#phoebe junior

[aliteraryprincess]

May Wrap Up

Time just keeps flying! I’m officially on summer break now (yay!), but that doesn’t mean I get to relax. I’m busy reading for my exams and doing last minute preparations for my wedding. I kind of just want June to before so I can take a moment to breathe. 

Books Read: 7

This was another great reading month. My favorite was Heartstopper Vol. 4, closely followed by Phoebe, Junior. I don’t think I really have a least favorite. I actually had way more fun with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland than I thought I would, so that was nice. I was convinced it would be a one star read since I hated it so much as a kid. 

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll - 3 stars

Heartstopper Vol. 4 by Alice Oseman - 5 stars

A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft - 3 stars

Edging Women Out: Victorian Novelists, Publishers and Social Change by Gaye Tuchman - 3 stars

Phoebe, Junior by Margaret Oliphant - 4.5 stars

Little Rabbit by Alyssa Songsiridej - 4.5 stars

The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan - 4.5 stars

On Tumblr:

Okay, there’s not much here. But at least there’s a few things, right?

April Wrap Up

Book Quotes: Heartstopper Vol. 4 by Alice Oseman

Book Quotes: Daniel Deronda by George Eliot

On the Blog:

Yeah, there’s nothing here. Let’s not dwell on it...

On YouTube:

But I’m still going strong on YouTube! I’d really appreciate it if you checked me out over there if you haven’t already.  

Modern Classics Book Tag

The Philosophy of Reading Tag

April Wrap Up

Book Haul! - Barnes & Noble, Thrift Books, and Freebies

Book Haul...again!

May TBR - Exam Reading and ARCs

Currently Reading 5/24/22

Underrated Victorian Recommendations #2

#booklr #may wrap up #monthly wrap up #books #book photography #phoebe junior #margaret oliphant #a vindication of the rights of woman #mary wollstonecraft #alice in wonderland #alice's adventures in wonderland #lewis carroll #the feminine mystique #betty friedan

[chimaeraonwards]

someone needs to make an edit of lucy frostblade (and the rest of her [ex]party) to punisher by phoebe bridgers

#alternatively an edit of lucyxkristen with funeral by phoebe bridgers will also go kind of hard #fantasy high junior year #fantasy high #fhjy spoilers #lucy frostblade #rat grinders

[kawaiilovedreamer]

Cartoon crossover art collage.🎨🖌🖍

Over the moon netflix.🌕🌙🌟⭐✨🌠

Miles from tomorrowland.🌟⭐✨🌠

#Over the moon #Miles from tomorrowland #Fei Fei #Ching #Gobi #Bungee #Chang'e #Miles callisto #Loretta callisto #Merc #Phoebe callisto #Leo callisto #Disney junior #Netflix

[wdillustration]

Disney 100: The Callisto Family

Miles, Loretta, Leo, Phoebe, & MERC

#art #fanart #disney #disney junior #disney 100 #miles from tommorowland #miles callisto #loretta callisto #leo callisto #phoebe callisto #merc

[paigemathews]

Okay so since Wyatt canonically has at least a godmother, I was thinking about who everyone’s godparents would be and came to some conclusions.

Wyatt: Paige (canon) and either Victor or Darryl. My initial thought was Darryl, but I think Victor gets it after tackling a demon while stabbed.

Chris: honestly, probably none. Initially would have been Darryl and Sheila, but the whole Darryl/sisters fiasco happened at the same time so I don’t think it’d have happened. I’m vetoing Phoebe just bc I feel uncomfortable having her be the godmother when she said some sketchy shit to/about Chris, and I feel like it’d have been too awkward if Piper asked Paige again. His godfather could be Victor admittedly, but uhhh, with the timeline of everything going on, I don’t think it’d have come up soon enough.

Melinda: could be anyone honestly, especially since Piper never really landed on having actual friends. I’d guess her godmother could be Phoebe since Paige was Wyatt’s, but could also be Darryl and Sheila. Although you remember Derek from Little Monsters? Going with the idea his kid is best friends with Wyatt and Derek and Leo become friends, Derek could be her godfather.

Peyton (Phoebe’s oldest): Elise and Leo, definitely. Phoebe was the daughter she never had and they had a good friendship, so Elise was definitely the godmother of at least one of her daughters. Again, the sisters have like no male friends, but I think that Phoebe would’ve wanted Leo as her daughter’s godfather.

Parker: Billie as her godmother, but not totally sold on who the godfather would be. Maybe Henry? By the time that Parker’s born, I feel like Coop could have grown closer to Henry and again, the sisters don’t have male friends. Billie and Henry, yeah that works.

Patience (Phoebe’s youngest): Another instance of uhhh, idk. Either Paige or Piper would end up as the godmother and the godfather would probably be Darryl. Look, she’s the youngest of all of them and we’re kind of out of combos at this point.

Charlotte and Penny (Paige’s twins): they’re born at the same time, so they get paired together. You can switch who gets which set, but I think that one of them has Darryl and Sheila as godparents. The other one has Piper as a godmother and maybe Coop as a godfather? Alternatively, y’know Derek from Little Monsters and how we all headcanon his kid being bffs with Wyatt? I’m just saying, he and Henry could become friends so alternative suggestion.

Henry Mitchell Jr.: still unsure on if I’m making him mortal or not, but Victor’s his godfather. a) if he is mortal, Victor’s someone who’d understand that. But from Paige and Henry’s side, it’s the idea that Victor basically treated Paige like another daughter and bonded with Henry as a mortal who was married to a Warren witch. For godmother, again, they don’t have friends so maybe Phoebe? Or Billie, since she was originally Paige’s charge.

+BONUS: Sebastian (half-manticore baby): Piper and Leo are his godparents. Piper helped save him and Leo saved Derek’s life.

#charmed #charmed next generation #next gen #abi speaks #next gen fanfic series #this isn't necessarily just for my series but also my legitimate thoughts on it just with my characters' names #may still switch it around a little bit #but the sisters. don't really have friends so this is what we're working with #i'm much more set on some of these than others #i also did not intentionally kinda skim over phoebe being the godmother to anyone specifically but it's more. #canonically she's not wyatt's and i don't think she should get to be chris's when she said he may not be meant to exist #and i mean piper and leo dont have friends really so it's kinda process of elimination for mel #and then i'm set on the twins with piper being at least one of their godmothers #and i think that henry befriends darryl and sheila in the mortals club so that's the other twin as well #she could be junior's godmother tho so #i'm deadset on victor being junior's godfather and peyton and parker's godparents #and sebastian's for that matter

[blckbrdlove]

someone else lights up the room

paring: eren jeager x reader

summary: it’s mid-september and eren’s falling in love for the first time in his whole life. too bad for mikasa, it isn’t with her, but with you.

genre: fluff, smut, slight angst (just in case)

notes: well pals! here she is!! my long, long awaited re-write for this series. a lot of this will seem familiar to those who read this part when i first posted this series, but there is some new stuff we haven’t read yet as well! after this part, almost everything we see will be new to all of us. i am very happy to get this out and to hear everyone’s thoughts on the re-write. reblogs and comments are much, much appreciated. please give me any and all feedback you may have. i know i put it off, and missed lots of deadlines i promised you guys, but i have put my whole heart into her. i am very excited to get this whole series out and completed to you guys, which will all be posted (hopefully) before the end of august.  title credits; nothing new; taylor swift ft. phoebe bridgers

warnings: MINORS DNI, angst, fluff, meet cute, eren is a hopeless romantic, eren is a gentleman, eren is a sweet boy, eren falls in love with reader basically at first sight and has been smitten with her ever since, reader recently got out of a toxic relationship and is still healing- but is also very smitten with eren, unrequited love (mikasa), mentions of creampie, jealousy, smut, oral (f receiving), fingering (f receiving)

word count: 8k

series masterlist next

Eren spots you from across the courtyard walking with your little blonde friend after his final class for the day. It makes him stop and completely tune out whatever Mikasa is trying to talk to him about regarding their upcoming applications for medical school that are due in a few weeks.

You’ve got on a little light blue floral dress that shows off your legs and collar bones beautifully, and paired with some strappy white sandals that show off the pretty polish on your toenails.

It makes him wonder if your skin is as soft as it looks from this distance. He bets it is, and he bets you smell really good, too.

Your friend says something that makes you laugh, the sound bringing a half grin on Eren’s own face as his heart stutters in his chest.

Mikasa looks up to see if he’s paying attention, quickly taking notice of the gleam in his eyes and half smile beginning to take up his face. It almost makes her smile before she realizes he isn’t even paying attention to her.

Her gaze follows the direction of his, quickly noticing you walking in their direction with your friend’s arm linked through yours.

She quickly frowns, being unfortunately reminded of the deep infatuation that Eren has with you that began during last spring’s semester. Honestly, the first time he talked about you, she thought you were an idiot, being the only junior in a freshman level chemistry class and barely passing. She often wondered if Eren tweaked your grades on the papers and exams he graded as Professor Hange’s TA, not that she would ever admit that to him.

Annie had been the one to inform him that you had a boyfriend, and had been with said boyfriend since high school, her knowing from not only going to high school with you and your friends but having been in the same friend group before she broke up with Bertholdt. Apparently her friendship wasn’t as valued to you guys as his was and she made her quick exit and found herself in their little friend group now, thanks to her and Armin’s relationship, if you could even call it that currently.

Discovering your relationship didn’t quell Eren’s interest a bit, and he asked Annie to tell him everything she knew about you, which was actually quite a bit despite not being very close to you.

Annie met you through your, now ex, boyfriend Porco Galliard. You were a cheerleader and top of your class at Marley Prep and you have stupid rich parents who fund your whole lifestyle and want you to be the happiest you can be.

In Mikasa’s mind, you just really aren’t the type of person she think Eren would be happy with. Sure, his family is well off, but your parents, from what she knows, are on a whole different level, and you seem shallow.

She ends up so lost in thought she doesn’t even hear Armin walk up and start a conversation with them, going off about some party that Annie said she was going to tonight and hinted that she’d like to see him there if he was available.

“Armin, not that I mind going with you, but I’m not sure why you need me to go with you?” Eren spoke with slight confusion.

Armin looks between Eren and Mikasa, “I’ll just feel better if the two of you are there with me,”

Eren’s gaze turns soft when he notices how tense Armin is, how nervous he actually is at the thought of joining Annie at this party. Mikasa speaks up before Eren can respond, “We have a really, really important lab tomorrow, but as long as we aren’t out too late we can come.”

It almost upsets Eren at how definitive her answer is, how she’s decided for them that they need to be home at a certain time, that he needs to be home at a certain time. He isn’t a child, and he’s getting tired of all the coddling he gets between Mikasa and his mother.

“Lab isn’t until 9 anyway, so we don’t have to be home that early anyway.”

Armin throws his arms around his two best friends, mumbling quick thank you’s and you guys are the best.

εїз

Eren doesn’t exactly hate parties, but he didn’t particularly want to be here tonight. He’s under a lot of stress with his applications for early acceptance to his top medical school choices being due soon and his mom has been on his ass about coming to visit, which he typically doesn’t mind doing but before returning to campus for this last year at university, he and his dad got into a huge fight over where he’d be going to school and residencies and all the bullshit he didn’t want to deal with, especially since he still hasn’t told his dad that he doesn’t know if he plans on going to medical school.

But there isn’t a thing in the world he wouldn’t do for Armin, and if Armin needs him here for moral support, then he’s here.

Grabbing a cup and putting who knows what is in it, he turns around to make his way back to the living room to find his friends when he stumbles into another body. Reaching for your wrist, nearly dropping his cup in the process, he helps steady your body as his eyes widen slightly realizing just who it is he just ran into.

You’re slightly more intoxicated than you’d typically like to be, but after spending the afternoon watching your phone blow up with text after text from Porco before you finally had to buckle down and block him, again, over some of the hateful things he had sent you, all you wanted to do was drink and forget about the stupid break up, which paired perfectly with the fact that Hitch had wanted to come to this party and stalk Marlo.

Eren’s eyes trail up your figure, taking in all of you. Tonight you’re wearing dark wash jeans that compliment you in all the right places, light rips line the area of your thighs. The denim comes up and rests perfectly on your hips, while the light pink top you have on hugs your chest in a way that Eren knows if he looks for too long, his own jeans will start to get tight, with the amount of cleavage your showing on top of the way it clings to you.

Your own eyes look over him, taking in his pairing of dark wash jeans and a plain black shirt that clings to his muscles just right. He’s got nice hair too, you note to yourself, and it’s thrown into a sexy messy bun. You can’t help but wonder if it’s as soft as it looks.

The two of you make eye contact and it feels like his eyes are trying to find your soul with how deeply he’s looking at you.

Your staring is interrupted by Hitch, who stumbles in and grabs your free wrist with a giddy look in her eyes, “You won’t believe who just got here,” And just like that, you’re pulled away from him and into the crowd of people.

Hitch drags you over to your other two friends. Historia is sitting on Ymir’s lap as the latter is whispering, what you can only assume, dirty words in her ear. The way Historia is fidgeting in her girlfriend’s lap with her lip between her teeth makes you fairly sure that the two won’t be here for much longer.

You look at Hitch with a raised eyebrow and tilt your head back to the two of them in question. “Reiner is here.” Distaste fills your features at the mention of the blond brute as you hum before taking Historia’s cup from her and drinking the bitter, clean liquid.

“Vodka? Yuck.” Your face is scrunched up as you close your eyes and drink the remainder of the drink. You look back at Hitch, “No Pieck?”

Hitch frowns at the mention of the dark haired girl and shakes her head, not knowing why you would even bother to ask.

Pieck wasn’t initially your friend, she was his friend, but she quickly embedded herself into your friend group after you had started dating him. Hitch never really liked her, to be fair Hitch doesn’t really like anyone, in fact she always thought Pieck had tried a little too hard to be your friend, always looked at you a little too long. There had been multiple occasions where the shorter girl would lace her fingers with yours when she thought no one was paying attention, or Hitch would find her sending a heated glare in Proco’s direction when he would cling to you in front of her.

And it’s not like she’s even been around since the monumental breakup that occurred in June. Sending all of your calls to voicemail and neglecting the group chat before Ymir had enough and finally just kicked her out completely.

Needless to say, Hitch thought Pieck was fucking weird. But what she thought was weirder was that after you and Porco broke up, she completely ghosted not only the group- which Hitch could’ve excused- but you as well. Hitch couldn’t care less about Pieck not wanting to stay friends with her, but what bothered her was how hurt you were over it.

Sure, you have herself, Historia, and Ymir. Hitch has been your best friend since first grade and has never been anything less than your rock. Always there when you need her and never letting you down. And Historia joined the two of you, turning your duo into a trio in sixth grade when you and Hitch decided to join the cheer squad for middle school, and you met Historia at tryouts. The three of you made the squad and the rest was history.

When Ymir started dating Historia freshman year of college, she quickly learned how much you and Hitch meant to her, and in turn, as long as it was in her means, if you needed anything she was there.

But Pieck’s different, she’s no Historia, and she’s definitely no Hitch, but she’s Pieck and you hold a lot of love for her. And you were absolutely heartbroken that when you called her after the huge final blowout between you and Porco and she didn’t answer.

Sure, Hitch and Historia know how bad your relationship was, they know everything, but Pieck was the only one who saw how bad it was. It killed you to know she didn’t care enough to even just answer or send you a stupid text despite everything.

As if she can sense your mood dampening, Hitch grabs your hands, smiling wide and giddy again as she remembers why she drug you out of the kitchen in the first place, “You will not believe who is here!”

You roll your eyes playfully as you turn to give her your full attention so she can talk all about Marlo, not even noticing the eyes that can’t stop looking in your direction.

Across the room Eren stands with Mikasa and Armin, the blonde nearly sweating through his light blue button up shirt. Despite trying to calm him down, Mikasa can tell Eren’s mind is elsewhere. He keeps glancing across the room.

Following his eyes, Mikasa’s land on you with your friends and she has to fight an eyeroll, already irritated with being here.

Despite thinking his crush was stupid, hollow even, she couldn’t deny that she’ll never forget how upset she had been when she overheard Eren talk about you with Armin, the former had told him that you were probably the prettiest girl he had ever seen.

When she looked up your instagram later that same night, her stomach knotted as she noticed just how pretty you looked in all your photos, how put together you always seemed. Mikasa’s never really been insecure over girls Eren had brought in and out over the years, but you were just a different story.

Armin seems to finally catch on to the fact that Eren isn’t paying attention to his nervous ranting.

“Eren! Hello?” Armin finally snaps him out of trance, Eren looking at him briefly before looking back over at you, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” He tells him off handedly, gaze still on you. You have a bright smile on your face as Hitch says something, he assumes, is funny.

“You should just go talk to her,” Armin finally tells him with an exasperated sigh, which causes both Eren and Mikasa’s heads to snap towards him.

“Why would I do that?” “Why would he do that?” Eren’s eyes meet Mikasa’s as she blushes harshly under his gaze that holds deep offense.

Armin looks between the two before he clears his throat awkwardly, “I mean it’s not like she has a boyfriend anymore or anything. Worst case scenario she ignores you,”

Eren nods before frowning slightly, “Yeah, but I almost knocked her down in the kitchen and didn’t even apologize,”

Armin looks at him with wide eyes, almost gasping, “You mean to tell me you finally had a chance to talk to her? And you didn’t?”

Another offended look is on Eren’s face in an instant, “How do you know I didn’t talk to her?”

Armin scoffs as he rolls his eyes at Eren’s question, “Well, actually, I know you. And I know for a fact that you didn’t talk to her because you wouldn’t be over here with us talking about her, you’d be over there with her. And I also know that even if talking to her didn’t work out, you still would’ve said something about it.”

Mikasa frowns again, “But aren’t we supposed to be here to support you, Armin? I mean you’re a nervous wreck.” Armin gives her a weird side eye, and frowns lightly at her behavior.

“I mean I have you here, and Jean and Connie are here if all else fails?” Though he says it as if it’s a question, Mikasa knows the question is why she’s being so defensive about Eren talking to you.

“I think it’ll be fine,” Armin turns back to Eren, giving him a nervous grin, “Just go talk to her1 Annie’s here already anyway.”

Eren nods to himself, and then looks between Armin and Mikasa with a half grin that makes Mikasa want to melt into a puddle. “Wish me luck.”

As Eren makes his way across the room towards you, Mikasa can’t help but frown as she starts to compare herself to you. The outfit you’ve got on compliments your body so nicely, while her ripped black jeans and black tank top do nearly nothing for her own figure. You’re also pretty outgoing, while Mikasa can barely hold a conversation with anyone who she hasn’t known since high school without cringing at herself.

The glitter that frames your eyes is also a deep contrast from the black liner that is smudged around her own, your hair is nicely styled with a pretty silver butterfly clip holding some of it back while Mikasa’s hair is at an awkward stage of nearly outgrown because she hasn’t had a chance to go get it trimmed since coming back to school.

She also has bags starting to form under her eyes, the long nights of studying getting to her. Choosing pre-med as her major in an attempt to stay close to Eren starting to bite her in the ass since it comes a lot easier for him, so he doesn’t have to study as much.

Jean and Connie join Armin and Mikasa once they notice Annie in the kitchen. Connie walks up behind Armin and wraps his arm around him, getting close to his ear so he can give him a pep talk on how to woo Annie. Armin grumbles back that he doesn’t need his help, but when Sasha bounces over, she gets on Armin’s other side and tells him that Connie means well, just take his advice!

Jean stands awkwardly next to Mikasa, who has yet to take her eyes off of Eren. Her eyes finally avert to Jean when he starts talking.

“You look really nice tonight, Mikasa,” She has a slight frown on her face, but she mumbles back a small thanks as she bites her lip. She looks like she does every day, and she wants to tell him that, but instead she gives him a fake smile that she knows he can see right though and asks him if he wants to go find something to drink. He has an idea of what she’s trying to do but smiles softly and tells her to lead the way.

As the two of them make their way to the kitchen, Mikasa takes another glance towards your direction, stomach dropping even more when she takes note that Eren’s standing in front of you with his hands in his pockets.

Hitch had been going on about Marlo and how handsome she think he is for the past twenty minutes; Ymir is about five minutes away from taking Historia up to a bathroom, and you’ve had probably one too many solo cups full of vodka when Eren made his way to you, hands in his pockets and a boyish half smile on his face.

Hitch cuts herself off mid-sentence when she takes note of the six foot two man towering over the couch you occupy, eyebrows raised as she looks between the two of you with a sparkle in her eye once she realizes his eyes are strictly on you.

Your own eyes are wide with drunken curiosity as you look at him. “I know you!” Your voice makes Eren smile slightly as you continue, “You bumped into me in the kitchen, right?”

Eren winces and lets out an awkward laugh, “Uh, yeah. I just wanted to come over and apologize, I had meant to earlier but was a little distracted.”

His heart sputters when you let out a soft giggle, “Oh, don’t worry about it! Parties can get distracting. Though, I’d hate to think you’ve spent this whole party thinking about apologizing instead of actually enjoying yourself,”

Though there’s a teasing glint in the smile on your face and in your tone, your eyes tell him you’re genuinely worried he spent the whole party worrying about the fact that he ran into you.

“Oh, uh no. Well I mean I was distracted by you, but” His eyes widen once he realizes what he said, while Hitch has to hold back laughter at the man in front of her turning red.

“You were distracted by me?” Your tone is slightly disbelieving, and your eyes have a certain shine in them that he doesn’t quite recognize but the look on your face has his own flushing even more.

Unbeknownst to the both of you, Ymir and Historia have pulled away from each other and make eye contact with Hitch, whose eyes are gleefully wide as she looks between them over your head. Historia is a little confused due to the amount of liquor she’s drank in such little, but Ymir catches on pretty quickly to what Hitch is getting at and reaches across Historia to tell you that they’re gonna head out and they’ll see you later. Historia looks confused and goes to protest but a quick look from Ymir has her quiet despite her confusion.

Waving bye to your friends, Hitch looks across the room and her eyes land on Marlo, she looks back at Eren with a coy smirk, “Keep an eye on her for me, yeah?” and before he can answer she’s up and gone.

You and Eren sit in a semi-awkward silence for a few moments before he speaks up, “Do you want another drink?” He cringes at his question and silently prays that you don’t think the worst, that he’s just trying to get you drunk.

“Actually, I think I’ve had enough to drink, but maybe we can go sit outside or something?” He nods, an excited look in his eyes that makes you smile brightly. He reaches his hand out to you, and you take it, smiling wider as he helps you up and puts an arm around your back to take you outside. Neither of you notice the heated glare in Mikasa’s eyes as she watches from the kitchen.

It’s a lot more comfortable outside, you’re able to breathe and hear a lot  better. He sits next to you on the ground up against the rough brick of the house as the two of you spend nearly the next hour talking about whatever comes to mind.

Eren asks a lot about you, what you like, what your favorite food is, why your favorite song is your favorite song, asks about your major. He tells you that he thinks you look like an art major, which in turn you tell him you didn’t expect him to be in pre-med, which he laughs lightly as he nods in agreement, telling you it definitely wasn’t his first choice. You don’t ask him to elaborate, which he’s thankful for.

Mikasa frowns from her spot next to Sasha as Eren makes his way back over to the group, you shyly behind him with your fingers laced through his. Armin smiles and has to refrain from sending a thumbs up towards Eren once he notices you’re with him. Annie smiles, what Mikasa would consider her most genuine smile, and waves at you. Mikasa nearly forgot that the two of you used to be good friends at one point.

Mikasa tunes out the rest of the group as Eren explains that he’s gonna head out, you’re getting tired, and he wants to make sure you get home safe. He’s got that boyish smile on his face, and Mikasa watches how you’ve got a blinding grin on your own face, eyes not leaving him as he speaks to his friends.

Jean watches Mikasa’s eyes water slightly as Eren sticks his hand in your back pocket as the two of you walk away. Her watery eyes meeting his as she silently begs for him to make the pain go away.

εїз

Eren has you pinned up against the front door to his apartment before it can even slam shut behind you. Your chest pushed up against the door as his hands work their way up and down your sides under your shirt, teasing the underside of your breast as he grinds his erection into your ass as your back arches.

His left hand moves your hair to the side so he can suck on your neck while his right hand reaches for the button of your jeans, making quick work of getting them undone and slipping his hand into your panties. His middle finger makes quick work in circles on your clit, making you gasp in surprise and reach up with you right hand and grab at the back of his head, tangling your fingers his soft brown hair.

The light pull of your fingers causes him to groan and bite down on your neck, causing you to gasp in surprise.

He pulls his hand out of your pants and moves both hands to the hem of your jeans and begins to pull them down. His husky voice in your ear makes you moan out loud when he tells you how badly he wants to taste you.

His body follows his hands as he pulls your jeans down to your ankles, slapping your ass lightly before he spreads your cheeks so he can get a nice view of your cunt, and he groans when he sees how fucking wet you are.

His thumb finds your clit and he puts just the slightest bit of pressure, but somehow it’s enough to make you let out a soft moan of pleasure, causing him to smirk.

“Yeah, you like that, baby?” You nod and moan louder as he puts more pressure, rubbing harsh circles as he leans forward and dips his tongue into you. He groans at your taste, and he takes his thumb away from your clit so he can use both hands to pull your body closer to his face.

“God you taste so fucking good,” His words make you blush, but he gives you no time to respond, his tongue finding its way back to your clenching hole.

“Ohmygod,” You can’t contain the gasp of pleasure that leaves you as your right hand reaches around to hold his head in place as he continues fucking his tongue in and out of you, hands gripping your hips tightly to keep you as close to his face as he possibly can, breathing be damned.

His tongue alternates between fucking your hole and licking at your clit. His left hand moves from your hip to your cunt, and he sticks two fingers inside you as he continues licking at your clit. He groans at your tightness around his fingers, that with the addition of the taste of you driving him insane.

“Er-eren!” You yelp out his name as his fingers make quick work of finding your g-spot, you feel him smirk against you once he feels the spongey spot. Fingering you faster, his mouth moves back to your clit, and he puckers his lips around it and begins to harshly suck on it.

The feeling is too much, you feel like you can’t breathe. His fingers repeatedly hitting your g-spot, and his mouth harshly sucking on your clit has you cumming before you even realize it.

“Eren, ah! Fuck, I-I’m cumming,” You moan out, trying to warn him so he can pull away if he wants. But he somehow manages to keep surprising you.

“That’s right baby, you fucking cum for me.” Curling his fingers slightly harder against your g-spot, his free hand grips your hip harder to hold you in place as your body starts to tremble as your orgasm washes over you. He doesn’t pull his fingers away until you’re nearly sobbing from the stimulation against your g-spot, and he slowly pulls his fingers out of your clenching hole.

He smirks as you gasp, one hand still clinging to his head while the other hold the trim by the door for dear life. Slightly leaning forward, he licks your cunt one last time in a harsh strip from your clit up, momentarily sneaking his tongue back in you one last time for good measure.

Pulling away from you, he stands back up, slowly pulling your underwear back up. Giving your ass a light tap, he bends back down and lifts your legs up one at a time at your knees to help you pull your jeans off of your ankles. Eren folds and lays them on the end table by the front door before he makes his way back over to you, who’s now turned around, face flushed and facing him with legs still slightly shaking.

He smiles at you once his hands find their place back on your hips, mouth meeting yours in a kiss that makes you gasp in surprise, but your arms quickly make their way around his neck. Licking your bottom lip, he lifts you enough to where you can wrap your legs around his waist so he can walk you to his room. His tongue works its way into your mouth, causing you to moan slightly around it as he continues kissing you until he reaches his room and sits you on the edge of the bed.

You look at him confused when he makes his way over to his closet, pulling out an old black band t-shirt. It’s faded, but well taken care of. Your eyebrows furrow when he hands it to you and makes his way to his dresser, pulling out a pair of grey sweatpants and changing into them, leaving the t-shirt he was wearing off.

“Did you not want to…” Your voice trails off as you look at him with furrowed brows as he makes his way back over to you, fighting hard to keep your eyes off of his naked chest. He crouches down so your eye level, and he frowns when he sees the slight insecurity swimming in your eyes.

Reaching a hand up, he caresses your face and rubs his thumb just under your eye before he lightly pulls your face to his, kissing you again. This kiss is much lighter than the previous one, softer, he’s being much gentler. When he pulls away you frown slightly, leaning forward for more but he stops you.

“It’s not that I don’t want to, trust me when I say I do want to. Like, very badly.” He huffs out a laugh through his nose, the furrow in your brow slightly deepening in a silent question, “But I also happen to enjoy you very much, and I’d like to take you out properly, ya know?” He blushes deeply as he says it, but the smile on your face brings a huge grin to his own.

Reaching forward, you wrap your arms back around him, pushing your face into his neck as a small sigh leaves your mouth, “I think you might be very good for me,” Eren hears you whisper as you nuzzle your face into his neck. Eren lets out a soft but genuine laugh as he pulls your body closer to his, hoping you’re right. Hoping he might just be good enough for you.

εїз

Mikasa looks around Jeans room, trying to stay as far away from him as possible in his full size bed, and she can’t help but wonder what you and Eren are doing right now.

Regret starts building deep in her gut as she realizes what she’s done with Jean will not only change the dynamic between the two of them, but also the fact that Armin is going to be so fucking disappointed in her once he realizes she only slept with Jean because she was upset Eren left with you.

Carefully crawling out of his bed, she quickly finds her phone and clothes before getting dressed and quietly leaving Jeans room.

Guilt is swirling in her stomach as she walks as quickly and quietly as she can out of his apartment and makes her way up a few flights of stairs to the one she shares with Armin and Eren.

She prays to herself that Armin and Annie decided to go back to Annie’s place, so they don’t have to see the disgusted look she has on her face. Disgust with herself, disgust with the fact that Jean let her use him, disgust with the fact that that the more she walks, the more she can feel Jean’s cum leaking out of her. Her disgust is quickly overcome by even more guilt as she unlocks the front door to the apartment.

Guilt is a terrible feeling, it’s nothing compared to the heartbreak she feels as she’s walking towards her room. Because the last thing she expected when she walked past the bathroom was to see Eren holding you up on the counter by the sink as he attempts to wipe the glitter off of your eyes.

He’s got that stupid smile on his face as he whispers for you to keep your eyes shut, he’s almost done. He holds your head at the nape of your neck gently with one hand while the other makes work of carefully rubbing your eye.

You’re mumbling incoherently, sleep lacing your voice as you hold your arms around his neck, head following wherever his hand guides it.

Out of the corner of his eye, Eren notices Mikasa’s disheveled appearance, while he doesn’t make a comment one it, she notices the way he raises his eyebrow in surprise.

She wishes she could say something to defend herself, but her gaze is too caught on you. The way he holds you tenderly makes her stomach turn, he’s so careful and gentle as he caresses your face, it makes her frown in envy.

“We’re almost done, you can have the bathroom in a minute,” Eren tells her softly, and she hates that she knows his soft words aren’t for her benefit but your own. She watches as he does a quick glance over your face one last time before he throws away the makeup wipes from a brand she didn’t recognize, watches as he gently lifts you at your hips to wrap your legs around his waist and how your face instantly makes its way to his neck in an almost natural way.

“Night, Mikasa,” Eren whispers and smiles when he hears you mumble a soft night of your own. “Good night, Eren,” Her voice isn’t above a whisper either, so he doesn’t hear her voice crack as he shuts his bedroom door, leaving her in the soft yellow glow of the bathroom light, alone.

Despite all the negative and harsh thoughts running through her mind, all she can focus on is the fact that Eren had let you wear his favorite shirt.

εїз

Eren’s been awake for nearly fifteen minute, he knows he should probably wake you up too. He has a class in a little over an hour, and if he waits too much longer to get up, Mikasa will come to get him like she always does when he sleeps in.

But he can’t bring himself to care, not when you’re lying next to him making that old ass ‘the cure’ t-shirt look as good as you currently are.

He can’t help but admire you. You just look so perfect.

“You’re staring.” Eren flinches in surprise at your words, not realizing that you’ve already woken up.

“I’m gazing,” You peek an eye open at his words, a half-smile making its way onto your face at his cheesiness.

“It’s creepy.” He scoffs at you, leaning his face so close to your own that your noses are touching. “I think it’s pretty romantic.”

A hum leaves you as your raise your eyebrows at him, eyes closing slightly as you lean closer to him, lips nearly touching his, “Romantic you say?”

He sighs, nodding as his eyes refuse to leave yours, “Definitely romantic.”

Just as he’s about to lean in to seal the deal, a loud knock at his door causes the two of you to pull away from each other, “Eren, get up. We have class in a little more than an hour. I will not be late again to one of Hange’s classes because of you.”

He groans, head falling right next to your shoulder, “Yeah. Thanks, Mikasa,”

A laugh leaves your mouth, causing Eren to grin, “What time is it anyway?”

Eren reaches for his phone, clicking it on, “9:15,”

You groan loudly in despair. “I have class at 10:30,” The pout on your face almost has Eren asking if you want to skip and go get breakfast. Almost. But when you reach for your phone and sit up he decides against it.

He watches you scroll through your phone for a minute, not peeking at whatever you’re doing so he doesn’t seem like a creep. You’ve still got a little bit of glitter on your face from last night, and Eren inwardly cringes at the fact that he couldn’t get all of it off.

He likes the way you look in his bed, not to get ahead of himself but he definitely thinks that waking up with you a few days a week is something he could get used to.

Hopefully, next time you guys will have time to go get breakfast though, or maybe if it’s a weekend, you could get brunch.

Eren’s thoughts leave his mind when you look back over at him, a soft smile on your face, “Any chance I can get you to give me a ride home on your way to campus?”

“Yeah, yeah of course.” He tries not to sound too excited at the thought of you sitting in his passenger seat. You mumble out a soft thank you as you watch him get out of bed and make his way towards his closet, leaning your head in the palm of your hand as you admire the way his back muscles move and flex when he pulls a black t-shirt over his head.

“What class do you have this morning?” He asks, with genuine curiosity, you look away to give him some sort of privacy as he takes off his sweatpants and underwear so he can put on a pair of dark wash jeans and new briefs.

“Oh, um, it’s an advanced sketching class. Nothing special.” Running your fingers through your hair, you stand up and look around his room for your jeans.

Eren turns back around as he’s buttoning his pants up, smiling when he finds you standing awkwardly without pants on. “Your pants are in the living room,”

A half-grin is on your lips when you make eye contact with him and nod. “Right, I forgot.”

“Forgot I ate you up against my front door last night?” He’s cheeky, and it makes your body heat up as you bite your lip to stop a smile from showing you enjoy his teasing. Reaching over, you lightly slap his arm and mumble for him to get his head out of the gutter, to which he gives you a cheeky smile and a peck on the cheek in relation.

Mikasa is sitting on the couch in the living room when the two of you walk out, and she has to fight looking at you too long once she notices you still aren’t wearing pants. Just that stupid t-shirt that Eren’s been attached to ever since he found it at some local thrift store when they were fourteen.

You smile and send her a small wave, getting a blank look in return that makes you frown slightly. Eren appears in front of you, holding your jeans with that same boyish grin on his face. “I think your shoes are still in my car,” A small okay leave your mouth as your slide your jeans on, not really caring for modesty at the moment since everyone in the room has already seen you without pants on.

Eren holds your phone and keys out to you, “I, uh, couldn’t find your shirt or the clip you had in your hair last night.” As he scratches the back of his neck, you have to refrain from ogling his biceps as they flex. “Oh, uh, that’s okay,”

Before either of you can say anything else, Mikasa clears her throat, “I hate to interrupt, but we have a class to get to.”

Eren gives her a weird look at the tone she uses and the look she’s giving you. “Actually, we’re taking a detour. We’re going to drop her off at her place first.”

She frowns and looks over you under her nose now that she’s standing, before giving him another look, “Eren, we seriously can’t be late again.”

You finally decide to speak up, “I can always get an uber-“

“I think that would be for the best.” “Absolutely not!”

You look awkwardly between the two of them as they glare at each other, feeling extremely out of place. You give Eren an uncomfortable look, “Really, I can find my own way home,”

Eren lets out a scoff, his eyes softening as he looks at you again, “It’s really not a big deal. And if she has such a problem with it, she can take a bus.”

Mikasa lets out a noise of disbelief grumbling a whatever, sending you a sharp glare as she storms to her room to grab her bag.

She can’t fucking believe him, how dare he? She’s been nothing but good to him for twenty-two years and this is what she gets in return? Over some random girl who didn’t even know his fucking name twenty-four hours ago?

The car ride to your apartment from theirs consists of an extremely awkward fourteen minutes, not that you were counting. Mikasa had sent you another intense glare when you went to sit in the front, practically forcing you to sit in the back and ignored you the whole time, talking over you anytime you tried to respond when Eren spoke to you.

You have to refrain from letting a huge sigh of relief leave you once the car stops in front of your building. Eagerly getting out of the car, you don’t even notice Eren quickly stumbling out of the driver’s seat as he tries to catch up with you.

“Hey! Hey, wait up!” His voice makes you halt your steps, turning around to look at him. “I’m really sorry about you, I don’t think she had a great night last night and-”

“You don’t owe me an explanation, Eren,” You don’t mean to interrupt, but he really doesn’t owe you any sort of explanation.

Slightly frowning he responds, “Well, I know. I, I just had a really, really good time last night, and I didn’t want to end things on a bad note or before I can ask for your number.”

“You could’ve just asked,” A light laugh leaves you at his more detailed than explanation, “I just meant you don’t have to apologize for your friend. Everyone has bad nights sometimes, and having someone throw of your routine can make stuff like that even worse.”

“Oh,” He laughs awkwardly as you hold out your hand for him to give you his phone. He watches with enthusiasm as you punch in your number before calling yourself, so you have his number.

“Text me later! I’d stay and talk more, but I need to go change for class and I think if you stay any longer, Mikasa may just glare a hole in my skull.” You press your lips against his cheek softly before you turn around to enter your building, “See ya later, Eren.”

His whole face is burning up by the time he gets in the car, too engrossed in what just happened to even notice that Mikasa has a deep scowl painting her features.

His phone buzzes, pulling it out he sees it’s a text from you. A fond smile is on his face when he sees it’s a mirror selfie of you in his t-shirt with a half grin on what shows of your face. For my contact photo <3

“Are we going to class or what?” Mikasa grits out with a hateful tone, snapping him out of his trance.

“Oh, right.” He awkwardly coughs out as he starts the twenty minute drive to campus. Very, uncomfortably, awkward twenty minutes.

εїз

Walking out of your sketching class, you’re pleasantly surprised to find Eren standing there waiting for you with, what you assume is, an iced coffee in his hand. Once he notices you, a huge smile appears on his face.

“Hey!” Your face heats as he hands you the drink enthusiastically, “Uh, Hi!” You look between him and the drink with curious eyes, causing him to blush as you take it.

“Oh, right. It’s an iced chai, with oat milk. I had Armin make it, he said you seemed like the type to like chai, but if you don’t like it then I can take you and get you something else.”

Your eyes don’t leave his face as he goes on about how Armin said oat milk was definitely a safe choice, because in case you have a dairy allergy, he firmly believes it superior non-dairy milk. Eren continues rambling for a few minutes about how he has no idea about the differences between almond and oat milk before he finds himself lost in your eyes that seem lost in his.

Smiling, you reach your free hand and grab his own, “I love oat milk. And, I have to agree with Armin, it is the superior non-dairy milk.”

Relief washes over his features as he smiles brightly at you, eyes traveling over you as he takes in your outfit change from this morning. You’ve chosen pink again today, and he can’t deny that it looks great on you, though he wishes you had kept on his shirt instead of going with the pink jeans with the pink corduroy jacket over a cropped white tank top you’ve chosen today.

You clutch your black tote bag closer to you as you sip the drink happily, grinning at Eren as you bite on the straw.

He smiles softly and clears his throat, “Anyway, I had a question for you.”

You quirk a brow, nodding for him to continue, “There’s this old theatre in town, they play lots of older films. They’re playing Rear Window on Friday at 7:30. Last night you mentioned you like older movies, so,” he sticks his hands in his pockets, biting his lip and glancing up at you, green eyes shining.

Your face heats up even more if possible, “Are you asking me out?” You pray his answer is yes.

“I mean, yeah! But, like, only if you want, though,” He’s met with a lip bite as you fight back yet another grin.

Despite wanting to say yes, you feel the slight need to be cautious. “I would love to go see Rear Window with you, but-”

Eren has to fight the frown that begs to take over his features at your words as you continue. “I just got out of a relationship. The only relationship I have ever been in, actually. And, well it wasn’t exactly a great relationship,”

Looking up at him you give him a small smile, “I would love to go out with you Eren, on a date. But do you think we could maybe, I don’t know, just hang out for a little bit? Take things slow?”

Eren tries not to look disappointed, because he does understand and he’s not disappointed, more bummed than anything honestly. But, he’s spent a whole semester pining over you, what’s a little longer?

“Absolutely!” The relief in your eyes makes whatever disappointment that was trying to creep in disappear completely.

Yeah, he absolutely can take things slow. No problem at all, right?

Can you take things slow, though? Probably not.

A comfortable silence develops between the two of you as you leave the fine arts building and head towards the parking lot to the south of it, “Do you want to get lunch with me and my friends tomorrow? I can pick you up around 1?”

Looking at him, you smile and nod, “Yeah, but are you sure no one will mind?”

Neither of you need to say anything to know you’re referring to Mikasa and her behavior towards you this morning. His face falls slightly at the thought of you not wanting to meet or hang out with his friends just because she was acting out of character this morning.

“Of course not!” It rushes out before he can control it. “If you’re worried about Mikasa, she had just had a bad night last night, like I was telling you earlier. It had absolutely nothing to do with you!”

You bite your lip, still unsure as you two come to a stop next to your car. Looking up at him, you sigh internally when you see his green eyes are already staring deeply at you, as if he’s begging you to say yes.

Despite a nagging feeling deep in your stomach, one telling you not to give in, especially so soon, a small voice in your head tells you that this, that he, could be good for you.

A soft smile creeps onto your glossy lips as you nod, telling him you’d be happy to go with him to lunch with his friends.

The smile the breaks out on his face makes all your negative thoughts disappear.

This will be a good thing, worst case, you just don’t click with his friends. He seems to like you plenty well already, and you like to think you’re likeable, surely his friends will, at the very least, get along with you.

#fic: ioblwbbrbig #eren yaeger x reader #eren x reader #attack on titan x reader #eren jeager x reader #eren jeager smut #eren yaeger smut #aot x reader #aot smut #eren jeager x you #eren jaeger fluff #eren yaeger fluff #aot fluff #she's here #*finally lol* #i hope you guys enjoy her!

[powderblueblood]

HELLFIRE & ICE — eddie munson x f!oc as enemies to star-crossed lovers

CHAPTER FIVE — CHEERLEADERS MAKE BAD NEIGHBORS

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summary: after you get kicked off the cheerleading squad by an enraged tina, you're stranded in a rainstorm of biblical proprtions- and the only safe haven is eddie munson's trailer. fuck. content warnings: MINORS DNI I'M NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT HAPPENS TO YOU HERE- male masturbation, sexualized language, some mild objectification, cursing, smoking, drinking, drug mention, reader backstory (i do it for the plot the plot the plot), steve harrington cameo, reader is a pretentious bitch word count: 10.1k

Dear reader, Joan Didion said something because Joan Didion is always saying something. Particularly to me. She comes at me hard, smacking me in the back of the head with perfect clarity and I have not gotten around to not resenting her for it yet. 

‘I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not.’

Joan Didion probably did not have to stay on nodding terms with a girl she used to be in order to score a cheerleading scholarship because her family blitzed her college fund on ill-chosen legal advice. 

But she’s got a point.  

You remember that day with perfect clarity. 

Middle school had been a lesson in elocution, thanks to your then-best friend Phoebe’s older sister Casey. Phoebe was a relic of your former life– a bookish indoor kid with Coke bottle glasses, a slight stammer and a distinct lack of style. Despite this, you loved Phoebe and she loved you. But more than that, more than anything, you loved that Phoebe had an older sister. 

A cool older sister. 

Casey was popular in the best way, which is to say that she wasn’t showy about it but she wasn’t humble either. By recognizing the power of being hot and likeable, she knew nothing could ever touch her. 

You wanted to be just like that. 

You remember the first time Casey told you you’ve got potential. Her hand-me-downs were a little too big for Phoebe, because Casey had boobs and Phoebe’s hadn’t come in yet. Even as a pre-teen, you knew an opportunity when you saw it. Can I try that top? And you did, flipping your hair and adjusting yourself in the mirror just like you’d watched Casey do a hundred times, sitting on her bedroom floor and soaking up her knowledge while Phoebe moaned and sulked about being bored. 

Check you out, hot stuff, Casey had smirked, but not in a way where you felt stupid. You’ve got potential.

The shirt didn’t feel entirely right on you, but the way Casey regarded you did. 

Fast forward– your first day of freshman year. You were in the parking lot, stepping out of the passenger side of Casey’s car. Phoebe slid out of the back seat, shoulders slumped forward. You were dressed in an outfit that you and Casey spent hours agonizing over the night before–first impressions are everything, girl–while, again, Phoebe looked on glaring. 

Come meet some of the crew, Casey said, pointedly to you and not to Phoebe. 

Hey– I thought were were going to find our homerooms together, Phoebe protested, grabbing you by the elbow. She knew she wasn’t invited. And she didn’t care– she’d never cared for Casey and her ‘airhead ways’, as she so derisively called them. 

Yeah, girl! you affirmed, a note-perfect impression of her older sister. Phoebe’s big eyes flared with disbelief. You’d spent junior high carefully studying Casey’s every movement, absorbing and adopting her behaviors as your own. Stella Adler would have loved your ass. Don’t worry about it. I’ll catch up with you later, ‘kay?

Make a move, freshman! Casey yelled, and you came trotting after her. There would be no catching up later, and you knew that. You bit back the sinking in your stomach with a Bonne Bell-glossed smile. 

Look, I love my sister, Casey murmured, but I’m glad that you’re my little freshman experiment, ‘kay? You are way more fun that Phoebs and her goddamn library card. 

You nodded, wordlessly grateful. Way more fun. The older girl confiding in you like this made you feel warm, included, grown-up. But not quite so grown-up that you remembered to watch where you were going– the laces of your left Chuck Taylor All-Stars came undone, sending you tripping– tripping–

Oof! Right into the muscular arms of Steve Harrington. Steve Harrington and his autumn colored eyes, his swathe of hair that seemed to grow more voluminous the more girls he flirted with, his shock of grown-up cologne and his perfect, perfect, perfect smile.

But it wasn’t just Steve Harrington. It was also all the surrounding popular kids that had already made a name for themselves coming up alongside you in middle school–Tina, Carol and her boyfriend Tommy Hagan–mingling with the older kids. 

You okay? Steve asked, his voice all breathy and cute the way boys voices are when they’re halfway making fun of you. 

Uh-huh, you nodded, lashes fluttering like crazy as you wracked your brain for something smart to say. 

Let me help you out here.

Then Steve did something you never thought possible, something right out of your daydreams. He got down on one knee and started to re-tie your shoe. 

Better watch yourself, Lacy, he said, tightening the bunny ears, gazing right up at you, Wiping out on the first day is not a good look.

Lacy. Lacy. Your heartbeat quickened at the nickname, hammering like hummingbird wings. It was the greatest thing you’d ever heard– it makes you feel fresh. New. Seen for the first time. Seen by Steve Harrington for the first time. 

Can you blame me? you said before you knew you were saying it; a common occurrence with you, You’re just too easy to fall for, Harrington. 

You drawled out too easy like you’re making fun of him, which of course you weren’t, because he’s Steve Harrington and you would never– but it earned some warm guffaws from the surrounding kids and a little ugh, please, from Tommy Hagan. 

Hagan’s something else. Hagan’s hated you since day dot, and you him. You remember his merciless teasing of some kid during Nancy Wheeler’s thirteenth birthday party, the last boy-girl party of your middle school careers, goading that they were too chicken to go into the closet with you for Seven Minutes in Heaven.

Steve grinned at you, eyebrows quirking upward. A fizzing feeling ran through your sternum and you felt like you might faint. Casey threw an arm around your shoulder, a magnet for attention. Well, it looks like some of you already know my little Lacy! You guys better be fuckin’ cool to her, okay, or else you’ve got me to answer to. 

You smiled up at her, the older sister you’d always prayed for, and she looked impressed with you. That’s all you wanted. That’s all you craved. That, and for Steve Harrington and everybody else to never quit calling you Lacy. 

And they didn’t.

Everything you’d gleaned from Casey equipped you to cruise through freshman year with no speedbumps, no checkpoints– you knew exactly how to wear your hair, how to flirt, how not to flirt, what not to eat, who not to be seen with… and even better than that, these people really took a shine to you. The girls especially.

Hawkins isn’t kind to teenage girls. It’s heavy with passive-aggressive Midwestern sensibility, with all the backwards, misogynistic attitude that comes along with that. It’s not overt, it’s insidious. It makes sense that these girls were scared. Few women make it out of here, and look at the ones that don’t. Their mothers. Your mother.

But what was even scarier was to want something more. To strive for better and be met with the begrudgery of your attempt. To think about life outside the snowglobe of this wicked little town. 

That's the thing with wanting. It doesn’t leave you alone. It gnaws at you while you zone out in the cafeteria, churning around with the half fat yogurt in your stomach. It finds you in the middle of the night, awake on the floor of your friend Carol’s room after an evening of pounding secret wine coolers and picking apart the rest of the Hawkins student body for their flaws and faults, looking around at your friends and thinking, 

God, I fucking hate these people. God, I’ve got to get out.

And you were working on it. Like a motherfucker, you were working on it– perfect grades, perfect attendance, the perfect extracurriculars in an excruciating balancing act with your demanding social life. Keep your record spotless and you could fly the coop to any college you wanted.

One such extracurricular was–is cheerleading. And god, you were great. You’re a flyer, one of the shining, pretty faces responsible for revving up the Hawkins Tigers and their adoring fans. Given your propensity for perfectionism, it’s an obvious position for you. Tina, the reigning captain of the cheer squad, had even taken you under her wing and spit shined up your back handsprings when you tried out as a freshman. Tina had a prior career as a child gymnast, making her a shoo-in for the title come senior year. And here she is now, hollering you all into formation. 

It’s Thursday, and it’s still the week from hell. You had almost forgot about cheer practice, but here you are, in your green and white and gold, ponytail too tight and bruise fading out. The tension between you and Tina casts a thick haze over the gym, the other, less-clued-in members of the squad not exactly knowing where to look. 

It probably wasn’t fair, outing Tina and her indiscretion with Hagan like that. But you felt like a cornered animal. It was all you could do, after all of them subtly chipping away at you for weeks when you’d done nothing but be there for them. Wiped their tears. 

Bought their crabs lotion, in Tina’s case. 

“Sloppy, Lacy! Again!” She’s drilling you like you’ve never been drilled before. Each twist and flip you perform, she finds something wrong with it– and you can’t even tell her she’s wrong. You have gotten sloppy, because your head’s not in the game. While cheerleading was a social and athletic high at one time, it wasn’t high on your list of priorities right now. Dismounting your bases and tugging your ponytail ever tighter over your skull, you stalk towards her. 

“Alright, Tina!” you yell, bubbling over with frustration. “How about you just drop the Russian gym coach bit and tell me what I’m doing wrong? Or is yelling at me all you got?” 

She does her best attempt at a withering glare. You can’t help but think it looks like something she learned from you. “How about I show you instead?”

Tina shoulder checks you, hard, and calls to one of the underclassmen. A mousy sophomore with sandy bangs and blazing Bambi eyes. This kid looks terrified, and knowing Tina’s reputation, she should be. “Cunningham! You’re up!”

Chrissy Cunningham. Right. Heir to the throne of Hawkins High. You don’t think you’ve heard her speak more than a couple of words and most of those have been in response to her Aryan meathead boyfriend, Jason Carver. 

But for what Cunningham lacks in vocal force, she makes up for in aerodynamics. This girl makes a basket toss look like ballet, ponytail pirouetting as she lands in the bases’ arms. Every move, faultless. She’s locked in. 

“That is what I want. What I don’t want, Lacy, is a flyer that looks like she’s losing control of her rectum mid-toss,” Tina hollers. “We all know how crucial this weekend is. Not just for us, but for the Tigers, too. Right? So that means the last thing we need is dead weight dragging us down.” She locks her laserlike stare on you. “Right?”

The squad mumbles in the affirmative. Chrissy Cunningham visibly gulps.

And you? A knife slices right through you, cold and exacting. You almost gag, trying to swallow through your thickening throat. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” 

“You tell me, Lace. You’re the one that knows everything.”

You don’t waste a second of time trying to counter-argue, because you can’t be sure it won’t end in your limbs flailing, trying to smash Tina’s head against the waxed floorboards of the gym. Instead, you grab your bag. You give the squad a grimacing nod and head to heave the double doors open. 

The sound of your sneakers squeaking against the linoleum floor makes you want to tear your shoes off and throw them through a window, just to watch the glass shatter.

You really never thought of yourself as a violent person, not until– everything happened. 

But now, god, now you just want to punch and tear and rip everything apart. This slow burn of your social status, your friends, your tether to reality as you know it slipping away is torturous. You’d rather burn it all up than let it swallow you whole. 

Standing on the front steps of the school, your eyes automatically dart to the parking lot. 

It’s not there. He’s not there.

And why would he be? you think, starting in the direction of the trailer park. You hadn’t spoken to him since that day in the record store, leaving him hanging with his hands behind his back and his mouth in that grin.

There was a reason for that. Call it post-high clarity or something else, but you knew right then you needed to focus the fuck up. Quit acting out because of your daddy’s mistakes and prove all of these shitheels wrong once and for all. 

Blend in. Stop causing trouble. Fall in line and study hard and cheer harder and get the hell out of dodge once you get your hands on that high school diploma. By whatever means necessary. Those means really did not include hanging out with Eddie Munson for even a second longer than you already had. 

–which is a nice thought and all, but Tina really shit all over that one with this shedding the dead weight move. 

The clouds above you carry the most pathetic of pathetic fallacies, gray and pregnant with rain that starts to hit you square on the crown of your head in fat, heavy drops. You’re still fifteen minutes from the trailer park, at least, and you don’t have a raincoat. You don’t have an umbrella. And you don’t fucking care.

You stomp up the dirt drive leading into Forest Hills, the pleats of your green skirt heavy with water, your cheerleader’s cardigan weighing down your shoulders. Your white knee-high socks are flecked with mud and getting dirtier with every sloppy step. And the rain, the relentless relentless rain, is streaming into your eyes, streaming mascara with it. 

You gasp against the cold of the downpour as you approach your trailer– and a glowing yellow light catches in your peripheral vision. His bedroom, the one you can see into from your bedroom. Though you try not to look. And sometimes you fail. 

You don’t see much, when you do look. It’s mostly his hunching figure, bent over his guitar or some binder or book or map or figurine. But he always seems calmer, the frenetic energy he wears around like chainmail finally falling to the floor. Watching him like that makes you want to breathe a sigh of relief right along with him, just to see if you’d feel similarly. Calmer. 

Calm is not how you feel right now, wiping the rain from your face as you dig in your bag for your keys. Once, twice, thrice they slip out of your hands, and on the fourth try, you finally get them in the door. And then– the key strains in the lock. Come on. This door has always been unnecessarily sticky, but this wasn’t really the time– you push and you push the silver key to the left with no give. 

Was your mom in there? Had she left her key in the door by accident before she went on another overnighter with Prince Valium? “Mom! Mom!” you yell, hammering on the door. No dice. You pull at the key again, and pull and pull and– 

Snap.

You shudder, a full body shake that’s only partially down to the rainwater that’s soaked you right to the bone marrow. The key has snapped off in the lock, leaving you standing there with a useless silver nub. 

“Fuck!” you holler, “Fuckfuckfuckfuck fuck! Fucking–shit!” 

Your fists go straight to the side of the trailer, banging one after the other against the metallic veneer. You don’t care that it hurts your knuckles, you want it to dent or crack or something, you want to not feel so impotent and fucking useless, but here you are! 

“Hey! Asshole!”

Your head whips around, heavy, sodden ponytail smacking you in the face. 

Eddie Munson is leaning out his bedroom window, barely visible through the downpour. 

“Keep it down! You’re in a residential goddamn area!” He’s not smiling that shiteating smile. He’s not even grinning. He’s just glowering at you, which is the look you’re most accustomed to seeing him wear. Even so, it feels– it feels– it makes you feel worse. 

“Fuck you!” you scream across to him, “Who died and made you the fucking neighborhood watch?!”

“Go inside, you lunatic!”

“My fucking– my key broke off, dickhead!” 

That makes his brow loosen a little bit. You just stand there, gasping in the rain. And then he disappears from the window–

–only to fling open the front door of his trailer. 

“Come on,” he grumbles, massaging the space between his eyebrows like he can’t believe what he’s fucking doing. 

“No.” 

“What? Cut the shit, Lacy, come inside.” 

“No! I don’t want to!” 

Munson’s face opens up in an expression of sheer incredulity– and you partially can’t believe yourself either. What is it about him that just makes you shove and shove and shove, unable to let him win– or in this case, unable to let him help? 

“Fine! Fucking drown out there for all I care!” The trailer door slams.

Your teeth have started to chatter, and your options from here on out are… walk or hitch your way back to town and drag your sodden ass somewhere there’s a phone where you then call your mom and pray she’ll pick up (she won’t) and tell her about the lock and try to tell her about the cheerleading squad and pray she’ll understand how upset you are (she won’t) and how much of an awful spiral this whole year has become and it’s not even Christmas yet and–

The trailer door swings back open. 

Eddie Munson comes stalking out into the rain, white Reeboks splattering mud everywhere. He’s wearing that shirt from his Dungeons and Dragons club, the one with the big fucking smug Satan splayed across it and you wonder, did he model that after himself? 

“What’s your fucking problem?” he asks, point blank. It feels like he’s aiming something at you. 

“I’m having a shitty fucking day!” you scream in response, making that dog belonging to that red headed kid sister of Billy Hargrove’s yap somewhere in the distance. “And I keep telling you, I don’t need your fucking–”

“Help? Right!” he scoffs, loud and indignant, crossing his arms across his chest. The fabric of the ringer tee is changing color before your eyes, clinging to him. “You don’t need my help yet you always take it, you don’t wanna be seen with me yet you end up at my lunch table, in my van, smoking my weed– you know, it may shock you but I’m not exactly thrilled to be seen with you either, Lacy! I mean, playing chauffeur to a grade A certified bitch that wouldn’t give me the time of day unless she was desperate? Who stood by and let her shitty friends, who aren’t even her friends anymore, make mine and my friends’ life a living hell for how many years? What kind of an asshole does that make me? How pathetic is that?” 

The way he spits the word bitch– it was different from the way he said it in the record store. There, it felt like a come-on. A compliment. Here, it feels like a curse. But oh, he doesn’t stop there! You are rooted to the spot, an unmoving target for his justified rage. 

“You can’t even play ignorant, y’know, because I’ve seen you. You’re smarter than them. You know how godawful those people are–Harrington, Carver, Carol, fucking Hagan worst of all–and you just let ‘em run. Because you needed that status, you needed to be the most evil fucking twat at the twat table, and for what? They left you, Lacy! They all left you!” 

You’re not sure at what point in his speech you started sobbing but at its crescendo, you yelp. It’s a high, pathetic sound you wish you could stuff back inside your throat and hopefully choke yourself with. See, you know all these things. You’ve told them to yourself in your most honest moments, of which there are not many, but having Eddie Munson lay them out for you in the pouring rain– it’s horrible. You’re horrible. 

Eddie’s arms move from where they were bound on his chest. Okay, that was an outburst, sure, but he didn’t mean to make you cry. And you’re like, really crying. He can’t stand it when girls cry, and you, in particular–you, having never displayed much emotion beyond bemusement and annoyance and mild disgust toward him–is especially frightening. 

And then you let out this scream. It comes right from the center of your chest, rumbling and primal and visceral and real. It’s a real noise, not one you put careful, curative thought into, tuning it just right before you let it out. Because in this instance, he’s right! You’ve worked so hard, and for what! For fucking nothing! For it to blow up in your face! So you let out another howl– and it feels so, so good. A feeling of satisfaction, more than a feeling of relief–

–so Eddie screams too. God, that feels fantastic.

His is heavier than yours, obviously, because he’s a guy and he probably screams as a hobby in whatever metal band he supposedly plays in. But you like that sound. You like the way it seems to ring off the exteriors of the trailer, ricocheting around like a pinball in its machine. 

A couple more painful sobs escape you, and Eddie’s taking tentative steps toward you, like you’re a snarling animal he’s trying to coax. 

In ways, you are, but that’s because you feel hunted. You have to blink, through tears and through rain, but you see that his shirt is so soaked that it’s see-through. You can see a vague suggestion of a tattoo on his chest. You see that he’s fighting a smile. 

This is so stupid. This is so ridiculous, that you could make a noise like that and completely short circuit the white hot anger he was spewing at you. 

“Come inside,” he breathes, a little less than a foot of space between you, “You lunatic.”

Your head, so heavy on your neck, so heavy from crying, so heavy from carrying your spiteful brain around, falls against his chest. 

“Uhh…” Eddie mumbles, hands hovering behind your back, not sure if he’s supposed to embrace you or if you’re about to rip his heart out of his chest. Either could be true. 

You know what you’d prefer. 

You’re positive he doesn’t here you exhale into his chest, into the mouth of the cartoon Satan, into the thrum of his jumping heartbeat. Sorry. I’m really… I’m so sorry.

“Hey,” he murmurs, “hey. Shit.” His hand finally rests in between your shoulder blades. You let him guide you inside, and he even picks up the book bag you had thrown in the mud. You reach, try to grab it from him, but he yanks it out of your grasp. Half teasing, half assuring you that it’s okay.

A squeaky, squelching silence settles between you two as you stand in his doorway. You’re creating a puddle near some old work boots. You wonder if they’re his– you’ve never seen him not wear those Reeboks. 

“So… welcome,” he cringes, emitting a pitchy, awkward laugh. You follow him through to the kitchenette, which is identical to your kitchenette, except every surface is not covered in legal correspondence or empty wine bottles or too-expensive tchotchkes. The light in here seems dimmer, warmer. There’s a distinct aroma of stale cigarette smoke and old coffee, which you breathe in deep. “Sorry for the mess–”

“It’s fine. It’s good mess,” you say, a little distant. You peer around the place like you’re in a gallery. 

“Good mess?” he queries, crossing to the kitchen sink where he attempts to wring his shirt out by hand– still wearing it. 

“Lived-in mess,” you say. What you mean is, it doesn’t look like a mausoleum of a life someone left behind. A storage locker. A haphazard sarcophagus. Before you moved to the trailer, your house was so clean– that was a whole other problem. The same tchotchkes that are scattered on your counter were kept behind glass, only touched when your mother polished them, the only housework she ever did. You stare at a collection of trucker hats nailed along the living room wall, the shelf of novelty mugs that accompanies them. 

“Living in mess? What is that, like living in filth? You better start showing this fine abode some respect before–”

“Lived. In. Munson, I said, lived in if you would just listen– it’s good, it’s fine. It’s n-nice.” 

It’s warm in the trailer, you can tell, but you’re shivering. You bear down in your body, jaw all set so your teeth don’t start chattering again, but he hears it in your voice. 

“Uh-oh,” he says, somehow not at all betraying any signs of being out in the freezing rain except for being entirely soaked. You bet his skin is still running hot, like you felt through his shirt, like you felt grabbing his wrist. “Star cheerleader’s coming down with a case of hypothermia. Right before the big game!” 

He slaps his hands to his cheeks in mock horror. 

“I’m–” you’re about to tell him a couple things; one, that you’re fine which would be stupid, because you are so clearly not fine; two, you’re not the star cheerleader anymore; and a third, forgotten thing. “--cold,” is what you settle on. It sounds small, vulnerable.

Eddie holds his breath for a second. You sound so delicate. Hard, terrible you.

“No, sure, of course you are,” he fumbles. The way his wet hair has flattened to his skull makes him look younger– exposing a nervous boy behind the metalhead posturing. “You can– take a shower. If you want. To warm up.” 

Take a shower. In Eddie Munson’s trailer. Your eyelids flutter closed, taking on their own vibrations from the wracking of your body. This is a hell of my own making. “Yes. Sure. Thank you.”

“I can also,” he starts, crossing the kitchen again and knocking something over on his way– it just clatters to the floor, whatever it was, and he lets it, like he’s used to leaving crashing sounds in his wake. “I can take your clothes if you want. Put ‘em in the washer.” 

You hesitate a beat, then follow him down a hallway. 

“I probably have something you can wear,” he says. There’s a note in his tone that’s high and nervous. “You’re for sure gonna hate it, but hey– beats freezing to death.” 

“Just barely,” you murmur. 

“Huh?”

“This, uh– this is dry-clean only,” you correct yourself, gesturing to the uniform. 

He rolls his eyes. “Of course. Only the best for the pom-pom shakers.” 

He ducks into a room that must be his bedroom, but you don’t follow him. Instead, you linger in the hallway, near the dingy bathroom, staring at the corn themed wall calendar. Going into his bedroom feels too personal– too intimate, as if preparing to take a shower in Eddie Munson’s trailer only to change into his clothes isn’t intimate. 

“I figured,” he says, emerging from the bedroom with clothes and a towel in hand, “since you like all that rinky-dinky-tinkly garbage, you wouldn’t hate wearing a Stooges shirt.” 

“I–” the shirt is soft under your wrinkled fingers, as are the boxers he passes off to you. Boxers. You hold them up between your forefinger and thumb, stepping into the bathroom. “These are clean, right?”

Eddie stares at you for a second– then leans his head into the bathroom and shakes his sopping locks at you, just like a dog. You let out a shriek that he thinks almost sounds like an involuntary giggle. I’ll take it.

“No comment!” And he slams the door on you. 

Then you’re standing. In Eddie Munson’s trailer. In Eddie Munson’s bathroom. Holding his old Stooges shirt and his boxers, with mascara running down your face. 

You pinch yourself, hard, just in case. 

The shower heats up quick–quicker than yours, you notice–and you rest your head against the tile as the steam swirls up around you. This is so weird. This is so fucking weird, and you can’t scrub away the weirdness fast enough. There’s not enough Irish Spring in the world. You reach into the shower caddy to replace the bottle and notice something familiar– wait, that’s–

Wait. 

Do you and Eddie Munson use the same brand of shampoo? 

You had to switch from your favorite to the best that the Big Buy had to offer, given the change in your personal means, and this was the top score in terms of quality. Eddie Munson apparently agrees– but better yet, you realize as a grin spreads across your face, Munson uses women’s shampoo. 

It’s nice to have a fresh piece of arsenal to aim at him once you get out of the shower. 

Toweling off and changing, you do give the boxers a wary sniff before you put them on– but luckily, they smell like generic detergent and aren’t stiff in any way. So you slide them on.

They fit snugly– naturally, given he’s all sinewy and you have hips. He is really sinewy, now that you think about it. 

His wrist wasn’t bony, but it was active. Tendons flexing under the thin, soaked layer of his shirt. You wonder, absently, was that a tattoo you saw. What is it. What does it look like. Is it shitty. It’s his, so it’s probably shitty, but I want to see it. Does he have any more. 

You shiver, slipping the Stooges t-shirt on, and blame your hardening nipples on the cold.

The cheer outfit is another problem. You emerge from the bathroom, clutching the still-sodden uniform with Eddie’s– Munson’s towel thrown over your shoulder. 

“Do you have, like, a garbage bag or something?” you ask, eyes rising to look at him where he stands in the doorframe of his room. He’s still in his soaked clothes. 

He takes a second to answer you, and when he does, his voice is all thick. Avoiding eye contact. 

“Suuure,” and he disappears and reappears with a plastic bag, quick as a blink. 

“Thanks.” You dump the uniform, sneakers and all, into the bag and make for the door. 

“Hey, it’s still raining–” his voice follows you, as if you hadn’t heard the raindrop gunshots hitting the trailer roof. 

“Yup,” you say, popping the ‘p’. You yank Munson’s door open and fling the garbage bag outside. It lands squarely between your trailer and his. 

Munson appears over your shoulder, looking out at the garbage bag. His face is twisted in confusion, concern, curiosity. 

“I got kicked off,” you explain, plain as biscuits. 

“Off the pom pom squad?” he whispers, eyes flaring in surprise that you think might actually be real. You’re looking at his lashes again, fanning around the almost-perfect circles of his eye sockets. 

“The very same.”

“Escándalo. What happened?”

“How about you go and shower first,” you suggest, poking a finger into his chest. He makes a little breathy noise, a little ‘unh’, that you don’t… hate. “Can’t have the star dork of the make believe board game club catch his death, can we?” 

“Anything happens to me and you’re the prime suspect, babe,” he grins and snaps the towel off your shoulder. 

“Hey!”

“This is the last clean one. What am I, a fuckin’ Rockefeller?”

-

Christ, he wants to jerk off into this towel but he knows that’s weird. That’s perverted. That’s fucked up. That’s everything everyone says about him and that’s everything you make him feel. 

So he strips, turns the hot water to scalding and furiously rubs one out down the drain. One, because he feels bizarre about leaving you alone among all of his things for too long and two, because hot water is in short supply. 

And three, because he’s achingly rock hard at the sight of you in his boxers, tossing your cheerleading outfit into the mud and the wet. 

The metaphors. The implications. The feeling of your forehead against his chest. The stab of your finger in his sternum. 

He cums jaggedly, almost silently, with his mouth rammed against his forearm. 

If you heard him– God, you’d be so nasty about it. God, he’d never live it down. God, he’d love to know what you’d say.

He makes damn quick work of sudsing up and rinsing down, wrapping a towel around his waist– only to run into you as he’s coming out of the bathroom. 

You stare. You stare at him, and Eddie’s mouth goes dry, and all the blood drains away from his brain. Again.

“Stare much?” he sneers, but only just about. Because his first instinct is to drop the towel and give you an eyeful. See what you’d do– hopefully something with your mouth. God, he hopes it’d be something with your mouth. 

“Where are your smokes?” you snap back. “I know you have some.”

“Kitchen. There’s probably–,” he needs you to stop looking at him like that; like you’re going to snap his neck, “--kitchen.”

Eddie slams his bedroom door and smacks his face with three quick strikes. “Come on, man! Get it together!” 

Because it’s go time. 

He has to formulate some kind of plan. 

He hadn’t exactly thought ahead when he invited you inside–or, demanded you come inside–and since you now had no place to go and Wayne had specifically told him not to go near you and your boobs were stretching out his dad’s old Stooges t-shirt…

Christ. 

He’s entirely, massively, completely at a loss. Eddie paces around the room like an animal in panic, grabbing a Scorpion shirt and some worn flannel pants as he goes. 

“Like, I’m supposed to go out there and do what? Ask her to hang out? Fucking paint her nails, read Cosmo? Study?! Jesus!” he angrily mumbles to his reflection, tearing the towel away and tugging his t-shirt over his sopping hair. “Hey, Lacy, you wanna beer? Who am I, Steve fucking Harrington? Jesus, Jesus, Jesus Christ, dude!”

“Munson. Are you talking to me in there?” He hears your voice from a minute distance away– see, that’s the thing about trailers. Small space, thin walls, and Eddie Munson’s voice travels at super speed. 

He stops, seizing, cringing, shoulders hitching up to his ears. 

That was not enough time to formulate a plan. 

Eddie, jankily tugging his pants on, sweeps out to the kitchenette area like something is chasing him and stops dead when he sees you. You haven’t trashed the place. You haven’t even tried to stick your head in the oven, two things he was kind of concerned about given the way you were wailing outside. 

You’re standing in the middle of the room with your hip cocked out, smoking a stolen cigarette and studying his uncle’s trucker hat collection. 

All the air in the room seems to orbit around you like a tornado in slow motion. 

How is it that you make an old shirt and boxers look like a skirt set? How is it that you can be sobbing your lungs out one minute, then the picture of poise and sophistication the next? 

All that air and none left for Eddie to take a breath.

“Hey, Lacy,” he strains, “you wanna beer?” 

“What,” you purr– like, he’s so sure that you actually purr, “You mean you’re all out of Sancerre?”

He does not know what the hell that is, but he can only assume it’s some rich people bullshit– and he’s relieved. You’re mocking him. At least that’s some tether to normalcy. She’s baa-aack. 

Eddie rolls his eyes, not entirely meaning it, but if he beams right at you he’s going to give the game away. 

“Think fast!” He tosses a can of the cheapest beer available at the Big Buy your way and you just about catch it, hands above your head and the cigarette dangling out of your mouth like Keith Richards. 

“God, Munson,” you mumble around the filter, “What kept you off the basketball team?” 

“Half a brain and a big dick,” he smirks, cracking the pull top and snatching the soft pack of cigarettes you’d left on the countertop. You cross from the living room, propping yourself up on the counter stool in a fluid movement that can only be described as feline. 

“Well, we sure can account for one of those things,” you say, ashing with your right hand and tapping at your temple with your left. 

“And the other?” Eddie asks, voice dropping a mocking octave. 

“I’d sooner drink arsenic than find out.”

He raises his beer can to you. “In that case, cheers!”

Your mouth twists around a smile and Eddie can see you’re fighting hard to keep it at bay. And that you’re losing. You tip your beer to your lips and he braces his elbows on the counter, looking around for a lighter. He spots a Bic, but the trigger won’t light it– just sparks, no flame. 

“That thing’s dead,” you say, “I lit this off the toaster.” 

“Oh! Right,” Eddie goes to turn, but something chilly snaps to his forearm. Your fingers. Damn. What is it with you? Circulation thing or what?

“Don’t do that,” you shake your head. “I don’t trust you not to burn the whole trailer down.”

“This is my trailer, y’know.”

“Yeah, and I’m in it. So burn it down on your own time.”

You motion for him to light his cigarette off the half-burned length of yours and Eddie tentatively places the filter between his lips. You prop yourself up on the stool, ass raised from the seat, leaning toward him. He leans in too and you cup that little hand with the perfectly painted fingers around the cigarettes. Like you’re whispering a secret. You look down, focusing on making fire, but Eddie’s eyes follow the tiny crease of your brow, the slope of your nose. The little wipe of mascara still underneath your eye. 

Tips touch and Eddie inhales just as you do. The cherried ends of the smokes glow orange and you pull back and Eddie just stays there a moment, frozen with the now-lit ember hanging out of his mouth. 

You pull back and inhale that smoke like one of those chicks from those black and white movies Wayne is always watching. You exhale all daintily, in one perfect clouding stream. You’re all– you’re so–... 

“Fucked,” you groan, shoving the heels of your palms into your eyes. “I am so fucked.” 

Eddie finally tugs the cigarette from his mouth, filter gone a little soft with the low-level salivating he’d been doing. “Oh. The cheerleader shit?”

“Yes, Munson. The cheerleader shit.” 

“What happened, anyway?” He resumes the position of being elbow-up on the countertop, which incidentally brings him a little bit closer to you. Incidentally. “You crack some skulls this time?”

“Huh,” you chuckle emptily, “Almost. Um, Tina more or less took me out at the knees. Which, I understand of course. If I were her, I would have obliterated me, but–” 

“You’re not her, and it doesn’t feel awesome to be on the other end of obliterated,” Eddie nods, giving you a squint-eyed pout of mock-sympathy. “Poor Lacy. Getting shitkicked by the consequences of her own actions.”

Thunk! You punch him in the shoulder, which hurts and he gasps, but it’s so funny and categorically unladylike coming from you. These little peals of violence that keep coming off you are a seemingly bottomless source of amusement for him. 

She’s so funny-looking when she’s mad. 

“Fuck off!” you bark, as if reading him like a goddamn horoscope, but there’s a glimmer to your narrowed stare. “I got replaced by a sophomore, as if I needed an insult topping on that injury shitshake.” 

“Oh, she Old Yeller’d your ass!” Eddie gasps again, chuckling heartily, “Took you out back and–” He mimes blowing your brains right out, nailing you right through the forehead. You stare at him square, unimpressed. “Who usurped ya?”

“Chrissy Cunningham.”

Oh. Well, isn’t that interesting. Eddie’s lips flatten into a straight line and he makes a little mmh sound. And you pick up on that immediately, being that you’re annoyingly perceptive. 

“Munson! Come on!” 

“What? Whaaat? I didn’t say anything!”

“That’s a child.”

“That is a sophomore and you said so yourself. Besides…” he trails off, pointedly crushing the butt of his cigarette into the ashtray until it’s oversquished. “...we have history.”

If his cigarette extinguishing was pointed, yours is needle sharp with the way you crush it into the ashtray right next to the remnants of his. 

“Go on,” you hum, just like you did in the van that last night. I really wanna know. It’s conspiratorial and intoxicating and makes it feel like you’re on his side, which you know he’s not but it’s so, so tasty to think that for a second you might be. 

Is this how you make everyone feel? Lull ‘em into a false sense of security? Hoard your ammo and go apeshit later? 

Eddie draws back, nearly congratulating himself for doing so. “That’s for me to know, and you to die ignorant.” 

The way your lips pop open is almost too good, your little doll face turning to a mask of betrayal too quick for you to hide it. Too quick for you to be all like fine! Keep it to yourself! You’re both totally irrelevant anyway! or whatever other bitchy retort you’re bound to come up with. 

“Wow. Well, if that holds any water, Carver’ll shit,” you start, sipping on your beer, “His little virgin Mary deflowered by the devil’s first alternate.” 

“Hey, I never said–!” Fuck. Fuck! How do you do that! Eddie pinches his lips together as you smirk over the rim of the beer can, all stuck under your gaze. Fly in the spider’s web. 

“A-ha,” you say, irritatingly smoothly. “So nothing happened. She’s just spank bank material.” 

“Didn’t– say that either,” Eddie mumbles, mind going annoyingly blank under your rapid fire tearing and the inebriating way you’re delivering it. He hates this and he has no intention of telling you to stop. The duality of man. 

“Didn’t not say that, though.” 

“You oughta be a lawyer,” he tells you, swigging deep, “the way you find a loophole in everything.”

“The way you want me to get you off, you mean.” 

You come out with that, something so incendiary, oh-so-casually and slip off your seat. She can’t just do that. You’re padding around the living room again, bare footed and small-looking, but Eddie’s staring at you like you’re a hand grenade with the pin missing that also has the secret to everlasting life inside. Terrified. Fascinated. 

A little stiff.

“What?” he breathes, but doesn’t really want you to answer the question. 

And you don’t, you just keep looking around the living room with your arms crossed over your chest. “You need money to be a lawyer, Munson. To go to law school. To go to any school. And I don’t have that. And I foolishly figured getting a cheerleading scholarship would be a cinch of a backup plan, and now I can’t do that either.”

“What are you looking for?” he asks, finally willing his dick down and his legs to work, rounding into the living room with you. 

“Your, like… stereo, or record player, or something,” you murmur, smoothing down his boxers over your hips. “It’s too quiet in here.”

Eddie blinks. What should really happen is he should say, no, stay out here in the silence, you insolent wench. Think on your crimes. Reflect. Repent. Stop being such a bossy little ballbreaker and give my balls a break.

“Room. Uh– it’s in my room,” is what he says instead. 

“‘kay,” is all you say with a little shrug of your shoulder, grabbing your can from the counter and padding down the hallway toward that same bedroom. His bedroom. Eddie Munson’s bedroom with his bed and his shit in it. “Let’s go.”

How irregular does your heartbeat have to get before you classify it as a cardiac event?

-

There’s only so many times you can flagellate yourself with the ol’ what the fuck are you doing thing before it becomes redundant.

Songs get overplayed, nail polish color gets overused, trends die. Things become redundant all the time, and you discard them. 

The notion of what the fuck are you doing in Eddie Munson’s trailer in Eddie Munson’s boxers walking towards Eddie Munson’s bedroom has become redundant because you simply are doing all those things. Not much point in questioning them. The chips have fallen. 

An eerie calm had come over you when he was in the shower and you were staring at all of these trucker hats on the wall– if the insanity is temporary, you might as well lean into it. You can’t go anywhere else. You’re trapped. Might as well get comfortable.

“God, this place is filthy, Munson.” You, with your arms still bound across your chest, toe a discarded t-shirt out of your path as you move into the bedroom with that same reserved interest of a gallery-goer. The place is cluttered, posters and flyers and doodles torn out of notebooks tacked up on the wall in total disarray. Every surface area is covered in what could be organized chaos, but knowing Munson the little that you do, you doubt it. 

To test the theory, you ask, “Where are your records? Tapes, anything?”

But he’s just lingering in the doorway, chewing on the end of a lock of hair. Watching you stand in the middle of the room with astronaut eyes, unblinking. It’s kind of– sweet, in a deeply unnerving way. He looks like a kid. 

Your brow furrows, grimace turning your lips into a point.

“Fine. Ogle me like a goddamn lobotomy patient, then.”

You resume your perusing of his things, when you spot the most precious piece of hardware hanging by the mirror. A marbled black and red body fashioned into nasty spikes. You reach out to give the strings an aimless thrum but your wrist is rapidly snatched away. 

“Nuh-uh. That’s where I draw the line,” Munson says, shuffling you away from the guitar like a security guard. A flash of something as your calves hit his mattress– him shepherding you toward your own bed, you drunk out of your gourd. “Siddown.”

And you sit, bouncing against the sinking mattress on impact. Rubbing at the spot on your wrist that his fingers had been squeezing. Staring up at him glowering down at you. “Ow.”

And Munson, it turns out, knows where everything is in his nuclear fallout of a room. He shoves a shoebox of tapes into your hands and nudges a bigger milk crate full of records nearer to you with his foot. 

“Knock yourself out,” he huffs, flinging himself face-down on the mattress next to you. You jerk; always the court jester, this guy. “Not that you’re gonna find anything you want to listen to.” 

A scoff flies out of your mouth before you’ve got a chance to suppress it– he’s gotta know, right? He’s gotta know he can’t just say shit like that to you without you fully activating that I can do anything you can do better–backwards–bleeding–in heels chip in your brain. You’ll show him. There’s nothing that matters to you more in the world right now than showing him. 

Though, rattling through his box of tapes, each one bearing a different variation of hot chick and the Devil artwork, you’ve got your work cut out for you. W.A.S.P. Mercyful Fate. Dirty Rotten Imbeciles. Witchfinder General. Some band that’s literally just called Loudness, for Chrissake. As you flick and flick, hope wavering, one catches your eye. There’s a jump in your throat. Scrawled letterhead against a draped satin background. A photo of something you always figured was a headless marble statue, though you could never be sure. 

“Why do you have this?”

No response from the corpse of Munson, presumably smothered by his own comforter.

“Hey!” you tap the back of his skull with the plastic casing. One eye appears, glaring up at you from the mattress. Rattle rattle goes the Cocteau Twins tape as you shake it in its case. “Thought this was haunted doll music.” 

“Ow.” Munson slowly raises himself onto his elbows, looking like he’s about to start kicking his legs in the air behind him. Twirling his hair around his finger. A grin is edging onto his lips, lips he’s pulling strands of hair away from. 

“Sometimes the five finger discount chooses you.” 

A feeling akin to heat spreads rights across your breastbone. You want to pry, secretly. You want an explanation. Why would you take that? Do you like me, or something? But asking speaks it into existence, and the insanity is temporary, and you’re so waiting for dawn to break on it so you can resume some hobbled together semblance of a normal existence. 

One that doesn’t include Eddie Munson stealing tapes that make you feel ticklish in order to, I don’t know, listen to them on his own so he can feel ticklish too. 

He hadn’t listened to it, for the record. Not all the way through, at least. 

He’d gotten as far as track two and had to switch it off, ejecting it out of the tape deck of his van with such speed that he was sure it’d shoot clean through the doors in the back. Too close, too real. That had veered a little out of the lane of objectifying you as someone whose crotch he maybe wanted to bury his face in and a little into the lane of you being like, a person. With feelings. 

The events of tonight aren’t helping that case. He hoped that lying face down for as long as he possibly could might let them just unfold around him, like he’d roll over and you’d just be gone, no evidence left behind except for your hair in the drain. 

But you demand attention. Eddie might be obvious, but you demand attention. His attention, at least. 

He grabs the tape from you. “We’re not listenin’ to that bullshit. Try again.”

“Fine!” you snap, but there’s this irritating bemusement dancing around your face. 

You lean forward from your spot on the mattress and tug the milk crate between your calves. Now, this is more your lane– in here, Munson’s got the classics. Or as close to the classics as he will deign to recognise. Zeppelin, Sabbath, Alice Cooper, Blue Öyster Cult– the combination of which you have something borderline mean to say about, but you’ll leave that ‘til later. You dig around, and then.

And then. Hello there, handsome.

In your hands are twelve inches of beauty, belonging to a grisly-voiced Tom Waits. Blue Valentine. Straight to the record player with this old bastard.

“People give this record too much shit,” you remark, and Eddie watches you as you tentatively lift a sock off the turntable. Yeah, he’ll cop to it, he doesn’t take such good care of some of his gear, but sometimes his brain behaves like a police scanner. Lotta channels operating at once. Anyway. Doesn’t matter. He’s watching you lift the needle onto the vinyl right now. “People say that this is a mediocre addition to the oeuvre, but what is mediocre about this–!”

Rousing strings seep from the stereo speakers– it’s Waits’ cover of Somewhere from West Side Story. Eddie knows it within the first half a second because, and now he’ll never admit it since he knows you like it so much, he has played this album to death. 

Somewhere around the halfway mark of Christmas Card For a Hooker in Minneapolis, the record will skip because it's scratched. Or well-loved, if you ask Eddie. 

“Fucking Robert Christgau thinks he’s being funny, doing this, y’know,” you sneer, examining the record sleeve as if you hadn’t seen it thirty thousand times before. Your copy had been lost in the move, among a number of your little sonic secrets. The records you’d keep to listen to by yourself, lying on your bedroom floor. “As if the whole core of Tom Waits’ whole thing isn’t heartache, the sentimentality of what-if. What if we could, what if life wasn’t garbage. That’s sentimentality, right there. It’s West Side Story, I mean, c'mon. Tom Waits is singing to us with his heart on his sleeve, but Christgau wants to suddenly be pedantic, turn around and be like, it’s a vaudeville act! because Waits sometimes also wears his dick on his sleeve.”

It’s a tirade you’ve often repeated to yourself, in your diary or alone in your room, pretending like you’re on a panel, pretending like you’re Susan Sontag and people actually give a shit what you actually have to say. You can’t exactly figure why you’ve said it again now. Maybe because you always found the strings on this song too much to bear without emoting, and you’re already vulnerable and tired. 

Munson, for his part, has flipped over onto his back on the mattress. “Who?” he drones.

“Robert Christgau,” you say, momentarily distracted by the way his shirt has rucked up around his belly. No six pack. Some meat there. Tendons, like you’d noticed before. “Just one of the most seminal rock writers of our time.”

You have a well-thumbed copy of his Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies somewhere in a still-unpacked box.

Munson has a happy trail that curls like brushstrokes.

“You fucking trifler,” you grumble.

His face takes on that terrible look that he’d given you in the record store, all enraptured and cloudy at the corners of his eyes. Looking at you from where he leans on his elbows, one knee propped up, rocking back and forth ever so slightly. You want to shove it back down. 

And see what he’ll do about that. 

“How do you know all this shit?” he asks. Eddie can’t help this. He can’t help that he keeps changing his channel about you (again, police scanner) because one second you’ll be such a massive pain in the ass, then the next, you’ll say something so clever that it’ll make him want to vomit. 

“I like music,” you say, flatly. You give it to him straight, because you suddenly feel searched. You clutch Waitsy’s printed face to your chest in an effort of self-defense. “And I like… words. Kind of makes sense that I would enjoy music journalism, if you’re not totally stupid.” 

“I’m only a little stupid.” 

“Debatable.” 

“Wait, but I mean–” and he’s gearing up, because Eddie is about to ask you a real question. Something that’s been on his mind, the more ice shavings he can tear off of you. Considering you, all three dimensions of you– four, if you add in how much you like to punch him and stuff. “You’re like, incredibly smart, right.”

“Yes.”

“Like, perfect grades.”

“Almost. Save Kaminsky, because he can’t teach for shit and he can’t grade for piss.”

“And you’re a cheerleader… like, an important one?”

“Artist formerly known as, but yes.”

“And you’re on the newspaper.” 

“Very perceptive, aren't we.”

“You’re also popular– or, yeah, were. You party and stuff. You’re always hanging out with those assholes who don’t do half the shit that you do.”

 “Are you closing in on a point here, Munson?”

“How?” he nearly whispers, tone close to dreamy. “You’ve gotta have like, body doubles running around or something because no human person could possibly have that much time in the day. How the fuck did you do all that and also be running around ready to cite, like, an issue of the New Yorker from 1975, and not go completely insane?”

How do you know I’m not completely insane. Because, if he had ever witnessed how Jekyll and Hyde you could get, smacking the shit out of yourself with your hairbrush before you could turn on and be Lacy the cheerleader, Lacy the hot chick, Lacy the playground bitch, he would think you are totally insane. 

You answer him half-straight this time. 

“Diet pills.”

This makes him sit up, and makes you take a couple of steps back towards the bed. You flop down, tossing the Blue Valentine sleeve to the side. 

“Diet pills,” he repeats. 

“Oohhh, yes,” you nod, drawing the shape of the cylindrical pills on his comforter with your finger. You don’t really want to look up at him. “Rainbow diet pills. Soon as I hit my menses, I started lifting them from my mom.” 

“Isn’t that stuff illegal?” Eddie murmurs out of the corner of his mouth, mimicking your criss-cross applesauce seating position. “It’s basically speed, right?”

“Said the drug dealer,” a snort bursts from you. You’ve moved your fidgeting, starting to braid your half-damp hair. “And it is. It’s fully speed. I was doing baby Valley of the Dolls at age thirteen.”

“That is fucked up, Lacy.” 

“Yeah. Well. I'm a little fucked up, or haven't you heard?” 

“There’s been rumblings.” Eddie watches your fingers work, weaving locks of hair, one over the other. He’s never braided his hair. He wonders what it might look like. You come to the end and twist it around your finger, at a loss for a hair tie. He sticks a finger under his leather and silver bracelet, digging out an elastic he keeps handy, just in case. There are a lot of times that Eddie needs to yank his hair out of his face just to focus. “Here.” 

You mouth a silent thanks and wind the elastic around the tuft of hair. Tom Waits whines away about rain washing memories from the sidewalks and you feel weirdly… at ease. You’ve shared a couple of rainbow diet pills with Nicole and Carol (Tina doesn’t mess with amphetamines, a consummate athlete), but you’ve never had anyone ask you how you’ve managed to be the person you’re pretending to be. 

To put the clues together about your impossible do-it-all identity.

And not react in disgust when he finds out you’re fallible. 

“Hey,” Eddie says. Something about hearing you rattle off, not sniping for once, saying something real… it eased the heartburn. It has loosened his tension around you, a little. He figures it’s his turn to say something real. “I’m sorry I called you evil.” 

Most evil twat at the twat table, you nearly correct. “You had grounds.”

“No, no, I didn’t. You–” this is actually harder for him to get out than he thought, “You’re trying. You’re trying really hard to make the best of a messed up situation, and maybe I should’ve seen that– but I didn’t, because it’s high school, and it’s dumb, and I’m trying too, and we’re all trying, just to survive this messed up microcosm of the world– and– and–" He huffs. It's you gazing at him this time. Eyes sparkling in the half-light cast by his bedside lamp. You're... really pretty. "Jesus, can you just forgive me so I can stop talking?”

“That’s a first,” you say. “Microcosm is a five dollar vocab word, Eddie.”

The way you say his name. “I’m a changed man.”

“Can you use adulation in a sentence next?” Your big grin is devastating.

He leans right into you, dastardly looking suddenly. “Is this provocation getting you hot, you psycho?”

Fingertips braced over your knees, your torso keening just the right amount of degrees to favor him, your stare making an unsubtle job of darting from Eddie’s lashes to his lips to his lashes to his lips… 

“Maybe.” A beat. A heavy beat. “What are you gonna do about it?” 

In any other world, with any other person, the wanting would completely make sense. Wanting him to say nothing more and just do, to plant a big, ringed hand either side of your hips and pull you into his lap. To crush his lips against yours. To dig his hands into your thighs, to wind your fingers into his hair. To feel the chill of silver traveling up, under the back of your borrowed shirt, to press down onto him and–

Hey Charlie, I almost went crazy-ayzy-ayzy-ayzy-ay–

Eddie doesn’t mean to, he really doesn’t mean to, but his head snaps away from you just as the record starts to skip. 

Then the door slams.

Fuck.

“Ed?”

Wayne.

He totally forgot to formulate that plan.

author's notes: ZOOWEE MAMA HOW WE FEELING ARE YOU STILL WITH ME longest chapter in the fic so far. thanks for keepin up. i love you, let's not waste any time, i don't think i've got a lot of notes for you this go around but i love you - there is nothing more secretly pretentious teenage girl than loving joan didion and susan sontag (i know this because i was her, i am her to this day in fragments) but particularly joan didion on keeping a notebook really sticks to one's ribs. this is not the last joan didion ref in this fic, sorry for being unbearable - stella adler, the mother of method acting - steve harrington being the originator of the nickname lacy is a tribute to him showing signs of being a goofy motherfucker from day dot. please see this post. it was always there, we just couldn't see it in freshman year because of all the hairspray - what's going on with tommy hagan? does anyone really care but me, probably not. but for those that are keeping tick on the timeline (don't)- he got held back senior year, hence why he did not graduate with steve and is in the same grade as eddie, lacy, carol, et al. - WICKED LITTLE TOWN!!!! - the stooges t-shirt is yet another flight of icarus pick; al wears a stooges shirt and i creamed because i love the stooges. let's listen to one of my favorites - loudness are a metal band from osaka, japan! they got signed to an american label in 1985, but how did eddie munson get that tape in hawkins, indiana in 1984? well, my theory is that eddie loves music and jerry from main street vinyl loves benzos. a trade's a trade's a trade. - reader, you are an 18y/o girl who thinks you're better than everyone. of course you're stealing lester bangs' opinions on blue oyster cult and making them your own - and shitting on robert christgau bc you've got a wetty for tom waits - also, here is tom waits' cover of somewhere! my theory on eddie being a tom waits fan-- of course he is, that man looks and sounds like billy goat gruff and is a storytella just like eddie is. he would especially be into his later stuff, like the megalithic orphans album. y'all remember this song from shrek 2 - rainbow diet pills were a real insane thing! this seems more accessible than adderall for the time period, which modern!lacy would certainly have been abusing - for the time that's in it, let me present tom waits' anti-christmas song, christmas card from a hooker in minneapolis my loves, if you've still stuck with me this far, i thank you greatly. i know i'm nutso but i'm having fun writing this fic. i would've been writing it if nobody was reading, but it's a billion times better now that you are. reblogs are always appreciated, and the inbox is always open to chat shit ♡

#published by powder #in progress #hellfire & ice #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x f!reader #eddie munson smut #eddie munson fic #stranger things fic #e. munson by powder

[fatehbaz]

On the night of April 30, 1541, the Ming Ancestral Temple in Beijing was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. [...] 

[T]he fires forced the Jiajing Emperor to resurrect one of the dynasty’s most expensive, difficult, and destructive projects: the logging of old-growth timber in the far southwest of China. Disaster struck again in 1556, when fires burned the Three Halls that form the central axis of the Forbidden City. The Three Halls burned yet again in 1584. Through the end of the sixteenth century, repeated damage to the imperial palaces forced reconstruction. Yet the lightning strikes in Beijing were also a disaster for the old-growth forests of the southwest, where the logs to build the palaces had first been cut in the early 1400s. As logging supervisors soon learned, ancient trees could not be felled on a regular basis. Officials pressed ever deeper into the gorges of southern Sichuan and northern Guizhou to find them, bringing massive transformations to the environment in the process.

---

The foundations of Beijing were laid between 1406 and 1421 by the Yongle emperor, a junior son of the Ming founder, who moved the court to his personal appanage in north China. [...] Grasping the sinews of power that connected his court to far-flung regions of the empire, Yongle pulled one million laborers to Beijing to build his palaces.

Because the weight of Chinese buildings is carried by their pillar-and-beam frameworks (liangzhu), monumental buildings required monumental trees (Figure 2). So Yongle also dispatched a similarly large labor force to the old-growth forests of the far southwest to cut the fir (Cunninghamia lanceolata) and nanmu (Phoebe zhennan) that grew straight and tall enough to be used for imperial construction.

We cannot be certain just how many logs were cut to build Beijing, but the figure must have been astounding. In 1441, two decades after the completion of the project, 380,000 large timbers were left over from the earlier construction. By 1500, these too were gone, used for repairs or too damaged by rot to be used for construction purposes.

---

In the sixteenth century, logging officials wondered how their predecessors had been able to obtain so many giant timbers. Li Xianqing, who supervised more than 40 logging sites in the 1540s, noted that large trees could still be found, but they could only be transported out with great difficulty and at great expense. The majority had to be discarded as hollow or insect-damaged.

Even when a quality log was found, it took five hundred workers to tow a log over mountain passes.

Skilled craftsmen were on hand to build “flying bridges” (fei qiao), stone-lined slip roads, and enormous capstans (tianche) to tow the logs up slopes (Figures 3 and 4). In the remote forests of the southwest, loggers faced attacks by snakes, tigers, and “barbarians” (manyi); “miasmatic vapors” (yanzhang, probably malaria); storms, forest fires, rockslides, and raging rivers (Figure 5). Labor teams had to carry their own food and often starved. At the rivers, logs were tied into massive rafts bound with bamboo for buoyancy, towed by teams of 40 men, and then launched on the three-year, three-thousand-kilometer journey to Beijing (Figure 6). Only a small fraction of the trees reached the capital in a condition where they could be used for palace building.

---

Expeditions exceeded their budgets up to fiftyfold.

One official remarked, “the labor force numbers in the thousands; the days number in the hundreds; the supply costs number in the tens of thousands each year.” Another saying held that “one thousand enter the mountains, but only five hundred leave” (rushan yiqian chu shan wubai). To make matters worse, logging mostly occurred within territory that was under only loose Ming control [...].

---

The Yongle Palaces were said to replicate the otherworldly atmosphere of the old-growth forests where their pillars originated. The presence of these timbers in Beijing linked the capital, materially and symbolically, to the southwestern landscape of cliffs and gorges where the trees had grown.

But ancient sentinel trees could not be reproduced on demand. The fifteenth-century logging project was a millennial event, removing the growth of hundreds or even thousands of years. Later officials were forced to come to terms with the transformations their predecessors had wrought in the ancient forests. Eventually builders had to switch to smaller, commercially available timber, using ornate artisanship and commercial efficiency to substitute for the austere majesty of the early Ming palaces, and the thousands of years of tree growth on which they rested.

---

All text above by: Ian M. Miller. “The Distant Roots of Beijing’s Palaces.” Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Environment & Society Portal, Arcadia no. 39. Autumn 2020. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

#abolition #ecology #colonial #imperial #plantation

[brandogenius]

Omg your boygenius x young artist hc was so cute!! Just like think of how they’d tease you like a little sibling (maybe muna does too if you’d wanna write them in) like maybe your parents send you your senior yearbook since you might have not gotten it yet and they are just horrified you JUST graduated highschool and tease you about how young and cute you look in your photos😭 Imagine them just SCREAMING when you win a grammy like for best new artist and the way they’d go to WAR for you if the tabloids were going after you or your getting a lot of hate or like something happens. Think they went to your graduation and we’re just so proud! ok i’m ranting but your writing is so good and being 19 also maybe i’m projecting but you write them SO WELL!!

THANK YOU 😭😭😭🫶 i’m glad you like them!! i love it so much the dynamics between younger reader and the boys in a younger sibling way is my ultimate favourite!!

tiny bit of projecting in this one too mainly because i live for this trope / (if it’s even a trope) hc blurbs whatever you call it !

i’m trying my hardest to base it off an american school system but since i’m not american i apologise if it isn’t correct trying my best to be as actuate as possible !

i’m not too familiar with muna unfortunately! id love to write them in but feel like i wouldn’t do them justice! in the future 100%

‼️ RPF‼️

HC - boygenius & younger! artist

adding on from here :D

- taking away with some stuff anon said the boys are absolutely HORRIFIED when they realise you graduated school last year. what do you mean you were class of 2023?

- “this is a whole ass child we’re talking to”

- i like to imagine they DID go to your graduation. you knew of the boys since your junior year of highschool. opening for them on their tour when they were in your state.

- so many photos taken. ones with you and the boys in your graduation outfit. it was such a sweet moment. your parents meeting the boys for the first time and they surprise you by going to a nice restaurant. you, your parents and the boys.

- booking the biggest table in the restaurant it’s chaos. laughter and chatter is made. phoebe demanding your parents to bring the yearbook when they drop you off for tour.

- i can imagine the boys forgetting you’re not legal, you’re only 19. the boys going to after party’s with your for music awards and freaking out. “SHIT YOU’RE A FUCKING CHILD” julien is grabbing the car keys to drag you back to the tour bus

- when you get your year book you wish the ground would swallow you up.

- the scene unfolds by the boys acting like a pack of wolves that haven’t eaten in months. all grabbing the book to try and peak into it. lucy being the tallest holds it over all of yours head having the perks of being the tallest

- phoebe turns into an ankle biter in that moment. desperate to laugh at your photos and gossip with you about the tea

- you and the boys spend the rest of the night surrounded by the small tour buss table going through all the photos.

- “that guy? he is a bitch don’t like him. used to be mean to me in class”

- the boys got personal beef with some teenagers they never even met before “it’s on sight for real”

- trips to the theme park. it’s so random but you really wanted to go so up they went one day with you like “road trip!”

- the day you win a grammy is the day they feel like they’ve achieved in life.

- at this point they feel like they raised you. i feel like you might be like 25 or something when you get the grammy “they grow up so fast sniff sniff”

- absolutely goes chaos. standing on chairs and cheering (like julian on sunday 😭)

- they’d go ankle biter mode when tabloids and news articles come for you. it is fake news and rumours yet they are prepared to defend you on their LIFE

- defending you, subtly indirecting / actually going as far as @ ting on main twitter. they don’t take no shit and will immediately be by your side!

#pom writes #boygenius au #boygenius fanfic #boygenius one shot #boygenius x reader #julien baker au #julien baker fanfic #julien baker one shot #julien baker x reader #lucy dacus one shot #lucy dacus au #lucy dacus fluff #lucy dacus fanfic #lucy dacus x reader #phoebe bridgers au #phoebe bridgers fluff #phoebe bridgers one shot #phoebe bridgers fanfic #phoebe bridgers x reader

[legoflowrs]

HEADCANNONS

c/w: drinking, drugs, addiction, abuse, slight nsfw

AGED UP TO 18 MY PEOPLE!!!!

A/N: ok so in the headcannons he’s with Stan cause Style is very dear to my heart but in the relationship headcannons he’s with reader xx

Kyle Broflovski

- Massive fucking NERD!! (pls i love nerds).

- Got straight A’s throughout high school.

- Was on the honour roll and was on student council.

- Firm believer in basketball Kyle supremacy.

- Came out as Demisexual and Bisexual (male leaning).

- Stopped being super strict on Kosher throughout high school but kept that a secret from Sheila.

- Never stopped being insecure about his nose. Literally at one point started saving for a nose job till Stan talked him out of it.

- Drinks almond milk.

- Thinks thrifting is gross cause he’s a germaphobe. Washes his hands like 50 times a day.

- When I hear the song Basic Instinct it reminds me of Kyle.

- The Smiths > The Cure.

- Style: Stan fell first, Kyle fell harder (bro i love these dweebs lol).

- Was legit so in denial about being in love with Stan for the longest time.

- His Dad pushed him to study law but he ended up studying psychology to become a child psychologist because he saw the effects of unchecked mental health in children while he grew up.

- Got really drunk once and Kenny pierced his septum. He has it flipped up most of the time.

- Hates glasses so wears contacts.

- Such a fkn mummas boy lol it honestly was a problem at one point.

- Didn’t do his own laundry till he moved out. Did not know how to put sheets on a bed 👍

- Such a good relationship with Ike, he would die for his little brother.

- Did someone say abandonment issues!!!! Could not keep a partner to save his life during high school.

- Smoked weed with Kenny twice and then freaked out after he greened out.

- Got addicted to nicotine during college and used it as an outlet because he put so much pressure on himself to be perfect. Spoke to his doctor and he’s trying to quit.

- Defs listens to Phoebe Bridgers because he has a strange relationship with his dad.

- His dad pushed him to be perfect all the time until Kyle had a massive breakdown in junior year that burnt him out for a long time.

- A family man!!! Wants kids pretty early on into his life.

- A god at poker.

- Hates taking photos of himself.

- Still pretty insecure about his hair but Kenny and Stan helped himself to accept it and even start taking good care of it.

- Really struggled with anger issues.

- Stopped speaking to Cartman completely.

- Forest green is his favourite colour.

- Writes poems and makes people cry with how nice his birthday card messages are.

- First out his friends to get a license. His parents paid for his car.

- Such a damn backseat driver.

- Didn’t really work until he moved out.

- I think he’d help Heidi out at the community gardens.

- After Heidi finally ended things with Cartman, her and Kyle became really close friends.

- Had a friendly academic rivalry with Wendy through high school.

- Him and Wendy study together in college often.

- Has a record player.

- Grew closer to Craig’s gang in senior year of high school. Goes record shopping with Tolkien.

- Very accident prone.

- Has diabetes.

- Loves picnics and simple activities like stargazing.

- Smells like pine needles and the ocean.

- Actually a fantastic swimmer.

- Did drama in sophomore year.

- A massive library in his house. Had to instil a book ban on himself because he was spending all his money on it.

- Really nice eyelashes.

- Comes home to celebrate Hanukkah with his family every year.

- Did long distance with Stan during college. They almost broke up a few times but pulled through.

- Enjoys taking pictures of nature.

- Takes Ike to the movies very often.

- Has the nicest knitted sweaters.

- His guilty pleasure is Taylor Swift.

- HE IS SO MIRRORBALL CODED.

- When he’s in a good mood he loves baking and often bakes for his friends.

- Kenny, Kyle and Stan do day trips together super often. In my world these three never grew apart they are inseparable 🤞🤞

Kyle in a relationship

- An absolute gentleman. Refuses to let you get out of his car without him opening the door for you. Holds doors and pulls out seats. Always gives you his jacket.

- Was very insecure about his sexual inexperience. But y’all guided each other through it. I think there’s something so sweet and special about that.

- Touch tank by quinnie is all I have to say 😼.

- Loves kissing your neck and ears. He kisses your knuckles as well it’s very tender.

- Combusts when he sees you getting along with his family. Especially his Mum and Ike.

- Let’s you touch his hair, it relaxes him a lot.

- Opens up to you about his struggle with his Dad and nicotine. You are his biggest supporter through it all.

- Even though he hates photos, he’ll have a polaroid of y’all in his phone and wallet. Plus a photo booth strip in his car.

- Y’all will bake at midnight together.

- You go on fancy dinner dates together and rate the restaurants in the car together.

- Avid Letterboxed users lol! Give each other show and movie recommendations all the time.

- Kyle always had trouble sleeping but there was something very comforting about your presence so he’ll spend a lot of time at your dorm.

- Writes poems for you.

- Brings you flowers every time the old bouquet dies (ugh what a man).

- BUYS YOU LEGO FLOWERS!!!

- His love languages are gift giving and quality time.

- Keeps a list of all the dates you’ve been on.

- Will take such good photos of you fr! Your biggest hype man.

- I think his short temper would be a problem for you guys but he loves you so much he works on it so hard.

- Your praise means the absolute world to him.

- You guys always go to carnival together and share a caramel apple, it’s like tradition now.

- Couples costume for halloween always.

- Asks for your Dads/Mums/Guardians blessing before he proposes to you.

- Loves the smell of your perfume/cologne. Like it’s seriously intoxicating.

- Proposes to you with his Grandmas ring.

a/n: guys i love kyle so much i’m gonna make his mood board now <3

also if any of these are ooc in ur opinion it’s just for funsies and my opinion hehe

#south park x reader #kyle broflovski #kyle broflovski x reader #kyle broflovski headcannons #south park headcannons #my boy love him

[wutheringmights]

I wanted to read one last book to close out the year, so I shopped through my bookshelf for a small little novel I could read in a few days and ended up pulling out my copy of The Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger (CITR).

I never read CITR in high school. My AP teacher had the privilege of being able to assign us non-state standard readings and took full advantage of it. And in college, professors just assume you've already been forced to read it. But, nope. Not me.

I actually bought my copy many years ago from Goodwill when I lived in [redacted city], then proceeded to forget about it until now. I only mention this because my copy is apparently the UK edition and doesn't have so much as a synopsis on the back. So beyond knowing a little bit about the misinterpreted poem scene and that everyone HATES Holden Caulfield, I had no idea what this book was even about.

And... holy fuck.

This book is AMAZING.

At first, I just thought it was funny. I was enjoying how much of a shit head Holden is, and all the ways he is such a teenager. He's insightful, but draws some of the dumbest conclusions you have ever seen. He thinks he's so suave and cool, and it's so clear that everyone thinks he's a loser. He wants so badly to be thought well of by his peers while not respecting any of them. I love how Salinger writes his narration, how he branches off into little anecdotes about barely related topics.

But at some point, I just got so sad for him. I'm not sure where exactly it hit me, but at some point you can't help but see how tragic he is. He truly is in so much pain and has no idea how to process any of it. He's traumatized and has been failed by every adult in his life. No one is helping him.

But for a character that has such a reputation for being a manipulative man, he really does seem like a child who is scared to grow up. I was surprised to find out that the titular catcher in the rye monologue was about wanting to protect the innocence of other kids. With the way people discuss this kid, you would think he was conspiring to kill, well, John Lennon.

By the end of the story, when he's with Phoebe at the carousel and he's feeling happy for once in his life, I was crying (or as Holden would say, that killed me).

I then proceeded to spend the next twenty minutes staring at the ceiling, just trying to make sense of it all.

It's such a shame that this novel has been so thoroughly marred by its controversy. I tried to talk to my sister about it afterwards, and she just got really hung up about how she always thought Holden Caulfied was a "psycho" and "one-step away from being a school shooter."

Which, no? Did we even read the same book? Are we still talking about the same kid? He's a brat, but he's not out there to hurt anyone one.

I'm not sure how I would have felt about this book had I actually read it in high school. On one hand, I had a hefty respect for classics when I was a teen and would never dare claim that any one of them is terrible or stupid (except The Great Gatsby). But on the other, I think that a teacher that tried to teach this novel as Holden being a character who has profound thoughts and sees through the veneer of polite society (like apparently how it was taught to my brother)... I mean, I would have believed it but adult me certainly doesn't agree.

This book definitely lays a blueprint for Robert Cormier's entire catalogue, and I was obsessed with his books in junior high. So I probably would have inevitably liked CITR.

I'm glad I waited until now to read it. Teenage me wouldn't have understood everything in it. Older and (hopefully) wiser me does, and she will defend Holden Caulfield with her life.

#a new type of girl: 13 year old obsessed with the Chocolate War and I Am The Cheese #it was a CHARACTER trait #me rambling #me reading #bookblr #books #the catcher in the rye #jd salinger

[agracefulfall]

All of Us Strangers ... oof. No spoilers and honestly, I don't know what I'm about to say. I may need a century to process the weight of this film. So what's to follow is unscripted, free flowing.

I'm bisexual, queer. It didn't click until a few years ago (even though I knew subconsciously when I was in junior high). I'm not completely out. Just my best friend, my pub friends, and my online community know. I've dropped hints, albeit subtle, to my family. However I'm not sure how perceptive they've been. There's no doubt that they'll accept me. My sister is trans and queer. Our family has been on this journey with them since I was ten (I'm now 33). It's just that I know they'll make a big deal of it and have a thousand questions to which I don't know that I have the answers to (or that they would understand the answers I do have, and I don't have the energy to explain).

I have SO many thoughts after AOUS ... so so so so so many. Again, I may need a century for thoughts to stop spinning. But one that I keep coming back to is, "tell them, before they're gone". It's one of many regrets that I had with my grandmother. She passed before I was able to even type the words "I'm queer". Instead, I spoke them at her grave and somehow, I know she heard. But my parents? They're still here. Physically and mentally.

The diner scene. When Adam's dad told him how much he loves him and even more so now that he KNOWS him. Oof. In the words of Phoebe Bridgers, "I know, I know, I know". I need to tell them, I know. I just don't know how ... yet.

I think that's all for now. If you've gotten this far, thank you for reading and listening. Please go support All of Us Strangers. There are many more thoughts I have about this beautifully, heartbreakingly tender film.

If Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Claire Foy, Jamie Bell, or Andrew Haigh happen to scan Tumblr and find these words ... thank you, from the bottom of my incredibly sentimental, emotional, delicate, queer little heart, THANK YOU.

#all of us strangers #paul mescal #andrew scott #claire foy #jamie bell #personal #queer #biseuxal #andrew haigh

[eds6ngel]

beth!!! I saw your post about Robin finding out that the reader is bisexual, do you think you could do the same except put Eddie in Robin's place??? sorry if i misspell a word, english is not my language 😅

of course i can honey!! and by the way, your english is great <33

warnings: fem!reader. pre-established relationship. pet names. swearing. mentions of homophobia. eddie being an ally. coming out. one mention of sex. comfort. fluff. both r and eddie are 20 [0.9k].

You and Eddie had been together since your junior year. You were both pathetically in love with each other, extremely open and no conversation was ever off the table. Which meant you allowed Eddie to talk about girls he found attractive, whether that be out in public or through the form of a celebrity. You trusted him with your life that he would never leave you, and coming up to three years going strong, it seemed that you were correct to make that assumption.

Eddie was on his third attempt of senior year, him afraid that his inability to grasp the education system would encourage you to leave him, but you did the exact opposite. You loved him to pieces, no amount of the flawed academic structure would change your mind about that. Even you didn’t take the formal route of college, your dream of becoming a writer meaning that no amount of student debt would improve the skills you had built up in your life. And Eddie supported your career choice, you spending your free time working on your latest book whilst working at a local bakery to help the Munsons pay their bills, you moving in with them shortly after you graduated high school.

However, there’s one topic that never got brought up, because in all honesty, you never thought it needed to be. You had been struggling to grasp your sexuality since you were a child, constantly flicking back and forth between men and women, society pressuring you to choose one, even if one of the options got you berated.

Luckily one day, you came across the term bisexuality, liking men and women, and everything fell into place. But, when Eddie would point out the hot women on the TV screen, you couldn’t help but shrivel up in your seat, knowing that you too found them attractive in the same way he did, not just in an admirable way like he assumed.

The constant agreements of “Mhmm, she’s pretty,” whenever Eddie would focus on Phoebe Cates would rip you apart, when on the inside you were screaming, “She’s the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever seen in my life.”

So, when Eddie decided to rent out a movie called “Desert Hearts,” a story about a female New York professor who falls for another woman whilst staying on a ranch, your heart couldn’t help but flutter. You had an idea he was accepting, Eddie not making any fuss when two boys got outed as gay at Hawkins High, but this was your full confirmation that he had the same attitude towards gay men and gay women.

“I can’t believe this is what people have a problem with,” Eddie complains, “I mean, Back to the Future had Marty find his own mom hot, but suddenly two women falling in love is the worst thing in the world.”

“You don’t mind?” you ask, curled up to Eddie’s chest as he strokes your hair.

“Not only do I not mind sweetheart, I really don’t care,” he admits, “Like, why in the hell would I care if two women are kissing, or cuddling, or even sleeping together for that matter? It’s not my life, and personally… I get it. Like, women are hot, I understand.”

You slightly laugh, nibbling at your fingernails in nervousness as Eddie looks down at you, “Why? Do you have a problem with it?”

“No, not at all… The complete opposite actually,” you purse your lips and frown, “Baby, can I tell you something?”

“Of course princess, anything you want.”

You sigh out, sitting up as you admit your deepest secret that you’ve ever kept hidden from him, “I like women too…”

He remains silent for a minute, letting out a quiet “Oh,” as you don’t look at each other, the both of you afraid of what the other will think. There’s one thing saying it, but when you are faced with it in reality, you can change your mind. You trusted Eddie with your life, but there was something inside of you afraid that, that could happen.

“Well… I’m proud of you for telling me sweetheart,” he says softly, “I can’t lie that after all these years, it does sting a little, but I hope you find the girl for you.”

You brows furrow in confusion, before you click on what you said, “Wait, baby, baby,” you shake your head, chuckling at your own words, a sense of embarrassment flooding your head, “I meant I like women too, as in, as well as men.”

“Oh,” he exclaims, breathing out and letting his head fall into your shoulder, wrapping his arms around your middle as he laughs, yours playing with the hairs at the back of his head. “Jesus fucking Christ sweetheart, are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

He lifts his head up, you placing your hands on his cheeks, “I’m sorry,” you quietly say, “But, yeah… That’s not a problem… is it?”

He lifts his eyebrows and snorts, “You still like men, you still like me, so… I think we’re okay,” he smiles, chuckling and leaning in to press a soft kiss to your lips, one that you gladly return.

“But…” he starts, “You know… if you really are just exclusively into women, you can tell me. Will it hurt like a bitch? Yes. But, in all honesty babe, it’s probably the best way to get broken up with,” he softly laughs.

“I promise you, I find both men and women extremely attractive. And out of everyone in the world, you rank the top of that list,” you flirt, Eddie slightly blushing as he presses a kiss to your neck, hugging you once again, the pair of you separating to shift into your previous comfy position.

“Okay, but now I have to ask,” he says, “Phoebe Cates is hot, right?”

You grin up at him, biting your lip, “So fucking hot.”

this was a lil short one, but i hope you enjoyed regardless!! <33

#eds6ngel #eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson x fem!reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson comfort #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson fic #eddie munson blurb #eddie munson boyfriend #eddie munson x bisexual!reader #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson x female reader #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson x bisexual reader #stranger things

[nebelihood]

i loove that you’re getting back into hey arnold i look at your artwork all the time cause it’s genuinely so amazing to me!! your animations and comics always make me smile!! i’m curious if you have anymore headcanons and stuff about lila? i think about her and helga alllll the time because i feel like there was so much untapped potential between them and a potential frenemy-like relationship like omgg i could go on and onnn.

HIII THANK YOU SMM!!!!! AJAHSK I DOOO AAAGHH- Actually I thought about something really cool for Lila and Helga but it's gonna take some time for it to be seen qwq-

but for now my current headcanons for junior high Lila and Helga is that- Helga still doesn't like Lila that much. Lila likes Helga and since she's becoming popular (and sadly and slowly a little more superficial) she likes to annoy Helga (always having somewhat of a respect between eachother)

Then we have Helga on highschool without Arnold- There Lila has left behind many recognizable faces (except Phoebe and some others perhaps) right now we don't know what has happened with Lila but something tells me she'll probably cross paths with Helga again ewe,,,

#hey helga #hey arnold #question #nebelihood #compliment

[paigemathews]

I’m working on a fic that includes teen!Paige and like. You can tell I didn’t go to parties. or drink. or be even a little bit rebellious. We’re just gonna go with it, the show fucked up enough continuity that we can just pretend this is an accurate depiction (it v well could be, i’m bullshitting my way through this part and we’re just gonna call it a day)

#abi speaks #i googled how to shotgun a beer #i cannot emphasize enough how much you cannot judge me for my depiction of paige's (or phoebe's if i ever write her as a teen) #rebellious experiences bc i didnt go to my first college party until junior year didnt drink until three months after i turned 21 and #have spent the vast majority of friday and saturday nights playing sims on my laptop

[darkodomain]

i'm not whole || danny phantom

DVD Menu // Pheobe Bridgers Kids Will Be Skeletons // Mogwai Crystalised // The xx Philosophy of Time Travel ?? Michael Andrews of the Donnie Darko OST Loud(y) // Lewis Del Mar Nightcrawler // James Newton Howard of the Nightcrawler OST Gossip // Tame Impala Daydreaming // Radiohead 2AM // Bear Hands Yes I'm Changing // Tame Impala Clouds // BØRNS Where Is My Mind? // Pixies Hometown // Twenty One Pilots A Lack of Understanding // The Vaccines Mourning Sound // Grizzly Bear Under the Milky Way // The Church Trouble // Cage the Elephant THE QUIET // Troye Sivan Time After Time // Gunship Running Up That Hill // Coldbones Silk // Wolf Alice I Know The End // Phoebe Bridgers Truce // Twenty One Pilots If It Bleeds It Leads // James Newton Howard of the Nightcrawler OST

oh man. oh man oh man. would you guys believe this playlist started almost ten years ago? on fuckin 8tracks? on my second rewatch ever? jesus what was I... 16? christ.

anyways. wowza I started this when I was writing my angsty little one-shot on quotev back when i was like, a junior in high school. and here I am starting my third year of post-grad in a med program, a grownass adult, and i'm rewatching again after so so long and i actually felt inclined to reopen this mix and update it. of course of COURSE the (ecto)core is still there, just a few additions from more recent years to round it out and goddamn, do they fit perfectly or what?

from one antique Phan to the rest of you. thank you for keeping this show alive. it's time i shared this.

*spotify linked in the title*

#danny phantom #phantom of truth #shadow of a doubt #danny fenton #playlsit #music #troye sivan #borns #twenty one pilots #nightcrawler #donnie darko #radiohead #tame impala #the vaccines #grizzly bear #gunship #wolf alice #danny phantom playlist #nickelodeon #phoebe bridgers