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luveline · 11 months

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𝐚𝐧 𝐮𝐧𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐤𝐞𝐧 𝐝𝐞𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 | 𝐦𝐢𝐠𝐮𝐞𝐥 𝐨'𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚

you and miguel have different definitions of the same word. he finally gives in to temptation —featuring a cranky but lovesick miguel and a flirty, head-in-the-clouds spider-girl. pre across the spider-verse but contains spoilers. requested here. fem!reader, 3k

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

This has to be your favourite song in the whole world.

You sit in the hall beside the entrance to Miguel's office (this week, you're thinking you might call it The Bedroom, on account of all the magic happening inside), headphones on, a bottle of lemonade beside you.

Today has the makings of a great day. You're at the Spider Society headquarters and not at home, for starters, and one of the Peter Parkers you'd made friends with in the med-wing saw you this morning and recognised you, which is brilliant because he looked super similar to every other Peter Parker you've met. He offered to help you fix your rinky-dink headphones, and now they're working again and loud enough to cover the sound of Spider Chatter, even with your enhanced senses.

What's more, Miguel has finally emerged from his dormitory, and he's walking toward you looking confused. That's a step up from unhappy.

He asks you something.

"What? I can't hear you."

He says something else. You shake your head, music too loud to catch even a hint of what he's saying, and Miguel eventually crouches down to push your headphones around your neck. He's surprisingly gentle.

"What are you doing?" he asks.

"Waiting for you, what did you think I was doing?"

"Why are you sitting on the ground?" He gestures backward to a red-lit control panel. "Chair right there."

"I think that's someone's desk."

"It's really not."

Miguel stands up and doesn't hesitate to grab your arms and help you up too. It means more to you than it should, because it's not necessary and a few months ago he wouldn't have bothered. Which isn't to imply that Miguel is a mean guy, Lyla says he used to be a loser (code for sweetheart), and you get flashes of it every now and then in chivalry and kind smiles.

He's not mean, he's cranky.

"Don't sit on the floor," he says. "Just– just go inside if I'm not here."

"Well, The Bedroom doesn't come when I call."

Miguel's lips part in confusion for a second. Lyla appears at his shoulder, and says, "She can't get the platform to come down without you, genius."

"Put her name on the command list," Miguel says.

Your eyes widen. Lyla flashes to his other side, closer to you, and smiles playfully. "Done."

"Stop sitting on the floor," Miguel says, turning around. He walks a few steps and pauses when he realises you're not following. "Are you coming with me?"

You jog to catch up with him. Music plays against your collar, a slinking, indie sound that makes Miguel wrinkle his nose. You turn it up a little bit and smile when he glares at you.

You enter the atrium that houses The Bedroom. Miguel hops up onto the platform because he's too tall to see sense while you struggle, but you're pleased when he takes your hand and pulls you up properly. All these familiar touches today, anyone might think Miguel liked you.

He definitely does.

You sit down in the spinning chair near what you've decided is your desk but certainly isn't, again pleased beyond words when you find your sketchbook from last time still there, cleaned away carefully, pencils in a pot and a brand new pencil sharpener by the side of it. It matches your spider suit. You look over your shoulder, your face lit up with thanks, and Miguel swiftly looks away from you.

"It's electric. Tell me when the battery's dead, I'll charge it."

"Thank you," you say, flipping your sketchbook open to the last entry.

You aren't Picasso, but most members of the Spider Society are somewhat artistically inclined, considering the suit-making rite of passage they must all endure —if you don't know how to sew before you start, you will by the end.

Or like Miguel, you could cheat and make the suit out of nanotechnology.

You haven't really been designing any suits lately. Spidering is tiring, you need to relax, and your reluctant friends are the easiest subjects, though Miguel's face is painstakingly difficult to get right. He's very angular, high cheekbones with that divot that needs kissing stat, and his nose… He's really pretty, but you almost wish he wasn't so your sketches of him held a better likeness.

He's the only one of the regular crew that stands still long enough to be drawn. Jessica doesn't like you (or maybe she does, it's hard to tell, but she hasn't forgiven you for asking if her baby was like a maraca bead when she fights) so she doesn't let you draw her. Lyla will stand very still if you request it, but after a few portraits she got bored and started changing her hair or glasses, and after a few more she gave up. Margo is hard to focus on because her blue light makes everything else seem super orange, though she does stand in one place usually. She takes up a lot of pages, but it's Miguel you've drawn most of all.

You go around the Spider Society sometimes asking people if they'll sit for you, but again your skills aren't impressive, so it's awkward when they want to see how you've done. There are drawings of all kinds of Spiders, including yourself, between Miguel, and Miguel, and Miguel.

His back, the side of his face, his hands ungloved. His pointy bottom teeth mid fight. The naked stretch of his arm and his Rapture injector positioned over it. He might not appreciate that one. You rip it out and toss it in the waste paper basket under your desk, where it incinerates, paper smoke curling up toward the extractor fan on the atrium ceiling.

"What are you doing?" he asks without looking at you, his gaze on one of his marigold coloured monitors.

"Drawing." You're not drawing so much as sitting there with a coloured pencil in hand, trying to think of conversation starters. "What are you upto?"

"According to the program, there are no Canon events today at risk of disruption," Lyla chimes in, "so Miguel's doing chores."

"What, not one bad thing is gonna happen today?" you ask.

"Nothing we can predict," Miguel says.

You swap your pencil for your drink, unscrewing the lid of your lemonade to sip at it leisurely. Today is your favourite kind of day. No fighting, lots of time with Miguel, and music to go with it. You're so happy you could melt.

Miguel turns to you and sees your stickying smile.

"What?"

"Nothing. Just happy to be here with you," you say.

"Don't say stuff like that," he says, turning back to his screen.

"Scared you'll actually experience sincerity?" Lyla asks.

"Lyla," he warns, as though Lyla might be afraid of any consequence he had the power to inflict.

"Sorry," you say, not very sorry, but not wanting him to be uncomfortable, "it's just nice, being friends with you."

"We aren't friends."

You're not quick to take offence with Miguel. He can be cruel. He's hurting, he's unhappy, he has a lot on his plate. Oftentimes he's so tense with apprehension his neck locks up and you hear it clicking as he turns one way or another, or if he isn't apprehensive he's disappointed, furious, upset. You give him the benefit of the doubt because you know him, but you don't know the tone of voice he uses now. It's like he's offended at the insinuation. Like he would never, ever be friends with you.

You put your lemonade on the desk and don't know what to do. His insipid floating platform is too high now to leave without causing a scene. Maybe when he's busy you can web down and go home. All you know is that you desperately don't want to be near him. But home sucks, and the dormitories are worse. You're stuck.

"You can be so mean," you say softly, turning back to your sketchbook and pencils.

You're thinking you might draw him with a bunch of bee stings, or find a previous sketch and cross his eyes out.

"What?" he asks.

Your hackles rise. "You're mean. Don't talk to me."

"What?" Miguel stands very still. "Y/N, what?"

"What do you mean, what? I said something nice and you said something cruel. I get it, okay, we aren't friends, so don't talk to me."

"I've upset you."

You stare at your blank page. "It doesn't matter."

"No, I've said the wrong thing."

"Miguel, don't bother. What else could you mean by that?" You laugh with little humour. Crestfallen doesn't begin to describe how you feel. "I'll be quiet. I just don't want to be at home."

"What's wrong with home?"

"Is there ever much right?"

"Did something happen?"

"We aren't friends, so why ask me?"

You bite the inside of your lip as Miguel approaches, his footfall hushed over the lightweight metal flooring. You turn to him in your chair, head tilted back to meet his eyes, arms crossed over your stomach defensively.

"That's not what I meant when I said that." He speaks slowly, firmly, to avoid any misunderstanding. "What's wrong with home, mi cielo?"

You tap his ankle with your shoe, looking away from his gaze. You don't want to tell him, and if he keeps looking at you like that, you will.

"¿Qué pasó?" He bends at the waist slightly, bringing his face closer to yours, dark hair falling into his eyes.

"I don't know what that means," you murmur.

"Did something happen?" he asks.

"Nothing happened, it's just– it's lonely there," you say, squirming under the weight of his gaze, his sudden caring. "What's with you? One minute you're not my friend, the next you're worrying about me? You're giving me whiplash."

He stands up, and his face falls back into a more typical emotionlessness. He's clearly feeling something, but he's wiping the slate clean.

"When I said we aren't friends, it didn't mean–" He grunts, crossing his arms over his chest. "I thought you were staying in the women's dormitory?" he asks, frustrated.

"I am, but I'm useless, and they don't really respect me because I'm–"

"Eccentric?"

"–not as experienced," you finish, eyes flaring.

"Oh, my god," Lyla says, appearing in front of him to make sure he sees her delight at his slip up.

Miguel bats her hologram with an annoyed grunt. She disappears again, her tinkling laughter cut short.

"It's a good thing," Miguel says quickly.

You stand up. "It's not the point."

"You should feel at home in the dormitory, and if you don't, I'll find you somewhere else to stay here, you don't have to be in there if you don't feel welcome."

"Miguel, you're sounding awfully friendly right now."

"We aren't friends," he says again, stepping closer to you. "What's so hard to understand about that?"

"But we spend time together. We have fun. You like me, Miguel, you do, you tell me jokes sometimes, you make me things for me. You… you do like me, right?"

"You know that I do," he says, his eyebrows pinching together.

"You like me, like, you want me," you say, just to make sure.

His fist clenches hard enough to make an audible sound. Miguel's voice is fraught, and through barely parted lips, "If you know that, what's the problem?"

You don't know. Maybe it was silly to worry about how he sees you, because you do know that Miguel likes you, but you also know he hadn't wanted to like you. His attraction to you was reluctant, you're not stupid enough to miss that, and it was important to you that whatever tension sexual or otherwise lingering between you had bloomed into mutual affection.

"I want us to be friends, too," you say.

"I thought we were more than that."

It's such a quiet admission. He isn't afraid to say it, and he isn't reluctant like you feared.

"Miguel," you say. "I want you to like me. I know I can be off-putting, I know I tease too much, but I don't want you to like me despite those things, I just want you to like me. So, when you say we aren't friends…"

"I've never heard you say three serious sentences in a row," Miguel says, reaching out for your hand. He pulls you toward him slowly, his fingertips gliding up the length of your arm. "Then again, it's the same nonsense as usual."

"Miguel–"

"Of course I like you. How else do you need me to say it? I like you and I want to kiss you, I like you and I like that you're irregular. You want us to be friends? Then let's be friends." Miguel's hand closes around your bicep. His thumb presses against soft fat and muscle alike. "But not just friends."

Relieved, you sigh. "So you're saying we really weren't friends?"

Miguel leans down until his face is the only thing you can see. His smooth skin, his dark eyes, their darker flush of too-long lashes; it's unfair how pretty his eyelashes are, how they curl, how they bunch in triangles you have to fight to resist touching. His eyebrows so often slightly set, giving him an unhappy expression even now.

He brings the hand that isn't clasped at your bicep to the hill of your waist. It's hot as a brand, and it pulls you closer, your neck craning with every inch he steals from between you.

"We can be friends," he says.

His fingers twitch against your arm, and his hand begins to climb. It's not as slow as it feels, conquering the curve of your shoulder, your neck. His hand is big, his thumb pressing into the column of your throat gently.

He looks at you for a measured lapse of time, and you know, finally, that you're on the same page.

"What you said before, 'mi cielo?'" You hold his elbow. "What does that mean?"

"My sky," he says. "My… my heavens. It's saccharine. It's something teenagers say, when they're," —his voice dips, the hand at your waist squeezing tight like you might slip through his hold— "infatuated."

"Just teenagers say that?" you ask.

"No," he allows. "I always thought it was too much."

"But you–"

"Yeah. I did."

The first kiss is surprisingly sweet. On the tail end of words, Miguel presses his lips half-parted to yours, slowly, softly, like the brush of a downy feather. He lingers, and it's your own movement that spurs him on —you shudder up into his lips and he loses control.

The sound he makes is a shock. You try to pull back to check he isn't hurting, and he lets you until he realises why it is you're pulling away. "It's fine, it's okay," he says quickly.

Assuaged of your concern, he pulls you back in and he kisses you, he kisses you, his hand squeezing too tight and his nose bridge sliding up against yours from the force of it all. Your chest feels like a pit and you need Miguel closer if you're ever going to fill it, your hands snapping up to his face like magnets. There's no need to pull him down to you, he's already wading in, not wading —crashing, kissing you so hard your lips burn.

You make a sound that says, hopefully, This is really fun, but don't give me a bruise.

His tongue is a heat at the seam of your lips. Your weight bends, your chest leaning into his front. He doesn't hesitate to ease his hand behind your back and prop you up against him as things get heady, and the only thing you can feel is him.

All those times he almost kissed you, all those times he couldn't cross the gap. He poked and prodded and provoked you into getting into his space and each time you called his bluff. You wanted Miguel to give in, and now he has, it's the meltiest, most stickying warmth you've ever felt.

Voices sound far away, off the platform and down the hall. Jessica and someone else, approaching fast.

Something sharp snags your bottom lip as Miguel pulls away. You press your finger to your sore lip. When you pull it away, blood spots your skin.

Miguel takes your face into his hand and angles your face to a glowing screen carefully, in total juxtaposition of the grip he'd had on your waist.

"Sorry," he mumbles, the tip of his fangs catching the light. His adrenaline must be high.

"Excited?" you ask him breathily.

He wipes your lip with his thumb. The other hand pet's your cheek. You feel suddenly and smotheringly adored, all his attention on your pinprick wound.

"Everything okay up there?" Jessica calls.

Miguel drops your face like he's remembered himself. You turn to your newfound company, Jessica Drew and an unhappy looking Gwen Stacy. This high up, there's no way they can see the state of either of you, mussed hair and Miguel's blushy cheeks, but they'll see you eventually. And Miguel might like you, might want you, might be your more-than-friend, but he's a stickler for appearances, and being found kissing your subordinate dizzy when you're supposed to be working would mortify him.

"I cut my lip on a lemonade bottle," you call cheerily, waving at grumpy Gwen. Her lips perk up. "Miguel's trying to tell me it's my fault. Is lemonade usually sharp?"

His hand flattens subtly at the small of your pack.

"Thanks," he murmurs.

"Welcome, handsome. Is it bad?" you ask, turning back to hip with your lip pouted.

His eyes visibly soften at the sight of you. "Not that bad."

"Alright, good. You'll have to let the platform down, I need to go."

"What? Where are you going?" he asks.

"If we're friends now," you say, lilting, performing a half spin in front of him just to watch his eyes narrow, "I'm going to have to make us bracelets. Friendship bracelets." He clearly doesn't like the idea of being friends still, so you amend with a softer tone, "Friends and whatever that was. Come on, you'll love it. I'll make it match your suit."

He rubs the space between his eyebrows.

"Will you bring your stuff here?" he asks, the platform beginning to lower under your feet.

"Duh. I need to take lots of measurements. I'll be in your hair all day, you'll hate it."

He nods like he agrees. "I'll hate it," he says, deadpan. When he's sure Jessica and Gwen aren't looking, he gives you a smile you've never seen before.

You and I have a secret, it says.

Lyla appears by your shoulder to instantly tell him otherwise. It goes without saying that she's mildly disgusted and extremely smug. "Don't match it to his suit, Y/N. Mr. Heartthrob here needs something soft. How about some baby pinks, hm?"

Miguel sighs, but you barely hear him over your excited gasp. "Yes! Pink and white, for sure, that would be so nice."

"Great," Miguel says. "Perfect. Thanks for that, Lyla."

"You're so welcome!"

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed :D please reblog if you have the time ♡

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glitch-karma · 1 year

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Bungo character's reaction to you drawing them

Dazai

He snuck up on you while you both were supposed to be working

"Y/nnnn~! I'm bored!"

You quickly hid the drawing but he still snuck a peak of it

"What's that?"

He ofc snatched the sketchbook

"My my! It seems you've drawn quite a handsome man!" "NO NO NO"

He proceeded to run around the office showing off your skills as you ran after him yelling

He also took the drawing home with him and actually genuinely loves it

Kunikida

Unlike Dazai, you're actually the one who gave the drawing to him

"Hey uh, Kida?" "What is it? I still have a lot of work-"

When he saw the drawing he was actually speechless

You thought he died for a second as he just mindlessly stared at the drawing

"...Kida-?"

He reached out and grabbed the sketchbook, his eyes never leaving the drawing

"This. This is me, correct?" "Yeah, I just thought you were the perfect model"

You start to get self-conscious as he goes silent again.

"Can I keep this?" "Huh?"

He looked up at you with a genuine smile as he asked again:

"Can I keep it? You're drawing skills are impeccable. I'm honored to have been your muse."

Anddddd you blush immediately and agree

He has it framed by his bed

Atsushi

You also gave your drawing to Atsushi

"I have a gift for you" "Really? For me?"

As soon as he saw the drawing he bursted up out of his seat with stars in his eyes

"Wow, you actually drew this!? It's incredible! You even got my eyes and everything! You really have a gift!"

You smiled as he stared excitedly at it

After he was done spouting out praises and compliments he gave you a big hug

He keeps it in a drawer by his desk

Ranpo

Ranpo deduced it was a drawing of him by the way you kept glancing across the room at him

While you were sharpening your pencil, he snuck over and ripped out the page

"Ugh- RANPO!"

He opened his eyes to get a better look at the drawing

"Awe y/n, you just can't take your eyes off the world's greatest detective can you?" "Wait it's not done!"

He childishly ran around the office as you ran after him

You both were stopped by Kunikida and you got your drawing back

Yosano

You were injured on a mission

After Yosano was done healing you the drawing fell out of your pocket

She was gonna just put it back in your pocket, but then she noticed it had her name on it

She opened it up and was shocked to see such a well done drawing of herself

She blushed and admired the drawing for a long while before folding it and putting it in her own pocket

She kept it and you assumed you lost it

Kenji (Platonic)

You gave the drawing to Kenji as a present

"Wow you really made this with your own hands!"

He was amazed at the drawing and smiled brightly at you

You treated him to beef stew after for all his hard work

Kyoka (Platonic)

To make Kyoka feel more welcome at the agency you made her the drawing

She thought it was a picture at first

"..Why do you have a picture of me?"

After you explained that it was a drawing and that you made it she got really embarrassed

she stared at it for a while and then gave you a hug

"...It's really pretty.."

You patted her head and helped her finish her paperwork after

Chuuya

He came to pick you up for work

While on his motorcycle the drawing flew out of your pocket

You immediately panicked and begged him to go back

As he parked you ran around searching everywhere for it

"Is it really that important? It's just a drawin'."

He saw that you were genuinely distressed and felt bad

He started helping you look for it after calming you down a bit

Unfortunately, he was the one to find it

"Hey is this-"

When he saw it was him he full stopped

You saw he had it in his hand and froze as he said nothing

He burst into laughter

"All of that for a drawing of me!?"

You guys skipped work and he watched as you redrew it as payment for laughing at you

Akutagawa

You were too scared to give it to him in person so you just left it on his desk

When he first saw it he was confused, but he saw it was signed by you

He didn't say anything to you about it the next day so you got scared

You slowly forgot about it till randomly on a mission you both were on

While you two were walking to the destination he randomly spoke up:

"Oh by the way thanks for the drawing. It was well done." "..Huh-"

He didn't say anything else about it and you were very confused

Gin

You and Gin regularly hang out outside of work: during one of these times you gave it to her

She was really embarrassed about it and muttered out a "Thank you.."

She cherishes it and keeps it by her bed

Poe

you hid the drawing in one of Poe's books

When he found it he was amazed

You even included Karl and that made him happy

He wrote a poem about it and he keeps both the drawing and the poem he wrote by his bed

Fyodor

You gave it to him

He just stared at it for a long long time

He nodded before putting it in his pocket

"I'll be keeping this."

He likes it ;)

Nikolai

He grabbed it from you using his ability

He looked at it with stars in his eyes before jumping up excitedly

"Quiz timeeeee~!" "Oh boy.."

"Question one: Why did you draw me, Nikolai Gogol?" "..I just thought you were pretty."

"Excellent! Question two: Do you always think I'm prettyyyy?"

You walked away from him

Ango

Ango works a lot so you found it hard to find the right time to give it to him

Eventually, you just gave it to him at the office

He stared at it for a long time, and didn't say anything

You got scared as he stood up and walked over to you

He suddenly engulfed you in a big hug which threw you off for a second

When he pulled away he had tears in his eyes which made you PANIC

"ANGO- ARE YOU-" "It's beautiful. This is the nicest gift I've ever gotten."

He keeps it framed by his desk so he can look at it every day.

Jouno

...

Dude he's blind-

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betterbooktitles · 3 months

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"I’m certain I’m not the only millennial who feels we as a nation have taken a dizzying turn when it comes to drugs. I remember a uniformed police officer showing up once a week in 5th Grade (a year before Sex Ed) to explain how to avoid buying and taking drugs. Luckily, I already knew the dangers of the drug trade because I had seen The Usual Suspects. I knew cocaine was a bad thing to buy, sell, or steal, especially from a drug kingpin. The D.A.R.E. program, however, let me know how important it was to say no to anything fun, including alcohol. At least until I understood a little algebra first. We did role-playing exercises where we walked one by one toward the portly police officer and he casually asked if we wanted to hit a mimed joint with him. All we had to do was say “no” and walk to the other side of the room, defying the only rule I knew about improv. We wrote essays about how important it was to preserve our pristine bodies and minds, obviously unsullied since we had yet to take the class teaching us how puberty was going to defile them both. I’m still mad that my friend Nicole’s essay beat mine in a contest, and she got to read hers in front of the whole school all because she had the benefit of an older brother who took too much acid and sat in her room all night talking about why the existence of light proved God was real. My essay about a time I saw my friend’s dad drink a beer and then drive his truck somewhere was also good! We signed pledges to enter the new millennium drug-free. We took the red pencils that said “Friends Don’t Let Friends Do Drugs” and sharpened all of them down to say “Let Friends Do Drugs,” “Friends Do Drugs,” “Do Drugs,” and simply “Drugs.” Despite that little rebellious act, my friends and I spent a solid six months swearing we’d never put any harmful substance into our bodies besides every form of candy available.

Imagine how I feel now as a D.A.R.E. graduate becoming my dad’s drug dealer. It’s less thrilling than I thought it would be. Between my father’s warning not to hang around one specific neighborhood in Cleveland as a kid and nearly every TV show about drugs, I thought I’d always be buying marijuana from an intimidating dude who definitely had a gun and would use it immediately if he thought I was wearing a wire. Instead, I now buy marijuana from a well-lit storefront that looks like the Apple Store. I’ve even gone to a place where a guy with an iPad explained what each available strain would do to me. I buy what sounds good with all the confidence of a man pointing at items on a menu written in a language he can’t read. I put it all in a cardboard box. I place a book on top. I mail the box to my dad from my local post office. I tell myself the book is to hide the contraband crossing state lines, but in truth, the book is what clears my conscience. I want to send my dad something edifying while also sending him the drug that all of America worried would make me unable to read if I tried it once. The unrequested book is a red herring to distract from the vice, like when you were young and didn’t want to buy condoms outright at the store so you cushioned them between a pack of peanut M&Ms and a magazine. Hmm, what else did I need, — right, while I’m here — might as well pick up a few condoms.

Right as marijuana becomes legal in most states, I’m about done with the drug. I’ve had three good times on edibles, and one of them was when I felt nothing and fell asleep at 9:30 PM. I’m flabbergasted that my dad likes edibles. He seems to be a man free of anxiety. Case in point, I once brought him some THC lozenges to our summer holiday in Chautauqua, and around dinner time I told him “You might want to only take half of what I gave you” to which he replied, “I took it hours ago.” He was stoned and no one noticed.

While I’m stuck in my head, stoned or sober, wondering why I didn’t take some acting gig 15 years ago, wondering if I’ll ever make enough money, worrying I’m doing everything wrong including in this moment as I write this sentence, my dad is enjoying himself.

Judith Grisel, the author of Never Enough: The Neuroscience And Experience of Addiction, describes using marijuana as throwing “a bucket of red paint” on your brain. She was approaching the stimulant clinically in terms of how it differed from the laser focus of other drugs (THC reacts with many receptors in the brain, cocaine focuses on one), but now every time I smoke, I think of the red paint metaphor. While other people seem able to crank an entire joint and do insanely complicated stuff like function at their jobs, I am reduced to a gelatinous blob, on top of which my eyes and brain are navigating a dream state that, like many dreams, isn’t all that interesting the next day. Mostly, I get high and can’t decide what I want to watch on TV or what video game I want to play, I realize how hungry I am, and then I fall asleep with cereal still stuck to my teeth. Pot, for me, is like the squid ink hitting the screen in Mario Kart: I can still see where I’m going, but everything gets a little harder to do, and the panicked half-blindness makes everything slightly more chaotically fun."

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An essay on Claire Dederer's book Monsters and movies made by monsters.

Writing inside a Toyota Service Center.

Writing mistresses.

#writing #essay #essays #lit #literary #funny #lol #drugs #books #humor #reading #better book titles #dan wilbur #bibliophile #pot #d.a.r.e #just say no #comedy

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tomholland1996simp · 1 year

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Snap || Peter Parker

Summary: It’s been a long stressful day for Peter, so when you come over he can’t help but get mad at certain things you do. Leading to him snapping at his girlfriend.

Haven’t read over so sorry if there’s mistakes.

Being spider-man could be such a stressful Job for Peter, patrolling late at night, trying to juggle with school work and saving the city all made him tired. He felt drained, not just physically but mentally too. That’s why today he wanted to relax in his and his aunts apartment, alone.

However, Peter had forgot that a couple of days ago he asked his girlfriend, y/n, to come over to hang as the apartment would be free. So instantly when he opened the door after he heard a knock, his face dropped slightly when he saw her bright smile. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see her, he just wanted to be alone and be by himself for the day. Normally when Peter is stressed or tired he snaps out at people and gets angry very easily.

“Heyy, Petey” You smiled at your boyfriend, noticing the black bags under his eyes which you would ask about later if he had been getting sleep. You know that Peter is spider-man, you found out when you two were best friends, after the day he told you, you both confessed that you were in love with each other.

“Oh, y/n? Hi” He rubbed the back of his neck, letting you walk into his apartment. Now he regrets asking you to come over, knowing he just wanted to go bed and sleep.

“Did you forget that I was coming?” You let out a little chuckle, placing the two plastic bags on the counter. Before going to Peters, you decided to buy his favourite sandwich from his favourite sandwich shop, Delmars. Then you stopped at another store to get your favourite snacks and drinks for you’re movie marathon that you had planned to do tonight.

“N-no, just didn’t realise the time” He lied, taking your bag from you’re shoulder and putting it into his room. You followed him behind asking him if he wanted his sandwich. “Maybe later, I just ate not long ago” He lied yet again, laying on his bed.

“You okay, baby?” You noticed his mood, normally your boyfriend was excited to see you, he would greet you with a big hug and a kiss. Then he would ramble on about his day or his patrols late at night.

“Y-yeah” He faked smiled as you crawled onto the bed leaning over to peck his lips, him not kissing back.

You raise your eyebrow, thinking he’s playing with you. “Peterrr give me a kiss” You whine as he ignored you looking at his phone. You then decided to straddle his legs, taking his phone from his hands and giving him a kiss. This time he did kiss back but he pulled away quickly.

“Give my phone back, please” He tiredly asked.

“No” You jokingly smile at him, but your smile dropped when you realised he wasn’t joking the whole time.

“Give my fucking phone y/n!” He snapped, snatching the phone from your hands and pushing you off him. He then turned his back from you, going back on his phone.

“m’ sorry” You mutter that feeling sinking in, deciding to go into the kitchen and help May by cleaning the apartment up a little. You hoped that after you was done that Peter would be out of his ‘mood’ or whatever was going on with him.

After an hour the dishes were finally washed and cleaned so you decided to go back into Peters room to check on him. Now he was sitting at his desk doing his homework that was due for Monday, maths. Luckily for him you were quite good at maths, that’s why he would always ask you for help.

“Want some help?” You asked, your voice coming out more quiet than usual.

He just nodded his head as he moved to the bed so you could both sit together. You then explained to him how to solve some problems, basically doing the homework for him as he laid there. You didn’t mind that though, you were happy to help him.

Your talking, however, was making Peter lose his mind, he just wanted silence but you kept rambling on about how to do his homework.

“Ahh shit, the pencil is blunt. Do you have a sharpener?” You look at the blunt pencil and then at him.

He then pointed over to his desk top draw, implying that it was in there. You nodded your head, standing up and going over to the draw looking through it to find the sharpener. “I don’t see it” Turning to look at him, seeing him roll his eyes making you gulp.

“It’s in there, look properly” He said, watching you struggle to find it, the noise making his head hurt.

“I don’t think it’s-“ You was cut off by hearing him get up from his bed, stomping over to you and moving you out of the way. He went through the draw and fount it in a old pencil case.

“It’s right here! Open your fucking eyes next time! Fuck sakes, your making my head hurt!” He snapped at you, shouting. He had never ever shouted at you, nor sworn at you before. He then grabbed the pencil sharpening it a bit too hard making it break.

“Sorry” You stand up fiddling with you’re fingers looking into his eyes but not finding any regret in them.

“Stop fucking apologising y/n, that’s all you fucking do. ‘I’m sorry’ just shut up and leave me the fuck alone!” He shouted stepping towards you making you flinch a little as he yelled. You know Peter would never lay a hand on you, but seeing him right now made you scared.

You didn’t want to cry in front of him but you couldn’t help letting a little sob escape your mouth. His angry expression fell a little, now realising what he had said and how scared you looked.

You then pulled out your phone acting as if you had received a message. “Oh, I-I got to g-go, my uhh my mum messaged saying I can’t stay tonight, got plans” You wiped your eyes with yours Peters hoodie, grabbing your bag and throwing it over your shoulder, not daring to meet his eyes.

“y/n, no please don’t go. I’m sorry, Angel.” He grabbed your arm softly, not wanting you to leave, now regretting the way he had just shouted at you. Your his girlfriend, he shouldn’t ever raise his voice at you. He loves you.

“No, just don’t, Peter” He let go of your arm, hating the way you said his name. You never call him by his name, you always use nick names or cute pet names for him.

“I’m so sorry, baby. Please” He pleaded as you ran to his front door, opening it and slamming it behind you as tears fell down your face. He didn’t run after you, no. But he couldn’t help but feel guilty, looking at the clean apartment that you had cleaned up for him and May. Opening the two plastic bags that had his favourite sandwich in and all your favourite drinks + snacks.

Tears fell down his face, he told you he would never treat you like how he just did. He wishes he could give you the world and beat up everyone who makes you cry, not to be the reason you cry.

————————————

At school

You hadn’t answered any of Peters messages or calls. After he had snapped at you, you decided to let him be alone not wanting to be around him when he was like that. Annoyingly, Peter and you went to the same school, so you knew you would see him on Monday.

Now you’re walking to chemistry, which you shared with Peter. Your running a bit late though, due to not feeling the best today. Maybe it was because you didn’t want to face Peter again, you didn’t know.

“Miss Y/L/N, your late” You’re teacher told you as you walked in, everyone’s eyes on you, but you didn’t want to meet a certain pair. You didn’t apologies or neither answer, your voice would sound too weak as you had already locked eyes with him.

You sat down in your seat, your leg bouncing up and down, wanting the lesson to be over with. Peter sat two rows in front of you, you just kept staring at his figure. He looked better than before, earlier when you saw him his bags were gone and his hair was less messy.

“Y/N since you were late, you can clean the rest of the equipment up” Your teacher told you as she packed her things up, making you sigh.

Once everyone left, you started putting the equipment away, like the test tubes and all the other things. All you could think about is Peter.

Smash.

You hadn’t realised but you had dropped one of the test tubes, the glass shattering everywhere. “Fuck, sakes” Tears pricked you’re eyes, you were so tired and you kept thinking of the fight with Peter. Did he not love you anymore? Are you both broken up? Maybe you really are annoying and you should leave him alone.

Picking up the glass, you didn’t care if you were cutting yourself, you were just upset. “Let me help you” You heard from the door as someone came to help you, picking the rest of the glass up and grabbing your hand.

This voice made your heart skip a beat.

“Shit your bleeding, here sit on the table” Peter helped you to sit on the table, grabbing the first aid kit and cleaning the cuts. You both stayed in silence in the classroom as he wrapped your hand with the hand wraps, making sure it’s not on too tight.

“Thanks” You mutter, keeping your head down, you was about to get up but he stopped you. “I-I uhh I’m sorry, y/n/n. I was just stressed with school and saving the city. I was doing too much and I was so tired, I know it’s not an excuse at all but I love you, baby. I’m so fucking sorry that I said all them things, I didn’t mean it, I swear.” He said truthfully, tears welling in his eyes making you smile a little.

“No, I’m sorry, I was being annoying..”

“No, you wasn’t not at all. I made you cry, you’re my girlfriend and I should never treat you like that because i’m stressed. I know you would never. I’m sorry” He apologised yet again, grabbing the sides of your face.

“It’s okay, Pete. Don’t cry” You smile wiping a tear that fell from his face.

“I love you so fucking much, baby” He smiled leaning in to kiss you.

“I love you so much, Spidey” You chuckle grabbing his face and smashing your lips together.

“Y/L/N, Parker, Hands off each other in the classroom!”

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urfavstargirl1 · 1 year

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Here’s a little prompt ig you can call it for you Eddie fluff buttttt Eddie is crushing on shy!reader? Idk if that helps with ideas but yea :)

hey anon, don't think I forgot about you babe. still in the mood for fluff but finally found the time to write

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

Talk

"Psst," Eddie hisses from the desk next to you.

You look at him from the corner of your eye, turning your head slightly to the other side.

“Hey," he gently taps your desk, giving you no other choice than to nervously peer up at him, "Do you have a pencil I could borrow?”

Borrow. No amount of stars in his eyes or sweetness in his smile could distract from the fact that this would be the fourth pencil in a row he’s borrowed this week.

You almost want to say something, but it’s not worth the trouble. Why make a big deal out of something as small as a pencil?

“Please,” he whispers as the person in front of him passes a stack of papers to him.

You reluctantly oblige. You always have a stash of pencils in your bag. Eddie seems to have observed as much and was poised to use it to his advantage.

Failing to prepare is preparing to fail. At least that’s what your parents always said.

So, of course, you were always prepared for anything. Having a backpack with extra pencils, a sharpener, mini first aid kit, period products, hair ties, and even a snack or two has come in handier more often than you'd like to admit.

It always astonishes you to see people like Eddie who don't seem to be prepared for anything. At least not that you could see in class.

However, it was just your luck that Eddie Munson would be the one to identify this fact of yours, thanks to the stupid seating chart Ms. O’Donnell had in class forcing Eddie sit to right next to you.

You almost resented her for it. Teachers were always sitting the bad kids or the loud kids next to you, hoping your shy and quiet demeanor would somehow cancel theirs out like some stupid pemdas math equation.

But no, that was not how the laws of the universe worked. Sitting next to Eddie didn't make a difference in his behavior, much to Ms. O'Donnell's dismay.

“Thanks, you’re a lifesaver,” Eddie grinned at you, making your eyes widen and heart constrict in your chest. And perhaps that was one of the few plus sides, not nearly enough to counteract the many downsides to sitting next to Eddie: that thing you couldn't quite put your finger on.

Some could call it charm. Others might call it charisma. You weren't sure what to call it. But all you knew was that before this class, you wouldn't have given much thought to Eddie. If you saw him in the hall, you would either not notice him completely or if you did, you probably wouldn't get any goosebumps or an alarmingly high pulse like you do now.

Whenever he smiled at your or talked to you, even about something as simple as borrowing a pencil, he always said it like you were special, and his smile or words were for you and you only.

No one had ever made you feel that way before.

You could barely admit to yourself how much you liked your minute daily interactions with Eddie, let alone tell him.

So like always, you turned your attention forward, failing to ignore that thump thump, thump thump feeling of your heart beat somehow louder or maybe just faster as a result of that stupid smile and tried desperately to ignore the feeling and instead, get to work on your pop quiz.

****

After you've turned in your pop quiz, waited a mind-numbingly boring amount of minutes between the quiz and the end of class, the bell rings.

The sound of the tinkly metal chime brings you back to life. You organize your things in your bag and get up from your desk.

From the corner of your eye, you see Eddie barely finishing up with his quiz.

Just like yesterday and the day before, you know he's not going to give you your pencil back. For all you know, he'll need it for his other classes. Which makes you wonder how he survived the periods before yours.

But for now, you're just relieved class is over and you can enjoy a much needed break at lunch.

You make your way to the door of the classroom and exit into the hall, thrust into the sea of students making their daily migration to the cafeteria. Before you can even make it to the end of the hall, Eddie catches up to you.

"Hey neighbor," a deep voice reverberates behind you and suddenly, a warm shoulder lightly presses into yours.

You turn your head to the side of the offender and find a wild head of frizzy tousled waves framing the face of none other than Eddie Munson.

Your eyes widen and lips part. Your expression frozen as you process the fact that Eddie is currently standing next to you, and closely enough that you can feel the warmth of his body.

"H-Hi," you say as more of a question than a greeting.

"I believe this belongs to you," he says as though he's handing you some sort of precious gem despite only the wooden pencil being offered from his rough ring clad hand.

"O-oh. Thanks," you say in bewilderment, slowly accepting the pencil from him.

He smiles at you again and it that same heart-wrenching smile that just makes you want to faint into his arms.

"I should be the one thanking you. Can't army crawl my way to a D without the proper equipment," he jokes.

You smile and awkwardly laugh, instantly feeling guilt about being so annoyed by lending him a pencil when he's obviously struggling in class.

You settle into a silence. Something you're usually comfortable with, but as you've somewhat gotten to know Eddie in class, realize he may just be the opposite.

"So, you don't really talk much, huh?" Eddie ask as you both continue walking to the cafeteria.

You guess you and Eddie are walking to lunch together now.

You shrug at his question. This isn't the first time someone has asked you this and it definitely won't be the last. "What's there to say?"

"Lot of things," Eddie shrugs and smiles at you.

How can you talk, when Eddie's stupid smiles send you into a mental frenzy, preventing any sort of coherent speech.

You shake your head and try to find the right words, something you seem especially to have trouble with around Eddie.

"I don't know. Talking's overrated. You can learn way more about a person by listening."

"Gotcha," Eddie nods, "So what have you learned about me?"

"That you never come to class prepared," you say without even thinking.

As soon as the words come out of your mouth, you wish they hadn't. Instantly feeling remorse and embarrassment at the fact that the filter you are usually good at using when speaking to anyone besides your friends has somehow seemed to disappear in the presence of Eddie Munson.

Meanwhile Eddie is doubled over laughing at your blatant response.

"I'm sorry. What I meant was-"

Eddie places a hand on your shoulder and smiles at you with both his mouth and his eyes, "Don't be. It's true."

You face forward and nod, already feeling a warmth crawl to your cheeks.

"Hey," he nudges your shoulder, making you look into his warm brown eyes, "But if you don't talk, how am I ever gonna learn anything about you?"

You gasp as though you got sucker punched in the stomach.

Your brain can barely even scramble to mutter a coherent response.

Your eyebrows raise and your eyelids blink.

This is also why you don't talk a lot. Half the time, the thoughts in your brain don't seem to know how to make it to your mouth, and the other half, well, your mouth just ends up doing all the talking for you.

"Watch where you're going freak," someone shouts near you and Eddie.

Before you've even realized it, you've made it to the cafeteria and got into the lunch line with Eddie.

Eddie scowls and merely flips the student off before turning to you and smiling.

You shyly smile back, but still severely aware of the comment he had made.

Eddie... wants to learn about you?

"Seriously though," he laughs, a certain sort of rasp more pronounced in his voice, "What's a guy gotta do?"

You shrug, not sure how to answer what is a rather loaded question for you.

"I don't know," you answer frankly. "Talk is cheap. A lot of times people are saying things without really saying anything important, you know?"

"So you only talk when you really want to say something, when you mean it?"

"Yeah, I guess you could say that," you nod.

"I see," Eddie nods and gestures for you to go before him as you approach the food station.

As you grab your tray Eddie leans over to you and says, "Why don't you sit with me and my friends today? They can be a bit of a riot but I think you'll like 'em."

On any other occasion, his offer would practically give you a heart attack, but seeing as all your other friends are either in study hall or have a different lunch period leaves you no other choice.

"Um, sure," you nervously smile and let him lead the way to his table.

"Gentlemen, meet Y/N. She'll be sitting with us today so let's give her a warm Hellfire welcome," Eddie announces as he sets his tray down at the end of the table. Two rows of boys sit on either side of the table, letting about six sets of eyes land on you.

You smile nervously and wave awkwardly, "Hi."

There's no empty seats next to Eddie, but before you can find another one by the other end of the table, Eddie shoos some of the boys to his right to scoot down a seat creating an empty one next to his.

You gracefully take a seat and mutter a quick thanks to the closest boy.

"So, what's Hellfire?" You ask nonchalantly. But perhaps it was a naive question because it causes the rest of the boys to go into a full tizzy.

"Eddie!"

"You didn't tell her?"

"It's the only saving grace in this god-forsaken hell hole."

Comments and exclamations come flying at you meanwhile Eddie can only smile and stare at you, simultaneously making your chest feel warm and like you want to crawl under a rock.

Eddie lays a warm palm along your forearm, "Patience, young jedi, you'll soon learn the ways of the Hellfire Club."

You eyes instantly shoot down to look at his limb connected to yours. And instinctively, you look up at the boy across from you, as if to silently ask, "Are you seeing this too?"

And he looks at you with widened blue eyes and eyebrows that almost reach the head of light brown wavy hair as if to say, "Yeah, I'm seeing this too. It's weird, right?"

You subtly nod, because it is weird. Not entirely unwelcome, but definitely unexpected.

Eddie retracts his hand and begins to say something. The table has all eyes on him, but not you. You're still replaying what just happened in your brain over and over again like a carousel projector caught on the same slide.

"Right Y/N?" Eddie asks.

You shake your head and mutter a quick apology. "Huh?"

"Well while you were off in la la land and, trust me, I don't blame you. I do it all the time myself. But we were just talking about tonights Hellfire meeting. You in?"

Oh no, he caught you. Does he have any idea you were thinking about how warm and rough his hand felt on your skin? Or how strong his fingers felt?

Hopefully not.

But the more important thing to worry about now is the fact that Eddie just invited you to Hellfire Club!

What does this mean?

Should you say yes?

You kind of have to say yes right? It'd be rude not to. And it seems like a big enough deal to him and his friends. But you still have no idea what Hellfire is or what's gonna happen tonight. But you guess you're just going to have to find out.

"Um, yeah," you reply with a shy and bright smile.

"Yeah," Eddie fist pumps in the air. "Okay, so I gotta warn you, these guys can get pretty reckless. But I know you can handle it."

You smile with your lips closed and nod. Oh god, what have you gotten yourself into?

"Meet us in the drama room after school, okay?"

"Sure," you nod and shyly smile at the other boys.

After school comes like clockwork and you find yourself nervously approaching the drama room doors. A poster with messy handwriting reads, "Hellfire Club Meeting in Session."

Okay, here goes.

You open the door, and enter the dark space. You wander through the room, guided by the warm stage-lights turned on further inside.

You eyes land on Eddie, who's sitting at a throne prop no doubtedly used by the drama club for the upcoming play. He's seated at the head of the table, just like at lunch.

He goes between reading a piece of paper and adjusting figurines on the table.

As you walk further into the room, you see no one else is here yet. It's just you and Eddie.

And before you can even say anything, your footsteps are enough to announce your presence causing Eddie with a face of concentration adorning his scrunched up brows and pursed lips, to a full on grin and lit up eyes as he sees you.

"Hey neighbor," he gets up from the throne and jogs over to you.

You nervously grin and offer a small squeaky, “Hey.”

He gets closer to you and swiftly encloses you in a bear hug.

Your body tenses and your eyes flinch shut. You didn't expect him to make such a move, much less so casually. But then you take a second to embrace the feeling of his strong arms around you. The warmth of his body against yours. Or the scent of soap and tobacco lingering on his clothes.

And before you can even think to hug him back, he pulls away, but leaves one arm wrapped around your shoulder and guides you to the table, "I'm glad you could make it."

You make a sound adjacent to a nervous laugh, “Yeah.”

Eddie pulls the chair closest to throne out for you to take a seat. Eddie sits on the edge of the table and looks down at you.

“Alright so before everyone else shows up let me fill you in on how things go down in Hellfire.”

The feeling of your surprise and almost fear at the unknown of what will happen must be evident on your face because Eddie leans forward and places a comforting hand on your forearm again.

“Don’t worry okay, it’s gonna be fun,” he says in a voice you find utterly endearing but aren’t poised enough to really appreciate it because all you can focus is on is the feeling of flames at the point where Eddie’s skin and your meets.

“O-Okay,” you force yourself to utter.

You focus as best as you can while Eddie explains the game of Dungeons and Dragons to you, but by god is it easy to get lost in those stars in his eyes.

Soon the rest of the boys start showing up and they help explain a few other things too.

Before you know it, you're in the midst of your first campaign. You have no idea what you're doing half the time, but Eddie was surprisingly right. It is fun.

So much fun in fact that you've lost track of time. And now you really should be heading home before your parents start to worry.

But Eddie has hypnotized you. You don't want this night to ever end. But it has to. And now, all the boys are packing up their things and getting ready to leave. And so should you. So you do.

And as the boys begin to trickle out of the room, Eddie looks at you and says the magic words: "Hey, can I give you a ride home?"

If someone would have told you earlier today that you'd be spending the evening with Eddie Munson at Hellfire Club and would even be getting a ride home from him, you would have never believed them.

But anything could happen.

"Yeah," you nod breathlessly.

The night sweeps you by as you find yourself in the passenger seat of Eddie's large beat up van with loud metal music blaring from the speakers.

But it feels oddly comforting. And you don't mind being the passenger seat princess with Eddie's music and fast paced train of thought filling the space.

You could listen to Eddie talk for hours. Whether it be in that silly medieval accent he does for Hellfire or in his normal voice with just enough rasp and deepness to it that you love.

As Eddie's van crawls along the curb to your front yard, and as he shifts the gear into park, a wave of sadness overcomes you.

You look out the window and over to Eddie. You press you lips together and shrug, pointing out the window with your thumb, "This is me."

Eddie nods and rubs the palm of his hand along the nape of his neck, "Yeah. Listen, uh, I had a lot of fun with you today."

"Me too," you squeak.

Eddie's eyes light up as he looks into yours, "Yeah?"

"Yeah," you shyly smile, feeling heat crawl to your cheeks and neck.

"Cool, yeah, I'm glad," Eddie flounders around his words as he lays his palms flat along his thighs and rubs them along the denim, slightly avoiding your gaze.

"Eddie," you ask as you shift your head, looking for his eyes. When he lets you find them, he smiles nervously.

Eddie. Nervous? No way.

"Sorry, uh, I don't usually get like this," Eddie looks away and awkwardly laughs. "Kind of funny how I'm the shy one now."

"It's okay," you reassure him.

He pauses for a moment, and you decide to do something unexpected. You place a gentle hand on his forearm, attempting to comfort him the way he had for you.

He briefly flits his eyes up to yours and lets out a breathless laugh. With his other hand, he guides your hand to move down and interlock with his. He squeezes firmly, grounding himself in your touch.

"You're really cool, you know that?" Eddie smiles at you earnestly.

"No, but thanks," you shyly smile back, feeling about one million butterflies erupting in your stomach.

"Would it be cool if I, um... Could I have your phone number?"

Now, you've officially died and gone to heaven.

You nod giddily and sweetly whisper a soft, "Yeah."

You take out a notebook and pencil from your bag. You tear off a corner from a blank page and write your phone number.

You hand it over to Eddie and you can practically feel the buzz of electric excitement coming from him.

"So, I'll see you tomorrow?"

"Yeah, just don't forget to bring a pencil this time," you tease as you put you things back in your bag and unbuckle your seatbelt.

"Then what excuse will I have to talk to you," Eddie responds.

You laugh at first until you realize he meant it. He was actually doing that just as an excuse to talk to you.

Holy shit.

"Um, I'm sure you'll come up with something," you nervously laugh. "You seemed to work that Munson magic pretty well today."

It was something you said rather off-handedly, but that sort of is what drew you to Eddie. Some sort of magic he seemed to possess. Someone who was rather unsuspecting from the jump, seemingly with magic had you utterly charmed.

"Munson magic, I like that. Guess you'll just have to find out tomorrow then," Eddie said confidently.

"Is that a threat or a promise?"

Eddie laughs and shakes his head, "Whichever one you want it to be."

You rolled your eyes and smiled as you opened the car door and slide out of the seat, "Goodnight Eddie."

Eddie smiled at you as you looked at him one last time.

"Goodnight Y/N," he smirked.

You close the door behind you and giddily walk up the driveway to your house, hoping Eddie nor your parents would be able to tell just how giddy you'd felt.

Or how strange this whole day has been. Or how Eddie's Munson magic has you feeling like the luckiest person in the world.

#eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson oneshot #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson #eddie munson blurb #eddie munson headcanon #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson angst ##stranger things fanfic #stranger things s4 #stranger things season 4 #stranger things x reader #stranger things fanfiction #urfavstargirl1

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genacity · 1 year

Text

⌗ nsfw fucking little loser heizou </3

i have a problem with guys who are absolute LOSERS. i mean like literally bitchless fucking weirdos who have never felt the touch of a woman (i am going insane)

maybe its just my corruption kink or sm shit like that but theres something about fucking a little nerd that makes my head spin… so lets demonstrate with my cheeky bf heizou 😇

you’ve seen him in class before. he’s one of the kids in the back of the classroom always silently much too concentrated on some manga or comic book he’d been reading that week. eyes lingering far too long on a certain page, only for it to be a panel of a woman with her thighs wrapped around some guy’s head you notice after passing behind him to sharpen your pencil. (he later claims the characters were taking a self-defense course. you don’t believe him.)

hearing him talk about how he could pin a girl down with ease; snickering to his friends about how easily he could become dominant in the bedroom. you and your friends giggle as you pass— knowing damn well he’d never been loved by a woman besides his mother a day in his life.

when you finally manage him into your bedroom. distracted from the project you were assigned partners in for that same class you caught him drooling over a certain page of his book. pushing heizou onto your sheets, his poor head spinning at the sight of you towering over him. hitched breath, sweat pooling on his brow. this was not the way it went in his manga.

sweet sounds of pleasure barely passing through your closed door, the poor boy’s back arching with every gasp and whimper of your name as your hand pumps his flaring cock. heizou can barely make a sound beyond a whine— the sound of his own voice behind the melody of his own slick being used to abuse his cock made his brain melt into a puddle in the back of his head.

“cum— cum! please!” heizou gasped, thighs shaking as he felt his orgasm near for what seemed the nth time that night. he whimpered at the sound of you laughing, knowing his blubbering pleas had fallen on deaf ears. his cute cries of “cumming!” “y/n—!” “fuh—fuck!” driving you to madness.

going back to school and seeing he’s got a new manga. peering over his shoulder as you go to put the final touches on your shared project you could barely finish at your house— only to see a new image; a man on his knees with a collar around his neck.

#@ genacity ☆#@ heizou ☆#dom reader #sub character #sub heizou #how we feeling #i wanted to write scaramouche but i write for him too much #hsr coming soon i think #idk #i love losers 😇💖😴😁😍

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silly-self-destruction · 9 months

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Honestly the amount of time is incorrect, I've had my moments but I don't count those.

Anyways I forgot I wrote that, made me proper crackle.

#tw: sh #im so not funny #this isn't funny #i just have trash humor #my EX gf said she was going to put this in her damn dnd camapin as a weapon #broken pencil sharpener #that is #shes actually funny #we on good terms #this was awile ago anyways #s3lf h4rm #self h@rm

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fandoms--fluff · 2 months

Note

Can you write a story with reader where she’s a workaholic and hope has to pull her away from her work because she’s been working on it all night

Overworked

Female witch reader x Hope Mikaelson

Warnings: none

A/n: I'm so excited for summer to come. I hope you like this!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's 11 o'clock at night, and you've been working on the same design for the last four hours. The deadline has been changed to a day away. So you bunkered down on your kitchen bar top, sketching and typing away.

You work as a head of costumry at a company that makes a bunch of the massive dresses and old timeybclothing for movies and productions and all those things. A new line of fairy dresses have been customed ordered, and you've been put in charge of them. You were excited when you got them, but now you kind of wish there was someone to share the workload with who you trusted would actually put hard work into.

You may have slight trust issues.

There's barely anyone at your work who's under you, takes it seriously. They will just put the least amount of work into something and call it a day. There have been times when you've just wanted to get violent with them, but alas, you can't. But that doesn't mean you haven't switched to a few other harmless methods.

You let out a groan as the tip of your pencil breaks again. It's the third time that's happened. You reach for the sharpener, and as you're twisting the pencil in it, it jams and the pencil breaks. "Seriously!" You exclaim stressfully.

Your girlfriend, Hope, looks up from where she was sat on the couch, watching TV. Her facial expression softens, turning the TV off before getting up.

She's been worried about you all night, but you wouldn't allow her to pull you away from it. But now she definalty has to, she doesn't want you to overwork yourself to this extent.

She walks over to you and places a hand on your back. "Why don't you stop for tonight and get back to work on it tomorrow, during work hours." She kisses your shoulder.

You look up from your sketch book, "I can't, there's no way I can get this all done tomorrow" you sigh. "I'll help you then, with the designs or talking to your boss"

"Talking?" You raise an eyebrow. "Or compulsion?"

"Which one will make you feel better?" She asks, making you let out a chuckle.

"...fine" you groan, "you win" you tell her, shutting your sketch book and turning your laptop off. "Thank you" she tells you, holding your hand as you get off the barstool.

She leads you to your guys' bedroom. As soon as you get in there, you flop onto the bed. "I've missed you" You told the bed.

"One of the many reasons you shouldn't be overworking yourself, not getting enough sleep. Come on, before falling asleep in your jeans, let's get pajamas on" She rubs her thumb in circles on your hand.

"Mmmm, fine" you comply, getting off the comfy bed. You reluctantly change out of your jeans and t-shirt into navy pajama pants and a white tank top. After you finish changing, you go to the bathroom washing your makeup off and brushing your teeth.

"Yay, comfy" you smile as you crawl into bed, next to where Hope's leaning against the headboard, in her pajamas as well.

You lean against, cuddling up to her. Your head falls to her chest and right arm thrown over her stomach. She wraps her her arms around you as well, placing a hand softly on the back of your head.

"I'm surprised you haven't spelled anyone at your work yet, it's impressive, considering if they really are like what you describe them" Hope says as she runs her fingers through your soft hair.

"Who says I haven't" you mumble into her chest. "Some of them are plain stupid, they should be thanking me for making them at least a little competent."

In the next minute, you're fast asleep, cuddled into your girlfriend.

"Okay, slightly less surprised" she shakes her head, playfully rolling her eyes as well. "They deserve it" you grumble.

"I bet they do, Baby" she places a kiss to the crown of your head.

#hope mikaelson #hope mikaelson x reader #hope mikaelson x witch reader #witch reader #hope mikaelson x female reader #hope mikaelson x fem reader #hope mikaelson is the best girlfriend #cuddles #overworking #cute #fluff #imagines #fanfic #thevampirediaries #writing #theoriginals #legacies

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imaginedanvrs · 6 months

Text

my demon gave me everything

part 5 l masterlist

summary: dark!natasha romanoff x reader. Natasha Romanoff saves the world. Morals, lifestyle and past aside, the fact is that she puts her life on the line for everyone else. And for this, she believes she’s owed something. She saves billions of lives on the regular, so why not take the occasional one for herself?

word count: 3.3k

warnings: established kidnapping, abuse, power dynamics, strap on sex, breathe play, degrading, manipulation, hints of stockholm syndrone

“Fuck,” Natasha grunted, voice raspy from the pleasure you were able to give her. “Keep that pretty mouth there.” She ordered as her hand gripped your hair tighter and forced you to stay put with her cock touching the back of your throat. You looked up at the assassin with watery eyes, a sight that only drove her to buck her hips up more and make you choke. She let up at that and was kind enough to give you a few seconds to gather more air into your lungs before she was forcing you back onto the toy.

That time, you took your time in licking the underside of the toy and humming around it. The redhead was feeling generous that day and brought out your favourite strap, the one that filled you up just enough without giving you too much of an uncomfortable ache. Natasha’s breathing picked up again at the visual, of course not being able to actually feel it but loving the sight nonetheless. Her throaty moan of approval made you throb and you brought your mouth down to the base to apply some light pressure to her clit.

Natasha never let you touch her, so times like that were your only opportunity to make her feel even remotely as good as she made you feel. She had never let you continue for long enough to make her cum, something she only did in the security of her rooms upstairs as she pictured those very scenes. Though when she saw how into it you were getting, she gripped the back of your head and forced you down to the base without letting up. You squirmed between her legs and scratched at her thighs but she only grinned down at the sight of your defiance.

“Fight a little harder, detka, you can do it,” she cooed condescendingly as you struggled in her grasp. You looked up at the redhead, pleading and wide eyes and wholly desperate for some relief. She let you off and slapped you for not fighting hard enough. You almost toppled to the floor but Natasha’s thighs held you upright enough and she was hauling you onto the sofa with her within a second anyway.

“I love seeing you cry around me,” Natasha breathed heavily as she pulled your underwear down and nestled between your legs. You were too disorientated at first to register either until she pushed the head of her strap against your cunt. “You always look so pathetic,” she smiled and thrust the toy inside without another word. Natasha was never gentle when she fucked you. She was rough and careless and only seemed to strive to make you feel worthless. Despite yourself, you cherished every second. Even if you didn’t think you wanted it, Natasha soon showed you otherwise and had you putty in her hands before you could think too hard about it.

That was how it was every day, though things grew lonely quickly. You were never much of a social person, in fact, you had labelled yourself a house mouse to numerous people proudly. In all honesty that was partly down to you not feeling like you fit in anywhere or not being comfortable around enough people to ask them if they wanted to hang out and so over time you found yourself enjoying your own company more often than not. But you got lonely a lot. You craved company and just didn’t know how to obtain it. So in a sense, it was no surprise that in a matter of a few days the isolation got to you, especially as Natasha wasn’t the best company.

You found yourself falling into a routine with the Russian. You would wake up without her and spend the majority of the day sketching, (finding your pencil freshly sharpened each morning), staring out at the city, missing your home until your head started to hurt from crying, then finally waiting for Natasha to come back. Sometimes she was just upstairs but stayed there for the same duration of time. Then the evening would arrive and she would bring you some dinner or make some and sit in silence on the sofa for several hours before fucking you however and where ever she pleased. That was the only time she truly acknowledged you. When she didn’t have her hands on you, she wouldn’t even answer you when you talked to her. It drove you up the wall at first but now it was starting to ache as the loneliness set in. Consequently, you craved the sex because it was the only time you didn’t feel so alone. You still hated Natasha. A lot.

You spent a lot of your time thinking of all the ways you could hurt her. Not even necessarily to escape, just to be a painful inconvenience. You thought of hiding in cupboards and jumping out at her with a knife to stick her gut. You thought of splashing boiling water in her face. You thought of smashing up all her plates and glasses just for the sake of making her have to buy new ones. You doubted it would cause her any financial distress, but it would be annoying. However you never had the nerve to attempt a follow through of any of those ideas, knowing the torment it could cause you in return.

Sometimes you wondered if it would be best just to stop fighting all together. To let go of your hatred for the redhead and let yourself succumb to loneliness. But you were always swift to remind yourself that thats’s not what Natasha deserves. She doesn’t get to have you give in so soon. Because you did not want to be there. You wanted to go home to your small apartment, not live with an Avenger in a condo.

On one of those days, Natasha still wasn’t home by the time the sun had long since submerged itself beneath the city and the sky was darkening. When specks of white were caught in the black net, the redhead still showed no signs of returning and you considered two possibilities. One, that she had been injured on a mission and that you could be dead by the time she gets back. Or two, that it was some twisted test on you to see exactly how you’d fend for myself when Natasha wasn’t around.

Eventually, you laid down on the sofa so that you were facing the door at the top of the stairs. You stared at it for several minutes as you considered the two possibilities and let your mind tunnel down both rabbit holes before eventually succumbing to the exhaustion of what they could both entail. Neither good, but were they still better than Natasha returning home before they could play themselves out?

It was 2am when Natasha finally arrived home. You were fast asleep on the sofa where you had been for hours when she strolled down the stairs. The redhead knew how long you had been there because she had been examining the camera logs on her return flight from the mission, yet she was still mildly surprised to find you still there and even more so that you didn’t stir to the sound of her boots hitting each step with a heavy thud. You were both tired.

Natasha crouched down in front of you, watching as you slept soundly amongst her blankets. She knew you had trouble sleeping, between being in a new environment, not having your stuffies and being uncomfortable next to her, but clearly the exhaustion had finally won. The Russian gently moved the hair away from your face so she could see you better and wondered if the weariness was going to bring your breaking point closer. Natasha knew you were lonely and that it was making you crave the sex, but your hatred was still there, a contrast she saw in a few women but not to such an extent. It seemed you were stuck in the vortex of your own turmoil and consequently made it harder for Natasha to seek any answers on just how much longer you would be in that apartment. You had only been there a couple weeks but if you arrived at the point where the Russian were to kick me out in a few days, you still would have been there longer than a couple. Then again, perhaps it would go the other way and you would persevere for a couple more months and make it longer than anyone. The longest stay was two months and four days.

Natasha placed her slightly roughened hand against your cheek and let her thumb graze over the small scratch under your eye where the spy had caught her nail ‘accidentally’ on you the last time she slapped you. She smiled at the look of shock you had everytime she did it, as though you couldn’t believe it would happen again. Natasha’s smile broadened when she remembered how wet you got as well.

The redhead’s gaze focused when you showed signs of waking up, the slight furrow in your brown and your eyes moving beneath your eyelids and as you shifted, you leaned into Natasha’s touch with a content hum. The spy smirked at that and rubbed her thumb gently in a circular motion that made you smile sleepily, chasing the foreign feeling of tenderness. You allowed your eyes to flicker open and meet the older woman’s but it was only after several moments of slow processing that you realised what you were doing and shot back against the sofa away from the redhead with a scowl. She chuckled at your antics and her smugness made you want to hit her.

“Come to bed, detka,” Natasha called as she strolled away, still chuckling to herself. You cursed internally and tried to ignore how the warmth of Natasha’s touch was still lingering on your cheek. You hadn’t felt such warmth before, not from anyone. You had always hoped you would feel it from a girl you loved someday, from someone who made the butterflies in your stomach cheer with glee, not try to hide.

You followed Natasha through to the bedroom where she had already stripped down to just her shirt and slipped into bed beside her, already anticipating however she was going to touch you that night and certainly not expecting it to be the way it was. The redhead immediately wrapped her arms around you and pulled you against her chest where she held you close. You tensed, awaiting her next move that never came. Instead, Natasha continued to hold you until her breathing steadied enough for you to wonder if she had fallen asleep.

It was just like the first night when she held you. But that had been after sex and she hadn’t held you since, leaving you to wonder what she was doing. Perhaps she was merely too tired to do anything else, you gathered that it was late although you still had no access to anything that told you the time.

You tried to relax in her hold as hypothetically it should have eased your loneliness, but you felt suffocated. It was too much. She was too close and holding you too tight and you didn’t know how to adapt to the change in routine, so you lay there wide awake for a long time. It was then that you started wondering what exactly it was that Natasha was looking for in having you living with her.

She treated you like a prisoner, not letting you leave, not giving you access to the outside world, only being able to eat and drink what she provided and not having your own clothes. Not to mention the power scales. And yet part of you wondered if she was just as lonely as you were and that she merely wanted a companion. She wasn’t soft with you and didn’t seem to even really like you all that much, but there she was holding you as she slept. You had no idea what it was that Natasha was striving to find, and you weren’t convinced she knew herself.

"Want a pb&j, detka?” Natasha asked from the kitchen. You could have laughed at that, surprised that such a ruthless and deadly assassin enjoyed such a snack.

“I’m allergic,” you called back from the sofa where you sat reading one of the novels the redhead had leant you after you finally worked up the nerve to ask. The drawing became tedious when it was all you did for eight to ten hours a day.

“To what?” Natasha replied without a beat, staring into the back of your head with a frown. She had your medical records and there was nothing about any food allergies. There was no way she would miss that and it unsettled the redhead that there was something like that she didn’t know. She was meant to know everything.

“Peanut butter,” you said simply without looking back. “Well at least I think I am. I had a weird little reaction once but I never got tested because I didn’t like it anyway,” you explained as Natasha came over to the sofa and placed a cup of tea down in front of you instead.

“We better get that sorted then,” she muttered, intending to get a test kit as soon as she could to answer that question. You shrugged in vague agreement, not feeling the pressing need like the redhead did.

Things had shifted in the atmosphere of the apartment after the night Natasha held you as she fell asleep. For one thing, you were able to fall asleep swiftly and stay asleep, as though the redhead’s hold was enough to keep you from unwanted consciousness. You didn’t want to believe that that was the cause of the end of your insomnia, but when Natasha did the same thing night after night and the same effect happened, you knew there was no point denying it to yourself. You never revealed this discovery to the Russian though you had wondered if she had noticed herself.

Though it wasn’t just during the night that things had made a gradual change. While still tense, it felt as though there was a touch less hostility with every passing moment, as though you didn’t have to be constantly on edge. You still knew that if you tried anything with Natasha all of that would fly out the window, especially as the redhead was no less rough when she fucked you and continued to make it clear that she didn’t give a second thought to hurting you, but the rest of the time she seemed…pleasant.

You were still scared of the Avenger. You also still hated her, though maybe hate had become too strong a word. Your desire to go home remained strong, especially when the redhead was in a bad mood, and you knew Natasha wasn’t about to let you go anytime soon, a fact you continued to shed a tear about when you were in the shower. It didn’t help that she had started watching you a lot too. You could feel her eyes burning into your back more often than not, as though she was still waiting for you to make some sudden attempt at escape and you never knew how to act under her intense gaze.

However, sometimes you woke up with her still laying next to you and you found it to be something you appreciated. It made you feel less alone. She started talking to you as well throughout the day, just the odd comment here and there about anything from when she was going out to and her occasional enquiry about your life, though you always dismissed those questions. She still didn’t get you a clock but if you asked what the time was she would tell you. A couple times you had asked for the TV on but she continued to deny you that until the third try.

You watched as Natasha pressed a few buttons and fiddled around with the back of the screen before it flickered to life and the news started playing. You could feel the redhead’s eyes on you as you sat back and turned the volume up so you could hear the presenter's voice clearly. You didn’t want to miss anything, wondering if perhaps there was even the slightest chance you would be there. People had to know you were missing. It had been…well I wasn’t sure exactly how long but it was definitely long enough to be declared missing surely.

The news went on for an hour, covering stories from all over the world with countless kinds of issues being mentioned, but you weren’t one of them. You knew that that would be the case, the Avengers would never let any awareness be brought to your disappearance when it was connected so closely to one of their own, but you couldn’t help but hope. Natasha Romanoff was untouchable and you were nothing.

You wondered how many people actually knew you were missing or if they had been given a story about you moving back to England early or even dying. Either way, it was being kept on the downlow. No one was looking for you.

You turned the screen off when the channel changed to some reality show you didn’t recognise, you weren’t in the mood for reality. Instead, you tucked your feet up on the sofa and stared up at the ceiling, dwelling in your feelings of emptiness until Natasha’s hand slipped around your back and pulled you to her to rest your head on her shoulder. You didn’t protest, instead closing your eyes and imagining you were somewhere else with someone else who was doing the same thing.

“Don’t worry about the rest of the world, malysh. This is where you’re meant to be,” Natasha cooed with a kiss to your head. For some reason, you didn’t feel entirely shit about that. And you think the spy knew that.

While Natasha could tell you still weren’t exactly her biggest fan, she was able to see that the hatred had started to weaken into plain dislike. She had known before she had taken you that you weren’t the kind of person who was able to hold onto such bitter feelings, even under such testing circumstances. It had certainly helped that Natasha was giving you what you had secretly been craving for as long as you could remember: a woman’s touch. Granted it wasn’t in a context you ever could have foreseen, but it was something.

For Natasha, it wasn’t enough yet. Refraining from you unless it was to fuck you had certainly pushed things along, but the redhead had grown bored or the same routine and wanted to try something else. There were many games Natasha had up her sleeve that she could play and some of them she was just itching to try. She had made your body betray you but your mind needed something different, something to help lul it into a false sense of security, so she had been pleasant and watched, giving you the attention you had desired but didn’t have any clue what to do with when you finally got it.

You were still weary of the redhead, but not as weary as you wanted to be. You were fully aware of how your walls were starting to crack and you couldn’t seem to do anything to stop it. Which led Natasha to ponder the same question as you were, how badly did you really want to leave? So the redhead went about setting up the same test she had pulled numerous times in the past that had always provided the same results. Would you be any different? Natasha hoped so, it would be nice to have a change.

#natasha romanoff x reader #natasha romanoff #dark!fic #dark!marvel #dark!natasha x reader #natasha x reader #black widow #natasha romanoff smut

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luveline · 1 year

Text

radio cure | steve harrington

an unhappy you meets steve harrington and his merry band of dorks. he shows you that some things are worth sticking around for.

5k words, fem!reader she/her used, tw mentioned/implied suicidal ideation please don’t read if that’s going to have a negative impact on you (no graphic imagery. but reader is passively suicidal and dealing with the other factors of that), robin steve + eddie chaotic trio, friends to lovers, multipart, swearing, friendly teasing, sarcasm, artist!steve, 90s au

.•° ✿ °•.

You're twenty two when you decide to kill yourself.

It's a warm day. The sun shines like a flower bud unfurling, a faint hint of golden yellow masked by cloud cover. You're savouring the brief moment of blessed cool as you walk around Lover's Lake, your ipod in one hand, headphones around your neck.

The flowing pants you're wearing help mitigate the heat around your legs, an itching, slick thing. Warmth feels like oil on your skin. You tip your head back and smell the grass, the lake water, the dry mud under your feet. You're thinking it's as nice a day as you're going to get this week, and you're forlorn, because it doesn't make one drop of difference.

You look up at the blue sky, squinting against the light, and you think it to yourself resolutely. This is going to be my last year. When your savings run out you're giving up.

It doesn't feel conclusive. It doesn't feel scary. It's just a decision.

You walk over dry grass until you reach the short pier on the leftmost side of the lake and sit down. You pull your headphones over your ears and bite your lip when the music isn't loud enough. The dock is rough. You're uncomfortable immediately. You want to go home, but you pull out your little craft sketchbook made of yellow paper and a pencil you've sharpened with a pen knife, staring out across the lake for something to strike you. A duck. A goose. Anything at all.

The thing is, you don't want to draw. You aren't some master, though you try, and you aren't a natural talent… You try sometimes. Nothing seems right. Most people have a style, charm, but you could draw a picture perfect copy of the day in front of you and still feel the lack; you have no idea what it is that makes other people's art beautiful, and that's the problem.

It doesn't matter. You put the sketchbook away. You have nobody to impress but yourself, and besides — you're not the first person in the world to feel uninspired. Thousands of people must feel it everyday, and they aren't throwing any pity parties. You peel off your cardigan, ball it up, and lay down with the fabric behind your head. You can hear the soft pant of a dog across the way, the happy chattering of a Frisbee game. Under the dock, little bodies thwack the planks, tiny green frogs that occasionally hop in the grass nearby.

You press your arm against your stomach and you fall asleep not long after that, your ipod playing music a few feet away.

—

Steve Harrington doesn't know why he stops to look at you. You're just a girl enjoying the summer sun, and he doesn't mean to be a creep. But you've left your stuff laying in small hills around you and your body's lax. You're asleep.

He kneels down next to you. Enough room to swing away if you try to stab him for perving. He isn't perving, he reasons. He wants to check if you're okay.

He tilts his ear toward you and holds his breath.

You're snoring.

Good, he thinks, crawling back to the far side of the dock, at least two feet between you. You're sleeping.

He sits down, knees up, hands between his thighs, and looks out across the lake. The sun shines high as the clouds shift to reveal it in full force, a burning yolk. It kisses every bit of green foliage it can find, dappled sunlight everywhere he looks. Steve is out today to draw whatever beauty he can find, and the light across the water riding the rippled waves of ducklings and brave human swimmers seems nice enough. He peers out of the corner of his eye at you, deems you still sleeping, and takes the pocket sized sketchbook out of his denim jeans.

His pencil is a stub folded between the pages. He lays down graphite in big sweeping lines, more focused on the impressions of shape than the specifics. It's hard to see a coloured world in black and white values. Steve isn't great — he's been drawing for two years now, and that feels like both a lifetime and a flicker. Every day he learns something new about making art, and every day he looks back and feels embarrassed at what he made before. The start of his sketchbooks make him cringe. This one is a mixture of pride and tepid reluctance.

Being bad at something is a stepping stone at getting better. Not every drawing he makes is good, but hopefully it's teaching his brain to be better. He doesn't know what he believes about art but he likes to draw, and he has gotten better.

The point isn't in being good, he'd told Robin. I just need something to do. Before I go crazy doing nothing.

He draws the lake. He loves the way it comes into being. Ten minutes can turn grey splotches into trees, and bluegrass, and the heat rising off of the water. He draws a duck when it swims really close, though he has to abandon it when it swims away, leaving a half formed lovecraftian creature to haunt the page. He draws the dock, and his shoes, and your shoes, and your hand curled weakly next to your ipod. He draws your wrist, though he stops quickly.

He looks at your sleeping face.

Steve thinks you don't look like anyone he's ever seen before. He notes your lashes, your brows, and your nose. The sun emphasises the fine hairs across your cheek, and the texture beneath them.

He wants to draw your face, but he thinks drawing your hand and your shoes might have been too much without permission. He lets you sleep for a while, and then when he realises the heat is making him dizzy, he can't leave you there to bake.

He rips a sheet of paper out of his sketchbook and shoves the small book back into his pocket. The dock groans as he stands, and he casts a shadow over your face and upper torso.

"Hey," he says.

You flinch awake.

"Don't panic," he says, which is something a pervert might say, so he amends, "don't freak out, I'm just worried you're gonna cook your brains. I didn't want you to get sick."

You sit up. You look kinda cooked already, blinking and disoriented.

"You okay?"

You don't look up. "Yeah, I'm okay. Thank you for waking me up."

"Yeah, sure. Here."

He holds out the drawing of your hand. He doesn't think it's good, doesn't want you to see it, but he already did it. Giving it to you will ease his guilty conscience.

It's unlike Steve to bail, but he bails. Your fingers are barely brushing the paper when he's wiping his palms on his thighs and stepping away.

"Bye," he says, uncertain. "Try not to fall asleep again!"

—

It's not so weird. Sure, he'd made your fingers skinnier than they really are, and he made your shoelaces look like spaghetti, but they're good drawings.

You're trying to read a book in the corner of Benny's when he finds you a second time. He hovers, and you're not cool, you aren't, you're working with what you've got. Not many people skills.

“Hi,” he says.

"They were good drawings," you say, in lieu of your own hello, thumbing at the pages of your book all full of jumpy nerves.

"Thank you, I'm… new to it. My best friend, she's– she's actually nicer than she should be about them, I can't lie. I was going to say she thinks I should be banned from picking up a pencil, because I wanted to make you laugh, but. She's nice when it matters."

You can't keep looking down, it wouldn't be polite. You dog ear your paperback and let it lie against the tabletop, greasy to touch but you doubt it'll make a difference. The book is old and had cost you 50 cents at Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler's yard sale.

He's tall. Hair falls around his face and curls gently against his cheeks, a sandy brown. He's wearing a hat. He hadn't been wearing one the day he'd given you his drawings, but you can understand why he needs it. The sun is an inescapable force: sun stroke has half the town down for the count. The whole reason that you're in Benny's is because it's air-conditioned and shady.

"Do you want to come and eat with me and my friends?"

You say no automatically. "No, that's okay. I don't wanna," —you don't know what to say, so your voice hikes up awkwardly— "impose."

"You don't have to, but if you want to, you're not imposing." He twists at the waist and nods to a booth across the room, where a boy and girl sit. When they see you seeing them they look away. "Sorry, they're dorks. There's usually more of us, but Jon's in work and Nancy's in Emerson, so…" He seizes up.

You wonder why people are so afraid of being awkward. It terrifies you, to think one day you'll fuck up and be awkward and the other person will remember it and laugh, but looking at him now, you can't see why it matters. It actually makes you feel better, knowing he's worried too.

"I only brought enough for the milkshake," you say.

"I'll get you something."

"That's– no, that's okay."

He hesitates. "You'd be doing me a favour. I love them, really, but I can't stand it when they're together, they bully me."

It would probably be worse to reject his offer and sit here lonely while they laugh and talk. You'll worry they're talking about you.

"Okay," you mumble, picking up your book and your milkshake.

He grins at you and you follow him through the diner. It's not busy today, but there's still feet to fall over and backpack straps to tread on, so you watch the floor.

"My name is Steve, by the way."

You tell him your own name, which brings another quick smile to his face. He slows as he approaches the booth of his friends and beckons for you to slide into the empty side before following you in.

"Guys, this is– Eddie, what the fuck is that? We said no gross shit at the table."

"This, my friend," Eddie says, words rolling around his mouth grandly, "is a monster."

It's a little man made of coffee stirrers, sporks, and chewing gum seams. It's kind of gross, but it's cute. Grossly cute and cutely gross.

"We're about to eat."

"You're stepping on his artistic licence," says the girl, her voice distinctly pretty and a tiny bit hoarse.

"Disgusting," Steve says.

You shift on the leather chair underneath you and anxiety pulses in the bottom of your stomach. They're ignoring you, but not really. Both have lifted their eyes to look at you, and, in sync, they smile. The girl's smile is startling, lip gloss lips and white teeth. Eddie's is softer, less happy and more reassuring.

"I'm Eddie," Eddie says, though you'd figured it out. "That's Robin. Do you think my monster is gross in the gross way or gross in the sick way?"

"He's cute," you admit to thinking. "But the gum…"

"I didn't have any glue."

"Steve told us about his drawings. If he's holding you hostage right now, blink three times, okay?" Robin jokes.

Eddie and Robin lean their shoulders together and start a bit where they count your blinks. There's murmurings about shelters and how they can definitely throat punch Steve hard enough to make him mute. You're stunned at being the object of a joke and don't know how to react, feeling like you've been whacked and now there's cartoon birds flying around your head and they can all see them.

Steve grabs the menus out of the rack and slaps one down in front of everybody. "Alright, team. You know the drill. Last person to choose what they want has to buy drinks." He spares you a glance. "Except you. She's on me because hostages don't pay for themselves."

"I would make such a pretty hostage," Eddie says.

He is pretty, in fairness. Dark curls thick with baby hairs frizzed up in the summer heat frame a pale face. He has big brown eyes.

“And talented,” Robin adds, poking the gum man until he falls flat on his face. The head pops off and Eddie shrieks, not loudly but with a passionate upset about him that makes you laugh.

Steve leans over. “Please choose quickly so I don’t have to pay for Robin's lemonade addiction. No pressure.”

“I’ll just have what you have.”

“With a coke?”

“Sure.”

“Robin?” he asks.

“I want a cheeseburger with a lemonade and then, if you will, another lemonade.”

She dumps her menu in Eddie’s lap, who looks up from his decapitated figure with a look of defeat.

“Wh- hey, she cheated. She hurt my dude.”

“Rules are rules.”

Eddie sulks and accepts everybody’s money. He slinks up to the window like an annoyed cat. After he’s placed the order, he looks back to the table and flips the bird covertly.

“So, how old are you?” Robin asks.

“Twenty two.”

“How’s that?” she asks sympathetically.

“Robin.” Steve chides. “She’s twenty so she thinks she’s a baby.”

“I am a baby. This is my first year not being a teen, which means it’s my first year as an adult. I’m one.”

“We have this argument a lot,” Steve says, though not with any bravado. Simple explanation, his voice soft and warm. “When being an adult actually begins. It’s not the adult part that even matters, it’s the not having rules that fucks people up. Look at Eddie. He’s been out of school for a year and he’s been arrested three times.”

You frown, not because his getting arrested would bother you (depending on the charge), but because you’re surprised, and surprise is quick to appear as anger on your face. His shirt and rockstar rings, his nice smile, his gum man — you’d assumed he was a huge nerd. His arrests are a surprise.

“What for?” you ask, before you can remind yourself that invasive questions are rude.

“Once for indecent exposure– completely accidental. Once for trespassing, and the last time was because he chained himself to a tree outside of Tawny’s bar. They weren’t cutting the tree down,” Steve says. “He, and I quote, wanted to see what all the fuss was about.”

“Don’t give away my RAP sheet when I’m not here,” Eddie says, placing a tray of drinks on the table carefully. Three cokes and two lemonades.

“It’s not a RAP sheet if you don’t actually get in trouble. They let him off ‘cause they know his uncle. And also ‘cause it’s Hawkins.” Robin slides her slice of lemon between her teeth, shepherding her two lemonades as far away from everybody as she can, looking extremely hedgy. “I’s a bitch sheet.”

Eddie feigns for her second lemon slice and snickers when Robin defends it, elbowing him hard in the ribs.

“I paid for it!” he says through laughs.

Your hands start to shake. You hide them under the lip of the table but it’s no use. Soon your legs are shaking, your arms, all of you. They’re minute tremors, both invisible and impossible to ignore. You glue a smile to your face and try to calm down. You’re overwhelmed and you don’t know why — this isn’t a new feeling. You are not the first person to feel this feeling.

Then why does it feel like it?

Sometimes, everything gets so scary so quickly, and you sit there wondering why it isn’t scary for everybody else, and you wonder why they can’t see it on your face how scared you are, and they must see it? They must know you’re fucked.

You’re shot with thoughts. These people, you could be friends. All you have to do is make a good impression. But how should you go about that? How do you talk? What do you say?

“I draw too,” you say, hands clamped between your knees.

Steve’s eyebrows do this little dance. It’s adorable, and it makes you want to be his friend most of all.

“You do?”

“I do. I’m not good, I mean. I used to be better. I’m out of practice.”

“I draw,” Eddie says.

“Yeah?”

He nods. “Jonathan, too. God, you should see his shit. And he’s an even better photographer. But I draw shitty zine comics. And Robin does the typesetting for me.”

“Oh, wow,” you say genuinely.

“Nancy writes,” Robin says. “So we’re, like, a jerk circle of artists. She’s good, too.”

“She’s good,” Eddie imitates fondly. “I bet she is. Robin’s gonna be a great writer as well, once she gets all these private Nancy lessons.”

Steve puts a hand up and Eddie promptly shuts up. He takes a big, sheepish slurp of coke and you feel like you’ve said something wrong though you barely said anything at all, sipping at your own coke.

“What are you reading?” Robin asks.

You slide the book toward her so she can see for herself. “The Sea, The Sea,” you tell her. “It’s about, uh,” —you’ve only managed to read the first thirty pages, and that’s after reading the first ten five times straight— “this guy named Charles, he’s unique. He’s uh, annoying.”

“You know, Nancy used to have a book that looked just like that,” Steve says.

You laugh weakly. “It must be popular. I got it at a yard sale.”

“Can I open it?” Robin asks.

“Of course. It’s already pretty beat up, I don’t think there’s anything you could do—“

Robin opens the book with one hand, thumb and pinky fingertip pressed to either side, and tries to take a sip of her drink without looking, tipping her glass of lemonade straight into the pages of The Sea, The Sea. What doesn’t get soaked up by your book rushes down the length of the table and into her lap.

Steve reaches across the table to grab up the glass, but the damage is already done. Your lips part. Eddie gawps, throwing a hand over his slack-jawed face.

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” she says, looking at you with wide eyes. “I have the worst case of butterfingers ever, I’m sorry.”

It’s as if she can’t believe she did it. You fluster when you realise they’re all waiting for your reaction.

“It’s okay!” you say, as loud as you’ve ever spoken in public.

“You can be mad,” Steve assures you.

“No, it was an accident. I’m not mad, it cost fifty cents, and it was totally garbage anyway. I’m really not mad.”

Eddie stuffs napkins under the table and Robin shivers uncontrollably, dishing ice cubes from her lap and the seat. Steve, laughing now, says, “God dammit, Robs,” sounding like she might be the most golden person on the planet.

—

Steve works his hat over your hair the best that he can. “There. Now you won’t die from heat stroke.”

You bring both hands to the hat to encourage it down onto your head. “Steve,” you say, sounding unsure on how to continue.

“It’s on loan.”

You nod and look out over the lake, where Eddie stands at the edge of the dock. "It's getting way too fucking cold for this," he complains, in swim shorts and a shirt, gazing in distrust at the lake’s shimmering surface.

Lake is kind. It is technically a lake, but also technically a really, very pathetic lake that feeds from a pathetic tributary. If you stationed Steve on one side and you the other, he would strain to hear you talking. Likely infected with brain eating amoeba or tadpoles or leeches. Slimy things. It’s less disgusting than Lover’s Lake, a condom cesspit, so that’s a plus.

You aren’t looking any more eager about jumping in than you had been, thighs naked and kissed by the hem of an oversized, black t-shirt. It’s wrinkled. Steve kind of loves it.

"Just jump in, you big babies," Robin says.

She'd already jumped in, screamed at the cold, and now languishes in the chest height water in front of the small fishing dock with a smug smile on her face. "Not you," she says to you. Steve rolls his eyes.

You shake your head, hair slipping out of the hat. You sigh as you pull it off and readjust the sizing band.

"I guess I am being a baby,” you say to him quietly. “The sun’s been out all day, how cold can it be?” You’re not feeling confident. It seeps into your voice, to which Steve lends a placating smile.

"Really fucking cold."

"Eddie, shut up. Y/N, it's fine. You'll like it."

“I really don’t think she’ll like it.”

Steve doesn’t either, but he wants you to feel included, and less tense. Distract you from whatever it is that’s giving you such a big case of the frownies, and prove he and his friends aren’t just book-ruining hooligans.

Eddie finally jumps in over Robin’s head, disappearing into the not quite blue water with a cut-off curse. He appears again a few seconds later, black hair slicked to his face, neck and shoulders, wiping the water from his eyes as he splutters and giggles boyishly.

“Shit, Stevie,” he says. “Not that cold after all.”

“You don’t have to jump in, you can just ease off the dock, if that’s better,” Steve says.

“Frogspawn,” you murmur.

Steve does a bunch of flexing, throws in a jumping jack for good measure. “Alright,” he says, holding out his hand. “Let’s go.”

You shake your head gently.

Steve doesn’t wanna embarrass you further, or insist when you really don’t want to, so he nods and smiles and takes a running jump into the lake. Robin and Eddie both swear and dart away as his body collides with the surface of the water, and he sinks like a well-practised stone to near enough the lake bed, feet gracing slippery pond weed and things he’d rather not think about. The air shatters out of his lungs and the water, despite the summer sun, is cold. It feels amazing — he hadn’t realised how warm he was until the temperature abruptly shifted.

He rushes back up to the surface and shakes his hair out like a dog, water running down his face and shoulders in fast thick rivulets. He peels his eyes open and turns to find you still hesitating on the dock. Robin splashes at Steve in retaliation for his hair splatters and Eddie laughs evilly as he joins in.

“Come on!” he begs you. “I told you, they bully me! I need back up!”

You toss his hat on the dock. The jump you take into the lake is timid but enough to miss the frogspawn and not break your legs, a cold splash of water and you’re there. Luckily, your presence has Robin and Eddie both stopping in their cruel tracks, and you don’t have to save Steve after all.

Your happy laughter is stunning.

"It's so cold!" you squeal, water in your eyelashes.

Eddie takes one of your hands and together the four of your tread into deeper water.

"Now that all who can be present are present," he says, falling into his dungeon master drawl, "it's time we commence the The Tournament. Swimmers, take your stations."

Everyone falls into line. You don't know what you're falling into line for, raising your timid voice to ask, "What's the game?"

"The game is me and you dunk the ever-loving out of dumb and dumber," he says.

"Hey, what?" Robin asks. "How come you get her? She's a total wild card, she might win the game all by herself."

"Or she might really suck. We don't know, and so in the interest of fairness, I propose she swims with me." Eddie's wet sleeve sticks to your skin as he nudges you. "But you don't suck, do you?"

"Um…"

"Attagirl. On your marks, get set, go!"

You spend an hour like that. Steve and Co, they're stupid, but they aren't stupid stupid. The Tournament is a series of chasing and dunking (stupid but fun) wherein you get to throw yourself on the shoulders of the person you're chasing and submerge them (stupid again). You can't hold them down, though, they aren't trying to drown one another. Much.

The sun regretfully starts to set. If it's anything like the last few days, that means it's likely near 10PM, and they're all working tomorrow.

"Do you have work tomorrow?" Steve asks in concern, after he's heaved himself up onto one of the huge stones on the opposite side of the lake.

Cattails obscure you from view on your own stone. Across the lake, your possessions lay thankfully unscathed on the dock. Robin sits as close as she can to Steve on his rock, kicking water at Eddie every time he tries to approach.

"You fucking rat," he fumes, mouth full of lake water.

"I'm not really working right now,” you say.

"Do you need a job?" Eddie asks. "They're hiring— Harrington, restrain your creature! They're hiring at the Palace Arcade, aren't they?"

Steve nods voraciously. "Yeah! Hey, we can get you an interview no problem, they probably won't even ask you that many questions. I mean, Keith worked there."

"Don't be mean about Keith," Robin says, though she doesn't really like him. He thinks it's akin to defending your deadbeat older brother.

"I don't know, I think even a couple of questions might be too many," you worry.

"How come?"

You pull the fluff off of a cat tail, and it explodes in your hands. Steve yanks one down to do the same, watching the fibres float across the lake's disturbed surface with a cool breeze. Robin shivers beside him, sensitive to the cold in her wet clothes, the adrenaline of swimming and almost but not really dying wearing off.

"I'm bad at stuff like that."

"I don't think anyone's good at interviews at our age," Eddie says, nose wrinkled as cat tail floats toward him. "We're, like, babies."

"I always feel like I'm really old," you confess. You look down at your naked knees. "Like I wasted all the good years already."

"What, school?"

"And the four years since," you say.

Steve gets it, in a way. His high school years sucked, and he'd maybe thought he'd get out of Hawkins on a track or swim scholarship, basketball — anything. But he's here still, and at first that hadn't been what he wanted. Sure, he'd expected it, but in different ways.

Steve pushes back the cattails to see you clearly. "I didn't even get any real good years until just now," he says, as kindly as he can.

"I failed senior year twice," Eddie speaks up, "I kinda thought I was wasting my life too, but if I didn't, I wouldn't even know Robin, and she's, like, my best friend."

He throws his hands over his face before Steve can kick a huge wave of lake water into his eyes. "Get your own," Steve fumes. He's not really mad.

"Yeah, these are the good years," Robin says, "probably. I never had guys fighting over me in high school." She laughs and tucks her wet hair behind her ears, her freckled cheeks pale in the oranging light of the sunset.

You hold your hands out for Eddie and he finally climbs onto one of the rocks. From this side of the lake, you can watch the sun set behind the silhouettes of Hawkins town a half mile away. It dips slowly down, meandering almost, a pearl sinking through layers of raspberry pink and orange and, as Steve holds his breath, that sudden flash of electric green.

"I'm blind," Eddie mumbles, falling back into the rocks and grass.

"Shit, that was cool." Robin stands up and stretches. "I'm so cold I'm gonna die right here. Steve, do you still have a blanket in your car?"

Steve looks over at you again. You look shell-shocked, not quite awed. He doesn't know what emotion you're feeling, only that you're feeling it, eyes wide and set across the lake at the darkened sky, lights from the buildings like stars shimmering in your pupils.

He stands up and offers his hand to you. When you take it, he pulls you up without hesitation, not a flicker of doubt or an ounce of struggle.

"I'll get you that interview," he says, questioning, soft. If you want it.

Your fingers linger in his palm.

"Yeah, okay. Thank you."

"Come on!" Robin says, taking your other hand and tugging without apology, barefoot over the asphalt path surrounding the lake. "Before the gnats come out."

"We might see fireflies if we stick around," Eddie says.

They bicker. Steve lets go of your hand and you and Robin walk just ahead, your head bobbing between his two arguing friends like you're watching a quickfire tennis match.

You turn to the side and hide a smile. Steve sees it, and he figures it's a start.

"Munson," he hollers, "how about you stay and watch the fireflies and you tell us all about it? Me and the girls aren't gonna freeze out here so you can get back in touch with nature."

It's a bad joke, but it works. "Fuck you, Harrington. The ladies wanna see the lightning bugs, don't you?"

"I can't remember the last time I saw them," you say.

"Then we have to stay," Eddie says smugly.

You all crowd the back of Steve's car, the heaters on but not doing a lot, the blanket stretched over Robin's shoulders. She tucks it behind your back, and you all look out to the night and scout for bugs.

"There," you whisper, pointing.

Green dots of light rise from the dry grass like tiny lanterns, a handful at a time.

"Jonathan's gonna be sad he missed this," Robin murmurs.

You try to count them all. Four voices whispering bets into the night air, though the real number isn't possible to calculate. "Winner gets a new paperback on Robin," Eddie jokes, swiftly quietened by a barrage of elbows to his side.

They let you win.

#steve harrington x reader #steve harrington x you #steve harrington x y/n #steve harrington #stranger things x reader #stranger things fic #steve harrington imagine #steve harrington fanfic #steve harrington fanfiction #stranger things

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piratekane · 1 year

Text

Beatrice sighs as her pen runs out of ink. This is the second pen today and she’s starting to feel like there is something working against her. But, that seems illogical. The more logical conclusion is that Ava has used her pens. She has a tendency to use them until they’re nearly dry and put them back in Beatrice’s backpack, thinking she’s doing a good job returning them to where she found them.

Not maliciously. There’s nothing Ava does that is malicious. Beatrice knows she’s probably thinking: I borrowed this. I need to put it back. And then she does and Beatrice opens her backpack at the student center the next day, intent on getting some work done while she waits for Ava, and finds her pens dry.

She looks through her pencil case but there isn’t another pen, just a precisely sharpened standard pencil, two black mechanical pencils, a yellow highlighter, a soft white eraser, and her red pen - used to make corrections only. She debates using it.

No. It would ruin her notes.

Instead, she pulls out her laptop. She’ll just continue her notes there and transfer them to her notebook later. The extra repetition will be good for her. Her professor asked her a question she wasn’t quite prepared for and she knows she’s going to be thinking about it all week until she has a chance to redeem herself in the next class.

Her screen comes to life and she sighs. This one isn’t born from frustration like her last one; this one is an acceptance, an admitting to herself that, despite what she’s looking at, she can’t help but feel a rush of affection for it.

Ava has changed her desktop background again. This time, it’s a picture Camila took last weekend. Ava is in a white shirt and white shorts, a white sweatband around her forehead. All of it is stained in neon paint. She’s holding a fake plastic trophy high above her head with one hand, the other looped around Beatrice’s neck, the two of them squished into the frame. Her own clothes are soaked with the same bright colors.

How she agreed to something called a Color Run... The idea of running through cannons of color had not sounded appealing, but Ava had come home with a flyer she found on the bulletin board outside the cafeteria and presented it to Beatrice alongside a bulleted list of reasons why Beatrice should say yes.

She let Ava go through the list: one, you love to exercise. Two, it’s advertised to make the world ‘healthier’ and you’re always telling me I need to start making better choices. Three, imagine if we got Lilith to agree to come and someone blasted her with a color cannon?

The third one hadn’t been convincing. Lilith would never agree to something like that.

Beatrice didn’t tell her that the list didn’t matter; she was going to say yes the moment Ava handed her the flyer and looked at her with those eyes, the ones that always made Beatrice feel like she could free fall and not care what waits for her at the other end of it.

And she had to admit, it was rather fun. The white clothes they bought were completely ruined, but it had been worth it to see the way Ava beamed the whole run, sprinting ahead to circle back around her. She had thrown her arms wide when the color cannons went off, soaking in the powder. Beatrice soaked in her happiness in return.

It hasn’t been long. Spring is fading into summer quickly and Ava has been living with her for two months and every single moment has been filled with the kind of happiness that Beatrice could have only dreamed about when she was younger. The kind of happiness that made each day feel like it was worth waking up for.

She hadn’t gone looking for this, hadn’t expected something like this to just fall into her lap - or literally crash into her table. It’s illogical to think fate sent Ava into her orbit, but if she was pressed, she could admit that each of them must have been in the right place at the right time. Serendipity, Ava said with a rakish smile. We were destined to meet.

If there was such a thing as serendipity, it must be working in her favor.

She opens a word document, the cursor blinking at the top of the page. She titles it Anthropological Theories of Religion and flips through her textbook until she finds the correct page. She likes this class, likes how as she continues through her degree program the class gets smaller, more intimate. She typically likes the professor, though she feels thrown off by her now.

Halfway through a word, her world goes dark. Warm hands slide over her eyes, fingertips pressing against her skin.

She smiles nearly instantly. “Ava.”

“Not Ava,” says a low voice. But it’s clunky, a poor imitation at something deeper.

Beatrice plays along for just a moment, indulging Ava and a part of herself that likes to make Ava happy. “Oh? Well then. I suppose a stranger has found it appropriate to put their hands on me.” She curls her fingers around a thin wrist, one her hand already knows the shape of, and tightens slightly. “I do know how to disarm you.”

“You could try.”

Beatrice tightens her grip in response and hears a slight exhale that glances against the shell of her ear. A fingertip skates across her brow briefly and then Ava is letting go, pressing a kiss to the top of her head before she sits down heavily in the chair next to Beatrice.

“How did you know it was me? What if I was… Mary?”

Beatrice spares Ava a glance. “Mary knows better. You, on the other hand…”

“I’ve never known better.” Ava says it with pride. “Especially not when it comes to you.”

Beatrice feels her chest tighten. She wonders if Ava knows, if Ava understands how something so simple unspools the tight loop Beatrice keeps around her heart. A part of her thinks Ava must. Ava is able to read her so thoroughly. From the moment they met, Ava has seen through her so effortlessly. It’s thrilling, to be seen like that.

And it’s devastatingly terrifying.

“Yes, well,” she says quietly.

“One day, you’ll use that to your advantage.” Ava spins Beatrice’s textbook towards her, reading a few of the section titles before she turns it back towards Beatrice. “But you’re also too nice for that, so who knows.”

Beatrice straightens out her textbook out of habit more than anything else. “You’re late.”

Ava smiles sheepishly. “I got caught up.” She doesn’t give an answer past that.

Beatrice nearly frowns. Ava doesn’t owe her any more of an explanation. She just usually gives one.

“But I’m here now!” Ava takes off her backpack, resting it on the floor before she opens it and takes out her own laptop. “I thought you didn’t like typing your notes? Muscle memory or something, right?”

“My pens are out of ink.”

Ava’s cheeks flush. “That’s my fault, isn’t it.”

“It’s certainly not mine.” She says it without any malice. “I just need to start carrying more pens.”

Ava still looks guilty. She fishes into the pocket of her jean shorts and unearths a stick of gum, three paper clips, and an uncapped pen. She spreads them out on the table and nudges the pen towards Beatrice. It’s not the tip she likes, thicker than she usually uses, and it’s blue. If red would ruin her notes, this would change the physical shape of them.

She takes the offered pen and closes her laptop. “Thank you.”

“Anything for you.” Ava smiles and scoops the paper clips up, putting them back in her pocket.

Beatrice will find them later when she does the laundry and she’ll add them to the jar of pocket-trinkets she keeps of all the things Ava leaves behind in her clothes. It’s made up of coins and paper clips and pen caps - all things that Ava swears she’s going to put in proper places but never remembers until Beatrice is pulling them out of the washing machine.

Ava takes the gum and breaks it in half, offering it to Beatrice. She has coffee and this gum is spearmint. The combination will taste horrible. But she puts the gum in her mouth and smiles when Ava does.

“So, listen to what MacKay did today.” Ava tells the story animatedly, face shifting as she plays each character. Beatrice doesn’t catch every word, too focused on the rise and fall of her voice and the way her hands move as she goes on. Beatrice finds herself smiling along, not at all caring about some girl named Carina or Professor MacKay and whatever argument they’ve gotten into this week.

Ava is halfway through her story, body gearing up to drop the punch line, when her face shifts and her eyes cut over Beatrice’s shoulder. Beatrice frowns, turning to look. A boy is approaching their table, hands locked around the straps of his backpack as he strides towards them.

“Hey, Ava!” he calls.

Beatrice looks back at Ava. She knows this boy, at the very least. But her face is unreadable - a feat Ava doesn’t manage to accomplish very often. He comes closer and Beatrice’s frown deepens.

“Ah,” Ava says quietly.

Ah?

The boy slows as he reaches their table, a smile on his face that someone might find charming. She studies Ava’s face. Does she find it charming?

“Hey, Ava,” he repeats. His voice is smooth, slightly accented. A traitorous part of her thinks of the time that Ava said she liked accents. “I was hoping to catch you after class.”

Ava smiles. “Sorry, JC. I was in a hurry. Had a lunch date.” She hooks a thumb in Beatrice’s direction. “JC, meet Beatrice, my best friend. Beatrice, this is JC. He’s my biology lab partner.”

JC. She’s never heard of him before. Ava talks about everyone and everything. Some nights, she talks until she falls asleep on the couch, her Hobbes stuffed animal clutched in her arms. It’s almost as if she collects stories all day just to tell them to Beatrice later. She knows about every one of Ava’s classmates, is - secretly - invested in her Literary Theory classmates, Robert and Nayara, and their on-again, off-again relationship. She knows about the librarian Ava likes, who doesn’t mind her iced coffee, as long as she uses a paper towel and keeps it away from the books.

But she’s never heard of a JC, or anyone who might use the initials JC.

And it’s not that Ava isn’t allowed to have friends. She is. She has plenty of them. She always says hello to at least fifteen people when they go out, either here to their favorite table in the student center or in the library or walking to the cafeteria if they’re getting lunch between classes. Ava loves people, loves knowing things about them. Beatrice loves that about her.

She just thought she knew all of them. Or has heard of them before. She certainly thinks she would have remembered hearing about Ava’s lab partner. It's odd, now, that she hasn't.

JC smiles at her, his eyes taking a moment longer to shift away from Ava. “It’s nice to meet you. Ava has talked a lot about you.”

Beatrice hides her smile at that. “Nice to meet you,” she says politely.

He completely turns from her, his job of mirroring her politeness gone, his job done. Beatrice finds herself studying him. He’s attractive in a conventional sense. A strong jaw, a good smile. Camila would have many things to say about him and Beatrice works to keep her voice out of her mind. She focuses on Lilith instead.

Boys, she would probably sneer. Beatrice agrees.

JC runs a hand through his hair, pushing it back a little. Beatrice watches Ava’s eyes follow the motion and fights a visible frown. JC notices, though, and seems to preen a little in a way only university-age boys can when they find themselves to be attractive. She takes a centering breath. She doesn’t know JC. She’s sure he’s a nice person. She’s also sure he’d be a nicer one if he wasn’t standing at their table right now.

“I just wanted to know if you gave any thought to my question.”

“Ah,” Ava says again.

Ah?

JC doesn’t seem bothered. “I know your rule on dating your lab partner. It’s a very specific rule but I think you should give me a chance.”

Dating echoes in Beatrice’s head like a slow siren, like the slow spin of a lantern in a lighthouse. It illuminates JC, floating in the ocean in her mind, with his charming smile and his hopeful eyes. Ava appears next, face unreadable. They rotate around and around until they’re in the same frame.

She blinks and Ava is staring at her, a slight wrinkle in her forehead.

Beatrice keeps her face neutral, unsure of what else to do with it. She certainly can’t shout no. She absolutely will not encourage it. She’s stuck in a sort of limbo where she isn’t sure what comes next and so she waits, poised and ready to do whatever is needed of her.

Ava’s frown deepens.

JC takes the silence and runs with it. “If it’s because you’re worried about things being awkward if it doesn’t go well - and that’s a big if - then you don’t need to worry.” His smile widens and he leans one hand down on the table, his whole body angled towards Ava now. “What do you say?”

Say no, she thinks. Tell him to go away.

Ava has been living with her for two months and Beatrice has been in love with her for at least half of that.

It took some getting used to, this feeling. It took many nights laying in bed staring at the ceiling and pretending like the feelings she had for Ava were just a friendship. An intense one, born of their proximity and Ava’s natural affinity for people in general.

But love is friendship caught on fire, she’s read before. And her friendship with Ava is a living, burning thing. She knows their love would be incendiary, scorching everything she thought love looked like before.

If - and it’s a big if - Ava ever wanted to love her back.

Why would she? Why would she give up a world of possibility for Beatrice? She’s certainly nothing special. She’s disciplined, polite, considerate to the needs of others - all the things her parents wanted her to be. Ava wants someone free, a little brash, selfish in the right ways. Beatrice is none of those things, can’t even begin to think of how she could be. But Ava deserves to get what she wants after all those years of being denied even the simplest of things.

Beatrice just doesn’t have the qualities Ava could want. Friendship is one thing. Being in love with someone is another. Beatrice is hyper aware of the difference.

It doesn’t stop her from dreaming about it, though. It doesn’t stop her from wishing for it.

“What’s the worst that could happen? We spend the rest of the semester ignoring each other?” he asks, smile charming.

Yes, she thinks. What’s the worst that could happen between them? They could spend the rest of the lease ignoring each other. Ava would never look at her the same.

She’d have to go back to living her life the way it was before Ava - not the worst, but not as great as this.

“I don’t know,” Ava finally hedges.

Yes, Beatrice exhales in her mind.

JC leans forward a little more. “It doesn’t need to be anything big. We could go for one of those iced coffees you like. At the cafe near Venable?”

“She likes the one near the English department.”

Beatrice frowns. Surely that wasn’t her voice. But Ava and JC are both looking at her. So it must have been her. There’s a slight smile on Ava’s face, a slight frown on JC’s. Beatrice clears her throat.

“I’m sorry. I just…”

JC recovers. “The one near Eldridge Hall, sure. I know someone who works there. She can sneak us a pastry.”

Ava hasn’t looked away from Beatrice. “I don’t know,” she repeats.

Beatrice swallows. It’s fine. Ava is - well, not quite a grown up, but certainly not a child. Despite her propensity for Saturday morning cartoons on Beatrice’s Hulu account - which is ruining the algorithm of her suggested shows - and sleeping on the couch upside down like a toddler and eating, God help her, shredded cheese out of the bag after finishing half a gallon of milk without even pouring herself a glass, she is not a child.

She can make her own decisions. And if that decision is- If it’s- Well. Beatrice swallows past a knot forming in her throat. Well. She can do what she pleases. Including this probably-very-nice-boy in front of them. She’s allowed to do that.

So she smiles tightly, her lips pressing together thinly, and tells herself to get it together. She keeps her focus on Ava and loosens her mouth and it feels a little more natural. She inhales through her nose. She can tell Ava that she’s free to do whatever she wants with whoever she wants.

“You do like a free pastry,” is what she ends up saying.

Ava’s forehead pinches, the corners of her mouth crinkling. “I do,” she says slowly, confused.

“An iced coffee and a pastry.” Beatrice says it just as slowly. “Both things that you enjoy.”

“I do,” Ava repeats.

Beatrice nods encouragingly. Her head feels like it’s on a spring, up and down and up and down. She’s worried it’s going to roll off.

JC looks between the two of them, confusion on his face. Beatrice sees him out of the corner of her eye and her smile tightens again.

Ava is still staring at her, still frowning slightly. Beatrice forces herself into her most diplomatic smile.

Don’t you get it? she wants to ask. Don’t you understand what I’m trying to say?

But Ava misses it. Because she breaks Beatrice’s gaze and focuses on JC instead. Beatrice thinks her smile is slightly dimmer. Or she’s just hoping it is. But it still doesn’t ease the pain of knowing there is a smile and it’s aimed at JC.

She opens her mouth, but he beats her to it. “Listen, you have my number. I’m done with classes this evening. And then you’ll meet me for coffee, okay? And you won’t regret it.”

Ava says nothing. JC pushes back from their table and smiles, hooking his hands back around the straps of his bag. His eyes wander to Beatrice and he nods politely before turning in a lazy circle and heading back through the crowd as the student center starts to fill up as afternoon classes.

Beatrice looks away instantly, busying herself with adjusting her notebook. It doesn’t need to be straightened out. In fact, she pushes it out of place and the pen Ava loaned her starts to roll across the table towards the edge. She reaches for it at the same time as Ava does.

Their fingers tangle and the pen is trapped under Beatrice’s palm. She pauses, every nerve exposed, and looks up to find Ava already looking back at her.

She smiles, mouth still wound too tight. “I’ve got it.”

“Do you?” Ava asks curiously.

Beatrice frowns, looking down. Their fingers are still slotted together, still laced over the pen. Of course she has it. It’s right there, scratching blue ink against her palm.

“Because it seems like you’ve lost everything else,” Ava continues. “Like your cool, for instance.”

She pulls back minutely. “My-” Her eyes narrow. “What do you mean by that?”

Ava shrugs a shoulder. She only does that when she has a secret, when there’s something that Beatrice missed, a cue she didn’t read. “You do like a free pastry,” she mocks, her voice pitched low in a terrible approximation of Beatrice’s accent. “What gotten into you?”

“Oh.” Beatrice bristles. “Well, you do.”

“I know that. You know that.” Ava pauses. “Why does JC need to know that?”

Beatrice doesn’t have a good answer for that. So she makes one up. “Your potential suitors will need to know things about you. That is less a trivia fact and more of a necessity.”

Ava snorts loudly. Beatrice looks around, but no one seems bothered by the sudden noise. “My potential suitors?” She shakes her head. “Bea, honestly. No one talks like you do.”

She doesn’t make it sound like an insult. She never does, never has. She seems more entertained than anything, but not in a way that makes Beatrice uncomfortable or self-conscious. It makes her feel seen. And she loves to be seen by Ava. It uncoils some of the tension in her shoulder that she knows is radiating into her hand, tense under Ava’s touch.

Ava doesn’t move her hand. “Well, thanks to you, I think I’m going on a date tonight.”

Thanks to me. Thanks to the way she said Ava would enjoy herself. Thanks to her, Ava is meeting someone who isn’t her for a coffee at Ava’s favorite cafe where she only brings Beatrice. One of our places, Ava always tells her with a smile.

“You can say no,” she reminds Ava, her whole body locking up again.

Say no, say no. She feels each word burn in her throat. But why would she? Why would she pick someone like JC over me?

Ava is still looking at her curiously, head tipped slightly as she studies her face. Beatrice holds still, face perfectly impassive from years of practice. She doesn’t move, doesn’t blink, doesn’t open her mouth and tell Ava that JC seemed nice but she deserves something better than nice; something spectacular.

Then again, she’s not sure that Ava would feel that way about her.

So she forces her face to relax. Works through each muscle until she’s smiling slightly and nods encouragingly. “But if you like him and can see yourself enjoying your time, you should say yes.”

“Do you want me to?”

The question cuts through her with the intensity of a perfect lightning strike. She pulls back slightly, the only indication Ava’s hand tightening over hers when it starts to slide away. Ava’s face has gone from curious to a level of seriousness usually reserved for her more difficult homework assignments, or when she’s trying to figure out something Beatrice said.

“I don’t… I don’t think that’s my decision.”

“Well, you’re my best friend.”

Beatrice has never hated a description more in her life. She fights the visceral reaction she feels come alive in her chest. She is Ava’s best friend. She’s admitted that more times than her parents have told her they love her. The first time had been a surprise to both of them, almost too soon after Ava moved in. But it felt natural. Ava slotted into the unknown hole in her life like she had always been there.

But she’d set their whole foundation on fire if it meant one day she could be Ava’s best friend and, and, and.

She widens her smile, feeling like she’s playing a part. “Of course. But I suppose… Well, there’s no harm in trying, is there?”

Ava’s hand slides away now and the feeling that she said the wrong thing rushes in on her.

“A very diplomatic answer, Beatrice.” She pats the top of Beatrice’s hand before she pulls it into her lap. “Remind me again why you’re not running for student government?”

Beatrice doesn’t smile. She simply touches her notebook, arranging it’s already perfect line. She looks down at the chunky-tipped blue pen sitting on the page, so out of place against the neat, thin, black lines of her notes. Suddenly the idea of writing with it feels overwhelming.

“I think we better get to lunch.” She puts the pen in front of Ava. “Camila said she was going to meet us there.”

She needs the buffer, needs to put space between them. Camila is the perfect distraction. Mary and Shannon would know instantly that something was wrong - and they’d corner her until she said what. But perhaps they might not; Shannon seems supernaturally in tune with her and there’s rarely a thing she needs to tell her. Lilith would read Beatrice’s hesitation and be annoyed. Or think it’s Ava’s fault and be cagey when she doesn’t need to be. Camila would be too polite to acknowledge the tension Beatrice knows is radiating off her.

Ava, mercifully, doesn’t argue with her or point out that Camila isn’t meeting them for another 15 minutes and the walk only takes 5. She pockets the pen again and packs her things away, waiting for Beatrice to zip her bag closed.

They walk inches apart, shoulders to themselves. It’s the longest 5 minutes of Beatrice’s life.

The door opens slowly. Beatrice looks up from her book, the one she’s been reading since Ava left; the one she hasn’t been reading at all. Ava slips through it, back turned to close the door quietly behind her. When she turns to the living room, she gasps.

“Beatrice.”

Beatrice blinks. “Why are you sneaking back in?”

Ava is still taking deep breaths, hand pressed to her chest. “I thought you’d be sleeping.”

“At…” Beatrice checks her phone, frowning. “Eight o’clock in the evening?”

The tips of Ava’s ears go red just enough for Beatrice to notice. “Well. I didn’t look at the time.”

Beatrice looks out the window at the golden sunset. “It’s still light out.”

“You’re an early sleeper.” Ava sounds like she’s grasping at straws, the pitch of her voice rising.

“Not that early,” Beatrice says flatly. She slips her bookmark into her book, grateful to be closing it. “8 hours a night are important, but if I went to sleep at this hour, I’d be up at four in the morning. That’s too early, even for me.”

Ava toes off her shoes, kicking them towards the shoe rack at the door. One of them lands on the rack but the other bounces off it and away. Ava sighs, fixes it, and runs a hand through her hair when she straightens up.

“How-” Beatrice stops. She suddenly needs to be busy, needs to have her hands moving. She could open her book again, thumb through the pages. But tea sounds better. She stands, crossing to the kitchen and filling the electric kettle.

“I got you a coffee.” Ava pulls out a stool tucked at the breakfast bar, leaning forward with her chin in her hands. “But some kid on a skateboard crashed into me when he cut a corner and took the coffee down with him.”

Beatrice pulls two mugs out the cabinet, dropping a tea bag in each. “Are you okay?”

“Just my pride.” Ava shrugs when Beatrice looks back. “But I’m disappointed. I got you a mocha chip frappuchino. Lucy put in extra chocolate chips.”

Something flutters in Beatrice’s chest, a sudden thought that overwhelms her: maybe Ava does these things because she feels it too. She pushes it down and smiles. “I do like when Lucy makes my drinks. But, maybe next time.”

Ava is quiet long enough that Beatrice wonders if she left. The kettle starts to whistle and she fills the mugs, balancing them carefully as she carries them to the counter Ava hasn’t moved from. She’s just uncharacteristically quiet. She hums a thank you and curls her hands around the mug, hissing when she finds it’s too hot.

Beatrice can’t help the fond smile; Ava is always rushing into things.

It’s why Beatrice knows Ava doesn’t feel the same way. She’s not rushing into this, not caught up in a whirlwind like she is with everything else.

“Aren’t you going to ask me how my date was?” Ava finally asks.

I don’t want to know.

“How was your date?” she asks politely.

Tell me it was the worst date you’ve ever been on. Worse than the one you told me about where the boy slurped his pasta and sauce got everywhere; worse than the one where the girl tried to cast a love spell on you.

Ava shrugs. “It was… nice.” She blows on her tea. “JC is a good guy. I knew that already. But it wasn’t… groundbreaking.”

Beatrice is patient, letting her tea cool on its own. “Does a date need to be groundbreaking?”

“World-breaking.” Ava says it so quickly and fiercely, Beatrice has to blink. “It should be life-altering.”

“That seems like a lot to expect for a first date.” Beatrice points out. “At a coffee shop. With your lab partner.”

Ava shrugs. “Maybe I just have high expectations.”

Ones Beatrice can never live up to, it seems.

She smiles, hoping it looks warm and friendly. “You’ll have a hard time finding someone with an outlook like that.”

“I don’t know.” Ava takes a sip of her tea, hisses again. “I mean, a lot of things in my life have been like that. Getting out of the orphanage. Getting into school. Meeting you.” She’s staring at Beatrice now, a smile on her face.

She curls her hands around her mug and fights the way it burns her skin. She’s hardly earth-shattering, hardly worth that much. There’s no way she could be. But Ava is so earnest all the time, means things so completely. And if she’s saying that, Beatrice has to acknowledge that Ava considers her something great. A great friendship that Beatrice could never, ever risk.

But she feels herself flush all the same. “I’d hardly call it that.” She hedges around her next question. “So, no second date?”

She wonders if Ava hears the way her voice trembles; she can certainly feel it in her chest.

But Ava doesn’t seem to, too focused on taking another, slower, sip of her tea. This one apparently doesn’t scald her tongue. She grins up at Beatrice, hunched over the steaming mug. She’s brought her legs up on the rungs of the stool and her knees are around her ears. Ava clutches the mug tightly to her chest.

She’s in love with a menace.

“I don’t think so,” Ava says after a minute. “I mean, I don’t really have a reason not to, but…”

Beatrice breathes in deeply, steadying herself. She’s not a reason for Ava to say no. She knows that. “That’s not very encouraging,” she says instead.

Ava shrugs. “I don’t know. I’m not looking for anything to change right now. I want things to stay exactly as they are. Things are perfect. And if I went out with him again, I’d just be, I don’t know. Pretending.”

She takes another measured sip of her tea. She feels like she’s walking in the empty space between the points of knives. “You wouldn’t be happy.”

Ava shakes her head softly. “No, I wouldn’t be. How could I be happy if I was pretending all the time?”

Beatrice knows. Because she is. She’s pretending from the moment she wakes up to the moment she falls asleep alone and all the seconds in between. She’s pretending that everything she’s feeling isn’t consuming her from the inside out.

All the books she read as a child, all the romances novels she devoured in her bed with a flashlight illuminating the pages - none of it described the way it feels now. Love is friendship on fire had seemed like such a childish thing to say. Something arbitrary and insignificant. But now she understands what it’s supposed to mean, what she could never understand before with anyone else.

“You couldn’t,” she admits. She’s not lying.

Ava’s eyes are still piercing, still searching her face. She wonders what Ava is trying to find and she keeps the truth as far away from her as she can. Either she finds something else or she gives up, because her face breaks into two and she’s grinning.

Ava slurps her tea, smiling wider when Beatrice looks mildly disgusted. “Alright. The way I see it, we have two options: we have a sleepover night where you let me braid your hair and I let you paint my toenails.” She laughs when the mild disgust turns into outright horror. “Or, I get you back into that really nice sweater you were wearing earlier and we got off in search of a replacement mocha chip frappuchino?”

Beatrice abandons her tea almost immediately. “Do you know what time Lucy’s shift is over?”

Ava jumps off her stool, landing lightly on her feet. She doesn’t bother with sneakers, socked feet sliding into sandals. Beatrice thinks about telling her how ridiculous it looks: her mid-calf socks usually hidden by her high-top sneakers, and a pair of black slides; her jean shorts where the pocket hangs just a little too long past the hem; her crop top with How you lichen me now? hand-stenciled on the front, from the one botany club meeting she attended; her hair half-pulled back in a high top-knot; a crooked grin on her face.

She’s the most beautiful woman Beatrice has ever seen in her life.

And one day, someone else is going to get to call her theirs. Beatrice will be left with the empty space where Ava used to be, her own space in Ava’s life filled up with someone else. Someone better. Someone she wants to rush headlong into the future with. Someone she sees a world of possibilities with.

Beatrice will be happy for her. Or, she’ll exhaust herself pretending.

“Milady,” Ava says, mouth tripping over the sounds. She holds out her arm. “Will you accompany me on this chip?”

Beatrice rolls her eyes. “You hardly made an effort that time.”

Ava’s smile doesn’t falter. “One of these days, I’ll impress you, Beatrice. You’ll see.” She wags her finger at Beatrice. “And then you’ll realize how special I am. You’ll never want to lose me.”

“No,” she says quietly. Ava slips away to grab her phone, abandoned on the breakfast bar. Beatrice waits by the door, holding it open. “I don’t suppose I ever will.”

It’s inevitable. She’ll lose Ava to someone who loves her out loud, someone good enough for her. But she’s going to bury greedy hands into the moments in between and hold on for as long as Ava lets her.

“I think I’m going to tell JC it was nice, but we won’t go out again,” Ava says conversationally as they exit their apartment building, headed towards campus. “He was nice, but… I’m looking for better.”

“You’ll find it,” she says, believing it wholeheartedly. She unthinkingly maneuvers Ava around a crack in the sidewalk. “You just need to be patient.”

“Patience isn’t my strong suit.” Her hand slides to Beatrice’s, their fingers slotting together for a fleeting moment. “I don’t know how much longer I can wait. But I'll try.”

Just keep waiting. Wait forever, her mind screams. Don’t find anyone before I can be who you need me to be.

Ava takes in her silence and laughs. Beatrice frowns, not in on the joke, but doesn’t protest when Ava laces an arm through hers, pulling until their pressed together from the shoulder to their elbows, digging into each other. There’s no space between them, not for a slip of paper or a secret.

Ava hums softly, some tune Beatrice doesn’t know, but would guess is some new song on the radio that she’s never heard. Beatrice lets it bubble in her chest, sinks into it’s familiar warmth, and hopes that whatever God is watching over her lets her keep this moment for as long as she can.

And if he isn’t, she hopes he’s just not paying enough attention to realize she’s living on borrowed time and that she’s running out of it.

#warrior nun #avatrice #ava silva #sister beatrice #forever roommates #jealousy turning saints into the sea #but also poor bea?#(as if i didn't write her into this corner)#everyone say thank you kay thank you kay #anyway let's try for a little less next time yes?

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