#they get stabbed in the demo

[low-quality-microwave]

whoever you are, just hold me tight; i lost my love, my life that night

#boots n bombs #sorry everyone (i am not sorry in the slightest) #i always get so Nervous posting art here but srill. hope y'all like it #lyrics are from the gun song by car seat headrest #btw if it's not clear demo is holding a sword. dagger thing. and is stabbing solly and solly has a revolver pointed at his chin

[help-the-horse]

TF2 Backstab Models and What They Mean for the Mercs

In my travels in the TF2 meta, I've noticed that when using an Australium or ice themed weapon, such as the Spy-cicle, each Merc has a few different models for their "frozen backstab" pose. I thought this was interesting and decided to take it upon myself to document the different models and extrapolate what that might mean for each merc as a character. Keep in mind the "canon" of TF2 and the characterization of the mercs is very much up to interpretation but I think this can give us some insight at least into what Valve thinks of each character and how they react to injury, particularly the backstab.

Let's get into it.

SCOUT

Scout with his quicker speed assumedly has a faster reaction time compared to a lot of the other mercs, so it tracks that in many of his poses he is almost completely turned around/facing back. I don't think he necessarily expects to be back stabbed but his fast reflexes makes it so that he is one of the mercs who is closer to actually catching the Spy before the stab. Clearly he isn't always fast enough if he gets stabbed though. On a side note I personally find his poses to be some of the most unnerving ones.

SOLDIER

Clearly Soldier's slow speed catches up with him when it comes to backstabs. Being one of the slower classes in the game, and one of the more burly/stocky characters, it makes sense that he would have trouble catching a Spy before a stab. In a few poses you can see that he reaches behind himself, but you never see him trying to turn his torso or head around to catch his attacker. It's also interesting to note how he reaches to his lower back, either because of how he holds his rocket launcher on his shoulder, or because of his lack of physical flexibility,

PYRO

Pyro's poses are all rather similar, so I don't find that I have much to say about them. Given what little we do know of Pyro, it's reasonable to assume that they probably don't notice Spy's through their pyro-vision very well, so it would make sense that they wouldn't be prepared for a backstab. They also don't need a particularly fast reaction time for their weapon/attack style so they don't show the same reflexes as Scout or Demo. Pyro just be silly with their pose.

DEMOMAN

Demo is very dramatic to say the least. I find it very interesting how he seems to be very close to actually grabbing the knife/Spy relative to some of the other mercs like Solly, Medic, or Pyro. This supports my personal theory that Demo plays up his drunkenness on the battle field/in general. He clearly has a good degree of flexibility as well looking at the curve of his spine, and a reasonable amount of balance shown by his repeated "one toe on the ground" style stance.

HEAVY

Unfortunately I wasn't able to get many screencaps of Heavy, but all his poses are essentially this with little variance. He is probably one of the least flexible out of all the mercs, which makes sense given his body type and how built up his shoulder/back muscles must be from carrying a 300 lbs gun around all the time every day. You can see that he probably doesn't expect a backstab and has a slower reaction time than others, which is in line with his in game movement speed.

ENGINEER

This man really just always be on his knees. I would assume that this is due to the fact that most of the time you would see an Engie crouching behind a sentry or dispenser, in game and in the character sense. It also reinforces Valve's mocking of his VERY NORMAL AND AVERAGE height. I also like to think Spy kicks his knees out from behind as he stabs. The models also tend to have effed up hands for Engie for some reason which I find very funny. Arguably his right hand tends to be the more messed up one, which is also his mechanical hand/Gunslinger. Food for thought, perhaps a mechanical malfunction/short when he dies?

MEDIC

Medic's poses are all very similar as well unfortunately. What stands out to me the most is how INCREDIBLY TALL Medic is compared to all the other mercs. You can see that he also doesn't work to turn around or even reach behind him to any large degree, which I think shows how unexpected a backstab is for Medic. He's usually busy chasing some screaming Scout or hiding behind a corner to pocket a Heavy so it would make sense he wouldn't expect a backstab as he usually has some power class with him to protect him. We stand with our Medic's though, no hate only love. Stay strong Medic army.

SNIPER

Sniper is the most interesting to examine for me, as he and Spy tend to have a rivalry in every sense, from the Spy v. Sniper update/event released by Valve way back when, to in game play, to in the comics/canon media we have of the mercs. It's clear he is the most prepared for a back stab most of the time, and arguably the closest to actually stopping Spy. I think he generally has an average reaction time if the in game movement speed is anything to go off of, but the fact he is so close to stopping the attack just shows how used to the backstab he is. He also has a higher degree of flexibility on par with Scout and Demo.

SPY

And finally, we come to the man of the hour. The tl;dr is he's a drama queen who's holier than thou attitude and cockiness causes him to not expect or prepare for another Spy's backstab, which ends up being his ultimate downfall. The long version of it is that he is a drama queen who's holier than thou attitude and cockiness causes him to not expect or prepare for another Spy's backstab, which makes him a little bitch boy who's pride gets hurt more than the actual pain of the stab. All of his poses are pretty similar, showing he has a good amount of flexibility but a piss poor reaction speed if he's able to get beat at his own game.

ANYWAY, if you've made it this far in the post thank you very much for reading it all and indulging my TF2 brain rot. I have no idea if any of this deeper reading was intended by the devs or Valve, but I think it's interesting to explore what little we get in regards to any hints about the mercs as characters and what they might be like on and off the battle field in a story sense. Would love to have more discussion in the comments and if anyone has any other niche requests for me to overanalyze TF2 game play/lore please let me know and I'm sure I will find more than expected to talk about.

Stay strong TF2 fans.

#tf2 #tf2 scout #tf2 soldier #tf2 pyro #tf2 demoman #tf2 heavy #tf2 engineer #tf2 medic #tf2 sniper #tf2 spy #original post #helpthehorse #tf2 theory #tf2 mercs #tf2 engie #tf2 solly #team fortress 2 #game theory #tf2 screenshots

[storydays]

Hazbin Hotel: Episode 1 p1

Overture

@avatar_lover

(3rd POV)

"Once upon a time, there was a glowing city protected by golden gates known as Heaven. It was ruled by beings of pure light. Angels that worshiped good and shielded all from evil. Lucifer was one of these angels. He was a dreamer with fantastical ideas for all of creation. But he was seen as a troublemaker by the elders of Heaven. 

For they felt his way of thinking was dangerous to the order of their world. So he watched as  the angels began to expand the universe in their ways. From the dust of Earth, they created Adam and Lilith. Equals as the first of mankind, but despite this, Adam demanded control and Lilith refused. 

Drawn in by her fierce independence, Lucifer found her and the two rebellious dreamers fell deeply in love. Together, they wished to share the magic of free will with humanity, offering the fruit of knowledge to Adam’s new bride, Eve, who gladly accepted.

But this gift came with a curse.

For with this single gift, evil finally found its way to Earth. With it, a new realm of darkness and sin, and the order Heaven worked hard to maintain was shattered. As punishment for their reckless act, Heaven cast Lucifer and his love into the dark pit he created, never allowing him to see the good that came from Humanity, only the cruel and the wicked. 

Ashamed, Lucifer lost his will to dream. 

But Lilith thrived, empowering a demon-kind with her voice and her songs. And as the numbers of Hell grew, so did its power. Threatened by this, Heaven made a truly heartless decision, that every year, they would send down an army: an extermination to ensure Hell and its sinners could never rise against them. 

But Lilth’s hope remained. And her dream was passed down to their precious children, the Prince and Princess of Hell.”

A pale hand closed the story book, as a young woman held a key close to her, looking downcast. “Don’t worry Mom, I’ll make you proud.” She whispered, gazing out the window, listening to the screams outside. 

“Charlie?” a voice called startling the young woman. “Augh!” she yelped, as her key turned into a cat, who ran away to hide. Charlie winced before turning to the other woman, “Vaggie! Did you hear all that?” she asked. 

“Uh, yeah. I was standing right there.” smiled the woman, pointing at the door. “Sorry, I get pretty worked up after an extermination happens. The story helps.” Charlie frowned, staring at the book. “I know, don’t worry. I enjoy your theatrics. Are you okay?” Vaggie asked, sitting next to the blonde demoness. “I’m fine, just–ya know thinking about family stuff.” “DId you hear your from your mom yet?” Charlie shook her head sadly. 

“Oof, how long has it been now?” 

“Not that long…only…..seven….years. Off doing something important, I’m sure.” Together the women stood up, to look outside the window. “But this kingdom was something she really cared about; something I care about.” Charlie hugged herself, smiling wistfully. 

“Well, at least you’re not alone.” Vaggie soothed, holding Charlie’s hands.”I just hope that what I’m trying to do here will work.” Charlie admitted. “It will. I have faith in you.” the white haired woman smiled, cupping Charlie’s cheek. 

“All right, come on. Alastor says he’s got something he wants to show us.” Vaggie walked out of the room, Charlie going to follow her, before hearing the church bell ring outside. She turned to look out at the clock as it rang, signaling the end of the extermination. Charlie sighed before heading downstairs. 

*Downstairs*

“Well, hello there, you wayward sinner!” A cheery voice, on the television, called out to a demon currently stabbing another on the street, making the two look around confusedly. “Do you like blood, violence and depravity of a sexual nature? Of course you do, that’s why you’re in Hell! But what would you say if there was a place that had none of that?” questioned the voice as more sinners popped up, varying emotions from annoyance to confusion. The camera then zoomed to reveal the hotel.

“Welcome to the Hazbin Hotel! A misguided path to redemption!” the camera then pushed into Charlie’s personal space as she was mid conversation, before she noticed the camera and she smiled and waved nervously. A spider demon appeared behind her, using all four of his hands to give the demoness bunny ears behind her head and on the side. “Founded 5 days ago by Lucifer’s delusional daughter, Charlotte Morningstar! Come place your faith in her inexperienced hands as she tries to work through her daddy issues by fixing you!” 

The television showed a picture of Lucifer facing away from Charile as she hugged herself, tears in her eyes. Then it showed Charlie attempting to convince sinners to join. 

“Here we offer fun things! Such as somewhat functional staff.” The camera showed a grumpy cat demon who was clearly drunk as he face planted into the bar. A little cyclops woman scurried around him, chasing a bug with a giant needle in her arm, with a maniacal grin on her face, as she attempted to stab the bug.

“24 hour pest control! Custom rooms, and just look at this tacky parlor!” The camera panned out to show a piece of wood falling near the spider demon from earlier who was lounging on a couch, clearly bored as he examined his finger nails.  “Enjoy riveting conversation with our singular resident.”

The spider sent the camera a middle finger, making an effect of the word Wow appear on screen, changing to show a crudely drawing of the hotel with different notes and smiley faces with a large toothy grin. “Wow! All this and more at the Hazbin Hotel. Your last desperate attempt at salvation starts here!” On the screen, appeared: “Call now or don’t! I don’t care! We still don’t have a working phone!” 

The TV shut off as the audience in the room sat around, emotions varying from anger, shock, and disbelief. “So, what’d ya think?”asked a grinning deer demon, dressed head to toe in red and black. 

“I’m sorry, what the FUCK was that?” scowled Vaggie, arms crossed. “Uh, yeah, one note. Alastor…” Charlie started, ignoring how the demon’s smile tightened. “I mean, first off, thank you so much for making this, seriously, amazing, but um..” Charlie played with her fingers as she tried to explain her thoughts, “The tone was maybe a bit..off?” Alastor tilted his head as she continued. 

“We want people to WANT to come here. This makes it look–um..” “Bad. The word you’re looking for is bad.” Vaggie snarled, crossing her arms. 

“Funny, I was going for hilarious!” Alastor laughed. “It didn’t explain anything about how we’re trying to save demons, which is the whole fucking point!” 

“Vaggie is right, Alastor. The commercial was to let sinners know we are trying to save them.” called a smooth voice from another armchair. The male was sitting on the chair, his legs over the arm of the chair, and the cat from earlier purring in his arms, as he stroked her back. This was the Prince of Hell, Heir to the Throne, and Charlie’s big brother, (Y/N).

“Well, my dear (Y/N), I haven’t been active in Hell for some time, and everyone remembers me from my radio show. The proper way to express oneself!” Alastor turned to the TV with a clear disdain written over his ever grinning face.

“But you insisted on this noisy picture box advertisement. So I had a little fun with it.” “Oh fun, you had a little fun?” Vaggie snapped, before standing. “Well, this is not what we want to represent us. When you showed up here, a week ago, you told us you would help run this hotel. Instead, you’re mocking us. Nobody’s going to want to come to a place that a powerful Overlord like you thinks is a waste of time.” Vaggie hissed before the 4 noticed a red hand waving in the air. 

“What?” snapped Vaggie as (Y/N) started to walk towards the bar. 

“If’n you’re filimin’ a commercial, can I suggest you take advantage of the talented celebrity you have right here?” The spider demon from earlier, sat up lazily, grabbing the bottle of alcohol with him, and winked at the people, gesturing to himself. 

“Angel, you’re a porn star.” Vaggie deadpanned.

“A famous porn star.” Corrected Angel, as (Y/N) came back and sat next to the spider, with a strawberry Daiquiri in his hand. 

“I’ll have the horniest sinners knockin’ down these walls to get in.” The white furred spider grinned smugly, before swinging his legs over (Y/N)’s lap, clearly comfortable. “We are not shooting a porn as a commerical.” Vaggie said firmly. 

“Why not? Sex sells, don’t it?” Angel winked. “I swear, if you film me going at it with Sexy Princey or Mr FancyTalk Creep Voice here, you’d be rollin’ in participants to stay at this tacky hotel.”. Alastor laughed loudly before deadpanning. “Haha! Never going to happen.”

The bespectacled prince cleared his throat nervously, cheeks a slight red as he tried to compose himself. “A-Angel, we appreciate you wanting to use your ‘special skills’ to, um, attract folks to the hotel. But I–WE, meant to say WE don’t want to exploit you in that way.” 

(Y/N) smiled at the spider demon who grinned, leaning into the prince’s space, close to his ear, and purred, “But what if I want you to exploit me……..Daddy?” “HAHA! OKAY!”

(Y/N) yelped, before using his wings to quickly fly up and over by the bar, startling Angel who then smirked knowingly at the demon. 

Turning towards the girls, Angel continued to talk, “This body was made to be exploited, baby. I’ve got the arms, I got the stamina, I got the legs, I got the lung capacity. Oh, oh! I have the legs, the gag reflex, the holes, the chest fluff everyone thinks are tits..”  Charlie laughed uncomfortably as Angel continued talking.

(Y/N)’s phone started ringing, making the prince roll his eyes and walk away, answering his phone. “I’ll be right back.” 

He turned the corner, and grinned deviously as he answered the phone, “What up, bitch!”

*Back with the others*

“Hey, I have a question. If freaky face over there is so powerful, then why can’t he just make people stay here?” Angel asked suddenly, pointing at Alastor.

“Oh trust me, I can.” Alastor grinned darkly, briefly showing his horns.

“Why do you think I’m here?” A gruff voice called from the bar, making everyone turn to the bar, towards the grumpy cat from earlier. 

“You think I’d be cleaning bottles and listen to you fucks’ bitch and moan, if he wasn’t forcing me.” The bartender hissed as the little cyclops appeared next to him, grinning. 

“I like being forced.” She giggled. 

“Keep that to yourself, Niff.” grimaced the cat demon. 

“What, you don’t love being here with me, Whiskers?” Angel mocked, making a kissy face. 

“Call me whiskers again, and I’ll jam that bottle down your throat.” the cat threatened.

“Kinky! C’mon, keep talking dirty.” grinned Angel, narrowing his eyes at the cat.

“Angel, let Husk do his job. And no, we can’t force people to stay here; they need to choose to.” Vaggie stated. 

“I’m choosing to be here, and I think it’s all stupid. We’re in Hell, toots.” Angel shrugged, “That’s kind of the end of the line, ain’t it?”

“Well, maybe it doesn’t have to be.” Charlie smiled. “Just because no one’s ever made it out, doesn’t mean it’s not possible.”

Angel placed a hand on Charlie’s shoulder as he leaned down to her height. “Hey, whatever means I can keep crashing here rent free.” The women shot him a deadpanned look, and he scowled. “Crack is expensive.”

(Y/N) quickly came and grabbed Charlie by the arm, grinning excitedly. “Char, come with me!” Charlie yelped as her brother pulled her around the corner. 

“Woah, (Y/N), what’s going on?”

“So the leader of the Angel Army wants to meet…and I managed to convince Dad to let me send you to talk to them instead.”

Charlie tilted her head. “Why me? You usually take care of stuff like that.”

“Because, Char, you are the princess of Hell,and I think you’re old enough to start partaking in stuff like this. And.. you can use this as an opportunity to try to convince Heaven to give your Hotel a chance. “ (Y/N) prompted. 

“Ooh! Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Charlie hugged her brother before rushing to tell Vaggie. (Y/N) going to lean on the couch, as Vaggie questioned Charlie. “But the extermination just happened. What could they want this soon after?” 

Charlie started singing and twirled Vaggie who replied dizzily, “Okay but just don’t sing to them.”

“That bitch is half way down the street.” (Y/N) and Angel laughed, with the others looking out the door, watching the princess sing. 

“Is she–?” Vaggie asked, worriedly.

“Oh, she’s dancin’.” Angel tossed his head back, drinking the bottle in his hands, ignoring Vaggie’s groan.

#Spotify #hazbin hotel lucifer #hazbin hotel charlie #hazbin hotel x male reader #hazbin hotel x reader #hazbin hotel #viziepop #hazbin angel dust #hazbin alastor #hazbin lucifer #hazbin charlie #hazbin husk #hazbin vaggie #hazbin niffty

[waayfo]

i said, “do u think u’ll kill for me one day?” (yes, of course i will, my darling)

dottore x gn!reader. lyric from national anthem (demo). mentions of killing or murder / possessiveness / mentions of dottore’s real name / pet names / cursing / slight ?? yandere / ooc ( kinda soft dottore ). english is not my first language !

You know that Dottore, or your boss is a mad man who does as he pleases—at least that's what people think. But he always acts a little differently to you, which clearly shows favoritism. An act of favoritism that is certainly not left to some other people.

Other people try to take advantage, by asking you to make dottore do something. The most common thing that happens is when they ask you to beg dottore to release their newest prisoner (?) that became the subject of Dottore's experiments who is either their family or friend or partner.

And of course, you’re not happy with it.

You are not a tool to fulfill their wishes. And they were merely just strangers who suddenly came to ask for help, without repaying.

You are pissed.

But also scared at the same time.

Just now you came out of the room called the ‘sacred’ dottore's office. But a stranger who you guess is a new worker just by looking at his impolite behavior, suddenly grabs your arm and takes you somewhere.

“What the heck?!” You yelp. Ignoring the fact that the stranger's hands were shaking violently.

The stranger is now facing you. While his hand was still gripping yours tightly, to the point where you were in pain. "P- please help me!"

You let out a harsh sigh. "No, i won't help you. Thanks to your very impolite behavior.”

“W- w- wait! What do you mean?! This is urgent, and you must help me!” The audacity, you curse him in your mind.

“I said no!” Those three words managed to make him angry instantly.

“You—you should know your place! Is it because you managed to tempt The Doctor with your body and face means you can do whatever you want?!” You winced at his words, it felt like you were being stabbed by a knife, even though you know that it's all not true.

“If you will not tell that crazy man to free my friend—I will cut off your head, and present it to him.” You just looked at him in disgust thinking that he was a strange man. A disgusting strange man.

“Fuck off!” You yell at him.

Long story short, you managed to release his grip. But you couldn't help but notice the bruise on your wrist. You are increasingly annoyed and decide to end all this in an ‘inelegant’ way; using your heels, you stomp on his feet full of revenge. It should hurt a lot, you think.

And when you saw his reaction of pain and screaming, you immediately ran as fast as you could. Your body feels like it's on autopilot when you subconsciously search for someone you know too well— A tall and pale skin man, with light blue and slightly wavy hair, which makes anyone know his identity. And makes anyone afraid and even begs for mercy.

And there he was, standing straight with his hands behind his back like always.

“—tore,” Your breath hitches but tries to reach for his name.

“Dottore!” The man— Dottore looked at you quickly, as if he had been looking for you all along. He opened his arms, making room for you to fall into his embrace again. And you (will) happily return to his arms.

“Zandik!” You call his name once again, as if it were a spell that could make you happy for eternity. “Yes, dear?”

He lifted your chin, making you look up at him. His hand moved to wipe away a few tears that had fallen. Ah, since when have i cried? Why did i cry?

“What happened?” His calm voice made you shudder. You tightened your grip on his white lab jacket. And you know it won't cause him any pain.

You shake your head. "Nothing happened."

“Something happened,” His other hand, covered in a glove made especially for him, is now cupping your cheek. And his other hand, stroking your hair. “Am i right?”

The words are reluctant to come out and get stuck in your throat. You were too afraid to answer, too afraid to imagine what would happen to that stranger.

Silence enveloped the room. You only feel warmth, whether because of the heater in the room or because of Dottore's touch.

Knowing there would be no answer from you, dottore sighed. He placed you to sit on his desk. The desk was a little messy because of the papers, but there was still a place for you to sit.

Dottore's head lifted so he could see your face and what expression you were wearing right now— scared, with traces of tears.

His hand again rose to cup your cheek, then traced every curve on your face that he thought was beautiful. The touch felt strangely soft. Knowing that it was a touch from The Doctor— someone who had killed many people in order to achieve perfect experimental results.

And when he was about to hold your hand, he noticed something. A bruise on your wrist, a fucking bruise. That somewhat pissed him off.

“Who did this to you?” You can easily tell that he is angry, by the way he talks and the questions he asks.

“It’s— it’s just a random bruise i got—” “Stop lying.”

You were silenced quickly.

“You’re always been patient when other people try to take advantage of you,” Dottore's calm voice was whispery. If he knew about it all along, why did he continue to comply with your request?

Dottore closed his eyes for a moment, trying to connect the dots. “Someone asked you for help again? And you refuse, then they gets angry?” You nod.

“Is it a new employee?” You nod again.

“Tell me about them.” You told him straight away.

Dottore nodded. He noted it in his mind.

Out of sudden, you cupped Dottore's face. Cold, is the first thing that comes to your mind. Everything about him was cold, and so was his skin. You saw his pale face, but you couldn't guess what expression he had behind his mask.

As if he could read your mind, he took off the mask that covered part of his face. He put the mask right next to you.

“You’re not angry?” You ask, breaking the silence.

“Why?”

“Because i touch you– i touch your face.”

“Foolish question. Absolutely no.”

Dottore's hand covered yours that was touching his face. Maybe dottore can see your cheeks are a little red right now. Maybe now that stranger is scared right now that you managed run away.

You kissed Dottore's forehead as a thank you.

“I'll take care of it quickly.” And you can't imagine what experiments Dottore would do to the stranger.

#konstelasiv fanfic #dottore x reader #dottore fluff #genshin dottore x reader #dottore x you #dottore x y/n #dottore x female reader #il dottore x reader #genshin impact headcanons #genshin scenarios #genshin impact imagines #genshin x reader #genshin impact x reader #genshin headcanons #genshin fluff #genshin dottore #genshin hcs

[sattlersquarry]

the great divide (steve harrington x fem!reader)

Summary: (Post Season 4 AU, the sequel to orange juice) After your miraculous return to the land of the living, you aren't doing well.

Word Count: ~12k

Warnings: 18+ PLEASE!!!! for language, anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation. The reader has panic attacks and intrusive thoughts about Not Wanting To Be Alive. If that will be triggering for you please don't read this (read my happier bloom series instead). there's also an allusion to a relapse, slut-shaming, and allusions to sex (although there's no smut, it just gets slightly steamy). this fic is angst + hurt/comfort with an optimistic ending. inspired by noah kahan's music (including this amazing demo on instagram).

a/n: please let me know if i missed any warnings. please don't read this if you think it will be too triggering. the last thing i want is to make someone upset! but writing this was cathartic and helped me work through some things, i think. writing is magical!

🫀🫀🫀

THE GREAT DIVIDE

SOMETIME IN 1987

You aren’t sure how long it’s been since you last saw your friends. It feels like a fucking long time.

You woke up on the ground of the Upside Down, covered in dried blood and terrified at the sight of Vecna towering above you.

He brought you back to life. He wanted to send you back home and use you as a soldier and spy, the same thing he did to Will, Billy, Heather, and countless others.

“If you do this,” Vecna had growled, “You can once again see your family. Your friends. Your beloved Steven. Otherwise…you will die here.”

You refused, not interested in being his lackey. He tried to flay you anyway, but he was weak from the hell Nancy, Steve, and Robin rained down on him, allowing you to escape his clutches.

He stalked you for days, finally catching up to you—but you got the upper hand, using Eddie’s spear to stab him. Repeatedly.  

Killing Vecna caused the gates he opened to sew themselves back shut before you could get through. You were glad that your friends no longer had to worry about Vecna and his army of monsters pouring through the four gates, but it meant you were trapped on the wrong side of the universe.

Vecna gone meant the Upside Down could revert back to what it was before he arrived. Now, the sky of the Upside Down was a buttery yellow, and it was much warmer. You saw patches of green grass and flowers starting to grow in various spots around town. But it still felt like a nightmare.

You wander the Upside Down each day with a routine: avoid monsters, forage for food and clean water, and visit the gates to see if any of them reopened. Food and water aren’t as hard to find as you feared, since the world isn’t so much of a poison, desolate nightmare anymore. But the gates stay staunchly shut, much to your chagrin.

You miss your life. You miss Steve. You miss his laugh, his smile, his kisses, his touch. You would do ungodly things to see him again.

You hope he’s okay. Any time you want to give up, you remind yourself that if roles were reversed, Steve would keep fighting to come back to you no matter what.

And, to your pleasant surprise, he does just that.

🫀🫀🫀

AUGUST 1987

It’s been three months since you returned to the land of the living. You’re not taking it well.

Surviving the Upside Down meant constantly being in fight-or-flight, scrambling to find food and clean water while avoiding demo-creature attacks. Without Vecna’s evil influence, the animals weren’t so bloodthirsty—but they still needed to eat.

You were able to avoid them, surviving yourself off disgusting canned food from the Upside Down’s version of the Big Buy and whatever houses you ransacked. It wasn’t very appetizing. It made the meal you were serving up today seem like a 5-star, 5-course delight.

It was neither of those things. It was for a church potluck that your mother had a hand in throwing. Lots of casseroles and carbs. She dragged you along to volunteer in hopes to get you out of the house.

Ever since you left the hospital in May, you’d only ever left the house to go to doctor’s appointments, therapy appointments, and Steve’s place. Your parents wanted to encourage more of a well-rounded life and schedule, and although they’d never admit it, you figured they hoped you’d turn back to your normal self. To the person you were before it all happened.

You think she might have died.

As you plate some macaroni and cornbread for your next patron, you sense eyes on you. You glance over and see two women at a table a few feet away. To your chagrin, they’re gossiping about you.

“I mean, it’s appalling,” an old bat named Shirley hisses. “She claims to have lost her memory after the earthquake and gotten lost, but it’s obvious that she just ran away.”  

“Probably thought she was grown up, that she knew better than her parents,” Mildred says with a sniff, adjusting her too-big glasses.

“I can’t believe she left poor Steve Harrington high and dry,” Shirley adds.

Your heart clenches at the fact that these women see you as a villain, as an irresponsible idiot who up and left everyone who loved her out of spite. If they knew the truth…if they knew the nightmare you’d survived…

It only gets worse from there.

“You know what Cynthia told me?” Mildred says. “That her cousin’s roommate’s friend’s brother saw Y/N working a street corner in Manassas. It's just shameful.”

Anger burns through you, hot like hellfire. So, what? You’re not just a flake—you’re a slut to this people now, too? What happened to ‘loving thy neighbor’ and ‘forgiveness’ and all that shit?

“Can I get some more of that?” an elderly man says.

It snaps you back to your task at hand: dishing out food to hungry churchgoers.

“Ah, yeah,” you say. You dump macaroni on his Styrofoam plate. “Sorry. Here you go.”

The man smiles and ambles off. You take a deep breath and try your best to tune out the whispers of the chattering hens.

Your mother must notice the scowl on your face. She makes her way to you, practically floating, as graceful as ever. She’s totally in her element. She deserves a daughter who doesn’t clomp and stumble her way through life. Who doesn’t jump at every loud noise and sleep with a hunting knife under her pillow.

“Doing all right?” your mother asks you, giving you that sympathetic look that you think you might despise by now.

You muster up a smile of your own and nod.

Your mother can’t tell its fake and beams.

“See?” she says. “I knew getting you out of the house would turn that frown upside-down!”

She doesn’t know about the Upside Down. She thinks you got injured in the earthquake, stumbled through the Indiana woodlands, and got found by cops two states over. That you couldn’t remember where you came from due to amnesia, that since they pronounced you dead no one assumed you were the missing girl from Hawkins until your memories came back.

You let her comment slide and fake a smile, figuring it’s better to pretend you’re fine than feel it all.

🫀🫀🫀

That night, you chat with Steve on the phone. He’s gone back to college for the fall semester and you miss him terribly.

He promised he’d come back to Hawkins every other weekend. He knows how hard it’s been for you coming back. Or, he says he knows. Sometimes, you get the idea that he doesn’t really understand.

How could he? Every time he tries to get you to open up about what happened and what you went through, you shut down.

However, when he asks how your day was, you decide to be honest.

“It sucked,” you say. You blow out a huff of air. “These old crones were being total bitches at the church potluck. Apparently, the new conspiracy theory is that I was turning tricks in Virginia.”

“Ugh, I’m so sorry Y/N,” Steve says. For some reason, the sympathy in his voice makes you wince.

“But it’s fine,” you say quickly. “I don’t care what they say about me.”

There’s a pause on the other end of the line.

“It’s okay if you do, you know,” Steve says, speaking slowly and carefully as if he’s worried about setting you off. (For good reason; you’ve been prone to outbursts of anger lately.)

“I know!” you say, defensiveness seeping into your tone. “But I don’t give a shit. Really.”

“Good,” Steve says. But he sounds unconvinced. “You shouldn’t.”

Another pause. It lasts a little too long for your liking. You clear your throat.

“I should probably shower and head to bed,” you say. “It’s been a long day.”

“Yeah, totally,” Steve says. You don’t understand why he sounds almost intrigued by the prospect of your boring nighttime routine until he says, “A shower with you sounds like heaven right now…”

Shit. You’re really not in the mood for phone sex. Even if that’s not what Steve is angling for, just slightly flirty banter doesn’t sound fun to you either.

Steve has been a total gentleman ever since you got back. You’ve kissed a little, but anytime he tries to take it further, you stop him. As much as you longed for him in every sense while in the Upside Down, you don’t feel ready to re-engage in those kinds of activities—like you’ve been shot back to the insecure, unconfident person you were before you started dating Steve.

He respects those boundaries and never, ever presses for more. But you worry he’s getting bored and wants to get back into old habits, possibly evidenced by his shower comment.

You’re a coward. You don’t tell him outright that you’re not in the mood, afraid he’ll have an out-of-character reaction and chew you out for being a prude or a tease.

“Huh?” you say. Steve starts to repeat his salacious comment, but you interrupt with: “Bad…connection…can’t…better…”

You hang up the phone and let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding.

🫀🫀🫀

OCTOBER 1987

It’s a Thursday in October, and you’re taking a trip for the first time in a long time.

“You have everything you need?”

“Yes, Mom.”

“Toothbrush? Extra socks? Lambchop?”

You huff and roll your eyes, crossing your arms like a petulant teenager.

“Mom! I’m an adult. I do not need a stuffed animal.”

“But you packed her, right?”

You mumble out a “Yes” as she pulls up to the parking lot near Steve’s apartment building.

You applied for spring admission at the University of Indiana. Your lovely boyfriend invited you to stay with him for a few days so he could show you around campus for homecoming weekend.

Tonight is the unofficial campus tour with “Tour Guide Steve.” Tomorrow, you’ll help him and his friends put the finishing touches on a homecoming parade float, and Saturday is the big football game.

Before your disappearance and assumed death, your parents were insanely strict about you staying the night with Steve and wouldn’t have allowed it. Now, they’ve mellowed out—but you hate thinking it’s because of some kind of twisted pity.

Steve must have seen your mom’s minivan pull up from his apartment window, because he jogs over to you before you’ve even grabbed your bag from the trunk.

“Hey, babe!” he says with a beaming grin; the picture of exuberance. You can feel his excitement roll off him in waves. You feel like an asshole for matching his energy. Even though you’re excited for time with Steve, you have a pit in your stomach at the thought of being away from home for so many days.

Of course, if you get accepted to U of I, you’ll be away from home for weeks at a time. You try not to think about that.

Steve hugs you tightly, and you hope he can’t sense your apprehension.

He seems not too, still smiling as he gives your mom a quick hug and then offers to carry your duffel bag for you.

You give your mom a hug goodbye, promising to call if you want to get picked up early.

You and Steve wave as your mom drives away. After dropping your bag off at his apartment, Steve takes you on an abridged campus tour that ends at the dining hall. He wants to introduce you to his friends.

He has friends here. Of course he does, you’re glad he does. No one should feel like they don’t have friends, or like their girlfriend is their only friend. But what does it mean that your boyfriend is your only friend lately?

Nancy’s off at Emerson. As for the Hawkins crew, Jonathan’s busy with family stuff, helping Joyce and Hopper renovate their new house. Eddie’s preoccupied with his band, trying to get Corroded Coffin off the ground after a he-was-accused-of-murder hiatus. And Robin’s a student at Roane County Community College, spending her days with marching band and classes and clubs and work.

They’ve started inviting you to things, and sometimes you go. You usually don’t have much fun, distracted with your own anxieties and unable to think of anything interesting to say.

So, the fact that Steve seems to have moved on from everything so easily and has a pack of friends at college makes you feel pathetic, even though it shouldn’t.

At the dining hall, Steve introduces you to his buddies. When Steve lived on-campus last semester, Gus was his roommate. Now Steve’s moved into his own apartment off-campus, but the boys still hang out often and play together on a club basketball team.

Jessica is Gus’ girlfriend. She has a kind smile and compliments your sweater.

The last friend in their clique is Rochelle. She’s tall and slender, like a supermodel. Apparently, she and Jessica grew up together and are good friends.

Everyone greets you happily when Steve introduces you—except Rochelle, who looks you up and down like she’s inspecting you. It makes you uneasy.

You immediately start to dislike her more when she laughs loudly at Steve’s jokes and squeezes his shoulder flirtatiously.

“You are tew much, Harrington,” Rochelle says, flipping her shiny hair over her shoulder.

It makes you feel tense and jealous and angry and sick all at once.

You’re completely content to listen in silence while the others chat, but then Jessica asks where you go to school.

“Oh, um, here, in the spring,” you say. “Uh, hopefully.”

“That’s awesome!” Gus says. “You get the full Hoosiers homecoming experience a whole semester before having to pay tuition.”

You chuckle and smile. Any good feelings you have about this interaction come crashing down when Rochelle asks, “So, like, if you aren’t a student right now, what do you do?”

“She’s working at Sonic,” Steve says. “Saving up money. Right babe?”

You turn to him, face falling. You’re not working. You tried to apply for a job at Sonic and had a panic attack when you saw the gap in your resume from your 15 months in the Upside Down, so you roller-skated your way home to unemployment.

Did you not tell Steve that? You suppose you “forgot” to tell him about that panic episode.

“Uh, actually no,” you say, furrowing your brow. “Not anymore. I’m just taking a semester off.”

Surprise flashes behind Steve’s eyes, but he recovers quickly. He throws an arm around your shoulders and says, “Right, of course.”

The rest of the conversation is mostly you smiling and nodding along to the funny stories and inside jokes the group shares. When you and Steve get back to his place later that evening, you apologize for not updating him on the Sonic situation sooner.

Steve waves away your apology.

“Don’t even worry about it,” he says.

“But I feel bad,” you say, fidgeting with your fingers while you sit next to him on the couch. “I can’t believe I forgot to tell you.”

(You didn’t truly forget. You were embarrassed and didn’t want him to know.)

“These things happen,” Steve says. “I totally get it. For a few months after Vecna and…you, my brain was like scrambled eggs. I’d drink myself to a coma every other night. I definitely didn’t have the sharpest mind.”

You appreciate him for understanding. Except you feel shitty because you’re lying to him about forgetting. It’s a vicious cycle.

The two of you put on a movie, and while you’re lying on the couch with him, you start thinking of something you haven’t done in a long, long time.

You lightly trace your hand up and down the arm that’s wrapped around your middle.

“Hey,” you say quietly. “Would you want to…”

You clear your throat.

“What?” Steve asks.

You aren’t sure how to ask for what you want without sounding wholly desperate and/or pathetic and/or like the horniest bastard alive.

“Go to your room?” you say.

“Sure, if you want, we can go to sleep. We have a long day tomorrow.”

You laugh lightly.

“No, I mean. You know.”

You wiggle your eyebrows and Steve’s jaw drops. Mouth agape, like a goldfish, his brains seems to short circuit.

The air is charged with something you haven’t felt in a long time.

“Are you sure?” Steve says, a barely audibly whisper. His hand cups your cheek so delicately, and you feel cherished. Love. Seen.

“I am,” you whisper back, before pulling him closer to you for a kiss.

It’s the kind of kiss you dreamed about while you were trapped in another universe.

It makes you feel electric, the same way your first kiss had. That iconic kiss happened because Steve found out you’d never played spin the bottle. In his kitchen late, late at night, he took an empty soda bottle and spun it on the countertop.

He had maneuvered it just right and stopped it with his hand when the bottle neck pointed right at you, like a compass needle finding truth north.

“Well, what do you know,” Steve had said at the time, with a dopey grin on his face. “It’s you.”

“If you wanted to kiss me so bad,” you had quipped, “you could’ve just asked.”

And then you two kissed like crazy, amongst other things.

Back in the present, all your hesitancies and qualms about re-engaging in intimacy and sex with Steve are thrown out the window when you feel his lips on yours.

Giddy as if it’s the first time (because, in a way, it kind of is), the two of you break apart and practically race down the hall to his bedroom. Thank goodness for no roommates, because when you’re in there, Steve slams the door and presses you against it to kiss some more, closing the gap between the metaphorical great divide that you’ve placed between you both.

You tug at his shirt, and he pulls it off before the two of you stumble into his bed.

Things heat up, and they’re going great. Steve is kissing and biting your neck, probably leaving a hickey or two, but you don’t mind. His hands are gripping your waist, practically leaving scorch marks in their wake.

You’re loving this. You’re having a great time.

Until you’re not. The trains of thought in your brain all rush from the station at the same time, colliding at a junction on the tracks.

What if you give Steve an infection? Not an STD, but like, an Upside Down sickness. You could be a carrier and not even realize it. Is that a possibility? What did Dr. Owens say last time you saw him?

He advised you not to get pregnant. He said there’s a possibility your future children could have birth defects after your time in the Upside Down. Birth defects! You’re only 21 years old and your body is poisoned. Not enough to harm you in the short term, but the long term effects on you (and your progeny) could be terrible to deal with.

But Steve really wants kids. What if he finds out you can’t give him children and he leaves you? You really, really don’t want him to leave you.

You don’t realize it, but you start breathing a little harder. To Steve, it seems like you’re insanely turned on. Mentally, your brain is on a different plane of existence.

He’s going to leave you because he’s better off without you. He doesn’t realize it yet but one day, one day. He will.

Vecna was right. Vecna said Steve would get tired and bored of you. That’s why the monster tried to recruit you, to flay you. That’s why he pursued you across the Upside Down for days, hunting you like a dog until he cornered you at the quarry.

Steve finally takes notice of your erratic breathing pattern. You’re not reacting how you usually do to his kissing. He ceases the lovefest and leans up on his elbows.

“Y/N? You okay?”

You don’t hear him. You continue to hyperventilate, your eyes screwed tightly shut.

And when you stabbed the beast through the chest with the spear Eddie left behind, you didn’t even feel sorry.

Is that the kind of person you are? A sick, violent freak?

But it was self-defense!

But if you hadn’t tried to draw the demobats away, you wouldn’t have been in that situation. You went against the plan. You caused all the bad things that happened to you.

You’re a bad person. A bad omen. A bad girlfriend. A bad daughter. A—

“Hey, can you hear me? Y/N?”

Steve’s soft, slightly panicked, voice brings you back down to reality.

You nod, eyes still shut.

“Sorry,” you say. “I don’t—I don’t know what happened.”

“It’s okay,” Steve says, still speaking quietly as if he’s afraid to scare you. You don’t feel his hands on you anymore, but you sense he’s still close. “It’s okay. Can you sit up? I think you should drink something.”

You sit up slowly and open your eyes. Steve looks frazzled, but he musters up a smile when he hands you a glass of cold water.

“Sorry,” you mumble.

“You don’t have to apologize.”

You don’t respond, just take a sip.

“Can we just go to bed?” you say after a moment, voice cracking.

Steve nods and gives your knee a gentle squeeze.

“Of course. And, hey, listen, we don’t have to have sex anytime soon, okay?”

“But—”

“No, seriously,” Steve says, shaking his head vehemently. “I mean, of course I like having sex with you. Probably too much.”

You snort and shake your head, a small smile pulling at the corners of your mouth.

“But you know I don’t mind waiting. Right?”

You nod.

“Yeah, I know.”

But as you lie awake, tossing and turning, your brain continues feeding you lie after lie, and you find yourself believing the opposite. Prude, tease. Bad girlfriend. Bad person.

🫀🫀🫀

The next morning, you, Steve, Gus, Jessica, and Rochelle work on a homecoming float for the club basketball team the boys are on.

It’s fun at first. The parking lot is filled with floats for all different student organizations. Someone is playing music a bit too loud, but the energy is electric.

It takes a turn when Steve rushes off with Gus to get more supplies.

While you’re kneeling by the float trying to staple tinsel trim around the edge, you hear Rochelle and Jessica whispering conspiratorially on the other side. They can’t see you due to a large papier mâché basketball blocking you from view.

You're awash with embarrassment, feeling warm head to toe, when you realize they’re talking about you.  

“You know what Mollie told me?” Rochelle said. “When she and Steve were hooking up last year, he called her Y/N, like, three times.”

Your heart shrinks. You didn’t know Steve had been involved with anyone while you were gone. In fact, he said the opposite.

“That’s kind of sweet though, when you think about it,” Jessica muses. “But I wonder what caused Steve and Y/N to break up and then get back together. I’ve never dreamed of breaking up with Gus.”

“I heard some other super freaky stuff about her,” Rochelle says. “My sorority sister, Tina, is from Hawkins too. Apparently, Y/N had, like, amnesia or some shit after that earthquake thing. And she was like missing.”

“Damn,” Jessica says. “That’s crazy. How’d she remember stuff and get back home?”

“Who gives a shit?” Rochelle scoffs. “That’s obviously a cover story. Tina said the real story is probably something much simpler. Like she ran away to become a stripper but couldn’t hack it because she doesn’t have a good body. And, well, we’ve seen that firsthand.”

Anger and shame courses through your veins, and you tug on the hem of your sweatshirt. You’re comforted only a miniscule amount when you hear Jessica come to your defense.

“Don’t be such a jerk. And we have no idea what really happened so stop making shit up, mkay?”

“I’m just repeating what I heard. But Tina’s right, her whole deal is so weird. I can’t believe she’s Steve’s girlfriend. He deserves better.”

Those words echo in your head. He deserves better. He deserves better. You’ve been thinking that a lot yourself lately.

You don’t care if Jessica and Rochelle see you when you toss your stapler onto the ground and stomp off.

“Oh, shit,” you hear Jessica say. “Nice going, Roche.”

“It’s not my fault! I didn’t know she was creeping around!”

As you beeline through the throngs of float-makers, you bump into Steve, holding a box of glittery something. He grins at you.

“Hey, where’s the fire?”

When he notices the grim look on your face, he sobers up.

“Whoa, what happened?”  

“Who’s Mollie?” you ask before you can stop yourself.

Steve pales. He swallows hard, grip on the box loosening. He gingerly sets it on the ground next to him and shrugs.

“No one.”

“Liar.”

Steve glances around before leading you away from the crowd to a secluded spot on the outskirts of the parking lot.

“She really was no one,” Steve repeats. “Just some girl I had a class with. I was lonely and she liked me, so we went out twice.”

“I heard Rochelle say you hooked up with her,” you say. You cross your arms and try to keep angry tears at bay. “You told me you didn’t find anybody else.”

“I didn’t!” Steve says, a little louder. He clears his throat. “I meant that. We almost hooked up, but I couldn’t stop thinking of you.”

You sigh and shake your head. You want to believe him so badly. But the voice in your head that’s been so cruel to you lately isn’t convinced.

“Do you still think about her?”

Steve scrunches up his face, wholly confused at your line of questioning.

“What? No, of course not. Like I said, we hung out twice, had one near-miss, and then never spoke again. Babe, is everything okay?”

He reaches a hand to your arm and you flinch away. Your action makes him frown deeper.

You rub your forehead.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” you say. “Just tired.”

A beat. You think Steve’s going to accept your answer, until: “Why are you lying to me?”

“I’m not lying!” you say, irritation creeping into your tone. “I’m just tired. Okay, Steve?”

Steve fidgets from foot to foot. He’s starting to look as agitated as you feel. With an annoyingly calm, even voice, he says, “I think you’re not being honest.”

“And I think you should shut up,” you fire back, before you can stop yourself.

Steve’s face contorts into a frown, the line between his brows deepening.

“Whoa, what the hell?” he says. “Why are you being like this?”

“Because I just found out you lied about not being involved with someone while I was gone!”

Steve rubs his face with his hands, as if he’s trying to scrub away whatever he’s feeling. He takes a deep breath, another one, and then finally speaks.

“Y/N, I thought you were dead,” he says, voice strained. “You can’t seriously be jealous of me spending time with someone else because to my knowledge, I was never going to see you again.”

You know you should apologize for your outburst. Tell him about your insecurities, now dialed up to 1000 thanks to Rochelle’s comments. Rejoin his friends at the float like the normal girlfriend he probably wishes you were.

But instead, you find yourself voicing one of the fears that’s been swirling in your brain since June.

“It would be so much easier for you if that was still the case, right?” you ask, softly.

“Excuse me?” Steve asks.

“Do you ever regret it?” you ask. “Bringing me back?” He doesn’t react, doesn’t move, doesn’t blink. You clear your throat and, louder, add, “Because it would be so much simpler for you to date a girl like Mollie or Rochelle.”

“Jesus, Y/N,” Steve groans. “Don’t bring Rochelle into this.”

“Why not? She’s obviously obsessed with you!”

“Yeah?” Steve scoffs. “Well, I don’t like her. I like you.” He shakes his head, as if he’s short-circuiting, and corrects, “I love you!”

Too late. You already heard the Freudian slip of your worst nightmare. He doesn’t regard you in the same way he did before your so-called death. You’ve changed too much.

You shake your head vehemently.

“No,” you say. “No. You loved the girl I was before it all happened.”

“You’re still the same girl!”

“I’m not!” you shout. You’re so angry, so upset, so emotional, you can’t stop. You’re floating above your body and watching yourself speak when you say, “I’m not. She’s gone, and sometimes I wish you’d never brought me back so I wouldn’t feel like this.”

Steve goes still once more. When he finally replies, his voice is dangerously quiet: “How dare you say that.”

You hadn’t expected that. You’d expected him to swoop in with comforting platitudes. To hug you and promise it would all be okay. To truly hear the words you’re saying—the thoughts you’ve been too afraid to voice in therapy, thoughts you’ve sugarcoated in your mind to lessen that bitter feeling on your tongue when you finally speak them aloud.

“What?” you whisper. Your eyes sting, unshed tears collecting on your lash line.

“How dare you say that,” Steve says, shaking his head. He’s angrier than you’ve ever seen him. He runs a hand through his hair and barks out a laugh so hollow, you can practically hear the echo in his ribcage. “That’s so fucking selfish that you wish you were still down there. I was miserable without you. I didn’t want to go on. I didn’t think I could!”

He's not getting what you’re trying to say. You open your mouth to reply, to apologize, to try and fix things, but Steve continues.

“So for you to be so callous, to think so little of me, to think I’d rather date some vapid airhead just because it would be ‘simpler’? To think I somehow can’t love you anymore because of what you went through? That’s just…bullshit!”

You heave out a sob as tears roll down your cheeks. Steve’s expression morphs into one of guilt. He swallows hard.

“Y/N, I—”

“You don’t get to tell me my feelings are bullshit!” you snap. You sniffle and roughly wipe your tears away, before jabbing a finger into his chest and pressing in. “Ever since I’ve been back, it’s all about how everyone else feels about it. You and my parents are so much happier, and you seem to think I can snap back to how I was before and forget it all happened and be grateful that I survived. Well, I can’t!”

Despite your distance from the parade planning festivities, you see a few curious students glance in your direction. You can’t be bothered to care.

“I don’t know how to go on with life like normal after 15 months in that hell, and no one understands what I’m going through!” you yell. “No one has been through that! And I’m miserable and scared and anxious and I’m lying to my therapist week after week because I can’t even verbalize what I’m thinking without feeling like I’m losing my goddamn mind. So sorry if sometimes I wish all this would go away.”

Steve’s facial expression cracks your heart in seventeen pieces. He looks devastated and confused.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, somewhat cautiously. “You’re right. I’m not handling this well, not seeing it from your point of view. But this is the most you’ve expressed how you’re feeling about it all. For the past few months, I—I don’t know. I thought you were feeling okay.”

You sniffle again and shrug.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay, Y/N,” Steve says. He clears his throat. “This is good, I think. Well, no, it’s not good that we’re screaming at each other in the quad. But getting our feelings out is—”

“I want to go home,” you say, cutting him off.

Steve closes his eyes, sighs softly, and nods.

“Yeah, okay. I’ll drive you back to Hawkins tonight.”

“No, I want to go now,” you say, voice cracking as you try not to cry harder. “I want my mom to come get me.”

Hurt flashes on Steve’s features. “Babe, are you sure? I really don’t mind. I want to, actually. The drive will give us more of a chance to talk.”

But you’re too tired and overwhelmed to talk anymore. Steve understands, though his shoulders are slumped as the two of you walk back to his apartment.

He offers to pack your bag while you call your house. Your mom picks up on the second ring.

“Hello, Y/L/N residence.”

“Mom?” you sniff. “Can you come get me?”

“Oh, of course sweetie!” You hear the jingle of car keys. “Wait, are you crying? What’s wrong? Was it another nightmare?”

“I just don’t want to be here anymore.”

“Did you and Steve have a fight?”

“His friends were really mean,” you say quietly, deciding not to disclose that you indeed got in an argument with Steve. “This girl, Rochelle, said one of her friends from Hawkins is telling everyone I was a stripper.”

“Oh, don’t you listen to that.”

You can’t hold back tears as you begin to cry harder.

“How come everyone makes up those dumb rumors?” you say through sobs. “And if people on campus already know them, how much worse will it be if I’m a student here?!”

Your mom soothes you over the phone before promising to get there as quickly as possible. As you hang up the phone, Steve comes in from down the hall, frowning and carrying your now-packed duffel. He doesn’t even try to be subtle about his eavesdropping when he asks, “Why didn’t you tell me Rochelle said that to you?”

You shrug and look down at your feet.

Steve closes his eyes and shakes his head. “I keep replaying our conversation in my head,” he says, “and I feel like an ass.”

“You’re not, Steve.”

“No! I am. I absolutely am. You were honest and vulnerable, and I immediately got mad. I’m so, so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” you say flatly. Admittedly, you’re not sure if you forgive him yet. But you know you didn’t treat him well either, so you say, “I’m sorry too. I was insensitive. I know you had a hard time while I was gone—”

“But it’s nothing compared to what you were dealing with,” Steve says. He steps closer to you and intertwines your hands together. “Are you sure you don’t want me to drive you?”

“My mom’s already on her way,” you say. “And you should rest up. Tomorrow’s the parade, and the homecoming game.”

“I don’t need to go to the game.”

“Steve—”

“I’d rather come back to Hawkins this weekend,” he continues. “Spend more time with you. Talk things through, you know? Maybe I can just ride with you and your mom, and Munson can bring me back Sunday.”

He’s sweet. But you aren’t sure how to tell him that you really, really don’t want to be around him right now. You don’t want to be around anyone, really.

You take a deep breath, gently drop his hands, and say, “I think I need some space.”

You can’t look Steve in the eye, but you hear the pain in his voice when he says, “Oh. Um, okay. Yeah. Of course. Space.”

You two sit in awkward silence while you wait for your mom to arrive. When she gets there, Steve continues to be a gentleman, carrying your bag for you and politely making small talk with your mom. He gives you a hug goodbye, but it doesn’t linger the way his hugs usually do.

As your mom drives away, you watch your boyfriend get smaller and smaller in the side mirror.

Before leaving, you promised him you’d call him that night.

You conveniently “forget” to do that.

He leaves a message at 9:37 p.m., asking you to call him back.

You don’t.

🫀🫀🫀

NOVEMBER 1987

“Hey, babe. It’s Steve. Again. I know we agreed on ‘space’ but I haven’t heard from you in three weeks…I don’t want to rush or smother you, but I’d really like to talk, even if it’s for, like, five minutes. So please call me back. I love you, Y/N.”

-

“Hey Y/N. Are you doing okay? Robin says she saw you and your mom at the store the other day and you just seemed kind of…out of it. To be honest, I’m worried about you. Listen, even if you don’t…even if we…even if you’ve decided you don’t want to be with me anymore, or something, I still care about you. And I’ll always be here for you, no matter what. Please call me. Bye. Love you.”

-

“Hi Y/N, I’m coming back to Hawkins for Thanksgiving. Can I come by after you and your parents have dinner? I want to check in. On how you’re doing, and on how you’re feeling about ‘us.’ Let me know, okay? Bye, Y/N.”

-

“Hey. I’m going to swing by your place after I’ve finished Thanksgiving dinner with the Buckleys. Robin told me you’ve been avoiding her too. And Eddie, and Jonathan. I know you’re going through a tough time, but don’t try to do it alone. That’s a lesson I learned the hard way last year. I’ll see you tonight, all right?” 

🫀🫀🫀

You’ve spent the past month and a half wallowing. All you really do is sleep, eat, shower, and take short walks around your neighborhood for exercise. Any time Steve calls the house phone, you tell your parents to let it ring and let it go to voicemail.

It’s shitty of you, but you aren’t sure how to dig yourself out of this hole that you’ve found yourself in. You’re still feeling rather undeserving of Steve.

So when he shows up on your doorstep on Thanksgiving, wearing that maroon sweater that you’ve always just adored, the first thing you do is apologize for your radio silence. Then, you offer him pumpkin pie.

“I won’t say no,” he says. “As long as you split it with me.”

While your parents cuddle on the couch and watch It’s A Wonderful Life, you and Steve sit on the kitchen counter and eat slices of pie with whipped cream.

For a few minutes, you exchange small talk and pleasantries. Then, Steve gets down to business.

“How have you been doing, really?” Steve asks.

“Fine. Just tired.”

“Y/N,” Steve says with a sigh. “Please just be honest with me.”

You suck in a breath.

“Okay. You want honesty? I’m having a really hard time.”

“I know,” Steve says gently. “And I want to help. Can you talk to me about what’s going on?”

You consider it. You consider wrenching your heart open for him and admitting all your fears and insecurities. But last time you broached this subject with Steve and tried to be wholly honest about what you were feeling, you didn’t explain it right and he took it the wrong way.

And you also hear what sounds like Rochelle’s voice in your mind: He deserves better. He deserves better.

You save yourself the trouble and say, “I need to get my shit together. And I’m not being a very good girlfriend while I do, so I think we need to break up.”

Despite your best efforts to stay strong, you feel tears coming on. Everything only worsens when you hear Steve whisper, “What?” 

He deserves better. He deserves better. He deserves better than you.

“I have to focus on myself right now,” you continue as the tears roll down your cheeks. You stab your pie with your fork and say, “I’m sorry. I love you so much—”

“I love you too, Y/N, so I—”

“—but I need to deal with this on my own. It’s not fair of me to treat you like this.” You clear your throat and add, “You deserve someone who can give you everything you want.”

“You’re what I want,” Steve says. You can’t look at him, but you get the impression that he’s tearing up too. “I mean, if this is really what you want, I’ll respect your decision completely, but I just have to know—is there anything I can do to change your mind?”

You don’t want to do this—

—but he deserves better.

“I’m sorry, but no.”

“You don’t have to do this alone,” Steve says after a beat. “Even if we aren’t together anymore, I’m still here for you. You know that, right?”

You nod, still decimating your pie slice with your fork.

“Okay, good.” He sniffles.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay. You don’t have to keep apologizing.” 

“Sorry. Ah, I mean—”

Steve chuckles, despite everything. You two share an awkward hug goodbye before he leaves.

You stay in the kitchen and hear him wish your parents “Happy holidays.” As you hear the front door open and shut, as you hear his car turn on and drive away, you try to convince yourself this was the correct choice. That shutting him out means he’ll live a happier life without you.

The pit of emptiness like a chasm in your soul will go away eventually, right?

🫀🫀🫀

FEBRUARY 1988

It’s been 3 months since you broke up with Steve.

You decided to defer your U of I enrollment. Steve, being a good friend, calls a few days before the semester starts asking if you’d like help moving into your dorm, and you break the news to him. He understands but sounds disappointed. It makes you feel terrible.

But this is the right choice. You aren’t ready to be away from home, away from your parents, even if it’s just a couple hours away.

You start taking community college classes to fill your time and get some credits, along with working at Bradley’s Big Buy as a stocker. It’s mindless, monotonous work. It’s kind of perfect.

What isn’t so perfect is your therapist, Elaine. She’s nice enough. But she doesn’t seem to get it. You aren’t able to fully tell her what you went through, considering she knows nothing about the Upside Down, so she can’t really help you.

When you start opening up about the dark thoughts worming their way through your mind, Elaine advocates strongly and staunchly for putting yourself out there and making new friends to fill the void. You’re starting to wonder if you’re wasting your time shelling out $50 a week.

You do think a better social life would be good for you, so you invite Robin, Eddie, and Jonathan to come over to your place for a horror movie marathon. (Nancy would be invited too, if she wasn’t away at school.) You’ve rented a D-level slasher trilogy about a man in a hockey mask attacking pageant queens. It’s small potatoes compared to what you’ve actually been through.

Jonathan agrees, but both Robin and Eddie tell you they can’t make it. Robin because she’s got the flu. Eddie because he has band practice all afternoon and into the night.

It stings like a barb ripping you open when you swing by Melvald’s for cheap movie candy and spot the two of them across the street, laughing as they head into the Hawk with…Steve, who must be home from school for the weekend.

So they do want to have a movie night. Just with Steve and not you. Message received.

You wonder if Steve said something to sour you in their eyes. You thought the breakup was amicable. You know he was upset by it, but he respected your decision. And he doesn’t seem like the type to badmouth an ex, especially after all you’ve been through together.

But anxiety rolls through your nervous system the rest of the day. As you and Jonathan watch the crappy movies, you just feel numb.

“Jee-sus!” Jonathan yelps as the killer’s chainsaw hacks through someone’s limb.

He glances your way, eyebrows raising. “What? That didn’t scare you?”

You shrug. “I’ve seen worse.”

Jonathan’s brow furrows. He leans over and pauses the movie.

“Hey, is everything okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? We can watch something else. Or, if you’d rather be alone, I can head out.”

You pick at a loose thread on the pillow in your lap.

“Are Robin and Eddie mad at me?” you whisper.

“What?” Jonathan says with a laugh. “You’re, like, the nicest person in a fifty-mile radius. Why would they be mad at you?”

The old you was nice. The current you is moody. But Jonathan is also pretty moody, so maybe your moodiness is baseline in his eyes.

“They both said they couldn’t come tonight,” you continue, “but then I saw them just an hour ago in downtown Hawkins heading into the Hawk with Steve. Why else would they make up excuses not to come unless they were mad?”

Jonathan takes a long, slow sip of his grape soda and shrugs.

“It’s probably because they don’t want you to think they chose Steve over you in the breakup.”

“But that’s exactly what they did!”

“Maybe not,” Jonathan says. “Maybe they just made the plans with Steve before you invited us over and it’s easier to turn down your invitation than cancel on him.”

That’s a very logical way of looking at it, but it still stings feeling like you’ve lost two friends since you and Steve aren’t together anymore.

You and Jonathan continue watching, but his mom calls halfway through the second movie, forcing him to leave early—something about El using telekinesis to turn her bed into a bunk bed and it backfiring horribly.

You try to push your worries out of your mind, but paranoia takes a hold. As you toss and turn in your bed that night, clutching Lambchop for a semblance of comfort, your brain bullies you.

Robin and Eddie are pissed at you. Probably because you haven’t gone to any Corroded Coffin shows since you’ve been back. You’ve been a little preoccupied.

A little selfish, more like. It doesn’t matter what you’re going through. You should still support your friends.

But why? You don’t like drinking alcohol anymore because you don’t like feeling out of control. And the Hideout is the only place Corroded Coffin plays, and that place reeks of booze and cigarettes and bad decisions.

Maybe that’s why Eddie’s mad. Is Robin mad by proxy? Did Steve shit-talk you to her? How did he describe the events of the breakup?

Were you a bad girlfriend? Are you a bad friend? Bad person?

Yes. You’re a bad person.

🫀🫀🫀

You happen to run into Robin on the community college’s campus the following Monday. You can’t help but ask if she’s feeling better.

Her eyes widen and she plasters on a smile.

“O-oh, yeah!” she says. “I’m feeling loads better. Tons! Tons better.”

“Your sinus infection is gone?” you prompt, knowing full well she told you it was the flu.

“Yep! All gone. My sinuses are as healthy as can be. I feel like I could live to be 100!”

You exchange a few more pleasantries and shuffle off.

🫀🫀🫀

MARCH 1988

There’s a dark cloud hovering over your mind. Most days, you’re lethargic. You go to classes and go to work, and you do start going to the Hideout on Tuesday nights with Jonathan and Robin to watch Eddie play with his band.

But that’s the extent of your social life. You’re feeling lonely and drained.

Things take a turn for the worse in March. It was a cold, cold winter in Hawkins, and spring is shaping up to be warmer but just as gloomy. Really bad thunderstorms shake the windowpanes of your house most days, and the streaks of lightning remind you so much of the grayish-yellow Upside Down sky, it makes you sick.

You can’t help but find yourself thinking you want to disappear to escape it all. Not die, exactly. But fall into a deep, dreamless sleep. Maybe when you woke up, things would be better.

You try to explain what you’re feeling to Elaine the Therapist, and she doesn’t understand what you meant in the slightest.

“Have you gotten checked for narcolepsy?” she asks.

You give her a tight smile and say you’ll ask your doctor about it at your next checkup.

A bright spot is when Robin invites you to a party at her apartment. You forgot her and Eddie’s little white lie from a few weeks ago and RSVP yes.

The party is going well. You’re having a nice conversation with Jonathan and Eddie when Steve walks in, and he’s not alone.

Your heart sinks to your feet, through the floor, and all the way to the core of the earth when you see Steve is joined by Rochelle.

You don’t even hear any of the conversations happening around you. You quickly excuse yourself to the kitchen for a glass of water—and because you need to be alone.

You get about 15 seconds of a reprieve before Steve enters.

“Listen, it’s not what you think,” he says quickly.

“Hello to you too, Steve,” you say. You can’t even look him in the eye, choosing instead to study the ice cubes in your glass.

“I’m not here with Rochelle,” Steve continues. He runs a hand through his hair. “I mean, yes, she’s here. And I’m here. And we’re here together. But not together together! God, I’m not making any sense, am I?”

“None at all.”

“She needed a ride to her parents’ house for the weekend,” Steve explains. “She lives just forty-five minutes from here. But I guess they were out of town, and she didn’t have a key, so she’s staying with me. And she didn’t want to spend all day in my house alone, so—”

“She’s here,” you finish for him. You finally look him in the eye and force a smile. “That’s fine, Steve. You can hang out with whoever you want.”

“Trust me,” Steve snorts. “I’d rather not be hanging out with her. I’m just doing her a favor because she’s friends with Jessica and Gus.”

Before you can respond, Rochelle saunters into the kitchen. She smiles like a shark—all gums and teeth.

“Oh, it’s you!” she says. “Y/N! How have you been?”

“Fine,” you say politely. “How about you?”

“Oh, just great. Really great. Sad to not see you around campus, though. I thought you enrolled?”

She has the impressive capability of making everything single sentence sound like an insult.

“I’m going to community college instead,” you explain. “But I really should get back out there.”

You give Steve and Rochelle a wide berth before stepping back into the living room.

The rest of the party goes by fine. Except you can’t quite contain your rage watching Rochelle throw herself at Steve all afternoon.

She sits too close to him. She constantly whispers in his ear and giggles, like they’re sharing inside jokes and secrets. While Robin’s putting on a movie for everyone to watch, you swear you even see Rochelle put her hand on Steve’s thigh.

The only thing that makes you feel better is that Steve blocks every one of these advances. While Eddie regales you all with a Corroded Coffin storytime, you even notice Steve's slotted himself in between Robin and the wall, forcing Rochelle to stand off to the side near a potted plant.

When the party’s over, you wish Robin well and try to slip out unnoticed. Unfortunately, Steve has a terrible habit of noticing everything about you, and he follows you out.

“Hey, wait up!” he calls, jogging behind you as you speed walk to your car to avoid the sprinkling rain.

“Sorry, I have to go,” you say, struggling to unlock your car door.

Before you can get it unlocked and make your escape, Steve places a hand over the driver’s side door handle.

“Hold on,” he says. “Can we go somewhere and talk?”

“Well, I have to get home—”

“This’ll take five minutes,” Steve promises. He traces an X over his heart. “Cross my heart, hope to cry.”

You scrunch your nose in confusion. “It’s ‘die.’”

“Huh?”

“It’s ‘Cross my heart, hope to die. Stick a needle in my eye.’”

Steve’s eyes widen and jaw drops, affronted. “Jesus Christ,” he grumbles. “Why would anyone ever want to do that?”

“That’s the point!” you say, and you can’t help but laugh at the appalled look on his face. “You don’t want to do that, so you keep the promise.”

“Ah. Okay, well, I’ll be fast. I just want to see how you’ve been doing these past few months. I—I miss you, you know?”

You swallow hard. The rain’s starting to pick up now. You don’t want to wait too much longer to drive home, or else it’ll be too hard to see. And if you see lightning, you’ll probably have a panic attack behind the wheel, making you a danger to yourself and others.

“I miss you too,” you say. “But I really, really need to get home now.”

You think of leaving it at that, but your heart feels as sad as the look on his face, so you add, “But you can come by my house later tonight and we can talk? Uh, how’s 8 sound?”

Steve’s face brightens. He gives you that smile that always makes your stomach do a backflip.

“I’d like that,” he says.

You smile back and open your car door. Before stepping in, you turn to him and say, “Do not bring Rochelle.”

“Cross my whatever and hope to who-gives-a-shit!” Steve says as he walks backward away from your car. You give him a small wave, which he returns, before getting in the car and driving off.

As you suspected, the drive home is much, much too anxiety-inducing. Thunder seems to shake the whole frame of the car as you drive across town. Rain falls in pails, as if angels are taking buckets and throwing them on your car specifically. Your windshield wipers can barely keep up, and cars are honking and passing you since your fear is causing you to drive about ten under the speed limit.

You try not to let that bother you as your hands grip the wheel for dear life, the muscles from your fingers up to your shoulders impossibly tense. There’s a reason your mom drove you everywhere last summer and fall. Getting back into the habit of operating a motor vehicle isn’t easy, and everything seems to scare you now.

Despite everything, the drive is going fine—until one of the cars passing you cuts a little too close as they swerve back into the right lane. They almost clip your front bumper, which causes you to panic and swerve off the road near the now defunct trailer park.

Your tires squeak on the wet grass and you slam on your breaks, heart pounding. Shuddery breaths draw in, out. In, out. You try and collect yourself and turn your left turn signal on to merge back onto the main road. However, something gray out of the corner of your eye causes you to whip your head in the direction of the trailer park.

This is where you died and were resurrected—well, the version of this in the Upside Down. In Hawkins, the area is cordoned off. No one can live there anymore, thanks to the big cracks in the earth. Once gates, they were now sealed, but they upended some trailers and tore others in two.

You see a flash of movement between two broken trailers. The gates are supposed to be closed, and there aren’t supposed to be Upside Down creatures in Hawkins anymore, but you can’t help but wonder alternatives. You feel compelled to check it out. 

You turn off your car’s ignition, grab the flashlight from your glove box, and clamor out, ducking under the “CAUTION” tape and jogging into the park. You squint in the rain, the beam of your flashlight scanning the surrounding area. You step over uneven earth, wondering if you’re wasting your time and should just—

“GRRRRRROWWWLLLL!!!!!”

You whip around and gasp. The gray creature you saw wasn’t a demo-creature, but a mangy, stray dog with muddy fur. It snaps its jaws and you see three little puppies cowering under a bush behind it.

An overprotective mama dog wouldn’t have scared you two years ago. You would’ve known exactly how to handle the situation without freaking out. But now, your fear spikes and you remember the few run-ins with hungry demodogs you had in the Upside Down. The dog is blocking your way back to your car, so you turn on your heel and run in the opposite direction, toward the imposing forest.

You can’t think clearly. Your mind is on fire. All you can think is Danger! Danger! Danger! And it’s keeping you from making any rational decisions.

You swear you hear the dog chasing behind you, snarling and ready to attack. You zig-zag between trees and glance behind to see if you really are being chased.

You lose your footing on slick mud, left ankle twisting painfully as you fall to the ground. Your flashlight skitters out of your grasp and rolls away, blinking out.

Now, you’re stuck in the rain, in the dark, with an injured ankle and no flashlight. Thankfully, the dog wasn’t following. But you feel powerless, hoping you can muster any survival instincts from your time in the Upside Down to make your way back to safety.

🫀🫀🫀

At 7:58 p.m., Steve parks outside your house.

He’s more nervous than he needs to be. He tries to remember that this isn’t a visit to win you back, as much as he wishes it was. No, he’s respecting your decision. But he’s glad he has the chance to just talk to you.

After you dumped him, he spent way too much time overanalyzing that fight you two had in October. It solidified the fact that he was an ass, completely misunderstanding you and getting mad for no good fucking reason.

Admittedly, he was tempted to throw away all his progress and drink away his misery. But he didn’t, channeling that energy toward more productive things. His mind is clearer than it was, and he’s going to make it right this time. Steve wants to check on you, the way his friends checked on him while he was having a tough time. Their support was invaluable.

Steve rings your doorbell, shaking out his umbrella.

The front door swings open. Your father looks expectant, before he frowns.

“Steve, hello,” your father says. “Is Y/N with you?”

Steve’s brow furrows. “Uh, no,” he says. “I’m supposed to meet her here.”

Your father curses and puts his head in his hands.

“Is it her?” your mother says, rushing around the corner with the cordless phone tucked under her shoulder. When she sees Steve, her shoulders slump. She speaks into the phone, “Hopper, she’s still not back.”

“What’s going on?” Steve asks, heart sinking. “Y/N’s missing?”

“She never came back from Robin’s party,” your father says, stepping aside to let Steve in. “You saw her leave, right?”

“Yeah,” Steve says with a nod. His mouth feels very, very dry.

Your mother continues murmuring on the phone with Hopper, and your father continues grilling Steve: “How was she? Did she seem upset?”

“A little nervous, maybe,” Steve says. He swallows hard. “I, uh, I think she was freaked out by the storm.”

You should’ve driven her home, Steve thinks. You idiot. If something happens to her, it’ll be your fault.

“She’s been so quiet lately,” your father says, voice strained. He clears his throat. “And so jumpy. But she said she wanted to start driving again. We thought she was getting better…”

Your father looks like he’s beside himself. Steve is unsure what to say to make things right.

Your mother hangs up the phone and sighs. “Hopper’s going to go look for her,” she says. She chokes out a sob. “Oh, Roger…she’s been so down lately. What if she…”

“Let’s not speculate,” your father says firmly, though he looks anxious about the possibilities.

Your parents decide to drive around looking for you, and Steve joins the search in his own car as well. He can’t sit idly by knowing you’re out there, possibly in distress, possibly in danger.

🫀🫀🫀

While you’re sitting against a tree trunk trying to shield yourself from the rain, there’s a morbid part of you that’s okay with this.

You wanted something bad to happen. You wanted to be in some kind of distress, because you being hurt means people have to care about you. Right? They have to really, truly see that you’ve been struggling but haven’t been able to ask for proper help.

You snap yourself out of that thought process, trying to remind yourself that people do care about you. But it’s hard to feel that way when you’ve put so much distance between yourself and the people you love.

You aren’t sure how long you sit in the rain having a pity party, watching your swollen ankle get bigger and bigger. You need to ice it and elevate it. And anytime longer in this rain, you’ll catch a cold.

So, you crawl on your hands and knees and find as sturdy a branch as you can on the forest floor. You use it as a pseudo walking stick to help you hobble back toward the trailer park. You know the way, thanks to your time traversing the forest daily in the Upside Down.

As you get closer to the break in the trees, you hear people calling for you. You shuffle there faster.

“I’m here!” you yell, stumbling through the tree line. “I’m here!”

It’s Chief Powell and Hopper, and they look relieved to see you. Officer Callahan and an animal control worker are trying to coax the mama dog and her three pups into crates.

“What happened, kid?” Hopper asks, sitting with you in the backseat of Powell’s truck while the other man radios for an ambulance and a tow truck for your car. The usual gruff timbre to Hopper's voice has a softened edge to it today, like he can sense your emotional fragility.

“Some jerk pushed me off the road. And I thought I saw…I—listen, the mud made the dog’s fur look gray, and I thought it was—”

“One of these hellhounds?”

You nod.

“I’m not sure if you realize this,” Hopper says. “But it’s been two years to the day since you…you know.”

You swallow hard.

“I didn’t remember,” you admit. “I mean, I knew the anniversary was coming up soon, I just…”

“We were all worried you…did something,” Hopper continues cautiously.

“I wouldn’t,” you say, much too quickly. “I mean, I feel like shit a lot of the time, but…no. I wouldn’t.”

Hopper nods, eyeing you. He doesn’t quite look convinced.

When the ambulance arrives, he rides with you to the hospital. Then, your parents meet you at the ER, while a doctor looks over your ankle.

It’s sprained, but not broken, thankfully. They send you home with a brace, some crutches, painkillers, and instructions to elevate and ice.

The whole drive home, your parents give you a speech about how much they love you and how they want to know how you’re doing, and that if you ever feel low, to talk to them because they can help. Normally, that kind of thing would annoy you, but after today—the fear of seeing what you thought was a demodog, of being back in the wilderness by yourself, even just for a few hours—you appreciate the gesture.

It's after midnight when you get home, and the rain has finally let up. Your dad helps you up the porch stairs, leaning the side with your bad leg against him the whole way. You almost don’t notice the note tacked to the front door until your mom points it out.

It has your name on it. You open it. Parts of it have been scratched out, but you can still read it all.

Hey, Y/N. I was driving around looking for you when Hopper found me. I’m so glad to hear that you’re going to be okay.

I’ll swing by tomorrow to chat, if you’re still up for it. If not, no worries. I know it’s a tough time. I just want you to know that I miss you I care about you more than you know I’m here.

-Steve

🫀🫀🫀

When Steve comes by the next day, he’s not alone.

You’re surprised to see him and Max Mayfield standing on your porch.

“Uh, hello!” you say. “How are you, Max?”

“Pretty good,” she says, “now that Steve is taking us for ice cream.”

You raise your eyebrows and adjust your stance on your crutches.

“Oh!” you say. You look to Steve. He’s smiling, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. Everything about his posture is tense, nervous. You wonder if this is an intervention or something—if you’ll arrive at the ice cream shop and be bombarded by the rest of your friends and a licensed professional promising a “safe space.”

You tell your parents where you’re going, promising a million times that you’ll be careful, and hobble down the porch steps to Steve’s waiting car. He’s a gentleman, one hand hovering behind your back and ready to catch you if you fall.

Max lets you have the passenger seat, likely due to your injury. On the ride over, you consider (politely) asking what she’s doing there, as you expected this conversation would be about the nature of your and Steve’s relationship.

A part of you deep, deep down had hoped he would beg you to take him back. A part of you deeper down felt selfish for that, but it was what you wanted.

You made a huge mistake letting him go.

Steve ends up taking you both to Sonic, pulling into one of the parking spots and pressing the “Order” button. Max leans up from the backseat, sticking her head between the two front seats, and rattles off a complicated order of hot dogs, fries, slushies, and ice cream into the speaker.

“I thought this was just ice cream,” you say with an eyebrow raised.

Max smirks.

“Moneybags Harrington is paying,” she says, patting him on the shoulder.

“I resent that,” Steve grouses. But there’s a sparkle in his eye.

When the food comes, Steve divvies it up amongst the three of you. However, he quickly comes up with a shoddy excuse to step out of the car—something about the fries being a medium instead of a large.

Max climbs over the center console to settle in the driver’s seat.

You aren’t sure what to expect when you’re alone with Max, but it’s definitely not, “Dying and coming back really sucks, doesn’t it?”

Your burger immediately tastes like sandpaper. “Oh, let’s not talk about that,” you say. “Let’s talk about fun things. Have you learned any new skate tricks recently?”

“Don’t deflect,” Max says, waving a french fry at you for emphasis. “Steve said you were having a hard time because no one could relate to you, and I’m probably the only person in the world who can.”

She’s not wrong. After your return to the right side of the universe, you learned that Max woke up from her coma, completely healed, after you killed Vecna and the gates closed. You hadn’t thought about how the two of you had similar, paralleled experiences.

“It does suck,” you say quietly, swirling your spoon around in your ice cream cup. “And I kind of feel like I’m losing my mind.”

“For me, it was a lot of anger,” Max says. She fidgets with her own food as she continues. “I couldn’t understand people’s priorities anymore. Like, what do you mean you’re worried about a chem test, Dustin? A few months ago, the world almost ended!”

“I totally get that,” you say, and your heart already feels lighter. “And my parents don’t understand what really happened, so they just don’t get me at all. Why I get so scared, so angry. So jumpy. It makes me feel like I’m a freak in their eyes.”

“I feel like my mom doesn’t even see me anymore,” Max says. She clears her throat and you catch a glimpse of tears gathering on her lash line before she roughly wipes them away. “Like to her, I’m a ghost.”

“I’m sure that’s not true,” you say. She scoffs.

“And there’s another annoying thing,” Max says. “The empty platitudes to make us feel better. That shit doesn’t fix anything!”

You’re not offended by her outburst, because you honestly agree. The two of you lament a bit longer, and by the end of the conversation, you’re feeling on top of the world. Sure, nothing is really fixed. But you finally realize that you have a kindred spirit in all this.

You and Max make a plan to do things together more often. You’re seeing her as a de facto little sister already, and you’re hopeful that your planned meetings will be just as beneficial for her as they are for you.

Steve comes back after what seems like a millennium, shooing Max back to the backseat.

“Took you long enough!” she says.

He just smiles.

🫀🫀🫀

JUNE 1988

It’s the first day of summer.

And it’s been a year to the day since you returned.

You expect to feel more anxious than you do. Instead, you feel peaceful.

You’re doing a lot better, genuinely. You found a new therapist (sorry, Elaine) and since it’s someone who worked with Dr. Owens, you’re able to spill all the gory details of your past and your trauma. Healing isn’t easy, but you feel yourself slowly sewing yourself back together again.

You and Max stick to your word and take weekly trips to Sonic. You talk about the heavy stuff, but also the normal life stuff. You sometimes have guests. This past week, Lucas and Mike tagged along, arguing the whole time about what should happen in the Ghostbusters sequel that’s supposed to release next year.

You and Steve…ah, what’s there to say. You want him back, but you imploded the relationship and it feels selfish to waltz up to him and say, “Hey, hot stuff. Wanna get back together?”

However, you’ve officially enrolled for the fall semester at U of I. While he’s home from Hawkins for summer break, under the guise of asking for tips about campus life, you spend a lot of time with him.

You also spend time in the library, doing some studying to catch up before you start your classes in the fall. Your high school graduation was a lifetime ago. Literally.

Steve, Robin, and Jonathan join you for those summertime study sessions, although Jonathan and Robin usually bicker over the music theory books and Steve doesn’t get much done except for doodling in his notebook. But sometimes you catch him staring at you, and then his cheeks flush pink in that adorable way that makes you want to do something stupid, like beg him to take you back.

If only you knew if he really felt the same…

…which you find out he does, during the summer solstice.

You’re at the county fair with your friends, but they’ve all run off to watch the fireworks, so it’s just you and Steve at a picnic table downing sodas and cotton candy.

Your fingers wrap around the cool glass of a now-empty Coke bottle, and you place it on the tabletop. You attempt to look nonchalant as you spin it slowly.

Once it’s picked up momentum, you let it go, watching it spin a few more times before stopping it with your hand when the bottle neck points at Steve.

“It’s you,” you whisper, attempting to recreate that magical first kiss moment from years and years ago. You clear your throat at Steve’s dumbfounded expression. “Ah, sorry. You don’t have to kiss me. I was just…”

To your pleasant surprise, Steve’s face splits into a grin. “Well, gee, Y/N,” he says. “If you wanted to kiss me that bad, you could’ve just said so.”

A million canaries titter a love song in your heart as he leans forward.

The two of you kiss, for the first time in a long time.

The great divide in your soul is starting to seal. And everything feels right.

THE END

🫀🫀🫀

a/n please lmk what you thought 🩵

tags; @aloneinthehellfire @starry-eyed-steve @hollandweather @wisdomssdaughterr @huffledor-able541 @springautumn

@sunshinesteviee @curiositydooropened @crappymixtape

#st fic: oj #st fic: tgd #steve harrington x reader #steve harrington x y/n #steve harrington x you #steve harrington #steve harrington fanfic #steve harrington fic #stranger things fanfic

[corvusasteris]

the sands of time is a fantasy interactive fiction where you play as the mage of a small provincial town who, in the process of investigating into strange magical phenomena, finds themselves embroiled in a far-reaching political intrigue with potentially deadly consequences. and ghosts.

themes/tags : intrigue, fantasy, effects of time, power, magic, ghosts

You are a mage who, after being forced to flee from the capital for a crime you may or may not have committed, has taken refuge in Kemorlen, a small, unremarkable town ideal for keeping out of the political reaches of the Illyosian Empire. But when an apparently straightforward investigation into bizarre magical phenomena forces you into conflict with figures from your past and powerful forces that care little for you, how will you navigate through the oncoming storm that shatters your fragile calm ?

The continent of Aiolos has been dominated by the Illyosian Empire, with its back-stabbing nobles and complex court politics, for generations. Yet their hold is beginning to fray, and its rulers will do anything to take back their former power, sparking events that quickly spiral far out of their control.

Aiolos is a land at the crossroads of the mortal and spirit realms, where the effects of the underworld are felt keenly, and the delicate balance between mortal and spirit realms is ever on the verge of tipping over.

worldbuilding info

Flee from the capital under dubious circumstances: choose whether you were a spy or scholar when in Melera.

Meet five characters (one male, two female, one nb and one selectable: either male or nb) and choose to pursue romance, friendship, or rivalry.

Navigate a world of complicated politics, spirits that frequently won't stay dead and magic that permeates everyday existence.

Choose your name, pronouns, gender and place of origin.

Pick which area of magic you are strongest in, out of four (warding, enchantment, healing and transmutation).

Try not to get assassinated, arrested or possessed.

detailed character info

Jasper (m) :

A familiar face from your past, and not one that you expected to see again. He's a snarky, obsessive researcher into spirits and, during your time in the capital, your closest companion. After getting caught up in the incident that provoked your rather abrupt exit, you presumed him to be dead, and he you.

Leonora (f) :

The owner of the alchemists shop next door to you in Kemorlen. Despite her saving your life (numerous times) and helping you to create a new life for yourself there, she remains a figure that you know surprisingly little about. She's blunt, impulsive, skilled with a sword, and definitely hiding something. All in all, you don't quite know what to make of her.

Augustine (nb) :

A quiet, unassuming healer who arrived in town shortly after you did. Surprisingly squeamish and possessing a dry sense of humour, they have quickly become indispensable in helping you deal with the everyday magical difficulties of Kemorlen. Their past remains a mystery to you, and you suspect there may be more to them than first appears.

Mira (f) :

A charismatic bard who wanders the roads of Aiolos collecting stories, gold, and animal companions after being exiled from her home kingdom. She seems to attract trouble, but as long as the resulting chaos makes for a good tale she doesn't appear to mind much.

Theodorus (m/nb) :

A spirit with patchy memories and a thirst for revenge after being accidentally brought back from the underworld. They're awkward, restless and struggling to reconstruct a life for themselves in a world where they are supposed to be dead.

demo : here currently 17k words, prologue

release medium : twine & itch.io

rating: 16+

pinterest: here

#interactive fiction #twine if #if wip #interactive novel #twine #if game #interactive game #any spelling mistakes are bc i got my keyboard stuck in french mode so all the keys are in the wrong place #what can i say technology hates me #demo

[prettyboypistol]

Personal Favorite SniperSpy Dynamics

SAME TEAM:

Sniper is horny for Spy and Spy is like "bro i know how you live hell no" but also secretly wants Sniper

Spy thinking low of Sniper and getting pissed when Sniper proves just how professional and competent he is, Sniper knowing damn well what Spy is thinking and relentlessly teasing him about it

"I'm not going camping with you." "Well then I'm not going to Morocco with you."

Idk but I love the plot of Spy dodging Sniper's flirting like the plague while Sniper dodges Scout's flirting like the plague. (Sniper would know that Spy is Scout's dad, Scout wouldn't know.) Bro it's so fucking funny to think about. like Scout. Scout. Fuck off I'm trying to hit on your dad. I also just really like pathetic Scout >:)

CROSS FACTION:

We all saw meet the spy. those bitches hate each other. They spend their down time scheming and thinking about each other. They both have pictures of each others they stab. They complain about each other. They bicker on peace days. They make out with each other. They refuse to acknowledge that this isn't the first time the other has woken up in the other's room.

Both privately acknowledge the sexual tension but refuse to say anything about it actively.

Heavy and Medic openly betting about when they will finally get over themselves and quit the drama like BLU Soldier and RED Demo becoming good friends.

RED being more encouraging to Sniper while BLU being snide and spiteful for anything to do with RED

#tf2 #team fortress 2 #fanfiction #tf2 sniper #tf2 spy #sniper x spy #sniperspy #bloody suit #great barrier thief #knife party #prettyboy pistol

[the-wild-wolves-around-you]

tell me we'll never get used to it

Pairing: Eddie Munson/Fem!Reader; Eddie Munson/You

Summary: Sequel to "i can't carry it for you, but i can carry you," but this one can technically be read as a standalone.

Set a few weeks after the finale, you and Eddie are finally healed enough from your ordeals to have sex. You both get a little stoned on California weed, and then Eddie confesses to you that not only is he a virgin, he's also self-conscious of the scars the demo-bats gave him. So you seek to reassure him, remind him how much you love him, with both your words and your body.

Rating: E(xplicit). Minors DNI

Warnings: smoking/shotgunning weed, smut, virgin!eddie munson, loss of virginity, oral sex (f/m receiving), fingering, unprotected sex, vaginal sex, creampie, praise kink, dirty talk, pet names, riding, scars, self-confidence issues

A/N: I started this fic with the intention of making something quick and smutty, and then it turned into... this. And this fic stems from my deep seated belief that Eddie Munson deserves to get really high and have really tender loving sex, and since the Duffers are cowards, I did it myself. Also, as much as I love bad boy, sex-god Eddie, I just head cannon Eddie Munson as a virgin because come on, lol, he's a DnD nerd who plays in a "weird" band, sells drugs, and failed senior year twice. I love him with all my heart, but the boy has never gotten his dick wet lmao

(And, yes, I took the title from a Richard Siken poem, sue me)

Ao3 Link: Here

“‘Kay, kids, I think it’s time to pack it in,” Steve said as he stood up and clapped his hands.

“What?!” Mike, Lucas, Dustin, and Will protested in unison, snapping their heads up from where they were crowded around your long coffee table.

“We’ve barely even started,” Mike argued as his eyebrows furrowed sharply.

“Yeah, the sun hasn’t even set yet,” Dustin added, stabbing an accusatory finger at where the fading orange sunlight was filtering in through the living room window. “We’ve got like, at least thirty, thirty-five minutes before we need to leave.”

“But we’ve been playing for hours,” Robin groaned as she flopped over on the couch, into the space Steve had just vacated. “I’m bored.”

“You’re only bored because you died,” Dustin shot back. “By tripping off a cliff, I might add, which I’m still not sure how you did that…”

“And this is nothing,” Nancy scoffed from beside Robin. “Mike once ran a marathon forty-eight hour session in our basement, starting Friday and going all through the weekend. That room smelled disgusting by Sunday night.”

“Shut. Up. Nancy!” Mike was sitting cross-legged on the floor, and he turned and scowled at his sister over his shoulder. He was blushing, and when El giggled from where she was leaning against Mike’s opposite shoulder, he only blushed harder.

“Only telling the truth,” Nancy said as she raised her hands.

“I believe you,” Steve muttered and then ducked when Dustin threw a six-sided die at him. “Hey! That’s it! Party’s over. It’s past your bedtimes, so pack up all your little toys and dolls.”

“Hey, no need to disrespect the game, Harrington,” Eddie said from behind you.

He was sitting in the recliner your mom’s boyfriend bought only a few months ago, and he looked every inch like a king on his throne when you glanced up at him from where you were sitting— also cross-legged —between his feet. Since he’d been discharged from the hospital, he hadn’t let you leave his side, and he always had to be touching you, not that you were complaining. Right now, both of his legs were pressed against the outside of your arms, and one of his hands was idly playing with your hair.

“I have respect for the game,” Steve huffed with his hands on his hips, like a disgruntled mother. “But like Robin said, it’s been hours, and you know Agent Mustache gets pissed when we’re not back in our homes by sunset.”

All at once, the teasing atmosphere in your living room evaporated, and you watched as everyone’s smiles slowly faded.

It had been three weeks since everything went to shit. Three weeks since Hawkins was split in half by the Upside Down’s gates. In those three weeks, a lot had changed. For one, Hawkins felt like a ghost town now. Most people had either fled or been evacuated. But there were still a few hold outs: a couple of simply stubborn people who didn’t like being told what to do, a handful of others who just had nowhere else to go, and some old men and women who’d been born in Hawkins and planned to die there, too.

And, of course, the families of the kids in this room. El had needed to stay to deal with the gates, and Mike of course wasn’t leaving her, which meant neither were Dustin, Lucas, and Will. Steve, Nancy, and Robin felt like they needed to protect the kids, and you and Eddie had already given a pound of flesh to the cause, so what was a little more?

The government hadn’t been too happy with the number of liabilities left on their hands, but Mike pointed out that he and his friends had already broken into a secret lab and a Russian spy operation, so slipping back into Hawkins would have been child’s play. The government just gave up trying to make them leave after that.

Instead, they’d instated a curfew. A heavily enforced curfew. Soldiers armed with flamethrowers roamed the barren and broken streets of Hawkins at all times, but at night the patrols doubled, bright headlights sweeping the darkness for anything that moved.

Surprisingly, nothing had happened yet. In fact, it had been relatively quiet. The gates were still a ghostly specter that haunted the town, spewing forth ash and killing all plant life within a certain radius. But nothing else had come through the portals. No demo-dogs, or bats, no Demogorgons, nothing. El and Will said it felt like Vecna was biding his time, licking his wounds, preparing for his next big move, so everyone was just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

But there were only so many strategy meetings a group of teens could sit through, only so much prep and training they could do. Sometimes, everyone just needed a break, a few hours to not think about monsters, or the world ending, or the fact that Max still hadn’t woken up, no matter how hard El tried to reach her.

And that’s where Eddie Munson came in. Eddie, with his infectious smile and enthusiasm, his elaborate storytelling skills that ensnared his audience and made the real world just fall away. Everyone had become an honorary member of the Hellfire Club, even Steve “the Hair” Harrington. Not everyone was particularly good, but it was a fun way to pass the time, a nice reprieve from all the life-and-death situations this group somehow always found themselves in.

But now, reality had come calling once again.

“Ugh, way to kill the mood, Steve,” Dustin sighed, breaking the morose silence as he flopped back onto the carpeted floor.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m the bad guy.” Steve rolled his eyes. “Blame me all you want, but we still gotta get going.”

The kids all grumbled as they started packing up, and as if on cue, Jonathan suddenly came stumbling in through the back door off the kitchen, coughing and watery-eyed. He’d excused himself about half an hour ago, and it wasn’t hard to tell what he’d been doing on your back porch.

“Hey, guys are we, uh, heading out soon?” he drawled. “Sun’s setting.”

He blinked slowly at everyone, and you saw Will roll his eyes, which made Mike, Lucas, and Dustin stifle snorts. Then Dustin got this mischievous look you knew too well, and he turned to Jonathan with a startled expression.

“What are you talking about, dude?” the kid asked. “We’ve been here all night, that’s the sunrise.”

Jonathan balked and snapped his head toward the window, which caused the whole room to break out in laughter. Blushing, the older Byers rubbed the back of his head, and Nancy smiled as she walked over, placed her hand on his arm, and murmured something to him in a reassuring cadence.

You didn’t know what was going on with Nancy and her so-called boyfriend, especially with the way Steve was staring at the pair of them, but you were a professional at minding your own damn business, so you turned away from them, craned your neck back, and looked up at Eddie behind you.

“That was a good session, Munson,” you said, smiling up at him as you leaned your temple against his knee.

“I know.” He smirked, but then he narrowed his eyes at you. “Wait, why do you sound surprised? All of my sessions are good sessions, Obi. You might be a Jedi Master, but I am the Dungeon Master.”

Even after all this time, that stupid nickname he gave you made butterflies erupt in your belly.

“Of course.” You nodded, making sure you face was very serious. “You are the Dungeon Master to end all Dungeon Masters. No one can hold a candle to your genius.”

“That’s more like it,” Eddie said with a pleased expression, and he wrapped a lock of your hair around his finger. His eyes were dark and deep as he stared down at you, but his touch was soft when his thumb brushed the side of your face.

You leaned into his hand with a sigh, but the moment was abruptly broken by Dustin making a gagging noise.

“Ugh, get a room you two,” he groaned.

You whipped your head around and raised an eyebrow at him.

“Um, this is my house, Henderson,” you reminded him. “And didn’t your babysitter say it was time to go, anyway?”

Dustin made an affronted noise, and you laughed as you stood up and stretched your back. But before you could move to help pick up some of the various snack bowls scattered around the living room floor, two hands suddenly snaked around your waist, tugging you backward.

“Munson!” you gasped as you fell into his lap, the chair rocking back from your added weight. You turned your head to chide him, but then Eddie seized your lips, one of his hands coming up to cup the back of your head.

Instantly, the living room, your friends, and the rest of the world faded around you. Eddie had this… magnetism about him or something. Every time he looked at you, touched you, especially kissed you, it was like nothing else existed except the two of you. Now wasn’t any different, and you sighed as you opened your mouth to his probing tongue.

But all too soon, he pulled away, and when your eyes fluttered open, he was smirking.

“Okay, yup, time to go,” you distantly heard Steve mutter, followed by a chorus of agreements.

“Heh, worked like a charm,” Eddie whispered in your ear, and you knew he was just joking around, but his warm breath brushing your skin made you shiver.

You didn’t want to completely embarrass yourself in front of your friends, though, so you shook your head to clear it, pushed yourself off Eddie’s lap, and walked everyone to the door. The sun was just starting to dip below the tree line, and you could see a government Jeep roll by the end of the street, but everyone lived pretty close, so they should able to beat curfew.

Nancy and Mike climbed into Nancy’s car to head back to the Wheelers’, and Steve was practically the designated carpool, so he was dropping off Robin, Lucas, and Dustin. Jonathan was taking Will and El back to the combined Hopper-Byers residence, and even though his eyes were still bloodshot, you knew Jonathan was a cautious driver and would get them all home.

Maybe just a little bit slower than everyone else.

You stood on your front porch and waved goodbye until the last car slipped out of sight, and you fought back a yawn as you dropped your arm. Then your eyes trailed to the reddish sky, searching the streaks of black clouds that perpetually hovered over the gates.

It felt so strange to be living a somewhat normal life with the apocalypse hanging over everyone’s neck, but what else were you supposed to do?

“Obiii-wannn.” Eddie’s singsongy voice pulled you from your thoughts, and his arms wrapped around your waist as he tugged you back against his chest. Then he pressed a kiss to your hair and rested his chin on the top of your head. “Penny for your thoughts?”

“All the shit rolling around up here would definitely cost more than a penny,” you snorted and leaned back into him.

“Ah, well, never mind then, cuz I’m broke.”

You laughed as you turned in the circle of his arms, and the lopsided grin you loved so much was beaming down at you. You rose up on your tiptoes to kiss him, but before your lips could meet, the sharp honk of a car horn blared behind you, making you jump.

Glancing over your shoulder, you saw one of the government Jeeps stopped in the middle of the street in front of your house, and the soldier in the passenger seat gave you a pointed look through the open window.

You blushed as you fell back on your heels, but Eddie just wrapped an arm around your waist and pulled you against his side.

“Evenin’, gentlemen,” he called out as he put two fingers to his forehead in a jaunty salute. “We were just heading inside. Keep up the good work!”

The soldiers seemed unimpressed with him, but Eddie just snickered as he turned and steered you back into the house.

“Tough crowd,” he said as you shut and locked the door behind you.

Since the town still needed power, and since he was used to the hours, Wayne had continued to work nightshifts— with ample guards, of course— so he wouldn’t be home until after dawn, and he had a copy of the key to let himself in.

“I don’t know why you have to antagonize them,” you sighed, referring to the soldiers, as you turned to your boyfriend.

“Because it’s funnnn.” Eddie grinned, and he reached out to pull you against him again. “And I’ll take all the fun I can get these days.”

You didn’t blame him for that.

Still, you playfully rolled your eyes as you pulled away. Eddie made a whining noise in the back of his throat and grabbed after you, but you batted his hands back.

“Help me pick up first,” you chuckled. “Then you can Velcro yourself to me while I warm up dinner.”

“Nooo, let’s just pick up everything later,” Eddie said with a cajoling grin.

“And let Wayne trip over all this shit in the morning when we inevitably forget and fall asleep?” You raised an eyebrow and gestured to the living room floor, which was still strewn with snacks and the various odds and ends that came with every DnD session.

“Fine,” Eddie pouted, but then he got a mischievous glint in his brown gaze. “That just means you’ll have to wait longer for my surprise.”

You couldn’t help it. Your curiosity was piqued.

“What surprise?” you asked as you narrowed your eyes at him.

“That’s not how surprises work, Obi.” He smirked and wagged a finger at you, spinning on heel. “You’ll just have to wait and see now. Cleaning up comes first after all. It’s so very important.”

You knew that when Eddie got like this, he would tease you to the point of torture. He would pick up one paper, one stray chip at a time just to drag it out until you eventually broke and gave in to his demands.

“I am a hostage living in my own home,” you muttered, bending down to pick up an empty bowl covered in Dorito-dust fingerprints.

“How’s that Stockholm Syndrome treating you, baby?” Eddie asked with a wink, and you turned away from him so he couldn’t see your stupid, dopey smile.

God, you loved him. Even when he was being annoying.

Thankfully, he didn’t seem in the mood to torture you too much tonight, because he helped you pick up relatively quickly. He did distract you several times by brushing up against you on his way to the kitchen, and then twice just to full on kiss you, but eventually the living room floor was no longer a death trap. You’d mostly just stacked the mess in different places— empty bowls on the kitchen counter, and DnD supplies on a living room end table— but at least it wasn’t underfoot anymore.

And it wasn’t like your mom or her boyfriend were here to bitch at you, anyway.

“Alright, Munson,” you said, and you turned to him and placed your hands on your hips. “What’s this surprise?”

“Aw, I think you can ask a little nicer than that, sweetheart,” Eddie teased as he faced you in the middle of your living room. His dark-brown eyes were dancing with a playful delight, and he tapped the fingers of his right hand against his lips, like he was trying to hide his shit-eating grin.

He wasn’t successful.

But two could play this game.

You dropped your arms from your hips and slowly sauntered up to him, closing the distance in three strides. Some of the cockiness went out of his gaze the closer you got, and once you came to a stop in front of him, you slowly wound your arms around his neck, pressing your chest into his. Then you rose up on your tiptoes and brushed your lips against the shell of his ear.

“Pretty please?” you breathed, punctuating the question with a flick of your tongue against his earlobe.

Eddie groaned deep in his chest, and you knew you’d won.

Smirking, you dropped back onto your heels, but Eddie latched his hands onto your hips to keep you from pulling away. When he looked down at you, his eyes were narrowed, and his lips were pressed into a thin line.

“You are evil,” he deadpanned. “Evil Obi. You might have all the others fooled, but I can see the horns holding up your halo.”

You grinned, stuck your tongue out, and lifted your hands up to your head in the symbol for horns, copying a face Eddie had made many times.

It worked like a charm, because the fake-hardness to his expression melted, and he bent down to slant his mouth over yours.

“Is this my surprise?” you giggled against his lips. “Not that I’m complaining, but it isn’t exactly a surprise when you kiss me every five minutes.”

“Five minutes?” Eddie gasped, pulling away from you with wide eyes. “Shit, I’m way off schedule. No way am I gonna make my daily quota now.”

You giggled again and playfully shoved his shoulder. “I’m serious. You have me dying with curiosity now. What’s the surprise?”

“Well, we definitely can’t have you dying,” Eddie said with a smirk, and one of his hands left your hip to dig around the back pocket of his jeans. After a moment of rummaging, he withdrew his hand with a flourish and dangled something in between your faces. “Ta-da!”

You blinked and leaned back a little to bring the object into focus, but the smell hit you before your brain processed what was in the small plastic baggie.

“No way,” you murmured, reaching up for the bag of weed. “Where the hell did you get this?”

The two of you hadn’t smoked anything besides cigarettes in weeks. Eddie had suggested maybe going back out to Rick’s to see if the drug dealer had anything stashed since Rick himself was still in jail, but Lover’s Lake was a hot zone with Watergate being in the center of it, so neither you nor Eddie wanted to take the risk for a little grass.

“I have my ways,” Eddie said as he tugged the bag out of your reach. “A good man never reveals his sources, like a magician never reveals his tricks.”

You raised an eyebrow at him and crossed your arms over your chest, and he caved in less than thirty seconds.

“Alright, twist my arm, damn,” he grumbled. “IIIII might have told Byers— the older one— that my pain levels have been… higher than they actually are, and he was a good enough friend to give me some primo pain management all the way from California.”

“Munson!” you gasped, your tone half scandalized, half amused. “You conned Jonathan out of what is probably the last of his Cali stash?”

“It was for a good cause!”

“And what cause is that?” you asked as you tried to keep from laughing, but it was hard when Eddie was standing there pouting like an innocent puppy while holding a bag of illicit substances.

“Becauseeeee… I wanted to get high with you?” Eddie replied with a sheepish smile. “And I think I deserve it after being such a brave hero, don’t you?”

“You’re really going to milk that forever, aren’t you?” you deadpanned, but secretly you were happy that he saw himself as you did, even if just a little, even if he tried to make it a joke.

“Forever and ever, baby.” He grinned before shaking the bag at you. “So, what do you say, Obi? Do you want to enjoy your surprise, or do you want to be a goody two shoes and give Byers back his weed?”

You narrowed your eyes at him, trying to look conflicted, but really, there was no question.

“Fine.” You snatched the bag out of his hand while his grin widened. “But I’m rolling. You always make them too fat.”

“No such thing,” Eddie snickered, but he dutifully followed you back to your bedroom.

You went over to your desk while Eddie sauntered over to the bed. Before your mother left, you always kept your papers and lighters hidden deep in a junk drawer, or even in the floorboards after David moved in and started giving you shit when you came home from Eddie’s smelling particularly skunky. But now she and David were gone, and Wayne honestly didn’t give a shit. He even sometimes smoked a bit himself to deal with the pain that came from working in a powerplant for thirty odd years. So, your tray was just sitting in the corner of your desk, and you pulled it towards you as you flicked on the lamp in the opposite corner.

Behind you, Eddie had grabbed his guitar from the side of the bed and was idly strumming out the riff of a Motorhead song. Gareth had given him a small amp after the Munson trailer was destroyed, but Eddie was always respectful and kept the volume at a tolerable level, unless you asked him to crank it up. It might be strange to some, but you found the heavy rock chords soothing, and you hummed along absently as you picked up your grinder.

“Obiiiii,” Eddie sing-songed from the bed behind you, and he suddenly paused his strumming.

“I haven’t even started yet, Munson,” you said without looking back at him. “Patience.”

“But why are you allllll the way over there?” he asked, and you could just imagine the pout on his face. “Just come roll it on the bed.”

“You know that never ends well,” you snorted, shooting a look at him over your shoulder. And yup, he was pouting. “We always end up spilling it, and I am not picking crumbs out of my carpet and wasting what little we have.”

“We don’t always spill it,” Eddie argued, but when you just cocked an eyebrow at him, he huffed. “Okay, maybe, like, eighty percent of the time.”

“So basically always.” You shook your head and faced forward again, opening the bag of weed and trying not to greedily inhale like a crazy person. God, you’d missed smoking. Your anxiety had been through the roof this past week as everyone waited for the other shoe to drop. You just wanted one night to not think about it. “Just give me five minutes, and I’ll come join you.”

“That’s soooo long, though,” Eddie groaned from behind you. “I don’t know if I’ll make it that long.”

You glanced at him again to see he’d sprawled back dramatically on your pillows, his guitar laying across his chest. He was staring at you with those puppy dog eyes again, but your gaze got sidetracked by the sliver of pale skin just visible between the hem of his black hoodie and the tops of his black and torn jeans— both hand-me-downs from Jonathan, though Eddie was a bit taller. Heat bloomed to life in the pit of your gut, but it was quickly extinguished when you saw the edge of a pink and still-healing scar.

That night, filled with blood and the shrieking of bats, suddenly filled your mind, and now you wanted to be close to him, too, to feel him pressed against you, warm skin and beating heart.

You didn’t say anything as you turned back to the desk, quickly gathered your tray and supplies, and stood from your chair. You crossed the room in two strides, but instead of sitting on the bed itself, you sat on the floor between the wall and the side of the bed. Pressing back against the mattress with Eddie’s legs dangling to the left of you, you stretched out your own legs and set the tray of supplies between your thighs.

“Wait, are you telling me that worked?” Eddie laughed from the bed above you.

“Hush, I’m working,” you muttered, but you leaned your shoulder into the side of his leg to quell the latent panic still haunting the corners of your brain.

He was fine. He was sitting right here beside you, alive, and the two of you were going to get high, so all was right with the world.

You repeated these things to yourself as you slowly ground up some of Jonathan’s weed, but almost like he could hear your thoughts, Eddie suddenly swung himself upright. Then he slid down to sit beside you on the floor, leaving his guitar against your pillows. His legs were longer than yours, so when he stretched them out, his toes brushed the edge of the wall in front of you.

“That’s better,” Eddie sighed as he leaned against you, settling his right hand on top of your thigh.

It was still strange to see his fingers bare, but the ring he previously wore on that hand was now perched on your middle finger, the black stone clicking off the grinder as you turned it. He’d given it to you a few days after he got out of the hospital, at first just lying on your couch with his head in your lap and playfully stacking his rings on your fingers. Most of them were too big, but the gemstone one fit, and he’d grinned so wide when he told you to keep it that you couldn’t deny him.

After a moment, Eddie started idly tugging at the dangling strings of your jean cutoffs, and his touch distracted you enough that you almost dropped the grinder and spilled everything.

“Munson.” You shot him a quick glare, and he grinned, stilling his hand but not taking it away.

“Sorry, princess,” he said. “I’ll be good.”

“I highly doubt that,” you muttered as you carefully opened the grinder, set it on the tray, and reached for the rolling papers.

“I take offense, dear Obi,” Eddie gasped, and his hand squeezed around the meat of your thigh, his thumb slipping under the hem of your shorts.

Your breathing stuttered as the papers crinkled in your hands, and you shot the dark-haired bastard another heated look.

Eddie glanced down at his hand like it wasn’t his, and then he moved it further down toward your knee and shot you another disarming smile.

“Okay, now, I’ll be good,” he said.

You shook your head but didn’t respond this time, instead focusing on the task at hand. Very slowly and very carefully, you bent one of the rolling papers into a shallow trench and then tapped some of the ground-up weed out of the grinder and into the paper. By some miracle, you didn’t spill any, and you set down the grinder and capped it before you started rolling the actual joint. Once you were satisfied by the overall size and shape, you brought the joint up to your mouth and licked the edge, your fingers nimbly rolling the paper into a cylinder and twisting off the ends.

“Ta-da.” You smirked and flourished the joint as you looked up at Eddie, but your smugness evaporated in an instant.

Eddie was staring at you with such an intent expression that you felt naked. His pupils were dilated, turning his already dark eyes into pools of black that glimmered with something you couldn’t name, and his gaze was locked onto your lips. You also realized his hand had tightened around your thigh again, and your skin broke out into goosebumps.

“Um…” Your voice cracked, your mouth suddenly dry, and you snaked your tongue out to wet your lips, Eddie tracking the movement like a predator tracks its prey. “Munson?”

His named seemed to snap him out of hit, and his eyes flicked up to yours.

“What?” he asked. His voice was raspy, rough, like he’d swallowed nails and gravel.

“I, uh…” You fought to regain your composure and suddenly remembered the joint in your hand. “I finished. And I w-will say, it looks pretty perfect. Definitely not too fat.”

Eddie stared at you for a long moment before his gaze finally drifted to the joint between your fingers, and now that his eyes weren’t boring into yours anymore, you felt like you could breathe.

“Hmm, I’ll be the judge of that, Obi,” he said as he plucked the joint from your hand, his voice back to its usual teasing cadence. He narrowed his eyes at the joint, inspecting it from every angle at great detail and making exaggerated faces. After a few moments, he clicked his tongue and looked back at you, and the hint of a smirk was tugging at his lips. “Well, I don’t know about perfect, but it’s pretty good. A solid eight out of ten.”

“Excuse me?” you scoffed, playing along. “And where did I lose two points?”

“The ends are messy,” he said with all seriousness. “And since there are two ends, you lose two points.”

“Fine, then give it back.” You reached out for the joint. “I’ll smoke it all by myself, messy ends and all.”

“Well, now, let’s not be too hasty,” Eddie laughed, leaning back and extending his arm out of your reach. Then he pressed the fingers of his opposite hand to his ear and nodded like someone else was talking to him. “Wait, what’s that? I’m hearing from the other judges that your score has been reconsidered! Perfect ten out of ten.”

“That’s what I thought.” You smirked and sat back against the mattress, picking up the lighter from your tray and tossing it into his lap. “And because I’m so nice, I’ll even let you light it up.”

“Your charity knows no bounds, Obi.” Eddie stuck the end of the joint between his lips and grinned as he picked up the lighter. “One of the things I love most about you.”

His tone and expression were joking, but there was a genuine earnestness to his eyes that made your cheeks flush.

But then he was striking the lighter, bringing the flame to the tip of the joint, and inhaling. You watched his cheeks hollow, the tendons in his neck standing out in stark relief, and the sight made the heat in your face travel down to the rest of your body.

Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

“Shit,” Eddie exhaled a few seconds later, smoke curling from his lips and rising to the ceiling. The acrid smell hit you like a wave, and already you felt your body relaxing.

No, you needed this.

“Don’t hog it, Munson,” you muttered, nudging your elbow into his arm. “Sharing is caring.”

“And you said I needed patience,” he teased but handed the joint over.

The second it was at your lips, you inhaled slowly, holding the breath deep in your lungs until spots of color began to dance in the corners of your vision. Then you exhaled all at once, a sharp release, and your ears rang slightly as you started to cough.

“Fuckkkk.” You dropped your head back against the edge of the bed. Tears blurred your view of the ceiling, but then you blinked, and drops of warm water trailed down your cheeks.

“I know, right?” Eddie snickered, taking the joint back from you. “This shit’s way better that what I got from Rick. I didn’t know Byers was such a connoisseur.”

“Connoisseur,” you echoed and then giggled. Your head already felt a little swimmy, but that might be from the coughing and lack of oxygen. “That’s a funny word.”

“Blame the French, sweetheart,” Eddie chuckled before he took another drag.

The two of you passed the joint for a few rounds, and you felt like you could melt into the carpet. Every knot in every muscle you had unwound bit by bit, and the horrors of the Upside Down and the impending future faded until they were nothing but a distant memory.

“Hey, Obi,” Eddie murmured what felt like minutes and hours later. “Pssst, Obi.”

“Hmmm?” you hummed, lolling your head to the side to look at him.

His face was less than a foot away, so close you could count every pore and laugh line, and his brown eyes were hooded and glassy as they skipped over your face. He was holding the still-smoking joint between his middle and index finger, like he would hold a cigarette, but when he caught your gaze, he shifted his grip so he was holding it more firmly between his index finger and thumb.

“Can I try something?” he asked, and there was a glint in his gaze that you knew you should be worried about, but you felt too relaxed to worry about anything right now. “There’s this thing I’ve always wanted to try…”

“Sure,” you mumbled, and Eddie grinned before he brought the joint to his mouth and inhaled again, the cherry on the end flaring orange.

Then he held the joint out of the way and leaned forward, and dull surprise sparked through your veins when his lips met yours.

You opened up to him instinctively, inhaling sharply just from his proximity, and Eddie seized the opportunity to shotgun the hit he’d taken into your mouth. Your eyes fluttered closed as his tongue chased the smoke past your teeth, and he flicked the point of it against the roof of your mouth before he pulled away.

You held your breath for as long as you could before exhaling, and when you opened your eyes again, Eddie’s gaze was locked on your face. His eyes were black once more, his head backlit by the lamp on the bedside table behind him, and you suddenly realized what that something in his gaze had been when he’d watched you roll the joint. Because it was there again.

Lust.

Your stomach immediately bottomed out inside of you as every hair on your body stood on end.

It had been three weeks since Eddie woke up in the hospital, three weeks since the two of you confessed your feelings to each other, since he moved into your house. He even slept beside you in your bed every night. Not at first, of course. For the first two nights, he just “slept” on your living room couch while Wayne took the master bedroom. But by the third morning, you couldn’t ignore the dark bags under Eddie’s eyes any longer and so confronted him. He had eventually confessed that he hadn’t been sleeping much. Kept being woken up by nightmares and then panicking that something was in the house and running to check on you in your bedroom. You had laughed a little, then, to his confusion, and told him you’d been checking up on him, too, the pair of you seemingly missing each other like ships in the night. Hell, for all you knew, you were the ones waking each other up.

After that, Eddie moved into your bedroom for both your peace of minds, but like a gentleman, he tried to take the floor. He piled it with sheets and blankets and pillows, assuring you it was fine, but that lasted all of five minutes after the lights were dimmed.

(You never turned them out completely at night, both you and Eddie too uneasy in the dark.)

Emboldened by the shadows hiding your furious blush, you were the one who broke and asked him to just come lie in the bed with you, and after only a few beats, Eddie had slowly and quietly climbed up onto the mattress. He’d been stiff, stretched out beside you on his back, and in an effort to help him relax, you’d rolled on your side to face him, tentatively placing your hand on his chest to show him it was okay. He’d immediately subsided into the sheets, sighing, and turned his head to brush a kiss against your brow. And the two of you slept that night with no nightmares, for either of you.

Since then, you’d slept every night in the same bed as him, and more and more lately, you woke up with him wrapped around you, his front to your back, holding you tightly against his body.

But it had never been sexual. (Well, you had woken up a few times with his morning wood pressed against your back, but that didn’t count, that was just an…unconscious physiological response, and you always pretended to be asleep until he rolled out of bed to go to the bathroom.)

Either way, nothing had happened between you two except for a few heavy makeout sessions, and those never happened in your bedroom. The living room, the kitchen, the hallway, but never the bedroom. And whenever things got too heated, Eddie was always the first to pull away, to press one last kiss to your brow and step back, changing the subject to something innocuous.

You knew it had been because the two of you were so injured at first. You’d only ditched the sling a few days ago, and your arm was still sore, needing to be exercised every morning and night. Eddie had also recently received the all-clear from the doctors, and you wondered if he’d just been waiting to make sure neither of you got hurt.

The look in his eyes was definitely not hesitant now, and you felt your core throb in response.

A thousand thoughts tumbled through your brain like rocks in a dryer, a very slow dryer, because everything felt slow and languid around you, like it always did when you got high. Your skin was lightly buzzing, but your tongue was heavy in your mouth, and Eddie’s hungry gaze continued to pin you to the spot like a butterfly pinned beneath glass.

“Do you…” The words fell from your mouth unbidden, slow like molasses, but nervousness suddenly traced its hand down your spine, making you shiver.

“Do I… what?” Eddie murmured after a moment of silence. His voice was lower than usual, made rougher by the smoke, and you suddenly remembered the joint in his hand.

For courage, you leaned forward and plucked the remnants of the joint from between his fingers. There was maybe one good hit left, so you took it, the embers burning your fingertips as the smoke swirled into your mouth before you held it there. Then, as Eddie’s black eyes swallowed you whole, you bridged the distance between your lips and his. He opened dutifully beneath you, inhaling as you exhaled, and one of his hands came up and cradled your jaw, long fingers framing your face.

Once your lungs were emptied, you pulled back a fraction, and since you were feeling a little more brave, you trapped his lower lip between your teeth and tugged. You let him go just as quickly, but Eddie’s fingers had burrowed into your hair now, holding you in place.

Your eyes fluttered open— when had you closed them?— and you could see a tiny version of yourself reflected in Eddie’s wide pupils. Then he exhaled sharply, a curtain of smoke rising between your faces, and you were just about to pull further back when he lunged forward and smashed his mouth against yours.

His sudden ferocity startled a gasp out of you, and Eddie cupped your face more soundly as he leaned forward, his tongue delving past your lips and pulling up a moan from deep within your chest.

You had just enough sense left to drop the ashes of the joint on your tray before you were tangling both hands in Eddie’s hair and kissing him back with equal intensity. The rings on his left hand felt cold against your temple, your cheek, but everywhere else you felt hot, so hot. His mouth was like a furnace, a fiery brand, tasting of ash and smoke.

You were both gasping for breath every time your lips parted, but then one of you would dive back in for more, teeth and tongues clashing. When his left hand trailed from your cheek down to your neck, you thought you were going to combust, and then his other hand tiptoed up your thigh, and you knew you were going to burst into flame.

The apex of your thighs throbbed again when his fingers brushed the hem of your shorts, and you whimpered before you ripped your mouth away, gasping for breath and dropping your hands from his hair.

“Come back here,” Eddie muttered as he chased after you, but then he suddenly hissed and froze.

The pained note in his voice abruptly cleared some of the fog from your mind, and you blinked as your gaze zeroed in on him.

“Are—” God, your voice sounded wrecked. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Eddie nodded, but his eyes were tightly closed as he faced forward and leaned back against the bed again. “Just… twisted a little too far.”

His right hand ghosted over his side, and you chewed on your swollen lower lip.

“Sorry,” you murmured, guilt stabbing through you. He was still healing, and here you were being a horny mess.

Eddie opened the eye closest to you, and then, when he saw your expression, he opened the other and turned his head to face you.

“Nothing you should be apologizing for, princess,” he said, and his smile turned a little sheepish before he continued. “That was… so fuckin’ hot.”

His voice took on that gravelly quality again, and you could feel slickness pool in your panties.

“Yeah,” you breathed, the filter between your mind and mouth nonexistent, shrouded by smoke and the buzzing feeling in your veins. “It was.”

Hunger flashed in Eddie’s gaze again, and he reached his arm out to you.

“Come here,” he muttered, flexing his fingers in a grabby motion.

“I’m sitting right next to you,” you said, but you didn’t fight it when his fingers gently latched onto your wrist.

“Not close enough.” Eddie pouted at you, tugging your arm.

You were half turned anyway, so you kneeled and shifted to fully face him, shuffling forward until your knees were pressed to the outside of his thigh.

“Closerrrrr,” he hummed and tugged at you again.

You realized he wanted you to straddle his lap, and a wave of heat washed over you from head to toe.

“I-I don’t want to hurt you again,” you tried to argue.

“You didn’t hurt me in the first place, Obi,” he said with a lopsided smile, the one that always tore down all of your defenses. “I just turned in a weird way. Buttttt, if you’re sitting right in front of me…”

He yanked at your arm a third time, and to keep from falling over, you clumsily slung a leg over his lap. Once you regained your balance, you hovered over him with your knees digging into the carpet on either side of his thighs, and he grinned up at you.

“Now I don’t have to turn at all,” Eddie finished, sounding proud of himself, but it was hard to be angry at him when his hands were settling on your hips, thumbs rubbing at the jut of your hip bones through your shorts.

“That’s… good,” you said. The slow-firing synapses in your brain were unable to come up with anything else.

“Doing okay there, sweetheart?” he asked as he smiled up at you. His thumbs were still stroking your hips, slowly driving you insane.

Your mouth was so dry, but you swallowed as best you could and nodded.

“Yeah,” you murmured, but then you wobbled on your knees and had to put your hands on his shoulders for balance.

“You sure?” Eddie chuckled before he tugged on your hips. “Why don’t you sit back a bit, Ms. Weeble-Wobble.”

You slowly sat back on his thighs, careful to not crush his legs, and Eddie smiled when you were at eye level.

“Hi,” he said, leaning forward to press a quick kiss to the tip of your nose.

“Hi,” you giggled back, and then giggled again as you settled more comfortably on his thighs. “Shit, this stuff is good. I feel like I could float away.”

“Yeah, we’re definitely moving to California,” Eddie snickered and squeezed his hands over your hips. “And don’t worry. I’ll keep you anchored, princess.”

“You always do,” you sighed, and something flashed in the dark depths of his bloodshot eyes, but it was gone just as fast, fleeting and mercurial.

“What were you going to ask me before?”

“Huh?” You blinked to focus on his face a little better, and Eddie was staring at you intently.

“You started to ask me something before you took that last hit,” he clarified. “You said, ‘Do you…?’”

You frowned as you tried to remember, wading through smoke and the memories of his mouth hot against yours. Then you suddenly recalled why you’d taken that last hit in the first place, and your face burned with embarrassment.

“I don’t remember… it was nothing,” you said, squirming in his lap and then stopping when the movement pressed the seam of your shorts into your clit.

Fuck, when did you get so wet?

“Well, that’s not contradictory,” Eddie teased. “Which is it, Obi? You don’t remember, or it was nothing?”

“It was stupid,” you amended and refused to meet his eyes, staring instead at a spot on the bed above his shoulder.

“I highly doubt that,” he scoffed, but when you stayed silent, he reached out, gently took your chin between his thumb and index finger, and turned you to face him. He was still smiling gently, but his eyes were serious. “Nothing you say or do could ever be stupid.”

The sincerity in his face and voice made you blush even deeper, and you wished he would just drop it, but Eddie Munson was like a dog with a bone when he wanted something, and he stared at you patiently as he waited for you to respond.

“Fine, it’s… embarrassing,” you huffed, and you shifted your hands on his shoulders so you could fiddle with his curls.

“Now we’re getting somewhere.” Eddie smirked and turned to playfully nip at your fingers. “Come on, tell me.”

You stubbornly shook your head, pressing your lips together, and Eddie narrowed his eyes. After a moment, a familiar glimmer of mischief flashed across his face, and one of his hands abandoned your hips to cup your cheek.

Then he leaned forward until his lips were just a hair’s breadth away from yours, but he paused before kissing you.

“Not even if I say pretty please?” he whispered as he tossed your earlier words back at you, warm breath fanning across your lips.

His proximity, the warmth of his hands on your cheek and hip, and the high still buzzing through your body, it all overwhelmed your senses, short circuited your brain, and your mouth opened of its own accord.

“Do you want to have sex with me?” you blurted out.

Your words echoed in the deafening silence that followed, and Eddie’s eyes widened in surprise, his teasing expression going slack.

You were so embarrassed, you were sure your blood was going to start boiling.

“W-Wait, no, that’s not what I— that was stupid, oh my god, forget I said that… like that,” you rambled. Your tongue felt clumsy and alien in your mouth, and at this point you wanted to bite it off. Instead, you slammed your eyes closed and tried to pull away. “Never mind, I’ll just—”

“Woah, hey, now,” Eddie said, clamping his hands around your waist and keeping you seated on his thighs. “Where’s the fire? Come on, Obi, it’s okay. We all say things we don’t mean when we’re high.”

You peeked open your eyes to see him smiling at you reassuringly, and he was just so beautiful, so kind, that you couldn’t stop yourself from digging your hole even deeper.

“I… did mean it,” you murmured, and again your words seemed to surprise Eddie, his fingers flexing around your waist. You thought you saw his pupils dilate even further, and that gave you the courage to go on. “I-I mean, I know I’m high, but tonight isn’t the first time I’ve… thought about this. It was bad enough when we were just friends and I thought I didn’t have a shot with you, but ever since that first time you kissed me in the hospital, I’ve been… And I know we’ve both been healing, and the world is set to end at any moment, but I just… I want you, Eddie.”

You were panting for breath by the end of your little spiel, and you bit your lip as you searched his face for a reaction. You hadn’t been very eloquent, but you hoped he understood what you were trying to say.

Eddie’s pupils were definitely blown now, swallowing his irises into inky pools that contrasted with his reddened sclera. He exhaled shakily and licked his lips, his Adam’s apple bobbing as his throat clicked with a swallow, and you thought you could feel his fingers tremble where they were still resting on your waist.

“Are—” Eddie started, stopped, cleared his throat. Then his gaze met yours, and you were surprised to see the uncertainty there. “Are you sure, Obi? B-Because I don’t want you to feel like you have to. I’m perfectly fine with taking things slow, just kissing you— god, just kissing you is already enough to drive me fucking insane. So we don’t have to rush. I don’t… I don’t want you to do something you’ll regret. I don’t want to hurt you. Never want to hurt you.”

That last sentence was murmured softly, Eddie’s face twisting, and your heart twisted along with it. This man. This ridiculous, noble, gentle, kind man. You loved him with your entire being.

“You could never hurt me, Eddie Munson,” you said, leaning forward to brush your lips against his. The kiss was soft, barely there, and you didn’t seek to deepen it. Instead, you pulled back and moved one of your hands to his cheek, stubble scraping across your palm as your pressed your forehead to his and stared into his eyes. “And if you want to wait, that’s okay with me. Because I agree, kissing you is pretty awesome.”

Eddie cracked a smile, some of the tension bleeding out of his shoulders.

“But,” you continued, your voice dropping low, and Eddie fingers tightened around your waist in response. “Just so you know, I could never regret anything I do with you. How could I regret something I’ve been dreaming about for almost an entire year?”

Eddie sucked in a breath and held it, and under your palm, you felt the muscles of his jaw flex as he ground his teeth together. He studied your face for a long, endless moment before he suddenly jerked his hips up. His belt buckle just barely brushed your clit through your shorts, but it was enough to tear a gasp from you, pleasure zapping through every nerve in your body, and Eddie snapped.

One of his hands left your waist to grab the back of your head, and then he was tugging you forward, crashing your mouth against his.

“Fuck, okay, yes, god, yes,” he gasped between kisses, and his hands were everywhere, in your hair, dragging down your spine, grabbing your ass to pull you against him.

“I… take it… you don’t want to… wait?” you couldn’t help but tease in the brief moments he released your lips.

“You’re not the only one who’s been dreaming of this, sweetheart,” he muttered as his mouth left yours, trailing across your jaw and down your neck. He pressed a kiss over your pulse point, and your breathing stuttered.

“Then maybe we should turn those dreams… into reality?” you suggested and tilted your head back to give him more access. The fact that he wanted you just as much as you wanted him made you bold, and you ground down into his lap to further emphasize your point.

“Shit,” Eddie hissed, and then his mouth was on yours again, hungry and insistent. His tongue traced over every one of your teeth before he pulled back and nipped at your lip, his voice coming out in a desperate gasp. “J-Just tell me what to do, Obi. Fuck, I’ll do anything, anything you want, just tell me.”

It could have just been dirty talk, but you thought you detected a strange note of uncertainty to his words, and the fire building in your gut cooled a degree as you pulled back and looked into Eddie’s face. His eyes were glassy and full of lust, but you saw insecurity there, too, and a question jumped to the forefront of your mind and off your tongue before you could stop it.

“Have you… done this before?” you asked.

Eddie winced slightly, more of that insecurity blooming on his face, and you felt him start to fiddle with his rings against your right hip.

“Well, um, technically, no, b-but I know the general gist. Talk floats around the boy’s locker room, ya know, and all those magazines under my bed certainly painted a picture— shit, fuck, forget I said that. What I’m trying to say is all of my knowledge is, uh, theoretical, not practical. Not a lot of girls lining up to sleep with the trailer trash freak who sells drugs and worships Satan and… wow, I’m really selling myself here, huh? So sexy. Shit.”

Groaning, Eddie clenched his eyes shut and dropped his head back, but you chased after him, rising up on your knees a little to lean into his chest.

“Hey,” you muttered, and when he wouldn’t look at you, you reached out with both hands to cup his face. “Hey, Munson.”

Reluctantly, he tilted his head up and opened his eyes, and you smiled.

“Hi there,” you giggled, pressing a kiss to the tip of his nose like he had done to you earlier.

“Hi,” he grumbled back, but he let you brush his bangs out of his face and met your gaze.

“For the record,” you said as you ran your thumbs over his stubbled cheeks, and you couldn’t help but dip down and press a quick kiss to his parted lips. “I still think you’re very sexy.”

“Uh-huh,” Eddie muttered, sounding unconvinced.

“I’m serious.” You met his eyes again before your own started to trail over the features of his face. “Sexy. Handsome. Pretty. Beautiful. I think of at least one of these words every time I look at you. Your eyes always make me feel like my lungs forgot how to work, and every time you smile, especially if it’s directed at me, the world stops for just an instant. And don’t even get me started on the tattoos and jewelry. Chicks dig that stuff, you know?”

You ended on a partial joke because Eddie had started to squirm under your praise, but then he looked up at you, shifted one of your hands off his cheek, and pressed a kiss to your palm. He looked less uncomfortable now, less insecure, but his smile was still tentative.

“So… I haven’t ruined my chances, then?” he asked, and seeing the lust spark back to life in his eyes made you clench your thighs together.

“Definitely not,” you muttered as you hovered over him, your lips slowly descending toward his again.

“And you’re sure it doesn’t… bother you? That I haven’t… you know?”

“Not at all,” you breathed. You were less than a centimeter away from kissing him, but a sudden thought popped into your head, and you felt it only fair to voice it. “Does it bother you that I have?”

“No.” Eddie’s response was instantaneous, full of sincerity, and you couldn’t wait any longer. You dove down and slanted your mouth over his, and Eddie groaned against you, his fingers digging into your waist. All of his hesitation was gone now, and his hands burned a path down your back to cup your ass. You whimpered into the kiss, and your noise seemed to spur him on, because the next thing you knew, he was shifting his feet behind you and pushing upright.

“Eddie!” you gasped as you tore your mouth from his. “Be careful!”

“I got you, sweetheart, don’t worry,” he chuckled once he was fully on his feet, his hands tucked under your thighs that were wrapped around his waist.

“I’m more worried about you hurting yourself.” You frowned. You weren’t exactly thin, not like Nancy and Robin. “Put me down.”

“As the lady requests.” Eddie smirked and then turned, throwing you down on the bed beside his guitar, which he immediately moved out of the way and onto the floor. He was grinning when he looked back at you, but he seemed to freeze at the sight of you sprawled across the mattress.

You were wearing jean cutoffs, his old Metallica shirt that Dustin saved from the trailer, and a worn red flannel on top. It was a casual outfit, not even especially cute, but Eddie was staring down at you like you were wearing the sexiest set of lingerie.

“Fuck, Obi,” he breathed as his eyes pinned you to the mattress, and you squirmed under his scrutiny.

“Well, are you just going to stand there and stare at me, Munson?” you asked, cheeks flushing.

“Hell no,” he said, and then he was climbing onto the bed, hovering over you on his forearms and claiming your lips once again. He wore a new guitar pick necklace, the pick having fallen out of his copy of The Hobbit the other night. At some point, he’d apparently forgotten he was using it as a bookmark, but now it was hanging on a loose silver chain, brushing your jaw and neck as it dangled from his throat.

The two of you made out for a minute, but then Eddie started pressing kisses down your neck. When he reached your collarbones, he paused to dip his tongue into the hollow between them, and you moaned as you arched your back. The weed high was still making everything feel tingly and cranked up to eleven, and you could already feel that your panties were sticking to you beneath your shorts.

“Eddie, please,” you gasped as you buried a hand into his mane of curls.

“What do you want, Obi?” he muttered against the base of your throat, licking the skin there again.

“You.” Squirming, you arched up into him again, brain fuzzy with pleasure. “I-I want you. Want you to touch me.”

“Shit, sweetheart,” Eddie groaned before he lifted his head to seize your lips in another kiss. “Where? Where do you want me to touch you?”

“Everywhere,” you whined, reaching for the hem of your own shirt. It suddenly felt stifling in your bedroom, and you could feel sweat bead along your brow.

Eddie let out a litany of curses, but he helped to slip the shirt off over your head, and then you reached behind yourself and undid the clasp of your bra with a flick, too impatient to wait.

As you tossed the bra away and fell back onto the bed again, you saw that Eddie’s wide eyes were glued to your breasts, and his mouth hung open like the hinge of his jaw had broken.

“Oh, f-fuck, you’re so gorgeous, Obi, god, I want to put my mouth on them.” His dark gaze flicked to yours, begging. “Can I? Please?”

You wanted to tease him, but the earnest way he asked your permission made your pussy clench around nothing, and all you could do was nod your head.

Eddie wasted no time, diving down and immediately dragging his tongue over one of your nipples. The shock of his wet, hot mouth made you gasp, then whine as he closed his lips around you and sucked.

“O-Oh, shit,” you moaned when he reached up and tweaked your other nipple with his nimble fingers.

“Feel good?” he mumbled, words muffled by your flesh.

“So good,” you breathed and then cried out when he ran his teeth across your nipple. “F-Fuck! Don’t stop, don’t…”

You trailed off into another moan as Eddie flicked the nipple he wasn’t sucking on, the nub pebbling between his fingers.

“Goddamn, you make the prettiest noises, princess,” the metalhead muttered between your breasts, switching from one to the other. “Better than I ever dreamed of. And I’ve dreamed about sucking your titties a lot.”

The vulgar confession made more slick pool in your panties, and you whimpered as you reached an arm down, wiggling it between the two of you until you found the button of your jeans. But you couldn’t open it from this angle, and you groaned in frustration.

“Please, Eddie,” you begged, using your other hand to tug at his hair until he released your nipple with a slick ‘pop.’

“What?” he asked as he looked up at you, and his eyes were glassy with pleasure. You could also feel where he was hard against your thigh, and you pressed up into his bulge, making him stutter out a moan.

“Pants,” you gasped, reaching for the button of your shorts again. “Help me… help me get them off.”

“Shit,” Eddie exhaled with wide eyes as he watched you lift your hips, and then he was fumbling into motion. “Yeah, here let me just…”

With his help, you were able to push your cutoffs down your thighs and kick them away, but he stopped you when you reached for your panties.

“Eddieeee,” you whined, but he clasped your wrist firmly and pressed your hand into the bed beside your hip.

“Slow downnnn, Obi,” he said, that familiar teasing lilt in his voice, and he flashed a lopsided smile as he started to crawl down the length of you. “There are some things I want to savor.”

“Sadist,” you pouted, and Eddie opened his mouth like he was going to retort, but then his eyes zeroed in on the apex of your thighs.

“Fuckkkkk,” he breathed as he lied down on his stomach, legs dangling off the bed and his gaze glued to your pussy. “You’re so… wet. Did I do this to you?”

The awed disbelief in his voice made you moan, and you tried to clench your thighs together, but Eddie grabbed them, fingers digging into your skin.

“No, don’t hide,” his said, voice breathless. “I— fuck, I want to—”

He broke off suddenly and then just darted forward, licking a hot stripe up your slit that you felt even through the soaked fabric of your panties.

“Oh!” you gasped, the syllable cracking in the middle, and your hips bucked toward his face.

Eddie pulled back as he licked his lips, and then his wide eyes flicked from your pussy, to your face, and back again.

“S-Shit, you’re right,” he rasped out, and his fingers started clawing at your hips, tugging your panties down your thighs. “These have to go, gotta get out of the way, f-fuck.”

You giggled a little at his frantic fumbling and the way he threw your underwear over his shoulder, but then his hands were sliding up your thighs again, prying them apart, and the laughter hitched in your lungs when his eyes zeroed in on where you were wet and trembling.

“Je-Jesus Christ.” Eddie swallowed sharply as he lowered himself onto his stomach again, his gaze still locked on your pussy. “I— Jesus H. Christ. God, you look so pretty, so… Fuck, can I taste you, Obi? Please?”

Your whole body flushed, from the tips of your ears to your toes, and you squirmed beneath him.

“Y-You don’t have to,” you muttered. Despite not being a virgin yourself, you’d actually only slept with one other person, and he never did that to you. In fact, the whole “losing you virginity” thing took less than five minutes and was ultimately pretty unsatisfying.

“Oh, I want to, baby,” Eddie corrected as his eyes finally clicked to yours, dark with hunger. “Holy shit, do I want to.”

The last remnants of saliva in your mouth dried up, but you felt more wetness trickle out between your legs.

“O-Okay.” Your voice shook as you nodded, and Eddie grinned like you told him he won the lottery.

Fuck, he was going to destroy you.

Eddie wiggled a little to get more comfortable, but after a moment, he ended up just kneeling on the floor at the foot of the bed, tugging you down until your butt met the edge of the mattress.

You gasped as he parted your thighs to make room for his broad shoulders, and he smiled as he trailed kisses up each of your legs before he pushed them back so your feet dangled near his ears.

In this position, you felt vulnerable, all of you laid out and laid bare, but the absolute adoration and lust in Eddie’s eyes chased away any of your lingering insecurities.

“Damn, I wish I had a camera,” he muttered as his gaze dragged over you, hot enough to burn. “You look… so fucking incredible.”

“Eddie, stop teasing me,” you huffed, reaching out to twine your fingers through his curls. “Please.”

“Well, since you asked so nicely, pretty girl.” He smirked, but then his cocky expression grew a little hesitant. “I-I’ll probably fuck it up at first, but just tell me what feels good. I want to make you feel good.”

You nodded frantically, but all your words were lost when Eddie leaned forward, his breath fanning over your slick folds. His fingers dug into the meat of your thighs as he anchored himself, the rings on his left hand cold against your overheated skin. Then the flat of his tongue dragged across your pussy, and your vision whited out.

“F-Fuck!” You tossed your head back as pleasure zapped through you, and you unintentionally tugged on Eddie’s hair, pulling him further between your thighs.

“Oh, god,” Eddie whimpered, and then he was suddenly licking you with fervor, delving between your folds until his nose bumped into your clit. Even that slight stimulation to your bundle of nerves had you jolting, and Eddie noticed, shifting his mouth upward, tongue swirling in circles that made you see stars.

“Eddieeee,” you keened to the ceiling when he sucked your clit between his lips, and he immediately popped his head up so you could just see his wide eyes and slick mouth over the curve of your belly.

“Holy shit, you taste so fucking good, Obi,” he said, voice guttural. “Am I— does it feel good, too?”

“Y-Yes, fuck, Eddie, feels incredible,” you panted as you tugged at his hair. “Please don’t stop.”

Eddie stared at your flushed and writhing body for a moment before he was diving back between your legs, tongue and lips everywhere. He was a little sloppy, saliva mixing with your arousal and making everything slick, but his eagerness made up for it. He was also very attuned to your every sound and twitch, so when he dipped his tongue into your entrance, and your moans rose in pitch, he started swirling the tip of his tongue around your hole until you were practically sobbing. Then he fucked his tongue into you as far as it could go, his nose pressed firmly to your clit, and your eyes rolled into the back of your head.

You didn’t know if it was the weed still singing through your veins or if it was just Eddie, but your orgasm crept up on you without warning. One moment, Eddie was pressing a sucking kiss to your clit before fucking his tongue back into you, groaning at the taste, and in the next instant, your spine was arching off the bed as every muscle in your body locked up.

“Shit, I’m-- ohhhhhh!” you wailed as Eddie rapidly thrust his tongue into you, shaking his head at the same time so his nose flicked back and forth over your clit.

It felt like you shattered into a million pieces, lights and colors exploding behind your tightly shut eyelids. You could distantly feel your legs spasming and clamping around Eddie’s head, but he was still moaning as he tongue-fucked you through your climax. You whimpered and clawed at his hair, feeling like every nerve in your body was an exposed live-wire, chanting his name until you ran out of breath.

Once your whines took on a slightly pained quality, Eddie pulled his mouth away, and it was like you were a puppet whose strings got cut, because you immediately slumped into the bed.

Air sawed in and out of your lungs as you gasped for breath, and you stared blindly at the spinning ceiling while you slowly descended back into your body. Your limbs felt like they were filled with static, but you mustered up enough energy to lift you head and look down toward the foot of the bed.

Eddie was still kneeling on the floor between your legs, and you felt your walls flutter around nothing at the glimmer of your juices smeared across his chin. His breathing was as ragged as your own, and his hair was wild, mussed by your fingers. When he caught your eye, he exhaled sharply and half-heartedly dragged the back of his wrist against his chin, his chain bracelet glinting in the light of your lamp.

“Jesus Christ, Obi,” he grunted out, and his black eyes threatened to swallow you whole. “That was… fuck, that was so goddamn hot. I could feel you fluttering around my tongue. Shit.”

He reached down with his right hand, and though the edge of the bed hid it from view, you knew he was palming his cock through his jeans. His obvious arousal made you throb again, and you bit your lip.

“I’ve… I’ve never cum that fast,” you confessed, and your cheeks still flushed with embarrassment even though the man in front of you had been tongue deep in your pussy just seconds ago.

Eddie groaned at your admission, and then both of his hands were latching onto your inner thighs again, thumbs smearing saliva and slick into your skin.

“Do you— can you do it again?” he asked, his dilated eyes flicking from your folds to your face. “I want to see you do it again. Wanna see you cum, pretty girl.”

His pet names made more slick drip out of you, made your thoughts fizz out into static for a moment, but then you frowned and propped yourself up on your elbows.

“What about you?” From this angle, you could see his lower half, and his cock was straining against his tight black jeans. It looked like it hurt. “I want to make you feel good, too. Can I put my mouth on you instead?”

Another groan rattled deep in Eddie’s chest, and he had to reach down again to press the heel of his palm into his crotch.

“Christ, that’s fucking tempting,” he panted, but then his eyes drifted back to your pussy, and they got that hungry glint in them as he leaned down and darted his tongue between your folds.

You cried out as your elbows buckled, your spine falling back to the mattress.

“But you just taste too goddamn good, baby,” he muttered against your clit. “Wanna make you feel good again. Want you to fall apart on my tongue, my fingers.”

You whined as he started licking at you once more, and soon you could feel the coil in your gut tightening bit by bit. This time, Eddie focused his mouth around your clitoris, alternating between flicking it with his tongue and sucking it between his lips, and when your legs started twitching around his ears, he snaked a hand down your belly and pressed a finger to your entrance.

You immediately shoved your hips down, sucking his finger in to the knuckle, and the two of you moaned in unison, the sound rattling through your bones.

“O-Oh, fuck,” Eddie hissed as his twisted his finger inside you, pressing against the walls of your pussy. “Fuck, Obi, you’re so wet and goddamn tight. Holy shit.”

“Eddie,” you whimpered, clenching around him. His finger was thicker than any of yours were, but it was still not enough, so you bore down, tears gathering along your lashes as you begged. “M-More. Please, Eddie. Y-Your finger f-feels so good— fuck! So good. I need another one, please.”

You were practically sobbing now, humping into his hand, and Eddie leaned down to pepper kisses over your inner thighs.

“Shhh, shh, it’s okay,” he soothed, and you felt the tip of a second finger prod at your entrance. “It’s okay, baby, I got you, give you everything you want. Anything you want. Here you go… shit, you gotta relax sweetheart, let me in.”

You whined but listened as best as you could, and a moment later, he slotted both fingers home inside of you, drawing a shout from deep within your chest. Your pussy immediately clamped down around both digits, but Eddie twisted and spread them inside you, stretching your walls, until he brushed up against that one spongy spot that caused you to wail.

“Fuck, is that it, baby? Is that the spot?” he grunted, pressing more insistently on it.

You couldn’t respond because your toes were starting to curl, your moans rising in pitch, but apparently that was all the response Eddie needed because he suddenly started thrusting his fingers, hard. They nailed your G-spot with pinpoint accuracy, squelching through your wetness, and then you felt his thumb brush over your clit.

“Cum for me, Obi,” he said as he pressed on your pleasure zones from both the inside and outside. “Cum on my fingers. Want to see it so bad, baby, please.”

The coil in your gut spun tighter and tighter, but it finally exploded when Eddie leaned down and sank his teeth into the flesh of your inner thigh.

Your mouth dropped open in a silent scream, and you felt yourself levitate off the bed as your second climax crashed into you like a tsunami wave. The weed in your system amplified the sensations once again, sending your mind into the stratosphere and your limbs spasming like you were being electrocuted. Then there was a gush of wetness between your thighs, and Eddie’s guttural groan echoed through your bones.

The world blacked out around you for a moment, and when you came to, you were sprawled limp on the bed. Your chest heaved as your lungs fought for oxygen, but the sensation of a wet tongue dragging across your thigh caused you to jerk.

You blearily glanced down at Eddie, and a gasp whistled between your teeth at what you saw.

His curly head was propped against your thigh, which he was still kitten licking, but what shocked you were the droplets dripping off his cheeks, jaw, and bangs. Then you shifted, and you realized you were lying in a very wet spot.

“F-Fuck!” You propped yourself up on shaking elbows, disbelief burning through you. “Did I…”

You trailed off, unable to complete the sentence, and Eddie’s eyes finally met yours. They looked like twin oceans of oil that were threatening to suck you under.

“Squirt?” he finished your hanging question, and his tongue flicked out to lick a drop of your juices off his chin. “Fuck yeah you did. Hottest thing I’ve ever goddamn seen.”

“Shittttt, I’m sorry,” you groaned and covered your face with both hands, falling back onto the bed as shame spiraled through you. “I-I forgot that smoking sometimes makes me do… that.”

It had happened twice, both times after you left Eddie’s trailer high and had to come home to satiate the burning ache between your legs. It had been embarrassing then— when you were alone, and no one saw you shamefully wash your sheets in the middle of the might— but it was mortifying now.

Eddie was silent for a moment, but then you felt him shift, the bed dipping as he climbed up onto his feet and hovered over you.

“Did you miss the part where I said that was the hottest goddamn thing I’ve seen in my life?” he asked, and when you wouldn’t reply, he used one of his hands to pry yours from your face. His fingers were tacky against your skin, and you flushed when you realized it was from your orgasm.

“R-Really?” you asked tentatively, finding his eyes, and the lust in his brown gaze almost set you aflame.

In response, Eddie lowered his hips, rolling them against your own until his erection pressed into the crease of your thigh. He was hard as steel, and since he was still somehow fully clothed, his belt buckle and jeans scraped over your sensitive skin deliciously.

A whimper caught in the back of your throat, and Eddie dove down to seize your lips. You groaned at the tangy taste of yourself, and he rolled his hips into your thigh again.

“What do you think?” Eddie asked against your lips, the question half growl, and even though you’d already cum twice, desire ignited in your belly again.

“I think you’re wearing too many clothes,” you muttered as you reached down to grab the hem of his hoodie, but the instant you brushed fabric, his fingers latched onto your wrist, his grip tight and unyielding.

You thought he was teasing you again, but when you looked up at his face, the lust that had been there was suddenly gone, replaced by an uneasy fear.

His expression immediately made you still.

“Eddie?” you asked and shifted your head to meet his gaze more directly under the shadow of his bangs. “Are you… okay?”

“Y-Yeah.” He smiled shakily and cleared his throat before he turned the wattage up on the smile, but it still looked forced. You stared at him patiently for about ten seconds, and when Eddie saw he hadn’t convinced you, he sighed and averted his eyes. “It’s just, uhh, can I keep my shirt o-on?”

The question hung between the two of you for a moment, and Eddie seemed to hunch more into the curtain of his hair.

“If that’s what you’re comfortable with, of course,” you said as you frowned at him, frown deepening when he seemed to sigh in relief. “But… can I ask why?”

His sudden change in demeanor concerned you, and you could feel your desire fading, taking a back seat as you hesitantly reached out and cupped his face. Eddie ground his jaw beneath your palm, but when he finally met your eyes, his expression fractured.

“It’s just—” he started, stopped, took a deep breath. Closing his eyes, he turned his head and nuzzled into your palm. “I… don’t exactly look pretty from the neck down anymore. Damn bats really ruined my bikini body, ya know? And I just didn’t want my s-scars to ruin the mood, but hey, would you look at that, I did it all by myself, huh?”

He laughed in a dry, self-deprecating manner, but you immediately tilted his head up.

“Eddie, look at me, open your eyes,” you said firmly, and after a moment of hesitation, he obeyed. His deep brown eyes looked so lost now, so uncertain and scared, it broke your goddamn heart. “Eddie Munson, I want you to listen to me, and listen good. First off, you didn’t ruin anything. Secondly, and more importantly, you are the most gorgeous man I’ve ever met—”

He opened his mouth, probably intent to argue, but you narrowed your eyes at him, and his lips pursed shut.

“You are the most gorgeous man I’ve ever met,” you repeated as you held his gaze. “Both inside and out. And I know for a fact that will not change no matter what’s under your shirt. I-I love you, Eddie. Did you forget that?”

“No,” he murmured, voice strained.

“Good,” you said. “Because I do. Munson, I love you so much it drives me insane. Literally insane. Insane enough that I dove head first into a hellish dimension and took on an army of bats with a lighter, a can of hairspray, and a busted shoulder.”

Eddie cracked a smile at that, his eyes going soft as melted chocolate. “My warrior princess.”

“Damn straight,” you huffed before you grew serious again. “But I love you, Eddie. Love the way you are so passionate about everything, be it DnD or learning a new song on the guitar. I love the way you’re always looking to make someone smile, someone laugh, or feel included. And I love how fiercely loyal you are, even to the point of stupidity. So nothing about you could ever be ugly. Especially not your scars. Because those scars mean y-you’re still with me, still alive. I’m, fuck, I’m so goddamn grateful for those scars, Munson.”

Your voice grew rough with tears, the backs of your eyes burning, and Eddie’s face twisted.

“Fuck, Obi, no, don’t cry. Come here.” He quickly gathered your naked body up in his arms, and then he half-carried, half-dragged you up the bed until you were both settled against the headboard. “Shhhh. I’m sorry. Shit, I’m such an idiot.”

“No, no, you’re not,” you argued, rubbing your face into his shoulder as he wrapped his arms around you. He sighed into your hair, the sound tortured, and you knew you needed to lighten the mood. “Well, maybe a little. Sometimes. But not right now.”

“Ah, so the truth comes out.”

You snorted as you wiped your eyes against his hoodie and lifted your head off his shoulder, and Eddie immediately brushed back the hair hanging in your face. The two of you were settled on your sides—you, on your right, and him on his left— and his other hand, the one not in your hair, was wrapped around your back. His fingers trailed over your spine, spreading shivers, and you flushed a little when you remembered you were naked. You were naked, thighs still tacky with your release, and one of your legs was slotted between his.

“Sorry, again,” Eddie murmured as his eyes roamed over your face. “For, you know, ruining the mood and making you cry.”

You shook your head before you leaned up, pressing your lips chastely to his.

“Stop apologizing,” you said. “If anyone ruined the mood, it was me, the crybaby.”

Eddie smirked, his thumb brushing against your lower lip. “A very cute crybaby.”

You nipped at his thumb in retaliation, but when you felt his breath hitch, you flicked your thumb across the pad before drawing the whole digit into your mouth. Eddie stopped breathing completely then, and his eyes darkened as they stared intently at where your lips were wrapped around his thumb.

You sucked in briefly, hollowing your cheeks, and something twitched against your thigh from where it was wedged between his.

“Shit, Obi—” Eddie started, then hissed when you rocked your thigh into his crotch.

“I still haven’t made you feel good,” you whispered once you released his thumb with a pop. “Can I, Eddie? Please?”

“Fuck, how am I supposed to say no to that?” he groaned before he captured your mouth with his. When he pulled away, he was breathing hard, muttering against your lips as he rocked against your thigh. “Asking so sweetly, almost as sweet as you taste. Fuck, I love you, Obi. You know that, right? Tell me you know that.”

“I know, I know, love you, too,” you gasped and pressed your naked body against him, losing yourself in his kisses for a moment before you pulled away. He chased after you with a whine, but you placed your hand on his chest and pressed him back into the pillows propped up against the headboard. “But let me take care of you this time, baby.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said and then exhaled shakily as you carefully straddled his lap. “F-Fucking-- Christ, you’re so beautiful, Obi.”

“Mmmm, you, too,” you hummed and pecked a quick kiss against his lips. Then you leaned back a little, met his eyes, and took the hem of his hoodie between your fingers. “Let me see you?”

Eddie bit his lip and looked a little hesitant, but after a moment, he nodded.

You smiled and gave him another kiss. “Thank you.”

Even though he’d given you consent, you still took it slow as you worked the hoodie up over his chest and tossed it to the side. Eddie flicked his hair out of his eyes as his hands settled tentatively on your waist, and you ducked to press your lips against the tip of his nose.

“Hi, there, handsome,” you said, reveling in the slight flush that spread across his lightly freckled cheeks. You traced the spreading red hue with your lips, then your tongue, shifting as you trailed across his jaw and down his neck.

“Obi,” Eddie rasped as his fingers flexed around your waist.

“Shhhh.” You dipped your tongue into his collarbone like he had done to you earlier. “Unless you want me to stop, just lie back and let me make you feel good. Do you want me to stop, Eddie?”

“N-No, fuck, no,” he stuttered, tilting his neck back to give you more room.

You smiled against his skin and sucked a quick hickey into the base of his throat, causing him to moan, but then you pulled away and shuffled backwards so you were kneeling more over his knees than his thighs. Eddie’s fingers slipped from your waist as you sat up more fully, and you felt him stiffen slightly below you as you gazed down at his bare chest.

You were careful to keep you face completely neutral, but your heart ached inside your chest for the boy beneath you. You’d seen glimpses of him shirtless before, usually when he spilled something on himself while you two were getting high at his trailer, and he stumbled around his room half-naked to look for a semi-clean shirt. So, the long, pale expanse of his torso wasn’t necessarily new to you. You even knew all of his tattoos by heart, mostly because he loved showing them off. There were the bats, the wyvern, and the puppet master on his right arm, on his forearm, tricep, and inside of his wrist respectively. Then there was the black widow spider below his left collarbone and the skull of a demon below the spider, just above his heart.

Except both the spider and the demon were unrecognizable now.

Eddie’s chest and abdomen were covered in ropy scars, pink and knotted and barely healed. Slashes marred the tattoos on his chest, so the images were dissected and distorted. But the scars on his stomach— above his right hip and below the left side of his ribcage— were worse. These scars were more jagged, both from the demo-bats’ teeth, and from where you’d burned him with a serrated knife to cauterize his wounds. The skin there was more red than pink, and you frowned as you ghosted your fingers over the raised lines, almost but not quite touching.

“Obi?” Eddie asked, and the quiet timidness in his voice snapped you out of it.

You flicked your eyes up to find him starting at you with his lip caught between his teeth, and the tinge of fear in his eyes made your throat tight again, but you shoved it down.

“I was right,” you said instead. “Still as beautiful as ever, Munson. Truly, it’s a little unfair.”

“I-I think that’s my line, sweetheart,” he scoffed, but a small smile tugged at his lips, so shy and endearing that you had to crawl up his body again to kiss him.

Eddie opened his mouth to your tongue, groaning when your naked body brushed against his. For a second, you were worried you’d hurt him, but then his kiss turned more bruising, and one of his hands came up to grope your breasts, tweaking at your nipple and causing you to groan this time.

“S-Shit, how are you so goddamn soft everywhere?” he gasped against your lips. “My hands must feel like f-fucking sandpaper.”

“No,” you moaned as your pressed into his left hand, his rings cold against the hot flesh of your breast. “Your hands feel s-so good… but stop distracting me, Munson.”

You pulled back and pouted at him, and before he could stop you, you started kissing your way down his neck again. This time, you didn’t stop at his collarbones, and you hovered over him reverently as you oh so softly dragged your lips over his scars.

“So handsome,” you muttered, pressing a kiss to his sternum. “So fucking handsome, baby. Love you so much. Every bit of you.”

“Fuck, O-Obi,” Eddie whimpered above you, and you felt him buck his hips.

You didn’t want to torture or overstimulate him too much, so you continued down his torso, pausing only briefly to dip your tongue into his bellybutton and run it across his happy trail. When you got to the buckle of his belt, you glanced up at him, finding him staring back at you with eyes as wild as his hair.

“Is it okay if I keep going?” you asked as you reached for his belt.

Eddie bobbed his head sporadically but then seemed to swallow and find his words. “Yes. Christ, yes, please.”

“Well, since you asked so nicely, pretty boy,” you parroted his earlier words back at him. It was supposed to be a joke, but you saw the breath hitch in his chest, and you felt his cock twitch beneath your fingers.

Oh. He seemed to like a little praise. This knowledge made you throb, and you filed it away to use later.

Instead, you focused your attention on opening his belt and jeans, and you immediately started working both his pants and boxers down his thighs. Eddie lifted his hips to help you, and after a brief tug, his cock sprang out and slapped against his belly, causing him to moan.

You quickly shoved the rest of his clothes down his legs, and Eddie kicked them off before you knelt in the V between his thighs.

“Christ,” you breathed. It was one of Eddie’s favorite words, and it was the only thing you could think of as you stared at his straining cock.

You admittedly hadn’t seen many dicks in your life, but his was by far the prettiest. Were dicks supposed to be pretty? Because his sure was. It stretched out maybe seven inches, arching towards his belly button, and the girth of it made saliva pool in your mouth. At the base sat a bush of dark brown curls even more wild than the hair on his head, and at the tip was a little mushroom cap, beading with pearly fluid.

“I-Is that a good, um, Christ?” Eddie asked nervously.

Instead of answering, you leaned down and licked up the underside of his cock, pausing at the tip to lap at his precum, and Eddie cried out, his hips leaping off the bed.

“Mmmm, you taste as good as you look, Munson,” you sighed and licked your lips. Then you shifted, positioning yourself flat on your stomach between his legs, your own kicking up into the air behind you. Eddie’s thighs tensed when you slid your hands across them, one snaking further up his pelvis to grip the base of his cock and tilt it toward you.

“Ohhhh, son of a—” Eddie whimpered as his shaft throbbed in your hand. It was warm, and softer than you imagined, and you couldn’t stop yourself from sticking out your tongue and swirling it around his head.

“I’m not exactly an expert at this, either,” you confessed, feathering a kiss under his mushroom shaped head. “So tell me if you do or don’t like something.”

“Obi,” he gritted out with his head pressed back into the pillows and his eyes tightly shut. “I can’t even fuckin’ look at you right now because I’m on the edge of losing my absolute shit. Y-You could probably just sit there like that for a minute, and it would be enough.”

“But where’s the fun in that?” You smirked, feeling high off the power you held over this man. And from the weed, too, if you were being honest.

Then, before he could say a single thing in retort, you fitted your lips over the head of his cock and sunk halfway down.

Eddie wordlessly shouted as he thrashed, and you had to use one of your hands to press his hips back into the mattress. The other you used to grip the base of his shaft, and you pumped softly as you swirled your tongue around the portion in your mouth. His skin tasted a little salty but clean, and the smell of him was more pungent here, muskier. It drove you a little crazy, and you felt drool dripping past your lips as you slowly started to bob your head.

“Fuckkkkk, Obi, holy shit, t-that feels—” Eddie broke off with a whine, and suddenly his fingers were tangling in your hair. He didn’t push your head down, though, just held you there as he twitched his hips upward, his shaft throbbing against your tongue.

After letting him shallowly thrust for a minute, you pulled back until his head popped free of your mouth, but you didn’t go far, pressing kisses to his tip and using the saliva running down his shaft to lubricate your still-pumping hand.

“God, you’re so hard, Eddie,” you muttered absently, feeling him throb between your fingers. “Does this feel good?”

“Ohhh, so good, so fucking good, you have no idea how good,” he babbled as his fingers scratched pleasantly against your scalp.

“Hmmm, excellent,” you hummed and licked at his leaking head like a lollipop. “Because I want to make you feel as incredible as you made me feel.”

“Fuck, baby, you’re already— AHH!” he cried out, voice cracking, as you suddenly took him in your mouth again and deepthroated him.

You gagged a little, eyes stinging, as he hit the back of your mouth, but your breathed in through your nose and swallowed, feeling the walls of your throat cinch around the head of his cock.

“Shit!” Eddie’s voice rose an octave, taking on a panicked pitch, and then he was suddenly, frantically, yanking at your hair. “F-Fuck, Obi! Stop, shit, stopstopstop!”

You immediately pulled your head back, his dick sliding out of your lips with a wet slurp. Your breathing was ragged as your looked up to find him in a half-seated position, his face contorted and eyes closed, and your stomach immediately churned.

“A-Are you okay?” you rasped, your voice hoarse but concerned. “Fuck, I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

You used your arms to push yourself up and away from his pelvis, until you were kneeling again between his thighs. Eddie panted as he slowly collapsed back onto your pillows, and one of his hands came up to push the damp bangs out of his face while the other flopped across his hips.

“Eddie?” you prompted when he didn’t answer, and finally he cracked open a single eye and tilted his head to look at you.

“You… didn’t hurt me,” he muttered, and he still sounded a little breathless. “I just— fuck, that felt so good, sweetheart. Too good. I, um, almost… ya know, i-in your mouth.”

“Oh.” You smiled, your concern melting away as your desire reignited. “You could have, you know. That was kind of the goal, Munson.”

Eddie exhaled shakily, and you saw his dick twitch where it laid against his stomach, still red and slick with your spit.

“Jesus Christ, don’t say stuff like that, Obi,” he breathed, and he reached down to squeeze the base of his cock. “I-I don’t want to… finish… in your mouth. This time.”

The ‘this time’ made the heat in your gut travel up into your chest, and your smile widened at the implication that he planned to do this again. Because you wanted to do it over and over, for the rest of forever. Until you got sick of it, though you didn’t think that was possible.

You’d only gotten a taste, and yet you knew you were quickly becoming addicted to Eddie Munson.

“Oh, really?” you asked with a smirk, slinking up his body until you were straddling his lap. Your pussy hovered right over his cock, but you stayed hovering above him as you met his glassy gaze. “Where do you want to finish then, Munson? What do you want?”

Eddie’s hands settled against your hips, and his eyes were wide as he gazed up at you with naked adoration etched across his face.

“I-Inside,” he stuttered and then swallowed as his fingers tightened around your hips. “God, Obi, I want to be inside you so fuckin’ bad, I— t-there’s a condom, in my jeans. Can I— let me grab it.”

“Since when have you started carrying around a condom in your pocket?” you teased.

“Since I started waking up every day with your ass pressed against my morning wood,” Eddie said, making your pussy throb, and he patted your naked thigh as he twitched beneath you. “Come on, let me up, it’ll only take a second.”

“Actually…” You bit your lip as you placed one of your hands on his sternum and gently pressed him back down into the bed. “I was thinking… y-you’re clean, since you’ve never, um, been with anyone. And I’ve only, uh, d-done this once, and I’ve been tested since then. Also, I’ve… been on birth control for years now, it helps to regulate my cyc— never mind. What I’m trying to say is we don’t need a condom… if that’s alright with you?”

You didn’t know where you found it in you to be embarrassed after everything you and Eddie had already done together, but your cheeks flushed with heat all the same. You were still hovering over Eddie’s lap, but that quickly changed when he suddenly lunged out and yanked you down onto his chest. You squeaked in surprise, barely able to catch yourself by bracing your hands on the bed beside his shoulders, but then Eddie was devouring your mouth, teeth and tongue and hands everywhere.

You moaned as his fingers skimmed up your sides, detouring to your breasts and nipples for a moment before they continued upwards to cup your face. His tongue swiped across yours one last time before he ripped himself away, and he panted against your mouth as he pressed his forehead to yours.

“That’s… holy shit, that’s so fucking hot,” he whimpered as he bucked up beneath you, and the brush of his bare dick on your wet folds punched a groan from your chest. “Obi, Christ, Obi, I need to be inside you. Fuck, please, I just— I’m gonna die if I’m not inside you in the next thirty seconds.”

“I already told you once, you’re not dying on me, Munson,” you said, snaking a hand down between your torsos to grasp the base of his cock.

Eddie whined again at your touch, but it was nothing compared to the strangled sound he made when you notched the head of his dick against your dripping cunt. You sat up a little to get the angle right, but then you paused and smiled at the tense, panting man beneath you.

“Love you, Eddie. I love you so goddamn much.”

“Fuck, I love you, too, sweetheart, I— OH!”

He broke off with a shout as you pushed your hips down, popping the head of his dick past your entrance. The stinging stretch made your eyes roll back into your head, and a guttural groan echoed up your throat as your slowly sank down, inch by inch, onto his cock.

“S-Shit, Eddie,” you whined once you sat in the cradle of his pelvis. Your walls ached and fluttered as they tried to accommodate him, and it felt like he was lodged all the way up in your chest. The first and last guy you’d been with definitely hadn’t felt like this.

“Fuckkkk,” Eddie practically sobbed out, and his nails dug into the skin of your hips, hard enough to leave bruises. But he managed to lift his head from where he’d thrown it back into the pillows, and his hazy, unfocused eyes found yours. “Christ on a fucking crutch. A-Are you okay, Obi? You’re so goddamn tight.”

“It’s cuz you’re f-fucking big,” you shot back, your voice a little breathless as you gently settled your palms against his belly, careful to avoid the worst scars. The stretch of him inside you still ached a little bit, but it was beginning to fade, and you slowly rocked your hips against his.

You moaned at the dual sensation of him moving inside your pussy while his pubes tickled your clit, and Eddie cursed again as his fingers clamped down around your waist.

“Wait, s-stop, stop,” he suddenly hissed, and you froze above him, lifting your hands off his stomach.

“Sorry, did I—” you started to ask, but Eddie quickly shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut.

“No, you just feel too goddamn good. Again.” Eddie laughed shakily before he took a deep breath and let it out slow. Then he opened his eyes, and he smiled up at you sheepishly. “Sorry. You’re just… so fuckin’ beautiful, and I’m on a virgin hair trigger here, and—”

“Eddie, it’s okay,” you cut him off with a smile, reaching down to pry one of his hands off your hips so you could press a kiss to his fingers. “You have nothing to apologize for. Do you feel good right now?”

“Good doesn’t even fuckin’ scratch the surface, sweetheart,” he breathed out, and when you released his hand, it immediately fell to one of your breasts, brushing over your nipple. “This is quite literally the best goddamn day of my life. Don’t know how it could get better from here.”

“I think I have an idea.” You smirked before you leaned down and slanted your mouth over his, rolling your hips in the process.

Eddie’s groan was muffled by your tongue, and you whimpered along with him as you lifted a few inches up his shaft before sitting right back down. You swirled your hips with him rooted deep inside you, and his hands ghosted up your spine, pressing you against him.

The two of you rocked together as you kissed, but you needed air eventually, so you tore your lips away, burying your face in the crook of his shoulder as you gasped for breath.

With his lips free, Eddie took to babbling, and every word out of his mouth just made you drip and clench around his cock.

“O-Oh, fuck, baby, you feel sooo good, so goddamn good. So wet and-- Fuck! Squeezing me so tightly. Christ, you’re driving me insane, I can’t even t-think. My brain is on fucking fire-- god! Obi. S-Shit, Obi, w-wait. I’m sorry, wait, waitwait.”

You froze midroll and whimpered as his cock brushed that special spot inside you. Eddie panted as he clutched you to him, but after a moment, he slowly relaxed into the sheets, and you carefully propped yourself up on your hands.

“Sorry,” Eddie muttered as he blinked up at you.

“I told you, you have nothing to apologize for,” you reminded him with a smile, but he still looked so contrite, so you clenched around him, rising up a little and sinking back down so he could hear the wet noises coming from between your bodies. “Hear that? That’s because you turn me on so much, Ed. You’re the one making me so wet. I could probably just sit here on your cock and cum without either of us moving. That’s how good you feel inside me.”

“Goddamn it, Obi,” he gritted out as he clenched his eyes shut again, his hands clutching at the top of your thighs. “I’m trying not to cum here, and you’re not helping.”

“But I want you to cum,” you said, sitting up fully and starting to rock on his cock again. From this angle, you could almost feel him in the back of your throat, and you tossed your head back as you settled your palms against his belly and rode him in slow but deep movements. “I, ah, want you to cum deep inside me, pretty boy. Want— fuck, want to feel it.”

“Oh, shit,” Eddie hissed and bared his teeth. Then his hands wrapped around your hips again, guiding you a little bit faster. “S-Shit. I— Can you cum again? Wanna feel you cum on my cock. Fuck, I want that so bad. What can I do?”

“Touch me,” you gasped. The coil in your gut was tightening again, wound tighter and tighter by the insistent press of his cock deep inside you.

“Y-Yeah, yeah, I can do that,” he groaned, shifting his left hand from your hip, and the cold bite of his metal rings against your heated and swollen clit made you cry out.

“Eddie!” You jolted further up his cock than you had been, and you were so slick that you just slid right back down, your ass meeting his pelvis with a wet slap. The head of his cock knocked against something inside you that made you see stars, and suddenly you were bouncing on his dick, rapid and wild, your eyes rolling back into your head.

“Fuck! Oh, god, oh, Christ, O-Obi, Obi, I’m— shit, I’m cumming.” Eddie’s voice rose into a high-pitched whine, his fingers and rings blindly bumping against your clit, his hips bucking off the bed to meet yours. “I’m cumming, fuck, cum with me, cum with me, baby, please!”

“Yes, cum inside me!” you sobbed as he snapped his hips up into yours, and your third orgasm of the night hit you like a freight train. “Eddie!”

You felt his cock thob in the tight clutch of your walls moments before you were filled with the warmth of his cum, and the sensation heightened your own climax. Your whole body spasmed, lightning in every nerve, and you only distantly felt Eddie tug you down onto his chest, his tongue invading your mouth, his sobs and curses muffled by your lips.

The two of you rolled and writhed against each other as you rode out your climaxes, but eventually your thighs burned too much, so you just collapsed limp on Eddie’s chest while he thrust up into you a few more times. You whimpered from oversensitivity and the aftershocks of your orgasm, and your brain felt like slush between your ears when Eddie finally gasped, shuddered, and stilled beneath you.

A long moment stretched by in silence as you both caught your breath and returned to your bodies, but Eddie was the first to stir, his hand feathering up your spine. It tickled slightly, so you involuntarily clenched, and then you both groaned as you tightened around his softening cock.

“Fuckkkkkk.” Eddie laughed, his chest rumbling beneath you, and his palm pressed flat between your shoulder blades. “That was… holy shit. I… I think I might have died. I think this might actually be heaven.”

“Why do you keep trying to die on me?” you grumbled as you lifted your head off his shoulder and pouted at him.

“’M not trying to, baby.” Eddie smiled and cupped your cheek, but then he bit his lip, his dark-brown eyes searching your face. “Was that… okay… for you?”

You blinked at him. And then again. “Munson. Did you not just make me cum three times?”

He blushed, but his smile was equal parts sheepish and proud. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess I did.”

“Damn right you did,” you sighed, wincing as a cramp started up in your thigh. “But, um, I need to… dismount now. Leg cramp.”

“Oh, shit, yeah, let me—” Eddie paused and glanced down at where you were still connected, and then his eyes darted from side to side, searching. “My shirt, I—”

“Too slow,” you groaned, and you pulled up without warning.

His half flaccid cock slid out of you with a wet sound, and both of you whined. You could feel something start to trickle out of you and onto your inner thigh, but you just flopped onto your back, Eddie scooting over to make room for you against the headboard.

“Sorry,” you hissed as you stretched your legs out, pointing your toes. “Couldn’t wait. Damn Charlie horse.”

“Want me to rub it?” Eddie asked, and he shifted partially onto his side next to you.

“No, it’s fading, I’m okay,” you sighed, relaxing into the bed and turning your head to look at him. But he wasn’t looking at you. No, his eyes were glued to the inside of your thighs, and when you followed his gaze, you blushed. Your skin was wet, glistening in the light of the bed side lamp, and you could feel more wetness seeping out of you and onto the covers.

Oh, well. You needed to wash the sheets anyway. Thankfully, you had spares for tonight.

“Eddie,” you muttered when he just kept staring, and you tried to close your legs, but he suddenly reached out and stopped you, his fingertips pressing into the tacky skin of your thighs.

“No, wait… can I…” He trailed off as he glanced at you, and you wanted to tell him no, were already squirming with embarrassment, but you found yourself nodding yes.

Yes to whatever he wanted.

Eddie smiled before he scootched down the bed a little, and then he was pressing your thighs open, his fingers brushing against your sopping folds and spreading them apart.

“Fuck,” he breathed as he gaped at your swollen pussy, and you moaned, walls fluttering, pushing out another glob of his cum. “Goddamn, you look…”

He trailed off again, and you felt his thumb swipe up your slit, collecting his cum, before he slotted it back inside you.

“Ah!” you gasped, the sound transforming into a moan and then a whimper. You closed your thighs around his wrist and arched your back, trying to scoot away. “Eddie, s-sensitive.”

“Oops, sorry.” He immediately withdrew his thumb, but he paused a moment to inspect the slick glint of your combined juices on his skin.

You reached for his hand without thinking, meeting his wide eyes as you pulled his thumb to your mouth. Gently, you wrapped your lips around him, swiping your tongue over the pad of his digit. The taste was salty and tangy but not bad, and your eyelashes fluttered a little as you hollowed your cheeks.

When you released him, Eddie exhaled sharply, like he’d been holding his breath, and then he was swooping down to kiss you again. His tongue stabbed into your mouth, chasing the remnants of your combined flavors, and you moaned as you wrapped your arms around his neck and tugged him down to lie half on top of you.

“Whoa,” Eddie laughed against your lips. Then he pulled away to stabilize himself so he didn’t fall off the bed or crush you. “Careful there, Obi. I might trip, fall, and end up with my dick inside you again.”

You giggled at the corny joke and pecked another kiss against the corner of his mouth. “I wouldn’t be opposed to that.”

“You are so evil,” Eddie groaned as he wrapped his arms around you, trapping your own against his chest. “Evil, evil Obi.”

“Muhahaha,” you murmured sleepily, settling against him. But then your eyes fluttered open, and you saw the scars inches away from your nose. Tentatively, you traced your fingertips down the pink, ropy tissue, and when Eddie tensed slightly, you leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the remnants of his spider tattoo. “I didn’t hurt you, though, did I?”

“Princess, what you made me feel was the opposite of pain,” Eddie sighed and pressed a kiss to your forehead. “You made me feel… fucking fantastic. Is it weird if I thank you? Because I feel like I should thank you. You know what, I’m doing it. Thank you, Obi. Thank you for rocking my goddamn world.”

“You’re welcome.” Giggling, you pressed another kiss to another scar. “And thank you, Munson. I… I love you.”

“Fuck, I love you, too,” he breathed as he placed his fingers under your chin and tilted your face up. His lips brushed over your so sweetly, and his opposite hand traced idle patterns against the bare skin of your back.

When he pulled back, he was smiling that smile you loved so much— the one that crinkled the lines around his eyes and made his dimples stand out— and there was a hint of mischief in his chocolate brown eyes.

“Now, what do you say to us rolling another joint, raiding your kitchen, and going round two?” Eddie smirked.

“I think…” you said with a smile, tickling your fingers against his chest until he giggled and pulled back. “That you better hurry up and get rolling, Munson.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He grinned and smacked another kiss against your lips before clambering out of bed.

You laughed at his overexaggerated hurried pace, the way he kept glancing at the clock on your nightstand with increasing faux-worry. He somehow managed to roll another joint without spilling anything, and you felt your breath hitch a little as you watched him lick it closed.

Yeah, you were definitely addicted to Eddie Munson now.

But you didn’t really see the problem with that.

#eddie munson #eddie munson/you #eddie munson x you #eddie munson/reader #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson/f!reader #eddie munson x f!reader #eddie munson/female reader #eddie munson x female reader #eddie munson/fem!reader #eddie munson x fem!reader #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson smut #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson fix it fic #eddie munson survives #fanfic #stranger things #stranger things fanfic #my writings

[storges-orange-tree]

Finished playing the touch starved demo and like....

Leander definitely tried hooking up with Vere but failed lol. I think Vere just looked at him and went: "get away, you disgusting freak"

Partly bc I think Vere is very good at seeing the worst of ppl. I hate him (bc he killed me) but I do think he is correct about his assessment of the others. No way in hell am I going to play his route, esp at first, but I do think minding his warnings will help.

The only negative thing he has to say about Mhin is that they stabbed him on sight (which was cool and correct of them). And Kuras doing weirdo magic can be odd.

I do think Leander is attracted to the MC, but he also is attracted to any non-groupmind humanoid. Meaning that his attraction to us will not stop him from betraying us later on.

I still don't know what to think of his questions. Leander was the only one interested in knowing how we felt about the others, and being negative or positive didn't change a thing. At least not that I noticed. He probably had his reasons to want to know, just like we did when we asked.

As for Kuras, i probably would have gotten more out of him if i Played as a priest.

Ironically, Ais seems to be the only genuine one here. He is an open book. All it requires is not being cowardly, and he spills the beans pretty easily.

Mhin is definitely my fave. I understood how to deal with them best, and whatever is troubling them (another curse?) Is similar enough that we can lean on it for further bonding.

#touchstarved game #touchstarved leander #touchstarved mhin #touchstarved kuras #touchstarved vere #touchstarved ais

[sweet-dreams-internal-screams]

Camp Counselor Ethan Hcs🤭

HES SO POOKIE UGH I CANNOT

Warnings ⚠️ swearing, drinking, suggestive comments, no gf, children 👎🏾 fem!reader

This man LOVES being a counselor and as his s/o he ropes you and everyone else into helping that following summer

He’s in charge of the shyer kids because they feel more comfortable with him (and he used to be one)

Chad and Ethan’s cabins are right next to each other and if he’s not with you he’s with Chad (since he isn’t so hellbent on stabbing Chad)

LOVES TUG OF WAR WITH CHADS CABIN gets slightly over competitive

He’s making sure his cabin is going ALL out for color wars

Unfortunately you guys are on opposite sides of the camp and it’s not a long walk but being so far🙄 makes him touch starved and horny

He doesn’t know it until you or Mindy says something but all the 12 year old girls have the biggest crushes on him but he’s so unaware of it. (This would’ve been me at camp lolz)

When you guys tell him he gets beet red in shock.

When it’s arts and crafts time he always makes sure his group is sitting next yours

when he notices one of his campers crushing on yours he takes upon himself to help the little fella out (he also uses it to spend time with you)

He likes most of the other counselors

Especially if they swapped with him so you two could spend time together

But he really just likes hanging with the kids and listening to their stories

“.And Tommy started talking about his hot wheel collection and apparently he’s got this collection of rare ones”

Also LOVES camper drama

Him and Annika love debriefing each other

Campers are very shocked when they learn you two are dating (this is early in the summer)

WHEN HE DOES A FRIENDSHIP BRACELET DEMO HE PUTS IT ON YOU AWWW

When the campers see the look he gives you as you get off lifeguard duty or lake time with your girls

They try harder to push you two together but when you guys realize you just play into it

“ yeah girls you’re right Ethan is kindaaaa cute”

“Idk guys I DO think Y/n/n is very pretty”

When you guys do canoeing he’s always your partner

“ETH BABE YOURE GONNA FLIP US” (this is how they “figure” it out)

“Yeah Counselor Y/N called Ethan BABE”

The campers love the two of you

But mainly him- he’s always getting small drawings or projects from kids and he always keeps them

LOVES leading nature courses and talking about bugs

This man LOVES S’mores probably his favorite treat (he’s definitely the type to burn the marshmallow) that’s actually me self projecting lolz

Okay suggestive/NSFW warning

He’s obviously a guy and going a WHOLE two months is a lot and seeing you gets him riled up regardless

Those looks during Lifeguard duty weren’t sweet loving ones (they were but also 😈 lol)

He loves seeing you tan with your girls and lies down in front of you if it’s a lake and lays on his stomach so he can get a “good view of the campers” good view of your chest

During Counselor Night he keeps you on his lap by the bonfire while you both sip on Alcohol that was snuck in

You guys sneak off and fuck in the woods GOODBYE

he brought a blanket incase he got lucky

He got lucky and thank goodness because he would’ve exploded

Cannot help staring if you’re wearing shorts

And Chad teases him about this (but then Tara walks by)

Get jealous if other counselors flirt with you this may or may not lead to steamy makeouts behind trees

One morning he surprised you on the cabin porch for a makeout session and accidentally moaned too loud causing some of your campers to wake up (he pulled away in time but was hurt his noises cut your time short)

If you guys sneak off during Color wars a nosy camper HAS to ask why there’s red face paint on him and blue on you

Chad and Ethan smoke behind their Cabins at night and talk about you and Tara

Loves doing physical labor near you so you get riled up as much a he is

A/N: I feel like I wrote too much lol but hope you like Pt.2?

Also this is inspired by Murdrdocs go check theirs out!!

Also please request I’m so bored when I’m not writing

#ethan landry #ethan landry x reader #scream #scream 2023 #scream 6 #chad meeks martin #tara carpenter

[exilethegame]

While replaying the demo for the bajillionth time, I for once didn't immediately go to stab Jamie and he started flinging fireballs at me, normally I wouldn't question this but since i'm a phoenix commander... does fire hurt now? And even if it does, Jamie wouldn't know that, right? I mean i literally JUST told him I was a phoenix, or does mage fire hurt?

MC comments on it internally after they get injured by the flames-- they say something along the lines of how they're upset because a few years ago, when their mythosi blood was more "potent" the flames wouldn't have hurt. So yes, fire does in fact hurt Phoenix MC's as of now! If you ever unlock the scenes where Phoenix MC's try to use their powers, it'll also be brought up, since MC no longer being immune to flames basically means they end up burning themselves from the inside out whenever they try to use their powers.

And who knows whether Jamie knew or not! 🤷🏻

#answered

[sleepanonymous]

Turn off the lights On the brink of integrity "Sign this dotted line please, sir"...

Does it seem every time Mind over matter is a lie Are you done? Pull the other one Maybe I’ll fall for that shit next time

You’ll send the bodies down the path of shame yourself Don’t give up your day job You’ll send the bodies down the path of shame yourself It’s just greed This is all greed, neighbor Greed beyond dreams in the Deep freeze

Gets worse all the time What’s the price of your dignity Put your money where your mouth is In such a strong cage You’ll be looking at me You fucked up Your dirty dollar won’t save you this time

You’ll send the bodies down the path of shame yourself Don’t give up your day job You’ll send the bodies down the path of shame yourself It’s just greed This is all greed, neighbor Greed beyond dreams in the Deep freeze

Fiend, you better watch your mouth x32

👁️👄👁️ Baby Ves was angry. No information on this demo sadly. I'm leaning more toward 2011 because I know he was performing with a local cover band as a part-time member at that time. This definitely could be all him, but it was published to his YouTube under a different project name than anything else he'd posted so 🤷‍♀️ I'm not sure the lyrics are 100% correct, but credit to my Discord buddies who took a stab at these lyrics several months back (including counting how many times Ves screamed that last line lol).

#lost media #circa 2011-2012 #song fiend #idk why this song makes me thing of gods? #they're really not that similar at all lol #except ves says fuck

[fiddles-ifs]

Happy update day!!! A little bit of a bulkier update. I'm actually not. Entirely sure how many words, being honest LMAO. I spent so much time going back and forth finagling with earlier passages that I completely forgot to do that. We'll say it's comfortably in the 5k range. That seems normal.

This update allows you to experience the full lumberjack route, up until leaving the bar! Depending on how you approach your investigation/interrogation, you'll leave McNeil's either with a lot of information or none at all. And with a few more stab wounds.

If you play your cards right you can also ask Nazeri or Bautista to spar with you 👀 That content will come up next month!

CHANGELOG

Fully written lumberjacks route, partially written aftermath

Get stabbed. Again.

Added another secret easter egg (this one's for KC!!)

Ask Bautista and Nazeri to spar (only partially written)

#greenupdate #interactive fiction #greenwarden if #greenwarden: book one #sorry if there's bugs but im trying to get ready for a 16 hour shift tonight. pray for me #if i die drag me into the parking lot so i can see the stars for the last time

[lovelyyandereaddictionpoint]

Madam Butterfly sister Ainz sound interesting even more if they are a school teacher

It makes me think that in game she have a secret tittle of being of Mother Of Umbra who she taken in human and nonhuman children who are orphans ( NPC that she created ) and they are loyal to her and often calling her mother while also act as soldiers and assassin's ( think of witches from Bayonetta and this one game that I forgot but it kinda liked dark souls ) with the studies that she taught them ( like math, science, reading and writing, and also tell them to think outside of traditional means and be creative by used of arts )

How would Sebas, Demiurge, Nigredo, Albedo, and Pestonya

Meeting one of her children ( who is fully adult ) she taken in as they sending messages and works for their mother as she currently busy in her floor area of the tomb

Mother To All | Yandere Overlord X Madam Butterfly Sister Reader

The Butterfly Sorceress of the Sorcerer Kingdom is widely known and highly regarded by anyone who speaks of you. Despite being a demoness you are known for your compassionate decrees and your twisted form of affection. So any creature human or not+ under your reign should be treated with respect

Even the human witch who’s working on the newest floor of Nazarick:

Sebas Tian

“You must be the newest addition to Mistress (User)’s children. I am Sebas Tian, the head butler of Nazarick. It's a pleasure.”

He’s cordial 

And he may have an inkling of compassion for humans being saved from horrifying circumstances

They have been chosen by you 

Becoming your property thus worthy of his protection

Besides he can happily get updates on whatever you're doing 

An awesome privilege to be friendly with your children

Demiurge

“You..? We’re given the privilege of serving our Mistress? Hm.”

He’s disgusted by the human status of most of your property

He’s also jealous of how much time they get from your teachings 

The idea of mere human filth having more access to you than him

He hates the creature with his whole being

And it does cross his mind to…cause an accident or two…

Sometimes he succeeds but Cocyutus or Sebas will usually catch on

“Why I was simply attempting to provide aid but I see that my immense strength is doing more harm than good. My apologies…I hope you take good care of our Mistress (User)”

Nigredo

“Y-you a-are one of the ones in her family?”

She naturally admires you anyway

But you’re compassion for humans that Ainz seems not to rely on attracts her on a deeper level

She happily moves to follow after you 

And admires how you gather your children

If she could leave she’d find more humans and outcasted creatures to add to your family

“Serve (User)-sama well, human. It is a privilege to even bear witness to a gracious supreme being.”

Albedo

“Hmph! For a second don’t think anything you have here requires your existence. My supreme being is more than something as puny as you! ”

She’s so so so jealous

She wants you to speak over her shoulder while you correct her work

Or the punishment she might receive for getting all the problems wrong

Her imaginations fuel her wet dreams about you

And she’s jealous a stupid weak insufficient human gets to have that place

“You overstep I will delight in stabbing you over and over and over and over again.” 

Pestonya

“Woof! Welcome to (User)-sama’s family!”

Similar to Nigredo she only comes to acknowledge how much more she admires you because of this tactic

It appreciates humans which many of the floor guardians and Ainz not really don’t do that

She knows it’ll be a fight to see who gets to work under you 

She desperately carries on your love of education

Tail wagging and swooning every time you praise your children her

“(User)-sama is your savior. Be sure to work your hardest! Woof!”

#yandere overlord anime #yandere overlord albedo #yandere overlord #yandere demiurge #yandere sebas tian #yandere pestonya #yandere nigredo #yandere albedo x reader #yandere Overlord #yandere x reader #yandere x you #lovelyyandereaddictionpoint #yanderexrea #yandere #yanderes

[infamous-if]

Hi I just finished the first chapter of the Infamous demo and just wanted to say MAN this is so good!!! I love the way you write things, and I’ve gotta say, the moment I saw you could have an ex-to-lovers relationship with Seven I went “sign me tf up!!!”

Anyway, while I was playing I did wonder if it was possible to have the interview go well? I tried different answers and everyone always commented on how the interview went sort of poorly and I’m not sure if it’s because I wasn’t playing to my strengths or if that’s just the way it goes lol

I also have it in my head that MC and Seven have an argument once the bus assignments are chosen where Seven goes “why didn’t you go with Underground Wastebasket???” And MC goes “look me dead in the eyes Seven and tell me you think Blake Winters wouldn’t stab me in my sleep if he thought he could get away with it”

Thanks again for the amazing demo! Excited to see more! :)

thank you! That’s so nice of you to say :,)

Unfortunately the interview goes poorly no matter what. That’s not going to be the case for all interviews, in fact, I think that’s the only interview in which there is a set outcome like that (that can change!) So don’t worry too much haha

MC and Seven…they will be an interesting pair on the bus, that’s all I’ll say!

#inbox #seven lawless #gameplay #Mc

[jamisonwritestf2trash]

Sniper losing an eye and having to suffer the consequences (a bit of lost depth perception and couple days wait until Medic gets back to base to regrow it) and maybe a bit of swordvan thrown in

Sniper Loses an Eye HC (ft. Swordvan)

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Oops, I meant to write a hc, but wrote a mini fic, oh well.

Bare with me for some of this. It's not easy to ask Google, "Would having one eye affect sniper accuracy?" I'm pretty sure it doesn't, I was reminded that OW exists and that Ana has one eye, and she does just fine.

I uh, may have ran with swordvan a bit more than expected 😮‍💨

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Oh God. He's so fucking embarrassed. He's so upset. For one, he's embarrassed that Spy managed to stab him through the eye on the one day the respawn machine was malfunctioning. For two, he's upset because now he's reminiscing on the jokes he's made at Demo's expense. He dead ass sits in the lab for a good twenty minutes, contemplating on whether or not he should hide out in his van to save himself the ribbing he knows he's going to get from both Demo and the rest of the team, minus Medic, who is more than sympathetic to Snipers predicament. But regardless of how sympathetic he might be, Medic still needs Sniper out of his lab after he's done bandaging his face. Sniper just sighs and gets off the table and walks to the doors, planning out his escape plan and calculating where all the mercs should be at this time of day.

Keyword being, should. Because he jumps when he sees Demo waiting outside the lab doors. A smug smile on his face as he leans against the wall, taking a swig from the drink he has on hand. Sniper internally groans, but from the way Demo chuckled, he assumed he might have accidentally done that out loud. Demo doesn't actually say much. He just walks over slowly, standing in front of Sniper.

"Take off the bandages." His tone is asking, but his words covey a demand. Sniper protests, citing the fact that Medic had just spent a decent amount of time patching him up, and he'd hate to see how angry the doctor would get if asked to do it again.

"Dont worry," He moves his hand behind his head, undoing the knot of his eye patch quickly, the motion being one he's done many times before. "This ain't my only one. It's far better than any bandage." Demo reaches up and carefully slips his fingers under the bandages, pausing for a second, giving Sniper a moment to tell him to stop, but he doesn't, so the bandages around his eye find themselves being unraveled, draping around his neck and shoulders as they attempt to fall to the floor. Demo only moves his hand to tap the underside of his eye and then to tap Snipers.

"Look, we match." He says with a smile. And they just stand there for a minute, looking at each other, before Demo invites him to come look for an eye patch that'll fit and that he's willing to wear while Medic regrows his eye. It should have only taken a few minutes, but Sniper finds himself being in Demo's room for hours, taking for hours about the new and old predicaments they had found themselves in.

Sniper had left to go back to his camper late that night. Clutching his gifted eye patch, thumbing over the fabric and he dragged his tired body away from the base. He found himself thinking about the Scotsman more than he normally would that night as he drifted off to sleep. He figured it would all go away by morning, along with all his new worries about his missing eye. Hell, maybe the eye would just reappear in the night. He could only hope.

His eye did not infact reappear while he slept, and his worries and thoughts didn't disappear like he had hope. With battle fast approaching, he tied the patch on and grabbed his gear. Joining the other mercs, he found himself biting his tongue at the jabs made by his teammates. Figuring this was his karma for the many jokes he found himself telling. Demo joined the group the latest, immediately finding his way up to Sniper with a grin. Reaching a hand up to fix the eye patch that was half hazardly tied on.

"It looks good on ya." Was the only thing he said before walking away, only to be seen occasionally from far away on the field. Sniper didn't like the warm feeling that gave him.

Sniper found himself frustrated with his sudden loss of skill. Cursing under his breath anytime his sights failed him. Every time he missed shot after shot. He knew well enough that he'd have issues. His depth perception changes would be something to adapt to, but he found himself completely taken out of his depth, completely removed from his skills, the one thing he prided himself with. As the match came to a close, anyone near could hear the muffled thudding of a gun hitting the ground and a

"Goddammit!" As the other team became the winners of the day's battle. He was pissed off. He had never experienced anything like this, and he hated every minute of it. He could only put his head in his hands and sit for a minute. Taking in the newfound silence. Until he heard creaking and boot fall behind him,

"Y'know, for being new to this whole one-eyed thing, you still do a decent job." Demo complimented as Sniper picked his head up, Demo held out his drink, prompting Sniper to drink, trying to help him ease his disappointments. Sniper accepted as Demo continued to talk his ear off. Sniper tried to listen, but he found his focus elsewhere, between his thoughts on his new frustrations with his skills, and the feelings that seemed to rise up with every kind word or action Demo threw his way. Sniper could only sigh as he attempted to refocus his attention. This was going to be a long week.

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Why do I get so embarrassed when I write? Who knows. Anyways, I hope you like this Anon, this fueled my love of Swordvan </3

I'm finally back. Who knew that forcing myself to write a certain fic that I don't have the inspiration for would kill any desire to write? But now that I'm changing it up, I feel more productive! Thank you, guys, for being patient with me. I love you guys 🫶🏻

Also, apologies for anything that's messed up at the end, I am exhausted rn.

#tf2 #team fortress 2 #tf2 headcanons #tf2 sniper #tf2 demoman #swordvan #sniper x demoman