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mostlysignssomeportents · 15 days

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Twinkfrump Linkdump

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in CHICAGO (Apr 17), Torino (Apr 21) Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

Welcome to the seventeenth Pluralistic linkdump, a collection of all the miscellany that didn't make it into the week's newsletter, cunningly wrought together in a single edition that ranges from the first ISP to AI nonsense to labor organizing victories to the obituary of a brilliant scientist you should know a lot more about! Here's the other 16 dumps:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

If you're reading this (and you are!), it was delivered to you by an internet service provider. Today, the ISP industry is calcified, controlled by a handful of telcos and cable companies. But the idea of an "ISP" didn't come out of a giant telecommunications firm – it was created, in living memory, by excellent nerds who are still around.

Depending on how you reckon, The Little Garden was either the first or the second ISP in America. It was named after a Palo Alto Chinese restaurant frequented by its founders. To get a sense of that founding, read these excellent recollections by Tom Jennings, whose contributions include the seminal zine Homocore, the seminal networking protocol Fidonet, and the seminal third-party PC ROM, whence came Dell, Gateway, Compaq, and every other "PC clone" company.

The first installment describes how an informal co-op to network a few friends turned into a business almost by accident, with thousands of dollars flowing in and out of Jennings' bank account:

https://www.sensitiveresearch.com/Archive/TLG/TLG.html

And it describes how that ISP set a standard for neutrality, boldly declaring that "TLGnet exercises no control whatsoever over the content of the information." They introduced an idea of radical transparency, documenting their router configurations and other technical details and making them available to the public. They hired unskilled punk and queer kids from their communities and trained them to operate the network equipment they'd invented, customized or improvised.

In part two, Jennings talks about the evolution of TLG's radical business-plan: to offer unrestricted service, encouraging their customers to resell that service to people in their communities, having no lock-in, unbundling extra services including installation charges – the whole anti-enshittification enchilada:

https://www.sensitiveresearch.com/Archive/TLG/

I love Jennings and his work. I even gave him a little cameo in Picks and Shovels, the third Martin Hench novel, which will be out next winter. He's as lyrical a writer about technology as you could ask for, and he's also a brilliant engineer and thinker.

The Little Garden's founders and early power-users have all fleshed out Jennings' account of the birth of ISPs. Writing on his blog, David "DSHR" Rosenthal rounds up other histories from the likes of EFF co-founder John Gilmore and Tim Pozar:

https://blog.dshr.org/2024/04/the-little-garden.html

Rosenthal describes some of the more exotic shenanigans TLG got up to in order to do end-runs around the Bell system's onerous policies, hacking in the purest sense of the word, for example, by daisy-chaining together modems in regions with free local calling and then making "permanent local calls," with the modems staying online 24/7.

Enshittification came to the ISP business early and hit it hard. The cartel that controls your access to the internet today is a billion light-years away from the principled technologists who invented the industry with an ethos of care, access and fairness. Today's ISPs are bitterly opposed to Net Neutrality, the straightforward proposition that if you request some data, your ISP should send it to you as quickly and reliably as it can.

Instead, ISPs want to offer "slow-lanes" where they will relegate the whole internet, except for those companies that bribe the ISP to be delivered at normal speed. ISPs have a laughably transparent way of describing this: they say that they're allowing services to pay for "fast lanes" with priority access. This is the same as the giant grocery store that charges you extra unless you surrender your privacy with a "loyalty card" – and then says that they're offering a "discount" for loyal customers, rather than charging a premium to customers who don't want to be spied on.

The American business lobby loves this arrangement, and hates Net Neutrality. Having monopolized every sector of our economy, they are extremely fond of "winner take all" dynamics, and that's what a non-neutral ISP delivers: the biggest services with the deepest pockets get the most reliable delivery, which means that smaller services don't just have to be better than the big guys, they also have to be able to outbid them for "priority carriage."

If everything you get from your ISP is slow and janky, except for the dominant services, then the dominant services can skimp on quality and pocket the difference. That's the goal of every monopolist – not just to be too big to fail, but also too big to care.

Under the Trump administration, FCC chair Ajit Pai dismantled the Net Neutrality rule, colluding with American big business to rig the process. They accepted millions of obviously fake anti-Net Neutrality comments (one million identical comments from @pornhub.com addresses, comments from dead people, comments from sitting US Senators who support Net Neutrality) and declared open season on American internet users:

https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2021/attorney-general-james-issues-report-detailing-millions-fake-comments-revealing

Now, Biden's FCC is set to reinstate Net Neutrality – but with a "compromise" that will make mobile internet (which nearly all of use sometimes, and the poorest of us are reliant on) a swamp of anticompetitive practices:

https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2024/04/harmful-5g-fast-lanes-are-coming-fcc-needs-stop-them

Under the proposed rule, mobile carriers will be able to put traffic to and from apps in the slow lane, and then extort bribes from preferred apps for normal speed and delivery. They'll rely on parts of the 5G standard to pull off this trick.

The ISP cartel and the FCC insist that this is fine because web traffic won't be degraded, but of course, every service is hellbent on pushing you into using apps instead of the web. That's because the web is an open platform, which means you can install ad- and privacy-blockers. More than half of web users have installed a blocker, making it the largest boycott in human history:

https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/

But reverse-engineering and modding an app is a legal minefield. Just removing the encryption from an app can trigger criminal penalties under Section 1201 of the DMCA, carrying a five-year prison sentence and a $500k fine. An app is just a web-page skinned in enough IP that it's a felony to mod it.

Apps are enshittification's vanguard, and the fact that the FCC has found a way to make them even worse is perversely impressive. They're voting on this on April 25, and they have until April 24 to fix this. They should. They really should:

https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-401676A1.pdf

In a just world, cheating ripoff ISPs would the top tech policy story. The operational practices of ISPs effect every single one us. We literally can't talk about tech policy without ISPs in the middle. But Net Neutrality is an also-ran in tech policy discourse, while AI – ugh ugh ugh – is the thing none of us can shut up about.

This, despite the fact that the most consequential AI applications sum up to serving as a kind of moral crumple-zone for shitty business practices. The point of AI isn't to replace customer service and other low-paid workers who have taken to demanding higher wages and better conditions – it's to fire those workers and replace them with chatbots that can't do their jobs. An AI salesdroid can't sell your boss a bot that can replace you, but they don't need to. They only have to convince your boss that the bot can do your job, even if it can't.

SF writer Karl Schroeder is one of the rare sf practitioners who grapples seriously with the future, a "strategic foresight" guy who somehow skirts the bullshit that is the field's hallmark:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/07/the-gernsback-continuum/#wheres-my-jetpack

Writing on his blog, Schroeder describes the AI debates roiling the Association of Professional Futurists, and how it's sucking him into being an unwilling participant in the AI hype cycle:

https://kschroeder.substack.com/p/dragged-into-the-ai-hype-cycle

Schroeder's piece is a thoughtful meditation on the relationship of SF's thought-experiments and parables about AI to the promises of AI hucksters, who promise that a) "general artificial intelligence" is just around the corner and that b) it will be worth trillions of dollars.

Schroeder – like other sf writers including Ted Chiang and Charlie Stross (and me) – comes to the conclusion that AI panic isn't about AI, it's about power. The artificial life-form devouring the planet and murdering our species is the limited liability corporation, and its substrate isn't silicon, it's us, human bodies:

What’s lying underneath all our anxieties about AGI is an anxiety that has nothing to do with Artificial Intelligence. Instead, it’s a manifestation of our growing awareness that our world is being stolen from under us. Last year’s estimate put the amount of wealth currently being transferred from the people who made it to an idle billionaire class at $5.2 trillion. Artificial General Intelligence whose environment is the server farms and sweatshops of this class is frightening only because of its capacity to accelerate this greatest of all heists.

After all, the business-case for AI is so very thin that the industry can only survive on a torrent of hype and nonsense – like claims that Amazon's "Grab and Go" stores used "AI" to monitor shoppers and automatically bill them for their purchases. In reality, the stores used thousands of low-paid Indian workers to monitor cameras and manually charge your card. This happens so often that Indian technologists joke that "AI" stands for "absent Indians":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/29/pay-no-attention/#to-the-little-man-behind-the-curtain

Isn't it funny how all the really promising AI applications are in domains that most of us aren't qualified to assess? Like the claim that Google's AI was producing millions of novel materials that will shortly revolutionize all forms of production, from construction to electronics to medical implants:

https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/millions-of-new-materials-discovered-with-deep-learning/

That's what Google's press-release claimed, anyway. But when two groups of experts actually pulled a representative sample of these "new materials" from the Deep Mind database, they found that none of these materials qualified as "credible, useful and novel":

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.chemmater.4c00643

Writing about the researchers' findings for 404 Media, Jason Koebler cites Berkeley researchers who concluded that "no new materials have been discovered":

https://www.404media.co/google-says-it-discovered-millions-of-new-materials-with-ai-human-researchers/

The researchers say that AI data-mining for new materials is promising, but falls well short of Google's claim to be so transformative that it constitutes the "equivalent to nearly 800 years’ worth of knowledge" and "an order-of-magnitude expansion in stable materials known to humanity."

AI hype keeps the bubble inflating, and for so long as it keeps blowing up, all those investors who've sunk their money into AI can tell themselves that they're rich. This is the essence of "a bezzle": "The magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way

Among the best debezzlers of AI are the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy's Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor, who edit the "AI Snake Oil" blog. Now, they've sold a book with the same title:

https://www.aisnakeoil.com/p/ai-snake-oil-is-now-available-to

Obviously, books move a lot more slowly than blogs, and so Narayanan and Kapoor say their book will focus on the timeless elements of identifying and understanding AI snake oil:

In the book, we explain the crucial differences between types of AI, why people, companies, and governments are falling for AI snake oil, why AI can’t fix social media, and why we should be far more worried about what people will do with AI than about anything AI will do on its own. While generative AI is what drives press, predictive AI used in criminal justice, finance, healthcare, and other domains remains far more consequential in people’s lives. We discuss in depth how predictive AI can go wrong. We also warn of the dangers of a world where AI continues to be controlled by largely unaccountable big tech companies.

The book's out in September and it's up for pre-order now:

https://bookshop.org/p/books/ai-snake-oil-what-artificial-intelligence-can-do-what-it-can-t-and-how-to-tell-the-difference-arvind-narayanan/21324674

One of the weirder and worst side-effects of the AI hype bubble is that it has revived the belief that it's somehow possible for giant platforms to monitor all their users' speech and remove "harmful" speech. We've tried this for years, and when humans do it, it always ends with disfavored groups being censored, while dedicated trolls, harassers and monsters evade punishment:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/07/como-is-infosec/

AI hype has led policy-makers to believe that we can deputize online services to spy on all their customers and block the bad ones without falling into this trap. Canada is on the verge of adopting Bill C-63, a "harmful content" regulation modeled on examples from the UK and Australia.

Writing on his blog, Canadian lawyer/activist/journalist Dimitri Lascaris describes the dire speech implications for C-63:

https://dimitrilascaris.org/2024/04/08/trudeaus-online-harms-bill-threatens-free-speech/

It's an excellent legal breakdown of the bill's provisions, but also a excellent analysis of how those provisions are likely to play out in the lives of Canadians, especially those advocating against genocide and taking other positions the that oppose the agenda of the government of the day.

Even if you like the Trudeau government and its policies, these powers will accrue to every Canadian government, including the presumptive (and inevitably, totally unhinged) near-future Conservative majority government of Pierre Poilievre.

It's been ten years since Martin Gilens and Benjamin I Page published their paper that concluded that governments make policies that are popular among elites, no matter how unpopular they are among the public:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B

Now, this is obviously depressing, but when you see it in action, it's kind of wild. The Biden administration has declared war on junk fees, from "resort fees" charged by hotels to the dozens of line-items added to your plane ticket, rental car, or even your rent check. In response, Republican politicians are climbing to their rear haunches and, using their actual human mouths, defending junk fees:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-04-12-republicans-objectively-pro-junk-fee/

Congressional Republicans are hell-bent on destroying the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau's $8 cap on credit-card late-fees. Trump's presumptive running-mate Tim Scott is making this a campaign plank: "Vote for me and I will protect your credit-card company's right to screw you on fees!" He boasts about the lobbyists who asked him to take this position: champions of the public interest from the Consumer Bankers Association to the US Chamber of Commerce.

Banks stand to lose $10b/year from this rule (which means Americans stand to gain $10b/year from this rule). What's more, Scott's attempt to kill the rule is doomed to fail – there's just no procedural way it will fly. As David Dayen writes, "Not only does this vote put Republicans on the spot over junk fees, it’s a doomed vote, completely initiated by their own possible VP nominee."

This is an hilarious own-goal, one that only brings attention to a largely ignored – but extremely good – aspect of the Biden administration. As Adam Green of Bold Progressives told Dayen, "What’s been missing is opponents smoking themselves out and raising the volume of this fight so the public knows who is on their side."

The CFPB is a major bright spot in the Biden administration's record. They're doing all kind of innovative things, like making it easy for you to figure out which bank will give you the best deal and then letting you transfer your account and all its associated data, records and payments with a single click:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/21/let-my-dollars-go/#personal-financial-data-rights

And now, CFPB chair Rohit Chopra has given a speech laying out the agency's plan to outlaw data-brokers:

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/prepared-remarks-of-cfpb-director-rohit-chopra-at-the-white-house-on-data-protection-and-national-security/

Yes, this is some good news! There is, in fact, good news in the world, bright spots amidst all the misery and terror. One of those bright spots? Labor.

Unions are back, baby. Not only do the vast majority of Americans favor unions, not only are new shops being unionized at rates not seen in generations, but also the largest unions are undergoing revolutions, with control being wrestled away from corrupt union bosses and given to the rank-and-file.

Many of us have heard about the high-profile victories to take back the UAW and Teamsters, but I hadn't heard about the internal struggles at the United Food and Commercial Workers, not until I read Hamilton Nolan's gripping account for In These Times:

https://inthesetimes.com/article/revolt-aisle-5-ufcw-grocery-workers-union

Nolan profiles Faye Guenther, president of UFCW Local 3000 and her successful and effective fight to bring a militant spirit back to the union, which represents a million grocery workers. Nolan describes the fight as "every bit as dramatic as any episode of Game of Thrones," and he's not wrong. This is an inspiring tale of working people taking power away from scumbag monopoly bosses and sellout fatcat leaders – and, in so doing, creating a institution that gets better wages, better working conditions, and a better economy, by helping to block giant grocery mergers like Kroger/Albertsons.

I like to end these linkdumps on an up note, so it feels weird to be closing out with an obituary, but I'd argue that any celebration of the long life and many accomplishments of my friend and mentor Anne Innis Dagg is an "up note."

I last wrote about Anne in 2020, on the release of a documentary about her work, "The Woman Who Loved Giraffes":

https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/19/pluralist-19-feb-2020/#annedagg

As you might have guessed from the title of that doc, Anne was a biologist. She was the first woman scientist to do field-work on giraffes, and that work was so brilliant and fascinating that it kicked off the modern field of giraffology, which remains a woman-dominated specialty thanks to her tireless mentoring and support for the scientists that followed her.

Anne was also the world's most fearsome slayer of junk-science "evolutionary psychology," in which "scientists" invent unfalsifiable just-so stories that prove that some odious human characteristic is actually "natural" because it can be found somewhere in the animal kingdom (i.e., "Darling, please, it's not my fault that I'm fucking my grad students, it's the bonobos!").

Anne wrote a classic – and sadly out of print – book about this that I absolutely adore, not least for having one of the best titles I've ever encountered: "Love of Shopping" Is Not a Gene:

https://memex.craphound.com/2009/11/04/love-of-shopping-is-not-a-gene-exposing-junk-science-and-ideology-in-darwinian-psychology/

Anne was my advisor at the University of Waterloo, an institution that denied her tenure for fifty years, despite a brilliant academic career that rivaled that of her storied father, Harold Innis ("the thinking person's Marshall McLuhan"). The fact that Waterloo never recognized Anne is doubly shameful when you consider that she was awarded the Order of Canada:

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/queen-of-giraffes-among-new-order-of-canada-recipients-with-global-influence

Anne lived a brilliant live, struggling through adversity, never compromising on her principles, inspiring a vast number of students and colleagues. She lived to ninety one, and died earlier this month. Her ashes will be spread "on the breeding grounds of her beloved giraffes" in South Africa this summer:

https://obituaries.therecord.com/obituary/anne-innis-dagg-1089534658

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/13/goulash/#material-misstatement

Image: Valeva1010 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hungarian_Goulash_Recipe.png

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

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intertexts-moving · 10 months

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ok ive still been rotating warbreaker in my mind recently & i still gotta say it is SO unserious 2 look at brandon sanderson whose bibliography includes

>warbreaker (extremely religious girl from a small insular community goes to the Big Evil City, goes on a journey of realizing that being extremely dogmatic and self-righteous in your faith is almost always hypocritical, recognizes that the Big Evil City and People are not, in fact, inherently evil, and the alleged sins they commit are actually beautiful and fascinating and morally neutral things, eventually wields and grows to love the very power she was taught to be terrified of and hate by her religion,)

>mistborn (god is dead & i killed him & that is a cause for celebration, god is awful and cruel and must be stopped, god is tired and faded and not very good at helping, god is a teenage girl, the only truly kind god in the entire cosmos is a kind and gentle archivist who has gone to hell and back and is capable of resolving problems and differences into harmony,)

>mistborn era two (dogmatic insular religion CAN be good for some people but it will only be a cage for others & can be frustrating and wrong and harmful and still have good in it too & will haunt them the rest of their life, sometimes you will go your entire life feeling the disappointed gaze of your religious elders on your back and still know the choice you made was the only right one for you)

>stormlight archive (that which you believed was god is dead and possibly was never god in the first place and you have GOT to stop worshipping him it is USELESS it does NOTHING he is DEAD you are calcified in your dogmatic ways and will do incredibly stupid shit in the name of religious tradition, arrogance and pride and bigotry and oppression in the name of tradition and religion will always come crashing down upon their perpetrators, you framed yourself as the innocent victims of evil but you were the evil itself all along)

& go oh my god... sanderson... isnt he like.. mormon... i bet he writes vile shit because he's religious...

#txt #like. TBH.#cosmere #stormlight archive #mistborn

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aeriona · 11 months

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I literally hit 300 followers while writing this so here you go: Here is a study I've done on the various sapient species of Splatoon! Drawing them all in their entirety would take too much time, so I've stuck to just some hands. besides, it looks cool.

Quick note: Keep in mind that the art i’ve done for each group is a generalisation, there is an ABSURD amount of variation between different species so if you want to use this knowledge for your own stuff then literally go nuts! There are basically no rules!

Anyway, This is a very long and nerdy post, so strap in.

First we have the Cephalopods. This includes Inklings, Octolings and Nautili. (I made seperate sciencey-art posts for each a while ago). These guys are cold-blooded, have no bones, blue blood and suckers on the end of each finger (except nautili, cause they’re weird.) These suckers are quite strong especially in Octolings, which can use them to cling to walls and even ceilings. Squid also have sucker-teeth, these retractable, chitinous rings inside each sucker that vary in length and sharpness between species.

Inkfish (excluding nautili) have 3 main types of skin cells;

Chromatophores, which allows for colour-changing

Iridophores/Leucophores, which gives the skin an iridescent effect

Photophores (some squid only) which can produce a blue glow.

Instead of bones, they have a unique system of muscles called a hydrostatic skeleton, which uses fluid pressure (in this case, ink) as a support structure. Blood is used too, but mostly ink cause they have so much of it (once again except Nautili, as they have no ink at all). This means that these guys are super bendy, they can stretch and contract their limbs and even turn their heads nearly 270 degrees!

Next we have both Cnidarians and Echinoderms. (I've excluded crustaceans cause idk how to draw them lmao sorry). These groups include jellyfish, anemones, sea slugs, snails and urchins.

Similarly to cephalopods, they’re all also cold-blooded and lack bones, instead having similar hydrostatic system for support with varying strength between each class. For example, Anenomes have super robust supports in their legs thanks to calcified rods in the fluid cavity, however jellyfish are extremely floppy as they have extremely weak hydrostatic muscles.

On a side note, Jellyfish and Anenome are also unique, as many species have cnidocytes in their various arms and tentacles. These are cells that when stressed, will inject a venom that varies in strength from a bee-sting to literally killing you.

Urchins are similar, as each finger is tipped with a brittle spine that can not only inject a weak venom but also break off into your skin, leaving behind nasty shards that cut you up from the inside. Fun.

And then there’s Sea Slugs/Snails which are literally the sweetest little people alive, they have no natural weapons at all apart from their poisonous flesh. They don’t even have teeth at all! They’re just slimy little buddies who love you! However, urchins are immune to their poison as they eat them. Sea Slugs are actually an urchin’s ONLY source of food (they get sick/weak eating anything else), and this has resulted in quite a lot of legal and criminal issues. It’s whole other can of worms.

And finally, fish. Fish are actually the ONLY people in the entire Mollusc Era to have proper bones and red blood, literally everyone else has either an exoskeleton or a hydrostatic system, with either blue blood or none at all. Damn fish and their weird joints.

Cartilaginous fish (sharks, manta rays) have cool, rough skin that’s kinda unpleasant to touch, whereas the most of the remaining species fall under the ray-finned fish (basically everything else) category, and they are covered in shiny scales.

Also eel, there is no hand. Because eel. I’m very funny.

And with that, I have concluded. I’ve done a lot of research on this stuff so if you have any questions at all or if you want me to draw some more diagrams/related artwork, please don’t hesitate to shoot me an ask! I love talking about/drawing this stuff so it’s of no inconvenience!

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calcifiedunderland · 2 months

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Spare Change

Azul x GN Reader (they/them)

—In which you win Azul’s friendship with the loose change in your pocket.

Notes: I tried to keep the coin description vague so it could be from any currency!! I had this idea for a little while now. Enjoy shrimpies~

—

You were going to buy Azul’s friendship at the cost of a gumball.

Well, maybe that was an exaggeration. By all accounts, it would’ve been impossible to do that, even with a large sum of money. You didn’t think that you’d ever be back in his office making a deal with the merman who almost turned you out of your dusty dorm. But this time, it hopefully would go in your favor.

Earlier that week, you’d been cleaning out your knickknacks, and came across some loose change you’d had in your pockets when you arrived to NRC. Honestly, you forgot about it - it wasn’t like you could really use it here.

Still, you recalled some offhanded comment Jade made - something about Azul’s coin collection, and his fascination with human trinkets. Once, when you’d visited Azul’s dorm room while he was recovering from his overblot, the framed coin showcase on his wall had caught your eye. The coins shimmered, and despite some wear and tear, you could tell they were now kept in meticulous, pristine condition.

This went through your mind as you stride into Octavinelle, feeling the coins in your pocket thump against your skin.

You sucked in a deep breath and knocked on his office door, and, not waiting for a response, you opened it. If you waited, you’d lose your courage. Azul looked up irritably, adjusting his glasses. “Please wait a moment, I’ll be wi-” he stopped mid-sentence, mouth hanging open when he saw you. “Well- Hello, Prefect,” he clasped his hands over his desk, discreetly shoving a contract into a drawer, “what brings you here today?” He coughed slightly, clearing his throat.

Wordlessly you sat down in front of him, change jangling in your pockets. You looked at him intently, searching his eyes and thumbing a coin in your pocket. This could go really well or really not well. Still, you’d made unlikely friends with Riddle and annoying acquaintances with Leona. Besides, you thought as you rubbed the coin, what you wanted wasn’t anything material. Rather, it was genuine and immeasurable - less to you, but more to him.

Azul was pensive, looking at you carefully. You unsettled him. After what happened before winter break, when he overblotted, he’d had a hard time making heads or fins about you. You were a walking paradox - a magicless human who somehow had so much power over strong housewardens. By all accounts, you shouldn’t have been able to one-up his contract to gain Ramshackle. And yet you somehow did, with Leona and your friends.

In all honesty, you had every reason to be upset with him. So why were you in his office now? His eyes zeroed in on yours. What was your angle? What did you have to gain? He hated this feeling of being indebted to you after his overblot. Like he had to make it up to you, somehow. Would you hold it against him?

You fidgeted slightly under his gaze, feeling a little unnerved. Wordlessly, you fished into your pocket and pulled out one of the larger coins from your currency. You put it on the desk between the two of you, the tether between you and him. And if all went well, a symbol.

He looked down at it, curiousity getting the better of him. He picked it up carefully in his gloved fingers, holding it up and turning it around. He rubbed his fingers over the dips and engravings, analyzing the text on it. He held it up to the light, admiring it. Strange, he thought to himself. A childish fascination grew in him, and he carefully flipped the coin around in his fingers, admiring the way it glinted and reflected the light. You smiled, watching the awe in Azul’s eyes grow.

At last, he spoke, not taking his eyes off it, “I’ve never seen anything like it. I’d have to look into it’s origins if you’d want me to appraise it.” He couldn’t think of any other reason you’d be here, giving this to him. Was this your way of getting him to repay you? Have him auction off this coin? His mind halted, why did you show this coin to him? To lure him in and then take it away?

You shook your head, “you won’t find any information on it.” He rose an eyebrow at you, and you continued, “this is a coin from my world. Where I’m from.” He glanced back at the coin with new interest, enraptured. A one-of-a-kind, limited commodity? A coin that only you would have? His heart skipped a beat.

He’d be lying if his businessmer side wasn’t salivating, but a part of him didn’t want to sell it. Deep down, he knew he wanted to keep it for his collection - after all, it wasn’t often that he came across rare coins.

Still, Azul knew better than others that you couldn’t get something without payment. “…what would you like for it?” He asked so quietly, you would’ve thought you’d imagined it if he wasn’t looking at you. He braced for the worst, thinking you’d demand something wild as revenge for his overblot.

You took a deep breath, “Nothing.”

Weeks ago, you would’ve disbelieved the idea of befriending the same person who almost ousted you from Ramshackle. Especially offering him your friendship in the form of spare coins you’d found in your pocket.

Being in his office, trying to offer your friendship to him in the form of a coin of a lost world, was the last thing you thought you’d be doing. But here you were, the subject of scrutiny, sitting in the lavish armchair in front of his desk, trying to show him that you weren’t as ill-intentioned as he thought others may be. That you genuinely did want to connect with him.

Which was hard to do when he was looking at you intently, hands clasped under his nose, presumably staring at you uncomfortably. The look on his face was unreadable. Nothing? They want… nothing? Azul was no fool. All his clients wanted something, no one would ever do something nice for nothing in exchange. You had to have some ulterior motive. Right?

“What… do you want?” He asked again, straightening. A few weeks ago, you might’ve been a little ruffled at his straightforwardness. Now, you only knew he was trying to compose himself, as he lifted his head and offered a debonair smirk, adjusting his glasses. “I understand that the headmaster has still not given you proper accommodations for you. I’m sure, as a non-magical student, I could offer you assistance in exchange for this rare commodi-“

“I really don’t want anything material,” you cut him off, crossing your arms. You would’ve thought you’d have insulted him, from the way his face contorted. “That- that’s preposterous, Perfect. Surely you’d want something in exchange for this coin!” Otherwise why would you be here? was silently said between the two of you.

“I wanted you to have it. It’s a gift. I’m giving it to you.” That’s what friends do!, you thought exasperatedly.

Azul’s eyes bored into yours, and you noted that his pupils were slightly square rather than round. He said, “nothing is free, now Prefect. Surely there’s something you want?” You sighed through your nose. “I just…” you swallowed, looking at him, “I thought you’d like it.” Your tone was genuine, and you squared your shoulders. Azul’s tone softened, “do you not want to keep it? It’s from your world, after all.” You angled your head in wonder.

A few weeks ago, Azul probably would’ve taken the coin without regard for you, or done something underhanded. You were curious (and maybe a bit hopeful) why he was considerate to you now.

“It wasn’t the only coin I had,” you responded, fishing for an identical coin in your pocket and pulling it out, “I had another. It’s the same thing, see?” Azul glanced at it, indeed it’s the same. He asked, “regardless, wouldn’t you want both?” You shrugged, “I can’t exactly spend it here, and I have no need for two of the same. Besides,” you smiled at him, hoping he’d understand, “I… thought you’d appreciate it.”

A lump rose in Azul’s throat as he turned the coin over in his fingers, noting every small scratch and engraving. “I…” he cleared his throat, composing himself. “Thank you, Prefect. I want to give you something in return,” he looked up. You were about to insist you wanted nothing (even if you did start out wanting something), when you saw the look in his eyes. You supposed old habits died hard - he would keep insisting on compensation for you until you accepted. So, you supposed it couldn’t hurt to be honest.

You smiled at him, holding out your extra coin to him. “How about your friendship?” His eyes widened, and you saw his adams apple bob. “I mean it,” you said softly, “really. Please?”

His eyes searched yours for any foulplay or malice. Feelings surged in him - memories of other merchildren making fun of his tentacles or his ink, times when they’d fooled him into being ‘friends,’ hiding in a crevice from bullies. Still, he found no reason to doubt you, as you smiled at him. How could you forgive him?

A poor, unfortunate soul is he, to refuse redemption.

He held his coin in his fingers, “It’s a deal,” he declared, and tapped it against yours.

——

#twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland x reader #twst x reader #twst #twst azul ashengrotto #azul ashengrotto x reader #twst azul #octavinelle x reader #octavinelle #twst yuu #azul ashengrotto #mostro lounge #calcified writing

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bizaar · 7 months

Text

Endless Summer ✧

Part 2: She Drives Me Crazy

Cruel Summer Masterlist

First - Next

pairing: eddie munson x afab!reader

warnings: sexual content (18+ minors dni), touch starved!eddie, mentions of drug usage, swearing, bullying, self-deprecation, masturbation (m), oral (m receiving), mentions of slight sexual trauma (nothing serious or icky, just soul-crushing humiliation)

word count: 18.5k

a/n: listen, if there's one thing about me, I'm gonna write eddie a little bit pathetic and a little bit more traumatized than is rightly fair. this chapter should really be called "to all the girls who have treated eddie munson terribly before"

There is absolutely nothing rational about the crush Eddie has on you.

It’s a wickedly cruel twist of fate to find himself yearning like this, especially for someone like you.

You, who is so untouchable that he feels like he’s going to burst into flames for so much as looking at you, who is so far removed from his league that you might as well be on another planet.

It’s really not fair. He’s been through this before, he’s supposed to know better by now, but when has life been anything even remotely close to fair for Eddie?

It’s driving him more than a little crazy. You’re driving him more than a little crazy, because you’re just about the closest thing to popular as you can get, and he’s a leper – untouchable, same as you, only from the complete opposite end of the spectrum.

You hang out with cheerleaders and jocks and the arguable social elite of Hawkins High, and Eddie skulks around with his group of loser friends, so far down at the bottom of the food chain that their link is not even attached.

You’re the day and he’s the night – polar opposites. The way he sees it, you should hate him, just like all your shitty friends do, and he should hate you right back because that’s just the way things are, but against all odds, he doesn’t feel that way.

Against his better judgement, Eddie likes you. He really, really likes you, which is stupid because he doesn’t even know you, despite what happened that night at Tina Burton’s party last year, despite the way you’d turned big watery eyes up at him, despite all the things you’d said back and forth to each other.

All the things that haunt him at night that he’s certain you don’t remember.

He knows he’s just going to end up getting hurt over it, letting himself get so attached to someone so far removed from his orbit. He can already feel the beginnings of that pain, hairline fissures forming cracks over the surface of the calcified muscle in his chest that he’s worked so hard to turn to stone.

He’s always fine until he sees you, then his mouth goes dry and his hands start to shake, and he feels the ominous prelude to the terrible hurt that lies waiting for him just over the horizon.

You’re going to break his heart someday, Eddie knows that for certain, and at this point he’s just counting the days until you do.

Maybe he’ll get over you before that can happen. Maybe something will happen that will cure him of the fever he’s got for you and save him from that impending heartache, but for now, he’s completely and utterly obsessed with you in a totally uncool, irrational, sweaty palms sort of way.

He’s halfway down the road to loving you without ever having held a real conversation with you, all because you went and committed the unforgivable sin of treating him with the smallest shred of basic human decency.

If that isn’t the crutch upon which Eddie leans, he doesn’t know what is. All he knows is that ever since that party, he’s been desperate for your attention, starved for it, really, and he doesn’t know what to do about that.

Except make a fool out of himself in front of half the school population, diverting Carol Perkins’s attention away from you and taking the full brunt of her ire just to try and save you.

He doesn’t know why he did that – it’s yet another thing he should know better than to do, especially considering the bruise he’s got on his kidneys from the way Tommy Hagan shoved him into a locker later that day and threatened major bodily harm for embarrassing Carol like he did.

Whatever, she’s a bitch and so is Tommy and they’ve both been that way since Middle School. It was high time somebody knocked her down a peg, and if Eddie was the one who had to do it? So be it, especially if that meant coming to your rescue.

He would do just about anything for you, except talk to you. He’s not brave enough to do that, because for as obsessed with you as he is, as violently as he craves your attention, you scare the ever-loving shit out of him.

Still, in the deep blue hours of the early morning, Eddie lies awake imagining all the things he secretly yearns for – all that boyfriend-girlfriend shit. Like holding your hand in a movie theatre, taking you out and giving you a chaste kiss on the forehead at the end of the night, making enough money to afford to buy you flowers and chocolates and jewelry and whatever else your little heart desires.

Then there are his secret aspirations, the ones that live in the safe space behind his lungs like glittering little jewels, the ones Eddie only entertains when he’s safe and solitary, and really down bad for you. That’s when he starts fantasizing about getting on his knees for you, giving you a ring, marrying you – Christ on a bike, he’s pathetic.

But he keeps those wishes locked up tight, because he knows the circle you run in, the creatures that swim in your tide pool.

It’s only a matter of time before you go and get yourself a stupid jock boyfriend and the sky comes crashing down on Eddie’s head. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do when that happens, how he’s supposed to endure it.

He thinks about it a lot, and it terrifies him.

How it will be bad enough having to watch you go around with him, whoever he’ll end up being, holding his hand, sitting perched on his lap, falling into his arms and letting him stick his tongue down your throat, but worse than that is how you’ll probably end up getting knocked up and married to the bastard right out of high school.

Because on top of being a stupid jock with a shining future that promises him collegiate glory in the way of sports scholarships and a good job waiting for him the moment he graduates, he’ll probably be a good Christian boy, too, so he’ll do right by you, come hell or high water – the son of a bitch.

Worst still is how all that plays directly into the vicious cycle of boys and girls that has existed in this town since time immemorial. In the very likely event that this future comes to pass, you’re almost guaranteed to settle down right here in Hawkins, just like everyone and their mothers and fathers do, and Eddie is just going to have to endure the way that cycle perpetuates itself, because this town is a gravity well in the worst possible way.

As likely as you are guaranteed to stay, so is he, and it is a particular brand of quiet doom that keeps him up at night.

Eddie knows he’s got no prospects, no future, no chance of getting out and finally escaping this place. So, in the event that this terrible future does come to pass, he resigns himself to the fact that he’s just going to have to sit there and continue to watch you live your life in the arms of someone else.

Eddie would do right by you, if you gave him the chance. He’d work himself to the bone to buy you a house with a fence and a yard and a dog, to put presents under the tree at Christmas and raise your kids right, but that’s not in the cards for him. Thats not the kind of American Dream that is afforded to someone like him.

That’s what’s going to break his heart in the end, and it’s fucking tragic, really.

Life would be so much easier if Eddie could just find a way to be a little less himself and a little more the deviant everyone makes him out to be.

If all he wanted was to get you on your knees and ram his cock down your throat, abuse that pretty little mouth of yours, he could find a way to work with that. He might even manage to coax you out to the van so he can fuck you nasty in the back and be done with all these bullshit feelings.

Hell, maybe he’ll get lucky, and you’ll come to him.

He knows what people say about him, after all.

Word on the street is that Eddie Munson is easy, he’ll trade weed for head – he fell for that exactly one time, and it was a mistake that he is still paying for, all because Tina Burton gave him a forty second blow job for an eighth, and then she went and told all her little friends and suddenly it was open season.

He’s lost count of how many times a deal has ended with some put-together ASB type balancing their open disdain for him with their horny little fantasies, batting their lashes at him and resting a sleazy hand on his thigh.

He guesses he was just lucky that the talk of the town was the exchange and not the fact that he came so fast, but it’s cold comfort when everybody is suddenly forgetting their money and offering to pay him in “favors” — really, how do all these rich kids expect him to pay his bills?

It’s not like you can cash orgasms in at the bank... well, not in this little conservative corner of Indiana, at least.

The only solace he can take in that is that you’ve never been lumped in with that crowd. He’s never had the pleasure of selling to you, so he’s never had to endure the sick prelude of waiting on you in some parking lot, wondering how this deal is going to play out.

No, with you he’s doomed to walk around yearning like some kind of lovesick virgin.

Even now, he’s stuck replaying his most recent interaction with you over and over in his head in an infinite loop, analyzing every minute detail, searching for meaning in the brief moments you’d shared.

He thinks about what happened in the parking lot that morning the week before, or at least what he can remember of it, considering how he’d spent the minutes leading up to your interaction bogarting Adam’s bong in the back of his van.

Eddie was high as a fucking kite – higher even – and he didn’t see you coming.

You caught your Walkman in one hand with an impressive feline grace after you collided – thank God, he could barely afford new brake shoes for the van, let alone even begin to try navigating the waters of replacing something like a cassette player.

Considering he wasn’t immediately aware of who he’d just crashed into, Eddie set his teeth and braced himself for the incoming volley of verbal abuse that was sure to be hurled his way, and he found himself standing a little more than dumbstruck when it never came.

Even more so when an apology arrived in its stead.

“Oh, shit— I’m sorry!”

The sound of your voice shot him full of holes and sent adrenaline like lightning rocketing down to the tips of his fingers and toes.

Out of everyone it could have been in this goddamn town, the last person he expected to see was you standing there, thankfully without your ever-present group of horrible friends — still Eddie was not prepared to face you, not as high as he was. He couldn’t muster his armor, snap all his carefully constructed shields into place, and it filled him with a blind, bleary panic.

Why, oh why did it have to be you?

Because Hawkins is a small town, made that much smaller when you are so painfully aware of someone that you constantly feel like you’re about to fly apart at the seams. Then again, he’s not exactly sure why he was so shocked to see it was you, considering it’s hard not to feel like he is tripping over you every time Eddie turns around these days. It would be annoying if it wasn’t so terrifying, never knowing where you are going to pop up next – goddamn pervasive is what you are, like a jump scare waiting for him around every corner, only that never seemed to happen before.

Before Tina’s party, the most he could say about you is that he’d seen you around. At school, in town, at the arcade and the movies, and that he thought you might have been a year or two behind him. He might have even been able to drum up your name if he really pressed himself to think, but before that night, before you turned those big sad eyes up at him and confessed all your sins, he’d never thought of you as more than just a living accessory to the insufferable unit that is Tommy Hagan and Carol Perkins.

Now, he can’t seem to make himself think about anything but you.

And then came the impressive dressing down you’d received over something so blatantly untrue that even Eddie is shocked Carol is stupid enough to believe it.

People talk, and Tommy Hagan’s trying so hard to convince everyone he doesn’t secretly get his rocks off to Steve Harrington that he’s willing to throw you under the bus to do so. He’s telling people you came on to him at a party last weekend (one which Eddie is only slightly embarrassed to admit that he knows you didn’t attend) and that you got a little too handsy.

He’s saying you tried to grab his dick, or something vague like that.

“I woulda let her do it,” Eddie overheard him saying from the back of homeroom, “Only she was too drunk to know what it was she was trying to get her hands on.”

The group of thickskulled meatheads listening in all erupted into braying donkey laughter after that, and Eddie had to bite his lip to keep from correcting them.

Not only is that ridiculous, considering Tommy’s obvious proclivity toward his own gender (all the signs are there, even a blind man could see it) but that specific Saturday night which he is referring to, Eddie just so happened to see you shepherding a gaggle of manic cheering boys out from the back of your beat up little green Toyota and across the parking lot into the Palace Arcade.

He’d been parked in that same lot, perched on the hood of the van and waiting around for a no-show hookup who was already twenty-five minutes late.

Trust Rick to keep him waiting.

Normally, Eddie operates on a strict policy that gives his clientele ten minutes of leeway before he hits the breeze. Normally he’s not desperate enough to hang around in a parking lot waiting for someone, but he needed the contraband, because he was expected to bring it to the very party that you skipped out on. The one Tommy Hagan is insisting you attended.

How tragic it is that he’s got the perfect alibi for you, one he’s not free to go spreading around, because Rick never showed and Eddie elected to wander into the Arcade rather than try to show up at that party empty handed – his occupation is, after all, the only reason he is ever invited to those social gatherings at Tina’s big ugly house. Maybe at first it was out of some kind of misplaced obligation for so summarily ruining his reputation the way she did, but any remorse she feels for spreading that rumor about what he will and won’t trade his stock for has long since evaporated. Anyway, Eddie hates parties, so as far as he figured he wouldn’t be missing anything.

He had an arguably much better time feeding quarters into the machines and fending off Keith when he came wandering over to watch over his shoulder like a dead eyed zombie while Eddie tried to balance playing Dig-Dug and Dragon’s Lair and keeping a very close eye on you.

You didn’t go to the party, but neither did Eddie, and he’s not brave enough to defend you from the people who did, because doing so would be admitting that he effectively stalked you around the arcade for the better part of three hours. His friends were happy enough to let him know just how creepy that was, and how maybe he ought to keep that information to himself.

Eddie agreed, because he doesn’t need that extra layer to his already tarnished reputation – people already think he’s a devil worshiping freak, it would do him no good to add “stalker creep” to his resume.

Still, despite all the time he’s spent sitting around thinking about you, fantasizing about you, fucking his fist to the image of you that now lives burned into his mind’s eye (two weeks ago he’d had the misfortune of witnessing your skirt blow up walking into class on a particularly gusty day and Eddie swears he’s got a friction burn on his cock from all the time he’s spent jerking off to the memory of it) he never in his wildest dreams expected you to be nice, to give him the time of day.

It’s part of the reason he’d been so frustrated with his stupid crush on you, because you were supposed to be mean and scary, just like all of your friends.

There has always been a certain safety in that, in how untouchable you were to him, back when there was not a chance in hell that he’d ever be able to act on any of his feelings toward you, but suddenly none of that was true, and there were pitfalls abound.

In that moment, stoned out of his mind in the parking lot and staring down at you, he’d somehow slipped behind the veil into a world where he wasn’t some creature to be reviled, where he was a human being with thoughts and feelings and fears and dreams. Somehow, you could see that version of him shining through to the real world, and it was intoxicating like nothing he’d ever experienced, being seen like that.

Before he knew it, Eddie was on his knees for you.

He knows he mumbled some sort of slurred apology, something unintelligible to be sure, and he knows you made a joke that took him far too long to get.

He laughed when it finally hit him, too loud to be appropriate, and all of that knowledge would go on to haunt him later that afternoon when he sat revisiting that moment and everything else that had happened that day.

He’d made a fool of himself, which was nothing new, but his knees still stung from where the gravel had embedded itself in his flesh through the tear in his jeans while he gathered your books.

That close, Eddie could smell your perfume, something cloyingly sweet that had lingered in his sinuses all morning, though not unpleasantly so. He could also hear the faint melody of the music blaring from your headphones — you were listening to Magic Man by Heart, which somehow felt extremely appropriate, especially with whatever it was steadily going on between the two of you.

Come on home girl, he said with a smile, you don’t have to love me yet, let’s get high a while...

It was almost startling, the window into your life that it opened to him, and he is still not sure why except that it’s just not what he expected from someone in the same social tide pool as Steve Harrington.

Eddie hadn’t been aware of how he was staring at you until you glanced up at him with your big pretty eyes, the same one’s that have held him in a vice ever since that night …

Then Carol screeched your name from somewhere across the lot and ruined everything.

You reacted like you’d been caught smoking or something, and snatched the last of your things up, brushing Eddie’s fingers with yours as you did and sending a bolt of electricity shooting up to his shoulder and exploding in a smattering of sparks across his chest.

You offered him an apologetic smile that was little more than a horizontal stretch of your lips and promised to see him later in a way that was completely absentminded but still made his knees wobble.

Oh, now, why’d you have to go and say something like that? All it did was leave him hoping, scanning the sea of faces for you between every break in classes, heart pounding erratically in the fear that he wouldn’t see you, and the fear that he would.

What did he expect to do if he did? Say hi? Wave to you?

What if he did and you reacted badly? What if you ignored him? What if you laughed at him?

The possibilities were infinite and terrifying, and it made the promise that you’d see him again feel all the more dangerous. It left him feeling like he was a kid again, going out day after day and trying in vain to win the affections of the other kids who lived on his block and hated him as a rule.

It wasn’t until the end of the day that Eddie spied the last of your belongings, overlooked and left behind in your rush to answer Carol’s call. It was a beat-up, dog-eared paperback copy of Dune, tucked in behind the front left tire of the van. Eddie fished it out at the expense of its cover, which, wedged beneath the tire, came tearing off.

Whoops…

He flipped through the pages, finding them littered in your loopy handwriting, and it opened yet another window into the elusive creature that you are.

He fully intended to give it back to you, but he just never seemed to get around to it.

Seeing you, even just in passing as has been an almost daily occurrence over the past year has started to make his insides go tight and squirmy in a very specific way he hasn’t felt in years.

Eddie can’t remember the last time he wanted somebody as badly as he wants you.

Yes, he does.

Stacey Keats. She was a year older and had done away with his virginity one cruel summer in a fumbling press of bodies that didn’t last long enough to make it through to the end of Queen’s Crazy Little Thing Called Love, which Eddie still can’t hear without cringing bodily.

At the time, he would have thrown himself into traffic for her, head over heels in love by the time she ushered him out the door that sweaty afternoon with a fond pat on the head and a promise to see him again soon. And it only got worse from there, particularly with the way she’d kept him around and tucked snugly between her legs from June to mid-August. He was half surprised he wasn’t pickled by the end of that summer, more surprised though with how bad he was down for her so fast. He went all the way, flowers and dinner with her parents, he even went and embarrassed himself by telling her he loved her. It wasn’t his fault, not really, because it’s not like Stacey did anything to discourage the snowballing effect of his hormones, easily confused for genuine feelings.

By the time school came back into session, Eddie was all ego. He waltzed back onto campus that first day, fully convinced that he was a sex god with an older girlfriend – big man on campus – only Stacey evidently didn’t get that memo.

She looked at him like he had two heads when he approached her at her locker, like she would kill him where he stood for daring to speak to her, standing there among her group of tittering friends, and Eddie learned the hard way that now the summer was over, he had ceased to exist in her sphere.

Oh, God – huah-fuck! – right there, Eddie – don’t stop, don’t stop! turned into …what the hell are you looking at? in less than seventy-two hours, and it left Eddie feeling like he could curl up and die, right there in the hallway.

Whether he liked it or not, he was not her boyfriend, he was just some schmuck she’d used to pass the time while her friends were away for the summer. Now that they were back, he’d gone back to being less than the worms in the ground.

“I thought you said you loved me,” Eddie choked on the words as they slithered out from somewhere deep down in the hollow of his chest, and the harsh, unforgiving laughter that erupted from that group of girls still haunts him sometimes late at night when the trailer park gets a little too quiet.

That summer with Stacey Keats was a very hard lesson he didn’t expect to have to learn, one that took him a very long time to recover from.

If there’s one thing Eddie knows, it is that time heals no wounds – distance is the only balm that soothes anything, and it’s the only thing keeping him from drowning in the sea of you. He’s desperate for you, but not so desperate that he’s about to throw himself down on a spear, so Eddie exiles himself to the slow death of playing your shadow, because the safest way to love you is to do so at arm’s length.

Still, attention is the high he craves like nothing else, and there is no greater fix than your attention, undivided, unwavering, fixed solely on him, but he doesn’t have any classes with you.

There are no easy excuses to get you to look at him, so he does the first thing he can think of.

He does what comes naturally.

He jumps up on the table, he gets loud and obnoxious and theatrical, he makes a scene and gets in trouble, just like he’d done today.

He’d been slapped with an in-school detention for it, but it was worth every second he spent under Mrs. O’Donnell’s glare, if only because of the way you’d looked at him, the way you’d smiled.

Wednesdays are for band practice, and because of Gareth’s drum set, they almost exclusively occur in his garage, in among the holiday decorations and mismatched second-hand furniture they’d cobbled together to create a comfortable hang out spot for themselves.

It’s there Eddie sits, tucked into the corner of a stained and fraying corduroy couch, finger pads throbbing from their recently concluded practice and brain spinning as he scrambles to understand just how the conversation changed over to him so quickly. One minute they were shooting the shit, talking about all the inane nonsense teen boys could be expected to discuss, and then the conversation strayed to girls, as it naturally does in a room so brimming with unchecked teen hormones. Someone said your name and it made Eddie’s guts seize, caught strangely off guard by the hard shift in conversation topics, as if he isn’t always just sitting around waiting for the topic of you to come up naturally.

His reaction must have been palpable, as suddenly he was getting a lecture on his love life – or lack thereof.

“Will you just go talk to her?” Gareth sighs.

Eddie shakes his head, letting the stinging sensation of his hair striking his face ground him.

“No, I can’t.”

His refusal does not sit right with the newest member of his group.

“Why the fuck not?” He demands.

It’s strange to be spoken to so directly by someone he’s more or less only just met, but it’s Gareth, so Eddie lets it slide. What’s more, he answers truthfully.

“Because I’m me.” Eddie begins, gesturing vaguely and fumbling for the words to best express the conundrum that haunts him day in and out, “And she’s—” Untouchable, ethereal, and perhaps most important, off limits.

“Nice.” Gareth presses, “She’s nice and she’s funny and she’s cool – and she wants her book back, so you might as well just go talk to her.”

Eddie hangs his head in his hands and grinds out a sound of thick aggravated desperation.

Of course, you’re all those things, and it would be slightly reassuring to hear all of that confirmed by an inside source if it weren’t for the fact that you were hopelessly and irrevocably out of his league.

There is the soft whisk of a lighter being flicked over and over somewhere to Eddie’s left as Adam tries and fails to light his nasty, tar caked bong.

“Quit being a pussy, Man.” He huffs.

It ignites a fire in the hollow of Eddie’s chest, and he snatches the lighter out of his hand, leveling his bandmate with a hateful look.

“What am I supposed to do?” He demands, “Just waltz on over and ask her how her day is going? Just say something stupid like, what’s a girl like you doing in a place like this? I’m sure that's exactly what she wants.”

Gareth hardly lets him finish.

“Yes, it is! Trust me, Man. I know her, I talk to her basically every day.”

As if Eddie needs any reminder of that, as if he isn’t already violently jealous of the easy proximity Gareth shares with you by complete and total accident. He suddenly can’t help but picture the way he’d seen the two of you sitting with your heads bowed together when he wandered past Mr. Kapz’s room earlier in the year, taking the long way back to class from the principal’s office in a blatant attempt to try and steal a look at you. Imagine his surprise to find the door wedged open, giving him the perfect vantage to see you and Gareth, snickering over something Eddie was desperate to be included in on — he’s not proud about the way he iced Gareth out over that in the days that followed, but that green eyed monster has a funny little way of making an ass out of people, and Eddie is in no way immune to its clutches.

In fact, jealousy claws ravenously at his heart thinking about it now, about what should be his moment, passing pipettes back and forth and leaning over beakers and Bunson burners – stealing glances as he pours over textbooks with you, intimate one-on-one study sessions … it makes his ears burn just thinking about everything he’s missing out on, everything he’s sure Gareth is taking for granted.

Lucky bastard.

It’s not fair, but it’s just one more thing in a long line of unfairness that has punctuated every beat of Eddie’s natural life since the day he was born.

“Seriously. You ought to just go and talk to her. I mean, really, what do you have to lose?”

Everything.

Eddie grits his teeth to try and bite back the venom pooling on his tongue.

“Why don’t you go talk to her since you’re such good friends?”

Gareth pulls a face, like it’s the stupidest thing he’s ever heard.

“Because I’m not the idiot pining over her.” he says, prodding Eddie in the center of his chest with an accusatory finger.

He snorts.

“I’m not pining over her.”

A loud rumble of dissent washes over the table, startling Eddie.

“I’m not!” He insists, and it only causes the group to erupt into a fit of booing and hissing.

They’re quickly talking among themselves, tossing playful handfuls of things at each other and making commentary on what complete and utter bullshit that is.

“What’s it been, a year since that party?” Jeff starts, “All we ever get from you is oh, woe and misery, she’s so cool and I am but a pathetic loser, however shall my withered heart go on?”

He clasps his hands and tucks them at his jaw, tilting his head down and batting his eyes to affect the wistfully theatrical look of a maiden asking after her Romeo as he says it, voice jumping up an octave or two.

Eddie’s face goes hot with righteous indignation, and he opens his mouth to try and say something to defend himself, but the guys are already speaking over him, trading snide comments back and forth at his expense. Something squirms in his midsection as he comes to the sickening realization that this is apparently a widely discussed topic of conversation. It’s one thing to talk about it as a group, but behind his back? He won’t deny that it doesn’t sting a little.

Before Eddie can make the effort to silence them, Gareth takes it upon himself, shouting something unintelligible, just to try and get a word in and taking his chance when there is a lull in the heated conversation.

“Look! I wasn’t gonna tell you this—” he starts, “But… she knows, okay?”

The vagueness of the statement is startling like the clanging of a bell, and suddenly Eddie’s ears are ringing.

“She–she knows?” He echoes, “She knows.” Eddie’s mind is suddenly crawling with spiders as he tries to balance the question over what that could possibly mean and the knowledge of what he is certain it means.

If he’s right, he’s going to kill Gareth, right here, right now.

Eddie sits there, waiting for his friend to elaborate, watching unblinking as the freshman sits fidgeting, pursing his lips and looking anywhere he can, anywhere but directly at Eddie.

He grits his teeth and braces himself for the answer to a question he already knows.

“What exactly does she know? Gareth?”

Flannel clad shoulders jump up to his ears.

“Obviously that you have her book…” Gareth hums with a flippant shrug, then he grows sheepish, and he drops his tone as the words come tumbling out in a rush, “And … it may or may not have come up that you feel a certain way about her…”

He might as well have stood up and kicked Eddie in the teeth with the way it hits him. Like getting swamped at the beach, like the rush of the undertow pulling him down to crash against the rocks.

Eddie is flayed alive as a deafening roar of dissent kicks up from their little huddle.

He doesn’t hear it though, because he’s too busy feeling his brain melt out of his ears.

His vision goes spotty and for half a moment he is sure he is about to keel over from the shock of such violent betrayal.

“YOU TOLD HER?” Eddie shrieks, fisting his hands in his hair and feeling his lungs go flat in his chest.

He could die. He could literally lay down and die right here on the floor of Gareth’s garage.

Thankfully, the outrage is a mutual thing.

“Judas!” Jeff shouts, drowning out whatever curse Adam is busy laying at the junior member of their group’s feet.

Gareth throws up his hands in a lame attempt at defending himself from the onslaught of vitriol suddenly being hurled his way.

He has to shout to be heard over the others.

“She pulled it out of me okay!” He cries, as if that makes it any better.

Eddie slumps forward, elbows braced on his knees, and scrubs his hands over his face miserably to try and hide the way his cheeks are burning with shame.

This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to him.

“Oh, God!” He moans pitifully between his fingers, flinching with every new shock of humiliation that strikes him like bolts to the chest, one right after the other, “How could you do this to me?”

Gareth is the worst. A thousand curses upon Gareth. Eddie hopes he fucking dies, he hopes something falls out of the sky and crushes him flat, and pitifully, he hopes the same for himself.

“Explain yourself.” Jeff demands, and when the boy hesitates, he raises his voice, “Now, Gareth!”

“Okay, okay. Her exact words were: I don’t bite — if he likes me, he should just come and talk to me.”

A dissenting groan rumbles through the garage as Adam and Jeff exchange disappointed glances. What Gareth did was unforgivable, Eddie is furious, but somehow the feeling is a little more muted than it was a moment ago.

Because he can’t help but get caught on one tiny little, microscopic detail in your words, parroted from Gareth’s stupid, flapping mouth. A word suddenly materializes in Eddie’s mind and clangs around the planes of his skull, beating his brain into submission as it does.

Permission.

He suddenly has permission to approach you.

Eddie sits in a stunned silence – or at least he thinks he does, the words are tumbling out of his mouth before he even realizes that there is a question forming in his mind.

“Well, what the fuck am I supposed to do with that?!” He shouts.

And Gareth has evidently had his fill of the abuse being hurled his way.

“Fucking ask her out!” He fires back.

The room goes oddly silent as his demand bounces back and forth between the bodies and the walls and the ceiling and the floors.

The mood shifts, and suddenly Eddie can’t help but notice the way his friends have changed sides. They’re not on his team anymore – what’s more, they’re agreeing with Gareth.

You know, he’s right, they’re saying. That idea’s not half bad, they’re saying.

Eddie’s tongue goes fat in his mouth and suddenly his palms are sweating at the mere suggestion of asking you out.

He’s barely bridged the gap of talking to you, and now suddenly he’s expected to … to what?

Ask you out.

Jesus Christ.

“Sure,” He huffs, feeling his face get hot as his voice cracks, “Sure, I’ll just do that. I’ll just go up to her and ask her out in front of Carol and Tommy and-and-and fucking Steve, right? What could possibly go wrong?”

“Quit being so dramatic, Man. What are you so afraid of?” Gareth demands, and Eddie’s insides go tight.

Everything. Everything and anything he can imagine. Breaking the invisible rules very clearly set into place for him and being skinned alive for it. Tarred and feathered and ridden out on a rail, pushed further into the fringes than he already exists and condemned for having the audacity to approach you. Hunted down and killed for the simple act of speaking to someone like you, who by all rights he should not even be allowed to look at, let alone think about the way that he does. In a nice little town like this? Eddie would not put it past them.

Even if he were brave enough, even if he had the audacity, what is he supposed to even say to you?

Hi, I’m Eddie. I don’t know if you remember me, but we met at Tina Burton’s party last October, and I’ve been obsessed with you ever since — here’s your book back. D’you want to go to the movies or buy drugs or something? Can I hold your hand or should I just go and deposit myself into the nearest dumpster for your convenience? Great, thanks for your time, I’ll see myself out.

Somewhere Stacey’s friends are howling with laughter and Eddie is sinking further and further beneath the tide.

“She’s not like that dude,” Gareth presses, almost as if he’d been privy to Eddie’s inner turmoil, “I swear on my life! She really, really wants you to talk to her…”

“Oh, fuck off — you know you just ruined my life, right? Do you understand that?” He snaps, slumping back into the fraying couch cushions, arms crossed tight over his chest, grinding his teeth and doing his very best to kill Gareth where he stands, “Jesus fucking Christ – I’m gonna have to change schools after this.”

Somewhere beside him, Adam snickers.

“Dude, you’re gonna have to change towns.”

He shuts up quick when Eddie socks him hard in the shoulder.

“Alright, fine,” Gareth says, throwing his hands up, “You know what? Fuck it. She’d kill me for telling you this, but she likes you, okay?”

Jeff and Adam kick up another one of those roaring cries of dissent.

“Whoa!”

“Holy shit, just like that?”

Only once again, Eddie doesn’t hear them. He’s too busy trying to get his bearings again after being knocked off his feet from the impact of the truth bomb Gareth just dropped on him.

You like him? You like him… he doesn’t understand.

“... what do you mean she likes me?”

Gareth pulls a face.

“What are you, stupid or something?” He scoffs, “I mean she likes you!”

He keeps saying that, like it’s going to clear things up for him, like he’s speaking plain English and spelling it out for him, which, as far as Eddie can tell, he is, but he still doesn’t understand.

Maybe he is stupid, but he just can’t seem to make sense of that information. It does not compute.

Before he can ask after it again, however, Adam shrugs beside him.

“Actually, I heard about that too.” He says, like it’s the most casual thing in the world.

Eddie’s heart seizes in his chest and explodes. There are spots and colors dancing across his vision and his head snaps over so quickly he feels something pop in his neck.

He’s only half surprised when his head doesn’t roll right off of his shoulders, when his eyes don’t pop out of his skull.

“You what?”

“There’s a rumor going around.” He says, rolling his eyes and gesturing vaguely, “You know how it is, there’s always a rumor going around.”

“... that bullshit about the party on Saturday? I already told you guys, I saw her at the arcade–”

“No, not that one. This one’s new.” Adam says absently, suddenly wrist deep in a can of Pringles as he explains, “Word on the street is she’s into you,”

Eddie feels himself pulling a face.

“Who says?”

Adam shrugs and pops a handful of potato chips into his mouth.

“Carol Perkins.” he says, chewing noisily.

It hits him like a fist to the gut.

“She told you that?” Eddie gasps and feels himself go hot and then cold when Adam’s thick shoulders jump up toward his ears.

“Well, not exactly. I heard her talking to Tammy Thompson about it in fifth period, apparently that’s what all that noise at lunch was about–”

It just about breaks his brain with the way it makes perfect sense. Eddie didn’t know what could have happened to turn Carol so fanatically giddy back in the lunchroom when only moments before she’d been trying with every particle of her being to awaken her latent psychic abilities and kill him where he stood. Whatever happened was distressing enough to send you running from the cafeteria, and Eddie had only spent the rest of the afternoon wondering about it, wishing he’d gone after you.

Of course, with the information that has just come to light, that wish is amplified tenfold.

Oh, God – why on Earth didn’t he go after you? Especially now that he knows what he knows?

Then again, he doesn’t really know anything, does he? It’s just a rumor, but it doesn’t make it any less terrible to hear. It’s not the knowledge of what is evidently making its way through the student body like chicken pox that haunts him so much as it is the fact that he almost followed you right out of the lunchroom this afternoon, but he chickened out, like he always does.

Adam is still going, elaborating on the specificities of his latest foray into eavesdropping on popular girls, who said what and all that good stuff.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute! This doesn’t make sense.” Eddie says, “This doesn’t make any goddamn sense.”

Then Gareth huffs out a sigh and braces his hands on his knees before starting again, much slower this time.

“Think about the way you feel about her.” He says, “You like her, right? You’re crazy about her? You sit around all day imagining doing all that fluffy boyfriend-girlfriend shit with her like holding her hand?”

It makes him suddenly and painfully shy, and Eddie moves instinctually, snatching a snarled lock of his hair to drag across his face to try and guard against the way he is sure he must be blushing beet red.

“You don’t have to make it sound so weird…” he mumbles.

“It’s not weird, Dude. It’s mutual.” Gareth stresses, “I guarantee you she’s sitting around thinking about all that ooey-gooey stuff too, when I tell you she likes you, I mean she was practically vibrating when I told her.”

Eddie can hardly stand it. He suddenly feels like he’s about to burst.

“Stop.” He says, “Just… just shut up and give me –” He can’t think, his brain is turning to mush in his skull, “Just gimme a second to think…”

Gareth does as he’s told, despite the look of stark confusion etched across his face. He sits there and he waits for Eddie to say something, same as everyone else.

Even Eddie is just sitting there, holding his breath and waiting for his brain to click back over, for the other shoe to drop and for a big stupid shit eating grin to spread across his friend’s face, because he’s fucking with him … right? He’s got to be.

Only Gareth is still just sitting there, staring back at Eddie and growing more and more nervous the longer he stares at him.

Eddie looks to Adam for assistance, then, begging him to explain it to him, clear things up where he’s evidently too goddamn stupid to understand. He does this silently, however, because he can’t get the words out around the way his throat is closing up.

You like him? How can you like him? What’s wrong with you?

Then, devastatingly, Jeff tilts his head down and pushes his shoulders up.

“Yeah… I heard something about that too.”

And that solidifies it. Three for three. Matching slots that send glittering little coins spilling out of the machine and all over Eddie’s feet with a loud DING DING DING!

Somehow all it does is send a sick feeling bleeding into the pit of his stomach.

“Jesus Christ!” Eddie’s brain is melting again – you like him, “Why didn’t you tell me? You all knew, and none of you told me…”

“Well…” Jeff starts, opening his mouth to explain and coming up short. “We were gonna tell you, it’s just…”

“You were busy, Man.” Adam presses.

“No I wasn’t,” Eddie insists, violently shaking his head, hard enough that the ends of his hair whip around to sting his face, “No I fucking wasn’t, not when it comes to that. You guys should have told me.”

“Sure, and get our heads bitten off because you turn into such a fucking weirdo whenever she comes up – we definitely should have told you.” Gareth snorts, oozing sarcasm and glowering at Eddie from where he sits among the fraying cushions, clearly still sore about being dog-piled on. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter, because now you know.” He shrugs, “You like her. She likes you. Circle of life.”

Sure. Circle of life, not Eddie’s life though. Not his American Dream.

Before he realizes what he’s doing, he’s on his feet and gathering his things - his jacket, his keys, and the heavy bag of weed sitting untouched in the middle of the table where he had so graciously bestowed it upon his friends at his arrival, free of charge, just because he’s that damn generous.

He picks things up and drops them again, spins in aimless circles as he remembers something and instantly forgets it as another thing crosses his mind and chases it off. He tries to think, tries to approach this from a rational standpoint, but his brain is pulling in four different directions under the duress of this new information.

He doesn’t know what to do and he’s panicking a little bit.

You like him? No, you don’t like him. You can’t, he’s a leper. If you like him that means there’s something wrong with you, and there’s nothing wrong with you – you’re perfect, which means the guys are wrong or they are lying to him.

More than likely, though, Carol is lying, and it’s a trap. For you or for him, Eddie can’t decide, but he knows for certain that if he takes the bait he’s going to get hurt. Seriously hurt.

He’s smarter than this, right? He knows how to protect himself from something like this, right? So why the hell is he suddenly considering it? How come his heart is beating so fast in that flighty, hopeful sort of way?

It’s a trap. You don’t like him… but you do.

You like him and you want him to talk to you, so much so that you went out of your way to make sure he knows. You want your book back, and he’s got to give it to you because you know he has it and you gave him permission to approach you, but how can he do that without giving you his heart right alongside it? With sharks like Carol and Tina lurking in your waters, how is he supposed to do this?

He’s not, he decides in an instant.

Eddie can’t do this. He can’t he can’t he can’t.

I thought you loved me, he’s still whimpering, eyes wet and brimming, lips and knees wobbling, and Stacey’s friends are laughing at him.

They’re still laughing.

Somewhere in the muted rationale of his subconscious, Eddie knows he’s freaking out, and that he’d better get out of here if he wants to keep any shreds of leftover dignity he has. So, he snatches up his keys and his jacket and the bag of weed and Sweetheart and everything else that belongs to him here in Gareth’s garage and struggles to fit all his things in his hands as he turns and bolts for the van.

Behind him, he can hear Jeff shouting at him, asking him where he’s going, but he’s already slamming the door shut and whipping the van into reverse.

Music blaring loud enough to rattle the windows, gas pedal pressed to the floor, Eddie drives much too fast for how dark the streets are and how little attention he’s paying to the road. But that’s nothing out of the ordinary. That’s just how he learned to drive.

The next thing he knows, he’s stumbling up the steps of the trailer and falling through the front door.

Wayne’s not home, which is good – the last thing he wants to do is have to try and explain why he looks like he’s seen a ghost, which Eddie is sure would be the first and exact words out of his uncle’s mouth if he could see him now.

Pale, sweating, face pulled tight into a thousand-yard stare.

Eddie’s brain has completely shut off by now, and for the sake of his own self-preservation, he clicks over into autopilot, going through the motions on complete muscle memory.

He moves aimlessly about the trailer, throwing his things down, kicking his shoes off, sloughing off his jacket and all his extra layers where he’s suddenly become too hot.

Strangely, he doesn’t feel like a human being right now, he feels like vapor, like at any moment a stiff breeze is going to blow through the room and send him scattering to every corner of the world… because you like him.

Eddie tries to remember what normal human activity looks like, what he would naturally do when he comes home like this, despite how completely unnatural it suddenly all feels.

He makes a mental list and goes down the line: shoes off? Check, stuff stashed? More like thrown haphazardly across his bed, but sure, check.

Now what … dinner? He’s not hungry. Vapor doesn’t need to eat.

Homework? Pfft, as if.

It’s sitting forgotten in his locker, wedged between the sheet metal siding and the tattered paperback scribbled over with your loopy handwriting.

Eddie’s going hot and cold again, skin prickling with ravenous possibility – you like him, he’s got permission to approach you.

He blinks, and suddenly he’s in the shower, standing under the tap and letting the water pressure blow his brains out in a desperate attempt to try and make his brain stop buzzing and start working again. He watches the water drip from his lashes down to the swirling tide at his feet and tries and tries and tries to make himself flesh and bone again so that he doesn’t go slipping down the drain.

He blinks again, once, twice, and then suddenly he’s sitting in the Laz-E boy with his knees up, scratching at the fraying fabric and staring unblinking at the fuzzy pictures moving frantically across the television screen.

Lucy and Desi are arguing in black and white – the laugh track tells him it’s meant to be comedic, but Eddie’s too busy grinding his teeth together to feel anything but static, because you like him. Because suddenly his future is blown wide and open and there’s a chance for something new… something good, for once.

Blink, blink, blink.

“Hello?”

Eddie’s standing at the telephone, garroting his finger with the cord, and just like that he’s human again, trying to remember how he got here and who he’s talking to on the other line.

“...Did you mean it?” The words are out before Eddie can settle back into himself completely.

There is a brief pause as the person on the other end evidently processes the question.

“Oh, hey Eddie.” Gareth mumbles, voice thick with disuse, “...what time is it?”

He finds the clock on the wall and stares it in the face, watching the minute hand take a steady turn around the sun.

3:45. Whoops.

“It’s late.” Eddie says quickly, vaguely, “Sorry – it couldn’t wait.”

“...Alright, Man. What was the question?”

He hardly takes the time to wonder what exactly he’s been doing for the last few hours he’d spent as a cloud of vapor, but the question is burning on his tongue like a hot coal and he can’t help but spit it out.

“Did you mean what you said? Does she really like me?”

The long suffering sigh that comes through the phone is ever so faintly tinged with static and makes Eddie’s back teeth buzz.

“Yes,”

“And you’re not just bullshitting me.”

“No. I’m not bullshitting you.” Gareth says, and Eddie wonders if he’s finally going to get around to believing him this time.

It’s still terrifying, but doing things scared is a skill that Eddie has had in his tool kit since he was very small. He clings to the warmth of its jagged familiarity and forces himself to breathe deep.

“Okay…” He clears his throat, “Okay. So, um… s-so, what do I do now?”

“You know what to do.” Gareth insists, “You fuckin’ talk to her, Man.”

Yeah. He was afraid he was going to say that, but Eddie is a blank slate in desperate need of guidance and nods into the phone, conveniently forgetting that Gareth can’t see him do it.

“When?” He asks.

“Tomorrow’s always good.”

His heart thumps against his ribs and Eddie fails to swallow down the lump forming in his throat.

“Jesus.” He mumbles, “Isn’t that kind of soon? Shouldn’t I like… make a plan or something?”

Gareth pauses, like he really has to consider it and the only indicator that Eddie has been holding his breath is when his lungs begin to burn. He tries to breathe out as quietly as he possibly can as Gareth answers him.

“I don’t know,” He hums, “I guess it depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether you’re gonna spend your life sitting around just making plans or if you’re gonna nut up and finally do something about it – she’s not gonna wait around for you forever.”

Eddie knows that. Of course he knows that, he’s got a goddamn contingency plan for that, but for as often as he sits around entertaining that fantasy, he hates it.

He hates it with every fibre of his being and Gareth is right, but it doesn’t make it any less worrisome. You like Eddie, sure, but only for now, and only until your stupid imaginary jock boyfriend shows up to sweep you off your feet. He's waiting for you, just over the horizon, waiting impatiently. Who’s to say the sands of time can’t be hurried along if the nice young man decides he’s done waiting for you and decides to come and fetch you himself?

What’s Eddie supposed to do when that happens?

He’s not so dull that he doesn’t recognize that there is a very brief window of opportunity open to him here, only a crack, but just enough that if he’s quick he can slip through. It’s dangerous. He’s most definitely going to get burned if he does this, but if he doesn’t, he knows he’s going to spend the rest of his life regretting it. Even if that not-so-distant future comes to pass, even if you do eventually end up in his arms and he manages to whisk you away from all that cloying Suburbia, he’ll regret not having run to you sooner, he’ll regret the life he wasted without you.

“So, what are you gonna do?”

“Fuck…” Eddie says through his teeth, letting his head slip forward to hit the wall with a muffled thump. “...I guess I’m gonna talk to her.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow…” Today, technically, but he’s not going to waste time getting caught up on the specificities of daylight hours or just how late he’s calling, “At lunch. If she’s not socked in with all her shitty friends? …I’ll go talk to her.”

On the other end of the line, Gareth makes a pleased sound in the hollow of his throat, and Eddie makes a mental note to punch him the next time he sees him, just to wipe away the smug look he knows he’s got plastered across his face.

“Good - just be yourself and she’ll love you.”

Eddie appreciates the sentiment, despite how blatantly untrue it is.

“I’m seriously doubt that.”

“Yeah, of course she will, give her that cool line you said earlier,"

He doesn’t have to work to remember what line Gareth is talking about – What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this – like he thinks he’s Humphrey Bogart or something.

“Not a chance in hell.” Eddie bites.

“What? Why not?”

“Because it’s stupid.”

Gareth clicks his tongue.

“Oh, come on, at least it would be different? Seriously, what’s the worst that can happen?”

“Public humiliation on a global scale.” Eddie posits, “Gut wrenching shame ... Murder.”

“Yeah exactly, so no pressure.”

Eddie makes a thoughtful sound in the hollow of his throat to try and humor his friend, but he suddenly can’t stop thinking about how none of this would be happening if Gareth had just kept his big mouth shut. This is his fault, Eddie is taking a chance at something for the first time in his life, putting himself out there knowing full well that he is probably going to get seriously hurt, and it’s all Gareth’s fault.

“Listen Gareth.” He starts, “I just want you to know, truly and sincerely from the bottom of my heart, you’re an asshole.”

He snorts.

“I know.”

An hour after Eddie hangs up and drags himself off to bed, Wayne gets home. Eddie lies there, wide awake and staring up at his ceiling, listening to the heavy thumping of his uncle’s footsteps moving through the trailer – into the kitchenette where the whine and thump of the fridge being opened and shut again reveals the lack of food in the house, then down the hall and into the bathroom where there is the hiss of the shower turning on, and a sharp expletive muttered under Wayne’s breath as he discovers that Eddie went and used up all the hot water, trying to force himself back into the shape of something vaguely human.

Finally, the thump thump thumping footsteps recede down the hall, followed soon by the gentle murmuring of the television being flicked on as Wayne cuts his losses and settles in. Eddie lies awake, knotting his fingers together as he worries about what he’s promised to do in only a few hours time.

He tries to tell himself he doesn’t have to worry about that right now, because that’s tomorrow’s problem, for now, he’s got all the time in the world, but somehow, he just can’t seem to make it stick.

Then the rain starts.

It persists all throughout what is left of the night, thundering down into the tin roofing of the trailer and kicking up the right kind of racket to quickly lull Eddie into a deep and dreamless sleep – it’s what seems like mere moments before Wayne is knocking on his bedroom door, startling him awake and rousing him with the promise of fresh coffee brewing on the stovetop.

Just like that, it is today, and there begins Eddie’s ticking clock, counting down to the impending doom that awaits him.

It rains all day with absolutely no sign of stopping and it feels appropriate for the dour mood a night spent lying awake caught in the throes of anxiety has twisted him into – the world mirroring his frame of mind.

When the time finally comes, and the noon bell rings dismissing the student body for lunch, Eddie nearly drops his lunch pail twice from the titanic outpouring of sweat that has decided to pool in his palms. His heart jumps violently between his throat and his stomach as he makes his way down the hall, dragging his feet like they’ve been set in concrete as he takes the long march toward the cafeteria, staring at the oh-so-tantalizing exit sign, shining above his head like a sickly green beacon.

He could just leave, he realizes. Feign some kind of sudden onset illness and run for the hills, abandon this insane endeavor, and — and …and and and?

And what?

Go home and hide under his covers, condemn himself to a lifetime of regret, jerking off and moping around all because he’s too scared to talk to a pretty girl?

No way in hell. He’d never live it down.

Suddenly, a strong hand comes down in a hard clap against his back, ringing out and startling Eddie bad enough to send him leaping damn near out of his skin.

Visions of authority figures pass through his mind at the speed of light, teachers, principals, cops, Chief Hopper himself, all come to cart him away for some perceived misdemeanor Eddie doesn’t recall committing— perfect, hallelujah.

“You ready, Man?”

It’s only Gareth – fucker, this is only happening because of him and his big stupid mouth – and Eddie has to remind himself that he’s the one who has spent the last several months needling him for information about you.

This is nobody’s fault but his own.

Still, he resists the urge to double over and brace his hands on his knees.

“I think I’m gonna be sick.” he huffs.

Gareth grips him tightly by the shoulder and gives him a good-natured shake. “That’s the spirit,” He says, then steers Eddie hard to the right down the hall toward the cafeteria “Let’s go.”

The lunchroom is exceedingly crowded, the day’s dreary weather simultaneously mirroring Eddie’s mood and driving the school’s population to pack themselves indoors in lieu of the typically coveted outdoor seating.

Eddie takes this as a good sign because maybe it means all your nasty little friends will have descended like flies and he won’t have to submit himself to the slow and terrible death of public humiliation – strange how despite the armor he has amassed over the years, something as simple as talking to someone he’s not meant to interact with drives him to the edge of panic.

He knows the rules, and he knows how to follow them to avoid mutilation.

The summer is over, and Stacey’s friends are back…

The crowd parts as best they can when Eddie appears, like they always do, though it’s a little more difficult for everyone to get out of his way, crammed shoulder to shoulder the way they are.

In an instant he is granted a clear path to the usual lunch table, where Jeff is already seated, grinning stupidly and gesturing less than discreetly toward your table where – Christ, there you are, sitting alone and quietly pouring over a book.

Great, so that means he knows about what he and Gareth talked about on the phone last night – this morning – whatever.

Eddie swallows hard and locks his knees to try and keep them from wobbling as he assesses the situation. He’d given himself one condition in talking to you – that he’d only do it if you weren’t socked in with your shitty friends, and lo and behold there you are… alone.

Why the fuck are you alone when the cafeteria is standing room only? Without even turning his head, he can clock half a dozen people meandering around looking for seats, so why hasn’t anyone asked to join you?

Because you’re untouchable, that’s why. In the best, most terrifying possible way.

You need a personal invitation to join that table, one that is not so readily extended to just anyone and will most certainly never be done for Eddie.

And he’s just supposed to waltz over to you like he owns the place? The thought makes his legs turn to jelly.

“Muster thy courage, good sir, and proceed!” Gareth says, giving Eddie a neighborly shove.

He staggers forward and, thankfully, manages to stay on his feet – the last thing he needs is to go sprawling onto his belly in front of God and everyone he knows. There would be no recovering from that humiliation, and he’s almost sorry it didn’t happen, because it would be the perfect excuse to abandon this endeavor entirely.

Enough of that, he tells himself, Just cowboy up and get this over with.

Eddie grits his teeth as he takes a step, and then another, feeling the waters of his courage lap at his ankles like the surf – then, a high, braying laughter jumps up above the monotonous drone of all of his classmates talking at once, and Eddie’s stomach bottoms out. There goes his courage, drawing back with the tide, abandoning him.

Without a second thought, he walks right past your table and straight for his, planting himself firmly into the seat across from Jeff so that his back is to you.

The silence that lingers over the table is stupefying and heavy, particularly with the way Jeff is gawping at him.

“What are you doing?” He starts, followed very quickly by Gareth’s long-suffering sigh.

“Eddie, come on–” He starts, but he doesn’t let him finish.

“Shut up shut up shut up – just let me think!” He hisses before forcing himself to take a deep, steadying breath.

Eddie holds it in his lungs until it burns and then breathes out slowly, noisily.

It's all his friends can do but stand there, staring helplessly, like he’s completely lost his mind.

Maybe he has, because here he is, actually doing this.

“Okay – so she’s alone…” Eddie begins.

Gareth cuts him off.

“Not anymore, Tina just sat down.” He says sheepishly.

The name sends a bolt of fear lancing through his midsection.

“Tina who–?”

Eddie just about nearly breaks his neck whipping around to see the dark-haired girl who took it upon herself to arrive in the seven seconds it’s been since he took his eyes off of you — Tina Burton.

Of course. Of all the people in this goddamn town, Carol, Steve Harrington, even his own goddamn father would have been preferrable to Tina fucking Burton, who stripped his walls down so completely that she only knows what his fucking dick looks like – tastes like, even… Jesus Christ almighty.

Fuck his stupid fucking life.

Eddie watches you fold your book closed and carefully tuck it into your bag, offering the girl a weak smile that fades the minute she looks away. He lingers too long, and after a moment, like you could feel him staring at you, your eyes flick up and Eddie jerks back around to face his friends, hands clenched into stressed fists, face burning with anticipation.

“What are you gonna do?” Jeff asks.

Eddie shakes his head and wishes people would stop asking him that.

“I don’t know…” He says, “I need… I just – I need a second to think.”

Easier said than done with the din of the lunchroom pressing in on him, much louder than it typically ever is. He feels like he’s turning to vapor again, first his fingers and his hands, then his wrists and forearms, all dissipating and wafting up toward the ceiling. Eddie rubs his hands together to try and keep himself solid with a little bit of friction, and he pictures his window of opportunity, swiftly slamming shut.

He grits his teeth and considers his options here.

He would very much rather avoid public humiliation if he can manage it, but he doesn’t want to spend his life regretting you, wishing he’d been brave enough, wishing he’d followed you out of the lunchroom, wishing he just fucking talked to you.

Move or die, something inside of him stresses, and the next thing Eddie knows, he’s got his hands braced on the table and he’s pushing up on creaky, wobbly legs.

“You got this man.” Gareth says in a way that he imagines is meant to be reassuring, the words settle heavily, one by one in the pit of his stomach as he turns.

Another deep breath, and then another… one more for good measure, and then Eddie crosses the lunchroom on stiff, stilted legs, fighting the urge to wipe his sweaty, trembling palms down the front of his jeans

He can see you sitting there, enduring whatever it is Tina is saying to you, but her lips are moving too quickly to make out the words. In no time at all, the need to lipread is quickly discarded as Eddie closes the distance between your tables enough to suddenly hear your conversation.

“I heard a rumor,” Tina Burton is telling you, her voice lilting in a malicious singsong.

Uh oh.

“I’m so sure you did.” You mutter, rolling your eyes and very pointedly not looking at her.

Your feigned disinterest does nothing to deter the other girl.

“It’s a good one,” She hums, “Carol told me all about it.”

You and everyone else, apparently. Eddie thinks, watching you closely for any sign of clairvoyant warning of his approach. He’s nearly there now, only a matter of moments before he bridges the gap and really has to commit to this.

Tina’s taunting is finally enough to grab your attention. Your head snaps up and your eyes go wide as you regard her with a suspicious look that leaves Eddie feeling like he’s intruding on this moment, that he should turn right back around and go back to his seat.

“What did she tell you?” You demand, and then suddenly Eddie’s out of time, and he’s standing right there, watching your face twist up into a mask of horror as Tina elaborates.

“She says you’ve got yourself a little crush–”

“Hi,” Eddie says and immediately feels himself break into a sweat when Tina’s eyes go bright, and she shows him her teeth in a wicked grin.

“Speak of the Devil!” She gasps.

Eddie suppresses a flinch, guts seizing and twisting themselves into a Gordian knot to suddenly be under the bright light of your attention when your head snaps over to him.

He stares at you, mind suddenly and horrifically blank, and watches helplessly as you stare back at him, wide eyed and mouth falling open in what is perhaps the most appropriate response he could think of.

That’s more or less how everyone reacts when he approaches them unprompted – he told Gareth you didn’t want him coming up to you like this.

This is the worst idea he’s ever had in his life.

He’s wrestling with that urge to bolt again, excuse himself and go back to where he belongs, but Eddie locks his knees and reminds himself that this is where he belongs right now.

You gave him permission.

She wants you to talk to her.

Somehow, with every passing second, that seems a little less true, because you’re just staring at each other, wide eyed and trembling as you both wait for the other to speak.

Personally, Eddie thinks it should be you, considering you’re the one who apparently wanted to talk to him so bad, but then again, he’s the one who just rocked up to your table and interrupted your conversation, so it probably should be him.

Some wildly stubborn part of him is refusing to break, however, because he’s done his part. He’s here, isn’t he? You sent for him, and he answered the call, so now it’s your turn to meet him out on this limb. Only you don’t seem to have gotten that memo, so the silence endures.

It’s incredibly awkward, and after an agonizing moment, even Tina begins to feel it.

She furrows her brow and gives you an incredulous look when you continue to fail to respond to Eddie’s greeting. She clears her throat, trying to prompt you, and when you just keep sitting there staring back at him, she endeavors to kick start you back into working action – literally kicking you under the table.

You flinch and the spell is broken in a rush of rapid blinking and a strangled sound ekeing up out of your throat as you endeavor to clear it.

“Oh – hi!” You stammer, an octave higher than your typical cadence, “Hi!... Hi, E-Eddie… hi. Hi, Eddie.”

Somehow, it’s worse than the stunned silence, and he feels his stomach bottoming out.

This is going great, no, really. He’s so glad he did this.

Tina snorts, and the sound makes the two of you jump in tandem.

“You’re doing great,” She drawls when you look at her, chin propped up on her hand, batting her eyes at you with an unimpressed, half-lidded gaze.

Eddie feels his guts seize on your behalf, especially when your face flushes with a deep shade of color, and there he goes turning himself into a shield for you again.

“Hey,” He bites, before quickly rethinking his tone and beginning again, “...would you mind…? Can-can you give us a minute, Tina?”

Eddie hates the way her name feels in his mouth, and more than that, he hates the look she gives him to hear him say it.

Her brows come down over her eyes and her lips twist up maliciously. She can see right through him, and how mortifying a thing it is to be so readily perceived by someone like her.

“Why?” She asks, stretching the word in a teasing lilt that makes Eddie’s insides go tight.

The subtext behind the question is so unbearably clear it makes him feel like he could be sick right there on the floor all over his reeboks – why, she asks, when what she really means is, what do you want with her? An accusation, more than a question.

Eddie can practically feel the color creeping up his neck as he is violently assaulted by memories of Tina’s hair, sticky with product, gripped between his trembling fingers – that haunting sound she made when his hips jerked involuntarily forward and he hit the back of her throat, and even worse, the sound he’d made when she choked and the muscles of her throat constricted on him, ripping him right over the edge before he’d even begun.

He’s never going to get over the humiliation of that moment, no matter how long he lives.

Why, God, why did it have to be her?

Eddie grits his teeth, swallowing that same strangled sound he’d made that terrible day, suddenly lurking on the back of his tongue, and does his best to stay calm, collected – cordial.

“Just give us a minute, okay?” He pleads, hating himself for it.

She gives him a hard, condescending look.

“Oh, Honey,” She stresses, brows tweaking up in faux concern as she makes a point to look at you, then back at him, “Don’t worry. That’s all the time you’re gonna need, anyway.”

It punches his lungs flat in his chest and Eddie feels something cold land heavily in the pit of his stomach.

It’s about as much as he could have expected from her – Tina’s always got to have the last word, but to her credit, she braces her hands on the table and stands, giving you one last parting look and winking before she shoulders her bag and saunters off.

No doubt to go and report back to the rest of the Hawkins Elite, which means he’s suddenly on a ticking clock, and it’s almost enough to make Eddie bolt from there, but he’s once again frozen to the spot.

Cautiously, Eddie glances back over his shoulder to where his friends sit, watching with rapt attention. They offer enthusiastic thumbs up when they see him looking, and he cringes.

Eddie clears his throat and you whip back around, still looking just as stunned as you had a moment before.

“S-so… uh,” He begins, scratching at the back of his neck and realizing much too late that he has absolutely no idea what he plans to say to you – why the fuck didn’t he practice something in all the time he’s spend worrying about this moment?

Christ on a goddamn bike.

“Do you… I mean – why don’t you sit down?” You ask, and gesture quickly to the seat across from you.

Eddie’s heart jumps up into his throat. Suddenly, his palms are sweating, and he feels his knees wobble beneath him.

Relax relax relax. He tells himself, You’re allowed to do this, you’re right where you’re supposed to be.

“Yeah, okay,” Eddie says slowly, sliding carefully into the seat across from you.

Once he’s settled, he braces his hands on his knees before second guessing the motion and – stupidly – extends his hand to you.

“Hi,” He says again, like a goddamn broken record.

He can’t help it, it’s the only word that keeps surfacing when he tries to think of something to say to you.

You stare back at him, blinking as the word lingers between you, and Eddie kicks himself for sounding so goddamn stupid.

“Hi,” You say slowly, the gentlest hint of a smirk quirking the corners of your lips as you reach across and take his hand, and then, “You already said that.”

Oh, that’s fantastic. Keep going, Moron, let’s see what else you’ve got in that big empty head of yours.

“Yeah… yeah, I did. Sorry.”

You shake your head.

“You don’t have to be sorry,” You insist kindly, and it throws him for a loop.

He doesn’t? That’s … odd… because sorry has always been the safest thing to be with people.

Keep your head down and apologize, no matter what, that’s more or less become Eddie’s motto. It’s how he’s survived so long in a town that hates him on principle, but he supposes this is just another instance of you giving him some kind of permission he’s never had before: he’s allowed to come and talk to you, and he doesn’t have to be sorry for doing so.

The thought alone is enough to leave him feeling lightheaded in the strangest way.

“Oh. Right. Okay.” He swallows hard as you shake hands, and Eddie quickly releases you, feeling like his skin is burning from where you touched him.

He curls his fingers into a fist, trying to trap the sensation there in his palm.

“So,” You begin, tucking your hands neatly together in front of you on the table and pulling your shoulders up to your ears in a painfully endearing way, “What’s up?”

“Uh… Gareth.” Eddie says quickly, lamely.

Your eyes go momentarily bright at the mention of his name, and Eddie tries not to succumb to the misplaced sick feeling it causes in the pit of his stomach.

He suddenly can’t stop picturing the two of you sitting in Mr. Kapz’s class, with your heads bowed together conspiratorially, whispering back and forth to one another.

Eddie tells himself he’s not jealous, and he’s not going to let the feeling ruin this, but his throat is going dry, and his mind is going even more blank than it already was.

“Gareth? What about him.”

“He, uh, he said you guys were talking and … well actually, what he said was that you said – n-not that he’s telling me about the stuff that you guys talk about in class or anything –”

You smile as he continues to ramble, nose scrunching up in a way that is entirely too endearing and makes Eddie feel fuzzy and much too warm for all his layers of denim and leather.

“What did Gareth say?” You ask gently, clearly trying to help him get to his point.

“He said… well he said that I should come over and say hi. So…” Don’t say it, don’t you dare say it again, “Hi, I guess.”

Fucking moron.

You giggle.

“Hi.”

It’s like that stiff breeze he’s been waiting on, only miraculously it doesn’t send him scattering to the furthest corners of the Earth. Strangely, it’s almost grounding and Eddie can suddenly feel his courage come rushing back, like a crashing wave of the tide finally returning to shore.

He smiles, glances down at his hands, clasped together, and knocks his knuckles against the table.

“He also said I should ask you what a place like this is doing in a girl like you, but that’s – fuck, no! Wait a second, that’s not how that goes.”

As if the giggling wasn’t bad enough, his titanic fuck up causes you to laugh out loud, and it just about blows his goddamn brains out – Jesus fuck.

It’s the greatest thing Eddie’s ever heard in his life. Fuck Sabbath and Dio and Metallica and all that noise, his new favorite song is the musical lilt of your laughter.

It makes his heart seize and throb and suddenly he can feel himself smiling so much wider than before, foolishly, in the goofy way where he knows that goddamn dimple of his must be showing. Eddie’s only cognizant enough to be half embarrassed about that, mostly because he can’t decide if he thinks you’re laughing at him – somehow, he doesn’t think that’s the case.

Your laughter is the furthest thing from malicious he’s ever heard, and he feels himself go hot, then cold as goosebumps break out across the expanse of his body.

You’re so pretty, he can hardly stand it, and if he doesn’t hear you laugh again, like, immediately, he’s going to drop dead.

Eddie breathes out an anxious chuckle to match yours and shakes his head, relishing in the way it causes his hair to fall forward and curtain his blushing features.

It’s quite a thing to be under the force of your undivided attention – he imagines this is what it must feel like for an ant to wander under a magnifying glass.

“So, Gareth told me a little something too…” You say once your giggling has finally subsided.

Eddie’s heart jumps up into his throat and he can’t help but get caught on the way you’re looking at him, so patiently with your arms crossed over the table in front of you. He also can’t help but notice the way it pushes your tits up in that pretty little cardigan you’re wearing, but that’s neither here nor there, despite the way it makes his throat feel like it’s going to close up.

When he doesn’t answer, you tilt your head forward coquettishly and raise your brows at him.

“...about my book?” You prompt.

Oh.

Eddie can’t decide if he’s relieved about that or not, considering for a moment of blinding terror he was so sure you were about to ask him to confess his feelings for you, but of course that’s not what you would mean. Giving you your book back was the whole point of this, wasn’t it?

“Right…” Eddie says quickly, shaking his head to try and dislodge any lingering haze of panic, “Yeah, of course. I, uh, I have your book.”

You light up like a kid on Christmas and clap your hands together theatrically. .

“You do?” You gasp, feigning amazement. It’s entirely too cute.

“Yeah, it’s in my locker.”

“Oh.”

Oh? What does that mean, oh? Was he supposed to bring it with him? Obviously, based on the way your brow is creasing with disappointment.

And how he hates to disappoint you, he’s suddenly desperate to rectify his mistake, slap a band aid over the suddenly obvious pitfall he’s blundered into.

“I mean. It’s not a problem,” Eddie says quickly, pushing up from the table, “I can go get it for you – it’ll take like two seconds if you wanna just sit tight…?”

You make a dissenting sound in the hollow of your throat that he is entirely helpless to comprehend until you begin scooping your things into your bag, like you’ve suddenly remembered that you have to be somewhere.

“Actually,” You start, shaking your head, “Now that I think about it, Tina will be back with reinforcements any minute now, so it’s probably better if I go with you.”

“...wait, really? You wanna go with me?” Eddie stammers, hoping you don’t see him flinch as you stand to meet him and come a little closer into his space than he was rightly prepared for.

“Yeah, sure.” You say, carefully tucking your chair in and shouldering your bag. “If that’s okay with you?”

“It’s okay.” Eddie says immediately and perhaps a touch too loud, nodding emphatically, “Yeah, it’s totally okay.”

You smile, all teeth, eyes scrunching tight, and Eddie’s stomach seizes.

“Great.” You hum, “Lead the way.”

It takes Eddie three tries to get his locker open, and when he does, he just about whips himself in the face with the door. He’s never been the type of person concerned about the state of the individual spaces that belong to him. His bedroom, his van, they’re both black holes of mess that he’s never been readily concerned about, and least of all the state of his locker with all its crumpled papers and scribbled graffiti, but suddenly with you standing there, peering into the dark little cubby, he’s kicking himself for not keeping it cleaner or more pleasing to the eye in an aesthetic sort of way.

He tries to tell himself it’s not that bad, and then you see it.

“Oh!” You say suddenly, scrunching your nose as you peer at the picture Eddie remembers too late that he has taped to the inside of his locker door – the pinup he’d torn out of a magazine. The model lays stretched over a shag rug with her legs pulled up and her arms splayed over her head, arching her back to push her big fake tits out.

Eddie feels an electric shock of adrenaline rip through his body as he slaps his hand over the magazine spread with a hard metallic bang. How typical would it be to have this going so well, only to scare you off with the goddamn porn he’s got plastered to the inside of his locker? What the hell is the matter with him?

Only you’re not scandalized, you’re grinning, eyes bright and teasing.

“Who is she?” You ask.

“Nobody.” He chokes, absolutely mortified as he watches you bite your lip.

“It said January Embers.”

Eddie opens his mouth to make some sort of an excuse – it's just a joke, oh, where did that come from? Those guys got me again, ha-ha, but somehow he can’t muster the ability to cover for himself, not under the heat of your gaze.

“Pretend you didn’t see that.” he says, brows pulling down over his eyes.

You give him a wry look, like you’re trying to decide whether or not to play along before tucking your hands behind your back and pulling your shoulders up to your ears in mock innocence.

“See what?”

Oh, good girl.

The thought is startling and makes Eddie’s face burn more than being caught with a nudie photo taped to the inside of his locker. He clears his throat and keeps his hand pressed firmly to the glossy page as he retrieves your tattered paperback with the other before slamming the door shut tight again, once again hiding his shame.

“Oh, well, thank you very much, Sir.” You chirp when he passes it to you and Eddie feels the tips of his ears go hot and his jeans get a little tighter.

Stop it, stop it! Get a hold of yourself, Munson.

He watches as you turn the book over in your hands with a gentle kind of reverence, not inspecting it, he thinks so much as reacquainting yourself with a treasured thing. It makes his insides go warm and fuzzy, especially with the way your eyes flit up and you catch him staring at you.

“Gareth said you found it in the parking lot?”

It’s strange to hear his name spoken, your mutual point of contact, the only reason any of this is happening right now. It stirs something in his chest, not that same jealousy, so much as a selfish aversion to bringing him into this moment.

This is Eddie’s moment with you, and Gareth has no business intruding in on it, despite all the work he’d done to manufacture it.

“Yeah…” Eddie says thickly, “I’ve been meaning to give it back to you, but…”

But I’ve been too scared to come talk to you.

“Never found the right time?”

“Exactly.”

You hum thoughtfully and nod, and Eddie is strangely pleased to have satisfied you with the answer.

He watches you hug the tattered book to your chest, before leveling him with a suspicious look, peering at him through your lashes in stark contrast to the wry quirk of your lips.

“So, did you read it?”

“No,” Eddie lies, suddenly unable to stop thinking about the way he’d spent a long evening laying on his bed flipping through its pages, pouring over all your scribbled little annotations, trying so, so hard to look through the text and into your mind, “Absolutely not.” Your brows come down over your eyes like you don’t believe him, but your feigned annoyance is betrayed by the shy smile pulling at the corner of your lips. Eddie watches your gaze track sideways, and he instantly feels lesser not to have your eyes upon him, but then your features soften, and you get a far away, wistful look on your face that punches his lungs flat.

“Hey,” you say softly, “The rain’s stopped…”

Eddie turns to follow your gaze down the hall to the doors he hadn’t noticed.

They’re standing open, revealing the cold light filtering down from the break in the clouds and causing the pavement to glisten.

He thinks back to what you said, about Tina and reinforcements and how it was better that you go with him… you’re better off with him… better off than you would be with your stupid jock boyfriend and the vicious cycle of boys and girls.

Suddenly, Eddie feels a little braver than is perhaps wise, fueled by the promise of a future he’d never once considered. A chance he was never meant to have.

Eddie knows he’s going out much further on this limb than is rightly safe, but this is already going so much better than he ever could have hoped, and the high of his winning streak makes him foolish.

“D’you…? I mean, I wanna show you something… if you’ve got time… that is.” he says, bashfully.

He tries not to get caught on the subtle way your eyes light up before you check your watch, then you shrug your shoulders and glance back up at him through your lashes in a way that makes him feel sick in the sweetest way.

“We’ve got twenty minutes before the bell rings,” You hum, “Is it gonna take longer than that?”

Eddie shakes his head.

“Have you ever been to the picnic table out in the woods?”

He second guesses the question the moment it leaves his lips.

Oh, God, why did he ask you that?

Eddie holds his breath and waits for you to wrinkle your brow and ask the obvious question – you mean where you deal drugs to all the jocks and cheerleaders? You don’t though, you bite your lip and shake your head, and he blesses you for it, feeling the corners of his mouth twisting up as he smiles at you and grows suddenly shy.

Eddie drops his gaze to his shoes and gives a lopsided shrug.

“It’s – uh – it’s real pretty out there, especially after it rains.”

You’re grinning when he dares to steal a glance up at you, a wide stretch of your lips with a hint of your pearly teeth, and you nod.

“Show me.”

He’d thought it was enough simply to extend this interaction as far out to his locker, but now, headed out those doors like they were the threshold to everything he never dared to hope for, Eddie’s won the lottery.

He’s the luckiest man alive, and he’s painfully aware of the sound of your footsteps, crunching in the wet leaves behind him as you follow him out across campus, headed into the woods. He wonders what people would think if they could see you, what kind of rumors that would kick up in the toxic swirling miasma of high school politics. Eddie imagines all his classmates watching you go with their faces pressed flat against the windows, eyes bugging out on stalks.

Quick! Somebody save that poor girl before he leads her into the underworld! But it took no coaxing at all for you to follow him out here. You came on your own volition, one willing step after the other, down into the darkened hollow with him.

It’s not all that dark, actually. As the sun breaks free of the clouds, it streams through the canopy to leave dappled little puddles of silvery light embedded across the forest floor, and you’re sliding onto the bench opposite Eddie with no prompting at all.

For a few moments of nagging terror, you find yourselves sitting there in another one of those awkward silences, avoiding each other’s gazes and looking around like you’ve only just realized that you’re alone out here, really alone, and you have nothing to talk about.

It’s briefly terrifying, until you thankfully come to the rescue.

“You know…” you start, laying your palms flat against the splintered wood tabletop, “This isn’t the first time we’ve… hung out.”

He levels you with an incredulous look.

“It’s not?”

Of course it’s not, but that can’t possibly be what you mean, despite the way you shake your head and wait for him to meet you down the path of your thinking.

“You don’t remember?”

Of course he does, but he wants to hear you say it, so he plays dumb and shakes his head.

Your eyes flit down to your hands and you hum thoughtfully in the hollow of your throat.

“That’s okay,” you assure him with a lopsided shrug, “It was a while ago. I probably wouldn’t remember me either.”

It physically pains him, forcing himself to sit there and resist the urge to tell you otherwise. Even if he hadn’t spent the last year caught in the clutches of that night, it would be hard not to remember someone when you’ve lived in the same place with the same people your whole life, it’s only just that you’ve been largely invisible to him until very recently.

And not even for the obvious reasons like you came back to school after having suddenly developed massive tits over the summer, or got your braces off or something stupid like that – as far as Eddie can tell, you’re just the same as you’ve always been – same hair, same body, same clothes – you’ve only just miraculously happened to stray into his orbit for the first time, and he’s so goddamn pleased you did.

“Tina’s party.” You prompt, “Last October–”

“I remember.” He says, perhaps a little too quickly, and wonders just how much of it you remember.

That night, the one that haunts his every waking moment – the one that arguably ruined his life, if he was speaking bluntly, getting him so fucked up over you.

You had no business being at a party like that.

Eddie knew you’d never smoked from the second someone suggested they pass the blunt around. Probably never even been offered anything like that, judging by the way your eyes bugged out of your skull when the contraband came out. He couldn’t help but feel sorry for you, looking so small and scared standing next to him, but try as he might, Eddie couldn’t save you from the crushing pressure of your peers. One thing almost no one tells you about smoking weed is that it’s worse when you cough – that’s the sort of thing you have to discover for yourself, taking a hit and coughing and choking and spluttering and somehow ending up so much higher than everyone around you, which is exactly what happened to you.

He found you slumped over against the wall a little while after the game ended, barely conscious and subsequently abandoned by your shit-ass friends.

Ever the soft-hearted moron he is, he endeavored to take responsibility for you, because he didn’t need that kind of heat if something happened to you while under the influence of something he was pedaling, and you oh so desperately needed his pity.

So, he made you drink water, and then he dragged you outside for a few deep breaths of fresh air.

At first, all he was trying to do was keep you upright, holding you pressed against his body like that, but then your brain started working again and you came unglued. You pressed your face into the front of his shirt and wailed about how nobody likes you and he commiserated with an awkward pat to your back that you melted beneath. Eddie remembers the smell of your shampoo when you snuggled up against him, and being so starved for basic human contact, he’d only gone and put his nose in the crown of your head before turning his cheek to rest heavily on you. He held you, and you held him right back, and just like that Eddie felt something healing inside of him, something he didn’t realize was broken until it was put back together.

You called him nice and nuzzled up against him — he called you Sweet Girl and petted your hair back from your face, and he felt the gentle brush of your lips on the taught columns of his throat when you told him you liked that.

There he sat, crouched between the trash cans on the side of Tina Burton’s garage, still so fresh off of that humiliating afternoon with her, cuddling with some overly-stoned girl who, up to this very moment, had only lived in Eddie’s fantasies, dredged up to torture him with the memories of someone clinging to him so sweetly and saying such nice things.

“You were so kind to me,” You say softly, bringing Eddie back to the moment, the here and now where you are a creature of flesh and blood and not something out of his imagination, “… I never got the chance to thank you for, you know… looking after me. Being so nice.” You shrug your shoulders in a way that is almost shy and Eddie feels his heart begin to swell painfully in his chest. “I mean, it’s more than I can say for my friends…”

And if that isn’t the truest thing anyone has ever said.

He remembers how they came stalking around the corner and found him there watching over you, and how Carol said something nasty about date-rape that scared the shit out of him.

Eddie skipped school the entire week following that party in the gut-wrenching fear of that rumor taking root, but thankfully, after he bolted, someone drove the Burton’s Cadillac through the fence and into their pool, and all was mercifully forgotten, including all traces of the moment you’d shared.

But you’d called him nice, and you’d done it again just now….

Sweet Girl, he thinks.

Eddie’s throat is going tight, his palms are going sweaty… he’d throw himself into traffic for you…

Oh no…

“Hey… it’s, uh — it was-it was my pleasure.”

He tries so hard to remind himself that he doesn’t know you — that he didn’t know Stacey Keats and he got his heart broken for it.

This is not his beautiful house, this is not his beautiful wife, and this most certainly is not his American Dream.

He doesn’t love you, and he most certainly isn’t suddenly trying to picture what you look like first thing in the morning with a cup of coffee or last thing at night, face scrunched up in a yawn as you say goodnight. He’s not thinking about the way he’d match his tie to your dress for Prom or homecoming or whatever dance he’s certainly not imagining taking you to, he’s not trying to remember the name of that wine Wayne told him he ought to order if he ever takes a girl out to a fancy place like Enzo’s, and he’s definitely, definitely not thinking about getting you out of that nice, soft cardigan of yours… popping the buttons slowly, one by one, teasing you within an inch of your life and holding you at bay while you do everything in your power to try and rub up against him, to steal yourself a little bit of pleasure where he’s oh so tenderly denying you…

Patience, Sweet Girl, he’d tell you, curling a gentle hand around your throat and holding you there, All good things to those who wait…

Yeah… Eddie’s definitely not thinking about that…

He feels his tongue dart out to drag a sheen of moisture over his top lip, and his guts seize when — for the briefest moment — your eyes flick down to watch.

Did he imagine that? Christ, is he already so far gone for you that he’s hallucinating the possibility of reciprocation?

It would be so easy to kiss you right now, all he would have to do is lean across the table, or maybe come around to your side of the bench. The thought is intrusive and startling, but when Eddie doesn’t burst into flames for having such an untoward thought about someone like you, he lets himself wonder if you’d let him do it. Probably not, maybe you’re just playing nice, counting the seconds until he offers you weed at a discount or turns you loose so you can go scurrying back to your friends.

But you’re still here, nothing’s stopping you if you want to leave, and you’re sitting there so pretty, just batting your lashes at him.

“You’re not what I expected.” He says suddenly, before he even realizes the words were forming on his tongue.

Your features twist up quizzically.

“What do you mean?”

Eddie fumbles for the words, gesturing vaguely as he does.

“It’s just… you’re so approachable, and — and… nice?”

You snort out an undainty sound of laughter and he can’t help but laugh right along with you, goofy deep throated giggles bubbling up from inside of him and twisting his face up in what he knows has got to be a big stupid grin. He can’t help it. Sitting there, grinning back at you, Eddie is suddenly convinced he’s in love.

“Who says I’m not nice?” You ask, tilting forward in a way that Eddie is powerless to help but mirror.

“Uh, nobody. Nobody says that, it’s just… I mean aren’t you supposed to be popular or something?”

You scoff.

“Ah— so, here’s the thing about that — Carol’s the popular one … you know Carol, right?”

He feels the corner of his mouth twitch as he exercises every bit of willpower he possesses not to react.

“Sure, I know Carol.” Eddie says slowly, “She’s… fine.”

“It’s okay, you can say it.” You tell him.

“She’s awful.”

And then you go and flip everything he thinks he knows off of the table with one simple gesture, and you nod.

“Yeah …she’s pretty much the worst.”

He has absolutely no idea what to think after that, so Eddie makes the diplomatic decision to keep his mouth shut and only offers you a tight-lipped smile when your eyes flit up to regard him.

Without question, there is understanding there, lying quietly between you – you didn’t ask him why he was inviting you out to the spot where he sells drugs to all your friends, and he doesn’t ask you why you hang out with them in the first place. Suddenly, you’re simpatico in the fact that you don’t understand each other, and neither of you care.

“Anyway, she’s only popular because of who she hangs out with and I’m just the lucky fella who gets dragged along for the ride.” You say, “I don’t think people really notice if I’m even there half the time – they certainly don’t notice when I’m not.”

Case and point, that rumor Tommy is touting about what you apparently did at a party you didn’t even attend, and suddenly, Eddie understands how all your shitty little friends could believe it.

Well, he doesn’t understand, but he supposes it at least makes a little more sense, in a totally vapid, head-assed sort of way.

“That’s … bizarre.” He says, “So you’re just out here hanging out with the cool kids on complete and total accident?”

“Pretty much.” You hum, rolling your shoulders and heaving a wistful sigh, “...Anyway, what about you?”

“What about me?”

You bite your lip and the way you turn suddenly shy, averting your gaze down to your hands has Eddie’s stomach turning in knots. You like him, you like him, you like him… Eddie has to resist the urge to say it out loud, less a question than an accusation, a point of fact he has no business thrusting upon you.

“You’re nice too.” You mumble, almost like you’re confirming what he’d just elected not to say to you.

It leaves him feeling just a little bit winded, because, Christ, you’re gonna give him a big head if you keep talking so sweet like that… and you’re gonna give him a raging hard on if you keep looking at him like that, all shy, glancing up at him through your lashes.

Maybe he should kiss you.

Maybe he’s reading the signs wrong, maybe this is one of those lessons he never got around to learning, like that afternoon when Tina Burton put her hand on his thigh and gave him the same look when she suggested she pay for the weed “some other way” but try as he might, Eddie can’t get a sense of any hidden danger here, and he can suddenly hear Gareth posing that ominous question to him over the phone.

What’s the worst that can happen?

Then, in the distance, the bell rings bringing with it a bright burst of panic surging through his chest and sending stinging shocks all the way down to his fingers and toes.

No, not yet, he silently pleads to no one in particular, Five more minutes... please...

Eddie watches with a sick anxiety as you twist around to stare back through the hollow, back toward where you’d come from, where the school sits waiting for you, and he mourns the impending end of this moment — this perfect, perfect moment, everything he ever hoped it would be.

More, because he hadn’t been stupid enough to dare to hope it would be this good. For one giddy moment, he briefly entertains the idea of inviting you back to the van, but he stops the thought in his tracks.

Invite you back to do what?

Smoke?

Fuck?

Neither, honestly, all he wants is to talk to you some more, but there’s no way he can properly express that, not with his reputation being what it is.

And even if he tried? What kind of a reaction is that going to get out of you, if you suddenly start to think this was all some convoluted ploy to get into your pants or something? Or worse, if he opens up to you and it turns out you’re just playing nice and very good at faking it.

But that hasn’t been the case so far. He’d already pushed his luck much further past the breaking point asking you to come out here, and somehow, against all odds, you’re still sitting there.

You could have bolted the second the bell rang, but you didn’t, and a bigger part of Eddie than he is ready to address is sure that’s got to mean something… that you actually want to be here with him.

You’re going to be late going back if he keeps you any longer, and that same part of him wishes you wouldn’t go back, that you would stay and linger a little longer in this moment.

Stay here with him, just for a little while.

“Well… I should go,” You start, spreading your palms flat across the table, and he feels a sick wave of disappointment wash over him like a fever as he watches you stand, “Chemistry calls,”

The statement is punctuated with your slow rise from the bench and a goofy, overexaggerated show of jerking your thumbs over your shoulder, just like the way he’d done back in the cafeteria but so much better on you.

He really does think he might love you and it turns his tongue to a fat, useless thing sitting heavy in his mouth.

“Do… d’you want me to pass any messages on to Gareth?” You ask suddenly.

Yes, tell him I could kiss him. That he’s the greatest man to ever walk the face of this Earth, that he’s my goddamn hero.

“When he asks how it went, tell the smug bastard to mind his own business.”

You pull a face, features scrunching, brows knitting over your pretty eyes.

“How it went?” You echo.

Eddie dismisses the notion with a flippant wave.

“You’ll know when you know.”

You snort undaintily and roll your eyes.

“Okay… I’ll see you later,” you hum, and this time, the promise is hopeful.

“Sure.” He says, nodding.

You reward him with another one of those bright smiles, all pearly teeth and crinkled eyes, and then you turn and start out back toward the light.

Eddie watches you go, feeling his heart thumping solidly in his chest as you reach the end of the hollow and turn to leave him with one last parting glance, a shy wave, and then you’re gone.

He misses you already.

“You like me,” he says quietly to himself, testing the words on his lips and feeling a warm satisfaction flood his body when they come out sounding right.

Eddie lingers a little longer after that, basking in the afterglow of everything that just happened, everything he’s spent so long wishing and hoping for, and wondering too late whether he ought to have followed you, or maybe even walked you to class. It’s probably best that he didn’t, he decides. The scandal of seeing you steal away into the woods together was probably shocking enough for anyone who cared to notice, he can’t imagine what seeing the pair of you walking back together would do.

He turns his gaze down at the table, to where you’d been sitting only moments ago, and there he sees it.

A tattered, heavily annotated copy of Dune, missing its front cover.

Permission. Eddie thinks reverently as he snatches it up and folds it in against his chest.

He supposes he’ll just have to give it back to you the next time he sees you, and the promise of an impending next time fills him with joy – he’s positively giddy with it, and practically skipping as he makes his way back out of the hollow.

Christ, he’s such a loser, and he’s down bad for you.

baby taglist: @thrutheburnout, @vintagehellfire,

#eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson x you #eddie munson imagine #joseph quinn eddie munson #stranger things fic #endless summer fic #cruel summer prequel #if you would like to be added to the taglist please let me know and I will do my best but this lady is still very broken sometimes #the taglist i mean ... not me #sometimes me lmao

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y-the-youthful · 11 months

Note

is the whole thing of Y's character to be the unappreciated mother friend

Shout out to all my mother friends, but no (firstly because I think they are appreciated for feeding people and making sure they stay alive)

Y's whole thing is to be a person that has had an ultimately negative life and seen and done some exceptionally cruel things to survive, but to, despite all of that, choose kindness in the end. A lot of the characters they come across are self destructive or cruel and Y's whole thing was to look at that and decide to do the opposite whenever possible. A contrast to represent the ultimate apathy of the circumstances they end up in.

I call it their 'villain era' but really it is when they fall into such a state of despair and anger (the time shortly after A's death, B's disappearance, and the loss of Z and many other disasters happening at the same time) that they indulge that part that was so buried, something that has only been seen in flickers before, but they do return to kindness in the end.

I guess you could say it's the indomitable human spirit

#answered #out of calcified hearts #headcanons #I wanted to write someone that was just so stubborn to be kind that it was a little bit scary

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jurisffiction · 15 days

Text

hi soni

there was that article on my dash today that i cant be bothered to find because im on a writing break but was about how millennials trail behind boomers in terms of wealth (obviously) but the disparity in wealth amongst millennials is way worse than it ever was between boomers. then the rpf thing. and i thought about generic theories about how it's obviously way easier to either/or a) narrativise, idolise, mythologise, b) be a nasty little freak about someone in the specific way rpf tends to do if you're more disconnected from them. i think there's two threads here that are like. 1) social media and Platformisation and Commodification and other -Ations of Identity Performance have transformed more and more aspects of life into opportunities to like. make yourself someone to celebritise. even as "relatability" and "authenticity" are pushed as concepts you're still selling yourself as a narrative and concept that feels like a smaller jump to do rpf theorising about than your actual friends. Like. How rpf is very prevalent in industries that rely on full-coverage PR narratives anyway . 2) wealth disparity exacerbates the disconnect in actual living reality and spaces between these two groups of those being rpfd and those doing rpf. both in terms of the other point (psychologically / subconsciously (?) it feels easier to theorise these people) and more directly in terms of like. Rage sentiment towards the rich. "pete wentz can go look at his bank account to feel better" mindset. You know. I guess the endpoint extreme of this thought is like "rpf probably went Crazyz hard in extreme wealth disparity like with Emperors" and it totally did. In its way. but that adds a further point that this is only true within a certain comfortable-enough modern middle class who due to ? technology ? is largely freed from like. gruelling physical labour taking up all their day. and is instead left with a hollow lack of options for genuine engagement and entertainment within the calcified cultural spaces that capitalism leaves you. am i going anywhere with this. i meant to add line breaks but nowhere felt right

#hey everybody i'm now on medication to restart my stopped metabolism and im a walking adhd stereotype again .I get an mri tomorrow. hold m #Hold my hand

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sallysavestheday · 3 days

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Throwback Thursday!

I've been in a Maglor mood this week, so here's a little one-two tragedy-comedy punch of him from September 2022.

From 4'33":

His great works are lost to him, after the fall, after his long, dreamlike submersion. For what felt an endless time, he floated like waterweed at Ossë’s whim, his body just one more strange calcified structure in Uinen’s halls. But the sea spat him out, eventually, the cool depths fundamentally unwelcoming to one who has touched fire.

And the B side (Avant Garde):

“I’m here, if here is anywhere, really.” Makalaurë is puddled on the floor in a shadowy alcove off the main walkway, blinking miserably up at Findaráto from within a welter of scarlet robes. His jeweled circlet is askew, and his braids have begun to unravel. The smoky eyes he affects for triumphant premieres have made their way damply down to his chin, and he reeks of 100-proof despair.

Something for everyone! Enjoy :)

@a-tehta @thescrapwitch @starspray @melestasflight @tilion-writes feel like sharing something from your dustier old parchment piles? Show a little love for those fics that are old.

#throwback thursday #my fics #maglor

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astralnymphh · 7 months

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god knows she tried.

ellie williams⊱.

“the monster inside her was baying for blood, it had to come out some day.”

⤹𓍢ִ໋listening to; lacrimosa and sour

𖤐.an; I present to you, my proudest piece. wowowoww I really enjoyed writing an emotional piece like this. I hope it suffices and gets enough recognition cause this surely won't be my last angst piece!! inspired by lacy, oh lacy by @coeurify

𓍢ִ໋-cw; ellie pov focus leaning, large analysis of ellie throughout tlou2, loser-esque jackson ellie, angst, heavy feelings, depictions of death + wanting death + blood + guts + sharp objects + nausea/vomit + self hatred + jealousy + starvation, mild glimpses of happiness, reader replaces dina, reader isn't pregnant, poetic writing

⋆.ೃ;wc; 5k+

masterlist ୨୧

the sun was shrouded in gloom. the water did not glisten, but her tears did. droplets of gray guilt pour in slow motion down her bloodied cheeks. tears glistening with hurt.

washed up like a sea carcass, phantom fingers pounding in pain. made into a husk by her own self-corrosion. her mind would have been bare, except, you're there. a figment of time, standing there, suffocating in your blank stare. why are you staring like that? it's not even you. ellie can't grasp that truth. it's only her subconscious. projecting an apparition of your mortal flesh and briny blood. salty like the sea she's sitting in.

would you echo that figment in real time?

the past figments she saw had character. one shaking their head, one like a beacon of comfort caressing her shoulder, and never dead. you're not dead, why is she crying?

she cries for everything.

her limbs calcified of stone. nothings' moving. lungs that felt dried up from all the tears leaving her eyes. a throat that strains and tugs with each dense swallow, reminding her of the atmosphere that appeared so devoid of air, thinking, how could she breathe right now? the insoluble pain of self-destruction. the hunger for revenge, snuffed like a breeze to flames. it was all in her head. the choking. her lungs begged for air, and she could not breathe it.

ellie cusps the hand that gushes with beady red blood that drips into the dark murky water, pressurizing the exposed throbbing knuckle. it hurt like hell, an unlivable hell. yet, not a wail is heard by the ocean. only the whimpers and sniffles graze the ears of her highness, the sea, the only one physically there to listen.

behind her, feet are hung at head-level. wooden pillars that scarcely mimicked crucifixion. this place was dark, in all dimensions.

just minutes ago, her skin was forming bruises and jaw nearly caved in from the force of abby's struggled hits. knuckles praying to live. not even the mass of a gun tucked in her jeans had her awareness. no, she didn't use it. she wanted to feel abby fucking dying in her hands. her hands that have siphoned the lives of many before. but, when she realized someone was actually dying in her hands, when she could feel that through her skin, it was over. the flashes of joel in her head beckoned her to stop, without uttering any words. the same mental imagery that motioned her to break skin in the first place.

joel was always there.

soaping up the harshly served reality that projected on the foggy thalassic horizon and toxified the surrounding waters, her mind sails to different times. supposed simplistic times that, by fate, turned rotten.

the day you two met. a mere four years ago. the town was a busy winterscape. you both were the golden age of sixteen, well, not that golden admist the post-apocalypse. steady clanking hoofsteps that striked the concrete track streaming into jackson, mounted on your midnight coat steed that trailed behind tommy's. heads turned at the sounds of large rusty hinges twisting, including hers, watching from beyond the stable's fencing.

goddess above and below, you're were so stunning.

she remembers she was gearing up for group patrol that day when you arrived, the saddles' horn nearly slipping from her bay leather grasp. thoughts of interest and curiosity had slowly piled up from that point. her pupils picking up on each hoofprint left as you pass the open paddock and stroll into the connecting stable. her browlines furrowed, wondering if you we're some backpacker hauled over for a spell, or a new resident.

she's lucky it would be the latter.

the veil of frigid air that seeped her skin and snapped her focus out of a daydream by the echo of dina's voice, calling her,

"earth to ellie?"

and it tethers her back on earth, turning her face to dina. she thought back to how her gloved fingers snapped in her face, asking for her focus, there and then.

"sor- um, what were you saying?" her speech was floaty, stacking on each other as she stuttered.

why was her focus glued to you at that moment? you had literally just entered. fucking hell, must have been something intruding the air. it's unlike herself to be so.. enraptured.

and later that evening, after a session of controlled gunshots mowing down the rigid fungoid heads that dared to disrupt their supply run, she was tired. plain tired.

as it turns out, a sturdy bench baring wooden boards as seats was enough comfort after all that shit. legs beat down to drooping over the woods edge, feeling like jelly. her hair bathed in the dining hall's incandescent lights, rendering a mellow orange halo. lips in pure quietude, she sat as a stranger to the conversation had between joel, jesse and dina.

ellie pondered the expedition for guitar strings that happened weeks ago, still processing what joel had told her. 'there was, no cure.' was it fabrication? what really took place in her state of unconsciousness? this was the beginning of a lurk. an unabating, rough gloom that presides under and through the chamber of her stomach, telling her something wasn't right. a thing she can't exactly point a finger to. a gut hunch that anchors her heart tightly. all is not true. she must seek.

blanked inside the home of her mind, only to be yanked by the wisping holler that ran over her head.

"hey! over here!" it was dina, ushering you over with the jerks of her wrist.

you passioned your way through the meal lines, appearing before her. she recalls how you looked, you were perfect. you wore the same ebony winter jacket that gathered dust on the wall-mounted rack of your farmhouse bedroom. it had its wears and tears and excerpts of journies to tell, but it was perfect on you. it's just a plain jacket. but for her, it was the jacket.

"the house up to yer' standards?" joel asked you, the usual mug of piping hot joe whaffed a steam around the aged and cracked skin of his face. tender in the light.

your voice rang through, "yeah, nothing I could ever bargain." and it cleared a trench between her temples. that rough gloom took a rain check instantly.

a fuzzy feeling that fords neither love or hate embraced the nape of her back. she didn't realize it just then, but, between the vault of aching uncertainty in her gut and the day to day neutrality she feels, a blossoming delight would come from your arrival at jackson, should she consume its goodness.

she didn't remember much of that conversation until the spotlight beamed towards her.

"this is ellie, she jus' came back from patrol. she'll show ya how we handle things 'round here." joel had gestured your sights over to her, to consume her first impression, with a smile that would become signature.

her ears tuned to you.

"hi!" you greeted with the softest wisping of your lips. oh, it made her evening that much more animated.

from that day onward, it was like a sweet lullaby of love. waving from across the horizon for weeks, your hand splayed out flat in the air, and hers curled up a bit. another week passes, and she's inviting you to the tipsy bison on her own accord. months pass, and she's constantly slumbering on your sofa over long nights, preferring it over being alone in her garage home. at this position in your shared timeline, ellie has grown distant from joel. you swore she forgot that old mans' bowed and bearded face sometimes.

it stung to relive the memory of pushing joel away. outside that damned hospital. saint marys' piece of shit. yelling, "don't you fucking, touch me!"

the tears were scorching. they were brought up to be. and they burned. the inside of her throat felt sliced up, chewed up, and ran through with barbed wire. swallowing was too much to bear, just how it is now, sitting on that dark beach.

that same day, she returned to find you waiting at her doorstep, box in hand. worry-struck. ellie took off out of the void, it made sense you were distraught. she felt mutually the same, her wrenching heart suffering the aftermath. the dawn of day she assumed would be spent alone, was sat atop her bed. losing herself in the video game you brought in that box, laying on you while she flicks the joysticks and taps the bumpers. it was a sunny yellow haven. a light she found in the darkness, that was you.

a tightly braided friendship.

and her mind lingers on something you once uttered at the crux of night during a sleepover, entailing the words;

"i like moths now, because of you."

that made her flustered across the span of a whole week, even joel questioned why she was blanking out during patrol training.

she was your moon. someone to subdue the spines that pricked your skin every day. sharp edges that tell you, happiness wasn't meant to stay. battle it all you wanted. moons eventually dim and embellish darkness.

two years pass, and she's being led to the center of an ornamental string-lit dance floor during another peak of winter, by none other than dina.

not you. if only it had been you. or else she wouldn't have felt that specter of gloom wrench her gut in disgusting ways later at dusk.

at least her gut didn't feel as it does now. torn open for this sorrowful sea to behold, exposed to a retch colored with regret. ill aversion.

her hands guided to the small of dina's back, draping like a silk curtain. missing a flinch when her arms huddled ellie's shoulders. not a flinch. ellie didn't love dina, but they were close. pinkies-tied close. it's just dina being dina, right?

"every guy in this room is staring at you right now.." her voice croaked in a demure whisper. the blood cells in her being were fluttering, the weight of her position then and there, made her feel lit up inside a dark room. backed into a corner. she was the spotlight once more.

"maybe they're staring at you.."

they would soon.

you never resented ellie for that night. you liked her, yeah, but it wasn't her fault. it only felt like you'd gulped a clump of metal bolts, weighing like a sick burden inside you. cold and rustic. your will of steel didn't let that shatter you completely, though. bottled it up and bluffed your feelings. it was never her fault. sucked down that bitter shot and let it ferment in your sickly gut packed with a stir. a stir of pungent nausea jabbing thorns in your esophagus. it delivers a nasty taste. but you swore, you wouldn't resent ellie.

ellie was unaware of your shared adoration. what seemed like a one-sided crush, was not. nights left off with a friendly hug could have been so much more divinely satiating. she wishes her body wasn't bound to the now, wishing she could back to then. the past, and express her affection. tell you everything.

a wish brewn too late. a drunken kiss to her buds out of wills' reach binds a woolly, empty headed fizzing to her ears. tossed into a stupor. all she could do was stand still like a willow tree in the windless plains. lips unable to jerk away. then it sunk hard. you're there. you're watching. people are peering. you saw.

"fuck." was emphasized in her toneless breath, narrowly letting loose another swear in the flavor of a loud scream.

in that gloomy darkness, she saw you. illuminated like a beacon too. your face plasters an unbothered exterior, but the eyes, the eyes are a glass screen. you can understand the essence fueling a person's emotion with one meager glimpse. a new gag clots her gullet. she can't show it, but she for heaven above and hell below, could fucking feel it.

you virtually felt a crack in your heart. cracks in a porcelain antique. you're sure the two looked similar.

strung between multiple conclusions, you pondered. if ellie liked dina, you'd have to woefully accept it. and if she didn't, then she didn't. what more could you have proposed at that time. life is life.

your feet carried you with a saunter, skirting the doors brinking you from the ghostly streets of a slumbering town of jackson. a jarring contrast from the lively party howling behind you. even for someone who's experiencing confusion, you walked with a gentle gait.

pausing under the descending pearls of frozen water, casting your eyes heavenward into the starry globe above you. the stars twinkled so perfectly on such a gut-wrenching night as this one. it dawns on you. how the celestial bodies of space feel no pain, no heartbreak. how their life is lived without the mortal trials you face. it must be so easy up there, suspended in space, feeling nothing.

as the snow nestled in the beds of your hair, melting on your blue hot face, you claimed a sense of emptiness in your head amidst the vomit begging to unfurl from your throttle. please, let it be a dream.

piercing isolation.

ended suddenly.

the swinging of a door wooshes through your ears, and capers your sights to its source. and there she was. joining you in the twilight snow-shower. ellie.

she trotted up to you, lone in the wintry streets, and harvested the same pellets of opalite snow that decorated the strands of your hair like constellations hovering above. her head, too, snowflakes cling to her russet bang and lashes, framing her eyes so damn right.

oh, snowy fern eyes. the most serenic evergreen rings encapsulated behind gloss. dewey eyes sitting atop red sweltered cheeks. her lids fluttered back the tears, the tears that might wither the snow, and surely wither her soundness of mind. a quiver of the lip, bent over her teeth. frozen fucking wind that chars the lining of her lungs with ice. every single thing fucking wounded her.

you gazed into one another, emotions roaring loud. she could peer right through you. through the glass windows of your eyes. things were felt and not shown, it was evident in your expression. no words were uttered in those seconds before. before the infamous words you spoke. words that forced everything to the shore.

"do you love dina?"

fucking gag. another smother of disgust gurgling in her gut. the sheer assumption that you believed her heart to be penchant for dina, and not you, drowned her guts. a quick spurt of unease penetrates her whole esse.

here went nothing.

"I love you."

whorled away from your envy like whiplash. it added up by that point. she appeared like a puppet to that kiss on the dance floor. you recalled it then. ellie's teeth were never bared in a smile, more so, it was the true one-sided love. now, she is standing in front of you. physical, mortal, and all. retching out that confession like it was stifled beneath a tombstone.

to ellie, that tombstone represented everything she expected to fail. to be dead. a wish foreseen as ash, fled to the gales of something more worthy.

that wish sailed the breeze, and landed at your feet.

you reached that shore too.

"I love you too, ellie."

her name levitating off your tongue with a tone so soothing felt affirming. grounding. this is not a dream.

her eyes transmutated, eclipsed by a sun. what was once dewey, red and puffy, then softened to a set of almonds brazed in sweet syrup. calmer tears that were golden. joyous. lids relax and anchor her brows, straightening out like rows of a poem. after straying so long beneath the falling snow, her nose suffused a red-orangey tint, nostrils even redder.

love passioned its way through the gelid space, accompanied by the humid huffs of your breath. but nothing was as warm, not even a star, as what brought your bodies a few measly steps closer.

a kiss.

huddled in the somber streets was an effigy of igniting amour. two souls stuck together. her arms wrapped around your back like you were the only life she could clutch. reddened knuckles crumpling up the same ebony jacket you attired in the winter, holding you dear. your arms found a natural embrace, cusping her shoulders and marrying fingertips into her coppery mane that tied into her bun.

nothing beats the way you two rolled lips, tasting the skin and smacking slowly. her peachy buds that fit the open groove of your mouth so easily. her lips were formed for you. cells that build her body, are building for you. she existed solely for you. graciously drinking up the kiss like a fucking sweet milkshake.

a taste so addictive, you could die on it.

shit, she's smirking into your lips. ellie, you blasted dork. even the dimples denting her cheeks could poke you back. that's how wide her smile travels from ear to ear, even her cheeks fattened up, creasing those beautiful crinkles at the edges of her eyelines. a true smile.

and once that kiss severed, you saw those bloated, ruddy cheeks plucking the corners of her lips. too fucking adorable.

"well, there's that smile. lost her a while ago, els?" the teaser you were, and the loser she was.

her lips refine into the same toothy, adorable beam. she nearly cringed at your observation. the way you kept notation of how often her midface perks up, it was cute. her flesh bites the bitter cold, and blood that heaped her cheeks burnt so vibrant for you.

she couldn't believe you were true.

"i think you're the only person that makes me smile," she recalled this vividly, trying her darndest to uplift every waking thought about you through a cold shell she fabricated, "fuck, i'm so bad at this.." laugh it off past ellie, laugh it off.

if she pinpoints it correctly, you had said the words "i like bad." jokingly. fashioning the most proud smirk ever. pfft, she giggles every time her brain resurfaces that memory of your snowy brimmed confessions.

"tsskk- u're weird."

"you're a big dork."

"shut up.." her ardent palms pancaked against both of your cheeks, passionately pulling you in for another tangerine sweet kiss.

the ivory supermoon set on a blissful night, luckily enough. ellie ended up fleeing that street, hand in hand mingled with you, towards her home. fuck that dance. fuck those feelings flush of guilt that died right there on that street. being tangled in the sheets with you snuggled in her arms was enough. enough to submerge what galloped through her head.

"i don't need your fucking help joel."

shit.

gods above and below.

what did daylight bring?

bloodshed. blood stains her eyes to this day. she was there. she saw. the blood spilt and it splashed towards her. if joel couldn't reach his torn, bashed and narrowly mutilated hand out to her, his lifeline would. the plasma pumping his heart to sustain life, hurling out like a ribbon of crimson. a downright disrespectful invitation of rememberance abby had chucked to her fucking face.

this memory. this disease, an immoral plague. who the fuck up there in the pristine realms of divinity decides a mortal punishment like this?

that memory, lives on. it weakens the marrow in her bones. turns the tides in her head. she wanted to rip her skin off. her skin that gets to survive. disgust. again. the muscles attached to bone, felt like they didn't belong.

she stopped genuinely breathing after that day.

you saw the will to breathe drain from her eyes. etching into that lodges' oak floors. the first grave she ever dug.

"i'm so sorry, ellie."

was the first swan song she ever heard.

now that rough gloom, plummeted and shapeshifted into a dark cavern of misery. starless, desolate gloom. her room turnt cavernous too. blocking all rays of bright luminosity from injecting a disturbance in her seclusion. era of mental death.

you had been visiting her daily in her time of barren sensitivity, at the least, visiting her door. you uneasily sat on the exterior end of her door. poised aside and smushing your ear into it's solid strength. praying that you might hear any peep of life on the other side, you wait. you miss her bloodcurtiling sobs reserved for nighttime, sowing the conclusion that she, inside, was empty. a husk.

if death is so morbid, why did graves look so peaceful? so prettied up. why are the baby blue hydrangeas sitting atop his freshly cold grave, soft in their glory, delivering such a potent posion. they plant their own seed. clotting ellie's throat with a nest of hydrangeas she'll carry with her forever. roots latched to a deep spring in her spirit that navigates every little emotion. the flowers bulge from her esophagus and cough up in petals of regret, forgiveness, and rejection.

she can't accept that.

she didn't.

she heard the rainy forest calling for her.

seattle is here. seattle is waiting. the old flame lights the new wick, and so it ignites, her immortal foe. revenge.

and she brought you along.

ellie respires every soul set free from mangled bodies she creates. her hands a syphon, the weapon her postman. delivering screaming letters of justice with every pull of her finger on the trigger.

a once starless gloom was snapped in half by her own drive with spheres of guttural fire baying for blood. she wakes up a blood-gutter every sunrise. her face just might fossilize and cherish this total takeover. she was someone new. angled fuming brows, irritable red nostrils flared more than ever, and an awful intensity in her eyes. it made them scintillating, more so, grossly gleaming. irises fern green to hazardous toxin in just a few months.

enemies could read ellie's aura nimbly, if their visions should even grasp it faster than their machetes and hammers meeting a clenched palm. she wasn't just a girl. she was a threat.

miles of blood patterned in her path, splotching the diamond modeled bottoms of her converse like abstract art. she was lost in her own world. driven straight to the goal.

you promised you'd be there every damn sliced throat of the way, no matter what. but this scares you. slowly, the fire burning in her eyes had charred her up till she could barely give anything more.

the fire had only engulfed her when she appeared at the theater's lobby doors, banging the margin of her balled fist on the wood. the fist gloved in crescent scars, peeled cuticles, and raised callouses. when the doors waved open to you, gliding up to her and weaving yourself with her body in a relieved hug, she couldn't do it. it was too much. the torture lingering in her muscle memory stung, frozen hands jittering above the small of your back momentarily.

ellie was enervated.

it took her a second to even hug you back. that was, too kind of you. to embrace her body slathered in the lifeline of someone else. why would you even do that, she thought.

her mind looped on a cycle, processing that damned notion as you pleat the soiled shirt off her back. she couldn't even feel the salient tear in her back, the brutally severed dermis throbbing red, not a whimper soars her gullet when you tend to it. numbness riddled her. stitch her up, and she won't flinch.

then ellie croaked,

"i made her talk."

she was revolted. how could she touch you so tenderly after whacking a metal rod into a beating body 'till they coughed up the words. knackered them up for eternal sleep. the face she just wiped from this earth, blurred. does she even remember what she looked like?

it was your own arm, meshing around her blistered collarbone that prompted her to gauge the value of her life, even just for an iota of solace time.

problem being, she couldn't remain enlightened of her value- without you.

"i don't wanna lose you."

your lips kissed her pain away, pitter by patter along the scruff of her neck to her seared shoulder. every peck embedded with a melodic note that forges a song saying, 'i am here, you won't lose me' without even brushing that past your satiny lips.

won't you seal my hardships with your lips of silk? taint my lips of leather and gums of thorns with your soothing buds?

"you wont."

then that day arrived, when she almost did. a scene depicted by the ten of swords. a major disaster indicated. as the arrow speared the air suddenly, and in no time you could count, it had already paved through the plate of your shoulder and strung out blood to the planks before you. rendering you unconscious.

"please stop!" ellie pleaded, just like she did before. god forbid if she had to witness another loved one being lacerated from life. her limp body prays, prays for your safe survival, and not your safe passage. she wonders if god is even real, if any god is real. do they hear her now? we're they aware when she shrilled for mercy at every red ribbon lashed out from his body? did they welcome him, home?

and right before that cold steel nearly divided your skin, a voice erupted.

"abby!"

thank fuck you hadn't ended up a resemblance of the 'ten of swords' illustration. thank the sun gods that you were able to bask and tan under the light that fondled the rustic farmhouse with her. ellie is so lucky, for someone who doesn't believe in it.

"don't ever let me see you again."

you then retired to that old, rustic farmhouse. aging under the continuous moon phases for two years straight.

it was a strenuous journey getting to where she was supposed to be the happiest. despite all the treasures she owned on that farm property, the lagoon of corn fields and hills of verdancy that sung in spring, mighty splendors anyone might wish for, ellie still lived with a loom. ellie bore tantrums inside the confined loneliness of the farm's supply room, kicking the hilt of a rake as it clatters to the stony ground, yelling, "fuck!" when it startled her badly enough, or when it enraged her ptsd well enough.

reminiscence is woven into the scar risen on your shoulder. it reminds her. every. damn. glance.

every approaching dream was daunting to ellie. she'd wake up. cold beady sweat. go back to sleep, suffocate in her subconscious again, and surface them in a panic once more. not even braving the night with a stroll around the perimeter helped. it only sunk everything deeper.

if she was drunken in her sorrows, would you carry her?

the daylight spent with you was her only source of felicity. the mundane made it feel much more liveable. a day spent baking together, flour dappled on each other's noses, roused as she pushed up behind, and swayed you to the cordial and funky beats thrumming from the viynl player. that day, that simple day made her want to live fully for you. she wanted to be tied to your pinkie with the lusty filaments of love.

and in that humble kitchen laid a promise;

"so- this means you'll marry me?" a stupid smirk muffled ellie's voice out huskily, flowing against the shoreline of your ear.

"can't we just announce ourselves married already?"

"baabeee.." that freckled idiot whined.

"eelllssss.." you rung back.

her arms fastened you tighter, pout puffing on your shoulder, "i wann' make it feel real.." she intoned, inclining up and stuffing her nose into your neck. pretty sure she rubbed all the flour onto you, being the bear hugger she is.

no answer parts your lips.

"babe?"

ellie felt you twirl in her caging arms, perking up to even up with your gaze in curiosity. her brows fumble and arc inwards to visibly show her interest for your next words.

"we're real, els. i don't need a ring or declaration to show that.." your tone caters to her love of soothing sounds, as she breaks into an even toothier smile that trails your words.

"you don't?"

you had leaned in, devoid of words. a quiet kiss to her brows, said so much more than she expected. that inner-loser knocked on the door of her mind and took control. blasted blush coating her cheeks. you really knew how to woo her, cradling her head in your tender cusp.

"i just need you."

"don't go."

the grounding touch of her cheeks held between your hands was not enough. the blank, void, and unnerving night was not enough. nothing was enough to keep her waiting.

what kind of songs do you play when dwindling into internal madness?

her own screams battle the wood boards of that farm too often. her screams synchronize with joels, replaying in her head. scared and unable to hold onto anything. thoughts running amok. she fucking needs you more than she thought.

"ellie- ellie.. I'm here. it's okay."

it's not okay.

it's not okay for her to play pretend and cast an ocean over those feelings 'when she can'. you told her, it's okay. to be broken. but her heart anchors towards an obligation to be picture perfect for you, for anyone. every positive cover-up felt like posion pooling from her mouth. lying til she couldn't feel her lips.

she lied to you once. for someone who despises lies and has been lied to, she lied. that fucking lie hurt. but it was too loud. the gloom that stuck with her for so long has grown into a pounding, jarring sound similar to intense whirring, but echoed. nothing had color at that point. everything was a null void, and every sound was a silence too loud.

a sentence meant to be; "i'm going to find abby." sounded a lot more like,

"i'm so tired, baby." murmured ellie, collapsed flat on the plateau of your chest and drained of energy.

you assumed it was just physical fatigue.

"it's fine, go t'sleep, we can talk later."

ellie's eyes looked so dull, so scarce of humanity. she was tired. each passing day had been vampirically sucking the motivation from her veins. some days, she didn't even catch you calling her name from the farmhouse. earth to ellie, are you still in there?

"I have to finish it." ellie's forehead bent to yours, felt so wrong.

"why didn't you tell me?"

"I can't." her voice nearly shattered into a waterfall of sobbing.

your voice cracked, however, "bullshit, els."

that was the drawing line. she finally breaks and is consumed by that hovering gloom. she lost herself.

ellie dashed every chance of losing you, and yet took it upon herself to leave you, instead.

that fucking thing that leeched off her for so many years is finally getting what it yearns for. greed of revenge to feed the darkness. starving herself as it ingests every fiber barely holding her together.

you spun away with leisure, breaching your hands from her, "I am - not, doing this again."

you couldn't save this. she was leaving. nothing blocks her way.

heart-wrenching silence dawns.

"that's up to you."

her heels unhurriedly turned in an instant, abandoning you, and her dreams born of soft blue dasies. her omens of happiness and trust, becoming a fatuous foreground. the door waving shut behind her would soon come to bite her in the heart.

now she sits. almost dying in that water. the water was her gloom all along. she was the vessel, she paid the price, it's free. now she bleeds into it. red rivers dance and make a mockery of her weeping body.

she tried.

it won.

she tried for the false clone of you haunting her mind. it's the only thing she had left of you.

she tried so hard to be strong. only she and the gods above know that.

you wouldn't though.

coming home to jackson a walking carcass, pinning her hopes on you being there. it was obvious you moved from the farmhouse. why would you live there alone?

so, she stands. inside your old jackson home, to divulge its absence of you. no, you weren't there. you weren't in jackson. all that remains are old memories crammed into boxes. motionless without a requiem.

ellie closes in on one of these.

and what she finds is painful.

that winter jacket.

she clutches it tight to her barren eyes, burrowing the trench of her nose with your lingering scent. the scenes trance her mind. visions of you tackling her in the thick mud puddle on your farm's acres, an enchanting laugh wheezing in your throat. visions of holding your stomach while you scrubbed fine china of its grub and stains, wishing you two had a real family, a child, by some miracle. recollections of you, legs sitting pretty across her lap as she thrashed a controller, casting her evil curse whenever the game ticked her off just enough and how you giggled at her. the everlasting evocation of you two, kissing under that snow-ether night, vowing a love to extend across times bounds.

the jacket smells so fucking good.

"please.." whispered ellie, with a taut countenance, "where are you.."

not a clue of where you went is in those walls.

are you dead? nobody knows.

where she left the farmhouse, you left her entirely. unknowing if it stems from love, hate, or neutrality. the guilt felt disgusting, once more. the pain stung in her lung far harsher. the air siphoning out.

in a room so devoid of air, and you, how could she breathe?

you can't pay in blood and sacrifice. ellie has learned that. she paid in loss of something that didn't have to go.

love was understanding each other's limits, and so was losing each other. she just never realized you had limits plummeting down on you, until the new moon phase had begun, and it was too late.

that figment of you is all she has left.

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