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#but Fritz is in good hands

blametheeditor · 1 month

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Terms Of Agreement

Wander, will they ever grow attached to the little human ? If they do what would the tipping point ?

Even demons and monsters whose sole purpose is to fight to the death for souls get attached sometimes. And unfortunately for Vincent, David, and James, they will get attached to Fritz. And they will fall like domino's.

Vincent respects strength. David enjoys having his ego stroked. James has never had an opportunity to converse with someone just for the sake of companionship. So give them someone who doesn't back down when it counts, who's genuinely respectful, and who enjoys answering and asking questions once it's realized they're relatively 'safe'? And BOOM, they're powerless and will inevitably become fond of the human.

It will be a long and arduous process. One slip up, and Fritz could lose all of the progress made, and the worst part is the fact he doesn't know such a thing might be happening. Not when demons and monsters don't really show affection. They might think a nudge of the shoe is a great way to display their fondness, but just because 3 out of 4 agree does not mean the one thinking he's about to be crushed does.

But, even though they may come to enjoy Fritz's presence, he still has a soul they've been fighting over for six years, and that's something none of them will want to willingly give up. Because how far can their attachment really go in the face of power, rank, and obligation?

At least the threats will stop! Maybe.

...they won't. Not until Fritz fires back with one of his own, and the chance of that happening is the same as one of them shrinking down to human size while the door is closed.

#thank you so much for the ask!#especially with how Fritz is currently being put through the wringer #it's hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel #but Fritz is in good hands #literally #and they won't let anything Too bad happen #there will be a happy ending #with a heaping pile of angst #but happy ending!#I hope you have a good rest of your day Anon!#answer #Terms Of Agreement

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creature-wizard · 3 months

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Looks like it's time to talk about starseeds and the New Age movement again.

Since I'm seeing more starseed content being posted, I'm gonna make another post on why the whole starseed thing and the surrounding New Age belief system are... not good.

So for those who don't know, New Age mythology is essentially a hodgepodge of cherrypicked and distorted myths from various cultures, racist pseudohistory, and far right conspiracy theories. To put it very briefly, starseeds are supposedly here to help Earth resist the reptilians, a race of politics-manipulating, war-starting, media-controlling blood-drinking aliens. For those who don't recognize the tropes here, these are basically all antisemitic canards. The reptilian alien myth as most know it today comes from David Icke, who ultimately cribbed a bunch of his material from The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a Russian hoax created to justify violence against Jews. He was also influenced by the work of people like Fritz Springmeier, a hateful crank who based much of his work on other hateful cranks.

(David Icke, by the way, also claims that transgender is an evil reptilian conspiracy. You'll never find just one form of bigotry with these people.)

There are supposedly numerous alien races out there, and one of the most prominent among them are the Pleiadians, AKA Nordics. While modern depictions of the Pleiadians give them more variety in skintone, there's no denying that older Pleiadian mythology basically pictured them as Aryans In Space, even associating them with the swastika.

You see what's going on here? "Good" swastika-loving Aryan aliens versus "evil" Jewish aliens? Sound familiar?

Racism isn't just a tangential part of the starseed myth, either. It lies at its very core. It's inextricably tied in with the ancient astronaut hypothesis, which has a history of racist motivation behind it. The TL;DR is that a bunch of white people couldn't believe that non-white people had built a bunch of things they couldn't figure out how to build themselves (EG, the Great Pyramids), so they proposed that the real builders were anyone from Atlanteans to aliens. (Atlantis, by the way, never existed; it was a literary device created by Plato.)

One supposed purpose of starseeds is to help the world "wake up to the truth," which basically just means "convert people to New Age spirituality." New Age believes that world peace is contingent on a majority of the world being converted to New Age belief, and that resistance against their belief system is ultimately the work of the aforementioned reptilian aliens.

To put it another way, New Agers think they understand other cultures' spiritual traditions better than the actual members of said cultures, and think that anyone who disagrees with them is being manipulated by the conspiracy, or is an agent of the conspiracy. This includes Indigenous cultures which are already endangered from white Christian colonialism.

Essentially, endangered cultures cannot speak up for themselves and resist New Agers' efforts at cultural assimilation without being labeled a problem and an enemy. It's basically white Christian colonialism repackaged as "spiritual, not religious."

Again - if you heard from these people that some ancient text or myth describes extraterrestrial beings visiting our planet for one reason or another, you heard misinformation. They twist and misrepresent literally every myth and text they get their hands on. For example, you may have heard that the vimanas from Hindu traditions were actually alien spacecraft. They were no such thing. Or maybe you heard that the Book of Enoch describes aliens performing genetic experimentation on humans. It literally does not. At best, all of the stories they cite just kind of sound like aliens if you ignore most of their content and pay no attention to their cultural contexts.

The starseed movement preys on alienated people, especially autistic people and people with ADHD. You can look up nearly any list of signs that you're supposedly a starseed, and many of them will align perfectly with characteristics associated with autism and/or ADHD, or that people with these conditions commonly report. Some people within the movement even go so far as to claim that ADHD and autism don't even exist, but were actually made up by the conspiracy as a cover to suppress and control starseeds, which is some yikes-as-hell ableism.

So basically, people are being told that if they have these certain characteristics or symptoms, that means it's their job to spread New Age spirituality to defeat the conspiracy and help others ascend to the fifth density.

And what's the fifth density, you might ask? It's supposedly humanity's next evolutionary level, because New Age is also based on biological misconceptions. Supposedly once everyone's DNA "upgrades," they'll essentially morph into an aetheric form. Supposedly, this is preceded by a number of "ascension symptoms," including depression, headache, gastrointestinal issues, and any number of other symptoms that could indicate almost anything, including stress.

What many of these people don't realize is, this prediction has already failed. Back in the 2000s and 2010s, experiencing "ascension symptoms" was supposed to precede ascension to 5D beginning December 21, 2012. One lady, Denise Le Fay, was convinced that the hair loss she was experiencing in 2008 was an ascension symptom. As we can see by looking her up, she's very much still with us on the 3D plane these days, repeating the same tired old scripts New Agers recycle endlessly.

By the way, everything you near New Agers saying today about old systems being dismantled, dark forces being arrested or kicked off the planet, and new economic systems on the horizon? They've been recycling these scripts for years now. Take a look at this page written back in 2012. You got stuff about the complete dismantling of an enormous network of sinister forces," "the arrest and removal of a world-wide cabal," and a "new economic system."

("Cabal," by the way, is a dogwhistle term for "Jews.")

Furthermore, people in this movement are often encouraged to try and access past life memories through dreams or hypnosis, which makes the whole thing feel even more real to them. But the thing is, you can have incredibly vivid experiences about literally anything you put your mind to - the people in the reality shifting having vivid experiences of living another life in the Harry Potter universe are a great example of this. Just because you have vivid experiences, doesn't mean they have any bearing on anything happening in this reality.

So yeah, the starseed movement and the larger New Age movement are both extremely harmful. They promote racist pseudohistory, medically-irresponsible pseudoscience, conspiracy theories that target numerous marginalized groups, and functionally target aliened people with ADHD and autism to convince them that spreading its beliefs is their job.

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charliemwrites · 5 months

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Bark, bark, snort, grrr

(The ex idea comes from @st-el-la-luna, absolutely brilliant darling ❤️)

Content: Voyeurism, Mild Injury, Possessive/Protective Behavior

Johnny, for all his quirks and… weirdly human tendencies, is an incredibly good sport. Particularly about letting you put him in Santa hats and wreaths, ugly sweaters and snow socks. He poses for every picture so dutifully, looks so serious and annoyed up until you plant smooches on his head or cheek and that silly lupine grin comes out.

He’s been your perfect little heater ever since the heater started to go on the fritz. It keeps shutting off or turning itself lower than it’s meant to be, leaving you shivering before you realize something is amiss. It’s not so broken that you’re willing to interrupt your solitude to have someone come fix it. But you’re grateful for a big fluffy body laying on your feet or snuggling under the blankets with you.

As the winter sets in, you tromp out with him in the snow a lot. Often use his sturdy shoulders and better footing as a crutch to navigate without slipping. He always gets fussy when you do, dancing in his feet and snuffling at your coat, urging you up.

One morning you wake up after a fresh snow, expecting that you’ll have to clear the driveway and porch - only to find it freshly shoveled and salted. It would spook you, except you’re sure Johnny would have woken you up barking his head off if it was anything to worry about.

Your mother calls about holiday plans in mid-November. You hedge around any commitments, hand buried in Johnny’s fur, saying that you don’t want to leave your precious pup at home.

The combined efforts of both your parents, your sister, and a cousin you actually like makes you cave eventually though. They promise it’ll just be family, that you can even bring Johnny. You grimace at that - debate getting him some meds from the vet…. But he’s been doing better on walks in town.

The weird assurance that it’ll “just be family” should have been a red flag.

When you arrive at your parents’ place, several gift bags and Johnny (with a bow tie on his collar) in tow, you find your ex there. On the couch. Next to your least-favorite cousin and your sister.

“What’s he doing here?” you ask sharply.

“Well, you two were engaged—”

Johnny’s ears shoot straight up as you tense.

“Yeah, and then he cheated.”

“People make mistakes. If you would just hear him out.”

“I don’t care what he has to say. And I don’t care what you have to say either.”

You drop the bags in a heap and click your tongue for Johnny. He falls in with you instantly, leaning up against your side. You get all the way to your car before you hear your ex’s voice calling your name.

You try to hurry, but there’s ice and the last thing your dignity can take is slipping right now. Luckily, you have the perfect deterrent before you ex can even get within arm’s reach.

Johnny snarls, so deep and loud you feel it in your own chest.

“Jesus!” your ex cries, coming up short. “Where did you get that thing?!”

“Johnny picked me. More than I can say for you.”

“Don’t be like that, I’m picking you now.”

“Oh, did your girl best friend lose all her daddy’s money?”

His cheeks light up neon. Huh. Got it in one.

Then he dares another step and Johnny lunges. You just get a hold of his harness but it’s enough ward your ex off a bit more.

“He’s very loyal,” you add. “Also more than I can say for you.”

“Baby, just listen—”

“An upgrade all around, I think.”

You round your car, climb into the driver’s seat with Johnny standing guard, then let him clamber over you into the passenger’s seat. At the front door, most of your family is gathered and staring. You flip off your ex one last time before peeling out of there.

The tears come after you’ve gotten back home. Johnny licks your face until you stop crying, then leads you inside. The two of you curl up on the couch together, his face buried in your stomach. You fall asleep there and dream of a man’s voice whispering love and comfort in your ear.

—

A week later, your ex shows up.

You’re out in the yard with Johnny, watching him zoom through the snow and laughing as he speeds by. Your ex must hear you because he comes round the side of the house.

And Johnny. Goes. Ballistic.

Literally, he hits your ex like a missile, taking him into the snow and snarling like something from hell. He’s got his teeth in your ex’s designer coat, ripping it to shreds. It’s frightening; you’ve never felt safer.

“Johnny!” you call. A growl. You walk closer, kick a bit of snow at both of them. “Johnny, down! Leave it!”

And he does, finally does, though not without taking a good chunk of fabric with him. Your ex, wide-eyed and pale, panting, doesn’t bother to say a word. He scrambles away while Johnny barks after him, all canine and spit.

You hum as he returns to you, fabric in his mouth, tail wagging.

“What a good boy,” you coo, taking the partial sleeve and inspecting it. Louis Vuitton, it looks like. “Very good. My perfect boy.”

You drop his prize into the snow and snort as he wastes no time peeing on it. Well, that’s gonna stay there. Forever.

“C’mon bud, you deserve a treat.”

Johnny follows you happily inside, a new pep in his step.

#thoughts™️#cod #my writing #fanfiction #dark fic #reader fic

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whore-ibly-hot · 11 months

Text

Yan!Soldier/General x Fem!Reader

'His little bride.'

18+ Minors DNI

Warnings: Smut, power dynamics, mentions of sa, p-in-v sex, mentions of war and military, implied violence, threats, possible dub-con as reader does not know the full story behind our yan's goals, female and male genitalia, female reader, pet names.

(AN: Not me coming back from the grave to drop a horny fic and this disappear again. Gonna go eat some pumpkin roll.)

Part 2 here

The sound of papers shuffling and a heavy sigh pierces the usual quiet of General Fritz's office, which is only occasionally broken by you dusting or rearranging one of the many books on the various shelves that lined the room. It's been 3 weeks since the invasion of your small town of Cyril, and the few civilian homes not destroyed in the invasion have been turned into functioning barracks and homesteads for the troops that now occupy your town. While not ideal, the army Fritz serves aligns with the beliefs of your villages people much more than the opposition, and while they are still invaders, many believe them to be the lesser of two evils. You remain as quiet as you can as Fritz attends to his work with a furrowed brow.

General Fritz, while known for his excellence in military strategics and his translation skills, seems to be struggling with the morning's crossword puzzle. A man of 42, he has served in his countries army since he was just 15, leaving his family's small farm and quickly rising through the ranks. He's a scarred man, with many gashes, stubble, and hair that when not in public is rather unkempt. Despite the things he's seen, a kindness remains in his bespectacled eyes. He gives up on the crossword puzzle, allowing the paper to fall to his desk with a 'plop!'. You glance over at him, and approach.

"Sir, is there anything you need, you seem a bit, well, stressed." You say, trying not to impose but express concern. When the troops arrived, many men were recruited, and many girls had to seek jobs. Some had to turn to unsavory means to get by, but you were lucky, you supposed. You were scouted out to serve as a guide and servant for the general, to both give information and serve his needs. While the thought of serving a strange man, one much older than you at that had frightened you, he was nothing like the other soldiers you had seen. He was polite, careful not to scare you off, provided you with good quarters, and never laid hands on you. All in all, the situation would have been perfect, had you not missed your family's bakery from which you were taken. For reasons you didn't fully understand, he never wanted you to travel far beyond his estate and into town.

He sighs. "I am fine, my dear girl. Just dealing with some disputes at the border of the county. Nothing you should concern yourself with." He says. He looks up at you, his glasses reflecting the light of his desk lamp. "Would you mind drawing me a bath, my dear? It has been... quite the day, and I think I need some time to relax." You quickly nod, and scurry off to the master bedroom, entering the attached bathroom and beginning to fill the tub with hot water. After some time, Fritz enters, looking as though he is fighting the urge to ask a question. "I... I hate to ask this of you, and say no if at any point in my asking you are uncomfortable or find me uncouth, but-" He hesitates. "I am very tired, and am currently dealing with some rather serious pain in my legs. Past wounds, you know. Would you be offended if I asked for your assistance in bathing?" You blush a little, but a part of you knows he won't try anything. You have noticed he seems to be limping a little more than usual, his mobility decreasing. Plus, you can tell he's only asking because he must, as the look of utter shame on his face suggests this is the last thing he wished to ask of you. "Of course, sir." His breath hitches, but he nods. As he begins to remove his more civilian garb, as he did not wear his uniform on this day, you try to avert your gaze. Still, you catch a glimpse of his pronounced muscles, littered with the occasional scar or blemish. You swallow heavily.

He slides down into the tub, his tensed muscles visibly relaxing as he lets out a groan. "Hmm..." He glances at you. "It's okay to look now, my dear. Sorry to have upset you." You shake your head, as if to assure him that you aren't bothered. He looks at you softly as you go to grab a sponge, a small part of him disappointed that you won't be using your bare hands to lather soap onto him. He shakes this thought off quickly. 'Shame on you!' He scolds himself 'Thinking such thoughts about your sweet servant girl. God, I'm acting like a recruit visiting his first whorehouse'. He is disappointed in himself, but tries to rationalize it by being innocent. Perhaps he just wanted to feel your hands on him, for comfort, for something different. One of the things he likes most about you is your hands. He noticed them when you first were sent to his mansion, much more timid then. You shook his hand, and his large, calloused and veiny hands, rough from years of labor and fighting, practically trembled at the feeling of your soft ones. As he grew to know you better, he would watch as you worked, your delicate hands dusting a vase or folding a sheet. He quickly decided any hard labor around his home be delegated to cadets and privates, when they would make the occasional visit, and sometimes as a disciplinary action. He wanted to keep your hands like you, soft and warm.

"Sir?" Your voice snaps him out of his thoughts. "Uh- Yes?" He stammers, readjusting his glasses (which oddly enough he always kept on for bath time.). "I was wondering... if I may take a bath sometime soon?" You ask timidly, causing him to frown. "Have you not been able to take one?" He asks. He doesn't remember ever giving such a command, and he would never deny your basic needs. "Well, one of the privates told me that the recruits shower schedule is twice a week, and that I should probably adhere to that at your house." You explain. Fritz grimaces. Of course some recruit would find it funny to torment the General's beloved servant. The soldiers where allowed two showers a week, but you were no soldier. You were a servant. His Servant. His.

"No, my dear, you may bathe whenever you see fit, that rule only applies to my soldiers of low rank. I imagine that young recruit may have been trying to have a laugh at your expense." He huffs. "Please, if you ever see him at the estate again, alert me to him, alright?" You nod, a little put off. You've never seen Fritz truly mad at one of his soldiers, he doesn't even get grumpy often, but now... he's scowling, as if that cadet had come right up to him, spit on his boots, and insulted his mother.

His eyes suddenly flash with a different emotion, as a thought crosses his mind. He bites his lips, trying to keep away the thought, but it's too tempting. "Perhaps..." His hand grips the porcelain edge of the tub. "Perhaps it would be easier for you to bathe me properly, if you were closer." He mumbles, avoiding eye contact. You tilt your head. "What do you mean, sir?" You ask naively. "Well, I just think, you could get a better position to clean me if you were to join me, i-in this bath, I mean." You blush wildly, and he begins to stammer, coming up with reasons it's a good idea. "For one, it would help you to apply the pain balm to my leg, and-" He's out of breath. "And taking a bath now, together, would ensure you are free later if I should need you." He risks a glance up at your face, feeling his turn red to match your own. You swallow. "I... I suppose that would be okay, sir." You mumble. You can't imagine he would hurt you, or try to take advantage of you. If that were the case, you imagine he would have had his way with you already. Besides, you can't deny how you failed to avoid looking at him when his disrobed before his bath. "Just, look away while I undress, please." You say, beginning to undo the corset of your servants attire. "Of course, anything to protect a ladies modesty." He says, quickly using his free hand to shield his eyes.

You slip into the bath water, and he looks up as he hears the water splash upon your entrance. You both remain silent, and you bathe him gently. He holds back sighs of pleasure, as you have forgone the sponge, and now use your bare hands as he had dreamed of moments ago. "Sir?" you break the silence. He lets out a "Hmm?" In response, eyes still closed in satisfaction. "May I ask, why do you never let me go into town? I wish to see my family, and the bakery." You ask. He seems to tense a little, the veins in his arm more prominent. "Because I simply don't have the time to venture there with you right now." He explains. "Yes, but I grew up there! I'm fine to go by my own." You say, a little annoyed he seems to think you're some helpless maid. He lets out a long exhale, before sitting up a little. Even like this in the bath, he towers over you. "It's not you I'm worried about, little one. I'm sure in town, before me and my men arrived, you could hold your own. But you couldn't against my soldiers, and-" He hesitates to tell you this, a part of him not wanting to scare you. "I don't trust half of them around a sweet thing like you." He sighs. You furrow your brows, your face upset. "You mean, like?" You can't bring yourself to say it. He nods. "I prevent it in every way I can, for all women. I do not allow it, but I cannot be everywhere, and the leaders above me do not permit me to dismiss a single man for a transgression like that. We need all the men you can get for the war." He makes a bold move, to cup your cheek. "But, rest assured, I won't let a single one of them lay hands on you. I just fear something could happen outside of my estate, that I could not control." You gulp at the notion, and nod. He sees the sorrow on your face, and strokes your cheek once more. "I will try to take a small holiday, a day or two perhaps, and I will take you to see them, alright?" He feels his heart speed up when he sees the light return to your eyes.

"Oh! Thank you, sir!" You look as if you could cry. He smiles and nods. "I, I must confess, I hope to go sooner rather than alter, I had wished to speak to your father." He says. "About what?" You feel a little fear knaw at you, and you gasp. "Wait, sir, no! He's much to old to fight, and-" Fritz cuts you off with both hands on your shoulder. "No, my dear, no. I'm not going to draft your poor father, do not worry. I would not want to do anything that would worry you so much." He coos, then avoids eye contact again. "I had wished to speak to him. The last time we spoke, we made a deal that you were to work for me as a servant girl, but..." You nod for him to continue. "I have found that house chores and labor do not suit you." You frown at his words. Had you not been doing a good enough job. "I'm sorry, sir, if I've not been performing well, please don't fire me. My family needs the money." He seems shocked once again, and laughs awkwardly. "God, I do seem to be bad at saying what I mean, don't I?" He shakes his head. "I mean that I think such things are below you. I... I should like to take you as my bride, if you and he should permit it." Your eyes widen. You hadn't expected that. What would he have you do as his bride? He senses your nervousness, and continues. "I assure you, it can have as much or as little intimacy as you wish. You needn't even act as a proper wife to me, I just-" He seems to be struggling to explain. "I just want you to be safe, and comfortable, a-as you have made me feel since you began to serve me." You feel your heart flutter at his words. "Since you arrived, you've been so sweet. Doting on me, caring for me, helping me with the daily crosswords." You laugh a little, and he smiles. "I want nothing more than to ensure that I get to enjoy that everday, and more importantly," a slightly darker tone ebbs its way into his voice. "I want to ensure that no other man does." You're a bit put off by the shift, but only nod.

"I should like to, sir." His head snaps up, his mouth hanging open slightly. "I'll admit, I always wanted to live in a fancy house like this, and the company isn't half bad either." You admit, shyly looking up at him. He is elated, his form almost trembling. "Do you mean it? Truly? You wish to accept my proposal?" He gasps. You nod. He lunges forward to hug you, causing the water to surge forward, but stops just short of you, remembering your nude form rests below the soapy water, as does his. "Ah, um." He coughs awkwardly. "I must ask, if we are to marry, and you do enjoy my company, would you be okay with the typically romantic things? I know people usually court first, but seeing as we've spent all this time together already." He says. You think. "Like kissing, and holding each other?" You ask. "Yes, like that sort of thing." He affirms. You nod. "I'm fine with trying it, but I need to tell you something." He nods for you to go on.

"I'm sure you know, we are a little reserved and conservative in our town. As a traveling man, and a general, I'm sure you have had your share of, um, intimate encounters. I was always told to wait, however, and I may not be what you are used to." You look at the water, trying to fight the insecurity gnawing at your heart. He only shakes his head quickly. "No, no, my darling girl! How could you ever be anything but perfect to me?" He asks, caressing your shoulder blade with his thumb. "I would be honored, if you would have me, to teach you about the more, intimate affairs of marriage and courting." He says. "I must admit, I'm afraid that I wouldn't be enough to satisfy you as a man, or a husband." He confesses. You gasp, and cup his face. "Why, sir?" You implore him to confide in you. "My dear, you are a mere twenty-three years of age, and I am forty-two. I'm practically twice your age. Besides being an old man, you had to help me with this blasted leg into the tub. I'm practically a cripple..." His insecurities begin to flow out as he confesses. You gently tuck your head against his shoulder. "No, sir. You are enough for me. You are a general, and a kind man. You have always treated me with respect. If I didn't think you were enough, I wouldn't have said yes to marrying you, would I?" He nods reluctantly. "No, you wouldn't have. You've always been a smart girl." He admits. "I'm willing to learn, as long as you show me, sir." You whisper.

He blushes, but takes this as a sign. "Well, seeing as we are due to wed, I don't see the harm in teaching you a few things now..." He says, pushing forward a little so your smaller frame is up against the slanted back wall of the tub. "Are you alright with this, you may tell me at any time if you want to stop." He says. You nod. "Words, my dear, please. I want to hear that you understand." He pushes. "I understand, sir." You say. He shakes his head as he plans a kiss on your forehead. "Call me Fritz, my little bride." He coos. "And since you are to be my bride, I hope you won't mind showing me what's been hiding under that uniform I gave you?" He asks. You blush, but slide a little further up the tub, parting your thighs just a touch, so he can see the bush of hair between them. "I haven't shaved, sorry." You say, a little embarrassed. He only chuckles, and shakes his head. "My dear, I've gone months without a shower, and shared a restroom and barrack with 27 other men. A little hair won't scare me off." He looks longingly. "Besides, it's what's under it I'm interested in." His hand suddenly comes to your inner thigh, the sensitive touch making you gasp. You've never been touched up there, much less by a man so strong. One of his large, calloused fingers comes to part your lips, exposing to your future husband your dripping, virgin holes. He lets out a wanton sigh at the sight.

"So beautiful, and untouched?" He asks. You gulp, and nod. "It is my honor to be the first and last man to pleasure your sweet little sex." He says. He traces that finger up and down you're folds, making sure you are properly teased, and getting a feel for you. "So wet, and not just from the bathwater, it seems." He whispers. "Is this how you planned to lose your purity? To a man twice your age, and an invading military officer, no less?" You blush in shame. "I didn't think of the specifics, just... just wanted you to have it, sir..." You whine. His grins grows, and he lets out a groan as he latches his lips to your neck. He licks and kisses up and down your neck, until he finds a spot that makes you let out a beautiful whine, causing him to nip at it. "Do you think your father would be less likely to accept my proposal if he noticed you covered in marks of love from me?" Fritz asks, and you only giggle a little. He finger wanders up to touch the pearl of your sex, making you gasp. "Oh, Fritz... what are you doing?" You ask. "Just finding your pearl, my dear. I want you to cum at least once before I take your virginity. I want to please you, my darling girl." He kisses your cheek, before he presses another finger against your pearl. He rubs in soft, slow circles, trying a few different angles before he finds one that pleases you, which he discerns from the moans you let out. "Fritz, mm-" You moan. You can feel a slow heat spreading, as something in you builds. "Please, a little faster?" You ask. He tuts, and looks at you. "Can't you be patient?" He teases. "No, wanna finish..." You mumble. "Want you in me, I-I wanna be your little wife." He almost chokes at your pleas, the words going straight to his cock. He didn't think you could arouse him even further, but you always did exceed his expectations. He quickens the pace, and you can feel your orgasm approaching. "Yes, Fritz, Yes. Please, make me cum." You beg. "You want to cum, cum so I'll put my manhood into you? Want me to make you a proper little wife for me?" He edges you, and as you nod and agree profusely, you feel that wave wash over you. Your pussy convulses around nothing, as you let out a whine that sounds like music to him. This beats his visits to the royal opera a hundred times over.

As you pant, coming down from your high, Fritz holds you in your place, rising a little out of the water himself. You blush, as his erect manhood becomes visible. He's well groomed, and while the tip isn't pronounced, there's a curve to it that makes your mouth water. "Well, do I seem up to your standards, my love?" He asks. "More than that, Fritz. You're so pretty..." While it seems like nothing to you, these words strike him hard. He's never been called pretty before, and hearing it from your soft lips wipes the lewd grin off his face, replacing it with momentary shock. He pulls himself to you, his chapped lips colliding with your soft ones. You squeak, but melt into it. He tastes like earl grey tea and the occasional cigars he would smoke, but only when stressed. You both gasp as he pulls away, needing air. He places many small kisses on your face, making you smile as you look up at him. "My sweet, sweet girl. Always so kind to this old man..." He murmurs. As he does, he rolls his hips forward a little, allowing the underside of his manhood to rub against the length of your sex. "I'm going to be gentle, alright? It might hurt a little, especially with me being quite a bit larger than you. But I promise to take it at your pace, alright?" He asks, his hands resting gently on your waist. You nod, and feel his hard tip prod a few times at your aroused pearl, before moving down to line up with your entrance. He warns you a little, before gently pushing the tip in. You wince, and he continues to soothingly rub your waist with his thumbs. He moves himself out, then rolls his hips back in, a little deeper with each thrust. It hurts, but the relaxing warm water helps, and it's not as bad as you thought it would be. "Feels okay, darling?" He asks. "Yes..." You respond, focusing on the feeling of him inside you. As he continues, the pain subsides, and he begins to quicken the pace when he tells you this.

"God, Fritz. You're big, s-so big..." You moan, his hips causing your ass to bounce back and forth off the wall of the tub. "I' feel 'mazing." He huffs. "So tight, and warm. My girl, letting me take you like this, getting you ready for our wedding night." He feels himself harden even further at the thought. "Y'know, I think it'd be a shame not to share how sweet you are, how caring." He says, his hips now pounding at your cervix. "W-what?" You ask. He had made it clear earlier he didn't want to share, so despite the pleasure you are confused. "Saying you'll make a good wife, but I think you'd make a better mother." He moans. You gasp at the thought. "All swollen with my baby, my child. Letting me care for you for once, instead of helping me walk cause of my leg, I'd get to help you around..." He thrusts grow more erratic at the idea, and you feel yourself about to climax once more. "Let me, my love, please. Let me fill you with my seed, my children. Let your fiance make you a mommy..." He begs. Just as you shout an agreement, you feel yourself convulse around him, causing his breath to hitch. He groans. "God, gonna finish to now, going to give you my babies..." He shouts. You feel a warmth flood you, as he sprays hot, white ropes of cum into your womb. You both pant, taking quite some time to recover.

Being the strong man he is, he bounces back quite quickly, while you are so tired you can barely move. "I'm sorry, my love." He coos. "Perhaps I was a bit rough for your first time..." You shake your head. "Mmm, no. I-I felt good, just, I'm just tired." You yawn. He chuckles. He cleans himself, and you, before draining the tub. He grabs both of your clothes as he carries you past your servants quarters, and into his room. Helping you to redress in your undergarments, he lays you down. You sigh as your body melts into the luxury sheets. He sits beside you, gently stroking your face. "Get some rest, my little bride." He whispers, before departing back to his office. He heads to the front door, and picks up a letter dropped off from the courier. Inside the envelope is your father's response, from a proposal sent several days ago by Fritz. Once again, though this was his third and final time asking, your father once again denied your hand in marriage to Fritz, saying he would never marry his precious girl to an invader. Fritz grimaces, as he had not wanted it to come to this. Sighing, he writes two more letters in response. One to your father, stating his intent to take your hand either way, and another to his second-in-command, ordering a man to be jailed for treason and defying military orders. The first letter reads as follows.

Dear sir,

As you are well aware, this is the third time you have rejected to allow me to take your daughters hand in marriage. While i understand your hesitation, I do what I do only to provide her a safe, comfortable life, which I do not believe you could have provided her, in your town which my men overtook in merely three hours. I could not imagine if a man worse than I had set his sights on her instead. Rest assured, that in light of your soon-to-be imprisonment, I will care for her. She has developed a reciprocation of my feelings, and despite your refusal to wed her to me, as I write this she lays in my bed, beginning to bear my child. I wish that you had been understanding, and done what was best for your daughter. Now, she will marry happily, but have no father, and the blame lies only on you.

-Fritz, General of the Northern King's forces.

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shonen-brainrot · 5 months

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Ex boyfriend!Bakugo, who revels in the whirlwind of our past relationship, now faces the aftermath of your departure after you decided to cut him off. Fueled by a fiery concoction of rage and heartbreak, he struts into a darker, more sinister version of himself, leaving reverberations of chaos in every damn corridor of his existence.

Ex boyfriend!Bakugo, who'll be showing up uninvited at your new home because he heard you were moving on with someone new, the sting of jealousy evident in his actions.

Ex boyfriend!Bakugo, who'll be engaging in heated arguments and raising his voice out of sheer jealousy anytime he sees you happy. "You think you can just walk away and I'll let you? I'll make sure every step you take is a reminder of what you left behind!"

Ex boyfriend!Bakugo, who will apologize for screaming at you with a warm hug after yet another argument he caused.

Ex boyfriend!Bakugo, for whom the training becomes a way of releasing his pent-up anger at himself, which sometimes leads to him overdoing it and pulling something or straining a muscle, but he refuses to go to the medbay in his agency because he knows you might be there.

Ex boyfriend!Bakugo, who can't get used to sleeping alone at night. For years you had always been there with him, and now that you aren't, the silence and the loneliness are deafening. He's still intoxicated by the memories of you, relentlessly holding onto the past and struggling to move on.

Ex boyfriend!Bakugo, who somehow finesses you into going out for a drink one evening when your new boyfriend is off doing whatever at the delegation, all in the name of talking and setting things straight. Surprisingly, you end up having a blast, reminiscent of the good old times, and, of course, you both get completely wasted. With the night still young, you both decide to hit the dancefloor.

Ex boyfriend!Bakugo, with his hands shamelessly exploring every inch of your body as you grind your ass against his crotch, completely oblivious to the impact it's having on him. Katsuki grunts throatily into your ear, a vice-like grip on your hip and waist, because subtlety was never his damn forte.

Ex boyfriend!Bakugo, whose brain's on the fritz, declares that it's high time for you to saunter your way back home. In the taxi he commandeers, he lounges on the back seat like he owns the place, a solid arm draped around your shoulders as your head lazily lolls on the crook of his neck. Amidst giggles and banter, you reminisce about the good old times.

Ex boyfriend!Bakugo, his other hand making a bold move between your thighs. Mentally thanking the universe for your choice of a short dress, he smirks as his rough fingers skillfully push aside the fabric of your panties to rub your folds slowly. You, under the influence, offer no objection. A wicked grin plays on his lips as he relishes the sensation of your wetness slowly covering his fingertips, and you can't help but let out an anticipatory gasp.

Ex boyfriend!Bakugo, who, the moment you two step into your swanky new house, wastes no time pinning you against the nearest wall. He swiftly tugs your panties down your legs, expertly wrapping your leg around his hip. With a hand that's practically shaking, he skillfully works on unbuckling his pants.

Ex boyfriend!Bakugo, who drives his cock into you, evoking a gasp from your parted lips. He's relentless, kissing and nibbling on your exposed neck, growling with satisfaction at the wetness and warmth of your ever tight pussy is enveloping his throbbing member.

Ex boyfriend!Bakugo, who's railing you, going all in with a pace that's as fast and brutal as a damn hurricane. He has your thighs shaking as you scream his name. Your pussy clenches around his cock, practically begging for every drop of his cum, and he's more than willing to oblige, growling in your ear, "Yeah, bitch, just like that, taking my cock so well, just like back when I was your boyfriend. You miss my cock, hmm? Yeah, of course you do, tsch!"

Ex boyfriend!Bakugo, who unleashes a guttural growl like an animal as he finishes inside you, emptying his balls deep in your cunt until the tip of his cock brushes against your cervix again and again. Katsuki's seed spurts as the man kisses you with a hunger, sucking on your tongue. "I'll fucking make you mine again, doll."

#ru writes 🍬#mha headcanons #bakugo headcanons #bakugo x reader #bakugou x reader #bakugou katsuki #katsuki bakugo x reader #bakugo smut #bakugo x reader smut #mha smut #bakugo x you #bakugou smut #bnha smut #anime smut #bakugo #bakugo x y/n

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familyvideostevie · 3 months

Text

it's your turn for choosing

this was born out of a prompt request from my dear, dear, @softlyspector. this is for you, becca!

getting asked out via a smudgy scribble on a coffee cup | valentine's day prompts

joel miller x reader

summary/warnings: joel stops by your coffee shack every day. it's not your fault you're a little in love with him because of it. | modern au, fluff, flirting, jesse and cat and ellie cameos, game!joel in my head. i have not been a barista so sorry to all baristas if this reads wildly off-base. | 5.6k

a/n: it's giving rom-com! happy valentine's day. a bit different from my usual fare but hopefully it makes your heart warm. love u. thank u always to @macfrog and @bageldaddy for your eyes.

___

7:32 am. It’s helpful in this line of work to know exactly when you’re fucked.

The espresso machine has been on the fritz all week and despite how much you want your current method of fixing it to work – banging a fist on the top until it stops wheezing – all signs point to today being a very bad day indeed.

You’ve only been open for two hours.

Here for three, awake for four. God, you’re tired.

Anyway – you’re fucked. And there’s nothing you can do about it.

You call the time of death on the machine and search for something you can write on.

The Zone – a stupid name, but you can’t be bothered to change the sign that came with the place – is a coffee shop that sits between towns.

Your coffee shop.

It's more shack than shop, not really a zone of anything, just an order window and a five-drink menu. It's the kind of place that appears like a mirage for tourists right before they get on the highway at an ungodly hour and serves as a quick stop for everyone else. You open earlier than any other place around to get the truckers and the farmers and close when you stop being able to keep your eyes open.

The faded brown clapboard building is no bigger than an RV. The paint is chipped and the roof is a too-bright shade of green and you serve your drinks and the occasional sweet treat when you can get a good deal off of the baker two towns over through a window. It’s not a fancy chain, it’s not a drive-thru. You’ve got a bathroom and a few rickety cafe tables and chairs and no fucking common sense since you like it.

You even love it, some days.

And the craziest part is that it works. Even on mornings like this one, when your espresso machine breaks during the lull between rushes and your part-time help calls in sick and you’ve spilled coffee all over your apron twice – it works.

You tear off the lip of a cardboard box and write in big block letters: NO ESPRESSO TODAY. Maybe Tess, the baker, knows someone who can fix it. She knows everyone.

“Fuck you, you piece of junk,” you say. You give the machine another smack for good measure.

Someone clears their throat and you whirl around, makeshift sign in hand.

You’ve been doing this long enough that a handsome customer doesn’t phase you, but the man standing at your order window makes your stomach swoop for just a second.

“Morning,” you say, summoning your smile. “Hold on a sec, let me just –”

You lean out the window and wedge the piece of cardboard against the napkin holder on the ledge.

The man’s gaze drops to read. You take the opportunity to look at him.

He’s tall and broad – if you had to guess, you’d say he works on one of the farms around here. He’s tan, dark hair threaded through with grey. His arms are crossed and you wish he wasn’t wearing a jacket so you could see his forearms. His denim shirt is undone at the top and you fixate on the chorded column of his throat, on the teasing glimpse of chest hair underneath.

The guy looks tired.

Bone-tired, the kind of exhaustion you see when you look in the mirror. It comes from hundreds of early mornings and late nights, from hours on your feet and plenty of worry. He’s got lines at the corners of his eyes and a few around his mouth and you find yourself hoping they’re from laughter.

“No espresso,” he reads, slow and unhurried. His drawl fits in with most of the folks around here, but you’re sure you haven’t seen him before. You’d remember.

“Hope that doesn't scare you off,” you say. “Still got everything else.”

“Everything else being…” He glances at the chalkboard that serves as your menu.

DRIP COFFEE. LATTE. CAPPUCCINO. TEA. HOT CHOCOLATE. All written in your blocky hand in white paint.

“Three options.”

Trial and error have taught you that simple works best. You’ll make anything people ask for, so long as you know how and have the supplies, and if they’re nice about it you won’t charge too much extra.

“Can I get you one of those three options?”

You’re not trying to rush him, but the next wave of people is bound to show up any minute.

“Black coffee will do,” he says. His mouth tugs up at the corner into a smirk that makes your face feel hot. “If you have that.”

“Thank you for taking pity on me,” you say, going for teasing and missing the mark by a mile. You just sound tired and genuine. “You just made my morning.”

He looks amused and you turn from him, unable to hide your grin. You pour a steaming cup and snap the lid on.

“Pretty shit morning if this is makin’ it,” he drawls.

You hand him the cup and your fingers brush.

“You have no idea.”

He eyes the sign again and then your stained apron. “I got some notion.” He tugs his wallet from his back pocket and pulls out a $5 bill. “Keep the change,” he says.

You want to refuse, to thank him, but a few more cars pull up and Mr. Black Coffee just raises his cup to you and heads back to his truck.

Well, shit. You hope he comes back. A tipper like that, and hot? You sure wouldn’t mind if he became a regular customer. __

You call Tess that afternoon and she does know a guy, so the espresso machine gets fixed and things go back to normal. Your part-time help returns in the morning and nothing else breaks.

Today is uncharacteristically warm for the season. The inside of The Zone is almost stifling, always at least 15 degrees warmer than outside, and you keep wiping your sweaty hands on your apron as you make espresso after espresso for the lunch crowd.

Cat, a spunky girl who likes to practice her latte art when it’s slow, takes orders at the register. You keep half of your attention on her and half on the four drinks you’re working on.

“Black coffee, please,” someone says to her. Someone whose voice you recognize.

“Can I get a name for that?” Cat asks. It’s busy enough that calling names is easier than calling orders, no matter how small your menu is.

“Joel,” he says. You let the milk steam on its own and pour the black coffee before Cat can do it.

“I’ve got it,” you tell her. “Can you finish up those drinks?”

She shrugs and you swap places. You know you’re sweaty and coffee-stained but you smile at him and hand over his coffee.

“Hot coffee on a day like this?” you tease. He – Joel – is sweaty, too. The collar of his work shirt is dark with sweat and his hair is a mess. He must be here on his lunch break. He takes the cup from you and slurps a long sip as a reply to your question.

You laugh. Joel looks pleased.

“Operatin’ a full menu, I see,” he says, pulling out another $5. “Glad you got it fixed.”

“It’s still a piece of junk,” you shrug. “Just don’t tell anyone I said that.”

He waves off your offer of change and raises his cup at you, taking a few steps backward towards his truck.

“Thank you,” he says. He eyes the tag on your chest and tacks your name on at the end. It sounds good from his mouth.

“Bye, Joel,” you say. His lips twitch but you barely have time to think about it before you have to take the next few orders.

The line dies down and you step away from the register to help Cat with some cappuccinos – your least favorite drink by far due to all the damn foam they require – and she eyes you.

“Dude,” Cat says. “What the hell was that?”

If it wasn’t already a billion degrees in here you know your face would feel hot.

“What the hell was what?”

She can’t reply for a few seconds while you grind beans for some espresso.

“I didn’t even know you knew how to flirt,” she muses, tapping a frother full of milk a few times. “That was pretty bad flirting if you ask me –”

You turn the grinder on again to drown her out.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” you yell. She rolls her eyes at you until you turn off the machine.

You tamp down the grounds and slot them into the machine.

“I mean, not my type at all, for like, so many reasons,” she says, wrinkling her nose. “Way too old for me, for one. Man, for another. But I see the appeal, I guess. Seems like he likes you. And was that a five-dollar bill? Black coffee is two bucks, last time I checked –”

“Can we get back to steaming milk, please?” you snap, more embarrassed than mad. “I am not taking flirting advice from a teenager.”

“I’m twenty!” she sputters. “Wait, so you admit that you like him?”

“Milk.”

Cat is right, though, and you know it. You just don’t see any harm in having a crush on some guy who comes to your coffee shop. Running this place means you see hundreds of people every day. You know their names, you ask them about their kids and their pets and their jobs, and you smile at them even on your bad days. It’s just part of the job. The daily interactions keep you afloat, make you feel more solid in your own life. People see you, they recognize you, they know you – even if it’s just because you make them coffee.

Maybe Joel will keep coming back. Maybe he’ll become one of the regulars you know things about.

And if you have a crush on him?

No harm done. He’s nice to look at.

And he tips well.

Joel stops by again.

And again.

He comes in every morning – sometimes at lunch – and orders the same thing. You learn the rumble of his truck by ear alone, the crunch of his boots on the gravel. Sometimes people in line say hi to him and a smile works its way onto your face on instinct when his voice reaches your ear. It’s never slow enough to have a proper conversation but he smiles at you, tells you he likes the flowers, your new apron.

All of it is flirting but maybe not flirting.

Maybe he’s just being polite.

Also, he keeps overpaying.

One day, almost a month since you first saw him, he doesn’t come in the morning. When you don’t see him in line at lunch, either, you’re a little disappointed. The weather is perfect – not too hot, not too cold, the sun shining – and you want to see him in the sunlight.

The day crowd is long gone and you’re only an hour or two from closing when his truck pulls up.

“I was getting worried,” you call as he walks over. Usually, he’s got some kind of dust or paint or something on them – Joel is a contractor, you’ve learned through your brief encounters, not a farmer – but today his clothes are clean and un-ripped.

“I’m honored,” he says.

You have his cup ready by the time he reaches the window.

“I’m just surprised you can get through the day without a cup of coffee.”

He snorts and hands you his cash.

“I can’t,” he says. “Had shitty home brew this morning.”

He takes a sip of your coffee and sighs. Your heart picks up and you don’t hide your grin.

“What’s with the schedule change?” you ask.

He smirks. “Miss me?”

You scoff and cross your arms. Heat rises in your chest and you feel almost giddy.

“Just curious,” you say. “Don’t let it go to your head, but you’re my favorite customer.”

Joel laughs and scratches the back of his neck.

“Reckon that’s the tip.”

“Actually, ordering a cup of black coffee is the way to any barista’s heart.”

Joel’s eyebrows climb up his forehead.

“Ah,” he says. He takes another sip, his eyes dancing with mirth. “‘Course.”

“Nah,” you say with a teasing smile. “I’d never be so shallow.”

There’s no line behind him but you expect him to go back to his truck, anyway. But here he is. Talking to you.

You grab a rag and wipe down the counter to keep your hands busy.

“I’m, uh. Meetin’ one of my kids here,” Joel says. The sudden shyness that accompanies his admission is a surprise.

Your eyes dart to his hand but you see no ring, nor the pale shadow of one.

“Both of ‘em moved to the city recently. Ellie – she’s comin’ up for the night.”

“I’ll bet you miss them,” you offer. You’re not sure why he’d want to bring his daughter to your coffee shack, but you’re not complaining.

Joel smiles at you. It’s a sad smile but still a good one. The affection in his eyes is raw.

“Sure do,” he says. He tucks one hand in his pocket and takes another sip of his coffee. “But it’s good for them. Sarah – she’s a little older – is in school and Ellie is workin’ on her music and whatever else she’s into these days.” The pride in his voice is clear.

“Well, I’m honored you want to bring her here.” You gesture to your slightly sad sitting area and the empty lot behind him.

Joel looks ready to argue with you when a faded, older version of his truck pulls up. Music leaks from the open windows and the driver bops her head to the beat a few times before shutting it off and hoping out, thumbs flying on the screen of her phone.

“That’ll be her,” he says drily. “Hey, kiddo.”

Ellie looks up from her hands, tucks her phone in her back pocket, and grins at Joel.

She doesn’t look a thing like him, but the connection is obvious. She moves like him, her shoulders set like she’s ready for a challenge at any moment. Joel sets his coffee down at the window and meets her halfway for a hug.

You look away and busy yourself with restocking whatever you can get your hands on.

“Dude, you come here every day?” Ellie asks. “Joel, this is so far from –”

Joel talks over her.

“Drive go okay? Sarah said they’re doin’ shit on the 35 –”

Ellie huffs.

“Yeah, yeah, some traffic getting out of the city ‘cause of the fucking lane closure, but otherwise fine.”

“Good.”

You turn to face them, a genuine smile firmly in place.

“Hi,” you say. Joel picks up his coffee again, which Ellie eyes with a scowl. You introduce yourself to her. “You’re Ellie, right? I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Ellie frowns. Behind her, Joel’s mouth twitches but he says nothing. It’s a lie, obviously, but something tells you he doesn’t mind and she believes it.

“Really?” She throws him a glare and then rolls her eyes. “You gotta stop telling strangers about me, man.”

“Someone’s gotta warn ‘em,” he says.

She laughs. “Hey, fuck you!”

“Only good stuff,” you say. You like her. “Joel says you’re working on your music?”

Ellie’s eyes light up. “Oh, yeah,” she says. “I’ve got an audition next week.” She turns to Joel. “I brought my guitar ‘cause I have a fuck ton of songs to play for you.”

He puts a hand on her shoulder and she settles a little.

“I bet they’re real good.”

Ellie flushes and rolls her eyes. “Yeah, well. You have to hear them first.”

You feel a little off-balance again, like you’re on the fringes of something you shouldn’t be seeing. The love on Joel’s face is clear as day.

“Do you want some coffee?” you ask her.

Joel winces. Ellie gags.

“No offense,” she starts, eyes darting between you and Joel. “I know Joel is fifty percent coffee on a good day, but it’s not my thing.” She looks at the menu and narrows her eyes. “I had a mocha the other day and didn’t hate it. Do you make those?”

“Look at that,” Joel says. “You’re convertin’.”

“Am not,” Ellie says. “It’s got chocolate in it, dude. No shit, I like it.”

“Yeah, give me a few minutes,” you laugh. “I’ll put lots of chocolate in it.”

They sit at one of your tables and you hear their laughter in the background as you make her drink.

It’s strange to see Joel like this – to build up on the man you’ve imagined him to be in your mind. Father never occurred to you. It makes sense, though, like a missing piece of him slotted into place. But it also makes the crush feel a little more real. Now that he’s more than your favorite regular customer. Now that you know a piece of him, of who he really is.

It makes you want to know more.

You finish her drink and call Ellie’s name. They both stand and Joel digs in his wallet again.

“Don’t you dare pay me, Joel,” you say. You direct your next words at Ellie. “Really. I’m just honored you stopped by.”

She eyes Joel and he eyes her right back with the same look. She must have learned it from him.

“Yeah,” she says. “Me too.” She grins at you with all of her teeth. “Joel loves this place. Talks about it all the time.”

She takes a sip of her mocha and her eyes go wide.

“Wait, this is fucking good. Man, I see why you drive –”

Joel clears his throat.

“We’re off,” he says. “Thank you, as always.” He sounds softer than usual as if being nice to his daughter is the best thing you could do for him.

You suppose it is.

“You’re welcome, as always.”

Ellie knocks her shoulder with Joel’s as they head back to their trucks. She must be whispering something to him because he swats her away with a groan and she cackles.

They both wave at you as they drive away.

Joel keeps coming in the mornings, and your conversations return to their fleeting cadence. Even so, it’s hard to deny that your crush on him has kicked into high gear.

You try not to let your gaze linger on his lips, on his throat. On his hands when he takes the cup from you, how your skin brushes and it makes you warm all over. You think about how he laughed, how relaxed he was around Ellie. You want to know what he’s like outside of your small daily interaction. You want to know what he eats for dinner, how he spends his weekends, what he listens to on the radio.

You want him.

Business is busy, which helps. A kid from a few towns over – Jesse, he’s called – signs on to work part-time, mostly for the second half of the day. He’s been a barista before so the training is minimal, but it still changes the flow of things. He’s a charming guy and the regulars take to him easy enough.

It’s you who is distracted.

One morning, Joel comes in as expected. Jesse is working, too, trying to clock some extra hours this week.

Joel is on the phone in line, his attention somewhere else. He’s frowning, a deep crease between his brows as he waits in line. All it would take to smooth it away is the press of your thumb.

You try not to stare and probably fail, but manage to take and make the orders ahead of him without making any mistakes, though your whole body feels alight.

He hangs up right as he gets to the window and sighs, giving you a tired smile.

“Howdy,” he says. You set his coffee down in front of him and he pulls out a ten-dollar bill instead of a five.

“Joel –” you say, but he interrupts you.

“My brother called and said he needs breakfast,” Joel grumbles. “Y’got any of Tess’s bear claws?”

Right, they work together, you remember. He’s mentioned Tommy in passing.

“I think so, just hold on a sec.”

“Take your time,” Joel says. It sounds like he means it, even though there’s a line behind him and he probably needs to get to work.

You do find a few bear claws in the box Tess gave you early this morning when you stopped by the bakery.

“You’re in luck,” you say, putting it in a paper bag. “Well, Tommy is.”

“Savin’ my ass,” he tells you when you hand it to him. “Thanks, sweetheart.”

The word sends a jolt of lightning through your whole body. He doesn’t even seem to realize he’s said it but your world shifts slightly on its axis. Sweetheart.

He turns on his heel before you can give him change for his cash, his phone ringing.

“Jesus, Tommy, I said I’d –”

You let him fade into the distance and smile at your next customer.

“How can I help you?”

A few orders later you end up next to Jesse making some lattes.

“Was that Joel Miller?” Jesse asks. “Before. The guy with the black coffee and bear claw?”

You startle. “Um. It was. How do you –”

“I didn’t know he was a customer here,” Jesse says. “Does he come in a lot?”

You unpack a few more cinnamon buns that Tess gave you this morning. “Yeah, every day.”

“Damn,” he says. “He must really like your coffee.”

“Are you trying to say it’s bad coffee, Jesse?”

He huffs a laugh. “No, boss, ‘course not.” He grinds beans for a few seconds but continues once he’s done, steady hands tamping down the results. “I just know he lives like, a half-hour away. And that there are plenty of coffee shops there, too.”

You narrow your eyes. “How do you know him, Jesse?”

“His daughter, Ellie, is a friend of mine,” he shrugs. “Went over to their house plenty of times in high school.”

“Well. He’s a contractor, right? I bet he has a job out here.”

Jesse clips the espresso into the machine and starts on some milk.

“I’m not saying he doesn’t,” he muses. “I am saying that it takes at least 30 minutes to get here from where he lives.”

It’s silly. You’re half-flattered, half-confused. Yeah, you like Joel, and yeah, you’re pretty sure you’ve been flirting every day for over a month. But you figure it’s convenient for him. Coffee and an ego boost all in one.

But if he’s going out of his way to come to The Zone? Well, maybe it’s not just for the coffee.

“Your coffee is good,” Jesse stresses, seeing the gears in your mind turning. It looks like he’s trying to hide a grin. You need to stop hiring young people who have keen eyes and big mouths.

“I think the ice needs a refill,” you say, snapping back into focus.

“He might be here for something else, too -”

“Go refill the ice.”

He throws up his hands with a smirk. “I’m going!”

7:24 am. You’re on your own again and you’re fucked.

The espresso machine is working perfectly and the early rush has ended. The weather is beyond shitty. Rain falls in sheets and the sky is so dark it feels like the sun didn’t bother to rise. It pounds on the roof and blows in the window every time you open it. The awning does nothing to shield customers as they shout their orders over the wind at you. Your fingers are going numb and your front is damp enough to set your teeth chattering.

Joel’s truck pulls up and – well. You’re fucked. And he’s why.

You’re fucked because you can’t stop thinking about him. You can’t stop thinking about what Jesse said. What Joel said. Sweetheart.

A harmless crush turned into something more intense, something heavy in your stomach. You want him earnestly, fully, with every piece of you.

And you still barely know him. But you want to.

Maybe it’s the weather, maybe it’s the fact that you’re damp and cold and frustrated with your own heart and brain. But you see his truck and you decide to do something about this stupid crush.

You write your phone number on a cup with steady hands and set it aside for Joel. You scrawl on it as neatly as you can: Want to get a drink somewhere else sometime?

It’s a bit of a coward’s way out. You should just ask him, say how you feel to his face. He’d probably like that better, anyway. But, well, this just feels safer. He could ignore it, he could throw it out, he could see it and decide to never come back.

Sweetheart.

Somehow you don’t think he’ll do any of those.

The rain lashes against the window so hard you don’t open it until you see the lonely figure approach. The morning rush has been a morning trickle, a few brave souls venturing out for something from you.

Joel, it seems, is one.

You open the window and are greeted with a spray of mist.

“Gimme a sec,” you tell him. It’s so windy he leans in close to hear you. He’s wearing a jacket that’s ill-suited for the rain, his hair plastered to his forehead. Your fingers twitch with the need to brush it back.

You quickly fill the cup you’ve set aside and pass it to him with two hands so it doesn’t blow over.

“Brave of you,” you say. He’s in the rain and you’re both getting soaked but you want to talk to him desperately. It’s a buzzing need at the front of your brain. “Thought the weather would get you, too.”

“Told you,” he all but yells over the wind with a flash of white teeth. “Shitty coffee at home.”

“Drive safe, Joel,” you tell him. He nods at you and jogs back to the truck, cup in hand. You won’t be able to see if he reads it from here, but you hope so. All you have to do is wait.

And wait.

The rain stops.

You’re still waiting, phone silent.

Sunshine peeks through the clouds with a slightly surreal post-storm glow. A few more folks have made their way to The Zone but today has been slow. The clock ticks slowly towards 3 pm and your phone does not ring.

“Don’t be stupid,” you mutter. “He’s working.”

You step out of the shack and into the slightly humid air, the gravel under your feet shifting wetly. The tables you’d set out this morning are, mercifully, still there, though they’re spattered with rain. You might as well close up now.

You’re bent over the last of the chairs, wiping them down with an old rag. You’re focused, so much so that you don’t pay much attention to the hum of an engine and the crunch of tires behind you.

A door slams but you don’t turn around.

“Sorry,” you call over your shoulder. “We just closed.”

“Shame,” he says.

You whip around and find Joel, hands in his pockets. He’s in a different shirt than this morning and his jeans don’t look soaked. You’re still damp, water stains on your pants and shirt.

“Oh,” you breathe. “Hi, Joel.”

He smirks. “Don’t think I’ve ever seen you outside of that window,” he says, before jutting his chin towards the tables. “Can I help?”

You’re very aware of your whole body all at once. He’s looking at you, drinking you in like you’re his morning cup of coffee.

“Uh, sure,” you say. You want to ask why he’s here but the words won’t come. “They go in there, in the little closet on the right.” You point to the open door to the shack.

He dips his chin low just once and then crosses the distance between you in three big strides. He grabs the chair closest to you. The t-shirt he’s wearing shows his arms and you feel what he’s just said – it’s weird to be in the same space like this. You’re outside but he feels so big.

Joel’s arms flex and you swallow, following him with another chair. He stacks his in the right place and holds a hand out for yours.

“What did you write on it?” he asks, casually.

The words don’t totally register. “What?”

He doesn’t answer. His arms are crossed, brow furrowed. Your mouth goes dry.

“On my cup. This mornin’.” He keeps his gaze on yours and for some reason, you can’t look away.

“Oh – you, you didn’t see?”

He shakes his head. “Was rainin’, remember? Got smudged before I got in my truck.”

“Right.”

You tear yourself away and leave him standing there. Maybe you should just lie.

But then you think about the way his eyes crinkle at the corners when you make him laugh, and how he asks you how you are and how he brought his daughter here and how he tips and how he drives all this way for your – for you.

Joel waits, his footsteps the only indication he’s followed you.

You turn around.

“I wrote my phone number,” you say. “And I asked you on a date.”

The corner of his mouth pulls up and you think he’s…blushing?

He rubs a hand over his beard and you hope he’s hiding a smile. Your heart is in your throat, beating so loud you worry that he can hear it. All of your bravado sinks into the damp ground at your feet. Maybe you’ve read this totally wrong. Maybe he’s just a nice guy, maybe your coffee is just really good and your employees are fucking with you. He’s here to let you down easy, to tell you he’s not even available, not interested, not –

“Alright,” Joel says. He walks towards you and tugs his phone from his back pocket. “I’ll take that number.”

Oh.

He hands it over and you type it in, heart jackhammering in your chest. But you watch his face, see the quirk of his mouth and his blush and it makes you brave.

“And the date?” you ask, giving it back. Your fingers brush and your heart keeps pounding but your nerves take a sharp turn away from doubt and towards excitement.

“Well, you gonna ask again?”

You both seem to have found your footing with whatever this is. The flirt in him is back full force, and he’s looking at you in that way of his. You want to know all of his expressions. There is so much to learn.

“Are you going to say yes?”

“S’why I came back,” he admits. “Figured you’d be closin’. Hoped you’d be free.”

“So you could read the cup?”

Joel takes the other two chairs and heads for the door again. You trail him. God, his arms are distracting.

“Most of it,” he says. “Couldn’t make out the last few numbers, though.”

“Well, once we’re done here, I’m free. If you wanted to go on a date with me.”

Joel turns and you’re in the small space at the same time, your chests almost pressed together. You must smell like sweat and stale coffee but you watch as Joel inhales, eyes on yours.

“I do,” he says.

It would be so easy to kiss him, a quick, chaste press of your lips to see what he tastes like.

His pupils dilate and you sway into him for a breath before you realize what you’re doing and step back outside.

You take a deep breath of fresh air. “Great.”

He rubs the back of his neck with one hand and you head for the tables.

“Y’know,” he says. “Ellie’s been on my ass about this.”

You laugh, high and bright. “Has she?”

“That girl ain’t capable of missin’ an opportunity to stick her nose in,” he grumbles, but it’s affectionate.

“Well, I think she’s smart,” you goad.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Reckon she is.”

Joel’s brows furrow and he takes a few quick steps into your space, so close the tips of your shoes almost touch.

“Oh,” you breathe. “Hi.”

“Hold still,” he says. He reaches for your face slowly, slow enough that you could pull away but you don’t. He brushes something from your cheek with the pad of his thumb.

“Grounds.” His voice is a little hoarse.

“Thanks,” you breathe.

He smirks but the flush creeping up his neck tells you he’s not wholly unaffected. It makes you feel…it just makes you feel.

Joel Miller likes you.

“Well, don’t just stand there,” you say.

His eyes widen slightly and he leans in just a little but you slide out of his space with a grin.

“The sooner we finish up the sooner I can buy you a drink.”

Joel laughs, loud and full. “Oh, how generous of you.”

“You’re very lucky,” you say.

“I agree,” he drawls. He taps your chin with one knuckle.

His eyes sparkle and he smiles, looking luminous in the post-storm sunshine. You see a flash of a future – watching him drink coffee in a kitchen instead of through the window of The Zone. Your hands meeting over a shared table, fingers tangling, that smile directed at you in the morning light.

Giddiness rises in your throat and spills out of you in a delighted laugh of your own. Joel just grins.

“So,” he says. “Where’re you takin’ me?”

thank you for reading <3 reblog, send feedback, general masterlist here!

#joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #joel miller x y/n #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller fluff

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luveline · 10 months

Text

𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐠𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐭 | 𝐞𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐞 𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐧

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

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

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

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

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

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

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

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

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

"Our body heat will mingle."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Eddie," you chastise.

"Moderately fast."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Eds?" you murmur.

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

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

"Can I sleep over?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Like, by a ghost?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oof," you say, straight-faced.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Who?"

"The ghost."

"She's a she?"

"Sounds kind of like one."

"Come sit up here with me."

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

Because Eddie doesn't believe in ghosts.

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

"What does she say?” he probes.

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

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

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

Eddie stares at you.

"I was going to tell you–"

"When?" he demands.

"I'm telling you right now!"

"How long have you been hearing voices?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eddie stands up.

"Where are you going?"

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

"I don't want a beer."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Can't. In Santa Barbara."

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

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

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

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

Wayne grunts again.

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

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

"Yes!" Eddie and Wayne call simultaneously.

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

"Lighter?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Gotta be faster than that," Eddie taunts.

"Don't chain smoke," Wayne says.

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

Wayne hums.

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

"One for me?" he asks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You little freak."

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

"Loser can't even light a cigarette."

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

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

"Somebody must've," you say.

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

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

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

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

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

"What's going on with you?" he asks.

"I'm just thinking."

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

"I'm not sure you wanna hear it."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It's working, isn't it?"

"Loser."

—

You wake up to Eddie tapping your shoulder.

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

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

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

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

Eddie's frowning at you when you look up.

"Want me to get you a rag?" he asks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Where's your uncle?" you ask.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You're trying to piss me off."

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

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

You sigh at the chilly coldness of each blessed drop.

"Heatwave from hell is finally over."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Me," you say.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You asked me last night–”

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

“I’m agnostic about ghosts.”

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

“No. What’s agnostic mean?” you ask.

“We’ll buy a dictionary.”

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

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

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

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

“Way too personal for our relationship.”

Bad, overused joke.

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

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

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

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

“Twelve dollars.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You forgot the side salad.”

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

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

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

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

“They taste the same.”

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

“Aren’t you always?”

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

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

I’ll make one of myself, too.

What if they fire me?

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

What if it never goes away?

It will.

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

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

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

Eddie… has… a secret…

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

Don’t we all?

—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Kind of.”

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

But he knows.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You’re super worried about the ghost.”

“It is an uber worrying ghost.”

“‘Cause she talks?” you ask.

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

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

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

“Who the fuck is Lucy?”

“The girl. Lucy and Johnny.”

“Bonnie?”

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

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

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

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

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

“I got it,” he says.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Thank you, good sir,” you laugh.

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

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

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

“Do not speed!”

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

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

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

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

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

“Yikes,” you say. “Don’t look.”

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

“Fuck off, Eddie,” you laugh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No. Something I noticed, is all.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Are you listening to me?" he asks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Thought you wanted fries?"

"And I thought you wanted a side salad."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Ugh. Any chance she likes the stereo?"

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

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

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

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

"I left it on the top shelf."

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

"You sure?" he asks.

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

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

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

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

"I've never tried it."

"I'll do it quietly?"

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

"Should I get a different one?"

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

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

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

"And by no graphic detail, you mean…"

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

"Not even, like… hand stuff?"

"Do you want there to be hand stuff?"

"With the demons?"

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

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

"You'd like that, huh? Extra arms?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Read to me, serf," you demand.

Eddie clears his throat.

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

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

"Don't fall asleep," he says.

"It's your whispering."

"I don't want to disturb the ghost."

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

—

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

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

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

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

I swear, sometimes, I can hear someone talking.

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

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

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

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

He must be stroking it in his sleep.

Or maybe you're frizzy.

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

Your lips part.

Thunder cracks outside.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The broken phone is starting to irritate him.

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

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

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

"Yeah, love you too, kid. Eddie–"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lightning flashes again.

There's someone standing in your yard.

The second he notices the figure, it lunges left.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His neck cracks with the force of his turn.

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

“Oh, shit.”

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

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

“Are you okay?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Lightning.”

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

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

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

“What the–”

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

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

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

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

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

“Ouch,” you croak.

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

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

“You’ve been drooling again.”

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

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

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

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

“No, but I have. You know I have.”

“True. That is… unfortunately awkward.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Can you blame me? Snore.”

“You wanted to watch it.”

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

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

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

—

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hey, beautiful.”

“You want half of a turkey sandwich?”

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

“Oh, gross. Give it to me right now.”

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

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

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

“I love it. What’s the occasion?”

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

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

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

“You can still get her flowers.”

“Yeah.”

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

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

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

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

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

"Me too."

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

It must feel so, so heavy.

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

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

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

"You're my best friend."

I would fucking think so, he'd say.

"You're mine," he says.

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

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

"She'd like it, I think."

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

"I'm sure she would. It's pretty."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh. I asked, didn't I?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I'll get out my t-shirts."

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

"I could cancel."

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

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

"I don't like knowing you're alone."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Like a tapeworm," you agree solemnly.

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

"Can tapeworms worry?" you ask.

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

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

"Your ghost."

"Ah."

Eddie waits.

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

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

"What?"

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

"I'm not lying," you lie.

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

"What do I look like?"

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

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

"Why not?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He thinks you're making it up.

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

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

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

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

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

"I didn't mean it."

"Stop, Eddie."

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

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

He does.

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

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

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

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

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

Or maybe it was your ghost.

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

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

"It's not fine."

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

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

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

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

"I'm sorry," he says again.

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

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

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

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

You laugh wetly. Eddie promptly stops talking about parasites.

"Forgive me?" he asks.

You nod on automatic. Of course you do.

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

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

That's when the real trouble begins.

—

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

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

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

“You remember Hawk?” he asks you.

“Jack 'Hawk'?” you ask.

“Yeah, Hawk.”

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

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

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

“What did you do?” you ask.

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

“And he left?”

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

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

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

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

“You didn’t tell me.”

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

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

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

You snort, “Thanks for the information.”

“I got him back for it, anyway.”

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

You elbow him.

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

“Less shame and more story,” you say.

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

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

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

“I wasn’t on vacation.”

“What?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Eddie…”

“I’m a bad person.”

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

The story isn’t true.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eddie is haunted by her absence everyday.

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

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

He needs you to be okay.

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

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

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

"So…" he says.

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

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, she– OK." You frown.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Did she prescribe anything?" he asks.

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

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

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

"I could get you some for free."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You save him from his miserable attempt at placating you.

"I know."

He licks his lips.

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

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

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

"Just so hard to say it to you."

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

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

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

"Is that something you want to go to?"

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

"Yeah. Absolutely."

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

He loves you. You're terrified.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Really?" you ask hopefully.

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

"I'll keep trying too," you promise.

It's all he can ask for.

—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eddie's afraid too.

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

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

"They're too big to be pigeons."

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

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

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

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

If you're sick, what does that mean?

You search for something in the air to hold onto.

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

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

Right?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She's not real.

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

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

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

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

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

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

He stays hovering there.

He holds very still.

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

"What if it isn't?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I'll look after you."

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

Eddie releases a breath. Warmth feathers along your skin.

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

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

"I can't," he says softly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You should take your ambien," he murmurs.

"Okay."

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

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

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

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

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

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

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

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

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chiriwritesstuff · 5 months

Text

The Girl in IT - 1. The Night Shift

A Boss! Joel Miller x IT Specialist F! Reader AU

Chapter Rating: E (18+, MDNI)

Chapter Preview: "Well, it was a virus, and as I looked into the problem, I had to explore every avenue to ensure I pinpointed the issue, you know, for my report to Tess. I went into your history to see if it might have been a site that caused you to have the virus. I may have casually peeked into a few files to ensure they weren’t corrupted…” you admit, “…and I might have stumbled upon-" your eyebrows raise in embarrassment, "Something personal." “Something personal?” He questions, his brows furrowed in confusion. “I don’t have anything personal… oh, shit.” His eyes widen as the realization dawns on him, hands covering his face as he groans in embarrassment. "Look, about my internet history... and the list-" You slowly nod and bite your lip, mostly to hide your own embarrassment. “… yeah. Um, it was quite... informative about your... sexual preferences.”

Chapter Warnings and Tags: No Outbreak! Joel Miller, Mentions of intended smut towards the reader, Boss x Employee Relationship, Virgin Reader, All of the yearning, Joel Miller is a silly flirt, A small-ish age gap, Joel is too forward for his own good, Tess is a boss (and should not be fucked with - or you get the horns).

Word Count: 5.6K

A/N: Well, hello there!

I honestly have no idea where this idea of a (somewhat crack) fic came from, but I had an idea and I ran with it! A lot of the character development came from my own anxieties of feeling behind in life, and if you feel that way too, I feel you! Don't worry, I promise it won't always feel like this. Time is just that- time, and it's never too late to follow your dreams! I believe in you!

To: [email protected]

Fr: [email protected]

Subject: I think I have a Virus?

12:50 AM (10 min ago)

Hey Sugar,

I know it's late, but my computer fritzed out an hour ago (a shit ton of pop-ups) and I have that presentation with The H Hotel tomorrow morning. Well, do you think you could do me a solid and help me... not have any more of those darn pop-ups? I called the number that popped up asking if I needed assistance with the virus and they asked for my credit card information but they haven't replied back.

Shit, was that a scam? Fuck. I should call Amex.

Anyway, do you think you can help me get out of this bind, Sugar? I'll be forever and eternally grateful. If you don't, well... I'm sure Tess will rip me a new one, and I would like to not have a Servopoulos-level meltdown at 9 in the morning. Not after last time. Sorry about having to be a part of that, Sugar. At least Maria was able to pay for your dry cleaning and get you a new shirt? You should have let me check your chest for burns, I sure as hell wouldn't want scalding hot coffee being thrown in my direction either. Shit. Not check your chest as in checking out your... breasts, just the burn site. Yeah. That's what I meant.

(Also, sorry for emailing you last minute. Shit. I'm desperate, baby.)

Thanks,

Joel Miller

Owner and CEO, Miller Construction Group

(512) 123-4567

To:[email protected]

Fr: [email protected]

Subject: RE: I think I have a Virus?

1 AM (0 seconds ago)

Good Evening Mr. Miller,

I got your request and will work on it shortly. I can't make any promises, but I will try to get you out of your "bind".

Don't worry about that thing with Tess. She was rightfully upset, and I just so happened to be caught in the line of fire. If it had to be one of us, I am glad it was me being pelted with boiling hot coffee, and not you in front of your clients. You didn't have to have Maria buy me a blouse from Neiman Marcus, nothing a little tide-to-go can't fix, right? Also, I knew what you meant about my chest, and I didn't think you wanted to look at my... breasts. Let's not refer to any of my body parts moving forward.

Also, I am not completely comfortable with the terms of endearment that you continuously call me, Sir. Please refer to me by my actual name, these emails are monitored by Tess and I would not like to be scalded with hot coffee again for a little misunderstanding.

Please let me know if you have any other pressing questions or concerns.

Goodnight!

IT Specialist 0926,

IT Department, Miller Construction Group

(512) 765-4321

"Ok Bubbles, let's see what mess Mr. Miller got himself into this time."

Settling by your coffee table, you access your remote portal and insert your portable SSD, initiating various programs to gain entry into your boss's laptop. Securing your hair in a messy top bun with a claw clip, you find yourself biting your bottom lip in concentration. Simultaneously, you switch on your TV, finding solace in the ambient noise that fills your dimly lit apartment—a space shared with Sir Bubbles, your British Shorthair companion since your college days. There's a marathon of Criminal Minds airing on TBS, Spencer Reid's adorable face on screen as he rattles off another theory for why the unsub was an abuse victim by his prostitute mother. You turn the volume down a bit, drowning out his voice.

It's near silent in the little shoebox you call home, the only decent place you were able to afford with your meager savings- after slaving away as a Geek Squad IT Specialist for the majority of your twenties at the Best Buy down the road from your parent's house. Despite graduating with your MIS at the University of Texas - Dallas, finding a decent job in your industry was brutal, and, honestly, quite embarrassing after receiving 30-plus rejection emails in a span of a year. Downtrodden and desperate for a job, you settled on working at Best Buy temporarily, but by the time you hit your mid-30s, it's been eight years working for barely minimum wage, and absolutely nothing to show for it.

"Do you remember those sweet Miller boys who fixed our roof ten years ago?" your mother asks during a Sunday dinner six months ago, sliding a boat of gravy your way as you absentmindedly drizzle it over your mashed potatoes. "I ran into the older one... Joeseph? James? He owns his own company now with his brother, quite the feat, right? They're working on that hotel down the road... anyway, Josh-"

"Joel," you correct her, nudging the over-steamed carrots around your plate. "I think his name was Joel, Mama."

"Yes, Joel," your mother dismissively waves her hands. "Well, I told him about how you were on the job hunt, you know, with your master's and all. Oh, remember when you used to have that silly little crush on him? He's grown to be quite the looker, you know? Anyway, he told me that they were looking for someone to replace their old IT person—apparently, they retired—"

"Mom," you groan, "get to the point."

"Well," she grins conspiratorially, "he wants you to apply, baby. He remembers you and your little crush, and he said he could never forget someone as cute as you. If you're as good as I claimed you were, well... the job's practically yours!"

Your fork slips from your grasp, the metallic clang against porcelain causing Bubbles to leap in surprise, hissing at you in irritation. "Wait, what?" you blurt out, your eyes wide with a mix of shock and confusion.

Your mother beams at your reaction, seemingly pleased with the bombshell she just dropped. "I told him all about your IT skills and how you practically run the technology world from your bedroom. He seemed really interested, sweetie. And, well, it wouldn't hurt to at least consider it, right?"

You sit there, a swirl of thoughts and emotions whirling in your mind. The unexpected twist of Joel Miller, the older Miller boy you once had a crush on, remembering you and possibly offering you a job—it's surreal. Bubbles, having recovered from the earlier disturbance, casually resumes licking his paw, completely uninterested in the familial drama.

"I... I don't know, Mom," you stammer, trying to process this unexpected turn of events. "I mean, working for the Millers? It's a bit... complicated."

She leans in, her voice lowering to a conspiratorial whisper. "Sweetheart, this could be a fantastic opportunity. And who knows, maybe that little crush of yours could turn into something more... professional, of course." She cuts into her meatloaf, humming in contentment as she chews. "Oh, and Sweetie? Wear the red sweater with your pleated skirt, with something other than those sneakers. You're turning thirty-six in September; you can at least do yourself a favor and start dressing your age for once! I'm sure Joel would appreciate it!" she winks at you as your father grunts in displeasure, rolling his eyes, muttering "meddler" under his breath.

"Mom, it was just a crush from a decade ago. Besides, mixing work and personal feelings is never a good idea."

She chuckles, reaching across the table to pat your hand. "Well, think about it, okay? Joel seemed genuinely interested in having you on the team. It's worth exploring, don't you think?"

A wink, a handshake, and six months later, you find yourself on-call indefinitely, catering to Mr. Miller's every technological whim and folly. It's not a bad job, you reason — getting paid triple what you made at Best Buy, monitoring everyone's browsing history in the office, and fielding the incessant IT requests Mr. Miller sends your way- which was often. Way too often.

[My laptop won't turn on.] Did you charge it? Try doing that first.

[Why does the volume not work on my Zoom calls?] Did you make sure that you're not on mute or that your computer volume is up? Check that first.

[Since when did we put a parental blocker on the internet?] It was per Tess, who said that employees should be working instead of looking up anti-feminist manifestos on Reddit. I apologize for the inconvenience, Mr. Miller. [Oh, well shit. Do you think you could unblock it for me? I am... having a hard time accessing my... bank account.] I mean- I could, but I would have to run it by Tess first. [Do you think you could... for me? It'll be our little secret, Sugar. Don't worry about Tess, I'll handle her.] Sure, Mr. Miller... Right. Our little secret. [Sugar, for the last time, it's Joel. Besides, I thought we were past having a silly little crush on me, you've grown into a... rather nice young woman. Please, call me Joel.] Uh, sure Mr. Miller.

You are broken from your silent reverie by the unmistakable ding, ding, ding of the pop-ups Joel- Mr. Miller - you correct yourself, mentioned in his email. You scoff, biting into a piece of beef jerky. Typing in a command, the pop-ups halt, the black screen granting you developer access popping up as you run diagnostic after diagnostic trying to catch the little sucker - a virus, as Mr. Miller claimed - in the act of corrupting your poor boss' laptop once again. There you are, you little shit, you mutter under your breath as you furiously type in more commands, eradicating Mr. Miller's bane of existence for good (or so you hope).

After running what felt like the tenth diagnostic of the night and downing three cups of coffee for the last three hours, the dawn of a new day streaks through the sheer curtains against your window. With bated breath, you restart Joel's system once more, closing your eyes until the familiar chime of Windows 11 booting up reaches your ears.

Please, please, please for fucks sake... no more pop-ups...

Joel's home screen pops up in an instant, the photo of him and his two girls smiling back at you as you breathe in a sigh of relief. "Fuck yes! Finally!" you silently exclaim, a drawn-out yawn and a deep stretch escaping your body as you settle your laptop on your couch. "Okay, let's just run a few programs and check a few documents to make sure they're not corrupted and then I can finally hit the sack..." you squint at the digital clock of your microwave, "and sleep for an hour before I have to get ready for work," you groan, eyeing the jar of Cafe Bustelo in the distance. Yep. No sleep for me, you think bitterly. Another night, another one of Mr. Miller's computer meltdowns...

Your eyes scan his desktop, opening up the PowerPoint file he needs for his presentation. It opens up with a slight lag, something you can optimize later but you breathe out another sigh of relief anyway. You check his internet browsing history, his late-night extensive porn viewing not a surprise to you anymore as you snort at the ridiculousness of it all. At least it's not as bad and kinky as Tommy's browsing history, you tell yourself, because you'll never quite get used to all of the roleplay porn he watches religiously, you think. Closing out of Google Chrome, You scan his desktop for a random Word doc for you to open, not checking its title as you double-click on the first one that you see, slightly hidden by the Recycle Bin icon to the bottom right. Wants? What kind of a file name is that?

The Word doc pops open, and it seems to be a running list of random things. You blearily scan the line items, your eyes widening in shock as you read on.

Fuck her against my office door as I cover her mouth to muffle her screams.

Spoil her with a shopping spree at Neiman's with my Amex black card.

Fulfill my breeding fantasy by convincing her to get off of her Birth Control (do you think she's on one?)

Fuck her from behind against Tess' desk (serves her right)

You quickly exit out of the document, pushing your laptop away as if it were cursed. You look at the document title once more.

Wants.

What the fuck was this? Who is he talking about? you ponder, the guilt of your negligence weighing on you like a weight tied to your ankles as you sink into the depths of the Atlantic. You shut your laptop for good measure, covering it up with your quilt as you shake your head in disbelief.

What the fuck did I just read?

“Mr. Miller? Do you have a moment?”

You knock on the office door once more for good measure, standing timidly as you try to occupy yourself by smoothing out your dress - sensible, a decent length, work appropriate, you think to yourself. You try to not occupy the idle time of waiting for your boss, Joel Miller, one half of Miller Construction- and the thing you found while remote logging onto his computer last night - I think I have a virus, his email stated - only to stumble upon something rather telling and personal - but he was your boss, and you were a professional, and you weren’t going to think about the list…

Kiss her in the rain.

Make love in my truck as she rides me.

Bend her over my desk and take her from behind.

Marathon sex

Eat her out as she works at her desk.

No, Joel was unequivocally your boss—older than you by at least a decade (and maybe a few more years, give or take), and the document titled "Wants" was clearly personal, likely intended for someone else, and certainly not meant to be seen by anyone, especially not an overly curious IT specialist like you. No, you reckon that this list was meant for someone else in the office - someone beautiful, sexy, and confident— someone decidedly who isn't you. Certainly not for someone who dresses like she’s still in college, who only recently began living on her own in a shoebox of an apartment (if you can call it that) after living with her parents for the majority of her adult life, and who barely has her life together. It’s pathetic, being a woman of a certain age and with nothing to show for it, still painfully single, nothing substantial to your name, only getting your life together now while everyone around you has done everything right. I feel so behind in life, you think to yourself. Who would want someone so pathetic as me?

It’s not like it’s a crime to have wants, you think to yourself. Everyone has them, including you, you reason. So what if you just so happen to stumble upon your boss's deepest (and somewhat depraved) desires? Doesn’t everyone have a bucket list of their desires written somewhere? So what if your older, attractive boss with his Gen X tendencies has it typed out on his work computer? It’s not like he meant for you to open up the Word doc, right?

You knew he was single. You also knew that he had kids, at least two—Sarah, his eldest, was the head of HR, and Ellie, his adoptive younger daughter, an apprentice working under Tommy, the other half of Miller Construction—a serial flirt who asked you about your dating life in your interview a few months back. No, you didn’t think about your boss and the sheer mass of man that he was, that he smelled like cedar and sandalwood, that he winks when he tells you good morning as you pass him in the parking lot while stumbling out of your less-than-impressive shitty Corolla. You also didn’t take note that he drinks his coffee black with a sprinkle of sugar—the one in the brown packet—or that he eats in his office instead of the employee lounge because he’s a messy eater. The deep red blush trailing down his neck as Tommy scolded him about his lack of table manners during a company-mandated team-building day wasn't proof enough of that.

There wasn’t a ring on that tell-tale finger, not even a tan line, no photographs of another woman on his desk—besides his daughters, of course. Not that you were looking. Tommy had his wife Maria come down to the office often enough; wouldn’t Joel be the same with his own?

Miller Construction prided itself on being a family-run company, with Joel and Tommy at the helm and their best friend Tess as VP—more the boss than the actual Miller brothers. While Joel and Tommy preferred the hands-on work on-site, Tess ruled over the office with an iron fist. No one dared to cross her.

"You've got one job, and one job only," she declared during your office tour. "Make sure no one spends the majority of their shift watching porn, and keep Joel from messing up his computer with his boomer-isms. We can't afford to keep replacing a laptop every six months."

"Isn't he in Gen X?" you ask. "... at 56 years old, he's still considered to be in that generation, right?"

"Technically, yes," Tess replies with an exasperated sigh. "But you know what I mean. Sometimes it feels like Joel is stuck in a time warp with his 'boomer-isms.' Just keep things running smoothly here, alright?"

As the days pass, you notice an unusual trend in Joel's computer issues. It seems that every time his laptop malfunctions, it coincides with a spike in suspicious internet activity. It doesn't take a genius to connect the dots, and you can't help but shake your head at the irony of it all.

After a particularly eventful morning filled with more than the usual technical hiccups, you decide it's time to address the elephant in the room. You knock on Joel's office door, half-expecting him to be engrossed in some spreadsheet or construction plans.

It's not like you have to tell him about your snooping - he would be none the wiser judging by the way he was so technologically inept - you weren't about to tell him that the reason for the virus on the computer was because he was looking at some rather specific porn - boss fucks unsuspecting secretary from behind- his internet history had listed, nor did he probably think that his computer is being monitored, including his internet browsing history- company policy, as stated on the employee handbook that every employee of Miller Construction signs on the day of their official hiring- nor does he think that it sends reports to her at the end of the day.

You don't think about how the sudden uptick of his secretary porn viewing increased since a week after your hiring. It's just a coincidence, right?

“Mr. Miller?” You call out once more. “It’s about your IT request last night? I have an update?”

“Yeah? Sorry! Come on in!” you hear from behind the door, accompanied by the frantic shuffle of papers and a silent curse. You take a deep breath as your hand turns the doorknob. Silently, you shut the door behind you, offering a small smile as you smooth out the skirt of your dress once more.

You fidget in place in front of the door as Joel—Mr. Miller—in his green flannel and dark jeans slung just right—it really should be criminal, looking this ruggedly handsome for someone his age, you think—as he ungraciously flops onto his desk chair, motioning for you to take the seat in front of him as he clears his throat nervously. “Take a seat.”

You situate yourself in front of him, refusing to meet his eyes as you fiddle with your hands on your lap, wondering why he, out of all people, would be nervous. It's not like he stumbled upon something so... intimate. You are a professional, and you were only doing your job, you tell yourself like a mantra, trying to ground yourself. What's the worst that could happen? It's not like he would fire you over your accidental snooping, right? You nod to yourself. “So…”

“So…” he replies, Adam’s apple bobbing as he takes a drink of his coffee. “Thank you for taking a look at my computer last night.” He begins, smiling at you. “I know that it was late, and I’m willing to compensate your time by giving you time and a half…”

“Oh,” you nervously reply, shifting in your seat. “No, Mr. Miller—”

“Joel.”

“What?”

He shakes his head. “Please. We’re all family here. Call me Joel. Mr. Miller is my father for fuck's sake—”

“Right,” you chuckle. “Sure. Joel. Listen, you don’t need to compensate me for last night, let alone give me the overtime rate—”

“I emailed you at midnight; surely you were already busy, or I probably irritated your husband—”

“No.”

“No?”

“No,” you mumble solemnly, “there’s no husband, just me and my cat-“

He barks at that, the laugh so loud it makes you jump in your seat. He gives you a look, almost as if he was relieved with that bit of information. “Well, disturbing your cat, then-“

"Oh," you reply casually, waving your hands in dismissal. "I'm sure Sir Bubbles didn't mind... and I don't sleep much, really—"

"Oh?" He straightens himself, his face serious. "Is it because of all of my requests? Shit. My girls give me such a hard time about not being with the times, I'm not really interested in technology— So no husband? Boyfriend, then?"

"Uh, no," you reply quickly, not eager to delve into the details of your lackluster love life. You clear your throat, adopting a professional demeanor. "Joel, as you're aware—or maybe not," you chuckle nervously, "I receive reports of all employee internet histories at the end of the day. Being the sole IT specialist on your payroll—perks of the job, outlined in my duties—I keep an eye out for any... irregularities."

"Irregularities?" he replies, his demeanor shifting into something resembling guilt. "What are you trying to get at?" he presses.

"Well, I monitor employee computer usage to make sure that they're not... distracted from their work," you reply. "Tess was explicit about not having any employees using company time for any unnecessary personal... dalliances."

Joel gives you a hard look. "Dalliances?"

"Yes, dalliances. Tess told me it was an issue before, with employees browsing social media and visiting questionable Reddit threads?"

"I don't follow," Joel replies. "You gotta spell it out for me, Sugar. What does that have to do with my request last night? I had a late night at the office, and after... checking my emails," he gulps, "I suddenly get bombarded with these pop-up things, so much that I just... unplugged my laptop... and, well-"

How is he so oblivious about this? You bite your cheek in frustration, not knowing how to get to the point without having to spell it out for him that you caught him browsing porn last night, secretary porn at that, and although it's highly inappropriate, you hardly think he was watching it because of Gladys, his actual secretary, who is old enough to be his mother. Not unless he has some weird mommy kink...

Unable to endure the suspense any longer, you decide to rip the bandaid off as soon as possible. “I’m sorry!” You exclaim, “I didn't mean to look at your browsing history, I mean, I had to, but only because I had to find the reason why a virus got on your computer, but that is not the point! I had to open a file to make sure it wasn't corrupted, and I swear, I didn't mean to open it!"

“Open what, sweetheart?” he smiles at you, leaning forward towards you.

"Well, it was a virus, and as I looked into the problem, I had to explore every avenue to ensure I pinpointed the issue, you know, for my report to Tess. I went into your history to see if it might have been a site that caused you to have the virus. I may have casually peeked into a few files to ensure they weren’t corrupted…” you admit, “…and I might have stumbled upon-" your eyebrows raise in embarrassment, "Something personal."

“Something personal?” He questions, his brows furrowed in confusion. “I don’t have anything personal… oh, shit.” His eyes widen as the realization dawns on him, hands covering his face as he groans in embarrassment. "Look, about my internet history... and the list-"

You slowly nod and bite your lip, mostly to hide your own embarrassment. “… yeah. Um, it was quite... informative about your... sexual preferences.”

Joel visibly pales at your confession. He adjusts his collar, unbuttoning the second button as if he were being strangled by your scrutiny. “I just want to let you know", he starts, looking you in the eye with an unreadable expression. "I respect you as a woman, and Tommy, fuck, he wouldn’t let it go, with all that teasing about you being exactly my type and all, and well, your mother did remind me about your little crush on me back then-“ he rubs his hands through his hair as he rambles on, “… and I know that this looks bad, with you being my employee and all-“

“Wait, what?” You cut him off, a confused look on your face. “What do you mean? I mean, they're your personal preferences, and the list, well, I'm sure whoever you're writing about must be some woman, not that it's any of my business-”

“Fuck. You didn’t read all of it?”

“No!” You exclaim, practically jumping out of your seat. “I quickly closed it once I realized the nature of the document…”

“Well.” He stands up suddenly, pacing behind his desk. “I wrote that drunkenly one night after the company dinner, you know, the one when you wore that dress… do you remember?”

“Yes,” you reply breathily, “… the night where-“

You vividly recall that night. It was a dinner at the recently completed new hotel project. After a few glasses of wine and an impulsive, rather expensive purchase at Nordstrom.com a week prior, you endured most of the evening in an uncomfortably tight and overly revealing dress—a poor choice for a company party, for fucks sake. You believed Joel approached you at the end of the night out of sheer pity, not because—

“Well… after seeing you in that dress, and how stunning you looked in it, sitting by yourself, biting your lip in a way that makes me-“ he stops himself, giving you a small smile. “I was drunk, and I was thinking… I was contemplating how, if I were to have you, if you, by some miracle of fate… were interested, that I would do things right, you know? That if I had a second chance at… I would do it right. Treat you right.”

“You do know I’m not a secretary, let alone your secretary,” you roll your eyes. “I’m in IT… the only person in IT actually, and you’re not the first person I caught looking at questionable porn…”

Joel bristles at that. “Shit. Let me guess… Tommy?”

That gets a small smile out of you. “I can neither confirm nor deny, but… he’s partial towards a certain porn actress, and let’s just say he is really in love with women who looks like his wife.”

He smiles. "Shit, I thought I was being obvious enough, being that Tommy has teased me about it enough... I thought you knew. I know you work with computers, Sugar. I’m not completely senile, and I know Tess has been on a warpath about people getting their rocks off at work, I figured you would look at all of my… perusing.”

You're left stunned, your mind racing to process what Joel just revealed. It's not the revelation about his desires that leaves you speechless, but the unexpected admission of his feelings toward you. Your mind flashes back to the list, the desires that seemed so out of reach for someone like you. You never thought Joel would be harboring any feelings for you, let alone express them so openly.

"I... I had no idea," you stammer, still grappling with the revelation. "I thought that list was for someone else, someone... not me."

Joel walks around the desk, his eyes never leaving yours. "You thought wrong, sweetheart. I've been trying to drop hints, but I guess I've been subtler than I thought."

A myriad of emotions wash over you — confusion, surprise, and a hint of something you can't quite place. The professional boundary between boss and employee seems to blur, and you find yourself in uncharted territory.

"But," he continues, "I get it. I'm your boss, and this is complicated. I didn't want to put you in an awkward position. I should've been more direct."

You take a deep breath, trying to steady yourself. "Joel, it's not about being direct or indirect. This is just... unexpected. I never thought someone like you would... feel that way about someone like me."

He reaches out, gently lifting your chin so you meet his gaze. "Someone like me? What does that even mean, darlin'? You're intelligent and beautiful, and I've seen the way you handle your work. I've noticed you, and I can't help how I feel."

A mixture of vulnerability and sincerity in his eyes makes it hard to doubt his words. You start to consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, your insecurities have clouded your perception.

"I don't want to pressure you, and I understand if you're not comfortable with this. I just needed you to know. The last thing I want is for things to be awkward at work," he says, his thumb gently caressing your cheek.

You take a moment to absorb everything. Joel's revelation, your preconceptions, and the unexpected turn of events. The office, once a familiar space, now feels like uncharted territory.

"I need time to process this," you finally say. "It's a lot to take in, Joel. I never expected... any of this."

He nods understandingly, his hand dropping to his side. "Take all the time you need. I'll respect whatever decision you make. And hey, if you're not interested, we can go back to being boss and employee, like nothing happened."

You manage a small smile, appreciating his attempt to lighten the mood. "I'll... let you know. Just give me some time, okay?"

"Of course," he says, moving back toward his desk. "And, for what it's worth, I meant every word on that list. Whether it's a rain kiss or making love in my truck, I want it all with you."

You nod, silently acknowledging his sincerity. As you leave his office, you can't help but wonder how a routine IT request led to such a revelation. The office dynamics have shifted, and you find yourself navigating uncharted waters, unsure of where this unexpected revelation will lead.

As you walk away from Joel's office, a whirlwind of conflicting thoughts consumes your mind. The revelation about Joel's feelings for you is a shock, but it's not the only thing echoing in your head. The list of desires he had penned down only magnifies your own insecurities. The voice in your mind grows louder, whispering that you're not the woman he deserves—too much of a mess, too behind in life, and certainly not beautiful enough for someone like him. The echoes of your perceived inadequacies replay like a broken record, drowning out the possibility that someone could genuinely see something valuable in you. You glance at your reflection in the office window, critiquing every imperfection, every perceived flaw. The dress that seemed sensible before now feels like a sad attempt to disguise what you believe is a lack of style or grace. The weight of self-doubt becomes an invisible burden, and you can't shake the feeling that you're not enough, that you may never be enough for someone like Joel.

As you grapple with your internal struggles, a small spark of defiance begins to flicker within you. Perhaps it's time to challenge those self-limiting beliefs, to be bolder than your insecurities allow. Joel's admission has opened a door you never expected, and you find yourself at a crossroads. Despite the echoes of doubt, a newfound courage whispers that maybe, just maybe, you can be more than what you perceive.

Embracing this sudden surge of determination, you make a decision. Instead of letting fear dictate your actions, you choose to confront the uncertainties head-on. Swallowing the apprehension that threatens to hold you back, you turn on your heel and head back to Joel's office. The faint thud of your own heartbeat echoes in your ears as you push open the door.

"Joel," you say, your voice steadier than you anticipated. "I've been thinking about what you said, and I need you to clarify something for me."

He looks up from his desk, curiosity etched across his features. "Sure, what's on your mind?"

You take a deep breath, suppressing the self-doubt that still lingers. "Is that list something you genuinely desire with me, or was it just a drunken fantasy?"

Joel's eyes lock onto yours, a mix of surprise and sincerity in his gaze. "Every word of it is something I want with you. Why?"

A daring smile plays on your lips as you respond, "Then let's not leave it as a list, Joel. Let's see how many of those desires we can turn into reality."

The room seems to hold its breath for a moment as Joel's expression shifts from surprise to a slow, understanding smile. The air thickens with anticipation, leaving the next steps uncertain but filled with the promise of something new and exhilarating. As you stand on the precipice of this unexpected journey, the uncharted waters of possibilities lie ahead, and you find yourself ready to take the plunge.

Taglist: @gwendibleywrites, @joeldjarin, @brittmb115

For more updates on all of my fics, please follow @chiriwritesstuffnotifs

All dividers by @saradika-graphics

#pedro pascal #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller x you #joel miller #joel miller x reader #pedro pascal fanfiction #joel miller x female reader #joel the last of us #joel tlou #joel miller fanfic #joel miller smut #tlou hbo #tlou fic #tlou fanfiction #the last of us fic #the last of us #tlou #the last of us hbo #the last of us fanfic

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the-witchhunter · 10 months

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DP x DC: Animal House

Danny can apparently shapeshift, and that’s great!

or it would be great if it wasn’t for the fact he got stuck as an eldritch cat. On the plus side, he can talk to animals like this. Downside: He lacks thumbs and his powers seem to be on the fritz.

Luckily, he got picked up by the Waynes who seem to think he is some kind of alien cat. It’s actually pretty cool. Lots of soft things and window spots to soak in some sunlight, and, hell, the homemade cat food actually tastes pretty good.

Plus he’s been making friends!

Alfred the cat and Titus are his favorites. Ace is cool but he’s more like an uncle figure. Batcow is chill, but Jerry the turkey is an asshole. Then Dick brings his dog Haley aka Bitewing, so Jason brings his dog Dog, and the whole batfamily of pets is there vibing with Danny.

Then a family emergency happens requiring all hands on deck. Everyone is out of the house and even Alfred is too busy in the Batcave keeping an eye on things to pay attention to the animals. So that can mean only one thing...

Party time!

Danny invites all the DC animals that I remember exists. Krypto the super Dog, Comet the Super Horse, Streaks the Super Cat, Beppo the Super Monkey, Rec the Wonder Dog, and of course Bobo T. Chimpanzee aka Detective chimp, the worlds greatest detective, and the alcoholic ape that’s going to supply the whole party with booze

That’s right, Danny is hosting an animal rager at the Wayne manor, and between his malfunctioning powers, the other super powered animals, and a lot of alcohol, things are going to get WEIRD

#dpxdc #dp x dc #dp x dc crossover #dp x dc prompt #Danny Phantom #legion of super pets #malfunctioning powers #eldritch danny #cat danny #eldritch cat danny #LISTEN #IMAGINE THE SHENANIGANS #danny and kypto steal the statue of liberty #Comet tells danny about the time he kissed supergirl #danny is weirded out by that one #Bruce comes home and doesn't even know what to make of it #a table is phased halfway through the wall #and Detective chimp is passed out in a bathtub #and there's glitter EVERYWHERE

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laracrofted · 11 months

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supernova

synopsis: in a game of truth or dare, you reveal your dream threesome.

pairings: natasha trace x fem!reader x bob floyd

warnings: 18+ minors dni, ageless blogs that interact will be blocked, explicit smut (f/f/m threesome, oral sex, unprotected sex, blink and miss it choking, sort of dom phoenix, edging, cum eating, orgasm denial, overstimulation) and like, swearing lmao (wc: 3.2K)

notes: a little something something for my fellow bisexuals during pride month 🌈 and yes, i defeated awful writer's block with horniness and so can you 💖

much love to @sushiwriterhere @theharddeck @sometimesanalice and @roosterbruiser for letting me bounce many depraved thoughts off of them and i'm summoning a few people who might be interested: @princessphilly @seresinsweetie @rhettabbotts @lewmagoo @bradshawsbitch @i-wanna-be-your-muse @sebsxphia and also no one look at me

“Anyone would want to sleep with me. I’m the most fuckable person in this room. Ask anyone.”

"What's Hangman so up in arms about now?" Phoenix asks, sounding unimpressed. She leans against the pool cue, waiting for Fanboy to make his shot, and cracks her knuckles with one hand.

You shrug. "Who knows."

Honestly, you can't even remember who made the comment that got him so worked up, so defensive over his own sex appeal. His general fuckability – which as a side note, you're pretty sure is not a real word.

Maybe Rooster, actually probably Rooster.

Regardless, Hangman has decided to make them all suffer the consequences, going on and on and on.

"Fine," Rooster manages, choking down a laugh, almost always given away in the unmistakable twitching of the overgrown ferret on his upper lip. "Go ahead. Ask anyone then, Hangman. This will be good."

You are minding your own goddamn business in the corner of the common room, sipping a canned red wine that isn't half bad for the price. It is sweet, a little bubbly, pleasant.

You press your lips against the cool edge and are in the middle of a sip when Hangman catches your eye, a sharklike gleam in his green eyes.

Is it worse to make eye contact or break it? Is that bears or sharks who see it as a challenge?

And in truth, Hangman is neither. He's more or less harmless with a sometimes sharp bite.

You lower the can, slow and suspicious, narrowing your eyes at him with a raised brow. “Can I help you, Hangman?”

Smirking, Hangman drawls, “You owe me a truth from earlier, ain't that right? You ran out on the game before I could get my question out."

You roll out a red carpet of curses in your brain and swallow another mouthful of the sweet red wine.

You'd gotten a call from the Domino's driver to come down and grab the pizzas from the front door before Hangman could ask whatever pointed – and alarmingly observant – question had popped into his scheming brain.

Everyone else has forgotten the game with some pizza in their stomach and a basketball game on the big screen, but clearly, Hangman has a good memory. Bastard.

"Fine. Hit me with your best shot, Hangman."

Fire away and all that.

His canines are gleaming white. "Who would you most want to have sex with in this room? No, wait, I should give everyone a fair chance of selection. Pick two."

"Together? Or separate?"

His brows raise, and Hangman's smirk deepens. "Well, damn. Someone's a little adventurous." Your eyes are practically slits now, staring him down. "Together. Who would you have a threesome with in this room? And unfortunately, no, I don't have a twin."

“My nightmare,” Phoenix mutters, and Fanboy shakes with silent laughter.

“Hmmm…”

An answer had popped into your head the second that Hangman asked, but in the name of suspense, you pretend to mull it over and really contemplate.

You look around the room. Halo and Fritz are on the sagging couch with Yale and Harvard in the opposite chairs, watching the game too closely to overhear this cursed conversation.

Bob and Fanboy are strategizing in the corner, but Bob is definitely listening. His shoulders don't look quite natural.

Across the pool table, Payback shows you his wedding band with a faux scolding expression. You grin.

“I guess I'd have to pick... Phoenix and Bob."

Rooster absolutely crows with laughter as Hangman goes into a full control-alt-delete shut down and reboot, blankly staring at you with disbelieving eyes and a slack jaw.

Someone should commemorate this moment. Add it to one of the frames in the Ready Room.

"Are you malfunctioning?" You drain the rest of the wine and drop the can into the nearest recycling bin. "You know I'm bisexual, right, Hangman?"

"But Phoenix and Bob?" Hangman splutters, as if recovering from an ordeal with a capital O. "I need the reason. Why would you pick them?"

You glance over at Phoenix, who is regarding both of them with a smug smirk. You don't dare look at Bob right now.

You smile, radiant and knowing, with a “Follow up questions aren’t part of the game, Hangman,” and breeze across the room for another can of wine, patting him on the shoulder.

"So..."

Five or so minutes later, Phoenix sidles up to you and sits on the arm of your chair, ignoring the perfectly good and empty chair in the corner. Her boot brushes against your leg.

She leans in, and Phoenix's familiar vanilla and amber scent washes over you.

"Am I allowed to ask a follow question?" A nod, and Phoenix looks kind of self-satisfied. Kind of smug. "Did you mean it? Or were you just kicking the chair out from under Hangman? Because..." She lowers her voice, all smoke and velvet. "I had fun with you before. Just us."

"Both..." You pause. "I kind of wanted to knock him on his ass, but also, I was very much serious."

Her smile widens, and Phoenix leans in more, brushing the shell of your ear in a puff of warm breath. "Meet me in my room in 20 minutes."

Her canine grazes your earlobe for a brief second.

You blink, dazed, and Phoenix is already walking away.

"What about...?"

What about Bob? is the question on the tip of your tongue, but obviously, you can't call that out in this room. He is still here somewhere.

She looks over her shoulder, dark eyes warm with want and promise, and mouths, "20," with a wink.

A little over 20 minutes later, Phoenix has your wrists pinned down on her soft sheets, nudging under your chin with her slender nose in search of the sensitive spot on the side of your neck.

Her bottom lip drags against it.

You bite down on a moan, and in retaliation, Phoenix bites the spot harder.

"I want to hear you," Phoenix murmurs, an order wrapped in a pretty bow. "You sound so pretty, angel."

She kisses you again and sucks your bottom lip between hers, making it impossible to bite down on.

And with intent, Phoenix slides a smooth thigh between your legs, dragging her knee against the red flash of fabric that covers your cunt and grinds down.

"Come on. Let me hear you."

A drawn out moan escapes your mouth, and right then, Bob walks in.

He closes the door behind him, oblivious, and then, spots you both and freezes.

"Phoenix?" Bob manages, sounding uncertain. His eyes are wide and blue behind the wire frames. "You said 30 minutes, right? Should I – I can come back. We can catch up another time."

Despite the words, Bob doesn't move. He looks down, cheeks pink and flushed, but doesn't move.

"Don't worry, Bob." Phoenix releases your arms and climbs over the edge of the mattress with a smile. Walks over to him in an electric blue bra and underwear set that looks downright radiant against her dark hair.

She looks like a goddess.

"You want him here, don't you, angel?"

She circles behind him, sliding the plaid button-down shirt from his broad shoulders. It crumples to the carpet without resistance as Bob raises his chin and meets your eyes.

"You told me before," Phoenix prompts. "Tell him."

He is watching you, waiting on your answer with bated breath.

A long breath releases from your mouth.

You push up on your elbows, then your knees, wanting to see him more clearly.

“Earlier with Hangman… I wasn't kidding when I said I wanted both of you. I want you – both of you – to fuck me."

His Adam’s apple moves as Bob swallows, sudden and hard.

He looks surprised. He shouldn't be.

He's always felt a little out of reach, so damn nice. You didn’t want to freak him out – or worse, offend him with a casual invitation to very casually fuck your brains out and maybe, let you suck his cock before or afterward.

You’re not picky. Whatever works for him.

You were pretty sure Bob was at least a little interested, but now... Bob only stares.

Phoenix gives him a gentle push and strolls over to the record player. She looks casual and languid, flipping through the records, but you're not so fooled. She's giving him a moment alone with you.

"Phoenix and I have... before, but I want you as much as I want her. Do you want me? is the only question, I guess."

He coughs into his elbow, messing with his lenses, which are fogging every so slightly. "I do. You're very pretty and nice, and I've... I mean, I do want you."

A smile dimples your cheek. "Oh, I'm pretty and nice, am I?"

"Shut up," Bob mutters under his breath with a slight smile. His ears are a little red.

You reach out and pull him closer to the mattress, pulling until Bob has to plant a knee on the edge to keep his balance. He watches you with wide eyes and says your name in a rush of breath – like a sharp wind over the ocean – and leans in, gravitating.

He cups your chin, slow and careful, pulling you in for a slow kiss that fizzles in your bloodstream like champagne. He is still giving you ample time to pull back and change your mind.

You deepen the kiss, even as Bob holds back.

You're still not sure Bob believes you.

Music swells from the corner, slow and sultry and sensual, as Phoenix settles behind you. She unlatches your bra and pushes it from your shoulders, running her fingers in soothing circles over the muscles.

She reaches between you and him, moving to cup your breasts, but at the last second, Phoenix skims her hand down the curve of your stomach and down and down, dipping under the waistband of your panties.

Clever fingers glide through your wetness, glancing off your clit in a tease that makes you whimper into Bob's mouth. A satisfied hum vibrates your back.

"So wet already, darling. We haven't done anything other than kiss you. You must really want us," Phoenix murmurs, warm against your ear, licking the sensitive patch of your neck again. "Come here, Bob."

She pulls you back from him with a hand around your throat – squeezing once, hard enough to make you feel light all over – and puts her glistening fingers in his open mouth.

His moan makes you even wetter.

You watch, breathless, as Bob closes his eyes and licks your taste from her fingers. His pupils are blown, eyes almost black, when Bob opens his eyes again.

His groan against your mouth is a rough sound, drawn out and unrepentant. He kisses you like religion, like a prayer.

Phoenix's voice is smug in your ear. "He believes me now."

You've been paired with Bob and Phoenix on enough exercises to know that the Naval aviators are an unstoppable pair in the air, cutting through the skies with grace and precision.

You'd imagined – more than once – that Bob and Phoenix would be an unstoppable pair in the bedroom as well. Sue you, okay? Who wouldn't?

Phoenix had been a force on her own, pinning you down and making your thighs shake over her shoulders; coaxing you to the edge and kicking you over without warning with a razor sharp smile that bordered on mean.

Bob always seemed so quiet. Seemed so unassuming.

But Bob dated, and on the one and only occasion the WSO brought a date back to the shared apartment complex, all of the Daggers had heard about the dying cat sounds that'd been loud enough to bleed through the walls. Hangman had been relentless.

You were seemingly the only one who could put the admittedly horrendous moaning aside and remember the other sounds.

(Oh, oh, Bob, oh, Bob. Fuck me. So good.)

You knew Phoenix was good in bed.

You had a feeling about Bob.

Together?

You were absolutely and without a shadow of a doubt right.

Phoenix is in the backseat for once but never ever on the sidelines. She seems to sense that the WSO might still need more reassurance, might need some control to feel wanted here.

She focuses on you, nibbling your neck and pinching your aching nipples, as Bob rests on the red and orange pillows, watching you swallow his cock, mesmerized.

You pull back, keeping him half in your mouth and circling his base with your hands, and run your tongue along the sensitive underside of him.

He bobs in your mouth, letting out a rough curse.

"Are you sure?" Bob had asked before, stilling the hands that were reaching for his zipper, running a thumb across the veins at the base of your wrist. "We can start with something else. I don't want you to feel pressure."

"Positive. I've wanted to suck your cock for about six months now."

He blinked, looking even more owlish with his glasses on the nightstand. "Six months? You've only been here for like six months."

You cut in, "And I wanted to suck your cock the whole damn time. Any other questions?"

He audibly swallowed, and Phoenix grinned.

You could easily get lost in him – lose minutes, even hours with the weight of him on your tongue and the sound of his broken moans in your ears – but Phoenix is too impatient to let that happen.

She nudges your soaked underwear to the side and pushes one, two, three of her fingers inside of you. You're wet enough that Phoenix doesn't meet any resistance.

"She's so fucking wet for you, Bob. Jesus Christ," Phoenix moans. A wet kiss is pressed into the curve of your shoulder, against the nape of your neck. "Should I make her come?"

God... and Phoenix says it like, What do you think, Bob? Am I clear? Should I take the shot?, in the same voice from the air. Asking him to weigh the pros and cons. Deferring to his decision.

You'll never be able to be paired with them on a drill again and not remember.

You would breathe a sigh of relief when Bob nods, except for... well, obvious reasons. You swallow around him, and Bob leaks against the back of your throat.

You're already aching, and Phoenix is pressing the heel of her palm against your clit. Pleasure is building in the pit of your stomach, and you need, you need, you –

"Or..." Phoenix drawls, easing up on the pressure, all casual and unaffected. She works you open, steady and constant, pinching the thigh that tries to rock you against her hand. "I could edge her for you. Make her wait to come on your cock."

God, Phoenix can be mean in bed. You'd almost forgotten.

You kind of hate her for it right now.

(You really don't.)

You whimper around Bob's cock and clench around Phoenix's fingers at the same time, digging your nails into the pale skin of Bob's muscular thighs, already bruised with a small love bite from earlier.

An abrupt fuck spills from Bob's bitten lips.

He pulls out of your mouth without warning, squeezing a hand around his base and screwing his eyes closed to keep from coming right then and there.

"Jesus Christ, Phoenix."

"So Bob seems to like that idea," Phoenix observes, almost conspiratorially. Her fingers catch your chin. "What about you, pretty girl? You want to come now or on Bob's cock?"

You are a little out of breath but no less certain.

"Do I even have to answer that?"

As a reward, Phoenix slips her tongue in your mouth and starts all over again, ever careful to pull back at the exact right moment when your breaths are short and your gaze is glassy and unfocused.

You are shaking and warm all over when Phoenix is satisfied, running her fingers through the arousal that slicks the inside of your thighs, underwear long discarded on the floor somewhere now.

"Can I..."

You are on your back now, and Bob leans over and sucks your nipples in his mouth. You lose focus, running your fingers over the hard length of him, smearing his pre-cum over the head.

"Can you what?" Phoenix prompts, ghosting a knuckle over your swollen clit. You quiver.

"I want to eat you out. Didn't get to do that last time, remember?"

You seize Bob's shoulder, keeping him pressed against your chest, and Bob makes a pleased sound, content to lavish your breasts with licks and nibbles right now.

You continue, "I want to eat you out while Bob fucks me."

"Well," Phoenix replies, breezily, brushing her hair over her shoulder and bends to suck on your other nipple. "We can probably make that work."

"Fuck," Bob breathes again.

You've never heard him curse so much, not even in actual missions.

A content sigh pushes everything else from your brain.

You lick at Phoenix again, licking a stripe up the center of her cunt, drowning in the warmth and silk, as Bob pushes into you from behind, bare and hard and so goddamn big.

Fuck is right.

"God..." Bob moans against your damp skin, pulling out and easing back in again. His accent comes out in bits and pieces, smoothing the edges from his words. "Feel so good. S'good for me. So good for us, darlin'."

You melt at the praise and nuzzle deeper into Phoenix with a sigh of pleasure, circling her clit with a content hum that makes her breath go all uneven and shuddering.

Satisfaction slides down your spine, warm and consuming.

You could stay here for hours between them. You would.

She's quick to instruct and correct, but once you're in a rhythm with your fingers hooked inside, Phoenix is nothing but moans and sighs and oh god, so good, oh god.

She comes in your mouth with a sharp gasp and rolls out from under you, which leaves Bob with enough room to double his efforts now.

He presses praise against your neck, circling his fingers around your clit with precision and attention; urging you to come for him with gentle pleas and deep thrusts and blissfully, a well-placed palm against your aching cunt.

You shatter around him as Bob spills inside of you.

Oh my god are the only words that are forming in your head right now. You want to say something else.

Holy shit maybe.

We should definitely do that again even.

But Phoenix doesn't give you even a second of peace.

"You're a mess, angel," Phoenix comments, light and almost mocking. She spreads your legs wide and looks you over. "Let me."

You expect Phoenix to wipe you down, but instead, Natasha presses her mouth against your sensitive cunt.

Stars erupt in your vision. Galaxies.

She licks and licks every inch of you, holding down your shaking legs, until you come again, damn near crying from the overstimulation, shuddering.

Wetness dampens the sheets underneath you, and Phoenix licks the cum that drips down your legs, some yours, some Bob's, and kisses you right on the mouth.

You definitely mean to get your clothes and pee and everything after, but Bob is warm against your side. He nuzzles into the crook of your neck and passes out with an arm across your chest.

Sleep pulls you under soon after.

Phoenix is the first one to leave the bed and even then, only to put on a quieter record and go right back.

note: is she the filthiest smut piece i've ever written? maybe. she's named after red wine supernova by chappell roan, which is so fun and so queer and worth a listen 💖 leave a comment before i regain an ounce of shame.

#bob floyd fic #bob floyd x reader #bob floyd x you #robert floyd smut #bob floyd smut #phoenix x reader #natasha trace x reader #natasha trace x you #natasha trace smut #natasha trace fic #bob floyd x reader x natasha trace #laracrofted writes #bob fucks #fic: bob floyd #fic: natasha trace

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credince--writes · 1 year

Text

Scary Dog

You need a new printer. Sometimes you need to bring negotiation aids.

Useless, shitty little one-shot because I need something else to work on.

Konig x Medic!Reader

Scary dog privileges

Your pen tapped against the desk you sat at. The smell of sanitizer and printer ink was fresh on your nose.

And, well your skin too.

That goddamn printer, it was always breaking, half of the time you thought it would just catch fire.

It would be easier that way if it just did, then you'd be able to get a new one.

But, alas, you weren't the head bitch of the armed-with-alcohol-pads crew. That lovely position was reserved by Lud.

All the other doctors lovingly refer to him as Dud.

Because that is what he is.

A Dud.

A lazy, selfish, piece of-

You were getting sidetracked.

He would always deny your requests for a new printer, and at this point, it was a hindrance to your job.

The black ink splattered all over you, staining your shirt and skin was proof of that.

You prided yourself in your work,

your efficiency.

Your ability to get the things others couldn't get done, done.

Just so happened that because of this, you got the....

How could you phrase it?

Well,

you got the scary dogs.

They were big, and they looked mean as hell.

But all it took was a threatening glance and they were rolling over showing their soft puppy bellies to her.

Maybe it was the dum dums you brought back from America to give them as a treat for being a good patient.

"That's it!" You slapped your hands on your desk, throwing the muddled papers scatted across the floor as you swiped your arms across the desk.

All of the papers were useless, all thanks to that fucking printer.

Stomping out of your little office, you made your way through the hallway and into the main living space for the team.

"I need a dog!" You yell, catching everyone in the space's attention.

"What?" One of the men ask.

You promptly ignore him, scanning the room and walking- angrily - might you add to find the perfect scary dog.

"A big- scary fucking dog!" You flail your arms in the air.

And your eyes landed on him.

Oh.

He'd do.

He'd do just fine.

"König." You call out, sickly sweet.

He was already staring at you, giving you a cautious glance.

"Did you fight an octopus, doctor?" He asks.

His accent, it was thick.

Just like the rest of him, you suppose.

Music to your ears.

"Would you please accompany me to Doctor Dud?"

He stands, lifting his body to its natural heigh, towering above you.

Perfect.

"Is everything alright?"

"I just need you... to be my big scary dog." You smile.

That smile could make him do horrible things.

"Uh...?" He asks, confused.

"Be intimidating. Be my persuasion, can you do that for me? Please König?" You bat your eyelashes- not too much. A subtle blink or so.

His name falling off your lips.

He had to catch himself for falling forward as he zoned out, looking down at you as you so sweetly begged for his presence.

"Of course." He nodded.

"Great!" You grinned, that evil toothy Cheshire smile.

Pulling him along- not this his long stride took up two of yours- you stood outside of Dud's office. Knocking on the door twice, you pushed the door open and made eye contact with him.

He never really took the time to work with the special teams.

They were a little rowdy for him.

"What do I owe the pleasure....." His voice trailed off, looking up and meeting the narrow, deadly gaze of König.

"Oh, I think the printer is on the fritz again!" You laughed lightly, innocently.

Oh, how evil.

"... I can see that." He said.

"I think it would be best if I just got the new printer." You said, tilting your head to the side. "You see, König was in my office but he can't go about his day until his paperwork gets finished!" You laughed.

"Well... I don't think a new one is in the cards right now-"

"Oh no!" You fake pouted. "I'd hate to cause your mission to delay König." She glances up at him.

His eyes were fixed on Dud.

His presence loomed.

It was as if he sucked the heat from the room, leaving the air in a suffocating freeze.

"Oh- well-" Dud stammers.

"We wouldn't want to cause any inconveniences to König here, would we?" You ask innocently.

Dud swears that a red glint flashes in König's eyes.

"Of course not!" He all but heaves out, sweat collecting on his brow.

"So, new printer?" You ask happily.

"I'll have it brought down right away."

"Great!" You smile, turn, and quickly walk out of the door.

König doesn't move, opting to leave an impression by standing there in silence a few seconds longer, staring into his soul.

"König!" You call.

His head snaps back, releasing him from his trance. He spins on his heel and quickly exits the room, tailing you.

Man, maybe next you could get new linens!

#könig x reader #könig x you #mwii #call of duty mw2 #König

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augustjustice · 8 months

Text

The Ole Harrington Charm

AO3 Link

Steve is in a dry spell.

Well…okay, it’s technically not a dry spell. He’s going on plenty of dates, he just–can’t seem to find that special spark that tells him this is the one.

Steve’s starting to question if he’s off his game, or something. If his flirting is to blame, that might explain why things are all downhill from there.

“I mean…what do you guys think?” he asks Robin–and Eddie, currently loitering around on a surprisingly slow Thursday afternoon at Family Video. “Is there something I’m doing that’s just–not working?”

“As someone who was there to witness the millions of times you struck out at Scoops, I can definitely say that what you’re doing now is leagues ahead of whatever that was.”

Steve huffs. “It was not millions, Robin. And, yeah, sure, okay, but if I’m so much better now…why doesn’t it ever work out past the first date?”

Eddie slaps an uneven rhythm on the counter, pushing up from where he’d been slouching against it. There’s a challenging gleam in his eye, the same kind he gets when he’s struck with an idea for one of his campaigns.

“Alright, big boy. Lay it on me.”

“What?”

“Come on, wow me with those irresistible flirtation skills that had the ladies lining up for you back in school, and I’ll tell you how you do.”

What’s he got to lose?

Steve decides to lay it on thick. Might as well pull out all the stops, and besides…Eddie always hams it up when he’s pretending to flirt with Steve. Turning around is fairplay, or however it goes.

Leaning a casual elbow on the counter, Steve turns his most charming smile on Eddie.

“Hi, there. I don’t think I’ve seen you around here before. And I would absolutely remember a face like yours.” Shooting Eddie a wink, he reaches out and tugs at his battle vest, brushing his fingers against Eddie’s chest while he gets a “better look” at his pins and patches. ”Judas Priest, huh? Not sure I’ve heard their stuff.”

Maybe not the best tactic with Eddie, but that’s what he would do usually, bring up something the other person seemed interested in. Long gone were the King Steve days of ‘act like you don’t care.’

”Why don’t you tell me about them while I help you find what you’re looking for. You look like a horror section guy to me. And, you know, scary movies make a great pick for date night. Perfect to snuggle up to.”

“Lame,” Robin declares. “And cliche.”

“No one asked you, Robin,” Steve rolls his eyes, “Eddie’s the judge here.”

Only then does he realize Eddie is frozen in place, a faint pink tinging his cheeks.

“Nuh–” Eddie swallows, his voice cracking in the middle of whatever he was trying to say. “No, man, the, uh…Harrington charm is definitely not on the fritz. You’ve got nothing to worry about there.”

“Cool,” Steve brightens, before adding smoothly, “So, Saturday, horror movie, your place?”

“Good one, Harrington.”

“Eds,” Steve reaches out, covering Eddie’s hand, “I’m serious.”

“Saturday night, huh? Alright, Stevie, you’re on. It’s a date.”

They’re both grinning dopily when Steve does a celebratory fist pump, not bothering to hide it. Shaking her head, Robin laughs.

Oh, yeah. He’s definitely still got it.

#stranger things #steve harrington #eddie munson #steddie #steddiemicrofic #steddiemicroficseptember #robin buckley #buckington besties #brotp: three muskequeers #my stuff #my writing #my things

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charliemwrites · 5 months

Note

screaming just imagining (woof! Woof!) Johnny trying to convince reader to call, well, him. But in the dumbest ways imaginable because he’s, well, him.

A (not-so) little wolf dog running around the house secretly causing more problems than you’ve ever had before. Firmly in the mindset that you’ll eventually cave and call up the big strong man you met at the bar to fix them for you!!!

And it’s so confusing for poor you. Before everything went wrong you considered yourself pretty handy. It takes a lot to live on your own but you’ve managed exceptionally well, thank you very much. But now all of a sudden there’s your door coming off its hinges (definitely not because someone loosened the bolts behind your back), a leak in your sink (definitely not because someone messed with the pipes), and your cocking has been mysteriously peeled away overnight (Definitely not because someone was picking at it).

It escalates to holes in your fencing, low water pressure, and god damn it your electricity is on the fritz now, too. (That last one actually wasn’t him. Promise.)

You blow off steam at the bar and lo and behold there’s Soap waiting for you again. Stating you down in an uncomfortably tense manner. Like every muscle in his body’s pulled taught ready to heel at your side if you called for him. You elect to ignore him because honestly you just need a drink or three after the week you’ve had. Isn’t it hilarious that COINCIDENTALLY your not-so-secret admirer is so knowledgeable about wiring? That his hands are so steady and he’s just so hand(s)y in general? Dw, he’s good with explosive personalities, too.

lost steam towards the end and I apologize for the bad pun but you get the vision? Insane about this literal dog of a man 🤭

Normally I’d put you in jail for the pun, but I love this concept so much I’ll allow it.

You wake up in the middle of the night, wondering where your precious snuggle buddy is. Find him in the kitchen, sniffing at your fridge that mysteriously isn’t working.

You could scream!

And normally you wouldn’t spout about your issues to a stranger - or sort-of-stranger — like soap, but you’re jussst tipsy enough when he asks what sorrows you’re drowning. When he offers to help, you know you should say no…

But he’s been so attentive and understanding. Saying all the right things and making the right faces (okay maybe you’re more than a little tipsy to notice that his tone is off and his grimace doesn’t reach his hungry eyes). And besides, these repairs are going to be expensive and you’ve already got a big boy to feed!! Soap is willing to help for a beer and good company, he said.

So yeah, you give him your address, take a taxi home, and drunkenly leave kisses all over your pup. Tell him to be soooo nice to the guy coming over tomorrow, you can’t handle an ER visit on top of everything else.

But he’s mysteriously gone the next morning when a bright-eyed Soap knocks on your door, tool kit in hand.

#asks #thoughts™️#cod #woof woof johnny

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romantichomicide95 · 7 months

Text

KINKTOBER-AKI HAYAKAWA/FREE SPACE

pairing: aki hayakawa x reader

warnings: 18+. spanking.choking. p in v. fingering. oral (f!receiving). female anatomy. slight praise kink. multiple positions. drunk sex. drinking. smoking. slight rough sex.

notes:how is this my first time writing for him and this is the longest thing i’ve ever written? please. also if it’s ooc im sorry. and i finished this at 1am so don’t come for me with the end.

word count-> 2k

kinktober masterlist / taglist

“Here.” You say throwing the pack of cigarettes at your roommate, Aki. He had come home from work moments ago, and you’d realized you’d forgotten to do the one thing you’d promised him…buy him a new pack of beer and cigarettes. He’d gotten a little pissed, which wasn’t unlike him after a shitty day at work as a Devil Hunter, so you let it slide.

Mostly because you so conveniently drank the last beer in the fridge, so you’d had to run to the corner store for both.

“Thanks." Aki said, taking the cigarettes and beer. He looked at you with his normal stoic expression, yet his dark eyes held a flicker of gratitude.

"Sorry I got so pissed before. I had a rough day.” He looks over at you. Your hair is down today and you look really good. He thinks you always look good. Your figure, the way you dress just a little bit revealing. He thinks you do it on purpose to drive him crazy. You’d had sex before, the perks of having a hot roommate, but it had only been a few drunken nights…much like this one.

“It’s cool. I’m sorry I forgot. My memory’s kind of on the fritz lately.” You say, taking a beer and settling down next to him on the couch.

"Yeah, whatever. I’m over it ." Aki says, taking the beer from you. His attention seems to be locked on you, he can't help but stare at your lips. The way they pout ever so slightly. “Let’s just forget about it." He adds, looking away.

“Alright. Deal.” You say, smiling at him. You turn the TV on to some random show and you both sit in comfortable silence watching TV and drinking beers, you make it through the pack quite quickly.

Eventually, Aki grabs his cigarettes and stands up, walking outside towards the balcony for a smoke. You follow behind him.

Aki lights a cigarette, and watches you as you walk towards him, your hips swaying slightly. He can't help but admire the way your body moves. You’ve got such a great body, he thinks to himself.

"Can’t believe you’re drunk already” He says, taking a drag.

“And you’re not?”

“I’m not as much of a lightweight as you." He says. He takes another drag from his cigarette and looks at you.

You giggle slightly, “That’s true.” You take a step towards him, a slight sway in the way you walk thanks to the affects of alcohol. “I think you like me when I’m drunk though.” You tease.

"Maybe." He says, his voice low and husky. His eyes are locked onto yours, admiring the way they sparkle under the dim light of the balcony.

He takes another drag from his cigarette, watching as smoke billows around you.

You wave your hand in the smoke, willing it to disappear. “I think I’m a fun drunk.” You say with a cute little pout.

"Yeah, you're fun." He says, his voice a little deeper from the affects of the booze. “As long as you don’t puke on me." He says, with a slight chuckle, taking another drag from his cigarette, the tip glowing red in the darkneses.

“Hey!” You yell, swatting his arm. “That was one time.” You say in defense. With a playful grin you lean against the balcony railing. The cool breeze brushing against your face.

“I'm kidding." He says, with a smug smile. “Let's go back inside." He takes another drag from his cigarette and then stubs it out on the railing of the balcony.

You follow him inside, the glow of the TV illuminating the room. You lean against the kitchen counter, watching as he grabs another beer from the case.

“Want another?” He asks, extending a beer filled hand to you.

You hop up on the counter, opening your beer and taking a sip. “See, I think you’re trying to get me even more drunk.” You tease, a playful smile graving your lips. “Cause you like me drunk.”

"Maybe." He says, shrugging. He steps closer to stand directly in front of you, looking you up and down as you sit on the counter. He looks in your eyes for a second, before leaning up to grab a bag of chips from the cupboard behind your head. His shirt slightly lifts and your eyes trail along his stomach, admiring his physique.

“Like what you see?" He, asks catching you staring, his voice low. He takes a chip from the bag and pops it into his mouth, watching you closely.

The tension between you is palpable. “Maybe I do.” You shrug. He takes a step closer, setting the bag of chips down next to you. You instinctively spread your legs apart, giving him access to step between them.

“You’re drunk.” He says, leaning in to whisper in your ear. His voice is low and husky and the rich tones make your body shiver.

“So what if I am?”

“Well, if you're drunk, then maybe you don't care."He moves closer to you, your bodies slightly touching. One of his hands reaches resting on your thigh, just barely above the hem of your shorts. “Maybe you want me too."

“Want you to what?” You ask, feigning innocence.

You can feel the heat from your bodies emanating between you. Electricity funnels through you both, a magnetic pull of your bodies. Aki’s hand moves higher up your thigh, closer to the heat between your legs. “Do things that we shouldn't be doing right now."

You suck in a breathe as his hand moves higher and your heartbeat picks up. Your gaze falls from his eyes to linger on his lip before you’re looking back at his eyes again. You say nothing, the electricity surging through your body renders you momentarily speechless.

Aki senses this as his hand finally stops to rest at your hips. He leans in to whisper in your ear, “Do you want me to kiss you?”

All you can do is bite your lip and nod as he leans in to brush his lips against yours. His hands tighten on your waist, pulling you closer to the edge of the counter. He presses his lips to yours in a long lingering kiss, he pulls away to look at you. He smirks at the hunger he can see in your eyes before he leans in to kiss you again.

This kiss is deeper, his tongue traces the edges of your lips seeking permission to enter before sliding inside.

He pulls away slightly, his piercing blue eyes looking through you as a smirk grows on his face. “You taste like beer.”

“So do you.” You say, breathless and eager. You lean in brushing your lips against his again. He pulls you closer, his lips pressing against yours in a hard rough kiss. A kiss filled with hunger, and intense desire.

Aki’s hands navigate the curves of your body, until he finds the hem of your shirt, pulling it off over your head. He admires your body for a second before he’s kissing you again. Your hands travel up his back, gliding your fingertips over his muscles until you reach his hair, gently tugging at the dark strands.

His hands move to your waistband, undoing the button and zipper with quick movements. He pulls your shorts and panties off. Exposing that beautiful sight of your naked pussy. You spread your legs further, and it’s like a beacon calling to him. “Fuck you’re so wet..." he murmurs before he’s down on his knees and diving in, his tongue tracing the outline of your lips.

You let out a soft moan, tugging his hair as he licks and sucks at your heat. His hands grip the flesh of your ass, holding you steady as he devours you. “Fuck…taste so good.” He says, tasting the sweetness of your juices that mingle with the taste of beer on his tongue.

He’s intoxicated. Your taste mixed with the pretty little moans that escape your lips as you tug his hair, is driving him insane. His fingers slip inside you, moving in rhythm with his tongue.

You rut your hips up, chasing more of his tongue as you clench around his fingers. He smiles slightly against your skin, before his tongue is flicking at your clit. He thrusts his fingers deeper, hitting that sweet spot that causes you to moan louder.

“Aki…F-fuck…gunna cum.”

“Cum for me." He murmurs against your skin. His fingers move faster, his tongue whipping around your clit. He can feel it happening, the way your body tenses up, the way you moan his name over and over again. “That’s right..." he says as you explode around him, your juices dripping down his face and covering his fingers.

He pulls back slightly, looking at the mess he's made of you. The way your pussy glistens is amazing. He leans in again, licking up every last drop of your cum from your body. His tongue traces along your sensitive parts, making you gasp and arch into him.

“Aki, please…” You beg, all you can think about now is how bad you want him inside you. He leans in to kiss you, you can taste yourself on his tongue.

"Please what?" He whispers, his hands tracing up your thighs. His eyes are locked onto your body, the way you're shivering under his touch. The thought of being inside you now is driving him crazy. “Fuck you?" he asks, his eyes gleaming with mischief. "I can do that.”

You reach down, helping him to take his pants off as your lips meet again. “So fucking eager.” He groans against your lips as his cock springs free. His hands grip your ass, pulling you against him as his cock slowly sinks inside you.

Soft groans escape him as he feels your gummy walls tighten around his cock, the feeling is almost too intoxicating.

“Best fucking pussy. God, feels so good.” He pulls out almost completely before slamming back in again, each stroke hitting that sweet spot inside you that makes your entire body shiver with pleasure. “Ahh fuck, love this pussy so much.” He moans again, his hips moving faster now. His hands grip your thighs, holding you steady.

He groans again, his thrusts becoming more erratic. The way your pussy clings to him, the sound of your bodies slapping together, it’s almost too much for him. It’s taking everything in him not to cum right there.

"I can't...fuck..." He pulls out suddenly, leaving you feeling empty and needy. “Get down and turn around.”

You oblige, bending over and spreading yourself open for him. He admires your ass, round and firm begging for his touch before he gives it a good slap. Causing you to cry out in pleasure and pain.

He steps closer thrusting inside you from behind, unable to control his movements. His hands grip your hips again, holding you steady as he fucks you hard moving you in sync with his rhythm. He slaps your ass again, admiring the handprint left behind.

“Fuck, come here.” He says turning you around again, he lifts you up with ease and carrys you to the couch. Laying you down and lining himself with your entrance again, he thrusts inside you again. His hips move faster, his cock hitting your service everytime he enters your lush walls.

He comes down to kiss you again, trailing his lips down your body before taking a hard nipple into his lips. His tongue moves around the bud and it causes your moans to become louder. You rut your hips up into his, your nails digging into his back as his thrust become more erratic.

He can feel something start to boil inside him, a coil in his stomach ready to explode. “C-can’t hold on much longer…gunna cum.”

“Cum inside me Aki, fill me all the way up.” You moan, breathlessly in his ear. Those words alone cause him to let go, as he shoots his seed inside you, filling you up.

He rides his orgasm out, before collapsing on top of you. You both lay breathless and sweaty.

After awhile he leans up on his hands above you, kissing you on the forehead and looking in your eyes.

You take a deep breath. Carding your fingers through his hair, stifling a giggle. “Told you that you liked me when I was drunk.”

#aki hayakawa #aki hayakawa x reader #aki hayakawa smut #aki smut #aki chainsaw man #aki x reader #aki x reader smut #aki x you #aki hayakawa x reader smut #aki hayawaka #chainsaw man #csm smut #chainsaw man x reader #csm x reader #csm x reader smut #hayakawa aki

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gutsby · 7 months

Text

Nighthawk

Pairing: Daryl Dixon x Reader

Summary: After your lusty, short-lived relationship with a certain archer goes south, you decide to bring Spencer to the neighborhood Halloween bash to take your mind off things. Daryl isn't so easily convinced of your intentions and decides there's no better place than his motorcycle to show you just how much he misses you.

Warnings: NSFW. Unprotected p-in-v, semi-public fucking on Daryl’s bike and hints of exhibitionism, generally rough, jealous sex. Age gap. Assplay. Angst.

One swig of the witches’ cocktail brew, a couple candy corn jell-o shots, and several spiked seltzers in, and you were starting to have serious doubts about your decision to come out tonight.

You clutched your stomach in one hand and Spencer’s arm in the other. The man guiding you inside tried his best to stifle a chuckle.

“You good?” he asked, nudging you with his elbow.

“Great,” you lied through your teeth.

The two of you were weaving through a swarm of partygoers in the entryway now. A sea of masked faces and shredded costumes came dimly into view, and with the sight of the first goblin ensemble drenched in fake blood, you wanted to vomit. You’d think a community of people plagued with nightmarish walkers year-round would lay off the theatrics when it came to Halloween attire as gruesome and grisly as that, but no. Spencer laughed and clapped the ghoul on the shoulder.

“Abraham, my man!” he greeted, “You’re a vision in red.”

Abraham lifted his mask just slightly to heave a sigh.

“It’s hotter’n H-E-double hockey sticks in this sick contraption. I’m sweatin’ like a hog,” he scowled.

When his eyes had adjusted to the light and he caught a glimpse of you, practically green in hue, his face softened considerably.

“You alright, darlin’? You look ready to blow chunks.”

He wasn’t far off the mark. Your stomach was busy doing somersaults up and down your body, and your brain was on the fritz with a new wave of nausea.

“Need a little water is all,” you managed meekly.

Your red-haired companion nodded and started off down the hallway without another word, beckoning you and Spencer to follow. You passed through the rest of the house with relative ease, amazed at how much Alexandria appeared to have grown and how many of those people were here, in Deanna’s house, for some seemingly inconsequential Halloween celebration. You barely recognized half the faces.

Spencer grinned as he sensed those same people were all turning their heads to follow your path. It was his first time parading Officer Friendly’s daughter around a public gathering—the first time you’d agreed to make it known you two were a tentative “thing” since the messy conclusion of your last relationship—and he was pleasantly surprised to see the effect you had on others.

Never mind the fact you were wearing a white lacy bodice, miniskirt, garter belt and stockings. Paired with the makeshift halo and wings, breasts practically bursting at the seams of your costume, it seemed you garnered more attention than you knew what to do with. You were hot, and you were his, Spencer thought with a superficial sense of pride. He squeezed your hand a little tighter and secretly hoped you’d cross paths with everyone he knew in town, so he’d get his chance to prove it.

The three of you descended the few short steps into the garage, where it seemed most of the music, booze, and bodies had congregated. A smoke machine supplied a thick white mist about the room, and alongside the near-blinding white and purple strobe lights, you had only to cling to Spencer’s side and hope he was still following Abraham.

Suddenly, a red solo cup was thrust in your direction, and you smiled at the sight of water spilling over its edges.

“You’re an angel,” you beamed, standing on tip-toes to place a quick kiss on Abraham’s cheek.

Abraham opened his mouth to speak but was presently cut off by a louder, shouting voice:

“Quit your loose-lipped lolly-gaggin’ with the lady and get your ass over here!”

Eugene was drunk. So very, very drunk. You could tell by the sound of his voice alone.

“Kiss my freckled ass,” Abraham yelled back, baring a toothy smile at his friend as he started to make his way over. Tugging you and Spencer to follow suit.

You shot a worried look over your shoulder.

“Spence, I don’t think I—”

“Sure you can, sweetheart,” Spencer interrupted, already eyeing the white table at the center of the room, “Just drink your water, and you’ll be good to go in no time.”

You doubted you would but downed the liquid nonetheless. With each step ahead, it seemed you were only growing sicker, so you got to guzzling the water fast and just hoped you would be able to keep it together.

Unsurprisingly, the folding table was already crowded with plastic cups. Eugene and Aaron making sloppy pours across the tops with cans of Busch Light cradled in their arms and cracking up at every spill they made. You quickly scanned the group for any unknown, or unwanted, faces and felt relieved not to see Rick, your father, or Daryl, his best friend—and your ex-boyfriend.

That last part your dad still didn’t know about. You wanted to keep it that way.

Today marked six months since you and Daryl had started your ill-conceived affair and two weeks since you decided to call it quits—you know, after one too many occasions where Rick had almost caught you two boning on the sofa and Daryl swore left and right he was going to tell your dad everything, while you begged him not to. You sensed any such admission would be guaranteed to destroy your dad and Daryl’s friendship, so you made him promise not to tell.

Begrudgingly, Daryl had agreed, but he’d hated every minute of it. You knew it was only a matter of time before the whole thing blew up in your face, and eventually, it did.

Fourteen days after you’d broken the man’s heart, here you were, waltzing into a party on Spencer Monroe’s arm. Six long months after you’d kept Daryl your dirty secret, you were flaunting this fabrication of a relationship for all to see.

You knew he’d hate you for it. You needed him to. There was just no other way you could shake his affections—and consequently protect his friendship with your father, along with any last shred of unity in your group—unless Daryl despised you. You knew no surer bet than Deanna’s shitbrained son to accomplish that goal.

At present, Spencer pressed a beer-sodden pair of lips to yours, and you almost recoiled.

“You in, baby?” Nodding toward the drinking game still being set up before you.

You shook your head no.

“She’s in!” Spencer announced anyway. Then, quietly, he leaned in closer to you and said, “Quit bein’ a pussy.”

Defying all logic, he kissed you again. Harder. You reluctantly accepted his tongue in your mouth and feigned a smile when the rest of your group cheered their drunken, congratulatory encouragement around you.

When you pulled apart, you felt you wanted to puke again, this time for reasons unrelated to the alcohol. Then, as if on cue, your eyes fell on a previously undetected member of your party.

Daryl stood across the table now, gaze locked on yours with a look that could’ve killed you twenty times over.

To your horror, Spencer extended his arm across the way to shake his hand. Clearly trying too hard to ingratiate himself with a man who looked like he wanted him dead.

“Daryl Dixon!” he cried, smiling too wide for anyone even half as happy.

Your archer shook his hand and hardly seemed to see him. Disinterest painted plain across his features.

Spencer turned to you next, and you wanted to melt into the floor as he gestured toward Daryl, stupidly:

“Have you two met—”

“Your girl’s too young to play.”

Daryl didn’t even deign to grace you with a look. Spencer forced a laugh.

“You kidding? She’s practically a pro at rage cage,” he returned, pinching you playfully.

Somehow, you sensed Daryl wanted Spencer to shut up even more than you did. The stoic, tight-lipped frown with a set of deadened eyes sealed it for you.

At length, he chanced a look in your direction, and his expression didn’t change.

“Doubt it,” Daryl scoffed, “Better let her sit this one out before her daddy comes and gets her.”

He sure had been singing a different tune when he’d had his cock crammed down your throat a couple weeks ago. Didn’t seem too worried about Rick’s intrusion back then, you thought to yourself.

Before Spencer could respond, the whole table shook beneath you. Eugene was beating his fists against the surface, sending solo cups shaking every which way.

“Hear ye, hear ye—”

“Someone please cut him off,” Rosita grumbled behind you.

“This is the last—I repeat last—chance any one of you gets to join this game of rage cage right here,” Eugene declared, the end of his sentence punctuated by a hiccup.

One of Deanna’s goodie bags went sliding across the table to you. You looked at Daryl, confused.

“This one’s already itchin’ to pull trig,” he said to Eugene, “She better sit this out.”

Daryl then nodded toward the plastic baggie as if to suggest you go ahead and puke, but you flung the thing back at him fast.

“I am not,” you countered defiantly.

“Prove it,” Spencer interjected, useless as a screen door on a submarine.

You turned and saw him smiling ear to ear, oblivious to just how badly you wanted to rock his shit.

“Leave her be, chucklefuck.” Abraham boomed overhead.

“Well now, nobody has to prove—” Eugene paused to hiccup again, “—anything.”

In spite of your friends’ words of support, you felt a twist in your stomach and a familiar heat rise to your cheeks. You were blushing, you knew it, but you simply couldn’t lose out in the face of such a challenge. No matter how drunk and disoriented you were, you wouldn’t let Daryl, much less Daryl and Spencer, make a fool of you now.

You glanced at the handle of Everclear in Maggie’s hands just as she started to mix herself a drink.

“I can take a pull to prove it,” you said, motioning to the bottle.

Everyone who’d heard your suggestion and spared a look to the bottom shelf bottle of liquor made a face. Though piss-poor spirits were certainly no anomaly for your group, it was hardly anyone’s inclination to start chugging stuff close to 190 proof—least of all for folks who didn’t have a death wish or a liver made of steel.

“Fuck no,” Maggie and Daryl said in unison.

“Hell yes,” Spencer supplied just as fast.

So the matter was settled.

Maggie eyed you with an incredulous look when you reached for the bottle but knew better than to stop you after you’d made up your mind. Before you knew it, you were holding the thing by the neck and struggling, at length, to ignore Rosita and Abraham’s pleas over your shoulder.

“Don’t be stupid.”

“You’d be better off swallowing a bag of dicks dipped in Drano, darlin’.”

Even Daryl was watching you with wide, desperate eyes, silently pleading with you not to take the pull.

You would’ve gladly relented then, dropped the handle back on the table and stepped away without another word, but there was something in your brain telling you you needed to see this through. Whether it was self-sabotage or simple, drunken stupidity, you couldn’t be sure, but you probably wouldn’t care much longer.

You tipped your head back and flooded your mouth full of the grain alcohol.

Shortly after, a spasm in your stomach told you, without a shadow of a doubt, you wouldn’t be swallowing any of it.

You dropped the bottle and bolted out the door. Before you’d made it one step outside, you were already spraying a cloud of Everclear in the air, along with every food content and bodily fluid residing in your stomach. You dropped to your hands and knees in the grass and hurled like you never had before.

You closed your eyes and dug your fingers deep into the dirt below, desperately wishing you weren't wearing white. Convulsed in your tight corset and hoped this process wouldn’t be too painful to endure.

When you felt someone’s hands start to gather your hair in a ponytail behind you, you surmised you might not be so lucky. You spit on the ground and tried to shake them off.

“Get fucked, Spence,” you hissed.

The hands didn’t flinch from your hair and instead pulled it tighter between them.

“I said, get—” you struggled at the last, trying in vain to buck off whoever was above you. You cursed under your breath when it seemed clear they weren’t planning on budging.

“If this is how ye treat yer boyfriend, I’m glad ye dumped me,” a voice said with some amusement.

You groaned into the grass below you, eyes squeezing shut in disbelief,

“You don’t know the half of it.”

Daryl loosened one hand from your hair to start rubbing circles in your back. When you retched again, he moved his palm even more softly.

“I think I know ye well enough to say ya shouldn’t be chugging Everclear to prove a point,” Daryl said.

You didn’t have anything to say to that. He was right.

After one more pitiful heave, you started to struggle to get upright and eventually onto your feet. Daryl looped an arm around your waist and helped you up.

Your mind was reeling and your stomach was steeling itself against another potential onslaught of convulsions. When Daryl turned you around and steadied you in front of him, though, all concern for your current predicament ebbed gently from your mind. His blue eyes seemed to study every inch of you.

“Do you hate me now?” you asked abruptly.

You felt stupid for asking as soon as you said it. But then, to your surprise, Daryl smiled. He placed a hand on either side of your head and tilted it up to his.

“Do I look like I hate ye?” he asked.

Perhaps owing to your state of intoxication or the way Daryl made you feel when there was little more between you than a few inches and ample opportunity, you actually looked him up and down. Trying to detect any trace of hatred or the least bit of annoyance there but coming up with nothing. He started stroking your cheeks with the pads of his thumbs.

The memories and the feelings all came flooding back faster than you would’ve liked, but there they were, and there he was, standing tall and tame and perfectly blameless in this situation you wished you hadn’t shot to shit two weeks ago. You suspected if he’d been looking at you any differently that night, it was simply an act of self-preservation on his part; no number of dirty looks or disparaging jabs could mask the fact that he couldn’t hate you if he tried. One warm look from those wide, placid eyes turned your stomach inside out and made you ashamed you ever left him in the first place.

You weren’t sure who started it, but your lips were back together in seconds, placing hot, frantic kisses all over the other.

“Did you miss me?” you mumbled against his mouth, in between a barrage of kisses.

Daryl’s hands traveled down your back and squeezed your ass, prompting you to jump and wrap your legs around his waist.

“More than you fuckin' know,” he groaned as he slid his tongue between your lips.

Quick came the mind-numbing rush of intimacy in secret, that lovely, electrifying feeling of doing something you shouldn’t. It took no time at all to get reacquainted with that addictive sensation—you felt yourself lean into it even more this time around. You slipped out of his arms and back onto your feet, ready for more of him.

“We can’t—” Daryl started, out of breath already, “—keep doin’ this, honey.”

“Yes, we can,” you returned quickly. Reaching for his belt while your pupils widened with lust.

You made the few familiar maneuvers to undo his buckle, button, and fly, and when you palmed him over his boxers, he moaned.

“What happens when your daddy finds out, hm?” Daryl managed through gritted teeth.

“If he does,” you corrected him.

“When he does.”

You sighed, frustrated. Daryl sure wasn’t making things easier on you.

“What do you want me to say, D? That I—I can just come clean and tell him his best friend’s been bangin’ me for the past six months? You know he’d skin you alive,” you said, your voice a little less kind than you intended.

It was the truth, though.

Like clockwork, Daryl took you back in his arms and carried you clear across Deanna’s yard, toward a tiny shed in the back. You snuck a look over your shoulder and saw his old, trusted motorcycle propped up against its siding.

When he placed you on the wide leather seat, you knew this fight was far from over. You kissed again, anyway.

“I’ll tell him myself then.” Daryl pulled off of you and ran his hands up your stocking-covered legs.

He rubbed them up and down and up again until his fingers faltered at the edge of your garter belt, secured snugly across the tops of your thighs.

“Or we can tell him. Together,” he rejoined, calmly dropping a hand between your legs.

Your breath caught in your throat. You were already so sensitive, soaked through your panties and ready to take him whole. You whined when he swept his thumb over your clothed heat and clamped your thighs in defiance when he started to rub you up and down.

“I need you now,” you moaned.

Daryl didn’t bother concealing his smirk and just reached back to readjust himself—toying with your attention while you waited for him to take his cock out fully.

“No foreplay, huh?” he mused aloud as he eased his boxers down, “Must’ve been missin’ this cock somethin’ awful.”

You nodded without a second thought.

You were physically salivating at the sight of him. Watching him pump himself firm in one hand and brush your cheek with the knuckles of his other in a gentle touch.

“My baby won’t mind gettin’ stretched out again?”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Promise not to cry?”

“Uh-huh.”

He was teasing you now. He’d seen your wide, listless eyes drink in the sight of him and couldn’t resist.

When he told you to bend over the seat of his bike, you obeyed in an instant. You planted your palms on the cushion, stuck your ass in the air, and practically wiggled it for him there.

“Like a bitch in heat,” Daryl growled just loud enough for you to hear.

He took your ass in both hands and spread yourself just wide enough so he could see the leaking, dripping mess along the slit of your panties. You sighed when he pried your underwear off a second later.

Daryl’s idea of “skipping” foreplay still wouldn’t be complete if he didn’t tease you to the point of orgasm at least once or twice.

True to form, he leaned in and placed a kiss over your unclothed core, and your knees almost buckled. He pushed his tongue up your slit, circled your clit, and dragged it all the way down past your pussy to the point he was nearly veering into uncharted territory for you both.

You gripped the bike below you and moaned out loud.

“Daryl, baby,” you pleaded with no motive in particular. You didn’t know what he was doing, you just wanted him to keep doing it.

“Want me here?” Daryl asked, his thumb sliding to that same delicate spot.

You pushed your hips back into him in a wordless but enthusiastic answer in the affirmative. Daryl grew even harder.

He knew you weren’t ready for that just yet, knew he wanted to make that first-time experience in your other hole a little more sentimental than taking you over his bike with little to no lubrication—but the thought of the future endeavor excited him nonetheless. He peppered a couple more gentle kisses between your legs before standing up.

You whimpered at the loss of contact and almost turned around to say as much when he reappeared behind you, this time pressing the head of his cock between your folds.

“How bou’ here, honey? Can I fuck ya here?” he asked, all sweet words and civility when it came time to fuck you stupid.

“Y-yes, Daryl, yes,” you supplied your consent in a second.

“Then be good for me while ye take it, okay, doll?”

Before you could answer, Daryl’s cock was already starting to split you open. Soft, slow, and tender, with a stretch that made it feel like your first all over again, you both moaned at the feeling and rolled your bodies into one another.

Two weeks apart and you were all but fiending for an orgasm like he hadn’t been inside you for a year or more. Judging by the sounds Daryl made when he bottomed out, he was right there with you.

He dragged himself out to the tip and plunged back in, gripping your hips like they were the last thing holding him to earth. Then dropped his head back and groaned when you pushed yourself back to start meeting his thrusts.

“Ye feel too fuckin’ good,” he grunted, relishing the sounds of his balls slapping your ass with each bounce.

Your nose was buried somewhere between the seat and your own trembling fingers, scarcely breathing more than you could manage between each moan of his name. He loved you like this, all bent out of shape with your brain devoid of any other thought but his cock. He ran a finger over the pale, feathered wings of your costume—the ones that mirrored those emblazoned on the back of his vest—and couldn’t help but smile.

Just when you clenched and sensed you were dangerously close, Daryl hoisted you back onto your feet. Pulling out for a moment to switch positions and take you in his lap, now straddling him over his bike.

You sighed at the new sensation and smiled now that you could see him face-to-face. Daryl grinned right back and took your lips in his for a couple quick kisses.

“M’perfect girl,” he hummed, sponging kiss after kiss across your skin in sloppy, haphazard fashion.

You tipped your chin back and reveled in his gentle affections, moving your hips over him a little faster now.

“Gonna cum f’me? Show me just how good I’m making ye feel?” Daryl prodded, eyes alight with lust.

You pressed your forehead to his and nodded. Breaths coming out more ragged and strained than ever, you felt Daryl lift his hips and start fucking into you a little sharper, grip your sides a little less gently and just start giving it to you hard and fast and senseless so you’d be spilling over him in no time at all.

You were a mystery to him in many ways, but this realm was not one of them. Daryl knew just the right angle to take your soft, sensitive spot—strike it over and over and over again so you were clenching tight around him, begging him not to stop—and in a matter of seconds, you both got what you desperately wanted.

With one final squeeze around his member, you reached your peak and screamed his name, fucking him back with every vicious thrust he gave you. Then, try as he might to hold it in, Daryl grew just as oversexed and sensitive, shooting his load in you moments later.

The two of you rutted and moaned and clutched each other tight as you trembled through your highs. With Daryl’s warmth spreading deep inside you, you would’ve liked to stay this way forever—maybe rest in each other’s arms long enough to rally for rounds two, three, and four, if not more. But at present, you were content just to hold him.

A dull thump of music echoed from Deanna’s house. Daryl eyed you up and down, seemed set on asking if you’d like to go again, but took you by surprise with another question entirely.

He pulled you tight in his lap so his lips were close to yours. Sank his fingers into the flesh of your sides and said, ever casually:

“Ready to tell Rick?”

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