#if all you were going to do was have the characters hurl abuse at her?

[bohemian-nights]

No this fandom is actually insane

Do people think it’s ok to write “he was teaching her how to bathe”?????? I’m honestly scared to go read the post that they were talking about. The lengths that these people will go to just to prove that dettles never happened

Read at your own risk.

The person who wrote that is actually Black(or so they claim), but is willing to throw Black characters and Black fans under the bus and promote negative stereotypes about us for their mostly (racist) followers in defense of a racist characters desirability.

Sir/ma’am, if you are reading this, get some self respect. I’m actually embarrassed for you cause this shit is actually pathetic. You’re better than this.

Case in point they wrote this crap a while back with 100% sincerity:

(I should also note that I actually had a run in with them about a year and some change ago and they threatened to block me after I asked them if Corlys bathing with Rhaenyra would be normal father daughter figure bonding time so I blocked them first😊).

Like you don’t have to like Dettles, but when you are pushing harmful ideology and stereotypes (Black people are so stupid/dirty that we need the white mans help to civilize us) as a way to discredit them and make those who ship it look like angry Black women jealous of the poor helpless white woman and her stans, you’ve gone too far.

Let’s keep in mind that this poor helpless white woman was actively trying to kill a Black girl for a crime she claims she didn’t commit and that despite claiming that Nettles definitely didn’t sleep with Daemon her stans spazz out everytime you mention her name and actively want her cut from the show.

Or how about the fact that these same stans actively stalk and harass Dettles shippers whose only crime has been pointing out y’all’s bullshit.

Let’s keep in mind all of this shall we:

So who is actually jealous of who here? Who in this scenario wants racial revenge?* Who is the problem in this hellhole of a fandom?

Is it the people merely pointing out Nettles importance to the Dance and Daemon’s arc or the people who hurl racial insults and stereotypes? The people who want her erased from the narrative in its entirety cause she disrupts the status quo?

(The fact that someone would even fix their mouth to say that when Black people have been beaten, raped, enslaved, terrorized, tortured, disenfranchised, abused, subjected, and not even given common decency and respect for centuries by these people. If we wanted racial revenge it damn sure wouldn’t be off the back of a fucking fictional character).

The fact that they can’t see Nettles value and only see her as some irrelevant Black girl and reduce people liking her down to a gotcha/“woke” moment is fandom misogynoir in action.

They forget that she comes from nothing, claims a dragon, has a prince willing to give his life for her(six men or sixty remember that since y’all claim to be capable of reading🙃), survives the Dance and becomes a firewitch worshipped by a group of people, because they don’t want to acknowledge her importance.

It makes them uncomfortable to do so because she doesn’t look like them, but people like I’m not like those other Negros cover up for them so that when they are called out for it they can go see this n-I mean this Black person agrees with me.

Imagine being this butt hurt about a fictional character that you can’t even leave your racism or tap dancing at the door for five seconds.

Nettles doesn’t fit the mold, but that’s the point of her story.

They can recognize maester propaganda and scream about feminism when it comes to their white faves, but when it comes to the Black girl who is actively being stereotyped and maligned for her gender, race, and social standing in the source material they believe it no questions asked?

Again, what does it say about you that you are so willing to believe that a Black girl who was clever enough to claim a wild dragon doesn’t know how to bathe herself? What does it say about you that you think Daemon would never touch her with a ten foot pole just because she’s Black?

What does it say about you don’t want her on the show because of her race? What does it say about you that a fictional character who just so happens to be Black has you worked up into a tizzy.

Y’all claim to be for women(real or fictional), but in reality you only care about the women who look like you and shit on women you see as beneath you. Women who you think are a threat to the status quo. You’re no better than the men who oppress you.

#bnask #bnasks #this is longer than I wanted but black people and black characters aren’t the problem here #nettles #anti daemyra stans #anti rhaenyra stans #full of bullshit #hotd fandom misogynoir #hotd fandom bs

[0v3rcast]

((CONTENT WARNING: VIOLENCE, BODILY HARM, BODY HORROR))

Seriously. If these things mess you up, please sit this one out.))

Vulnus Aureum

Teyvat was supposed to be different. You were a stranger here, an outsider, brought here after a disastrous first life.

You were supposed to see this beautiful world through your own eyes, to fall in love with it a second time. To taste the meals of your most beloved characters, to know them as people...

Instead, the first person you met put an arrow through your eye, killing you instantly.

This vendetta against you follows you from Mondstadt to Liyue to Inazuma to Sumeru. The ones you love turned against you by some belief you're an 'imposter'.

Pyro licked at skin as you screamed, burning to death.

Your frozen body shattered when it impacted the ground.

The sizzle of frying flesh as you writhed and howled, body coursing with electro.

Desperately clawing at your throat, eyes becoming bloodshot as Anemo stole the breath from your lungs.

The sheer water pressure of Hydro attacks cleaved through your flesh with impunity, your lungs overflowing with water as you drowned on dry land.

Your organs and bones crushed to pulp beneath the unyielding weight of Geo.

Dendro-grown plants strangled and bound you, thorny vines curling up to crush you, air full of choking pollen.

Teyvat was supposed to be different.

---

Unbeknownst to you, every death came with consequences for your killer.

Visions entirely lost their glow, the elemental energies contained within abandoning the traitorous allogene, leaving them powerless in a suddenly far more hostile area.

Pristine weaponry and artifacts, proof of your favor, vanishing into thin air the moment you cease to live.

Even the falling stars that once brought them such power simply fade from their constellations.

(After all, if they are not yours, if they reject Your Divinity, then they have no right to your favor.)

Where your blood touches weapons, they rust and decay, turning the pinnacles of craft into simple piles of iron oxide and termite-eaten wood and weathered stone.

---

You find that the animals, monsters, and machines of Teyvat follow your orders without question and treat you with both respect and kindness.

Hilichurl camps all across Teyvat go from 'nuisance' to 'genuine danger' as their inhabitants go up a world rank overnight are mysteriously empowered after your presence fills their cursed bodies with life, with this not helped by the fact that many allogenes simply no longer have the power of a Vision.

---

Upon a throne of marble and gold and crystal, a 'god' harshly addresses their acolytes, hurling abuse at the now-powerless Archons.

In their rage, they knock over a porcelain cup, which does as all fragile things do and explodes into shards.

(In this instant, Teyvat grins, her eyes full of malice, and a careful application of Anemo takes one shard straight across the cheek of the false idol.)

The archons stare up in horror as starless red blood oozes from the wound on the face of their Creator.

Horror curdles into deep-seated shame... and blinding rage. Four Archons overpower a liar and rend them apart with nails and teeth.

That night, the sky fills with falling stars, gold and blue and purple screaming down from the heavens on comet tails, seeking out those who'd never raised their hands against the maker, giving them gifts that had once anointed favored acolytes.

These 'New Chosen' do not stay within the cities. Not when they have You to find. Not when there is so much for them to make up for.

#sagau cult au #genshin sagau #reader has a terrible time #genshin imposter au

[highpri3stess]

"Why are we hating on JJK writers and fans."

Okay, as a JJK fan, let's list everything that has happened for the past three months. Take a seat and drink water. You're gonna need it. And since you people always think I'm angry, imagine me saying this with the most deadpan tone in the world. I am not angry posting this. I am jaded.

Majority of you are racist. Don't boo me you know it's the truth. Just look at how you guys wanted me to deactivate or tried to gaslight me because I said your fave is supporting a pedo. In FACT. It was a JJK writer who sent my post to that lady who opened me up to a lot of racial abuse from JJK fans. Edit; oh and she didn't apologize for doing that to me btw. I won't expose her though.

And doubling down on the racism, you people do not respect black women in your fandom. Like it is VERY bad. My jjk moots since 2021 up until now still get racial slurs hurled at them because they exist in a space that does not care or defend them. And you see your black moots get racist comments but you want to go "no discourse". I get it. You are a pussy. But to that extent? If you're above 20 and you're still scared of talking about racism in your community or standing up for black writers I am ashamed for you and I am shaming you.

I didn't even see any of you talk about noury on here. Especially ms "I will use the palestinian genocide to hide from criticism." I genuinely hope you at least donated something to her or spoke about her on your other platforms.

The way you guys excuse anything as long as the person is your friend. Because tell me why you people were jumping on Ezra's and Tee's dick, especially after what they both did. Or trying to discredit his racism. Be for real.

The way some of you come for other fandoms. JJK girls, especially that one that deactivated came around to drag aot writers because they said they are "niggerfying" the characters. You go to tr writers and start sending hate, chasing them out. Hell, there are cliques of JJK writers and fans alike on this site. You guys are fucking elitist. You don't like any other person apart from yourselves and it shows. The way you come for how people write x reader "why is she so ghetto". It is ALWAYS you people. Always.

SatoSugu fans are slowly becoming extremely misogynistic. I'd expect that behaviour from dudebros but the moment a girl says they like either of them, they come out of the woodworks. Also, let people ship crack ships in peace. I've been a satosugu girlie long before the season 2 came out and I miss when we were a lot quieter. NanaGo girlies were chill. Can't you copy them at least?

Now moving on to less pending reasons:

I've said this before and I'll say this again, stop tagging "he spat in your mouth and came" or nsfw links with x reader and about 30 plus characters. I get it, we're all burnt out. But even in my busiest of days in university I have NEVER posted that kind of shit. I take my time because writing is a skill and an art. This is not fast fashion.

And stop rewarding anyone who does that. Why are they having 1k notes in 6 hours? What the fuck is up with that?

Do better writing Gojo and hell the entire cast. I get it. Every character has a stereotype attached to them. But come on, 800 words and STILL it is a copy and paste of every other fic? I have to check twice if it is the same author and it's not. It's like every naruto oc fic written in 2016. Same face syndrome but in fic writing.

Writers are getting burned out cause you guys want the same thing over and over again. I hope salt is not the only spice you use because sending hate anons to JJK writers who write outside daddy doms and playboy Gojo is giving that energy. Be for real. These people are giving quality fics, stop chasing them away.

These are my few gripes with you all, because one day is not enough to list every issue I have. If the shoe fits and you rant in my inbox, that's on you. I did tell you to take a seat, drink water and read this in the calmest voice as possible.

#monica.speaks ♡ #jujutsu kaisen discourse #as a jjk fan i'm going to point it out #you guys should change the way you behave for real or don't [as]

[loslentesdepedrito]

Broken Bottle, Broken Heart

Characters: Jack Daniels ‘Agent Whiskey’ and Frankie ‘Catfish’ Morales 

Word count: 3.4k+

Rating: 18+ no explicit content but I'd rather not have minors read these type of subjects. Warning contains spoilers, but please read if you'd like!!! They are below the cut

Summary: You go to Jack's house, expecting a perfect evening with him, but instead you are met with hostility when Jack accuses you of stealing his deceased wife's necklace. His words break you, and then seven years later, he’s back.  

Warnings: angst, topics of death and mourning, language used by the characters is harsh and contains strong emotions, lines can definitely be viewed as emotional abuse, pregnancy mention. Hope I didn't leave anything out!

As you entered Jack's house, the sweet aroma of his favorite dish filled the air. The table was already set for two, and you couldn't help but smile as you imagined a perfect evening with the man you loved.

"Hey, cowboy," you called out, looking around for him.

Getting no reply from him, you walked towards the hallway. He was rummaging through the closet, and it seemed like he wasn't finding what he was looking for. You asked him what he was looking for, but he snapped at you with a harsh tone that sent chills down your spine.

"Where’s her necklace?” Jack grits out and you can tell he’s panicking over this necklace.

What is he talking about? You wondered. “What necklace?” you ask 

“Why does it matter to you? I bet you stole it. It's not like you care about her, or me for that matter," he said bitterly.

You were taken aback by his words. Of course, you cared about him. You loved him with all your heart. But before you could even ask what the hell he was talking about, he continued his outburst.

"You're just a replacement for her, you know that? You're here to fill the void she left behind. But you could never measure up to her. You could never be her," he spat.

Tears welled up in your eyes as you realized what was happening. Jack doesn’t love you. He was using you to mourn his deceased wife. You were just a temporary fix until he could move on.

The way he said those words, with such venom and hatred, broke something inside of you. You could feel your heart splintering and your spirit breaking.

"I don't understand what you're saying, Jack," you managed to whisper, trying to hold back the sobs that were threatening to escape.

"You don't understand? You're not like her, and you never will be. You're just a pathetic imitation," he said, his voice growing louder and angrier.

You tried to speak, to defend yourself, but your words were choked with sobs. You didn't want to believe that Jack could be so cruel. He said he cared about you. You didn't want to accept that you were just a rebound. That you meant nothing to him. But his words made it clear that you were nothing to him.

His eyes are red when he screams at you “Leave! I don’t ever wanna see you again.”

“No, Jack. Let’s talk about this.” You get closer to him and the intense smell of whiskey hits your nose. 

“I fucking told you to get out! I don’t need you. I will never need anything from you.” Jack said with bloodshot eyes, and his voice slurred with the effects of the alcohol. His face contorted with anger as he shouted at you, his words laced with venom and bitterness. The tension in the room was palpable, and you could feel your heart pounding in your chest.

As you tried to reason with him, he grabbed the whiskey bottle and held it tightly in his hand. You could see his knuckles turn white from the force of his grip, and your heart sank as you realized what was about to happen. ‘No, please don’t do it, please don’t break it.’ 

Without warning, he hurled the bottle against the wall with all his might. It shattered into a thousand tiny pieces, sending a spray of amber liquid in every direction. You jumped back, startled by the sudden explosion of glass and liquor. 

The sound of shattering glass echoed through the house, and the smell of alcohol filled the air. Your heart was beating wildly in your chest, and your breathing became ragged and quick. You could feel your hands trembling with fear as you gazed at the broken glass and liquor that now covered the floor. Jack stood there, breathing heavily, his chest heaving with anger and frustration. He looked at you with eyes that burned with fury, and you knew that there was no reasoning with him. At that moment, you were terrified of Jack. you had never seen him like this before, and you didn't know what he was capable of.

Every muscle in your body was tense as you tried to keep yourself together. A voice inside was telling you to run and get as far away from him as possible, but another was asking you to stay; To make sure Jack was okay. Paralyzed in fear, you felt like you were walking on eggshells, afraid that any wrong move could set him off again. You could feel your heart racing and your breath coming in short gasps as you tried to calm yourself down.

You could feel the tears welling up in your eyes as you backed away from him. All you could think about was ‘It broke into a million pieces. It’s shattered beyond repair, and there was no going back’ 

With a heavy heart, you turned to leave, your steps were unsteady, and your feet felt heavy as if you were wading through mud. You felt like you were being watched like Jack was still hovering over you, even though he was several feet away. Every sound made you jump, every shadow made you flinch. It was like the fear had settled into your bones, and you couldn't shake it off. You kept glancing over your shoulder, half-expecting him to come running after you, and half-hoping he would. But he never did.

Finally, you made it outside, and you took in a deep breath of fresh air, your heart still racing. As you walked out into the cold night, You felt like you were leaving a part of yourself behind. You didn't know how you could ever forget this.

Seven years later

As you sat in your home office, surrounded by ancient texts and artifacts, you heard a knock at the front door. You got up to answer it, only to find Jack standing on your doorstep. Your heart raced as you felt anger bubbling up inside you. You had moved on with your life after he cruelly pushed you out of it seven years ago. You had built a family with Frankie, and you didn't need Jack to come barging in and disrupt it all.

"It's good to see you," he said softly. 

You snorted, "Is it really? After everything you did, you just expect me to help you? I’m assuming you need my help. Why else would you show up out of the blue? Didn't you say 'I don't need you. I will never need anything from you. I never want to see you again.' You may have forgotten, but I never forget things," you spat at him as you stood with your arms folded tightly across your chest. Fuck you were going to slap this man. You were going to drop-kick his ass, but before you could further imagine his demise you saw his guilt-ridden expression. 

Jack hung his head, looking ashamed. "I know I messed up baby, and I'm sorry. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't important," he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

Jack shuffled his feet. "I should have come to you sooner, baby, I know that now. But I've thought about you every day for the past seven years. I should have run after you, I should have looked for you. But I was scared. I should have told you how I felt about you sweetheart.” 

You raised an eyebrow. "And how did you feel about me?"

He looked at you, his eyes searching yours. "I loved you, dammit. I- I love you more than anything baby."

"What the hell do you need from me?" you asked, relenting slightly.

"I um... I need some classified documents translated. I know you're the best in the field, and I need someone who will be discreet," Jack explained.

Taking your silence as too much he started to explain himself. "I thought you stole my ex-wife's necklace," he said, his voice filled with regret. "I couldn't find it anywhere, and then her sister had it. I'm sorry, I should have trusted you. I should have known you’d never steal from me."

You didn't respond, feeling the anger still simmering inside you. But when you heard the sound of the car pulling up into the driveway, you knew you had to compose yourself.

Unsure if you wanted to get involved in his mess again, you hesitated in giving him an answer. “Okay, you need to stop with the pet names. I’m mar-” Before you could tell him you’re happily married and give him an answer about the job, the sound of the car doors opening interrupted your conversation.

"¡Mami, ya llegué de la school!" (“Mom, I’m back from school!”)  your daughter called out, her voice echoing through the front of the house. You felt relief flood through you as you saw her, happy and carefree, running towards you. Frankie followed closely behind, and his face instantly contorted with anger when he saw Jack.

Frankie knew you could handle yourself, but he still worried about you. He knew you too well, he knew that seeing Jack again was hurting you. 

“Mija, entra a la casa y ve a jugar con tus muñequitas y carritos arriba,” (“Mija, go inside the house and play with your dolls and cars upstairs”) Frankie spoke to his daughter in a soft tone as he gently touched the top of her head. 

Everything was in slow motion for Jack when he saw your daughter. His heart was racing as he watched your daughter run towards you, her hair bouncing in the sunlight. She looked so much like you, but there was something about her that made Jack's heartache. He couldn't quite put his finger on it at first, but then he saw it - the shape of her eyes, the curve of her lips. They were just like his own. He couldn't help but wonder, was she his? Had he missed out years of her life, never knowing that he had a daughter? The thought made him feel sick to his stomach, and he had to take a deep breath to keep from hyperventilating.

“Hi, cowboy! Bye, cowboy!” Your daughter told Jack as she zoomed past him excited to go play.

What pulled him out of his trance was also heartbreaking. “This is my husband Frankie, Frankie you already know who he is,” You point towards Jack, watching as his eyes widened and then darted to your left hand, where your wedding ring glinted in the light... ‘Fuck’ he thought. Of course, you’re married. You were such an amazing person. He was an idiot to push you away. 

Frankie's arms wrapped around you tightly, his warm embrace a comfort against the tumultuous emotions stirring within you. His lips pressed softly against yours, and for a moment, you forgot that Jack was even there. You melted into the kiss, savoring the taste of him, the feeling of his body against yours. It was a familiar comfort, a reminder of everything you had built together.

But as quickly as it began, the kiss ended, when Frankie pulled away to face Jack "Let’s go inside. I don't want to cause a scene out here,” your husband gently led you inside, followed by Jack. 

Jack stepped into your home and paused, taking a deep breath. The scent of a home-cooked meal wafted through the air, filling his nostrils and stirring his appetite. He looked around, his eyes taking in the space, and he couldn't help but notice the bookcases lining the walls. They were filled with ancient texts, tomes, and artifacts - a reflection of your passion for history and knowledge. Jack felt a pang of regret as he remembered how he used to love listening to you talk about history and archaeology.

His eyes wandered around the room, scanning the pictures on the walls. There were several family photos - one of you, your husband, and your daughter all huddled together on the beach, another of the three of you smiling brightly at a family gathering. Jack's heart sank as he realized that he could have been in those pictures. He could have been a part of your family.

He continued to inspect the room, taking in the little details that he had missed out on. The vibrant, hand-woven rug that you picked up in Peru. The small figurines on the mantelpiece that you had collected from your travels. Every item in the room told a story, and Jack felt a sense of longing to be a part of those stories once again.

As he stood there, taking everything in, he felt a lump form in his throat. He had let you go, pushed you away, and now he was just an outsider looking in. He couldn't help but wonder how things could have been different if he had just been honest with you and if he had fought for you. He had missed out on so much - your laughter, your love, your family.

With a heavy heart, Jack turned to you, his eyes filled with regret. "You have a beautiful home," he said softly. But even as he spoke the words, he knew that he could never be a part of it again.

Jack’s restraint broke when he saw the picture of your daughter as a newborn. Jack's teary eyes searched for answers. "Is she mine?" he asked, his voice quivering with emotion.

Without hesitation, you replied, "No."

"How old is she?" Jack pressed on.

"She's six," Frankie, answered with a calm yet firm voice.

Jack's eyes widened as he calculated the dates in his head for the first time. "So, she could be mine?" he asked, his voice tinged with hope.

Frankie's eyes narrowed as he shot Jack a sharp look. "No, she's my daughter," he said, his tone leaving no room for argument.

Jack looked ready to lash out, his fists clenching at his sides. "But biologically speaking, is she mine? She looks an awful lot like me," he insisted.

"She looks like Frankie too," you interjected, snapping at the man who hurt you so long ago.

"But biologically speaking, I don't know," you added, wanting to be honest.

"I met Frankie right after you kicked me out," you said, your voice trembling with memories you'd rather forget.

Jack's expression turned sour. "Oh, so you spread your legs for the first man you saw," he accused. He knew it was hypocritical of him as he reverted to his old ways the same night he kicked you out. 

Frankie's temper flared as he grabbed Jack by the collar and pushed him against the wall. "You don't get to judge her for seeking comfort in someone else," he said, his voice low and dangerous.

Jack flinched, feeling the weight of Frankie's words. "She loved you, you know," Frankie continued. "But you never deserved her. You took advantage of her while still grieving. She was in love with you from the moment she met you, and you didn't even trust her."

"Do you even remember what you said to her? How much you hurt her?" Frankie asked, his voice rising with each word. "Because she couldn't forget. She would cry every day when she remembered how quickly you threw her away like she didn't matter. But she is not a replacement and she didn't deserve to be treated as such."

"That little girl is my daughter, got that?" Frankie said, his eyes burning with fierce protectiveness. "I don't care if she may not be biologically mine. I didn't even want a paternity test because I know she's my little girl."

"I've been there since my wife started getting pregnancy symptoms, when she took a pregnancy test, when she took 5 more, when she went to her first appointment, when she first heard my daughter's heartbeat," Frankie said, listing off each milestone with pride. "When my little girl grew every day in my wife's womb, when my princess first kicked, when my wife craved all sorts of street food at 2 am, when our daughter was born, when she first rolled over, when she first crawled, when she took her first steps, when she said her first words, when she had a fever that wouldn't break, when she broke her leg, when she was scared of her first day at school, when she graduated pre-k and kinder. I've always been that little girl's dad."

Silence hung in the air as Jack absorbed Frankie's words. He looked at you and then at Frankie, his face a mix of regret and resignation. "I'm sorry," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. 

Frankie's grip on Jack's collar loosened, and he took a step back, and he sent you a look. You knew what he was thinking. It’s something you discussed together before- what if Jack found out about your daughter and came back for her? Although, you thought he would demand a paternity test. As the years went by, the possibility of his return diminished and you and Frankie stopped discussing the possibility. You certainly weren’t expecting him to turn up now. 

You had never expected Jack to show up at your doorstep, but here he was. "Give me your phone number," you said, your voice distant and cold. "We'll get back to you as soon as we figure out a plan." The words slammed into him like a ton of bricks, and his heart dropped into his stomach. He knew that things would never be the same again.

Jack could feel the weight of your words bearing down on him as you continued to speak. "I don't think it's a good idea to introduce you to our daughter as her father just yet," you said quietly. "However, you might only see her on special occasions, such as birthdays." Jack knew he should be thankful. It wasn't certain your daughter was his because she could have been Frankie's. Even if she was Frankie’s, it would be his only opportunity to be a father figure, and he would take it.

And then came the crushing blow. "I'm not going to let you hurt her, Daniels," You said, your voice rising with anger. "Your words... they have the power to make you feel weak, pathetic like you don't matter. I am not going to expose my daughter to that. I don't care if you didn't mean to hurt me. You said those words. I need to make sure you’re not capable of saying something like that to my daughter."

Jack felt a lump form in his throat as he remembered the fight that had led to this moment. The hurtful things he had said to you, the things he wished he could take back. He had never meant to hurt you, but he had, and now he was facing the reality of it.

"Did you know I still flinch around loud noises?" You continued, your voice shaking with emotion. "I'm sorry if you think I'm keeping her from you, but I'm doing this for her own good. She already has a dad who loves her so much. I don't want to break that bond."

Jack felt a wave of jealousy wash over him as he thought about another man raising his daughter. He wanted to be the one to hold her when she cried, to teach her how to ride a bike, to be there for all of her firsts. But he knew that it wasn't meant to be.

"When she gets older, we can tell her about you," You said, your voice softening slightly. "We always planned to be honest with her, and if she wanted to look you up, we weren't going to stop her."

As Jack walked away, he couldn't help but think of all the things he had lost. The chance to be a father, the love of a woman he had hurt, and the sense of belonging that he had always had with you. He was a man adrift, lost in a sea of his own mistakes and regrets. He could only hope you could forgive him one day. 

As soon as Jack left, you turned to Frankie, feeling a mix of anger and sadness. "Why did he have to come back now, after all these years?" you asked him, your voice choked with emotion. Frankie took your hand, his touch warm and comforting. "I don't know, baby. But I won't let him hurt you again or our princess. Todo estará bien amor, ya lo veras," (Everything will be okay my love, you’ll see) he said firmly.

Note: I have been writing for plenty of fictional characters for years, including Pedro’s characters. However, this is my first time publishing anything I’ve written. This was intended to be a series, but I ended up writing one part. Apologies for any mistakes, I don’t have a second reader. It’s just me double checking within seconds! 

#angst #agent whiskey x reader #jack daniels angst #jack whiskey daniels #jack daniels x you #kingsman fanfiction #frankie catfish morales #frankie morales x reader #no y/n #jack daniels x reader #angst with happy ending #pedro pascal characters #well for one of the boys #I will write a happy ending for Jack (in the future and in another work) #pedro pascal fanfiction #loslentesdepedrito's writing #my writing

[bizaar]

Cruel Summer - Part 6

First - Previous - Next

pairings: Eddie Munson x fem!reader

summary: After breaking up, you and Eddie do your best to soldier on with your lives, but you slowly begin to discover that there is a stronger line of connection keeping you together than just history…

word count: 15k (YIKES)

warnings: swearing, mentions/descriptions of child/spousal abuse, death, funerals, grief, ANGST, panic attacks, fluff, allusions to sex and smuttiness towards the end of the chapter

A.N.: Babysitter!reader part six is here! This one is a MAMMOTH you guys I was gonna cut it down but you all gave me some pretty positive feedback about long chapters so... here you go :) Wayne Munson continues to be the best man in Hawkins, meanwhile, Eddie's father is the literal worst -- Eddie has TRAUMA

I'm gonna be sad about the Munsons for the rest of my life

Hellfire met and played at the Munson trailer for the better part of a month before the drama room finally became available again. Eddie could not have been more relieved if Publisher’s Clearing House had shown up on his doorstep with a million-dollar check. It was only three sessions, considering the club only officially met on Fridays, but each and every one of them had been punctuated by a special kind of weirdness that Eddie could not stomach another second of.

He’s never been so happy to be back on school grounds.

First and foremost, Gareth had been correct. Wayne was very clear that he didn’t want them playing D&D in the trailer anymore, not after a particularly rowdy session had seen Jeff and Adam engaging in a wrestling match that ended with them falling over and absolutely decimating an antique coffee table that had belonged to Eddie’s grandmother.

Eddie damn near pulled his hair out over it, considering it was arguably the nicest piece of furniture they owned and something Wayne had been very careful about preserving, scratches and water rings and all. The moment only got worse from there, as before Eddie could even finish saying “oh shit—you guys, my uncle is gonna kill me!”, there was Wayne, stepping in through the door mere seconds after the table collapsed … well, exploded was probably the better word to describe what had happened to it when Jeff and Adam came crashing down with all their collective weight like they thought they were a pair of pro-wrestlers or something.

Pair of assholes, more like.

It would have been hilarious if it had been any other piece of furniture in any other house, but then that was just Eddie’s luck, wasn’t it? That it would be the single piece of furniture they owned that his uncle was precious about.

Eddie never met her, considering his father was all but disowned by everyone but Wayne by the time he was born, but he knew well enough that his uncle was a mama’s boy through and through, and Grandma Munson was revered in that household, even in death. What few remaining heirlooms of hers there were that hadn’t been pawned or lost to time were tantamount to sacred, so needless to say, Eddie was in deep shit.

Wayne stood surveying the scene as the smoke cleared – dice, pages, and character maquettes scattered to the wind, sweaty teen boys still wrapped in the vice of their wrassling, laying amidst the rubble of Munson family heirlooms – and he miraculously did not kill his nephew. He did, however, breathe out hard through his nose and go right back out to chain smoke and try to calm down.

Wayne didn’t get mad easily, his temper was a slow-burning fuse in contrast to his volatile younger brother’s, but still, it made Eddie panicky. Being in trouble with Wayne was an exercise in “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed,” and arguably worse than any insult or abuse his father could have hurled at him in the same situation. Eddie would have given blood to avoid finding himself in the line of those big, sad eyes as he rushed everyone out and did his best to clean up and piece the table back together. The effort was in vain, there was no saving the table and no amount of apologies could save Eddie from the long tired sigh of disappointment Wayne heaved when he finally came back inside.

Wayne didn’t have many hard rules – respect the space, don’t do anything too stupid while he’s gone, do your damn dishes – but that night he made a new one. No more D&D in the trailer. Eddie promised, though more importantly, they shook on it, which was binding among Munson men. Of course, the nasty little problem there was that Eddie had also sworn to himself that he would never set foot in Benny’s diner ever again, not even if his life depended on it … not even if he thought he was going to find you there.

He honestly didn’t think he could physically make himself go through that door, and he was panicking about it, because how was he supposed to explain that to anyone?

How to explain that even after ten years, the diner was still so stifling with the lingering atmosphere of his mother’s presence that he couldn’t breathe? Too many memories of days after school spent waiting while she moved back and forth behind the counter, hours and hours sitting in the squishy pleather booths doing his homework (when he still did his homework) or perched on his knees on the rickety stools and spinning around and around and around until he couldn’t see straight. Watching the clock and counting the minutes left in her shift, walking home hand in hand, telling her about his day, and enjoying a brief interval of peace before his father got home.

Enough time has passed that those days are fuzzy now, bright little jewels of memory that have turned to sepia-toned shards of glass embedded in his mind. They are still painful enough to keep Eddie away from the diner permanently. How is he supposed to explain that he’s afraid he’ll taint what is left of those memories if he returns as he is now, so far removed from the version of himself that his mother knew? The best version of himself.

He can’t do it. He won’t.

So he swallows his pride and calls Wayne at the plant and begs him – literally begs – to let Hellfire play in the trailer. He doesn’t know precisely what it is that wins his uncle over, maybe he’d blown the whole coffee table thing out of proportion in his mind and Wayne wasn’t actually that upset about it (he was) or maybe it is just because he just thinks Eddie really needs a win after the last few months, with you and what happened that afternoon at Rick’s and not graduating again (he really hopes it isn’t that, despite how stridently true it is) — really what is the harm in letting them play a little D&D? Especially after Eddie’s long, drawn-out spiel about how he swears they will be on their best behavior and they won’t get too rowdy or make a mess and he’ll make sure everyone uses coasters if he wants them to, and Wayne listens to his nephew talk a mile a minute before finally cutting him off mid-stream — because they aren’t the type of people who worry about things like coasters — and he relents.

“Take a breath, Bud, it’s alright. You can bring your friends over.”

And Eddie practically sobs with relief, which is embarrassing, but it had been a very tense few hours fighting off panic attacks and wrestling with the very real thought of canceling Hellfire entirely just to try and avoid ever having to set foot in that diner again.

Somehow he gets the sense that Wayne knows all this because he’s always had that weird sort of omniscience that parents have when it comes to their kids (good parents, at least) even though Wayne is not his dad and Eddie is not his son – Wayne always seems to know exactly what’s wrong with him at any given moment and it would be maddeningly frustrating if Eddie didn’t rely upon it completely.

The Munsons have never been good at talking about their feelings, and Eddie feels so much all the time.

He thanks Wayne profusely and swears he’s going to make it up to him.

“Just don’t let the big guy break any more furniture.” Wayne huffs down the line, wrenching a watery laugh from somewhere deep inside Eddie.

He would have said something smart about how the only thing that’s going to get broken is Jeff’s neck if he doesn’t behave himself, but he’s already too far gone in his memories as he hangs up and switches over to autopilot to go about getting the place ready for guests…

It was late summer, 1977, and Eddie sat on the steps of Wayne’s trailer, back when it was just that, before it was home— sulking because she was leaving him there again.

It wasn’t her fault, and he didn’t blame her, because he knew she didn’t have any other choice.

Still, he did not want her to go.

His father had gotten himself arrested again, for dealing or boosting a car or any number of his other nefarious pastimes, and his mother was preparing to go through the long, arduous process of bailing him out. That meant Eddie would be spending the night on the couch at Uncle Wayne’s, and while those nights were never bad — it was all television and take out and the novelty of being treated like an adult without being scandalized in the process, like when he was nine and his father took him out to a strip club on the interstate (it was the angriest Eddie had ever seen his mother – she’d blown a gasket) – it was always just the circumstances that sent him to Wayne’s that Eddie hated.

His mother sat crouched in front of him on the stairs and pinched and poked and tried to make him smile. She always teased just a bit too much when things were bad, always told him he was too young to be so serious.

He pouted and told her that she ought to just leave his old man there to rot, not for the first time (though unknowingly the last). She’d wrinkled her nose and agreed with him, pulling him forward by his elbows to wrap her arms around him and blow a raspberry into his cheek. He would have told her he was too old to be treated like that, but in spite of himself, he snorted with laughter and let his mother kiss the offended flesh before standing to talk to Wayne.

Eddie felt the brief warmth of humor give way to anxiety tugging at his heart and covered his ears – he didn’t want to hear her say anything too serious. Serious on Eddie’s mother was always too close to sad, and he hated when she was sad (too many mornings sitting and watching her try to mask last night’s bruises with caked on cover-up, biting back tears and doing her best to smile for him.)

Her voice was hushed and thick with emotion as she spoke.

“I’ll be back when I can, but…” he heard her suck in a sharp breath, “I don’t know, Wayne, it just — it took so long the last time –”

Wayne cut her off, patting her on the shoulder and speaking in a soft, reassuring voice.

“I know, Darlin’. You take as long as you need,” and then he made a point to perk up, raise his voice to try and make himself sound chipper, for Eddie’s sake – chipper is an emotion that has never worked on Wayne. “We’re gonna be just fine. It’s gonna be fun. Right, Bud?”

He nudged Eddie gently with the toe of his boot, but the only response he could muster was a dejected sigh, propping his head up with his fists, elbows perched on skinned knees.

He reached down to ruffle his hair and Eddie jerked moodily out of his touch and buried his face in his knees as his mother tut-tutted him.

“Hair’s gettin’ real long…” Wayne mused, sucking his teeth, “Maybe we’ll give you a trim while your mama’s gone,”

The thought of it set Eddie’s heart beating at a pace – his father was always trying to cut his hair, spitting hateful slurs and insults about the “kind of men kept their hair long” – thankfully, his mother spoke up.

“Oh, no, don’t.” She said quickly, reaching down and running her fingers fondly through Eddie's curls, “We like it long, right, Baby?”

He didn’t answer, but he could feel her looking at him, waiting patiently. A sprig of defiance wormed its way up through his midsection, and Eddie decided he would stay quiet for the rest of his life if he had to.

His mother just sighed – she didn’t have time for a tantrum, the one his father was sure to throw was arguably worse than the one Eddie was kicking up. She had to go, so she turned on her heel and started down the gravel drive.

“I’ll be back soon. Love you, Teddy Bear!” She called, waving over her shoulder— her massive collection of keychains jangled loudly as Eddie peeked up from his knees to watch her make her way back to the car.

The Munsons were all packrats in their own way – his mother collected keychains and magnets, Wayne collected novelty mugs and baseball caps, and his father collected felonies and arrests… Eddie supposes now that he collects regrets. He wishes he’d done more to commit her to memory, he wishes he’d done something to make her stay…

“I love you!” She said again, louder, stretching the phrase lyrically and trying to bait him.

He wired his jaw shut – maybe if he didn’t say it back she’d stay until he did. Maybe he’d never say it again and she’d never leave him.

Still, a sudden spike of anxiety flared in his chest as something screamed at him to call out to her, make her turn around and look at him one more time. Just in case.

Just in case what? Just in case you never see her again.

“Don’t let him drive!” Eddie shouted at his mother’s back, pushing up to stand on the steps like if somehow he were a little taller it would help drive the message home.

Don’t go. Don’t go. Please, don’t go.

She stopped as she pulled the driver’s side door open and smiled – a wry, crooked thing that indented her cheeks with dimples.

“I never do.”

She winked, and slipped in behind the wheel and out of his life because no matter what she assured him, she didn’t ultimately have a say in who drove home that night, no matter what his father had taken or how fucked up he was.

He drove. They crashed. She died.

The funeral was open casket, and Eddie refused to move from his seat. He didn’t want to see her, not like that – he wanted her here, smiling and laughing and teasing too much and collecting stupid novelty keychains and breathing, not cold in the fucking coffin his father had put her in.

The son of a bitch had tried to drag him up there to “pay his respects”. He seized him by the scruff and told him not to be a pussy, but his arm was in a sling from the accident and he couldn’t get a good enough grip on Eddie to hold him to the spot when Wayne stepped in and pulled his brother aside for an extremely tense, hushed conversation.

The repast had been at Benny’s because she’d worked there long enough that the staff was like family and their house was too small to host. His father somehow managed to get himself completely blackout drunk, despite the lack of any booze being served, and made a huge scene – like he always did, and Eddie sat there trying to endure the violence of his hatred for the man.

Why couldn’t he have just let her drive? Why did it have to be her? Why hadn’t she been wearing her seatbelt? Why why why…

His grief was too big, he didn’t know what to do with it or where to put it, and it made Eddie so angry. Angrier than he had ever been in his life. It made him brave— or perhaps vitriolic— and when his father shouted and slurred and swatted at him like he always did, Eddie grit his teeth and spat the venom right back.

For all the times he’d sat helpless, for all the times she’d sent him to run and hide, he finally stood up.

He paid for it, of course, with a hard crack to the face that knocked him right back down, and before his brain could stop rattling around his skull enough to catch up to his body, Eddie hit one of the first of many hard limits he would pass with the old man over the next few years.

With a bloodied, broken nose, he bolted from the diner and ran all the way out to the interstate. He didn’t know where he was going, only that he meant to get as far away as humanly possible, from his father, from Hawkins, from his grief and the terrible life he knew he surely faced without his mother to act as a buffer. Even at eleven years old, he knew he didn’t have a chance if he stayed.

This town would kill him if he stayed.

The first and only car to pull up beside him had been a rusty pickup – it was Wayne, because of course it was, and he rolled alongside Eddie in the truck at a glacial pace on the shoulder of the wrong side of the road for the better part of twenty-five minutes as he tried to talk his nephew down.

Eddie continued to walk, wiping blood and tears on the sleeve of his suit jacket and refusing to be coaxed into the cab until he’d learned that the cops had picked his father up and he wouldn’t have to go home that night. When Eddie finally relented and climbed up into the passenger seat, he saw that Wayne’s knuckles were cracked, swollen, and bleeding on the steering wheel.

He didn’t have to ask to know what had happened – he hoped his father hadn’t been too drunk to feel every second of the beating Wayne had given him — Eddie hoped it hurt as bad as it did when Wayne set his broken nose later that night, sitting perched on the edge of the sink, gritting his teeth and biting back tears.

It would be another two and a half years of days like that before the old man would finally go to prison.

With Wayne’s blessing, Hellfire resumed at the Munson trailer, and by 8:30 that Friday in April, everyone was piled into the little living room, huddled around the replacement, decidedly less nice coffee table, and Eddie could finally breathe again.

Except that Jeff was fully committing to the bit of being bizarrely hostile, in his own completely non-threatening way. Eddie thought it was exceedingly strange – and more than a little rude considering he would have been meek as a mouse if he had found himself allowed back into a home where he’d so unceremoniously destroyed a treasured piece of antique furniture, but he couldn’t really kick up the gusto to be angry about it, because Jeff was being hostile no matter where they were.

“Hey, what the fuck is Jeff’s problem?” He’d asked Gareth one day, sitting huddled over his notebook in the back of second-period English Lit while Mrs. Faulkner droned on about some old dead guy.

Proust or some shit.

Gareth had merely shrugged his flannel-clad shoulders in feigned ignorance and done his best to look innocent as the color drained from his face and his eyes went wide. Of course, that reaction suggested he knew exactly what Jeff’s problem was, but the old harpy had screeched a warning at them about cross chatter and threatened detention from the blackboard before Eddie could press him further on it.

The issue with doing everything with the same group of people is that when you have a problem with one of them, you have to see them everywhere you go. Jeff is a member of the Hellfire Club as well as Corroded Coffin, so Eddie has to deal with his snarky, backhanded remarks pretty much wherever he goes.

It is, at best, mildly annoying and at worst, deeply confusing.

Eddie can’t wrap his head around the shift in his attitude, except that once, when you were still very new to each other — the first time he’d ever brought you to hang out with the guys as his officially official girlfriend, in fact — Jeff had pulled him aside at the end of the night and drunkenly warned Eddie that if he ever hurt you, he would kill him.

It had been an intense and slightly off-putting way to end what had been a generally pleasant evening, but Eddie had just chalked that up to Jeff being… well, Jeff. Poor social skills and all too easily impressed by nice girls who showed him even the slightest bit of kindness or attention.

You’d laughed about it on the car ride home, not unkindly, though. You thought his crush on you was sweet, like the crush the kid you babysat had on you. And then you’d sat in the car eating ice cream and discussing life’s most important questions; who would win in a fight – Jeff or Eddie...

Eddie had just been happy to get to share you with his friends and integrate you into the group without it being weird so that he didn’t have to parcel out his time between the band, D&D, and you.

He knows you would have won out over his friends every time, though he’s not sure they could have held it against you.

He used to love how much they loved you until he told everyone about the breakup.

He’d said it was mutual, and maybe he’d let them believe that it had been more your idea than his — he doesn’t know why, maybe he’d thought it would be easier to stomach if he could manage to be pissed at you, but he couldn’t muster it and it didn’t make him feel any better to say it.

Despite everything, Eddie can’t help but shake the feeling that all of his friends have taken your side. Somehow they know he hurt you, and he supposes if Jeff had meant he was going to annoy him to death it’s working marvelously.

And then there’s Dustin.

Dustin Henderson, who spends all his time talking about his babysitter and hangs out with that pretentious douche Steve Harrington when he isn’t following Eddie around like a lovesick puppy.

He can’t deny he has a soft spot for the kid, even if he is annoying as hell, and Eddie does feel bad about biting his head off over the whole situation with the diner. He’d thought it was actually very cool that the kid even tried to find them an alternate place to play, and he’d been sincere in his apology at the campus phone, but he also knows he’d gone a little overboard in the teasing, especially with that bizarre conversation with Dustin’s babysitter that followed.

It hadn’t been Eddie’s fault, not entirely.

He’d already been feeling too manic, his senses dialed up to eleven at the thought of having to go back to Benny’s, but Dustin was also just entirely too easy to tease. He was, perhaps, just a tad too flirtatious with the babysitter on purpose, just to ruffle Dustin’s feathers — Eddie is big enough to admit that that was a fuck up on his part.

The connection over the payphone had not been the greatest, just as much static as voice, and somehow he’d fooled himself into thinking the girl on the other end of the phone sounded a lot like you. So much like you that if he tries very hard, he can convince himself that it had been you on the phone that day. It wasn’t, he knows this, but in his heart of hearts?

The teasing, the cadence of her speech, the specific little phrases she used, her laugh? Christ – the way she’d laughed had been enough to make Eddie weak at the knees because he swears to God, Tiamat, Ozzy Osborne, whoever is out there listening, that it had been you laughing on the other end of that phone call — but then she’d hung up on him, and Eddie knew he’d been deluding himself, projecting you into some random girl he’d probably scandalized.

He imagines some snotty cheerleader on the other line, lying on her bed, twisting her perfectly manicured fingers in the phone cord, popping bubble gum, and kicking her feet —painting the picture of a pretty little fantasy until she realizes who she was talking to, until he tells her his name. Then he pictures her sneering and slamming the phone into the box with a harsh grunt of disgust.

She probably felt like she needed to take a shower after that, to wash the freak off of her.

Eddie still can’t believe how badly he’d let his feelings get hurt over it, all because he’d let himself pretend he was talking to you.

Then there was the way Dustin and Wayne acted towards each during that second Friday playing at the trailer. It was a rare day off, and it had seen his uncle rolling up unexpectedly and coming through the door halfway through their session.

Everyone instantly shut up and mumbled their own overly formal, awkward greetings as Wayne surveyed the group. He greeted the boys he knew, regarded the ones he didn’t with a curt nod as Eddie introduced them – Mike and Lucas, and then he clapped eyes on Dustin, and he got stuck. He stared hard and set his jaw, and Eddie could practically see the gears turning in his uncle’s head as he tried to work something out.

It would have made him nervous if he hadn’t noticed the way Dustin was staring right back at him with the same intensity. Like they recognized each other but they didn’t precisely know where from.

Weird.

And then the moment passed, like fixing a skipping record.

“Y’all been playing long?” Wayne hummed, setting his wallet and keys down on the little dining table shoved against the opposite wall.

His addressing Eddie brought the game to a screeching halt and everyone held their breath and waited to see what he would say.

“Few hours, yeah.” he replied cautiously, “Why?”

There was a tiny nagging voice in the back of his mind that warned him they were about to get kicked out and they would have to finish their session with flashlights in the back of his van, but Wayne just shook his head, like it didn’t matter why he’d asked.

He fished his cigarettes from his pocket and patted himself down in search of his lighter, coming up empty.

“You got a light?”

Eddie tossed him his lighter— he caught it effortlessly.

“Well, don’t stop on my account, gentlemen.” He said, pushing a cigarette up to his lips and going right back outside.

The door clicked shut and a collective sigh passed over the room as everyone turned back to the game board and began chattering amongst themselves.

“You think he’s still pissed about the table?” Adam asked sheepishly.

Jeff and Gareth both began to voice their dissent – no, no way that was so long ago — and Eddie had to grit his teeth to stop himself from saying anything too mean about it because it may have been long ago to them but he still hadn’t heard the end of it.

“Of course, he’s still pissed – you guys, shut up about the table already,” Eddie huffed, flipping through the beat-up Player’s Handbook balanced precariously on his knee.

Of course, that only spurred them on to talk more about it. And when Mike piped up, asking “what table” Gareth was all too happy to launch into the story, much to Eddie’s annoyance as everyone lost interest in the game and began laughing and talking.

He propped his chin up on his hand and heaved a dejected sigh, continuing to flip through the book and waiting for them to be done. He just wanted to play D&D, was that too much to ask?

And then he could feel eyes on him. He glanced up to find Dustin staring at him expectantly from where he sat on the floor like he was waiting for the answer to a question he hadn’t asked yet.

Eddie waited. Dustin waited, and for a long moment, they both just sat, staring, waiting for the other to speak.

“What?” Eddie finally prompted.

Dustin began slowly.

“So…” He said, giving him a quizzical look and shuffling just a little bit closer to where Eddie sat with his knees up in the lazy boy. “How do you know that Wayne guy?”

Eddie wouldn’t say that the question floored him, but he didn’t quite know how to respond. He supposed he could have just answered the question – he’s my uncle – but he was much too caught on the other end of it.

“How do I–? How do you know Wayne, Dustin?” Eddie snapped, well aware that he was biting the kid’s head off over nothing again. “Don’t ask me stupid questions like that.”

He could practically hear you in the back of his mind, reminding him that there were no stupid questions, but Eddie stridently disagreed. That was a very stupid question.

Dustin didn’t have a response. He looked more put out than dejected as he threw up his hands and shook his head, but someone kicked up with a concern about snacks or drinks or something variably more important to a group of teen boys before Eddie could chase the thought any further.

It was another twenty-five minutes of trying to corral the group before they finally resumed their session and when Wayne finally came back in, Eddie spent the rest of the night trying not to get distracted by the way he and Dustin sat glancing at each other as he did his best not to lose his flow.

Wayne didn’t have much to say about it later on.

“Do you and Dustin know each other or something?” Eddie asked after everyone had gone, gathering the last of the books and character sheets, and dice.

Wayne sank heavily into his chair — the lazy boy that had served as a poor substitute for Eddie’s throne — with a sigh and beer. He scratched his stubbly chin and furrowed his brow like he had no idea what his nephew was talking about.

“Who?”

Eddie grit his teeth to keep himself from snapping.

“Dustin— the kid with the hat? Braces?”

“Oh.” Wayne said.

He hummed deep in the hollow of his throat, like he was considering whether or not to tell Eddie something, then he picked up the remote and flicked on the tv.

“Nope.”

That was the end of the conversation, no matter how long Eddie stood there in the living room, waiting for his uncle to elaborate. He didn’t, and Eddie finally had to just turn and stalk back to his room with an agitated sigh.

He can’t help but feel that there is a huge piece of the puzzle missing there, one he isn’t sure has anything to do with all the weirdness that has punctuated his days since school started. He tells himself he doesn’t care, so why does he suddenly feel like there is some kind of big conspiracy between everyone he knows going on behind his back? He racks his brain for what the possible connection could be and comes up empty.

He is so goddamn relieved when they finally get back to playing in the drama room.

+++

The counselor’s office looks the same as it always does, all of Ms. Kim’s pictures, degrees, and personal items are still where they were when Eddie was last here, same time last year.

Christ, has it been a year already?

He knows he’s fidgeting more than usual, bouncing his knee and digging his nails into the arm of the chair as he waits for the guidance counselor to speak.

So far she’s just sitting there, staring at him and it's making him very nervous.

The last time he’d been pulled out of class to see Ms. Kim, she’d told him he wasn’t graduating again… and graduation is only a month away now. He’d be lying if he said his stomach wasn’t in knots.

She is smiling sweetly at him from across her desk, hands clasped neatly in front of her and Eddie is still frantically bouncing his knee.

“How are you doing, Eddie?” She finally asks, tilting her head thoughtfully and leaning forward ever so slightly.

He resists the urge to ask her to just cut to the chase. He would much prefer to rip the band-aid off and get it over with – none of this beating around the bush with mindless pleasantries.

Still, his mother had done her best to raise him right, in spite of it all, and he would be damned if he didn’t at least try to be civil with Ms. Kim. She’s never been anything but kind to him, which is not something he can say about most of his teachers.

“Okay, I guess,” he mumbles.

Her face pinches into a mask of concern.

“I heard you’ve been having a bit of a rough year.”

Eddie clears his throat to cover the bitter snort of laughter that tears itself out of him.

“Yeah well, nothing ever really changes around here, does it?” He says, smirking and shifting uncomfortably in his seat, “Same shit different day – sorry.”

The silence that blooms between them is more than a little bit awkward. He hadn't meant to swear.

Ms. Kim straightens the stack of papers set out on the desk in front of her and Eddie’s gaze flicks down to try and discreetly see what they are – he can only make out his name.

“So, I've got your transcripts here,” She begins, “And I wanted to talk to you about your future at Hawkins High School…”

Eddie’s heart drops into his stomach – he suddenly feels like he’s going to be sick.

“Oh come on, my grades can’t be that bad…” He chuckles. It is a humorless sound.

He is going to be devastated if she tells him he’s not going to graduate again. He doesn’t think he can stand another year of this…

He half expects her to give him a piteous look, scrunch her features and turn her eyebrows up in apology, but instead, they jump up towards her hairline and she shakes her head.

“No, actually, quite the opposite. Your grades are…” she trails off, shrugs, “Well, I’m not going to lie to you, they’re still pretty low, but considering what they were this time last year?” and then her lips quirk up into a big smile, “I think you might be on track to graduate next month.”

Eddie would have been less shocked if she’d pulled a gun on him. He's fully aware of how his mouth has fallen open as he stares at her.

“Shut the fuck up!” He gasps, and then, “Sorry – I’m so sorry – I just… y-you’re serious?”

"I'm serious."

"You're not just bullshitting me, right?" Goddammit, Munson, language, "Ah– sh-shoot – sorry."

Despite his language, Ms. Kim is still smiling and nodding – and Eddie doesn’t think she would lie to him about this. Educational staff wasn’t allowed to pull practical jokes, were they? Prank the guy with the worst grades in school by telling him he was graduating? That would be a major conflict of interest, probably illegal even, which means she’s not kidding, and he’s really – finally – going to graduate if he can keep his shit together.

Holy shit.

“I know it’s a little premature to say, but congratulations.” Ms. Kim says.

Eddie almost doesn’t hear her.

He feels like he’s going to burst, though for the first time in a long time it’s from happiness and not some kind of devastating attempt to hold himself together. Eddie only realizes how broadly he is smiling as his hands come up to clasp either side of his face. Shock is the only word he can think to describe what he feels, elation maybe? Dumbfoundedness?? Mostly, he can’t believe his stupid luck.

No, not luck, hard fucking work is more like, he’s been kicking his own ass all year and it’s finally paying off. He suddenly can’t wait to tell someone, everyone, get up on a table and shout it at the denizens of this wretched place – take a good last look, everybody, Eddie Munson is finally getting out of here.

“That being said–”

God dammit.

“–you’ve got one grade that you need to pull up. Mrs. O’Donnell’s class–”

Eddie's heart sinks a little. He's not sure any one of his teachers hates him more than Mrs. O'Donnell does. She would fail him just to spite him if it didn't mean she would have to endure another year of him in her class.

“– you’re close though, D is a passing grade. I should mention, however, that if you don’t manage it–”

“Oh, Christ – don’t say that!”

Eddie’s not superstitious, but he can’t help but jump forward and wrap his knuckles sharply on her desktop with both hands. It’s made of sheet metal – shit.

Is it bad luck to knock on wood when it’s not made of wood? He doesn’t know.

You would have known because you always had little bits of random information for him like that.

You were a purveyor of secrets and forbidden knowledge – you were Lady Midnight.

God, he wishes he could tell you the news, wrap you up in his arms and spin you around and around until he can't stand up straight.

Ms. Kim carries on about how there’s no shame in getting his GED and how best to stay on track for graduation, but Eddie isn’t listening anymore.

He’s too busy picturing the alternate universe where you still lived in Hawkins. Maybe you had a place together, one of the tiny apartments above or behind or in the basement of one of the buildings on Cherry Street.

He imagines he’d go straight from Ms. Kim’s office to find you at work, wherever that was – maybe you worked at Family Video with that asshole Keith and he’d find you behind the counter, or maybe you had some office job that he’d pick you up from every night at five.

He imagines the way your face would brighten when he told you — Baby, you won’t believe it, I’m finally fucking graduating! — your eyes would go wide and you’d scream and throw your arms around him and jump up and down. Everyone would stare because everyone always stared at the both of you, but you wouldn’t care because Eddie was graduating.

You’d be so excited that he would have to pry you off of him, and then you'd take him by the hand and insist you go out to celebrate immediately.

“Let’s go to Enzo’s and get drunk and eat our weight in breadsticks and lasagna,” You’d say, sidling up and tucking yourself beneath his arm.

And Eddie would scoff because there’s no way either of you could afford Enzo’s, but he would never deny you a good time.

“Sounds great, Sweetheart, we don’t have to pay rent this month,”

Of course, that was never going to happen.

Realistically, he thinks if he had the chance to tell you, your face would scrunch in sadness or maybe even anger, because you’d worked so hard tutoring him last year, all for nothing. All for him to break up with you just because he was jealous that you’d graduated and he didn’t, because you’d promised you weren’t going to leave him behind and he hadn’t believed you.

Maybe this was the start of Eddie finally getting his shit together, but what is the point of moving on if you aren’t going to be there waiting for him?

He’d spent so long imagining the moment when his life would finally jump out of stasis — graduating, moving on, moving out, getting his own place, getting a real job, and maybe – if he was really lucky – even someday getting married. Settling down with someone kind and fun and funny and eventually having a couple of little Munson brats of his own, running around wreaking havoc and living the childhood he always wished he’d been lucky enough to have.

He doesn’t want any of that on his own, he doesn’t want it without you – as cheesy, sappy, rom-com bullshit as that sounds.

He'd spent too long imagining his life with you.

Whatever scenario he drummed up for his future self — whether the band took off and he made it big and became this ridiculously famous rockstar living in a mansion out in LA, or even if he just got a job at a mechanic’s shop somewhere that barely paid him enough to make rent — you were always there with him.

Filthy rich or dirt poor, you were supposed to be hitting those milestones together.

He’s going to graduate next month and you’re not going to be there.

Eddie's heart is hammering against his ribs again, and he flexes his fingers to keep his hands from shaking.

It always hits him in the worst moments...

There is no rhyme or reason to his path after Ms. Kim turns him loose. For lack of anywhere better to go, Eddie heads straight for his locker, because he doesn’t think he can stomach sitting through class — he doesn’t know what he plans to do when he gets there.

Maybe he’ll grab his shit and leave — cutting class is not a good look when you're trying to graduate — maybe he’ll slam his head in the door until the blood stops roaring in his ears or his head falls off or something — can't graduate if you're dead — can't have a panic attack if you're dead either.

He fumbles with the lock until he can get the door open then, for lack of anything better to do, sticks his head inside, hands gripping the metal tightly as he tries to take deep breaths.

It’s nothing compared to a sink full of ice water, and the relative dark is not enough to be calming, but it’s better than nothing.

Calm down calm down calm down calm down calm–

“Are you okay?” he thinks he hears you ask.

Eddie whips back from his locker and cracks the back of his head against the door – ow – and it’s not you standing there, staring at him through your lashes, of course, it’s a cheerleader.

Chrissy Cunningham, he remembers after a moment of static. Red-blonde hair pulled into a high ponytail, sweet face, heavy blue eye makeup. She’s wearing jeans and a soft white cardigan and Eddie realizes he didn’t recognize her without the greens and golds of her cheer uniform. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen her out of it.

The phrasing makes him feel like he could start blushing.

She’s staring up at Eddie with big, wide eyes, filled with concern, and maybe something halfway to fear. It takes him a moment too long to realize she’s waiting for him to answer the question she’d asked.

“What?” He asks a little too loud, swallowing hard.

Her voice is very quiet when she answers.

“I just … asked if you’re okay…?”

“Oh… Yep— I mean — yeah, no. Yes. I’m fine.” Real smooth, keep talking cool guy, “I was just— I was looking for something.”

He gestures nervously to his locker, glancing at its messy contents before reaching out and snatching the first thing he sees. A broken pencil. Great.

Eddie has never been good at thinking on his feet — there is always as good a chance that he’s going to make a complete fool of himself as he is going to come across as smooth. Even when he’s confident that things will go well, his brain has this nasty little habit of betraying him at the last moment and short-circuiting, as had happened that first moment he’d tried to talk to you in the lunchroom.

He may as well have just stabbed himself with the broken pencil for how thinking about that makes his chest hurt.

Still, he holds the pencil up to Chrissy, like he needs to prove that he’s okay. He’s not.

“Found it.” He says.

She stares at him, wide-eyed and blank for what feels like an excruciatingly long moment, and then she smiles — giggles even, in spite of herself, pursing her lips and casting her gaze downward. It’s a soft, shy thing that carries shades of the way you’d looked at him the first time he’d ever spoken to you. It makes Eddie’s heart thump.

In a moment he remembers himself and slams his locker door shut, putting the pencil behind his ear and crossing his arms over his chest like he suddenly feels the need to protect himself.

Cheerleaders don’t usually talk to him unless it is to say something nasty or to try and buy from him … or that time in his first senior year when the cheer captain cornered him in the bathroom at a party and tried to coerce him into having sex with her out of some kinky, rebellious fantasy she’d wanted to fulfill before she graduated — you’d thankfully come to his rescue before anything could happen.

Girls like Chrissy Cunningham, who wear their innocence like a veil and date sports stars most certainly don’t talk to guys like Eddie.

It makes him nervous.

“Uh … sorry, did you… want? Something?”

Her eyes grow wide, like she’s been accused of something untoward and she looks away again, scratching nervously at her ankle with the toe of her immaculate white sneaker.

“Oh. Yes… actually.” Chrissy says, “Um, s-so… I was told that you— like … I mean if I wanted to get … something? You would have it.”

It takes him a long moment to untangle the sentence, and he’s a little dumbfounded when it finally comes undone. Maybe he was wrong about her because according to his translations, Chrissy wants one of two things from Eddie: sex or drugs.

Somehow he doesn’t think she’s coming on to him so that just leaves option two, which doesn’t leave him any less flummoxed.

“You wanna buy?”

It sounds much more like an accusation than he intended.

Chrissy twists a delicate finger tightly in the hair at the nape of her neck, garroting the tip of her digit and doing her very best not to look directly at Eddie. Her face is ever so slightly flushed pink as she bites at her lower lip and nods.

In spite of the bizarre situation, Eddie does think she is really very pretty, in a way he’d never noticed before.

He swallows and clears his throat to stop his voice from cracking as he continues.

“…What, uh— what were you in the market for… specifically?” He asks.

Chrissy glances at him from the corner of her eye and twists her sleeves down over her hands. She hesitates like she has absolutely no idea how to answer the question. Suddenly, her eyes are bright and shining, like she is ready to cry, and Eddie’s heart is in his throat.

He can’t stand to see people crying – girls, in particular, it makes him feel helpless, too much like watching his mother put makeup on over the bruises on her face. His hands twitch at his sides as the impulse to somehow try and comfort her becomes nearly overwhelming.

“Hey — hey… it’s okay. I’m not gonna bite you.” He says softly, resisting the urge to take a step toward her.

And do what, hug her?

That’s what he would have done with you, pulled you close and held you tight until you’d calmed down. Eddie doesn’t dare cross that line to touch Chrissy, he’s half convinced she might combust into flames if he did, innocent little bird that she is.

Innocent little bird trying to buy drugs.

He hopes she knows he means no harm as suddenly she becomes very interested in her sneakers, tugging at the hem of her big cardigan.

Eddie dips his head to try and meet her gaze, make her look at him – all she’ll do is glance at him, and he smiles at her when she does, in a way he hopes is reassuring. The moment of emotion thankfully passes quickly and Chrissy comes down again – she’s no longer on the verge of tears and Eddie can relax… at least a little bit.

“You good?” He asks.

“Yeah— yes. I’m sorry… I’ve — I’ve never done this before.” She mumbles, chewing the inside of her lip.

“That’s okay…” He assures her, shaking his head, “Everybody starts somewhere… I guess – uh – I guess I should’ve asked what kind of results you’re after?”

She blows out a tense breath and purses her lips like she really has to think about it.

“I don’t know… I—um… I've been having …n-nightmares?” She mumbles, then shudders bodily, like a sudden chill has ripped through her. “Terrible nightmares.”

For half a moment, she gets this scary, far-away look in her eye and it’s enough to stop Eddie from thinking about how her admitting that feels a tad too much like oversharing, considering they don’t know each other…

That’s not true, He tells himself, You do know Chrissy… second grade. Project on manatees – she came over and mom helped us work on it…

And then like being struck over the head, he’s reminded of another seriously unhelpful bit of information for the moment Eddie has found himself in.

She came to Mom’s funeral…

Eddie nods sagely, “You wanna sleep better.” he hums, trying to banish the image of black clothes and sorrowful faces standing around as a coffin is lowered into a grave — a much younger Chrissy stealing a shy glance at him before ducking back to hide behind a pair of legs.

Eddie wonders if she remembers any of that.

Chrissy returns the motion, a sharp jerk of her head in affirmation. It’s reassuring. At least he knows what he can sell her now.

“Okay.” He feels himself smiling without really being aware of how it got there, and he shrugs, “Well, hey, I’ve got the cure—“ Eddie stops short and tries to blink the living room at Rick’s place back on its axis — I’ve got the shit for what ails you — he’s quick to correct himself, shaking his head to try and clear the sudden smokey haze from his mind, “I’ve got something for that,”

Chrissy nods again and then brings up a hand Eddie hadn’t realized she’d had clutched in a fist. Slowly, her fingers unfurl to reveal a crumpled hundred-dollar bill.

“How much will this get me?”

Eddie almost laughs out loud at the sight of it. It’s more than he’s ever even paid to refill his whole stash.

Much more than you’re gonna need, Sweetheart, he wants to say, but he can suddenly taste whiskey on the back of his tongue and his head is buzzing with static.

Eddie rubs his hands down his jeans where his palms have become sweaty, and he tries to pass the nervous motion off like he’s searching his pockets.

“Well, I don’t— I don’t have anything on me right now…?”

“Oh!” Chrissy chirps, eyes widening to the size of dinner plates and freezing a moment as her fingers snap closed on the money again. “Sorry–”

“It’s fine, I’ll just...” Eddie makes a show of jerking his thumb over his shoulder, but Chrissy is shaking her head before he can finish the thought.

“No, no that’s okay—I just thought… nevermind, it doesn’t matter…”

She trails off, color bleeding into her cheeks as the interaction suddenly starts to feel like it’s fizzling out.

Eddie is quick to try and smooth things over because strangely he is suddenly very concerned with what Chrissy thinks about him. He suddenly wants so badly for her to think he is nice.

“No, I mean — like, if you wanna come back around tomorrow?”

An awkward silence blooms between them as she considers the offer.

“Tomorrow?” She echoes, a soft, lilting question that has Eddie smiling at her again.

He notices that her two front teeth are ever so slightly crooked in a way that is painfully endearing. She’s much too sweet for this, he shouldn’t be agreeing to deal to her, but he suddenly feels the closest he has felt to his old self in months, standing there in the empty hallway, talking to Chrissy Cunningham — Eddie before you.

“Yeah.” He says gently, “Yeah—we could meet after school…”

She hesitates, worries her lower lip, and continues to avoid looking at Eddie. It doesn’t feel malicious so much as bashful, like maybe it didn’t matter that it was him she was talking to, like she would have been this shy trying to buy drugs from anyone.

Her brows come together, scrunching down over her big pretty eyes.

“Tomorrow’s the pep rally,” Chrissy says softly, like she’s letting him down.

It hits Eddie like a fist to the gut, and darkness begins creeping in at the edges of his vision. He takes a slow, deep breath in through the nose and blinks rapidly.

“You don’t want to go to the pep rally.” He can suddenly hear you saying, somewhere very far away.

Eddie digs his nails into the palm of his hand until it hurts in an attempt to try and banish you.

“Right.” He says, forcing himself to breathe normally.

Chrissy finds the courage to finally look at him then, if only briefly — her eyebrows are turned up apologetically.

“…And the championship game,” she says.

“You just want to go and antagonize the basketball team…”

“That’s also true.” Eddie hums, nodding.

He’d caught you on your way out of class, throwing his arm around your shoulders and trying to steer you towards the gymnasium before you’d shrugged out of his reach.

No, of course, Eddie didn’t want to go to the pep rally, but an injustice had been delivered upon the Hellfire Club by said Hawkins Tigers, and by code of law, action begets action. He didn’t know what he planned to do – make a scene, probably heckle and taunt the players from the bleachers, be generally disruptive – but you wanted absolutely no part of it.

Your refusal was an idle thing, yet dagger sharp.

Eddie staggered, throwing himself back against a row of lockers and gasping dramatically as he pantomimed being stabbed. You hardly reacted, rolling your eyes and leaving him behind as you made your way further down the hall toward your locker. You were used to his antics by now. He watched you go.

“Me? Antagonize the basketball team?” Eddie called, jogging to catch up, “I would never–”

“No, of course not.” You said, the sarcasm oozing off of you thick enough to leave a gooey trail in your wake. “Because you’re just bursting with school spirit, right? – Go sports!”

Eddie couldn’t help but laugh, coming to a sliding stop at your side as you found your locker amidst the row.

“Oh, come on, Sweetheart, give me a little credit here. I’m peppy as hell. I’ve got pep in my step,” The statement was punctuated by Eddie jumping up and down beside you.

Again you rolled your eyes, and turned your attention to fidgeting with the sticky padlock clipped to your locker.

“Look, if we go, it’s gonna be weird that we’re even there in the first place and you’re just gonna push it and push it until one of those meatheads decides he’s offended by something and causes a big scene – because that’s what always happens – and it’s just so much easier not to go and avoid all that drama in the first place.”

You were right, because you were always right, but Eddie didn’t have to tell you that.

“How dare you,” He gasped, feigning offense, pressing a scandalized hand to his chest, clutching phantom pearls, “Here I am, bearing my heart and soul, and you won’t even entertain the idea of being seen in public with me. Heartless – that’s what you are.”

Of course, by then you were openly ignoring him and his antics, which absolutely would not do, so Eddie changed tactics. He reached out and pinched the flesh of your cheek between his thumb and forefinger.

“Hey, can you blame a guy for wanting to support the home team?”

You jerked out of his touch and swatted angrily at him.

And then, perfectly on cue, there came the basketball team. The hallway parted like the sea as people made way for Hawkins’s best and brightest (and most popular) flanked by the ever-present cheerleading squad, like a green and gold cloud of preppy little gnats.

Eddie clenched his teeth as he watched the group pass, feeling judgment rolling off of them in tangible waves, like invisible daggers hurled in his direction – worse still in your direction, because they’d offered you a choice and you’d picked him over them.

He just couldn’t help himself.

“Go Tigers!” Eddie shouted, pumping his fist in the air.

The phrase “if looks could kill” passed briefly through his mind as they turned to regard him. He felt a strange mixture of satisfaction and chagrin as they did their very best to kill him dead, satisfaction for how he’d gotten under their skin without doing basically anything, and then chagrin as he saw how their disdain for him extended to you.

That made it less fun – still, he committed to the bit.

“See?” Eddie said, gesturing down the hall towards the group of fading athletes, “Think about how fun it would be to sit through three whole hours of that.”

You watched them go – your old friends – and turned to look at him. Something fluttered across your face, and for half a moment Eddie was afraid he’d gone too far and hurt your feelings somehow. Then you narrowed your eyes.

“I thought Eddie Munson didn’t do school functions?” You teased, though there was real bite behind it.

Eddie cringed bodily – he understood that reference.

In the weeks before he’d mustered the courage to ask you out, you’d asked him if he was going to that night’s Sadie Hawkins dance. Eddie had scoffed and told you “I don’t really do school functions,” like it was some kind of running joke.

The Hellfire guys had laughed, and you’d tried your best to join in, but he’d seen the look of disappointment flash across your eyes and the way your face fell. You’d mumbled a quiet, “oh, okay, nevermind then” before quickly excusing yourself. It only occurred to him that you’d been asking him to the dance several hours later, while he was sitting on his bed working out the chords to a song you’d said you liked.

Eddie was sure his neighbors must have thought he was being murdered with the way he’d screamed when it hit him. He was a fucking idiot, and he knocked over just about every piece of furniture and clutter they owned in his panic to get to the phone and call you. It was too late for the dance, and he barely let you get a word in edgewise as he stumbled over apologies and excuses and promises to make it up to you somehow – he was still making it up to you.

“You’re never gonna let me live that down, are you?” He groaned, thumping his head against the locker beside yours.

You gave him a sly, sidelong glance, your lips quirking at the corners and eyes flashing in triumph as you finally managed to jimmy your locker open.

“Never.” You purred.

Flirting with Chrissy seems like a real funny way of trying to make it up to you, but still, Eddie tries to make himself smile in a way he hopes is reassuring. He hopes it looks a lot more convincing than it feels.

“What if we meet up before the game?”He posits, and Chrissy doesn’t seem convinced, so he keeps talking, “D’you know where that old picnic table is? Out in the woods past the field?”

She nods, still tugging at the sleeves of her cardigan.

There is a soft crease of worry between her eyebrows and Eddie feels a strange combination of warmth blooming in his chest and guilt cramping his stomach as he resists the urge to smooth it away.

She really is very pretty...

“Yeah,” she says, slowly with a newfound sense of surety, “…Okay. Before the game.”

He lets out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. A sigh of relief.

“Okay. So… I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Okay.”

"Okay."

She offers him one more shy smile before turning on her heel and scurrying down the hall.

He watches Chrissy go and very quickly feels the afterglow of talking to a pretty girl give over to guilt as something crumples inside of him.

“Come over tonight?” He’d asked, leaning against the locker beside yours.

You’d cast a sidelong glance his way and offered an apologetic smile as you tucked away your textbooks.

“I can’t – I’m babysitting.”

Ah, the old babysitting excuse – Eddie knew it all too well, and it was not enough to deter him.

“That’s okay, I’ll come to you.” He said, eliciting the expected response, your face scrunching up in the way he loves, brows coming together, eyes narrowing.

“No, you won’t.” you’d huffed, like he’d suggested something positively scandalous.

The suggestion of it was there, of course, a perpetually lingering shadow of arousal that lived between any two people in a consenting adult relationship (particularly if they happened to be a couple of horny teenagers) – still, Eddie couldn’t help but feign innocence.

“Why not?”

“Because.” You pressed, stretching the word, “I’m not gonna be one of those cliche babysitters who sneaks her boyfriend over to make out all night. That’s how you get killed in a horror movie.”

Eddie rolled his eyes, hand dropping idly to crook a finger through your belt loop and tug you towards him.

“Oh, come on,” He said, “We’re not gonna make out all night.”

He moved to tuck a wayward lock of hair behind your ear and somehow managed to get lost along the way. Suddenly his hand had come to rest at the curve of your throat, which only went on to suggest a strident contrast to what he’d just said.

No, you weren’t gonna make out all night, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to do everything in his power to get you out of your jeans.

“Eddie…” You warned him.

"Ed-die."

You furrowed your brow at his mocking and he just smiled. He knew that tone, it meant “don’t start”, but the way you sighed his name betrayed your steadfastness. It was reminiscent of the way you said it when he had you in a compromising position, with his hands all over you – all whiny and a little desperate, face flushed, lips bitten.

Uh oh, he thought, feeling the stirrings of something in his abdomen that was never so easily banished. Dangerous territory. Proceed with caution.

For the sake of his dignity, and considering you were both still at school, Eddie pivoted – it was a rare act of self-preservation.

“Come on, Babycakes,” he said, sounding perhaps a tad whinier than he’d intended, “I wanna meet the little twerp who’s been trying to steal my girl.”

Your brows came down in stark contrast to the way your face split into a wide grin as your fingers came up to grip the hand that had drifted south to rest over your collarbone.

“Your girl huh?” You purred, tilting your head down to gaze up at him through the thrush of your lashes.

Fuck. He loved it when you looked at him like that, but he knew if he wasn’t careful, he was gonna end up with a raging hard-on – at school, no less – and then what was he gonna do?

Eddie swallowed hard and ran his thumb over the plush spread of your lower lip, despite how it nudged him just a little further down the path of ruin. He had to fight to resist the urge to push the digit past your lips, press down on your tongue.

“Gotta scope out the competition.” He said thickly.

You scoffed then, thankfully cutting the tension with the harsh sound as you jerked your head back, pulling out of his grip.

“He’s not competition, Eds, he’s twelve.”

Eddie shrugged. “Even better, I’ll let the punk know who’s boss.” He could tell you clearly weren’t buying it, so he doubled down, “Hey– hey, I’m great at babysitting — I get those babies flat as a pancake every time.”

Your eyes flashed indignantly and before he could think to move, you jabbed him sharply in the ribs with your knuckle.

“Ah—shit!” he gasped.

“That’s my joke, Munson.”

Eddie hissed a sharp intake of breath and jerked away from the skittering feeling over his ribs as you poked him again and again.

“Baby don’t—ahh!“ He cut himself off with a cry as your hands came down to squeeze at his sides.

The worst thing that had ever happened to him was how you had so unceremoniously discovered just how goddamn ticklish he was, one afternoon when you’d engaged him in a wrestling match. You’d started it, but Eddie had easily flipped you over and pinned you down, holding your hands over your head and ready to torment you until you said “uncle”, but little did he know that you were an incorrigible brat who would not go down without a fight. Not a fair one, at least. Somehow, you’d gotten a hand free and immediately jabbed him in the ribs, pulling an embarrassingly high-pitched yelp from somewhere deep inside of him, startling the both of you. It was all over from there.

Eddie has not known a day of peace since, and today it seemed would be no different.

In some small attempt at self-preservation, he seized you at the wrists and pulled your hands around his back, jerking you forward and forcing you to hug him so that you couldn’t tickle him.

It was not the most ideal solution, considering the growing state of his arousal. You were suddenly pressed flat to him, head forced back so that your chin was resting at the dip of his sternum, gazing up at him with the faintest hint of mischief glinting in your pretty eyes.

If you were a cat, your tail would have been twitching with anticipation.

"Oh good, now that I've got your attention," He started, breathless and a little lightheaded as you tilted your chin down ever so slightly.

And then you sank your teeth into the soft flesh of his chest and Eddie yelped. He bit the sound off with a shout of laughter and pushed away from you.

You chased him, because of course you did, vicious harpy that you were – talons extended and reaching to grab at him again. He easily skirted around you in a wide circle, and suddenly you were both laughing and shouting as Eddie proceeded to run up and down the hall, fleeing the threat of your tickling fingers like he was running for his life.

It was an exercise in stamina, as even though he had longer legs, you were the faster runner, and as such, you were on him at every turn, squeezing and poking and pinching.

You really were in rare form that day. Super bratty. Part of him knew he was gonna have to hold you down and teach you a lesson later if you kept it up. That same part of him really hoped you would keep it up.

Your classmates passed you idly in the hall as you played, staring in varying degrees of discomfort as they made their way to the forgotten pep-rally, admonishing your dopey public displays of shouting, laughing affection with sidelong glances and the singular utterance of “get a room.”

In quite the athletic feat, Eddie finally managed to outmaneuver you enough to grab you from behind, pulling your hands across your chest and pinning them there so that you were stuck in a straight jacket of your own body. Once he was certain you were restrained, he walked you back to your locker, compensating for your presence between his legs by taking large awkward steps.

The action was closer to skipping than walking, and by the time Eddie deposited you back to your locker – the both of you noticeably winded from the game – you were giggling hysterically, spinning in his arms and rocking back against the cold metal door. You made no effort to stop him from caging you in there, hands coming up to rest on either side of your head as you lingered a moment, working to catch your breath.

Your face was flushed the prettiest shade of pink from exertion, eyes bright, chest heaving. Eddie watched your tongue poke out to swipe a thin sheen of moisture over your lips, and he swallowed hard.

He had to force himself to drag his gaze up from your mouth.

“So anyway, about me helping you babysit tonight—"

You heaved an overdramatic groan and rolled your eyes as Eddie rushed to continue before you could cut him off.

“Just hear me out— you said he’s a little nerd, right? That’s perfect. Nerds love me,”

“No, they don’t.”

“They do.” He insisted, beaming, “We can play D&D! Like a mini-campaign. Just the three of us – it will be so fun, I promise.”

The corners of your mouth quirked with humor.

“Can I be the Dungeon Master?” You asked.

You were teasing, but Eddie just dipped his head forward to brush his lips against the highest point of your cheekbone.

“Baby, you can be whatever the hell you want if you just say yes.” He said, pressing a kiss to your temple.

You hummed thoughtfully and let your head thump back against the hard metal like you were really considering the suggestion.

Eddie pulled back ever so slightly to watch the gears of your mind turning visibly on your face, though he very quickly became distracted as his eyes dipped to the exposed columns of your throat. He had to work very hard to resist the urge to put his mouth on you and suck a bruise into your flesh.

He wondered what the student body would think about that? The Freaky couple going at it in the hallway while the pep rally went on unnoticed? How’s that for school spirit?

Finally, you shrugged your shoulders.

“…I mean… he would love that, actually.”

“Yes!” Eddie cheered, pumping his fist in victory.

He grabbed you by the wrist and jerked your hand up for a high-five, the force of which rang out with a loud clap, echoing through the now-empty hallway and leaving his palm stinging.

You were giggling again, chewing your lower lip like you meant to contain the sound.

“Really though, he’s gonna love you. You guys like all the same nerdy stuff,” you said, rapping your knuckles against his chest. “You’ll be best friends and then I’ll just be that girl from across the street who used to be cool. Last year’s toys —totally lame.”

Eddie caught your hand and held it there, brushing the pad of his thumb across your knuckles and telling himself he didn’t need to tell you just how cool he thought you were, how much he loved you.

He was too caught in the way his heart was suddenly thumping in his chest over the sentiment.

Nobody ever said “oh you should meet Eddie Munson, you’re gonna love him,” — at least not without a heavy dose of sarcasm.

Nobody loved Eddie. Except for you … and the kid you babysat, apparently.

It made him feel like he could burst.

Eddie wanted to linger in the feeling a little longer, bask in its glow, but because he was who he was, he just couldn’t help himself.

“Of course, he’s gonna love me, I’m awesome.”

You snorted with a burst of undainty laughter.

“And so modest!” You teased, eyes growing soft as you walked your fingers up over his chest. “And smart, and funny, and handsome…”

Eddie felt his stomach do a cartoon flip-flop – he was still learning to take compliments like that, and you’d made it perfectly clear that you wouldn’t stand for his self-deprecating comments, which left him standing hopelessly defenseless in moments like this.

He rolled his eyes and resisted the urge to hide his face in the crook of your neck, if only to hide the warmth he could feel creeping up into his face.

“Aw, babe…” he mumbled, “You’re gonna make me blush.”

Then your hands drifted southward to rest on the buckle of his belt, and Eddie felt something inside of him begin to throb.

He couldn’t tell if it was his heart or his dick.

“Let me come with you.” He suddenly couldn’t stop himself from saying, perhaps a little too earnestly as he did his best to ignore the way your nose wrinkled at the unintended innuendo.

You giggled, and Eddie pushed his lower lip out and pinched his brows in a mock pout.

“No, stop it, I’m trying to be sweet.” He huffed.

You breathed a sigh of soft laughter through your nose and nodded, relenting.

Eddie dropped his chin and nudged your nose with his, glancing up at you through the thrush of his lashes in a gentle mockery of the way you’d looked at him moments before.

“Please?” He pleaded, softly.

At this point, despite how you’d gotten him all worked up, he didn’t even want to have sex with you (that was a bald-faced lie, he would have fully taken you right there against the lockers if this were some kind of cheap porno and if he thought he could get away with it) he just wanted to be near you —always— sit on the couch and watch a movie with you, cuddle you, hold your hand, breathe you in, kiss you, hold you and never let you go.

Truthfully, Eddie just wanted in on the piece of your life that you had yet to share with him, because he was infinitely curious about how you spent your nights entertaining the kid you babysat.

Selfishly, he wanted every part of you to belong solely to him. He was, in fact, more than just a little bit jealous of how much of your time and attention that kid held in his grubby little hands.

It was stupid, he knew that, but you had a knack for making him just a little more stupid than was normal.

You brought your hands up to smooth the wrinkles out of the front of his shirt and drummed your fingers over his heart.

It was a nice prelude to the gentle rejection hanging on your lips.

“Not tonight, Eds.” You mumbled.

Eddie made an unabashedly whiny sound of disappointment in the hollow of his throat and put on a show of pouting as he dropped his head to press his forehead against yours.

“Fine,” He sighed – rather pathetically in the hopes that you would take pity on him enough to reconsider.

You didn’t, but you did surprise him by suddenly fisting your hands in the front of his jacket and tugging him closer, as if that were even possible.

He was fully pressed against you now, pinning you to the lockers, and that little sparkle of mischief was back in your eyes.

“…You should come over after, though.” you breathed against his lips.

Eddie felt heat flaring in his chest, the possibility of “after” dripping down to pool in the pit of his abdomen – he could feel his face splitting in a slow smile as he rocked back on his heels.

“Yeah?”

You nodded slowly, “My parents are in Chicago until next week — and I should be done tonight by eleven-thirty? Then we can hang out, watch a movie, and stuff.”

If he was grinning any wider, his face might have started to peel off, so Eddie bit his lip.

“And stuff, huh?” He echoed, tilting his head in curiosity, “What kinda stuff?”

He knew exactly what kind of stuff you were talking about, he just wanted to hear you say it.

“Oh, I dunno.” You hummed innocently, “Maybe play some games?”

“I like games.” Eddie said, nodding emphatically, “What kind of games do you want to play?”

You blew out a breath and rolled your eyes up like you were thinking, even going so far as to tap your chin with your index finger. You were so goddamn cute, Eddie’s fingers twitched with the urge to squish your face.

“Well, there’s Candyland… Twister… Chutes and Ladders?”

It was a stretch, to be sure, but nobody ever accused him of being mature, and in spite of himself, he snorted with laughter.

Chutes and Ladders… Dumb joke. Really trashy. Barely even an innuendo.

Still, he tried and failed to compose himself.

“Sounds good. What next?” Eddie asked, still chuckling.

Your eyebrows jumped, like you couldn’t believe the audacity of him to even think to ask.

“What, and ruin the surprise?”

The surprise was ruined the minute you put your hands on his belt.

It was sex.

You meant sex, but you were too shy to say it outright.

You were the type of person who wasn’t shy about initiating but did so by rolling up with your hands behind your back, eyebrows jumping as you coquettishly asked if he wanted to “fool around”, and it was so incredibly cheesy Eddie couldn’t help but fall a little more madly in love with you for it.

His heart was so full with the feeling, the declaration of it lived perpetually on the tip of his tongue, but how many times a day could a man feasibly tell the object of his affection he loved her before the words started to lose meaning?

The danger of semantic satiation was ever-present.

“You,” he said, taking your face in his hands and pressing a gentle kiss to your lips, again and again, each following word punctuated with another chaste peck, “Are,” Kiss. “An incorrigible,” Kiss. “Tease.” Kiss kiss kiss. “And a mean, mean girl. How am I ever supposed to make it to eleven-thirty?”

You stuck him to the spot with a sly look, quirking your brow and pursing your lips.

“You’ve got hands, don’t you?” You said, deadpan.

The boldness of the statement hit him like a slap to the face, and as if it weren’t enough to say it, you punctuated the statement by bringing your fist up and making a slow jerking motion.

“Oh, my God!” Eddie shouted, hands flying down to grip you by the shoulders as he barked out a burst of sharp, incredulous laughter. “Who are you?”

In the distance, he could hear the marching band beginning to play, signifying the start of the pep rally.

You smiled, looking awfully proud of yourself for being so naughty, and then you were serious again, pouting.

“Well?” You prompted, “Edward. I asked you a question.”

Eddie bristled at the sound of his full name and gave you a hard, disapproving look. You just smiled, a cat in cream – you were really gonna pay for that one tonight, and he had to wonder if you knew that.

His fingers scrabbled up to rest at the junction where your shoulders met your neck – because he couldn’t not touch you – fingers gracing the curve of your throat, and he met your gaze.

“Yes.” He said matter-of-factly, “You’re absolutely right, my darling little weirdo. I’ve got hands.”

And then there was that look again. You were pleased as punch and his head was spinning for it.

He bit his tongue to resist the urge to tell you he loved you again.

Eddie had never been this stupid about someone in his entire life – he’d been with other people, had little crushes here and there, some reciprocated, most not, but he had never been in love before, not like this.

Nobody had ever matched his energy the way you did. He knew he could be too much, but his feelings had always been big and unwieldy. Eddie did nothing in small measures, least of all love, and he didn’t know how to parcel it out in manageable bites. Once he was in, he was all in, and he threw everything he had to offer at the object of his affection. You were the first person who had ever accepted it without hesitation, and perhaps most thrilling of all, you’d given it right back.

He could hardly stand it.

He would have married you tomorrow if you’d have him, but that was a secret, something shiny to take out and admire in private moments. That was just for him.

Eddie pulled you into a tight hug, and pressed yet another kiss to your temple. He hummed contentedly when he felt your arms snake up around his waist under his jacket and the soft rumble of you sighing against him and he loved loved loved — but still, he just couldn’t help himself.

“I’ve also got a blanket in the back of my van.” He said crudely into the line of your hair.

Then it was your turn to shout with laughter, pushing against his chest. Eddie only held you tighter, deciding he could stand to indulge himself, and you could stand to be squeezed a little.

“Come on, Sweetheart.” He said, teasing a little too much as he hugged you and stretched the words in a singsong way, “Let’s go out to the vaaaan.”

“I don’t have time!” You laughed, the strain of trying to break free of him evident in your voice.

Eddie nuzzled his face into the crown of your head and felt the tickling of static kicking up over his nose and cheeks.

“Sure you do.”

You continued to struggle, and Eddie continued to hold on.

“I don’t want to be late.”

“You can be a little late.”

“No—"

“Yes.”

“Eddie.” You whined, that authoritative warning creeping into your tone again.

Christ, he loved it when you got bossy.

Still, Eddie released you, though only to seize you roughly by the jaw and pull you back to him, slanting his mouth against yours in a forceful kiss. He coaxed you to open up for him just a little more with a swipe of his tongue and the little moan you breathed into him as he licked the roof of your mouth shots all the way down to his balls, kind of like a bolt of lightning, kind of like getting kicked there.

It was not entirely unpleasant.

You were more than just a little bit breathless when Eddie finally released you with a wet, vulgar smack, feeling satisfied enough to start purring, like a cat in cream as he licked his lips. He watched you struggle to open your eyes and hummed contentedly at the sight.

He still had a gentle hold on your jaw, and he was not entirely convinced he wasn’t just going to kiss you again and again, holding you to the spot until you were late to babysit, just because you were that sweet, with your pink lips parted ever so slightly and your face flushed bright red.

Instead, he squished your cheeks in his hand and shook your head back and forth, fondly, before finally releasing you.

“Alright, that’s enough out of you.” He said, “Begone Succubus! And tempt me no more.”

“Don’t be mean,” you huffed, taking your bag from Eddie as he offered it to you and shouldering it.

Eddie spun you away, and crooked his fingertips to hold on until distance demanded you part. Off you went, looking back at him with a bashful smile and starting down the hall.

He sighed, and watched you go. Eddie pressed his hand to the left side of his chest where he could feel his heart thumping and felt utterly dopey, drunk on your love and lost in the promise of “after”.

Then, he remembered almost too late that he couldn’t just let you go — he had to get you back for biting him— and because you were a brat and he had absolutely no handle on his impulsivity, Eddie took a big step forward and brought his hand down to clap you on the ass with a loud smack.

You yelped and leaped damn near out of your skin, hands flying down to cover the offended spot and face burning as you turned back to glare at him. You stuck your tongue out at him and he could feel the muscles in his face start to hurt from how widely he was grinning.

“See you tonight!” He called, watching you scurry down the hall, shoulders pulled up to your ears because of course —of course— he still wasn’t done, so he raised his voice and shouted, “—you know— FOR THE SEX!”

“Eddie!” You hissed, “Shut up!”

Eddie watches Chrissy go and breathes out a hard, shaky breath to try and banish the way he’s getting dangerously misty-eyed.

When she’s gone, disappeared around the corner, he sinks to the floor to stop his knees from buckling underneath him, and crouches at the foot of the lockers. He groans and crushes his palms into his eyes until he sees bursts of color.

Eddie misses you more than he’s missed anything in his stupid, pathetic life, and he feels guilty for it because he has no right to miss you after he’d so carelessly thrown you away.

Stupid, stupid, stupid…

He can’t shake the feeling that with the perfectly innocent interaction he’d just had with Chrissy, he’s wronged you somehow, betrayed you — more than he already has — and he has to remind himself that flirting isn’t cheating.

You can’t cheat on someone you aren’t with.

He sniffs pathetically and runs the back of his hand under his nose.

He wishes the ground would open up and swallow him. He wishes he could feel normal again, free from this pervasive guilt, these stupid panic attacks, the crushing vice you still hold on his life after almost a year. He wishes he could be rid of you, and he wishes he would cease to exist for even thinking that.

Nobody’s fault but your own, you fucking loser.

Eddie makes himself think about Chrissy, because that feels easier than missing you. He thinks about her long legs in her short little cheer skirt, the gentle pout of her pink lips, her big wet eyes.

He thinks about how he’s going to see her again tomorrow.

He tells himself he’ll keep on flirting with her if she’s open to it, because she’s nice and she’s pretty and because there’s danger in it.

He knows he’ll definitely end up having sex with her if she comes on to him, because it’s been eight months since he’s felt the gentle press of your body and his hand has been a poor substitute.

Eddie knows Chrissy has a boyfriend, but he doesn’t care, because fuck Jason Carver and the shining white horse he rode in on.

There is a delicious sense of satisfaction in thinking about how goddamn pissed Jason would be to find out Chrissy had been talking to him, let alone soliciting drugs from him.

His perfect little princess.

Eddie thinks he could ruin her and have fun doing it.

No, he wouldn’t. He would do it and feel awful about it afterward because all he seems to manage to do these days is destroy himself a little more.

The thought of using her like that makes him feel sick, but he doesn’t know what to do with all the love you left behind in him. He doesn’t know where to put it. He won’t part with it — it’s all he has left of you — but it’s becoming a weight much too cumbersome to carry.

Eddie tells himself that maybe a rebound is the answer, maybe it’s what he needs to finally start to feel halfway normal again. Maybe it’s time to finally start thinking about moving on… the thought of it breaks his heart all over again.

If he closes his eyes tight enough he can still see you walking down the hall, glancing back at him over your shoulder – sticking your tongue out at him because you think he’s an asshole.

You'd wanted to see him.

He wants to see you so badly it makes his chest hurt… but instead, tomorrow he is going to see Chrissy...

Taglist: @harrys-tittie @r-a-d-i-0-n-0-w-h-e-r-e @itsrainingbisexualfrogs @thicksexxualtension @ganseysgff @scoopsr0bin @peanutbutter-y-jams @audhd-dragonaut @clilxlx @alexandriaemily20 @averagestudent03 @but-vanessa @cosmictime45 @timelordfreya @forever-war @munsonzzgf

#eddie munson x you #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson #cruel summer #stranger things fic #stranger things #not me hurting my feelings imagining mama munson #and how much of a mama's boy little eddie was #also i'm sad about chrissy #am i just a sad boy like orville peck? #the answer is yes #I’m sorry this is so late getting up it took me literally four hours to edit #cruel summer fic

[pelideswhore]

the horror and the wild (and achilles)

basically i’m trying to explain why the songs that are in my iliad playlist are there at all and ofc i’m starting with none other than achilles. I’m gonna do this line-by-line so you can listen as you read but i won’t be doing repeated lines. enjoy <3

also, yes, i am aware that the song is written about an abusive relationship between father and child, and i love listening it to it in that sense (yes i’m traumatized) but in this context it’s obvs different. my ability to make everything about achilles is a gift that keeps on giving. if you don’t want this song to have different meaning than what it’s actually about, just stop reading.

You were raised by wolves and voices, every night I hear them howling deep beneath your bed —

The ‘you’ in this line is Achilles, who knew from a very young age that he was destined for greatness. He based his entire personality around the fact, hence the having been ‘raised’ by voices. The ‘wolves’ also remind me of the fact that he a) spent many years in a cave with Charon and b) had many father figures. I mean it. Count them.

They said it all comes down to (you) —

This ties in with the previous line. Achilles really was told that the fate of the war and hence the entirety of Greece depends on him, when he was literally a child. That’s way too much responsibility for a five-year-old if you were looking for parenting tips.

You’re the daughter of silent watching stones, you watch the stars hurl all their fundaments in wonderment at you and yours, forever asking more —

I mostly connect the female part of the song to Thetis. Firstly, I feel like this segment already makes her feel like an ethereal, divine being (although Madeleine’s voice does that well enough ngl), at the same time it also describes her character very well. The fact that the stars ‘hurl all their fundaments’ reminds me of Book (idk what book it is), where Zeus fulfills Thetis’ wish on Achilles’ behalf, no questions asked. I also feel like some people forget that Zeus literally wanted to marry her, she was that gorgeous, so ya.

You are the space that’s in between every page, every chord and every screen. You are the driftwood and the rift, the words I promise I don’t mean —

I don’t know what this means. Love it tho.

We’re drunk, but drinking; sunk, but sinking —

I love this line so much, you have no idea. It brings up the idea that while they all know that they are fated to die and it is guaranteed, there’s still living it in real time. They’re eating, laughing, speaking, with the knowledge that tomorrow they won’t be able to. They’re dead men walking. Also, on a less existential note, it reminds me of the fact that they’ve doomed themselves by starting the war and yet they continue it. They’ve dug themselves a hole and instead of hopping out, they dig deeper.

They thought us blind, we were just blinking —

Patroclus and Achilles now: Their decision to put the war on hold, a momentary action, is the blinking, in relation to “blindness” which would’ve been leaving. The ‘they’ who thought them blind could really be Agamemnon, who underestimates and insults Achilles with the little party he sends to him. Or it could be Hector and the Trojans who believed they were safe … and then Achilles came back.

All the stones and kings of old will hear us screaming at the cold —

The stones are a perfectrepresentation of the Trojan wall and the kings, well, that’s the current Trojan royal family but also all that have passed. They will hear Achilles screaming at the cold, which could be the sea or Patroclus’ corpse if you want to take it literally. When he hears the news of Patroclus’ death, his screams do in fact reach Troy.

Remember me, I ask. Remember me, I sing —

Yeah. Remembrance for Achilles is obviously a big thing, so I’m not going to go super deep here, however the switch from ‘ask’ to ‘sing’ is really nice, considering we’re taking about an epic that was sung in remembrance of Achilles. The first word of the Iliad is literally ‘sing’.

Give me back my heart you wingless (thing) —

This could very much be about the fight for Patroclus’ corpse, but Achilles didn’t even know that was happening at the time, so instead I just make it about Achilles wanting Patroclus to be alive again. He does in fact refer to him as “his soul’s far dearer part”.

Think of all the horrors that I promised you I’d bring —

To me, this sounds like Achilles referring to threats he made to Hector about killing him and bringing destruction to his people. While the threats were empty at the time, now, after Patroclus has died, he takes them very seriously.

I promise you, they’ll sing of every time you passed your fingers through my hair and called me child —

In the song, this is the same person as in the lines before and after, considering it’s a song about a father and his son, but to me, this line is about the fact that Achilles wants the affection Patroclus showed him to be remembered. He doesn’t want the love they had to go forgotten. This is 100% caused by the fact that in my writing, Patroclus and Achilles’ hair is a huge thing you might want to look out for if you read it lols. OH also, the fact that he cuts it after Patroclus dies is like a “if you can’t touch it, no one can” moment.

Witness me, old man, I am the wild —

Back to the Trojans. ‘Old man’ here obviously means father but we’ll just ignore that and apply it to Priam, specifically to the scene where he comes to Achilles’ tent and asks for Hector’s corpse back.

You are the son of every dressing up box —

Honestly, I have no idea what this means. It definitely does remind me of Achilles hiding in a costume among the princesses in Skyros, but that doesn’t hold all too much significance. Dressing up is also usually a kids’ game which reminds you that he’s really just a kid pretending to be someone he’s not.

And I am time itself, I slow to let you play. I steal the hours and turn the nights into (day) —

Instead of giving the female voice just to Thetis, I could classify it as divine interference as a whole. This line specifically is giving me Athena vibes, though she is not time itself. The way she refers to what would be battling in this context as ‘playing’ shows how superior she is and how much she looks down upon even her favoured soldiers. It also reiterates for the millionth time that these soldiers are really just children. The fact that Athena has to ‘let’ him or allow him to play illustrates that Achilles is dependent on divine interference to win his battles, but specifically the duel with Hector.

Day by day, oh lord, three things I pray, that I might understand as best I can how bold I was, could be, will be - still am, by god, still am —

Here we get to the self-reflection where Achilles realizes that he was never as great as he thought he’d be, and that he had failed his people by not using that greatness to its full potential. The ‘will be’ and ‘still am’ parts are just him hyping himself up to take revenge on Hector, reminding himself that he does have the strength to do it.

Fret not, dear heart, let not them hear the mutterings of all your fears, the fluttering of all your wings —

I don’t know how deep I can go into this beyond what it literally means. He simply can’t let on that he’s scared. I guess the wings do represent his inner demons, but it’s also kind of funny when you think of him being Podarkes aka. having “winged feet”.

Welcome to the storm, I am thunder —

In the storm that is the war, Achilles is the thunder, the loud thing everyone fears. It’s quite interesting to consider that in reality, thunder is safe. The danger is the lighting. In my mind, Achilles considers Patroclus to be the lightning, which makes sense when you remember that after his death Achilles admits that he is not the best of all Greeks, but Patroclus. This leaves Achilles to be the thunder, the echo of what truly mattered.

Welcome to my table, bring your hunger —

This is similar to the line before. It’s his table, his war. Hector is the one that has to come prepared, ready to fight, but also ready to be served, ready to die.

#i cannot believe i said ‘illustrates’. i feel like i’m writing an essay for school. #greek mythology #greek myth #achilles #the amazing devil #the horror and the wild #tad #iliad #the iliad #trojan war #patroclus #hector of troy #thetis #athena #king priam #priam #ancient greece #mythology #greek gods #mythos #greek mythos #song analysis #literary analysis #analysis #myth #homer #epic cycle #greek heroes #ik there are so many other things i could tag this as but idk what

[pepperpottsandcompany]

Chrissy Cunningham, Edissy and Grace Van Dien

I don't usually make long text posts on here - hopefully I will make more about awesome female characters in the future - but I feel this situation requires it.

There are spoilers under the cut.

First off, I really liked Chrissy Cunningham as a character when she appeared. A lot of people did, and a large part of that is the actress making her so likeable. I assumed we were going for the bitchy head cheerleader stereotype when they introduced her, but I was wrong. She was really sweet, kind and had immediate chemistry with Eddie.

Obviously, the actors (Joseph Quinn and Grace Van Dien) made their characters so amazing and their acting made the characters have undeniable chemistry. Whether you see that as platonic chemistry or romantic chemistry, it's undeniable that it's there. The scenes they shared were wonderful and I actually got very attached to Chrissy in the short time we had with her.

Now, I ship 'Edissy' (Eddie x Chrissy) and I shipped them immediately. However I understand that some people see them as platonic and see a friendship there, which I totally understand. We don't all ship the same things. I also ship 'Steddie' (Steve x Eddie), and I love both those ships. They're great.

What is NOT great is the fact that a lot of people within the Stranger Things fandom - most of whom seem to ship Steddie as well - seem to think it's okay to post nasty and hateful things about Chrissy, Edissy and Grace herself. A lot of them have even sent Grace hateful messages on social media and genuinely made her fear going to conventions because she's worried about in person hate.

They are also claiming that Edissy is paedophilia because Eddie is around 19/20 and Chrissy is 17/18. They are both SENIORS, which means they are around the same age and even though Eddie has been kept behind a couple of years, he's still a teenager, like Chrissy. That age gap is NOT PROBLEMATIC and if you think it is, you need to log off the internet and go the fuck outside into the real world.

Edissy is a perfectly fine and valid ship, as is Steddie. If you don't ship it, awesome. Just move on with your life and don't harass people who do.

Moving on from people being gross about the ship, the fact that some of you think it's okay to harass and bully the actress who plays Chrissy on social media because you've decided you don't like the ship is vile and horrific. And a lot of people doing that are

a) super weird Steddie shippers who remind me of the horrible Lokius shippers in the Loki/MCU fandom who harass Sophia Di Martino for playing a female character that 'gets in the way' of their white mlm ship and

b) obsessed Eddie Munson/Joseph Quinn stans, who, a lot like the Tom Hiddleston stans in the Loki fandom (who send hate to Zawe Ashton, Tom's real life fiancée, as well as Sophia), or Robert Pattinson stans in The Batman/Twilight fandom (who send hate to Suki Waterhouse, Rob's irl girlfried, and a lot of whom seem to hate BatCat and Zoe Karvitz), seem to hold up their favourite purest bestest boy fictional character and the actor who plays him, but hates any woman who is close to him irl or in the shows/movies they're in, and seems to think they have some weird claim over them

You DO NOT have ANY CLAIM over a fictional character NOR THE ACTOR WHO PLAYS HIM.

The fact that you all have decided to bully and harass and young woman over a fictional romance that NEVER happened (both ships guys, BOTH ships) and are insinuating that the friendship between real people (the actors) is fake because you can't handle a a woman being friends with a man you see as your possession, is absolutely disgusting and you are all scum.

Also, so much of it stems from misogyny, and what's worse is that a lot of the people hurling this misogynistic abuse are other WOMEN. That is vile. It disgusts me. Women are people, and male/female ships are VALID. Also, the fact that you only harass the ACTRESSES in these situations tells so much. You all still see women (other women for many of you) as obstacles to what you want and as lesser then you. Go and revaluate your misogyny, internalised or not.

Also, while I'm here, all the people crying about Eddie being queer - you do realise bisexual and pansexual people exist? As well as a wealth of other sexualities where it's possible to love/be attracted to more then ONE gender. People in male/female relationships CAN BE QUEER. Eddie can like Chrissy AND Steve. It's possible.

Anyway, I got distracted. Chrissy is a wonderful character, Edissy is a great ship (romantic or platonic) and Grace Van Dien seems like a lovely young woman.

If you have been hateful towards Grace, or any other female actor, for playing a female character that you perceive as 'stealing' a male actor/character you like, or as 'getting in the way' of your gay ship? YOU ARE THE ONE WITH THE PROBLEM. You need to work on yourself and your misogyny and you need to leave social media and stop harassing real people.

I am ashamed to ship Steddie because so many abusive people ship it too and have decided that this is the 'superior' ship and they need to harass people who ship a different ship or need to harass the actress who plays one part of the other ship. I'm also ashamed to love Eddie Munson as a character because so many hardcore Eddie 'stans' (who also obsess over Joseph Quinn) are also being abusive towards Edissy shippers and Grace as well.

I adore Chrissy, and Grace, and I ship Edissy. I needed to say that. And the rest of it needed to be said.

To all those antis, haters, whatever you call yourselves. If you've harassed and bullied Grace or anyone on social media for liking Chrissy or Edissy, I wish the worst fates on you. Grow up, put down your phone and go and revaluate yourself and how you think.

#chrissy cunningham #eddie munson #edissy #eddie x chrissy #grace van dien #steddie #I had to make a post about this #it's too important not to #I am actually horrified by people #I feel ASHAMED to share a fandom with some of you #the way you treat female characters and actresses is appalling #especially when you do it because you think you have some sort of claim towards the male actor/character #or because you think the female character 'gets in the way' of your mlm ship #and there are too many examples of this sadly #there's the three mentioned above #but as I wrote I thought of so many more #stranger things #stranger things 4 #stranger things spoilers

[lgbtlunaverse]

If you wonder why i just went on a massive ochako redesign reblog spree (when really i have no beef with her design, especially if you compare it to something like momo's)

A while ago some annoying troll replied to my post because it mentioned bakudeku and togachako and they clearly didn't like that. As i say there, their account is full of them complaining about queer ships simply existing and their straight ships not being more popular. I remembr laughing very hard about THIS monster essay that they reblogged, where a whiny cishet teenager on their high horse decided that THE prime criterium for being considered part of the lgbt community is whether THEY personally like you and your opinions on fictional anime ships. I'm not showing you the full essay, consider that a favor. It goes on like this forever.

So that orginal post, the one they replied to, came up in my notes again, and against all better judgement i clicked on their account again and found this

And this

Just a whole string of ochako fan redesigns they're hurling abuse at.

It's in dutch but if you look right under their url you can see the timestamp that shows these were all posted in the same hour. They clearly just looked up "ochako redesign" and decided to yell at all of the results

Because of this time contatraint- gotta maximise the amount of artists you can harass per hour, after all- they like to fall back on this one a lot. "Hideous and impractical"

This is only a portion. There are so many more of these! Some of them are from all the way back in 2018 and this weirdo dug them up just to harass them.

You can practically see them straining not to say a racial slur in this one.

Anyhow. I reblogged all the artists they harassed. Go block this troll. Go give the artists they're harassing some love. They deserve it.

And @zozobegone, who actually gave this person a sincere and way kinder than deserved reply: I hope you didn't let them get to you. They're not gonna give you any advice, they just want to be mean. If you want to do a redraw, that's wonderful, I'd love to see it! But feedback from peopel like this who do not care about art or character design or anything but being the shittiest human being possible is worthless.

Go support artists, and everyone except user hypnobanditoperanickel have a lovely day <3

#bnha #discourse #uraraka ochako #verbal harassment #< just as a warning for the people who don't want to see that shit

[marciabrady]

Hi Marcia, first of all, Happy New Year! I hope this year will be great for you <3 I wanted to ask, have you ever seen the film "Ever After" starring Drew Barrymore? Is a retelling of the Cinderella fairytale but without magic and with a more "90s girl power" update and it's pretty popular nowadays with many considering the best adaptation of the Cinderella story. I admit I love the film, but only as a different take based on the fairytale, and while I really love Danielle and her story, part of me feels at uneasy that she's often hailed as the "right kind of Cinderella" because she's more enlightened and knew how to rescue herself in the climax by fighting the bad guy with a sword, given that we can't expect all abuse victims to fit in a "correct" mold, specially when you see the situation of Disney's 1950 Cinderella who didn't had the resources to leave, neither she was trained in self defense - if anything I find her situation a sad reflection of how domestic abuse works inside households in real life. Any thoughts on that film?

Thank you for wishing me a Happy New Year- I hope yours proves to be a superlative one, as well! I saw Ever After when I was twelve or thirteen and going through one of my Cinderella phases. I was writing for Lady Tremaine at the time, and I genuinely thought the writing on the Stepmother was pretty good. I still think certain lines that were written for her are incredible like "my mother forced me to wash my face twenty times a day. She convinced me it was never clean enough." However, Drew Barrymore, talented as she is, was never my Cinderella. I understand that many people laud her as being the most incredible one, but that's because of the patriarchal masculinity she displays. Drew Barrymore's Cinderella swordfights, throws punches, swears, hurls insults, and is generally violent and aggressive. Which is fine, if that's what you're into...but I don't think it's the character of Cinderella. I think it's the character of Belle, especially with her love of reading, within the Cinderella story structure and that's why so many people love her. So it really is discouraging to me that so many people are rallying behind her as the only correct adaption of Cinderella because...you can tell what they're doing with the character lol I'm less than enchanted with the direction. As I mentioned before with this strange conjunction of "feminist" critique and heteronormativity and the death of romance, Cinderella meeting her Prince by pummeling him with apples is...her getting whipped against the back for meeting him, her running away and crying at the ball because he rejected her. It just isn't for me. I think the film is a violent, gory one for no reason and it's disenchanting and it has good writing at times and it has merit I suppose, but it just really really isn't for me and it makes me uncomfortable with how it treats the subject matter.

#ask #anonymous

[moistvonlipwig]

1/2 friendly reminder that teen wolf fans and viewers are not obligated to like scott mccall just because he is your fav (or because jeff and posey told us that we HAVE to) you clearly don't give a shit about racism outside of whining and throwing a tantrum because people dislike your fav and prefer other teen wolf main characters to him. posey and jeff literally abused, humiliated and treated arden (a woman of color) like trash in favor of their shitty and racist teen wolf revival, because

2/2 they think that getting that teen wolf movie paycheck and a producer credit is more important than a woman of color's feelings and well being. and yet all you do is frothing at them mouth because people don't worship the ground your personal fav scott walks on like you (and your bitter, jealous, eclipsed fav posey) want and demand… so embarrassing

Friendly reminder that I never said you were obligated to like Scott McCall or that you couldn't prefer other characters.

Friendly reminder that I have spoken out repeatedly against the racist and misogynist treatment of Kira (who is my second favorite character on Teen Wolf) and Arden Cho, and have stated that I do not intend to support the Teen Wolf movie due to her treatment. In fact, I actually quit watching Teen Wolf the show after Kira left in Season 5 and only absorbed Season 6 through my dashboard.

Friendly reminder that I have never said a positive word about Jeff Davis in my entire goddamn life. Jeff Davis can get his liver eaten by an eagle like Prometheus for all I care.

Friendly reminder that I can detect your deflection tactics a mile away because I've been in fandom spaces for over a decade now and exactly none of your arguments are new. "Why are you talking about fandom racism when the show is also racist???" is an extremely tired argument employed by racist fandoms who don't want to be called out on their shit. Guess what, genius, I can talk about both!

Friendly reminder that giving a shit about racism requires you to ALWAYS give a shit about racism, even when it impacts people, characters, or actors who you personally dislike or think are bad, even when it inconveniences you, even when it ~disrupts~ your fandom experience. So if YOU gave a shit about racism, you'd care about racism against Scott McCall too.

Friendly reminder that making a post that is properly tagged so as to only be seen by fellow Scott defenders is not throwing a tantrum, but coming into someone's inbox and hurling unfounded accusations at them most definitely is.

And one last friendly reminder, for the road: if you see a post you dislike, you can ignore it, block the person who made it, and go the hell outside. Too much screen time isn't good for you, anon!

#of all the baffling things about this ask #perhaps the most baffling is that anon seems to think i am pro jeff davis #what blog have you been reading anon??? #teen wolf fandom problems #the bite is a gift

[raisindeatre]

White people are honestly so tiring 

#i was actually excited to watch shadow & bone but all this anti-asian racism... i'm so tired!! i really am so tired!!! #like white people just CANNOT write poc. they can't! and they prove this over and over again and how many more chances must i give them #people more eloquent than me have already written about this but what was the POINT of making alina half-shu han #if all you were going to do was have the characters hurl abuse at her? #i'm genuinely so exhausted. #you CANNOT pat yourself on the back for 'introducing diversity' into a piece of media #and then immediately think 'well we NEED to be racist now as well obviously. we'll fucking die if we cannot' #like NONE of this was in the books. there was NO need for it. #the show really decided to introduce a racist subplot the minute they made a WOC their main character #like you really just could NOT let her be half-asian and have the story the way it was in the books #you just NEEDED to insult the shape of her eyes and call her 'rice-eater' #bro i am just sitting here!!! what the fuck!!! #anyway white people just cannot write poc without being racist . they can't have diversity without being racist #they CANNOT just have characters of colour without insulting them #anyway i feel like it's really telling that everyone who is gushing about s&b is white lol #i'm tired!!! i like the bits with the crows but i do not think i can watch any more of this show #it's fine if you like it but i am really begging you to be a bit more critical of the choices made in this show #and how hurtful they are to any asian people watching it #like great! you wanted to address the shortcomings of the source material as being too white. i get that. i even applaud that. #but did you NEED to put all the anti-asian elements in? think about that.

[asulmae]

Expectations v Reality

TW: Ooc characters, Traveler being mean, other characters being mean

Note: first time writing this for months lurking this SAGAU

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Life wasn't good for you. Arriving first at the City of Freedom, the people throwing things at you, hurtful words, and even trying to kill you. Heck, even Venti - the God of Anemo himself was even angry at you. The Knights were none the wiser and tried to attack you unprovoked - good thing you knew how to defend yourself but never their visions.

Fleeing Liyue was even more devastating. The Liyue Qixing immediately told the citizens and the Millileth soldiers to quickly dispose of the imposter - you. You tried to talk to the soldiers and the citizens that you are no GOD but it fell on deaf ears.

You already began to question where the heck the Traveler and Paimon is. The two were supposed to be somewhere but they weren't in both Mondstadt and Liyue. Zhongli managed to call upon Xiao to kill you as well but you managed and by luck defeat the yaksha and fled to the scene.

Inzauma was the last one - it was the worst of all the worst. When you arrived, you were immediately taken by the Yashiro Commission as a captive and saw the Traveler - Aether and Paimom together with Ayaka and Thoma. The look in Aether's eyes when you gazed at him was shocking.

"An imposter who wreaked havoc amongst Teyvat…" He spoke with disgust as Paimon just looked away from your gaze with a sorrowful expression.

You were immediately and supposed to be executed in front of Raiden Shogun at Tenshukaku. When Raiden raised her Musou no Hitotachi at you, you summoned your sword and clashed as a wave of powerful energy sent flying all the bystanders who were hurling abuse towards you. It created a smoke and fog as you quickly fled away from the scene.

Pain and sorrow filled your heart. Questioning your sanity as to why your favorite characters attacked you and tried to kill you. You haven't done anything wrong.

"Hello, are you alright?" You immediately draw your sword and look for the person and shocked crossed your face.

"Paimon? H-How did you find me?"

You were hiding at Tatarasuna and good thing the electro thing was eliminated.

"Paimon was just sorry about everyone. They hurt you, didn't they?"

Tears trickled down to your face as you wailed hard. Hand was on your head as you cried and cried hard.

"Do you want to go back to your world?"

You stopped crying - you blinked at Paimon as she handed you a small vial with gold fluid inside. You took the vial and inspected it, the vial was gold.

"Your Grace, it's best for you to let them kill you - in that way I can guarantee that you will go back to the world you adore…"

String of questions tangled in your thoughts as angry shouts and yells were heard. All the vision holders, especially the important ones from Ayaka to Yae were there. You glanced at Paimon who disappeared in thin air.

"You have no right to live you miserable fake of an imposter god!" Raiden exclaimed as her eyes glowed dangerously. Your eyes wandered frantically to your supposed executioners.

You opened your hands and the vial Paimon gave you - you pulled out the cork and drank the liquid down. Your throat slowly burn as you managed to look at Raiden and the others.

"Any last words?"

You blinked as you chuckled softly.

"Consummatum est…"

Before you knew, the blade you never noticed Raiden was holding strike you down to your heart. Blood spurted out from your mouth and your chest as you fell towards the ground.

It is finished. And now, you left that miserable, awful, cruel world of the game you once loved and adored

#self aware genshin #genshin cult au #genshin sagau #fanfic #genshin impact #reader insert #sagau #sagau impostor au

[babyjakes]

forever and a day | 1. just a little girl.

〈 disclaimer: this blog posts content not suitable for individuals under the age of 18. minors are strictly prohibited from viewing, sharing, or interacting with this blog. for more information on this blog's commitment to protecting minors, read our full statement here. 〉

series masterlist | next chapter →

summary | a story in which america’s favorite captain gives a new life and family to a five-year-old girl who has suffered well beyond her years at the hands of hydra.

characters | dad!steve rogers, girl/willa rogers (original character)

warnings | AU similar enough to OU to include spoilers to many Marvel movies (Age of Ultron and beyond). mature themes related to child abuse/neglect, ptsd/trauma symptoms in a child (developmental discrepancies, de-humanized behavior, detachment, extreme fears). somewhat evil!Tony Stark.

[Steve]

“Holy shit!” the charismatic voice of Tony Stark exclaims through my earpiece as the bottoms of my boots hit steadily against the uneven ground beneath me. “How many Hydra freaks are in this place? Did we know we were hitting a total jackpot?”

Huffing out a large puff of air, I try to steady my breathing, focusing on the single task of running through the halls of the mysterious underground site while keeping an eye out for possible targets. The entrance to this place was difficult to crack through. In a little mountain preserve right outside of Seoul, we were finally able to shift the boulders around in the correct manner to reveal the secret door.

We’ve been storming the place for about an hour now. We’ve already rounded up dozens of high-ranking Hydra officials, and about twenty or so “experiments.” I’ve only dealt with three of them so far; to say it’s a devastating situation is an understatement at best. While we’ve all grown to know the evils of Hydra, these prisoners seem to have had it particularly rough. The worst part is that they can’t recognize we’re here to help. All they know how to do is fight, which leaves us with no choice but to take them by force.

“We’ve hit gold,” Nat responds to Tony over our interconnected wire. “None of the other locations were ever this huge.”

I continue to dash around the huge main room, watching as my teammates destroy the enemy. At this point, I’ve learned that Hydra isn’t necessarily hard to fight. The most challenging part is the sheer number of guards and other members they have stocked here. Nat, Clint, and Thor are all in the main segment with me, mostly tackling guards and shuffling survivors out to the entrance where Hulk and Tony are waiting to throw them onto our ship.

Suddenly, an angry-looking man with slick black hair and icy blue eyes dressed in a crisp white lab coat charges at me, catching me off guard. I quickly brace my shield and grab him by the wrists, hurling him through the air. Stumbling back, he bumps up right against Thor. “Ah, another one. Thank you, my friend,” the large man chuckles casually as he grabs the Hydra scientist and tosses him by his hair to Clint, who ties his arms and throws him by a few others who are dressed and bound just like him.

“Hey guys, how many prisoners was it?” Clint asks.

“Just grab as many Hydra members as you can. This site should have twenty-four experimental prisoners. How many do we have now?” Tony yells, clearly wrestling with something (or someone) as he replies.

“We’ve given you twenty-three!” Nat chimes in. “There’s just one more. Someone should go look for him and the rest of us can finish up these bastards.”

“I’ll go,” I offer, making my way to the holding cells. They’re pathetic little rooms with glass doors, no more than a handful of feet both wide and deep. Each has a metal bed topped with a thin mattress and sheet, thick padded restraints tied to all the corners. The rooms are empty besides that. I sigh, making my way down the hall of the sad and depressing cells. Coming up to the final door, I notice that a white curtain has been draped over the glass, almost appearing to offer some privacy to whatever’s being held inside. I look back at the other doors and see that above each, there’s a plaque with a number and letter coding on it. Looking back at the door in front of me, I find a similar plaque, only there’s no identification code. Just a single word: girl.

“Uh- guys?” I buzz in over the earpiece. “Why doesn’t the last prisoner have a code?”

“What do you mean?” I hear Clint responding, “they all have codes. They serve as their names.”

“I know, but this one doesn’t. The sign above the room just says ‘girl.’” There’s a long silence before I hear someone turning on their microphone to speak.

“Girl… I’ve heard of that before,” Natasha says slowly.

“Wait, I have too,” Tony butts in. “I was briefed on her once. Apparently, she’s not an assassin like all the other experiments.”

“Not an assassin? Then what does she do?” Nat asks.

“She heals people. And supposedly brings them back from the dead,” Clint says coldly.

I freeze, unsure of what to think or say. Brings them back from the dead? I wonder how she acquired that power, or maybe if she was simply born with it.

“That’s right; that’s what she does. I remember that now, she’s been used to revive some of Hydra’s top officials and assassins,” Tony adds. “Also… don’t quote me on this, but I’m pretty sure she’s just a kid.”

“Cap, just grab her; we can investigate more once we get her on the ship,” Nat decides. “You need backup?”

“He won’t,” Thor cuts in, “if she’s indeed just a child.”

I take a few more steps towards the door, leaning up against the curtain to try to hear inside. There isn’t any noise, no growling or groaning like I heard from the other prisoners. I sigh, almost feeling the need to… knock? Or at least give some warning of my presence. It doesn’t feel like I’m about to meet a dangerous killer. Probably because I’m not, at least, according to the team.

Cautiously, I reach out with a shaking hand, slowly moving the curtain aside. Peeking into the room, it looks like the others. The metal bed sits empty in the left corner with the straps hanging down sadly to the floor. Bright lights illuminate the space, reminding me of a hospital. My eyes drift over to the right and settle on the surprisingly tiny figure in the corner. She doesn’t look like she could be much older than five or six. Something else that surprises me right away is that she’s chained to the wall and blindfolded. The other experiments weren’t held like this; they were just loose in their cells. The girl has long brown hair that falls all around her pale face. She’s emaciated. While the others we rescued were wearing battle gear and armor, bulked up and ready for battle, she wears nothing but what appears to be a thin hospital gown over her bony form. She hasn’t noticed me yet, given that she can’t see. I sigh, taking a few more seconds to breathe and take in her depressing state.

When I gather enough courage, I twist the locks and pry the door open. The sudden noises startle her and she jumps, shoving herself back up against the corner she’s curled up in. I clear my throat, realizing that she probably thinks I’m just another member of Hydra, here to do… well, whatever it is they did to her.

“It’s alright. I’m not with Hydra,” I begin, my voice coming out firmly, as I’m not completely sure what kind of powers this girl possesses or what she could do to me yet. “You’re being liberated. I’m going to bring you with me to safety.”

She doesn’t respond, her blindfold covering too much of her face for me to properly read her expression. It occurs to me that maybe my language is too sophisticated for her to understand, given the fact that she’s so young. The thought even enters my mind that she might not know English. But I don’t want to assume anything; I can’t take any chances. She might be a child, but she’s a child who’s been programmed by Hydra.

Swinging the door closed behind me, I take a few steps towards her. She can sense me approaching and her body quivers, her arms coming up to cover her face. Resting her hands on top of her head, she swallows hard. A terrified whimper rises from her throat and at the pathetic noise, my body immediately softens. What on earth did they do to her?

Still several feet away, I decide to kneel down, even though I know she can’t see me. “It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you,” I say, my voice coming out surprisingly gentle and almost soothing in tone. “I’m just gonna help you out of your chains; I can take your blindfold off, too.”

I inch myself a little bit closer so that only a foot or two separates me from the shaking child. Slipping off my red gloves, I shove them into a pocket on my belt. My strong hands reach out and meet the ends of the cloth that are covering the little girl’s face. She cowers, her breathing escalating rapidly. I wish there were some way I could calm her down. I can’t imagine how difficult this must be for her. More than anything, I just want to get her out of this place; surely it has been unforgivably cruel to her. As gently as I can, I unravel the tightly bound blindfold and pull it away, revealing two light green eyes full of tears. She only meets my gaze for a moment, but the amount of pain held within her expression is enough to fill an entire lifetime. She squints for several seconds in the light, and I wonder when the last time was that she was allowed to see. She looks me over and becomes confused, clearly not recognizing me.

“My name is Steve Rogers. I’m Captain America,” I tell her, not knowing if she’ll know either name, “I’m here with the Avengers. We’re taking down Hydra and we know they’ve hurt you. We’re here to help.”

“Don’t hurt Girl.” Her soft voice surprises me in the silence. “No lab, n-not again, please,” she adds. As her words hit me, it truly sinks in just how little and afraid she is. She’s still young enough so that her pronunciation of certain words is off, making “please” sound more like “p’ease,” and it just breaks my heart. At this point, strong, intimidating Captain America is gone, a much softer and warmer version of myself left in his place.

I shake my head, quickly assuring her, “No lab, I’m gonna get you out of here. I’m not with Hydra.” She eyes me warily, clearly not convinced. “Your name is… Girl?” I ask, trying to show her that I’m a friend, not a threat. She nods. Offering her a gentle smile, I tell her, “My name’s Steve. I’m gonna help you out of here, Girl,” I repeat. “It’s gonna be okay.”

I reach down and take one of her tiny wrists in my hands, only for her to recoil instantly in fear. Quickly, I soothe, “Hey, hey, it’s alright. Let’s get you out of these chains, okay?” She doesn’t seem any less uncertain, but can’t stop me as I pry the metal apart with my bare hands. It appears she senses my abnormal strength, and I can tell that it only instills more uncertainty within her.

Once the chains are removed, I scoot back a few inches, waiting for her to stand. When instead she only continues to tremble and look up at me, it occurs that she may be too weak to get up.

“Do you need some help?” I ask as softly as I can. She lowers her head submissively, not saying anything to me.

I look around the room, my eyes landing on the thin sheet atop the bed, which is what I’m assuming she was given as a blanket. I retrieve it and quickly kneel before her again, carefully draping the sheet around her shivering form. “I’m gonna pick you up now, Girl,” I tell her gently as a warning. My arms reach out and gather her close to me. Her body stiffens, and she lets out a frightened sound. “It’s okay,” I remind her, “not gonna hurt you.”

Standing, I notice that it feels like I’m carrying nothing. As I frown over her malnourishment, she begins to grow a little bit more restless in my arms, not exactly trying to escape but clearly scared out of her mind.

“No lab, please- please don’t bring Girl there, please don’t,” she begs repetitively, tears rolling down her cheeks, causing her skin to shimmer in the bright lights.

“No lab, it’s okay,” I tell her warmly, “we’re going somewhere safe. Not a lab, I promise.” She looks up at me, obviously doubtful, but I think she knows that she doesn’t have a choice whether or not to come with me.

“Hey Cap, you alright in there?” Nat buzzes over my earpiece.

“Yeah, I’ve got her,” I reply, still talking rather softly. “Tony, grab a blanket and have it ready. And everybody, listen up: she’s not an assassin. She doesn’t seem to be dangerous at all, but she’s in pretty bad shape. Be nice.”

“Wait a minute, we have no idea what she could be capable of,” Clint responds, seeming unconvinced.

“No, I’m telling you. I’m gonna carry her out now. Just- just be nice, okay? She’s just…” Tears are suddenly welling in my eyes as I look down at the young victim in my arms who’s quaking with terror, her own cheeks damp as she cries softly. “She’s just a little girl.”

series masterlist | next chapter →

#faad #faad: just a little girl #eun's writing #steve rogers #steve rogers fanfiction #steve rogers series #steve rogers au #steve rogers angst #steve rogers fluff #hurt/comfort #steve rogers x child!oc #dad!steve rogers #the avengers #avengers fanfiction #mcu #mcu fanfiction #captain america #captain america fanfiction

[honeybee-babe]

Exposing D@isuki21, now f!v3y@h3@rtsf!ktor: toxic person in the TUA Fandom who has borderline web-stalked and harassed queer minors w/ homophobic abuse

MAJOR Trigger Warnings: Homophobia, Lesbophobia, mention of and harassment to do with r@pe, telling ppl to unalive themselves, borderline web-stalking, homohpbic slurs hurled at minors... basically think of the most abusive online conduct you could imagine

“I WISH YOU DIE DISGUSTING LESBIAN BITCH, UNNATURAL”

“"GO CRYING DIRTY AND STUPID LESBIAN BITCH"

(said to a 15 year old via Instagram DM...)

Hey Umbrella Academy Fandom. As you all know, this fandom has a lot of discourse and lets be honest, bitching and moaning over minor disagreements about a character’s sexuality, ships, inc3st, p3dophila, etc. I've had my fair sure of admittedly immature pissing contests on here over minor disagreements, as I'm sure many of you have, and I'm not trying to act like I'm perfect. I’ve made myself into a clown many times.

But there is one user in particular who is a raging homophobe/lesbophobe and has been incredibly abusive to others on this site for years....  

Go to where it says THE WORST OF IT to skip the intro if you know about her general bullshit, to see the actual borderline stalking + homophobic harassment of minors. Scroll to the very end for screenshots. 

BASIC CONTEXT:

This user currently goes by the URL fiv3y@h3@rtsf!ktor and used to go by D@isuki21, and various other iterations of that name/various others and has made multiple accounts, always to pass herself off as a different person. I have interacted with her before, and I know many individuals who have been targeted by her since at least 2020 (probably earlier), and she’s still on her bullshit. But the distinctive communication style and sheer ridiculousness of her statements makes it very clear that it’s the same person. Namely, her wording is very fucked up and full of typos and misspellings, and reads very much like a child throwing a temper tantrum. She often dissolves into overuse of emojis especially the 🤡 emoji (ironic if you ask me).

So I wasn’t going to say anything, but I just learned from my new pal @ultimate--sheep​ some new information that was the final straw, and we both decided we had to say something. 

WHAT WE KNOW:

This person is 23 years old (though she acts like she’s 15), she is a MASSIVE 5ya stan and while I’m sure there are many wonderful people who ship 5ya, this person is NOT one of them, and she gives the ship a bad rep with her incredibly immature, problematic behavior. She basically picks fights by going into “rival” ships’ tags (IE Vissy) and into the “Anti 5ya ” tag (which is obviously intended to be blacklisted by 5ya shippers and used to keep 5ya shippers from seeing it, unless the 5ya shipper is D@isuki and  is deliberately looking for a fight) and then she harasses people simply for shipping Viktor with someone other than Five.

In particular she used to go off on people who used to headcanon/perceive season 2 Viktor as a lesbian. She would also get into fights with people for pointing out that 5ya is incest/psuedo-incest + pseudo-pedophila in the Anti- 5ya tag – she got mad at me once because asked her to admit that it was at least pseudo-incest (I specified that I wasn’t judging her for shipping incest, but for denying that it was incest to begin with – you can’t have a ship called ‘Harcest’ and claim it’s not incest it’s IN THE NAME). She called me various childish nicknames, I don’t remember everything…

She harasses people and frames it as 'arguments' but it's 90% incoherent nonsense, name-calling, straw man bullshit, and then she blocks them and tells them "DNI" and makes posts to her followers AFTER she has blocked the person telling her followers vitriolic BS about how the other person is an idiot and an "anti."

HOW WE ( D@isuki & I) MET:

I don't 100% remember how we met but you can scroll through my page to find receipts. I think what happened is that she responded to someone else's post I saw describing their headcanons for the characters’ sexuality (one of those things that were like ‘Five and Luther are ace’, ‘allison and diego are bi’, ‘V is a lesbian’ etc.). The OP called pre transition Viktor a lesbian and D@isuki WENT OFF on them saying they were biphobic, etc. Her argument claimed it was biphobia but they were also complaining about why "you don't need to make everyone LGBT" which like ????????? you don’t sound like that great of an ally, hon. and it's a HEADCANON. Let people live. And when I argued that V could be a lesbian and Leonard could have very easily been comphet, she claimed that comphet “doesn’t exist anymore in the 21st century…” (I stg… i cant make this shit up)

Anyways… she frequently not only changes her url but I believe make new accounts to harass ppl through. And then she denies it when people identify her (see the below from when I recently called her out:

“Changing my username makes me crazy? Weak argument I say so myself also I’m not d@isuki-21 wow the fact you assume I’m them makes me realize you’re obsessed with them. I never block you or anyone in your anti 5ya community.”

(bro how obvious can you be…)

THE WORST OF IT:

I wasn't going to even say anything about this person, except I recently met Juno @ultimate--sheep​, who informed me that D@isuki also is on Instagram and has gotten into a similar argument with them, and then somehow found (IE stalked) them on Reddit too and proceeded to harass them on there too,  telling them they "must habe been r@ped a lot when they were a child" and that their art (Viktor w/ a lesbian flag) is "disgusting and biphobic," and told them to get "psychological help" for pointing out homophobia from 5ya shippers.

She also:

–Stole Juno's art twice (took their lesbian pride Viktor artwork and changed it to a bi flag).

–Made several abusive comments on their lesbian friends insta posts calling Vissy “disgusitng”

–Took a picture of Juno’s ex-friend’s Insta profile, who was a 15 year old MINOR (remember, this b*tch is 23 YEARS OLD) and wrote over it: "Disgusting lesbian looking for sex. Prostitute”

–Targeted Juno’s friend again on IG taking pictures of Sissy and putting stink marks on them, writing abusive things like "DIE", etc.

And the worst one… messaging the same MINOR (age 15) and telling them:

“I WISH YOU DIE DISGUSTING LESBIAN BITCH, UNNATURAL”

“"GO CRYING DIRTY AND STUPID LESBIAN BITCH"

IN CONCLUSION:

Guys.... I am a bisexual woman, and if it isn’t already clear enough, there is no way in hell that this person is “defending a bisexual character” and standing up against biphobia. This person is anti-LGBT and anti WLW PERIOD! She is a homphobe and a heinous person in general who frames herself as being an ally ONLY when it serves the 5ktor/5ya ship.

And listen, I want to be clear on this: I’m not saying shipping5ya makes you a bad person – but how can you ship something that is pseudo-incest and then turn around and call a normal ass, CANON lesbian ship “unnatural” and “disgusting?”

This is not the behavior of a mentally healthy person -- but that is not an excuse. I am asking you for your safety to report/not interact with this person if you see them/have any suspicions that it’s them. It is not worth your time and I am genuinely concerned that the stalking and harassment behavior could turn into something more serious.

SCREENSHOTS:

#tua fandom #tua #umbrella academy #The Umbrella Academy #tua discourse

[morsking]

uhhhhhh to better grasp why rin is a host for both ishtar and ereshkigal and why sakura is a host for both kama and parvati you’re gonna have to read the vn since that is the only place where you will be treated to the different dimensions of both their characters and dispel any illusions and misunderstandings the ubw anime created (about rin in particular). i can explain it well but if you have the ability to, you should read the vn to really let it sink in and appreciate things more organically.

there are times in the anime where rin feels like a caricature of herself since she appears so confident and fun-loving and tsundere about it (the vn sometimes does this too but manages to balance things out a little better) that it overshadows how rin is also in her own way extremely repressed. 

rin, while fashioning herself the ruler of her own world and a competent genius is still someone shackled to her duty as the last living tohsaka heir and denies herself a more profound and fundamental happiness because she reasons so long as she is the tohsaka heir, she can never be sakura’s sister, and wrongfully believes that sakura has moved on without her and belongs with the matous oblivious to what zouken has done to sakura for almost 11 years because it’s easier to think that sakura doesn’t care about her anymore than to confront all she’s taught and has lived for for so long is wrong and that she has a chance to make it right. rin however finds ways to keep running into sakura just enough that her true desires betray her efforts at keeping her distance, and if sakura just said “you are my sister, please let’s live together again�� no doubt rin would be so torn to hesitate yet so hopeful to as to want it to be real. 

rin’s apparent emotional independence and reputation is a product of her purposefully distancing herself from making any real human connections because she has no idea how to be emotionally available from years of stifling aristocratic conditioning. if she puts herself on a pedestal, it’s easier for others to not approach her and see through her facade. apart from that, as much fun as rin could possibly have by herself there is still something that will keep her from feeling truly fulfilled, and that’s the lack of opportunity (and emotional bravery) to reconcile with sakura. it’s also easier to forsake sakura and threaten to kill her when she’s out of control because acknowledging the horror of killing her own sister would break her own convictions and denounce her, and the tohsakas, as murderers and frauds. ishtar is that side of rin that finds being herself and living as the person in charge of her own existence. ereshkigal is the unhappy part of rin that yearns for more than what she’s been given but feels too guilty and too bound by responsibility to seek it out, and therefore denies herself her wish to connect with the person who would make all the difference in the world (sakura for rin, guda for eresh). 

sakura is a naturally kind, gentle, yet strong-willed individual who has experienced that which would break and utterly annihilate most at a spiritual level. sakura only survived what she did because her mental fortitude, much like shirou’s, is so exceptional she will always retain her sense of self even if pushed to the very brink of suffering. despite that, she grew up extremely bitter, depressed, and with a disposition that utterly gave up on the world that abandoned her to the point where she wished others to fail and suffer at whatever they endeavored. if her life was pointless and fruitless as to be thrown away, why shouldn’t everyone else’s be too? 

it’s really not until she met shirou that she began to change her mind and desire to have more than just numbness. a boy who just wouldn’t give up no matter how many times he couldn’t clear that jump, and accepted the outcome without regrets, second-thoughts, and self-loathing left such a deep impression on sakura that she wanted that thoughtless drive to live freely and greet tomorrow as a given to be hers as well. 

little by little the broken doll with lifeless eyes restored more and more of her inner kindness and good faith, both because she gained a will that did more than just curse, and because there was someone who showed her what a real home, a real family looked like so she’d believe in love and happiness again. but much like rin, sakura struggled to believe she deserved happiness. years of abuse crushed sakura’s self-esteem, and thought her suffering made her unlovable and unnatural. her desire to be both loved and pitied clashed against one another, and were also contradictingly one and the same. it would be easy to be pitied, that means she would’ve been right about her hatefulness all along and she can just fade away along with the pain her baggage might’ve caused others. but if she’s loved, then how will she ever make herself worthy of it? how could she ever justify to herself that she’s being given love that hasn’t been earned? and even worse, what if she’s given love that can be lost?

sakura hides all the things that risk her losing all the love she’s accumulated, a desperate selfish tactic employed by a scared girl deathly afraid to lose the only light she’s ever known. if all her anger, bitterness, cowardice, jealousy, scars, and self-hatred were exposed, what would shirou think of her? once he does find out what she’s gone through, she pushes him away. she really believes she’s done for and has nothing else to come back to. even as shirou keeps asserting he does still want her in his life, she keeps hurling all the terrible things she’s done to him and herself without him knowing: that because he’s kiritsugu’s kid she spied on him for zouken, that she used him to run away from zouken and shinji, that she tried to kill herself, that she’s not a virgin, all to get him to reject her for good while guiltily clinging to the hope that he will still choose to love her in spite, or because of all that.

even after sakura’s killed shinji by accident and transforms into dark sakura, a part of herself is weak towards shirou. a part of herself lashes out when he’s around because she’s still rejecting him hoping he’ll forsake her so he’ll live without getting hurt by her while also begging for him to see how much she’s suffering so he’ll save her, going so far at the end that she tells rin to run away with shirou, having decided to kill herself alongside the grail. rin however, sees through sakura’s attempt to earn pity, but in her own fit of duty-induced forced apathy threatens to kill sakura herself before sakura has the chance to wipe herself out (jesus, rin) rather than comfort her and tell her she wishes for her to live. rin though fails to follow through with her plan. just as she overpowers sakura, she throws away all her lies and embraces her sister, telling her how she really feels, and the very first sincere expression of love her sister has shown her in a decade is enough for sakura to stop dead in her tracks and crumble in grief until shirou arrives to save her and insist that she deserves to live so that all the suffering she both caused and experienced and all the people she devoured can be given meaning. this parallels into how kama as beast iii/L wishes to render all love obsolete by drowning the universe in love to the point where all love becomes meaningless and kama no longer has to be hurt by love, with their defeat marking a change in their beliefs about the world and themself.

parvati tells you as much that she’s taken over sakura’s good side. she’s the earnest hardworking woman who is full of benevolence and enthusiasm after her purpose has become clear. however, what parvati doesn’t understand is that sakura’s good qualities are intermixed with her darker ones and fundamentally cannot ever be truly separated, and that’s why parvati also connects with sakura’s tendency to hide the ugly things about herself out of fear she’ll be rejected, and that it’s wrong and harmful for her to do that to sakura as much (if not worse) as it is for sakura to do it for herself alongside all the people that could be affected by that dishonesty. 

apart from the obvious gross reasons, there is in fact a good justification for kama’s ascensions in fgo. their ascensions go from child to adolescent to adult to demonstrate that kama has a parallel to sakura’s personal growth. they are both individuals who, after being betrayed by their own kind (the gods and the tohsakas) and having their bodies destroyed (kama becoming the cosmos, sakura being devoured by crest worms and having her dna rewritten), have lost faith in who they were before and the world around them. kama starts out in sakura’s child body: the young girl who was sacrificed for a greater purpose and whose heart has been filled with depression, cynicism, and hatred for the world around her. their childish disposition however, marks that kama has truly been reborn and is going through the process of recreating their identity after it was shattered by trauma. 

when kama is in sakura’s adolescent form, that signals that much like sakura around that age, they still cling to some anger and bitterness, but have begun to ease into forming new connections and their desire to be identified with love becomes complicated as it is both heavily resisted yet profoundly wanted. it is kama at their peak self-loathing, directing hatred to themself as much as their child form did to everyone else.

when kama shifts into sakura’s final adult form, it marks the period where they both have had some of their faith renewed in their existence. while it is still very difficult for them to truly know what love is and whether or not they’ve earned it, they nonetheless make it clear they want to believe in it again with the help of the person they’ve placed their trust upon (shirou for sakura, guda for kama). as the god of love, for kama to learn what love is is for kama to once more understand what it is to love themself again, and like sakura at the end of heaven’s feel finish constructing their brand new identity and move forward in a way that their happiness and reforged self-confidence can dignify their suffering and make up for all the damage they caused others and themselves.

this isn’t to say that pseudos as a concept are inherently good or anything. they are still very flawed because when mishandled for fanservice (and it happens a LOT) they do far more to displease both fans of the mythological figures and fans of the original fate/stay night characters simultaneously than to appease them both by robbing all characters involved of their complexities. regardless, that doesn’t mean that these gods wearing the faces of these girls is entirely pointless, lazy, and thoughtless. on the contrary, these girls were chosen because of all the different facets they have that match their possessors’ demeanors and themes, and i hope that this knowledge can help people see the connection with more clarity.

#anyway ooku event spoilers and vn spoilers for those who wanna go in blind #you don't have to reblog this if you don't feel like it i mostly typed this all out for myself #because i got tired of seeing either bad or somewhat disinformed pseudo servant takes #and needed to say something to keep my sanity

[stina-is-a-punk-rocker]

‘flowers in the attic’ by v. c. andrews: the weird, the wonderful, and the what-the-fuck

tw: child abuse, rape, incest- just fifty shades of fucked-up, and then some

Man, my parents’ generation grew up with some fucked-up books.

Here’s the thing: I like fucked-up. I filter out nothing on Ao3. Dead Dove: Do Not Eat is a siren’s song.

Flowers in the Attic is, all things considered, a goldmine.

It’s got its faults, sure- the prose is unnecessarily, for lack of a better word, flowery; if I had to read another ‘good-golly day’ with my own two eyes, I’d be compelled to commit arson; the whole he-raped-me-but-I-love-him-so-it-doesn’t-count sits very, very wrong with me; not to mention, why do all these fucked-up dudes have to be named Chris? Christopher Dollanganger, Christian Grey, Chris Brown… Chris Bang, you’re our only hope.

But if it makes me a sinner to adore this book, then maybe I don’t want heaven.

While certain character depictions do come off icky, there is a certain charm to Cathy and Chris, forced to grow up far too much far too quick; melancholy Cory, with his sad songs and poetic death (he died of the cold! But no! His dear mother slowly poisoned him!); Carrie, growing weaker without her other half; the beautiful mother, so blinded by greed she plots to kill her own children; Malcolm Foxworth, omnipotent and a candidate for Father of the Year (not); and where would any gothic horror be without a cruel, evangelical matron?

I’ll admit the writing did throw me off, at times. Melodrama is great, don’t get me wrong.

I’m talking about the Lorde album. In writing, it just makes me want to hurl.

But there’s a limit to florid writing, and while Andrews toed the line, she never crossed it. Flowers in the Attic just reels you back in, and for that, you can thank the plot.

The plot! Where do I begin?

… No, seriously, where the fuck do I begin?

I suppose I could start at good ole Daddy Dollanganger, that man who can do no wrong, except maybe eloping, marrying, and subsequently impregnating his half-niece. But incest, as this book will have us believe, is the least of all evils to happen.

Dollanganger, Sr. dies, leaves wife destitute with four small children; Dame Dollanganger whisks them all away to her parents; her parents are religious zealots who have disowned her for fornicating with a family member; the children are hidden away in an attic from the outside world for three (two and a half???) years; shenanigans of the whipping, mother-remarrying-and-ignoring-her-children, brotherfucking variety ensue; one of the kids fucking dies because he’s fucking poisoned by his own fucking mother; and then, in a slightly anticlimactic turn of events, they escape.

Blond brother-sister pairs in books get a bad rep. Game of Thrones, The Secret History, and now this. You guys just can’t catch a break.

Jokes aside, the way Corrine Dollanganger (Foxworth? Whatever the fuck her second husband’s last name was? It’s been an hour since I read the book, and I’ve already forgotten his name. I’m calling him Burt) went from a loving mother to a neglectful, cold, money-hungry woman was written beautifully, as was Cathy’s (and Chris’s) gradual undertaking of parental duties they were far too young to shoulder. The twins seeing Cathy and Chris as their actual parents broke my heart, and Corrine’s indifference to it all only broke me more. The gradual loss of the fear of God and authority was, uh, neat, I guess.

I wish Andrews went further with the schoolroom plot, although I admit I can’t see where she could’ve gone with it, either. I just wish she’d gone somewhere further.

About the demerits; about Cathy and Chris escaping from their prison that one time to go swimming or whatever serving no purpose to the plot that I could really see. About the gaudy language… yeah, Cathy, you Dresden dolls are tragically beautiful, ill-used angels, we got the gist the first ten times. And Cathy being somehow simultaneously naïve and incredibly mature did come off a bit :/.

All this considered, and all this to say: I’m definitely reading Petals on the Wind next.

#flowers in the attic #dollanganger series #v.c. andrews #book review #books #cathy dollanganger #chris dollanganger #today on what the fuck did i just read