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#sunshine gurl
ac1dfaerie · 1 year
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🌌Night and Day 🌅
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pollie-pockets · 2 months
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Black dolls for black history month: day 8
Sunshine gurl from LOL OMG
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dees-dollies · 2 years
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These are all the new LOL OMG dollies I got myself for my birthday (with the exception of the first two anyway, I got those a couple weeks before 😏) 🎂
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zaksdolls · 2 years
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Sunshine Gurl
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I kept flip flopping between getting her and not. Then I saw Moonlight Jewel's custom and that convinced me I absolutely needed her.
She is just so damn cute and I love love LOVE her colors so much! Her packaging is nicely done as per usual.
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Very cute striped undergarments although a bit ill fitting.
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I shouldn't love the accessory boxes and bags so much but I do. Her jacket and pants are well done for the most part. Lots of tail ends. And some fraying. Fray Check to the rescue once more!
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All the accessories. Shoes/ skates are cute!
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And I am in love with her butterfly clips!
There is a downside though. I feel that they're too far back and I would like to change the color on some of them. However, I can't remove them without undoing her hair, and I really really don't want to do that. Speaking of hair, it has plenty of product. After a good wash I ran my fingers through the fiber and I'm not crazy about it.
It feels rather coarse and stiff. I want to say it's polypropylene? But I am not great at differentiating hair fibers so be warned.
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Good news is it flat irons nicely and the frizzy ends softened a bit. I'm not liking the length of hair and am thinking about chopping it a bit. But first I would like to dip dye her ends a light purple. Going to experiment with Rit Dyemore in teal and see how that works. Or maybe just go with very diluted blue instead. I dunno.
Also, this was interesting:
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What am I suppose to do with three waist clips?
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sea-of-machines · 2 years
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1st day of summer
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kawaiigirl14 · 2 years
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We love you
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lovesclinic · 1 year
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Oh my god! I cannot describe how much I love your blog <333 I'm such a sucker for soft/girly reader :3 I was wondering if you're interested in writing The Walking Dead Dan fics? The image of hardass redneck Daryl with a sunshine reader is *chefs kiss* 💋 But if you don't wanna I would be more than happy with more Joel and Aaron writings :Dd
Mwah!
ྀི ۪ ׂ. ૮ ๑• . •๑ ა ۪ ׂ. ꒰ 𝐏𝐔𝐏𝐏𝐘 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄 !! ���
꒱ hi anon!! i love love writing for girly reader too so send in as many reqs as you like! i’m not sure if i got his character right but here you go <;3
꒱ pre! breakout daryl x sunshine reader
꒱ in which daryl recalls how you met, it was puppy love
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Daryl could clearly remember the day he first saw you; at the time, he and Merle had been temporarily staying at the residence of a friend while the man spent his days in a tattered trailer, a little house situated in a community of copy-and-paste homes. a park for motorhomes.
before landing at his current address, he had been floating around with his older brother, drifting aimlessly from place to place while couch surfing.
the property was filled with worn-out furniture salvaged from the depths of a dump, a paint chipped trailer with holes in several walls, and discarded food, old clothing, and other belongings considered rubbish.
he couldn't remember how long he had been in the confines of the rottenly boring community, with no foreseeable end to his current predicament in sight.
or so he thought.
he had been sat on a rickety old lawn chair out front the van he called ‘home’ when he saw you.
A foreign truck was heading down the pavement, and as it did, a light brown cloud of dust and dirt around the car and flew from the lousy concrete. The truck was one that Daryl had never seen previously in the neighborhood and had no memory of seeing it. As the car passed in front of him and made its way to a vacant trailer that was situated approximately two or three houses down the street, he watched as it passed.
without looking away from his newest form of entertainment in the bleak caravan park, daryl placed his drink on the dirt ground next to him rather than keeping it in his hand. as he was curious of the new arrivals.
you were so out of place from the first second, pink nails glinting in the sunlight, soft, enchanting laughter that daryl wanted to bottle up and save for a rainy day to sheer himself up.
sliding out of the driver’s seat of the car with some kind of dog pulling you from place to place. daryl barely had a moment to examine you before your body was roughly tugged left and right.
the usually gruff man, incapable of expressing a great array of emotion, had his breath caught within the depths of his throat as his eyes landed on you.
your bare legs slipped from the vehicle, feet dangling from the side of the truck momentarily, your thighs were dripping in a layer of sweat accumulating from the hot weather as well as the energetic puppy tugging you along.
Daryl watched your nails grip at the metal before you eventually pushed your figure from the chambers of the vehicle, finally revealing yourself to the males awaiting eyes.
while the dog was on a lead, you were the one being walked, you had no control as the furry animal dragged you to his seat.
“m’sorry mister! i don’t have a whole lotta control over her,” your worry was evident from the tone in your voice, a slight wobble. which was fair considering Daryl’s somewhat intimidating stature and redneck look.
his lack of smile and overall ‘scary’ persona made you uneasy, until he spoke.
softly, as if not to scare you away, “it’s alright, darlin” leaving you a mess of half giggles and nervous mumbles, almost forgetting about the dog on the other end of the lead.
that was until a sharp tug from said devious dog landed you smashing face first into the stranger’s shoulder, sitting in his lap.
“m’sorry again!” you babbled, apologising profusely so not to let the man chastise or yell at you.
“this really isn’ the best first impression, is it?” you shyly asked, gathering up inkling of courage you looked at the man, expecting to be met with a look of disgust and annoyance.
instead all you saw was a soft smile and an unreadable look.
“oh baby, i’ll take care of you dont you worry, you could never make a bad impression on anyone.”
“i swear.” your smile was so sweet, it melted that gruff man’s heart in less than a minute.
seems like daryl would have to make room for two new girls in his life, you and your puppy.
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starrrrlettt · 11 months
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iSHINE BRIGHT💛💫💥💥
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iwillsurvivecollege · 2 months
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♡♡♡♡♡ A 5 HEART AND AN INSTANT FAVORITE RIGHT AWAY AFTER READING THE FIRST LINE. ANN LIANG YOU DID IT AGAIN 🙌🏻 🫶 😭
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Ever have a really, really GOOD day? Not perfect but calm and joyful and easy?
Day out with no.2 kiddo today, shopping for glasses, sharing a poutine and finding that elusive, much desired thing for her and each sibling.
Today felt good, even with all of the world's pain bombarding us constantly. A joyful little oasis.
A feeling to hang on to.
I hope everyone has that one easy day this week.
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pyropalle · 1 year
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Well, at least we know Shinya and Kureto are alive. But where the hell is the rest of my children. Where’s Mito, Kagami.
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dees-dollies · 2 years
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I got these besties in recently. They're just soooooo fucking cute! They really make a great contrasting pair.
I love both their aesthetics so I couldn't resist getting them 💕
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beiasluv · 2 months
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yes, and? | f1 d!lfs
a/n: Ariana popped tf off with that house music, but ngl I have mixed feelings abt her allegations. don’t be a homewrecker bitches 😘
aussiegrit
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liked by oscarpiastri, fernandoalo_official and 96,279 others
aussiegrit Ride a Porsche, save a horse…😆 yourinsta
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fernandoalo_official nice caption 🙌🤣
aussiegrit got a smart gal 😊😂
username thatshouldbemeholdjngyourhanddd
username mark and yn are weird. prove me wrong.
username don’t be a hater if she’s having fun
username having sex with someone’s husband is fun?
username ain’t no one saying that yet
username if I see a dilf using the laughing emoji unironically again I will combust
username then I’ve got good news for you..
username ICONIC QUEEN SHITT
username Honestly get that bag gurlll
username Yn is a grown woman, should’ve known not to mingle with an older man
username is it so depressing to see a successful young woman having a fun time?
yourinsta
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liked by sebastianvettel, jensonbutton and 218,718 others
yourinsta ride or die (literally) 😙
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jensonbutton careful love
yourinsta will do 🤭
username hang out with people your age
username stay mad, go touch some grass
landonorris we literally drive fast car for life 💀
yourinsta I KNOW 😭😭
yourinsta when are you visiting 😔
landonorris soonn
username ERM Where.
sebastianvettel glad you had fun schatz
yourinsta anytimee 🫶
username sebastian went skiing and no fucking picture. I’m devastated.
username what exactly are you riding 🤭
username she slayed for that
username DONT TAKE TREACHEROUS ROADS
username DONT MAKE UNNECESSARILY JOURNIES
jensonbutton
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liked by yourinsta, aussiegrit, and 122,017 others
jensonbutton off seasonal things 🤣.
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yourinsta slow your horses on drinking mr button
jensonbutton will do love 😉
yourinsta I’ll keep an eye on that.
username taking care of her old man You go girlll
username was this the Santa hat he got from Fernando 😭😭
username it’s also likely that one of them gifted the whiskey as well
username nobody can stop yn and her dilfs on this summer break
username HELL YEAH
username not complaining for the lack of content from the current grid (except Ms gurl herself)
yourinsta
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liked by oscarpiastri, mickschumacher and 186,297 others
yourinsta I have no more storage 😔
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sebastianvettel sorry schatz ❤️
yourinsta I maybee forgive you
username grow tf upp
username she got them down bad and you mad??
landonorris why is your phone crustyy
yourinsta I SWEAR IT’S THEMM
yourinsta my selfies ate 🤭
username PERIODDD
username get yourself sweaty old dilfss
jensonbutton deleting is not an option love
aussiegrit buying a new one is
username OH???
username be my sugar daddy please 😩🙏
username Oscar and mick basically cringing at their father figure
username Respect the original rizz gurll
username Sebastian was and still is the original rizz, ask yn 😘
username kimi what are you doing hereeee
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f1gossips
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liked by username, username and 39,728 others
f1gossips Ricciardo, Vettel, Button, Alonso, and Ln spotted in a holiday in Ibiza, Spain. More attendants to be confirmed.
- admin
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username honestly it’s kinda weird that she keeps on hanging out with the older grid while she is literally a Mercedes driver?
username and what’s wrong with hanging out with people outside the current grid
username idk seems kinda weird to me, older men..
username if she’s getting that bag I respect her cause why tf not?
username homewrecker much?
username desperate much?
username homewrekcerr so coquette 🎀
username you guys don’t get it (I GET HERR)
username Spain… so is Carlos joining??
username and Lando’s comment??
username I swear they need to show tf up
yourinsta
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liked by aussiegrit, sebastianvettel and 186,727 others
yourinsta told you my selfies ate 😘
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aussiegrit beautiful sunshine ❤️
yourinsta wish you were heree
aussiegrit I’ll definitely see you soon honey
username never let mark know what a dm is so I can keep reading their texts
username if you look closely into the background you can see me drowning in my tears
username omg same!! twinss
carlossainz55 did you pierced your tongue?
yourinsta no?? why would I do that
username why are they so siblings 😭
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sebastianvettel
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liked by yourinsta, lance_stroll and 385,167 others
sebastianvettel trip dump or whatever the kids say?
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yourinsta correcto
liked by sebastianvettel
username get away from my mann 😘😘
username ngl you got me in the first half
username can the summer break be longer 😭😩
username I miss the dilf trip already. I have nothing to look forward to anymore
username how to…be…a dog ✍️
f1gossips
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liked by username, username and 27,156 others
f1gossips Mark Webber and David Coulhart spotted at the Porsche convention, Melbourne, Australia. Lando Norris confirmed in joining the Ibiza trip last week as seen with a fan at a restaurant
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username i know exactly what you are doing by putting mark in this
username so was it Mark??? 🤭🤭
username Mark please comeback 😭
username come back the kids miss you 😩
username so was it true that she fucked one of them?
username WHAT? WHO WHERE WHEN
username it was rumor but idk guessed it would’ve spiraled at the trip
username had a feeling that it was Sebastian 🤷‍♀️
username SAMEE TWINSS
yourinsta
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liked by jensonbutton, aussiegrit and 426,268 others
yourinsta yes, and?
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username OMF MISS QUEENNN
username QUEEN SHIT BITCH
username ITS CONFIRMEDD
username so can I call her ariana now? 💀💀
yall know the drill, interact if you liked it😘😘 let me know who’s your favorite f1 dilf
today’s a great day to take care of yourself!!
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lovebugism · 1 year
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oh my god,,,, gurl!!!! THE CUSTOMER'S ALWAYS RIGHT fic is sooo good 😫 my heart literally breaks every time I read this story. Thank you for blessing us with this masterpiece <3
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THE CUSTOMER'S ALWAYS RIGHT | square one
summary: eddie makes a confession that's been weighing heavy on his heart. you realize that your future with him is haunted by ghosts from your past. pairing: virgin!eddie munson / f!reader word count: 16.3k warnings: hopper, steve, and robin being the reader defense squad, hints at reader's previously poor mental health, mentions of abusive and toxic relationships, a banshees of inisherin quote, b*lly h*rgrove because he needs a warning. (pretend any typos don't exist pls and thank u!) a/n: guess who's back, back again? ✨✨ i'd apologize for disappearing for a month, but then there'd be apologies in all my notes, so just know that i'm sorry every time i disappear unexpectedly, okay? 🥲 thanks for being so patient! please enjoy this long-awaited installment of tcar ily <3
( PREVIOUSLY ) | ( SERIES MASTERLIST ) | ( NEXT )
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Eddie’s got a 1986 Van Halen tape in his boombox and a baby pink heart stitched into the fabric of his shirt. He’s the least metal he’s ever been, but he couldn’t be happier.
You keep your promise to him to patch up his torn Hellfire tee. If anything, you use the absentminded assurance as your excuse to see him again. The night you shared before, all but baring your scarred souls underneath glittering stars and streams of pale moonlight, hadn’t satiated your hunger for him. Eddie left you craving in a way you weren’t used to before — a yearning to be close to him that went beyond the boundaries of physical intimacy.
It was a simple sort of longing. It was a homesickness. A sense of nostalgia for a love you’d never felt before.
You wish you could wear Eddie’s adoration for you like a blanket, wrap yourself in the hand-stitched quilt of many colors and bundle it tighter around your shoulders when the cold comes. You want his softness to hold you in a way you’ve never been able to hold yourself.
You feel swaddled in it, succumbed and cloaked and at peace in all his tenderness. You’ve never been so at ease, so blissfully comforted by the presence of another human being. And Eddie feels all of that, every ounce of warmth you feel, because it pours out of you like rays of sunshine and bathes him in shades of gold.
He didn’t think you could get any softer than you had been that night at Skull Rock, until you were nestled in his unmade bed the next morning. You curled your legs underneath you as you weaved the needle and thread through the tear in his t-shirt, eyes squinted and tongue poking out the side of your mouth in an astute concentration. 
All of the sudden, you were marshmallow fluff and honey on toast — made of all things sickly sweet that made his stomach feel suddenly full. 
You finish mending the rip in record time and beam when he wears the heart-shaped stitching with pride. The rest of the day thereafter was spent in the tiny confines of his one hundred square-inch bedroom. From there, the both of you came to the silent understanding that you didn't want to spend another day apart.
The weekend had given you a limited sort of freedom, allowed you to pretend that you lived in a world with no responsibilities or anything other than Eddie Eddie Eddie, but adulthood made you no such promises. He had a side job to do to keep himself afloat, and you had a cat that thought it was the end of the world anytime you were gone for longer than a night. Both of those things together meant that the eve of parting was ultimately inevitable.
Every second you spent away from Eddie felt like you were grieving.
You mourned for him in the darkness of your apartment and tried to pretend you weren’t half a person in the cat food aisle at Melvald’s.
You tried to lessen the unbearable distance with phone calls, though it didn’t come nearly as close as feeling his fingers thrumming imaginary beats on your thigh or his heartbeat thudding against your ear. 
But his voice filled the emptiness of your one-bedroom apartment and the Eddie Munson shaped hole he’d left just behind your ribcage, and that was good enough for you.
When you weren’t with him, you were roaming around your apartment like some kind of ghost, with the phone tucked between your ear and shoulder and the rotary clutched in your free hand. 
You cook yourself dinner with him ranting about his day in your ear. You hold the receiver closer to Bowie and force him to hear her purr when she’s being exceptionally cute. He falls asleep some hours later to the sound of your soft snores, and you wake up the next morning to the sounds of his.
It was pathetic, truly.
You’d be gagging at how sweet it was if it wasn’t happening to you.
But it was.
Every ounce of this sticky sweet goodness was yours, and it tasted just like honey on your tongue. 
It was the honeymoon stage times a thousand, all rose-colored and reflecting light — your own personal utopia. It brought with it a heavenly sort of refuge, a bubble of peace you never wanted to pierce.
Eddie basks in the serenity of it all when he finally has you with him again. You’re in his lap, on his lips, and all over him, but it still isn’t quite close enough. He doesn’t think he’ll be satisfied until you’ve successfully melted with him and your limbs have entwined with his like tree roots, destined to remain that way for the next couple of centuries or so.
And it’s weird because he could hardly handle living in such a tiny trailer with Wayne, let alone stomach more than a couple hours with the guys from Hellfire all in one place. But you? You entered his life all at once and now he can’t remember what it was like without you.
He doesn’t particularly want to, if he’s being real honest.
It’s why he’s always less enthused about letting you leave when you’ve both got responsibilities dragging you apart. He begs you to stay with him a few hours more, pleads for you to stick around while he makes a quick deal or an emergency pick-up when Dustin Henderson calls and says he needs a ride. 
And you promise you’ll wait on him there, because he makes it virtually impossible to say no to his rosy pouted lips and chocolate syrup puppy dog eyes.
That’s when you run into Wayne for the first time, when Eddie’s out and you’re making breakfast for when he comes back.
French toast and scrambled eggs sizzle on the stove and warm the kitchen with all its cinnamon confections. It makes the man’s face screw up in confusion when he steps inside the trailer because he’s never known Eddie to cook a day in his life. And then his eyes find you — a young, pretty girl all alone in his kitchen with his nephew’s van gone from the drive.
“…Who the hell are you?” he wonders gruffly and pops a cigarette between his lips, totally unbothered.
He’s got no reason to be intimidated by the stranger in his trailer. He’s more confused than anything else, and he’s got this contorted look on his face like he’s blaming the exhaustion from the graveyard shift for his vision of you.
“Oh— my god,” you mumble through the mouthful of whipped cream you’d squeezed into your mouth moments prior. You fight to swallow it all down. “Uh. Hi. I’m, um… I’m Eddie’s... girlfriend?”
It sounds like you’re lying. 
In some ways, it feels like you are. 
You’ve been spending more time in his trailer than in your own home, but it’s not like either of you has motioned to make anything official just yet.
He eyes you with a tired and heavy gaze, eyes as dark and as infinite as Eddie’s. The man gives you a once-over and then chuckles lowly to himself as he tosses his corduroy jacket onto the back of the recliner and his tin lunchbox to the coffee table.
You shift awkwardly on the other side of the room. “…What is it?”
“When Eddie said he was talkin’ to a pretty girl on the phone every night, I thought he was lyin’,” he admits through hearty chuckles. 
It makes you laugh too. 
There’s little talking after the fact, besides you offering him some of the breakfast on the stove and him joking that you should come around more often.
You recount the story to Eddie when he returns, utterly mortified about the whole thing. You’re even more embarrassed when the boy finds amusement in your horror and starts to chuckle to himself — not exactly at you, but not with you either.
He laughs louder when you swat at him for it. You clamber on top of him, mattress squeaking mattress under your weight, as you demand him to stop through giggles of your own.
Somewhere down the line, both of you stop caring. 
Neither of you is quite sure where the conversation stopped and ended, only that when you started kissing, you couldn’t stop. 
They weren’t innocent little pecks, but they weren’t sloppy and full of tongue either. You press your lips together with the intent of being as close as you can to the other, like you haven’t spent every second you could together.
Neither of you will be satisfied until you’ve swallowed each other whole.
And you, you’ve got this ache for him. A swirling of want that’s constantly rippling in your belly for this boy. He’s just not usually under you when it’s happening — and now that he is, the crackling embers have burst into white and blue flames behind your sternum.
Your lips click each time you part, a lewd noise you never want to stop hearing. The sound of it gives you goosebumps, like a good song you’ve just heard on the radio. You wonder if Eddie can feel them as his hands start to creep up beneath your shirt and find purchase along your waist. 
You open his mouth with your own and sneak your tongue inside just as you roll your hips over his lap.
It’s the most forthcoming either of you had been in your three-day stint of nonstop talking. Even when you were over at the trailer, totally alone and pressed underneath him, it was otherwise completely innocent. You just make out like a couple of teenagers until one of you wants to make a food run or offers to roll a joint. 
And you like that. You like that he doesn’t expect anything from you, but it does get a little agonizing when you’ve tried every attempt to give yourself to him and he just won’t take it.
Like usual, Eddie tenses when he feels you grinding on top of him — partly because he feels a tingle at the base of his spine when he gets instantly half-hard, but mostly because he knows there’s nothing he can do about it.
He keeps preaching to himself it’s not the right time, it’s not the right time, it’s not the right time — but he’s got no idea when it’ll ever be the right time, if it’ll ever be the right time, or if he’ll know it when it comes.
Because he’s had you to himself for days now — no Wayne, no responsibilities, no pressure — with his tongue rutting against yours and your hands fidgeting with the metal buttons of his jeans, and it still doesn’t feel good enough. Eddie doesn’t feel good enough.
He’s not sure if he ever will.
And it’s not you. God, it’s the farthest thing from you. As far as Eddie’s concerned, he’s never had more fun with anyone else. He’s never laughed harder with anyone else. He’s never felt as comfortable with anyone as he’s starting to feel around you. So he’s not entirely sure why he finds the rest of it so hard. 
Eddie wants you so bad that the ache of all his yearning is palpable. It’s like the weight of it is what’s keeping him from you — unstoppable force, immovable object, blah, blah, blah. 
Either way, it leaves him entirely unable to take things further with you, however much he wants to. There’s something in his way and it’s him. 
Your heartache is his own when he has to pull away from you.
“You okay?” you ask him with wide eyes and swollen lips, always so concerned for him.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m good,” he’s quick to assure you. He’s still breathless when he fidgets beneath you, trying to prop himself up on his headboard without rubbing his half-hard cock against your thigh.
When he succeeds, he musters a smile that shakes at the edges. “It’s just… you know, not everything… It doesn’t have to be about sex, you know?”
He makes himself as soft as possible for you when he says this. He gets rid of all the usual teasing lilts that tend to lurk on his tongue as the words spill from his mouth. The last thing he wants to do is hurt your feelings or, in some roundabout way, make you think you’re the problem. 
He just wants you to know that that isn’t why he’s been wanting to spend so much time with you. There was never an ulterior motive with him other than all the adoration he holds in his hands and his mouth for you.
The strike of hurt that flashes across your face is obvious to only Eddie, who’s spent enough time mapping out your features to know what twitches are ones of discontent. The slight frown that dips between your brows when they scrunch together for half a second comes like a stroke of lightning. It’s a brief flash of purple in the sky that leaves so quickly that it makes you wonder if it was ever there at all.
You fidget on his lap, not resting as comfortably upon him as you had been just moments before. “Oh…” you murmur through soft, jutted-out lips. “Sorry. I, I didn’t—”
“No, it’s not— that’s not what I—” he tries to assure over your insecure stammers, but succeeds only in tripping over himself in return. He cuts himself off with a breathy laugh, shaking his head while his fingers fidget on your hips. “That’s just not what this is about for me, you know? I just… I wanna spend time with you.”
It’s easily the softest thing he’s ever said to you — to anybody, for the matter — and the marshmallow sweetness of it all wraps around you like wisps of pink cotton candy.
Your apprehensiveness twists into something lighter, a pair of twinkling eyes and a bashful smile.
“Oh,” you hum again, obviously more pleased than before. “That’s nice…”
“No one’s ever said that to you before, have they?” Eddie asks you.
He tries to muster a crooked smirk as the words leave his mouth, but he’s got a feeling he already knows the answer. Hearing you affirm his suspicions will do nothing more than make him angry at all the assholes that had you before him, at everyone who taught you that you were good for sex and hardly a thing else. 
It makes him wish that he’d gotten to know you sooner. Maybe then you’d understand that he’d be happy just holding you like this and never doing anything more.
You don’t answer him verbally, just shake your head with your lips pursed softly to the side. You look more innocent than anything he’s ever seen before, even with your lipstick smeared on your chin. 
He’s still not quite sure how someone could be so reckless with such a fragile thing — to watch you break and not spend the rest of time grieving to know that you’ll never be quite the same again. 
There’s a primal instinct that swims in him then, an urge to keep you in his arms and locked in the confines of his trailer forever and ever. He wants to keep the wolves of Hawkins, Indiana from ever getting a whiff of you again. It’d be more than they deserved, anyway.
“God, you have got to get better boyfriends, sweetheart,” Eddie tells you with a playful lilt in his voice despite the anger simmering in his belly.
“Isn’t that what you are?” you giggle.
His world stops.
“Huh?”
You tense at his tenseness. Only when he’s gaping at you does the weight of your words dawn on you. “…Huh?”
The awkward moment goes as quickly as it arrives, chased out by the fit of laughter the two of you are quickly thrown into. Your entwining chuckles rise like smoke in his tiny bedroom and then settle back over you like a fuzzy blanket.
“Are you asking me to be your boyfriend, babe?” Eddie teases.
“Of course not,” you scoff. “Babe.”
“Oh, right, of course not. That would be way too crazy considering we’ve spent, like, every day together and have made each other come… what is it now? Twice?”
“Three times for me,” you correct with you a smile. “You need to catch up, Eddie Spaghetti.”
“Another time?” he offers with a scrunched nose.
“Whenever you want.”
Eddie is grateful for your lack of urgency, even more so for the kiss you press to the tip of his nose. 
You peck him on the lips after — once, twice, and then a thiiird, drawn out time — before moving on to his chin and jaw and neck. Whatever part of him you can reach (which is just about everywhere, considering the vantage point you’ve got sitting on his lap), you sprinkle a kiss to it.
It’s an innocent sort of affection, the kind that makes him wonder how it ever came to be in the first place. What evolutionary measures led to this, to you pressing your lips to his skin to show how much you care about him? Eddie doesn’t really want to know the answer, he’s just grateful that it happened in the first place.
You’re so good at it, loving on him. You’re always so kind and so gentle in your way and it makes him feel guilty. There’s a lingering feeling of undeservedness that settles something heavy at the base of his stomach. How could he ever expect you to be so open with him when he hasn’t done the same for you?
A heavy sigh rattles in his deflating chest. 
“I gotta tell you something, sweetheart,” he cautions when your lips smack against the thrumming pulse below the left side of his jaw. “Something you’re not gonna like…”
A billion things run through your head all at once. When you part from him, he can see the rollercoaster of emotions each one of them puts you through.
Your first instinct is that he’s got some kind of partner he’s kept hidden from you until now. It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve gone steady with a guy who’s then told you about some other girlfriend he had — or, god forbid, a wife. 
But then you realize that you surely would’ve had some sort of inkling if that were the case. There’s no way Eddie would’ve been able to spend every second of his day with you — and then another several hours on the phone when you had to leave — without someone else coming along to burst your bubble. 
And so far, there haven’t been any angry wives, just the occasionally confused Uncle Wayne.
Then you start thinking he’s about to tell you he wants an open relationship. The you’re great, but I’m just not ready to settle down yet spiel that you’ve heard a thousand times before. Usually when people say that, they mean that they just don’t want to settle down with you.
You’ll become some douchebag’s fuck toy for a month or more until the girl next door comes around. He gets her knocked up in record time, his family forces him to marry her, and they begin their cushy lives together in the center of some cul-de-sac — really settle down, as it were.
You’re not sure if you could take that from Eddie. You could grin and bear if it you had to, take whatever attention he’s willing to give you because who cares if he’s giving it to someone else on the side? You’re just not sure how long you’d last like that.
And then you start to worry that he’s just going to break up with you entirely — it’s not you, it’s blah, I’ll always care about blah, please don’t tell anyone about how we blah-ed. That whole talk. 
All the rest of your worries stop mattering so much because you’ve only just called him your boyfriend. And here he goes, about to end it all before it can really even start. That’d be just your luck, you figure.
“Did I do something wrong?” you caution after a few moments of heavy silence.
Eddie’s bleeding heart wrenches at your words, at how sad they sound spilling from your mouth, and how you immediately think that it’s got something to do with you. 
He shakes his head feverishly in response. “No. No, it’s not you. You’re… you’re perfect.”
“Okay…” you concede quietly, voice trembling with a lingering disbelief.
“I just… I haven’t been totally honest with you, you know?” the boy admits before his glimmering chocolate eyes fly open and he corrects himself quickly. “And I haven’t lied to you or anything. Not— Not exactly. I just… I wanna be honest with you… As your boyfriend and all.”
You can tell by the sudden weight in his voice that he’s serious. But the fine coat of glowing rose that splotches Eddie’s cheeks after calling himself your boyfriend for the first time makes you melt. 
You smile to yourself and start to trace the heart you’d stitched into his t-shirt with your finger.
“Yeah. I mean, we are about to spend our two minutes anniversary together and everything.”
“Exactly,” the boy huffs out a laugh. It lacks its usual jest, though, because of the ice-cold anxiety that drenches him from head to toe and makes his hands and feet go numb.
His fingers tremble where the rest on your waist, trying and failing to find a comfortable position there because, right about now, Eddie feels the most awkward he’s ever felt.
“I just want you to know that I… I’ve never done this before,” he confesses quietly and with his eyes squeezed shut. He prays that he doesn’t have to be any less vague than that.
Your face twists in confusion — your brows furrow and your nose twitches and your head tilts to the side like a puppy. And then you’re laughing, a soft little thing of a giggle that normally makes his heart sing, though now he can only feel it breaking.
“What…?” he tries to scoff out his own chuckle. “Why are you laughing?”
“Because you’ve already told me that, dummy. That you’ve never felt this way before…” you answer, reciting his own words back to him. You haven’t yet forgotten how he’d looked at you as you said them, pale skin made silk under the moonlight while he sparkled beneath the beams of it and his love for you. 
“No, it’s… it’s more than that,” he corrects. “I’ve never even had a girlfriend before you. Or anything really.”
You still don’t seem to understand. You just look on at him with uncertainty. 
A quiet “okay?” tumbles from your mouth entwined with a nervous giggle, because you don’t understand what’s got him so somber. He’s never dated anyone, you’ve fucked half of Hawkins — these are just facts that went unsaid before now. 
And maybe it’s because you’ve never been with a virgin before, but the thought that Eddie might be one hasn’t seemed to cross your mind at all. 
It’s that exact thought that scares him. 
Because if it hasn’t already, maybe it’s because you’re avoiding it altogether. And why would he ever be the exception?
He opts to bite the bullet and hopes that his heart doesn’t get broken after.
“I’m a virgin. Okay? I’m a complete, total, proper adult virgin,” he blurts with a brazenness he’d previously lacked when it came to all this. “And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before now, but I didn’t, because I liked you and I was scared. So if you wanna yell at me or if you wanna break up with me before our five-minute anniversary, I totally get it, but I should probably let you know that it’ll rip my little virgin heart to shreds, so…”
Eddie ends his nervous ramble with a trembling, lopsided smile that does little to ease the leaden tension he’s just manufactured in the four walls of his bedroom.
He can’t seem to gauge your reaction after the fact, which is strange because he always knows what you’re thinking. 
He knows when you’re laughing with him and not at him. You scrunch your nose and giggle when he tells you a funny joke, then tilt your head back and cackle when he trips over the punchline. 
He knows the exact moment when something’s started to bother you — when you get real quiet in your bubble of reserved stillness and your eyes start to glaze over. To anyone else, it might just look like a person who’s keeping to themselves. Eddie’s starting to learn that usually means trouble when it comes to you.
He knows the difference between your gentle sort of sadness and when you’re damn near inconsolable. When you cried at the end of Stand By Me, you smiled at him with a glassy tear-filled gaze, then rolled your eyes when he tried to comfort you. The tears only spilled over when you laughed because Eddie pretended you’d hurt him when you’d shoved him away. 
But when you’re really upset about something, you don’t show him at all — you fight to keep it all to yourself until you’ve squished the problem into a tiny enough ball that you can forget about all of it.
This is something different.
There’s too much crossing your mind all at once for him to get a good read of you.
You just gape at him, like you’re trying to figure out if he’s joking or not, and then fighting to understand what it means when you realize he’s being serious. 
And just when you’ve started to wrap your head around it all, when your brain remembers how to make words again and you realize you haven’t said anything in several agonizing seconds, a foreign voice sounds from down the hallway.
Not foreign in that it was unfamiliar exactly, just foreign in that you and Eddie had spent so much time alone that you were starting to forget that there was an entire world outside of yourselves. A great big world, filled with a great many people, some of whom were your friends who tended to get pretty worried about you.
“Edward Wayne— why the hell is the Chief in my driveway?” his uncle curses from the living room, sounding like he’s speaking through a cigarette in his mouth.
Eddie himself is immediately freaking the fuck out because he figures he must’ve gotten tipped off again. He tries to calculate the quickest way to get you off of him and to all of his cubby holes full of miscellaneous drugs so he can flush them down the toilet before Jim Hopper busts the door down.
And even though you’re not the drug dealer who’s had cops on their ass since they were fifteen in this equation, you look a whole lot more terrified than Eddie does.
Your eyes go wide and the whites of them swim with terror as you launch yourself off of his lap. You don’t spare another glance back at him, not even when you nearly trip over yourself when you shove your sneakers on your feet and shuffle out of the room. He’s forced to follow behind you like a confused puppy as you bound through the trailer at lightning speed. 
The haste of your movements startles even Wayne, who halts mid-puff of his cig when you’re in and out of the living room before he can blink. The opening squeak of the screen door and metal slamming against metal is the only thing that punctuates your exit.
“Would it kill you to answer your damn phone every once in a while?” the powerful timbre of Jim Hopper’s angry voice, of which only the man himself could pull off, is muffled until Eddie cautiously slinks onto the porch behind you. 
He finds the chief standing beside the Cruiser he’s parked sideways. The door of it is still flung open. A distant beeping sounds from the ignition. 
He’s still got on the pressed khakis of his uniform — complete with the golden badge pinned to his chest, darkened sunglasses on the bridge of his nose, and flat-brimmed hat on his head. Even with the majority of his face covered, it does little to hide the anger that radiates off of him like a hot stove eye.
You remain on the porch, shifting your weight on your feet at the top of the steps. “Okay, Hopper, just listen to me for a second—”
“Three days!” he shouts over you, not deterred by your composed nature. “I have been calling you… for three days! Seventy-two hours. No answer!”
Eddie decides to speak up from behind you despite his better judgment. “Yeah, uh, that was kinda my fault,” he confesses with an awkward laugh. “Wouldn’t let her hang up the phone—”
“I’ll deal with you in a second,” Jim interjects firmly and without thinking. He goes back to berating you with an admirable finesse. “Buckley wanted my head on a pike when I wouldn’t file a missing person’s report in the first twenty-four hours, but seventy-two? She was gonna kill me!”
Rather than argue with him, like every fiber of your being so desperately wants to, you make the difficult choice to concede with a heavy sigh. Because you don’t doubt that Robin was on his ass the second she realized you weren’t answering your phone or at your apartment when she and Steve dropped by.
She did tend to be on the overprotective side, after all, which obviously paired well with her melodramatic disposition.
“I’m sorry, okay? I’ve just been… busy.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard the one before,” the man answers bitterly.
“It’s different, Hopper!”
“I’ve heard the one before, too!”
Eddie can only assume that the both of you are communicating telepathically, what with the way your synchronized glares seem to say a thousand words (probably every curse imaginable, if he had to guess) without your mouths ever moving once. 
He stands on the outskirts of it all, feeling a bit stuck in the thorniness of such a tense silence, like any slight movement might cut him.
Jim moves slowly, akin to a creeping snake, as his hands raise to remove the glasses from his face. Their lack reveals the ice-cold glare that was previously hiding beneath them.
“Get in the car—” 
“—No,” you reject just as the direction leaves his mouth because you knew it was coming.
Jim inhales sharply and smacks his lips against his teeth, like a father whose child is most ardently testing his patience. He plants his work boot in the gravel and his hand on his hips. His steel gaze goes far off for a moment before flitting back to you again.
“…Get in the car or I put you in handcuffs.”
Your breath hitches at the threat. You squint over at him. “You wouldn’t.”
Jim smiles at you, but it’s more threatening than anything else. “We both know that I would.”
Eddie’s eyes flit between the both of you. He can tell that Hopper’s serious and that you’re trying to decide whether or not to call his bluff, with your arms crossed defensively over your chest and lips pursed in a tight line.
You ultimately decide not to. Because Hopper has, in fact, done that before. And even though the circumstances are very, very different, you wouldn’t put it past him to do it again. So you all but stomp your foot like a protesting child and spin on your heel to storm back inside the trailer.
Eddie’s nervous gaze flits between your disappearing form and the storm cloud of a police chief standing in his driveway. When their eyes lock, he realizes he should probably say something. He cocks his thumb over his shoulder and stammers, “I should— I should probably…”
He doesn’t finish his sentence. He catches the front door before it shuts and slithers through the crack of it to follow in behind you.
“Wait, was he— was he being serious about that?” Eddie wonders once you’re back in his bedroom.
It feels a lot less cozy than it did minutes before, less like the bubble of refuge that you thought nobody could pierce and more like a lonely space that feels entirely too empty. You pluck your things scattered around his room, and it starts to feel less and less like home with parts of you gone from it.
“I don’t know,” you answer within a sigh as you collect your cardigan from the back of his desk chair and shrug the thing back over your shoulders again.
“But it’s happened before?”
“Yeah. Once. When I was…” you confess quietly, then trail off. You get your bag from his nightstand and haphazardly shove your scrunchie, sunglasses, and chapstick into the bottom of it. “…When I was in a bad way— it doesn’t matter now.”
Eddie so desperately wants to pry.
He’d wanted to make a joke before, about the handcuffs — something less than tasteful about them and you and Hopper and some good ol’ freaky deaky that you'd scold him for after. But he decides not to now because you sound so strangely solemn about the whole thing, as though it was a story you buried deep with the intent of never bringing it up again.
“You don’t have to go with him if you don’t want to, you know that, right?”
“Of course, I do,” you scoff at his worries, not nearly as threatened by Jim as the rest of Hawkins. You move to stand in front of him in the center of his room and meet his furrowed brows with a soft grin. “He’s not gonna do anything, he’s just pissed. He’ll berate me on the drive back to my apartment and then it’ll be like nothing ever happened.”
That seems to please Eddie well enough, though he’s still a bit disheartened at your leaving.
“I guess we couldn’t keep spending time together like this, huh?” he teases lightly, like the realization of it doesn’t make his chest ache. “Sorta forgot about the rest of the world… whatever that is.”
“It was fun while it lasted,” you tell him with a shrug and a whimsical sigh.
“Wait for me, will ya?” he jokes, if only to make you laugh and to feel like he’s stuck in some sickly sweet ending of a romcom for a couple moments more. 
You roll your eyes at his dramatics but let him wrap you in his arms anyway. His hands find purchase on your elbows, thumbs rubbing soothingly along the outsides of them. “How about a kiss, then?” he offers when the urge to feel you because too great to bear. “For our ten-minute anniversary and all?”
“You never have to ask me, Eds,” you assure with a laugh. You rise to the tips of your toes and he meets you halfway. 
Home is in your mouth. It’s warm and cozy and safe there. It’s easily the most familiar place he’s ever known, with your bottom lip nestled between his own. He feels homesick when you part from him. 
“You’re not mad at me?” he wonders quietly, feeling a bit like a cowering child from where he stands in front ahead of you — eased only when you shake your head almost immediately in response.
“No. I couldn’t be even if I wanted to, I think.”
“Okay. That’s… That’s good.”
“We can talk about it later, if you want. After I get lurch off my ass.”
He tries not to smile too wide, but it’s hard not to beam every time he looks at you. “Yeah. Sure. I’ll… I’ll see you around, I guess?” he stumbles over himself, having forgotten how to say goodbye to you. 
It’s equally as hard for you too, it seems, because you nod at him and turn to leave and then realize once you’re halfway down the hallway that you might not survive if you don’t kiss him again. 
So you turn and rush back, catching Eddie with his back turned and spinning him around so you can peck him again. You feel his cheeks heat beneath your palm and his sigh against your cupid’s bow and his lips melt against your own.
You etch each tingling sensation into the edges of your mind in the hope that you won’t drive yourself completely insane when you inevitably start to miss him like crazy. 
You focus on that and on him when you find Hopper and his stupid proud dad smirk. It’s the only reason you don’t punch him in the jaw and tuck and roll out of the Cruiser when the silence becomes so slowly insufferable.
You’re starting to think Jim left the radio off on purpose. You’ve never known the guy not to drive around without the strumming of an old-school folk song to accompany him. You figure it must be some sort of intimidation tactic, to make you so uncomfortable that you break. You’re a lot closer to that than either of you realize.
You spare a glance over at the man next to you. He hasn’t looked at you once since you get in the car. He’s got one hand at three o’clock on the steering wheel and the other with its elbow propped up on the door as he scratches at the stubble on his jaw. 
He’s too at ease not to be bothered. This is obviously some kind of front he’s putting on to conceal his inner irritation.
You give on the lecture you’d been trying to prepare yourself for and exhale sharply through your nose. Your fingers fidget on your thighs as you kick your restless feet up on the console. 
“Get your feet off the dash,” Jim scolds without missing a beat. 
You huff and obey. “Okay, this is crazy— can’t you just yell at me already?”
He barely wastes a second.
“I cannot believe you right now!” he seethes through gritted teeth, stewing in a dad-like sort of anger.
“It was three days, Hopper!”
“You know what happened the last time no one heard from you for three days?” he shouts back. 
You tip your head back against the seat and groan. You should’ve known he was going to play that card. 
He waves an accusatory finger between the both of you. “You and me— we had a deal, remember? You let me check in on you. You agreed to that. You visit your little high school friends, and I see you at work, so I can make sure you’re not off somewhere killing yourself.”
Hopper becomes a casualty to the tense silence he created then, when you don’t retort with some comeback of your own and force him to feel every ounce of pressure from the leaden quiet. 
He sighs a great big, too loud sigh and shifts in his seat. His softening gaze flits between you and the road. “I didn’t… I didn’t mean it like that, okay? I just meant it, you know, figuratively. I wasn’t… trying to be mean.”
“When have you ever cared about being mean?” you monotone.
“I don’t,” he assures. “I’m just not trying to hurt your feelings, alright? Jeez…”
You try not to take too much pride in the man’s half-apology, though you’d be lying if you said it wasn’t a little bit rewarding.
Jim Hopper’s practically an iceberg. He only melts for his kid, Joyce Boyers, and you, apparently. 
It’s why he’s always so damn protective over you. He’s developed this sort of deep-rooted urge to keep you safe after watching you make every wrong decision a human being could possibly make. And when you mess up, because you do mess up, he feels like it’s partially his fault — that, if he’d done more, he could’ve kept you safer. 
It makes you feel like a burden most of the time, but you know it’s above yourself and mostly out of your control.
You’d known of each other for a while before you really met, because a troublemaker and police chief in such a small town are bound to. But somewhere down the line, he found you in a valley of mourning for someone that was still alive and you found him in a black hole of grief for someone who wasn’t. The empty and infinite voids within you both were stitched slowly together all over again. 
Jim Hopper was the dad you never had. You were the daughter he couldn’t.
And you thought something might change after he adopted El. You figured he might forget about you because it wasn’t like it was his job to watch after you or anything. Playing pretend always felt nice, but you knew it wasn’t real. 
It was to Jim, though, who’d developed a similar adoration for you as the one he had for Sara. He hasn’t been able to forget about you in the same way he hasn’t been able to forget about her. 
Every night, after he’s scrubbed the day off his body and washed it all down with a lukewarm beer, he lays on his pull-out bed in the small living room of his cabin and goes through a checklist in his head. 
He makes sure that he’s checked on El and reminds himself to wake up early to make her breakfast the next morning before he brings Joyce coffee at Melvald’s — Joyce. She always comes next on his list, always right after El, and then you. 
He forces himself to calm down when his blood pressure inevitably spikes at the thought of not having heard from you all day. He reminds himself that he saw you at work on his lunch break and that he’ll see you again tomorrow.
Jim hums to himself as he settles more comfortably into his springy cot, deciding that he’ll try a new wine he can’t pronounce when he sees you at Enzo’s the next day and that he’ll drink it while he rambles about Joyce or El’s new boyfriend.
He drifts to sleep with thoughts of Sara.
You’re as ingrained into his mind as every other person he’s grown to love.
He stopped worrying about never getting you out a long time ago. Like a tomato sauce stain on a dress shirt, he knows he’ll never get you out of his head. He knows even more so that he doesn’t want to — no matter how much you annoy him or how angry you make him when you don’t answer his calls.
“Sorry…” you murmur and swallow down whatever mundane argument you could’ve spewed then, at the result of his sudden warmth. You turn to gaze out the window and trace the edges of the puffy white clouds with your eyes. “I wasn’t thinking about that — the… deal, or whatever… Honestly, I was a little too busy being happier than I think I’ve ever been in my life, so…”
You don’t see the dramatic eye roll he gives you in response, but you can’t miss the hearty groan that spills from his mouth. 
“What?” you laugh in response. “Have you never been a kid in love before?”
It’s almost jarring how he goes from huffy to concerned in a fraction of a second. His head snaps over to you, jaw clenched and eyes suddenly stern and swimming with a lingering fear. 
“Love?” he repeats like he must’ve heard you wrong. “Love— That’s— That’s what this is?”
You shrug. “I don’t know… Maybe…”
His eyes flutter shut for a moment. “Please don’t tell me you’ve said that to each other yet. This guy was just a crush four days ago.”
“No, Hopper. We haven’t. I mean, he literally just told me he was a virgin, so I don’t think we’re even close to—”
“A virgin?” Jim echoes, voice high-pitched and giddy. He beams at you from beneath his bushy mustache and slaps you a little too hard on your arm when he laughs. “Shit, teacup. Are you runnin’ out of options over there or somethin’?”
You twist your body to hit him back harder with your right hand. “It’s not funny, Hopper,” you scold. “He’s nice.”
“You said that about Hargrove once—”
“This is different,” you monotone before the words have the chance to leave his mouth.
“Yeah? How do you know?”
The question stumps you for a moment because you don’t know — you can’t.
You’d never admit it out loud, but Hopper was right; you’re still not quite sure how you ever could’ve thought that Billy Hargrove was a good guy, but you did. You felt a similar feeling of elation with him as you do now with Eddie, an otherworldly sort of happiness that makes you feel like you’re the only person it’s ever happened to.
And here you are now, sometime later and reveling in the aftermath, still gluing pieces of your shattered heart together.
You treat love like a drug. You use and use and use until it stops being a fun thing and becomes a crutch you can’t live without. That’s always when it starts to hurt you, but you’re in too deep to stop craving it.
And you know it’s bound to happen all over again, but you have to believe Eddie’s different or else you might as well fall into the deep pit of despair you’ve been trying this whole time to crawl out of. 
He makes you happy, really really happy, and you’d rather gamble that he hurts you than give it all without even trying.
“I… don’t,” you conclude after a few moments.
Jim seems surprised by your admission, shooting you an incredulous look with his untamed brows raised to his hairline.
You meet his look with a wavering grin. “But he makes me really happy, Hop. Like… It feels like it should be illegal or something. He makes me feel so good my heart hurts. There’s like this—”
“Ugh,” the man grumbles in disgust, sullen all over again.
“I didn’t mean it like that, you weirdo,” you chide.
A grin twitches beneath his mustache in response. “I know you didn’t… ‘Cause Munson’s a virgin.”
“Oh my god!” you groan. “I didn’t even mean to tell you that, okay? Leave him alone— and a swear to god, Hopper, if you make fun of him—”
“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with it, alright? I mean, he’s got the expert around to show him the ropes— ow!” You cut off his stupid joke and accompanying sardonic grin with a fist to his shoulder.
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Steve and Robin tend to be quite the formidable duo.
They’ve barely got a brain cell to rub together between them, but there’s still something strangely intimidating about them when they’re both angry. It feels a bit like they’re your I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed parents, and you’re the scolded child taking your lashings in the form of a lecture.
It’s what you feel like now, sitting across from them in your designated booth at Benny’s Burgers — the one by the window in the corner. It’s far enough away from the bustle of the entrance but close enough still to gossip about the assholes you used to know from high school when they walk through the door. 
“You scare the shit out of us when you go AWOL like that, you know?” Steve confesses, still soft even though you know there’s a more upset part of himself he keeps hidden for now.
His chocolate gaze flits between you and the pile of fries in the middle of the table that the three of you share. He finds the one covered in the most salt and pops it into his mouth.
“AWOL?” you echo with a distant laugh when you realize how much he sounds like Hopper. “It was three days.”
“Yeah, and you fell off the face of the earth,” Robin retorts, half-muffled through the hearty gulp of strawberry milkshake starting to melt in her mouth.
“You guys are acting like I went halfway across the country,” you scoff. “I was with Eddie. At his trailer.”
“Exactly!”
Steve’s face contorts mid-bite. “Wait, you were with him? The freak?”
It makes you roll your eyes. He’d been too busy hopelessly flirting with the waitress at the counter to hear the entire recounting of your absence to Robin, though it was more of you gushing about it than anything else.
“Yep,” you answer.
“You skipped out on movie night to be with… Eddie Munson?” he reiterates for himself, as though there was any correlation between watching the same three movies while gorging on greasy junk food with your best friends and falling more in love with a guy you were already head over heels for as he tried to explain away the unopened box of condoms collecting dust underneath his bed.
Both are equally fun in their own ways, but totally totally different.
“How did you survive without me, Steven?” you joke back in response.
“He didn’t,” Robin quips.
“So… what? You guys just went on some kinda bender? I don’t get it. Did you just fuck the entire time or something?”
“Well, contrary to popular belief, I can actually spend time with someone and not fuck them—”
“Okay, that’s not what I meant and you know it.”
“And to answer your question — no, we didn’t fuck,” you confess, then elaborate more slowly, a tad bit awkwardly. “Because he told me today that… he is a… virgin.”
Your words seem to settle over each of them differently. Robin stills with her lips wrapped around the candy-cane striped straw then furrows her brows, as though their meaning hits her a few seconds after the fact.
Steve, meanwhile, goes entirely agape in an amazed sort of shock. His eyes go wide, his brows fly up and hide beneath the bangs that hang down over his forehead, and his jaw falls open. And then he starts to smile, a subtle hint of a grin on the corners of his pink lips, like he finds it funny.
“I knew it,” he murmurs to himself.
“…Why are you smiling like that?”
His smirk widens. “That freak said he screwed Vicki Carmichael senior year. I knew he was lying.”
“And why do you look so proud of yourself, exactly?” Robin asks him.
“Because now I feel less bad about never fucking her,” the boy explains like it’s obvious. He set his elbows on the table and gestures wildly with his hands. “I always thought the freak one-upped me because she, like, never gave me the time of day after Hargrove came along, you know? But… It’s good to know that I’m still king.”
His delighted grin is met with confused looks from both you and Robin, who look upon him with twisted eyebrows and squinted eyes. 
“Are you not aware of how strange everything that comes out of your mouth is?” you ask him, only partly joking.
“At least that settles why he wouldn’t let you give him a blow job,” the brunette girl concludes with a shrug as she slouches against the booth. “Poor guy was probably shitting bricks about it.”
You realize then that it does make sense, why he’d always been so adamant about your pleasure and never his own. Why he always touched you like you were some fragile thing he might break, and like everything was new to him. Because it was new to him. All of it.
And even though it baffles you to no end how he went his entire life without someone wanting to jump his bones (because truth be told, you’re doing a terrible job at hiding your want to do just that), the fact still remains — Eddie Munson is a virgin. 
He’s a virgin with an acute infatuation for the local slut, both of you freaks in your own right. 
It just adds more intricacy to a puzzle that already feels so complicated.
“I’ve never been with a virgin before,” you admit quietly, mostly to yourself, as you train your gaze on the straw wrapper you curl around your finger. “It’s different… Scary.”
“Why?” Robin wonders aloud.
“I don’t know. I just— I don’t know what to do now.”
“Just do what you always do,” Steve tells you like it’s that simple. He folds his arms on the table and leans in closer to you. “Experience is good. Okay? Experience is key.”
“No, it’s not that. I think I’m just… I’m scared I’m gonna treat him the way, you know, that I was treated. And I don’t wanna… I don’t wanna do that to him.”
You’re not sure when the shift started, when you stopped being a person to people. You only know that you were something less than that. Somewhere between junior and senior year, you become a plaything that anyone could do anything they wanted to with, and you were too starved for physical affection to tell them otherwise. 
You liked the attention. You liked feeling loved, even if it was only for a minute and a half, and all you had to show for it was a pool of cooling come on your belly.
Eddie’s the fragile thing now that you were then. 
He was a delicate little thing that can break so easily, something you could split in half if you wanted to. 
You don’t. 
You want so desperately to be kind, but you’re scared you won’t know how to, because no one’s ever been kind to you.
Steve reaches across the table for you, taking a wild stab at an attempt for affection after several months of being scared to touch you — he did enough of that, he thought, and he’d hurt you. But he can see the lingering ache hiding in your glazed-over eyes and feels an overwhelming urge to quell your worry. 
Five warm fingers wrap around your wrist, not too tight or too strong, just enough to stop you from cutting circulation off to the tip of your pointer finger and to remind you that he’s still there.
“Trust me,” he tells you with a sudden soft swimming in his caramel-colored eyes and a smile playing on his lips. “You couldn’t do that to anybody. Not even if you wanted to.”  
Your heart nearly stops at his words, at the sheer kindness of them, and at the way he holds you in the soft way you’re used to only Eddie holding you. Your eyes go wide when they flit up to him and then start to sting with the weight of unshed tears. 
You’re quick to blink them away though, while you playfully shrug him off and joke — “stop being so nice before I get the wrong idea, Harrington” — because it’s easier than accepting his tenderness.
Robin takes one look at his fond gaze, all gooey and dripping with honey, and then at your rolling eyes and accompanying shy grin, and groans at the softness of it all. She slides out from the confines of the booth and grumbles something about getting a refill on her milkshake.
“Some fries too, while you’re up?” Steve offers with a hopeful grin.
He’s met with the girl’s signature scowl.
“Please,” you finish for him.
Robin grins. “Anything for you,” she croons, if only to make the boy pout, before skipping off to the counter.
She leans her elbows upon the red wooden laminate top and smiles that same sickly sweet smile for Benny by the grill — no doubt trying to get her refills for free. 
Even though the bearded man seems unimpressed with her presence, you know that he’ll give them to her free of charge. He’s always had a soft spot for her, one of the only people in town who could rival his wit.
The door dings open, a familiar and high-pitched chime that often becomes more frequent as the evening progresses. This time it lets in a foreign, bitter breeze when the door swings open and closed again.
You can feel the chill from a distance — it resembles the crispness of autumn despite being comfortably settled in the middle of March. It nearly takes your breath away, prickles your skin and makes you grimace back a shiver. 
When your eyes leave Steve, a difficult feat considering he’s doing an alarmingly good impression of a walrus by sticking fries in his upper lip, you find that it wasn’t abnormally cold air at all. It was a Peter Parker spider sense form of anxiety that had felt like a bucket of ice water had been poured over you.
Billy Hargrove used to turn heads when he walked into a room. 
Now he just sucks all the air out of it.
And it’s not like you haven’t seen him since the break up; for a while, the asshole was painted on the backs of your eyelids — he all but haunted your consciousness. You’ll see him around town on occasion, in his sunglasses and jean jacket and too-tight denim pants, while he struts around Main Street with his new girlfriend (otherwise known as, his flavors of the month).
You think this is the first time you’ve been in the same room as him since your split, though. It feels like it must be with the way your throat starts to tighten and you forget how to breathe. 
All at once, you’re scrambling for an exit. It’s like Billy’s a fire and his smoke is rapidly filling your lungs. Your legs start to tremble when your adrenaline spike. Your brain tells you to get out as quickly as you can before he burns you.
Steve notices the look of fear flood your features like a dark storm cloud. You were laughing just seconds before the door opened, equal parts with him and at him, but now you just looked terrified — like a child who’s just spotted a boogeyman in her closet.
He turns in the booth to find what haunted thing has just caught your eye and finds that it’s worse than any monster you could conjure up. It’s Billy fucking Hargrove, with his pretty hair and his pretty smile and his pretty girl under his arm.
His presence filled targeted, almost. Like he chose to come to this diner, on this day and at this time just to fuck with the group of you.
“Don’t even look at him,” Steve advises when he turns back to you. “Look at me, okay? He’s not even worth it. That asshole doesn’t deserve to ruin our day.”
And you try to listen to him. You try really, really hard to let him change that subject to the cold fries or Robin taking too long or a combination of the two, but you can’t focus on him. You’re already so overwhelmed at the sight of Billy that you can’t focus on anything else but him. 
You settle on the fact that you might just have to drag Steve and Robin out by their wrists because you can’t sit in this booth any longer, and you definitely aren’t hungry anymore.
And that’s when he spots you.
Your eyes lock and you freeze, immediately averting your gaze but catching the sudden sparkle in his own as he grins a sly, sadistic grin.
“No way,” you hear him say with a laugh under his breath. The sound of his voice makes you tense. You hadn’t realized how at peace you’d been all this time without having to hear it. Now it feels like so many little needles piercing your skin.
“Fancy seeing you guys here,” he greets after he’s made a b-line for your booth and dragged Vicki Carmichael along with him. He smiles with all of his pearly whites while he smacks pungent wintergreen gum between them. 
When he slides into the booth beside you, he does so without invitation, and forces Vicki to slink in next to Steve.
And like it wasn’t already awkward enough, you know Vicki — like, know her, know her. There was a drunken makeout at a Halloween party in ’82. Then a one night stand with her brother before he left for college in ’83. And then her Tom Selleck clone of a father at a sleepover for her eighteenth birthday in ’85. 
You’re not exactly proud of it, but you’ve gotten a rather hefty taste of her family tree, and the fact that both of you know it makes it that much more uncomfortable.
“We’re kinda busy here, Hargrove,” Steve tells him when he notices how comfortable he’s making himself in your booth.
“Ooh… Is this a little date?” Billy teases with a grin.
Steve’s face falls. “…No.”
“Oh, right,” he nods, though the sardonic lilt in his voice tells you that he already knew the answer. He crosses his arms on the tabletop and turns to look at you with eyes bluer than any ocean. They flicker up and down your form. Suddenly, you feel self-conscious in your baggy jean and tank top duo.
“You’ve been seeing that guy, haven’t you? What’s his name again? The, uh— the freak?”
“His name is Eddie,” Steve answers for you, defending him because you can’t find the words to.
“That’s it,” Billy snaps his fingers, then points. He nudges you with his shoulder. The familiar feel of his jean jacket against your skin makes you wince. “God, you must be runnin’ out of steam over there, huh? I mean… the freak? Seriously? You couldn’t do any better than that?”
The jokes were tolerable coming from Jim and Steve and Robin — they weren’t funny by any means, but you could stomach them because you knew they were jokes. But this? This was just to hurt you. And it works too easily because Billy knows exactly how to break you. He knows all the wires to cut and buttons to push because the puzzle of shattering your psyche is one he memorized long ago.
“He’s actually a really nice guy,” you manage through a tight throat, still staring at your fidgeting hands.
“Well, that’s good,” he hums like you need his approval. “It’s about time, right?”
You huff and choose to entertain him despite your better judgment. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He only shrugs. “I don’t know... Just, you know, that found a guy willing to settle for you. That’s all.”
“Settle?” you repeat, trying to laugh despite how tiny your voice sounds.
“You know what I mean, c’mon,” the blonde boy chuckles. “Sluts are fun and all, but they’re not the kinda girls you wanna settle down with. Steve knows what I mean.”
“No, I don’t,” Steve monotones quickly and without thinking, gaze hardened and jaw clenched. “And you need to leave.”
“I”m hungry, Billy,” Vicki whines, feeling every ounce of the tension surrounding her — like syrup or quicksand. She slides her permed bangs from her eyes and tucks a rogue strawberry strand behind her ear in a nervous tick. “Can’t we just get something to eat?”
“Alright, alright. I know when I’m not wanted,” Billy chuckles.
You grumble bitterly under your breath. “Apparently not…”
“I’ll see you around, Harrington,” Billy singsongs with a grin that wreaks of insincerity while his girlfriend slides out from the booth. He turns to look at you and squints. “Don’t be a stranger, alright? Matter of fact, point Munson my way, and I’ll give him a few pointers.”
You’re uncowed by his offer and angered by his mention of Eddie. Your eyes are stern and unwavering as you meet his gaze for the first time since he sat down beside you. 
“I think you could learn a thing or two from him, actually,” you retort, words sounding sweeter than the venom lingering behind them.
Billy’s grin only widens, impressed by your arguing. “Ooh… I forgot about the mouth you had on you, sweetheart.”
The use of the nickname makes you cringe. It doesn’t sound nearly as fulfilling as it does when it comes from Eddie. Now, it just sounds artificial — degrading.
He leans in close to you like he’s about to tell you a secret and splays his arm along the back of the booth behind you. The nicotine on his breath makes you grimace; it’s intoxicating when it comes from Eddie, disgusting from the boy sitting next to you. 
His eyes are bluer so up close, darker than you remember them being, and you notice he’s trimmed his usual stubble to a patchy mustache. He looks like the grown-up version of the boy you used to know, visually more mature but still the same in his way.
“When he gets bored of you — because, let’s be serious, he will get bored of you — you know where to find me,” Billy murmurs to you, a cynical smirk on the edges of his lips. “I’ll make sure you stay nice and broken in for the next dozen guys that want a taste—”
Steve can’t hear a word from where he sits across the booth, but he’s fuming with fists clenched under the table anyway. He hates how close Billy is to you, more so how uncomfortable you look with the proximity and how his words make you flinch. 
“Alright, you need to leave,” he blurts. “Now.”
Before the blonde could respond with a quip of his own, Robin all but teleports to the head of the table. She’s standing in front of the four of you suddenly, carrying a basket of fries and a strawberry milkshake and wearing a frown on her face.
“You’re in my seat, dickwad,” she monotones, even though she hadn’t been sitting next to you before. She’s not the least bit threatened by the Californian douchebag.
Billy smiles up at her anyway. “I was wondering where the third musketeer was! Still a carpet muncher, Buckley?”
“Happily.”
“What do ya say me and you head up to Lover’s Lake later?” the boy offers despite his date shifting awkwardly a few feet away. It’s a joke, for reasons that are more than obvious, and that’s what makes it so unbearably unfunny. 
He slinks out from the booth. The lack of his warmth is strangely comforting and you’re able to breathe for the first time in five minutes. He stretches his back out when he stands to his full height in front of Robin, then shrugs with his hands splayed on his hips.
“Maybe you just need some good dick. I mean… we’re gonna die anyway, right?”
“I’d rather,” she quips with a rouge-tinted smile.
The way it makes him laugh is startling. He finds a strange humor in being rejected — in most things, really. You still haven’t forgotten the cackles that left his bloodied mouth when Steve delivered blow after blow to the boy’s face in the middle of his living room, like it was all a fun game to him.
That was, of course, before Billy got the upper hand and nearly killed Steve that night. He laughed about it that too, until Max knocked him out with a baseball bat.
He’s got the same grin on his face now as he did then when he turns to look at you. A pink and pretty smirk, just wide enough to reveal the dimple in his left cheek. It’s nothing short of taunting, like he’s mocking you without having to say anything at all.
“Don’t be a stranger, alright?” Billy repeats. He keeps smacking his gum between his teeth and winks at you before spinning on the heel of his boot. He guides Vicki with him to the counter with a hand on the back pocket of her jeans.
Even when Robin slides in next to you and effectively pierces the bubble of tension that had already started to shrink with Billy’s leaving, you still find it hard to breathe. You have to keep reminding yourself, forcing oxygen in and out with wobbling breaths through your nose, or else you just stop altogether.
The other two move on rather quickly, having no trouble finding their voices again after he’s gone. Their words are muffled, though, like they’re underwater.
“I forgot what an asshole he was,” Robin grumbles.
“Well, I didn’t,” Steve retorts, eyes scanning the basket of fries for the most strategic pick of the bunch. “I can still barely breathe through my nose.”
“That’s because you didn’t go to a doctor, dingus.”
“Because I didn’t need a doctor, Robin.”
“Yeah, because being concussed three times in two years is so healthy—”
Your eyes act like magnets as they stay locked on Billy’s form. He leans in closer to Vicki to tell her something, then pats her once on the ass before walking towards the exit again. The door dings when he swings it open. Through the window, you catch him pulling out a red and white pack of cigarettes — the same brand of Marlboro Reds he’s been smoking since he was in middle school.
“You okay?” you hear Steve say, but it sounds too far away for you to realize he’s talking to you.
Robin nudges you with her shoulder to jog you from your stupor. You blink hard once and then turn to her with wide eyes. “What?”
“You doing alright over there?” the girl wonders.
“Yeah,” your answer is too quick and too high-pitched to be true. “Fine.”
“Like, fine as in you’re actually fine, or fine as in, if I leave you alone for too long, I’m gonna find you living under a bridge like a troll?”
You roll your eyes at her. “Fine as in, if someone bums me a cigarette, I’ll be good as new.”
Steve huffs when you hold out the palm of your hand toward him. He’s the only one of you who smokes recreationally enough to carry a lighter and pack of cigs with him. You swear he only keeps it with him because the weight of them makes him feel cool. You’re grateful for them now, though, and for the escape they unexpectedly provide you.
His fingers are warm when they brush your hand. The metal zippo he drops in the center of it is far colder and carries a comforting sort of weight to it. He thumbs a cigarette from the pack for you, and you take it with a sardonic smile and a sickly sweet “thank you, Stevie.” 
Robin gets out of the booth to let you slide out of it.
The door chimes again, this time over your head when you open it. 
Fresh, spring air nearly knocks you on your ass when it hits you for the first time. You realize then, that you’d forgotten to tell yourself to breathe and now your vision’s all swimmy. The cool breeze tries its hardest to quell your swelling anger, but you’re still at a simmering boil. Fists clenched over the lighter and cig duo in your palm and your sneakers slapping angrily against the cracked pavement.
That’s what signals your arrival, the raging stomps that echo in the alleyway Billy takes his smoke break in. 
The boy takes a puff of his cigarette and smirks on the exhale at the sight of you. All he needs is one glance to see how angry he’s made you. It’s an innocent, childlike sort of rage that’s got you all scrunched face and red — a heartbroken girl on a war path.
“I knew you couldn’t resist me, sweetheart,” he taunts with his signature sarcastic smile. He holds his arms at his sides, like he’s waiting for some kind of embrace from you. “You used to be like that all the time — all over me, you know? Clingy.”
“You know what you used to be?” you ask him once you’ve planted yourself a few feet away from him, fists shaking at your sides in a nearly overwhelming mixture of rage and apprehension.
“What’s that?”
“Nice! You used to be nice! Or do you not remember that?” you wonder rhetorically. Your anger fades slowly, an ebbing tide, as a reminiscent sadness eclipses your fury — a flood of blue in all your red. 
The sharp frown between your brows crumbles and so does your clenched jaw as your harsh features crumple like a balled-up piece of paper. You look upon the man that broke your heart with all the shattered pieces of it.
“You used to let me sleep over at your place when I was too scared to sleep alone at mine, and you’d bring me food when I told you I hadn’t eaten all day, and you’d take me on drives when you knew I hadn’t left my apartment in days,” you ramble in a single breath, gesticulating wildly with your hands — waving them at him and at you and the still air between. They fall hopelessly to your sides. 
“You used to be so sweet, Billy…” you conclude with a wavering breath. Your chest trembles on the inhale as you straighten out your shoulders and lift your chin, trying your best not to look as defeated as you feel. “And you know what you are now?”
Billy grins that stupid grin at you, the one that almost looks kind. Almost. It’s still soft in all its insincerity, like a parent entertaining their kid that’s gone on some meaningless tangent.
“No, sweetheart,” he answers after a beat. “What am I?”
“Not nice.”
He scoffs out a laugh.
“You used to tell me, all the time, how scared you were about ending up like you’re dad—” he tenses at the mention of the man, of his own monster in his own closet. “—He’d beat you black and blue every night, and I’d bandage all your cuts and put makeup on you when you begged, so you could go out and pretend like everything was normal. And you know what? You’re just like him!”
Billy doesn’t cower when you walk closer to him. He’s got no reason to be afraid of you, but your words hit him in a place far deeper than a thousand bloodied fists.
“What he did to you, is exactly what you do to me… Or do you know see that?” you don’t wait for a sarcastic reply, mostly because you wouldn’t see the indicators of it through the tears that blur your vision. “You’re not punching me, but it feels like you are. You break me over and over and over and I have to pretend like everything’s just normal and that we—”
“Real mature of you. To bring out the dad-card,” he interjects, if only to stop your ramblings so that he might not have to hear the truth that comes with them.
“You used to he nice,” you repeat, you agonize, you deflate. “Or… Or did you never use to be?”
The shell of your mind answers for you, paints itself with all the memories you’ve been trying like hell to forget for the past six months. It’s easier to pretend the bad things aren’t real than unravel all the reasons why they were bad to begin with, you find.
The negative memories come together like renaissance paintings — dark and gloomy and blotted with too realistic tears and spatters of blood. The oil stains the backs of your eyelids, destined to remain there forever like paintings in museum that’ll stand the test of time if you nurse them well enough.
You hadn’t yet been able to forget the screams and the cracks of fists colliding with bone. They tend to keep you up at night, even when you squeeze your eyes shut and beg for your memory to be wiped away completely. 
Billy crouches over Steve’s chest and pummels wholehearted punches to the boy’s face, never tiring in their force, even well after the boy goes limp underneath him. You beg for him to stop while trying like hell to shield Max from the sight of it all. 
For a while, you’d blamed yourself for it — for Max being there in the first place and for Steve’s cuts and bruises. 
You’d taken the girl and sought refuge in the Harrington home after witnessing a rather heated fight between Billy and his father. There was a sudden urge within you to take her far away from it before it ended how it always did — in weeping cuts and salty tears and insincere apologies when the cops were called.
But you made it worse anyway. 
For Max, for Steve. 
And you apologized profusely for it after, cried to the boy in his bathroom while you nursed his cuts like you were the one who put them there. 
When he told you it wasn’t your fault, you didn’t believe him. Not until now. Not until you realized that Billy had always been angry — always raging with an ocean of fear and grief and violence.
When he fought with his sister, you thought it was normal, that that’s just what siblings did. But the way she cried to you after couldn’t have been normal. Neither could the unearthly fury that washed over Billy like a riptide when he found out you and Max had sought safety in Steve The Hair Harrington — angered that it was Steve and that he couldn’t be that for the both of you.
And then there was the fights. The yelling and screaming and crying fights that felt like the end of the world every single time. The kind of fights you shouldn’t be having when you’re eighteen. You thought that maybe there was some normalcy in the cheating and the secrecy and Billy’s accompanying assholery because that was all you’d ever known.
Or maybe because you had to tell yourself that was normal in relationships because you didn’t want your’s to end. Billy was the first guy to give a damn about you in ways that went beyond just sex. How were you supposed to just give that up?
But then there’s Eddie — Eddie The Freak Munson, who was really just sunshine wrapped up in leather jackets and wild hair and chunky rings and metal music. He makes you happy. The sort of happy that makes you suspicious because something bad has to counteract all the goodness he makes you feel. 
Maybe that’s what this was. 
Seeing Billy after having wrapped yourself in a blanket of Eddie’s warmth made you see somehow more clearly. He loves on you so much that it’s made a mockery of everything else. 
Whatever you had with Billy wasn’t normal, it was a goddamn shit show. He loved you when it was convenient and then had you believing it was the real thing, that you wouldn’t find it anywhere else, when you tried to leave him. 
It was a lie, all of it.
The realization makes you falter.
“Oh, god…” you sigh, voice fragile like cracking glass. “Maybe you never used to be…”
For the first time ever, you see Billy’s grin shake. The edges of it flitter, like he’s fighting to keep the corners quirked up. And his eyes have gone a lighter shade of blue, the way they always did when he blinked back angry tears as he talked about his father.
It isn’t rage glassing his eyes now. It’s something sadder, but still as real — something you never got from him in the two years you were together.
He tries, still, to cover it all up. He smacks his lips against his teeth, sympathetically. “Sorry it took you this long to figure that out.”
The laugh you exhale then is heavy with sadness. Your smile is far away and so is your gaze as you stumble back from him. You turn your head to the edge of the alley where mom’s with strollers and people in fancy suits bustle on the sidewalk and keep your eyes on the strangers that whiz by you’ll probably never see again. 
“This is… This is pointless,” you murmur. His lean form is blurry through the burning tears you blink away. “Every time I see you, it’s just more bullshit so let’s just— let’s just leave each other alone, okay?”
Billy takes a puff from his cigarette. When he sighs, white smoke billows from his plump, pink lips. “That’s a shame… I was just thinking that you were the most interesting you’d ever been.”
The ebbing tide that had just left you rushes back in a bubbling scarlet wave. His words don’t make you sad anymore, they just make you angry all over again because you know you don’t deserve them. And you’re not entirely sure why he’s chosen you to antagonize out of all the other girls who’d made the mistake of falling for him, but you’re too far past the point of not caring to ask.
“Bother me again and I tell Chief Hopper,” you threaten even though you don’t feel very threatening just now. “I know you’re not scared of me, but you’d be stupid to be scared of him.”
“Why’s that?” he wonders before sticking the half-gone stick between his lips again.
“Because he runs Hawkins. And he fucking hates you—” for what you did to me, you almost say. You swallow the words down like bile before they have the chance to spew out. “And… And be nice to Vicki. Okay? She’s too good for you. Don’t do to her what you did to me.”
Your plea for another is the last thing you say to Billy before you turn away from him. You wouldn’t be upset if it was the last thing you ever said to him. You’re grateful for the resounding silence that follows. It’s nothing but the sound of your receding footsteps and the soles of his shoes scrapping the concrete as he snuffs out his cigarette. 
There is no snarky remark or insincere plea — just two people who used to love each other that have no idea to exist together anymore. 
When you step outside the brick confines of the alleyway, you feel as though a fraying string that had always connected the both of you had been finally cut.
It allows you to take a deep breath in for the first time in months. A lungful of fresh air that cleanses you, body and mind.
And when you catch Steve and Robin idling at the corner and doing a terrible job of pretending like they hadn’t just been eavesdropping, you don’t get upset or angry with them — you don’t feel much of anything, really.
You just hand the boy his lighter and unused cigarette and let them comfort you on the drive back to your apartment.
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A misery sandwich. That’s what Robin calls the three of you and the heaping pile you lay in. 
Your queen-sized bed is in no way meant to accomodate three moderately sized adults, but you make it work anyway, like you always do.
Steve lays on his back, legs crossed and hands tucked under his head. Robin is on her stomach on the other end of the mattress, arms wrapped around the pillow she smushes the side of her face into. You lay between the both of them — on the both of them. Sprawled out sideways, you’ve got your head on propped up on Steve’s ribcage and your legs thrown over Robin’s thighs. 
The awkward position is the most comfortable you’ve ever been.
“I can’t believe that asshole had the nerve to show up to the diner on our day,” the boy rants. “And then sit in our booth, I mean— who does he think he is?”
Robin’s response is mostly muffled by the pillow. “I thought he left, like, forever ago.” 
“Maybe he just couldn’t stay away. It’s Hawkins, shit attracts shit, right?” Steve answers with a shrug that jostles your head slightly. It doesn’t little to knock you from your stupor, though, where you’ve been stuck for the better part of the day. You pick at the skin around your nails with little regard for how red and raging it's gone.
He notices this and thumps you on your temple — hard enough for you to feel it, gentle enough that it doesn’t hurt you. 
You turn your chin to your shoulder to look over at him. He tilts his own head to stare down at you, honey-tinted gaze somehow stern and soft at the same time. “If he bothers you again, I’ll kill him.”
You’re instantly warmed by his protective disposition. You know that he cares about you, even though you like to joke that he doesn’t. Steve hurt you once, made a promise to himself to make it up to you, and then just never left you alone. 
You’re grateful for it. 
You’re not sure who’d be the butt of every joke if he wasn’t around.
“Good to know,” you answer, nodding against his side and trying to hide the smile he gives you. You fail. “You think if he breaks your nose again, it’ll pop back into place?”
His face falls. “You’re real sweet, you know that?”
You open your mouth to respond, something along the lines of “I’m always sweet. You of all people should know that, Stevie,” before a knock sounds at the front door. It comes in the several rhythmic raps that Eddie is known to give when he’s got a tune stuck in his head. 
Apparently now, it’s the chorus to “Why Can’t This Be Love?” The Van Halen song he said he couldn’t stand before you.
Robin huffs at the sound of the muffled taps. She frowns like a child. “Who the hell…?”
“It’s just Eddie,” you affirm through a half-hearted grunt as you rise from your comfy position.
That brightens the two of them up almost immediately. Her and Steve share a look you can’t place as they grin at one another. Then they turn back to you with identical mischievous twinkles in their eyes. “Your boyfriend is here,” the former of the two singsongs.
You roll your eyes, but make no move to correct her. 
When you stand from the bed and make the short journey towards the door, you hear the patter of their feet following close behind you. 
“Gonna go all the way tonight?” Steve teases and jabs you on the shoulder. “Do you want us to leave?”
“No, nothing is happening. And yes, I think you should leave,” you monotone playfully.
Robin rushes past you suddenly and grabs the brass door handle before you’re able. She swings it open without thinking twice about it. Her sudden appearance, coupled with the fact that it isn’t you, startles the man on the other side of the door.
Eddie’s umber eyes go wide, brows raising and disappearing beneath his fluffy bangs, as his head jerks back.
“Eddie Munson,” the girl full-names the stranger she’s never spoken a word to before now. She leans against the doorway and effectively blocks the boy’s view of you. Steve, who squeezes himself in beside her, doesn’t make it any easier. “Fancy seeing you here.”
“You too, Buckley…” he wavers, trying to peer past them for any sight of you.
“Perfect timing, Eds,” you call out from behind them. “They were just about to leave.”
He’s relieved at the sound of your voice — even more so at your appearance when the two in front of you step off to the side to toe on their sneakers. 
You don’t look much different than when he saw you last. You’ve put on some makeup that’s started to smudge after the long day and changed your baggy sweatshirt for a more fitted tank top and boxers, but other than that you’re still the same. Still familiar and comforting in your way, a home away from home.
His smile is a tired one and it wobbles at the edges. “Oh, shit, am I— am I interrupting something?”
“No,” you’re quick to reassure him. “You’re saving me, actually.”
“Oh, give me a break,” Steve scoffs. “You love us.” 
The boy pulls you into a hug before he leaves, and it’s not the rarest thing in the world, but embraces like this do tend to be few and far between. He whispers  “use protection” in your ear and then a sharp “ow!” when you jab him in the ribs.
He and Robin smile kindly at Eddie when they walk by him and out the door, but waste barely a second before turning back around and grinning wildly at you. Steve flashes you a thumbs up while she mouths a cartoonish ‘good luck’ — like it’s the first time you and Eddie had ever been alone together. Like they were just on your ass about having been with him this whole time.
You usher Eddie and shut the door behind them. A quiet sort of peace settles on the apartment like a weighted blanket. The boy revels in every bit of its warmth.
Exhaustion drips from him like syrup. He’s sticky with it. His eyes have lost their usual twinkle, weighed down now with the burden of his fatigue. His face has lost most of its color, leaving a pale sheath of monotoned skin, and his hair is wilder than normal, with an unintentional sort of ruggedness to his curls.
It’s what being without you has done to him.
“You okay?” you ask him softly. It almost makes him want to cry.
“Yeah,” he answers anyway and idles in the spot where your kitchen meets your living room. “Just had a pretty shitty day. Wanted to spend time with you.”
“Me too… About the wanting to spend time with you part— and the shitty day part, too, I guess.”
Eddie smiles at your rambling, but purses it to the side to conceal it from you. “And since it is just about our…” he trails off and bends his elbow to check the watch on his wrist. “…Twelve hour anniversary, I picked us up some takeout.”
He sets the plastic bag on the counter. The red logo of Oriental Jade on the side of it makes your stomach roll with a distant hunger. You hadn’t realized how starved you were feeling after you abandoned your early dinner at Benny’s. It makes you more grateful for Eddie, who always seems to be on the same wavelength as you without even trying.
“Keep this up and we’ll be married before we hit hour twenty-four,” you joke as you rifle through the cartons — chow mein, sweet and sour chicken, dumplings, the works.
Eddie settles in next to you, propping his elbows on the countertop. “Well, I’m pretty sure the courthouse opens at nine, so… What were you thinking for the honeymoon? Hawaii? Bora Bora?”
“How about a cabin in the woods where no one can find us?”
“Hmm… Spooky. Sexy. I’m into it.”
You settle in the living room and eat on the couch while She Ra re-runs play on the television. You try to teach Eddie how to use chopsticks, though he can only work them with his non-dominant hand and all the wrong finger placements. You think it’s cute to watch him fumble with them, and you giggle about it until you’re scolding him for trying to feed Bowie some noodles. He laughs as you swat at him.
When all the containers are fully scrapped clean and tossed in the recycling bin, you migrate to the bedroom — which is perhaps too raunchy a phrase to use when the two of you only bury yourselves under the covers to talk shit.
Eddie drags out the chunky box fan you use when the air conditioner goes out in the summer — because it always goes out in the summer — and props it on the chest at the foot of your bed so the covers will billow around the both of you. “And it’s perfect because we can stay in the fort forever and not get hot,” he tells you, all giddy about it like he's a kid again.
“What if I get cold?” you retort.
Without missing a beat, he answers, “Well, lucky enough for you, I know several ways I can warm you up, sweetheart.”
He ditches his leather jacket and strips down to his boxers and settles in beside you underneath the blankets. The two of you lay shoulder to shoulder while you trace absentminded patterns on the palm of his hand and tell him about your day.
You make sure to leave out all the re-traumatizing-Billy-Hargrove bits, though. You focus mainly on the tense drive with Hopper and the small fight you’d had with Steve on the drive to the diner later that afternoon about the lyrics to Love My Way (both of you had been wrong).
Eddie tries his hardest to focus on your story and your fleeting touches, but he’s too far in his own head. You tell him all these things but he can’t stop thinking about himself — about whether or not you might’ve brought him up somewhere in between. 
He wouldn’t have blamed you, if you had. Steve and Robin are your closest friends and, for whatever reason, so is Chief Hopper, you’re bound to bring him up eventually. He was just hoping it would’ve been in a better capacity. Maybe about how kind he was or what a god he was in bed — not how he could only be one of those things because he’d never been anything in bed.
“It doesn’t make things weird between us, does it?” he wonders out of the blue.
You halt mid-sentence and turn to him with furrowed brows. “What?”
Eddie realizes then, that the first half of the conversation with you had only happened in his head. He prays that it’s too dark beneath the covers for you to see how red his cheeks get. “Just… What we talked about this morning. About me… you know…” He finds it hard to say the words. Or any of them at all.
“Why would it make things weird?”
“I don’t know. Because I wasn’t… totally honest with you, I guess? I feel a little bad about it, you know?”
“It’s okay,” you assure and turn on your side to be closer to him. Eddie stays on his back, more than happy to let you cuddle further into him. “I guess I do wish you’d said something before, though.”
His chest tightens. “I’m sorry. I just… I didn’t know how to—”
“I’m not saying it to make you feel bad!” you interject quickly when you catch the spiral of regret he was about to twist himself into. You curl tighter into his side, tossing a leg over his thigh and wrapping your hand around his bicep in an effort to melt with him. When he turns to face you, your noses nearly brush.
 “That’s not how I meant it. I just meant that, if I’d known before, I wouldn’t have… I would’ve taken things slower. I wouldn’t have been so, you know, so all over you.”
He hates how apologetic you sound. Like there was ever an ounce of him that would want to take back what happened that night at his trailer or a part of him that might hate how much you love on him.
“I liked it. I do like it.”
“Maybe we can just start over,” you offer. “Pretend like none of that ever happened.”
Eddie knows there’s no way in hell he’ll be able to forget about a single damn thing — not his cum stained jeans and how you looked so pretty washing them for him, not the feel of your tits in his mouth or you wrapped around his fingers, not how you made him blow his load all over his fist just by talking to him. 
He goes along with it anyway, though, just for you.
“Okay...” he nods slowly, then squints over at you. “You’re still my girlfriend, though, right?”
“Of course I am,” you giggle.
He grins proudly to himself. “Well then… Hope it’s not too early to have our first kiss then?”
It makes you roll your eyes because it’s such an Eddie Munson way of asking to kiss you. You told him earlier the day that he never had to ask you — in fact, you’d prefer it if he’d just kiss you out of the blue and take your breath away without you ever knowing it was coming. But there was something foreign and sweet in his little reassurances.
“Kiss me silly, Eddie Spaghetti,” you beam. He twists on his side to press tiny pecks to your smile.
It’s rather strange, you find, to kiss someone this way without the intention of it ever becoming something more. You kiss him just to kiss him — just to map the outline of his cupid’s bow and memorize the pattern of his tongue. Just to feel him, as much of him as your mouth will allow you to.
With one arm curled under his head and the other cradling your jaw, when his watch alarms — high-pitched beepbeepbeeps in quick succession — it’s sudden and close to your ear. 
Your lips click in protest when they part. His are pink and swollen and glossy with your spit. He smiles with them. “Happy twelve hour anniversary, sweetheart.”
“How long are you gonna make that stupid joke?” you laugh like your heart isn’t swelling so much you’re scared it might burst entirely.
“Uh, I was thinking… forever. Yeah. That sounds about right,” he concludes after a moment of feigned thought. He turns his watch off again and you swear you see him set for another twelve hours from now.
“Forever?” you echo.
“Uh-huh. Forever—” he presses his lips to yours once. “—And ever—” Twice. “—And ever.”
Eddie kisses you until you’re flat on your back and surrendering to each of his tiny little pecks. You twist your hands in his hair and let him love on you a little while more. You giggle when his mouth trails from your lips to your chin to your jaw to your neck. Please don’t get bored of me, you beg silently within your laughter.
I don’t think I could even if I wanted to, he answers with each kiss his sprinkles to your starved skin. How could I, when you’re the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me?
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cseni-bean · 5 months
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I had the wonderful opportunity to be in this years Bumbleby Big Bang! :D
The fic is writen by @emocean-is-trash ! It's based on a visual novel called "Our Life: Beginnings and Always!" You can read the fic >Clicking< there
My fantastic co-artist is @gummi-doodles who absolutelly killed it with each Blake, been a blest to work with them! :D
I did all the Yangs it was really fun to draw the sunshine gurl thru big events in her life
Here are some close ups:
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Same as it ever was 4
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Warnings: this fic will include dark content such as neglect, bullying, manipulation, cheating, and possible untagged elements. My warnings are not exhaustive, enter at your own risk.
This is a dark!fic and explicit. 18+ only. Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.
Summary: Between your home life and work, you just can’t catch a break. Especially after you draw the ire of your boss.
Characters: Lloyd Hansen ft. Pete Brenner
Note: Oh my, we be sad gurls and bois.
As per usual, I humbly request your thoughts! Reblogs are always appreciated and welcomed, not only do I see them easier but it lets other people see my work. I will do my best to answer all I can. I’m trying to get better at keeping up so thanks everyone for staying with me.
Your feedback will help in this and future works (and WiPs, I haven’t forgotten those!)
I love you all immensely. Take care. 💖
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When Pete rumbles with snores, you move to the couch, hoping for what little sleep you can summon. You can't lay there beside him knowing what you know. You can't steam in the spite of knowing that he can sleep just soundly while sneaking around.
Two wrongs can never make right. You're not absolved. Far from it. You're mad. At him. At yourself. At life.
As you drift in and out, the apathy comes. You can't care. If you let yourself feel, you'll fall apart. You don't have that choice. Someone has to hold it together for the kids.
You get up first, like most mornings. You're restlessly impatient to get the day started if only to get away from that house. From the husband who isn't much of one.
Simone and Malik sit at the table eating cereal as you check your phone. You're on track so far. As if fate is throwing you a soft ball, the morning is going smoother than ever.
You get the kids packed and in the car. Every step is taken on habit alone. You walk them to the school doors and wish them a good day. Then you go back to your car and idle in silence. You're empty, you have nothing left.
You make yourself pull out and join the snailish roll of traffic through the school zone. Your drive to work is over before you know it as you stay locked in a trance. Before you just went through the motions, now it's like you're a ghost, floating aimlessly from one place to the next.
You enter the office, the walls a blur in your vision as you find your way blindly to your desk. Your head is pounding. Amid your early morning scramble, your desperation for distraction, to think of anything but reality, you hadn't even had a coffee. Your entire being throbs from the caffeine withdrawal.
You cup your forehead as you boot your computer. Eventually you'll get up and grab a cup of the weak break room brew. You lean heavily on the armrest of the chair and wiggle your mouse. 
For once, you're thankful to be at work. No fighting kids, no laundry, no scoundrel husband. But you're there and it's just as hard to live with yourself. 
"Morning, sunshine," Mr. Hansen's booming tone has you careening back in your chair as he comes to lean on the corner of your desk, "aren’t you bright-eyed and bushy tailed. Long night, huh? Husband finally loosen you up a bit."
You give him the daggers. That look that says 'enough'. Your motherly chagrin blazing at full force. He winks and laughs as he taps the end of your nose.
"You're real cute when you're pissed off, you know that?" He puts a hand on his hip, smoothing his index and thumb of his other across his mustache.
"Mr. Hansen," your voice is gravelly with dry fatigue, "is there something I can do for you?"
"Well, I can think of a certain wakemeup," he snickers, "but I'm thinking that you're not really into it. Still, you look like you could use it."
You huff and turn your chair to glare up at him. Can't he bother anyone else? He had his fun, he humiliated you, he made you hate yourself. So what else does he want?
"If you don't mind," you push your chair back and stand, "I'm going to get some coffee."
"Oh, sounds fun," he shoves away from the desk and trails after you, surprising you as he stretches and arm across your shoulders, "this company shit, it's garbage. How about I make you my own personal brew? I got a keurig in my office, just got some French Vanilla–"
"No thank you," you grumble and pull away from him.
You enter the kitchen first as he continues his incessant pursuit. He likes Malik when he wants to tell you about his legoworld. You go to the machine and find the carafe empty. You rinse it and fill the tank.
"You're mad about yesterday," he says as he leans on the counter, "if you're into snuggling, you coulda stuck around–"
"No," you growl as you measure out the coffee grounds.
"I let you go take care of the crotch goblin so I thought we'd be square–"
"Mr. Hansen, it's not you," you close the lid and flip the switch, "really."
"Ah, got it, it's the hubby. He's not taking care of his marital duties, huh?"
"Please, sir, it's not… it's not that," you falter as the lie sticks on your tongue. "Tired, need coffee."
"You look like you need sleep," he shifts closer as you stare at the slow trickle of coffee, "tell you what," he lowers his voice, "you come in my office, give me a good tug and I'll let you sleep in a meeting room. How's that? I'll make sure you get your eight hours."
You open the cupboard, taking out your mug from the bunch of mismatched porcelain, and set it on the counter. You can't even look at him. Not only because he repulses you but he reminds you of how pathetic you truly are.
"I'm good," you insist, "thank you, sir."
He scoffs, "I'm giving you something you're not getting elsewhere. Action and sleep," he runs his knuckles up your sleeve, "beggars can't be choosers, can they?"
You look at him. You're so fucking exhausted that your eyes are too dry to eke out a single tear. It's the only thing keeping you from tipping over the edge.
He smirks and looks at your blouse, reaching to pinch one of the front buttons, "look at that, all put together."
You glance down at the misaligned buttons. You don't even care. You're a mess. You're old and used up and unwanted. Even he only wants to get off, it doesn't matter who does it.  At the end of the day, he'll be just as happy to do it himself.
You're speechless. It's nothing like shock. It's exasperation. Are all men really like this? Is this what Pete does? Is she some girl at the company?
"Forget it," you take your empty mug and spin in your low orthotics.
You stride out and stumble to your desk. You can do this. You just have to get through the day. And then what?
Get the kids, go home, cook dinner, do homework, bath time, bed for them, clean the endless mess…
Tomorrow? The same thing, over and over, until what? Until when? When do you admit defeat?
Hansen struts out of the breakroom. You look up as you see him sipping from a mug; your mug. He meets your gaze as he drinks deeper and passes by.
You wonder the same thing about him; when will he give up? 
🗄️
You feel yourself slumping lower and lower. Your eyelids are scratchy and burning as you fight to keep them open. You cup your chin in your hand, elbow planted on your desk as the emails blur before you. You can do this… 
In a minute, you’ll get up and get a coffee, undisturbed, and really start working. You won’t fall asleep. How could you? Right here in your office chair. On the best nights, you can barely sleep in your own bed. Lately, it’s only been bad nights.
Once you find the energy, you’ll get up. You swear you will. It’s all you have to look forward to. That cup of coffee. You can smell it. You know it’s burnt by now, stale and bitter, but your stomach growls for it.
A few more minutes.
You hear snorts, strange noises that seem to rumble from within you. The clacking of keys and soft clicks continue, almost forming a rhythm as your screen ripples to bars of colours. You feel a weight over you and a sudden shift.
You hit the floor, bouncing on your ass as your seat hits your shoulder. You look up as you awake, only realising then that you dozed off. You blink at your coworkers before focusing on the figure glaring down at you. Mr. Hansen has a hand in his pocket and a foot on the bottom of your chair. Shit.
“Working hard,” he muses tritely.
“I-I’m sorry,” you stutter, disoriented. You can’t believe you fell asleep. You hope this is just a dream, if so. “I… I didn’t–”
“Get up,” he demands.
You scramble to get to your feet. You reach for the chair and he kicks it further away. You’re overly aware of your audience. No one will look directly at you in fear that they might draw Hansen’s attention, but it’s obvious by the lack of typing that they are very aware of the scene.
“I’m very sorry, sir, I didn’t mean to. I was– I’ll stay awake. You don’t have to worry.”
“Go home,” he says curtly.
“Home? No, I can make it through the day. It was a mistake.”
“Go. Home.” He repeats pointedly, “this isn’t a hotel.”
“Please,” you murmur, “please, Mr. Hansen,” you clutch your hands together, trying not to speak too loud, embarrassed as your voice cracks, “I–”
“Don’t make me call security,” he warns as he steps back on one heel, his posture victorious. He arches a brow in challenge. You’re certain he’d love to see that, you dragged out like an intruder. “Come back Monday, well-rested, and HR will deal with your disciplinary report.”
“What?” You gulp. In all your time there, you’d never been written up. Not once.
“Keep digging that hole.”
“Okay, okay,” you go to your desk and open the drawer to pull your bag out. You hook it on your shoulder and turn around, nearing him as you reach for the coat hung on the back of your chair. He watches you with a smug smirk, “I’ll be back Monday.”
“We’ll see.”
His ominous words put you on edge. You recoil and stare at him. What does he mean by that? You’re not stupid enough to ask. You put your head down and march out, burning with embarrassment as you pass your rapt audience.
“Hey,” Hansen claps his hands, “back to work.”
🗄️
You barely make it home. You set an alarm as you get in the front door and collapse on the couch. You don’t care that it’s lumpy and uncomfortable, you don’t care about anything. You forget all your worries for the blackness that clogs your mind.
As quickly as you close your eyes, your ringer goes off. You wake with a groan and roll over, shoulders cramped and stiff as you reach for your phone. Two o’clock already. Your head pulses with the dregs of fatigue. You feel marginally better.
You fill a travel mug and head out to pick up the kids. Along the way, you can’t help but shrink behind the wheel as the morning pricks in your mind. You don’t expect things to go well on Monday.
You pass a Burger King and slow down. You don’t have the money for a Whopper. No, that’s not what you’re thinking. It’s not spending you’re planning on.
You pull in and get out. You enter and approach the counter, sheepish as a twentysomething greets you from the other side.  You smile as you come forward.
“How can I help you ma’am?” He asks, hands on the side of the till.
“Oh, uh, I was… I was looking for an application,” you eke out. “For a job.”
He nods, you see the surprise flick in his lashes, “oh, well, we don’t have physical applications anymore but…” he reaches over to a stack of small flyers beside the till, “if you scan this QR code it will take you right to careers page.”
“Um, right, yeah, makes sense,” you take the slip as he offers it, “thank you.”
“You lookin’ to order?” He prompts with a strained smile.
“No, sorry, I gotta go get my kids,” you fold the flier and turn away, “have a good one.”
You head back to your car. You drop into the driver seat and curse. Fuck, your hips are killing you. You don’t imagine doing weekends standing behind a till will do much for that but you don’t have much of a choice. Even with the second job, you doubt you’ll be able to pay for the babysitter to cover it. What a stupid idea.
You shove the flier into your purse and back out from between the lines. You check the time as you set out to the school. You arrive just as the bell rings and the kids are let out into the yard. 
You find Malik with the other grade ones as Simone seeks you out on her own, too cool to hang around with the other grade sixes. She can be a bit of a loner but not in a sad way. She can intimidate even you.
“Hey, how was school?” You ask as you take them to the car, “did you do anything fun?”
Malik tells you about the popsicle stick houses they made as you buckle him into his car seat and Simone does up her seat belt on her own. You nod and smile, humouring your son’s slightly lisping story.
“What about you, Simone?” You ask as you look over at her.
“I just read. I’m almost done number four,” she shows the cover of her latest fantasy series, “but they wouldn’t let me stay in the library during recess.”
“Good, you need the fresh air,” you tease, “speaking of, I was thinking we could go for a hike this weekend. How does that sound?”
“A hike?” She grimaces, “is dad coming?”
“Err, we’ll see,” you shrug, “I spend all day in the office, I’d like to get out before the winter gets here.”
“I’ll go if dad does,” Simone opens her book, “it won’t be any fun without him.”
“Daddy, daddy,” Malik claps his hands, “I love daddy!”
“I’ll ask him,” you nod and keep a frown from tugging at your lips. 
You stand straight and gently close the back door. You round to the driver’s door and get it, quiet as you turn the engine. You’re not even good enough for your own kids.
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