#ED RUNNING TO PUT HIMSELF BETWEEN THEM | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

steddiehyperfixation · 6 months

Text

don't you forget about me (steddie fic)

saw this post and was inspired to write something angsty <3

The first thing Eddie is aware of when he wakes up, before he even opens his eyes, is the dull, aching pain throbbing through pretty much his entire body. The second thing he’s aware of is that someone is holding his hand.

“Eddie?” The hand in his tightens its grip as Eddie begins to stir; the voice it presumably belongs to sounds immeasurably relieved, yet only vaguely familiar.

Eddie groans. His eyelids flutter, blinking awake, and he groggily rolls his head to the side to get a look at whoever had spoken.

The voice sighs again, “Oh thank god-”

“Harrington?” Eddie’s eyes fly open wide now as they land on the mystery man sitting beside him on the edge of the bed - a man he most definitely is not close enough with to be holding his hand, and a bed that is most definitely not his own. He snatches his hand away. “What the hell are you doing? Where am I?”

“Ed-” Another man’s voice, this one just as relieved and infinitely more familiar. It fills Eddie with relief too as he looks to his other side to find his uncle Wayne rising from a nearby chair to come up next to him.

“Wayne, what-?” His surroundings are becoming more clear. “What happened? Why am I in a hospital? And why the fuck is King Steve at my bedside?” Eddie tries to sit up only to gasp and wince in pain as the dull ache in his sides sharpens to near agony at the movement.

“Take it easy, son.” Wayne’s hand lands on his shoulder, gently but firmly pushing him back down onto the pillows. “You were hurt real bad.”

“Yeah, I got that,” Eddie grumbles out. He sucks in a deep, intentional breath and exhales slowly, the pain beginning to dull again now that he’s settled. His questions are still largely unanswered, though. Blank mind reaching desperately for any logical piece to this bizarre puzzle, he turns an accusing glare to Harrington. “Did you land me in here? Is that why you’re here, some sort of weird guilt thing?”

Harrington’s looking at him like a kicked puppy. “What? No, I-” he falters, takes a shaky breath and swallows painfully like he’s trying not to cry. “You don’t remember?”

“I don’t remember what? Will someone just tell me what happened?” Eddie’s confusion is rising more and more into agitation with every second he remains without an explanation.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Harrington asks quietly.

“I was driving home from school, just found out I wasn’t gonna graduate again.” Eddie frowns as he thinks back, still trying to put pieces together. “Did I crash my car? Is that it? I was emotional and not paying attention and got into an accident?”

Yet again, he receives no answers.

“Eddie, what month is it?” Wayne asks instead, his tone dangerously measured and serious. “What year?”

“May…” Eddie says warily, “1985.”

His words hold a weight he doesn’t understand, landing heavy on the others in the room and thickening the air. It sends a chill of dread down his spine, the way his answer etches concern deep into the lines of Wayne’s face, the way Steve Harrington seems to take it like a blow to the chest.

Harrington exhales sharply as if he’s been punched, standing abruptly and taking a few stumbling steps back. Wayne says, “It’s April of ‘86, Ed.”

Eddie’s blood runs cold. “No. No, it can’t be.”

“I’m gonna go tell the nurse you’re awake,” Harrington mumbles, his voice strained and his eyes glassy with barely held-back tears.

“I’ll go,” Wayne offers, pushing himself away from Eddie’s bed. He gives Harrington a meaningful look, though what that meaning is, Eddie can’t decipher.

Harrington turns his devastated gaze to the older man. “But, Wayne, he doesn’t-”

“I know, kid.” Wayne gives a sad smile and places a sympathetic hand on Harrington’s shoulder as he passes by. “Just talk to him.”

Eddie is thrown off by this familiarity between them. Since when were those two close? He feels like he’s entered some sort of parallel universe where everything is just ever so slightly wrong. It leaves an itch beneath his skin, uncomfortable and out of place, like he no longer quite fits in his own body, in his own life. He’s lost 11 months, apparently, and this world is no longer his; he doesn’t know where he fits into it anymore.

Wayne leaves the room, and Eddie wants to protest: Don’t leave me here with this guy I don’t know in this time I don’t know, please, you’re the only thing that feels safe and familiar! Anxiety is crawling through him like a thousand tiny bugs in his veins. He wants to scream, he wants to cry, he wants to run. Anything to shake this feeling loose. But he’s confined to this bed, trapped both by his pain and by all these machines he’s hooked up to, and he sure as shit isn’t going to have a breakdown in front of Steve goddamn Harrington.

Instead, Eddie resigns himself to this situation and casts a sideways glance at Harrington who very much looks like he’s also trying not to have a breakdown. “I’m freaking out, man,” Eddie says finally, hating how shaky and pathetic his voice sounds. “I swear to god, Harrington, if you don’t tell me what the hell is going on…”

Harrington worries his lip between his teeth as he hesitates. “It’s a lot to explain.”

“Yeah, I bet,” Eddie scoffs out a humorless laugh. “I’m missing nearly an entire year, of course it’s a lot to fill in. Unless I’ve been here this whole time?”

“No.” Harrington shakes his head. “No, you’ve only been here about a week. I- I don’t know why you’re missing so much time, the whole Vecna thing only started like a week before that-”

“Vecna?” Eddie interrupts to question. “What does any of this have to do with the D&D campaign I was planning? And, also, how the fuck do you know about that?”

Harrington closes his eyes for a second and takes a breath, like having this conversation is the most painful thing he’s ever had to do. “I’m not talking about D&D, Ed. Vecna was a real-life monster from a real-life alternate dimension we called the Upside-Down. The kids only called him Vecna because we didn’t know who he was at the time and he, like, cursed people before he killed them, but he was actually Henry Creel, which is a whole other fucked up story.”

“Okay…” Eddie doesn’t know who ‘the kids’ are and he’s skeptical of the way Harrington talks so factually about monsters and dimensions and curses existing in the real world, but he does remember his uncle telling him stories about the demonic tragedy of the Creel family, which is the only thing that makes any of this even halfway believable. It still doesn’t explain how Eddie wound up in the hospital with his entire body feeling like it’d been run through a blender, though, or why the former king of Hawkin’s High was hovering over his sickbed. He gestures for Harrington to continue.

“I never wanted you to get involved in all this Upside-Down shit,” Harrington’s voice breaks. He steps closer to Eddie’s bed again, and he looks so so sad as he stares down at him that it makes Eddie’s own heart ache, just a little bit. Harrington’s hand twitches at his side as if he means to reach out for Eddie but then thinks better of it, running the hand through his hair instead as he continues, “I tried to keep you from it for so long, I really did, but then Vecna killed Chrissy in your trailer and the whole town blamed you and you were just a part of things then, there was no getting around it. You helped us fight him - Vecna. You kept his army of bats off our ass while we weakened his body and El weakened his mind. If it weren’t for you we never would’ve defeated him and we certainly wouldn’t have all made it out alive.” Harrington’s gaze softens, as does his voice, his next words almost a whisper, “You were a hero, Eddie.”

“That doesn’t sound like me,” Eddie says, like that’s the least plausible part of Harrington’s story. And, really, it is. He can wrap his mind around a lot of things: a murder in his trailer - sure, Forest Hills always was a shady place; the whole town accusing him of being a killer - yeah, of course, that tracks; even an evil wizard from another dimension with an army of bats - fine, okay, why the hell not. But Eddie Munson is no hero, and he’s definitely not any sort of fighter either.

“No, you never did think so, did you?” Harrington mutters with a sad sort of fondness and the barest trace of a wistful smile. “But it’s true. Dustin was in danger and you didn’t even think twice. You ran right into the fray without a second thought, sacrificed yourself so that the rest of us might survive. Those bats nearly killed you, b-” he breaks, choking on whatever word he was going to say. His eyes swim with yet more unshed tears. “I almost thought they had killed you, you know. I thought you were dead when I carried you out of the Upside-Down,” he admits shakily, choked up and barely managed, “and even when I brought you here and you were stable, I was still so scared you wouldn’t wake up…”

Eddie doesn’t know how to react to any of that information or to such a display of emotion. His own hands twitch now with the urge to reach out and comfort him, but he too denies that instinct. He tries for humor instead, something lighter, cracking a grin and teasing, “Aw, Stevie, I didn’t know you cared.”

Harrington makes a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh. “Oh, Ed, you have no idea.”

“We were friends then, weren’t we?” Eddie guesses now, carefully. It’s rapidly becoming the only possible explanation for the guy’s behavior around him. “Before all the Vecna stuff?”

“Yeah,” Harrington manages, forcing a small, sad smile as his eyes finally overflow and streak his cheeks with tears. “Yeah, we were good friends.”

Wayne reenters the room then with a nurse in tow, and Steve quickly turns away and rubs his hands over his face. He needs to pull himself together; he can’t break down right now, not yet, not here.

He listens, distantly, as the nurse asks Eddie a bunch of questions and then tells the rest of them that she needs to take him in for some tests to determine the cause and prognosis of Eddie’s amnesia. He watches, numbly, as she wheels Eddie’s entire bed out of the room.

Steve can barely hear, barely see, his emotion clouding his eyes and roaring in his ears. He stares blankly through the open doorway and struggles to swallow down the ever-rising lump in his throat.

Wayne’s voice rumbles from somewhere beside him, but he can’t quite make out the words. “What?”

“I’ll take that as a no, then,” Wayne says, the sound reaching Steve’s ears a little clearer now. “I asked if you were alright.”

Steve shakes his head. His voice comes out coarse and raw, “‘Course I’m not alright.”

“Right, ‘course you’re not,” Wayne echoes. He follows Steve’s mournful gaze to the door Eddie had disappeared through. “What did you tell him?”

“Told him he was a hero,” Steve croaks, “...and that we were good friends.”

“Ah…” Steve’s vision is so blurred behind a thick layer of tears he can’t see the sympathetic frown on the old man’s face, but he knows it’s there. “At least he’s alive, kid,” Wayne tries to be comforting. “You can always start over.”

“Yeah, I know, but I don’t- I don’t want to start over, I just want-” Steve chokes back a sob. He just wants Eddie.

It’s a horrible thought, but Steve almost thinks that this just might be worse than if Eddie really had died… Because how is Steve supposed to handle the fact that his boyfriend of 9 months no longer knows him? How is he supposed to cope now that the love of his life looks right at him and no longer sees him?

He closes his eyes, presses the heels of his palms into his eyelids, inhaling a shaky breath and exhaling an even shakier sigh. Steve whispers, “It feels like I’m losing him all over again.”

(part two is here!)

#i have plans to fix it don't worry. eventually. maybe #i'm really really bad at writing longer multi-part fics but i've got a lot of ideas spinning around my head for this one so #hopefully i will continue it if any of y'all are interested in more of this #steddie #steddie angst #steddie fic #steddie ficlet #eddie munson #steve harrington #stranger things #ficlet #fanfic #mine #1k #dyfamsteddiefic #<- tag to follow for this story

2K notes · View notes

thisisadonaldduckblognow · 1 year

Text

all the rise boys get done dirty on characterization by fandom in different ways i think. (not ALL the time every fanwork etc etc these are just like, trends i tend to notice?) every fandom suffers from losing character nuance.

- leo i’ve talked about plenty on this blog, how some of his canon traits (genuine belief in his skill and cockiness, capacity for joy, his manipulativeness whether for good or ill) seem to get watered down or wiped off the board and supplemented with generic sad boy. his struggles with purpose and identity and not wanting to fail somehow morph into “he hates and completely holds no value for himself”

- donnie’s canon personality gets blurred out and largely replaced with whatever list of Neurodivergent Traits. and i think there’s such a fine line to walk between exploring a character that’s been word of god confirmed as on the spectrum and overwriting what’s canonically there. it’s a hard needle to thread. it also feels like a lot of his canon emotiveness gets left off the table for some reason. bc he does have his moments of flat/deadpan delivery, but a lot of the time he’s honestly very emotive. he has the passion of a theatre kid and the vindictiveness of... also a theatre kid. and the mind of a scientist.

- raph loses so much of his rowdy teen boy energy it’s kind of wild? like interpretations sand off that he’s also impulsive and can be reckless and dumb and LOVES fighting and roughhousing and isn’t the most eloquent person. suddenly there’s this pitch perfect soft boy big bro who would never hurt a fly and always says the exact right supportive thing and singlehandedly raised his 3 brothers (which simultaneously sands off all the nuance of splinter’s issues emotionally connecting with his sons and how that affected all of them). and like i LOVE raph, he’s so full of love and care and anxiety, he clearly has learned to put a lot of work into being aware of his strength and size. but there’s a difference you know?

- mikey is like. where raph gets overparentified by fanon, mikey gets over “family therapist”-ed IMO. the impulsiveness, the goofiness, the powerful emotions including a VERY powerful temper, the flat-out dumb teen boy choices... they get ignored. suddenly there’s this only very sweet and earnest boy who has read a hundred psychology books and runs group family therapy weekly or something. he is crying in his room bc leo and raph are arguing about something. which is so. he IS very sweet and can be very earnest and is full of love! he HAS come in with his opinions and unsolicited advice a couple of times and life coached for the greater good. but there’s a difference between what he does in canon and the role he gets in fanon.

#rottmnt #rise of the tmnt #idk this is not a very eloquent rundown its very hard to explain exactly my vibe #ig the long story short is i feel like a lot of their most interesting and fun qualities get left in the dust #mikey as family therapist is getting under my skin the most rn i think its just so.#for as much as it seems like his brothers try to shelter him (esp raph with his overprotectiveness)..... i just dont see it #i dont see his brothers and definitely not his dad putting their issues on him like that...#him dragging donnie into that one dr feelings session and dragging draxum into a new moral alignment were different #than 'yeah everyone tells mikey their stuff and he has to do the labor of helping with it'#like it just doesnt vibe for me #i think he is very emotionally OPEN on all levels compared to his family #i think he is more likely to share when HE struggles #i dont think raph or leo is sitting with him at 3am like 'it all started when i was 4 and accidentally broke a plate' or what have you idk #it's all so ymmv i do just scroll past stuff i dont vibe with i dont drop hate on it i just #idk dudes its so hard to see the appeal in some of the choices made

2K notes · View notes

libraryofgage · 8 months

Text

Mermaid/Pirate Steddie Two

Part One

Have I already posted something today? Yes, yes I have but also I finally got through my block on this one hfjdks

I'll be working on Addams Family Steddie next but idk when that part might be coming out lol

anyway, as always, if you see any typos no you didn't ;)

---

Steve has taken over Eddie's large porcelain bathtub after it was moved to the main room of the captain's cabin. Steve is lounging in it now, a week into being on Eddie's ship, with his tail draped over the edge so he can submerge his head and breathe through his gills. It's infinitely more comfortable, even with the seaweed still wrapped along the length of his tail and reminding him of its presence with every twitch.

He sighs, bubbles rising from his gills in the "I'm beyond bored" pattern that Robin would light up at seeing. But she's not here, so Steve is left to once again turn Eddie's bat ring over in his hands, fingers brushing along the wings.

Eddie had shown him a drawing of an actual bat, and Steve still thinks they're freaks of nature. But he finds the ring itself a little endearing if only because it was Eddie's ring willingly given.

He smiles softly, the gesture only dampened by the sharp jab of worry over his guppies and Robin. They're probably losing their scales with worry themselves, scouring the sea and putting themselves at risk of being seen in their hunt for him. Steve can't even fault them, either; he would do the exact same thing if Robin or any of his guppies had been captured like that. He has done the exact same thing.

Steve sighs again, this time the bubble pattern expressing exhaustion and "What the fuck am I supposed to do now?" He kind of misses having someone who actually understands what his bubble patterns mean, but he knows it wouldn't be fair to get frustrated with anyone for their inability to gain meaning from bubbles floating toward the surface.

He thinks, maybe, the worst part is being confined to the tub. Sure, it's infinitely better than the fucking bucket from the other ship, but Steve is still getting restless. He's like a guppy that's watching its siblings swim but still doesn't have the tail strength to swim itself. He feels trapped and has way too much energy with nowhere to spend it.

Steve hasn't mentioned this to Eddie, though. He'd been planning to, of course. In fact, he intended to tell Eddie that morning, but then they'd docked at some port city and Eddie had run off with the promise of being back soon. Steve had tried not to feel a little abandoned, left by himself with fucking nothing to do while Eddie prances around on land.

Before he can get too far into this line of thought (he's about three minutes from convincing himself that, really, Eddie shouldn't have left and could probably be taught the basics of bubble patterns as punishment), Eddie practically barrels into the room, vibrating with something Steve only recognizes as excitement when he sees Eddie's grin.

Steve surfaces, pushing his hair out of his eyes and leaning on the edge of the tub, twitching his tail slightly and exercising incredible control to keep from preening when Eddie's gaze lingers on it. "What happened?" he asks, slipping the bat ring onto his thumb, the only finger it fits.

Eddie drops to his knees, scooting closer to the tub until their noses are almost brushing. "I've got a surprise for you, sweetheart," he says, voice light and eager.

"Where is it?" Steve asks, returning Eddie's smile.

"It's on the deck! Do you trust me?"

For a brief moment, Steve thinks Eddie is about to throw him back into the ocean. Which, like, wouldn't be a bad thing, but Steve would be incredibly offended by the suddenness and wonder if he'd been imagining the draw between them.

But he's sure Eddie wouldn't do something like that without asking first, so he tucks it away as something only slightly possible. Steve nods and pulls back, bracing his hands on the edge of the tub before pushing himself up. He perches on the edge, his balance a little unsteady as he looks at Eddie.

Thankfully, Eddie catches on quickly. He scrambles to his feet and scoops Steve off the edge of the tub, one arm under his tail and the other wrapped around Steve's back. Steve holds onto Eddie's neck, still a little paranoid about being dropped despite Eddie's prior insistence that he wouldn't let anything happen to Steve.

"I think you're gonna love it," Eddie says, his voice soft and his breath warm against Steve's cheek.

Steve gets the urge to ask again, but he holds back as Eddie carries him up to the deck. The sky is covered in clouds, keeping the sun from blinding him when they emerge from the stairs. The deck is concerningly large for such a small crew, and Gareth is currently lounging against the mast, a hat pulled low over his eyes as he sleeps.

He's not very attention-grabbing, though. Not when there's a large...contraption in the middle of the deck. It has four wheels and is shaped like a boat, big enough for Steve to sit comfortably without his tail draping over the edge. There are cranks of some kind on the inside of the boat, and Steve realizes it's filled with water as Eddie carries him closer.

"What is this?" Steve asks, trying not to grimace at the discomfort of his scales beginning to dry out. They're starting to feel tight and itchy, a sensation he really hates, like they're going to split apart at any second.

Eddie grins wider and carefully sets Steve into the water, making sure he doesn't bump the tail or the seaweed wraps. He points at the crank to Steve's left and says, "That will make the back wheels turn. If you crank forward, you'll go forward, and back will make you go backward." He then points to the other crank by Steve's right. "This one controls the front wheels. Forward will make them turn left, and backward will make them turn right. You should be able to move around the deck with this."

Steve stares at the cranks for a moment before glancing up at Eddie. When he receives an encouraging nod in response, he slowly turns the left crank forward, lighting up when the boat does, in fact, move forward a few inches.

He's so overwhelmed with joy that he can't help the notes bubbling in his throat, rising and rising until he can't hold them back anymore. Steve doesn't even think before singing, a wordless tune that conveys just how truly happy he is, one that would leave Robin flabbergasted because she's never heard this tune before.

Because this tune is for courting gifts. Like, really fucking fantastic courting gifts. The kind of gifts that blow everything else clear out of the water and leave a merperson dazed and bubbly and floating without any direction from sheer happiness, bubbles bursting through their gills in joyous patterns.

Steve has never sung this tune before, but he's not at all surprised that Eddie is the person who managed to coax it out of him.

-----

Eddie knew the boat would be a good idea, but now he's thinking it was the best idea he's ever had and ever will. Even after hours have passed, after Steve has watched the sun drop below the water and asked Eddie to carry him back to the cabin, complaining about his arms being sore from turning cranks, Eddie is still reeling.

He's never heard a more beautiful sound. Eddie keeps replaying the tune Steve sang in his head, frustrated with his inability to recreate it just right and too flustered to ask Steve to sing it again. Because he gets the feeling it was special, something that Steve can't just do at the drop of a hat, but something he did because of Eddie.

Eddie twists his fingers in the sheet covering him, turning his head to glance at the tub where Steve is leaning against the edge. His eyes are closed, but Eddie knows he isn't sleeping yet. Steve submerges his head when he sleeps.

"Hey, Stevie," Eddie whispers, almost like he doesn't want Steve to hear so the comfortable silence continues.

Steve hears him anyway, of course, the flare of fin along the edge of his ear twitching slightly. He tilts his head a bit more, squishing his cheek against his arm, and somewhat lazily says, "Yeah, Eddie?"

Eddie turns onto his side, meeting Steve's gaze. "How'd you become a caretaker?" he asks. It's not the question he actually wants to ask; he wants to ask Steve to sing again, to let him drift to sleep to beautiful notes and lingering melodies.

He watches as Steve tenses slightly before forcing himself to relax. He takes a deep breath, his gills fluttering slightly before slowly exhaling. "A while ago, my pod had an...altercation with a pod from the southern seas. They kidnapped one of the guppies, Will, and the other guppies decided to rescue him. They snuck off one night and I followed them when I discovered what happened and..."

Steve trails off, frowning as he tilts his head to look at the small window, staring at the moon through the glass. "Well, long story short, there were lots of fights, our pod lost its previous caretaker, and we gained a new guppy the southern pod had captured. After everything, I couldn't let the guppies out of my sight, and they kept coming to me and Robin whenever they had problems. So, eventually, I just convinced Robin to be my partner and raise the guppies."

There's a lot going unsaid in that explanation, but Eddie knows better than to pry right now. Steve will tell him when he wants, and if he never wants to, that's fine, too. Eddie won't fault him for that. "Did you have a job before that?" he asks.

Steve hums softly, still beautiful and soft, but not at all the melody Eddie really wants to hear. "I used to scout for the pod," he says, "I would swim ahead and make sure an area was safe or find spots to rest when the pod traveled. When we stopped for long periods, I'd help gather food for the pod."

"You like caring for the guppies more," Eddie says, and it's not at all a question.

"Yeah," Steve replies, a soft smile tugging at his lips. "The guppies are great."

"Tell me about them."

"Well, first is Dustin. He's a little sea urchin, always talking back and getting into trouble, but he's sweet. Will is usually pretty quiet, but he's got a great imagination. Mike always hangs around Will, and he's kind of a squid, but he's going through an awkward growth phase. Lucas is the most active of them, and he likes to shadow the scouters when he can. Erica is his little sister, and she doesn't let the others get away with anything. Max is daring and brash, she tends to dive head-first into stuff, but she's also really protective. El is quiet like Will, but she's really smart and really caring. They're such a handful. Robin and I never have a dull day."

His voice is trailing off toward the end, and Eddie knows he's just moments from falling asleep. "I'd like to meet them someday," Eddie says, his voice softer than before, the words spoken more to himself than Steve.

Of course, that doesn't stop Steve from hearing him anyway. He hums again, this one quieter, and groggily mumbles, "Of course you will, Eddie. That's part of the courting."

And then, like he hasn't essentially rocked Eddie's entire world, Steve slips down in the tub. He submerges his head in the water, and Eddie can hear the quiet murmur of bubbles rising to the surface and popping as Steve breathes.

Eddie stays frozen for a few minutes, staring at the tub, and suddenly wondering if, maybe, somebody somewhere happened to write a merperson courtship manual.

Tag List (there's still room, so let me know if you'd like to be added!)

@mugloversonly, @raisedbylibrarians, @thegirlwiththelibrarybag, @savory-babby, @vankaar, @beckkthewreck, @itcanbepalped, @imfinereallyy, @finntheehumaneater, @mightbeasleep, @weekend-dreamer7

@whenindoubtb72, @troublemaker2azz, @just-a-tiny-void, @upallnightogetloki, @mxmakessense

#steddie #steddie fic #high seas steddie #merman steve harrington #pirate eddie munson #steve harrington #eddie munson #stranger things fic #steddie fluff #my writing

840 notes · View notes

clairegregoryau · 6 months

Text

Through the Looking Glass

From fairytale in Season 1 to stark reality in Season 2 of Our Flag Means Death- meta ported across from this Twitter thread by popular demand!

This thread contains spoilers for the entirety of OFMD Season 2

First OFMD S1 rewatch since S2, and holy shit, if you haven't done that yet... do that. A thing that it made instantly clear: they told us *all along* where this was going, but there was a reason we didn't see it. Because we were living in Stede's world then. Now it's Ed's.

I know that a lot of us have felt that the tone shift at the end of S2 was... jarring, compared to what's come before. This felt like a show that wouldn't go there. One where being run through was a temporary hiccup. We've travelled all the way from this to this.

But we haven't jumped there without a journey in between. And from the minute we started hearing about Blackbeard, the show never tried to hide what Ed's world and his specific life was like. Not once. In fact they told us over and over and over.

But Season 1 told us a lot of those things through song and story and fuckery. It blended reality with fiction.

Stede met the Blackbeard he knew through books and tall tales, and the real man was even more wonderful than he'd imagined.

We, along with Stede, were comfortable thinking that all those other tales were exaggerations and misrepresentations, and a lot of them very likely were.

The Ed Stede got to know was a person who was capable of whimsy and silliness and loved soft things and doing something weird. Yep, he was also capable of violence and rage, but when he was with Stede, he didn't feel it so much.

This was a vacation from that life.

To Stede he was absolutely lovely... oh, and also a bloodthirsty killer. And Stede loved (and loves) everything about him, and both of those things can be true. This is a perfect example of a spot where (in watching Season 1 without the benefit of hindsight) I assumed that everyone else in that pub was wrong, and Stede was simply trying to protect Ed's fearsome reputation by agreeing on the bloodthirsty bits. And I think from Stede's perspective that was largely true. I think that's how they wanted us to see Ed, through his eyes. Now, after watching both seasons, I think it wasn't the whole picture.

They told us, we heard it, we saw glimpses of it. But we (and Ed) were in Stede's run-away-to-sea fairytale the whole time. It wasn't until Stede left that we saw the reality- the Ed we knew had been, to a degree, a fictional character all along. I always saw this scene as Ed putting a bit of distance between himself and reality; it always felt like the Blackbeard of Stede's storybooks was the fictional one. But now it feels like the softer Ed that Stede knew was much the same- neither of them the whole story of who Ed was and is.

The one person who refused to live in Stede's fairytale was Izzy. I've seen people say it before, but he always gave off that vibe of the only human in the Muppets movie, or the guy who was in Black Sails while everyone else was in Pirates of the Caribbean. He saw the real risks clearly.

And in that light, the end of S1 has shifted an inch to the left for me, and I'm seeing it at a slightly different angle.

Izzy ripped away the healing Ed was doing, but in some respects he did it by tearing away the fairytale we'd all been living in, shoving Ed back into the Blackbeard story.

And that's where we pick up again in Season 2.

The fairytale reference came back in S2 in two notable places, those being Jim carrying that legacy forward in the darkest times, and in Izzy invoking the wooden boy against Ricky's efforts. Stede's made himself into a real boy. Ricky, nope.

Now that I've watched both seasons together, the tone shift doesn't feel so jarring at all, actually.

It feels like sliding through the looking glass, out of Stede's world, and into Ed's- a world that existed all along; we were just seeing it, la vie en rose, through Stede's eyes.

At the beginning of S2, Stede's gone, and we're seeing it unfiltered through Ed's reality.

But Stede wasn't lying when he said he loved everything about Ed. He made a promise to come back and find him- he went down into Ed's darkest place and reminded him that no matter how bad things got, there WAS someone waiting for him, ready to love him.

The contrast between S1's fantasy and S2's reality (excluding mermaids and actual bird guys and cursed coats) is stark, but it really is that.

We have the same settings, the same people, and very different ideas and outcomes at different times.

But it was always there.

Things do come back to a state of (precarious) balance once they're all together. Apologies are made, whether they're spoken out loud or through actions. Things go right, things go wrong. Healing happens. Izzy continues to have the steadiest, most real through-line in the story as he tracks toward redemption, finds acceptance, and to an extent finds himself.

Once again, I hate that they went here with the ending and I wish they hadn't. But it got a fraction easier for me looking at it not as a continuation of Stede's fairytale, but of the grounded-in-pirate-reality arc Izzy was always on, even while we lived in Stede's world.

Where does that leave us? We're not going back to the fairytale, but we're not going to be living in Black Sails for S3, either. We've hit a fusion point where S1 ended with each of them going to separate, miserable homes, but S2 ended with them in the same place, ready and willing to make a go of it.

Season 3 is going to give us their world, together.

I LOVED the moments in this season where the deep emotions were in balance with the silliness I've always adored about this show. Eps4-6 were wonderful like that. Clearly we're not done with drama, either, but like Ed and Stede, I think we'll find a middle ground.

Anyway in conclusion, a rewatch of S1 after S2 somehow made me love the first season even more, which felt impossible? It's now gained /even more/ layers of depth than it had before. No matter how you feel about S2 I think it's worth that rewatch.

Adding one more bit of clarity for myself: I think we got a bit (intentionally) seduced in S1 by the idea that the Ed of the storybooks, the Vampire Viking Clown with the nine guns, was a version of him that others saw, when Stede saw the REAL person who 'worked' for Blackbeard.

In hindsight I think it's clear the Ed Stede go to know was also not the complete version of himself- the reality is, there's a whole spectrum between the two, and they've landed in the middle of it now. Ed intentionally leaned into the unlovable Kraken image to protect himself.

It very much didn't work, just like being just... Edward hadn't worked to protect himself, either. This season has been very much about pulling those two extremes together and finding all the parts that make up Ed overall (another thread on that here on Twitter, which I'll also shift across to Tumblr soon!)

And I think one of my favourite things in S2 has been seeing the way Stede SEES that- he knows what Ed's done, everyone's told him, but he still loves Ed. sees his trauma and how it affects him, and believes he's a good man regardless. He IS lovable; he's not forever broken.

And together, they can heal.

#ofmd #our flag means death #gay pirates #ofmd meta #unreliable narrators #fantasy vs reality #ofmd spoilers #ofmd s2 spoilers

618 notes · View notes

rhysdarbinizedarby · 7 months

Text

‘Our Flag Means Death’: How Blackbeard & Stede’s Fantastical Underwater Reunion Came Together

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Our Flag Means Death, Season 2, Episodes 1-3.]

It doesn’t take more than a single second to recognize Kate Bush‘s haunting and heartbreaking tune “This Woman’s Work,” as Blackbeard, a.k.a. Ed (Taika Waititi), is pushed from a clifftop to plunge into the ocean’s depths below in Our Flag Means Death‘s Season 2 installment, “The Innkeeper.” But how did the pirate heartbroken over Stede Bonnet (Rhys Darby) wind up in this position? It’s a delicate and winding path that starts with the infamous pirate’s unraveling over the course of the latest season’s first two episodes.

Believing Stede intentionally abandoned him after planning to run away together at the end of Season 1, Blackbeard embraces the version of himself so many have conjured up in their minds as he leads the Revenge’s “new” crew to pillage and plunder on the high seas. His unhinged behavior eventually forces Jim (Vico Ortiz), Izzy (Con O’Neill), Frenchie (Joel Fry), Archie (Madeleine Sami), and Fang (David Fane) to violently take control of the ship and neutralize Blackbeard — or so they think — after he steers them directly into a storm.

When Zheng Yi Sao’s (Ruibo Qian) Red Flag happens across an eerie-looking Revenge on the ocean, Stede dives overboard in his excitement over the possibility of seeing Ed, only to be told various excuses for his absence by the crew aboard. When Stede directly addresses Izzy regarding Blackbeard’s lack of presence, the now peg-legged pirate claims the Revenge crew dropped Ed on a beach.

This seems to ring true as we see Blackbeard wash ashore and cared for by his own former captain Hornigold (Mark Mitchinson). While together, Blackbeard and Hornigold discuss the mutiny that took place and Blackbeard’s hopes for the future. When a role-playing scenario testing Blackbeard’s ability to be an Innkeeper, a profession he’s interested in, goes awry, he attacks Hornigold, killing the tarp-clad pirate. But when Hornigold rises again, Blackbeard realizes something is off.

Aboard the Revenge, Ed’s body is uncovered below deck. Believing him dead, Zheng Yi Sao is forced to consider killing the Revenge crew for mutiny after initially welcoming them aboard the Red Flag. And Stede has to cope with the idea that his love may be gone forever.

After hatching an escape plan for the Revenge team, Stede and pals return to their former ship, leaving Zheng stranded without a wheel. Going to sit with Ed’s body, Stede wonders why he had to go and get himself killed. Meanwhile, Blackbeard begins to realize he’s stuck somewhere between life and death, a place this Hornigold manifestation calls a “gravy basket.”

As the two men banter about the pros and cons of choosing life over death, Hornigold ties a boulder around Ed’s waist and throws it from the cliff they’re standing on, pushing Blackbeard into the ocean. Just as it seems as though he’ll succumb to the waves, Blackbeard proves Bush’s song right: Perhaps there’s a little life in him yet. When Stede lifts the cloth from his face on the Revenge, underwater Ed reacts to the change. Peering into the water, he sees a light from which a fantastical mermaid version of Stede emerges.

In the real world, Stede reacts to Blackbeard’s twitching hand, taking it in his and pleading for him to live as a montage of their moments together rolls alongside Bush’s still-playing song. The final seconds of the episode see Ed’s eyes open, giving Stede hope.

So, how did this moving turn of events come to pass? A team full of creatives was responsible for bringing the captivating and satisfying reunion.

Stede’s Mermaid Tail

“It’s a huge process,” putting together Stede’s practical mermaid look, according to costume designer Gypsy Taylor. She says “it started with me begging everybody” to avoid visual FX and make a tail for the sequence. The orange and glittering look could have followed several different styles, but ultimately, Taylor notes, “I thought if Stede is going to turn into a mermaid, and it’s in Blackbeard’s dream, it’s sort of his vision of a mermaid.”

Considering this, in Taylor’s mind, Blackbeard wouldn’t envision some epic fantastical creature; instead, Stede would “just be like a goldfish. He’d just be like a sweet harmless goldfish.” In putting sketches together of the ensemble, Taylor acknowledges the symbolism of the goldfish motif: “There’s a huge Chinese element that we have coming through, and goldfish in Chinese culture is considered lucky.” As this vision of Stede was responsible for helping bring Ed back to life, that luck was certainly there.

“I thought that was a pretty beautiful thing, that they meet each other under the ocean and then they find each other,” Taylor gushes. “And so I went a little deep on that, but really he’s just a goldfish.” In order to achieve the goldfish mermaid look, Taylor teamed up with props master Hayley Egan, who’s based out of Australia. “She happens to excel at making mermaid tails,” Taylor shares.

After securing Egan’s involvement, Taylor says, “We fit Rhys in a jumbo stretch long skirt and made sure it was really tight so he could still sort of do this dolphin [swimming] action. And then we bought these mono fins, which you can purchase online and put your feet in.” Safety was key, though. “He had to swim really deep and for a really far distance, and he’d never done anything like that before,” Taylor explains. “So it had to be really safe and doable.”

Once that was figured out, Taylor says Egan “cast something like 3,000 hand-sculpted silicon scales. There’s something like five kilograms of glitter in the whole thing. And then we hand-dyed pleated chiffon for all the fins, so that when he was swimming through the water, it would have this magic feel.”

While the scene may play as emotional and romantic, the story behind getting Stede’s mermaid look from Australia to New Zealand was actually quite comical. “[Egan] sliced two suitcases in half, filled [them with the mermaid tail], and then when it went through customs, the customs guy said to her, ‘Are you bringing fish into this country?’ And she’s like, ‘Yes, yes I am.'”

In total, there were four tails, including “a practice tail, a stunt tail, because Rhys had to do quite a few lessons before we got the real one on. And the real one was super precious, and chlorine’s very strong, it eats fabrics away, so we wanted to save the hero one for the hero shot,” Taylor reveals. When it came time to film, “We put him in [the tail], and it was just amazing.” In order to get Darby into the pool, Taylor says a ramp had to be built and the actor was placed in a wheelchair while costumed “and pushed in.” As unglamorous as it sounds, she adds, “it was like Rhys’s dream come true.”

How Kate Bush Entered the Music Mix

It’s safe to say Kate Bush has been having a moment on TV since last year’s “Running Up That Hill” needle drop on Stranger Things, but music supervisor Maggie Phillips says, “This Woman’s Work” was selected before Netflix‘s hit made headlines with their use of the aforementioned song. “When we were placing [the song in the season lineup],” Phillips says, “it was maybe weeks after Stranger Things, and I was worried that we would look like copycats.”

Phillips maintains that the song was in the mix before, but it ultimately “doesn’t matter because really what matters is that Kate Bush is a queen and more and more people need to know her music.”

She says, “From what I heard from David [Jenkins], it was a song that Taika was attached to.” At first, Phillips was reluctant to go with the song due to its prior uses, but “David told me not to worry about [that], that people have short-term memory when it comes to music.”

While she debated with the team over cutting it, “[David] has the visuals in his mind. I don’t. I’m just hearing it with a script and I had no clue how it was going to work until I saw the first cut, and it was beautiful and they picked a part of the song that worked really well with the visuals, so they sort of made it their own,” Phillips explains. “They added a different context to the song that I wouldn’t have been able to imagine myself. So they proved me wrong for sure.”

It’s hard to imagine the scene without Bush’s song. “It changes the way you listen to the song,” Phillips notes. “I got chills watching it and I know that song so well and haven’t gotten chills like that in a long time.” With all of the buildup, “You’re waiting for them to have their romantic moment. You’re waiting for three episodes for that to happen. And so it’s so cathartic when that song comes on, and you see them come together in this fantasy world under the sea. It’s just perfect.” This led her to email Jenkins. “I was like, ‘You were right. I was wrong. But this was beautiful, and thank you so much.'”

Blackbeard’s Wet Wig Woes

Anyone watching the scene unfold would have to notice Blackbeard’s silver tresses weaving through the water, a feat much more difficult behind the scenes than the seemingly simple sequence onscreen. “We filmed that quite late in the season, and so we were really planning and thinking about that all the way through [filming]. I was a bit nervous,” hair and makeup designer Nancy Hennah admits. “I knew that he was going to have to be under the water with his wig on for quite a long time.”

Even with high-quality wig glue, Hennah says, “You can do everything you can to make that wig stay on, but there’s a limited amount of time that the glue will last. So we had to use different products than we would normally use to get the wig down.” Because the product Hennah normally uses to keep hair back in a wig is water soluble, “it melts, and the hair starts coming out from the lace, and it can ruin the whole look of the wig.” She had to come up with a creative fix.

“I glued his own hair back, and then we glued the lace on top of that, and wildly, it lasted right until the very last shot when they were dragging him through the water by the ankles,” Hennah reveals. “The wig just came off completely after they’d finished shooting. And so he came up out of the water, and the wig was off to the side, [and he goes], ‘I think my wig came off.'” She calls the success of the wig “incredible” and “just a fluke really.”

When it came to capturing Darby’s underwater look, it was all about blending the mermaid tail with his skin. “With Stede, Gypsy had a beautiful mermaid tail made, and we did a whole lot of practice with different types of silicon and things that we had to blend that piece between his skin and the tail. We made these pieces of silicon with glitter and things in them that we individually stuck over the top of the mermaid tail,” Hennah details.

Again, there were concerns about getting “things to stick underwater,” but watching the scene come together from behind the camera eased those. “[When] we were standing there on the set that day and watching the monitor, it just was so beautiful that we were all blown away by it, and that tank that they were filming in was a couple of stories deep, and to be out there in that water, it was challenging, and they both did so well. It just went off without a hitch. It was one of those great days where it just worked for everybody.”

Don’t miss what else is in store for the season. Stay tuned for additional interviews and content as the second season of Our Flag Means Death unfolds.

Our Flag Means Death, New Episodes, Thursdays, Max

Source: TV Insider

#rhys darby #taika waititi #ofmd #our flag means death #ofmd s2 spoilers #costume designer #costume details

626 notes · View notes

blushweddinggowns · 2 years

Text

Wayne loved Eddie more than anything else in this world. That kid was his son, sister and her shit husband be damned, and he had been for almost eight years now.Wayne would do just about anything for that kid, and he liked to think that Eddie knew that by now, so he couldn't quite understand why he was trying to hide something so obvious.

That being whatever was going on between him and the Harrington boy.

The two had been attached at the hip for months, and while Eddie was no stranger to having friends, having one that slept in his bed nearly every night was certainly new. And if that wasn’t a dead giveaway to what was really going on, then all of the touching sure would have been. He had never seen his boy be so tactile with someone before, and that was saying something considering how freely Eddie liked to give out touch. But with Steve? It was like he couldn’t go five minutes without being all over him, whether that be an arm draped around his shoulders, a hand on his thigh, or pressed against his side, if Steve was within arms length, then Eddie was reaching for him.

At first, Wayne worried he was keeping quiet because he was scared of his reaction, but he had been more than clear with Eddie growing up that being different in any way was nothing to be ashamed of, despite what the world may tell you. And Eddie seemed to be living up to that advice in every other aspect of his life, so that couldn't be it.

Then, he thought it was because he knew Wayne didn't like Steve. Or at least used to not like Steve. In hindsight, he was a little ashamed of his mistrust of the kid, but could he really be blamed? It wasn't so long ago that Steve Harrington was on the list of jackasses Eddie would complain about after school, a smarmy smartass just like his father.

But then Eddie went up and almost died, and suddenly Wayne was met face to face with just how much the kid had changed, and just how much the kid loved his Eddie. Slowly but surely, Steve wiggled his way into his good graces.

Like the way he made his boy smile wasn't enough, the kid basically became a live-in nurse during those first few awful months of Eddie’s recovery. And if Wayne thought Eddie was obvious with his feelings, Steve was on a whole other level. The kid was walking around with heart eyes whenever Eddie was around, always giggling like a high-school girl at whatever lame jokes his boy made, always leaning heavily into any touch, always obsessed with wearing his clothes. And as much as the cutesy behavior made Wayne roll his eyes, it also melted his heart a bit, knowing his kid was with someone who loved him just as much, if not more.

He just…wanted Eddie to know he was safe to be himself, both of them were, in any way that was. Eventually Wayne just let it slip, on one of those rare nights when Steve wasn’t there for dinner. He was working a late shift, and as Wayne watched Eddie wrap him up a plate for when he got off, he just let the question fall out of his mouth,“So…you and the Harrington boy huh?”

Eddie almost dropped the plate in surprise, spinning to stare at Wayne with wide eyes, “Huh?”

“You and Steve,” Wayne reiterated, “Not that there’s anything wrong that Eds, really, I don’t care-”

“There’s nothing going on between me and Steve!” Eddie interrupted, face bright as he put the plate down, “Why would you think that?”

Wayne sighed, “Eddie, you don’t got to hide anything from me.”

“I’m not!” Eddie insisted, face still insanely red, “Steve’s great but we’re not-I’m not like that, okay?”

Wayne blinked at him. He knew what his Eddie sounded like when he lied, and this wasn’t it…but Wayne also knew what he saw, and he couldn't help but feel his heart break a bit for Steve. Maybe his boy wasn’t in love with the kid, but Harrington sure as hell was, “My mistake then,”

Eddie gave him a nervous laugh, running a hand through his hair, “You bet it is, really letting that imagination run wild over there huh?

Wayne sighed as he stood up, “But Eddie?"

“Yeah?”

"Try and let him down easy when the time comes." He patted his shoulder as he made his way to his bedroom, already wondering if there was any way he’d be able to help the poor Harrington boy out when his heart got broken, leaving a shell-shocked Eddie in his wake.

Let him down easy when the time comes.

Eddie didn’t know what to do with that. He trusted Wayne, respected him too, but there was no way in hell that Steve felt anything towards him that wasn’t friendship. King Steve wasn’t gay, if anything he was a flaming heterosexual considering his insane number of flings in highschool.

Not to mention the fact that Eddie wasn’t gay, or at least…he didn’t think he was gay. But then again, he wasn’t thinking about much these days that wasn’t Steve, Steve, Steve. But they were best friends, new best friends, so wasn’t that normal? And okay, sure, Eddie had never felt like this for anyone ever before, but that didn't mean it was romantic. And so what if the thought of Steve with a girl made him ill? He was just a needy guy who loved having all the attention on him.

And so what if Steve was objectively attractive? Was it gay to know that a man was pretty or was it just having eyes? And okay, sure, Eddie had had a few wet dreams about him, but dreams didn’t mean anything. Right?

Eddie flopped face down onto his bed, groaning into his pillow. If, on some very off chance that Wayne was right, then he was going to have to put a stop to it wouldn’t he? It’s not like he and Steve could just drive into the sunset together as gay lovers, not in this town. No, Eddie would just have to lay down the law, put up some boundaries, do something to make this relationship make sense, because now that he was actually thinking about it, they were nowhere even close to normal.

Eddie could hear the front door unlocking, the tell-tale sign that Steve was finally home. Eddie wasn’t sure when their shitty trailer had become Steve’s home, but he hoped it stayed that way, even after they managed to put their friendship back into the strictly platonic category.

He kept his face in the pillow, mind racing on how to even start this bizarre conversation when he heard Steve laugh behind him, “What’s got you so dramatic?”

You.

“Wayne,” he mumbled into the fabric, listening to the sounds of Steve puttering around the room. He could tell everything he was doing from the sounds alone, so used to the little night routines they had developed together. He was digging through Eddie’s drawers now, definitely looking for something clean to sleep in.

Shit, would Steve stop wearing his clothes after they talked? Would he stop sleeping in the same bed as him? Eddie was really starting to question the worth of useless things like boundaries if it meant having his Steve around less.

His Steve. Platonic friends didn’t call each other that did they?

Eddie could feel Steve start to crawl onto the bed, laying right beside him, “Are you ever going to come out of there?”

“Never,” Eddie grumbled, because that would mean he would have to look at Steve. He’d have to acknowledge all the stupid shit going through his head and things would change. And he didn’t want things to change.

Steve laughed at that, and Eddie could feel warm hands start to poke at the side of his face, “But what if I want to see you?”

“Then that sucks for you.” Eddie mumbled. He could feel Steve getting closer, close enough that his breath was tickling his face. Close enough that Eddie felt like his heart was going to escape his chest from how hard it was pounding.

“You’re such a shithead,” Steve giggled right into his ear, “Come on, please? I missed you today.”

Eddie sighed, finally turning his head to look at him, only to be met with that stupidly pretty face. Was it legal for men to be this cute? Steve was smiling, the small kind that Eddie was almost sure was just for him, and he was so close. Eddie glanced down at his mouth, realizing it would take almost nothing for them to be kissing.

And from the look on Steve’s face, he just realized the same thing. They stared at each other, all of the playfulness from earlier gone. Steve was biting his lower lip, and Eddie knew that he was watching him stare at it.

“Do you wanna?” Steve finally whispered, leaning in the slightest bit closer, so near that it was making Eddie’s head spin.

This was it right? What Wayne was talking about, the perfect opportunity to let him down easy. He should just sit up, tell Steve to stop joking around, and start talking about what the hell they were even doing.

"Sure," he said instead. Vaguely, in the back of his head Eddie remembered he was supposed to be having reservations about this whole thing as their lips finally met, but whatever they were vanished into thin air the second they touched.

Because kissing Steve Harrington felt fucking amazing.

The thought of saying no? Of never kissing him again? It wasn’t going to happen, not after he'd gotten a taste. Eddie gripped his shirt and pulled him in closer, relishing in the little surprised sound Steve made when he slipped his tongue into his mouth. He wanted to do this forever. He couldn’t even remember what the argument against it was, not when Steve was moaning against him, not when he was too busy scrambling to move and get Steve in his lap, definitely knocking multiple things off the nightstand in the process.

If this is what being gay meant than Eddie was on board, himself from half an hour ago could go to hell.

He should have realized that they were making too much noise, noises that his very protective uncle, who just found out Hell was a real place and it lived below Hawkins, was not used to hearing from his room.

They both jumped when the door slammed opened, a frenzied Wayne standing in the doorway with Steve’s favorite bat over his shoulder, He let it drop at the sight of them, half relieved that they were fine and half shockingly amused to see what they were doing.

Steve tried to scramble out of Eddie’s lap, an apology already on his lips when Wayne started to cackle, “I really let my imagination run wild huh?”

Eddie laughed right along with him, rolling his eyes as he kept an iron tight grip on Steve’s waist, forcing him to stay in place, “You win this round old man,”

“Damn right I do.” Wayne laughed, turning on his heel, “You kids have fun now, just not too much.”

Steve could still hear him cackling as he went down the hall as he sat dumbfounded in Eddie’s lap, “What the hell was that?”

Eddie shrugged, “My uncle approving of us. Now kiss me again.”

And well…there was no way Steve was going to say no to that.

#steddie #stranger things #steve harrington #eddie munson #steddie ficlet #drabble #wayne munson number one ally #i needed a fic where Wayne had to step in and show his dumbass son he's in love #is it gay to be in love with your best friend #yes eddie #yes it is

4K notes · View notes

forestdeath1 · 1 month

Text

Sirius’s attitude towards Peter

This is going to be a bit controversial because in the fandom, it's commonly believed that Sirius loved Peter. People backs this up with two points:

Sirius suggested Peter as the Secret Keeper.

Sirius said he'd die for Peter.

In my view, their relationship was a bit more complicated than just "he loved him." Emotions aren't just about love and hate, there's a lot of grey area in between. But personally, I don't see any evidence that Sirius truly loved or respected Peter.

From what we know in the books, teachers saw Peter like this:

Pettigrew... that fat little boy who was always tagging around after them at Hogwarts?’ said Madam Rosmerta. ‘Hero-worshipped Black and Potter,’ said Professor McGonagall.

For an observant and clever person like McGonagall, the group dynamics aren't a secret. It's exactly what people saw from the outside.

We know for sure that Peter visited the Potters, and Lily worried about him being sad, whereas there's no mention of Remus. In the Order of the Phoenix photo, Peter stands next to James, Lily and Sirius, while Remus is on the other end. So at least during the war, Peter was closer to the Potters than Remus.

Here's what JKR says about their relationship with Peter:

"Pettigrew, who they, in a slightly patronizing way, James and Sirius at least, who they allowed to hang round with them, it turned out that he was a better wizard than they knew. Turned out he was better at hiding secrets than they knew."

And it makes sense. Patronizing. They didn't intend to be friends with Peter at all, it was Remus who felt sorry for him and persuaded James and Sirius to include him.

Remus, always the underdog’s friend, was kind to short and rather slow Peter Pettigrew, a fellow Gryffindor, whom James and Sirius might not have thought worthy of their attention without Remus’s persuasion. Soon, these four became inseparable. (Pottermore)

And what we see in their relationship in reality:

Every time James made a particularly difficult catch, Wormtail gasped and applauded.

‘Put that away, will you,’ said Sirius finally, as James made a fine catch and Wormtail let out a cheer, ‘before Wormtail wets himself with excitement.’

Wormtail turned slightly pink, but James grinned.

Peter's behaviour:

Lupin and Wormtail remained sitting: Lupin was still staring down at his book, though his eyes were not moving and a faint frown line had appeared between his eyebrows; Wormtail was looking from Sirius and James to Snape with a look of avid anticipation on his face.

How can someone like Sirius, who literally hates groveling ("I, a spy for Voldemort? When did I ever sneak around people who were stronger and more powerful than myself?"), respect and love someone who constantly grovels? Was Sirius blind not to see that? Everyone saw it. Remus simply pitied and was kind to Peter ("always the underdog’s friend"), and James loved Peter's adoration. James is the kind of person who really loves attention, and at the same time, he has a pretty black-and-white view of the world, and probably considered Peter a good guy, albeit one he could sometimes make fun of ('How thick are you, Wormtail?' said James impatiently. 'You run round with a werewolf once a month –')

But Sirius didn't need attention, he wasn't an attention-seeker. He could see pretty well who and what everyone was.

Many say that what Sirius says in PoA,he says it after many years of reflection in Azkaban and on emotions. I don’t think so:

‘Lily and James only made you Secret Keeper because I suggest- ed it,’ Black hissed, so venomously that Pettigrew took a step backwards. ‘I thought it was the perfect plan ... a bluff ... Voldemort would be sure to come after me, would never dream they’d use a weak, talentless thing like you ... it must have been the finest moment of your miserable life, telling Voldemort you could hand him the Potters.’

Sirius came up with a bluff. A plan where Voldemort was supposed to come after him, Sirius, not Peter. It wasn't just that Sirius trusted Peter. The point was that Voldemort would NOT come after Peter. Why was he so sure Voldemort wouldn't come after Peter?

Because first of all, I think Sirius really, as he said, believed that Voldemort would never pay attention to Peter. And secondly, Sirius was sure that Peter admired James too much and loved him too much to betray. The one who was always attached to them, the one who always looked up to James in admiration.

Sirius underestimated Peter's "bravery" and cunning.

‘I, a spy for Voldemort? When did I ever sneak around people who were stronger and more powerful than myself? But you, Peter – I’ll never understand why I didn’t see you were the spy from the start. You always liked big friends who’d look after you, didn’t you? It used to be us ... me and Remus ... and James ...’

He always saw that Peter was attached to them as "big friends," but Sirius, being arrogant, underestimated that besides them, Peter could have other "big friends." He was too convinced that Peter idolized James.

At the same time, it's pretty obvious why Sirius didn't trust Remus. He always respected Remus more, considered him smarter and more capable. He couldn't not trust James, James was everything to him, but Remus, who also often disappeared on missions, he could. This distrust shows not so much that they had bad relations, but rather that Sirius considered Remus a more capable and independent person, not just an appendage to James, like Peter.

So why were they considered inseparable and why did Sirius say he would die for Peter?

‘He – he was taking over everywhere!’ gasped Pettigrew. ‘Wh-what was there to be gained by refusing him?’

‘What was there to be gained by fighting the most evil wizard who has ever existed?’ said Black, with a terrible fury in his face. ‘Only innocent lives, Peter!’

‘You don’t understand!’ whined Pettigrew. ‘He would have killed me, Sirius!’

‘THEN YOU SHOULD HAVE DIED!’ roared Black. ‘DIED RATHER THAN BETRAY YOUR FRIENDS, AS WE WOULD HAVE DONE FOR YOU!’

Sirius has a very strong sense of honor. For him, dying for those he considers «ours» is a matter of honor. This is a nuance in his character — he may not particularly like or respect someone, but if they're «ours» he'll defend them (even someone like Mundungus).

He considered Peter their friend, he was with them from the first year, James loved Peter, Remus loved Peter, Peter helped in their mischiefs, and Sirius treated Peter okay, as a friend, but without much respect or some unearthly love that fandom usually portrays. He could see what Peter was like, and surely there were tense situations between them, but Sirius wasn't a bad person, and Peter knew how to play the helpless and miserable guy. It's like a patronizing friendship, where you're friends not because you really respect and love the person, but because they're in your group, and you're used to them. It was a childhood friendship. There was no sacred friendship. Children often start friendships simply because they end up in the same bedroom.

And Sirius isn't afraid of death. His death – it's not the worst thing for him. He tells Peter the same thing. Better to die than betray friends. That's his honor—he doesn't understand betrayal. The concept of honor isn't linked to love. For some reason, many think that a person can only decide to die for those they love. But some might choose death because their honor demands it. And if Sirius considered someone a friend, and he did consider Peter a friend, then dying for him is a normal reaction.

JKR on this: "Sirius would have done it. With all his faults and flaws, he has this profound sense of honor, ultimately, and he would rather have died honorably, as he would see it, than live with the dishonor and shame."

And Sirius would die not just for Peter. He told the twins about their father, who was on a mission: "You don't understand - there are things worth dying for!"

So, I don't see any evidence that Sirius truly loved and respected Peter. Did he consider him a friend? Yes, he did. Not personally his own, but their friend. James's friend first and foremost and an integral part of the Marauders. Would he die for him? Yes, of course. It's a matter of honor. But he always saw him as lesser than themselves, not as worthy, not as strong, not as smart, too cowardly, and sly. And it's precisely because of his arrogant attitude that he thought Voldemort would never pay attention to Peter, making Peter the perfect Secret Keeper. Also, in his opinion, Peter would never betray James precisely because Peter supposedly idolized James too much and loved him too much. But "it turned out that he was a better wizard than they knew. Turned out he was better at hiding secrets than they knew."

#sirius black #the marauders #peter pettigrew #sirius black meta #the marauders meta #hp meta

286 notes · View notes

loveinhawkins · 1 year

Text

It’s only once everything is okay that Dustin starts thinking there’s something deeply wrong with him.

They’re out of the danger zone, where hospital visits have almost become normal hangouts rather than something to sit through on tenterhooks. Eddie’s getting the all clear to go home soon, and Dustin feels like he’s finally, finally able to take a deep breath, and blow it all the way out.

Steve must feel it, too, because he starts drifting off halfway through one of their last visits, while Dustin’s telling Eddie how Tews got up on the roof last night.

Dustin’s not offended by Steve falling asleep—for one, Steve already heard the story on the ride to the hospital and, more importantly, Dustin’s pretty positive that he’s barely been sleeping, only just enough so he can safely drive his car.

Dustin pats his knee fondly as he gets up.

Even though he’s steadily swaying towards the end of the couch, Steve tries to rouse himself.

“Mm, Dustin, jus’… jus’ need ten minutes, then… give y’ride home…”

“It’s okay,” Dustin says. He gently pushes Steve’s shoulder, snorts when Steve’s head tips right onto the arm of the couch. “I’m gonna go call my mom.”

He knows Steve really must be exhausted when he doesn’t attempt an argument to counter that, just sighs with a murmured, “Hmm? If tha’s… ‘kay.”

From the bed, Eddie looks on with a smile. “Thanks, Henderson,” he says softly. “Wayne’s gonna come later, he can… give him a ride home.”

He yawns through his words, like just looking at Steve is making him sleepy, too.

They’ve been like that a lot recently, Dustin thinks, like their breathing falls into sync without them even trying.

He slips out of the room quietly. There’s something between Steve and Eddie, he can feel it—and although he can’t quite put a name to it yet, he knows it’s something delicate, like spun glass. He’s not going to be the one to disturb it.

When his mom comes to pick him up, it happens.

“Put your coat on, hon, it’s freezing out.”

Dustin rolls his eyes—it’s hardly that cold—but as he steps outside, the air hits his bare skin and—

He’s in The Upside Down, and the cold is in his throat, in his lungs, he can’t stop shaking with it, and Eddie, he’s—he’s not breathing—

“Dustin? The car’s parked this way, baby.”

Dustin breathes in, short and sharp. For a moment, he can still see it all: the lightning, the blue tint, the particles hanging in the air, and then, like blinking away a camera flash, it’s gone.

His mom frowns, steps closer. “Dusty? Oh, you look pale. Hope you’re not coming down with something. Early night tonight, okay?”

“Yeah,” Dustin says. Blinks. “I’m fine. Just tired.”

He tells himself it’s a one-off.

Then it happens again—inside the hospital this time.

Steve opens a window in Eddie’s room before heading to the vending machine—just a crack. Barely anything.

But the cold is so intense that it takes Dustin’s breath away.

He hears the bats. Feels the pain in his foot, burning white-hot as he runs, he has to run. Eddie. Screaming. He has to get to him now or he’ll—he’ll—

Dustin shuts the window with such force that the pane rattles.

Eddie glances over from where he’s standing, right in front of the tiny mirror on the wall; he’s been wringing out his still damp hair with a clean T-shirt that Dustin highly suspects belongs to Steve, unless Eddie’s suddenly taken to owning a Hawkins Phys. Ed uniform.

“Woah, that’s the window shut, I guess,” Eddie says lightly. “You cold?”

“A bit,” Dustin says, hopes it comes out normal.

It must do, because Eddie just shrugs and goes back to the mirror, fiddling with his curls, and Dustin would usually give him so much shit for that, but his chest is tight, and although logically, he knows he’s sitting on the edge of the bed, he can still feel the dampness of the ground, the dirt under his nails, Eddie’s blood…

“Did you just close that?” Steve says, jerking his head towards the window with a bemused look.

“I live to piss you off,” Dustin says.

Eddie laughs.

“Yeah, it’s your special talent,” Steve shoots back, monotone, but he’s grinning as he throws a candy bar at Dustin’s head.

3 Musketeers.

Dustin isn’t hungry, not even for nougat.

But he tears the wrapper anyway, takes a sizeable bite just for the sake of appearances.

Steve is catching Eddie’s eye in the mirror, and Eddie’s smiling, looking at Steve’s reflection; and although Dustin can hardly hear what they’re saying through the thud of his own heartbeat, their joy is obvious without words.

Because it’s over. It’s all over.

Dustin’s not gonna be the one to ruin this for them.

He won’t.

#dustin henderson has ptsd #with special love & thanks for the messages on my Dustin related fics ❤️ Tbd on amount of parts but will be on ao3 soon too ❤️#dustin henderson fic #steddie with dustin’s pov #henderfam #steddie #steddie fic #steddie ficlet #eddie and dustin #steve and dustin #steve x eddie #dustin henderson #steve harrington #eddie munson

1K notes · View notes

writingdumpster · 1 year

Text

a little advice

pairing: Eddie Munson x reader

warnings: fingering, oral fem receiving, praise kink

summary: a sequel to “a little help,” accessible as the post before this one or through my navigation, but can be read alone. Sorry it’s not linked. When I put hyperlinks in my posts they don’t go to the tags and idk how to fix that.

Teaching Eddie to make you cum.

word count: 1.4k

“Well, I want to return the favor,” Eddie said. His hands moved beneath the hem of your skirt, toying with the elastic waistband of your panties. “If you’d give me a little advice.” You grinned.

“Yeah, I’ll give you a little advice.”

“Let’s go to the bedroom,” you suggested as you rose off Eddie’s lap. He managed to keep hold of your hand and didn’t let it go as he followed you back to his room. You climbed up onto Eddie’s bed, arranging pillows behind you so you were sat up from the mattress. Eddie watched from the edge of the bed, nervous about what he should do. You pulled your skirt up to your stomach, revealing your underwear to Eddie.

“Do you want to take them off for me?” You asked. Eddie’s eyes lit up. He crawled onto the bed and hooked his fingers around the elastic of your cotton panties. He dragged them down your legs slowly, letting his hands run over your body as he pulled your underwear off. Eddie crumpled them up and tossed them off the side of the bed. He aimed for his laundry pile, hoping you wouldn’t be able to find them later and he’d have a souvenir. He looked up at you with wide eyes.

“What next?” He asked. You smiled at him, unable to contain it. He was so sweet. So loving. So perfect. So Eddie.

“Give me your hand,” you said, reaching out to take his. He let you take his hand in yours. You moved it between your legs. You dragged his fingers through your folds.

“You feel how wet I am?” You asked him.

“Mmhmm,” Eddie withheld a moan.

“That’s all just from sucking your dick, Eds,” you told him. Eddie blushed brightly. He pushed his fingers through your pussy lips, gathering your cum onto them and feeling just how wet you were

“Is this—Is this a lot?” Eddie asked. “It feels like a lot.” You giggled.

“Yeah, Eds, it’s a lot. I don’t know if I’ve ever been this wet before,” you admitted. That pulled a moan from Eddie.

“Tell me what to do, baby,” Eddie begged. “I want to make you feel good.” Your cunt pulsed at his words alone.

“Feel this,” you instructed, moving his fingers to your clit. Eddie rubbed the pads of his fingers over the bud, just trying to learn what exactly he was touching. His fingers moved smoothly, still wet after you’d let him feel what he did to you.

“Mmmmooh,” you moaned involuntarily. Eddie’s eyes flicked up to your face. He started rubbing your clit with a slow, featherlight pressure, but he had you whining nonetheless. You had been aching for Eddie to touch you like this since the day you met him.

“This is your clit?” He asked. You laughed.

“Yes, baby,” you said. “It’s my clit.” Eddie pushed your hand away, still resting over his. You moved it to his shoulder, digging your fingers into the firm muscle there.

“How does this feel?” He asked.

“Press a little harder,” you said. Eddie put a firmer pressure on your clit as he rubbed his fingers back and forth.

“How’s this?” He asked.

“It’s—Ohh—It’s good,” you assured him.

“What else, sweetheart?” He asked. “What feels better?” He asked.

“Try rubbing in circles,” you told him. Eddie started moving his fingers against your clit in a clumsy circle. Your legs kicked against the mattress. Eddie smiled to himself. He was proud that he could bring you pleasure.

“That’s good?” He asked smugly. You gasped, catching your breath as his circles became more and more uniform.

“It’s good, Eds,” you whispered. “Really good.”

“Tell me more, baby,” Eddie requested. “I want to make you cum.” You moaned at his confession.

“Your other hand,” you gasped.

“What about it? What do you want?” He asked. He was growing more and more confident. He was asking for your instructions, but somehow he was in control.

“Your f-fingers—Fuck me with—Oh!” You gasped. Eddie understood what you wanted even through your broken mumblings. He pushed two fingers into you and you whined loudly.

“How do you want me to move them, baby?” He asked sweetly.

“Slow,” you said. “Curl them up,” you told him. Eddie followed your instructions, curling his fingers against you just the way you liked. He made long, slow strokes with his fingers.

“Is that good?” He asked. His fingers were still moving against your clit and you were moving towards your orgasm.

“It—Fuck—It’s good, Eddie,” you assured him. Eddie started moving his fingers faster against your clit, starting to have an intuition of what you needed already.

“What else, baby? What else do you like?” Eddie pushed. You whimpered as you tried to think of something, your mind foggy from the way Eddie was touching you.

“Tell me I’m a good girl,” you pleaded. Eddie grinned widely at this request.

“Oh, sweetheart, you’re such a good girl for me,” Eddie praised. “You made me feel so good. You had me so hard without even trying, baby. You’ve got me hard again now,” he told you. You glanced down to his crotch and saw the noticeable bulge in his sweatpants.

“Eddie,” you whimpered weakly.

“My good, good girl,” Eddie cooed. “You’re doing so good telling me what you want.”

“Please,” you gasped.

“Please, what? Help me out here, princess.” Eddie was keeping his aura of dominance. He could see how much you liked it. He liked it plenty himself. But you could also tell he really wanted you to tell him. He was still new despite how quickly he had stepped into the persona of a sex god.

“Fuck me a little faster with your fingers and rub a little faster too,” you begged.

“What if I use my tongue?” Eddie asked. Your eyes widened at this offer.

“Are you sure?” You asked.

“Please,” Eddie insisted. “I want to taste you.” You moaned.

“Yeah,” you said. “Go ahead, but keep fucking me with your fingers, just use your mouth on my clit.” Eddie shifted his body so he could position his mouth over your pussy.

“A little advice?” Eddie requested. You were still a mess of whined and gasps as he continued moving his fingers slowly inside you.

“It’s not g-going to t-take very much,” you admitted. Eddie smirked and kissed your thigh.

“What should I do, baby?” This time Eddie’s voice was soft. His facade had washed away. He just wanted to make you feel good now.

“Focus on my clit, try licking circles around it,” you told him. Eddie didn’t hesitate, diving down and pushing his tongue against you. He moved his tongue down to your folds at first, clearly taking a taste of your sweet center before he moved up to your clit as instructed. You moaned as his tongue began circling your clit, pushing firmly against you.

“Fuck, Eddie!” You reached down and dug your fingers into his curls.

“What else?” Eddie mumbled against your cunt.

“Angle your fingers up a little and suck on my clit,” you begged desperately. Eddie obeyed immediately. It was only another moment before you were falling apart from Eddie’s touch for the first time. You cried out in pleasure. Eddie kept his mouth on you until you pushed him away. He looked down at you with a wild smile on his face. You caught your breath, your mind returning from its haze and a smile fell onto your lips as well.

“That was real, wasn’t it?” Eddie asked. “I made you cum?” You laughed.

“Yeah, Eds, you made me cum,” you assured him. Eddie sighed in relief. He leaned down and kissed you softly.

“Thank you, baby,” he said quietly.

“I need a minute before I take care of you again,” you told him.

“Take care of me?” He asked.

“I thought you got hard again,” you said.

“Oh,” Eddie mumbled shamefully.

“What?” You asked.

“I did but, uh—I sorta…” Eddie stammered. You looked down to his pants and saw the large wet spot that was seeping through the material of his grey sweatpants. You giggled softly. Eddie blushed brightly.

“You’re so fucking cute,” you told him.

“Because I came in my pants?” Eddie questioned incredulously.

“Because of everything,” you said. “I just…really like you,” you said, holding back the word you really meant. Eddie knew what you wanted to say though, and he wasn’t afraid to say it.

“I love you too, baby,” he told you. You grinned.

“You always know what I’m thinking.”

“Will you say it? Please?” Eddie asked. You pressed your lips against Eddie’s firmly, your hand on his cheek. You kept your forehead pressed to his when you pulled away, still cupping his face softly.

“I love you, Eddie Munson. With all my heart.”

#eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x female reader #eddie munson smut #eddie munson x reader smut #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson fic #eddie munson x fem!reader

1K notes · View notes

luveline · 8 months

Note

Can I request an Eddie and roan story where something happens and Eddie is quite vulnerable and upset and roan finds him at the kitchen table so she goes and gets reader to help cheer him up. Hurt comfort

ty for requesting ♡ eddie and roan fem!reader, 1.7k

cw grief

It's a bad idea, but Eddie opens the photo frame on the sill. He moves the small metal holdings aside, peeling away the velvet back to reveal the hidden photograph waiting beneath.

His hands are trembling as he picks it up. The edges are soft but the photo itself is pristine, a perfect polaroid taken from her waist height, angled up as she smiled down.

Eddie puts it back. Closes the frame, sets the photograph right side up on the sill next to your vase. His hands shake as he stuffs them in his pockets, a hard lump aching in his throat. I shouldn't have looked, he thinks to himself, sitting down at the dining table freshly cleared after dinner.

He couldn't not look. As he washed the dishes after dinner, he'd found his gaze drifting. The photo framed is a simple close up of Roan at her last birthday, her face painted pink, purple, and white in the shape of a butterfly with silver glitter accents. The secret photograph is stupid to keep secret, he should put in pride of place, he should be a fucking man about it—

If you could hear his thoughts you'd frown. Maybe do that silly sweet thing with your hand on his cheek and your soft eyes imploring as they look into his. God, Eddie would give you anything you asked for when you look at him like that. But he doesn't tell you about the photograph, how could he? It's his. It's the last bit of her.

He looks down at the wooden grain of the dining room table. Without thinking, he springs to his feet, removes the frames backing, and takes the photograph of his mom into his hand a second time.

She looks so young. Younger than Eddie is now. He must have been a really little kid when he took the photo, old enough to have worked the camera but young enough that he can't remember the moment. Can't remember what she said, what she was laughing about, how that sounded. He can't remember her smell.

How could I forget that? he thinks, stricken.

Eddie ducks his head. He drops back into his chair at the table, pinching the bridge of his nose between a calloused index finger and a softer thumb. Don't, he thinks desperately, even as his thoughts race to a more cruel place. I don't remember her.

She's beautiful in the photo. Willowy and smiling, crouching ever so slightly with a hand braced on her knee. Her lips are curved up a touch and parted with a laugh, but Eddie theories now that she wasn't laughing. Maybe she was telling him something he doesn't remember anymore. Maybe she was telling him that she loved him—

"Dad?"

Eddie hides the photograph without thinking. "Yeah?"

His voice cracks. Roan stares at him with wide eyes, brown as his own but with longer lashes. She's quicker to smile than he was at her age, though none of that lightness shines at present.

"I'll get Y/N," she says hurriedly, spinning on her socked heel and hurtling back the way she came.

"Ro!" he says, clearing his throat. "Fuck. Fuck." He wipes at his wet eyes. Fucking great.

"Y/N!" he hears Roan shout, her panic a raw thing. He can see the look on your face a floor away. "You have to– we have to go help dad!"

There's a lapse in shouting. Eddie would put the photograph away, wipe his eyes, and run to set things straight if he could; you don't deal with abrupt circumstances well and he hates to think of how your heart is racing, but he can't stop crying.

Your footsteps sound and stop at the kitchen doorway.

"Eds. You okay?" you ask.

"I'm fine, I'm," —he starts to laugh, but the laugh turns into crying, everything a mess— "okay. Tell Roan it's okay."

"Okay. Two seconds." Eddie covers his face, trying desperately to get a handle on things as you speak in hushed tones. "It's okay, Ro, alright? How about I put some TV on for you? Would that be good?"

"I want to stay," she whispers.

You pause. Eddie loses bits of time and conversation, wiping madly at his eyes, his head heavy as a bowling ball and aching as though it's been hit by one. Roan must agree to watch TV or at the least pretend to, because you return alone, pushing the table away from him to stand skewiff by his legs.

Eddie feels like he's choking on air. "Sorry."

"Eddie, what's happening, honey?" You touch his shoulder tentatively. "What's wrong?"

He tries to tell you and it hurts worse. Grief is super weird, it always has been (when it wasn't solely and unsympathetically devastating), and Eddie's grief tends to hide away for long periods of time. Like a brewing storm, pressure builds, and builds, and he knew looking at her photo wouldn't end well but she was just so pretty.

He presses his forehead to balled fists.

You sigh like he's hurt you, curling protectively over his hunched back. Your cheek to a heaving shoulder, you rub at his tensed spine with your palm spread. "It's okay," you whisper, hugging him gently. "Sweetheart, it's okay. You have to tell me what's wrong so I can fix it."

"You can't," he says, his voice rough as gravel.

You kiss his shoulder.

A handful of seconds and you pull back to look him in the eye. "Let me try?"

He shakes his head softly, reaching into his lap. He's careful to dry his hands before he picks up his mother's photo, placing it with care on the table. You follow his movements, your lips twitching with understanding as you realise what it is. "That's your mom."

"Yeah, she…"

"I've never seen this one."

Eddie doesn't have many, but he has a few that he treasures. One framed on the living room mantle, four or five kept in safe keeping with Wayne. You nudge the corner of the polaroid to shield it from the glare of the kitchen fluorescents.

"She looks really young."

"She was younger than we are now. She didn't… it couldn't have been five years before she…"

You don't condescend, your empathy palpable as you murmur, "Aw, Eddie. I'm so sorry. It's not fair."

His eyes burn. His nose tickles. He closes his eyes and shoves the brunt of his palm against his socket. "I can't remember what she was trying to say. What kind of son am I?"

"No, no," you crouch down and place your hands on his thighs, "what do you mean? Is that why you're upset? Babe, I can't remember things you said to me last night, you know that? That's not how memory works."

"But it was important. I took the photo, I should remember."

"You were young… I'm sorry, I wish you could remember, but," —you hold the photo up carefully— "with a smile like that, it's not hard to guess, right?" Your voice is smooth and soft as angora silk, though it pills as you continue, "I bet she's just telling you that you're doing a good job. Same way you say it to Ro. You must've gotten it from somewhere."

A half sob shudders out of him. "I hope so."

You pat his thigh. "You gonna be okay?" you ask, eyebrows pinched.

He leans into the chair, the armrests groaning as he tries to breathe. His breath hisses from between his teeth. "Shit, sorry. I'm sorry. I'm alright, just, sometimes I remember she's gone and I realise I lost another little part of her and–"

"It's okay." You stroke a strand of hair from his face. He relaxes at the simplicity of it, a routine gesture. "She's not lost, Eddie. You're not losing her. Yeah? That's not how it works. She's your mom forever."

"I guess you never stop wanting your mom, huh?" he asks. His throat burns like nothing he's ever felt.

"I guess not."

Eddie's tears peter out eventually, aided by the way you hold his hands as though they're delicately made and the constant steadiness of your presence, your head dipping down intermittently to press kisses to the side of his thumb. He can't shake the feeling of grief and he doubts that he'll feel much better tonight, but the need to cry dissipates. He's drained suddenly, like he's held his breath too long, every inhale an ache.

Roan comes to investigate the quiet. She tiptoes in, her lips parted in confusion, but her puzzlement doesn't stop her from snaking between his legs and your arms to sit in your lap. He's scared her, he knows, and he can't blame her for the way she wraps her arms around your stomach. Like he said: you never stop wanting your mom.

Roan twists her neck to look at him. You plant a kiss behind her ear.

"Are you okay, dad?" she asks.

"I'm okay."

"Why were you crying?"

"I don't know, Ro. I guess I was hurting."

"Did you cut yourself on the sharp knife?" she asks worriedly.

Eddie chucks her under the chin. "Not that kind of hurt, babe."

She frowns as though he's told her off and buries her face in his knees. Eddie folds down onto her like a cheap tent in a hurricane, craving the comfort of his little girl, knowing she's here, and that she's not going anywhere. "Is it okay if I squeeze you?" he asks.

"Yeah, dad. But only this time. You squeezed me too hard last time." She huffs, chewing over her words even as she hugs her father back ferociously. "You're rough."

"I said sorry already," he says lightly. His eyes scrunch closed. He has to try hard not to burst into a second round of tears as he smells her hair. "I'm really sorry, I thought you liked being squeezed."

"I don't mind if it's to make you feel better."

You laugh through your nose. Eddie clings. "Thank you." He's saying it to you, too. He really hopes that you know that. "I feel way, way better already."

1K notes · View notes

deathbecomesthem · 5 months

Text

Roomies 3

Eddie Munson x Best friend!reader | ~2.3K

One & Two

Summary: It’s the perfect solution. You need a place to stay, he needs someone to help with the rent.

In this chapter, expect lots of talk about sexual stuff, but no actual smut. Have you ever unwittingly picked out a super sexy movie to watch with a friend you're attracted to and regretted it? There are spoilers for the film Basic Instinct, but that film is probably older than most of the folks in this fandom.

---

Eddie doesn’t close cupboard doors. Not completely, anyway. There are times when you walk into the kitchen and find at least 5 separate cupboard doors slightly ajar. You think he doesn’t realize he’s doing it - either that or it’s a fully conscious decision. There can’t be an in between scenario. Every time you enter the kitchen, you absentmindedly make your rounds, closing each door until you hear them click into place.

Eddie thinks you’re playing a cruel joke on him, because he has yet to make it through an entire day without stumbling across at least one pair of lace underwear hanging in your shared bathroom. Red, yellow, black, and purple so far. His curiosity gets to him every time he sees a pair, and runs the fabric between his fingers. One morning he couldn’t stop himself, he pulled the black pair hanging from the hook on the back of the door and dropped his boxers. He expected the material to be scratchy against his sensitive skin, but was pleasantly surprised at how gently held he felt. He groaned when he felt his cock stirring against the lace, and quickly took them off to put them back where he found them. He had to get to work, he didn’t have time for this kind of self discovery.

“What are you up to tomorrow night?” Eddie’s asking the question before he’s even fully stepped foot into the living room where you’re sitting cross legged on the couch eating a bowl of grape nuts. His nose crinkles when he peeks into the bowl and sees the brown cereal. “You might as well just eat the gravel from the parking lot.”

“Fuck off,” you say around a mouthful, “sorry it’s not Fruity Pebbles or whatever.” You scramble to not spill your bowl when Eddie plops himself down right next to you. He’s staring at you, waiting for an answer, “I was planning on staying in and watching a movie. Why? You’re working, right?”

Eddie pinches the spoon out of your hand and scoops a small bite of Grape Nuts into his mouth. He wrinkles his nose again, “Nah, Joey needs some extra cash, so I told him he could take this Friday.”

“God, stop stealing my food, you dick. You don’t even like it.” You reach for the spoon, and he giggles and holds it away from you, “Come on, Ed. Knock it off.” You put the bowl on the coffee table, and straddle his lap to reach the utensil. He puts one of his hands on your hip to try to hold you in place. He’s still giggling, but you see his smile falter when he sees that he’s eye level with your tits. No bra, just a black tank top. You slump down onto his knees and he hands the spoon back over to you, and the hand on your back falls away. He’s doing that thing he does, he’s got a piece of hair pulled over his mouth. Shy.

Eddie clears his throat as you sit back in your own seat and pick up the bowl like nothing just happened. “So, how about you and me tomorrow night? Hang out with your good buddy like we used to do before I started having to clean your hair out of the shower drain?”

“Pffft,” you stir your spoon around the now mushy cereal and set it back down on the table without taking a bite, “I’m sure your hair never ends up all over the bathroom.” You pinch a curl between your fingers and give it a little tug. “But, yes please. Movie night with me?”

Eddie’s eyes are soft when he really smiles, and right now you feel yourself wanting to fall into them. Not for the first time, you think of how easy it would be to get lost in them if you’d allow yourself to do that. They sparkle. From this angle, you can see thin amber colored lines that you’ve never noticed before now. How much more could you find if you could both stay in this moment?

You break contact and drop your hand from his hair. You didn’t realize your fingertips were dancing along the edges of his curls. It’s your turn to clear your throat. You stand and walk to the kitchen to rinse out your bowl.

“Well, Angel,” Eddie’s voice carries through the doorway while you’re at the sink, “it’s a date. You, me, Family Video, and burgers from Hank’s.”

A date. You smile at the thought and call back, “sounds good, lover boy. Better bring me some chocolates.”

—

“Jesus, Eddie. Where’s the fire?” You’re clutching the “oh shit” bar as he cranks the wheel into an empty spot in front of the video store. “I swear to god, one of these days you’re gonna give me a stroke.”

“Relax. I’m not the one that’s gotten into multiple accidents in the last year.” Eddie snarks back. He cranks the emergency break and hops out of the van before you can respond. He’s right, but you’re more unlucky than a bad driver.

It feels good to be with Eddie like this, it’s been a long time. Somehow, over the last few months you’ve been spending less and less time together, and the new living arrangement has put a weird kind of pressure on your otherwise happy and close friendship. There’s tension - you know what kind of tension it is, but you haven’t been able to actively acknowledge it yet. You haven’t even admitted to yourself that you’re finding excuses to be in the hallway when Eddie’s walking from the bathroom to his room after a shower. Wet curls brushing against pale skin. Black ink and shiny rivulets of water.

Eddie’s voice snaps you out of your private reverie, “what are we thinking? Do not say When Harry Met Sally, I can’t take it again.” You giggle and Eddie shoots you a warning look. It’s your favorite movie. The last time you watched it, he joined you. He cried like a baby.

“No, I’m in the mood for something different. Let’s walk the route.” You hook your arm in his elbow and steer the both of you to the corner just inside the entrance. You’ll do the route - new releases, thrillers, and comedies - starting with A and going all the way through Z of each section before making a final decision. This is how things are done, it’s how the two of you have always done it. You both point out movies along the way you’d be willing to watch, and make a mental list. You’ll consider each option at the end.

“Come on, Eddie, it looks cute,” you’re pleading your case for Bennie & Joon, but you already know it’s going to fail. Eddie’s toe is tapping impatiently and his eyes barely glance at the movie cover.

“You’re just horny for Depp, don’t deny it.” Eddie reaches out and picks up the plastic VHS case at his side. His number one choice, and you know exactly why he wants to see it, “What about this one? You like thrillers.”

You grab the box out of his hand and look at the girl on the cover of Basic Instinct. “Oh, I do like thrillers. Especially when they’re starring a hot blonde.” You cock your head to the side and hope he goes shy on you about it. He chooses indignancy.

“Oh, come on. If it’s hot, that’s just a bonus. We could go with Sliver, but it’s got the same issue. I can’t help it if Hollywood only casts hot blondes in thrillers.” Eddie’s standing with his hands on hips and a bitchy look on his face, and it makes you giggle to see. You can’t help it, you want to give him what he wants, even if it means you watch a trashy movie with a hot chick in it.

“You win this round, Munson. But you owe me a milkshake.”

Eddie does a little fist pump in triumph, and grabs the box from your hand. He’s at the counter in a flash, grabbing a box of Whoppers on his way. Your favorite.

—

Eddie regrets his film choice very early on, but he’s not ready to admit it. He should have let you get your way, because the tone of Basic Instinct raises the heat between the already blazing temperature. Benny and Joon wouldn’t have opened with a sex scene that made Eddie half hard, at the very least. The graphic violence did nothing to stop the way his mind began to play a vision of you on top of him, his mouth reaching out to your nipple in the same way the doomed man did with that faceless femme fatale on the screen.

“Well, at least he got off,” you reach for the popcorn bowl on Eddie’s lap and grab a handful. Somehow, you seem completely unaffected by the scene that just played out in front of the both of you, “can you imagine coming like that while there’s an ice pick in your eye?”

Eddie shifts uncomfortably and huffs a short laugh. He moves the popcorn bowl to the coffee table. It’s self preservation, he can’t deal with you reaching your hand that close to his dick, even if the bowl is doing a decent job of hiding his erection. Except, you take that move as a signal to scoot closer and rest your head on his shoulder. A familiar position that you’ve taken countless times before, but tonight Eddie is very aware of the body heat your cheek is radiating through his lightweight cotton shirt.

To your eyes, the film is well acted. Beautiful people lying, killing, fucking - an absolute romp. The sex scenes stir your guts, you take short mental snapshots to store away for later. You hide your smile from Eddie, but you’re keenly aware that his entire body is tense. Every muscle is tight, but you’re too good of a friend to point out the way he has to wiggle his hips every so often to hide the tightness in the seat of his pants. You try not to make mental notes about the scenes that make his breath hitch, but your stupid brain can’t stop itself.

“Oh my god, it’s the therapist?” Eddie sits up straighter at the twist in the story, forgetting about the weight of you at his side. You slide down, and reach out to pull the blanket at your feet over your body. “I knew there was something about her.”

Eddie turns to look at you, the blue glow of the television illuminates one side of his face while the other - the side closest to you - is still hidden in shadow. Poor boy. You frown sympathetically, and cup his cheek with your hand. He’s perplexed by your reaction, but you shake your head and snuggle back into him. This time, you rest your head on his chest, you want to hear the way his breathing and the way his heart beats from here out.

—

“How the fuck did you know?” Eddie’s head is in his hands, thinking about where he lost his footing in the story. “You fucking knew it was Catherine the whole time.”

“Oh, Eddie,” you giggle and run your fingers through his soft curls. You can feel his head push back into your touch a little, it’s subtle but true. “That’s the whole point. You were thinking with your dick, just like Nick.” Eddie turns his face to you. He looks sheepish, but he’s smiling. You kiss his cheek before picking up the bowl of popcorn. It’s empty but for a few kernels and butter stains.

“Well, can you blame me?” He’s following behind you, watching the way your hips sway a little under the black sweatpants. He can’t stop thinking about the way they’d feel under his grip.

“No, I can’t,” you giggle as you turn back, the fat of your ass pushed against the edge of the counter. Eddie’s closer than you expected, close enough to have to reach around you to place the empty cans of beer on the counter behind your back. “We saw Christine through Nick’s eyes, and he was totally clouded by his feelings for her.”

Eddie’s looking at your lips while you talk, and the words start to slip from your mind. You have more to say, something about an oversexualized femme fatale. Something about noir using the trope over and over again, and how Eddie knows that and still missed it because Sharon Stone made his dick hard. None of that matters, not when he’s looking at your lips like that. Not when he’s looking at you like he wants to swallow you whole. And his arms are bracketing your sides, his hands are resting on the counter.

“Well, what can I say -” Eddie’s voice is low and he’s close enough for you to feel the heat of his words fanning against your lips. You think, kiss me now, you fool. Instead he closes his eyes and turns his head to the side to shake away the sudden animal instinct that nearly took over his ability to reason. “- you’ve always been smarter than me.” A kiss on the cheek and a whispered goodnight, and you’re left standing there watching him walk out of the kitchen and down the hallway to his room.

You yank open the junk drawer and fish around for the AA battery pack. You grab 4 before slamming it closed and heading back to your own room. It’s precautionary, you can’t have that little Pocket Rocket dying on you, not tonight. Not when you’re sure you can picture exactly what Eddie’s doing on the other side of your bedroom wall. Is it just your imagination, or do you hear the rhythmic sounds of bed springs faintly vibrating along with the rhythm of your own pleasure.

All doubt is gone when the sound of a moan through the paper thin wall, and decide that tonight you won’t bite down on your pillow while your own hips lift up off your mattress trying to ride an imaginary lover through your pleasure.

#eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson smut #eddie munson #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson fanfiction

377 notes · View notes

apomaro-mellow · 4 months

Text

Every Baby Needs a Daddy 5

Part 4

to tboyeddie and kas-eddie-munson: yall are on the right track ;)

to a-blog-of-negotiable-affections: i hope this part makes your brain just as goopy as the last.

Steve closed the door to the hotel bedroom. He thought about how he'd already been fucked in this bed. Then he wondered how much longer Eddie would be in town and what sort of bed he'd be taken in next. He went to the bathroom first, checking himself over. Eddie hadn't marked him up yet. But from the way he used his teeth, Steve could tell he wanted to.

He decided to give Eddie a few more minutes to get wherever he was going. In the meantime, he undressed, got comfortable on the bed and checked his socials before getting started.

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

Leaving Steve behind was probably the most difficult thing he had to do. But there was no getting out of it when his manager called a meeting like this. But he literally had a hot and ready omega waiting for him. So he was going to be diligent and knock this out so he could get back.

"Alright, I'm here", he announced, using both hands to thrust open the doors of the conference room. "You can all calm down now."

"About time." His manager had her arms crossed. Chrissy looked small and cute but Eddie only let that fool him once. She'd taken their band out of dive bars and brought them into relevance. The rest of his band was there as well, sitting around a table.

From how urgent it sounded, Eddie had a hunch this was about a future venture. Now whether it was a tour or a new album or something like that, Eddie was all for, and glad that they wanted him present for the strategy meeting. But Steve...

His phone buzzed with a text notification and he opened it, eyes bulging and closing it, looking around to see if anyone saw. Gareth was too his left, but with enough distance that he'd have to crane his neck to see his phone. Cautiously, Eddie opened it up again and swallowed.

Steve: Daddy left me all alone guess I have to play with myself Steve: image.jpeg

The picture was of Steve's mouth, his lips shiny with two fingers dipped down to the first knuckle. Eddie could tell from the framing that Steve was in bed, and at the very least shirtless. He put his phone face down but the image was burned in his head. Steve was naked in the hotel room, pleasuring himself, hopefully to the thought of Eddie.

"Got something on your mind, Eds?", Jeff asked when he noticed his strange look.

"Uh, just thinking about covers, you know, covers could be cool it's been a minute since we performed covers."

Gareth perked up. "What if we did a metal cover of a non-metal song? Those are always a hit."

Eddie smiled. They'd only done that live a couple of times but they did it a lot more before they got discovered. Between the four of them, they had varied music tastes and it was always a great creative exercise to change them to fit the new genre.

Then his phone buzzed again.

Eddie bit his lip and peeked at the new picture. This time it was of Steve playing with his chest, nipple pinched between two fingers. The last time they were together, he'd only gotten a taste of him. Eddie wanted more time to explore everything Steve had to offer. He needed more time.

The next picture came more quickly. This time it was of Steve's lower half. It started from his belly button to the very top of his crotch, those dark curls tempting before disappearing under the covers.

Eddie: Tease Eddie: I thought you said you were gonna be good Steve: I never said that

The next picture was of Steve's hand dipping under the blanket. Eddie turned his phone face down on the table again as he let his imaginations run wild. He tamped it down when Chrissy gave him a worried look. He really didn't need his pheromones stinking up the joint. If the boys knew he was mooning over the same omega as before, he'd never hear the end of it. They'd probably meet Steve soon enough anyway.

Steve: You're the one who said to keep it warm

The next image popped up but Eddie put his phone down before it could fully load, sure that it would be the end of him. Grant and Jeff were having a friendly debate on their outfits for the next show and Eddie couldn't hold back anymore. He opened up the image and was blessed with Steve's glorious, sopping cunt, spread out on white sheets.

Eddie bit so deep into his knuckle he would've tasted blood had Gareth not slammed his hands down onto the table. Eddie was glad that his friends were always so passionate about whatever adventure they were on. At times like these, it freed him from having to be an active participant.

Eddie: Behave

He tried paying attention after that. It was bad form to pop a boner and he'd get to sink into that sweet heat soon enough. He was going to knot Steve this time. He deserved it, his pussy was desperate for him and Eddie wasn't so unkind to deny him.

Now Chrissy was asking them about venues and Eddie was attentive and alert and had his head in the game and-

buzz

It was a video. Sent from Steve. Eddie sucked in a breath and quickly excused himself to go to the bathroom. Taking no chances, he plugged his headphones into the jack and locked the door to the stall. He saw thick, hairy legs that he was already familiar with but wanted to get to know even better. Steve sighed straight into his ears as he straddled one of the hotel's pillows.

"Wish it was you, alpha." He let out a small whine as he started to grind, no doubt getting the pillow wet.

Eddie palmed himself as he watched, wishing the same with all his might. Steve moaned, unbidden as he got himself off on the softness between his legs. Eddie pulled out his cock and it wasn't hard to imagine Steve sliding his pussy on it like he'd been trying to do to his leg earlier. He could tell by the panting that Steve was getting close and his hips moved quicker.

He moaned Eddie's name and collapsed, face still out of frame while his hips stuttered. Fuck, that pillow must be soaked. Eddie pumped his cock, just the thought of getting it wet with Steve's juices enough to push him over the edge.

After cleaning himself up, he locked the video. It was for his eyes only. He returned to the meeting, secret safe except it wasn't.

"Dude, you reek", Jeff said the moment he walked in.

"Yeah, does planning really get you that hard?", Grant teased.

"You know it does, Grant-master Flash", Eddie beamed. He shot off a quick message to Steve.

Eddie: Baby likes to put on a show hope you're ready for an encore later

Steve: 🩷

About an hour later, the meeting ended and Eddie was able to get back to Steve. He called out his name when he got to the hotel room and when he didn't get an answer, he went to the bedroom. There was his latest obsession, sleeping like an angel. Eddie walked over quietly, his nose catching the scent of the pillow Steve had used, lying next to him. Eddie buried his face in it, his tongue coming out to lick whatever was left.

Then he turned his attention to Steve. He was lying on his side, blanket only covering him from the hips down. It must have been very purposeful, because Eddie was able to see something peeking out. He pulled the cover down a bit to see a little sticky note attached to his pelvis. There was a little message, with an arrow pointing downwards.

Play with me until I wake up

Eddie could have thrown his hands up in praise. But instead, he would partake in the communion Steve was giving him.

Steve woke up from his nap to someone kissing his neck and kneading his chest. He let out a soft sigh when one of his nipples was pinched. The spicy musk of aroused alpha filled his senses.

"Eddie~", he breathed out as a hand trailed down his torso.

"I see you kept it warm for me", Eddie murmured, letting his fingers slip between his folds.

Steve was still half asleep and it made everything move like syrup in his mind. It was like an amazing dream that he didn't want to wake from. He spread himself as best as he could on his side and that gave Eddie room to start slipping his fingers inside.

"Daddy....Daddy..."

"I've gotchu, baby." Eddie started nibbling at his shoulder. "Think you can take my knot like this?"

"Yes", Steve answered right away, the remnants of sleep knocked from him at the thought of being filled like that. "Yes", he repeated, hoping it would spur Eddie on.

It got the desired result because he felt the tip of his cock rubbing up against him. Steve pushed back and Eddie pulled his fingers out, quickly replacing it with something better. Eddie meant to go slow, let them take their time because they had time. But Steve rocked back and Eddie pressed his forehead to his shoulder as he slid inside.

"Mmmmfuck, feel so good baby. So perfect for me."

"Only the best-ah-for my alpha."

Eddie couldn't let him get away. Not when he drove him wild like this. Even when he was done with this town and onto the next, he had to take Steve with him.

"Need you with me, need your sweetness. You'll want for nothing, baby, I'll give you anything."

For a split second, Steve wondered if his pussy was really that good to make Eddie babble things like that but the next moment he was certain that Eddie's dick was really that good. As it thrust into him, making wet noises in the room, Steve wanted to follow it around the world. If Eddie wanted to take him to the Arctic, Steve would be there, ready to sit on his face.

It was just as good as before, then Steve felt that knot pop in and he saw stars. Eddie bit into his shoulder as he felt Steve milking his cock. All that was missing was the feeling of actually cumming inside of him. Eddie always wrapped it up, obsessed with Steve or not. Until such a time that Steve confessed that he wanted Eddie's seed coating his insides then-

"Hey, you remember how you said we're exclusive?", Steve asked through pants.

"Yeah?"

"I'm thinking..." He craned his neck to meet Eddie's gaze from behind him. "I'm thinking maybe that means you can go without the condom."

Eddie's dick twitched from inside Steve. This man would be the death of him.

Too spent to go out, Eddie ordered them room service and Steve spent the night there again. Back at home, Steve contemplated looking up Eddie's band and learning more about them. He debated simply because he didn't know how much of it would come up. Eddie was taking him to a party. Would he be expected to know their hits? Or how respected they were in the business? Or their rivals were if they had any?

Steve couldn't help but compare this to the life he'd left behind. Being told to smile prettily while the alphas talked business. Eddie probably wasn't expecting him to know much about anything. He'd bought him a nice suit and would have something pretty to show off for the evening. That was Steve's job.

He let out a sigh and opened up his laptop. He searched up 'corroded coffin' and strapped in for the evening.

Part 6

I realized that while i've been tagging the a/b/o stuff, I never really put up a warning for the daddy kink stuff but like...yall read the title LOL

Tag Team

@awkotaco24 @lingeringmirth @littlewildflowerkitten @estrellami-1 @tartarusknight @velocitytimes2 @mrsjellymunson @trashcanniballecter @marklee-blackmore @dragonmama76 @paintsplatteredandimperfect @a-little-unsteddie @sllooney @starman-jpg @oxidantdreamboat @xxbottlecapx @chaosgremlinmunson @newtstabber @tiny-enthusiast @desidrarry-wolfstarshipper @y4r3luv @hello-fellow-nerds @anonymousbandgirl @alyelf @potato-of-the-lord @beckkthewreck @greatwerewolfbeliever @croatoan-like-its-hot @pluto-pepsi @abstractnaturaldisaster @ellietheasexylibrarian

#apo writes #stranger things #fanfiction #steddie #omegaverse #a/b/o

363 notes · View notes

celluloidbroomcloset · 2 months

Text

In terms of Stede running from Ed...

Some of the miscommunication between them about their own feelings is, weirdly, a result of Lucius. Lucius is the one who clocks where their relationship is going, and he tells Ed that Stede likes him. He treats Ed leaving with Jack as a breakup, and that's the impression that Ed gets as well. Stede has not apparently put his romantic feelings into words, so when things become undeniable with the kiss, he's still not sure what's really happening between them, while Ed thinks they've been working towards this the entire time.

There's a good argument that Lucius doesn't even get what's going on with Stede. I don't think he knows that Stede hasn't figured out his own sexuality yet, or doesn't understand his feelings for Ed. He's seeing this clear romance happening before his eyes and it doesn't occur to him that Stede, not Ed, is the one who hasn't figured it out.

So Ed's understanding of their relationship has been filtered through Lucius and through Stede's behavior, while Stede himself is largely oblivious to his own romantic feelings.

Stede doesn't know he's in love when Ed kisses him. Stede doesn't know what he is with Ed. He knows they're friends, but he's never had a friend. He knows he feels strongly about Ed, and was heartbroken when he left and elated when he came back. He also sees Ed apparently giving in to being taken by the English—shaving his beard, being happy folding socks, etc.—and that confuses him. Not so long ago Ed was talking about sharpening his sword for the next adventure. Then Ed tells him that he's the reason Ed has been happy all this time...and that's a lot of pressure for a guy who truly believed that his presence made very little difference to other people. He is Ed's happiness and he's never been that for anyone.

#ofmd #our flag means death #stede bonnet #edward teach #gentlebeard #ofmd meta

202 notes · View notes

beansprean · 2 years

Text

@blakbonnet @saltpepperbeard Your post has come to fruition…this comic hurt my teeth with its sweetness!! I should apologize for how long it is but...I won't.

(ID in alt and under cut)

ID: 1. Full body of Stede and Ed standing in an 80s grocery store. Ed, wearing a black tee shirt tucked into lightwash jeans, black boots, a light blue handkerchief in his back left pocket, and his hair in a high ponytail, is standing with an empty grocery cart with both hands on the handle and one foot up on the bottom basket. He glances from the empty cart and then to Stede, waggling his eyebrows suggestively. Stede, wearing a retro-patterned teal and purple short sleeved button up tucked into pleated khaki slacks, brown leather loafers, and a gold watch, his hair swept back in a big feathered quiff, holds his hands up defensively with a nervous smile. He says, “Oh- Darling, no. No, no, I’m too big!”

2a. Ed begins to stalk towards Stede with a mischievous grin, arms out in a grabbing motion. Stede backs up, smile growing even as his eyes narrow in warning and his hands try to bat him away. “Ed.” he says shortly. 2b. Ed darts forward and grabs Stede around the waist, scooping him up over his shoulder. Stede bursts into laughter, face going red, and yells “Ed! Put me down, you’ll hurt yourself!” 2c. Ed walks back toward their cart with Stede flopped over his shoulder and sings, “Nonsense, love!” In the background, there is a young brown woman wearing a patterned jumpsuit with long dark feathered hair facing the shelves as she browses cereal. There is a baby over her shoulder wearing teal overalls who catches Stede’s eye as they pass and reaches out a chubby little hand to wave at him in solidarity. Stede waves back automatically, clearly embarrassed but unable to stop smiling.

3a. Ed half-falls into the cart with a punched-out “Oof!” as he flops Stede down into it butt-first, his face buried in Stede’s chest and Stede’s legs flying up around him. 3b. Ed lifts himself up with his arms braced on either side of Stede, nose-to-nose with his husband who has sat up in the cart with a silly grin, one leg thrown over the side. Ed continues the previous conversation with a soft smile, “It’s like holding a couple of grapes.” 3c. Ed closes the last inch between them to smack a kiss on the tip of Stede’s nose. Stede reddens and snorts out a laugh.

4. Close up on the woman in their aisle as she chooses a cereal called “Matey Puffs” featuring a white cartoon Blackbeard with a hook hand. She glances over in confusion at Ed and Stede as they zoom away, Stede tucked in the cart and Ed driving, both giggling uncontrollably. The baby continues to wave after them.

5. Text reading “Later…”

6a. Stede and Ed waiting in line at the checkout. Stede is still in the cart, knees pulled to his chest, now surrounded by piles of groceries including a bottle of L&P soda, a bag of shredded cheese, a head of romaine lettuce, a bottle of wine, a few packs of meat, a bag of apples, a bag of Twisties, a loaf of bread, a bag of Roshuns, several packs of spaghetti, and a few miscellaneous cartons and jars. Ed, one hand on the cart handle, suddenly smacks the heel of his other hand against his forehead with a “duh!” expression. He exclaims, “Oh, shit! We forgot the oranges!” Stede turns his head around shoot him an annoyed look and replies, “What?? That’s the whole reason we came!” 6b. Ed runs off in a cloud of dust, shouting behind him, “BRB, Baby! Kiss kiss!” Stede cranes his neck after him in panic, unable to move from his grocery prison, calling, “Wai- Ed! Ed!!” 6c. Stede turns back around, red faced, sweating with nerves, and now a middle aged man alone in a full grocery cart. In front of him in queue is a bald man resembling Black Pete in a white suit with the sleeves rolled up, pushing his own cart. Behind him are an older dark-skinned woman with short gray hair wearing a puff sleeve shirt, long pink skirt, and pearls, holding a full basket with both hands and a large Māori man resembling Fang in a pink polo shirt and pleated khakis with a bag of dog food under one arm. They both step forward automatically to fill Ed’s vacated space.

7a. The older woman leans forward toward Stede with a small smile, saying, “You and your husband are very sweet.” Stede cranes his neck around to smile at her nervously, replying, “Oh! Thank you…” 7b. The woman loosens one hand from her basket to place it on Stede’s cart, continuing, “Let me push you forward, the queue is moving.” Stede drops his chin to his chest in relief, breathing out a much more genuine “Thank you.”

8a. Text at the top reads “9 minutes later”; Stede has reached the front of the line. The employee, who resembles Izzy, is wearing a blue striped button up and red bow tie under a yellow apron and stands, one hand hovering over the register as he stares down silently at Stede. Stede, looking small and scared, barely able to peek over the edge of the counter, stares back sweatily with wide eyes and says, “Ummm…” 8b. The employee startles as Stede cracks his head back and screams at the top of his lungs, “Ed!! Darling, where are you?? We have a problem!!”

9a. Ed suddenly zooms into view holding a bag of oranges, sliding smoothly between Stede and the register with a grin and a wink. He says, “Never fear, my love! I’m here!” Stede smiles hugely at him, full of relief and love. Behind them, the Izzy-like employee just glares at them, looking extremely tired, revealing he is wearing a large anachronistic button that says “service with a smile”. Stede cries, “You came back!” Ed replies, “Never left.” Both their speech bubbles are filled with pink hearts. 9b. Text in parentheses at the top says “he really didn’t.” We now see Ed from earlier, already holding the bag of oranges, peeking out from behind a shelf with a warm expression. He giggles, one hand to his cheek, as he observes Stede’s predicament from afar. Offscreen, Stede is saying, “Oh- Louise, we’re moving again.” Louise, presumably the older woman behind him in line, responds, “I’ve got you!” Stede continues, “Haha, getting awfully close to the front, aren’t we… I wonder what’s taking Ed so long…” /end ID

#ofmd #blackbonnet #gentlebeard #modern ofmd #80s aesthetic #mlm #our flag means death #my art #fanart #image described #bob damrons handkerchief code may be required reading but there r lots of fun easter eggs #originally i was like hehe what if the baby was jim but i was like no then everyone would be way younger but #who cares baby jim

4K notes · View notes

daisynik7 · 9 months

Note

This is for your y2k!

“Photograph” by Ed Sheeran for Toji Fushiguro - angst

We keep this love in a photograph, we made these memories for ourselves.

Read Part Two - Make You Feel My Love

Pairing: Toji x f!reader

Word Count: ~3.1k

cw: implied family abuse, angst, some fluff, modern day-au, no curses au, a kiss, time skip

Summary: Toji Zenin is scary; he’s the most intimidating boy in your class. When you’re paired with him for a group project, you’re nervous that he’s as bad as he seems. However, you learn that behind that hard exterior is a person yearning just to be normal.

Author’s Note: The first story for the y2k karaoke party! Inspired by “Photograph” by Ed Sheeran. Thank you @gojoshooter for submitting this song/request! I hope you like this one! Divider created by @/cafekitsune.

You meet Toji in high school, when you’re paired up randomly for a project during your last semester of senior year. He’s a transfer student, having just joined a month ago, introducing himself briefly with a scowl on his face, uninterested in anything. Aside from his obvious stature, the evident scar running across his mouth stands out. Most of your peers avoid him, intimidated by his overwhelming presence. He’s bigger than everyone else, both in height and muscle; he looks like someone you don’t want to mess with. Even teachers do their best to evade him, leaving him to his own devices in the back corner of the classroom. At least he isn’t disruptive; most of the time, he keeps to himself.

Of course, in a school as small as yours, gossip spreads like wildfire. They say he comes from a prominent family, the “Zenin’s”. You’ve never heard of them; apparently, they are notoriously elitist and filthy rich. So, it surprises you that a son of the Zenin clan would attend a public school like yours rather than a private institution. Maybe he’s different.

Everyone dreads group projects, let alone randomly assigned group projects. Everyone is on pins and needles, waiting to hear who their partner is. When your name follows his, your heart sinks into your belly. Sighs of relief wash over the rest of your classmates, thankful that they aren’t you. Taking a deep breath, you get up from your seat, slowly walking towards him. When you’re by his desk, he doesn’t look up. You clear your throat to say, “Hello. I guess we’re partners for this project.”

He scoffs, twirling a pen between his fingers, brows furrowed, irritated already. “Great,” he mutters, sarcastically.

Okay, maybe he’s not different.

~~~

Your teacher calls this project “A Week in the Life”. Basically, you’re tasked to capture your partner’s daily routines throughout the week in the form of photographs. Each student is given a disposable camera, loaded and ready to use. Once developed, you’re supposed to put them together into a collage, decorating it however you desire. A short essay is also required, describing what you will learn about the other person after spending this time with them. You have an entire month to complete everything. Weekdays are repetitive, considering most of the day you’re in school; it’s the afternoons, nights, and weekends that set each person apart from the other.

“I’m not inviting you into my house,” Toji says, crossing his arms over his chest.

“But that’s part of the project. I’m supposed to see what you do on a daily basis.” You resist the urge to sound equally as annoyed, not wanting to start off on the wrong foot.

He glares at you, hunched over his desk. “I avoid going home as much as possible. That’s what I usually do.”

You swallow hard, unsure how to respond. Eventually, you murmur, “Well then, you can do me first. We’ll just figure yours out later.”

He shrugs, unenthused. “Whatever.”

You pull your phone out of your pocket, sliding it towards him. “Let’s exchange numbers so we can coordinate our schedules. We can start next week.” He doesn’t argue, pushing his cell to you to do the same.

As planned, the following Monday, Toji begins taking random photos of you during the school day. It starts off in class when he captures you working at your desk. Other students are doing the same, so it isn’t as awkward as you expect it to be. Still, it feels odd being watched by Toji through the lens of the camera.

At lunchtime, he sits with you and your friends in the cafeteria, his big body smushed next to yours as you munch on your meal. You notice that he hasn’t brought anything to eat except for a protein bar and sports drink. Not thinking anything of it, you split your egg salad sandwich into two triangles, handing him one. He glances at it, then at you, confused. “What?”

“Eat it.”

He makes a face, taking it reluctantly, having the audacity to sniff it before taking a bite. When he doesn’t say anything, expression relaxing, you smile to yourself, satisfied. It’s gone two bites later, and from your peripheral, you see him lick the excess off his thumb. Mouth still full, he mumbles a brisk, “Thanks,” snapping his drink open to take a swig.

After school, you attend a book club meeting that’s hosted every Monday by your friend. Toji snaps a photo of you and your group posing with your book for this month. Before you leave for dinner, a few of the girls whisper to you about how hot he is, how lucky you are to be paired up with such a hunk. How scary he comes off with his scowls and glares. They’re so loud, you’re certain he can hear, but he doesn’t mention anything about it. That is, until you’re alone with him, walking home together.

“So, do you think I’m scary?” He has his hands in his pockets, looking down at the ground where he walks besides you.

The question catches you off guard. “Huh?”

“Do you think I’m scary?” he repeats, looking at you now, smirking.

You grin. “Maybe a little bit at first. Not so much anymore.”

“What changed?”

“I saw you inhale that sandwich. The tough guy act disappeared in that moment.”

“Hey, that thing was tiny. I could have swallowed it in one bite,” he chuckles, kicking a pebble on the ground. “And I’m not putting on a tough guy act. This is just who I am.”

You giggle softly, smiling at him. “Well, I’m looking forward to getting to know you better, Zenin.”

“Toji. Call me Toji.”

~~~

Dinner with your parents goes by smoothly. You’ve prepared them for this special visitor, urging them to be on their best behavior and not judge a book by his cover. Naturally, your mother is startled when his big frame enters through the doorway, but when he bows to her, introducing himself respectfully, she eases up. After a quick tour of your house, Toji snaps shots of you helping your parents in the kitchen. With the whole spread laid out on the table, he takes another photo before you all gather around to eat.

Much like earlier in the day, Toji scarfs his meal, mumbling out compliments to the chef. Your parents are thrilled, dropping more servings onto his plate, watching with pride as their cooking is devoured. You can’t help wanting to capture this memory, so you retrieve your own disposable camera from your backpack, taking his picture. He doesn’t seem to mind.

The two of you eat ice cream sandwiches in your backyard while your parents wash the dishes. The sun is setting, beautiful golden streaks shining from the horizon. Your classmate takes a candid of you sitting on the patio chair, staring at the last moments of daylight. “Do your parents cook like that every day?” he asks, finishing off the last of his dessert.

“Nah, they just wanted to impress you.”

“Well, I am thoroughly impressed. That was the best meal I’ve had in a long time.”

After just one day with him, you feel comfortable enough to ask, hoping that it isn’t crossing the line. “Do you dislike eating at home?”

He doesn’t respond right away, thinking of his answer carefully. “Yeah, I do.”

“Why?”

He smirks, running his thumb along the scar on his lips. “Dinners at my house don’t always end in dessert, if you know what I mean.”

Your jaw drops, unable to contain your reaction. “You’re saying…”

He leans back into his seat. “Yup. Got a knife thrown at me.”

“What?!”

Laughing, he nods. “After that, I didn’t like having dinners there.”

You’re tempted to ask for the whole story, but you know it’s pushing it. Instead, you offer, “Well, you’re always welcome here.”

It’s a simple comment. To you, it’s nothing. Maybe it’s because you’re used to offering kindness to others; it’s what you were raised to do. It’s what the people around you do. It’s common. Second-nature, really.

But as Toji stares at you, wearing an expression you’ve never seen before, one of genuine gratefulness, you realize that to him, it’s not nothing. It’s special.

Throughout the remainder of the week, Toji spends practically his whole day with you, morning, noon, and night. During this time, you learn that his family is wealthy, though he chose to attend this school on his own will, just to spite them. He considers himself an outcast, the black sheep of the Zenin clan, so much so that he even refuses to associate himself with the family name. And while he’s sure he’s better off away from the snooty rich kids of the school he would have attended, his intimidating appearance and less-than-friendly attitude has made him an outcast amongst your peers. You feel guilty being part of the problem, judging him before getting to know him. He’s actually easy to talk to. It helps that he’s an open book about his personal life.

Saturday, you plan to go to the aquarium with your family, inviting him to tag along for the project (and for fun). Toji is at your doorstep right on time, dressed in a tight black tee shirt and grey sweatpants, accentuating his chiseled figure. There’s no denying it; he’s very attractive. You’d be lying to yourself if you said it hasn’t crossed your mind. But Toji doesn’t need people to be attracted to him; he needs a friend. And that’s what you’ll be to him.

It’s a fun day, observing all the fish and aquatic creatures swimming in their tanks. He takes pictures whenever it’s appropriate, covering the flash with his finger as to not disturb any of the animals inside. You eat lunch together in the cafeteria, Toji offering to pay for it as thanks for all the kindness he was shown this week. Near closing time, you take one last stroll through the jellyfish section, marveling at the wonderfully bizarre invertebrates floating in the water.

“I’ve never been to an aquarium before,” he admits, quietly admiring them beside you. His eyes twinkle with the glow of the iridescent jellyfish swimming in front of him.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

You nudge him playfully. “So, what do you think?”

He smiles, rubbing the spot on his arm that you touched. “Better than I expected.”

~~~

The following week is his turn. The closest you get to his mansion of a home is on the outside, not even through the gates.

“This is for your own good,” he warns, throwing a twig aggressively between the spaces of the iron bars.

You snap a quick photo with your disposable, not questioning it. When you’re finished, he smirks. “So, ready for some real fun?”

Toji spends his days after school at various locations. Basically everywhere except his own home. The public library, the gym, arcades, shopping malls, cafés, you name it. He’ll eat dinner at whatever restaurant his stomach fancies at the moment: Ramen, Takoyaki, steak, even instant ramen, depending on his mood. And while his life seems fun from the outside, like a kid in a candy store, it’s lonely. Except for when he’s with you.

Saturday is different from the other days. On the weekends, he goes to the beach, bag packed with his favorite books and snacks, ready to relax on the sand with the waves crashing against the shore. He sets up a large umbrella to cover both of you as you settle into the big blanket laid flat. He passes you one of his books, a volume of his favorite manga. The two of you read in a comfortable silence, sharing a bag of chips, fingers brushing against each other’s whenever you reach at the same time.

Out of the blue, he comments, “This is nice. It’s normal.”

Laughing, you reply, “What do you mean?”

He sets his book down, looking at you. “Nothing about my family is normal. It’s just nice to feel like a human instead of a failure.”

Your eyes widen, uncertain how to respond. Before you can say anything, he murmurs, “Sorry. I didn’t meant to kill the mood.”

You close the manga, smiling gently at him. “Don’t be. I can’t imagine what it’s like. My life is very normal.”

“That’s what I like about you, though.”

Heat rushes into your cheeks at his statement, and maybe it’s your imagination, but you see him blush. You’ve taken enough pictures to complete your project, but there’s still a bit of film left. “Let’s take a picture together,” you suggest, holding the camera in your hand, trying to lighten the mood.

“Seriously? Why?”

“To celebrate being normal, even if it just for a day.”

He grins, scooting closer to you. “Okay.”

You lean against him, both of you smiling, capturing the moment with the click of your finger.

~~~

Toji doesn’t stop eating lunch with you. Even with your photos at the lab, being developed, he remains by your side, eating the extra sandwich you always pack for him now. Occasionally, he’ll stop by for dinner, always welcomed by your parents. On the other days, you accompany him to whatever restaurant he’s craving.

When the photos are complete, you pick them up together, not wanting to share them yet, hoping to be surprised on the day they’re displayed in the classroom. At home, you compile the pictures into a stylish collage, decorating the borders with fun stickers, smiling as you gaze at each photo of him. One at the arcade, holding a toy guy in his hands with the high score flashing in the background. Another at the gym, where’s he’s kicking a punching bag, making it look far too easy. Finally, there’s the last photo you took at the beach, the two of you posing for the camera. It’s a cute picture, one that shows two people who live very different lives happily enjoying their time together. You tape it right in the middle.

When everyone’s posters are hung around the classroom, many people flock to Toji’s, desperate for a glimpse in his mysterious life. Many gawk at the mansion behind the gates, unaware of the dark secrets it holds. The girls ogle the gym picture, while the boys admire it, asking for workout tips. Toji looks pleased with how his collage turns out, especially intrigued by the photo in the center. “You included the one of us, huh?”

“It’s too cute, isn’t it? I had to include it.”

He smiles at you. “I totally agree.”

He walks you home that afternoon, a usual part of his routine now. Curious, you ask, “So, what did you write about me for your essay?”

“I wrote about how nerdy you are, going to class and willingly going to clubs after school. For fun,” he emphasizes, rolling his eyes, teasing you.

You poke his arm playfully. “And…?”

“I said that you and your family are really nice. And that your parents should be chefs,” he adds, grinning.

You laugh, hooking your arm around his. “That’s more like it.”

Before you know it, you’re at one of the parks he frequents, sitting side-by-side at his favorite bench. “What did you say? About me?” he asks, staring at his hands in his lap.

Without thinking, you rest your head on his shoulder. “That you’re not actually scary. You’re just you. And who you are is pretty great. Really great, actually.”

There’s a pause while he processes what you said. Afraid that it’s too far, you attempt to back away from him, but he catches you first, pulling you in for a kiss. It’s hesitant, like he’s unsure if this is okay. And when you place your hand on his chest, feeling his quickening heartbeat race against your fingertips, the kiss deepens, his lips parting open to slide his tongue inside your mouth. Before it gets any further, he pulls off quickly. Electricity hangs in the air, buzzing on your lips, tingling on every inch of your skin.

“I’m sorry,” you apologize, throat heavy. “I shouldn’t have done that. I just thought – ”

“You’re right. You shouldn’t have,” he spits out, jaw clenched, avoiding your gaze. It’s a harsh voice you haven’t heard the entire time since the start of your friendship.

“But I thought you liked – ”

“You’re wrong. I don’t. I – ,” he swallows, struggling to get the words out. “And I never will.” He stands up, turning his back towards you, leaving you alone with tears streaming down your face, embarrassed, confused, and heartbroken.

It’s the last time you’ll see of him. He doesn’t come back to class after that incident. Rumor has it that he came in early the next morning to gather all his belongings, which wasn’t much to begin with. There’s more gossip about it, of course, ridiculous chatter. Eventually, they fade, and his name is no longer uttered by anyone, including you. Months pass, and gradually, new memories overtake the old ones. Life goes on without him. You don’t notice the center photo of your collage is gone until you collect it at the end of the schoolyear.

He’ll never tell you that it’s for your own good. That turning his back on you is the best option to keep you safe. No matter how much he opens up to you, his reality is much worse than you can ever know. Hurting you is his way of protecting you. Because loving you is too dangerous, especially for someone like him.

~~~

Ten years later, you’re an elementary school teacher in your hometown. You planted yourself right where your roots grew. There is nothing but grand memories in this place you’re lucky to call your home. The only exception is the abandoned plot of land where the Zenin mansion was demolished a few years ago without any explanation. You preserve its memory in the form of a tattered photograph, forgotten somewhere in your closet.

Today, there’s a new student transferring into your kindergarten class; an adorable little boy with jet black hair and long eyelashes named Megumi. He reminds you of someone from your past, someone you kept buried in the back of your mind a while ago, for your own sanity.

Little do you know that on the other side of the door, Toji Fushiguro leans against the wall, listening carefully to your familiar voice introducing yourself to his son. He smiles to himself, the month you shared together all those years ago fondly replaying in fast forward in his mind. He’s no longer a Zenin, unleashed from the cruelty of his ancestry, liberated from the life he was cursed with from birth. Free to love who he wants without fearing that their life is in danger by the hands of his wretched family.

He sticks his hands in his pocket, fingers brushing along the corners of the withered photo of the two of you smiling at the beach. With a deep breath, he grips the handle of the door, finally ready to face you at long last.

#toji fushiguro #toji x reader #toji x you #toji x y/n #toji zenin #fushiguro toji x reader #fushiguro toji #jjk toji #toji angst #jjk angst #jjk x reader #jujutsu kaisen toji #toji fushiguro x reader #toji fushiguro x you #toji fluff #jujutsu kaisen x reader #y2k karaoke party #milestone event

666 notes · View notes