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steddieas-shegoes · 2 months

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cw: discussion of past parental death due to overdose, mention of drug use

Steve stumbled upon the article when he was helping Robin collect articles for a project for her Industry Studies course.

He didn’t think much of reading about another small time musician getting caught up with the wrong crowd, and overdosing or getting in a drunk driving accident. It seemed like a pretty common theme. It was terrible, sad, horrible, but he’d seen about 30 stories like that in the last two days and he was kind of getting numb to it all.

Until he saw the name Munson.

Until a picture of a woman with long, curly hair and Eddie’s smile stared back at him next to a headline that read: “Kentucky Country Queen Dead at 27.”

He read the article with tears in his eyes.

Elizabeth “El” Munson, a hopeful country singer and guitarist, was found dead in her home by her six year old son, Edward. The boy reportedly tried calling his father at work with no luck before finally calling his uncle, Wayne Munson.

Toxicology reports show that she overdosed on multiple illegal substances. At this time, it is believed to have been accidental and no foul play is suspected.

It has now been made clear that Elizabeth was seeking a divorce from her husband, Al Munson, but had not been successful as lawyers were unable to locate him until her funeral. Their son has been put in the care of Wayne until further notice.

Robin found him 20 minutes later, staring at the page with swollen, red eyes. She took the paper, read the article, and put it back in the files wordlessly.

“I don’t think he wants us to know,” she finally said.

She was probably right.

But Steve had grown pretty close to Eddie over the last six months, had opened up to him about his parents, his fake friends, his concussions and nightmares. Eddie had started opening up to him, too.

He thought he had, anyway.

He told him about how his mom died when he was young and his dad was awful so he moved in with Wayne. He told him about how his dad appeared every couple years looking for money or a place to stay and Wayne always turned him away.

But he never really talked about his mom, always said he barely remembered her.

Did he know what happened?

——

Steve asked Wayne the next morning.

He’d come by to pick Eddie up for a day with the kids, but Eddie hadn’t set his alarm and was still asleep.

Perfect opportunity to find out more.

“So. Eddie’s mom.”

Wayne tensed over his plate of toast and scrambled eggs. He didn’t look up, just took another bite of food.

“Does he know how she died?”

“Do you?”

“Newspaper said overdose,” Steve tapped his fingers nervously against his thigh. “Says Eddie found her.”

“Trauma messes with your memory.”

It was final, a statement that left Steve with more questions, but a certainty that he’d get no answers.

“Yeah.” He gulped. “I’ve heard.”

——

Steve doesn’t bring it up to Eddie for a while.

He figured Wayne’s reaction said a lot about what Eddie knew or would be willing to share.

But they were a little high and alone and Eddie’s hand was warm in his and his filter was broken.

“I’m sorry you had to be the one to find your mom.”

The air around them was thick. The silence was deafening.

“Me too.”

Eddie’s voice was quiet, nothing like his usual playful tone.

Steve immediately wanted to put this conversation in reverse, pretend his curiosity didn’t matter.

“I’m sorry.”

Eddie moved closer to Steve, his arm a constant pressure against Steve’s. His head leaned against Steve’s shoulder.

“Wayne doesn’t know I know how she died. He doesn’t know I know my dad gave her bad drugs, convinced her all the up and coming musicians were doing a new strain of heroin. She’d kicked him out of the house,” Eddie’s breath caught. “She shouldn’t have let him come back that day. I heard them arguing before I left for school. She told him she was finding a manager and recording an album and that she was divorcing him. I didn’t know what that meant, but I knew it was bad.”

“Eds, you don’t have to tell me.”

“I know, Stevie. But you know everything else.” Eddie’s face turned until his nose and mouth were pressed against Steve’s arm. “I went to school. Didn’t think about it. Figured my dad would be gone when I got home and might come back in a few days once they cooled off. But when I got home, he was gone and my mom’s bedroom door was closed. And I opened it and there she was.”

Steve turned so he was face to face with Eddie, cupping his jaw and rubbing his thumb along his cheek in encouragement.

“I don’t even know why I tried calling the store first. I didn’t even know if he still worked there. But then I called Wayne and it’s like he just knew.” Eddie’s eyes closed for a moment. “Don’t think he’d ever gotten to our house so quick.”

“Did he know all this?”

“He knew enough. I stayed with him and then my dad gave up his rights. Lied to the counselor about what I knew so Wayne wouldn’t freak. Kept it up for a while,” Eddie let out a small exhale that slightly resembled a laugh. “I read the article about eight years ago. A kid in my class made a joke about me being an orphan because of the drug problem in America as if he even knew what that meant and I decided to see what the newspaper reported.”

“Do you play because of her?” Steve asked.

Eddie blinked back at him.

“I play for a lot of reasons. But I started because of her, yeah,” he whispers. “You’re the first person to ask me that instead of give me that look of pity.”

“I’m sad about how it happened, but giving you pity doesn’t change it. I’d rather hear how it changed you,” Steve whispered back.

They were close, legs intertwined, hands touching bare skin under shirts and on faces and necks.

“It changed everything for me. Wayne packed us up and moved us here as soon as he legally could. Probably for the best. Well,” Eddie gave a small smile. “Definitely for the best. Wouldn’t be here with you if he hadn’t.”

“Do you ever go back?” Steve did his best to ignore the fluttering in his stomach.

“Her birthday every year. She’s got a nice spot near her mom.” Eddie bit his lip. “It’s actually coming up in a couple weeks. Maybe you could come with me?”

“Me? Are you sure?”

Eddie nodded. “If it doesn’t weird you out that I talk to her. I like to give her updates on my life, Wayne’s life, music. Think she’d find it quite funny that I bring the guy I’ve had a crush on for two years.”

It takes a minute for the words to sink in.

“Two years?” Steve’s lips curled up into a smile. “I hope I live up to expectations.”

“I think she’d like you. She’d definitely make fun of me for having a boyfriend who wears polos though.”

“Is that how you’d introduce me?”

“If you’re okay with it.” Eddie leaned his forehead against Steve’s. “I know we haven’t talked about what we-“

Steve pressed his lips to Eddie’s, nearly knocking their noses together painfully in the process.

After the initial shock, they both relaxed into the kiss.

“I’d love to go. As your boyfriend,” Steve said after pulling away for air. “What was her favorite flower?”

“Gardenias. Always wore perfume that smelled like it. Why?”

“Because I have to impress her, right?”

“You realize she’s not gonna actually see or hear you? She’s definitely dead.”

Steve snorted. “I know. But she can still have nice things. Maybe us bringing her nice things in death is a way to apologize for the not nice things she had in life.”

“You’re a pretty incredible boyfriend, sweetheart.” Eddie kissed the tip of his nose. “And you now know more than Wayne, so it’s time for a pinky promise.”

Steve giggled before holding up his pinky. “I swear I won’t tell Wayne anything.”

“And you’ll kiss me whenever I want…”

“That’s a guarantee.”

“And you’ll let me win at Go Fish…”

“Not a chance, Eds.”

Eddie laughed. “Worth a try.”

Steve curled his pinky against Eddie’s. “So do you think she’d like me?”

“Oh. Oh god. She’d love you. You’re exactly who she’d want for me,” Eddie rolled his eyes when Steve flipped his hair back confidently. “And she’d braid your hair every night while you gossiped and sipped tea.”

“And what would you do?”

“Probably just soak it in. Appreciate having her and you around. You’ll just have to gossip with Wayne.”

“Wayne doesn’t strike me as-“

“Oh, he’s got you fooled! He’s a worse gossip than the ladies at the hair salon. Just ask him about the mailbox at the end of the road sometime. Make sure you’ve got an hour to spare.”

“Really?” Steve’s eyes lit up. “Is he home now?”

Eddie pulled Steve forward until he was flush against his front. “No and I have much better plans than gossiping with my uncle.”

“Oh?” Steve’s brow raised.

“It involves my bed and handcuffs. You in?”

“Hopefully you’re in.”

“God, you’re ridiculous. C’mon, now I’m even harder from your stupid flirting,” Eddie sat up and tugged until Steve followed. “Can’t believe this is how my night’s going.”

“Believe it, baby.”

#steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #wayne munson #picturing Eddie’s mom as someone similar musically to Wanda Jackson #she was big in her part of Kentucky #might’ve made it even if not for Eddie’s dad #cw: parent death #cw: mention of overdose #cw: mention of drug use #first kiss #getting together #angst with a happy ending #sorry for the sad part #they kissed about it at the end tho

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brucewaynehater101 · 2 months

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Red Robin AU: Maximum Angst

Tim left to go save Bruce. It didn't matter that no one believed him. It didn't matter that his loved ones, people he trusted, tried to stop him. It didn't matter that everyone wrote his theories off as some sort of mental breakdown and grief stage denial. None of that mattered.

Tim was right, and he was going to prove it.

Two years after Tim left, Dick gets a phone call. It's from Superman.

During a JL mission, some villain gets away from a large JL team up by mentioning one fact: Bruce died in the timestream waiting for someone to save him. He had left clues, as many as he could given his circumstances, of his continued existence and predicament.

Dick, with the help of Damian and some of the JL, leaves Gotham to gather the evidence. Even after two years, art curators and museums are weirdly tense when he brings up the exact piece he wants to see.

A few months of carefully collecting his dad's last momentos occur before Dick has the realization: Tim was right.

Oh gods, Tim!

He can't believe, with all the responsibilities he had to juggle, that he just forgot about Tim!

This cues another frantic search as Dick retraces all of Tim's steps. The man allows himself a little laugh when he realizes that Alvin Draper is wanted for being an art thief.

Despite the sloppily covered trails, Dick finds himself at a dead end. The last location Tim might have gone to is in the middle of a desert. When Dick arrives at the spot, an LoA assassin is waiting for him.

Batman is glad that he's dressed in his uniform, he's glad that Damian didn't accompany him, and Dick prepares for the attack.

The assassin regards him neutrally.

The vigilante lowers his fists, but he's still tense in preparation. The assassin rolls their eyes and holds their hand out.

There's a com.

"What's that for?" Batman growls out.

Another eye roll from the assassin as they sigh. "Ra's knows you're looking for Timothy Drake-Wayne."

Hesitantly, the retired acrobat plucks up the com. After placing it in his ear, a smug voice greets him.

The Demon's Head cordially invites Batman to dinner.

Great.

Dick, wanting to find out where his brother is, has no choice but to follow the assassin to what's most definitely a trap.

Later, when Dick is haunted by the memories he desperately combs to liberate himself from his guilt, he'll darkly chuckle as he longs for it to have been a trap.

When the doors swing open to reveal Ra's al Ghul lounging at the head of the table, a feast is laid out before the young man. He forces himself to sit at the opposite end and listen to Ra's prattle on and on about how extraordinary Tim is. How the young outcast knew his father was alive. How he had to resort to taking Ra's hand in order to finish his quest.

As the evening is winding down, Dick had only spoken a handful of sentences. Ra's swirls a wine glass and gazes wistfully into its crimson hue.

"It's a shame, Richard, that it took you twenty-six months to scour for information about Timothy. I'm sure the realization of such would bring him despair."

There's a pause as the Detective's successor runs mental calculations. It has been thirty months since Tim left Gotham.

Emerald eyes, not too dissimilar to the shade of green Dick's son owns, bear down on a man too small for Batman's mantle.

"He died knowing his death would kill his father. It's a shame we lost them both that day."

#dc comics #dc universe #tim drake #dick grayson #bruce wayne #ra's al ghul #dc red robin #batman #dc au #tim drake angst #dick grayson angst #tim died in the desert if that wasn't clear

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bornonthesavage · 10 months

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It was an undeniable fact that Steve was lucky. He had been told it more times than he could count, from all sorts of people, so it must be true. His friends at school told him he was lucky that he had no one at home to give him a bedtime or make him eat vegetables. The housekeeper that came to bring him groceries and to clean once a week told him he was so lucky to live in such a nice house. Ever since he could remember, his parents had told him that he was lucky to be born to an upper-class family. And when others were around, Steve kept up the façade. He could pretend that he agreed, with bright smiles and boastful words. But in the late hours of the night, when he was all alone in that big house, lucky wasn’t the word he thought about. No, what Steve really was, was lonely.

Even at twelve years old, Steve was pretty sure it wasn’t normal for his parents to leave him alone for up to a month at a time. When he was young, they had hired nannies to care for him while they were away. That hadn’t been great either, but at least there had been someone else in the house with him. Someone to talk to and watch TV with and to make dinner. Then, on Steve’s twelfth birthday, his parents had told him he was old enough to look after himself while they were away. They trusted him to not burn down the house, at least. That had been six months ago.

Now, six months later, Steve sat alone in his living room. His parents had left earlier in the week, promising to be home before the end of the month and told him to call if he needed anything. He never called. What would be the point? It wasn’t like they would come home. No, if he needed something, he would figure it out on his own.

Steve pulled his knees up to tuck against his chest as he sat on the couch, watching a rerun of Gilligan’s Island. A half-eaten bowl of popcorn sat on the coffee table along with an empty coke can. He had heated up a bowl of chicken noodle soup for dinner, which he’d eaten with crushed up saltine crackers, but he always found himself craving a snack before bed. It was almost ten o’clock, but he wasn’t yet tired.

When the episode ended, Steve stood and began to make his way toward the kitchen. He could go for one more coke before bed. But before he even made it out of the living room, a loud clatter from the back yard made him freeze. He turned, creeping slowly toward the glass door that overlooked the pool. It had sounded like it came from the shed, which sat beyond the pool deck, nestled almost among the trees. His hand shook as he reached up to flip on the back light. A part of him was convinced he would see a horrible monster racing up his yard toward the house, ready to devour him. But that was ridiculous. There was no such thing as monsters.

The yard was completely empty, the pool glowing an eerie green in the night. Steve scanned the perimeter until his eyes landed on the shed. Though it was dark, it looked as if the door was slightly ajar. Now, Steve knew the sensible thing to do was to ignore it until morning. But then he remembered that Kasie Jones, the girl who sat in front of him in math class, had found an injured mother cat behind her house just one month earlier. It was Springtime, she had said, which meant lots of animals would be having babies. If she hadn’t found them, the mother cat and her babies could have died. Steve couldn’t live with being responsible for that.

So, with only a mild amount of fear, he grabbed a flashlight from the kitchen drawer and slid open the glass door. It was early April, so while the days had grown warm, the nights still held a bit of a chill. Steve slid on his outdoor sandals and began to make his way across the yard. Everything was quiet now, except for the crickets. He approached the shed, tilting his head to see if he could hear any meowing. There was nothing.

It wasn’t until he was directly outside the shed that real fear began to prickle at the back of his neck once more. He was far enough from the house that if anything burst out and took chase, he likely wouldn’t make it back without getting caught. Steve took a deep breath and remembered what his dad was always telling him.

“Be a man. Real men don’t shake like little babies.”

Right. Be a man. He stepped forward and grabbed the edge of the door, which had been swaying slightly in the wind, and yanked it open. There wasn’t much inside the shed, just pool equipment and a few yard tools. Steve leaned inside, casting his light around for any sign of an injured cat. He took a step inside, letting the door swing partially shut behind him. The light caught on random items as he scanned. An old broken truck from when he was little, the pool noodles he liked to use when the weather was warm enough, a leaf blower, a pair of human eyes.

Steve screamed, his heart slamming up into his throat as he stumbled backward and dropped the flashlight. His back hit the wall and he fell, his legs giving out with the sheer force of terror he felt in that moment. There was someone else in the shed with him, someone curled up beneath the work bench on the far wall. The flashlight had rolled away from him, its beam pointed in the wrong direction for him to see. Steve glanced at the door, wondering how quickly he’d be grabbed if he made any sudden movements. A quiet voice spoke from the shadows.

“H-hey. It’s alright. You don’t have to be afraid. I’m not going to hurt you.”

That made Steve pause. Whoever it was sounded young, probably close to his age, and they also sound afraid. But what was another kid doing in his shed at night? Steve took a moment to let his heart rate slow before speaking again.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?”

For a few seconds it was silent, but then he spoke again. “Eddie. My name is Eddie. I was… I was just looking for a safe place to sleep.”

“To sleep?” Steve asked, furrowing his brow. “Why would you want to sleep in this dingy old shed? There are like, a hundred spiders in here, I’m pretty sure.”

He heard the other boy shift around a bit. “It’s better than outside.”

Well, maybe that was true, but it still didn’t explain much. Slowly, Steve moved onto his knees and crawled forward to grab his flashlight. This put him closer to the other boy, with Steve knelt in the middle of the small room. He raised the light until it fell on the other’s face.

Steve had been right that he seemed to be around his age. With dark curls that fell around his ears and big, pretty brown eyes, Eddie didn’t look like much of a threat at all. In fact, he seemed to be in bad shape. There were dark circles beneath his eyes and his cheeks looked a bit sunken in, as if he hadn’t eaten in a while. His knees were tucked up against his chest, but Steve could tell the jeans he wore were dirty and tattered.

“Are you homeless?” Which, okay, maybe that was a rude thing to ask, but Steve thought it was a fair question.

Eddie looked away, his brows lowering slightly. “I’m- I mean… Yeah, I guess so.”

Steve tilted his head. “Where are your parents?”

Something in Eddie’s expression became tight, before crumbling. “They’re dead. My mother died a year ago, my father just last month.”

“Shit,” Steve mumbled. That really sucked. He had never met someone who had lost both their parents. “Do you not have any other family?”

Eddie shook his head. “It’s just me.”

“Oh.” Steve shifted off his knees so he could cross his legs. “But, there are places you can go, aren’t there? Like, an orphanage or something? I could probably call the police and they could—”

“No!” Eddie snapped, his eyes darting up to Steve’s. “No, please, nobody can know about me.”

Steve frowned. That was definitely an odd reaction. “Why? Are you some sort of criminal?”

Eddie snorted, the corner of his lips twitching, as if he found that amusing. “No, not really.”

“Not really? Either you are or you aren’t.”

“I’m not,” Eddie insisted. “I’ve never hurt anybody that wasn’t trying to hurt me. But… There are people. Bad people, who would hurt me if they ever found me. So, I’ll leave if you want me to, but you can’t tell anyone about me.”

Steve stared at the other boy. His eyes were wide and serious, his mouth set into a hard line that told Steve he wasn’t joking. Whatever this kid was mixed up in was dangerous, he could tell that much. It would be smart for Steve to tell him to get lost, to find somewhere else to hide out. But, still. He didn’t want him to just leave.

“Where would you go? If I told you to leave, I mean.”

Eddie let out a breath, his shoulders dropping. “I don’t know. Maybe someone else’s shed. Maybe try and make my way to Indianapolis.”

Steve fiddled with his hands. “That sounds dangerous. You can’t go off to the city all by yourself. You’re just a kid, like me.”

A small smile tugged at the corner of Eddie’s lips. “Not just like you. I can take care of myself.”

That struck Steve somewhere in his chest, the sentiment all too familiar. “Yeah, so can I, but that doesn’t mean you should have to. You should have someone to look after you.”

Eddie tilted his head, his eyes searching Steve’s face. “Are you always alone?”

“What? How- how do you know that?”

“Oh, um,” Eddie averted his eyes, suddenly looking a little bit guilty. “I’ve been here for a few days. I wasn’t trying to spy on you, but I saw that it’s just you in the house. Nobody else ever came or went, but you must have parents, right?”

Steve huffed and rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I have parents. They just… they go out of town a lot for business. And I can’t go with them, because they don’t need a kid running around while they do work. But, it’s like, fine. I have the house all to myself, and I don’t have a bedtime, and I can eat whatever I want.”

Unlike all the other times Steve had told another kid this, Eddie didn’t look all that impressed. If anything, he looked sad. Which… was stupid. So stupid. Steve was lucky. He had everything he could ever want. He didn’t need some orphan, who clearly didn’t have anything this nice, feeling sorry for him.

Eddie rested his chin on his knees. “That sounds really lonely.”

A heavy pit settled in Steve stomach. Nobody else had ever acknowledged that before, and he didn’t really know what to do with it. His first instinct was to defend his parents, to tell Eddie that it was fine, and he didn’t know what he was talking about. But another part of Steve, a stronger part, felt an overwhelming sense of relief. It settled something inside Steve, hearing someone else say the words he’d been keeping locked inside for so long. It was validating.

Slowly, he nodded. “Yeah, it can be. But, that’s just the way it is.”

Eddie didn’t look convinced. He opened his mouth, as if to say something, but before he could, a violent shudder shook his whole body. Steve’s eyes wide at the look of pain that crossed Eddie’s face and he hesitantly reached out a hand. Only, that seemed to make it worse, as Eddie flinched away from his touch.

“No, don’t come closer!” Eddie warned. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Steve furrowed his brow. “Hurt me? Why would you hurt me?”

“No, I don’t want to, but… I haven’t eaten in a week. I’m afraid I won’t be able to control myself.”

A week? What the hell? That was way too long for a person to go without food! No wonder Eddie looked so sickly. He was starving to death.

“Hey, if you’re hungry, come inside with me. I can get you something to eat, no problem!”

But Eddie only shook his head, his face still pained. “No, Steve, it’s not… It’s not that simple. There’s nothing in your house I can eat. Well, nothing that I’ll allow myself to have.”

“What are you talking about?”

A look of resignation came over Eddie’s face. “Steve… I’m not- I’m not normal. You should leave. You don’t want me to come into your house with you.”

He really wasn’t making any sense now. Did Eddie think that just because he was homeless and without parents, he was undeserving of kindness? That was ridiculous. If anything, it made Steve want to help him even more. “Uh, yeah, I do. That’s why I invited you.”

His arms tightened around his legs, as if he were protecting himself. “You shouldn’t do that.”

“Do what?”

Eddie’s eyes flashed up to meet Steve’s. “Invite random strangers into your home. It’s dangerous.”

Steve snorted. “I don’t think you’re dangerous, Eddie. You look one minute from keeling over.”

“Yeah,” he said, letting out a humorless laugh. “And that makes it even worse.”

Alright, Steve was starting to grow tired of arguing about this. “Dude, come on. You have to eat something.”

Eddie made a little sound, like a whimper in the back of his throat, and closed his eyes. “If you knew the truth about me, you wouldn’t say that. If you knew the truth, you would run away. Or maybe even try to hurt me.”

“Whoa, hey, no. Eddie, I promise I won’t hurt you. I’m just trying to help.”

Outside the shed, it sounded like the wind began to pick up as the structure creaked ominously. Steve pulled his jacket more firmly around himself and couldn’t help but think that Eddie’s thin hoodie didn’t seem warm enough. Maybe Steve could give him some of his clothes. It’s not like his parents would ever notice. The look Eddie gave him when he opened his eyes was filled with sorrow.

“Yeah, I know. You seem really nice, Steve. And I’m afraid that if I come with you, I’ll hurt you without meaning to, and then I’ll be a monster, which I don’t want to be.”

Steve was trying to understand, he really was. People called him stupid sometimes, which he didn’t really agree with, but now he was struggling to follow what Eddie was saying. How could Eddie hurt him without meaning to?

“Eddie, I don’t understand. Please, you can tell me the truth. I won’t run away, I promise.”

Eddie shook his head, casting his big eyes down. “You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep.”

“Hey, look at me.” He waited until Eddie did, then scooted forward on his knees. Slowly, without making any sudden movement, he held up his pinky. “I pinky promise I won’t leave you. And I always keep my pinky promises.”

A hesitant smile grew on Eddie’s face, though he still seemed extremely uncertain. Finally, after what felt like forever, Eddie brought his pinky up and wrapped it around Steve’s. It was slightly shocking, just how cold Eddie was. Like his skin was just a thin layer of ice, molded around bones. That couldn’t be good. Steve really needed to get him inside. Before he could pull away, Eddie spoke.

“And I promise to do my very best not to hurt you.”

Steve grinned. “Well, there you go. So, go on then. Tell me what the problem is.”

Eddie sighed, tucking his bottom lip between his teeth. “Okay, I guess I might as well. I don’t have anything else to lose. Um, have you… have you heard of vampires?”

“Vampires?” Steve asked, scrunching up his nose. “What, like Dracula? Or The Count on Sesame Street?”

Eddie snorted and rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I mean sort of. But also, no. What if… what if vampires were real?”

Steve narrowed his eyes. “I don’t understand. Vampires aren’t real, so what does that have to do with anything?”

A look of frustration crossed Eddie’s face. “Steve. I’m trying to tell you. Vampires are real. I know, because I am one.”

For several seconds, Steve didn’t speak. The only sound to be heard was the shifting of trees outside and the quiet breathing of the two boys. Finally, Steve let out a laugh.

“Yeah, right, okay. Look, I don’t know why you don’t want to tell me—”

“Steve—”

“But it’s fine, I guess. You don’t have to trust me, I guess.”

“Steve, I am telling you the truth! See, this is another reason I didn’t want to tell you. Humans never believe in anything beyond what they see in the daylight.”

“Oh, come on,” Steve said, dropping back off his knees to sit on his butt. “I get it, you’re trying to prank me, for whatever reason. But I can’t help you unless I know the truth. Or at least until you tell me what the real problem is. You’re not a vampire.”

“I am!” Eddie insisted, the corners of his lips turning down in a frown. “Do you want me to prove it to you?”

At this point, Steve was getting a little bit annoyed. The joke wasn’t that funny. He was cold, and the dirt on the cement floor was digging into his backside, and he really just wanted to get back inside. So, with a jeering smirk, he leaned forward.

“Yeah, sure, go ahead. Prove that you’re a vampire.”

Eddie didn’t move at first, just continued to stare at Steve with his too big eyes. It was a little unnerving, to be honest, the way he didn’t seem to blink or even move. And then, in a flash of movement too fast to be humanly possible, Eddie shot forward. Steve flinched at the unexpected movement, falling back onto his elbows with a small shout of surprise. He half expected to be attacked, to maybe feel Eddie’s hand around his throat or a fist against his cheek. But it never came.

Slowly, Steve opened his eyes. Only, Eddie was nowhere to be seen. The spot beneath the bench was empty, and when Steve looked around, he didn’t see Eddie anywhere. Had he slipped out the door and run away? Why? Steve didn’t understand. But then, Eddie spoke.

“Steve. I’m up here.”

A chill ran down Steve’s back, some primal part of him that had been dormant waking up at hearing the voice from above. Slowly, Steve tilted his head back. What he saw defied all explanation. Eddie was on the ceiling. He was crouched upside down, his hands gripping the wood beam and his feet planted flat on the roof. Eddie blinked down at him, his hair dangling away from his face.

Steve opened his mouth to scream, a natural response he thought. But before he could utter a sound, Eddie was off the ceiling. He landed on top of Steve, his hand pressed firm to his mouth to stop any sound from escaping and his other hand holding Steve to the ground. For a wiry looking kid, he was sure strong.

“Please, Steve, don’t scream,” Eddie begged, his wide eyes earnest. “I promised not to hurt you, and I won’t. You’re safe with me, okay?”

For a few seconds, all Steve could do was stare up at him. He shouldn’t believe him, logically he knew that. Vampires drank blood, human blood, which Steve had. But if Eddie had wanted to hurt him, surely, he would have already. He could even do it right now. Steve was trapped beneath him, his movement completely restricted. So, slowly, Steve nodded. Eddie chewed his lip, before removing his hand. Steve took a few deep breaths, trying to calm his racing heart.

“Holy crap. You’re like, a real vampire?”

Eddie nodded, still looking concerned. “Yeah, pretty much.”

“Wow. How long have you been a vampire for?”

“Uh, my whole life?” Eddie said with a chuckle.

Steve frowned. “Wait, what? But I thought vampires were made by being bitten.”

Eddie finally climbed off Steve, sitting cross legged in front of him while Steve sat up and matched his position. “Yeah, some. Some vampires are humans who were turned. But others, like me, were born as vampires. Both of my parents were vampires, and they had me.”

Huh. Steve had never heard of anything like that before. “But what about, like, mirrors and blood drinking and stuff?”

“Eh, I mean, most of the stuff humans know about vampires was made up by them. Except for the blood drinking, that’s true.”

“What about sunlight?”

Eddie scrunched up his nose. “Well, I won’t burst into flames if I’m exposed to it. But it does sting my skin and hurt my eyes, so I avoid it if possible.”

Steve nodded, taking that it. “So, that’s why you’re hiding out here in my shed?”

Eddie nodded.

“Hmm, ok. Well, you know, you might be more comfortable inside the house.”

“You… would invite me into your house? Even knowing what I am?”

Steve shrugged. “Yeah, why not? I believe that you won’t hurt me, and it doesn’t sound like you have anywhere else to go. Plus, I’m getting pretty cold.”

He pushed himself to his feet and held his hand out for Eddie, who hesitated. He looked unsure, and maybe a little bit afraid, though Steve couldn’t imagine of what. It wasn’t like he was going to hurt Eddie. When Eddie didn’t immediately take his hand, Steve gave it a shake.

“Come on. It’s okay.”

Finally, Eddie reached up and took it. Steve hoisted him up, then still holding his hand, led him out of the shed. Eddie looked around as they crossed the yard, as if afraid someone was going to pop out and do a sneak attack. They got to the sliding glass door and Steve pushed it open, stepping into the wonderfully warm living room. He tried to pull Eddie in after him, but the other boy hesitated on the threshold.

“What’s wrong?”

“Are you sure? Are you sure you want to invite me in? Once you do, you can’t take it back.”

Steve sighed. “Eddie, I don’t understand. You promised you won’t hurt me, and I’m not going to hurt you, so what’s the problem?”

Eddie chewed on his bottom lip. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to help myself. It’s just… I’m so hungry. I haven’t eaten anything in almost a week, and you… you smell really good. And I don’t want to hurt you, I promise. But what if I lose control?”

Steve blinked a few times. Oh. He hadn’t really considered that. “And… you need to drink blood? That’s all you eat?”

Timidly, Eddie nodded.

“Right. Okay. Well, maybe I could give you a little bit of my blood, just to hold you over, and then—”

“No!” Eddie shouted, ripping his hand out of Steve’s. “No, Steve, please don’t offer me that. I’m too hungry, I know I won’t be able to stop once I’ve started. I’ll kill you, and then… then I really will be a monster.”

Steve chewed his lip, wavering in the doorway. “What do you normally do when you’re hungry?”

“I hunt animals, usually. But… I waited too long. I’m too weak to catch anything on my own now.”

Right. That made sense. Steve was a little relieved to hear that Eddie usually hunted animals. If he could only drink human blood, they would definitely be in a bit of a pickle.

“Okay, here’s the plan,” he said, “Tonight, you’ll come in and sleep somewhere cozy. You won’t kill me or try to drink my blood. Tomorrow I’ll skip school and go to the butcher in town. I know they stock cow blood, because my nana bought some a few years ago to make this really gross pudding.”

Eddie’s eyes went wide, his mouth falling open slightly. “You’d do that? You’d really go out of your way to help me?”

Steve grinned wide, taking his hand once more. “Of course! We’re both on our own right now, so we should look after each other, shouldn’t we? And my parents left me plenty of money for snacks and stuff, so they won’t even notice if I use it for something else.”

There was something warring in Eddie’s big brown eyes, a well of emotion that Steve couldn’t guess at. All he knew was that he wanted to help Eddie, and so he was going to. When Eddie still didn’t make any move to come inside, Steve tugged gently on his hand.

“Come on. I’m inviting you inside. You’ll be okay.”

Eddie took a deep breath, then nodded, as though coming to a decision. Hesitantly, he stepped forward, bringing one foot over the threshold. He stared down at his foot, as if half expecting it to burst into flames. Could that happen? Steve really hoped not. Finally, Eddie brought his other foot inside. Steve smiled, nodding encouragingly.

“See, that wasn’t so hard.”

He slid the glass door shut behind them and locked it before closing the curtains. Eddie had wandered a few more paces in, standing awkwardly in the middle of the living room. His baggy sweatshirt hung loosely from his limbs, and in the light, Steve could see smudges of dirt on the other boys face. It must have been a long time since he’d had a bath.

“Do you want to use my shower before bed?”

Eddie glanced at him over his shoulder, his brow furrowing. “Are you saying I stink?”

“What? No! No, I wouldn’t say that, I promise! It’s just—”

He stopped when he saw Eddie chuckling. “I’m only joking. I do smell. That’s what happens when you live in the woods for a couple weeks.”

Steve huffed and rolled his eyes. “Ha ha, very funny. Come on, follow me.”

He shut off the tv as they passed it by before switching off the lights and leading Eddie to the stairs. The other boy followed close behind, and when Steve turned to look at him, saw he was taking everything in.

“This place is like a castle,” Eddie murmured.

“Eh, not really. Castle’s have a lot more people in them. It’s just me here.”

“Why don’t your parents want to live here?”

“They do!” Steve said, defensive. “They do live here. They just… go on a lot of business trips. They’re super busy.”

Eddie hummed, not commenting on it any further, which Steve was grateful for. He didn’t want to talk about his parents. All that ever did was make him sad, and he wasn’t in the mood to feel sad. He had a vampire in his house. A vampire who might want to be his friend. He couldn’t entirely wrap his head around it.

They reached the second landing and Steve led Eddie down the hall to his room. He flicked on the light and moved to sit on the bed, watching Eddie as he looked around the room. For some reason, the corners of Eddie’s mouth turned down in a frown.

“What, you don’t like my room?”

Eddie shrugged, walking to stand beside his dresser with the ribbons he’d won at his school’s field day. “It’s not very… you, is it?”

“What do you mean.”

“I don’t know. Where are the pictures? The posters of your favorite bands and movies? Where’s the mess?”

Steve looked around, forcing himself to see his room from someone else’s perspective. “My mom doesn’t like messes. And I just, I don’t know, haven’t really thought about adding anything to the walls.

Eddie hummed again. “Well, you should. Give this checkered monstrosity a little life.”

“Hey, it’s not that bad.”

“It sort of is. Let me guess, your mom picked it out?”

Steve rolled his eyes. Eddie sure was a lot sassier now that he’d come inside. Hopefully that meant he felt comfortable. “Yeah, so? I don’t mind it, so why does it matter?”

Eddie held up his hands. “Hey, as long as you like it.”

“Right. Well, if you want to take a shower, it’s right through that door,” he said, motioning to his on-suite. “I’ll put a towel and some pajamas you can borrow on the counter for when you get out.”

“Yeah, ok, cool.”

Eddie stepped into the bathroom and closed the door behind him, leaving Steve alone to sit on his bed. Right, this was totally normal and okay. He had a vampire in his house, one that was apparently his age and who had nowhere else to go. If his parents found out, they’d flip. Luckily, they weren’t home, so there was no need to worry about that. Unless… well, unless Eddie decided he wanted to stay. Surely being here would be better than going to the city alone, to ask a bunch of creepy older vampires if he could live with them. That sounded pretty terrifying, if you asked Steve.

Because really, what could they have that Steve didn’t? Did they have a twenty-seven-inch screen tv? No, he doubted it. Would they have a pool, or a whole forest behind their house for privacy? In the city? Yeah, he didn’t think so. Which, okay, maybe he was getting ahead of himself. He had just met Eddie, he couldn’t ask him to stay with him. Even if he wanted to.

It would be pretty cool to have someone else his age who lived in his house, though. Someone who wouldn’t leave on trips for most of the month. Someone he could watch tv with and play games with and stay up talking to. It would be like having a live in friend. That sounded… that sounded really nice.

Steve was jolted from his thoughts at the sound of something clattering in the shower.

“Sorry!” Eddie shouted. “Dropped the shampoo.”

Ah, right, he needed to get Eddie a towel and some clothes. He grabbed one of his fluffiest towels from the cupboard and then took out his second favorite set of pajamas. He’d gotten them from his grandma last Christmas, and they had Snoopy on them. Trying to be as quiet as he could, he placed the items on the bathroom counter before scurrying out again.

The water turned off a few minutes later. Steve climbed into bed to wait, pulling the blankets up and leaving his bedside lamp on. The door opened and Eddie stepped out. Despite being a year older than Steve, the pajamas still hung a little loose on him. His dark curls dripped on his shoulders as he looked around.

When he spoke, he sounded unsure. “So, um, is there another bed I can take? Or I can lay on the floor if you want, I don’t mind.”

Steve scrunched up his nose. “What? I’m not going to make you sleep on the floor. My bed is plenty big, just sleep with me.”

Eddie hesitated, but after it became clear that Steve was serious, made his way to the other side of the bed. “You really don’t mind sleeping next to me? Even knowing what I am?”

“I already told you I don’t. But, I mean, if it’ll be a problem for you, you don’t have to.”

“No, it’s just, I probably won’t sleep. I usually sleep during the day, so I’ll probably sit here until I feel tired. Which, yeah, will probably be when you’re waking up.”

“Oh.” Steve hadn’t considered that. “Right. Well, you can go downstairs and watch tv if you want. I’ve got lots of movies.”

Eddie bit his lip, the unnatural sharpness to his fangs all the more obvious in the lowlight of the bedroom. “Actually, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll just lay here with you. I think I’ll feel too weird, sitting downstairs by myself.”

Steve wouldn’t admit it out loud, but that was secretly what he’d been hoping Eddie would do. He’d been to his fair share of sleepovers, and while he loved a lot of different aspects of them, his favorite was falling asleep next to another person. The feeling of closeness, of safety, that being close to another person brought… there wasn’t really anything else like it. So, Steve wasted no time in pulling back the blanket on Eddie’s side of the bed and urging him to climb in. Only once they were both laying down, with only a few inches between them, did Steve finally shut off the light.

It was late, way later that Steve normally went to bed on a school night. At least he’d already decided he wouldn’t be going into school tomorrow. He would still wake up early, so that he had enough time to bike down to the butcher and get back before Eddie woke up. Despite all the excitement of having a new vampire friend, Steve felt the unavoidable pull of sleep as he snuggled further into his blankets. Before he could drift off, however, Eddie’s voice came from right beside his ear.

“Steve?”

He blinked an eye open, unable to make out the shape of the other boy, having closed the curtains to protect Eddie from the early morning sun. “Hmm?”

For a few seconds, it was quiet. Steve almost wondered if he’d imagined Eddie’s voice, until the other boy spoke again. “Thank you.”

“For what?” he murmured.

“For helping me. For letting me into your house. For… for just being a good person. I don’t know very many off those.”

Steve hummed, smiling sleepily. “Me either. I guess we’ll just have to be good to each other.”

A puff of breath ghosted across Steve’s cheek, leading him to believe Eddie was even closer than he’d thought. He could probably see Steve perfectly, with his superior vampire vision. The thought should scare him. It didn’t.

“Yeah,” Eddie said quietly. “I guess we will.”

Steve wasn’t sure if he said anything else after that, as he drifted off. But when he dreamed of a creature hiding beneath his bed that night, it wasn’t a nightmare. Because he knew, despite what the movies told him, that this monster wouldn’t hurt him.

#steddie #steddie fic #steve and eddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #steve x eddie #My writing #this is heavily inspired by the mid 2000s film Let Me In #I posted this once before but hardly any one saw it #so posting it again

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nsharks · 1 year

Text

it's safe here | simon “ghost” riley

words: 2.6k

plot: simon says “I love you” for the first time.

tags: a little bit of smut, mostly fluff and love, reads well with my previous fics, death mention, fem!reader

Ghost didn’t know if love was something he was allowed to have.

It didn’t seem like it.

There were three people who had received proclamations of love from him, and all three of those people ended up killed. It seemed Ghost’s love had as deadly of a touch as his hands. His love was tainted and dirty; he could run his hands under a faucet and watch the blood swirl down the drain, but all the death he’d caused wouldn’t follow it.

He’d told himself it was just sex with you. In the beginning, that’s all it had been, right? Sex and scarce kisses and long drives around the city where he’d just listen to you talk.

You’d ran into him one night on your bicycle (almost quite literally), and then somehow two years later, he was waking up to your soft toes poking his thigh and your toothbrush next to his in the bathroom.

It wasn’t just sex, of course—

—not when Ghost found himself dreaming about you and asking you to stay over every night.

The thing was, he’d never felt lonely before you. Ghost quickly realizes that loneliness requires the knowledge of what good company feels like; ever since he met you, solitude became painful. It’d stick its teeth in him and gnaw and chew until he gave in, calling you sometimes in the middle of the night.

Can’t sleep without you, pet.

It started with those late night calls, which turned into you practically moving in after six months, and then officially, after over a year, Ghost asked you to be his girlfriend.

Well, he didn’t ask, really.

Ghost never had a girlfriend before so he didn’t know better.

“My girlfriend doesn’t like pickles,” he had said one day when you went out to grab lunch. You’d told him it was okay, you’d eat it anyway, but he shook his head and called the waiter over. “Can you fix this, please?”

“Simon, you just called me your girlfriend,” you’d said once your food came back, utterly stunned.

“Yeah, I know.”

“Since when did you ask me?”

“Ask you?” he furrowed his brows. “Do I need to ask ya?”

“Well… usually that’s what people do.”

He cleared his throat and tried again, grumbling, “Be my girlfriend.”

It was more of an order than a question, but you said yes, anyway.

That was months ago and Ghost still hadn’t mentioned anything about love. You hadn’t even seen your boyfriend without his mask fully off, or seen his unclothed body in proper lighting.

Until his birthday. A day that Ghost normally doesn’t celebrate because he’d had such traumatic experiences on it as a kid.

Somehow— with that strange ability you seem to possess— you manage to turn something dark and twisted into something pure and new.

_____

You plan a surprise for him.

Last year, you’d missed his birthday because Simon didn’t tell you about it. But now you know when it is, you’ve marked all your calendars, and you secretly figured out what flavor cake he preferred (had to bring home different slices from the store and leave them on the counter to see which he ate the most of).

When Simon comes home from the gym, he’s showered with what can only be described as love.

He sees the balloons on the floor, all ten of them that you blew up yourself, and then the cake on the table that’s got some frosted words in your handwriting.

And then there’s you.

It feels like his life has been many miles worth of nighttime and now, it’s breakfast. The sun is up, and he sees it in your eyes as you beam at him.

“Surprise, Simon,” you smile, cheeks rosy and matching the dress you’ve got on. “Happy birthday.”

“You did this fo’ me?” Simon asks slowly. He sets his gym bag on the floor.

You’re worried you’ve overwhelmed him. Romantic gestures are not something he’s used to giving or receiving, but he’s been slowly warming up to them over the course of your relationship.

You tuck your hair behind your ears and nibble your cheek. “Well, it’s your birthday, and we didn’t do anything for it last year. I just thought that you might-“

“Y/N,” he stops you. “It’s… nice.” Simon is terrible at this. He swears under his breath, “Fuck, it’s lovely.”

“There’s something else,” you say carefully. “The cake is for later. I’ve got a little supper packed for us.”

“Packed for what?”

You don’t explain. Instead, you grab the sack you’ve packed and a folded blanket and guide him outside. Simon’s house— the one you’ve moved into with him— sits on a quiet, gravel road with few neighbors. The town’s edge is still and the skies grow grey as you walk together. He is confused when you stop at a seemingly random spot, just near a rose bush, and you lay down the blanket you’ve brought.

“This is the spot where we first met.”

He hears the words leave your mouth but he’s so focused on your lips that he doesn’t quite process them.

“The…” Simon looks around and the memory comes into view. “Christ- right here, was it? With your bike?”

Simon is overwhelmed, but not in a bad way. The two of you sit there, having a picnic in the middle of this quiet backstreet where you nearly ran into him, and he listens to you talk because, as usual, he’s at a loss for words. You tell him about the process of making the cake, and how you had to try three times before it came out right. All the while, his heartbeat is thick in his chest and he’s wondering how did this happen?

It feels like yesterday he was pushing you away, playing a sick game of trying to guess when you’d finally give up on him. Simon knew he made things hard; he could be angry, demanding, and painfully reserved. But you were so patient with him, held him close during his nightmares and never pried about the mask he felt dependent on.

Now today, in this moment, you are his girlfriend, and you have planned the first real birthday he’d had in years. He doesn’t plan on pushing you away—

—as you keep talking, Simon’s brain runs through all the ways he can think of to keep you close.

Then, it starts to rain.

“I was worried this would happen,” you sigh when the first few drops hit you. “Come on, we can finish at home—“

You’re getting up when a hand reaches for your arm and tugs you back down.

“Wait. Hold on.”

The gentle request is uncharacteristic of him. That tone of voice only makes an appearance when he’s with you, because you’ve had Simon doing things he never imagined doing since the beginning of your entanglement.

For one, he never kissed people before you. Once or twice when he was a teenager, but he never really cared for it- now, Simon thinks he’s obsessed with how your mouth fits against his, soft and delicate.

He pushes up the edge of his mask, just below his nose, and covers your lips with his before you can question it.

The rain is unforgiving, growing heavier, but both of you are too focused on each other.

Simon cups your damp cheeks and holds your face firmly while kissing you, slow and deep. Thoughtful swipes of his tongue that pry your lips apart so he can explore and take in every detail, every taste.

There are words exchanged in this kiss that he struggles to say. Doesn’t know what language to translate his feelings into.

Thank you? No. You’re all I have? No. I can’t believe you did this all for me?

But you know what language to use. You’ve known for some time now, and as you pull away from the kiss and lean your damp forehead against his now-soaking mask, you let yourself finally whisper:

“I love you.”

_____

Simon doesn’t say it back.

You were kind of expecting as much, but still, it stings. You’d played all the scenarios in your head of how this first time telling him you love him could’ve gone; the two of you walking back in an uncomfortable silence, clothes soaked, wasn’t one of them.

You also don’t expect him to be visibly frustrated. Simon‘s got the wet blanket in his arms, his eyes are dark and unreadable, and his body is tense.

When you get to the house, you’re quick to run to the bathroom, eager for a hot shower that will hopefully wash off the burn of his silence and mask the tears you’d been holding. You don’t even feel embarrassed about telling him; just defeated. He kissed you like he loved you, held you like he loved you—

—why couldn’t he just say it?

In the house, Simon follows after you, knocking his knuckles to the bathroom door just after you’ve peeled off your clothes.

“Let me in?” he requests hoarsely.

Holding your breasts in your arms, you use the excuse, “I’m naked.”

“So?”

Reluctantly, you unlock the door and dig your teeth in your lip as he steps in. Your body is cold from being wet and he’s still got his soaked clothes on, not caring that he’s leaving a little trail of water behind.

Simon’s breathing heavily, chest rising and falling as he looks over your naked body and then gets the shower running. You stand there confused, but he grabs your hands and guides them to the hem of his wet shirt, the notch in his throat visibly tight.

He doesn’t need to say it for you to understand; you start helping him undress, carefully and hesitantly, because he has never let you do this before.

You peel the shirt up his torso and his chest is revealed under the bright bathroom lights, allowing you a view of every scar etched around a every tattoo, the burns on his side that you’d never gotten a good look at before, and the trail of coarse hair down his navel. The bare skin is cold and blissful under your fingertips.

You swallow, “Your belt.”

Hands reaching for it, Simon helps you with the contraption before you’re able to tug down his jeans. His legs are exposed to you and you quickly realize they are equally marked. A burn scar consuming his left thigh. A deep scar just above his knee. He’s got tattoos on his calves that you’ve never seen before until now.

Simon is completely naked before your eyes.

You can tell it makes him nervous. This brooding man who’d kill more people than you wanted to know, shifts uncomfortably and flickers his eyes to the light switch, probably itching to turn it off and hide himself. But he wills himself not to— for you.

“Simon,” you lay your hands on his chest, feel how strong his heart is. “I… love you. All of you.”

You’re the one who leads your hands to the hem of his mask. It’s soaked and probably uncomfortable, and your fingertips dance underneath it as if to ask for permission. When Simon doesn’t push your hands away, you swallow and pull the fabric up.

Up all the way this time. Up past his stubbled chin, his lips, his nose, and then his eyes.

He let’s you do it. Let’s you peel the mask over his hair and then fold it on the towel rack for it to dry. After two years, Simon trusts you fully— completely.

And you; you are in love with him. So much so that it didn’t really matter what face was under that mask, as long as it was his face.

Once in the shower, Simon bends down to bury his face in your neck and wraps his arms around your waist. Hot water enveloping you.

“You’re handsome,” you tell him.

“I know, pet.”

There’s a smirk that you feel against your neck. Your fingers dig into the skin of his back, the muscles still tense, but you’re glad to see his frustration is gone.

Mumbling into your skin, he says quietly, “I want to fuckin’ say it.”

Your heart flutters. “Say it then. It’s… it’s okay to say it.”

But Simon isn’t convinced. Has anyone ever survived hearing him say it? Is he allowed to have these feelings?

“If I say it,” he grumbles, “Then… bad things could happen to ya.”

“No,” you shake your head, “Bad things won’t happen. It’s safe here.” You promise to him softly, running your hands through his wet hair and drawing circles at the nape of his neck. You understand what holds him back now, what has been holding him back for the longest time, and it makes your chest ache.

“It’s safe here,” you repeat when he doesn’t respond. “You can say it, Simon. It’s just me.”

He runs his rough hands up and down your back, keeping you impossibly close to him in the small space of the shower (which he takes up most of). Then, he gently pushes you against the wall and presses one hand above your head, pulling his face away from your neck so you can see him.

You feel Simon against your thigh. Hot and heavy, it’s not a surprise that’s he’s hard.

But he’s focused on your lips. Thumb pressing gently to them, he studies your face and swallows his hesitation and breathes deeply through his nose to muster up his confidence.

Then, with a flicker of fear in his eyes, he whispers, “I… I love you, too.”

He says it so quietly that you think he’s scared of someone else hearing him. All of the dark thoughts cut through his eyes and he looks around wildly. But it’s only you there; there has only ever been you. You think you could cry from the relief of it all. The weight has been lifted now that he has opened himself to you and you have stripped yourself open for him, heart hanging out.

Then, his eyes make it back to yours and he sighs in relief.

Soon, you’re kissing up against the wall, eager and starved with hands that fumble around to touch every inch of each other. He takes you against the wall like this, fingers uncharacteristically fumbling as he guides himself to your folds, so you grab his length and help him. The press of him is so deep inside you that it’s consuming, and all you can think of is how he reaches a part of you that no one else ever had or will.

Your hands are in his wet hair, clawing and whimpering. “Simon.”

“I know.” He moves his lips to your neck and kisses up along it. Hands cupping your thighs, he hooks your legs around his waist so all of your limbs now cling to him. You don’t mind. If you could, you’d invent a way to be even closer to him. “I’ve got ya.”

You both say the words again somewhere in the midst of it all.

And then, Simon finishes in you with a muffled groan, softly biting your collarbone when he feels you tighten around his cock. But he doesn’t pull out. You stay like this for awhile, legs wrapped around him and his cock still nestled inside you. There’s mumbled words and quiet touches as you both linger in this moment, one that you’ve waited patiently for for two years. A moment that was once Simon’s biggest, most secret fear.

____

Simon doesn’t wear the mask for the rest of his birthday.

He says it’s because it’s still wet, but you hope it’s because he feels safe without it.

You both change into your pajamas after the shower, but it takes awhile to fully get them on because he ends up taking you on the bed, too. Can’t seem to keep his hands off you, with constant, gentle kisses and gropes to your waist. He touches you like he thinks you might disappear if he doesn’t.

Simon loves you. You carry around this fact with a glow to your cheeks. Even though he would leave you soon, for months, you’d have these words to hold on to and keep you warm.

“You really made this?” Simon asks when you cut him a piece of cake.

You snuggle up on the couch and share it together.

You hum and nod. “Pretty good, right?”

“Pretty good,” he mumbles in agreement, tugging you to his lap and resting his chin on your shoulder. Then, he adds softly, “Might have to keep you around long enough for my next birthday.”

#simon ghost riley x you #simon riley x reader #call of duty #cod #john soap mactavish #fanfiction #simon ghost riley #fluff #ghost #simon ghost riley x reader #smut

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shewroteaworld · 5 months

Text

PCOS

Pairing: Aaron Hotchner x reader

100 Follower Celebration Request: "🤨 + 'You’re braver than you think and more beautiful than you know.' "

Premise: You've been keeping a secret from your boyfriend. At the most inopportune time, it thrusts itself into the light. He doesn't have the reaction you feared.

Warnings: mentions of Criminal Minds--typical violence, mentions of nausea, discussions of chronic illness, mentions of poor self-esteem

Word count: approx. 3,000

When the unsub impaled you with the knife, you gasped awake.

You blinked open your eyes to pitch black darkness, a pulse of 200 beats per minute, a stomach frothing with queasiness, and cold skin sticky with sweat.

Something velvety constricted your body like cling wrap. The suffocation was akin to being buried six feet under. Fortunately, the feather pillow cushioning your head and the soft foam squashed beneath your fingertips broke through your sleep-addled mind.

It was only a nightmare. You were still laying in bed next to Aaron Hotcher.

Your breath caught, and you went rigor mortis still. Once A’s soft snoring reached you, you relaxed.

Tiredly, you smiled at a ceiling you couldn’t see. You didn’t wake him. The last thing A needed after a horrifying case was to not only be woken before dawn but also be woken by his girlfriend gasping in terror.

Your boyfriend of six months, Aaron, was an FBI supervisory special agent. As a civilian, there was plenty of work information to which you were not privy, especially if a case went south. Often, Aaron didn’t tell you where he flew for work. All you knew was, he’d be away for days. However, sometimes you’d know where Aaron was flying back from once the case was handled. Either, he could tell you once the target was apprehended or you found out via news report.

Based on the news reports from New Mexico that featured the BAU's media liaison, Jennifer Jareau, a cult leader ended his sadistic campaign with an AR-15 shootout and a murder-suicide that caught the state police completely off guard. The FBI caught the scent of his plan, but by the time they sniffed it out, they were 5 steps too far behind. Thankfully, Aaron nor any of his unit members died.

Aaron returned to his DC brownstone to ceramic pans full of your best dishes— all piping hot— on his kitchen counter. You made sure to prepare enough food to last him a couple weeks; emotionally trying work events and tons of paperwork were the perfect recipe for Aaron to not eat enough, and you weren’t going to make it easy for him. The past work weeks had been a whirlwind for you as well; you’d billed 15 plus hours every day for the past week to resuscitate a major merger on its deathbed. You set the last dirtied spoon on A’s drying rack two seconds before he unlocked his front door.

Aaron left the details of his past case vague. He kept the details of his emotional state even vaguer. But you could tell in the extra tight grip of his hello hug that he was in need of grounding. You anchored him with a constant, comforting grip, on his calloused hands. You fed him your best mac and cheese; you even cut back on your beloved pepperjack for his spice sensitive taste buds. Later that evening, you took a soothing shower together and collapsed into bed. You broke your typical bedtime routine: instead of discussing the latest novel you’ve read or life realizations, you watched a so-bad-it's-good corporate soap and ripped it a part for its inaccuracies. That’s when Aaron laughed for the first time since he came home.

You were relieved you didn’t wake him. Even though food comas were “scientifically disproven,” a factoid Aaron passed on to you from his team's young genius, Doctor Spencer Reid, you hoped the welcome home dinner you made him helped sustain his deep sleep.

Your adrenal glands calmed. You closed your eyes, but, not a second later, you were rudely interrupted by a sharp pain three inches below your belly button--- right where the unsub stabbed you.

It was just a dream. With a quiet huff, you rolled onto your side and curled against Aaron’s back.

That’s when you felt it— a tacky liquid sticking your satin pj pants to your thighs. A swell of nausea overtook you, and you feared it was not a byproduct of anxiety alone.

Gingerly, you slid out of bed. With the nausea sliding up your esophagus and the sensation of the room spinning, it wouldn’t take Holmes to confirm the cause, but you refused to panic without irrefutable evidence.

Gently, you folded the covers back. Not daring to turn on your phone flashlight, you tapped your home screen and raised the brightness.

When you hovered the light over the bed sheet, deep red splotches of smeared period blood screamed against Aaron’s stark white sheets.

Something deep and cold coiled in the pit of your stomach. You clicked your phone off. Carefully, you took a few steps back from the bed.

Your stomach whirled. A shiver crawled up your spine. You hurriedly tiptoed across the carpet to Aaron’s ensuite. Even in your haste, you quietly shut the door behind you. As soon as the door was in its oak frame, you turned the lock.

You pulled the roots of your hair with an iron grip. Shit. Shit.

You collapsed onto the edge of Aaron’s bathtub. There was blood all over your pj bottoms. You stood in a panic. You looked back and, of course, in a matter of three seconds, you stained the white acrylic.

You went to his faucet and patted ice cold water on your cheeks. Get a grip. Stress would only make the inevitable worse. Why it was possible for your body to malfunction this severely, you’ll never understand.

If you’d only been blessed with a normal body, one that menstruated on a timely schedule and didn’t come with a laundry list of ugly, graphic symptoms, tonight would be nothing more than a minor embarrassment.

The guilt for waking Aaron on tonight of all nights would be strong, but all you would have to do is tap him awake, apologize, and attack your blood splotches with a hydrogen peroxide–soaked cotton ball and the night would revert back to a typical night with your boyfriend.

You wished you were well enough to clean his sheets. Unfortunately, for you, it wasn't possible. You’d get even more nauseated. Or too lightheaded. You already felt sick when you woke up, which meant you were menstruating for a few hours.

How did you not catch this? Your body at least has the decency of shooting some warning flares, and the new medication your OB/GYN prescribed three months ago was far from 100 percent effective at calming your PMS symptoms.

You ran a hand over your face and through your hair. You were two weeks early after billing unbelievable hours for that merger dispute. This was stress induced.

You forced a deep breath. You needed to find a way out of this.

Suddenly, your vision swam. With no other option, you sat on the stained portion of Aaron’s bathtub. You gripped your stomach as the pain twisted deeper into your abdomen. You hunched over yourself.

Tonight could not become Aaron’s baptism by fire into your PCOS. He was exhausted physically and emotionally. He shouldn’t have to deal with all the baggage that comes when you experience the most natural thing in the world for a woman.

The nausea crawled up your throat, and you forcefully swallowed it back with a groan.

You put your head in your hands. You didn’t bring enough pads. Or tampons. You didn’t have any anti-emetics. What if you got a migraine? What if you fainted and A woke to what appeared to be your corpse lying on his bathroom tile?

Your spiral was interrupted by the man in question. “Honey?” Aaron called, voice strung.

Before you could respond, he yelled. “Honey?!”

You stood, and Aaron’s bathroom tilted on an axis. You barely managed to stumble to the doorway.

Fumbling, you unlocked the door just as Aaron reached the it.

His brown eyes were wide blown and wild. You'd never seen that expression on him before. “Are you okay?” He held your forearms as if he were afraid you’d crumple with too harsh a touch.

“I saw the blood and I…” He swallowed. He scanned you from head to toe repeatedly. “I thought the worst.” He whispered. Your heart fell through the pit of your stomach to the soles of your feet.

He cupped your cheeks. “Baby, you’re really off color. I need you to talk to me. Where are you hurt?” The blood stains on the back of your pants were out of his view.

“I’m not hurt, A.” You said.

His eyebrows furrowed. “Your side of the bed is blood stained.” He said, his voice taking a sterner edge.

“I’m on my monthly.”

“Oh.” He released your arms. His cheeks dusted pink. “Sorry, honey, I…” He ran his hands over his bedhead. “I should’ve…I jumped to conclusions.” He sounded shocked with himself.

“You’ve had a long day.” You whispered. “Give me a minute. I’ll clean.”

Suddenly, everything went blurry. Your muscles slacked, and your forehead dropped onto Aaron’s pectoral.

A hand was back on your forearm, this time with a tighter grip. A calloused hand tapped your cheek. “Hey. Hey. Baby. Stay with me.”

Carefully, he walked you away from the door. “Sit.” Fully supporting your back, he sat you on the floor and leaned you against the bathtub.

As soon as your back was fully supported, his ensuite regained color. You could take a deep breath again.

Aaron knelt in front of you. “Honey,” Aaron said, his stare piercing through yours. He stroked your hair out of your face. “I need you to be honest with me. What’s wrong?”

“I told you.” More accurately, you began to tell him.

You shivered. He pressed the back of his hand to your forehead and stroked down your cheekbone.

“I don’t have a fever.” You insisted. “It’s just my monthly.”

He pecked your forehead. He didn’t believe you. “Is it always this bad?” He asked with a mix of concern and skepticism.

“Yes.” You sighed. “I have polycystic ovarian syndrome.”

“PCOS?” He asked.

You were shocked. “You know what that is?”

He nodded. “I’ve heard of it.”

“It can make my time of the month super severe.” Stubborn tears leaked from your eyes. You wiped your cheeks with the cuff of your pajama shirt.

You were supposed to be the woman who kicked ass in the boy’s club of corporate law by day and kicked ass as the perfect girlfriend by night.

He was not supposed to see you trembling before him, huddled in pain. He was not supposed to see you on the verge of throwing up from period cramps when he almost died in a hail of bullets less than twelve hours ago. He was never supposed to see how weak you truly were.

He took over wiping your tears with his thumbs. “Scale of 1 to 10—how bad is the pain?”

“Maybe an 8?” You said. It was a 9. If you could’ve managed without your head aching, you would’ve rolled your eyes at yourself. The one thing about dating a profiler is they always know when you’re fibbing.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” He asked.

You sniffled. “About my condition or that I’m in pain?”

“I think those are a package deal.” He said gently.

You sighed. Your instinct was to lie, but you stopped yourself. Aaron could see right through you. He was one of the best behavioral analysts in the entire world. For the first leg of your relationship, you’d managed to avoid this confrontation which was a blessing in itself.

“I didn’t want you to see how sick I get. How sick I am.” You toyed with the ends of your hair. “I didn’t want you to know how weak I am.” You whispered.

His eyes softened. “Honey, you’re not weak because you have PCOS."

“There are months where I can’t even stand up.” You said, voice taught with tears.

“And that’s why I need to know." He smoothed your hair. "Have you been going through this every month by yourself?”

“Since I moved out of my mother’s place for undergrad, yeah.” You sniffled with a watery smirk.

He wrapped an arm around your back, then hesitated. “Can I hug you?”

“Please.” You whispered

He pulled you into a hug. His hold was looser than normal, but his embrace still filled you with warmth from head to toe.

“Darling, I love you so much.” Aaron said. “I would never look down on you for this.”

“It’s just…I’m not used to….”

“Being this vulnerable.” Aaron finished sympathetically.

You nod. “It’s just…I get so sick. It makes me so ugly.”

He shook his head. “Hey.” He made sure you were looking him in the eye. “You’re never ugly.”

You chuckled. “You’ll revisit that answer when you see me dry heaving at 3 in the morning.” You said, unpleasant nights resurfacing.

His lips don’t do so much as quirk upwards. Rather, he looked shattered. He squeezed your hands. “I won’t.”

“What can I do to help?” He pivoted.

“You can change the sheets.” You looked to the top corner of the ensuite door frame as more tears welled. “And go back to bed.”

“I won't ever leave you on the bathroom floor in pain, alone.”

“But you should.” You said. He cupped your cheeks with his homey hands. He gently pulled your chin back to level your gaze, but you resisted.

“Why should I?” He asked.

“Because you’re tired. And I’m sick. And I’m broken. And there’s nothing you can do.” You make eye contact and immediately are wracked with full body sobs.

Suddenly, every second of you’d spent building up your self-esteem went out the window as your deepest insecurities broke through. You were never supposed to be a burden to him.

He pulled you into chest and wrapped you in his arms..“Helping you when you’re sick is never a burden. I love you so much.”

“What if you get tired of me?” What if this made him stop loving you?

“I won’t.” He promised.

He pressed another kiss to your forehead. “We’ll return to this conversation when you’re feeling better.” He stroked your cheekbone with his thumb. “What helps? Do you have medication?”

“I have daily medication. I’m still working with my doctor to get a regimine that works.” You wiped your eyes. “Heat helps. I drink this peppermint tea to help my stomach when I’m at home.” You rambled.

“The one by that British brand?” He asked.

“Yeah.”

“When I saw their tea in your apartment, I bought some to keep here. I might have some peppermint. I’ll be back, honey.” He left you with a kiss on the cheek.

The tailoring he did to his world to accommodate you would never cease to flutter your heart.

The pleasant moment was quickly halted by your stomach bubbling.

As A’s slippers padded down the stairs, you crawled across the tile floor over to the toilet. You forced your head between your knees.

About ten minutes later, you heard the clack of his slippers against the bathroom floor. “Nauseous?” He asked.

You nodded.

He sat the mug close to you. “Your tea to your left within arm's reach. I’m going to grab some blankets and pillows. I’ll be right back. Shout if you need something.”

You learned by “some blankets and pillows” Aaron meant an entire blanket set.

As you leaned your head back against the wall, Aaron began prepping your makeshift bed. In your peripheral vision, you laid pillows as floor cushioning.

“I won’t judge you if you go to sleep in bed. This gets ugly.”

“Baby, I’m an FBI agent for the BAU. Even if you threw up on me, it wouldn’t make the list of the top fifty gross things I’ve experienced by miles.”

You scooched onto a pillow. Aaron slipped the blankets around you.

Your head found the soft crook of his neck. He pressed his head onto yours, and the pressure instantly relaxed you. Unfortunately, your your uterine muscles corkscrewed. You squirmed in pain.

Aaron shushed you. “You need to breathe. This will pass, just breathe.”

You clasped his hand like a lifeline. What feels like hours later, when the pain begins to ebb away, you pant, “It’s alright if you need to go to sleep.” Aaron already relayed his plans to go into the office on Saturday morning to attack some dense paperwork.

He placed his free hand overtop of yours. “You will always be a priority for me. I hope I’ve shown you by now that I will always take care of you.”

You smiled into his shoulder.

“Also, the heating pad is charging in the bedroom, and, before you ask about the sheets, they’re already in the wash.”

You sighed in happiness. “I could kiss you right now.”

“What’s stopping you?” Gently, he pressed his lips to the top of your forehead.

You smiled again. You could count on your hand the number of times you’d smiled when you’re like this: on the bathroom floor, nauseous and dizzy.

You squeezed his knee with your free hand. “You promise you’ll stay with me?”

“Of course I’ll stay with you. I love you. And, just for the record…this may be tough, but you're not ugly and you're not weak. You're braver than you think and more beautiful than you know. I'm grateful to be the one holding you through this."

In the coming days, you’re certain you’ll have a laundry list of next steps from your boyfriend: call your doctor, check in with a dietitian, monitor stress, anything he could think of to lessen these symptoms. He’ll probably want to talk more about why you didn’t tell him sooner.

But, for now, you're both satisfied with sitting on the bathroom floor and riding this out. And in a moment where the pain could split you in pieces, you somehow felt whole.

Author's Note: I'm happy to say the 100 follower celebration fics are finally going live!

I hope you're having a good day or night! Thanks for taking the time to read my work! And, to anyone struggling with a condition similar to the reader's: you, too, are braver than you think and more beautiful than you know!

xoxo,

shewroteaworld

#aaron hotchner x reader #shewroteaworld 100 follower celebration #aaron hotchner #aaron hotch hotchner #aaron hotch x reader #aaron hotch imagine #aaron hotch fanfiction #criminal minds fluff #criminal minds fanfic #criminal minds fic #criminal minds #ssa aaron hotchner

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zepskies · 7 months

Text

Smoke Eater - Part 6

Pairing: Firefighter!Dean Winchester x F. Reader

Summary: Dean Winchester is the cocky, but well-respected Lieutenant at Firehouse 25. He leads by example, but he’s also known to break a few hearts. He’s starting to crave something he’s never had, though. Something stable. Something real.

That’s when he meets you, on a truly terrible day, trapped in a rickety old elevator.

🔥 Series Masterlist

Word Count: 7,000 Tags/Warnings: Fluff, jealousy, angst, hurt/comfort

Part 6: “Just Casual”

A few days after the house fire that claimed the life of Paul Richardson, father of two, Chief Bobby Singer was joined in his office by Detectives Winchester and Novak, along with his resident Squad Captain and Truck Lieutenant, Benny and Dean.

“The Richardson fire has officially been determined an arson,” Bobby revealed.

“They found a time-delay incendiary device hidden in the attic. No fingerprints. But that’s not even the odd thing,” he said. “The medical examiner found a brand mark on his wrist that was inconsistent with his other burns. Which is why you’re here, I reckon.”

Bobby directed his gaze at both John and Cas, who didn’t look surprised to hear this news.

Dean raised a brow. His gaze shifted to his father, but John only met his stare for a moment before he answered Bobby’s unspoken question.

“We’ve been investigating a series of murders in the area over the past six months,” John said. “Each victim died in their home, with the same brand somewhere on their body. Typically the wrist, or the back of the neck.”

“So we officially have a serial killer turned arsonist on our hands,” Bobby concluded. His attention shifted to Benny and Dean. “Keep this close to the vest, but keep your eyes open.”

“Arsonists are hard to catch,” Dean said, looking to the detectives. “What do you know about this guy?”

Cas glanced at John. The older man could feel his stare, but had to ignore it for now.

“Not much as of yet,” John said. “Right now he’s a coil of smoke, if you’ll pardon the phrase. Our psychologist says he’s most likely a white male, statistically speaking. College educated, or at the very least intelligent, efficient, and so far, he thinks every step through. Like he said, no prints. But the brand is a message.”

“To who, and why, is what we’ve been trying to figure out,” Cas added. “We think that’s the key to pinpointing a suspect.”

“Really,” Dean said. He raised a brow and crossed his arms. “Six months, and that’s all you’ve got?”

“Dean,” John started, but the Lieutenant shook his head.

“Come on, Dad. I know you. Who is this guy?”

“Dean, this is the best I can give you right now, but believe me, we’re working on it,” John said, that tone that boded no further argument.

Bullshit, Dean wanted to shoot back. But he held his tongue for now. He knew that John wouldn’t budge. Instinct still told Dean that his father was holding something back though.

As the men filtered out of Bobby’s office, Dean held Cas back for a moment.

“Watch the old man’s back, all right,” Dean said. “He’s got a penchant for being reckless.”

Cas gave him a wry, pointed look. “I’m doing my best. Winchesters are a stubborn lot.”

Dean smirked and walked out with him. Meg was headed inside, having just come in from an ambulance call. She smiled when she saw her boyfriend.

“Hey, lover,” she greeted. And she smacked his ass in front of God and the entire Rescue Squad, who liked to sit outside the firehouse and play cards at their table.

Ramirez and the others smirked and called out their customary whoops and cat calls. Dean smirked at the actual blushing discomfort that tightened up Cas’s face and shoulders.

“Dinner tonight at Casablanca’s, right?” Meg asked, unfazed by the catcalling peanut gallery.

“Right,” Cas said stiffly. But he still brushed her cheek with his thumb in affection. “See you later.”

“Yep,” she nodded, though she shot Dean a wry brow. “What? I stole your boyfriend. Get over it.”

She continued on her path back inside the firehouse, leaving Dean and Cas to stare after her in annoyance and begrudging fondness, respectively.

Dean turned to his friend and clapped him on the shoulder.

“Good luck and Godspeed, my friend. That woman’s fuckin’ terrifying.”

Cas gave him a lazy salute as he walked away. He found that John had already started up their police car. He was in the driver’s seat, as always, with a hand resting casually on the steering wheel.

Dean typically sat in much the same way. Cas thought both men were more comfortable in a car than anywhere else in life. Except, maybe, the precinct and the firehouse.

Cas slid into the passenger seat and gave his partner a knowing look.

“I still think you should tell Sam and Dean what’s really happening here,” he said.

John looked over at him with an almost unreadable expression. But they had been partners for a few years now; long enough for Cas to get a read on the older veteran.

“I understand why you want to keep them out of this, but now this guy is starting fires. Here, in Dean’s district,” Cas pointed out. “Wouldn’t it be safer for him if he had clearer eyes walking into the next one?”

If, God forbid, something should go wrong on the next call Dean responded to, John would never forgive himself. Both he and Cas knew this, but John never answered his partner’s question. He didn’t want his sons getting their noses in this just yet, even if it meant the worry he saw in Dean’s eyes.

So he put the car in “drive” and peeled away from the firehouse.

Trying to match your schedule with Dean’s was a challenge you two were trying to figure out. Though you’d fallen into a pattern of talking on the phone to fill the void when you two couldn’t meet.

Even after almost two more weeks and a third date, you were pleasantly surprised that you and Dean still had plenty to talk about. You told him more about your childhood with your grandparents, while he told you funny stories about him and Sam growing up with their dad, though he was often gone while working on cases.

It was family friend and Fire Chief, Bobby Singer who looked after them whenever John couldn’t, or his old partner Jody Mills, or even Ellen Harvelle, owner of the Roadhouse.

The more you learned about Dean, the more invested you became. And he listened to you when you went on tangents about new recipes you wanted to try out (as long as he got to be your official Taste Tester).

You two argued, playfully and fervently, about music. And you’d been creating a list of old shows the other hadn’t seen, but absolutely needed to.

Dean had suggested Dukes of Hazzard, for example, while you suggested Smallville. You each only agreed to put up with this list if you two watched it together. (Needless to say, there would be some marathon binge watching in your future.)

You particularly took notice though, when Dean invited you to join him at the Roadhouse to meet Cas, one of his best friends, and his girlfriend Meg. You’d invited Andréa to come along, and even Dean’s friend Benny, who she’d also been seeing ever since that night at the Roadhouse.

Apparently, the couple had their own plans.

You tried not to feel some type of way about her brush-off, but your friend had been increasingly distant since she met Benny Lafitte. However, you supposed you couldn’t judge. You hadn’t been calling her as much either, ever since you met Dean.

You knew that if you kept dating him, some adjustments would have to come in your life. You also promised yourself that you’d never be someone who forgot your friends for a man…even for a man like Dean Winchester.

Tonight, however, you’d come directly from work to meet him at the bar. It made more sense than to make him come pick you up from your house, so you sat with a ginger ale while you waited. He’d promised you via text that he was on the way, just stuck in traffic.

Okay, drive safe. 😘 Don’t speed, please.

You knew how he liked floor the Impala with that damn lead foot of his.

No promises. 🏎️

You wanted to roll your eyes, but you were smiling unconsciously as you read his reply.

You were soon knocked out of your thoughts when a smooth voice said your name. You looked up and to your right, and there stood a familiar face. The man greeted you with an easy smile as he sat down next to you.

“I thought that was you,” he said. He reached out his hand and re-introduced himself. “Gordon Walker. Not sure if you remember me.”

“Oh, yes! Of course I do, Gordon,” you smiled and shook his hand.

“It’s good to see you again,” he said. His dark eyes subtly took you in from head to toe in your skirt, heels, and blouse. “Though I’ve gotta admit, I’ve never seen you here before.”

“Ah, right,” you said. “Well—”

Before you could explain, Gordon held up a finger as he noticed your drink of choice.

“Oh, wait a sec. Let me get you something stronger than soda,” he said. He started to flag down Jo, but you shook your head and made a cutting motion with your hand.

“Uh, no, that’s okay,” you said. “I’m waiting for someone.”

“What?” Gordon asked.

It was getting busy in the bar, making it loud enough that you could understand why he hadn’t heard you. You leaned over towards his ear.

“I’m good for now, thanks,” you said, raising your voice a bit. Gordon leaned in even closer and chanced resting a hand above your knee.

“You sure?” he asked. He gave you a smile that was all smooth sex appeal and confidence, without being arrogant.

It was undoubtedly attractive, but you were more shocked than charmed in your blush. You instinctively leaned back when you felt his hand on your thigh. Your hand clenched on the counter.

While your brain scrambled to figure out a response that would successfully remove it (without snapping rudely like you were itching to), a hand slipped along your lower back.

You jolted a bit in your seat with a flare of unease, until you turned your head and found Dean.

“Hey, baby,” he greeted, and dropped a kiss at your hairline. He also clapped a heavy hand on Gordon’s shoulder and squeezed. The other man graciously got the hint and leaned back, withdrawing his hand from your thigh.

“Hi,” you said, finally able to breathe a bit easier. You gave Dean a smile, and he returned it.

He looked over at his friend with a sharper smile. “Hey, Gord. How’s your night goin’?”

“Good.” Gordon nodded, now with a knowing gleam in his eye. “Though I’m sure your night’s gonna go better.”

You weren’t sure how to take that remark, considering the way Dean reacted with a tighter expression and pursed lips. Then, they flickered at a smile.

“Well, we’re meeting up with Meg and Cas in a minute. You should join us,” Dean said. Even though his tone wasn’t so very inviting. The two men seemed to have a wordless conversation between the lines that you couldn’t decipher.

Gordon shook his head, but raised his drink. “No worries, you guys hang. I’m leaving in a few.”

“All right. Let us know if you change your mind,” Dean said. He thumped Gordon once more on the back, more friendly this time.

Dean’s other hand slipped around your waist. He tapped you on the side.

“Come on, I’ve got us a table. It’s quieter,” he said.

You nodded and slid out of your seat. You offered Gordon a polite smile, even if you’d rather not.

“Have a good night,” you said.

The other man’s smile was less flirtatious and more polite this time as well.

“You too,” he said.

Dean helped you onto your feet, like the gentleman he was, and he continued to lead you away from the bar with a hand on the small of your back. You instinctively pressed against his side to squeeze past the throng of patrons.

When you reached a high-top table in the corner, he pulled out your chair and held your hand as you climbed up in your skirt. You thanked him with a more genuine smile. Though once he was seated next to you, you leaned towards him and laid a hand on his arm, which rested on the table.

“I tried to tell him I was waiting for you. He took me by surprise,” you whispered.

Dean’s brows rose, but his face soon evened out with a smile. He tucked a strand of hair behind your ear.

“Don’t worry about it. He didn’t know about us,” he said. “He was shootin’ his shot…a bit aggressively. Sorry about that.”

“Oh…it’s okay. Nothing I haven’t dealt with before,” you replied. Though butterflies ran through your belly when you considered what us meant.

You noted his frown at what you’d said though, and so you aimed to change the subject.

“But Cas and Meg know, right?” you asked.

Dean nodded. His frown started to lift. “Yeah. Cas is one of my best friends. Meg is…well. She’s the little sister I wish I didn’t have.”

You shook your head in amusement. Then you let out a squeal as Dean hooked a foot around the leg of your chair and brought you closer. He stopped you from becoming too unbalanced by wrapping an arm around your waist. You clenched your hands into the open panels of his plaid shirt, and his charming smile greeted you.

“Hi,” he said.

You laughed. “Yeah, you mentioned that earlier.”

“Well, I’m doing it right this time,” he said. And he dipped down for a lingering kiss.

Across the bar was Jo Harvelle, doing her job behind the counter. She poured five shots in succession and doled them out to a party of frat bros without even looking.

Her eyes were drawn to the back corner of the bar, where you and Dean sat closely together, exchanging whispers and the occasional steamy kiss.

“Mind your business,” came Ellen’s whisper in her ear.

Jo whipped her head to glare softly at her mother, but she saw Ellen’s point. It was both obvious and pathetic of her to stare.

Despite the unease making her feel a bit sick to her stomach, Jo went over to Gordon down at the end. His sympathetic smile bothered her; she knew then she hadn’t just been caught by her mother.

“Interesting, isn’t it?” he remarked.

“What?” Jo said. She began wiping down his area of the counter. “Would it kill you to keep it in the glass?”

Gordon gave her an amused look as he sat back in his seat. His tumbler of whiskey was drained.

“Look, I’m sorry, all right?” he said.

Both of them knew he wasn’t apologizing for the spill.

Jo’s brows knitted together, mostly in annoyance. “Again, for what?”

“I know it’s gotta be hard to see him actually moving on,” he replied.

Her lips pursed, and her eyes darted to the back of the room again. She stared for a moment at the side of your face.

“Knowing him, whatever it is won’t last,” she muttered.

Gordon hissed at the "burn," with a deep chuckle. She knew her words weren’t kind, but it was how she felt.

“That may be,” he allowed. “But he’s not just chasing tail anymore. That’s what scares you.”

Gordon dropped a nice tip for her next to his glass. He grabbed his coat off the back of his chair and left Jo with the churning in her gut.

Cas and Meg finally arrived a few minutes later.

Dean knew you’d been to the Roadhouse before, but this was different. You were meeting some of his friends, and he realized how much he wanted you to. He felt…comfortable around you. And he wanted his friends to know you, and to like you.

“As you know, Meg’s our Paramedic in Charge over at 25,” he began, gesturing at the woman as she got settled in her seat.

You admired her long brown hair, tall boots, and black leather jacket. She seemed to ooze confidence and dark charisma as she tossed you a smirk.

“Guilty,” she said.

You smiled back. Dean gestured at her boyfriend next, clad in a beige trench coat, slacks, and blazer.

“And Cas, who bravely suffers being my dad’s partner on the job.”

Cas nodded wryly at the introduction. His dark hair and blue eyes were striking, you could admit. His tie was loose and slightly rumpled. Along with the stubble coating his face, he was handsome, if a bit scruffy. It was hard for you to believe he’d earned the top scores his year in the Police Academy, but you supposed that looks could be deceiving.

“What’s that like?” you asked with a smirk. “From what I’ve heard about John Winchester, he sounds like he’s a bit of a hard-ass.”

Dean barked with a dry laugh. “An understatement.”

“He has a crab-like shell,” Cas agreed. “But he has a soft center where it counts, not unlike his sons.”

You turned to Dean with a more teasing smile. “Aww…”

He rolled his eyes, even though his arm, which had been draped across the back your chair, now dropped to curl around your waist.

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever, Columbo,” he remarked at his blue-eyed friend.

Always had to get the last dig in, it seemed, but you couldn’t help but laugh a little along with Meg at Cas’s expense.

“You guys all seem really close,” you said. It was nice for you to see.

Dean shrugged like it was no big deal. Or rather, like it was commonplace.

“Well, maybe family ain’t just about blood,” he said.

Meg rolled her eyes. “Ugh. What a friggin’ sap.”

“You love it,” Dean grinned. She smiled, begrudgingly.

Family ain’t just about blood.

You liked that sentiment as well. It seemed to be true here.

Even Ellen Harvelle treated Dean like a son when she came over to greet your table. She kissed his cheek and gave Meg and Cas’s shoulders a squeeze. Even you got a warm hand on your shoulder when she introduced herself.

“Welcome, hun. I understand it’s not your first time here, but if you got any questions on the menu, you let me know,” she said.

Dean shot you a conspiratorial smile, and it got you wondering what he was about to do.

“I mean, I don’t know why you don’t put the order in for chili fries the second you see me come through the door,” he teased. “Come on, Ellen. How long’ve I been coming here? Since before I had a license?”

Ellen narrowed her eyes and flicked the side of Dean’s head, regardless of his flinching protest.

“Don’t you go sayin’ that so damn loud,” she reproached. “You never drank underage at my bar.”

His eyes averted with a smile, in a way that told you Ellen was a damn liar. You bit your lip to try and hide your smile.

“Anyway, I’ll get your damn fries—”

“And a beer,” Dean interjected. She rolled her eyes.

“And a beer. Four?” she pointed at the rest of you, and you, Cas, and Meg nodded in agreement.

“All right, four beers. Anything else, darlin’?” She looked at you with a mother’s charm.

You looked up from the menu and unconsciously smiled.

“Um, sure. Can I get the chicken sandwich?”

She patted your shoulder. “You sure can.”

Ellen then took the rest of their orders without writing a thing down. You were impressed by her memory. At the end though, Dean didn’t let her go without a hand on her arm.

“Thanks, Ellen,” he said with a more sincere smile.

“A-huh,” she replied, with all due sarcasm. But there was a fondness in her eyes that was hard to miss when she playfully grabbed the back of his neck. “Knucklehead.”

A giggle escaped you, and Ellen tossed you a wink before she went to put in the orders and get the drinks.

Conversation flowed easier when the alcohol came. One beer became two, and even three (four, for Meg). By then, you were sure it was one beer too many for yourself, but you didn’t want to be the odd one out. You were mostly listening to the three of them bounce back and forth between reminiscing with old stories and roasting one another mercilessly.

It was hilarious and entertaining, but you were trying not to get caught in the crosshairs of the volleying. Inevitably though, Meg’s attention turned to you with a certain sly smile.

“You must be real special,” she remarked, gesturing at Dean. “He usually doesn’t bring his girls around here, where he actually likes to hang out. Guess that’d mean he’d have to see ‘em again with the lights on.”

You blinked in surprise.

“Meg,” Dean’s voice cut like a warning.

Your eyes widened as you took in the change, his deeper voice, his more serious gaze, versus Meg’s nonchalance. Even Cas gave her a chiding look.

“Not sure I want to know what that means,” you tried to joke.

But you could guess. It was fairly obvious.

You glanced over at Dean, whose lips pursed. Before either of you could say anything more, Meg chimed in.

“Oooh, is this gonna be your first fight?” she teased.

Dean’s brows furrowed with a glare. “That’s enough.”

“And that’s our cue,” Cas nodded. He’d already slipped out his wallet as soon as his girlfriend started talking. He left a generous few bills to cover their half of the night, plus tip, and got up out of his seat. He claimed his coat and then encouraged Meg off her chair.

“What? I’m not done with my beer,” she protested.

“I think you are,” Cas said.

Meg scoffed, but she allowed his manhandling as he wrapped a supportive arm around her waist.

“You’re not the boss of me, Clarence,” she snipped.

“Certainly not,” he agreed. “But you’re a lightweight. Time to go home, before you insult the entire bar.”

“You’re no fucking fair,” she groused, hitting his chest over his jacket. Cas leveled you and Dean with a long-suffering look of apology.

Dean waved him off with a “no sweat it” look and a shake of his head. Meg annoyed the shit out of him sometimes, especially when she was drunk. He turned to you with a sigh.

“Again, sorry about that. I didn’t think I’d have to apologize for my friends more than once tonight,” he said.

You shook your head. “It’s...okay. Overall, they were really fun.”

Dean scoffed. “I don’t think Cas has been called fun even once in his life.”

You smiled in amusement, but Meg’s words still swirled around in your head like heady wine.

“Dean,” you began, but your attempt to broach the issue was cut off by his cell phone ringing. He gave you an apologetic look and fished in his pocket for his phone. His brows rose when he saw the caller ID.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I gotta take this,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

“Oh, okay—” You’d barely nodded when Dean was up and out of his chair, heading out of the bar. You could still see him through one of the faded glass doors as he held the phone up to his ear.

It was late, and quieter now. A blonde server came to take your plates, and you actually remembered her.

“Oh, hi! Jo, right?” you asked. She hesitated when you spoke, but she bobbed her head.

“That’s me,” she said. “Can I get you anything else?”

“No, I’m good. Thanks,” you said with a smile. “I met your mom. She’s really nice.”

Jo uttered a wry laugh as she stacked the plates and silverware. You helped her collect the silverware and empty beer bottles.

“Yeah, when you get her good side,” she replied.

You smirked at that, remembering how Ellen snapped back and forth with Dean. You had no doubt that woman could be a pistol if you pissed her off.

“Well, it's nice here,” you admitted, once again taking stock of the décor. The music, the warm lighting, the good food… “It’s cozy.”

Jo’s smile quirked to one side as she paused.

“Well, it’s been in my family for three generations of Harvelles,” she said. “This was my father’s favorite place in the world.”

You caught the note of melancholy in her words, in her eyes.

“Was?” you echoed. She met your gaze and nodded.

“He was a firefighter,” she said. “He died on the job.”

You dimmed considerably. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

Jo only nodded.

“How did he…” Your curiosity got the best of you, but you soon shook your head and backtracked. “Never mind, you don’t have to explain.”

“It was a fire that wasn’t properly vented,” Jo answered your half-spoken question. Her blue eyes were heavier. “He got caught in an updraft…but he actually worked at Firehouse 25. He was their brother. That’s why this’ll always be their place.”

You processed that with a slow nod of wonder.

“It’s good that you and your mom will always have that support,” you said eventually. “Even though…it might be hard too, to always be reminded.”

Jo’s lips quirked again. “It’s more the first one, but…sometimes the second one. A lot of these guys have known me since I had braces. It’s hard to shake that perpetual little sister thing.”

You smiled at that. “Yeah, I’d imagine that gets old real quick. A bunch of over-protective older brothers.”

“Overbearing, more like,” she scoffed. You laughed.

Unconsciously, you glanced over to the front of the bar, where you saw Dean still on the phone. You remembered the second date you were meant to have, when he was late due to a five-car pileup his team responded to.

You remembered that night he called you for the first time, after a long day he didn’t want to tell you about. He’d let you distract him instead. All the while, it had you wondering what he’d seen. What he’d responded to that day.

Had it been another car accident? A fire? What made someone as upbeat and funny and smooth as Dean seem to lose all the life in his voice?

Though while you were lost in your thoughts, Jo was watching you.

Jealousy roiled inside her, unbidden. She didn’t want to hate you, because unlike the girls Dean usually messed around with, you had some self-respect. Jo heard Meg’s snide clips at you earlier, and no one could fake the surprise in your eyes. Unless you were just that good a damn actor…

But no, she didn’t get that vibe from you.

It didn’t mean she had to like you though.

“You’re right to think twice,” Jo said, earning your attention back with a swivel of your head. “What Meg said…she wasn’t wrong. Dean’s broken a few hearts, if you catch my drift.”

Just a few well-placed words, Jo thought. She realized then that she had the power to twist the wrench here, widening the gap between you and Dean. Feed your doubts.

She didn’t have to feel bad about it if it was the truth.

And yet…she saw the way your gaze fell. The disappointment setting in, the anxious clench of your hands on the table. You glanced over at Dean again out of the corner of your eye.

Jo realized then just what she was doing, not just to Dean, but to herself.

You’re not some petty bitch, she dully reminded herself.

“But,” she found herself adding. You raised your gaze back to her. Jo let out a subtle breath.

“It’s not always his fault,” she admitted. And maybe she was speaking a bit too much from experience. “The job demands a lot from him.”

Slowly, you nodded. You looked pensive, but not like you’d made up your mind.

Fine, Jo thought, as she collected the dishes and left your table.

She didn’t know if she wanted to sway you one way or the other on taking a chance on Dean Winchester.

While you were talking to Jo, Dean was taking his father’s unexpected call.

“Hey, Dad. What’s up?” he said.

“Hey, son. How are ya?” John’s voice was gruff and tired. Dean frowned to hear it.

“I’m good. I’m out right now, but did you need something?”

“Have you responded to any fires lately?”

“You mean like the Richardson fire?” Dean asked pointedly. “No, haven’t had one since. And no cattle prod brandings either.”

“All right, good. Just checking in.”

Good? Dean thought. John would be chomping at the bit for a new arson. If he was “just checking in,” then he was worried about something. Is he worried about me?

“What’s going on? Is there something I need to know?” Dean asked in suspicion. This was why he had taken the call. “Seriously, you can tell me. I’m not even gonna bitch at you like Sam does.”

John chuckled. But then he hesitated. Dean knew he’d hit on something.

“Dad?” he pressed.

John’s sigh was a heavy one. “Okay. What I’m about to tell you, you don’t fucking repeat. Not to anyone, you understand me? Not even your brother.”

Dean’s brows furrowed in trepidation. “Okay, fine. What the hell is it?”

“Richardson, the father of two?” John reminded. “He was a lawyer, linked to a money laundering scheme through a company called Stull Storage. It’s an old company, dates back to the seventies.”

“Okay…”

As John continued to explain, the more confused Dean became…

About 30 years ago, John Winchester had been a young, but promising officer in the Narcotics division. He’d married young, and by then was just barely clearing the five-year mark. Already he had the house he’d inherited from his wife’s parents, a four-year-old son, and a newborn.

Stull Storage’s units were used by a drug ring that John had been trying to infiltrate, undercover. Those units had stored cocaine, illegal weapons, and other flavors of contraband, mostly from South America (and back).

“We got close to breaking that case, once, but after the fire…I transferred out of Narcotics, as you know,” John said.

Dean knew the real story there. After his mom died, his father went into a spiral, trying to find whoever set that fire—even after the Fire Department found no evidence of arson. John had eventually been forced out of Narcotics. He requested Homicide.

As he’d told Dean once when he was extremely drunk: I seem to do better at my job when the bodies are already dead.

“Now I know that I was right about your mother’s death,” John said.

Dean released a shaky sigh. “Aw, man. Not this again, Dad. For Christ’s sake.”

“There was something wrong about that fire, Dean,” he said, raising his voice to be heard over Dean’s objections. “I just didn’t find the connection…until now.”

Dean muttered a curse under his breath. His gaze fell to the ground. Sam was usually the one who drew a hard line at hearing any more about their mom’s supposed murder, but now Dean had reached the end of his tether. It was too much.

He glanced back through the glass doors to make sure you were okay. He saw you talking to Jo, and he frowned at himself.

Here you were, waiting on him back in the bar, and his dad was calling him in the middle of the night, chasing ghosts again.

“Look…it’s been my whole damn life with this.” Dean held the phone to his ear with one hand, and rubbed at his forehead with the other. “I just can’t do this with you anymore.”

“Dean, listen,” John urged. “You wanna know what I’m digging into, this is it. I got Mary’s file unsealed.”

Dean’s eyes widened. “What? Thought you couldn’t do that without new evidence and a court order.”

“Well, I’ve got the evidence…maybe I was a bit impatient with the court order.”

Dean rolled his eyes. His father liked to play a little fast and loose with the rules.

“At the time, the medical examiner dismissed it. She’d been burned…” John paused on a deeper breath. “But I saw it. Mary had a burn on her wrist. It was the same brand found on Richardson. On Jerry Stillwell, CPA. Amanda Waller, journalist. It’s all connected, Dean. How they’re connected to one another, I’m not sure yet. We’re still digging…but I do know this. Richardson was a message.”

Dean’s back hit the wall of the Roadhouse. His brows furrowed as he struggled to digest everything John was saying.

“A message?” he asked. “To who?”

“To me, I think. Those kids, and their mother…you got ‘em out alive, but they weren’t meant to,” John said, his voice sounding heavy. "The wife told me her husband was erratic when he got home, holding his wrist. He'd been burned before the fire. He wouldn't say what happened...then they smelled the goddamn smoke."

"Shit," Dean replied. He leaned heavily against the wall, pressing a hand to his forehead. There was an ache starting between his eyes.

“Yeah," John agreed. "The drug ring I was investigating, when I was in Narcotics. I was getting close. And I mean close. I was about to get the Big Kahuna. The kingpin of the whole operation…and then the house fire.”

Fuck. Dean wiped at his mouth anxiously as he realized what John was saying. Fuck.

“He burned me, Dean. He must have,” John said. Meaning, the drug lord he was trying to pin down somehow discovered his identity. “Your mom paid the price of that.”

“Who is this guy?” Dean asked. His hand holding the phone was starting to tremble.

“I still don’t know his real name. Workin’ on that one too,” John said. “But they called him Azazel.”

When Dean eventually hung up with his father and returned to you at the bar, he saw you brighten. But you soon dimmed with a tinge of worry. Something of his thoughts must’ve shown on his face.

Shit. He tried his best to school his features.

“Hey, sorry about that,” he said, grasping your shoulder. “I’ll take you home.”

“I met you here, remember?” you asked.

Dean paused, then shook his head. Get it together, asshole.

“Right," he said. "Well, I’ll walk you to your car. Let me just pay real quick.”

After he sorted out the bill (he didn’t know that you’d slipped in an extra $30 in Cas’s stack for your part), he led you out, saying goodbye to Ellen and Jo while you went.

You hesitated when the two of you got to the car. Something wasn’t right with him. And both Jo and Meg’s words still rolled back and forth through your head.

“Dean, are you okay? Who was it on the phone?” you asked.

“I’m fine. It was just my dad, called to have me take a look at his car. We were just arguing about our schedules…I’m sure you can relate,” he replied, trying at a smile.

You weren’t sure if you believed him. Though he was nearly convincing, he was also shifting on his feet, hands in his pockets. His gaze roamed away from yours, above your head and over your shoulder.

“Um, I might’ve had a beer too many,” you said with a half-chuckle. “Could you walk with me for a bit? Just until my head clears enough to drive.”

“I could take you home,” Dean offered.

“And leave my car here?” you asked. In a public parking lot behind a bar?

You shook your head and pointed down the road.

“Just there and back…but if you need to go, I guess I could just sit in my car for a while.”

Dean shook his head with a frown. He couldn’t tell you that a damn serial killer was on the loose.

“No, it’s okay,” he said. “It’s a relatively safe neighborhood, but not so much at night. Not by yourself.”

He laid a hand on your back to start walking with you, but his hand soon fell back to his side. You glanced at him, but he looked straight ahead, unusually quiet and reserved.

It felt like he was checking out of this night with you. Like he just wanted to usher you into the car and leave. Did he just not want to deal with what Meg said?

Letting out a breath, you tried to see if you could broach the subject.

“It was nice to meet some more of your friends,” you said, and with a nervous laugh, “even if it did get awkward there at the end.”

Dean finally looked over at you.

“We never exactly talked about what each of us was looking for,” you said. “What we were really doing here.”

You stood your ground, but you tried not to look censuring. Just open to whatever he might have to say. Even so, unease churned inside you.

Dean sighed and raked a hand through his hair. “Look, she wasn’t exactly wrong about me.”

You considered that with a nod, biting the inside of your lip.

“When was the last time you were in a relationship?” you asked. Dean gave a humorless huff of a laugh. This really was the last thing he wanted to get into tonight, but he had a feeling he had no choice.

“A few months ago, for about a minute,” he said. “But uh, before then…never.”

Together, you began to cross the street while the cars on either side waited at the red light. Pedestrians had the right of way for the next 30 seconds. You looked over at him and steeled yourself.

“Dean, is this is something casual for you?”

“Define casual,” he attempted to joke (or to deflect). Though the bravado fell the moment he saw that look on your face: tight and disappointed…and hurt.

He reached for your hand, but you weren’t having it. You slipped away from him and continued walking at a more brusque clip, even in those platform heels.

“Okay, hold on.” He quickly followed after you and tugged you back by the hand. It had you both stopping in the middle of the crosswalk.

Dean squeezed your hand and peered into your eyes.

“Look, I’m sorry. Don’t close up on me,” he implored. “…Please.”

Despite your better judgment, and your pursed lips, you waited. Something told you this man didn’t often say please.

“The truth is, I’m trying to do something different here with you. I don’t think we would’ve made it to date #4 if we were just casual,” he said. “I’m not playing games either.”

You wanted to trust that he was serious. Once again, your mind and your heart were at odds; the former told you to be wary, while the latter told you to trust the earnestness in his eyes.

Your heart won. “Okay, Dean.”

“Yeah?” he asked, with hopeful brows raised.

“Yeah,” you nodded.

You finally smiled. And you leaned up, resting a hand against his chest, and pressed a kiss to his cheek. His stubble was coarse, but familiar against your lips.

Dean turned his head and leaned in for a proper kiss. His hands found the curve of your waist and brought you closer against his chest. You both sunk deeper into it, your lips gliding as your head tilted into the kiss…

Until a horn honked loudly, making you both jolt at the sound.

The streetlight was green, and several cars were waiting for you to cross. You snorted in amusement, leading Dean to grin down at you. He tugged you back into step with him across the street.

Again, you hesitated at your car. Dean was more himself as he’d held your hand all the way back.

He now held your car door open while you threw in your purse. But when you turned back to him, you still saw something brooding behind his eyes.

You drew near and grasped the open edges of his shirt. This man wore a lot of plaid when he was out of uniform, always with an undershirt. Tonight it was green plaid on gray, complete with some faded jeans and a pair of boots. This was the only “casual” way in which you wanted Dean.

“Hey,” you started.

“Hmm?” he replied, holding you by your arms.

“I get that we haven’t known each other all that long. So you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to,” you said. “But did something happen when you stepped out? When you talked to your dad?”

Dean paused. His eyes, a pale green under the streetlamp, flicked to yours.

“I just want to know that you’re okay,” you said. “And if you’re not, that’s okay too.”

After a moment to blink in surprise, your earnestness got to him. His grip moved down your arms, and he took one of your hands. His dad’s warning echoed through his mind.

What I’m about to tell you, you don’t fucking repeat. Not to anyone, you understand me? Not even your brother.

Dean knew his dad didn’t make demands without a reason, even if he wasn’t typically so forthcoming with them. But Dean drew enough courage to be as honest as he could be. You deserved that much, after everything you'd put up with tonight.

“My mom died...when I was about four,” he said. “It was a house fire.”

Your eyes widened. All this time, you’d assumed his mother had passed away. You hadn’t expected that, though. You squeezed his hands.

“I’m so sorry,” you said, and you meant it. Dean just shook his head.

“It was ruled an accident. Really they just didn’t have much evidence either way,” he continued. “But uh, my dad’s been obsessed with the idea that it wasn’t. That someone started the fire on purpose… Well, today, he might’ve found his proof.”

He held your gaze for as long as he could, but in the end, he just couldn’t. His chest was tight. Saying those words out loud made them real, and he wasn’t sure of how to handle it.

“Oh, Dean,” you said, starting and stopping, as you struggled to formulate a response that wasn’t just “I’m sorry,” or “Are you okay?”

He clearly wasn’t. You also didn’t want to give him platitudes like, “That’s crazy,” or the ever-inspired: “Wow.”

Or some other variation of what you’re supposed to say. You wanted to give him something honest. Something real.

So you curled your hands around his arms, earning his gaze.

“You must be reeling right now,” you said. “Do you think he’s onto something this time?”

“I don’t know what to think,” said Dean. “I’ve been pressing him for answers, but…honestly? I wish he hadn’t told me a damn thing.”

You didn’t know what to say to that. You were surprised that he actually confided in you with this. But the only thing you could think to do was lean up on your toes and slip your arms around his neck. You hugged him, warm and tight.

You couldn’t even imagine what he was feeling, but you just wanted him to know that someone was there for him. You were there for him.

Dean eventually hugged you back. He held you, reassuring you as well as himself. He blew out a cathartic breath, and his hand came up to cup the back of your head. His lips tugged upwards.

“You’re a sweetheart, you know that?” he said.

A smile spread across your face. Your fingers soothed through his hair gently. You pressed your lips into his neck.

“I aim to please,” you said against his skin.

Dean smiled more fully at that. The new warmth in his chest warred against the roiling in his stomach. Despite his best efforts, his smile faded.

His mom’s killer was still out there.

The thought was haunting his mind, and he knew it probably would for many nights to come.

So for now, he’d just hold you a bit tighter.

AN: 🥲 I honestly didn't mean it to end so angsty, but Dean finally got some much-needed hurt/comfort there! What did you think of how Jo handled her jealous side? And Gordon "shooting his shot" lol.

Coming soon in Part 7, we finally get to a huge milestone between these two lovebirds, with a side helping of baking shenanigans. 😏❤️‍🔥

Next Time:

“Ey, ey!” he raised a warning finger with his free hand. “You’re about to take this to a new level.”

You met his gaze through your lashes with a playful smile. “So?”

Dean raised a brow at you. He could admit, you had audacity. All he could do was call your bluff.

He took one of your battered fingers into his mouth. Your eyes widened at the feel of his soft tongue swirling around your finger, sucking it clean. All the while, his eyes never broke from yours.

Lord have mercy, you thought. Really, it was the only coherent one in your head.

Keep Reading: PART 7

Dean Winchester Masterlist

Main Masterlist

Series Tag List (Part 1):

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@vanillawhiskeyflavoredkisses @roseblue373 @this-is-me19 @emily-winchester @spnexploration @deans-spinster-witch @deans-baby-momma @iprobablyshipit91

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#Just Casual #Smoke Eater #Part 6 #dean winchester #Firefighter!Dean Winchester #dean winchester x reader #Dean Winchester x female reader #firefighter!Dean Winchester x Reader #dean winchester x you #firefighter AU #dean winchester AU #spn #supernatural #zepskies writes

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kolsmikaelson · 6 months

Note

carmen - prompt list 2 - "since we're dating, does that mean i can hold your hand whenever i want?"

— LOVER OF MINE

— a/n - i know i’m weeks late on writing this so i hope it was worth the wait <3. tysm for sending something in!

— warning (s) — not proofread, carm and r being idiots in love <3

— word count - 293

join my taglist or follow @rodrickhefley to see when i post!

You’d met Carmy about six months back. Freshly moved into the apartment three doors down from him, you showed up on his doorstep a week or so later when your door got jammed and your phone had died. You weren’t sure what to do but you’d seen the blue eyed man with this unruly hair on more than one occasion and he looked nice enough. And before you knew it, he was asking you out for the first time and things took off from there.

While you’d been dating for the better part of those last six months you were still somewhat hesitant in showing public displays of affection. Carmy rarely initiated anything in public, though he would always have his hands on you if you were in the comfort of yours or his own apartment.

“Carm,” you ask, lifting your head from its place on his chest. “Can I ask you something?”

The TV playing an old hockey game is long forgotten as Carmen sits upright, pulling you with him.

“‘Course baby. What’s up?” There's a flash of fear hiding in his eyes, almost imperceptible, but you see it anyway.

“Nothing bad, promise. But since we're dating, does that mean I can hold your hand whenever I want? You don’t ever hold my hand unless we’re here or at my place.” you pout. Carmys loud laughter confuses you, not sure why he finds this so funny.

“‘M sorry baby, I didn’t think that you wanted me to be that way with you in public. ‘Course you can hold my hand in public.” He grins at you. “Was just letting you do whatever you were okay with, ‘M sorry.” He apologizes again, kissing your cheeks first before making his way to your lips.

dividers by : @.cafekitsune

#◜ caitee’𝗌 works ✎ ˚✧ ꜝ #kesh <3 #carmen berzatto #carmy berzatto #the bear #carmen berzatto x reader #carmen berzatto imagine #carmen berzatto blurb #carmen berzatto x you #carmy berzatto x reader #carmy berzatto imagine #carmy berzatto blurb #carmy berzatto x you #the bear x reader #the bear imagine #the bear blurb #the bear x you

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lovebugism · 6 months

Note

for fictober could I request from the 50 autumnal prompts ‘when he wears THAT flannel’ with Eddie please?

we were so robbed of Eddie all boyfriend in soft cosy clothes. R wouldn’t be able to keep their hands off of him and he’d love it come autumn when it’s all he wears.

ugh imagine him in like thick baggy sweaters and when he reaches up it just exposes a bit of tummy 😍 I’m like a Victorian seeing ankles

love you xoxo

hi angel! idk how i managed to make this angsty, but alas! hope you like it :D

summary: you and eddie try to get used to life post-vecna but it's not nearly as easy as you thought it'd be (post st4, established relationship, wee bit of angst tw for mentions of death and scars, 1.2k)

fictober (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ)

Eddie’s pretty much recovered by mid-fall.

Not totally. But mostly.

You think getting away from Hawkins helped the most — moving out of the city and settling further in the green. Even though everyone back home eventually understood that Eddie wasn’t the psycho-killing freak they made him out to be, things had changed far too much to ever go back to normal again.

Something’s break beyond repair. Something’s just can’t be fixed.

Not your Eddie, though. Eddie’s perfect. Damn near it, anyway, considering the circumstances.

He’s still got the nightmares and the phantom pains — even though he tells you he doesn’t. But he’s graduated now and helping Wayne at the car shop whenever he can. He’s taking the newfound normalcy in stride, spending early autumn with you and making you hot chocolate like nothing ever happened.

“You like marshmallows in your cocoa, right?” he calls from the kitchen, though he sounds like he’s talking mostly to himself.

You hear him, but you forget to answer. Your brain all but short circuits at how pretty he looks.

You eye him from the couch while he bustles in the kitchen, and gutwrenching existentialism knocks the wind from your lungs like a fist to the stomach.

You weren’t supposed to have Eddie again. You weren’t supposed to share a home like you always dreamed about, and he wasn’t supposed to make you hot cocoa or keep you warm when autumn got too bitter.

A season or more ago, you were saying your goodbyes while he bled out in an alternate dimension.

You haven’t yet forgotten how pale his skin had gotten or how glassy his chocolate eyes grew as the life spilled from the weeping bites on his stomach. The feeling of his blood, slimy on your hands and drenching your clothes, hasn’t yet left you. The red-hot blood in the unnatural navy blue cold still lives in your head.

But it’s only there. In your head.

And Eddie’s right in front of you — wild hair, baggy pajama pants, and all. You can smell the musk of his cologne and the floral of his shampoo. He’s real enough to touch.

He’s real.

The realization hits you every day, all the time. It wells from your chest up into your throat and makes you feel like crying. Most people don’t get to say goodbye to their soulmate and eat Wednesday morning breakfast with them months later.

You’ve got so much gratitude inside you, bursting like golden rays of sunshine, that you don’t know what to do with it all.

“Babe?” he calls again when you don’t answer. “Did you hear me?”

He pokes his head in the doorway, and your eyes go wide. “Huh? What?” you stammer, shaking your head to jerk yourself out of your stupor.

Eddie laughs, high and boyish. It sounds like heaven, and it pierces your heart. Six months ago, you never thought you’d hear it again. “I asked if you wanted marshmallows, weirdo.”

You nod rapidly and ramble an answer. “Oh, yeah. Sure. Thank you.”

“O-kay,” Eddie lilts, though his voice wavers with confusion. His grin widens and his eyes narrow, but he doesn’t ask why you’re acting so suddenly strange.

You wonder if he’s used to it by now. You wonder if he knows when you go quiet that you’re remembering that a part of you nearly died.

He returns to the kitchen and reaches for the upper cupboard. A sliver of his milky white tummy peeks from beneath his flannel. You can see the bites from here. They’re scarred over now, dark red and light pink and thunder-strike purple. It almost jars you how healed they look. The wounds are still fresh and weeping whenever you close your eyes.

Eddie comes in from the living room, balancing two mugs in his hands rather carefully because he’s filled them to the brim. He’s got his usual ceramic Campbell’s Tomato Soup cup in one hand and your sleeping Snoopy in the other. The innate domesticity makes your stomach whirl.

“You okay?” the boy wonders with pinched brows when he hands you your cocoa.

You nod with glittering eyes, mustering a faint smile up at him. The mug warms your chilled, trembling hands.

“Mm-hmm… Why?” you question, though you’re more than aware of why.

Eddie’s got a knack for knowing how you’re feeling before you’ve even hinted at it. You think he might’ve got mind-reading powers when you were in the Upside Down.

“I don’t know. You just looked a little… far away, I guess.”

“Just missed you,” you confess with a bright, innocent gaze.

Eddie snorts as he rounds the couch to sit next to you. “While I was in the kitchen ten feet away?”

“Yeah. ’S way too far.”

“Well, remind me to carry you with me wherever I go, then.”

You know he’s joking, but you beam anyway. You don’t want to be anywhere that he isn’t. You don’t want him to go where you can’t follow.

Eddie takes a sip and smiles at your smiling. His grin is crooked and rosy and lined with whipped cream. He leans in to kiss you with it.

You pull back from him, just far enough to wipe the melted sugar off with the pad of your thumb. You give him a smacking peck a second later.

With a kissed grin, the boy leans back against the couch with his arm sprawled along the back of it. You curl into his side like his own personal puzzle piece, nestling your mug between your bodies with one hand and settling your free one on his stomach.

Your fingers seem to gravitate beneath his fuzzy flannel without you having to think twice about it.

Eddie doesn’t seem to mind, either. His attention is consumed by the television — a Scooby Doo re-run he’s probably seen a thousand times. His chuckle rumbles against your cheek. You laugh along with him, made content by the sound of his boyish delight.

Your fingers dance through the fuzz of his happy trail, then settle on something softer.

The marred skin of his warm tummy feels like silk. Before you realize what you’re touching, the boy beneath you jolts.

You nearly spill your cooling cocoa when you freeze alongside him. You part from Eddie with a gaping gaze, wide eyes darting over every inch of his face. You’re frightened that you’ve hurt him, but his pink grin only widens.

“Oh, shit. Are you okay?” you blurt. “I wasn’t— I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

Eddie turns to you, then. His features are blurry with sleep, and they twist with confusion at your misplaced concern.

“No,” he answers with the shake of his head. The softened ends of his chocolate curls brush your cheek. A laugh sputters from his mouth. “It just tickled, babe. It’s fine.”

You let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding. It wavers on the way out, but you manage a trembling smile anyway. “Oh. Okay,” you hum, breathless.

“Yeah. ’S okay,” Eddie murmurs softly back, wrapping his pale arm around your shoulder to pull you closer. He presses a kiss to the crown of your head and lingers there. “I’m okay,” he whispers into your hair.

#published by bug #eddie munson x reader #stranger things x reader #eddie munson #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson imagine #stranger things imagine #stranger things fanfiction #stranger things fanfic #stranger things fic #stranger things #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson fanfiction #eddie munson fic #st drabbles #eddie spaghetti drabble #event: fictober!

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metalhoops · 10 months

Text

Inspired by this post

Steve had watched the world end a hundred different ways. He’d lived the same day more times than he could count, watching the people he loved die or feeling himself die. There were things worse than death. There were memories he didn’t dredge up for fear of calling them into the waking world.

He'd held onto hope for the first twenty recurrent days, which had dwindled to a sense of steely determination until he’d lost count of the days. Then all that was left was the comfort of repetition. He was Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill, day in and day out. Steve kept trying and failing to save Eddie until it was all he knew.

Maybe he was Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods and spent his life paying for it, tied to a rock while birds picked at his liver, only for it to grow back with each morning. Prometheus whose name, by definition, means forethought; one’s ability to consider possible futures. Steve had spent a small lifetime considering futures. It wasn’t a comparison he would’ve made on his own. That was Eddie, who’d spent his childhood with his head in thick tomes of fantasy and mythology.

Eddie Munson came to him like cheap furniture, in crudely disassembled pieces that Steve had been working tirelessly to put together. Each new loop brought him another piece of Eddie. His favourite colour was blue. He only woke up early on weekends to watch cartoons. He liked too much cream in his coffee.

The Eddie that existed in a world where Steve stayed with him and Dustin during the swarm of bats had told Steve his biggest dream was to make enough money to buy Uncle Wayne a proper home. His biggest fear was that when he died, no one would remember him.

Days or months later, with Steve repeating the same damn day, he’d finally learnt why Eddie’s love for his uncle ran so deep. Wayne had taken him in before his dad went to jail when the man caught Eddie holding another boy’s hand. In that world, Steve had stayed with Eddie in the RV as the rest of the group searched War Zone.

Eddie’s mother died when he was six. He’d told Steve that later, or earlier. Steve had and has lost his sense of past and present. Eddie loved his mother deeply, though was unsure if that love had been misplaced. He recalled two mothers, one who read him bedtime stories and threw herself around the kitchen each morning with her wild theatrics and another mother who was distant and whose temper could turn on a dime. Eddie wasn’t sure which of those mothers was his and which was the mother of memory. All good storytellers know the story shapes itself in the retelling. Eddie’s mother was Janus, god of duality.

Steve understood. He loved and hated his parents. These feelings weren’t mutually exclusive. Steve loved Eddie because he’d spent the last hundred-odd days getting to know him, but Steve hated Eddie because he kept dying. Until he didn’t.

The boys lay side by side in the red-blue soil of The Upside Down, their bleeding sides caked with mud and demonic bat viscera. In the end, Steve wasn’t sure what’d done it. It’d been so long since he’d lived Eddie’s original death that it’d been smeared by the haze of memory and conjecture. All he knew was that a sea of bats lay dead around them and that it was over. Finally, over.

Steve removed his hand from where it was pressed into his side and extended it to ensnare Eddie’s. He felt muscles tug and tear from the walls of his ribs with the effort. Blood flowed freely from the cavity, but Steve didn’t care. He wanted to hold Eddie’s hand. Holy shit, they’d done it.

Somewhere along the way, Steve had fallen in love. It’d taken him ten more iterations to reconcile with the fact he could not only like a man but love him. That was months ago, in Steve’s time. It was old news. “Steve, you still with me?” Eddie asked, his voice horse.

He was hurt, though not as badly as Steve. All his wounds were superficial. He’d be okay. Steve had been so sick of watching Eddie die, he’d been willing to put his body on the line to make sure it didn’t happen again.

In this loop, he was still ‘Steve’, not ‘Stevie’. They hadn’t grown close enough yet. Eddie only called him ‘sweetheart’ in the iterations where they kissed. Steve wanted to kiss him, but there was the taste of iron in his mouth.

“I’m okay,” Steve insisted, squeezing Eddie’s hand. He felt a sharp pain shoot through his side as Eddie pressed his hand into Steve’s wound.

“Christ, there’s a lot of blood,” Eddie muttered to himself.

He was bad with blood. He’d scraped his knee down to the bone when he was seven and ever since, the sight of gore made him queasy. Steve wasn’t meant to know that yet. In this iteration, he hadn’t told Eddie about the loop. He’d tried before, but it never helped.

Pain and blood loss drag Steve down into a familiar oblivion. He expected to wake at the beginning of the loop, emerging in The Upside Down from Lover’s Lake, but instead, he found himself in a hospital room with Eddie in a bed by his side. It was late, too late for visitors, but Eddie wasn’t sleeping. His eyes were trained on Steve, equal parts concerned and curious.

“You scared the shit out of me,” Eddie confessed, as Steve’s eyes met his.

Steve wanted to cry or scream. He wanted to untangle himself from the knot of cords and tubes to crawl beside Eddie in bed as they had curled up together in the back of the RV dozens of times before. He needed to hold Eddie to know he was alive, to understand he wasn’t going anywhere. Steve blinked away tears, balling his hands into fists. He didn’t want to scare Eddie.

“I scared you?” Steve choked out a mixture between a laugh and a sob.

Eddie didn’t know what to do. He never knew what to do when people cried. Steve learned that in the iteration where they’d lost Dustin. He didn’t want to think about it.

“You almost died, man,” Eddie explained.

He somehow understood Steve wanted him closer. Eddie got out of bed, clutching his I.V. drip as he flopped into the chair by Steve’s bedside. He wanted to hold Eddie’s hand again, but he was out of excuses. He could tell him the truth, but he didn’t know what good it would do.

Steve was still used to thinking of possible futures. He was Prometheus who, unlike Sisyphus, escaped his torment. Steve wondered what happened to Prometheus after he was rescued. Did he return to a normal life? Does anyone bother to ask? Prometheus’ story is always about punishment. Afterwards, he was a footnote in the story of Hercules, but once the heroes leave the story, what’s left?

Eddie would know the answer, but it wasn’t a conversation he’d had with this Eddie. That Eddie was dead. This Eddie was and wasn’t him. This Eddie was Janus, god of abstract duality, god of beginnings and ends, god of life and death.

“Sorry my lame-ass face is the first one you had to see. Robin and the kids were in here all day. Wheeler left flowers,” Eddie tacked on awkwardly.

This Eddie didn’t know Steve. They were strangers. Of course, things were awkward. He couldn’t know he was the one person Steve wanted to see more than anything.

“No, Ed’s—.” Slip of the tongue.

“Eddie. I’m really glad you’re here, man.”

They were back to square one, but Steve could work with that. He’d been working with that for months. This time, Eddie would remember. This time, they had the luxury of taking things slow.

“One thing’s been bugging me all day,” Steve began.

After hundreds of days of getting to know Eddie, Steve had learnt a few shortcuts, a few ways to jump-start his way into Eddie’s heart.

“Can you explain what the hell Mordor is?”

It was a tried-and-true method. By that point, Steve knew Eddie’s response off by heart, but he wanted to hear him say it. Eddie gave him the same perplexed look he always did when Steve asked. It was as though Eddie thought he knew too much like there was some secret he wasn’t letting him in on, but he didn’t challenge Steve on it. He never did.

“Harrington, have you heard of Lord of the Rings?” Yes.

“No.” A million times.

“Tell me about it.”

Read Part 2 Here

#steddie #steddie ficlet #steve harrington #eddie munson #stranger things #drabble #ficlet #Metalhoops writes #I read the post yesterday #and I've been thinking about it ever since #the plot kind of ran away with itself #but I like how it turned out #I'm considering a part 2 #from Eddie's point of few in the weeks/ months that follow #depending on if people are interested #shoutout to #@theamazingbard #for the idea

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squishycheekanon · 2 months

Note

I have a request: how would the Techno react if Reader dies but appears a few months later alive but very injured?

Now this inspired me.

Warnings: 18+, angst, suicide mentioned, hints at nsfw, blood, alternate timeline where she was never pregnant; adding Athena and Apollo into this would have made me cry so no.

————————————————————————

Techno was distraught, it was against his nature to love and be loved and yet you taught him how. You were his everything and more. From the moment you shot him in those woods all that time ago, when the voices went quiet when your face came into his eyesight, everything changed for him.

He loved you more than life itself, so when Phil broke the news to him that you were dead, he lost it. Standing in the living room of the home you had shared together, rage burned through him, his shaking hands ripping, shoving, destroying. By the time he was done, Phil had witnessed something he thought he’d never see.

Techno was weeping, sobbing, screaming for you. A broken man wanting the only thing he couldn’t have. For months Techno barely ate, barely slept, contemplated suicide daily. How could he live without you? Why would he even want to? Without you there was no meaning to his life. It was like a huge hole had been punched through his chest.

The absence of you was everywhere he looked, the little touches you had slowly added to the house over the years. Your perfume, oils and lotions on the white vanity in the corner of the room. Techno remembers vividly, when you had talked about wanting one and he worked for weeks to build and paint one you’d love. He sat for hours carving intricate designs onto the legs and around the mirror just for you.

The wardrobe filled with your clothes, the beautiful materials you covered your body with, he was always envious of them, they got to touch you all the time. Dresses hanging there that hugged your figure perfectly, that made his heart beat faster.

The bathroom filled with your sweet bath oils and bath salts, countless times he had come home from fighting and you drawn him a bath and washed him clean. Countless times had he taken you apart in the sweet smelling waters and steamy room.

The bed was the hardest to deal with, it reeked of you. The mouthwatering smell he wanted nothing more than to roll around in, it was always present when he slept. It was a slight comfort to him, but always left him distraught. He thought about sleeping downstairs but had to remind himself that he had destroyed the couch.

More time passed, around six months now since Phil had told him about your death. He was a hollow shell of himself, he had lost a lot of weight and always had dark bags under his eyes. He was surprised he was still breathing.

“Techno!” Phil had screamed, a dreaded, fear filled, confusion dripping scream. Techno sighed, it took so much energy out of him to simply stand. Feet practically dragging along the floor, he shuffled to the front door sparing a longing look to his axe of peace. Whatever was on the other side of his door was dangerous if Phil’s scream was anything to go by, and he was happy to let whatever it was kill him.

Opening the door and stepping out onto the wood panels just before the stairs that led down to the snow, red cloak and gold crown nowhere in sight, The Blood God isn’t who stepped out to fight, but a broken man ready to die.

That all changed the second he saw you. You who had been dead for six months, you who he had mourned for six months, you who was bruised and covered in cuts with blood dripping from them. You who looked just as starved and exhausted as Techno did, in fact you looked worse.

“Sweetheart?” Techno’s voice cracked as he uttered the term of endearment he hadn’t spoken in so long.

“Tec.” Your voice was small and fragile, your hand reaching for him. The clothes you wore were torn and certainly not enough to keep you warm in the freezing cold snow you had trekked in to get home.

He ran to you, feet moving quicker than they ever had before all so he could take you in his arms and hold you close. “I’ve got you darlin’, I’ve got you, hold on to me.” He used all his strength to help you into the house, Phil running to your aid too.

You took in the state of your home and honestly it was alot better than what you had expected. Glancing at your husband, he avoided eye contact sheepishly, normally it would have made you smile. You don’t even think you know how to do that anymore.

“Let’s uh, get you upstairs.” Phil said awkwardly, helping Techno carry you up into your bedroom, and onto the bed. You sighed in pure relief that you body didn’t have to hold itself up anymore, that you weren’t on a nasty cold stone floor too but the soft, Techno smelling, mattress you had been dreaming of for six months.

You were so happy you cried. You cried ugly, hard, loud. Letting all your emotions out. Techno was there stroking your filthy, greasy hair and holding your dirty, sore hand. “Sweetheart?”

“I’m just so happy, I thought this day would never come. I had convinced myself that it wouldn’t. And yet here I am. Home.” You sobbed out the words, looking at your husband through your tears blurred eyes, just about making out the crooked smile on his gorgeous face.

He wanted to ask what had happened, wanted to know who had done this to you. But just seeing your relief to being in a bed, to being home, he knew you’d need time.

Phil went home after Techno had asked him to, they agreed not to tell anyone you were back until they figured out what had happened to you and by who.

Techno ran you a bath and took extra time and care into washing you off, he had to pull you out of the disgustingly mucky water and run you a new bath. This one you could soak in, allow yourself to relax, even when the clear water did dirty again, only a little this time though.

You saw the look in Techno’s eyes as he washed you and you knew, remembering the vow he made to you all those years ago; “I love you, it took me a while to say it I know. But I need to know you understand—“

“Understand?” You asked.

“How much I love you. I’d destroy empires for you. Pillage country’s for you. Kill for you.” He pressed his forehead to yours. “If anyone ever even thought about hurting you, they’d be dead before they could finish that thought.” He growled, deep from within his chest. The ruby of his eyes shining brighter the more he talked about it.

“I understand.” Of course you did. You knew from the moment you said ‘I do’ exactly what that meant.

“You’re going to kill him aren’t you?” It was a question you knew the answer to but you still felt compelled to ask nonetheless.

“Yes.”

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silverbladexyz · 3 months

Text

TW: Mentions of death, injuries, self-loathing. Part 2 to this. Part 3 is here.

"I can't believe you sometimes. What if you had actually been killed because of your recklessness?!"

"But I wasn't! Even if combat isn't my strong suit, I had it all under control; and besides, these wounds are nothing compared to what we've faced before!"

In the normally tranquil environment of the Port Mafia's infirmary, two voices argued back and forth. One laced with worry and anger, the other laced with guilty adamance. A pair of best friends seemed to be the reason behind this noise; with their stubbornness a guise of the true feelings that they harboured for each other.

"Are you seriously kidding me right now? Even if you had it all under control, that doesn't mean you can gamble your life away like it's nothing! How do you think everyone would feel if you died? Do you want to put them through more pain and suffering that could've been prevented if you were more cautious? Do you even care?!"

"..."

Instead of replying, you turned away, suddenly finding the window to be more interesting than whatever was going on right now.

He was right. You didn't think properly about the consequences before you jumped straight in to engage with the enemy, even if you may have had a backup plan.

"... I'm sorry."

It was soft, but Chuuya managed to catch it.

He gave a small sigh, his shoulders dropping as the tension in them wore out. You fiddled with your bandages, not having the courage to look at him in the eyes. Did you even deserve to, afterall? When you worried him sick after he learnt that he almost lost you?

You heard his footsteps approaching you, and mentally prepared for the next thing that he was going to say.

Only for him to somewhat tug you into his arms.

Your eyes widened, and you blinked several times before realising that Chuuya Nakahara, your best friend, was hugging you.

His breath fanned against your collarbone as he buried his face into your shoulder. Strong arms held you close to him, being mindful of the injuries that you sustained on your body- yet the grip they held you in was tight but secure.

"... You idiot. Don't you dare do that again."

It was the most vulnerable you had ever seen him.

You hugged him back, inhaling his rich scent as an unknown heat bloomed in your chest.

"I won't. I promise, Chuuya."

His warmth never left your memories.

Now, you watched as he stood with her, holding her hand. They were too far away for you to make out their words, but whatever she said made Chuuya laugh. A genuine, happy laugh that seemed so much more different from the short chuckles he normally gave you.

He put his arm around her shoulder, and you unconsciously hugged your body as you felt yourself getting colder. It was the third of December- the start of another winter in Yokohama. Marking the six month anniversary of their relationship.

A wry smile made it's way on your face as Chuuya pulled Yasuko in for a kiss. Even though it was a short peck, it was enough to make your heart twist in longing that exemplified whenever you were around him. It was stupid; you knew that your best friend deserved to have someone much better than the monster you were, but it didn't stop you from wishing that you were her. Someone that was a sight for sore eyes, with an aura brighter than the blue skies- someone that could get Chuuya mesmerised.

You even noticed how he became slightly more distant in the friendship. You knew that he wasn't doing it on purpose; he was still the great best friend that he always was, but the little signs were there. Holding your hand so that you wouldn't get lost in the crowd had diminished to just staying close to you. Whenever you called him on a free day to ask if he wanted to hang out with you, he would apologise, saying 'I have a date with Yasuko later'. And the fact that you had the same free days really said something about how much they meant to him.

You walked away, the sight getting too much to handle. Once you were at a safe distance, you crumpled against a wall, biting down on the inside of your mouth to stop the tears from leaking out. A higher-ranking mafioso like you, crying over some crush? Pathetic. An unfitting model for your subordinates who looked up to you as a great unflinching leader.

"Why would you ever kiss me? I'm not even half as pretty." You chuckled bitterly, digging your nails into your palms. You hated it- the soft gaze in Chuuya's eyes whenever Yasuko was mentioned, the way that he gently held her hand, the way he became much more sweet and patient with her that was almost nothing like how he acted around you- you hated it all. You regretted not confessing to him sooner all those years ago.

But you were only the side character in their romance; forever doomed to support them while you suffered in silence.

Was there something or somebody that you could blame for this agony that you were currently in? Destiny, perhaps? Or even Cupid? Those names only made you scoff as you stuffed your hands into your pockets.

There was nobody you could blame except for yourself.

Perhaps it would have been better if you were the one who saved Yasuko, not Chuuya. They would have never spent as much time with each other, and you'd still have a chance at romancing him. None of this would have happened if the roles were reversed at that time.

But who were you kidding? One way or another, they’d end up together by the red string of fate. The most perfect match in all of Yokohama that could put every other couple to shame. And you'd always be the third wheel- the 'best friend' whose sacrifices went unseen just so that they could be happy.

Or maybe it would have been better if Yasuko didn't exist in the first place.

"-Y/N? Y/N?"

A voice broke you out of your thoughts, and you blinked a bit before refocusing onto the girl in front of you.

"Is everything okay? N-not that you have to tell me what's wrong, but if you ever need someone to talk to, I'll always be here for you."

Yasuko looked at you with a concerned expression, her eyes searching your face for any sign of discomfort.

Those innocent, beautiful eyes of hers that had held Chuuya captive in their gaze.

Ah, right. You were currently in the shopping mall with her, because her boyfriend had asked you to accompany her like some sort of bodyguard. And who were you to refuse, as his best friend who was always there for him? Well, you were grateful that Chuuya trusted you enough to let you near Yasuko. You had seen how protective he was of her.

"... Nothing. I'm alright."

You smiled at her, all traces of your previous emotions now gone. How could you have let your composure slip so easily? This hangout was so that you could 'get closer' with her, not reminiscing about the pathetic past that held you captive in this agonising love.

She frowned a little, but before she could say anything else, you jumped at the opportunity to distract her. Anything that could make you temporarily forget your pain for one moment was what you desperately needed now.

"Oh, looks like they're selling discounted jewellery! Let's take a look! You might find something that you like."

Grabbing her wrist, you dragged her towards the jewellery store despite having no intentions to buy anything. You simply wanted her to be distracted by the precious stones, so meticulously cut and fit into fine metal that it was laughable how they were mostly for show. A valuable trinket only made to be admired and forgotten at the end of the day, even when so much blood had been spilled over them. Blood that would forever stain the hands of a sinner such as you.

"Oh! I remember Chuuya taking me to a similiar store! He bought me a ring; I said that there was no need, but he insisted." Yasuko glanced down at the gold-and-red circlet that lay snugly around her index finger, her gaze becoming shyer as she profoundly remembered the day that her beloved boyfriend had bought it for her.

Your own silver ring that he gifted to you on your 18th birthday paled in comparison to the 5-carat Burmese ruby that sat atop her finger. It was a harsh reminder of who the buyer really preferred from between the two of you. That twisted feeling in your gut resurfaced, but you pushed it back down. You had no more frivolous hopes that he would one day realise you were the one whom he truly belonged with.

"Haha... did he now? I didn't know Chuuya was such a romantic. Did you know that rubies symbolise passionate and undying love?" You smiled as she blushed; the redness on her cheeks rivaling the shade of the precious gemstone that was proof of his commitment to her.

People were right when they said love hurts, but they never mentioned that it was the most painful sensation in the world. All the stab wounds and burns and whatnot that you had experienced from your enemies were nothing compared to a broken heart. A heart that was made to be torn apart to pieces as it weeps for the love it would never get.

Something cold brushed against your wrist, and you looked down to see a bracelet made up of the most exquisite yellow topaz. Yasuko held an identical one in her hand, her expression almost bashful as she faced you.

"I... I wanted to get matching bracelets for the two of us. I know it's only been a few months since we became friends, but being around you has really brightened up my life. I'm glad that we got to meet each other, and I hope that our friendship continues to grow and strengthen!"

She smiled at you; a smile so full of purity and beauty that it would've made many men fall onto her knees in front of her. It was a smile that didn't belong in the dark depths of Yokohama- instead, it belonged to a goddess that was too good for this world. A goddess that clearly deserved to call Nakahara Chuuya hers. Just seeing that smile made you feel infinitely more guilty about the nasty thoughts you had about her each night.

Yasuko's smile faded, worried that she might have overstepped your boundaries due to your silence.

"S-sorry... I should've asked you beforehand if you wanted to buy matching bracelets. Please don't force yourself to buy it just to make me happy-"

You shut her up by slipping it onto your right wrist, the topaz seeming to reflect the sun's golden rays back at you. Shooting her a smile, you grasped Yasuko's hand and put the other bracelet onto her left wrist joint. It fit nicely; just like anything else that she wore.

"May our friendship last until death do us part." It was a pact that you had sworn with Chuuya before. And you always kept your word, never breaking a promise to someone no matter how bizarre or extreme it was.

How unfortunate, really, that death did you apart too early.

@circinuus @riiwrites @ruanais @justcallmesakira @yasu-masashige @oldworldpoolhall @heartsfourdazai @ashthemadwriter-uwu @sariel626 @yuugen-benni @chocsra @iridescentdove

#silverbladexyz #no way did I just pull a Heather in my fic #it's a good song though #i hope this was okay #bsd x reader #bungou stray dogs x reader #chuuya x reader #chuuya nakahara x reader #bsd x gender neutral reader #bsd x female reader #chuuya x gn reader #chuuya x fem!reader #part 2 of unrequited love fic #yellow topaz symbolises friendship btw #unrequited love

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