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iznsfw · 1 year

Note

Chaewon anal pls :3

Fancam

IZ Days of Christmas: Day 6 - Kim Chaewon

LE SSERAFIM's Kim Chaewon x Male Reader Smut

3455 words

Categories: BUTT STUFF (anal + ass eating), brat!Chaewon, cunnilingus, rough sex, spanking, mirror sex, masturbation, doggy style, fingering, squirting, inspired from how a BFH happens + dirty thoughts

I couldn't complete the initial draft, so I just combined it all together but still made it fit the story like the clever little fucker I am. Enjoy.

For @kaedespicelatte ❤

Your cock goes through more bouts of stimulation in these minutes than your other body parts have ever felt in their lives. It suffers—or rather, enjoys, the feel of your fist bobbing up and down its girth as you imagine that your hand is not actually itself, but rather, your favorite idol's cunt.

"Oh, oh, fuck! Fuck, Kim Chaewon, you're so tight!" you yell out, speaking out loud to her in spite of knowing she won't hear you.

Yes, that is her name. You have never felt more of a degenerate and a blushing schoolgirl at the same time. This fourth generation idol does things to you. She's an adorable girl, but it's inevitable to see the hot side to her. As the concepts of her group, IZ*ONE, matures along with the members, she does, too. She becomes even more attractive.

You'd close your eyes to picture her bouncing on your cock better, but that would rob you of seeing the looped muted videos playing on your computer: Chaewon sensually gyrating her ass side to side, in accordance with the choreography of the most recent IZ*ONE comeback: Panorama.

Oh, she knows what she is doing. The smug look reflecting in her eyes, her smile... no one can tell you that Chaewon doesn't know the effect she has on her fans. What, with that tight little body and ass, she can send each and every one of the fans who adore her to heaven. Hell might be a better place for you since you love to lust over this girl so much, but you don't care one bit. You'd set yourself on fire if it meant a chance with her.

In short, and to keep all those pathetic statements, you are a big fan of Kim Chaewon. Too big of a fan, you know, but it is what it is. She's too attractive of a girl to not do... this.

As the videos transition to a new outfit and new angles, you close your eyes and let your mind run wild. What if....

"Oppa, are these shorts too tight on me?"

No. Well, actually, yes. You purposely styled her navy blue shorts that way so it accents her hips and butt, to appeal to the fans. It's your job as her stylist to design good outfits for her that fit the comeback concept and also pleasure the eyes and flesh, but now, it has backfired. The plan you have made is slowly starting to take you as its victim, too.

Chaewon raises the shorts higher, smoothing her fingers on the fabric as it wraps around her tiny body. Your mouth practically waters.

Chaewon, with her dark blue hair curled and cheeks blushed, snaps her fingers in front of your face. "Hello? Hellooo? Oppa, you good?"

"Y-yeah!" you say nervously. Laugh a little at yourself because of how weak you particularly are around Chaewon. You're a professional stylist—you are blunt, but charming enough for richer customers like those from Swing Entertainment, and most importantly: professional, but cool enough for the idols to pull jokes around you.

However, you are none of those things. At least, not in front of Chaewon whom you cannot seem to put your work personality on for. You get along with Eunbi and the other members professionally just fine. Yena has even become one of your best friends. So why can you never act right around her?

"Ohhh." Chaewon draws out the word with a sense of understanding. Afterwards, she sets her hands on her hips and smiles knowingly. "You're one of them now."

"Huh? One of who?"

"One of those fans. Those fans who never want to do anything but worship my body. That's who."

You feel a little guilty now. Have you overstepped on her boundaries? Yes, it is your job to cater to IZ*ONE's male-dominated fanbase, but that does not mean you have to become like them, too. No, you only admire Chaewon in a proper manner. You like her because she is pretty and has a sweet voice, not just because of her body!

Her body that is just so hot and tight...

Chaewon leaning over one of the dressing tables and wiggling her ass is no help at all. She giggles profoundly, as if her doing that was a completely innocent thing, and smiles again. "What if," she says, and pauses, letting the suspense take over, " I let you? "

Is she serious?

You have no time to think about it. As if you were controlled by a perverted puppetmaster, you walk over and smack Chaewon's ass. She gasps deliciously, biting her lower lip, whether for more seduction or simply her libido is unknown. But you set that thought aside to take it all in: how Chaewon's buttcheek feels so soft yet firm at the same time, completely spankable; the wet spot your fingers touch on as you slap her ass and part of her center. Chaewon is as needy as she is evil, so her eyes send you a request. Without words, you understand what she wants you to do.

But foreplay is essential. Taking this into consideration, you close the distance between you till it is almost nonexistent. Her thighs feel great in your palms. You've never noticed how pretty they are before. Pale and thick, they feel like pillows beneath your touch. They are sensitive as well; Chaewon whimpers softly while you take your sweet time with them.

"Yes, I've wanted to fuck you for so long, oppa~" she confesses out of the blue. The mirror reflects your actions performed onto Chaewon's beautiful figure. Most importantly, they show her face: the makeup for the comeback performance makes her siren eyes look even more seductive. Her lips are painted a perfect ruby red. "Everytime I saw you arrange the clothes for the girls, and how passionate you are about everything, I felt so... needy. I've wanted you since the day I met you."

"That makes two of us," you chuckle softly. Kiss her back as gently as you can, somehow assuring yourself through it that you can hold yourself back from ravaging her immediately.

The day you met Chaewon enters your mind. She still uses the same perfume from that day. She had worn an adorable blue and strawberry red sailor-themed dress. You loved its design, so you had reached her, complimented her performance and how she looks in it, and asked who made it for her. When she replied that she had designed and sewn it herself, you were surprised. You already knew that Kim Chaewon is talented, but you somehow forgot that her capabilities are also strong outside of vocals and dance.

She looked adorable. You were both the same age with big dreams that were just recently attained. And now... she looks beautiful. She has always been pretty, but there is a mature side to her now. If you were to be a little more explicit... hot?

"Did you know, Chaewon, that I put a very special feature in these shorts?" you ask, grinning. Feel around her crotch area to render her moaning needily.

"Mm, and what is it?" she asks. Her eyes are closed. They flutter wide open suddenly. "Oh!"

You've inserted a finger inside her. Her wet walls tense due to the unexpected intrusion. Smirk as you explain: "I added a secret zipper. Just so I can fuck you safely whenever I get the chance."

"Mmm, oh..." Chaewon rides your finger in dizzying circles, head thrown back. And it is so much hotter to watch her in motion in the mirror—it reflects the need in her eyes, the talented sway of her hips, and most importantly, her rounded mouth when she lets out her beautiful moans. "W-what's stopping you then, oppa? Why don't you just take me?"

Quicken the wiggle of your finger inside her to reach the right spots. Chaewon gasps out girlishly, looking back at you as if she expects you to just get to it. That's how most of her fans would have done, but you are no ordinary fan of hers. You are her stylist, someone she trusts and someone she actually wants to fuck her.

"It's just so fun to tease you. Look at Chaewonie all red and blushing."

She does. She gazes in the mirror and sees her own flushed face, and becomes redder. Since when did she become this horny for anyone? There's been the occasional boy toy here and there, yet she always finds herself wanting you.

"Please, oppa," she begs, with a cherry on top. Her own cherries must have been rock hard under her bra right now. They poke through the fabric, not protrudingly enough to show an imprint, but still tweakable. They are your findings in the experiment that is "Explore Kim Chaewon: erect, yet soft tempting things that slide against your palm.

Stop fingering her for a while to smack her ass again. This time, you do not hold back. Its impact sends Chaewon's hips jerking forward. She cries out in pain, but your focus is on the way her fat ass cheeks ripples in your hand.

"Say it again," you command firmly. Your eyes seal onto the reflections of Chaewon's in the reflective glass. She whines, not knowing what to do being put in a situation like this, so you spank her again. "Say it again, Chaewon-ah."

"Oppa, can you—pretty please?—fuck my ass?"

Her words are the perfectly written code to trigger the following events: the zipper being wrung even higher, and your cock sliding up into Chaewon's asshole. The tightness is overwhelming; all the lube you've used is the natural wetness from her cunt.

Now, Chaewon arcs her back and screams. Her virginal asshole is not used to your size nor girth, but the pain only extracts more juice from her cunt. It is even wetter than from when you fingered her. She bites her lip in order to quiet herself down, but you slam into her ass harder, knocking her into the table.

"Ah! Oppa!"

"Scream louder," you command. Grasp her by the waist and start to pound her fervently. The puckered hole just grips you so well. What else can you do but let it? Hell, even make it?

Chaewon whimpers. "But what if someone hears? Oppa!" She screams again because of your cock roughly jerking to the depths of her ass, amplifying the pleasure that warms her whole body.

"Let them, they might even join in on the fun."

Chaewon considers this, and you can tell that deep inside, she has to confess that she likes the idea. Imagining someone coming in as you pound her before the mirror in the salon... it is a fantasy that she has not even considered.

She gasps as you add your fingers inside her cunt again. Her gasp turns into a wail; she's being fille din both holes simultaneously, and you are in no way being gentle. Your fingertips dig into a rougher texture, making Chaewon cry out. That is how you know you've reached her G-spot. Start to rub into that spot more and kiss her delicate neck and ears. Capture her earlobe with your teeth and increase the speed of your drills.

"Mm, ahh, fuck, oppa!" Chaewon wails needily. The penetration from both holes is becoming too much. She is just being stretched too well. All her sensitive places are being overstimulated. But she can't cum now! Not when you're jerking into her so perfectly and her mouth is lewdly slack as she watches herself in the mirror. Not when your cock stretches her tight asshole so perfectly that it is nearly agape!

"No, no, can't cum yet!" Chaewon's ass sways just like the part of the choreography you've watched for so long, again and again. "Can't cum y-yet—ahhh!"

Girl cum floods your hand like a storm. Chaewon's scream of pleasure is the thunder. The lightning speed of her body squirming and bucking into yours brings you to your orgasm, too. Her asshole has become incredibly tight despite the stretch your cock has made, wringing ribbons of cum from its tip and filling her ass with semen.

Such a shame that this has to end. You want to stay in the heavens of her ass forever.

Deftly pull out with pants that mirror Chaewon's. Her shorts are now ruined. Her creampied ass wets the fabric along with her own cum. It's filthy—you know you should be angry that her need to be ruined has done its own way of ruining the shorts you've painstakingly sewn and designed, but in that moment, you don't mind. You don't mind one bit.

That's your first orgasm for the night. Your cum has spurted all over your shorts and shirt. You are beyond exhausted; you have been wanking off to Chaewon all night, and your mind has gone to places you never knew could reach.

You can't move nor speak, so instead, you look at your desktop wallpaper of her in the background. She is beautiful—her tongue is cutely stuck out as she mimicks a Kuromi expression. A picture that is supposed to be cute suddenly gives you an idea again.

Sigh and wrap your hand back on your cock. Here we go again.

"You're just so boringgg! Why can't we do it?"

If you were a different person and were told that those words came from a five-year-old girl spoiled by overly adoring parents, you would have believed it. But you aren't a different person and Chaewon isn't five; she's twenty-fucking-two years old and your girlfriend.

It's the weekend, and Chaewon has decided, because you are home, to be brattier than ever. You know your endless scolding and spankings won't stop her because she thrives on those like a little devil with each sin you make, so you try to ignore her loud complaints as you go through your phone.

She sits on the floor, legs folded beneath her, throwing another temper tantrum. You're used to it, but it still annoys you to no end.

"Why can't we do it?" she whines, slapping your knee. "Other couples do it a lot! But you won't let me!"

You ignore her, subtly rolling your eyes and scrolling through your phone. Cool, another funny dog video. But that doesn't evoke a laugh from you; you're too riled up by Chaewon to even chuckle.

You know what she's asking from you, and you are not about to give in.

It's not that you don't want to, per se; it's that you are afraid that it might hurt her. Even if she begs for it day or night, you aren't sure you can go ahead without hurting her.

Despite Chaewon's brattiness (both in and out of your sex life), you still love her and would not want to put her in pain.

"Why can't you put it in my ass too? Are you scared?"

Yeah, that's correct: Kim Chaewon has been begging you to do anal. You know it sounds ridiculous that she has to plead for it from you, but you have your reasons.

Reasons that you are having difficulty keeping.

But you roll your eyes. Fine, you'll bite.

Place your phone down on the sofa, your eyes trained on her with a squint. "Chaewon, I'm tired of this."

"I am too!" she fires back.

"And I'm not scared, Chaewon."

"Oh? Then fuck me."

"Easy," you say, licking your lips. You are about to reach for her when Chaewon shakes her head.

"Uh-uh! You don't just fuck me…I want you to fuck me in the ass."

You should have seen that coming. The little brat.

but if she wants it that bad…

Your mind is a large fire of frustration. Your girlfriend is being the most annoying person on Earth right now, and the pent-up tension between the two of you isn't helping at all. Not one bit.

Your hands quivering, you grab Chaewon without thinking and throw her on the sofa. She screams, whether out of excitement or actual fear is unknown to you. You simply wring her panties and shorts from her legs, finally giving in after abstaining from it for so long.

"Fuck, oppa, what are you doing?" Chaewon asks. Her legs are pushes back in the air. She gasps when you blow cold air all over her pussy, and the round brown hole that has barely been used.

"Lubing you up, what else?"

Chaewon moans with pleasure when your lips connect with her lower ones. Your tongue slides over her lips, flicking her clit, and licking its sensitive form repeatedly.

Chaewon practically quivers from gratification. She lies back to enjoy your oral attack, but you aren't about to give her a gentle way in. Not at all. You grab her thighs and wildly wiggle your tongue inside her, lapping up the juices that eventually start flowing. Lick from the bottom a stripe that finishes sharply on her clit, before trying out something new.

Your tongue prods against her brown hole. "Oh!" Chaewon screams, hands on her mouth as she watches you. She loses sight of you; she can only see stars as this oddly new sensation ripples through her body. Would she like it? Or would she regret asking you to expand your horizons in bed?

Your tongue eases in through the tight hole and backs out, too. It isn't quite anything like you expected. She tastes... delicious? Her juices flow down to her peach and make it easier to eat it, adding to the delicious flavor that is and only is Kim Chaewon.

"Fuck, oppa, you eat my ass so well!" cries out Chaewon. Her asshole tightens around your tongue, but you continue to lick and lap. All the while, your nose also provides constant stimulation to her clit with unintended but welcome rubs.

Chaewon's thighs crash into your head. You actually start to run out of air. You have kept at alternating eating out her ass and pussy, have become so inmersed in eating her out that you forget yourself. Inhale sharply through your nose and let her feminine scent invade your senses, just like how your tongue does to the wet and tight cunt and her unexpectedly delicious ass. It doesn't help that Chaewon keeps wiggling her cunt in your face, forcing you to continue eating her out with no break. Your plan of not giving her rest throughout this session has backfired on you, too.

Luckily, Chaewon is close. She announces it loudly, breath catching in her throat, before she screams loudly. She suddenly tears at your hair and forces you to keep your tongue wildly wiggling in both of her holes, sliding over her erogenous zones and filling them both. It is too much for a one-guy job, and you aren't too sure you can handle it. You aren't sure if you can handle her.

You start to spank Chaewon's thighs wildly, a sign for her to back out. You fire angry slaps at her ass too, but no matter how red and sore they become, they remain around your head. She's desperate, now, but you are, too. Who will win this game? Chaewon, who is squeezing her own breasts and lying back on the sofa pillows moaning, or you—her good-for-nothing daddy?

It's obvious now. Daddies always give in. Might as well do so in a way that pleasures you, too.

Soon, Kim Chaewon is upside-down. She is slobbering all over your cock, diligently blowing its girth, while you give your all into eating her cunt out. You groan; you forgot how good she is at giving you head. Such a pity you are out of breath to praise her. At least your hips are diligently knocking into that cute little face, causing her to gag wildly.

Wow.

You are stunned at the thoughts your own mind can create. The clarity of it all makes your nth orgasm less intense. Although you have had your head full of thoughts about Kim Chaewon—her bending over and letting you take her ass, and her being bratty as you eat her out—only one thought remains clear:

I should become a smut writer.

You have read them before, and it is possibly that which has led to all this feral feelings over Chaewon. You have fantasized a lot before, but you have never actually considered writing them down or posting them.

Perhaps you could—no, you should—write them down. Maybe someone out there will like them enough. Tumblr is always a good place to start.

Determined, you wipe yourself down and clean your place up. You log into your barely touched Google Documents account, add a fresh new document, and start to write.

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tozettastone · 25 days

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RE: "there's so little F/F fanfiction," and its supposed relationship to misogyny, unexamined "fandom truly hates women," statements, and also why "eating your veggies" ala dutyfic is all kind of... inadequate and poorly expressed, in my view (and in my experience, as an AFAB person).

"Fandom hates women," is a statement that's usually written as though the person writing it does not hate women themselves. I think feminists who can't acknowledge their own misogyny are probably living the unexamined life (sorry, Socrates).

These people are right that misogyny is a problem. But they are wrong about how, why, and whether or not the amount of F/F fanfiction or female character-centric works is a proxy for measuring it.

I think there must be room to accept that among the people who happen to be assigned female at birth, even the most liberated suffer from some amount of internalised misogyny — or even just the relentless examination of their own thoughts in trying to root out the misogyny they know is in there. It's an ugly thing people really try to pretend isn't real. Feminists are also misogynists. Society has raised us all ugly and correcting it is a lifestyle, not a one-and-done deep clean.

Sometimes we've thought about it so much that every line of text is haunted by the long shadow of that misogyny. I know I often start and don't finish, or finish and just don't post, my f/f fanfics. It's not just because it attracts more harassment (although it sure used to, at least; I don't know now), but also because I overthink what I'm putting into the world: Is her vulnerability in this moment an attitude of feminine weakness? Is her stoicism just me the writer falling into a bland stoic butch trope because it's easy? Am I replicating gendered things I hate in M/F fanfiction but don't notice in F/F? Is this just writing in character, or is it a sexist stereotype? Hey, what if writing "in character" IS a sexist stereotype? What does this female character, a representative of her entire constructed identity, say about women? Shall I write another scene where she cuts her soft hair and rejects pink girly things and takes her job ever so seriously as part of a power fantasy, in which the excision of femininity goes hand in hand with the attainment of that power?

Every line of text might be a new enfilade in the long identity war. It's Schrodinger's sexism. Who's reading? What will this imply? What will they infer?

I just feel like, personally, until you can exist in society as someone that other people view as a woman, in a way that isn't being perpetually dissected and examined (by yourself, by others, by the people who feel insecure and defensive and want to respond to this saying "uhmmm sweetie that's YOUR problem, I'm an enlightened woman who genders and fucks how I want actually, YOU'RE the only misogynist here, you just suck," as though that's not yet another permutation of exactly the high-pressure, high-critique behaviour I just described), there will simply be fewer people putting their writing about female characters (and by extension F/F) into the public eye, and fewer people who want to do that writing at all.

It's just so fucking exhausting. I think it must be nice, sometimes, writing deathly boring (to me) M/F romance that openly embraces gender stereotypes, where she's always taken by surprise, and he's always competent. Ha.

But then you attempt a M/M romance, and you have to think, "isn't writing masculinity as the totally unexamined default actually kind of an act of collusion, too?" It doesn't have to be. But it sure can be, when you feel like this. And then you throw your laptop out the window. (I'm writing this on my phone. How did you guess?)

You have to draw a line somewhere, horribly, between your existence in a politicised body, your representation of politicised bodies in your art, and your existence as an individual who wants to enjoy their fucking hobby.

Maybe that means you delete all your social media accounts and go herd goats on a mountainside. Or you write about aliens for five years and give them whatever genitals you feel like today. But, like, listen. It's going to be fine. Gender is made up. I know, I know, pretty much everyone else thinks it's a holy binary, just like good and evil, and you have to live in the same world with them, sending coded gender messages all day every day and unable to stop. I know. But it is made up anyway.

Key takeaways: People should write whatever they enjoy writing and kind of just worry less about it. Worrying isn't helping you make fun art. And the amount of fanfiction about female characters and F/F relationships is a poor proxy for whatever we think we mean when we say, "fandom hates women."

#tozette.txt #just venting lol #I do not write long unhinged posts like this very often anymore #but what's a blog for if not to have a whinge about fandom wank now and again #fandom wank

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hold-my-dr-pepper · 2 months

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ok ok ok. incoming tw for sui ide mentions and correlating depression mentions, but i feel like this needs to be said

those posts that say "this is your sign to stay alive !!! you are loved !!!" are all good and well meaning, but as a fellow sufferer of the Big Sad, at least for me, these are quite unhelpful. they dont know you. they dont interact with you. its like filming buying a homeless person a $1 mcdonalds coffee.

so im gonna share some tips and general thoughts that have helped me.

when you want to hurt yourself:

-get a rubber band/hair tie, wear it around your wrist, and snap it. my psychiatrist actually recommended i do this. it stings a bit, but ultimately, it's better than taking a knife to your arm.

-draw with a red marker on the body area you want to hurt. stitches are my go-to, but it can be literally anything. try not to use the super thin tipped markers if you can help it because you could start digging them into your skin, and thats counterproductive.

if anyone else has tips for this specific section, feel free to chime in.

when you're having serious thoughts about killing yourself:

-write. journal, story, ramble. just write. write your thoughts and feelings in a notebook. project your feelings onto a fictional character (try not to get too attached to the character you're killing). depending on what you write, it can also be distracting and help get your mind off the Thoughts (comedy, romance, the like).

-text/call/talk to someone. doesn't have to be a professional at first. doesn't have to be about suicide either. text a friend, try to talk about other topics (jokes, fandoms, music, literally anything). if they notice something's off/if you want to tell them outright, TELL. THEM. more likely than not, they want to help you help yourself and will tell an adult, or even call a hotline, for you.

-tell your parents. im sure i'll get backlash for this, but no matter the situation, most parents genuinely do not want their child dead. they will help you. if they dont, burn them to the ground go back to the previous point, and try talking to a friend instead.

-keep the lights on. being such a raccoon myself, i enjoy sitting in the dark. it can be comfortable. but it can also be dangerous. i dont know if there's some science behind it, but for me, turning on my bedroom lights and/or opening the window blind has at least distracted me from the more serious Thoughts.

these are all the coping mechanisms i can think of off the top of my head. i might edit this later if i think of more. this is a heavier topic than what i usually talk about, but what with recent personal events and other things, i generally wanted to get this off my chest.

additions to the lists are appreciated, but i judt wanted to try and help other people yk

make sure you know your hotline numbers and hospital locations, and stay safe. 🫶🏻

#tw sui ide #depression tw #rant/vent #lord this took me forever to type i kept making typos it was so ANNOYING #idk how to like end this post so uh #drop kicks this post into the void

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bizaar · 2 years

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New Kid On the Block

Pairings: Eddie Munson x Female Reader

Summary: You're new in town and not exactly fitting in at Hawkins High, and a certain misfit metal head is the only person to treat you with even a modicum of human kindness.

Word Count: 8k

Warnings: Fluff, bullying, swearing.

A.N.: I heavily debated whether this was even worth posting considering its BARELY implied fluffiness, but I figured we could all use a little platonic Eddie-fic. It's an end of season one timeline, Nov - Dec 1983.

Hawkins is not much like your old town, nestled in sporadic patches of woods and dotted with bodies of water of varying sizes.

It’s of those sleepy small towns in the shadow of a major metropolitan city that suffers from a devastating lack of traffic. People who don’t live there tend to drive right through on their way to Indianapolis, and people who do live in Hawkins… also tend to go to Indianapolis for things.

At least you assume, you haven’t lived here long enough to say for certain and you don’t have any friends to tell you otherwise. Hawkins, being the conservative little hamlet it is, has a small three-screen movie theatre, an arcade, a public library, there’s even a Radio Shack, but no mall, no major restaurants or recreation centers, not even a goddamn Taco Bell.

The thing you are most chagrined about is its lack of any kind of decent record store. If you want to go to a Sam Goody, you’re going to have to head into the city, and considering your lack of a license or car, you’re fairly certain that’s not going to happen any time soon, not unless you make some friends who drive.

Yet another thing you are certain won’t be happening any time soon.

1983 is not your year. You know this well before November, but as the year draws to a swift and terrible close, it seems hell-bent on making sure you know just how much it hates you.

Being the new kid in a town that seems predestined to dislike you is hard enough without missing the first three months of school.

The student body’s opinion of you has somehow been set in stone as wholly negative, and by your second week, you are only half surprised to find that you already have a bully.

Her name is Debbie Blake. You don’t know where she came from or what in the hell her problem with you could possibly be, but she apparently hates you well enough to go out of her way to torment you.

You have spent hours racking your brain, trying to recall if you’d said or done anything that could have possibly offended her over the very short time you have been enrolled in Hawkins High, and thus far you have come up empty.

All you can guess is that she’s a cheerleader, she’s pretty and semi-popular, and that’s about as deep as the well of her personality goes.

Girls like that are mean for sport.

You wish you had been thinking about all that as you arrived at school that morning.

The air is crisp with the full force of autumn and the first chill of a promised snowfall. As such, you’re bundled in a combination of a favorite white sweatshirt sporting the logo of a local radio station from back home beneath an oversized jean jacket. The walk across town to school is far, but you’ve come to appreciate the long solitude, just you and whoever happens to be keeping you company from the portable haven of your walkman.

This morning it is The Edge of Seventeen, and Stevie Nicks has lulled you into a false sense of security as you make your way through the student parking lot.

You don’t notice Debbie and her pleated skirt bedecked toadies closing in as you weave through the cars. You’re more preoccupied with avoiding being hit by the door of a particularly shitty panel van as it swings open in front of you, and the shaggy-haired metalhead who hops down from the cab, momentarily blocking your way.

“Hey, watch out!” You snap, more startled than actually put out.

You only briefly glance at him, dark eyes beneath long lashes regarding you curiously, before you brush the shoulder of his leather jacket as you push past.

“Hey yourself, New Girl.” He says after you, slamming the door with a heavy thud.

Stevie Nicks takes you across the grass and the last stretch of pavement, and before you can reach the double doors leading into the school’s front hallway, you think you hear someone calling your name.

You weren’t aware anyone at this school even knew your name.

You foolishly pull your headphones down and turn just in time to experience the agony of having a thick icy beverage thrown in your face.

You gasp and freeze, bracing yourself against the sensation as it washes over you in a sticky wave and immediately soaks through to your skin. The morning air immediately sinks its teeth in and whispers something to you about frostbite. When you look up, there stands Debbie Blake, holding the styrofoam 7/11 cup, laughing.

“Oh my god!” She cries, “Don’t you just hate it when that happens?”

Your face burns hot with shame. You clench your jaw to keep your lower lip from trembling as a lump begins to form in your throat.

Debbie is not oblivious of your emotional state and mimics you, pushing out her bubble gum pink lips and pinching her brows together as she contorts her face into a pouting mask of feigned pity, like she wasn’t the one who just bathed you in frozen blue raspberry hell.

“Aww, don’t cry Weirdo, I’m sure it will come right out.”

Like rubbing salt in the wound, she reaches out and makes a show of brushing the ice from where it has begun to freeze to your sweatshirt.

A crowd of onlookers has begun to form around you. Devastatingly, your body has betrayed you and refuses to move, it is all you can do but watch as she rubs the blue mess deeper into the fibers of your sweatshirt.

Debbie sucks her teeth then, taking her hand back and pulling a face.

She shrugs. “Then again, maybe not.”

Her shit-eating toadies erupt into high peals of laughter and Debbie knocks your shoulder hard as she pushes past you. Each of her nasty little friends has something smart to say as they follow and your classmates react with varying degrees of amusement as they all file into the building.

Still, you are stuck to the spot where she left you.

Anger simmers in the pit of your stomach and you imagine going after her, seizing her by that high bouncing ponytail and hitting her in the face until you’ve knocked out every single one of her perfect teeth, but the urge is gone as quickly as it comes.

The morning air burns your lungs as you force yourself to take deep steadying breaths. You know that while violence very often feels like the justifiable answer, there will be nothing to protect you if it comes out that you socked Debbie in the face just for spilling a drink on you.

All that kind of reaction will do is make you out to be a psycho. That is the last thing you need right now.

You are fighting angry tears as the morning bell erupts to life, a shrill ringing to signify the start of your classes for the day. With a heavy sigh, you turn and slowly file in with the last of the stragglers, making your way down the hall, though you are not headed for your first-period Biology class.

In the far southwestern corner of the school, there is a seldom used set of restrooms you’d discovered by accident whilst hopelessly lost on your first day. The mirrors and walls are covered in writing, the overhead lights have long since died, and you’re fairly certain based on the stale tang of cigarettes and something harsher that nobody actually uses this bathroom for its intended purpose.

You shove the door open and angrily throw your backpack down onto the cracked linoleum, shrugging out of your jacket and going to the mirror to assess the damage.

Your jeans and boots are flecked with ice, which is easily discarded despite how you can feel tiny pinpricks of cold where it has seeped into your socks.

The worst of it is the gigantic blue stain that has already started to dry across the front of your sweatshirt. You hope for a moment that maybe it looks worse than it actually is there in the dim bathroom, but somehow you know better.

Serves you for wearing white, you think.

You make quick work of stepping out of your boots and turning them over to discard any melted slush before peeling the sweatshirt up tentatively over your head to discard in one of the sinks. You are further dismayed to discover that the t-shirt you have on underneath is also stained in that evil electric blue, though you should have guessed that. You could feel the ice melting in your bra as you made your way down the hall, your boots squeaking obnoxiously against the tile.

You take another deep breath in through the nose and let it out slowly, already dreading the conversation you will have to have with your mother if you can’t get this stain out.

Suddenly, there is a sharp knock at the bathroom door and it startles you enough that you nearly slip, sock footed on the tile as you are.

A hollow silence fills the air.

You brace yourself for whatever is about to come next, imagining it is either a furious teacher who has come to read you the riot act for skipping class or worse, more cheerleaders to torment you. Regardless of whatever is waiting for you on the other side of the door, you know it can’t be good.

The door creaks open ever so slightly letting in a sliver of harsh fluorescent light. Much to your surprise, you hear an almost familiar voice speaking to you from the other side of the door.

“Hey, New Girl, you decent in there?” He calls, whoever he is.

It takes you a moment to process the question, you blink stupidly at your reflection in the mirror and consider the state of yourself before answering.

“…yes?”

“Great.”

The door swings open and in steps the metalhead from the student parking lot. You stare at him for a moment in stunned silence. Never in the furthest reaches of your mind did you think he would be on the other side of that door.

He’s very familiar to you, and you can’t think why except for the fact that you literally just saw him out front. You tell yourself that you must have seen him around school, in the halls and the lunchroom maybe. He’d be hard to miss, you haven’t seen many other metalheads so openly dressed in their creed here in Hawkins, if any.

You can’t imagine what he could possibly want as he puts his hands up like he means to put you at ease. You notice he’s got something black clutched in his left hand.

“I come in peace.” He says, dark eyes darting down to your ruined t-shirt.

You fight the instinct to cover yourself. You are not sure how to react to the statement, but somehow you believe he means no harm.

“Okay…”

“I’m Eddie.” He says, gesturing to himself.

In an instant, you know exactly who he is. Even without the luxury of having friends, you’ve heard the talk about Eddie Munson. His reputation precedes him, and you know for a fact that a lot of the underclassmen are scared of him.

It is a sentiment you don’t share.

You honestly don’t think he’s all that impressive in the flesh. Worn leather jacket held together by bits and bobs that don’t precisely belong stitched into a garment, denim vest decked out in patches and pins denoting the various bands he worships, nondescript band t-shirt, torn jeans.

The way people talk about him you’d half expected he’d have Devil horns, a forked tongue, maybe.

Eddie Munson looks just like every other metalhead you’ve ever met.

Still, you tell him your name, as is only polite. Your mother may have raised you with a stunning lack of social skills, but she’d made damn sure you knew when it was time to mind your manners.

“Yeah, uh… I know, I think we have a class together,” Eddie says.

You nod, suddenly remembering exactly where you’ve seen him, tucked away in the far corner of your fourth-period Algebra class, a lone senior among juniors. Your seat is not too far from his, now that you think about it.

“Oh! Right.” Some little voice inside of you pipes up rather unhelpfully with the other name you’ve heard people using to refer to him, Eddie the Freak, “Eddie from Math.” You say.

He smiles and breathes a quizzical laugh like he finds the new nickname highly amusing.

“Yeah. Eddie from Math.”

An awkward silence blossoms between you.

You clear your throat and cross your arms, suddenly a little self-conscious to be caught in what feels like an extremely vulnerable moment by someone you’ve only just officially met,

“Sorry, what did you want?”

The question seems to take him by surprise.

“Oh, uh… nothing. I just saw what happened out there just now–”

You roll your eyes and are powerless to stop the bitter snort of humorless laughter from tearing itself out of you,

“You and everybody else in school, I imagine,”

If you’re being rude, Eddie doesn’t seem bothered by it. His gaze is very direct, but it is not unkind. If anything it feels inquisitive, like he’s really looking at you for the first time and trying to decide what he thinks. The beginnings of a smile quirk up the sides of his mouth.

“Yeah. Debbie’s a bitch.” He says slowly, then shrugs his broad shoulders, “I’ve been there and much worse, trust me…”

Another awkward silence.

This time, it’s his turn to speak up.

“Anyway, you’re new here and I thought maybe you could use some of that good old-fashioned Hawkins hospitality. The real kind, not that shit Debbie and her minions are peddling.”

Eddie pushes the black mass clutched in his hand towards you. You hesitate a moment, looking from the object to him and back again like you don’t trust that this isn’t a trap and the thing isn’t going to be full of spiders or something worse.

You level him with an uneasy look, you really don’t think you can handle any more abuse for the day. Suddenly his voice grows very soft and reassuring.

“It’s okay,” He says, “You can take it. It’s just a t-shirt, it’s not gonna bite you.”

Slowly, you unfold your hands from their protective position over your chest and carefully reach for it. Your fingers brush his when they curl into the fabric and you hold your breath as you pull.

True to his word, he lets go, and nothing happens. No creepy crawlies come spilling out as the shirt unfolds, and no alarms go off to signify you’d fallen for some kind of bizarre joke.

It’s just a t-shirt, and you and Eddie from math class, standing across from each other in the dimly lit girl’s bathroom at the far southwest corner of Hawkins High.

You can’t help but feel a little stunned at this act of kindness as you stare down at the black fabric clutched in your hands.

In the three weeks you’ve spent struggling to keep your head above water in the quagmire of Indiana’s teenage social politics, he is the first person who has thought to treat you with an iota of human kindness.

“Thank you,” you say breathlessly, embarrassingly, your eyes have become wet.

Eddie stuffs his hands into his pockets and shrugs his shoulders again, casting his eyes to the floor like he is trying to afford you a little privacy in your emotions,

“Hey, everybody needs a little help sometimes, right?”

You wipe your eyes and do your best to smile at him, before slipping into one of the stalls and making quick work of stripping off your soiled t-shirt. You pull the new one over your head and are surprised to find the material is softer than you’d expected it to be.

The fit is a tad big, but not uncomfortably so, and it has an old smell like it’s been sitting in a cardboard box for an indeterminate amount of time. It’s strange if not entirely unpleasant.

When you emerge, you find you are oddly disappointed to see that Eddie is gone.

Of course, you didn’t expect him to hang around a half-derelict girl’s restroom and wait for you, you don’t know him, and you’re certain he’s got his own class he’d skipped out on to come and rescue you from further public humiliation.

Even so, you are sad to see him go. Somehow it feels like you’ve missed out on the opportunity to make a friend.

You turn back to the mirror to examine yourself and are caught staring at the front of your new shirt. Where you’d assumed it was a plain black tee, you see that there is a logo, a little demon-faced character applied to the middle of the shirt in a slapdash way.

The words “Hellfire Club” are written above him in a semi-indiscernible script.

You don’t know what it means, but you like it, despite the nagging feeling in the back of your mind telling you you might be subjected to further abuse for wearing demonic iconography in a public school sphere.

All the same, you push that from your mind and turn your attention back to your sweatshirt.

You spend the better part of an hour scrubbing and wetting and scrubbing and rewetting the stain, playing the morning’s interactions over and over in your head on an infinite loop.

It’s only the shrill ringing of the bell to signify the end of first period that causes you to rethink the whole endeavor. Just as you feared, all your efforts were for not, the blue stain splashed across the front is not any less vibrant than it was when you started.

You heave a dejected sigh, gather your belongings and take one final look at what up until this morning had been your favorite sweatshirt, then you wad it up and deposit it forlornly into the nearest trash can.

+++

The next few weeks go about as poorly as the first as you continue to fail to acclimate with the local population.

Hawkins High offers a plethora of intramural sports and extracurricular activities, none of which particularly appeal to you, which throws a bit of a wrench in your plans.

For the lack of any ability to make friends the good old-fashioned way, you had hoped you might be able to force it through team-building activities.

No such luck.

You don’t see much of Eddie, from what you understand he skips class about as often as he cares to attend, and when you do see him he doesn’t acknowledge you. You can’t muster the energy to let your feelings be too hurt over it, you’re far too busy with other pressing matters.

Debbie and her toadies have set about making your life a living hell like it pays their bills, and somehow, that is not even the worst development in your school year.

You have started to get pulled into regular meetings with the guidance counselor, Ms. Kim, who has taken a special interest in you after noticing your apparent lack of any kind of social group.

It is here you’d found yourself one rainy afternoon in late-December, the last day of school before the respite of the holiday break, unceremoniously pulled out of the hallway and into Ms. Kim’s office while you were attempting to make your way off campus to start the long trek home.

You didn’t hear most of what she’d had to say to you, consider the tiny, highly distracting animatronic Santa Claus sitting on her desk. You couldn’t stop yourself from staring at it while she droned on and on about the importance of making connections in your classes, wondering if the Santa ran on batteries or if maybe it was supposed to dance.

You had discreetly started looking for the “on” button, trying to decide whether or not you could get away with pushing it when Ms. Kim realized she was making no headway with you and sent you on your way. More the better for you, you have a long cold walk home ahead of you, one you should already have been well into.

The hallways are all but deserted as you make your way towards the foyer, your shoes make hard noises against the slick linoleum. You are distracted as you go, fumbling with changing the tape out of your walkman, having decided it is not a John Denver kind of afternoon and that you will need the dulcet themes of Dreamboat Annie to keep you company on your way home. You are woefully unaware of the sharks in the water.

You round the corner and are alerted to the sound of approaching voices, the sight of gold and green uniforms sending a spike of adrenaline surging through your body as you clap eyes on Debbie headed your way, flanked by two of the minions she has on regular rotation for your daily torment.

Thankfully, they have not noticed you, and you take the opportunity to turn on your heel and go right back around the corner from which you’d come. You stash your walkman and break into a run, not trusting that the psychotic pompom twirlers aren’t right at your heels, ready to seize you in their perfectly polished talons and drag you kicking and screaming off to some corner to devour your soul or whatever it is that cheerleaders do after practice.

For lack of any better option, you duck into the first room you come across and unintentionally slam the heavy door behind you, scaring the bejesus out of the person you didn’t realize would be inside.

It’s the drama room, set up in the style of a black box theatre, folding seating vaulting ever so slightly down to bottom out in an arena-like flooring that serves as what would be an elevated stage in a normal theatre setting.

Standing at the bottom is Eddie Munson, hand on his chest like he was recovering from the minor heart attack you’d just given him.

“Jesus Christ, man!” He half shouts when you arrive.

You press yourself against the door and shush him, listening hard for the sound of approaching cheerleaders.

Eddie is momentarily very put out to not only have been scared out of his wits but also summarily shushed by the strange girl who has just come crashing headlong into his sanctuary. Uninvited, no less. It takes him a moment, but he eventually recognizes you, and his tone steadily changes.

“Oh, hey, New Girl,” He says, “You scared the hell out of me…”

You’re too busy looking over your shoulder to answer. You can’t see much through the tiny inset glass in the heavy door, but to your knowledge, there are no pursuing bullies stalking the halls. You let yourself breathe a little and hope that maybe this time you got lucky enough to evade capture.

“Hey,” Eddie calls from the stage, “You okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

You turn your attention to the room then and really notice Eddie for the first time. He looks more or less the same as he always does, give or take a different band tee. You notice that today he has swapped his white sneakers for a pair of beat-up combat boots, due to the rain you assume. The toe of his left boot is held together by an alarming amount of silver duct tape, like the muzzled maw of a great beast.

“Hello?” Eddie calls, “Earth to New Girl.”

“Sorry,” you say breathlessly, “I was just… uh… sorry, is it okay if I hide in here for a little bit?”

“Hide?” He asks, looking around like he’s completely bewildered by the concept that someone would want to hide in this room. Still, he shrugs and nods, “Yeah, sure I guess.”

“Thanks,”

You stand and make your way down the steps to a middle row of the small theatre, where you park yourself in an aisle seat and breathe a sigh of relief.

Eddie eventually goes back to what he was doing, setting up folding chairs around what appears to be three card tables put together, though he’s decidedly distracted, peering over at you with obvious curiosity.

He eventually endeavors to break the silence.

“Cool shirt by the way,” Eddie says, clarifying when you give him a puzzled look, “Dark Side of the Moon?”

You look down at the prism logo splashed across your chest and feel just a little bit silly for not immediately understanding,

“Oh!” You say, “Thank you.”

“You like Pink Floyd?”

“I do.”

After a moment, he gestures vaguely to himself,

“I’m more partial to The Wall but Dark Side of the Moon rocks too…”

Somehow that information checks out, but you fail to say whether or not you agree.

Another one of those awkward pauses blooms between you as Eddie’s nervous attempt at filling the silence falls flat. You’re still a bit too frazzled to realize you are being a poor conversation partner.

After another long pause, he tries again.

“So,” he says, drawing the word out lyrically, “What are we hiding from?”

Now here is something you’re of a mind to talk about.

“Psychotic fucking cheerleaders,” You huff.

Eddie nods sagely like he knows precisely what you mean.

“Debbie Blake, right?”

You shake your head incredulously and run your hands over your face. You hadn’t realized just how stressed you were about it until this very moment.

“I swear to God she’s trying to kill me. I don’t know what I did to piss her off but she is bound and determined.”

Eddie straightens, abandoning his task downstage, and takes a tentative step towards you, and then another.

“You probably didn’t actually do anything to her. People around here just don’t like it when you’re different.”

That statement strikes you with a strange and bitter tang in the back of your throat.

You blow out a harsh, shaky breath to try and dissipate the bad feeling wheeling in the hollow of your chest. Frustratingly - embarrassingly- your eyes are wet again, though this time from the breaking dam of the state of constant stress you’ve existed in for the better part of a month rather than anything else.

You have to fight to keep your voice steady as you speak, throwing up your hands in defeat.

“I haven’t even been here long enough to be different.”

The silence that follows is deafening, and you feel warmth bleeding into your cheeks as you try to compose yourself, wiping your eyes and clearing your throat.

That's twice now you’ve become misty-eyed in front of Eddie, and you can’t shake the embarrassment you feel about it. You can’t imagine what he must think of you, the weepy-eyed new girl always in need of some kind of rescue. You imagine it must be getting very old rather quickly.

In spite of all that, Eddie climbs the stairs and settles into the seat in front of you, crossing his arms over the back of the chair and pulling a sympathetic face.

“You’re the new kid.” He says matter of factly, “It’s reason enough for them.”

It feels like a noose looping around your neck, the death sentence of “they just don’t like you”, and after all the time you’d spent trying to fit in, to be normal.

You can’t deny that you had taken a quiet solace in thinking that somehow your torment was justified, that you had committed some kind of invisible faux pas that had driven your classmates to hate you for good reason, but hearing something like that from someone like Eddie sends that hope sailing out of your grasp.

You find that you have to take a deep breath to steady yourself.

He is not unaware of the effect it has taken on you.

“You know,” He starts to say, slipping into that gentle tone again, “I’d love to give you some sage advice and tell you it gets easier the longer you’re here, but take it from me, one misfit to another … it’s probably always gonna suck this bad.”

In spite of yourself, you laugh.

“That doesn’t make me feel any better.”

Eddie smiles broadly at you in a way that warms your insides.

“Made you laugh though.” He says, “It’s like I said, I’ve been here and much worse. And I had to do this part all by myself, so you’re already doing better than I was.”

You sigh and wipe your eyes. “Sure feels like I’m by myself.”

Eddie pulls a face and feigns offense.

“First of all, how dare you? I’m sitting right here.”

It makes you laugh again. He’s got a wicked amount of charisma, you have to give him that.

“Hey, look at that, I’m on a roll,” Eddie says.

For the first time since you met him, a silence blossoms between you that isn’t awkward.

You sit in quiet awe at the comfort his presence brings you, and you start to let yourself think that maybe this is what it feels like to have a friend. It’s a dangerous game, but it’s all you have to cling to.

Despite what you’d previously said, you can’t deny that having someone to commiserate with you does make you feel better. Better enough to change the subject at least.

“So, what is all this? Drama club?” You ask, gesturing to the stage and the table set up behind him.

Since your first official meeting in the southwestern bathroom a few weeks back, you have had the pleasure of witnessing the full effect of Eddie Munson, standing on tables, sermonizing, antagonizing other students.

Drama would make some kind of sense to you if it weren’t for the face he pulls in response to the question, like he can’t even fathom the concept of joining the drama club.

“No way, man. This is Hellfire.”

You stare at Eddie, uncomprehending like that is supposed to mean something to you. Then you remember the words printed across the shirt he’d given you back in November.

“Oh!” You gasp, pulling open your bag and rummaging through it until books and pencils and paperwork give way to reveal the black material shoved all the way to the bottom. You’d been carrying it around for weeks.

You liberate it from its prison and offer it to Eddie,

“I’ve been meaning to give this back to you.”

“Keep it.” He says, dismissing you with a flippant wave of his ring-bedecked hand, “We’re getting new ones anyway. Consider yourself an honorary member.”

Slowly, you thank him and stuff it back into your backpack, secretly very pleased to get to keep the shirt you’d since grown very fond of.

You suddenly can’t help yourself from asking, the curiosity has been gnawing at you for weeks and with no outlet with which to learn, the question has all but consumed you.

“What is Hellfire anyway?” You ask,

“It’s a D&D club.” He says matter-of-factly, clarifying when you give him a quizzical look, “Dungeons and Dragons? Never heard of it?”

You feel yourself scrunching your features and bite the inside of your mouth. “I don’t think so, no.”

Eddie pushes up from his seat and starts back down to the table he’d been setting up when you arrived.

“Come see,” He says, waving you over.

You tuck your backpack into your seat and follow him down the few remaining steps.

When you reach the bottom, Eddie spreads his arms over the table theatrically, “This… is Hellfire,” he says.

Across the table is scattered the various accouterments of the game, books, stacks of dog-eared paper scribbled over across every inch, little plastic character maquettes, and one rather large drawstring bag that upon further investigation you discover is full of dice of various shapes and size.

You recognize the same demon-faced logo from the shirt drawn crudely on the front of a manila folder.

You pick up one of the folders and read the cover aloud.

“Advanced Dungeons and Dragons … dungeon master screen… who’s the Dungeon Master?”

Eddie gestures grandly to himself, “That would be me. I sort of run the whole thing.”

“And what exactly does a Dungeon Master do?”

“Runs the campaign,” he says, “Tells the story and guides the players through encounters. Every player’s got their own character with special abilities that build up a party, and that party goes on quests and adventures and junk,”

Suddenly, like a lightbulb being switched on, your brain delivers you a tiny sliver of context.

“Oh wait,” You say, “I think I have heard of this. It’s that game that nerds play in their mom’s basements, right? Like with wizards and monsters and shit?”

Once again, if you’re being rude Eddie doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, he goes as far as to laugh at the statement. It’s a light, musical sound that puts you at ease.

“Harsh, but sure, I guess some people play in their mom’s basement.”

“But you play here.”

You look around the theatre and really take it in for the first time. It’s moody, atmospheric, perhaps even dungeon-like. You understand how it could help set the stage for the game.

Eddie is watching you closely when you look back at him.

“It’s as good a place as any.” He says.

“I didn’t think people made school clubs for that kind of thing.”

He suddenly levels you with a hard look, like the words don’t sit well with him.

“That kind of thing.” He echoes, and you think you detect a hint of bitterness, “You mean like devil worship and ritual sacrifice.”

His tone is enough to make you sheepish. Somehow you manage not to crawl into yourself.

“So there’s none of that, then?” You tease,

Eddie shakes his head.

“We’re a group of like-minded individuals who like to get together and talk about our interests, same as any other club, except instead of chess or something we’re playing a fantasy game,”

You get the sense that he’s worn this argument out. You can’t imagine having to defend your interests so stridently when it’s so publicly condemned—misunderstood as you now understand.

“How often do you guys play?” You ask, bending to examine the intricate figurines set out on the table.

Some are painted, most are not.

“A couple times a month. Planning the campaigns takes time. Tonight’s kind of a big one, though. We’re wrapping up our session before everybody goes on Winter break. Big boss fight, it should be pretty fun.”

You zero in on one of the larger figurines, a grotesque creature in the shape of a ball with dozens of tentacles protruding outward from one large eye and a gaping toothy maw, both of which take up most of the real estate of its body.

“I like this one.” You say, pointing to the cyclops creature and giving Eddie a sidelong glance.

“That’s the big boss himself.” He explains, “The Beholder.”

You pick the figurine up to better examine it, then present it to Eddie in a way you hope is grand.

“Behold.” You say.

He smiles and crosses his arms, hugging his biceps as he rocks back on his heels.

“You could come play with us, you know,” He posits, “After the break, I mean. We’re always looking for new members, and collecting little lost sheep is sort of our specialty.”

“Is that what I am?” You ask, leveling him with a sly look, “A lost sheep?”

“I mean, this is the second time I’ve found you hiding from predators in a disused corner of the school.”

You pull a face, but you can’t deny there is truth in that.

You return the Beholder to his position on the table and stuff your hands into your pockets,

“Thanks, but I think I’ll pass.” You say, despite how you feel you can hear Ms. Kim’s voice in the back of your mind, tiny, ever so slightly condescending, imploring you to take a chance at making friends. “I’ve never been much for roll play. Sorry.”

Eddie raises his hands to show he takes no offense to the rejection.

“It’s not for everybody. Offer stands if you change your mind, though.”

You smile, once again struck by the kindness he doesn’t have to think twice to extend to you and glance reflexively at your watch.

5:15.

Your heart leaps into your throat.

“Oh shit!” You gasp, “I gotta go!”

You turn on your heel and vault up the steps, grabbing your bag and heading for the door. You are halfway certain your mother has already put in a phone call to the Hawkins police department to report you as a missing person when you remember your manners.

You stop and turn to address Eddie one more time before you have to begin your mad dash home,

“Hey. Thanks for the sanctuary, this was … this was fun.” You say.

And you mean it, even if you didn’t share in his enthusiasm for the game, you enjoyed talking with Eddie. Evidently, enough that over an hour had flown by without your noticing.

The sentiment seems to take him by surprise and Eddie gestures vaguely, seemingly at a loss for words.

“Oh, yeah, it’s no problem. Sanctuary is what I do best.” He finally manages to say.

You turn to start up the steps again when Eddie calls out to you.

“Hey, uh… this might sound a little weird but, are you driving? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in the parking lot.”

You can’t stop yourself from smiling, “You mean besides when you almost took me out with your door?”

“Yeah, besides that.” He says, waving the thought away.

You giggle, which is odd because you’re not the giggling type, but suddenly you’re feeling an emotion you can only think to describe as giddy. You have to subtly pinch yourself to try and come back down to earth.

“Yeah, no I don’t - I don’t drive. I’m walking.”

“I mean… Do you want a ride home?” He asks, stuffing his hands in his pockets like he suddenly doesn’t know what to do with them.

The offer itself takes you by surprise and you find yourself declining on instinct.

“Oh! No, that’s okay. Thanks.”

Eddie raises his eyebrows like he genuinely didn’t expect you to refuse.

“You sure?” He asks, “It’s probably dark by now, and with the rain?”

A brief silence hangs between you like he’s holding the floor open for you to reconsider. Still, you decline.

“Yeah no, it’s only like a ten-minute walk.”

You kick yourself for saying that. You know very well that the walk home is much longer than ten minutes when made in broad daylight, and it is a truth universally known that all long walks are made that much longer under cover of darkness.

Almost as if somehow he knows you aren’t being honest about the distance, Eddie throws up his hands.

“Could be a five-minute drive?” He says, his voice lilting in a sing-song way.

In spite of yourself, you’re grinning again.

“I like walking,” You insist.

“I like driving.”

You find yourself briefly considering it before your eyes fall upon the figurines laid out on the table, “I don’t want to make you miss your club.”

“Nah, don’t worry.” He says, starting up the stairs like he’s already made up his mind to drive you, regardless of what you say. “I’m the boss, remember? They can’t start without me.”

“Really, Eddie, it’s okay.”

You surprise yourself by saying his name, and strangely enough, you like the way it feels on your tongue. You have to stop yourself from saying it again just to keep it there a little longer.

“No, come on. It’s dark, it’s raining. Come on, I insist.”

Suddenly, he’s standing on the step below you and you’re face to face. He’s looking expectantly at you in a way that is making your insides go squirmy for reasons you can’t quite comprehend and you feel the muscles in your face starting to ache for much you’ve been smiling over the past hour. You suddenly notice that he has the softest, prettiest eyes, like dark pools of satin. You bite the inside of your cheek and briefly consider turning him down once and for all, particularly considering the state of your insides and the butterflies that have begun to make residence there, but Eddie from math class is kind, despite what his reputation suggests, and the walk home is very long.

“Okay.” You finally say, slowly. Carefully.

His face lights up in another one of those big broad smiles and your insides twist in on themselves again, “Okay.” He says, “Great, let’s go then.”

It isn’t completely dark by the time you emerge from the school, but it is dark enough that Hawkins, in all its small-town glory, would have forced you to walk a long stretch of the way in pitch darkness due to an inexplicable lack of streetlights along your route. You’re suddenly very glad you’d let Eddie talk you into taking that ride.

The rain has stopped, the air is thick with the smell of creosote, and the pavement crunches underfoot as you follow him across the parking lot, angling towards his large, semi-shitty panel van sitting at the far end of the lot like a crouching beast. It is not the only car in the lot, much to your chagrin.

The cheerleaders have joined the basketball team, and they all stand gathered around their various expensive vehicles, probably each revealed with a bow waiting for them outside their houses on their sixteenth birthdays.

You’d gotten a crisp twenty-dollar bill for your sweet sixteen and a note explaining that your mother was working late and there were leftovers in the fridge, and you’d been happy to receive it. You’d put that money towards your precious walkman.

The social elite of Hawkins High grows strangely quiet as you pass them. You can feel them watching you with their eyes out on stalks like they can’t believe what they’re seeing.

Eddie Munson and the weird new girl. What could they possibly be doing together on this dark, Friday evening in mid-December? You can’t even begin to imagine what kind of rumors this will spark.

If he’s bothered by their staring, Eddie does an incredible job at not showing it, meanwhile, you are exhausting all of your willpower in fighting the urge to hide behind him just to try and escape being looked at with such severity.

“My adoring public,” Eddie explains with notable sarcasm.

Mine too, you want to say, but anxiety has wired your jaw shut.

It takes what feels like a very long time to reach the van, and when you do, Eddie makes the gentlemanly effort to open the passenger door for you and hold it while you climb up into the cab. The heavy door swings shut with a slam and you watch as he circles around to climb in on the driver’s side.

“Okay. So do we want music or quiet reflection?” Eddie asks, as he settles in.

He fishes his keys from his pocket and twists them in the ignition. The engine roars to life and his stereo blares an indistinct metal. Eddie quickly reaches out to turn down the volume, waiting for your answer.

“Music is good,” you say immediately, though you are struck by the sweetness of his thinking to ask.

He leans over and pops open the glove compartment at your knees, instructing you to “find something you like” as he shifts the van into drive and you begin to move towards the edge of the parking lot. You lean forward to try and better examine the mess of tapes he has piled up in the little drawer, squinting against the dark.

“Alright, my Lady,” Eddie says as you roll up to the stop sign, “Where am I taking you?”

“Gloucester and Cornwallis.” You say, absentmindedly thumbing through his cassettes.

Eddie stomps the brakes a little harder than you’d expected, your lack of a safety belt causing you to lurch forward in your seat. You catch yourself with a palm against the dashboard as Eddie swings his head around to level you with a very pointed look.

“What?” You ask, suddenly a little worried that you said something wrong.

“Gloucester and Cornwallis?” He echoes, like he can’t believe what he’s hearing.

“What about it?”

He leans back a little like he needs to take a better look at you.

“That ain’t no ten-minute walk, Babe.” He says, and you feel warmth creeping into your face. He’d called you babe. Something in you is suddenly ravenous to hear him say it again. “That’s clear across town.”

Strident concern for your wellbeing oozes off of his tone and you can’t stop yourself from bleating out a peal of incredulous laughter. You’ve been a latchkey kid so long you might as well share the same creed with the postman, Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night…

“I told you you didn’t have to drive me!“ you insist, “If it’s too far I’ll get out and walk”.

You pull the handle of your door and start to push it open but Eddie is already shaking his head, his shaggy brown locks bouncing as he reaches across you to grab the door. His fingers curl over yours as he takes hold of the handle and you freeze as he pulls your door shut.

“No way. Absolutely not. I said I’m driving you, so I’m driving.” He insists, and then, “Put your seatbelt on.”

“You’re the boss.” You hum, pulling the belt across your midsection

Once it is clicked into place, Eddie puts his foot on the gas and pulls out onto Cherry Street, a straight-through town shot up to Gloucester.

You’re back to examining his collection of tapes, stifling a smile as you listen to him mutter angrily to himself about so-called ten-minute walks in the dark.

“You walk that far every day?”

You nod, “Every day, to and from.”

“Jesus,” he mumbles, “You do like walking.”

An easy silence falls over the cab after that, the sound of the radio is barely audible.

You’re not surprised to discover that Eddie’s collection is mostly generic metal. Bands you’ve heard of, bands you haven’t. You flip through his tapes until finally, you come across something that speaks to you.

“What about this?” You ask, retrieving it from the glovebox and holding it up for Eddie’s approval. He glances at you and immediately shakes his head,

“No, don’t show me,” He says excitedly, all thoughts of your daily commute forgotten. He punches a button on his stereo, ejecting the current tape from the cradle and tossing it carelessly over his shoulder. “Surprise me.”

You can’t deny that you are slightly horrified at how he treats his cassettes, thinking of your own pristine box of alphabetized tapes at home, but you feel a nervous trill of excitement in your chest as you push the tape into the cradle and let the machine take it. You sit back and tilt your head toward the stereo.

“You’re gonna want to crank it.” You say.

Eddie grins at you and obliges.

“Atta girl,” he says. You’re blushing again.

After a moment of mechanical whirring, the song starts up with a guitar riff you know very well. You’d spent hours and hours listening to your own copy of this cassette until tragically it had exploded into that dreaded ball of scrambled tape.

The excellence of your choice is not lost on Eddie, whose face splits into another one of those bright, broad smiles as Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song blares from the speakers.

“Oh yes,” He says, heeding your previous advice and further cranking the volume of the stereo, “Great choice!”

You fail to swallow the smile lighting up your face, happy to have received the Munson seal of approval and laughing when Eddie starts throwing his head back and forth in the sheer joy of rock music. It’s infectious, and before you realize it, you’re both shouting the lyrics, despite how you can barely hear yourself over the pounding music.

You can only imagine the picture you must paint to the innocent bystanders of Hawkins, milling about the main street as you come barreling down the road, music blaring. You half expect to get pulled over, and you are half as much surprised when it doesn’t happen.

The song goes on to its grand finish before cycling to the next track, and the sound on the stereo is dialed back to a reasonable volume. Your heart is pounding and you’re half way to giddy in a way that only singing along to very loud music can make you feel.

Eddie pushes his hair back out of his face, “So have you been pulled in to see Ms. Kim yet?” He asks.

“Yeah, today actually.” You say, “She’s worried I’m not acclimating to the local population.”

He hums thoughtfully, “It stresses them out when the new kids don’t conform right away. It’s like they think you’re more inclined to go postal or something. Don’t be surprised if she starts trying to get you to join a club after the holidays.”

You laugh humorlessly and think back on the exchange you’d had with Ms. Kim only a few hours before.

“She also wanted to know how that whole thing with that Byers kid was affecting me,”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, I guess she assumed I know his brother because we’re both…” you trail off as you try to think of a delicate way to put it.

“Social outcasts?” Eddie posits,

You breathe out hard through your nose, “I think the word she was angling towards was weirdos,”

He seems to find that endlessly amusing, “For the love of God, please, make my day and tell me that she actually called you a weirdo”

You scrunch your nose and try to let him down gently, “It was more implied than actually said,”

Eddie feigns disappointment and hits the steering wheel with the heel of his palm. “Damn,”

“Sorry.”

Before you know it, you’re rounding the corner onto Gloucester and pulling up to the front of your house. The lights are on and you can only just imagine your mother, chain smoking and wearing a groove into the carpet from all her frantic pacing.

Eddie throws the van into park and gestures grandly to your house.

“There you are, my lady, safe and sound, as promised.”

“Thank you, good sir, for the ride, the stimulating conversation, and the music.” You unbuckle your seatbelt and begin gathering your backpack and the rest of your belongings as you prepare to step out.

“Anytime.” He says, and you think he means it.

You smile at him and try to push down the warmth blossoming in your chest as you pull the door handle. The night air is cold and crisp with the leftovers of the rain. You are almost immediately shivering as you hop down from the van, but as you turn to shut the door behind you, Eddie stops you, same as he had on the stairs back at school.

“Hey,” He says in a way that almost reads as sheepish, “I feel like I should probably warn you, this…?” He gestures between himself and you, “…isn’t gonna make you popular with your friends. Hanging out with the freak kind of makes your a freak by default,”

You pretend to consider it, though only for the briefest of moments. “Everybody already thinks I’m a freak, and I don’t have any friends.” You say, throwing up your hands.

Eddie leans over the steering wheel and levels you with a pointed look.

“Oh come on,” He says, “What am I, chopped liver?”

Your heart leaps into your throat.

“Are we friends?” You ask, only half teasing.

The muscles in your face are starting to hurt again from how widely you are grinning.

“We could be, if you wanted to.”

Again, you are stunned by how effortless it is for Eddie to extend a little bit of kindness. It might not mean much to him, asking you to be friends, but to you it’s everything. You don’t think you could have spoken at that moment if your life depended on it, all you can do is nod emphatically and hope you don’t look too eager.

Eddie smiles another one of those big broad smiles at you and your insides go squirrely.

“Okay, Weirdo. I’ll see you at school.”

You shut the door and start up the grass towards your house, imagining you are glowing for how bright you feel.

Just as you’re about to reach the front porch, you hear Eddie shout your name. He revvs the engine as Immigrant Song kicks up again, cranked all the way up for the full effect.

You turn around once more and can’t stop yourself from laughing out loud when Eddie sticks out his tongue and throws up the horns, full rock and roll energy on display as he stomps the gas and roars off down the street. The familiar riff can be heard blasting through your neighborhood, even as the van whips around the corner and disappears from sight.

You watch him until he’s gone, then turn back to the house to find your mother standing in the doorway, a scandalized look on her face.

“What in the world was that?!” She demands, hands on her hips.

You stare at her for a long moment of silence, contemplating trying to explain yourself, before you smile and simply say “I made a friend.”

#eddie munson x female reader #eddie munson fic #reader insert #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson imagine #stranger things fic #eddie munson #stranger things

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doubleddenden · 4 months

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Okay I had a whole thing typed that was my review for the new Pokémon dropped in Indigo Disk, but tumblr ate it, so take 2

Starting with my favorite, Archaludon. It's a dragon, a kaiju, also a stapler remover, also a bridge with power cables inside. This is a really cool design overall and fixes what I dislike about Duraludon, and it's fun to play with. 9/10

Hydrapple fixes what I dislike about Dipplin, but does make Flapple and Appletun a bit obsolete. Regardless, it's a fun idea and concept- I love that 7 Syrpents (which I guess aren't individually pokemon on their own? Slowbro Shelder situation I guess) make up 1 pokemon. It's silly but fun. 8/10

Also these two are neat because the concepts tie into New York/ Unova if we look at it through lense of Archaludon's Sky Arrow Bridge being based on Brooklyn Bridge and Rainbow Bridge, and Hydrapple clearly being a Big Apple reference. Very creative

Onto the paradoxes

Raging Bolt is interesting. I prefer Raikou, and I'll be the first to admit that I do not give a shit about how many cultural or historical references are in a design, if it looks like shit its a shit design. But this design is pretty okay, and because of that I can appreciate ALL of the inspirations that went into its design.

First off, with the Beast Paradoxes drawing inspiration from dinosaurs, we have Raging Bolt as the Thunder Lizard- aka Brontosaurus. That alone is meat, but it's still pretty mammalian compared to Walking Wake- that's because there's references to something called a Questing Beast. In Medieval times, before the age of cameras or fact checking, a description of an animal far far away- such a giraffe- can get twisted abd distorted via several games of telephone until we get to a creature that combines the lower body of a leopard and deer and the neck and head of a snake- aka the Questing Beast. Raging Bolt plays a bit with all of these ideas in a pretty unique and fun way. 8/10

Iron Crown- admittedly the Justice Paradoxes suffer a bit from the same "just make it a robot" mentality that plagues other Violet Paradoxes, but the Swords of Justice got the better end of it, I'd say. Iron Crowns in particular actually fixes what I hate about Cobalion by adding segments to the legs and thus making them feel less like bipedal knees on a quadrupedal animal.

It's signature move, Tachyon Cutter, also looks so cool in action by making the horns HUGE and GLOWING. That's awesome imo. 8/10

And now the new paradoxes we knew were coming

Gouging Fire, Entei's Paradox. I'll say that I like it, although this is the least changed of the Beasts and is basically just Entei in a fancy hat. Hey, that's fine though.

The dinosaur Entei is based on is some kind of ceratopsian blend. I personally thought they'd go in that direction with a triceratops design, so I was close. The head dress piece actually gives me Ho-Oh vibes, in particularly the gold and greens, which could be purposeful and root the Beasts Paradoxes back to the Beast's master, Ho-Oh. Fun design, 8/10

Iron Boulder. This one imo is more of the "robot" angle but done in a very good way. I like Terrakion best out of the Swords to begin with, but only at certain angles in 2d (they murdered him in SV. Murdered. He looks like a cross eyed frog now.) Iron Boulder takes the bulky build of Terrakion and makes it work better in 3d by incorporating spherical and cone builds along its body and head.

It definitely looks the LEAST like a psychic type out if any psychic type I've ever seen, but that's fine. Like Iron Crown with its twin horns and Iron Leaves with its 3 blades, Iron Boulder has a cool looking sword move- his turns his two larger horns into ONE MASSIVE GLOWING BLADE. THAT'S REALLY COOL! 8/10

And now. The Boy

Terapagos is a cute design that becomes more elegant, refined, and Stellar as it becomes stronger. While I'm a bit disappointed at how they handled it in story after a year of build up, I do think the designs after it's base form are incredibly detailed and creative.

The type patterns on its shell actually shift and change smoothly to other types, and the Terastilized form is even more incredible by representing every type plus a hat version of its original form. Beautiful, yet imposing, and a tad silly. The dome is an interesting take that I believe might represent the world or perhaps even a larger turtle- the design could reference one of many World Turtle mythologies and possibly have it represent a planet in space, or maybe a Turtle floating in the ocean, perhaps it's even a reference to the Tale of Urashima Taro. If Terapagos was available in Blueberry Academy- which I think it started out that way in planning- it could even represent the Terarium itself. Perhaps a deeper story was originally planned but dropped- like the castles and gigantic tree of Crown Tundra.

Regardless, base form is a 6/10. Its cute but kinda pointless. The other forms though are 8/10 though for incredible execution, wonderful and pleasing use of color, and overall just being great.

This batch of new Pokémon is way better than Teal Mask's, let's be real. For the paradoxes, I'll say the Future ones got better after Iron Leaves, while Walking Wake was the peak for the Beasts. Ogerpon wins for cutest legendary with the best build up, but Terapagos definitely wins for best design. This batch is an everall 8/10

#pokemon #pokemon scarlet and violet #pokemon scarlet and violet spoilers #Indigo disk #the indigo disk #indigo disk spoilers #Archaludon #hydrapple #terapagos #iron crown #iron boulder #raging bolt #gouging fire #den reviews stuff

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tmnt-obsessed-ace · 10 months

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What if the events of Lost But Never Found (your au with the amnesiac 2012 Leo turned battle nexus champion) happened in the same universe as Ghost In The Shell (SAINW Donnie adopting the rise kids) how would Ghost react to that?

Oho :)

Imagine being Ghost for a second. You and your family just managed to send the Shredder back to its Prison Dimension (or at least you hope that Big Mama would keep her word on that, but knowing her its honestly a gamble) and as you're going home, Leo suddenly runs ahead yelling that they need to hurry, they need to go help Indigo. Who the hell is Indigo?

Well when you and your family get back Leo hurries to the medbay, and you naturally follow him.

Only to see another mutant turtle wearing strange armor and wraps, badly injured, covered in so many scars, barely conscious and most importantly, holding a knife to Donnie's throat.

Well he is until he passes out from bloodloss and exhaustion.

How are you even supposed to process that?

Once he's out of the of the armor (so many more scars were hidden underneath) and bandaged up, a blood test is drawn.

And it turns out that not only is this turtle actually a mutant, but a biological match to Hamato Yoshi.

Aka Splinter.

Even worse, this kid says he's been fighting in the Battle Nexus quote "For as long as I can remember" (which for Indigo/Leo is only 4 months. He's been in this dimension for 4 months and he cant remember anything before the 4 months so... :3)

Ghost is devastated. This...this is one of his kids. One of his children was forced to fight in the Battle Nexus for so long that he doesnt remember anything from before the Nexus. (not really but thats the only conclusion you could draw based on the many MANY scars it makes sense to come to that conclusion)

How did this happen? Did Draxum make another turtle using Splinter's DNA? Or was Indigo created at the same time as the others? If so why did he get left behind? How did he end up in the Nexus and in Big Mama's clutches?

Did...did Draxum sell Indigo to Big Mama? Or just give him up? Did Big Mama have Indigo trained purely to fight in the Nexus? She's clearly not above putting loved ones in the arena, she did it to Splinter already.

Still raising a child just to make him fight to the death? Thats so unbelievably evil and cruel. Ghost thought Big Mama wouldnt stoop that low.

But the scars covering Indigo's body (some of which are several YEARS old), the pure exhaustion in his strange eyes, the pure survival instincts so deeply ingrained into this kid is all the proof you need.

Can he even be called a kid? He looks older than the kids, even older than Raph. Indigo looks like he's 18-20 at the minimum...but if he's truly been fighting in the Battle Nexus for years it would make sense for him to look much older than he actually is.

Ghost understands, god he understands, in the Battle Nexus every fight is life or death, kill or be killed. Recovering from that ordeal is beyond difficult. And Indigo has presumably been in the Battle Nexus for much loger than Ghost has.

So I can imagine that Ghost would be the most patient while trying to help Indigo adjust now that not every moment is a fight to survive. (Especially when dealing with Indigo's very murdery tendencies. If Indigo feels like you are a threat to either himself or his brothers there is a very HIGH chance you will end up dead. He became one of the top FIVE battle nexus fighters for a reason.His current body count is 301 for a reason)

But Ghost is also the most protective over the new family member. (You thought Ghost was motherhening the Rise kids wait till he starts with Indigo. If Big Mama or Draxum even look at Indigo they better pick a god and pray. Indigo is still healing and Ghost will be damned if he lets his new child suffer anymore than he already had too.)

Indigo is basically Ghost's worst fear for the Rise kids come true. A kid who lost his entire childhood fighting battles that werent his and didnt have a choice in the matter. He didnt get to be a kid.

And now Indigo has dozens of scars, physical and mental, all because of Big Mama being a selfish asshole and force her own child to become a battle nexus champion

But...things will start to make Ghost question how true his current theory is. Like for example, Indigo is physically different from the Rise kids. (Short and stocky, round three toed feet) the strange nightmares that start becoming more and more frequent as time goes on (and oddly specific too, like sinking in the ocean, helmet exploding in outer space, getting attacked by a metal monster in the winter, getting thrown through a window, decapitating a metal and bone monster) the fact that he primarily uses twin katanas as weapons, little mannerisms that keeping showing up that remind Ghost too much of Leonardo.

And the gaps in the story dont help. How old was Indigo when he first started fighting in the Battle Nexus? Who trained him before that (because it is OBVIOUS that Indigo has gotten formal training that the Battle Nexus would provide) why doesnt Indigo recognize Draxum? Why doesnt Draxum know who Indigo even is? Why does Indigo act so much like Leonardo sometimes that its uncanny?

Too many things dont add up about that story

However unlike Donnie, Ghost can understand keeping secrets (he has so, so many secrets) so he doesnt try to pry too much. But he cant help but wonder what exactly happened to Indigo

Little does Ghost know, that Indigo already has a family thats looking for their big brother...

(@bluepeachstudios I borrowed ghost for a second, also love GITS its one of my favorite fics now)

#tmnt 2012 #rottmnt #ghost in the shell #tmnt ghost in the shell #short answer Indigo would be adopted on sight

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annie-quill · 6 months

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🖍 YOUR INTERPRETATION OF DARK WITH HOW DAMIEN AND CELINE WORK INSIDE GOGOGO AM BIG INTEREST IN SEEING HOW PEOPLE VIEW DARK!!!!

For some reason I was simply STRUGGLING to draw Dark so he gets to be a cunty lil headshot 😭 anyways at least one of these two is trans and I won’t say who (@hollow-sleep)

The twins were born into a wealthy political family with Japanese background, identical and often. Simply interchanged for one another by their parents. Being the daughter, Celine’s only role in life is to marry rich and be taken care of by a man. Damien follows in their father’s footsteps by working to be a political figure in their town, even if he can only make his way to mayor, he had bigger ambitions.

The two did have their faults though: Damien avoided the draft for war with a bad knee, and has never been good at keeping money due to his gambling addiction. Celine married her husband for status and financial support, while longing for her actual interest in William while he was at war. Not to mention her interest in witchcraft, creating “spells” and causing slight mischief towards those she’s unfond of-

As for the entity known as Dark.. they are so Cold your hand feels like its burning to touch them. They are in a constant type of pain, back and ribs aching, Damien’s old leg pain flaring up even if this body never suffered that damage. It’s a very odd feeling to look at a body that is nothing like your own, to touch it and feel both the pressure of your own hand and the skin beneath it as two separate things. To have a constant ringing in your ears that never fades, a creeping void that feels like a constant buzzing, like a limb that’s “waking up” after losing blood circulation. They never feel warm, people avoid touching them to keep that creeping aura from taking them as well- not to mention, the mental torment, the memories of what happened that night, of trying to keep conflicting personalities from coming out. To force yourselves to act as one to keep from disturbing others, or triggering their husband’s repressed memories..

Uhhh anyways Darkiplier is my least favorite ego can you tell??? /j

#sorry this took so long and im so sorry dark isnt full body ive been Struggling. yells #art requests #Darkiplier #Celine wkm #Damien wkm #my art #digital art #procreate #Markiplier #who killed markiplier #wkm #mayor Damien #Celine the seer

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muzzleroars · 8 months

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WAITWAIT if Michael is Lucifer's "replacement" does he feel unworthy? Like i can imagine him breaking down thinking how Lucifer would think of his actions and also how Michael failed him by not upholding Lucifer's former duty/legacy

YEA....it gets into a really interesting part of michael's psychology regarding his position and provides another reason for why he's as strict as he is in performing his service. god is made out to be perfect and, importantly, that god doesn't change his mind - to michael, this means he was always meant to ACTUALLY be the prince of heaven and that lucifer's fall must have been foreseen by god so. why then does he still feel out of place? why does he feel that the position is not suited to himself as an angel, all meant to be made exactly for the role they fill? it must be his own internal failing, yet he continues to think on how lucifer might have handled a situation, what lucifer would think of his decisions...and he continues to believe lucifer would have been better. he handled leadership with ease, he never seemed to agonize and he seemed so capable of making fair choices without wasting time pouring over god's laws. michael was meant to direct and to lead but on a much smaller scale, and ever since his traumatic coronation he's felt entirely unequipped to deal with the millions of angels that he's meant to rule over. ever since he's operated under a constant, but cloaked, state of fear.

michael is deeply god-fearing in the traditional sense, though even he doesn't recognize this is the root of his fierce loyalty - he has an unmistakable love and respect for god, but at its foundation is a devouring sense of terror. because he was the first being to ever draw blood, and lucifer was the first to ever feel pain. because he was the first to witness god as destroyer and punisher. because he knows exactly what became of the angels that fell and that his chains still bind them. the entire war in heaven was difficult enough for a population that had never known any suffering, who didn't know they could be wounded - it was profoundly disorienting as some gained their first scars and others first had to repair bodies torn open. it was an untold, incomprehensible agony, yet god refused to step in and save them. michael viewed it soon as punishment brought down on all their heads, that lucifer as their prince had condemned them all even as his body grew numb to the pain fighting for god's throne. they would all be rent apart, and he didn't even understand the concept of death.

the war only stilled when michael was pulled down from the precipice of heaven with a fallen lucifer, plummeting from the only home any of them had ever known and into a chaotic abyss. yet none of them dared to follow. none of lucifer's angels, and none of god's. and out of heaven's embrace, lucifer's fire consumed them both in a terrible inferno, burning up the seraph to cinders while michael's skin blistered and cracked in a white hot pain that finally broke through his deadened nerves. and they fell. forever it seemed like. days at least. until finally they crashed into the earth, lucifer's now ash white body burning only with low embers and michael seared to his bones. finally, god reached out his hand, taking up michael and restoring him in an instant for only a few scars to remain. delirious and in a near stupor, michael turned to pray to god for things he couldn't understand. he begged for lucifer's life, though he couldn't comprehend death. he didn't even know if there was still life in him now, for god had not raised him, but still he prayed with limited words and poor awareness.

god answered him, telling him lucifer would not die because their mercy, mercy he cannot understand. it's how michael came to know mercy, god guiding him to arm himself again and strike satan through with his spear, burying him into the earth as the rest of the fallen angels were expelled in the same instant. down into hell as its first residents. and michael was gifted a heavy, golden chain to follow alone after them into that pit to make certain they would never rise again, binding with them all the sins of the angels against god so his wrath would not be leveled at those who remained. he saw the writhing mass lucifer had become, he heard every single angel in their multitudes as they screamed for him, but he did as he was told and nothing more. because of that loyalty, because of his willingness to serve, he was then crowned prince in lucifer's place before all the angels now left in heaven. and ever since that crown has weighed on him, he has felt misplaced, mistaken, wrong. he is strict because without that, he knows he would fail in this position. god's law is absolute and he applies it in everything he does because one step outside of it, and he fails god, himself, and all the angels that rely on him. and even though lucifer did just that, michael continues to think of the ease with which he operated, his calm demeanor and his inspired decisions. he failed, yet his ghost haunts michael's rule and becomes the singular reason he ever questions his faith.

#SORRY I GOT A LITTLE SIDE-TRACKED #but the trauma of lucifer's fall is really important to this point #michael knows it wasn't right and it feeds into how everything since hasn't been either #though none of this is particularly conscious unless he's REALLY stressed #otherwise it just eats away at him but he never acknowledges it bc he really can't #cake answers #michael #lucifer

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darkdumbass · 2 months

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Hi there! This is random, but I really really love the way you do line art! I love how simple, clean, and direct it feels. It has great energy and feels really appealing! I’m trying to improve my own line art right now… I feel like it takes me a long time to choose the “right” lines and end up with clean finish. What to you think has helped you get up to this point with your line art the most? Do you have any suggestions of ways to study and practice? Any favorite artists you look up to for their lines?

I love your work ❤️ thank you

Hello! Thank you for the kind words. I enjoy doing linework a lot, so this is nice to hear :)

These days my line art is more of a "clean drawing" rather than what one usually imagines under traditional line art, which would be opaque lines with varying weight. Right now I like to use a brush that doesn't vary size with pen pressure but varies opacity only. It gives the lines a very soft feeling that I've grown to love.

I browsed through your art, and I was a bit blown away actually, because I think you have a fantastic energy and expression in your drawings, which is something I aspire to have myself. You are very knowledgable about line weight and shapes, so I won't bore you with explaining any of that, haha.

I think good line art comes down to confidence. Obviously, an artist needs a confident hand to avoid shaky lines, to lead them exactly the way they want to, to give them an energy. This sort of mechanical skill is acquired through experience.

But! I've always felt there is a sort of a mental side to this as well, which is best observed during traditional inking. You have to commit to your lines, you have to trust them. You have to sit back and give control to your hand, because with the experience it has, it also has a mind of its own. This sounds pretty out there, but it's about letting go and not overthinking it. I realized this when I looked up to Jim Lee's work as an older teen. There's a lot of videos on YT where you can see his process, which looks utterly effortless. Take this one for example. It's quick, so it's a bit rough, but it does look like his hand is just doing whatever!

I fostered that approach in my art while doing daily drawing from life - straight to inks without sketching. The drawings look wonky a lot of the time, but it gave me confidence where it mattered later. To this day, when I do clean lines in digital too, I adopt this mindset of letting go, which gives the lines more leeway, which also means that if the line doesn't go exactly where it should according to the sketch, I can still trust it. (Although contrary to this, I still put a lot of controlled effort into faces, and this approach comes more easily while drawing bodies and clothes.)

As for suggestions for practice, as I've already mentioned, drawing from life straight to inks (I recommend this over going straight to inks from imagination as that's extremely difficult, at least for me). Have a fast hand, and do long lines even if they come out wobbly. Try to let your hand roleplay Jim Lee here and there - let it do that flick that crosses a line it shouldn't have, let it make a turn with an accidental squiggle, let it pool a bit of ink at the end of the line. Fake it till you make it. At first, I suggest trying this on subjects that aren't your expertise (eg. in my case, draw a bottle instead of a person), so you don't subconsciously compare this to your best work, but make sure you're still having fun :)

Of course, it helps to like doing line art too. I don't know what your relationship to it is, but if it suffers, I suggest busting out the traditional inks with dipping pens, wodden skewers and brushes. It connects me with the process like nothing else.

As for my favorites, I can recommend one of my favorite manga artists - Satoru Noda. Superbly confident and energetic linework. Check out his series Golden Kamuy or Dogsred :)

I hope this will give you a small idea of how I approach my line art. It might be a mess… If you have any more questions as a result of this, or related to anything else, don't hesitate to ask!

#ask

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dymdrimluga · 8 months

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I love World of Darkness and here's why

The more life experience I have, the more some things in WoD become relatable to me, and it's mesmerizing

Vampires. The main line for me, I wouldn't continue to learn about other WoD games without vampires. In fact, my fascination with vampires came to me as a teenager (around 13...) from The Witcher (yes, I read those books with carnage and sex at 13, don't judge me).

I played a lot of vampire characters in forum text RPGs. Actually, I wasn't interested in blood drinking and the whole aesthetic as such, I was interested in two ideas:

1. Immortality. Well, almost immortality. The vampire for me was associated with the image of the phoenix, a creature that can be broken, can suffer deeply, but if it preserves its psyche and stays alive, it can regenerate its own body. I want that too. I want to not be afraid that I will lose a leg or an arm or an eye or that my body will start to fail me. Eternal life is the dream of many.

2. Loneliness and overcoming loneliness. Something that is especially strongly felt in adolescence, or after moving to another city, especially when you do not have particularly valuable social skills, and you cannot trust anyone with your secret. The fact that a creature that is considered a monster by all canons can survive, even have friends, can trust someone is what gave me hope then, and what I like even now. Through my characters, I can sometimes feel again what I hide from myself: the feeling when you are far from friends and family, and you seem to be walking over an abyss, and there are no threads that connect you to others, that can hold you above the abyss , but you have to find something, lean on something, at least on yourself, and try to make new and new connections.

As I delved deeper into VtM, I recognized a third idea:

3. Creativity

"Vampires are incapable of creativity," many sources tell us. Well, first of all, yes, when the soul begins to die, and emotions are dulled, then creativity is no longer possible. Do you know when I felt something like that? After emotional burnout at work, when there is constant fatigue and the impossibility (due to lack of energy and time) to draw something for myself, something that I like. It is very easy to get stuck in this state for a long time. You literally feel time passing by and you start to die inside.

Recognizing this feeling, I looked at the vampires. They constantly have some kind of problem. They are very limited in time during the night. They are very limited in self-expression due to the masquerade and other features of their lives. They are limited in impressions, which is why many of them are looking for thrills. Almost all of them are very traumatized by what was done to them, and what they did and will do in the future. They are frozen in dead bodies that feel less and less as your humanity diminishes. And at the same time, they are still creating new works of art, scientific works, interesting inventions, and Tremeres are constantly improving thaumaturgy and rituals.

This is not the kind of easy creativity that comes to you when you are full of energy and emotions. It's what's left with you afterwards... what's left after all.

I think I will write about changelings and mages later. For now, here's a very interesting song that reminds me a lot of a vampire at a relatively high level of humanity

youtube

#vampire #vtm #world of darkness #vampirethemasquerade #creativity #Youtube

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writermask-0807 · 1 year

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Warmth in the white of Winter - (Emotionless) Smaug x reader

A/n: yeah I'm backkkk. So I've been planning this fic for a long time and here it is! It still sucks tho... Anyways, don't kill me but this actually sounds a lot like the smaug fiction from another writer, so I'm suffering from imposter syndrome rn.

Warnings: Almost dying reader, cringe and cliche stuff ig??

YOU couldn't help the slow shudder that trickled down your spine like droplets of frozen water cascading across fragile porcelain, goosebumps erupting along the now sallow flesh of your skin.

You sat tucked away in some small corner of your Master's vast treasure hold, soft, labored whimpers falling from your lips as you desperately held your knees up to your chest, hoping to shelter yourself from the great gusts of howling winds that blowed inside the cavern, biting into your delicate skin like the prickle of a thousand needles being buried underneath.

The frigid Winter air was accompanied by a soft flurry of snow, crystallized flakes of white descending from the darkened heavens as though they were angels of death marching down to claim more poor souls lost to the cruel Winter that ravaged Laketown and the mountain, and they were not merciful. The sky darkened with a brewing storm, and gray clouds swirled into an inky darkness that carpeted the vast skies, breaking violently into the mountain through the broken cobblestone archway that had once been a gate.

The harsh wintry winds ravaged the treasury, and snaked around your bare, dainty feet that were now numb from the cold, strangling you with invisible, gaunt fingers. Each kiss of ice against your bare skin felt like the edge of a sharp blade being pressed into your flesh, shattering the porcelain of your pale, fragile skin, each shrill whistle of the cruel winds against your flesh numbing you and yet somehow making you feel intense, agonizing pain at the same time, making you shrivel under the sheer intensity of its power, your limbs powerless and weak.

White-hot tears boiled in your large e/c orbs, hot, salty droplets trickling down your ivory skin, and eventually feeling icy against your cracked cheeks, making you wipe them away with nimble fingers that shook as you did so. Your petite, crumpled up form trembled with uncontrollable tremors, each one sparking chills that rattled you to the very core.

The harsh Winter was once upon you again, and each time it came, it wrought ruin and marched down in great armies that arrested the lands in an icy grip. You despised the bleak white slopes and fresh bed of white that tucked the rich earth and decaying leaves beneath its starkly clean, pristine white layer, you hated the very aspect of Winter itself, loathed it with every pore of your very existence.

Winter was an accursed season that had forever plagued Laketown when you had been housed within its walls, and Winter had brought you to your near death when you had been ousted out of it and had been offered to the Dragon as a sacrifice. And now, Winter was here again to rob you of everything else, not that you had much else to offer to satiate its ravenous hunger.

You gripped your clothes tighter, but it offered no real solace nor any warmth from the cold. You were clad in a shallow, worn-out dress, translucent and see-through, stopping just below your knees that were buckled under the weight of your fatigue, merely a soft cloud of thin cloth that veiled your slender, bare body, and not enough to draw comfort from. It was the dress you had been forced to wear on the day of your sacrificial, crafted of the richest of silks and satins, threaded with thick strings of gossamer that wove delicate flowers around the hem, slipping delicately through your fingers as you held a fistful of it in your weakening grasp, or at least, the richest Laketown could offer to you; to one of the many lost souls it had birthed. But it was a somewhat meager comfort that assured you that at least your nudity was not entirely visible to your nonchalant charge.

You had been sacrificed to the Dragon - to the great and terrible beast that had threatened to fulfill the heavy promise of ruination and fire to Laketown if not offered an object of one his greatest desires: a human girl, a maiden fair of grace and elegance, the freshest and purest of all the flowers in a barren, unpromising meadow. Whether to be devoured or disposed for other more morbid uses, the townsfolk had not the courage to question the creature, for the ripe promise of death was laid heavily upon their hunched shoulders that sagged with defeat.

And, unsurpringly, you had fit the demands of the Dragon. While you did bear the precious gift of kindness that was rare in these miserable times, and possessed an uncommon grace, you and your mother had been accused of Witchcraft, and thus, they were all too eager to be rid of you. You still could not stamp out the bitterness that rose at the back of your throat and the tightening of your chest whenever your thoughts took on the darker side and took a brief trip down the memory lane. Even your own mother had not done anything to save you, and for that you would forever be embittered of. But perhaps, it was a somewhat bittersweet fate you had been destined with, for your charge was not nearly as horrible as he portrayed himself to be, at least not to you.

Your master; Smaug, had never been particularly hostile nor hospitable towards you, and treated you rather like his treasure hoard, precious and to be guarded at all times, and treated you nothing short of royalty, though he took his begrudgingly sweet and stubborn time to treat you as an equal and not another piece of his stolen treasure.

However, there was still one thing he couldn’t resolve, no matter how many times he tried. Despite being an ancient creature of fire that had roamed these lands long before man and elf, he had trouble understanding your most crucial needs, such as appropriate clothing, which led to your current predicament. You suspected it was because he thought it to be trivial then, and that he did not consider the possibility of you stealing a place in his heart, (though his constantly swelling ego and pride would never let him admit it).

Speaking of your (partially deranged) Master, where was he?

He had brought an unnatural heat along in his wake, the very stones that built the foundation of the hold radiating the warmth of the cool, breezy summers and the burning rays of sun, radiating the warmth of raw, flickering tongues of fire that danced within a kindling hearth, like burning embers of crackling flames, drenched in a white-hot intensity within a furnace, for the heart that was cradled deep within his armored chest was one crafted of boiling, churning, liquid fire and harsh obsidian and black stone.

In his absence, the heat had receded and the treasury had become unbearably cold. Lately, he had been venturing out of the mountain more frequently, and often did not return at hours on a time. It was odd, questionably so, since he had barely set foot outside the threshold of his mountain, deciding to spend his days sleeping about. Another dark feeling had accompanied the barrage of questions but you did not dwell upon it in fear unearthing old pain from where you had buried it deep within your heart. So when you had awoken in the misty morning, you were not surprised that he was already gone. But you were unhinged by the fact that he had never bothered to inform you of his destination or current whereabouts. It had been troubling, at the very least, but when the hours had bled by and Winter's freezing breath had begun to smother the atmosphere, you had lost the ability to worry or even think rationally.

The cold was slowly beginning to become painstakingly numbing, the uncomfortable sensation of the biting cold that cut into your sallow flesh overwhelming you like the feeling of a thousand blades being buried underneath your skin simultaneously, poking and prodding around your innards, was now replaced by a glacial numbness, something akin to an unhealed wound cracked and caked with dry blood that hindered one's movements with intense pain. But somehow, it made you feel intense, agonizingly excruciating pain at the same time.

Your hands had lost all feeling, and fell limply at your sides, allowing the fresh, glacial wind to lick your bare, exposed skin, and you collapsed against a broken pillar. Your vision was becoming blurry, spinning and hazy because of exhaustion. You could see black dots in the corners of your eyes, speckled spots of darkness that threatened to consume you whole, fragments of the endless, shapeless oblivion that loomed over you like death, your consciousness slowly slipping away from you and into the depths of the abyss.

You knew death was near, you could feel it's presence, could feel and taste the weight of its growing impatience on your tongue as it waited for the power of your will to waver and wane, for you to succumb to the deep slumber that the darkness coaxed you to give in, to cut the torment short, to give into the tempting offer and slip from one world of nightmares to another.

But you held on, you latched onto a shred of hope that your Master would arrive soon, and that the torture would be over, with a wild desperation to live lancing through your veins. You knew that before long, your soul would be reaped as well, another number added to the growing masses. You wished you could see Smaug again, but you were not stupid, though a part of you silently begged and pleaded for him to come soon, and perhaps, that was a selfish reason for you linger seamlessly in the fabric between worlds, slipping in and out of consciousness.

Almost as if answering your prayers, the stones beneath your petite, limp form became warmer, signaling the return of your Master, though you did not notice in your thoughtless reverie.

"Where are you, Y/N, dearest?"

You were vaguely aware that he had called out for you, and hearing his voice made more tears pool in your eyes, a witch’s brew of emotions glimmering in your eyes as the last light within your lustrous e/c orbs made them swirl with a kaleidoscope of vivid colors, not unlike the gentle opals that lay scattered in the mountains of treasure in the hold. Your eyes slowly fluttered shut, your senses focusing on his voice for possibly the last time, and you were very aware of it. You attempted to savor the sound, relish the feel of his voice against your skin, richer than the silk and velvet that veiled your pale skin, warm as the red-hot liquid fire that coursed through his veins, impossibly deep, moon-stone smooth and dripping with honey, though venomous, chasing away the almost liquid moist of frost that swirled within the air.

If only you had more time…

You could feel it now, the touch of skeletal, bony digits against your flesh, could feel the air part and tear with the force of something sharp slicing the clouds of dusted ice, could feel the thin, biting steel blade of a scythe before it even touched you. It hovered above you, inches away from your chest where it would rest, but it lingered in the air like the flecks of frost, and you heard the sound of air being sucked.

The jaws of Death opened for you, a vortex between worlds opened into the earthly domain, ripping and tearing the fabric of reality and situating itself above you, a gaping black void with swirling tendrils of darkness, a bottled, deep sea of shadows that would drown you slowly, brimming with thousands of lost souls, Hell's maw opened wide to swallow you whole.

And then, sharp canines met with your flesh, but it didn't hurt, lifting your petite form into the air with ease, but it was not Death. You could tell by the gentle manner he held you within his jaws, that it was your Master. The portal had disappeared just as quick as it appeared, vanished into thin air, and he was in its place.

Relief flooded your senses as you felt the cool brush and stroke of Winter fade on the marble canvas of your skin, and you felt a bit light-headed, but whether it was from the sudden movement or the relief, you didn't know. You couldn’t help the choked gasp that escaped your parted, cracked lips. You felt free, felt the release of what seemed the world perched upon your slumped shoulders, which you didn't know had been burdening you. You inhaled great gulps of air, ragged, short pants bubbling from your burning throat, almost desperately as if to assure yourself if you were truly alive, and not hallucinating as you teetered precariously over the brink of death.

The cold, fresh air of Winter filled your lungs with crackling frost and the damp mist of snow, putting a halt to the raw burning in your clamped throat and streaming eyes, and assuring you that you indeed were very much alive, and that your Master was with you. Yes, your Master was here, here with you, and he had shielded you of death and the cold.

Your pounding heart slowly returned to a much more steady pace, and your taut muscles relaxed slowly, easing with the knowledge that you were now safe from whatever that threatened you with danger.

You let your heavy head rest against the side of his jaw, your eyes slowly fluttering open to the world once more, and your skin warmed at the touch of his scales, which you knew were flickering scarlet and crimson and gold, the color of vibrant sunsets, a myriad of vivid colors painted across the canvas of his scales as a faint light bounced on them. Warmth pooled in your stomach, and feeling slowly returned to your limp limbs, and it was almost as if Winter had carved path for Summer, the beams of sun bathing your small form, enveloping you in a cocoon of heat and warmth.

He settled down on a mountain of gold, movements careful and cautious so as not to harm you further, as though he were cradling glass, as if he feared you would shatter at the slightest of touches like the porcelain doll you appeared to be.

He put you down, as gently as a behemoth of a creature such as himself could, and as soon as your feet came in contact with the cold of the precious metals, they threatened to buckle underneath your weight. It felt foreign to stand unsteadily on your feet that wavered and trembled weakly. Fortunately, his arm was situated beneath you to break your fall.

You slumped onto his arm with a soft thud (well, practically threw yourself on him,) your exhausted body resting on his arm, and heat seeped into the pores of your flesh as your skin met his. Making yourself comfortable, you snuggled closer to him, burying your face into his broad armored chest, welcoming the warmth that peppered your skin with sunlit kisses, and you listened to his soothing heartbeat that sang melodiously, each beat a steady note of music, pumping liquid fire through his veins, raw and whole and alive, caressing your eardrums.

Without much thought, you threw a weak arm around him, taking in as much of him as you could, so that you could lock him in a somewhat awkward yet tender, meaningful embrace, and he obliged to your wish wordlessly, allowing you to hug him when he normally would have pulled away from your touch as if it scorched him. You breathed in his scent - the fragrance of rich earth and the fresh flow of a youthful river, and the ambrosial aroma of old books overwhelmed you, restoring your heartbeat back to normal, and the unhealthy alabaster of your skin faded into the normal, creamy peach hue.

Despite your recent encounter with near death, you felt somehow whole and content; safe. His presence itself was enough to ward off the memory of it; for Death was no longer looming above you like a constant shadow, waiting to darken your life, the vacuum of a portal had vanished and the last dregs of Winter had been erased from your body. You felt secure in his embrace, safe from all the dangers of the world because you knew he would protect you. Your Master was here and he was not going to leave you.

The reminder brought peace to your heart, making it warm at the comforting thought.

However, despite the warm atmosphere, you felt that something was amiss. It was subtle, the change almost unnoticeable, but you realized with a start that Smaug had not spoken to you since his arrival, the only mention he had addressed you with being the call of your name when he had returned to the hall. He was quiet, too quiet. You could immediately tell that there was something bothering him, but you did not know exactly what. His silence was palpable, and a thick tension clouded the atmosphere, the very pores of his existence oozing a foreign, ancient emotion that you hadn't seen in him, and couldn't quite decipher. You could taste it in the air before he even spoke, the weight of the bitterness emanating from him thick and heavy and sour on your tongue, and when he did speak, it was a deep and rich timbre that rumbled within his chest like a low roll of summer thunder, tickling your skin with slight goosebumps.

"I…"

Your breath was stolen from your lungs, your eyes widening at the suspense of his answer.

"Apologize."

He said, and for an abruptly painful moment, your heart halted within your ribcage, before regaining its steady pace. In his entire existence, Smaug the great, Smaug the stupendous, Smaug the magnificent, had never, ever apologized for anything, and you knew this.

You rolled over to your back, finally meeting his eyes for the first time since he returned (from wherever the hell he was languishing about), and as your gazes collided, you noticed there was something different about his eyes.

They were still speckled the lustrous color of waning dawn and blossoming dusk, colored the same shade of the sandy dunes of the endless deserts of time, richer than the treasure scattered about him, and glistening with a sort of bewitching light that lured you into its spell, but now, they were glimmering and swirling with an ancient, foreign emotion you had unknowingly stirred within his eons dead, withering and dark heart.

The rich hickory and stain of molten gold of his eyes softened into a look of sincerity, of heavy worry, raw regret and pure, unadulterated, tender love, a nebulous swirl of abstract emotion, all held simultaneously his gaze as his deep beds of luminous, glazed caramel rested your small, petite form, and all of them reserved for you, and you only.

You suddenly understood what he meant. You could feel the sheer power of his emotions within the air, swirling with the current of the winds, weighing the air down with its weight that was both light and unbearably heavy at the same time. Your heart burst with a kaleidoscope of emotions as realization dawned on you, your stomach pooling with the brushing, translucent wings of butterflies.

You rested your dainty palms against the hard scales of his chest, clambering onto your trembling knees, and you gazed directly into his beautiful, luminous orbs that seemed to contain the sun within their deep, lustrous depths.

You knew how heavy the weight of regret was, having felt it many times before.

" It wasn't your fault," You spoke softly, dragging each syllable and letter so that you could drill it into his thick skull, because you meant every word you said. Smaug did not respond, and instead chose to look away from your gaze as if meeting your eyes doused his soul in the same iron-hot liquid that traversed through his veins.

" I was not there to protect you. " He stated, and though his voice was as quiet and calm as the frozen waters beyond the threshold of the mountain, he held a deeper meaning to his words that he himself could not understand. He knew that he was not supposed to feel anything but the burning, overwhelming sensations of hatred and jealousy and greed that had been shaped by the white-hot intensity of man's desire, but he felt something more, something that resonated deep within the boiling, dark waters of his soul. He could not explain it, for the concept of emotion itself was foreign to him, but whenever you were around him, he felt sort of a… a warmth bloom within his chest, warmth that your delicately petite form did not provide, but rather, your presence did. On the rare occasions he had to venture out of his hold and into the world beyond, your absence had become plaguing… And it was always too cold without you. And now, seeing that you almost died when he had been gone loitering about, his chest ached and writhed in fresh, raw, unadulterated emotion, somewhat similar to the remnants of a scar searing into his flesh, or like a festering wound that had not been treated and had manifested into something more… Ominous.

You could see it now. Within those rich orbs that flickered with darkening embers of a crackling fire, the emotions that your Master struggled with were visible, crystal clear to you, for you had felt them too many times ("I was so worried about you, Mother! Are you injured?! Did they attack you again?!" Here your eyes softened with an infectious, melancholic sadness at the bitter memory) to be unfamiliar with their burdening weight. The frustration rolled off of him in a sudden burst of heat, great waves of roiling warmth, translucent wisps of steam that curled around the gaps between your fingers and licked your bare skin, invisible tongues of fire that threatened to burn you to the very core. You brought a gentle palm to his snout, not at all afraid of this display of power (and apparent distress), bringing him back to reality, momentarily placing a halt to his dilemma.

" It's not your fault. Besides, I'm here right now, with you, and it's all because of you. If you hadn't arrived when you did, I wouldn’t have been here right now. So please… Don't blame yourself for something that you couldn't control."

You said gently, and your normally quiet voice was dropped into an unnaturally soft whisper, barely audible, though you knew he had heard what you had said. You hoped it would assure him, because it was normally Smaug that had bestowed you with the precious and wise words of advice and caution, it had always been him who had assured your safety.

Perhaps your words weren't enough to convince him, but he leaned into your soft touch anyway, nuzzling his snout into your hand, and his lustrous scales felt rough against your more supple skin, though you didn't mind. You stroked the armored plates of his skin affectionately, and savored the heat that radiated from them, draping over your skin luxuriously in a blanket of warmth. You soaked in the peace and tranquility of the moment, relishing this rare side of your Master, wishing that moments like these would last for eternity.

A low purr erupted at the back of his throat, rumbling throughout his chest like the steady crackle of flames dance within a hearth, and you couldn't help the slight giggle that breezed traitorously past your parted lips, and the fond smile that shaped your cupid bow lips, thinking that the resemblance between him and a cat was almost too strikingly similar. Grumpy most of the time, almost always begging for your attention, and perhaps too sleepy and lazy at times.

However, curiosity got the best of you, and you couldn't help blurt the question that had been bothering you. " Where did you go, though?" You pulled your hand away from his sharp jaw, slapping it over your mouth in an exasperated manner, your cheeks burning with an embarrassed flush as you averted your gaze from his, ashamed, muttering a nervous apology. You hadn't meant to pry, really, but you simply couldn't help yourself.

There was a pregnant pause, where the air thickened again, and then - " I…" His voice was thick, colored with what you thought was embarrassment, and when you lifted your head to meet his eyes, his gaze, too directed elsewhere, strictly avoiding yours. If you were someone else, you would have feared that you had incurred his wrath, but you knew him better than that.

Is he being… Bashful?

Then he nudged you with his snout, edging you to roll off of him, which you complied to, albeit a bit hesitantly. Once you landed on the gold underneath, he stood up, and the precious metals shifted under his weight, the reflection of the fake galaxy and constellations mirrored on the roof of the cavern morphing into a different, vibrant cosmos that depicted another tale as he moved.

Once he was up on his feet, he glided gracefully above the sloping mountains of treasure, somehow managing to maintain the delicate balance of the mounds of gold, despite being as massive as he was, and not even a single coin of the hoard went sliding down underfoot.

He turned his head, beckoning you to follow him and his amber orbs met yours for a brief moment, and you thought you spied a hint of embarrassment within them. However, you couldn't quite read everything that was written upon his sharp, reptilian features, as he had looked away too quickly, but you knew that you would be getting answers very soon.

Unfortunately, you did not possess your Master's elegance, and however try as you may, the coins still slid under your bare (and still trembling) feet. After all, you had always been a bit of a klutz. However, at that moment, you did not dwell on this flaw of yours, unable to contain your curiosity. Smaug had never been a secretive person, *ahem* Dragon, per se, but you had never inquired about his frequent visits beyond the mountain, worried that you would be invading his privacy if you did so, and he had never bothered to tell you of his own accord.

You scrambled up to your still wobbling legs, leaving a path of destruction in your wake as you followed your charge, unable to keep up with his long strides. The cold did not hit you as hard as it did in his absence, but it still made shivers erupt along your skin and chills to crawl down your still rigid spine, and you hugged your arms to your chest as you scurried along.

He lumbered into an adjoining chamber that was secluded from the treasury through a wide, stone archway. Your eyes inspected this chamber critically, as you had never had any knowledge of its existence, let alone entered it. Dark gray bricks were neatly stacked upon one another, creating an impossibly smooth, wet surface that surrounded you bleakly from all sides. The air inside was damp, moist with crackling frost saturated within the air, and for some unfathomable reason, it brought a dreadful sense of impending doom and gloom.

You cracked open your lips to ask him, but then you saw it.

What…?

In the middle of the room, nestled into a bundle of fabric were what appeared to be clothes. They immediately stood out against the bleak surroundings, a splatter of ardent colors against the gray background of a canvas, various vivid and vibrant shades of lavish fabrics resting upon one another. You realized with a start that they were woven from the softest of furs, embroidered from thick strings of gossamer, threaded from the richest of silks and velvets, impossibly soft and satin-smooth to touch. Despite being crafted from the most luxurious of fabrics, they were also incredibly suited for the harsh weather as well, the clothes heavy and comforting against your skin as your nimble fingers traced the golden embroidery.

Is this what he was trying to get all these days?

Your eyes welled up with the pearlescent liquid you had grown familiar with your entire life, but this time, these tears were not of anguish or pained despair or even of the bitter sorrow that had continued to plague you. These tears were of happiness, of relief.

Your lower lip quivered with a sob that threatened to tear through your throat, and you clutched a handful of the clothes, holding them up to your chest in a trembling fist.

To an untrained eye, perhaps, you had no reason to shed your tears for such a trivial matter, but to you, it meant the entire world. From a young age, you had been reprimanded and rumored to be the daughter of a Witch, and so you had been avoided by the other children and townsfolk alike at all costs. You had grown up alone all your life, with no-one but your mother for support and love. Your mother, in question, was no more of a Witch than you were, but you supposed that when one brushed greetings with Death, one must be feared enough to stand out in a crowd, hence the reason you and your mother had been avoided like the plague.

But you could not help but be heartbroken when she, who had been your entire world, had decided to betray you and throw you into another unfamiliar, harsh plane of existence. But perhaps you were pitied by the Gods as you were blessed with a kind charge, whom you had lost your heart to. So when Smaug had begun to venture out into the world beyond, the familiar satanic whispers of doubt had crept into your mind, and you had worried that he too, would be leaving you if you had lost your worth in his eyes.

You had tried to ignore these dark thoughts that continued to badger you like the growing Winter, but in all honesty, fear and doubt had begun to crawl into your senses subtly, as the sinister voices had woken from their deep slumber, and perhaps, though you didn't want to admit it to even yourself, you might have lost yourself to not know Death but to these fears as well if he had not arrived in time.

This realization made more of the crystallized droplets of hot, salty tears to crawl down your porcelain cheeks, and you turned to your Master, a fresh sensation of belonging and love and relief blooming deep within the gardens of your soul. He was still determinedly avoiding your eyes, his head set firmy towards one of the walls, as if keenly studying every particle of moss and lichen that grew on the cobblestone bricks.

If he were human, you would have been able to spy the faintest hint of scarlet coating his cheeks, but he was not, and you knew him better, much better than he would have liked to admit. You threw your weight against him in a bone-crushing hug that would have been deadly to humans, your thin arms grabbing whatever part of him you could, and you clutched him with a desperate want lancing violently through your veins, your cheek resting against the ever-bright, armored plates of his scales. The tears began to flow in more abundance, stubbornly carving new paths down your cheeks as you whispered softly against him, your voice thick with emotion. " I'm so glad. " And though your voice came out muffled, you knew he could hear you clearly.

"What for?" He asked, and you had an unccany feeling that he already knew the reason as his snout came to rest gently atop your head, to reciprocate the embrace in the awkward fashion that only a colossal creature such as himself could. " I… I was worried… That I became of no use to you anymore, that you no longer loved me." You finally confessed, the weight of the burden you had been carrying plummeting to the ground. Plumes of smoke curled from his nostrils, his warm breath tickling the shell of your ear and tousling a few rich locks of your hair as he spoke. " You truly are an insufferable idiot. My heart belongs to you, and you alone, and it will forever remain with you. "

You smiled through your tears, your plump lips shaping in the form of a soft, brilliant beam as you spoke. " And mine remains with you, until the end of time."

#reader x smaug #smaug x reader #cliche #fluff #idk how to tag this shi #the hobbit

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