#the ashes of yourself blurb

[likedovesinthewindd]

I have a request

So Ash is alive but Fez is in jail

So like Fez and the Reader have been dating for awhile like they're high school sweethearts (even tho he's a drop out) and before he got arrested she got pregnant.

Could you write how that looks. Like phone calls, and letters, and visits, but also write when he gets out and he gets to finally see his kid

hi love! ty for requesting🩷 idk if you wanted a little blurb but you got this big ass fic lmao, sorry i got carried away! also in this custer was never killed at Fez's house so he only got charged with drug possession and given like one or two years because he's a first time offender (i think?) ik it's all over the place but i hope you like it;)

fezco x pregnant!reader

warning: mentions of drugs/drug abuse, murder, jail, pregnancy, throwing up, giving birth, infant care, Fez's dad is mentioned once, religious imagery/mentions of praying, lots of crying.

wc: ± 4530

a/n: this is so similar to my other fez fic but also not at all lol. I tried changing it up as much as possible but there are def a lot of similarities I'm sorry. not proofread!

gif not mine, all credit to original creator.

You and Fez met back when he was still in school, just before he had dropped out. He sat next to you in History and the two of you would only talk briefly, often just about things like what the date was or when the next period would be. He would occasionally crack a joke or make a lighthearted comment that would always catch you off guard.

He was a normally stoic and calm person; he didn't talk much and kept to himself most of the time. This made you appreciate the rare jokes and little bursts of personality even more. You quickly found yourself talking more and more with him, and he'd start greeting you when you passed each other in the hallways. You had considered him somewhat of a friend after a while. Maybe not the closest, but you valued the little time you two would spend together.

Then he started showing up to class less and less, and rumors had begun spreading around. A few weeks before he dropped out, he had asked you if he could copy your notes that he had missed while absent, and you agreed. He told you to drop them off at the convenience store his grandmother owned, because that's where he spent most of his afternoons.

You did this every time he didn't show up to class; you'd write him all the notes neatly and bring them to him at the store, and in return he'd let you take whatever you want from the shelves free of charge. You always took the same thing (a can of Sprite, a packet of Sun Chips and a pack of cherry flavored twizzlers), and after a while he had started keeping the three items at the counter, ready for you to grab when you came around. One day he asked you if you'd like to stay a while before heading home, and you spent your afternoons sitting on the roof of the convenience store eating your treats and talking about whatever came to mind.

You never asked him why he wasn't at school, or even asked yourself why you'd go through all this trouble for him. Maybe it was because you've always been way too nice for your own good, or maybe because you had a little crush on him. One day when you were on your way to give him the day's notes, he'd told you he was dropping out. When you asked why, he only replied with, "Have to take care of my grandma."

You didn't stop visiting him after he left school, and would go to the store every other afternoon, quietly doing your homework by the counter while he restocked the shelves. He never explicitly told you, but he enjoyed having you around. You never asked too many questions and you were always nice to him. He would say maybe too nice to count as just being friendly.

As time passed the two of you grew closer and closer. You had met his brother Ash and occasionally helped him with his grandmother, who you had only met briefly before she became ill, when you were making your rounds to drop of his notes.

A few months later he had asked you out, and you said yes. You haven't looked back since.

That was years ago, and this was now. Now, you were sitting on the lid of the toilet in the dead of night with a pregnancy test clasped tightly in your right hand, while the other covered your mouth in shock. The two red lines stared back at you tauntingly as you felt your head spin with anxiety.

You were pregnant. You were pregnant with Fez's baby and you had no idea how you were going to tell him. You finished up, washing your hands and face and made your way to the bedroom you and your boyfriend shared. You hid the test in the drawer you kept your underwear in and sat on the edge of the bed, waiting for your boyfriend to return home.

He arrived eventually, but you couldn't find the strength in you to tell him. You knew you had to eventually, you couldn't possibly keep this a secret for too long, but you were terrified. You had no idea what his reaction would be, and you feared the worst.

The night you finally did get the courage to tell him, was the same night he decided to almost kill Nate at a New Year's Eve Party. Your plan had been derailed once again and that night you found yourself sitting in the bathroom while you silently cleaned the cuts on his hands. You knew you couldn't tell him then, he was still on edge and filled with adrenaline from everything that had transpired. He was definitely not in the correct headspace for a revelation like that.

Everything after that night was an absolutely downward spiral.

With Faye moving in, Mouse getting killed in your house and ultimately Fez getting arrested after Custer had ratted him out, you found yourself at your wits end. He had been arrested and taken away right before your eyes, and you felt completely helpless as you watched him get dragged out of the now ruined house, with a distraught Ash clinging to you like a lifeline.

☆˚｡⋆

Fez was only given three years for drug possession with the intent to sell, considering he was a first-time offender. Three years may not have been much considering it could have been a much heavier sentence, but your stomach still churned at the thought that he would be away for that long. What about Ash and Marie? What about the store?

What about the baby?

You couldn't do this. It felt like the world was suddenly dropped on your shoulders as you watched the officers drag Fez out the court, and away from you.

You shot up from the uncomfy wooden bench and made your way to the closest bathroom, where you threw up the little food you managed to keep down this morning. When you finished you flushed the toilet and made your way to the sink to clean up. As you stared at your reflection in the dirty mirror, everything struck you at once like cold water being thrown in your face.

You were going to be alone. Alone and pregnant, having to look after Ash (who God willing, they don't take away from you) and his grandmother. You hadn't even realized you were crying until your reflection became blurry and your breathing erratic.

You went back home that evening, with a dreadful feeling deep in the pit of your stomach for what the future holds.

☆˚｡⋆

Fez had finally been approved for calls, and after not hearing anything from him in weeks you were ecstatic to finally hear his voice.

You had received a call from the jail where he was, following all the necessary steps and pressing all the necessary buttons before you got to talk with him. When you heard his voice say your name you had to stop yourself from breaking down right beside the telephone. It hadn't even been a month and you already missed him more than words could describe.

He said your name again in a questioning tone and you realized that you hadn't said anything in return.

"Fez?" was all you could force from wobbly lips as your grip on the phone tightened. "Yeah baby, it's me," he said quietly. "I miss you," you said trying your hardest not to sob. Gosh, you couldn't even think about asking him how he was doing, you just wanted him to know how much you needed him right now.

"I miss you too baby, so fucking much," he replied, "how are things going that side?" You inhaled sharply before answering. "I don't know," you answered truthfully, "I'm still trying to figure everything out right now. But okay I guess."

He hummed. "What about Ashtray, he around? Can I talk to him?" he asked. "Of course," you said before calling out to Ash, who was over the moon when he finally got to speak to his brother after so long. You saw him smile for the first time in months, and you were overjoyed at the sight.

When they were finished catching up he handed you the phone. "You still there?" you asked. "Yeah baby, but I only got like a minute left. Listen I'll call you back as soon as I can again okay?" he said. "Okay, goodnight. I love you so muh, Fez," you rushed out. "I love you too baby, so mu—"

He was cut off by the ending call and you placed the receiver of the telephone back on the wall.

☆˚｡⋆

You didn't know how to tell Fez you were pregnant over the phone, so you settled with writing him a letter. You told him how you were pregnant, and that you were planning on keeping the baby. A part of you already knew you were keeping the baby the moment you stared at the test in your hand. The thought of being pregnant now absolutely terrified you, but recently you had found yourself fantasizing about what the little one would look like.

Would it be a little girl or a boy? Would she have your nose, or your eyes? What would her soft hair feel like under your fingertips? What would her first word be?

You hadn't even realized you were already referring to the baby as "she". That was what made you realize you were already deadset on keeping the baby, whether Fez wanted to be apart of that or not, even though it pained you to think that way.

You nervously sealed the letter and sent it off, hoping for the best. Fez had called you the same day he received the letter.

"Hi Fez," you answered nervously.

"You bein' serious Y/N?" You knew exactly what he was referring to, so you took a deep breath before answering him. "Yes, I'm being serious," you said quietly. You could hear him sigh and curse under his breath before he spoke up louder. "How long you known?"

"From before the raid. But, before you say anything, I did want to tell you on New Years, but that shit with Nate happened and everything after that was a total shitshow," you breathed, "I'm sorry for not telling you earlier."

"Shit, it's alright ma I ain't mad, jus' a bit shocked," was all he said. There was a short silence between the two of you before he spoke up again. "I'm gonna be a dad?" he asked softly. "Yeah..." you said, waiting for anything to indicate how he felt about this. "I'm so sorry I can't be there wit' you for this," he said. That broke your heart. He wanted to there, wanted to be a father and the thought made your heart fill with joy.

"It's okay, we can't help the circumstances," you said. "Listen, I promise you imma be here wit you every step of the way, okay? Maybe not physically, but I want you to keep me updated on everthing alright?" he said. "Okay, I promise I will," you breathed, a smile stretching across your face. "Imma do right by you, baby, I promise. You ain't doin' this on your own."

You were sure your heart was going to explode. You were going to have a baby with Fez. The circumstances were the farthest from ideal, but you were hopeful that you were going to be able to do this. You were going to do this. For yourself, for Fez and Ash and for your baby.

☆˚｡⋆

The pregnancy was anything but easy, and it was even harder without Fez by your side. It helped that he showed his support in any way he could, like always calling and sending letters, checking up on you to stay updated with the condition of your baby. You were roughly at 3 or 4 months and by now the little bump was already visible.

Telling Ash was one of the things you were the most nervous about. You didn't know how he'd feel about a baby being bought into your living situation. You had sat him down and got straight to the point. When the words first left your mouth, his face twisted into an unreadable expression. He seemed to be mulling it over silently, before a small smile stretched across your face and he replied shyly with, "So I'm gonna like, be an uncle?"

☆˚｡⋆

The letters you frequently wrote Fez were on of the only things he looked forward to. He loved reading them, reading about how you were doing and everything that was happening with your body and with the baby growing inside you. It sometimes fet like he got to experience the pregnancy right there beside you, with the way he could clearly indicate your mood swings even in your writing.

The letter would quickly go from I saw an old couple sitting by the old park benches today and I broke down in tears to The guy at the drive-thru told me I couldn't order 'just pickels'. Imagine saying no to a starving pregnant lady!

When he received the letter with a small black and white attached to it, he nearly cried. The little ultrasound picture didn't look like much, you could barely make out the big white blob in the middle as a baby, an actual human being. He turned the picture around and saw that you had written our baby! in your messy handwriting, with a little heart at the end. That was all he needed to actually start crying.

That night he couldn't fall asleep at all. His mind was filled with a million thoughts that were consuming him. What if something happens to her or the baby while I'm in here? Will she be able to cope on her own? What's she gonna do once the baby is born?

What if I'm not a good father?

That's what was eating at him more than anything else. He didn't want to be like his own father, and his worst fear was eventually ending up like him, no matter how hard he tried not to. He didn't want his kid to hate him, he wanted to be the best dad he could be, because he already knew that you were going to be the absolutely best mother any child could ask for. He knew because he saw the way you cared for Ash, like he was your own little brother. He also knew that you had a big heart. When you loved, you loved with everything in you, so he didn't have an inkling of doubt about you being a good mother.

That was the night he had promised himself that he would be the best father that he could be for your child and that he'd give them the love and support he never received from his dad.

☆˚｡⋆

By now you had finally been approved for your first visit, and you were over the moon. The first time you visited you went alone, and when Fez saw you walking into the cold room, a slight waddle to your step and a cute little bump sticking out from your pretty pink sundress and cardigan, he swears he had fell in love with you all over again. You looked so beautiful, he thought, maybe more beautiful than you've ever been.

Maybe it was the pregnancy glow people would always refer to, or maybe it was the fact that he hadn't seen you in months, but he couldn't get the dopey smile off his face as you made your way to the table where he sat.

You were permitted to a brief embrace and kiss at the beginning and end of each visit, and when he wrapped his arms around you for the first time in months, and got to inhale the smell of your almost unfamiliar perfume, he didn't ever want to let you go ever again. His grip on you tightened a little bit and you had to will away the tears threatening to spill over your cheeks when you felt his warmth consume your body. It felt like home being back in his strong arms.

"You're gonna squish the baby," you said playfully, placing a kiss on his shirt over his heart. You honestly didn't mind at all; you'd let him hold you like this forever if you could. You eventually broke away when you saw the guard giving you a unhappy look from the corner of your eye. You sat down on the cold metal bench and he found his seat accross from you.

You so badly wanted to hold his hand while you talked to him. You wanted to sit next to him and feel the warmth of his body radiating off him and bury your face into his neck and hold onto him for dear life, but you couldn't.

"Y'know if it's a boy or a girl yet?" he asked. You absent-mindedly tapped your manicured nails against the metal table that separated you two, until the guard had given you a stern look from behind Fez, by now irritated by the repetitive sound. You retracted your hands, placing them in your lap and shaking your head. "No, I'm finding out at the next appointment," you smiled, "do you still have the photos I sent you?"

You were referring to the ultrasound photos as you had sent him in letters from all your appointments. "Of course I do," he smiled, "keep 'em in my cell, under my pillow." You smiled, looking down at your belly and softly running your hand over it.

"I think it's gonna be a girl," you said softly, as if it was some secret only the two of you had the right to know. "Nah, it's a boy," he replied and you rolled your eyes playfully, which made him laugh. "Of course you think it's a boy," you joked. He shrugged "I'm still gonna love 'em whether they a boy or a girl," he said, before adding, "but it's gonna be a boy."

You rolled your eyes at him once again, this time more dramatically, and rubbed at your belly. "I just know it's going to be a little girl," you said, and when you looked up from your belly your eyes met Fez's. They were filled with an immeasurable amount of admiration and love, and you couldn't help but shy away from the attention.

"If it's a girl, I hope she look like you."

☆˚｡⋆

The last few weeks of your pregnancy you had asked your mother to stay with you until it was time to go and give birth. By now your belly was fully formed and perfectly rounded, and you were waddling around the house like a lost penguin. Everything was hurting, from your feet to your back and pregnancy brain was truly kicking your ass. As much as you loved the beauty of pregnancy, you couldn't wait to finally get this over with.

You were on the phone with Fez when you had first felt it, the liquid running down your legs followed by a slight cramp in your abdomen. At first you were scared that you had peed yourself (your bladder had been your number one enemy recently) but it didn't take long to realize what was happening.

Without even sparing Fez another word you hung up and called for your mother. This was it, you were finally going meet your baby.

Ash was shitting bricks as he paced around the house while you and your mother gathered everything to head to the hospital. Soon enough you found yourself in the hospital, with your arms leaning on the bed trying to control your breathing. The pain felt like nothing you've ever felt before, and at some point you thought you were going to pass out.

A little while later and you had started to dilate. After what felt like a lifetime of mindless pushing and incoherent shouts, the screaming of your baby girl filled your ears. You looked next to you, to your mother who was still holding onto your hand tightly while her other hand pushed the hair out of your sweaty face. You were beyond grateful to have her with you, but your heart yearned to have Fez with you for this moment. When you got to hold your baby in your arms you cried like a crazy person. She was so beautiful, and your heart was already filled with abundant love for her.

☆˚｡⋆

You've had baby Eden at home for almost two weeks, when you finally got a call from Fez.

"How'd it go baby? Is she healthy? Are you okay?" he had asked as soon as he heard your voice greeting him. You pressed the phone tighter between your ear and your shoulder. "She's as healthy as can be, and she's beautiful, Fez," you said happily, as you rocked the baby in your arms to sleep. "You gonna send me a picture of her?" he asked.

"I already have a few taken, I just have to get them printed then I'll send them to you," you smiled, "she's so beautiful, Fez." You knew it was a little biased, but she truly was the most beautiful baby you'd ever seen. Her pretty long eyelashes that rested on her chubby cheeks and the pretty pink lips that would sometimes streatch into a toothless smile, or her cute button nose that would scrunch up when she yawned or sneezed. Everything about her was so absolutely perfect.

"I can't wait to see yall ma," he whispered. You could hear the slight sadness in his voice. "Me neither," you replied with a sad smile.

☆˚｡⋆

He had no doubt when you told him that Eden was a beautiful baby, but when Fez got to see a picture of her for the first time, all the air was knocked out his lungs.

That was his baby. His baby girl, wrapped tightly in a fluffy pink blanket and a little cap to match. He couldn't stop looking at the picture, his thoughts going at a hundred miles per hour. Fez hadn't seen a lot of babies in his life, but he was one thousand percent certain that Eden was the most beautiful baby he'd ever layed his cynical eyes on.

He couldn't remember the last time he prayed, but that night Fez found himself closing his eyes and praying. He prayed that you and your baby were kept safe, he prayed that his baby girl would stay healthy and happy, and he prayed for the patience to diligently serve his sentence, counting down the days till he got to hold you both.

☆˚｡⋆

You sat in shock as you read the contents of the letter over and over and over.

Fez was going to be released from jail earlier for good behavior. He was coming home, to you, to Ash and his friends and to his baby. He was going to meet his daughter.

Ever since giving birth you hadn't brought Eden along with you when visiting Fez. She was still very young, and you didn't want her driving the long distances back and forth. This unfortunately meant that Fez hadn't got to meet his daughter yet. That was changing soon though.

☆˚｡⋆

You were pacing back and forth in the house, waiting for Fez to come knocking at your door. Today was the day Fez was coming home, back to his family, back to you.

He had to go through several release preparations, then pre-release custody and then supervision. After he complete those steps he had a full release from the BOP system, and they arranged transportation for him to come back home.

He had asked you to not tell anyone about him coming home, he didn't want people bothering him and wanted to spend his first night in just the company of the people he loved the most. You had kept to your word and not told a soul, not even Ash, who you knew would soon be jumping out of his skin when he gets to see his brother.

You had Eden in your arms, gently rocking her back and forth to soothe her. She was a little cranky because she didn't get her afternoon nap in, and when she finally dozed off, you went to go place her in the small crib next to your bed.

You shifted your weight from one foot to the other nervously, before checking that everything was good. The food was cooked, the house cleaned and the bed covered in clean sheets.

The hard knock on the door almost made you drop the pie you had taken out of the oven. It was custard pie, his favorite. You removed your oven mits and sprinted to the door.

When you opened it, there stood Fez with a small smile on his face. You immediately wrapped your arms around his neck and pulled him as close to you as possible. He was here. He was back home with you finally and you got to hold him for as long as your heart desired.

By now you were sobbing into his neck, beyond relieved and happy to finally have him home. When you broke away he looked down at you, tears in his own eyes.

"Hi," he breathed. "Hi," you replied through a half sob half laugh. "You're home." "I'm home."

Ash had cried when he saw his brother standing in the living room awkwardly, and wrapped his arms around him tightly, almost as if he was scared of losing him once again. Once everyone had settled down somewhat, you decided to ask Fez the big question.

"Do you wanna see her?"

☆˚｡⋆

The room was dead silent as you pushed open the door and made your way inside, Fez following soon after. You could see the anxiety written on his face, evident in the slight tremble of his hands. This was a very big deal to him. He was going to meet his daughter for the very first time.

You made your way over to the crib, standing next to it and urging him to do the same. He warily moved closer to the crib, looked over the edge and down to where the little girl layed peacefully assleep. He could see the small rise and fall of her chest as she breath rhythmically, and the way her two small fists layed clenched tightly next to her body. If he listened closely enough he could hear her breathing, and the soft cooing sounds in between.

"She's beautiful isn't she?" you asked quietly, and he only nodded, not once lifting his gaze. "Would you like to hold her?" This made him look up at you. A part of him wanted to say no. He didn't want to hold something as precious as her in his hands. Hands that have done shameful and awful things, much too tainted to handle something as fragile and irreplaceable as her.

"It's okay, Fez," you said, sensing his hesitation, before reaching into the crib to pick her up gently. When she was secured in your grasp, you turned your body to him and he hesitantly reached out to take her from you.

Once she was in his arms the small tears began to fall from his eyes. You rubbed his back comfortingly as you watched him closely.

Nothing that Fez had ever achieved in his life measured even closely to this moment. No amount of money or fortune would make him trade this. This was it. This was him, being home and being able to be with you, with his family.

His grandmother had taught him the importance of family and looking out for each other. She taught him that the family he'd have would be the people he was willing to die for, and as he stood in the quiet room, his daughter in his arms and you by his side, he knew that he had found his family.

He looked over to you, and when his eyes met yours he saw the contented look on your face, behind all the happy tears.

"She looks like you," he smiled.

#fezco euphoria #fezco x reader #fezco x y/n #fezco x you #fez x reader #fez euphoria #fezco fluff #fezco fanfic #euphoria x reader #euphoria fic #likedovesinthewindd

[loveshotzz]

All I Really Want Is You

older!neighbor!widower! steve x fem!reader chap five/ten - a slow burn series of blurbs - updated every wednesday

Whiskey & Cigars

summary: Trying to keep your promise to thank Steve for fixing your sink, you aren’t expecting him to have company when you show up at his front gate after work.

wc: 5k

warnings: 18+ series for future chapters but none really for this one. Drinking, cigar smoking, flirting and wait.. is that an almost kiss?? 🤭

authors note: the idea of this chapter is what sparked the entire series, i’ve been so excited to write this one and share it with you. I hope you guys love it, we’re half way through so you know what that means? (things actually start happening lol) But Leighanne, I want to date this older!eddie too! Guess what? You can in @carolmunson ‘s orange colored sky 🧡

🌇 <- chapter four ->chapter six

The Masterlist / The Playlist / The tune:

The box of tacos is warm in your hands, the package of cannoli’s you snagged on your way home from work moving around in your backpack as you step off the train. You take a shaky breath as you make your way towards your block, your feet taking you to his house. The nerves of him not expecting you has you talking yourself off the ledge the entire walk. Does he really like fish tacos? Was he just trying to be nice? What if he’s busy? What if he’s not even home?

Your overthinking is silenced the moment you hit your street, the string lights of his front porch catch in your sight, while the sounds of Eddie Money echo down the steps filling the quiet and hitting your ears. He was home, but he wasn’t alone.

You slow your pace when you get close enough to smell the smoke of his cigar, and hear the deep baritone of his full belly laugh. Another voice chimes in, it’s raspier, darker, and definitely not a woman’s. The unruly pang of jealousy that hits your gut subsides when you reach your apartment and he finally comes into view. 

His hair is messier than you’ve ever seen it, the gray and honey highlights sticking out at the ends like he’s spent the whole night running those big hands through it. His cheeks are flushed with what looks like the end of a fun day with friends, a half smoked cigar tucked between his teeth that show themselves in a wide grin for the man sitting on his porch steps next to him. 

He leans on the top step by his elbows,your thighs pressing together when the silver chain that’s usually hidden under his shirt swings over the soft blue tee that fits tight across chest when he laughs again. His cream jeans are loose fitting, stretching at his thighs with dark gray house slippers on his feet.

The guy next to him is not who you’d expect to find, he looks around the same age, gray streaks shining under the porch light in the dark curls that rest tied back in a loose low hanging bun. His chocolate eyes shine with excitement while ring and tattoo covered hands gesture wildly with his story, the ash at the end of his cigar is dangerously close to falling onto the wood of the porch. 

Steve picks up the ashtray between the two glasses of a dark liquor like it’s second nature, lifting it up for his friend, making you notice the silver chain that dangles around his wrist when he takes the offering. He’s dressed in all black, a contrast to the light colors of Steve’s wardrobe with a pressed Judas Priest band tee that sits half tucked into the tops of his Chino shorts that fall right above his knee. Black socks and black slides covering his feet. 

Bandit’s the first to notice you from his spot on the giant rug by the front door when you reach the gate. His ears perk as he sits up, paws dropping one after the other in excitement. A high pitch whine escapes him, catching Steve’s attention. Steve plucks the cigar from his mouth, looking at Bandit before finally following the dog’s line of sight to you. There was no getting out of this now.

You feel like you won some kind of prize at the size of Steve’s smile, lopsided with rosy cheeks pushed up and eyes crinkling in the corners. He sets his cigar down, ignoring the confused look his friend is giving him before sitting up, running a hand through his hair making it stand on end even more.

“She’s alive!” He does his best impression of Dr. Frankenstein sticking his arms out in front of him and you see the man next to him grimace before taking a puff and turning his attention on to you. Curious dark eyes watch Steve and Bandit go to meet you at the gate. 

“Yes, I somehow survived.” You can’t help but giggle, making the man on the porch shoot his eyebrows up. All the nerve you worked up on the way here is gone when your neighbor gets close enough for you to see the stubble you like so much is back. 

“I hope the Au Cheval burger helped with that,” he breaths with a smirk, his eyes landing on the to go box that’s threatening to succumb to the iron grip in your hand. “Is that what I think it is?”

Too caught up in how his eyes seem to light up when he asks, it takes you a minute to register that he’s talking about the fish tacos in your hand. 

“Oh!! - Sorry - Yes, I didn’t know you had company tonight. I have cannolis in my bag too, I don’t wanna interrupt anything - I can, I can just leave them with you.” Bandit jumps onto the gate while you stutter your words, suddenly feeling sixteen again. The heat of his friend's stare makes you shuffle around in place. 

Steve opens his mouth ready to protest but he’s interrupted before he gets a chance to say anything. 

“Harrington! You gonna invite the pretty girl up for a drink or what?”

The heat rises to your cheeks as you busy yourself with scratching Bandit behind the ear with a free hand. Steve lets out a breath through his nose before pinching the bridge of it. His ears turning red like the cherries on the ends of the cannoli’s in your bag.

“Sorry about my friend.” He takes another beat before he looks up, his eyes smoldering against yours, hope hidden inside the golden specks. “I was going to actually ask you if you’d like to come up for a drink, I promise he’s harmless. He met his wife shopping at Trader Joe’s.” 

You can’t hold back your laugh, not used to seeing this playful side of him- the sipper on his porch loosening up his nerves. His grin spreads wide at your reaction, and he’s opening the gate before you can even respond because he already knows the answer.

“I happen to love Trader Joe’s, Steve.” Narrowing your eyes at him as you make your way in. He takes the opportunity to grab the to-go box from your hands just in time for you to accept Bandit’s big paws.

“Bandit!” He hisses, stealing your move with a roll of his eyes at his rambunctious dog, closing the gate while you keep him distracted. “I’m more of a Whole Foods guy myself.”

“Of course you are,” you scoff with a condescending laugh, desperately trying not to meet the eyes of the man who’s been watching you this whole time.

“What? I like having a beer when I shop. Does that make me an asshole or something?” He tries to defend himself but he only validates you more and he knows it  by the way you smirk at him.

He tries to act offended and not think about how cute it is that you haven’t stopped petting Bandit the whole walk to his front steps.

“Yes, it does make you an asshole.” The raspy voice from before interjects and you can’t hide from his curiosity when you both stop at his feet. A warm smile meets your eyes when you finally look at him, a puff of smoke exhaling through his pierced nose.

Steve’s eye roll is real this time.

“This is Eddie,” he sighs, introducing you to the mystery man, “We’ve been friends since high school, and he’s just jealous he moved to New York where you can’t shop and drink at the same time.”

Your cheeks push up at his banter, all the color in his face seems brighter tonight, his shoulders are relaxed. No longer constricted by a tight work shirt, or weighed down by loneliness - Steve is happy.

“Best friends since high school,” Eddie corrects him, setting his cigar down before opening his hands out for Bandit who abandoned you the second you reached him. 

“Hi,” you greet, trying not to sound as awkward as you feel, silently begging for your next joke to land, “I’m Steve’s neighbor and I hate to break it to you, also Bandit’s new best friend.” 

Eddie snorts, eyes twinkling when he catches the way your lips twitch when you hear Steve’s laugh next to you. 

“I was wondering who he was ditching me for.” He narrows his gaze a little as he sizes Steve up who seems to be focusing on anything but his friend before choosing to set his sights on you. 

“I’m going to go put these in the kitchen for now, I’ll grab you a glass. Thank you for this honey, you really didn’t need to.” His hand reaches out to squeeze your arm like after your hug the other morning. Goosebumps form under his palm when his thumb rubs the softness of your skin gently before letting go.

“It’s the least I could do, seriously you’ve been such a help.” You take your backpack off, the breeze making your shirt unstick from your back. “Don’t forget the cannoli’s.”

“Cannoli’s too? My, my Stevie boy. You must be quite the neighbor,” his friend chimes in, picking up his cigar again.

“Eddie,” Steve scolds just like he did Bandit, grabbing the pastries from you with an apologetic look that you wave off.

He stomps as he makes his way up the steps shooting his friend a glare. Eddie just smirks around the tobacco, leaning back with a raise of his eyebrows and a shrug.

The front door sounds heavy when it closes behind Steve, leaving the two of you alone. It’s quiet, but not for long, the gears in his head moving as he chooses his words before speaking. The crickets chirping in the grass and the hum of distant cars make your palms sweat.

“He must’ve done something real nice to get his favorite dessert hand delivered by his pretty next door neighbor.”

Your gaze narrows, a small smirk forming.

“I never told you I lived next door.” 

Eddie’s smooth facade cracks for a minute when he realizes he gave away what he already knew about you, letting you know that Steve must talk about you.

“He fixed my sink if you must know,” you tease, letting him off the hook, unable to hold back the smile that takes over your face when he barks out a loud laugh.

“How neighborly of him,” he hums around his cigar. 

The door’s opening before the conversation can go any further, a glass of the same dark liquor they’re drinking in Steve’s hand. Eddie catches the slight wrinkle of your nose at it chuckling to himself when you shoot him a look.

“I see he didn’t scare you off yet. That’s great.” Steve grins at the tattooed man, who smiles back with his teeth.

“I don’t know if I could have lasted much longer,” you sigh with fake annoyance, taking the glass from Steve, your stomach going off like fireworks on the fourth of july when your fingers brush, “Thank god you’re back.” 

The laugh you earn has you wanting to make him do it again.

“Why don’t you take a drink of that delicious Johnny Walker Blue label I saw you eyeing when he brought it out?” Eddie raises his glass in a silent challenge. 

Steve’s brows furrow when he looks at his friend in confusion, missing the way you’re scolding Eddie from behind his back.

“I would love to, Eddie, I thought you’d never ask.” You raise your glass in acceptance, already regretting it.

Placing the crystal to your glossed lip, the smell of it makes your gut churn with flashes of your hangover from the other night. You watch the realization wash over Steve’s face when the liquor hits your tongue in the smallest of sips.

“Oh no, that’s probably not what you want to drink after the other night, huh?” His concern dares to crumble when his lips twitch as he tries not to smile. 

“Don’t look at me like that Steve!” Your own smile breaks through your embarrassment.

“Jesus Harrington, go take your girl to get something she’ll actually enjoy,” Eddie laughs, extending his hand out to take your glass, his own now empty. 

Your girl. That’s my girl. Your face and neck heat up at the words again.

“It’s fine! This is okay, I can drink it!” You try to drive your point home by taking another sip, just for your face to give you away again.

“Honey,” Steve chuckles, taking the glass from your hands. “You don’t have to pretend to like it. I’m not offended.”

“I’m sorry, I just usually like something a little bit sweeter.” Your confession makes Steve’s cheeks dust pink.

“Of course you do.”

Steve’s place is intimidating, the overhead pendant light is dim in the entryway. Big paintings hang in perfect placements along his light gray walls that lead up a dark stained wooden staircase. The music is quieter inside, the smell of cedar hitting your nose from the crackling candle he has lit in the living room that you only get a small glimpse of as he leads you to his kitchen. 

He flips the middle switch and only one set of overhead lights turn on, matching the mood of the rest of the house. You take in the giant island in the middle of the kitchen, white paneling that matches the tile below your feet, topped with black marble that sparkles under the low light. The box of cannolis you brought him sits in the middle.

He stops at the stainless steel fridge, shoulder blades moving under his shirt when he opens the door with a firm grip that makes his forearm flex, the harsh brightness polluting the dark. You both squint for a second letting your eyes adjust, the low hum of the fridge drowns out the way your heart beats in your chest.

You were in his house. 

“Are you a margarita girl?” His voice is too smooth to startle you, something softer in it like this. His eyes meet yours with a lopsided grin in an attempt to soothe your obvious nerves. 

“Depends on if you have salt for the rim.” Letting your back hit the countertop, you fake difficulty. 

“Do I have salt for the rim? Please, honey. I’m not in my twenties.” He scoffs shutting the fridge with a lime and what looks like a homemade mixer in hand. The way you giggle for him makes him feel like he might have a chance.

“I’m just making sure is all.” You roll your eyes at him for the first time tonight, and he can’t wait to make you do it again. Addicted to the smile you try to hide, always giving yourself away.

“I’ll make it how you like it.” 

He walks towards you, invading your space just enough to smell the way the spice of his cologne mixes with the expensive whiskey on his breath. Freeing his hands of the ingredients he looks down the hard line of his nose, glazed mossy eyes taking in your face like he’s never got to really do it like this before. The wild stray falls loose and your hand twitches at your side wanting to be the one to brush it away from his forehead this time.

“I promise.”

The twitch of his lips lets you know he heard your breath catch before walking away to get you a glass and a shaker. You exhale through your nose when you get a break from his attention. Was this happening? Was he flirting?

There’s a salt rimmed glass filled with crushed ice in his hands when he comes back, too lost in your own head you didn’t even hear him do all of that. He gets close enough for his shoulder to brush against yours, the tension making your fingertips buzz. 

“This okay?” He asks, eyes avoiding yours as he slices the lime. “You zoned out a little, just want to make sure you feel comfortable is all.”

“Yeah - I - sorry, I kinda get lost in my own head sometimes.” You turn your body to face him, admiring the sharp lines of his jaw from the side, the hint of crows feet from years of laughter that meet the tip of his high cheek bone, the never ending expanse of freckles and moles that dot his skin. “I mean I could have kept those cannolis for myself and left, so what do you think?”

He snorts through his nose, measuring out the shot before pouring it in the glass.

“I ate one already.” He looks at you from the corner of his eye like a boy who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “I couldn’t help it.”

“Steve! Dessert before dinner? What are you on vacation or something?” Your laugh makes his face light up, pouring the mixer a little heavy handed just for you.

“What can I say? I was craving something sweet." He makes sure to look at you when he says it, begging you to catch the double meaning before dumping everything into a silver shaker.

His eyes watch the way your bottom lip tucks between your teeth at his words to try and hide your smile before he starts the loud process of mixing your drink. You don’t look away from him this time, holding his stare. It pours out smooth over the ice when he’s done, squeezing another slice of lime for good measure over the top. Pushing it towards you, he leans on the counter with his elbow to watch.

“Let’s see what you think.”

You give him your best poker face, your fingers wrapping around the now chilled glass. Pieces of salt fall off the rim when you bring it to your lips. He straightens up, grinning proudly at the way your brows marry together when it hits your tongue. You can barely taste the tequila, the sweetness of the mixer hiding all evidence while the sour of the lime balances the whole thing out. It was the best margarita you’d ever had.

“Wow,” you finally get out after you’ve had enough, only to have part of your sip dribble down onto your chin. 

“Careful.” He chuckles, taking the glass from you, his eyes meeting yours with something unknown swimming in them. 

He gets closer — close enough to feel the heat of his breath fan across your lips, for the tips of his slippers to touch the tops of your sneakers. Your favorite stray still taunts you, begs you to take care of it but it’s his hand that raises first. The pad of his thumb swiping across your chin, cleaning up what you left behind. 

“Is it sweet enough for you tough girl?” His voice comes out low, a question just for your ears. 

Your answer is lost on the tip of your tongue when he brings his thumb to his mouth. Pink lips wrapping around it before sucking it clean. 

“Steve - “ your fingers go to hook in his belt loops, your body demanding him closer before your brain can stop the movements.

“Hone-“ he starts, but someone clears their throat in the doorway.

Your hands drop expecting to hear the deep tenor of Eddie’s voice, only to be met with the silky softness of a woman’s.

“Steven! Who is this??” It comes out sweet like the drink he made, and it makes the man in front of you sigh. Whatever was going to happen is gone. 

“This is my neighbor.” He gives, not trying to hide his annoyance, and when you turn around it only seems to make her smile more.

“This is Eddie’s wife Peach.” Steve introduces, finally running a hand through his hair and you can’t help the pang of jealousy that you didn’t get to do it. 

Peach smiles brightly at you, extending a dainty hand and the rock on her wedding ring catches in the overhead light. She’s gorgeous and almost out of his league, but the way she gives Steve the same knowing eyebrow wiggle makes you realize quickly they’re a match made in heaven.

“Well now I want a margarita Steve.” She crosses her arms winking at you, relishing in the groan Steve gives her.

He wanted to kiss you, but bargained with himself that maybe this was the universe giving him the sign that it wasn’t time yet.

“Do you mind if I use your bathroom?” You don’t mean for it to sound so shy when it comes out of your mouth, but you needed a minute alone to catch your breath. 

“Yeah of course honey, it’s just down the hall right past the staircase.” He points down the doorway you both came from, grabbing your fingers and squeezing gently before busying himself with making another drink.

You're halfway down the hallway when you hear Peaches in the kitchen.

“That’s her??”

The bathroom is smaller than you thought it’d be. It’s only a half, meant for guest use, that part is obvious with the lack of a shower inside. It’s still nicer than the one in your one bedroom, the crisp white towels that hang on silver racks look almost untouched. The deep stone sink in front of the mirror makes you feel like you’re in a spa. 

You stare at yourself in the big oval mirror. He was going to kiss you, right?

You can hear the faint sounds of the two of them talking in the kitchen, choosing to stay hidden until the rate of your heart slows down to something less likely to make you pass out. Their feet shuffle against the wooden floor by the entryway before the sound of the front door opening hits your ears.

The light knock on the bathroom door makes you jump, his voice slipping through the cracks of it.

“Hey sweetheart, we’re going back to the porch. I’ve got your drink whenever you come out.” There’s a hint of worry in his tone, was he thinking about it too?

“I’ll be out in just a sec!” 

He lingers by the door for a minute before you hear his heavy steps head outside. You take one more look at yourself in the mirror, straightening out your work shirt, and pulling down the ends of your skirt before turning around to check from behind. 

“Okay, you’re cool. Just be cool. He was totally gonna kiss you and that’s fine,” you whisper to yourself before checking your breath just in case it happens again. 

Your hand lingers on the door knob for a second before you finally work up enough courage to face him again.

🌃🌃🌃

The front door is cracked open when you emerge from the bathroom, their voices battling over the low playing music inside.

“What do you mean you haven’t asked her for her number yet Steve?” Eddie’s question makes you stop in your tracks.

“Can you talk any louder?” Steve half whispers and half yells, making Peach giggle. 

“It’s obvious you both are into each other -“ Eddie starts again only to be cut off by his wife.

“I swear they were about to kiss in the kitchen, Ed.” 

The way Steve stays quiet tells you that it wasn’t just in your head.

“Look, I just - I don’t know.” He sighs deeply, and you can practically see the way he’s probably running a stressed hand through his hair.

“Steve..” his best friend's tone goes soft, “It’s been long enough, you’re not a bad person for having feelings for someone again. You and I both know Emma would want that for you. I see the way you look at this girl, I haven’t seen you look at someone like that in over a decade.” 

Since his wife.

Steve laughs a little and you hear the ice in his cup clink against the glass signaling him taking a drink before he answers, “Yeah, I know.”

There’s a second of silence and you wonder what his face looks like right now. 

“Look, you’re going on that camping trip next week right? Ask her to water your plants or something while you’re gone, then you can get her number that way. That’s less scary right?” The teasing edge to Peach’s words are gone, she’s gentle with the way she speaks to him.

“Yeah, I mean, that’s a normal thing neighbors ask right?” 

“Totally!” Eddie chimes in enthusiastically making you have to muffle your giggle.

You decide to open and close the bathroom door again to alert them of your presence when you feel like your eavesdropping has gone on long enough. 

Steve clears his throat and you catch the end of his silent scolding to his friends when you step outside. He smiles but there’s something missing from it when he holds up your drink from his place on the porch swing, Bandit curled up at his feet. 

“There she is!” He teases, desperately trying to bring the mood back to what it was before.

“I didn’t fall in if you can believe it,” your response comes out more awkward than intended, laughing nervously while taking your drink. You wonder if it’s obvious that you heard everything when you dare to take the spot next to him. Thighs and shoulders pressing together, your mind races with the new information.

Steve, your handsome older neighbor, the one who works for the Cubs, the one who drives a BMW to work every morning, the guy who fixes your sink and sends you dorky notes likes you. The weight of his guilt is the only thing holding him back from making a real move and it’s hard for you to wrap your head around the fact that the silly crush you’d been harboring is returned.

“Didn’t anyone tell you not to comment on how long a lady’s in the bathroom Harrington?” Eddie teases breaking the ice, making Steve flush deep crimson from his neck to his ears.

“That’s not - that’s not what I meant,” he grumbles inside his glass, the smooth confidence from inside the kitchen now gone.

You squeeze his knee gently with a giggle, the thick hair tickling your palm. 

Eddie takes control of the conversation for the rest of the time it takes you to finish your drink, Peach interjecting every now and then to roast him when he’s telling a story wrong. You half listen to as much of it all as you can, but it’s hard to focus when you can feel the way Steve keeps looking at you from the corner of his eye, turning away everytime you go to meet his gaze. 

He keeps his thigh pressed to yours despite there being more than enough room on the swing, the sides of your feet tapping together on the porch. The heat of his body and the strength of the nice tequila hit after a long day all at once, a yawn escaping you in the middle of another one of Eddie’s bike trip stories.

“If I’m boring you just say something, jeez,” Eddie teases, a warm smile spread over his plump lips.

“Sorry!” Embarrassment warms your cheeks, feeling everyone’s eyes on you, “It’s just been a long day at work and I think the late night is just hitting me.”

“I’m teasing, kid. I have stories like these that I could tell for weeks. Go get some sleep.” He pulls his wife deeper into his side, her eyelids droopy like yours. “I think the Mrs is ready too anyway.”

Steve’s hand spreads over your back, the warmth of his palm rubbing up and down the dip of your spine making you hum.

“I’ll walk you home honey.”

🌃🌃🌃

Your staircase feels never ending, both of you slightly out of breath when you get to the top. Turning around at your front door to face him, both of you smile, trying not to laugh at the sheen of sweat on your foreheads. 

“That seemed harder that time, no?” Steve breaks the silence sounding winded.

“I think maybe it has something to do with the liquor and the pastries, but I could be wrong.”

His laugh is booming, making you giggle while you try to shush him out of courtesy of your neighbors who are fast asleep. 

“Sorry, sorry!” He whispers, a smirk that tells you he’s really not tugging at his lips, his eyes meeting yours the way they did in the kitchen.

You don’t know when he got this close or how your back ended up pressed against your front door. It’s silent between you, but the comfortable kind. Words not ready to be said out loud being exchanged through looks and the tips of his fingers brushing against yours.

“Thank you again for bringing me dinner, that was very sweet of you.” His voice is soft like his touches.

“It’s not a problem. It’s the least I could do really.” You look up at him from under your lashes, you’re ready for what was meant to happen in the kitchen now.

He hums a little to himself, interlacing your fingers with his. His eyebrows knitting together like he’s deep in thought. 

“Listen, I’m going on this camping trip next week with Bandit. Peaches would kill me if I let those plants die, maybe you wouldn’t mind coming by once to water them? I can give you my number, that way you know, we can talk about details or if something else breaks in your apartment.” He lets out a shaky laugh, and you squeeze his hand in reassurance.

“Gimme your phone Steve.”

His eyes widen and you can’t believe he’s shocked you said yes. He lets go of you to dig it out of his pocket, and you try to stifle a laugh at how frantic he seems.

You save your number under Tough Girl before handing it back to him with your bottom lip tucked between your teeth watching the way it makes his cheeks turn red when he reads it.

“I’ll - um text you with the dates,” he stutters a little slowly, backing away. 

“You could also just text me.” You shrug and it makes him miss the top step, catching himself on the railing. 

“Good to know.” The smile he gives you knocks the air out of your lungs. “Have a good night, tough girl.”

——

It’s only an hour later when you’re in bed, halfway asleep when you hear your phone buzz next to you. You wonder if he can see the way you smile like an idiot at your bright screen.

--

---

----

beta’d by @superblysubpar

dividers by @newlips

eddie munson edit by @eddiemunsons-missingnipple

chapter six

#my writing #all i really want is you series #steve harrington #steve harrington x you #steve harrington x reader #steve harrington smut #steve harrington fluff #steve harrington series #steve harrington x y/n #steve harrington slow burn #older!steve harrington #older!eddie munson #eddie munson

[powderblueblood]

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

CHAPTER SEVEN — WELCOME to the REAL WORLD, JACKASS

PREVIOUS | MASTERLIST | NEXT

summary: christmastime in hawkins brings a bunch of cherry bombs in the boy's bathroom, a trip down memory lane via seven minutes in heaven avenue, and the least likely trio this town has ever seen. content warnings: MINORS DNI i'm going to fuck you up and santa isn't real so we've got, smut including references to and descriptions of male and female masturbation, smoking, swearing, a pregnancy scare, era-typical misogyny and ANGST in the form of a flashback!!! word count: 12.5k. merry christmas babies

Dear reader, it takes you less than five weeks to become incapable of imagining your life without Eddie Munson.

Which, given his propensity for being an absolute neanderthal, is concerning.

Eddie Munson talks with his mouth full and plays his music too loud. He never closes a cabinet all the way. He walks through anywhere, literally anywhere, be it a store or the library or Ronnie’s trailer–leaving a trail of destruction in his wake. He talks during movies and puts his feet up on the seats at the Hawk. He makes fun of the books you read, but always grabs them away from you to stare at the blurb on the back. He never finishes a cigarette all the way before lighting another one, which is just wasteful. He pretends to be good at holding his liquor, but he’s not. 

He stands too close to you in places where he’s got plenty of room to move. He makes you laugh, even when you don’t want to. He holds the door for you in school, at the bookstore, getting out of the van, even though you’re more than capable of doing that yourself. He takes advantage of you when you’re in a good mood, like making you scratch his head as if he were a cat.

Sometimes he calls you ‘baby’, as if you don’t have a nickname already. As if you two are…

You lean toward the only mirror in the girls’ room with decent light, reapplying the red lip stain you’d taken to wearing– it was coming on Christmas, for god’s sake, and despite everything, you’re feeling festive. Quick. Lighter on your feet than you have been in a long time. 

“Hey girl, could I borrow that?” an out-of-tune simper rings right next to your ear and you almost jump out of your skin, lipstick clattering into the sink.

“Jesus!” you say, and Eddie Munson cackles. You knock him back with a one-handed shove, face setting into that funny little grimace you’ve taken to wearing when he acts up– and he’s always acting up. You’re gonna get wrinkles if he doesn’t cut it out. “What the hell are you doing in here? Hair in your eyes make you miss the sign that says girl’s room?”

You know that’s not true, because you were the one that just about tied him to a chair in Ronnie Ecker’s trailer so you could trim his bangs last week. 

This is a fuckin’ violation of my human rights, Lacy!

Every time I’m seen with you, people think I’m out walking a goddamn Briard. Hold still!

“So, hot off the press, newspaper girl,” Eddie says, leaning against the yellow porcelain, “One, I am literate, much to everyone’s shock and awe. And two, someone threw a bunch of cherry bombs down the john in the boy’s bathroom and the place is fucking Hiroshima, but wet and kinda shitty smelling. So we all got told to use this…” He gestures around at the clean-ish tile. “...salon of iniquity.” 

“Was it you?” you ask, plucking a cigarette from the soft pack he’s offering you. 

“Huh?” He scrunches his brows, leaning with a lighter ready. He’s taken to doing that; cigarette at the ready, lighter at the ready, low-grade explosives at the ready, probably.

“The cherry bombs, was it you?” you say through a reel of blue smoke.

“For once, no,” Eddie sighs, head slumping forward like a Peanuts character, “Some other gorgeous, anarchistic genius got the jump on me.” 

“Oh, god,” a frown sets in; you pick up your dropped lipstick and in its wake, ash into the sink, “There’s no other bathrooms on campus you animals could use?”

“Nuh-uh. Unisexuality, baby, it’s the way of the future,” Eddie tells you, fanning out his hands like P.T. Barnum. 

A beat. You think. This bathroom, the unofficially allocated senior bathroom, the one you and the rest of the Hawkins in-crowd had been using since sophomore year, got crowded at the best of times. The fumes of Aquanet were a definite health risk, but that’s an occupational hazard when it comes to being a girl. You add boys into the mix, nay, couples into the mix–

Damn.

“We’re about to witness the conception of so many toilet babies.”

Realization dawns on Eddie, his brown eyes flaring. “Oh shiiiit. I never thought of that.” 

“The band geeks alone, Eddie,” you whisper, head tilting toward him all scandalized-like, “We’re gonna show up at our fifteen year reunion and every single one of these suckers is gonna have their own little freshman clones.”

“Spare a thought for Heather Holloway.” Eddie’s face, a mask of mock concern, makes you roll your eyes.

“Why?” you scoff, not a fan, “She doesn’t inspire many.” 

“Objection. Her implants do.”

You turn to face him fully. “J’excuse?” 

“Swear to god,” and his palms are up, “Just saw her in Chemistry.”

“Good? Bad?”

“Conical. Jayne Mansfield.” Aaand his hands are gesturing, animatedly. Crassly. Pervily. “Take your goddamn eye out.”

“Wow. Christmas came early.”

“Christmas ain’t the only thing that’s gonna be coming early…”

“Ew.”

Eddie smirks and flicks his cigarette into the sink, hitting the faucet to wash it away– there were at least three good drags left in that, you think. 

“Heather H, first one to get knocked up in the Great Bathroom Insemination Project of 1984. Mark my words.”

“And you think you’re in with a shot?” Your tone is dripping in sneer. 

Eddie regards you for a moment, so you know something deeply annoying is about to happen. His voice goes all serious, barely above a whisper, as he closes space between you like he’s trying to beat a draft. 

“This is a once in a lifetime opportunity, Lacy baby.” His hands brace either side of the sink you’re standing at, trapping you against him. See? No respect for boundaries. But– Hm. Not… that annoying. “Oversexed teenagers sharing the same bathroom– at Christmas, with all that mistletoe around and shit.” His eyes, searching you with a glint that’s s’posed to be provocative. You, elbow propped up by your folded arm, puff a plume of smoke into his face. He doesn’t even blink. Smirk pursing his lips up. The two of you have established a rhythm. “Anything could happen.”

“Ew, what the hell are you doing in here? This is the girl’s room.” Enter some upstart underclassman, and Eddie’s peeling away from you.

“You didn’t see the biblical flood on the second floor, Pippi Longstocking?” His voice is big and booming and bouncing off the tile, making the underclassman cringe. “Forcible takeover. This is my house now.”

“God, shut up, freak.” She shuffles by the two of you to a vacant stall with a look you recognize– she’s so telling her friends about those two trailer park abnormos just about copulating in the bathroom later.

“Great choice!” Eddie exclaims, door of the stall slamming, “I warmed the seat for ya!” 

—

“Watch where you’re going, you almost milled down that stroller!”

“I wouldn’t need to go so fast if you two, freakin’ Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Priss Ass, didn’t insist on getting to this place before it closed!” 

“We wouldn’t need to rush if you hadn’t spent all freakin’ afternoon at goddamn Lipton landing getting all– all–”

“All?”

“--toked up and shit!”

“Market research, Ecker! And, I’m gonna remember you said that! Later! When you want to get all toked up and shit– woah!”

Listening to Ronnie Ecker and Eddie Munson bicker in the front seat while you balance on a drum stool in the back of his van, clutching onto Ronnie’s passenger seat for dear life– no better way to get into the spirit of the season. You’d be joining in the milieu if you weren’t currently suffering from major motion sickness. 

Eddie takes a harsh pull into a parking spot outside of Family Video and–“Go, go, go!”--you three load out like soldiers, locked on the target. He takes the lead, swinging the door open for the two of you ladies, but a voice calls out from the counter before Ronnie can even get a toe over the threshold.

“Oh, no– no way, no way!” Steve Harrington’s yelling from the helm of the ship, waving his hands. “We are– fifteen goddamn minutes away from close, I can’t do this tonight!” 

“Highly unwise of you to turn away paying customers, Harrington!” Eddie gasps, Ronnie ducking under his arm. 

“You guys come in here and spend honest-to-god hours talking shit in the aisles and– and you never even rent anything!” 

“Well, your luck’s about to change!” Ronnie says, and Steve regards her with a mask of total confusion because, well, it’s likely he’s never heard her speak directly to anyone other than Eddie before. 

That’s when you roll in the door under Eddie’s arm-arch, color rising in your cheeks that’s not from the cold. 

“I am deeply reconsidering my association with you guys.” 

“Tough shit.” “Find another trailer park.” “You love it. You love us. You’re obsessed.” 

You pinch both of your hands towards them, the universal action to encourage zipping it, and cast a glance towards Steve. His shoulders relax. His vest is green and garish and a terrible color on him and… he’s wearing elf ears. And he’s Steve Harrington. And your stomach clenches, though it’s more muscle memory than anything else. 

“Hey, Steve,” you smile, soft and small and not really all that there. 

“Lacy. Hi.” He does smile at you, after a beat. “You responsible for these assholes?”

You hadn’t seen him since the night of his party, that grand inferno that had landed you here, standing between Eddie and Ronnie and feeling not entirely awful about it. Well, you hadn’t exactly seen him then either, except for a flash when Eddie was dragging you out of his house. 

So, y’know, the blush is entirely justified.

“She’s bankrolling us,” Eddie says, closing the door to keep the heat in and speaking just to break the tension. True, too– you’d scored a part time gig at The Bookstore after a confrontation with the eagle-eyed Ivana regarding certain missing copies of Little Women, The Woman Destroyed and Fear and Trembling. You assumed you were working off the thievery, which you never directly admitted to and she never directly accused you of– but then, she paid you. 

Ivana, it turns out, is incredibly pro-workers rights and even more incredibly anti-Hawkins gossip mill. Which works out a treat for you. The bookstore’s become more of a haven than it had been before. 

“Can you scatter already?” you direct two thirds of your threesome towards the stacks. “Let’s make this breezy, I feel a wave of mortification rising.” 

“No. I was promised in-store bickering,” Eddie says, rooting himself to the spot. You catch a weird flash of– something in his eyes. Ronnie, with her unlikely band geek strength, groans and yanks him toward the horror section. “It’s my favorite part! It’s like the pre-show!”

You take to the counter, gingerly, shyly. Why are you shy? Why, all of a sudden, after showing your ass in such a spectacular bruise-garnering fashion, are you shy to speak to Steve Harrington? Is it because Nancy’s dropped a tidbit here and there that he’s not exactly great boyfriend material? Is it because you sometimes secretly think, good, I hope you two are having a terrible time, even if you and Wheeler are making baby steps towards a friendship?

Is it because you never forget the first person that called you Lacy?

Fuck knows. Some of that. 

“So you’re… what, hanging out now?” Steve asks, gesturing to the twin dipshits. There’s a bite in his voice from a former incarnation of Steve Harrington, one with (somehow) bigger hair and an unchecked ego. It doesn’t all shed at once, you figure. He’s sloughing it off and there’s still some left over, judging by the way he’s staring at Ronnie and Eddie. 

You look over your shoulder to them. It would be so easy to deride it, right– only due to my unfortunate proximity to them, yes or girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do for a ride these days or it’s community service, I swear. 

But you don’t. You turn back to him with a pinchy little smile. “I’m this close to getting them to let me play tambourine in their band. Can you even deal?” 

Steve, after a beat and a brow furrow, sort of half nods. “Think I kind of… get that.” 

You’re about to answer when another body comes barrelling in through the back. 

“Just wanted to let you know, dingus, that I just got off the phone with Keith–you remember Keith, right, our manager who is currently in a war of words with our boss trying to keep this place open–and your little stock-take fuckup has cost us, like, weeks of manhours in work and–” Robin Buckley, complete with a light-up Santa hat, stops dead. Counts every person in the room. Shakes her head like she’s in a dream. “What is…”

“H–hi Robin!” Ronnie calls, her voice all squeaky– due to the scuffling headlock that Eddie has somehow managed to put her in without you and Steve even noticing. “Don’t worry, we– we’ll be out of your hair in a second!” 

And Robin– wait, is Robin kind of… blushing? She backs down immediately, putting her Family Video branded binder flat on the counter. “Yeah, no… that’s totally okay, take your time!” 

You look at Steve. Steve looks at you. You quirk an eyebrow like– is that, is she… And Steve shrugs like, don’t ask me, sister. Pleading the fifth. Saving Robin’s dignity. 

But you’re still you and you’ve been bugging Ronnie about her situation for weeks so you hold up a finger.

“What are you two idiots arguing about?”

“Black Christmas–” “Silent Night, Bloody– ow, Ronnie, don’t pull hair, you girl!”

A swivel back to Robin, who is totally pink-cheeked. “We need a professional to settle this.” 

Her mind seems to stutter like a badly wound tape. Oh, she’s suckered. “Uh– uh, Black Christmas, for sure. Not exactly the coziest thing to watch, but–”

“We’re not cozy people!” Eddie yells, Ronnie coming at him with arms like weed whackers.

“--but Margot Kidder, right?” you poke, goddamn Jimmy Page and John Bonham for the Midwest set slamming into the counter on either side of you.

“Olivia Hussey,” Ronnie says breathlessly. Eddie seems to have winded her somehow. “That’s– she’s cool–I heard she was in this–”

“Exactly!” Robin lights up, excited, “She– she played Juliet in Romeo and Juliet–”

“Wait, don’t you see her boobs in that movie?” Eddie jerks in. 

“Yes,” Robin and Steve chime in unison. And glance at each other. Telling. 

Ol’ Munson there snaps his fingers. “Sold.”

“But not in Black Christmas,” you say, almost gently, so as not to… let him down?

Eddie rolls his eyes and tilts his head toward your shoulder. “I’m a man with an imagination, ain’t I?” he rasps. You pretend-shudder.

“Okay, let’s do Black Christmas and– you got a copy of The Thin Man?”

Blink-blink goes Robin, like a cartoon. It’s nearly audible. “... like, the William Powell, Myrna Loy Thin Man?” 

Your turn to roll your eyes. God, you guys love to roll your eyes, huh? “Is there any other?”

“Like the black and white movie. You’re sure? I just didn’t think it’d be your–” 

But Eddie cuts right through that assumption that’s making an ass out of you and Robin, because he knows. He knows because you’ve made him sit through Double Indemnity at the Hawk, scolding him for putting his feet up (god forbid, right!) and you’ve even threatened to drag him to some Buster Keaton retrospective that’s playing there after the holidays. He keeps thinking, man, if Wayne Munson ever comes across this girl, he’s a goner, and then he remembers why that won’t be happening any time soon. 

“She’s a freak.”

You regard him with a tight smile. Kind of a thanks, kind of a fuck you. Kind of your thing. 

“I’ll watch it when these bozos pass out.” 

—

Something’s gotten into Eddie. 

You three are absolutely basking in the glory of your one night of freedom– see, Granny Ecker’s away on a weekend hotel stay in Indianapolis with one of her special friends from the Hawkins Senior Center. Which, on the one hand, gross, Eddie never ever wants to think about Granny Ecker getting lucky no matter how happy for her he is. But on the other, in the words of her beloved granddaughter–

“God bless the Indiana Sweepstakes!”

Eddie has stolen Granny’s usual spot, the kick-out recliner that seems to sag more with every movement. You and Ronnie are bunched onto the little two-seater together, with Ronnie shyly suggesting that you paint her nails (black, how totally hardcore)– now, Eddie knows this move. This is so she can distract herself from the bonafide creepiness of Black Christmas because while she tries to put on a brave face, Ronnie’s eyes for horror movies are way bigger than her stomach. She’s all nerves. It’s why she’s such a good drummer. 

As you’d predicted, by the time the movie ends and you all clear the six pack that Eddie had procured, Ronnie’s nodding off– but Eddie is determined to stay wide awake. You make a move off the couch and she grumbles, having narrowly avoided propping her head on your shoulder. You move to arrange her in such a way that she’s sleeping Nosferatu style, crossing her arms over her chest. “Because I spent an awful lot of time on that polish and I won’t see it ruined, not on your account,” you chide, real quiet. Ronnie’s not listening, she’s pretend honk-shooing. Eddie, on the other hand, is. 

He likes you like this. You’re sweet to Ronnie, in your prickly little way– making her flustered with your misdirected flirting, bonding with her about things so far out of the realm of his male understanding. Being a girl with her. It’s occurred to him that Ronnie, in her testosterone-soaked world of current comrades, might actually need that. Like, she’s friendly enough with Jeannie and that Vickie girl from band, but they’re not people she’d go out of her way to make a case for so’s that Granny Ecker will let them stay for dinner. 

Which she’s done for you. Once or twice now. Which you’ve nervously accepted and even ruined your manicure for, by insisting on washing up the dishes. Eddie dried, because of course he did, because the Ecker trailer is the only place close to home that the two of you can hang out.

You’re, like– friends. 

Which is horrible.

Eddie tosses you a cold can of soda from the fridge. You catch it, hands basketing above your head.

“Power forward.”

“Cheerleader.”

You lean over to the TV to swap the tapes out, insistent on watching your dumb little black and white movie. As you do it, your skirt lifts a little bit and– 

Eddie’s gotta break eye contact. Stare at the floor for a second. Cock jumping like the fucking mole from whack-a-mole.

He almost hits it.

You bitch, are you wearing thigh highs?

“You need to pull trig, Munson?” he hears you from the kitchenette, clicking the video player’s play button. “You only had two beers.”

God, maybe. Was the room spinning? “Smoked a lotta weed today.” 

“Right. Lipton landing,” you smirk. Ronnie’s derisive little nickname for Reefer Rick’s place. “Are you gonna get over here and snore through my movie or not?”

I do not snore, or some muttering of a similar fashion comes out but he’s doing exactly what you tell him to do. He can’t help it. Brain function gone all freaky from that flash of flesh squeezed out the top of your– yeah. 

Eddie lands on the floor next to you with a little groan. Your eyes flick between him and the now-empty recliner. 

“What are you doing down here?” 

Oh. Busted. “I’m a gentleman, Lacy. Take the damn seat.” 

Your face screws up in that silly way it does whenever he talks sense to you but you don’t wanna hear it. Brat. “No. I like to sit right up near when it’s something I really want to watch.”

A shrug of your little shoulder as you wrap your arms around your knees like a kid. Face illuminated by the greyscale on the television. Skirt rucking back against the carpet. Fuck.

Eddie lets out an unsteady breath, crawling forward to lie on his tummy. Closer to you. “You’re gonna get square eyes if you keep doin’ that, dorko.”

“Who died and made you my optometrist…” but you say it in this half-hearted, distracted way, eyes on the screen.

“Y’know, if you–” Eddie starts, eyes on the lace top of your–yes indeedy–stockings.

“Shut up,” and you tap him on the shoulder. “I love this part.”

Your hand stays there as some fancily dressed chick totally eats shit in the bar of some hotel or something. Christmas presents flying everywhere as she falls. 

Women and children first, boys.

Say, what is the score anyway?

Oh, so it’s you he was after.

Hello, sugar.

Your hand stays there as you’re totally mouthing every single word, you true-blue nerd. Eddie, completely at a loss of how to react to this other than gaze, gaze, gaze at you, snaps his teeth at your hand. 

You, so completely embroiled in Nick and Nora’s white hot banter, gasp at the near-bite and swipe at his head. Eddie dodges the blow by rolling onto his back, hair fanning out on the Eckers’ rug. He grins up at you, and all of a sudden the rise and fall of his chest in that worn-out Alice Cooper shirt is very distracting. 

Pretty girl. 

Yeah, she’s a very nice type.

You got types?

Only you, darling–

“--lanky brunettes with wicked jaws,” you say, beat-for-beat with William Powell. 

“Talkin’ about me?” Eddie says, lips peeling back, eyebrows quirking.

“Not in your wettest, wildest dreams, Eddie Munson.” 

“Oh, you don’t wanna know what happens in those dreams. It’s filthy.”

“Uh-huh.”

“It’s twisted. It’s disgusting.” 

“I bet.”

His hand is absent-mindedly stroking his chest, shifting the hem of that t-shirt up a little bit. Brushstrokes. You remember that? Eddie Munson has a happy trail like– 

“You’re so nice to me. It’s so fffffucking hot.”

“How wildly out-of-character,” you scoff, and he laughs, and you shift in your spot the teensiest bit. Eyes back on the screen, back to safety. 

From here, where he’s lying, Eddie has a fully illustrated view of the flash of skin up your skirt. Now that you’re not looking at him, he’s looking at it. Swallowing back saliva. Ignoring Nick and Nora. 

It’d be simple as pie to walk his fingertips along the rug and brush up against you there–oops–by accident or design. Feel how soft that skin is. Feel that heat radiating from your–

“It’s alright,” he hums, eyes flicking to the ceiling. Otherwise, all the blood’s gonna drain away from his head and he’s going to fucking die. “I know I’m not your type anyway.”

Your head lolls to your other shoulder, exposing a flash of your neck. It’s sorely missing a tongue running along it, he thinks, breath shuddering a touch. 

“You wouldn’t know my type if it hit you with an eighteen wheeler.”

“Can Steve Harrington drive an eighteen wheeler?”

Lolling your head back in the most exaggerated form of exasperation, you groan. “God. The way you talk about Harrington, I’m willing to put money on the fact that you have a crush on him.”

Eddie shrugs, hand resting on his sternum. You had your hand there once, you recall.

“I got prescribed one on the first day of freshman year, just like everybody else. But it wore off.”

“Sure about that?” Your eyes narrow.

“Sure as I am that I saw you makin’ googly eyes at him at the Family Video tonight.” Eddie crosses his own peepers for effect. Your attention darts back to the screen.

“I was not–”

“You can just say it, Lace.” His face is a twisty little smirk, if you’d care to look. “Regardless of how utterly pedestrian it might be.” That was a dig at you, by the way. That was an almost eerie impression of you. 

“The things I felt in seventh grade don’t really have a lot of gravitational pull on me anymore,” you shrug, not giving. Because, when you think about it, you don’t have to give. It was a baseless kind of thrill, seeing Harrington tonight. One hit wonder. “He’s a cute boy. Reminded me I have a pulse. Nothing wrong with that.”

Eddie’s quiet for a few seconds, flicks his eyes up to watch the TV from upside down. Nick places an ice pack on a drunken Nora’s head. 

Hmm… what hit me? 

The last martini.

He smiles as you smile, and he wonders if you’re thinking of the same thing he’s thinking of. 

“Alright, well– we can forget this ever happened. Resume being assholes to each other on Monday. Don’t, like, die in the meantime.”

“You say resume like we ever stopped being assholes to each other.”

“Funny you mention seventh grade…” Eddie trails off, tugging at the rug underneath him.

“Funny ha-ha or funny peculiar?” Your voice is distant again. 

“Little bit of both.”

“Why?”

Well, he thought you might be fucking with him, but– “... God, you really don’t remember, do you?”   

“Remember what?” He sees your brow pinch, he’s getting to ya.

“Not a fucking clue.” No give, no glory, eyes on the peeling ceiling. 

“Remember what?” You’ve snapped your neck and are looking down at him now, thirsty for him to fucking spill it already.

“Total–” he blows a raspberry, “--blackout before freshman year, right?”

“Eddie.”

His name makes him sit up. Pavlovian, sure, and he’s trying to deny the fact that he’ll do just about anything you say when you call him Eddie in that slightly-tinged sour way and not Munson like you’re writing him off. He’s trying to deny that. He swears.

“Nancy Wheeler’s thirteenth birthday party.” 

You two are shoulder to shoulder, him facing the couch, you facing the screen, his breath warming the bare skin of your off-the-shoulder top which is an insane thing to be wearing in the dead of fucking winter, but praise Jesus hallelujah you’re wearing it. Your expression is unimpressed. 

“... yeah?”

“We played Seven Minutes in Heaven.” He lays that out a little too plain for your liking. Playing Seven Minutes in Heaven at a thirteen year old’s birthday party is like the non-denominational Hora for pseudo-white bread Christian teenagers, at least in Hawkins. Everybody does that shit. But hold on.

“... you were there?”

“Fucking obviously, dimwit, that’s the setup to the whole story.” He sighs in a puff, and he’s very close to you. Chin almost on your shoulder like that night at the Quarry. “Tommy Hagan ripped into me for like, fifteen full minutes because my spin of the bottle landed on you.”

Confusion is a disease and you’re terminal. “That was… not you.” 

Insistence is a disease and Eddie’s fatal. “Yes. It so was.”

“That was John Hudson-Wasserman.”

“That was not–,” Eddie full on splutters, like slapstick splutters, reeling his head away from you, “you’re gonna get me confused with John Hudson-Wasserman? The guy who was like, pathologically obsessed with the Kennedy assassination? The guy who moved to Des Moines like, two weeks after that party?”

Then you’re spluttering back all of a sudden. Everything you two are doing is contagious. “His parents named him after John F., can you blame him? –actually, I can totally blame him, that was bizarre.”

“Lacy.” Well, the way he says that straightens your spine. “Use that pretty little brain to think for a second, huh? There’s one unmistakeable detail I bet I can get to jog your memory.”

But you’re already there. Activated. Like a sleeper cell. 

“Your hair was all buzzed off. You had that bandage on your head.”

“I did. And you asked me what was under it, and I said–”

A hole. They cut out a part of my brain so I’d be– The Wheeler’s linen closet was tiny and you were breathing in lavender detergent from all angles. 

The boy in front of you, scrawny and angry, had an aura around him like a firework. You knew it was dangerous, but you wanted to look closer. 

–less of a freak? you finished. Such was the accusation du jour for this kid. 

Less of a danger to society, he said, chest puffed. They let me keep it in a jar. Just in case shit gets really real and I need to shove it back in. 

You don’t quite know what to do with that. Like. He is so weird, and his hair is unevenly shaved and he’s got little cuts and scratches and scabs all over him. Like he’s been running through brambles. He looks like a kid someone found in the wild. 

Did you name it? you ask, finger drawing circles on a nearby towel. Your jar brain.

Eddie Junior, he told you, crossing his arms. 

Aren’t you already Junior? Shouldn’t it be Junior Junior? 

His jaw hardened. No. I’m Eddie. 

You nudged forward on your toes to get a better look at the bandage– he was taller than you. It lumped out of his head, unmissable. Nothing to be done about it. 

He seemed to cringe away from you. 

Don’t try anything, skank. 

You bounce back onto your heels. 

I wasn’t, asshole. We don’t have to do anything– just… like… did it hurt? 

He paused for a full ten seconds (you counted) and swallowed real hard. Eyes wide as hubcaps, and dark, and frightened. He craned his neck toward you a little. 

Then the door swung open, Tina Burton standing there hand-in-hand with an irritated-looking Steve Harrington. Time’s up, losers! 

Al hadn’t asked if it hurt, when he beat the crap out of him for doing something so stupid. Wayne hadn’t even asked if it hurt, when Eddie came back from the hospital like a dog with its tail between its legs. 

You were the first, and you were the last, and it was before everything. Before you were even Lacy.

“What happened, anyway?” you ask. Soft. Like that last time.

Now, in retrospect, Eddie sees the error of his ways.

“I lit all my hair on fire with a butane torch.” 

“You what?!” 

“It’s not– entirely my fault! I think I saw someone with hair on fire in an X-Men comic and I thought, y’know, that’s an achievable look.” That’s a severe understatement. It was Johnny Storm from The Fantastic Four and Eddie believed that he could be like Johnny Storm only more badass and maybe with like a sick motorbike. What, you’re telling me you didn’t go through a pre-teen-to-mid-teen phase where you were secretly convinced you had superpowers? Smarten up. 

“And how high–”

“Yeah, okay, I was also hitting a Reddi-Wip can like crazy.” The nitrous oxide did not help these delusions. 

“Why the big bandage?”

“Eh, I got some, like, bitsy little burn. Total overreaction.”

“Do you have a scar?” Before he can answer, you’re parting his hair, right near the place you remember that bandage being. Eddie freezes, your frigid fingertips searching his scalp. You are… very close. 

“Uh– no, I don’t.” He gulps, avoiding looking at you directly in your bright, curious little face. “Can I tell you something truly fucking dumb?”

“Wouldn’t be out-of-character for you, that’s for sure.” 

Deep, deep breath. Fucking shit fucking goddammit fuck. Balls. “I regret it.”

“The hair thing? Yeah, you’d think–”

“No. Not kissing you.”

“Oh.” Your hands drop from his skull but don’t exactly leave his hair. Just kind of wound in there, hovering, the way you feel like you’re hovering now. 

“You asked me if it hurt, and then I was gonna– but then, fucking Tina–” Eddie says, eyes dashing to you in these minute little glances. Away, back, away, back.

“Fuckin’ Tina,” you breathe. 

“--and Harrington.”

“Ah.” You shut your eyes. He didn’t notice you were wearing green eyeshadow until right now. “The square root of the problem.”

“Huh?” Barely heard it. Too busy looking at the glitter on your eyelids. The way your eyeballs shift around underneath.

“You’re totally lemon sour bitter with Harrington because you think he made you blow your shot with me.” You open your eyes with a squint.

“That is so not–” Break a spell, why dontcha! But then, Eddie takes a bite. “Actually, if you pop-psychology that, there might be somethin’ there, but… I regret it because I didn’t just–”

You cut in. “Go for it.”

“Shoot.” He confirms.

“Power. Forward.” You emphasize, lips curling.

“Cheer. Leader.” Eddie says, gravel in his voice.

Do you know that your hand is still in his hair? Like, are you physically aware of it? (Answer: no.)

Nick. Nicky?

What.

You asleep?

Yes.

Good. I wanna talk to you.

Your head swivels back from the screen. He watched you look away, dart your tongue out onto your lip, look back at him. 

“Eddie.” There’s fizz in your voice.

“Yes, Lacy.” He wonders what flavor. 

“I think…” and you finally extract your hand to lay it in your lap. Withdrawing, willing to be shot down, but you’re you and you know that you won’t be. “We could make a case for making up for lost time.”

Eddie’s mouth has become very dry. “... meaning that…”

“Eddie, I think that you should kiss me like a seventh grader– eighth grader? So weird, why did Wheeler have eight graders at her bir–”

“Lacy. Back on track, please,” which is another horrendously pin point perfect impression of you. And he needs to be sure that you just said what you just said and that isn’t the ghosts of Lipton landing talking.

“We should try it out. An honest-to-god, never-been-done-before Seven Minutes in Heaven kiss. I happen to think it’d fix something in you.”

“Oh, come on,” he scoffs.

“No, I’m serious!” And it is kind of fizzing out of you, and you might not be entirely just talking about him for this next part, “I think you’re holding onto a lot of pent up energy that may have just gotten even more pent since we became, y’know–”

“Zoo animals with parallel enclosures?” Eddie says with an arching eyebrow. 

“Wow,” you swallow a breath. “That really sounded like me.”

“I’m afflicted with a Lacyism from time to time.”

“Is that like astigmatism? Because you should get that looked at.”

“Who died and made you my optometrist?”

“Eddie.” Your voice, coming from your face, which is all dappled in the unserene technicolor glow of the Eckers’ Christmas lights, highlighted by the blaze of the black and white on TV. You make it look like stained glass. He would walk into oncoming traffic– “You trust me, right?” He would go and play on the freeway if you asked him to.

Eddie, Christ, he’s got to gather himself. Like the sweat gathering on his palms, he thinks, great work ethic, I need some of that. He gets a bright idea, brighter than those twinkling lights. “I think I need full authenticity in order to make this experience worth it.”

“What?”

“We need to find a closet.”

It’s pretty much a hard no on whether or not the Eckers have a linen closet (you’re a long way from Maple Lane now, babe), so it’s agreed that you’ll give Granny Ecker’s wardrobe a shot. You follow Eddie in there with tentative steps, like you can almost feel her watching all the way from the Best Western in Indianapolis she’s no doubt staying in. Trespassing is bad, yadda yadda, but it’s also exciting.

It’s exciting, being in here with him. 

He glances back at you, eyes a glimmer in the darkened bedroom. “After you,” and he flourishes a hand toward the open closet. 

You two are so not seventh graders anymore– heads bang against hangers, you’re kind of melting into a lot of denim and fleece and you… you don’t have much breathing room. No lavender detergent, just the beer-and-old-weed-sweet smell of Eddie Munson pushed close to flush against your chest. The scent of that shampoo you both use caught somewhere in the middle. 

Your breathing is so shallow, you feel like you might be having an asthma attack. You don’t have asthma. 

“Tight,” he says, and knits his brows, “I mean–”

“Cozy,” you correct, unsure of where to put your hands.

“We’re not cozy people.”

“So let’s do this,” you attempt to smooth your face into something resembling nonchalance, “Kiss me like a seventh-or-eighth grader, Eddie Munson.”

He clears his throat, shaking his head. A smile keeps flicking and dying on his lips. Heart about to burst out of his chest because of how weird this is, because of how weird you are, because of how– how– 

Eddie knits his fingers behind his back in an imitation of you, your girlish pose, and leans forward. About ninety percent, just in case you decide this was a stupid idea, or you don’t like the look of his face up close, or– or–

You close that perfect ten. Your lips feel like flower petals. Light. Baby-soft. Crushable.

It’s so chaste and it’s so innocent. It’s so the diametric opposite of the two of you, brash and harsh in your diverging, abstracting ways– waving only to meet in the middle. It’s pretty, like you are, and Thumper-from-Bambi-thumping-his-foot nervous like he gets around you.  

You pull away a fraction, and Eddie swallows a sound. To save face, he is about to say something– I give it a six or that’s what I’ve been missing out on this whole time or you flap that mouth an awful lot for someone who doesn’t know how to use it, something equally goading. Something that would make this… normal.

Until you take his bottom lip between yours. And it’s wet there. And it’s warm. And your lips are so, so crushable– 

Eddie’s fingers unweave and find your arms, find your waist. Slow, slow, he takes it slow because he could scare you and he doesn’t want to scare you. You’re curving into him, lips slicking against his, and then his tongue licking it’s way into your mouth which you just fucking open for him and it’s so good–

–and he tastes like salt and smoke and he holds you like he’s anchoring himself against you. Your hands wind on up, up, up his chest, catching on his t-shirt where his chest is (duh duh duh you fucking idiot), where his heart is thrumming under that smatter of a tattoo you got caught staring at that night in his trailer. It’s all you’ve got in you not to tug it up and off him, but Christ, no, because you need to keep kissing him. It’s so nice, it feels so nice, kissing him, when was the last time something felt as nice, that’s all you can think with sensation seeping through your body like a sugar rush. Hands move to either side of his neck and he makes a noise. 

Your fingers, fishing hooks in his hair, pulling him closer and closer to you. 

The heat. Of his body. Matched only by the heat gathering in the cherry pit that lives in your stomach. 

And he needs, god, Eddie needs it fucking bad. It is a lot of things. It includes your tongue so far inside his mouth that you can taste the Tab on his uvula this time. It includes more of your tits pressed against him, so he can feel if your nipples have hardened under his touch. It includes this moment, just this moment, just kissing you as your body winds around him–

But then you pull back. Before he can whisper the little, “No…” that’s coming like a reflex, you cover his mouth with your hand. The mouth that’s all slick from kissing– you. 

Jesus Christ. You had really done that. The stupid, idiot both of you. 

“Guys?”

Eddie, dizzy and down-the-rabbit-hole tipsy Eddie, gets the impulse to lick your hand, to take your fingers in his mouth and just start sucking, but he doesn’t do it. Because he has now snapped to the fact that that’s Ronnie Ecker calling out for you. 

The two of you, twisted around each other like snakes in her grandmother’s closet. 

“Go,” you hiss– no, you breathe. He was just expecting you to hiss. But you’re breathy and unsure about the command you’re giving. Still, you jerk your head. 

Well, Eddie’s pretty hard up about telling you this, but, “Can’t. Need a sec–” Like, can’t you feel that?

Eddie’s standing more than half to attention, pressing in between the both of you. 

You let out a jagged breath that sounds like oh, fuck, and it’s not the kind of oh, fuck he was hoping to hear and his heartbeat stutters. 

And then you’re gone. 

Eddie stands there, hands held aloft around the ghost of you that was there, that was right there and kissing him. Like you meant it, like it wasn’t an experiment or a joke or a dare or anything other than what you wanted. You wanted him. You wanted him. “Oh, Jesus Christ,” he breathes into his hands, dragging them down his face, his lips, the smell of you still lingering around him. “Oh… I am so fucked.”

Kentucky fried fucked. 

You make your way back to the living room on trembly legs, reaching for every steadying surface, attempting to destroy the evidence of a swollen mouth and Munson-finger ruffled hair. You find Ronnie sitting upright on the couch. Nick and Nora have nearly solved the case. You don’t give yourself enough time to make a mask of your face that could easily lie to her. 

“Munson had to pull trig,” you say, and it’s not steady enough for Ronnie to not call bullshit.

But she doesn’t. Not outright anyway.

“He okay?” she asks, nearly wary.

“I don’t know. Could be comin’ out of both ends, I don’t know,” you start scrambling around for your bag and your shoes and your coat and not your right mind because you left that back in the closet, somewhere between Eddie’s teeth and tongue. “Look, I hate to ditch on you, but my mom–”

“She’ll be on your ass,” Ronnie says, measured like a cup. “Sure. Go on. I’ll think about calling 911 if he chokes.”

Breathing out some piss-poor rendition of a thanks, you dip out of Ronnie’s and past his van and all the way back the lot towards home. 

It’s freezing. You’re not. For once.

When Eddie finally reappears from the closet, Ronnie is sitting in the exact same position. Except this time she looks somewhat judgier– maybe because it’s easier to be judgier toward Eddie than it is toward you. Some kind of girl politico he doesn’t understand. 

“You feel better?”

“Huh?” Eddie says. Wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. 

“Do you feel better. Lacy told me you had to barf.”

“I… I guess.” Eddie has already cashed in his once-in-a-lifetime lie convincingly to Ronnie Ecker voucher. 

“She also told me you maybe shit yourself?”

Alright, well, that was unnecessary. “Alright, well, that was unnecessary.”

“I guess I was just hoping that…” she sighs, crossing her arms, “... that you weren’t puking and shitting yourself…” she sits back against the couch, “... when you were making out with her. In my… bathroom?”

He really does consider leaving out this detail. “Granny’s closet.”

“Oh, you’re fuckin’ kidding me.”

“She’ll know. She’ll kill me.”

“Oh, she’ll kill ya,” Ronnie mutters, “And then I’ll go to work on ya.”

—

You two have got to stop fucking each other over like this.

Fucking each other over, conceptually, actually, is interesting. Because Eddie’s done a whole lot of fucking you over in his mind since that closet. Sliding your panties aside and fucking you with his tongue, polyester lace of your stockings creating static against his hair, sparks snapping off your inner thighs as you rub against his nose. 

Following you back to your trailer and fucking you with his fingers against the cold, metal exterior, your nails digging into his neck and your voice stabbing his name into his eardrums. 

Pulling you into his lap in the driver’s seat and tearing through the cotton of your underwear with sheer animalistic fervor, making you lean back against the steering wheel as he sucks your tightened nipples, cock safe and warm in the slick, deep wet of you. 

Somethin’ like that. He didn’t sleep much this weekend.

Mind stuck on the one track, your lips smacking against his. Now in fabulous 3D!

In every single one of these fantasies, too, his idiot sap ass is whining your name fifty billion times more than you’re whining his– so much so that it breaks the fantasy barrier and he’s crying, “Fuck, Lacy-yy–,” into his limp pancake of a pillow, cum careening down a fist that should have nerve damage by now. 

He is exhausted. And to make it worse, he hasn’t seen you. 

He hasn’t even been avoiding you this time. So that’s all on you, you bitch.

“You bitch…” he mumbles, head resting against the cold brick of the newly-unisex senior bathroom, which has become a hellhole in no time. First period on a Monday is usually an okay time to get a bit of peace and fucking quiet, though, because everyone else is at least making an attempt at starting the week off on the right foot. 

But not Eddie. Not worn out, prick-tired Eddie. 

And not whoever is doing a horrible job of hyperventilating in the stall next to him. 

“Excuse me?” a breathless voice says. He thinks he kinda recognizes it but–

Then, ew! Some gagging, some violent coughing, a little ugh, Jesus, please not again–

Eddie slides out of his stall and knocks on the next door– and it swings open with ease. 

She’s crouched over the cistern–gross, fucking gross–and tears are streaming down her peachy cheeks, catching on her pointed chin. 

“Christ, Wheeler. S’matter, you pregnant?”

Nancy Wheeler’s eyes flash in a flare of rage, a choked scoff spitting out of her. She’s about to fucking cuss Eddie out, it looks like, which he kind of wants to see, but then whatever straw that’s holding that together snaps and she lets out this wild sob of total incredulity. 

Ohhh, as much as he would love to bolt out the door like it’s not his problem, Eddie realizes that this has now, somehow, somewhat become kind of his problem. 

—

“I gotta talk to you.” 

Ronnie Ecker appears like a lightning flash, knocking you clean out of your reverie of slowly crawling fingers and lips and teeth and guilt that had been plaguing you all weekend. 

You had spent most of the last forty eight hours staring into the middle distance, ready to glue upright nails into your shoes and walk on them for penance. You fucking stupid slut. Kiss me like a seventh-eighth grader, Eddie Munson. You unbelievable fucking cowshit. See, because, okay, do you know what you’ve done?

You’ve taken the first real friendship you’ve possibly ever had in your life (save for Phoebe, God rest her soul that moved to Saskatoon) and completely entirely fucked it sideways, and sure, you’ve also spent a lot of the weekend thinking about other things getting fucked sideways, like you since you’re now cursed with the knowledge of the vague suggestion of the outline of Eddie Munson’s dick but moreso, foremostly and mainly you want to fucking take a swandive off the edge of Sattler’s Quarry. 

Addendum– there’s too many quarries in this fucking county. 

A ping-ponging of guilt-to-orgasm-to-guilt-to-orgasm-to-guilt-to-orgasm-to-guilt-to-slinking your way to first period the long way that’s only now broken by Ronnie Ecker coming down on you like an Acme anvil.

Meep meep.

She knows. Of course she knows.

“Ronnie,” you whisper, eyes following her as she lands herself into the aforementioned Munson’s seat behind you, “I can explain…”

“Don’t!” There is this vigor, this knife’s edge in Ronnie’s voice that is terrifying and kind of thrilling but mostly scary and having been in the presence of Granny Ecker even those few times, you knew she always had it in her. 

You recoil. A little.

“If Eddie wants to be a fucking moron about you, please can we just let him, and not–” Ronnie’s mouth clamps closed like a Muppet’s might. Like she’s physically trying to calm herself down. “Look. I really like being your friend.”

Oh, Christ, your heart. “I r– I–”

“You’re dogshit with the emotional stuff, I get that, but I’ve been friends with that asshole so long that wearing my heart on my sleeve is like, second fucking nature so I’m not and I’m pissed off, frankly, that there’s a chance of him coming between, like… us.”

You and Ronnie. You, and your friend Ronnie. “Oh, it’s–”

“Because technically, by absolute technicality, I was your friend first, okay? We were lab partners first and I thought we had a vibe goin’ in Biology and I was the first person you wanted to talk to at the Hellfire table even if it was a thinly veiled ploy but you’re so good at ploys and you’re such a piece of work and you’re so funny and I wouldn’t know what Ponds cold cream actually does if it wasn’t for you. Fuck.”

“Granny’s a soap and water girl.” There’s a fluttering in your chest and a thickening in your throat. You swallow big, and you think you might actually start– “This doesn’t mean I’m gonna try fencing, Ron.”

“But it’s fucking cool, even if we do it with sticks.”

You take her in, baseball cap shoved over her coiled hair, darned-all-to-hell sweater sagging out under her overalls and you really feel like something is about to bust out of your chest. Your honest-to-god friend, Ronnie Ecker. 

“Miss Ecker, last time I checked, that’s not your assigned seat.” God, Kaminsky’s such a relentless dickwad.

“I’m having a conversation,” Ronnie says, with the kind of as-yet-unheard volume from her that makes the rest of the class go ooooh!

Jesus fucking Christ, have you turned Ronnie Ecker into a bad girl?

“I don’t give a shit!” rumpled Kaminsky says, slapping that dusty chalkboard duster full of dust, “Have it in detention.”

“Hey! That’s–”

But if you can do one thing for Ronnie. “No can doozy, Mr K, Miss Ecker has a prior commitment.” 

“Oh, Jesus Christ, not you again,” he mumbles not-quite-under his breath. “And what is that? Lacy?”

Before you can even say the words peer tutoring, none other than Eddie Munson is barrelling through the door. He stops comically short at the top of the classroom, gesturing to Ronnie in his seat like what the fuck? 

“Lacy!” he eventually says, and he’s breathless and flustered and just like you imagined him in–

“Munson, what in the name of the goddamn Father Almighty–”

“Weekly Streak–” and guy is just snapping his fingers, blinking wildly at you, “–thing!”

You stare on in a state of confusion until you spy Nancy Wheeler right in your eyeline, right through the open classroom door. Her little face streaked with tears, and god, she looks like shit, and she’s beckoning to you with a flutter and a fury. 

“No, of course!” a little murmuring, uh, shit, and you hurry to the top of the classroom, slamming the homework that Kaminsky’s obviously going to ask for on his desk with a rattle. 

“Kaminsk, my man, the future of print media is forever in your debt!” Eddie calls, ushering you out the door and into the echoey hallway. 

“What is going on?”

Both Eddie and Nancy shuffle you down the hallway, avoiding the monitors (rat finks!), dipping under the east stairwell. A great stairwell. So much illicit shit has happened in this stairwell and you have an itemized list of it all, somewhere in your brain. The kind of person people tell things to.

Nancy’s just full tilt gulping like a fish out of water, and Eddie’s all, “Wait, shit, are you gonna barf again?” and you’re all, “Answers, please, tout suite!”

“I’m late.” Nancy’s voice doesn’t even tremble. She’s that scared.

“Fuck.”

“Very?”

“Extremely.”

“You’re sure?” you press, and suddenly you’re the kind of person that grabs Nancy Wheeler’s shoulders. 

Her lip trembles. “I mean, I haven’t–” 

“Well, we gotta. Right now.” And it occurs to you that Eddie is just standing there, a polite enough distance away that he’s involved but kind of not involved, but respecting the space that you two need. How does he know how to do that? How does he always know the right… “Eddie.” 

He snaps to attention, mouth all serious and eyes all eager. You want to kiss him again, but this shit is not about you. 

“We need a ride to the drugstore.” 

The three of you pile into Eddie’s van, him insisting on doing the honors of opening the passenger door for you again, and Nancy quietly requesting that you share the passenger seat with her. You two are squished together, her spindly thighs overlapping yours. Denim versus dark suede. There is a very tense silence in place the entire van ride there, Nancy digging her nails into her palm and Eddie nervously thrumming against the steering wheel. The tape deck plays resumes mid-play– Metallica’s Ride the Lightning. 

For your part, you experience a harsh zoom-out moment– Nancy, who you’ve learned is almost as strong-headed as you, just on a better moral track (lawful good versus chaotic neutral, you think Eddie once framed it), is stranded. She’s the eldest sibling to that little shitstain Michael and Holly, who’s a baby so to you has no discernible personality, and her mother is kind of an airhead and her father… you don’t know shit about, but it’s Hawkins, so dads. The responsibility of everything seems to fall on her all the time, and you can only be so resourceful as a teenage girl in a town like this. Especially when the other teenage girls seem to, at best, keep you at arm’s length, or at worst, ostracize you. 

And Nancy had lost Barbara Holland. Who, when she mentions her, is talked about with such a glow that’s followed by such a wave of sadness that it nearly takes you under too.

She misses her so much. She misses her best friend so much. 

Barb should be the one dealing with this. Not you. Which sounds like you’re shirking responsibility. But really, it’s because you don’t know if you fully deserve the privilege of helping Nancy. 

Truth is, Nancy would probably be okay, handling this on her own. Sure, it’d be another inch of depth added to the chasm of loneliness building in that poor girl’s psyche, but she’d do it, because she’s Nancy and she handles things.

Just like you’re Lacy and you handle things. 

But however Eddie Munson ended up as part of this situation… he brought her to you. Because he knew you’d know what to do. So she wouldn’t have to do it alone. 

Because Eddie doesn’t want people to do things alone. 

You only really have that impulse if you know how terrible it feels. 

And if you don’t see kindness as a weakness.

Which Nancy doesn’t. And Eddie doesn’t. And you… don’t want to, anymore.

You reach and peel Nancy’s fingernails from the grooves they’re digging into her flesh. You don’t even look at the half-moon marks they’ve made. You just glue her palm to your palm and web your fingers. And over the frizz of Nancy’s perm–the nice kind, salon kind, the kind that doesn’t stink of egg–you look at Eddie, just as he glances at you.

He smiles, small and unsure and wavering. You bite your lips between your teeth and try the same. 

“Shit, I don’t think I can go in here.” 

The van has skidded into an inconspicuous (but not entirely, because have you seen that fucking vehicle) place near the drugstore.

“Why?”

“People– the pharmacist knows my mom and everything,” Nancy shudders, “There’s no way that people won’t have something to– fucking say.”

Eddie’s eyes widen and you give him a look like, welcome to the Nancy Wheeler Actually Swears Club. Care for a canape?

And y’know, you could argue so what. So what if people have something to say. You’re young, mistakes happen, the world keeps turning. But one skip in a perfect twelve-inch record of reputation like Nancy’s can make her life a living hell. You know that. 

Shit, she knows that– you weren’t not aware of that stroke of creative genius vandalism that went up on the Hawk marquee that one time.  

And it would shatter Nancy’s mom’s heart. And while you don’t have the same time of day for her, Nancy really loves her mom. 

Once you’ve ruined your reputation, you can live quite freely. 

That moveable feast motherfucker was onto something. 

Click, and Eddie’s glovebox pops open in a clatter of tapes and a one-hitter and other ephemera. You reach in, retrieving sunglasses you’d left in here a little bit ago. 

“So let’s give ‘em something to talk about,” you say, sliding on the shades. 

Nancy clutches your arm, eyes wide and searching. “Lacy.”

You shrug, like it’s nothing. Except nerves have started nibbling at you. “Spot me a ten. What am I, a goddamn Rockefeller?”

“Not anymore,” Eddie Munson grins at you. Sun breaking through the bleak midwinter. The nerves cease their nibbling. 

—

The tension doesn’t exactly ease when you make a beeline for the drugstore (particularly because you’ve just accepted a goddamn miniature hero’s quest and he’s a little… well, he’s not not watching your ass as you walk away, let’s put it that way). 

Eddie and Nancy Wheeler are still absolutely enormous universes apart. Not even the same species. He doesn’t mind keeping it that way. This right here is just, like… the right thing to do. 

He moves to turn the radio down, figuring that the thrum of Fade to Black might be a little much for her right now. “Sorry. Didn’t mean for–”

“No, it’s okay.” Wheeler smiles that flat, priss smile reserved for the barest of polite gestures. 

Eddie nods, propping his elbow against the window, cupping his face in his hand. He keeps kind of sneaking sidelong glances toward Wheeler, because– well, had you told her anything? About… Seven Minutes in Heaven? Does she even remember that, from her birthday party all that time ago? He knew that you two weren’t exactly tight, but were well on your way to getting tight, but not as tight as you are with Ronnie and certainly not as tight as you are–or were–with him and Jesus Christ almighty, he’s got to find a synonym for the word tight.

“You… play Dungeons and Dragons, right?” Wheeler asks all of a sudden.

Eddie glances down– he is in fact wearing his Hellfire shirt. She’s a sharp one, that Nancy.

“I dabble,” he says, a derisive little chuckle that’s not all-the-way mean spirited.

Wheeler bobs her head. “My brother, Mike,” she says, and he sees now that it’s an effort to keep her nerves steady, “he loves it. Like, he’s totally obsessed. Him, and his friends, they’ve got their own little party going. Majorly long campaigns, very involved.” 

“Campaigns, parties. Using terminology like that, I’d say you’re something of a dabbler, Wheeler.”

Nancy chuckles. “I– may have dressed up as an elf for one. Or two. When I was way, way younger, though.”

“Well, your brother– Mike?” Eddie checks and Nancy nods, “Once he gets to high school, why dontcha tell him to look up Hellfire. Could be the best-worst decision he’ll make for the next four years of his life.”

“Right, because you’ll be passing the torch,” she says, grinning.

“And possibly to a Wheeler. Oh my stars and garters,” Eddie gasps, clutching his chest in mock-shock. 

Wheeler laughs and, okay, maybe she’s not so bad.

“Shoot, we have movement.” And out you come, holding the Advance pregnancy test over your head, gleaming and victorious– but Eddie and Nancy flap their hands, willing you to put that fucking thing away! We’re being subtle!

Climbing back in the van, you announce, “Alright, so the good news– no doctoral interference, obviously. The wonders of modern medicine, everybody give thanks to Johnson and Johnson, et cetera. The bad news– who knows of somewhere we can steal–” you glance back at the box, “--thirty glorious uninterrupted minutes of time?”

“Lacy, I can just–” Nancy starts, but you stop her short with a tap to the head. 

“And have you sitting in class all day with your guts churning because you don’t know what’s up or down that spout? I think the fuck not. We’re doing this now.” This is out of the goodness of your heart, you swear it is. 

But there might be a fraction, just a generous sliver, that still loves the drama. 

Like Steve Harrington, it’s not an immediate shed of the ego. It’s a slough. 

“Well, my place is a no-go,” Nancy tells you, shrugging into herself. “My mom will definitely be home.”

“Ditto,” and your mother is the only person you know that loves gossip more than you do. Besides Eddie, of course. 

After a beat or two of wondering silence, Eddie raises a hand. “I may… have someplace… we can go.”

—

How many cherry bombs does it take to make a boy’s bathroom look like the bombing of Dresden?

“So fuuun fact, turned out that some nerd swiped a hunk of sodium from the Chemistry lab and just blew this mother to shit,” Eddie brightly informs you and Nancy as the two of you pour over the instructions for the pregnancy test kit. 

“While everyone was distracted by Heather Holloway’s implants, you mean?” you murmur, scanning over the small-sheet size booklet.

“Streets are saying she was an accomplice.”

Holy fuck, these instructions were involved. Nancy stands clutching the little rectangular tray that her pee is supposed to go in, nailing Eddie with a look beyond normal categorical nerves. “You’re sure no one’s gonna come in here?” 

He shakes his head. There might as well be police tape all over the door of this bathroom, that’s how off limits it is. “It’s cold, it’s broken, it smells gross. Maybe some people are using this place to huff paint, but I can guarantee, Wheeler–” and he bends a little to meet her earnest eyes, “--I will bark like a fucking rabid dog to clear ‘em away if I need to.” 

Nancy nods shortly. Jerk, jerk. She disappears into the least dilapidated stall with her pee rectangle. 

“God, she is so scared,” Eddie murmurs to you, crossing his arms. 

You’re still studying the instructions. This shit has droppers and test tubes and color changing strips, oh my. “Pissing shouldn’t be a problem, then.”

Wrong.

“Guys.”

“Yes?” “Yeah, Wheeler?”

“I’m a little, ahem–” Bladder shy. Perfect. Awesome. Not that you guys aren’t going to be shacked up here for thirty minutes anyway, but that’s only after Nancy Wheeler goes number one and you, like, mix up the pregnancy oracle potion. 

Shit. “We’ve gotta do something to like, make her chill out–” Eddie half-mouths at you. 

“Yeah, but she’s so high strung, that’s like–” a spark hits you. “Wait, have you got anything on you?”

“Fresh out. Waiting on a shipment from Lipton landing.” 

You smack him, not even thinking, and he winces. “And all that shit you were smoking the other day, that was–” “That was market research, babe, and I told you that–”

Nancy clears her throat from inside the stall. “Please, don’t quit bickering on my account. I’m only trying to figure out whether or not I need to start rehearsing lullabies.” 

Damn Nancy, Eddie mouths and you almost laugh. Wait.

“Nance, what’s your favorite song?” 

“Huh?”

You shake your hands. “Like, the song you absolutely cannot go without hearing? The one that makes you feel, just–”

“Ticklish?” Eddie suggests, the paragon of knowledge, the pinnacle of your annoyance. You thump him again. “I need a safe word.”

“Um– uh…”

“C’mon, Wheeler, the song that makes you feel just… awesome and chill and on top of the fucking world, c’mon!” Eddie encourages, kicking detritus around the bathroom floor.

Nancy eventually, eventually mumbles something. 

You pivoting around on your heel by the sink. “Louder, Wheeler, I wasn’t born with sonar.”

“It’s– it’s ‘Just What I Needed’.”

What? Eddie mouths to you, arms binding across his chest. 

“What, like– The Cars, ‘Just What I Needed’?”

A pause from Nancy’s end. “... yeah.”

You know this song. You know that song, right, it’s like duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-DEW-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-DEW… Shaking yourself out, you brace up like a boxer heading into the ring. 

“Gimme a lead in, Nancy.” Holy fucking shit, you’re really doing this. Nancy hesitates, probably because she can’t believe any of you are really doing this. 

A mumble… “I don’t mind you comin’ here…”

“--and wastin’ all my time!” you jump in, “”cause when you’re standin’ oh so near, I kinda lose my mind…” 

Visions of a plush lilac bedroom, yours, and a mountain of clothes and makeup and drained wine cooler bottles on the floor. You, standing on your bed in your socks and shorts, vamping– Tina and Carol singing hairbrush backup, Nicole on air guitar and Cass smoking out the window. There were flashes of this, you know, when it wasn’t all boiling vitriol and subtle shivving and one-up-manship. When you and those girls that you wished you weren’t near but knew you needed actually felt like friends. 

A memory like that makes you feel empty. 

“It’s not the perfume that you wear,” oh my god, “It’s not the ribbons–in–your–hair,” is he really, “And I don’t mind you comin’ here– and wastin’ all my time!”

Why the fuck does Eddie Munson know this song?! Your jaw drops open, your eyes go wide and your feet stamp against the tile like a goddamn kid. Yes! Yes! Amazing! You’re both so fucking out of tune, like there is absolutely a reason he does not sing a single note in Corroded Coffin but by god alive, you’re giving it everything you got in that fucked up boy’s bathroom. 

Eddie’s so much better at it than you are, pouring every bit of obnoxious showmanship into it that he possibly can– complete with pulling you in for a fully nonsensical dance number. You spin into him, crashing into his chest with a clumsiness you never thought possible, laughing so hysterically that you can barely get the words out. He’s holding the reins, and holding that falsetto so badly you think the mirrors will shatter. 

Your skin is buzzing, your heart is hammering and Eddie is pressed against your back and you are both scream-singing to the door of Nancy’s cubicle– “I guess you’re just what I needed! Just what I needed! I needed someone to feed– I guess you’re just what I needed! Just what I needed I needed someone to–”

“Pee! Pee, you guys, I’m peeing!” Nancy’s voice, bright and high from actually laughing, rings from the busted toilet. 

You and Eddie erupt into a triumphant yell, him shaking you like a rag doll against him. The laughter peels away and then it’s just kind of him, looking at you from over your shoulder. His arms wrapped tight around your waist. His lips, a little cracked. Breath a little labored. Lashes still so long. You nearly–

The door flings open and he jumps away from you first. Nancy heads toward the sink and you resume the position, helping her figure out the Chemistry play set that holds the answer to how the rest of her life pans out. Thirty whole minutes, they’ve got to wait. 

Nancy notes the time on her watch. 

She even suggests that you guys can go at one point, but Eddie reminds her that a) he’s keeping an eye out for paint huffers and b) “... y’know, maybe it’s not so great to…” “Do this on your own,” you finish for him. Nancy nods, silent and grateful and so fucking nervous. 

At about the seventeen minute mark, when you and Eddie have smoked four cigarettes each and Nancy has tried a puff of one (“Nope,” she hacks, “still totally vile…”), Eddie tosses this stink bomb between you two. Nancy has excused herself to stand with her head against the cubicle door. Something about calming her nerves. Coming up with a plan. Something to tell Steve, no doubt. 

So it’s just you and Eddie, you sitting on the edge of the sink and Eddie rhythmically kicking the wall. 

“You ever wanna be a mom?”

“Jesus, what a time to land that one on me.” You almost make a joke like you haven’t even stuck it in me yet, but that’s in bad taste. And implies a yet. 

Eddie smiles over his shoulder, fluttering his eyelashes. Stupid. Stupid eyelashes. “Grounds of relevance.”

You pinch your lips between your teeth. “... fine. But, I fully reserve the right to change my answer given the fact that we are eight-shitting-teen years old.”

He points to the cubicle and mutters, “Well, she’s seventeen.”

You, wide-eyed at his dumbassery, mouth I know!

“Okay. Sorry. Go.”

“Fuuuuuck no. No babies pour moi, merci, c’est bon, au revoir!”

Eddie turns to lean against the wall, propping one leg up. God, but he does lean great. 

“Why?”

“Genetic fate.”

“Huh?”

A sigh flutters out of you, shoulders slumping forward. “A certain… how do you say, thread of assholery runs through my family, I don’t know if you’ve noticed.” 

Eddie nods sagely and you kind of want to punch him for it. “Daddy issues. Right.”

“Uh!” A hand flies up in your defense. “Let who among us here without them cast the first stone.”

From the cubicle, Nancy calls, “Not me.”

Surrendering, Eddie grumbles, “Yeah, not me either.”

“Glad we agree.”

There’s another tick and tock of silence, and you get the distinct feeling of something being pried open in the atmosphere. 

“... whatever happened with your dad, anyway?”

Ah. The million dollar question. Whatever happened with your dad, so-called upstanding member of the Hawkins community, poor little poor boy done rich, scaling his way up the ladder of property management in this delightful little Midwestern enclave?

“Not a big fan of the news, are we, Munson?”

He seems to grimace at you tugging on his surname. “Print’s too small.”

“Taking offense to that,” Nancy chimes. 

“It was the big ‘E’,” you say, kind of not into bantering about it. 

“‘E’... ‘E’... ‘E’...” Eddie kicks the wall on each utterance. Possibly forgetting that he could also be the big ‘E’, if he wanted. You wonder if, just in terms of size…

“Embezzlement, Eddie,” you cut that thought off cold. 

His eyes widen, eyebrows shooting under his shaggy bangs. “Shooooot.”

“Score.”

“What all did he, like… embezzle?”

The raising of the hackles is not entirely intentional. “Y’know who’d be able to answer that question, Eddie?”

But he sees it. He calms it. In unison, you both shrug, “Al Munson.”

Boom! Cubicle door flies open again. You’re starting to think that Nancy might just love making an entrance. Lot of flourishing happening here. Not entirely unlike Eddie in that way. 

“It’s time.” 

Each and every one of you beeline to where the test is set up on one of the sinks. Nancy gingerly plucks the offending strip from the test tube and Eddie, a man with money on his mind, asks another million dollar question. “So how do you know…”

You grab the instruction leaflet that you’d been tearing corners off of, making it look nearly moth-bitten. “Wait, it’s white, right?”

“It’s white,” Nancy whispers.

“It’s not, like… off blue, or…”

“No, that is white,” she’s trembling. “Is white– is that good, or– I can’t remember.”

“Nancy Wheeler…” you breathe, peeking over the paper, “Congratulations. You are nobody’s mother!” 

She emits a shriek like nothing you’ve ever heard and barrels straight into you, near knocking you off your feet with a strength you didn’t know this little waif was capable of possessing. Her arms wrap boa constrictor tight around you, her words bubbling over like a shook up can of pop. “Jesus Christ, I’m so relieved, I just– I–!”

“You’re relieved?!” Eddie yells, ringed hands tearing down his face, “I’m way too young to be an uncle! Fuck! Thank god!”

Nancy chokes out a laugh through her tears, tears of relief, thank god and– and you don’t know if it’s selfish and you don’t know if it’s possible but you hope… you hope that’s helped close the chasm. Just a little bit. That she didn’t have to do this all alone in a shithouse bathroom that smells like sulfur and piss. 

Breaking away from you (damn, you wish you knew how to hug), Nancy straightens herself up. Not that she needs to. She’s a pretty crier, that bitch. 

“Just one more thing, you guys.” 

“Anything,” you say before you even know you’ve said it. 

“This is… between us, okay?” her eyes dart from you to Eddie, and you both take a step closer to her. Ceremoniously, Nancy holds out her two pinkie fingers. You link. Eddie links. His finger looks comically large compared to hers– and yours, when he reaches and hooks it around your unsuspecting baby finger. 

“No one can know. No one needs to know.” There’s that headstrong Wheeler reserve you’d been missing. 

“Cross my heart,” you proclaim.

“Hope to d– well, I don’t hope to die, that’s a little dramatic–”

“Eddie!” you both bark, varying degrees of amusement. Yours is on the lower end. “Swear on something real,” you push. 

He hesitates a moment, then gives Nancy a look. “Alright. Swear on Hellfire.” 

“Swear on Hellfire,” Nancy grins all tight, and kisses her right hand, hooked into Eddie’s finger. “Lacy?”

“Swear on Hellfire…” You mumble, rolling your eyes and kissing your Nancy’d hand. You need to swallow, first, before you tug your hand that’s hooked into Eddie’s toward your mouth. 

And he does the worst thing. He leans down to meet your gaze, suckering you right in as his lips pout. They’re hungry. You’ve met those lips. “Swea-aar,” he sing-songs. 

“--on Hellfire, okay,” you scoff, half-laughing into the little kiss. 

“Ha!” Eddie barks, so fucking loud that it jumps off the walls. “Trick! You just made a deal with the devil, ladies, so I hope you enjoy eternal damnation at the hands of yours truly!”

Dumb as he is, Eddie might be right. If the way you’re looking at him is anything to go by.

author's notes: MERRY CHRISTMAS MOTHERFUCKERS. WE GOT IT WE DID IT WE MADE THEM KISS WE MADE THEM REALIZE SOMETHINGS NOT ALL THE THINGS SURELY BUT IT'S. IT'S SOMETHING. IT'S A START! on to the fun bits, like the jokes in the christmas crackers - absolutely obsessed with the mental image of eddie munson's bangs grown too long and he looking like this - cherry bombs down the john is a reference to the classic prank but mostly to american graffiti my beloved. later in the chapter, eddie says that some kid just threw some sodium down there which is something i read about on this reddit thread when researching cherry bombs. domestic terrorism at hawkins high! - p.t. barnum is that mfer that the greatest showman is based on. horrible man! not a fan! - heather holloway's jayne mansfield titties got me thinking about the jayne mansfield-sophia loren photo which has its own wikipedia page??? anyway, lacy coded! - black christmas is a stunning christmas horror film from 1974, which is loosely in part based on a bunch of murders that happened in the westmount neighborhood in montreal, quebec. fun fact, i just moved back from mtl after living there for a year. anyway black christmas kicks ASS - lipton landing is 100% a juno reference. big up my king elliot page - the thin man is one in a series of fantastic lil films from the 1930s all about nick and nora charles, a married couple that get drunk and SOLVE CRIMES. i'm not doing it justice by describing it that way but myrna loy and william powell are the royals of married banter and i model everything i write after their rhythm, more or less. - you're trying to tell me eddie munson didn't do whippets as a kid fucking wise up - one of my personal precious favourite recurring jokes in this series is 'who died and made you my x' and baby. i love a recurring joke - ronnie saying "oh she'll kill ya. then i'll go to work on ya," is a special reference because a) it's from my favourite film of all time, ocean's eleven and b) ayo edebiri, who i've fancast as ronnie ecker, has an ocean's eleven tattoo. we are sisters and also wives! - meep meep! - all i could think about when writing about how guilty lacy was - another metallica needle drop!!!! - pregnancy tests in the 80s really were that insane and involved! there's a great scene in glow (rest in fucking PEACE! gone but never forgotten) of alison brie's character using one, and here's more of the history - maybe the best needle drop of this whole series imo - finally peeped into those daddy issues. look forward to more of that and with that my hellcats, i wish you the merriest of holiday seasons wherever you find yourself and whatever you're doing. i will be back after the christmas break because i have to fully wreck my bank account and see every single person i have ever known and drink every espresso martini on dry land. sorry if there's typos in this, i have been labouring over it for... ever. reblogs, comments, likes and asks are always appreciated and i love you so much it's bordering on criminal! thank you!!!!

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

[seresinsbabe]

Happy anniversary! Can I get Hangman for List 4 with number 44, “I saw you naked once.  And now I can’t stop thinking about it" please!

Thank you!! This started out as a blurb and it well...it's definitely not a blurb anymore.

Pairing: Jake "Hangman" Seresin x fem!reader

Warnings: 18+! MDNI! Awkward encounters, awkward Jake, mentions of alcohol, mentions of masturbation, smut, p in v, unprotected sex (be smart with your parts please!)

Ash's 1K Follower Celebration

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

It had been a complete accident. Jake had been distracted by something stupid Rooster had said and instead of opening the bathroom door he opened your bedroom door.

There your naked form stood still glistening with water from the shower you'd just taken. A glob of white lotion in your hand that hovered just over your chest where you'd been getting ready to apply it. Droplets of water fell from your hair, running down until they'd hit your nipples. All peaked and perky from the air conditioning that kept the home at a comfortable temperature in the San Diego summer.

He'd stared way too long. Drinking in every inch of you before he realized what he was doing. His face heating up in embarrassment as he slammed the door shut and yelled and apology.

That was a month ago and he'd been unable to wipe you from his mind since.

Not that he wanted to.

But it would a little less painfully pitiful if he could.

The images of you writhing underneath him, screaming out his name, taking his cock as deep as you could. They kept him awake at night. He'd jerked off more in the past month than he had since he hit puberty.

For the first couple of weeks after it had happened he couldn't look at you. Now he could, until you looked at him and then he was immediately jerking his gaze away from you.

It actually hurt you. The way he was doing everything in his power to avoid looking at you.

Since it happened you'd been wracking your brain as to why Jake was being this way. At first you chalked it up to embarrassment. And that made sense. He'd walked in on Phoenix's roommate. Of course he'd be embarrassed, but you figured that the embarrassment would blow over. It was fucking Jake Seresin. You were surprised he was embarrassed in the first place. Now that the avoidance continued you started to wonder if it was because of how you looked when naked. Maybe he'd found you so abhorrent that he couldn't bear to look at you.

Whatever the reason you were bound and determined to find out. Tonight was the night.

When Nix had come home earlier that week, letting you know that Rooster had invited the both of you over for a barbecue and bonfire, you started hatching a plan.

It wasn't a complex plan by any means. The only steps to it included cornering Jake when he was alone and asking him straight up why he wouldn't look at you.

Your chance came when he got up, mentioning something about need to hit the head. You waited a minute after his departure and got up yourself. Stating you were going to mix up another drink in the kitchen. No one questioning the fact that you had a full drink in your hand.

The house was empty and just as you breached the door you heard the toilet flush. A bit of the whiskey and coke spilled on the counter as you set it down in a rush to catch Jake in the hallway.

He'd thought he'd done good all night. Avoiding looking at you and preventing a tent from forming in his jeans. If he looked at you his mind would wander. The memory of the smell of the pomegranate and vanilla lotion would invade his senses and he couldn't do that in front of everyone. They'd give him so much shit.

"Why the fuck won't you look at me?" Jake jumped a bit when he opened the door. The last thing he'd been expecting was you standing there, hands on your hips and foot tapping expectantly.

"Wha-I- what are you talkin' about?" He felt his throat constrict. He couldn't not look at you and he was trying to everything in his head to keep from thinking about you naked and covered in water.

A huff of air flared your nostrils and your arms moved from your hips to cross over your chest. Jake had to look away again for a second as the movement pushed your tits up, exposing them more than the flimsy sundress already was.

"Since you saw me naked! Am I that repulsive that you can't even look at me now?!"

Huh? His eyes snapped to yours. You thought that he thought you were repulsive?

A soft grin pulled at his mouth as he searched your eyes. "That's what you think?" Jake asked, taking steps towards you. "That I saw you naked and can't look at you because you're ugly?"

"Well yeah. Why else?" You pushed back, jutting your chin up as you met his eyes.

Jake let out a sarcastic chuckle, stepping towards you again until your back hit the wall. His arms came up, caging you in on either side. Your eyes flickered between the limbs, noting the way they flexed and how it made his veins more prominent.

"Sweets, I saw you naked once," he started, leering down at you with a look you couldn't quite place, "and now I can't stop thinking about it." Jake's mouth hovered just over yours. "I can't look at you because if I do all the things I want to do to you flood my brain." His voice was low and husky.

You swallowed hard, feeling a coil start to build in your belly. Jake Seresin wanted to fuck you. Jake Seresin couldn't look at you because he wanted to fuck you so badly. You.

"Then let your brain win."

You weren't sure where the sudden boldness came from. Maybe it was the coil in your belly tightening or with the intoxicating smell of his cologne. Sandalwood and cognac. Whatever it was you knew you wanted him and you knew you wanted him to act on what he wanted.

His eyes searched yours, the green orbs darkened with lust. When he found whatever it was he was looking for he captured your lips in a heated kiss.

Your arms wrapped around his neck and he lifted you up by your thighs, wrapping your legs around his waist. With one hand and the wall he kept you up while his other hand blindly searched for a doorknob. He didn't care what room he fucked you in, he just knew he couldn't fuck you in Rooster's hallway.

It didn't take him long to find a doorknob and before you knew it you were naked and underneath him on a mattress. Whether it was Rooster's or a guests you didn't care.

"Oh fuck!" The expletive flew out of your mouth as your back arched. Jake had buried himself inside of you, stretching your walls deliciously.

It took him a few seconds to start thrusting. So many you almost started begging him to move. Each thrust had your walls molding around his cock, clenching and unclenching in a way that had him almost seeing stars.

"So-fuck-" he faltered in his words when he hit that spot in your cunt that had you squeezing him like a vice. "Gon'be the death f'me." He mumbled, his head falling into the crook of your neck.

The mewls falling from your mouth grew louder, nearing screams the closer he brought you to the edge. Neither of you thinking about the group of people outside.

"What's taking them so lo-" Coyote's question was cut short when they heard the sound of your scream. They all knew what it meant.

"Fucking finally!" Phoenix mumbled, tossing back the rest of her drink and then throwing the beer can in the fire.

"Ah shit...I think they're in my room." Rooster groaned and slumped further in his chair. "I just washed the sheets too!"

#ash hits 1k #seresinsbabe 1k celebration #jake hangman seresin #jake seresin #hangman #hangman x reader #jake seresin x you #jake seresin x reader #tgm fic #tgm smut #jake seresin smut #hangman smut #jake hangman seresin x you #hangman x you #jake hangman seresin smut

[justmystyles]

Hi, could you make a fic about something to do with money maybe Harry dating a girl who came from not much and she still isn’t used to the fancy things in life like he is and so when there dating she feels bad ever spending his money.

I’m currently having to sell most of my Harry merch because we can’t afford to fix things in our house and I am very sad over it so I just need some comfort but if you decide not to write this, you’re still one of my favorite writers. Thank you for all the comfort you bring me.

Love Don't Cost A Thing

read my other work here

pairing: Harry Styles x plus size reader

word count: 1.1k

warnings: a couple of curse words, but other than that, it's tame.

a/n: to my anonymous requester, i am so sorry for the hard times you have found yourself in. i wish i had something i could say that would help you through. just know that hard times don't last forever, there will be a light at the end of the tunnel, and i am hoping and praying that you reach it soon.

also, thank you so much for your kind words. i am so incredibly honored that you consider me one of your favorite writers, that compliment made more than just my day, i think it may have made my whole summer. i hope this blurb is what you are looking for, and provides you the comfort you need right now.

if you ever need someone to talk to, i am here. i may not be able to provide much, but i am happy to be a listening ear (reading eye?) if you need one. 🖤

tags: @allthelovehes @ameerakane20 @ash-craze @bethanysnow @blue-ballad @brightlightsinlife @creativelyeva @cute-as-ducks420 @fanficismydrug @gem1712 @golden-hoax @gothmingguk @groovychaosavenue @hillzrry @iceebabies @indierockgirrl @jerseygirlinca @jng4kook @jooniesbabie @kaverichauhan @lexiecamposv @mrs-anna-styles211994 @n0vaj3an @rach2699 @ravenclawdirectioner @stylesfeverr @superchrystaldrug @tenaciousperfectionunknown @tiaamberxx @thechaoticjoy @theekyliepage @walkingintheheartbreaksatellite @youknowwhaaat

The waiter drops the check at your table, thanking you for coming in and continues on his way. You reach your hand out to grab it, but Harry beats you to it. Again.

“Harry, you don’t have to–” 

“I know, baby, but I want to. I love spoiling my girl.” He reaches his free hand across the table, squeezing yours gently. 

Ever since you and Harry started going out, you hadn’t paid for a thing. Not only that, but the things he’s been paying for have been extravagant and way outside of your comfort zone. The gifts, the meals, the flowers, the flights. He has taken you around the world and back, and has refused to let you pay for any of it.

Holidays and birthdays had been hard too. Harry always gave you multiple extravagant gifts, you could never even come close to matching it. He told you he didn’t care, that your gifts were always so meaningful, and that’s what was important. You knew he meant it, that he didn’t need you to buy him fancy things. He was more than capable of doing it himself. But it didn’t matter to you, you felt an imbalance in the relationship that was only growing with time. And you were sure that the gossip blogs and fans noticed it, talking about how you were just with him for his money. It wasn’t true, you and Harry knew that and it should have been enough, but it wasn’t. 

You didn’t grow up poor, you were grateful for what you had and knew that there were others that were worse off than you. But you didn’t even have half of what you were experiencing now. Your parents raised you to be practical with your money, to save and not to spend frivolously. You always had what you needed, but weren’t always able to have what you wanted. 

Now that you were with Harry, even if you just made an offhand comment about a cute piece of jewelry or clothing, all of the sudden it was yours. You love Harry, and you know he was doing it because he loves you too, but it still didn’t sit right with you. 

Later that night, you were laying in bed together. Harry was talking to you about his schedule for the upcoming month.

“So I was thinking you could come meet me in Paris. We could go to that little cafe we love, do a little shopping.” He suggested with a smile, loving the idea of walking through the most romantic city in the world with the love of his life. 

“Sure,” you agreed. “I could probably swing the money for a round trip ticket.” 

“You’re not swinging anything,” he pressed a kiss to your temple. “I’ve got you, baby.” 

“Harry, I can afford a flight.” You’re not sure you really can. You’ll probably eat canned goods and boxed mac and cheese for a month, but it’s better than the guilt you feel every time Harry opens his wallet for you. 

“I know you can, but you shouldn’t have to. I’m asking you to come spend time with me, it should be my treat.” 

“Yeah, but everything is always your treat, Harry.” You say with a slight bite in your tone. 

Harry looks at you confused, and a little bit hurt. “Angel, are you alright?” 

“No Harry, I don’t think I am,” you confess. “I can’t keep doing this, it doesn’t feel okay.” Harry stays silent, allowing you to say what you need too. “I love you so much, and you have the kindest, most generous heart of anyone I have ever met. I just, it’s just too much. The meals, the gifts. You don’t let me pay for anything, I feel like… I don’t know. I know you don’t see a problem with it, but I do. It just makes me feel… uncomfortable. I’m basically living off of your money, and I don't feel right about it.”

“Baby,” he said as he let out a breath. “I had no idea you felt this way.” He brought his hand up, brushing your cheek gently. 

“I know you didn’t. And it’s a me problem, I know that too.” 

Harry shakes his head sharply. “No it’s not, it’s an us problem. You’re my girl, we’re in this together.” You look down, overwhelmed by how tender he was being with you despite the way you unloaded on him. “Why haven’t you told me about this before?”

You shrug, “I don’t know, it sounds kind of crazy when you think about it.”

“How?” He asked.

“Because, there are girls that would kill to be in my position, who would love to be spoiled and given all these extravagant gifts, and here I am complaining about it. I sound so ungrateful.” 

“Hey hey hey,” Harry holds your face in his hands. “You do not sound ungrateful.” He strokes your cheeks with his thumbs. “I love you, I love you so much and I give you all of these things because you deserve the world.”

“I love you too, but I don’t need all these things, the fancy dinners, the clothes, I just need you.”

He smiles softly at you, the adoration clear in his gaze. “I know angel, and that’s one of the things I love most about you. Your heart is so pure and good. I am so incredibly lucky that you have given it to me to hold, and I don’t ever want you to feel uncomfortable, especially not because of my actions.” 

“I know, and that’s part of the reason I didn’t tell you, I knew you’d feel bad. I don’t want you to feel bad about doing nice things for me.” 

“Tell me what I can do, how I can make you feel better.” He asked, willing to do anything to make you happy. 

You take a deep breath as you try to articulate your needs. “When I offer to pay for things, let me.”

Harry nods in agreement, pulling your face to his and kissing you softly. “Anything you want, love.” 

“And just because I say something is cute, doesn’t mean you have to buy it for me.” You add. 

“Got it,” he kisses you again. “But I can still spoil you sometimes, right?” 

“Sometimes,” you say in a subtle warning tone. “Just not all the time.”

Harry smiles, his brow arching mischievously. “How about I spoil you right now, and it won’t cost a cent.” 

Your breath catches in your throat at the implication of his words. “Sure, I guess I’d be okay with that.” 

#harry styles #harry styles x reader #harry styles x fem!reader #harry styles x plus size reader #harry styles headcanon #harry styles fluff #harry styles angst #harry's house #harry styles fanfic #harry styles fanfiction #harry edward styles #harry styles imagine #harry styles one shot #harry styles x you #harry styles x y/n #love on tour #harry styles blurb #harry styles fic

[thegnomelord]

Shark

- 🦈

(WOBSVHDVUH. HOLY MOTHER OF SHARKS. HOW DO YOU WRITE SO GOOD. Gosh you, darn you, daum you. Fuel my god daum brainrot.

Now im thinkin of angst. DONT WRITE IT, I CANNOT HANDLE YOUR WRITING IN ANGST. THIS IS JUST A BRAIN BLURB.

Price is close to death whether it be the ultimte battle between the destruction of all that can die or of a horrid enemy, they have yet to defeat.

Price is alive, but too far to be ever saved. The boys want to summon their captain's ole friend, to say a well had goodbye, maybe even save him. But no books, no scrolls, nor anything etched in stone on the surface depicts them. Nothing.

Price dies knowing hes lived a good life, praying to all the gods that his beloved eldritch dosent destroy the surface he called home.

The only way the poor eldritch finds out, are when Prices ashes are swallowed by the waves.

In every storm, waves tower over the heights of skyscraper, to the point not even those that could fly can cross. Death is quick when it comes to the ocean, like it trying to collect all power it can withhold. Creatures are cruel when it comes to what has killed their gods beloved, relentlessly acttacting what they can. Sharks are rare, to the point their sighting have come near myth or legend. Yet, they will always come come towards any that is draconic for they miss them. Ocean creatures, humanoid or not, would cry with no control, close to fire, dragons or smoke. They grieve. They all grieve.

But, Dragons seem to live longer when close to the waves. Saving them in dire situations when the fall from they sky, wounds healed when submerged in the salty sea. Even if you were pure fire, absolute whole magma. You'd be saftely cradled in any and all water. Water is the safest, the safest they have ever felt in all of their exsistence. They know this feeling, it is old, it is familiar, it is embedded in blood.

For the ocean rembers, it always remembers.)

Okay honestly your brain farts are always so good but. . . But . . . I'm so sorry sharky. This came to before you even wrote your ask and now I have to do it, you're just the sacrificial goat. . .

CW: SFW, angst, made myself cry :/ Got some idea inspo from @heliumknife

John Price doesn't die on a notable day. He doesn't die on the day of reckoning, doesn't die on the day fire rains from the sky and blood muddles your oceans, doesn't die alongside human gods, doesn't die on the day he may meet what made him and hear he was a good man.

John Price dies on a regular Tuesday night.

Not even a blip on the radar.

Having saved the oblivious world yet again he retches a bloodied cough as he stumbles on the beach he'd ended up on. His legs give out, the course sand rubbing his skin when he falls, red blood slowly seeping between the grains. Distantly he can hear his boys calling for him, watching the waves wash onto the shore, the tide too low to reach him; too low for you to sense him.

He can feel Gaz scrambling to stem his bleeding, Soap desperately searching through the first aid kit, Ghost barking on the coms that Price is hit. And as the world begins to grow quiet, the low murmur of waves washing upon the sand filling his ears, washed up amber glittering in his blurring eyes, the scent of seaweed and brine filling his rapidly slowing lungs—

Price smiles — he'll slumber with you soon.

Only when the morning tide comes in do you sense his blood, do you rouse from the depths like lightning, waking from a nightmare to find it has followed you to the waking world.

You're too late.

Like always.

He's so still.

Peaceful — worry lines and wrinkles smoothed out and face relaxed you could delude yourself into thinking he's just sleeping. Oh those dragons with their slumber; he'll grumble when you go to wake him, demanding five more bloody minutes of your attention as if he's the god here. Cling to you like a barnacle and growling like a kitten until you give in and lay down next to him. Give a rumbling purr and laugh at how he got a god wrapped around his finger until you shut him up with a kiss.

But you can't.

Your vessel's eyes keep darting to the blood staining his clothes, the crusted red lines trailing from his lip down his chin, the stillness of his chest, the silence.

They tell you John Price died protecting his team from a brutal foe. John Price died protecting the world. John Price died protecting the very people who in your recent shared memory had been happy to sharpen sticks and melt rock into to steel all in an vain attempt at glory. . .

John Price died a hero.

Your John died.

And you weren't there.

"Hey. . ." You look at Gaz when he speaks, standing on the opposite side of the medical table they've laid his body on. ". . .I know you two were, close." He chokes up, voice rough and nasally, fresh tear tracks staining his cheeks.

You envy him for it. For once you wish you were the ant on a circuit board instead of it's maker, just so you could see the world like they do, mourn like they do — open, visible, showing you cared, showing he wasn't just a toy in your sandbox. That Price was the voice you'd hear when loosening the noose of the rope, the beckoning call beyond the reach of your waves, the one that held that wretched excuse you call a heart.

But you can't.

All your treacherous vessel manages to achieve is a small dip in the corner of your lip. "So were you." Your voice is low and garbled like you're drowning, the rumble of icebergs scraping on the ocean floor filling the silence behind each syllable.

Gaz flinches like he'd been slapped, unable to look at the man he loved as much as you did. "Yeah," His gaze flickers everywhere like fleeing fishes in a reef, "I'm sorry." He blurts out.

"Don't be." You don't look at him, your cold hand reaching out to trace Price's jaw, coarse beard scratching your flesh. "You loved him when I couldn't." A part of you wants to be angry at Gaz for harboring John's affection and attention, that it's not fair for him to be able to mourn when you've known your John long before Athenians and Spartans decided to throw hissy fits in your waters. But you can't call yourself a lover he deserved when you met him so rarely, a blink of the eye for you and a century passes.

"Are you going to kill us now?" Kyle asks, not scared, as if he's expecting it.

It shames you, but you thought about it; of sea life growing gigantic and voracious under your influence, of making the sky weep in your stead, of violent waves rising up and devouring the planet for taking away your world. What's the point of it's existence when the one who made it shine has been snuffed out?

"No," You sigh in resignation. You can't, not while there are still people and places John loved, not while vestiges of him remain. You can't kill what's left of him, protect them like you couldn't do with him.

Gaz tells you they plan to cremate him in line with dragon customs, only to take a step back when you pick your John up to cradle in your arms, his loose wing draping over your shoulder, his head resting on your shoulder, nose buried in your neck as if he's scenting you once again.

"I'll come to collect the rest of you when you pass." You say before disappearing with Price, because if you had to answer Gaz's questions — Why are you taking his body when you weren't even there when he died? Why do you act like you care when you saw him so rarely? Why are you taking him away from Gaz when he was the one who loved Price? What gives you the right? — you would have drowned a country.

Water rushes around him the moment you are back in your element, holding him in a cradle made of your waters like the first time he'd fallen into the ocean so many millennia ago. Water bubbles escape his open mouth as your waves caress and kiss each inch of him, crusted blood muddling the brine around him as you pull him as close to your real body as you can.

Searching.

You can feel his soul once your waters have kissed every inch of his skin, faint yet stubbornly clinging on somewhere in the aether, no doubt giving Death a headache.

You were once a soul too were you not? Just a dead thing too dumb to know it died; somewhere deep beneath the individual writhing sharks and decaying corpses and fossilized bone making up your body resides your original one, nothing but a chunk of rock with the imprint of what you had as a skeleton at the time.

For if Death doesn't come to claim it, a soul won't die until the body's gone. You had slipped past the cracks, grew fat and large on the other souls until Death could no longer touch you without fear of being swallowed whole.

You doubt it would let Price slip through like it had with you, fortunately you put claim on his soul long ago. You swim to the deepest part of the earth where burning geothermal vents spew minerals into freezing cold waters, where you slumber and feed on the souls of the dead.

You curl around him, living and dead bodies parting until Price rests wrapped around the oldest part of you.

Embracing you like he always wanted to.

He waited so long for you.

Now it's your turn to wait. This time you will be there.

And if the oceans above rage for months, if the season long rain floods the streets, if the weather makes it so that in the crushing depths no one can pick out your tears from the ocean brine, all the better.

#gnome correspondence #cod mw2 #x reader #male reader #trinkets from the hoard #captain john price #kyle gaz garrick #price x gaz #captain john price x male reader #captain john price x reader #eldritch reader #angst #immortal x mortal #john price cod #cod monster au #monster 141 au

[lukesdice]

'Till the Day I Die

Luke Hemmings x Reader

Word Count: 1.6k

Warnings: Some swearing

Blurb: You hadn’t seen your ex boyfriend in 7 months after he broke your heart, and at a party you finally see him again.

Note: hey :) I wrote this short piece as an introduction to me writing for 5sos! If you have any requests for any of the boys, pls send them in 🖤

The light drizzle of rain tickled the tip of your nose and the ends of your lashes, a chilling breeze causing you to pull your thin jacket tighter around yourself. The muffled beat of lounge rock music drawled through from the patio doors, a light chatter of tipsy voices and clattering mixed in with the soft tunes.

"Have you spoken to Luke tonight?" Calum asked you, taking a short drag from his cigarette and turning to face you as he pressed his elbows to the cool metal on the balcony railing.

You shook your head and sighed, staring out at the darkening view of the city lights.

"Are you going to?"

Smoke tingled with your senses as you wrung your hands together, thinking for a short minute.

"Why can't he speak to me first?" you asked, not once tearing your eyes away from directly looking in front of you.

"He's not going to do that," Calum said, "I think he's scared."

You sighed again.

Calum held out his half-smoked cigarette in front of you, drops of ashes dusting the balcony floor.

You let the smoke inhale into your throat and exhale out of your mouth again, watching the clouds in front of you dance into the chilling air.

"Does he even regret leaving me without even really giving me a reason?" you asked, twisting the cigarette between your fingers a little.

A moment of silence passed.

"He hasn't really spoken much about it" Calum said.

You sighed for a third time.

You handed Calum his cigarette and took a swig of your vodka mixer, it's harsh burn trickling down your throat. You pulled the cup away from your lips and screwed your face into a disgusted frown.

Calum chuckled loudly, "not really a vodka girl huh?"

You shook your head and coughed a little, "but it gets me drunk quick so fuck it" you laughed lightly.

After Calum had finally decided to leave to find another drink, you decided to make your way to the toilet, smiling and waving at a few people on the way. You stared at yourself in the mirror, mascara now slightly smudged and hair a little frizzy from the faint rain. You combed your fingers through it to try and untangle the knots, adjusting your skirt to a more suitable position.

"Fuck" you whispered to yourself, the light buzz in your head from the alcohol kicking in a little.

As you left the bathroom, you noticed Luke from the corner of your eye, his curly blonde hair and sparkly eyeshadow was instantly recognisable. He was wearing his favourite suit trousers and converse, the combo you always thought looked great on him.

He was smiling and laughing with Ashton and some girl, your heart picking up in speed. You knew it was wrong to feel pissed off at the fact he looked happy, you just wanted him to be miserable without you. You knew that sounded cruel but you couldn't help it. You wanted him to feel as broken as you did when he left.

You made your way back to the balcony, now alone, beginning to feel anxious and awkward at the sight of seeing your now ex-boyfriend of 7 months.

"Oh" you heard awkwardly from behind you.

You slowly turned around, your heart now hammering in your chest as you came face to face with Luke.

You stared silently at each other for what felt like five minutes, it becoming obvious to you that Luke hadn't come out here because he knew you were and wanted to see you.

"Sorry" he croaked.

"I didn't know you were out here."

You twisted your lips between your teeth, racking your brain for anything to say back that didn't sound stupid.

"Why? Am I that unbearable to see?" you questioned, not even really aggressively but more in a defeated manner.

Luke cast his eyes away from you for a moment and you could see his cheeks heating up a little with embarrassment.

"No" was all he could say.

"How are you anyway?" you asked, trying your best to make conversation. For some reason you desperately didn't want him to leave, and you wanted at least a minute more with him. Even if your head and heart hurt whenever you looked into his blue eyes.

"I'm fine" he replied, looking uncomfortable in the spot he was standing in but obviously scared to even move a muscle. "You?"

"I'm okay" you told him.

He nodded slightly before turning around to place his hand on the handle of the patio door, ready to re-enter the party.

Your shoulders dropped as you turned back to the view, tears forcing their way to teeter on the edge of your eyelids. You knew seeing him would hurt but you weren't prepared for the actual literal pain it brought.

"Actually I'm shit."

Your eyebrows raised slightly as your body tensed up. You kept your focus on the buildings and cars below you, scared of what to reply and shocked at his admittance.

"I've been shit since we broke up, and it's worse 'cause it's all my fault."

Your mouth felt dry, a tear that had been taunting you fell quickly down your cheek. You brought your hand up to your cheek to wipe it away and it was gone as quickly as it had come.

You had been longing for and imagining this moment over and over, concocting scenarios in your head where he had said this to you in various different ways, but you couldn't even now bring yourself to look at him anymore, never-mind respond.

You heard him sigh and begin to open the door, his footsteps shuffling for a moment before stopping, the music from inside now a little louder.

"I may have fucked up and you may hate me," Luke said quietly from behind you.

"But fucking hell, I know I will love you 'till the day I die."

Your chest rose and fell heavily, another couple of tears crawled down your face, but still no words came to mind. You felt as stuck as a clay statue.

You heard the door shut behind you and the music was instantly muffled again, and you knew that you were alone. A soft quiet sob left your mouth, as you hugged yourself tightly and mentally berated yourself for not saying anything.

After another ten minutes of calming yourself down, you re-entered the party, desperately scanning your eyes around the room for his blonde mop of hair. You couldn't see him anywhere. You began to panic that you had fucked up your chance after he had just literally told you he still loved you.

"He left a few minutes ago" Calum told you as he sloped up to you, a beer grasped in his hands. His eyes were glassy from being a bit too drunk. "You might still catch up to him" he smirked a little, like he was telling you that he knew something you didn't.

You thanked Calum and left through the front door, practically running down the flights of stairs and to the front of the building complex.

There he was, waiting out on the pavement for a taxi.

You cautiously approached him, shivering a little in the nighttime breeze and steady rain.

"I don't hate you" you said, making Luke jump a little at your sudden voice.

He turned to stare into your soul, his bright blue eyes the only thing you could focus on as a small curl tickled his brow, his leather jacket covered in little raindrops and glitter dotted over his cheeks as the rain had migrated it from his eyelids.

"I fucked up Y/N and I'm sorry, so sorry" he suddenly began to ramble without warning, "I don't deserve you, I fuck-" his voice cracked.

You took one step closer to him.

"I was just scared of hurting you or that you would hurt me so I ran away, and I fucking hurt you anyway" he continued, his blue eyes were vast teary oceans.

"Luke" you whispered softly.

He stopped his rambling, as you stood directly in front of him.

"I fucking miss you" you choked out without really thinking as he gave you a wet sad smile in reply.

He opened his mouth to reply but as he did so, his taxi pulled up to the curb, the driver inside motioning for him to hurry. Luke gave him a wave and turned back to you, drinking all of you in as he seemed to fight with himself not to leave you now. Not like this.

"Do you need a ride home?" he asked.

"I don't want to be a pain."

"Please" he almost begged you.

You agreed and climbed into the taxi before him, your heart and head in a mess of confusion and intense emotion. You still hadn't quite registered the fact that Luke had finally explained his reason for why he hurt you, even if it was in a few rambled sentences. You still hadn't really taken in the fact that Luke still loved you.

You were both silent in the back of the dim taxi, your hand next to you gripping the edge of the middle seat. You desperately wanted to look at Luke but a part of you felt too rigid with nerves to move your head even a crack.

But as the taxi slowly followed traffic in front, you suddenly felt a warmth upon your hand, your chest fluttering a little as you looked over at Luke's hand on yours.

You let him intertwine his fingers with yours, resting your entangled hands on the middle seat, neither of you spoke a word but a thousand feelings were exchanged.

Luke softly squeezed your hand like he always used to, and a small smile tickled the corners of your lips, because you hadn't felt these innocently romantic feelings since you had first met.

#5sos #5 seconds of summer #luke hemmings #calum hood #ashton irwin #michael clifford #5sos fic #luke hemmings fic #luke hemming imagines #luke hemmings x reader #5sos x reader #5sos imagine #calum hood x reader #luke hemmings x y/n #luke hemmings x you #ashton irwin x reader #michael clifford x reader

[darlingofvalyria]

❝The story where your rage nearly tore Winterfell to ashes?❞

[ You talk your daughter down from her cold feet. ]

[ 1,405 ] [ series masterlist ] | king!jacaerys velaryon x aunt targ!reader (aegon's twin)

contains— canon divergence - fluff, smidge of angst - allusions to warfare, character death(s), infidelity, revenge, manipulative targ!reader - children, arranged marriage, mentions of pregnancy and childbirth - sort of fluff?? bits of angst, toxic as shit hhshs - no kings, no martyrs, no betas.

a/n— a little blurb before the third proper instalment of 'in hightower green' (yes, we now have a masterlist and a series title!!). this is post-the series, & contains a hint on what happens to the third part, which will be a two-parter, cos its heavy and reader goes full gone girl shdjshdhs can't wait to share it!! but for now have a glimpse of the future lol + comment, reblog & like at will, my loves!!

"I was told that you were on the verge of fainting, but I see you are upright as a horse." A faint smile glimmers on your playful lips as your daughter turns, smiling in an exact replica of how Helaena smiles.

It bursts wildflowers and warmth in your chest as you approach, standing behind her as you take the earrings from her fingers that have been turning them around and around, Nila, the spider whose web you placed by your daughter's, said.

You balance the heavy accessory, before you say, "Let me."

A quiet settles the pair of mother and daughter, the chaos of the feast unable to taint the tranquility provided in her chambers. As you take care in placing the baubles for her ears you press a gentle smile on your face as you gaze upon her on the mirror. Maegella Velaryon is a patchwork creation of your most beloved people, despite being the fourth born daughter and the second triplet, she bore Helaena's smile and Aemond's dusky laughter.

Though there is the Strong features in her jaw and face shape, her eyes and hair are your mother's. The Hightower features you have adored since childhood, the auburn hair and the gentle, round brown eyes.

Your seventh child bears the most resemblance to your Hightower roots, as she is the only one with her grandmother's auburn locks. Sweet orange red, a shimmer of a dying flame.

"I do not know if I am making the right decision, your grace." She breaks the silence, meeting your violet gaze with her gentle brown. She is young, on the verge of her womanhood, while you have aged, a mirror of what visage will soon become. "I understand that the Lord Stark is an honourable man, most auspicious is our arrangement thus far, but..."

"But?"

"I am fearful," she whispers.

There is Aegon in her chin, in her purse lips. It tugs at your heartstrings further at the reminder of your beloved twin.

Your children have always been Aegon's favourite to spoil, but much more your triplet daughters.

"They all look so much like you, sweet sister, even if their colouring is not fully Valyrian," he had said when they were born, snuggled against each other in their sleep much like the two of you when you were newborn babes.

"So they look like you, since we are twins," you teased. He nudged you with an elbow, giggling.

"Yes, exactly." He turned to Maegella, newborn as she is, her hair had been a lighter shade of red orange back then. He runs a finger down her hair and forehead before booping her button nose. "This one has mother's hair."

"And brown eyed. I thought of naming her Alicent, but I digressed. Much too on the nose."

He laughed. "Maybe the next one then, as for sure you will be round with the Strong bastard's babe once more."

Though there was no heat to his tone, you still slapped his arm. It wasn't like he was wrong. You promised Jace you will bring him heirs.

You promised yourself strong babes. Their blood is yours, and they breathe with you.

"Oh, my sweet, darling girl," you say now, smiling gently as you place a coifed, auburn lock back behind strings of pearl that swept up her hair in elegant coils, not unlike fully bloomed roses cinched together. "You are about to make a new life for yourself, there is much to fear. But you are the blood of the dragons. And of the oldest, greatest House in Westeros. And the sea. Which is ancient, and has drowned men in vigour despite her age."

"Just like Vhagar?"

You laugh. "Much like Vhagar when she lived, yes, that old, ferocious girl."

She giggles then sighs as you hold her close to you. Gentle as you are to her wedding attire, a faint, seafoam blue laced white dress. A gift from her father.

You stand straight, something in your expression triggers her own posture to straighten. The visage and orderly manner of a princess coming back to her spine and face.

"No true marriage is a fairytale. Most oft, you have to strangle fate by the throat and conquer your future."

Her eyes widen. "Mother! That sounds ghastly."

"It is." Your laugh isn't what she's used to. It's a breathless, mirthless exhale. A memory so entangled in your mind it weaves about in silvery threads between you. "But my marriage to your father had not always been such a gladdened time."

"I would expect so..." she says hesitantly, wary of every minute change of your expression. "It has been a long marriage, with a heft of babes of your own." Her hand finds yours and squeezes, trying for a jest with a pinch of honesty. "Do not expect the same amount of children from me, your grace. Though the birthing bed is a war all women must face, I have five other sisters to continue your lineage."

You exchange a laugh, pinching her cheek whilst she yelps.

"I cannot fathom birthing the same amount as you have. You are the strongest of us all."

"Your great-great grandmother, The Good Queen Alysanne, named after your sister, bore much more than I, I will remind you so."

She shivers. "Madness it is."

"It is," you agree. "The realm had asked for only two, but I had love your father so. But our marriage... it had almost cost me everything."

"Everything?"

Your smile is flaccid. "My crown, my birthright, my position in your father's life. Everything."

She stands, thoroughly alarmed, spinning to you and holding your arms. "Mother? I have not heard of this before."

"Oh, how can you? You were yet to be born." You run your fingers over her sweet face. Your seventh child. To think you almost lost them all. To think such bastards nearly took everything from you. "Only Daenera and Aemma had been, and I am not sure they can remember it all. They were quite young. And I am furious to tell further, but... but for you, I can. So you might understand that marriage is too, a battle to be won. A prize you must covet. As a dragon, your hoard is your own. Any who dare touch it must pay with fire and blood."

Your chin tips. "Even if sometimes, your enemy is your own spouse."

"Father?" A faint gasps leave her lips. "You are scaring me mother. What story is this?"

A smirk plays on your lips. "The story of how Winterfell almost burnt to the ground."

"What?"

"Rage, my sweet girl, especially born out of a dragon's flame, can raze armies to the ground. We were called conquerors for a reason." You cup her face with your hands. "Though I have not made a promise to your father, I had kept this piece of history deep within the wells of my heart. But for you I shall. To guide you into your marriage, and to comfort you that no matter what happens, no matter what tragedy curses your vows, you are able to control your future. You are no mere wife. Your blood sings above the sheep alike, and with it, a reminder to all that you are a dragon and nothing less."

You release her face, smiling gently, before you tug her to the bed. "We have time for a story, I'm sure. They cannot start it without a queen nor the bride."

"The story where your rage nearly tore Winterfell to ashes?" She frowns. "How does father fare in this?"

"Oh, he had lied to me."

"Father?! Lied?"

You tap her lips. "You must take this story to your bosom. And you must not look at your father any differently. He is changed now. He has kept his vows with much sincerity." Though a certain bitter triumph echoes in your heart at the idea that his own daughter might look at him with hatred.

The years had been kind to you, yes. But by no means have you met it with ease. The crown you bear on your head bore witness to every battle you had won, every war you had forged, and only those who understood its stench know of the blood you had spilled to get it.

And though you have forgiven him long before, the memory sings old embers anew.

"Her name was Sara Snow, and your father had dared..."

TAGGED: @inkareds @marihoneywk @caterina-caterina @ahristata @xxvelvetxxxx @but-i-write-so-i-must-count @bunbunbl0gs @yazzzmints @bellstwd @hiraethrhapsody

#₊˚ପ⊹ hightower green 🕷 #jacaerys velaryon x reader #jacaerys velaryon fic #jacaerys velaryon x you #jacaerys velaryon angst #jacaerys velaryon fanfic #jacaerys targaryen #jacaerys angst #elle writes !! ꒱ ↷˗ˏˋ🍒

[beautifulbrainrot]

ash I'm dying of period cramps send help, (help being a very fluffy(also kinda not) blurb/ramble/add on to this utter trash I'm about to write. Spencer taking care of you on your period, running you a bath, getting you your favorite snacks, literally SPRINTING to do any and everything he possibly can to help you feel better. Anything that you need, he will do. Chocolate? Done. Cuddles? Arms open and he's laying down. Massage? He's grabbing the lotion. (..maybe he'd also recommend an orgasm or two to help you out and offer to help you get it.)) But anyways I'm dying pls.

Love your writing! Hope you're doing OK, I saw a few days ago a message that said you'd maybe be on a sort of break? Anyways, I personally very much enjoy reading your writing, and I don't want my favorite writer to feel overworked. Please take care of yourself, because I think a good few of us (hem hem 💌) care about you very much. (ME included.) Alright rant over, love you bye!

my mood goes up and down so much ahh, so i’m sort of on a break until i get random motivation, and post something, it’s so weird idk!! love you 💋(also i just rewatched revelations send help 😭)

spencer hates seeing you in pain so much, so when you’re on your period he does everything he possibly can to make you feel better

he’d make you hot water bottles, and heating pads and what not, anything you need to help your cramps

if you’d like, he’d run you a warm bath, to soothe the aching and he would sit by it and just hold your hand if you want him to be close

he’d definitely get you any of the sweet treats and food you want, literally anything to help you feel better !!

if you take meds for your period, like i do, he’d make sure your taking them, and also drinking a lot of water

also yes, he’d be happy to help ease the pain in other ways..

he just cares about you so much and wants you to feel better, so he does everything he can to help

he’d do loads of research on what helps relieve period cramps, and rub your tummy and massage your shoulders and back if you need, and cuddle with you ahhh !!

i love him <3

#spencer reid #spencer reid x reader #criminal minds #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid x reader fluff

[werecreature-addicted]

I wrote a small little blurb with Pre tadpol!Durge putting out a cigarette on Gortash :3

You stand alone on the balcony looking over the lower city. Baldurs Gate looks back up at you. The city smells like piss and cheap wine, but also more pleasant things: blooming flowers, baking bread and roasting meat. The city lights keep the night from being too dark, but the torchlight is dim enough that you still see the stars. It’s hardly a peaceful night, you can hear shouting down below and what sounds like a band playing farther off, but still, you find yourself at ease. You’ll have to come up here more often, you think to yourself as you light a cigarette. The sewers are home, but the city has its own charm. 

You start smoking, enjoying the bustle below you. The door behind you opens and the hairs on your neck stand on end. Your instincts tell you to whip around, to not give your back to the person approaching. But you still yourself, you know those footsteps, and he wouldn’t hurt stab you in the back… at least not literally. 

“I didn’t know you smoked,” Gortash says, wrapping his arm casually around your waist as he comes to stand beside you. With his other hand, he starts toying with the sleeve of your robe. His robe really, but you’d snatched it for the night, the clothes you’d come in nothing more than blood-soaked shreds at this point. You look down at his hand and can see the tan lines where his gauntlet should be, his skin slightly paler where the metal usually rests. It looks silly you think, but you don’t tell him that. 

“It’s more recent, I only took it up to quit drinking,” you admit. He hums and leans into you further, pulling the collar of the robe to the side and pressing his mouth to your neck, tickling your skin with his stubble. 

“Trading one bad habit for another,” he teases in between kisses. “Wonder what you’ll have to take up to quit smoking.”

“Something worse I assume,” you say, tilting your head to the side so he can kiss his way up your neck to your jaw. Suddenly he sinks his teeth into your neck biting you hard. Your body jolts and you let out a soft “oh” of surprise, which makes him laugh. You smile too. You’ll get him back for that. You’re sure of it. You go to put your cigarette out on the banister but Gortash stops you. 

“Hey- that’s expensive, and wood. You’ll burn the whole place down,” he protests. You’re sure he’s more upset at the idea of the ash singeing the glossy wood than he was actually concerned that a little ember would burn down his entire estate. 

“Fine, I'll put it out on something cheap then,” you say and press the burning end of the butt into his arm. You expected him to scream or curse you out. Instead, he hisses and then lets out a low groan of pleasure. A shudder goes through your body at the sound and you grind the butt deeper into his skin, before pulling it off, a nice red welt left behind. The smell of burning hair and flesh fills your nose and you flick the crushed trash away, letting it land somewhere on the city streets below. 

He glares at you, holding his injured arm and looking at the small burn. “It’s nothing a Cleric can’t fix, but you really are a brat, someone should put you in your place,” he grumbles. The idea excites you

“Yeah? Why don’t you take me back to bed, and you can try to ‘put me in my place’ as you put it,” you tease. 

“You think I can’t?” he asks, his eyes shining with the challenge. He cups your jaw in one hand and brings your mouth close to his, but not kissing you quite yet.

“It's the opposite," you admit, your eyes falling to his full lips, "I know you can.”

#durgetash #durge #gortash x durge #bg3 durge #gortash x dark urge #gortash x reader #the dark urge #baulders gate 3 #baldurs gate 3 fanfiction

[souperbloom]

Tours over!! We def need a blurb of the boys coming home. Preferably Ash I swear I’ve read everything written about Ashton :/

thank you for the request, friend! i do agree, we are in dire need of some Ash homecoming content. how about a smutty little reunion? ;0

hope you enjoy <3

————————

honey, i’m home! [A.I.]

🏠 i’m biased towards this photo because i was there, teehee

boyfriend!ash. a reunion, if you will. :)

after a long three months away on tour, your boyfriend Ashton finally comes home.

CONTENT WARNINGS: references to weed, suggestive language, pet names.

WORDCOUNT: 1.9k

⋆⭒˚｡⋆

Today was the day.

After three months of an empty couch, an unraided fridge, and the divot on the right side of your mattress growing cold, your boyfriend Ashton was finally coming home.

Today was the fuckin’ day.

You sat on the edge of your seat, literally, barely taking up any space on the couch cushions. Your feet were bolted to the floor, practically ready to blast off into space.

Or, to jump up and greet him.

You’d check your phone every now and then, watching the hours tick by growing later and later, and occasionally seeing your lover’s name light up the screen.

There have been a few updates on his ETA, random photos from his camera roll of the two of you, and even some mindless, lovesick babbling. Rambling on about how much he missed you and ‘couldn’t wait to come home to see your sweet face.’

Each time his name popped up, you’d smile; feeling nothing short of a kid in a candy store. You couldn’t wait to see the look on his face not only after seeing you, but after seeing what you had planned.

You had decided to make Ashton’s homecoming an event, of sorts. A dreamy date night filled with all of his favorite things that you were sure he was missing.

And, of course, being that you knew him better than anyone in this world, you made sure to think of everything.

A fresh bouquet of daisies on the kitchen table, straight from his favorite farmer’s market. A joint, rolled with love, for the two of you to share and smoke out on your balcony. A fridge stocked full of his favorite snacks and foods.

And lastly, the pièce de résistance of it all.

A few days prior, you had gone out shopping on your own at the little boutiques down on Rodeo. You found yourself wandering into a quaint lingerie shop, only to walk out with the most beautiful, most expensive, two-piece set that ever graced their mannequins.

It was an emerald green two-piece, covered in floral lace and complete with its own matching silk slip. You thought it was perfect for the comfortable, homesick-curing aura you were trying to create around you and Ashton’s home.

And green is Ashton’s favorite color, after all.

After a few more moments of quiet, the mellow sounds of classic rock streaming softly out of your speaker, your phone lights up.

ASHTON ❥:

Be home in 5. Love you so much.

Can’t wait 2 see you. xo

It took everything in you not to let out a piercingly loud girlish squeal, rocking back and forth on the couch and clutching your phone like it was just going to just fly right out of your hands. But you didn’t want risk your neighbors thinking you were being attacked—

You didn’t want a repeat of the last time Ashton made you scream.

With Ashton’s messages still shining on your screen, you toss your phone to the side. You decide to stand up from your permanent spot on the couch, and do one last run around of the house to make sure everything was perfect, and in order.

The flowers were still on the kitchen table, yes. The sweets and fresh fruits were all still in the fridge, right where you had left them. Your bed was still made, thank God, and the stick of incense you had lit still had about an hour of life left in it.

Safe to say, everything you had thought of was perfect.

As you walk through the halls of your spacious, yet lived in home, you hear a familiar sound.

A click.

Then, another.

A squeak.

And one last sound that made your heart start to flutter.

"Honey, I’m home!"

Without a second to think, you’re rushing towards the front door. Your socked feet padded along the hardwood floors as you ran, cutting corners and slipping along.

"Baby? I hear you…"

The sweet sound of his voice grew louder, your heart just ready to burst and pop out of your throat into fireworks. You round the corner to the foyer—

And there he was.

"Ashton!" You gleam, finally seeing him for the first time since he had started his journey out of the country and across the world.

He sported unkempt, overgrown curls and a black trench coat, that was tugged off slightly from the heavy duffle bags that sat on his broad shoulders.

It was almost impossible for you not to swoon.

You barrel past his bags as he drops them on the floor, jumping into his arms and practically lifting yourself off of the ground.

"Hi, sweetheart," he hums into your ear with a voice like honey, as your body clings onto his, "I missed you so fuckin’ much."

He holds you tightly, his cologne hitting your nose almost instantly with the way you had your face buried in the crook of his neck.

"I missed you more, baby— fuck— I missed you." Your words are slightly muffled by the material of his coat, not long before he’s pulling away from the hug to get a better look at you.

"Look at you. Fuckin’ look at my girl. Thought I was dreaming when I saw this sweet face again," he trails off, letting his eyes linger behind your head to admire all of the little sweet nothings you had prepared for him, "Is this all for me?"

"Mhm, it is. You are definitely not dreaming," you hum, proudly.

Ashton pulls you in for one last squeeze, then places a sloppy kiss upon your lips.

"I am the luckiest guy in the world," he sighs, adjusting his arms around you, "Think I gotta get a better look at all the stuff my girl did f’me."

"Come in, stay a while." You try your hand at biting back a smile as you pull away from him, but can’t seem to contain the elated expression plastered on your face.

He shrugs off his coat, hanging it on the hook next to yours. Inhaling deeply, he smiles, "Do I smell Paolo Santo?"

"Mhmmm." Your bottom lip is caught between your teeth, with your arms behind your back as you swing impatiently from side to side.

"Good choice," he nods.

"Your favorite."

With all of his bags now on the floor, and his Doc Martens still laced to his ankles, he quietly steps through the foyer to the kitchen. You watch from behind him through adoring eyes, loving every second of watching him discover each and every little detail.

"Daisies—?" He tosses you a sweet look over his shoulder, but stops in his tracks as his eyes meet yours.

He scans down your frame, finally taking in what you had been waiting for. The emerald green silk slip, in all of its glory.

"Holy shit—" he stops himself again, turning all the way around to face you.

"Well, whatdaya’ think of my outfit?" You ask, fanning out your hands and showing off the full extent of the dress and all of its means of hugging your curves.

His jaw hangs open slightly, before he crosses his arms over his chest. That expression of shock melts into a cheeky smile.

"Honestly, now I’m thinking about what it’s gonna look like on the floor."

He starts to walk towards you, his taller frame looming over you as you tilt your head to look at him with a pout.

"On the floor, Ash? This was expensive!"

When his hands find your waist, you freeze. His fingertips dance along the silky materiel that dressed your hips, pulling you into him.

"Money can buy you a new one, sweetheart. But— I’m afraid no money can buy how much I’ve been missing you."

Your lips push to the side, now feeling slightly electric at the feeling of his gentle touch.

"Didn’t know you missed me that much."

"No?" He quips, "Well then why don’t I show you? Show you just how much I’ve been missin’ ya."

Something inside of you snaps, the twinkle in his eyes making you giddy— you reach out to him, slithering your arms around his neck to pull him into you.

When his lips land on yours you sigh, like a forty pound weight being lifted off of your shoulders. You missed the sweetness of his kiss; the taste of his lips, and tongue on yours.

You were a puzzle that had found its missing piece. Whole again.

Ashton’s hands travel down your sides, greedily wandering across each and every part of you that he had been deprived of in the last three months.

The promise ring you had gifted him right before he left was now right back to its rightful owner, scorching your flesh in all of the places you had been dying for him to touch. To see. To have again.

His hands had now found their way to your ass, making you shiver.

"Jump." He mumbles messily into your lips.

You oblige, jumping up and locking your ankles around the small of his back.

As the kiss between you grows hungry, Ashton starts to move you. He walks you past the threshold of the kitchen, and over to the island.

You had already started to feel that familiar, swirling feeling you get whenever he’s around you; let alone the feelings that came with him so effortlessly picking you up and walking around the house with you in his arms.

He releases your lips, brushing his nose against yours as he he starts to walk the both of you closer to the marble countertop.

"I’ve been waitin’ so long to take care of you properly, sweetheart— But at this rate, I don’t think I’ll be able to make it t’ the bedroom."

As he speaks, he lowers you gently onto the cool marble. You let out a giggle at his eagerness. "I don’t mind, baby. You can have me anytime, any place. I’m all yours."

His hands find your waist again, sliding you forward into his hips. He knocks his forehead against your own, before granting you a quick kiss.

"You’re all mine?" He asks again, as if your words of confirmation weren’t enough for him the first time.

"Yes, Ash. I’m all yours."

His lips find their way to your jaw, starting a trail of gentle kisses down towards the nape of your neck. He stays there for a moment, tenderly nipping at the fragile flesh.

"’Don’t know who I bribed in heaven to get sent down an angel as perfect as you— ‘Don’t know how I got so lucky..."

He kisses your neck again as your hands get lost in his lush curls. You can’t help but tug down on them, just the way he likes it.

With one final kiss at your collarbone, he pops his head back up to meet you. But as he makes his way up, something on the counter catches his eye.

His eyebrow quirks, as he reaches behind you and picks up the joint you had rolled for him.

"Now, what’s all this?" He asks, waving the pre-roll in front of your face with a mischievous smirk.

"Just a little somethin’ special," you grin, your tongue darting out to wet your bottom lip, "But we can worry about that later…"

He lets out a breathy laugh, putting the joint down in it’s spot the counter and reaching back up to cup your cheeks with his blistered, earthy palms.

"You really thought of everything didn’t you— my sweet girl."

Your cheeks tinge pink, unable to control your urges as you plant another big kiss onto his soft lips.

"Welcome home, Ashton."

⋆⭒˚｡⋆

#soupster requests #ashton irwin smut #ashton irwin #5sos #5sos fanfic #ashton irwin fanfic #request

[folkbreeze]

character/story influences tag

rules: write up a blurb or make a visual collage of the people or characters (from books, TV shows, movies, etc.) that inspired your story and/or OC, either visually, personality wise, or just a general vibe

tysm @dizzyscabiosa for tagging me in this!! I had so much fun creating these. Now I'm tagging @barbieaiden @warmsol @lilacmaze @forest-void and @wolfavens (feel free to ignore, i just love your sims and would love to know more about them)

I decided to make two moodboards (inspired by this), one for "the past" that i called sulking folks, which is basically the story i thought for Lázaro's past and how he and Ashe met and all that, and one for ending breeze, which is Lazza's life.

I usually get inspired by words/feelings/images rather than media, so... yeah. other stuff under the cut tho:

inspo for both - la cantera (guitarricadelafuente)

SULKING FOLKS - nostalgia / trust / faith / postcards / memories / illness / la lluvia amarilla (Julio Llamazares) / vaca (Federico García Lorca) / quote

the birds were the first creatures to leave this hell. some of us, humans, were too attached to our past selves to even atempt an escape. my sister was brave enough to be a bird, to give us wings.

ENDING BREEZE - old pictures / solitude / exhale inhale (aurora) / yo escucho los cantos (Antonio Machado) / warmth / home / quote

we are what memories made us, we are the stories we heard as kids, we are what our eyes let us see. the world keeps moving. the world keeps moving, blowing breezes, winds and tornados. So hold yourself: even the softest breeze can be the ending breeze.

anyway, there's not much bc i never sat down to write any of it, i just fantasize about it in my head and here i post gameplay which... has little to do with this, but the vibes are there, hopefully

#kinda tempted to do this everytime i come up with new ideas #i enjoyed it so much #actually thinking about doing this for my non sim ocs #tag game #*fin generations extras

[powderblueblood]

STEVE HARRINGTON X MILLION DOLLAR MAN !!!!

( idk if that’s what you meant 😭 pls delete if it’s not <3 )

send me 🎵+ character name and i’ll write a lil blurb inspired by a song from their playlist (you can also request songs and i will do my level best. god is a dj and i'm god)

▶ MILLION DOLLAR MAN - LANA DEL REY

you've got the world, but baby at what price? or how falling in love with notorious conman steve harrington began your career as a fence of stolen jewelry.

an: @stveharringtn cherry how the fuck did you know that i've been sitting on a conman!steve au for what feels like a hundred thousand years. PERFECT SONG PERFECT CHOICE lets begin i hope you like it

warnings: my blatant obsession with the oceans eleven cinematic universe and pathological need to create a heist au out of EVERYTHING. and CUSSING IS IN THIS TOO.

word count: 2.5k

MIAMI BEACH, 1990

“Whatever happened to a good old-fashioned safe?”

“I don’t trust a safe. I don’t trust me, I don’t trust you, and I most definitely don’t trust a safe.”

Dustin Henderson dangerously toes the edge of squawking, but he doesn’t know any better. At this point in his career as a thief, he doesn’t understand that when Steve Harrington says he doesn’t trust anyone, it’s not dismissive. It’s simply a missive, a fact of life. Everyone’s got knives, everyone’s got backs. Stands to reason that someone’s going to thrust and someone is going to get stabbed. 

Steve likes to take all the necessary precautions. 

He doesn’t trust anyone. 

“But her you trust?” 

Robin Buckley’s tone is hard. Robin Buckley is the only person that Steve could imagine himself trusting, and even so, they keep each other at an imperceptible arm’s length. To the outside world, they’re bosom buddies, best friends eating dirt together. But they both understand the business that they’re in. 

They keep their knives sharp.

They take all the necessary precautions. 

So why the fuck is Steve bringing an outsider into the ring. 

“I never said that.” Steve grabs a coaster and pointedly puts it where Robin might next aim her beer bottle, dripping with incriminating condensation. All over his agarwood coffee table. 

“It was inferred.” Robin pointedly puts the bottle down– to the far left of the coaster. Fuck you.

“I don’t see how that’s my problem.” Fuck you right back. 

“I know why he’s not using a safe,” Eddie Munson crows from the near background, wiping ash from his face. Eddie Munson, munitions expert. Eddie Munson, expert in blowing up any conversation within a three mile radius. Detonation test, by the way, that’s why his face is covered in shit. 

Steve holds out a hand–stop right where you are–before he can reach the agarwood table. 

“Because he’s–” and proceeds to make that finger in hole gesture that doesn’t crack a single smile in the room. Not even Dustin Henderson’s, mostly due to the fact that it’s happening behind his head. “Because he’s fucking her.” 

“It’s not that,” Steve and Robin say in unison, with Steve’s eyes narrowed on Eddie and Robin’s eyes trained unmercifully on Steve. 

It’s not that. They’re right. It’s worse. 

-

There’s something psychosexual about the game of tennis. The grunting, the tiny little skirts, the whacking of balls. The amount of money rich people love to spend on it. There’s something evil here, and you’ve committed yourself to a summer of trying to figure it out. 

Well, half-committed. Your real commitment is making enough tips to make a dent in your looming student loans. Post-graduation, a friend had given you a hot tip about private tennis clubs in Miami. They use hundos like napkins there, girl. Go get your piece. 

Your nana lives in Miami. Lived. She’s dead now, three months. You’re living in her condo now– technically in a seniors complex, assisted living type of thing, but it’s okay. It’s quiet. The people chat and force you to play bocce ball sometimes, the only sport you understand. 

Tennis, you don’t understand, other than the fact that these people have more money than they know what to do with and they’re all too repressed to grunt in the privacy of their own homes. 

After a time or two taking drink orders and bringing their rackets for in-house repair, they all blend into the same amorphous blob– the white outfits-on-white people effect does not help. They tip you in enormous digits, confident that you’ll remember them and treat them right, but you don’t have that skill. Some of your co-workers do, but you don’t. 

So, you notice when someone stands out. 

You smell him before you see him, and you know how that sounds, but bare with– 

The thickening, insistent incense smell of patchouli. Rainwater. Dust. Lemon.

When you turn from your place behind the bar, fetching your eighth double vodka soda in what seems like as many minutes for another bleach-blond man in his mid-forties, he’s leaning with one elegant elbow propped on the marble top. Sunglasses push over a shock of brown hair, streaked with blonde from the Florida sunshine. 

“Macallan, buddy. Up.” But he’s not talking to you. He’s talking to the bartender, Trent, the picture of incompetence. Trent nods to him, smiling broadly, but that flattens into a hard line as he turns toward the bar. 

This guy politely turns his head, eyes glossing right over you. But you are just staring a bullet hole right though him, and you can’t help it. He’s magnetic. He’s dressed in a light blue linen suit, a far cry from the tennis uniforms or the hollering Versace shirts every other man in the place seems to be wearing. The slope of his shoulders suggest something… provincial. 

He’s not a city boy– man. This is a man. 

You hear a clatter to your immediate right and see Trent pouring a finger of Chivas into a tumbler. 

“Oh, Trent, that’s not–” 

He passes it off to the linen gentleman, this Miami cowboy, with a serene smile. Most people wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a Chivas and a Macallan, but you would. 

And you bet he would too. 

He departs in a cloud of the same heavenly scent he’d arrived in, heading courtside to watch trust fund kids fumble over backhands. 

“Trent,” you say, reaching for the correct bottle and a fresh tumbler. “Meet Macallan. For next time, okay?” 

The blond kid just shrugs at you. “All that shit tastes the same to me.” 

To you. 

You linger near the arm of his chair before speaking, suddenly able to hear your pulse in your ears. Up close, you can see moles dotting the hand holding the errant glass of Chivas. A big hand too, it seems to dwarf the crystal. 

“Excuse me,” you say, as steady as you can manage. It’s not very steady. You wish you would’ve thought to check your makeup before you made a beeline out here, but time, you couldn’t help but feel, was of the essence. 

He looks up at you over his sunglasses and you think your knees might buckle. 

Eyes like a dark wood. Inviting you in. The kind of eyes that don’t look through you. 

Christ, people had been looking through you all summer, but it didn’t matter now. 

“Is that the Macallan?” he mumbles conspiratorially. 

You just– nod, uniform-required ponytail bouncing. 

“I’ll trade you,” he says, about to pass off the glass of Chivas, but then he pauses. Takes you in, surveying you in a way that makes you blush, “if you can finish this one with me.” 

“Um…”

“Is that allowed?” he asks, “I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

Trouble be damned. The hell with trouble. Not only is your reputation as a little worker bee here untarnished, you can’t not sit with him. 

“I’m due a break, actually.”

“So I’ll trade you. Sit down, get comfortable. Give me the scoop on these tennis brats.”

He leans in to take the glass of Macallan from you, to pass off the glass of Chivas, and he brushes your hand. You experience the full entirely of a cliche, feeling electricity thrum under your skin– but then he passes a fingertip over the ring finger of your right hand. 

“That’s a pretty piece,” he hums, “Princess, right?”

For a second, you falter. Princess? Me? But it’s the ring he’s referring to– the yellow diamond engagement ring that once belonged to your nana. 

“Close!” you say, twisting the band on your finger in an act of self-consciousness. “Carré cut. Less pricey than a princess.”

“But just as pretty.” 

“And more rare, actually.” 

“Huh,” he says, and you smooth your skirt out with one hand, taking the seat nearest him. Enveloping yourself in the cloud of him. “Rarer than a princess.” 

From the court, a headband-wearing pre-teen in dazzling whites hollers fuck you, Mommy! Fuck you and your fucking bullshit topspin! I fucking hate this place!

“I’ll drink to that.” 

-

NEW YORK CITY, 1995

The car door slams behind Dustin Henderson, raindrops rolling from the brim of his baseball cap. It’s late November and a freezing rain has descended upon the Diamond District. 

Steve had at least hoped he might see sunshine when he got out of the joint. 

From the wheel, he cranes his neck to the back seat where Dustin sits, wiping the dripping water from the hat’s beak. His Thinking Cap. He’s had that thing since he was a kid and has somehow managed to keep it in immaculate condition. Dustin loves details. Dustin also loves risk. Which is why he’s the only man for this recon job. 

“Tell me,” Steve says, tone as level as he can possibly keep it. 

“She is way hotter than I remember.”

“Dustin.”

“Miami always makes people less hot. I think it’s the heat,” the kid chuckles, an obvious attempt at lightening a tense mood. See, they weren’t supposed to be here. They weren’t supposed to be looking for you. Robin hadn’t said don’t go looking for her, but that more or less should have been in the terms of Steve’s release from Sing Sing. 

“Dustin.” 

“She’s in there, just like you said she’d be in there. It’s a white room and it’s got every kind of goddamn sparkler you could think of. Three layers of security. Three. What kind of jewelry store you ever been to that’s got three layers of security?” 

A detail like that would make a less accomplished thief sweat. But Dustin and Steve share a knowing smile. 

“A jewelry store selling stolen jewelry.” 

“Exactly,” Dustin nods. “I thought she’d be front-of-house, but she’s got her own office. Tucked away in the corner. Appointment only.” 

“Any availability?”

The younger man smirks. “For me or for you?” 

-

Buddy’s is the last place in midtown you can get a decent drink and not be surrounded by throngs of yuppies. 

You know this, because you tend to date the yuppies in the throng. 

This is the one place that seems to be universally avoided by the trader set– it’s too dark and wooden in here, no brutalist architecture to make them feel at home while they rail lines of coke off their girlfriend’s compact mirrors. 

At Buddy’s, there’s a pianist that’s been propping up the corner for the last half century, minimum. A carpet that’s never been shampooed spreads across the floor and the mahogany is dented in all the places the light doesn’t hit. You can smoke indoors. Everything Happens to Me by Chet Baker will play, and everything feels like it’s going to be alright. At least until happy hour ends. 

You have a regular seat by the bar, a vantage point for people-watching. A gin martini, hold the vermouth, sits waiting for you by the time you arrive. On an average Thursday, you spend a couple of hours drinking three of these in an act of decompression from the violent fluorescent lighting of your workplace. From peering through a looking glass, examining the way light refracts through gemstones. 

From moving cargo that isn’t yours to move. 

This Thursday has been no different. 

You drag a finger along the condensation of your martini glass, it’s perfect conical shape a welcome weight in your hand. 

Your hair is piled up on top of your head, and you wear your reading glasses, and though you are beautiful, no one bothers you. Nothing bothers you. 

Until you hear a sound you haven’t heard in years. 

Tapping, against the bartop. One, one. Two, two. Three, three. Nerves. It was the only time you could ever tell that he was nervous. 

“Macallan, buddy. Up.”

Fucker.

-

He knew you by every single detail about you, let’s get that straight. 

He is entirely sure that in a room of a thousand clones of you, he would be able to pick out the real one, just from your minute sigh. From the way your one shoulder always slopes. From curl at the base of your neck. 

From the way you play with your grandmother’s Carré cut diamond, still sitting pretty on your right hand. 

He positions himself a number of seats away from you, from the seat that he’s been watching you sit at for a couple of nights in a row now. He does not approach you directly. 

Partially to see if you’ll still remember him. 

Steve is still vain, in his ways. He wants a spotlight shone on him. 

He only ever remembers the warmth of yours. 

He orders the same drink he ordered that day you met at the tennis club, the same way. He even hopes the bartender will mistake the Chivas for the Macallan and you’ll have to climb over the bar and charmingly correct him. But Antoine, as he’s heard you call him, has been behind this bar longer than Saint Peter at the pearly gates, so there’s no fear of that. 

You don’t react right away, and he doesn’t expect you to. He savors it, in fact, the opportunity to slyly watch you. Even if you’re seething. Even if you’re seething, you’re seething like a goddess might seethe. Horrifying and beautiful, all at once. The definite end of him. 

Then, the lack of attention you’re showing him stretches on a beat too long. 

“Excuse me,” he says from his spots a couple of seats down, “Can you do me a favor?”

You don’t respond. This doesn’t stop him. Never has.

“You mind tasting this for me?” Steve pushes the glass toward you, sending it sliding down the bar. You catch it with your right hand, yellow diamond catching in the light. A cut like that has never sparkled until you’ve worn it. “You think that’s Macallan or Chivas? Be honest.”

Steve’s fingers flex unconsciously as you lift the glass. Tilt it toward your lips. Still making no eye contact. But you don’t sip. 

“I think you should be in prison,” you say into the crystal tumbler and place it back on the bar top. “Why the fuck are you not in prison.” 

Steve closes the space between you, taking in that powdery perfume you’re still wearing after all this time. Candied violets. He settles into the beside you and props his palm under his chin. 

“Why are you selling stolen jewelry.”

He sees you tense for a brief moment, then release. Like you knew he’d say that, like you should have seen that coming. Because you know him, and you always see him coming. Other than Robin, you’re the only one that ever has. 

“I asked you first.”

“I asked you second.”

“So that when some bastard in a bad linen suit asks me to hold on to some stolen jewelry, I’ll at least know how much it’s worth.”

A beat. You stare Steve down with such naked disdain that his heart twists in his chest. You hate him, and he sees that, and with all the evidence stacked up against you, he should hate you too. But that wasn’t what bit him.

“That suit wasn’t bad, Princess.”

#powder room talk #stveharringtn #s. harrington by powder #steve harrington x reader #steve harrington x you #steve harrington x f!reader #heist au #conman!steve you will live forever unlike danny ocean who is apparently dead. #stranger things fic #published by powder #blurbs #clear cut

[seresinsbabe]

Hi Ash!! Congrats on the 1K!!! For the celebration, could I get a blurb with Jake with the angst prompt “Am I the reason you cry every night?” and the fluff prompt "i've loved you since the moment i first laid my eyes on you." (Jake says both of these), pretty please? Thanks!!!

Thank you thank you!!!! you've been one of my biggest supporters and I am truly so thankful for you!

Pairing: Jake "Hangman" Seresin x fem!reader

Warnings: 18+ mdni! nothing bad, just angst, tears and fluff

Ash's 1K Follower Celebration

This was the last thing he wanted. In fact he had never wanted this. Seeing tears well up in your eyes until they fell in fat drops down your cheeks had his heart in a vice grip.

He knew those tears were his fault. However he'd never thought that he'd hurt you this bad.

"I'm the reason you cry every night?"

Hearing the words repeated to you made you feel even worse. It was so stupid to be this upset over him. Jake had made you feel like you were on top of the world. Like you were the only girl that mattered and then he would shatter the façade. Just when you thought he'd finally give in to what you thought he'd been feeling. Or at least the feelings he'd been leading you on to believe he had it would all come crashing down. Jake would have some pretty girl, the opposite of everything you were, on his arm. And your heart would break a little bit more.

That wasn't what Jake thought he was doing.

In his mind you were too good for him. That you would never slum it with a cocky asshole like him. Even if he was pretty he didn't feel he deserved you.

All those girls were his way of trying to get over you. It never worked - because they weren't you.

Never had he thought that he was hurting you. You swallowed hard and squeezed your eyes shut, trying to will away the tears and will up the courage to finally speak.

"I shouldn't I know I just-" you took a deep breath to keep yourself calm. "Jake you make me so happy. Make me feel so good like we could be something and then you go and pull the rug out from under me when you walk in with those women. Women that I could never compete with." You felt like you sounded so pathetic. Pouring your heart out to this man who thought of you as nothing more than a friend.

Jake's came out to cup your cheek, pushing ever so slightly to get you to look at him. "Beautiful, I never wanted those women. They were my attempt at getting over you." It sounded like he meant it, but your brain couldn't wrap around the idea that Jake wanted you in that way.

Confusion warped your features.

"What?"

He chuckled softly. "I've loved you from the moment I first laid eyes on you."

Disbelief combined with the confusion. Jake Seresin loved you? Jake Seresin has always loved you. "Then why..."

He shrugged. "I didn't think I deserved you. You're too good for me."

You frowned. How could you be too good for him? It should be the other way around.

"But it's true and if you give me the chance I will spend the rest of my life making sure you never shed another tear." His other hand cupped your face, his eyes searching yours.

Softly your head nodded and Jake's mouth formed a saccharine smile before they melded with yours. He pulled away as soon as he felt something wet hit his cheek.

"No, no more tears." The pad of his callused thumb swept along your cheek, wiping away the liquid.

You gave him another peck and pulled away, wiping your own tears this time. "It's okay, they're happy tears."

#ash hits 1k #seresinsbabe 1k celebration #jake seresin #jake seresin x reader #jake seresin x you #jake seresin angst #jake seresin fluff #hangman #hangman x reader #hangman x you #hangman angst #hangman fluff #jake hangman seresin #jake hangman seresin x you #jake hangman seresin x reader #jake hangman seresin angst #jake hangman seresin fluff #tgm fic #tgm angst #tgm fluff

[justmystyles]

Home Stretch

read my other work here

pairing: Harry Styles x plus size reader

word count: 1.3k

summary: as the tour comes to an end, the schedule starts to visibly take its toll on Harry, and you can't help but worry.

warnings: a couple of curse words, but other than that, it's tame.

a/n: we've all seen the Frankfurt night 2 videos. our boy is slowing down, so i had this idea for a blurb. i'll miss all the looks and videos and everything we've been getting the last couple of years, but i'm so glad he's going to be able to take some time to relax and recover.

tags: @allthelovehes @ameerakane20 @ash-craze @bethanysnow @blue-ballad @brightlightsinlife @creativelyeva @cute-as-ducks420 @fanficismydrug @gem1712 @golden-hoax @gothmingguk @groovychaosavenue @hillzrry @iceebabies @indierockgirrl @jerseygirlinca @jng4kook @jooniesbabie @kaverichauhan @lexiecamposv @mrs-anna-styles211994 @n0vaj3an @ravenclawdirectioner @stylesfeverr @superchrystaldrug @tenaciousperfectionunknown @tiaamberxx @thechaoticjoy @theekyliepage @walkingintheheartbreaksatellite @youknowwhaaat

You watched on with so much pride and joy as Harry gave his all on stage. It was the second night in Frankfurt, and your last night on the tour for two weeks. You had some family obligations that you needed to go back to the states for, but you promised Harry that you would be there for his last show. And then the two of you would ride off into the sunset and hide away together for a few weeks. You were looking forward to that. 

Your mind had drifted off, thinking about the two of you isolated in a villa somewhere, but quickly snapped back to the present when you saw Harry falter onstage, it looked as if his knee had given out. Your heart stopped and your eyes went wide. 

You lean over, getting Brad’s attention. “Did you see that?”

Brad nodded in response. “It’s been a long tour, and you know how hard he pushes up there.”

Your worried eyes are locked on Harry when it suddenly clicks; he hadn’t been doing as many jumps as he usually does, his satellite stops had been lacking their usual stomp. He’s hurting, but still pushing so hard. You can’t seem to let go of your concern. Your fingers start tapping against your thighs, a nervous tick of yours. You have to do something, you can’t just stand here and watch him push and continue to hurt himself. 

“I’m going to go back and make sure there’s an ice bath ready for him as soon as he gets off.” You tell Brad, who nods in acknowledgement, but you don’t see it. You had turned and started to make your way backstage as soon as you finished the sentence. 

When you get to the backstage area, you arrange an ice bath for him and make sure his dressing room is set up with towels and his post show change of clothes. You just have to be doing something.

Once you had things set up for him, you went to the side of the stage to watch the rest of the show. You were studying his every move looking for any signs of pain or discomfort. When he noticed that you had moved from your usual spot in the front of the house, he shot you a questioning look. You simply shrugged and shot him a wink. 

Your concern continued through the rest of the show, relieved when he substituted finger guns for his usual ‘Kiwi kicks’. You positioned yourself so that you would be right there when he got offstage, as he skipped toward the exit, you saw the moment where he decided he was far enough from the crowd that he could drop the facade. His skip quickly turned to a limp, and he practically doubled over. 

You rushed over to him, placing a hand on his back and offering your other arm to him for support. “Baby, are you alright?” 

Harry chuckled, a small cough escaping him. “I’m fine princess, you worry too much.” He leaned in, kissing you softly. “Why’d you come back here? I like having you in the audience.” 

Despite assuring you he was fine, he continued to use your arm for support as you slowly made your way to his dressing room. “Because you’re hurt, and I wanted to make sure to get everything set up for you as soon as you got offstage.” 

“Set up everything?” He asked. You opened the door to his dressing room to reveal the ice bath you had prepared for him. He looked over at you with a wide smile. “God, I love you.” 

You leaned up, pressing a kiss to his lips. He puts his hand on the back of your head, deepening it. You pull away with a smirk. “I love you too. Now get in there, I’m going to go–”

“No, stay with me.” He pleads. “You’re leaving tomorrow and I’m not going to see you for two whole weeks.” He gave you his best puppy dog face, the one he knew you couldn’t resist. 

“Ugh, fine.” You roll your eyes playfully. “But I am not getting into that thing.” You point to the tub filled with ice and water. 

“Your loss,” he shrugs, closing the dressing room door and immediately stripping down. 

You get yourself comfortable on the couch as Harry lowers himself into the tub. You give him a few minutes of silence as he adjusts to the temperature change. 

“So, how did I do tonight princess?” He asked once he was settled. 

You let out a deep sigh. “You were good, but I’m really starting to get worried about you.” 

His brow knit in confusion. “Why?”

“Harry Edward Styles, you have got to be kidding me?”

“Did you just use my full name?” He was taken aback. 

“You’re goddamned right I did. Baby you did amazing, you always do, but you give so much of yourself, it’s starting to take a toll on you. And I’m worried about you.” 

“Oh angel,” he reaches his hand out to you. You scoot over on the couch to get closer to him, taking his offered hand. “Please don’t worry. There are only five shows left, I’ll get through these and then I’ll get some time to rest. We’ll get some time to rest.” He brings your joined hands to his lips. “Besides, I have you here to take care of me, so I know everything will be fine.” 

“Yeah, but I’m not going to be here for four out of those five shows. What if something bad happens?” Your breath hitches slightly as you try to control your emotions. 

Harry’s brows round in concern. “Baby, come here.” He tugs on your arm, and you narrow your eyes, making him chuckle. “I promise I won’t pull you in.” You move closer, kneeling beside the tub. He rests his hand on the side of your neck, pulling you in so your forehead rests against his. “I promise you, I am going to give everything I have responsibly for the last few shows. I will keep modifying things, and take it extra easy offstage. But I owe it to the fans to give them everything I possibly can until the end.”

“I know, I’m just afraid that you’re going to give so much that you won’t have enough for yourself once this is all over. You’re too selfless sometimes.” You raise your free hand, pushing a stray curl out of his face.

Harry kisses you, you can feel him smile against your lips. “I love you for worrying about me as much as you do. And for taking care of me like this. As much fun as I’m having, and as sad as I am to see the tour come to an end, I’m looking forward to having some time to take care of you, and try to pay you back for everything you’ve done for me this whole time. And I plan to be in tip top shape when I do that.” 

“You don’t have to pay me back for anything. I do this because I love you, and the fact that I get to be here by your side and love you is all the payback I need.” You lean in, placing a lingering kiss on his lips.

Harry groans as you pull away. “Are you sure you need to leave tomorrow?” 

“Yeah,” you sigh. “I’ve got my mom’s whole birthday thing. I need to be home for that.” 

“But you’ll be in Italy?” He questions.

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” you say with a smile. “Somebody is going to need to have an ice bath ready for you.” You wink. 

“Will you do that one with me?” He asked hopefully.

You scrunch your face, hating the idea of sitting in a giant bucket of cold water. “Maybe.” 

#harry styles #harry styles x reader #harry styles x fem!reader #harry styles x plus size reader #harry styles headcanon #harry styles fluff #harry's house #harry styles fanfic #harry styles fanfiction #harry edward styles #harry styles imagine #harry styles one shot #harry styles x you #harry styles x y/n #love on tour #harry styles blurb #harry styles fic

[talkfastromance4]

Slow motion—Ashton blurb

Warnings: mentions of being high, consuming a gummy, high sex, some fluff and giggles

Word count: 724

Feedback is welcome!

••••

It’s slow building at first. The gummy bear torn in half was slow acting and you first felt it in your head, a certain type of weightlessness. The warm glow of his salt lamp paints him in warm fuzziness and it makes you giggle then you touch your lips.

“What’s wrong?”Ashton squints at you.

“My lips are fuzzy…” you probe them with your fingers. “Like caterpillars.” You gasp. “They’re gonna turn into butterflies and leave!”

“No they won’t, I won’t allow it,” he giggles then moves his fingers forward. They tangle with yours, grazing your parted lips. “Never let these lips go.”

“You better catch ‘em quick.”

And now it’s in slow motion.

You and Ashton meeting in the middle of your conversation pit, lips colliding, fingers threading through hair. And then you’re falling in slow motion, down and back onto the fluffy pillows and comforters. The words of Bob Dylan play overhead, sweeping in and out of your ears. 

Then Ashton is tracing the ladder of your ribs with the length of his fingers. You’re tugging his tank top up and over his muscles leaving his hair fluffed. He traces your lips delicately. You feel each caress.

“You are soft,” he whispers. 

“Are your lips soft and fuzzy, too?”

“Kiss me and find out,” he grins.

It’s slow motion with lips touching lips. His hands are under your shirt again, inching higher and higher until your shirt rolls over your breasts. You rise up gently letting him remove it. Soft palms on your breasts. 

“These are soft, too,” he mumbles. Silken lips trace your neck. Your fingers undo the drawstring of his sweatpants and then you’re skin to skin. 

Bob Dylan transferred to The Weeknd. Ashton’s lips leaving a heated trail down your body. He’s glowing in amber light and he’s rolling your pants down your legs. Hot lips on warm legs, the tips of his hair tickling your knees. Warm lips on lips. 

“All of you is soft, too,” you whisper on his jaw.

Bodies begin to rock and sway. You’re weightless and weighted beneath him. As you connect in hushed whispers you’re ascending. You’re moaning in his ear and his ankle brushes your foot. Fuzziness fills your body and when you laugh it’s like bubbles in his ear. 

“What’s funny?” he smiles, nose bumping yours. 

“Now my feet are fuzzy,” you can’t stop giggling. His hips snap against yours in the perfect way and you moan. You nibble on his ear. His pulls and thrusts elicit intense points of pleasure. 

“You’re silly,” he laces his fingers with yours. Lips brush your ear. “My silly girl.”

Your lovemaking is slow and meticulous, every neuron is fired up. Your head feels fluffy. Your body floating. Ashton is everywhere and anywhere. 

“Love you,” you sigh.

“Love you more.”

Giggles happen with kisses as you ride the rollercoaster of consistent pleasure. It’s exhilarating and relaxing. You tap his side and he rolls over leaving you on top. His hands help guide your hips up and down. Each pull is pulling you tighter and pulling you apart at the same time.

His fingertips graze and squeeze over your skin. His mouth sucks on the soft skin of your neck and then it’s silky against your tongue. Breath to breath you fall apart but Ashton keeps you upright with the motion of his hips until he’s spent as well.

You’re warm and sticky and fuzzy with gooey thoughts and a blissed out smile. He tilts your face up, his fingertips brushing your lips. Your body rises and falls with his breathing, music notes soak over your pores.

“That was a dream,” he says.

“Let’s never wake up,” you shake your head and kiss the pad of his finger. “Ash?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m hungry, can we make popcorn?”

You’ve got on a long tank top and you’re leaning on his counter as you watch the popcorn rotate in the microwave. You’re humming a song to yourself and Ashton rests his hands on your hips.

“What song is that?”

“You don’t know?” 

“Sing a bit for me,” he kisses the top of your bare shoulder.

“My life’s just a carousel spinnin around poppin some corn.”

You both double over in laughter falling to the floor as the popcorn burns above you. It’s still the best popcorn you’ve ever had.

Taglist: @calumance  @in-superbloom @wiiildflowerrr @sunshineeeluke @littledrummeraussie @suchalonelysunflower @hoodhoran  @thew0rldneedsmcreycghurt @sunshineeashton @ashtonsunflower​ @mymindwide​ @itjustkindahappenedreally  @seanna313 @pandaxnienke @celestialams @in-a-world-of-fandoms @blairscott @writersdare

#ashton irwin #ashton blurb #ashton smut #ashton irwin smut #ashton fluff #ashton x reader #ashton writing #ashton irwin writing