#we'll dream of a longer summer

[luveline]

𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐠𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐭 | 𝐞𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐞 𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐧

Best friends since middle school, you tell Eddie everything, which is why he's so surprised to find out you've been keeping a secret —you’re hearing a voice whenever you're home alone. He’s always had a thing for the fantastical but he can't believe in ghosts, and the longer you insist on it, the more worried he becomes. This would be bad enough if Eddie didn’t have a secret too, and it threatens to change everything between you. [22k] 

fem!reader, best friends to lovers slow-burn, mutual pining, eddie is infatuated with you, idiots in love, paranormal activity/au, heavy hurt/comfort, angst, fluff and affection, wayne is uncle of the year every year, ghost-hunting

cw assumed auditory hallucinations, talk of mental health, surrounding worry and circumstances, mentioned mental illness stigma, recreational drug use mention, prescription drugs, grief

my endless gratitude and thank yous to @h-ness1944 and @mrcylvsu for their sensitivity beta reads and for answering my questions so many moons ago, I'm very, very thankful for all that hard work, and all the time and energy you both spent!

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

Eddie's desk fan is on the fritz. It twists back and forth with a weak metallic clicking sound that promises eventual electrocution but for now provides momentary relief. Even the nights have been hell lately. No matter how many windows he and Wayne open, the air at home stays thick with humidity. 

Sweat shines on his brow and collar. He refuses to tie his hair back, and each hour it grows more and more uncomfortable. 

"Are you sure you don't wanna come and lie up here?" he asks, shifting reluctantly to peer over the side of the bed. 

You're laying on the floor of his room, just as sweaty but half as unhappy. You've abandoned a book to your left, having declared the weather too much to concentrate through. 

"Our body heat will mingle." 

"The fan is really helping," he argues lightly. "If you die on my floor Wayne won't ever let it go. Just come up here." 

You mumble something he doesn't hear and pull your shirt from your chest. You attempt to fan yourself with the thin, clinging fabric. It doesn't work, but it does expose the soft hill of your abdomen to his guilty eyes. His mouth dries up. 

"It's getting late," he says. He's not trying to get rid of you, promise, but now he's thinking about your body heat mingling and why it wouldn't be such a bad thing, and he doesn't want to. "I'll drive you home, yeah?" 

"In a minute," you agree, looking as if you have no intention of moving. 

You turn your face to the side, eyes closed, lashes skimming the delicate skin of your under eye. Eddie sits up and rakes his greasy hair away from his face. He'll drop you home, take a cold shower for purely heat related reasons, and hopefully sleep through the night. It's a very unlikely outcome, but a man can dream. 

"Come on. We'll roll the windows down and go really fast." 

"Eddie," you chastise. 

"Moderately fast." 

His sleeveless tank top gets caught as he leans down to try and flick you. Eddie can only ever forgive his fourteen year old self for maiming perfectly good vintage in times like these. A completely unnecessary culling of an entire wardrobe's worth of sleeves, but when the weather gets bad for a few heady weeks every summer, he remembers the reasoning behind it. 

He's stripped of all his clunky jewellery for now, adorned only in the dark ink of his multiplying tattoos. His most recent addition is an artist's rendition of the Eye of Sauron, blinking up at him from beneath his volley of bats. Still sick, he thinks to himself smugly. 

You've pulled yourself into a sitting position with your arms crossed over the bed, your hand stretched out to touch his plaid pyjama bottoms. You're in a nearly matching pair; when Eddie called you to hang out earlier you'd turned him down, citing a reluctance to change. He'd promised to pick you up in his own pyjamas, and you've been lying on his floor since then.

You're the laziest kids this side of the Wabash river, Wayne'd said, looking over your limp bodies with a smile. 

The other side, too, Eddie popped back. Will you put those chicken wings in the oven for us, please?

Eddie's not a monster, the wings were pre-prepared. Any other day he'd correct his uncle, say, hey, we haven't been kids for years, but the heat makes him feel gross and sometimes you just want your dad to make you dinner. (Sometimes Eddie's just lazy, also.)

"Eds?" you murmur. 

He lets his hands fall away from his hair where he'd been scratching mindlessly and turns to you. He's lethargic, feels like he's turning his head through molasses. "What, sweetheart?" 

Years of being friends lends an easy affection. His pet names are purely platonic. Or they used to be. Either way, you aren't perturbed.

"Can I sleep over?" 

He usually says yes to that question immediately. But again, the thought of your sweaty body curled into his with your hands breaching a friendly gap to curl over his waist like they tend to do fills his stomach with dread. 

His little crush is making him a bad friend, he decides. He will always, first and foremost, be your friend. 

"Of course you can." He rubs his mouth. Feigning casualness. "How come?" 

You peel out of your fatigue and get on your knees. The extra height is all you need to finally grab his legs, smiling sheepishly. Eddie won't judge you for almost anything and you know that, so it's gotta be outlandish. 

"I think…" You tap his kneecap. "Okay, laugh at me if you need to, but I'm pretty sure my house is haunted." 

"Like, by a ghost?" 

"What else?" you ask, laughing good-naturedly.

"Why do you think it's haunted, superstar?" 

You drop your face onto his thigh, giving him a disjointed hug. He hugs you back for as long as the heat will allow it, a handful of stolen seconds with his hand over your back.

"I swear, sometimes, I can hear someone talking."

That's… scarier than he imagined. "Shit, I thought you were gonna say a coat fell off the hanger, or the light in your bathroom started flickering again." 

"It has," you admit, your mouth pressed to his thigh. "But it's just the bulb." 

He pushes you off of him, your voice sending vibrations through places he'd prefer it didn't, and you fall back with a half-hearted stab at melodrama. 

"Oof," you say, straight-faced. 

"You really think it's a ghost?" he asks. 

"No. I don't know. I won't believe in ghosts until I see one, and I haven't seen one, but if it were a ghost, this is the type of behaviour I'd expect from it. So I guess I do. Does that make sense?" 

"Sure." He doesn't know. "What does it say?" 

"Here's the bit where you won't believe me." 

You smile at him from your spot on the floor. Your hand curls out, like a tight budded flower coming to bloom. 

"She asks about you," you say quietly. "It's pretty much all she says." 

"Who?" 

"The ghost." 

"She's a she?" 

"Sounds kind of like one." 

"Come sit up here with me." 

Eddie knows his voice has gone hard and weird, but he can't help it. He understands that he doesn't understand anything, that the world is large and works in mysterious ways, but he wouldn't forgive himself if he took this lightly. You sound so convinced — it makes him feel ill. 

Because Eddie doesn't believe in ghosts. 

You climb up onto the bed in front of him and he doesn't take your hand. He should. You won’t meet his eyes, a sign that you're slightly embarrassed. It's not what he meant to do. 

"What does she say?” he probes.

You go teasing and shiny, a glimmer in your eye. "I know you don't believe me, Eddie." 

"Who says I don't believe you? I just need you to explain." 

"She says…" You laugh. "Okay, she says stuff like, 'Eddie is okay?'" 

Eddie stares at you. 

"I was going to tell you–" 

"When?" he demands. 

"I'm telling you right now!" 

"How long have you been hearing voices?" 

You climb up on knees to wrap your arms around his head. "You think I'm delusional," you say, a loving murmur in his ear. 

He grabs your waist. Unsurprisingly, hugging you doesn't make him nearly as electric as he'd worried. It feels the same as it always has, like hugging his best friend. Loving the smell of your hair is new, but everything else stays the same. 

"I don't think you’re delusional, I don't, I just– if I told you the same thing." 

You pull away, and his hand comes to rest atop the curve of your hip. "I'd believe you," you say. 

"I believe that you believe there's someone talking to you about me. Uh… if it is a ghost haunting your house, why's she talking about me?" 

You take his hands off of your waist, squeezing his fingers together in your palms. "Don't know. I tried asking but she never answers, and last night…" 

Eddie stands up.

"Where are you going?" 

"We gotta let Wayne know you're staying and he's about to fall asleep, and I want a cigarette, and you need something to drink." 

"I don't want a beer." 

"No," he says. When he says to drink, he really means something cold to sip on. He's hoping to grab you back from… whatever it is you're going. "Soda, apple juice, drink what you want." 

He fiddles with the drawstrings on his pants, waiting for you to join him at the doorway. You stay sitting on his bed. He doesn't know what your face means. 

"Hey, you still have to tell me about it. I want to know, swear to god. We have all night." He holds out his hand. Wiggles his fingers at you. "I'll let you paint my nails again too, like a real girls night." 

That grabs your attention. You slide off of the bed and take his hand, shrieking as he yanks you ten miles an hour down the skinny hallway and into the living room. Wayne's got the sofa bed out already, his padded roll-up mattress laid out over the springs and a sheet stretched corner to corner. 

"Hey, kids," he says, fluffing one of his pillows. He chucks it at the top of the mattress. "Home time?" 

"Can I stay over, Mr. Munson?" you ask. 

Wayne rolls his eyes. You once spent eight days here with no breaks sometime in the summer of 1987 and he hadn't batted an eye. Eddie made sure it was truly alright with Wayne, of course, and you'd done your share of housework. Point is, both Munson's find  your asking to stay unnecessary. 

"I'll make pancakes in the morning," you add. 

"Oh, in that case." Wayne throws his blanket out over the bed and sits on top of it. "By all means, kid, stay over. Tell your guardian." 

"Can't. In Santa Barbara." 

"Ah, then I have to insist you stay," he says, laying down with a huff. 

Eddie passes him the TV remote. "She's a big girl, Wayne." You're well past the age of parental supervision. 

Wayne answers with a grumbling sound that means, hey, you can keep talking to me but there's no guarantee I'll answer. 

"I won't be annoying, promise," you say. 

Wayne grunts again. 

"That's old man talk for I know you won't," Eddie translates. 

You nod, glad to have permission, and meander into the kitchen. "Can I–" 

"Yes!" Eddie and Wayne call simultaneously. 

Wayne laughs to himself in that pleased gruff way he's good at and tucks his arms behind his head. He's wearing one of Eddie's t-shirts. They've been the same size since Eddie was seventeen, something both Munson's utilise when laundry day is approaching but not quite upon them. 

"Lighter?" 

Wayne scrunches his eyes in displeasure. "By the sink."

"Thanks." For some reason, Eddie doesn't leave. He stays standing by the TV, listening to the voice of a late-night talk show chuckle through a joke about some scandal. 

When Eddie was younger, he'd get into bed beside Wayne and watch TV until his eyes hurt. Too young to have stopped needing comfort and too old to know how to ask for it, he'd drift down the snug hallway into the living room and Wayne would usually be asleep or almost there. Eddie would stand by the TV hesitantly, and if he was sleeping Wayne must've been able to feel it, a new parents instinct or something, because he'd soon wake, and if he wasn't he'd look at Eddie like he'd been waiting for him. Like Eddie was running late. 

His teenage years were almost solely defined by bad dreams and TV with Wayne. On the good nights, Eddie would go back to bed. On the bad nights, heartache would swallow him whole. Well, almost whole. His cheek would rest on Wayne's shoulder as the night went on. Miraculous and ordinary at once. That's the only bit of him that didn't hurt. 

Pain emaciates the good from his memory, but it can't erase the comfort of watching TV with someone who loved him when they didn't have to. 

Wayne pretends to chop Eddie in the stomach. Eddie laughs and dodges out of his path. 

"Gotta be faster than that," Eddie taunts. 

"Don't chain smoke," Wayne says. 

"We won't be up long." Eddie's lying. He can't imagine that either of you will be getting an early night tonight considering the nature of your confession. What he means is, you won't be keeping Wayne up, and Eddie won't smoke more than what's wise. 

Wayne hums. 

You're in the kitchen screwing the lid back on a gallon of apple juice, your cup a quarter filled. You're like that. Won't ever take more than you need.

"One for me?" he asks. 

"I figured now all your taste buds are dead, you wouldn't want any." 

"Ha-ha," he says. The kitchen is unusually clean. "Shit, stop cleaning my house. Good god." 

You pull one of his jackets off of the seat of one of the kitchen table's chairs and shake it out. "So I can sleep here, eat here, but cleaning is where you draw the line. I like it." 

Eddie grabs the lighter from beside the sink in one hand and your wrist in the other, pulling you away from the table before you can start organising their mail and through the back door. 

It's still sticky-hot out and the steps are warm to the touch as the two of you sit down hip to hip. He pulls the stiff pack of cigarettes from his pants pocket and hands them to you. Your hand is already waiting. You peel off the plastic and tap the pack against your chest. You like doing it, arguing that it makes you feel like you're Chelsea Marino in Glory Days, all dark smiles and indulgent self-loathing. 

You open the pack, tug out a lone cigarette, and pass it to him. 

"You're like a pez dispenser," Eddie says, putting the butt of the cigarette between his lips.

"You little freak." 

He laughs and almost drops his cig. Wayne's heavy zippo struggles to light, low on gas. 

"Loser can't even light a cigarette." 

"Who put two dimes in you?" he asks, thrilled by your negging. 

He takes a sharp inhale as the end of the cigarette finally lights, the heat tickling his throat until it burns the way he needs it to. 

"Somebody must've," you say. 

"Reckon we can tip you upside down and get something to eat?" he asks through an exhale of smoke, tapping ash into the small egg cup to his left that's been serving as an ashtray for as long as he's been smoking. It used to be yellow. Every now and again he washes it and sees the old chicken paint underneath. "Too late for cooking." 

"Are you hungry?" you ask genuinely. "I told you we should've had more than just wings."

"It was too hot to eat hot stuff. It's still too hot. Tomorrow, we should go to Bradley's and get stuff for sandwiches." 

Eddie waits for your answer. "I'm sick of PB and J, Eds," or "Yes! And a pitcher for sweet tea, my captain." You don't say anything, your face turned up to the sky and your eyes closed, soaking in the heat. 

He has half a mind to go get a spray bottle and douse you before you collapse. 

"What's going on with you?" he asks. 

"I'm just thinking." 

"Think out loud. Don't be fucking selfish." 

"I'm not sure you wanna hear it." 

He puts his cigarette in the eggcup ashtray half-smoked, ribbons of white curling up into the shimmering summer heat. Any other time he'd lounge back and let the nicotine course through his system, a momentary relief against the winding tightness that comes with being so hot, and so worried about you. 

"If I ask you how you've been feeling lately, could you answer me?" he asks. "Without assuming I don't believe you. Don't get mad, just tell me." 

You drop your shoulder against his. "I feel fine, I think. You know me, I– I worry too much, and work is overwhelming. If you took me to a doctor, he'd probably prescribe me ambien and a week in a dark room, but. I really don't think I'm making this up." 

"I don't think you'd know," he says. Isn't that the deal? If you're having a hallucination of some kind, it would likely sound and feel real enough to trick you in some capacity.

"Trust me," you say. Your hair brushes against the top of his damp arm. He can't smell good, but you don't say a thing about it.

"I do." Eddie turns his head to take another drag. He blows the smoke as far from you as he can manage. "Tell me about last night," he says, eyes on the weather worn plating of the trailer. "What happened?" 

If you're not messing with him, your ghost has been talking to you for a while now. Something happened last night to scare you in a way you hadn't been before.

He fights his rising nausea with a final drag on his cigarette. You stop leaning on him, hands back in your lap as you tell the story. 

"I was listening to the stereo real loud while I did laundry. I don't know if I was trying to, you know, block it out if she started talking, I'm not stupid, I– I know it could be all in my head. I don't think it is, but I'm not stupid. I went down to the basement to swap the load out in the dryer, and while I was down there…" 

You look like you don't know how to explain it. Eddie bites his cheek. 

"She wrote me something," you say finally. "In my notebook, the one you got me for Christmas. She said hello." 

"I could've written it," he says. "I don't remember, maybe I left you a message in it knowing you'd find it." 

"Did you come in and take it off the shelf, too?" you ask gently. "Eddie, I know your handwriting. I'm not making this up."

He sighs, rubs his face with both hands, the smell of smoke and salt ingrained in the lines of his palms. He gives himself a long five seconds scrubbing at his stubbly jaw and wishing it was colder, then he shoots up onto his feet and pulls open the door. 

"Early night," he says decisively. "If you're still sure there's a ghost in the morning, I'll come over. See if she'll talk to me too. How does that sound?" 

You hold your hand out. Eddie takes it, hoisting you up.

"It sounds like you need a better strategy for getting girls to go to bed with you." 

"It's working, isn't it?" 

"Loser." 

— 

You wake up to Eddie tapping your shoulder. 

"Come on, sweetheart," he says quietly, his voice rough as hewn stone. "I made you pancakes." 

It's as if you're submerged at the bottom of a shallow pool. Sound and heat and sunlight reach you, but it's dull. It takes you a second to understand what Eddie's saying, and why his thumb is rubbing into your shoulder. 

"Come on," he says again, "'fore they get cold." 

You blink. Blink blink blink. Your throat hurts and you have a bad taste in your mouth. Your eyes feel like somebody flicked sand at you while you slept, gritty and dry. You kick the thin blanket away from you, a long day of writhing in the heat yesterday having turned you to sludge, your limbs limp and uncooperative. 

Eddie's frowning at you when you look up. 

"Want me to get you a rag?" he asks. 

"No, I'll wash my face." Your words string together like toffee melted between them and hardened again while you weren't looking. "Oh," you murmur, wincing as you set your feet on the ground. "My back really hurts. Did you push me out of bed last night?" 

"You slept like a log. Same position all night." He reaches for you, but his hand wavers. He must change his mind. 

Eddie leaves the door wide open as he leaves. The radio is on, and a song he secretly loves but won't admit to wars with the sound of sizzling oil. If you strain, you can hear him humming. You get closer and dip into the bathroom, the door open so you can listen to Eddie sing the chorus. 

Dance with me, I want to be your partner, can't you see? The music is just starting. 

He doesn't sing well, really. It's a light, high-pitched rendition. He isn't trying. He feels comfortable enough around you to be unapologetically mediocre, and it's somehow sweeter than if he had a voice like Larry Hoppen. 

You wash your face with handfuls of cold water, your lips tasting of salt as it drips down your nose to your neck, rogue rivulets of run-off seeping into your rolled sleeves. 

The heat broke overnight. A light rain patters soundlessly against the windows, and the back door has been propped open in the kitchen to let in the smell of fresh churned earth. Petrichor. 

You pat your tacky face dry. Eddie turns to the sound, and you nod at Wayne's empty seat.

"Where's your uncle?" you ask. 

"He wanted to get epoxy and a fresh roll of duct tape in case we spring another leak. The rain was pretty bad last night, I think he's worried it'll rot the ceiling. I don't know. Don't worry, I made him something first." 

You sit down and let Eddie serve you a stack of pancakes. The ones on the very top are piping hot. You slather them in butter and maple syrup as he sits down next to you, a plate of his own in hand. 

"How's your back?" he asks. He's being too soft with you. 

"I saw a ghost, Eds, I'm not dying." You slice down the pancakes with the side of your fork, attempting to act unbothered. "Worst case scenario, I'm schizophrenic."

Eddie sits down in the chair next to yours. It's a small table but there's ample room. His proximity is a choice. "Worst case scenario, you're being targeted by an evil demon, but schizophrenia could also be really bad," he says. "S'why I'm worried." 

"Eddie." You put down your fork, swallowing a half-chewed mouthful roughly. "Hey. If it's my head, I'll go to the doctor and I'll let them take care of it and everything will be fine." You have no way of knowing if what you're saying is true. Mental illness isn't easy. You're just saying what you think he needs to hear without outright lying. "I'll take the meds and you'll be there for me. But I'm fine. And you're being weird." 

"You're trying to piss me off." 

A little. Pissed is better than anxious. You'd rather give him something to glare at than a reason to twist himself into knots. "You're easily riled," you jest. 

His eyebrows rise. He eats his pancakes and you your own, the wrinkled knees of your pyjamas rubbing against one another as he jigs his leg along to the song on the radio. The rain starts to worsen, fat droplets slapping the screen door like the thwack of a bullet. From your seat, you can see the sky dark with grey clouds, the sun a long forgotten foe. The humidity has been cut in half, which is to say bad but not unbearable. Last night, if you'd been awake to feel it, the rain would've been warm in your palm. Getting up to close the door now, you nudge the ajar screen wide with your foot, letting some of the rain lash your arms and face. 

You sigh at the chilly coldness of each blessed drop. 

"Heatwave from hell is finally over."

"Thank fuck for that. Let's hope it's miserably cold for weeks," Eddie says.

It's mid September —summer has said goodbye with one last fierce kiss. By October, you'll be wrapping yourselves up in throw blankets on the couch on the porch, or hiding inside with Wayne's special pasta (buttered noodles and green pesto for the 'brave') watching slashers on Eddie's blurry TV. The humidity will be nothing but a gross memory. 

You wash your plates and Eddie lets you shower first. You have your own shampoo in the corner, and a rose scented body wash Eddie buys but doesn't use (but it isn't for you, idiot, why would he buy you something so expensive? He got it by mistake). You could draw the cracks in their shower tiles with your eyes closed, and the condensation that clings to the cold water pipe, that's how many times you've been in here. You finish quickly, dry quicker, and pull fresh clothes over your still-clammy skin. 

You tap Eddie in. He's somehow even faster than you were, and you swap places in his room. While he's changing, you dry the bathroom walls with a towel as soon as he's out, knowing the small room has a propensity for dampness. 

"Stop cleaning my fucking house," he says when you traipse back into his room, his head hanging upside down as he towel dries his curls. 

You forgo your usual explanations and tell the truth. "I know you're perfectly capable. I like helping, that's all." 

"I know. Ugh, you suck. Do you have any deodorant?" 

You grin and pull your deodorant out of your bag, a new-ish stick of Teen Spirit. Eddie sees it and sighs, obviously unprepared to smell like Pink Crush for the rest of the day. "I have like, half an inch left of Caribbean Cool. Coconut?" you offer. 

He goes with the coconut scent. The wall of privacy between you has eroded to a scrap of paper after so long living in each other's laps, but you feel guilty for looking at him, the shifting muscle beneath the skin of his arms and chest stealing your focus. If Eddie were to see you without your shirt, you doubt he'd find himself anywhere near as distracted. He'd look if you let him because that's the way he is, unaffected by simple intimacies, but when you tell him to face the door it doesn’t aggrieve him. Most of the time he’s already averted his eyes. 

"Gotta add that to the list of shit we need. Have you seen my shoes?" 

"Your white sneakers are in the hallway. One of your converse is under the bed, but it's hard to say about the other." You swallow a sudden lump. "Are we going shirtless?" 

Eddie does not go shirtless. He pulls a shirt on that thankfully has sleeves, and then a zip up hoodie under his leather jacket. You didn't think to bring a coat yourself due to the extreme baking temperature of the day before. You're lucky you had clean clothes here, considering you hadn't intended to spend the night. Or, not lucky, loved. One of the Munson’s has washed what you’ve left behind.

You have a momentary lapse as Eddie puts his shoes on, trekking into the bathroom to look in the mirror. It's no secret that you aren't pretty. You can make a good effort, and you keep it classy, stay clean, but you aren't pretty, not by your own opinion. 

Eddie knows everything about you (nearly). He knows you don't think much of yourself. And a younger version of him had comforted you as earnestly as an awkward teenage boy could manage, but these days he goes for the root of the problem. He still tells you that you're pretty occasionally, or rather, "Looking good, babe," but not today. 

"Hey." Eddie looks you up and down. "What's wrong?" 

"I look stupid." You glance at your legs. Why does everything look so weird on you?

He hooks his arm through yours and starts to drag you down the hallway to the front door, sideways like two crabs. "No." 

"Yeah, I do, and people are gonna think I do, too." 

"Who cares what other people think?" And there's grown-up Eddie's rhetoric, Who gives a fuck what other people think? 

"Me," you say. 

You understand exactly what it is he's trying to do: free you from the anxiety of overthinking. It doesn't work as often as you wish it would, but he gives it a good go. 

"No, you don't. We don't care what other people think because it doesn't affect us." He doesn't make light, exactly, but his eyes are bright and his smile is sweet as he opens the front door and gestures for you to go down first. Rain and wind are quick to kiss at your naked arms. 

"What if they all think I'm some sort of slob?" 

"Then they'd be wrong. It's okay for people to be wrong about us. That's their problem." More familiar argument. It actually does make you feel better, despite hearing it a hundred times before. "People are wrong all the time." 

Eddie follows you down the first step and turns away to lock the door. 

"Like you and my ghost," you say, trying to steer the conversation from your moment of weakness and into happy territory again. "You don't think she's real." 

"Baby, I'd love it if you proved me wrong with that one." He jogs down the rest of the steps, knowing it’ll give you a conniption, the wet metal a death trap waiting to happen. “Go! Get in the van!”

You scramble across the grass and the curved pathway to the drive where the van is parked and yank open the passenger door with all your strength. The handle is notorious for sticking shut. When nothing happens, Eddie curses up a storm as he clambers into the driver's seat and over the console to force it open, giving it a good old-fashioned kick from the inside. It flies into your waiting hands and you rush up the step into the front of the van away from the rain that’s growing heavier and heavier by the hour. 

“Well, glad I didn’t waste time letting it dry,” Eddie says, wringing his hair out over his lap. It only drips two or three drops, but it’s funny all the same. The top of his head shines like a dark halo. “About the ghost. Do you really believe in them?”

“You asked me last night–”

“I know, but last night you said you wouldn’t believe in one unless you saw it, and then proceeded to talk about it like it was real.”

“I’m agnostic about ghosts.”

“Oh, yeah?” he asks. He sticks the key in the ignition and turns it until the engine groans to life. The van was old when he got it. Now it’s super old. 

“No. What’s agnostic mean?” you ask. 

“We’ll buy a dictionary.”

“I kind of believe in ghosts. I believe in my ghost. If I ever see one, I’ll believe in all the ghosts. Shit, I sound stupid.”

“No, you don’t– you don’t! It’s okay to not know, I wasn’t trying to interrogate you about your personal beliefs.” He is a very responsible driver these days. He keeps his eyes on the road. His hand, however, strays to your arm. “You’re not stupid, superstar.”

“Don’t,” you plead. Superstar is a nickname that stuck despite your vehement disagreement with its origin and further usage. “It makes you sound like an old dad and I’m the son who just got benched at little league. Again.”

You stand as much as your seatbelt will allow and dig out the purse from the butt pocket of your jeans. “I’ll get gas.”

“Way too personal for our relationship.”

Bad, overused joke. 

Eddie doesn’t want you to pay for gas, the same way he doesn’t want you paying for takeout or birthday presents. He hates ‘handouts’ —it took you a while to convince him that gas money isn’t a handout, it’s you trying to keep things fair. You know how it feels to need the money and not want to ask for it, so you put him in a position where he never has to ask. 

Things are easier now. You’re not in high school anymore. Work doesn’t pay as well as you want it to, but it’s enough to get by, especially while you’re living in your childhood home with only partial bills to pay. Eddie isn’t hurting for money either. That’s something to be grateful for. 

Eddie pulls into the gas station. He won’t let you pump while the wind is whipping, but you sprint into the gas station and trawl the fridge for the biggest drinks, sticking two cans of iced tea under your arm. The cold immediately eats into your naked skin. You jog to the counter to pay. 

“Pump two, please,” you say, putting your cans down.

“Twelve dollars.”

You frown. Eddie only put ten dollars on the pump. Well, deducting your two cans of iced tea at 99 cents each, ten dollars and two cents. What an asshole.

You hold out a twenty dollar bill with a smile, and look out the window as you wait for your change. The rain is too heavy to see him, but you imagine Eddie drumming the wheel of the van with both hands. You shiver out a thanks as your change hits your palm, dropping it into your purse with your best receipts. There’s one for bowling (a triple defeat, Eddie a secret master), one for two whole frozen cheesecakes you’d eaten in bed a month ago with double-sized dessert spoons, a couple for Hawk theatre; Back to the Future II, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Ghostbusters II (‘89 was a great year for sequels). All your best memories printed on thermal paper. 

“Holy shit I’m so cold,” you squeak, prying open the door without the aid of Eddie’s kick. 

“You’re soaked, you fool. You want to go home first for a sweater?”

You close the door behind you and drop the iced tea into the console, grimacing at the great clang they make. Your seatbelt snaps into place around your soft middle, and without ceremony you’re back on the road for your original mission. 

“No sweaters, Bradley’s. Stupid to double back.” You look at him from the corner of your eye. “I think we should get frozen pizza and extra toppings to put on them. And fries, obviously, and dessert.” The ghost won’t care. Probably. 

“You forgot the side salad.”

“Forgot,” you say, laughing. “Why yes I did.”

“Dessert,” Eddie says, his turn now to make some decisions. “I want a slurpee real bad right now, so I’m thinking we buy a bag of ice for your food processor and get some syrup.”

“We could go get slurpees,” you say encouragingly. If that’s what he wants, why not?

“We have shit to do,” he says, smiling so much his dimples peek out. “Ghosts to convene with, notebooks to analyse. Feasts to prepare.” He looks deeply speculative. You assume he’s thinking about the maybe-ghost, but he says, “Why are we getting frozen pizza? They have those pre-packaged ones now that are basically fresh.”

“They taste the same.”

“Liar, the bottom of the frozen ones go soggy and the cheese burns on the crust. You know that I’m right, don’t give me dish.”

“Aren’t you always?”

Eddie has a horrible tendency to be right about things. Maybe that's why you hadn't told him about the ghost for so long, because you'd wanted to handle it yourself without his explanatory assurances. You’re the worrier and he’s the one who always sets it straight.

What if I make a fool of myself? you've asked him once.

I’ll make one of myself, too. 

What if they fire me? 

We’ll get you a new job with me cleaning up after idiots.

What if it never goes away?

It will. 

What if body snatchers get us while we’re sleeping?

That one made him smile. The fondest upturn of a pretty mouth, not an expression you often see. Then they get us, he’d said, whispering across the pillows, face only partially visible in the struggling light of the TV. It’ll be awesome. Me and you. No brains, no worries. Just lettuce heads forever. 

You watch him beating along to a song you aren’t privy to against the wheel. He hadn’t seemed to mind the idea of losing his mind with you back then. He doesn’t believe you now, but that’s because he hasn’t heard her voice. The whistling wind warping itself into coherent syllables. Reaching for you, a dark slice of sound. 

Eddie… has… a secret…

You look at your lap, tamping down a shudder at the sensation of ice riding your spine. 

Don’t we all?

—

Eddie feels you’ve been overly relaxed about the situation at hand. He doesn’t want to back you into a box and declare a health crisis, but he’s been thinking up possible illnesses while you weigh the pros and cons of pizza toppings in case he has to take you to see someone. He’s not sure how gas lines work but he’s sure a quick phone call to the Munson landline could clear it up for him. Perhaps the most effective test of all for carbon monoxide poisoning would be to subject himself to the same circumstances. He’ll spend a few days at home with you and see how he feels afterward. If push comes to shove he’ll light a match and see what catches. 

On the inside, Eddie’s panicking about your mental health and, admittedly, the slim reality of a supernatural presence. On the outside, he’s playing along with your unconcerned dinner plans and aimless chatter. If you want to pretend that today is the same as any other day, he's prepared to let you. He won’t do the same, but he won’t discourage you, either. 

You cut through one of the home aisles toward the front of the store with a heavy basket on your elbow, Eddie hot on your heels. He grabs a pocket dictionary from the display to his left and hurries to keep up with you. 

You’re shivering. “I really didn’t think it would rain,” you say. 

Eddie looks past the registers to the glass doors at the front of the store where rain pelts with a force bordering on stormy weather. If it gets much worse than this, he'll insist you both go back to Munson headquarters and hunker up to wait it out. 

“The weather,” Eddie mumbles, unlike himself. “Are we expecting a storm? Maybe we should grab a cart and get some basics. Crate of water.”

“Okay, we can do that. Are you worried?”

“Kind of.”

He meets your eyes. He loves your eyes. He knows you don’t. You're not insecure in a way he feels he can fix —if he can fix any of it. It’s like you dissociate, for lack of a better word, from the things you can’t love. You don’t look in the mirror, won’t let him take photographs of you. You don’t say it. You call yourself stupid, weird, silly. Never ugly. 

But he knows. 

And now this whole ghost business. Eddie needs to think of something he can say to you that will inspire a better level of honesty going forward. 

“How long have you been speaking to the ghost?” he asks. 

You grin at a conveniently abandoned shopping cart at the end of the aisle and slide toward it on squealing shoes. You look around broadly for an owner, and when they don’t appear you place your basket in the stomach of it. The only thing remaining from whoever used it beforehand is a small tray of four cupcakes. 

“Four. One for you, three for me,” you say, ignoring his question with a smug giggle. 

Eddie loves you in a way not many people can love someone else, the kind of love that takes years of patience and acceptance and sweetness to take root, kind of love you only feel after seeing someone at their best, worst, and weirdest — memories come thick and fast whenever he thinks about the sheer years you’ve spent together, seeds of affection long germinated and rearing to grow. You, throwing up behind a Denny’s with sick in your hair, crying so hard you couldn’t catch your breath, and when you could, asking him if he wouldn’t mind buying you a new t-shirt to wear in the car as though you were some dastardly imposition, and not his sick best friend. You, on top of the world, surrounded by people who loved you with a birthday cake in front of you, eyes brighter than the blinking flames of each dripping candle. You, in pyjamas too tight, too loose, old or brand new with your hair up, down, washed, and greasy, your lips chapped, bruised then healed, parted against one of his pillows as you slept, as you yawned, as you laughed, talked. No matter what you’re wearing, saying or doing, you, in his bed, completely at home. 

Eddie has a thousand images of you in his head and they all fight to play again, like a VHS on constant rewind, or a movie with duplicated film, double, triple exposed. Before even an inkling of a crush had ever come around, he loved you. That's why it doesn’t really matter that he can’t kiss you. He can’t imagine loving you more than this. 

Sometimes, sometimes… you put your leg over his and your thigh spreads out across the top of his, and he has to beg himself not to want to touch you. He wonders if you’d mind. Eddie thinks about asking so often it turns into its own fantasy. He knows what cadence his voice would take, the exact grit and warmth, his hand waiting on your knee and aching to inch downward. 

You pull him from his sickly introspection with a poke. Your fingernail dents his shirt precisely atop a small beauty mark. He doesn’t know if you know what you’re doing, if you’ve seen his naked chest enough times to realise that there’s a mole right there an inch shy of his belly button, if you’d ever looked at him in so much detail. 

“Transmission incoming,” you say, your fingers flattening over his abdomen, your palm hovering apart. Like the pole of an opposite magnet, it refuses to connect. “Chirp. Houston, we’ve been attempting to connect with Astronaut Munson. He is unresponsive. Let us know when you make contact again.” You smile at him ruefully. “Damn moon keeps dropping signal.”

“Sorry… Astronaut Munson? Do they call astronauts astronauts? I thought it was commander.”

“I don’t know, Eddie, I haven’t brushed up on NASA related job titles lately.” Your deadpan wanes, replaced with a genuine concern. “Are you okay? You really did get lost.”

“I’m just thinking about, you know– Your ghost,” he lies. The ghost should be his highest concern, and for the most part it is, but he’d let his attention get pulled along by other things.

That’s the thing about love. It feels much more important in the moment than anything else, even when it shouldn’t. 

“You’re super worried about the ghost.”

“It is an uber worrying ghost.”

“‘Cause she talks?” you ask.

“Well, yeah. Most of the time you just get, like, blurs on night vision cameras or the general malignant presence of the thing. Not words.” Not questions concerning your best friend. 

“Casper talks and he’s gorgeous,” you say. “A true sweetheart.”

“Doesn’t Casper have to protect Lucy from his evil ghost uncles?”

“Who the fuck is Lucy?”

“The girl. Lucy and Johnny.”

“Bonnie?”

“Oh. That sounds right. But her name doesn’t matter,” Eddie insists. “My point was that the bad ghosts outweigh the good three to one. That’s more than half, you realise.”

“His name is Casper the Friendly Ghost,” you say, shrugging. Eddie hopes you know where it is in the store you’re going to. He hasn’t looked away from your face for the last twenty minutes.  “It’s in the name.”

“But your ghost isn’t Casper,” Eddie says.

“No. My ghost isn’t Casper, but she hasn’t tried to kill me. She would have written something threatening in my notebook or knocked all the books off of my shelf if she were evil.”

Eddie frowns. You’ve steered him around the store like you’ve never been here before, changing your mind after turns to go down the opposite aisle, murmuring about bottled water. He reaches for your hand on the shopping cart rail and can’t resist squeezing it as he pulls it away. 

“I got it,” he says. 

He swears that your expression flickers. Worry breaking through the closed shutters of your blasé. 

You’re not so chatty as you follow him toward the back of Bradley’s where they keep the big jugs of water. He grabs one, thinks back to the bad weather and grabs another. It’s unlikely that you’ll need them, but Eddie would rather be safe than sorry. “Do you have a lamp?” he asks. “An oil lamp? Or a flashlight?”

“I have a flashlight,” you confirm. “Is it really so bad? Uh, I don’t wanna ask again, but I– maybe I could–” 

Eddie wants to pull your face into his chest. He thinks about it. Would he have hugged you like that a year ago, before the butterflies and the late nights daring to think of the dough of your thighs or the column of your throat when you tip your head back? He might’ve. It would mean something different, but he might’ve. 

He throws an arm around your shoulder and gives you a good shake. “What is wrong with you? If it gets any worse, you’re staying with me. I’m only asking about a flashlight in case we have one of those worst case scenarios and get stuck in your haunted house. I refuse to die like the jocks in a b-rated horror.”

“The jocks or the whore? Isn’t it the girl who sleeps around that gets murdered in the dark?” you ask. 

“Super unfair. I sleep around, do I deserve to die?” he asks, dropping his arm. 

You mime stabbing him in the gut. Everyone's so violent. 

Eddie is amazingly unharmed as he gets you to the register. You try to fight him on who’s paying, but you’re an idiot who insisted on getting gas. It’s the leverage he needs to win. Out of Bradley’s and back into the rain with grocery bags double bagged, you run for the van and thrust the spoils of your shopping trip in the passenger seat footwell. Eddie opens the side door to lug the water jugs inside and you take the cart back to the front of the store against his wishes.

He waits for you to be in arms reach and gets back in the van. You’re soaked to the bone. He’s cold in three layers, so you must be freezing. He shrugs off his sopping wet leather jacket and then the zip hoodie underneath, draping the zip hoodie over your lap and chest and then rushing to put his leather jacket on again.

“Thank you, good sir,” you laugh.

He’s already fiddling with the air conditioning. Heat bursts from the left vent but not the right, leaving you in a cold bubble. “Shit, I’m sorry, the right vent’s still busted. Ol’ Beauville keeps letting us down.”

“Don’t hate on the Beauville!” you scold through chattering teeth. 

“You're dying,” he says. “Hold on, I’m gonna do ninety.”

“Do not speed!” 

You get to the road outside of your place without any hydroplaning. You live on a regular American street in a two-story semi-detached house not too far from Hawkins High school with your guardian, who isn’t home very often. It has three bedrooms, one bathroom, and a lot of white walls. You often lament that the house doesn’t really feel like your own, and punctuate with a giddy laugh he doesn’t understand but adores nonetheless. 

Eddie parks his van on the long gravel driveway as close to the house as he can get it and ushers you inside with your keys. You’re cold enough to listen without complaint. 

He puts the groceries in the kitchen on the countertops and kicks off his shoes, intending on putting them away when he’s sure you aren’t in any danger of hypothermia. He kicks off his shoes by the door, locks it tight, and starts up the carpeted stairs to your room. 

He’s not surprised to find you half-naked, but overfamiliar, affectionate friendship doesn’t necessarily mean you like being seen. He averts his gaze from your naked legs and tries desperately to think about anything but underwear. The more he tries not to think about them, the worse it gets. 

“Hey,” he says, covering his eyes so you know he isn’t perving, “our horror flick just got dirty.”

“Yikes,” you say. “Don’t look.”

“I’m not, I’m not. You could’ve closed the door. You know, spare me a guilty conscience.” Then, because he just can’t help himself, “When did you start wearing fancy panties?”

“Fuck off, Eddie,” you laugh. 

“Do I have to make the switch to tighty whities?”

“Our underwear choices do not concern one another.” You trek toward him. He peeks through two spread fingers and finds you thankfully reclothed in dry sweatpants and a sweater soft with age. “I thought tighty whities hurt your–” You raise your eyebrows. 

He regrets being honest with you when you were teenagers. A little secrecy might help repaint him in your mind as less of a huge loser. You could possibly find him attractive if you weren't privy to the numerous embarrassments that make up his life, he thinks. 

He chokes on his own tongue and dies right there in your bedroom. “Why do you remember shit like that?”

“Same reason you keep a heat pack in your room in case I get all crampy,” you say.

You give him one of your sick smiles —you have to know what you’re doing, you have to— and drape your arms over his shoulders, nearly knocking him down with the sudden addition of your weight. He, stunned, plants a foot behind himself so you don’t both trip and fall on your asses. 

The plane of your back beckons beneath your sweater. What he’d give to slip a hand under the hem to explore the ridge of your shoulder blade with his fingertips. 

A quiet ensues. Your hug turns from a joking attempt to push him around a bit to a real one. He steel-arms your waist, tightening them around you three times in quick succession, nose buried in your hair to steal a deep breath. 

“This where the ghost talks to you?” he asks, looking over your head into the chaos of your room. It’s not dirty, but it isn’t tidy, either. 

You sigh too much like a moan for his sanity and stand up tall, your hands trailing down his chest unthinkingly as you follow his gaze. “Yeah. I don’t know if we’ll hear her over the rain. It has to be really quiet.”

“What are you doing? Experiments?” he asks. He sounds as distracted by it all as he feels. 

“No. Something I noticed, is all.”

“I don’t get why you didn’t tell me the first time it happened,” he confesses, voice dropping to a murmur. 

“Um… remember senior year, you kept missing class because you had all those doctors appointments?” You smile sheepishly. “‘N’ you didn’t tell me about it until after you knew you were okay?”

During his first senior year, Eddie found a small cyst in his arm. Small compared to other cysts, large in his arm. He worried it was malicious, or rather Wayne worried and Eddie didn’t know what he thought about it until after they’d cut it out. It had been a thankfully speedy affair in a doctors office they couldn’t afford. Eddie didn’t tell you about it until he’d been all stitched up and tested — he tried, but then he would imagine the look on your face when he did, and it made him feel like his intestines had learned to jump rope. 

He still remembers when he finally told you, the split second between, “a tumour,” and “but it’s not cancer.” The relief on your face. The shock of upset tears it caused. 

“I guess I was trying to be good to you,” you say, shrugging and starting down the stairs.

Eddie follows. “If something like that happened again to me, god forbid,” —he dips into a melodramatic voice, scared of the sombre mood that’s descended— “I wouldn’t keep it to myself. I’d make it your problem instantly.” 

Every now and then, Wayne will lean over the back of Eddie’s chair at the breakfast table and grab an arm, feeling for a tiny bump that hasn’t come back. You’d done the same in your own way: you wrote ‘check for lesions :D’ on a piece of paper and taped it to his bedroom doorway. It fell off ages ago, but he occasionally gets déjà vu as he leaves the room. And as he walks down the hallway, he’ll roll up his sleeve and check that there's nothing there.

Eddie didn’t tell you senior year. A lingering abandonment issue, maybe, ‘cause Dad didn’t stay when things got hard, who cares? He doesn’t think about that shit anymore. Figures the mark it left was enough. But these days, he’d tell you if he found a lump in his arm, or a ghost in his room. Your scribbled note made sure of that. 

"Are you listening to me?" he asks. 

"You'd make it my problem," you provide. "Tell me something I don't know." 

He grabs you by the shoulders at the bottom of the stairs and blows into your ear. 

With the lights on and the radio at a low volume, the rain outside doesn't seem nearly as imposing. The kitchen is small with a long strip light above that gives the room a near clinical white cast, the countertops shining clean, not a plate in the sink. It's evident how much time you don't spend here. No photos on the fridge, no salt or pepper shakers on the table. Where Eddie and Wayne have their insane mug collection made up of states and hours and way too much money in some cases, you have four black coffee mugs in a tower stack by the seldom used machine. Where they have a corkboard of photographs, Polaroids and printouts from Walmart off of rinky-dink digital cameras, you have one photo on the wall, a professionally done portrait of you from the day you graduated and Eddie, unfortunately, did not. 

Eddie's grad pictures are much less robotic. Too much eyeliner but just enough you, he has his arm thrown over your shoulders in the back of a grungy restaurant, his smile blisteringly bright. He might as well have written 'Thank Fuck' across his forehead. There's another one of him and Hellfire Club at the time, blurry with the flash making him pale as snow. You and Wayne had been trying to make the camera focus, twin scowls on your faces. Eddie's expression was one of pure joy. 

He tried to make up for your shitty grad pics by celebrating your first job with a pack of Polaroids. You'd looked adorably strange in the uniform, so young but so done with his shit, eighteen and exhausted. He keeps one in his room in the bottom of the box with all his rings and chains. If you ever found it, he'd think about drowning himself. 

Your appointment with a ghost waits until after dinner. You pull your frozen pizzas out of their boxes and put them in the oven (you don't preheat, which Eddie thinks is a questionable choice, but he'd help you get away with murder). While they defrost and start to cook, you slice and dice your extra toppings on the wooden chopping board beside the stovetop. He stands there with his hands washed and nothing to do. Just watches you cut up jalapeños for him and thinks about how he's going to take care of you if the ghost doesn't speak up. Does he tell your guardian? You're an adult. All your healthcare would be private and confidential. Could he tell Wayne? Would that be a betrayal? 

"Check the pizzas?" You scrape the seeds out of a jalapeño, eyes pinched in concentration. 

Eddie doesn't know if he can eat. You aren't as out of it as you were at the store, but you aren't fully present. A song you love plays on the radio and it's like you don't hear it. 

He pulls the pizzas from the oven. He makes a smiley face out of pepperoni and jalapeños, earning half as big a smile as he thought he would from you in response. 

Together, you clean the small mess you made. The pizzas brown. When they're done you take them out, cut them up, plate them, and carry them up to your room on a tray with a two litre bottle of sprite and two plastic cups. Eddie changes into a pair of his pyjama pants that you keep at the bottom of your dresser before he sits on your bed, wide-eyed when he sees how many slices you've managed in his absence. 

"Nobody's gonna take it away from you," he teases lightly. 

"Can't be too careful 'round you," you say, dropping a crust onto his plate. It's his favourite part. 

"Thought you wanted fries?" 

"And I thought you wanted a side salad." 

"I wanted snow cone syrup," he says, shrugging. 

He considers offering to go make you some fries anyway, but he takes a big bite of pizza and it tastes so good he forgets about it. Eddie doesn't know nothing about nothing, but if he had a say, he'd make it so that he and you could spend the rest of your lives doing this, meaningless jabbering over greasy food. It's not a good idea —you need vegetables that aren't on pizza, and fresh grains, and who knows what else to stay healthy— but Eddie's never claimed he had them. He wants this. 

He gets it most of the time, but he's selfish. He wants it every night. He loves Wayne but he wants to come home to you, or to have you come home to him, in a space that you decorated, a life that you made. He wants a dog and a pet fish and, in five years or ten or never, a baby if it's what you want too. A front door lined with three pairs of shoes. 

He also wants a limousine that takes him from place to place and a room full of thousand dollar guitars. A man can dream. 

The first port of call for any dream is making sure you're okay. Let the ghostly stakeout begin. 

Sated and sick at once, Eddie puts your empty tray on the dresser and goes to turn on the TV. "She won't talk if the TV's on," you interrupt.

"Ugh. Any chance she likes the stereo?" 

You slouch down where you'd been sitting and shake your head. Your jaw goes soft, eyes softer when you smile. "It's not all bad. She doesn't care how loud you turn a page." 

Eddie can't be with you every second of the day, the same way you can't be with him. There are shifts to take, shifts to cover, dungeons to pilfer and dragons to slay. You have your job, your other friends (none as handsome as he is), your hobbies. How often are you home alone, talking to ghosts? 

He stands by your bookshelf, eyes skipping over the titles in slight disinterest. 

"Hey," he asks, "where's your notebook? I wanna see her handwriting." 

"I left it on the top shelf." 

Eddie stares. There are a few other notebooks and sketchbooks aligned here, but not the one you'd described. 

"You sure?" he asks. 

"I left it right there,” you say with a yawn.

Eddie looks at you from over his shoulder. You’re tired. He figures he can see the notebook later, and offer you some remedial comfort now. Anything to wipe the frown off of your face. 

He grabs a book off of your shelf at random and cracks it open. You love being read to. You'd beg and beg him growing up, and he'd almost always oblige. 

"Can I read aloud, or does she hate that too?" he asks, turning away from your shelf. 

"I've never tried it." 

"I'll do it quietly?" 

"Sure," you say, a tired but pleased smile on your lips. "I've read that one before." 

"Should I get a different one?" 

"No, it's good. It's the one I told you about with the demons who eat stars." 

"The dirty one?" he asks, dropping like a stone near the top of your bed, the blankets under his hip warm from the residual heat of the pizza plates.

"It's not dirty. There's one scene toward the end where they get handsy, no graphic detail."

"And by no graphic detail, you mean…" 

"No graphic detail," you repeat. It's awful how funny you find each other. 

"Not even, like… hand stuff?" 

"Do you want there to be hand stuff?" 

"With the demons?" 

You devolve into giggles, the kind that start slow and thicken into a giddy sort of breathlessness, your head supported by the headboard. Eddie looks up at you in awe.

"I could be into that," Eddie furthers, stretching your laughter as long as it will go. "Are they the kind that look like people but with extra arms or wings or something?" 

"You'd like that, huh? Extra arms?" 

"I wouldn't be opposed to extra arms."

"Gross," you cheer through another wave of laughter. "I don't wanna think about it." 

Eddie looks to the book's first page and tamps down a grimace. You don't wanna think about him in that sort of position. 

Eddie, excluding any extra appendages, thinks of you like that more than he should. Never when you're near, not if he can help it, but at night when the hot shower water beating down against his back can be shaped into the vague sensation of a body behind him, he thinks of your chest. Your hands. Or in the early mornings, when he's writhed into a contortionist’s ball and the streaking sunlight through the curtains is kissing his abdomen, he imagines it's your leg thrown across his hip, with your face turned into his chest. 

Fuck, it kills him, because he knows what the real thing feels like. He's had you clinging to his waist on colder nights, and he's been under your hands. Tipsy, free with your touches, he's felt the breadth of your palms cupping his cheeks. 

You're pretty, you'd told him, as you love to tell him when you've been drinking, but you need a haircut. 

He never would've let you kiss him in that state, but he kids himself into thinking you wanted to. It was only booze doing what booze does. 

"Read to me, serf," you demand. 

Eddie clears his throat. 

"The enemy is close," Eddie reads, "and the lane is overrun. Sympathy for the second kind had felt natural to Mellissa once, but now that she sees the sharp angling of their shoulders in the dawn light, she aches with hatred…"

The novel isn't bad. It isn't Eddie's favourite; the tone falls flat, and the main character's actions aren't fed by any particular emotion. Its first arc is formulaic, and soon the hero's forced to answer the call. You evidently find his rehashing tedious, as your head tips toward his head, and you wriggle your way down to his shoulder amicably. 

"Don't fall asleep," he says. 

"It's your whispering." 

"I don't want to disturb the ghost." 

"Okay." You start to pick at your nails, little scratches against the cuticle. "I won't fall asleep." 

— 

Your snores aren't gentle. You're a human being and Eddie doesn't expect you to breathe like a princess, but the wheeze is concerning. 

He waits for you to settle down, easing your head onto the pillow. Your airway clears, and your snoring quietens to the same ambient level as the rain hitting the window outside. He feels your head for a temperature carefully. Back of his hand, fingers curled in so his ring can't startle you, he tries to gauge if you're running a fever. 

It isn't normal for you to cat nap in the middle of the day, but the sun is occluded by dark clouds and the rain blots out what's left, leaving the bedroom in darkness, and you'd been warm and fed and Eddie had been doing something monotonous. It makes sense that you'd drifted off. Eddie wishes he felt tired too, so he could slide down under the sheets with you and curl a hand around your wrist. 

He lies on his back, arms crossed over his chest, straining his ears for the sound of a voice. 

I swear, sometimes, I can hear someone talking.

You have a vent in your room, and perhaps a couple of late nights after your shifts had you mistaking a groaning foundation or the wind for a whisper. That's a thing, right? People hear something in the wind. Fatigue has your mind playing tricks on you. Eddie should go to the library and see if they have anything to do with sleep deprivation. 

It's no fun listening for ghosts. Eddie's shoulders and upper back begin to feel tense. The feeling travels lower, a snaking ache that wraps around each vertebrae. Even his tailbone hurts. 

He shifts onto his side and stares at your closed eyes. He blows a breath at you to watch your lashes flutter like tufts of grass in the breeze. 

Your breaths are like a metronome. He syncs his to yours for kicks, just listening. When you're both asleep, does your breath sync on its own? How do your bodies react to each other? Eddie has woken up to your arms around him or your body halfway across the bed, leg falling out from under the covers. You're irregular, where he has a tendency to grab at you while he's knocked out. He doesn't wrap his arms around you so much as hold you in his hands. His fingers curl in the hem of your t-shirts or bracelet your bicep. If he falls asleep with an arm above your head, he'll occasionally wake to find his hand at the top of it, your hair mussed. 

He must be stroking it in his sleep. 

Or maybe you're frizzy. 

No shame in frizziness. Eddie's frizzy more often than not. Curly hair is hard to take care of and he has a lot of it. God knows it was worse before he started seeing that hairdresser in the city who makes magic happen with her thinning shears. 

Your lips part. 

Thunder cracks outside. 

Eddie lifts his head to look out of the window in surprise. Summer days have come to pass and sunset comes earlier in the day, fractals of light bouncing between the violent rain. In an hour or two, it will be pitch black outside. 

He should call Wayne and see what's happening. How he is, and if he thinks Eddie should come home and bring you, too. 

Eddie clambers off of the bed, careful not to wake you. He slides across your hardwood floor and takes the empty dinner tray with him down the spongy carpeting of your stairs, back to hardwood in the hallway, and finally onto the freezing cold linoleum of your kitchen. 

He locates the source of chill quickly. The window in front of the sink has unlatched. It's the thing you call him over for most; when you want to hang out you go to Eddie's, when the window won't close Eddie comes here. 

His shirt hikes as he leans against the sink, his abdomen pressed to the cold countertop as he yanks the window and twists the handle the wrong way, goosebumps climbing his arms. It groans in resistance, but Eddie knows from experience that it’ll stay closed for a while. 

He takes the liberty of turning your thermostat up as he waits for Wayne to answer the phone, coiled cord pulled taut.

Wayne isn't too bothered by the weather, "It's not a hurricane. A storm, sure– you'll be fine. But by all means, come home if you're scared."

"I'm not scared, jerk, I'm concerned." 

He winds the cord around his arm, leaning in when Wayne's voice is hard to hear like it'll make a difference. 

"...might go out," Wayne's saying, "call me, or call around Roger's… get back to… warm." 

"Where the fuck are you? I can't hear a thing you're saying." 

"Don't cuss at me. I'm with Roger, that's why I said to call Roger if I don't answer, he has that new pool table…" Anything Wayne says after that is garbled, like he has a hand pressed over his mouth.  

“I thought Roger had a broken leg?” Eddie says. “How’s he getting around?”

“He hops. I left money in the bread bin for you, did you see it?”

“No, I didn’t see it. Wayne, we’ve talked about this before, I’m working. I appreciate it, I do, but I don’t need you giving me money.”

Whatever Wayne says at first gets eaten by static. Eddie doesn’t know if it’s your phone or the Munson’s. He doesn’t need to hear what Wayne’s saying to get the general gist of it. “…water bill..”

This again? Eddie paid the water bill. He thought he’d be allowed to do that, considering he uses the majority of the water, but it’s been a great point of contention between them.

“I’m sorry!” he says. “If I knew it would bother you so bad I wouldn’t have done it. But I don’t want it back, I’m not a kid anymore, half the time you don’t let me pay for groceries–”

“This might shock you, son, but I’ve been paying for you to eat for a decade. I ever complained? No, ‘cause it’s my job, and I don’t want you thinking any…” the words scratch out. Eddie guesses what he’s saying. 

The broken phone is starting to irritate him. 

He holds in his argument. Call it respect, love, whatever you want. “I’m not saying that! Listen,” —Eddie laughs to himself, words wrought with it like bubbles— “you’re senile.”

“You weasel–” The phone gives up. Whooshing air is all Eddie hears. 

"I can't deal with this. I love you, I'll see you tomorrow, okay?" Eddie asks, rubbing the space between his eyebrows. 

"Yeah, love you too, kid. Eddie–" 

He doesn't catch the end of Wayne's sentence. The line goes dead. He pulls the shiny receiver from his ear and frowns at it. 

Wayne was probably just telling Roger and the guys what Eddie was up to. Or what he thinks Eddie's up to, at least. Eddie told him via note that you wanted help rearranging your bedroom furniture. A small lie, but he didn't want to expose you to any outward judgement until he's sure himself what's going on. 

Eddie hangs the phone on the hook. He grabs your plates, throwing the meagre leftovers in the trash and dumping the plates in the sink. He turns on the hot faucet and grabs a sponge and the dish soap and gets to work cleaning. It takes him all of five minutes, and he's oh so smug about being a decent person that he doesn't notice the chill. 

He dries the plates and puts them in the cabinet across the room with his back to the sink. The dishes clatter together loudly, like a gunshot in the silence. He winces internally and tries to be gentler closing the cabinet door.

The hum of the kitchen light catches his attention. He looks up, unsurprised to find a bug crawling inside of the plastic covering that shields the long bulb. A moth, Eddie thinks, it's fuzz silhouetted in shadow. He doesn't really like moths, but he also doesn't wanna watch one die. 

The rain seems worse when he turns off the light. Your kitchen faces out into the backyard, and through the night Eddie can see the house that's behind yours with its porch lights on. It turns the rain to quicksilver, and provides just enough illumination for Eddie to look up at the kitchen light and know what he's doing. 

He drags a chair to the middle of the room and steps onto it. It's disturbingly slippery. Thankfully, Eddie doesn't plan on doing any acrobatics. He reaches up to the warm plastic light covering and feels along for the ridges to pry it off. One ridge clicks off, and another. He leans precariously toward the other side and feels for the third and forth ridge when thunder rumbles outside, and somewhere in the distance lightning flashes. 

Eddie flinches but doesn't fall. "Fuck," he mumbles. Pussy. 

The plastic falls into his hands and Eddie climbs off of the chair as quickly as he can. It's too hot to handle, banging against the kitchen table as he chucks it down. He'd turned off the light thinking the plastic would cool down fast, and he’d been proven very wrong.

"Shit," he mumbles some more. Your neighbour's porch light turns off, leaving him in total darkness. 

Eddie’s hand aches from his mild burn. It's like whenever he has to wash the frying pan at home, he forgets that while cold water might cool the pan itself, the slim piece of metal that connects the dish to the handle stays hot. He's burned himself so many times on that fucker– 

Lightning flashes again. 

There's someone standing in your yard. 

The second he notices the figure, it lunges left.

Eddie stands frozen on the spot, unsure if he should approach the window to get a better look, or if he should move backward and away from the potential harm. 

He takes a step forward. Mind in a numb state of thoughtlessness, he walks to your sink and stands there silently, looking into the grass and trees for any hint of irregular movement. 

Tree branches rail in the wind and rain. Eddie leans further forward. 

A third flash of lighting comes, and it must have struck close by, as the light it gives off is long and bright. He gets a clear look at the yard and the image of his own reflection in the glass. No dark figure in the tall grass toward the fence, no heinous murderer trying the back door. 

It’s dark again. Eddie puts a hand over the racing pulse of his heart. Fuck, he thinks. I’m seeing things. He’s on edge ‘cause of your fucking ghost, and it’s not your fault but he wonders if maybe loving you is making him tired. He regrets it as soon as he thinks it, what does that even mean? He’s loved you for years. It has never felt like a chore. But… tired. He’s tired. Pining for someone you already have, just not in the way that you want, is exhausting. It’s not your fault and it doesn’t change the fact that he’s exhausted. Today has been a long day. 

He scrubs his eyes with his palms until they burn and lifts his head. 

There’s a girl on the other side of the glass. 

Eddie startles, startles again when he realises she’s not on the other side at all, she’s behind him, outfitted in white like an apparition, like an angel. She’s inside the house, ten feet away in the doorway. 

His neck cracks with the force of his turn. 

“Sorry,” you say, taking a step back into the hall. “I thought you heard me.”

“Oh, shit.” 

You’ve turned the light on in the hall. Eddie turns back to the window and sees your reflection again, no angels and no apparitions. You’re just a girl. 

He half turns and gets stuck like that, hand braced against his eyes, torso pitching forward. “Shit,” he mutters. 

“Are you okay?”

Eddie laughs. “You surprised me. I’m fine,” he assures you, though he takes his time standing at full height. How can such a small scare feel like a marathon? “Creep, who fucking does that?”

“You were totally spaced, dude, don’t blame me,” you say, holding your hands up in mock surrender. 

“I do blame you. I hope you feel blamed. Fucking fuck, that got me.”

“I wasn’t being quiet. I yelled. You didn’t hear me?”

He can’t stop the dubiety that warps his face. “No? What’s your definition of yelling? ‘Eddie?’” he imitates you, tossing his own name into the dark kitchen. “Unbelievable.”

“What were you looking at?” you ask, nodding at the window. 

“Lightning.”

“That why you’re in the dark? Or have I interrupted something?”

“‘M moonlighting as a serial killer.” He grins at you. “Got me.”

You lean against the wall next to the light switch and turn it on, exposing the chair shy of his leg and the plastic cover from your light on the table.

“What the–”

“I’m doing a good deed. Or, I was. There was a moth at one point." 

You help Eddie clip the light back into place. He climbs back on the chair and you hug his legs to make sure he doesn’t fall either way, arms encircling his thighs and your face pressed comfortably to his stomach. Your cheek flush with the naked stretch of his stomach, his shirt hiked up as he struggles to finish what he started, he explains the moth, who, for lack of an escape, has probably found a home in your curtains or your coat rack. You laugh at his softness.

Back upstairs, you won’t let him read to you again, and the ghost monitoring continues on. Eventually, you both get bored and turn on the TV. Eddie forgets his fright, you forget your haunted house, and the night ends. You fall asleep against his shoulder, drool leaking from the corner of your mouth. He pushes you gently down into your pillow, and goes to brush his teeth with a snort. 

Eddie wakes in the morning with a crick in his neck. He feels better, having slept. All his monstrous yearning has fizzled out overnight, and he’s glad to find that the damp circle of dribble under your cheek isn’t cute, it’s gross. (Okay, it’s a little cute. He’s only human.) 

The window brags an end to the extreme weather. Rain nor shine reaches through your drapes; the morning looks mundane. He kicks your shin ‘by accident’ and waits for you to rouse, keeping a safe distance. He doesn’t wanna get his morning breath all over you. That would be inhumane. 

“Ouch,” you croak.

“It wasn’t that hard.” His voice is as rough as yours. 

“Not your kick,” you moan. “My throat.”

“You’ve been drooling again.”

You cover your face sluggishly and your pinky must feel the wet spot staining your pillow. 

“It’s embarrassing.” You dig your heels in at the bottom of the bed and pull your head off of the pillow so you can grab it and throw it out of view. Once it’s bashed against your mirror with a concerning glass sound, you pull the blankets over your face and sigh. “I’ll be here forever, if you need me.”

“Could be worse,” he says lightly. “Imagine waking up with a stiffy.”

“Did you–?” you ask, like you’re terrified to know but couldn’t not inquire. 

“No, but I have. You know I have.”

“True. That is… unfortunately awkward.”

“‘Xactly. Don’t feel weird about your spit.”

You don’t feel as bad as you pretend. Sure, it’s embarrassing. So is puking in your lap at the movies, or ripping your pants climbing over the fence into the woods by Forest Hills, or getting fired after two weeks from the Palace Arcade because the manager didn’t like your ‘general demeanour and/or presence’, all of which he’s done and you’ve been a witness to. He thinks you might be impervious to humiliation as long as you’re together. 

Eddie pulls the blankets over his head, pleased that the morning light reaches you even here. You’re curled on your side underneath them, bleary eyes meeting his from across the small stretch of mattress. You hadn’t touched him once while you slept. 

“I don’t remember falling asleep,” you say quietly. 

“We watched Poltergeist. You fell asleep with twenty minutes left.”

“Can you blame me? Snore.”

“You wanted to watch it.”

“It’s the only movie I own that has a ghost.”

You share a silent look. Eddie tries to keep a straight face and ultimately fails, his laugh roaring. You join in, half reluctant and half delirious in your fatigue. Your sleep-swollen eyes close like you can’t keep them open anymore. 

He stays under the sheets stealing looks at you for as long as he can, despite the building, smothering warmth. The day passes with much of the same. 

—

When you first started working at Leaven, Eddie called you a traitor. He said you’d made it impossible for him to show his face in Bradley’s. He’d been joking — the prices at Leaven are ridiculous, and completely out of the average joe’s budget. Bradley’s remains your go to for everything. He’s come around these days — he likes the fancy soups and admits Leaven’s has the best fresh fruit.

Despite the rich old women who frequent and make your workdays… less than ideal, you like working at Leaven. Your days consist almost exclusively of stacking shelves, but occasionally they chuck you on checkout and you get to sit in a padded chair for ten hours. You’re basically living the American dream. 

Working here has introduced a special brand of monotony to your life. It’s very, very quiet, and that’s how you like it. But there’s something to be said for noise, for Eddie and Wayne’s noise specifically. You like going there after work to shock your body back into the real world. Here’s sound. Here’s life. Here’s love. 

You’re scanning a bag of ‘holistic’ lemons when you notice Eddie lingering toward the front of the store a mere twenty feet away. You don’t wave at him, lest your customer think they aren’t the sparkling apple of your eye and report you to the manager, but you nod jerkily, hoping he takes it for ‘I see you’. He smiles and points his thumb toward the store’s cafe.

When your arms are numb from another twenty minutes of scanning and typing in coupon codes for people who don’t need coupons, you shut down your register and lock it all tight. You take your lunch break early, and thankfully there’s nobody in the cafe to yell at you for being unprofessional. 

You waltz over to Eddie sitting at the back next to the huge glass windows and prop your lunch bag against the coke bottle he’s opened. “Hello, handsome,” you say. 

“Hey, beautiful.”

“You want half of a turkey sandwich?”

He beams at you, kicking your chair out so you can sit. “Nooo, I brought you a hot dog.”

“Oh, gross. Give it to me right now.”

You know he made it at home before he’s even pulled the foil wrapped package from his bag. Eddie makes the best hot dogs ever. Fancy brioche buns, caramelised onions and a mixture of sauces on the world's worst meat. They make you queasy and they might be one of your favourite foods. You open it, delighting in its retained heat. 

His wrist is shiny. You put your hotdog down to grab his arm and bring it closer to your face. He’s wearing a simple tennis chain with black gems like a rich girl. “What is this?” you murmur, pleased to see him wearing something nice. 

“You like that? It was thirty four dollars from a magazine.”

 “I love it. What’s the occasion?”

“My mom’s birthday.” He fishes his own hotdog from his bag and slaps it down in front of yours. You take a huge bite, and can’t answer him when he asks, “Is that really weird, buying myself something when it’s a day about her?”

You steal a swig of his coke and wince the entire time. “Sorry.” You cough. “No, that’s not weird, Eddie. Wanting to buy yourself something nice is a good way of dealing with a shitty day. A day that makes you feel shitty,” you amend. 

“Maybe I should’ve got her a big bouquet of flowers or something.”

“You can still get her flowers.”

“Yeah.”

You take another bite of your hot dog and slip away to get a bottle of water from the cafe. You feel like an asshole for not hugging him. When you return Eddie’s already polished off his hot dog, and has moved onto one half of your turkey sandwich. 

“Are you gonna be weird about it if I hug you?” you ask him genuinely. 

“No.” He puts down the sandwich. “I don’t know. Maybe. I want one, though.”

You wipe your hands in a napkin showfully before approaching his chair. You slide a knee next to his thigh and wrap your arms around his head, a hand between his shoulder blades and the other pulling his face to your chest. You have to slouch. It's not entirely comfortable but it doesn't feel awkward, so you take the win. 

"I'm sorry, Eddie," you say quietly. You think about kissing his head. 

"Me too." 

There's a moment in there where you feel a nasty emotion brewing, sadness and much worse. You know that the gutted pain aching through you right now is nothing compared to what Eddie feels. That loss. 

It must feel so, so heavy. 

You pet his neck affectionately. Your nose dips into his hair, the tip touching his scalp. Your hands come up, like trying to hold water as it trickles between your fingers, Eddie's slipping. You grapple to keep him with you. 

"I love you," you say honestly. He's your best friend.

Eddie pats your back. "I love you too, loser." 

"You're my best friend." 

I would fucking think so, he'd say. 

"You're mine," he says. 

You smile and give him a good squeeze. When you pull away he doesn't look as odd as he had, relaxing against the hard-backed wood of the cafe chair as he tucks his hair behind his ear. He holds your gaze without any weight to it. You sit in your own uncomfortable chair and lean forward to compensate for the space between you, like two slanting trees in the wind, parallel but untouching.

"It's a really nice bracelet," you say. 

"She'd like it, I think." 

You don't know anything about Eddie's mom. She isn't someone he's ever been able to talk about with you. You can't remember the photographs you'd seen once upon a time, but you remember having the distinct thought that Eddie looked more like her than his dad or his uncle Wayne. She'd been beautiful, and her life couldn't be more starkly mourned. 

"I'm sure she would. It's pretty." 

His mouth wobbles. You're horrified for a moment, thinking he might burst into tears, but it's laughter he's chasing, and his little giggle is like a beam of sunlight. "Sorry," he says. Laughter doesn't seem like a good enough word to describe the sounds he's making, such understated, small curls of sound. Fleeting, golden. "She would've liked you, too. She would've loved you." 

"That's a good thing?" you check, cautious that he might be on the precipice of a nervous breakdown. 

"Yeah, that's a good thing. Is it ever bad? To be loved?" he asks.

He's teasing, but it feels like he's asking you something else.  

"You could be a stalker, with that logic." 

And there you go, ruining a moment with a shitty joke because you're too much of a coward to ask questions when you don't know the answer. 

Eddie grabs his coke, tipping his head back as he says, "Who says I'm not a stalker already?" 

Funny how the subtext of a conversation can contain magnitudes for one party and not the other. You worry you're in love with your best friend. He sips at coke and threatens perversion. 

"You're definitely a stalker. You couldn't wait a couple hours to see me tonight?" 

"I didn't realise I would be seeing you tonight," Eddie says, lifting his brows. 

"Oh. I asked, didn't I?" 

Eddie shakes his head. "Are you sure? I don't remember you asking, babe, I'm supposed to go play at Gareth's." 

Babe is his funniest pet name, in your opinion. It doesn't suit you, or him, but it feels good anyhow. Like you're a babe, supermodel pretty for TV or magazine spreads, long legs and not a single wrinkle that isn't marring the paper itself. 

"Bummer for me," you say lightly. "What are you doing, Dio tributes again?" 

"Don't say tributes like that, like we're out sacrificing goats in studded jackets." 

"That's a good image." You laugh. "That's funny." 

"I don't know. He wanted to try something he wrote. Invited Jeff and Jamison. Band's back together." 

"I'll get out my t-shirts." 

You have all the corny classics; I'm with the band; I'm with the guitarist; a Corroded Coffin faux tour shirt, different Hawkins locations written in typeset sharpie on the back. When you made it, Eddie had been wearing the t-shirt and the ink leaked through. He had 'Lover's Lake, Nov 18' between his shoulder blades and 'The Hideout, May 22' over his tailbone for a week. By day three the words had become illegible but you'd known them anyway, in the same way you knew the dots between the letters H and I were freckles rather than ink spots. You've always looked at him more than you should. 

"I could cancel." 

You and Eddie experience the natural ups and downs of friendship, or rather the ebb and flow. You know you come back together eventually if you get too far apart, and there hasn't been a time since you met him where you were worried about the permanence of your relationship. You're human, and you get insecure about it anyway, but then he says stuff like that and you're confronted with how close you are. He puts you first. He has other friends, other healthy friendships and a life outside of you, but you still get to be a huge and important part of the majority, and that is more than enough. (It should be more than enough. Some days it is.) 

"Now why would you do a thing like that?" you ask, sarcastic but soft. "You know they sound shit without you." 

"I don't like knowing you're alone." 

"I'm not lonely," you say. Truth or lie. 

"That's not what I said." Eddie's eyes narrow.

"It's stupid to worry about me, I always lock the doors. I lock the windows, even the ones upstairs. I don't think I'm gonna fall victim to a home invasion anytime soon." 

"I don't think many people think they're gonna be in home invasions until their homes actually get invaded. And it's not really what I'm worried about." 

"Do you ever think that we worry too much?" 

"Yes. We worry constantly. It's, like, our parasitic relationship with each other." 

"Like a tapeworm," you agree solemnly. 

"Exactly. I'm your tapeworm. And I'm worried about you."

"Can tapeworms worry?" you ask. 

Eddie kicks you mildly. "I don't know? I don't think tapeworms have a level of consciousness beyond what's needed for them to survive. They probably think about eating and parasitizing and that's it. Don't make me ask, please." 

You take a pull of your drink to prolong the inevitable. "Ask about what?"

"Your ghost." 

"Ah."

Eddie waits. 

You sigh again. "Look, I don't even know if she is a ghost, I probably just imagined it." 

He pulls himself forward and there's the weight you'd be waiting for, sternness marked into his face one feature at a time. "Liar." 

"What?" 

"You're lying. You don't think you imagined it." He looks you up and down. “You think I don't know when you're lying?" 

"I'm not lying," you lie. 

"You are. I know you are," he says, smiling despite the point he's making. "I know what you look like when you do." 

"What do I look like?" 

"I can't tell you, you might change it, and then I won't know when I'm supposed to look out for you 'cause you never tell me anything." 

"I don't want to talk about the ghost." 

"Why not?" 

"Because you don't believe me," you say too loudly. 

Eddie reaches across the table but doesn't touch your hand. He puts his palm down and leans ever forward, says, "Hey, I do." 

"No, you don't, you think there's something happening to me." 

"What would you think, if it were me?" he asks, frustration seeping in. "Try and see it from how I'm seeing it." 

"If it were you'd I'd believe you because you needed me to." 

You cringe at yourself and veer back into your chair, shoving your hands between your thighs and clamping your legs closed. Your fingers turn numb. 

Eddie doesn't look shocked, exactly. Surprised that you're talking to him unkindly, sure, and concerned. 

This whole situation is ill-fated, you know that. What good can come of a ghost? Hooks from the past. "I never should have told you," you say quietly. 

"Did you tell me?" Eddie asks, speaking with an anger that forms each word like a cut, clean and hurting. "You won't tell me anything. You tell me she talks to you, that she asks you about me. But you won't say what she says, exactly, and you have nothing to show for it. Your notebook conveniently disappeared. I can’t hear her."

He thinks you're making it up. 

Fuck. He thinks you're making it up. Eddie thinks you're lying to him, and while it hurts like a sharp kick to the solar plexus, a flooring, winding pain, it's the embarrassment that has tears glowing along your last line. If he really believes you'd make something up like this for attention, what does he think of you? That you're some silly leech clinging to him through bad lies? That you're bored? That this is a game you're playing with him? 

Your heart beats hard enough that you can feel it in your chest. Your hands shake with anger and hurt at once, your leg bouncing under the table in an attempt to keep the rush of it at bay. You look at Eddie with your lips parted, trying to say what you mean and not what you feel. You want to say something scathing, and you don't want to be cruel, and these are two facts existing at the same time. 

Eddie has other ideas. He sees your eyes turn glassy, he must, because his anger drains and he turns sorry and soft. It reminds you of a different moment like a film cell played overtop, of a younger, remorseful him. The expression he makes when he's just popped you in the mouth wrestling, or burned behind your ear with the hair iron. An accident. 

"I'm sorry," he says. Sheepish, gentle, sincere, embarrassed, too many threads of emotion to summarise with one word. "Sweetheart, I'm sorry. Don't cry." 

"Fuck off," you mumble, looking down at your bouncing leg. You push your hand against it, forcing it to lay still. 

"I didn't mean it." 

"Stop, Eddie." 

"I'm just hurt you're not telling me everything and I'm acting like an asshole 'cause I'm a big baby," he says, two shades from frantic. 

A tear rolls down your cheek. You thought for sure you'd escaped them, but it had already welled, and with nowhere to go it races down your cheek. You paw at it and hope he won't see it. 

He does. 

Eddie's chair screeches across the floor as he stands up. You know he'll hug you before he's touched you. Same way you know he's freaking out on the inside, allergic to girl tears.  

His hands take to your shoulders, hesitating there, and one slides behind your neck so his forearm presses against both shoulder blades. His lips ghost warmly over your forehead as he leans in. His other hand meanders, braceleting the top of your arm and running downward before swiftly changing paths to flatten out against the small of your back. 

"I'm sorry," he mumbles, rubbing your back.

His tender hug exacerbates the hurt, like an exsanguination. You cry as quietly as you can manage and Eddie feels it under his hands, the two of you condensed at the back of an empty room. You forget where you are, what you're wearing, what you've been fighting about. What he said. You realise how badly you'd needed him to comfort you lately, and hate yourself for giving in.

He shushes you so quietly you think you might have imagined it. 

Or maybe it was your ghost. 

"I'm sorry," he says, his breath kissing your scalp. "I'm a dick." 

"It's fine," you say. You despise yourself for how weak you sound. 

"It's not fine." 

"I wanted to stay because it's getting worse," you tell him. You don't mean to. 

"Okay. Okay. Then you'll stay. It's no biggie." 

"It's worse," you say, turning your face into his chest. 

You're shaking hard. Eddie can't make it stop no matter how tightly he holds you. 

"I'm sorry," he says again. 

He doesn't have to be. If he was acting out, fine. If he does or doesn't believe you, fine. You don't need him to see ghosts, or apologise that he can't. 

"I just didn't want to do it by myself," you confess, at the very pit of pathetic. You hope he won't hear. Your growing panic about the ghost is a secret you hadn’t meant to tell.

Eddie pulls away. He looks down at you, and if he wanted to he could kiss you, his lips are that close, but he widens the distance. He takes your face into his hands, calluses rough against your tacky cheeks. 

"You think I'm gonna let you? I know I'm fucking it up royally right now, I know I'm an asshole, but I'm not fucking going anywhere, okay? Don't worry. Don't worry about it." He drops his hands to your shoulders. "I'm your parasite, right? Do you know how hard it is to get rid of a parasite? Sometimes they have to pull them out, and they're excruciatingly long, it's a process you don't wanna go through–" 

You laugh wetly. Eddie promptly stops talking about parasites. 

"Forgive me?" he asks. 

You nod on automatic. Of course you do. 

"I swear she's real," you say, rubbing your forehead with the meat of your thumb. You think she’s real, but the truth is that you just don’t know. You amend quickly, "I swear I'm not lying. I am hearing someone… even if she's not real." 

Eddie frowns. "I know. I believe you." 

That's when the real trouble begins.

—

Eddie wants to hold your hand desperately. You're wearing your nicest dress, split hem sewn with infinite care, and your dress shoes with the tiny heels. He doesn't get to see you like this very often, and he wishes it were a better occasion. 

You've had your hair down at the hair stylists in the city, you're wearing concealer. You've done everything you can to look presentable. You look beautiful. He hopes you know that, at least. 

You heave a sigh. You're as anxious as Eddie is to get this over with. 

“You remember Hawk?” he asks you. 

“Jack 'Hawk'?” you ask. 

“Yeah, Hawk.”

“He’d come around for green?” you ask. 

“Yeah, that’s the one. Alright. So, when you were on vacation last summer, Hawk knocked on the door, I answered. I’m straight, right? Haven’t sold anything in years, no plans on selling again. But Jack barrels up the steps and starts going on like I promised him something. I said, dude, I don't deal anymore, and could you possibly shut the fuck up? Wayne’s inside making milkshakes. Blender on, couldn’t hear us but I’m sweating bullets.

“Jack, fucker, starts begging.” Eddie leans into your shoulder, hushed. “He’s saying c’mon Munson, I know you got some, don’t you have a personal stash? I’m desperate.” He picks a piece of hair off of your sleeve. “I didn’t, obviously, and I told him that but he’s not listening to me, he’s getting all wild-eyed and fucking wound like he needs the hard shit. I’m just trying to get rid of him at that point, I don’t know if he was tweaking but he looked like he was going to hit me and I wasn’t interested in fighting.” He laughs, encouraging a smile from you. “Wayne’s inside making milkshakes. Full fat with vanilla extract– I’m not about to take a trip to Hawkins General.”

“What did you do?” you ask. 

“I said to him, even if I did you wouldn’t be getting anything, asshole, and pushed him toward the steps, you know? It felt good, standing up for myself.” 

“And he left?”

“No, he fucking hit me straight in the dick. Can you imagine that? Junk shot on my own front door.”

You gasp with giggly indignation, hanging on his every word now. Eddie knows he’s taken you out of your head, even if it’s temporary.

“He hit you in the dick,” —you whisper ‘dick’ like it’s insidious within these four walls— “‘cause he wanted pot? You should’ve pushed him off of the porch.”

“I would’ve but he fucking winded me.” He starts laughing again, your giggles contagious though you try to smother them with your hand. “It’s funny now, but it wasn’t funny at the time.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“He was five foot one. I’ve never felt that humble in my life, I told Wayne I was coming down with something and had the worst afternoon nap ever. Didn’t even get my milkshake.”

“No,” you mumble sympathetically. Your eyes widen. “Eds, I’m sorry, that’s not funny. He assaulted you–”

Eddie waves his hand at you. “He got in a cheap shot. I was fine. I’ll still have kids.”

You snort, “Thanks for the information.”

“I got him back for it, anyway.”

He pretends like that’s the end of that, like the story doesn’t go on and he has nothing to tell you. You wait raptly for him to explain but he gloats, knowing you're hooked. 

You elbow him. 

“What?” he asks. “Oh, you wanna know how I got revenge? You’re evil.”

“Less shame and more story,” you say. 

“Alright. Are you ready? Here’s where it gets complicated.

“I’m at The Hideout listening to that new band that blazed through here a couple of months ago, Board Growth, or something? They’re incredible, the booze is cold, I’m tipsy and Gareth owes me anyway, I’m putting it all on his tab and he, seemingly, isn’t noticing. It’s great. Better if you hadn’t been on vacation again, what the fuck, but it’s good. 

“And there he is. It’s the fucking Hawk. He’s looking down his nose at these young girls smooth-talking them. Or, he’s trying to smooth talk them, but it’s like watching a worm flirt with a praying mantis, okay, we all know who’s gonna lose.” Eddie’s knee rests against yours, your hand is on his thigh, he’s losing the thread of his story fast under the smell of your perfume and hair oil. “I knock back the rest of my drink, slick my hair like I’m James Dean and, in all my drunken intelligence, decide that this is the perfect moment for me to get him back.”

“I wasn’t on vacation.”

“What?”

“I only went once.” You’d gone for two days with some old friends. He remembers now, and rushes to fix the story.

“Why didn’t you come, then?” he asks, flipping the script. “You’re such a flake.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know when this was.”

“Stop bailing on me and ruining my stories,” he says, teasing. 

“Okay, you’re hopped up on liquid courage and about to hit Jack in the dick,” you prompt. 

“Right! I stroll up to Hawk and he’s instantly wriggly like the worm of a guy he is, and I say, hey Hawk, how’s it hanging? 

“Maybe he’s just that stupid or maybe he thinks I’m putting out the olive branch but he actually starts telling me how he’s doing, and I’m looking at these girls as if to say, can you believe this guy? I cut him off, and I’m a loser, I’m not half as cool as I think I am but again I’m slightly incredibly inebriated. I’m making bad decisions.”

“Where’s your cafeteria bravado?” you ask.

“It’s worse than that. Imagine me at my most insufferable. I smile at the girls and I lean into Jack’s space, I’m laughing, I feel bad about what I’m gonna say before I’ve said it but I say it anyways. I lean right into his ear and tell him at full volume how sorry I was to hear about his recent bout of syphilis. I’m just so glad they caught it in time, man,” he says, imitating a past self. 

You open your mouth. “And,’ Eddie says, jumping to finish, “so happy you could keep most of it, buddy.”

“Eddie…”

“I’m a bad person.”

“No,” you mumble, hiding your smile on his shoulder, your forehead a hair’s width from his chin. You’d laugh a storm any other day to make him feel good, whether you think he’s funny or not, but today all you can manage is a hand on his leg. “You’re not a bad person, he deserved it… fucking hit you…”

The story isn’t true. 

He made it up. Right here right now. He just spent five good minutes of your lives spinning an outrageously awful story with poor jokes and one glaring plot hole, for what? 

This is hard. Making you cry, begging you to see what a doctor has to say, playing grown up in a grown ups body. Eddie thought you’d get to be kids forever. He never imagined what would come after school, and then suddenly it is after, and everything’s an ugly boring mess except for you (and Wayne, god bless), and now you’re sick. The waiting room you’re in, the road here, the look on your face when he told you what he wanted from you. It’s all… heartbreakingly monotonous.

One doctor's appointment, he whispered across pillows. Late and neither of you asleep. The sound of cicadas outside and Wayne’s deep snore a room away. 

You nodded and closed your eyes, and you didn’t say another word all night. 

What’s the worth in a made up story? What good will it do? You have to see the doctor eventually. Distraction, Eddie thinks pleadingly. Relief. He just wants to give you as much relief as he can from what’s happening with the only thing he feels he has —his quick mouth. 

He stares at your hand on his thigh. He wills himself to raise his own and put it on top of yours. He channels his thoughts, like this is telekinesis and not his own body, move. Move your hand, he says to himself. 

It's a millimetre out of his pocket when they call your name. 

You shoot up like a stalk and smile at the nurse who's come to collect you. You don't look jittery anymore, but there's a distinct doe in the headlights look about you as Eddie watches you trail down the hallway into the doctor's office. You look back at him three times, and each time is a whip.

As soon as the door closes, he bends forward in his chair and heaves a sickly sigh. His nausea has him coughing into his hand and praying he doesn't throw up here. If they want you to go somewhere today, like a pharmacy for temporary medication, or the emergency room for a CAT scan, he can't be covered in his own vomit. 

A child babbles across the room. Eddie peeks at her through his fingers. She's pale with dark hair, much like Eddie himself, and her mom is the same. The kid's mom doesn't look like Eddie's mom besides that, but seeing her here in a hospital makes it impossible not to think of her. She's been on his mind so much lately. Her birthday is at the end of the month, and it isn't the same —she'd been in hospital for three brutally short days— but you're being here is like peeling the scab off of a wound he thought healed years ago. 

Mom was everything. She was willowy and beautiful and tough as a board. She was smart, she knew everything; how to make microwave pizza taste gourmet, how to make whistles out of blades of grass, how to make a bad day feel brand new. 

He wished he could say that he has her every detail committed. The cruellest, most terrifying thing about the people we love is that they aren't permanent, not their life and not what they leave behind. Over time, his mom has turned from an aching spear of love to a dappling of sunlight through the branches of an old tree — scattered. Beautiful and impossible and a thousand pieces in his memory, slowly fading over time. 

There'll come a day where Eddie can't remember her. He knows that. He knows his frame of reference for who she was will reduce down to her photographs, and the nearly empty bottle of her perfume under his bed. 

Eddie is haunted by her absence everyday. 

There is no corporeal apparition of her at his shoulder, no cool chill running down his spine, but he's haunted all the same. It's why he won't accept your ghost. It's why he can't. He knows what it feels like to have someone with him who isn't really here, and he won't let you suffer through the same thing. He'll protect you from this, from her. 

Even if it means he has to take you to doctors offices an hour out of town. If he has to bargain for it, and make you cry at work, and– and fucking drive this wedge between you, he'll do it. 

He needs you to be okay. 

He can't think about his mom anymore. He loves her, he misses her, but if he thinks about her too much he won't be able to stand up. 

Eddie sits up, takes a lungful of air in, and waits. He senses you as you come back down the hall, grateful for your dry cheeks, and your small, small smile. Tiny but irrefutably there.

He stands up and holds out his hand. You don't take it, but you walk into his side so your hips are pressed together and he falls into step with you. 

"So…" he says. 

"She asked if I was getting enough sleep," you say, "and I told her I was. I explained everything to her like I promised I would, even– even… I told her everything. And um, she seemed very open." 

"Yeah?" 

"Yeah, she– OK." You frown. 

"Listen, you don't have to tell me if you don't want to. I know I practically forced you to come, but it's still your life, and you can have privacy from me–" 

"It's not that. I just don't want to cry in here." 

He puts his hand on your shoulder, his arm folded against your shoulder. You don't speak until you're out of the doctor's office and weaving through people as you walk toward the parking lot. 

"She thinks I'm having auditory hallucinations. And that it could be an initial symptom of schizophrenia, or something else. She said it usually starts around my age, and–" 

"Hey, it's okay," he says, though internally he feels as distressed as you're beginning to look, horrified by your crumpling chin and wringing hands. "It's okay. You don't have to say it if it's going to upset you." 

"It might not be anything," you say, shaking your head. "She said the human brain is complicated, and sometimes stuff like this just happens. She wants to, uh," —your voice twists up very high— "see me again after I've had some sleep to see if it's persisting." 

Eddie nods. He's fucking glad that the doctor took you seriously, grateful for her advice and her reluctance to misdiagnose you with something. It's not as though Eddie wants you to be experiencing hallucinations. But he thinks you are, and he needs help looking after you if that’s the case. 

"Did she prescribe anything?" he asks. 

"A week's worth of ambien. She didn't really want to, but I told her about, you know, you coming over to make sure I'm okay, and I know that was because of the gh–" You bite your lip. You're shaking like a leaf. "Well, she thought it was you making sure I'm not an insomniac. Which I'm not." 

"I'm really proud of you," he says quietly. "I know you don't want this to be happening. I get it, I promise. I don't want it either, but this is a good thing." 

He can see you regaining some composure. You smile a little, and you offer him your prescription paper. "You know it only costs seven dollars for seven ambien?" 

"I could get you some for free." 

Your laugh startles him. "No, I don't think so." 

"I'm not offering. Just saying. I know a guy." 

"No, you knew a guy who knows a guy who could get me something ridiculous, like a percocet." 

"I'd never give you anything like that." 

"I know." You come to a halt. The cloudy weather paints you in shadow. "I'm sorry this is happening." 

"You're what?" He doesn't let you answer moving to stand in front of you. "Why would you apologise for this?" 

"Because it's my head," you say stiffly. 

"You didn't want this to happen. And– and it might not be happening at all. You'll try the ambien, and you'll take care of yourself, and we'll go from there. I wasn't trying to scare you… I wish I could brush it off, you know? I wish I could believe that you…" He takes you in. Your skirt and jacket are swaying in the cold wind. You look one sharp shove from falling over. "I get that it isn't like me, to not believe in the fantasy–" 

You save him from his miserable attempt at placating you. 

"I know." 

He licks his lips. 

"I love you," Eddie says as he starts toward the van again. "Let's go fill your prescription, and then I'll get you whatever you want to eat."

"Boys are so weird about I love you," you say, following. The light behind your eyes makes your teasing worth it. "You say it like you chewed on it first. Struggled to get that one out, did you?" 

It's not your best insult. Neither of you are exactly on form. 

"Just so hard to say it to you." 

You take what you perceive to be an insult on the chin. Only Eddie knows there's a sliver of truth in what he's said. 

You generously let him help you into the passenger seat. He's hopeful that your mood's improved until that wretched frown worms its way across your pretty mouth once again. You wait for him to round the hood and start the van before you explain yourself. 

"There's a support group. For anybody who's, um, hearing voices. Schizophrenics, manic depressives…" 

"Is that something you want to go to?" 

"I don't know. Can I be honest with you?" 

"Yeah. Absolutely." 

"I don't know if I believe that it isn't real. I know that's the point. The definition of hallucination is, uh… an experience involving the apparent perception of something not present, and so… it makes sense. My ghost isn't there, even if I think she is, so I must be hallucinating, but Eddie," —you shrink in on yourself— "I have this feeling that won't go away." 

He loves you. You're terrified. 

He's already guessed what you're going to ask for.

"Can we try again? Please? I'll take the meds and I'll go to the support group, but in the meantime, could you please come back and just– just listen. Maybe it takes a while for her to talk to someone else." You scrub your face. "Fuck. I sound fucking crazy." 

Eddie squeezes the wheel. "Don't say that. Don't say it like you've done something wrong. You didn't do anything wrong." 

People say crazy but they mean sick. They ridicule what they can't understand. 

He doesn't understand, but he wants to. He says, "If you want me to, we'll try again. I'll come over." 

You look up from your palms. He notices almost habitually that they're smaller than his. When you were young teenagers there'd been a short period of time where you'd been the taller one, with bigger hands and a bigger smile. Lately, you've seemed small. 

"Really?" you ask hopefully. 

"You came here 'cause I asked you to. It was hard for you." He turns his eyes to the road and turns the key until the Beauville's engine is thrumming with life. "I'd do a lot of shit for you, superstar. Like, anything. If you need me to keep trying then I will. And you'll–" 

"I'll keep trying too," you promise. 

It's all he can ask for. 

— 

The sky is all kinds of grey. It stretches like a sheet from one corner of your eye to the other, darker toward each limit of your vision, a gradual decay into colourlessness toward the very top where the sun fights hardest to burst through an impossible expanse of clouds. They seem thick as marshmallo, but where they begin is hard to decipher. 

Your eyes feel sore. You imagine a hand reaching for you, hitting you, pressing its cold knuckles to each bruised eye socket to calm the raging ache behind them. You hadn't expected to feel this way. It isn't the first time you have, but to feel so intensely unreal while there's someone still with you is new. You lean your weight against the sill and let your arms swing from the open window ledge, knuckles scraping the scratchy brick of the house's exterior walls, instantly chilled by the weather. 

A black band of birds burst across the sky somewhere leftwards. The pitch and tumble with no discernible formation. They're too far to hear. You imagine the flap of wings, their buoyed cawing, screeching to one another as they swim between pylon cables and their brothers spread wings. 

"What kind of birds do you think they are?" Eddie asks. 

You feel his weight settle into the ottoman beside you. You'd dragged it to the window with tired arms. You haven't felt up to anything since you got home, though Eddie's promise should've restored a little hope. He's going to keep trying to meet your ghost. You'll have to hope you don't get worse before that. 

You know, starkly, that you aren't having auditory hallucinations. You know, starkly, that your ghost had written to you in your missing notebook. 

But maybe that's the nature of your hallucination. A night bent over the pocket dictionary had ended as this one begins, with the crushing realisation that you cannot trust what you know. To put it plainly, you're afraid that you're mentally unwell. Terrified of how it’s going to change your life, the people in it.

Eddie's afraid too. 

Your orange bottle of pills glares like a flame to your right where it stands waiting for you on the nightstand. Eddie's made up your bed for the two of you. He could sleep in the guest room, and he never has. 

"I don't know," you say hoarsely. Your voice sounds as you feel, like something has its hooks in you, and it's dragging you down, down… 

"They're too big to be pigeons." 

"They're too dark. They're crows," you guess, tracing an outlier as he skirts the crowd of his family and spirals up into the air. 

Like a party trick, you expect him to disappear, or explode, or rocket up into the cotton clouds and out of view. He slows as he falls, and then he dives back toward the main swarm of birds as they migrate toward the horizon. 

There's a feeling brewing in you that you don't like. 

If you can't trust your own perception. If real isn't real. If you need someone to sit beside you and distinguish real from fake, if… if you're sick. 

If you're sick, what does that mean? 

You search for something in the air to hold onto. 

Eddie hums softly, his hand pushing out into the static as he points toward the glowing clouds. "Sun's going down slow." 

You raise your hand and wrap it around his. It isn't enough. You force your fingers between the gaps of his, just a little longer, thicker, solid, and lock him in. He feels real. That's the key. As far as you know, hallucinations don't carry that far. Bugs crawling over your skin and through the strands of your hair, an itch you can't scratch, a drop of rain from a concrete ceiling, the brain can recreate these things. But the exact width of Eddie's palm or the feeling of his calluses against your loveline, your lifeline, and the heartbeat that bumps against the meat of your thumb when you focus, that's impossible. That's a level of precision the human brain can't find. 

Right? 

Eddie curls his thumb around yours. You can feel his gaze on your cheek like a breath blown between parted lips. You turn toward him, and you catalogue every little mar or mark, every fine hair. His wrinkles, his textured jaw. The strands of a fallen curl come apart near his eye, grown out bangs kissing the highest point of his cheek.

You're panicking. There's a thumping behind your eyes. 

"I don't know if you look right," you say. 

"I look very right. I'm extremely handsome," he says. 

You hold his hand out of the window, worried you'll drop it, and it'll fall. 

If Eddie were at home tucked into his double bed a mile away, she would've talked to you by now. Your breath shortens as the meaning behind that thought solidifies. 

She only comes when you're alone. Why do you think that is? 

She's not real. 

Is that how it works? Can hallucinations, auditory, visual, or otherwise, take place in the company of others? You know next to nothing. Maybe they aren’t so common with loved ones standing guard. 

You push your head out of the window again and look down at the flat, dying grass in the backyard, a yellowing carpet of bluegrass. Bluegrass is prominent because it can grow anywhere, like mould. With all the rain these past few days, the grass should've livened into a plush and solid green, like the lawns in the southern side of Hawkins where the rich people lavish in sprinklers and gardeners alike. It remains rumpled.

Eddie rubs the back of your hand. It's far from the closest you've ever been. There have been nights you spent unawares in his arms, waking with your face tucked into his neck, so embarrassed you couldn't look at him afterward. But it's the most intimate touch you've ever endured. The whorls of his fingerprint embossing itself into your hand, a quarter circle that doesn't cease. Time feels brief and unsteady. 

Eddie must realise you're having a bad moment. He shuffles closer to you, your arms twined, his hair tickling your shoulders. It snaps you back, in a way, with its softness. 

"Let's go to bed," he says when the sky's more charcoal than light. 

You're cold. You follow. You latch your hand in his and he doesn't say a word, closing and locking your window with one hand, pulling the sheets of your bed back deftly for you to climb in. You slide across to the outermost side and he follows, leaning over you to pull the sheets to your chin. 

He stays hovering there. 

He holds very still. 

"Everything's going to be okay," he whispers. 

"What if it isn't?" 

"It will be, you…" he trails off. He keeps your hand in his, but he plants his elbow on the other side of you, like a lover about to share sweet nothings, his face so, so close. "You'll be okay, no matter what happens." 

"I wish she'd told me more," you say. 

"The doctor?" He draws a small, careful line across your cheek with his index finger. "Sweetheart, we'll find out everything there is to find." 

"I want to know how scared I should be. Because this feels like torture." 

"You don't have to be scared." Eddie smiles, and as far as you can tell, though you're having trouble trusting yourself, it's one of his genuine smiles. "Why do you think I'm here, huh? It's not to watch as something bad happens." 

You lift your chin. He's too close to look at both eyes at once: you have to choose, and you can't. Your irises dance back and forth between them, shuddering in indecision. 

"You'll look after me," you say, not a question. 

He turns his hand, stroking down the length of your cheek with the backs of his fingers. They feel much softer than the undersides, the flat of his nails like silk. Your eyes burn as you free your hand from his, hoping he'll be kind with that one, too. 

"I'll look after you." 

You tuck your hands behind the trim of his waist and, knowing you shouldn't, let them feed into his shirt. You draw a shaking line through the downy soft blanketing the small of his back until your finger is skipping up the jutting bumps of his spine. It's like climbing a staircase by touch alone. You wonder if anyone else had ever done this to him, if they ever wanted to, and if he'd let them. 

Eddie releases a breath. Warmth feathers along your skin. 

His hand strokes down to your neck, resting at your collar. Half a second and his petting returns, the side of his thumb brushing your soft jawline tenderly. 

He must feel you swallow. His pupils travel down the whites of his eyes like the steady descent of the setting sun. 

"I can't," he says softly.

Can't what? you want to ask. You don't know if you should. You know the answer, but does he?

"You're not all here," he says, hand paused. He cups your cheek, holds you in place. You hadn't been moving. "But when you are, I could. I could."

"I don't know if I…" you drift off. How can you explain it to him? I don't know if I'll feel better any time soon. 

His eyes move sideways, as if the instruction for your reassurance lay somewhere in the apple of your cheek. 

You don't want him to kiss you if it's a fixative meant to soothe your rampant nerves. You want him to kiss you for a hundred reasons, but that's not one of them. You're not sure he wants to kiss you beyond that. 

He would, you realise. Kiss you, if he thought you wanted it badly enough. That's a lot of power to have over someone, more than you want over him, and you can't ask him to. You look away from his eyes and search upward, trembling hands and the starts of your forearms pressed to his back, hiking his shirt up one inch at a time. 

He sits up agonisingly slowly, in the same way the sky has fallen from light to dusk; inchingly, so as to escape notice, until suddenly you can't feel the emanating heat of his chest against yours anymore, and the only light inside of your room is a yellow band sliced by the ajar door. 

Your hands fall back. One under the sheets, one over. Eddie sits where you lay, his hands at the crook of your elbows. He gives symmetrical, superficial massages to each. 

The life has been sapped from you, as if it were tied to the sun sunk beyond the horizon. A brutal fatigue sets in. 

"You should take your ambien," he murmurs. 

"Okay." 

The eye tattooed on his arm seems to follow you as he reaches for your seven dollar bottle. He twists off the cap and shakes a single pill out for you, and you watch as the lines of his arms start to blur. 

You take your pill, lying firmly in the middle of your pillow, and wonder if now would be an appropriate time to burst into panicked tears.

"I'll look after you," Eddie repeats after a while. Or maybe he doesn't. The weight of the day and the helping kick of your medication pulls you under. He lays down next to you carefully, his hand searching under the covers for yours. 

And there, standing in the corner of the room, is your ghost. Real. Stunningly, terrifyingly real. 

You can’t open your mouth wide enough to warn him.

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

end of part one! thank you so much for reading, I really hope that you enjoyed! this was my baby and such a labour of love in April and I’m so happy now to share it :D if you have the time, please consider reblogging, it means so much to me and I’d love to know your thoughts on the story so far <3<3

#eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson x fem!reader #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson oneshot #eddie munson scenario #eddie munson drabble #eddie munson fic #eddie munson fanfiction #stranger things fanfiction #stranger things #stranger things fic #stranger things x reader

[bubbles-for-all-of-us]

Can you love me most?

Part 2

requested: I keep having dreams that Azriel and I (or x reader) are in a politically arranged marriage and have to learn to love each other and I feel like that would make a good fic if you want fluff requests.

warning: this involves some heavy topics like attempted suicide, mentions of abuse (no descriptive scenes just mentions) so please be causes. And this does have a pretty big age gap but no one is a child in this. All interactions are between adults. ⚠️

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Azriel was furious. His anger was practically dripping from him as his shadows frantically flowed all over the place. "How could you!", the shadow singer roared as he stood before his high lord, "Azriel", "Don't you Azriel me, Rhysand!" The situation with summer court had been wobbly for some time. Ever since the fiasco that Cassian pulled yet again, things have increasingly gone downhill. Apologies did nothing. Gifts didn't smother the high lord, and the war was about to break. And for some unknown reason, it was he who had to pay the price.

"Everyone's mated. You're the only valid option left", Azriel only shook his head in disbelief, "So I'm just an object in your game? Is that all I am?", Azriel had done so much for this court and had sacrificed so much. All he wanted was some decency in return. And even that was off the table. "Tarquin agreed to let it all go if...", "Do you even realize what you are doing, Rhysand?" Maybe the irritation would have been less blazing if Azriel had been involved in a discussion of this, but no. Azriel was greeted with a letter while he was in the middle of the mission. A letter. Not even a conversation with Rhys himself. "We'll find a way," Rhys reassured the male, but Azriel only stepped back, "She's so young," "That's not true, she's nearly a hundred."

Azriel choked out a laugh, running a hand over his face and asking, "Are you hearing yourself? Do you hear how stupid you sound?" And Rhys felt awful; he did. The last person he wanted to drag into this was Azriel. But he had no other choice. Tarquin appeared to have a sister, whom Rhys suspected the male was trying to get rid of. The deal was to marry her off to someone important in Night Court so that the Prince of Summer would feel less threatened. "Does she even know about this?" Azriel's voice was way lower now. He might have been pissed that he was dragged into this, but he had at least a solid five hundred years of experience in different things in life. You... He didn't even know that you existed until he read about you in the letter he got. All he knew you might have been locked up somewhere. Still as pure as the first snowfall in winter.

"I... I'm not sure," Rhys choked out, and Azriel gaped at his high lord, "Tell me you're joking?" But the shadow singer knew from the way his brother's face paled that the girl had been left in the dark. Shaking his head, Azriel stepped closer, saying, "I will never forgive you, and she won't either." Holding his gaze for a moment longer before he stormed out of the room.

Azriel didn't even get to meet you before the ceremony. He felt like the biggest clown standing there. The black suit felt suffocating, and if he could, he would rip it off. This felt like the biggest mockery ever to him. Yet even now, even without ever meeting you, he found himself worrying about you. The music was making his head pound, and he hated the way all the flowers were messily scattered all around the room. That's not how Azriel imagined his wedding to be. Not that he ever imagined it, but... Still not like this.

The main door to the ballroom opened, and everyone instantly turned to look. You were visibly shaking. And it was clear that Tarquin had a firm grip on you, as even now you tried to escape it. Pulling at your brother's hold as he practically dragged you through the tiled floor. The veil did nearly nothing to hide your tear-stained face. Black streaks of mascara painted your cheeks. A shiver ran down the spymaster's back. The same feeling as when he saw Nesta being forced into the cauldron shifted past him.

He wanted to apologize so badly. Wanted to put the Summer Court prince in his place, but... Azriel wasn't sure what consequences would accrue. What would they do to you if he refused to marry you? Had they done anything as of now? So they could break your spirit just a little. Azriel felt like he didn't blink through the whole ceremony. Once your hand was placed in his, you didn't meet his eyes. You didn't wrap your fingers around his palm; they stayed firmly straight as your hand trembled without a trace of stopping. You mumbled the vows under your breath as tears streamed down your cheeks, and Azriel felt like being cursed by the Mother would have been a happier fate than this.

"You may kiss the bride now," and if Azriel was being honest, he didn't know why he even learned it. Didn't know why, after seeing your tears and quavering body, he thought it was a good idea. But he did it just the moment he got close enough to you, you turned your face away from him before lifting the material of your dress as you turned to run out of the room.

"Sit down," Azriel turned to Tarquin, who rose to walk after you, "She's not your responsibility now." With everyone still watching him and still slightly mortified by the whole situation, Azriel crossed the room in a couple of steps. The moment everyone was left behind, he tugged at the tight collar of his shirt, ripping the first two buttons open. He unleashed his shadows, sending them swirling around the empty hallways. Having no clue where you were. The shadows almost screamed at their master once they got back to him. Outside balcony. Run. Run. Azriel frowned as he made his way there. Even if the shadows were flowing around him more frantically, he brushed it off as the aftermath of heightened tension. However, the moment he stepped a foot outside Azriel's heart sank.

 You were up on the glass railing, bracing yourself on the stones. The wind must have ripped the veil out of your hair and set your crystal white hair rattling alongside the breeze. In all honesty, he wasn't even sure how you managed to keep your footing steady. His movements now had to be sharp and calculated. One mistake, and you would be falling. Some of his shadows tugged at the back of your dress, but you didn't seem to notice. A tear-stained face turned to face the horizon in front of you.

Azriel cleared his throat, making you instantly snap your head in his direction, your legs wobbling as you lost your balance for a moment. Azriel stepped forward, "Get down, dear," his arms reached for you, but you backed away from him, shaking your head. The fall was a long one. Standing here, you couldn't even see the bottom as the clouds covered the ground.  "I want to help," the shadow singer continued speaking softly, but you only choked out, "If you'll move any further, I'll jump." Azriel lifted his hands, yet his gaze was still more than alert. He couldn't help it. It was in his blood. Heart breaking with every tear that rolls down your cheeks.

"I can only imagine how scary this is for you. I have no interest...", "Don't speak", you pushed one of your hands to cover your ear. Everyone around you had been talking for the past few days. Speak about you. Speak for you. You only wanted to know why. What changed that your brother suddenly wanted you out? What exactly had you done?  "I don't want you to..." Azriel tried again, slowly inching closer to you. "I said don't speak!" you yelled out. Turning to face your now-husband, you lost your footing beneath you and slipped over the railing. You managed to let out a yelp as gravity took full control over your body. The sensation of free fall rushed through you as you tightly closed your eyes. It felt like, for the first time, you finally felt alive. As if you've finally heard your heart. All the voices were gone. Only the wind. Cold, cold wind biting at your exposed skin. 

It didn't have time to fully set in, though, because two strong arms wrapped around your middle and everything came to a halt. Those arms clung to you for dear life. You had a feeling it was him. Azriel. The shadow singer. The females who dressed you pitied you, saying prayer after prayer to save your soul. He was a monster, they said. They told you not to speak and to always obey because one wrong move could send you to the other world. The male knew no mercy, and you were never going to feel loved.

You shivered like an autumn leaf in the wind as Azriel walked with you in his hands. He said nothing, and you didn't dare to push your luck. You could tell that he was tense. His muscles felt like rocks. Was it just because he was fit, or was it because he was so mad at you? The room was dim and dark. It didn't have a bed, but you let yourself assume that one of the doors would lead you to a bedroom. Azriel just stood there. Looking at the window at the end of the room. Kind of there, but at the same time in a completely different dimension. The view of you falling played on and on in his brain. What if he didn't catch you? What if you had hit the sharp side of the rock? What made you jump to such extremes? To not fight but to give up without a second thought.

"Will you hit me?", your voice was so small that Azriel felt like he was going to vomit from the sheer amount of fear that dripped from you. "Or do you want me to get naked and please you now?", you didn't look at him, but you moved to pull the material of the sleeve off your shoulders. "No," Azriel found himself stuttering as he watched you. Your hands firmly move to wrap around your middle. "Listen to me. I would never do such things. Never", he desperately wanted to meet your eyes just so he could tell if you believe him even a little bit. "Has anyone... has anyone ever hurt you in that way?" The shadow singer knew this was a dangerous question and that asking it like that was wrong, but a part of him was ready to slaughter a whole village if he had to. No woman deserved to be harmed in such ways. Azriel kept his distance from you, knowing how intimidating his size can be. You shook your head slowly, and Azriel found himself feeling somewhat relieved.

"I own you an apology and want you to know that I had nothing to do with all of this", the spymaster continued, "You own me nothing", "Don't I as your wife need to carry out all of these duties, tend to your needs, bear you children?". This had to be some old lady's doing. Digging into your brain like that, "No, you don't have to be anything you don't want to be." You nodded your head once again, slowly lifting your gaze at the male before quickly dropping it back down. He was attractive—that was not a lie—but you still didn't know him. He was a stranger who, in a matter of minutes, owed you by the rights of gods.

"How about we start with an introduction? Azriel," he said, reaching out his hand to you, which was covered in deep-rooted scars. From a battle? From killing innocent? Self-defense? Or was he harmed by someone? You shook your head quickly, shaking away the thoughts as you reached to hold onto his hand, "Y/N". That was the first step in your journey together. The place turned out to have two separate bedrooms, and for that you were thankful. You two barely talked, and if Azriel were to walk in while you were still in the shared living space, he would simply nod his head your way before disappearing into his office. You attended most of the not-so-serious court meetings together, but the moment Azriel noticed that they only dampened your mood, he dismissed you from any of the work that Rhys wanted you to be a part of, and since you had to obey your husband, you spend your days cooped up in your chambers.

The scars from this didn't all heal overnight. The pain of this bargain was still flowing through the both of you. Azriel heard you weeping multiple nights in a row. He heard you but didn't leave his bed. At first, it was easy. It almost soothed him. As if you were letting out all the emotions for both of you. Then came the frustration, and he found himself gripping the sheets, wishing he wouldn't hear you. Only after a week of listening to your cries did he get up. Walked out of the room as quiet as the darkness itself. Watched you as you sat all curled up by the window. Even in the darkness, he saw your tear-stained face and your trembling shoulders.

The moment you turned to face him, Azriel only let out a deep sigh before sitting down not far from you. "Come here," he mumbled, already dropping one hand over your shoulders. Your hesitation didn't last long, as you fell into his embrace. Your arms clutched him as you clung closer to him. His fingers slowly brushed your hair as you trembled. Without really realizing it, Azriel found himself humming. He hummed a melody his mom used to hum when he wasn't feeling well. He held you that night till your body eased and sleep took over. However, after he gently lowered you to your bed, he couldn't find the strength to pull your hand out of his. You needed him. He had to step up. He had to be a good husband. So he stayed.

After that night, you would fall asleep together in either your or his bed almost every night. Fell asleep, but we never woke up together. You didn't blame him. Nor could you blame yourself. He was a busy male, and you... Well, you just didn't know how or when to approach him. So you settled for occasional exchanges of words here and there. Azriel was working more simply so he could take his mind off of you. Of everything. He wanted to somehow melt the ice between the two of you, but he didn't know how, and he wasn't about to run to his family for a piece of advice when they were the ones who put him in this situation in the first place. Before he stepped through the door of your chamber, he waved at his shower, who swiftly handed their master a bouquet. Nothing special, but he saw them on his way back from town and figured he'd get them for you.

However, his body was ridged with fear the moment he stepped in. Blood. He could smell blood. He couldn't tell if there was a lot of it, but there was blood. The spymaster struck your bedroom first, but seeing no sign of you there, he knew you would only be in the bathroom. It's the blood. It's the first day. The image of you on the railing flashed through his mind. There was blood; he smelled blood. "Y/N," Azriel said, firmly banging his fist on the wooden door. No answer. His fist rose again, but then, "Go away." It was clear to him that you were in pain. A lot of pain, "Open the door or, at the very least, tell me what's going on." He had never felt so helpless standing on the other side of the door. But all he heard in response was a hiss coming from you, and that's all it took for him to kick the door open. He knew that this was invading your privacy, but if you were hurt, he felt the right to make an exception just this once.

And here you were. Hair frown up messily. That tired look on your face, along with the purple bags under your eyes. One hand gripping the counter. The other clenched your stomach. Stomach. His eyes fell to your blood-stained thighs, and his gaze instantly shifted to the floor. Your cycle had started. Mother strikes him for his stupidity. He wasn't sure what to do. You were clearly in pain, and now, on top of everything else, he had to embarrass you like that. Azriel wasn't sure of what he was doing. He moved around the bathroom, pulling out some clean lines, before handing them to you so you could wash up. He would have offered to help you do that, but from the way your checks burned red, he decided against it. Walking out of the bathroom so he could grab you some of his clothes so you wouldn't need to struggle in all of these tight corsets and uncomfortable dresses.

"Please just..." Your hands were covering your face as you sat on the floor with your still blood-stained nightgown on, "I don't mind, this is natural", Azriel tried to sound as calm as possible, but his heart was beating rather rapidly inside his chest. "It's disgusting", "It's just blood. Come on, let me get you to bed," you wanted to protest, but Azriel scooped you up with ease. He didn't carry you to your bed. He carried you to his instead. Before offering you his clothes and some privacy to change.

When he knocked on the doors once again, you were already swallowed up by all the warm blankets that surrounded you. "I brought you a topic for the pain, light snacks, and a lot of water. You need to stay hydrated", you looked at him through your droopy eyes. The pain made you rather disoriented, "I'm sorry you had to go out of your way to do all of this", Azriel frowned at your words. "I'm doing this because I wanted to", you watched him for a moment. His wings were neatly folded behind him as he sat on the end of the bed. You weren't sure why, but you reached your hand towards him, and he took a hold of it instantly. "Can you lay with me?", "I have a...", but Azriel cut himself off mid-sentence before nodding his head as he made his way onto the bed. The moment you were close enough, Azriel placed his palm on your lower stomach, and that extra warmth of his skin instantly made you purr in delight.

"Come on, tell me something good", after the whole period fiasco, you two had started talking to one another more. It was quite ironic that the period and your dying in bed for a couple of days would be the things that got you two speaking, but you were thankful for him and the amount of time he had spent with you. "What is something?", you two were now sitting in the little living room that joined the two bedrooms, both nursing a glass of wine each. "Well, you lived, traveled, and fought in multiple wars," Azriel growled as he leaned back on the sofa. You've been nudging him to tell you tales of his travels for a while now, but he always found a way out. "Oh, come on. You are such a stubborn brood."

 Azriel instantly turned to look at you, and you felt a shiver run down your spine. Have you finally crossed the line? But he only let out a laugh before shaking his head. "Ah, so that's how it is?", you crossed your arms over your chest and watched him, "No, actually don't say anything. I'll find a book in the library." As you two continued to stare at each other, Azriel let out another laugh. "Don't do that," he muttered after some time. "Do what?", you asked him innocently, not dropping your eyes. "Don't look at me like you want to kiss me," you swallowed harshly, quickly dropping your haze to the glass in your hands. That night, you two parted ways, both aware that if you shared a bed, one thing would lead to another, and then...You bit your lip as you stood with your back to the door. You couldn't help all the thoughts that raced through your mind. Your gaze fell onto another set of fresh flowers on your nightstand and a box of sweet treats. You chuckled under your breath as you saw a rather thick book lying on top of your pillow. War tactics and the art of battle.

Azriel was raging as he ripped his leathers off. The day had been horrible. His spying mission failed, and that in itself happened so rarely that it set him off first thing in the morning. And then there was Rhys. Rhys never seems to shut up these days. Stupid was the fact that, till not long ago, Azriel thought that it was Cassian who spoke simply for the sake of speaking. The spymaster was desperate for a boiling bath. To simply sit in the hot water until it cooled along with his temper. But he was met by you. You were in the middle of the bath, and the bathroom was filled with endless amounts of bubbles. On the floor, walls, everywhere. Like mirrors, they illuminated the room and you in it. He was about to turn around and leave when he heard your voice, "Oh no, spymaster, come join me." Azriel wanted to say no. Especially after discovering an empty bottle of wine by the bathtub's side. "I'll cover my eyes so you can get all naked," you chuckled, placing your palm over your hands, but not even a heartbeat later spread your fingers apart to peer in between them.

Azriel couldn't help but let out a laugh, the worries slowly slipping away from his mind. "You are quite something," he said,  "I prefer gorgeous, attractive, and sinful, but I'll take quite something this time." You leaned your head on the side of the tub, smiling at the male sheepishly. "You're drunk," Azriel said while undoing his pants, and you instantly frowned, "I am not; don't make me challenge you to a drinking game." You knew that you would lose a game like that in a heartbeat, but with the slight buzz in your system, you were feeling quite confident.

Azriel entered the tub on the opposite side of you. Eyes once again not leaving one another. There was this weird, unfamiliar itch. This needs to somehow get closer to him. But instead, you scooped up a handful of bubbles before blowing them toward Azriel. He wasn't quite quick enough to cover his face, resulting in bubbles covering his face and hair. Azriel quickly grabbed a hold of your hand, dragging you close to him and making you squeal. "You're giving me that look once again." He was so much closer to you now. Your hand was lying on his thigh under the water. Your mind was racing so fast that you weren't sure if you would be able to form a sentence.

"I didn't kiss you during the wedding; I owe you a kiss," you mumbled softly, your hand coming up to wipe away some of the bubbles from the side of his cheek as you giggled under your breath again. Azriel went rather stiff as your fingers grazed his cheek before you very carefully leaned in. You pulled away after a single pack. It was Azriel who quickly placed his hand on the back of your neck, bringing you closer to his lips once again. Kissing you over and over again. Kissing you till your lips were all puffy and red. Kissing you till there was no breath in your lungs.

This feeling had been eating you up. It's like now a part of you was consumed by it. By Azriel. Rubbing your palms together, you walked back and forth in your room. You've been meaning to tell him this for some time. But even after the kiss, not much had changed. You talked, laughed, and ate dinner together, but he was still closed off. And at times it felt like he opened up himself to you only when it suited him and his interest. No, he was just more introverted than most. So you walked out of your room in a hurry, quickly knocking on the door that led to the room Azriel worked in. He was surrounded by paperwork. You had never stepped foot here, so the shared curiosity made you stop.

"Did something happen?", Azriel's voice sounded slightly frustrated, but now that his eyes were on you, you had no choice but to go on with your plan. "I think I'm falling for you," you blurted out quickly. Azriel lowered his inked pen onto the table and asked, "Falling for me?" You quickly nodded your head, waiting for him to say something, but his face broke out in a smile that made your heart flutter slightly. "Well, I don't think it's something that should or could happen", those words stung you, and if not that, then how he picked up a piece of paper with you still there and returned to the work he was doing. You knew that you didn't need to say anything and that he wasn't going to care, but you still muttered, "Right, right, of course," before turning around and walking away, quickly wiping away the tears as you headed towards your room. Maybe they were right after all you were not going to find love in the spymaster's embrace.

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All acotar writing: @brekkershadowsinger @cityofidek @baebeepeach @lucyysthings @hideing @urfavbrunettebish @historygeekqueen @marina468

#azriel x reader #rhys x reader #cassian x reader #acotar imagine #azriel x you #acotar x reader

[elvendria]

Clean (formerly Love is a Battlefield)

AU Eddie Munson x Fem!Reader

Part Three

(i was planning out the story and realised the name no longer suited, so here we are)

Summary:

You return to Hawkins after a few years in the middle of the night during the summer with your 4-year-old sister in tow, thinking the two of you could fly under the radar and settle in at Forest Hills Trailer Park. You thought you could get by without bumping into your old enemy, Eddie Munson, the town freak.

But you weren't always enemies, in fact, there was a time when you two were closer than anything.

Eddie dreams of making it big, you just dream of making it out of here alive.

\\enemies - lovers//

((Warning I'm not from the US, so bare with me when it comes to states and such))

tw: smut 18+ oral (m receiving) 18+ MINORS DNI or I will be busting kneecaps, E.D, physical abuse, child abuse, runaways, the reader Joyce's ex-step-niece, Will and Johnathan's cousin, Joyce is Queen, Wayne is King, slow burn, gambling addictions, the reader is 20 and Eddie is 21, Chrissy is the villain but we stan Grace. Reader has a small scar on her lower torso. underage drinking, allusions to smut, no details of smut for obvious reasons, eventual smut in upcoming chapters,

Word Count: 5226K

part one part two part three part four

Days turned into weeks, and soon it was the middle of July, and still even then, his touch lingered on your lips. It was as soft as you'd remembered. He still tasted like mountain dew and toothpaste, only now with the added taste of cigarettes.

It made your chest lurch at the memory.

Are you sure?

Are you sure?

Are you sure?

Those words echoed in your mind late at night, the way his eyes widened, red-rimmed from being told the news. The feel of his hands on yours, both of you centimetres from crossing the line of no return.

-flashback to sophomore year-

You'd just been told you were moving across the country, and your heart currently resided in your feet. You were 16 but you were convinced your life was over. Everyone you knew, everyone you loved, was here. Your home was Hawkins, and despite your wishes to leave, you never wanted to leave like this.

You wanted to leave with your best friend, the guy you'd been crushing on since you met him. Eddie Munson, your guy, is the only person who saw you for you. Who knew you better than you knw yourself. And now you were expected to leave him behind with the promise that you'd fucking write every week.

And that's how you ended up sitting on his bed and staring at his posters, your hands wringing together in your lap. He was silent on the other side of the room, processing your words..

"So this is it." You could tell he was doing his best to maintain composure and to be strong for you, which was fruitless because you were already a mess. You just needed your best friend to hold you and hug you and tell you it would be okay.

"I guess that deal we made in freshman year is null and void now." You tried to lighten the mood, but it was near impossible, because your predicament hung like a heavy cloud in the room, threatening to open and rain down on everyone beneath it.

It took him a while to remember the deal, or at least he let on that it took him a while. The truth was that it was all he ever thought about. He plagued him late at night, and whenever he saw you smile. Hell, it was on a loop in his mind whenever he saw you in general, he just didn't think it was something you'd remembered making.

It had been your first high school party, Eddie had snuck you both in the spring of your freshman year, and you'd gotten quite drunk. Jason Carver had tried to kiss you but your fist had given him the message, and so he stopped. Besides that, the party was uneventful. Eddie stayed sober to make sure you'd get home okay, but he told you it was because he didn't like any of the alcohol there.

"Promise me we'll be each other's firsts, okay?" You had murmured out, stumbling into his arms. He knew you were gonna be killed if you went home this way, he wasn't blind to your bruises.

"Firsts? First what?" He didn't register it until moments later, too focused on how pretty you looked in the moonlight. Like something, someone, from a fairy tale. You were gorgeous, effortlessly so. He didn't know why you didn't see it. "Oh... sure, I mean it's not like I'm gonna find anyone else."

You continued to mumble as he led you back to the trailer park. He so badly wanted to kiss you at this moment, the stars the only witnesses, but he wasn't a creep, and he wasn't going to try something if he felt you wouldn't remember or worse, didn't want it.

Now fast forward a year later, and he's sitting, staring at you like you'd just told him you knew about his best-kept secret. "You... You remember? You were so drunk, I thought-"

"No matter how much I drank that night, I don't think I'd ever forget asking you to... well you know." You didn't want to carry on saying it, afraid that if you do he'll laugh, tell you that you're crazy or stupid. You were so caught up in feeling this way, in being in your own head, that you didn't realise he'd moved closer to you until suddenly his hands were on yours, his body between your knees.

"What... What if it wasn't null and void. What if we still did it? Only if you want to of course..." He wanted to tell her how beautiful you were. You'd known each other since they were kids, and in his eyes, you'd only gotten more beautiful with each passing second. Every moment with you was a moment he used to study the colours in your eyes, counting the small freckles on your arms. He knew you better than you knew yourself. He knew what you were capable of, of all your potential.

He'd always known you were more than Hawkins, more than the parents that would drag you down and squash your dreams in a heartbeat. He'd always known that if your heart ever broke, he'd replace it with his own in a second. He'd always known it was yours, ever since he'd seen you that first time.

You didn't know what to say. Your eyes were trained on his, and his eyes burned with something... unrecognisable. Something that made you feel warm. All it took was a nod of your head, and slowly he moved you onto the bed, ridding you both of your clothes.

His lips ghosted over your own, taking your breath in heavy pants, his arms steady by your head

And then he spoke those words. The ones that haunted you still. Those three small words would run through your mind late at night.

"Are you sure?"

"Are you sure?"

"Are you sure?"

You sometimes wondered what your life would be like if you changed your mind. If you told him you weren't sure. But late at night, when your mind won't turn off, all you can picture is his alabaster skin, his hands on you, holding you, cradling you, caring for you. The feel of his lips on yours. He tasted the same, it almost made you mad. Your skin still tingled from where he touched you, just like it had before. It almost made you scream.

Almost.

All these things, the small details that should irritate you, instead warmed you. Knowing he had changed in appearance only, something about that made you feel... some way as you stocked the shelves at work. But you couldn't, he was dating that overly preppy girl who would come around all the time. He was taken, spoken for, and in love with a girl who looked nothing like you. Pushing your thoughts and feelings aside, you gathered up your things as your shift ended.

You were due to collect your car from the garage of Waynes' friend. You hadn't spoken with him, but Wayne promised he was a good guy, best in Hawkins. And you trusted Wayne. He'd told you it was just a ten-minute walk from your job, which you were grateful for. As much as you'd come to like Simon, there were only so many times you could listen to him complain about the kids who delayed him in the mornings.

Stepping off the bus, you let out a long sigh, tired from the long day. All you were looking forward to was getting home so you could curl up on the couch with Willow, watching a film you let her pick out from Family Video. The guy from behind the counter was familiar, but you just couldn't place him.

Trudging along the street, feet barely lifting off the ground, you were sure Wayne had gotten it wrong and in fact, the garage was ten miles, not ten minutes.

As you walked you made a mental note of what you had to do once you got your car back. Laundry was top of the list, the downside of getting a trailer so soon and on such short notice is that you had no washer or dryer, leaving you to rely solely on the laundromat in town.

Trekking into town had been a nuisance, especially lugging the clothes to and from the laundromat. You were thinking of investing in a washboard and going all 1800s, but you knew that you wouldn't be able to keep up with the mountain of washing, or the pain it would cause your arms. Thankfully Wayne said you could start using his after mentioning that idea to him, so you didn't have to worry about it anymore after this load.

The garage was a rusty building, looking like it would collapse with one good gust of wind. But Wayne said that the guy working on your car was the best, although when you stepped inside you began questioning his judgement for the first time in your life.

Your car sat in the middle of the room, with no mechanic in sight. Loud banging could be heard, drilling and hammering, metal clanking off metal echoed and bounced around the room. You looked around and felt slightly exposed, worried the guy servicing the car would be a creep.

Due to the heat, you had opted for an off-the-shoulders top crop top and shorts, and if Greg's comments were anything to go by, you were showing a lot of skin.

"I'm uh... I'm here to pick up my car?" Your voice was meek, tiny and quiet as you attempted to call out, although thankfully someone heard you because you could hear footsteps coming towards you.

"Yeah, no problem, which one is i- Oh, it's you." He stood there, white muscle shirt clinging to his body and suddenly you forgot how to breathe. You weren't sure how you hadn't noticed it before, but despite his slender frame, he was actually pretty buff. Combined with sweat from working in the heat all day, every crease and dip and curve became all that more defined. You felt your mouth go dry as your core goes wet.

What were you supposed to do, he was standing there looking like someone out of a Playgirl magazine. a sweaty oily rag tossed over his shoulder and a grease smudge on his cheek.

His dark hair was a mess of loose curls, only made worse by his hand running through them, fussing with it and pushing it back. The majority of it was tied back in a bun, but there were a few stray pieces that framed his face, now sticking to it.

You stared at him for a few seconds without speaking, your mind blank. You were at a loss for words, which was very rare when it came to him. Most of the time you were cursing him from a height, or calling him every name under the sun before Willow even woke up in the morning. Just as you expected though, it didn't take long for you to find it again.

"Wait, you're looking after my car?" You were slightly annoyed, you had hoped to never run into him again if possible. You were also annoyed with Wayne, knowing without a doubt he had set this up. Had Eddie asked him too? Had Eddie done something to your car so you'd have to go to him? Okay, that may have been a stretch, but it couldn't be ruled out.

He looked at the ground, shuffling his shoes on the concrete and twisting his rings. You could feel his smirk before you could see it. That same damn smirk that used to make you weak in the knees. Turns out that some things never change. He crossed his arms over his chest, turning his head up to look at you like he was some kind of winner in this situation. Like he knew something you didn't. "This is the car I was assigned, why, is that a problem?" He looked down at your shoes and back up at you, eyes raking across your body and taking slightly longer to stare at your chest. Back in Nevada, you would have slapped a boy for doing that, but with Eddie, you felt... alright about it? You mimicked his stance, arms crossed under your chest, unknowingly pushing them up more.

"Shouldn't be, as long as you actually work on it and don't, you know, throw yourself at it with no warning." You glared daggers into him, letting him know exactly what you thought of his actions a few weeks ago. You would never admit you liked it. No, you would go to the grave with that secret.

You watched as his face fell, his hand coming up to rub the back of his neck as he looked... almost ashamed. Strangely, it made your heart sink. Did he regret it? Did he hate it? Did he hate that it was you? Maybe he thought it was going to feel different, maybe it wasn't the same for him as it was for you.

You couldn't take this anymore, you could feel tears brimming your eyes for some stupid reason and just needed to leave. You shouldn't care, he clearly didn't. "Look, just tell me how much I owe you and I'll be on my way." You didn't know why you were upset, you had filled your quota of tears over him in the months that followed after your last letter.

The letter where you told him to call you. That you had something you needed to tell him and that it didn't feel right to put it in a letter.

The letter he never responded to. The letter he never heeded. The letter that was the last time you spoke to him. You were terrified, going through a truly horrific time in your life and needing the man you loved, only for him to blank you.

"You, you don't owe me anything. It's um... it's on the house." He looked down at you with soft eyes. It hurt, the way he looked at you like an injured dove, pitying you.

"No, no I'm not taking your handouts, I'm paying for the service." You fumbled for your wallet in your bookbag, searching for it and getting irritated when you couldn't find it.

"Hey no, look I'm ser-" He began to try and get you to stop, trying to get your hands from your bag.

"So am I Eddie, I'm not going to be in debt to you." You pulled out the wallet finally, pushing a few dollar bills into his chest.

"Take the money, Eddie." You slammed it into his chest again and again, positively seething at his refusal. "I'm serious take the-"

He'd had enough. Clearly, words weren't getting through to you so he did the only thing he could think of. Grabbing your hands as they connected to his chest, he held your wrists, pinning you to a wall with the hands above your head, the cash falling from your fingers.

"Jesus Christ, do you ever shut up.'' His voice was dark, his forehead creased and his brows drawn together. He looked mad, annoyed almost, but not in a way you'd seen before. And you'd seen Eddie mad before.

You wrestled against his hold, not as hard as you could have. Secretly you didn't want to leave, you didn't want him to let go.

"Nice to see you're still as feisty as ever. At least that hasn't changed." He leaned in, speaking so close to you that his breath fanned your face. "God, I want to kiss you so bad right now." His eyes were fixed on your now trembling lips.

You don't know what came over you, you felt your eyes widen, breath catching in your throat, and suddenly... you got a hand free.

You should have pushed him, you should have stood your ground. But you didn't. Instead, you grabbed the back of his neck, pulling his lips to yours in a heated moment of passion.

A surprised noise came from him, his hands dropping your own before recognition overcame him, and he was back in the moment, drowning in you. God what a way to die. But before he moved in further, he pulled back away and looked at you, the three words hanging in the air.

Are you sure?

Your delicate fingers latched into his hair before you had a chance to register it all, a hunger burning inside of you that had lay dormant for four years. A hunger that was only satiated by his lips on yours, his tongue exploring your mouth as a soft moan left you.

"You taste better than before, how the fuck do you taste better than before?" He spoke with an almost disbelief. You weren't sure what he meant, but then again you kind of did. Eddie used to taste like toothpaste and the knockoff cola Wayne would buy from the dollar store, but now... now he tasted of weed and cigarettes. The mint and cola were still there, buried in the back, but overall it was all him, it was all. Undeniably, unbelievably him.

He hummed against your lips, swiping his tongue along your lower one. "Mm, is that chapstick? Tastes nice." He swiftly devoured you again, and before you knew it, you're hands were on his waist, tugging his white shirt out of his jeans.

"Someone's hasty, at least buy a guy dinner first." He spoke mockingly, teasingly, as his lips devoured your own.

"Now who's the one who can't shut up?" As you said that, you felt his hand sneak up to your throat, holding you back to the wall in a show of desperation, eyes boring into yours. He didn't say a word, just letting you sink into the sticky pools of his eyes, allowing you to get stuck forever.

"You better watch that fucking mouth of yours." His voice held a mocking seriousness but was dark enough to make you inhale sharply.

In this moment, right now, you weren't in a mechanics shop, hell you weren't even in Hawkins. You were somewhere else entirely, some universe where nothing had ever happened. A world where your needy kisses, your flustered movements along his body held no deeper meaning.

Dipping his head, he kissed along a piece of your neck that makes your knees buckle beneath you. His hands found your elbows, holding you up and caging you in. You could feel his teeth grazing your skin, soft sounds spilling from you, your voice full of eagerness. You were a mess, a puddle in his hands.

You couldn't take it anymore. Once you found your feet, you pulled him off of you, a look of shock and worry appearing on his face. That was quickly wiped off when you pushed him back against your car, his hands splayed behind him on the door as you dropped to your knees.

You didn't know why you hadn't stopped yet, you were like a woman possessed. You knew you shouldn't do this, that this time of your life was meant to stay in the past, and you shouldn't fall back into old routines of pining for him. And yet all you wanted was to feel him. Feel his pulsing skin in your hands, feel each tremor and twitch and curve of his body against yours.

You looked up at him with serious yet comforting eyes. "Do you want this?" All he had to do was say the word, and she'd get up and walk away.

God she really didn't want him to say the word.

"Wha- what are you talking abou-" You cut him off as you put your hand on his denim-clad thigh. You were nervous. You'd never been with anyone apart from him. Things had gotten in the way. You knew he'd been with others, hell you saw girls leave his trailer just two days ago, and you had to admit it hurt like hell to see them.

"Do. You. Want. This." You spoke matter of factly, eyes wide and stern. Your heart felt like it was beating 100 miles a minute, your palms sweaty and your stomach in knots. You wanted this so bad, but you didn't know what it would mean if you went through with it. You pushed that thought to the back of your mind, your eagerness to feel him winning you over.

"Ye-Yes... I want this... I want you..." He spoke quietly, under his breath so you wouldn't hear the last part. "I've wanted you."

You nodded your head, looking back at his jeans where you saw the fabric strain a little. Hooking your fingers into his belt loops, you popped the button before pulling them down, his boxers following suit. Before you had a chance to react, his large leaking cock made a soft thump against his stomach.

Big didn't begin to describe it. Sure you'd felt it last time, but you never really had a chance to see it, nerves overcoming the both of you to the point that you just wanted it done and over with. Now, however, you wanted to savour it, you wanted to take your time.

He was thick too, he had to have grown because there was no way that it would have fit before. You must have been staring for a while because you heard a dark chuckle come from above you, his hand coming down to stroke your cheek, gripping your chin.

 "What are you looking at?" His thumb brushed your bottom lip, fiddling with it. "Go on, you can tell me. Used to be able to tell me anything."

You took a breath, reaching a tentative hand out to touch his skin. "You... I'm looking at you..." You were truly speechless, unable to say much, your mouth watering at the sight of him. Gently, you went to touch his cock. You had his permission, you knew he wanted this just as much as you did, and soon that mind-fogging monster returned to cloud your judgement.

He groaned out as you wrapped your hand around him, his tip a fiery red as it presented to you. You stroked his shaft, soft and tenderly, eyes fixed on it. You got the same feeling as when you'd run the mile in high school, desperately thirsty.

Slowly, you slide just the tip of your tongue up the underside of his shaft, so light he can barely feel it - it's mostly just the sensation of your breath. You can sense his cock twitching, and feel it pulse in your hand.

Once you reach the head, you slide your lips over it ... just the head ... sucking it in, swirling your tongue around it. you can hear his breath catch as you suck a little harder.

"Shit babygirl, fuck..." His breath was heavy, chest heaving as he looked down at you, the way you rotated your hand along his shaft, suckling away at his head. "S'good, S'so good."

You were in a haze, you don't know what came over you, but you liked seeing him this way. Wanting you, needing you, calling you that name. You moaned as you heard it, feeling the vibrations in your hand as you took him in a bit more.

You tapped his cock on your tongue a few times, before placing sloppy wet kisses along the sides of him, moving lower and lower to his base. As you got to the bottom, you looked up at him with innocent, angelic, doe eyes, and sucked his balls into your mouth as you pumped his shaft.

"Holy shit... fuck yo-you're going to kill me, gonna drain my soul right out of my fucking balls baby." He was ashamed to admit how close he was. The feel of your warm wet mouth combined with the lingering taste of you was sending him into overdrive. "Fuck... come on, be a good girl and suck my cock for me."

You said nothing, you just tenderly licked his balls while warming them up with your mouth. You looked up and saw him, the way his body was tensing, the muscles in his hips contracting slightly as he bit his bottom lip, indicating to you that he was desperate not to cum yet.

You grinned, before removing your mouth from his balls and without a second's warning, you shoved his length deep into your mouth. You had returned to his cock, sucking like a slut in heat. You wished you could deepthroat him, but the burn in the back of your mouth where you'd managed to get him to was almost too much.

"Shit shit shit... fuck I love your mouth, never had one like it, baby." He was almost jealous. No scratch that, he was insanely jealous. There was no way you'd gotten this good at sucking someone off without any practice. No way. He pushed that image aside though, choosing to live in the moment.

As you bobbed your head, hollowing your cheeks around him, you almost dared him to cum, begged even. You wanted to know how it tasted, wanted to feel that sweet nectar running down your throat. Your eyes said as much, a pleasing look as tears stung the corners of them.

"S'good for me, oh...fuck...I'm gonna come soon, gonna cum down all in your mouth aren't I?"

Your pace and intensity grew with each movement up and down his shaft, making loud slurping and sucking sounds with your mouth, and tongue running along his underside. His cock was throbbing, you could feel it shaking in your mouth. You could see it now, the white-hot cum filling up your mouth, dribbling from your lips.

No sooner had you thought that than your cheeks were filled with him, the salty taste of him enveloping your senses. As you stared up at him, his eyes full of curiosity as if pondering your next move, you swallowed it all, licking your lips to clean up any that spilt.

You could tell he wasn't expecting that, because his mouth hung open a little as he caught his breath, chest heaving up and down as he tried to recover. "Jesus Christ, I didn't think you were gonna-" He was fastening up his jeans when he heard the click-clacking of a familiar pair of heels.

You however weren't familiar with the sound, yet you threw yourself together as fast as possible. The last thing you wanted was rumours spreading and having attention drawn to you. You grabbed a piece of blue tissue paper, cleaning off your spit just in time for whoever it was to come in.

"Hiya baby!"

Baby? Who the fuck was calling him baby? Turning around to face the person, your heart stopped. Standing before you was none other than Chrissy Cunningham. She'd been a star athlete when you were in middle school and from the looks of things that hadn't changed. You shot Eddie a look of confusion as she sauntered in, jacket draped over her arm.

"Oh... Chris, I didn't think you'd show up at my job." He wished she'd get the message that a casual fuck doesn't mean they're together. She was waltzing in here and ruining his chance of happiness.

"Oh course I'd show up here, can't miss seeing my hunky man in action." She hadn't even bothered to notice the other person in the room, she was always so used to having them try to talk to her first that when no one but Eddie spoke to her, she simply assumed they didn't exist. Although that was hard to do when those idiotic nonexistent people made noises like coughing. Or breathing.

You had cleared your throat, an apparent side effect of having given a taken man a blowjob, when the redheaded devil shot you daggers. Sweet, sickly daggers that pierced your skin with smiles. "Oh I'm sorry, I didn't see you there, and you are?"

It hurt almost. Almost. Chrissy had made your life hell when you were in school together, something you didn't like to talk about given that she was not one but two grades below you. You remember when you got your period, having bled through your white jeans, and she tauntingly called you Bloody Mary until you left.

That was the same day Eddie had given you his prised jacket to cover yourself till you got home. The same jacket that he never took back. The same jacket that you gave to Willow that's way too big for her.

And now here she was, calling Eddie her man and acting like she didn't remember you. It stung, it made you feel belittled, and irrelevant. You felt invalidated by her response.

"I'm just here to get my car." As you spoke, you could feel the once passionate bond between you and Eddie splinter like glass before cracking into fragments. He must have felt it too, because he turned to look at her, taking her by the elbow to guide her from the garage.

"Look Chrissy I really don't have time to feed into this right now, I have work to do." He spoke with her quietly, when they reached the entrance, and just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, she kissed him.

And he kissed her back.

You felt your gut sink to the floor as you watched them exchange goodbyes as she left. You don't know why you felt this way, you knew he was sleeping around, you just didn't know he was also in a committed relationship. One thing you did know for certain, was you weren't about to be another one of his side pieces for him to call up in the middle of the night looking for a piece of ass.

"Sorry about that, I wasn't expecting her to be here. She normally never stops by." He walked over to the table, grabbing your keys to hand them to you. "So, next time you really need to let me go do-"

"There won't be a next time." You snatched your keys, fiddling with the lock on your car. You could sense him, the way his body stiffened at your words.

"What do you mean? bunny she means nothing!" He held out his hands in defence but it was useless, you saw the way she looked at him, how in love she was. You even saw with your own two eyes. If it meant nothing, he wouldn't have kissed back.

"I mean, there won't be a next time because this was a mistake, and from now on I think we should only see each other when I'm getting Willow from Wayne in the evenings." Finally finding the key, you get the door open. You slide in and turn it on, the sweet sound of the engine filling your ears.

"And stop calling me Bunny, you lost that privilege when you never called me." Before he had a moment to register your words, you were gone, your body drained of all its energy, sucked dry from you as if he was some sort of... energy vampire or something. Overall you had to put this down as one of the worst days of your life.

And you still didn't get to do the laundry.

part one part two part three

@vintagehellfire @1paire2vans @introvertedmouse

@ms1oftheboys @ashlynnkennedy @poisonedluv @302rocks @micheledawn1975 @corrodedcoffincumslut @f-cklife @chloe-6123 @hellfirexwhore @caseyqdilla @alyisdead @winchester-angel @sunflowerabyss @badluckgirl @blackb4ts @tlclick73 @eddiemunsonsgf2

#eddie munson stranger things #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson x you #eddie stranger things #eddie the freak munson #eddie x reader #eddie x y/n #eddie munson #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson fic #eddie #enemies to lovers #eddie fluff #eddie munson comfort #eddie munson angst #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x fem reader #eddie munson imagines #eddie munson imagine #reader x eddie munson #eddie smut #boyfriend eddie munson #eddie headcanons #eddie munson fluff #eddie x fem!reader #eddie munson soulmate au #eddie munson series #eddie munson st4 #eddie munson headcanon #eddie munson headcanons

[mendessi]

speak now | part five

pairing: fem!reader x pre-outbreak!joel

summary: joel saves you from the biggest mistake of your life

(this will end up being a multi-part story)

word count: 2.8k

warnings: smut probably, pre-outbreak, mentions of marriage, based off speak now by taylor swift, mentions of domestic abuse, joel is 26 & reader is 21, mentions of cheating, kind of slow burn, brief mention of death, angst, will add more as i think of them, not proofread

this chapter: kind of domestic joel at the very end

part one | part two | part three | part four | part five

minors dni

"Do you have everything together?" Joel asked Tommy as he entered the hotel room.

"Yeah, all packed." He said.

"What time do you wanna head out tomorrow?"

Tommy hesitated and it came out as more of a question, "Two?"

"Two? We won't get to Austin til after midnight if we leave at two. I already told the Adler's we'd stay for dinner after getting Sarah." Joel almost raised his voice, but refrained. Tommy understood why he had been so touchy recently and gave him a pass because of it. He had lost you the only person he ever really loved.

"I asked around and she's getting married at two." Tommy told him, hoping Joel would pick up the rest.

"I'm not watching her get married." Joel finally snapped and then put his head in his hands muttering an apology to his brother.

"Not watch... Stop." Tommy said. "You can't let her get married to that man, Joel. Statistics don't lie and she will not survive that relationship."

"That's not my problem." The words stung coming off his tongue and it almost made him physically sick, "She doesn't love me and I don't love her. Just some summer fling."

"That's a lie and you know it." Tommy took a seat in the chair across from the bed. "Joel, you were like a love sick puppy following her around these last few weeks. Never in my life have I seen you so infatuated with somebody, let alone someone you just met."

"I know." Joel sighed. "I know. That's why it's hell, Tommy. Losing her to someone like him. It scares me thinkin what she'll go through. It makes my chest hurt like I can't breathe knowin that we'll be gone tomorrow and she'll just be stuck with him for the rest of her life. It fuckin hurts, Tommy."

"So don't let her get married tomorrow." Tommy told him.

"She doesn't want me." Joel shook his head and looked at the ground.

"I'm gonna tell you somethin, Joel." Tommy inhaled a short breath and then looked up at his devastated brother in front of him.

The next morning your annoying mother-in-law woke you up barely as the sun was rising, talking about how you had hair and makeup appointments to get to and that you needed to eat breakfast before doing so.

It felt like you were in your own personal hell being dragged around all morning by her. Barely touching your breakfast, the idea that you'd be married come this afternoon making you nauseous. If only this woman knew how horrible her son was.

People were in and out of your house all morning, people you didn't know. Everyone invited you didn't know because they were all his friends and family. You only had the friends you worked with and they were hardly friends, you certainly weren't close enough to invite them to your wedding.

The day was beautiful at least. You almost wished it had been storming so it would be called off all together and would deny your betrothal a bit longer. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and for the first time all summer, the temperatures weren't scorching hot. It was how you always imagined the day to be when you dreamed about your wedding.

Staring in the mirror, you found it easy to dissociate from the reality that was currently setting in. People touched your face and your hair and even your nails despite having them done just the day before. You thought of Joel and how he was probably halfway home to his daughter, leaving any thoughts and memories of you behind in Austin. Now you'd get to live with every single piece of himself that he left behind because you lived here.

"Are you not happy?" Your fiance's mother asked.

"I'm great." You forced your best smile and looked at her as she watched what the hair stylist was doing.

"He told me." She said to you.

"He told you?" Your heart sunk and you tried to hide any surprise you might've shown at the question.

"That you had another man in the house while he was away."

"Yes, I did." You didn't bother lying. Even if you did, she wouldn't believe you.

"Did you love him?" She asked.

"More than anyone I've loved before."

"I was in your position once." She said. "When I married his dad. I didn't want to but I did it because it was a woman's only way of survival back then: marrying into wealth. I loved somebody else but he couldn't give me what I needed."

You sat there speechless that she was opening up to you. Over the three years of you knowing her, you never talked so personally. It was refreshing to say the least than her regular nonsense about things that simply didn't matter to you.

"I'm sympathetic for you. I know what it's like to be in your position. I won't pretend my son is perfect but neither were we as parents so perhaps that's our own fault. Going through with something like this is quite frankly a woman's purpose in life. Doing things we don't want to for the sake of a man's ego." She said to you. "At least you look beautiful doing it."

Her words stung but a part of them felt slightly right. This was your place in the world.

"Did you ever see him again? The one you loved?" You found the courage to ask.

With a shake of her head and a sad smile she said, "No, but if she would've came through those altar doors I would've left with her in an instant."

Tears brimmed your eyes as you looked at yourself in the mirror, your mother-in-law zipping the back of your dress up. You felt hopeful that maybe the two of you would have a healthy relationship after today. There wasn't much you knew about maternal relationships, you didn't have one with your own mother so there was nothing to compare it to, but she seemed empathetic today.

With only five sons and no daughters, experiencing a wedding from her daughter-in-laws perspective was somewhat touching to the old woman. It's always different for mothers and daughters in weddings and in childbirth, there are just certain things to be shared between the two.

Your dress was beautiful, handed down to you from his mother, a gesture you didn't expect. It was simple and that was something you loved. The sleeves were sheer which was a nice touch considering the Texas heat and hung just off your shoulders. The neckline was modestly cut straight across and didn't reveal any cleavage but made your collarbones look nice. The dress flowed effortlessly to the ground, pooling ever so slightly at your feet and instead of white it was a soft cream color. Your hair was pulled into a simple bun, pieces left to frame your face.

You held back tears not wanting to ruin your freshly done make up and wished silently that your dad would be here to walk you down the aisle on what you presumed would be the best day of your life. This wasn't the best day like you imagined. You weren't marrying someone you loved and to be honest this day felt like the last one of your own.

"You look beautiful." His mother said placing her hands on your shoulders. "Come, it's almost time."

Your lead to where the rest of the bridal party is stood outside the altar doors and you hear the music start playing. It bothered you that even your wedding party was assigned by his mother, nobody you knew well. His cousins who were your bridesmaids for the day and his groomsmen who he chose all congratulated you upon your arrival and it made you wonder how his entire family seemed so sweet and he was so awful. But then again, he was sweet at first too.

The music didn't sound like music at all as pair by pair started walking down the aisle, moreso sounding like nails on a chalkboard. His mother snuck back inside to find her seat so it was just you and the wedding planner now who would cue you when to walk. You took multiple deep breaths, each one shakier than the last and stared down at your feet.

"Your turn." The planner said and her and her assistant pulled the large oak doors open to the beautiful altar before you filled with people you barely knew.

You found a steady pace to walk down the aisle falsely returning smiles to those who smiled at you, trying your best to look happy. You imagined your dad had his arm linked with yours and was walking next to you, steadying you from falling. You imagined it was somebody, anybody else standing at the end of the aisle waiting for you. You swallowed the lump in your throat, realizing about halfway down the aisle that you weren't breathing so you reminded yourself to do so.

Once you reached your annoyingly too old for you fiance, you handed your flowers to your maid of honor who you couldn't even remember the name of and took his hands in yours.

"You look ravishing." He said to you, squeezing your hands so hard your knuckles turned white. He had a gleam in his eye like he had won, having you exactly where he wanted you. Joel wasn't coming to the rescue. He had won the prize.

"Let's get this over with." You said quietly as everyone before you returned to sitting.

“This beautiful couple you know and love have invited us to share in this celebration as they affirm their love before us, pledge their faith to one another, and enter into the joys and privileges of marriage." The preacher started and you fought back the tears that were threatening to brim your eyes. You wouldn't let him see you hurt like this.

"If there is anyone present, who can show just cause why these two persons may not be joined in matrimony, speak now or forever hold your peace.”

Your chest tightened as everyone's attention turned towards the sound of the church doors swinging open. Your head turned and it felt like every moment forward happened in slow motion.

Your eyes met Joel's down the aisle standing in the church door frame, looking like a literal angel with the way the sun hugged his figure. Like you always said before, Joel was the sun and he radiated warmth and safety and he was here. He was here to save you.

You looked back to your fiance who had a dumbfounded look spread across his face. Nobody wanted to say anything at all, not understanding who this man was that had just burst through the doors. Your eyes found your fiance's mother who was standing looking between you and Joel and you could've swore she had the tiniest hint of a smile on her lips.

Joel didn't even have to say anything, didn't even have to move for you to drop your fiance's hands. His eyes were hopeful that you'd come with him, he knew you'd come with him but there was still the ounce of doubt that what Tommy had said about your conversation wasn't true. You turned on your heel taking your first step down the stairs just for him to grab your wrist.

"Don't you fucking dare." He said under his breath.

"Now darling, don't cause a scene." You yanked your arm away from him and then picked up the fabric of your dress up just enough so it wouldn't drag as you took off sprinting down the aisle towards Joel, everyone in the audience collectively gasping.

A smile spread across his lips as he held his arms open for you, jumping into them and twirling you around once, pressing his lips to yours. He didn't pull away until you were on the ground and it felt like straight out of a fairytale for you. The moment young you would wait to see in a movie as a child. Joel was the prince and he had saved his princess.

"Let's get out of here." He said taking your hand in his.

Ignoring the screams of your ex fiance as you ran down the steps of the church hand in hand, laughing at how you nearly tripped down the stairs in your dress. This moment was everything to you both.

Joel pulled open the back door of the truck and you both climbed in, Tommy laughing loudly as he pulled off chaotically from the church parking lot.

"I love you. I fucking love you." You said cupping his cheeks and bringing his lips to yours, kissing him with every fiber of fiery passion coursing through your body.

His hands couldn't find one place on your body, just thankful that you were sat safely in front of him, "I love you, baby."

"Where are we going?" You asked through a laugh, as his lips pecked kisses all over your cheeks.

"Home. We're goin home."

ten years later | one year before outbreak day

You sat on the porch watching Sarah play with her younger sister, Savannah, who was born nine short months after you moved to Austin.

"Mom, did you see?!" Sarah laughed as she kicked the soccer ball right past Savannah.

"You gotta dive for it, Sav!" You laughed at the defeated look on her face.

Joel's truck pulled into the driveway and the girls immediately swarmed him and Tommy as soon as they got out of the truck. Tommy immediately began kicking the ball around with the girls, inevitably showing them who was boss. You stood up from the chair and stepped down the porch steps, holding your hands out towards him as he approached you.

"Hi, baby." He grinned down at you kissing you softly. "My shirt again?"

"It's all that fits." You pouted as his hands found their way to your swollen belly. "And barely." You noted how you only had a few buttons done and the rest of the shirt draped open exposing your pregnant belly.

"I love it. How is she?" He asked, brushing his thumb against your skin.

"Good. Any day now." You said standing on your toes to kiss him again. "We missed you."

"Our daughter's a real soccer star, huh?" He asked looking over as Sarah passed the ball around Tommy.

"Oh, she's going for the World Cup one day." You laughed and the two of you walked up to find a seat on the porch. Joel sat in the chair and you sat on his lip, leaning against his chest as his hands rubbed your belly gently.

Not a day passed that you weren't grateful for Joel and your small found family. Everyday reminding you that a found family is bit as beautiful as a born family.

PREV | NEXT ???

maybe ill continue this but post outbreak day

#joel miller x you #joel miller #tlou #tlou hbo #the last of us #joel miller x reader #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller x fem!reader #pedro pascal #joel miller fanfic

[user2772636]

So American

Oh God, it's just not fair of him

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When your french boyfriend loves to tease you about how "american" you are, you just think you should write a song about it.

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Actor!Joseph Descamps x Singer!Reader

Warnings: none but flufffff

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Joseph Descamps wasn't fond of the fact that "the americans" drove on the right side of the road or that the wheel was on the left side of the car. But you grew up here, and he trusts you.

It helped him relax, knowing what you were wearing. His famous brown leather jacket with an "I ♡ Paris" shirt on the inside. You looked like a tourist in his country, but he guesses you look "trendy" here.

He places his hand on your thigh, and it's warm enough to make you shiver in relaxation.

To you, Joseph Descamps was the dream boyfriend. He's pretty, tall, smart, funny, fashionable, and even more. What you liked most was his accent and the way he speaks his mother tongue. He's almost too perfect, like a man you'd only find in poems.

Every time you cracked a joke, he'd laugh uncontrollably. He understood every one of them, clinging on the words like a ladder.

When he saw an american flag in the back of your car that you hadn't taken out since the fourth of july, he teased you about being so american. You could only roll your eyes, planning on kissing those teasing lips later.

Every time you kissed, it felt like so many emotions filled you up, but you absorbed it in every type of way. It felt so nice, it felt so good. He made you feel like this and only him.

Being honest to yourself, you'd marry the man. Sure, you're young, and sure you've only been together for a year, but you love him, and he loves you.

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You get a call from your producer and long-time best friend, asking if you were free over the week, having come up with an idea for a single.

"Well, I think I do. You know how I've been with Joseph these past few months since my break? Well, he's just so perfect. I mean his fluffy hair, his pretty eyes, his pretty pink lips, and his accent, God, his accent. He's so well read and so well dressed and he-"

"Hun, you're rambling again." Fuck. This is the 5th time.

"Sorry."

Plus, every time you lie on your bed, planning on taking a nap, it's so hard to do when he's literally right beside you, available for kissing and cuddling and loving. You're so in love with the boy you sacrificed your beauty sleep. Imagine that.

Okay, so this might be a bit much a bit too soon. But if love ever came up, he'd be the first in my mind. I haven't said I love you yet, and he hasn't either, but I know deep inside me I do. I really fucking do.

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"Joseph?" He tilts his head up from his paperback, raising his brows.

"Yes, mon ange?" He scoots a bit closer, bringing his arm around my shoulder.

I smile to myself, thinking of a game. "Think of a number."

He smiles back, this game all too familiar for him. "Okay." He pauses. "1, 2, 3..."

"6."

"I love you." I whisper, looking into his eyes from below.

He only stares, lips slowly turning up into a smile.

"I love you, too." He pauses again.

"Je t'aime, mon ange. Je ne peux pas respirer sans toi. Chaque fois que nous sommes séparés, tu es toujours dans mon esprit. Je t'aime, je t'aime, je t'aime." He kisses my lips after every I love you, and my breath stumbles at his confession.

"I don't understand what you're saying!" I laugh, kissing him back on occasion.

"Good." Another kiss. "It's too much for now. Just know I love you." The next kiss lasted longer. It was gentle, it was hungry, it was love.

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When "So American" came out, it hit the charts. Everyone loved it, and everyone supported it.

That's when they started to get the idea you, famous pop singer Y/N L/N, was dating famous french actor, Joseph Descamps.

Well, we'll see how long we can keep it from them.

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2 in a row?!?!??! So crazy rn. Its literally 2 am here and im sweating balls over the summer heat. This is hella short sorry but i wanted this so bad.

#joseph descamps #joseph descamps x reader #mixte1963 #fame au #singer #actor #secret relationship #so american #olivia rodrigo #french men #fluff

[sissylittlefeather]

Anybody else love Tulsa McLean?

Home Sweet Oklahoma

A/N: This is a one-shot featuring one of my favorite Elvis movie characters from his 1960 movie GI Blues. I loooooove Tulsa and GI Blues for lots of reasons, but one of them is because I was born and raised in Oklahoma. I just couldn't help myself 😂. (Also please forgive any inaccuracies in my German, the geography, the time period, the military, etc. I did my best here.)

Warnings: 18+ minors DNI, masturbation (male), kissing, cussing, fingering, oral sex (f receiving), p in v sex, unprotected sex, and I think that's about it. It's pretty fluffy.

Word count: 6.3kish (I know it's long, but the backstory is important and it's a slow burn...)

When your father was transferred to Germany in 1956, the last thing you wanted to do was leave the states. You were just about to graduate from high school, so you argued and begged to be left behind. Of course, without a wedding ring on your finger, your father wasn't letting you live anywhere but where he was.

You never dreamed you'd love it here so much. Now, you've been here for four years and you've built a pretty good life. Still, sometimes you missed being back home. Not that you'd ever really had a place to call "home". Being a military brat wasn't easy and you'd never lived anywhere longer than 4 years at a time. Most places you only stayed 2, except for the stint in Colorado where your younger brother was born and the stint in Oklahoma where the twins were born. The time in Oklahoma was particularly memorable for you. You started 5th grade there and stayed until the summer before 9th grade. You were actually there long enough to make some good friends and experience your first dabbling in love. It was nothing serious, of course, but you'd never forget how he kissed you behind the swings at the park near your house. When you moved to North Carolina that summer, you were devastated.

Still, that was a long time ago, and living in Germany had changed you. You were a grown woman now, complete with a job singing in a night club. Your dad didn't love it, but being 22, you were more free to do as you pleased. And you typically did exactly that.

******

Tulsa, Cookie, and Rick were at the train station preparing for their transfer to Frankfurt. When they met the soldiers who just came from there, the first thing they wanted to know about was the girls. Where were the prettiest ones and what were they like? Rick was only concerned about one girl, Marla, who he had met and fallen in love with a year ago. Tulsa was ready to meet new ones and Cookie was along with him for the ride.

"There's only one dame to avoid." Turk warned.

"Avoid? That sounds like a challenge to me." Tulsa joked, his crooked smirk splayed across his face. He was the perfect combination of sexy and cute and he knew it. Girls didn't typically say no to him.

"You say that, but this dame is just mean. She's prettier than sin, but no man can get close to her. I'm telling you, don't waste your time."

"Well, now I'm really intrigued. Where do I find her?" Turk rolled his eyes at Tulsa's cockiness.

"She sings at the Cafe Amerikanisch."

"Amerikanisch? Is she--"

"American? Yes." Tulsa's eyes lit up. Picking up frauleins in a GI uniform was easy. A girl from back home would present a challenge worthy of his effort.

"Well, we'll see if I can't melt this ice queen." He looked at Cookie and wiggled his eyebrows. Turk scoffed. There was a whistle and everyone moved to board the train. As they walked away, Turk called out to Tulsa.

"Good luck! Her name is y/n!"

******

The Cafe Amerikanisch is owned by an American expat and is intended to serve as a haven for homesick soldiers and other Americans living and working in Germany. As an American singer, and a pretty good looking one at that, you are a perfect act for this particular club.

Tonight is a pretty normal Saturday for you as you sit in your dressing room waiting for it to be time for you to go on stage. Your shiny red dress is form-fitting with a dangerously high slit, but your legs are your best feature, so it doesn't bother you much. There's a knock on your door and someone lets you know you've got two minutes. You slip on your black heels and long black gloves and stand up, adjusting your hair in the mirror. The last thing you do is blow yourself a red-lipstick kiss for good luck and then make your way to the stage.

The band begins and you do your normal set, singing and flirting with the audience. You've just started your last song, a jazzy version of Dream a Little Dream of Me by Ella Fitzgerald, when you notice a group of American GIs come in and stand in the corner watching you. It's too dark for you to really see them, but your stomach drops and you have to actively stop yourself from rolling your eyes. Great, now you'll have to deal with them tonight.

You've learned from experience that the soldiers usually come in with one thing on their mind. For some reason, you seem to represent some kind of prize for them to win. You gave in once early in your career and fell in love head over heels just for him to disappear several months later. Since then, you've avoided these men like the plague and turned down, quite aggressively, every advance from one of them. It sounds arrogant to assume they're there for you, but it just always seems to be true. You don't intend on calling their bluff tonight or ever, really.

Seeing them standing in the corner sends up your defenses and you start to come up with reasons to go directly home after you finish singing. Finally, your set is done and you bow, smiling to the crowd, waving and blowing kisses. You head off the stage to your dressing room to change and get out of here. You're a little annoyed because you were hoping to stay and have a few drinks with some of the other girls in the show, but now you'll have to run home. Once you're back in your navy blue and white dress, you grab your coat and purse and make an attempt to leave. Several of the other girls stop you before you can get to the door, though, and you chat with them for a bit.

"Please get a drink with us, y/n!"

"No, I really need to go. I'm so tired."

"Just one? You always run out of here so quick."

"Alright, one drink. And then I have to go."

You let them lead you to a table, keeping your eyes on the group of GIs, waiting for them to try to approach you. You accidentally make eye contact with one of them and a bolt of recognition hits you. Why does he seem so familiar? No matter. You can ignore him, and his sweet blue eyes and perfect hair, the same way you've ignored all the others.

They stay put where they are, watching you, until after you get your drink. You're starting to think that maybe they'll leave you alone when you notice them making their way towards you. You down your drink in three gulps and say a quick goodbye to the girls. You stand up and almost run smack into the one with the blue eyes.

Between the alcohol and standing up so fast, you're a little dizzy and almost running into him knocks you off balance. He catches you with both hands on your upper arms before you fall.

"Whoa, honey, where are you headed so fast?" There's something about his accent that causes you to freeze. Who is he?

"Wait. Y/n?!" Your eyes scan up to his face and you try to place him. He's so familiar and he obviously knows you too.

"It's Tulsa! Tulsa McLean!" He steps back from you and gestures to himself.

Your heart stops.

"Oh my god. Tulsa..." Your hand goes to your mouth and you look up into his eyes.

You haven't seen him since you moved from Oklahoma 8 years ago. Your brain flashes back to holding his hand, going to the movies and getting hamburgers, and most of all, that kiss behind the swing set. You wrote letters back and forth for a while, but you lost contact once you both really got into high school. Now he's here, in front of you again.

"What are you doing here?" You ask. He points to his uniform.

"Isn't it obvious? What are you doing here?"

"My father..."

"He's here? I don't remember him liking me very much." He chuckles and looks around the club like your father might be right around the corner. You notice that the other soldiers are elbowing each other and laughing, like Tulsa has a real chance here and they're impressed. That makes your blood boil and you turn back to Tulsa coldly.

"Well, it's good to see you, but I really need to head home." He blinks, surprised by the change in your tone.

"Now wait a minute, can we go somewhere to talk?"

"No, I'm sorry. It's late. Goodnight." You turn and walk away. There's a pang in your heart as you do. You've missed him, a lot, but he's a soldier now. There's no way you can trust him. You swallow the lump in your throat as you walk out the door towards your house.

******

"Tulsa! We thought you were in for sure!" He and his group of friends make their way to a table to order some drinks.

"How do you know her?" He looks down at his beer when it comes, thinking about the time you spent together all those years ago. He hasn't stopped thinking about you in all that time.

"We went to school together for a while when we were kids." He's gotten unusually quiet and the guys look at each other in surprise.

"Isn't that a good thing? It'll make it easier, right?"

"Guys, I'm not doing this anymore."

"Aw, Tulsa, come on. You're our entertainment! You gotta prove to Turk that you can do it!"

"No, I'm done. I'm going to head back to the barracks. I'll see y'all later." He stands up and makes his way to the door. On his way out, he stops at the table of girls you had been sitting with.

"Hey, ladies. Do any of y'all know where I could find y/n?" The girls look at each other, hesitant to share your location with a soldier. Still, you live with your parents, so they figure your father will keep you safe if anything really bad happens. The girl that you're closest with, Maryann, tells him your address.

"Thank you. Truly." He flashes them a winning smile and heads for the door.

Cookie sees him walk out and turns back to the guys.

"Hey, fellas. I don't think this is over." They laugh and cheer. Your friends notice this and make a note to tell you later.

******

You're sitting in your room, brushing your hair and looking in the mirror, trying not to think about Tulsa. You've already gotten ready for bed, so you have on pajamas and your robe. It's really late and the rest of the house is asleep. The only lights on are in your small apartment over the garage. You live with your parents, but the house is large and you've got your own area with a bathroom and sitting room. Your father let you move over here when you started working at the club. This was the closest he would let you get to living on your own. Just as you put the brush down and go to get in your bed, you hear something hit your window. What on earth was that?

You ignore the sound and continue getting in bed. When you hear it again, though, you start to get nervous. You walk cautiously to the window and peek through your curtains at the street down below.

What the hell??

Tulsa is down there, throwing tiny rocks from the garden at your window.

How did he find you?!

When he sees you in the window, he waves like the 10-year-old he was when you met him. You open the window and call down as quietly as possible.

"Tulsa! What are you doing here?!"

"I need to talk to you!" He hollers.

"Shhhh! You're going to wake up my father. I'm coming down there." You look in the mirror quickly on your way down. Your pajamas will have to do, since you don't want to take the time to get dressed. And your hair is down around your shoulders, unfixed. But it's just Tulsa. He saw you in junior high; this can't be worse than that.

You tiptoe down the stairs and open the front door as quietly as possible. You pull your robe tighter around yourself and step out into the chilly night air, dragging the door closed softly behind you.

"What? Talk fast. I'm freezing."

"Maybe we should go inside?"

"Nice try, soldier. I'll be okay. Just talk."

"Well, I hadn't really thought of what I was going to say. I just needed to see you again." He smiles sheepishly.

"Tulsa. Why?"

"I'm not entirely sure." You scoff and start to go back inside. He grabs your arm lightly to stop you and his touch sends shockwaves through your body.

"No! Wait! I just... I haven't ever stopped thinking about you..."

"That was a long time ago, Tuls..."

"Have dinner with me." You shake your head no. "Please, Birdie..." Your eyes snap up to his. He called you by the nickname he made up for you back then, when you used to sing while he played the guitar. You can hear his junior high voice, "You're just like a little songbird. My very own Birdie."

"Just dinner?" You can feel yourself melting a bit and it bothers you.

"Yes. I promise."

"Pick me up tomorrow at 8." He nods excitedly and you turn to go back inside. You really hope you don't regret this.

******

Tulsa watches you walk back up to the house. He's still a little in shock that you said yes. He also can't believe what a beautiful woman you've become. He knew you were cute, but this is something entirely different. As he turns to go back to the barracks, his mind wanders to the way you looked in your red dress. It hugged every curve perfectly and your leg was peeking out through the slit. He longed to see both of your legs without the skirt in the way. And then you came downstairs in your pajamas and were somehow even more beautiful with your hair falling down around your shoulders. He imagines taking your robe off and running his hands up and under your silky pajamas. When he realizes how aroused he is, he decides to get a cab so he can sit down and not be wandering the streets of Frankfurt with a blatantly obvious erection.

Back at the barracks, he's the first one home for the night. He figures the other guys are still out at the club. His mind wanders back to you in the red dress and what it might look like on the floor of this room. Before he knows it, he's turned on again and he decides to do something pretty risky. He pulls his army-issue blanket over his lap and frees his painfully hard dick from his pants. As he touches himself, he imagines what your small, soft hands might feel like on him. The possibility drives him insane as he begins to stroke himself faster and faster. Then, he thinks of your beautiful red lips wrapped around him and he moans softly. He knows he probably doesn't have much time before the other guys come home, so he continues to move his hand up and down, moving his foreskin back and forth, the friction making his hips buck into his hand. His mind stays focused on you and your curves as he imagines holding your hips and pounding into you, first from behind and then with you on top so he can watch your breasts as they bounce with his motions. The image is almost overwhelming and he feels his release building. Finally, when he pictures the face you make when he gives you an orgasm, he comes hard, moaning your name with a string of cuss words.

His blanket is ruined, so he uses it to clean himself up quickly and then tosses it in his laundry. He's breathing heavily, a little embarrassed at having just gotten himself off to the thought of you, when he hears the guys coming down the hallway. He tries to slow his heart rate and gets ready for bed, laying down just as the door opens.

"Hey Tulsa! You missed a helluva night! You shoulda seen this girl Cookie was talking to!" He rolls over pretends like they woke him up.

"How'd it go with your girl?" They all look at him expectantly.

"Oh, well, uh, we're having dinner tomorrow night." They whoop and holler, the amount of beer they had becoming obvious.

"We knew you'd get her! Nothing like a connection from the past to get a girl to go weak in the knees for ya!" Tulsa frowns.

"It's not like that, fellas." He tries not to think about what he just pictured you doing. "We're old friends. That's all. Now let me go back to sleep." He rolls back over as they continue talking and laughing. He tries to go to sleep, but he can't stop imagining you curled up next to him in your silk pajamas.

******

You're standing in front of your house in your favorite pink dress when Tulsa pulls up in a cab. You forgot that he wouldn't have a car, since he's a soldier. He hops out and opens the door for you, but you shake your head.

"We'll take my car." He pays the cab driver and follows you to your BMW convertible. His mouth pops open when he realizes it's yours.

"Nightclub business must be good." He jokes. You remember how much he loves cars and toss him the keys.

"I don't really feel like driving tonight." His eyes light up and you can't stop yourself from smiling. He really is an attractive man. This might be harder than you thought.

You guide him to a restaurant, where he parks and runs to your side of the car to open the door for you. He still has his southern manners. Once you get to the table, you both relax a bit and it feels more like the two of you used to be, talking and laughing easily.

"And how's your mama? She was always so sweet to me." You ask, taking a bite of your food.

"That's because she loved you! Always said you were too good for me. She was probably right." He looks at you shyly. "But, she's good! She and Daddy still live in the same house. I haven't seen them in almost 2 years." He gets a little somber and you can tell he must be homesick.

"Are you almost finished with your tour?"

"I've got three months here in Frankfurt and then I'm free. I can't wait to get back to the states." You look down at your plate. He's going to disappear in three months. Don't get attached.

"What about you? Will you be headed stateside any time soon?"

"No, my father is about to retire, but he wants to stay here. And even if he left, I'd probably try to stay. I like it here and I don't really have a home in the US. Not like you do."

"You could always come back to Oklahoma." He cuts himself off before he says "with me." You look up at him, noticing that it seems like he wants to say something else, but he doesn't. Instead, he changes the subject to talk about your singing career. He tells you he has formed a group with some of the guys and has been performing whenever they get a chance. He also tells you about how they want to open a nightclub when they get home.

"See, you could come sing in our club! Be our main act!" You know he's joking, but there's an edge of seriousness to him that makes you wonder.

You continue to talk and laugh through the rest of dinner and it feels good to be with him, like he brings out a part of you that you forgot exists. A happy, hopeful, youthful part of you that's been buried since you had your heart broken.

You sit together at dinner for a long time after you finish eating and even when you can't sit there any longer, you're still not ready to be away from him. He suggests a drink somewhere and you agree with a swiftness that you fear gives you away.

You like him. A lot.

He's still the sweet, funny boy you loved so long ago, just in the body of this charming and devilishly handsome man.

You decide to take him back to the Amerikanisch for drinks. It's familiar and you know everyone that works there. You sit at your table together and continue your conversation from before. At one point, he says something really funny and you put your hand on his on the table. He stops laughing and looks at you longingly. You let him take your hand and hold it, running his thumb over your knuckles softly. Your heart beats faster and you start to wish that you were somewhere other than a crowded club so he could kiss you if he wanted to. And something tells you that he wants to. The spell is broken, though, when his friends come in and see you together. He gets up to take them to a different table.

"I'll be right back, Birdie." He uses your nickname again and you wish it didn't make you melt all over again.

As soon as he's gone, Maryann joins you at your table.

"You need to watch out for that one."

"For Tulsa? No, I've known him for a long time. He's not that kind of guy."

"Yeah, well, his buddies sure think he is." She tells you about what she and the other girls noticed last night.

"Just be careful, okay? I'd hate to see you become some kind of trophy for him." You nod and look over at him at the table with the other soldiers. You can't let yourself forget he's one of them.

******

"What are you guys doing here?"

"We had a feeling you'd be here with y/n and we wanted to come check on your progress. And even if you weren't, Cookie wanted to come see his waitress."

"Check my progress? I told y'all that's not what this is. You're about to ruin the whole thing." Tulsa raises his voice slightly to let them know he's serious. Cookie's waitress comes by and he disappears to follow her to the bar. The rest of the guys agree to back off, so Tulsa makes his way back over to you. There's another girl sitting with you, though, and he recognizes her as the one who gave him your address.

"Thanks again for helping me find her...?"

"Maryann. Nice to meet you. I've been hearing a lot about you in the last ten minutes." She stands up and lets him sit back down. As she walks away, she gestures to you that she's watching.

"What was that all about?"

"Oh, nothing really. She just worries about me since..." You trail off, not really wanting to talk about why.

"Since what?"

"Since Mike." Tulsa looks uncomfortable and brings his eyebrows together in a frown.

"Who is Mike?" You don't want to, but you feel safe with Tulsa, so you tell him the whole story. How you let him take you out, let him convince you to fall in love with him, let him make you believe he wanted to marry you, let him have you. When you get to the last part, Tulsa looks away from you, obviously affected. The thought of you with another man makes him sick to his stomach. The thought of that man hurting you fills him with rage. He suddenly wishes Mike was around, so he could punch him in the face and then take you in his arms and protect you.

"That's why you don't trust soldiers." You nod, not wanting to let the tears that have gathered in your eyes find a way to fall. He's dying to put his arm around you and comfort you. He wants to wipe the tears from your eyes and make sure you never cry again. But you're still in the middle of a crowded club.

"Do you wanna get out of here?" He asks, trying to sound as genuine as possible. You look over to his table of friends hesitantly. He looks down at his hands, frustrated by the fact that they've made you nervous. He'd give anything not to be wearing this stupid uniform right now.

"Yes." He looks up at you, pleasantly surprised. You decide to trust him, despite everything. He stands up and puts his hand out for you to take, so you grab your coat and wrap your fingers through his. At your touch, his heart skips a beat. This might be more than just rekindling a friendship.

******

When you get outside the club, the cold wind hits you and you shiver. Tulsa puts his arm around you, and you let him, warmth spreading through you.

The only place you can think of to go is back to your house. You recognize that this might send the wrong message, but you're not exactly sure that is the wrong message at this point.

Once you're in the car, Tulsa asks where you want to go.

"Home."

"Oh. Okay." He thinks you mean without him. You scoot close to him in the front seat and put your head on his shoulder.

"I want you to come with me." He tries to hide his excitement and fails, but instead of being annoyed, you think it's really cute. He puts the car in drive and you make your way back to your house.

Thankfully, the house is dark when you get there. You weren't looking forward to explaining to your father why Tulsa was coming upstairs with you. Instead, you both take off your shoes and walk as quietly as possible until you reach the safety of your apartment.

As soon as you close your bedroom door, you both burst out laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation. You're grown adults sneaking around like teenagers. He sets his hat down on your dresser while you take your coat off. You stand there for a while, staring at each other in silence. Then, slowly, carefully, he reaches out and puts his hand on your cheek, brushing it softly with his thumb. You close your eyes and lean into his palm. Your heart is beating so fast and your eyes flutter open to meet his blue ones. They're soft and calm, like the ocean on a still day. As he leans in, your fingers begin to tingle. When his soft lips finally meet yours, a tidal wave of desire washes over you and you're filled with a need for him to touch every inch of you. The same wave seems to hit him as well because he moves his hands from your face to your waist, pulling your hips in close to him as you throw your arms around his neck. Your lips part and he slides his tongue into your mouth to dance with yours. You feel your body heat up as he presses against you, kissing you passionately.

After a few minutes of being locked together like this, he pulls back from your lips and looks into your eyes again.

"Is this really what you want, Birdie? I don't want you to feel like I'm forcing you into anything." You think for a second. If this continues, you know you won't be able to stop yourself from falling for him. But do you want to stop? Tulsa isn't like the others. He knows you. And even if he is leaving in a few months, you've found each other once before. Who's to say you won't do it again? You're ready to stop being scared. And three months with him sounds better than a lifetime with Mike.

"Yes, this is what I want. You are what I want, Tulsa." He dives back into the kiss and never looks back. You walk backwards towards your bed, pulling his tie off and starting to unbutton his shirt. He finishes your work and drops it on the floor, his lips never moving from yours. His hands move to the back of your dress, finding the zipper and carefully pulling it down to the small of your back. As he runs his hands back up to your shoulders, his fingers graze the skin that was under your dress and the electricity is palpable. You wiggle your shoulders as he slides the top half of your dress off. He kisses down your neck to your shoulder and each place he presses his lips burns with a newfound heat. You push your dress down over your hips and let it fall to the floor with his shirt. He slides the tips of his fingers under your slip and pushes it down too. Then, he pulls back and looks at you standing there in your garter belt, hose, bra, and panties.

"Wow." You blush a little with his burning gaze moving up and down your body and move to cover yourself with your hands.

"You don't have to hide from me, baby." He gently moves your hands away from you and you start to feel more comfortable. His presence is comforting, even as you stand there nearly naked. You take a moment to look down his body, running your hands from his shoulders down to the waistline of his pants. That's when you notice that his dick is hard, pressing against the fabric of his pants dramatically. You look up into his eyes and he looks away and clears his throat like he's embarrassed. You put one hand on his cheek and softly move his face back to making eye contact with you. Then you take your other hand and touch him over his pants, rubbing up and down his dick carefully.

"Mmm." His eyes close and his hips buck forward into your hand. He is desperate for your touch, just as you are for his. He moves his hands up and down your sides and then finds the back of your garter belt with his fingers. He undoes the hooks and then sits you down on the edge of the bed. Kneeling down in front of you, he slowly unclips your hose and drops the belt to the floor. Then, he gently rolls your hose down each of your legs, lifting each ankle to his lips and pressing a kiss there. He kisses each of your knees and then pushes them apart to kiss the inside of each thigh. As he gets closer and closer to your center, you feel your arousal begin to gather in your panties. He stops before he gets there, though, and stands up. You lean forward and unbutton his pants.

"Wait, honey." He puts his hands on yours and stands there looking down at you, breathing heavily. He wants to savor this moment with you. He's been with women before, but something about this feels like another kind of first time. It's a little overwhelming and he wants to make sure it doesn't move too quickly. He looks at you sitting there in just your bra and panties. You might be the most beautiful thing he's ever seen. Even his imagination didn't do you justice. Is this what it feels like to be in love?

"Should I... should I put on pajamas or something?" You look around the room, assuming something about you must have turned him off, despite his continuing erection. He sits next to you on the bed.

"Oh, no, honey--"

"You don't like me?" You look at him with tears in your eyes. You didn't realize it mattered to you so much, but now you know. You so desperately want him to want you, to like you, to love you the way you've realized you've always loved him.

"Don't like you?! Baby, I-I... well... to hell with it... I love you." Your eyes snap up to meet his.

"Y-you do?"

"Aw, hell. Yes, y/n I do. I always have." He searches your face for some kind of reassurance that he's not alone in this.

"I love you too..." you whisper it, but it's enough for him. He puts his hands on your face and pulls you into a deep kiss. He lays you back on the bed, running his hand down your body. He kisses down your neck, whispering "I love you" in between each kiss. His hand makes its way to your center and he moves your panties to the side, sliding his finger up your slit to the place that makes your back arch and a moan escape your lips. He smiles at how easily you come undone in his hands. After a few second of this, he slips one finger into you and then two. The feeling of some part of him inside you is enough to drive you to the edge. He sits up on his knees and slides your panties down and off. Then he climbs in between your legs and pushes his fingers back into you, moving them in and out rhythmically. You're overcome by the sensation of his hands on you and the intense emotions that are running through you. He loves you. But more importantly, you love him. Everything physical that's happening is just an expression of that and you never want it to end. Just as you think you're going to lose control, he lowers his mouth onto you and adds his tongue to the movements he's already making. You gasp and it doesn't take long for your orgasm to build up and crash over you like waves on a beach, over and over again out to the edges of your body and back again.

"Oh, yes, Tulsa!" You cry out as you shudder and pulse around his fingers. He sits up on his knees and finally lets you undo his pants, kicking them and his underwear off quickly. He unhooks your bra and literally throws it to the side. Now, it's like he can't move fast enough. He needs to be inside you as soon as possible. You help him with this task, lining him up with your entrance before he pushes into you hard and deep.

"Oh shit." He moans. "You feel so good, Birdie." When he uses your nickname again you whimper and kiss his neck. He begins to pump in and out of you and both of you begin to sweat. You feel him inside you, hitting all of your most sensitive places. The rhythm he keeps is not too fast or too slow, his hips pressing into yours and driving him deeper inside you. You can't believe how good he feels like this. But you want to repay him for the pleasure he gave you at the start, so you push him off of you and lay him on his back next to you. He follows directions easily, waiting patiently for you to straddle him and lower yourself onto him. Groaning with the change in sensation of having you on top of him, he reaches up and cups both of your breasts while you bounce. The picture that you make, sitting there on top of him, drives him absolutely crazy.

"God, you're beautiful." He moves his hands to your hips and starts to thrust into you deeply. You roll your hips to meet his over and over, your hands on his chest. His eyes roll back and close as his mouth is opened partially. The look of pleasure that he has makes you want to keep doing this forever. His arousal fuels your own as you continue to grind against him.

"Yes, don't stop!" You moan again as another orgasm builds inside you, starting in your abdomen and spreading through your legs.

"I'm gonna come, baby." He opens his eyes and tries to watch the expression on your face, but he's overwhelmed by his own ecstatic pleasure as you reach your climax together. You feel his warmth inside you and know it's risky, but you don't care. In that moment, the only thing that matters is you and him together, bodies intertwined and breathing heavily, your skin pressed against his. You lay on his chest and he wraps his arms around you and kisses your hair.

"Birdie, that was..."

"...everything." You look up at him from your position on his chest. You've never felt anything like this before, emotionally or physically. You gently run your fingertip down the line of his nose and he grabs your fingers and kisses them. The intimacy between you goes beyond the simplicity of sex. You belong to each other.

Eventually, you get up to go to the bathroom, thinking about everything that just happened. It seems like fate that you would run into each other again. And after what just happened, you don't ever want to let him go.

When you get back to the bedroom, he gestures for you to come lay beside him. He's under the covers now; it looks like he doesn't want to go anywhere either. It's fine by you that he stays. You wish he could stay forever. That's when you remember that he's leaving in 3 months.

"Tulsa, what are we gonna do?"

"About what, honey?"

"You're only here for a little while." You crawl into the bed and snuggle up against him. He's not worried about anything, though. In his mind, he's going to buy a ring tomorrow.

"Come back to Oklahoma with me." He says it matter-of-factly. You think about what that would mean, leaving your job and your friends and your family behind. But you've moved so many times before. And this time, you wouldn't be moving away from somewhere, you'd be moving towards a home with him.

"Okay. I'll go home with you. I'm not sure how my father will feel about me moving without--"

"--a ring on your finger? Let me worry about that part." He makes his crooked smirk-smile and you kiss his cheek.

"I trust you..."

******

The End

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

I wasn't sure if anyone would want to be tagged, since this is technically not an Elvis fic...

#tulsa mclean #gi blues #Tulsa mclean smut #Tulsa McLean fanfiction #Gi blues fanfiction #elvis presley #elvis movies #Elvis movies fanfiction #60s elvis #elvis presley fanfiction #elvis smut #elvis fanfic

[munchmemes]

fall out boy lyrics, so much (for) stardust edition

❛  what would you trade the pain for?  ❜

❛  we were a hammer to the Statue of David.  ❜

❛  we were a painting you could never frame.  ❜

❛  you were the sunshine of my lifetime.  ❜

❛  i'd never go. i just want to be invited.  ❜

❛  every lover's got a little dagger in their hand.  ❜

❛  there's no way off the hamster wheel on this rat race.  ❜

❛  give up what you love before it does you in.  ❜

❛  no matter what they tell you, the future's up for grabs.  ❜

❛  is there a word for bad miracle?  ❜

❛  we could dance our tears away.  ❜

❛  it's open season on blue moods.  ❜

❛  i guess i'm getting older 'cause i'm less pissed.  ❜

❛  you put the 'fun' in dysfunction.  ❜

❛  hold me like a grudge.  ❜

❛  the world is always spinning and i can't keep up.  ❜

❛  part-time soulmate, full-time problem.  ❜

❛  i guess somehow we made it back with a few dreams of ours still in tact.  ❜

❛  i got no map to my own treasure.  ❜

❛  i thought i knew better, i thought it would get better.  ❜

❛  i figured somehow by now, i would have got it together.  ❜

❛  if you put your heart in it, then we'll do more than just get by together.  ❜

❛  i'll call you up and demand you have no fun without me.  ❜

❛  i make no plans and none can be broken.  ❜

❛  do you laugh about me whenever i leave? or do i just need more therapy?  ❜

❛  love is in the air, i just gotta figure out a window to break out.  ❜

❛  i didn't take the love when i had the chance but i swear i'm not sad anymore.  ❜

❛  we all started out as shiny dimes but we all got flipped too many times.  ❜

❛  we did it for futures that never came and for pasts that we're never gonna change.  ❜

❛  i will never ask you for anything except to dream sweet of me.  ❜

❛  tell me, when the party ends, will you still love who i am?  ❜

❛  save your breath. half your life you've been hooked on death.  ❜

❛  be careful what you bottle up.  ❜

❛  i closed my eyes inside of your darkness and found your glow.  ❜

❛  shake things up and see what comes down.  ❜

❛  i got this doom and gloom in my mind but i feel all right.  ❜

❛  feeling so good right now 'til we crash and burn somehow.  ❜

❛  i know i've made mistakes but at least they were mine to make.  ❜

❛  all of my wildest dreams, they just end up with you and me.  ❜

❛  let's drive until the engine just gives out.  ❜

❛  i'll be whatever you need me to be.  ❜

❛  i cut myself down to whatever you need me to be.  ❜

❛  it's all just a random lottery of meaningless tragedy and a series of near escapes.  ❜

❛  i take pleasure in the detail, you know? a quarter pounder with cheese. those are good. the sky about ten minutes before it starts to rain. a moment where your laughter becomes a cackle.  ❜

❛  here i am, not sure you should take a chance.  ❜

❛  i like playing dumb, letting you figure me out.  ❜

❛  just another day spent hoping we don't fall apart.  ❜

❛  let's twist the knife again like we did last summer.  ❜

❛  i'm just trying to keep it together but it gets a little harder when it never gets better.  ❜

❛  late at night in my room, i lie awake and think of you and all your little dooms.  ❜

❛  last night, i dreamt i still knew you.  ❜

❛  i carved out a place in this world for two but it's empty without you.  ❜

❛  i've got all this love i've got to keep to myself.  ❜

❛  all this effort to make it look effortless.  ❜

❛  confront all the pain like a gift under the tree.  ❜

❛  oh please, i can't be who you need me to be.  ❜

❛  one day every candle's gotta run out of wax.  ❜

❛  time is luck and i wish ours overlapped more or for longer.  ❜

❛  but you know what they say, if you want a job done right, you gotta do it yourself.  ❜

❛  what is there between us, if not a little annihilation?  ❜

❛  i'm pretty sure as far as humans go, i am a hard pill to swallow.  ❜

❛  i spent ten years in a bit of a chemical haze and i miss the way that i felt.  ❜

❛  i felt you at the beginning but needed you at the end.  ❜

❛  stop me if you have heard this all before.  ❜

❛  oh, but you don't know me anymore.  ❜

❛  that's the way, the world, it used to be before our dreams starting bursting at the seams.  ❜

❛  we're out here and we're ready to livestream the apocalypse.  ❜

❛  the view's so pretty from the deck of a sinking ship.  ❜

❛  everything is lit except my serotonin.  ❜

❛  everything is lit but my lightning bolt brain.  ❜

❛  i just need someone to hold me even though you don't even know me.  ❜

❛  what a time to be alive.  ❜

❛  they say i should try meditation but i don't want to be with my own thoughts.  ❜

❛  when i said 'leave me alone' this isn't quite what i meant.  ❜

❛  bad news, what's left?  ❜

❛  i'm in a winter mood, dreaming of spring now.  ❜

❛  i feel like something that's been stretched out over and over again until i'm creased and i'm about to break down the middle.  ❜

❛  the stars are the same as ever but i don't have the guts to keep it together.  ❜

❛  life is just a game, maybe i'm stuck in a lonely loop.  ❜

❛  we thought we had it all.  ❜

❛  i need the sound of crowds or i can't fall asleep at night.  ❜

❛  i'm pretty positive my pain isn't cool enough.  ❜

❛  ache it till you make it.  ❜

❛  i think i've been going through it and i've been putting your name to it.  ❜

❛  i used to be a real go-getter. i used to think it'd all get better.  ❜

#lyrics rp starters #lyrics starters #rp starters #lyrics rp meme #rp meme #lyrics meme #sentence starters #long post

[canirove]

Granada | Chapter 21

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Masterlist

"Thank you very much for allowing us to stay here, lord Santos."

"Of course, my prince. It's a pleasure to have you and the princess with us."

"I promise we will be gone as soon as my men have rested."

"My prince, please. You all are very welcomed here. You are defending our country."

"Still. Thank you very much" Rúben said. 

After the battle and once all the survivors had regrouped back in what used to be the camp, they had decided to move to Lord Santos' state to rest and decide what to do next.

"Boy!" Lord Santos called. "Please accompany the prince and the princess to their room so they can rest and have a bath. We'll meet later for dinner."

━━━━━━❃━━━━━━

"I'm gonna sleep for days" Rowena said, letting herself fall on the bed.

"Careful" Rúben chuckled. "Or have you forgotten what happened the last time you jumped on a bed like that?"

"Yes, that you broke it."

"Because you made me jump."

"It's not my fault you are that easy to persuade" she shrugged. 

"I am not easy."

"Are you not?" she smirked as she sat up, resting on her elbows. 

"Rowena…"

"Rúben…"

"My prince?" a maid called after knocking on the door.

"Saved by the bell" Rowena said under her breath.

"My prince, I've brought some clean clothes for you and the princess, and the bath should be here shortly. Who will go first?"

"Rowena?" Rúben asked her.

"We'll bath together if that's possible" she replied.

"What?"

"Could it be done?" she asked the maid, ignoring him.

"Of course, my lady. It will take us a bit longer, though."

"Don't worry, take all the time you may need" she smiled.

"We are bathing together?" Rúben asked once the maid had left.

"You don't want to?"

"I do. You know I've always liked the idea."

"Then?"

"I thought you didn't like it."

"When you first offered, I didn't. But I do now."

"What made you change your mind?"

"The fact that I'm in love with you is the main reason."

"Say that again."

"You are so annoying with your say it again" Rowena said, rolling her eyes. "What do you want me to repeat?"

"That you are in love with me."

"I am in love with you, Rúben."

"Music to my ears" he replied, giving her her favourite smile, making it impossible for her to get mad at him. "What are the other reasons?"

"Uh?"

"You said that being in love with me was the main reason that made you change your mind about bathing together. So there are others."

"Well… it actually only is one. Remember when I fell asleep on the coach that took us to the summer palace?"

"I do. You were dreaming about me."

"Yes. I was dreaming about you, in the bath, with me" Rowena said, feeling her cheeks get warm for some reason.

"Really?" Rúben smirked. "And what did we do?"

"Just splash the other as if we were two kids."

"Just that? I don't believe you."

"When we were about to do more, you woke me up" she shrugged.

"Oh, so you want to continue your dream where you left it."

"Maybe I do, maybe I don't. We'll see."

━━━━━━❃━━━━━━

"Rúben" Rowena yawned. "What is that smell?" she asked as she moved in the bed. It felt wet and sticky. "Rúben!" she screamed when she looked down, the sheets covered in blood. "Rúben, wake up!" she said. But when she touched him, he felt cold. Way too cold. "Rúben?" As she turned to look at him, she was met with the same black eyes who had attacked her at camp. He was there, in her bed, laying dead next to her. The first man she had ever killed.

"Rowena. Rowena, wake up."

"No, no, no…" she said, her legs getting more and more tangled on the sheets.

"Rowena, it's just a nightmare, wake up" Rúben repeated.

"No, no… No!" she screamed, standing up in the bed, everything around her moving.

"It's alright, my love. It was just a nightmare" Rúben said as he hugged her.

"No!" she screamed again when he touched her.

"It's me, Rowena. You are safe."

"It's you" she repeated. "It's really you."

"It's me" he said, taking her hand on his and kissing it. "You are safe, it was just a nightmare."

"A nightmare" she said, taking deep breaths. "Just a nightmare."

"Do you want to talk about it?" 

"No" Rowena replied as she hugged him back, the feeling of his chest against hers, of his heart beating, reassuring her that she was awake. That he was real. 

"Do you want to go back to sleep?"

"No" she said against his neck.

"What about a walk? Some fresh air may make you feel better."

"That could help, yes."

"Then let's go put some clothes on. We don't want to go outside looking like this, do we?" he chuckled.

"The maids won't mind."

"As if you wouldn't get jealous the moment they laid an eye on me."

"I'm not the jealous type."

"Are you not… cupcake?" Rúben smirked.

"That day I wasn't jealous of you and the maid. I just worried about her reputation and ours."

"Sure" he laughed.

"Idiot" Rowena replied, hitting him on the chest.

"Oh, there she is" he said, kissing her head. "Come on, let's get dressed."

 ━━━━━━❃━━━━━━

"I had missed hearing the sea" Rowena said. They had walked towards the south wall of Lord Santos' palace, the one that faced the sea, the wind tangling her already messy hair. But it was a welcomed feeling after her nightmare. And despite winter being around the corner, it was still warm. Back home, she could never do this without a thick coat. Home…

"What is it?"

"Uh?"

"You just let out a big sigh. What is it?" Rúben asked again, putting a lock of hair behind her ear. Or trying to.

"I was just thinking about my parents and my sisters."

"Do you miss them?"

"I find myself thinking less and less about them, but when I do…"

"It hurts."

"Yes… and no. I don't know how to explain it, but it doesn't feel the same as when I first moved here."

"Maybe because you actually like it here? Because you've found something that makes you want to stay? Or maybe someone?"

"I can't live without Aurora's cooking, you caught me" Rowena said with a teasing smile, making Rúben laugh. 

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"I love hearing you laugh."

"I also love hearing you laugh. But I actually love everything about you" Rúben said while hugging her. 

"I have the ugliest feet ever, though. Do you love those too?" 

"All of you. From this tiny ear of yours" he said, kissing it and making her giggle. "To this finger" he continued, lifting her hand and kissing her little finger. "And to everything that is kissable from your waist down. I could show you right now, but this isn't the place."

"Better inside" she smiled. "Shall we?"

"After you, cupcake" he replied, taking the hand she was offering him, her laugh being mixed with the sound of the waves.

━━━━━━❃━━━━━━

"What are you thinking about?" Rowena asked.  

"That you always look so beautiful after we've…"

"Don't."

"Are we going shy now?" Rúben laughed.

"Yes, we are."

"Then tell me what you are thinking about."

"Nothing" she lied. Because she was thinking about him. About how the first rays of the sunrise were hitting his body in all the right places, making him look as if he had been carved on the most beautiful stone. He was simply perfect. Bruises and wounds included. 

"I see… Can I tell you about something else I am thinking?"

"I'm all ears" Rowena said.

"I'm thinking that once all this is over, when there is no war to worry about… I'm taking you home. I want to meet your parents."

"You do?"

"Now that I finally charmed you, I'm ready to charm them too" he smiled.

"Who says you've charmed me?" she laughed.

"Everything these four walls have seen and heard since we arrived at this palace is a good example."

"Whatever" she replied, trying not to smile. 

"I'm really looking forward to hearing your father call your mother little poppy. See what sounds better, that, or cupcake."

"Little poppy, obviously."

"I beg to differ… cupcake" Rubén said with a teasing smile, hugging her closer to him.

"You are the worst" Rowena laughed. "But maybe I should also start calling you something. Ruru perhaps?"

"Ruru?" 

"Anne calls Diogo Didi, so why not?"

"Umm… no."

"Well, I like it" Rowena said, resting her head on his chest. "Good night, Ruru."

"Good night? The sun is coming out!" he laughed.

"Can't hear you, Ruru. I'm sleeping." And she was actually falling asleep pretty quickly, suddenly feeling very tired after her nightmare, their walk, and what came after.

"Alright" he chuckled. "Sweet dreams, cupcake" he said while caressing her hair, the feeling making Rowena fall asleep with a smile on her face.

#ruben dias #ruben dias fanfic #ruben dias imagine #football fanfic #football imagine

[valentina-arrington]

Te amo con todo mi corazón.

It was only supposed to be a temporary job, something to do to pass the time before heading off to Oxford University. But travelling to Mallorca the summer after graduation, fate had other plans for me.

It was that very summer where I met my soulmate.

Like a good rom-com, he was that guy. Handsome, kind and funnier than anyone I've ever met. He had just finished his first year of university, and like me, he was putting his summer to good use. Employed as the chef in the very same hotel restaurant I'd gotten a job as a waitress, my busy days never felt tiring. He always had jokes that kept everyone in a good mood. And I always had something more special to look forward to when I clock out for the day.

And like any good rom-com, we fell in love. We fell in love like we've never loved before...

Nine years have passed, and I didn't think anything could be as painful as having to be without him. But seeing nine years' worth of memories all boxed up, it was, and still is, harder than I'm willing to admit. Moving to Marbella is supposed to be a good change. This is the mantra I've had to keep repeating to myself, or I'd never leave. I mean, why would I?

This was his home. Our home.

It was out there on the balcony, on a beautiful summer's night, where he promised me forever with a ring so beautiful that I still wear it on my finger. It was in that backyard where we were going to get married. Nothing big, nothing fancy. Just a day to celebrate our love and share it with our loved ones. It was in that room where I gave birth to our son, Diego, just a year after we met. It was in these halls where our baby boy learned to take his first steps and filled our walls with laughter. It was in that kitchen where I'd make their favourite food, just like my mother taught me. And it was in this bedroom where he and I would retire after a long day to connect, to make love, and to make plans of a future we always thought would come.

But it was also in this home where we decided to put off our dream wedding as the financial responsibility came down harder and harder with every chemotherapy he had to take. It was here where I had to say goodbye to the love of my life, where I've had to be strong for our son and where we'd honoured his loving memory by living each day to the fullest, just like I know he'd have wanted for us.

Alex was only 21 years old when he passed. Diego was 3. Our boy is almost 7 now. And this move is for him. He needs to be in a better school, in a better environment, and with actual family around. He needs more than what I can give him all by myself. So, as brutally as this move tears me apart, I know I can't be selfish much longer, living a half-life for my son, buried in my grief. None of it will ever bring my Alex back, no matter how tightly I hold on. I have to live in the present if I ever want my son to have a better future.

But we'll be back, mi amor. We'll never forget.

#[ valé arrington || journal 01 ] #[ ⚠️warning! death & grief ]

[glorious-spoon]

9 and any Stranger Things ship for the wrapped meme

Thank you! Number 9 this year was Limelight, by Rush. Here's a bit of pre-relationship Steddie featuring Eddie's complicated feelings about his hometown - I hope you enjoy!

-

title: get on with the fascination [on AO3]

word count: ~1900

-

Fifteen years after the world doesn't end, Eddie Munson returns to Hawkins.

It's a dramatic phrasing, even in his own head; for one thing, this is far from the first time he's been back since the summer of 1986, although the last time was almost a decade ago. He doesn't call it going home. Home is New York, and sometimes Chicago these days, which is as close to Roane County as he usually wants to get. Home, as far as it ever existed for him in Hawkins, was a trailer that got dropped into an alternate dimension along with a good chunk of the town the same night Eddie almost died. Home is the little house over the Illinois border where Wayne has lived since '91. Home sure as shit isn't here.

"You planning on brooding this whole time, or what?" Steve asks from across the booth. The bar they're currently sitting in is no longer called The Hideout; at some point in the last fifteen years, it's been rebranded to On The Rocks Bar And Grill. There's a fresh coat of paint on the walls and a layer of new laminate flooring over the old asbestos tile. Draft taps and an honest-to-god raised stage instead of the grimy corner where the old band used to play. At the turn of the millennium, Hawkins is finally gentrifying.

"I'm not brooding."

"Yeah, man, you totally are. Could we get a couple of refills? Thanks so much," he adds to the waitress who pauses by their table to ask if they need anything. She doesn't seem to recognize Eddie. Too young to remember him from his illustrious youth here, and apparently not into the metal scene, thank fucking Christ. For the most part, he kind of likes it when strangers come up to him in public—two platinum records in and it still hasn't lost its novelty—but not here. Not in Hawkins. This place still feels fucking cursed.

"Are you buying me beer now, Harrington?"

"You're the big-shot rockstar," Steve points out with a shit-eating grin. "You're buying."

"Ugh," Eddie groans, and puts his head down on the table, which doesn't even have the decency to be sticky. "Remind me again why I agreed to this?"

"I don't know. Closure?"

"Next time I decide to do something this shit-stupid, can you do me a favor and just, like, duct tape me to a chair or something?"

"Kinky," Steve says dryly, but he's still smiling when Eddie lifts his head to glare at him. Eddie should probably be less of a dick about this, given that Steve is only here for moral support; he doesn't live in Hawkins either these days. He's up in Chicago with Robin, who would also probably be here if she weren't mired in stacks of midterm papers on film theory from her earnest little freshman ducklings. Steve makes his own hours, so it's not that much of a surprise that he closed up shop and drove down here and didn't bother to call until he'd already crossed the county line, at which point Eddie was winding himself up into a dangerous head of steam and was grateful for any distraction that offered itself.

And Steve is the best kind of distraction. Always has been. Even now, kicked back in a bar booth in all his yuppie glory, sipping the last of his beer and scanning the bar every now and then with a wariness that Eddie hasn't seen from him in a while. Because Eddie isn't the only one who left a headful of ghosts behind in Hawkins, Indiana. He forgets that sometimes.

"Thank you, by the way," he says. "Did I say that yet?"

"Nah. Mostly you've just been, like, bemoaning your life."

"Bemoaning," Eddie repeats, delighted. "We'll make a poet of you yet, Stevie."

"In your dreams," Steve says mildly.

"Oh, every night, baby."

That gets him a scoff, but it's a fond one. The waitress comes back with their drinks, and he leans back out of her way to let her set them down and clear away their empty glasses. Steve thanks her again, and this time Eddie does too, because there's only so much wallowing that Steve will let him get away with and he's probably closing in on that limit quickly. Still, all Steve actually says once she leaves is, "So what's the plan, then? You're meeting the interviewers at, what, three?"

"Yeah," Eddie sighs. "I don't fucking know. They wanted me to, like, walk them around and show them the old sights, which sounded like a great idea when Marleen pitched it, but now it's like, what old sights? Oh, here's where the basketball team tried to kick my skull in. Here's where the football team tried to kick my skull in. Here's the picnic table where I used to sell weed out of my lunch box. Here's where my trailer was before a girl died there and it got sucked into the shadow dimension, except—oops!—can't tell you shit about that because I signed a stack of confidentiality agreements almost as tall as me. But they're still gonna ask." He lets out a long sigh and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. "They're gonna want me to talk about Chrissy."

"So you tell them to go to hell."

He barks a laugh. "Easy as that, huh?"

"You've never had trouble with it before," Steve says with a shrug.

That's true enough. Eddie sighs again and reaches for his beer. "This place is fucking me up. No, there is actually a plan. We're gonna stop by the high school after it's cleared out and do the interview there, it's all set up. You know they put up a plaque with my name on it outside the drama room?"

Steve laughs. "No shit?"

"Yeah, apparently there was a vicious battle about it on the school board. Real fire and brimstone shit, went on for months. Henderson's mom led the charge on my behalf, I got the whole story from him."

"Jesus," Steve says. And then, "Shit, we should go see her while we're in town."

"You're just hoping she'll feed you."

"Well, yeah," Steve says. "I've been living on my own cooking since…" he waves a hand and makes a face. "You know. Since everything went south with Jerry."

Jerry was the latest in a series of attractive people of varying genders that Steve has dated over the last ten years, since he moved to Chicago and figured his shit out. Eddie kind of hated the guy, but it wasn't personal. He was objectively probably a perfectly fine person, and it wasn't his fault that Eddie fell head over heels for a hot monster-slaying jock in the spring of 1986 and never entirely recovered. Though, as he's now reminded, it's been a long time since he and Steve were both single at the same time, and the last time that happened, he still thought Steve was straight.

He tries to swallow that thought down with a mouthful of beer, but it lingers like a strange spiky shape in the back of his throat. "So, how's all that going, anyway?"

Steve groans dramatically.

"An encouraging response."

"No, it's fine. I'm, like, totally over him at this point. I just… I don't know, I figured I'd be past all this shit by now, you know? Thought I'd settle down, get my life together, find somebody who…" he trails off.

"Who…?" Eddie repeats leadingly.

"I don't know. Somebody who gets it. Somebody I don't have to, like, lie to."

"That's a tall order, my friend."

"Yeah, I guess," Steve mutters. He's looking at his beer, rubbing a thumb against the wedge-shaped scar bisecting his lower lip. He's got a lot of scars, and Eddie knows the story to most of them, even the ones he wasn't personally present for. But he supposes that he can see how it would wear on Steve, inventing explanations for them that aren't about being tortured by Russian spies or eaten alive by interdimensional monsters. Steve's not much of a liar, when it comes down to it. Eddie doesn't mind spinning fantastical stories to obscure the ugly truth, but they're wired differently that way.

"Hey," Eddie says. He taps his fingernails against Steve's glass and waits for him to look up. "Listen, I'm sorry I brought it up."

Steve smiles a little. "It's fine. Seriously. Robin says I'm being a sad sack, and she's probably right."

"Mm. Probably, but I am not the sensible Professor Doctor Buckley, am I?"

"God, you know she hates it when you call her that."

"She's the one who decided to get a PhD. Masochism, in my strong opinion."

"Oh, we all know," Steve says. He glances over Eddie's shoulder at the clock, then says, "Probably ought to get going if you want to make your interview on time."

"And Marleen has promised to string me up by my metaphorical balls if I show up late for another one," Eddie sighs. He drains the last of his beer and stands, digging his wallet out.

After they pay and head outside, Steve lingers by the side of the brick building, facing the road. It's a sunny day, breezy and crisp, pale wisps of clouds moving fast across the blue sky, and something about it makes Eddie's chest pinch with a strange nostalgia. Something about the way Steve looks right now, in his stylish yet dorky windbreaker with his hair tossed by the breeze. It's shorter now than he used to wear it but he really doesn't look that different at thirty-four than he did at nineteen. Older, sure, but it suits him.

"After I'm done with all this shit," Eddie says. "You wanna go get high at the quarry? You know, for old times' sake?"

Steve laughs softly, eyes crinkling. "Does it really count if we're not smoking in the back of your van?"

"True. Pretty sure I wouldn't get the deposit back on my rental if I turn it in smelling like grass, either."

"We can take my car," Steve says.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. If you want."

"You wanna crash with me after? So you don't have to drive all the way back home tonight, I mean? The room they booked me is, like, palatial. I didn't even know they had places that nice around here."

Steve glances at him again, rubbing his jaw. It wouldn't be the first time they've shared a hotel room, but there's a different context now. For one thing, they can both afford separate rooms these days. For another, Eddie's got that itch that means he's probably gonna do something reckless, and he's not even sure he wants to try to stop it.

If he and Steve go smoke up by the quarry where they spent the last summer of Eddie's teens, he's going to confess something, he's pretty sure of it. Lay it all on the line for Steve, after all this time. He's starting to think that might not even be the worst idea he's ever had. Steve is here, after all.

"Yeah, okay," Steve says, finally. He bumps his shoulder against Eddie's, and Eddie leans back into the solid warmth of him, and takes a deep breath of cool spring air, and watches the Hawkins traffic pass them by.

Tomorrow, he'll be gone. Maybe, if this doesn't all blow up in his face, he'll go back to Chicago with Steve. Hawkins is a place he's outgrown years ago, and whatever story comes out of this interview is never going to be anything other than a media-crafted shadow of the truth, but honestly, that's never been what mattered in the end.

"It's a date, then," he says, and when he glances over at Steve, he finds him already smiling back.

#stranger things #steddie #steddie fic #eddie munson #steve harrington #my fic #prompt fic

[earlgreytea68]

idk if you seen this but SMFD is going to be a single which is very interesting to me for a few reasons one being we are past the time to release singles to promote the album and it's also not due to popularity bc according to spotify the most listen to non-single is fake out. my best assumption as to why is to promote the upcoming tour

I have a few theories on why SMFDS tho bc it is an odd choice. don't get me wrong I love that song but it's a song you really appreciate having also listened to the rest of the album and it's very good in concert but imo you release a single so it can be played on the radio for whatever reason (as a album teaser, it got popular) which is why I think it's about promotion and not radio. SMFSD is like THE track in terms of representation for the album for a lot of reasons to me so it makes sense they'd use it to promote their tour to fans who likely have listened to the album. also I suspect we'll get a SMFSD music video which I'll be excited to see (I do hope it has a little story line like the other mvs from this era rather than just clips from tourdust but we'll see)

I am FASCINATED by SMFS as a single, not because I don't love the song (it's one of my favorites on the whole album, I adore it), not because I don't think it's a super-strong song (lyrically I think it's transcendent in how it nails a very true emotion and musically I think it's complex and smart), but because it doesn't really strike me as my idea of a radio song, as you say. So yeah, this feels like an emotional choice rather than a marketing-based one, which also feels right to them. Their contractual situation makes their record label pretty hands-off, I think, so they can kind of do what they want. And maybe the song being labeled one of the top ten songs of the year by Time, or whatever that was, made them think that it deserved more attention not just by fans.

I'm sure the music video will be intensely plotted and silly because I genuinely think that's how they like to make music videos and I would be surprised if it's just tour footage, but we'll see.

I have a theory about Fake Out. To me that song seems like such an obvious single and I've always been surprised it didn't get a big push last summer. But I think once the new We Didn't Start the Fire dropped and ended up performing so strongly for them (and over the entire summer building gradually), they didn't want to crowd it out and let it play out. But I think Fake Out is definitely a summer song. It's a roll the windows down song to me and always has been since the first time I heard. Whereas SMFS is a perfect winter song (I'm in a winter mood dreaming of spring...). I wonder if they'll try to ride the album out a little longer and push Fake Out this summer. I wouldn't be entirely surprised, because I think there are no real rules anymore over when you can push a single from an album.

#fall out boy #fob

[brightlight-dazzlingeyes]

the french exit | chapter 01

kylian mbappé x original female character [+18]

synopsis: alice is a lonely rich girl whose biggest fear is to become a lonely rich woman. ever since they moved to paris, her fiancé doesn’t seem to be interested in her anymore. so alice decides to find comfort in the arms of another man. warnings: cheating; angst; smut; i have never been to france; minors dni.

masterlist | next chapter

Chapter 01 | Blank Space

“'Cause we're young, and we're reckless

We'll take this way too far

It'll leave you breathless”

Alice Morgan-Webber is a classic Ralph Lauren blonde girl. Summer at the Hamptons. Kate Moss poster on her wall. Her father owns a hotel chain and is the CEO of a company specialized in luxury goods. Her mother is a fashion designer. Alice is an only daughter and heir to an American dream empire. Her highschool sweetheart boyfriend, David, proposed to her in the summer. Their families have been friends for generations and when their mothers got pregnant at the same time, they knew it was meant to be. His family have their own inspirational story about their generational wealth.                       

A couple months ago David got a job at his family's company's French headquarters, and now they’re living in Paris. It didn’t take long for Alice to get an internship in a fashion magazine – in fact, all it took was a phone call from her mother. The couple’s perfect french pronunciation and overall cool behavior made them a perfect match for the city of light.

Their European fairytale didn’t last longer than a month. Very quickly David got bored of playing house. He started to spend his nights and weekends away from their cozy luxury apartment, always with the excuse of being busy with work. That was expected, in a way, so Alice wasn’t exactly disappointed; but she was surprised, his lack of interest in the very first month was a disaster. They weren’t even married yet.

“Men are complicated, honey. But maybe he really is busy with work.” Her mother, Caroline, told her over the phone. David’s family owned a holding company that was currently in the process of starting to invest in a fashion brand – owned by Alice’s family. So her mother soothed her, told her to wait. It is in everybody's best interest if they could find a way to be happy together. “You’ll be married in the spring and everything will be perfect, dear. I promise. You just need to be a little less controlling.”

It was a destination wedding, in Greece. Her mother would design her dress, of course. On her left hand she was wearing David’s grandmother’s ring. A colossal diamond that felt heavier every time he left the house without making eye contact. “Bye, love.” His strong voice, that once made her legs shake, now made her nauseous. He could at least look at her when saying goodbye, right? That wasn’t too much to ask, right? Alice thought to herself. 

Part of Alice’s job included getting invited to luxury brands promotional parties, the kind she was already used to. But this time was different, she was working. Alice was supposed to post pictures of the event on social media and later report it to her boss. How the food tasted, was the music any good, what kind of celebrities showed up. It was a sports brand, so there were a few french athletes present – one specifically caught Alice’s attention. Kylian. She saw him in person before, in another one of those parties long before she moved to Paris. Back then David was present, a possessive hand around her waist. Warning her of the depraved behavior of football players. Now she was alone and Kylian was staring right back at her.

Later she would have a hard time recalling the food and the music; the French football player was the only thing on her mind the whole time. They were formally introduced at some point, he graciously shook her hand.

“Beautiful ring.” His eyes were on her left hand. She blushed.

“Thank you.”

“When’s the wedding?”

“In the spring.”

Quickly and smoothly, without anybody else seemly noticing, he whispers in her ear:

“So I still have some time.”

Alice laughs and nods at him, still blushing. They don’t talk for the rest of the evening, but when she comes home she gets a notification on her phone that makes her heart beat faster: k.mbappe just liked your post / k.mbappe just followed you. He answers one of her stories; it is a picture of her living room, beautifully decorated solely for the purpose of impressing her future in-laws. 

k.mbappe you have good taste 

alicemwebber thank you

k.mbappe i’m a buying a new apartment need help with the decor you should visit give me some tips

Kylian’s new apartment was just outside of busy Paris; it was modern and spacious, and smelled brand new. There wasn’t a lot of furniture or items that identified the owner, so Alice felt like he wasn’t entirely lying to her. Who knows how many times he used that trick, but Alice didn’t need a very convincing excuse. She just wanted to see him, to be in the same room completely alone with him and to feel desired by him. Her lust was aggravated by her anger. In her messed up head, what she was doing felt like revenge. 

“So, what do you think?” He was standing behind her, so much taller than her. His perfume was intoxicating and she was fighting her own brain, trying to keep herself focused.

“It’s a really nice place, but it needs more… Personal touches.” She guides her right hand to his, without even looking, her thumb slowly caressing him. Kylian takes a step closer to her, his body now fully flushed against her. He holds her hand and rests his head on top of hers.

“I agree. Like I said, you have good taste.” He gives her a soft kiss on the cheek. “That’s why I invited you.” He continues to softly kiss her face, lowering his kisses down to her neck. “Are you going to help me?” Their bodies are even closer and she can feel he’s getting hard behind her.

“Yes, I will. Whatever you need.” As she says that he puts both of his hands on her hips, pushing her back onto himself, making her feel him.

“Whatever I need? Are you sure?”

Alice nods, and when she opens her mouth to properly answer him, he kisses her. She turns around, holding him by the neck. The kiss feels like a perfect match. They instinctively know exactly where to touch each other, their tongues know the exact moves. Their breaths and the small noises of pleasure Alice makes echoes in Kylian’s almost empty living room.

“Do you own a bed, at least?” She asks, face still close, afraid of moving away from him and breaking the spell. Kylian laughs warmly.

“I do own a bed, yes. Let me show it to you.”

He guides her to the bedroom while still kissing her. By the time they lay in bed together half of their clothes were already forgotten along the way. She’s lying on her back and he’s towering over her, he already feels big just standing over her, looking at her. His body is warm, he’s kissing her like he’s in a hurry. A real man. Wanting her, tasting her. Paying attention to her. She surrendered herself to him. Alice tries to take off his pants but he holds her hands above her head. She stops the kiss.

“Please. Please.” She guides her hand once again to his jeans. Kylian sits on the bed and brings Alice onto his lap.  He takes her left hand and bites the side of the finger with her engagement ring. Alice moans. “Do you like that?” He whispers in her ear, she eagerly nods in agreement.

“I like it too.” He kisses her finger. “I also like knowing I only had to ask you once.”

“You’re being mean.” Alice takes the rest of her own clothes off, tired of waiting for him. Kylian laughs. His eyes shining bright give Alice butterflies. He looks beautiful like that, horny and teasing her. She feels lucky to get to experience it.

“I’m being mean?” He gets up and holds both of her legs, carefully making her seat at the end of the bed. Then he pulls her legs apart and admires the view of her dripping wet core. “Alright, let me be nice to you, then.” He gets on his knees and starts kissing her feet, almost in a devotional manner. He continues his kisses up, firmly holding her legs. After what it feels like forever he finally kisses her cunt. Kylian can’t help moaning with her. She tastes amazing and he can’t get enough. She cums screaming his name even before he puts his fingers on her. “What about now? I’m still mean to you, baby?” Alice is laying on her back again and he’s fingering her roughly.

“Ye–yes, yes, you are.” She’s stuttering, can’t control her voice when she’s so close to another orgasm. On her third orgasm she has his cock inside of her. She’s on all fours and his hand is holding her hair, keeping her head up. Her mouth is open, her moans somehow still getting louder.

“You’re so big.” Alice mumbles, eyes closed, feeling full and satisfied. Kylian is proud, both from her words and the state he managed to get her.

“You should always feel like this, baby.” He’s still behind her, but they’re both on their knees in the middle of the bed, his hand never leaving her hair. “It’s what a pretty girl like you deserve.” He kisses her shoulder and neck, restraining himself from biting her.

Later, after she showers, he politely offers for her to stay. She can’t, of course, and he knows. At the apartment door, kissing goodbye, she says:

“There’s a lot of work to be done in this place, don’t you think?”

He agrees, grinning at her. “You should come often, I need all the help you can give.”

***

David doesn’t know anything about football, but loves talking about it. It never bothered Alice before, she used to find it amusing; his lack of knowledge over tactics or stats. It used to be cute, even. They were at a private box in Parc des Princes, together with some of David’s work colleagues and a potential client. The guy was a family man and a PSG fanatic, so David decided to take his lovely bride to a football match in hope of luring the French millionaire into doing business with him. Alice is nauseous the entire time. She deserves it, she thinks. Maybe this is God punishing her somehow. Still, she has her eyes on Kylian the entire time.

“Alice, are you feeling good?” David asks her, his hand on her back. Her head is spinning. God, why is he being so thoughtful.

“I… I don’t think so.”

Alice sort of disassociates, only fully regaining her consciousness after she throws up a couple times at the Saint-Germain lounge bathroom. David is by her side, holding her hair. His action only made her more nauseous, reminding her of a few nights before.

“You’re not pregnant, are you?” 

Her fiancé asks and she weakly slaps him.

“How can you ask me that this way?” Alice is angry, but her voice is weak. David laughs, brushing her hair off her face and kissing her forehead.

“Well, there’s still a few months till the wedding. I want you to look good in your dress.”

Alice stares at him in shock, trying to gain courage to ask him what she really wants to know. To tell him how she feels. It was the first time he even mentioned the wedding in weeks.

“Do you really? You still think about our wedding?”

“Of course, love. Where’s this coming from?”

Her hair is a mess and her make up ruined, they’re both still sitting on the bathroom floor and Alice feels like this is the lowest so far in their relationship. David's tone of voice makes her feel like she’s delirious. Maybe she overreacted. She should have asked him sooner.

“I feel like you don’t want me anymore.” She’s fully crying and David tries to dry her tears, confused. He takes out a handkerchief embroidered with his initials and hands it to her.

“What? Love, that’s not true. How can you say that?”

“I’m sorry I ruined your business meeting.” Alice says in between sobs. David shakes his head.

“You didn’t ruin anything. It’s actually a pretty good look for me, coming to help you.” He chuckles. A few minutes later, Alice recomposes herself, quickly fixing her hair and make up. When they walk out, holding hands, it is like nothing happened.

“Oh, look, Messi scored!” David points at one of the Tv’s on the lounge. Back home, getting ready to bed, Alice tries to initiate a kiss but he points a finger on her lips.

“Love, you threw up today.” He looks at her with disgust.

“Are you serious? I’m feeling better, you psycho.”

“Well, let’s wait a few more hours. Just to make sure.”

On her phone there’s a new notification. An answer to her stories on the stadium. It was a group picture, David had his arm around her, kissing her cheek.

k.mbappe  enjoyed the game?

alicemwebber not really wasn’t feeling well had to leave early

k.mbappe  feeling better now?

David was sound asleep beside her, she stared at him for a while before answering.

alicemwebber yes much better

#the french exit #kylian mbappe #kylian fanfic #mbappe fanfic #smut #football fanfic #kylian mbappe fanfic

[thatnerdinthecorner]

Reason I HAte Jamie No. 46849

'If I hadn't believed in you I wouldn't have loved you at all' from If I Didn't Believe In You

so much of this show is Cathy thinking about her insecurities. Jamie is so successful and she isn't, and throughout the show we get her talent confused with her insecurity: in Climbing Uphill we see her unsuccessful audition and how terribly it goes, and we as an audience are supposed to think she's a bad actress/singer, but she spends the summer touring, and we know that this is something that she does regularly:

'Is it just that you're disappointed To be touring again for the summer?'

Touring isn't a bad job for an actor. It's not Broadway, it's not her dream, but it's a good job and it takes work and talent. Jason Robert Brown got sued by his ex, and consequently had to change parts of the show because it was too close to the reality of their marriage. In other words, the writer is Jamie, the entire show is told by Jamie, and even the songs from Cathy's perspective are written and told by Jamie. Given everything else in the show, I'm not particularly inclined to trust Jamie's account if he's the one telling us that she's bad at her job.

In If I Didn't Believe In You Cathy doesn't want to go to one of Jamie's work parties. She's feeling frustrated about her own career and doesn't feel like spending the evening faking it to appease Jamie's colleagues. So Jamie digs into that. The entire song is very manipulative, but with these lines it fits into a continued theme throughout the show of saying that because Cathy hasn't managed to reach the pinnacle of an incredibly competitive field that she is automatically bad at her job and completely unskilled. Which we know isn't true, because otherwise she wouldn't be touring.

When Jamie says:

'If I hadn't believed in you I wouldn't have loved you at all'

what he's really saying is if I didn't think you would be successful, I wouldn't love you. But because her success is constantly conflated with her talent, when Jamie is talking about her success, he's also talking about her talent, so he's also saying that his love for her is dependent on her being talented, which he is measuring by her success.

Also, for the rest of the song Jamie says 'If I didn't believe in you' not 'hadn't'. I'm probably simplifying this a lot, but in this context, 'Didn't' works in the past and the conditional present tense. 'Hadn't' works in the past and conditional past tense. When Jamie switches to 'hadn't' at the end, he's saying that his belief in her is in the past tense. When Jamie says 'I wouldn't have loved you' that's in past tense too. His belief in her, and his love for her, which are intrinsically tied, are both in the past tense, because she has failed, because she is untalented. The song ends with him confirming all of her worst insecurities and saying he no longer loves her, and the next and final line is:

'Now why don't you put on your dress and we'll go, okay? Cathy? Can we do that, please? Please?'

In other words, the last few lines of this song is Jamie saying telling his wife yes, you're right, you don't have a good job, and you'll never get a better one, you'll never be successful, because you're not talented, and I don't love you anymore, because I only loved you because I thought that you could be successful one day, so why don't you just shut up, stop whining and do as I say, and come to my party to celebrate me and my work and my success.

I hate this man more that I can say.

#do i mean Jason Robert Brown or Jamie Wellerstein? you'll never know #the last five years #the last 5 years #jason robert brown #jamie wellerstein #cathy hiatt #anna kendrick #jeremy jordan #if i didn't believe in you

[skadren]

sephesis week day 4. injury / separation: "wings stripped away, the end is nigh."

-

"They're saying the war will be over by the end of this year," Genesis says, reaching up to play idly with a strand of Sephiroth's hair. His bangs are getting long—long enough to dangle in Genesis's face when he rests his head in Sephiroth's lap, and they dance away from his fingers as Sephiroth's head tilts in askance.

"So they are. And?"

"And," Genesis continues, sitting up abruptly, "I'd like to hear what our esteemed hero thinks. So, will it?"

"You and I are here." Sephiroth's mouth quirks upwards. "I place my estimate at the end of autumn by the latest."

Even for Sephiroth, that's rather confident, and Genesis's eyebrows raise. It's already mid-summer, after all.

"We won't be together, though," Genesis points out. Though they've been called to return to headquarters for briefing before the final phase of the war, it's largely for protocol's sake. As the actual personnel on the field, they both already know that the strategy to take down Wutai's final fort will require them to split up for the first time in years. "I do believe that eliminates a good portion of the benefits of our teamwork."

"The end of autumn," Sephiroth repeats, almost dogged in his insistence, and Genesis feels the ache of separation already. "No longer."

Admittedly, the thought of the war ending so early is… appealing, especially the implied freedom it brings. There's not much he misses about the people of his hometown, but the orchards, the caverns, the apples… It's been a very long time, and he murmurs, "It would be rather nice to go home. And to be able to see Angeal more often than whenever Lazard deems fit to summon us."

After their promotion to First, while Genesis had been assigned more leadership responsibilities in Wutai, Angeal had opted to stay behind and train new recruits. After all, Genesis has always been more deft at leadership and strategy, while Angeal is the one with the patience and sternness to engrain some kind of principles in flighty teenagers high with too much power in their hands. Enough that most don't immediately die on the battlefield, at least.

As a result, Genesis and Sephiroth only ever really get a chance to spend time with Angeal when they return to Midgar—which admittedly isn't infrequent, but it's almost always brief, which is a far cry from when they used to spend all hours together here in Wutai. Genesis knows Sephiroth enjoys those times together too, which why his silence now is a tad odd, and—

"I suppose I'd simply… return to ShinRa, then," Sephiroth says finally, his mouth an unhappy line. "After all, I have no other home to return to."

"Absolutely not," Genesis says immediately. "You'll come with us to Banora, of course. You, me, Angeal—we'll all go together."

Sephiroth's eyes widen, as if such a revelation comes as a surprise. As if it isn't a given. "It wouldn't be an intrusion, would it?"

"Of course not." Genesis dismisses the thought with a wave of his hand. "After all, there's something there I want to show you."

There's a dream he still has from a long time ago—a wish that he still hasn't fulfilled, even after all these years.

"It's a promise."

-

Dearest Sephir

My love, I

It won't heal. I can't bear

I have no other choice but

Wings stripped away, the end is

I lo

I'm sorry.

-

Genesis burns the note.

-

previous day | next day

#sephesis week 2024

[vividwritinglove]

You are with Pierre when he is visiting his nephews/nieces and he says he wants kids after and you guys start practicing/trying for it

his latest Insta post inspired me so much!

—————

The last week of the summer break Pierre and you spend as usual with his family. His parents rent a large house at the Côte d'Azur so that they can live with all their sons, their wives and grandchildren under one roof. It's chaotic, noisy and wonderful.

This week is absolutely sacred to Pierre. For several years now you have been taking part in this great tradition of the Gasly family. It is one of your highlights of the year. You love Pierre's family and they love you! Especially Pierre's mom is head over heels by you. You hit it off right away with her and even talk on the phone a few times a month. Without Pierre, which sometimes bothers him, because he thinks that you and his mother are keeping secrets from him.

You sunbathe with Pascale on the sun deck of the yacht, that Pierre has rented and watch the men doing water sports. Pierre wears his favorite orange swim shorts, by now his trademark, and keeps waving at you when passing by with the jet ski. Pascale grins, her youngest son still as enamored with you as the first day. You spend the whole day on the yacht, even have dinner there. Pierre is very busy with his youngest nephew, who is just learning to walk. Again and again the little one toddles up to him and falls joyfully into his arms. Everyone claps enthusiastically and your heart swells at this sight. Pierre loves his nieces and nephews so much. He would like to have children of his own, preferably 3. You are sure that he will be a great father one day.

Arm in arm, Pierre and you leave the yacht and get into the turquoise oldtimer that he also has rented. While Pierre confidently steers the vintage car along the coast, you lean back on the beige upholstery and enjoy the summer breeze. Pierre reaches for your hand, leads it to his mouth and covers the back of your hand with kisses. You are really lucky to have him. Pierre is the most generous and loving person you have ever met.

"I love you!" you say as you watch him continue kissing your hand.

"And I love you!" he replies directly, looking at you over his sunglasses on his nose with a smile. You can't help but snuggle up to him and kiss his strong neck. Pierre grins at your caresses, "Mon cœur, can't you be patient until we get home?“.

"With your entire family?" you laugh, "Forget it!".

"Then we'll just have to be quiet..."

You both decide to drive along the coast a little longer. The house would be a bit chaotic now anyway, since it's bedtime for the kids. Pierre drives to a small bar not far from the house and you two linger there for a while, before you arrive back at the family domicile after midnight. Everyone else already went to bed and Pierre and you have to sneak quietly into your shared room. Which is not that easy, since Pierre pushes you with his hands on your hips in front of him and meanwhile kisses the crook of your neck. His beard stubble tickles you and the 2 glasses of wine you had before made you even giggle more.

"Shhhh." admonishes Pierre, "we have to be quiet.".

Finally you made it to the bedroom and as the door falls into the lock, so do your clothes on to the floor. Pierre pushes you onto the bed and leans over you to kiss you passionately. His kisses travel from your lips, to your neck, over your breasts and down to your belly. He stops and looks up at you. Your eyes meet. You look at him questioningly.

"I'd love to see you with a round belly." he murmurs against your skin, kissing it again while keeping eye contact with you, "A little you and me, what do you think?".

You knew you wanted to be a mother someday and starting a family with Pierre would be a dream! You stroke your hands through his hair and smile at him, "Let's make a baby.".

#freakyf1friday #pierre gasly #pg10 #pierre gasly x reader #f1 smut #pierre gasly smut #f1 things

[scrumptiousassbtch]

I've been collecting songs for my Sebaciel playlists, and its still on 28 minutes lmao. Here are some of the songs that I think perfectly suits them:

1. Me and the Devil by Soap&Skin

This is screaming SEBACIEL! No further explanation.

Early this morning When you knocked upon my door And I said hello Satan, ah I believe it is time to go Me and the devil walkin' side by side

2. Young and Beautiful by Lana Del Ray

I personally don't like this song before but then I discovered Sebaciel. I literally wept when I realized how this song suits them. (I like the orchestral ver. more)

Will you still love me when I'm no longer young and beautiful? Will you still love me when I got nothing but my aching soul? I know you will, I know you will, I know that you will

3. Dark Paradise by Lana Del Ray

More on the angsty side. Sebastian missing Ciel, years after he had consumed his soul. Because, come ooon. It is somehow inevitable, sebaciel isn't canon(and it hurts). I'am somehow(we all are) hoping that the canon Sebastian holds affection for our Ciel.

Basically the entirety of the song, but here's the part where it hurts more

Loving you forever can't be wrong Even though you're not here, won't move on Ahh That's how we played it And there's no remedy for memory, your face is like a melody It won't leave my head Your soul is haunting me and telling me that everything is fine But I wish I was dead (dead, like you) Every time I close my eyes, it's like a dark paradise No one compares to you I'm scared that you won't be waiting on the other side

4. Everything I Wanted by Billie Eilish

This one right here! Literally soft sebaciel people *sobs*. I can imagine Sebastian saying this to Ciel(I know kinda OOC, but let me indulge)

I had a dream I got everything I wanted But when I wake up, I see You with me And you say "As long as I'm here, no one can hurt you Don't wanna lie here, but you can learn to If I could change the way that you see yourself You wouldn't wonder why you hear 'They don't deserve you'"

5. The Fruits by Paris Paloma

I really love this one because of how it screams feminine rage, but then someone here on tumbler(I can't find it) points out that this song is also kind of Sebaciel coded and I couldn't agree more.

My love, are you the devil? I would worship you instead of him I have no time for confession For I'm too busy committing sins My love, you're something special I've never met someone like you You'd make me fall from heaven But I know just what I do

6. Skyfall by Adele

Oh come on, this one right here. The song when the inevitable happens(I don't want to imagine it. It hurts)

This is the end Hold your breath and count to ten Feel the Earth move and then Hear my heart burst again For this is the end I've drowned and dreamt this moment So overdue, I owe them Swept away, I'm stolen

Where you go, I go What you see, I see I know I'd never be me Without the security Of your loving arms Keeping me from harm Put your hand in my hand And we'll stand

Bonus Song(lmao):

Salvatore by Lana Del Ray

It's because of that damned(affectionate) fanfic on ao3! I actually wasn't able to finish it because of how graphic the violence is. But I can assure you its really good, I'm just a weaksht ass. The writing and the plot is superb.

For those who want to read it(Im sure everyone has read it already), it's The Great Northern by bun_o_ween

And I've been waiting for you all this time I adore you, can't you see, you're meant for me? Summer's hot but I've been cold without you I was so wrong not to tell, I'm in regine, tangerine dreams Catch me if you can Working on my tan Salvatore Dying by the hand Of a foreign man Happily Calling out my name In the summer rain Ciao amore

I hope it's not that obvious that I like Lana, lol(It was actually unintentional)

Anyway, here's the playlist. Enjoy Sebaciel enjoyers love lots 🖤.

#sebaciel #sebaciel playlists #Spotify