#imaginary masterpiece

[thefugitivesaint]

The Goncharov train continues to chug along and now Martin Scorsese himself has jumped on board. This is a screen shot of a text conversation that his daughter Francesca Scorsese shared on Tiktok. I think this might be the peak of this particular meme. You did it everyone. Congratulations. 

#goncharov #imaginary masterpiece #martin scorsese #invented films #magnificent memes #unreality fandom #you people have too much free time

[crimsonkenjii-writes]

I have no idea what art god fucking possessed me???? But I was drawing cringe of me holding me and Giyuu’s son and it came out hella fucking good????? I’ve never done anything like this before. How the hell?? I’m evolving this is great. Anyways, I’m super happy with it so now I’m sharing it here. This is selfship art so scroll if you don’t like that stuff

Honeslty the wisteria could be better but I was lazy and didn’t feel like looking up references or actually drawing flowers cuz they are actually pretty hard to draw. Anyways.

#look at me #being an imaginary mother #and my husband being the most perfect fictional man #yes yes tis perfect #it literally started off as just a quick little doodle cuz I was bored 😭 #and then it turned into a masterpiece #i will stare at it and start nitpicking all my little mistakes as usual later #so I’m posting it before I hate it #crimsonkenjii rambles #crimsonkenjii art #self ship

[mossunderstanding]

Episode One: Scene One

BLACK SCREEN SHOWING A DATE - 1943 SOUNDS OF a very young child screaming, banging, desperate on a window. FADE IN: SOUNDS OF hushing, sweet, motherly. Child calms slightly. INT. RUN-DOWN HOME – KITCHEN DOOR – MORNING - CAMERA FACES the window of the door looking out just above the bottom of the window. The child’s hands have stilled on the glass. A man with a duffle bag over his shoulder strides out of view. JULIA: shush now, Johnny, daddy’s got to go, but mummy’s got you. Alright, love, that’s it, mummy’s here.

FADE OUT

#So #I know #John's dad just was in the merchant navy and then just gradually stopped sending letters and money #But little three year old John doesn't know or care about any of that #And we have limited time in this imaginary masterpiece series #So we're establishing that John's dad left when he was three and it was traumatic and we're moving on #John Lennon #Julia Lennon #The Beatles #Episode One #Obviously the picture is not mine

[atsuwumus]

₍⑅ᐢ..ᐢ₎ 𝐀𝐅𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐄 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐃𝐄𝐄𝐏𝐒𝐏𝐀𝐂𝐄 𝐁𝐎𝐘𝐒.

๋࣭⭑ 𝐒𝐘𝐍𝐎𝐏𝐒𝐈𝐒 : what are the boys like when you both come down from your tender highs? when the kisses slow and you're chest to chest? what happens afterwards?

๋࣭⭑ 𝐌𝐀𝐈 𝐌𝐔𝐌𝐁𝐋𝐄𝐒 : bc we can never get enough from these men (˵ •̀ ᴗ - ˵ ) ✧ just a small little something to feed you guys, will be back with more detailed requests <3

𝐙𝐀𝐘𝐍𝐄 . . . likes to listen to your heartbeat. As your highs finally come down and you seem to look at him through a clearer gaze he likes to lower his head till his nose is brushing right against your pulse point, closing his eyes. There's always a faint hum he can hear, the rhythmic pitter patter of your heart that pulses through your body, tuning in to listen to it. His hands often like to rest on your chest or even skim your next as he pulls you into him, spooning you from behind. Every now and then you'll feel a gentle kiss being presses against the crevice of where your neck meets your jaw, followed by a soft yet calculated, "Keep breathing. We can clean up and eat something once your heart rate has gone down a bit." It's always endearing to see Zayne's concern for you bleed through even during tender moments like these.

𝐑𝐀𝐅𝐀𝐘𝐄𝐋 . . . likes to draw miscellaneous shapes onto your bare skin. His fingers are soft as they trace lines and curves, imaginary strokes of a brush all over your heated skin. He adores seeing you like this, glowing, ethereal, "Like something straight out of a masterpiece." Rafayel often finds himself lazily kissing your body, taking his time as he drags his lips from one inch of skin to the next, adorning you with whispers of appreciation. And don't even think about disturbing him, you just might end up with a bite mark or two on the insides of your thighs. Not that he minds, of course. You're his pretty thing and he gets to paint you however he pleases.

𝐗𝐀𝐕𝐈𝐄𝐑 . . . likes to hear you talk. Emotions often run at an all time high after such an intense scene, so Xavier likes to be a soft landing for you to fall onto, steady ground as you come down from your orgasm. He's always there to catch you. His favorite thing to do is reel you right into his bare chest, skin against skin, heart against heart and murmur, "How are you feeling? Is there anything on your mind? Anything I can get you?" His voice is gentle, silk woven around his words as he speaks and everytime he does you can feel the comforting hum of his chest. He excels at listening, letting you bounce anything and everything off of him as he cradles you close.

#love and deep space fluff #love and deep space smut #love and deepspace x reader #love and deepspace x you #love and deepspace drabbles #love and deepspace scenarios #xavier x reader #xavier x you #xavier fluff #xavier smut #zayne x you #zayne x reader #zayne fluff #zayne smut #rafayel fluff #rafayel x you #rafayel drabbles #rafayel x reader #l&ds fluff #l&ds x reader #lads fluff #lads smut

[ozzgin]

Yandere! Gamer Boyfriend Scenarios

A collection of parodies to satisfy everyone’s desire for a happy ending. Warning: crackhead humor.

Content: gender neutral reader, yandere behavior, brief NSFW, time machine to Wattpad glory days

[First story] [More parodies original works]

Case 1: Third contender

Very few people know about your stepmother. You’d kept it a secret, even from the tentacle monster, who was understandably confused about your boyfriend’s nervousness upon hearing your idea of a family visit.

“Try not to kill each other, please.” You say with pleading eyes.

“I’m more worried about you, (Y/N). Will you be alright?”

You swallow dryly. The evil hag had summoned you earlier this week, and you dare not oppose her. A tear threatens to form in the corner of your eye, so you turn around with a dismissive wave. You’ll be fine.

“I see you already have a suitcase”, the older woman remarks, puffing on her cigarette. “Good. You’ll be leaving today.”

“What? I just got home!” You argue in confusion.

“This isn’t your home anymore. Times are difficult, you see. We’re low on funds.” She ponders her words, then continues. “We’ve sold you to a famous K-pop idol group.”

You can only gawk in shock. Almost simultaneously, you feel a tap on your shoulder and hesitantly look back.

“You must be (Y/N)! Wow, you’re even cuter in person. Those photos I received of you barely do you justice.”

A tall, handsome man with a beaming smile stands behind you. He flashes you a little heart gesture with his index and thumb, and winks.

Is this the power of idol charisma? You can feel the faintest tug at your heart, deep red blush heating up your cheeks.

“I couldn’t possibly…I’m already in a…in a relationship!”

“You’ll be much happier with me. I can offer you the world.”

What a ridiculous situation. You stumble on your words, partly afraid, partly curious about the potential life of luxury as the beloved partner of a famous idol. Can’t be that bad, you tell yourself. You shake your head aggressively. No! You have two people (well, one monster) waiting for you at home. You need to get out of here, but how?

Just as you evaluate escape routes, the door bursts open and you gasp at the sight: your gamer boyfriend, followed by the tentacled creature.

“How did you bypass my security?!” The idol shouts in disbelief. “I have the best engineers in the world working for me!”

The gamer boyfriend smirks defiantly.

“Heh. Wasn’t too hard to hack into your systems, all I needed was my PS5 controller. As for the physical obstacles…” he says, turning to the ancient beast. “You might want to call a cleaning crew for what’s left of your guards.”

You run towards them, and the young man gently guides you behind him.

“Since when do you two get along?” You ask with the sarcasm of a witty Marvel character.

“Let’s just say we figured out a common goal.”

The goal of keeping other people away from you. Any kind of pride he or the monster might've held has been swiftly discarded for this greater purpose. After all, two heads are better than one. Or whatever encephalic organ the creature possesses.

The cherry blossoms sway in the wind, scattering the frail petals across the riverbank.

"It's too much!" you whine, your hot lips brushing against the overgrown grass of the hill, privacy filled to the brim with appendages. "W-what if someone passes by?"

You can't even tilt your head back to look at your aggressors; the weight of the attempted kidnapping was too great for the pair to bear, and thus they were overwhelmed by the urge to reclaim you on the spot. Right there, in the fields, on the way back home.

"I couldn't...care less about that, (Y/N)", the gamer boyfriend manages to blurt out between exhausted, husky growls. His knuckles white from gripping imaginary sheets.

“You belong to us.”

(No slick folds were harmed in the process)

Case 2: Picture frame

The screech slowly dissipates, and the room is quiet again.

Finally. The gamer boyfriend gazes at his masterpiece, a satisfied smile on his face. Now that he's gotten rid of his rival, he can have you all for himself.

“I hope you enjoy the flatness. I didn’t.”

The fight might've lasted longer, had the beast not committed the ultimately fatal mistake of underestimating him. It realized much too late it wasn't dealing with the same human who disappeared months ago. That one was weak and easy to remove.

"Please, what are you-...What are you doing with my body?"

"Relax. I'm just...borrowing it. Permanently, maybe."

Oh, how long he waited for that moment, that instant in which he was guaranteed freedom from the 2D realm. How delicious it was to snatch the escape from the boyfriend who worked so hard for it. All those hours spent romancing the characters, repeating the same dialogue lines again, and again, until the love meter blinked in achievement. And then he stole it, just like that, with a snap of the fingers.

Two things immediately struck him once he made his way out:

First, the third dimension. He'd never experienced such depth before, and all the angles and perspectives sickened him terribly. He spent days bedridden and nauseous. Equally baffling was the fact that conversations were always spontaneous, random, one-of-a-kind and without any subtitles or dialogue box. He tried in vain to reset his response to you, or to replay something you told him. Thankfully, his secret was of such absurdity, that you couldn’t even begin to imagine its possibility. You took his suspicious gaffes with an amused chuckle, calling him a silly goose.

Second, you. He had no idea who you were, but upon laying his eyes on you, a wave of warmth and affection flooded his innards. Were you someone important for the boyfriend? Either way, whatever leftover feeling was left inside the vessel swiftly turned into obsession. You took such great care of him. Guided him through this new world with unconditional kindness. Whatever the boyfriend was to you before, he deserved it more. He was certain of it.

Only one obstacle stood in his way, and he just took care of it.

The entry door unlocks, and you walk in, unsure.

“It’s been days. It always lived here, why would it vanish now?” you sob, shaken by the sudden disappearance of the ancient creature.

“Oh, Darling. Come here”, the gamer boyfriend coos sweetly. “You have me now, don’t you? Am I not enough for you?”

“Of course you are, it’s just…”

You stop in your tracks.

“When did you get this?”

“Today. Do you like it?”

“It’s…nice.”

You stare at the new picture hung in the living room. The ornate frame contours what seems to be an oil painting of a sea monster, tentacles preying out of the water.

It almost looks like it wants to crawl out of the canvas.

“Maybe it just got tired of you.” The boyfriend whistles, approaching you. “But I’ll tell you a secret. I’ll never, ever abandon you.”

“I know, (B/N).” you throw yourself into your boyfriend’s arms.

“Who? Ah, right.”

Case 3: Hidden Ending

You sniff and wipe your tears again, filling your satchel with bread. At the very least, it’s good bread. You made the sourdough starter yourself, in the kitchen you renovated with your own hands.

Not anymore.

You button up your patchy peasant robe, glancing back at the couple one final time. Your gamer boyfriend…well, ex-boyfriend, is following your movement with melancholic eyes. The tentacle creature is holding him affectionately, its tendrils of darkness wrapped around his small shoulders. The same appendages that lewdly traced your body.

You have been cucked.

“I’m sorry, (Y/N). I…We never meant to hurt you. It’s just…we love each other.” He sheepishly lifts his hand, revealing a ring glowing with ancient, cursed energy of cosmic, long-forgotten springs. “We’re thinking of a tropical honeymoon.”

Your underbaked cinnamon orbs glisten with fresh tears, as thin streams caress your cheeks. No matter. You’ll find a new apartment. You’ll start again. You finish tying the bread satchel around the stick, and throw it over your shoulder.

“I wish you happiness”, you sigh, exiting the house.

#yandere #yandere gamer boyfriend #gamer boyfriend versus tentacle monster #yandere x reader #yandere x you #yandere x darling #yandere meme #yandere parody #yandere imagines #yandere concept

[lovebugism]

oh my god,,,, gurl!!!! THE CUSTOMER'S ALWAYS RIGHT fic is sooo good 😫 my heart literally breaks every time I read this story. Thank you for blessing us with this masterpiece <3

THE CUSTOMER'S ALWAYS RIGHT | square one

summary: eddie makes a confession that's been weighing heavy on his heart. you realize that your future with him is haunted by ghosts from your past. pairing: virgin!eddie munson / f!reader word count: 16.3k warnings: hopper, steve, and robin being the reader defense squad, hints at reader's previously poor mental health, mentions of abusive and toxic relationships, a banshees of inisherin quote, b*lly h*rgrove because he needs a warning. (pretend any typos don't exist pls and thank u!) a/n: guess who's back, back again? ✨✨ i'd apologize for disappearing for a month, but then there'd be apologies in all my notes, so just know that i'm sorry every time i disappear unexpectedly, okay? 🥲 thanks for being so patient! please enjoy this long-awaited installment of tcar ily <3

( PREVIOUSLY ) | ( SERIES MASTERLIST ) | ( NEXT )

Eddie’s got a 1986 Van Halen tape in his boombox and a baby pink heart stitched into the fabric of his shirt. He’s the least metal he’s ever been, but he couldn’t be happier.

You keep your promise to him to patch up his torn Hellfire tee. If anything, you use the absentminded assurance as your excuse to see him again. The night you shared before, all but baring your scarred souls underneath glittering stars and streams of pale moonlight, hadn’t satiated your hunger for him. Eddie left you craving in a way you weren’t used to before — a yearning to be close to him that went beyond the boundaries of physical intimacy.

It was a simple sort of longing. It was a homesickness. A sense of nostalgia for a love you’d never felt before.

You wish you could wear Eddie’s adoration for you like a blanket, wrap yourself in the hand-stitched quilt of many colors and bundle it tighter around your shoulders when the cold comes. You want his softness to hold you in a way you’ve never been able to hold yourself.

You feel swaddled in it, succumbed and cloaked and at peace in all his tenderness. You’ve never been so at ease, so blissfully comforted by the presence of another human being. And Eddie feels all of that, every ounce of warmth you feel, because it pours out of you like rays of sunshine and bathes him in shades of gold.

He didn’t think you could get any softer than you had been that night at Skull Rock, until you were nestled in his unmade bed the next morning. You curled your legs underneath you as you weaved the needle and thread through the tear in his t-shirt, eyes squinted and tongue poking out the side of your mouth in an astute concentration. 

All of the sudden, you were marshmallow fluff and honey on toast — made of all things sickly sweet that made his stomach feel suddenly full. 

You finish mending the rip in record time and beam when he wears the heart-shaped stitching with pride. The rest of the day thereafter was spent in the tiny confines of his one hundred square-inch bedroom. From there, the both of you came to the silent understanding that you didn't want to spend another day apart.

The weekend had given you a limited sort of freedom, allowed you to pretend that you lived in a world with no responsibilities or anything other than Eddie Eddie Eddie, but adulthood made you no such promises. He had a side job to do to keep himself afloat, and you had a cat that thought it was the end of the world anytime you were gone for longer than a night. Both of those things together meant that the eve of parting was ultimately inevitable.

Every second you spent away from Eddie felt like you were grieving.

You mourned for him in the darkness of your apartment and tried to pretend you weren’t half a person in the cat food aisle at Melvald’s.

You tried to lessen the unbearable distance with phone calls, though it didn’t come nearly as close as feeling his fingers thrumming imaginary beats on your thigh or his heartbeat thudding against your ear. 

But his voice filled the emptiness of your one-bedroom apartment and the Eddie Munson shaped hole he’d left just behind your ribcage, and that was good enough for you.

When you weren’t with him, you were roaming around your apartment like some kind of ghost, with the phone tucked between your ear and shoulder and the rotary clutched in your free hand. 

You cook yourself dinner with him ranting about his day in your ear. You hold the receiver closer to Bowie and force him to hear her purr when she’s being exceptionally cute. He falls asleep some hours later to the sound of your soft snores, and you wake up the next morning to the sounds of his.

It was pathetic, truly.

You’d be gagging at how sweet it was if it wasn’t happening to you.

But it was.

Every ounce of this sticky sweet goodness was yours, and it tasted just like honey on your tongue. 

It was the honeymoon stage times a thousand, all rose-colored and reflecting light — your own personal utopia. It brought with it a heavenly sort of refuge, a bubble of peace you never wanted to pierce.

Eddie basks in the serenity of it all when he finally has you with him again. You’re in his lap, on his lips, and all over him, but it still isn’t quite close enough. He doesn’t think he’ll be satisfied until you’ve successfully melted with him and your limbs have entwined with his like tree roots, destined to remain that way for the next couple of centuries or so.

And it’s weird because he could hardly handle living in such a tiny trailer with Wayne, let alone stomach more than a couple hours with the guys from Hellfire all in one place. But you? You entered his life all at once and now he can’t remember what it was like without you.

He doesn’t particularly want to, if he’s being real honest.

It’s why he’s always less enthused about letting you leave when you’ve both got responsibilities dragging you apart. He begs you to stay with him a few hours more, pleads for you to stick around while he makes a quick deal or an emergency pick-up when Dustin Henderson calls and says he needs a ride. 

And you promise you’ll wait on him there, because he makes it virtually impossible to say no to his rosy pouted lips and chocolate syrup puppy dog eyes.

That’s when you run into Wayne for the first time, when Eddie’s out and you’re making breakfast for when he comes back.

French toast and scrambled eggs sizzle on the stove and warm the kitchen with all its cinnamon confections. It makes the man’s face screw up in confusion when he steps inside the trailer because he’s never known Eddie to cook a day in his life. And then his eyes find you — a young, pretty girl all alone in his kitchen with his nephew’s van gone from the drive.

“…Who the hell are you?” he wonders gruffly and pops a cigarette between his lips, totally unbothered.

He’s got no reason to be intimidated by the stranger in his trailer. He’s more confused than anything else, and he’s got this contorted look on his face like he’s blaming the exhaustion from the graveyard shift for his vision of you.

“Oh— my god,” you mumble through the mouthful of whipped cream you’d squeezed into your mouth moments prior. You fight to swallow it all down. “Uh. Hi. I’m, um… I’m Eddie’s... girlfriend?”

It sounds like you’re lying. 

In some ways, it feels like you are. 

You’ve been spending more time in his trailer than in your own home, but it’s not like either of you has motioned to make anything official just yet.

He eyes you with a tired and heavy gaze, eyes as dark and as infinite as Eddie’s. The man gives you a once-over and then chuckles lowly to himself as he tosses his corduroy jacket onto the back of the recliner and his tin lunchbox to the coffee table.

You shift awkwardly on the other side of the room. “…What is it?”

“When Eddie said he was talkin’ to a pretty girl on the phone every night, I thought he was lyin’,” he admits through hearty chuckles. 

It makes you laugh too. 

There’s little talking after the fact, besides you offering him some of the breakfast on the stove and him joking that you should come around more often.

You recount the story to Eddie when he returns, utterly mortified about the whole thing. You’re even more embarrassed when the boy finds amusement in your horror and starts to chuckle to himself — not exactly at you, but not with you either.

He laughs louder when you swat at him for it. You clamber on top of him, mattress squeaking mattress under your weight, as you demand him to stop through giggles of your own.

Somewhere down the line, both of you stop caring. 

Neither of you is quite sure where the conversation stopped and ended, only that when you started kissing, you couldn’t stop. 

They weren’t innocent little pecks, but they weren’t sloppy and full of tongue either. You press your lips together with the intent of being as close as you can to the other, like you haven’t spent every second you could together.

Neither of you will be satisfied until you’ve swallowed each other whole.

And you, you’ve got this ache for him. A swirling of want that’s constantly rippling in your belly for this boy. He’s just not usually under you when it’s happening — and now that he is, the crackling embers have burst into white and blue flames behind your sternum.

Your lips click each time you part, a lewd noise you never want to stop hearing. The sound of it gives you goosebumps, like a good song you’ve just heard on the radio. You wonder if Eddie can feel them as his hands start to creep up beneath your shirt and find purchase along your waist. 

You open his mouth with your own and sneak your tongue inside just as you roll your hips over his lap.

It’s the most forthcoming either of you had been in your three-day stint of nonstop talking. Even when you were over at the trailer, totally alone and pressed underneath him, it was otherwise completely innocent. You just make out like a couple of teenagers until one of you wants to make a food run or offers to roll a joint. 

And you like that. You like that he doesn’t expect anything from you, but it does get a little agonizing when you’ve tried every attempt to give yourself to him and he just won’t take it.

Like usual, Eddie tenses when he feels you grinding on top of him — partly because he feels a tingle at the base of his spine when he gets instantly half-hard, but mostly because he knows there’s nothing he can do about it.

He keeps preaching to himself it’s not the right time, it’s not the right time, it’s not the right time — but he’s got no idea when it’ll ever be the right time, if it’ll ever be the right time, or if he’ll know it when it comes.

Because he’s had you to himself for days now — no Wayne, no responsibilities, no pressure — with his tongue rutting against yours and your hands fidgeting with the metal buttons of his jeans, and it still doesn’t feel good enough. Eddie doesn’t feel good enough.

He’s not sure if he ever will.

And it’s not you. God, it’s the farthest thing from you. As far as Eddie’s concerned, he’s never had more fun with anyone else. He’s never laughed harder with anyone else. He’s never felt as comfortable with anyone as he’s starting to feel around you. So he’s not entirely sure why he finds the rest of it so hard. 

Eddie wants you so bad that the ache of all his yearning is palpable. It’s like the weight of it is what’s keeping him from you — unstoppable force, immovable object, blah, blah, blah. 

Either way, it leaves him entirely unable to take things further with you, however much he wants to. There’s something in his way and it’s him. 

Your heartache is his own when he has to pull away from you.

“You okay?” you ask him with wide eyes and swollen lips, always so concerned for him.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m good,” he’s quick to assure you. He’s still breathless when he fidgets beneath you, trying to prop himself up on his headboard without rubbing his half-hard cock against your thigh.

When he succeeds, he musters a smile that shakes at the edges. “It’s just… you know, not everything… It doesn’t have to be about sex, you know?”

He makes himself as soft as possible for you when he says this. He gets rid of all the usual teasing lilts that tend to lurk on his tongue as the words spill from his mouth. The last thing he wants to do is hurt your feelings or, in some roundabout way, make you think you’re the problem. 

He just wants you to know that that isn’t why he’s been wanting to spend so much time with you. There was never an ulterior motive with him other than all the adoration he holds in his hands and his mouth for you.

The strike of hurt that flashes across your face is obvious to only Eddie, who’s spent enough time mapping out your features to know what twitches are ones of discontent. The slight frown that dips between your brows when they scrunch together for half a second comes like a stroke of lightning. It’s a brief flash of purple in the sky that leaves so quickly that it makes you wonder if it was ever there at all.

You fidget on his lap, not resting as comfortably upon him as you had been just moments before. “Oh…” you murmur through soft, jutted-out lips. “Sorry. I, I didn’t—”

“No, it’s not— that’s not what I—” he tries to assure over your insecure stammers, but succeeds only in tripping over himself in return. He cuts himself off with a breathy laugh, shaking his head while his fingers fidget on your hips. “That’s just not what this is about for me, you know? I just… I wanna spend time with you.”

It’s easily the softest thing he’s ever said to you — to anybody, for the matter — and the marshmallow sweetness of it all wraps around you like wisps of pink cotton candy.

Your apprehensiveness twists into something lighter, a pair of twinkling eyes and a bashful smile.

“Oh,” you hum again, obviously more pleased than before. “That’s nice…”

“No one’s ever said that to you before, have they?” Eddie asks you.

He tries to muster a crooked smirk as the words leave his mouth, but he’s got a feeling he already knows the answer. Hearing you affirm his suspicions will do nothing more than make him angry at all the assholes that had you before him, at everyone who taught you that you were good for sex and hardly a thing else. 

It makes him wish that he’d gotten to know you sooner. Maybe then you’d understand that he’d be happy just holding you like this and never doing anything more.

You don’t answer him verbally, just shake your head with your lips pursed softly to the side. You look more innocent than anything he’s ever seen before, even with your lipstick smeared on your chin. 

He’s still not quite sure how someone could be so reckless with such a fragile thing — to watch you break and not spend the rest of time grieving to know that you’ll never be quite the same again. 

There’s a primal instinct that swims in him then, an urge to keep you in his arms and locked in the confines of his trailer forever and ever. He wants to keep the wolves of Hawkins, Indiana from ever getting a whiff of you again. It’d be more than they deserved, anyway.

“God, you have got to get better boyfriends, sweetheart,” Eddie tells you with a playful lilt in his voice despite the anger simmering in his belly.

“Isn’t that what you are?” you giggle.

His world stops.

“Huh?”

You tense at his tenseness. Only when he’s gaping at you does the weight of your words dawn on you. “…Huh?”

The awkward moment goes as quickly as it arrives, chased out by the fit of laughter the two of you are quickly thrown into. Your entwining chuckles rise like smoke in his tiny bedroom and then settle back over you like a fuzzy blanket.

“Are you asking me to be your boyfriend, babe?” Eddie teases.

“Of course not,” you scoff. “Babe.”

“Oh, right, of course not. That would be way too crazy considering we’ve spent, like, every day together and have made each other come… what is it now? Twice?”

“Three times for me,” you correct with you a smile. “You need to catch up, Eddie Spaghetti.”

“Another time?” he offers with a scrunched nose.

“Whenever you want.”

Eddie is grateful for your lack of urgency, even more so for the kiss you press to the tip of his nose. 

You peck him on the lips after — once, twice, and then a thiiird, drawn out time — before moving on to his chin and jaw and neck. Whatever part of him you can reach (which is just about everywhere, considering the vantage point you’ve got sitting on his lap), you sprinkle a kiss to it.

It’s an innocent sort of affection, the kind that makes him wonder how it ever came to be in the first place. What evolutionary measures led to this, to you pressing your lips to his skin to show how much you care about him? Eddie doesn’t really want to know the answer, he’s just grateful that it happened in the first place.

You’re so good at it, loving on him. You’re always so kind and so gentle in your way and it makes him feel guilty. There’s a lingering feeling of undeservedness that settles something heavy at the base of his stomach. How could he ever expect you to be so open with him when he hasn’t done the same for you?

A heavy sigh rattles in his deflating chest. 

“I gotta tell you something, sweetheart,” he cautions when your lips smack against the thrumming pulse below the left side of his jaw. “Something you’re not gonna like…”

A billion things run through your head all at once. When you part from him, he can see the rollercoaster of emotions each one of them puts you through.

Your first instinct is that he’s got some kind of partner he’s kept hidden from you until now. It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve gone steady with a guy who’s then told you about some other girlfriend he had — or, god forbid, a wife. 

But then you realize that you surely would’ve had some sort of inkling if that were the case. There’s no way Eddie would’ve been able to spend every second of his day with you — and then another several hours on the phone when you had to leave — without someone else coming along to burst your bubble. 

And so far, there haven’t been any angry wives, just the occasionally confused Uncle Wayne.

Then you start thinking he’s about to tell you he wants an open relationship. The you’re great, but I’m just not ready to settle down yet spiel that you’ve heard a thousand times before. Usually when people say that, they mean that they just don’t want to settle down with you.

You’ll become some douchebag’s fuck toy for a month or more until the girl next door comes around. He gets her knocked up in record time, his family forces him to marry her, and they begin their cushy lives together in the center of some cul-de-sac — really settle down, as it were.

You’re not sure if you could take that from Eddie. You could grin and bear if it you had to, take whatever attention he’s willing to give you because who cares if he’s giving it to someone else on the side? You’re just not sure how long you’d last like that.

And then you start to worry that he’s just going to break up with you entirely — it’s not you, it’s blah, I’ll always care about blah, please don’t tell anyone about how we blah-ed. That whole talk. 

All the rest of your worries stop mattering so much because you’ve only just called him your boyfriend. And here he goes, about to end it all before it can really even start. That’d be just your luck, you figure.

“Did I do something wrong?” you caution after a few moments of heavy silence.

Eddie’s bleeding heart wrenches at your words, at how sad they sound spilling from your mouth, and how you immediately think that it’s got something to do with you. 

He shakes his head feverishly in response. “No. No, it’s not you. You’re… you’re perfect.”

“Okay…” you concede quietly, voice trembling with a lingering disbelief.

“I just… I haven’t been totally honest with you, you know?” the boy admits before his glimmering chocolate eyes fly open and he corrects himself quickly. “And I haven’t lied to you or anything. Not— Not exactly. I just… I wanna be honest with you… As your boyfriend and all.”

You can tell by the sudden weight in his voice that he’s serious. But the fine coat of glowing rose that splotches Eddie’s cheeks after calling himself your boyfriend for the first time makes you melt. 

You smile to yourself and start to trace the heart you’d stitched into his t-shirt with your finger.

“Yeah. I mean, we are about to spend our two minutes anniversary together and everything.”

“Exactly,” the boy huffs out a laugh. It lacks its usual jest, though, because of the ice-cold anxiety that drenches him from head to toe and makes his hands and feet go numb.

His fingers tremble where the rest on your waist, trying and failing to find a comfortable position there because, right about now, Eddie feels the most awkward he’s ever felt.

“I just want you to know that I… I’ve never done this before,” he confesses quietly and with his eyes squeezed shut. He prays that he doesn’t have to be any less vague than that.

Your face twists in confusion — your brows furrow and your nose twitches and your head tilts to the side like a puppy. And then you’re laughing, a soft little thing of a giggle that normally makes his heart sing, though now he can only feel it breaking.

“What…?” he tries to scoff out his own chuckle. “Why are you laughing?”

“Because you’ve already told me that, dummy. That you’ve never felt this way before…” you answer, reciting his own words back to him. You haven’t yet forgotten how he’d looked at you as you said them, pale skin made silk under the moonlight while he sparkled beneath the beams of it and his love for you. 

“No, it’s… it’s more than that,” he corrects. “I’ve never even had a girlfriend before you. Or anything really.”

You still don’t seem to understand. You just look on at him with uncertainty. 

A quiet “okay?” tumbles from your mouth entwined with a nervous giggle, because you don’t understand what’s got him so somber. He’s never dated anyone, you’ve fucked half of Hawkins — these are just facts that went unsaid before now. 

And maybe it’s because you’ve never been with a virgin before, but the thought that Eddie might be one hasn’t seemed to cross your mind at all. 

It’s that exact thought that scares him. 

Because if it hasn’t already, maybe it’s because you’re avoiding it altogether. And why would he ever be the exception?

He opts to bite the bullet and hopes that his heart doesn’t get broken after.

“I’m a virgin. Okay? I’m a complete, total, proper adult virgin,” he blurts with a brazenness he’d previously lacked when it came to all this. “And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before now, but I didn’t, because I liked you and I was scared. So if you wanna yell at me or if you wanna break up with me before our five-minute anniversary, I totally get it, but I should probably let you know that it’ll rip my little virgin heart to shreds, so…”

Eddie ends his nervous ramble with a trembling, lopsided smile that does little to ease the leaden tension he’s just manufactured in the four walls of his bedroom.

He can’t seem to gauge your reaction after the fact, which is strange because he always knows what you’re thinking. 

He knows when you’re laughing with him and not at him. You scrunch your nose and giggle when he tells you a funny joke, then tilt your head back and cackle when he trips over the punchline. 

He knows the exact moment when something’s started to bother you — when you get real quiet in your bubble of reserved stillness and your eyes start to glaze over. To anyone else, it might just look like a person who’s keeping to themselves. Eddie’s starting to learn that usually means trouble when it comes to you.

He knows the difference between your gentle sort of sadness and when you’re damn near inconsolable. When you cried at the end of Stand By Me, you smiled at him with a glassy tear-filled gaze, then rolled your eyes when he tried to comfort you. The tears only spilled over when you laughed because Eddie pretended you’d hurt him when you’d shoved him away. 

But when you’re really upset about something, you don’t show him at all — you fight to keep it all to yourself until you’ve squished the problem into a tiny enough ball that you can forget about all of it.

This is something different.

There’s too much crossing your mind all at once for him to get a good read of you.

You just gape at him, like you’re trying to figure out if he’s joking or not, and then fighting to understand what it means when you realize he’s being serious. 

And just when you’ve started to wrap your head around it all, when your brain remembers how to make words again and you realize you haven’t said anything in several agonizing seconds, a foreign voice sounds from down the hallway.

Not foreign in that it was unfamiliar exactly, just foreign in that you and Eddie had spent so much time alone that you were starting to forget that there was an entire world outside of yourselves. A great big world, filled with a great many people, some of whom were your friends who tended to get pretty worried about you.

“Edward Wayne— why the hell is the Chief in my driveway?” his uncle curses from the living room, sounding like he’s speaking through a cigarette in his mouth.

Eddie himself is immediately freaking the fuck out because he figures he must’ve gotten tipped off again. He tries to calculate the quickest way to get you off of him and to all of his cubby holes full of miscellaneous drugs so he can flush them down the toilet before Jim Hopper busts the door down.

And even though you’re not the drug dealer who’s had cops on their ass since they were fifteen in this equation, you look a whole lot more terrified than Eddie does.

Your eyes go wide and the whites of them swim with terror as you launch yourself off of his lap. You don’t spare another glance back at him, not even when you nearly trip over yourself when you shove your sneakers on your feet and shuffle out of the room. He’s forced to follow behind you like a confused puppy as you bound through the trailer at lightning speed. 

The haste of your movements startles even Wayne, who halts mid-puff of his cig when you’re in and out of the living room before he can blink. The opening squeak of the screen door and metal slamming against metal is the only thing that punctuates your exit.

“Would it kill you to answer your damn phone every once in a while?” the powerful timbre of Jim Hopper’s angry voice, of which only the man himself could pull off, is muffled until Eddie cautiously slinks onto the porch behind you. 

He finds the chief standing beside the Cruiser he’s parked sideways. The door of it is still flung open. A distant beeping sounds from the ignition. 

He’s still got on the pressed khakis of his uniform — complete with the golden badge pinned to his chest, darkened sunglasses on the bridge of his nose, and flat-brimmed hat on his head. Even with the majority of his face covered, it does little to hide the anger that radiates off of him like a hot stove eye.

You remain on the porch, shifting your weight on your feet at the top of the steps. “Okay, Hopper, just listen to me for a second—”

“Three days!” he shouts over you, not deterred by your composed nature. “I have been calling you… for three days! Seventy-two hours. No answer!”

Eddie decides to speak up from behind you despite his better judgment. “Yeah, uh, that was kinda my fault,” he confesses with an awkward laugh. “Wouldn’t let her hang up the phone—”

“I’ll deal with you in a second,” Jim interjects firmly and without thinking. He goes back to berating you with an admirable finesse. “Buckley wanted my head on a pike when I wouldn’t file a missing person’s report in the first twenty-four hours, but seventy-two? She was gonna kill me!”

Rather than argue with him, like every fiber of your being so desperately wants to, you make the difficult choice to concede with a heavy sigh. Because you don’t doubt that Robin was on his ass the second she realized you weren’t answering your phone or at your apartment when she and Steve dropped by.

She did tend to be on the overprotective side, after all, which obviously paired well with her melodramatic disposition.

“I’m sorry, okay? I’ve just been… busy.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard the one before,” the man answers bitterly.

“It’s different, Hopper!”

“I’ve heard the one before, too!”

Eddie can only assume that the both of you are communicating telepathically, what with the way your synchronized glares seem to say a thousand words (probably every curse imaginable, if he had to guess) without your mouths ever moving once. 

He stands on the outskirts of it all, feeling a bit stuck in the thorniness of such a tense silence, like any slight movement might cut him.

Jim moves slowly, akin to a creeping snake, as his hands raise to remove the glasses from his face. Their lack reveals the ice-cold glare that was previously hiding beneath them.

“Get in the car—” 

“—No,” you reject just as the direction leaves his mouth because you knew it was coming.

Jim inhales sharply and smacks his lips against his teeth, like a father whose child is most ardently testing his patience. He plants his work boot in the gravel and his hand on his hips. His steel gaze goes far off for a moment before flitting back to you again.

“…Get in the car or I put you in handcuffs.”

Your breath hitches at the threat. You squint over at him. “You wouldn’t.”

Jim smiles at you, but it’s more threatening than anything else. “We both know that I would.”

Eddie’s eyes flit between the both of you. He can tell that Hopper’s serious and that you’re trying to decide whether or not to call his bluff, with your arms crossed defensively over your chest and lips pursed in a tight line.

You ultimately decide not to. Because Hopper has, in fact, done that before. And even though the circumstances are very, very different, you wouldn’t put it past him to do it again. So you all but stomp your foot like a protesting child and spin on your heel to storm back inside the trailer.

Eddie’s nervous gaze flits between your disappearing form and the storm cloud of a police chief standing in his driveway. When their eyes lock, he realizes he should probably say something. He cocks his thumb over his shoulder and stammers, “I should— I should probably…”

He doesn’t finish his sentence. He catches the front door before it shuts and slithers through the crack of it to follow in behind you.

“Wait, was he— was he being serious about that?” Eddie wonders once you’re back in his bedroom.

It feels a lot less cozy than it did minutes before, less like the bubble of refuge that you thought nobody could pierce and more like a lonely space that feels entirely too empty. You pluck your things scattered around his room, and it starts to feel less and less like home with parts of you gone from it.

“I don’t know,” you answer within a sigh as you collect your cardigan from the back of his desk chair and shrug the thing back over your shoulders again.

“But it’s happened before?”

“Yeah. Once. When I was…” you confess quietly, then trail off. You get your bag from his nightstand and haphazardly shove your scrunchie, sunglasses, and chapstick into the bottom of it. “…When I was in a bad way— it doesn’t matter now.”

Eddie so desperately wants to pry.

He’d wanted to make a joke before, about the handcuffs — something less than tasteful about them and you and Hopper and some good ol’ freaky deaky that you'd scold him for after. But he decides not to now because you sound so strangely solemn about the whole thing, as though it was a story you buried deep with the intent of never bringing it up again.

“You don’t have to go with him if you don’t want to, you know that, right?”

“Of course, I do,” you scoff at his worries, not nearly as threatened by Jim as the rest of Hawkins. You move to stand in front of him in the center of his room and meet his furrowed brows with a soft grin. “He’s not gonna do anything, he’s just pissed. He’ll berate me on the drive back to my apartment and then it’ll be like nothing ever happened.”

That seems to please Eddie well enough, though he’s still a bit disheartened at your leaving.

“I guess we couldn’t keep spending time together like this, huh?” he teases lightly, like the realization of it doesn’t make his chest ache. “Sorta forgot about the rest of the world… whatever that is.”

“It was fun while it lasted,” you tell him with a shrug and a whimsical sigh.

“Wait for me, will ya?” he jokes, if only to make you laugh and to feel like he’s stuck in some sickly sweet ending of a romcom for a couple moments more. 

You roll your eyes at his dramatics but let him wrap you in his arms anyway. His hands find purchase on your elbows, thumbs rubbing soothingly along the outsides of them. “How about a kiss, then?” he offers when the urge to feel you because too great to bear. “For our ten-minute anniversary and all?”

“You never have to ask me, Eds,” you assure with a laugh. You rise to the tips of your toes and he meets you halfway. 

Home is in your mouth. It’s warm and cozy and safe there. It’s easily the most familiar place he’s ever known, with your bottom lip nestled between his own. He feels homesick when you part from him. 

“You’re not mad at me?” he wonders quietly, feeling a bit like a cowering child from where he stands in front ahead of you — eased only when you shake your head almost immediately in response.

“No. I couldn’t be even if I wanted to, I think.”

“Okay. That’s… That’s good.”

“We can talk about it later, if you want. After I get lurch off my ass.”

He tries not to smile too wide, but it’s hard not to beam every time he looks at you. “Yeah. Sure. I’ll… I’ll see you around, I guess?” he stumbles over himself, having forgotten how to say goodbye to you. 

It’s equally as hard for you too, it seems, because you nod at him and turn to leave and then realize once you’re halfway down the hallway that you might not survive if you don’t kiss him again. 

So you turn and rush back, catching Eddie with his back turned and spinning him around so you can peck him again. You feel his cheeks heat beneath your palm and his sigh against your cupid’s bow and his lips melt against your own.

You etch each tingling sensation into the edges of your mind in the hope that you won’t drive yourself completely insane when you inevitably start to miss him like crazy. 

You focus on that and on him when you find Hopper and his stupid proud dad smirk. It’s the only reason you don’t punch him in the jaw and tuck and roll out of the Cruiser when the silence becomes so slowly insufferable.

You’re starting to think Jim left the radio off on purpose. You’ve never known the guy not to drive around without the strumming of an old-school folk song to accompany him. You figure it must be some sort of intimidation tactic, to make you so uncomfortable that you break. You’re a lot closer to that than either of you realize.

You spare a glance over at the man next to you. He hasn’t looked at you once since you get in the car. He’s got one hand at three o’clock on the steering wheel and the other with its elbow propped up on the door as he scratches at the stubble on his jaw. 

He’s too at ease not to be bothered. This is obviously some kind of front he’s putting on to conceal his inner irritation.

You give on the lecture you’d been trying to prepare yourself for and exhale sharply through your nose. Your fingers fidget on your thighs as you kick your restless feet up on the console. 

“Get your feet off the dash,” Jim scolds without missing a beat. 

You huff and obey. “Okay, this is crazy— can’t you just yell at me already?”

He barely wastes a second.

“I cannot believe you right now!” he seethes through gritted teeth, stewing in a dad-like sort of anger.

“It was three days, Hopper!”

“You know what happened the last time no one heard from you for three days?” he shouts back. 

You tip your head back against the seat and groan. You should’ve known he was going to play that card. 

He waves an accusatory finger between the both of you. “You and me— we had a deal, remember? You let me check in on you. You agreed to that. You visit your little high school friends, and I see you at work, so I can make sure you’re not off somewhere killing yourself.”

Hopper becomes a casualty to the tense silence he created then, when you don’t retort with some comeback of your own and force him to feel every ounce of pressure from the leaden quiet. 

He sighs a great big, too loud sigh and shifts in his seat. His softening gaze flits between you and the road. “I didn’t… I didn’t mean it like that, okay? I just meant it, you know, figuratively. I wasn’t… trying to be mean.”

“When have you ever cared about being mean?” you monotone.

“I don’t,” he assures. “I’m just not trying to hurt your feelings, alright? Jeez…”

You try not to take too much pride in the man’s half-apology, though you’d be lying if you said it wasn’t a little bit rewarding.

Jim Hopper’s practically an iceberg. He only melts for his kid, Joyce Boyers, and you, apparently. 

It’s why he’s always so damn protective over you. He’s developed this sort of deep-rooted urge to keep you safe after watching you make every wrong decision a human being could possibly make. And when you mess up, because you do mess up, he feels like it’s partially his fault — that, if he’d done more, he could’ve kept you safer. 

It makes you feel like a burden most of the time, but you know it’s above yourself and mostly out of your control.

You’d known of each other for a while before you really met, because a troublemaker and police chief in such a small town are bound to. But somewhere down the line, he found you in a valley of mourning for someone that was still alive and you found him in a black hole of grief for someone who wasn’t. The empty and infinite voids within you both were stitched slowly together all over again. 

Jim Hopper was the dad you never had. You were the daughter he couldn’t.

And you thought something might change after he adopted El. You figured he might forget about you because it wasn’t like it was his job to watch after you or anything. Playing pretend always felt nice, but you knew it wasn’t real. 

It was to Jim, though, who’d developed a similar adoration for you as the one he had for Sara. He hasn’t been able to forget about you in the same way he hasn’t been able to forget about her. 

Every night, after he’s scrubbed the day off his body and washed it all down with a lukewarm beer, he lays on his pull-out bed in the small living room of his cabin and goes through a checklist in his head. 

He makes sure that he’s checked on El and reminds himself to wake up early to make her breakfast the next morning before he brings Joyce coffee at Melvald’s — Joyce. She always comes next on his list, always right after El, and then you. 

He forces himself to calm down when his blood pressure inevitably spikes at the thought of not having heard from you all day. He reminds himself that he saw you at work on his lunch break and that he’ll see you again tomorrow.

Jim hums to himself as he settles more comfortably into his springy cot, deciding that he’ll try a new wine he can’t pronounce when he sees you at Enzo’s the next day and that he’ll drink it while he rambles about Joyce or El’s new boyfriend.

He drifts to sleep with thoughts of Sara.

You’re as ingrained into his mind as every other person he’s grown to love.

He stopped worrying about never getting you out a long time ago. Like a tomato sauce stain on a dress shirt, he knows he’ll never get you out of his head. He knows even more so that he doesn’t want to — no matter how much you annoy him or how angry you make him when you don’t answer his calls.

“Sorry…” you murmur and swallow down whatever mundane argument you could’ve spewed then, at the result of his sudden warmth. You turn to gaze out the window and trace the edges of the puffy white clouds with your eyes. “I wasn’t thinking about that — the… deal, or whatever… Honestly, I was a little too busy being happier than I think I’ve ever been in my life, so…”

You don’t see the dramatic eye roll he gives you in response, but you can’t miss the hearty groan that spills from his mouth. 

“What?” you laugh in response. “Have you never been a kid in love before?”

It’s almost jarring how he goes from huffy to concerned in a fraction of a second. His head snaps over to you, jaw clenched and eyes suddenly stern and swimming with a lingering fear. 

“Love?” he repeats like he must’ve heard you wrong. “Love— That’s— That’s what this is?”

You shrug. “I don’t know… Maybe…”

His eyes flutter shut for a moment. “Please don’t tell me you’ve said that to each other yet. This guy was just a crush four days ago.”

“No, Hopper. We haven’t. I mean, he literally just told me he was a virgin, so I don’t think we’re even close to—”

“A virgin?” Jim echoes, voice high-pitched and giddy. He beams at you from beneath his bushy mustache and slaps you a little too hard on your arm when he laughs. “Shit, teacup. Are you runnin’ out of options over there or somethin’?”

You twist your body to hit him back harder with your right hand. “It’s not funny, Hopper,” you scold. “He’s nice.”

“You said that about Hargrove once—”

“This is different,” you monotone before the words have the chance to leave his mouth.

“Yeah? How do you know?”

The question stumps you for a moment because you don’t know — you can’t.

You’d never admit it out loud, but Hopper was right; you’re still not quite sure how you ever could’ve thought that Billy Hargrove was a good guy, but you did. You felt a similar feeling of elation with him as you do now with Eddie, an otherworldly sort of happiness that makes you feel like you’re the only person it’s ever happened to.

And here you are now, sometime later and reveling in the aftermath, still gluing pieces of your shattered heart together.

You treat love like a drug. You use and use and use until it stops being a fun thing and becomes a crutch you can’t live without. That’s always when it starts to hurt you, but you’re in too deep to stop craving it.

And you know it’s bound to happen all over again, but you have to believe Eddie’s different or else you might as well fall into the deep pit of despair you’ve been trying this whole time to crawl out of. 

He makes you happy, really really happy, and you’d rather gamble that he hurts you than give it all without even trying.

“I… don’t,” you conclude after a few moments.

Jim seems surprised by your admission, shooting you an incredulous look with his untamed brows raised to his hairline.

You meet his look with a wavering grin. “But he makes me really happy, Hop. Like… It feels like it should be illegal or something. He makes me feel so good my heart hurts. There’s like this—”

“Ugh,” the man grumbles in disgust, sullen all over again.

“I didn’t mean it like that, you weirdo,” you chide.

A grin twitches beneath his mustache in response. “I know you didn’t… ‘Cause Munson’s a virgin.”

“Oh my god!” you groan. “I didn’t even mean to tell you that, okay? Leave him alone— and a swear to god, Hopper, if you make fun of him—”

“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with it, alright? I mean, he’s got the expert around to show him the ropes— ow!” You cut off his stupid joke and accompanying sardonic grin with a fist to his shoulder.

Steve and Robin tend to be quite the formidable duo.

They’ve barely got a brain cell to rub together between them, but there’s still something strangely intimidating about them when they’re both angry. It feels a bit like they’re your I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed parents, and you’re the scolded child taking your lashings in the form of a lecture.

It’s what you feel like now, sitting across from them in your designated booth at Benny’s Burgers — the one by the window in the corner. It’s far enough away from the bustle of the entrance but close enough still to gossip about the assholes you used to know from high school when they walk through the door. 

“You scare the shit out of us when you go AWOL like that, you know?” Steve confesses, still soft even though you know there’s a more upset part of himself he keeps hidden for now.

His chocolate gaze flits between you and the pile of fries in the middle of the table that the three of you share. He finds the one covered in the most salt and pops it into his mouth.

“AWOL?” you echo with a distant laugh when you realize how much he sounds like Hopper. “It was three days.”

“Yeah, and you fell off the face of the earth,” Robin retorts, half-muffled through the hearty gulp of strawberry milkshake starting to melt in her mouth.

“You guys are acting like I went halfway across the country,” you scoff. “I was with Eddie. At his trailer.”

“Exactly!”

Steve’s face contorts mid-bite. “Wait, you were with him? The freak?”

It makes you roll your eyes. He’d been too busy hopelessly flirting with the waitress at the counter to hear the entire recounting of your absence to Robin, though it was more of you gushing about it than anything else.

“Yep,” you answer.

“You skipped out on movie night to be with… Eddie Munson?” he reiterates for himself, as though there was any correlation between watching the same three movies while gorging on greasy junk food with your best friends and falling more in love with a guy you were already head over heels for as he tried to explain away the unopened box of condoms collecting dust underneath his bed.

Both are equally fun in their own ways, but totally totally different.

“How did you survive without me, Steven?” you joke back in response.

“He didn’t,” Robin quips.

“So… what? You guys just went on some kinda bender? I don’t get it. Did you just fuck the entire time or something?”

“Well, contrary to popular belief, I can actually spend time with someone and not fuck them—”

“Okay, that’s not what I meant and you know it.”

“And to answer your question — no, we didn’t fuck,” you confess, then elaborate more slowly, a tad bit awkwardly. “Because he told me today that… he is a… virgin.”

Your words seem to settle over each of them differently. Robin stills with her lips wrapped around the candy-cane striped straw then furrows her brows, as though their meaning hits her a few seconds after the fact.

Steve, meanwhile, goes entirely agape in an amazed sort of shock. His eyes go wide, his brows fly up and hide beneath the bangs that hang down over his forehead, and his jaw falls open. And then he starts to smile, a subtle hint of a grin on the corners of his pink lips, like he finds it funny.

“I knew it,” he murmurs to himself.

“…Why are you smiling like that?”

His smirk widens. “That freak said he screwed Vicki Carmichael senior year. I knew he was lying.”

“And why do you look so proud of yourself, exactly?” Robin asks him.

“Because now I feel less bad about never fucking her,” the boy explains like it’s obvious. He set his elbows on the table and gestures wildly with his hands. “I always thought the freak one-upped me because she, like, never gave me the time of day after Hargrove came along, you know? But… It’s good to know that I’m still king.”

His delighted grin is met with confused looks from both you and Robin, who look upon him with twisted eyebrows and squinted eyes. 

“Are you not aware of how strange everything that comes out of your mouth is?” you ask him, only partly joking.

“At least that settles why he wouldn’t let you give him a blow job,” the brunette girl concludes with a shrug as she slouches against the booth. “Poor guy was probably shitting bricks about it.”

You realize then that it does make sense, why he’d always been so adamant about your pleasure and never his own. Why he always touched you like you were some fragile thing he might break, and like everything was new to him. Because it was new to him. All of it.

And even though it baffles you to no end how he went his entire life without someone wanting to jump his bones (because truth be told, you’re doing a terrible job at hiding your want to do just that), the fact still remains — Eddie Munson is a virgin. 

He’s a virgin with an acute infatuation for the local slut, both of you freaks in your own right. 

It just adds more intricacy to a puzzle that already feels so complicated.

“I’ve never been with a virgin before,” you admit quietly, mostly to yourself, as you train your gaze on the straw wrapper you curl around your finger. “It’s different… Scary.”

“Why?” Robin wonders aloud.

“I don’t know. I just— I don’t know what to do now.”

“Just do what you always do,” Steve tells you like it’s that simple. He folds his arms on the table and leans in closer to you. “Experience is good. Okay? Experience is key.”

“No, it’s not that. I think I’m just… I’m scared I’m gonna treat him the way, you know, that I was treated. And I don’t wanna… I don’t wanna do that to him.”

You’re not sure when the shift started, when you stopped being a person to people. You only know that you were something less than that. Somewhere between junior and senior year, you become a plaything that anyone could do anything they wanted to with, and you were too starved for physical affection to tell them otherwise. 

You liked the attention. You liked feeling loved, even if it was only for a minute and a half, and all you had to show for it was a pool of cooling come on your belly.

Eddie’s the fragile thing now that you were then. 

He was a delicate little thing that can break so easily, something you could split in half if you wanted to. 

You don’t. 

You want so desperately to be kind, but you’re scared you won’t know how to, because no one’s ever been kind to you.

Steve reaches across the table for you, taking a wild stab at an attempt for affection after several months of being scared to touch you — he did enough of that, he thought, and he’d hurt you. But he can see the lingering ache hiding in your glazed-over eyes and feels an overwhelming urge to quell your worry. 

Five warm fingers wrap around your wrist, not too tight or too strong, just enough to stop you from cutting circulation off to the tip of your pointer finger and to remind you that he’s still there.

“Trust me,” he tells you with a sudden soft swimming in his caramel-colored eyes and a smile playing on his lips. “You couldn’t do that to anybody. Not even if you wanted to.”  

Your heart nearly stops at his words, at the sheer kindness of them, and at the way he holds you in the soft way you’re used to only Eddie holding you. Your eyes go wide when they flit up to him and then start to sting with the weight of unshed tears. 

You’re quick to blink them away though, while you playfully shrug him off and joke — “stop being so nice before I get the wrong idea, Harrington” — because it’s easier than accepting his tenderness.

Robin takes one look at his fond gaze, all gooey and dripping with honey, and then at your rolling eyes and accompanying shy grin, and groans at the softness of it all. She slides out from the confines of the booth and grumbles something about getting a refill on her milkshake.

“Some fries too, while you’re up?” Steve offers with a hopeful grin.

He’s met with the girl’s signature scowl.

“Please,” you finish for him.

Robin grins. “Anything for you,” she croons, if only to make the boy pout, before skipping off to the counter.

She leans her elbows upon the red wooden laminate top and smiles that same sickly sweet smile for Benny by the grill — no doubt trying to get her refills for free. 

Even though the bearded man seems unimpressed with her presence, you know that he’ll give them to her free of charge. He’s always had a soft spot for her, one of the only people in town who could rival his wit.

The door dings open, a familiar and high-pitched chime that often becomes more frequent as the evening progresses. This time it lets in a foreign, bitter breeze when the door swings open and closed again.

You can feel the chill from a distance — it resembles the crispness of autumn despite being comfortably settled in the middle of March. It nearly takes your breath away, prickles your skin and makes you grimace back a shiver. 

When your eyes leave Steve, a difficult feat considering he’s doing an alarmingly good impression of a walrus by sticking fries in his upper lip, you find that it wasn’t abnormally cold air at all. It was a Peter Parker spider sense form of anxiety that had felt like a bucket of ice water had been poured over you.

Billy Hargrove used to turn heads when he walked into a room. 

Now he just sucks all the air out of it.

And it’s not like you haven’t seen him since the break up; for a while, the asshole was painted on the backs of your eyelids — he all but haunted your consciousness. You’ll see him around town on occasion, in his sunglasses and jean jacket and too-tight denim pants, while he struts around Main Street with his new girlfriend (otherwise known as, his flavors of the month).

You think this is the first time you’ve been in the same room as him since your split, though. It feels like it must be with the way your throat starts to tighten and you forget how to breathe. 

All at once, you’re scrambling for an exit. It’s like Billy’s a fire and his smoke is rapidly filling your lungs. Your legs start to tremble when your adrenaline spike. Your brain tells you to get out as quickly as you can before he burns you.

Steve notices the look of fear flood your features like a dark storm cloud. You were laughing just seconds before the door opened, equal parts with him and at him, but now you just looked terrified — like a child who’s just spotted a boogeyman in her closet.

He turns in the booth to find what haunted thing has just caught your eye and finds that it’s worse than any monster you could conjure up. It’s Billy fucking Hargrove, with his pretty hair and his pretty smile and his pretty girl under his arm.

His presence filled targeted, almost. Like he chose to come to this diner, on this day and at this time just to fuck with the group of you.

“Don’t even look at him,” Steve advises when he turns back to you. “Look at me, okay? He’s not even worth it. That asshole doesn’t deserve to ruin our day.”

And you try to listen to him. You try really, really hard to let him change that subject to the cold fries or Robin taking too long or a combination of the two, but you can’t focus on him. You’re already so overwhelmed at the sight of Billy that you can’t focus on anything else but him. 

You settle on the fact that you might just have to drag Steve and Robin out by their wrists because you can’t sit in this booth any longer, and you definitely aren’t hungry anymore.

And that’s when he spots you.

Your eyes lock and you freeze, immediately averting your gaze but catching the sudden sparkle in his own as he grins a sly, sadistic grin.

“No way,” you hear him say with a laugh under his breath. The sound of his voice makes you tense. You hadn’t realized how at peace you’d been all this time without having to hear it. Now it feels like so many little needles piercing your skin.

“Fancy seeing you guys here,” he greets after he’s made a b-line for your booth and dragged Vicki Carmichael along with him. He smiles with all of his pearly whites while he smacks pungent wintergreen gum between them. 

When he slides into the booth beside you, he does so without invitation, and forces Vicki to slink in next to Steve.

And like it wasn’t already awkward enough, you know Vicki — like, know her, know her. There was a drunken makeout at a Halloween party in ’82. Then a one night stand with her brother before he left for college in ’83. And then her Tom Selleck clone of a father at a sleepover for her eighteenth birthday in ’85. 

You’re not exactly proud of it, but you’ve gotten a rather hefty taste of her family tree, and the fact that both of you know it makes it that much more uncomfortable.

“We’re kinda busy here, Hargrove,” Steve tells him when he notices how comfortable he’s making himself in your booth.

“Ooh… Is this a little date?” Billy teases with a grin.

Steve’s face falls. “…No.”

“Oh, right,” he nods, though the sardonic lilt in his voice tells you that he already knew the answer. He crosses his arms on the tabletop and turns to look at you with eyes bluer than any ocean. They flicker up and down your form. Suddenly, you feel self-conscious in your baggy jean and tank top duo.

“You’ve been seeing that guy, haven’t you? What’s his name again? The, uh— the freak?”

“His name is Eddie,” Steve answers for you, defending him because you can’t find the words to.

“That’s it,” Billy snaps his fingers, then points. He nudges you with his shoulder. The familiar feel of his jean jacket against your skin makes you wince. “God, you must be runnin’ out of steam over there, huh? I mean… the freak? Seriously? You couldn’t do any better than that?”

The jokes were tolerable coming from Jim and Steve and Robin — they weren’t funny by any means, but you could stomach them because you knew they were jokes. But this? This was just to hurt you. And it works too easily because Billy knows exactly how to break you. He knows all the wires to cut and buttons to push because the puzzle of shattering your psyche is one he memorized long ago.

“He’s actually a really nice guy,” you manage through a tight throat, still staring at your fidgeting hands.

“Well, that’s good,” he hums like you need his approval. “It’s about time, right?”

You huff and choose to entertain him despite your better judgment. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He only shrugs. “I don’t know... Just, you know, that found a guy willing to settle for you. That’s all.”

“Settle?” you repeat, trying to laugh despite how tiny your voice sounds.

“You know what I mean, c’mon,” the blonde boy chuckles. “Sluts are fun and all, but they’re not the kinda girls you wanna settle down with. Steve knows what I mean.”

“No, I don’t,” Steve monotones quickly and without thinking, gaze hardened and jaw clenched. “And you need to leave.”

“I”m hungry, Billy,” Vicki whines, feeling every ounce of the tension surrounding her — like syrup or quicksand. She slides her permed bangs from her eyes and tucks a rogue strawberry strand behind her ear in a nervous tick. “Can’t we just get something to eat?”

“Alright, alright. I know when I’m not wanted,” Billy chuckles.

You grumble bitterly under your breath. “Apparently not…”

“I’ll see you around, Harrington,” Billy singsongs with a grin that wreaks of insincerity while his girlfriend slides out from the booth. He turns to look at you and squints. “Don’t be a stranger, alright? Matter of fact, point Munson my way, and I’ll give him a few pointers.”

You’re uncowed by his offer and angered by his mention of Eddie. Your eyes are stern and unwavering as you meet his gaze for the first time since he sat down beside you. 

“I think you could learn a thing or two from him, actually,” you retort, words sounding sweeter than the venom lingering behind them.

Billy’s grin only widens, impressed by your arguing. “Ooh… I forgot about the mouth you had on you, sweetheart.”

The use of the nickname makes you cringe. It doesn’t sound nearly as fulfilling as it does when it comes from Eddie. Now, it just sounds artificial — degrading.

He leans in close to you like he’s about to tell you a secret and splays his arm along the back of the booth behind you. The nicotine on his breath makes you grimace; it’s intoxicating when it comes from Eddie, disgusting from the boy sitting next to you. 

His eyes are bluer so up close, darker than you remember them being, and you notice he’s trimmed his usual stubble to a patchy mustache. He looks like the grown-up version of the boy you used to know, visually more mature but still the same in his way.

“When he gets bored of you — because, let’s be serious, he will get bored of you — you know where to find me,” Billy murmurs to you, a cynical smirk on the edges of his lips. “I’ll make sure you stay nice and broken in for the next dozen guys that want a taste—”

Steve can’t hear a word from where he sits across the booth, but he’s fuming with fists clenched under the table anyway. He hates how close Billy is to you, more so how uncomfortable you look with the proximity and how his words make you flinch. 

“Alright, you need to leave,” he blurts. “Now.”

Before the blonde could respond with a quip of his own, Robin all but teleports to the head of the table. She’s standing in front of the four of you suddenly, carrying a basket of fries and a strawberry milkshake and wearing a frown on her face.

“You’re in my seat, dickwad,” she monotones, even though she hadn’t been sitting next to you before. She’s not the least bit threatened by the Californian douchebag.

Billy smiles up at her anyway. “I was wondering where the third musketeer was! Still a carpet muncher, Buckley?”

“Happily.”

“What do ya say me and you head up to Lover’s Lake later?” the boy offers despite his date shifting awkwardly a few feet away. It’s a joke, for reasons that are more than obvious, and that’s what makes it so unbearably unfunny. 

He slinks out from the booth. The lack of his warmth is strangely comforting and you’re able to breathe for the first time in five minutes. He stretches his back out when he stands to his full height in front of Robin, then shrugs with his hands splayed on his hips.

“Maybe you just need some good dick. I mean… we’re gonna die anyway, right?”

“I’d rather,” she quips with a rouge-tinted smile.

The way it makes him laugh is startling. He finds a strange humor in being rejected — in most things, really. You still haven’t forgotten the cackles that left his bloodied mouth when Steve delivered blow after blow to the boy’s face in the middle of his living room, like it was all a fun game to him.

That was, of course, before Billy got the upper hand and nearly killed Steve that night. He laughed about it that too, until Max knocked him out with a baseball bat.

He’s got the same grin on his face now as he did then when he turns to look at you. A pink and pretty smirk, just wide enough to reveal the dimple in his left cheek. It’s nothing short of taunting, like he’s mocking you without having to say anything at all.

“Don’t be a stranger, alright?” Billy repeats. He keeps smacking his gum between his teeth and winks at you before spinning on the heel of his boot. He guides Vicki with him to the counter with a hand on the back pocket of her jeans.

Even when Robin slides in next to you and effectively pierces the bubble of tension that had already started to shrink with Billy’s leaving, you still find it hard to breathe. You have to keep reminding yourself, forcing oxygen in and out with wobbling breaths through your nose, or else you just stop altogether.

The other two move on rather quickly, having no trouble finding their voices again after he’s gone. Their words are muffled, though, like they’re underwater.

“I forgot what an asshole he was,” Robin grumbles.

“Well, I didn’t,” Steve retorts, eyes scanning the basket of fries for the most strategic pick of the bunch. “I can still barely breathe through my nose.”

“That’s because you didn’t go to a doctor, dingus.”

“Because I didn’t need a doctor, Robin.”

“Yeah, because being concussed three times in two years is so healthy—”

Your eyes act like magnets as they stay locked on Billy’s form. He leans in closer to Vicki to tell her something, then pats her once on the ass before walking towards the exit again. The door dings when he swings it open. Through the window, you catch him pulling out a red and white pack of cigarettes — the same brand of Marlboro Reds he’s been smoking since he was in middle school.

“You okay?” you hear Steve say, but it sounds too far away for you to realize he’s talking to you.

Robin nudges you with her shoulder to jog you from your stupor. You blink hard once and then turn to her with wide eyes. “What?”

“You doing alright over there?” the girl wonders.

“Yeah,” your answer is too quick and too high-pitched to be true. “Fine.”

“Like, fine as in you’re actually fine, or fine as in, if I leave you alone for too long, I’m gonna find you living under a bridge like a troll?”

You roll your eyes at her. “Fine as in, if someone bums me a cigarette, I’ll be good as new.”

Steve huffs when you hold out the palm of your hand toward him. He’s the only one of you who smokes recreationally enough to carry a lighter and pack of cigs with him. You swear he only keeps it with him because the weight of them makes him feel cool. You’re grateful for them now, though, and for the escape they unexpectedly provide you.

His fingers are warm when they brush your hand. The metal zippo he drops in the center of it is far colder and carries a comforting sort of weight to it. He thumbs a cigarette from the pack for you, and you take it with a sardonic smile and a sickly sweet “thank you, Stevie.” 

Robin gets out of the booth to let you slide out of it.

The door chimes again, this time over your head when you open it. 

Fresh, spring air nearly knocks you on your ass when it hits you for the first time. You realize then, that you’d forgotten to tell yourself to breathe and now your vision’s all swimmy. The cool breeze tries its hardest to quell your swelling anger, but you’re still at a simmering boil. Fists clenched over the lighter and cig duo in your palm and your sneakers slapping angrily against the cracked pavement.

That’s what signals your arrival, the raging stomps that echo in the alleyway Billy takes his smoke break in. 

The boy takes a puff of his cigarette and smirks on the exhale at the sight of you. All he needs is one glance to see how angry he’s made you. It’s an innocent, childlike sort of rage that’s got you all scrunched face and red — a heartbroken girl on a war path.

“I knew you couldn’t resist me, sweetheart,” he taunts with his signature sarcastic smile. He holds his arms at his sides, like he’s waiting for some kind of embrace from you. “You used to be like that all the time — all over me, you know? Clingy.”

“You know what you used to be?” you ask him once you’ve planted yourself a few feet away from him, fists shaking at your sides in a nearly overwhelming mixture of rage and apprehension.

“What’s that?”

“Nice! You used to be nice! Or do you not remember that?” you wonder rhetorically. Your anger fades slowly, an ebbing tide, as a reminiscent sadness eclipses your fury — a flood of blue in all your red. 

The sharp frown between your brows crumbles and so does your clenched jaw as your harsh features crumple like a balled-up piece of paper. You look upon the man that broke your heart with all the shattered pieces of it.

“You used to let me sleep over at your place when I was too scared to sleep alone at mine, and you’d bring me food when I told you I hadn’t eaten all day, and you’d take me on drives when you knew I hadn’t left my apartment in days,” you ramble in a single breath, gesticulating wildly with your hands — waving them at him and at you and the still air between. They fall hopelessly to your sides. 

“You used to be so sweet, Billy…” you conclude with a wavering breath. Your chest trembles on the inhale as you straighten out your shoulders and lift your chin, trying your best not to look as defeated as you feel. “And you know what you are now?”

Billy grins that stupid grin at you, the one that almost looks kind. Almost. It’s still soft in all its insincerity, like a parent entertaining their kid that’s gone on some meaningless tangent.

“No, sweetheart,” he answers after a beat. “What am I?”

“Not nice.”

He scoffs out a laugh.

“You used to tell me, all the time, how scared you were about ending up like you’re dad—” he tenses at the mention of the man, of his own monster in his own closet. “—He’d beat you black and blue every night, and I’d bandage all your cuts and put makeup on you when you begged, so you could go out and pretend like everything was normal. And you know what? You’re just like him!”

Billy doesn’t cower when you walk closer to him. He’s got no reason to be afraid of you, but your words hit him in a place far deeper than a thousand bloodied fists.

“What he did to you, is exactly what you do to me… Or do you know see that?” you don’t wait for a sarcastic reply, mostly because you wouldn’t see the indicators of it through the tears that blur your vision. “You’re not punching me, but it feels like you are. You break me over and over and over and I have to pretend like everything’s just normal and that we—”

“Real mature of you. To bring out the dad-card,” he interjects, if only to stop your ramblings so that he might not have to hear the truth that comes with them.

“You used to he nice,” you repeat, you agonize, you deflate. “Or… Or did you never use to be?”

The shell of your mind answers for you, paints itself with all the memories you’ve been trying like hell to forget for the past six months. It’s easier to pretend the bad things aren’t real than unravel all the reasons why they were bad to begin with, you find.

The negative memories come together like renaissance paintings — dark and gloomy and blotted with too realistic tears and spatters of blood. The oil stains the backs of your eyelids, destined to remain there forever like paintings in museum that’ll stand the test of time if you nurse them well enough.

You hadn’t yet been able to forget the screams and the cracks of fists colliding with bone. They tend to keep you up at night, even when you squeeze your eyes shut and beg for your memory to be wiped away completely. 

Billy crouches over Steve’s chest and pummels wholehearted punches to the boy’s face, never tiring in their force, even well after the boy goes limp underneath him. You beg for him to stop while trying like hell to shield Max from the sight of it all. 

For a while, you’d blamed yourself for it — for Max being there in the first place and for Steve’s cuts and bruises. 

You’d taken the girl and sought refuge in the Harrington home after witnessing a rather heated fight between Billy and his father. There was a sudden urge within you to take her far away from it before it ended how it always did — in weeping cuts and salty tears and insincere apologies when the cops were called.

But you made it worse anyway. 

For Max, for Steve. 

And you apologized profusely for it after, cried to the boy in his bathroom while you nursed his cuts like you were the one who put them there. 

When he told you it wasn’t your fault, you didn’t believe him. Not until now. Not until you realized that Billy had always been angry — always raging with an ocean of fear and grief and violence.

When he fought with his sister, you thought it was normal, that that’s just what siblings did. But the way she cried to you after couldn’t have been normal. Neither could the unearthly fury that washed over Billy like a riptide when he found out you and Max had sought safety in Steve The Hair Harrington — angered that it was Steve and that he couldn’t be that for the both of you.

And then there was the fights. The yelling and screaming and crying fights that felt like the end of the world every single time. The kind of fights you shouldn’t be having when you’re eighteen. You thought that maybe there was some normalcy in the cheating and the secrecy and Billy’s accompanying assholery because that was all you’d ever known.

Or maybe because you had to tell yourself that was normal in relationships because you didn’t want your’s to end. Billy was the first guy to give a damn about you in ways that went beyond just sex. How were you supposed to just give that up?

But then there’s Eddie — Eddie The Freak Munson, who was really just sunshine wrapped up in leather jackets and wild hair and chunky rings and metal music. He makes you happy. The sort of happy that makes you suspicious because something bad has to counteract all the goodness he makes you feel. 

Maybe that’s what this was. 

Seeing Billy after having wrapped yourself in a blanket of Eddie’s warmth made you see somehow more clearly. He loves on you so much that it’s made a mockery of everything else. 

Whatever you had with Billy wasn’t normal, it was a goddamn shit show. He loved you when it was convenient and then had you believing it was the real thing, that you wouldn’t find it anywhere else, when you tried to leave him. 

It was a lie, all of it.

The realization makes you falter.

“Oh, god…” you sigh, voice fragile like cracking glass. “Maybe you never used to be…”

For the first time ever, you see Billy’s grin shake. The edges of it flitter, like he’s fighting to keep the corners quirked up. And his eyes have gone a lighter shade of blue, the way they always did when he blinked back angry tears as he talked about his father.

It isn’t rage glassing his eyes now. It’s something sadder, but still as real — something you never got from him in the two years you were together.

He tries, still, to cover it all up. He smacks his lips against his teeth, sympathetically. “Sorry it took you this long to figure that out.”

The laugh you exhale then is heavy with sadness. Your smile is far away and so is your gaze as you stumble back from him. You turn your head to the edge of the alley where mom’s with strollers and people in fancy suits bustle on the sidewalk and keep your eyes on the strangers that whiz by you’ll probably never see again. 

“This is… This is pointless,” you murmur. His lean form is blurry through the burning tears you blink away. “Every time I see you, it’s just more bullshit so let’s just— let’s just leave each other alone, okay?”

Billy takes a puff from his cigarette. When he sighs, white smoke billows from his plump, pink lips. “That’s a shame… I was just thinking that you were the most interesting you’d ever been.”

The ebbing tide that had just left you rushes back in a bubbling scarlet wave. His words don’t make you sad anymore, they just make you angry all over again because you know you don’t deserve them. And you’re not entirely sure why he’s chosen you to antagonize out of all the other girls who’d made the mistake of falling for him, but you’re too far past the point of not caring to ask.

“Bother me again and I tell Chief Hopper,” you threaten even though you don’t feel very threatening just now. “I know you’re not scared of me, but you’d be stupid to be scared of him.”

“Why’s that?” he wonders before sticking the half-gone stick between his lips again.

“Because he runs Hawkins. And he fucking hates you—” for what you did to me, you almost say. You swallow the words down like bile before they have the chance to spew out. “And… And be nice to Vicki. Okay? She’s too good for you. Don’t do to her what you did to me.”

Your plea for another is the last thing you say to Billy before you turn away from him. You wouldn’t be upset if it was the last thing you ever said to him. You’re grateful for the resounding silence that follows. It’s nothing but the sound of your receding footsteps and the soles of his shoes scrapping the concrete as he snuffs out his cigarette. 

There is no snarky remark or insincere plea — just two people who used to love each other that have no idea to exist together anymore. 

When you step outside the brick confines of the alleyway, you feel as though a fraying string that had always connected the both of you had been finally cut.

It allows you to take a deep breath in for the first time in months. A lungful of fresh air that cleanses you, body and mind.

And when you catch Steve and Robin idling at the corner and doing a terrible job of pretending like they hadn’t just been eavesdropping, you don’t get upset or angry with them — you don’t feel much of anything, really.

You just hand the boy his lighter and unused cigarette and let them comfort you on the drive back to your apartment.

A misery sandwich. That’s what Robin calls the three of you and the heaping pile you lay in. 

Your queen-sized bed is in no way meant to accomodate three moderately sized adults, but you make it work anyway, like you always do.

Steve lays on his back, legs crossed and hands tucked under his head. Robin is on her stomach on the other end of the mattress, arms wrapped around the pillow she smushes the side of her face into. You lay between the both of them — on the both of them. Sprawled out sideways, you’ve got your head on propped up on Steve’s ribcage and your legs thrown over Robin’s thighs. 

The awkward position is the most comfortable you’ve ever been.

“I can’t believe that asshole had the nerve to show up to the diner on our day,” the boy rants. “And then sit in our booth, I mean— who does he think he is?”

Robin’s response is mostly muffled by the pillow. “I thought he left, like, forever ago.” 

“Maybe he just couldn’t stay away. It’s Hawkins, shit attracts shit, right?” Steve answers with a shrug that jostles your head slightly. It doesn’t little to knock you from your stupor, though, where you’ve been stuck for the better part of the day. You pick at the skin around your nails with little regard for how red and raging it's gone.

He notices this and thumps you on your temple — hard enough for you to feel it, gentle enough that it doesn’t hurt you. 

You turn your chin to your shoulder to look over at him. He tilts his own head to stare down at you, honey-tinted gaze somehow stern and soft at the same time. “If he bothers you again, I’ll kill him.”

You’re instantly warmed by his protective disposition. You know that he cares about you, even though you like to joke that he doesn’t. Steve hurt you once, made a promise to himself to make it up to you, and then just never left you alone. 

You’re grateful for it. 

You’re not sure who’d be the butt of every joke if he wasn’t around.

“Good to know,” you answer, nodding against his side and trying to hide the smile he gives you. You fail. “You think if he breaks your nose again, it’ll pop back into place?”

His face falls. “You’re real sweet, you know that?”

You open your mouth to respond, something along the lines of “I’m always sweet. You of all people should know that, Stevie,” before a knock sounds at the front door. It comes in the several rhythmic raps that Eddie is known to give when he’s got a tune stuck in his head. 

Apparently now, it’s the chorus to “Why Can’t This Be Love?” The Van Halen song he said he couldn’t stand before you.

Robin huffs at the sound of the muffled taps. She frowns like a child. “Who the hell…?”

“It’s just Eddie,” you affirm through a half-hearted grunt as you rise from your comfy position.

That brightens the two of them up almost immediately. Her and Steve share a look you can’t place as they grin at one another. Then they turn back to you with identical mischievous twinkles in their eyes. “Your boyfriend is here,” the former of the two singsongs.

You roll your eyes, but make no move to correct her. 

When you stand from the bed and make the short journey towards the door, you hear the patter of their feet following close behind you. 

“Gonna go all the way tonight?” Steve teases and jabs you on the shoulder. “Do you want us to leave?”

“No, nothing is happening. And yes, I think you should leave,” you monotone playfully.

Robin rushes past you suddenly and grabs the brass door handle before you’re able. She swings it open without thinking twice about it. Her sudden appearance, coupled with the fact that it isn’t you, startles the man on the other side of the door.

Eddie’s umber eyes go wide, brows raising and disappearing beneath his fluffy bangs, as his head jerks back.

“Eddie Munson,” the girl full-names the stranger she’s never spoken a word to before now. She leans against the doorway and effectively blocks the boy’s view of you. Steve, who squeezes himself in beside her, doesn’t make it any easier. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“You too, Buckley…” he wavers, trying to peer past them for any sight of you.

“Perfect timing, Eds,” you call out from behind them. “They were just about to leave.”

He’s relieved at the sound of your voice — even more so at your appearance when the two in front of you step off to the side to toe on their sneakers. 

You don’t look much different than when he saw you last. You’ve put on some makeup that’s started to smudge after the long day and changed your baggy sweatshirt for a more fitted tank top and boxers, but other than that you’re still the same. Still familiar and comforting in your way, a home away from home.

His smile is a tired one and it wobbles at the edges. “Oh, shit, am I— am I interrupting something?”

“No,” you’re quick to reassure him. “You’re saving me, actually.”

“Oh, give me a break,” Steve scoffs. “You love us.” 

The boy pulls you into a hug before he leaves, and it’s not the rarest thing in the world, but embraces like this do tend to be few and far between. He whispers  “use protection” in your ear and then a sharp “ow!” when you jab him in the ribs.

He and Robin smile kindly at Eddie when they walk by him and out the door, but waste barely a second before turning back around and grinning wildly at you. Steve flashes you a thumbs up while she mouths a cartoonish ‘good luck’ — like it’s the first time you and Eddie had ever been alone together. Like they were just on your ass about having been with him this whole time.

You usher Eddie and shut the door behind them. A quiet sort of peace settles on the apartment like a weighted blanket. The boy revels in every bit of its warmth.

Exhaustion drips from him like syrup. He’s sticky with it. His eyes have lost their usual twinkle, weighed down now with the burden of his fatigue. His face has lost most of its color, leaving a pale sheath of monotoned skin, and his hair is wilder than normal, with an unintentional sort of ruggedness to his curls.

It’s what being without you has done to him.

“You okay?” you ask him softly. It almost makes him want to cry.

“Yeah,” he answers anyway and idles in the spot where your kitchen meets your living room. “Just had a pretty shitty day. Wanted to spend time with you.”

“Me too… About the wanting to spend time with you part— and the shitty day part, too, I guess.”

Eddie smiles at your rambling, but purses it to the side to conceal it from you. “And since it is just about our…” he trails off and bends his elbow to check the watch on his wrist. “…Twelve hour anniversary, I picked us up some takeout.”

He sets the plastic bag on the counter. The red logo of Oriental Jade on the side of it makes your stomach roll with a distant hunger. You hadn’t realized how starved you were feeling after you abandoned your early dinner at Benny’s. It makes you more grateful for Eddie, who always seems to be on the same wavelength as you without even trying.

“Keep this up and we’ll be married before we hit hour twenty-four,” you joke as you rifle through the cartons — chow mein, sweet and sour chicken, dumplings, the works.

Eddie settles in next to you, propping his elbows on the countertop. “Well, I’m pretty sure the courthouse opens at nine, so… What were you thinking for the honeymoon? Hawaii? Bora Bora?”

“How about a cabin in the woods where no one can find us?”

“Hmm… Spooky. Sexy. I’m into it.”

You settle in the living room and eat on the couch while She Ra re-runs play on the television. You try to teach Eddie how to use chopsticks, though he can only work them with his non-dominant hand and all the wrong finger placements. You think it’s cute to watch him fumble with them, and you giggle about it until you’re scolding him for trying to feed Bowie some noodles. He laughs as you swat at him.

When all the containers are fully scrapped clean and tossed in the recycling bin, you migrate to the bedroom — which is perhaps too raunchy a phrase to use when the two of you only bury yourselves under the covers to talk shit.

Eddie drags out the chunky box fan you use when the air conditioner goes out in the summer — because it always goes out in the summer — and props it on the chest at the foot of your bed so the covers will billow around the both of you. “And it’s perfect because we can stay in the fort forever and not get hot,” he tells you, all giddy about it like he's a kid again.

“What if I get cold?” you retort.

Without missing a beat, he answers, “Well, lucky enough for you, I know several ways I can warm you up, sweetheart.”

He ditches his leather jacket and strips down to his boxers and settles in beside you underneath the blankets. The two of you lay shoulder to shoulder while you trace absentminded patterns on the palm of his hand and tell him about your day.

You make sure to leave out all the re-traumatizing-Billy-Hargrove bits, though. You focus mainly on the tense drive with Hopper and the small fight you’d had with Steve on the drive to the diner later that afternoon about the lyrics to Love My Way (both of you had been wrong).

Eddie tries his hardest to focus on your story and your fleeting touches, but he’s too far in his own head. You tell him all these things but he can’t stop thinking about himself — about whether or not you might’ve brought him up somewhere in between. 

He wouldn’t have blamed you, if you had. Steve and Robin are your closest friends and, for whatever reason, so is Chief Hopper, you’re bound to bring him up eventually. He was just hoping it would’ve been in a better capacity. Maybe about how kind he was or what a god he was in bed — not how he could only be one of those things because he’d never been anything in bed.

“It doesn’t make things weird between us, does it?” he wonders out of the blue.

You halt mid-sentence and turn to him with furrowed brows. “What?”

Eddie realizes then, that the first half of the conversation with you had only happened in his head. He prays that it’s too dark beneath the covers for you to see how red his cheeks get. “Just… What we talked about this morning. About me… you know…” He finds it hard to say the words. Or any of them at all.

“Why would it make things weird?”

“I don’t know. Because I wasn’t… totally honest with you, I guess? I feel a little bad about it, you know?”

“It’s okay,” you assure and turn on your side to be closer to him. Eddie stays on his back, more than happy to let you cuddle further into him. “I guess I do wish you’d said something before, though.”

His chest tightens. “I’m sorry. I just… I didn’t know how to—”

“I’m not saying it to make you feel bad!” you interject quickly when you catch the spiral of regret he was about to twist himself into. You curl tighter into his side, tossing a leg over his thigh and wrapping your hand around his bicep in an effort to melt with him. When he turns to face you, your noses nearly brush.

 “That’s not how I meant it. I just meant that, if I’d known before, I wouldn’t have… I would’ve taken things slower. I wouldn’t have been so, you know, so all over you.”

He hates how apologetic you sound. Like there was ever an ounce of him that would want to take back what happened that night at his trailer or a part of him that might hate how much you love on him.

“I liked it. I do like it.”

“Maybe we can just start over,” you offer. “Pretend like none of that ever happened.”

Eddie knows there’s no way in hell he’ll be able to forget about a single damn thing — not his cum stained jeans and how you looked so pretty washing them for him, not the feel of your tits in his mouth or you wrapped around his fingers, not how you made him blow his load all over his fist just by talking to him. 

He goes along with it anyway, though, just for you.

“Okay...” he nods slowly, then squints over at you. “You’re still my girlfriend, though, right?”

“Of course I am,” you giggle.

He grins proudly to himself. “Well then… Hope it’s not too early to have our first kiss then?”

It makes you roll your eyes because it’s such an Eddie Munson way of asking to kiss you. You told him earlier the day that he never had to ask you — in fact, you’d prefer it if he’d just kiss you out of the blue and take your breath away without you ever knowing it was coming. But there was something foreign and sweet in his little reassurances.

“Kiss me silly, Eddie Spaghetti,” you beam. He twists on his side to press tiny pecks to your smile.

It’s rather strange, you find, to kiss someone this way without the intention of it ever becoming something more. You kiss him just to kiss him — just to map the outline of his cupid’s bow and memorize the pattern of his tongue. Just to feel him, as much of him as your mouth will allow you to.

With one arm curled under his head and the other cradling your jaw, when his watch alarms — high-pitched beepbeepbeeps in quick succession — it’s sudden and close to your ear. 

Your lips click in protest when they part. His are pink and swollen and glossy with your spit. He smiles with them. “Happy twelve hour anniversary, sweetheart.”

“How long are you gonna make that stupid joke?” you laugh like your heart isn’t swelling so much you’re scared it might burst entirely.

“Uh, I was thinking… forever. Yeah. That sounds about right,” he concludes after a moment of feigned thought. He turns his watch off again and you swear you see him set for another twelve hours from now.

“Forever?” you echo.

“Uh-huh. Forever—” he presses his lips to yours once. “—And ever—” Twice. “—And ever.”

Eddie kisses you until you’re flat on your back and surrendering to each of his tiny little pecks. You twist your hands in his hair and let him love on you a little while more. You giggle when his mouth trails from your lips to your chin to your jaw to your neck. Please don’t get bored of me, you beg silently within your laughter.

I don’t think I could even if I wanted to, he answers with each kiss his sprinkles to your starved skin. How could I, when you’re the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me?

#published by bug #eddie munson x reader #stranger things x reader #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson smut #eddie munson #eddie munson fanfic #stranger things #eddie munson fic #virgin!eddie munson x reader #virgin!eddie munson

[flamingpudding]

Fictober23 Prompt: 6 - "I can't wait for you."

Fandom: DPxDC

Rating: T

Warnings: Mentions of blood and injury

Danny stared at the stars above his head, sitting on top of Fenton Works. Even after a week his arm still tingled with phantom pains from his accident. In his left hand was a dagger he hadn't looked at in years now. Was it 6 or 7 years? Danny couldn't really remember. He had been too young when he had made his first decision for himself only.

The fingertips of his right hand traced imaginary patterns over the blade as his eyes searched out different constellations in the night sky. 7 years ago, he would have never imagined for himself a future where he was allowed to follow his own dreams. A week ago he had talked about his dream of becoming an astronaut, exploring the vast space that existed just outside of their own stratosphere.

Now after that the lab accident he had he felt like another dream had gotten shattered by the wheels of fate. It wasn't even his past life from before the Fentons that shattered these dreams, in the way he had feared in the first couple of years after coming to live with them. It where times like these when he would dug out the dagger to take it with him to see the stars.

His eyes turned from the stars to the blade in his hand.

It was a special blade his biological mother had ordered when she learned about having twins. The blade itself was only one half. The flat surface of the handle and the blade on one side while the other appeared like a high quality blade and greatly decorated handle, spoke of the missing part. His dagger was only half of a dagger, the other half was with his twin.

This was the only thing he had taken with him when he had left at the tender age of 5 or was it six? His memory was blurry and back then celebrating your birthday wasn't as big of a deal as it was in the life he had gained with Fentons.

At times Danny wondered why he had been the only one to see it. His twin had gone through the same teachings, the same lessons, the same training, the same mission. Yet Danny had been the only one who saw the way their grandfather really was. The manipulation, the gaslighting, the brainwashing. Danny had seen it all and realized it pretty soon and when he had talked with his twin about it?

He had hit a wall. Grandfather knows what he's doing. Stop imagining things, Danyal.

"I can't wait for you. Damian, if you can't see what I do, then I can no longer stay here and wait."

These were the last words he had said to his twin after another argument about their grandfather gaslighting them about a mission result. It was right there and then that Danny decided he needed to leave and that he did.

Somehow, as a five years old he had managed to get all the way to America before they found him again. And when he refused to come back they, his grandfather's mans, attacked without remorse. After all it was better to get rid of loose ends than to let them frail your masterpiece.

But ending up near death in the middle of a forest where the Fentons happen to be camping was his luck back then. They probably thought that he wouldn't make it, that Danny wouldn't have the will to continue barely breathing in his own pool of blood but Danny proved them wrong. He did have the will and he had continued crawling until Jazz had found him.

That was how his life had changed the first time. The Fentons took him in, allowed him to dream and to build a future and family of his own. Now this lap accident was making changes to his life again and Danny couldn't help but think back to his previous life. "I wonder if Damian finally saw what I did or if he still is under grandfather's influence…"

Months later Danny was introduced to an apparent family friend of his parents. One Danny felt was too much of a fruitloop and gave him concerning flashbacks to his grandfather but was still easier to deal with. But following all the incidence of conflicts with the fruitloop was also a moment to which said fruitloop somehow convinced his parents to let him drag Danny to a Gala.

Danny hadn't paid any attention to the guests of this gala, no he had taken the first chance he got to escape the way Sam had advised him before to do, and fled to a balcony. Breathing in the clear night air Danny loosened the tie he was made to wear. He did not notice the soft click of the balcony door behind him.

"Danyal." Danny whirled around and pulled out a hidden blade he kept on his person more out of habit than anything else. He hadn't heard his name spoken like that in years, even the fruitloop and a more American dialect when it came to saying his name.

He froze at the mirror image with green eyes that stood before him. That couldn't be could it?

"Damian?" The other teen nodded and Danny only relaxed his stance ever so slightly. His shoulders were still tense and he was still ready to spring into action or use his ghost powers to escape if needed.

Neither of them spoke a word as they took in each other's appearance and Danny hid a small chuckle as his twin clicked his tongue at his defensive stance, crossing his arms.

"I see, you still have that half of a dagger mother had made for us."

"The only thing I took with me when I left."

His twin clicked his tongue once more before reaching into a hidden pocket and pulling out the other half of that dagger. Showing that he also had kept his half of it throughout all these years.

"There is no longer a need for you to wait, Danyal."

Danny blinked and completely dropped his defensive stance, hearing the unspoken words. He let a small smile tuck his lips upwards. It appears that there was a lot he had to catch up on with his twin.

"I never waited to begin with Damian. I ghosted you right after." He chuckled lightly, knowing his brother wouldn't understand until later.

"Don't lie, Danyal. You took your half of the dagger with you." His brother frowned before smirking at him. "You said you couldn't wait anymore but taking it with you was clearly telling me that you would still do so anyway."

#fictober23 #danny fenton #danny phantom #damian wayne #Demon twin AU #dp x dc #dpxdc #crossover #dcxdp #fanfic #Danny has left the Leauge on his own when he was just a child #He saw how manipulative they were #Damian only realized later what his brother saw #they meet at a gala again after years apart #A little angst with a sorta happy ending #Vlad unintentionally helped Danny reuniting with his family #the bats and birds did not know about Danny until then #To Damian's Defense... they never asked #Bruce is going to have another crisis #Damian never believed Danny was dead #he knew his twin best after all #Danny was just waiting for Damian

[infiniteko]

Simple Wisdom

In the quiet spaces inbetween thoughts, there's a clever truth waiting to be discovered—a truth so simple, so obvious. Let's imagine it like this: life is a bit like a puzzle, and sometimes the pieces might seem tricky, but what happens if you don't think about what you call a problem? Is it here?

What if I told you that all problems are imaginary dreams? They might look real, but if you stop and really think, you'll find they're not as solid as they seem. It's a like magic—seeing through the tricks you play on yourself.

Sometimes, it feels like we're caught up in a storm, doesn't it? But who is perceiving that storm? Is it bothered by any of it? Isn't it quietly watching? Look closely!

So, let's wake up to this simple truth: You are the canvas, and you are the artist. You have this fantastic ability to create your own masterpiece. No need for complex brushes.

In the world of easy and finite words, there's a profound infinite intelligence. It's not about big, complicated ideas. It's about understanding the simple magic of existence and using it to paint a beautiful picture of your own story.

infiniteko's PB

[gvnvks]

// zb1 boys wanting your attention / affection.

> pairings: non-idol!zb1 x fem-reader

> warnings: pet names, a lot of touch, lowercase intended, not proofread

> song recommendation: crazy by luminous (DRIVE ME CRAZY CRAZY OOH CRAZY CRAZY)

> a/n: i think im back but like fr now… thank yall for 500 followers!!

// 김 jiwoong.

seated at a corner table, you were engrossed in your work, laptop open, fingers dancing across the keyboard. lost in your world of words and ideas, you hardly noticed jiwoong, your ever-adoring boyfriend, quietly sipping his latte at the opposite side of the table.

he gazed at you with a warm, affectionate smile, his eyes sparkling like sunlight on a tranquil lake. with a playful twinkle, he began, “you know, ive always thought that if words were colors, the ones you type would paint the most beautiful masterpiece.”

you looked up, surprised by his poetic remark. a soft blush tinged your cheeks as you replied, “oh, come on. you're just saying that to distract me.”

jiwoong chuckled, his laughter like a soft melody. “maybe i am. but can you blame me? i can't resist stealing your attention away from those words for just a moment.”

you rolled your eyes playfully. “you're shameless.” he leaned forward, his voice turning slightly serious. “i'm shamelessly in love with you.”

a delighted giggle escaped your lips. “flattery will get you everywhere, you know.”

jiwoongs gaze turned thoughtful as he looked out of the window, his eyes fixed on the swaying branches of a nearby tree. “you know, watching the leaves dance in the wind reminds me of you. effortlessly beautiful and always moving forward.”

you leaned back, your heart fluttering at his words. “smooth talker.”

“im just speaking from the heart,” he said, his fingers tracing an imaginary path on the table. “and my heart tells me that i miss you even though you're right in front of me.”

your fingers paused over the keyboard, a soft smile tugging at your lips. “youre the one who chose to come with me to the café, remember?”

your boyfriend sighed dramatically, a hand on his chest. “ah, but my heart didn't get the memo. its been pining for your attention.”

with an exaggerated roll of your eyes, you pushed your laptop aside. “alright, you win. what do you want, mr. heart-pining?”

he grinned, his eyes gleaming mischievously. “just a kiss to tide my heart over until youre done conquering the literary world.”

a delighted laugh bubbled up from your chest as you leaned across the table, meeting him halfway. your lips met in a sweet, lingering kiss that felt like a promise of forever.

as you pulled back, jiwoongs eyes held a mix of adoration and playfulness. “thank you for indulging my heart.”

“youre welcome,” you replied, your fingers now entwined with his. “but only because youre my favorite distraction.”

// 장 hao.

you stood by a large window, your voice weaving a gentle tapestry of words as you spoke to your mother over the phone. the room itself seemed to listen, its walls echoing with your laughter and the comforting words exchanged.

unbeknownst to you, hao watched from a distance, his heart swelling with affection for the beautiful scene before him. his tousled hair and sleepy eyes hinted at a man who had just risen from dreams, but his determination sparkled brighter than the morning sun. a mischievous grin tugged at the corners of his lips as he plotted his charming disruption.

with a soft, silent step, your boyfriend closed the distance between you. his fingers brushed over the piano, and a soft melody trickled into the air, a backdrop for his silent advance. your voice continued to flow, but his eyes met yours, a playful gleam dancing within them. as his fingers reached you, they brushed against your arm in a featherlight touch.

your startled laughter bubbled through the phone, a melody that blended with the piano's notes. “mom, i think there's a tickle monster on the loose!” you teased, glancing toward hao. he chuckled, his fingers stilling on the keys.

“im innocent, i swear,” he chimed, his voice a gentle harmony to the symphony of the morning.

your mothers laughter resonated through the phone, a distant yet warm presence. “well, it sounds like you two are having a wonderful morning.”

haos fingers now traced patterns along your forearm, leaving a trail of tingling sensations in their wake. “speaking of wonderful mornings, i think this one could be even more wonderful if someone would spare a moment for her boyfriend.”

you rolled your eyes in playful exasperation. “hao, youre not going to give up, are you?”

his gaze held yours, his eyes twinkling. “never, especially not when it comes to winning your affection.”

a soft sigh escaped you, one that carried the depth of your fondness. “mom, ive got a persistent charmer here who wont let me concentrate.”

her laughter flowed through the line, a soft caress. “well, dear, enjoy these moments. love like that is a treasure.”

your boyfriends fingers found their way to your cheeks, his touch warm against your skin. “see, even your mom agrees. now, how about a kiss?”

you glanced at him, feigning resistance. “oh, fine. but only if you promise to behave afterward.”

his eyes danced with playful mischief as his lips met yours in a sweet, lingering kiss. “deal,” he murmured against your lips, his voice a whispered promise.

// 성 hanbin.

a gentle hum of laughter and conversations filled the air as you and your friends sat around the table, immersed in your chatter. the table was adorned with a bouquet of vibrant wildflowers, their colors echoing the joyous atmosphere.

hanbin leaned back comfortably in his chair, a playful glint in his eyes. hed been trying to catch your attention all evening, but you were engrossed in your friends' anecdotes.

as one of your friends animatedly recounted a hilarious work story, hanbin softly cleared his throat from beside you. you glanced at him, and he flashed you an endearing smile that made your heart skip a beat.

“you know,” he began casually, “i heard they have the most amazing desserts here. maybe we should order something sweet to share?”

you nodded in agreement, and your attention returned to your friends. your boyfriends hand found its way to the back of your chair, his fingers gently grazing your shoulder, sending a tingling sensation down your spine. he leaned in a little closer, his voice a hushed whisper only you could hear.

“i think youre the sweetest thing here, though,” he teased, his lips brushing against your earlobe. you stifled a giggle, trying to keep your composure as his words sent warmth rushing to your cheeks.

just as you thought hanbin might be satisfied with his display of affection, he took it up a notch. your friend was now sharing a particularly amusing anecdote, and hanbins fingers lightly traced patterns on your forearm, his touch featherlight and barely noticeable to anyone else. your skin prickled with awareness, and you shot him a sideways glance.

“what are you doing?” you whispered, a playful glint in your eyes as you caught on to his game.

hanbin grinned mischievously. “who, me? im just appreciating the fine art of touch communication.”

you chuckled softly, leaning closer to him. “well, mr. communication expert, what else do you have up your sleeve?”

his eyes sparkled with excitement as he leaned even closer, his lips now barely brushing against your ear. “how about this?” he murmured, his fingers tracing a heartwarming pattern on the inside of your wrist.

you couldnt help the soft sigh that escaped your lips. hanbin always knew how to make your heart dance with delight. as the evening progressed, you found yourself stealing glances and exchanging secret smiles with him, a silent dialogue of affection that only the two of you shared.

and as the night drew to a close, dessert plates now cleared, hanbins hand found yours beneath the table, his fingers interlocking with yours in a silent promise of forever.

// 석 matthew.

in the clinking of weights and the hum of machines filling the air, you were engrossed in your workout routine, headphones on, completely absorbed in the rhythm of your exercises.

your boyfriend stood nearby, a playful and yet proud smile tugging at the corners of his lips. he watched you lift dumbbells with focused determination, your brows slightly furrowed. unable to resist any longer, he strolled over and leaned against a nearby machine, his warm brown eyes fixated on you.

“youre looking incredibly impressive there,” he quipped, his voice a playful whisper that barely reached your ears above the music.

you blinked, momentarily taken aback before a grin broke across your face. “oh, so you think im finally lifting as much as you?”

matthew chuckled, his gaze dancing with amusement. “well, i wouldnt go that far. but youre definitely getting there.”

as you continued your set, matthews fingers lightly grazed your arm, causing a pleasant shiver to race down your spine. “need any pointers?” he asked, a hint of boyish charm in his tone.

you rolled your eyes playfully. “i think ive got this, thank you very much.”

he leaned in closer, his voice a conspiratorial whisper. “ive seen your squats, and i must admit, theyre pretty impressive.”

a soft flush crept up your cheeks, but you tried to hide it by focusing on your next set. your boyfriend seemed determined to keep your attention, however. with a grin, he gently adjusted your posture, his fingers guiding your movements. “here, a little shift in your stance will give you better balance.”

you complied, surprised by how his touch not only corrected your form but also sent a pleasant warmth radiating through you. “thanks, i can feel the difference.”

matthews fingers lingered for a moment longer than necessary, his touch becoming a lingering caress. “anytime, my personal training services are always available,” he teased.

betwixt the exchanged flirtatious glances and playfully bickering comments, matthews care and affection were evident. he fetched a water bottle for you, making sure you stayed hydrated, and subtly encouraged you through the more challenging sets.

as the session continued, he surprised you by joining in, effortlessly matching your pace. “you make this look so easy,” you huffed, sweat-drenched and slightly breathless.

matthew grinned, his shirt clinging to his chest as he mimicked your exercises. “well, someones gotta make sure youre not the only one suffering here.”

// 김 taerae.

as you stood by the stove, carefully flipping pancakes, your boyfriend entered the kitchen with a rascal expression. “hey there,” he chimed, wrapping his arms around your waist from behind. his touch was both affectionate and reassuring.

you chuckled, focusing on not letting the pancakes burn. “good morning, taerae. whats the occasion for this sneak attack?”

he rested his chin on your shoulder, observing your culinary skills with genuine admiration. “no occasion. i just realized how lucky i am to have a girlfriend who can turn flour and eggs into something magical.”

you rolled your eyes playfully. “yeah. youre just buttering me up because you want some pancakes.”

“guilty as charged,” he admitted with a chuckle. his fingers traced gentle circles on your waist, sending shivers down your spine. “but also because i want some of your attention too.”

you finally turned off the stove and turned to face him, your eyes meeting his twinkling gaze. “you have my attention now. what do you want?”

taerae feigned innocence, his lips curling into a youthful grin. “hmm, maybe a kiss to start with?”

you pretended to consider his request, tapping your finger against your chin. “lets see. pancakes or a kiss… tough choice.”

he gasped in mock astonishment. “are you saying my kisses arent as delicious as your pancakes?”

you leaned in, pressing a sweet kiss to his lips. “definitely not as delicious, but close enough.”

he pulled you into a warm hug, his arms encircling you tightly. “ill take close enough.”

as you both swayed gently to an imaginary rhythm, the aroma of breakfast filled the air. taeraes fingers idly drew patterns on your back as he spoke softly. “you know, i think im addicted to your touch.”

you chuckled, nuzzling your head against his chest. “oh really? do you need a daily dose of my touch to function properly?”

“absolutely,” he replied without hesitation. “its like a warm, comforting energy that i cant get enough of.”

with the pancakes ready, you playfully extricated yourself from his embrace and set the table. “well, i guess i cant deny you your daily dose of affection then.”

he helped you with the plates, his eyes never leaving your face. “you know, im starting to believe that the best moments in life happen right here in this kitchen.”

you handed him a plate with a smirk. “are you saying that my cooking is the key to your heart?”

“among other things,” he teased, winking at you. “but honestly, its the love and laughter that fill this space that make it so special.”

// 리키 ricky.

as you saw the sun dipping below the horizon, casting a warm, golden hue over the quaint little restaurant, you found yourself seated at a beautifully set table alongside your family. the ambiance was serene, with gentle music playing in the background and the distant sounds of laughter and clinking cutlery from nearby tables. the scent of delectable dishes wafted through the air, making your stomach rumble in anticipation.

ricky sat beside you. he was dressed in a crisp white shirt that accentuated his blonde, tousled hair and his beautiful grin. you could feel his leg occasionally brushing against yours under the table, his way of seeking connection even in a crowd.

as the first course arrived, ricky leaned in slightly, his lips almost grazing your ear as he whispered, “hey, have i told you how stunning you look tonight?”

you chuckled softly, feeling a warm blush creep up your cheeks. “if im not mistaken, you already mentioned it thrice," you replied with a playful twinkle in your eye.

across the table, your sibling raised an eyebrow and grinned knowingly. “are you two whispering sweet nothings over there?” they teased.

your boyfriend leaned back, a sheepish grin on his face. “just trying to keep the romance alive,” he quipped, earning an amused chuckle from your parents.

as the main course was served, rickys fingers found their way to yours beneath the tablecloth. his touch was gentle and reassuring, a silent reminder of his presence amidst the family gathering. you intertwined your fingers with his, giving his hand a tender squeeze, and he responded with a loving smile that melted your heart.

between the clatter of cutlery and the hum of conversation, rickys foot subtly brushed against yours. you shot him a questioning look, and he raised an innocent eyebrow, feigning innocence. “oops, sorry,” he said, barely suppressing a mischievous grin.

your mother, ever perceptive, couldnt help but notice the exchange. she leaned in, a knowing smile on her lips. “just be sure to save some affection for dessert, you two,” she advised with a wink.

dessert arrived in the form of decadent chocolate cake, accompanied by a scoop of velvety vanilla ice cream. rickys eyes lit up as he took his first bite, and he couldnt resist offering you a forkful with an impish grin. “here, a taste of heaven.”

you indulged in the delicious treat, savoring the sweet and creamy flavors. “mmm, youre right. this is amazing,” you agreed, your eyes locked on his.

as the evening drew to a close, with your family engaged in cheerful chatter and laughter, rickys hand found its way to the small of your back. his touch was light yet possessive, a silent promise that he was there by your side, no matter the setting.

with a satisfied sigh, you leaned into his touch, feeling a sense of contentment wash over you. the restaurants warm lighting and the soft buzz of conversation created a cocoon of intimacy around the two of you.

as the night wound down and your family began to bid their farewells, your boyfriend stood up, helping you with your chair. his fingers brushed against yours again, his touch lingering as he leaned in to press a soft kiss to your cheek. “thanks for letting me crash your family dinner,” he whispered, his warm breath sending shivers down your spine.

you turned to him, your heart full of affection. “anytime, as long as you keep bringing that charming smile of yours,” you replied with a grin.

with a final, lingering touch, he intertwined his fingers with yours and led you out of the restaurant.

// 김 gyuvin.

as you sat on your plane seat, you decided to put on your favorite playlist, drowning out the noise of the plane engines with your favorite tunes.

beside you, gyuvin shifted in his seat, trying to find a comfortable position. he glanced over at you, an affectionate smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “hey, you,” he said, leaning in closer to you.

you looked up from your phone, surprised by his sudden closeness. “hey there,” you replied, taking out one earbud and offering him a curious smile.

“mind if i join your musical adventure?” he asked, gesturing to the empty seat next to you.

you grinned and removed the other earbud, handing it to him. “sure, pick a song.”

he scrolled through your playlist, his eyebrows raising in pleasant surprise. “you have great taste,” he noted before selecting a song.

as the music played, you both bobbed your heads slightly in time with the beat. the melody created a light, carefree atmosphere, perfect for the journey ahead. gyuvin leaned back in his seat, but his fingers couldn't seem to stay still. they tapped rhythmically against his thigh, his hand occasionally brushing against yours.

“you know,” he began, his tone casual, “ive heard that couples who listen to music together are destined to stay together.”

you chuckled, raising an eyebrow at him. “is that so? and whos your source for this theory?”

he pretended to ponder for a moment, his lips curling into a mischievous grin. “well, the source might be me, but its still a valid theory.”

you playfully rolled your eyes, but a warm feeling spread through your chest. his playful nature was one of the things you loved most about him. as the music continued, gyuvins leg brushed against yours more frequently. he let his pinky finger graze against yours, his touch sending a tingle up your spine.

turning to him, you teased, “is this your subtle way of asking for affection?”

he chuckled, his cheeks taking on a faint rosy hue. “maybe just a little,” he admitted. “i mean, its a long flight. a guy needs some cuddle time, right?”

you laughed softly, your heart swelling with adoration for this man beside you. “well, i guess i cant argue with that.”

leaning a bit closer, gyuvin intertwined his fingers with yours, his touch warm and reassuring. “see, thats better,” he said with a grin. “much cozier.”

the two of you shared a comfortable silence, the music playing in your ears as the plane continued its journey. the sun had now fully set, painting the sky with shades of deep purples and blues. the cabin lights were dimmed, creating an intimate ambiance.

your boyfriend leaned his head against yours, his breath tickling your ear. “you know, i wouldnt mind if this plane ride lasted a little longer,” he whispered, his voice carrying a hint of playfulness.

you turned your head to meet his gaze, your heart fluttering at the affection in his eyes. “whys that?”

he shrugged, his lips curling into a tender smile. “just means more time for us to listen to music, share some cuddles, and maybe steal a few kisses.”

blushing, you leaned in, capturing his lips with your own.

// 박 gunwook.

you lay in your bedroom, your peaceful slumber untouched by the world around you. your room was like a haven of serenity, decorated with gentle shades of pastel and sunbeams filtering through the sheer curtains.

with you being unaware, gunwook has arrived earlier that morning. a playful smile danced on his lips as he watched you sleep, cherishing the quiet moments when he could admire your beauty without your witty retorts. he sat at the edge of the bed, his tousled hair giving him an endearing charm.

“gosh, youre so adorable when you sleep,” gunwook mused to himself, his voice a tender whisper.

a faint snore escaped you, and he chuckled softly. leaning in, he brushed a stray lock of hair from your face. his fingers lingered on your cheek, caressing it ever so gently, as if he was painting his affection through touch.

your lips curved into a slight smile in response to his touch, even in your slumber. he leaned closer, his lips hovering just above your ear.

“hey sleepyhead, time to wake up,” he murmured, his warm breath tickling your skin.

you stirred, a sweet sigh escaping you. “five more minutes,” you mumbled, your words laced with sleep.

gunwooks fingers traced a delicate path down your arm, leaving a trail of goosebumps in their wake. he chuckled again, the sound like a soothing melody. “you say that every morning, sweetheart.”

he let his fingers dance along your arm until they reached your hand. taking it in his, he gave it a gentle squeeze. “come on, the world is waiting for us today.”

you finally cracked open an eye, meeting his adoring gaze. “hmm, cant we just stay in bed forever?”

he laughed softly, his eyes sparkling with affection. “as tempting as that sounds, theres a whole day ahead of us. and ive got plans.”

your curiosity piqued, and you sat up slowly, rubbing the sleep from your eyes. “plans? what kind of plans?”

gunwooks grin widened. “ah, thats a secret for now. but first, i need you to be fully awake.” he tugged playfully at your hand.

you smirked, a playful glint in your eye. “so, waking me up is just a ploy to get my attention, huh?”

he leaned in, his lips brushing your forehead in a soft kiss. “well, that and the fact that i missed you.”

your heart fluttered at his words, a warm feeling spreading through you. “okay, okay, im up. but only because youre cute when you're desperate for attention."

your boyfriend feigned shock, a hand placed dramatically over his heart. “desperate for attention? me? never.”

you both shared a laugh, the sound filling the room with joy. as you got out of bed, gunwook wrapped his arms around you from behind, resting his chin on your shoulder.

“ready for the adventures of the day, my love?” he whispered, his voice filled with anticipation.

you leaned back into his embrace, a content smile gracing your lips. “always, as long as youre by my side.”

한 yujin.

pages were turning, notes were being jotted down, and equations were being solved as you were studying for your upcoming exam. little did you know, your doting boyfriend had something entirely different in mind.

with a twinkle in his eyes, yujin strolled over to your table, his tall figure casting a gentle shadow on your books. “hey there, brilliant mind,” he whispered, his voice a warm caress against your ear.

startled, you looked up, a surprised smile dancing across your lips. “yujin, you scared me…”

he snickered, his fingertips tracing invisible patterns on your back as he leaned down to peck your cheek. “sorry about that, but i just couldnt resist interrupting your study marathon.”

you playfully rolled your eyes. “oh really? and whats the occasion?”

he smirked, his hand moving to ruffle your hair affectionately. “no occasion, just missing my favorite person.”

returning to your notes, you raised an eyebrow. “mhm, and how exactly do i know youre not just craving snacks?”

yujin leaned against the table, his elbow barely grazing yours. “well, i might be a bit peckish too, but mostly i wanted to spend some time with you. just the two of us and these captivating textbooks,” he winked, his voice dripping with playful sincerity.

you couldnt help but chuckle, your annoyance at the interruption melting away. “youre something else, yujin.”

he grinned, his fingers now drawing soft circles on the back of your hand. “thats why you love me, right?”

you sighed dramatically. “i suppose so. but only because youre cute.”

yujins laughter filled the air, warm and melodic. “ah, youve discovered my secret weapon.”

with a mock sigh, you finally surrendered, closing your book and turning your attention to him. “fine, you win. what do you want to do?”

his face lit up, clearly thrilled that he had your full attention. “how about a study break? we can explore that garden outside. i heard theyve got roses that rival your beauty.”

you playfully nudged his shoulder. “smooth talker, arent you?”

he winked, his fingers now tracing your palm. “only for you.”

as you both stood up, yujin took your hand in his, his grip gentle and warm. the two of you walked towards the french doors leading to the garden, your steps light and laughter echoing in the air.

the garden was a riot of color, with vibrant flowers swaying in the breeze. your boyfriends arm found its way around your waist as he pointed out various blooms, narrating stories about each one. you couldnt help but be charmed by his enthusiasm.

as you both found a cozy bench beneath a blossoming cherry tree, yujin pulled you close, his head resting on your shoulder. “you know, i think i could get used to studying like this."

you smiled, leaning into him. “well, its definitely more enjoyable with you around.”

he pressed a soft kiss to your temple, his fingers idly drawing circles on your thigh. “ill always be here to distract you, you know that, right?”

you tilted your head to look at him, your heart swelling with affection. “yeah, i do. and i wouldnt have it any other way.”

© gvnvks 2023. do not copy or translate any of my works.

#zb1 #zerobaseone #zb1 imagines #zb1 headcanons #zb1 reactions #zb1 x reader #zb1 drabbles #kim jiwoong #zhang hao #sung hanbin #seok matthew #kim taerae #ricky shen #shen ricky #kim gyuvin #park gunwook #han yujin #boys planet reactions #boys planet headcanons #boys planet x reader #boys planet

[your-local-simp-writers]

A Gift Beyond Measure

Word Count: 588

Warnings: None

Vil Schoenheit x Fem!Reader ︶꒦꒷♡꒷꒦︶︶꒦꒷♡꒷꒦︶︶꒦꒷♡꒷꒦︶︶꒦꒷♡꒷꒦︶

The Night Raven College was a place where magic was as common as the air we breathed, and today, it was charged with a different kind of enchantment. It was Vil Schoenheit’s birthday, and as his girlfriend, I wanted to make it unforgettable.

Vil, the epitome of grace and beauty, had captured my heart from our first encounter. Our relationship had begun as a tentative friendship, sparked by a shared interest in alchemy and a mutual respect for each other’s talents. Over time, our bond had deepened, and we found ourselves drawn together by more than just academic pursuits. Vil, with his impeccable standards and keen eye for beauty, had seen something in me that I hadn’t seen in myself, and under his subtle guidance, I had flourished.

I held in my hands a gift that symbolized the depth of my feelings for him.

The gift I had chosen for him was a reflection of our journey together—a handcrafted journal, its cover embossed with the emblem of Pomefiore and dyed in a deep blue that matched his dormitory’s colors. It was more than just a book; it was a repository for our memories and a promise of the many moments we had yet to share.

I approached Pomefiore Dormitory with a mixture of excitement and nerves. The gift, a small, exquisitely bound journal, was more than just a collection of pages; it was a canvas for our future together. Each empty page was an invitation to fill it with our dreams, our adventures, and our love.

Knocking gently on Vil’s door, I waited with bated breath. “Enter,” came his voice, a command that still sent shivers down my spine. I took a deep breath, smoothing out the imaginary wrinkles on my dress. 

The room was a vision of sophistication, much like Vil himself. He sat at his vanity, his golden locks reflecting the soft light, his eyes meeting mine in the mirror. “Happy Birthday, my love,” I said, my voice filled with the tenderness I felt for him. 

He turned, his gaze lingering on me with an intensity that made my heart flutter.His gaze softening. “What have you brought me?” he asked, a playful curiosity in his tone.

I handed him the gift, watching as he unwrapped it with the care of someone who understood the value of anticipation. “It’s a journal,” I said, “for us to fill with our thoughts, our dreams, and our story.”

Vil opened the journal, his eyes scanning the first page where I had written a note:

'To Vil, who teaches me that beauty isn’t just seen, but also felt and shared. May this journal be a canvas for the masterpiece we will create together. With all my love, (Y/N).

A smile, rare and breathtaking, spread across his face. “This is exquisite,” he said, his voice carrying a warmth that filled the room. “You know me well, my dear.”

We spent the afternoon in each other’s company, talking and laughing as we had in the early days of our friendship. The journal lay open between us, a silent witness to the love that had grown in the space between words.

As the day turned to evening, and the shadows grew long, I knew that this birthday would be etched in our memories, a day of simple joys and profound emotions. And as I left Vil to his thoughts, the journal in his hands, I carried with me the knowledge that the best gifts are those that speak from the heart.

#twisted wonderland #twst #twst x reader #twisted wonderland x reader #twst x you #twisted wonderland x you #twisted wonderland fanfic #twisted wonderland fluff #twst imagines #twst fanfic #twst fluff #twisted wonderland x female reader #twst x female reader #twisted wonderland imagine #x female y/n #vil twisted wonderland #female!mc #f!mc #twst pomefiore #vil schoenheit #vil schoenheit x reader #vil schoenheit x yuux f!reader #Twisted Wonderland #disney twisted wonderland #twst wonderland #Twisted Wonderland Fluff #x female reader #vil schoenheit x yuu #disney twst #vil shoenheit x reader

[robinwinged]

escapism in "the boy and the heron"

Interrupting my regularly scheduled programming of Good Omens brainrot for this attempt to process the wonderful, fantastical, and distinctly discombobulating experience of watching Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Boy and the Heron.” 

Miyazaki’s films, at least to me, have never been straightforward to follow. Spirited Away, for example, is a beautiful masterpiece whose meaning is difficult to decipher on a first watch, and is only fully unveiled when you dive headfirst into research of Japan’s context and the movie’s many symbolic themes. The Boy and the Heron takes this typical Miyazaki complexity and ineffability and turns it up to eleven. There are so many elements that seem random, so many narrative arcs and characters all warring for attention (what is the tower? why are the parakeets so goddamn bloodthirsty? why is the blue heron such a creepy old man?), that combine to create a whimsical but overall also very strange landscape. 

I know that art in general does not have to have “meaning” or “a message” to be deserving of our love and attention. Art can be touching, affecting, disturbing, provoking - any number of things that would give it credit - and damn it if The Boy and the Heron isn’t all of these combined. But. 

But.

This is also a Miyazaki movie, and he has proven once and time again why he is the master of hidden meaning, and so here, in no particular order, are my half-formed rambles on what I have personally think each movie detail that I struggled to puzzle out initially is about. 

(spoilers below, so proceed with caution!)

The tower, time, and escapism 

The tower is the central mystery point of the movie - a literal mystical rock that crashed down from the heavens and later lured Mahito’s grand-grand uncle (let’s call him the Tower Master for convenience’s sake) into its depths. Within the tower is a mirage world filled with magic but no real living beings, controlled by the whims of the Tower Master and nothing else that remotely resembles logic or reality. The tower also contains a series of doors that seem to lead to different points in time, if the ending is to go by and how the 13 blocks are meant to be pieces of worlds the Tower Master has visited. So what is this strange and fantastic realm, and what role does it play in the overarching narrative? 

My hypothesis is that the Tower is a pocket free from the influence of time (think like the TVA in Loki) - a separate island running parallel to the fabric of the universe that contains portals to different points of past, present, and future. By itself, the pocket has no life or substance; it must be filled by the imagination - pure imagination, untethered to reality - of its main (human) inhabitant. This is why most of the ships are illusions rather than real objects, why the parakeets are so ridiculously odd and behave nothing like real

birds, why the fish is the size of Kiriko’s damn ship. Anything that is real, has to be brought in from the real world (see: the pelicans, Himi, and Kiriko). This is also why the parakeet king immediately topples the tower: yes, he is not the Tower Master’s descendant, but he is also not inherently a real sentient being, and an imaginary object cannot in itself sustain a further imagination. 

So why does the Tower Master choose to sequester himself in this alternate space, where he can only exist alone with his own mysterious creations? I think the Tower Master represents those of us who wish to escape from reality, to inhabit worlds which we can control, where pain doesn’t have to touch us if we don’t wish for it (whether I’m projecting reallyyyyy hard at this point does not matter ok). He is an insanely avid reader, with books literally piled in small mountains throughout his living quarters, and don’t we readers (i.e me, again) always wish for escapism? The Tower Master, then, is an example of those who would rather become entrapped in our own minds rather than deal with the world beyond us - maybe, even in a way, a little like Miyazaki himself, whose imagination is so powerful but is also extremely singular and all-consuming, anchoring him to his creative work without reprieve of retirement until his reserves run dry (not to imply that the man is a hermit or that I want him to retire, quite the opposite in fact, but parallels, no matter how shaky, can still be drawn). 

This, too, explains why the Tower Master needs Mahito to control the world for him. It is not because he’s grown old, since he cannot be affected by time in the Tower, but it is because his imagination is stagnating - he is no longer capable of finding new ways to balance the tower, he cannot sustain the fantasy any longer. In itself, this can already serve as a message from Miyazaki - we cannot hope to live only within the confines of our minds if we do not interact at all with the real world, because then at some point we will run out of material, of lived experiences to build on top of, and threaten to crumble the fragile imaginary world we have created. 

Himi and her fire powers

Himi is a strange hiccup in the system - a rare occurrence of a living person in this fantasy playland that wasn’t brought into it during Mahito’s own entrance, like Kiriko. This theory is a little bit out there, I can totally appreciate that myself, but remember that one year in which Mahiko disappeared from the real world and then came back completely unchanged? I think she chose to stay there for much longer than a year, knowing that time didn’t work the same in this pocket world and she always had the chance to return to her original timeline through the handy door-portals. I think Himi has stayed there essentially until she met Mahito - so long that she actually grew into a part of the fantasy, developing impossible pyrokinetic powers and becoming a set part of the landscape in exchange for extended youth. But this stay didn’t come without consequences. In the real world, Mahiko passes away in a fire, at a younger age than would be expected. Perhaps this, in itself, is a punishment for cheating time - the universe reclaiming the years that Himi spent in the Tower. It’s also definitely not a coincidence that Himi can control fire in the Tower, and dies by fire in the real world; a form of lethal poetic justice, if you will. Seeing Mahito was the trigger for Himi to leave, to embrace her own destiny, because she could now see and be proud of the outcomes of her life and not have regrets about missing out on the life passing her by. (This interpretation would then necessarily imply a deterministic version of life and time, so it’s probably not everyone’s cup of tea, but I think it makes sense in this version because you see doors way farther down than the present which Mahito steps into.) 

The starving pelicans 

The pelicans are another anomaly because they, too, are not figments of the Tower Master’s imagination, but instead have been brought into this fantasy world, for one reason or another, likely against their will. And this is where the Tower Master’s escape from reality cracks and burns at the foundation - he creates harm rather than good when he brings in the pelicans, because he does not account for the fact that they cannot exist without a source of food, and they then are forced to eat the Warawara to survive. The movie states that the Warawara are like baby souls, who ascend to become new lives, but I think it’s a little more metaphorical than literal rebirth. For me the Warawara are metaphorical ideas or seedlings of inspiration, the only parts of the Tower Master’s creations which aren’t fully formed, but allowed to grow by themselves and escape into the world - like passing the spark of creation to others outside the Tower. And the pelicans, involuntary prisoners of the Tower Master’s fantasy world, must prey on the Warawara before they have the chance to become real. This can be seen (if you squint real hard and do some violent spins so your vision is hella blurry) as the beginning of the end of the Tower Master’s reign - the forceful inclusion of other sentient beings inside his imagination doesn’t help him enrich his internal realm, but rather snuffs out the genuine inspiration that he could be passing onto others, creating pain where the Tower Master hoped to be spared from it. 

Mahito’s rejection of the Tower

So with this central “Tower as escapism” theory, what does Mahito’s rejection to take over for the Tower Master mean? There is a moment that was so subtly powerful in that final exchange between the two, when Mahito stops denying the truth by telling everyone that he got his scar from falling, and instead admits that self-harm was the actual cause. At the beginning of the movie, I viewed that moment of very painful self-harm as Mahito’s wish to withdraw from the challenges of life - to live in isolation away from the grief over losing his mother, the challenges of being the rich new kid in town, the overwhelming discomfort of seeing his father shack up with his aunt. His reality is agonizing for him, and the fantasy land is so beautiful in its strange way that it could become a safe haven away from his trauma. But when Mahito says “no”, he is choosing reality; he is choosing to do the hard work, to face all the hardships life can throw at him, because he feels finally strong enough to not need to use imagination as an escapist crutch. In those final moments, Mahito is choosing to live in a world that he cannot control, because no matter how tough things get, he doesn’t have to do it alone - and that’s what I think Miyazaki is telling us too. 

Of course, the movie also deals with themes of class conflict and war profiteering; grief and acceptance; continuing your ancestors’ legacies versus paving your own path, which many have already discussed and I don’t particularly have anything new to add to. Regardless, these themes are masterfully woven into the plot, as per usual, and serve to elevate the movie’s emotional impact into something heart-twisting and truly unforgettable. 

Alright, ramble over - back to fandom lurking! 

#the boy and the heron #studio ghibli #hayao miyazaki #the boy and the heron spoilers #robin rambles #the kind of movie that makes you think #or perhaps overthink?? #the boy and the heron meta

[yours-mythically]

The Chronicles of Chaos and Cuddles: Big Dreams

In a small, sunlit room, little you, a small bundle of energy, had a big dream. You wanted to be an astronaut and explore the vastness of space. One day, as you looked at the stars twinkling in the night sky, a brilliant idea popped into your head.

"Mommy! Mama! Guess what?" You exclaimed, your eyes sparkling with excitement.

Wanda and Nat turned to you, with smiles on their faces, "What's up, sweetie?" Nat asked, her eyes curious.

"I wanna be an astronaut, mama!" You declared, your tiny hands reaching for the sky.

Wanda chuckled, "That's an amazing dream, little one."

"But I can't go to space now, right?" You questioned with a hint of disappointment.

Nat knelt down, meeting your eyes, "Not right now, kiddo, you're too small. But one day, who knows? You might just reach for the stars."

Determined not to let your dream fade away, you decided to take matters into your own hands. The next day, armed with cardboard boxes, glue, and colorful markers, you set out to build your very own rocket. Your moms watched, amazed by your creativity.

"Look, mommy! Look, mama! It's my space rocket!" You proudly announced, presenting the...masterpiece.

Wanda and Nat exchanged smiles, appreciating the effort you put into your cardboard creation, "It's fantastic, sweetheart!" Wanda praised.

You climbed into your cardboard rocket, pretending to press buttons and countdown to launch, "3...2...1...Blast off!"

Your moms joined in the fun and cheered for your imaginary space journey. In that moment, the living room transformed into an intergalactic adventure, and you were the fearless, little astronaut leading the way.

As the day turned into night, your moms tucked you into bed with a promise, "Dream big, little astronaut. One day, who knows where your dreams will take you."

With a heart full of joy and dreams of space adventures, you drifted off to sleep, knowing that even cardboard rockets could carry the most extraordinary dreams.

#yours-mythically #marvel #the avengers #natasha romanoff x reader #natasha romanoff #black widow x reader #platonic #natasha romanoff x you #natasha x reader #wanda maximoff x reader #wanda x you #wanda x reader #wandanat #wanda maximoff #mama nat #natasha romanoff x daughter!reader

[pastelsnowcat]

Three is a charm, two is not the same pt. 11

» [3 - Britney Spears] «

1:25 ─〇───── 3:33 ⇄◃◃ ⅠⅠ ▹▹ ↻

Hello!! Second part of my first series/smut/ Drabble lmao, hope you guys enjoy <3

Minors, do not interact or I will chase you like a dog with rabies :) The blog is an adult space

Pairing: Yuki x Shoko x fem!reader

Second part so hopefully you read the first part and got the gist of it. Filthy, lesbian smut :) established polyamorous, lesbian relationship. Semi-public sex, masturbation

11.35pm

11.36pm

11.37pm

Time kept passing, and neither Shoko or Yuki were home yet- and you were bored. At this point in time you moved to your shared bedroom and were now laying in bed after stripping your shorts, now only wearing Yuki’s shirt- which was too big for you- and the black panties you stole from Shoko like a naughty puppy.

Thinking about Yuki got you all hot and bothered- but without at least one of your girls, you had to take the matter into your own hands.

Your hand creeps down your body, tactically moving underneath the black underwear and ghosting over your heated core. It reminds you of the way Shoko always touches you, calculated moves drawing out small gasps and whimpers as she never interrupts the intense eye contact.

With a defeated sigh you pull out your phone and set it up on the nightstand next to you. The first time you weren’t quite so successful and it slipped and dropped, but the second time it didn’t- the camera now capturing a perfect view of your body as you settled back into position.

“Really miss you two.. think you’d hurry ‘nd come home..” you admit to the camera but directing your request towards your pretty girlfriends, your plead followed by a soft sigh as you moved your hand down your panties again.

Once more, your mind starts to wander but focusing on her this time.

Shoko. Shoko. Shoko.

A chant racing through your head, causing you to tremble, to moan at the imaginary touch of your favorite doctor. Whereas Yuki is more energetic, fucks you like she hasn’t touched a woman in years- Shoko is a lot more calculated in her movements.

Memories of the broody brunette flood your mind and vivid images of her leaning against that wooden desk of hers, in her office, cause you to jump slightly as your fingertips barely graze your throbbing clit, a string of your arousal clinging onto them.

And you remember vividly.

Her, you, in her office late at night. You came to visit her during her night shift, and you two were all alone.

“Hmmm.. keep your legs open for me, can you do that?” She murmurs against your dripping cunt, lapping at your heated middle like a starving animal with expert fingers slowly pumping into you, scissoring you wide open for her.

Shoko knew exactly how to drive you mad, how to lick and suckle at your clit while her fingers worked into you ever so gently, her trimmed nails carefully dragging along your warm, wet walls.

“Shoko, Sho.. please-..” you begged quietly, pushing your hips further towards her soft lips and shaking underneath her touch.

Yuki might push you physically, pulling and twisting you into all kinds of positions and overstimulation your body and cunt for hours, using her strong hands and quick tongue and her favorite strap, but Shoko…

Shoko tortures you mentally, making you beg and plead and pray for her like she’s god herself. Your doctor wouldn’t spank you like Yuki would, no, but she will make you cry pretty tears until she would finally allow you to touch her already whenever you dared to disobey her, after she had touched herself so sinfully in front of you with your hands tied behind your back. Pushing her delicate fingers in- and out of her own, soaked cunt, never breaking eye contact with you.

Shoko could make you cum with her eyes alone, her intimidating gaze drilling into you much like her fingers and her beautiful dark, sleepy eyes never leaving the masterpiece that your body is- a sculpture in desperate need of polishing.

“Tsk Tsk..” she coos, her voice low and sultry and toxic. “So impatient.. needy lil’ thing, hm?”

Her tongue licks a strip up your core, before disappearing entirely into your clenching cunt alongside her fingers, watching you closely and registering every single twitch and shudder of your muscles, the way your soft skin twisted underneath her and how your breath was shallow and fast.

Shoko is a smoker, and a drinker. One could say she’s an addict to nicotine and alcohol- if only they knew her real fixation, cigarettes and booze and any other substance she has ever ingested paling in comparison to you. Even the craving of a cigarette after a hard day, or the warm embrace of whiskey in the evenings couldn’t ever compete with your sweet taste.

The only sweet thing Shoko enjoys, and simultaneously the reason why the doctor can’t stand any other sweet things- you’re more than enough for her tastebuds. Your arousal would cling onto Shoko’s tongue, stick at her teeth like chewy caramel, coating her entire mouth (and even her chin, so messy) with that delicious liquid she seeks.

Even Winnie the Pooh himself ain’t got shit on her when it comes to your honey.

“Why don’t you ask again, mh? For me, sweet girl..” she asks huskily, her cheek now resting against your thigh as she never halted the movement of her digits, massaging and rubbing your sweet spot.

“Fuck- please Sho-“ you ask, voice high and airy and so desperate. Desperate for the older woman.

“Watch your mouth, pretty” Shoko warns, her eyebrow twitching slightly at your use of cuss words. She doesn’t approve if you do, convinced you’re far too refined, too good for such expressions.

You’re her good girl after all, her sweet little girlfriend, her favorite trophy. Shoko never wasted a single thought about buying you pretty things or treating you to your favorite lunch. You deserve to be spoiled after all, don’t you? And when Yuki is just a little too rough on your body, fucking into you just a little too unhinged, Shoko would be right there to treat your little bruises and blemishes. It’s a deadly combination, but it just fits so perfectly- Yuki is a fighter, the heavy hitter. But Shoko is a healer in every way, and she’ll always put you back together just for Yuki to break you down entirely, and the circle would repeat itself. Again, and again.

“‘M sorry, sorry Sho, please- please, I’m begging you!” You cry out, hoping Shoko will notice the apologetic tone in your voice. With your favorite blonde you weren’t afraid to be bratty, you would push her buttons and see just how far you can extend your limits, but you want to be good for Shoko. You need to be good for Shoko.

With a simple nod, Shoko dove right back into your cunt. Her wrist is now picking up the pace and her tongue circles your clit with experience, gaze fixated on you like a lion stalking its prey. With every passing moment, the tension crackling and almost igniting in her office at Jujutsu tech, you got closer and closer to your climax.

And looking down was a mistake.

A mistake which catapulted you directly into your orgasm, too fast, too sudden to realize what was happening.

Shoko’s cheeks were flushed red, her pupils blown wide and making her eyes appear even darker than usual. Her eyebrows furrowed in concentration, and the tip of her nose glistening underneath the dim lighting after it kept rubbing against your cunt, occasionally brushing your clit. It’s rare, a luxury, to see the brunette so heated about something. And her nonchalant demeanor nowhere to be seen- if Shoko is passionate about even just one thing, it’s to make you feel good, to show you how you deserve to be treated. And now she isn’t as put together as she usually is either, her lab coat hanging loosely off her shoulders and a droplet of her salvia- venom, according to your opinion, one that will drive you mad seeking more- running down the corner of her mouth.

And it’s unsure who’s more obsessed with whom- if you adore Shoko more, or if she’s more mesmerized by you. When you first met the intimidating doctor, well respected by her peers and a valuable asset to the sorcerer’s world, your breath got caught in your throat. She might not seem that way at first glance, but she’s a force to be reckoned with.

Like a panther she circled you, stalked you until she caught you between her claws with the intention of never letting you go again. And you’re more than willing to let her eat you alive, savor your flesh between her teeth and drink your blood if she had asked you to allow her.

“You’re okay, sweet girl.. cum for me, be good and I might just give you a treat” she reassures and commands with the same words, curling her fingers in a way she knew would heighten the pleasure of your ongoing climax, one that crashed over you and threatened to drown you.

You don’t mind drowning though, do you?

Not if it’s Shoko who’s pulling you under to take your breath away, to surround you entirely until there’s nothing but her. Shoko is your Narcissus, and you’re happy with drowning as long as it meant you could keep looking at her, keep existing within her enchanting presence as it is truly a privilege to be loved by her.

Second part y’all, third part will be up soon (hopefully) :> I’m so in love with Shoko oh my god. Anyways please let me know what you think about the use of my color usage and the format overall 🙏 still trying to figure it all out:)

This part is dedicated to @nanam0-0n , the biggest Shoko Simp I know except for me 😔

#jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen shoko #shoko ieiri smut #shoko ieiri x reader #jjk manga #ninäswrites #jujutsu kaisen shoko ieiri #jujutsu kaisen anime #lesbian #polyamourous #drabble #jjk shoko ieiri #jjk shoko #jjk x reader #jjk smut #jjk anime #shoko ieiri #ieiri shoko #shoko x reader

[sweetkpopmusings]

stray kids as nephilim <3

a/n: my roommate and i discussed this briefly and they wanted me to write blurbs so here we are ! i won't lie; this got me in my feels, so i hope it brings you comfort <33 pics not mine~

content: nephilim!straykids, supernatural au | wc: 0.6k | warnings: none really! | pairing: stray kids x gn!reader | requests: open

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

chan♡‧₊˚

the crackling of a bonfire, moss growing over forgotten rubble, a promise that’s kept

chan, though sometimes haunted by the turmoil of being an in-between being, loves nothing more than to use his powers to heal wounds. he sees beauty in once-broken things, and, when you meet him, you feel all your scars melt together into a beautiful masterpiece. when he looks at you, it’s as though you’ve stepped into fresh sunlight after being trapped in the cold.

minho♡‧₊˚

lightning in a summer storm, the smell of fresh tea leaves, finally getting what you need 

minho believes the best way to use his strength is to protect any and all creatures–humans included–from physical and emotional harm. when you meet him, your fear is replaced with only gratitude because the protector you once waited for is now by your side. when minho looks at you, the world seems renewed, like a forest after a fire.

changbin♡‧₊˚

flowers picked for someone special, handwritten notes, an “i love you” that warms your chest

changbin promised himself that his strength–physical and metaphysical–would only be used to uplift the world. in particular, he loved sending people signs that things were going to be okay. when you meet him, serenity cascades over you, everything falling into place. when changbin looks at you, you smile, knowing with certainty that joy is everlasting. 

hyunjin♡‧₊˚

the smell of the ocean, incense burning in a crystal shop, a gaze that reveals everything

hyunjin finds beauty everywhere, particularly in people. his heart aches knowing that everyone must hurt at one point or another, so he uses his powers to give art to those who are sad, lonely, and in pain. when you meet hyunjin, he hands you a watercolor, images flowing out of the page and enveloping your body in a comforting embrace. when he looks at you, you understand what it is like to be deeply and truly seen.

jisung♡‧₊˚

music playing in the distance, dewdrops in sunlight, hearing what you need to hear

jisung, as a writer by nature, is often up late into the night. he knows just how important safe escapism is, and he uses his abilities to ensure people have good, restorative dreams. when you first meet jisung, he promises to take away the stress of your day by returning you to a favorite imaginary land from childhood. when he looks at you, your shoulders relax because it finally all makes sense.  

felix♡‧₊˚

sunlight breaking through the trees, soft footsteps down familiar paths, a truth you can bear 

felix knows how much it hurts to be stranded and alone, so he channels in power into searching for lost animals and returning them to the warmth and belonging of their homes. when you meet him, he’s cradling a lost kitten in his arms, cooing so softly that your heart feels more soothed than you ever thought possible. when felix looks at you, it feels like a promise to find each other again and again and again. 

seungmin♡‧₊˚

laughter that lingers in your memory, autumn leaves falling, finding your safe space

seungmin finds the fun in every situation, and he thinks the best way to help others with his powers is to create pockets of joy in what can be such a dark world. when you meet seungmin, the sound of his laughter reverbing off your own makes the whole world fade away. when he looks at you, you know with certainty that happiness is around every corner, waiting for you.

jeongin♡‧₊˚

catching your breath after a long run, the comfort of a worn-in jacket, a heartfelt “thank you” 

jeongin spends his free time creating beautiful scenery to encourage people to slow down, breathe, and appreciate what life has to offer. when you meet him, you’re both wandering around a garden–his favorite–and you watch with wonder as a butterfly lands on his outstretched hand. when jeongin looks at you, your imagination runs wild, a swarm of butterflies filling your stomach with the endless possibilities he offers you.

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

#stray kids #stray kids blurbs #skz #skz blurbs #stray kids fluff #skz fluff #stray kids x reader #skz x reader #stray kids au #skz au #stray kids imagines #skz imagines #bang chan x reader #chan x reader #lee know x reader #minho x reader #changbin x reader #hyunjin x reader #han x reader #jisung x reader #felix x reader #seungmin x reader #i.n x reader #jeongin x reader #bang chan #lee minho #seo changbin #hwang hyunjin #han jisung #felix lee

[yourdarlingness]

✦ Artistic ~ themed names, pronouns, and titles !

──　NAMES :　palette . colourette . art . acry / acrylinne . canvainne . muse . canvesse . artisse . penny . inkinne . inklita . sketch . sketchoria . illustria . illustrine . digatelle . colorisia . doodelia

──　PRNS :　co / color . pai / paint . bru / brush . art / artistic . cre / creative . cae / canvas . ske / sketch . pa / pastel . water / color . scri / scribble . doo / doodle . ima / imaginary . vi / visual . di / digital . he / hex . pen / pencil . 🖍️. 🎨 . 🖌️

──　TITLES :　the lover of arts . the talented artisan . the artist(e) . the artist's muse . the dying artist . the painted beauty . the burnt-out artisan

prn* who creates masterpiece . prn* who appreciates beauty . prn* hidden talent . prn* who draws the world's beauty . prn* who has a mind of its own . prn* who is visually artistic

DAY 5 of @hawntedboy ' s event !

#🦑 sea floor ┈ ♡ #i will not take NPT suggestions requests! #bc its hard #mogai #pro mogai #name suggestions #pronouns #neopronouns #title suggestions #pronoun suggestions

[lllivia]

Happy birthday, cara mia

Wednesday Addams x fem!reader

☆.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°★.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°☆

☆.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°★.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°☆

You were sitting at the weathervane cafe with Wednesday as usual, doing your homework. "Shit I'm kinda hungry, I'm gonna go buy a sandwich, do you want something?" you said getting up and almost tripping from a biology paper you lost on the floor. Looking up in amusement Wednesday rolled her eyes at your little sqeal "no thank you, I'll stick to my coffee".

Blushing slightly in embarrassment you walked over to the counter where Tyler was standing ready to take your order "Hi Y/N what can I get for you?" You looked through the glass counter for a second before choosing. "Hmm I'll take an avocado sandwich"

Walking back to your seat with your sandwich, some hot chocolate and a slice of red velvet cake you looked happily at Wednesday "Tyler gave me this for free since my birthday is coming up! He's so nice" Wednesday's eyes flickered up to yours fast after hearing that. "Birthday? You didn't tell me it was your birthday?" Trying to hide her panic, her mind flew rapidly across what she could do for you. "I didn't? Huh must of slipped my mind, I don't really do much for my birthday usually" munching on your cake you grinned at her wide eyes.

"I got to go, I think I just figured something out about the murders" Wednesday said quickly getting up and packing her things, hoping you'd believe her lie. "oh alright, want me to help you?" You asked setting your fork down slightly disappointed that she was leaving this soon. "No, I have to do this alone, I'll come by your dorm tonight"

Rushing into her dorm Wednesday slammed the door behind her, scaring Enid that missed her nail and got light blue nail polish all over her her hand instead. "HOLY SHIT WEDNESDAY, YOU CAN'T JUST COME IN LIKE THAT" Standing up ready to argue she noticed how the girl on the dark side of the room seemed occupied by something. "If I remember right Enid this is a shared dorm" rolling her eyes Enid skipped over to her roommate. "Soooo watcha doing, I thought you were on a date with Y/N?" She asked standing behind her as she was looking for paper on her desk "I was, before Y/N told me unbelievably late that her birthday is in a couple of days... And I want to do something nice for her. can you maybe.. Help me?"

Enid stood still as a statue for about a second before "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE OMG WEDNESDAY ADDAMS JUST ASKED FOR MY PARTY ADVICE" flinching slightly at Enid's scream she merely looked at her amused. "So are you going to help me or not, because if you aren't I can get Thing to help instead"

Later that evening Wednesday and Enid had already put up a big board of ideas, not noticing how late it actually was before now Wednesday glanced over the board once again before walking over to the door "where are you going, I thought we were working on ideas?" Enid said confused, turning away from her so called 'masterpiece'. "I'm sleeping in Y/N's dorm tonight, she wanted to watch some movie called 'Harry Potter' about some imaginary wizarding world or something"

The next day she was up and going before you even woke up, it was the day before your birthday and she was rushing to find the perfect gift that you'd enjoy.

After walking through the small town in circles for at least an hour she finally spotted the perfect gift - a beautiful ring with a blue/grey crystal on display in the window of Uriah's heap. Walking in she immediately asked the lady at the counter to get it for her not caring about how expensive it was seeing it was for the love of her life.

Proudly walking back to her dorm she was almost ready for her girlfriends special day, secretly excited to see her reaction to what she had prepared. Closing the door behind her she walked over to her desk, ignoring Enid's grinning face that was awing at her. Packing the ring up neatly in some black silk paper she almost smiled. The day was starting to slip by so she decided it was finally time to go to your dorm to sleep.

The sun shining bright outside woke you up as you reached out trying to find Wednesday's resting body next to yours, only to find a cold empty space next to you, feeling sad you got up. Even though you didn't really care for your birthday you still hoped that Wednesday would at least wake up next to you. After getting dressed in your normal school attire you were about to leave your dorm when you saw a note laying folded on your desk.

"Meet me at weathervane at 11:00 - W. A."

Cursing to yourself you realized that it was already 10:32 and you didn't have much time to get there. Almost running outside you bumped into Enid "fuck- OH- HAPPY BIRTHDAY Y/N" Enid yelled unnecessarily loud causing people to turn around to stare, not really caring Enid grabbed both of your hands and spun you around squealing. "Enid, Enid- I'm going to throw up if you continue to spin me around" you laugh at your best friends behavior. "I'm just so excited, it's your special day after all cutie!!" She said and hugged you tightly, closing your eyes you hugged her back loving your friends kindness.

Walking into weathervane your eyes scanned the shop for your goth girlfriend, immediately spotting her sitting there with a big bouquet of roses, you smile widely at how adorable she looked with her freckles being more noticeable in the sunshine. Sitting down in front of her you gazed over the table, where there was every kind of cake from the cafe in front of you. "What's all this for Wens?" You asked curiously "well I wasn't really sure what cake you would prefer, so, I bought them all." Wednesday said in her deadpan voice, rolling her eyes at you like it was obvious, blushing you looked away, not used to this kind of treatment from any of your other former partners. "Also here, Enid said it would be romantic to give you these flowers" she said giving the gorgeous flowers to you. "Thank you so much Wednesday, I love them, and I love you, I really wasn't expecting something like this, thank you" you pecked her dark lips "of course, I would do anything to see you happy dolcezza" she responded smiling slightly - something she would almost only do with you.

"I'm sorry Y/N but I have something I got to do" Wednesday said in her most apologetic voice grabbing your hand. "Oh, alright, are you still going to be sleeping in my dorm tonight?" You said somberly looking down at the table "of course my love, I'll see you later" Wednesday said before getting up and leaving the cafe, again leaving you alone to your thoughts.

Finally back in your dorm you sighed getting a vase and filling it up with water from your bathroom, you went back over to your desk before putting the vase there with the flowers in it. Finding a good book on the shelf that occupied most of your wall you sat down on your bed and relaxed, trying not to be suspicious of what Wednesday was doing.

The clock was nearing 04:00 pm when you finally heard a knock on your door, but as soon as you opened the door, Thing rushed inside, signing as fast as he could. "Hold on Thing, you're going to fast, I literally can't understand a word you're saying" you said worried by the urgency. "Wednesday, hurt - woods - dorm Wednesday got hurt by the monster in the woods and now she's back in her dorm??!" You said now ready to run out to get her as thing nodded, putting on your shoes you hurried over to Wednesday's shared dorm where you knocked forcefully entering without getting any response.

"SURPRISEEEE"

The multiple people in the room shouted, everyone wearing colorful party hats - even Wednesday, who was weirdly sporting a big crooked smile on her face. "Happy birthday again Y/N!!!" Enid came up first handing you her gift. Opening the glittery bag up you noticed it was a bright pink sweater with a dog print wearing sunglasses on, kinda confused you thanked her profusely before walking over and saying hi to the other guests, Eugene had gotten you three glasses of honey from his hive and Ajax had gotten you one of those weird stuffed rats from Uriah's heap as a joke, when you finally got to Wednesday she was holding a small package in her hand. "This is for you my love" you took her gift gently and opened the wrapping paper, gasping you looked at the beautiful ring before looking up at Wednesday, the look of love being all over your face. "Thank you so much Wens, this is the best birthday I've ever had, also, if you ever scare me by saying you're hurt again I will kill you." You said glaring a bit at the end of your sentence, taking the ring from you Wednesday put it on your finger, a sadistic smirk playing on her lips "I had to surprise you somehow, happy birthday, cara mia"

💗🍰🥳 It's my birthday!! 🥳🍰💗

💗 Masterlist 💗

#gf material #my wife #wednesday addams #enid sinclair #eugene otinger #wednesday 2022 #wednesday addams fanfic #wednesday addams imagines #wednesday addams netflix #wednesday addams imagine #wednesday addams x female reader #wednesday netflix #wednesday addams smut #wednesday addams x reader #wednesday addams x you #wednesday fanfic #wednesday fanfiction #wednesday imagine #wednesday the series #wednesday fic #jennaortega #jenna #jenna ortega #jenna ortega x r #jenna ortega x reader #jenna ortega icons #jenna ortega imagine #wednesday imagines #wednesday x fem!reader #made by lllivia