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yanderenightmare · 4 months

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TW: NSFW, dubcon/noncon, slave darling, crude and derogatory terms, classism, abuse of power, death threats

fem reader

Thinking about the poor kitchen maid who's suddenly told she's to be the spoiled Prince's new chambermaid.

It hasn’t even gone a day yet, but you already miss your job in the kitchens.

Sure, the sweltering heat of the ovens always left you in a state of fever, and kneading dough from dawn ‘til dusk made your arms acidic with burns – unyieldingly sore – not to mention never getting a chance to sit down and rest before collapsing in bed at the end of the day. But the smell of freshly baked buns and the chance to sneak a bite out of those that came out of the oven just a bit too burnt for serving had always felt like payment enough.

That and not having to deal with the royal family.

You know you should feel honored. You know it’s supposed to feel godsend to be picked to become the Prince’s personal servant. But… there was a reason he so often required a change of maid.

You still remember the last one they’d taken from the kitchen. She was pretty and young and shouldn’t have been working there in the first place – that’s what everyone used to say before she disappeared.

You wonder if such words carry curses… and what you did to deserve the same things being said about you.

You nearly cried standing outside The Prince’s chambers, chewing on your lip with his breakfast tray in hand, wondering what rumors were true – if he really was as terrible as everyone claims – wondering where the other kitchen maid went and whether you’d end up in the same place… wondering what you could do to keep it from happening.

You don’t know what you were standing there waiting for, nearly pissing yourself when you knew he was still out – busy hunting down a couple of runaway servants for sport. It was almost as though you feared the room itself, as though it would bite once crossing the threshold.

None of the sorts happened, though a gust of warm wind hit you like the breath of a beast once you opened the door.

Inside, there were around a dozen heads mounted on the wall – dragons, bears, lions, wolves, and other creatures you weren’t too sure of – all with mouths big enough to bite yours off.

You took only a second to look at them before they looked as though they’d leap from the walls and eat you alive, just like you’d predicted.

You set the tray of food down on the bedside table and walked to the bathroom to draw his bath – deciding work would keep your mind off it.

Stepping out a second later, you fixed a fire in the hearth and made to make the bed, stretching the duvet and the quilt over the massive mattress while eyeing the thread count with envy and the hand-stitching with awe. Left to wonder how many ducks had been shot to stuff the mountain of plush pillows he’d all but thrown onto the floor to make space for himself.

Walking through the steam to the bath again, you opened the cupboard to pick out soaps and oils – overwhelmed by the sight of every shelf stocked full of all sorts you’d never seen – glad you had somewhat decent reading skills – unlike many of the other maids.

Soaping the water, you sat on the edge and waited with a hand wading through the warmth – and while biting your lip, you let your mind wander again – daydream, like it so often did – imagining what it would be like to feel it on the rest of your skin, warm and smooth, sucking all the stress out and leaving you soft like a newborn.

He watched you enjoy yourself, his stark eyes calmly assessing what they saw with a tilt of his head – trailing from the tip of your worn-out shoes to the tattered edge of your grey maid’s dress, up your lap to the cinch of your waist where your white apron was bound – taking his time until your eyes fluttered open to find him standing there.

You nearly fell into the water, hopping up to a stance. “Sorry, your majesty- I forgot myself! Please forgive me.” You bowed, looking down at the muddy stains on your gray shoes – in anxious wait of his wrath.

But instead of a backhanded slap that would send you straight to the stone floor or a spit of venom which would make you flinch and cry, he spoke a calm and patient “Come here-”

Though spoken in a certain tone of authority that forced you forward in quick steps until stopping just short of him – still with eyes downcast.

“Mh, I'm glad they haven't run out of cute ones down there.” He said then, once you stood only a hair's length from him – voice just as calm as before and inspiring just as much surprise in you still, though now joined with visible confusion in the crinkle it caused between your brows. A furrow that only deepened once he reached out his hand, tucking a loose strand of hair behind your ear.

“Your majesty?” You questioned.

“It’s master.” He corrected sharply, and you grew unsure if his voice wasn’t just cold rather than calm. “I like that better. Now quit wasting my time and undress me, slave – I have important shit to attend to today.”

You wavered only a second, feeling the words like a flick to the forehead. “Of course, your majes- master. Forgive me.” You blurted with hands quickly jumping forth to help detangle the knots keeping his robes together.

Small fingers working hurriedly to appease him, setting aside the light leather cuirass upon his dresser once loosening it from his torso – wondering if you should tell him your name, though thinking better of it as he’d opted for simply referring to you as a slave instead of asking.

You hadn’t been called that in a long while – slave – never by anyone in the kitchen, at least. You’d nearly forgotten it was what you were – a slave – and not just a busy member of the crown’s staff.

You bit your lip with another bow of your head, not wanting the Prince to see your face in its hurt while you undid the ties to the braces on his arms. The castle had become your home rather than a prison over the years, but… with the echo of your title wringing in that very heavy tone of his, along with standing there – bowing your head while undressing him of all fine body armor and robes – you couldn’t suppress the reminder of being of much lesser blood and birth. A fact that – despite never before having bothered you much – somehow seemed to strangle you now.

He’d dragged mud in with his boots – and given he’d not bothered taking them off, you were left to believe he wanted you to do it for him. And though humiliating as it was, you crouched down and began undoing the laces nonetheless – further feeling degraded while caressing the boot.

You pulled it off and repeated the action with the other foot – wondering if he meant you to remove his breeches and tunic as well until he, fortunately for you, lifted the shirt off and pulled the strings to the trousers himself. Leaving the undergarments in a pool on the floor next to you.

You kept your eyes down until he was completely submerged in the water, afraid to see something you weren’t allowed to – before getting up and padding back to the cupboard. You'd never been any lady's or lord's maid before, but you had been trained in the duties – and though heat rose to your cheeks at the thought of those duties, you still made to grab the soap and loofa in shakey hands before kneeling down on the stool next to the tub.

You’d never seen the prince if not from afar atop the castle balcony during speeches by his mother, the Queen – and had only ever heard of his appearance as something twisted and foul – but looking at him with his eyes closed, he really didn’t look as demonic as people had made him out to be. But further thinking about it, scrubbing his chest with soap and water and oil – you realized that none of those people were likely to have seen him up close either.

He looks every bit royal with his strength of face – cutting edges as though carved in marble, with chiseled muscles gleaming in the water and oil.

He was no doubt very handsome, you concluded silently – finally understanding why he was more of an eligible prince than what his attitude would otherwise allow – that, along with the kingdom’s riches, of course.

He sagged forward while you mindlessly amused your findings – though paying attention enough to take the cue – squeezing water onto his back with the sponge before rubbing over the broad flex of muscles, freezing once hearing him let out a heavy moan.

He leaned back again after you were done. Spilling water onto your dress once pulling his arms out to rest on the frame with a sigh – his chin tipped upward, lounging lazily on the back of the tub.

You reached for his face next – now with a silken cloth – stroking it lightly over the few droplets of blood splattered from when he must have cut into those poor runaways after hunting them down with swords and dogs in heel.

You shuddered some at the thought and must have let your eyes linger too long – or at least long enough not to notice him opening his – staring at you silently with eyes jaded in something that seemed to seize you by the throat.

“I’m sorry, ma-” You tried, but he seemed disinterested in it, reaching for you with wet fingers rubbing on the hem of your collar.

“You’re not dressed properly.” He said then, voice lazy yet loud – unimpressed, though not enough to be outright angry.

Gulping at the feel of his large hand so close to your neck, your voice only barely held it together. “I’m sorry, master. They hadn’t the right maid livery in my size, but I’ll have it ready tomo-” You started, hands folded neatly on your lap.

“Take it off.” He interrupted.

You blinked – tensing with your throat closing – sitting there stunned for a moment before mustering an ever so hesitant answer.

“Your majesty?”

“It’s master. Don’t make me tell you again, slave." He growled through grit teeth right at your face after yanking you close by the fabric of your shirt. "And you either dress properly, or you go naked. And right now, it looks like it’ll be the latter. Unless you want to be whipped for poor servitude?”

Your eyes – moon-big now while you shook your head – breathing thin through your nose. “No, master... I’ll undress.”

“Good.” He broke off your collar, dropping you back down onto your seat on the floor before rising with water rushing fast and heavy down along his limbs, dripping onto you as he stepped out with an unfettered splash.

You got up as well, beginning with the buttons on your shirt. Feeling him eye you while he wrapped himself in the towel you’d laid ready for him – his burning gaze leaving you goosefleshed and nearly in tears, bashful as you stepped out of your skirt – naked before him.

You didn’t dare look – even as he stepped toward you. Keeping your head bowed low – breath in shivers while eyeing the hand he reached for you, his fingers stopping just short of touching your bare skin.

“Clean yourself.” He said then, wafting the same hand to the tub he’d just used. Still filled with bubbles of lavender, though no doubt also of his own grime. But you wouldn’t refuse, no matter the degradation – your thoughts still lingering on the former kitchenmaid who’d disappeared not long after becoming the Prince's personal servant.

You stepped in, feeling the warmth close around your legs – still hot enough to prickle. Lowering yourself down, you sat there – swallowed by the bubbles with the loofa in hand, lathering your flesh with the mix of oil, soap, and water – brushing off soot and sweat – leaving you soft-skinned and smooth to the touch, but also riddled with goosebumps that wouldn't lower under the heavy leer the Prince was giving you.

“Get out and come here.” He said a short moment later, and you got out as told – taking slow steps toward the man, with footprints leaving soapy puddles in their wake.

He reached behind you to pull the pin from your worker's bun, letting your hair cascade in flowy wisps down around your shoulders – before brushing them behind you to clear your face and chest.

He’d dried off but didn’t offer you the towel – having dropped it into a wet pile on the floor – now reaching out to feel the smooth gloss of your breasts with brazen digits. Inspecting and assessing while caressing their weight as you stood there with your head still hung down low – silent and shivering.

Soon his hands fell from your chest down to judge your every curve, sliding over slippery slopes until reaching your cunt – stroking two thick fingers through the drippy curls found there. Gliding them between the lips, he circled your clit with his middle digit – tickling you – while dark eyes watched your lip quiver with a power-hungry gleam.

Stepping closer, the small smirk stretched on his face brushed your hairline where you tried bowing your head even lower in embarrassment – with brows tremoring similar to the hands hanging loosely by your sides.

“Aren’t you gonna bleat like a little lamb? Hmm... slave?” He asked then – low in a whisper, blowing gently into the sweat of your hair – cold enough to make you shiver even more. “The slut before you did….” He added with his smirk sharpening – lips stiffening against your skin where he brushed them in halfhearted kisses down your forehead and temple until reaching the shell of your ear. “I had to wring her little neck just to make her stop squealing.”

You sucked your teeth on impulse, jolting just a bit but not enough to make the dire mistake of moving.

“I can tell you’re smarter. That’s good….” He continued with fingers kept at your cunt – playing your shivering core where you stood planted – dripping wet with bathwater and terrified of moving. “Weak little things like you do better understanding their place.”

Your hands formed loose fists, flinching at your sides as you kept from the urge to wring your thighs shut until he left your sensitivity alone.

“But smart or not, I believe you missed a spot earlier-” Both his hands found your hair instead. “So get down on your knees, slave.”

One paw cupped the back of your skull in a ponytail while the other laid flat on your scalp, pushing you down until he had you leveled with his throbbing manhood – thick and high-strung – blushed red and strangled with veins – bobbing with might against the ant trail leading up to his navel and looking every bit impatient to be served.

“Use this pretty head of yours to do better, and maybe I won't have to wring your little neck too.”

You eyed the swaying length with eyes crossing – sucking your lip at its intimidating reach and how it seemed to rise higher than your head – mumbling out a weak. “Yes, master...”

You dropped your jaw and produced your tongue – feeling him keep control of your head in his tightening hold, yanking your hair before you gave the large cock a flat lick – starting at the base of his balls until flicking off at the very tip.

Not too revolted by the mild taste of lavender and vegetable oil, you locked your lips around the head and sucked it in hopes he’d ease his grip.

“Sh-fuuhck- you really do know your place, huh slave?” He mouthed – his head hanging back in a heavy groan – holding your skull in both hands while using them to bob you against his crotch on repeat, lolling his hips inside the wet warm comfort of your mouth a little deeper for each time – only moaning with a laugh once you gave a whine for breath. “Sweet and obedient- just how I like- with a nice wet throat to fuck too….”

He thought of kicking you when you put your small hands against his thighs to brace yourself – but given how softly you held them there without nails and pinches, he decided he’d grant you the tiny mercy – thinking he’d later teach you to keep your hands on your knees when serving him head like a proper slave ought to.

Tipping his head back again, he looked down at you and the pretty curl between your brows and the cute sight of your teary eyes looking back up at him – giving a hiss at how it made his balls tug in excitement.

“Get up-” He growled, pulling you up by your hair and throat until you shoddily stood upright on unsteady feet – lightheadedly looking at him with dazed eyes and a wet pout. “’This tight cunt as loyal to the crown as your mouth, hm?” He asked with a hand smacking the soft place, making you yelp before he made to bury two of his thick fingers inside the taunt space.

You whined out softly at the intrusion – kept steady and close by the fist holding your throat in a choke – before he used the same hand to throw you over the bed – stomach first with a slap to your ass.

“Bow down, slave- and show me some fucking respect. You’re in the presence of royalty, remember?”

He mounted you with a pent-up groan – and a strong fist in your hair, pushing your face down into the mount of pillows you’d dallied with earlier. His knees dipped into the plush next to your hips, locking you beneath him with his spit-slickened meat resting between the soft valley of your ass, sliding between the cheeks impatiently.

Gathering your wrists in his other fist, he kept them crossed at the small of your spine – before pulling back and letting his cockhead fall right to your sweetly wet and welcoming opening – wasting little time in piercing it nice and deep in a direct aim – like an arrow shot straight through a target.

You winced and bucked your hips at the attack – feeling your walls weep and sting – fluttering hot around the size of it.

He leaned across your back – heavy against your shoulders with his mouth at your ear in gritty whispers. “I like docile slave girls like you who know a thing or two about pleasing a man. Good submissive sluts who understand they’re nothing but warm soft meat for men like me to devour.”

His words groaned in nibbling bites on your earlobe – with a hand kept strict and harsh in yanking your head back for him as he slowly started dragging himself out and stuffing you so fast you couldn’t keep from yelping at the breach. Toes gripping the cold rocky tiles as your legs shook under you – being rocked into harsh and deep by the muscle strength of the beast on top.

“I'm not the first one you’ve bent over for, huh?” He continued with a grin, haughtily chuckling in low breathy condescension. “Probably the first one you’ve had take you in a proper bed, though, hm? And not in a hayloft on whatever dirty farm you grew up on.”

Your fingernails punched into your palms where he wrung your wrists tight, keeping you pressed flat beneath him while he heedlessly rutted into you like you were nothing but his own snug fist.

“I bet the whole village had a go seeing how pretty you turned out.” He laughed again, scoffing at it with his tongue tickling your ear. “Did they all fuck you like this? From behind like a farm animal? On all fours with your pretty face moaning in the mud?” Simpering, he sped up as though aroused by his own words.

Twisting your hair tighter and groaning louder against your ear – chasing your deepest parts with balls clapping hard against your clit.

“You’re all fuckin' inbreds- It’s a fucking miracle your filthy parents created something like you- prettier than all the bratty princesses I have to listen to yap all day.” He moaned – now fully drooling against your face, nomming on your ear with heavy breaths.

Fully draping you in his sweaty muscles, you lay gasping beneath the weight – cunt clenching hard around his shaft – making him hiss.

“Ah fuck- It's nice coming home to an obedient slave- so tight and warm- grateful for a royal cock in your poor slave cunt, huh?”

You winced at his pounding, so deep you felt it choke you – making your stomach fold and curl, trying to protect itself from the assault. “Yes- thank you, master- thank you-” You cried while he placed sloppy layers of wet kisses down your temple and cheek in return – until finally pulling off.

“Come here, down on your knees-” Ripping himself to his feet, he pulled you with him by the fist riddled in your hair and pushed you down at the foot end.

Tugging on his cock in the other hand – quick faps in the slick – he kept you looking up at him while slapping the wet weight in sticky taps against your lips.

“Open wide, slave- here it comes-”

Only one more jerk and it all blew in thick white beams shooting across your face – spewing in clusters, hitting you once on your forehead and another over the nose - dripping to your lips into your gaping mouth where he focused on squeezing out the rest – tapping the plush creamy tip against your tongue while panting.

“Mh-fuck- clean me off and swallow.”

With breaths heavy and slowing, he detangled his hand from your sweaty locks and made to pet your head instead. Gently running his fingers over your hair while watching you obediently kiss and lick up all the spill in tired and slow yet devoted strokes with your tongue until it was all prettily wiped clean.

“Good slave.” The Crown Prince hummed then.

Finally sounding satisfied – still with a lazy hand holding your head where you so faithfully sat at his feet, swallowing his seed, while his satiated cock grew limp in regard.

“Now go wash off while the water’s still warm, and come out and help me get dressed.” He ordered, voice groggily soft in the after high. “I have a full schedule today looking at potential brides… and I want my little farm animal by my side to keep me going insane from boredom.”

BNHA – Bakugou, Dabi

JJK – Sukuna, Gojo, Naoya

HQ – Oikawa, Sakusa

BLLK – Reo

DS – Doma, Muzan, Sanemi

#yandere x reader #yandere #yandere x you #yandere imagines #yandere smut #yancore #jujutsu kaisen smut #jujustu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen #yandere jujutsu kaisen #yandere jjk #jjk smut #bnha smut #yandere bnha #mha smut #my hero smut #yandere csm #yandere aot

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finalgilmoregirl · 5 months

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omg I loved your grumpy x sunshine Mike and reader work - could you please do another scenario where the sunshine! reader is the one who has a bad day and it’s up to grumpy! Mike to comfort and help out in his own way? :) thanks for sharing your work!

a/n : i'm glad you enjoyed it, thanks for the request. fem!reader, she/her pronouns, mainly just fluff

☆ bad day : grumpy!mike schmidt x sunshine!fem!reader

mike knew something was wrong the moment he closed his door behind him and was greeted with silence has he entered the house.

you were always rushing in to greet him as soon as the sound of his keys against the door knob signaled his arrival, but today that clearly wasn't the case.

"hello?" mike called out and a moment later was met by the sight of abby creeping out of the hallway.

"where's y/n?"

"well hello to you too" the young girl rolled her eyes, walking past mike and heading for the kitchen.

"sorry" he sighed, catching her arm before she got too far and pulling her into his arms for a hug, earning a groan in response. "how was your day?"

"it was okay, but i think y/n/n's sick."

"sick? what do you mean?" mike thought back to when he last saw you just that morning. you were fine, your normally bubbly self despite the early hours, yawning between giggles as you and abby got breakfast prepared.

abby shrugged, "i don't know, she's been in bed since we got home."

mike knew you better than abby to know that you couldn't be sick. even if you were sick, you would protest and continue your daily routine as usual. something had to have been seriously wrong for you to defy from that routine and lay in bed for hours, especially with abby home. you hated to leave her alone and always tried to find something spontaneous and fun for the two of you to do if time permitted.

he warily walked into the direction of your shared bedroom and slowly opened the door that was left ajar. the lights were off and if it wasn't for the glow of the hallway light, he wouldn't have been able to see your figure on the bed in the dimness of the afternoon darkness.

but there you were, laying on your side, facing away from the door. mike could tell you weren't sleeping by the way that you were scratching at the loose threads of the faded colored duvet.

"hey" he called out softly, nearing your spot on the bed where he then took a seat on the edge, softly placing a hand on your shoulder. "you okay?" he asked, trying to gauge your emotions. that quickly cleared up however when he heard a sniffle come from you, followed by a small hiccup. you were crying.

mike leaned over to look at your face and was met with wet eyes and puffy chapped lips. his eyebrows furrowed, "hey hey hey" he said softly, moving you so you were now laying on your back, looking up at the ceiling as you tried to will the tears away. you hated crying, and you knew mike hated to see you cry. "what's wrong? what happened?"

you closed your eyes and let out a deep breath, clearly trying to control yourself. "just...had a bad day." you sighed.

"well, talk to me about it." mike wasn't always the best at dealing with emotions, but he was good at comforting you and abby, always wanting you to open up to him, even if he had trouble doing the same sometimes.

you took in another deep breath and nodded, preparing yourself to tell mike about the worst day you'd had in a while.

"i fell off the front steps after you and abby left this morning. but it was okay" you started, "i laughed, realized i scraped by knees and had to change my pants but that was okay." mike nodded along and listened, rubbing your side as you spoke. "but then i got a flat tire on my way to work." you continued, sighing as you felt the emotions building up again. "that was fine, it took me a while to get it fixed but i mananged and that was taken care of with no problems. but i was late, and usually my boss would let that kind of thing slide, but we had some hire ups there to oversee us and when one of them called me out for not being "better prepared", instead of changing the subject or at the very least, defending me after everything i've done for him, he agreed! then she basically told him that i should either be fired or have my paycheck cut." you finished with a huff and let the fresh tears that had built up in your eyes fall down your face.

mike felt a pang of hurt in his chest as he heard you recount the unfortunate events of your day. you didn't deserve to go through all of that. "why didn't you call me?" he asked, brushing the tears away from your face and attempting to flatten the hairs that had become out of place.

your hands came up to cover your face as you let out a sob. "i forgot to charge my phone!" you cried, earning a soft aww honey from mike as he kissed your temple, allowing for you to let your feelings out. after a minute of you gasping for air through your cries and furiously wiping away tears that just kept coming, you started to relax. you sighed and turned your head to your partner.

"i'm sorry you had to see me like this, how was your day?" you asked, still sniffling. mike shook his head and scoffed a laugh, even in the middle of a breakdown, you still want to talk about him.

"no don't worry about me, it was fine." he said, "how can i help you?"

you shrugged, looking down and beginning to play with mikes fingers where his hand now rested on your stomach.

"come on" he insisted, "you always help me when i'm having a bad way and i want to help you now. do you want a snack? do you want to watch a movie, or go for a drive? anything you want, i'll do it for you."

you let out a small laugh at mike's dedication, causing him to squeeze your side. "i'm serious!"

you looked back up and into his eyes, cracking a small smile. "maybe a movie." you said quietly.

"okay, i can do that." mike spoke, starting to get up from his seat on the bed until he was stopped by your hand on his arm.

"but first can you just hold me for a bit. please?" mike looked down at you with a kind of softness that he ever only reserved for you.

"yeah, i can do that too."

the end ☆

#mike schmidt x reader #josh hutcherson x reader #mike schmidt fluff #kelly : mike thoughts 💭

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hiveswap · 4 months

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Summary of The Cat of The Year poll atrocities of 2023/2024

I'm sure that most people on this side of tumblr have seen the Jellie vs. Nefarious Anglerfish poll going around with like 60k votes at this point, and I'd really like clear up some of what happened since I was around for the whole thing.

Url blocked out for op's privacy. They have already left but don't look for it if you haven't seen it/don't harrass them if you already have.

1. The previous round (preparation)

I discovered the poll in its previous round, needless to say she beat Jort's ass severely. This was around the 3rd of january, meaning that this round finished before jellie's passing with only about 7k votes. Op did add their own piece of propaganda from their main:

...which was FINE. (except for stuff we'll see later) Of course running a poll while biased isn't ideal but I for one didn't even know they were the op until much later. I also added my own piece in a separate thread, and they didn't interact with it at all. There was no drama.

2. The Finale

Jellie unfortunately passed away right before the starting of this poll, which was the catalyst for what happened next. Op did exactly as last time and added a slightly more mean spirited encouragement to vote for the other contestant. This is the point where I believe that i fucked up personally.

I added this thinkpiece accusing op of associating all mcyters with Dream (who we all hate for the record) despite them not alluding to him at all. This is because tumblr has a history of disimissing all mcyters as... everything that dream was been accused of. Op did allude to not caring for mcyt. but they didn't say what i accused them of. This is important to point out because this reblog of mine is still being spread. Jellie was in the lead at the time, but not by the time i woke up next morning.

I won't be including anyone else's additions because I don't want to put blame on any specific person. Just felt like clearing up mine.

3. The Fuckening

Some time later op made this post to their personal blog:

which is insanely shitty because, as other people have pointed out, the "lame ass youtube cat" didn't die to inconvinience op or ruin their fun, and people would have probably voted for her anyway because jelly is universally beloved in the mcyt community. This isn't anti democratic. This post was added to the poll with a caption saying op should not be running this poll, and it took off. Op later went on to say that this was a joke:

This apology was not taken well by people, (including me) because "you were not meant to see it" isn't an apology and they still very much made fun of someone's pet dying. Safe to say this did not make the drama stop and only added fuel to the flame. I believe this was the point where the conversation of mcyt fans being unjustly sent hate to was reignited.

We should discuss that! it's a real thing that happens often and is equal to childish bullying. However, in this case, OP was the only one getting sent hate to my knowledge. The notes were mostly saturated by mcyt fans, and even now i can only find one or two hateful stance towards us under the whole 20k notes post.

4. Conclusions

Op posted a second apology to the catoftheyear blog to try and calm people down (i believe this is comprehensive and a lot better than the previous one) The blog was deactivated shortly after, so i only have my phone screenshots of it that i also added to the poll itself at some point:

(Edit) Here's proof that op did not write the justification they got criticised for, from the notes of the original poll:

This apology didn't get seen, or get accepted by enough people, so op made this statement on their personal:

Needless to say I am deeply dissapointed (and guilty) that it's come to this. Yes, op said tasteless things that made us all angry, but telling a human being to commit suicide is worse than being insensitive about a stranger's pet dying. Even after I posted about the blog being decatived i had someone come into my notes to wish that "they never find happiness" i mean wtf. This isn't like shipping where we can do whatever without the content creator's input. this is fucking harrowing and i can't imagine how i'd feel if this was done in my/my pet's name especially after losing them as recently as a week ago.

I hope no one from hermitcraft who is on here (let alone scar holy shit) learns about this like they did with previous lighthearted tournaments. If you truly respect the creators you claim to be a fan of as people, you do not tell people to kill themselves over them. And finally, let Jellie fucking rest, guys. she had a long, good life. I hope op can come back and also avoids behaving like this if they ever wish to do so. I'm angrier at mcytblr, though.

#catoftheyear #jellie #tw animal death #tw suicide bait #hermitcraft #goodtimeswithscar #adding to main tags so people see this instead of the poll itself with no context on how it ended #If this breaches containment and gets used as a reason to hurt mcyt fans i am going zo eat whoever is doing that #catoftheyeartournament #jellie the cat

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nouearth · 1 month

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let me in.

peter parker x male reader.

summary: peter struggles to balance between life and work, and it's ruining his relationship with you.

wc: 6.6k. genre: smut. warnings: andrew!peter, college au, established relationship, brief fighting, brief injury and blood mention (nosebleed), misunderstandings, peter reveals his identity, dry-humping, over the pants (or suit) handjob, body worshipping, lots of sweat, fingering, frotting, riding, spandex fetish, reader has a thing for peter in his spider-man suit!

You were starting to feel antsy. You could feel it—the nerves kicking in again. Anticipation—a suspension of doubt—made your hands clammy at first, but it was the time that made your hands clutch nothing but air. You rubbed the sweat off your hands onto your pants, your knees not so comforting with their pointedness.

Acceptance—when it was evident that Peter was late, again.

Birthdays have never been a big deal in your family. Sure, it was great that you had the privilege to live another year. To witness yourself grow older, to stand a few inches taller, to live a little more knowledgeable than yesterday. But growing up with parents who had to constantly work, well-late into the depths of night, it had never been more than a birthday wish that had greeted you in the mornings, and bid you slumber in the evenings. Since then, you knew not to expect anything.

If only Peter hadn’t made such a big deal out of it this year.

“Excuse me?” The familiar timbre of a voice speared your thoughts; deep and tunneling as you were transfixed on the glasses of water before you. Yours had been refilled, though a little sparse compared to Peter’s full cup.

Your eyes widened with feigned curiosity, a small smile plastered alongside to hopefully negate any annoyance from the waiter—because you expected what he was about to follow up with.

“Hey… uh,” he shifted on his feet awkwardly, eye bags weighing heavier than the last time he had checked up on you. You looked around, surprised by the amount of patrons who had filled the space around you while you were daydreaming. Laughter and smiles completely lit up the room. The dim lights were practically stationed in the restaurant for decoration, and seemingly to spotlight your ‘dinner for one’ status. “I’m sorry, but… we have no more tables to fill, and if you aren’t ordering soon, then we’ll have to give your table up for the next party...”

It was obvious that you weren’t, you hadn’t even torn into the buttery bread rolls that were piping hot forty-five minutes ago. Now, the fat had solidified into spotty, yellow clumps, though you doubt that would’ve been enough to detract from the quality of the rolls.

“Oh, I—“ You pulled out your phone to check your messages again. Nothing. Swiped down to refresh your conversation with Peter. The loading icon felt like it took forever, you half-expected that your phone was updating the thread with Peter’s messages that somehow got lost in the void of the restaurant’s spotty signal.

And nothing.

“I—yeah… uh. I-I’ll head out.” It was embarrassing. Even if the waiter had given you a sympathetic smile, you hated knowing that you wasted his time. You hated that you selfishly occupied a seat when someone else would’ve been done with dinner by the time you exited.

“Thanks—”

You hated that you had your hopes up for things to be different.

Again.

The night was dreary. Not even the wind had greeted you like the others when you stepped out. Soft and fluttering against your skin, but scolding enough to make you put your coat back on. Luckily, your apartment wasn’t too far from the restaurant, a fifteen minute walk at most if you speed-walked. Shoving your hands in your coat pockets, you then ambled along the sidewalks, wallowing in your feelings with a playlist that belted in your ears once you plugged your earbuds in.

You didn’t have the energy left to hurry home.

Once you crossed the last intersection, you felt a little bit more at ease. Seeing the familiar apartment complex at the end of the block picked your pace up a step more. You paused your music once you neared the entrance, just a turn away before you could finally bury yourself in your bed.

You reached into your pocket to grab your wallet. The weight in your palms instantly reminding you to deposit the cash tips sometime soon before the stretch of the leather had become unbearable to fit in your pocket.

Your walk slowed as your attention was fixated on your wallet, fumbling it open clumsily to retrieve your keycard. In midst, you caught a glimpse of a photo print of you and Peter, standing shoulder to shoulder with the biggest grins as Peter had a peace sign above your head, doubling as bunny ears. Honeymoon phase, they’d call it. Where you were beginning to discover more about Peter, and Peter was beginning to discover more about you. Likes. Dislikes. Hobbies. Memories. It felt like yesterday when you two were spending every second of your day with each other.

Now, it would be a miracle if Peter returned a call.

With the keycard in your hand, you turned the corner, and towards the entrance, the smiles from the photo print reflecting onto yours as you could vividly hear Peter’s pleas to retake them again. The flash of the cameras always made him blink.

If only you had been focusing on where you were going instead of the still image of the first memory between you and Peter, maybe you could have avoided the collision altogether when you approached the door. You suddenly found yourself on your back, facing the night sky as clusters of stars twinkled in laughter. There was a slight throbbing to your forehead, a mark you’d reckon would appear as purple within the next 12 hours despite the painless… pain.

“Oh god— I’m so, so, so, sorry! Let me—“ If the beating your face took to the door hadn’t snapped you back to reality already, the familiar face before you certainly pulled you out of your thoughts like whiplash once he helped you back onto your feet. Your vision instantly cleared of haze, as if his simple presence was your remedy.

“(M/N)?” Peter interrupted himself, his eyes widening. You could see the wheels turning in his head when the dim light spotlighted your features: eyes, nose, lips; flesh and bone that he was well-acquainted with.

“Peter—“ You took a moment to scan him. It was like all the other times he had been late. His fringe; stuck to his forehead with a mixture of sweat and water, the latter being a last resort to clean himself up. His knuckles; bruised and torn with minuscule cuts barely able to conceal the truth behind his scars. His necktie; clumsily done with the knots coming loose. Though, whether the silk unfurled by Peter’s own sloppiness, or by the increasing frailty of his fingers that had become susceptible by even the most delicate material of neckties; it was futile to mention it to him. You knew he’d shut you down with another excuse.

“W-what are you doing here? Are you okay? I-I’m so sorry—I was on my way to you and—Oh god, you’re bleeding!“ Breathless, panting, not only because he was panicking from running late.

But because of adrenaline. You could see it in his eyes. The alertness. The high.

“What—“ You wiped your nose with the back of your hand, only to see a smear of blood blotted across your skin. “Shit.”

Another thick drop splattered in greeting.

“Peter, it’s a nosebleed. You’re acting like I had my arm chopped off or something.” You’ve been applying pressure to your nasal bridge, pinching it tightly to barricade the stream of blood. All while you had your head tilted over Peter’s sink, in case of the blood leaking past your hold. “And how long does it take to find a cotton ball?”

“I’m trying—“ His one-sided game of hide and seek with the bag of cotton balls was leaning in favor of the latter. Medicine cabinet: empty. Bedside drawer: foreign coins and bills. You were watching him from the corner of your eye, a small limp to his step when the lightbulb seemingly lit up overhead and had him dashing towards the kitchen.

“Found it!”

Peter’s touch was delicate. Tender, like the forming bruise on your forehead. He was adamant on taking care of you, even if frankly—you would’ve done it much faster had it been a solo endeavor. Cotton balls were plugged up into your nose, and a warm face towel was laid across your forehead. If an intruder had the audacity to rob Peter’s apartment, you’d imagine you would find yourself lucking out. Peter joked that you looked like patient zero.

“All done. See? Nothing to cry about.” He was joking again, the smug smile across his face a clear indication of it—and the laugh that he couldn’t help but contain.

“Ha. Ha. Thanks, Dr. Parker. Now, how much do I owe you? I’m paying outta pocket.” For a brief moment, you forgot that you were upset earlier. All because of how nice it was to actually see him again. He pressed a kiss to your lips, a comforting gesture if his constant apologies weren’t enough. Stay focus.

“So, about dinner…”

“Oh,” Disappointment softened Peter’s smile. You could see it tightening, even as he was organizing his room. Though, it was really a matter of tossing his clothes on the floor back into the laundry basket. “Listen, my… bike got stolen and—“

“Peter…” You sighed, pinching your nose bridge because you feared another avalanche of a nosebleed incoming. That, and because it helped you maintained your composure. “You said that the last time. Three times, actually.”

“Third time’s… the charm?” He was joking. Again. But even he wasn’t laughing at it because he’d been cornered. Called out. Embarrassed that he thought that would even work on you. Embarrassed that he thought he could get away with it.

Again.

“Peter.” You called out, straightening your posture against the headboard of the bed when he sat at the end of the mattress. Shit, it’s happening.

“I… I don’t know how to…” The veins in his hands, they lined perfectly to the cuts, scrapes, and bruises on his knuckles. Clear as day now that he wasn’t hidden under a dim light. “I just…”

He had his hands around his face, rubbing his temples, his cheeks, his nose, anything that could alleviate the accelerating drill of his heartbeat.

You were hopeful to get an answer out of him. A proper explanation. But it pained you, knowing that in a few seconds—what he would tell you would only confirm your yearning suspicions of his strange behavior.

He doesn’t love you anymore. He’s cheating. You’ve become a nuisance, an absolute bore in his life. Actually, you’re a bad influence on him. You’re holding him back. He needs to let go of you to accomplish better things. He never loved you.

It’s happening. It’s fucking happening. All he has to do is say those words. The dreaded five words you’ve heard once from him in a nightmare.

I want to break up.

“If you want to break up, just say it.”

It sounded softer in your head, but the tears that had welled in your eyes finally bursted into droplets. They ran down your cheeks, and your voice broke during its pursuit.

Something commanded you to let those words slip out.

Maybe it was the ghost that you and him had been theorizing about since the night you’ve helped him move into the apartment floor above you. Carrie; you nicknamed her, and Peter would scold you for doing so because he had the suspicions that giving her a backstory would ultimately reassess his home as a possessing ground. To this day, he swore he saw a shadow looming in the corner of his room on a perfectly stormy night.

Or maybe it was the months of frustration that you had accumulated, snowballed because of your own selfish reasons to continue being with Peter for as long as you could, even if you saw the signs, because you couldn’t bear to see yourself without him. Live, when you two had promised so many futures together.

“What? No, (M/N), that’s not—“ He jolted up at the mere mention of separating from you. There was a chill. The room suddenly felt colder, and then warmer—scorching hot, when the glossiness of your gaze reflected into his. He began joining you by your side. “Hey, hey, I would never—“

He broke into a cold sweat. He’d never seen you like this. And to think that he was the root of this—of your pain—it was all overwhelming.

“Peter, there’s always something going on with you. Y-you don’t text me for days. You ignore my calls. You disappear without telling me. You’re always late. And… you’re always hurt? And you think that I’m dumb enough to not notice that you aren’t? How you’re limping? How you’re always bruised and—For god’s sake, Peter, I’m just as smart as you, we have the same GPA and—“ You took a breather, a gulp because you were rambling now. Your cheeks felt hot, from your sudden outburst and from embarrassment, because the latter half of your rant immediately negated the idea of some kind of affair.

“Okay, maybe you aren’t cheating, but—“ You felt him tug you into his arms, but you wouldn’t budge. Instead, you pushed away, edging to the other side of the bed to face him.

“I would never.” He sighed, his arms dropping as soon as you removed yourself from his embrace.

“Then what is it? You’re leaving me in the dark here. I barely see you anymore, you know that?”

“I know.” He was biting his lips. Chewing, as if he was internally debating something. A decision that could either ruin you, ruin him, or both.

“Then?”

You waited. Watched his fingers fiddle with one another as he continued turning the screws in his head. Your heart would jump whenever he would open his mouth, anticipating whatever had caused so much turmoil in his life, but there was a last minute decision that kept him silent.

Crickets.

Nothing.

“I don’t… I don’t know what you’re doing. But you’re getting hurt and I’m just… worried.” Your gaze dropped to his hands again. Pale, veiny, and full of life yet they’ve looked like they’ve been worn out. Torn. “At least tell me it’s not gambling.”

“Well—in a way with my life, it kind of is like gambling—“ He thinly smiled, hoping it would at least make you crack a smile.

“Peter!” You scoffed, nudged his side with your elbow out of frustration, then surrendered when you brought your knees up to your chest, and buried your head in between your knees. “Not funny.”

“Okay, okay, just… you can’t tell anyone.” His voice softened.

“We all know that between you and I, you’re the one with the running mouth.” Your voice muffled in the space between your legs, hands tucked around your nape.

“I’m serious, (M/N)” Pleading now, he held your hand in hopes to get ahold of your attention again, squeezing so you’d look at him. You do.

“I won’t tell.” It was a promise. Peter didn’t need you to clarify because he could see it in your eyes, honest and sincere. Determined, as if you were willing to protect him.

“Okay… and also, don’t… freak out.” Peter was off the bed now, wandering in the middle of his room as he rolled his shoulders back, relaxing the muscles in his back like a wrestler preparing for his next fight. He gestured for you to follow him out to the stairway, out into the cold.

“Why would I freak—“ There was something around his wrist. No, wrists. You thought they were watches, but there were two devices around him. They were strapped with a similar black leather to your wallet, to Peter’s, and a red button protruded in the middle of it. “Peter, what are you—“

You stopped a few feet before Peter, watching him closely, yet afar. Afraid, yet intrigued. Concerned, because he was on the ledge of the staircase now, perched like an animal. Yet there was a grin on his face. Not crazed like a madman considering he was acting like one, but foolish. Goofy, giddy like the times he’d hide stuff from you, and wait until you’d notice it was gone.

“Like I said, don’t freak out.”

“Peter, what are you even—“

With that, he opened his arms like wings that spanned across his back and flipped into the air as if the wind would carry him across city to city. As if he was recruited as a sponsor to the heavenly gods with the incredible height he’d taken off in, pursuing the clouds, the wind, the stars, and the night simultaneously all in multiple slings.

Into. The. Air.

Into the fucking air.

You raced forward with a yelp, as if you would’ve made it in time to catch him. To catch his hand before he fell. To hold him one last time before he’d land on the ground and shatter every bone in his body.

If he had landed.

No, you blinked once—twice—no, at least in the double digits because this was all a dream. It was all a dream, right? That you caught a glimpse of Peter somehow slingshotting himself from window to window, from rooftop to satellite, like it was a mundane day job one had to endure to put food on the table, to pay the bills.

Right?

You paced around the stairs, raced towards one floor to another, bending over the railings because—Peter disappeared. He was gone. If he had smashed into something, you would’ve heard him. You would’ve heard him in yelp in pain. You would’ve heard the metal railings shake. You would’ve heard him cry for help.

Instead, you heard the sound of wind. Whistling as it sailed leaves to the west of you.

As if it carried a hint along the way.

“Peter?! Peter—Fuck, fuck!” You followed the sound of the whistle. The source of the pitchy sound. Fluttering when your head spun closer to the note, wavering when you were getting colder, then peaking when your gaze lifted, higher, and higher, until it landed on him.

Peter.

Peter, perched over the rooftop of the apartment complex like a bug. The moonlight framed his silhouette, emphasized the texture of his suit; protruding grids that encased him like a nest; and you’ve never been more intimidated.

Red and blue spandex tightly-fitted over the muscles and body of the man you have been more than well-acquainted with. You’ve seen it before. It was familiar. On the news, on the papers, on the internet.

“You’re freaking out!” He yelled out, clearly amused in your frozen state of shock.

He peered over at you with a smug grin, aimed directly at your bafflement before pulling a mask over his head. It was the icing on top in rendering you utterly incapable of stringing up any words. The lens of his mask reflected off of you, mirrored your astonishment in clear display, and you sensed that would be a memory Peter would be carrying to his death bed.

“What. The. Fuck.”

“Okay, so, just to clarify,” You were winded, still recovering from the heart attack Peter had nearly given you after he took you on for a stroll in the night. Into the sky.

Luckily his bed was right beside you. As soon as your legs gave out, you fell back into his mattress, and stared into the ceiling, speechless. Peter joined you after, bringing you into his arms. He’d always been aware that touching you in any way or form brought you back to reality. “You are… not a cosplayer?”

“Honestly? That would make me way more money than what I’m making right now.” You couldn’t keep your hands or eyes off of him. Peter was still in his suit, and that gave you the perfect opportunity to run your hands over the webbed texture of the spandex.

“Just a few more months until my lease is up. I can move in, and that’ll help with the rent. For both of us.” It felt like silicone, or rubber. Whatever it was, it was durable considering how thin it felt in your fingers when you rubbed it in between them.

“Just like that? You’re not mad?” Your hands came to a halt when Peter suddenly took them, and rested your palm on his cheek, coincidentally on the cut that you’ve never noticed.

“Why would I be mad?” Quieter. Your voice mellowed into a whisper as you catalogued the amount of beatings his skin had taken. Caressed the marks you were too selfish to notice. Exhaustion wore on his face, and yet he never looked so peaceful as he gazed into your eyes.

Pretty eyes, Peter thought. Ones that could motivate him to get back up after falling. That feels nice, when you pressed a kiss to his damaged skin. A touch that made him believe there was a reason to suffer, to be great, to be all of this.

“Well, for starters, it’s your birthday and… I completely blew it.” Peter closed his eyes when you began brushing his hair back, knotted in cold sweats, but you fanned your fingers out to undo them until they felt somewhat tidy in your strokes. Smooth and soft. He sighed, “Again.”

“Can’t entirely blame you. How would I look if I were to complain about missing you, when you’re out there risking your life for everyone?” It wasn’t a question, but you wanted him to look at you. To respond. And he does, when you pressed a gentle kiss to his lips, and he returned it with a silken one, a following grin. “All I wish for was that you told me sooner, I guess.”

“Yeah,” He figured he’d save the details of the ‘friends’ he had made along the way some other time. For now, it was all about you. “Wow, you’re not even going to wish for me to be safe?”

“Hey, you know what I mean! That’s a given.” You rubbed at his chest, finding yourself quickly accustomed to the scales of his costume. The red was striking against your palms, comforting almost.

“Still. I want to hear you say it.” Peter rolled onto his side and slipped an arm under your back, scooting closer to you. His signature goofy grin never failed to knock a similar one out of you. And unwillingly drawn out, when he began pinching at your sides in quick snips.

“Stop—“ You laughed, your hands occupying themselves to defend your body from his quick attacks. But Peter was fast, avoiding your arms and hands to find another opening that you’d abandon. “Stop, stop! Stay safe! Happy?!”

Closer and closer, you found yourself beneath him, framed by his body as he took your arms above your head and pinned them secured with his tight grasps.“Incredibly.”

Your legs spread open to make room for his body, only for Peter to wrap them around his waist, to press his body into you, kissing you like he was driven to steal your breath.

“This your way of making it up to me?” You broke apart from the kiss, only briefly, before the taste of Peter, the softness of his lips reeled you back in for another kiss. Languidly paced until one’s accelerating lust for one another had taken ahold of the wheel and shifted gears, into a weightiness that kept your mouth parted open while Peter’s impulse to explore you had become evidently clear.

“Problem with that?” He’d been driving his hips into you, grinding his front with your own. Both clothed, infuriatingly covered, but the pressure in between your bulge and Peter’s was too pleasing to ignore. Too satisfying to make him stop. “I should take this off—“

“No, wait—“ You grabbed his forearm when he reached back to unzip his suit. To be honest, you never thought about how he even got in or out of the suit in the first place, but that was beside the point. Something about this suit, this costume, whatever you wanted to call it; it was a turn-on.

The way it fit snug against Peter’s body; how every fiber of muscle was stretching the material to its limit. Maybe you were just turned on because you associated it with him being a hero. For god’s sake, that was as much of an aphrodisiac one could be if you happened to be saved from a falling tower.

Or maybe, it was simply how Peter looked in it. Unabashedly handsome, yet himself, seemingly courting you further into his webs, as if he hadn’t already from day one.

“Keep it on. I like it.” You muttered, fiddling with the collar of his suit. It was snapped on tight, but you managed to slip a finger or two past, to pull at it with a stretch.

“Then how are we going to…” He abandoned the few inches he had unzipped, providing a small relief to the squeeze around his body while his broad back was bare and tense towards the ceiling.

“Then, you’ll take it off. But for now, I just want to…” One hand was on his nape, pulling him down for another heated kiss, while the other traveled south between your body and his. Further, lower, until you cupped him at his crotch. Rubbing, squeezing, and palming at the thick, growing center. “Want to try something…”

You could feel him smiling, a crooked one flattened against your own grin when he whispered, “I should’ve told you sooner, shouldn’t I.”

“You think?”

You were getting harder, your pants beginning to tighten around the center as you palmed him. It was a heavy handful in the beginning, but Peter’s bulge began to unfurl. It didn’t take long, didn’t take much of a stroke for him to unravel from his tuck and thicken into a full-blown erection towards the left side of his thigh. It pointed downwards, the plump head evident through his suit, and you were beginning to drool in Peter’s mouth at the haziest image of it.

“Come on, I need to get out of this… It’s killing me.” It wasn’t like Peter to beg. It was charming, cute, sexy, all the synonyms that could describe how you felt all day and every day about him, and you squeezed, because he wasn’t being patient with you.

“Birthday boy gets what he wants, don’t you think?” He winched into your mouth, and you swallowed him. Swallowed every ounce of breath, and breathed it back out with a kiss. Sloppy, heavy, your tongue weighing on his because you wanted to keep his lips apart, mouth open to hear his moans.

Peter grunted again once you began stroking his cock, touching him like it was a delicate plate of chin. Fingertips only, dusting him off with little pressure so he wouldn’t shatter.

“What are you going to do about it, hm?” You continued your short, limp strokes. “Just going to take it? Hm?” Your wrist was weak, lazy as it became limp to tease him even more. Peter sucked in a breath, doing his best to maintain his composure, but it was all futile, all those attempts of sucking in his lip to chew, to hold back his moans, because you’d slap his clothed cock, grasp it tight in your hand, and massage as much as you could gather.

“Fuck, baby—“ You had him under your control. Even if his hands were free, you knew he wouldn’t lay a finger on you. He knew that if he did, you’d stop touching him, stop stimulating the blood running down every vein of his cock, fueling his erection. His desires.

He couldn’t let that happen. Not after the day, the week, the months that he’d been having.

You and Peter eventually switched places: Peter resting on his back while you sat in between his legs, marveling at the stretch of his suit. Somehow, his cock looked bigger than you’d remember. Squished and pressed flush against his thigh like this. The suit was like a magnet, inviting your hand back to his cock and refusing to let you go.

“Just relax.” You commanded him. He was watching you slouched up against the headboard, gravity weighing his eyelids lower. With his legs spread apart, he provided you excess space as you began massaging his right thigh with your free hand. “Is this okay?”

“Mm-hm...” He knew you were talking about the pressure on his thigh, but the strokes over his cock remained supreme in his mind. Championed through as you pressed harder into the shaft, massaging tenderly from vein to vein. The protruding webbed texture of his suit pressed into him, rolled against cock like the inside of a fleshlight, ultimately adding onto the already gratifying pleasure.

It was glorious.

“More…” Peter gritted through his teeth, a selfish need for more escaping from his lips in huffs. Grunts, when you’d fulfill his wish with two hands now, kneading his cock like dough.

Thick, stiff, throbbing dough.

Before the complaints could come pouring in, you shimmied your pants off in a hurry, tossing it in the corner before greedily climbing onto Peter’s lap. It was like he read your mind, perhaps another secret that he’d been hiding, because he immediately took you into his arms. An embrace, a tight one that grounded you against his bulge, pressing your body weight until it restricted the blood flowing into his erection, as well as preventing an escape.

“You’re so hard…” You marveled at how rigid he’d gotten under you, grinding your ass against the large mass, beating and throbbing with every rut.

“I’m so hard.” He confirmed, complained, and bragged all in one smile. He then took you by the nape to kiss you again. Hard on the mouth, slow with his tongue to taste you and your desires, his desires. His other hand rested on the small of your back, guiding your grinds at first before his fingers looped into your waistband, tugging once before stuffing the strap under your ass cheeks. Your hard-on was the only thing keeping the cotton material from slipping off while you continued grating your hips. “Just like that…”

To make it easier for you, Peter repositioned his erection so it was facing north, towards his navel, in its sublime mass. Your briefs had been tossed to the side now, completely bare bottomed against him while you mounted over him, and rode in needy strides. It was a sight to behold, something that Peter reckoned he should savor. He folded his arms behind his head, providing a self-made cushion for the weight of it, and watched you. It was entrancing, like a dance. You swiveled your hips to a ghosting rhythm, one that could only be heard between two hearts, two parties, between the two of you, man to man.

“Like this…?” Breathless, you unbuttoned your shirt open, but left it present on your body. Sweat formed over your neck, dribbled down to your bare and exposed chest; it was practically an open-invitation for Peter to ravish you. And so he did, with a haunting groan as he held you, contained you in the warmth of his arms as he simultaneously pulled you forward, and pushed himself off the headboard to meet you in the middle.

He kissed you on the neck, achingly hard when he sucked, and then enthralling, sweat-inducing when he bit into your skin. He couldn’t contain himself. You tasted too good, and it’d been too long since he had you just like this. “Just like that. Your cock against my cock, fuck. I love it so fucking much.” He muttered hot against your neck, panting because he was sweating too. The spandex felt tighter on his skin, constricting against him with every drop of sweat.

“Oh, fuck…” His lips had latched onto your nipples now. Peter’s tongue worked magic on your two nubs, flicking and swirling over their perkiness until you felt swollen. Raw, when he bit, pulled, bit, and bit again. You buried your face into his hair, rocking yourself back and forth with your arms holding him close to your chest, gliding your cock against his print as if a gun was pointed to your head, like your life depended on making Peter come.

You were delirious, humping Peter without a single thought other than to get him off, and you’d reckon that was the goal lingering in Peter’s head as he began rocking back into you. It took a while for him to find your rhythm, chasing after it in slower, sluggish beats, but eventually he caught up to you, snapping his hips against your own, grinding his cock against yours like two crescent moons caressing the other’s curvature.

“Close…” He muttered into your shoulder. Your shirt was hanging off, exposing more of your skin, but Peter made sure you didn’t feel a single chill with the marks he had followed up with soon after. It was like he had done it on purpose. Made you feel safe in his arms, comfortable in the warmth of his body, worshiped with the amount of care he had given your body. Frozen, when you felt something prod at your pucker. Then enraptured, when Peter pushed a wet finger inside of you.

Tremors, chilling tremors ran down your spine as you took the single digit Inside of you with one determined push. “Fuck—“ Your back arched, chest pushed forward towards him, and your hips jolted forward in one strong, and delicious swipe against Peter’s cock. “Peter…”

It was a mouthwatering display of food before him. The perky nubs on your chest, the veins in your neck, the mole on your body, the strain of your thighs on overdrive, the swollen head of your cock; Peter didn’t know what to lay his finger on first, what to mouth on, what to kiss, and suck, and latch onto until you’d scream. Whichever it was, he knew you were desperate for him. Begging, sweating, whimpering, for Peter to lay a finger on you. Another finger inside of you now, and you rolled your eyes at the stretch he was providing you with, a fulfilling wish that startled your hips once more.

“You’re so good, so good for me…” Peter was staring up at you, marveling at the layer of sweat on your body. It glistened with every movement, dripped heavily with every thrust of Peter’s fingers, and tasted just like how he remembered. Salty when he licked up your neck, up your chest, against your nipples, and repeated. Your body was his, and Peter was determined to let the world know. Determined to remind you in case that you’d forgotten.

Your hands were wandering. Grabbing and touching at anything and everything that could linger in between your fingers. Peter’s hair, his head, shoulders, chest, your cock and his, his back. Everything. You couldn’t keep your hands off of him. Even if he was covered from head to toe, you were touching him. Because he was yours.

“Gonna come—“ You cupped Peter’s jaw to straighten his posture, to kiss him sloppily on the mouth, and he pulled his fingers out of you, resting them on either side of your hips as he joined you once again in grinding hips. The pleasure was overbearing, drilling into each individual brain until the smallest movement would render you both speechless. Panting in slurred moans of each other’s names, of profanities that you two had rarely used in your lifetime on earth.

“Me too…” Peter pushed himself on top of you now. Your arms were tied around his neck, tighter than the necktie he had on prior, and your legs; they wrapped around his waist equally secured, if not even tighter, as he thrusted against you.

You were too distracted, unable to respond to Peter’s constant licks in your mouth. He was desperate for you, suckling on your tongue and chasing after it once it slipped out because of your moans. They were rattling, each breath immediately vaulted in the back of Peter’s throat because he couldn’t part from you. Couldn’t imagine a life where he would. And if he had to, at least he’d have a part of you inside of him. Even if it was a whisper.

He thrusted harder, panting into your mouth, his nose practically smushed flat against yours. He wondered if you could imagine that life, a life without him.

“P-Pete—Shit, I’m—“ Your fingers dug into his nape, grounding him impossibly closer to you when that feeling had suddenly come to stun you in place.

It simmered hard in your stomach, then to a rolling boil as it traveled lower to your pelvis. You squeezed your stomach, clenched your toes, and your eyes widened when Peter’s hips showed no signs of faltering. Your cock swelled and your balls jolted, tightened, until you finally saw stars bursting into flames and let gravity have it come crashing down on you. Shivers had you enclose your arms around Peter, holding onto him tight as you felt yourself crumble and spill all over your chest and his suit. You came with a gritted grunt of his name, sinking your nails into his nape because you had nowhere else to channel your spasms as Peter kept rocking against you, drunkenly astonished by how you came for him. By how much you needed him.

It didn’t take long before Peter came right after. He buried his head into your neck, stifling moans into the heat of your neck, clammy with sweat, yet comforting as he filled the inside of his suit with thick, large loads. You felt his cock throb against you when you reached down to help, to ride out his orgasm to the fullest. His cock pulsed as you’d imagine several thick pumps of his load would gush out and uncomfortably layer his navel. If only his suit hadn’t been waterproof, because there was no doubt that he would’ve been leaking out of it by now.

You’ve never been so jealous of spandex.

He was hot in your ear, panting, breathing you in, then breathing you out as you slowed the strokes on his softening cock. Then a sudden inhale, a jolt of his body, when you squeezed hard, to seal the deal in covering the entirety of his cock in his own cum. It was filthy. It was shameless. It was Peter.

“Driving me crazy here…” Peter sluggishly lifted himself off of you to face you, a sleepy smile plastered across his face as you kept kneading at his cock, increasingly sensitive with every second.

“Not enough to drive you away, right?” You smiled, drowsy yourself as you quickly found your high coming to a crash. Though, you mustered enough strength to hold Peter’s cheek in your palm, tenderly caressing, to which he immediately kissed as soon as it reintroduced itself.

Peter sighed, holding your gaze for what felt like minutes, and yet you wished it could be for longer.

It was different this time, the way he looked at you. The same amount of love and warmth, yes. But they no longer wavered, no longer tried to find something else to look at in case you were prying about.

“Never.”

Instead, they stilled, relaxed the longer you stared into him, into those brown eyes of his, because you were in now.

You were finally in his life.

How much you needed him? His question had been answered.

nouearth. please do not repost, plagiarize, or translate my works. andif you like this story, please reblog and leave a like!

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ghoulphile · 20 days

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wish you'd make me cry | c.h./the ghoul

➥ pairing | cooper howard/the ghoul x f!reader ➥ word count | 2.3k ➥ warning(s) | 🔞 smut; rough, dom!cooper, frottage, sitting missionary, dirty talk, degradation kink, pet names, teasing, dacryphilia, bareback, drug/chem use (jet), shotgunning, high sex ➥ summary | "You’re such a needy fucking brat." :3c ➥ notes | drabble (that's no longer a drabble lol) request for @tearueful, thank you bby!! this one really got away from me... i had to stop myself from writing lol. un-beta'd atm. masterlist | feel free to send in thots, questions, requests! | feedback is always appreciated ❤️

Setting up camp for the night in an abandoned warehouse, you and Cooper wait out a radstorm that blows in off the horizon. Because while he loves sitting outside with a smoke, soaking in the rads until he’s buzzing with frenetic energy, you don’t feel like hunting down RadAway tomorrow.

It’s quiet apart from the distant sound of super mutants and ferals roaming the city, the sporadic roar of thunder, and rain tinging off the sheet metal roof. There’s still hours left until daylight, and it doesn’t seem like the volatile weather will break soon.

Unfortunately, you’ve read all the Grognak comics you could get your grubby hands on three times over, and there’s not much else to pass the time besides scuff your boot along the concrete floor, and pluck at a stray thread hanging off your tattered sleeping bag.

Meanwhile, Cooper lounges on his side, unbothered. His hand - bare for once - props up his head, the unscarred skin of a commandeered digit stark against angry rad burns and ropey scars. Between the knuckles of his other hand, he rolls a vial of chem over and over in a mesmerizing flick of deft fingers.

A lantern sputters between you as the old battery struggles to keep it lit. Its jaundiced glow banishes the thick darkness; a fuzzy halo of light that elongates shadows and deepens the cuts of his face.

You kiss your teeth, and say, “Hey, you got any more Jet?”

Lazy eyes slide towards you. A hairless brow quirks. “And if I did,” he asks, the vial pausing between his fingers, “why you wanna know?”

“Dunno, I’m bored… wanna get high?”

“Well, shit,” he whistles, bares his teeth. A low, crackling laugh rumbles from his chest. “Why the fuck didn’t you ask sooner.”

You shrug and crack a knuckle.

To be honest, the idea hadn’t occurred to you at first. Now that it has, anticipation curls low in your belly. Not only has it been a long, long time since you last got high (the sensation a hazy, half-remembered dream of fuzzy warmth and whirling thoughts), you know Cooper always carries a top-notch stash.

The little chem fiend, you think fondly.

“So,” you prompt. “Wanna get high together or what?”

“Sure as shit, darlin’. Let’s party.”

He settles against the pockmarked wall beside you with a soft grunt, the grit of concrete digging into his back. Thigh to thigh, his body is a rad warm line of heat. A bloom of suffocating heat in the otherwise biting chill of a wasteland night. Gunpowder and smoke tickle your nose when he leans over to rifle through his bag, leather creaking.

Muted, mellow; everything fades into a silent companionship as you pass the red inhaler between you. With every puff, whorls of smoke curl from your mouths until a murky gray cloud hovers in the air; defining the edges of your crafted universe.

The acrid vapor of chem burns its way through your lungs and into your bloodstream. A bitter taste coats your fattened tongue, lips tingling as your palm smothers little coughs. A flood of static rushes down your nerve endings, sends your head spinning.

As your vision blurs, the tension leeches from rounded shoulders with a bone weary sigh. And with every slow clicking blink, colors spark to life in a distorted kaleidoscope. Head lolling to the side, you watch through heavy eyes as Cooper rattles the inhaler and takes a shallow hit.

When he exhales, little tendrils of smoke caress the plains of his cheek. Dance along the hollow nasal ridge. “Almost out.” He grunts, your fingers brushing when he passes the cartridge back. “Go on, now. Finish it.”

The kind gesture (for him) touches you.

Then a faraway thought flutters.

Snags - settles into a nebulous desire.

And before you can second guess yourself, a rumble of thunder shakes the building. Wipes away the last of your common sense, and reservations. After all, why not? He was nice enough to share. You can too.

To his credit, Cooper doesn’t startle when you slink into his lap - not that you expect him to, even without being chem-addled. He tracks your movements from beneath a heavy brow bone, the dark Nuka Cola of his eyes glittering like shattered glass in the wane light.

“Heh, this that kinda party then, darlin’?” he asks once you settle, your thighs draped over his hips and your ass flush with his crotch. “‘Cuz you’ll be wanting ta extricate yourself if it ain’t.”

—Before I do it for you.

Humming, you dip forward until your breasts brush over the wide expanse of his chest. Interest flickers to life behind your navel; cinders cracking and popping along your spine. While you’d never considered Cooper a sexual availability beforehand (what with his never-ending search for family), the laden weight of his gaze as it pauses on your chin before dropping lower sings through your blood.

Kickstarts your heart into a galloping stutter that thuds against your ribcage as longing hooks behind your navel, tugs sudden and sharp. The world spins.

Maybe, you think, peering at him from beneath the fan of your lashes. Maybe…

“Pervert,” you murmur, biting down on a small smile.

The knife-sharp smirk falls from his lips faster than a comedown from Psycho when your fingertips ghost over the curve of his jaw, turning his head towards you. Like this, you share breath, the scant space between you thrumming with energy.

So close you can see flecks of gold in the amber whiskey of his eyes.

Your forehead brushes over his; the rough drag of gnarled skin sending a shiver through your limbs. “Let’s share the last hit. S’only fair.”

Pausing, he considers you for several long moments.

His gaze bounces from yours to the playful curve of your mouth and back. A small eternity passes like this. And then - when you’re about to crawl away to lick your wounded pride - the most imperceptible of nods grants his assent.

There’s a hiss of aerosol, a lung burning inhale, and then you’re exhaling into the open gash of his mouth.

Wisps of smoke dance off your tongue onto his, the bow of your lips glancing off the swell of his top lip as you squirm closer. You feed him chem in a slow, steady stream until all the air has left you.

He groans - a wounded, low-throated sound.

Your eyes flutter open to find him already staring, his iris a thin ring around the Blackhole of his wide blown pupils. Hooded, hungry: a caged predator. You lick your lips, and in doing so, flick your tongue over his.

Your stomach swoops, “I --”

“You’re such a needy fuckin’ brat, y’know that, sweetheart?”

Whether it was an apology or some other retort stuck to the back of your teeth like hard candy, you’ll never know because in the next moment a rough hand knocks the Jet out of your hand. The inhaler cracks against the concrete with a plastic smack before skidding off into the darkness.

A burning palm curls around your wrist, calloused fingers digging into your fluttering pulse point. “Hey — hngg!”

He yanks you close, and you taste the violence in his kiss.

Harsh lips map out the softness of yours as teeth pinch and roll until your mouth is a swollen mess of tender flesh and smeared spit. Keeping up with the frenzied scrape of his tongue and the deep pulls of his kisses is like trying to weather a hurricane or fight off a Yao Guai with a single bullet.

“W-Wait,” you gasp, fingers twined through the lapels of his duster. “I don’t --”

“Shut up,” Cooper growls, worrying the swell of your bottom lip until a bead of blood bubbles to the surface. He sucks it away with a stifled moan, his hips kicking up against the plush of your ass.

“Shut the fuck up right now. You know what you was doing - trying ta act innocent when you’ve been gaggin’ for it.”

Flustered, you pull back, “No, that’s not true!”

It’s hard to keep your balance with chem pumping through your veins, and you sway to the side. The only thing keeping you upright is the bruising grip Cooper has on your wrist. “I haven’t been — you’re wr-rong.”

He spits out a mean spirited chuckle. “If that’s what you need ta tell yourself, sweetheart.” A critical eye drags down the pathetic sight you make, crumbled as you are in his lap. “But I know the truth. I felt you looking - pantin’ after me like a bitch in heat.”

“...”

Panic grips you by the throat, your pulse thundering against the thumb he strokes along the curve of your shoulder. You should’ve known better.

Of course, he’d notice.

He was The Ghoul after all - best bounty hunter from this coast to the next. It was his job to perceive everything around him, sus out friend from foe.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

“I’m… I’m sorry.”

What else can you say?

He brought you along (for whatever reason, fuck if you know why), and you’ve caused nothing but trouble every step of the way. It’s a wasteland miracle he hasn’t kicked your ass and left you bleeding in the dirt by now.

I have to fix this. Whatever it takes.

“I ain’t wanting you sorry.”

Gulping, you will away the sting of tears, and say, “Please, don’t kick me out.”

“Y’know, sometimes I think it’s a miracle you survived this long at all.”

“You don’t have to be so rude about it…”

“Listen good and well, sugar,” he says with a roll of his eyes, that tender hand brushing over your neck turning into a collar as he drags you close. His lips whisper over yours with every word. “I didn’t go through all of this bullshit just ta get rid of you. Now--”

Hips rut up into you, dragging the firm line of his growing erection along the soft globes of your ass. “Stop teasin’ and make yourself useful,” he says. “Or you will be sorry.”

Everything after that flicks in and out of focus like a zoetrope: the burning clasp of hands, the slick glide of hungry mouths, the frantic rock of your hips as you both chase after dry friction with a desperation that borders on madness.

Your hands don’t know where to settle, fluttering from the nape of his neck to the breadth of his shoulders to the rippling muscle of his stomach as he rocks into you. Bites at any exposed skin that he can until his teeth leave marks you’ll carry for days.

All the while the hard edges of his body crash into your softness like waves against an eroding shore. Liquid fire blazes in your belly like a raging wildfire, scorching you from the inside out until you’re dumb and dripping.

The chem snaking through your body enhances the littlest of sensations until you feel like one giant exposed nerve. Slick drenched and sweaty, you moan weakly and rest your forehead against his cheek.

“Please,” you slur, thighs trembling where they squeeze at his live-wire hips. “S’not enough - need more. Wanna cum. Please, please, please. Make me cum.”

Cooper bites out a curse, his fingers biting into the fat of your ass. “Yeah, s’that right, sweetheart - d’you think you deserve it for bein’ such a lil brat?”

“Yes, yes, please, I’ll do anything. Just - hhahh, fuck!”

The fabric of your panties clings to your folds, and your pants chafe.

Your clit throbs with every thud of your heartbeat, every firm grind of his cock and low husk of his voice. Want him seated so deep inside you choke - your poor pussy struggling to take his cock as he rides you so hard you cry.

“Anything?” he asks with a breathless chuckle.

The devilish gleam of his eyes rattles your bones, shivers of electric anticipation fizzing through your veins like Quantum.

“Well, shit. Don’t come cryin’ ta me when you regret it. Now, take off those fucking pants and ride my cock like a good girl.”

And when he bullies his way inside, those thick ridges dragging along gummy walls, you almost swallow your tongue. He’s so big - the biggest you’ve ever had.

Every inch is a struggle, a victory. He’s not patient, he’s not kind. You don’t want it any other way, spread so wide your pussy flutters pathetically, trying to push him out.

Then the fat head grazes past the rough patch of your g-spot, sliding home to kiss your cervix. Your knees lock around his ribs, your head tossing back as a high-pitched whine punches its way out of your throat.

“A-Ah! I can’t — oh shit — you’re so,” you babble. “Too much!”

An ache spears deep, roots behind your navel.

“Heh, you asked for it, sweetheart. Look at me.” A scarred thumb wicks away a tear as you peel your eyes open with a sniffle. “That’s it. Shit, you look s’pretty when you cry.”

He licks his skin clean, uses his wet thumb to reach between you and roll the pad over your abused clit. You jump, sliding up on his shaft only for gravity to drag you back down with a solid smack of skin, your limbs jello soft.

The motion slams him deeper and slick drips from you in a sticky gush to soak his balls. You cry out, reedy thin.

Cooper grunts, warns, “You keep doing that and we’re not stoppin’ til you’re dripping cum.”

Though the thick haze of chem and syrupy sweet pleasure, you cobble together a grin and lick your way into his mouth. Tangle your tongues and suck as your hips arch into his. “Please, ruin me,” you breathe.

A possessive greed glints at you from the depths of his hangman eyes.

“Don’t go sayin’ I didn’t warn you, sweetheart,” he promises.

#cooper howard x reader #cooper howard x you #the ghoul x you #the ghoul x reader #cooper howard smut #the ghoul smut #cooper howard #the ghoul #fallout smut #fallout fanfic

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stargirlrchive · 1 year

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te compro otra ✩ miguel o’hara

cw: miguel o’hara x gn! reader (spanish speaking reader) miguel being a flirt <3 I NEED HIM BAD - wc: 343

notes: my first miguel fic (drabble?) i’m kinda testing the waters to see if i like writing for him (i do, this was cute) but obvi had to give my man a spanish speaking reader, like it’s what he deserves ! he’s so mine

masterlist ✩

The words rolled off of Miguel’s tongue effortlessly, causing heat to bloom on your cheeks at the affectionate nickname, “Love when you wear this color, Cariño.”

His fingers gently toyed with the ends of your shirt before he tugged. Even without using much force you could tell he stretched out the fabric. A frown making its way onto your face as you pushed his hands away, “Miguel!”

He let out a deep laugh, his hands reaching out to grip at your hips to keep you in place. His fingers moved your shirt up to let his rough fingers lightly dig into your skin. But you were determined to not look up at him, only slightly upset that he ruined another shirt of yours.

“No seas así.” (Don’t be like that)

You bit down on your lip, trying to stop the shivers that were threatening to erupt on your body at the feeling of his calloused fingers on your soft skin. “Te compro otra.” (I’ll buy you another)

“Ya me debes como diez.” (You already owe me like ten)

A deep laugh left his throat once more, pinching the side of your hip lightly as he purposely tugged on the fabric harder, you could hear the threads pulling apart and you swatted at his toned chest.

“Since you can’t seem to stop ripping my clothes, m’just gonna start coming around naked.”

A smirk etched its way onto his face, his red eyes glowing brighter and you groaned quietly, “Like the sound of that, amor.”

“You’re insufferable.”

“Pero así te gusto.” (And you like me for it)

“Desafortunadamente.” (Unfortunately)

His fangs bared for a few seconds as he sent you a teasing smile. His face inching closer to yours as his lips ghosted over your own, “I’ll buy you as many shirts as you want. We both know it isn’t gonna be the last time this happens.”

You were about to protest against his words but he pulled you in roughly, his lips pressing hard into your own, distracting you from the ripping of fabric.

#miguel o’hara #miguel ohara #miguel o’hara x reader #miguel ohara x reader #spiderman #across the spiderverse #miguel o'hara #miguel o’hara smut #miguel o’hara fluff

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yazmarina · 4 days

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this is FILTHY ok? ok! f!reader is a new wag and still getting used to all the media attention and paparazzi, F1 driver feels kinda guilty. After a particularly hectic outing for dinner, driver sits down to ask if she is really ok with it, she is like "ill get used to it, its worth it for you" and the man is swoon!! hes like "ok, lets get you used to being the center of attention then" with a smirk and its just him pleasing her all night, even photographing her to get used to flashing lights!!

picture you

lando norris x fem!reader

you could only expect so much, having a boyfriend who likes taking pictures

warnings/notes: smut, fingering, semi-nude photography, implied insecurity

a/n: very short, just a little bite-sized drabble to test the waters. lmk what you think!

Dating celebrities is not for the weak. That much you knew. With all the media attention, tabloids scrutinizing every aspect of your relationship, curious fans digging into the recesses of your life, one must possess a certain degree of resilience.

But dating an F1 driver? Even the most tenacious of people might buckle under it all.

What was supposed to be a quiet dinner between you and Lando turned into curious eyes and less-than-quiet murmurs around the restaurant. Lando tried to steer your attention away from all the other people and you tried your hardest, you really did, to carry on a normal conversation, but Lando could see you were growing more uncomfortable with each passing minute.

So after your last bite of pasta, Lando rushed the waiter for the bill. So much for your shared creme brulee.

"Hey, are you okay?" Lando asks as the two of you step into his apartment. He flips on the light switch by the door and his whole living room comes into view.

You sigh, tossing your jacket onto the couch before collapsing on the plush upholstery.

"I'm fine," you lie. You busy yourself with the straps of your shoes, avoiding Lando's eyes.

"But you're not," Lando presses, plopping down next to you. "You can tell me if you're not."

"Eh," comes your noncommittal response. "Unless you can make every person turn away when we're out on a date, I'm afraid whatever I say won't matter at all."

Lando huffs, hands wrapping around both of your wrists. He coaxes you to look at him and you see the look of concern in his eyes. His eyebrows are bunched together, and for a moment, you think Lando looks like a scorned puppy.

"Don't be like that," Lando urges gently. "I can make them look away. I'll try."

You chuckle, leaning in briefly to kiss him right on the scar on his nose. Lando scrunches up his face, pulling away as if annoyed by the gesture.

"I just need to get used to all of this," you admit. Your thumbs find Lando's knuckles and you rub along them soothingly.

"I can bear being the center of attention if it means I'd be doing it for you," you add.

Lando's expression softens and you can almost see the twinkle in his eyes. He cradles both sides of your face and pulls you in to kiss you square on the lips, his mouth plush against yours.

"You're dating the Lando Norris, of course, you're gonna be the center of attention," Lando teases, nudging your cheek with his nose. You laugh, fingers threading through the hair near Lando's nape.

"Big talk for someone who begs for cuddles every night," you whisper back as Lando kisses his way down your neck.

His hands grip tightly around your waist as he adjusts the way you lay against the couch, pulling you fully underneath him. Your hair splays out against the throw pillows and your chest is heaving, Lando's teeth lightly grazing the skin over your jugular.

"You can be the center of attention right now," Lando murmurs near your ear, large hands sliding under the hem of your dress. He bunches the silky material up around your waist, exposing your lower half.

You huff as you're left bare from the waist down, Lando pulling back to grab something off the coffee table.

His camera.

Your breath hitches as he squints, angling his eye against the viewfinder. Lando snaps a picture, the flash going off just as you gasp in surprise. He takes another one, his hand coming down to rest against your breast.

"Lando...," you whimper. You hook your legs around his hips, pulling yourself closer, right against his thigh. You start to grind against the rough material of his jeans, your panties doing little to confine the wetness between your legs.

"Naughty," Lando chuckles, pressing a hand down on your abdomen to still your movements. He pulls the material of your underwear away, fingertips immediately pressing against your cunt.

You can't help the moan that escapes you, the cool touch of Lando's fingers a contrast to the warm liquid that's leaking from your hole.

"Smile, honey," Lando encourages, taking another photo. You shiver at the thought of these images of you, tucked away only for you and Lando to see.

"You're a star, baby," Lando continues, circling your entrance once, twice, before plunging two fingers in. You mewl, hips shooting up to meet Lando's hand.

"You're a natural. So good for me, yeah?"

Lando starts to pump in and out of you, curling his fingers periodically against that one spot inside. You stare straight at the lens through your lashes and you can see the grin that spreads on Lando's face from behind the camera. He takes a burst of shots as you play it up for him, biting your lip and grabbing onto your boobs.

"Oh, I wanna see you cum on my fingers, baby," Lando says mischievously. "Wanna take a picture so it lasts longer."

He quickens his pace, the loud squelch of his fingers echoing around the space of Lando's living room. Your eyes roll into the back of your head when you feel Lando angle his fingers deeper, your walls clenching around him.

"Come on, let it go for me, sweetheart," Lando implores, snapping more pictures as you start to unravel.

Your fingernails dig into one of the couch pillows, your other hand reaching down as you shove your fingers beneath your panties, rubbing at your aching clit. You hear Lando grunt at this, zooming in on your hand so artfully outlined in your thin underwear as you frantically work your nub closer to orgasm.

"Filthy," Lando practically spits out. "So fucking filthy, my love."

Your release rips through your entire body and your back arches impossibly high off the couch. You hear the camera shutter go off again but it's faint, overtaken by the loud ringing in your ears as waves of your orgasm wash over you.

You're panting a few moments later once it starts to fade, your vision bleary and Lando barely coming into focus in front of you.

He places the camera back on the coffee table, leaning down to kiss you fervently. He licks into your mouth and you groan, fingers tangling in his hair.

"There's more where that came from," you whisper against Lando's lips.

You can only yelp as Lando flips you over on your stomach.

#f1 x reader #f1 smut #f1 fanfic #lando norris x reader #ln4

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ecoamerica · 2 months

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youtube

Watch the 2024 American Climate Leadership Awards for High School Students now: https://youtu.be/5C-bb9PoRLc

The recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by student climate leaders! Join Aishah-Nyeta Brown & Jerome Foster II and be inspired by student climate leaders as we recognize the High School Student finalists. Watch now to find out which student received the $25,000 grand prize and top recognition!

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luveline · 7 months

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𝐚 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 | 𝐞𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐞 𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐧

eddie wakes up with a red string tied from his finger to yours, no idea where he got it, and no idea how to tell you that you're caught on the end of it. soulmate!au. fem!reader, 16k.

content warnings mentioned issues with self image, implied body dysmorphia, reader is insecure/a touch shy, alcohol, a short kiss after one character has been drinking, weed mentioned but not used by eddie or reader. please read with care! requested here ♡

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

Eddie remembers the party in flashes. The feeling of his thick-soled creepers caught on the floor, wings in fly paper. Someone's headphones cracking like a wishbone between two hands and a fist fight in the backyard. Your hair touching some degenerate's cheek as they leaned down to kiss you, and the shudder that ran through you as you opened your mouth. Beer. Beer, cheap wine, another beer.

While he realises the beer may be fogging his memory, none of the fractures explain the piece of string tied to the marriage finger on his left hand.

He stands in the tiny trailer bathroom with his back against the door, the hustle and bustle of his Uncle Wayne's morning routine filtering through the flimsy door. It bends under his weight. Anymore pushing and it'll fly off the hinges.

The string withstands reasoning. Eddie wasn't particularly alarmed when he couldn't slide it off of his finger that morning, half-falling out of bed and desperate for the bathroom. He figured himself the victim of an elaborate prank, toppling out of bed to follow the red string where it stood taut. He chased it to the door and gave up when he realised that it disappeared down the dark stretch of road leading out of the Hills.

Panic set in somewhere between peeing and a pair of scissors falling apart around the string in the kitchen. Like even the touch of the string was an insult, uncuttable.

From there he tried yanking, buttering, slicing. The butter made his fingers greasy and the knife went dull. To the touch, the string is thin. Twelve pieces of strand like doubled embroidery thread, plain cotton to the eye, maybe polyester if the minimal iridescent shine is a clue. He can spread it out between his fingers and thumb, he just can't cut it off.

"Eddie, what the fuck did you do?"

Eddie winces and drops his hand from his eyes. The string slides down the doorway where it's trapped with a light shushing.

"What?" Eddie shouts back to Wayne.

"Don't what me, son! Come here."

Eddie groans and hangs his head. Pissed, he scrounges through the laundry for a shirt that's in acceptable condition and attempts to put it on but the insufferable string refuses to play nice. It bends, snags, and Eddie can't find a way to get it off —he has to pull the string toward him, pleased if sceptical to find that despite its taut nature, it will allow him enough length to get an arm through his sleeve.

"What the fuck," he mutters, looking at the mirror in disbelief. The purple-yellow bruise haunting the hollow of his right eye has shrunk since last night, to his relief. Upon reflection, Eddie doesn't think it'll draw much attention.

The string doubles back on itself, a red line up the length of his arm to his armpit where it disappears into the sleeve. From there, it snakes down his stomach to pull out from the bottom hem.

If whoever has the other end of the string decides to pull, his shirt will rise up. Awesome. Really great. He's a fucking streaker.

"Edward Albert Munson, if you don't get in here!"��

"Wayne," Eddie says, pushing open the bathroom door with a suffering sigh, "what do you want me to say? I can't get the fucking thing off'a me."

Wayne is thoroughly unimpressed where he stands in the kitchen, arms crossed over his chest and gaze on the countertop by the sink.

Eddie's confused at first, complaint dying on his lips as he remembers the mess he made in a mad dash for freedom half an hour ago. Butter shines yellow and melted on a small plate, the broken scissors tossed frustratedly aside, a useless knife in similar fashion at the bottom of the sink.

"What the fuck, Eds?" Wayne asks.

Eddie holds up his hand. "I don't know!" he says, exasperated, eyebrows halfway up his forehead. "I woke up with it, I can't get rid of it."

Wayne's turn to be confused. But, like his newphew's, his confusion doesn't last long. "What happened to your eye?"

"The string?" Eddie asks, waving his red string around for emphasis. Bruises are commonplace, were nearly normal the summer between nine and tenth grade, this weird magic string is anything but.

"That what kids are calling shiners?" Wayne asks, taking Eddie's face in a rough hand. "At least say you got one in too."

"I don't remember."

"You don't remember?" Wayne asks, a mixture of unimpressed and horrified.

"No, I…" He bats Wayne's hand away, giving his tired-faced uncle an abashed smile. "It's fine, Wayne. I was at Gareth's last night."

"Ah, well that explains it. What does your bruise have to do with the state of my kitchen? You try cutting it off?"

Eddie turns from Wayne to grab the scissors and knife. He wraps both in paper towel until the sharps (or not so sharps) are covered and tosses them in the trash, scrounging for a bottle of bleach under the sink to wipe away his buttery mess. "You're focused on the wrong disaster, Wayne. Like, I tried following the string out the door and it's a half a mile long. I'm gonna follow it in the van."

"Is this, like, a trend? Speaking in tongues to get out of trouble?"

"What are you confused about?" Eddie asks, spinning back to hold his hand in Wayne's face.

Wayne doesn't look like Eddie, he's not so dark in the hair or eyes, and he obviously doesn't look like Eddie's mom, but the smile he gives him now was one Eddie's mom wore all the time, enduringly fond. Wayne takes Eddie's hand, turning his nephew's palm this way and that as the string slithers against pale knuckles. It almost writhes.

"What am I supposed to be seeing?"

"That's not funny."

"I'm not joking."

"Wayne," Eddie says, his shirt rising as he pulls on the string to catch the light. It shines in a way that isn't normal, too many colours like the scale of a deep sea fish. "This!"

"Right… I can't see whatever it is you're seeing. How hard did you get hit? Jesus, I asked you to stop getting yourself in these messes, you could get seriously hurt."

Wayne doesn't waste another second looking through Eddie's string. The weight of a long shift rests between his shoulders, abates as he brings the chipped rim of a Garfield mug to his lips. Eddie swears the chubby cat is mocking him, cruel eyes smirking at his misfortune.

"Unbelievable," Eddie mutters, ditching the whole scene in search of his dingy black sneakers.

Wayne chuckles and opens the cabinet where they keep their cookies and coffee cakes, calling, "You want breakfast?"

"No! I have delusions to attend to. Need anything while I'm out?"

"A new pair of scissors."

Eddie pretends to stab himself in the eye by the front door, over and over. His frustration calms. He slips into loose laced sneakers and grabs his jacket where it's hanging on the coat rack, digging for his keys. He elbows the door ajar, and doesn't notice his van isn't in the driveway until he's standing at the bottom of the porch steps, flabbergasted.

"Did you wanna borrow the sierra?" Wayne asks from the door.

Garfield looks on in silent judgement.

Wayne generously lends Eddie the sierra. He's relieved when he shuts the door on his string and it behaves like regular old string (which is to say, it doesn't buckle the metal), but then he tries to grab the steering wheel and his finger almost pulls from the socket, stopped by the string. His relief ends.

"Fuck fuck fuck," he says, opening the door, gathering some string and closing it again. Righted, he pulls his shirt back down his torso and starts the car.

Eddie's hoping he can follow the string to its beginning, but at this point he's sure he got his shit rocked hard enough to forget being hexed by a devious yet loveable warlock —the string can't be a real string. It doesn't tangle around the wheels of the car as he drives over the faint line of it leading from Forest Hills into Hawkins' town centre, it just vanishes, like Eddie's winding it around a bobbin.

He takes the first exit on the traffic circle reluctantly, away from the string and toward Gareth's house, where Eddie assumes he left his beloved van. He can't believe how wasted he must have been, and now that he's accepted the string as an irksome constant but prioritised it below van retrieval, the hangover he should definitely have rears a head. His stomach hurts, his eyes are sand, you were fucking kissing somebody else last night—

Eddie might throw up. He rolls down the window and sticks his head as far out of it as he can justify while driving. The roads are quiet, a late morning in Hawkins pockmarked by the burr of lawn mowers chewing up perfect lawns and the spray of illegal sprinklers. The sun emerges slowly and then all at once, licking his naked arms with the promise of sunburn should he continue the day unprotected. Eddie never seems to tan. He hates the sun, anyway, the glare of it bouncing off of the road in a blinding dotted line. He unfolds the visor over his seat.

Needless to say, he's in a shitty mood when he finally gets to Gareth's house, spying his van wedged in the driveway between a miscellaneous ford and a buick.

Hungover, too hot, trying not to panic about the red string choking his knuckle. It can't seem to decide on how tight or loose it's going to sit. It tightens as he climbs out of the sierra, loosens as he walks toward his van.

"Hey, gorgeous," he says, patting her freshly lacquered body with love. She's all jet black now, rust buffed and wheels shiny.

There are bikes crowded against the house wall like toppled dominoes. The window shades are closed but the door is wide open the hinges, the sharp smell of booze wafting out into the sun. Give it enough time and Eddie's sure the sun'll bake all the milling bodies into a brand new smell.

"Hey, man," Jamison greets, sitting on the kitchen counter and unfairly put together considering the bottle of sours he demolished alone last night, "you survived."

Gareth is face down at the table next to a plate of cold toast, jelly congealed. Jeff stands by the patio door smoking a cigarette that smells exciting, and Macy stands doing the dishes at the sink.

"Got the girl doing the dishes. Classy," Eddie says.

Macy drops the sponge she's using into the water, soap bubbles dripping from her fingers. "Thanks for offering."

He relents. The mess they've made —and it is generous to call it a mess, more apt might be an explosion, or a weather event— is extensive. Pizza boxes upturned, tomato sauce and stringy cheese smashed into the fridge like a modern art piece you'd see at MOMA. Eddie wouldn't put it past drunk or high him to have done it, declaring some statement of pretentious high horsery, so he doesn't comment on it. If it was him, he doesn't wanna know.

"Some party," Jeff says through smoke.

Eddie pulls the stopper out of the sink to let the water drain. He doesn't roll like that. "What the fuck happened?"

Gareth rouses at Eddie's question, said as it is with vigour, and remembers his toast. He takes a bite and turns in his seat to blink blearily at Eddie. For a second, Eddie kids himself into thinking his friend can see the string currently spilling water onto the floor like a tightwire.

"You lost your shit and wrecked my house, you stupid bastard."

Eddie looks to Jamison, as if to say, that true?

Jamison pushes a long arm behind his back and stretches. "Y/N was hooking up with Cory Wilson and you took it like a champ, in my opinion. We had a good time."

"She hooked up with Wilson?" he asks, dread pooling in his stomach. The string shudders as you had, Eddie remembers, your chin tilted up and your eyes closing into sweet dark lines, painted lashes squeezed together.

"She took you home," Macy says, muffled, a hair tie between her lips. She lets the thin blonde strands of her hair fall back to her shoulders. "She didn't stay the night?"

"That would've been kind of sick," Jeff says.

"He could barely walk," Jamison agrees. "Okay, I'm lying. You were fine."

"I figured she'd have to stay, the way you were begging her. Ditch Wilson, baby, he doesn't know you like I know you. We can make it work, just say you'll stop seeing him."

Eddie drops a plate in the sink with a splintering crush. The answering roar of laughter tells him what he hadn't had breath to ask. No, he didn't really say any of that shit.

"You were drunk, not stupid," Jeff says.

"Not that stupid," Jamison corrects.

Eddie frowns down at the broken plate in the sink for a breather. Nerves abated, total loserdom escaped for another day, he holds his damp hand up in the air. "Any of you fuckers seeing this?"

"Get a new tattoo?" Macy asks.

He shakes his hand, the string (still caught in his sleeve, line like a bright vein up his arm) shaking. "You don't see it?"

"Your artist is gonna be pissed, they hate cheaters."

Eddie sighs. "Can someone pass me the trash can?"

They clean the house together in fits and starts, all nauseous, all wishing they'd had the sense to have a chill get together, just the five of them. Gareth declares his home a no go scene for the rest of summer and Eddie doesn't bother offering, nobody wants a party at the trailer park. Seeing the disco ball missing a rainbow lense under the stairs, a jumbo box of popcorn sprayed over the entire downstairs bathroom, and poor Manny Gomez cup-locked where he snoozes on the Persian rug in the lounge, Eddie wouldn't agree to host a party ever, even if he lived in one of the rich kid cribs like Harrington. It takes hours to put it right.

The longer he cleans the looser the string becomes. It drops to the floor (seemingly done with no regard to the laws of physics, having magicked itself out of his sleeve at a point, unnoticed) and trips him up as he walks downstairs. Eddie led a one man search party for Gareth's pet fish who some idiot transferred to the bathtub. The fish flops around at the turbulence of his trip inside of a temporary cup, but Eddie manages to return the poor thing to its tank uninjured.

"It's fucking sick," he says, crouching down to follow the fish as it reacclimates. Its big black eyes are like sequins set in orange glitter, scales glistening, a shimmering of purple and teal blues kissing its underbelly as it swims. "You're a beautiful creature. I'm sorry somebody tried to evict you, babe."

"He's a boy."

"Yeah, and he's a babe." Eddie bites his tongue.

You bend at the waist. With the shades still drawn, the brunt of the light entering the room is from your left, and the right side, the side closest to Eddie, is lit blue by the fish tank. You smile gently at the goldfish puttering around between artificial seaweed, an expression that grabs Eddie by the intestines. You feel his gaze, turning your face ever so slightly to his.

"Don't look as nice without makeup, I know," you murmur.

You're dressed differently today, stripped back in one way and more beautiful all the others, bare-skinned, no makeup or glitters to hide behind. Eddie remembers every detail of what you were wearing last night, the details stamped into his temporal lobe (before he drank his weight in other peoples booze). Black tights that shimmered slick oil as you moved and a tiny dress to boot. You're not a small girl, thighs there and grabbable and so un-grabbed, and when you bent down Eddie's shamefaced to say he followed the line. He loved how you looked last night, loves how you express yourself, but he craves how you are now, the lesser seen side of the same coin.

"You look nice." He cringes, his reflection in the fish tank glass a horror. Eddie never actually managed to shower this morning. If he doesn't smell like pale ale it'll be a miracle. "You do. At least one of us showered."

"I'm surprised you're alive," you say with a fond smile. Eddie never takes your insults to heart because you never say them to hurt. You're easygoing. You're light incarnate. "I haven't seen you drink that much since graduation."

"Macy says you took me home." He stands at full height. You follow suit.

"Kicking and screaming. You told me you were going to drink every drop of Mr. Lashlee's bourbon or die trying, and you tried."

"I didn't hurt you, did I?" he asks. He can be volatile when he's intoxicated, like a fish out of water.

You gesture to his cheek. "Hurt yourself. You were freaking out and your hand kicked back. I didn't think it would bruise. Does it hurt awful?"

Your sympathy melts him. Eddie shakes his head, lying through his teeth, "I can barely feel it."

Your hoodie drowns you, your jeans not as oversized but hiding the feats of your thighs from view. He can't say he's not disappointed, though it's cute on you, your jeans rolled at the ends to showcase mildly mismatched crew socks and a pair of converse, their rubber shiny with newness besides a small sharpie heart on the left toe. Trapped beneath them is Eddie's string.

He tugs it out. You show no sign of feeling it as the string snaps upward like an elastic and stops short. It goes stiff as a stick, tied from the knuckle of his marriage finger and leading…

To the knuckle of yours.

Like matching rings.

Eddie thinks, Sure. If I'm delusional, of course it's something to do with you.

"Don't suppose you can see it?" he asks, pulling against the string. The red band expands to accommodate you, rather than tug you inward. It has a mind of its own, apparently, listening to Eddie only on occasion.

"The bruise?" you ask, confused. "It's hard not to see. But it's not too bad. You could buy some powder for it if it bothers you, but I think it makes you seem cool."

"I don't seem cool?"

You smile as though you're sharing a joke. If you are, Eddie hasn't heard it before.

It's weird, crushing on someone. He can't remember feeling this way growing up, spending sun-soaked days at playgrounds and parking lots and the pool, wet to the knees, you and your friends sitting under the shade of the umbrellas. The first time he saw you there, in your bikini bottoms and your big white t-shirt bent over a book, he didn't feel any sudden revelation. No spark. No pulled string. He thought you were pretty without bragging about it and he met you not long after that at a nondescript barbecue. Then he stopped hanging out with his middle school friends and flunked two years. He forgot you existed. And now he knows you again, he feels more and more of himself bending and twisting trying to be what you want him to be, or what he thinks you want, at least. If you want Wilson, he can be Wilson. Eddie can kiss like a fish and wear too much cologne, he can sell out and cut his hair to the ears.

Well, maybe not that far. I still want to be me, he thinks, eyes on your hands and the string stretched between them. The red seems darker now, onyx hued, ropey as blood.

"What are you doing here?" Eddie forces out. Not surprised, you and Macy are close enough that you've formed friendships with the whole gang of merry misfits, but wondering if his string has pulled you here. Does he have any say?

"I thought I'd help with the aftermath, see if anybody wanted to get burgers, the works."

Eddie catches a flicker of nervousness in your stance, the half-step backwards you take when his shoe nears your own. The string loosens.

He doesn't have any intention of making you uncomfortable. He probably smells like a dumpster, he wouldn't blame you for needing space. And if who you were kissing last night is indicative of who you'll be sidling up to again in the future, Eddie has low hopes for you both.

"Burgers?" Manny groans from the floor.

You turn slowly on one heel. "Hello, Manny," you say, angling your head to line up with his. "Someone's drawn on you."

"What did they draw?" Manny asks, rubbing his smeared face sluggishly.

You look to Eddie for guidance. The reality of Manny's tagging is embarrassing.

"It's a dick, I'm afraid." Eddie offers Manny a hand. "With disproportionate, uh, baubles."

"But I'm sure Benny won't care," you say.

—

Benny makes Manny wear a baseball cap pulled down low, because This is a family establishment, Man. Every time you see the thick-lined drawing on his cheek you smile and feel awful for it, but luckily Manny seems to be taking the joke well.

If you'd fallen asleep at the party last night and woke up with a semi-permanent tattoo of similar calibre you'd be too mortified to bother leaving the house until it was gone. You're not thrilled with your appearance as it is. Any cruel additions would have you housebound.

Guilty, you take a bite of your burger to hide your smile. Eddie's already clocked it, generous enough to pretend he hasn't noticed, and Macy finds it funnier than you do, so she's yet to notice your amusement. The rest of the boys are making ornaments out of plastic straws. Gareth is shit, Jamison better, but Jeff takes the cake with a three layer birthday cake, candles included. It strains to break as he adds another candle. His bloodshot eyes show no signs of anxiety.

Manny grabs a napkin and knocks your ice tea. The cup sloshes but doesn't spill, ice cubes clinking and beads of condensation racing down the sides of your glass. You pick it up to feel the cold. Lately you've been morose. The cold, any sensation, can put distance between you and the heavy for a while, but there's no cure. And now you've gone and let Cory Wilson of all people kiss you for the simple fact that he wanted to.

He's the first person who's ever wanted to kiss you.

But you don't want him to kiss you again, and you're not sure how you manage it. Do you have to tell him you're not interested? Probably not, it was just a stupid kiss. He dipped down, his lips hot, his smell nice if overpowering, and it was right for a while, it was what you wanted, but then his hand dropped down rather than up, searching for something to take rather than something to hold.

It's not how you pictured it.

"You okay?"

You raise your eyes, ice tea in hand. Eddie splits his attention between you and a basket of crispy crinkle cut fries loaded with cheese and bacon bits. He's nonchalant, his shoe tapping into yours as he leans forward for another bite. He chews, and he waits for you to answer.

"I'm alright. Thinking about work." Bad lie. "Gareth said you got a new tattoo?"

"Nope. I've been thinking about getting a new one to fill the gap under my puppeteer," he says, extending his arm to show you it in the light, the ridge and weave of his veins stark against his white skin. They're especially fierce leading down to his wrist, as is the small notch on the outermost side. You reach out to touch it without thinking, fingertip rubbing carefully over the bump.

Eddie pushes his arm closer. "I want something here." He draws a half circle with his opposite pinky in the empty space. "But I can't think of what I want. Sometimes you go to the shop and they have a bunch of flash sheets and you like one of them enough to get it, right? I don't know."

It means a lot to you that he'd let you touch him without asking. You should've asked.

He should've asked you, but he was drunk. You're not sure he was thinking straight.

You sit back in your seat and finish your iced tea, feeling the cold slide down into your chest. You shiver at the feeling.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Eddie asks.

"Why wouldn't she be okay, Munson?" Manny asks.

"Quiet, dickhead."

Manny snorts, grabbing a greedy handful of Eddie's fries as punishment for a low blow. Eddie couldn't care less, clearly, his focus on you and your moping. You step into a sweeter smiling version of yourself that you save for times like this.

"You know I work for Deenie DIY?" you ask.

"Of course I know that," Eddie says, and not in the way people do sometimes where they assume you're insulting their intelligence, but the nice way. Like knowing where you work is easy information to carry.

He's the nicest of his friends, which is a credit to him; they aren't a bad bunch.

"So, I have this coworker that keeps bringing soup to work, and she swears that someone is syphoning off a couple of spoonfuls before lunch every day…"

Eddie listens to your story with a weird expression. You bumble through the twists and turns of the world's stupidest fable, how she blamed a bunch of different people and now no one likes her, and the soup was getting warmed up by the fridge lights —it was her own fault. He listens, he smiles and nods and offers commentary that's funnier than the original story, the entire time with a downturn to his lips. You hate seeing him like that, but you don't know what to say.

Plates left streaked with ketchup and mayo, glasses dotted by greasy prints and lip smackers, you and your friends tip as generously as twenty-somethings can afford and decide to head back to Gareth's for a couple of hours. It's barely past noon on a Saturday in late July. Nobody has to work for at least thirty six hours. You pile into two cars, arguing about what tape to play for the ten minute drive. Eddie ends up in the seat beside you somehow, and he doesn't shy away when the car takes a bend and you lean into his side.

He puts his arm behind your shoulder. "Sorry," he says.

"It's okay."

You lift your head. The memory of his face hovering close to yours, the sweet smell of cheap cherry wine on his breath, his hand clumsy with drink but kind as it climbed your back, your dress thin enough to catch your death, thin enough to feel like he was touching bare skin. Sorry, he'd said, you're just so fucking beautiful.

"I gotta take my uncle's car back. Wouldn't do me a solid and come with?" he asks.

—

You follow Eddie in the van. He can see you in his rear view mirror, your hands on his steering wheel, the window down and the breeze ruffling your hood.

Jeff was too high to drive and Eddie wouldn't trust Jamison to drive a moped. Gareth can't drive and okay, Macy can, she's good, but Eddie chose you for a reason. The string tied between your hands clings from door to door.

Eddie pulls the sierra into the driveway in front of the trailer, holding two fingers up to you as he hops out and jogs up the steps. Two minutes.

"Wayne? Brought the car back."

"How's your bruise, Eds?"

Wayne's laying on the couch with a blanket over his legs, coffee cup swapped for a plate of cookies and a bag of chips. Eddie leans on the doorway, Wayne's keys on his finger. The string bobs back through the door, as if to say, Hey, she's over here, dipshit.

"It's fine, what are you eating? Did you have breakfast after I went?"

"Yeah I had breakfast, I'm a grown man." Punctuated by the crunch of potato chips. "It's lunch time. This is my lunch."

"Let me make you a pot pie or something."

Wayne waves him off. "You're going back out. Who's in the van?"

"That's Y/N."

Wayne smiles knowingly. "Ah, is it?" He stands up with remarkable speed putting his plate of cookies on the table. He ducks down to peek through the window, and you must see him or wave, Wayne waving back. "Make her come say hi."

"I won't be making her say shit."

"She was nice last night."

Eddie cringes, having forgotten you were his saviour. "Do I wanna know what you said?"

"I said you were an idiot and an embarrassment, and that your safe return deserved a reward. You should invite her over for dinner."

"No, because that's, like, a couples thing. Come and meet my parents," Eddie says, shoulders jumping, hands up in jazz hands, "laugh at my baby photos."

"I don't have many of those. Got a bunch of you when you were fourteen and deep in the glam rock obsession."

He used to say Eddie could wear whatever he wanted and paint his face a hundred different colours as long as Wayne got to take a picture.

"Great, I'll invite her, and you can show her your nice album of reasons not to date me."

"Son, why don't you just ask her to dinner? Worked in my day."

"You're not even old. And I was going to," Eddie whines, rubbing the flat of his forehead ineffectually. "Then she was kissing this idiot Cory Wilson last night. I blew it. Lost my chance."

"I still think you should ask her for dinner. Any sense about her and she'll say yes."

It's one of those reassurances your mom says to you when you're down on your luck. Handsomest guy in the world, how could anybody say no to that face?

"Maybe I'll ask her." Eddie smiles nervously. "We're gonna go hang out, cool? You going to Dean's?"

"None of your business. Yeah, I'm going to Dean's, just to help him fix his hand saw. I'll be back before six. See you then?"

Eddie tosses Wayne the sierra keys. "See you. Don't drink too much."

"Ironic, Edward!"

Eddie leaves the trailer feeling vaguely hopeful about you; maybe Wayne's right. Kissing somebody doesn't mean you're married, but the window of opportunity to let his feelings be known is getting smaller the longer he waits. And seeing you standing against the grate of the van with your hands in your pockets, slice of your calves peeking out between your socks and jeans, big sleeves on your hoodie falling up one arm, he doesn't know if he can wait anymore.

"Hey, would you wanna get out of here?" he asks. "Like, ditch Gareth's for a bit?"

"And do what?"

The string shortens as he closes the gap between you. He twists it around his finger. It's tied to you —it must be a sign. (Or he's imagining it and he has, like, a paralytic brain worm eating its way across his eyeballs.)

"I don't know, hit the goodwill? I have somewhere between twelve and sixteen dollars with your name on it if you're interested." He tries not to shrug, can't help it. "Only if you want."

"Yeah. I want to." You worry your lip. "I'm not dressed to go out."

"Are you kidding? You look fine. You look good."

You rub your wrists together, grimacing.

Eddie can roll with the punches. "Or you could go home and change first?"

"Would that be okay?"

Eddie's glad for offering to witness the spectacle of your bedroom. The string seems to hate him but love you, giving you space all the way here and yanking him like a bad dog when he strays too far. You change behind your closet door and it forms hearts at your feet, unperturbed by the mountain of rejected shirts and skirts.

Eddie lounges in a bean bag by the door, taking in your belongings as he waits. You've crafts on your desk, little origami cranes made of paper you've painted with watercolour. Phthalo blue and alizarin crimson foiled with short, skinny strokes of gold etching. Intricate and simple, time and care poured into each sheet.

"Are you sure I'm okay by here?" Eddie asks.

"Can you see me?"

"No." Eddie can see shelves of books with creased spines, your made bed and all your mismatched sheets, the candles on your window sill —moonlight meadow, half-burned and sun-bleached; candied sweetheart, untouched; white lily and freesia, a double wick with only one melted tunnel—, and the soot stain unfurling like a soft-edged flower around the curtain pole. "Can't see anything."

"Then don't worry."

The sun ticks higher into the sky as an hour stretches into a second since you left Gareth's together. Eddie likes his room, his dense kingdom of the stuff that make him him, but he likes yours for the quiet. He can picture you sitting cross legged on your bed with a book in your lap, your back arched uncomfortably forward, a day old drink of water on the ceramic coaster with tiny bubbles clinging to the sides of the glass. He thinks he'd like that, to sit here and watch you, listening to one of your CDs, the string between you bouncing with each turn of a page.

Eddie pulls on the string experimentally. Determined to fuck with him, it becomes a tauter thread, and the momentum of his tug tips you over. Your hand follows the line and the sudden slip pulls you into view without a shirt. Eddie flinches and looks as far away from you as he can.

You laugh to yourself, but the sound is bitter, like burning coffee grounds on the tongue.

"Is everything good with you?"

You and Eddie are friends. Not great ones, but enough to have been able to ask you to ditch the others. There have been hundreds of seconds alone, the two of you sitting together at tables edged by arcade machines, diner booths, bowling alley benches, waiting for the others to get back, and those are moments where Eddie found time to fall in love with you. The string must be a manifestation or those seconds, threads of time tied together that join you forever, even if you can't see them. They're there. Eddie cares about you and it makes his throat hurt to hear your unhappy sounds; you have a morosity to you that he isn't heartless enough to ignore. He doesn't want to.

Everybody has an unseen misery weighing them down. Eddie needs to find a way to hold yours for you. Just for a bit, however long you need.

Unless Cory Wilson is going to take that mantle. Maybe that's why you're sighing; Eddie would be pretty upset if he had to remember being kissed by Wilson. He was already upset about it, and Wilson didn't kiss him.

"Hey," Eddie says, peering between his fingers. With you definitely out of sight, he lifts his head. "Seriously, are you good?"

"I don't know what to wear, that's all. Sorry for taking so long."

"We could sit here till tomorrow and that would be cool. We don't even have to go, but you don't have to stress about what you're wearing. It's goodwill."

"I always get stressed about what I'm wearing."

"Is that a girl thing?"

You toss a pretty flowered dress over the closet door. It slinks under its own weight and puddles on the floor. "I've always been like this, I get too focused on looking nice, it winds me up."

"You always look nice."

Your laugh says you certainly don't believe him. "Thanks, Eddie."

"I'm not just saying it to make you feel better. You'd look nice in a potato sack."

"Like Marilyn Monroe."

"Who?"

You appear in a sliver, naked arm linked to an unseen but unignorable naked chest, your face over your shoulder and a beatific silkiness to your smile. "You know who she is. Happy Birthday mister president? Blonde, with her beauty mark." You tap your top lip with your pinky.

"Oh, right. Did she wear sacks often?"

"Someone said she was beautiful because her clothes were designer and made to fit, so she did a photoshoot in a potato sack to prove she was beautiful."

"You could totally do that."

"It's not other people I need to convince." You retreat behind your closet door again, your voice half as clear as you confess, "I think… I've always been like this. I look in the mirror and I don't even know who I'm seeing. She doesn't feel like me."

Eddie's ridiculous sitting on a beanbag while you bare your heart. He swears in his head and climbs onto tired legs, his hangover beating like a dull knife between his eyes for a moment while he gets used to standing.

You take his silence for something else. "Sorry, ignore me. It's weird."

"That's not weird. It's not." He tries to say what he means and not the first words that come into his head. "You know, I used to feel that way. Growing up, in junior high, I felt like such a poser. Even when I started being myself, I didn't feel authentic. Does that… is that similar?"

"I guess so. How did you make it stop?"

"Okay, this is gonna sound bad, but my mom died." Eddie twists a ring around his knuckle, the string tangling between fingers. "And I didn't care for a while. And then I got older."

"I'm sorry," you murmur.

"It's okay. I didn't say it for sympathy. That's just what happened." Eddie sits gingerly on the end of your bed. He doesn't want to intimidate you —after all, you're a young woman alone with him in a state of undress. A vulnerable young woman, if you're as upset as you're beginning to sound. "I'm trying to make you feel better with the worst personal anecdote ever."

"You don't have to make me feel better. I shouldn't have brought it up, I don't…"

"You can tell me anything," he says.

You appear again, this time fully clothed. Black skirt to your knees —the sickest skirt you've ever worn— and a thin gauzy camisole, you look beautiful, and insanely uncomfortable. "Really?" you ask, hands wringing.

"I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it. I promise."

"Well. Last night," —Eddie sees flashing lights, the carbon bubbles in a spilled beer— "I let somebody kiss me."

He knows. It's agony. Eddie waits for you to continue with an open expression despite the feeling your confession inspires; he assumes this is what a knife to the eye feels like, the willing horror of letting you use it.

"Nobody's ever wanted to kiss me before, so I let him. And I'm shit scared that I'm never gonna recognise myself in the mirror, so I'll keep letting him kiss me." You wring your hands meanly. "Sorry, I know I sound like a bad movie. Why is talking about your feelings this awkward?"

"That was your first kiss, last night?"

It's not the right question. You wince visibly. "I know, I'm in my twenties, it's embarrassing."

"No, that's–" Eddie sighs. "That's not what I meant." What did he mean? Fuck, I wish it could've been me, and Jesus, that doesn't make a lick of fucking sense. You aren't right, for starters, Cory Wilson isn't the first person who's ever wanted to kiss you, he's just the bastard that got lucky enough to have you reciprocate. "Wait, was it okay? Did he corner you?"

You sit on the end of the bed with a small smile. "No. He didn't pressure me."

"Was it what you wanted?"

"Not really… I guess I don't know what I want."

Is that rejection, or is he self-absorbed? Should he take the hint, or is he just another guy making it about himself? Eddie leans back into your bed to escape the heartbreak of being close to you, the string anchoring his hand in place as he tries to scratch his chest.

"It's not embarrassing to get your first kiss in your twenties," he says, eyes roving over the lines of a small paper butterfly, black cardstock like ink against your white ceiling. "That's what your twenties are for."

"Don't bother, I know exactly how you lost your virginity."

Eddie scrunches his eyes shut, can't stop himself from smiling as his wry voice scratches out, "Listen, everyone knows how I lost my virginity, but that's not the point."

"You'd think a seventeen year old would make marginally better decisions." You're teasing, not shaming, your smile playful.

"No, you wouldn't. Seventeen year olds are stupid. I thought I knew what I wanted at seventeen and now I'm twenty three and the only thing I know for sure is that I don't know a thing. The point of being twenty is doing shit for the first time. It's our first time being grown ups."

"That's wise," you say.

"Fuck off."

You lay down beside him. The string whips like a ribbon in the wind before falling into the shape of a heart again, clearly pleased to have you near.

"It's not embarrassing," Eddie says quietly. "But when you get your second kiss, I think you should save it for someone you want to kiss. Don't just let someone have it because you're not sure of yourself."

"That's a nice sentiment, Eddie, but I already gave it away."

He swallows his surprise, a tiny spike of agony. "How was that one?"

"I'm not sure about it. I don't think it counted."

"Do I wanna know?"

"I'm not sure about that, either."

"Was it Wilson?" he asks.

You turn your cheek into the bedsheets. He can hear the fabric brushing your skin, turns ever so slightly to meet you, a few inches all it would take to breathe the same air.

"Eddie," you say, very, very softly.

His heart eases into his mouth a beat at a time until it's thrumming between his ears.

"Yeah?" he asks, his tone a twin.

"I think I need to cancel our plans."

It's not what he's expecting you to say.

—

There's a black velvet jacket dotted with embroidered stars hidden under your bed, their silver thread like cosmic dust. Music pounds the floor and shakes the house's foundations, seeping down into Macy's damp basement one rippling riff at a time, the bass of it deep in Eddie's chest, but he can't stop thinking about your jacket. Did you know it was there?

The string tied to his marriage finger grows restless the longer you and Eddie are apart, bouncing like a shockwave whenever he thinks your name. In fact, all it takes is the idea of you, the slightest memory of your smile, your hands, the way you tell stories to the group with your shoulders turned to him like he's there alone, and the string flinches.

"Are you okay?" Manny asks.

Eddie drags his way up the couch. "Hey, Man. You got the dick off your face. That's great."

Manny lifts his cheek. "Had to steal some of my mom's make-up. Can't tell, huh?"

The colour match is dubious, now he's mentioned it. Eddie doesn't have the heart to tell him, flopping back into the crisp, cracked leather seat beneath him. A circle of his face is sticky where it clings to the couch. It's among the worst feelings of this earthly plane, grim as ice cream dripping down your hand on a hot day, or perpetually gutting heartbreak like he suffers now.

"I think I'm seeing things," Eddie says.

"Jeff has stuff for that."

Eddie groans loudly. With the way he feels it's not melodrama. Just pure human anguish. He groans again when nothing changes, fisting his hair in two aching hands. He's clenched and unclenched his hands for hours all day, trying to force the hurt away from his chest, chasing breathlessness to the tips of his fingers. Pins burn his palms.

He knew in the back of his mind that you weren't going to want to date him. Realistically you have options, even if you think you don't, and his being your only option wouldn't inspire romance anyways. Being someone's last resort isn't love. None of it was love, you aren't in love, but Eddie thinks he could've been. He was halfway there, falling, whatever the poets might say —Eddie wants you. Wants to do stupid shit with you. He can picture the scene like he has before, that first bouquet of flowers, lilies with big white petals and purple sunspots. The cellophane would crinkle in trembling hands pressed to his chest, their stems leaking dew into his hardly worn button up. He'd pass them to you with more confidence than he feels and tell you that you're pretty. You're always pretty.

He's not pretty, he's barely funny. He was stupid for thinking you'd like him too.

The string is pale pink. Eddie loops it around his finger thoughtlessly, worsening the sting of pins and needles.

There were times…

He clutches his chest. The nausea he's feeling can't be understated.

There were times when you could've been in love with him, he thinks. Splitting a cigarette you had no business splitting on the steps of Jeff's porch, your vanilla chapstick softening the filter. Holding his hand for support as you made the hike down to the lake, your fingers curled around his like you worried you might hurt him. In the passenger seat of his van on the way to your house, laughing as he sang along to a Van Halen guitar solo. You could've been in love with him.

But Eddie didn't ask you out. He didn't do what Wayne said, because goodwill is not dinner, and now you're probably happily sequestered in Wilson's BMW. He jumped the wrong gun and he blew it.

"Seriously, Munson, are you good?"

"Peachy." Eddie holds up the sign of the horns, pinky and index finger up, thumb holding his marriage and middle finger down, face buried in an old cushion.

"Let me go get you a joint."

"I gave it up."

"Dude. Pizza it is."

Eddie waits for Manny to leave before he turns onto his back. Last night in the shower after a knowing shoulder squeeze from his Uncle and a frankly overflowing bowl of microwave spaghetti, he pressed his forehead to the tile and let it all ache. He might have cried or water may have streamed from his hair, he genuinely doesn't know, but he knows he's in danger of another round of the same if he keeps thinking about you.

He's a big boy. He can cope with your decision.

"Eddie, what are you doing?"

Eddie sits up with a handful of clicks. "Robin?"

"Hey," Robin says, "whaddya know, I followed the smell of sadness and rejection and here you are."

She's dressed fancy, her hair in a rare updo, faux pearls dangling from her ears to kiss the collar of a leather jacket. "Shit, you're so cool, Buckley."

"Thanks. You okay?" Robin asks, sitting on the arm of the couch.

Eddie's stomach churns as her perfume reaches him, the sweet, subtle smell of vanilla under white musk. He leans his face against the starched denim of her jeans. "Who told you?" he mumbles.

"Steve. Who else?" Robin pats his head. "But Jeff told him. And I was talking about your bruise."

Eddie waves off her concern. "Where is Steve in my hour of need?"

"Smoking a not secret cigarette with Jeff," she says, a melodic cadence to her usual light rasp.

"I wouldn't risk Jeff's cigarettes."

She snorts a laugh, "Steve would risk his life for a cigarette. He loves to say that quitting was easy, but he drinks half a beer and starts gasping like a fish." Robin mimes Steve's apparent desperation, to Eddie's delight.

She smiles as his laughter peters out, tilting her head to the side. "So… was it bad?"

"I don't know." He rubs his eyes. "The last time I got rejected was in senior year, and it was– I didn't even like her, you know, thought she was pretty, but this is different."

"Sorry, Eddie," she says, pushing her bottom lip up into her top one, a bubbled pout that betrays how out of her depth she feels.

Eddie isn't trying to make it awkward. "That's okay. I liked her, she doesn't like me, it's cool." The string flails. The music from upstairs gets louder. "What the fuck is happening? I thought Macy said it was a quiet one."

Robin and Eddie start up the basement stairs to the main body of the house. The air is warmer and thicker, the faint smell of hotdogs and burgers grilling in the backyard filtering inside through the patio doors. "You know," Eddie says, glaring at the sudden crowd, "there's an atari down there."

"Sorry, I think I'll have to keep my idiot out of trouble." Robin points at Steve near the stereo with Jeff, the two of them laughing hard enough to bruise as they mess with the pitch of the music. "Steve! You'll go deaf in your good ear if you don't stop!"

"What?" Steve shouts.

Robin rushes over to drag him away from the stereo. Eddie doesn't want to be your best friend, but if it was a friendship like Steve and Robin's he would consider himself lucky to have it, smiling as she wraps her arms around his chest from behind and pulls him away, sniffing at him, her nose wrinkled as she gives a reprimand too low for Eddie to catch. "I'm serious," she says as they grow closer, weaving around the living room coffee table and retreating back into the slim hallway leading to the basement stairs, "where are your earplugs?"

"In the car, Rob. I'm fine, I promise."

"Sure. Alright, Eddie, would you keep him away from the stereo?" Robin shoves Steve toward him. "Thanks so much."

"I'm not high," Steve says as soon as she's gone.

"While that's uber convincing, honeybear, I don't care if you are," Eddie says lightly. "Not a cop. Wanna go get a burger?"

They move away from the living room and into the kitchen, where Steve nearly trips over the door jam and Eddie forgets for the first time in days how awful he feels.

He sits Steve down at the glass table next to Macy herself and a younger friend of Manny's. Jamison and Gareth stand at the grill arguing about who's doing what, but Jamison proves to be the better grillmaster and the better friend, dropping two burgers on paper plates in front of them not more than twenty seconds after they've sat down. "For you, my poor little Munson," he says, smacking the ketchup and mayonnaise down between them. "Eat up."

"I can't get the cap off," Steve complains, welding a bottle of mayonnaise at him like a dagger.

Eddie sighs. Steve is definitely high. "You know Jeff doesn't smoke plain rolled cigarettes, right? Like, you knew it was weed?"

"Whaaaat?" Steve asks exaggeratedly. "Open my mayonnaise."

"Plausible deniability," Eddie says. "I like it."

He finds that taking care of Steve is a good distraction, but there's only so much care a grown man needs, high or not, and Eddie's gaze is pulled to the string. It's impossible to stop thinking about you on the other end of it. He tries not to look at the string at all, but he can't, being as permanently tied to his finger as it is. What's worse is seeing people tread on it. The colour fades slowly, once a strong red, now a meek pink. At this rate it'll be bone white by the end of the night, like a vein with no supply. Maybe that's how this ends. You stay kissing Cory Wilson and the string dies.

As he thinks it, the string tightens. The pink turns rosy, turns healthy, red as a rose, vice-like on his finger. Eddie knows without knowing that you're near. He could've guessed without the string's shifting, your presence the antonym of sixth-sense chills. He turns back toward the house and catches a glimpse of you as you walk past the patio door in your black velvet jacket, those tiny sparse stars like needlepoints from this far away and glinting as you turn to let Robin pass.

"Holy fuck!" Robin mouths, Steve's earplugs in a small pouch meant for coins in hand as she speed walks down the short path to the table. "She's here!"

"I can see that."

Robin sits on the chair next to Steve's. He passes her the last half of his burger and takes the earplugs from an outstretched hand, shaking them from their pouch. You'd never look at him like this with mayonnaise on his top lip, thigh to thigh with loser-sweetheart Robin Buckley, and think he'd be violent. He isn't, truly, his hearing loss the result of getting his ass handed to him hard, and the motivation of a pacifist who wears ear defenders to the movies.

"You're gonna have to speak up," Steve says, pushing the plugs in.

"Yeah, man." He doesn't have much to say anyhow. His stomach is curled in knots, the string a tightrope without walkers between him and you in the kitchen. You're talking to someone, walking one way before rushing the other. "What the fuck?" Eddie asks, sitting up.

Macy stands as somebody gasps. Eddie's quick to follow, Gareth jumping back out of Jamison's reach as the grillmaster swings a long pronged fork his way. "What?" he asks cluelessly.

Eddie follows the string to you, stepping over the patio doorjam and into the cacophony of the kitchen. Blaring rock music vibrates through Eddie's worn shoes, but it doesn't occlude the vehemence of Cory Wilson's slurring. "I should've known," he hisses.

Eddie would stand in front of you, he should, he's going to, but he doesn't and he can't fathom why. He's glued to the spot as you defend, "I didn't know. And I didn't do it on purpose."

"Are you fucking with me?"

"No." You sound startled rather than scared, but the cagey way you've moved back and the curl of your hands into fists says otherwise. "No, I didn't kiss you to–"

"To what? Guess it doesn't make a difference. I should've known. Two guys in one night's a good night for a girl like you, huh?"

You flinch away. It could be the pull of the string or the panic on your lips as you struggle to speak, or maybe Eddie's done being a coward who half-asses his life even if you're not gonna kiss him like he wishes you would, whatever it is, it has him standing in front of you unafraid.

Cory Wilson is rough. Eyes bloodshot, evil on tequila sliders from the sugary brown stain on his collar, he takes one look at Eddie and starts laughing.

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean, a girl like her? Why don't you explain it?" Eddie asks, his voice burnt, almost acrid in his own mouth. "What, you plant one on her and you think it's alright to talk to her like that?"

"Eddie," you say.

He reaches back gently, his fingertips brushing your abdomen.

"You're a fucking classless act, Wilson, you always have been. You don't talk to her like that."

"Why don't you stay out of it, freak?"

"Dude," Jamison says. "No way. Get the fuck out of here."

"You can't stay out of it, can you? It makes sense now I'm seeing it," Cory rails.

This is so teenaged angst and Eddie's over it. You'll have to forgive him but he's feeling territorial. This is Macy's house, they're your friends, and Cory was a dick before he kissed you. "This is embarrassing, dude," Eddie says over the island, meeting Cory's eyes straight on. "Don't do this shit."

"It was you, right?" Cory asks, nodding, mind made up already. He peers around Eddie's shoulder to stare at you incredulously. "Him?"

"It doesn't matter!" you insist, stepping forward. "Why does it matter? I said no, I don't wanna go home with you, I'm sorry, I told you more than you needed to know because I thought it would help you get it, and I'm sorry I let you kiss me! I'm sorry, I thought it was best to be honest with you."

Eddie's thinking you don't have to say sorry for anything. Cory's thinking about the milling crowd of young adults haunting the corners of the kitchen and pressed in from the hallway, rounding the island with his chest puffed up.

"It was Munson, wasn't it?"

You take a step back into Eddie. "It's fine," he says to you quickly, because coward or not he'd never let someone hit you, but you're pushing him behind you. You're protecting him.

"Yes, it was Eddie!" you say. "So what? It has nothing to do with you."

Macy cuts in, all red hair and glare. "Okay, enough. Cory, you have to leave, man. You can't yell at girls in my kitchen because they don't want to sleep with you."

Eddie stares at the back of your head.

Did you kiss him? That second kiss, that was with him?

"You kissed me?" he asks quietly.

Your lips part as you look at him from over your shoulder. Macy and Jamison argue with a red-faced Cory, Steve asks Robin what someone just said and Robin shouts the answer, but Eddie couldn't tell you what anyone's truly saying if you paid him to, his attention on the pillow of your bottom lip and searching upwards as you exhale.

"Eddie, you kissed me." Your eyes are soft, the starts of your brows hooked together. "You really don't remember?"

"I kissed you? When?" He grabs your arm, pulling you toward him. "At Gareth's place?"

"I took you home," —you drop your chin, a new panic about you as your voice drops, waning, tenuous as spider silk— "you were wasted, you'd been drinking Macy's wine and Mr. Lashlee's bourbon and I didn't mean for it to happen. I wasn't trying to get you to kiss me, Eddie, I just asked why you were upset."

"What did I say?"

"You said that I was beautiful. That you wanted to kiss me, and then you did."

Sorry, he'd said, you're just so fucking beautiful.

"And then you freaked out like you'd been laced about string between your fingers. I took you to your room and told Wayne you ate a bunch of hotdogs on the turn." You won't meet his eyes. "I'm sorry. I never meant for it to go that far."

A glass smashes. Eddie takes your hand, pulling you away from the scene and through a curious crowd to the back door. He closes the patio doors behind you and half jogs you down past the smoking barbecue and all its leftovers, chairs pulled out haphazard from the garden table and food discarded.

He has to be quick, he doesn't know how much time he has before everyone comes flooding back out of the house.

You're strangely timid, shame having sewn your brows together. "Eddie, I'm sorry," you say, your hand wriggling weakly in his to be let go. He lets it fall.

"Sweetheart, stop. Just stop. I'm the one who's sorry… I think I–" He sighs, you're so fucking beautiful on loop in the back of his mind. "I remember. I know I made a move. You didn't do anything wrong."

"I should've stepped away faster. I wasn't expecting you to kiss me."

"I shouldn't have kissed you."

"It was just a peck, Eddie. It's okay, 'cos it's not that I don't want you to kiss me ever, but you were drunk. I should have–"

"You didn't do anything wrong," he insists, cutting you off before you can criminalise yourself with a vehement shake of the head. "But that's– that's–" He chokes on his question. "What did I say about the string?"

"The string?" you ask, and fuck! Fuck, you look beautiful now, beautiful still as the night moves forward and the day's last lazy dregs of sunlight dapple your skin through the hanging branches of the surrounding sycamores. You stuff your hands in your pockets and pull your jacket around your tummy to hide from the cold, the string tugging with you. Your eyes are wide with confusion. "You wouldn't stop talking about it. That's when you hit yourself, your bruise?"

"After I kissed you, or before?"

"After, but… why does it…"

"I'm going to sound crazy."

You laugh softly. "No different than usual, then."

Eddie opens his hand and holds it out for yours. The string on his finger is loose but not long, moreso when you give him your hand. "I know you can't see it, I get that it's ridiculous, but there's a string tied from my third finger to yours. This red piece of thread like my nanna would use. I woke up yesterday morning and it was there. I thought maybe I was going crazy, because I like you," —he swallows air, no idea why this is so hard— "and I saw you kissing that loser and I figured it was some quasi manifestation of how much I want to be near you, like torture, but it was after I kissed you. It appeared after I kissed you."

"So we're connected by a string?" you ask slowly.

Eddie's genuinely ecstatic that you'd even entertain it. "Yes!"

"Show me," you say.

"I can't."

"Well, where is it?"

The string is tight as a wire again. Eddie runs his finger along it, hoping that'll help. You can't see the string but you can see the ease with which he follows it, how his finger slides from one end to the other seamlessly. Inspired suddenly by the memory of your bedroom, Eddie grabs the string near the middle and pulls.

The string deigns to do his bidding, yanking your hand forward.

You pull it back instinctively. "Is that a trick?"

"There's a string. I've been losing my mind trying to show people, I tried to cut it off. It's impenetrable." Eddie stamps down his excitement in the face of your less enthusiastic frown. "It runs from me to you."

You rub your marriage finger, the string a strong and shimmering crimson at your touch. "I can't feel it, but you pulled me." Your eyes are shiny. "Eddie, you like me?"

"Yeah, I do." He can't believe he's admitted to it out loud. No escaping it. Of the two secrets he just told you, it's the least terrifying. He wants to say more and he wishes he could take it all back, your confusion tangible in the lines of your frown, your gloss-sticky lips drawn thinner.

He's interrupted.

"Hey, Y/N!" Macy calls, slipping through the doors, Robin on her heels. "You okay?"

Eddie steps back from you guiltily.

"I'm fine! I'm fine, Mace, I was trying to let him down easy and I kept saying the wrong thing." You drop your hand out of the air. "I'm sorry."

"Hey, it's okay, I don't care. I don't want people yelling at you, that's all." She spies on Eddie out of the corner of her eye.

"I'm not yelling at her," he defends.

"Yeah? You should both come back inside, then. Have a drink. That's why you're here, right?"

She smiles until Eddie realises, defeated, that she's not gonna leave you alone out here with him. That's fine, he's glad people are looking out for you, but fuck is it annoying. He's finally told you about the stupid impossible string that links you together and you almost believed him, he could see it, and worse, his confession lays at your feet unanswered.

Macy pulls Eddie back by the t-shirt as you walk on ahead, where you're quickly commandeered by a concerned Harrington, a chocolate milkshake in his hand that he instantly attempts to share. "Eddie," Macy says, jaw dropped in emphasis, "you kissed?"

He covers his eyes with his hands, palm out, solid rings digging into his eyelids. "Not really," he says, a pounding headache emerging between his eyes. "No. I guess not."

—

Hawkins library smells musty with disuse. Dust motes swim between beams of light shining down through dirty windows, an aged yellow colour painting the pages of the book splayed in front of you. You'd originally retreated into Hawkins library in the pursuit of one thing alone: resolute, guaranteed solitude. You'd considered disconnecting your phone, but your address isn't a secret. The only sure fire way to be alone was to leave, and to hide.

No twenty-two year old Hawkinite spends their Sunday mornings at the library. You'd carried a litre bottle of water and a tupperware of sandwiches into the recesses of the old building and dropped into a creaky desk bright and early. For a blessed, blissful half an hour, you set your cheek to cold wood and closed your eyes, content to be unreachable.

It's not that you don't want to see people. Not that you don't want to see Eddie. You don't want to be seen. Not today.

Some mornings you wake up and feel wrong. You can shower, dress in new clothes, wear makeup and nice shoes and pretty bangles, but none of it makes any difference to your poor self-esteem. You figured every woman feels this way —what is there to love in a world that advertises solutions to problems you didn't know you had until they printed it in magazines? But it's been getting worse.

Now you're lonely enough to let acquaintances kiss you for the simple reason that they want to, and insecure enough to attribute that want to a specific motive, but Eddie said he kissed you because he thinks that you're beautiful. Because he likes you. Because a string runs from his hand to yours that can't be severed.

The latter feels as mythological as the former.

It's a mess. You've asked a thousand questions. Would the situation be cleaner if you rejected Cory? Did Eddie kiss you because he realised he could, that you'd let him do it? Cruel. Not his style, and mean to think of him, but a worry nonetheless. From there the questions broaden, immature in root. Does Eddie actually like you? Would he be your boyfriend? Does he want that, do you want that, is he okay? Was he high last night? Was he ill?

You flick through tomes with sweat thumbprints pressed deep into the corners and sides, scanning mildly then feverishly for an answer. Love myths, old legends, everything the librarian can give you on fantastical sweethearts —soulmates.

Eddie thinks that there's a string tied from his finger to yours to torture him as a link to what he wants, but can't have.

It doesn't make much sense. Eddie Munson could have you if he asked nicely enough.

That might be the problem. He's never asked anything of you. Eddie's a giver, constantly, a thousand little gifts. Your hair is nice like that. Do you want to sit here? You'll get the next one, but he never lets you get the next one.

His very best gift was small. Waiting for Gareth to bring the car around and hiding from the early summer rain under the Hideout's short veranda, you and Eddie sitting on a cold wall, his jacket underneath you as he insisted to stop you from catching a chill. You remember thinking he was pretty even with his hair in his eyes, his cheeks hollowed in concentration. He pulled his wallet from his pocket, offering a glimpse of a guitar pick tucked inside of the plastic photo window. "This is my best kept secret, okay? Don't go spreading it around," he'd said from the corner of his mouth, deft fingers folding the length of a receipt into a square. He tore the excess, leaving himself with an incredibly small scrap to start with. From there he made the paper crane swiftly, folding neat corners and twisting the snout, placing the finished craft on your stocking-clad knee. "Here."

"How did you do that?" you asked, awed.

He made you a square of your own, shuffled closer to you on the wall, the heat of his hands near yours to correct you and his patient demonstration booting your heart into overdrive. You remembered every step of his origami even weeks later, folds of paper brushed by the soft memory of his fingertips on the back of your hand, accidental touches, and the smell of him, so close.

Those paper cranes in your room, tens of them sewn like popcorn strings at christmas…

You shake the thought from your head and close the book. Maybe you do like Eddie. Maybe you have all along (tenuously, waiting to get let down, and thinking there wasn't a chance in hell he could ever like you back). And now he likes you back?

This obsessive retrospection is bad for your head. Sighing, you stand from the desk you've monopolised and stretch your arms over your head, taking a breath to peer down at your fruitless investigation. The string is in his head. He punched himself pretty hard the night you took him home —he's reeling from the after effects of booze and a mild concussion, no doubt. His mind is playing tricks on him. As far as you're concerned, there's no string. (But your hand moved when he pulled. But you want it to be real.)

You pull the books to your chest and ferry them back to the lonely shelf they came from toward the back of the aisles near the audiobook stand.

Fuck, you think to yourself, kneeling by the mythology section to begin putting your books back in a vaguely organised manner. Your reading provided no answers, and you're starting to worry it's none of the scenarios you'd contemplated, but a mean-spirited joke. What would Eddie ever want with me? you think, neatening the edges of the books slowly.

Realising you like him, his chaste kiss, the red string, it's a lot to take in. You aren't sure what you believe, but you'd love to believe Eddie, in both of his confessions.

You're standing and dusting your knees when you see it, a small cloth bound book shoved between encyclopaedias on the shelf above. It's more like a personal notebook than a novel. You reach for it on a whim. The cover is selenite white, slightly coruscating in the light and broken only by the weighted lines of Chinese characters painted with the bristle of a squirrel mop brush. You trace the last of the characters mindlessly, the English translation beneath it reading, Chinese Folk Mythology.

You open the book to the first page, blank; the second, the titular; and the third, contents. You flick through creation myths and cosmology, defeated before you've even begun. You really want Eddie to be telling the truth about this —if he is, it means he's telling the truth about liking you, puts real feelings behind his tipsy kiss.

The first and last burst of colour stops you short.

The red thread of fate.

A red line furls from one corner of the page to the second page opposite, shot through phrases, your eyes catching fast on choice words. Invisible to the mortal eye. Marriage of two souls. Tangled, knotted, but never broken. Fate.

You sit on your knees on the floor of the library, the pages spread flat under your hands and their minute trembling.

—

Eddie checks his hair in the rearview mirror again. "Loser," he says, looking himself straight in the eye. Then he smiles with teeth, kicks open the driver's side door, and drops out of the van with a crushed bouquet of flowers held to his chest.

Today's been a nightmare. Between you (always you, his only thought of the growing mess he's made) and Wayne, he's been flayed.

"Your room is a pigsty, Eds, I'm not happy," his uncle had said, glaring at him over the lip of his coffee mug. Garfield absent and replaced by genial Odie, Eddie still felt abjectly judged.

"I've been busy!" Eddie defended, too worried to eat and instead working his way through five pieces of nicotine gum at once, his jaw aching with each magnanimous chew.

"Yeah, busy turning down shifts and spending all your money on burgers and beer."

"I'm way too old for this," he said through gum bubbles.

"Exactly! Too old to need reminding. If we get bugs I'm kicking you out."

Wayne would never kick Eddie out, but that wasn't the point. "Wayne, I'm having a crisis. Could you have, like, a modicum of compassion for me? Your only nephew? In his time of need?" He clutched his chest. "Christ, man."

Wayne leaned backwards in his chair to fish the trash bags from a miscellaneous drawer. "This is compassion. Don't be gross."

His room was chaos rather than gross, knick-knacks in their wrong places and two hampers worth of laundry piled behind the door. The whole time he cleaned, he debated if it was appropriate to call you, and when he finally bit the bullet and picked up the phone you didn't answer. That's fine, except he called Robin (who was predictably nursing a rumpled Harrington back to health but had enough wherewithal to ask for the hot gossip), Macy (who told him to leave you alone if he was causing trouble), Gareth (who laughed), and Shauna (fucking Shauna) in search of you, and nobody knew where you were.

It got to the point where he couldn't not check on you. Couldn't stay stuck in the narrative anymore of your will we won't we. It hurt his chest too much, a real anxiety with claws to match. He hit Bradley's for a bouquet but the flowers they had were wilted slim pickings, and then he raced to the bakery before he thought about it too much and left empty handed.

Imagine buying a girl baked goods for her to reject you. Eddie in the rain with his paper bag of croissants and dying flowers.

He couldn't find you through the phone, but he has a secret weapon: the string that leads from him to you tied tight to his finger, a compass without magnets. He followed it in the van to this secluded spot overlooking Hawkins town, and knew he was in the right place when he found your car parked on the hill.

His palms clam on the way up, pine needles crushed to mulch under his cons. Dirt crusts their white toes and puddle water splashes over the tongues, seeping into his socks. The rain slows to a pittering that beads down the arms of his jacket and along the ridge of one finger, welled cold at the line of a titanium ring.

The string is trodden and dirty on the ground. Eddie toes at it as he goes, the thread red but not taut, leaving you closer than he expects you to be, perched on a picnic table with an umbrella held loosely on one shoulder.

"Hey," he says, tensing as you tense, softening his voice appropriately. "If you don't wanna see me I understand, and I'll leave, but I wanna talk to you… If that's cool."

You peer down at the umbrella handle under your fingers. "Sure, Eddie. You don't have to leave." He counts his lucky stars, more when he sits on the bench beside you and you ask, "Are those for me?"

He fights through nerves, flowers squeezed to death in his grip. "They're for you. I had to buy a couple of bunches. These are the best of the worst." He offers you the flowers, cellophane crinkled in his hand, not half what he pictured but somehow better for being real. "I'm sorry."

"Don't say sorry for giving me flowers," you murmur in your way, not mindless but small. Not tentative, just careful.

"I'm not sorry for giving you flowers, I'm sorry that they're wilting. I wanted to get you a bunch from Leaven, you know, impress you even if it was too late. I'm sorry for a lot of things, actually. Mostly kissing you without asking first." He doesn't mean to say it like that— oh woe is me. "I want to be honest with you," he confesses, quieter. "Stuff feels weird and awful."

"I know what you mean," you say.

"But talking to you isn't like that. Talking to you is..." He scratched his neck sheepishly. "This is going way worse than I pictured."

"Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty bad." Your voice is calm against his awkward panic. You aren't ridiculing him, the opposite. You're in the same terrified boat. It's reassuring at least to know he's not alone.

You put your hand out without turning his way. Eddie stares at it with another gasping round of chest pain but takes it swiftly in both hands, too much. Why are you this fucking weird? he asks himself.

"I think I believe you."

Eddie bites the inside of his lip. Your hand is marginally smaller in his, softer by yards, and easy to pet at your admission. He feels this bone deep longing to stroke the back of it and he does, the side of his thumb tracing the faint indentation of bones beneath your skin with the care of someone handling a more delicate artefact, the string shortening, shortening, until it's all but disappeared. You're hardier than a rough hand-hold, he's wanted to do this for so, so long.

"About what?" he asks. The string? Or his affection?

"About the string." You struggle with the flowers and the umbrella in your other hand but make no attempt to take the first back from his grip.

He waits for you to say more, seconds turning to minutes, his palm growing sweaty in yours. Eddie wants to be cool like a rockstar who knows you want him and doesn't care, and he wants to be sweet and gentle and give you the respect you deserve, but mostly he wants to make it out of this conversation with you at his side. He's not sure how to do it, but holding your hand as you want him to is a start.

"I have to ask you something," you say finally, as though the words have been dragged from the root of you. "This string… this isn't all a joke, is it? That would be– that would be sick. If it's not real."

"No!" Eddie interrupts. "It's not a joke, I get if you think I'm crazy but I'm not trying to mess you around–"

"I don't think you're crazy. This whole situation is crazy. It doesn't make sense."

"But you believe me?" he asks. What he's really asking is Would you believe me, please? He's so tired of being alone with this.

"I found this book at the library." Your hand livens in his, your fingers pushing between his to twine together solidly. "Talking about the red thread of fate. There's a myth that people who are destined to get married have an invisible string tied from their fingers. It gets bigger and smaller, and you can't cut it no matter how hard you try, but I still didn't know if I believed you. You could've read the same book."

Didn't know. Past tense. "What changed your mind?"

"How would you know where I was if you were lying? We're twenty minutes outside of town."

"I could be a stalker."

"Do you want me to believe you?" you ask with a laugh.

"Of course I do," he says warmly, spurred by your laughter, pulling your arm bodily into his and encouraging you closer. "You don't have to believe that we're destined to be together, but the string is real."

"And you like me."

Eddie's turn to laugh. "I do, yeah. So much it's embarrassing."

"Everybody knows but me?"

"Kind of."

"Oh." You lay your cheek against his shoulder. Almost like you're testing his limits to see if you're allowed.

Rain dots lightly on his jacket arm, the chill of the weather sudden and obvious. He covers your wrist with his hand to hide you from it, knowing he should offer to take you somewhere warmer but needing to stretch this moment, his chest alleviated of anxiety pangs for the first time in almost a week.

"You really think I'm pretty?" you ask quietly.

Eddie stares at the top of your head. "You're the sweetest thing I've ever seen. Even if you don't believe it yourself, you're beautiful."

It's not that Eddie thinks you're going to cry but you come apart, slow fissures in the last of your strength. He takes the bouquet from you to lay on the table behind and closes your umbrella, letting the drizzling rain kiss the tops of both your heads. You look as nervous as he feels. "Come here," he says, desperate for you to feel better. "C'mere."

You sew your arms under his as he wraps his around your shoulders, the string stretching so as not to hurt you. Your voice comes rushed and low, honesty now that you're no longer face to face, "I like you too, Eddie. Ever since you made me that paper crane, I think."

He rubs your back. "You don't have to sound upset about it," he teases, trying to rescue you from tears. He'd hate to see you cry.

"This has all been such a mess."

He hugs you harder. "I know. I promise I'll make it up."

"But it's not your fault."

"Maybe, but that's kind of the point of being with someone. Looking after each other, cleaning up messes. I want to."

"You're with me," you repeat carefully.

Eddie pulls back, taking your face into his hand. The string lines your cheek like a teardrop curved down the slope of it. He strokes the red thread gently with his thumb. "I want to be. You think that could work? Us?"

Your fingers curl into the crook of his elbow. You nod into his touch. "If this isn't a trick."

"It's not a trick. I'm in love with you," —he wants to lean in, and he can't, not yet, not while a fraction of you still thinks he couldn't want you sincerely— "everything about you. I think I have been for a while."

"In love…" you murmur into yourself.

You lean forward slowly, stilted, and when Eddie leans in to meet you your eyes flutter closed. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, he thinks. He might have kissed you before but he doesn't remember it anymore than a phantom, a ghost, the echo of a memory. He remembers what he said and the blooming pain of his hand kicking back into his eye a thousand times clearer than how your lips felt, he has no idea what you like, where to put his hands—

You kiss him first. You lean in, and you kiss him gingerly, waiting for an impending cruelty or rejection that's never going to come. He keeps it gentle, holding his breath as the tip of his nose slides across yours and his head tilts to allow better access, a proper, full kiss.

For someone who hasn't had very many, you're a good kisser. A little too still. Eddie sees no harm in it, moving back a millimetre to wade in again immediately, his left hand rising to join the right on your warming face and prompting you into a braver reciprocation.

He smiles at the feeling of your bottom lip pressed against the seam of his mouth. His jacket sleeve creaks as your grip tightens.

It's a lovely kiss, even if it's tenuously taken. It's everything. For a while the rain doesn't matter, steams off of him, but it must fall too harshly for you to ignore, peeling away from him, so, so carefully. He meets your softened gaze with a similar expression. For once, you seem completely present, and better, your smile is real.

"Was that okay?" he asks, sliding his hands down the lines of your neck, feeling for nothing in particular. Feeling to feel, wanting to learn every hill and bow of you.

"It was better than the first two," you say, an endearingly bashful answer.

"That's not difficult. One was from a wet-nosed, mouth-breathing imbecile and the other one was from Cory Wilson."

You laugh without restraint, a full-bodied sound that echoes down his arms. "I think you mixed that up," you say nicely.

Flirting! Eddie could burst into tears. "You think? How about slimy, frizzy loser?" His hand lives a life of its own, squeezing your shoulder as he suggests, "Desperate and unobsequious uggo?"

Raindrops catch your forehead as you tip your head back briefly, laughter bubbling on your lips, your relief a palpable saccharine. "In what world are you an uggo?"

"What, do you like me or something?" He takes another kiss, lips lingering, longing for just a few more seconds. "Notice how you didn't disagree with 'desperate'? 'Unobsequious'?" he murmurs, a quarter inch from your mouth.

"You're not desperate," you murmur back, almost inaudible under the patter of rain.

"But?"

"But I don't think unobsequious is a word."

"No?" he asks, kissing you again. The awkwardness is gone, replaced by a melding need. "You don't think so?"

"No," you defend. He can hear your fondness.

Eddie presses a tight kiss hard enough to feel the impression of your teeth over your lips before tearing himself away. Kissing you isn't a tenth of what he wants from you; there's a lot to tell you. He needs to start now.

Your lips part as though you've a question to ask, too, but you bring a distracted hand to his hair. "Your hair's getting curlier in the rain. It's…"

You falter.

"I'm drowned, huh?" he asks.

You try to say no. Your hand wavers shy of a coil, listless, "No way," you whisper, eyes on your hand now, on your marriage finger and the red string playing at your knuckle, shimmering with a fish-scale sparkle as you pinch it between your thumb and forefinger on the opposite hand. "I can see it."

"You can see it?" Eddie asks, leaping onto his feet.

Your face is transformed, infinitely, impossibly prettier by your beaming smile as you clamber to stand in front of him, stretching the string between your bodies experimentally. "I can see it!"

"You can see it?" he asks, vaulting his weight into you, his arms working around your back in a squeeze.

You pull your arm up between you both and twist your wrist this way and that, the string following your whims as you lean back in the circle of his arms. Your eyes flicker between him and the string, as though you're working out which one is an illusion. Eddie and the string are both real.

"We're really soulmates."

Eddie doesn't know if he believes in soulmates, but he believes in the hopeful colour to your voice as you say it, and the tacky skin of your cheek as he leans in for your fifth kiss, your sixth, each one better than the last.

If his soulmate were going to be someone, he'd want nothing more than for it to be you.

—

"Come on! We're so late!"

Steve detaches himself from the frankly killer novel in his lap to turn, his sunglasses casting you and Eddie in a sepia tone as he drags you bodily down the path to their picnic spot. You giggle girlishly at Eddie's telling off and the bodily nature of his pushing, flopped like a fish out of water in his arms.

"I'm hurrying, Eds, you're just faster than me."

Eddie pretends to drop you, to your roaring delight, your laugh echoing across the park and drawing the eyes of Steve's summer club.

"Here comes happy and happier," Robin groans.

"You wanted them to date," Steve says, turning to his best friend where she lays on the blanket beside him, his jacket a pillow under her neck. "You have sleep in your eyes."

"I'm tired," she defends, struggling into a sitting position. She wipes her eyes with the bottoms of her palms, mean, words stretched with a yawn as she continues, "Please tell me Eddie has the basket."

"Nope," Max says, slamming down on her knees next to Robin, her jeans already grass-stained.

"Y/N has it," Lucas clarifies, sitting down with them in similar fashion.

Steve's daunted by them when they're together, but he leaves his commentary at an unintelligible curse word, his head tipped back in annoyance. They're constantly pulling the carpet from under him, practically manufacturing flaws to tease him about, Max whip-smart and Lucas loyal to a fault.

Still, he likes them.

More than he likes Dustin when the curly-haired boy sits down next to Steve and takes his hat off. "Feel how sweaty this is getting."

"Rather not, dude."

Eddie speaks, closer now, and Steve misses the words but not the tone of them. Dripping, almost sleazy affection, the kind that knows what it is unabashedly. You stand on toes to kiss the highest point of his cheek as quickly as you can, your hand on his trap.

"Hey!" Eddie shouts to their turned head, waving a hand of rings, calluses and bandaids. "You guys look like meerkats."

His cheeks are rosy red with blush despite the moderate temperatures today, the sun set to come out in an hour or two when the cloud cover moves. Said meerkats make room for you on the picnic blanket, where you share the bounty of your basket, sandwiches and cut fruit. "There are chips in the car," you say.

"You cut up fruit?" Robin asks.

"Eddie did. I watched."

"And ate the best cuts," Eddie says proudly, wrapping his arm around your shoulder to drown you in a hug. You slink an arm begins him to hug him in return, your face pressed with delight to the curve of his neck. "As is her right."

"Don't be disgusting!" Mike calls, a baseball bat in unconfident hands.

"You sure you know how to use that thing?" Eddie calls back. "Lucas, I thought you were helping him, man? Help him!"

"Some people are beyond help."

"Shut up, Dustin."

Despite an abundance of company and a ton of shit to do, you and Eddie are distracted by one another, and Steve isn't stupid enough to not get why. They didn't see you both for a week, and then you emerged from your self-imposed quarantine as grossly in love with one another as Steve has ever seen two people be. Like, maybe the happiest couple ever. In some loud ways but mostly quiet ones, hands held, fond cheek kisses to say hello, these weird paper birds you make for each other whenever there's a scrap of paper left lying around. Eddie's doing it now, having stolen the sticky note Steve was using as a bookmark to craft a teeny tiny crane, Steve, their called cranes. One second it's a pink diamond and the next he's performing an intricate twist, four last folds, and placing the finished product on your knee.

Steve's sort of jealous, but you guys are too in love, honestly. It's nice if you're in it but too intimate if you aren't (nothing maliciously done, of course), so he rounds up the troops for the first round of baseball to give you guys some privacy.

If he's expecting you two to start French kissing when he leaves, he's not correct. He wouldn't know it, back turned to you as he takes first bat, knees bent and waiting for Erica to serve, but you guys talk. Talk talk talk. Eddie can talk for Indiana and you listen in your way, wryly amused, promising any minute now that you're gonna get up and spread out on the field.

"Is this a bad idea, sports? What if it beheads someone?"

"It knows how to behave," Eddie assuages, hand on the blanket next to your thighs, turned toward you, effectively locking you in. "We don't wanna get that involved. You look too good right now to ruin."

Nothing can fix the insecurities you hold instantly, but knowing someone wants to kiss you regularly has helped. Eddie's constant compliments have done even better. He's easy about it, no fuss, no bravado, praise said like fact. Come here, pretty girl, I got a present for you. Hey, gorgeous. You should do my hair, yours always looks so good. And the photos —he has a disposable in the glove box, and insists on taking photos of you when you're especially happy. Now that he's your guy, that's often.

"You're saying I wouldn't look good if I sweat this off?" you ask, gesturing to your face and your makeup.

"I know you'd look good." He dips down for a kiss, as if daring you to suggest otherwise. It's a touch rough, twice as devoted. Things are heady for a time, the two of you stealing another short moment to add to the list, your kiss made of twin smiles. "Maybe we can use it to our advantage," he suggests, pulling back to stroke your cheek.

"The string?" you ask.

Eddie steals a last quick peck before his hand climbs onto your leg, giving your denim-clad thigh a pat. "We'll use it to trip people up. Come on, it'll be fun. We'll get Harrington flat on his ass," he says, clambering onto sure footing.

"No way," you say, leaning back to see him, your hand nudging aside a plate of sandwiches. You shield your eyes from the sun as it comes out, sunlight like spun gold spilling down your arm. "I'm not helping you hurt your friends."

"What, those guys? They're just my D&D subs."

You shake your head at him in disapproval.

"I'm kidding!" he says, reaching down for your hands. "Get up, sweetheart, we'll only trip someone if we need to win. Stop fighting me, you know it's useless. I always win."

"You cheat," you sigh, letting him help you onto your feet.

"I cheat," he agrees, kissing your cheek, then the opposite, before holding them in both hands and leaning in. "I love how you sound when you know you're losing–"

"Shut up–"

"You get all breathless," he says, his face drifting closer, and closer, "all shy on me."

"If I knew you were gonna try and embarrass me this much I never would've said yes to being your girlfriend," you say, half-glaring at him with a wave of affection brimming behind your poor acting.

"Really?" he asks. His voice is low, a little rough.

"No. But you have to stop, okay?" You laugh, nudging him in the stomach with your knuckles. "I wanna play baseball."

Steve waves Eddie over from home base to field on his team while you join Max, Robin, and Lucas in line to bat. "This isn't enough people for baseball," Eddie says, crushing emerald green bluegrass beneath his shoes. The rainfall last week made for lush vegetation.

"Yeah, which is why you were supposed to invite more people," Steve quips.

"I was busy." Eddie rolls his shoulders. "We don't need more people to win. We got this."

"We do not got this! And no going easy on Y/N, okay? I don't care if you're together, we need to play to win. Loser's buying the winner's pizza and I just got Sheila out of the shop."

"Are you kidding?" Eddie asks, stretching his arm behind his head, his eyes across the field where you laugh at Robin's side. "Obviously I'm not going easy on her. Why would you think that?"

"Seriously? This is the worst honeymoon phase I've ever seen. I figured you guys wouldn't even be able to play on different teams, like, major separation anxiety."

Eddie does this thing with his hand, his thumb plucking an invisible string. "I don't need to worry, man. I know exactly where she is."

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

thank you for reading, especially if you got all the way to the end! hope you enjoyed ♥

#eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson x fem!reader #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson oneshot #eddie munson scenario #eddie munson drabble #eddie munson fic #eddie munson fanfiction #stranger things fanfiction #stranger things #stranger things fic #stranger things x reader #stranger things 4

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selineram3421 · 2 months

Text

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Courting Pursuit

Part 1

Prologue

Alastor X Deer Reader

Warnings ⚠

⚠ (gn) gender neutral reader, mule deer reader, assuming alastor is a marsh deer, flustered alastor, Spanish translated, food mention-not specific, italics= thoughts, mentions of dismemberment ⚠

You had gotten Alastor's attention after that peck on the forehead.

It annoyed him though.

How dare some demon think to kiss him, the frightening Radio Demon, who slaughtered other Overlords to get to the top. He should be feared!

But after that day all you did was give him gentle smiles and what he assumes are compliments in Spanish. He's had to get a dictionary to translate them, not wanting to go to Vaggie every time.

After learning how to properly translate in his radio tower, he's left with a flushed face.

Damn that sleepy eyed deer- He huffs and tosses the book away.

Then he starts to notice more things about you. Mostly because he's trying to figure out a way to get you back for daring to touch him.

You look sleepy, almost all the time.

Noticing how strong you are when you lift one of the couches for Niffty to clean under it. How big your antlers are and how often you have to lower your head in order to enter a room without hitting your antlers on the door frame. Damn Angel for pointing out your big build and chest.

A button has shot out and broken a glass at the bar, the thread having finally snapped from the constant tension.

"Holy shit!", Angel laughed and turned to the white haired demon. "Hey vagina! You owe me a twenty!"

He learned the proper shirt size for you so that it wouldn't happen again.

Then he's noticed that you like to stand near him when given the chance. Sitting on the chair next to him when having dinner with everyone, sometimes following him to the bar, and then watching him cook.

It annoys him.

You still don't fear him.

Another night, another meal to be made and you're watching him cook again. The Radio Demon finally speaks up about your presence in the kitchen.

"If you aren't going to contribute in making the food, then leave.", he glances over his shoulder with a slight glare.

The mule deer stays leaning against the door frame for a second longer before pushing themselves off, walking over while rolling up their sleeves.

"Te ayudaré." (I will help you.)

It is quiet in the kitchen, save for the occasional ask for spices and other ingredients.

You are quite skilled with a knife.

He watches from the corner of his eye as you mince the vegetables.

After everything is done, you get the plates and set them down on the counter before starting to serve some the food one one of them.

"Who are you serving?", he questions.

You don't reply, instead you finish piling food on the plate before offering it to him with the same smile you always show him.

"Eat."

The Radio Demon was confused but took the plate anyway. It was the cook that ate last, it's always been that way.

"I don't really understand why you served me first. The others are in the dining room.", he said.

Before he could put his plate down, you stopped him and gave him a utensil.

"Please, eat. Has trabajado duro, así que come y relájate. Yo serviré.", you flashed another smile and gathered up the other food filled plates, balancing them on your arms as you made your way over to the door. (You have worked hard, so eat and relax. I will serve.)

He stood there as he watched you leave the room, taking a glance at the plate in his hands.

What exactly were you trying to do?

Later in the week, Alastor decided to pay a visit to Rosie and brought some food that you had made after finding out where he was going.

He sat on one of the arm chairs as the woman across from him complimented your food.

"I need advise for a problem."

The black eyed woman lifted a brow.

"You? Now this must be something good. You never ask for advise unless something has really stumped ya.", she said and dabbed the corners of her mouth with a napkin.

"It's about that mule deer I brought with me last time, the hotel guest.", his smile strained slightly. "I don't understand why aren't scared of me like other sinners. Hell, even the Princess knows to be wary of me but the damn demon just smiles at me."

This gets her attention and she sits up a bit straighter.

"Go on.."

"Not only that, they dare to peck me on the forehead.", he looks away. "I hate that they aren't afraid. They sit close to me, compliment me, follow me around sometimes, helped me in the kitchen just a few days ago. Served me a plate even!", he raised a hand up in annoyance. "I've ripped demons apart in front of them but they still act so strangely around me! I don't understand! Why are they so odd!?"

Rosie laughs as she places her elbow on the arm rest, leaning her chin in the palm of her hand, wearing a knowing smile.

"If I didn't know any better, I'd say you're being courted."

Alastor turned to look at his friend.

"A what now?"

You..courting him?

How absurd! Laughable even.

"Hahahaha!", he wiped a tear away. "I didn't think you'd make such a ridiculous joke, ha.."

The woman crossed her arms and stared him down with a look.

"Surely you jest.", he says.

Rosie sighs and stands from her seat. "Dear old friend, what are the ways to court or show interest in a person?"

"Ah..well. You know I've never-", he begins but is cut off.

"The most popular ways to court someone are to give the person of their interest compliments, attention, gifts, acts of service, and often treated in a respectable manner.", she lists off and she walks over to stand next to his chair. "And the oh so famous line of reaching a person's heart is through their stomach.", she says and pokes his mid section. "It sounds a lot like what that big darling deer is doing for you."

Alastor left, not knowing what else to say after his friend laid out the evidence so plainly for him to see. Once he arrived back at the hotel, he noticed the mule deer sleeping in the lobby on one of the couches.

"Everyone else is asleep in their rooms.", Husk spoke up fron the bar.

The spider demon is at the bar drinking a maroon liquid from a martini glass in his hand.

"Why are they..here?", the Radio Demon gestures to you.

"Said something about making sure to welcome you when you got back. I don't know why they'd want to though.", the cat demon serves himself a drink.

"Gentle Giant is real sweet, that's why.", Angel places his cup on the bar counter. "Damn, I'd want some hot demon to welcome me back home.", he says before leaning closer to the bartender. "Oh Husk~"

Husk just rolls his eyes and drinks his alcohol.

"They gotta sleep in their room. The couch is not that comfortable.", Husk mentions.

Not too long later, the two demons at the bar leave to go to their rooms to retire for the night.

Alastor now left with the task of waking you up.

He goes over and places a hand on your shoulder, beginning to shake you slightly.

"Wake up. You have to go to your room.", he says.

You slowly blink your eyes open and stare at him for a second. Then that soft dopey smile forms on your face.

"Bienvenido de nuevo.", you mumbled out. (Welcome back.)

". . . . . . . . ."

Shit.

He made sure you didn't hit anything on your way back to your room. Immediately walking away after your door closes to think over a few things.

Fun fact: Female deer can also have antlers but it is very rare and only occurs when there is a hormonal imbalance of testosterone/regulation issues.

~Seline, the person.

Part 2

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fuckyeahdindjarin · 1 year

Text

II ║ Threads

Joel Miller x F!Reader

{ Part I: Seams | Series Masterlist | Main Masterlist }

Rating: M

Summary: When Joel revisits Main Street Outfitters two weeks later, he finds you on your knees. Again.

Warnings: Very spicy thoughts but not explicit, sexual tension, sexual innuendos, some language, shy!reader, reader has a nickname related to her job, soft!Joel, no use of Y/N

Word count: 4.3k

Notes: This crept up on me and happened just as I was finishing up edits. I am so grateful, and I hope Threads is a fitting thank you gift to you all 😘 I’m thinking about doing a sleepover celebration, we shall see!

Joel and Pin are back ❤️ They're back because you guys have been so generous with your love, sending me so many ideas and hyping me up - I can't thank you all enough! This chapter is all thanks to Singer machine anon who bravely (affectionate 😉) shared their story of getting stuck under a sewing machine table. I hope you enjoy this one!

A treadle sewing machine is powered mechanically by a foot pedal that is pushed back and forth by the operator's foot.

If you're not familiar, here is a classic Singer treadle cabinet, which is no way big enough for the purposes of this story, so please exercise your imagination 😉

Joel hovers outside the Jackson Grocer’s, arms crossed, trying to make himself look as inconspicuous as possible in front of the leafy display of butter lettuce heads.

It’s been a few months since he’s settled in, but sometimes he can’t get over how fucking nuts this place is. Looking at the shelves brimming with fresh fruits and vegetables outside, canned food and home goods inside, he could easily be standing outside the 24/7 mart in his old neighbourhood. There are even shopping baskets, for crying out loud - stacked neatly one on top of the other by the door.

A voice pipes up from his left. ‘Didn’t know you ate greens.’

Joel scowls. ‘I don’t.’

‘Why are you loiterin’, then?’ asks Tommy, picking up a couple of apples and examining them with exaggerated care.

‘I’m not loiterin’,’ he spits out the last word as if he’s above it, turning his gaze to the high street.

Tommy tosses him a cocky grin, head tilted at a knowing angle. ‘Yeah, you are. And now you’re makin’ eyes at Bob. It’s disturbin’.’

Glancing across the main thoroughfare at the welder’s shop, where the said proprietor is cutting up wooden planks on the porch, Joel grumbles sarcastically, ‘That’s right. Bob is just my type.’

At that very moment, right next to Bob's, the door of Main Street Outfitters creaks open, and Joel recognises Lucy instantly as she sneaks out on tiptoes. She skips down the stairs and wanders up the street in what appears to be another impromptu work break.

Joel’s already taken two steps towards the shop before he remembers that he’s not alone. Braking abruptly and bringing up one hand to scratch the back of his neck, he feels Tommy’s eyes on him.

He half-turns, and snaps, ‘What?’

The younger Miller brother shrugs, pursing his lips thoughtfully. ‘Why are you going to the Outfitters again? Didn’t you just get those new jeans a couple of weeks ago?’

‘Thought I’d get a new shirt for your stupid baby shower.’

‘Joel -’

‘Sorry, sorry.’ He throws his hands up in capitulation. ‘Baby showers are not stupid. Especially in the middle of an apocalypse.’

Taking another two steps forward, a thought stops him dead in his tracks again. He can practically feel Tommy smiling smugly at his back.

For fuck’s sake.

He doesn’t turn around this time, jamming his hands into his pockets and asks, ‘Can I bring someone? To the party?’

‘We know Ellie’s comin’.’

Whipping around, he growls, ‘Tommy -’

He laughs. ‘Well, I’ll be damned. Joel Miller makin’ friends in town? Maria’s right - you’re fittin’ right in, big brother.’

Rolling his eyes, Joel flips him off and stomps his way across the street.

Tommy calls out at his retreating back. ‘Say hello to Pin and tell her we’d love to have her come over on Sunday!’

When he steps inside, the shop is as empty as it was a fortnight ago. Joel shuts the door firmly, making sure the bell jingles, so his entry doesn’t go unnoticed.

Your voice, though muffled, comes promptly. ‘Lucy! Is that you?’

He heads towards the doorway that leads to the workshop. ‘It’s Joel, actually.’

‘Oh, shit!’

His eyebrows reach for his hairline - you don’t seem to be the type to curse. Concerned, he asks, ‘You alright back there?’

There’s a touch of panic in your reply, ‘Don’t come back here. Did Lucy sneak out again?’

On your instruction, Joel hesitates in the middle of the room, talking to air. ‘Yeah, saw her leave a couple of minutes ago.’

‘Goddamnit, Lucy!’

He shuffles his feet awkwardly. ‘Uh, you sure you’re ok? Should I come back later?’

There’s a resigned sigh, then a pause. ‘Promise you won’t laugh.’

One end of his lips tugs upwards in a smile. ‘Why would I?’

‘Promise.’

At your insistence, he humours you, ‘Alright, I promise, sweetheart.’

‘Come on back.’

When he steps into the workshop, he doesn’t spot you immediately. The space is seemingly empty, everything standing still and in order. He sweeps his eyes across the room, starting with the shelving unit and the desk along the near wall, then trailing over the large timber work table in the middle, where a stack of folded shirts stands neatly.

His throat isn’t the only thing that tightens when he glances at the rug under the skylight -

‘Joel?’

Your voice draws his attention to the far corner of the room, where a sewing station is tucked into a little alcove.

Joel doesn’t know much about sewing machines, but he can recognise a vintage Singer anywhere even without the name blazoned across its elegant body. His grandmother had one in her drawing room by a sunny bay window, and he used to watch her work on it when he visited every other weekend. For a disorienting second, he can almost smell homemade cinnamon rolls and black tea.

Little did he know that things were about to get a lot more disorienting than a pleasant childhood memory.

As he steps around the work table, the rest of the sewing station comes into view, fronted by a big window, the light streaming through the glass glancing off the black sewing machine on top of a classic treadle cabinet. What looks like a half-finished dress lies on the wooden work surface, which stands on quintessential wrought metal legs, and between them - his throat constricts with a slow swallow when he realises what - or rather, who - he’s looking at.

The words barely come out, as if his tongue is suddenly too big for his mouth, as he makes his presence known. ‘I’m here, sweetheart.’

To be fair, you’re not making things easy by any means. All he can see is your backside hovering in mid-air, the rest of you out of sight under the desk. It has built-in cabinets on each end, the right side of it backed up against the far wall, and a chair is pushed to the side.

Joel stops two measured paces away, staring down at the curve of your ass and the way your top rides up, baring the small of your back. His eyes linger on the soft skin between the shirt’s hem and the waistband of your very tight jeans.

Jesus Christ. Do you always have to be on your fucking knees in this workshop?

Your small voice jolts him from his daze. ‘Well, at least you’re not laughing.’

He has to bite his tongue to stop himself from scoffing. If only you knew how laughing is the furthest thing on his mind right now. ‘What happened?’

‘A spool rolled off and I went down to get it, but I fell on the treadle accidentally - I think my shirt is snagged in the band wheel. I can’t move at all, and this Singer is an antique - I can't risk breaking it.’

Unfamiliar with what you’re talking about, he probes, ‘And where’s the band wheel?’

‘Under the table, on my right.’

You wriggle your hips, perhaps to help him locate where you’re stuck, unaware that you’re not helping. At all.

He swallows thickly and implores you, ‘Stay still, sweetheart. I’ll take a look.’

It’s been two whole weeks since Joel Miller came into the shop. You’ve caught glimpses of him in between - Jackson is tiny, after all. He catches your eye as he ambles down the high street with Ellie, his gruff Southern accent carrying even in the mid-afternoon bustle, too preoccupied arguing with the teenager to notice you on the other side of the road. He’s in the cafeteria a couple of times when you arrive for a late dinner, nodding at you from a few tables over, while you work up the nerve to smile back.

Every time, he’s wearing the jeans you handpicked for him, which makes your chest swell and constrict at the same time with something like - pride.

You picked out the pair for him. You assured him that he looks good. And by the way he’s wearing his confidence on his sleeve, he’s certainly taken your words to heart.

Whenever you see other women eyeing him as he struts about town - which is entirely too often - it awakens an ugly possessiveness in you, one that twists your insides into grotesque balloon animals.

Fourteen damn days. Even in the privacy of your workshop, you can’t escape that man. The simple touch of denim provokes a visceral reaction from you, heat chases beneath your skin every time you pick up the tailor’s scissors. It doesn’t help that most of your daily tasks are not exactly cerebral, which gives this man all the more leeway to lay claim to your subconscious.

If you believed in magic, you would've thought you summoned him with the sheer energy you’ve spent thinking about him. But what kind of witchcraft conjured him up at the precise moment you get trapped like the bumbling idiot that you are?

One minute you’re reaching for the stupid thread, the next thing you know, you’re stuck, unable to move without the mechanisms of the antique Singer groaning ominously at your attempts to free yourself.

But maybe, it’s still better than Lucy finding you. She’d take a hammer to the sewing machine to get you out, no question - patience is not her strong suit - and she’d be laughing at you for days.

You hear the floorboards give behind you as Joel moves into the space, which isn’t much - when you’re sat down at the treadle cabinet, the wall is barely two steps behind.

The wooden table creaks above you as he braces one hand on the surface, and you startle at what sounds like the vicious crack of a vertebra.

‘Um - you okay?’

Joel grunts. ‘I’ll live.’

So you wait, thinking absent-mindedly how your elbows are starting to get numb. There’s a scruff of boots and what sounds like a brief struggle, before Joel sighs. ‘Back’s too stiff ‘mfraid. Gotta get on the floor to see underneath.’

Before you can squeak out a reply, there’s a boney click of what you presume is his knees as he crouches down, and an unexpected brush of denim on your left ankle surprises you. Forgetting where you are, you jump in reflex, hitting the underside of the table so hard that you screech in pain.

‘Shit!’ Joel cusses behind you, one warm hand landing on the side of your hip to steady you. ‘You ok?’

Up until this point, you’ve been too consumed with embarrassment by your predicament to even think about the position Joel found you in. But once the warm imprint of his palm registers through the denim, it hits you like one of those interstate trucks that you used to see out of your window.

You’re leaning on your forearms, ass in the air, and now - he’s behind you, getting onto his knees. You can’t decide if the back of your head or your pussy is throbbing harder as you stutter, ‘I’m fine, just - get me out, please.’

‘Alright, hang on, sweetheart.’

You swallow the childish urge to stamp your foot. He has no right going around dropping sweethearts all over the place.

There’s a throaty exhale as Joel lowers himself onto the floor, his knees bracketing yours to shift closer to you. You know he feels the shudder that chases down your spine when soft flannel grazes your bare back, heat spilling from his solid frame as he looms over you.

‘You say you’re stuck in the band wheel?’

Somehow, you manage to answer, ‘Yeah, to my right.’

He clears his throat. ‘I - uh - I’ll have to lean down pretty close to you to take a look, is that ok?’

You feel all the air leave your body, which is probably why your reply comes out far breathier than you intend it to. ‘Yes, Joel.’

And with those two words, Joel has a problem with his jeans. Again.

They’re too tight. Again.

There’s nothing he can do as his mouth goes dry and his cock hardens with a vengeance, his self-control slipping like sand between his fingers.

He was doing so good - well, he was more or less holding it together, as much as he could be expected to while kneeling behind you. And of course, his damn knees hurt, but so does his bottom lip which is caught in his teeth, trying to regulate his breathing when his heart threatens to beat right out of his chest.

He already has one hand on you, and goddamnit, it’s taking him all he’s got to hold back from gripping you with his other, to grasp the swell of your ass between his palms, to trace your curves up to the dip of your exposed waist, to bow his head and run his tongue along the arc of your spine -

And the jeans you’re wearing - fuck, they’re tight. He wonders idly if you wore them for him. His eyes follow the seam that runs down the cleft of your ass, the way the pockets stretch over your backside has his fingers twitching, thinking about how well you will fill his hands, and how the slow rub of denim will burn his skin.

He wants to hook his thumbs into the belt loops and pull you flush against the zipper of his jeans, where his cock is straining against - rub himself on you, grind on you, his thighs plastered to the back of yours -

‘Joel?’

Fuck.

He sways as he snaps out of his stupor, dangerously close to knocking into you, light-headed from the lack of blood to his brain. He chokes out, ‘Yeah, I got you, sweetheart.’

Get it together, you dirty bastard.

He’s careful to leave a couple of inches between his front and your ass when he bends his elbows and ducks so he can peer beneath the desk. His chest pressed flat against your lower back, he can see the bunched fabric of your shirt where it’s caught.

‘Yup, you’re right, your shirt is snagged tight in there.’

‘Can you untangle it?’

‘Think so, but I’ll need both hands.’ He pauses. ‘I’d better get on my back under you.’

You swear you’re going to black out.

‘Pin?’ he prompts when you’ve been quiet a beat too long.

‘I - um, what do you mean by going under me?’

‘If I’m on my back, I can use both my hands, like a mechanic under a car,’ he explains. ‘If you’re uncomfortable, I can find another way -’

‘No!’ you blurt out, wincing at the desperation in your tone. ‘I mean - whatever is easiest for you. You’re the one doing me a favour here.’

‘Alright,’ he says, placated by your reassurance. ‘On your hands and knees then, sweetheart.’

Your eyes nearly roll to the back of your head. Oh, come on. Can he hear himself?

Scraping together your last vestiges of control, you push up on your palms to make space underneath you. You have to consciously lock your elbows - your joints suddenly feel like barely set pudding.

‘Move as far to your right as possible so I can slide in.’

Shuffling on your hands and knees until you’re pressed up against the band wheel, you hear the brush of fabric on wood - must be his back against the floorboards as he slides in. To say it’s a squeeze is an understatement. His broad shoulders brush the front of your thighs as he inches in, and then, his face appears under yours, head between your hands.

His lips quirk. ‘Hi, sweetheart.’

Your breath hitches at his proximity, your wrists brushing the soft red flannel he’s wearing today. ‘Hi.’

‘You ok?’ he asks.

You’re this close to pouting. What does he think? There’s a telltale stickiness between your legs that you’re frantically trying to push to the back of your mind while you mmhmm noncommittally, hoping that he doesn’t smell your want in the tiny, claustrophobic space you’re now both caught in.

You can only assume that he’s none the wiser, since the next thing that comes of his mouth is -

‘Climb on top of me so I can slide in closer to the band wheel.’

Someone might as well say your last rites. This is the end.

You’re taken aback when your limbs start to move on autopilot, because your faculties have well and truly abandoned ship. One trembling leg attempts to swing itself over the solid breadth of his body, but it wobbles like jelly, and your knee ends up connecting firmly with his stomach instead of landing clear on his other side.

At his grunted oomph, you panic and bang your head on the underside of the table again, which sends your whole weight sprawling onto his front with a yelp.

Joel cradles the back of your scalp with one hand. ‘Shit, you ok, sweetheart?’

The seams of your lashes sting, your head smarting with the impact, and you blink drily as your gaze focuses on Joel under you. He’s so close that you can see flecks of gold in his brown eyes, his breath hitting your face in warm puffs. Your glance at his lips, and with that one little motion, all goes quiet.

He watches you back, neither of you breathing, and in the stillness you realise that you’re fully straddling him, your palms pressing into the hard floor on either side of his ears. Your tits are crushed up against his ribs, his soft tummy warmly cushioned under you. Lower still, where your hips are nestled into the spread of his thick thighs, something stiff and long and insistent presses into you -

Your jaw goes slack when it dawns on you.

Oh god.

He’s hard.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Joel breaks the silence, a pained frown on his brow as he shakes his head. ‘This is embarrassin’. Couldn’t fuckin’ help it, seein’ you in those jeans -’

Tongue-tied, you can only stare at him, wishing you were brave enough to say something. Tell him that you pulled extra shifts to buy this particular pair of jeans, knowing that they flatter your figure. That you’ve worn them almost every day these two weeks, hoping that he’d swing by again.

But you can’t.

So you pray that he can see what you can’t say by the way you’re looking at him, by the way your heart races wildly in your ribcage against his chest.

His voice cracks. ‘I understand if you want me to go -’

You unstick your tongue from the roof of your mouth and cut in, ‘Don’t.’

His warm eyes widen, something like hopefulness in the way he looks up at you. ‘You don’t want me to go?’

You press your body closer into his, filling in the gaps. ‘No. Please don’t, Joel.’

He leans forward, so close that you can feel the phantom burn of his silvered beard, his palms finding the meat of your legs, blunt nails biting into the denim.

He really should be ashamed of himself, at the way his cock pulses unabashedly, nudged right between your thighs as you stare down at him, lips parted. He’s hard enough that he worries if there’s a wet spot of precum on the front of his jeans - he can feel himself leaking through his boxers.

The wicked tip of your tongue traces a wet trail on your bottom lip, and he almost chokes on a half-buried groan deep in his chest. He knows that you don’t even know you’re doing it - and in turn, what that does to him.

It would be easy to close the two-inch gap between you. To kiss you, taste you, lick into your sweet mouth. All he needs to do is to cup the back of your head and pull you down, or crane his neck and press his lips to yours -

And Joel is someone who always follows the path of least resistance.

But - he wants to do right by you. He knows you deserve more than a quick fumble under a table.

Sucking in a shaky breath, Joel steels himself and brushes a chaste thumb over your cheekbone. ‘Let’s get you out of here, and then we can talk, ok?’

It’s almost perverse the way his chest warms at the flicker of disappointment in your eyes as you give a reluctant nod, ‘Ok. Please be careful, the Singer’s really delicate.’

It’s hard to focus - his attention keeps drifting to how snugly you fit into his chest, between his arms, and it’s not a stretch to imagine a soft mattress underneath his back. It's funny how quickly his body has adjusted to creature comforts after months of sleeping on the cold winter ground.

Joel’s mindful that an antique sewing machine will be a pain in the ass to repair without the requisite parts, so he moves carefully, gently coaxing the band wheel back and forth to see how he can extract you. It doesn’t take long to loosen the grip of the metal teeth on your shirt, but he has to reach up and untangle the threads snagged into the mechanisms one by one.

He muses idly that this is not his method. These hands of his, with crooked knuckles that never healed right, where many a dagger, knife, gun, rifle have found a home - they break things, people.

When was the last time someone asked gentleness of him?

He wants to scoff. That’s not what he’s good for.

Despite himself, his throat rumbles with a hum of satisfaction when the band wheel finally lets go of your shirt, the Singer whirring to life as it spins freely. He gives you a lopsided smile. ‘There you go, sweetheart.’

You smile, but don’t seem to be in a hurry to move, which pleases him. He likes looking at you from this angle, relishing in your weight on him. He takes his time running his eyes over your face, his palms coming to rest on your knees.

You duck your head prettily. ‘Thank you, Joel.'

He gives you a playful shrug. ‘Well, I owed you one for these jeans.’

You roll your eyes in good humour. ‘Actually, I told you specifically that you didn’t.’

Joel basks in the lighthearted turn in the conversation, egging you on, ‘Well, in that case, you owe me one for this instead.’

‘That’s hardly fair -’ you chide him, punching him in the shoulder in a half-hearted rebuke.

Taking the opportunity, he grabs you by the wrist, the contact prompting a bodily shudder from you that he doesn’t miss. He smirks, ‘M’fraid I don’t play fair, sweetheart.’

You glare at him in mock sternness, bold enough to demand, ‘Fine - what do you want then, Joel Miller?’

For a split second, he hesitates, woefully out of practice at whatever it is that he’s about to do. Swallowing his self-doubt, he asks, ‘Tommy and Maria are throwing a baby shower on Sunday at their house - do you want to come?’

Your shoulders stiffen. Now, that you were not expecting. Your social anxiety bubbles between your ribs and looms over you like a spector. You sputter, ‘Um, I -’

You start when his fingers draw soothing circles on the top of your knees, as if seeing straight through the source of your apprehension. He reassures you, ‘Lucy is welcome to join too. The more the merrier.’

Your eyes soften. ‘Ok. I’d love to.’

The endearing way the corners of his eyes crinkle as he smiles has you swaying towards him, his nose just brushing the side of yours - when the doorbell rings, cutting through the loaded silence.

In your haste to sit up, you knock your head against the table for a third time.

‘Ow!’ you cry. Even Joel flinches at the hard hit.

Lucy calls out, sounding dangerously close. ‘Pin? You ok, hon?’

‘Shit!’ You start scrambling backwards, bent over awkwardly, convinced that you’re one more blow away from a concussion. You’ve barely scrambled onto your feet when Lucy steps into the workshop, the world tilting on its axis for a moment as blood rushes to your brain.

She watches in amusement as Joel drags himself from under the sewing station, head cocked to one side. ‘Hi again, stranger. You really like our shop, don’t you?’

His shirt is rumpled from where you sat on him, bits of his curls sticking up. He rubs the back of his neck, as if caught with his hand in the cookie jar. ‘I just swung by to, uh, invite you and Pin to the baby shower. Tommy and Maria’s. This Sunday.’

Lucy crosses her arms, arching an eyebrow. ‘And it’s a tradition where you’re from to talk about weekend plans under a table?’

You narrow your eyes at her. ‘Luce -’

She winks. ‘You know what? I don’t need to know the gory details - but I’m in. See you Sunday, Miller!’

Joel huffs a chuckle as Lucy disappears into the front of the shop, leaving you two alone. You smile, suddenly shy for no reason, twining your fingers to stop from fidgeting. ‘Thanks again, Joel.’

He shrugs it off, a touch of boldness in the way he stands, hands in pockets, hips cocked. ‘Pleasure was all mine, sweetheart.’

Instead of heading in the direction of the door, he takes two long strides towards you, leaning down to murmur in your ear, ‘Wear those jeans for me again on Sunday?’

Stunned, you gape at him as he turns with a crooked grin and walks off, dispatching a two-fingered salute at Lucy as he goes. Pausing by the threshold, Joel gives you one last wink that has your breath stuttering - but you only allow yourself to sag against the wall when the door closes behind him, your knees giving.

Lucy wastes no time skipping back into the workshop, practically bouncing on the balls of her feet in excitement. ‘Alright, time to raid the party clothes rack, girl!’

You laugh - Sunday can’t come fast enough.

Notes: I had the best time writing this chapter - it was fun to flip the tables on Pin, not that Joel comes out completely unscathed!

I definitely have ✨ideas✨ for these two, but I'm enjoying keeping things loose, so I have no plans to turn this into a full-blown series just yet. I hope you enjoyed this instalment, comments/reblogs/asks are so so appreciated as always ❤️

#fuckyeahseams #tlou fanfiction #the last of us fanfiction #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller x you #joel miller x reader #joel miller x f!reader #joel miller x fem!reader #joel miller imagine #joel miller fic #joel miller x female reader

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