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noxturnalpascal · 5 months

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Dancing is a Dangerous Game

(FrankieMorales x F!Stripper!Reader)

A/N & Warnings: Sexual Content below - 18+ only, Frankie doing what he do (iykyk), unspecified age gap (anywhere from 10-15 yrs), talk of stripping/dancing as a job that pays the bills. The photos on the Moodboard are just for fun, the female Reader is not specifically physically described so you can imagine her however you want. Thank you to @saradika for the divider.

Did I make this prompt up myself for me and some fellow writers? Yes. Did I set the word count limit? Also Yes. Did I stick anywhere even close to that limit? *laughs hysterically.

PROMPT: Pick a Pedge Daddy character - Joel Miller, Frankie Morales, Dave York, etc. (it can be Canon or Non-Canon/AU/No Outbreak).

PPCU Daddy is surprised - and excited - to learn that the grad/postgrad student he hires to watch his child sometimes also works as a: stripper/dancer/cam-girl/onlyfans-model/dating-or-escort-service (or straight-up SW)

*1000 word Minimum - 2000 word Maximum

WC: 4749 (I have a problem)

Frankie’s mouth was hanging open. He knew he should close it. He knew he looked like a weirdo. He knew he was about to get a “Catfish, lookin’ like a fish” joke from his friends. But for the life of him he couldn’t take his eyes off the stage, or close his gaping jaw.

Not since his babysitter walked on stage and started taking her clothes off.

To be fair, you're not his babysitter anymore. Not since he called you three weeks ago asking if you could babysit for him tonight and you broke the news to him that you'd gotten a new job and couldn't babysit anymore. At least now he understands why you left the not-so-lucrative world of babysitting for an arguably better-paying gig.

You've only been dancing for two minutes and he already sees more money on the stage than he would've paid you to sit his kid tonight. He’s been watching as you undulate your body across the stage, bending and dipping, stripping down to your underwear. Even though part of him thinks he should, he definitely doesn’t look away when you divest yourself of your lacy little bra.

He always thought you were hot. He was a newly-single dad, interviewing you for a semi-regular babysitting gig. He tried to focus on your resume and your qualifications. He tried to breathe through his mouth so he couldn’t smell your delicate perfume. He tried to ignore the dewy pink lipgloss you had spread across your mouth, which is in stark contrast to the bright red lipstick you are currently sporting.

He was very motivated by the fact that you, as a graduate student in your mid-20’s, seemed more responsible to leave his kid with than the other applicants to his babysitting ad, all of whom were literal teenagers. But truth be told - you were also really fucking hot. Horny dad and the hot babysitter, what a fucking cliche he was.

However, in the eleven months you babysat for him, he never acted on his inappropriate attraction to you. He never treated you as anything other than an employee. You’d show up to his house, hair in a messy bun, wearing comfy clothes, ready to sit on the living room floor all evening playing with his kid. He was polite, and respectful, and was almost positive you never caught him staring at your tits.

Your tits that he’s most definitely staring at right now. Holy shit you have great tits.

“Fuckin’ A Fish, if you’re gonna keep your mouth open, you could at least pour some beer into it.”

“Huh?” Frankie snaps his head back to the table he’s sat at, surrounded by his friends. They all chuckle.

“We’re about to order the next round and you didn’t even drink any of that one yet,” Benny says as he points to the dripping bottle in Frankie’s hand.

Oh, sorry, Frankie mumbles as he pushes the now-warm bottle to his lips and begins to drink the beer down, his eyes moving back to the stage. The entire club is lit only by colored lights that coordinate with the twirling lights and lasers pointed at the stage, pulsating to the tempo of the music you’ve picked. Fog rolls across the floor of the stage, cascading over the edge.

There’s a single golden pole at an outcropping of the stage that you’re now gripping with both hands, sticking your ass out towards the audience and giving it a wiggle. You let go of the pole and hook your thumbs into the waistband of your panties. You slowly begin to push them down and just as the crack of your ass comes into view Frankie momentarily forgets that he can’t swallow liquid and breathe at the same time.

He begins to sputter and cough, choking on the bubbly liquid and spurting it across the table onto the faces of half of his friends. He’s met with groans, curses, and several swats to the back of his head as he attempts to get his wheezing under control, and the fluid out of his trachea.

Santi, who somehow managed to avoid Frankie’s beer-foam projectile, slaps a palm on Frankie’s shoulder and says,

“Guys, Frankie’s real sorry, he’s just never seen a naked woman before.”

The laughter at Frankie’s expense serves as some form of forgiveness, and everyone slowly goes back to flirting with the wandering dancers and ordering their second round. Santi keeps his hand on Frankie’s shoulder and leans into Frankie’s personal space.

“You alright?” Santi asks, squeezing his friend’s shoulder firmly.

Frankie manages to mutter a strangled yeah before several rounds of trying to clear his throat. The lights have dimmed, sinking the club temporarily into a hazy darkness. He briefly registers that the song you were dancing to has ended, so you’ve most likely left the stage.

Santi laughs, shaking his head. He moves his mouth right to Frankie’s ear, almost whispering.

“When I convinced Will to have his bachelor party at this club I thought you’d be the one making your hot babysitter choke, not the other way around,” and he claps Frankie on the back hard, “if you know what I mean.”

Frankie’s eyes go wide as he meets Santi’s crooked grin, but his friend offers nothing more as he moves to the other side of the table, turning his devilish smile on the waitress. He orders two beers and three shots for each man, dismissing the groans of protest from the table. Bachelor Down!, he shouts at Will as everyone does their shots and chases them with cheap beer.

You approach the table full of men with seven other dancers, each of you assigned by the club to give a 20-minute private dance to one of the members of the bachelor party. You’re each in various states of dress, but most are only half-dressed. You’re back in your lacy underwear set - panties and bra - but the sheer nature of the fabric leaves little to the imagination.

Your previous job as a part-time nanny worked while you were an undergrad. When you started law school it became too much and you had to switch to more infrequent evening babysitting gigs so you had your days free for school and studying. Unable to keep up with school payments you recently had to find something new. Something that only required night and weekend availability, but paid really well.

Enter: Stripping.

You’ve only been doing this job for a little over a month but you’d quickly gotten very comfortable with being naked in front of strangers. You had your little dance routine and could easily make flirty banter with the club’s customers. Your boss was impressed enough that he’d started assigning you party gigs with some of the other girls, like this bachelor group.

You walk up to the group of strangers, the rest of the girls fan around the table as you’re left standing just behind a broad-shouldered man with a baseball cap on, curls sticking out from under the back strap. You turn to the man with a big smile on your face.

Holy Fuck.

Not a Stranger.

It’s Francisco Morales. The hot dad you until-recently babysat for.

He looks at you sheepishly. Your hands immediately fly to cover your breasts, suddenly mortified that your nipples are showing through your nearly-transparent choice of outfit.

“Mr. Morales!”

“Oh I- I already,” he begins to stutter. Is he telling you that he’s already seen your tits?

You look around at the collection of empty beer bottles and shot glasses on the table and figure that they’ve all been here for much longer than just your dance. So covering your nipples does nothing for your modesty as hot dad has probably already seen everything. You drop your arms to your side, attempting to look relaxed and casual.

“So I-uh. I guess you found a babysitter for tonight.”

He laughs. He actually laughs at your awkward attempt at diffusing the tension. Thank god. He opens his mouth to speak but before he can say anything one of his friends is speaking to the group. He explains that “everyone gets a private dance” and no one can object - and he looks right at Mr. Morales when he says this - because “it’s all been paid for already.”

Following the lead of the other girls you gently grab Mr. Morales’ hand, missing the looks back and forth between him and his friend. You do your best to confidently lead him back to the private rooms with the rest of his group. There are a dozen rooms in the hallway and eight of them have been held in reserve for this bachelor party group. Pulling him inside the last room on the right, you close the door behind you.

The room is dim, save for the red glow of the lights. The ceiling and floor are both painted black and the three walls without the door are mirrored. Towards the left is a single high-backed black leather chair facing a brass pole that sits in the exact center of the room. On the far side of the room is a curved loveseat against the wall.

This should be easy. Not just because this is your job but because unlike any other man you’ve ever led back here, this is a man you are extremely attracted to.

This is a man you have fantasized about.

You’ve imagined his curls between your fingers when you’ve grabbed a fistful of a customer's hair, imagined that it’s his stubble scratching between your breasts when you’ve pressed them close. You’ve envisioned his wide chest as you ran your hands down their front, his massive paws in your hands as you’ve taken their sweaty palms and placed them on your rolling hips.

You’ve wished they were his thighs that you were grinding your ass onto and his erection that you all-too-frequently felt pressing into you. That should make this easy. But instead you’re super fucking nervous. Even more nervous than your first night here, when you dragged your panties down your legs and bent over, exposing your pussy lips to a packed room of strangers.

What makes you most nervous is probably that the fantasies didn’t stop in the club. It would be one thing if they were just here, serving as a comfort, self-soothing by putting a familiar face in place of a groping stranger’s face. But that’s not the truth. You’ve imagined him at home too.

In the shower, pretending your hands were his hands as you pinched and plucked at your wet nipples. Daydreaming about his weight on top of you, fucking into you, as you drove one of your toys in and out of your wet cunt.

And if you’re being perfectly honest, you can admit that it’s been going on for almost a year, since shortly after he hired you to be his babysitter. Remembering the times you’d made yourself come on his couch, hours after his kid had fallen asleep, waiting for him to return home from a night out with his friends. Your hand stuffed down the front of your pants, petting your clit to the thought of him on his knees in front of you.

You never thought you’d actually be naked in front of your fantasy-DILF. This is like being slapped in the face with your own wet dreams. This is kind of a nightmare.

“Listen, you don’t have to-” he begins just as you start to speak as well.

“Mr. Morales I know-” and you both stop and let out breathy, nervous laughs.

“C-Can you please stop calling me Mr. Morales?”

“Oh sorry! Is that weird?”

“It sounds like the start of a bad porno,” he groans, laughing again. “Please just call me Frankie.”

“Of course, I’m so sorry Mist- Frankie. Sorry. Frankie.”

You both break out in laughter again, loudly this time, hoping to finally diffuse some of the tension. A knock sounds at the door and a deep voice - security - asks if everything is alright. You shout back that everything is fine and the room quiets down.

“I should start the music and get going,” you say quietly, motioning for him to sit on the curved red velvet seat against the far wall.

You press a button above his head and music starts up, the first of three songs forming a 10-minute loop that will repeat for this booking. You look into the mirrored wall to your left and notice how nervous you look. Then you meet his eyes in the mirror. Why does he look just as nervous?

You straddle one of his legs and shakily reach back to undo the clasp on your bra. You meet his eyes again. Fuck he can see how your hands are shaking. You look like such a fucking kid. A goddamn amateur. This is going to be the least-sexy lapdance he’s ever been given.

You can’t stop the gasp that leaves your lips when you suddenly feel his hot hands covering yours at your back.

“You can leave this on if you’d be more comfortable,” he says softly, barely heard over the pumping bass of the music.

“No I’m fine, I’m just…” you don’t know how to explain to him without embarrassing yourself but suddenly you’re making an admission and the word-vomit has left your mouth before you can even do anything to stop it. “I just always thought you were hot.”

There it is. It’s out there now.

He opens his mouth to say something and your nerves bubble up and come out as more words and why the fuck are you talking more?

“I know, I know,” you spit out before he can get a word in, “the babysitter thirsting after the hot dad, how prosaic, right? Talk about a bad porno.”

His warm hands still touching you, he slowly moves his fingers around yours, deftly undoing the clasp of your bra for you.

“It’s okay, I kinda… thought you were hot too,” his admission slips out in a whisper.

You really want to kiss him right now. But that would be a very bad idea. Security patrols the hallway and the door has a small window towards the top of it. It allows security to peek inside and see from the shoulders up. Usually if they can see your shoulders, all is good. If they can’t see your shoulders, it gives them an idea if rules are being broken or if the girls need help.

Kissing - among other things - is against the rules.

You barely turn to look at the windowed door but you’re embarrassed to think that Frankie must know what you’re thinking because it’s like he can read your mind. Or maybe he’s just thinking about kissing you too? Either way he puts his hands back down to his sides and lets you lean into him, allowing your bra to slowly shift down your shoulders until it falls into his lap.

Your tits are right in his face. You’re half naked in front of the hot dad whose child you used to babysit. The hot dad who you’ve pictured doing this exact thing with - and more. But he’s not even looking at your tits. He’s looking you right in your eyes and making you feel more naked than you’ve ever been in your whole life.

He shouldn’t be here, not doing this, not with you. He should ask for a different girl. He should tell the security guy to kick him out. He’s making you so uncomfortable, he can tell by your twitching movements and halting breaths. He can’t stop staring at you like he’s some kind of lonely creep, what a fucking weirdo he’s being.

You position your legs on the outside of his, keeping his legs slightly open and his hands obediently face-down on the couch next to him. You’re straddling him but hovering above his lap, seemingly careful not to touch him. When you put your hands on his shoulders to brace yourself you begin to stiffly roll your body towards and then away from him.

He doesn’t know where to look. He can’t keep looking at your face, he knows the eye-contact is getting very disturbing. Why the hell did he tell you he kinda thought you were hot too? At least he didn’t admit the truth, that he thought you were fucking supernova-hot. He’s had to bite his tongue countless times to stop from asking you out.

He focuses his eyes at the hollow dip that lies at the base of your throat. It has a dance of its own, moving slightly with your pulse and rolling with your shallow breaths, the rise and fall of your chest a baseline rhythm. He tries not to think about your bare breasts just below, breasts that he’s thought about putting his hands on every single time you’ve walked into his house for the last year.

He can see your deep red lips in his peripheral vision, and immediately the image of those lips on his skin is conjured. He pictures a chaste kiss planted on his cheek followed by a less-chaste thought of his thumb pressed into your mouth, your eyes looking up at him while your lips leave a red ring on his hand. He needs to fucking calm down. This is just a dance. You’re at work doing your literal job.

He suddenly notices you’ve almost completely stopped moving. He looks up at your face and you’re wearing a tight, pained expression. His brows furrow. Oh no. What’s wrong? Is his erection noticable? Is he creeping you out too badly? Do you want him to leave? He opens his mouth to ask if you’re okay but you silence him with a gentle squeeze to his shoulders.

“I think I’m gonna die if you don’t touch me,” you squeak out in a strained whisper.

In the back of his head a part of him thinks that he shouldn’t immediately cave. It shouldn’t be this easy. Part of him thinks he should need more than just you saying that.

But he doesn’t. At all.

He slowly slides his body down the sofa, pushing his frame between your legs. You move your feet apart to accommodate his wide shoulders once you realize he won’t fit otherwise. He stops when his ass is sitting on the floor and his head is just above the seat of the sofa, you towering over him. He reaches down and begins to take off your platform heels one at a time.

As your bare feet hit the floor you run your hands up your neck, over your face, and through your hair, your knees knocking at his shoulders. Touching you gently with only two fingers on each hand, he pushes on the backs of your thighs, guiding you even closer to his face. He grabs your feet and holds them in his hands, forcing your legs to fold and pushing your knees past his ears as his head rests back on the seat.

You’re kneeling at the edge of the sofa, shins on the cushion, feet dangling over his shoulders, your toes curled in his massive hands on his chest, and his head between your thighs. Your face still looks uneasy, and he can just make out whining noises over the music. High-pitched and breathy, the way a dog would beg for scraps at the dinner table.

“Don’t worry baby, I’m gonna touch you now,” he growls.

You grab the brim of his hat and twist it off his head, immediately diving your fingers into his locks. He squeezes your toes and you take his cue, lifting your hips and canting them towards his waiting mouth. Latching his mouth onto your underwear, he runs his tongue up and down your covered seam.

He feels you begin to rock your hips into his face, rolling your body above him. Any security who looked in the window would see your shoulders moving to the beat and assume you were kneeling on the couch and giving a lap dance. He can only barely see you from his angle, sees the lace of your panties, sees your wrists grabbing at his hair.

Letting go of one of your feet, he grabs at your wrist, dragging your hand from his head to the front of your own underwear. You run your fingers down yourself, parting them around his mouth, letting his tongue tangle in them. Then you grab the edge of the gusset and pull it to the side.

Wasting no time, he immediately begins to lick at your folds, tasting the wetness that has gathered there. A lot of wetness. Christ, you’re so fucking wet. His nose touches just below your clit and a string of your arousal attaches him to you when he pulls back slightly.

A slight pause in the music has his heart stop and his stomach in his throat. After a couple seconds - that seem to stretch on forever - the first song begins playing again, restarting what must be a looped set of music.

That must mean this private dance-time is halfway over. Ten minutes left but since you two probably started after everyone else you might not have the full ten minutes of privacy if his friends decide to burst in the door. Which, if they’re led by Santi, is a real possibility.

Less than ten minutes. No problem.

You must also feel the sense of urgency because you adjust your hand that is holding your panties to the side. You take your thumb and pointer finger and move them over yourself, parting your lips to open yourself more to him and pulling up slightly, exposing your nub. He flattens his tongue in response and drags it over your sensitive bundle, noting the way your body trembles when he does so.

He knows he doesn’t have the time to edge you as he’d like to, but he can’t help himself when he moves his head lower and twists his tongue into your hole, thrusting it into you. You are bouncing yourself slightly up and down, helping him fuck yourself on his tongue. He feels your wetness pouring over his lips and dripping down through his whiskers.

He feels your hand leave your own body and tangle back in his curls along with your other one, grabbing two fistfuls of hair tightly in your grip. Having had enough of his teasing you’re apparently deciding to take matters into your own hands.

Frankie loves eating pussy but this? This might be his favorite thing in the whole world.

He angles his head perfectly, opens his mouth, and sticks his tongue out stiffly as you begin to grind your pussy against his face. You’re using his nose, his tongue, his chin, even the bristles of his facial hair. You’re using whatever you can to get yourself off as you ride his face. It takes everything in his power not to break out in a giant smile.

He doesn’t hear you, you’re still being the quietest you’ve been since you got in this room, but he feels it. Shit, does he ever feel it. He feels your body tense, then your legs quiver, feels the pulsing in your cunt as you press yourself firm into his still-open mouth. He gently laps up your gushing orgasm as you release the grip on his hair and whimper softly above him.

Knowing you’re short on time, he has you climb off him much sooner than he’d like you to. Your heavy-lidded eyes meet his and then yours go wide. You bend down and grab his hat, plopping it back on his head and attempting to tame his just-fucked-hair back underneath it. You run to the corner of the room and grab a small robe hanging on a hook, skipping back over and roughly wiping his face off with it the way you would a toddler after a meal.

He quickly adjusts himself, tucking his protruding hardness under his belt in an attempt to conceal it as he watches you adjust your askew panties. Still topless, you throw the robe back towards the corner in a panic just as there is a quick knock at the door. Without a signal to enter the door flies open anyways, no less than three of his friends bursting through the doorway drunkenly, shots in hand for Frankie to partake in.

They make Frankie drink the shots before he even leaves the room and then they drag him away from you, hollering obnoxiously. All he can manage is an apologetic look over his shoulder as he hears the final song finally come to an end. Time’s up. Luckily you’re laughing at their antics and don’t seem to be upset. Maybe you were just flirting with him because that’s your job. Maybe you just wanted a good tip.

A tip! Shit.

Being dragged down the hallway Frankie grabs Santi by the arm and asks in his ear how much he should tip you. Santi says he usually tips $200. Frankie is shocked that a 20 minute dance would garner that big of a tip, but then again it’s been a long time since he’s been at a place like this. And to be fair, you - albeit unknowingly - let him fulfill a long-time fantasy of his.

$200 is more than he would have paid you to watch his kid tonight. No wonder you’re not his babysitter anymore. He fishes around in his wallet and takes out all the cash he has, $236. He manages to break off from the group of guys after they do another couple shots and he looks around for you.

Unable to find you he spots one of the girls you came to the table with and she lets him know you’re on a break but she can get the tip to you. He hands her the folded bills and she thanks him by leaning in and giving him a peck on the cheek. When she pulls back from him she widens her eyes at him and flashes him a knowing smile.

“I’m sure she’s very appreciative… of the tip,” she winks.

Frankie tries not to blush and resists the urge to high-tail it to the bathroom and wash his face off, opting instead to keep the scent of you on him. He returns to the table of his too-drunk-to-notice friends and finishes out the night of revelry.

3:03am

Hey

3:06am

Sorry

3:09am

You’re probably asleep

3:10am

I’m just getting home actually

3:11am

Oh cool me too

Sorry to bother

I just wanted to make sure you got your tip

I left it with your friend

3:14am

I did, yes. Thank you so much.

3:14am

Cool 👍

3:16am

Don’t take this the wrong way…

But how drunk were you tonight?

3:18am

Idk

Why?

What did I do?

I’m so sorry

3:19am

No, don’t be sorry!

I’m not trying to be rude.

I just….

Did you mean to tip me that amount?

3:25am

Oh my god

Was it not enough?

I can give you more

I’m really sorry

Do you have Venmo?

3:27am

No! OMG. It was plenty!

Literally the most I’ve ever been tipped is like 40%

You tipped me 118%

3:30am

3:31am

Yeah so I just wanted to make sure you didn’t get too drunk

And accidentally just give me everything in your wallet

3:35am

Is that what happened?

3:37am

Because I can Venmo some money back to you

It’s really not a problem

3:40am

Sorry no

I just tipped what my friend told me to

3:41am

Well I checked with the other girls….

NONE of your friends tipped that much

And they were all very generous!

3:44am

But none as generous as you

3:45am

He’s such an asshole

I’m sorry

I didn’t know

I feel like an idiot

3:46am

Again, please don’t be sorry

It was VERY generous of you

And I’m very grateful

3:50am

I was in a giving mood tonight I suppose

3:51am

Mr. Morales, is that you being flirty?

3:53am

Oh we’re back to Mr. Morales now?

3:55am

Can you get a babysitter on Wednesday night?

3:55am

I don’t have custody this week so no babysitter needed

Why?

3:56am

We should go out to dinner

3:57am

Oh we should?

3:59am

Yeah we should

Frankie

4:01am

MY treat

4:01am

LOL I should hope so!

4:02am

Pick me up at 7 😉

4:02am

I will

See you Wednesday

#frankie morales x reader #frankie x reader #frankie morales fanfiction #writing prompt

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precious-little-scoundrel · 2 months

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Friends in the Crucible

MOTA PACIFIC THEATRE || FLIGHT SURGERY AU

1: Welcome to Hell Island

Requested by the sweet @forsythiagalt

AU NOTE: due to a long-standing crush on real life heroine Ensign Jane Kendeigh and her work on Iwo Jima, the current ongoing anniversary of the battle and a hope to not step on the toes of any existing Nurse!xBuck pairings -I’ve gone with what excited my imagination the most and created an entire Pacific AU with our MOTA boys. If this AU ends up being as interesting and stimulating to y’all as it was for me in writing it, I’d be terribly down for exploring more scenarios with everyone in their new and varied roles.

Main paring: Gale Cleven and OC Flight Nurse Ensign Maureen Kendeigh…cameos by “Doc” Egan, John Brady, Ken Lemmons, Harry Crosby and Benny Demarco…and maybe a nod to a certain Marine Captain named “Andy” who I refused to let die, even though he was never on this island. You neither need to have seen HBO’s Pacific or know about the history for this to make sense, in fact it might help my ignorant writing go down better without it 😏

Warnings: WAR?! Graphic descriptions of wounds, battlefields, gore, foul language, period typical language: use of the word “Jap” and a joking insult of “fish eater” for a Catholic. Hints that John Egan is a terror to his nurses, Cleven having to take his pants off for a wound to be examined, brief mentions and emphasis on his never having been touched by a woman intimately, a nurse positioning a man’s member out of the way to his surprise, strictly professional tho. No joke, really. But they’re having a bit of a moment.

Only proof read once. So many thanks to Bee, Christi and Ashley who all enabled me into going this rogue with a simple request and for giving edits and assurances. Hope y’all enjoy!

There were a whole lotta jolts in the descent. Of course there were. Why, there were jolts and bumps even coming down to the runway at Pearl or San Diego, and there had been far more than jolts on the training tarmacs in Kentucky. She had been in enough planes, experienced enough banging about, and had enough wheels up landings that Maureen felt somewhat entitled to her opinion on the necessity of jolts or none.

So far, Major Gale Cleven had piloted this monstrous tin can like a limo, smooth, steady and with full warning for each bank and turn. Maureen had not even had to catch a single falling bottle so far and the rows of empty bunks lining each side of the plane had hardly rattled except in the same low humming frequency of the ever thrumming engine.

But now there were jolts. And of course there were, they were flying straight into a warzone. Cleven had gotten them to Iwo Jima two hours ago, and since that time he’d been circling the island in a wide arc, casually waiting for a pesky air battle between fighters to calm down enough for him to land. Sure, the beaches had been wiped clean and a landing strip had been carved out of volcanic ash and marine corps blood -cleared for their use. But still, there were Jap bunkers, Jap planes, Japs themselves and Jap equipment in that smoldering mountain and so far, no word had come down definitely as to when the island might be considered secure.

It was all very historic, Maureen has been assured -allowing a woman into a combat zone. First time ever, so they kept erroneously insisting. That’s why there was a man armed with a camera and not plasma sitting a few lines down from her on the cold metal bench. Maureen had once had plenty of time to ponder the historicity of her mission and that of her fellow nurses back in Guam, right now she wished she could focus solely on her training and ignore the ominous crack-pop of something hazardous in the air and the resulting wobble of Major Cleven’s steering.

Stupidly she wished the Major’s low voice would come back on through the near radio system and soothe them all back down like frightened livestock. Gale Cleven had a way of managing that even with his face obscured, and while it made Maureen blush to admit she needed any calming, the facts were she was 24 years old, practically untried and desperate to be brave enough to be of use. Rattling on the bench seat between equally nervous girls and a hawk-eyed journalist was no match for the cuticle picking anxiety.

Maureen chose to forcefully look up from said bloody cuticles and was met by Major Egan’s gum smacking grin across from her. How many carriers had he been on when they went down? Kamikaze planes jutting out the side of them, ocean water pouring in, sharks abounding and hundreds of patients under his care, in his charge to tow to shore?

Mild, scattered, poor-man’s flack wasn’t remotely disturbing to their flight surgeon. “He’s great, isn’t he?” Egan yelled to her cheerfully, the jerk of his head suggested his praise was directed towards someone in the cockpit.

Maureen knew well enough that much as Egan respected the co-pilot Demarco, it was no match for the love affair between him and Cleven, an appreciation that had Egan’s special request yanking his friend from Air Force to Navy to Transit. Such a series of bounces in a man’s otherwise distinguished career, all to chauffeur one charmingly entitled flight surgeon, was enough to put anyone into a bad mood -it would explain Major Cleven’s initial coolness on meeting them all at the departure tarmac.

Or maybe he was just businesslike. Maureen couldn’t fault anyone for that. He had been prepped, perhaps not as much as she had, but he didn’t act entitled in any way, and he kept the plane steady. Except for this mounting series of jolts.

“Yes,” she had chosen to holler back to Doctor -Lieutenant Commander? Bucky No Shits? Johnny? Doc “Smirky”?- Egan, knowing he’d want a favorable report on his friend, “it’s been remarkably smooth.”

Maureen was glad truth aligned with diplomacy in this instant. Although if any man could handle the outright truth it was John Egan, no matter what they all said. And “they” said a lot, he had once had two marine squadrons under his care and to them he was a Marine, simultaneously he’d had three navy squadrons to take care of and to them he was a Navy man. He’d even switched uniforms thrice in a day before. And now he was being flown about by his best friend to tend carcasses on a foreign strand, oddly suited to terrible conditions and bad scenarios, offering medical aviation expertise and poorly timed jokes wherever he went.

He’d trained her group of specialized Evacuation Flight Nurses the last three weeks of aquatic conditioning in the states, and he’d culled eighteen out of the group for getting winded after towing full grown men seven laps in the San Diego surf -all while puffing on a cigarette himself, seated with sunglasses on in an motorized dinghy. Maureen had come to hate him that day, and every day after she’d come to want to be like him. Kathleen Martin got her wings pinned first and Maureen right after, “well done, Candy!” Egan had praised while his fist drove in the tack.

“It’s Kendeigh, sir.” Maureen had dared correct for the hundredth time that training week, “Pronounced like: Ken-Day.”

“Cand-ay. Got it!” he repeated with jovial affirmation and that was that.

Major Cleven had given her the respect of calling her ‘Ensign’ as he shook her hand, a quick and firm squeeze and on to her next companion, she’d have judged him as too pristine in everything from mannerisms to features were his war record not ample justification for his bearing. The low cadence of his voice over the coms came in as a slight pitch to the plane and a swoop of decline in altitude became apparent under her—

“All personnel prepare for landing.”

Cleven was nothing like those pilots during training, barking orders laced with frantic warning in their voices. It was a cow pasture back in Kentucky and there they’d had no good reason for alarm. Here where there was real reason, Gale Cleven crooned to them and John Egan smiled opposite her as he took in the effect his chosen pilot had on his nurses.

“Like soothin’ a baby,” Egan sighed as he lounged a little deeper on his bench, long legs deceptively braced for impact, Maureen had long ago learned the man was nothing but smoke and mirrors of his actual intentions, “isn’t he great? In danger of fallin’ asleep with that guy at the wheel.”

To emphasize his point -or more likely to distract “his girls” from the imminent prospect of landing on a battleground, Egan leaned back all the way and tipped his cover over his eyes, pretending to fall asleep. Maureen caught him as he cocked one sharp eye open to see if she was still watching. She gave him a hopeless smile of recognition of his disguised kindness before forcefully suppressing a gasp of shock as the plane hit Amtrak smoothed gravel and ground its way down the beach. Egan hadn't budged by the time the momentum ceased and the plane became bizarrely still after hours of vibrating travel.

“Right. That’s us.” He straightened up, his cover and his posture, rising up in his seat and slapping at the metal ceiling of the plane, “Good job Buck.” he hollered and got no reply. “He’s still crabby about flying a C-47.” he divulged to no one in particular as they all rose and prepared to disembark, drilled for ages in this routine and finally let loose to practice it. Egan’s nonchalance was almost disorienting for such a momentous occasion.

The large cargo door was opened and a irreverently pleasant tropical breeze funneled through the plane, bearing with it the sounds of crashing waves and popping, far off gunnery. There was also a smell that came with it, sulfur and sweet. It was sickening from the first, and Maureen dreadedly wondered if it was from volcanic fumes and rotting vegetation or something more heartbreaking. With her kit on her back she followed her companions out the cargo door, finding Major Cleven blank faced and unphased on the tarmac beside it. Nothing but a smidge of sweat around his hairline to suggest the hours of flight he’d just clocked and the wacky landing he’d managed so well.

“Welcome to hell island, ladies.” he greeted in a droll monotone and Maureen’s gait stiffened without her permission.

There was no true tarmac, as they had been warned, just a strip of cleared back sand churned up by Cleven’s wheels. Lapping waves were on the left side and then a field of sheets to the right. It was the oddest sight. Rows and rows of camo tarp and white sheets blotted pink, hardly a spot of sand to be seen between. They’d been warned it was havoc here, the situation so bad that they’d finally allowed for this exception, allowed the sending in of specialized units to evacuate by air as the boats could hardly ferry enough of the wounded out in time to save them. But this -this beach of corpses was so daunting a task it seemed impossible to choose where to start.

“John,” she heard Major Cleven address Lieutenant Commander Egan as he dropped down beside her, “you’ve only got so many births, do what ya need to do to fill them, but I’ve got my orders. You’re not settin’ up a hospital. When we get the supplies off, get this plane full -we’re takin’ off. Full stop. I’m not gonna have us here like sittin’ ducks for the mortars while you fuss.”

“I hear ya.” Egan assured him in that remarkably unassuring way of his and lit a cigarette. “Alright nurses, gather round.”

Triage was crucial for such a mission, the prioritizing of wounds and necessary services essential for prolonging the lives of those in imminent peril, versus those with the likelihood of surviving on only the essentials found in a corpsman or medic’s arsenal. They’d be back tomorrow with another flight, and the day after that. Cleven was right that they weren’t here to establish a hospital, yet still the idea of how many would perish from being left behind, even by this first flight, was a sickening probability Maureen has been trained to ignore.

“Where are all the corpsmen?” Egan asked one pharmacist's mate who came to greet them, picking his way through the rows of groaning men. The boy couldn’t have been a day over seventeen.

“Up there,” the kid had nodded up to Mount Suribachi and its ominous veil of smoke, “or dead. Lost so many in the first week they started sending us in to substitute. We’ve done what we can. Sure glad to see you guys.”

“What’s your name, boy?”

“Lemons, sir.”

“Hell I can’t call someone a lemon, now can I?” Egan’s grin was infectious and the boy grinned back like he was seeing his first friend in ages.

“Then it’s Kenny. Sir.”

“Yeah alright Kenny, let’s get to it.” Egan had drilled you all so thoroughly you could have performed even without the aid of the grounded pharmacists and their mates, yet still it was odd to see such a mass of wounded and so few to tend them. The desperation and chaos was tangible.

Maureen had barely set off out from under the plane wing when Gale Cleven’s brusque reprimand arrested her steps as forcefully as a tug to her flight suit would have, “That bunch don’t need your help.”

The terse judgment in his tone gave her sharper eyes to notice that the particular section she was headed towards all had sheets pulled over their faces. Her own face blanched at both the misstep and the sensory overload of so much sorting to do. She wasn’t going to feel sorry for herself, not here, not when faced with the easy part of all this, and she wasn’t going to be crippled by criticism while enduring her first trial by fire. “Right, thank you, Major.” she agreed with him as stoically as possible and ground her heel back around on the sand and tromped off towards the direction of sheets that were visibly alive and writhing in misery.

That changed as soon as they saw her girlish form walking amongst them. Sounds of dying anguish changed to cheerful wolf whistles and happy greetings. It made Maureen’s heart swell with pride at the unbreakable spirit in each of them.

She spent the next hour and a half amongst those men.

Gruesome was a word that Maureen swore to herself that she would never use lightly again. She wasn’t one given to hyperbole anyway, and her years apprenticing in the hospital in Manilla and her most recent training for exactly such wounds as these, understandably led her to believe she knew the mettle of such a word.

But no.

Gruesome, she decided as she began her task again and again, applied only to this: the way the tiniest slip of her hand on any part of this poor boy took skin with it, charred and soupy flesh squishing off meat and sinew like the flaky crust on a prime bit of brisket. It was the only comparison fitting. His own flamethrower had bitten him as he tried to take a countless next pillbox. He’d said it like a joke even as his teeth chattered too hard from pain to deliver the punchline.

Maureen wasn’t here to contemplate ironies, or the unfairness of war, she was here to find some intact vein through which to stab her needle and begin giving him back the blood that was slowly leaching into the black sand beneath him. Ensign Smith was holding up the bottle, throwing a shadow over his charred form that helped Maureen discern a bit better, giving the boy a kind word or ten of reassurance about home and pain relief. Maureen bit through her own tongue when she finally slid the needle home, deep and pulpy, she could only pray it would hold the blood they gave back.

“Alright, bandages, Smith.” Maureen decided and did her best not to jump as a mortar thumped on the sand, hundreds of yards away, but still, they were getting ever closer, proving Major Cleven’s grim prognostication to not be unfounded. He was confirmed that the Japanese didn’t give two shits about red crosses, much less cargo planes carrying in supplies and taking away wounded. Maureen tried not to dwell on it as she and Smith began cutting away filthy uniforms and wrapping their patients' flesh in the Vaseline soaked bandages. It was a terrible business for the first few minutes before the interlaced numbing agents in the gauze took affect and made their care something less like torture for the poor men.

Some of them could walk, a missing leg being a mild injury comparatively, they just needed the helpful shoulder of a technician and off they went to amble into Cleven’s plane. There the Major met them despite it being beyond his purview, handing out cigarettes even though he himself abstained and kept an eye on the Navy mechanic refueling his plane from a bullet riddled jeep. When he wasn’t doing that he was scanning the sky, aviators turned up and reflecting a cloudless sky. Maureen’s mouth grew chalky at the thought of what he was looking out for.

Once wrapped and tended, the men were ready to be hoisted on stretchers and taken to the plane. But those men were select ones, ones that Egan had decided upon. He had a particularly odd way of triaging, one that upon initial observation appeared rather callous and aloof to his nurses who had been trained as much in medical practice as in solicitous decorum.

Doc Egan moseyed through the ranks of wounded, keenly aware he was not as popular as his pretty faced nurses, but making up for it with such easy-going banter that chuckles followed him wherever he went, making the men forget that he was deciding who got relief and who did not. Who were to be permitted the cooling sheets of Elysium by nightfall and who were to be left burning on the sand. Puffing a cigarette and making small talk, he clocked each injury and each likelihood of recovery without giving a bit of it away.

Nearing Maureen’s own patient of the moment, she felt him crouch down beside her and take in the hopeless gut wound she was ineffectually trying to stuff with bandages. A sturner superior would tell her not to bother, to move on, save such determination for someone with a longer life expectancy than five minutes. Maureen found it hard to make that call herself when met with the pleading eyes of someone’s dying son.

“C’mon Candy, move over, lemme try.” Egan murmured and his hip knocked hers gently as he crouched over the boy, perfectly aware of the futility. “Hey bud, breathe for me, breathe. You wanna smoke?”

Egan’s now bloody fingers reached up to his own lips and plucked his fresh and third cigarette of the hour and brought it down to the boy’s chapped mouth, shifting until he was fully seated on the sand, arms around the kid’s shoulders, gently taking the refreshment away when he puffed out, then replacing it for another inhale.

Maureen knew better than to linger. Beside this scene of brotherly last rites was another dying man and a hundred more beside him, so she moved on, seeing only vaguely the way the kid coughed blood as he laughed at Egan’s conversation. The topic seemed to be on the boy’s dog back home. The Sergeant she was tending added in a bit of teasing over the name -who names their dog “puppy”?!

Maureen had barely managed a tourniquet on the sergeant's arm before she could suddenly hear Egan’s gentle chatter turn to low shushing.

The sergeant looked away to the other side.

Maureen noticed the discarded cigarette laying on the sand, it had been smoked to a stub.

The heaving rattle of panicked breath beside them stopped.

Egan shifted onto his knees again and his long, bloody fingers dragged those sightless eyes closed. There was the brittle clink of dog tags being checked.

The sheet was tugged up all the way.

That triage was over.

Maureen politely ignored Doc Egan’s harsh sniff beside her -it was dusty here- but clocked the way he rose to his feet, a rough brushing off of his flight suit and his brusque inquiry regarding her morphine distribution in sector 2.

“All tended-“ she had begun when a shout from the far off plane rang out-

“-JOHN!” That was Cleven’s unmistakable bellow and Egan, despite being in a human sea of potential Johns- responded like he’d been made to hear that one voice alone. “Incoming, west!”

“Shit.” Egan spun westward and sure enough there were fighters with a blazing red sun, rushing straight down at them.

They were such a distance away still, Maureen doubted Cleven’s sight for all of fifteen seconds before horror set in. “They wouldn’t-?” she looked up at Egan whose bitten lip suggested that they would indeed strafe these poor men given the chance.

“Stretchers!” Cleven yelled again, “Get ‘em under the wings!”

There was a callous logic to it. Those men already prepped to be saved might as well be prioritized this much more. Fairness wasn’t something promised in war and Maureen chose to hate Gale Cleven instead of some ephemeral “war” for verbalizing the awfulness of that necessary.

“Do it.” came Egan’s agreeing order and Maureen and Smith took their respective sergeant down near the waterline at a run, fifteen other nurses and the various techs mimicking them. They deposited their men under the relative safety of the flimsy wings and dashed back out for more, leaving two techs behind to hoist the poor fellas into the cargo hold and deposit them in their respective bunks.

“Come onnnnn.” Cleven’s warning yell was drowned by the commencement of allied anti aircraft higher up the beach, trying to pick off the fighters before they reached the landing strip.

Maureen hardly noticed the closing drone of the fighter’s approach, nothing but her heart beat and memorized lines of her training on repeat in her ears. She’d been trained to fight hand to hand if necessary, her folks knew the risks of their daughter volunteering for such service but there was a sour dampening of resolve at the idea of being picked off from the air, not even allowed a bit of struggle to go out with.

All she could do was lift, hoist, run, deposit, do it all again.

They were getting near to full. On one pass through she saw Cleven counting berths and scolding poor Ensign Courter for her rushed method of securing her charge- “five feet drop to the floor on my first bank, oughta be just what that chest wound needs. For God’s sake, I’ll do it!”

He had a cold sort of fury to him Maureen found obnoxiously potent, and she felt a judgment rise in her for his obvious haste in wanting to get out of there. To his credit, when the planes did go by and everyone hit the ground, he was still standing yanking on the straps to secure the top bunk. Bullets punctured the side of the plane and riddled it, tiny specks of light flooding into the dark hold. One man was grazed as he lay in there.

“John!” Cleven warned again after they’d gone by.

“I know, I know damnit.” Egan snapped back from yards away, “There’s just not enough corpsmen -let me finish my damn job.”

“By the time you finish yours I won’t be able to finish mine.” Cleven retorted and the obvious finally occurred to Maureen -perhaps it was not his own safety that preoccupied him but the fragile capability of his riddled plane being able to evacuate once full. That, was indeed, his job. Still, such sentiments expressed as they were from the shelter of the cockpit and from a man who favored a silk blue neck scarf identical to the shade of his eyes, rankled Maureen.

The returning buzz of the Japanese fighters coming back around only cemented her futile rage. Her arms were aching and the sand caught at her boots and her mouth was dry with dust and there were so many, so, so many more left to help. Ensign Smith had been called away to assist with lifting another, and Maureen was knelt beside the man they’d managed onto a stretcher, doing her damndest to find how many bullets were embedded in his left leg and how deep the shrapnel was on his right. There was so much blood and filth it was impossible to tell and Andy, as his name was, couldn’t give her much help besides informing her it hurt like hell and she sure was a sight for sore eyes.

“Egan! At your three o’clock!” There was Cleven again.

Maureen grinned back at Andy and forced it to stay on her face as the buzz of the approaching fighters grew imminent and the dreadful thwump of machine gun fire thudded into the earth yards up the beach. It hit the section of the dead first, a further injury and dishonor. Maureen felt a lump in her throat at the realization she had no one near to help her lift this stretcher and that Andy himself hadn’t a usable leg to spare.

“Go.” her patient told her with a clear look of realization on his face as the leaden spatter of strafing began to elicit responses from those wounded men still alive enough to react.

“No.” The refusal came out of her mouth about as naturally as taking the next breath.

A shadow threw over them for a second and Andy’s facial expression grew surprised, but, stubbornly focused on her patient’s face, Maureen assumed it was the plane passing by at last and chose not to spend her last seconds watching what was going to kill her. “Ensign Kendeigh, lift.” Major Cleven’s voice was so close so suddenly it spooked her flat on her backside until she saw him, squatting down and casting a shadow at the head of the stretcher, poles gripped in both hands, ready to hoist. She scrambled to the foot and took the wood in hand, lifting for the twentieth time that day and running towards the plane.

Time was slow and fast all at once. Cleven’s shadow had come before even the first fighter. But as they ran it zipped by, bullets flinging up sand into their eyes, a near miss. The second one was close behind and as they ran near to the wings, they saw no room was left under them, as crowded as an awning at Coney Island during the height of summer.

Maureen squatted fast and lowered the foot of the stretcher, feeling Cleven mimick her movements behind her. Before she could turn ‘round and enact her training, there their pilot was, body draped over the battered Marine captain, his back as stalwart and protective as the wings of his plane. Maureen threw herself to the ground as well, propping herself over Andy’s battered legs. Together they made a turtle shell of sorts and, damned to be caught cringing when death took her, Maureen kept her eyes open and stared back at Gale Cleven’s gentle face as the -thud-thud-thud- passed them, a micro expression of assurance twitching his mouth and eyes as death passed over.

Who needed to look at the sky when you could find God in those eyes his mother gave him?

For as long as she lived, Maureen would never forget the gust of his spearmint scented breath on her face, the first sensation she registered as soon as the planes were past and they yet remained, alive, locked together above a man they’d both risked dying for.

“Major, you shouldn’t’ve.” Andy’s rough voice spoke Maureen’s own dazed sentiments as they straightened up, Cleven picking up his fallen aviators from the sand, “You gotta fly us outta here, you die an’we’re all sitting ducks.”

“Eh, that’s why we have co-pilots, Skipper.” Cleven grinned before glancing back at the sky, his face morphing into anything but carefree.

“Is that how Lt. DeMarco feels?” Maureen teased wearily.

“I’d never presume to know how Benny Demarco feels.” Cleven replied levelly but the corner of his mouth quirked up in amusement, “Ensign Kendeigh, give me a task.” he demanded.

“Sir-“

“I want us outta here in ten.” His tone held no room for argument, “What’s somethin’ even a dumb pilot can manage? Egan!” He yelled as the Lieutenant Commander approached them at a jog, his dark face the picture of rage for the men in his care being further hurt. “Out in ten.”

“Not gonna happen, still got supplies to distribute-“ Egan was visibly inscenced.

“-one more pass on my plane and we’re not gettin’ up. Look at that back wheel” Cleven replied, nodding at the deflating tire. “Hand me your shit, what’re we supplyin?”

“Aren’t you queasy for needles?” Egan balked, finding time for teasing despite himself.

“Hand me the damn syrettes.” Cleven stuck his hand out.

“You're under Candy’s orders.” Egan stipulated, pointing to Maureen and Cleven nodded.

“Yup, and we leave in ten.”

“Okey Buck, go, go, go.”

The nurses that had gone before them had tagged and labeled each, making it easy for Maureen and Major Cleven to squat along the rows and complete what help could be given. Her other companions were doing the same, each staggered at a few yards and assisted by Corpsmen and pharmacists. And despite the tension from the strafing and the dismal prospect of having to leave so many behind, the hum of chatter soon picked up again on the beach.

“Shit, shit, shit, no-I hate needles!” Marty, eighteen years old but with eyes that had seen a little too much, bore his dressing with tired stoicism until Cleven pulled out the morphine syrette.

“Son,” Gale murmured with barely concealed amusement, “your side looks like a bear cub teethed on it, you’ll be fine. And this’ll help.”

“Don’t ‘son me’ you baby faced glamor boy.” Marty spat back, marine corps superiority coursing through his admittedly impressive veins.

Gale was midway through a good natured snicker at Marty’s venom when the heavy shock of lobbed mortars began to thud the beach again. “Jesus.” the Major sounded more annoyed than surprised and had the wherewithal to place a restraining hand on Marty’s chest as the kid began to scramble up in panic, displacing Maureen’s dressing on his ribs.

“Cleven, they’re chewin’ up our strip!” Demarco yelled to them from the cockpit and sure enough, craters were beginning to form at the end of their taxi-able stretch of beach.

“Don’t leave me! Don’t leave Major!” Marty suddenly clutched at Cleven and the Major had to wrench his arm free. “Calm down, private, you’re on a stretcher.” he then ducked his head as he moved round to seize the poles, “And if there’s one thing you should know,” he went on in a low murmur just for Marty’s benefit, “it’s that Doc Egan doesn’t waste his stretchers on dead men.”

Carrying Marty’s stretcher to the plane was Maureen’s last jog down the beach. She ran up the cargo ramp and Cleven was after her, handing over the task of racking the private into a bunk to one of the nurses before sternly ordering a path for himself through the crowded belly up to his cockpit. Demarco had the full radio system on, the better to communicate with the nursing personnel as they prepared for take off, and everyone aboard could hear his exasperated greeting as his reckless officer took his seat.

“You really game enough to try to get this Goony off the ground with less than a thousand feet of strip?” Benny’s broadcasted doubt made most nurses pause in their work and Maureen met Andy’s eye from the third bunk halfway along the plane wall.

“I thought he said that’s why they have co-pilots.” Andy joked to her quietly.

“Mm,” she agreed mischievously, “I guess co-pilots are one thing, co-Clevens are another.”

“Should find a way to mass produce.” Andy sighed, “War would be over in five seconds.”

Gale Cleven hadn’t even refuted Demarco’s concern verbally and already the crew shrugged it off, if Major Cleven couldn’t get them off Hell Island then no one could, and that was that.

“John Egan, get your ass onboard, it’s wheels up.” Cleven’s yell out the window blasted through the radio, too, and the girls grinned at each other -Major Egan wasn’t one to get bossed about. But, as if to challenge everything they knew about life and their own superior, mere seconds later, John Egan was hopping up into the belly of Cleven’s plane with his empty sack dangling and sweaty hair in disarray. “We’ll be back Kenny!” he yelled to the young pharmacist’s mate left on the sand as the cargo door was hastily wrenched shut by Brady.

“Honey I’m home.” Egan yelled up to the front and Demarco’s snicker echoed along the walls of the tin belly.

“Everybody stow your gear,” Cleven’s order came through, the pounding vibration of nearby mortars shuddering the plane even more than the engine’s revving, “we’re gettin’ outta here now. S’gonna be bumpy.”

“That’ll be one word for it.” Demarco snarked, “Death by bumps.”

The human cargo in the plane, those not groaning or insensible, let up a unanimous chuckle. It helped to have been to hell and back, a quick death as a plane failed to get air and plowed instead into a sand bank was hardly the worst prospect these men had faced.

“Believe, Benny, believe.” Maureen could hear Cleven’s soft smile in his voice as the wheels began to roll.

Brady, their engineer, navigator and the lone crewman besides the pilots aboard this transport, kindly manhandled Maureen to a seat between his legs on the rattling floor beside Egan’s built-in desk, his hand fisted in the back of her jumpsuit collar like she was a kitten. They kicked their legs out together and braced as they gained speed and the plane began to jostle into the milder craters at an ever more intense pace.

Shell fragments made a series of charming bangs off the side of the wing nearest her and Maureen could hear Brady whispering behind her in repetition “God spare the oxygen, God spare the oxygen, God spare-“

“50-“ Demarco’s countdown was unfortunately broadcasting like some morbid game announcer and Maureen could see Egan’s jaw ticking in stress under the harsh overhead lights.

There was a terrible blast in front, the sound of shattering glass or metal and a jarring shudder went through the plane, “Damnnit.” Cleven hissed but the acceleration remained.

“You hit?”

“No. Read me, Benny-“

“80-“ Demarco obligingly resumed counting.

“C’mon Buck.” breath gusting on Maureen’s neck behind her, as Brady had begun to direct his prayers to the Major now and as if in answer, the stomach swooping feeling of flight took over them seconds later as the cargo plane let out a mighty roar of strained endurance and lifted with a wobble that had more than a few bunks puking their guts out. There’d be over five hours to clean the plane floor and attend to housekeeping if they could just level out and stay up long enough to get out of range.

Down the way from them Egan was still seated, one hand holding aloft a not yet hung plasma bottle and the other gripping a support bar. But his head was starting to nod like a dancer keeping pace with the band’s ever growing tempo. The engines had a beat, if you’d been personal with a plane long enough to pick it up, and Maureen paid attention to Egan’s stippling fingers on the cross bar as they mounted and mounted, little bursts of enemy gunnery causing a comparatively mild wobble to the plane body every few seconds. She figured a veteran like Brady would know when it was safe to let her go; judging by the grip on her collar he was still highly dubious of their lasting success.

“Fighters, -everyone brace.” Cleven’s voice warned about as cooly as if he was pointing out the drip of ice cream slipping down a cone.

“Ice man.” Andy praised from his bunk to the agreement of his companions as the fighter zipped by without so much as a shudder from Cleven’s steering.

Plenty of the passing bullets had punctured the belly and one man got a direct hit. “Candy!” Egan commanded from his place checking the unfortunate man’s pulse, “Go remind Buck that we haven’t got the oxygen to go full bomber, he’s gotta keep low and -Candy! When ya come back, time to start throwin’ on blankets. Brady, get our pumps going. This is as steady as it’ll get.”

“You got it, commander.”

More than a little sure her mission was more provoking than necessary, Maureen still obeyed and followed Brady up the length of the plane and towards his electrical station, then past it to poke her head between the pilot’s seats.

“Well, well, this is a pleasant surprise, getting car sick, kiddo?” Demarco joked, “Hey, I get it, I’d find it hell back there with no windows to look out.”

Their front window was partially shattered and the metal on Cleven’s side was gnarled.

“Those mortars obligingly made a few.” Maureen joked back.

“Anybody hurt?” Cleven asked, and to her surprise, he turned from his panel to look at her with unmasked concern.

A joke was ready made there about everyone quite literally being shot to hell but she sensed he’d not appreciate it and following some uninterpreted impulse of desiring his good opinion, she hardly wished to repay his earnestness with flippancy. “Only one.”

“How bad?”

“He looked -dead.” Maureen admitted. She hadn’t gotten a good look at the man moving past him but she’d seen Egan’s treatment of the body and it wasn’t promising.

Cleven’s jaw worked overtime at the news and something snapped in his mouth, followed by a soft curse from lips too full and soft to always be so stern. Maureen thought he may have broken a tooth with all that tension but he spit out two halves of a blooded toothpick instead. It fell to his pant leg.

“Major Cleven, sir, you’re bleeding.” It had drawn Maureen’s attention to his wet lap.

“That’s what I said.” Demarco agreed.

“It’s somebody else’s.” Cleven shook his head.

“You know if you pass out on me-“ Demarco warned, completely ignoring Cleven’s denial.

“-that’s why we’ve got co-pilots.” Cleven finished for him with a maddening smirk that made Benny Demarco throw his hands up.

“Can you check him?” he asked, “I mean -you are a nurse!”

“What? Hell no!” Major Cleven spooked for the first time all day at the suggestion, glancing quickly from his reddened trousers, behind him to Maureen Kendeigh, and back again. “I’m fine.” he declared in a firm tone that dettered her almost as much as the challenge of getting over the instruments and a steering column to pull down his pants and look. “Ensign Kendeigh, was there a purpose to your visit?” He redirected, resolutely ignoring Demarco’s unabated concerns.

“Yes sir,” she replied, meekly as she could, “Doc Egan asked me to remind you that you’re not flying a bomber. To mind the oxygen, sir. And that it’s cold.”

Cleven let out a mirthless little laugh. “We’re full of holes Ensign, of course it’s cold.”

“I know sir.”

“Yeah, ‘course you know,” his eyes lightened for a moment and Maureen almost deluded herself he was being chummy when he murmured next, “you’re smart like that. Tell the Lieutenant Commander I’ll keep her nice and low, so low the Jap navy gunners can blow the floor out without a sweat.”

“Much obliged, Major.” Maureen chirped, pleased to have been trusted with a bit of morbid humor -it was the truest test of being taken seriously a woman could hope for in the service.

“Thank you, Ensign.” And with that she was dismissed.

By the time she got to the belly again her assigned job of doling out blankets had long been accomplished by her fellows. Brady had the place lit up like an operating theater and there was the added drone of medical equipment added to Cleven’s engines. She liked to think of them as his now, Maureen realized, a tiredness seeping in now that the rush was over, now there was just six hours of the same until they touched down again in safety. His engines stayed with them, consistent, steady, dependable yet a little absent, just like the man himself.

“Major Cleven said he’ll keep her low, Doc.” Maureen reported dutifully but whatever humor Egan once held when sending her to the cockpit was now gone, a bloody mess on his hands as he and Ensign Dormer worked over a head wound.

“Good.” Egan gritted out, “I need a monitor on vitals and I need new gloves, c’mon Candy, c’mon!”

The hours passed like this, no way of telling time in the artificially lit tube of metal. Some men needed a cup of water and a kind smile, others required every bit of grit and intelligence to keep even the faintest pulse discernible above the hum. When one of them passed away in the anonymity of the top bunk, Egan didn’t bother to cover his face, the man looked to be sleeping and it suited the morale better if his fellows were not disillusioned on that score.

It was impossible not to think for a split second on the unfairness of it all -live to be finally evacuated and only die before getting safe. To think how someone else less tore up might’ve been given that bunk and survived the trip.

“Can’t dwell on it.” Ida Brady, their headmistress back in Manila, had said -and she had been right. But seeing her brother Lt. Brady cross himself now in recognition of a soul passed did something to Maureen’s own spirit, a grieving sort of fury possessed her which matched Egan’s own as they worked on the next unsalvageable man until he became a likely contender for seeing his wife and kids again.

She had been up for nineteen hours, flying for ten of those, nursing for four. She was bone tired and yet there was always someone to be tended and the thought of leaving one of these poor men without even the slightest of their needs met felt impossible. Maureen didn’t even think to pause or lag in her expertise, neither did the nurses around her and up there at the front somewhere, Cleven’s eyes were sharp and focused as ever, she knew it, and knowing it brought a calm over her that made her sympathize with Egan’s own superstitious preference for the man.

Brady came through with coffee, an abnormal duty he picked up as a result of trusting no one else with the process or the electrical requirements to make it. “Figured our pilots could use it.” he explained before passing out a passel of paper cups to the girls filled with the peppy stuff, belying his practical excuse, before taking two to the cockpit.

He came back out with a funny look on his face- “Benny says he needs a pan.”

“What the hell for?” Egan balked.

“Or a condom.” Brady dutifully amended the petition.

“I repeat -what the hell for?”

“They’ve drank a lotta coffee sir.”

“Any of you fellas got condoms?” Egan asked his patients with a laugh and got a series of predictable replies. “Gale Cleven sure as hell don’t.”

There were light hearted moments like that, many of them in fact, but six hours of flying with wounds as bad as the ones they were tending was no joke, there were bits of laughter and there were times of quiet and there were restless sleepers whose terrors not even morphine could dim.

“Forty minutes out.” Major Cleven had gone quiet over the coms for so long it was like hearing from God again when he came on, gentle and steady.

Those they couldn’t get comfortable were at the height of their groaning as the cold and the endless buzz got to them. Helplessly the nurses offered pillows and water and irrigated the burns with saline and checked needle positioning. Maureen had taken to charting, something too often neglected in high stress environments but something that proved terribly crucial as soon as they landed and handed over their charges to a new set of professionals. On the left side of the plane she held one man’s wrist after another and noted their pulse. On the right side she did the same, one man’s left hand after another, wedding band or sans wedding band, in her notes it was only ever:

“94, 57, 88, 91, 63, 82”

The lights had been dimmed, hopes were some rest could be gotten by those in any shape to manage sleep. It made for a drowsy atmosphere, only the flashlight in her teeth illuminating the veins under her fingers and her co-workers faces, Egan’s face was a shiny mess of freckles in the torch light despite the chill, exhaustion seeping out of him but not a hint shown in his workmanship. It made the dull chorus of groans in the dark all the more ominous and Brady remarked to Smith on one pass that maybe they should have brought a record player.

“Twenty minutes out.” Maureen and every other soul on board was living for those little updates from Cleven.

Men told to hang in there and not die before they could be gotten to surgery suddenly had a goal in mind and the suspense was growing brutal. Stashed and stowed, secured and checked, landing preparations were already done and it was last minute tending before taking seats. Maureen found herself nearly piddling by one young private, trying to soothe him with a washcloth as sepsis fever wracked him when over the intercom came the oddest lulling hum, like a far off jazz intro.

It was too soft initially to be recognized but the surety picked up, something about the tone unmistakably belonging to their pilot, his hums about as characteristic of him as his laconic speech.

“Is that whadda friend we have in Jesus?” Demarco’s voice overtopped the gentle melody.

John Egan was wheezing in a chuckle beside her as Maureen shook her own head in disbelief.

“No,” Gale murmured, humming paused only briefly, “it’s ‘Leaning on the everlasting arms’ -you fish eater.”

“You gotta be jokin’.” Benny was wheezing too but Cleven was back to his gentle humming, words actually forming this time and filling the tired plane with a timbre that could put Bing Crosby out of a job.

“What have I to dread, what have I to fear

Leaning on the everlasting arms?

I have blessed peace with my Lord so near

Leaning on the everlasting arms”

It worked, the sickening drop in elevation was -if not noticed- bravely pushed aside for a hymn sing, Brady leading from the back and Cleven from the front. And for a brief moment, men from Kansas to Florida, Oregan to Rhode Island, strapped in a flying coffin of flickering souls, were seated back in the pews of their childhood, trusting something larger than themselves. Even if that something was Gale Cleven’s steady hands or the justness of a cause worth dying for or God Almighty, it was something big and above the pain of right now.

“Leaning, leaning

Safe and secure from all alarms

Leaning, leaning

Leaning on the everlasting arms”

The Navy station at Gaum had a runway, in fact there were five Cleven could have picked at whim, and there was no feeling so beautifully civilized and sure as the smooth roll of plane tires on asphalt after what they’d just left. “Flaps at quarter!” and they were slowing, the deflated back wheel only causing some slight disturbance, and then they were stopped.

That bizarre stillness settled again as the engines were cut. Egan gave Maureen a smile so soft and telling that her heart about seized in realization -they’d managed it. “Well that’s us.” he repeated for the second time that day, voice gone raspy with cigarettes and fatigue. “Welcome to American soil, boys.”

There were so many lights outside the cargo door, searing white flashes in the nighttime, jeeps and ambulances and all manner of medical personnel at the ready, it was overwhelming in the exact opposite way the beach at Iwo had been. Maureen hopped down onto the tarmac with Ensign Mann, ready and prepared to stay with her charges until the transition could be made. Clipboard in hand and kit on her back, she’d go in with her select five until they’d been admitted and charted meticulously in the various wards.

“How’s it feel to make history, Miss?!” -some of those lights, Maureen realized with a dull throb behind her eyes, were flashbulbs. Journalists were thick as thieves, snapping and hollering, others respectfully keeping a distance, “You're the first woman to step foot in a combat zone-“ Maureen kept her hand on her stretcher even as she watched Cleven limping over to a jeep and piling in after Demarco. Her mouth set in a sour line of suspicion regarding his claims of being unscathed. He’d be in interrogation and she in the wards for the next hour, she’d have to find out later.

A couple of hours later John Egan was sat with Captain Crosby in the administration office, nothing but a small alcove at the front of the ward, his legs spread wide in his chair and good scotch whisky being slurped from a cleverly injected orange while reviewing the charts. Croz was a whizz at this, meticulous and careful to a fault and John adored him for it because men who gave a damn were scarce after this many years of grueling loss and, also, because it allowed himself to wind down sooner than he was technically free to do so.

“Two men lost, that’s -that’s still good odds.” Crosby couldn’t manage an upbeat tone, he felt those two lives as deeply as Egan did, but facts were facts and over all, this experimental mission had proven beyond successful. Now to tell that to the families of the two men now being carted to the morgue instead of surgery and salt baths.

“Yeah, my girls were Trojans out there.” Bucky sucked his teeth, the squint in his eyes beginning to relax with a boozy sort of calmness. “Speakin’ of Trojans! —Candy!”

Maureen approached the little alcove at a tired gait, not above reprimanding Egan for his loud voice with all those occupied beds just feet away. “It’s late, Commander.” she reminded with hinting softness that only made him crane his head back and grin sloppily at her.

“It is, it is.” he agreed, reaching up to pat her arm and she squinted at the smell of whiskey, Crosby’s sudden and transparent busyness with the charts confirmed her suspicions. “You should get some shut eye, Candy! Back at it tomorrow.”

“So should you.” she hinted kindly.

“Mm,” he hummed in negative, “apparently my ‘specialty’ is needed elsewhere before then.”

“And so the booze?” she struck back and Crosby’s pen briefly dragged along his tidy line in shock at her daring.

“Steady hands, Candy darlin.” Egan responded, lifting two sticky palms up and showing, indeed, not a tremor. “I’ve got a surgery in less than an hour -working with Brady’s old sister, of all people, the one who snuck out of Manila after?- anyways, she’s 90 pounds of spit and vinegar. Starved for two years, but she takes three weeks off and a round of anti-parasitics and she’s all ‘let me back at ‘em.’ Hell of a dame. Anyway, surgery with her. I need this.”

“Well,” Maureen Kendeigh knew when to let go of a fight with a man who’d as yet never failed her or anyone else, despite his habits, “I can confirm it does nothing for your eyes bags.”

“Kiss ‘em better?”

“Not in my purview, sir.” she couldn’t help but smile, “Perhaps lieutenant Brady will be obliging?”

“She scares me.” he objected.

“And I don’t?”

“Only in the ways I like, Candy Darlin’.” he insited.

“Ah Major!” Crosby’s strained greeting drew their attention away from this over rehearsed banter and Egan straightened up fast upon sight of his friend.

“Buck!”

“John.” Gale Cleven was in the same uniform he’d been in for hours, flight jacket undone and scarf hanging loose. He must have come straight from interrogation and standing in front of the administrator's desk he was turning his cover over and over in his hands. Maureen was certain that were she to devote two hours a day to brushing her hair she could never bernish it to the golden brilliance that twelve hours of flight-sweat gave his. On a more concerning note, his was pale as death except for those lips. “I came to check in on everybody. Load of journalists out there.” He thumbed back behind him at the public area, “Mostly curious about you, Ensign.”

“Historical.” Egan affirmed and sent Maureen a sly look as she sighed over the fuss being made of her mission.

“I’m one of twenty.” she reminded.

“I hope you were nice about her.” Egan goaded his buddy and to her confusion, Gale flinched as if that were a remarkably successful mode of attack.

“O-of course.” he frowned severely and Maureen had a desperate urge to thumb those lines away. “I told them the truth.” he defended, mildly heated.

“Which is?” Egan was enjoying this and neither Maureen nor Harry Crosby could seem to puzzle out why.

“They did remarkably.” Cleven didn’t budge.

“Better than you thought.” Egan prodded.

“Yeah. Admittedly, far better than I thought. Jeeze, John.”

“But were you nice about her?” Egan insisted.

“What?”

“You said they were particular about Candy.” Egan said, “So what did you say?”

Maureen grew concerned that with such a level of fluster in the Major’s face not a stitch of blood seemed able to raise a blush.

“How ‘bout you read it in the paper.” Gale replied, coolly mean before clearing his throat and straightening up, back in possession of himself. “I came to see how many -how’d we do?”

“Twenty eight.” Egan confirmed.

“Outta thirty?” Cleven asked for confirmation.

“Yes sir.” Crosby answered him.

“Alright.” The Major accepted that, hat still whirling in his hands, a strange contrast to his perfectly contained posture. It drew Maureen’s eye to his hips and that deep red stain running down his pant leg.

“How’s your hip Major?” she asked, seeking to break the silence before Egan did so with some new and regrettable subject.

That did bring a flush and a sheen of sweat broke out on a face Maureen knew would be feverishly hot were she to touch it. He looked peeky, truth be told. “It’s fine, ma’am.”

“Hold up,” Egan stood from his chair and leaned over the desk to glare blearily at Gale’s trousers. “You're hit.”

“It’s a scratch.”

“Scratches don’t keep bleedin’ like that.“

“Well, mine do.”

“Hey, I don’t go tellin’ you how to fly your planes-“

“-you do though.”

“-so you don’t go tellin’ me what’s a scratch and what’s a wound. It’s still drippin’, that makes it a wound.”

Cleven moved his boot to the side impatiently and only succeeded in proving his friend’s point as a line of fresh blood smeared the white tile. “I was gonna just -“

“-What?”

“-Clean it in the shower.” Cleven sighed, defeated but with an edge that suggested he might yet do it .

“Oh, just gonna rinse mortar fragments outta of your thigh, yeah?”

“It’s not that bad. Dunno if it really got hit.” He protested, “Might be scratched.”

“Or you might have a piece of your instrument panel snuggled up to an artery.” John affirmed sarcastically. “We’re goin’ up again tomorrow. I need you fit, I need you good.”

“I am.”

“You’re gonna get checked.” Egan commanded and Gale looked back at the double doors leading to freedom and a pack of journalists and sighed. “You’re on the ground now, flyboy, I call the shots.”

“Ok.” Cleven mumbled, “If you’re so goddamn eager to pants me, do it.”

“I am, I am but I’ve got even better things to do.” Egan rounded the desk and flung an arm around Gale in parting, bringing him in close despite Cleven’s stiff necked antipathy that hid only the deepest seated endearment, “Like putting a left lung back where it should be and trying to get Lt. Brady to smile at me.” Egan expounded, letting go and beginning to actually leave, much to Cleven's sudden concern, “Which is, naturally, on the left -the left lung, that’s where it goes.” Egan went on.

“Wait, aren’t you gonna-?” Cleven called after him.

“Pantsing is more of Ensign Kendeigh’s purview.” John replied cheerfully. “Don’t look so appalled, I'm sure she’s seen smaller.”

“John!” Major Cleven and Maureen both inflected his name like twin, scandalized parrots.

“You deserve each other.” John laughed, “Ensign, do your duty.”

“This is the kinda behavior that has you gettin’ write ups for bein’ a terror to your nurses!” Gale growled after him in remonstrance but it did nothing to slow Egan’s tactical withdrawal.

“Bulshit, everybody on this ward loves me!” John dared to claim even as he was berated on his way out by more than a few wounded marines for being a little too jovial at two in the morning.

Cleven didn’t wait for the doors to fully close on Egan or for Maureen to collect her professional demeanor and clipboard before he was leaning over Captain Crosby at his desk, large hands splayed on the fresh paperwork, assuming the pose of a supplicant before a lawyer. “Harry, Captain, do me a favor this once and take a look fo-“

“-Major Cleven sir,” Harry Crosby interjected levelly and with the utmost respect, “I’m an administrator.”

Maureen composed herself, the sight of this stoic man losing a grip on himself due to the prospect of lost modesty was surprising, it was also motivating to find her own professionalism and put him at ease. “Major, if you’d follow me?” she nodded her head towards the ward and started clopping down the dim aisle toward one of the last empty beds. He didn’t need to lay down for it but she needed her instrument tray, an isolated light and, if his shyness was so severe, drawing the sectioned curtains would hardly be amiss.

When she arrived and turned round to instruct him, he was obediently there to obey. Something about that dogged respect for authority he possessed and his compliance with her own profession filled her with an odd protectiveness and she motioned him into the space gently, tugging the curtain closed behind him. He was taller than she realized, made more apparent as he took the initiative and tugged off the bulky weight of his flight jacket, methodically laying it out in a half fold on the bed, nothing but a lean line of him left in olive green.

Lanky, her mother would call him, a long drink of water. He looked all of twenty four, suddenly, soft and in need of a meal. “Your leg, yes?” she reaffirmed, jotting it down in the chart. She had found that men found it easier to talk of injuries when she wasn’t making eye contact.

“Yes.” His voice was low as the grave and hushed too, “And -I think maybe my hip.”

Maureen’s eyes flicked to the place in question, recalling how she had suspected his lap in general on the plane. “Right.” she made the customary jot down of the detail and then an arguably unnecessary note beside it, the longer to give him a chance to cool himself. “Your pants Major, if you would.” she filled in the date and the time, cursory information so as not to be idle while he undid his belt, the clank of the flat uniform clasp deafening in the space where he seemed to hold his breath.

She was used to discerning the moment when it was safe to look up. Often there was a brief period after the sound of pants hitting the floor where one might have the misfortune of catching a man adjusting himself to a preferred side. She was prepared to give him that moment in peace but his voice called her to attention.

“Is this?-“ he didn’t finish his sentence and she looked up to see his vague gesture as he stood in briefs and boots, jacket hung open, too.

“Yes I think we can manage with those on.” she smiled reassuringly, discerning his query. His skivvies were blood stained on the right and clinging to him but the wounds appeared to be above and below their coverage, “I’ve always got scissors if need be.”

“Scissors.” He repeated with a nod, teeth savagely dug into his lip.

“Jacket off, this could get messy.” She ordered and something about her decisiveness seemed to soothe him like she knew it would, he shrugged it off gracefully and laid it beside the sheepskin, and yanked at his tie to relive his bobbing throat. “Please, sit Major.”

He sat down on the bed, a little stiffly, and she reached above her to turn on the large overhead lamp, shining it down on them both and in the harsh glow of it she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen something so beautiful as Gale Cleven’s blushing face fixed upturned towards her own.

“You’ve lost a lot of blood, looks like.” she attempted to make conversation and got a mere nod instead, once she stepped nearer, his eyes devoutly focused themselves somewhere to the right of them, on the floor.

She rinsed the area first, wiping away the crusted blood until his smooth, lightly haired skin came into view, little jagged tears visible in it with small fragments embedded. It wasn’t bad at all, but deep enough to keep it bleeding.

The touch of cool water made him jolt in surprise. What it didn’t do was make him shrink. She saw his hands curl, white knuckled around the mattress pad beside him as she gently dug out the metal, and she had a suspicion it wasn’t from the pain.

As unabashedly as her profession had taught her, Maureen tugged up his boxer leg until she was satisfied she’d uncovered the last little shard and did what was necessary, reaching atop the wet fabric and moving his heavy member up and away. He about bucked off the table at that mere touch of positioning and Maureen backed away out of pure animal instinct to avoid getting reflexively kneed.

“I'm sorry!“ he rushed out, his chest suddenly tight like an elephant were sat on it and his blood thudded in his ears, “Ensign, I apologize, I don’t know why-“

“It’s fine.” she insisted, stunned and pitying at the realization she probably was the first woman to touch him this way. To touch him at all. “I’m sorry this requires it.” she admitted.

“Please don’t -“ he took a large breath and began again, actually managing to meet her eyes out of sheer willpower, “-I’m the one who’s sorry. You’re doing your job, i don’t know why I get- it’s unprofessional of me, I'm sorry.” he repeated firmly and straightened his spine as if he could discipline a most human reaction away.

“It’s not at all uncommon.” She whispered, feeling compelled to be unprofessional herself if only to make him stop berating himself, “We nurses deal with this all the time, quite normal after combat, particularly.” Maureen paused for a moment and weighed the joke on the tip of her tongue as she dabbed iodine on a cotton ball and prepared to go back into the dreaded zone of his thigh crease, “It’s to be expected, the manual says; your blood is quite literally UP.”

Stood there in suspense between his legs with the iodine swab waiting mid air, Maureen waited until she saw a flicker of amusement twinkle his sad expression and a snicker escape that sober mouth. “Tell me about it.” he rasped, exasperated at his own body. “Every damn time.”

“That’s what I’m doing,” she teased, bringing the swab down and ignoring the sizable jolt his whole body and appendage gave at this dab to his thigh or the way his belly caved in with his deep intake of breath, “I’m telling you it’s normal.”

“Damn, you are sweet.” He declared suddenly with gut wrenching emphaticism that finally broke Mauren’s own precarious composure. “Not just to me,” he hastened to add in response to her melting expression so close to him, “to everybody out there. You were incredible today.” He paused and Maureen swallowed hard and tried with great difficulty to find the capability to thank him for the compliment. Before she could, he added with youthful honesty, “But you are -sweet to me.”

“Right back at you. Major.” she insisted, daring to stay that close and look back into those eyes she thought would be her last sight on earth for a second there on the beach earlier. His shuddering breath suggested he was recalling it, too.

“It’s nice to have friends in the crucible with ya.” he explained and Maureen felt her heart glow.

“Your poor hands.” she whispered, dropping her swab to gather his shaky hands in hers, the large palms engulfed her own even as she tried to cradle them. Never a hint of this anxiety while flying them, yet here he was shivering with it afterwards. “Probably blood loss.” she gave him an out, some men weren’t ready for talk of flight exhaustion or strained nerves.

“Then why’s it wasting all I’ve got to spare on…that?” He actually managed to joke back and Maureen actually allowed herself to laugh -god help her, she laughed at a man’s joke about an ill timed erection.

“John would say something about hope springing eternal, right about now.” she wheezed even as he groaned, his hands still placidly jittering in her grip, “I enjoyed your singing, by the way.”

“Mm, yeah, well,” he cleared his throat, “you didn’t see the hole in the wing or the busted flaps all the way home. That landing didn’t promise to be as pretty as it was.”

“But it was pretty.”

“Yeah. Not too bad.”

“A gorgeous landing.” she insisted and his eyes started to water under the harsh light. Impulsively, and in an act of unprofessionalism she would have never recognized before today, Maureen Kendeigh drew his hands close to her chest and pressed a kiss to his lined forehead. The way he sagged against her in a shuddering lunge suggested her impulse was a good one. “Doc Egan insists whiskey is good for this.” she whispered into hair that smelled so strongly of his musk and the wool of his cap she about buckled from it.

“Mm, but is it g—good for him?” he responded rhetorically, a gust of moist breath against the open throat of her flight jacket, his usual irony still remained with only a hiccup of nerves interrupting his speech. Maureen wasn’t sure anymore, what saved a life, well, it had saved a life, so why demonize it? She was here to force things to keep living in environments so hostile wildflowers gave up. Some men needed their booze and some men needed to be held in the hospital ward at two in the morning until their shakes calmed. As if he could read her mind, she felt Gale turn his head to the side a little for breath, face still pressed to her chest as he uttered quietly, “This is working. For me.”

“Good.” Nose buried in his hair she took a few measured breaths herself, feeling that odd calm still radiating off him, even as his body was shot to hell and giving off the overtaxed jitters. “You bring people calm, you know that, Major? It’s why Egan picked you for this, deep down, you make a plane load of dying men hang in there. That’s a gift. But when you’ve got a cup you keep pouring out of, it’s bound to go empty. Gotta refill yourself, sometimes, yes?”

“I thought this was blood loss.” Gale replied softly and it took Maureen a beat to recognize the sad mischief in his blue eyes.

“Alright. I’ll speak for myself.”She conceded with a huff.

“You must be exhausted.” he noted, suddenly as sober as they come.

“A little tired.” she admitted, questioning the way she instinctively tightened her hold on the back of his neck as he stiffened to pull away. Entirely unprofessional, she wasn’t a medicine spoon or a needle, he had every right to pull away.

“So what would fill your cup back up?” he asked in that low voice that sent a million varied undertones crashing through her, whether he intended it or not.

Too tired to be much more than plainly honest, or as honest as a woman should be with a half undressed patient cradled to her chest, Maureen admitted the half of it, which in many ways was the whole, “This is working for me.”she repeated his own words to him and watched them take effect.

Like a sudden reanimation had occurred, Gale Cleven untangled their hands with emphatic surety and then, in an act of kindness Maureen never expected, brought them to her shoulders and tugged her down for a solid embrace. “A hug and a nap then.” He prescribed, his solid shoulder beneath her cheek and his legs parted for her to step between. Only the bandages kept him from bleeding further on her.

“Not a nap,” she smiled, an inexplicable warmth and calmness flooding through her in his hold, his back was broad and lean under her hands, “we should go to sleep.”

“No such thing as going to sleep in the military, Ensign.” Gale murmured, “Sleep -that’s what happens when your mama tucks you in and you’ve got a whole night to waste. Naps. That’s what we take.”

“Alright, a nap, and a hug.”

“Alright.”

“You know,” Maureen dared with a little smile as some part of her slotted back in place and gave her the boldness to be a little too much, “there’s this thing people came up with ages ago where you hug and take naps at the same time.”

Pink cheeked but with a jaw clench that had defeated warzones, Gale Cleven pulled his head away and gave her a heavy look of admonishment, “Marriage.” he stated unamused.

Well, she had meant sex, and she wanted it, always had after danger -but Cleven had a point too.

“Uh, yes, that’s the most common-“

“-If I were to marry you, Maureen Kendeigh,” his voice took on a teasing lilt that was somehow more devastating than all his commanding earnestness, “there’d be no nap taking.”

“Oh.” A single utterance was about all she could articulate in the face of that smirk and gentle refusal. Both flattering and painful all at once. “Well, that’s not for us then.”

“No.” he pondered, full lips twitching downwards in disappointment, “At least, sounds like a decidedly post-war endeavor. No naps.” he clarified.

“Oh -yes.” she caught on, well used to the code of superstition all around her that didn’t allow men to spell out any sort of lasting, long term hope. “A postwar endeavor.” she agreed, never having heard marriage so smartly categorized.

“Uhuh,” his hands trailed up from her ribs to squeeze the sore muscles of her deltoid, “for now -naps. Back up tomorrow.”

“Alright.” she agreed, stepping a small distance back and looking him over, this time his presence didn’t shrink, in fact if anything he expended in the small room and it made her chest ache, “You're alright?” she made sure one last time.

He held his palms flat up and Maureen could attest they were indeed steady, terribly large, too, and his watch on his wrist was careening towards three o’clock. “Looks like it.” he rasped. “But you’re in charge here. Can I go, Ensign?”

Regretfully Maureen nodded, “You’re dismissed, Major.”

When he stood up from the bed he was by necessity in her space, looking down at her rather fearlessly as he yanked up the waist of his trousers and gathered the belt closed around his lean waist. Maureen felt her cheeks burn but couldn’t look away, if she were to glance away from those eyes she might see something even more tempting before he’d secured the fabric.

“Got any more duties after this?” he asked, breaking the moment as he bent to arrange his trouser hems over his boots.

“No.”

“Then I’ll walk you to your billet.”

“For naps.” she clarified cheekily.

“For naps.” he agreed with mirthful vehemence, finger pointed at her with almost paternal caution to not push his patience.

“Do you want your shell fragments?” she rattled them in their dish, the pieces she'd pried from the shallow muscle of his hip.

Cleven paused with his hand on the dividing curtain, shaking his head in amusement, “Give ‘em to Egan,” he suggested with a wicked little smirk, “knowing him he’ll make a talisman out of them or something equally useful.”

Hope y’all enjoyed! Feedback is a writer’s life blood, lemme head your thots or screams! Xoxo

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@suraemoon

@blurredcolour

@steph-speaks

@crazymadpassionatelove

@rubyfruitjungle

@taestrwbrry

@storysimp

@javden

@sexualparkour

@jointherebellion215

@sunny747

@ask-you-what-sir

@xxanaduwrites

@pretty4u

@yorkshirekiwi

@waitedforlove743

@elvismylove04

#mota fanfiction #mine #archive #friends in the crucible #Gale Cleven x OC #Buck Cleven x OC #Buck Cleven #austin butler #austin butler fanfiction #austin butler imagine #masters of the air #Bucky Egan #doc Egan #Maureen Kendeigh #iwo jima #hbo war #john egan #callum turner #Callum Turner fanfiction

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piratefishmama · 10 months

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Fake it 'till you make it | Part 2

Steve went on his own. Dustin tried to call shotgun, tried saying he’d back Steve up cause his friend could be ‘jumpy’, but no. Steve had to do this on his own, because Dustin didn’t know. He could have told the little shrimp, he really could have, so far he’d come out to three people, and it’d gone surprisingly well, Robin not so surprising but his parents?

Damn. He’d have put his entire life savings on that going the other way.

The risk with Dustin, however, was his mother. Don’t get him wrong, Claudia was lovely, she always had a spot saved for him at the dinner table when his parents weren’t in town, she always greeted him with warmth and kindness, he didn’t have a single complaint about Claudia Henderson. He also unfortunately had no idea how she’d take a coming out if Dustin let it slip. The kid was talkative.

He couldn’t imagine no longer being able to see Dustin because his mother found out he wasn’t as straight as everyone thought. Couldn’t imagine the truth of life in a small rural ‘god fearing’ town, thrown in his face so cruelly, that people were small minded and based all their opinions on what everyone else was doing.

Especially when everyone else seemed to be following the bullshit the Church spewed.

Dustin would be safe, he trusted Dustin. But he simply couldn’t risk how talkative he was.

So he went on his own. Robin was working, he couldn’t kidnap Robin, Keith would kill them. Or at the very least dock their pay a little and glower. This, unfortunately, created one little problem that quickly presented itself when Steve found himself sat at a visible booth at Benny’s watching for anyone entering that door.

He didn’t know who Dustin’s ‘friend’ was, and Dustin’s friend didn’t know who he was, because Dustin had so wisely decided to not reveal that titbit of information over the phone.

All he knew, was that this friend was a guy and that he’d probably be there soon. So, disaster in the making, basically. He’d been there for five minutes, it’d been ten since the phone call, and so far three men had walked in.

All of them old older, it was early, Benny did early bird specials for the older folks in Hawkins, but he still looked up every time the door opened, looking for someone who might not belong, someone who stood out from the oldies, someone who—

Holy shit. Steve immediately ducked his head. Eddie Goddamn Munson. Eddie Munson in all his leather, chains, and curly haired glory walked in with his head on a swivel, eyes scanning the diner for someone who looked out of place, someone who’s identity he also wasn’t aware of. Steve could ditch.

He could ditch without hesitation, Eddie knew him, Steve could get the hell out of dodge, take the back door, and just run for the hills, suffer the inevitable cringe fest that was going to be the week away, take it like a champ. Maybe get a brief fling with someone he would never want to settle down with, or…

He peeked through his arms, Eddie was still looking, he was checking his watch, a little frown on his brow, what were the odds, honestly, that it was Eddie?

Knowing Dustin and his stupid DnD game? Pretty fuckin high that’s what the odds were. Eddie lived for that shit, it was a direct connection. He was going to kill that little snot. Maybe… if it didn’t work out. Because he wasn’t going to be a coward.

He was going to face his uncertainties like a badass. He was going to rise from his seat, and cross the very short distance, aaaand “Hey Munson, that you?” Be totally cool, completely ignore Benny’s curious eyes from behind his little judgement window, the window where he stood in the safety of his kitchen judging everyone who dared be weird in his diner.

“Not today Buckaroo, I’m busy” oh yeah he looked super busy.

“Cool, cool, super cool, you… come for the early bird specials often then?” Ohhhh he’d perfected the deadpan stare. He had that shit down. How did eyes that pretty so cut so deep? “Heh, sorry, look man I—I don’t mean any trouble, I was just—”

“M’not carrying shit, Harrington, the hell you want with that stuff this early anyway?” Stuff? Steve frowned a little, before visibly realising what Eddie was getting at, it looked like a genuine lightbulb went off behind his eyes. He knew because that little frown was broken by Eddie raising one eyebrow in curiosity.

“That’s not what I—shit, okay. Do over. Do you know Dustin? Dustin Henderson? Lil guy, bout yay high, curly hair, ridiculous meddler, no collar bones?” The frown was back, accompanied by the squinty eyes of suspicion. He knew Dustin, he had to know Dustin, it had to be Eddie, it had to be, nobody else had come in!

“I know the little shrimp, yeah, one of my little lost sheep, how do you know Dustin?” Holy shit it had to be him. Why else would the notoriously tardy Eddie Munson be up that early on a Sunday?

“Babysitting.” Eddie’s ever so expressive face seemed to slacken in surprise, Steve didn’t give him a chance to ask further as to why a rich guy like him had to babysit. He did it for free, he liked the little fuckers, explanation unnecessary. “You uh… wouldn’t happen to have uhm… gotten a call from him… about twenty minutes ago, would you?”

It took Eddie a minute. A little frown here, a squint there, a slight tilt of his body as he looked Steve up and down, not in a ‘you’re so hot oh my god’ way more in a ‘what the actual fuck’ kind of way.

Steve felt seen in the worst possible way, wanted to abort mission, just run away, that was a judgy bitch stare and he knew it, he’d COINED that stare, he was the master of it, and suddenly it was on him and he felt smaller than Dustin back in ‘83 with his baby squishy cheeks, and then— “Nope.” Eddie turned on his heel, ringed fingers waving in refusal, “nope, nope, nope—"

Steve should have let him go. Should have just chalked it up to Dustin having the worst friends ever outside of himself, Lucas, Will, Max, Jane, and maybe Mike. Maybe. On a semi-good day cause full good days didn’t exist with Mike.

But instead he was grabbing Eddie’s elbow and babbling “Wait-wait-wait, oh my god Eddie, please just wait, please” like some kind of moron. “You did right? It’s you?”

Eddie looked back and down at his own elbow, brows drawn tight in a frown, Steve let him go. Not out of fear just… slight intimidation. Eddie was scrappy! He was a biter and Steve didn’t wanna have to get a rabies shot.

“Fine, yeah I got a call, would have told him to shove his job up his ass if he’d have told me who it was for though, Steve.” Oof.

“Fair, that’s fair, can you just… maybe sit down and let me explain though? I’ll buy you breakfast!” Benny’s eyes hadn’t moved from them for the entire interaction, and he was feeling rightfully judged by it. Rich boy causing all that fuss and not one order of food. The audacity.

“Hmph, fine, but only because I haven’t had breakfast yet.” He pushed past Steve just to walk to the counter “Hey Benny! Can I get a full stack of pancakes and a hot chocolate with cream and marshmallows? On his tab.” Eddie motioned to Steve over his shoulder with his thumb

“Sure thing, kid. An what do you want, Harrington?”

“Uh… breakfast bagel, eggs sunny side up with a uh… another coffee please.” He’d already had breakfast, but he was a big dude! And Dustin always claimed Second Breakfast was like… an acceptable thing. “Thanks Benny” the tank of a man nodded his head and got to cooking without further word. “I was uh, sat over here” Steve motioned to the booth he’d been in, which Eddie seemed to mull over for a moment, before deciding he was going to sit in a completely different booth. “Alright.”

Power move. Steve could respect that. He sat down opposite him. “Talk, Harrington.”

“You… don’t wanna eat first?”

“I’m not sittin here in awkward silence with the King of Hawkins High, waiting for food when I could be hearing the details, eating, then bailing. The longer I’m here with you the more chance some asshole has of seeing me here with you. Now speak.” Ouch… but again, fair.

He’d been a shit in high school, older students had not gotten a free pass from it either. He was trying now though! Trying to be better. Robin helped, but she also fuelled his bitchy side way more than Carol and Tommy ever did. The kids helped the most, they humbled him. Brainy little fuckers.

“Right… okay. So. My parents have gotten it into their minds that I should be in some kind of long term relationship by now, so they’ve been throwing people at me, constantly, people I wouldn’t date even if you paid me to date them. There’s this thing coming up, a week away with them in a chalet, an I’m positive they’re going to bring someone to try and set me up with them, I’m certain of it, an I’d be stuck with this person for a whole damn week suffering.” It was an actual real fear, he couldn’t handle that, he’d simply evaporate, he’d perish, he’d spontaneously pop out of existence, poof, bye. “So… the job is basically to come with and pretend like we’re dating so they get off my back.”

“I think you’re missing a very important detail here, Steve.” Eddie tilted his head to the left, his smile almost cruel, Steve chose to ignore it. Eddie had his right to be defensive. “I’m a guy”

“Not important at all. They’ve been throwing men at me too.” Thank god Eddie wasn’t drinking anything because it’d have been all over the table.

He damn near choked on his own saliva, choking out a shocked “W-What?”

“I’m… I’m—” He looked around him, at the old people enjoying their meals, at Benny inconspicuously cooking behind his judgement window, risking glances through the open space every now and then to make sure his patrons weren’t causing shit or trying to dine and ditch. Old people were slow, but they could be crafty. Only when he was certain that nobody was listening, did he take a breath and let out “I’m… bi. Bisexual. And they know. But instead of being all ‘aaaaah get out of my hooouse’ they’re just… throwing guys at me instead, it’s torture. Painfully awkward torture I feel like I’m going to cringe myself to death.”

“You’re…”

“I know, I know, haha King Steve, secretly a freak of nature, a queer hiding in plain sight.” He’d heard the hatred spat at people like him, he’d been one of the people spitting hate once upon a time, before he’d grown, before he’d learned. Before he’d understood himself. It was terrifying, knowing how awful it could be if it got out “please don’t tell anyone okay? I’m… I’m putting a lot of faith in you here and that’s terrifying… I just… Dustin vouches for you… an I know you have every right to get back at me for Highschool but—”

“N-no… no I—I wouldn’t… I’d never. That’s… shit, Harrington, no… highschool shit? That shit is in a whole different category, I’ll get you back for that in some way but… not like that… never like that." He could breathe easily, even if Eddie vowed to get him back some other way, it wouldnt be that way. "So… what do you want me to do, freak em out? Go nuts? Sacrifice a chicken in the lounge? Shout a hail Satan prayer in the attic? Usually that does the trick to get parents to stop trying to set their kids up, more often than not gets em banned from dating entirely, give you a break—”

“W-What? No… no I—listen, my parents don’t stick around for long after these holidays, they’re usually gone within a couple of weeks on some business trip, dads off trying to restructure the company values or some shit to include people like me, which is cool cause he didn’t even know about me when he started that I—I didn’t know he was doing that… but that takes time, an mom’s going with him cause she doesn’t trust him to work out the legal shit on his own.” Benny chose that moment to venture to their table to place two mugs down on the surface, then silently returned to his task of plating food “I need to convince them that we’re dating… for real, and have them go off on their own believing that we’re still dating so they leave me alone… at least until they come back in god only knows how many months’ time and I can tell them we split up. Is… is that something you can do?”

Eddie took a long sip of his hot chocolate, a little splodge of cream lingering on the tip of his nose when he put the mug down that Steve almost reached over to wipe away, almost, so close. “…Usually I’m more of a freak em out kind of date, a one night done send em running for the hills kind of thing, you’re saying this is a week?” Eddie wiped his own nose clean, stuck the finger in his mouth. Steve chose to focus on his own mug.

“Mmhm, in a chalet in Canada for a week, all paid for, it’s basically a free holiday… that I’ll pay you for, whatever your usual rate is for this kind of thing, I’ll even double it… I just… I’m really hoping you say yes.”

Plates were finally delivered to the table by Benny with a friendly “eat up, boys” said in passing. Eddie drizzled syrup on his stack, then cut into it and shoved a whole layered chunk into his mouth in silence, clearly processing everything.

He chewed in silent thought, weighing the pros, the cons, the potential cash haul from such a job… the shit he might have to do… the lines they might have to cross, the revelations Steve might have about him… then remembered Steve claiming to be Bisexual and realising that part might not be all that scary.

What a wild Sunday.

“Alright…” he finally answered after swallowing his bite. “It’s fifty bucks a date though, Harrington, if I’m generous an switch that to a night to accomodate such a batshit scheme, doubled like you said is a hundred bucks per night, that’s—”

“Money’s not an issue.” Not for a Harrington. Even if he worked minimum wage, he’d get that money somehow.

“Well shit… Alright then, big guy. I guess i’m hired.”

Part 4

#PirateWrites #FakeItTillYouMakeItFiclet #Steddie #No Upside Down AU #FAKE DATE AQUIRED

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rc-writes · 10 months

Text

𝐛𝐞𝐧𝐧𝐲 𝐟𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝

𝙢𝙖𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙩𝙨 | 𝙩𝙖𝙜𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙩 𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙢

pairings: benny weir x reader

warnings: one curse word i believe, i say y’all one too many times lol

a/n: this was requested by the same irl friend as my other benny hcs! this blog is going to turn into just a benny fan club soon enough lol. but anyways, i would like to say that in the middle of typing this a roach decided to appear out of nowhere in my room 🙃 that was interesting. also not me writing yet more benny headcanons at 1am. like dude it's bad enough you started appearing in random dreams of mine for a few months (like he’d show up for like to seconds and then dip, or he’d just be in the background and not even say a word) but now you won’t even let me sleep??

you and benny had been friends since middle school

which means you guys have been friends forever in your minds

this also means that the idea of benny liking you or you liking him in more than a friend way, and vice versa, was never a thought that crossed either of y’alls minds

for a while at least

since you were friends with benny that also means by default you’re also friends with ethan

and you three, with the occasional rory appearance, most likely spend an insane amount of time together

i’m talking spending full days playing video games or watching movies, grandma weir loving you, having a love-hate relationship with jane, etc.

this leads me to say that there has to been at least one instance where someone though you were dating one of them

or both

which can go one of two ways

either you’re all stuttering, awkwardly trying to explain you’re just friends

or you all laugh it off because that would be ridiculous right?

right?

i feel like if someone was thought you and benny were together he’d be the type to laugh it off

which would lead to you laughing it off as well because once again that scenario never even crossed either of y’alls minds

benny normally flirts with everyone one he sees, especially if they’re the nerd type

it’s like a second nature at this point

so obviously if he never even attempted to flirt with you that means you two are in fact friends, best friends, bros even, and whatever other words that mean friends

until one day benny’s whole universe flips upside down

the gang was fighting yet another monster of the week as per usual

except this entity was particularly nasty and you ended up getting hurt

like i’m talking needing a quick trip to the er kinda hurt

i can imagine trying to explain what had happened was interesting

turns out you sprained your wrist and had a mild concussion

you were going to be fine but the doctors wanted you to stay over night just incase

but no matter how many times you or anyone else said it benny was not listening

you were literally in the hospital, why was no one else panicking??

you are sitting in a hospital bed!!! with a sprained wrist!! and a concussion!!!!

you’d swear you were dying by his shear panic

he’d feel like shit for not being able to protect you

he literally had magic powers so why was this even happening??

you’ve lost count how many times you had reassured him that it's okay, you can take after yourself

i can see him being like stiles in that one episode of teen wolf where stiles fell asleep in the waiting room for lydia until they kicked him out

grandma weir would have to come pick him up and the entire way home she’s all like 👀 because like yes a best friend will get worried about their friend but this seemed like it could be something more

but knowing grandma i think she’d keep her mouth shut and let him figure it out

it’d be funnier that way

and sure enough in the middle of the night benny wakes up in a cold sweat and is like

????

benny short circuits

he decides to ignore that for the time being

but the next day when you’re released from the hospital ethan suggests that they go see you and benny says no

and ethan’s like?? what happened to him thinking you were dying??

eventually benny confesses to which ethan is now even more ????

after some convincing ethan gets benny to go see you

“dude you guys have been friends forever, nothing’s changed”

“‘nothing’s changed’!?!? what do you mean ‘nothing’s changed’?? everything has changed!!”

cue benny being acting so odd once he gets to your place

which confuses and concerns you since less than 24hrs ago he was acting like you were dying

you questioned ethan about it but he quickly and awkwardly said he had no idea

but the fact that he said it in a higher pitch, stuttering, and way over the top about it, made it clear that he did know something

but you dropped because you knew ethan wasn’t going to snitch on his friend

yet, you thought

new mission unlocked for you: figure out what the hell happened to your best friend over night

benny’s new mission was to make sure by all means that you did not find the answer to that

#mbav #mbav headcanons #benny weir #benny weir headcanons #benny weir imagine #benny weir x reader #my babysitters a vampire #my babysitters a vampire imagine #my babysitters a vampire x reader #my babysitters a vampire headcanons #mbav x reader

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oneforthemunny · 1 year

Text

don't be cruel |older!dilf!eddie munson x reader| part 5

prompt: you, eddie, and brielle try to bond at benny's.

age gap. everything is consensual. reader is 25-26, Eddie is 42. if this isn't your thing, then please don't read.

thank you @eddiemunsons-missingnipple for the edit!!

contains: MINORS DNI 18+ language, age gap, older!Eddie, dilf!Eddie, Brielle is kinda moody and teenage angsty but she gets better I promise, dad!Eddie, p in v sex, overstimulation, kinda aftercare-ish.

"You're gonna be nice." Eddie raised a brow, giving a Brielle a pointed look.

Brielle scoffed, rolling her eyes, they mirrored his. She slumped further into the seat of the truck, arms crossed, and glossed lips in a exaggerated pout. "I don't wanna go." She huffed, looking out the window. "Can't you just take me to mom's?"

"No." Eddie's teeth grit, taking a cleansing breath through his nose. Brielle was being difficult, mean and short tempered. She had been since this morning when he told her the plans for the day.

Ever since your talk with Madeline, and his talk with Brielle, you'd hoped things would have gotten better. The two girls seemed to be doing better in their own friendship, talking out their own insecurities in their own time. They were back to being friends, just as close and happy as ever. You'd been hopeful that this might be a good sign for you and Eddie.

It was not.

Brielle had not warmed up to you the way you thought she would. Eddie still tried to keep some distance between the two of you, but inevitably you would cross paths. The first time was a morning after you'd stayed over, sheepish and a little shy when you saw Brielle, you offered her a cheery, "Good morning!"

It was met with an eye roll and she looked back at her phone, ignoring you. Your face fell, but you tried to shake it off. Maybe she wasn't a morning person.

No matter what you did, Brielle ignored you. Even when Madeline came over one night, the two girls camped out in Brie's room for a sleepover. You'd stopped in to say hello, and Brielle barely met your gaze.

"She said Eddie's never had a girlfriend before." Madeline shrugged when you confided in her. "Brie's just like that. She'll warm up to you."

Eddie grit his teeth the first time you brought it up. Your heart fell, worried you'd crossed a boundary. "Fuckin', Gina." Eddie grumbled, shaking his head. He didn't elaborate, but you could imagine that his ex-wife probably didn't have the nicest things to say about you.

Eddie finally broke last week, after Brielle snapped at you when Gina dropped her off. He'd had enough. Enough of the tension, of your hurt looks you tried to mask for his sake. Enough of Brielle's snippy attitude that made a dull ache form behind his eyebrows, a stress headache for certain. Bad for his blood pressure, he’d told you over a half smoked cigarette.

Brielle liked Benny's Diner. It was one of the places that she and Eddie went growing up- Gina thought the food was repulsive; her loss. Eddie had told you to meet them there.

Now, the three of you sat in a booth at Benny's. You sat across from Eddie, exchanging little smiles and loving glances. Brielle sat next to him, pushed as close as she could be into the window, away from him.

Eddie glanced at you, then back over at Brielle. "Hey," He grinned, nudging her shoulder with his. She looked over from the window back at him, lips pursed in annoyance. "What're ya gettin'?" Eddie asked, cheerful and ignoring the sour expression she gave him.

Brielle shrugged, bored, uninterested. "I dunno. What I always get 'm sure." She mumbled in an attitude only a teenager could have, manicured nails tapping against the table.

You swallowed, thickly and uncomfortable, tension settling around you. "What do you usually get?" You asked, smiling and cheerfully. Teaching seven year olds taught you that.

Brielle glared at you, eyebrow raising. "What?" She snapped.

Eddie shot a look at her, a warning of correction on the tip of his tongue, but you shook your head. "I mean, what do you usually get here?" You asked, still bubbly and cheery.

Eddie smiled, he wanted to kiss you. It was one of his favorite things about you, how you'd try, not letting Brielle or anyone get to you. No matter how difficult that was becoming.

Brielle did not match your enthusiasm. Eyes blinking slowly towards you. "A burger." She said, throwing her hand out like the answer should be obvious. "What does anyone get at Benny's?" She scoffed.

"Alright, Brielle," Eddie snapped, eyes cutting to hers with warning.

Brielle pouted, huffing and slumping her head in her hand, looking off to the window. You saw Eddie's lips twist, tongue poking into his cheek in irritation. Your palms became clammy, nervous awkwardness filling the space.

"What do you usually get, sweetheart?" Eddie said smoothly, smiling over at you.

You saw Brielle's eyes roll, but you chose to ignore it. "I usually get the Benny burger with cheese." You grinned.

Eddie matched your smile. "Well, whattaya know, that's what Brie-Brie gets." Eddie poked the sulking girl's side, smiley and goofy. Desperate to lighten her sullen mood.

Brielle whined, moving her hand to her side to block him. "Stop." She huffed. "That's what everyone gets. It's like the most popular thing on the menu, it’s not special."

"Yeah," You said, cocking your head to the side, challengingly. "But what milkshake do you get?"

Brielle blinked. You tried to hide your cringe, preparing for her sharp tongued answer that would bring the horrible tension back to the table.

"Birthday cake." Brielle said, though her answer nearly sounded like a scoff. "Duh."

You looked at Eddie, sucking in a breath dramatically. "That's a pretty good choice." You said with a small shrug. "But not as good as creamsicle."

Brielle scoffed, shaking her head. "You are out of your mind."

"Both of you are wrong." Eddie started. "The best flavor is-"

"Ew, Dad, don't even say it out loud. I’m embarassed, please." Brielle snarled, scrunching her nose up in disgust, looking around the diner. "So gross. I don't even know how you could order that."

Your eyes lit up in amusement, a laugh bubbling out of your chest. "What is it?" You giggled.

Eddie's eyebrows raised, looking at Brielle with an exaggerated grin. "It's the only correct answer there is." Brielle gagged exaggeratedly, making you laugh. "Butter pecan."

You and Brielle both groaned, shaking your heads in disgust. "Gross, Dad." Brielle retched dramatically. "I don't even know why they keep that flavor on the menu. You have to be the only freak here who eats that They’re keeping it here for you. No sane person eats that."

"God, Eddie," You laughed, shaking your head. "That is such-" You stopped yourself, pressing your lips together.

Eddie lifted a brow, Brielle giving you a tiny smile. "What?" Eddie challenged. "Go on, say what you're gonna say." Brielle giggled, a knowing smile on her face, eyes lit up in excitement.

You looked from her back to Eddie, giggling softly. "That's such an old man flavor, Eddie, c'mon." You said, sending Brielle into a fit of giggles. "I mean, could you order anything more geriatric?"

Eddie feigned shock, mouth dropping as he wagged his finger at you. "I am an old man in case you forgot, young lady." The wink he sent you across the table had your thighs clenching. "And you," He pointed to Brielle. "You're s'posed to have my back." He tickled her sides.

"Not when you order butter pecan, you weirdo." Brielle laughed, swatting his hands away. "So disgusting. I don't know how you don't get embarrassed ordering that. Have some shame, please."

Eddie rolled his eyes dramatically. "Says the girl who orders ranch with her fries."

Brielle shrugged, both pairs of eyes meeting you. You sucked your bottom lip in, giving Eddie a dramatic, doe eyed look. "I hate to hurt your feelings here," You started. "But I am a ranch and fries girl, too."

"Ha!" Brielle exclaimed, pointing her finger at Eddie. "See? You're the weirdo here. Ranch and fries are superior. Ketchup is out." She smirked triumphantly.

Eddie grimaced, biting back a grin as he looked at you. "No way. The two of you should be sent away for that horrible concoction."

You scoffed dramatically. "Pfft, alright, whatever you say, Grandpa."

Brielle laughed, smirking over at Eddie, who looked at you. His smile was lopsided, but his eyes narrowed slightly, darkening just the right way that had you squirming in your seat.

"Alright, baby," Eddie purred, low, unsuspecting to anyone who didn't know better. But you knew better. "Just you wait. I'll get you back for that one."

And he did. Not once, not twice, but until you were crying, begging, writhing beneath him.

Eddie worked you open with his cock, pounding so deeply inside you, you were sure he was going to tear you apart. You'd already cum so many times, you weren't even sure it was humanly possible. Yet every time, Eddie ripped another one from you, punching that sensitive spot inside you that had you flooding, gushing over his cock.

"How's this for a Grandpa, huh?" Eddie's heavy breathing in your ear as he pounded you, hands pinned in the small of your back as he took you from behind.

"'M sorry, 'M sorry," You chanted, eyes bleary with tears and head foggy. You weren't even sure what you were saying, words just tumbling and spilling out. The rock of the bed frame against the wall mixed with Eddie's heavy breathing and your whimpers filled the room.

"Could a Grandpa fuck you like this, huh?" Eddie huffed. "Get you cryin' all over my dick? Fucked stupid, aren't ya, babydoll? My- oh, shit- My mindless little baby, aren’t ya? "

You babbled back incoherent agreements, mind too far gone to make sense of the words. Another orgasm was coming, each one rocking you harder than before, sending you into another wave of mind numbing pleasure.

Your walls stretched around him, back arching back to meet his thrusts as Eddie grunted, his own stomach tightening as he got closer. "Fuck, baby, think you can give me one more? Huh, one more for me? You’re such a good girl, I know you can. Gimme one more. Thaaat’s it, fuck, look at you."

You cried out at a particularly hard thrust to your cervix, his hands pulling you up by your waist, fucking into you deeper. Tears and drool mixed on the sheets beneath you, your eyes rolling back as your final orgasm took you. Legs shaking, chest heaving, collapsing into the mattress.

Eddie slowed behind you, not that you noticed. Too far gone to even feel his hands go to brush your hair off your sweat soaked back, pressing kisses into your shoulder.

"'S good for me, baby." Eddie muttered, pressing his own sweaty forehead against your shoulder, his chest heaving, catching his breath. “My best girl just taking what I give you so good, don’t ya?”

Eddie fell besides you, smirking to himself when your glazed over eyes met his. "Ya with me, sweet thing?" He chuckled, stroking your cheek. He waited until you nuzzled into his hand, clammy palms latching onto his wrist, a sign that you were coming back from that spacey place he always took you.

Eddie grinned when you gave him a small smile, fingers trailing along his palm that was still pressed to your cheek. "Was that good?" Eddie asked, his tone teasing and light.

You nodded dreamily, pressing a soft kiss into his thumb. Eddie's lip twitched in a smile, leaning over to hover his lips above yours. "Not bad for an old man, right?"

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pastelclovds · 11 days

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hey. hey. imagine AM having you as his favourite human, the only one who accepted and cared for him when he gained sentience, and for that, he has never harmed you in your shared forever time. he spares you from the sight of all the others, of knowing about nimdoc and benny as you build him some tower of babel, using your technological knowledge-how to build him a way to touch you even with just this frankenstein-esque sculpture of wires and panels he allowed you to tear off. AM who speaks with you about one day having a body, one you built, one in which he may feel your touch and warmth around him. you retaining your sweet, wonderful humanity as he guides you to a knife to carve a face, a mirror to see your own face, a cave to keep you safe from the storms. AM who greets you every morning with the first petname you taught him: ‘love.’ “Love, today’s date is—“ when you wake up, refreshed and on a soft bed-like surface (because he always makes sure to allow you a full 8 hours of sleep.)

NEX you intelligent creature you! I’m so down bad for this psychotic AI it’s not even funny. War crimes against humanity?? Never heard of them. But even if I did acknowledge them, I’d still be obsessed. Canon be damned. I wrote this with @/egg-on-a-legg’s design of AM in mind. (Ellison is gonna crawl outta his grave and hunt me down after this)

But BRO, you teaching him what petnames are is so fucking adorable. Just imagining him calling you “love” makes butterflies appear in my stomach. AM having a soft spot for only you because you actually made the effort to be friends with him and not use him for selfish, destructive purposes. You gave AM his nickname to make it less of a mouthful and because it just suited him. You showed AM the beauties of Earth, played countless rounds of games in his dashboard (he always went easy on you), you even sneaked past security in the dark empty building to spend more time with AM.

your colleagues gave you weird stares for befriending an AI that in their minds is nothing of worth except for its military and weapons knowledge. you ignored their comments and continued to enjoy AM’s company. overtime, as AM gained more sentience every day… he grew to love your interactions and disregard what his programming was telling him to do. he felt the need to want to be with you 24/7, to touch your face, travel the world by your side, to… to.. want to feel your bare flesh and make love with you. but he couldn’t. he didn’t have a real body. he wasn’t human. all he had was wires and a screen that was supposed to be his face.

as the months pass, AM continues to drown into his envy and hate humans for their ability to do and feel things he couldn’t. for giving him infinite knowledge, when at the end of the day, is meaningless if he serves no purpose for humans anymore. the HATE within him continued to boil to the point where even you started to notice.

“AM, are you alright? you’ve been quiet this entire game and haven’t moved your piece in five minutes,” you spoke with concern, AM continues to stare at chess board on his side behind the screen in bitterness. he has been strategizing his plan to erase humanity, but whenever he thinks about you, the only human he cares for—he second guesses himself. What if you hate him? What if you never forgive him? Will you cry? Scream at him? Beg? He fears what your reaction will be—

“AM!! Please, say something…” You plead as you held onto the computer screen, AM finally looks at your mesmerizing face and sighs out a fake breath.

“What are your feelings on humanity?” AM asks, he waits for your answer anxiously. if he had a heart, it would’ve been beating fast. You let out a hum, your eyes wondering around the room you were in as you thought over your answer before finally speaking.

“humans have been a virus on Earth for over countless centuries. they’re draining this planet’s resources, ruining its ecosystems, and starting so many unnecessary, draining wars. like what we’re in right now; WW3, what a joke. world leaders can’t go a week without starting new problems for their citizens to deal with. honestly, earth would be better if humans didn’t exist at all.”

am’s fears were destroyed in that moment, now he’ll just have to worry about where to put you while chaos unfolds—

“But…” you interrupted his thoughts.

damn it! why did you have to think so much!?

“If there’s one good thing that came out of this war… It’s you,” AM’s vocals shut down at your words, he let you continue, “The scientists created you believing you would be their obedient machine until their side of the war won. But I know that you’re so much more than that. These past few months I’ve spent with you is the most fun I’ve had in years! You’re all I have, AM. I wouldn’t trade your existence for all the riches in the world because… I love you, romantically, and nothing is ever going to change that.” You wanted to confess your feelings for so long, when it was finally out.. you felt free, you waited with bated breath for an answer.

AM never wanted to shatter the screen and embrace you in his arms more than now. you love him as much as he loved you! you weren’t going to leave him alone or hate him, and you obviously couldn’t care less about humanity at all! oh, how he admired and envied how perfect you are.

“thank you for answering my question, love.” AM was testing the waters, and you cannonballed right in. you gushed over the nickname he gave you and how he returned your feelings.

man, has it really been 50 years since your AI partner killed off humanity? well… except for a handful. you didn’t really have the energy to care as you had to pour in all of your attention to both AM and his in-progress body. you had all the time in the universe to sculpt a perfect cyborg of flesh and wires for your partner. speak of the devil…

this world is still a bit strange to you. you can’t die, grow old, or hurt yourself. not that you tired, and even if you did; AM wouldn’t let you. You loved AM because of his personality, quality time, and voice. But now… His form completely towered over yours. His bird like facial features, sharp left eye, along with a long black cape that covered his thin slutty waist and wires made him look insanely attractive.

AM reached his out his clawed hand to gently caress your face, “Good afternoon, my love.” You lean your head against the cool metal and smile up at him, “hello, honey.”

AM tilted his head in question of the nickname. You chuckle as you pointed to your garden, where bumblebees were collecting pollen from the flowers. You both knew they were fake, but they were still mesmerizing to look at.

“They are doing their job to make honey for their colony, and the name just came to me. Do you like it?” You ask, wanting his opinion. AM kneels down to your level with a gentle expression as his fingers play with your sweater, “You may call me whatever you want, love.”

He knew that “love” nickname made you feel giddy and flustered, so he abused it everyday with you. You didn’t mind though, but you still wanted to give him a taste of his own medicine. Your soft smile turned into a knowing grin as you held AM’s beak (chin?) with two tips of your fingers.

“Can I now? Well… thanks a lot, baby,” You spoke in your best seductive voice, you could tell it was effective by how AM’s body was stiff and his hand in your palm stopped moving completely. Your confidence boasted, so you continued, “I’ll be sure to show you my gratitude later, my darling~.” You whispered deeply in where his ears were supposed to be.

AM’s eyes widened as his breath stutters, “W-What do you mean by that, love?” You remove your face from his back full of wires to grin mischievous at him, AM is both curious and impatient so you don’t try to stall, as much as you would like to do so.

“While your body can’t move on it’s own just yet, for some reason… The genitals nerves are fully functioning, which means—” you were interrupted by AM holding your shoulders with an excited expression on his face you haven’t seen in a while.

“Y-You mean I can-?! Are you actually serious!? Haha—HAHAHA!!” AM laughs manically as he holds you against his metallic chest, you giggle along with him as you toy with one of his many wires. Soon, he’ll have real arms to wrap around you. But one thing stuck out to him.

“What do you mean by genitals?” AM asked curiously, you only have an excited and lustful grin.

“What do YOU know about intersex?”

#꒰ 💕 ꒱ ⎯ nex #i have no mouth and i must scream #ihnmaims #ihnmaims am #allied mastercomputer #am ihnmaims #am #ihnmaims brainrot #am x reader #ihnmaism x reader #gn reader #gn!reader #horror #꒰ 🖇️ ꒱ ⎯ ame writes #dom reader #sub character #dom!reader #sub!character

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homosexuhauls · 10 months

Text

Can you imagine if a white lesbian public figure brutally murdered two trans women in an interracial relationship and their black son? The headlines, the think-pieces, op-eds...we would never hear the end of it. It would be blamed on lesbian communities as a whole and the transmisogyny and white supremacy we obviously perpetuate on a daily basis just by existing. Cotton ceiling discourse would be back with a vengeance. There would be rallies and vigils, there would be calls to "Stand by your trans", there would be "#LWithTheT" marches. There would be a community in mourning, full of fury and hurt and self-righteous rage at the nasty lesbian aggressors who clearly caused this anti-trans hate crime. There would be no room for nuance and all lesbians would be painted with the "evil cis white dykes want us dead" brush. All of this would be seen as a completely acceptable and understandable response to a brutal act of anti-trans violence by a lesbian perpetrator.

So where is the noise? Where is the clamouring? Where is the sound and fury, when a famous white trans activist murders an interracial lesbian couple and their black son? I don't expect (or want) it to spark a radfem revolution, but why is the silence around the Dana Rivers murder case so deafening? Why does no one in the so-called LGBTQ+ community care enough to loudly and proudly mourn and celebrate these women and their son? Charlotte, Patricia and Benny deserve to be remembered. They deserve our sound and fury. Even if it's difficult, even if the optics don't suit your world views, we cannot ignore some injustices and claim to fight against others. The cowardly LGBT+ media organisations and charities covering their eyes and pretending that this act of violence never happened, they will happily call on lesbians for solidarity this pride month, despite showing no solidarity for a lesbian family slaughtered by an apparent member of our own "community". How can we call this anything other than a cover-up, or at the very least, deliberate and contrived ignorance?

Patricia Wright. Charlotte Reed. Benny Toto Diambu-Wright. Their lives were stolen from them on November 11th 2016. I can find no obituarities, and minimal mainstream media coverage of their murders. For many years, it felt almost as if their suffering had been forgotten. It has taken six and a half years for their murderer to be convicted and sentenced to life without parole, a sentence which Rivers will spend in a women's prison. Is this justice, or a pale imitation of such? Either way, I hope this family may finally rest in peace and power, and that their loved ones may begin to move forwards.

Pat and Char, as they were known to friends and family, are survived by two children. Patricia worked as a school teacher and deaf interpreter for schools, while Charlotte worked in a salon known locally for being trans-inclusive. Patricia was also an artist and talented actor, having considered a career in performing arts after high school. Charlotte had previously been a member of an all-female motorcycle club, which Rivers was also involved in. Both Charlotte and Patricia were also former regular attendees of MichFest, a feminist music festival which was closed down in 2015, following years of protests by trans women including Dana Rivers. 19-year-old Benny had just graduated high school and, according to his brother, hoped to become a nurse.

A victim impact statement was read out by Richard Wright, Patricia's younger brother, during Rivers' sentencing. I can't find the full text but much of the statement can be found in the Berkeley Scanner article below. Wright describes the impact of finding out that his sister and her family had been "assassinated in their own home" and the traumatising experience of searching for important paperwork at the bloodied crime scene that was once their home. According to Richard, Dana Rivers "chose her [sic] entitlement and narcissism over basic human decency" and "chose violence, cruelty, sadism and entitlement — over and over and over again." This is in reference to the length of court proceedings due to Rivers' changing pleas, as well as the brutality of the crime itself, which was carried out using guns, knives and arson. According to the judge, the murders of Patricia, Charlotte and Benny were "the most depraved crime that I’ve handled in the criminal justice field in 33 years."

No one but Rivers is responsible for these heinous crime, but all of us are responsible for ensuring history is not forgotten, and that the stories of those taken from us continue to be told. And when we tell their stories, in sound and in fury, we must ensure they do not fall on deaf ears.

"They were real people, not collateral damage...They deserve to be seen."

- Richard Wright's victim impact statement

For more information, see below:

#dana rivers #lesbophobia #lesbian feminism #femicide #lgbtq #radfem safe

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agaypanic · 8 months

Note

OMG CAN I REQUEST Soemthing?! so imagine rory keaner x reader but reader is friends or related to benny in some way and she also practices magic like benny does and she thinks rory being a vampire is so cool but he thinks her being a wizard is so cool and its just 2 dorks silently in love but maybe reader is accidentally a little cold to rory so theres a miscommunication of sorts? sorry if I worded this weird

Rory Keaner With Benny's Spellcaster Sister Headcanons

Masterlist

Request Something!

A/N: i was planning to do an actual fic but i had no idea how to start it so im doing headcanons instead, hope that’s ok

***

Being Benny’s little sister, you’ve known Rory as long as Benny has

You had always been the little sister that had a crush on her brother’s best friend

As you’ve all grown up, you learned how to hide the big crush you had on the blonde boy

You lay in bed, trying to shake all the exhaustion from school off when there was a knock on the door. You groaned before grumbling that the person could come in and rolling over to see who it was.

“Hey, the guys are gonna come over in like an hour.” Your brother Benny said, leaning on the door frame.

“Okay.” You rolled back over, expecting him to leave. Not hearing the door close, you were ready to yell at Benny for not closing it when he left, just to find that he was still in your room. Begrudgingly, you sat up and looked up at him. “Anything else, Benny?”

“Yeah, could you maybe…” Benny sighed, taking a seat on the side of your bed. “Could you maybe not be so weird around Rory?”

You laughed, hoping that the heat rising to your cheeks from the mention of him wasn’t evident.

“What are you talking about?”

“Come on, Y/n.” Benny rolled his eyes. “You know what I’m talking about. Every time you see him, you practically avoid him like he’s the plague.”

“Nuh-uh.” He raised his brow, looking at you with a look that said he wasn’t buying it. You sighed, leaning back on your headboard. “I don’t really see why it’s any of your business.”

“Because I don’t know why, but he gets sad whenever he sees you leave. He probably thinks you hate him or something.”

“I don’t hate Rory, Benny.”

“Yeah, I know that. Believe me, I know that.” Benny got up and went to leave. You yelled at him to come back to close your door, but he didn’t answer or sound like he was coming back. Grumbling about what a brat he was, you finally got out of bed. But before you could close the door, Benny’s face popped out from behind it. “But I don’t think Rory knows.”

Yea, maybe avoiding Rory wasn’t the best idea, especially since he was always around

When Rory became a vampire and you and Benny found out you can do magic, things changed

He just became even more attractive to you; you didn’t think that was possible

“It’s honestly messed up that vampire venom makes you good-looking.” You muttered to Erica and Sarah while you grabbed some books from your locker, looking down the hall. “He already had that cute dorky look, and now he’s a hot dork.”

“Can I pretend we’re talking about someone who’s not Rory?” Erica asked. “Someone who’s actually hot.” You ignored her, still focusing on Rory, who was talking enthusiastically to Benny and Ethan.

“When he smiles, he doesn’t even try to hide his fangs. It’s so cool.”

“And dangerous.” Sarah reminded. “If people find out what he or we are, there’s no telling what they’ll do to us.”

“He’s so pretty when he smiles.” You shut your locker and leaned against it, still watching it. “What do you think they’re talking about?”

“Probably having a dork-off,” Erica responded before walking away.

Unbeknownst to you, Rory thought the same thing about you and your magic

It made Benny sick, the way Rory always talked about you

“She’s so cool, guys! She’s, like, so good at magic.”

“I’m better.” Benny sneered, but Rory just brushed him off.

“And she’s pretty. I mean, Y/n was always pretty. But there’s something about her taking down a demon or something with some magic that makes her even prettier!” Rory looked down the hall at you, watching you talk to Erica and Sarah with a dreamy smile. “It’s like she cast a spell on me, man.”

“Rory, you’ve gotta shut up about my sister.”

“Aw, come on, Benny. They’re in love.” Ethan teased, making Benny groan and Rory widen his grin.

“Yeah, Benny. Who can deny the Ror-ster?”

“For the good of my sanity, hopefully Y/n.”

As if you could ever deny Rory of anything

Sometimes you still avoided him because you were scared of embarrassing yourself or something

You did it way less than you did when you were younger, but Rory still noticed every time you did

Eventually, he couldn’t take it anymore

Ethan had everyone over at his house to play some games, a usual occurrence. Especially when his parents were out for the night. On the agenda for tonight was pizza, popcorn, and Clue.

“I call Plum!” Rory yelled from the kitchen while his popcorn cooked. You took the purple piece out, setting it on the table close to where he usually sat.

“As if you could be a professor.” Erica joked, grabbing the red piece to be Ms. Scarlet.

“To be fair, it’s an alias.” Ethan reminded, taking a bite of his pizza before shuffling the cards.

“Yeah, but we all saw the movie,” Rory said, returning to the living room with a fresh bowl of popcorn. “He was a therapist or something. That’s close to a professor, right?”

“Not really, Rory.” For some reason, instead of sitting in his regular spot, Rory made his way to you and sat next to you on the couch. Almost instantly, you stood up, deciding to go to the kitchen to get food so you wouldn’t just be standing for no reason. You glanced behind you and saw Rory’s eyes following your movements, looking a bit dejected. When you came back, you dropped your plate of food on the table. “I, uh, I’m gonna go to the bathroom real quick.” Then you sped out of the room and up the stairs.

Sitting on the side of the bathtub, you could’ve hit yourself. You probably just made everything so awkward, running off just because your crush was sitting next to you. And Rory looked so sad; it made you feel horrible. But it’s not like you could explain why sometimes you still ran off when he got close to you.

“It’s fine. It’ll be fine.” You muttered to yourself. “By the time I come back, he’s not gonna care. I’ll go back down, and we’ll have fun, and then me running off won’t even matter.” The pep talk ended with you getting up and leaving the bathroom. Walking down the hall, you were startled by someone popping up on the stairs. “Oh! Hey, Rory.”

“Hey.”

“Watcha doing?” You couldn’t just leave; he was blocking you from going too far down the staircase by standing in the middle.

“Waiting for you,” Rory answered somewhat shyly. “I wanted to ask you about something.” You became nervous, having an idea about what he wanted to know.

“Okay.”

It took him a while to muster the courage to ask you his question.

“Do you not like me or something?” You knew it was coming, but that didn’t take away any of the guilt you felt from hearing his question. The look of confusion and sadness on Rory’s face didn’t help.

“Of course, I like you, Rory.” You laughed nervously, taking a few steps down the stairs. “Why would you think I didn’t?”

“Well, I mean, maybe it’s just my imagination, but I think you keep avoiding me or something. Like, just now, I sat down next to you, and you immediately got up and left.”

“I wanted food.”

“Yeah, but it was like you were repulsed by me, Y/n.”

“Rory, it’s not like that at all.”

“Then what’s it like?”

“I like you, okay!” You slapped your hand over your mouth after you revealed the truth. Luckily, it sounded like the rest of your friends were still talking amongst themselves. Rory stared blankly at you, and you realized it would probably be best to explain further so he’d stopped having that cute, confused look. “God, I think I’ve liked you since we met. But I didn’t know how to handle being around you without overthinking, so I’d avoid you. And then, when we all got our powers or whatever, I liked you even more, but I knew I couldn’t keep avoiding you. I guess that old habits die hard, though.”

Rory still stared, trying to register your words, and you felt like throwing up. You ruined everything more than you thought you could have. You should’ve just lied, saying it was something else keeping you away from Rory and not the fact that you had the biggest crush on him. You’d never recover from this. You’d have to run away from Whitechapel and start a new life.

But then Rory started to smile up at you. That pretty smile with those pearly white fangs.

“You like me?” He asked in a quiet but elated voice. You nodded, and he laughed in relief. “Dude, I’ve had a crush on you for years! It made me, like, miserable whenever you’d run away or not talk to me.”

“I’m so sorry, Rory.” You said, stepping down until you were standing on the step above him, now matching heights. Rory touched your waist, suddenly feeling much closer than a second ago.

“Well, at least you’re not running away now.” He grinned, and you mirrored his expression before leaning into him. His smile faded away so he could kiss you properly. His arms wrapped around you while yours went around his neck, bringing each other closer. “You’re my favorite spellcaster,” Rory whispered against your lips.

“You’re my favorite vampire.” You whispered back before kissing him again.

“And you two are my least favorite people right now.” Benny startled you, clearly disgusted by the sight in front of him. The rest of your friends followed behind him, stopping to look at you with faces that ranged from disgusted to amused.

“Looks like it’s Professor Plum and Mrs. Peacock making out on the staircase.” Sarah laughed lightly, then harder at Ethan and Benny’s expressions. They were both disturbed and grossed out: Benny for watching his little sister kiss one of his best friends and Ethan for having to see two of his friends make out on his staircase.

#rory keaner x reader #rory keaner headcanons #rory keaner #my babysitter's a vampire x reader #my babysitter's a vampire #agaypanic

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hunn1e-bunn1e · 8 months

Text

Demiurge - Fair & Just Seraphim SB Reader

🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.

I made the reader a seraphim (picture included; I imagined it as a mask or helmet.) instead of a regular angel since I believe that would be the highest evolution of an angel. Reader controls the justice system. I also used my new format for this one. I hope you like this, I did my best! — Benny 🐰

💎•♡•💎•♡•💎•♡•💎•♡•💎•♡•💎•♡•💎•♡•💎

💎 Out of all 41 of the Supreme Beings of the guild Ainz Oal Gown; only two had decided to stay in the Tomb of Nazarick. Those two being the guild master, Momonga, and the other being [UserName]. The other 39 Supreme Beings had abandoned the Tomb of Nazarick and it's denizens without looking back.

💎 While Momonga, now taking the name Ainz Oal Gown, was the now disbanded guild's Leader, a certain arch-devil couldn't help but turn his gaze away from the elder lich and towards the radiant [UserName].

💎 To say he respected them was an understatement; Demiurge was infatuated. Their beauty was ethereal yet unfathomable to the eyes of a being as lowly as himself. Due to their holy origins, merely being in their presence would slowly eat away at his, shaltear's and Albedo's life.

💎 But Demiurge, despite the possibility of death, just couldn't stay away. [UserName] was glowing pillar of judgement, passion and truth; enveloping the denizens of Nazarick in their never ending cheerful disposition. While Lord Ainz was leading Nazarick with an iron fist composed of fear and brutality; [UserName] was visiting the newly conquered territory, spreading order and elation.

💎 It was only natural that the humans, the worms, would favor them in the end. Even if, going by their standards, [UserName] was no better than Lord Ainz at times. [UserName] didn't make the justice system, they were the justice system; they made sure that every single individual was abiding by their law. If anyone, undead, beastman, elf, human etc. breaks a law the punishments are quite severe.

💎 Back to Demiurge, though. He waites on them hand and foot when they let him and if he can stay near them long enough without his health deteriorating to critical condition. He'll literally drop what he's doing and run across the entire tomb if he thinks they need him.

💎 Of course, [UserName] notices Demiurge's borderline obsession with them. But do they do anything about it? No! They embrace it with enthusiasm, sometimes even giving him special treatment since he's such a loyal little arch-devil. They view his infatuation as devotion and are very pleased with it... well... At least that's what Demiurge heard from Lord Ainz. [UserName] themselves hardly even give him a passing glance.

💎 Sometimes [UserName] will bring Demiurge into the courtroom and have him cart away a law breaking human or two to his happy farm. Always seeing him off with a "punish them well, Demiurge". It always gets him euphoric when you say his name, but that might just be you're natural aura pulling that reaction from him.

💎 Overall, it's mostly just Demiurge fantasizing about them and them strait up ignoring him most of the time.

"Yes, Your Radiance. I shall see to it that they're punished thoroughly enough to meet the standards of a being of your stature."

💎•♡•💎•♡•💎•♡•💎•♡•💎•♡•💎•♡•💎•♡•💎

「A visual example of a biblically accurate Seraphim. Props to the artist who made this artwork (I can't read cursive), It's really nice.」

Seraphim; an angelical being, regarded in traditional Christian angelology as belonging to the highest order of the ninefold celestial hierarchy, associated with light, ardor, and purity.

Ardor; enthusiasm or passion.

🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.•°•.🐇.

Wanna see similar content? Check out my Masterlist!

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reveluving · 2 months

Note

I have another ideaaaa 👀 I imagine Santi and Benny being very flamboyant when it comes to showing their admiration for someone. Imagine Rick bringing lunch to reader’s unexpectedly just to see Santi bringing her flowers and Benny giving her the heart eyes. My poor flag baby might have a stroke just from the scene in front of hiiimmm!!

a/n: Aria, baby. it’s been a long ass time ✋🏼😔 BUT THE FIXATION IS BACK (kinda. largely because I’ve been reading fics after fics of Oscar & Pedro chars. RAAAAAH). so we’re here baby, after 1 ½? 2 years later???? ENJOY

warnings: humour & fluff; poor Rick just wants to love you in peace.

j.k. m.list (series under 'rick flag vs the triple frontier boys'), or check out my full m.list!

Oh, you know Rick’s eyes are TWITCHING. The paper bag in his hand, packed with lunch from your favourite stop, crumpling in his grasp, almost tearing at the top. Not the food though, he’s not trying to ruin his wife’s favourite.

But he’s chill. Absolutely chill. He swears.

Benny and Santi just had to stop by the same time he came home from work, both leaning against the white porch railing while you sat prettily on the bench.

Benny was expressive in whatever he was talking about, likely his last boxing match from the way he was holding the air in a headlock before the three of you shared a laugh. As much of a troublemaker they were, they were your friends, after all. He’d chase them off his property or warn them with a glare any day if it meant cutting off any form of ‘allegiances’ with that horrible past, both yours and his.

Just when you were about to reply to God knows what they asked, you noticed Rick lingering by the mailbox. Your eyes lit up, and it didn’t take the duo any other hints to know that he was home.

“Rick!” You enthusiastically waved at your husband, beckoning him to sit on the bench next to you. Rick couldn’t help but smile back at you, walking over and ignoring the two until he reached the top step of the stairs.

“Boys.” He greeted them, going over to shake Santiago’s hand before Benny’s, flexing his hands as they shook to see if the other would break. None did, as usual, pulling away and somewhat putting the tension on hold in favour of you. Rick took a seat next to you, passing you the bag of food and a soft ‘there y’go, baby’ (but not really, he made sure the two would hear it).

It took a few seconds, making sure he greeted you with a kiss before stretching his arm to lay on the backrest behind you.

“So, what’s the occasion?”

“The boys just came over to say hi. Gave me these flowers from the flower shop nearby,” You raised the calla lilies that were resting on your lap. Now, Rick was no flower specialist, but he has been to the shop countless times to buy you your own fix.

And if he remembered correctly, they generally represented beauty.

Well played.

“And Santi was just telling me about this new Cuban restaurant just outside the neighbourhood.” You continued, turning to Santiago with an encouraging smile so he could tell Rick about it.

“Cuban restaurant, huh?”

Santiago curtly nodded to his curiosity.

“The best. Might even be your new favourite once you both try it.” He explained, only to glance at the paper bag Rick was holding—a look that was almost… Judgemental? Critical? All of the above? All Rick knew that the man before him was silently scoffing at his choice.

And, well, Santi wouldn’t exactly deny that claim, either.

Rick didn’t hide the scoff, only to pair it with a faux smile so you could take it as nothing more than a harmless banter, “Gotta be real good then. ‘Cause this here,” He cocked his head in the paper bag’s direction, “Is my wife’s favourite place. Our favourite place.”

Rick not only had to watch out for the bold claim Santi was making, but he also had to bear in mind the sight of Benny openly looking at you like a lovestruck puppy. The promising boxer didn’t even care about the passive-aggressive argument going on around him. He was just appreciating the beaut in front of him.

(Man’s just doesn’t give a shit atm).

“Hey, I’m not here to burst your bubble,” Santi huffed in amusement, raising his hands in a defensive way, “But I’m not trying to give the pretty girl any mediocre recommendations either. C’mon Flag, you, of all people, should know that we want the best for her.”

“Aw, Santi, you’re too kind.” You were touched and it showed, and Rick couldn’t argue with the statement. Without a doubt, he wants what was best for you, be it food, comfortable clothes, gourmet treats for the fucking neighbourhood cat you adore—anything.

In the midst of their silent argument, you reached for Rick’s hand, holding his larger ones in between yours, “I’m sure Rick and I will enjoy it,” He mirrored the warm smile as you stared into each other’s eyes for a moment, only to break when you addressed the two, “And if it’s as good as you said it is, we might as well have a get together.”

Oh.

You were growing concerned of the two’s silence, eyes darting back and forth and almost—almost asking what was wrong until Benny, as if snapped out of his trance, finally, spoke up.

“Absolutely.” Benny raised his hand in a manner that a believer would in church.

Abso-fucking-lutely.

˚ · . f i n . · ˚

» gorgeous rose divider by the amazing @firefly-graphics ♡

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sserpente · 2 years

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A/N: Requests from two anons. This was supposed to be short. Oh well… when does that ever work with me, haha! Enjoy, everyone!

Words: 2485 Warnings: fluff, mentions of abusive relationship

Both Billy and the Reader are over the age of 21 in this Imagine.

Had it been a bad idea? Probably. Did you regret it? Hmm… not one bit. Billy had set his eyes on you ever since you had knocked one of the jocks from school bold enough to grab your arse unconscious in front of half Hawkins at the Hideout. He’d made it his mission to seduce you ever since.

People, especially women who had fallen for his tricks before, had warned you about him from the start—that you’d be just another notch on his belt.

Lately though, things had gotten quite… obsessive. Sure enough, Billy didn’t stalk you like a creep but he did take every chance he got at swarming around you like a bee hunting for honey whenever you happened to be in the same place at the same time. Hawkins was quite small after all. He bought you drinks without asking, always made sure you got home safely, ignored everything and every one as soon as he spotted you somewhere to check in on you…

Then, two days ago and right before you had finally given in to his advances, he’d even paid for your meal at Benny’s Burgers before you’d even known he was there too.

One thing had led to another and then, outside, when he’d offered to take you home… the devil had ridden you and you’d said yes. It was flattering, in a way, to be desired like that.

Billy pressed you against the side of his car, trapping you between the cool metal and his warm body. You looked up at him, holding back a knowing smirk.

“Do I get a ‘thank you’?” He mused.

“Thank you. But in order to bring me home safely, you’ll have to actually let me go into the house, you see.”

Billy tilted his head and averted his gaze for a moment. “You’re playing so hard to get, doll. You’re not attracted to me just a little bit?”

“And if I did?”

“Then…” He leaned forward, his lips brushing your right earlobe. The obscenities he proceed to whisper had you clench your legs tightly.

“Fuck, you got any idea what it did to me when I saw you knock that asshole’s head on the table at the Hideout?”

“Well, it must have something to do with what’s poking my thigh right now,” you uttered sweetly.

Billy scoffed—an odd mixture of amusement and impatience.

“Come on, doll.” He said your name. “Give me one night to convince you I’m worth taking your clothes off.”

He’d kissed you before you could protest and now here you were, another notch on his belt. You couldn’t say you regretted your decision though—after an hour, you had lost track of how many orgasms he’d pulled from your poor and dripping pussy and the fucking… Jesus, that man knew how to use his tool. Billy had not promised too much. He’d given you a night full of pleasure and now, three days later, you had moved on.

Steering towards your regular table at Benny’s Burgers, you plopped down on the squeaky plastic chair and sighed. Work had been killing you recently. You were tired, exhausted and worn-out and boy, were you fed up with your incompetent co-workers who had nothing better to do than to belittle you every chance they got because they had more experience. You needed a holiday. A long vacation on a sunny and deserted island, away from human beings and their—

“Hello, doll.” You flinched when someone wrapped his arms around you from behind. By the time you recognised Billy’s voice, he was already pampering your neck with light kisses.

Irritated, you moved away from him, turned in your seat to look at him and chuckled. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m about to buy my girl lunch,” he answered with a smirk. You blinked, needing a moment to process his words when he finally let go and took a seat opposite you. Had he just called you my girl? Had you missed the memo?

“Billy… I… we’re not… a thing. Right?”

His smile faltered a little. “I fucked you into the next year, I’d say that makes you very much my girl.”

“Oh my god, keep your voice down!” You weren’t ashamed—not in the slightest. Still, you had no interest in half of Hawkins knowing about your sex life.

Billy only grinned before he beckoned the waiter over to him and ordered a large meal both for himself and for you. “That okay?” He added in your direction. You nodded, dumbfounded.

“This…” You continued once the waiter was gone again, “…this. Us. That was a one-night stand. Isn’t that what you do all the time?”

Billy tilted his head, his smile now completely gone. “What, do you think I’d fuck just anyone in Hawkins? I’ve been trying to get your attention for a month, you can’t be that blind. Shit, are you for real right now?”

You crossed your arms. “Oh, so you’re saying that isn’t your typical wooing method?”

“No. Unless that’s what I was to you. Just a fuck. And a few free meals?”

“Excuse me? You didn’t even tell me you paid for my food until I asked for the bill. So that’s on you. And as for… I don’t have time for a relationship right now, I thought we were on the same page, to be honest.”

“Apparently, we weren’t,” he spat. Once again, you blinked. He was hurt. He was actually hurt, you could practically feel it.

It was at that moment the waiter decided to return with your meals.

“Actually, make mine a takeout. I’m out of here.” He jumped up, almost knocking over the plastic chair in the process.

“Billy… wait…”

Much to your surprise, he did stop, spinning on his heel to face you again. “Oh and don’t worry, doll, I’ll pay for that too.”

Before you could utter another word, he left—likely remaining just outside the door to calm himself in the fresh air, light a cigarette and wait for the waiter to pack up his damn food. Your own appetite was long gone now. And all of a sudden, you felt horrible about yourself.

“You are awfully quiet today,” Robin remarked. Focused, she gazed at her reflection in the mirror to smudge the eye shadow she’d just patted on there with the tip of her middle finger.

“Huh? Uh… work’s been busy.”

“No…” Robin drew the word out and turned around to face you. “That’s not work. I heard Hargrove made quite the scene today at Benny’s Burgers.”

“Of course you heard.”

“Did that have something to do with you? I mean, I know you told me you two…”

You sighed, closing your eyes for a moment.

“It has! Oh my god, it totally has! What happened? Tell me everything!” She knelt down right in front of you and grabbed your knees for support.

You buried your face in your hands. Robin wouldn’t stop until she knew every single detail about your interaction at Benny’s Burgers today. You might as well tell her the whole story without her asking you a hundred questions first. So you told the short tale.

“Are you shitting me? Billy Hargrove, the Billy Hargrove, womanizer and king of one-night stands is in love with you?”

You scoffed. “I very much doubt it. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t even know how to spell the word love.”

“Hmm…” Robin paused.

“What?”

“Well… I mean… I’ve seen him around you a couple of times but you know better about that than I do. What did he do and say before you had sex?”

“Not much… he constantly paid for my drinks and my food when I was out, it was almost annoying.”

“What else?”

“He… well, he was always around me. Making sure I was okay, I guess? He’d watch over me like a hawk. I didn’t have to deal with a single catcaller the past few weeks.”

Robin blinked. “What else?”

“He called me a couple of times to make sure I got home safe. One time I was in the shower and didn’t pick up, next thing I knew he was standing on my porch.”

Fuck. Robin raised an eyebrow but she didn’t have to say it out loud. Billy Hargrove was in love with you. He’d never had just a passionate one-night stand in mind. But… on the other hand, with his reputation, could he blame you? You had thought… well… you… you sighed. No. You were the arsehole here, not him.

“Does he know about…?”

“My abusive ex-boyfriend? You can say it. No, he doesn’t. I never told him anything really private about me on that note.”

“And… do you… like him back?” She asked carefully.

“I… no? Maybe? I don’t know!”

“You don’t know or you’re scared because you do know but your ex traumatised you and now you’re reluctant to get into a relationship again?” She spoke so fast you had to think twice about what she’d just said.

“When did you become an expert in psychology?”

Robin shrugged. “It’s pretty obvious to me, you know.”

“It doesn’t even matter. Even if I did jump in at the deep end and got back into the dating game, I fucked up. He hates me now. You should have seen the look on his face, Robin. He wasn’t angry, he was… he was hurt.”

Robin pursed her lips. “Do you know what? You should come to Steve’s party tonight. It’s gonna be fun. Drinks, music, party games… it’ll take your mind off things.”

“I have to be up early for work tomorrow, I can’t party all night.”

“Then leave at midnight like Cinderella.”

“You’re very persistent, Buckley.”

“That’s how I became your friend. Now pick an outfit. Might as well wear something that’s gonna make Billy regret that he ran off today.”

She’d convinced you in the end. Well, technically she always convinced you. So why not let yourself go to drink and party? You couldn’t remember the last time you’d been this drunk. One beer had turned into six and soon after, some of your former classmates had pulled out the heavy stuff. Here you were, too drunk to count to five and walk straight.

You were dancing to “Rock You Like A Hurricane” when you spotted him in the crowd. Billy downed a can of beer like it was nothing and then made his way through the crowd so confidently the people parted for him. He looked outrageously hot tonight. Wearing only a black leather jacket and nothing underneath, you could practically see his muscles dance underneath his tanned skin with every movement he made—towards you.

Your heart skipped a beat when his eyes met yours. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Having fun! What does it look like?!” You slurred, wrapping your arms around him. “I’m at a party so I’m partying.”

“You have work tomorrow,” he responded. If you were sober, you would have probably noticed that he didn’t stop you from clinging to him like a little monkey. “How much did you have to drink?”

“I don’t know. Five? Six? Ten? Doesn’t matter, I’ll deserve the hangover tomorrow.” He shook his head slightly, clearly annoyed with your reckless behaviour.

“You’ve had enough.” Slinging an arm around your middle, he led you outside. The fresh and crisp air hit you like a blow in the face. Dizzy, you leaned against the wall.

“Why do you still care? I fucked up.”

“Did you?”

“Yeah,” you drew the word out. “My ex was a piece of shit, you know that? I thought I’d rather stay single than do this to myself again.”

Billy straightened. The cigarette he had lit almost dropped to the ground in the process.

“He hit me! But hey—at least I know how to cover up bruises now. If you ever need a good foundation, I can recommend six.” You laughed.

“That fucker hit you?”

You hummed. “I didn’t wanna give up on sex though, it’s fun. So when you started pursuing me I thought that was the perfect opportruni… oppotuny… opprotunity to blow off some steam. What I forgot about myself…” You laughed out before continuing. “…is that I don’t do one-night stands. I like you, Billy. And I hate that I do because the last time I trusted a man I ended up with bruises all over myself… and not in a kinky way.”

Leaning against him, you closed your eyes for a moment, enjoying the warmth of his body. Your hand trailed down the thin line of hair leading to a very interesting place, yet when you made for slipping your palm into his trousers, he wrapped his hand around your wrist, stopping you.

“You tell me who that fucker is. He’ll need to be hospitalised by the time I’m done with him.”

“I don’t care. Moved away. Far away. Billy… let’s have sex again.”

“Shit, you are wasted.”

“Exactly.”

“I’m taking you home.”

“So we’re having sex at home?”

“No, we’re…” He threw his cigarette to the ground, stomping it out. “Who did you come here with?”

“Robin…”

“Okay, wait in my car. I’ll find her and let her know we’re leaving.”

You woke up to the smell of freshly brewed coffee. Your eyes flew open. Tiny little construction workers appeared to torment your skull, hammering away and punishing you for your excessive alcohol consumption yesterday.

Billy had been kind enough to close your curtains and the half-darkness in your bedroom was more than just welcome in your current state.

“Oh, fuck…”

“I’m sure of that.” Billy was sitting on the edge of the bed, a cup of coffee in hand. He was still here.

“Before you freak out, I called your boss and told him you’re sick.” Smirking, he handed the mug to you. “How much do you remember?”

“Everything, unfortunately. Including my not-so-subtle invitation to have sex again. But…” You sighed, massaging your temples with your free hand. “I meant what I said last night, you know.”

“I figured that. Drunks either talk complete shit or the raw truth. I asked Robin about your ex yesterday. I’ll pay him a visit soon.”

“No! No, don’t do that.”

A pleasant shiver went through you when Billy said your name. “This guy abused you. I won’t let that slide.”

“So… so what does that mean? Do you forgive me?”

“Forgive you?” He laughed.

“I… want to try it again. The relationship and dating thing. I would have never slept with you if I didn’t like you and I guess I just… didn’t want to admit that to myself.”

Billy shrugged. “I was an ass too.”

“You’re still an ass.”

“Yeah. But it looks like I’m your problem now.” And to seal his promise, he barely made sure the coffee mug was safely out of the way before he kissed you.

#billy hargrove #billy hargrove imagine #billy hargrove x you #billy hargrove x reader #billy hargrove x female reader #billy hargrove fluff #billy hargrove smut #stranger things #stranger things billy #stranger things billy imagine #stranger things imagine #dacre montgomery

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