#fires 1 and 2 through california

[mostlysignssomeportents]

No, Uber's (still) not profitable

Going to Defcon this weekend? I'm giving a keynote, "An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet's Enshittification and Throw it Into Reverse," on Saturday at 12:30pm, followed by a book signing at the No Starch Press booth at 2:30pm!

https://info.defcon.org/event/?id=50826

Bezzle (n): 1. "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it" (JK Gabraith) 2. Uber.

Uber was, is, and always will be a bezzle. There are just intrinsic limitations to the profits available to operating a taxi fleet, even if you can misclassify your employees as contractors and steal their wages, even as you force them to bear the cost of buying and maintaining your taxis.

The magic of early Uber – when taxi rides were incredibly cheap, and there were always cars available, and drivers made generous livings behind the wheel – wasn't magic at all. It was just predatory pricing.

Uber lost $0.41 on every dollar they brought in, lighting $33b of its investors' cash on fire. Most of that money came from the Saudi royals, funneled through Softbank, who brought you such bezzles as WeWork – a boring real-estate company masquerading as a high-growth tech company, just as Uber was a boring taxi company masquerading as a tech company.

Predatory pricing used to be illegal, but Chicago School economists convinced judges to stop enforcing the law on the grounds that predatory pricing was impossible because no rational actor would choose to lose money. They (willfully) ignored the obvious possibility that a VC fund could invest in a money-losing business and use predatory pricing to convince retail investors that a pile of shit of sufficient size must have a pony under it somewhere.

This venture predation let investors – like Prince Bone Saw – cash out to suckers, leaving behind a money-losing business that had to invent ever-sweatier accounting tricks and implausible narratives to keep the suckers on the line while they blew town. A bezzle, in other words:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/19/fake-it-till-you-make-it/#millennial-lifestyle-subsidy

Uber is a true bezzle innovator, coming up with all kinds of fairy tales and sci-fi gimmicks to explain how they would convert their money-loser into a profitable business. They spent $2.5b on self-driving cars, producing a vehicle whose mean distance between fatal crashes was half a mile. Then they paid another company $400 million to take this self-licking ice-cream cone off their hands:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

Amazingly, self-driving cars were among the more plausible of Uber's plans. They pissed away hundreds of millions on California's Proposition 22 to institutionalize worker misclassification, only to have the rule struck down because they couldn't be bothered to draft it properly. Then they did it again in Massachusetts:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/15/simple-as-abc/#a-big-ask

Remember when Uber was going to plug the holes in its balance sheet with flying cars? Flying cars! Maybe they were just trying to soften us up for their IPO, where they advised investors that the only way they'd ever be profitable is if they could replace every train, bus and tram ride in the world:

https://48hills.org/2019/05/ubers-plans-include-attacking-public-transit/

Honestly, the only way that seems remotely plausible is when it's put next to flying cars for comparison. I guess we can be grateful that they never promised us jetpacks, or, you know, teleportation. Just imagine the market opportunity they could have ascribed to astral projection!

Narrative capitalism has its limits. Once Uber went public, it had to produce financial disclosures that showed the line going up, lest the bezzle come to an end. These balance-sheet tricks were as varied as they were transparent, but the financial press kept falling for them, serving as dutiful stenographers for a string of triumphant press-releases announcing Uber's long-delayed entry into the league of companies that don't lose more money every single day.

One person Uber has never fooled is Hubert Horan, a transportation analyst with decades of experience who's had Uber's number since the very start, and who has done yeoman service puncturing every one of these financial "disclosures," methodically sifting through the pile of shit to prove that there is no pony hiding in it.

In 2021, Horan showed how Uber had burned through nearly all of its cash reserves, signaling an end to its subsidy for drivers and rides, which would also inevitably end the bezzle:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/10/unter/#bezzle-no-more

In mid, 2022, Horan showed how the "profit" Uber trumpeted came from selling off failed companies it had acquired to other dying rideshare companies, which paid in their own grossly inflated stock:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/05/a-lousy-taxi/#a-giant-asterisk

At the end of 2022, Horan showed how Uber invented a made-up, nonstandard metric, called "EBITDA profitability," which allowed them to lose billions and still declare themselves to be profitable, a lie that would have been obvious if they'd reported their earnings using Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/11/bezzlers-gonna-bezzle/#gryft

Like clockwork, Uber has just announced – once again – that it is profitable, and once again, the press has credulously repeated the claim. So once again, Horan has published one of his magisterial debunkings on Naked Capitalism:

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/08/hubert-horan-can-uber-ever-deliver-part-thirty-three-uber-isnt-really-profitable-yet-but-is-getting-closer-the-antitrust-case-against-uber.html

Uber's $394m gains this quarter come from paper gains to untradable shares in its loss-making rivals – Didi, Grab, Aurora – who swapped stock with Uber in exchange for Uber's own loss-making overseas divisions. Yes, it's that stupid: Uber holds shares in dying companies that no one wants to buy. It declared those shares to have gained value, and on that basis, reported a profit.

Truly, any big number multiplied by an imaginary number can be turned into an even bigger number.

Now, Uber also reported "margin improvements" – that is, it says that it loses less on every journey. But it didn't explain how it made those improvements. But we know how the company did it: they made rides more expensive and cut the pay to their drivers. A 2.9m ride in Manhattan is now $50 – if you get a bargain! The base price is more like $70:

https://www.wired.com/story/uber-ceo-will-always-say-his-company-sucks/

The number of Uber drivers on the road has a direct relationship to the pay Uber offers those drivers. But that pay has been steeply declining, and with it, the availability of Ubers. A couple weeks ago, I found myself at the Burbank train station unable to get an Uber at all, with the app timing out repeatedly and announcing "no drivers available."

Normally, you can get a yellow taxi at the station, but years of Uber's predatory pricing has caused a drawdown of the local taxi-fleet, so there were no taxis available at the cab-rank or by dispatch. It took me an hour to get a cab home. Uber's bezzle destroyed local taxis and local transit – and replaced them with worse taxis that cost more.

Uber won't say why its margins are improving, but it can't be coming from scale. Before the pandemic, Uber had far more rides, and worse margins. Uber has diseconomies of scale: when you lose money on every ride, adding more rides increases your losses, not your profits.

Meanwhile, Lyft – Uber's also-ran competitor – saw its margins worsen over the same period. Lyft has always been worse at lying about it finances than Uber, but it is in essentially the exact same business (right down to the drivers and cars – many drivers have both apps on their phones). So Lyft's financials offer a good peek at Uber's true earnings picture.

Lyft is actually slightly better off than Uber overall. It spent less money on expensive props for its long con – flying cars, robotaxis, scooters, overseas clones – and abandoned them before Uber did. Lyft also fired 24% of its staff at the end of 2022, which should have improved its margins by cutting its costs.

Uber pays its drivers less. Like Lyft, Uber practices algorithmic wage discrimination, Veena Dubal's term describing the illegal practice of offering workers different payouts for the same work. Uber's algorithm seeks out "pickers" who are choosy about which rides they take, and converts them to "ants" (who take every ride offered) by paying them more for the same job, until they drop all their other gigs, whereupon the algorithm cuts their pay back to the rates paid to ants:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

All told, wage theft and wage cuts by Uber transferred $1b/quarter from labor to Uber's shareholders. Historically, Uber linked fares to driver pay – think of surge pricing, where Uber charged riders more for peak times and passed some of that premium onto drivers. But now Uber trumpets a custom pricing algorithm that is the inverse of its driver payment system, calculating riders' willingness to pay and repricing every ride based on how desperate they think you are.

This pricing is a per se antitrust violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act, America's original antitrust law. That's important because Sherman 2 is one of the few antitrust laws that we never stopped enforcing, unlike the laws banning predator pricing:

https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/sites/ilr.law.uiowa.edu/files/2023-02/Woodcock.pdf

Uber claims an 11% margin improvement. 6-7% of that comes from algorithmic price discrimination and service cutbacks, letting it take 29% of every dollar the driver earns (up from 22%). Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi himself says that this is as high as the take can get – over 30%, and drivers will delete the app.

Uber's food delivery service – a baling wire-and-spit Frankenstein's monster of several food apps it bought and glued together – is a loser even by the standards of the sector, which is unprofitable as a whole and experiencing an unbroken slide of declining demand.

Put it all together and you get a picture of the kind of taxi company Uber really is: one that charges more than traditional cabs, pays drivers less, and has fewer cars on the road at times of peak demand, especially in the neighborhoods that traditional taxis had always underserved. In other words, Uber has broken every one of its promises.

We replaced the "evil taxi cartel" with an "evil taxi monopolist." And it's still losing money.

Even if Lyft goes under – as seems inevitable – Uber can't attain real profitability by scooping up its passengers and drivers. When you're losing money on every ride, you just can't make it up in volume.

Image: JERRYE AND ROY KLOTZ MD (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LA_BREA_TAR_PITS,_LOS_ANGELES.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

I’m kickstarting the audiobook for “The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation,” a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and bring back the old, good internet. It’s a DRM-free book, which means Audible won’t carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/09/accounting-gimmicks/#unter

Image: JERRYE AND ROY KLOTZ MD (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LA_BREA_TAR_PITS,_LOS_ANGELES.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #bezzles #hubert horan #uber #rideshare #accounting tricks #financial engineering #late-stage capitalism #narrative capitalism #lyft #transit #uber eats #venture predation #algorithmic wage discrimination

[dazedandconfused-15]

Heaven's in your eyes

This is to answer a request I received from an anonymous user a couple of months ago “Billy asks shy reader out and is protective over her”, for some reason I can't directly respond to their post still getting used to Tumblr. Sorry for taking a while to write this one. Anyway, I got a little bit carried away and turned it into a short fic, I just loved the whole concept. I’ll definitely post a part 2. Comments and constructive opinions are always appreciated 🩷

Part 1

You have always watched him from a distance.

There was something magnetic about him. Where he was, energy swirled.

You have never spoken to him. He’s something inaccessible to you. He hangs out with the popular crowd. Yet, unlike all of them, he doesn’t seem to pretend. He doesn’t show off. He naturally exudes an aura that makes him alluring. He’s not just what could be called "hot." No, he’s beautiful. When you first saw him in the school hallways, you could swear that for a second, your heart stopped. He was playing with his lighter, walking with an assured stride in the direction of his classroom with Jason Carver. He was a palette of contrasting colors that stood out in perfect harmony. His tanned face was framed by long, golden curls that almost fell over his shoulders. He looked straight ahead as he listened to the boy at his side with his red mouth stretched into a smirk that revealed white teeth. His cupid bow was dusted with stubble. It was no surprise that most of the girls looked at him with no shame, the shyest ones glancing up as soon as he passed them. That California boy did not look like a boy. He looked like a man. You could tell by the way he was built, the black leather jacket hugging his broad shoulders, the muscular legs in his denim jeans.

You had realized that you were staring openly at him when he passed by you and, probably feeling the weight of your gaze on him, his eyes had met yours. There, something had happened inside you. His eyes were the purest blue you had ever seen. They were crystalline. But it was the long dark lashes that gave his gaze something expressive and unique. They were the embodiment of what is called a piercing gaze. It was a unique paradox: as angelic as it was rough in outline. Awakening from your enchantment, you lowered your gaze with an abrupt jerk of your head and resumed putting your books away in the locker, feeling your cheeks on fire and your heart beating wildly.

That was the only time you had even a remote semblance of contact with him. 

As you rush to your English literature class a month later, rounding the corner of the hallway, the last thing you expect is to bump into him. You let out an "ouch" as you collide with his hard chest, your notes and pencil case tumbling to the ground in the chaos. It's only when you raise your eyes in a flurry of apologies that you realize who you've bumped into. You swallow, kneeling and picking up your notes hastily. 

"You alright?"

"Yes. Yes." the notes slip through your shaking fingers.

His hands appear in your field of vision, and when you accidentally touch them, an electric shock almost makes you wince. He helps you pick them up, then raises to his feet and holds them to you. You thank him, thinking about what else you could say to avoid making the situation awkward. His baby blue shirt matches the color of his eyes. He’s even prettier from closer. 

"We’re in History class together, right?

His question surprises you. You didn't think he would remember you. You didn't think he would notice you.

"Yes. That's right."

He holds out his hand, his heavy-lidded gaze on you. "Billy."

You shake his hand, introducing yourself. His hand is large and his grip his firm, but gentle at the same time. That touch makes your stomach tangle. You can't believe he is talking to you.

"You're new, right?" you ask. You know fully well that he arrived here a month ago. You know full well that he is from California. He probably knows that you know, but he doesn't say anything about it

"Yes. Moved here last month."

“Oh, okay. Welcome to Hawkins, then.” you say gently as you absently tuck a strand of hair behind your ear. 

“Thanks.”

There’s a beat of silence, him probably waiting for you to say something else. You point at the door down the hallway, starting to walk away. “I ah, I have to go to class. Sorry.”

And you walk away, no, you scurry away, almost escaping him, feeling a pang of embarrassment as you replay the scene later in your head, regretting how abruptly you left without saying more. 

You don’t cross paths with him again after that. However, you are clearly more aware of his presence during history classes even though you don’t interact again. 

In recent months, you've adopted a strategy of minimizing your visibility as much as possible. It’s not always easy. That Thursday is one of the hard days. Mr. Jensen, the new history teacher, makes his way through the rows of desks, collecting permission slips signed by parents for the upcoming day trip he has organized to Indianapolis. 

"Ah, I don't seem to have your permission slip yet," he inquires gently as he sees you empty-handed. "Did you forget to bring it today?" 

Feeling the eyes of everyone on you, your cheeks flush with embarrassment as you shake your head, your voice barely above a whisper. You hate all of this attention on you. "I, um, I haven't been able to get it signed yet. My dad's been working double shifts, and I haven't caught him at home."

“I understand,” the teacher says, “But I need to give all the signed papers to the principal by tomorrow. Is it possibly to get it signed today? By your mother, perhaps?”

Before you could answer, Tommy Hagan's voice pierces the air, his tone laced with mockery. "She's probably halfway across the country by now, cozying up with some other guy."

You don’t even turn to look at him. You saw it coming. It’s been five months since she left now. Hawkins is a small town, so the news spread quickly. You shift uncomfortably in your seat, avoiding eye contact with your classmates as you feel the weight of their curious gazes. 

"I uh...I just," you try to ignore Tommy's comment, resting your eyes on the professor whose eyebrows are furrowed in confusion. "I'll tell my dad tonight. He's just been really busy. I will bring it to class tomorrow."

“If he comes back with the milk.” snickers Tommy. 

You stiffen instantly without wanting to, which the teacher doesn’t fail to notice.

“That's enough, Mr. Hagan. Comments like that have no place in my classroom.” he snaps as his eyes darken, his jaw set. His expression softens as he turns to me “Don't worry about the permission slip for now. We'll make sure you're included."

As the professor returns to his seat, your eyes remain fixed on the spot where the bench is chipped, absently touching it with your fingernail. Your body fails to relax as you fight to ignore the burning in your throat, careful not to blink, your vision blurred for a few moments. But Tommy's yelp draws your attention and you turn your head to your left, where he is sitting next to Billy. 

“Ow. What was that for, man?”

Tommy is rubbing his shoulder, his face scrunched up in pain and a mixture of disbelief and confusion on his face. Billy stares straight ahead, his face cold and hard. 

"What the fuck is your problem?" he eventually mutters under the teacher’s explanation. However, it sounds more like a statement than a question.

As you go back to stare at your desk, your throat is still burning but your vision is clear again. You wonder if what Billy said was because of Tommy's comments. Why would he defend you? 

The rest of the class passes in a blur of confusion and unanswered questions. Tommy's hurtful words echo in your mind, leaving you shaken and upset, the sting of their cruelty lingering long after the bell rings.

***

On the morning of the school trip, you are tempted to call the school and say you are sick, but your father comes back from the plant later in the morning and will see that you are actually fine. Also, Mr. Jensen might suspect that something is going on. Only, the idea of spending the day with the whole class, but feeling more alone than you are when you're at school, doesn't appeal to you. You've never been very outgoing. Since your mother left, the armor that covered you has only thickened, alienating you from the rest of the world. To this day you have received no answers. She left overnight without warning. You never received a call. You knew that things had not been going well between your parents for some time. Or rather, your mother kept complaining about how being in Hawkins was suffocating her, how she was no longer happy. The pain was slowly becoming coated with resentment. She had abandoned you and your father as if nothing had happened, as if years of living together had counted for nothing. As if being a family had cost nothing. Arriving on the ground floor and finding the kitchen light off had now become a habit, not an odd occurrence. Other things had become routine: the unaccustomed silence in your house, the TV once perpetually on now always off, the teapot once always in use was now in the kitchen drawer. 

Once on the school bus, you spend your time looking out the window and counting the trees on the distant hills. You can feel the wind blowing outside, the rain pelting cruelly on the window. A crack lets a trickle of air through, making you shiver and clench tighter in your jacket. The ride at least passes quietly, no one talking to you or bothering you. Tommy Hagan keeps his comments to himself, too busy jabbering in the back of the bus with his band of friends. You can hear the occasional shrillness in the voice of Carol Perkins, his girlfriend. 

You spend almost the entire morning in the Indiana Historical Society, following the professor through the corridors of the museum. You stay in the background, drowning out the guide's voice and looking at the paintings hanging on the wall. As you change rooms, you realize that you are not the only one who has remained aloof. Billy Hargrove lingers to your side at the back of the row of students, his hands tucked into his leather jacket. You try not to be affected by his presence, suddenly self-conscious of the way you walk and breathe. You still remember what he told Tommy Hagan the week before. You are increasingly convinced that he defended you. As the class spreads in different directions, everyone observing something different and speaking lowly in small groups you realize he’s still here, on your side.  As you ponder if you should say something, or just assume that he’s walking behind on his own, he catches you off guard. 

“Kinda boring, huh?” 

“Yeah, a little," you respond, offering him a small smile that probably looks like a grimace. "History isn't my cup of tea."

“Mine neither,” his gaze scans the display cases lining the wall on your left. “Beats being seated all day in class, though.”

“Definitely,” you nod in agreement as you slowly cross through another room. Desperately trying to fill the silence, you come up with the first thing that crosses your mind. “I’ve been here before.”

“The museum?” 

“Indianapolis,” you say. You hesitate before finishing your thoughts. “My grandma lived here. I spent some weekends at hers.” 

Billy hums. He sniffs, then retrieves some chewing gums from his back pocket. He unwraps one. “How’s the city?” 

“It’s great. Oh, thank you.” you softly say as you take the gum he’s offering you. “There are some nice parks.” 

He pops the chewing gum in his mouth. “We have quite a few in San Diego too.

You turn toward him, curiosity overcoming your shyness. “You lived in San Diego?”

“Yes. Big change of scenery.”

“I can imagine.” your gaze wanders to the antique objects displayed in a glass case. “I’ve seen pictures, it looks incredible.” memories of your dad's album, from when he was young, flood your mind – images of palm trees swaying in the breeze, golden beaches stretching for miles, and endless blue skies that seemed to merge seamlessly with the ocean. 

“That’s something else, yeah. Honestly, I couldn’t complain at all.” 

“I wish I could see California,” you say a little dreamily. 

“I can take you one day.”

Your throat feels suddenly dry. So you let out a nervous giggle, avoiding his gaze, assuming he is joking. Fortunately, the professor calls your attention back. It's lunchtime and he tells you that you are free to go wherever you want, as long as you are outside the museum within four hours. You told your father the school would pay for the student's lunch because you know times are tough. He insisted on giving you ten dollars in case you need it.

You walk down the steps of the museum looking around and thinking about where you could make all this time go. It's going to be long. You know a few restaurants, but you know that your pocket money is clearly not enough to eat there. A gust of wind brings the smell of smoke to your nostrils, and out of the corner of your eye, you see Billy stop beside you. His eyes take in your surroundings.

“So, you told me you know the city.”

“Huh, yes,” you answer, a little lost. “Not all of it, but most of it, like downtown.”

Billy exhales the smoke he’s been holding in his mouth.  “Are we downtown?” 

You look around, recognizing the skyscrapers in the distance. "Yes," you point to the skyline to your right, figuring he simply wants to ask you for information so he knows where to go with his friends. "It's over there."

“Sweet. You hungry?” 

The silence that passes between the two of you makes him turn toward you, waiting for your response. So you rush to answer, ignoring the way his piercing blue eyes make you feel self-conscious.

“Yes. Yes, a little bit,” then you ask him, unsure: “...are you?”

“Starving.” he resumes walking down the stairs again, and you follow him, trying to figure out if he really means what you think he means. Some classmates are already leaving in different directions. “You know someplace to eat?” 

“I do. But I don’t have enough. In case you want to go together. If that’s what you were offering.” You add, mentally slapping yourself. Why does everything you say have to come across as weird? Besides, you just admitted that you are practically out of money. “I can show you, though.”

Billy shakes his head, shifting in his leather jacket. “Nah, don’t worry about it. It’s on me.” 

“No, really, I can't let you do that," you insist, your voice tinged with concern. "I mean, I appreciate it, but I can't just let you pay for me."

Billy turns to you, a hint of amusement dancing in his eyes as he exhales the smoke sideways. "Come on, it's no big deal," he reassures you. "Consider it my way of saying thanks for showing me around. Besides, it's not like I'm short on cash."

You hesitate for a moment. But ultimately, you know that accepting his offer would ease the burden on your wallet. With a resigned sigh, you nod in agreement. "Okay, if you insist," you concede, offering him a small smile. "But just this once.”

You wanna immediately grimace at your pathetic implication that there would be another time, but Billy doesn’t seem to notice anyway.

He just winks at you. And even if he’s not smiling or anything, it still makes your stomach flip. "Deal," he says. "Now, lead the way."

As you walk beside each other through the park later on, you relish in what surrounds you, not even realizing the silence that has settled between the two of you because it feels so natural. Some people are jogging, there are some families too, or people walking alone headed who knows where. The birds are chirping in the trees that are alongside the walk. You spot a squirrel scurrying up the trunk of one of them, its fluffy tail waving wildly. The late afternoon sun is shining right in front of you, hitting your skin in a gentle caress. Spring is gradually unfurling its colors, bringing with it a glimmer of warmth that has been absent from your life lately. In the midst of the cold and desolation that settled in after your mother's departure, this glimpse of light offers a tentative promise of renewal, a small beacon of hope amid the darkness that has enveloped you and your father. You glance at Billy, realizing that in the short span of your conversation, he's frequently reached for a cigarette. Yet, even during the moments when he abstained, like in the museum and at the restaurant, his mouth was never empty. It was either occupied by a mint, a bite of burger, the straw of his milkshake, or eventually a toothpick found on the table. 

“So, uhm, have you been somewhere else besides San Diego or Hawkins?” you venture. 

“Nope”, he answers, the “p” resounding loudly. He looks around, one hand in his jacket pocket as the other one holds the cigarette on his side. “Never moved from Cali. I was born in Santa Barbara. Then moved to San Diego when I was ten.”

You hum in acknowledgment. “Is Santa Barbara close to the ocean?”

“It is. I’ve always lived by the ocean.” 

You turn to him, enthusiasm laced in your voice as you get carried away in the conversation. “So you know how to surf?” 

Billy chuckles, nodding as he brings the cigarette to his lips. “I do, yeah. Surfed every day.” 

“Wow.” you breathe, your mind wandering away. “It must be…like an adrenaline rush.”

As Billy exhales the smoke, you don’t miss the nostalgic glint flickering in his eyes, but it’s gone as quickly as it came. "Yeah, it's something else. There's nothing quite like catching a wave, feeling the power of the ocean beneath you."

“I’ve heard it’s hard to learn.” you muse softly. 

The rhythmic sound of your footsteps punctuates the conversation. Billy stays silent for a few seconds, probably lost in his thoughts. Then he shrugs. “To be honest, I was on the surfboard since I was a child, so must’ve been natural for me. But yeah, it generally is.

“I can only imagine," you respond, a sense of longing in your voice. You’ve only seen this kind of landscape in pictures or on TV.  "Must have been amazing growing up with that kind of freedom."

Billy's sigh is loud as he exhales a plume of smoke, his gaze drifting towards the horizon. "It was. Surfing was my escape, you know? Whenever things got tough, I could just grab my board and disappear into the waves."

What he says lightens some curiosity in you. You wonder what he means by that. You wonder what he went through, what his past was like. There’s something really intriguing about him. But you refrain from asking more, aware of how little you know each other. Besides, you can’t help but notice the little twitch of his jaw muscles as he says it. 

"It’s always been books for me.” you offer. “They have this way of transporting you to another world, making you forget about everything else."

Billy nods in understanding. “What kinda books you read?”

“Oh,” you look at your shoes as you feel suddenly vulnerable. You almost feel ashamed of your taste in books, but you know you shouldn’t. “A bit of everything, really. I’m reading a Dostoevsky one right now.

“Dostoevsky, huh? Pretty heavy stuff,” he says, arching an eyebrow. 

“You’ve read some of him before?

“I read Dream of a Ridiculous Man. A long time ago though.” 

“Oh,” you breathe, recalling how challenging it was to finish it when you read it a couple of months ago. Reading books by Dostoevsky, especially that one, has been both a cathartic and enlightening experience. They made you feel less alone in your pain. “Did you like it?”

“Yeah, it’s kinda controversial.” he grimaces. “It’s a fucking depressing book. But... it's like... there's something about it that just... resonates, you know what I mean? Like, you read it and... it's like looking into a mirror, but... the reflection's all twisted and weird. I don't know if that makes any sense.” he shrugs. 

It couldn’t make more any sense to you. For the first time, you feel understood in that sense. It's a relief to know that you're not alone in finding meaning within its pages. His words resonate deeply with you. 

“I totally get it. That’s part of the reason why I like his books.” 

The subtle revelation hangs in the air with the rhythmic sound of your footsteps on the concrete path. You hope he’s not reflecting on your words too much, aware of what you’ve implied. Your own thoughts go on what he said. Why did Billy resonate so much with the book? What if there’s something everybody can relate to, even people who haven’t experienced anything bad in life?

“What about you?” he then asks. “Always been in Hawkins?”

“Born and raised.” you nod. Then you add, a bit sheepishly: “Nothing like California, unfortunately.” 

Billy snorts, flicking his cigarette. “What’s there to do in summer?”

“Oh uh. Nothing much. We have a public pool.” you offer, looking at him. 

Billy takes a drag, his eyes trailing on the path in front of both of you.

“We have Lover’s Lake too,” you add. “It’s quite nice, actually. People spend the day there and have barbecues or campfires.” 

“Yeah, I’ve heard about that one,” he says. “You guys party by the lake during summer or something like that.” 

“Yes.” then you keep quiet for a few breaths, imagining he’s probably heard it from one of his friends from the basketball team. They’re usually to host parties or organize them. It always involves loads of alcohol and ends up in big scandals. You feel the urge to correct him. “Not me, though. I don’t, uh…I don’t party.” 

You feel his eyes on you. “Makes sense.”

You look up at him in question. 

“Didn’t see you at the Halloween party.”

“The one hosted by Tina Williams?” you soon look away as soon as you meet his gaze. “I didn’t know you…you noticed.”

“Would’ve sure as hell noticed if you were there.”

As Billy's words settle in, you feel a warmth spreading through you, starting from the tips of your ears and flushing your cheeks crimson. His simple compliment catches you off guard, igniting a whirlwind of emotions within you. You find yourself struggling to meet his gaze, your eyes flickering away as you search for some semblance of composure. None of this makes sense. The mere fact that he recognized your absence at the party, that he shared lunch with you, that he's now walking beside you in the park—it all feels inexplicable. You're accustomed to blending into the background, being an outcast in the bustling halls of the school. You're no stranger to the whispers that swirl around you, painting you as the outsider, the comments about your situation at home, the subtle jabs at your circumstances. The silence between you stretches, pregnant with unspoken thoughts. 

“You’re alright?” you hear him ask.

You slow down, lingering to a stop as you realize Billy has stopped walking too. He looks down at you with a hint of curiosity, the sun caressing his golden skin and reflecting in his eyes, becoming like polished, crystalline gems. That’s when you notice little details you haven’t paid attention to before. The scar cutting through his right eyebrow, the pattern of freckles dusting his nose. 

“I guess I’m just a little confused,” you admit. 

Billy exhales the smoke from his nostrils, his gaze effortlessly fixed intensely on you. “Why is that?”

“I just…” you try to not avoid his gaze. “Why are you here with me?”

The corners of his eyes crinkle in amusement and what looks like genuine confusion. “Why wouldn’t I?”

His question is so simple it takes you off guard. Makes you question your reasoning. As you’re at a loss for words, you feel a blush slowly creeping down your cheeks. 

Billy’s lips slowly curve into a smile, somewhat teasing. “You really have pretty eyes, you know that?”

You’re positively sure you’re as red as a lobster now, a little whine escaping your lips as embarrassment settles over you. It’s the most instinctual reaction. It makes him chuckle, and makes you awkwardly laugh in response, because what else can you do? He tilts his head to the side, trying to meet your avoiding eyes. 

“How about that? I’m here with you ‘cause of your pretty eyes”. 

“I really don’t think they’re that special.” you shake your head, still laughing. 

You’re not that innocent to not realise he’s openly flirting with you. You’re not surprised, because just looking at him is enough. You’ve also heard things about him and some girls at high school. What surprises you, is that he’s flirting with you. You don’t have that much experience in the love department, but there’s something sincere and genuine in the way he’s doing it now. There’s something soft in his eyes that tells you he’s sincere.

“Well, it’s a shame,” he says, that’s when you realise how much closer you are to each other. You can tell by how you can smell the tobacco and his cologne, his silver earring shining as it catches the sun. He tilts his head again, this time catching your gaze as you muster the courage to lock eyes with him. “’Cause you have beautiful eyes.”

“Thank you,” you mumble with a shy smile, nodding your head slightly. You swear you can hear your heartbeat in your ears. 

You feel like you want to return the compliment because his eyes are the reason why your heart is reacting the way it does. But then again, you’re too shy to do that, and a tiny part of you thinks it would make things weird or would end up having you vulnerable because you don’t know for sure if his compliment is fueled by real interest in you. 

“I just don’t hang out with anyone, trust me.”

As a distant church bells toll four times, their echoes drifting across the park, a subtle reminder of the passing time washes over you both. The realization settles in that it’s time for you to go. You should be back in front of the museum in half an hour. 

Luckily, Billy saves you from answering as he breaks eye contact and looks up beyond your shoulder, where the church is. “We should go,” he says.

As you walk back to the museum, you think about his words. Now you realize that you didn’t see him hanging around Tommy Hagan lately. In particular, today on the bus, the latter was seated with his girlfriend and hung out with two other members of the basketball team. Billy was somewhere else the whole time.

When you two reach the museum, the teacher is already counting everyone to make sure the whole class is there. Billy joins his mates, elbowing one of them in a friendly gesture. You didn’t fail the notice the looks most of your classmates shot at you when he saw you two arrive together. The teacher draws the class's attention back to the trip, prompting feedback and reflections from everyone.

What you don’t expect either once on the bus, is feeling someone sitting on the empty seat next to yours. Billy gets comfortable, making it seem something so normal as he stretches his long legs as far as the cramped quarters allow. His thigh brushes against yours and your heart jumps a little in your ribcage, but a few minutes later you start to relax. You can’t help the feeling of warmth spreading through your chest as you take in his choice to sit deliberately next to you. You don’t need to fill the silence, or at least not as strongly as a few hours ago. You’re also quite tired. As you venture a glance in his direction, Billy’s eyes are closed. It seems you’re not the only one feeling tired. His arms are crossed over his chest but his facial features are totally relaxed now that he’s dozing off, his head resting against the seat. His hair seems soft at the touch, a curl falling unruly on his forehead. You feel the distant urge to wrap it around your finger, brush it from his face. There is a difference between now and when he’s fully awake: his expression softened, his gaze peaceful, and his features relaxed. It's a stark contrast from the demeanor you've observed from a distance, where his smile is more wolfish, his facial muscles tense, and his eyes often distant or bored. You force yourself to look away from him, setting your gaze on the window. As the rhythmic hum of the bus lulls you into a state of drowsiness, you feel your eyelids grow heavy. The warmth of the moment envelops you, and soon, you find yourself dozing off as well. 

Once you get off the bus, you wrap your arms around your waist as you shiver. The weather is distinctly different. It seems to have been raining all day. The sky is darkening. School buses cannot take you home because there is no bus stop near your house. Forest Hill Trailer Park is in the isolated part of Hawkins. There is no one from the high school living there, so you can't ask anyone for a ride. It's not like anyone would have offered anyway. You've always walked to and from school, in total it takes you forty minutes. As you start to walk away from the bus, you hear footsteps behind you and Billy is at your side, effortlessly catching up with you. You realize his car is parked a few steps away from you. The gleaming navy blue Camaro stands out among the other cars, "CALIFORNIA" on the license plate.

You take the opportunity to thank him before he can dart away and you will probably never exchange another word again.

“Hey,” you start, turning to look at him. “I just wanted to thank you for paying at lunch today.”

Billy plays with the lighter, making it bounce in his hand. “It’s nothing. How are you getting home?”

“Oh, I’m walking.” you point your thumb at the road on your left.

“Come on. I’ll drive you.”

Your mouth opens and closes stupidly, then your brain finally decides to cooperate. Accepting his offer feels like taking advantage of his kindness. You don't want to do this. “I…it’s not a long walk, don’t worry about it.”

“It’s probably gonna rain soon.” he points at the sky, walking past you and toward the parked car.

“You don’t have to.” you insist, guilt filling my stomach as he opens the passenger door for you.

“I know.” he chuckles. 

The soft thrumming of a rock song fills the air, the bass pulsing gently as Billy lowers the volume as soon as he turns the engine on. The interior of the Camaro envelops you in a world that feels distinctly his. The smell of leather fills your senses, mingling with the faint scent of his cologne. It's clear that he takes immense pride in his car and the care and attention he devotes to it reflects on the interior. The leather seats feel soft and smooth. There's not a speck of dust anywhere, even in the corners. A pair of aviators rests on the dashboard. 

You give him directions, your voice cutting through the quiet ambiance of the car. He nods in acknowledgment, his gaze focused on the road ahead. His left arm casually drapes against the window, while his other hand firmly grasps the top of the steering wheel. 

“It’s quite a walk,” he observes as the Camaro speeds through the road surrounded by the woods. 

“Yeah…”

You’re thinking of asking him to stop before getting to Forest Hill, but it’s pouring and you don’t have an umbrella. As you get closer and closer, anxiety starts rippling through you. You shake the feeling out of your head. You’re being ridiculous, there’s nothing to be ashamed about. Additionally, you barely know him. You try and distract yourself, asking him about where he lives instead.

“Cherry Lane. You know where it is?” 

“Yes, it’s a nice and quiet area. It’s not that far from school either,” you observe.

Billy absently scratches his chin, the glint of a silver braided ring catching your eye. “Yeah. It’s quiet, that’s for sure.” 

You find yourself wondering about its significance. Does it have one? You've heard numerous accounts of Billy's involvement in fights at parties, tales of the severe injuries sustained by those who crossed him, and the ferocity of his punches. How many times has that ring been tainted with someone else's blood? Despite the rumors surrounding his aggressive behavior, your interactions with Billy have always been positive. He's consistently shown kindness to you.

Billy turns left, veering off the main road onto a narrow side road, the tires crunching on the gravelly dirt path that winds its way towards Forest Hills. The rain drums insistently against the car, a steady rhythm punctuating the silence between you.

The first trailer emerges into view, its weather-beaten exterior casting a shadow of foreboding over your already uneasy mind. Despite your discomfort, you muster the courage to speak up, directing Billy to continue driving until the end of the road.

You steal a furtive glance at him, searching for any hint of judgment in his expression, but Billy remains impassive. There's no trace of surprise or disdain in his features. His gaze lingers on the scene before you, studying it with a detached curiosity that seems to characterize his view of Hawkins as a whole.

“Thanks again for today, really. I wanna pay you back,” you venture as he slows down.

Billy waves a dismissive hand before settling it on the gear shift, smoothly transitioning into first gear. “I told you it’s no big deal. Wouldn’t have offered otherwise.”

You worry at your lip, still not totally convinced. You glance at him. “I know that. But it doesn’t sound fair. It’s important to me.”

Billy's gaze shifts to the road ahead as he seemingly considers your words. "If you really wanna make it up to me," he starts, his voice trailing off for a moment before he continues, "How about you show me around Hawkins sometime?"

You blink, caught off guard by his suggestion. "Show you around Hawkins?"

"Yeah," he nods, resting his forearm loosely on the steering wheel as he gestures while he talks. "I've only been here a short while, and I don't really know my way around outside downtown yet. Like, all the places you talked to me about. The lake, the quarry."

The idea appeals to you, though the thought of spending more time with him outside of school never crossed your mind. The fact of spending time with him in the first place was out off the charts for you. "Sure, I could do that," you reply, a tentative smile tugging at the corners of your lips. "I mean, I'm not exactly a tour guide, but I could show you some cool spots. Whenever you want, uhm. Yeah.”

Billy reaches out to the compartment on the passenger side, brushing your knee with his arm. He opens it and extracts a pen. 

“Here,” he takes off the cap with his teeth, and before you know it he’s taking your arm, gently lifting your sweater sleeve. 

You try to look unfazed by his touch, though the feeling of his fingertips pressing gently against your skin as he holds your forearm, the sensation of the pen as he writes something on it makes you shiver, raising goosebumps. You look at him in silent confusion as he writes, his dark lashes brushing his cheekbones, a glimpse of pearly white teeth and a sharp canine as he holds the cap between them. Then he releases your arm, and you take a look at it while he takes the cap from his mouth. A series of numbers are written in blue ink on your skin. A phone number.

“Oh.” you say softly. You definitely haven’t expected that.

“Call me when you feel like it.” 

It’s really hard for you to hide your nervousness, acting as cool as you can.

“Okay, will do.” you unbuckle your belt, glancing at him enough to give him a soft smile.

Billy nods at you in silent farewell before you close the passenger door. “Have a good night”.

“You too. Bye.”

The warmth of Billy's presence lingers in the car as you step out into the cool, damp air, the raindrops falling softly around you. Closing the door behind you, you watch as the sleek navy blue Camaro disappears down the little road and into the woods from the small window of the living room. As you stand there, the drops of water falling from the end of your hair, you can't help but brush at the phone number on your forearm, tracing the neat handwriting with your fingertips. It's like you're still trying to wrap your head around what just happened. Though you're trying to keep it under control, you can't help the fluttering feeling in your heart.

#billy hargove imagine #billy hargove smut #billy hargrove #dacre montgomery #billy hargove x reader #stranger things fic #billy hargrove x oc #billy hargrove fic #billy hargrove fluff #billy hargrove x reader #billy hargrove angst #billy hargrove imagine #dacryphilia #eddie munson #billy hargrove x y/n #billy stranger things #billy hargrove x you #stranger things smut

[persevereforahappyending]

He Hung Up (Christmas)

Pairing: Tara Carpenter x Reader

Summary: “Christmas is literally in a few days, is the plan for them to stay through Christmas as well?”

Warnings: None

Word Count: 6k+

Main Masterlist | Series Masterlist

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Sam trudged up the stairs to her apartment, sighing as she got her keys ready. She just got off a long shift and wanted nothing more than to just relax. She wasn’t big on Christmas, but she was looking forward to the time off and spending time with her sister, it had been a long time since they got to spend Christmas together. Sam doesn’t really count last year because there was still a lot of recovering from Ghostface going on. She knew this year wouldn’t be perfect, but she was hoping it might be better, maybe she and Tara could make new memories and Christmas could become something they enjoyed again. She knew she was part of Tara’s dislike of the holidays, first their dad left and then Sam left. Sam had a lot of make-up to do.

The college was already on winter break but given Sam’s job she hadn’t gotten to spend any time with her sister, she barely got started on her Christmas shopping. Chad and Mindy left the first day of break, which happened to be the day after Tara’s birthday. Sam was glad the twins got to spend Tara’s birthday with her, it ended up being a fun night. The next day they flew back to California to spend the break with their mom. They all agreed to do a Christmas together when the twins got back, which just meant Sam had more time to pick something good out for them. She was hoping to get a little input from Tara, she wanted to do something football related for Chad and horror related for Mindy but despite her father being a serial killer that spawned a popular horror franchise she didn’t know shit about horror.

Danny also flew back to his hometown to be with his parents. So, the only thing keeping Sam from getting to spend the holidays alone with her sister was you. As Sam’s keys jingled, unlocking her apartment, she heard what she had been hearing every day since the break started, you. You had been over every day since the break started. The only good thing was that most days you left and went back to your own apartment, not that it mattered because you stayed all night and then were back by morning, sometimes Sam was eating breakfast, and you were already there, knocking on the door. Sam was trying to be nice though, it was the holidays and she’d hopefully have Christmas Day just her and her sister.

When Sam pushed open the door, she saw you and Tara curled up on the couch watching a movie as you not so quietly talked to each other. Sam glanced at the TV to see Gremlins playing. “Gremlins?” she questioned with a raised eyebrow.

“Yeah!” You exclaimed, looking at her like it was the most obvious choice for them to be watching. “It’s the best Christmas movie.”

Sam was taken aback giving you a look like you had two heads. “How is-”

“Don’t,” Tara tried to warn her.

“That a Christmas movie?” Sam continued her question.

“Well, you see Samantha,” you started, earning a quick glare from Sam, she hated when someone called her Samantha. “Gizmo,” you pointed to the little fuzzy guy who was currently on the screen, “was a Christmas present.” You clasped your hands together as if you were presenting a project. “The whole movie takes place around Christmas time. They’re decorating the tree, making Christmas cookies, and the gremlins even dress up like carolers.” You let out a satisfied huff at the end of your reasoning.

“But people are attacked and some of them even die,” she tried to argue. She wasn’t sure why she was playing into your game.

“People are attacked in home alone, but everyone considers that a Christmas movie,” you fired back.

“But there’s no death!”

You scoffed, waving off the claim. “Gremlins only has off screen deaths, those don’t count. Also, all that shit Kevin did? Those two guys should have been dead.”

“Whatever,” Sam said shaking her head. She saw your reasoning and it was pretty logical, not that she’d ever tell you that. She still wasn’t sure if she’d considered it a Christmas movie.

Sam tossed her stuff down and made her way into the kitchen, opening the fridge to see what she could make for dinner. “Oh,” Tara called out from the kitchen. “Can Y/N stay for dinner?”

Sam sighed, closing the fridge, and moving to stand in the doorway. “Again?” Sam asked some of her annoyance from the week slipping in.

“Yeah?” Tara asked, turning to face Sam. “What’s the issue?” Tara wasn’t glaring at Sam, yet, but Sam could hear the slight annoyed tone. Tara always got that tone when she didn’t get her way, specifically when it came to you.

“They’ve been here an awfully lot this week,” Sam started, keeping her voice as neutral as possible.

“So? It’s Christmas break.”

“That doesn’t mean they have to spend every second of every day here.” Sam ran a frustrated hand through her hair. “They’re usually just leaving by the time I’m going to bed and then they’re back knocking on the door before I leave for work.”

“So what?” Tara was now on her feet, arms crossed and glaring at Sam. “You haven’t been home, and I don’t feel like spending all day alone. Who cares if they’re here all day?”

“Christmas is literally in a few days, is the plan for them to stay through Christmas as well?”

“Maybe!”

“No,” Sam snapped. She didn’t mean to be so harsh; all the weeks of stress have just been building up. She hadn’t expected an answer and the fact that Tara didn’t see a problem in you crashing their Christmas sent her over the edge. “That’s where I draw the line.”

“What are you saying?” Tara matched her sister’s anger. “I can’t spend Christmas with them? They’re not allowed to come over and see me?”

“I want one day! One day of just you and me! I figured Christmas could be that day. We could finally spend a Christmas together, just the two of us.”

“What about what I want?”

“Don’t they have a family to go see over Christmas and they want to spend time with?” Sam saw a flash of something in your eyes, but she was to focused on Tara to recognize what it was.

“God! You-”

“Actually,” you spoke softly cutting Tara off as you slowly rose to your feet, gently resting a hand on her arm. “I’m headed back home tomorrow.”

“What?” Tara whipped around. Sam almost got whiplash from how fast Tara went from angry to hurt. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

You shrugged. “I don’t know I was having fun with you; I didn’t want to ruin it.”

“You leave tomorrow?”

You nodded. “Yeah, but I’ll call you every day and I’m getting back the day after Christmas.”

Tara crossed her arms pouting. “I was hoping to give you your present on Christmas Day.”

“I’m sorry,” you looked at her sadly. “I wish I could give you yours Christmas Day as well, but we can do Christmas the day after, yeah?” You smiled, brushing a strand of hair out of her eyes. “Just me and you. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

“I guess.” Tara was still pouting but she seemed slightly less upset. “I still wish you would’ve had told me.”

“It’s not like it’s going to be fun. I’m not going to be doing anything, really.”

“Then why do you have to go?” Sam wanted to roll her eyes, of course Tara would try and convince you to not go to your families for Christmas.

“Spending time with family is important, right?” You raised your eyebrows, staring Tara down to make her agree with you. Sam didn’t know how you did it, you always got Tara to agree with you. If Sam had said any of the stuff you did, Tara would be nonstop, making nothing into a monstrous fight.

“Yeah,” Tara sighed. “I’m still going to miss you.”

“Me too,” you rest a hand on the side of her face, caressing her cheek. “Besides we still have tonight,” you looked up at Sam, silently asking her if that was still okay. Sam nodded; she could tolerate you one more night since it meant you wouldn’t be around for a few days.

“I guess,” Tara mumbled, wrapping her arms around your waist before burying her head in your shirt. You instantly wrapped your arms around her, pulling her in for a tighter hug. Sam wanted to roll her eyes, the two of you were acting like you weren’t going to see each other for months not a few days.

“Come on, lets finish the movie.” You kissed the top of Tara’s head, keeping one arm wrapped around her as you pulled away and led her back down to the couch.

**************************************

The next few days did not go as Sam had imagined. She had still been working crazy hours and after work she spent the night going from store to store searching for a present for Tara. She had a gift card at the ready to give to Tara, but she wanted something more personal. Tara had also been silently hostile towards her since you left. Sam was trying not to start anything; she was just hoping Tara’s mood would lighten by Christmas day. The only good thing was that Tara wasn’t actively seeking arguments with her, she was just pouting and giving Sam short responses. Every night Tara was on her phone either texting or talking to you. Sam knew it was young love or whatever, but you guys had just seen each other. She herself had barely talked to Danny since he left, they texted a few times but neither one of them was glued to their phone.

As she walked the streets of New York, searching for a shop she hadn’t already been in, something that would call to her, something that screamed Tara, she passed by a bakery. Sam stopped, looking in the window at all the Christmas themed baked goods, there were cakes decorated with snowflakes, cupcakes with little Santas, and various cookies decorated. Sam ripped open the door, stepped into the shop and purchased a dozen cookies. All the cookies looked great but before she could walk away from the window, she noticed some of them were decorated with characters or quotes from various Christmas movies.

As she continued to walk down the street, the box of cookies under her arm, she thought back to her childhood. Sam didn’t like thinking about her childhood, most of her memories were tainted by the lies of her mom, her dad leaving, the truth of her birth father, and the guilt she felt for leaving her sister. When she was younger and Tara was just a little kid who loved following her around things were good, they were happy. Christmas used to be a magical time for them, every Christmas eve they would spend the day baking cookies to leave out for Santa. A part of Sam wanted to bring that back, maybe not the leaving the cookies out for Santa part but the making their own cookies. Besides loving to eat the cookie dough, Sam remembered how big of a smile Tara had on her face, usually covered in flower, when they would make the cookies. Part of Sam worried about bringing it up to Tara, she knew Christmas wasn’t great after she left and Sam didn’t want to try and force old memories, just because she thought it’d be fun didn’t mean Tara would.

Sam sighed, she had been out a little later than usual and she hadn’t seen a single shop that seemed interesting. She was about to turn around when a life-size Wolfman figure caught her eye. She looked at the store front, seeing the windows filled with other movie related memorabilia and posters. She shrugged, deciding there was no harm in giving the little store a shot and opened the door. She knew it was the holidays, it was the day before Christmas eve and the store was closing soon so she was going to do a quick look around and see if anything jumped out at her.

The store was small but was stuffed full, wall to wall, ceiling to floor, there was product everywhere. There were posters, action fingers, DVD sets, a wide range of TV shows and movies. As Sam weaved her way through the rows of shelves she finally came to the register where there was a display case of collectibles. There seemed to be higher valued collectibles, things way out of her price range, but there were also knives and other weapons. The weapons were horror themed though, they were the same style from whatever movie they were from and then they had the villain of the movie etched into the blade. Sam’s eyes grazed over the Ghostface knife and landed on a Friday the 13th machete. The machete had Jason from different scenes etched all down the blade. Sam smiled at the old man behind the counter and pointed to the machete.

When Sam left the shop, she had some slight reservations about buying Tara a weapon. Luckily for her the man assured her the blade was dull and was meant to be a display piece more than anything. Sam made a note of where the shop was, she would have to take Tara there one day and she was tempted to come back and get the Michael Myers knife for Mindy as a gift.

As Sam juggled the box of cookies in one hand and Tara’s present in another, she caught a familiar figure out of the corner of her eye. She stopped dead in her tracks, turning to do a double take. Her mouth fell open, her brow furrowed as she watched you walk out of a pizza shop, pizza box in hand as you made your way in the direction of your dorm. Sam watched you from across the street, Tara hadn’t mentioned anything about you coming back to town early. Sam also hadn’t noticed any evidence of you being in the apartment since the night you left.

When Sam finally got back to the apartment, she kicked the door closed, making sure to hide the bag with Tara’s present. She heard Tara on the phone but paid her no attention as she rushed to her room to hide the present, dropping the box of cookies on the dining room table on the way. She quickly shoved Tara’s present in her closet, planning to wrap it before she went to bed, then made her way back out to the living room.

“Alright, night,” Tara said, smiling into her phone. “Have fun with your family and I can’t wait to see you when you get back.” Sam watched curiously as Tara waited for, Sam assumed you, to respond. “Love you too.” With that she hung up the phone and looked up at Sam with a confused look. “What?”

“Was that Y/N?” Sam questioned, turning her back to Tara to open the box of cookies.

“Yeah,” Tara sighed. Sam could see Tara’s pout without having to turn around.

“They still out of town visiting their parents?” Sam looked up, internally smacking herself, she was trying and failing at being subtle.

“Yeah.” She heard Tara leave the couch, her feet quietly shuffling as she made her way next to Sam. “Said it was kind of boring there and has only really been watching Christmas movies.” Sam could only hum in response, she couldn’t figure out why you didn’t go home for the holiday and more importantly she couldn’t figure out why you were lying to Tara about it. “Whatcha got there?” Tara nodded to the box.

Sam smiled, flipping open the lid of the box. “No way!” Tara said, reaching out and grabbing a cookie. “These are so cool. Where did you find them?” Tara mumbled through a mouth full of cookie.

Sam giggled, shaking her head at her sister. “Passed a bakery on the way home. Are they good?” Tara nodded, giving her a thumbs up.

Tara grabbed another cookie and plopped herself back down on the couch. Sam tapped her fingers against the dining room table, working up the courage to ask Tara what she wanted to. She grabbed a cookie, taking a bite as she sat in the chair next to the couch. She glanced at the TV to see Tara watching The Grinch.

“So…” Sam started off slowly, looking down at her cookie, it was a really good cookie. She flicked her eyes from Tara, who was already looking at her, to the TV, and back to Tara. “I get it if you don’t want to do it, but I was wondering if you wanted to make cookies tomorrow, like we used to do.”

Sam flicked her gaze from her cookie to Tara a few times, waiting for her sister to respond. Tara was looking down at her cookie, her brow furrowed as she was deep in thought. “We don’t have to,” Sam said softly, trying to reassure Tara that it was totally fine if she didn’t want to do it.

“No,” Tara said with a small head shake, finally looking at Sam again. “I’d like that actually, it sounds fun.”

“Great,” Sam smiled and turned her attention back to the TV. Which is how they spent the night, sitting in a peaceful silence, watching whatever Christmas movie popped up next.

***********************************

It was Christmas eve, Sam was off work, she had Tara’s present wrapped, they had plans to bake cookies later in the day, and everything was going perfectly just like Sam had always wanted. Sam couldn’t stop the nagging feeling at the back of her head though. She made breakfast for herself, and Tara and they were halfway through their second Christmas movie when she suddenly couldn’t take it anymore. Sam jumped to her feet, grabbed her keys, and walked to the door.

“I’ll be back,” she said, looking back at Tara before opening the door.

“Wait what,” Tara said, muting the TV. “Where are you going? I thought we were spending the day together?”

“We will, I just have to run out real quick, I forgot to pick something up.”

“I thought you wanted to make cookies,” Tara frowned.

“I do,” Sam smiled softly at her sister. “We will make them as soon as I get back. You’re going to like what I bring back.” Tara continued to pout. “Trust me, please, I promise you, you will love it.”

“Okay,” Tara mumbled quietly, curling up on the couch as she unmuted the TV.

Sam gave her sister one last look before rushing out the door. As a surprise to no one, the streets were bustling with people doing last-minute Christmas shopping. Sam pushed her way through the crowded streets, making her way to the college campus. There were hardly any students on campus, most having returned home for the holidays. Sam easily found her way to your building and up to your dorm room. She did a few quick knocks on your door, then bounced from foot to foot as she waited for you to answer.

The door was quickly flung open and standing before Sam was you, your mouth hung open, whatever you were about to say dying on your lips as you just stared at Sam. Sam bunched up her hands in her pockets, looking at you expectantly.

“What are you doing here?” you finally asked.

“What are you doing here?” Sam asked back, a little harsher than she intended. She couldn’t help it, you had a habit of just annoying her without even doing anything, she knew she had to work on that.

“I live here,” you said confused.

“Why are you lying to Tara?” Sam crossed her arms. “Why did you say you were going back home?”

You let out a defeated sigh. “You wanted Christmas to be the two of you,” you shrugged. “I didn’t want to intrude or ruin your Christmas.”

Sam’s eyes fell to the floor, it was so hard to dislike you when you were so considerate. You were kind of an asshole and Sam’s dislike was warranted half the time but deep down you were sweet. “Why didn’t you go home? Don’t your parents want to spend Christmas with you?”

You scoffed, refusing to meet Sam’s eyes as you looked down at the floor. “My parents haven’t spent Christmas at home since I was thirteen and deemed old enough to not burn the house down when left alone.” Sam frowned, she knew you didn’t talk about your parents much, Tara had said they weren’t super active in your life, but she didn’t realize how distant they actually were. “I don’t even know where they are right now,” you shrugged. “Somewhere warm.”

“Let’s go,” is all Sam said, turning to leave.

“Wait what?” you leaned half your body out the door.

Sam turned around, rolling her eyes at you. “Grab whatever you need and come on,” she waved her hand impatiently. “You’re spending Christmas with us.”

“Nononono,” you shook your head. “You don’t have to do that. I’m fine.”

“Get your shit and come on,” she snapped.

You quickly shut your mouth, ran back into your dorm, and came out with two presents in less than a minute. You silently walked behind Sam as she led the way back to the apartment. She never thought she’d say it, but it was actually unsettling how quiet you were being. When the two of you got back to the apartment, she went in first, tossing her keys on the table before closing the door behind you.

“What did you have to get?” Tara asked, not taking her eyes off the TV. Sam didn’t answer, making Tara look up, her eyes becoming confused when she saw you but quickly lit up. “What are you doing here?” she jumped up, running, and crashing into you for a hug. Sam shook her head; it hadn’t even been a week since you were here and yet Tara was acting like it was a lifetime.

“I never had plans to go to my parents,” you admitted, dropping your eyes to the floor in shame.

“What?” Tara asked, there was no anger in her voice, only confusion.

“They aren’t big on Christmas; I never spend it with them. I didn’t want to intrude and ruin Christmas for you guys,” you looked back at Sam. “And I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to feel bad, I knew you’d try and convince me to join you guys.”

Tara lightly punched you in the shoulder before pulling you in for another hug. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled into your neck.

Once Tara and you separated, the two of you followed Sam into the kitchen. Sam grabbed the ingredients and the three of you made cookie dough. You and Tara threw flour at each other, making a mess and though Sam would usually be annoyed she couldn’t help but laugh along with you guys. She’s pretty sure the three of you ate more of the cookie dough than you used to make cookies. When there were finally enough cookies to fill the tray, they popped them into the oven and moved to the living room, popping on another Christmas movie as they waited for the cookies to be ready.

When the oven dinged, you and Tara raced to the kitchen, nearly forgetting oven mitts as you moved to pull the cookies out. Sam had to push the two of you back before the two of you started grabbing the cookies off the hot tray before they had the chance to cool. She shooed the two of you back to the living room, forcing you both to wait for the cookies to cool before you all started eating and decorating them. With how excited the two of you were Sam wasn’t sure you guys would be able to wait to start decorating, you and Tara would probably eat all the cookies plain.

That’s how the three of you spent the rest of the night. You all decorated cookies together at the dining room table, eating cookies in the processes. Sam was focused on her decorating but every time she looked up, she saw you licking icing off your fingers, she wasn’t sure if you ever finished decorating one cookie. When all the cookies were eaten or decorated the three of you retired to the living room, Sam taking her usual spot in the chair while you and Tara cuddled up on the couch.

**********************************

Sam woke up Christmas morning to the smell of something delicious cooking. She rubbed her eyes, frowning at who could possibly be cooking so early. It wasn’t that Tara was a bad cook, she had to learn to cook after Sam left but she had never made anything smell this good. Sam couldn’t judge though; it wasn’t like she was a master chef either, she knew how to make enough things to allow them to survive and give them some variety, but they still did takeout the majority of the time.

Sam ran a hand through her hair as she walked down the hall and into the kitchen, she stopped, blinking a few times to try and clear her vision, she couldn’t believe what she was seeing, you were in her kitchen, cooking, and it smelled good. Sam looked around, seeing you were making use of the entire stove, cooking eggs, bacon and sausage, and pancakes at the same time. You flipped three pancakes onto a plate that already had a few, before pouring more batter into the pan, making three more pancakes.

“Morning,” you said, when you finally saw Sam. You kept your pace though, sprinkling cheese across the eggs before flipping it over, creating an omelet, then added more cheese on top. “We got pancakes,” you gestured to the plate beside you. “And eggs,” you gestured to the pan in front of you, before sliding the omelet onto a plate when the cheese was sufficiently melted. “And bacon and sausage,” you pointed to the other pan that was sizzling. “What would you like?”

Sam blinked a few times, still processing the site in front of her, it was just breakfast food, but everything looked so good, perfect almost, nothing was burnt. “An omelet, please,” Sam said, finally finding her voice.

You nodded, cracking another two eggs into the pan. “You guys didn’t have a ton of options but let me know what you want in it.”

Sam looked across the counter at the options, there was actually more than she thought there would be. “Just tomato and spinach.”

You gave a quick thumbs up before flipping the pancakes. You grabbed another plate, dumping all the bacon and sausage onto it. Tara came in, grabbing the plate of bacon and sausage and two separate plates with omelets.

“Morning,” Tara mumbled, taking the plates to the dining room table.

“Morning,” Sam replied, still watching you cook. She watched as you added the veggies to her omelet, flipped the omelet and added more cheese and veggies to the top of it. You flipped the pancakes onto the plate, Tara at your side the instant you were done and already taking the plate to the table. You quickly finished the omelet, sliding it onto a plate and holding it out to Sam with a smile.

Sam looked from the omelet up to you and back down to the omelet. She hesitantly took the plate but had to admit it looked just as good as everything else. “You can cook?” she couldn’t help but ask.

You just shrugged, turning off the stove as you followed Sam into the dining room. Sam set her plate down, taking a seat and got a full look at the table. The plate of pancakes, sausage and bacon, and a plate of toast was already laid out in the middle of the table.

“They can cook breakfast at least,” Tara said, shoving a fork full of omelet into her mouth. “Everything else, that’s debatable.” You scoffed, stabbing your fork into Tara’s omelet, and stealing a bite, she quickly slapped your hand, throwing a grumpy glare at you, making you chuckle.

“Thanks,” Sam said, looking down at the omelet.

You shrugged again. “It was the least I could do.”

Sam took a small bite of her omelet, and it was amazing, she hated how good of a cook you were. She almost wanted to say you could spend the night any night as long as you made breakfast in the morning. The three of you sat in a comfortable silence eating breakfast, slowly waking up the rest of the way. By the time you were all done almost everything was gone, except for a couple pancakes left over. Sam sighed, she hadn’t had breakfast that good in a long time, the diner she worked at didn’t even make breakfast that good.

The three of you moved into the living room, grabbing presents from under the little tree the sisters had put up. Tara and Sam exchanged gifts and then you handed Tara a little wrapped box, Sam was silently praying that it wasn’t a ring again. Her mouth fell opening as she looked up at you with questioning eyes when you handed her a present as well.

“Why is hers bigger?” Tara questioned, whipping her head around to look at you, holding the present she had gotten you out of reached.

You just chuckled at her. “Yours is more expensive?” you offered.

She narrowed her eyes at you but handed you the present. You happily took it, giving her a quick kiss. Without wasting any time Tara was ripping into the present you had gotten her. When she was done, she held a small jewelry box in her hand, it wasn’t a ring box though. Breakfast was good but if you had gotten Tara another ring Sam probably would have killed you. Tara lifted the lid, letting out a light gasp at the sight, she lifted the item out of the box to reveal a necklace. The necklace had a silver chain connected to a silver pendant with her birthstone in the center, it matched the ring you had gotten for her birthday. Sam might have hated the ring at first, but she had to admit you had good taste in jewelry. Tara held out the necklace for you, moving her hair so you could place it around her neck.

“It’s beautiful,” she whispered, pulling you in for a long kiss, acting as if Sam wasn’t still sitting right there. “Thank you.”

Tara then ripped into her present from Sam, letting out an exciting gasp at the machete. “This is awesome!” she held up the machete, a crazy look in her eye. Your eyes widened, instantly going to Sam, silently asking her if she was serious.

“It’s not sharp,” Sam quickly said. She could see you physically relax as she calmed your fears.

Tara pouted a little at the new knowledge but still twirled the machete in her hand, looking closely at the etching. “This is so cool,” Tara said again. “Thank you.”

You opened your present from Tara, jumping to your feet to reveal two videogames. Sam had no idea what the games were, but you were acting like a little kid, so she assumed her sister did a pretty good job. “Thanks babe,” you said, giving Tara a quick kiss, making her blush.

It was Sam’s turn; she slowly opened her present from Tara. “Holy shit,” she whispered as she took out the little box. Tara had gotten her ear buds, she had been looking at a pair forever because she wanted some for when she went for a run or to the gym, but she could never pull the trigger, they were always too expensive for her to justify. “Thank you.”

As Sam started to unwrap the box you had gotten her, she caught a mischievous smirk on your face. Sam almost paused her movements; she couldn’t even imagine what you had gotten her let alone what would cause that kind of smile on your face. Sam undid the rest of the wrapping paper, looking down at the box in front of her, she blinked a few times before glaring at you. You were smiling widely, nearly bouncing up in down in your seat.

“You’re an ass,” is all Sam said. She turned the box, revealing Woodsboro Monopoly, making you break out into laugh. Tara quickly slapped you but there was a small smile tugging at her lips as well.

“I’m sorry,” you said through laughter. “I couldn’t help myself,” you were practically wheezing. “I’ve had that for months.”

Sam couldn’t help but join in, lightly laughing at the game. “You know we did never get to finish our game.”

Your eyes lit up. “Yes!” you pumped a fist into the air.

“But I get to be the knife,” Sam said in a serious voice.

“Well, I’d expect nothing less.” Sam glared at your light jab. “I want to be the phone though.”

Tara groaned, rolling her eyes. “This means we have to suffer through another game of Monopoly,” she mumbled.

You gasped in offense. “It’s not my fault we were rudely interrupted last time,” you said.

Sam shook her head as she listened to you and Tara argued back and forth. Tara might hate monopoly, but it was only a matter of time before she conceded. You would probably even convince her to wait for the twins to be back and would probably drag Danny over and force everyone to play the new version they now had for game night. Sam relaxed into her chair, watching as you and Tara argued with smiles, you were slowly growing on her, not that she’d ever tell you that.

After presents the rest of the day was uneventful. The three of you just spent a lazy day lounging in the apartment, watching Christmas movies on TV again, even though you all had seen all of them within the last few days. When night finally came, Tara was curled into your side, your arm wrapped tightly around her as she was sound asleep with her head resting on your shoulder.

“Night,” Sam whispered, getting up to head to bed herself.

“Wait, Sam,” you called out, looking back but making sure not to turn enough to disturb Tara. Sam stopped in the doorway, looking back at you. “Thank you,” you whispered, dropping your eyes for a second before meeting hers again. “I really appreciate you inviting me over. This has really meant a lot.”

Sam nodded. “You’re always welcome here.” She looked away from you, opening and closing her mouth a few times. “Sorry, I kicked you out earlier.” You gave her a soft smile, shrugging lightly. “You’re now expected to join us every year,” she said in an annoyed tone, but you laughed, catching the playfulness underneath.

Sam went to bed that night with a smile. She had wanted Christmas day with just her and her sister but you joining them ended up making it better than she could have imagined. This ended up being the best Christmas she ever had, and Tara would probably agree with her. It seemed the cycle of tainted memories and disappointing Christmas’s were over; she was more than happy to make new memories with Tara and was even okay with you being in those new memories now.

You still annoyed the hell out of her, but she didn’t miss the way you brought a lightness to the group, even after everything that happened, even though you were still struggling, you managed to still find the humor in things. If Sam was being honest with herself, she was now looking forward to you joining her and Tara or the group for holidays, birthdays, and other big events. If anyone asked her if she were happy, you were there, she would deny it but inside, she was happy to have you around.

Taglist: @screechcat

#tara carpenter #tara carpenter x reader #tara carpenter x you #tara carpenter imagine #tara carpenter x fem!reader #jenna ortega #jenna ortega x reader #scream #scream 6 #scream vi #he hung up

[equallyshaw]

star crossed lovers, pt 2 | connor bedard

↳ oc hughes sister x connor bedard x brendan brisson + blurb + tiny insta post

↳ au masterlist!

takes place in 2026 with a connor sighting!

warnings: swearing

word count: 4.7K

Two households, both alike in dignity...

oh that love story that was too good to be true, so beautiful and soft and wholesome; was never meant to last. romeo and juliet had truly run their course it seemed. though originally, weren't they destined to be together forever, and never see the fate that the original story predicted?

maybe her brothers were right, kailey thought as soon as it happened. he dug the sword deep into her heart, twisted, and then pulled away. it was if they'd never been together. as if they hadn't spent the last three years together.

but was it the end for miss hughes? was it the end of her journey in finding love with a powerful and notable name within the world of hockey?

◦

These violent delights have violent ends

And in their triumph die, like fire and powder, Which as they kiss consume.

kailey pushed jack a bit as soon as entered the kitchen in the townhouse her two brothers shared in jersey. she quickly made her way over to the coffee machine and put a nespresso pod in, smiling once the humming of the machine began. she pulled out her phone and opened connor's message that popped up, and she wished she hadn't. she stared at the screen, allowing it to fade to black. "kails!" jack said hurrying over and putting a towel down, as the expresso spilled over the too small cup. she didn't move. he looked down at her, not understanding why she wasn't moving. he sighed, wiping the counter in front of her, before he heard her whisper. "he broke up with me." jack thought his mind was playing tricks on him, "funny kails." he said turning around to finish making his breakfast. "he br-broke up with me." she said again, louder and more clear. he looked back at her before taking two steps to catch her as she fell backwards, out of shock. he quickly brought her to the ground, holding her closely as she sobbed.

24 hours ago, the two were planning on what they wanted to do for their almost 1 year anniversary.

how could things change in 24 hours?

luke rushed in as soon as he heard sobs, and the look that jack gave him was more than he needed, he knew exactly what happened. the three brothers couldn't have seen this coming from a mile away, they didn't see this happening. ever. they thought that connor was the one, that one that made it past their hard exteriors. the one that had made his way into all of the hughes hearts.

oh how the universe and shakespeare could be so cruel.

◦

thankfully, kailey was finished with school and had graduated a few weeks before the breakup. so she thought long and hard on where she wanted to be, and who she wanted to be. dawning a new hair color and a will to pull herself out of heartbreak, she settled on sunny california. she moved to redondo beach in los angeles county, moving in with her cousin maya - a longtime family friend of the hughes that dated back to her mom's hockey days at college. the three brothers were crushed to see her leaving so early in the summer, and forgoing the lake house in michigan but she knew she needed to go. or else she'd never leave.

it was around 3 months later, late july when kailey reunited with a very old family friend. brendan brisson, out of the blue showed up at her and maya's apartment for a sunday brunch they were throwing. he came with his brother, and at first they did not recognize her because of her new hair color. since she'd been in california, she hadn't had the inkling or draw to post anything on social media. hence, people were relatively concerned as to what she was up to. sure, her family knew through text messages and private snapchats, but other than that- she'd ghosted the world. she also got off Instagram and twitter, not relishing in the fact that connor was off seeing other people. mere carbon copies of the girl, pre brunette. she hated seeing people tag her in things, hated seeing it come up naturally because of how much she used to look up his name; for shits and giggles she used to say.

that sunday morning though, after grabbing a cup of coffee from redondo beach pier, and a walk up and down it- she retweeted something. which let me tell you, alerted the hockey world and hockey twitter. i mean, the sheer power they held when they were together was out of this world. two great hockey names - connected in a magical way, how could they not? people adored seeing them together and that retweet cemented the breakup, which people had been suspecting for some time. she redownloaded Instagram, archiving her pictures with connor, not able to part with them just yet. she then opened up her groupchat with the boys, ripping the canadian boy to shreds. she'd simply put him into an early grave, by her word choice. she woke up with a vengeance this morning, her brothers thought as 6 messages - paragraphs - came in. her brothers agreed with every last word she sent, they were absolutely dumbfounded and out of this world angry when connor broke up with her via text. and without cause. their original thoughts about guys came back in an instant. they would do everything in their power to steer away boys, if luck would have it. nobody would ever be good enough. though she was a california gal now, they couldn't protect her. though - as much as quinn hated to ask for a favor - the boys had asked trevor and alex keep tabs on her on that side of the coast. the two without hesitation agreed, with trevor making a joke at quinns expense.

they were hoping they could sleep a little easier at night.

but as soon as brendan saw her, he quickly pulled her into a bone-crushing hug. "oh my god - blondie! wait no." and kailey giggled, "you're good! i haven't really updated social media so you wouldn't have known." she smiled widely, before hugging jordan. "how do you know maya?" she asked, "new hampshire, remember?" jordan said and kailey grinned. "should have known. those were...uh the good days." she hummed, drinking her iced expresso. "let me show you to the kitchen." she said motioning for them to follow. they walked into the kitchen, the two looking at the buffet of food. "any coffee? i can make it right now." she smiled, and the two smiled. "im good, im gonna go find maya real quickly." he said walking away so now it was just jordan and the girl.

"how's school?" he asked, pulling her out of her trance. "great! i just graduated" she smiled, and he mirrored it. "congratulations, kails! what did you major in again?" he asked and she smiled, "child psychology." she hummed. his smile never faltered, "that would be you. i remember as kids how much you cared for kids on the lake, and they just flocked to you." he said and it was as if they were both brought back to that time when the days never seemed to end, and sunburns were a regular occurrence. "yeah..im very fortunate things worked out the way they did. gave me this wonderful opportunity to start fresh out here." she said sipping some more of her drink. "oh..yeah. totally understandable." he said picking up her drift, "you knew?" she asked and he nodded. "yeah...jack said something in the group chat when it happened. im sorry about everything, that was real shitty of him. you didnt deserve that." he said sweetly. she shrugged chugging down the rest of the coffee, "good thing I've got nobody watching my every move, anymore." she smirked, leaning closely towards brendan before sliding over the his cup of coffee.

◦

“Then I defy you, stars!” 

jordan ended up leaving at some point in the afternoon, while brendan and kailey spent the day together catching up. the two had always been easy to get on with and used to be thick as thieves during the lake days. she'd never told any of her brothers - because god forbid if she did so - but she had had a crush on him for a few summers. it absolutely crushed her, when he got his first girlfriend in 8th grade and then they never came back to the lake house, so her crush disappeared. she'd never known this nor her brothers, but brendan too had had a crush on the girl.

the two sat on the white plush couch in the living room, as the sun was setting. maya had left some time ago to hang out with a friend and do some errands while kailey opted to stay in for the day. kailey and brendan were in the process of laughing, as kailey got a text message. she pulled up her phone from where it was laying on her thigh, and her demeanor visibly changed. it was a text from connor, asking why she retweeted the tweet this morning. brendan saw her eyebrows crease in confusion, before she shook her head and locked her phone. "let me guess..connor?" he questioned and she nodded. "the fucking nerve.." she sighed, pinching her nose. she stood up grabbing the two empty glasses from the coffee table, and made her way over to the kitchen. brendan followed, "the nerve he has! we've been broken up for three months already and he's upset i tweeted something about being respected by a significant other? whats so wrong about that? he's just upset because im calling him out for it, publicly at that." she said setting the cups in the sink. "don't i deserve respect?" she asked turning around to face the boy. he nodded, walking over to her and leaned against the counter. "you deserve that and so much more. he's got a stick up his ass, that's for sure." he began, "don't ever lower your standards because of him. he's an idiot. he's the one who did that, the one who double crossed you for no reason." he finished as kailey met his eye. "wish i heard that sooner." she hummed, crossing her arms over her chest. she looked down at the ground, "well...im saying it now. and i mean it." he said softly taking a step closer and lifted up her chin just a bit with his hand. she looked into his brown eyes. one's she adored as a kid, and now looking into his- something sparked within. a spark she hadn't felt for some time, long before connor. he took this as an invitation to close the gap between them.

oh, how the universe laughs. or hockey gods.

◦

it was now two weeks later, and brendan had kailey in his arms this early morning. the two had stayed up talking about anything and everything that came to their minds. they talked about their childhood, laughing over the fact that they both had crushes on one another but never suspected it. they smiled as the other one brought up conversations and significant memories, both happy that the other hadn't forgotten. this morning, she was savoring the warmth and comfort his body oozed, because he'd be starting back up early morning training again. he'd taken two weeks off due to a stress sprain, and now that it was fixed he would be resuming his schedule. "wanna see my parents today?" he softly asked, as he felt her beginning to hum from tiredness. she nodded her head, against his chest and he smiled. "they've been asking about you since i told them i was going to brunch." he hummed, and she slowly pulled her head up from his chest to look at him, "still the favorite hughes, eh?" she grinned before he leaned down to kiss her. his hand found the base of her neck, and the other found the base of her back. she wrapped her hands around his neck, getting as close as possible. they broke the kiss, resting their foreheads against one another.

kailey had a wave of deja vu, pass over her. making her nauseous.

she pulled away from brendan, pulling her phone to her chest, and saw a missed facetime from each of her brothers, and she sighed pressing quinns contact. she sat up, and inched away from brendan so he wouldn't be in the shot. "hey q, whats up?" she questioned, pulling him from whatever jack was saying. "hey uh, i take it you didn't see yet.." he said and that's when he heard jack yelling on the other end. "what do you mean q? why is jack yelling?" she said rubbing her eye, and quinn sighed sending her a screenshot of the instagram post. she clicked on his text and swallowed, anger seething from her. how could she betray her? her friend lisa from college in chicago was in connor's instagram post, somewhere in toronto. she quickly opened up instagram to lisa's page and she was even more angrier. she had been soft launching for almost 3 months already...that traitor. lisa was the one all along, the one that had been seen in pictures but kailey had never paid too much attention to the fact it was the same girl! she hung up on quinn, quickly locked her phone and turning on dnd. "whats wrong?" brendan asked, setting his phone down and pulling her into his chest as he sat up. "he-he's been seeing my friend from school." she said but she didn't cry. she was just angry, and disappointed. how naive she'd been. "im sorry kails." brendan said softly. he felt terrible for kailey, somebody he cared deeply about. and he knew she cared about him just as deeply. but maybe not in the way that he believed.

"lets just uh, lets get going. we should head over so were not late." she said pulling away and getting up to shower. she quickly took a body shower, hopping out to brush her teeth and moisturize before heading into her closet to find an outfit. brendan came up and wrapped his arms around her, as she inspected her outfit. they looked at one another in the mirror, as she finished inspecting, and she smiled once they found each other's gaze. "you ok?" he whispered, and she nodded giving him a small smile. "yes. thankyou for uh, being here with me these past two weeks. it means more than you'll ever know." she hummed, turning around in his arms. he grinned, leaning down and kissing her. deeply. she melted into his arms just a bit before pulling away. "lets get going b." she said pulling him out of her small walk in closet.

-

"kailey!" kim cheered, as the two walked through the doors of the brisson's manhattan beach mansion. "kim!" she smiled, disconnecting the twos hand as kim pulled her into a hug. kim swayed her just a bit, "oh my goodness! we've missed you so much sweetie, congratulations on graduating! i saw the pictures, they were just perfect." she said pulling back a bit and kailey smiled. "thankyou! had the best photographer." she hummed and kim smiled. "your mom has always been a fucking gem when it comes to pictures. they were just to die for and chicago being the backdrop? timeless." she fawned and kailey giggled. "thankyou!" she smiled, seeing mr brisson walk from the kitchen. "kiwi!" he yelled with a huge grin on his face, and kim let go of the girl. "pat! so good to see you." she smiled as he pulled her in for a hug. "you too! congrats on graduating, heard you finished with honors." he said pulling away, and kailey nodded. "yep! perfect 4.0. to which jack sent 4 dollars exactly, as his gift." she joked, causing the family to laugh. pat shook his head as he could just picture jack doing it, and so could kim. "your hair! oh my god! i love it, it looks so good." kim smiled, looking over the girl. kailey smiled, "thankyou! thought a little change could be good." she hummed and the brissons nodded. "well, breakfast just finished lets go eat!" pat offered and the three nodded. "good, im starvin!" kailey said rubbing her hands together, "good, we made your favorite!" kim said wrapping an arm around the girls shoulders, making her feel right at home. again.

Kailey and brendan ended up staying the full day at the brissons, catching up and reminiscing over the lake days. it was around 7 when jordan and brisson begged kailey to go get froyo and walk the pier at santa monica. "go! have fun, we'll get together soon." kim smiled, and kailey nodded hugging the two goodbye and then they were off. kailey got in the passenger side, and jordan got in the back. kailey quickly leaned into brendans shoulder, and there hands found each others as well. she looked back at jordan, and he quickly snapped a picture. she rolled her eyes with a small grin on her face. the three sat through traffic, singing loudly to whatever music she put on shuffle. a little bit of everything, which the boys loved. they finally made their way to santa monica and parked right in front of the frozen yogurt place. after that, they walked down to the pier and she stopped at one of the shops that was selling books and other knickknacks, getting a book to read at some point. they walked down the pier for the next hour, with brendan taking a sunset pic of the girl with her book who had the biggest smile of her face, at whatever dumb joke jordan had just said. on their way back to her apartment in redondo beach, she posted that sunset picture on her instagram story.

it broke hockey twitter.

"im gonna walk her in and then ill be out." brendan said to jordan who nodded, and the two got out. he walked her up to the townhouse, two blocks over from the pier. "thanks for today brendan, i had a lot of fun." she smiled, turning towards him at the door. "me too, thanks for being a trooper. i thought my parents would never stop talking." he joked, and she grinned. "no i loved it, it felt like home. like old times. it was comforting. with my parents being far, it's nice knowing that they are out here." she hummed and he nodded. "im glad." he smiled. she could tell he wanted to say more to her, but was fighting himself on how to begin. "just say whatever it is you want to say." she said grinning, pulling her free hand in his. he blushed, looking at the ground. "these past two weeks have been...everything i'd wanted since we were little younglings. and i don't want to go back to vegas in a few weeks, not knowing what we are or if we might have missed an opportunity....to see where things might go." he said looking up at her with hopeful eyes. she bit her lip, thinking hard. she liked brendan, and always had secretly; but was she ready to date again? she didn't want to become the laughingstock of the NHL family sphere. going from one player to the next, but shouldn't she at least attempt to move on? even if it was with another player?

brendan saw the hesitation in her features, and accepted defeat. he was about to say something but kailey spoke up. "i want nothing more than to say yes but what will my brothers say? what will the hockey world say? going from one guy to the next? i don't want to become the laughingstock, besides- my brothers don't deserve that. they don't deserve to take any heat from or about me. besides..i don't want to ruin our years-long friendship b." she said hoping he understood, and he did. "give me a few days, let me go take some time in chicago and ill let you know. ok?" she said with a pleading look. he nodded softly, "thankyou." she said pulling him in for a hug. her arms found his neck, his arms found her back; drawing her in as close as possible. incase, he'd never have her in his arms again.

◦

she arrived in chicago two days later, her best friend becca from college and lukas reichels' fiance, as well as alex vlasics wife tessa were waiting for her at the pickup area. she strolled her suitcase and carry on towards the arrivals area, and smiled widely when she saw the two holding a small bouquet of peonies and a dunkin coffee. they jumped up and down, as they saw her. she began to jog over towards them before they wrapped their arms around one another. "oh my god!!" kailey shrieked when they held out her iced americano and flowers towards her, while tessa took her bag and suitcase. "guyssss im gonna cry." she said with tears in her eyes. "we couldn't come empty handed." tessa cooed, as she wrapped an arm around the girl, with kailey taking the gifts from becca. the three girls walked out to the car that was waiting at the curb, that sat alex and lukas. "oh my god!" she said smiling widely when she saw the two leaning against the audi. "kails!" lukas said smiling and quickly hugging her, and then alex joined creating a group hug. tessa snapped a quick picture as kailey just laughed. "thankyou guys for coming to get me, i appreciate it very much." she smiled widely, as lukas opened the door for her and tessa. "you are very welcome hughesy." alex grinned as he opened the other door for becca. "where to first?" she quipped.

-

the three girls headed towards becca's and lukas' guest bedroom in their chicago townhouse, ready to bombard the girls with questions over her california life. kailey had been awfully quiet the past month and they were curious what had been going on. "girl! what have you been up to?? we wanna know everything!" tessa squeled as she shut the door behind them. kailey blushed while throwing a small smile towards her best friends. "did you meet a guy??" becca smirked, and kailey shrugged. "did he take the one sunset pic?" tessa joined in, sitting across from kailey on the bed. kailey grinned, "I've known him for sometime now....I've known him since we were kids." she began and the girls looked at one another. "who is it?" becca asked. "brendan brisson." she stated, and the two girls thought about who that could be. "wait! was he at usntp?" tessa questioned, and kailey nodded. "oh my god i remember him! isnt his dad like THE agent in hockey? doesn't he work with your dad?" tessa rambled and kailey giggled. "yes...we arent like officially together but somethings there. i just don't know if i want to pursue it. like, i don't want people to create narratives that were never true to begin with." she said putting her face in her hands, feeling defeated. "to hell with what everybody says. if you're happy and you see something with him, go for it." becca said and kailey shrugged. "but my brothers....what are they gonna think? they're gonna kill me." she said tessa forehead creased, "do they not know that you two have been spending time together?" tessa questioned and kailey shook her head. tessa and becca looked at one another, sharing silent words.

-

she spent the next week in chicago, reminiscing and growing fond of the memories she'd made the past four years. they caught up, spent quality time together and thankful that nothing from her past had shown up or crossed paths with the three girls. kailey did not need that, at all. she face timed nightly with brendan, him curious at to what shenanigans that three were getting up to. she'd been to 2 concerts, numerous museum trips, countless trips up and down the lakefront, and shopping galore. kailey woke up around 8 am, getting herself put together before heading down stairs. she jogged down the steps, and headed to the kitchen. it was too late, before she realized who was in the kitchen. lukas and connor were laughing at something, that happened at a gym session that morning.

connor caught the footsteps on the stairs first, and then the brunette hair second. he did a double-take, before realizing it was kailey. kailey was on the phone with brendan, before she spotted connor and froze. "ill uh, ill call you back." she said hanging up before brendan could respond. "morning kails." lukas said sipping some coffee, curious to see what was going to happen. "morning lukas." she hummed, heading to the fridge to grab a bottle of water, and her breakfast from the day before. she quietly worked as the two hockey players looked at each other, "ill be right back. im gonna take penny outside." lukas said calling for the small dog, and now it was just the two.

"how have you been?" connor asked as she put the food in the microwave. kailey took a few seconds to respond before turning around. oh, how good he looked. curse the hockey gods. his hair was still wet from the shower, his blue eyes meeting hers and what felt like a sense of deja vu washed over the girl. "I've been good. you?" she questioned, heading over to the expresso machine and began to mess around with the machine. she banged the expresso on the counter, before sliding it into the spot to pour over. "yeah real good. just got back to the city a week ago." he responded, and she nodded. "that's real nice." she hummed, as the microwave beeped. "hows california?" he asked and she sighed, pulling the container out. "its been nice. beautiful as always." she hummed, pulling a few pieces of hair behind her ear. she looked back up at him, "been doing everything i haven't been able to do for a few years." she said, a dig at the boy. he nodded feeling dread wash over him, as her phone began to ring again. she looked over at where it was on the counter, and she let it go to voice mail. she'd text brendan at some point. "hows lisa?" she quipped, biting into her burrito. connor swallowed tensely, "shes good. just started at lurie children's hospital." he said and hailey nodded. "that's nice." she hummed, walking over to the finished expresso and brought it back over to her food.

connor and kailey's tension could be cut through with a knife. even then, it might not even work. "when did you change your hair?" he asked, a few minutes later. "right after you texted me, I thought id try on a different personality." she said sarcastically, "apparently the last one wasn't good enough." she hummed, picking up her container, coffee and phone. connor sighed, "kails-" she cut him off, by turning back to him with a glare. "don't you ever call me that again, so help me god connor." she spat. he was defeated, he knew that much. she turned back and headed back upstairs.

oh how she loathed that boy, who threw away almost 2 years of pure bliss. pure romance. something out of this world. kailey did find out what changed, in those 24 hours and swore she'd place a dagger in their hearts at some point. his last words mere hours before, echoed his love, pure and committed adoration for the blonde. but like life, it can change in a mere moment.

“Do not swear by the moon, for she changes constantly. then your love would also change.”

◦

kailey sat down on the airplane, about to depart chicago and bring her to sunny los angeles. oh how she'd missed her home, and somebody that was waiting ever so patiently for her to return. she smiled, posting her photo dump from the summer. her first post since march. she deleted her instagram after responding to a few comments, allowing for the chaos to consume the hockey fandom. she turned her phone on airplane, drowning herself with music for the next 4 hours, not daring to look at the messages waiting for her when she landed.

“Don't waste your love on somebody, who doesn't value it.” 

◦

oh, what the universe and all of its stars had instore for the young hughes and the bright superstar.

-

@kaileyclara: little bit of this, little bit of that.

tags: tessavlasic, beccamuprhy, jordanbrisson and laurenorlando

-

@trevorzegras: wait a min @jackhughes: wait a damn minute @kaileyclara: can yall leave @trevorzegras: no im too busy inspecting every single detail of this post

@_quinnhughes: hughes sighting! @kaileyclara: hehe

@lhughes_6: who gave u flowers @kaileyclara: idk @jackhughes: to the gc! @_quinnhughes: already there @kaileyclara: i hate yall

@tessavlasic: I loved having you here bestie, i need to come out soon! @kaileyclara: i second this!

@beccamurphy: loml returned ! @kaileyclara: i thought that was lukas? @beccamurphy: he's my second love @lukasreichel: alright.

@brendanbrisson: im here for the hair @jordanbrisson: so am i @jackhughes: im not @kaileyclara: fuck off

@mayaaa: maybe u r a slut @kaileyclara: and that would be a fucking lie ! @mayaaa: 😚😚

@adamfantilli: orlando sighting? @kaileyclara: yes! toronto days hit hard @laurenorlando: still salty you guys moved @kaileyclara: me too @johnnyorlando: absolutely rude

hope you all enjoyed it, please like and reblog if you did-- id appreciate it very very much🥺 oh, and ofc i will have one more part to finish up this little series (:

mutuals from previous part : @privatemythss @boldysswld @trevorzegrizz @jayda12 @simp4hughes @skatesnstuff @slafgoalskybaby @cuttergauthier

#connor bedard #connor bedrd imagine #connor bedard blurb #nhl #hockey #nhl blurb #nhl imagine #hockey blurb #hockey imagine #chicago blackhawks #brendan brisson #umich hockey #umich wolverines #jack hughes #quinn hughes #luke hughes

[im-just-a-mississippi-girl]

Your Biker in Worn Leather Part 2

Pairing: EZ Reyes x female!reader

Category: Angst

Word count: 396

Summary: You finally tell EZ who’s responsible for your current appearance.

Warnings: None

Disclaimer: I have no idea if the Burning Souls are a real MC, it’s just a made up name for this fic. If they are real, this is in no way, shape, or form related to them and for entertainment purposes only.

Part 1

Masterlist

Taglist

Gif is not mine. Credit to the owner

EZ’s voice rang in your ears. Who did this to you? You knew the man Ezekiel would become once you told him the name. That version of EZ was terrifying to you despite his lividness never being aimed at you but others instead.

“Baby, who was it?” The biker asked once again in a softer tone, concerned filled eyes never leaving your face.

You swallowed hard. “Burning Souls.” You couldn’t bring yourself to look into EZ’s eyes. The fire that resided there was frightening and anyone in their right mind would run for the hills when met with the intense anger that bubbled up in the Mayan.

The Burning Souls were relatively new to the scene, being made up by men discharged from various branches of the armed forces and former police officers. They used all their skills, experience, and resources to their advantage to strike fear into anyone and everyone who crossed their path. What was their motivation? Their goal? Easy. To destroy all MCs in the state of California. To cause chaos, destruction, havoc and if people died in the process, that made it even better.

The Burning Souls had been scoping out the Mayans for a few weeks now. They had watched each Mayan through town and ultimately followed them to the clubhouse’s run down walled gate.

When the Burning Souls first saw you they didn’t think much of you, thinking you were just a club hang around and only there for fun and sex. That opinion of you was proven wrong when they kept seeing you with the Mayans’ Vice President, Ezekiel Reyes. The hugs and kisses exchanged between you and EZ told the story of love. Now the Burning Souls had what they needed — a weakness. A weakness to the VP. It was as close to the top as they were going to get since Obispo Losa showed no interest in love or affection but rather just sex. With no ammo to use on the Mayans’ President, the VP was next in line.

As soon as the MC’s name left your lips, EZ’s jaw tightened, fists clenched, his anger rose and rose with each passing second.

No one harms, much less touches his girl. Most importantly, no one lives to tell the tale.

Ezekiel Reyes was about to start a war ten times worse than the entire world has ever seen.

General Taglist: @kmc1989

EZ Reyes Taglist: @zaenight

#ez reyes #ez reyes x reader #ez reyes imagine #ez reyes fanfiction #ez reyes fic #ezekiel reyes x reader #ezekiel reyes #mayans mc #mayans #mayans imagine #mayans mc imagine #mayans fanfic #your biker in worn leather #your biker in worn leather series

[munsonsprincess11111]

New years shock...

Eddie munson x reader

Summary: all of your friends leave Hawkins to lice there dreams. However you and Eddie stay in Hawkins. 2 years later they all have a shock at the new years reunion party.

1987

Steve left with his new girlfriend first wanting to gwt away from Hawkins and start a new life together. Robin went touring Europe with Vickie and moved there shortly after. And now your hugging Nancy as her and Jonathan say goodbye.

You and Eddie stand side by side as Jonathan and Nancy pull away in the moving van. Going to live there life together in california. You look over at Eddie and he smiles at you. "Hug?" HE askews you putting his arms out.

You nod walking into his arms. His arms wrap around you tightly and your arms go around his back. "You've always got me. I know i ain't all pizazz but you've got me." Eddie says tryna cheer you up. You laughed and look up at him.

"I'm glad I've got you."

-2 weeks later-

Your laying on Eddie's bed passing a joint back and forth. "Your really pretty." Eddie says admiring you. You smile and blush slightly.

"Wanna... I dunno... go on a date... you can say no but I kinda liked you and I dunno why I'm doing this now maybe it's cause m a bit high n that's my confidence but if you want I can ask you again when I'm sober. I don't want you to thi-" he tries to save himself.

But you cut him off by sitting up and kissing him. Hands going to his hair. You kiss him passionately and he grabs your hips kissing back. The years of want all spilling out in one kiss.

"YES I'll go on a date with you." You say through the kiss. Him pulling you back in immediately.

1 week later you started dating.

-1989-

Everyone came back to Hawkins for a reunion on new years. Nancy was 5 months pregnant ans her and Jonathan were engaged. Steve and his girlfriend were better then ever. And Vickie and Robin where gonna explore the UK next. However no one knew you and Eddie were dating.

You arrived at Steve's parents house where the new years party was being held and everyone greeted you as you walked in. You hug Robin tight. Then Nancy being mindful of her bump. You hug vickie and you girls stand talking about everything and Nancy's pregnancy snd her weird cravings.

Then the door opens again. You turn to see who it is. You see Eddie walk through the door and Steve and Jonathan walk over to him greeting him. You can't help the smile that creeps onto your lips when he walks in. Steve, Jonathan, Eddie, Gareth and Dustin walk over to get a drink. Dustin staying alcohol free still being underage.

You all start to talk to Steve's girlfriend. Her telling you how awesome Steve is. You Robin and Nancy smirk n Nancy laughs.

With thr boys there all talking about boy stuff. Eddie Swigs his beer listening to Steve. "SO Ed you got a girlfriend yet?" Jonathan askes getting bored of hearing about Steve's sex life.

"Uhh yeah actually." HE says glancing at rhe boys then drinking his beer again. They all look at eachother and smirk. "Tell us about this mystery girl. Have we met her? Who is she? When did you get together? Who made the first move?" Steve leans on rhr counter firing questions.

Eddie quickly looks at you seeing laughing then back at the boys. "Yeah you've met her." HE says lip curling slightly. The boys frown. You wonder over to the boys deciding to mingle with them now. "HEY y/n you ever met Eddie's girlfriend n who is she?" Steve askes as you approach.

You look slightly shocked. You look at Eddie and he smiles at you. "Wanna meet my girlfriend?" Eddie askes grinning raising his eyebrows. The boys look at each other then nod. "OK." Eddie says. Eddie walks off out the door. Your confused by this. All you do is shrug at the boys. Seconds later Eddie walks back in with his jacket.

"Your dating your jacket?" Dustin askes confused. Eddie rolls his eyes and approaches Steve. "Smell this." He smirks shoving the jacket at Steve's nose.

Steve shoves Eddie away. "Ew Eddie that smells like y/n. Why did you-" Steve cuts himself of realising. You look at Eddie frowning. "YOUR DATING Y/N" Steve shouts loud enough for everyone to hear.

Eddie slaps his hand over Steve's mouth looking at him shocked and annoyed. You burry your face in your hands turning red immediately. Robin, vickie and jenny (Steve's gf) come over quickly. Nancy follows behind as quick as she could.

"What you guys arw dating?" Robin says looking at you both with wide eyes. Eddie closes his eyes and sighs. "YES ok yes. Jesus Steve did you have to scream it out. Right. Me and y/n are dating have been for... 2 years." HE says rhe last bit quieter putting his arms over his head expecting someone to slap him for not saying something sooner.

Everyone looks at eachother. You huff lifting your head up. "OK yes we're dating OK. You guys left we hung out everyday and you girls knew I liked Eddie. Turns out Eddie liked me to. We went on a few dates. He asked me out and yeah. We didn't tell you guys cause the time never seemed right. We're sorry." You explain crossing your arms over your chest.

"Your sorry I'm not." Eddie says getting a slap from Jonathan this time. "Ow!" Eddie says looking at Jonathan confused.

"OH shut it munson. We're happy for you really. You don't need to explain stuff to us it's fine we know now. N that's what matter right guys." Jonathan smiles at you. Everyone nods and there many 'yeahs' are said. Eddie's stood rubbing the back of his head.

When he removes his hand Gareth vant help but slap when Jonathan had. He had to. "DUDE WHAT THE HELL." Eddie exclaims as Gareth bursts into a fit of laughter. Eddie takes your hand and walks into thr living room giving Gareth the middle finger. Gareth still laughing along with the others.

"Atleast we can kiss at midnight now?" You say. Eddie's expression immediately softens. "Was gonna anyway. Give em a shock. Bring in '90 with something to remember." Eddie says walking in to you stroking hair out your face cupping your jaw kissing you. You hold his other hand.

Eddie's hand travels down to your waist. You stop his hand. Your arms going around his neck. And both his arms around your waist. You rest your head in his chest and close your eyes. He sways with you slowly enjoying the moment. He lightly kisses your head.

Slowly you look up at him and he lightly and sweetly kisses you. "I love you." HE whispers against your lips.

"I love you too." You whisper back. Before he can kiss you ever so delicately again your interrupted by Robin. "Awh that was so cute." She says smiling you look around and see everyone crowded by the living room door.

She put your head back in Eddie's chest. "Weirdos" Eddie says looking at all your friends.

30 minutes later your all in the living room counting in the new year.

"5,4,3,2,1.... HAPPY NEW YEAR." Everyone shouts. Jonathan kisses nancy amiling running a hand over her pregnant stomach thrn kissing her engagement ring. Vickie kisses robin leaving her a blushing mess all the time later still. Steve kisses his girlfriend sweetly pulling away after a few seconds as they both smile at eachother. Gareth and dustin hug... clearly feeling left out.... along with will and Gareth...

Eddie kisses you passionately holding you close. He pulls away smiling. And you smile back at him. "Happy new years princess." Eddie says nose touching yours. "Happy new years babe." You say smiling kissing him again.

A coin must drop for Dustin at that very moment. "EW EDDIE AND Y/N HAVE ALSO HAD SEX!" HE shouts genuinely looking scared. "Dustin!" Jonathan shouts everyone else laughing. You Bury your face in Eddie's laughing chest.

"Fuck yeah we have." Eddie says laughing. You step back slapping him. Eddie continues laughing pulling you back in cuddling you. "Relax Nancy's pregnant. That means she let Jonathan raw-" Eddie gets cut off by Steve.

"OK GUYS THATS ENOUGH TALK ABOUT EVERYONES SEX LIVES." Steve shouts stopping thr topic before something bad happens.

"Wow Steve thought we was about to get into yours." Robin says arm around vickies shoulder who'd laughing as Robin looks at thr boy smugly.

"Can't believe the first conversation of the year was everyone's sex lives." You say looking around the room. Eddie starts cackling again having to sit down from laughing. Once he calms down he sees everyone looking at him. He looks at you smirking.

The alarm "Eddie's gonna do something" goes off in your head.

"Awh y/n I love you so much." HE says smiling at you. "I love you too." You say looking at him.

-

Everyone's saying there goodbyes and leaving. You offer to take Eddie home as he's drunk. You walk out with Eddie's arm over you shoulders. One of your around his side. You walk out waving back at Steve who's stood at the door. You gwt in your car starring it.

"That was fun." Eddie says sliding a hand on your thigh. You nod. "Sorry is that's not hoe you wanted everyone to find out were dating." HE says looking up at you.

"It was perfect. Just sums us up perfectly." You say looking Iver and smiling at him.

"I love you." HE says looking up and you lovingly.

"I love you too." You smile back at him as he laces his finger with yours bringing your hand up and kissing it.

#eddie m #eddie munson thoughts #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x yn #eddie smut #eddie x reader #eddie x you #rockstar eddie munson #eddie my beloved #eddie stranger things

[bekkathyst]

Custom Wire Wrapped Necklaces

These are the stones I have available for wire wraps, for those of you who are interested!

If you would like to claim one, please be sure to read this entire post!

So here’s the rundown. Below is a picture with each stone numbered, and below that is the name of each stone, along with the price.

The price includes the following: the stone wrapped in the metal of your choice (sterling silver, 14k gold fill, 14k rose gold fill), an 18″ chain finished with a handmade clasp, and it includes free shipping worldwide! 

You will choose the style they’d like it wrapped in. There are three example pics below. 

Payment is due when the stone is claimed and all the options are chosen (metal, style, etc). PLEASE NOTE - these will be completed in late May 2023. I will aim to have them done before the end of that month. They take a long time to make, please make sure you’re okay with the wait before ordering. I put the utmost care into this and have extreme attention to detail, and when that combines with my busy schedule, it means that it can take a while. I always aim to get them done early, but sometimes it’s not possible. If you are buying one for a certain event or deadline please be sure to let me know when ordering, so I can let you know if it's possible for it to be completed before then!

To claim: send me a message over the instant messenger with your email address, the country you’re in, the stone you’d like to claim, the metal you’d like it wrapped in, and the style you’d like it wrapped in. I’ll then send your invoice and get started on your pendant! :) 

*Note* These are some of my best, highest quality stones! I’ve been collecting (and hoarding, if I’m honest) hundreds of top-quality stones for 10 years to build this collection I can share with you.

Here are all the stones:

Brecciated Azurite - $140

High-Grade Old Stock Ocean Jasper - $140

High-Grade Old Stock Ocean Jasper - $140

Lavender Quartz Facet - $155

Highest Grade Rainbow Moonstone - $180

Highest Grade Rainbow Moonstone - $175

Deep Red Garnet - $145

Watermelon Tourmaline - $145

Blue Apatite - $135

Genuine Spectrolite from Finland - $150

XXL Genuine Spectrolite from Finland - $325

Rainbow Obsidian - $135

Gold Sheen Obsidian - $120

Silver Sheen Obsidian - $115

Silver Sheen Obsidian - $120

Lavender Chalcedony - $135

Australian Crystal Opal Triplet - $125

Fire Agate - $125

Mozambique Rose Quartz - $120

Blue Labradorite - $125

Rare Purple Labradorite $145

Rainbow Moonstone - $130

True Silver Moonstone - $140

Lattice Sunstone - $140

Confetti Sunstone - $135

Star Ruby - $140

Chatoyant Sapphire - $160

Red Rutilated Quartz Facet - $135

Epidote Included Quartz Facet - $140

Clear Quartz Facet - $115

Black Tourmaline & Epidote Included Quartz Facet - $185

Harlequin Quartz - $160

Phantom Amethyst w/ Inclusions - $150

Ethiopian Opal - $155

Rare Genuine Andamooka Opal from Australia (15.8 carats) - $435

Vietnamese Ruby Gourd Carving (22.75 carats) - $425

Cat's Eye Pink California Tourmaline (San Diego co.) (12.3 carats) - $230

Morganite from Russia - $170

Chrome Diopside from Russia - $180

Pyritized Ammonite Fossil from Russia - $180

Dianite (Russian Blue Jade) - $160

Amazonite from Russia - $120

"Blueberry" Azurite Geode from Russia - $140

Uvarovite Garnet from Russia - $185

Mongolian Turquoise - $140

These are the styles you can choose from (I do very minimalist wrapping so the stone really shines through! And the wrapping is super sturdy!) 

Style #1 (prongs): 

Style #2 (symmetrical): 

Style #3 (asymmetrical):  

I will cross out each stone as they are claimed! 

Extra little note: I have some square wire if you prefer that to the round, just let me know!

Thanks, everyone :) 

#custom wire wraps #wire wraps #jewelry

[cyansadness]

this is how i think season 2 of grease rise of the pink ladies should start

we open on the facciano’s old apartment in new york. it’s snowing outside. the house is full of boxes. this is the night before they are set to move to rydell. frenchie is walking to her room when she hears yelling from jane’s room.

being a nosy younger sister, she leans closer to try to hear the conversation better. frenchie can’t really hear much. just jane yelling and a male voice yelling back. we can only hear bits and pieces of the conversation.

‘i never want to hear from you or see you again.’ ‘come on, don’t be like that jane.’ ‘i mean it zuko, get out.” ‘calm down facciano.’

frenchie hears footsteps approaching the door so she dives into her own room just as jane opens her own. frenchie watches the interaction from a crack in the door.

the conversation now is crystal clear as jane forces zuko out of her room. he goes to grab her forearm but she pushes him away.

‘come on jane, what are you going to do, huh? move to california and just forget about everything that happened?” he would ask, getting closer to jane but she would take a few steps back. the camera is facing his back, we still can see his face.

‘yeah, i’m not letting you ruin this second chance for me. you’ve done enough zuko. just leave me alone, for good this time.’ jane said, crossing her arms in front of her. ‘good-bye zuko.’ jane said, throwing something small at him. it bounced out off his chest and landed on the floor.

jane stepped back into her room and shut the door. zuko bent down to pick up what jane threw at him. a gold ring with a dark red gem in the center. he huffed before going to leave the facciano’s residence for the last time.

frenchie has a confused look on her face. what happened? what did they do? why were they arguing? so many questions and one sister unwilling to answer them.

we see jane through her small window that leads to a fire escape. the window is frosted over. as the camera pans out, we see her packing the last things in a suitcase.

the camera lifts up to show the night sky before quickly dropping back down where we are back in rydell.

this is right after the last scene of season 1. we see jane storm into the frosty palace, everyone jumping out of her way because calamity jane is on a warpath.

she’s angry but under all that anger, there’s fear. she has her back to the door as it jingles again. the pink ladies followed her, obviously.

they talk over each other as they question everything they just saw. as jane was about to start talking, the bell jingles again. jane looks up again and zuko is standing at the door, a smirk on his face like he’s been waiting for this day to come. this is the first time we’re seeing his face.

with that proud smirk on his face, he looks at jane dead in the eyes. “hey facciano, long time, no see.’

then we get our iconic title card and theme

bam, mic drop

now we just need a season 2.

#grease rise of the pink ladies #grease: rise of the pink ladies #save rise of the pink ladies #jane facciano #olivia valdovinos #cynthia zdunowski #nancy nakagawa #hazel robertson #i need them back #this has been living in my head rent free for months

[for-the-sake-of-color]

Teaser #1 for Chapter 2 of The Den

After a fantastic couple nights visiting The Den as relief and a reward for spending his daylight hours defending his pride at the Medical Conference, Kix decides to leave his massively hungover cousin Coric at the hotel and head back to the night club by himself. There was a certain shorter man that had refused to leave his thoughts. He's just lucky the Vampire was as eager for his return as Kix was to see him.

Excerpt under the cut >:3c

The side of Nihlus’ mouth lifted into a sneer, though he sounded amused as he said “and you were almost the perfect man, too. The world as your oyster and you still willingly chose to drink a beer?”

He shrugged in reply, “could have chosen a seltzer,” and at that Nihlus pulled a frown so deep that Kix barked out a laugh, “It’s not that bad! It’s really not,” he tried to assure him with a chuckle as he took a sip.

It really wasn’t that bad, a little more footy than he generally preferred from his Sours, but it was perfectly passable as a drink. He bet it’d even be rather pleasant if he got to a third one tonight

And then Nihlus mutters, “Ugh, well I’m not letting you stick your tongue in my mouth now,”

And Kix's brain ground to a halt and may as well have lit on fire in that moment from the implications.

“You were going to kiss me? That’s not against this place’s rules?” He asked  eagerly. So Nihlus had been thinking about him too! And for more than just his blood?

“It’d have been nice to think about, at least,” The Vampire muttered, sipping his drink 

Kix nudged him again and gave his best puppy eyes, “You could keep thinking about it?”

Nihlus stared at him for a long beat, before, “Alright, but you’re going to have to be a lot more charming if you want me to change my mind with your beer breath,”

“I can certainly try,” Kix chucked, taking another sip, “so what are you drinking tonight?”

“Besides you, later? Sparkling Rosé,” Nihlus gives Kix a bit of a smirk at that one, and then leans back and takes a sip of his drink. 

Kix’s eyes were transfixed as the liquid tipped back from the flute into his full lips. They looked... soft. Maybe if he was lucky he’d be able to have them pressed against his skin without getting bit long enough to remember the experience. 

Maybe a more realistic hope was that he’d get to have them pressed up against his own lips, but Kix liked to dream big

“You’re a wine guy, then?” 

Nihlus chuckled, “as unfortunately cliche as it is for a Vampire, yes, I am very much into the entire wine making process, not that I have the amount of patience necessary to see a vineyard through

“At least 50 years alive didn’t teach you any patience?” Kix asked 

The vampire scoffed, nudging Kix back, “Fifty... You flatter me, you pretty young thing.” he said with a grin into his drink.

Kix did not respond with the ‘I’m trying to’  that he was thinking, and instead followed with, “Is this one special, then?”

“We don’t serve special drinks here, Howler can't bartend to save his life,” The Vampire actually said rather loudly, said bartender flipping him off, yet bringing the bottle to refill his glass, Nihlus actually gave him a, “Thank you,” before he turned back to Kix,

“This is just some california blend sparkling blush, cheap as hell but sweet enough that I don’t mind drinking it,” and then Nihlus... held it out to Kix, biting his lower lip as he watched the Medical resident take a sip,

“It’s... okay,” Kix stated consideringly, he wished he had been able to taste more of Nihlus on the rim before he handed it back, “is the proof worth it?”

Nihlus’ grin was large, “not particularly, its only 3%, but it’s better than your beer,”

Kix laughed as he took another swig of his own drink, “How would you know, you haven’t even tried it?” and at 20 proof, it was well worth sipping on

“Fine,” Nihlus said, reaching his hand out, “if you’re so insistent,” 

And who was Kix to say no after the Vampire had so generously shared his own? Kix handed it over without complaint and got to study once more the way those sinful lips curled around the mouth of his glass as he... drank half of Kix’s fucking beer in one go

“Hey!” Kix tried to grab at it, but the Vampire was much faster, laughing loudly as Kix failed to take his drink back, “That's mine!” 

“And what do I get out of giving it back?” Nihlus asked him oh so childishly

Kix though? Raised an eyebrow and lowered his voice, “Well you know, now that you just made sure beer breath isn't an issue, I could kiss you for it back?” 

The Vampire was back to biting his lower lip as he leaned forwards, replying equally as quietly, “and who says that’s a reward for me?” 

Kix was smug as he leaned in himself, nearly touching but not quite bridging the gap between them, “Is it not?”

They were so close now, he could feel Nihlus breath against his skin as he muttered, “gods help me but it is,” and pressed himself against Kix, one arm sliding under Kix’s own and the other coming to rest on his shoulder after he set the beer down on the bar. Kix took it as permission to lay his hands around that perfect waist as the Vampire locked their lips together.

#star wars #star wars the clone wars #sw tcw #star wars au #Vampire au #Kix #tcw kix #clone medic kix #original character #star wars oc #sith oc #vampire oc #nihlus brek #nihlus tag #kix tag #the den #my art #star wars fanart

[rabbitcruiser]

Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park Vista Point, CA (No. 2)

The drive along Highway 1 has been described as "one of the best drives on Earth", and is considered one of the top 10 motorcycle rides in the United States. Highway 1 was named the most popular drive in California in 2014 by the American Automobile Association. Condé Nast Traveler named State Route 1 through Big Sur one of the top 10 world-famous streets, comparable to Broadway in New York City and the Champs-Élysées in Paris. Most of the nearly 7 million tourists who currently visit Big Sur each year never leave Highway 1, because the adjacent Santa Lucia Range is one of the largest roadless coastal areas in the entire United States; Highway 1 and the Nacimiento-Fergusson Road offer the only paved access into and out of the region. In January 2021, the Nacimiento-Fergusson Road was washed out due to the impacts of the Dolan Fire and closed, cutting off the only alternative route out of the area. It is not expected to reopen until December 2023.

The beauty of the scenery along the narrow, two-lane road attracts enormous crowds during summer vacation periods and holiday weekends, and traffic is frequently slow. Visitors have reported to the California Highway Patrol hours-long stop-and-go traffic from Rocky Creek Bridge to Rio Road in Carmel during the Memorial Day weekend. The highway winds along the western flank of the mountains mostly within sight of the Pacific Ocean, varying from near sea level up to a 1,000-foot (300 m) sheer drop to the water. Most of the highway is extremely narrow, with tight curves, steep shoulders and blind turns. The route offers few or no passing lanes and, along some stretches, very few pullouts. The sides are occasionally so steep that the shoulders are virtually non-existent.

Source: Wikipedia

#Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park Vista Point #Monterey County #California State Route 1 #Highway 1 #Pacific Coast Highway #National Scenic Byway #Big Sur #Pacific Ocean #travel #original photography #vacation #tourist attraction #landmark #landscape #seascape #countryside #street scene #road trip #summer 2022 #California #West Coast #Big Sur Coast Highway #nature #flora #grass #tree #USA #blue sky #blue sea #beach

[separatist-apologist]

Neon In The Nighttime

Summary: It's the end of the word as we know it. A west coast baker and the drummer of a metal band team up in Boston, MA thinking they're one of the last few people left alive after a viral outbreak turns those infected into blood hungry monsters.

Their destination: Los Angeles, California- the last place Lucien's eldest brother was living while gearing up for a presidential run. Lucien is desperate to escape the memories of his past life and what he had to do when his wife, Jes, became infected. Elain wants to try and reclaim the fractured pieces of the life she remembers before everything went to hell.

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Read on AO3

Thank you @corcracrow for the moodboard (And reminding me to upload)

It was the sound of shuffling that woke Elain. Louder than any alarm, Elain was primed to come alive the minute she heard feet dragging like that. Tucked beneath Lucien’s arm on the couch, the two of them had fallen asleep telling stories of their lives before everything had fallen apart. She suspected he, much like her, hadn’t wanted to sleep alone. He’d offered her Tamlin’s old bed and Elain had declined.

“Lucien,” she whispered, but beside her, he was already awake. Already holding the gun she’d yielded to him the day before. Neither of them said a word, listening to those stumbling steps.

They’d likely announced to every infected person in the building that they were here the second Lucien had begun hitting the drumset.

Elain couldn’t bring herself to regret it. Though she barely knew Lucien, she knew he’d needed that. The joy that had lit his face was worth the horror now slowly descending upon them. Elain watched the far wall and the long shadow that blotted out the flickering candle light. 

Lucien tightened his hold around her, turning his head to look. Elain didn’t, squeezing her eyes shut tight. A soft moan from a throat that was no longer capable of producing speech and then the vicious recoil of the gun.

“Time to go,” Lucien said with a heavy sigh. Elain wondered if they ought to work out a better system, a trade where he killed and she did, so the burden didn’t fall so heavily on him. Yet when it came time to offer herself up, Elain’s sandpaper throat swallowed the words entirely. Lucien didn’t betray anything but the same world weariness she’d grown used to. He slung the bag they’d packed the night before over a broad shoulder while Elain tried very hard not to look at the blood splattered mess all over the floor.

Lucien pulled open the door, revealing that they were very much not alone. Elain could hear the sound of those shuffling feet and the stench of rotting, bloated corpses infecting the stale air. Wide-eyed, Lucien’s panicked expression was the last thing she saw before the door snapped shut behind them, bathing them in the dark. 

“This way,” he said while Elain wished for a flashlight. Anything but the terrifying darkness and the sound of movement and moaning that seemed to echo around them. Lucien didn’t seem concerned until he yanked open the stairwell and a hoard of infected groaned. They must have spent the whole night walking those stairs.

“Oh, God,” Elain breathed. Lucien fired a shot, and then another before slamming the door shut. The sound of crunching bone made Elain gag. 

They were boxed in. Elain could hear the infected ambling down the hall, while the ones behind the door fiddled with the handle, unable to remember how to work it. Lucien laced his fingers through Elain’s, his sweating palms betraying his fear. “This way,” he said, pulling her toward the old elevator shaft.

“Lucien—”

“Do you want to die?” he asked, prying it open with a grunt. “Because I sure as fuck don’t. Not in Ohio, of all places.”

“Lucien–”

“Hold on to me,” he said, bending his knees. The door just to the side of them pushed open and fell shut, too heavy for the infected behind to push, though she didn’t think it would stay that way. “Grab my neck.”

“Oh, God,” she whispered, wrapping her arms tight around him. Lucien hoisted her up, letting her wrap her legs around his waist. He glanced down the hall, shuddering when he realized the infected were closer than they’d originally thought. It was nearly impossible to see, amplifying Elain’s fear. 

Lucien leaned into the open shaft, grabbing the heavy cable that had once hauled an elevator up and down. This was a terrible plan, she thought when he swung his body inside. Just in time—she’d felt cold fingers graze her arm, eliciting a soft scream of fear.

“You’re okay,” Lucien grunted. They were suspended in that dark shaft, held only by the strength in Lucien’s body. 

“Don’t move, don’t move, don’t move,” he chanted. Elain understood why a moment later. The infected who’d touched her pitched forward and fell silently, missing them entirely. Elain buried her face in Lucien’s shoulder, suppressing a sob when the sound of bone and flesh smashed at the very bottom of the shaft. All she could hear was her own erratic heart and Lucien’s shallow breath.

“There will be more of that,” he warned her, sliding them down an inch. “Don’t panic. I won’t let you fall.”

Lucien wasn’t wrong. Unconcerned with anything but the living, the infected pitched forward after them, falling into the dark in a desperate attempt to infect Elain and Lucien, too. It was terrifying—each new body forced Lucien to stop moving and hope they didn’t careen into the pair of them and drag them to their death, too. 

The smell in the shaft was unbearable by the end. Lucien’s feet touched the bottom first, arms held tight around her body as he stepped through blood and shattered bone to get them into the terrifyingly dark basement.

It was worse than anything Elain had experienced. Every drip of water or scurry of rat feet made her jump out of her skin. She didn’t feel safe, not when they descended back into the silent lobby, nor when they sprinted in the dark across the street and back to the parking garage they’d left Lucien’s truck in. 

Elain didn’t let go of Lucien’s hand until they were safe inside, doors locked. Lucien, too, was wild eyed and ashen. He shook out his hands and exhaled a heavy breath. Somehow they had made it out, though she’d never know how. 

“Where to, now?” Lucien whispered.

Elain launched herself over the center console, throwing her arms around his neck. Lucien was trembling, either from the effort it had taken to scale down fifteen floors in an elevator shaft, or the terror of their escape. 

There were no words exchanged in the hug. Only Lucien gripping Elain so tight he was likely bruising her skin and her holding him just as rough. It felt like a lifetime had passed between the night with the drumset and the morning in the elevator shaft, though the sun still hadn’t risen and they were still bathed in near darkness. 

“We’re okay,” he whispered into her hair. “We’re together.”

That was what mattered, she thought. Elain couldn’t have done any of that without him. In fact, it seemed a miracle she’d left that store at all, that they’d even gotten to Ohio. It was as if fate had conspired to bring them together, knowing they could only make this journey with the other. Wiping her eyes, Elain nodded. 

“I hate it,” she told him, because she did. She knew, deep in her gut, she wasn’t cut out for this kind of life. The fact that she’d somehow survived was surely some giant, cosmic joke. Punishment for some terrible misdeed in a former life, perhaps. 

Lucien gripped her face in his callused hands, sweeping his thumbs over her cheeks. She was sobbing, she realized. Elain hadn’t even noticed, but the soft sympathy on his face told her he didn’t begrudge her this.

“So do I,” he said, wiping away the tears cascading down her face. There was more he wanted to say, leashed behind his teeth. Elain was grateful for it. She couldn’t handle anything but the silence and the engine of the car. Lucien reached between them, hand reaching for her thigh. Elain had a visceral memory of Graysen doing this and feeling special for it. 

Silly, given how insecure he’d always made her. As though she could prove through the little gestures that what he wanted more than anything was her. 

There was no romance to the gesture. It was possible Lucien was trying to ground her, given Elain hadn’t stopped crying. It was just as possible he needed to ground himself, and reaching for her was the only way he could think to do that. Either way, the simple touch kept Elain from breaking.

She wasn’t alone—he was with her. They were together, and that had to be enough because there was nothing else. There was no waking up, no end to the nightmare they were now trapped in. 

“If I’m infected,” she began when the sun began to rise. Lucien had just crossed into Indiana, crawling through the sprawled, chaotic traffic left haphazard on the roads. 

“Don’t,” he tried to say, but they needed to know. Did he want her to do it quickly? To leave him to his own devices? Elain wanted to know what Lucien wanted in the event he was infected, too. It was better to tell him now rather than when panic set in and she might do or say something that put them both at risk.

“No matter what I say, I want you to kill me before I go. I want to die as me,” she whispered, hugging her middle. He squeezed her thigh tight enough to bruise, eyes glassy. 

Swallowing, he whispered, “I want that, too.”

They lapsed back into silence, stopping once in Portage, Indiana to use the bathroom. Elain didn’t bother to ask Lucien where they were sleeping that night. If he stopped at all, she knew they’d be locked inside the car for the duration of it, gun in his lap.

When Elain returned to him, bleary eyed and hungry, Lucien was holding up a CD case. 

“So I was thinking,” he began, eyeing her warily. “That maybe we could listen to some music.”

“I didn’t know you were a Fearless fan, Lucien,” she replied, pulling the album from his hands. 

He grimaced. “Before…all this…I would have sworn up and down that I hated Taylor Swift. Who needs another break up song, right? At least, not one I didn’t write anyway,” he added ruefully.

Elain offered him a small smile, surprised that he was offering this because he wanted her to feel better. She didn’t mind sitting in silence, but maybe Lucien did. 

“It’s the end of the world, though, and I don’t think anyone cares about how manly I seem. And I didn’t hate Love Story, if we’re being honest.”

“Wait until you hear Haunted then,” she replied with a teasing smile. It was on the tip of her tongue to thank him, but Elain leashed the urge. They’d been through so much in the span of a few days and thanking him for this small thing seemed strange—unnecessary, even. Had she been isolated for so long that she couldn’t remember how friendship worked?

It started, she supposed, with an offer to listen to Taylor Swift. And so Elain climbed back into the truck, draped a blanket over her lap, and slid the CD in while Lucien adjusted the volume. Loud enough they could both hear it, but not so loud they couldn’t talk, too.

The opening notes filled the cab and beside her, Lucien reclined back in his chair. Eyes closed, he groaned softly as he gripped the steering wheel. It was the most obscene thing she could ever recall seeing in her life and hardly sexual at the same time.

“I forgot,” he whispered, the corners of his eyes wet. Swallowing, he turned to look at her. “I forgot how music sounds.”

She reached across the car for his hand and squeezed. Lucien grinned, not caring about the tears threatening to spill down his cheeks.

“Sing it to me,” he said.

Elain took a breath. And she did.

LUCIEN:

“Okay, okay, okay,” Elain said, twisting in her seat to look at him. A can of cold raviolis lay nestled between her thighs, her plastic fork hanging from her fingers still stained orange despite the bite she’d just taken. Lucien was driving again, energized by the music and by Elain who’d really come alive in the last few hours. He’d thought he’d lost her after their crawl down the elevator shaft—she’d looked so dead eyed and vacant and he’d been terrified something in her had broken. 

He barely knew her and yet Lucien was certain if Elain left him, he wouldn’t be able to continue the journey. There was no way he could do it alone like he’d once thought. He needed her, and maybe she needed him, too. 

“Did you really get discovered in the basement of a record store?”

Elain had the jacket of his album in her free hand and was reading the story he, Vassa, and Jurian had carefully concocted one night after too many beers.

“Technically,” he laughed, thinking of that night. “He was a friend of my dads, so I had an in. We’d given him our record and he said before he signed us, he wanted to hear us live. So we scrambled, managed to convince a buddy of Jurian’s to give us the basement, and played live to him and a couple friends.”

Jes had been there. Lucien could still see her, leaned against that dingy wall, arms crossed over her chest while she smiled. Every time he looked up, he found her watching him and only him. She’d been the only person in that room to him—and he’d played only for her. The memory had once haunted him, but listening to Vassa’s voice over the speakers, Lucien felt warmed by it. There was some little spark of Jes in Elain that made Lucien feel safe. The way Elain smiled, maybe, or how bright and lively she was despite everything. It made Lucien want to trust her, to tell her every horrible thing that had happened in the aftermath. He thought she’d understand what he’d been through, what kept him awake at night.

And he wanted to know what she’d been through, too. More than anything, Lucien craved that connection—they were both killers and it weighed on them heavily. If she confessed that she’d hated it, that there had been no satisfaction in killing, Lucien thought it might absolve some of his own guilt, too.

But not tonight. It had been a hard enough day without asking her to relive more horror. They needed levity and fun.

“Isn’t that cheating?” Elain asked him, pulling him from his thoughts with that bright, sunlit smile. 

He shrugged, one hand on the wheel, the other on her knee. “You think Taylor Swift didn’t have some help with her career? There are no Cinderella stories anymore—just a bunch of carefully crafted biographies and kids with rich dads helping them out. That was the only good thing Beron ever did for me, and I don’t think he ever realized he’d done it.”

If his father had known, he likely would have sabotaged Lucien’s career just because he could. He’d never made peace with Lucien’s decision not to go into politics or finance. Why couldn’t Lucien be more like Moreno’s son and work for Black Rock if he wasn’t going to follow in Eris’s footsteps? 

“Way to ruin it, Lucien,” she grumbled, twisting just enough that she wasn’t facing him, but not so far he had to move his hand. 

“There’s no such thing as a starving artist anymore. You can’t create if you have to pay bills,” Lucien told her without an inch of remorse. His trust fund had paid for him, Jurian, and Vassa to not work, which gave them an edge. If they needed to travel for a venue they could hop on a plane and they had all the time in the world to refine their music, to buy nice gear, to record and play with their music. 

“My sister was a starving artist,” Elain told him, some of the light fading for a moment. “She would have been big if…”

“Maybe,” he finally said, glancing over. “Your family didn’t have money.”

Elain looked at her fingers. “Not money money. But my mom did…and my dad did before she died.”

“What happened when she died?”

Elain shrugged. “He spiraled. He didn’t know—no, that’s not true. He didn’t want to live without her. He let things go, including his business, and made a lot of bad decisions. The IRS came in and cleaned him out. They took everything. I was eleven at the time, so just old enough to understand what was going on.”

“I’m sorry,” Lucien said honestly, drawing in a breath through his nose. “Did he ever…”

Elain’s smile took on a bitter edge. “He never got another job. My older sister took a job in a nearby deli, and then we were all working to try and keep the lights on. My sister told us that if anyone found out how bad things were, we’d be separated so we went to school like normal and then after we went to our jobs, and then we’d stay up all night doing homework. It got better right at the end—when I was in high school, some relative of our moms showed up with trusts. They were little, but enough for the three of us to go to college.”

“Maybe they waited because they thought your father would spend the money.”

“Oh, I’m sure that’s why,” Elain said with a heavy sigh. “My sisters never forgave him, but I felt so bad. He was just so sick and so sad—I think he wished he would die, but his body wouldn’t let him. He was why I was in Virginia and sometimes I think…”

Lucien could guess what she thought. He reached between them, placing his hand back on her thigh. He’d worried, the first time he’d done it, that she’d think he was coming on to her. It was supposed to be comforting, a reminder she wasn’t alone. Elain exhaled the moment his palm collided with the fabric covering her leg, relaxing ever so slightly.

“I’m glad it was you in that Target,” Lucien finally said, swallowing against his nerves. “I didn’t realize how alone I was until I met you.”

“It could have been anyone—” she tried to say, self-deprecating when he wished she wouldn’t. 

“No, it couldn’t,” he replied, struck by the revelation. “It could only be you.”

Elain laid her hand over his own and squeezed, another touch he needed so desperately. Lucien didn’t think humans were built for the sort of solitude he’d endured over the last year. He knew he wasn’t. He missed the connection of another person who seemed to understand you down to your bones, that could get to the heart of the matter with one easy look. 

He couldn’t wholly say he enjoyed the Taylor Swift soundtrack. In the movies, they’d have been given something gritty, something with a messy beat and bleeding guitar riffs. The audience would know the two of them were alive just by the skin of their teeth.

But it wasn’t a movie. In the movies, Lucien would have had a military background and Elain’s clothes would have been so ripped you could see every inch of her. He’d be gruff and closed off and she’d be sexy and holding a shotgun.

Reality was far worse. There was no edgy score, no rough and tumble heroes that could fix the world. There was just a drummer and a baker in a car that, by all rights had no business running and no hope anyone they’d once loved was still alive. How did you carve a future from that? What future could they even have? 

“Can you garden?” Lucien asked suddenly, thinking of that future. 

“Yeah,” Elain replied, speaking a ravioli on her plastic fork and offering it to him. “Thinking about vegetables?”

“Thinking about what we’ll do if we get out to California and there’s no one waiting for us.”

“I don’t know if I want to settle down in Los Angeles.”

“Fair,” he agreed, offering her a tight smile. “We’ll figure it out, I guess.”

Elain opened her mouth to respond but Lucien swerved when a person appeared in his line of sight. Sauce flew through the cab as Elain screamed, throwing her hands up over her head. Lucien heard squealing tires ringing in his ears, felt the steering wheel vibrate beneath his fingers as he tried to control the truck.

“That…that person was alive.”

“Lucien,” Elain whispered, staring straight ahead. Lucien whipped his head around, certain the pair of green eyes he’d seen were human—were alive. “Lucien, look.” 

He turned his head to find a wooden sign staked to the ground. New Fort Wayne, it read, painted in steady, white letters. 1 mile ahead. 

“You don’t think?”

A slap against the glass made Elain scream. Lucien jumped, turning with the expectation he’d see more of the infected. More dead eyes, more pallid, bloated skin. 

He found long, blonde hair pulled off a sun-tanned face. Green eyes glowing in the dark, and an all-too familiar rose tattoo inked against a throat.

“Tamlin?”

Tamlin blinked for a moment.

#elucien #people places and things!

[bearterritory]

BEARS DOMINATE BIG SPLASH

#4 Cal Earns Largest Win Ever Over #3 Stanford

STANFORD – Closing out the regular season Friday at No. 3 Stanford, the No. 4 California women's water polo team defeated the Cardinal in historical fashion, 11-6 behind huge performances by goalkeeper Isabel Williams and attacker Elena Flynn.

Williams had 15 saves for the fifth time this season and Flynn poured in a Golden Bear career-high five goals as they led Cal to its largest margin of victory over Stanford (16-5, 4-2) since 1997. Along with helping hold the Cardinal to a season low in goals, Williams also became the second player in program history to reach 800 career saves.

Flynn single-handedly outscored Stanford in the opening half, pouring in her fourth goal on her fifth attempt in the final seconds of the second quarter. She tied a season high with five goals, firing in all five from distance.

It didn't take long for the Bears (15-5, 4-2) to take control of the game. On their first possession, senior Maddie DeMattia collected a pass in traffic from Claire Rowell and wrapped it around the defense for a slick backhand goal. The Bears held the lead the rest of the way.

Flynn put Cal ahead 3-0 with back-to-back goals midway through the first. In the closing moments of the period, junior Jessie Rose found senior Reagan Whitney in deep for a composed finish in front of goal, making it 4-1.

Looking to flip the script before things got too out of hand, Stanford earned a penalty on the first play of the second quarter. However, for the fourth consecutive game, Williams forced a penalty miss, remaining in a central position while extending her right arm out to stop the shot in its tracks. The Bears continued to pour it on from there, converting a pair of 6-on-5s with a goal by junior Rozanne Voorvelt and a quick strike from straightaway by Flynn to go up 6-1.

The Cardinal started to get its offense on track with two goals late in the half, but the Bears had an answer on both occasions. Voorvelt found senior Maryn Dempsey wide open on the left side to fire one into the top corner. With two seconds left on the clock, Flynn slotted in another shot from deep center, giving her four goals to Stanford's three at the break.

The second half provided a slow offensive start from both sides, but a pair of back-breaking goals by Rose and yet another penalty save by Williams quelled any chance of a late comeback. Flynn beat the shot clock and rocketed in her fifth goal at the 3:37 mark of the fourth to give the Bears their largest lead of the day, 11-5. She now owns team highs in goals (38), five-goal games (2) and four-goal games (4).

With their upset win, Cal now heads into the MPSF Championship in Indiana as a #2 seed. They are one of the few teams that will have a winning record against other top-5 nationally-ranked teams.  

No. 5 California 11, No. 3 Stanford 6 Cal 4 4 1 2 – 11 Stan 1 2 2 1 – 6 Cal Goals: Elena Flynn 5, Jessie Rose 2, Maryn Dempsey, Maddie DeMattia, Rozanne Voorvelt, Reagan Whitney Stan Goals: Sophie Wallace 2, Christina Hicks, Eleanor Facey, Kamryn Barone, Skyler Jones Cal Saves: Isabel Williams 15 Stan Saves: Maya Avital 6

#Go Bears! #UC Berkeley #Roll on you Bears #Cal sports #This Is Bear Territory #Go Bears #California athletics

[chantsdemarins]

🥵"Find Tom" (Part 1)

(Tom Hiddleston X Reader)

Well, I wasn't going to write another Tom fic, but I am weak. This one is honorary for the 14 Days of Valentine's Day Community project from @muddyorbsblr

It’s suggestive in Part 1, things heat up in Part 2

Maybe interested:

@lovelysizzlingbluebird @lokisgoodgirl (I risk tagging you I know lol 😂) @tbhiddlestan83 @peaches1958 @mygfloki @huntress-artemiss @coldnique @simplyholl @mochie85 @fictive-sl0th @goblingirlsarah @carlym @mjsthrillernp @i-stand-with-loki @filthyhiddles @wolfsmom1 @fantasyfan4life @jennyggggrrr @runningawaywithloki @lady-rose-moon @icytrickster17

(New art too!)

Sea Ranch, CA Sometime after the era fondly referred to as "Peak Tom"

The path back to his weekend rental was winding, to say the least.

Coastal sage and nubby coyote bush snagged the transparent black nylons you put on at the last minute when your winter skin looked a little too ashy for an evening event at Sea Ranch amongst the Bay Area’s artsy crowd. Your hand glided down to touch the plants along the escarpment, pulling a sprig off one of the branches with a gentle tug. Holding it to your nose and inhaling the scent, mixed with the salt misting up from the ocean below, it feels like velvet air coursing through your lungs.

You are climbing now, and you imagine by the time you get to the top of the cliff, your breath will be dangerously close to being lost. You were correct.

The view that opens before you, even in the moonless night, is more incredible than anything you could remember seeing of late. He’s way off in front of you, nervously plodding-perhaps to get inside the thick redwood doors and clean up quickly before welcoming you in. You can barely see the outline of his suit, his shoulder blades, noble triangles against the lithe of his tall frame.

He’s left a light on inside, as he nervously opens the door the light hits his face. It’s a relief to see him after what felt like 30 minutes trekking through the California coastline in borrowed Prada flats. From your side of the window, he’s impossibly handsome, untouchable. The window feels like a metaphor.

How you managed to get an interview with him at this hour, after an overly festive San Francisco film festival party, was a mystery, but he agreed when you took the chance. You’d been eyeing him all night, the last person you expected to be there, and the most interesting.

Only hours before, you’d quietly moved to the deck of the main Sea Ranch house, holding your cell phone to the pristine glittery night sky, searching for a signal to rejuvenate your bad cell service. You Googled “Tom Hiddleston” just to be sure it wasn’t Michael Fassbender.

Then when you heard someone say his name, you were clear, it was him.

It was unlike you to invite yourself into the conversation he was already having with a keen-eyed group of Brits across the room, stationed next to a looming Peter Doig painting and a roaring fire, but you did. Making a joke, dropping your cocktail napkin in your nervousness. When he picked it up mid-sentence and handed it back to you, eyes meeting yours, you knew. You waited a few moments but then told him who you were, the beat you were covering for the impossibly small publication you just started writing for. You were way in over your head.

Maybe you should have covered the state fair first, not the San Francisco film festival post-screening events. The roar of crashing waves just outside the sheer wall of glass was unnerving. You flagged down one of the servers and had another caramel-colored Manhattan with one of those big ice cubes that obscure the actual amount of alcohol. Tom did the same, eyes never leaving you.

He made a joke about the event planners saving money with the big ice cubes, “a deliberate act of malice” he said. By midnight you’d managed to find a cozy red, mostly ornamental couch, with cushions seemingly filled with lead, one shift too many caused Tom to say it first. To ask where you were staying.

You weren’t. That was the thing.

You were going to drive back to ennui filled Napa in the wee morning hours, with the marine layer locked in place, a challenge even for the sober. Which you clearly were not.

*Tom would later correct your pronunciation of ‘ennui’ when you used it in conversation, this may or may not have created a small pause in kinetic flow between you.

He offered for you to have some tea (or coffee because you were American, he promised he drank entirely too much coffee and was an honorary American because of it). He offered to be interviewed in his weekend cliff-facing Bill Turnbull masterpiece.

He was effulgent in his offering. So much so that you worried about how he seemed determined to make a good impression on you, a stranger with no obvious pedigree to situate yourself in a status of his interest.

You made your way inside, and you were right-he is nervously cleaning up. He’d been there for less than 24 hours and somehow managed to leave his running clothes, cliff bar wrappers, and socks all over the front room. He mentions jet lag, and delayed flights on the usually reliable British Airways.

You spy at least 25 pretzel packages on the quartz counter, and you ask Tom if those were from his flight. He gives a “ehehehehehheehe” laugh and says the flight staff was worried because he didn’t like the in-flight meal.

Of course, you asked what it was, how could you not.

It turns out it was beef bourgeon with Yukon potatoes. Tom explains the ‘why’ behind his reluctance to eat the meal, but you are simply not listening anymore. You are caught up in your own anxiety. He smells like blood orange and lilac with cedar. He smells like fancy architecture. He explains the house he is staying in with precise detail, he’s giving a dissertation on the Sea Ranch movement of the 70s but you hear approximately every other word. You are caught up in little visual details between the words you hear.

The way he seems different than the man you had watched on the San Diego Comic-Con reels, the impossibly linguistically delightful rhetorician of arcane theses. His mind accosts you, but his energy seems stuck in his head. It’s unnerving.

You wonder if he is even aware of his body, your body-or how you both are sitting now on the hastily cleaned up front room couch, bare feet accidently touching in thoughtless intervals. He is still beautiful but different, something has changed. You admittedly hadn’t kept up with his work, you were essentially a Marvel adjacent fan at best, and your previous amateur journalism beat was not entertainment, or the arts beat, it was tech.

There is an old wooden clock on the wall and the hourly bell strikes pausing you both, it’s 2:00 am. You laugh to yourself when you realize it’s now February 14th. Not one for any commercialized sentimentality or strange Catholic holidays masquerading as innocuous celebrations of love, you wonder to yourself if they even celebrate Valentine’s Day in England.

You want to ask Tom, but you are careful right now, he’s overly generous and his ego seems hidden under his red beard.

He’s giving “wounded” but there’s still his gaze, his cerulean eyes are boring holes through you. His skin is too golden when spring is still a few months away, it contrasts against his button-down shirt which is unbuttoned quite far. His pants aren’t two sizes too small like you remember him wearing to press events before, but they are still tight, they hug his thighs like neoprene, they are too distracting, you can’t ask if they have Valentine’s Day in London. You’ve never even been to the UK. Your blank passport is a spectral vision hanging over your head, you are a ghost covered with a bedsheet.

You debate a few more long, ponderous minutes before you finally ask if they celebrate Valentine’s Day in England. Tom wonders why you are asking. You remind him-today is now Valentine's Day. He laughs and explains America is much more theatrical than England-Brits don’t fall for heart-shaped boxes of chocolate.

You say, “So what do you guys fall for then?”

“Intelligence.”

You die a little. That’s it. You’ll never get your interview questions out of your mouth, and you may want this to end romantically. Any warm-blooded human would-when faced with the charm of Tom Hiddleston-even if it’s slightly redacted. Even if it’s like the big monolith ice cubes from the party earlier, somehow obscuring the ingredients.

You also want to know more about why he seems so different. You pry a little, your intuition is good enough and you can tell something happened.

Maybe it was a love affair, maybe he’s got mental health issues, maybe it’s being too famous, too known. This level of celebrity and privilege is impossible for you to sort out logically. You’ll likely never know what it feels like to have the kind of money to do anything and everything you’d ever dreamed of doing, and the charisma to attract endless people to bed.

He’s not vapid, though. At least his persona isn’t. He should be but he just isn’t Hollywood. You feel accepted by him, although you wonder how true that is, how true it could be-he comes from a world of strict judgments attached to insane amounts of money. People get exactly what they want. He’s part of that beast. He knows it, but he seems so normal right now. He even says he hates LA. He will never live there.

As you keep talking, words are mixing. Which are your thoughts, and which are his? A prelude perhaps to how he is in bed, all-consuming, immersive. He pulls you in, and you feel invigorated and ready to be supine all at once. Your body slinks down the cushions until you both are sitting on the plush rug, backs against the bottom of the couch.

Tom stares at you with the intensity of an SLS rocket launcher (the knowledge of an SLS rocket launcher is the byproduct of your last beat before entertainment and after tech-military weaponry). He stares at you like he owns you. Like there’s a collar around your neck. You check for a second just to be sure, running your chrome-colored nails against your throat.

Maybe that’s what he is struggling with, having too much pleasure and too much happiness. He’s laying low, attending minuscule film festival after parties in Northern California. Talking to a woman like you at 2:30 am, you feel much like the high tide outside the endless glass windows, disoriented by the lack of the moon's influence.

You close your eyes for just a second, and you can hear his voice mixing with the waves, the alcohol you’ve consumed, and his generous pours of the local wines he was gifted from the nebulas of vintners at the party. He can’t take them back to London, so “we better drink up,” he laughs again, emptying the second bottle into your vintage glass.

Are you holding it from the stem or the cup? Your grip is too tight, you notice. You try and hold the glass with less pressure, but your hands are like talons. If you weren’t holding on to a wine glass, surely it would be Tom’s cock.

Which you had spied the last time he got up to grab another bottle of wine, his jacket tossed on the chair to reveal his form with even more clarity. Although you tried not to look, it was difficult to miss. You assumed he wasn’t even hard yet, too lost in conversation.

You pondered if this was his thing, hooking up casually. It wouldn’t be surprising, but he was just so nice and sincere in all his actions it was hard to sift out the carnal jock with rugby stories from college and pick-up games in his London neighborhood to the starry-eyed poet delivering such lines as:

"When I consider how my light is spent, Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one Talent which is death to hide, Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest He returning chide; “Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”

By the time the last comp wine was consumed and the waves outside drifted back into low tide, you knew it was now or never.

He hadn’t touched you, not even tried; you were just left with the pleasurable burn from his boyfriend experience. You could feel the wheels turning in his mind. Perhaps he was wondering if he should be less caring, should you get too attached to his attention, his cerulean stare. He couldn’t be. Otherwise, it seemed, even if he put his acting skills to work on changing what appeared to be his perpetually endearing substrate.

He grabbed your wine glass from your hand, and you cautiously released it, wondering about your previous thought of what your hand would grab if it wasn’t a wine glass.

He gently placed his head on your shoulder with his eyes closed. Good god he smelled like heaven. Like signed contracts, like large claw foot bathtubs with a view of the Mediterranean Sea. He smelled like ginger and carrots and felt warm and hard simultaneously.

His skin was soft, but his features, like his triangle shoulder blades and his nose, were strong. They felt like swords piercing your skin. You were slayed by his bone structure even before he put his cock inside you.

You hoped it would be comfortably nestled between your legs by the time the sun began to rise over the luxuriant rock wall the house rested upon. Societal norms, class expectations, and personal relationships be damned. The wine and your own ennui fueled your longing for him—

Continue on to-

Part 2

#tom hiddelston loki #tom hiddleston #loki laufeyson #tom hiddleston fanfic #loki mcu #MCU #I'm insane

[hit-song-showdown]

Year-End Poll #17: 1966

[Image description: a collage of photos of the 10 musicians and musical groups featured in this poll. In order from left to right, top to bottom: SSgt Barry Sadler, The Association, The Righteous Brothers, Four Tops, ? and the Mysterians, The Monkees, The Mamas and the Papas (x2), The Supremes, Johnny Rivers. End description]

More information about this blog here

*Opening chords of Fortunate Son playing softly in the background*

A few polls ago, I mentioned that the song list I was using was not the one originally published in Billboard Magazine during that year. This is another one of those cases. If you read through the magazine, you'll find California Dreamin' listed as the number 1 song of the year. However, the data has since been updated and Billboard's website (and other up-to-date publications) list The Ballad of the Green Berets as the number 1 song in 1966. Every place I looked has given me frustratingly vague reasons for this difference. Since my threshold for research ends at the point where I have to start contacting people, I decided to leave this up to my (un)educated guess and assume the magazine was published before all the data for the year could be collected. Maybe, as America's involvement in the Vietnam War skyrocketed this year, more people were flocking to TBoTGB.

However I feel about the song (I try to keep these blurbs free of my actual opinions when it comes to the songs listed), it gives me an opportunity to talk about Vietnam War era music. When I imagine this era in music, I mostly think of protest songs or basically just the Full Metal Jacket soundtrack. Often, this is in contrast to the music about "the war" my generation got. To people like me who grew up watching The [Dixie] Chicks backlash and the fire-hose blast of patriotic pro-war songs, the Vietnam War era of popular music truly feels like another era in more ways than the obvious. So why is the number 1 song in the country one of the few "pro-Vietnam War" songs from the time?

I was able to talk to my folks about this era, and keep in mind that they're pretty left-leaning so that's the angle I'm coming at this from. They talked about listening to Walter Cronkite read the death counts on CBS. My dad said that after the draft was kicked into high gear, it felt like the government was just "throwing bodies" at the war effort. Middle America no longer had the luxury of distancing themselves from the war. With the draft and the footage being broadcasted into people's living rooms, there wasn't even the pastiche of "glory". But my dad also said that when he was in school, his teacher would have the kids sing Ballad of the Green Berets in class.

It sounds like I'm spending too long talking about the context behind one song, but that's because I can't think about anything else other than the war. Because the people back then couldn't think about anything else. Even if songs weren't explicitly about "the war", it didn't take much for them to be recontextualized. Another song on this poll, The Monkees' Last Train to Clarksville, didn't sound like it was about the war to me. But if you're in 1966 and you're worried about you or your friends and loved ones getting drafted, and you hear a song with the lyrics "We'll have one more night together" and "I don't know if I'm ever coming home", it's going to strike a different note. And thus, Last Train to Clarksville is still listed in Vietnam War Music compilations to this day.

I try not to be too long-winded when writing these. And even when I do go off for too long, I'm still aware that I'm giving barely a surface level summary of what I'm talking about. All of the songs I list in these polls could be the subject of their own documentaries in my opinion, and the music of the Vietnam War could be its own documentary series. But the war is something that will continue to loom over pop culture, and I'd thought I'd mention it during the poll that has an actual decorated soldier on the banner. Unlike the people at the time, we'll be able to put the war out of our minds until it comes up explicitly again.

#billboard poll #billboard music #tumblr poll #1960s #60s music #1966 #barry sadler #the association #the righteous brothers #four tops #? and the mysterians #the monkees #the mamas and the papas #johnny rivers #the supremes

[todaysdocument]

Telegram from the Executive Board of the San Francisco District of the California Federation of Women's Clubs Supporting the Raker Bill

Record Group 46: Records of the U.S. SenateSeries: Petitions and Related Documents That Were Presented, Read, or Tabled

The Raker Bill allowed San Francisco to build a dam on the Hetch Hetchy in Yosemite National Park.

[preprinted Telegraph form reads "WESTERN UNION NIGHT LETTER THEO N. VAIL, PRESIDENT Form 2289 B RECEIVED AT"] B5A LY 477 NL 124 EXTRA SAN FRANCISCO CALIF DEC 2 1913 [purple ink stamp "1913 Dec 3 AM 1 49"] [blue ink stamp "1340"] THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES WASHINGTON DC WE THE UNDERSIGNED MEMBERS OF THE EXECUTIVE BOARD OF THE SAN FRANCISCO DISTRICT OF THE CALIF FEDERATION OF WOMENS CLUBS REPRESENTING A MEMBERSHIP OF SIX THOUSAND WOMEN VOTERS OF SAN FRANCISCO AND VICINITY RESPECTFULLY CALL YOUR ATTENTION TO A RESOLUTION PASSED BY OUR ORGANIZATION IN RECENT CONVENTION AT SANTA ROSA CALIF BEGGING YOUR FAVORABLE ACTION UPON THE RAKER HETCH HETCHY BILL WHICH YOU ARE NOW CONSIDERING WE BELIEVE THAT THIS RESOLUTION SHOULD BE GIVEN THE UTMOST WEIGHT AMONG ALL OF THE MASS OF ENDORSEMENTS OF AND PROTESTS AGAINST THE HETCH HETCHY BILL FOR THE REASON THAT THE WOMEN OF THIS DISTRICT HAVE BEEN FACE TO FACE WITH THE WATER PROBLEM OF SAN FRANCISCO FOR MANY YEARS AND KNOW IT AS NO OTHER WOMEN CAN POSSIBLY KNOW IT BECAUSE[stamp in purple ink "1913 DEC 3 AM 1 50"] (SHEET 2) IT HAS BEEN BEFORE US IN OUR HOMES AND IN THE MEETINGS OF OUR VARIOUS ORGANIZATIONS AND WE HAVE GIVEN IT CONSCIENTIOUS STUDY WE HAVE PASSED THESE RESOLUTIONS WITH ACKNOWLEDGE OF THE FACTS AMONG OUR MEMBERS ARE MANY WHOSE HOMES IN SAN FRANCISCO ARE WITHOUT SEMBLANCE OF FIRE PROTECTION AND WHOSE HEALTH IS ENDANGERED THROUGH THE NECESSITY OF MAKING DOMESTIC USE OF WATER COMING FROM QUESTIONABLE SOURCES WE KNOW THE THOROUGHNESS WITH WHICH SAN FRANCISCO HAS STUDIES THIS QUESTION WE STAND UPON THE FINDINGS OF THE FEDERAL COMMISSION OF ARMY ENGINEERS APPOINTED BY OUR GOVERNMENT TO STUDY OUR PROBLEM WE HAVE GIVEN CONSIDERATION TO THE POSSIBLE INJURY OF CITIZENS OF OTHER SECTIONS AND BELIEVE THAT THE RAKER BILL IS A JUST AND HONORABLE BILL PROTECTING PERSONS WHO HAVE ANY INTERESTS IN THE WATERS FLOWING THROUGH THE HETCH HETCHY WE DO NOT AGREE WITH THOSE PERSONS WHO IN OUR OPINION ARE MISGUIDED IN ADVANCING FINE DRAWN DISTINCTIONS AS TO WHETHER THE HETCH HETCHY IS MORE PICTURESQUE AS IT IS THAN IT WILL BE WHEN ITS FLOOR IS COVERED BY A BEAUTIFUL LAKE[stamp in purple ink "1913 DEC 3 AM 1 50"] (SHEET 3) WE CANNOT BELIEVE THAT YOU WILL ALLOW THIS QUIBBLE TO ENTER INTO A QUESTION OF THIS KIND WHILE SAN FRANCISCO IS IN DESPERATE NEED OF WATER WE WANT WATER WITH JUSTICE TO ALL AND WE BEG TO AGAIN RESPECTFULLY CALL YOUR ATTENTION TO OUR FINDINGS AS EXPRESSED IN ON OUR RESOLUTIONS MRS PERCY S SHUMAN, PRESIDENT MRS PERCY KING VICE PRESIDENT MRS LEWIS E AUBURY COR SECRETARY MRS NATHAN FRANK REC SECRETARY MRS HENRY HANSEN TREASURER MRS H FINKLER AUDITOR MRS LILLIAN H COFFIN CHAIRMAN LEGISLATION MRS R V S BERRY CHAIRMAN ART MISS JENNIE PARTRIDGE CHAIRMAN CIVICS MRS J VICKERSON CHAIRMAN RECIPROCITY MRS C E CUMBERSON CHAIRMAN PEACE OR MARIANA BERTOLA CHAIRMAN HEALTH MRS NORMAN MARTIN CHAIRMAN PRESS MRS ELLA M S-EXTON CHAIRMAN EDUCATION MRS JOHN JURY CHAIRMAN MUSIC MRS C BURLINGAME CHAIRMAN HISTORY AND LANDMARKS MISS NELL H COLE CHAIRMAN FORESTRY MRS F F BOSTWICK CHAIRMAN PHILANTHROPY MRS W V GRIMES CHAIRMAN CIVIL SERVICE REFORM MRS NELLIE DENANN CHAIRMAN COUNTRY LIFE MISS M B VAIL CHAIRMAN HOUSEHOLD ECONOMICS MRS LOUIS HERTZ CHAIRMAN INDUSTRIAL AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS. 113AM

#archivesgov #December 3 #1913 #1910s #san francisco #yosemite national park #women's clubs

[eddies-house]

California Dreamin’

Chapter Four - Leaky Faucet (18+ ONLY)

Modern!Eddie AU - In which Eddie travels to California searching for something more out of life.  And then he meets you.  

Ch. 1 | Ch. 2 | Ch. 3

Warnings: drinking, grief, mentions of deceased parent, dark thoughts, eventual smut, please let me know if I missed any

7K words

Eddie x reader, Friends to lovers, Slow burn

<;- Prev |

Note: oof this one was one where I was really doubting myself and even still am but I’m really just trying to push myself 

Masterlist

Fire slowly burning out, embers glowing in the blackened wood with chatter still alive among friends, the night remains young and full of promise and yet Eddie perches himself on the arm of one of the patio chairs–mask on and his guard up as if his chest didn’t ache with grief.  He is physically present but emotionally he is seven years old again, reliving the agony forced upon him that devastating Fall day just shy of a week from Thanksgiving, 2006.  Drinking is one of the only ways to numb the pain–to ease the sorrow that mistakingly overflowed from him just minutes ago at the dam.  Snatching up a beer from the cooler stationed next to the setup of nearly-gone food, he pops the cap off, rings clinking against the glass and consumes the whole thing in one go and then reaches for another.  It’s not that he wants to drown himself in beer or any liquor for that matter but it gets him to stop thinking, allows him to forget.  Or so he thinks but what does it matter if he doesn’t remember any of it at the time?

Eddie found it hard to admit to himself that he was unhappy, that he was merely surviving and not actually living.  He didn’t even guarantee himself that he would live past eighteen, nineteen at the most but he still wouldn’t acknowledge his misery even enduring those thoughts.  And here he was at twenty four, a full grown adult still just clinging onto his will to live.  He never had intent to act on anything but he did envision that something would happen to him early in life that would relieve him of all the trauma–all the anxiety and turmoil constantly clawing at his shoulders, leaving them constantly tense, muscles clenched in anticipation for the next tragedy.  

Despite the grim thoughts swallowing him endlessly day to day, no one would know how much he ached and how dark his mind got–always smiling, cracking jokes, helping others when he couldn’t help himself, the strong front he put on when the citizens of Hawkins would pick fights with him as if he were their own personal form of entertainment.  The humor he would use to deflect their comments used as his armor, painting him as an unbothered individual in the eyes of the average person when underneath it all was a seven year old boy hurting and yearning to feel his mother’s touch–just one last time if that's all he could have.  To feel loved one last time.

While Wayne did love Eddie as if he were his own, there was something so tender about the way mama would run her fingers through his curls, how she would assure him that everything’s okay when in fact it's not but she was good at making him believe.  The way she would look at him like he put the stars in the sky, her Eddie.  How she would do any and everything for him despite how little they had.  The way she would hold his hand at night and help coax him into a peaceful slumber after a nightmare.  All of it stuck with him every single day and he’d give up everything to be in her arms just one more goddamn time.  

Across the patio from his seat, Jonathan takes notice of the scene, a beer also dangling from his fingers that he’s now sitting on the arm of his chair while discreetly making his way over ensuring that he’s not drawing unwanted attention toward the metalhead devouring beers like they were water.  Concern laces Jonathan’s features as Eddie finishes off his third, chucking the glass bottle into the large trash can.  “Hey man, you good?” he asks carefully.  Eddie’s breath already reeks like a baseball game, eyes heavy and puffy.  “Never better.” he mumbles.  “You’re just downing those kinda fast–”  “--I’m fine.” Eddie smiles, a little too eager.  “Just trying to have a good time.” he goes on, his tone cool and convincing before asking “Do we have anything stronger?”.  Jonathan hesitates, not fully believing that this is just a night of casual drinking for him.  “Um–I guess–I dunno.  Jos might know.”  He’s decided that if Eddie asks Jos for something stronger she’ll step in and stop him since he doesn’t have any kind of authority to tell Eddie to stop, he’d only just met him weeks ago and he’d for sure get told off.  

Within the next half an hour or so you step back out onto the patio from the kitchen after freshening up, still disoriented from the previous interaction with Eddie.  One minute he was sobbing into your shoulder and the next he was closed off, his face lacking any sentiment.  At this point all you can gather is that his mom is a highly sensitive topic and it didn’t seem like a good idea to add salt to the wound by trying to understand it.  Everyone is doing the same as when you left, convening, eating, and drinking, happily engaging with each other.  Even Eddie, as if nothing had just happened.  He’s now merrily talking El’s ear off, although there is a slur in his words, missing some vowels every now and then.  El winces, you can only guess this is due to his breath since she turns her head ever so slightly with her nose scrunched but he doesn’t seem to notice, his gaze fixed on the remaining embers in the fire pit as they flicker.  

Deciding that maybe it isn’t your place to babysit Eddie, especially given his reaction to you earlier, you return to your seat next to Jonathan, throwing back someone’s remaining drink from a nearby cup.  Not usually a smart idea but you felt more than safe around everyone here.  He shifts his posture, stopping his chat with Argyle to turn to you, his face softening.  He’s always been caring and compassionate though you weren’t necessarily super close with him.  It was just in his nature.  “Hey, where’d you go?”  he asks curiously.  “Bathroom.” you answer.  “I had to splash some water on myself, it’s hot out here.” you further explain, fanning yourself with your hand.  It wasn’t a lie, you did make your way to the bathroom on the way back and it was very hot out despite the sun being gone hours ago, the air still dry leaving your skin sticky and sweaty, the baby hairs along your hairline almost glued to your face and your cheeks flushed the same as everyone else on the patio.  “Cool, cool.” he replies almost nervously, his palms gliding along his shorts, most likely to rid them of sweat.  Jonathan was laid back and had a ‘go with the flow’ attitude but he also could be awkward at times.  Conversations usually never got far with you unless they were with Jos, Marlene, or El, your brain shutting down and not able to spark up a new topic on the spot although sometimes it did happen with them and your thoughts just tapped out.  It's why you were the quiet one of the group, your specialty being observing others and reading their body language as they interacted, understanding details others would overlook.

“So–” Jonathan speaks up a little louder, inching forward in his chair and leaning his elbows on his knees.  You tear your eyes away from Will who is attempting to do a little braid in Jocelyn’s dark hair, messing up at the same point each time before starting over.  Jonathan’s eyes are looking into yours, a bit too intense for your liking.  “I have these tickets for the art festival down by the beach next week…did you–did you want to go–with me?” he asks.  Was he asking you to go with him or asking you to go…with him?  The atmosphere gets immensely awkward as you’ve never really hung out with him alone, always in a group so you’re coming to the conclusion that it's the latter.  Not offering an answer immediately, you look around you to buy some time only to see yet again, Eddie in his same spot as before scowling toward Jonathan’s way, more fierce this time than a few hours ago.  Again, Jonathan doesn’t seem to notice, his stare fixed on you, awaiting a response.  Eddie notices that you catch him in the act and relaxes his face, the ground now suddenly more interesting to him.  

“You know what, it’s stupid–” Jonathan begins before you answer him.  “No, no it’s not stupid!  I just–I’m still–are you asking, asking?  Or just ‘as a friend’ asking?” you stumble over your words.  You’d never thought of Jonathan like that before and even though he’s now possibly suggesting it, your feelings still remain the same–platonic.  And even if that were to change, you were just a year out of your previous relationship that lasted a whole seven years.  Seven years that you now felt were down the drain, where you felt you wasted someone else’s time.  It didn’t end in screaming and crying or a detrimental breakup like in the movies but it did take a toll on you since you went from seeing them and spending every day with them to completely no contact due to drifting apart.  You still didn’t feel ready to jump into anything, it was hard to trust anyone and you didn’t date just to date, you craved a connection.  One that you didn’t have with Jonathan.  

“I’m asking.” he clarifies, sucking a breath in.  Not reciprocating his feelings, you look kindly into his honey eyes.  “Jonathan, I’m sorry… I–I can’t–I’m not interested in you like that.  I think you’re really amazing but…” you trail off.  He nods in understanding.  “No, it’s okay.” he assures.  “No weirdness between us now, right?” a small smile graces his face.  you giggle at this, relieved that he seemed to be taking your rejection well.  “No weirdness.” you repeat.  And once again you catch Eddie out of the corner of your eye, glaring.  Did he hate Jonathan?  Did they not get along and you just weren’t around when it happened?  Something wasn’t adding up but then again, a lot of stuff didn’t add up when it came to Eddie despite hanging around him the last several weeks.

—

As the night went on with a few more drinks, you could only hope that Jonathan wouldn’t feel humiliated every time he saw you after he attempted to ask you out.  It’s all you could think about as everyone began piling into Marlene’s car, there being entirely too many people to fit but no one complaining despite the tight squeeze.  You all could’ve taken Eddie’s van to fit everyone however he wasn’t sure where he put his keys before getting wasted.  The fireworks were at their peak so it was prime time to catch as many as possible at the top of the hill that overlooked the neighborhood as well as the city.  “Bro, your ass is in my face!” Argyle shouts, trying to push Will away but not succeeding due to the amount of bodies in the backseat as Will crawled over him.  “There’s not exactly enough room for six people in the backseat of a sedan so pardon my ass!” Will bites back.  No one was worried about getting in trouble for fitting so many people in the car since it was only a short drive up the hill.

Jos is situated in the front seat while Jonathan, Argyle, El with Will on her lap, and yourself fill up the back.  Eddie is about to make the decision to hop into the back and just occupy the trunk right behind the seats when he starts looking green.  “Mm’ jus gon-gonna, scuse m…” he tries to squeeze in between you and El so he can make his way over the seat, the smell of liquor and a tinge of his cologne apparent.  “Dude, I think you’re looking a little pale.” Jos points out.  He shakes his head, wild head of hair bouncing with the movement.  “M’ okay, m’ goooood.” he loses his balance, the top half of his body falling into your lap and his head on Will’s while his lengthy legs hang out of the car.  “Oh–shit.” he mumbles, using his hands to push himself up, momentarily landing on your thigh before he pushes off, running off to one of the bushes in the front yard before spewing the contents of his stomach.  “I knew he was gonna blow!” Argyle blurts out using his hands to gesture dramatically, everyone else twisting their face in disgust.  “He was shootin’ em back like some kind of cowboy.”  

Marlene starts opening her door to attend to him.  “I better go make sure he’s okay, is anyone else sober?  I can stay here while you guys go–”  Before she can finish you’re out of the car along with Jos, rushing to his side as he continues vomiting.  Jos is grabbing his hair and keeping it out of his face while you assist in keeping him from falling over into his own barf.  “We got him, we’ll meet you up there!”  Jos says.  Marlene hesitates before nodding and shutting her door and pulling out of the driveway.  “Fuck.” Eddie whispers, a string of drool hanging from his parted lips.  “You good?” Jos asks, using a scrunchy to secure most of his hair in a quick low bun.  “So good.” sarcasm drips from his tone.  “Let's get you to the garage to sit down.” you suggest, Jos nods in agreement as you both hook an arm around his at each side, walking him toward the house while he stumbles over his feet.  You help him slip off his leather jacket, the sleeve smeared with vomit from when he wiped his mouth.  Grimacing at the smell, you drape the jacket over one of the wooden stools cautiously, making a mental note to clean it off later.  

Eddie flops onto the couch, his arms limply falling with him, head resting back against the cushion, eyes closed while he rips the scrunchy out of his hair and tosses it aside.  Jos tosses him a water, the bottle colliding with his stomach and a grunt leaving his lips as he clutches the bottle in his hand.  “You better drink that whole thing by the time I get back.” she warns with a stern finger.  “Where are you going?” you question, sitting on the coffee table across from him.  Jos points to the door leading into the house.  “Gotta find a barf bucket just in case and some aspirin or something cause I just know he has a rough morning ahead of him.  Freakin’ idiot.” she mutters the last part under her breath as she heads inside, leaving you to watch Eddie.  The way his breathing evens out signifies that he’s fallen asleep, or so you think.  Eyes shooting open and a grin spreading across his face, his heavy lidded gaze reaches your face.  “Peach.” he addresses you in a hushed tone.  “Eddie.” you give him a soft smile back and he swears it's sweeter than honey, could give him cavities if he indulged too much.  “Sry bout’ the barf, s’ nasty s’ hell.” he slurs, clearly still intoxicated.  He wears a pretty pout on his lips, pretty enough to stare at all night if you could.  “That’s okay, it happens to us all every once in a while.” you sympathize, recalling the nights you’d been in the same boat, stomach empty and that foul taste lingering on your tongue while you try to convince your brain the room isn’t actually spinning.  “Jos and I got you though, we’ll get you settled and into bed.”  you promise.  His pout deepens as he sits up slightly, a hand running through his bangs, causing them to stick straight up.  Hiding a chuckle, you grab the water from his hand, he makes no effort to fight you on it as you twist the cap off and hand it back to him.  “You heard Jos.” you remind him, encouraging him to hydrate.  

Gulping down some water to satisfy you and Jocelyn, he then  continues talking.  “Wan know a s-ecret?” he hiccups.  Intrigued, you lean forward with your chin in your hand, resting your elbows atop your knees.  “What’s your secret?”  There’s a mischievous glint behind his eyes, a boyish taunt.  Reaching in between the couch cushions, he pulls out a bottle of Jack he had hidden earlier, presenting it to you as if he’d found treasure.  “Taaaadaaaaa!” He sings as your eyes widen.  While you’re not exactly one hundred percent sober either, you are definitely not at the level he is at right now and know better than to let him have more.  “Eddie, no—” You attempt to snatch the bottle from him but even in his drunken state, he’s quicker than you as he opens it and tilts his head back, chugging the amber whisky as if it doesn’t burn his throat.  You’re able to grab hold of it and snatch it away, the liquid sloshing around, some getting on his shirt while some manages to get on your shorts.  “C’monnnn, thought we’re all gon’ get fucked up nyway.” Eddie whines.  You cap the whisky, open one of the storage cabinets along the wall and slide it onto the shelf for safe keeping.  “I think you’re beyond fucked up, sorry to say.” you tell him.  Where is Jos?  You wonder, you’re not sure you can babysit much longer before he musters up some energy and goes rogue.  At least that’s been your experience with Argyle previously and sometimes even Will.  

With a little more whisky freshly in his system, Eddie is far from sober but he’s at least not running around making it difficult for you like Will would have, he would’ve been trying to climb the roof by now to ‘star gaze’.  Eddie just sits, a dazed and dopey look on his face, his eyes twinkly and glassy.  “Needa call Wayne.” He suddenly sits up searching for his phone, shifting from his left back pocket to his right a few times before finally finding it in his front pocket.  “Wait wait wait.” You urgently grab the phone from him, not wanting him to call someone who he may not otherwise while not intoxicated.  Eddie lets himself fall into the couch cushions in defeat, his face smushed against the fabric as he mumbles through a squished cheek “Needa talk t’ Wayne, need Wayne now.”  He sounds much like a child.  “Gotta talk w’ m’ uncle.”  Now feeling bad since the poor boy  just wants to speak with his uncle, which seems innocent enough, you offer him the phone which he happily grabs, now sitting up again as he calls his uncle.

The dial tone rings a few times before a husky voice answers, Eddie puts it on speaker and rests the phone on his stomach while he lays across the couch, face up with his hands crossed on his chest as if he were in a therapy session.  “Boy, it is the middle of the night, I was sleepin’, this better be good.”  the gruff voice says irritably.  Eddie smirks and lets the silence linger for a moment.  “Ed, quit playin’ around.” Wayne demands.  “Heyyy Wayyyyne.” Eddie responds before going on.  “Wayne, Wayne, m’ here w’ my friend…” he mentions you, saying your name like a giddy teenager.  “We’re jst hangin’ out, hey—I miss you, Wayyyne.” he draws out.  A deep sigh is heard on the other line.  “Kid, I miss you too, but please don’t tell me you just woke me up in the middle of the night because you’re drunk—“  “Wayne—“  “Ed, we talked bout’ this.” he sounds disappointed and you feel like you should excuse yourself but you stay.  “I know—I know.  S’ Fourth of July though.” Eddie counters.  Another silence takes over until Wayne speaks up again, a hesitance in his tone at first.  “Someone…did someone mention your mama?  Or your dad?  That how this happened?” he asks.  Now you really feel like you should leave, beginning to stand up from your spot on top of the coffee table except on your way you feel a hand gently grab your wrist and when you look down you see Eddie looking up at you as he still lays on the couch, he could almost pass as a helpless child with the way he looks up at you, big puppy dog eyes burning into you as he silently begs you to stay.  

You oblige and take your seat on the coffee table again.  It’s quiet for another moment.  “Ed?” Wayne pushes.  You try to avoid eye contact with Eddie but you can’t help it when his are welling up with tears that he’s desperately trying to hold back, hickory colored irises becoming wet and vulnerable.  “Yeah.” he whispers, pinching the bridge of his nose.  “Miss her.” is all he says, his voice going hoarse as he works to keep his composure.  You grasp onto the fact that his uncle just knew exactly what happened and why within seconds.  “I know, kid.  Me too.  Can’t keep doin’ this every time though, y’know that.  You’re better n’ that.” Wayne expresses as gently as possible.  “Mmhmm.” Eddie mumbles, now biting his nails.  Jos jogs back into the garage, a mop bucket, a bottle of Tylenol in her hands, and water.  She’s out of breath as she explains.  “Couldn’t find a bucket to save my life, then couldn’t find painkillers either but here they are, I got them.”  her chest is heaving as if she’d gone up several flights of stairs.  “M’ gonna go Wayne, call you morrow’.” Eddie abruptly ends the call as Wayne’s ‘goodnight’ gets cut off.  “Jos!!” He greets as if he hadn’t just been on the brink of tears.

Jos sets the bucket next to the couch and opens the bottle of painkillers, rattling it until one lands in her palm, placing it on the table next to a new water bottle.  Noticing the still half full water bottle nearly tucked into the couch from all of Eddie’s movements, she begins to scold him.  “What did I say?  You need to drink water, dude!” her dark chocolate irises douse him with disappointment, much like a parent reprimanding their child.  Her stare moves over to you with the same intensity.  “And you were supposed to make sure he drank it!” she complains, throwing her arms in the air as if she’s given up.  “Stop that!  Peach din’t do nything.” Eddie’s bottom lip juts out, now sitting upright, his body still slouching into the couch.  “I tried.” you shrug, releasing an exhale while claiming a seat a few feet away from Eddie on the couch this time.  Two exhausted adults sit before Jocelyn, eyebags protruding, and skin with a thin sheen of sweat.  The garage didn’t have any air conditioning to combat it.  

Jos contemplates for a moment, she’s probably the tiniest bit tipsy but still coherent.  “I was going to go meet everyone for fireworks but you guys seem like you’re done.” she explains while grabbing Eddie’s half drinken water bottle, holding it out to him.  Reluctantly he takes it, swallowing some to please his friend.  “I can stay if you’re too tired.” Jos offers, tossing a nearby cotton blanket over his legs, looking to you for an answer.  This night had been a lot compared to previous years–with Eddie’s emotions bouncing around like a ping pong ball and Jonathan attempting to ask you out.  Body feeling sluggish and unwilling to move, you decide you can always catch some fireworks from the front yard if you really wanted to.  “I’ll stay here, watch this one and make sure he doesn’t get into anything else, you go have fun.” you tell her, sinking further into the cushions, cheek resting along the back of the couch.  She gives you a kind closed mouthed smile before ruffling Eddie’s hair, a groan of protest rumbling from his chest.  “Don’t cause any problems for Peach here while I’m gone, okay?”

–

“Go fish.” Eddie lamely states with his cards held haphazardly in one hand, the other twirling one his curls around his fingers.  His cheek is pressed into the back of the couch, lip puckered due to the position.  The two of you have your legs criss crossed as if in kindergarten and a few piles of cards are scattered in between you.  “Damn.” you sigh, grabbing a new card shuffling your acquired deck around.  “What about five.” he hopes, glancing from his cards to you.  “Go fish.” a bored expression rests along your features.  “Game fuckin’ sucks.” he lays his cards on the couch in front of him, signaling to you that he no longer wants to play and you agree by doing the same.  The alcohol seems to be having less of an effect on him, not slurring his words as much and a sleepy appearance taking over his face.  “Tonight fuckin’ sucks.” he adds under his breath.  You can’t help but feel hurt at first, thinking you had something to do with it but quickly remember earlier when the stories about Roxy had caused his emotional turmoil.  

“M’ sorry.” mumbling quietly, you avoid eye contact–unsure of how to comfort him.  A sympathetic glow fills his eyes.  “Not your fault.” he speaks quietly, lips barely moving.  “I lash out.  S’ what I do.  Sorry you had to be around for it.”  he apologizes with a shrug of his shoulders, his stare moving to the ceiling above.  He looks like a mess in the most beautiful way possible.  Fluorescent light from above highlights his red and still puffy eyes, his curls frizzy and out of place due to his hands running through them one too many times, and his pink tinted face from all of the alcohol consumed, all so perfectly imperfect.  A few moments pass until you speak up again.  “I don’t mind.”  Your admission catches him off guard, his head tilting down to lock his gaze with yours.  His expression is puzzled, eyebrows raised in disbelief.  You have no other words to offer, just a gentle upturn of your lips.  

A sudden deafening boom sounds from outside, causing you to jolt forward and cover your ears.  Eddie remains still, his head only turning in the direction of the sound.  A firework being shot off from one of the nearby streets.  Not too long after another bang echos.  Hopping off the couch and making your way out of the garage and into the front yard, you catch a glimpse of a cobalt blue streaking the sky as the explosive dissipates in the air, Eddie not far behind while you both turn your attention upwards.  The driveway suddenly looks inviting, a VIP seat to the show above you as you both wander over and take a place in the dirt not caring that it would cling to your clothes.  

Not another word is spoken, a silent agreement between you that nothing further is necessary.  You didn’t know it yet but you had chipped at the first piece of the ginormous wall Eddie had built around himself.  

—

In the days following the fourth, work had gotten more demanding and you found yourself at home most of the week trying to keep up.  Housework piled up and it just felt useless to even begin a task, exhaustion draining any energy you had after work.  Bills were starting to occupy your mind more and more and on top of it all the kitchen sink just had to give out and drench you as the faucet gushed water.  All you wanted was to wash your hands, not rack up another plumbing bill.  As if on queue, Jos sauntered in, a pile of your mail in hand as she read through the coupons the local businesses sent out monthly.  “Oh!  We have to try this pla—“ she stops, dropping the mail onto the counter and processing that you had just been violated by the sink before breaking out in laughter.  Frowning, you squat down and search desperately under the sink for the knob to turn the water off.  “Not funny, the plumbing in this house sucks.” you murmur into the cabinet of cleaning supplies, struggling to turn the knob, water still creating a fountain on the tile.  “I can’t—turn it—off!” You manage to yank the knob from its place, now leaving you with a broken faucet spewing water across the kitchen and no way to shut it off.  “Shit.” You whisper, letting yourself fall backwards to then sit on the floor in defeat.  

Jos cracks her knuckles dramatically and stretches her arms above her head before cautiously making her way next to you.  “Let me try.” She says in confidence.  You can only roll your eyes, she’s never been that handy as much as she likes to think she is.  Her talents only extended to smacking her palm into whatever household object was broken until it ‘worked’ again.  “Jos—hitting it is NOT gonna work—“  “How do you know?!  I don’t see you offering any other ideas.” She bangs her fist against the pipe, only making you more nervous that you'll then have to worry about a broken pipe in addition to the faucet and the knob.  Plucking the knob out of your grasp, she starts forcefully shoving it in place, metal clanking against metal.  “Stop, you’re going to break it more!” You’re yanking at her arm, attempting to take back the object before more damage can be done.  “Jos, you don’t even know what you’re doing!” You bring your fingers to your temples in aggravation, a groan slipping from your mouth.  

Frustration evident in her tone, Jos turns to glance at you.  “You’re gonna need to find someone who knows what they’re doing.”  At this, a deep sigh flows through your body, fingers pinching the bridge of your nose.  “I know.  That’s why I said ‘stop’.” You enunciate the last word.  “I’ll call Eddie then.” She continues, unbothered as if she didn’t almost break your pipes with her bare hands.  “No, what if he makes it worse like you almost did! “ you protest, face feeling hot.  “Peach, you underestimate our dear Edward.  He’s not just good at fixing cars, he’s good at fixing almost anything.” She explains, jumping up to grab her phone from the counter.  “He’s been fixing shit around the house all summer.  Our dryer finally doesn’t sound like a bunch of dying cats anymore.”  

Your memory flashes back to when you’d walked into Jos’s house one afternoon and Eddie had in fact been cursing at the dryer as he used a screwdriver to pry something off from the back of it, his tongue poking out the corner of his mouth in concentration.  You figured he didn’t know what he was doing with the way he was using various tools to bang on the dryer

With a huff you nod in agreement as you push yourself to stand from the floor.  Jos dials up Eddie, putting the phone on speaker as the tone echoes throughout the room.  A few rings in and a crackle is heard, as if the phone on the other end was being tossed around before his voice chimes in.  “What’s up?” Eddie asks, commotion in the background most likely from the auto shop.  “So, Peach has a leak.” Jos starts off.  Your face twists at the way she words it, giving her shoulder a small shove.  “Mhmm.” Eddie hums, probably concentrating on a car at work as he listens.  “Could you come take a look at it…like right after work before this kitchen floods?” Jos pleads.  “For you?  Absolutely not—.” He replies, a loud drill sounding over the line.  “Ed, stop fucking around, there’s water everywhere.” Jos explains while gesturing to the mess as if he could see her.  “For Peach?” He continues as if he wasn’t interrupted.  “Anything.” He finishes, and you can hear the smirk in his voice.  Throughout the summer he was always like this with you, flirty but in a friendly kind of way.  He had a different dynamic with everyone.  With Jos he was a playful asshole, Jonathan and Argyle he was boyish and loud, with Will he was very attentive, and with El he was slightly dickish but friendly.

“Thank you, Eddie.” You try to hide your smile but Jos immediately notices.  “Uh huh, just put a bucket or some shit under it til’ I get there.” He replies, you can tell he’s occupied with another task as he talks.  “Okay, I’ll text you the garage code, you can just let yourself in.” You say while scrambling to find something, anything to collect the water in the meantime, opting for a giant punch bowl.  Jos hangs up instantly and raises her brow with her arms crossed.  Hurrying to wipe up the surrounding water with some beat up dish rags, you look at her, annoyed that she isn’t at least helping and just standing there.  “What?”  Your tone is irritated, the rags becoming sopping wet within seconds and Jos still not moving.  She leans against the counter, arms still crossed and brow still raised at you.  You widen your eyes at her as if to scream ‘what the hell are you looking at!?’.  “Are you and Eddie a thing?” She responds curiously, a spark in her eyes.  Scoffing, you scoop the soggy rags up and toss them into the sink.  “Jos if we were a thing I think you’d know.” You sass her.  Her arms raise up in defense, her expression giving away that she doesn’t fully believe you but she’ll let it go.  “Okay, okay.  Just be careful if anything does happen.  You were a wreck with this last one.” She advises.  “The last one was a completely different story.  We were straight out of high school and kept it going for seven years.” You defend.  “It’s not exactly something you come out of bright and happy.” You remind her.

Jos sighs, her shoulders rolling back before continuing.  “I know…I know.  Just—for both of your sakes…please don’t rush yourselves.  If you do end up making a move or god forbid he stops being a pussy and does something.” Her voice is now gentle and you can gather that she’s just trying to look out for you.  “Well, that’s not what’s happening so you don’t need to worry.  Pretty sure he just entertains conversation with me cause I happen to be there.” You sit yourself on the countertop, self depreciation dripping from your words.  Jos joins you and plops herself next to you on the counter.  “Am I not recalling correctly that he’s the one who has everyone calling you Peach?”  She questions searching for eye contact but not finding it as you focus on the refrigerator magnets across the kitchen.  “Did my eyes deceive me this whole summer?  The way you guys are attached like puppies to each other?  How you always end up hanging out in some way or another?”  Her explanations bring clarity but self doubt still overshadows your thought process.  Although so many words run through your mind at the moment, all you can do is shrug.  “Look, I know you have trouble talking about relationship stuff but I am here.  And I would love to see stupid ass Eddie and lil’ Peach together.  Think it could be good for you.” She smiles, poking your side which makes you squirm away from her with a giggle.  Grabbing her hand and giving it a squeeze, you thank her.  She’d always been someone to come through for you in your most uncertain times.

—

It was nearing the evening, around six o’clock and Jocelyn had left a few hours ago to catch up on some studying for her business course.  A pot of pasta with tomato sauce sat on the stove while you finished off a bowl at your seat from the stool at the counter.  You’d been emptying the punch bowl continuously filling with water and hadn’t left the kitchen all day.  It was almost tranquil with the trickling water however the fact that your sink was broken and was causing the sound ruined it.  

The sound of the door connected to the garage just off the kitchen startles you, Eddie stepping in with a tool box in hand.  His navy blue coveralls are hanging at his waist, the sleeves tied to keep them in place and he’s wearing a white tank top, his arms on display along with his various tattoos.  Grease covers his hands and there’s a smudge on his cheek from where he’d wiped some sweat away.  His hair is frizzy from being tied back in the shop all day, now flowing freely and wild.  

“Hey, Peach!” He greets with his dimpled smile.  Before you can greet him back he takes notice of the unintentional fountain originating from the faucet.  “Well, that’s fucked.” He expresses with a point of his finger.  “No shit, Eddie.” You look up to the ceiling, fed up with the bullshit that is today.  Stepping carefully around the punch bowl and crouching down in front of the cabinet underneath the sink, he starts looking around for the problem.  “Don’t worry, daddy’s gotcha.” He somewhat sings while picking up the knob that had broken off hours earlier.  “You see the issue is that this fuckin’ thing broke off—“  “Eddie.” You deadpan.  He turns his head around to where you’re patiently sitting at the counter, tapping your fork against the bowl in front of you.  “Tough crowd tonight.  Peach, you usually laugh at my jokes!” He whines while turning back to reattach the knob to its designated spot.  “It’s been a rough day.  Sorry.” You sigh while resting your head on the cool countertop.  “Don’t be sorry, just tell me my jokes are shitty.” He says while hammering the knob back into place.  “Eddie!” You groan, dragging your hands down your face.  “Okay, okay, I’ll leave you alone.” You can hear the smile in his voice.  He grunts while turning the knob and the water finally stops leaking into the kitchen.  “Oh thank god.” You mumble in relief while still covering your face with your hands.  

Eddie stands up to mess with the faucet, jiggling it around before letting a breath out.  “You want the good news or the bad news first?” He asks timidly.  “What do you—why is there good news and bad news?” You whimper out of frustration.  “Good news.  Or bad news.” He reiterates.  Another groan leaves your lips as you answer.  “Bad.”  He spins around to meet your gaze, chocolatey eyes making you feel all gooey inside.  “You’re gonna need a new faucet.” He states, stretching his arm across his chest to relieve some tension in his sore muscles.  You let out a puff of air with a nod.  “But…” he proceeds.  “The good news is that I can go get one tomorrow and have this shit lookin’ brand new.” He grins, sending a small wink your way.  “Eddie you really don’t have to—“  “—We’re gonna skip the whole ‘you don’t have to’, ‘oh but I insist’ spiel and I’m just gonna do it regardless of what you say, kay?” He mimicked your voice and then his in a deeper register as he talked, causing you to laugh.  He was always so unserious and it was refreshing in a world that always demanded business now, fun later.  

“Okay.” You speak softly.  Eddie was hard to say no to, he was like a giant puppy full of energy and you could never tell him no, not to those deep dimples or giant doe eyes, or even the little row of freckles scattered along his nose that came to be over the summer.  

“So how much should I pay you?” You ask innocently.  Setting his toolbox on the counter, he glances over your face, pupils dilating.  “How about…” he starts, resting his elbow on the counter and then his chin in his palm.  “You make me some of that pasta tomorrow and we call it good.” His eyelids are heavy, a lazy smile playing on his lips.  He’s captivating and his stare feels like a warm hug, fresh baked cookies on a chilly fall day, Christmas, even.  “I can do that.” You whisper with a fond expression gracing your face.  

Shifting to stand up from your stool, the metal legs scraping against the tile, you go to set your bowl in the sink to wash at a later time, either when you have the energy to take it to the bathroom sink or when the faucet is fixed tomorrow.  When you turn around to move your attention back to Eddie, he’s closer than you expected, surprising you.  “Sorry.” He says breathily.  Nervous, you avert your eyes to the crack in the tile between you.  “That’s okay.” You mutter.  When you glance back up to him he’s focused on your face, contemplating something silently.  “You—you’ve got a little…” he points to his own lip as you furrow a brow before realizing and going to wipe away any remaining pasta sauce from your mouth.  “No—it’s right—can I?” He asks, grabbing a paper towel from the roll on the counter.  Nodding, you give him permission and he ever so carefully goes to dab the napkin at your bottom lip in the corner.  As if in slow motion, he brings his grease stained hand to gently cradle your jaw as he cleans off the sauce.  Your heartbeat escalates dramatically and you swear you can feel your blood get hotter as it courses through your veins.  He’s touching me, he’s touching me, you think to yourself.  Not just grazing my shoulder with his hand as he passes by, actually touching me with purpose, you think.  But that thought quickly disappears, he’s literally just wiping the pasta sauce off of your face that you were too dumb to notice.  Suddenly eyes lock and in that moment time stills, it feels like forever.  You can hear your heartbeat in your own ears, hands trembling and breath hitching.  You swear his thumb affectionately grazes your cheek even if just for a millisecond.  

And then—he was gone.  

~end~

<;- Prev |

Masterlist

#eddie munson #eddie munson fic #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x fem reader #eddie Munson x female reader #eddie Munson x you #eddie Munson smut #cal dreamin’