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#girls generation 1979
junghaesin · 1 year
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alone, all alone nobody, but nobody can make it out here alone
- maya angelou
happy holidays & happy new year @haeyeongs! i hope this set does justice to some of your favorite girlies in the drama realm and their amazing friendships 💖
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goryhorroor · 2 years
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cats in horror
blanche in house (1977)
winston churchill in pet sematary (1989)
jezebel in the sentinel (1977)
jonesy in alien (1979)
ligeia in the tomb of ligeia (1964)
thackery binx in hocus pocus (1993)
general in cat’s eye (1985)
mar in ju-on: the grudge (2002)
the cat in a girl walks home alone at night (2014)
cat in coraline (2009)
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hotvintagepoll · 3 days
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Propaganda
Louise Brooks (Pandora's Box, Diary of a Lost Girl)—Louise Brooks started off as a dancer and went to work in the Follies before going to Hollywood. Disappointed with her roles there, she went to Germany and proceeded to make Pandora's Box, the first film to show a lesbian on-screen (not her but one of her many doomed admirers in the film), and Diary of a Lost Girl, both of which are considered two of the greatest films of the 20th century. She helped popularize the bob and natural acting, acting far more subtly than her contemporaries who treated the camera as a stage audience. After the collapse of her film career and a remarkably rough patch as a high-end sex worker, she was rediscovered and did film criticism, notably "Lulu in Hollywood," which Rodger Ebert called "indispensable." Also, christ. Look at her.
Vilma Bánky (The Son of the Sheik, The Eagle)—She's famous now for being a silent star ruined by the transition to talkies, unlike her frequent co-star Ronald Colman. I think that's a shame, as she has a real vivaciousness and charm in The Winning of Barbara Worth. In this *checks notes* western about environmental engineering, she rides around the desert and gets wooed by both Colman and a young Gary Cooper (good for her dot gif.) Even in stills from films that are sadly lost, I think there is a distinctive warmth and individuality to her. Also she is extremely hot in her extremely pre-Code dress in The Magic Flame.
This is round 2 of the tournament. All other polls in this bracket can be found here. Please reblog with further support of your beloved hot sexy vintage woman.
[additional propaganda submitted under the cut.]
Louise Brooks:
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"Defined the style of the modern flapper. A gaze that could make a stone fall in love."
"Louise Brooks left a legend far greater than her real achievement as an actress, but even today few people have seen her films. In our own time, the fascination with Brooks seems to have begun in 1979 with a profile by Kenneth Tynan in the New Yorker, which revealed that the actress who made her last movie in 1938 was alive and living in Rochester, N.Y. Such was the power of Tynan's prose that people began to seek out her existing films, primarily this one, to discover what the fuss was about. What we see here is a healthy young woman -- she was 23 when the film was released -- with whom the camera, under G.W. Pabst's influence, is fascinated. There is a deep paradox in Brooks and her career: the American girl who found success in the troubled Europe between two wars; the vivid personality who briefly dazzled two continents but faded into obscurity; the liberated woman who had affairs with such prominent men as CBS founder William S. Paley as well as with women including (by her account) Greta Garbo but wound up a solitary recluse. And all of this seems perfectly in keeping with her most celebrated role in Pandora's Box. For despite her bright vitality, her flashing dark eyes and brilliant smile, Brooks's Lulu becomes the ultimate femme fatale, careering her way toward destruction, not only of her lovers but eventually of herself."
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"She invented having bangs to indicate that you have borderline personality disorder"
"chances are if youve ever seen a "flapper girl" character or even just art of a generic flapper type made after the 20s it was based on her appearance - particularly the bob hairstyle! she had some pretty rough experiences through her life before during and after her tumultuous acting career which ended in 1938 but she made it to the 80s, wrote an autobiography and did a lot of interviews that she was never afraid of being honest in about her own life or peers of the age, and apparently was unabashed about some affairs she had with well known women (including greta garbo!!)"
"She read Proust and Schopenhauer on set between sets. She was one of the original flappers/new women of the 1920s. She had a one night stand with Garbo and was the inspiration for Sally Bowles in Cabaret. Truly a stone cold fox."
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"on her wikipedia page it says her biographer said she "loved women as a homosexual man, rather than as a lesbian, would love them" and while i have no idea if this is true or not i thought that was very gender of her"
"despite being american she was big in german expressionist films and thus her aesthetic was unmatched!!"
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So far ahead of her time in regard to portraying complicated women. Timeless elegance. "I learned to act by watching Martha Graham dance, and I learned to dance by watching Charlie Chaplin act.” - Louise Brooks
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Vilma Bánky:
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I love Vilma Bánky! She was called "the Hungarian Rhapsody" and apparently had a thick Hungarian accent which I think is cute. Several men fighting over the same women can be very cliche but when I saw her in The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926) I got it because my god she really is that drop dead gorgeous. She's also a wonderful actress though, expressive yet natural. I read once that seeing her in The Dark Angel (1925)—a film now seemingly lost—inspired Merle Oberon to become an actress :)
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This is more of a factoid but she was apparently the women's golf champion at Wilshire Country Club through the 1940s. [link] I just think she's neat.
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I love herrrrr she’s my everything. Watching her kiss Rudolph Valentino in Son of the Sheik made me so flustered I had to pause the movie to cool down. She’s the prettiest the most beautiful the most incredible woman I’ve ever seen. I could look at a picture of her for hours
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The Raincoats as photographed by Janette Beckman for Rough Trade records while rehearsing in London for their 1979 debut album. As the photographer recalls: "...I went to shoot them at their rehearsal space, but if you look at that picture, you can see that it's a toilet. They were literally in the bathroom practicing. It's just so punk and the place is kind of a wreck."
Ana da Silva and Gina Birch formed the group in 1977 after seeing the Slits perform. As Birch stated in an interview, "It was as if suddenly I was given permission. It never occurred to me that I could be in a band. Girls didn’t do that. But when I saw The Slits doing it, I thought, ‘This is me. This is mine.’ Palmolive, the Slits' ex-drummer at the time, actually joined them in '78, performing with the line-up that played live and recorded the debut album.
A weird fact for this all-girl band that was influential for so many female artists, is that it actually took a guy to help younger generations re-appreciate them and that's why the Raincoats somehow always seem to be mentioned along with Curt Cobain, since his enthusiasm for their music brought them back from obscurity in the '90s after citing them as one of his favourite bands and writing the liner notes for the reissues of their albums.
If you ask me, I think ol' Johnny Rotten was spot on when he said that: "The Raincoats offered a completely different way of doing things, as did X-Ray Spex and all the books about punk have failed to realise that these women were involved for no other reason than that they were good and original".
(via & via)
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r3medialch8os · 8 months
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so since u guys liked that i did this with remedial chaos theory i will now also be doing this for epidemiology.
the most incredible thing about this episode is that it is in fact Not merely an homage like most concept episodes are; it actually happens. a zombie epidemic For Real takes place at greendale. it's not a gimmick or a game or a way to frame the plot. the actual conflict is derived from the fact that people are zombies and the study group need to outrun them/turn them back. how often can you say that a sitcom incorporates a storyline like this and sincerely pulls it off? never.
the emotional tension in this episode is framed around troy/abed/jeff and the dichotomy of being a nerd vs. being cool, which respectively get attributed the qualities of caring about the people around you who have turned into zombies or wanting to run and escape from the zombies without trying to help. abed and jeff's costumes are both pointed out in the beginning receiving clear denotations of 'lame' and 'too cool to care' and therefore their positions in the conflict are cemented. the episode has a push-pull with troy being the moving factor, having to decide what he thinks is most important. he gets swayed in the beginning by two girls rejecting him over his costume and jeff mentioning how expensive his suit is. he changes from his ripley costume into a 'sexy dracula'. abed spends the whole episode trying to get troy back to his side, even saying "what defines a nerd? committing to an awesome halloween costume with your best friend?" troy is eventually 'turned back' into his nerdy self (perhaps a zombie metaphor itself, keeping in tone with the theme of the episode) because jeff cares more about his suit getting dirty than surviving the herd of zombies.
a crucial part of the episode is that it is soundtracked by abba music playing from the dean's playlist. now, who would i be if i didn't investigate significant music choices connected to scenes? first up and probably the most important one: s.o.s. is used in the background of a scene where abed confronts troy about changing costumes. troy insults him and walks away. the lyrics are: 'you seemed so far away, though you were standing near. you made me feel alive, but something died, i fear. i really tried to make it up, i wish I understood. what happened to our love? it used to be so good.' next; gimme gimme gimme plays right before the scene where chang and shirley hook up. another insane choice is at the end when troy is fighting the zombies. the whole sequence has mamma mia playing in the background Faintly. then when troy eventually gets to abed and has to fight him, the music comes in much louder with the lyrics: 'here i go again, my, my, how can i resist you?', which i think fits perfectly. the ending song fernando has the lyrics 'there was something in the air that night', both referencing the thermostat changing the zombies back and the fact that it was just an incredibly weird fucking night.
troy is dressed as ellen ripley and also kind of acts as the ripley of this episode. his journey in this as being the sole survivor and the one to eventually save greendale adheres to a common science fiction model where a life-threatening force is faced against the protagonists and they fall off in degrees, resulting in one person being left to mend everything. here specifically, it seems to mirror ripley's journey in alien (1979) as it starts with a crew that eventually gets cut down leaving only her. i thought that was really cool.
more alien tidbits, but the jumping cat scene is also inspired by it. jones the cat is an imporant figure in the first alien movie. in various scenes, members of the crew will go looking for him, then get ambushed by the titular alien and subsequently killed. it is a minor homage to the movie through yet another subtle reference. the bit is also parodying jumpscares in horror movies in general, and how they are used to cheaply amplify the tension. anyways, it's quite the multilayered joke because it also really works out of context as a bizarre comedic moment.
troy and abed's scene in the basement pays homage to princess leia and han solo's scene in the empire strikes back. the conversation in the film takes place just before han is frozen alive in carbonite by darth vader. not knowing if he’ll survive, he kisses leia, only to be torn away from her by stormtroopers. she says 'i love you,' and as he descends into chamber, han replies, 'i know.' an undeniably romantic moment, maybe one of the most memorable ones ever, is applied to troy and abed who have held reign over the emotional core of the plot for the entire episode. it's pretty special that such an iconic moment is given to them, i feel like the creators of the show wouldn't just do this sparingly. it also perfectly resolves their conflict as troy makes such a vulnerable statement and abed assuring him that he already knew, validating their bond once again.
more on troy and abed, it is pretty amazing realizing the emotional implications tied to how dire the situation was. everyone in this episode was under the direct threat of Not Surviving, and still abed sacrificed himself for troy. he knew this was for real. he couldn't be sure if they were going to make it. but i think he had enough faith in troy to aid in his escape. it's very touching. further, it's incredible that troy is willing to fight all the zombies (all his friends) but when it comes time to punch abed, he refuses to do it. he's struck by the force of their friendship, mumbling 'we're friends' defeated before eventually succumbing to his bite.
troy saving the school by controlling the temperature; nicely setting up his further plot with the ac repair school.
him being the one to escape and abed saying 'be the first black man to make it to the end' subverts the common horror trope of 'black dude dies first'. a playful way of keeping up with the horror movie theme of the episode.
also ironically this episode, which features the song mamma mia by abba, sets up a plotline in season two about shirley not knowing who the father of her new baby is, which is functionally the plot of the movie mamma mia!, a musical based on abba's music. probably a coincidence but a pretty funny one.
at the end when the army arrives, they ask the dean about witnesses. when he says he is the only witness, one of the guards reaches into his jacket, suggesting that he's pulling a gun intended to kill the dean and get rid of the witness. when they notice everyone in the school is still alive, they abandon this plan and go for 'scenario b'. kind of dark but i laugh every time that scene happens.
anyways that's all i could pull from my brain crevices for now. this episode is a genuine masterpiece, it will never ever get old and will remain to be one of the most unique sitcom episodes ever created.
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mickeys-malarkey · 1 year
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Pt. 3/3: My BATDR Timeline & Plot Twist Theories!
First, I think both BATIM and BATDR take place sometime between 1978 and 1991. I already suspected BATDR was happening in the ‘80s based on the fact that card readers – which have featured in many of the environment screenshots we've seen – were invented in 1979...
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…and Audrey's clothes and hairstyle look very 1980s.
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Then they released the images of Audrey's office, where her chair and desk lamps also look very 1980s, and the wallpaper and flooring looks pretty 1970s…
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…and @inkdemonapologist pointed out that the type of bankruptcy we see documents for in Joey's apartment didn't exist until 1978…
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…and I remembered that Joey's apartment also had a newspaper whose headline took place in the future— Princess Diana's 30th birthday which, as TetraBitGaming on YouTube pointed out, would be in 1991 since Princess Diana was born in 1961. She should be two years old if BATIM were really taking place in 1963!
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Maybe, at the time, they didn't mean for these two to be clues, since they seem to have rolled the date backwards a bit from the newspaper one; but at this point it feels pretty clear when BATDR takes place, to me. And I'm even more certain than I already was, after finding out that this image from the JDS website…
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…is titled “museum” (good work yoinking it, @halfusek /gen 👍🏻), that we know the ink dimension's new home: Nathan Arch Sr.'s private Joey Drew Studios museum that he mentioned he was curating in TIOL (meaning it's existed since around 1972).
“Over the years, I have collected every single piece of the studio memorabilia I could find to restore it to its former glory, to create, in a sense, a private museum that gleamed with the true vision of Joey Drew…” ~ Nathan Arch, The Illusion of Living, pg. 2
Also, besides the fact the museum image has clearly aged, here's some more evidence that at least a few years have probably passed since Bendy was purchased: it generally takes a fair bit more time (years!!) to make movies/documentaries, as Archgate Pictures seems to have made about Joey, than it does to make shorts.
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As for BATIM, I think that time has been moving as normal outside of the loop, we were just seeing a repeat of that significant day in 1963; Henry and Joey have been trapped in the ink dimension for somewhere between twenty and thirty years, and the bankruptcy paperwork and Princess Diana newspaper were pieces of the real world leaking into the memory. This explains how there seems to be evidence of Audrey in BATIM and how BATDR is still supposedly neither sequel nor prequel to BATIM despite all the evidence that it takes place long after 1963! They're happening at the same time!! I wonder if Audrey is the daughter of the little girl we hear at the end of BATIM? So, Henry's (great-)granddaughter or Joey's (great-)great-niece?
Now, onto my big theory: the plot twist.
If they handle it right, it would be really, really cool if “break the cycle” really doesn't just mean “end the time loop” but also “break the cycle of abuse/trauma” and a lot of the huge cast of not-so-innocent characters wind up with the potential to get redemption arcs. I have an idea of exactly how they might be planning on even providing the opportunity for Joey.
Victor McKnight commented this on his Artistic Hallowing music video and pinned it:
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Those last two sentences. “Make sure you're watching every second! You don't want to miss any vital information. 😉” Does that not sound to anyone else like he's got insider information? Now, I want y'all to watch these music videos that either Victor himself or his brother Noah were suspiciously involved in all of (and one of which is supposedly a BATDS song but for some reason involves Audrey) and tell me if you notice any patterns.
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This one seems to be a duet between Sammy and the Ink Demon, both singing to Audrey. Sammy mostly sings in the default sepiatone, asking us things like “Can you see me? Can you feel me?” (that feels so… sad… and desperate…) and telling us things like “make sense of the consequence we witnessed on that day” (Excuse me, you're telling me that there was a consequence for something on a specific, significant day that we witnessed?? 👀) The demon, on the other hand, mostly sings when the grayscale effect is on, and seems to just be playing a stereotypical villain roll until you notice “be forced to believe what I see” (why would we even give a crap about what you're seeing /srs? How the actual heck would we see what you're seeing /gen? You don't even have eyeballs, bro /j) and “be damned in this evil received” (how do you receive evil that damns you? Maybe by being abused and becoming an abuser in response?).
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Two apparently-separate characters singing with the same voice but very different tones and outlooks on the situation, still both singing to Audrey, in this one. One mostly sings in the default sepiatone, again, at first seeming more hopeful, helpful, and friendly until you start noticing ominous comments like “you've made mistakes, accept the change. You will be punished too” (*incoherent noises* 🚨🚨) and “welcome to my dream . . . you still think you are safe in my dream.” The other mostly sings when the grayscale effect is on, again, and seems much more aggressive and seductive until you start noticing comments like “take up your weapons, just leave my friends be” (why is this stereotypically evil-seeming character both telling us to take up weapons, not just letting us have them, and asking us to leave his friends alone with them?).
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More hints that the demon who will rise and presumably is most important to the story is linked to grayscale, in this one.
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And, in this one, Sammy's asking if the grayscale-linked demon is the one who will set him free (as he claims to be in the first two videos).
Across all four of these first videos, there seems to be an overall “things change when we switch from the default sepiatone to grayscale” and “grayscale is dangerous and seems hopeless but it's important and linked to truth and freedom” theme…
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…You're telling me that Sammy and his followers' past (BATIM?) selves were worshipping an imposter demon…? And the truth will be revealed in BATDR…?
Hum, hum, hum… fascinating. I'd noticed the sepiatone vs. grayscale split and imposter vs. true savior thing long before I read the books; for the longest time, I thought it meant we would be dealing with a Henry-Bendy and a Joey-Bendy, as I've been seeing people theorizing. But then I read TIOL, and discovered what I think is evidence that this info is indeed canon and was not left on the cutting room floor while BATDR was in development limbo.
Nathan makes a very strange note on Joey's story about the Sparkle Unicorn speakeasy…
“…I remember this night well. Though I remember it being at the Bee Room, gold and black, not silver as the main design aesthetic. Doesn't really make much of a difference though, I suppose.” ~ Nathan Arch, The Illusion of Living, pg. 44 (emphasis added)
Nathan remembers that night in sepiatone, Joey remembers it in grayscale.
Now, I've seen all kinds of theories all over about how Wilson actually “banished/killed the ink demon…” “Wilson took advantage of some sort of blip in Bendy's existence that happened when Joey died,” “Wilson got rid of him by purifying him and turning him into Dapper Bendy,” “Wilson got rid of him by fusing him with either Henry or Joey,” “Wilson got rid of him by trapping him in Henry's loop,” “he didn't, Wilson's just another liar manipulating everyone,” etc…
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What if we're looking at this from the wrong angle? What if the point is that, whatever happened, neither of the BATDR Bendys is the original soulless monster we see in BATIM and the books? What if, whether they share a body or are separate, there are two human souls involved here? What if one of those souls is the “new evil” in the ink dimension, not Wilson, who may have been meddling in ink dimension affairs since 1963?
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Going back to the time frame I propose BATDR is happening in… Joey was born in 1901, which means that if Nathan was 18 or 19 when Joey was just turning 16, then he was born in 1899 or 1898. So, in 1978, Nathan would've been 79 or 80, and in 1991 he would've been 92 or 93. Especially considering the clues that point towards Nathan having been a smoker, it wouldn't surprise me if he's straight-up already dead in BATDR. Mayhaps for 211 days? During Loop 414…? Could this be why the BATIM loop is different, with Henry apparently not remembering anything that previous versions of himself could? The now-previous owner of their prison has died of old age and/or lung cancer? And could that be why the JDS museum has fallen into bankruptcy? Has Nathan Jr. taken over and isn't as ruthless a businessman as his father?
Itsjustjord on YouTube pointed this out in his trailer reaction, which when he said it set my Clue Radar off so that I went to the trailer again to get a closer look. And… well… *clears throat*
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…Do y'all see this weird effect over Dapper Bendy? Compared to every other character we see in the trailer as well as the environment around him, does it not look as if we're seeing him, specifically, through some sort of cartoony filter? Maybe it'll only be in circumstances like this (far away in weird lighting) that the edges of the illusion will fray in-game, based on the other teaser image we have of him, but it definitely looks off to me.
Especially with what I now suspect Allison and Susie's situations were in relation to Nathan, I think that the ink creatures’ perfection vs. imperfection has nothing to do with how pure/good vs. impure/evil their hearts are as we've been lead to believe/is the conventional surface-level reading, but instead how intact vs. broken their hearts are. I think that the more horrific the ink being's appearance, the more the soul inside was abused while it was alive. Allison isn't a perfect Alice because she's a better person, it's because she obeyed Nathan and wasn't made to suffer as severely as Susie, who Nathan chose to be his next Isabel. So, why is one new Bendy (apparently created after Joey lost everything, I suspect even being made to watch his Shoulder Angel's murder before being murdered himself) so much scarier than the original (created before Joey lost everything) and the other so goshdarn perfect, proportions and all?
Maybe the banning of everything related to Sammy's demon cult and Henry under Wilson's rule has to do with his decades-old mission to keep the Creators from joining forces, as well as everyone including himself feeling like they're finally free from The Great Puppet Master?
I love Dapper Bendy's design as much as everyone else!! He's positively adorable, and it would also be a nice outcome if the baby boy is exactly what he seems and just a precious lil friend to love forever; but I theorize that Dapper Bendy is the perfectly sane, untraumatized, and truly evil one, that (assuming we actually get choices in BATDR, unlike in BATIM) his route, no matter how things seem in the moment, is the wrong one, that he's Nathan. And I think Freaky Teeth Bendy (that's been my nickname for him since we first saw him and I'm sticking to it lolol) is the damaged as heck but able to be saved one, that his route is the correct one, that he's Joey. I also think that we won't get to see either demon for what they really are – won't be able to get the True, Broken Cycle, “Joey's Redeemed & Nathan Faces Justice” Ending – unless we somehow unlock Grayscale Mode like we could in BATIM and gain the ability to see Joey's truth. Until then, we'll be seeing the demons the way Nathan wants us to see them. Through Nathan's tainted, gaslighting, sepiatone filter.
If I'm right, the fact that they did choose these color palettes is so perfectly poetic~! Sepiatone is what happens when black-and-white images have been chemically altered for preservation purposes; Nathan's altered our perception of himself, Joey, and all the events surrounding them, and his version of events is much more resilient. Meanwhile, Joey's would be more pure and unaltered but easily destroyed— including by himself, with his Illusion of Living coping mechanism… The only thing that could make it more perfect is if not only do we get to see Henry in BATDR, but when we do he's an angelic toon… *Vibrates with excitement*
Please, please, please, JDS, let me be right about where you're going with this!! Cause this would genuinely be so freaking cool…!! 🙏🏻 I hope that we eventually get to “rejoice with our founders,” as Artistic Hallowing says, when they're reunited.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk, rofl. Congratulations on making it through the ramblings of a hyped AuDHD fangirl (though, I guess we already knew you were capable, if you've read TIOL. I could do a whole nother rant on evidence that Joey's basically confirmed canonically ADHD(+?), my freaking gosh). 😝
Read the Rest of the Original Analysis/Theory: Part One • Part Two • Unexpected Part Four
BATDR Analysis/Post-Playthrough Theory Revision: Part One • Part Two • Part Three • Part Four
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got-ticket-to-ride · 3 months
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Wanted to know your thoughts on this, but for what I've reading on John it really looks to me he really got worse post Paul and post Beatles, like his saddest songs match the moment he started to have issues with Paul, he wasn't really having much contact with anyone outside Yoko, he wasn't doing much music, he wasn't being that funny either, he even died without being able to fully overcome his heroine addiction (addiction that started in the Beatles fall out right?), and idk i believe his involvement in the whole peace/art movement looked more like an escape (like some people do with religion) than actual interest.
So what you think, was John at his worst after he got out the band and cut his relationship with Paul or was it was always like that?
Hello @lord-pain
thank you for this ask! I hope I'll make sense. I think the White Album was definitely the start of John's "sad songs". Happiness is a Warm Gun, Yer Blues. Subsequently, Dig a Pony sounded so desperate to me and Because which is yeah, post India, post breakup?
There's so many different accounts during that period. Some narrators might be unreliable because you never know who these "historians/journalist/"acquaintances" have their allegiance to.
During the 70s it was said that John was miserable, became a violent drunk (who believed in astrology). He was quite unhappy with how things turned out in his life due to his choices but he was too proud to admit it.
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About drugs, Fred Seaman said John stopped with heroin in the last half of the 70s in this video.
Due to differing accounts that are out there, I just concentrate on John, what he wrote lyrically and how clearheaded he was during his last interview. He was trying to be better. I think that is the most important detail despite everything that went down. Also the part where he was going to work with Ringo and had booked a studio with Paul for January 1981.
His activism was partly a distraction for him. Beatle John dabbled in it, but he became very aggressive about politics after the break up. He was anti-religion when he released Imagine (1971). But went back to believing in god when he wrote "Grow Old With Me" (1979?), which I have so much thoughts about but I haven't even had the courage to voice out.
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While there are glimpses of John's mental anxiety visible in his song "Help!" (1965)
"Help me if you can, I'm feeling down, and I do appreciate you being 'round",
he was trying to be positive about it as seen in "Strawberry Fields Forever" (1966):
"It's getting hard to be someone but it all works out, It doesn't matter much to me".
And was still holding on during the conception of "Across the Universe" (in February 1968) with his mantra:
"Nothing's gonna change my world",
which I think might've been a result of Paul's engagement in December 1967 to Jane.
Across the Universe (February 1968) > believer God (1970) > anti-religion Imagine (1971) > anti-religion (he made a satire song which I did not include here) Grow Old With Me (1979) > believer
During his alleged break from music from 1975, he was still making home demos and was writing Skywriting by Word of Mouth.
I think John and Paul being apart was just not good for them. The general opinion was that Paul left John and had moved on. (I don't believe that's true). It was John who made the decision to leave, it was this push and pull thing, and Paul continued to reach out to him (and we don't know what happened during all those times they've met up). Some accounts say that John was practically begging for a reunion but then again Paul never stopped reaching out to John (see 1976) so I personally think, regardless of all these details that are out in the open, there is still a missing piece we have not considered yet and that can only be told by Paul himself.
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To summarize it, John probably had depression (since his teenage years) but Paul was a constant positive thing in his life that he needed and that had helped him through it, "the girl who came to stay" until something happened...
John Lennon was definitely at his worst without his buddies by his side in the 70s.
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kata4a · 4 months
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@jadagul @necarion @arsinyk @quantumofawesome
Over Thanksgiving @jadagul was explaining Maiden handtalk (from the Wheel of Time novels) to me, which as I understand it is a signed language used by the female warrior class of the setting, letting them communicate in secret (and in particular without being understood by men).
Obviously this immediately made me think of Irish Sign Language.
ISL is a language unique for having highly distinct gendered variants (due to the segregation of schools for deaf children). Naturally the children, after graduating, would eventually want to interact with each other, and naturally, it was the women who were expected to learn the men's language.
This of course, meant that female ISL speakers knew a private language which they could use to communicate in secret from men.
That's at least what I remembered, but I wanted to confirm that I had my facts straight, so I did a little bit of research when I got back to Boston. Pretty much every source I could find agrees that Irish Sign Language has two distinct gendered variants (e.g.: https://www.irishdeafsociety.ie/irish-sign-language/). But it was somewhat more difficult to find more information characterizing those differences.
At least it was until I found the faculty page for Barbara LeMaster, whose research specialty is apparently exactly this. A lot of the most useful information was from her 2006 paper, Language Contraction, Revitalization, and Irish Women
Apparently, the gendered differences in ISL are not just from segregated schooling in general, but in fact can be traced to two specific schools during a specific period of time: St. Mary's School for Girls from 1846 to 1946 and St. Joseph's School for Boys from 1855 to 1957.
(Why do the gendered differences seem to disappear in the middle of the twentieth century? Because the schools, and especially the girl's school, stopped teaching sign language and started emphasizing oralism; and as the language was used less and less the variations within it started to collapse. Apparently ISL as it is taught now is largely a standardization of the language that was spoken at St. Joseph's, although the details are of course a bit more complex than that.)
And LeMaster does confirm that the "women learned male signs for public sign use, reserving female signs for private use among women." (p. 214) She goes on to say:
Men of this generation typically use the male form with everyone. And as might be expected, the men often claim that the differences between their and the women’s signs are not great and did not impair communication between them (Foran 1996[1979]; Foran, cited in Leeson and Grehan 2004). However, the women, having done the accommodation work, recognize the differences between their signs and the men’s signs, noting that in the beginning they had to use their common finger-spelling system to communicate with the men through spelling words in English (Coogan, 2003; Ceci Walsh, interview by the author, 2004; LeMaster 1990). Most women use the male signs more often but have retained their female forms for use with other women in certain contexts.
Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, rather than being a cool secret gossip language, the social position of the women's sign language is a lot more "girls feel bad for being girly":
For example, in a videotaped interview, one woman talks about being ridiculed by men for her female signs. She says that she has forgotten a lot of female signs and actually “prefers” male signs over female signs. She says of male signs (translated from ISL), “They’re nicer.” Curiously, however, this same woman, who claims to have abandoned her female signs, interacts with other women who are monodialectal in female ISL. And during the sign interview on videotape, at the very time she says that she no longer uses female signs, she employs the female sign for use. In a section of the videotaped interview immediately following this segment, she uses the male sign for use, so it is clear that she knows both forms, and her use of the female sign in this instance was an unconscious code switch.
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cillianmesoftlyyy · 3 months
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The Ward Pt. 1 | Jonathan Breech x fem!character
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Summary: Jonathan Breech is sentenced to three months in a Dublin psych ward after trying to take his life. He meets a girl and thinks he's fallen in love... but is this just a product of opportunity and loneliness or could it be more?
Warnings: Based heavily on One the Edge (2001) so there is already a lot of mental-health specific discussions. More specifically- mentions of suicide, self-harm, death, depression, anxiety, feeling helpless and alone, medication, vomiting, pregnancy. There is nothing explicitly sexual in pt. 1 so there are no warnings for that here. Please don't read if you think any of the previously mentioned topics could be triggering! Some of this is taken from my personal experience with mental-health issues so read with care.
word count: 3098k
1979- The Smashing Pumpkins 🎶
Up the Junction- Squeeze 🎵
note- I named the female character because I personally don't love using "y/n." It can take away from the story that I'm trying to tell sometimes but the character is supposed to be general enough to be whomever you wish.
additional note (sry)- One the Edge is free on Internet Archive...
Please read the warnings before continuing, thanks!
Jonathan made his way through the hospital corridors, glancing briefly into each room they passed. 
“This is a pretty shitty hotel, eh? What do you charge per night? Whatever it is, I’m not fucking paying it,” he stumbled around behind one of the nurses and laughed lightly. They stopped in front of a room. 
“This is you. You’re expected in group therapy at 4.” The nurse deadpanned and unlocked the yellow steel door for him. Jonathan poked his head inside the door and whistled low. 
“Mhm, yep. Just what I was expecting,” he leaned out again and yelled after the nurse, “would it kill yeh to add some fucking color to this room? Fucking depressing.” He shook his head and wandered inside. He sat down on the mattress, the metal springs popped below and it sagged below his weight. He looked around at the drab gray room, the one window covered by rusted bars, and the bare bedside table. Jonathan emptied his pockets on the bed beside him and moved the carton of cigarettes to the table. A clock on the opposite wall ticked quietly and he watched it with his bright blue eyes, blinking every so often to the rhythm. 
A second nurse came by and handed him some clothes, pajamas. 
“What are these for?” Jonathan frowned, “I don’t need pajamas.” 
“You have to wear them during the day,” the nurse responded. 
“Why the hell would I do that when I have my normal clothes?” 
“Its policy, it distinguishes you from guests and day patients. In-patients have to wear these.” The nurse pointed to the pile of neatly folded clothes in Jonathan’s arms. “Put them on.” 
Jonathan sighed and kicked off his shoes. 
“You’re not gonna watch are yeh?” He sneered at the nurse when he didn’t leave immediately. The nurse turned and left, closing the door without another word. Jonathan stripped down to his underwear and examined the clothes that he was given. It was a matching pajama set in an icy blue color with smaller blue designs across the fabric. The sleeves were too short and ended at his forearm and the pants around his midcalf. He pinched the bridge of his nose and cursed under his breath. He put on his shoes and the cardigan he had brought with him, a yellow wool cardigan that still smelled like home. 
Around 4 o'clock Jonathan left his room and wandered aimlessly through the psychiatric ward, looking for the group therapy room. He walked until he spotted Dr. Figure walking into a small room and called out to him. 
“Heya, Dr. Figure. I’m here for my group therapy!” He said with a flare of dramatic excitement. Dr. Figure looked tired and responded with a strained smile. 
“Hello, Jonathan. Please come in.” They walked inside the room and Jonathan took a seat in a chair beside a boy around his age wearing a dark blue bathrobe. His light brown hair was messy and long and he wore round wire-framed glasses over his eyes. Dr. Figure sat opposite of him across the circle and cleared his throat as he arranged a stack of papers. Another boy and a girl sat at the circle too though neither of them looked up when Jonathan sat down. 
“Good afternoon everyone, thank you for coming today.”
“I didn’t have much of a choice,” Jonathan shrugged and pulled one of his knees up to his chest in the chair and rested his chin on his knee. 
“Yes, thank you Jonathan for coming anyway.” Dr. Figure sighed and gestured towards him, “this is Jonathan, everyone. He’s new and he’ll be joining us in group therapy. Why don’t we all introduce ourselves? I’ll start. I’m Dr. Figure and I’m the head psychiatrist here.”   
“I’m Toby.” The boy next to Jonathan nodded his head and Jonathan smiled at him. It passed across Jonathan to the girl on his otherside. She glanced up briefly to introduce herself with a small smile. 
“I’m Margaret.” She said softly and looked down at her hands again as the last boy introduced himself. He had headphones around his neck and a walkman clipped inside the pocket of his robe. Jonathan looked back at the girl, studying her. She looked as though she hadn’t slept in a while with the dark circles shading her downcast eyes. She was wearing a vintage nightgown, he realized, one with long sleeves and a modest neckline even though the dress was shorter than her knees. On her legs she had long brown socks tucked into a pair of duck boots. Her hair was brushed away from her face and fell straight down her back but he couldn’t see how long it actually was. She had a busted lip, he could tell from the bruising around her bottom lip and a scab that looked as if it was still bleeding. She played with the hem of her nightgown and glanced up again, catching him as he stared at her but he didn’t look away, she did. She flushed and stared at the tan tile around her chair. 
“Now I’d like to pass this around and I want you all to add any recent fears or anxieties that may have come up in the last few days that we haven’t talked about yet,” Dr. Figure handed the clipboard to the boy next to Margaret. Toby raised his hand. 
“Yes?”
“What if we’re scared of filling out paperwork?” Toby asked and Jonathan laughed. Dr. Figure seemed to genuinely ponder the question before Toby added, “that was a joke,” and Jonathan laughed again. 
“Why don’t you tell us what you’re afraid of, doctor?” Jonathan smiled and Dr. Figure exhaled. 
“It’s not important.”
“I think you’re deflecting, doctor.” 
“Jonathan, if you’d like to discuss my fears then I would be happy to do so at a later time in my office,” Dr. Figure answered calmly. 
“Oh, I see. You can analyze us as much as you want but as soon as someone asks the same question of you, you can’t answer, eh?” Jonathan crossed his arms across his chest. 
“It’s just not something that I do with my patients during group therapy. This is your time to get better, it isn’t about me.” 
“You know what would make me better, doctor?”
“What’s that, Jonathan?” Dr. Figure rubbed his eyes and waited for Jonathan to answer.
“I want clothes that actually fit. These are too short, I look ridiculous! And why do we have to wear fucking pajamas? How am I supposed to feel good about myself walking around in these, eh? And no one told me that girls were gonna be here too! Jesus, it's embarrassing.” Jonathan huffed and complained loudly, leaning forward in his seat sometimes to emphasize his point. He looked over at Margaret who was turning red. 
“I understand that you’re upset about the clothes but they shouldn’t matter. You’re here to get better, Jonathan.” Dr. Figure crossed his legs and clasped his hands together. 
“Now, if we could, please continue.” He gestured to Margaret to take the clipboard from the boy next to her. As she did so, Jonathan stood up and walked towards the door. 
“Thanks, doc. That’s it for today.” He waved his hand and left the room, letting the door close behind him. He went straight to his room and sat down on his bed. Gray light filtered in through the window and he looked out at the rainy streets. 
That evening he found the rec room and sat down by a window, bracing himself against a heater. Toby was sitting by the window as well and looked up at him when Jonathan approached. 
“Hey,” Toby nodded.
“Hey.” Jonathan replied and opened the window but it caught after a few inches. 
“It doesn’t open all the way,” Toby smiled, “they don’t want us to jump out.” 
“Damnit, that was going to be my plan A,” Jonathan shook his head.
“What’s your plan B?” 
“Wait out the next four months,” Jonathan chuckled darkly and reached into his breast pocket for a cigarette. 
“They won’t let you smoke that in here,” Toby advised and glanced over at the female nurses speaking quietly near the door. 
“I wouldn’t mind getting in trouble with them, eh?” He smirked at Toby who laughed. “Toby, right?”
“Yeah,” Toby nodded and pushed his glasses up his nose. 
“Jonathan,” he patted his chest for a second and changed the subject, “By the way, what’s that girl’s story, the one from group.”
“Margaret?” Toby asked and Jonathan nodded. “She’s been here for a week or two. I think we came in around the same time. I don’t know a lot about her because she doesn’t say much in group. It must be hard being the only girl around our age here.” Toby shrugged and continued, “She’s had that busted lip for a while but I’m not sure exactly how she got it. I’ve talked to her a little and she’s nice.”
“And cute,” Jonathan added with a laugh and Toby nodded. 
“Yeah, that too. I think she’s been through some shit.”
“Haven’t we all?” Jonathan muttered and Toby nodded knowingly. They sat in silence for a moment before Toby spoke again. 
“You know I’ve been sneaking out of here a few times a week at night. I could take you if you wanted.” 
“No shit,” Jonathan whispered with a smirk, “really?”
“Yeah. Wanna go tomorrow night?” 
“Of course.” 
“Ok,” Toby smiled. 
“Ok.” Jonathan affirmed and hopped up. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” 
“See yah,” Toby waved and went back to looking out the window. 
Jonathan left the rec room and wandered further down the hallways, passing the women’s ward. There was one men’s bathroom in the women’s ward and he went in. The opposite end of the bathroom had a short tiled wall that ended in a ledge below a row of barred windows. There were three sinks on his left and two stalls on his right, one a handicapped stall. A single urinal stood against the wall. Sitting on the ledge and leaning against one of the walls of the handicapped stall was Margaret, reading a book. The dying light from the window shone through her nightgown, showing the dark silhouette of her body underneath. She looked up quickly and jumped at seeing her. 
“Shit sorry, I thought this was the men’s room.” 
“It is, sorry.” Margaret closed her book and hopped down from the ledge, wincing as her feet hit the ground. “I like to read in here.”
“In the men’s room?” Jonathan raised his dark eyebrow, his pink lips pursed. 
“No one uses this bathroom in the women’s ward.” 
“The male nurses?”
“They aren’t allowed to work in the ward… legal reasons.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and held the book against her chest. He looked at the cover of the book. 
“What are you reading?”
“Jane Eyre.”
“That’s a bit on the nose, isn’t it?” Jonathan laughed and she smiled. 
“Maybe but I love it. I love anything by the Brönte sisters.” She fingered one of the pages on the book and met his eyes. She had a heart-shaped face with messy unkempt eyebrows and she was short, barely 5”3. 
“Did someone have you locked up in their attic?” He joked. 
“No, though it would have made my life more interesting.” She smiled at him, her cheeks pressed up into her eyes and flushed slightly from the conversation.
“You’re cute,” Jonathan broke the momentary silence and her eyes widened slightly. 
“You don’t know me,” she laughed breathlessly and brushed past him to the door. He spun around and followed her. 
“I don’t have to know you to know that you’re cute.” He protested and smiled as she took the door handle in her hand. 
“Don’t be stupid,” She frowned and he threw up his hands in surrender. 
“Personally, I thought that was pretty smart but hey- wait! Don’t go, I wasn’t actually coming in here to use the bathroom, I just wanted some space.” 
She looked at him for a moment and rolled her eyes, “word of advice? Don’t call girls cute, it's demeaning.” She cocked her head at him and left the bathroom. He left after her and watched as she walked down the corridor to her room. She looked back at him and smiled to herself as she went inside and closed the door. 
Jonathan woke up early the next morning for his private appointment with Dr. Figure. His room was cold and he’d slept in a t-shirt on top of his covers like a child. He was shivering when he finally woke up and quickly changed into his warmer pajamas, gritting his teeth as he remembered how short they were on him. He pulled on a jumper and laced his roughed up sneakers. Stepping out into the corridor, he rubbed his shoulders for warmth and hopped down the stairs two at a time. He pushed open the door to the garden and followed the cement sidewalk through a row of tall hedges. The morning was cold but the sun was already in the sky and shining on the hospital’s grounds. As Jonathan passed through the first set of hedges he looked to the side. Sitting on a small wooden bench was Margaret, still reading Jane Eyre. She had on a pair of men’s blue checkered pajama pants and a dark green jumper, also still wearing her duck boots. She sat with her legs crossed beneath her and her hair billowed in the short rushes of wind. He caught himself looking at her crotch and snapped out of it. He stuck his hands beneath his armpits and walked over, smiling wide when she looked up. 
“How was your first night?” She dog-eared the page in her book and squinted up at him. 
“Not bad, but I woke up fucking freezing.” 
“The heaters don’t work in the rooms. That’s why I go into the bathrooms to read.”
“Or outside,” he pointed at her book. She smiled and looked down for a moment. 
“It’s part of my treatment. I spend an hour outside everyday, for the fresh air and sun. It’s supposed to make me happier.” 
“You know they have drugs that do the same thing.” Jonathan smiled and rocked back and forth on his feet. 
“I don’t take them… I haven’t for a few weeks.” 
“Oh?” Jonathan sniffed, his nose already running in the cold air. She thought about telling him why she wasn’t on her meds but changed her mind. Jonathan noticed her change in body language and cleared his throat. 
“Look, I’m supposed to have a meeting with the doc. Could you show me where his office is?” He cocked his head to the side, twisting his lips into a smile. 
“You think you’re real smooth, don’t you?” She shook her head, laughing. 
“Don’t know, it depends on whether or not you say yes doesn’t it?”
“And what if I have something I’d rather be doing?” She smirked slightly and brought her knees up to her chest, balancing her heels on the edge of the bench. 
“Do yah?” Jonathan asked. 
“Of course.”
“And what is that?” He brought his head back upright and continued to smile, “what would you rather be doing than walking with me?”
“Eating real food at a restaurant with warm bread at the table, or going to a library where I actually have a valid library card, or buying expensive ice cream that I can’t eat because it's freezing outside…” she listed off the items, taping her lips with her index finger. Her cheeks were pink from the cold and Jonathan imagined how soft and cold they would be against his fingers. 
“What if in exchange for showing me where the old man’s office is, I buy you an ice cream when we get out of this shithole?” He shuffled his feet in the brown grass and Margaret smiled softly. 
“You think we’re getting out of this place?” She shook her head, almost sad but still smiling. 
“Why don’t we just pretend we are, for the sake of today?” He shrugged and twisted his torso side to side. She watched him for a second, trailing her eyes over his lanky body stuffed into clothing that was made for someone much younger. She had to admit that he was pretty but there was a reason that they were all in there, and Jonathan wasn’t exempted from that. She nodded and put her feet back on the ground and stood. Holding Jane Eyre in her arms she led Jonathan back to the path in the direction of the smaller house near the border wall. 
“So, what ice cream do you like?” Jonathan asked. His sneakers gripped the pavement and sent small pebbles bouncing across the pavement. 
“German chocolate,” she answered after a moment of serious deliberation. 
“You know, I’ve noticed something.”
“What?” She looked at him as they walked. 
“I don’t recognize your accent. You aren’t Irish.”
“No,” she shook her head, “are you disappointed?” 
He smiled and put his head back, “No, no. I’m just surprised. You don’t sound British either…” He bit his lip, trying to place her accent. 
“I’m American,” she answered for him and pulled her hair to the side of her shoulder. 
“American? What are you doing here?” He laughed lightly and she blushed. 
“I’m studying here for a semester.”
“Where?” 
“Trinity,” she glanced at him, “for Literature.” 
“Fuck, no wonder you’re depressed. Why would you come to Ireland for college?” He laughed and she blushed further. 
“I just wanted to get away from my family and Ireland seemed like the farthest place from home… and you have a good Literature program here.” 
“Ah, all the Irish poets and writers…”
“And Sinead O’conner.” She added and Jonathan laughed loudly. 
“You’re funny.” 
“And cute, apparently.” She shrugged, “you still haven’t apologized.” 
“For what?” He played dumb. 
“For calling me cute.” 
“I’m not apologizing for pointing out something that’s true.” He argued and she looked up at the sky, pretending to study the clouds. 
“I think you’re an asshole, Jonathan.” She looked up at him and he nodded slowly, a small smile stuck to his lips. 
“So do I.” 
They walked in silence to the house and Margaret left him at the door. He walked in through the door, strips of paint curled and fell onto the doormat. 
“Don’t forget that you owe me an ice cream,” she called quietly before the door closed and he gave a little salute before the door snapped shut.
...
end of pt. 1 :)
Thank you so much for all of the support. This community means the world to me and I feel very supported by everyone on this niche community. I love writing these silly little fanfics and I'm flattered that people like them. I read all of your comments and reblogs- lots of love!
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kdramaspace · 2 months
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🔁 please consider reblogging to increase our sample size.
feel free to leave suggestions for characters you’d like to see in the tags! as always, if you’d like to submit a potential POTW question, you may send in your submissions here.
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indouloureux · 2 years
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𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐛𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭 (part two)
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summary: she sought for validation; he sought for acceptance. two juveniles who believed they’d spend the rest of their lives playing red guitars and borrowed claviers, (along with the trepidation of isolation), meet in one boring afternoon, and find themselves reveling in caterwaul voices, laying in a field of colossal grass, and writing lyrics with botched ballpens and crumpled papers.
— or: two people bond over emotional trauma, and fall in love through great manifestos
warnings: 1hr reading time, slow burn, friends to lovers, slight teenage angst, jealousy, tooth-rotting fluff, eddie being a sap, weird manifestos, reader being adopted, eddie and reader both having a self discovery whilst falling in love, fem!reader (she/her pronouns), me not knowing how to write both piano and guitar playing properly, deep words (sorry guys open google), lengthy, idiots in love, a love story about two sad teens going through a phase (jk) eddie has a bit of a corruption thing (not kink) bc he introduces reader into new things lol!
explicit warnings (for part two): virgin!reader, virgin!eddie; piv, unprotected sex (wrap it before you tap it!), creampie, oral (f & m receiving), fingering, overstimulation, first time, soft, vanilla porn, mentions of blood, handjob, cum eating, biting, marking, missionary, maybe soft!dom eddie bc he watched porn a lot and thinks he "knows his way", sweet but short aftercare
a/n: this is a story of fiction. i do not know the locations in both indiana and illinois. this is written in the way i prefer it to be to fit its story telling, and i am well aware of the things i write in here, and how i write this story. based on the song '1979' by the smashing pumpkins. hope you all enjoy part two!
PART ONE; SERIES MASTERLIST
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That we don't even care
To shake these zipper blues
And we don't know
Just where our bones will rest
When you were young, you remember sneaking out of your room from the orphanage to sneak into the living room and watch the television with a low volume, loud enough for you to hear so as to not disturb the Nuns asleep in their rooms.
You thought falling in love was exchanged between lingering stares, a ring of hope and yearning in their eyes; sharing gospels about yourselves that you’d never tell anyone else, compliments coming from Freudian slips. The ‘will they, won’t they,’ the supportive friends. And months, maybe years, of mutual pinings until they end up confessing beneath the rain in the middle of the road as if there’d been no cars passing by. Yelling through the thunderous storm their words of utter devotion and kiss like their lives depended on it.
For years, before you’d been adopted, you watched the same scenario of love stories on a small screen for hours until your eyes ran dry. Boy and girl meet, one fell first and the other fell harder, an almost confession, an almost kiss, a secret that could ruin their relationship and it almost did, a confession spat in a dangerous situation right before everything went to shit, and then they lived happily ever after. 
The same one every movie.
But they never really expressed how falling in love truly felt. They just showed it. 
Your mother, adoptive mother, had once said that you’d feel this electricity inside you. That sparks fly when you see their smile, or just see them in general. That you’ll feel a thousand butterflies consume you until you feel like you’re floating in the clouds with their hand in yours as you fly into eternity together. 
That everything else falls apart and it’s just the two of you. Heartbeats heard in your ears as you get lost in this abyss of abiding love. Or a spotlight would compel you to look at him like a sacred artifact in a museum. That you’ll find yourself wanting to be closer to them no matter how dangerous it has been—like moth to a flame.
Eleven year old you had stared at her with a look that told her you understood. And you did. Kind of. A young mind like yours couldn’t fully understand that feeling. 
So you waited.
Up until Eddie Munson came to your life.
Eddie Munson, who’s been hiding something from you the past couple of weeks.
Every time you were together, whether it had been for school purposes, songwriting, or just for the hell of it, he’d be stuck in this small mental corner with his front facing you, the back of his notebook keeping a somewhat barrier to hide whatever he was doing. And whenever you asked, he’d stop writing, tap your nose with the tip of his pen, and say
“A satanic ritual.”
Then he’d go back into writing. 
Your curiosity would sometimes almost get the best of you; debating if you should take a quick peek when Eddie leaves the notebook with you (closed) and excuses himself to the bathroom. But it was an invasion of privacy. 
And he’s doing it right now.
Walking through the somewhat crowded hallway, you’ve got a hand clutching the sleeve of his unbuttoned black plaid shirt, just right on his elbow as he writes while walking. Just like you’d been all those months ago.
His tongue darts out, his feet stumbling across his own, muttering short apologies to the people he accidentally bumps too. But he lets you guide him through your small tugs. 
“Christ, Eddie!” you push him away when one of the students comes running in with their projects, almost smacking him against the locker. “Put that down!”
Eddie laughs a bit before he finally snaps it shut, shoving his pen in his pocket. You drop your hand from his elbow. “Sorry, Mands.”
“You’re gonna trip,” you avoid the judgemental stares. Of gossiping kids speaking behind locker doors; you focus on Eddie. “And honestly, if you did, I’ll just make fun of you and pretend you don’t exist.”
“You wound me, pretty girl,” he slaps his hand to his heart, a sardonic pout coming with. But the pout is gone sooner when he realizes what he’d just said, and he clears his throat. “You gonna sit with us at lunch, or you’re still sticking with Wheeler and her friend?”
“They’re revising for the school paper,” you fiddle with the clasp of your bag. “So, uh, maybe I can sit with you if that’s alright?”
“It’s more than alright,” he smiles. Eddie’s palm slams on the cafeteria doors and pushes it open, letting you in first before he follows, letting the door swing until it hinders and settles closed. He scratches his jaw, looking up at the ceiling. “But, uh, you gotta sit beside me. Or else you’ll be stuck between a sticky mess of Sour Patch Kids and, well, kids.”
You walk between the chairs from his table and the one beside him. Eddie takes an empty chair beside Dustin, dragging it beside him at the head of the table and pulls it out for you to sit on. You smile at him, sitting down.
“Oh, hey, (y/n),” Dustin smiles, braces a different color this week that leaves you endeared. “Hey, Eddie.”
Mike chews on his pudding pie. The same brand as Nancy’s, and he’s got a confused frown on his face that’s almost mistaken as repulsion had you not known him. “What are you doing here?”
“Eddie has stained my reputation. I’m a pariah now.”
“Hey,” Eddie laughs, pulling his ball pen out of his pocket. “I could embarrass you right now,”
“I’m always embarrassed. For you, at least,” you jest. 
Gareth opens his small lunchbox, his name written on the side in capital letters. “You ready for tonight?” he asks Eddie.
You whip your head back at the boy beside you, sleeves rolled above his elbows, which reminds you of the one he posited just on your arm. If people didn’t look at you for walking around unabashed beside Eddie Munson, they were looking at the tattoo on your arm. It had caught Principal Higgins’ attention, and you saw him visibly parley to himself if he should punish you for it. 
But then his eyes flitted to Eddie and he sighed, sauntering back to his office with a shake of his head and muttering something about blemishing the temple of God with your tattoos. 
“Been practicing our asses off for the past few weeks. ‘Course I’m fucking ready,” Eddie scoffs. Then he lifts his head off the notebook and looks at you. “You’re coming, right?”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” you smile softly. 
He returns the same smile with the same fondness, his eyes twinkling in appreciation. The hand on his lap comes up to twirl his pinky around yours, dimples deepening in glee. You feel your heart pound at the small touch; see how everything behind him blurs. And you flutter your lashes. 
Dustin clears his throat that breaks your eye contact. Eddie shoots him an almost murderous glare, unhooking his finger from yours. 
-
The Hideout was dark. With stone walls and chipped wooden tables. The bartender looked like he was nearing his fifties, but looked approachable and kind when he’d greeted you with a rag in his hand as he wiped the glasses when you stepped inside. The lights were dim but bright above the small stage with band equipment—where you saw Gareth’s Corroded Coffin drums. 
Eddie had been over exaggerating when he said he had a crowd of five drunks. But they’re not exactly many either. There were people scattered around, preoccupied in conversations you don’t, and couldn’t be bothered to know. 
You nervously tug on your dress. A deep shade of red that’s almost black to match him. You walk between tables and old men, sitting on the table second to the front, giving you a clear view of the stage.
Earlier, you’d told Eddie you’d meet him there before he dropped you off at your home despite his protests. He told you to wear something pretty—simple, but pretty. Something that’s you, in his words.
Waiting patiently, you hear the soft clinkings of glass against bottles of alcohol at the bar, the quite boastful laughter of the men in the corner. Your knee bounces, hands clasped in front of you as you trace the rigid strikes of Corroded Coffin’s band poster, and startle yourself when a looming presence hovers over you, casting a shadow over the light.
You yelp, looking up to see a man. His hair gray as his hairline recedes, exposing his forehead. He had a nose that looked a bit like Eddie’s, and his blue eyes shimmer in curiosity as they settle on you; his stare is anything but creepy.
“Are you…Mandy?” he says gruffly, a lilt of uncertainty in his voice, and he sounds as nervous as you are.
“No. I’m (y/n)...” you furrow your eyebrows. “Oh, shit. Are you Eddie’s uncle?”
His hands rub the back panel of his hat, nodding. “Yes ma’am. Wayne Munson. D’you mind if I sit?”
“Not at all,” you gesture to the chair beside you. Wayne pulls the chair out, moves it a bit more to the side to give you an appropriate distance so he wouldn’t make you feel uncomfortable, and he sits down with a grunt. “S-sorry for cursing. I’m Eddie’s friend—”
He says your name. “I know. He can’t stop talking about you,” he chuckles lightly. “I finally get to meet the girl that makes my nephew wake up before his alarm clock.”
“That’s me,” you twiddle your thumbs. “Um, Eddie told me you worked at night.”
Wayne understands what you mean, placing his cap on his lap and rubbing his hand on his knee. “I do. But it’s a holiday and I couldn’t pass on the opportunity to see him play.” he scratches his silver beard. “Do you drink? I could order us some.”
“I’m eighteen, Mr. Munson” you tell him. “I can’t drink yet.”
“Coke it is,” he hollers for a waiter, a man a bit younger than the bartender. He orders a pale ale and two cans of coke before he takes out his pack of cigarettes when the waiter leaves. You notice how he’s got a small lighter wedged to the side of his cigarettes like Eddie’s, and you wonder if he’d caught it from his uncle. “You smoke?”
You look around cautiously when he sticks one in his mouth. “Will they let me?”
“You ain’t gonna go to jail for it,” his eyebrows raise. “I’m not pressuring you, kid. I’m just offering,”
Finally, in an impassive shrug, you take one and you place it in your mouth. When Wayne lights up his own, he offers you his lighter. “Thank you, Mr. Munson,”
You sit in silence for a short beat, the smoke of your cigars mixing in the weak waft of the ac. He wasn’t as menacing as you expected, and you didn’t know why you expected it in the first place. Based on Eddie’s stories, Wayne had never questioned his love for his fantasy game, or complained about his love for metal. He’d been the first person to accept Eddie for who he is, the only family in his life that stayed and cared. 
“You know, I-uh-I’d like to thank you,” he turns to you. “You never judged my nephew for who he was. You made him happier and, hell, I haven’t seen him this happy in years. He’s always hogging up the phone talking and laughing with you. I’m not there for him as much as I used to; and I’m glad you gave him back his smile,”
Flushing, you look away and hide your parlously proud smile behind the borrowed cigarette, stained by your fuliginous lipstick. “Nothing to thank me for, Mr. Munson. Glad I could make him happy.”
“Ah, please,” he waves his hand, cigarette in the air. “Call me Wayne. Makes me feel old.” then he waves around his face. “I know my- hair says otherwise. But I’m still in my forties.”
“Copy that,” you take a quick hit. “Wayne.”
Wayne nods his head in acknowledgement, a guttural grunt leaving him. “My nephew hasn’t been this happy in a while. Eddie tends to… hide his emotions. Likes to distract himself with that god-deafening music and his fantasy game. And since you came to his life,” his arm lifts, as if to give your shoulder a pat before he clenches it to a fist and puts it back on his lap.
You chuckle. “You can pat me, Mr. Muns- Wayne.”
“You sure?”
“It’s just a shoulder pat, sir,”
Balky, his hand comes up to clap at your shoulder, shaking it lightly. You smile, placing the cigarette back in your lips and sucking until you couldn’t breathe, and let it all out.
“You helped him… (y/n),” he swallows. “And I thank you for that.”
When your drinks come, footsteps advance the stage. First came Gareth who settled behind the drums, who saw you immediately and gave you an ebullient wave, then Jeff and the other guy who’s name you’ve (sadly) forgotten.
Then Eddie came just when you opened your can. The fizzle of soda coalesce with his eager footsteps. Your hand stops around the ring, eyes trailing up to Eddie’s face.
You try to bite back a gasp.
There’s dark eyeliner beneath his eyes that names him hellaciously unique; the liquid kohl renders his eyes wider—his umber eyes darker, almost voluminously black, although fulgurated with the dim lights and his buzzing excitement. His vogue is eccentric, almost a masquerade that fools, had you not known him. But it’s so him, and at the same time, it isn’t.
But Eddie looks unashamed and proud of his look of ripped sleeves and borrowed eyeliner, his hair asininely wild, curlier like he’d gotten himself a perm. He’s wearing black jeans with more tears, his Dio vest that accentuates his lanky arms, the pudge of his stomach seen through his shirt but he wears it proudly; happy trail peeking underneath when he lifts his hand to pull on the mic.
He taps on the silver mesh head of the mic. Eddie clears his throat. “Uh, hello?”
You see everyone turn their heads, unamused, but forcing themselves to acknowledge his presence. Eddie smiles nervously, before his eyes settle on you and Wayne. 
“Good evening gentlemen and lady,” he winks at you. “Uh, yeah, thanks for being here tonight. It means so much to the owner who’s been working his ass off so, give him a round of— ah, screw it no one’s listening,” Eddie tuts with a ridiculous smile, eyes meeting yours in a short apology. He’s not upset, but he finds it amusing. “This first song is, um, Breaking the Law by Judas Priest. Hope you guys enjoy it and if it gets too loud, I suggest you cover your ears.”
He picks up his red Warlock NJ guitar (Sweetheart, he names her) resting on the amplifier beside Gareth’s guitar, slinging it around himself before he pulls on the vermillion pick on his neck. Eddie settles himself up front, lips hovering over the mic. Then he looks back at Gareth, who throws one of the dumstricks into the air but fails to catch it and falls to the ground with an awkward cattle. 
Beside you, Wayne smiles at the inconvenience, but doesn’t elicit a laugh out of him. Gareth shoots the both of you a penitent smile, picking up the stick. He taps it together three times to signal preparation, before you’re startled with his sudden slam on the snare.
You’ve never really seen Eddie play the electric guitar. Well, you have. You’ve just unfortunately forgotten the first time you actually did. And you wonder if thirteen year old Eddie was just as great as twenty year old him, playing the guitar with such precision; he was, indeed, a virtuoso with guitars—electric or not. 
The sight holds you ransom. Eddie, with his hair unruly, an unforgiving proud smile on his face when he darts his tongue out to glide his dexterous fingers across the bronze strings of Sweetheart, his voice a caterwaul as he recites the almost innocuous lyrics. 
“Feel as though nobody cares if I live or die.”
But his eyes were passionate—not of the barely there crowd, but it was obvious he loves what he’s doing. Especially now that you’re here, witnessing this for the first time with his beloved uncle. In that small stage, it stymies all judgment of conservative people, and he lets himself relish in the freedom of doing what he desires. 
A gloss of pursuit sybaritism coats his eyes; with a white ring of sheer wanton hedonism just above his dark irises. The rest of the boys mimic the same passion, arms kinetic at their own playing, noses scrunched in glee. 
Eddie doesn’t look like an angel tonight. When the lights shine horns on top of his head—the cardinal hue of serpentine antlers usurps the halo over his head. He’s devilishly handsome, wickedly catching your eye through the palls of branded cigarettes that spread across the room. 
Beside you, Wayne claps and whistles, showing his everloving support. Eddie smiles brightly, leaning back when he does a riff you’re certain you’ll struggle studying it. When the song ends, scattered claps gift him. Few, but loud to show their support. 
He’s sweaty all of a sudden, and he runs his hand through his dampened hair, wiping the sweat off his forehead. “Thanks. Thank you- hey, man, you owe me a beer,” he points at the guy sitting in the corner, who raises his bottle and tips his hat. You don’t know him. “This next song is dedicated to this lovely lady up front,”
You feel eyes on you. Suddenly, you want to sink into your chair just to avoid the unwanted eyes, and you tell yourself to forgive Eddie for making you off-guard. But the strangers give you either confused eyes, or looks that say they could care less.  But Wayne claps, which makes you hide your flustered smile behind the coca-cola can that you drink from.
“It’s Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic by The Police. I know it’s unusual for us to play something that’s not metal, but I practiced this song just for her. A…token of gratitude. And also for my uncle,” he adjusts his mic. “Um. Hope you guys enjoy,” 
You appreciate the fact that he’d practiced a song from one of your favorite bands just for you, despite it being out of his taste. You clap, a silly smile on your face that hurts your cheeks.
He strums, benign in all his dexterity, and shoots you a cheeky wink. You playfully grimace at his action, and you fail to miss the laugh Wayne lets out at the wordless banter. 
You gently sway to the indie music, see the way his rings glide across his nylon strings, how the bones of his fingers move through his skin when he plucks, mouth pressing up to the mic to sing clemently. You copy his nods, your own fingers tapping on the tin of your can.
The only thing the song lacked was the piano; you, basically. Eddie started playing with his eyes on you, and suddenly you remember being eight years old in the dark living room of the orphanage you stayed in. Except you hadn’t been the one watching — this time, you’re in the screen of that small box, finally feeling what it’s like to stare at someone so completely enamored with everything they did. With everything Eddie did. 
Because everything slows and everything else blurs, a flame igniting across every vein that brings you into a lovelorn haze. You hear your heart beat with the precious song Eddie has dedicated to you right in your ear, and you feel like floating off the chair. The halo comes back to slot itself between his horns, luring you in like a moth to a flame; like a venerated, fallen angel that has you plunging your hand through the clouds and taking his, flying you to his safe haven. 
“I resolved to call her up, a thousand times a day. And ask her if she'll marry me, some old-fashioned way,”
His once caterwaul cry of a voice shifts into a soft, canorous sway from baritone to tenor. Eddie smiles at you, a look in his eyes you can’t fathom but makes your heart burst, blood dripping down your chest but you don’t care. 
For four minutes and twenty seconds, your eyes never leave Eddie. And neither does he, like he knows he won’t so much as place the wrong finger on the wrong string or fuck up his plucking. Everything’s a scene on a cheesy romcom, a feeling told through a lovesick song, a story told through a galore of rhyming words in a poem. 
“Every little thing she does is magic; everything she do just turns me on. Even though my life before was tragic. Now I know my love for her goes on,”
In your mind, you push yourself off the table, chair falling to the ground, coke spilling onto the wooden top, walking yourself up to him and tackle him in a kiss; one of his arms would be around your waist and the other holding the mic stand tightly, your hands cupping his delicate face and mold your lips with his like some puzzle piece waiting to be connected. 
That the spotlight settles on the both of you, and you’ll fly up to the skies to spend the rest of your lives loving each other in eternity like everyone else did. 
But you stay on your seat with a fluttering heart and an agape mouth. You don’t realize Gareth has sped up his drums for the denouement of the song, and Eddie leaves on last hard strum before the small crowd claps for him, seemingly happy to finally watch someone play a song they knew. 
Eddie bows, an abashed smile for gratitude. “T-thank you, everyone—”
“Holy shit. They’re actually clapping for us—”
“Shut up, Jeff,”
-
“Thanks for coming, uncle Wayne,”
Their hug is tight with claps on the back and prolonged grunts. Wayne breaks away, hands on his nephew’s shoulder, a proud smile on his face. 
“No problem,” he nods at him. “Needed a break from work, anyway,”
You stand behind Eddie, fingers joint in front of you. Wayne gives you a kind smile that you return, one that makes Eddie turn to his shoulder to look at you, and you can see the roseate glow that dusts his cheeks. He bats you his eyelashes, eyeliner slightly smudged, before he turns back to his uncle.
“I like this whole… makeup thing,” he points at his eyes.
“Thanks,”
He leans in to whisper something in Eddie’s ear that you can hear, hushed words that are suspicious when Wayne looks at you again and when Eddie laughs nervously and lightly pushes at his uncle’s shoulder with a small whine of uncle Wayne, shut up! 
“Nice meeting you, Mandy,” Wayne tips his hat to you. “Drive safe, kids. I’ll see you tomorrow, Eds.” he pats his shoulder, shaking it lightly before he walks away.
Eddie walks you to his van, a hand on the back of your waist with his notebook clutched to his side. It’s quiet, with your shoes crunching with the gravel ground; he opens the door for you, right before he moves to his side. You watch in the side mirror as Wayne gets in his own car and pulls out of the driveway. 
Eddie throws his black notebook in the back, key twisting to start the car, and Broken Wings by Mr. Mister plays. It startles you, whipping your head at him.
“Where exactly are you taking me, Munson?” you narrow your eyes in feigned suspicion. He chuckles, buckling in his seat belt. “Well, that’s a first.”
“We’re leaving Hawkins. I can’t go to jail,” 
“Oh?” you raise a brow. Eddie laughs, humming along to the song which peaks your interest but you’re more curious about something else when he pulls out the driveway. “So where is it?”
He gives you a quick glance, the corner of his lip twitching up. “Illinois,” 
Your smile falls a bit, shifting into something confused when you squirm in your seat and rest your hands on your lap. “Oh,” you purse your lips. “What’s up in Illinois?”
“A surprise,” Eddie chuckles. “I’m not kidnapping you, if that’s what you’re thinking. Noooo ritualistic sacrifice.”
“I wasn’t thinking that,” you toy with your fingers, scratching gently at your tattoo. “You do know that when we get there, it’ll be one in the morning,”
He slows the van for a moment, driving with one hand as he reaches blindly behind him. Finally, he pulls out a pillow. It looks new, smells fresh, even, like laundry detergent. Eddie places it on your lap. “Figured. Take a nap, then,” 
You don’t. You hug the pillow to your chest, but you rest your head on it after you say a small thanks. Eddie adjusts the volume of the radio, redirecting the acs and when you give him a silent thanks with an abashed smile, he takes this as an opportunity to talk again.
“I’m really glad you came, by the way,” he smiles. “I mean, I know you said you’d come a while ago. And I’m really happy that you came even though our gig kept on being canceled for months.”
“I made a promise,” you lightly slur. “Your uncle’s really nice, by the way. He showed me this picture of you in his wallet when you were a baby. All ass and naked-”
“Shit, really?”
“No. I’m kidding.”
He tsks. “Would have been a nice, PG way to show you my ass but hey, it’s good to know my uncle doesn’t go around showing my butt.”
You laugh, unabashed. “I think I’d prefer grown up ass than baby ass, Eddie,”
Is this… flirting?
Flirting that’s not PG-13? Although, when has flirting been family friendly?
Why is he flirting with you?
Eddie’s smile dwindles. “You also look nice,” then he stammers. “I mean, more than nice. You look good- great- pretty- b-beautiful.” he sighs, the embarrassed pink tinge on his cheeks hidden by the darkness of his van. “You look… beauteous”
A rush of heat convulsing from your head to your toes that makes you squirm on your seat and toy with the ends of your red dress. “Beauteous, huh?”
“Yep.”
“Big word,”
“You know me,” he makes a psh sound, tapping his fingertips on the leather of his steering wheel. “I like it when they’re big…words,”
You turn your head to him. “Are you alright?”
Eddie’s fidgeting on his seat, lips pursed, eyebrows furrowed, feeling like he’s been berated for something so small. “Yeah! Why wouldn’t I be? I’m- sorry for, uh, the whole ass thing.”
“It’s just ass, Eddie,” you laugh.
“Yeah, but it’s my ass,” he motions to himself. “Isn’t it weird that I’m talking about my ass as a baby to you- you know what?” Eddie suddenly stops the van, right in the middle of the road, where it was just the two of you in his van in the asphalt ground. 
You gawp. “What are you doing?”
He unbuckles his seatbelt, leaning forward to shrug his vest off, leaving him in the extra shirt he brought along after his show—The Van Halen shirt he opted to shoplift one time, but you’d stopped him by buying it which he thanked you with an ice cream. And coincidentally, Runnin’ With the Devil starts playing.
Eddie places his vest on top of you, the entire shoulder length covering your chest; it’s as if he wants to keep you warm. You pout, hugging the pillow with one arm and the other tugging the vest around your right arm.
“Take a nap,” he pats your knee gingerly, giving you a small smile. “We’re gonna have a long night, sweetheart— god fucking damnit,”
You blush at his moniker but laugh at his rabelaisian accident. He sings beneath his breath, gives your bare knee a rub with his thumb before he starts driving again, forgetting to put his seatbelt back on.
-
“Oh my god, you are so gonna sacrifice me to the Devil,”
“Only bad girls get punished, (y/n)— I’m just gonna shut up now,”
When Eddie said he’d be taking you to Illinois for a surprise, you don’t expect to be brought to some abandoned home in a place you’re an alien to. Upon you stood a house which hangs on rusted nails and broken cement walls. It seemed to be a small historic mansion, built in a hamlet a couple minutes from the suburbs. 
You feel like you’re one of the protagonists who idiotically explore a home they shouldn’t be exploring in some horror movie. That behind the bushes hid a man with a burnt face and knives for fingers. The trees rustle, crickets chirp and the wings of birds flap into the night sky. There’s a dog that barks from a distance, cars that speed across the asphalt road to their destination, and Eddie’s labored breathing as he stares at you for any signs of fear or hesitance. 
You should be afraid — it’s one in the morning, and Eddie’s brought you to a place that’s hours away from your home. Are you afraid of him? Never.
But are you afraid of ghosts…?
“Is this safe?” you look around, surrounded by low hills and trees from afar that hide the city and the suburb. “Are we gonna get arrested?”
“We’re safe,” his eyebrows raise a little. “No ghosts, I promise. Although I can’t guarantee you there won't be any bugs and weird creepy crawlies in there, but I’ll protect you from them,” Eddie jokes.
You laugh, looking at the broken windows, the shape making it seem like someone had thrown a rock inside. There’s a small graffiti beside the door. Mellon Collie & Infinite Sadness, motherfucker!
“Mands, come on,” Eddie offers his hand, a glint of hope that bejewels his dark eyes. He’s gotten rid of his eyeliner already (sadly), but he looks just as handsome. Shyly, you place your hand on top of his. 
His palm is rough; the same goes for his fingertips. But they’re warm and gentle and so welcoming. It’s like your hands are made to hold his, with the way they connect like some padlock. Eddie holds your hand the same way you hold his heart: of reverential attentiveness and utter devotion.  
Eddie beams, bearing a smile that reaches his eyes. He tugs you close to him, pocketing his keys. “I got you, ‘kay?”
You tuck a strand of hair behind your ear. “Copy that, rockstar,”
He blushes.
Slowly, Eddie pushes the door open. An eerie creak emits from the decrepit door, loud that you worry it would be heard from the houses a couple minutes away. He visibly winces at the sound, your hand tightening around his when he tiptoes his way in.
“Fuck, I forgot the door did that,”
You look at him. “You forgot?”
“Well, how’d you think I knew about this place?” he smirks at you. “Gotta impress you, sweetheart. You, as an avid lover of pianos and Billy Joel, need to take you somewhere you’ll love,”
In all honesty, you appreciate the effort. And the thought of Eddie wanting—needing to impress you, makes your heart perform an elegant summersault. “Well, that’s nice of you. I can learn how to love some dingy home.”
Eddie laughs.
There’s a spiral staircase that leads up to the second floor, its balusters broken in half, the risers in the middle having foot-sized holes, the handrails covered in green veins. There’s an arched entrance beside the foyer, leading to a living room with couches covered in a thin white sheet, with a coffee table fallen sideways and a couple of smashed plates on the ground. There’s a window beside the fireplace, too, although what only remains to be the frame itself.
The carpeted floor is covered in mold, and you wonder what its design might have been before it had turned into this disgusting, brown color. 
“Don’t worry, there’s a room in here that doesn’t look this… mlegh,” he frowns deeply, wiping his hand on his thigh. “God, that was gross. This way, m’lady,”
He leads you through the spacey hallway, passing by ripped picture frames, a kitchen full of smashed plates and open cabinets filled with moldy and spoiled food; bedrooms with blankets covered in dust and démodé clothes inside unhinged wardrobes. Each item and corner harbor cobwebs from lingering spiders, and you almost ran into one if it weren’t for Eddie warning you to be careful.
Finally, your feet meet the marbled floor of a new room; moldy carpets gone, the darkness gone as this room is lit with the moonlight that sparks through the broken window. But there’s a clean blanket in the middle of the room, a picnic basket and a pack of beer—both fresh and clean.
You look at Eddie with a parted mouth and he says,
“Behold,” his arm stretches, moving behind him to guide your vision. Eddie’s ringed hands unearth his surprise, where your eyes follow his direction. “A piano,”
There’s a primeval grand piano in the middle of the room, the dust wiped off of its existence; its legs had been duct taped, the lid chipped and it’s missing two wheels but it was beautiful nonetheless. 
“You said you’ve always imagined playing Billy Joel on a grand piano, so here you go,” he lightly punches a wall. “Now, I know I’m no rich, snobby person, but I would applaud you, sweetheart,”
You near the piano, running your fingertips across the keys, pressing on one of them to see if they’re in tune and they are. You snap your head at Eddie with a slack jaw, tears welling your eyes. 
“Gareth and I drove up here, fixed up this room. Luckily, he knew someone here in Illinois who could tune the piano. And as for the blanket, and the beer, and the sandwiches, well, uncle Wayne did me a favor and brought all that shit up here. Now, I know it’s kind of gross in here and it’s like, one in the morning but—oh!”
Eddie’s tackled by your hug, feet knocking him back and almost to the ground. You wrap your arms tightly around his neck, nose digging onto his hair and eyes slammed shut to fight back the overwhelming tears. There’s not a single bone in him that’s hesitant to hug you back, holding you close to his chest, his heart pounding against yours when he presses his lips on top of your head.
“This is amazing,” you say against him. “I can’t believe you-you did this for…me.”
You pull away from him, hands on his biceps when you turn to look back at the grand piano. Eddie’s arms run back and forth on your waist, looking down at you with a triumphant smile before he twists you so that your back’s to his chest.
“Anything for you, Mandy,” he moves his hands up to your arms, rubbing them. “This was all I could do but-”
“I accept anything you give me,” you murmur with a smile, starstruck with the piano and his gift. 
“Yeah, I know,” he rests his chin on your head. “Now, you’ve got something to play for me?”
-
The lively music created by your adroit fingers was enough to make Eddie sway. You lack the guitars, the drums, and the trumpet but it’s robust with buoyancy nonetheless. 
You play the same way Eddie did—with a bobbing head, a bewitching voice, and dexterous fingers that know their way to your beloved instrument. He sips his beer, sitting cross-legged on the blanket, watching you with such awe; an exact mirror of you and him in the Hideout.
You keep your eyes riveted on the piano lest of mistakes. But Eddie thinks you’re far from failure, with how nimble your fingers are, and how your voice was as angelic as it had always been.
“You mighta heard I run with a dangerous crowd, we ain't too pretty, we ain't too proud,” your fingers glide, from left to right, pressing on all chords in quick speed, and it makes him holler. “We might be laughing a bit too loud. Aw, but that never hurt no one.”
“YES!” he claps. “You’re amazing! A fuckin’ star!”
Eddie takes a swig of the bitter liquor, headbanging to a song that wasn’t even metal but you could headbang to any song, right? 
When you’re done, he pulls out a rose from a basket and throws it at you, falling on top of the piano as he stands up from the blanket, clapping loudly that it ricochets outside the empty, broken halls. You flush, smiling bashfully when you stand up and take the red rose into your hand, bringing it up to your nose and bowing as if you just finished an hour-long concert.
“Felt like I was in church,” Eddie pants, wiping his palms on his jeans. “You’re goddamn amazing, Mands. You really could be the next Billy Joel,”
“Oh, stop,” you wave him off, playing with the stem of the rose. “You’re just-”
“Complementing? Praising you?” he cocks a brow, walking towards you and places his hand on your back. “Okay, now sit. I’ve got a surprise for you, babe,”
“I swear, if you’ve got Billy Joel around, I won’t hesitate to kiss him in front of you,”
“Keep it in your pants, young lady,”
You guffaw. “How could I keep my lips inside my pants?”
“By- shh. I’m trying to show off here,” he stretches his arms, fingers settling over the keys. “Um, Dustin taught me this. Kid’s great with the piano and all that shit. Not as great as you, though. He’s more…superior with his mind than he is with music. But, he was able to help me with this so let’s thank the little shrimp for that.”
Nodding, you bump your shoulder with his. A smile paints your face, having already been surprised that Eddie Munson learned how to play the piano for you. But you wait for the real one, eager to see what he has in store when he positions his fingers on the piano, rings pressing against the ivory.
“Uhhh- oh!”
You peer quietly, watching the way his fingers keep a leisurely pace; an obvious sign that he’s still unsure of which keys to press next. But he knows the words by heart — something you’ve never heard of, and it’s obvious that he’s written this himself. You deem the meaning behind them salient, singing with his voice a dulcet tenor, eyes evident that he’s repeating all the words Dustin said: 
Remember the keys. Play gently. Make sure you don’t get pinched by the keys, and you can always go slow. This isn’t some Corroded Coffin show where you start headbangin’ and making those fucking riffs. You play- gently! What did I just say? God, you’re gonna die a virgin.
Eddie looks at you for a split second, nervous, worried with the way your eyebrows furrow and your mouth parted. If he were being honest, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. The minute he sat down on the bench, he'd forgotten half of what Dustin had said, mind almost omitting to remember the lyrics he’d worked hard for for weeks.
And god, you’re staring at his hands and his face with bewilderment. And you’re beautiful. He feels so fucked up (in a good way). He’d probably kill himself if he fucks this one up.   
But you regard the lyrics. They’re meaningful and heartwarming, meant just for you when he takes those short glances, but there’s a part that stitches all your wounds together, provided by his dangerously blunt needle.
“You whisper into my heart. And I've never been quite smart, but I heed your words in a tempest; just where our bones will rest,”
Piano played with fidelity, lyrics sang with breathless devotion, fingers genuflect to please you with its core venerated. Eddie Munson plays for the key to your heart even though he’s had it in his palm for a long time; shakedown your mind with a flickering flame in his mind, veins high on morphine. 
Suddenly he stops, and Eddie looks at you with a face so wrecked with nervousness you just want to kiss hug him. 
“That’s- that’s everything that I remember,” he flops his hands down to his lap with a huff. “It’s actually unfinished. But I couldn’t wait any longer,”
You croon. “Why not?”
“Well, why’d you think I brought you here in the first place?” he whispers. “Other than me wanting to surprise you. I mean, Mands, I wanted to impress you. Think of any other guys who’d bring someone to an abandoned home for anything but a date.”
“A date, huh?” you repeat, slowly smirking. “This is a date?”
Eddie pales. “Well, I mean, if you want it to be… a date...”
You decide to play with him. “I hardly think of this as a date,”
“Why not?”
“I’ve barely eaten,”
He giggles, leaning back with his head lulling back. “Sorry! Sorry I jus’- wanted to see you play.” Boldly he reaches up to push your hair behind your ear, the side of his face glimmering by the bright moon seen from the huge hole on the wall of the room. “I stole your lyric, by the way. Kind of makes me not want to give you some credit,”
Flushing, you look away, mustering up the courage to place your hand on top of his. “I’d really appreciate the credit, Munson,” you murmur. “That way the world would know who I was,”
“But who cares about the world?” he cups your face, thumb resting on top of your cheek. “I’m here, Mandy. I’ll… heed your words. Y’know? I’ve never been smart but I’ll heed your words in- what was the next word?”
“Tempest,”
“Tempest,” Eddie repeats. You giggle, leaning into his touch. “I am…stupid for you. But I’ll understand you. I’ll listen to you, and I’ll take care of you, (y/n). I…”
He’s redolent of piety to genuine amor. Eddie looks at you like you painted the stars on the dark sky, like someone who’d pulled him out of hellfire and thought that all his devilish, leather and metal glory was worthy of your attention and acceptance. He cradles your heart in his hand.
“I think I’m in love with you,” he states. “I didn’t know anyone could fall in love twice but, life is full of possibilities.”
Tears well your eyes, rivulets transferring to your eyelashes. It seems like Eddie has mirrored you, too. You cock your head to the side, letting out a dry chuckle. 
“Me too,” you bite your lip. “I really like you. And I think I’m in love with you,”
“Thank fuck. My next option was to sacrifice you to Satan if everything went to shit,”
“Hey!”
“Kidding,” he smiles softly. “Can I kiss you?”
Four words enough to sweetly kill you, only to be resurrected by his yearning stare. You nod. “I don’t know. Can you?”
He doesn’t answer, but yeah, he can kiss you.
It’s tender, it's soft, it's warm, it's free, and it’s loving. It feels like summer in the dead of the night; like sitting in front of the fireplace with hot choco during winter. Eddie kisses you the way a lover would, with megawatts of avidity. And his lips are soft and home and so validating. I see you. I feel you, I understand you. 
Eddie fully carries your face in his hand, slanting his mouth against yours when he takes a deep breath. He breaks away for a moment before he tackles you with an open mouthed kiss that you reciprocate, the feeling of his balmy tongue grazing your plump bottom lip.
You feel the heat wave itself from your chest to the space between your legs that makes you subconsciously lean closer to him, thighs bumping. Eddie’s hand crawls from your cheek, to pressing lightly on the dip of your neck, to your plump shoulder, grazing the tattoo he painted on your skin until they land on your thigh, lifting it on top of his.
You moan softly that vibrates across his warm chest. Eddie hums, playing with the ruffles of your red dress, keeping your hot mouth locked against his. But when your hand comes down to grasp at his bicep, moving behind to tangle lightly on his curls, your body searches for friction and uses his thigh as the nearest solution. 
“Christ, babe,” he breaks away, the tip of his nose still pressed on your cheek. “You only got panties beneath?”
“You never know,” you pant. 
He groans, feeling blood rush down to his cock that immediately hardens. You feel an acute bump beneath your knee, giving Eddie a rubicund glow. You press the back of your knee against it, which makes him squeak. “Y’ really wanna- wanna do this? I mean, I just kissed you.” he swallows thickly. “And I’ve- I’ve never done this before,”
Eddie looks ashamed, like it’s embarrassing to be a virgin in your twenties. Your heart melts for him, face softening, taking his hand into yours and kissing his knuckles. 
“Me, too,” you confess. “But I trust you and- and I wanna do this with you. Besides, it’s better than to leave high and dry, right?”
I trust you.
He laughs jovially. 
“You’re right,” he gives your mouth quick pecks, too short for your liking but he makes up for it when Eddie readjusts himself so that he’s fully facing you, urging you to do the same so that he’d wrap your legs around his waist. “‘M gonna take care of you, Mands.”
He easily lifts himself off the old bench, carrying you with him. You sway with every step, arms locked around his neck, lips slotted against him with his eyes closed tightly but luckily he knows his way to the thin blanket.
Eddie kneels, almost falling down with your weight. He places a hand to the back of your head and the other on the bottom of your spine when he gently lays you on the light eiderdown. 
Immediately, he lays himself on top of you, a forearm on the side of your head with the other palming at your waist. Your dress rides up to your thigh, pooling beneath you when Eddie moves forward to caress his thigh against yours, your knees pressing up at his sides. 
“Can I- Can I remove your dress?” he asks gently, eyebrows joint. “Please?”
“Yes, please,”
His hands wander to the buttons in front, removing them with ease until your bra appears. It doesn’t match what’s below you, something you’re slightly embarrassed about, but Eddie goggles at them as soon as he pulls on your strap. “Oh, god, you’re hot.”
He mouths at the top of your breasts, sucking gently as he begins to pull down on your dress until he sees your cotton panties. He drags them down until your body’s free of restraint, where he moves back so he’d remove them off your legs and place them on top of the basket to avoid any dust ruining the fabric.
Then he goes back to kissing your tits, hands cupping them together, bunching the material of your bra in his fists. You moan softly, grasping his shoulders.
“Beautiful,” he says. “Goddess divine,”
Eddie helps you sit up slightly so he could reach behind and clumsily unclasp your bra. His tongue pokes out in determination, makes a happy sound of success once he sees your bra loosen, straps draping down your shoulders that he gladly removes from you. 
“Hold on,” he leans back, moving to his knees to remove his vest and shirt. Eddie stuns you with his alabaster skin tainted with black ink. A gnarly demon on his chest beside a black widow, the infamous bats on his outer forearm, the puppet master on the inside and the butterfly on his wrist; the wyvern on his bicep, and there’s a huge, hotly formidable tattoo of a pair of bat wings starting from his v-line, curving around his waist, and a skull beneath his left pec. “There. Now we’re even,”
“You look… christ, I’m not even gonna fucking hold back. You look hot. Very fuckable,”
He laughs with a light shake of his head. “I’m gonna pretend you were looking at my face while you were saying that.”
When he goes back down, his lips attach to your hard nipple. You mewl softly, feeling his hot saliva lather around your tit when he suckles hard like he searches for something in there. You clutch at his hair, head tipping back, hips jolting up to grind against his bulge which makes him groan. 
“Do you have to suck on my tits longer or should I start touching myself already?”
Eddie chuckles in disbelief. “Patience, honey. ‘M gonna give you what you want, don’t worry.”
His hand grips at the warm flesh of your thigh, index finger moving up to slip beneath the waistband of your panties, massaging your flesh. And he treats the other breast with the same hunger, doesn’t stop until he’s certain they’re sensitive (they are. They really are.)
Finally, he starts moving down, pressing wet, open mouthed kisses on your belly, down to your navel, until he reaches your dampening underwear. You prop yourself up to your elbows when he stutters in his movements, staring up at the wet spot that reveals the indent of your little cunt.
“What’s wrong?” you ask, a forming billow of insecurity preparing to tackle you the longer he stares at your clothes sex. 
“Nothing,” he clears his throat. “Jus’ that I’ve never… eaten a girl out, before. Well, I’ve had practice. Just not at a girl’s p-pussy,”
Curiosity waves insecurity off. “Well, where? At your hand?”
“At a fleshlight,”
Your head feels like burning. “Oh,” you blink. “Well, do your best, I guess. Good luck,”
“Thanks,” 
Eddie sniffs at your arousal, biting back an animalistic groan that scratches at his throat when the aroma of nectar fills his nostrils. Eddie leisurely removes your panties, lifting his eyes up to connect with yours. They’re achingly concupiscent, pupils blown in the thick glaze of frisson that makes the hair on his arms raise with anticipation. 
Finally, he tugs them down, wiggling them off you. Eddie’s practically edging himself, with the way he slowly reveals your cunt, mouth watering at the shiny gloss at your clit from your slick. He growls lowly, sliding them off faster until he tosses them into nowhere (you make a note to hit him later for that).
His hands push at your knees, spreading your legs apart, making your pussy open and splay out for him to press his tongue against. 
Which he does; Eddie’s lips purse, lets a thick glob of his spit cascade down to your clit before leaving a featherlight kiss to it, until he licks a fat stripe from your tiny hole to the bud. You keen, back arching, which makes him link his arms around your legs and press a hand on your navel to keep you down.
It’s a foreign feeling you know you’d relish for the rest of your life, especially when it comes to his tongue. “Oh, fuck,” you whimper. 
“You taste- taste fucking amazing,” you do. Like honey; like a pétillant sweet moscato, syrup on pancakes and all other sweet shit he could think of. Eddie repeats his action, which makes your hole flutter around nothing. He suctions his mouth at your clit, sucking all the juices that continue to leak out of your blushing cunt. “Christ on a fucking clutch- oh, god, Mandy.” 
There’s an embarrassing sound that seems to be like quiet slurping and the raw music of wetness created by his lips and your arousal. Your toes curl, the tip of his tongue dragging along your folds like some kitten before he returns to taking your clit back in his mouth.
Mewling, your elbows give out and your head falls down to the sheets, eyes squeezing shut. His vacant hand comes down to drag itself along the mess of your hot sex, amalgamated with his saliva and your lubricous dampness, rubbing your clit with his index and middle finger in slow, pressured circles that begins to ignite the flame below your stomach. 
“God- Eddie- I-”
“Wanna use your words, babe?” he laps at your hole, nose rubbing at your clit when he shakes his head vigorously. “Tell me how good it feels, come on. Don’t go shy on me.”
You nod, your wrist pressing on your forehead when Eddie parts your slick petals with his fingers, formed into a v to expose more of you. He licks at it, teasing your folds, gawking at you. 
“Feels- feels amazing. Felt like I was gonna pee whenever you- fuck- suck at my clit. God, Eds, I want more,” you whine, bucking your hips at his face. “Please. Please please please,”
He laughs against you. “You weren’t gonna pee, sweetheart.”
“How’d you know?”
“Porn,” he furrows his eyebrows. “Eavesdropping works sometimes.”
Eddie licks at his fingers, index and middle stuck together in his mouth as he twirls his tongue around them. He pulls them out with a small pop, eyes  wandering up to your bare, heaving chest, and he couldn’t resist a teasing squeeze using the hand pressed on your navel.
Then, he begins to ease one finger, lips apart, breathless as he watches you take in his digit slowly. It’s a strange feeling, with something prodding deep at your entrance, where Eddie doesn’t stop until he’s practically knuckle deep into you, pressing against your viscid walls; an alien sensation that feels good, albeit you still don’t feel full, even so, it’s tingly and blissful.
Your brows furrow, lips disjoined to produce heartily mewls, evoking Eddie of his altruism. He can’t get enough of how you taste, of how heavenly your sounds are despite the deed being so irreverent. He’s thrusting the single digit slowly. So you buck your hips against his face, almost shoving your clit into his mouth.
“M-more,” you whine. “Please. I can take it,”
“Yeah?” he kisses the outside of your cunt, nipping at your thighs. “Gotta stretch you open first, right?”
The tone’s a question, though it careens to remind you of what he’s going to do next. Eddie pulls his finger out, moaning quietly at his scintillating limb. He lifts his middle finger, placing it beside the sticky index before he gingerly impels inside. Your hips raise, your wails turning a bit louder, bursting into pleasured linns of coloratura. 
When he brushes that sensitive spot that makes you sob, one that abuts the waves and fluxes delirium on every blood that swims on your insides. Eddie looks up at you, hair in a tangled mess when you keep pulling on them as he picks up his pace and quaffs at your pulpy button, shoulders spreading your legs at an almost uncomfortable distance that puts an ache from your legs to your thighs.
The sounds you make are absolutely empyrean. They reverberate from the torn walls of the hallway just outside, like angels warbling as they play the harmonious harp with their cherubic fingers; like the skies had opened, let out a beam of sunlight surround him in a circle and take him up to heaven where you remain. 
And they shouldn’t be taking sinners like him; a devil worshiper as they rudely opine. Yet here he was, listening to an angel cry, her teardrops leaking down his fingers to his gyrating wrist, combing through his hair pruriently. 
But now, because of him, he doesn’t think you're an angel anymore. With what’s happening — angels don’t submit to the devil now, do they?
Eddie’s hair is a blazing abradation against your sensitive skin, heightens every part of your senses that explodes your mind. You feel an overwhelming, anomalous twist in the pit of your stomach. 
He places gentle kisses on your silky thighs, looking up at you with such vehemence. “You make the prettiest sounds, Mands. Just as pretty as your voice, hm? Wanna sing for me? Gon’ make you sing so loud, baby.”
Fingers fasten. They scissor, and they spread, and they augment on your viscous in your tight canal. An amoral sound produced by his neophyte hands and your needy, swelling cunt that aches for more despite already having been split open by his fingers. 
You moan, loud, his thumb rubbing circles on your clit as his arm begins to shake the faster he moves his hand inside you. Eddie begins moving up, fingers still fucking you, kissing his way up to your face. He leaves wet spots on your skin, both of his saliva and your wetness. Your hands leave his hair, eyes scrunched close to weep coarsely, pushing at his hand, urging him to go deeper that his cold rings sting your raw folds. 
“I’m gonna cum,” you warn him, stomach flexing, arm grasping at his hastening hand. You clench around his fingers, locking him in place for a split second from how tight it was. “God, Eddie, I’m- you’re making me cu- I’m close,”
“You can cum,” he kisses your cheek, dragging his lips up to kiss the corners of your eyes. “Cum for me, sweetheart. Come on, be a good girl and cum for me,”
You do, with your back bowed, jaw slack with mewls and moans, thighs shaking when he continues to rub your clit even when your cum starts to coat his fingers, dripping down to his rings and wrist. Liquid spurts, a hollow but wet sound when he slows his fingering and fucks your tiny entrance open. 
Finally, Eddie pulls them out with a humiliating shlick, cum leaking out of your hole and onto the thin blanket. He shoves his fingers in his mouth, like it’s his libation —god of fingerfucking, as you’d call him in your mind when he sucks all the white sap.
“Felt good?” he pokes your cheekbone with the button of his nose. “Because if it didn’t, I might as well leave you here and go back to Hawkins butt naked.”
You laugh, slapping lightly at his arm. “It felt amazing, Eddie. Don’t worry.”
Your hands fumble with his jeans. But Eddie kisses you, unrestrained with his tongue sweet, a faint bitter taste of the beer he drank earlier. He places his hands on top of yours, placing them on top of your stomach before he goes back to removing his jeans. 
The sound of his pants unzipping excites you, eyebrows raising as you kiss him harder, hands coming up to grasp his face gently, thumb on his cheek and the rest of your fingers below his jaw that you caress its emolliency. Eddie raises his hips, tugging them down until he’s clad in nothing but silver rings and checkered boxers.
He nods towards his crotch when you break away from him, eyes leading from his chest, to the fuzzy brown hair of his happy trail, to the bulge that pokes out of his loose underwear. “Wanna see it, babe?”
“Can I?”
Eddie snorts. “Yes you abso-fucking-lutely can. Take it out, sweetheart. You can play with it a little,”
He moves to lay halfway beside you, legs dropped and slightly spread, hands on his back to support himself. You get on your knees, face aflame when Eddie’s eyes watch your every move with his bottom lip tucked between his teeth. You wonder how he could be so calm; if he felt the same nervous sensation overwhelm your core, both being neophyte to sex. Nevertheless, you’re not nervous enough that you want to stop.
But when you tug down on the band of his boxers and his cock vaults up, he tries to hide how overwhelmed he is. You ogle, and if you could, you would have foamed at the mouth at the sight of his thick girth, tip swell with precum, how a vein bulges beneath and how his sack hung heavy. A voice in the back of your mind wonders if he could even fit inside you but suddenly you’re starved.
“Pretty,” you breathe out, tongue licking your lips. “Dude, you’re big,”
“Thanks.” he blushes.
Gallantly, you swipe your hand across your slick heat to lubricate your palm. He visibly shudders, eyes glassy, groaning when your fingers enclose around him.
“Fuck,” your wrist gyrates, starts moving up and down on his length. Eddie’s hips buck into your fist, your movement leisurely, like you’re relishing the feeling of his hot cock in your hand. But you lean down, mimicking him earlier by letting a dollop of your spit drizzle down on top of his tip. “Oh- oh god, that felt good,”
You slant down to wrap your lips delicately around his engorged helmet. He moans, breath ruptured when you sink down onto him, taking only what you could and coat the rest with your trembling hand. “Fuck- shit- yeah, baby, your mouth’s amazing,”
He tries not to buck up into your mouth, restraining himself by carding a hand through your hair to cup it on the back of your head. His hearing becomes muffled, nothing but the opaque sound of birds, deluging it with your gurgles, your spit and his fluid that continues to leak from his slit leaking down to his balls. 
Eddie had imagined this once- twice- three, he doesn’t know. It had been too many to count and he feels bad thinking about it; what kind of normal person would imagine their friend being on their knees, naked, sucking on their cock?
You look up at him, eyes vast and credulously submissive with enameled innocence, like you’re repenting with his dick in your mouth, as if it had been your god and you beg for forgiveness for all the sins that you’ve caused.
Jesus, Mary, Joseph. Oh…fuck.
Cardinal paints the alabaster marble of his cheeks, brushing over it until it spreads down to his clenching neck and heaving chest as you imbibe his tip, suctioning your cheeks around his length and jerk him off. You look like you know what you’re doing, leading him to wonder if you’d done this before. He should be jealous, let that fraught warp in his mind and spread over his nerves until he stops you and begins to ask. But pleasure besets him, too much, that the question withers away into the carnal haze.
You gag and he almost cums. “Shit, ‘ve been thinking about this for a long time,” Eddie’s voice is rough, sweat dripping down his temples and onto his hair that settles over his shoulders. You break away from his head, moving down to lave your tongue up from the base above his sack to the ridge beneath his tip. “Ohhh- fuck,”
Eddie gently pulls himself off your mouth, his hand coming down to your cheek and raising your head. His cock grazes your upper lip when it pops out and arches to his stomach, leaking down his happy trail. A luster of his precum and your spit smears on your plump lips, mouth parted to take a short gasp of air as he pulls you up to him.
“How’d you learn how to do that?” he wipes the fluid off the corner of your lip, bringing you into a kiss because he misses you, and just because he wants to taste himself.
“Gave a guy head before I left New York,” you murmur against him. “He came all over my face and some of his cum went in my eye. Got pink eye for two weeks,”
He winces. “Ouch,”
Then he gives you a kiss on your eyelids, your laugh that he interrupts with his mouth, cajoling you with kisses as he lays you onto your back beneath him where he slots himself between your legs, his cock grazing your still sensitive folds that makes you whimper in his mouth.
Craving, Eddie’s hand ventures from your waist, squeezing your ample thigh, stopping on your calf to hike your leg up his waist. He grinds down onto you,  pressing his hardness against the swell of your cunt.
“Still want to do this?” he questions between wet kisses, your hands venturing the slope of his back. “Just say the word and I’ll stop.”
“Don’t,” your eyebrows furrow in frustration. “I mean, I still want to do this. Christ, please,”
“Okay,” he breaks away, moving across you to check the basket. “Okay okay okay okay- fuck. Gareth forgot the fucking condoms.”
You stammer. “W-you knew we were going to have sex?”
“You never know,” he laughs nervously, copying you. “Um. I could pull out. I mean, I can’t exactly promise you I’d have the- the energy to do so. But I could just eat you out ‘till you’re okay. OH! Sixty-nine! We could do that! That way we’re both satisfied,”
“Eddie,” you reach between to grab his cock, squeezing lightly. His eyes flutter, groaning. “Just- just fuck me, okay? We can figure it out later.”
“Shit, okay,” he leans down to kiss you. “And I’m not gonna fuck you, babe,”
Eddie digs his nose into the crook of your neck, his hand replacing yours, slapping his tip on your bud. His forehead rests on your cheek when he does this, relishing in your small moan. “Why not?”
“‘Cause I’m gonna make love to you,” he lazily kisses your cheek. “‘Y need to stop being vulgar sometimes, sweetheart.”
He jabs at your entrance, before he slowly pushes himself in.
A searing pain threads around your cunt, chiefly at your entrance and your inner walls; though, when the pain spreads across your body, it numbs on your nerves, so the only thing burning was your sex. But Eddie’s taking it slow, agonizingly slow, feeling the tension that radiates. He comforts you through soft strokes against, kissing your cheek at every inch he pushes in.
When you wince once his pelvis pushes against your clit, Eddie lifts his head from your shoulder, his eye twitching lightly from holding back. He massages your thigh, other hand coming up to cup your face and rest his thumb on the corner of your eye when tears begin to form. 
“Are you okay?” he whispers, trying not to move, but his tip’s right at your spot. “Do you want me to pull out? Does it hurt too much?”
“It’s supposed to hurt right?”
“Well, I heard it does,” he kisses your nose. “Sometimes it doesn’t for others, though,”
“Okay,” you chuckle lightly, grasping harder at his back.
It took almost a minute for the sting to retire, and he stayed pliant inside you, waiting until he felt your walls relax around him; until your crumbled face slackened and your mouth opened, letting out sacred breaths. 
“You can move now,” Eddie smiles, slanting his mouth against yours. His tongue explores your mouth, mouth staying closed around yours as he begins to pull out halfway, before he pushes back in slowly. 
Eddie sheathes himself inside you, an omnipotent surge of sybaritism divaricates your senses.  He brushes his hair behind your ears, gazing down at you even though your eyes are closed and you stare into a void with your body aflame. And he feels good- amazing, with every stretch that enkindles every nerve.
You look blissed beneath him, every bone submitting to every grind, every time his head hits that very spot that lets you create sensual croons, soft ones that it seems like you’re silently gasping with your parted lips. He places a kiss to where your eyebrows join, sloppy with his hedonistic thrust. 
It’s nothing but soft, breathless moans, his grunts and your whimpers when the pain numbs out, his lips moving down until he meets yours with his ever loving tongue brushing your bottom lip from the lax kiss. The tush of hair tickles your skin, his balls slapping gently against your ass, his hand leaving your thigh to push your silky coiffed hair off your shoulder. 
He doesn’t hurry, takes his time with you like he’s got every second of your lives, like you both don’t lack sleep. And Eddie can’t stop kissing every inch that he could reach — whether it be the hollow skin of your collarbone, or leaving bites on your neck to mark you, not because he claims your being but because he wants to own your heart. He kisses your cheekbones dampened by your tears, taking your hand from his back, leaning down to kiss the tattoo he stabbed onto your skin. 
“You can cry,” Eddie whispers. “I got you. You look so pretty, hm — fuck, my pretty, pretty girl.”
You let your tears fall down to his thumbs, slowly opening your eyes even though it stings to do so with the tears that prod at your eyeballs. Eddie smiles, clasping his hand around yours and kisses every calloused fingertip.
“Ah, Eddie,” your bottom lip juts out, letting the moans flow. “Feels- f-feels so good. Your cock feels amazing,”
“Shit, Mands, don’t say that,” he laughs weakly. “You’re gon’ make me cum faster than I intend to,”
Each thrust builds a bubble inside, until it explodes and floods you in rhapsodic waves. A heavy feeling that tells you that you’d never get sick of feeling him buried deep in your gummy walls, or of hearing his breathless moans, or the love that radiates through every caress of his that brings you comfort. 
The lacuna is almost not there, like he wants to melt his skin with yours. His sweat drips down to your bare chest, where his lips venture until he wraps his mouth around your sensitive nipples that had been chafing against his chest. You run your fingers through his hair, your hips lunging up to grind with his. 
Eddie’s definitely not fucking you. No, no with his velvet sighs, or with his naughty suckles. He’s making love to you like he said; like he promised. 
“You feel me making love to you?” you nod, taking his face down to smush it against yours. “Put your legs around me, sweetheart,”
You do, gently circling your legs around his waist, heel pressing onto the bottom of his spine. You feel yourself split open, suctioning his cock, driving him deeper. It’s when the lewd sounds increase their volume, whenever his heavy sack hits your wet cunt as he picks up the pace of his thrust, pushing in and in and in.
“Fuck,” you cry out, pulling lightly on his hair. When you suck on his collarbone, a claret bruise colors his pearlescent skin, his chest reddening from the amount of sanguine blood that flows through. “You’re so deep,”
“Can you look at me, honey?” your eyes force itself open to stare deep in his doe eyes, roaring with ecstasy, staring right at the windows of your soul. “Hi there, Mandy.”
Eddie gathers both your hands in one hand and pins them above you, which you meekly allow him to while his vacant one slithers itself between your bodies to rub on your clit. The words in your mouth turn into moans, getting drunk at the bliss. 
He moves faster, the sounds making it seem like he’s fucking you but you’re too lost to care. Eddie moans, keeps on nudging your nose whenever your eyes begin to flutter shut from lethargy.
“You’re taking me so well, hm?” he nips at your jawline. “Pretty little pussy just taking my cock, yeah?”
It’s just you and Eddie inside that abandoned home, you believe. You feel him carve his skin against yours like a promise, when you exchange your slick sweat and your breathy moans swallowed by his open mouth that hovers yours; his hips folding against yours in corybantic impetus. He refuses to close his eyes as if he’d lose you when he blinks, devotion swelling his waterline. 
He drills faster and deeper, the hollow and wet sound of your arousals spurs him on more. There’s a sting on the inside of your cunt, though too faint for it to even dwell in your mind. Then that now familiar feeling of something twisting at the bottom of your stomach comes to surface, burgons over your senses, and so did Eddie’s.
“I’m gonna cum,” you mewl softly. “I’m gonna cum, Eddie.”
“I know, baby,” his grip tightens on your wrists, his thumb on your clit adding pressure and fastens his rubs. Eddie wantonly fucks his cock inside you now, moaning at your small cries when he hits that spot over and over again. “I gotta pull out, okay?”
“No!” you push his chest against yours, locking your feet around him. “Cum- cum in me. Want it in me, please.”
And who was he to resist you?
(Someone who isn’t ready to be a father, technically. But he seriously couldn’t resist you.)
Eddie kisses over your fluttering pulse, his cock snug, pressing himself against your thighs. He continues rubbing your clit, his blunt nails pressing on the sides of your wrist. And he coaxes you through the billow of your orgasm. “That’s it, baby. Good girl- shit- oh, fuck, gonna cum inside this pussy, yeah? Gon’ give you all of me.”
You cum with a gasp, lewd sloshing from your pussy as you gush around him weakly. You feel his cock twitch inside you, right before he tries to muffle his moans by kissing you sloppily, mixing his sultry seed with yours when he slows his thrust, pushing it inside deeper.
He mouths at your chest, licking across the top of your breast before he works up your nipples. Eddie moves his hips again for a couple more times before he slowly pulls out of you.
Your legs fall to your sides. Eddie kisses your knees, massaging your legs, spreading them apart.
Then he pales. “Fuck, (y/n), you’re bleeding-”
“Huh?” your head lifts, seeing the small pink puddle beneath your ass. Eddie wipes his sweat on his thighs, reaching for his shirt that’s been thrown somewhere to wipe it across your cunt hastily. “Babe that’s normal…”
You hide your eyes behind your wrist, panting heavily. The pounding on his heart eases, gently wiping across your cunt. “Really?”
“To some. But I did,”
Eddie reaches for a new bottle of beer from the basket on top of your head, opening it with his teeth before he slots himself back between your legs. You prop yourself up to your elbows, his hand cupping below your mouth when he brings the bottle to your lips.
You drink the bittersweet liquor, swallowing slowly. He smiles at you. “You did a great job, yeah?” He kisses your forehead, and he can’t help but cheekily lather your cunt with his cum when he reaches down to slide his fingers between your semi-bleeding folds. 
“Ah-” you squirm away, gripping tightly onto him. “Ouch. Sen- sensitive, c-christ,”
“Sorry, baby,” he plucks his finger inside his mouth, morsel of cum and your blood filling his taste buds. “Couldn’t resist,”
Eddie slants his lips onto yours, letting your pulse relax in the frenzied mist, the afterglow ensnaring your beating hearts. You see that the moon grants his eyes a vermeil glow when he pulls back, skin glistening like stars in the night sky, luring you in for you to lose yourself in them — you do, basking in the comfort of his gaze, pilfering your soul.
Double-cross the vacant and the bored
They’re not sure just what we have in store
In November of 1979, Eddie Munson stood breathless on the stage of the theater room for the Middle School Talent Show, electric guitar in hand, buzzed hair drenched with sweat that dripped down to his Bauhaus black shirt. The aftermath of his oh-so-metal performance of Breaking The Law left the parents clapping scatteredly, and his classmates hollering and yelling from their seats.
He looked back on his then bandmates and little Gareth who sat proudly behind the large drum set. Eddie laughed, clapped with them before he genuflected, ignoring the judgemental stares of conservative parents who watched his every move as he walked down the stage.
“Well, that was a very loud and brazen performance from… Corroded Coffin,” Mr. Clarke smiled brightly at them, holding the card in his hand. “Up next we have a very, very lovely girl named-”
He said a name, which Eddie deemed as the girl who sat in front of him during History, who wrote things on top of her books that he recognized were lyrics he’s unfamiliar to. Eddie ran his hand across his buzzed head, looking around and wondered where that girl may be.
Little Gareth stood beside Eddie, who pointed behind to the backdoors. When he turned, the doors were swinging open, the exit seen through the small window where he saw her running away to Hawkins High.
Eddie patted his friend’s back, deciding to follow that girl in a purple dress and short pigtails that disappeared into the darkness of the school parking lot.
The doors slammed against the walls, twice, and he ran and ran until he reached Hawkins High where she hid. He roamed the unfamiliar walls, knocking against the dents of the lockers, until he heard the gentle sound of piano from the music room nearby.
Like an angel’s cry for help, as he remembered. The tune of that song his uncle sang every morning familiarizes itself in his eardrums. Eddie approached the door, peaked through the small window, and saw
You.
Your back to him, back hunched, purple dress resting down to your knees with your hands idly pressed at the keys with a melancholy mist surrounding you. Eddie listened to you sing, a couple pitches wrong but nevertheless soft and dulcet, even though he heard something restraining your throat with what seemed to be held back sobs.
“Oh Mandy, well you came—”
When he stormed in, the doorknob slamming at the wall, you yelled, high pitched and laced with fear. Eddie’s eyes had widened and closed the door, placing a finger up to his lips to shush you.
“Hey- hey hey hey no, shh, quiet—” he lunged at you, cupping his hand over your mouth. Your screams had died instantly, though your eyes remained wide with distress and tears that stained his hand. You placed your hands on the bench, waiting until Eddie removed his hands from your mouth.
He saw that you had missing teeth like his, both on the same spot when you hissed at him. That you looked like you had been freshly crying (which you were) with your lips pouted and eyes stained red with the tears that priced your eyes.
Once his hand returned to his side, you kicked his shin, hard enough that Eddie knew he’d have a bruise (he did. A big one that lasted for a week). He winced loudly, rubbing the spot “What is wrong with you? Why didn't you knock?”
“Dramatic entrance,” he spread his arms, bowing down to you like he’d just finished a show. “I didn't mean to scare you like that. S-sorry. Are you okay?”
You had surveyed his intimidating demeanor of oversized black Bauhaus tee, ripped jeans, a single skeleton ring with a slick buzzcut that shone from the fluorescent lights of the music room with puffy eyes. Eddie felt that nervousness bubble in his stomach, knowing how well you’re judging him. But your posture remained relaxed and you showed no ounce of fear so he thought that was new.
When you remained silent, he took the opportunity to speak again. “My uncle loves that song,” he sat beside you, making you scoot over. “He sings it almost every morning.”
“Mandy?” you said, fiddling with your fingers, sniffing.
“Yeah,” his tongue prods at the gaps between his teeth, feeling the gums that protected his adult teeth. “Oh, Mandy. Well, you kissed me and stopped me from shaking,” 
You smiled weakly, sniffling. “My mom likes it too,” 
“Really?” You nodded, tugging on your dress. “I wouldn’t blame her. I like it, too.” Eddie had reached for his pocket, pulling on his skull handkerchief as he spoke again. “Why did you run away? You were next and you ran.”
“I was nervous,” you huffed, tears welled your eyes. “Tammy Thompson said I sounded like a muppet singing so I ran away so I wouldn't embarrass myself,”
Eddie gasped. “She said that?” he furrowed his eyebrows. “She’s the one who sounds like a muppet.” 
You gawped. “No she doesn’t!”
“Yes she does!” Eddie pressed his fingers on either side of his nose, before he began singing in a voice shrill and deafening that made you laugh hard. “Yesterday's a dream- oh! I face the morning yeah yeah crying on a breeze woah ooh The pain is calling- aaaaaaa!!”
You laughed beside him, both your small chests aching for the lack of breath that had been wheezed out, cheeks strained and eyes welled with tears. “Okay, maybe she does sound like that,” your smile withered. “But, what if she’s right?”
 “She isn’t.”
“You didn't even hear me sing,”
“Yeah, I did,” Eddie scooted closer, bumping his arm with yours. “You sounded cool. You sounded like an angel. A pretty metal angel.”
You remembered that it had been the first time you blushed — thirteen year old Eddie Munson, who still had baby teeth at his age, had been the receiving end of that bashful smile; you remembered that he asked if you could play, and you did, with the ends of your purple dress tickling his knees that exposed from his jeans.
“Metal?” Eddie nodded. “I was playing the piano.”
“Well, anything can be metal,” he pulled out his handkerchief. “Crying is metal. Singing is metal. This chair,” he used his other hand to grasp at the leg of the bench and shook it, making you giggle. “Is metal.”
That night, not only did Eddie Munson offer you his handkerchief for aid (that he wiped beneath your nose himself, unbothered by the thick snot dampening the fabric), but he offered you friendship. He offered you comfort and validation, and you offered him acceptance. 
That he proceeded to compliment not just your voice but your hair and your dress. Eddie Munson made you comfortable that night, had kindled something between the two of you that you called a friendship. He watched you play that piano in the music room unabashedly and confidently, him being your first ever audience, and Eddie stood up from the bench, and clapped at you like you’d performed at a concert.
That he sang Don’t Fear The Reaper by Blue Öyster Cult (and gave you a mixtape right before you left) in front of you so you’d get even.
He took your feelings seriously, said that you’d do great and it’s normal to get nervous before a performance; talked to you with his innocent, doe-eyes gaze with his hand on your shoulder for comfort.
And that he watched you, standing in front of the crowd, cheering you on as you sang Mandy with full confidence and carelessness of the judgemental eyes and insults from Tammy Thompson.
You went back home with the thought of that boy with a buzzcut that made you smile brighter than anyone else had. And you had a silly little childish crush on him for god knows how long. 
But Eddie had a crush on you until 1982, where he unfortunately started to forget. And you, the same.
Yet he never forgot. He always thought about that girl in the pretty purple dress who had a pretty smile and a cute laugh, who gave him a kiss on the cheek for cheering her on during the talent show. 
He thought about her — you — every night before going to bed and he dreamt of you. 
And now, here in 1986 where you sat on the passenger seat of his car with a cigarette in your mouth, racing the borrowed time before the sun begins to rise, the open window that blew the hair out of your face as you stared out with a blissed smile, Eddie realizes he’s been playing that dangerous love game since he was thirteen.
That he’s already charged Vecna and his swarm of bats with nothing more than a blunt spear, courage, a dream and a crush that blossomed into love. He’s been there since 1979, having it paused for four years before returning to the Upside Down when you came back.
He’s already played that dangerous game of love and now, he’s killed Vecna with a stake through his heart and won.
Eddie parks his car beside the broken fence of weathertop, the black sky now a bright shade of gray. You smile at him, unbuckling your seatbelt, before you simultaneously open the doors together and exit.
You hold the basket in your hand, the other laced around Eddie’s, climbing up that hill until you reach that spot you both were in weeks ago, with the tall grass tickling your bare ankles, hands tight against each other, a silent promise of protection as he holds you close to him. 
Your equilibrium is askew from earlier events, his shirt hangs well over your body that tickles your sensitive skin, and Eddie actually is shirtless, after unfortunately getting too much dust on your dress. 
But he feels free, standing on top of the hill with his tattoos and the love of his life holding his hand. When the white clouds start to emerge and levitate above him, its shapeshifting glory; pertinently gifting you with peaceful vapor that flows through the town. 
You both sat down, and soon you’ve both got a sandwich and a beer in your hands, sitting side by side, watching as the sun deliberately rises from the earth. You rest your head on his shoulder, munching on the sandwich, bottles balanced between your legs.
“No wonder why your mom’s eager to watch the sunrise,” you smell his musk of faint sex and cigarettes. Eddie presses a kiss on the top of your head. “It’s beautiful,”
He looks at you, the afterglow of sex still dawned on your vogue. You rip a piece of bread off and pop it into your mouth, and Eddie says, “I love you,”
You look up at him, the warm, dandelion smolder of the sun illuminates your face stupendously. He doesn't need to go further into detail how pretty you looked. 
But you? — with all the darkness of the world put on pause like some movie, the pastel colors of dawn that crawl up from his chin to the entirety of his face, his tangled mush of curls that frame his picturesque, devilishly handsome face, it heralds safety; love and adoration that you harbor for this man. 
“Yeah?” you press your chin on his shoulder. “Didn’t peg you as the type to fall after sex, Munson,”
“Oh, sweetheart, I fell a long time ago,” he rubs his nose against yours. “I just forgot,”
“How romantic,”
Eddie places his sandwich on his lap, just so he could push your hair behind your ear and stare at you. So he could see you, validating you for all your worth. 
You both sit there, on the field just where your bones will rest, until it withers into dust and disappear behind those dirt and stone and go one like you both never existed. But death was the least of your concerns, relishing in the moment you have with this person who'd given you validation when you sought for it (and Eddie, who stares at you with such devotion like you'd given him everything he fought for — acceptance).
“But yeah,” you whisper. “Maybe me too,”
He leans down to kiss you. And when the sun rises and coats you with its celestial brilliance, with his kiss chaste and soft and so loving, you break away with a small click created by your wet, plump lips.
“I love you,” you say. And you mean it.
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songs played by sequence: unnamed Mötley Crüe song/ Mandy - Barry Manilow/ Your Love - The Outfield/ Third Uncle - Bauhaus/ Marian - Sisters of Mercy/ Message in a Bottle - The Police/ I Wanna Be Somebody - W.A.S.P./ I Want To Know What Love Is - The Foreigner/ Paranoid - Black Sabbath/ Breaking the Law - Judas Priest/ Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic - The Police/ Broken Wings - Mr. Mister/ Runnin' With the Devil - Van Halen/ Only The Good Die Young - Billy Joel/ 1979 - The Smashing Pumpkins (not in the fic)
special thanks to @poppy-metal and her very horny anons who inspired me for the smut i love u
REBLOGS AND FEEDBACK ARE APPRECIATED 💕
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hpsaffics · 8 months
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✨ WLW Wed: Bellamione (Part 1) ✨
A biweekly HP femslash rec list made by the lovely members of the HP SAFFICS (18+) discord server. See all previous rec lists in the WLW Library.
Currently: Hermione Granger/Bellatrix Black Lestrange (see Part 2) Previously: Fake Dating (see list)
💫 HELLA LONG (>100k) 💫
Cover to Cover by NavalCat [E, 745k]
Hermione is lost... She has left the wizarding world behind her, hiding from the reality and expectations in muggle London, passing the time working in a small bookshop... When Hermione keeps being rescued by an oddly familiar stranger and discovers a new author she feels she knows through the pages, she doesn’t know if she is losing herself more or if she is finally found.
Breaking the Window by Useful_Oxymoron [E, 271k]
When they find a magic pool in the Forbidden Forest, it kicks off an unlikely friendship for two lonely girls thirty years apart of each other. Hermione begins a desperate search to find a way to save her new friend from the fate she knows awaits her, all the while dealing with the severe repercussions of having lived through a war. It becomes the start of an unexpected adventure.
Glass Silence by Zarrene Moss (Menzosarres) [E, 270k]
In another world, Hermione Granger never attended Hogwarts. Orphaned at age three, she grew up supporting a low-income adoptive family without the means to pay for her education. Post-war desperation and a chance encounter lead her into the employ of the three Black sisters. She finds herself caught in their deadly web, helplessly waiting to see who will reach her first.
Under My Skin by Harrytoad [E, 265k]
What if meeting Hermione had been enough for Bellatrix to change sides; the very feel of her in her arms enough to risk everything? Hermione is finally about to embark on her final year. As she approaches her 22nd birthday, she still cannot shake thoughts of the dark witch from her mind. How will she cope when they come face to face once again?
In the Dead of Night by Lost_my_soul_in_a_black_hole [E, 180k]
Hermione discovers something about her professor that leads her to go knocking on her door, late at night.
The English Rose by Loislame84 [M, 109k]
Non magical AU- 30 year old Hermione Granger is gifted a bookshop from her grandfather. She meets an intriguing patron who communicates through letter correspondence.
There's no blood like yours by isuckatnicknames [E, 102k]
Bellatrix is a pretty ancient vampire and Hermione is her 'meant-to-be'. There's no stronger bond that that.
The House Ring by annacec [M, 102k]
On September 19th, 1979, the life of Bellatrix Black was forever altered. 16 years and an Askaban stay later, Bellatrix is tired of waiting, and begins the process of claiming her witch. Hermione Granger receives a ring and innocently slides it on her finger, changing her life as she knows it, and paving her path to destiny.
💫 LONG (10k-100k) 💫
Black Jaguar by toujourspurbh [M, 97.1k]
Recently divorced, Bellatrix Black is looking for a helping hand whilst trying to juggle a young child and world famous business. Hermione Granger, star student at university, is looking to broaden her future horizon and teach English to the new generation. After applying for a nanny role one day, the student comes to find her life turned upside down by black curls and blood red lips.
Catching Midnight by deepforestspecter [E, 96.9k]
Bellatrix Black always gets what she wants, and right now that's the cute little barista that works at her sister's coffee shop. Hermione Granger turns out to be not at all what she's expecting.
Just an Itch by Loislame84 [E, 91.8k]
Hermione Granger is starting her Doctoral Program at her University and has a one night stand the night before. Little did she expect her one night stand to show up the very next day.
The Dark Mark by Loislame84 [E, 83.6k]
Bella owns a tattoo parlor and is looking for a shop girl. Hermione is a uni student who needs a part time job.
A Home at the End of the World by @ludling [E, 56.4k]
Hermione becomes Bellatrix's Horcrux. A love story in twelve parts.
Heaven is a Pirate Ship by @vitaminpops [E, 33.9k]
Hermione's being shipped off into an unhappy marriage when the most incompetent pirate crew captures her. Featuring: one trigger-happy but sexy pirate, a dysfunctional father-son relationship, a general absence of morals, and the many uses of knives.
Muse by deepforestspecter [E, 32.3k]
Hermione responds to an ad titled Artist Seeking Model. One thing leads to another.
September by @hustlingrube [M, 31.3k]
Bellatrix’s uncharacteristic behaviour gives Hermione cause for concern.
🌙 Want more Bellamione? 🌙
@bellatrixfest | AO3
Discord Communities: Bellamione Cult | Bellamione Coven
Bellamione: Tag on Tumblr | Tag on AO3
WLW Library: Tumblr | Tag | AO3
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bygone-hollywood · 1 month
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“I liked Clara. A very warm, sweet, generous girl.” —Colleen Moore
(From Gary Cooper: An Intimate Biography by Hector Arce, 1979)
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hotvintagepoll · 25 days
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Propaganda
Louise Brooks (Pandora's Box, Diary of a Lost Girl)—Louise Brooks started off as a dancer and went to work in the Follies before going to Hollywood. Disappointed with her roles there, she went to Germany and proceeded to make Pandora's Box, the first film to show a lesbian on-screen (not her but one of her many doomed admirers in the film), and Diary of a Lost Girl, both of which are considered two of the greatest films of the 20th century. She helped popularize the bob and natural acting, acting far more subtly than her contemporaries who treated the camera as a stage audience. After the collapse of her film career and a remarkably rough patch as a high-end sex worker, she was rediscovered and did film criticism, notably "Lulu in Hollywood," which Rodger Ebert called "indispensable." Also, christ. Look at her.
Ruth Weyher (Secrets of a Soul, Warning Shadows)—my vintage crush
This is round 1 of the tournament. All other polls in this bracket can be found here. Please reblog with further support of your beloved hot sexy vintage woman.
[additional propaganda submitted under the cut.]
Louise Brooks propaganda:
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"Defined the style of the modern flapper. A gaze that could make a stone fall in love."
"Louise Brooks left a legend far greater than her real achievement as an actress, but even today few people have seen her films. In our own time, the fascination with Brooks seems to have begun in 1979 with a profile by Kenneth Tynan in the New Yorker, which revealed that the actress who made her last movie in 1938 was alive and living in Rochester, N.Y. Such was the power of Tynan's prose that people began to seek out her existing films, primarily this one, to discover what the fuss was about. What we see here is a healthy young woman -- she was 23 when the film was released -- with whom the camera, under G.W. Pabst's influence, is fascinated. There is a deep paradox in Brooks and her career: the American girl who found success in the troubled Europe between two wars; the vivid personality who briefly dazzled two continents but faded into obscurity; the liberated woman who had affairs with such prominent men as CBS founder William S. Paley as well as with women including (by her account) Greta Garbo but wound up a solitary recluse. And all of this seems perfectly in keeping with her most celebrated role in Pandora's Box. For despite her bright vitality, her flashing dark eyes and brilliant smile, Brooks's Lulu becomes the ultimate femme fatale, careering her way toward destruction, not only of her lovers but eventually of herself."
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"She invented having bangs to indicate that you have borderline personality disorder"
"chances are if youve ever seen a "flapper girl" character or even just art of a generic flapper type made after the 20s it was based on her appearance - particularly the bob hairstyle! she had some pretty rough experiences through her life before during and after her tumultuous acting career which ended in 1938 but she made it to the 80s, wrote an autobiography and did a lot of interviews that she was never afraid of being honest in about her own life or peers of the age, and apparently was unabashed about some affairs she had with well known women (including greta garbo!!)"
"She read Proust and Schopenhauer on set between sets. She was one of the original flappers/new women of the 1920s. She had a one night stand with Garbo and was the inspiration for Sally Bowles in Cabaret. Truly a stone cold fox."
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"on her wikipedia page it says her biographer said she "loved women as a homosexual man, rather than as a lesbian, would love them" and while i have no idea if this is true or not i thought that was very gender of her"
"despite being american she was big in german expressionist films and thus her aesthetic was unmatched!!"
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So far ahead of her time in regard to portraying complicated women. Timeless elegance. "I learned to act by watching Martha Graham dance, and I learned to dance by watching Charlie Chaplin act.” - Louise Brooks
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Ruth Weyher propaganda:
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kdramaladies · 1 year
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@kdramaladies 1ST YEAR ANNIVERSARY     ↳ feat. @haeyeongs​‘s favourite friendships between women
RUN ON (2020 - 2021) dir. Lee Jae Hoon WORK LATER, DRINK NOW (2021) dir. Kim Jung Shik TWENTY-FIVE, TWENTY-ONE (2022) dir. Jung Ji Hyun & Kim Seung Ho GIRLS’ GENERATION 1979 (2017) dir. Hong Seok Goo BE MELODRAMATIC (2019) dir. Kim Hye Young & Lee Byung Hun AVENGERS SOCIAL CLUB (2017) dir. Kwon Seok Jang & Kim Sang Ho GLITCH (2022) dir. Roh Deok
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Dating Steve Harrington Headcanons
(with help from @mqxshroom )
He truly is a mom, okay? Especially with bringing jackets.
"Bring a jacket!"
"It's not even cold outside, Steve!"
~
"Steve... I'm cold."
"I knew it." And he'll give you his jacket, no matter how cold it is outside, even if it's absolutely freezing.
He loves kissing your neck, and not just sexually
He kisses it to calm you down, to relax you, show his affection in general
Once, you were crying about something stupid, but he could see that you were really upset, so he started peppering kisses all over your face and neck to calm you down and wipe away the tears
He's always attatched to you in some way, whether it be by your entertwined hands, his arm around your waist, or his hand in your back pocket
He's a cheesy ass little shit
Flowers. Heart shaped chocolate boxes. A mixtape of your favorite songs.
He rebuilt a car? And gave it to you? It's the nicest, new-to-you car you've ever seen in your entire life
A goddamn 1979 Chevrolet Camaro Z-28
It's fucking beautiful
He gave you a bunch of keys on a keyring so you can feel fancy
But like six of them are keys to his house in different patterns with different shapes at the top
This boy is so damn whipped for you, like--
You don't even really know until Eddie Munson tells you that you're all Steve talks about, like nonstop
"Oh, Y/n's so pretty!" "Oh, you should've been there yesterday, Y/n told the funniest joke..." "Oh, Y/n? My gorgeous girlfriend who I love very, very, very much? That Y/n?"
Like I said, fucking whipped
Yes, he lets you borrow his clothes, obviously
He thinks you look so pretty when you're wearing one of his shirts or fake-modeling his jeans, laughing your ass off watching the legs drag on the floor behind you
He's in love with an idiot, yes, but he doesn't care, he loves you so damn much
He wants to marry you, he wants to hold you in your bed in your house and carry you up your stairs, past your kids' rooms to your room
He wants whatever you want
Like obviously he has his own preferences about food and movies and shit like that
But future-wise
Lots of kids? "Of course, darling!" No kids? "Anything you want, babe!" Sixteen dogs? "Maybe tone it down a little, but I'll get you six!"
Constant compromising
You want to stay home and cuddle and he wants to go watch a stupid game? "I'll skip this one, but you have to come to the next one."
He's possessive
In a charming way
"Hey, look at that girl over there! She's smokin' hot, think she'd go with me?"
"That girl at the bar? The one wearing a huge ass jacket 'cause she was 'cold'?"
"Yeah, that's the one."
"Well, that's my wife girlfriend."
He has to constantly stop himself from calling you his wife
And after you're married, he turns into Johnny from Hotel Transylvania
"That's my girlfriend!"
"I'm your wife, Steve."
"My wife! Even better."
All in all, this boy is a 10/10 on the care meter and will do anything to make you happy even if it means leaving you alone when you want to be alone (he won't do that, either, because when you tell him to "go away", he knows it really means "I want cuddles, goddammit!")
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