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powderblueblood · 4 months

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🎵+ our girl lacy hehe

send me 🎵+ character name and i’ll write a lil blurb inspired by a song from their playlist (you can also request songs and i will do my level best. god is a dj and i'm god)

▶ MAKING THE BED - OLIVIA RODRIGO

and i'm playin the victim so well in my head, but it's me who's been making the bed or lacy visits her dad in prison and reflects on the life she's created*

*as part of the hellfire & ice universe

warnings for mentions of past parental abuse, incarcerated parent, slight drug mention, cussin up a storm as always

also the amount of time this has spent buried in my drafts! it's not right! but it is okay i hope thank you love you anon <3

You had been putting this off for as long as was excusable to put it off-- as long as you could push it, you'd push it. Busy with school, with work now since your gig at The Bookstore had started (which he'd hate), with your... friends (which he'd hate even more, if he knew exactly who that company included).

But eventually, you do just have to bite the bullet and pick up the phone.

The bullet tastes rancid and the visitation room is always freezing. Doesn't matter if you wear your warmest coat--the mink that he bought you, that still smells of smoke from a garbage can at Roane Quarry--you're still practically vibrating by the time you sit down.

"You always ran so cold, baby girl."

Your father smiles at you through the glass. His eyes are wrinkled at the edges, kind of tired. They've got him behind there like a caged animal. Like you're supposed to tap on the glass of his enclosure and see if he'll respond with glee or fury. He's docile today. It's a change; the last couple of times you'd accompanied your mom here, he'd been seething.

"I think it's an iron thing," you muse vacantly, winching your shoulders in.

"Should eat some red meat."

"There's been a concerning lack of filet mignon in my life lately."

That makes him chuckle and that makes you smile. The orange jumpsuit reflects badly against his skin, extra harsh under the burn of overhead fluorescents. Makes you both look sickly; worse than you are. Misery loves company. There's no way you can tell him that you're actually...

"So how are you doing?" He asks you this question and there's a weight attached to it. He must know, right, he must have figured the shitstorm of trouble that you'd been in for in the aftermath of his arrest. The blowback on you. On your mom, who you were white-knuckling yourself into having pity for.

Your lips purse, tugging to the side. Again, no clue how to answer a question like that. Is he expecting game face? Is he expecting... honesty? You can't read it. So you shrug. "You know."

"I don't, Lacy. That's why I asked."

He has a terrible stare, your dad, the kind you can never get out from under. The kind that makes you feel like you're being constantly watched. In the walls, this guy. As if he knows everything already.

"Well, ah-- school is fine, I'm doing about the same as always," you try to smile as casually as possible, "An even keel of greatness, as you used to say, and extracurriculars are... yeah. I, um," and you attempt a throat-clear, "I dropped cheerleading."

Your father pinches his chin between his pointer and his index as you speak, scratching at the side of his face. Contemplative. The smoothness of this expression doesn't break as you drop that on him.

"Why would you do that."

Your toes curl up in your shoes, ten little ice blocks you're begging to thaw out. Your pulse quickens with such a rapid pace that you feel it in your skull. So, you try and answer like he might.

"Conflict of interest."

"Conflict being?"

"Tina and I came to an impasse."

"Pass it." His laconic brilliance outshines yours.

Your throat tightens. "Why?"

This makes his expression falter, his hand drop from his face. There's a weird rush of satisfaction in that, seeing a crack in the facade--but then you have to deal with what leaks out of the crack in the facade.

"What do you mean, why? Because. This is who you are. This is what you've worked for."

Sshrrk, slicing right through the prime rib of you. He doesn't even need to hear you out, because he knows you, he created you.

He saw you attempting to alter and distort yourself in order to be something perfect and said, good.

Necessity is the mother of invention. Take their standards and make it look like you could maintain them in your sleep, bleeding, blindfolded. Be better, and make it look beautiful. Make them love you, then make them fear you.

And if it doesn't fit, shave parts off of yourself until it does.

You doubt that your uniform would even fit anymore.

Your teeth grit so hard that your jaw starts to ache. "I just don't understand why I should--"

"Why are you letting them win?" he asks.

"I'm not," you insist and it turns your stomach, "I'm not letting them win, it's just-- Daddy, you don't know what it's been like out here for--"

"Of course I do. I bet they're saying horrendous, gut-punching things about me, about what I've done, about you-- but what makes you think that freezing them out is the answer?"

You choose not to mention that you'd actually thrown a Molotov cocktail at them the night of Steve Harrington's party. Reason being?

"Self preservation."

"Your fragile ego can't take it?"

"I'm not fragile."

"No, god, you're solid as a rock. At the first sign of trouble, you turn heel, you quit."

"Dad, that isn't fair."

"This life isn't fair. And frankly, Lacy, I don't have faith in your capability to make it on your own."

Something about the way he uses your nickname makes it feel like it's tied too tight around you.

"You're scholastically intelligent, sure, but you're a shell. You have no inner structure. If you don't pack yourself full of something, whether it's pom-poms or prom invitations or fucking diet pills to keep you pretty, you will fall in on yourself." A pause. "You're not a well-rounded person. But it doesn't matter, not if you can make people believe that you are."

"Is that what you did?" Your voice is nearly slurred. When your father wants to cut you down to size, it's the one time that sound moves faster than light-- and it makes your head spin.

"Yes."

"Worked out pretty spectacularly for you, Daddy." It knocks out words you ordinarily wouldn't say.

"You're the child. You're supposed to learn from my mistakes."

"Can I count them on one hand?" Sometimes he'd knock you back for it. But this time there was a sheen of bulletproof glass between you.

"Lacy."

"Is doing yourself up like Saint Jude Thaddeus and siphoning money out of made up charities one of them?" You wonder if he could crack it. Use that handset as a hammer and gather his might and crack it.

"Lacy."

"Is Al Munson another one?" That one lingers between you a moment. "He's a two-bit do nothing deadbeat lowlife that's never come clean out of a job, straight or otherwise. Or so I've heard. People talk. He's like a folk hero now. Does it embarrass you that trusting him was all it took to topple everything?"

A beat. The sense memory of his hand cracking against your cheek is so visceral.

"Does it embarrass you that your charm offensive wasn't offensive enough to fool someone as surface level as him?"

A beat. The feeling of letting him have it, as they say, is all the more real.

"Does it embarrass you that you should've known better?"

A beat. You feel like you've just done a bump of something very dirty. Something somebody would sell out of a tin lunchbox. Immediate headrush.

"You got sloppy trying to fill that gaping maw inside you. And what do you have now?"

"What do you have, Lacy?"

And the descent of fear.

You open your mouth to answer, but decide y'know what. You hang up the headset, and leave him there.

Bussing it back to Forest Hills, your blood slowly starts to recirculate in your veins. With that, second guessing starts to flood in. Should you have said that. Were you right. Did any of it get through. Were you cruel. Did he read you.

Coat shrugged around you, you discover Eddie sitting at the picnic bench on your lot. Handful of pebbles in one hand, old SpaghettiO can in clear sight. A flash of pink presses out of the corner of his lips in sheer concentration-- you watch him miss three shots before you call to him.

"Knew you were flukey."

Eddie's head cranes over his shoulder and he grins a grin so loud and lively that it puts color back in your cheeks. They apple up; you're smiling too.

"Where the hell have you been?"

You cross to the bench, propping yourself up on the table beside him. He keens into you, bumping his head against your fuzzy elbow like a happy cat. Playfully, you nudge him away, but he's relentless.

"Prison. Where the hell do you think?"

Eddie hits pause, stares up at you with eyes brimming with shit, dude and fuck, dude. "Oh. Did it suck?"

You start to shrug it off, to completely glaze over it like the donut of daddy issues you'll force yourself to swallow later. But then you take a second look at him, his big eyes yelling you can tell me, y'know.

"It was fucking awful. Like, horrible."

His spine bolts up a bit. "You okay?"

This one you roll around your head a bit. "Right now, yeah. Maybe it'll hit me later."

"Okay. So worry about it later." Eddie's nonchalance when it comes to dad talk is reassuring. To you, he's a zen master when it comes to disengaging with the goading nature of toxic fathers.

"Worry about it later!" you echo brightly.

"I'll stick around in case, for later." He's a good friend. And your stomach sort of flips.

"Take me to the movies?" An afternoon in the warm dark sounds good.

"Fuck you, what if I had plans?" Eddie pushes back only because it'd be weirder if he didn't.

"You don't," you say, pushing back too, "Unless aiming rocks into that soup can is a prelude to something much more spectacular."

"Maybe it is. Maybe I'm finally trying out for basketball." He misses another shot.

"At the eleventh hour." It's a little transfixing, watching him aim and score. Moreso than when she ever stood on any basketball sidelines. "Why are you so bad at this. You're usually kind of good at this."

"These rocks are too small!" he exclaims, animatedly frustrated. Another one, making a sharp ting! off the can's jagged rim. "But seriously. I got banned from the trailer for playin' my gee-tar too loud while Wayne was sleepin'."

Because vaudeville was always one of your fascinations, you mimic your shittiest Southern accent in tribute to his uncle, "Goddamn, boy, ain't nobody teach you any manners?!"

"Was you brought up or dragged?!" His is so much better than yours.

You chuckle. He chuckles. There's a moment, the two of you looking at each other with the softness of two people with nothing but dumb bits and dangerous families. What ludicrous kinds of lives you lead.

"So, movies?" Eddie says, like it's his idea. You let him have it. It's nice to share.

"We'll always have the movies."

#powder room talk #Anonymous #hai brainrot #i genuinely DON'T know what else to tag this as but tentatively #eddie munson x reader #even though. look. it's lacy family issues centric #do i love it? not really. am i glad i wrote it? absolutely #anon thank you again for sending this in i'm very pleased that you're into this and that you fuck with this hope you're still here #i know this has been in drafts Furever #published by powder #blurbs #l. doevski by powder

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