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stthdr · 2 years

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Can't Get You Out Of My Mind (Gareth x F Reader) Stranger Things

A/N: This was requested on my tiktok @stthdrr I do head canons on there so check it out if you want also this is the first time I've EVER written NSFW sooo

WARNING: cursing, dirty talk,+18, NSFW, oral female receiving

I think that's it

Summary: you're about to get out for spring break and to celebrate the hellfire club all go to one of The Corroded Coffins shows and when you were there you realized how much you wanted your best friend

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Y/N pov

"Y/n wait up" I hear someone yell so I stop and turn around to see my best friend since 5th grade speed walking to me so I wait for him "Hey wha-" I get caught of by Gareth frantically breathing like he ran a mile "Are you coming to the show later" Gareth said frantically trying to catch his breath "Yea of course why would I attend every show even if the Old drunks make me uncomfortable" I jokingly say as I put my hand on Gareth helping him catch his breath "Ok good but can you do me a favor" He says finally breathing normally "Depends what it is" I say leaning against some random locker as people pass us trying to get out the school quickly "Can you do my eyeliner before the concert" he says looking anywhere but at you still embarrassed he has to ask you to do his eyeliner because not capable of doing it "Of course do you want me to get anything before I come over" I say with a small giggle "Yea I need to restock my mini fridge so can you get 2 packs of Dr pepper I'll pay you back" He says now looking at me "Sure but there's no need to pay me back" I say brushing off the fact he wants to pay me back despite all the times he's been there for me and all the fights he's gotten in because of me "Alright thanks want me to drive you home" He say looking at me seeing that I'm tired and don't really wanna skate home "Please I can barely feel my legs" I say in a tone that makes Gareth look at me quickly with a red face "Alright let's go then" Gareth says in a hurry I don't know why he reacted like that to my joke but it leaves me thinking

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Gareths pov

Why can't I stop thinking of her like that it's not like she thinks of me like that. There's no way she thinks of me like that. I wish she thought of me like that God she's so hot. My cheeks glow red as I realize that the whole time I'm thinking of y/n sexually she's starring at me trying to get my attention "Earth to Gareth you missed the turn to my house dumbass" She says waving her hand getting my attention "Oh shit sorry I wasn't paying attention" I said thinking of were to turn around at "It's fine we mine as well go to the store and then straight to you're house" She says and laughs a bit. I try to park close to the store entrance like always "Hey you wanna come in with me" she says to me as she gets out the car "Do you want me to" I say still with my seatbelt on starring at her "Just get out the car idiot" She says closing the door of course I follow her like a lost puppy around the store "Hey I don't know what's gotten in to you but you better get your shit together before the show I'm ready to see you kill it like always" I turn to look at her struggling to get down the box's of Dr Pepper "here lemme help" I go to grab one of the box's about to fall on her since the box's are on the top shelf "Thanks I didn't wanna lose my face to Dr pepper today" she said laughing god I love her laugh it's so amazing I have to stop thinking about her but I can't get her out of my mind "No Problem I want you to be able to come to the show without a black eye from the dr pepper" I say also laughing trying to play off the fact that I was just starring at her laughing "Come on before I pay for this stuff since you missed the stop to my house I have to buy some more eyeliner your lucky I was running low anyway" she says putting the box of Dr pepper in the cart "sorry about missing the turn earlier I was just distracted" I said regretting what I just said immediately "What are you distributed by I might be able to help" she asks as she's starring at the different eyeliner trying to figure out which one she normally uses I know I can't tell her how bad I want to kiss her and pull her into my lap and kiss her neck and "Gareth you ok" she says breaking me out of my trance "yea I'm fine sorry " I say trying to see if she will drop the subject "well come on we should get going we don't need you to be late to your own show" she said clearly sensing the weirdness of this whole situation from school until now I just follow her back to the car open the door for her like normal we drive back to my house

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Y/N pov

I don't know what's gotten into Gareth but its weirding me out a little "Hey back to what I was saying earlier what are you distracted by you can talk to me about it if you want of course" I say trying to break the awkward silence that me and Gareth haven't experienced since we practiced kissing on each other in 6th grade "Oh um I don't really wanna talk about it not to you" he says not even looking at me even though I know he knows I'm looking at him "Ok~ well at least tell me roughly what your distracted by did Jason do something to you that's making you-" I was cut of by Gareth "Shut up about Jason he didn't do anything this time ok" he said it so harshly it made me wince a little "sorry I'm just a bit stressed I guess I didn't mean to snap on you" "no it's fine I shouldn't be trying to push you to say something you clearly don't wanna talk about" I say immediately after he stopped talking we finally pull into Gareths drive way the whole band is in the garage "Hey why did y'all take so long we have to be there in 2 hours" I heard Eddie say as we get out the car "He missed a turn ok it's fine we still have 2 hours" I say before Gareth gets a chance to say anything I grab the bag of make up and snacks that we bought and Gareth gets the Dr pepper boxes I brush past Eddie into the house in a hurry while Gareth is putting up the Dr pepper him and the band are talking in the garage for like 20 minutes before I finally get tired of waiting for Gareth and go get him myself when I go down the stairs I hear Jeff laughing hysterically and Eddie saying something but I can't tell what so I slowly start to ease drop "You need to make a move" I heard Eddie say "There's no way she feels the same about me" I hear Gareth say that explains why he's been off all day hes in love with me and I didn't take the hints until now then I was about to walk in but then I start hearing Jeff asking something "I mean she is real hot if I was you I wouldnt be able to stop thinking about all the sexy things she can probably do" I heard Jeff say then I heard him say ow I suspect that Eddie punched him Eddie's always made sure Jeff never makes me uncomfortable I love that about him he's a sweetheart "the thing is that I can't I can't get her out of my mind ive been thinking about her non stop at first I didn't mind because it was innocent normal things but now I can't stop thinking about what she would look like naked or how her voice would sound during well you get what I'm trying to say" I hear Gareth say that and my mind starts running laps around my heart did he really mean he wanted to see me naked I left to think for about 10 minutes and then Gareth came upstairs to get his makeup done like always " Hey can we get the eyeliner over with" I hear a certain someone say that makes my heart skip a beat "yea yea of course sit down" I say some what tripping on my words he sits down in like the middle of the bed I crawl off the bed to get the eyeliner when I come back I can practically see all the things his thinking so I thought instead of being normal I should spice things up a bit

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Gareth pov

I'm sitting on my bed but my mind is other places but I was brought back by y/n sitting in my lap straddling her legs around my waist I look down to see the position we are in but she pulls my face back up not really forcefully but enough to catch me of guard "I need you to look at me if you want your eyeliner done dumbass" she says as she looks me dead in my eyes I try to look away but I can't it's like I'm frozen I shock "this might be a bit cold" she says before putting the liquid eyeliner on my water line I try not to blink and mess her up but the way she shifts her lower body against me turns me on soo much fuck we don't have time for fucking around like this "All done" she says getting up off my lap and kissing my cheek what was going on with her why is she acting so teasingly I bring my hand up to the side of my cheek she kissed "why are you being like this" I say not thinking what I said could by taken badly " what do you mean" she says acting stupid " your practically leading me on at this point you have never done something like this before whats the sudden change" I say generally curious "I heard what you said in the garage talking to Eddie and them" the second she said that I knew our friendship was ruined as my eyes slightly water I say "shit I'm sorry I didn't know you were listening I understand if you hate me and don't wanna talk to me anymore I mean I wouldn't either if I heard someone talking about me like that" "Gareth I love you I have since 8th grade I never planned on telling you but after hearing all that you said about me I mean wow " she says making my face practically glow red I got off the bed and walked to her , she was near the closet getting my clothes ready I loved when she picked what a wore she knows I can't ever decide what to wear I slowly put my hands around her waist as she turned around I kissed her I don't know where the sudden confidence came from but my confidence only grew when she started to kiss back harder and she seemed needy almost but it turned me on soo fucking much god

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Y/n pov

God I practically moaned into his kiss my panties are basically soaked and they have been since I over heard Gareth talking in the garage "please" I said a lot more needy then intended as I broke away from the deep passionate kiss for air that we both really needed "I don't know I don't want you to feel pressured into this because of the stuff I said earlier" Gareth said honestly scared because he didn't want to push you to so anything you don't want to do "please Gareth I can't wait any longer I've been waiting for what seems like years to fuck you I just need you" I say so eager to get fucked it's sad Gareth slowly starts moving me to the bed and taking my shirt off and I'm taking his shirt off slowly even thought we have both seen each other in just under wear because we normally just change in front of each other we have never starred at the other person in just underwear Gareth slowly starts sliding my joggers down as I undo his belt and jeans he notices how wet I am and says " God you really are eager aren't you couldn't wait to get me in your pants" I just giggle as I know it was true he slowly takes off my bra asking if it was ok to do so before even coming close to the back to take it off I of course say yes he just kinda stares at my boobs for a bit before even touching them of course he is constantly asking what felt good and what didn't I felt kinda bad for being the only one receiving attention so I start to palm Gareth threw his boxers and he moans so loud luckily no one was home except the band down in the garage but they shouldn't be able to hear us right

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Gareths pov

I can't believe I'm getting palmed by y/n y/l/n the moan I let out when she started palming me was unexpected and I'm almost certain the band can hear us down stairs or at least know what's going on up here we may be freaks but they aren't stupid I slowly start moving my head down to her clit and I start to slowly lick from her slit up to her clit and God the way she moans makes me go insane I stop eating her out and start to kiss and leave hickeys on the inside on her thighs "please in need you" she whines being really needy "alright princess what you say goes I guess" I say jokingly as I start to get a bit self conscious as I slid my boxers down I definitely wasn't the biggest but I was above average and I am kinda proud of it but also I feel a little judged sometimes but with y/n it was different it was like love no judgment I went to grab a condom out my nightstand before lining up to her entrance and slowly sliding in making sure I wasn't hurting her when I started moving the sounds that came out her mouth were so amazing they sounded amazing it turned me on soo much we both started getting close to finishing when y/n said "I fucking love you so much your such a pretty boy" that somehow sent me over the edge both of us cuming at the same time I slide out her took off the condom and slid next to her after I tied it of to throw it away "that was fucking awesome" she said giggling "I know but I can't believe I just lived my dream I mean pinch me please" I say jokingly but she actually pinches me "Ow" I say jerking my arm back "sorry but you did say pinch me" she's says still giggling " I didn't mean it literally " I say rubbing the skin she just pinched "I know but we should probably start getting dressed we're gonna be late" she says getting up to clean herself up a bit then bringing me some wipes to wipe off with I get up clean myself off a bit and we both got dressed heading back down stairs both us a nervous wreck not wanting anyone to have heard what just happened and trying to make it seem like we didn't just fuck I open the garage door "well well look who we have here the rabbits" Eddie says looking up from his guitar he was making sure was perfectly in tune even though the show was cancelled because it started storming "What" y/n said I look at her and her face was so red I'm assuming she thought they couldn't hear us "you heard what I said we heard what y'all were doing up there we don't care but next time please be a little quieter no one wants to listen to that" Eddie says acting like he was grossed out even though he knew it would happen sooner or later " Look what we did doesn't matter let's just go to the address of the show" I saying putting my arm around y/n and pulling her closer to me "It's cancelled" Jeff said disappointed "Wait what" I said disappointed as well "it's storming out almost flooding we can't go anywhere" Eddie says putting his guitar down gently "oh well we can just hangout here I guess" I say even though I really just wanted alone time with the girl I can't get out my head.

Y/N Y/L/N

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A/N : Hope you guys enjoyed this

#Gareth #Gareth emerson is fine asf #i love Gareth Emerson #Gareth needs more screen time #stranger things fandom #stranger things #strangerthings season 4

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yourelosingains · 2 years

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Imagine season 5 Will but with ✨this✨ haircut

#gareth needed more screen time #will byers #stranger things 5 #stranger things #gareth the great #byler #byeler #st #noah schnapp #mullet will byers supremacy #/wolfcut #he'd totally rock it

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steddiealltheway · 8 months

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(A special post for my dear friend Cass @henderdads who is celebrating 10k followers 🫶💛 can’t wait to celebrate more milestones with you 🥳)

Eddie watches the follower count on the Corroded Coffin TikTok rise every time he refreshes their page as the rest of the band looks over his shoulder.

“I can’t believe your bat song is going to bring us to ten thousand followers. Considering it’s about-”

“Shut up,” Eddie cuts him off, refreshing the page again.

“Seriously though,” Grant says, pointing at the follower count, “We’re going to hit ten thousand pretty soon.”

“Which is a big milestone for us,” Jeff adds before circling in front of where everyone in staring at Eddie phone. “Shouldn’t we celebrate or something?”

All the boys pause for a moment, and Eddie can feel them all staring at him, waiting for some type of creative revelation as if he can just come up with something on the spot like... “I have an idea.”

Gareth and Grant high five as Eddie jumps up and points at Jeff. “Go get some lame confetti party poppers and a cheesy celebration cake.” He turns to Gareth and Grant and points at them. “You guys need to find out how to put our follower count on a laptop or something while I set up my room so we can do a livestream on Tiktok in there.”

“We’ve never done a livestream.”

“Exactly!” Eddie says clapping his hands excitedly, “That’s what will grab people’s attention and boost our follower count. We’ll tell them that follower ten thousand will get a special private video from us or something. I don’t know. Whatever they want!”

“What if they ask us to strip?” Grant asks.

Jeff sighs and puts a hand on his shoulder. “No one is going to ask you to strip, dude.”

“You never know!”

Eddie just laughs as he rushes off to his room.

“Wait!” Jeff yells after him.

Eddie pauses and turns around.

“What money am I using to by this stuff?”

Eddie sighs and digs his wallet out of his pocket, pulling out two twenties and handing them over. “If this doesn’t cover it, you’ve done something wrong.”

Jeff smiles widely before running out the door yelling, “I’m gonna spend all of it!”

Eddie doesn’t even care about his money going down the drain, he’s too excited about reaching ten thousand and being able to call Wayne about it. For now, it’s time to seriously do some work to his room in order to make it somewhat presentable…

-:-:-:-:-:-

Eddie adjusts the camera stand and the ring light he bought for their videos that he gets constantly made fun of for buying. But the guys can’t deny how much better their videos look, so he doesn’t want to hear it.

“Jeff, give me your phone.”

Jeff hands his phone over but whines, “Why my phone?”

“Because you have the best camera,” Eddie explains, setting it up and going to their tiktok page. The numbers are quickly climbing through the nine thousands, and at this rate, they’ll definitely hit 10k during the livestream.

Once everything is prepared, Eddie asks, “Ready?”

Everyone nods and Eddie starts the livestream. He waves at the camera and watches the view count grow quickly. “Oh wow. Hi everyone. We haven’t done this before, so sorry for anything weird that may happen or when Grant inevitably says something dumb.”

Eddie gets a smack on the back of the head as Grant says, “Hey!” Jeff and Gareth just look at each other knowingly and laugh.

Eddie half winces and smiles as he rubs the back of his head and reads the comments asking about the numbers on the computer. “Oh shit. Yeah! Oh wait, I don’t think I should’ve sworn. Oops. Uh, anyways!” He takes a deep breath and gestures to the computer screen. “So, this the whole reason for our livestream. We’re about to hit ten thousand followers-”

“Thanks to you guys!” Gareth interjects.

“Yes, thank you guys. Really. From the bottom of my heart. Thank you,” Eddie says sincerely, laying his hands over his heart. “And we thought that we’d do something special for our ten thousandth follower. Maybe send them a video of us doing a cover of their favorite song or something. We don’t know! Whoever it is, you get to choose.”

“But you can’t make us strip!” Grant yells.

Eddie runs a hand over his face before gesturing dramatically toward Grant. “And this is what I meant when I said Grant would inevitably say something dumb.”

Gareth and Jeff just laugh as Grant turns red. Eddie turns around and pats him on the shoulder. “You know we love you.”

“Yeah, because you would suck without me.”

Eddie turns around and looks at the camera. “That’s absolutely true.” He looks at the comments and notices people asking them questions about when they’re releasing another song and if they’re planning on touring anywhere soon.

Jeff leans over squinting and says, “Oh! Our next song is called Hellfire Rains!”

Gareth looks at him slowly and asks, “Dude, are we allowed to say that?”

Eddie puts his head in his hands. This is absolutely a disaster, but he wouldn’t have it any other way. Eddie’s head pops back up. “We could do something even worse and give them a sample of it.”

He sees the comment section flood a bit with affirmations of YES PLEASE. I BEG OF YOU.

Eddie turns to the guys and shrugs. “Are you guys good if I play a weird acoustic version of it?”

All the guys shrug and nod until Jeff stops to say. “Wait, what if we hit ten thousand during that?”

“Then, you guys stop me and we look at the follower,” Eddie replies.

Jeff nods and says, “Okay, but what if I told you we’re only nine followers away from ten thousand?”

“What?!” The rest of the boys yell and turn to the computer, noticing the numbers going up.

Eddie scrambles to grab his phone and go to their page, refreshing their notifications to grab the name of the ten thousandth person. He quickly looks at the camera and says, “Okay guys, I’ll give you that cover after we hit this milestone and freak out.” He refreshes the page and grabs Gareth’s shoulder. “Wait, do you have the party poppers?”

“Shit!” He yells running to the plastic Walmart bag and digging through it, handing them to everyone.

“It’s about to happen guys!” Jeff yells.

Eddie’s heart thuds in his chest as he refreshes the page over and over.

“Holy shit!” Grant yells first as Gareth and Jeff yell to celebrate. Eddie glances at the screen showing 10,000 and laughs as everyone pulls their confetti party poppers. He turns back and refreshes the page.

He freezes.

“Eddie, man, who is the lucky person?” Jeff asks excitedly.

Eddie looks at them with wide eyes.

“What?” Gareth asks.

Eddie looks back at the name and presses on the profile, noticing their mutual followers confirming that it’s a legit account. “Oh my god.”

The guys all rush around his phone and stare at the page.

Gareth shrieks with laughter. “Holy shit! Steve Harrington? The same infamous Steve who your bat song is about?”

“The same infamous Steve who you had a horrible crush on in high school but could never get the courage to talk to him?” Jeff adds with a laugh.

“I talked to him once,” Eddie grumbles out running his hands over his face. This cannot be happening.

Gareth laughs loudly and says, “Let me recall it.” He turns to Jeff and acts like he gets flustered as he says, “Uh. Steve. Steve Harrington. You’re. Hi. Yeah. You. Uh. So Dustin and you. That’s cool. I. Well. Good seeing you!” Gareth then turns to run away quickly.

Jeff laughs loudly as Grant says, “Uh, guys?”

Eddie shakes his head as Gareth and Jeff ignore Grant to laugh about it until Grant yells, “Guys!”

They all look at him and notice him staring off. Eddie realizes that he’s staring at Jeff’s phone…which is still streaming.

They all seem to realize it at once and freak out. “Turn it off! Turn it off! End it!” Eddie yells as Grant drops the phone and Jeff scrambles to end the livestream.

They all pause and slowly look at Eddie who breathes out, “What are the chances that Steve wasn’t on that livestream and that everyone will forget about this?”

The rest of the boys slowly turn to look at each other with grim looks on their face.

“Oh no,” Eddie says burying his face in his hands. This is not going to be good.

-:-:-:-:-:-

Sure enough, the next day, there’s a viral TikTok going around of the movement that someone had screen recorded, and Eddie’s phone is spammed with texts from Dustin, annoyed at Eddie for never telling him about his pathetic crush on his babysitter.

Eddie ignores it and his friends attempt to drown out his sorrow with cake and platitudes of, “Hey, we’re actually gaining a lot of followers from this.”

Eddie just groans and buries his face in his bed. This cannot be happening.

“We did promise that we’d give our ten thousandth follower something special,” Jeff says. “So we still need to follow through with that.”

Eddie sighs, “I’m not going to message him.”

“Then I’m going to message him from our account and pretend to be you,” Jeff says.

As Gareth and Jeff encourage him, Eddie slowly sits up and says, “No. No. I’ll do it.” He begrudgingly reaches over and grabs his phone.

“And while you’re at it, people are complaining about you not doing that short cover so…” Gareth trails off as Eddie shoots him a glare.

“Okay, well we’re going to go pick up some food and give you some space so you don’t kill us,” Jeff says while grabbing Grant and Gareth and dragging them away.

“Thank you!” Eddie yells after them.

“But you’re not getting food unless you’ve sent him a message!” Jeff yells before closing the front door.

Eddie sighs and takes a deep breath before he glances at this phone, ignoring all the text notifications from Dustin, but he becomes curious about the text from a number he doesn’t have saved. He clicks on it.

As your 10,000th follower, do I still get to request something?

This is Steve Harrington by the way

Eddie nearly throws his phone but swipes to Dustin’s texts instead typing out, YOU GAVE STEVE MY NUMBER????

He scrolls through the dozens of texts, noticing a sequence of important texts he missed.

can i give steve your number? he’s asking me for it

eddie i swear he’s not mad or anything

okay i can’t promise that but it didn’t sound like he was mad

eddieeeee

eddie stop ignoring me

if you don’t respond im going to send your number

okay

im sending it

if anything happens i expect to be the first to know!!! don’t make me find out from a tiktok ever again

Eddie takes a deep breath and reasons that at least now he knows the number is legitimate. He opens the texts from Steve and stares at them. There’s no way he can text him.

And for some reason, he immediately decides to call him with is arguably a thousand times worse, but before he can hang up, Steve already answers with a, “Hello?”

Eddie swallows and tries to remember how to speak. “Hi,” he croaks out before clearing his throat and trying again, “Shit. Hi.”

“Hi,” Steve says, sounding amused.

Eddie sighs and lays back on his bed. “So, what are the chances that you weren’t on the live stream and you didn’t see that video?”

“Zero.”

Eddie groans. “I’m so sorry. I haven’t checked TikTok yet, but have people found you and flooded your notifications?”

“Uh…” Steve trails off, sounding hesitant to answer.

“I’ll take that as a yes. God, I’m so stupid. I just completely forgot the livestream was going or I never would’ve dragged you into this mess.”

Steve pauses and asks, “And what if I told you that I’m glad you forgot it was still on?”

Eddie sits up. “What?”

“What if…” Steve pauses and Eddie hears rustling on his end as if he’s anxiously twisting around. “What if I told you that I know what I want as your ten thousandth follower.”

“To punch me?”

Steve laughs, and Eddie tries as hard as he can not to latch onto the noise. “To ask you on a date.”

Eddie freezes in shock. Yeah, this isn’t happening.

“Eddie? Are you still there?”

“Yup, still here,” Eddie manages to breathe out. He pauses before asking, “You’re serious?”

“Yeah,” Steve replies, “I kind of had a big crush on you in high school, too. And I may have redownloaded TikTok when I heard about your live stream.”

“No way,” Eddie calls him out.

“Yes way. You should ask my best friend Robin. She saw the live stream and timed the follow perfectly for me. Plus, she’s suffered through my crush on you and has always been mad at me for never doing anything about it.”

Eddie can’t believe it. “Steve, can you FaceTime me right now?”

“Uh, sure. Yeah.”

Eddie clicks on the FaceTime button and waits until Steve’s face appears on the screen, further confirming it’s him and further freaking him out. Gosh, he hasn’t seen him in a while and he’s almost forgotten how gorgeous he is.

“Hey,” Steve says with a smile.

Eddie wants to melt into a pile of goo. “Hi.” He pauses for a second, getting a bit lost in seeing Steve’s smiling face on his phone. Then he remembers, “Oh! Okay, tell me again. But look me in the eye so I know you’re not lying.”

Steve chuckles and asks, “Eddie Munson, my secret high school crush, will you go on a date with me and fulfill the promise you made to all your followers?”

Eddie smiles and says, “Yes.”

-:-:-:-:-:-

A few days later, Eddie posts an update on the Corroded Coffin TikTok with a video of him singing a sneak peak of their new song then glancing off camera to ask, “Does my ten thousandth follower like it?”

Off camera, there’s a voice that sounds exasperated as they say, “How many times are you going to call me that instead of your boyfriend?”

Eddie puts his guitar down and rushes off camera quickly with a smile, but then the voice asks, “Did you end the video?”

Eddie pauses before saying, “No.”

“This is going to be a lasting issue isn’t it?”

“Maybe,” Eddie confesses.

Then, the mystery man appears in the shot, revealing Steve’s smiling face before he ends the video.

Once again, the video ends up going viral, and soon enough, Eddie is celebrating 50k with all the band members along with Steve (and Dustin who is very mad to find out about their relationship via the second TikTok). But he wouldn’t have it any other way.

#steddie #eddie munson #steve harrington #stranger things #steddie ficlet #corroded coffin #jeff stranger things #gareth emerson #gareth stranger things #unnamed freak stranger things #aka Grant

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lovebugism · 1 year

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band!eddie and reader finally having some alone time in the tour bus *wink wink*

18+ rockstar!eddie universe <3

It was one of those rare occasions where the rest of the band wanted to go out and you wanted to stay in. There hadn’t even been a show that day, just interview after interview after interview. It left your social battery at an all time low. So when Jeff and Gareth wanted to barhop the night away, you lamented that you were way too tired to accompany them.

And Eddie, being the nice guy he was, opted to stay in with you. “Someone’s gotta make sure the lady stays safe. Wouldn’t want someone to steal ya,” he’d half-joked.

You scoffed. “Because, god forbid, you lose your bassist, right?”

“Well, if I lost you, I think I’d die, but… yeah, having to find a replacement would definitely be more emotionally taxing.”

Eddie Munson was the only person in the world who could rival your sarcasm. It was so easy for the both of you to cover up a sweet thing with something so playfully sour. The boy finishes his quip with a stupid, lovedrunk grin that nearly makes you melt.

“Obviously,” you retort.

The rest of the boys disappear for the next several hours, enough for the sun to have set and stars to sprinkle the sky. If you had to guess, they’ve probably got a running bet on how many bars they could get free drinks from. It’ll go on until they can’t see straight anymore, no winners or losers — unless you count your manager, who’ll no doubt have to escort them back to the bus.

With them gone, the bus is practically silent for the first time all tour. There is no boyish yelling or tuning guitars or video games. There’s not even the muffled sound of tires on gravel with the tour bus parked. It’s total silence filled only with the faint sounds of Charlie’s Angels coming from the common area. The episode is practically on mute, though, because Eddie knows you’re tired and doesn’t want to disturb you.

The soft quiet ushers you into its velvet arms. It almost lulls you to sleep several times over, but something in the back of your mind refuses to let you slumber. You were annoyed at first. You were squirming in your tiny bunk for nearly an hour until you realized you were filled with a need of a different kind.

You didn’t need sleep. You needed Eddie. Like a child needs their baby’s blanket — you can’t be without him for too long, or you might start screaming. The sudden ache to be close to him hits you like a freight train.

The sliding door of the bunks glides open with a mechanical schlick. You lean against the frame of it, clad only in a too big shirt that probably belonged to all the boys before it got to you, and admire your boy in his element.

He’s all spread out on the leather couch, curly hair untamed and in a messy chestnut halo on his head. He wears a piece of outdated Corroded Coffin merch from back when you only played gigs at The Hideout. The shirt clings to his torso while a pair of old pajama pants hang low on his hips.

Eddie’s eyes are firmly trained on the small television in the corner of the bus. The chocolate of them dart around the screen as Farrah Fawcett turns flips beneath a shoddy cable service. He barely acknowledges your presence, too engrossed in the climax of his show.

“Thought you were sleeping,” he says without looking at you.

“I’m too bored to sleep,” you practically whine.

Your feet shuffle along the carpeted floor as you walk the short distance to him. You all but flop onto the couch at his side, burying your face into the warmth of his neck.

“What do you mean you’re too bored to sleep?” he mocks with a soft laugh. He turns to press his lips to your head, not exactly kissing you there, just resting against you. His words are muffled: “Why didn’t you go out with Jeff and Gareth?”

“Didn’t want to,” you answer shortly.

“Solid answer,” he nods. “What do you wanna do then?”

He doesn’t necessarily mean it suggestively. He’d probably go lie in traffic if it’d make you less bored, he loves you so damn much — but fuck if a million dirty things don’t pop into your head all at once.

It’s practically the first time you’ve been alone all tour.

Now that you think about it, every time you’ve fucked Eddie, it’s been at the discretion of prying eyes just behind a door or in a room over. Hotels are few and far between, and you and your boys are the tightest clan the universe has ever seen, so it leaves little room for opportunity time for you and Eddie.

But here you were now, with no one around, and practically all the time in the world (or rather, until sunrise, when the rest of the band shuffled back onto the bus).

“I don’t know,” you lilt, though you’re already hooking a leg over his thighs.

Eddie feels like a teenage boy all over again as you settle onto his lap. A wide grin tugs slow at the corners of his mouth. He doesn’t bother to hide his excitement. “What are ya doin’, doll?”

“Nothin’,” you shrug, feigning innocence, like you’re not slipping your fingers through the hem of his pants. The tips of them inch into his boxers and trail down the thin patch of coarse hair there with a touch that’s smoother than water.

His cock is already half-hard when you take him into your hands, warm and soft and stiffening in your grip. Eddie exhales deeply through his nose at your gentle caressing, his gaze now turned down to where work him harder.

“Keep watching your show, baby,” you tease with a knowing grin as you slip his dick from the confines of his pajamas.

“How can I—” he tries to joke, but the words get lost in his throat when you slide your panties to the side. He goes instantly stupid at the sight of your slick collecting along the manicured thatch of pubic hair just above your pussy. His brain all but ceases to function when you rub yourself along him, drenched folds parting to welcome the bulbous tip of his cock.

You feel like silk, he concludes, or maybe something somehow softer.

Eddie swallows thickly while his obedient hands settle on your hips to steady you. He continues, this time with a tremble in his voice. “How can I when you’re pullin’ this shit, huh?” his button eyes flit back up to look at you, a smirk forming on his pink lips. “You just wanna ride me, huh? That’s what you need?”

You don’t answer him. You’re barely listening, if you’re honest, too concentrated on positioning him at your opening. You gasp softly when you pierce yourself with him, then exhale low moans as you sink slowly onto his cock. The burn is a minimal one, somewhere in your lower tummy, that washes away with a flood of velvet-coated pleasure.

Eddie fills you so perfectly, just like he always does, like he was made to be seated inside you.

“Well, this is an excellent way to pass the time, if I do say so myself,” he manages to quip through bated exhales from where he’d been holding his breath. You rock your hips over his lap without warning. His pink lips form a tight line as something short of a growl bubbles in his throat and rumbles in his chest.

You watch with a proud grin as his eyes flutter shut and his head falls back. You push his curls over his shoulder to press open-mouthed kisses along the pale expanse of his neck, occasionally dragging your teeth along the milky white tendon there.

Eddie hums to himself when he feels you mewl softly against his skin. Your hips sway back and forth over his thighs, moving to a rhythm of their own accord — all slow and methodical. It’s a pace that always gets him pussy drunk. A steady rise and fall that forces him to feel all of you and makes him swear that you’re some kind of succubus.

“Oh my god,” he says within a dragged out exhale. He starts to babble to himself while you work yourself over his lap. “Fuck me… This is so… so fucking hot. Shit— your pussy is so good to be, doll…”

He forces himself to open his heavy eyes to watch you mount him. His chin tilts down towards his chest and he shifts his hips so he has the perfect view of you. Your honey coats his lap, leaving his cock and pubic hair glistening with your slick. The sight of him all shiny with you makes him dizzy.

His palm leaves your hip and seeks purchase on your ass, not really thinking about it, just gravitating to hold you there. He grips you with guitar-string calloused hands that encourage you to rock harder against him.

Your hand trails from his shoulder down to where the two of you meet. You start to rub your clit with a lust-fueled fervor that just about makes him implode. You whine when your fingers meet the sensitive button, clenching somehow tighter around him as your pleasure begins to crescendo.

“That feel good?” he wonders through bated breaths. His hand leaves your ass, rising for no more than a moment, only to come down again in a practiced slap that makes you jolt against him. The sting of his palm adds gasoline to the simmering embers of your impending orgasm.

You whine, louder this time, arching your back and keening shamelessly against him.

It makes him grin. “Huh? Feels good on your pretty little clit, doesn’t it, doll?”

“Fuck yes…” you cry through a tight throat. “Feels so good, Eddie— fuck.”

Your hips lose their rhythm as your body fights to find its own pleasure.

You’ve got his dick locked inside you with a grip so tight it’s got him seeing stars, and it makes him wonder if you’d stop. Like, if the boys barged in right now, would you keep going, too far gone and dumb on his cock not to see it through.

Something about that, you riding him for all he’s worth, whining while you come on his cock with your friends watching — seeing firsthand who you belong to — makes him want to burst all at wants.

“God, this pussy’s amazin’, baby… ’S gonna— holy fuck… You’re gonna make me come if you keep riding me like this... Shit, yeah, just like that, doll.”

When you come, you do it together.

It’s a borderline spiritual feeling, one that doesn’t happen very often because Eddie’s usually adamant about you coming twice before he has the first time. But now, both of you are sensitive and whining through your orgasms, heaving out incorrigible moans and grasping tightly onto one another.

Eddie takes to fucking up into you while you reach your simultaneous highs. He grips you hard enough to leave bruises while his thighs audibly slap slap slap against your more slick ones. You cry at the oversensitivity — electric shocks that contrasts heavily with the warm feeling of his come spitting into your fluttering walls.

You shake violently in his hold, moaning his name over and over like it’s the only word you can remember. Your orgasm comes and goes, and you’re left whining pathetic Eddie, Eddie, Eddie’s into the mostly silent tour bus.

The boy isn’t in much better shape either. He fights off a cramp in his foot from where he’d curled his toes too tightly and blinks away burning tears that sing the backs of his eyes from coming so suddenly.

Your hips come to a slow stop over his lap, too quickly and yet not soon enough. You rest your forehead over his own, knocking your nose with his before you lean in to press several lazy pecks upon his lax mouth.

“See?” you manage to tease through heavy pants. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“I guess that wasn’t the worst idea you’ve ever had,” Eddie quips with a wide grin and eyes that are still slightly glazed with dispersing pleasure. He rubs his hands over the skin of your ass to soothe where he’d held you too tight. It’s soft, too soft for what he’s about to tell you.

“Now, how about you spread yourself out on this couch and let me clean you up, ‘kay?”

#published by bug #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson smut #stranger things x reader #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson x you #stranger things imagine #eddie munson fic #eddie munson fanfic #rockstar!eddie #eddie spaghetti drabble #st drabbles

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strangersteddierthings · 10 months

Text

The Interview

Inspired by this post by @xoxoladyaz. Read on Ao3.

Eddie wakes up to one single missed call from Gareth on his private phone.

No one calls his private phone.

He dials back instantly.

"Hey Eddie," Gareth greets. He sounds tired.

"What's up? What's happened?" Eddie asks, a thousand and one scenarios running through his mind. Gareth is in Indianapolis, and Eddie's thoughts are filled with only his uncle back in Hawkins.

"Nothing's happened that we can't deal with, or rather, that I've already been dealing with. But, uhh, there's an interview you should watch. Let me send you a link-" there's a pause as Gareth does just that "-and just call me back after you've watched it. I know we usually ignore the shit people say about us but this- it's different."

"Okayyyy," Eddie says slowly. "I'll watch it."

They hang up without goodbye because Eddie's just going to call him back after the video. Opening his messages he sees the link, and then Gareth sent a follow up text you need to watch from 12:32 onward.

The video is nearly two weeks old already, and YouTube shows him a face he knows. Robin Buckley looks older but it's definitely her. Her hair isn't styled much differently than she had it in high school, just above her shoulders and a little wild. She's wearing a three piece suit in emerald green, slightly oversized on purpose by the look of it. She's sitting in a chair, cradling a grammy with one arm, as the interviewer sits across from her.

Eddie taps the screen and drags the progress bar closer to the 12-minute mark and listens. He hears the tail end of Robin's response to some question about her album before the interviewer asks what must be the question Gareth wants him to listen to.

'So, I think everyone is dying to know if you and Eddie Munson are friends. You're both from Hawkins, Indiana. Isn't that correct?' the interviewer asks.

Robin's smile slips a bit, 'I- uhh, this is going to be unprofessional of me but I made a promise to someone regarding if I was ever asked about Eddie Munson. So, can I have one minute to make a phone call before I answer your question?'

'Oh. By all means, make your call.'

Eddie watches as Robin is brought her phone by someone who is probably her personal assistant. She wastes no time in unlocking it and finding whoever in her contacts list.

'No time for formalities. I've been asked about Munson. Can I tell the truth?' Robin's mic isn't strong enough to pick up whatever answer she gets on the phone but she shakes her head to whatever answer she's been given. 'I told you, I love you more than this career and I've already got the grammy. I'll handle the fallout. It's not about me. It's about you.' What follows is a few seconds of silence before Robin nods and says goodbye, ending the call and passing the phone back to the PA.

The interviewer's eyebrows are up to her hairline in shock. 'That sounds ominous. You think it's career ending?'

Robin grins and it's almost feral. 'Corroded Coffin's fans have always been ruthless, and perhaps a bit heartless, so what I have to say will certainly set them on the attack. To answer your original question, yes, Eddie Munson and I are from Hawkins. We even shared band class in high school, but that's the end of what connects us. We are not friends, but we once were.'

'Can you elaborate on that?'

'Our friendship ended ten years ago when he ruined my best friend's life for fame and fortune, and Steve's never really known a day of peace since.'

Eyes wide, the interviewer leans closer, 'Steve? As in, Hey Steve, Steve?'

Robin nods, 'Just the one.'

'Are you prepared to talk about how one song ruined your friend's life?'

'That was the purpose of the phone call. Yes, I think people should know the truth. Munson vented his bullshit breakup rage into a song and fucked off out of town. A week after its release, his fans doxxed Steve. He wasn't out to his parents, you see, and Corroded Coffin's fans, Eddie Munson's fans, outed him. They sent hate mail to his house by the ton, it seemed. The fallout from that- the aftermath-' Robin cuts off as her eyes water and she swipes at them, smearing some mascara across her cheek. 'I'm sorry. I almost lost my best friend, the platonic love of my life, that day.

'It's public knowledge, what happened, you can look it up online if you know what to look for. But it is also so incredibly personal. I want to be the one to say this because it's important. What you do in life, it has consequences, and sometimes those consequences are for other people. Whether you think it will, or not. I'd rather people hear it from a human voice, from someone who loves Steve, and not the journalist view. No offense,' Robin shoots the interviewer a sweet smile.

'None taken, please continue.'

'Steve was hospitalized, I won't give the details,' Robin says, in a watery voice as she's clearly trying to not cry at the memory. 'When Steve was finally released from the hospital, there was no one but me to pick him up. And he's going through this while nursing a broken heart. He and Munson had only been broken up for maybe a month before Hey Steve came out.

'In less than two months, Steve had lost his parents, his home, all his belongings, and the man he thought he'd marry one day. And to top it off, that man gets to become rich and famous off a venomous, hate-filled song about their breakup. It talks about Steve like he's coward for not willing to be out, yet, and how... what's the line, about conformity?'

'Conformity holds your leash, baby, so run to the end of your chain and bark,' someone off camera shouts.

'Yes, that, thanks. Accusing Steve of picking 'conformity' over his love. Steve wasn't picking conformity, he was picking safety! And the worst part? The hate mail has never stopped. Steve lived with me and my family for a few months after getting out of the hospital before the hate mail got too much, and someone showed up at my childhood home, looking for him, threatening him. They had a gun. It was traumatic. I was still in my senior year of high school-' Robin cuts off, taking deep breaths.

The interviewer reaches across to place a comforting hand on Robin's, 'I can't even imagine what that must have been like.'

Once Robin has composed herself, she says, 'sorry, this is a lot. I've had ten years to come to terms with it, and I've waited seven for someone to ask me about Munson. I didn't think it would be this hard.

'And it's not- I can't blame Munson, or Corroded Coffin, for everything that happened. He doesn't control his fans. But he's never said anything about the treatment his fans give Steve. And if they're like this towards Steve, are they like this towards all his other ex's? Does Munson not care, or, almost worse, does he not even know?' she stops again, getting a faraway look for a moment before looking at the interviewer again. 'I had to help Steve move again. Just last month. They're still finding him. Sending him hate. Doxxing him.' Now she looks at the camera directly, "Eddie Munson. Call off your fans. Stop playing Hey Steve at concerts. Isn't a decade of hurt enough?'

There isn't a lot that makes Eddie feel anything these days, he'll admit. A decade of fame has made him a bit cynical and callus. However, Robin had said something that made his insides squirm. He swipes across the screen, rewinding the video to hear Robin say Steve had lost his parents, his home, all his belongings, and the man he thought he'd marry one day. Swipe. -ents, his home, all his belongings, and the man he thought he'd marry one day. Swipe. The man he thought he'd marry one day. Swipe. Marry one day.

He pauses the video. That can't be right. That has to be a lie Robin is adding. To garner more sympathy or make Eddie, and therefore Corroded Coffin, look worse. Steve and he had been young and naive when they'd dated. There was no way they'd have ended up married, even if Eddie had stuck around Hawkins longer. Gay marriage wasn't even legal when they broke up in 2013.

Eddie unpauses, skips forward to the end and listens to Robin speak directly to him. Stop playing Hey Steve? The song that rocketed Corroded Coffin into the limelight? No way. And call off his fans? Like they're dogs he's supposed to control or something. The video ends and the YouTube algorithm shows him a number of react videos. Eddie clicks on one and falls down the rabbit hole.

At first the algorithm shows him responses in his favor. Videos made by his fans defending him, or strategically picking apart what Robin had said. Eddie wants to agree with them, he doesn't think he's done anything wrong other than live his life, but then.

Then a video of a guy wearing merch sold during their tour last year plays. He's on the right side of the video while a screen recording is on the left. It takes him less than five minutes to get Steve's past addresses found. And Eddie is... well, he's a little horrified at how long the list is. At the short amount of time Steve's spent in any one place is.

The guy in the video reads out the state, city, and how long Steve lived at each address. The longest one is when Steve made the jump from Florida to Maine, where he lived for 19 months according to the video, and that was years ago.

And then the guy, he fucking starts to speculate about where Steve might have moved to next.

"We can't know for sure, but it looks like he headed back west? You can see from the last 3 addresses he's been just jumping state lines to the next place. I'm guessing Oklahoma, Kansas or Nebraska next. If Steve thinks he can try and ruin Corroded Coffin through Robin Buckley, then it's up to us to prove him wrong," the guy is saying, and Eddie thinks maybe this guy is just exaggerating but the comment section is already filled with other people saying vile shit about what they should send to Steve or what they'd like to do to him physically and-

Eddie clicks off the video, to the next recommended. The more he watches, the angrier they seem to get. He goes to the search bar and looks for new react videos.

He finds that everyone has an opinion. He watches videos where his own fans express their disappointment in him. They talk about how Corroded Coffin runs an antibully campaign and then allows their fans to bully an ex and for not calling out the ones doxxing people, wanting to know which was the reason - does Eddie not know, or does he not care? Eddie didn't know. Truly. But he can't help but wonder if he didn't know because he didn't care.

He'd written all his feelings into a song, and now that he's older, he can see that a lot of what he was feeling is an exaggeration and dramatization of what really happened. But the point is, he'd written out his feelings and moved on.

The man he thought he'd marry one day.

His stomach twists uncomfortably as Robin's voice rings in his mind.

He continues his spiral down YouTube until Gareth calling him again breaks through and he answers.

"How is this the first time I'm hearing about Robin's interview?" Eddie demands.

"You've got a damn good PR team, that's how. I guess you fell down the rabbit hole, then?"

"How'd you-"

"Is been almost 4 hours since we talked. Doesn't take that long to watch a 30 minute video."

"Oh. Alright. So, why did you want me to watch the video? Am I supposed to respond to Robin?"

"No. People don't actually want to hear from you. They want to hear from Steve. And that's why you needed to watch. 'Cause Robin's announced that Steve's finally ready to make a statement. Robin's going to post it on her Twitter. Tonight. So, we've got to be ready. If anything Robin said turns out to be true, we might have a problem on our hands. A slander lawsuit being just the beginning."

"Fuck."

"What a way to sum it up," Gareth chuckles into the phone before his tone becomes serious, "hey, how are you doing, though? With it all?"

He thinks about it, and how he really feels, before answering. "It's been years since I've thought about Steve, y'know? I... I've had that luxury. I didn't know.... Did you?"

"No. Hell no! I'd of said something. I mean, shit man, we run an antibully campaign 'cause high school was shit to us. If I'd known at all we'd have been telling them to fuck off. Harassment's just what they call bullying adults."

Eddie swallows. "Guess we just have to wait and see what Stevie has to say."

"I'd come sit on the couch with you and refresh twitter frantically but, well, Indy's a bit of a ways off. I'll call after Robin's posted, then?"

"Yeah, man. Let's see the damage," Eddie sighed. "Talk to ya later."

"Bye."

Eddie digs out his laptop and pulls up Robin's twitter page. He adds an auto-refresher extension and sets it to refresh every minute before opening his phone and pulling up YouTube again.

#steddie #my fic #based on xoxoladyaz's ficlet #it'll be three parts i think #the interview #Steve's response and the immediate aftermath of that #and eddie meeting up with steve to talk

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zamiecmunson · 11 days

Text

scooby snacks

eddie x reader

you accidentally eat some of eddie’s very special brownies

i love edibles. i love scooby doo. i love eddie. can you tell. warnings: weed obviously, vomit but no graphic description, wrote this a long long time ago been sitting in my drafts so not too sure what else sorryyyyy 🫶🏻

‘voila!’ eddie whispered to himself, beaming down with pride at his creation. he passed on doing a taste test as he knew the guys would get pissy if they turned up & he was already stoned. plus he didn’t know exactly just how strong they were. that was the purpose after all, stronger than usual. gareth had been complaining for weeks that he was ‘building a tolerance’ and wanted to ‘trip balls’ without taking the hard stuff. eddie scoffed at that of course but came through with some pretty sweet brownies anyway. he left them out to cool on the kitchen counter before jumping in the shower.

after knocking on eddie’s door and getting no answer, you let yourself in.

‘eddie?’ you called out clocking that the weird fuzzy noise was water running.

‘in the shower baby, i’ll be out in a sec’ he called back. both a pro and con of living in a trailer: thin walls.

‘ooh!’ you raised your brows excitedly at the freshly baked batch of brownies on the side. eddie bakes? who knew! you helped yourself to a small corner slice, after taking a bite you sorta understood why he’s never baked for you before. it tasted kinda funny. but the kind of funny where you had to keep taking another bite to figure out if it actually did taste funny or not. two and a half brownies later, eddie surfaced from the bathroom.

‘hey!- oh. oh god, babe!’ his face switched from a sweet smile to deer caught in headlights as soon as he locked in on the face full of brownie.

‘ ‘m sorry they jush looked shoh good and i’m tryna figure out what the shecret ingredient is’ you mumbled through heavy chews.

‘that would be pot’ his eyes stayed at full screen as he gently pressed his hands to the brownie, lowering the rest of it from your lips.

‘oh, i’ve had these before it’s fine! i thought they tasted kinda funky, i should have guessed’ you stayed blissfully unaware and calm, wiping the crumbs off the side of your mouth while eddie’s heart was going at 100 mph. his eyes darted from the tray, to your face, to the tray, to your face then back to the tray.

‘and you’ve had three of these?’ his nervous voice matched his face.

‘two and a half, technically’ you continued to grin innocently.

‘do you, by any chance, perhaps recall gareth complaining about how the usual stuff just wasn’t touching the sides for him anymore?’ eddie did this thing where he used a lot of unnecessary words when he was nervous. you chuckled at his little habit peaking through and answered with a subtle eye roll ‘yes’.

‘well… these were made with him in mind. extra strong. like, should probably just start with a quarter of a slice strong’ he delicately placed his hands on the side of your arms. there was silence for a while. a painfully long while. you focused on the feeling of it sitting in your stomach.

‘well this isn’t good’ you responded with a straight but calm face.

‘no, no it’s not’ you both continued to stand very still. you couldn’t tell if it was kicking in already or if you were just prematurely paranoid.

‘i should probably sit down’ you broke the statuesque silence, eddie guided you to his sofa as if you were his 89 year old grandmother.

‘i’ll get you some water’ he immediately sprung up again after sitting you down.

you probably should have been more nervous than you were. not eddie’s level of panic but somewhere in the middle. weed had only ever given you a slight buzz and the giggles, surely there couldn’t be irredeemably dire consequences. eddie was running around looking for a bucket just in case you were sick and anything else you might need while you stared into space.

after a while, you could hear eddie talking to you… but every other noise in the world appeared just as loud and 10x more important.

‘oh fuck here we go’ eddie caught onto your darkening eyes and droopy muscles. he’d looked after you when you were sick, drunk and stoned. this was about to be his ultimate test.

‘you know,’ you started but got cut off by how dry your mouth was. ‘your place has always smelled good. it smells like boy, but YOU boy. good eddie boy you’ you blinked what felt like 900 times but it really really wasn’t.

‘oh yeah?’ eddie smiled slightly, his panic dying down a smidge as he was amused. he handed you a glass of water recognising the signs all too well.

‘thank you that’s brilliant’ you took the glass and chugged.

‘slow down sailor you don’t wanna make yourself puke’ eddie suppressed a grin, pushing the bucket closer to your feet just in case.

‘do you think sailors get land sick? like, if they’re so used to being at sea would that make them get sick from not wobbling about on a boat?’ your brow knotted with concern as eddie’s shoulders bobbed up and down. ‘wobbling. wobble. wobbly wobbly wobble’ you started to amuse yourself with a slight slur of the pronunciation while eddie’s giggles turned into hearty laughter.

‘that’s an amazing question that i unfortunately don’t have the answer for’ he rubbed a brewing tear of laughter from his face and stared adoringly at your hazed state.

‘since when do you not know everything? you know everything ever, actually. you always have an answer’ you responded with upmost seriousness. on a normal day, that might have come off as condescending. but weirdly, it gave eddie a huge confidence boost as he could tell you were being completely genuine.

‘i know what goes on in your brain, not sailors i’m afraid. i’ll try do better in the future’ he petted your head like a dog and ruffled your hair. god, it felt amazing. like a head massage worthy of 10 million dollars.

‘what am i thinking right now?’ you continued to slur, smiling into his touch.

‘mcdonald’s probably, though it might be a bit early for that stage’ he continued to massage your head, fantasising about how good it probably felt from your perspective. you may as well have been purring like a cat.

‘mcdonald’s…’ you whispered not even almost comprehending what that word meant. until approximately 15 seconds after it sunk in. ‘MCDONALD’S!’ you attempted to spring up but in real time just un-slumped your shoulders and opened your eyes wide. eddie did his biggest grin yet and handed you back the glass of water.

‘i’ll get the guys to pick some up on their way over. stay right here’ he kissed you on the forehead and made his way to the phone.

‘uhhh gareth i’m gonna need you to bring one of everything from mcdonald’s on your way here’ eddie didn’t even wait for gareth to say hello when he picked up the phone.

there was a sigh.

‘…how many did she eat’ gareth’s spidey senses tingled.

‘enough. too much actually, i’m in for a long-‘

‘HIIIIIII GARETHHHHH,’ you appeared out of fucking nowhere. ‘NUGGETS?’ why use a full sentence after all? just saying NUGGETS at the man would obviously do the trick.

‘coming right up scoob’ eddie could hear his smirk through the phone. ‘and what would you like shaggy?’

‘drop dead’ eddie responded through a smile. ‘…cheeseburger and fries please’

by the time the guys reached eddie’s trailer, you were in silent mode. your vision was fuzzy, skin felt like velcro, cotton mouth was in full swing, there was a constant ringing in your ear and blinking was becoming an actual task. eddie was starting to get concerned but found comfort in knowing food was on its way. unfortunately eddie opened the door to an unwelcome surprise.

‘no’ was all he said when he met eyes with dustin & mike.

‘what?’ jeff asked holding 2 bags of mcdonald’s, slurping from a straw sticking out of one.

‘they can’t be here, they’re 12’ eddie spoke about the two as if they couldn’t hear.

‘we’re 15!’ they said in unison.

‘no!’ he said again, using his body to block the doorway.

‘nuggets?’ you attempted to shout from the couch but it came out as a dry whisper. only eddie heard.

‘hand over the food’ he compromised the barricade by putting one arm out.

‘idiot!’ gareth barged through the small opening using his bag of food as a battering ram.

‘nuggets!’ you said just as quietly but with a smile this time.

eddie clambered onto the couch you were sitting on to place the brownies on the top shelf before swiftly turning to dustin & mike, gripping their shoulders tight.

‘i’m not supplying class b’s to a bunch of freshmen. its bad enough that she’s out of action,’ without looking, he pointed behind to your melting body. ‘i actually wanna get out of this town alive and not shot dead by mrs wheeler, okay?’ dustin and mike stared blankly, wide eyed but blankly.

‘you do know i’m taller than you-‘ mike broke his gaze to point to the brownies on the shelf.

‘ARE WE CLEAR?’ eddie interrupted, gripping them tighter.

‘yes eddie!’ they stuttered together.

‘good’ eddie smiled, brushing them down.

‘NUGGETS?’ you actually shouted this time behind them, still slumped on the couch. eddie did an almost balletic 180 turn to face you, face softening immediately.

‘coming right up princess’

dustin & mike got a slap on the back of their heads for giggling at the pet name.

15 nuggets, a large portion of fries and half of eddie’s burger later, everyone was starting to loosen up a bit. gareth & jeff saved their food for later so they could feel the full effect, eddie wouldn’t even consider getting stoned before you’d got through the worst of it and the freshmen were just happy to be there. they thought eddie was soooooo cool, yet here he was. babysitting you. being responsible… he thought his street cred was over. but they admired him more, deep down.

‘feeling better scoob?’ gareth was starting to get giggly and watching you devour a milkshake without breathing definitely fuelled it.

‘who..’ you remembered to breathe. ‘is scoob?’ back to slurping with no remorse.

‘i don’t know lets ask shaggy’ he threw the screwed up bag at eddie.

‘does that make you velma’ eddie threw it back in return.

‘dustin is velma, i’m daphne’ he flipped his imaginary long ginger hair. dustin and mike shared a confused yet amused glance.

‘does… does that make me… fred?….’ jeff skipped giggle phase and landed straight in deep thought mode.

‘aww they’re girlfriend boyfriend!’ dustin and mike teased, making kissy faces at them.

‘OHHHH, SCOOBY DOO!! i get it now…’ you nodded into your milkshake. everyone laughed. you didn’t understand why. ‘dustin is totally velma’

everyone was arguing about lord of the rings when eddie noticed you’d gone quiet. not just staying out of it quiet, but not even going to laugh at how silly the situation was quiet.

‘hey sweet,’ eddie said quietly so only you could hear. you tried to move your head up to look at him but it didn’t work. ‘too many scooby snacks?’ he gestured to all the empty food boxes at your feet.

‘mmh’ was all you could manage. he then noticed you’d gone green. without saying a word he picked you up bridal style and carried you to the bathroom, telling dustin only with his eyes what the situation was. dustin suggested they all go to the park, gareth & jeff too gone to realise eddie had carried you across the room. eddie placed you down in front of the toilet and held your hair in a makeshift ponytail, rubbing your back. you were there for a while. eddie was impressed it took this long, he thought you were hard as fucking nails. when it was all out your system he hooked his arm under your shoulders and propped you up on the sink. taking your special eddie’s trailer tooth brush he cleaned you up with a smile. he always did everything with a smile when it came to you, no matter how gross it may seem from the outside. he knew you’d be mortified when you properly came round but seeing you this vulnerable, being your sole caretaker, was weirdly his happy place. you did it for him all the time, he loved, ADORED returning the favour.

picking you up bridal style once again, he carried you to his bedroom. after placing you down as carefully as possible and moving you onto your side, he ran back to the couch to fetch the bucket & water.

‘ez’ you attempted to call for him for the 0.5 seconds he was out the room. that was “ed’s” in your mind.

‘i’m here, i’m here’ he crouched down to face you after placing everything down.

‘ar ou g wa?’ you weren’t even sure what you tried to say then. but eddie deciphered it.

‘i’m not going anywhere sweetheart,’ he swiped his thumb over your sweaty brow. ‘close your eyes’ he whispered before kicking off his shoes and gently getting in bed behind you, tucking you into his frame.

‘ove ou’

‘love you too’ he kissed your ear and stroked your hair until you fell asleep.

the next morning you woke up to the smell of coffee right under your nose. opening your eyes, you discovered a steaming cup on the bedside table and a distant clatter that can only be eddie getting frustrated in the kitchen. rubbing your eyes you sipped from the mug and shuffled closer to the noise.

‘morning’ you muttered, feeling very groggy.

‘good afternoon!’ eddie popped out from behind a cabinet door, hair in a bun with a wooden spoon in his mouth. ‘do you know how many times i’ve reheated that? i kept having to check you were still alive!’ he giggled to himself, removing the spoon from his mouth to give you a big kiss on the forehead.

‘how long was i out?’ you grabbed eddie’s wrist to check his watch. ‘IT’S FOUR THIRTY?’ you tapped at his watch thinking it would tell you something different if you kept attacking it.

‘gareth woke up in the park today, you should be grateful you had a bed to sleep in!’ eddie tucked your hair behind your ears, laughing. ‘shit!’ he noticed his mac & cheese burning.

‘i’m never eating mystery baked goods ever again’ you thousand yard stared over the brim of your coffee

‘serves you right, doll!’ he winced at the too hot mouthful but continued to shovel more in. ‘anyway,’ placing the saucepan down, he climbed onto the couch to retrieve the brownies. ‘it’s my turn’ he grinned.

#eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson imagine

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munson-blurbs · 1 year

Text

Everybody Talks (Best Friend!Eddie x Fem!Reader)

Summary: You've worked hard to keep your crush on your best friend a secret, since he doesn't feel the same way. But when the Hellfire Club members open their big mouths, it threatens everything you've tried to hold together.

Warnings: some angst, fluff, mentions of financial insecurity

WC: 1.5k

“Pizza’s here!” you call out, carrying a stack of pies into the Wheeler house. “I got one pepperoni, one mushroom, and one plain for all the boring people,” you tease, looking directly at Eddie as you say it.

“I prefer classic,” he retorts, taking the boxes from your hands and setting them on the table. The rest of the guys start to crowd around him, paper plates in hand, practically drooling at just the sight of food. “Hey, hey,” he chastises, pushing them out of the way, “ladies first.” He offers you a plate and you take a slice, quickly moving aside before you’re trampled by the herd of hungry teenage boys.

“So,” Gareth says to Eddie between bites, “your last Hellfire campaign is over and done with. How’s it feel?”

“You wish,” Eddie scoffs, plopping down next to you on the sofa. “Just because I’m graduating doesn’t mean I’m done kicking your asses in D&D.” He chugs his plastic cup filled with Mountain Dew and wipes his lips with the back of his hand. “Anyone else want a refill?” he asks, shaking his empty cup before looking over at you. “Oh, shit; you don’t have anything to drink. Diet Coke, right?” Before you can protest that you can get it yourself, he’s up and pouring you a glass.

“Thanks,” you smile, taking a sip. The bubbles fizz on your tongue as you lean back, careful not to get too close to Eddie. Not that you don’t want to; the mere thought of him draping his tattooed arm around your shoulders makes you giddy.

Just a few more months, you think to yourself, and I’ll be off at college, meeting new people, and I won’t have to worry about my embarrassing crush on my best friend.

“You guys ready for prom tomorrow?” Mike asks, interrupting your pity party.

Jeff nods. “Just gotta pick up a corsage for Barb, and she’s getting me a, um, a…”

“Boutonniere?” you fill in helpfully, and he snaps his fingers and replies, “yeah, that thing.”

“What about you?” Lucas pipes up, turning to Eddie. “You ever decide who to ask?”

“Oh, he decided,” Jeff laughs, earning a scowl from his friend. “Too bad she decided to go with Jason Carver.”

Dustin throws his hands up in exasperation. “Dude, you’re still hung up on Chrissy Cunningham?” He rolls his eyes. “I told you; she’s sweet, but she’s not your type. You need someone who’s as nerdy as you are.” His eyes scan the room. “You know, like Y/N.”

You feel your cheeks burn with humiliation, not at Dustin calling you a nerd; you know he means that with utmost affection. It’s not even the idea of Eddie asking you out that has you nervous; it’s the prospect of him laughing at the thought. You’ve done a great job hiding your puppy love a secret from him, and you’d like to keep it that way.

“Ha!” Gareth barks out. “She wishes!”

No. No no no.

Tears spring to your eyes, and you can’t think of a decent excuse to leave before you’re dashing through the door, letting the screen slam behind you. There’s no lie in what Gareth said; you do wish Eddie had asked you to prom. Every time that the subject of the dance came up, you’d waited with baited breath to see if he’d say something to you. But he’d always ignore it, eager to move on to the next topic. And now you knew why: he wanted to take Chrissy, but she was in love with someone else. How ironic.

You’re almost at your car when you hear the squeak of the front door opening. “Sweetheart, wait!” Eddie shouts, probably a bit too loud for the short distance between you two. “I’m so sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize,” you tell him softly as he jogs over to where you’re leaning against the passenger side door. “‘S not your fault.”

“Kinda is,” he shrugs, bringing you to the front steps and motioning for you to sit next to him. “I mean, I was the one who went to a freshman for romantic advice. That’s the last time I do that; I don’t care how nauseatingly cute he and his singing girlfriend are.” He gives a small chuckle, but neither of you meet the other’s gaze.

Hold on. Freshman? Singing girlfriend? “Eddie, what are you talking about?”

Eddie stops gnawing on his lower lip long enough to answer you. “I’m talking about you being embarrassed by Henderson’s painfully obvious last-ditch effort to get me to man up and finally ask you out.” His brows furrow when he sees your similarly confused expression. “That’s not…what are you upset about?”

“Um, Gareth blabbing to everyone that I wanted you to ask me to prom?” You finally allow yourself to look at him, noticing the dejected look on his face.

“I couldn’t do that,” he mutters, resting his palm sideways over his mouth and shifting his body away from yours. His words come out all muffled, but you can still make out what they are.

“I wouldn’t have said no to you,” you reassure him, mustering up all of your courage to place your hand on his bouncing knee. He relaxes almost immediately, but he still seems sad. “Eds, what’s wrong?”

His eyes are misty when he turns back to you. “I couldn’t ask you to prom because…because I couldn’t afford it,” he confesses, twisting his skull ring around his finger anxiously. “The tickets, a tux, those fancy wrist things…best I could do is steal some flowers from Mrs. Wheeler’s garden.” He hums out a sad laugh. “‘M sorry, sweetheart. I wanted to take you, but I knew I’d just be letting you down.”

“But Jeff said you were going to ask Chrissy,” you point out.

Eddie shrugs. “Don’t get me wrong; Chrissy’s nice and everything, but I just said that so he’d get off my back. Because if I told him the truth, he wouldn’t shut up until I made a move.” He sighs. “His dad’s a lawyer, and his mom runs her own business. He doesn’t understand what it’s like to worry about having enough food in the house, let alone all the extra shit like prom.”

You’re quiet for a beat, letting everything sink in. You knew Eddie lived in Forest Hills Trailer Park, and you knew money was often tight. Wayne worked hard to keep a roof over their heads, but the plant didn’t pay nearly enough. There were many occasions where you’d spotted Eddie eyeing something in the grocery store and instinctively thrown it in your cart for him, but for some reason, it hadn’t even occurred to you that finances was the reason he’d avoided talking about the prom.

“I wish you’d told me,” you finally say. “I would’ve understood.”

“Yeah, I know.” Eddie rubs his nose against his hand, another nervous tic of his. “That was never the problem. You’re the most understanding fuckin’ person I know. You just…I dunno. You deserve the whole ‘prom’ experience, not whatever half-ass version I could offer you.”

At that, you can’t help but giggle. “Eddie,” you begin, “do you really think I wanted to go to prom so I could wear a fancy dress and uncomfortable shoes in a stuffy gym? I just wanted to dance with you, and then spend the night on your couch watching stupid movies and eating junk food and talking shit about everyone who was there.” You look deep into his chocolate brown eyes, nearly losing yourself in their beauty. “I just wanted to be with you.”

Eddie stares at you, gaze traveling down to your lips. “Can I kiss you?” he asks, voice barely above a whisper.

“If you don’t, I’ll kiss you.”

Your mouths crash together clumsily, but you’re too happy to care. You soak in every part of it: Eddie’s stubble rubbing against your chin, the way he tastes like stale cigarettes and marinara sauce, his curls brushing your cheeks. He only breaks the kiss to take a breath, and then he’s back, more purposeful in his movements the second time around. He brings his hand to your jawline, caressing it gingerly with his thumb as he parts your lips with his.

“Can’t believe I just did that,” he muses, smiling at you shyly. “Been wanting to kiss you for too goddamn long.” He leans in, frowning when you place your hand on his chest to stop him. “What?”

“You gotta take me on a date before you kiss me again,” you inform him, lacing your fingers through his. “When are you free?”

“Uh, right now? We can grab ice cream at Scoops. Lemme just get my keys.” He stands up quickly to head back towards the house.

“Wait, Eddie,” you call out to him, “what about the guys? And pizza night?”

“Who cares? I have a date with the most beautiful girl in Hawkins.”

#eddie munson #eddie munson fluff #eddie x reader #eddie stranger things #eddie x you #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x f!reader #eddie munson x female reader #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson fanfic #stranger things fanfic #fanfic #eddie munson stranger things #stranger things

1K notes · View notes

ghost-proofbaby · 6 months

Text

SO SCARLET (IT WAS MAROON)

CHAPTER FIVE: HOLY GROUND

I LEFT A NOTE ON THE DOOR WITH THE JOKE WE MADE, AND THAT WAS THE FIRST DAY. AND DARLING, IT WAS GOOD NEVER LOOKING DOWN.

☆ pairings: rockstar!eddie munson x fem!reader

☆ warnings: no use of y/n, strong language, angst, minors dni

☆ WC: 8K+

☆ A/N: trying something new in the formating here amongst the chapter - please bear with me <3

thank you to my love @hellfire--cult for the divider!

masterlist

“I’m sure you’ll find a way.”

Oh, how you realize you’ll come to regret that taunt.

The first week of working on organizing Corroded Coffin’s single release party is easy enough. Most of the communication is restricted to Matt and vendors, beginning the process of assessing venues as you start your list of all that will be needed for the party. An actual location, an open bar, entire stage crews. Matt is able to provide a few connections here and there, people in the live music industry that owe him a favor as he had so kindly put it. You had your spreadsheet of contacts that was growing with each passing day, you had several venues that looked as though they would work well for the occasion — the only thing you had yet to do was go over options with the band or properly reach out for their list of requirements for their night of celebration.

You had tried to be sneaky about it. Get around asking for any of their emails, continue living comfortably in the radio silence of not hearing from Eddie. And then you’d made the fatal mistake of asking Matt if he could gather the list of things the boys may want.

And of course, as any sane person would do, he had only forwarded the email to all of the boys’ professional emails and replied: I’ve CC’d our rockstars. I’ve instructed them to personally send you any requests they may have.

Fuck.

Eddie’s email sat at the lead of the list of CC’d emails, almost teasing you as it stared back at you from your laptop screen. A full week, you had avoided this. Even if he could have gotten your email from Matt, he hadn’t, and like a fool, you’d assumed that meant you were in the clear.

So much for that.

You compose and erase multiple emails until you decide that if the boys want to reach out, they can. There was no need for you to make first contact; they now had your email, a bait set for them to initiate a conversation by sending you their lists. If Eddie wanted to reach out to you, he had the perfect excuse to do so.

For a few hours, you don’t hear anything, and instead of sighing in relief, it only puts you further on edge. You want him to just get it over with. To send you an email, preferably an impersonal list that allows you to continue your job. No relations, no interferences. You didn’t know it, but the Universe was already laughing in your face.

The first email from any of the boys comes from Jeff.

A simple list, just as you’d requested. There was nothing outrageous; he’d recommended an open bar, asked for a specific brand of whiskey if possible, and thanked you for all you were doing. Simple, kind, appreciative. Jeff, it seemed, had stayed as humble as you remembered him.

The next email came from Gareth. Less simple, but still just as expected.

Nerds (the CANDY) of any kind. That vodka infused whipped cream (does it even get you drunk?), the softest robe money can buy. Actually, can I get matching house shoes with that robe? Can we also have some cigars in the dressing room? (We are getting a dressing room… right?)

You’re so busy snorting at his requests, rolling your eyes but also losing yourself in the warmth to know he also hadn’t changed much, you don’t see the next email come through.

It was comforting. You knew Eddie had changed — more than you could ever wrap your head around — but these boys you once knew seemed to still be connected to their roots. You read the requests and recall the times you’d spent in Gareth’s hot garage over the summer, sitting on warm concrete as you cheered overly excited, even occasionally standing up to jokingly mosh to their rehearsals. Sweltering summer nights between friends and beers that lost their chill far too quickly, laughter that echoed down the driveway and out into the empty streets of Hawkins. Nostalgia burns away at you, sitting restlessly in your chest as you let yourself simmer in it for the first time since…. since moving to New York, really. Even in that first year, life had moved so quickly, you and Eddie never took the time to ruminate in your past too often. If you did, it had caught you off guard, always fleeting to make room for the next uncertain experience.

You two had been so busy running away from your hometown, you’d never stopped to consider what you had given up in the process.

A soft sigh escapes your lips, and you swear you can still taste the shitty Miller Lite, the only brand that seemed to occupy the Emerson’s fridge, on your tongue as you exit the email and scribble on the notepad before you. Even if Gareth had been joking around with some of his requests, you’d take them seriously — besides, the mental image of Gareth in a plush robe and fluffy slippers to match made you laugh. You were thinking about your past, and for once, you were laughing. This part wasn’t a stain, wasn’t something you had scrubbed away at in a haste to make it fade from your ledger. This was the part you should have been lingering on.

And linger you did until you glanced up to find the next unread email.

Eddie.

[email protected]. You could fool yourself, tell yourself that email is from anyone else, but you know it isn’t. It isn’t even the email that had been CC’d. It’s his personal email.

Your mouse hovers over the highlighted and unopened message, heart dropping with each passing second. There’s a small preview of his message, but your vision blurs just enough that you can’t make out the small words.

Is this how you were always doomed to live out the rest of your days? To freeze, to panic, to malfunction at every slightest thing that has to do with the man you left to begin with? Would he always pull such visceral reactions from you?

In an act of bravery, you press the tip of your finger against the smooth mouse pad, a muted click that doesn’t reach your ears signaling the official opening of the email. All of your hopes are shattered as you realize it’s clearly too short to be a list similar to the other boys, a simple response that you could acknowledge and move on from.

No, he sends something that specifically calls for you to play with him. To reply and interact, to give him what he wants. To talk.

Two fucking words. Two loaded, vexing, provocative words that call to you with the titillating grin you imagine he wore as he typed them.

Your fingers work faster than your brain, slamming away at the keys hurriedly without thought as you type your least professional email to date.

The bottom of the email is automatically signed off with your work signature, including your direct personal line. If you had half the mind, you would have erased that bit of information to keep it from Eddie. It even has your actual signature, a mature one that differs from how you used to scrawl your name atop of schoolwork in high school, that you had scanned into your computer after having gone through the painful process of rewriting it what must have been a thousand times. No one had let you in on the fact that most other corporate monsters and coworkers just used one of the sloping fonts available to them. No one had shown you the ropes – you’d just assumed that it was the normal, to go so above and beyond.

Another brick in the foundation you’d built for yourself, separate from Eddie. Another attempt to change from the girl he’d once loved.

You’re shocked when a reply comes very quickly. You hadn’t even clicked out of the thread before it entered your inbox.

You try to channel fury, years of irritation and calluses you’d built up against him. But your chest has been weakened by that brief moment of nostalgia that Jeff and Gareth had triggered, and it’s a fruitless battle when he sends another message rapidly. He’s treating it like casual texting rather than stiff business interactions.

Your entire body flushes, a shock to your system coming that brings you out of the allusive hypnosis easily.

My emails are monitored. They’re going to see that we know each other. I’m going to get fucking fired.

You steady your breathing and try to stave off the anxiety. It’ll be fine; Lydia has no reason to comb through your emails at this time. Nothing said would trigger any bells or whistles to cause concern. It’s fine. It’ll be fine. It has to be.

You wish you had it in you to see red. He had an incomprehensible amount of nerve to be asking for your personal email all because he refused to use his professional email.

Soft. You’d worked on becoming a hardened version of your old self for two years, and all hard work was quickly going down the drain as you remained too soft for him. It was easy, too. All the rough edges had melted so discreetly somewhere amongst the in between.

You think he’s dropped the topic of your personal email, but you should know better. Not even mere seconds after you receive the first email, brimming with nonchalance and a teasing tone that has no room between the two of you, another message comes through.

Good to see he’s still annoying and persistent as ever, I suppose.

He’s all bark, no bite. That’s what you convince yourself. There’s no way he could find your personal email, a plethora of power and connections at his fingertips or not. Even if he could, it would take him ages and more effort than it would be worth.

All bark. No bite.

You hadn’t realized just how quick and consistent his replies had maintained until you’re met with silence. You wait impatiently, biting at your fingernails as you await for another one of his responses. The more the time passes, the excessive minutes piling up in the quiet midday hum of your midtown apartment, the more noticeable Eddie’s online silence becomes.

No, you think suddenly and strongly. No, I am not doing this.

You refuse to sit around like this and succumb so easily. All your half-healed scars thrum with aches deep-rooted within the skin you’ve grown over the last two years, screaming out in phantom pains with a reminder of what happened to you the last time you’d let yourself sit around and wait on the boy on the end of the line. Every lonely night, every tear shed, every beat of your bleeding heart — you cannot be doing this again, and not so soon.

Quickly, you click out of your email tab and back onto the list of vendors you needed to contact for the bar commodities. Distract, distract, distract. You comb through your list. Some vendors seemed to hold more potential than others, more attainable in the grand scheme of it all. For the first time ever in your very short career of event planning, budget wasn’t the issue.

Eddie’s reputation was.

But you’re not thinking about Eddie. No, your focus was anywhere but him right now. You weren’t thinking about him, or his new cologne, or his new rings, or his new life-

Just as you pick up your cell phone to start your calls down the list, a notification pings.

Only seven minutes had passed. Seven minutes, and your phone is suddenly alight with a small but terrifying notification from your personal email.

New email from [email protected]!

Oh, fuck.

Your thumb hesitates over the tiny banner before you release the breath you were sure you’d been holding the entire seven minutes. It shouldn’t have taken him such little time. You expected it to realistically take him a few hours, all your anxious waiting aside.

There had been only one fatal flaw in your taunting — well, technically there were several becoming more apparent as the seconds ticked by, but only one so glaringly obvious. Your personal email address. You had forgotten.

You hadn’t changed it since high school, since moving to New York, since meeting and since leaving Eddie.

[email protected].

The stupid inside joke haunts you.

��Why does your email even matter?” Eddie huffed from where he was sprawled out on your bed, tossing around some bouncy ball he’d acquired a few nights before during dinner at a local pizza joint, “No one even uses email anymore.”

He tossed the ball of rubber into the air once more, a blur of the rainbow swirl pattern whirring too close to your ceiling for comfort. Your focus waned from your laptop for just a moment as you suddenly shot out a hand, attempting to intercept the ball.

No use. Eddie used one hand to swat yours away, the other happily capturing the toy in his palm with a muted thud.

“Nuh, uh, uh,” he drawled as he looked at you with his boyish grin, eyes sparkling as his fingers closed loosely around his prize, “If you wanted one so badly the other night, you should have also coughed up a quarter.”

You snorted, “Are you really proud of that? You spent a whole twenty five cents on a hunk of rubber, Rockstar.”

“A hunk of rubber you’re now trying to steal from me.”

“I’m not trying to steal it,” you scowled, “I’m trying to focus here. Emails are important, despite your pessimism. Something my English teacher said about professionalism.”

“You’re really going to listen to that dinosaur? The old O’Donnel-saurus?” Eddie mused, chuckling beneath his breath at his own joke.

You refused to crack a smile in return, or show any recognition at the awful joke, but your chest still warmed. The smoke of your affection for the boy in front of you unfurled, thick enough to choke you up a few extra seconds but thin enough to not suffocate. Never suffocate — it was a time in which you could never imagine your love for Eddie Munson being your downfall. It was a wispy and adaptable type of adoration, just like the smoke that flows off of the end of the incense you’d taken to burning in your room lately in lieu of candles.

“It’d do you well to also come up with a professional sounding email, you know,” you hummed. You were mere seconds away from shoving your laptop away and joining Eddie in his relaxed position, maybe even laying your head on his chest or shoulder and bringing up the idea of a late afternoon nap you knew he’d never turn down, “Can’t go around emailing important people when you’re a rockstar with your Dungeons & Dragons nickname.”

“One,” he held up a stern finger, “Like I said — I don’t use email. And two, I’m very happy with my email, sweetheart. I’ll probably email the damn President with that name. Life’s too short and we’re too young to get a stick up our ass about shit like that.”

You reached out and wrapped your palm around his finger, tugging it down. Unlike with the ball, he let you capture him in your grasp, “I don’t have a stick up my ass about it.”

“Yes, you do.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Then make it something funny,” he wiggled his brows, “Make your email something stupid and live a little.”

“A little?” you scoffed, “I think I live plenty for the both of us. You’ve put me through at least three lifetimes worth of stress before I’ve hit twenty. I probably have grey hairs already.”

Your hand curled around his pointer finger drops to your thigh, but doesn’t release him. The touch remained, ever constant, now more for comfort rather than defiance. And he let you continue to hold him, as if your touch was a luxury he was indulging in just as much as you were his.

“Wanna check?” he taunted. He lifted up off his back for a microsecond, tugging your arm with his before the roll of your eyes had him falling back flat once more.

It was a losing battle, arguing with Eddie.

Your conjoined hands settled back atop your thigh as you sighed. Maybe Eddie had been right, and you were stressing out too much about this. He was right; you were young, and having a dumb email was a right of passage. Something to giggle at in your maturity when you’d provide it later down the road, a flash of your youth to keep close.

Fuck professionalism, or whatever high horse O’Donnel had been on.

“Fine,” you huffed, “What do you suggest?”

“… To check for grey hairs?”

“For my email, you idiot.”

A bit more back and forth, a bit too raunchy of ideas that passed Eddie’s lips only to be rejected quickly with rough shakes of your head. His finger remained locked in your palm, at some point his knuckle wiggling between suggestions to stroke at your skin.

“Sweetheart, you’re being too picky,” Eddie finally whined as you shot down yet another one of his ideas, “At this point, just make it something related to the band. You’ll probably be Corroded Coffin’s manager when we make it big, anyways.”

“That sounds like a nightmare,” you murmured, even if you enjoyed the thought. You already had started to get a hang of wrangling the boys in your small town for menial tasks and day-to-day activities. But on a wider, professional scale? You could already feel the headache pressing into your temples. If they ever offered you the proposition, you wouldn’t have said no, but you certainly would have complained to no end. And definitely got grey hairs.

“Sweetheart.”

The repetition of the nickname froze you. Your eyebrows furrowed as the wheels in your brain turned and you looked down at your boy, the formulation of an idea that was combining both of Eddie’s suggestions suddenly.

“Why do you call me sweetheart?”

Eddie was taken back by your question, face crumpling with confusion, “What?”

“Why do you call me sweetheart?” you repeated yourself as you finally let go of his finger and twisted to face him fully, laptop momentarily forgotten as your legs folded beneath you and pressed into your worn mattress, “Like, I call you Rockstar because I know you’ll be a rockstar someday. Already are technically, to me, but don’t let that go to your head,” you explained, smiling shyly as Eddie narrowed his eyes and shined his dimples at you, “So why do you call me sweetheart?”

He hardly had to think about it, although his answer came out as more of a question, “Because you’re my sweetheart?”

“That’s all?”

“Is this a trick question?”

You nearly cackled at his hesitation, “It isn’t, I swear. Just… humor me.”

This time, he took his time to carefully deliberate his answer, “Well, I guess because it just fits,” he paused, wide eyes catching yours as you lifted your brows in question, “You know? Cause you’re sweet like sugar, and you’ve got a heart of gold,” he grabbed up the hand that once held him and drew it into his lips, peppering kisses across your knuckles and fingertips, fighting a grin as he groveled, “There. Is that romantic enough to humor you?”

“Almost.”

You pulled your hand away despite the fact that you wanted to let him continue his display of affection. You would have laid around all day, letting Eddie Munson shower you in all the affection he had to give. But you really needed to create this email.

And now, you had the perfect name.

CORRODEDSUGAR.

You created the account quickly. Set everything up with ease before you proudly turned your screen to Eddie.

“Corroded sugar?” he read outloud in a murmur as a smile twitched at the corner of his mouth, “Cute. But also, very metal. Very badass. I approve, Sugar.”

A new nickname was born that day, to haunt you and taunt you at every corner. In soft mornings when he woke before you, his voice softly cooing ‘wake up, Sugar’ as he’d brush his nose along your jaw and attempt to awaken you with needy nuzzling. Amidst heated and passionate arguments had all in good fun while out with friends, where he knew you were right but the closest he’d come to admitting it would simply be ‘whatever you say, Sugar!’. He’d even once weaponized it against you during sacred moments, where his lips worshiped you as they trailed leisurely down the skin of your torso until he’d settled between your thighs, humming as he wrapped ringed fingers around your hips and whispered nothing more than the nickname. ‘Sugar’. He had sighed as if he were a starving man, and you were the plate of sweetness that would bring him back to life.

Sugar. A prayer, a promise, a reminder.

You couldn’t remember the last time he’d called you that. Until now.

When you’d tried to reset, rebuild, remake yourself, it had been hard to figure out a new email address. Amongst all the changes and all the decisions to be made, choosing a new email just felt overwhelming. And you’d been foolish, clung to one last relic of your past like an estranged child fisting a blanket to sleep.

The seven minutes suddenly makes crystal clear sense.

Whether it had really been Eddie’s rockstar connections from his fame, or simply recalling a far away memory, you hadn’t made yourself a very hard person to find. And you never considered that your laziness would have a consequence like this.

You don’t know what else to say. Your mind keeps reading over that silly five letter word, the bold lettering jumping off the page at you. All recollections of every time he’d ever called you that slip into the forefront of your brain, slapping away any concentrated thought.

You’d had dreams of him calling you that again. A mixture of memories and fantasies that would wake you up in the months following your departure. Compared to the other dreams you’d had amongst those, they had been a sweet reprieve. Not a nightmare of Eddie with his lips pressed to another, or mournful dreams where you reached out to him only for him to become intangible smoke where your hand should have connected with his torso. They were one of your only dreams you had awoken from without immediate tears.

They were the type of dreams where you’d awake, and for just a moment, you’d forgotten all that had happened. They’d twist you up in a blissful blanket of delusion that he was still yours, that you were still laying in a shared bed in that small apartment, that there was still a calendar on the wall with the date of his return marked with a scarlet heart.

The tears would come later. Once the dreamy fog cleared, and your eyes opened up to see the unfamiliar space you had taken to calling home instead.

The two of you should be discussing the release party. He should be handing over a list of requests and you should be adding them to the same page that you’d copied down Gareth’s.

You shouldn’t be doing this.

Talking, like nothing happened. Having a playful conversation over email that reeked of the same make-believe that had clung to your dreams of Sugar.

He won’t break the illusion, so you do.

Messaging him from this contact only reminds you of all that could have been. All the joking conversations back in Hawkins of your involvement with the band once they inevitably blew up, all the late nights where you’d been privy to a private show as he hunched over his guitar and hummed out melodies to new songs, all the bruises those once familiar hands had left and then caressed in the afterglow.

For just a moment, you miss it all.

For only a second, you wish he wore the same cologne and you wish you still signed your name as you had when you first met him. You wish for days of instability and the solid touch of his shoulders beneath your palms as you convince him to take a leap of faith on himself and the band. Dancing in a small apartment, falling asleep on the phone while he was a world away, quiet confessions of love to soothe the wound that distance made grow larger — for just a moment, you want it all back. Even the pain. Even the hurt you’d been burying alive for years.

Silence. Once again, he’s left you with static lines as the minutes pass and no new message is received.

You think you liked it better when he was being inappropriately playful.

At least then, he was saying something. Now, as he says nothing, you have to resort back to doing your job. You bring up a knee to rest your chin on as you adjust in your home office chair, clicking over to tabs of information on a physically small but well-known venue that had several different capacity options. Ranging from a small room that could hardly fit twenty five people to a rooftop set up with the ability to entertain several hundred people. Something about it had felt very Eddie to you; reclusive, with opportunity for an afterparty. Some odd mixture of who you once knew and who you’d seen flashes of through headlines and brief encounters. You hadn’t been given many guidelines from Matt to go off of, and when you’d questioned capacity size, he’d only brushed it off.

Just something smaller than the venues they play on tour.

Would Eddie even want this small of a venue? Looking over the venue’s website, you catch sight of the approximate occupancy limit for the “largest” stage room — 750 standing. What was Corroded Coffin’s new normal? Once upon a time, you were amongst a crowd that couldn’t even break double digits. But now, a show like this might sell out for them in five minutes flat. Hell, they could probably even sell out a thousand person capacity room.

A ding sounds to signify a new email.

For a second, you’re nonsensically relieved when you see it’s from Eddie. You find yourself blindly hopeful for a continuation of banter, another message solely trying to get on your nerves – something to satiate that stubborn need to slip back into old habits, even if for only just today.

It’s not. It’s a stale list of requests. Sent to your work email, this time.

No sight of his playfulness between the words. No beckoning of him taunting you, teasing you, whispering for you to just give in and play pretend with him one last time.

It’s probably for the best.

—

Have Mondays always been this hectic?

Week two of working on Corroded Coffin’s album release was starting off very differently from the first week. It seemed every corner you turned, you were faced with a new challenge that only made the headache behind your temples pound more relentlessly. Denial from venues, cold calls being forwarded to voicemail when you’d reach out to vendors, and Matt being impossibly busy with the band to get back to any of your emails in a timely manner.

If you had to hear one more venue representative turn down your business proposition with a “Sorry, but we’ve heard about Eddie’s reputation…”, you might make a detour to go jump off the Empire State Building.

Had he really been that awful to venue properties?

“You look stressed,” Romina notes when you hang up on your third unsuccessful call of the day, slamming the phone down more violently than you should.

“Who, me?” you bitterly reply, looking over your shoulder to where she leans in her chair, turned entirely from her desk to watch you with gentle amusement, “Never. I have never been stressed a day in my life.”

She quirks an eyebrow, “And before this new secret project of yours, I would have agreed.”

“Every venue is shooting me down.”

“It happens,” you yearn to feel the nonchalance that flows through the shrug of her shoulders, as if she’s now the one without a worry in the world, “Are they giving reasons?”

You open your mouth, but your tongue stops short. Because yes, they were each giving the same resounding, completely valid reason. But to admit this is to inform Romina what your secret project really is – something that a certain NDA strictly prohibits for the time being.

“Conflict of schedules,” you tightly lie as your glare diverts to your computer screen, still open on a mostly empty inbox.

Eddie hadn’t emailed you since last week.

Somewhere amongst your frustration, there was a sore disappointment lying in patient wait. You have not a single doubt that once the storm of the task at hand passes, once you finally secure a venue, that you’ll be forced to deal with it. But for now, a boy not emailing you after being so insistent for your personal contact was the least of your worries.

Romina’s voice draws you back in, “Really? How far out are you trying to book for?”

“Three months.”

The squeak of her chair pauses abruptly. Your eyes shift and you catch the way all her mindless swaying has ceased, mouth flat with eyes widened in disbelief.

“Three months?”

“What?” you finally spin your chair to face her, playing off nonchalance. You know why she’s reacting so dramatically, “Should I not be booking that far in advan-”

“I- No, no. You absolutely should be. It should actually be making it easier to book,” she leans forward in her seat, squinting at you, “Is that really the only reason they’re giving?”

You get it. Because she’s right; giving such fair notice should be making your job easier. But you can’t defend yourself and explain how the client you’re representing is the real issue.

“Yeah,” you force a forlorn sigh.

“Jesus,” she whistles out, “Well, that’s just… Fuck. I’m sorry, babe. That’s rough. What types of venues are you even trying for? Wait - didn’t you say you were arranging for a grand opening of a bakery? Wouldn’t they already have their shop set up-”

“Hello ladies.”

Thank fucking God for Lydia.

“Lydia!” you sit up just a little bit straighter, nearly leaping out of your seat with relief as your boss approaches. You knew exactly where Romina’s train of thought was heading, and you wouldn’t have been able to come up with a single pitiful excuse to keep up with your little white lie, “How are you today?”

Romina is still perched in her chair with a confused look, but Lydia doesn’t even glance her way, looking just as concerned as she looks down at you, “I’m… fine. There’s a client for you in the conference room.”

Straight to the point. Except, you didn’t have a meeting scheduled today.

“A client?” you echo, shrinking down a bit. You only have one client, technically, at this moment, “I didn’t have anything on my calendar.”

“Apparently, they were just on this side of town. Said you’d left a few voicemails and he thought it’d be easier to just pop in to discuss things.”

It had to be Matt. He must have gotten one of your frantic voicemails you’d left over the weekend, the ones you’d instantly regretted and worried had lacked in professionalism.

It has to be Matt.

“Oh,” Romina’s eyes are burning holes in the back of your chair as you fumble to lock your computer screen, scrambling to gather anything you might need. The notebook you’d been using to keep track of the entire ordeal crinkles slightly in your grip, “Yeah, of course, that- I’ll go straight there. Are they in one of the smaller conference rooms or the-”

“The main one,” Lydia interrupts you, and her tone makes you pause.

She sounds as if Matt’s arrival is the largest inconvenience she had experienced in the last month.

Why would Matt popping in to talk to me be such a big deal?

She’s clearly not in the mood for questions, so you only nod as you stand up, “Got it.”

And then she’s gone. No interest in joining you, or to question what could be going wrong. No sign of involvement like the day you’d originally met with the band and Matt to sign all documentation.

Your gut twists in knots that not even boy scout’s have discovered yet.

And they only worsen when Romina calls after your retreating figure, “Good luck with your baker!”

You’re kind of fucked. It’s clear she’s no longer buying into your lie of your client, and the thought of facing her after Matt is nausea-inducing. What if you just came clean? Would they sue you for telling Romina? Would Romina tell anyone else if you confided in her? Your thoughts race with question after question as you quickly make your way through the maze of cubicles, taking lefts and rights far too fast as you worry about making Matt wait much longer.

It was just stupid. Because amongst the questions, one rings out that’s insane enough to make the rest of them actually sound reasonable.

If you did manage to fuck this up in any way, would Eddie protect you?

Whether it be because you couldn’t complete the task at hand that was beginning to look impossible, or if it was because you couldn’t keep your mouth shut, would he defend you?

You’d figured you’d lost his servitude and protection long ago, back when you’d first left that apartment and ignored every attempt at contact. But if it came down to it, would he offer you one last privilege of his defense? Probably not. Which — fair enough. You hadn’t done anything in the last week to have already earned that back. You hadn’t wanted to earn that privilege back, either. No matter how badly you found yourself wanting a new email from him in your inbox, there was a clear line in the sand drawn by your own stick, and you had to stay to your side of it.

You were a big girl. You could handle it.

Just as you finally approach the conference room, eyes trained to the ground and brows tightly furrowed in careful consideration (definitely not frustration, because the thought of Eddie surely couldn’t frustrate you), you make a fatal mistake. It’s a small detail you’d never paid much mind to prior — a stain on the carpet just outside the doorway, subtle yet large once the shadowy shifting of the carpet’s color caught your eyes. You’re so busy letting your eyes trail the perimeter of it, trying to focus on the threaded shades rather than the shade of Eddie’s dark eyes in the hallway the week before, that you aren’t prepared when the toe of your shoe catches against the said carpet.

You should have ate shit, to put it plainly.

One quick fumble, and you’re flying forward, hardly thinking as you throw out your hands to brace for impact. Foolish, considering the fall would have left you with severely aching wrists, or a bruised face. But it never arrives.

Large hands suddenly appear to grab you, catching you halfway through the sudden fall, and the unfamiliar cologne that’s plagued your waking thoughts for a week now overtakes your senses.

You thought it was Matt waiting for you.

“Woah!” his voice echoes easily in the empty hallway, “Shit, are you okay?”

You swore it was Matt waiting for you.

“Fine,” you strangle out, pulling away from that touch as quickly as possible. Like he’s burned you. Like those hands that once knew you all too well held your entire demise in their palms.

And they might.

It wasn’t Matt waiting for you.

Eddie doesn’t seem shocked by your retreat, only watching with a blank face as you regain your balance on your own and avoid eye contact. He looks nice – a leather jacket too shiny to be the one he wore when you wore together, a faded band t-shirt beneath you can’t fully see the logo of but know was bought that distressed just for looks due to the familiar unfamiliarity that has begun to cloud around the man you once knew, heavy boots planted right on the stain in the carpet that had distracted you.

“What did you even trip on?” he finally questions, looking curiously behind you as he retraces your path, “Was it-”

“Air,” you cut him off, “Save me the embarrassment, but I tripped on air.”

If you had half a mind, you would have interrupted with something more useful. Maybe demanded to know why he was here in your office. Questioned his intentions of showing up unannounced. Asked why he never emailed again.

Okay, maybe not that last one.

He lets out a short chuckle, more a breath than anything else as his face finally cracks and he almost grins, “I see. To be fair, it’s an easy thing to trip on. Very hard to see. Almost as if it’s invisible.”

He gauges your reaction, but you don’t let yourself so much as smile at his awkward attempt at a joke.

You can’t. You can’t casually joke with him, you can’t laugh and pretend like there isn’t an elephant sitting on your chest every time you occupy the same space as him. There’s no magic eraser to everything between you two; no amount of emails, no amount of bad jokes that can vanish all that has transpired. Your past and the carpet, it seems, have something in common.

Never thought you’d say that about the ugly threads you only look at to disassociate during particularly long days.

“What are you doing here?” you finally whisper out the right question, and internally cringe as your mouth keeps moving only to tack on a completely unnecessary addition of, “I didn’t receive any emails about a meeting-”

“Matt sent me,” Eddie shrugs. You watch the way the leather creases and fits his wide shoulders, catch yourself studying to see if there’s any new muscle beneath the layers to further estrange you further from him, “He’s been stuck in meetings for the album and single, and said you’d left him a few voice mails so… I’m the rescue team, I guess.”

You finally look him in his eyes, jaw dropping ever so slightly, “You?”

“What about me?”

“You’re my ‘rescue team’?” the words are bitter on your tongue, his presence anything but a relief of rescue, “No offense, but how can you possibly help me?”

And then he smiles. And, oh Lord, you’ve forgotten how nice of a smile he has. It’s painful – a sharp reminder of the past that you just can’t shake. He’s an old photograph that never quite burns, a stain on your favorite article of clothing you’ll never wear again. For a moment, it doesn’t matter how many parts of him he’s replaced, how many pieces of him have been turned over brand new and unfamiliar, because he looks just like the boy you left behind. A relic you can mourn for once you return to your apartment all alone. A whisper you’ll exchange with your children about someday, as you tell them all about the boy who changed you for the worse.

“You’d be surprised,” he muses, reaching a hand up to drag over a chin shadowed over in faint facial hair, “Apparently, once you make it big, you have to learn about more things than just how to play an A chord on a guitar or sing in tune. Business, for example. That’s what you’ve been struggling with, yeah? The business aspect of it all?”

You kind of want to walk away from him. To go and eat shit in a different hallway, on your way to tell Lydia you can’t do this anymore.

“I’m not struggling,” you snap.

He’s quick to lift his hands in surrender, “Don’t shoot the messenger. Those were Matt’s words, not mine.”

“Yeah, well, tell Matt I’m fine,” you huff indignantly, “I’m a professional who can handle myself. I can figure this out on my own.”

You’re turning your back to him, ready to storm off dramatically for your own sanity, when he clears his throat.

You pause. You don’t turn to look, but you halt mid-step.

“Humor me, for a second,” he begins, “What exactly are you fully capable of figuring out on your own?”

“The planning,” you state the obvious, staring at an odd piece of art on the office wall to your left. Not quite turning your head to him, but angling so your voice carries.

“Yeah, no shit,” his words spark a little more anger, a little more rage, “I mean what part of the planning? You’ve left Matt at least two voicemails. Probably more, if he’s resorted to sending me.”

More like five. Possibly seven, but you’d indulged in more wine than would be wise to admitting this weekend after receiving your third venue rejection.

“Maybe he just got tired of babysitting you. Decided to make you someone else’s problem.”

“Maybe,” Eddie hums, and you can hear his slow footsteps as he slowly walks to block your vision of the abstract artwork. Your gaze is cut off from the silvery lines splattered across a black background and forced upon brown eyes that are more lively than you remember from the previous week, “But I already made the trip all the way down here. Might as well make myself useful to you.”

He’s still wearing that smile. The one that belongs captured in a polaroid at the back of your closet. The one frozen in a time that was so much simpler than this.

The kind that leaves a mark – a stain.

“You want to make yourself useful to me?” you narrow your eyes, straighten your shoulders, prepare for battle, “Then leave. That is the most useful thing you can do for me right now – walk out of this building, and leave me to figure this out without being a pest.”

Your words should hurt him, but they only seem to fuel him. It’s the exact same reaction you’d imagined on the other side of all the emails. A pep to his step and a perk in his posture that elicits unhinged annoyance from deep within you.

“No can do,” he smirks, “Sorry, I’m on Matt’s orders to not leave until we figure this out. Together.”

You don’t care how nice Matt is – you decidedly hate him at this moment.

“Eddie,” you don’t notice the way his chest catches when you say his name, even in your defiant tone, “I am telling you right now, there is nothing you can do to help.”

And then he takes you off guard, breathing still not quite steady as he breathes out, “Let’s go get coffee.”

“I already told you, I have no interest in getting coffee or lunch with yo-”

“Not like that,” he waves off, finally slipping back into his casual demeanor, “Just- throw me a bone here, Sugar. We don’t even have to talk. You can bring your laptop and phone, focus on work and pretend I don’t exist the entire time. But I have to stick around long enough to get Matt off my ass, and you clearly have been stuck in this stuffy ass building for too long.”

Sugar.

Your breath catches at the nickname, just as his had when you said his name.

Shakily, you exhale, “No, I-”

“Funny thing,” he shoves both hands in the pockets of his jeans. Well-fitted, fairly new. No signs of distress like he preferred in his youth. Just starch black that clings to skin you once knew, “I’m not asking. Technically, I’m your boss. And as your boss, I’m instructing you to join me for nothing more than a free coffee and change of scenery. Like I said, it’ll be as if I’m not even there. I’ll keep my mouth shut the entire time – strictly business.”

You nearly slip up and inform him that it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t talk – if he’s near you, your body always seems to know. Your body, your senses, your soul. Any time he occupies the same room as you, his vicinity lights something in you impossible to ignore. It had been that way since the first day you met him. And would probably continue to be that way until the day you were buried six feet under.

Even in death, his soul would probably haunt yours. You would never know another day of peace since meeting Eddie Munson.

“You’re not my boss,” you argue, crossing your arms, “You’re my client. Lydia is my boss.”

“And would Lydia appreciate you arguing with a client like this?”

“What do you want from me?”

The question falls from your lips with unexpected weight and exasperation.

Your arms fall down from your chest just as quickly as they’d risen, the two of you encased in silence as you both realize the implication behind the question. It’s about more than just the coffee, more than just his impromptu visit to your work. It’s the heaviest question you could have asked at this moment; and one that neither of you were ready to hear the answer to quite yet.

There’s a million unsaid words swirling behind whiskey irises. A hundred and one conversations never had, a thousand and one battles never witnessed on both ends of this war. Something in them whispers you might not be the only one haunted.

Maybe, just maybe, his soul will only haunt yours for as long as yours haunts his. A haunted house, a ghastly gallery. Two ghosts always meant to hang up parallel to each other in crooked frames, in an empty hallway.

“Just a coffee,” he whispers, and something in you cracks quietly, “Just one cup of coffee, for now.”

With all things considered, it’s not asking that much of you.

You don’t have any fight left in you. Whether he’s here, whether he’s a world away, you’re still destined to be stuck across from him in the damn hallway. Always staring, always drawn. There might not be a single corner of this world far enough away to break whatever thread ties you to the man before you, whether you still know him or not.

After a pregnant pause, you sigh, “Let me grab my purse.”

With all things considered, he probably should be asking more of you.

But you’re grateful he isn’t as you retreat and do exactly as promised, not looking Romina in her eyes before you begin your doomsday march for just one cup of coffee.

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munsons-melody · 10 months

Text

i got you, babe

summary: after a day from hell, eddie comforts you

pairing: eddie x female!reader

cw: none, just pure major tooth-rotting fluff + established relationship

recommended song: I Got You Babe by Sonny & Cher

word count: 1.9k

a/n: all i want in life is to snuggle with eddie and watch indiana jones but alas it hasn't happened so i'm here to write about it

masterlist

i do not consent to having any of my works republished, translated, or posted to any other site except here. if you see my works anywhere but tumblr, it has been republished without my knowledge, consent, or permission.

today was awful to say the least, calling it a day straight from hell was more like it.

it started this morning when you woke up late, causing you to rush out the door, which you always hated, but it was even worse this morning when it was pouring rain

one bad thing won't make it a bad day, you tried to reason with yourself

but boy, did bad things keep happening

after showing up to school late, wet, and cold, you tried to make yourself have a good day under the negative circumstances it started under

however, once you arrived at your math class, those hopes of making your own day better were instantly dashed when your teacher passed out your tests from the last class, seeing a giant red F on the top of your paper

nonetheless, you took in a deep breath and thought to yourself...

two bad things don't make it a bad day

but for a second time that day, your hopefulness was dashed away when your best friend and you started arguing during lunch about something as stupid as where to take prom pictures

and after lunch dismissed, you told yourself for a third time that you were going to try and have a good day, but that was right before you accidentally stumbled on a small rock lodged in the pavement, tripping onto the concrete before you, scraping up your hands and knees

then after that, it was getting reprimanded by your teacher for being late, even though you were at the nurse's and had a note for it,

you lost one of your favorite scrunchies, and when you thought things possibly couldn't get any worse when you got home from school, your mom started yelling at you for not taking out the trash bins in the morning, causing there to be an overflow of trash sitting in your garage

you sped right into your room, tears threatening to fall, and you decided to distract yourself by working on the little bit of homework you had left,

but the cherry on top of the worst day imaginable was when you realized you left the book you needed for the homework due Monday morning was still sitting in your locker, and you forgot to grab it as you left

you let out a frustrated sigh, burying your face in your hands, letting the hot tears flow

you stayed like that for a minute, before trying to take a deep breath in, thinking to yourself a way to make you feel better, and you knew of only one person to fix it... your boyfriend eddie

you had barely seen him all day since the two of you had conflicting class schedules and in the one class you had together, he decided to skip with Gareth and Jeff since it was the last period of the day anyways

you packed up some clothes in a bag, grabbed the few pieces of paper that was left of your homework, and walked out of your room, seeing your parents sitting on the couch watching some show

"uh, Nancy and Robin wanted to have a sleepover at Robin's house tonight, is that okay?" you asked, hoping they would not question any further

it's not like your parents haven't met Eddie, they have, it's just your dad would go ballistic if he knew you were sleeping over at his house

"sure things sweetheart, be safe and have fun" your dad said nonchalantly and you smiled to them as their eyes diverted back to the television screen

you finally parked your car right outside eddie's trailer, furiously wiping tears away that kept falling during your drive

you thanked your lucky stars that your blurred teary vision didn't cause a crash

you tried to control your breathing but it was hard, the lump in your throat increasing in size by the second

you grabbed your bag and walked up to the door, knocking lightly

the door opened and saw a smiley Eddie, he must've recognized your car when you pulled up, you assume

"hey baby I was just about to call you and come over," he said and kissed your cheek

you turned to face him when he saw your teary red eyes and his expression immediately changed

"oh, are you okay?" he asked sweetly, putting his arm around you and bringing you inside, shutting the door behind him

he took your bag and started down the hall to his room, and you followed

he threw your bag on his bed when he turned to face you, "c'mere" he said, and wrapped his two strong arms around you

as he held you, you started to cry again, half from the frustration of the worst day and the other half from finally being held in the loving arms of your boyfriend

he held you close as the sobs racked your body, stroking your hair and slowly swaying from side to side, almost as if he was rocking you

you stayed like that for what seemed to be an eternity, when you felt the tears slow and your breathing return to normal, and you continued to stand there in his arms, not wanting to break away

you breathed in, your nose inhaling his mix of musty cologne and cigarettes, which was your favorite scent in the whole world

he gently pulled back so he was able to see your face, when you looked up at him, puffy red eyes, swollen lips, and flushed cheeks

he gently caressed your face, kissing your forehead

"what happened sweet girl?" he asked softly, as if not to make you cry any more than you already had

you wiped the tears that had been sitting on your cheek

"i've had the worst day" you started, feeling your eyes start to well up again

"i was late to school, i failed the math test that i was so confident on, i had a fight with lisa about where to take stupid prom pictures, i tripped and skinned my knee, ms o'donnell yelled at me for being late even though i was in the nurse's office, and i lost my favorite scrunchie and then my mom yelled at me about not taking out the trash on time, and on top of all that i forgot my book for the homework that's due Monday morning in my locker" you ranted

eddie looked at you with sympathetic eyes, nodding understandingly at your frustration, wiping the tears that started to fall again and you sniffled

"sorry" you muttered out, and he chuckled "for what baby? if anything the universe should apologize to you for making you go through all that hell" he squeezed you tighter

"how about this, Monday morning ask to retake the test, and tomorrow, call lisa tomorrow about the pictures, i'm sure you two will work it out cause c'mon, they're stupid locations to take a picture," he started, pushing a piece of hair behind your ear

"i'll get you a new, and better scrunchie, better than your last one, it'll be the most amazing scrunchie you'll totally forget about your other one" he joked, and a smile tugged at your lips

"as for ms o'donnell, you know she can be a bitch but lets face it, that's what happens when you become a cranky old cat lady," he joked again, causing you to giggle

"there it is, that's my beautiful girl" he beamed, before taking your hands in his and bringing them up to his lips

"as for these," he said, kissing the scrapes on your hands from where you tried to catch yourself in the fall

"i think kisses should be the remedy" he continued, kissing all around your hand and your arm causing you to giggle even more and inciting a smile to tug on his face

"and lastly, you can borrow my textbook for the homework" he said, enlacing his fingers with yours

"so don't stress sweets, i got you babe... i love you y/n" he locked eyes with you, and leaned in to give you a soft, sweet kiss that sent the message he just told you

he was there for you

you both pulled away from each other, foreheads pressing against one another, his genuine concern warming your heart

"i love you too eddie" you said and you both smiled

you nuzzled into his neck, and he continued to hold you, gently stroking the back of your head

"how about tonight we watch movies and sit around, and get fat" he joked and you smiled

"what movie were you thinking?" you questioned as he started to gently sway the two of you side to side

"i snagged both Indiana Jones movies from Family Video earlier today if you're interested"

you couldn't help but smile at the suggestion as you loved those movies

"that sounds perfect, actually" you admitted

he kissed you once more before leading you to his kitchen, hand in hand

you started popping the popcorn as eddie went into the living room, and you were glad that wayne left a little earlier to the plant for his night shift so you'd have the tv and couch to yourselves tonight

as you turned into the living room with a bowl of popcorn, some drinks, and some other random snacks you found, eddie had already set up the movie, his thoughtful gesture not going unnoticed

you settled onto the couch with him, and as the film began, the tension in your shoulders started to fade away

throughout the movie, eddie made occasional comments that had you chuckling, despite your earlier frustration and sadness

his infectious laugh and witty remarks managed to lighten the heaviness in the room. it was as if he had a natural talent for lifting spirits

during one particularly intense scene, you couldn't help but feel a twinge of sadness resurface

sensing your change in mood, eddie paused the movie and turned to face you

"hey, I can see something's bothering you again," he said softly. "do you want to talk about it?"

you took in a deep breath, "i feel like such a loser for crying in front of you, i normally can handle my problems and i didn't mean to explode on you like that" you explained, feeling guilty for not being able to handle your own emotions - feeling like it made you look weak

eddie reached out and gently squeezed your hand, offering reassurance. "baby don't ever feel like you can't unload on me, i love being able to help solve your problems and make you happy, never ever feel ashamed to tell me whats going on"

his words washed over you, soothing the ache in your heart. it was a simple gesture, just doing the good boyfriend deed of wanting to solve your problems, but the genuine care in his eyes made you feel understood and supported.

you spent the rest of the movie talking, laughing, and enjoying watching Indy fight all the bad guys. eddie's presence and kindness acted as a balm to your weary soul, providing the solace you desperately needed

by the time the credits rolled on the first film, your spirits had significantly lifted

as Eddie prepared to get the next movie, you stopped him from getting up, hugging him tightly, gratitude swelling within you. "thank you, eds. i can't express how much you meant to me. You turned my whole day around just by being with you" you admitted

he returned the embrace, snuggling in close, his voice warm and sincere. "i vow to you till the day i die- and even in the afterlife, i will always make your bad days better, i promise you..."

and with those comforting words, you passionately kiss him, his lips providing you warmth and hope for a better day tomorrow

after he switched the movie to Temple of Doom, you cuddled into his chest, and couldn't help but feel blessed to have such a caring, beautiful boyfriend, ready to provide comfort whenever you needed it most and you fell asleep, snuggled into eddies chest

fin.

#eddie munson #stranger things #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson smut #eddie blurb #eddie munson fanfic #eddie x reader #eddie x y/n #eddie munson blurb #eddie munson x female reader #eddie munson angst #munsons-melody

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littlemissaddict · 9 months

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It's Not About The Blanket - Eddie Munson x Fem!Reader

Summary: A short fluffy blurb about how Eddie only likes to share a blanket with reader. Pure fluff with a sprinkle of angst if you squint.

Word Count: 764

Sharing a blanket with Eddie was not uncommon for her. Movie nights around Steve’s or huddled in the back of his van late at night up at Lovers Lake when she needed an escape or late nights after band practice when they’re still lounging about in Gareth’s garage and she’s listening to them discussing their plans to ‘take on the world’. You can guarantee that in each of these situations and any other where she has a blanket wrapped around her shoulders it won’t be long before Eddie is joining her even though he isn’t even cold.

Tonight is one of those nights, albeit it has taken him longer than usual to work his way under her blanket, they’re two movies into the marathon instead of just one when she feels the tug of the blanket. Though don’t mistake her thoughts as complaints, she is more than happy to share her blanket with him and even happier to be this close to him (not that she would tell him that), but it makes her wonder why he doesn’t get his own. Or share with someone else because she’s just now come to realise that when Eddie on the rare occasion doesn’t sit beside her, he never seems to share a blanket with whoever else is next to him, only when it’s her.

She whispers his name so as not to disturb any of the others who are still watching the movie, it’s quiet and she doesn’t think that he’s heard her until a soft hum leaves him in acknowledgement. “Why do you only ever share my blanket?” she asks, it’s silly but it’s been niggling away at her since the realisation came to her.

“What?” Eddie blinks up at her as his brow furrows and she thinks that maybe he misheard her so she repeats herself.

A sigh comes from beside Eddie before he has any chance to respond, “It’s because he’s in love with you” Steve’s voice deadpans as he barely glances from the screen. Now it’s her turn to be confused as she glances between a wide eyed Eddie and an annoyed looking Steve but surely he can’t be annoyed that they’ve interrupted the film because he didn’t even want to watch Back to the Future in the first place.

“God you’re both as oblivious as each other” Robin pipes up, the film now paused as both her and Steve look at the two of them still cuddled up under the blanket despite the revelation from Steve. “It’s not about the blanket, it’s about the person” she clarifies with a shake of her head and she swears she sees Robin roll her eyes but maybe she just imagined it.

“So you like me?” she asks, just to clarify, hoping to hear it from Eddie himself rather than their friends.

“Of course I do you’re my best friend I wouldn’t spend as much time with you if I didn’t” he responds, a sarcastic hint to his tone but she knows him well enough to know that it’s a defence mechanism, that he’s expecting to be turned down if he reveals his true feelings.

“That’s not what I meant and you know it Ed” she frowns, shifting away from him as she sits up from her slouched position against the back of the couch.

“Okay yeah, fine they’re right” he mumbles, unable to look her in the eyes as he confesses. He also pulls away from her, inching his way out from under the blanket almost as if he’s convinced that the rejection is coming, that he’s fucked up their whole friendship all because he couldn’t keep his feelings in check.

Her hand reaches out to grip his arm which stops him in his tracks as he slowly lifts his gaze, reluctantly meeting her eyes but he doesn’t find any trace of resentment in her eyes as he expected to. Instead she looks at him as she always does, although there seems to be relief written across her face at hearing the speculation confirmed. He feels the hand on his arm pull slightly and he lets her guide him back into their earlier position as he readjusts the blanket around them. They settle back at ease in the knowledge that their feelings are reciprocated as the film begins playing again and sure they need to talk about it but now is not the time, for now they are just them as they always have been happy with each other and their friends who love them dearly even if they are both idiots in love.

#eddie munson x reader fluff #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson blurb #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson oneshot #eddie munson drabble #eddie munson #stranger things fanfiction #stranger things

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littlegaybean1 · 3 months

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Ok ok ok...

It's been almost 18 years since it aired, but who cares I'm talking about it anyway.

I've seen a lot of people hating on Cyberwoman. And yeah, I understand why. That costume choice was, er, quite something. But it's still my favourite episode and yk why? The build up. The plotline. And most of all the acting. Oh my god the acting. My favourite scene has got to be the tourist office, because oh my days have you seen the way Gareth David Lloyd plays Ianto? It gives me chills. After watching it, I rewatched Everything Changes and Ghost Machine because I never actually noticed Ianto in them, unless he's speaking. The only time you ever see him is when he intentionally draws attention to himself, which he rarely does. I watched them again, specifically focusing on Ianto. He's barely in them. He's one of the main 5 characters, but in the first three episodes he has one of the most minor roles. Like, you see him let Gwen into the Hub, delete the stuff she typed to make herself remember and see him introduced. That's it for episode one. And yes, everyone has a minor role in that, but you never actually see him as part of the team. He works alone, always.

Episode three really highlights that for me. He appears every so often with a funny comment. He has less screen time than Rhys. If it wasn't for the fact that I was actively thinking about him, I would have completely forgotten that he was there. One of his rare appearances really got to me - the ending. Jack gives him the ghost machine to put in the secure archives. That's normal, the archives are his area.

Except Jack doesn't even look at him. He just holds it out, like Ianto is a servant, not someone with years of experience dealing with aliens. Ianto worked at Torchwood One. He was the most qualified of anyone on that team when each of them joined. Owen was medically trained, but no experience with aliens. Tosh was a genius, but she had only experienced aliens through wrong blueprints of their technology, plus a charge of treason. Gwen had police training, nothing more. She got a job by being stubborn, and in the right place at the right time. Jack was reckless, dangerous, and did not want to join Torchwood. He only did it because he needed to do something in the 100+ years that he would be waiting for the Doctor.

Ianto had everything taken from him all at once, and nobody bothered to check on him. He looked fine, so they didn't give it any more thought. They of all people should know that that's not how it works. Ianto was repressing his grief, exhausting himself with the amount he worked both at his job and caring for Lisa. He never had any desire to cause anyone any harm. He was blinded by overwhelming grief. When humans experience loss, the automatic reaction is to cling to what you have. For most people, that means reaching out to friends and family, creating a support system. Ianto lost all his friends, all at once. We don't hear about his family until S3 (goddamn S3), but it's implied that they aren't close. I haven't listened to any of the audios, so if there's more to it than that then I don't know it.

Ianto had nothing, except an echo pretending to be Lisa. He did the most natural thing in the world, clung to what he had. Or at least, what he thought he had. Don't blame Ianto for the events of Cyberwoman. His actions correlate with normal reactions to grief. Yes, his actions were extreme. But so was his grief.

#ianto #ianto jones #cyberwoman #torchwood #im going insane #he's my baby boy #he does no wrong #he was the greatest guy around #idk im spiralling #i love this episode so much it hurts #like give it a chance #ignore the costume for a minute #did you see the look in his eyes?#that's first class acting #that's what you're missing

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hellfirenacht · 8 months

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Being in Hellfire Club HCs

These are mostly for myself to have consistency in my fics.

-Eddie is the one to approach any potential new members. He's been recruiting for 2 years now, and he's very selective. But he can also sniff out a freak a mile away.

-Being part of Hellfire comes with a certain level of protection. Eddie is more than happy to be the big bad wolf to protect his sheep members. Most people leave Hellfire alone because they think Eddie will snap.

-There are the core members of the club (Eddie, Jeff, Gareth, Mike, Dustin, and un-named member who I am calling Zack), as well as subs. Subs are people who were curious and usually approached Eddie first. They have a passing interest, but not enough to risk being associated with the freaks.

-Everyone in Hellfire has cut class at least once to take a nap in Eddie's van.

-Everyone in the club knows that Eddie deals but unless they have intent to buy they keep their mouth shut.

-Eddie won't sell to freshmen. Period.

-The club doesn't do much outside of school. Of course, Corroded Coffin has band practice but that's about it.

-Once in a blue moon they will do "side quest day". The club will go to the arcade and play games and if they manage to impress Eddie, he might give them a buff or inspiration for the next session. This rarely happens though.

-Eddie runs a very tight ship with Hellfire. If you're committed to being part of the club outside of being a sub, you better take it seriously. You absolutely are required to wear the shirt during the school day. He's definitely given out punishments for not wearing the shirt

-He isn't unreasonable though. If you can give him a good reason why you can't do something he's willing to work with you. Eddie has the respect of his club for a reason.

-They absolutely are not allowed to be lighting candles in the prop department, but they do anyway.

-Eddie's chair is his and his alone. Don't try and sit in it. (*If no one else is around you might be able to get away with it. Just don't try it in front of the whole club.)

-Everyone got really into playing cards at lunch for about a month, betting snacks until a teacher shut that down. Sometimes they'll still try and play after school.

-Most of the club has been playing the same character for years from level one. Eddie prefers a clean slate character. Subs are able to create characters closer to where everyone is.

-if you're joining late in the game, you can create a leveled character, but you'll be a few levels behind everyone until you prove yourself.

-If you need to get up and move around a bit during the session, that's alright, but there is a clear line that you can't cross. Try and peak behind the screen and you're in trouble.

-You don't need to have the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons handbook memorized, but he expects at least basic knowledge if you're serious about the club. You absolutely need to understand your character race and class

-Eddie is not afraid of 'rule of cool' if you can sell your point hard enough. He isn't a full rules lawyer, but he isn't here to make this easy. Fun? Yes. Challenging? Frustratingly so.

-There has been a blow out fights over rules before. Tensions were running high with midterms and everyone having a shitty day. Someone's character died, Hellfire was cut short that night as everyone went and cooled off. That was the one time that Eddie scrapped a session and agreed to a do-over.

-Eddie is easier to talk to one-on-one outside of club. He's genuine with his love for Hellfire, but he's more likely to let his walls down when it's just him and someone else.

-He used to skip class a lot, but has been genuinely trying to graduate now. Now he only skips maybe once or twice a month.

-Gareth isn't allowed to have his drumsticks at the table anymore.

#hellfire club #eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #nacht post

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zzthekaiju · 2 days

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Best of the Reptiles in Media - 01 - Godzilla (Monsterverse)

I figure that while I'm using this blog, I might as well post my ramblings on a subject dear to my heart: That being the representation of reptiles as characters in media. And not just villainous or vile ones like we're so used to. I'm talking about ones that inspire me. The ones that are legitimately compelling to me. And these posts are an excuse to espouse why.

Plus, it's just fun. You can thank the likes of @tyrantisterror and @bogleech for inspiring me to do these.

So who better to start with than with the lizard who's been an inspiration to me for almost my entire life. That being the one known as Gojira. AKA...Godzilla.

This is the one character in these posts who probably needs no introduction. Ever since his debut in 1954, the walking embodiment of the horrors of nuclear war, among other things, has been nothing less than an icon. This is the beast people think about when they hear "giant monster" or "kaiju". This is truly the King of the Monsters.

My introduction to Godzilla was a children's book called "Godzilla on Monster Island". It was a fun read full of neat monsters living together and teaming up to stop an evil plan. And it left me wanting more. I wanted more stories of these fantastic yet friendly beasts being friends and living together while having fun adventures. Little me was a bit disappointed to find that Godzilla spent more time fighting his fellow kaiju and trashing cities instead.

The truth, as I would find out, was that Godzilla is never just one thing. He is a fun defender of the Earth. He's the terrifying consequences of our tampering with both nature and science. And in recent memory, he's been a lot of other things. But most of the time, he's either hero or mankind's hubris on two legs. To me, he was a giant dinosaur that could fire thermonuclear breath, and that was all that mattered. It was after hearing about the historical significance of him that my respect doubled.

Back then, I would tell you that my favorite Godzilla from a design standpoint was the 2002 version. Personality wise, almost every Showa appearance post-1964.

But in 2014, everything changed. In came a Goji that seemed to have everything I could ask for. So, we're going to look at the one that resonates with me the most. The Monsterverse version.

That right there is perhaps one of the most awe-inspiring entrances I've ever seen in a cinema.

Before the release of Godzilla (2014), the franchise had entered something of a slump period. The last film was all the way back in 2004, and sadly, the kaiju genre was still something of a niche thing growing up. Here in America, you either liked superheroes or real-life celebrities as a kid. If you liked monsters, let alone giant monsters, you were one of the weird kids. That, or one of the kids who never lost their passion for dinosaurs. But those were rare.

Then Gareth Edwards unleashed this film, and while one could argue that Pacific Rim (2013) got the ball rolling, THIS ultimately resurrected the entire franchise of the Big G, and got him a degree of general respect from most film-goers (so long as you ignore the irritating internet drama regarding screen-time back then).

But let's get to the meat of this post. Why is this Godzilla so much better to me than the rest? A few things, really.

First off, there's Godzilla's role in the Monsterverse's narrative. For the most part, he is a guardian of the natural order, a means of bringing balance to imbalance. He is a metaphor for how nature is capable of righting itself, and how we either have to deal with it, or live with the consequences. In practice, Godzilla ends up going up against almost every monster, most of which are only a threat because we awakened them/created them. Yet despite this, he doesn't go out of his way to destroy us. He's not mindlessly destructive or particularly vengeful either. He knows we're a part of the world too. We just tend to grate a bit more on his nerves because of how much we screw up. If there's one thing this series isn't afraid to show, it's that...well, "the arrogance of man is thinking nature is within our control, and not the other way around."

Design-wise, this is one of the best Godzilla's around. He's bulky, has a killer stare, and there's something oddly endearing about how...well, meaty he is. He's like if my aforementioned previous favorite design, the 2002 one, put on both a lot of muscle and weight. It also ties into his fighting style, said to have been inspired particularly by bears. Even the sounds associated with him are amazing. From that hype-inducing charge of his thermonuclear breath to what might be the best rendition of the classic roar.

Then there is the body language. This Godzilla's usual gait is slow, almost plodding at times. He shows clear signs of exhaustion in some scenes. What he goes through is hard, and his job is even harder, but he still does it. It really helps sell his personality most of the time.

Part of why I like the Monsterverse so much is that, for the most part, the kaiju are treated as characters in their own right (that's not to say they weren't in previous iterations, far from it, but it's a bit more pronounced here than most of the post-Showa stuff). Sure, some films in this verse are better about it than others (more on that later...), but I like how you can glean what Godzilla is thinking of just by looking at his eyes. Of particular note is how they widen in "Godzilla: King of the Monsters" when Ghidorah gains the upper hand during the final battle, his absolute sneer of anger in the first movie when the male MUTO approaches him, or...this.

This scene. This one right here encapsulates so much of what I love about this iteration. Where Godzilla, dazed and thoroughly battered by both the fight with the MUTOS and having a building fall right on him, locks eyes with a tiny little soldier. You see a sense of tiredness, of pain, of acknowledgement, and maybe even a little wonder. This is not just some mindless beast fighting for its turf. It's a thinking being. And he's hurt. The most powerful creature on the planet isn't invincible, neither on the outside and definitely not on the inside.

And you know what? I've been there. There are times where I feel like I'm carrying the weight of the world, that there are things too heavy to bear, and its suffocating. Godzilla constantly shows throughout the Monsterverse that his job as a living balancing act is wearing on him. He gets put through so. Much. Crap. From getting buildings dropped on him to being personally dropped from a distance above the clouds to watching his symbiotic partner/mate die, it's almost unfair how we're expected to not really sympathize with him as much as...I'll get to that later.

But he never gives up. Despite all the pain and fatigue, he gets back up, and he fights. And he fights. And he continues until the deed is done. Someone has to rise to the occasion, and it might as well be him. If not him, then who?

That is the biggest reason I resonate with this Godzilla. His awe-inspiring design is one thing, but he gave me the strength to persevere. I don't give up, because he never did. Never before had the Big G been such a hero to me. Such that in 2014 I found myself silently sobbing to myself when it seemed like he was dead near the end even though that was clearly not the case. It's hardly a surprise that I based my personal Godzilla AU on him, albeit with the more sympathetic traits dialed up. Stuff like this made G14 and KOTM some of my favorite kaiju flicks...

...which made it more than a little disappointing when Wingard took the helm and basically said "screw that, this is about the monke now!" Yeah, GvK is the weakest entry in the series for me for a reason. Godzilla's more redeeming qualities are buried under a narrative that clearly is not interested in giving him the time of day or even the benefit of a doubt. Both it and it's successor, GxK, are Kong movies through and through, and that means poor Big G is put out of focus.

I cannot tell you how much I HATE this idea that the only way a monster can be relatable is if it either looks almost just like us or is really cute. Yes, I understand the universal appeal, but they had such a good thing going for Godzilla! And they throw almost all of it away just so that they can make Kong look better by comparison.

Credit where it's due, these issues are slightly improved in GxK. It's not only firmly established that Godzilla is an overall benefit to the world for keeping the other Titans in check, but we get some interesting bits with him like how he instantly responds and prepares to answer the call of the Iwi and help them. It shows that despite his tenuous relationship with humans, there are ones he clearly gives a lot of thought to. And there's also how he makes the Roman Coliseum his own personal bed. Not only is it kind of hilariously adorable, but if you remember how in KOTM he had his own man-made temple, you get the impression that he has a bit of homesickness. That's the kind of thing I like to see! More of that and less "he's only ever angry and he only ever fights, character is for primates only".

Also, while the Evolved design has nice details, I WANT THAT GUT BACK! it just looks weird otherwise with that disproportionately skinny waist.

But thankfully, our prayers might be answered:

With GxK's roaring success (ha!), it's more than likely that the next Monsterverse entry will finally give Godzilla an overdue character arc that doesn't begin and end with "destroy everyone and act big and scary and nothing else". Just please make sure that he doesn't have to die to get that. There are plenty of ways you can make us invest in the guy's story without having to kill him. I WANT to see more of that emotional vulnerability teased across the movies. I want to see him come to terms with how he's been going about his job. And more importantly...I want to see a more explicit Mothzilla scene. A nuzzle and everything. But that's just me.

Whatever the quality of his current status, nothing is taking away how much I love this version of Godzilla. He's taken me out of some very dark places, and for that, I say long live the king.

Also, he brought Mothzilla into the public sphere and every Mothzilla pic made since is the cutest thing ever, so I just love him even more.

#best of the reptiles in media #ramblings #godzilla #gojira #monsterverse #godzilla 2014 #g14 #godzilla king of the monsters #godzilla vs kong #godzilla x kong: the new empire

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suspiciouslackofclowns · 8 months

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I’m trying to clear out my drafts, so have the alternate version of this <3

Even on quiet days where Eddie should, theoretically, be able to take time to himself, he finds that it’s nearly impossible.

The guys had pulled him aside early on and explained hey, they were mostly cool with Steve, as long as he didn’t talk too much when he was around. Billy was almost completely out of the question. It was kind of an ultimatum, made in the privacy of Gareth’s garage one afternoon.

It’s them or us, is what Eddie took away from it.

Try as he might, Eddie has come to find out the hard way that he can’t keep his two worlds separated. His partners are sure to discover that his friends don’t like them even if he doesn’t say anything, and his friends are stubborn enough to stop inviting him out because of it.

He eventually stops trying so hard to convince Gareth, Jeff, and Grant that his partners are okay dudes, and that turns out to be the right decision.

Because apparently this shit has to happen organically.

As the movie wraps up on screen, Gareth stretches where he sits in the recliner, pausing with his arms in the air like he just realized there’s a lion stalking him. Eddie quirks a brow, confused, until he realizes.

About halfway through the second movie in their marathon, Billy had wandered in soundlessly. Settled beside Eddie on the loveseat and leaned into his side, welcomed with an arm around his shoulders, and promptly dozed off. In all honesty, Eddie kind of forgot that he was there.

He’s been cradling Billy like it’s second nature. Threading his fingers through his hair and scratching softly at his scalp, keeping him humming happily and hugging Eddie like he’s a body pillow.

“Dude,” Gareth hisses.

He dawns a look of tired frustration, and Eddie rolls his eyes.

“What? He’s not bothering you,” he whispers.

Grant and Jeff seem just as caught off guard as Gareth was a moment ago, but Eddie keeps coddling his lover anyway. Even when Gareth narrows his eyes.

“But this is our movie night.”

“I promise you, he hasn’t been watching.”

There’s a moment where nothing is said. The credits are rolling on the screen, and Eddie and Gareth just stare at one another for a long beat. Eddie wants him to say it.

He’s ruining it just by being here.

“Guys, c’mon,” Jeff intervenes. “Let’s just put in the next one, yeah?”

Grant nods enthusiastically, but all efforts of distraction go ignored. Gareth crosses his arms.

“It’s like you don’t like hanging out with just us anymore, man,” he grumbles.

A wave of clarity washes over Eddie in an instant, and he bites back on a smile.

He’s fucking jealous.

“So that’s what this is, huh?” Eddie muses.

“What?” Gareth snaps.

“Y’know, if you actually gave him a chance, you’d probably get along with him. He’s super easy. Easier than Steve, even.”

Grant sits forward at Eddie’s other side, peering around him to get a look at the sleeping blond.

“Steve is more approachable,” he concludes.

Out of the few times that Steve has been around during a game night or a movie marathon, he’s always been awkward. Maybe the guys don’t see it the way that Eddie does, but he tends to talk to them like he talks to Dustin. Lots of things like what’s up, big man are said and nodding is done when he doesn’t understand a reference or joke.

Maybe they think that Steve is just naturally easygoing.

It’s especially funny, because he just so happens to be the most nervous person that Eddie has ever met in his life. He hates being around Eddie’s friends as much as they hate being around him, if for no other reason than he isn’t quite sure how to act around them.

But they don’t need to know that.

“Nah, he just looks a little intimidating, that’s all,” Eddie says, still carding his fingers through Billy’s hair. “He’s a total teddy bear.”

Gareth barks out a laugh, his face paling a bit when Billy stirs at the noise. Clutches onto the front of Eddie’s shirt with an unforgiving grip as he shoves his face further into the crook of his neck.

After he falls still again, his fist relaxing, Eddie gently guides his hand away and smooths out the front of his shirt.

“He’s an aggressive cuddler,” he dismisses.

“Right,” Gareth huffs. “I’m sure he’s sweet to you, Munson, but I don’t really plan on testing the waters with it.”

“Do you really think that little of me?”

“What?”

Eddie presses his lips into a line and sighs. Looks down at Billy’s sleeping face, studying the faint sprinkle of freckles on the bridge of his nose.

“You think my taste in men is so terrible that I’d date any old piece of shit.” Eddie makes pointed eye contact with Gareth, who swallows thickly. “It never occurred to you that maybe, considering I like him, he can’t be all that bad?”

Gareth opens and closes his mouth, and huffs irritatedly after a moment.

“I’m just wary of his type is all.”

Now Eddie laughs, and subsequently deals with Billy clutching at his shirt as if to say keep it down again.

“See, now you’re just doing what the vast majority of people do to us,” Eddie muses. “Kind of hypocritical, no?”

The tv screen goes blank as Jeff removes the tape. He doesn’t reach for the next movie just yet, probably waiting to see how this conversation plays out first.

“In his defense,” he begins. “It’s usually guys like Hargrove that rag on us for being different, so you can’t really blame us for being wary of him.”

Gareth and Grant both nod in agreement. Eddie sighs.

“Fair enough. I’m telling you, though, he’s a sweetheart.”

“I’m gonna need some proof.”

All three of his friends stare at him expectantly. Eddie feels the end of this interaction rapidly approaching until an idea blossoms in his head, and he stops petting Billy’s hair. Lifts his arm up and rests it on the back of the sofa, depriving the blond of contact, and smirking deviously as he begins to stir.

If for no other reason than the guys all look like they’re ready to bolt.

Billy cracks his eyes open, sitting up just enough to peer up at Eddie’s face as he splays a hand against his sternum.

“Was I snoring?” he asks, voice groggy.

Rubs at Eddie’s chest with a heavy hand, looking like he’s fighting to stay conscious as he waits for an answer.

“No,” Eddie says, and resists the urge to chuckle.

Billy sighs. His eyelids are heavy, palm rubbing in circles as he thinks for a moment. Then his eyebrows are furrowing.

“‘M I bothering you?” His movements halt for a moment. “Should I go to the room?”

“No, no, baby, you’re not a bother,” Eddie coos.

Billy nods, but his lips press into a frown as he pouts. Begins rubbing at Eddie’s chest again.

“Then why’d you stop lovin’ on me?”

The question is so earnest and he looks so betrayed while asking it that Eddie can’t help but smile and open his arm around him again. Coaxes Billy back into his side where he’d been pressed before.

Once his face is tucked into Eddie’s neck again, he melts instantly. Slumps into the brunet and hums a happy noise when fingers push into his hair once again.

“I’m sorry, Bills, I’ll keep loving on you.”

Billy drapes his arms around him. Gives him a squeeze before his muscles are all going limp, and Eddie is left scratching softly at his scalp as his breath evens out.

As if having proven his point, Eddie fixes Gareth with a look.

“Teddy bear,” he whispers.

Maybe he should’ve let Billy’s actions speak for themselves a long time ago, because the air of fear is no longer present in the room. Simply because Billy is all but purring and snuggling as hard as he can into Eddie’s side like a clingy cat.

“Dunno why, but I thought he’d be the type to get pissed about being woken up,” Grant says quietly.

Eddie hums amusedly. Tilts his head against Billy’s and noses a kiss into his hair.

“He’s normally a little moody in the mornings,” Eddie says. Keeps his nose buried in blond curls as he breathes a dreamy sigh. “It’s nothing that pancakes and coffee with extra creamer and sugar can’t fix, though.”

For once, when Eddie glances over, Gareth doesn’t look beyond pissed off. His expression is more neutral now, and it stays that way even when a door closes somewhere beyond the kitchen.

Steve pads into the living room, rubbing one of his eyes with the heel of his palm, and comes to stand beside the couch. Spreads a smile when he spies the couple on the sofa.

“I was wondering where he went,” he muses.

“Were you not cuddling him good enough or something? He’s been in here for a while,” Eddie chuckles.

Steve puts his hands on his hips and tilts his head to the side.

“I think he just missed you.” He sits on the armrest and reaches over, gently tucking Billy’s hair behind his ear. “Kept feeling your side of the bed and grumbling when you weren’t there.”

The information has a pang of sadness piercing Eddie’s chest. He holds Billy tighter and squeezes a surprised little grunt out of him, but the blond is quick to reciprocate. Nuzzles his face harder into Eddie’s neck and leans more heavily into his side.

“Did you come out here to take him back?” Eddie asks.

He flushes a bit red when he hears the shake in his own voice. Steve spreads a sympathetic smile.

“I figured, since…” he trails off, gesturing loosely around the living room. “You’d, y’know, want the room to yourselves.”

Eddie pouts at the thought of his sleepy boyfriend getting taken away. Momentarily considers calling it quits for the night so he can go snuggle Billy in the comfort of their bed, until Gareth clears his throat.

“It’s alright if he stays, or whatever.”

All eyes snap to him, and he crosses his arms over his chest nonchalantly. Eddie bites back on a grin, especially when he looks around and doesn’t see that either Grant or Jeff protest the claim.

Steve sighs and stands up.

“You okay if he stays?” he asks.

“Mhmm,” Eddie hums. Keeps his eyes on Steve as he rounds the sofa and leans over the back of it, draping his arms around Eddie’s neck. “You can stay too, if you want.”

Slender fingers tilt his chin up, and they meet in a soft kiss. Only parting when their smiles ruin it.

“You’re such a good boyfriend,” Steve coos.

“Yeah?”

“Uh-huh.” Another kiss is planted on Eddie’s lips, and he can’t help but melt a little. “I’m gonna pass, though. Pretty sure you guys wouldn’t appreciate me snoring over the movie.”

Steve chuckles when Eddie pouts, leaning down to smudge a few kisses in Billy’s hair before he turns to pad out of the room.

“Goodnight, Stevie,” Eddie calls. “Love you.”

“Mm, love you, Stevie,” Billy grumbles.

In an instant, Steve is leaning over the back of the couch again and smothering them both in more hastily-placed kisses. Billy spreads a lazy smile and Eddie giggles until their lover ceases the affectionate burst.

“Hurry up and finish your movie night so I can cuddle with my boys,” Steve says.

Eddie hums when he’s given a squeeze for emphasis from Billy.

“Yes sir.”

#harringroveson #metalsandwich #steddilly #rewrite? ish #fluff #mild angst #billy hargrove #eddie munson #steve harrington #background corroded coffin guys #I didn’t think I’d post this version but I’m tired of seeing it sit in my drafts #so here it is! the same-ish ficlet again minus chubby Billy bc I was too nervous to add him in #my writing #ficlet #god i’m so tired

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