#drug addition cw | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

luveline · 10 months

Text

𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐠𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐭 | 𝐞𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐞 𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐧

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

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

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

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

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

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

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

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

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

"Our body heat will mingle."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Eddie," you chastise.

"Moderately fast."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Eds?" you murmur.

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

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

"Can I sleep over?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Like, by a ghost?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oof," you say, straight-faced.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Who?"

"The ghost."

"She's a she?"

"Sounds kind of like one."

"Come sit up here with me."

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

Because Eddie doesn't believe in ghosts.

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

"What does she say?” he probes.

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

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

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

Eddie stares at you.

"I was going to tell you–"

"When?" he demands.

"I'm telling you right now!"

"How long have you been hearing voices?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eddie stands up.

"Where are you going?"

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

"I don't want a beer."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Can't. In Santa Barbara."

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

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

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

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

Wayne grunts again.

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

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

"Yes!" Eddie and Wayne call simultaneously.

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

"Lighter?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Gotta be faster than that," Eddie taunts.

"Don't chain smoke," Wayne says.

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

Wayne hums.

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

"One for me?" he asks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You little freak."

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

"Loser can't even light a cigarette."

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

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

"Somebody must've," you say.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I'm just thinking."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Loser."

—

You wake up to Eddie tapping your shoulder.

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

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

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

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

Eddie's frowning at you when you look up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Where's your uncle?" you ask.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You're trying to piss me off."

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

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

You sigh at the chilly coldness of each blessed drop.

"Heatwave from hell is finally over."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Me," you say.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You asked me last night–”

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

“I’m agnostic about ghosts.”

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

“No. What’s agnostic mean?” you ask.

“We’ll buy a dictionary.”

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

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

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

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

“Way too personal for our relationship.”

Bad, overused joke.

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

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

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

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

“Twelve dollars.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You forgot the side salad.”

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

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

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

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

“They taste the same.”

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

“Aren’t you always?”

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

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

I’ll make one of myself, too.

What if they fire me?

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

What if it never goes away?

It will.

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

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

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

Eddie… has… a secret…

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

Don’t we all?

—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Kind of.”

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

But he knows.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You’re super worried about the ghost.”

“It is an uber worrying ghost.”

“‘Cause she talks?” you ask.

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

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

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

“Who the fuck is Lucy?”

“The girl. Lucy and Johnny.”

“Bonnie?”

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

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

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

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

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

“I got it,” he says.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Thank you, good sir,” you laugh.

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

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

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

“Do not speed!”

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

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

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

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

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

“Yikes,” you say. “Don’t look.”

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

“Fuck off, Eddie,” you laugh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No. Something I noticed, is all.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Are you listening to me?" he asks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Thought you wanted fries?"

"And I thought you wanted a side salad."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Ugh. Any chance she likes the stereo?"

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

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

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

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

"I left it on the top shelf."

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

"You sure?" he asks.

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

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

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

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

"I've never tried it."

"I'll do it quietly?"

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

"Should I get a different one?"

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

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

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

"And by no graphic detail, you mean…"

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

"Not even, like… hand stuff?"

"Do you want there to be hand stuff?"

"With the demons?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Read to me, serf," you demand.

Eddie clears his throat.

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

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

"Don't fall asleep," he says.

"It's your whispering."

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

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

—

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

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

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

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

I swear, sometimes, I can hear someone talking.

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

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

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

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

He must be stroking it in his sleep.

Or maybe you're frizzy.

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

Your lips part.

Thunder cracks outside.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The broken phone is starting to irritate him.

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

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

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

"Yeah, love you too, kid. Eddie–"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lightning flashes again.

There's someone standing in your yard.

The second he notices the figure, it lunges left.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His neck cracks with the force of his turn.

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

“Oh, shit.”

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

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

“Are you okay?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Lightning.”

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

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

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

“What the–”

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

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

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

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

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

“Ouch,” you croak.

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

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

“You’ve been drooling again.”

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

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

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

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

“No, but I have. You know I have.”

“True. That is… unfortunately awkward.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Can you blame me? Snore.”

“You wanted to watch it.”

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

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

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

—

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hey, beautiful.”

“You want half of a turkey sandwich?”

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

“Oh, gross. Give it to me right now.”

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

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

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

“I love it. What’s the occasion?”

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

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

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

“You can still get her flowers.”

“Yeah.”

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

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

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

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

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

"Me too."

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

It must feel so, so heavy.

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

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

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

"You're my best friend."

I would fucking think so, he'd say.

"You're mine," he says.

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

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

"She'd like it, I think."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I could cancel."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Like a tapeworm," you agree solemnly.

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

"Can tapeworms worry?" you ask.

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

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

"Your ghost."

"Ah."

Eddie waits.

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

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

"What?"

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

"I'm not lying," you lie.

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

"What do I look like?"

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

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

"Why not?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He thinks you're making it up.

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

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

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

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

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

"I didn't mean it."

"Stop, Eddie."

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

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

He does.

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

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

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

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

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

Or maybe it was your ghost.

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

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

"It's not fine."

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

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

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

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

"I'm sorry," he says again.

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

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

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

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

You laugh wetly. Eddie promptly stops talking about parasites.

"Forgive me?" he asks.

You nod on automatic. Of course you do.

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

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

That's when the real trouble begins.

—

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

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

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

“You remember Hawk?” he asks you.

“Jack 'Hawk'?” you ask.

“Yeah, Hawk.”

“He’d come around for green?” you ask.

“Yeah, that’s the one. Alright. So, when you were on vacation last summer, Hawk knocked on the door, I answered. I’m straight, right? Haven’t sold anything in years, no plans on selling again. But Jack barrels up the steps and starts going on like I promised him something. I said, dude, I don't deal anymore, and could you possibly shut the fuck up? Wayne’s inside making milkshakes. Blender on, couldn’t hear us but I’m sweating bullets.

“Jack, fucker, starts begging.” Eddie leans into your shoulder, hushed. “He’s saying c’mon Munson, I know you got some, don’t you have a personal stash? I’m desperate.” He picks a piece of hair off of your sleeve. “I didn’t, obviously, and I told him that but he’s not listening to me, he’s getting all wild-eyed and fucking wound like he needs the hard shit. I’m just trying to get rid of him at that point, I don’t know if he was tweaking but he looked like he was going to hit me and I wasn’t interested in fighting.” He laughs, encouraging a smile from you. “Wayne’s inside making milkshakes. Full fat with vanilla extract– I’m not about to take a trip to Hawkins General.”

“What did you do?” you ask.

“I said to him, even if I did you wouldn’t be getting anything, asshole, and pushed him toward the steps, you know? It felt good, standing up for myself.”

“And he left?”

“No, he fucking hit me straight in the dick. Can you imagine that? Junk shot on my own front door.”

You gasp with giggly indignation, hanging on his every word now. Eddie knows he’s taken you out of your head, even if it’s temporary.

“He hit you in the dick,” —you whisper ‘dick’ like it’s insidious within these four walls— “‘cause he wanted pot? You should’ve pushed him off of the porch.”

“I would’ve but he fucking winded me.” He starts laughing again, your giggles contagious though you try to smother them with your hand. “It’s funny now, but it wasn’t funny at the time.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“He was five foot one. I’ve never felt that humble in my life, I told Wayne I was coming down with something and had the worst afternoon nap ever. Didn’t even get my milkshake.”

“No,” you mumble sympathetically. Your eyes widen. “Eds, I’m sorry, that’s not funny. He assaulted you–”

Eddie waves his hand at you. “He got in a cheap shot. I was fine. I’ll still have kids.”

You snort, “Thanks for the information.”

“I got him back for it, anyway.”

He pretends like that’s the end of that, like the story doesn’t go on and he has nothing to tell you. You wait raptly for him to explain but he gloats, knowing you're hooked.

You elbow him.

“What?” he asks. “Oh, you wanna know how I got revenge? You’re evil.”

“Less shame and more story,” you say.

“Alright. Are you ready? Here’s where it gets complicated.

“I’m at The Hideout listening to that new band that blazed through here a couple of months ago, Board Growth, or something? They’re incredible, the booze is cold, I’m tipsy and Gareth owes me anyway, I’m putting it all on his tab and he, seemingly, isn’t noticing. It’s great. Better if you hadn’t been on vacation again, what the fuck, but it’s good.

“And there he is. It’s the fucking Hawk. He’s looking down his nose at these young girls smooth-talking them. Or, he’s trying to smooth talk them, but it’s like watching a worm flirt with a praying mantis, okay, we all know who’s gonna lose.” Eddie’s knee rests against yours, your hand is on his thigh, he’s losing the thread of his story fast under the smell of your perfume and hair oil. “I knock back the rest of my drink, slick my hair like I’m James Dean and, in all my drunken intelligence, decide that this is the perfect moment for me to get him back.”

“I wasn’t on vacation.”

“What?”

“I only went once.” You’d gone for two days with some old friends. He remembers now, and rushes to fix the story.

“Why didn’t you come, then?” he asks, flipping the script. “You’re such a flake.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know when this was.”

“Stop bailing on me and ruining my stories,” he says, teasing.

“Okay, you’re hopped up on liquid courage and about to hit Jack in the dick,” you prompt.

“Right! I stroll up to Hawk and he’s instantly wriggly like the worm of a guy he is, and I say, hey Hawk, how’s it hanging?

“Maybe he’s just that stupid or maybe he thinks I’m putting out the olive branch but he actually starts telling me how he’s doing, and I’m looking at these girls as if to say, can you believe this guy? I cut him off, and I’m a loser, I’m not half as cool as I think I am but again I’m slightly incredibly inebriated. I’m making bad decisions.”

“Where’s your cafeteria bravado?” you ask.

“It’s worse than that. Imagine me at my most insufferable. I smile at the girls and I lean into Jack’s space, I’m laughing, I feel bad about what I’m gonna say before I’ve said it but I say it anyways. I lean right into his ear and tell him at full volume how sorry I was to hear about his recent bout of syphilis. I’m just so glad they caught it in time, man,” he says, imitating a past self.

You open your mouth. “And,’ Eddie says, jumping to finish, “so happy you could keep most of it, buddy.”

“Eddie…”

“I’m a bad person.”

“No,” you mumble, hiding your smile on his shoulder, your forehead a hair’s width from his chin. You’d laugh a storm any other day to make him feel good, whether you think he’s funny or not, but today all you can manage is a hand on his leg. “You’re not a bad person, he deserved it… fucking hit you…”

The story isn’t true.

He made it up. Right here right now. He just spent five good minutes of your lives spinning an outrageously awful story with poor jokes and one glaring plot hole, for what?

This is hard. Making you cry, begging you to see what a doctor has to say, playing grown up in a grown ups body. Eddie thought you’d get to be kids forever. He never imagined what would come after school, and then suddenly it is after, and everything’s an ugly boring mess except for you (and Wayne, god bless), and now you’re sick. The waiting room you’re in, the road here, the look on your face when he told you what he wanted from you. It’s all… heartbreakingly monotonous.

One doctor's appointment, he whispered across pillows. Late and neither of you asleep. The sound of cicadas outside and Wayne’s deep snore a room away.

You nodded and closed your eyes, and you didn’t say another word all night.

What’s the worth in a made up story? What good will it do? You have to see the doctor eventually. Distraction, Eddie thinks pleadingly. Relief. He just wants to give you as much relief as he can from what’s happening with the only thing he feels he has ��his quick mouth.

He stares at your hand on his thigh. He wills himself to raise his own and put it on top of yours. He channels his thoughts, like this is telekinesis and not his own body, move. Move your hand, he says to himself.

It's a millimetre out of his pocket when they call your name.

You shoot up like a stalk and smile at the nurse who's come to collect you. You don't look jittery anymore, but there's a distinct doe in the headlights look about you as Eddie watches you trail down the hallway into the doctor's office. You look back at him three times, and each time is a whip.

As soon as the door closes, he bends forward in his chair and heaves a sickly sigh. His nausea has him coughing into his hand and praying he doesn't throw up here. If they want you to go somewhere today, like a pharmacy for temporary medication, or the emergency room for a CAT scan, he can't be covered in his own vomit.

A child babbles across the room. Eddie peeks at her through his fingers. She's pale with dark hair, much like Eddie himself, and her mom is the same. The kid's mom doesn't look like Eddie's mom besides that, but seeing her here in a hospital makes it impossible not to think of her. She's been on his mind so much lately. Her birthday is at the end of the month, and it isn't the same —she'd been in hospital for three brutally short days— but you're being here is like peeling the scab off of a wound he thought healed years ago.

Mom was everything. She was willowy and beautiful and tough as a board. She was smart, she knew everything; how to make microwave pizza taste gourmet, how to make whistles out of blades of grass, how to make a bad day feel brand new.

He wished he could say that he has her every detail committed. The cruellest, most terrifying thing about the people we love is that they aren't permanent, not their life and not what they leave behind. Over time, his mom has turned from an aching spear of love to a dappling of sunlight through the branches of an old tree — scattered. Beautiful and impossible and a thousand pieces in his memory, slowly fading over time.

There'll come a day where Eddie can't remember her. He knows that. He knows his frame of reference for who she was will reduce down to her photographs, and the nearly empty bottle of her perfume under his bed.

Eddie is haunted by her absence everyday.

There is no corporeal apparition of her at his shoulder, no cool chill running down his spine, but he's haunted all the same. It's why he won't accept your ghost. It's why he can't. He knows what it feels like to have someone with him who isn't really here, and he won't let you suffer through the same thing. He'll protect you from this, from her.

Even if it means he has to take you to doctors offices an hour out of town. If he has to bargain for it, and make you cry at work, and– and fucking drive this wedge between you, he'll do it.

He needs you to be okay.

He can't think about his mom anymore. He loves her, he misses her, but if he thinks about her too much he won't be able to stand up.

Eddie sits up, takes a lungful of air in, and waits. He senses you as you come back down the hall, grateful for your dry cheeks, and your small, small smile. Tiny but irrefutably there.

He stands up and holds out his hand. You don't take it, but you walk into his side so your hips are pressed together and he falls into step with you.

"So…" he says.

"She asked if I was getting enough sleep," you say, "and I told her I was. I explained everything to her like I promised I would, even– even… I told her everything. And um, she seemed very open."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, she– OK." You frown.

"Listen, you don't have to tell me if you don't want to. I know I practically forced you to come, but it's still your life, and you can have privacy from me–"

"It's not that. I just don't want to cry in here."

He puts his hand on your shoulder, his arm folded against your shoulder. You don't speak until you're out of the doctor's office and weaving through people as you walk toward the parking lot.

"She thinks I'm having auditory hallucinations. And that it could be an initial symptom of schizophrenia, or something else. She said it usually starts around my age, and–"

"Hey, it's okay," he says, though internally he feels as distressed as you're beginning to look, horrified by your crumpling chin and wringing hands. "It's okay. You don't have to say it if it's going to upset you."

"It might not be anything," you say, shaking your head. "She said the human brain is complicated, and sometimes stuff like this just happens. She wants to, uh," —your voice twists up very high— "see me again after I've had some sleep to see if it's persisting."

Eddie nods. He's fucking glad that the doctor took you seriously, grateful for her advice and her reluctance to misdiagnose you with something. It's not as though Eddie wants you to be experiencing hallucinations. But he thinks you are, and he needs help looking after you if that’s the case.

"Did she prescribe anything?" he asks.

"A week's worth of ambien. She didn't really want to, but I told her about, you know, you coming over to make sure I'm okay, and I know that was because of the gh–" You bite your lip. You're shaking like a leaf. "Well, she thought it was you making sure I'm not an insomniac. Which I'm not."

"I'm really proud of you," he says quietly. "I know you don't want this to be happening. I get it, I promise. I don't want it either, but this is a good thing."

He can see you regaining some composure. You smile a little, and you offer him your prescription paper. "You know it only costs seven dollars for seven ambien?"

"I could get you some for free."

Your laugh startles him. "No, I don't think so."

"I'm not offering. Just saying. I know a guy."

"No, you knew a guy who knows a guy who could get me something ridiculous, like a percocet."

"I'd never give you anything like that."

"I know." You come to a halt. The cloudy weather paints you in shadow. "I'm sorry this is happening."

"You're what?" He doesn't let you answer moving to stand in front of you. "Why would you apologise for this?"

"Because it's my head," you say stiffly.

"You didn't want this to happen. And– and it might not be happening at all. You'll try the ambien, and you'll take care of yourself, and we'll go from there. I wasn't trying to scare you… I wish I could brush it off, you know? I wish I could believe that you…" He takes you in. Your skirt and jacket are swaying in the cold wind. You look one sharp shove from falling over. "I get that it isn't like me, to not believe in the fantasy–"

You save him from his miserable attempt at placating you.

"I know."

He licks his lips.

"I love you," Eddie says as he starts toward the van again. "Let's go fill your prescription, and then I'll get you whatever you want to eat."

"Boys are so weird about I love you," you say, following. The light behind your eyes makes your teasing worth it. "You say it like you chewed on it first. Struggled to get that one out, did you?"

It's not your best insult. Neither of you are exactly on form.

"Just so hard to say it to you."

You take what you perceive to be an insult on the chin. Only Eddie knows there's a sliver of truth in what he's said.

You generously let him help you into the passenger seat. He's hopeful that your mood's improved until that wretched frown worms its way across your pretty mouth once again. You wait for him to round the hood and start the van before you explain yourself.

"There's a support group. For anybody who's, um, hearing voices. Schizophrenics, manic depressives…"

"Is that something you want to go to?"

"I don't know. Can I be honest with you?"

"Yeah. Absolutely."

"I don't know if I believe that it isn't real. I know that's the point. The definition of hallucination is, uh… an experience involving the apparent perception of something not present, and so… it makes sense. My ghost isn't there, even if I think she is, so I must be hallucinating, but Eddie," —you shrink in on yourself— "I have this feeling that won't go away."

He loves you. You're terrified.

He's already guessed what you're going to ask for.

"Can we try again? Please? I'll take the meds and I'll go to the support group, but in the meantime, could you please come back and just– just listen. Maybe it takes a while for her to talk to someone else." You scrub your face. "Fuck. I sound fucking crazy."

Eddie squeezes the wheel. "Don't say that. Don't say it like you've done something wrong. You didn't do anything wrong."

People say crazy but they mean sick. They ridicule what they can't understand.

He doesn't understand, but he wants to. He says, "If you want me to, we'll try again. I'll come over."

You look up from your palms. He notices almost habitually that they're smaller than his. When you were young teenagers there'd been a short period of time where you'd been the taller one, with bigger hands and a bigger smile. Lately, you've seemed small.

"Really?" you ask hopefully.

"You came here 'cause I asked you to. It was hard for you." He turns his eyes to the road and turns the key until the Beauville's engine is thrumming with life. "I'd do a lot of shit for you, superstar. Like, anything. If you need me to keep trying then I will. And you'll–"

"I'll keep trying too," you promise.

It's all he can ask for.

—

The sky is all kinds of grey. It stretches like a sheet from one corner of your eye to the other, darker toward each limit of your vision, a gradual decay into colourlessness toward the very top where the sun fights hardest to burst through an impossible expanse of clouds. They seem thick as marshmallo, but where they begin is hard to decipher.

Your eyes feel sore. You imagine a hand reaching for you, hitting you, pressing its cold knuckles to each bruised eye socket to calm the raging ache behind them. You hadn't expected to feel this way. It isn't the first time you have, but to feel so intensely unreal while there's someone still with you is new. You lean your weight against the sill and let your arms swing from the open window ledge, knuckles scraping the scratchy brick of the house's exterior walls, instantly chilled by the weather.

A black band of birds burst across the sky somewhere leftwards. The pitch and tumble with no discernible formation. They're too far to hear. You imagine the flap of wings, their buoyed cawing, screeching to one another as they swim between pylon cables and their brothers spread wings.

"What kind of birds do you think they are?" Eddie asks.

You feel his weight settle into the ottoman beside you. You'd dragged it to the window with tired arms. You haven't felt up to anything since you got home, though Eddie's promise should've restored a little hope. He's going to keep trying to meet your ghost. You'll have to hope you don't get worse before that.

You know, starkly, that you aren't having auditory hallucinations. You know, starkly, that your ghost had written to you in your missing notebook.

But maybe that's the nature of your hallucination. A night bent over the pocket dictionary had ended as this one begins, with the crushing realisation that you cannot trust what you know. To put it plainly, you're afraid that you're mentally unwell. Terrified of how it’s going to change your life, the people in it.

Eddie's afraid too.

Your orange bottle of pills glares like a flame to your right where it stands waiting for you on the nightstand. Eddie's made up your bed for the two of you. He could sleep in the guest room, and he never has.

"I don't know," you say hoarsely. Your voice sounds as you feel, like something has its hooks in you, and it's dragging you down, down…

"They're too big to be pigeons."

"They're too dark. They're crows," you guess, tracing an outlier as he skirts the crowd of his family and spirals up into the air.

Like a party trick, you expect him to disappear, or explode, or rocket up into the cotton clouds and out of view. He slows as he falls, and then he dives back toward the main swarm of birds as they migrate toward the horizon.

There's a feeling brewing in you that you don't like.

If you can't trust your own perception. If real isn't real. If you need someone to sit beside you and distinguish real from fake, if… if you're sick.

If you're sick, what does that mean?

You search for something in the air to hold onto.

Eddie hums softly, his hand pushing out into the static as he points toward the glowing clouds. "Sun's going down slow."

You raise your hand and wrap it around his. It isn't enough. You force your fingers between the gaps of his, just a little longer, thicker, solid, and lock him in. He feels real. That's the key. As far as you know, hallucinations don't carry that far. Bugs crawling over your skin and through the strands of your hair, an itch you can't scratch, a drop of rain from a concrete ceiling, the brain can recreate these things. But the exact width of Eddie's palm or the feeling of his calluses against your loveline, your lifeline, and the heartbeat that bumps against the meat of your thumb when you focus, that's impossible. That's a level of precision the human brain can't find.

Right?

Eddie curls his thumb around yours. You can feel his gaze on your cheek like a breath blown between parted lips. You turn toward him, and you catalogue every little mar or mark, every fine hair. His wrinkles, his textured jaw. The strands of a fallen curl come apart near his eye, grown out bangs kissing the highest point of his cheek.

You're panicking. There's a thumping behind your eyes.

"I don't know if you look right," you say.

"I look very right. I'm extremely handsome," he says.

You hold his hand out of the window, worried you'll drop it, and it'll fall.

If Eddie were at home tucked into his double bed a mile away, she would've talked to you by now. Your breath shortens as the meaning behind that thought solidifies.

She only comes when you're alone. Why do you think that is?

She's not real.

Is that how it works? Can hallucinations, auditory, visual, or otherwise, take place in the company of others? You know next to nothing. Maybe they aren’t so common with loved ones standing guard.

You push your head out of the window again and look down at the flat, dying grass in the backyard, a yellowing carpet of bluegrass. Bluegrass is prominent because it can grow anywhere, like mould. With all the rain these past few days, the grass should've livened into a plush and solid green, like the lawns in the southern side of Hawkins where the rich people lavish in sprinklers and gardeners alike. It remains rumpled.

Eddie rubs the back of your hand. It's far from the closest you've ever been. There have been nights you spent unawares in his arms, waking with your face tucked into his neck, so embarrassed you couldn't look at him afterward. But it's the most intimate touch you've ever endured. The whorls of his fingerprint embossing itself into your hand, a quarter circle that doesn't cease. Time feels brief and unsteady.

Eddie must realise you're having a bad moment. He shuffles closer to you, your arms twined, his hair tickling your shoulders. It snaps you back, in a way, with its softness.

"Let's go to bed," he says when the sky's more charcoal than light.

You're cold. You follow. You latch your hand in his and he doesn't say a word, closing and locking your window with one hand, pulling the sheets of your bed back deftly for you to climb in. You slide across to the outermost side and he follows, leaning over you to pull the sheets to your chin.

He stays hovering there.

He holds very still.

"Everything's going to be okay," he whispers.

"What if it isn't?"

"It will be, you…" he trails off. He keeps your hand in his, but he plants his elbow on the other side of you, like a lover about to share sweet nothings, his face so, so close. "You'll be okay, no matter what happens."

"I wish she'd told me more," you say.

"The doctor?" He draws a small, careful line across your cheek with his index finger. "Sweetheart, we'll find out everything there is to find."

"I want to know how scared I should be. Because this feels like torture."

"You don't have to be scared." Eddie smiles, and as far as you can tell, though you're having trouble trusting yourself, it's one of his genuine smiles. "Why do you think I'm here, huh? It's not to watch as something bad happens."

You lift your chin. He's too close to look at both eyes at once: you have to choose, and you can't. Your irises dance back and forth between them, shuddering in indecision.

"You'll look after me," you say, not a question.

He turns his hand, stroking down the length of your cheek with the backs of his fingers. They feel much softer than the undersides, the flat of his nails like silk. Your eyes burn as you free your hand from his, hoping he'll be kind with that one, too.

"I'll look after you."

You tuck your hands behind the trim of his waist and, knowing you shouldn't, let them feed into his shirt. You draw a shaking line through the downy soft blanketing the small of his back until your finger is skipping up the jutting bumps of his spine. It's like climbing a staircase by touch alone. You wonder if anyone else had ever done this to him, if they ever wanted to, and if he'd let them.

Eddie releases a breath. Warmth feathers along your skin.

His hand strokes down to your neck, resting at your collar. Half a second and his petting returns, the side of his thumb brushing your soft jawline tenderly.

He must feel you swallow. His pupils travel down the whites of his eyes like the steady descent of the setting sun.

"I can't," he says softly.

Can't what? you want to ask. You don't know if you should. You know the answer, but does he?

"You're not all here," he says, hand paused. He cups your cheek, holds you in place. You hadn't been moving. "But when you are, I could. I could."

"I don't know if I…" you drift off. How can you explain it to him? I don't know if I'll feel better any time soon.

His eyes move sideways, as if the instruction for your reassurance lay somewhere in the apple of your cheek.

You don't want him to kiss you if it's a fixative meant to soothe your rampant nerves. You want him to kiss you for a hundred reasons, but that's not one of them. You're not sure he wants to kiss you beyond that.

He would, you realise. Kiss you, if he thought you wanted it badly enough. That's a lot of power to have over someone, more than you want over him, and you can't ask him to. You look away from his eyes and search upward, trembling hands and the starts of your forearms pressed to his back, hiking his shirt up one inch at a time.

He sits up agonisingly slowly, in the same way the sky has fallen from light to dusk; inchingly, so as to escape notice, until suddenly you can't feel the emanating heat of his chest against yours anymore, and the only light inside of your room is a yellow band sliced by the ajar door.

Your hands fall back. One under the sheets, one over. Eddie sits where you lay, his hands at the crook of your elbows. He gives symmetrical, superficial massages to each.

The life has been sapped from you, as if it were tied to the sun sunk beyond the horizon. A brutal fatigue sets in.

"You should take your ambien," he murmurs.

"Okay."

The eye tattooed on his arm seems to follow you as he reaches for your seven dollar bottle. He twists off the cap and shakes a single pill out for you, and you watch as the lines of his arms start to blur.

You take your pill, lying firmly in the middle of your pillow, and wonder if now would be an appropriate time to burst into panicked tears.

"I'll look after you," Eddie repeats after a while. Or maybe he doesn't. The weight of the day and the helping kick of your medication pulls you under. He lays down next to you carefully, his hand searching under the covers for yours.

And there, standing in the corner of the room, is your ghost. Real. Stunningly, terrifyingly real.

You can’t open your mouth wide enough to warn him.

˚ʚ♡ɞ��

end of part one! thank you so much for reading, I really hope that you enjoyed! this was my baby and such a labour of love in April and I’m so happy now to share it :D if you have the time, please consider reblogging, it means so much to me and I’d love to know your thoughts on the story so far <3<3

#eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson x fem!reader #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson oneshot #eddie munson scenario #eddie munson drabble #eddie munson fic #eddie munson fanfiction #stranger things fanfiction #stranger things #stranger things fic #stranger things x reader

2K notes · View notes

qierxing · 3 days

Text

Head empty just yandere Heartslabyul as your imperial harem members

yan!poly!Heartslabyul x Reader

tw/cw: dub//con, gender-neutral reader but referred with masculine terms, drugging, manipulation, implied somnophilia, political machinations

—

you were raised with the expectation that you would shoulder the crown and rule over your people, justly and fairly. because of that, by the time you were crowned, your mindset compared to others your age was mature beyond what was considered normal.

you would be lying if you weren't bitter. Although you've long accepted that no one else could be trusted to rule this land and its people, you often wondered what your life would be like if there were no etiquette lessons and sword practices consuming your childhood.

In the end, it's all foolish dreams. You sit on your glittering golden throne and watch apathetically as the imperial court cheers and raises a toast to the new royal blood.

You were prepared for the responsibilities of a monarch, but what you weren't prepared for was your vassals' obnoxious nagging.

Your kingdom's tradition and laws have long allowed for polygamy, and your previous ancestors were known for their large harems. That day, you finally learned why: to ensure that royal blood would still be carried on, no matter what.

it's distasteful to you. you try to ignore your vassals all talking your ears off about potential consorts and lovers. but it's only so long before you crack.

Riddle Rosehearts was the first one to be by your side.

Not by choice. Duchess Rosehearts was the one who brought up her darling son to your vassals first, who then presented him to you. You would've turned them away, if not for the boy's eyes. Something in those stormy gray eyes makes your heart ache. His mother clutches her son's shoulder in a vice like grip that goes far beyond parental worry. Perhaps he too knows what it feels like to have no control over his life.

And so reluctantly, you let him join you as a consort.

It's not bad. Rather, he's so intelligent and diligent that you often ask him for help and advice on the kingdom's affairs, knowing that his strictness with himself and others provides a valuable impartial view that you can hardly find anywhere else. Besides, even if he is too stiff and formal at times, you appreciate his aid in paperwork that threatens to drown you.

in fact, he's so dedicated to carrying out his duty, that you find him nearly unrobed on your bed. Seven above, that nearly gave you heart palpitations. As attractive as he is, you have no intention of forcing the boy to give up his virginity against his will, even if he is married to you.

you explain this to him as patiently as you can, even when his face scrunches up in hurt and confusion, asking if he wasn't enough–but you shut that down immediately. He is more than enough, and he isn't obligated to do anything he doesn't want to, even if his mother taught him otherwise. the revelation shakes his mind, causing his walls and views to crumble before him in the following days. you would like to think he became less stiff as he realized his true worth.

That is when an unexpected addition to your harem happened.

Actually, it was completely by accident. Your servants had often brought you various snacks and sweets during your work, as you were infamous for being extremely cranky without the motivation of good food. When Riddle, of all people, brings you a strawberry tart while you’re in the middle of some particularly grueling financial budget papers, it gives you pause.

It's not that you didn't trust him. It’s just…this is the boy who refused to eat more than the healthy amount of sugar. Even if you offered him various pastries and cookies, he always shunned them, saying it wouldn’t be right for him to consume them.

So you spear a fork into the tart and bring it up to your mouth. When the bite meets your tongue, you swear your soul ascends to heaven. The taste is absolutely indescribable: the crust was flaky and light and the filling was sweet and creamy. This has got to be the best dessert you’ve ever tasted in your short life.

When you inquire Riddle about where he had gotten his hands on the tart, he shyly looks away from you and mumbles something under his breath. Not wanting to pressure him, you decide to let it go with a request to send your highest compliments to the patisserie.

Since then, he is the one bringing you various treats, all unbelievably delicious tasting, each time you’re stuck among paperwork and meetings. You’re grateful, even if it does make you wonder who this mysterious patisserie is. You’re not particularly familiar with every kitchen staff member, but you would think that you would be aware of such talent residing in your walls.

The truth finally comes to light when Riddle bursts into your office one day, in tears and hyperventilating, as he collapses in your arms. Alarmed, you quickly try to make sense of his babbling words.

It turns out that the very patisserie wasn’t in your kitchens, as you thought. No, they were humble commoner folk who ran a modest bakery in the shopping district. Riddle had been secretly visiting the bakery whenever he had the time to buy their desserts and to visit his friend, the owner’s son. Problem is, his mother had found out and was furious that her son would debase himself and his reputation like that.

Trey Clover stands behind his parents with wide, frightened eyes as Duchess Rosehearts shrieks on about how she’ll shut down the establishment herself for daring to corrupt her son and so forth. It’s rather annoying that she would go this far in the name of parental love–thankfully she stops screaming once she catches sight of you.

For once, you’re thankful for the absolute authority of imperial power. Duchess Rosehearts begrudgingly draws back when you block her attempt to defame the bakery. With a disappointed glare searing over the rest of you, she storms out of the bakery, door slamming shut behind her with a deafening crack.

You watch with mild interest as Riddle rushes forward and envelopes Trey in a tight hug that nearly knocks the tall man over. Despite the fact that Trey should be the one more distraught, he comforts Riddle with an ease that is almost suspiciously, dare you say, reminiscent of fondness. You look away before your thoughts dwell on it for too long.

Of course, it’s not all over. Trey’s parents kowtow at your feet with desperate gratitude, even if you beg them to stand up and raise their heads. As you glance over at Riddle in Trey’s arms, thoughts begin to arrange themselves into a proposal.

You and Riddle both know that Duchess Rosehearts would not stop here. Your presence was only a mere temporary hurdle in her plans to bring down Clover Patisserie, and there was no telling what she would do next. So, you propose something nearly unheard of to them.

Your vassals will throw an absolute fit if you openly sponsor their bakery and provide protection without something in exchange. It leaves a bitter taste in your mouth, but this is the only way that Trey and his family would be safe.

Surprisingly, he accepts the proposal with grace, becoming the second consort of your harem that very day.

He inquires if there’s anything he should be aware of for his duties, making you laugh raucously and Riddle blush to the roots of his strawberry hair. You wave him off, telling him he only needs to do the things he loves and to bring you more of those tarts that cured your stress during your work times. The smile he gives is radiant and you wonder how it is that Riddle managed to find someone who makes the sun pale in comparison.

The next day, Riddle tells you between paperwork that he gifted Trey his own kitchen to bake and cook, and you nod in approval. It’s too easy to tease him over his obvious favoritism toward the baker, and it only makes you want to bully him more when his face becomes tomato red.

The annual royal banquet comes up and it dawns on both you and Riddle that Trey will have to present himself to the feral noble masses who are itching to know who this new addition is. The three of you are thrown into a hurricane of preparations, not just for the banquet, but to prepare poor Trey, who has never attended such an elite event, for the troubles ahead.

It’s certainly not for naught, you think, as you rake your eyes over your consorts. Their beauty outshines everything, in your personal opinion. When you make the introductory speech, you’re well aware that the audience in front of you is not just dazzled by you, but rather the two handsome men dutifully hovering behind you.

You hope that Riddle is enough of a buffer when the nobles inevitably swarm them with excited and curious eyes. As much as you would like to help, you were stuck with your own battles of greeting various guests and entertaining those who were trying to butter you up.

The Diamond family catches your eye first.

It wasn't something positive, per say. But it is quite hilarious as the Marquis introduces you to his family: his wife, his two elder daughters and his only heir and son–only to find the aforementioned son missing. He’s left stuttering in shame even if you don’t particularly mind. It would’ve just been another boring greeting, but at that moment, his eyes dilates in fear, and when you follow his gaze, you see why.

Cater Diamond is currently flirting with Trey. And very openly, at that.

The sight should make you furious, and yet you nearly burst out laughing. How could there be anyone this daring? Surely the young man would know better than to try hitting on an imperial escort–if he was aware that is, of the man being one.

You decide to be the merciful mediator, because Riddle is nearly about to blow a gasket by Trey’s side and Trey looks like he’s too flustered to appropriately reject the advances of the eldest Diamond son.

“Lord Diamond, I do believe your father is looking for you.” His face is full of surprise at the image of you grinning at him in amusement when you gently break the awkward atmosphere.

After he leaves in a hurry, your two consorts apologize profusely for letting the flirtations happen. You reassure them that it was fine, that whatever they liked to do was not meant to be dictated under your actions. However, their faces still remain guilty and dismayed, as though you had reprimanded them instead.

The encounter remains in your mind as an entertaining memory. So much so, that when your vassals pester you again on adding another member to your harem, your mind immediately goes to sparkling jade green eyes and vivid orange hair.

If anything it was on a whim. Of course, you consulted both Trey and Riddle before sending the invitation, and they both agreed, even if Riddle looked much grumpier than usual. You hardly believed that the proposal would be answered favorably; after all, you’ve learned from recent gossip that Cater Diamond was a rather well known playboy. You doubt that kind of man would enjoy being tied to an imperial harem, even if it was under your lax control.

Perhaps that is why it’s so surprising that when he finally is in front of you, he acquiesces to your proposal with no hesitation at all. You ask in disbelief if he was sure of his decision, and he affirms it with no distaste in his voice. He notes your incredulous face, giving a cheeky grin in response.

Apparently he's been wanting to separate himself from his family for a while. The reason for his scandalous affairs were only attempts at getting his family to send him away, but he never succeeded. He says that your proposition finally gave him the freedom to be away from his family. While you don't want to pry further, it confuses you on how the Diamond family managed to raise such an eccentric young man.

Regardless, he becomes the third member of your harem. There were some small tensions between him and Riddle, but thankfully they resolved rather quicker than you expected–it seems that although Cater acted rather laid back, he has skills in organization and networking that even Riddle had to begrudgingly acknowledge. Ask him on the most recent gossip on the nobles and he's sure to provide you a list alphabetized on the latest trends around the capitol. Besides, it seems him and Trey get along quite well—too well, in a way. You don’t think you’ve seen a pair more prone to exchanging sensual, fleeting touches. Well, that’s not your problem.

You pray that nothing more eventful comes up in the meantime. Trey could only supply you with so much cake and cookies before you simply keeled over from sugar intake.

It seems the Seven were not on your side.

The Knights' jousting tournament was something that slipped your mind. When it gets brought up on the agenda in a meeting you silently curse. In the racket of you ascending to the throne and tending to your harem, you had neglected a big aspect to your royal life.

Personal guards. Normally, you should've had personally assigned soldiers that would accompany you for protection, but you've kept putting it off since you were able to protect yourself just fine with your abilities. And hiring new people, for any reason, was always going to be a long chore of vetting, paperwork, and tests.

The worst part is that Riddle and Trey joined in on the nagging. Going on about how they worried for your safety as if you weren't already trained in self defense and swordplay since your childhood days. Cater just shrugs when you look at him desperately for help and winks while running off to who knows where. Traitor.

Whatever. The sooner you pick, the sooner they'll get off your back.

Somehow this year's tournament is rather disappointing. Your three consorts give commentary throughout the matches, but it cannot stop the boredom starting to overtake you. Trey discreetly offers you a cup of wine and you take it gratefully.

The announcer signals the start of a match, with Ace Trappola and Deuce Spade taking a stand against each other. You hear Riddle faintly murmuring to your side about how they look rather young to be in a tournament like this. But you're rather absorbed in their intense fight, to the point where Cater teases you, asking if your taste included younger men. you roll your eyes and tell him to be quiet.

The fight ends in a spine tingling draw. Both men have their swords knocked out of their hands, but they’re still glaring at each other with such raw passion, that it’s fascinating. You know you will hardly meet any others that could catch your attention.

The end of the tournament ends with the roar of the crowd shaking the colosseum and the boisterous victory announcement. The two of them weren’t finalists, but that matters little to you. The victor was impressive. But they weren’t what you wanted.

“Ace Trappola, at your service, your majesty.”

“Deuce Spade, at your command, your majesty!”

The two greet you with enthusiastic fervor that has you chuckling in amusement. They are just the breath of fresh air you need.

“Starting from today, you two will be my personal guards.”

They’re left with gaping mouths at your bold statement. Your consorts, too, are sputtering at your side. Riddle is already trying to convince you to reconsider. Trey is gently trying to ask if you’re really sure about this. Even Cater, for all his light-hearted banter, chokes an incredulous scoff, covering his mouth with a fist.

Yes, there’s always the threat of treason, and they might be slackers, but if you were going to have to employ someone, you’d rather it be someone entertaining.

Regardless, the two are knighted and become your guards in record time.

For several days, a persistent headache haunts you with how much Ace loved riling up Riddle for no reason, or Deuce somehow managing to blunder his way into destroying several pieces of priceless antique furniture. It takes only two days for Riddle to kneel at your side, begging you to please just switch guards, these two were ridiculously incompetent and not worthy to serve under you, but you only pat his head and send him off back to his chambers to rest.

Trey and Cater were arguably more agreeable, but you don’t miss their tired looks whenever they had to clean up after Ace pissing off a passing noble or Deuce somehow causing a fire when tripping over an iron poker. It makes you feel guilty, of course, but you still cling on. Call it stubbornness but you didn’t want to let go of the two. It was selfish, you know, and monarchs could never afford to be selfish, but was it so wrong for you to indulge in the only pair who seemed to disregard your status?

The answer came one hot summer evening, when you’re on your balcony trying to unwind. Tonight was the usual designated night to share a bed with your consorts, but you deigned to postpone it since you weren’t in the mood nor did you want to force the other three to deal with your sour attitude. It’s halfway through your third glass of wine that you were a rustle, then after starting your fourth, you hear footsteps, to which you turn and just narrowly miss a dagger aiming for your heart. The blade instead rips a gash through your left shoulder, causing you to grunt in pain, alcohol thankfully dulling most of the throbbing sensations. Unfortunately, your mind is hardly clear enough to have a steady stance to fight back properly, let alone see the assassin’s face.

You can’t believe you were going to die pathetically like this. If this was going to happen anyway, you should’ve at least finished your glass of wine—

Shouts, then sounds of clanging steel, and a blur rushed into your sight, tackling the hooded assassin and knocking him down. Deuce’s familiar blue hair registers in your blurry vision, holding down the assassin, while Ace’s flaming hair and eyes come closer in view, shouting something that keeps fizzling out to nothing. Your world tilts to its side suddenly, a loud buzzing in your ears, and everything goes black.

When you come to, you find Riddle with swollen, tear-crusted eyes hugging your bedsheets, while Trey exhaustedly sits behind him next to a wash basin and several empty vials. Cater was out cold on the chaise beside him, several papers littering his body. It seems that the assassin was quite thorough, as they made sure that if their sharp blade didn’t manage to end your life, then the quick acting poison laced upon the steel would. Ironically, according to the herbalist and doctor, because you drank a whole wine bottle, the alcohol managed to slow it down somehow just long enough for you to get treatment. A miracle, indeed.

For once, the room is no longer filled with tension with all five of the men together, but a genuine sense of relief. You give the two of your knights soft smiles and a sincere thank you which makes their faces flush like a ripe strawberry. Your escorts don’t protest, mirroring the same gratefulness in their faces.

Something changes after that night.

Of course, you’re extremely glad that Riddle is no longer blowing his top off after Ace goads him about being a stick in the mud, but since when did Ace get into pet names with Riddle? Rosebud? The nickname makes you gag internally at how corny it is. Not to mention that Riddle…doesn’t mind being called that?! You watch in disbelief as he preens at the compliment from your knight, trying not to give away your incredulousness.

Okay…whatever, at least they’re getting along?

Deuce shows up with your slice of cake with a beaming glow that has you taken aback as you accept the offering. Ace mutters about how Trey must’ve spoiled him again behind you and it takes everything inside you to not spit out your cake mid-bite. Again? Trey was kind, you’ll give him that, and he did tend to baby Riddle and you but—

On second thought, perhaps this wasn’t out of left field.

Cater titters knowingly when you slump in bonelessly into the lounge next to him trying on new earrings and bangles.

“And what ails my dearly beloved king?” You choke on your spit before glaring at him. He giggles, dangly silver drops chiming in tune with the laughter.

“Not you too…” It felt like the whole day you felt like you were background to some of the most insufferable flirting, and with your escorts and knights, no less. You raise an eyebrow at the shiny, glittering jewelry scattered on the vanity in front of the man. All imperial escorts did have an allowance, but you don’t remember Cater buying anything like this nor gifting him such things. When you inquire about it, Cater gives you a smirk and a wink.

”Rido and the younger ones have been quite sweet lately.” The sentence makes you nearly fall off the lounge. He chortles and blows you a mock kiss with no shame as you sear him with another heated glare.

The way they started interacting starts making you feel self-conscious and…embarrassingly enough, left out. Which is such a foolish thought. Of course, who would in their right mind love the person who tied their lives to them, romantically and sexually? And even though they were in such a situation, the fact they all loved each other was a blessing, wasn’t it? How many history lessons did you have where the monarch’s harem wasn’t full of in-fighting? That meant more prosperity and stability political wise, and there wouldn’t be any trouble between you…

Yet, your heart clenches at the thought of Trey’s smile directed at Cater, of Riddle gently caressing Deuce’s head, and Ace slinging an arm around Deuce…none of that affection could ever be for you.

And it’s best that way. Your father’s voice echoes distantly in your mind. You watched him solemnly on his deathbed as he implored you to not make the same mistakes he did, before his breathing stilled, and his hand lay limp in yours.

Yes, perhaps it was better this way.

Still, your thoughts are still wandering that you barely jolt back to present to a cabinet meeting looking expectantly at you.

“Pardon, could you repeat that?”

Riddle watches in worry as a dark shadow crosses your face as the demand for your harem to grow is conveyed. He coughs, causing the members to turn to him instead.

”If that’s the case,” he states with no hesitation, “then I might have some candidates in mind.”

You turn to him with the same expression as the other cabinet members. It drops to shock at Riddle’s suggestion.

As much as you wanted to oppose it, there wasn’t really a good reason to. You sat with your arms crossed as Riddle explained the proposal to your very two personal knights. Ace and Deuce exchange looks, and something between them is communicated before they turn to you and accept, despite your hope they wouldn’t.

And so, your harem became five.

You put your foot down after that. It was already enough to have your heart cracked into pieces with the knowledge you could never have their love. You don’t think it could handle another.

So you tuck your heart away as you smile with them over dinner, bantering over whether flamingos can play croquet or dancing with them at various balls, heart racing as the chandelier lit their face with a warmth you’ve never seen before. If it means you won’t get hurt or distracted, then that’s all you could ask for.

One fateful day, a letter out of numerous piles is hand delivered by Cater and changes your entire world.

It’s sealed with the crest of the fairest queen in the seven realms, meaning only one person could have sent this—Vil Schoenheit. Inside the elegant letter details a marriage proposal that listed all the benefits of taking him as a spouse. With all the pros listed out so cleanly, it was clear that the queen already knew that you couldn’t reject it so quickly.

But you must dissolve your harem. I do not take kindly to those who are not loyal to me and me only.

Something in your heart cracks at reading the condition. You should feel elated, somewhat, that you no longer had to drag around escorts for formality. And for the others, it meant being freed from a duty they were all forced into. But tears threaten to bubble over your eyelashes, and when Riddle asks you if you’re alright, one manages to overflow and trail down your cheek like a traitorous banner.

You don’t want to let them go.

Trey asks for the nth time if you’re sure you don’t want him to be with you or if you want some tea before you shoo him away. Ace and Deuce were meant to guard your chambers, but you wave them off too, saying you’ll find stand-ins for their places. Riddle and Cater were harder to shake off, but even they, too, were finally shut out when you closed your bedroom doors in their worried faces.

In the end, like a coward, you couldn’t bring yourself to tell them what that letter was, despite them asking nonstop about it. You’re not sure what to tell them either—that they were being discarded of their positions, no longer needed, but it wasn’t out of maliciousness—oh, who would even believe you?

When Vil graces your halls, the looks your escorts give you is enough to fill you with burning hot shame.

Cater doesn’t have his usual mischievous smile when he greets the queen, his emerald eyes sharpening to pin pricks whenever Vil speaks. You should’ve scolded him, reigned him back, but the guilt eating away at you made you hesitate. It didn’t help that Riddle, for all his perfect etiquette, suddenly seemed to forget what formalities and niceties were around the queen. The regal queen gives you a strange look as Trey sets down a plate of pastries a little too hard in front of him. Your gaze darts away as you sip the tea in front of you nervously, flanked by Ace and Deuce, their scowling faces too apparent.

They’re not dumb. Royals don’t visit other realms willy-nilly often. And it’s clear what Vil is here for.

The next day leaves you lethargic and sluggish, but you try to pull through, if only for appearances. While you stroll through the gardens with Vil, you try to avoid the burning stares of your guards behind you, no doubt dissecting each and every bit of your conversation with the queen. They pull you away as soon as the clock hits the afternoon hour, stating you had duties to attend to and so on and so forth. You excuse yourself and hope you don’t look like a mess to Vil, whose appearance is still immaculate despite the heavy winds and hot sun.

You try to focus on the stack of papers in front of you, despite the edges of your vision blurring and your head spinning. Taking the last sip of what remained of your tea, you squint uselessly at the words as Riddle murmurs something to your right about dinner and farewell banquets. The last thing you remember is the smell of chamomile and poppy flowers and the last document regarding international treaties.

By the time you wake up from your ill-timed nap, it was midnight and it had been decided that you were too unwell to properly receive the fairest queen, and thus Vil would be sent back, to come back another time. Cater explains with a tight smile while Riddle nods along. Behind them, Trey pours another cup of warm milk and offers it to you with a sympathetic smile. You take it, despite the guilt threatening to swallow you alive.

The days following are a haze of routines that you thought you once knew but couldn’t process. Nothing had changed, right? It seemed like you couldn’t recall what Trey made for you for yesterday’s tea, nor whenever Cater asked you for an opinion on his outfit. Before, you remembered the guards’ shifts to the letter, and yet, you completely forgot when Ace took over to guard you. Riddle smiles at you like usual, helping you with paperwork as usual, and yet…why couldn’t you remember what you had signed yourself?

Some nights you wake up to Trey or Cater, running their hands over you, despite the fact that they weren’t there before when you went to bed. Sometimes, it would be Ace and Deuce, bickering in hushed whispers before they shut up seeing you awake. And every time morning came and soreness set in your body, Riddle would greet your groggy face warmly, wiping away sweat and a strange stickiness that clung to your skin.

The thought of marriage is erased from your mind, and slowly, but surely, you can’t remember why you thought of breaking apart the men who treated you so fondly.

Perhaps you should have heeded the tales of those who ended up being puppet kings.

#yandere twisted wonderland x reader #yandere twisted wonderland #yandere twst #yandere heartslabyul #yandere reader insert #a wip i had in storage forever and didn't think i would ever get to finishing but here we are babeyyyyy #i am projecting har dbu talso mmmmmmmmmmmmheartslabyul rights

361 notes · View notes

word-wytch · 5 months

Text

Don't Stand So Close To Me — Chapter 16

Eddie x Teacher!Reader

Chapter 16/? 9k. Series Masterlist

✏︎ Frustrated by inconclusive endings, Eddie takes a seat behind the wheel.

✏︎ Series Summary: Forced to move back home to Hawkins after your fiancé cheats on you, you begin to fall in love again with an audacious 20 year old metalhead, only there’s one problem — he’s still in high school and you’re his English teacher.

While you struggle starting over in a place you never thought you would return, Eddie struggles feeling stuck in a place he can’t manage to leave — until you offer to help him. Of all the lessons learned, the most important are the ones you teach each other.

✏︎ Series CW: forbidden romance, slow burn, true love, smut (18+ mdni), internal conflict, student-teacher relationship, 10 year age gap, mutual pining, sexual tension, emotions, drama, angst, character development, happy ending :)

✏︎ Chapter CW: general angst, paternal angst, drug mention

Thursday, December 12th 1985

Before the first morning bell, Eddie gave Judy at reception his best impression of Wayne over the phone. He wasn’t totally lying, he was in fact, quite sick. Sick of all the taunting looks from meathead jocks. Sick of the way Ms. O’Donnell cleared her throat every five minutes. Sick of waking up so goddamn early. Sick of wasting his time. So after hanging up the phone, he stuffed a few essentials in his backpack and made for the door.

Like clockwork, Wayne always came home at around 8:10 AM, and though it would be far from the first time he’d skipped school, Eddie would rather not have to explain himself. Besides, he could use a change of scenery. There was no denying winter anymore, the ice he scraped off his windshield made sure to remind him. On a typical hooky day he would drive down to Lover’s Lake and toss open the rear doors, catch a breeze, light a joint, sit back and take in the ripples on the water and the rustling leaves. But that had all frozen over, so unless he intended to burn through his whole tank of gas, he would need to get creative.

That was how he found himself at Benny’s at 7:58 on a Thursday morning, setting up camp in a booth at the back of the restaurant. He ordered his usual — bacon, scrambled eggs, and a stack of pancakes in addition to white toast. Tossing his fourth emptied sugar packet beside the leaning tower of creamers, he sat back in the sticky, padded seat and took his first deep breath all morning.

The diner was bustling lowly, a handful of regulars perched on silver, spinning stools at the bar. From the frosted window leeching cool air beside him, he watched the funeral procession of headlights down Washington under a mournful sky. Just another day for the upright citizens of Hawkins, Indiana. From his cozy booth, Eddie sipped the top off his very full mug and smiled to himself.

Sprawling his belongings around the piping hot plates, he popped on his headphones, cracked open his monster manual, and got to work. The first hour flew by like his pencil across the graph paper. Between the bacon bits that had leapt from hand to page, a formidable lineup of foes was taking shape. Bottom line; the boys were in for a world of hurt tomorrow. He did his best to resign the grease to the flimsy napkins, but by the time he was finished, syrup tacked the gargoyle and gorgon pages together.

“Anything else I can grab for ya besides the check?” Sheri—according to her name tag—asked with a tired lean as she reached to clear his plates.

Eddie glanced down sheepishly at his freshly topped off mug. “I uh, think I might be staying for lunch.”

Sheri forced a hot pink smile, catching the fork with her decorated finger when it threatened to slide off the plate. “Y’ want me to get a room set up for you too?” she joked with a wink of her spidery lashes. “Just teasin’ sweetie. You just flag me down when you’re ready.”

Switching out his tapes, Eddie shut the cassette player and stared out the window as the men at the bar tossed their napkins and fished out their wallets. Snow was falling in lazy clumps, clinging to his windshield. Somewhere behind the overcast clouds, the sun was rising steadily. It was dismal, a fitting backdrop for the opening track of Black Sabbath’s Heaven and Hell. Of all the seasons, winter belonged to metal. Like it was made for cruising down a quiet, snow-covered street in the middle of nowhere. Made for drowning out Bing Crosby crooning from the speaker in the corner above him. Tinsel glittered on the small tree perched on a cloud of fake snow beside the cash register. Ornaments on swags swayed to the thump of footsteps passing. Eddie sighed and stared into the changing street lights.

Glancing at his watch he figured you were probably wrapping up the film with second period, knitting your brow and drawing your pen across the papers you were grading. He wondered what you’d think when the bell rang for fourth and you found his seat empty. Would you think he was upset with you? There was a small part of him that hoped so, and another part that hoped you would understand. After all, he was giving you the space you asked for, was he not?

Like a siren, your story—tucked between his notebook and the magazines he’d exhausted twice cover to cover—called to him. Cracking open the plastic spine, he dove headfirst into the typewritten pages.

For the whole narrow path into Rower’s End, Cybelle had sat in the front of the caravan, breathing the briny air unhindered by a barrier. Lazarus admired the brilliant fullness of her smile as she watched the seagulls soar overhead, under the clouds she had only ever seen from above. The sunlight had graced them then, beaming down in golden rays, glinting on the distant waves as they approached the sleepy seaside town.

Eddie could feel the corners of his mouth tug as Lazarus regaled Cybelle with a story of a time when he’d accidentally taken a crab home with him after spending a day at the beach, followed by an explanation of what a crab was. Cybelle seemed delighted with the prospect of seeing one, even more-so when he told her how he’d discovered the little hitchhiker when it pinched his rear in bed that night. Eddie noticed the way Cybelle leaned closer whenever Lazarus told stories, the way her hand came to shield her bare face with a giggle when he mentioned his rear. The way her delicate, copper fingers lingered over the soft skin of his forearm when she checked beneath his bandage. The wound was healing nicely — no sign of infection and not a thorn in sight. She warned that it might scar, but Lazarus did not appear concerned—rather the opposite actually—as if a strange part of him was pleased with the idea of having something to remember her by.

As they dipped over the final hill toward Rower’s End, Lazarus told her another story. A dream, rather, of a little cottage in Shantiglade with a full sized bed, and a garden, and a goose egg omelette big enough for two. A dream that would likely never come to pass. Cybelle seemed equally enchanted by it. Sitting back against the boxy, wooden seat of the caravan, she breathed in the salty air and imagined how good it would feel to do so every day. To experience the feeling of sand between her toes, of the ocean at her ankles, of propping her elbow against their shared kitchen table and gracing Lazarus with a naked smile before trying whatever an omelette was. It was good like this too — bumping along under a clear blue sky as Turnip plodded down the scarcely trodded path, watching the wind caress the wild grass and Lazarus’ even wilder curls, hearing his tales and his laughter.

Around the time he would be slumping into his desk in the back of your classroom, the bell dinged over the door of the restaurant. Eddie cranked the volume on his headset to drown out the chatter of a family of four clambering into the booth in front of him. The little boy had brought a pair of plastic drumsticks with him, beating a rhythm on the steel-rimmed table much to the annoyance of his little sister, who was clutching her book the way Eddie was yours. Dipping his few remaining fries into the smear of ketchup, he wondered why they weren’t in school on a Thursday afternoon. As he focused back on the type-written letters, he figured he should be the last to judge.

Eddie felt for Lazarus, he really did. The way he looked at Cybelle as she emerged from the cave, cradling the ghostfern like a pale, translucent child. The scene was as beautiful as it was somber — waves lapping at the rocky shoreline as the setting sun cast its deep orange hues on both of them. The rocks—slick with algae—had Cybelle stumbling, but Lazarus was quick to offer his arm. She accepted without hesitance, clutching the plant like a bouquet as her deep earthen fingers braced the pale angles of his. He lead her down the cascading stone as if it were a chapel aisle, slow and steady until they reached the flat edge of the water. There—in the golden remains of the day—seagulls dipped and soared over the glittering ocean, clasped hands swayed in the lapping wind, and for a moment, they had everything they came for.

After what seemed like both a small eternity and an aching second, it was Cybelle who broke away, tracing the ridges of his fingers as hers fell, stating out loud what both of them knew — that night was coming soon.

The journey back to Torgaard proved easier than the journey out, at least in terms of natural foes. No fenfinks or villainous vines, but the sky seemed to hang much lower. Dark, stormy clouds loomed overhead, casting its pale grey light over the moss curtains outside of Fenwood, over the verdant forests that shuddered in the gusting wind. There was a tension, a dread looming on the horizon that grew with each passing day. Even Eddie could sense it — the way Cybelle stared out into the swath of shifting green like she was attempting to soak up enough for the rest of her life. The way that Lazarus’ jokes were swallowed the creaking of the caravan. How nights that were once spent laughing over a roaring fire were now spent silently watching its crackling embers.

One day—just a few outside of Torgaard—the sky came crashing down. It sobbed in sheets, heavy enough to soak through Cybelle’s coat, to find the tear in her tent and make a lake of it. Lazarus ushered her inside the wagon, offered her a shirt that fit like a dress, offered to sleep on the floor. Assessing the size of the bed, and then the hard, narrow walking path, it was Cybelle who insisted they share it. She was small enough, or at least that was what she rationalized out loud. Lazarus did not argue. Her logic—unlike her tent—was water-tight. And so she climbed in between the soft linen sheets, tucked herself under the weight of the down blanket, and rested her damp, weary head on a pillow that smelled just like him.

Eddie glanced sheepishly around the restaurant, shielding the binder with his arm as Lazarus climbed in beside her. He hinged on each type-written word, lingering over the ones that stirred a fuzzy feeling. Written with careful attention to the way Lazarus’ chest rose and fell, how stiff their bodies were in hyper-awareness of the nearness to each other. How solid his shoulder felt under Cybelle’s cheek when the corner of pillow no longer sufficed. Slowly, they relaxed into the feeling. Not enough to sleep, but enough for Lazarus to free the arm that she was crushing. Enough to wrap it around her shoulder, to relish in the feeling of her cold nose in the warm crook of his neck.

It was good like this. Better when her fingers draped across the landscape of his pecks, felt his chest rise and fall like waves. Best when they awoke in the morning to the sun steaming in through the small, stained glass window above them. When their giggles shook the wagon. When their eyes met, closer than they’d ever been before. There, in the dim cocoon far outside the turning world, the smile that she had hidden for so long finally grew brave enough to capture his. And by the time they reached the towering stone walls of Torgaard, there was nothing more to hide from one another.

Eddie flipped the page to find only a black, plastic pocket. He rubbed it with his fingers to make sure it wasn’t sticking to another. When it failed to separate, he sat back and fumed. That was it. There was no more. No ending, no closure.

Sheri leaned against the top of the booth seat opposite him, hand on her hip, shifting between her dirty white sneakers with a tired sigh. “Listen sweetie, I’ve got ten minutes left of my shift. You’re welcome to stay as long as you want, but I’ve gotta cash you out before I leave.”

Eddie glanced at his watch, almost 2:00. “Yeah—yeah, no problem. Sorry for the trouble.”

“’S no trouble, just the way it goes around here. Hope you enjoyed your stay,” she said with a wink as she dropped the check.

After six hours and two meals, Eddie had gotten his fill of watching the world turn through an old, frosted window. His head was spinning enough on its own. With a frustrated huff he peeled his graph paper and manual away from the sticky table before shoving them into his backpack. Slugging it over his shoulder, he grabbed the grease-stained check and made his way to the register. That was when he noticed it — the lonely, half-eaten omelette on the bar.

“Alright that’ll be ten seventy-five,” chimed Sheri.

Tinsel glittered on the tree. Red, metallic bulbs swayed in the echo of his footsteps. Judy Garland caroled on about a merry little Christmas and he wondered if your characters would ever enjoy anything over their shared kitchen table or if that dream would be abandoned for their duties as well.

“Sir?”

Snapping out of his trance, he fished for his wallet and palmed her a twenty. “Keep the change,” he muttered before turning toward the door with a hoist of his backpack.

Her jaw hung open. “Oh my word, are you serious?” she called to his back, but the bell above the door was the only answer she received.

______

Main Street Vinyls was a ghost town on a Thursday afternoon, and Eddie preferred it that way. Aside from Jerry at the counter, it was just him and his noisy thoughts, accompanied by the slow plod of his own heavy boots as they weeped against the carpet. At least in this store he could escape the onslaught of Christmas tunes. Jerry—old hippie that he was—at least had some sense. Sometimes even sense enough to play some halfway decent rock music, but today Eddie would settle for Neil Young over the jingle bell garbage blasting through every speaker in Hawkins.

Glancing down the rows of plastic cassette spines, Eddie perused the M section as he kicked himself for giving away almost ten dollars. There was an album by a new band he’d only read about in magazines called Megadeth. Turning the tape over in his hands, he examined the cover. Everything about it spoke to him — the skull with its mouth chained shut surrounded by knives and candles, the title — Killing Is My Business. Flipping it over to the back, the phrase continued in haunted red letters …and Business Is Good!

The change he gave away in a fit of blind stupidity would have easily afforded it and left him with some to spare. With a bitter sigh, he shoved the tape back in its slot, knowing for a fact that the cash register at Benny’s had eaten the last bill he had in his wallet. Padding slowly down the aisle, he began his calculations.

He had a few regular deals lined up this weekend but would need to dig into his “savings” in the bottom of an old tobacco tin and pay Rick a visit before any of that happened. He might make eighty bucks if he was lucky. Maybe eighty more over the course of the week between the deals at school. Nobody wanted to spend too much time outside this time of year, so the park bench location was always iffy depending on how bad it was. He would resort to other classic meetup spots, like under the bleachers or the back of his van.

If he networked enough he might have some left over after helping Wayne with the bills. Scanning past the Tina Turner and T-Rex tapes, he wondered how much Wayne suspected about his little business. Surely he had to have some suspicion. Gig money, odd jobs, and oil changes for neighbors couldn’t possibly afford the kind of gear he had, or the ink in his skin, or the cash he contributed monthly. Wayne was sharp, and though he was no saint himself, he shuddered to think what he would say if he discovered his nephew was straying down the same path his brother took.

Peering back over his shoulder, he eyed the Megadeth tapes again—only three in stock—lined up like gifts wrapped in cellophane. They were such tiny things. Small enough to hide beneath his palm, to slide into the pocket of his coat with room to spare. Glancing up at the angled surveillance mirror in the corner of the store, he saw Jerry at the counter, humming obliviously as he stuck price tags on a fresh shipment of tapes. Over the tall shelf that separated them, he expected to meet his own eyes, but instead saw another man. A man he hadn’t seen in quite a while.

Eddie remembered finding a G chord for the first time; how big the fretboard felt in his small hand, how awkwardly his fingers had to stretch, how a larger set of hands had helped him find it. He earned a broad smile when the chord rang out, one he would search for again and again with every strum.

Sometimes in the late evenings as he crept past Wayne with a lunchbox full of drugs while he was watching reruns of Bonanza on the couch, Eddie would tell himself that at least he wasn’t stealing cars, or drinking himself half to death, or rotting behind county bars. At least he was still in school, something Warren Munson couldn’t say even at sixteen. At least Eddie could say he was trying.

With a bitter shake of his head, he continued down the aisle, leaving the tapes behind for the record bins that lined the walls. Mindlessly he walked his fingers over the cardboard spines, glazing past titles he’d seen a dozen times. Nothing new. Nothing different. Few things ever were in Hawkins. Every day he’d wake up and slog himself to a different type of prison, sit in a classroom for eight hours and actively feel his brain rotting. He would crumple up his failed tests and shove them in his backpack, endure the stares from kids whose parents cared enough to give them a ride to school, day after day. And every day he would come home and see the twinge of pride on Wayne’s face for the fact that he’d gone at all.

There were a few perks to sticking around, like running his club, and saving lost sheep, and seeing his friends everyday. Like having a swath of potential customers all in one place. It was safe and familiar, like a cage. His little business might be dangerous and criminal but at least it could afford him one thing he valued even more than ink or gear — freedom. Time, for another thing. Flexibility. It sure as hell beat making three dollars an hour flipping burgers or having to answer to some corporate boot-licker telling him what to do. Eddie huffed sharply, wondering what you would think if you knew. You, with your tightly buttoned blouses and endless patience. You, the very last person he wanted to disappoint.

The last look he’d seen on you destroyed him when he thought about it; the pain in your eyes and bitter line your pretty lips became. You were just about the only reason he had left to show up to class anymore, and now that was getting in the way of the one thing that actually had potential in his eyes. Way more potential than a stupid piece of paper that says, congratulations, you’re a real member of society and not a complete disappointment.

You had asked him a question back when you’d first made the arrangement to help him, one that rattled around in his brain ever since. Why did he want to graduate? If his memory served him, he’d given a relatively bullshit answer: to prove all the assholes in this god-forsaken purgatory wrong. It still held a fair amount of truth, but when he glanced up at the surveillance mirror again and saw himself this time, the real answer was abundantly clear. But was proving a point worth the risk of losing you?

The smell of cardboard and cellophane kissed his face as air puffed between each record falling forward. Each a different picture, some repeats of the same. Rock gods wielding wicked weapons, bathed in holy stage lights somewhere in New York or Los Angeles probably. Somewhere important. Sometimes at the Hideout he would close his eyes and imagine he was on one of those stages, but when he would open them as the last note rung out, it was always the same — just Bill and Drunk Sam, maybe a couple of bikers perched at the bar with their backs to him. Empty stools and sticky tables. A weak applause.

Eddie stepped back from the record bin with a heavy sigh and glanced at his watch. He’d killed about thirty minutes in this store, which meant he had at least twenty more before he could return home without triggering Wayne’s suspicious questions. The walls were starting to close in around him — posters like windows into a world far out of reach. Every million dollar strum reverberating through the speakers like a mocking reminder. With a half-hearted wave to Jerry stocking shelves, he left the store. Empty handed.

The drive down Randolph was always dismal, especially in the bleak winter light. Storefronts with yellowing signs that hadn’t changed in twenty years selling mattresses and televisions. A gas station with a rusted awning, dusted with snow. Architecturally speaking, the church was about the most interesting building, but only because it was brick and made up of more than just four flimsy walls. Even that was being generous though. The most exciting thing to happen to Hawkins since the housing development over by Factory Lane thirty years ago was the shopping mall that opened this past summer. Thrilling.

No matter where he drove within a fifty mile radius, it was all the same — a tomb where dreams went to die.

Gripping the steering wheel, he watched the car in front of him make grooves in the dirty slush, hypnotized by the spray off the sides of the tires. It wasn’t until he saw the high school approaching in his peripherals that he even looked up. It always felt good to be on the other side, especially when he wasn’t supposed to be. He could almost see you in there; brushing the chalk off your hands, shifting between your tired feet as you glanced at the clock, gazing out the window with a longing he’d seen in his own reflection — caught sometimes at night in his drivers seat window as he cruised the highway, dreaming of where it could take him.

As the squat fortress faded in his rearview mirror, he pictured you five years from now. Ten. Twenty. Wasting away in front of that chalkboard. Rattling on about stories written by dead people while your own collected dust inside a closet. While your talent withered like the dead, crumpled leaves under the snow; buried and forgotten.

With a hard right onto Prospect, he set out on the final stretch towards home. Sometimes he liked to imagine what might happen if he just kept going, just drove into the sunset and only stopped for gas. He had a vague idea from the movies and the maps that swayed in the wake of Ms. O’Donnell’s lumbering footsteps. Sometimes in the height of his boredom he would lose himself in them, imagine he was at a diner in the desert on his way to a gig with an actual sound system. Because somewhere out there—beyond the flat horizon—there were mountains, and canyons, and cities where names couldn’t follow.

______

“How does it end?” Eddie asked you on Friday between the fourth and fifth period bells. You glanced up from the stack of papers on your desk, cocking your head with narrowing eyes. “Your story,” he clarified.

“Oh.” Blinking, you sat back to ponder. “You know, I don’t think I ever fully decided. Cybelle is in a difficult position. The whole reason she set out on this adventure was to save her brother. I imagine she would want to fulfill her quest, but if she returned to Myrne, it may be difficult to leave again. Plus, she may receive some sort of punishment for leaving in the first place. I had written the laws to be quite strict, if I recall. And then if she chose not to return, her mother would lose two children. No matter what, she loses.”

Eddie furrowed his brow, shifting between his boots with a pained sigh. “I would hardly call a life with Lazarus losing. She seems happy with him.”

“Right, well, of course that would be ideal, but…” you tsked, “it’s complicated, and honestly that’s partially why I abandoned it. I really wrote myself into a corner. Well, that and student teaching started to eat up my time. Then it was finals, and moving, and then after that I met…” you trailed off with a bitter shake of your head. “Anyway, I guess life got in the way. It has a way of doing that, I’ve noticed.”

Eddie looked at you, really looked. You, in your cable knit sweater with pen on your hand and sandbags under your eyes, casting them down over your work with the same amount of hope he’d seen from players rolling threes with even fewer hit points to spare. He racked his brain for something he could offer—a dramatic death speech or a new character sheet—but you weren’t playing and he wasn’t prepared. Any words of comfort forming on the tip of his tongue were swallowed by the ringing bell, and he exited your classroom feeling the same as when he entered; unsatisfied.

______

It was starting to close in around you — the colored lights and ornaments, the mall Santas and fake green swags draping from shop windows. It was the first Christmas you’d truly spent in Hawkins since you graduated college, outside of day trips for visits. Surprisingly little had changed, the main thing being the fact that there even was a mall for Santa to post up in. Duplication must have been one of his many powers because he was still at Sears too, at least he was on Saturday when you dragged yourself out of the oppressive quiet of your apartment and into the bustling chaos.

You had no idea what to get your relatives for Christmas. You never really did, but this year it seemed insurmountable. This year you had no one to bounce ideas off of, and the constant mental chatter left little to no room for inspiration. As you scanned the shelves of cookware and appliquéd dish towels with snow men and reindeers, nothing really seemed to jump out at you.

What did jump out at you—or rather, jumped out at his sister—was a little boy across the aisle hiding in a circular rack of women’s bath robes. Pressing apart the terrycloth like curtains, he would retreat into his makeshift cave to the complete oblivion of his mother, who seemed more preoccupied with the price tags on a set of lingerie than with the whereabouts of her children.

A fantasy tugged at the corners of your mind, more sinfully indulgent than the one you had in class last week involving your desk and Eddie’s tongue. This time the set was the same as the scene before you, only the little boy had a mess of dark curls and Eddie was diving in after him. Not to scold him, but to play. You could almost see those fraying knee holes widening from contact with the carpet. Almost hear the giggles and the shushes and the click of his rings against the metal pole in the center of the rack for balance. You could almost turn around and see them popping out at you, feel the laughter ripple up through your very full belly and into the corners of your eyes as you feigned surprise to both of their delight. You could almost feel the glares from the other shoppers, the regular people eager to get on with their Saturday in peace, same as any other. It wouldn’t matter though, not in your little world.

The real mother in the real world did eventually turn around, grabbing the boy by the wrist and demanding he stay by the cart. Turning a dish towel over in your palms, you lowered your eyes to the machine-embroidered stitching of a corn cob pipe and a button nose as the fantasy disintegrated. You left the store shortly after, your cart just as empty as when you’d arrived.

On Monday it was hard to look him in the eyes. It was easier to meet Diane’s. At least this week you could hold a conversation without crumbling like Ms. Click’s half-eaten fruitcake up for grabs in the teachers lounge. But the coffee was bitter on your tongue, like a lie you were telling yourself.

In accordance with your wishes, there had been no rap of knuckles on your door frame after school, no screeching of chair legs dragged across the tile, only the dull thud of folders sliding into your bag, the surprising click of a magnet under the flap.

On Wednesday you left behind footprints in the parking lot before it had even half cleared, only to be swallowed by the emptiness of your apartment. You filled the space with what you could manage — an early dinner, and an early bedtime. Sleep seemed to be the only thing that quelled the battering ram thoughts, the scales tipping back and forth so much it made you queasy. You would lie there and dream of swirling smoke and plush lips, of arthritic fingers punching numbers on an office phone as you sat and accepted your fate. You would toss and turn, back and forth until your sheets became a tangle, and when you faced the mirror Thursday morning you barely recognized the person staring back.

When the final bell rang on Friday, the hallways cleared out like someone had yelled fire. A mass exodus of students and staff, flowing into the parking lot like a tidal wave outside your classroom window. You watched them as snow fell in clumps, as bright colored backpacks disappeared into the back of sedans, as cars peeled out like a parade into the street.

Assessing the paper mountain range framing your desk, you made an educated guess at how you would be spending your two week break. In hindsight, it might have helped to make the due date for the senior creative writing project last Friday instead, but deep down you knew you would have hardly made a dent by now.

When Ms. Click popped her head in to wish you a merry Christmas on her way down the hall, she seemed surprised to find your hand still moving across paper, not swaddled in mittens like hers. You brushed it off with something casual, the type of thing any regular person would say before the holidays. That it was too much to take home. That getting work finished now would leave more time with your family. You omitted the more personal details like how empty your apartment felt and the small, naked tree your mother brought over last weekend. This seemed to placate her, and with a cheery wave she left you in the silence of your classroom with only the ruffling of paper for company.

It was eery how quiet it was, but it afforded you a small hill of graded papers in the last hour, double what you would typically accomplish in front of the television. Thumbing through what remained of that stack, you counted each staple. Five, six, seven… you stopped when a certain name jumped out in MLA format.

Eddie Munson American Literature — 4th Period 20 December 1985

No title.

Papers fluttered to the desk as they fell from your hands, leaving only his. You held it gingerly between your fingers, as if it was alive. As if it could feel you, or rather, you could feel him through every type-written letter, through the thumb-sized grease stain in the top righthand corner. You could almost hear him too, shifting into a deep, dramatic narration.

Mount Myrne loomed on the horizon like a dark omen. Towering over the bustling docks of Torgaard, it disappeared beneath the ominous clouds with a formidable presence. Merchants scattered about, hauling their wares in heavy crates and barrels onto the many zeppelins.

This was where Lazarus first met Cybelle. In his mind’s eye he could almost see her stumbling about in her clean silk boots and glimmering gold coat. But her appearance today told a different tale. Her boots were caked with mud, her coat was splattered with muck and tattered by claws, her mask hung crooked on her face. Those large eyes that once glimmered with hope and wonder now stared off into the distance with oppressive sadness at the looming mountain.

This was where he was supposed to leave her. This was what they had agreed upon many moons ago. Cybelle just stood there, shifting back and forth between her tired feet as she dug her thumbs under the straps of her heavy knapsack that now held the rare and precious ghostfern. She finally had what she came for. Any moment now she would be moving those muddy boots toward the docks and use what little coin she had to barter a one-way trip back home.

That was the plan anyway..

Cybelle was frozen though. Fearfully, woefully, bitterly, she gazed upon her gold gleaming home in the sky with a sadness that was only dwarfed by Lazarus looking down at her. He looked at her beautiful face like it was the last time he was ever going to get the chance to. He memorized it in his mind as he shuffled his own dirty boots against the cobblestone. He didn’t have eyes for anything else. Not the zeppelins, nor the merchants, nor the mountain. Only her. After a moment that felt like an eon, Cybelle took a step forward.

“Wait.” said Lazarus. Cybelle turned around with surprise but also a hint of relief. “You don’t have to do this.”

Cybelle looked up at him with a mournful frown. “Of course I do, my brother will die if I stay here.”

Lazarus shook his head bitterly. “No, he will die if the ghostfern stays here.” he said.

Cybelle sighed as she looked out across the docks, “But how is it going to get there if I do not deliver it? No one is allowed within the city walls if they are not from Myrne.”

Lazarus furrowed his brow as he watched the merchants at work, hauling their wares aboard the large, formidable aircrafts. Suddenly he had an idea. “There are docks in Myrne, correct? And Myrnish merchants who take goods into the city?”

The gears were starting to turn in Cybelle’s head. “Yes, there are.”

“Well then, can we send the plant with like, a note or something? Some instructions and directions for the merchant to take where it needs to go?”

Cybelle thought for a moment. “I do know a few of the merchants by name. Arturo and I grew up together. He was my neighbor for a long time. He would know where it needs to go, and my mother would know what to do with it.” The brightness in Cybelle’s eyes dimmed suddenly as she had another thought. “But… I would never seen them again. My family.”

“Never say never, Cybelle.” Lazarus said. “Do you know that for a fact?”

Cybelle frowned heavily, “The laws in Myrne are very strict.”

“What if in the letter you told your family to meet you on the docks some other time? Perhaps in another moon or two once your brother has recovered?” Lazarus offered.

Cybelle sighed bitterly, “Only merchants are allowed on the docks. It is strictly prohibited. I was only able to come here because I snuck inside a crate. It was a miracle that they didn’t notice me.”

Lazarus kicked a stray pebble and huffed. There was a long pause before he spoke again. “I cannot tell you what to do, Cybelle. Only you can make that choice. But what I can do, really the only thing I can do, is tell you how I feel.”

All of a sudden there was a knot in his stomach. Because if he was going to say anything he knew that this would be his last chance..

“All my life I’ve dreamed about that cottage by the sea with the garden, and the bed, and the omlet. When I saw that pendant you were wearing I knew that it would be my only shot at ever getting what I wanted. Magic tricks are….. not exactly lucrative. And actually, if I’m going to be totally honest here, I figure you should know the truth about me. The whole truth.” Lazarus sighed, swallowing the bile creeping up his throat at the mention of the truth. He was going to be honest though. Maybe for once in his whole life. “This is difficult for me to say, but I owe it to you if nothing else. I’m a thief, Cybelle.”

Lazarus winced at his own words and Cybelle’s fallen expression, but he bravely continued..

“I confess that for a moment when I first saw you I thought about stealing that pendant, but once I heard your story and saw so much of my own I simply couldn’t. There is a goodness in you that I admire, how selfless and pure your cause is. Over the course of the last few moons I have had the privilege of spending with you, I have come to discover how beautiful the woman beneath the mask truly is. How kind, and curious, and patient you are. I have been all over this land. Traveled far and wide, through forests and over mountains. I have swam in lakes and oceans and gazed out over countless valleys. But never has the world looked quite so hopeful than when I saw it through your eyes. It made me believe that if you could see the beauty there, if you could see the goodness in me, then perhaps I can as well.”

It was startling — the tear that leapt over your lash line. Violently enough to hit the page, to blur the Os in goodness.

“If you choose to stay I promise you that I will never steal another coin or pocket watch. It may leave me poor for the rest of my days but if they’re spent with you, then I would be the richest man of all. It is all that I can offer you. My honesty, and a promise that I will show you more beaches, more mountains, more of the world than you could ever imagine. And since I intend to keep my promise, here is my honesty: I love you. Regardless of what you decide.”

With a trembling hand, you turned the page only to discover there was nothing on the back. Sitting back in your seat with a ragged sigh, you stared out into your empty classroom. Your nose stung, fluorescents flaring in your tear-blurred vision. Separating the pages with your thumb, you flipped back and read it again. The last paragraph. The last two sentences. Those three type-written words. Over and over, wedging in the cracks of your armor as your sniffles echoed off the tile.

The sun was dipping below the treeline, flooding the near-empty parking lot with a wash of somber pink. The snowfall had ceased, settled into the footprints and tire tracks. Glancing up at the clock and back down at the papers, you tried to imagine lifting another, scanning over sentences and writing in the margins like you hadn’t been completely upended by the one that trembled in your grasp. You couldn’t.

Tears dripped down your cheeks as you donned your coat, as you shuffled overstuffed folders into your satchel and slung its weight over your shoulder. You swiped at them with your scratchy wool sleeve, flicking off the lights and shutting the door.

The soft pink had cooled to twilight blue when your boots met the blanket of snow, leaving tracks in the clean, fresh powder. Your breath trailed behind you in heavy clouds. It was quiet here too, barely a scattering of cars in the parking lot. Not even the wind disturbed the limbs of the orderly saplings between the curb and sidewalk, dusted with a glittering powder.

Your hands found your keys, and the key found the hole, and soon you were sliding into your frigid leather seat, tossing the weight of your satchel on the passenger’s side with a dejected thump. You sat there a moment with only your breath for company before flicking your wrist at the ignition.

Nothing.

Stomping on the break, you lurched forward with conviction this time, as if you could convince it you were serious. All it awarded you was a weak, persistent click. It’s fine, you told yourself through gritted teeth as you lunged again, snapping your wrist with a startling anger, like the seal had been cracked on a two liter pop bottle that had rolled around in the trunk for a week and a half. Still, nothing but a pathetic click. A split second thought crossed your mind—that the ferocity of your stomp might actually damage the car—but the logic was quickly snuffed out by your rage. The hard plastic key bit into your numb fingers. Over and over — stomping, twisting, cursing. Cursing yourself most of all for being stupid enough to let this continue for months. You were paying for it now.

The tears were already waiting, primed behind your eyeballs, hardly dried on your cheeks when you left out the back door. They spilled over again, cooling as they dripped past your lashes, down the slope of your nose. One more time, you begged. Just one more time and I’ll be good, I swear. But the white Chevy Nova sat unmoved, offering only a vacant whine where there should have been a roar. You tossed back in your seat and huffed, chest heaving, filling the cramped space with the furious steam of your breath.

Snowflakes glittered in the floodlights, shining like flares through the blur of your tears. It might have been beautiful on any other evening — one where the engine was warm, and your mind was clear, and your heart didn’t sink like a pit in your chest. It was hard to notice anything outside your bitter sobs, most especially the shadow that appeared in the window beside you. The rap of rings on the glass had you jumping, whipping your head to face the set of eyes you’d been avoiding most of all.

“Need some help?” Eddie offered, bracing his knees in a crouch, eyes brimming with concern.

Your stomach twisted with relief, then embarrassment, then a million other things rolled into one, sick knot. Wiping the evidence from your cheeks with a futile swipe of your sleeve, you cranked down the window with your left hand. You must have looked like an absolute basket case, jerking your arm in tight circles as the barrier lowered with the urgency of a tortoise. When where was enough space for him, Eddie braced against the top of your door and ducked his head inside.

“Hey.” The warm sigh of his greeting kissed your cheek, thawing the sting of the cold.

“Hey,” you mimicked, sounding just about as stable as you felt when it came out. “W-what are you doing here so late?”

“Hellfire,” he stated simply. “You know, I could ask you the same question.”

Despite how true it was, it still felt pathetic when the answer left your lips. “Just… trying not to take so much work home with me.” You said it as casually as you could muster, but your voice betrayed you. Your cheeks were still cooling from the remnants of your tears, framing the heat from your dripping nose.

Eddie suddenly looked very serious, splintering your armor with his softness. “You ok?”

You gestured dejectedly at nothing, offering a hollow laugh. “No.”

Eddie filled the cabin with his sigh, eyes narrowing like he wanted to lunge through the window. Instead he just thumbed at the rubber and tipped his head closer, creaking your chest plate with the weight of his gaze. “You know, I could hear you clear across the parking lot,” he joked softly. “The car—I mean. Mostly. You leave your lights on or something?”

You shook your head. “It’s been doing this for months, ever since it started getting cold. I should have taken it to get checked out, but it usually starts after a couple tries.”

“Sounds like it might be the battery, or maybe the starter. I won’t know unless I try and jump it. I’ll swing around—if—if that’s ok.”

The wind ushered a curl toward his lips, and you clenched your hand to subdue it. “Yeah, it’s ok,” you sighed. “Thank you.”

With a nod, Eddie ducked out of the window and pivoted swiftly on his heels. From your side view mirror, you watched him make tracks in the blue snow with his heavy boots, hands shoved in his pockets as he glanced left and right, the ghost of his breath trailing closely behind. The seat creaked as you sat back and blinked like the cursor on a computer monitor; processing. One glance in your rearview mirror told you how disheveled you looked. Even in the twilight there was no masking the puffiness around your eyes, the mascara bleeding toward your cheeks. You swiped at them again, this time with a napkin from your glove box.

With a yank of the frigid handle, Eddie slid across the plaid and pleather padding into the drivers seat of his van. He froze for a second, glancing in his rearview mirror toward your small white sedan. Butterflies tore through his stomach, churning like a tornado as he flicked the ignition. Out of all his ridiculous fantasies, he hadn’t entertained this one. Not exactly anyway. One where you were the damsel in distress. One where he got to be the hero.

The parking lot was vacant enough to drive across the lines. Ploughing through the naked patches where cars had spent the afternoon, he rumbled up beside you. Your stomach did a summersault when he stepped out, plodding around to the front of your car with jumper cables slung under his arm.

“Can you pop the hood for me?” he asked.

The summersault rippled south through your abdomen. Reaching down under the console, your fingers found the leaver and obeyed. You felt kind of useless, just sitting there while he propped the hood onto the stand, shielding him from vision. Before you could form another thought, your hand was moving on its own, finding the plastic leaver of your door and opening it to the cold evening air.

Eddie gave a shy look from behind his curtain of curls before stepping back with a nod. “Well, good news, there’s no monsters,” he joked.

A smile cracked across your face, so genuine it almost felt foreign. You tucked your hands into your pockets, stepping closer to assess the engine like you knew what you were looking at. Your aura prickled with proximity, like his heat could thaw you even from where you stood. Eddie’s glance was soft and quick before procuring a small flashlight from his inner coat pocket. He held it in his teeth, flipping up the red and black plastic covers on the battery terminals.

“I have hands too, you know,” you said with a smirk.

With a playful side-eye, he clamped the appropriate cables onto the terminals. Removing the silver torch from his mouth, he made room for his retort. “Mmhm, best keep ‘em warm. It’s uh, kinda chilly out.”

You shook your head as a laugh escaped your nostrils in a plume. Sauntering over to his van like a dark knight, Eddie leaned in the door to pop his own hood. Your boots made tentative tracks in the snow, drawn like a magnet as he hoisted the metal. From the light pinched in his teeth you could see the expanse of the massive engine, the shadow of his furrowed brow as he unscrewed plastic knobs. What you saw more than anything though—like a filter laid over the scene—were three type-written letters. The hands that typed them fumbled with the cables, squeezed around the thick, jaw-like clamps. When they bit right where he wanted, they released; tendons flexing, knuckles pinking from the freezing air. Reflexively, he wiped them on the chest of his black hoodie peeking out from his open coat.

It might have just been the cold, but even in the twilight—in the absence of the flashlight he was tucking into his pocket—you could have sworn his cheeks flushed when he caught you staring. “Alright, um, go ahead and start your car. I’ll do the same.”

Following the tether that joined the two vehicles, you did as he told you. Nothing came of it though, just more incessant clicking. Exasperated, you tossed back in your seat before slumping out of the car once more.

“Shit, it must be the starter. Probably cracked, that’s my guess anyway by the sound of it,” Eddie explained as he stepped around to face your engine again. Clicking his flashlight, he peered into the compartment. “See, if you follow the positive terminal line all the way down, that’s where the starter will be. Only problem is it’s tricky to get to without a lift.”

You followed his grease-stained finger down the dirt-dusted tangle of tubes, drawing nearer under the subtle guise of interest in your engine. You stopped just inches from his solid leather frame, close enough to brush him with your elbow. “You seem to know your way around a car.”

He huffed, shaking his head as he muttered. “Wish I didn’t.” But before you could comment, he was shutting the hood. “I’m sorry, but I think we’re gonna have to call a tow truck.”

Your defeated sigh rose toward the clouds as you glanced at the squat school building. The lights were off. Judy’s car was absent from the lot, as were all but a handful, including the two of yours. Glancing at your watch under the floodlights, the big hand tipped past the golden dot where a five should be.

Eddie stepped closer, filling the gap with a heavy exhale before meeting your eyes. “You know I could, um—” he scratched the back of his neck, words evaporating quicker than his breath. What could he do? What could he really do about any of this? For most of his life he’d been a leaf on the wind, scuttling across the pavement toward the gutter, struggling to steer himself away. But you were stranded, and if there was anything he was good for, it was a ride. “I could—I could take you back to your place. If you’re ok with that, I mean. We could—fuck—I mean you could call from there a-and I could—”

There were chinks in your armor, cracking with each bumbling word. You looked at him, really looked. Eddie Munson, with grease-stained hands and eyes that pierced like arrows in their pleading. Straight through to the softest part of you, the place between your ribs that cries I want. And oh, how desperately you wanted. Wanted to soothe his worried lips in yours again, to feel his pounding chest again, to be thawed by his heat again. But you just stood there, frozen.

Shoving his hands into the pockets of his open coat, he shifted on the balls of his feet as he searched for more words in the snow. “Look, I know you said you wanted space, a-and it probably seems like—shit.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, releasing with a sharp sigh. “I just want to help you. Will you just let me help you? Please?”

Your chest plate clattered to the concrete, gauntlets falling in a heap beside your greaves. There was no white flag to wave. No sword to relinquish, or shield to discard. Your surrender was nothing but a soft “okay,” barely heard above the howling wind.

______

A/N: After over a year and 100k words, the smut chapter is finally upon us! Thank you for coming with me on this very long journey and sticking it out. I have no idea how long this next one is going to take me to write, but I can promise you that when it’s finished you will experience every moment in exquisite, delicious, poetic detail.

You might have noticed that I’ve pulled a few small details like character names and places from Flight of Icarus, but I will not be retconning any of Eddie’s backstory.

Also random, tumblr decided to make that one paragraph bold once I changed it to chat font with no ability to unbold it, but that wasn't intended. It kind of worked though so I'm not mad.

Taglist: @mermaidsandcats29 @toxicjayhoo @ooo-protean-ooo @jadequeen88 @wroteclassicaly @kissmyacdc @raccoonboywrites @storiesbyrhi @trashmouth-richie @keeponquinning @munson-blurbs @blueywrites @alottanothing @bebe07011 @idkidknemore @alizztor @godcreatoreli @ethereal27cereal @munsonsgirl71 @mrsjellymunson @emxxblog @siriusmuggle @sidthedollface2 @dollalicia @lma1986 @catherinnn @eddiemunson4life420 @readsalot73 @big-ope-vibes @barbiedragon @ladylilylost @3rriberri @princess-eddie @nightless @eddieswifu @thew0rldsastage @chaoticgood-munson @hanahkatexo @eddiemunsonsbedroom @beep-beep-sherlock @averagemisfit03 @vintagehellfire @haylaansmi @sllooney @lunaladybug734 @callingmrsbarnes @ajkamins

#eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson fanfiction #eddie munson older reader #eddie munson smut #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x teacher!reader #stranger things fanfiction #eddie munson angst #don't stand so close to me #dssctm

418 notes · View notes

nanaminokanojo · 1 month

Text

BAD NEWS | CHAPTER INDEX/PROLOGUE (Ongoing)

-just when you thought you were over your humongous crush on your older brother’s best friend, geto suguru, you couldn’t be more dead wrong, and maybe there isn’t really anything holding you back from acting on it now that you’re all grown up…except satoru doesn’t like suguru for you because he knows his kind all too well: a huge ass playboy who breaks hearts like he changes socks. but you think. MAYBE you’ll be the exception...maybe not.

TW/CW: strong/mature language | adult content so mdni on some parts; just skip them. you’re not missing much | mentions of alcohol, drugs | mentions of cheating, promiscuity, mild dubcon (consent >>>), etc. | again, god-awful pet names i’d cringe at if a 3d person says it | toxic behavior | will add more if something arises

AKI’S NOTES: I would like to express my sincerest thanks to everyone who loved and supported “Thawing Ice Queen” as well as those who participated in the poll on which smau I’m going to write next. So, this is what won in said poll, and I hope it gets as much as love as TIQ if not more. Reblogs and likes are very much appreciated, and I actively respond to comments as well as Asks. Also, if you’re interested, I will include you in the tag list. Just message me through whatever avenue you’re most comfortable with. Happy reading!

ADDITIONAL NOTES: i will be using pics and other media which would fit situations and make the smau-ness of this piece a little more realistic and entertaining when i believe it’s appropriate/fitting to the plot (as i've done with TIQ). having said that, with regard to inclusivity, i just want to put it out there that they will not necessarily be aimed as the exact descriptions to fit a supposedly generic reader nor will they be representative of a specific race or color (even if you’re/the reader is gojo’s sister here). it’s all for the simple fact of media availability, for funsies and the fact that i don’t exclusively write in consideration of those aspects when using reader-insert characters unless i specify it. thank you for understanding.

MASTERLIST

CHAPTERS: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15

16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30

PHOTOS/IMAGES/GIF/FANART/ANY MEDIA CREDITS GO TO THE RESPECTIVE OWNERS.

211 notes · View notes

forest-hashira · 4 days

Text

Cool Touch

hello hello everyone!!! i know i just updated Noble Blood a few days ago, but the mental image of this one wouldn't leave me alone, so i went ahead and wrote it. this is the first of my entries for @threadbaresweater's "summertime (and the livin' is easy)" collab event! my chosen prompt for this was gojo + sunburns. not much happens here, but nonetheless i hope you enjoy it! also as usual this is not proofread at all so please forgive any mistakes haha

read on ao3 | wc: ~1.9k | cw: gender neutral reader, ambiguous relationship (can be read as romantic or platonic!), kinda implied autistic gojo (mentions of sensory issues & such), sunburns (obviously), that's pretty much it!

“Wow, you really weren’t kidding.”

Your words earned you a glare from Satoru as he stood in the doorway. His sunglasses had slipped down his nose as he looked at you, and for once, the dark lenses stood out less against his skin than the stark blue of his eyes.

“Do I look like a liar?” he retorted, opening the door a bit wider so you could come inside.

“More like a lobster,” you said as you stepped around him, before you could even really think about the words. “Sorry! Too soon, I guess,” you added quickly, dancing away from him as he reached out, probably to pinch you in retaliation for your comment on his appearance.

“Yeah, too soon,” he grumbled, shutting the door. “I don’t think I slept at all last night, I was so uncomfortable.”

“That’s what you get for not reapplying sunscreen like we told you to.”

“‘We’?” Satoru asked indignantly, dropping down to sit in one of his dining table chairs as he looked up at you with wide eyes. “Who else told me to reapply?”

“Me, for starters.” As you spoke, you set the shopping bag down on the table in front of you and began to pull out the things Satoru had asked for: multiple bottles of aloe vera gel, four flavors of ice cream, a box of popsicles, ice packs to be stuck in the freezer for later, and a few large bottles of water – your own addition, not something Satoru had requested. “And Suguru, Shoko, Kento—”

“Nanamin??”

“Yes,” you confirmed. “He does actually kind of like you, you know. And we’ve talked about the interrupting thing.”

“Right,” he sighed. “Sorry. I’ll put the money in the jar later.”

“Good,” you hummed. You tried to hand him the receipt from the drug store then, but he waved you off.

“Just leave it on the kitchen counter when you grab spoons,” he told you, leaning against the back of his chair, though h e quickly sat up straight again with a hiss when his skin made contact with the wood. “Hurryyyy,” he whined as you walked off. “I’m literally going to die if you’re not slathering me in gel in the next five seconds.”

“First of all, why the fuck did you have to phrase it like that?” You opened the silverware drawer, grabbing two spoons for the various ice creams you had gotten. Before you left the room, you stuck the receipt to the fridge with one of Satoru’s kitschy little magnets – you were pretty sure the one you grabbed was some sort of fish, but it was a little chipped and faded, and you didn’t bother to look at it for too long before you were walking away again. “Second of all, you are not going to die, you’re just uncomfortable.”

“And itchy. Soooooo fucking itchy.” Satoru was quick to snatch one of the spoons from you, already having the pint of cotton candy flavored ice cream in his lap.

You wrinkled your nose at the sight, never quite able to understand how he was able to enjoy the flavor, but you said nothing as you came to stand behind his chair. Setting your own spoon on the table, you picked up one of the bottles of aloe gel.

“This might be cold on your skin,” you warned, though he barely acknowledged your words with a hum, his mouth too full of pink and blue ice cream for him to be thinking about much of anything. With a shrug, you squeezed some of the gel out into the palm of your hand, then set the bottle aside. You took a moment to rub the gel between your hands to warm it up a bit, then placed your hands on his tomato red shoulders.

Immediately, Satoru jumped, making an almost hilarious squawking sound as he moved away from your touch. “What the hell?” he demanded, ice cream and spoon still clutched in his hands. His eyes were open wide and his sunglasses had slipped all the way down his nose, seeming to cling to his face for dear life. “Warn a guy next time!”

More than a little shocked by his reaction, you blinked dumbly at him for a moment. “But… I did warn you?” Your brows furrowed as you spoke, and you cocked your head a bit as you looked at him, more confused than anything else.

“You definitely did not,” Satoru argued, now scowling at you.

“I said ‘this might be cold’,” you reminded him. “That counts as a warning.”

“But you didn’t say it would sting!”

Though part of you wanted to roll your eyes at Satoru for his dramatic reaction to the feeling of the aloe gel on his skin, you managed not to; you were well aware of how jumpy and antsy he could be in moments of vulnerability – physically or emotionally – and that generally he didn’t take well to perceived judgment during vulnerable times. Instead, you took a deep breath before apologizing.

“I’m sorry for not warning you about that part, too, Toru. If you’d like to come and sit back down I’ll put the gel on your sunburn. It’ll help you feel more comfortable in your skin, for at least a little bit.”

He eyed you for a moment longer, and you were certain if he had cat ears, they’d be in airplane mode as he decided whether to trust you again or not. Eventually, he let out a somewhat exaggerated sigh, then walked back over to the chair you still stood behind. “I appreciate and accept your apology,” he said quietly, settling down and taking another bite of his cotton candy ice cream.

A small smile tugged at the corner of your lips as you watched him, glad that he was comfortable enough with you to be vulnerable, and that he trusted you to take care of him this way. He’d come a long way since you’d first met; he’d never been standoffish, really – he was the life of every room he walked into, party or not – but he’d kept anything he deemed “too personal” close to his chest, not wanting to give anyone a reason to dislike him. He’d been slow to open up to you, but once he’d realized you could be trusted? He’d become your closest friend, constantly in your space whenever you were in the same place. It had surprised you, the sheer amount of love he was capable of, when he deemed someone worthy – and trustworthy – enough to show that side of himself, but you felt honored to have his love directed at you.

Even if he was dramatic and difficult sometimes.

“Thank you,” you told him. “Now, I’m about to touch your back and shoulders again, alright? It might be cold and it might sting again, but hopefully not much.”

“‘Kay,” he replied around a mouthful of his frozen pink and blue treat, and you shook your head at him, a small chuckle escaping you.

Doing just as you’d said, you placed your hands on Satoru’s shoulders again, spreading the gel over as much of his skin as you could reach from your current angle: across the tops of his shoulders and down around to his collarbones; up his neck to his undercut; back down below his shoulder blades, rubbing it all in and doing your best to make sure it wasn’t layered on too thick, knowing that would aggravate his sensory issues.

Satoru tensed and shuddered for a fraction of a second when your hands came in contact with his fried skin, but he quickly relaxed again, letting you do all the work for him, since the worst of his burn was on his back and shoulders, where he couldn’t get a great angle to rub the gel on himself.

Grabbing the bottle of gel, you squeezed a bit more of it out into your palm. “I need to get the rest of your back,” you told him. “Could you lean forward a little more so I can reach it better?”

“Sure.” He did as you asked without complaint, even setting aside the now empty pint of ice cream and reaching for one of the water bottles you’d bought, twisting off the cap and taking a large sip of it.

“Someone’s thirsty,” you couldn’t help but tease. It was so rare to see Satoru drink anything that wouldn’t give anyone else a cavity just from looking at it that you had to make note of it any time it happened.

He grumbled at your words, but if he blushed, it was impossible to distinguish from the red that already tinted his cheeks. “I am thirsty.”

“I know,” you soothed. “That’s why I bought those. I always get really thirsty when I get a sunburn.” You uttered another warning before placing your gelled up hands further down his back than before, once again working the substance into his skin as well as you could. From the new angle, you could tell the burn ended where the waistband of his swim trunks had been, so you didn’t let your hands wander any places they weren’t needed. Though you didn’t need another reason to keep your hands to yourself (so to speak), the way Satoru shivered when your fingers dipped the tiniest bit below the waist of the current shorts he wore was reason enough.

“I’m done with your back,” you told him after a bit, stepping out from behind the chair to better look at the snowy haired man you had just thoroughly aloe-d. “Do you need help with getting the gel anywhere else?” The smile he shot you struck you right in the heart.

“No, I think I can do the rest of it. Thank you.”

Keeping eye contact with him suddenly felt too intense, so you looked away. Your gaze landed on the open water bottle on the table, and you were pleased to see that he’d nearly emptied the bottle; the sight made you smile.

“You’re welcome,” you said back quietly. Then you remembered the ice packs and popsicles, so you picked them all up and walked back into his kitchen, sticking them all in wherever you could them, in between all his boxes of frozen chicken nuggets and other microwave meals – his kitchen skills were minimal, and the man knew what he liked, so you couldn’t really fault him for sticking with the ease of frozen food.

When you returned from the kitchen, you saw Satoru beginning to rub the aloe gel along his arms, so you were satisfied that you had completed the job you’d come here to do. You pulled your keys out of your pocket, making sure you had your phone before you made for the door.

“Wait!” Satoru called after you, and you stopped, turning back to look at him. His brows were furrowed, and his expression was some combination of confused and… dejected? “Where are you going?”

“You said you didn’t need any more help with the aloe, so I was gonna leave you to it.”

“Oh.” His face fell at your words, but he spoke again anyways. “Do you have somewhere you need to be?”

You tilted your head slightly. “Not really, no. Why?”

Satoru perked up so quickly it was enough to give you secondhand emotional whiplash. “Oh, good! I was hoping you’d stay, maybe watch a movie or something?”

You couldn’t help but smile at him, with his sunglasses hanging crooked on his nose, his frosty white hair falling into his eyes, his boyish grin aimed full force at you.

“Yeah,” you said quietly. “I’ll stay. What movie were you thinking?”

taglist: @mitsuristoleme @kentohours @peachdues @ghost-1-y @witchbybirth

@marinnnnnnnnn @dr-runs-with-scissors @enchantedforest-network

divider by @/saradika

#fallon's fics #gojo #gojo satoru x reader #gojou satoru x reader #gojo jjk #satoru x reader #satoru gojo x reader #jjk #jjk fanfic #jjk fanfiction #jjk fluff

128 notes · View notes

hoshigray · 10 months

Text

Sweet Blind Summer Fling ༄ S. Gojo

"Due to a bet made by Nobara, I made an online dating account to set myself up with a blind date. Although a bit witty and annoyingly childish, Gojo's remarkably handsome and sweet...So, how the hell did I end up sleeping with him on the first date!?"

A/n: Alright, y'all, it's time for the second entry for my summer series!! Not gonna lie, it was fun to write as it's my first time writing for Gojo. I think I did a decent job capturing his character in my style, but you will be the judge of that. This was supposed to be posted on Monday, but I was overwhelmed (had 1 hour of sleep) and dropped something else. But we're good to go now! :) And fyi: there's a bonus scene at the end that sets up the next story as they are connected. Any spelling/grammar errors will be dealt with tomorrow.

Also, guest appearances from my lovely mooties (@cu7ie // @kazushawty // @etherealxmaya // @hqkalon // @yourrfavzxri // @neptunes1nterweb) because I felt like it, lol. Hope this puts a smile on their faces if they see this :3

Series m. list!! This entry has been updated along w/ its contents.

Cw: switch! Gojo x fem! reader - explicit content, so minors DNI - blind date/online match-up - age difference (the reader is at least in their 20s; Gojo is around early 30s) - texting back and forth - sex at a hotel - one night stands - consensual sex under the influence - protected sex (PSA: wrap it up, or get the fuck up) - cowgirl + lotus positions - pet names (angel, baby, dollface, pretty, princess, sweet thing) - clitoral play (swiping and pinching) - praise - mentions of drug/alcohol use (reader and Gojo don't get blackout drunk, but y'all get tipsy) - a bunch of silliness bc it's a Gojo fic (duh).

Wc: 6.9k (7.4k with the bonus scene...never say I don't do anything for y'all)

Dear Diary...I once again have come to you with more thoughts that cloud my personal judgment. I did not think you'd be of use to me again. But after what happened last night, it's worth having you in front of me and a pen in my hand again once more...

After finishing your finals, summer break has finally welcomed you with open arms. Two semesters of painful studying and sleepless nights have been long forgotten since you turned in your last in-person exam! You've started working at an internship that you've been dying to get, enjoying the new things you're learning from experienced colleagues, and finding love in the field you've grown and studied for this entire time.

In addition, you also have all the time in the world to hang out with your best friends — Yuuji, Megumi, and Nobara! Just last weekend, you four hung out at this new sports bar that recently opened and had the most fun experience! Yuuji made new friends with people at the bar who kept buying him drinks; Megumi had to begrudgingly watch over the salmon-haired other to ensure he didn't croak from alcohol poisoning, and you and Nobara took sweet pictures together for your summer album.

It's been a great summer so far. There has been nothing that could bring you down from enjoying this season in the best way you can. Absolutely nothing that could throw you off your summer grove!

However, that's what you initially thought. Because why else would you be in some random hotel room writing in your diary.

To get the full context, I'll take you back to the night I and the gang left the sports bar. We spent the night at Yuuji's as he and Nobara tried to sober up...

It was a chill evening in your friend's place, you and the other three in the living room chatting with the television on low to not disrupt his sleeping grandfather. Yuuji was sobering up by eating bread and drinking water, Megumi was on the couch reading something on his phone, and you were arguing with Nobara.

The auburn-haired other points to you with her index, holding a glass of water. "I told ya, you lost the bet!"

"How!? You literally cheated!" You push her finger out of the way as you two giggle at your complaints. "You kicked Yuuji in the shin to distract him, and I didn't even know I was a part of the damn thing!"

Now your pink-haired friend jumped to say words of his own. "That was foul with what you did; I should've fallen to the floor and acted like I was really hurt. Have you paying my medical bills."

"Blah, blah, blah, sounds like a losers' pleas to me." Nobora rolls her eyes while you and Yuuji glare at her. "And you! You didn't say you were out of the game, unlike Megumi. I said, and I quote: 'When the wings touch the table, the bet is on,' and guess what? By the time the wings got here, I didn't hear a single peep out of you saying you forfeited from the challenge! Once you picked up a single wing, your ass was set in stone!"

"Oh, for fuck's sake, you annoying bitch..." you groan in your hands as the woman maniacally barks her laughs. "Alright, fine, I ate the shortest portion of wings. Therefore, I, Y/n L/n, declare myself the loser to this fuckery of a challenge. So, Queen Cheater," Nobara snickers to herself at the title you've given her. "What is my punishment?"

You should've known by the evil twinge of your friend's lip that the punishment would be absurd. "I, Queen Cheater," she takes a confident swig of her water before sealing your fate. The words she says next shake to your core, and the decline of your dignity hits you like a bullet train. "...Hereby dare you, the loser, to make an online dating account and find thyself a blind date!"

Your disapproval fell on deaf ears, forcing you to resentfully grab your phone and download a dating app. To make matters worse, you had to make the account with your friends watching (minus Megumi, who still wanted no part in what you all were doing). Once you were done setting up your profile, the three of you looked to the screen to look at the other users, who were also on a quest to find a sense of courtship.

The past thirty minutes have been spent looking at all the users around the area, swiping left and right for those who did and didn't pique your interest.

Todo Aoi (22) "I like 'em tall, with a FAT ASS. If you don't fit the criteria, it's gonna be hard to convince me."

Oh, brother.

Sol (18) "Don't know about a long-term relationship, but we can be chill if ya wanna be friends! :D"

Seems nice. Maybe a chat wouldn't hurt.

Mei Mei (36) Don't ever expect me to pay for the first date or any date. Will you see me again depends on what you have in your savings. ♡

Alright, I appreciate the honesty. But nope.

Karma (20) "Tbh I'm secretly married to my four wives: Hoshi, Maya, Sae, and Zari. But if you look like or are Toji Fushiguro, hit my DMs pronto!! Shhhh, don't tell Hoshi tho, she might divorce me :P"

Okay then—Wait, isn't that Megumi's dad??

Hoshi (20s) Don't listen to Karma. We are very much divorced, and my heart belongs to my one and only: Toji Fushiguro :/

Alrighty then...

Sapphire (19) "Call me MLK, cuz I had a dream about us 🫦"

Fucking no!

Frustration keens in through a heavy sigh. Usually, you'd be happy knowing you can't seem to find a match; however, for this situation, Nobara Kugisaki will not let you off the hook until there's someone worthy of the swipe of invitation. You groan in exhaustion, throwing your head back onto the couch behind you.

With no luck, you decided to call it a night and try again later. So you called an Uber, took yourself home after saying goodbyes to your friends, and reluctantly promised Nobara you'd let her know if you'd get a blind date. With a nice shower and some comfortable PJs, you're now lying comfortably on your bed and looking through all the pictures you took tonight. Then, for some reason, you had the urge to go back on the dating app to look through more users to match up with. Probably because you'd prefer to get this bet out of the way now than later. Regardless of the justification, you spend about twenty minutes swiping and reading through many other people's profiles, and — just like before — not many people catch your eye.

That holds true until you stumble upon a name and description that sparks your curiosity.

Satoru Gojo (old enough to be irresistible; 31) "I was made perfect, I can do everything perfectly, but I want us to be perfect together (･ω<;)☆"

It might've been the use of the emoticon or the confidence that seeped out based on the tiny description. Whatever the case, you stayed on the user's profile for quite a while longer than the others. Even going far as to read his profile thoroughly: knowing what his likes and dislikes are, his height, a fan of Digimon, and so on.

And you contemplated whether or not to swipe him to the side of approval, but you made up your mind after a few minutes of inner discourse. It's not like I'll match up with him immediately. So, you gave him the go and continued on with your search.

Although, that was short-lived because what happened next surprised you to the point that sleep no longer claimed over you.

"Contratz! You've successfully matched with Satoru Gojo!"

Wait, what!!??

You were utterly perplexed by the pop-up showing up on your phone screen. There's no way this was happening, all under the same night, too! And what surprised you the most was the fact that he was awake as well, sending you the first message:

gogojojo: Hey!

Oh, fucking shit. Your body tenses at the greeting, reading his username and message repeatedly. Quickly, you take a few deep breaths to ease yourself before doing something stupid. You answer him with a salutation of your own:

y/ndontwannabehere: Hi there!

gogojojo: A night owl too, huh? Couldn't sleep?

y/ndontwannabehere: Yeah, was just on my phone for a bit, until I saw your message.

gogojojo: Lucky me! I was surprised to have you as a match, I saw your profile about an hour ago.

y/ndontwannabehere: I'm also surprised as well, you're one of the few people who I seemed interested in.

gogojojo: Well, I'm flattered :D Now that you got my attention, what would you like to know about me?

y/ndontwannabehere: Okay...it says you're six-foot-three, how's that like?

gogojojo: I may be six-foot-three, but I'd like to be six feet under you ;3

y/ndontwannabehere: ......

......I regret giving this dude a chance.

Because of the terrible pick-up line, you closed off the app and turned off your phone to switch the lights off and go to sleep. However, another text sends your phone vibrating on the dresser's surface.

gogojojo: Woooow, not even a pity laugh? :/

You shake your head at the notification, but a smile creeps up when you open your phone and tap on the keys to message back.

y/ndontwannabehere: nope, that sucked ass.

gogojojo: Hey now!! >:T you can't say it's ass if it did what it was supposed to do

y/ndontwannabehere: and what's that?

gogojojo: got you here talking with me ヾ(●ε●)ノ

His message makes your smile broader, and you spend the rest of the night talking to Gojo.

It continues for two more weeks, sharing pieces of info about yourselves while rolling your eyes at his annoying jokes and pick-up lines. But for the most part, you enjoy your talks with the stranger on the other side of your screen.

And it all goes swell until he drops this:

gogojojo: Hey! Wanna go on a date with me this weekend?

You were lying on your bed watching Netflix, and you almost choked on your dinner when the message popped up. So in tune with the back-and-forth between you and Gojo that you had forgotten why you made an online dating account in the first place! You grab for your phone to reply:

y/ndontwannabehere: you're serious?!

gogojojo: yeah! I mean, you and I've been talking for a while, I'm kinda into you, plus we could meet up somewhere close. Besides, I would like to see you, and I know you're dying to see me too :)

y/ndontwannabehere: And what makes you think I'd DIE just to see you?

gogojojo: Because why would you not~? You'd be surprised by how many people I've had fallen head-over-heels for me~

y/ndontwannabehere: well, guess I'll be the first one to not be >:3

gogojojo: HUH!!?? Don't say that, I'll cry

y/ndontwannabehere: LMAO grown ass man crying over rejection

gogojojo: Rejection hurts, and I have a weak heart!! :'000

y/ndontwannabehere: Liar.

gogojojo: ANYWAYS! You up for a date?

And that's how you started dressing yourself up on a Friday afternoon, fixing yourself up in front of your bedroom mirror. Checking your phone periodically for Gojo to tell you when he's in front of your home.

You already texted Nobara that you got a blind date, to which she praised you with monumental amounts of supportive text messages and emojis and a text stating she'll throttle you if you don't tell her all about it. It was humorous: you created the online dating account because of a stupid bet for a random date — and now that it was here, you didn't know how to feel. You can't say when was the last time you ever went out with someone, let alone on a blind date! Anxiousness shadows you about the whole thing, but after chatting and getting to know a little bit of Gojo, perhaps it wouldn't be so bad of a date.

After all, the guy seems likable and fun to hang out with based on your interactions. Plus, it's only a date. That's all it is. Absolutely nothing attached in any shape or form.

Thoughts grind to a halt when you hear your phone vibrating on your dresser, a text from Gojo.

gogojojo: I'm here~~~ Ready to fall madly in love with me? :3

Your heart skips a beat at the message, biting the bottom of your lip in nervousness. You send him a reply:

y/ndontwannabehere: Nah, ready to barf right in front of your face :P

gogojojo: Such a rude person :/ Get your butt out here

You giggle before shutting off your phone and grabbing your bag with all your necessary items. Before you leave, you look in the mirror one last time, using this moment to mentally prepare yourself for what's to come. The day has come; you're about to go on a date. No going back now, and I can finally put this dumb bet to rest!

You open your front door and enter outside, the summer heat crawling on your legs from your cute jean shorts and your shoulders excluded from the cream-white cami top. You see a black car — a black 2018 BMW XI — parked right on the street, windows tinted to hide the face you're looking for. But when you draw closer to the vehicle, the passenger side window slides down, and you finally meet him.

The man of the hour himself, the man you've been talking with for two weeks straight, and the man you were about to experience a complete mess of a date with: Satoru Gojo.

"Hey there," his voice was chipper and friendly; his texting style matched his speech. From the window, you can interpret his outfit: a blue flannel shirt covering his white Tee and black jeans with a silver chain emanating from his belt. His eyes were blocked by dark circle sunglasses, making it hard to decipher the color. But his snow-white hair was the first thing that caught your eye, contrasting with the black interior of his car. "Y/n, right?"

You smile at your name. "Correct, Mr. Gogojojo."

He snickers at the use of his username. "You look cute, and I know you like what you see since you were eyeballing me up and down."

"Yeah, whatever." You roll your eyes before opening the passenger door, putting your bag between your legs as you sit down. While putting on your seatbelt, you can feel the bass subtlety vibrate within the car, and the music was...What the fuck? You look at the front integrated head unit on the dashboard and see what artist the man is listening to. "...You listen to Zack Fox?"

"Yeah, I was listening to his songs on my way here! You know his song Marinate?" And before you could answer, the white-haired man sang along to the lyrics. To your perplexity, you just watch him rap along with the artist and the outlandish lyrics. And he just keeps going until the transition to the second verse. "Funny, right?"

"You know," you shake your head at Gojo, whose grin goes wider. "I was about to fall for you until you started rapping the lyrics."

"Whaaaat, he's a comedian, it's meant to be funny!"

"Whatever. Let's just hurry and get this date over with."

"Oh, sounds like someone's ready to be wined and dined by me." He starts the car and shifts between gears. "Don't rush things, princess. Good things come to those who wait."

"Just drive!"

Gojo laughs at your complaints as he drives off on the street. You playfully groan to yourself at your date's antics, looking out to the window to watch your surroundings move past your line of sight.

⋆⁺｡˚⋆˙‧₊✩₊‧˙⋆˚｡⁺⋆

"Ever since high school, I would eat a pack of gummies anytime I was doing homework because it stimulates my brain and helps me focus. So by the time college came around, I got so used to eating sweets that I naturally started liking them." Gojo took a sip of his milkshake. "But then, when my best friend and I went to our first house party, I had my first drink. And, Y/n."

"Oh God, what?"

"The taste was so bad that I tried downing it all in one chug. Well, that came back to bite my ass — and my best friend got the worst of it."

"Gojo, what did you do?"

"He was sitting down on a couch talking to someone, and I was behind the couch feeling all squeamish. So, before I could stop myself, I barfed on his hair!"

"Oh, my God, No!!" And the two of you roar in laughter and bang on the booth table you were sitting at.

The date was at an old, vibrant diner in the city where Gojo is a regular customer; the cozy and welcoming atmosphere had you erase any anxious feelings about this date and feel a little more confident. You and Gojo took things slow, you talking about your summer internship and him of his job as a high school teacher.

The conversation started the topic of summer break came to play, prompting you to talk more about yourself and your friends. That flipped the switch entirely as you became more open about your friends and their goofiness. And as a goofy man, Gojo was intrigued with your stories and had him reminiscent of memories from his youth. Although, you've come to find out that Gojo takes his playful nature to a whole other level, and it's been having you two laugh about said foolishness for the past hour.

"The funny thing is, right, he was talking to this sophomore girl that was eyeing him up the whole time we were there," Gojo says through wheezes. "And he was finally talking to this chick, and she was really getting into him. I didn't mean to intrude on his parade or anything, but as my best friend, you're supposed to help me through thick and thin. I was going to ask if it was okay if I headed to the dorm alone while he stayed at this party. And then, vomit happened."

"Ewww, you terrible friend!" You try to eat a fry from your meal, but your giggles make dining difficult. "No wonder he pranked you with a weed brownie."

"Jokes on him; I still nailed my presentation for my exam. I don't remember saying anything I said, but I take pride in whatever I did to get that A." He takes a big bite of his burger and swallows before saying more. "And I started seeing the sophomore girl he talked to afterward, so checkmate."

You gasp at the information and throw a piece of your food at him, which he effortlessly catches with his hand and eats. "You petty bastard! I'm on your friend's side all the way."

"No regrets!" He hits you with his annoying chuckle that has you smiling hard, and the light above your table makes his dark sunglasses shine chicly.

"Oh, yeah?" You inquire. "I bet I could make you regret it."

The man on the other side of the booth scoffs. "Is that so? And how are you gonna do that, my pretty princess?"

You didn't think he'd buy your bluff. So, the truth is, you had no idea of how'd you punish the snow-haired man. Looking around the diner, you scope for anything that sparks a concept. You then turn to his side and notice a booth at the far end. A woman was laughing with her friends and sipping on a cocktail, making a slightly sour face after taking a drink.

And then it hits, along with a sneer, and you peer back to your date.

"You don't like alcohol, right?" He quirks up a brow at your question. "How many times have you had a drink in your life?"

"Three or four."

"Well then, I dare you to drink three or four cocktails. No milkshake or water to help you get through. Just the ice cubes in the drink."

White brows furrow, and even if the shades block them from your interpretation, you can tell Gojo is studying your face in deep thought with your so-called punishment. Ten seconds go by before he scoffs again. "I'll take up on that. On one condition," he leans back on the booth seat. "You have to take the drinks with me as well."

Now it's your turn to raise a brow and think about his words. "You're paying for the drinks."

"Done deal." He pulls his hand outward to you, initiating a handshake to set the seal in stone before continuing on with this game of yours. You happily shake his hand, commencing the punishment to officially start.

One cocktail was a breeze for you but a bit of a doozy for Gojo to stomach; you had to warn him that if he barfed on you, you'd ditch him and block him for life. Two cocktails in is when you begin feeling tingly. Your date was going through it halfway into the glass, so you had to compromise that a glass of water was needed for him.

Three cocktails in, and you undoubtedly feel the alcohol hit you behind its sweet and tangy facade. You can hardly look at the drink, same with Gojo. You two look at each other and shake your heads in disagreement, pushing the glasses to the side and groaning with your now-drunk selves.

Gojo is the first to say something. "As far as disciplines go, that was, without a doubt, one of the worst things I've had to endure."

You giggle. "Honestly. But I—hic! Excuse me. I bet you're regretting throwing up on your friend's hair now. I did it for his sake, after all."

He only looks at you through his glasses. He then gets up from his side of the booth and walks to yours, and you scoot over to let him have a seat. "Nah, don't regret it one bit. Because if I hadn't done it, I wouldn't have you over here laughing and suffering in alcohol with me about it." He maneuvers his hand to rest on your shoulder, and you allow him to move closer to you. "Wouldn't be spending this fun evening with you."

Your eyes hesitantly venture up to his face, welcoming you to the tension that builds up with the lighting and soft music of the diner. His hand rubs on your shoulder in a comforting manner, a gesture you take note of even under the influence. "You know, since you're enjoying having me and all, don't you think I should have a reward for doing your punishment with you."

"And what reward do you have in mind?"

"Can I see them?" You use a finger to motion your own pair of eyes, resulting in the snow-haired man in a short chuckle. But he doesn't argue with you and uses his free hand to remove his shades.

Icy blue is the first thing that comes to mind when you look at his eyes. His orbs are a rarity to the usual crowd, yet they go perfectly with his peachy complexion and pale hair. His orbs hooded and honed in on your figure, appearing soft because of the slight rosy shade of pink on his cheeks. You take in every single feature of his face before speaking.

"Well, I'm starting to see why so many people fall for you, Mr. Gojo." Your face goes hot with the sudden confidence that sneaks within you, yet you continue. "You're very attractive."

He chortles at your comment. "Thanks, dollface. But I don't think it's fair that you only get a reward from me. After all, I almost drowned in alcohol."

You hum. "Fair enough. What would you like?"

His face doesn't change with the following sentence he utters, but you take note of the slight squeeze on your shoulder. "A kiss from the princess would sure warm my heart."

Brows draw upward and breath hitches. A kiss? On the first date? On a blind date?

You don't know what possessed you to do this — it might have been the cocktails. But you incline your face to his and move forwards, your plump lips land on his soft ones for a simple kiss. And with the low hum of his voice, you place another. And another.

When you remove yourself from him, his eyes open to meet yours. A smile gets broader, and so does yours. "You taste sweet," you say.

"So do you." His fingers toy with the strap of your cami top. "Kinda want to kiss you more. And, you know, do a little more, only if you're up for it."

You give him a look. "I believe I just gave you a reward after receiving yours."

"I know, I know," he raises his other hand defensively, but he doesn't remove his smirk. "That's why it's up to you."

You only look at him as he waits for your answer. You already kissed the man; what more is supposed to happen on a blind date? Thoughts on what to do are carefully calculated in your mind, remembering the reason why you're even on this date in the first place. Without Nobara's stupid bet, none of this would be conspiring. Yet simultaneously, it's not like you were having a terrible time. If anything, it was quite the opposite. Not once did you feel uncomfortable around Gojo's presence or feel the need to call off the date. Just enjoying his company and character that attracts you to him more. Even if it means spending the entire night with him.

I'm already deep into this night. What's the use of stopping now.

"So?" Your eyes peer up and down on his figure. "What does 'a little more' entail?"

One moment you and Gojo were enjoying each other's company at a diner, then the date was moved to a different location the next. Now you and the white-haired man are in a cozy hotel nearby. You expressed your worries about Gojo driving you two to the new spot as he still had alcohol in his system. But your complaints fell on deaf ears as he persuaded you into trusting him ("Don't worry, it's like three streets away! Plus, it's almost midnight. No one's on the street." "If you crash us into a pole or something, don't ever ask to talk to me again." "Duly noted~" )

The two of you got yourself into a small hotel room. Soft lighting from the lamps bathes nude bodies lying on the comfortable queen-sized. You mount on top of Gojo, a makeout session warming the two of you up with the exchange of body heat. Sucking and biting each other's lips, his big hand at the back of your neck to deepen the kiss, and the grind of your hips on his firm erection makes the throbbing sensation between your legs flourish with your slick painting him.

His kisses trail down to your neck, and you allow him to venture below your clavicle. Pillowy lips pepper your chest and eventually find your breasts, taking a hardened nipple into his warm mouth.

A sharp cry exits your mouth when Gojo lightly teases your nipple with his teeth. "Mmmm! G-Gojo, pleaseee, I want it," your words come out in whimpers, your body quivering as your cunt brushes against his erect cock shielded by a rubber.

"Is that so, dollface?" He coos at your pleas, his hand running up and down the cusp of your ass and slender fingers teasing your aching entrance every time they draw nearer. "Then go on, ride on my dick like you want to."

His permission has your face go hot, but you station your hands on his chest to propel you upwards, admiring the view of him below you for a moment before lifting your ass. He moves his hands behind his head to relax, signaling you to do the work yourself and at your own pace. And with that, you do.

Your bottom raises until you position the tip of his shaft on the squish lips of your folds. Your breath hitches at the contact of his glans. His smooth voice coaxes you. "Relax, sweet thing. Take your time." You take a few moments to even your breathing and mentally prep you for your following actions. Hips gradually go down and push the cockhead further between your folds. Entry is prompted through the pain with every breath, and a sharp gasp lets you know that his girth finally enters you. And Gojo moans as well.

"Hmmm, that's it." He comments sweetly, his blue orbs tracing the union of your sexes. His hands now snake to your hips, and he throws his head back on the pillow under him. "Ready when you are, princess."

When you're ready, you move your hips downward to take in more of his member, the size of him widening your folds to accommodate the foreign limb intruding inside your vulva. His curve nudging your inner walls has your legs quake, and you concentrate on not being hasty and taking his cock all in one go. So once you finally meet the base, you exhale shaky and use a few seconds for your body to adjust.

Knowing you have the reins, you start to move. You start off with a slow speed, letting the feeling of his dick rub your walls in a steady position. Your whining is muffled with the bite of your lip, but not the man below you. He proudly expresses his pleasure in his moans, the hold on your hips getting tighter.

"Haaahhh, so good and tight," Gojo purrs, egging you to dial up your tempo. He notices you biting the bottom of your lip, and he chuckles. "Come on, baby. I wanna hear that cute voice of yours. Lemme hear it all." He then surprises you with a sudden thrust, evoking a choked cry from puffy lips.

You get the memo then and just let the pornographic noises fly, every moan getting higher and louder with the pace of your hips. His length drilling within you with each intake, and you lean forward for your clitoris to stimulate with the friction, causing you to jerk. You can't tell if it's because of the sex or the cocktails from hours ago making your nerves so sensitive and tender. But in any case, it makes you feel so good right now.

And when you lean back, the feeling gets even more ecstatic, resulting in more mewls from you. His dick goes even further than before, grazing your sweet spots and walls with precision with your increased speed. You swerve your hips in circles, having the man groan. To counter, his hand snakes down to your clitoris to play and pinch on, and you scream.

"Ahhhnn! Haaaah, Gojo! It feels so," the sounds of your ass smacking on his things are now apparent to the ears. The raunchy squelching noises of your cunt embarrass you; however, you can't deny the grip your cunt has on his cock with every rock. Your mind slowly descends into a dreamy haze. "Nnnmph!! Feels too goood, wanna commme..."

He opens his eyes to look at you; the erotic display of your nude body bouncing on his shaft turns him on even more. "Yeah, wanna come with me?" You nod lazily, earning another chortle from the man beneath you. "Alright, stay still for me."

It takes you aback when he suddenly moves up from the bed, sitting with his legs crossed under your ass and his handsome face too close to yours. You instinctively avert your gaze away from the frosty-headed other, bashfully turning your face to the side. It amuses him, guiding your face back to him with his hand. "Hehe, don't be scared of me, angel. I wanna see that beautiful face of yours."

Again, you can't tell whether or not it's the effect of the alcohol, but your face and ears go uncomfortably hot at his compliments. And now that his face is so close to yours, you can clearly take in his features. His sky-blue eyes were extremely fixated with yours, softly hooded with the flutter of his snow eyelids and in contrast with his rosy cheeks. Your heart skips a beat. What is with this beautiful motherfucker?! "Stop flirting with me in the middle of this..."

He laughs at your sheepishness, kissing your cheek. "Flirting with you is what got you here in the first place, baby. Now," his hands slither down your ass, squeezing the flesh with his fingers. "I'm gonna start moving — get ready."

He waits for you to wrap your arms around his neck and lift yourself from his legs before he begins moving his pelvis. The rash jabs of his cock leave you gasping for air and clasping around him. He hisses to your ear with his arms now wrapped around your back as he brings up the rhythm of his hips. You're now forced to bounce onto his crossed legs, his dick scraping your insides deliciously so that you can't think properly.

It's now that everything feels better than before; his member now achieving deeper penetration to the point of hitting your G-spot accurately with the underside of him. You no longer try to suppress the sounds leaving your lips, your wails bringing life to the hotel room. And Gojo's moans get louder and louder when your legs slither around him, and your ass matches the climbing cadence.

"Oooooh, fuck, Gojo! Shit, shit—Mmaah!!" With every rut to your cunt, you can feel the pounding of your head get louder and louder. "Oh, Christ, it feels tew good, so gooood...!!"

"Hnngh, mmmnph!!" Gojo groans at the pleasure, placing his sweaty forehead on yours. His eyes survey your certified expression caused by his touch. He chuckles, "You look so cute jumping on my cock like this. Such a pretty angel."

Timid by his words, you shift your face onto his shoulder to shield away from his line of sight. "Haaaah, stop saying stuff like that—Ahhhhhnnn!!"

You shriek when two fingers come down to your clitoris, the digits swiping and pinching the tender bud. "Hiding away from me again, huh, dollface?" He continues to mess with your clit ensuing in choked mewls and tears streaming down your face, and his hips increase in speed.

Your brain is a mushy mess, fighting the right to form coherent sentences. His fingers go at a hurried pace, abusing your clit. You're so close. Almost there. "Ahhh! Ahhhhh! Go-Gojo, pleaseee, I'm gonna cum—Hmmm!! Ahhaaaaaa!!!"

The peak hits you hard like a train, your body shaking uncontrollably on Gojo and his cock, the walls of your cunt fluttering beautifully on his length. And the contraction pushes him to release, his essence captured in the condom to prevent a spill.

Pants and groans fill the hot space between you two, and Gojo kisses your shoulder as the shockwaves die down with every passing second. A wave of calm covers your body while exhaustion crawls up your spine. You lift your head from his shoulder, and he's met with the most beautiful dazed expression he's ever seen.

"Heh, I should drink with you more often if it means I see you like this." He kisses your nose, and you smile.

"Oh, shut up," you remark breathlessly, and your lips meet his. He kisses you without hesitation, bringing you with him as he lies back on the bed. The sounds of his lips smacking with yours fill the room with a romantic glow, and it stays that way even when slumber claims you both.

⋆⁺｡˚⋆˙‧₊✩₊‧˙⋆˚｡⁺⋆

You're woken up by some sort of light on your eyelids and the sound of birds chirping. With a few blinks, your eyes open and are met with the sun's glaring rays peeking through the blind of the hotel window. Begrudgingly, you rise from the mattress and stretch your fatigued limbs. A massive headache greets your head without your consent, pounding it like a drum. The sheet above you slips from your figure, and you find out you slept bare nude.

Too flustered for exhaustion to take control, you grab the sheet to cover your chest, afraid that someone would've seen. The headache vanishes into thin air as you whip and search the room. But there's no one here? And you then notice the blue flannel on the side next to you. The side of the man you were on a date with.

Wait? I was with Gojo last night, right? Questions of the night prior finally come to you. Okay, wait, we went to that diner. Then we had those cocktails, which was a bad idea on my part. So what else? Oh. We kissed. Yeah...we kissed...then I got in his car and drove to this hotel room, and then...And then we.....we—

Unable to complete that thought, a sudden click catches your attention, whipping your head to the hotel door to see it open. And there he is.

Gojo enters the room with his clothes back on, his white tee and black jeans. His shades now block the beautiful eyes you had seen last night — perhaps it was a fever dream, imagining that you did see them. He's holding a paper cup, which you could only assume was tea or coffee. When he notices you, he greets you with a smile.

"Well, good morning, sunshine~" his tone gets chipper the closer he walks to the bed. Placing the cup on the bedside before grabbing for his flannel. "I brought you some tea since I'm sure your throat is sore from last night," your face heats up at the comment. "Plus, I didn't want to leave you empty-handed before I head out."

You blink at him. "You're leaving?"

"Yeah, sorry about that. Remember my friend I told you about last night?" You nod at him while he ties his blue clothing around his waist. "He texted me earlier, saying something came up with one of our other closer friends, and they need my help. He tried calling me, so I had to leave the room to let you sleep."

You hum at his confession. "I see..." How considerate.

"Hey," He climbs on the bed to be close to you. "Sorry that I can't take you back home or treat you to breakfast or something. Maybe next time."

Now that he's close to you like this, you can make out the implications of his eyes behind his dark sunglasses, blue orbs honed in on you and you alone. Your cheeks gradually go warm. "Next time?" You didn't mean for it to be a whisper, too entranced to notice.

He chuckles at your comment, and you swear your heart's beating irregularly. "Yeah, princess. I'd love to see you next time." He draws closer to kiss your forehead, and it takes every nerve in your body to not melt then and there. He then removes himself from the bed, the dent returning to normal now that his weight is off.

Gojo straightens himself and turns away from you. "Alright, I'm off. I'll leave my hotel card by the door. Text me if you need money for an Uber, 'kay?" You hear the door open. "Be good, ya hear!?" He shouts to you from the other side of the room, practically already in the hallway.

"Same to you!" You reply back in the same manner.

"No promises~." And with that comes the sound of the door closing, confirming your isolation in the now quiet hotel room. You're left to properly rekindle everything that led you up to this point, yet even then, you feel so at a loss.

As far as blind dates go — or dates in general — it's safe to say that this was the most bizarre one you've had. Not because anything dire happened. And that's probably the reason why it felt so surreal. You came into this date to release yourself from the shackles of a bet, knowing that you wouldn't see the end of it from your friend if you didn't take care of it with haste.

Nevertheless, thanks to Gojo, it didn't feel like a bet. Not at all. It felt like an actual, fun date with a new person. With a great person at that. Not once did you express any uncomfortable feelings or ill will towards Gojo. And if you did, you're sure he tended to your worries without your knowing.

"I'd love to see you next time."

His words ring in your ear once more, and they resume to do so when you exit from the bed to grab your bag on the chair next to you. You grasp the most necessary item inside — your diary — and sit at the hotel room desk to document your concluding statements appropriately.

...What happened last night was something that I had no vision of seeing. So, now that it did happen, I just feel a little...empty? Probably because I took care of Nobara's bet and don't have to worry about going on another date again.

But, deep down, a part of me wants to do it all again — Not with just anyone, but with him. What we shared yesterday was one of the most refreshing days I've had all summer. Although he was a bit childish for his mature age, maybe that made me like him even more. He was kind to me, funny, and, dare I say, an attractive guy, both in personality and physical appearance.

Thanks for the date, Satoru Gojo. And if you wish to see me again, any time at any place, know that my heart will accept with glee.

˚₊‧꒰ა Bonus ☆ Scene!! ໒꒱ ‧₊˚

Gojo exits the hotel room and walks down the hall to the elevator, whistling a tune that only he could understand. He presses the button to summon the machine to his floor, and it comes in a few seconds with the soft ding to mark its risen state. And before Gojo could fully get inside, he sensed his phone vibrating in his right jean pocket.

He grabs for it and stops whistling, tapping on the green call button and placing the device to his ear as the elevator doors close. "Morning, you man-bunned prick."

"It's midday, you blue-eyed sheep." A voice comes from the other side of his phone. "Judging by how you didn't know that, you went out last night, didn't you?"

"That's none of your business~," the white-haired man says in a sing-song manner.

"Shut the hell up~," The one on the phone returns the sentiment. "It's not like I don't know practically every person you screwed in the streets with."

The elevator door opens to the main floor, and Gojo exits to head for the entrance. "Yeah, yeah. I will say this: I had a great time with them."

"You say this about everyone who opens their legs for you."

Gojo sucks his teeth. "Well, this one really had me enjoying myself from start to finish. They were fun to be around. Shit, they even made me drink alcohol."

"Really? And you didn't barf on the spot?"

"Fuck off, Suguru." The one from the phone line — now named Suguru — chuckled at the curse thrown his way. Gojo walks out to the parking lot and enters his car. The phone call is transferred to the car's Bluetooth when the engine starts. "I don't know...They were just great to be around, ya know? Haven't had that in a while."

Suguru hums, vibrating the car with the bass systems. "Think you wanna hang with them again?"

"Mmmmm, I'd like to."

The one on the phone chuckles. "Well, don't get to whipped. Especially since you promised to be at Shoko's beach house this month, we don't want you canceling on us again because someone scheduled you for a dick appointment."

Gojo smirks at the comment. "Yeah, I won't. You'll see me." A few seconds of silence follow through until Suguru asks another question to his friend.

"So? How was the sex this time around?"

With a twinge to his lips, Gojo snickers to himself from reminiscing about the events of last night.

"Man, let me tell you..."

791 notes · View notes

phantasmiac · 1 year

Text

in which you unexpectedly reunite with high school sweetheart!touya

cw/tw: pro hero!touya who is messy, touya’s pro hero name is blueflame, drug use mention, alcohol use and mention, reader is a detective/cop, bar fight woo, use of guns, mentions of blood, mention of a grandparents death, angst and a little fluff

wc: 4.9k

a/n: this is a follow up to my ua student!touya piece. you can read this without reading that but it’s more fun if you dooooo wink wink.

the number five hero is slightly beefier than he was three years ago; still lean in comparison to the likes of his hulk of a father or his broad shouldered little brother, but the biceps outlined by his tight fitting hero suit are not the same ones you once habitually wrapped your arms around. his old snake bites have been exchanged for a single hoop on the right side of his lip. long gone is the eyebrow piercing you used to hold between your fingers as a threat when his teasing would become a little too obnoxious, and in place are two additional studs on his nose that join the original to form a triangle shape. his snow white hair has been tainted by the tips, now dyed black. you think it looks like he’s been sweeping the soot out of a chimney; you wonder if the same idea has ever crossed his mind. he always did have a tendency to beat you to your own joke.

standing next to him is the wing hero, hawks; though you remember him best as “bird brain”, or the underclassman from ua that touya loved to complain about. you wonder if he remembers you from the few times you’d ran into him while glued to touya’s side. those interactions always left you scolding him about “being nicer” (“if you like him so much go date him then,” he’d grumble). they look like they make a good team. you know they make a good team; news channels made sure you did, with all those replays of battle clips. you never thought your touya would be capable of being civil with a rival, let alone working with them. if it hadn’t been just last week that you saw him caught up in another scandal, you might have believed he’d actually grown since you last had him.

“i hope that we’re all able to cooperate,” you hear your sergeant say, muffled by the intensity of your own thoughts and the blood pounding in your ears.

you’ve been looking at the heroes from a distance, merely peeking past the shoulders of your fellow deputies, all crowded together to greet them at the door of the small office. it’s easy to go unnoticed when touya looks so painfully uninterested, leaving hawks to do most of the formalities. it’s funny, seeing these flashy figures in a place as dull as the police department (the yellow fluorescent lighting isn’t a good look on anyone, really). the number five hero has his arms crossed across his chest, eyes lazy and directed towards the beige vinyl floor tiles. you think there’s a chance he might actually be listening to the discussion despite his expression. it’s hard to tell. you don’t know him that well anymore, after all.

“how much you wanna bet he’s on one right now?” the close up whisper and sudden hand on your shoulder nearly has you jumping out of your skin. kawabata is one of the two only other detectives your age in the division. you’ve moved up the ranks with him and frequently worked alongside him for cases, but your closeness hasn’t surpassed friendship — you’ve made sure of that. kawabata is kind, considerate, and a good looking guy. you think if you hadn’t met him so early on, while you were still trying to get over touya, you wouldn’t have worked so furiously to build the wall protecting you from his advances.

“what do you mean?” you ask. you know exactly what he means. and you know you have no right to feel angry. you’re equally as guilty of subscribing to touya hero related gossip and making bitter judgements. but hey, touya didn’t break his heart.

“and how exactly would you know whether or not he’s on something? you gonna go up and ask him yourself, tough guy? think you could take him?” a voice chirps in from your left. like a smug angel sent from heaven — as if she needed another reason to be your favorite coworker — saeki intercepts your conversation. kawabata’s face flushes a noticeable shade of red at her teasing. it has you digging your mouth in the palm of your hand to cover an escaping set of giggles, an action that only irks him on even more.

“i totally could!” he exclaims in a volume that both makes your heart stop and leaves the room uncharacteristically quiet.

sheepishly, you look up to see the crowd in front of you parting like the red sea, sets of eyes turning their gazes to where the three of you stand in the back of the room — you can feel his burning into you among them all. when you fully lift your head towards the front of the room, your breath hitches. pro hero blueflame is no longer standing there. it’s touya, sleepy eyes gone wide and mouth ever so slightly agape with his crossed arms threatening to falling to his sides. defenseless and vulnerable, caught by surprise. it’s a familiar image, one you used to want branded into your brain, captured every time you would suddenly pull him into a kiss. contrarily, the blush on his cheeks is missing. so is all the color in his face. he looks like he’s seen a ghost. maybe he believes he has, too.

it all feels too real now that you’re looking at one another, and the urge to run up and wrap your arms around his neck is suffocating. you want to embrace him as someone you lost. someone who was ripped apart from you, and has spent every waking moment looking to find you again, driven by the dream of your fateful reunion — but that’s just a fantasy. the reality is that todoroki touya walked out of your life with his heart in your hands and decided to never look back. now he unexpectedly finds himself standing in front of you, stunned, with nothing to return. the reminder is like oxygen to your lungs.

hawks recognizes you, that much is clear. he’s probably the only person in the room aware that a silent soap opera is playing out in front of him, and judging by the way he’s grinning while his eyes cartoonishly dart back and forth between you and his partner, he’s enjoying the show.

“ha!” your sergeant is looking at you in a way that’s scarily reminiscent of the look your grandmother used to give you in public whenever you would act out as a child. the one that said you’re in for it when we get home. he maintains his best people pleasing grin and turns his attention back to the heroes. “saving me the introductions! those three are our youngest detectives….. clearly.” he mutters. “they’ll be the ones working most closely with you on this case. i believe you’re all close in age. we’re hoping that makes for an easier dynamic.”

and there goes that oxygen. you want to smack the look of subtle elation off each person standing before you. you know they’re not happy for you. they’re happy for themselves (perhaps with the exception of hawks and his shit eating, ear to ear grin). and then touya. you’re not really sure what to make of the twinkle that appears at the center of the storm that's been brewing behind his eyes.

you feel kawabata’s hand finds its place back on your shoulder, giving it a few pats of acknowledgement. the twinkle visibly disappears; the storm clouds grow darker.

the small claps, the rounds of congratulations and the confused calls of your name from your two colleagues all become distant as you trail after your sergeant out the door and down the hall. you deliberately avoid looking up at touya during your exit, but you’re still able to pinpoint the exact moment you brush past him. it’s not his particular smell or the warmth that he radiates that alerts you; it’s just a feeling in your gut.

your attempts at getting removed from the case were futile. maybe you were a little naive to think there was even a chance to begin with, but for the sake of your sanity, you had to try. the reality is that no detective is itching to work with heroes; much less heroes with as shitty of a public image as the dynamic duo currently in question. throwing scraps to the youngins, that’s all it really is.

you learn that you’ll be working together on a mob bust during your one and only meeting together, where you let kawabata take the lead (who was more than happy attempting to assert some sort of dominance). you spent the entire time silently begging touya to quit staring at you from across the conference table. you knew if he was anything like you remembered, he was more than likely going to attempt to catch you outside to talk. your solution was to come up with some bullshit excuse about having to share “confidential information” in order to get them to leave the room first, a request that earned you an audible scoff from an obvious perpetrator. by the time your impromptu briefing was over, the pair had left the building for their other duties, and a single word had yet to be shared between you.

the next evening, you and your teammates find yourself standing at the discussed location. it’s a dingy, seemingly abandoned warehouse that sits next to a river, saturated by the hues of the sunset. you’ve been standing at a safe distance for nearly half an hour, since the plan has essentially reduced you to backup.

“more like chauffeurs,” a voice yawns out. it’s a surprise to no one that kawabata is unhappy with the strategy.

it was touya himself who had declared that he and hawks would be the ones to enter the warehouse and restrain the suspects. if there was some sort of escape attempt, you’d be the ones to handle it. otherwise, you were really just there to collect them and take them to the station. sure, it was a bit patronizing to hear it from him of all people, but you agreed that it was the safest route to take. touya had his blazing flames and hawks had his wings of steel. if kawabata’s hands fidgeting at his holster indicated anything, it was that the three of you were restricted to using your guns. there was no telling exactly what you’d be up against, and you weren’t exactly eager to come back to the station in a body bag.

“it’s like they’re in there having tea or something. so quiet,” saeki mumbles as she paces around back and forth. her steps suddenly come to a halt as a thought visibly develops, and she’s turned to look at you with mischievous eyes. “speaking of quiet. what’s been up with you recently?”

the question has you flinching. “running off to the sergeant about the case? not taking charge during the meeting yesterday? what’s going on with the golden rookie?”

saeki’s tone isn’t malicious. she’s teasing you, like always, but you can’t help but feel like an animal backed into a corner at her sudden questioning. you’ve never told a soul that the current number five hero happens to be your high school sweetheart. it’s something you’ve wanted to erase from your own memory for years, and you’d believed you were making progress up until a few days ago. it’s humiliating, even more so now that your coworkers have noticed his presence interfere with your work ethic.

by the time you come out of your dissociated state, the stares of your comrades have become concerned. the silence is heavy, and you try to muster up something to make the atmosphere less uncomfortable. instead, you’re choking on your words.

“can you blame her?” kawabata butts in in an attempt to save you. “they’re making us work with a borderline felon. the narcotics unit probably has a whole file on blueflame,” he chuckles.

saeki seems to find it funny enough that the silence is replaced with laughter. but you’re still quiet, and it’s not because you’re at a loss for words. you’re biting your tongue. touya isn’t yours to defend anymore. if anything you should be joining in, adding some more quips into the mix. but you can’t help the anger that consumes you at kawabata’s badmouthing. you want to yell out “you don’t know him like i do!” like some silly lovesick schoolgirl. what a joke.

the sound of shattering glass has all your heads turning and your hands reaching towards your guns. you see shards raining down from a window on the other side of the warehouse, along with a silhouette that’s seemed to land on its feet. the three of you quickly approach the corner as silently as you can in a triangle formation. you’re now able to see the men the silhouettes belonged to as they attempt to make a run for it, completely unaware of your presence. they’re alerted by the “freeze!” that kawabata bellows.

it manages to get them to turn around. there’s a brief panic in their eyes that’s quickly replaced by a mixture of relief and malignancy at the sight of your guns and badges. it makes them bold enough to ignore your warnings and start walking towards you. their proximity forces shots to be fired; one of the men lifts his hand, and the bullets start flying wildly. one of them flies back towards you and narrowly misses, grazing your cheek. a metal quirk.

the culprit’s partner makes a pushing motion with his arms towards you, and you feel a force throwing you back. it’s all too quick to process. you’re suddenly meters away from you were just standing and away from your coworkers, back against the pavement. from where you’re laying you can see the men closing in on them. though your body is in shambles from the impact, your concern for your friends gives you the willpower to stand up and run back for them. a large wall of blue fire stops you in your tracks and blocks your line of vision. the adrenaline doesn’t allow you to make the connection between the fire and it’s potential user; all you can think about is the safety of your friends, and it has your hands gripping at your hair in distress.

it’s only a few seconds later that the fire dwindles, and your arms fall at your sides. in front of you, taking the fires place, is him, unscathed and looking down at you with an expression that screams high and mighty. “didn’t realize you were fucking quirkless now.”

it’s his first set of words to you in years, and yet your focus is over his broad shoulders. he follows your eyes towards both of your coworkers; but all he can see is that fucking dork from the meeting. the same one that put his hand on your shoulder all chummy the day he first saw you. the one who clearly has a thing for you.

you shove him aside and march away. you see hawks towering over the culprits who are now being held to the pavement by his feathers. you feel touya towering over you as he stalks you from behind. it irks you; it’s probably best to ignore him, but three years of rancor and your current aggravation compel you to respond.

“well what would you know about me anymore,” you don’t look back to see his reaction. “law enforcement aren’t permitted to use their quirks. you should know that, number five.”

touya watches blood gush down your cheek as you berate him. he’d be huffing smoke if he could. of course he knows that. what he doesn’t know, doesn’t understand, is why you’re working this shitty job in the first place. three years ago, you held a golden ticket in your hands in the form of a secured, successful future. how the hell did you get here?

he brings his hand to your cheek to wipe the blood off. “stupid fucking job, then.”

the sudden grip on his wrist could leave a bruise on a common civilian. you rip his hand away like he’s burnt you, and he looks back at you like you’ve done the same. touya has never seen you seething. annoyed, mostly, at all his teasing when you were together. you were always so patient with him, something no one else was ever able to do. something no one else has been since the day he left you. but angry with him? never. it’s something he expected all those times he would fantasize about a day where he’d run into you again. he certainly deserves it. but seeing it now — it makes him want to throw himself in the river and let the current swallow him whole.

touya doesn’t know how much of your self worth depended on him back then. it’s not something you ever brought up out of embarrassment. he doesn’t know how hard you worked to build yourself back up while having to hear about him thriving and hooking up with someone new every weekend. so maybe you’re wrong for wanting to rip his head off because of three silly words. he doesn’t know. and he’ll never know, because he abandoned without so much as a lousy text.

“well then it's a good thing it's my job and not yours. so you’re welcome to fuck off and disappear somewhere right after this.”

you think the universe really has it out for you when you see touya again the very next night. you’re at your usual bar, on your usual stool, with your usual drinking buddies. the bar is located in a small, quiet town; the same one you live in. seeing two top ten pro heroes around the area? very unusual.

you figure he must be staying around until his next duty calls and happened to find this place. his bird friend is missing at his side. three women take his place, tracing the tattoos littering his arms and giggling at his every word. it’s a sight you’ve seen in images countless times already, but none of those times prepared you for the ache in your chest when seeing it in real life. he’s wearing a black polo shirt that squeezes at his form; you really are no better than those women.

saeki and kawabata are chatting away about yesterday's events. how lucky you all were that “metal man” didn’t have great control of his quirk, how humiliating being saved was. both of them are about two shots in when they start blubbering a bunch of nonsense about starting a protest and how they would beat everyone’s asses if they could use their quirks.

“are you with us or are you against us?” you nearly fall off the stool when kawabata slams his fist and shakes the whole counter. “hey you’re not even listening!”

a dramatic shriek from saeki has you nearly breaking your neck in concern, only to find her looking where you’d just been. “this is so humiliating. we have to leave, immediately. or kill him. or both. for my own mental health, i just can’t ever look at that guy again.”

agreed, you think to yourself.

you realize her voice has traveled greater distances than your own ears when touya’s blue orbs shoot towards your group. it’s all too reminiscent of that day in the office and you silently curse your friends for repeatedly doing this to you. maybe you’re tipsier than you thought you were, because you think you see a tiny blue wisp ignite on touya’s shoulder for a mere nanosecond. the way he proceeds to flirtatiously whisper something to the women and moves one of them to the side by the waist makes you doubtful.

you feel the need to brace yourself for his arrival, hands gripping the edge of the counter until your knuckles turn white. it doesn’t take long for arms to cage you in from behind. what you don’t expect are his hands placing themselves on top of yours; it’s infuriating how the action makes your heart flutter, but it quickly steadies itself when your nose catches the smell of alcohol. he reeks of it. he must not be in his right mind.

“you following me?” he whispers directly into your ear, breath running down your neck. you’re not strong enough for this.

“absolutely not,” you hiss through gritted teeth. “the hell is wrong with you?”

he only chuckles and rubs circles on your knuckles. the tension makes you forget about the presence of your friends, though you’re quickly reminded when the chuckling suddenly stops and touya’s shoved off of you.

“dude, who the hell do you think you are?” kawabata is a few inches taller than touya, but you know he’s no match. you’d never forgive yourself if he got beat to a pulp because of your carelessness. it’s a pity that touya has always been so quick witted.

“if i remember correctly, i’m the guy that saved your sorry ass,” touya mocks like he’s been waiting for the opportunity; it warrants the first punch. it’s strong enough to send touya’s head whipping to the side. kawabata wastes no time in tackling him to the ground while he has the chance. the women touya flirted with previously are screaming like they’re about to witness a murder, and the bartender is demanding that they knock it off but making no move to actually stop the fight; probably afraid of ending up on the news or something. you hear a laugh before touya manages to turn the fight around and get on top to throw his own punches. it’s then that you realize you really need to do something.

you’re slightly embarrassed having to play the role of idiot trying to calm their “boyfriend” down using the power of love, but you see no other way. you know better than to try to yank him off, so you resort to the second dumbest option, crouching down in front of the scene and reaching out to hold his face in your hands. if he’s as drunk as he smells, this might just work.

“hey! touya. touya! let’s go home.”

the punches come to a halt. the collective confusion is comical. kawabata looks up at you like you’ve grown five heads from the ground below, nose all bloody. it’s impossible to miss saeki’s drunken “huh?” from above. and touya. his face has completely softened, and those tiny little wisps of fire are now undeniable. for a moment, you’re both sixteen again, sitting on your living room floor after having your second kiss.

“okay,” he whispers.

the first thing touya notices upon getting through your door is that your apartment is small. way smaller than his luxury loft. the second thing he notices is that he immediately feels more at home there than he ever has at his own place. and finally: he thinks about how he should have been the one to live here with you in the first place. there’s no evidence of him ever existing in your life as far as he can see. it should come as no surprise, but it still hurts a little, considering all the old photos of you currently being held up by a magnet on his fridge. the ones he’s had to regularly avoid explaining to all the hookups who’ve been nosy enough to ask.

on your wall there’s a framed photo of you at your graduation, from a school he doesn’t know about and has never heard of; very much not the one you were going to before he’d ghosted you. there’s a photo of you at the police academy, receiving work related awards and diplomas, and jesus fucking christ even that dickface has spots on your wall (saeki is very much in those photos, too. he just really enjoys torturing himself). finally, he sees the pictures of you and your grandmother. it cheers him up a bit, remembering how much he adored that sweet lady. probably hates his guts now, but he still feels compelled to ask about her while you’re scavenging through your cabinets for something like a wild animal.

he hates how your movements freeze and all the ruckus dies down at his question. instantly, he knows.

“she, uh. she passed away, after….” he knows.

“i’m sorry.”

“don’t be. you didn’t kill her,” you laugh humorlessly. you stand up from below your sink, first aid kit in hand. touya is looking at you like a wounded puppy, and it makes you really laugh. “she was sick, touya. you’re not a murderer, at least as far as i know. now sit,” you point to the couch.

there’s a teddy bear sat on the other side, mocking him. it reminds him of your first date — the day after your first kiss — at an arcade. he’d emptied out his pockets to win you a stuffed white cat with blue glass eyes, all because you said it reminded you of him. he was persistent even after you insisted it was okay, after his umpteenth attempt at that stupid crane machine. he was convinced you started to love that stupid thing more than him after awhile, even if it’s name was “touya jr”. the door to your bedroom is slightly cracked open. he wonders if touya jr. might be in there, on the same spot on your bed.

you first get to work on touya’s nose piercings, wiping them down with a cotton swab and hydrogen peroxide. you think to yourself that aftercare for three nose studs must have been a bitch, and touya was always shit at remembering to clean them. the bathroom in your house used to be stocked on wound wash, and you’d made it a point to tell fuyumi to make sure he was cleaning them at home. you wonder how all his siblings are doing now. natsuo should be in the beginnings of high school, and shouto in middle school.

“if you wanna know so bad maybe you should just come home with me,” he says, head shot towards the ceiling per your instructions.

“don’t be stupid,” you shoot him down. you’re hard at work trying to stop the blood that suddenly won’t stop dripping.

“why not? dickface won’t like it?”

“who?”

touya makes punching motions with his hands, and an honest giggle leaves your lips. the sound makes touya lower his head to get a good look at you, that expression he’s missed so much.

“kawabata,” you correct him, and touya wants to grumble that if you like his last name that much maybe you should just take it. he doesn’t (what if it actually gives you ideas?). “nah. not my type. but i might have to use my charms to get him back in my good graces now".

“well i think i hit him hard enough so that he'll have to fix his face. you’re welcome.”

it earns him a flick on the forehead. you instantly worry that you’re acting too comfortable around him, and it has you drawing your hands back and squirming in your seat. touya can tell you’re flustered. just yesterday you were speaking to him like you hated his guts — it’s the very reason he found himself in that bar tonight — and now you’re tending to his wounds the way you did when you had loved him. he knows he’s done nothing to deserve a second chance, nothing to prove that he never once stopped loving you. but he’s prayed to a god he doesn’t even believe in for a chance at meeting you again for so long; so he’ll be damned if he doesn’t take this opportunity.

“hey. do you think we could ever try again?”

the cotton swab falls from your fingers. he watches your eyebrows furrow and a lump form in your throat. you let your head fall, and he fights the urge to pick it back up. you probably don’t want him to see what you’re thinking, and he knows he’s not entitled to that privilege. with baited breath he waits, and continues to beg whatever higher power there is to give him one more chance. he silently promises he’ll get his act together, make up for everything he’s done, if he can just have you back.

after what feels like an eternity, you look back up at him with tears in your eyes. touya feels your weight being lifted off the couch when you stand, and he immediately knows. he’s not above getting on his knees and begging, but you’d always given him more than he deserved. so he sits still.

“‘m running out of cotton swabs,” you mutter.

a silent sob racks through your body when you close the bathroom door behind you. you will never not be madly in love with touya; but you think you’ll always be afraid to trust him with your heart again. and you know it’s pitiful and fucked up to wish you were the person you used to be, especially after you spent so much time trying to be better; but that person was weak enough to have taken touya back in a heartbeat. so in a moment of weakness, you allow to yourself regress back to that version, heading back to the living room with your answer.

you come back only to find that touya is already gone again.

★ a/n pt ii: if you were one of the people who read part one very early on and have been waiting for a part two for over two months I am so sorry AHHHHHHH I thought about writing part two literally every single day but could never find the inspiration to actually do it and then during my winter break I wrote like HALF and I literally finished this bad boy up in a day.

☆ tag list for those who wanted a part ii: @touwuya @ijustrepost @goblinhobo @yelloeukulele @nadyyl @im-nowhere-but-also-somewhere @abeokutea

#he comes back #and he does beg #dabi drabble #dabi headcanons #dabi imagine #dabi x reader #dabi #dabi angst #dabi x y/n #dabi fanfic #dabi fluff

434 notes · View notes