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powderblueblood · 6 months

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HELLFIRE & ICE — eddie munson x f!oc as enemies to star-crossed lovers

CHAPTER FIVE — CHEERLEADERS MAKE BAD NEIGHBORS

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summary: after you get kicked off the cheerleading squad by an enraged tina, you're stranded in a rainstorm of biblical proprtions- and the only safe haven is eddie munson's trailer. fuck. content warnings: MINORS DNI I'M NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT HAPPENS TO YOU HERE- male masturbation, sexualized language, some mild objectification, cursing, smoking, drinking, drug mention, reader backstory (i do it for the plot the plot the plot), steve harrington cameo, reader is a pretentious bitch word count: 10.1k

Dear reader, Joan Didion said something because Joan Didion is always saying something. Particularly to me. She comes at me hard, smacking me in the back of the head with perfect clarity and I have not gotten around to not resenting her for it yet.

‘I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not.’

Joan Didion probably did not have to stay on nodding terms with a girl she used to be in order to score a cheerleading scholarship because her family blitzed her college fund on ill-chosen legal advice.

But she’s got a point.

You remember that day with perfect clarity.

Middle school had been a lesson in elocution, thanks to your then-best friend Phoebe’s older sister Casey. Phoebe was a relic of your former life– a bookish indoor kid with Coke bottle glasses, a slight stammer and a distinct lack of style. Despite this, you loved Phoebe and she loved you. But more than that, more than anything, you loved that Phoebe had an older sister.

A cool older sister.

Casey was popular in the best way, which is to say that she wasn’t showy about it but she wasn’t humble either. By recognizing the power of being hot and likeable, she knew nothing could ever touch her.

You wanted to be just like that.

You remember the first time Casey told you you’ve got potential. Her hand-me-downs were a little too big for Phoebe, because Casey had boobs and Phoebe’s hadn’t come in yet. Even as a pre-teen, you knew an opportunity when you saw it. Can I try that top? And you did, flipping your hair and adjusting yourself in the mirror just like you’d watched Casey do a hundred times, sitting on her bedroom floor and soaking up her knowledge while Phoebe moaned and sulked about being bored.

Check you out, hot stuff, Casey had smirked, but not in a way where you felt stupid. You’ve got potential.

The shirt didn’t feel entirely right on you, but the way Casey regarded you did.

Fast forward– your first day of freshman year. You were in the parking lot, stepping out of the passenger side of Casey’s car. Phoebe slid out of the back seat, shoulders slumped forward. You were dressed in an outfit that you and Casey spent hours agonizing over the night before–first impressions are everything, girl–while, again, Phoebe looked on glaring.

Come meet some of the crew, Casey said, pointedly to you and not to Phoebe.

Hey– I thought were were going to find our homerooms together, Phoebe protested, grabbing you by the elbow. She knew she wasn’t invited. And she didn’t care– she’d never cared for Casey and her ‘airhead ways’, as she so derisively called them.

Yeah, girl! you affirmed, a note-perfect impression of her older sister. Phoebe’s big eyes flared with disbelief. You’d spent junior high carefully studying Casey’s every movement, absorbing and adopting her behaviors as your own. Stella Adler would have loved your ass. Don’t worry about it. I’ll catch up with you later, ‘kay?

Make a move, freshman! Casey yelled, and you came trotting after her. There would be no catching up later, and you knew that. You bit back the sinking in your stomach with a Bonne Bell-glossed smile.

Look, I love my sister, Casey murmured, but I’m glad that you’re my little freshman experiment, ‘kay? You are way more fun that Phoebs and her goddamn library card.

You nodded, wordlessly grateful. Way more fun. The older girl confiding in you like this made you feel warm, included, grown-up. But not quite so grown-up that you remembered to watch where you were going– the laces of your left Chuck Taylor All-Stars came undone, sending you tripping– tripping–

Oof! Right into the muscular arms of Steve Harrington. Steve Harrington and his autumn colored eyes, his swathe of hair that seemed to grow more voluminous the more girls he flirted with, his shock of grown-up cologne and his perfect, perfect, perfect smile.

But it wasn’t just Steve Harrington. It was also all the surrounding popular kids that had already made a name for themselves coming up alongside you in middle school–Tina, Carol and her boyfriend Tommy Hagan–mingling with the older kids.

You okay? Steve asked, his voice all breathy and cute the way boys voices are when they’re halfway making fun of you.

Uh-huh, you nodded, lashes fluttering like crazy as you wracked your brain for something smart to say.

Let me help you out here.

Then Steve did something you never thought possible, something right out of your daydreams. He got down on one knee and started to re-tie your shoe.

Better watch yourself, Lacy, he said, tightening the bunny ears, gazing right up at you, Wiping out on the first day is not a good look.

Lacy. Lacy. Your heartbeat quickened at the nickname, hammering like hummingbird wings. It was the greatest thing you’d ever heard– it makes you feel fresh. New. Seen for the first time. Seen by Steve Harrington for the first time.

Can you blame me? you said before you knew you were saying it; a common occurrence with you, You’re just too easy to fall for, Harrington.

You drawled out too easy like you’re making fun of him, which of course you weren’t, because he’s Steve Harrington and you would never– but it earned some warm guffaws from the surrounding kids and a little ugh, please, from Tommy Hagan.

Hagan’s something else. Hagan’s hated you since day dot, and you him. You remember his merciless teasing of some kid during Nancy Wheeler’s thirteenth birthday party, the last boy-girl party of your middle school careers, goading that they were too chicken to go into the closet with you for Seven Minutes in Heaven.

Steve grinned at you, eyebrows quirking upward. A fizzing feeling ran through your sternum and you felt like you might faint. Casey threw an arm around your shoulder, a magnet for attention. Well, it looks like some of you already know my little Lacy! You guys better be fuckin’ cool to her, okay, or else you’ve got me to answer to.

You smiled up at her, the older sister you’d always prayed for, and she looked impressed with you. That’s all you wanted. That’s all you craved. That, and for Steve Harrington and everybody else to never quit calling you Lacy.

And they didn’t.

Everything you’d gleaned from Casey equipped you to cruise through freshman year with no speedbumps, no checkpoints– you knew exactly how to wear your hair, how to flirt, how not to flirt, what not to eat, who not to be seen with… and even better than that, these people really took a shine to you. The girls especially.

Hawkins isn’t kind to teenage girls. It’s heavy with passive-aggressive Midwestern sensibility, with all the backwards, misogynistic attitude that comes along with that. It’s not overt, it’s insidious. It makes sense that these girls were scared. Few women make it out of here, and look at the ones that don’t. Their mothers. Your mother.

But what was even scarier was to want something more. To strive for better and be met with the begrudgery of your attempt. To think about life outside the snowglobe of this wicked little town.

That's the thing with wanting. It doesn’t leave you alone. It gnaws at you while you zone out in the cafeteria, churning around with the half fat yogurt in your stomach. It finds you in the middle of the night, awake on the floor of your friend Carol’s room after an evening of pounding secret wine coolers and picking apart the rest of the Hawkins student body for their flaws and faults, looking around at your friends and thinking,

God, I fucking hate these people. God, I’ve got to get out.

And you were working on it. Like a motherfucker, you were working on it– perfect grades, perfect attendance, the perfect extracurriculars in an excruciating balancing act with your demanding social life. Keep your record spotless and you could fly the coop to any college you wanted.

One such extracurricular was–is cheerleading. And god, you were great. You’re a flyer, one of the shining, pretty faces responsible for revving up the Hawkins Tigers and their adoring fans. Given your propensity for perfectionism, it’s an obvious position for you. Tina, the reigning captain of the cheer squad, had even taken you under her wing and spit shined up your back handsprings when you tried out as a freshman. Tina had a prior career as a child gymnast, making her a shoo-in for the title come senior year. And here she is now, hollering you all into formation.

It’s Thursday, and it’s still the week from hell. You had almost forgot about cheer practice, but here you are, in your green and white and gold, ponytail too tight and bruise fading out. The tension between you and Tina casts a thick haze over the gym, the other, less-clued-in members of the squad not exactly knowing where to look.

It probably wasn’t fair, outing Tina and her indiscretion with Hagan like that. But you felt like a cornered animal. It was all you could do, after all of them subtly chipping away at you for weeks when you’d done nothing but be there for them. Wiped their tears.

Bought their crabs lotion, in Tina’s case.

“Sloppy, Lacy! Again!” She’s drilling you like you’ve never been drilled before. Each twist and flip you perform, she finds something wrong with it– and you can’t even tell her she’s wrong. You have gotten sloppy, because your head’s not in the game. While cheerleading was a social and athletic high at one time, it wasn’t high on your list of priorities right now. Dismounting your bases and tugging your ponytail ever tighter over your skull, you stalk towards her.

“Alright, Tina!” you yell, bubbling over with frustration. “How about you just drop the Russian gym coach bit and tell me what I’m doing wrong? Or is yelling at me all you got?”

She does her best attempt at a withering glare. You can’t help but think it looks like something she learned from you. “How about I show you instead?”

Tina shoulder checks you, hard, and calls to one of the underclassmen. A mousy sophomore with sandy bangs and blazing Bambi eyes. This kid looks terrified, and knowing Tina’s reputation, she should be. “Cunningham! You’re up!”

Chrissy Cunningham. Right. Heir to the throne of Hawkins High. You don’t think you’ve heard her speak more than a couple of words and most of those have been in response to her Aryan meathead boyfriend, Jason Carver.

But for what Cunningham lacks in vocal force, she makes up for in aerodynamics. This girl makes a basket toss look like ballet, ponytail pirouetting as she lands in the bases’ arms. Every move, faultless. She’s locked in.

“That is what I want. What I don’t want, Lacy, is a flyer that looks like she’s losing control of her rectum mid-toss,” Tina hollers. “We all know how crucial this weekend is. Not just for us, but for the Tigers, too. Right? So that means the last thing we need is dead weight dragging us down.” She locks her laserlike stare on you. “Right?”

The squad mumbles in the affirmative. Chrissy Cunningham visibly gulps.

And you? A knife slices right through you, cold and exacting. You almost gag, trying to swallow through your thickening throat. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“You tell me, Lace. You’re the one that knows everything.”

You don’t waste a second of time trying to counter-argue, because you can’t be sure it won’t end in your limbs flailing, trying to smash Tina’s head against the waxed floorboards of the gym. Instead, you grab your bag. You give the squad a grimacing nod and head to heave the double doors open.

The sound of your sneakers squeaking against the linoleum floor makes you want to tear your shoes off and throw them through a window, just to watch the glass shatter.

You really never thought of yourself as a violent person, not until– everything happened.

But now, god, now you just want to punch and tear and rip everything apart. This slow burn of your social status, your friends, your tether to reality as you know it slipping away is torturous. You’d rather burn it all up than let it swallow you whole.

Standing on the front steps of the school, your eyes automatically dart to the parking lot.

It’s not there. He’s not there.

And why would he be? you think, starting in the direction of the trailer park. You hadn’t spoken to him since that day in the record store, leaving him hanging with his hands behind his back and his mouth in that grin.

There was a reason for that. Call it post-high clarity or something else, but you knew right then you needed to focus the fuck up. Quit acting out because of your daddy’s mistakes and prove all of these shitheels wrong once and for all.

Blend in. Stop causing trouble. Fall in line and study hard and cheer harder and get the hell out of dodge once you get your hands on that high school diploma. By whatever means necessary. Those means really did not include hanging out with Eddie Munson for even a second longer than you already had.

–which is a nice thought and all, but Tina really shit all over that one with this shedding the dead weight move.

The clouds above you carry the most pathetic of pathetic fallacies, gray and pregnant with rain that starts to hit you square on the crown of your head in fat, heavy drops. You’re still fifteen minutes from the trailer park, at least, and you don’t have a raincoat. You don’t have an umbrella. And you don’t fucking care.

You stomp up the dirt drive leading into Forest Hills, the pleats of your green skirt heavy with water, your cheerleader’s cardigan weighing down your shoulders. Your white knee-high socks are flecked with mud and getting dirtier with every sloppy step. And the rain, the relentless relentless rain, is streaming into your eyes, streaming mascara with it.

You gasp against the cold of the downpour as you approach your trailer– and a glowing yellow light catches in your peripheral vision. His bedroom, the one you can see into from your bedroom. Though you try not to look. And sometimes you fail.

You don’t see much, when you do look. It’s mostly his hunching figure, bent over his guitar or some binder or book or map or figurine. But he always seems calmer, the frenetic energy he wears around like chainmail finally falling to the floor. Watching him like that makes you want to breathe a sigh of relief right along with him, just to see if you’d feel similarly. Calmer.

Calm is not how you feel right now, wiping the rain from your face as you dig in your bag for your keys. Once, twice, thrice they slip out of your hands, and on the fourth try, you finally get them in the door. And then– the key strains in the lock. Come on. This door has always been unnecessarily sticky, but this wasn’t really the time– you push and you push the silver key to the left with no give.

Was your mom in there? Had she left her key in the door by accident before she went on another overnighter with Prince Valium? “Mom! Mom!” you yell, hammering on the door. No dice. You pull at the key again, and pull and pull and–

Snap.

You shudder, a full body shake that’s only partially down to the rainwater that’s soaked you right to the bone marrow. The key has snapped off in the lock, leaving you standing there with a useless silver nub.

“Fuck!” you holler, “Fuckfuckfuckfuck fuck! Fucking–shit!”

Your fists go straight to the side of the trailer, banging one after the other against the metallic veneer. You don’t care that it hurts your knuckles, you want it to dent or crack or something, you want to not feel so impotent and fucking useless, but here you are!

“Hey! Asshole!”

Your head whips around, heavy, sodden ponytail smacking you in the face.

Eddie Munson is leaning out his bedroom window, barely visible through the downpour.

“Keep it down! You’re in a residential goddamn area!” He’s not smiling that shiteating smile. He’s not even grinning. He’s just glowering at you, which is the look you’re most accustomed to seeing him wear. Even so, it feels– it feels– it makes you feel worse.

“Fuck you!” you scream across to him, “Who died and made you the fucking neighborhood watch?!”

“Go inside, you lunatic!”

“My fucking– my key broke off, dickhead!”

That makes his brow loosen a little bit. You just stand there, gasping in the rain. And then he disappears from the window–

–only to fling open the front door of his trailer.

“Come on,” he grumbles, massaging the space between his eyebrows like he can’t believe what he’s fucking doing.

“No.”

“What? Cut the shit, Lacy, come inside.”

“No! I don’t want to!”

Munson’s face opens up in an expression of sheer incredulity– and you partially can’t believe yourself either. What is it about him that just makes you shove and shove and shove, unable to let him win– or in this case, unable to let him help?

“Fine! Fucking drown out there for all I care!” The trailer door slams.

Your teeth have started to chatter, and your options from here on out are… walk or hitch your way back to town and drag your sodden ass somewhere there’s a phone where you then call your mom and pray she’ll pick up (she won’t) and tell her about the lock and try to tell her about the cheerleading squad and pray she’ll understand how upset you are (she won’t) and how much of an awful spiral this whole year has become and it’s not even Christmas yet and–

The trailer door swings back open.

Eddie Munson comes stalking out into the rain, white Reeboks splattering mud everywhere. He’s wearing that shirt from his Dungeons and Dragons club, the one with the big fucking smug Satan splayed across it and you wonder, did he model that after himself?

“What’s your fucking problem?” he asks, point blank. It feels like he’s aiming something at you.

“I’m having a shitty fucking day!” you scream in response, making that dog belonging to that red headed kid sister of Billy Hargrove’s yap somewhere in the distance. “And I keep telling you, I don’t need your fucking–”

“Help? Right!” he scoffs, loud and indignant, crossing his arms across his chest. The fabric of the ringer tee is changing color before your eyes, clinging to him. “You don’t need my help yet you always take it, you don’t wanna be seen with me yet you end up at my lunch table, in my van, smoking my weed– you know, it may shock you but I’m not exactly thrilled to be seen with you either, Lacy! I mean, playing chauffeur to a grade A certified bitch that wouldn’t give me the time of day unless she was desperate? Who stood by and let her shitty friends, who aren’t even her friends anymore, make mine and my friends’ life a living hell for how many years? What kind of an asshole does that make me? How pathetic is that?”

The way he spits the word bitch– it was different from the way he said it in the record store. There, it felt like a come-on. A compliment. Here, it feels like a curse. But oh, he doesn’t stop there! You are rooted to the spot, an unmoving target for his justified rage.

“You can’t even play ignorant, y’know, because I’ve seen you. You’re smarter than them. You know how godawful those people are–Harrington, Carver, Carol, fucking Hagan worst of all–and you just let ‘em run. Because you needed that status, you needed to be the most evil fucking twat at the twat table, and for what? They left you, Lacy! They all left you!”

You’re not sure at what point in his speech you started sobbing but at its crescendo, you yelp. It’s a high, pathetic sound you wish you could stuff back inside your throat and hopefully choke yourself with. See, you know all these things. You’ve told them to yourself in your most honest moments, of which there are not many, but having Eddie Munson lay them out for you in the pouring rain– it’s horrible. You’re horrible.

Eddie’s arms move from where they were bound on his chest. Okay, that was an outburst, sure, but he didn’t mean to make you cry. And you’re like, really crying. He can’t stand it when girls cry, and you, in particular–you, having never displayed much emotion beyond bemusement and annoyance and mild disgust toward him–is especially frightening.

And then you let out this scream. It comes right from the center of your chest, rumbling and primal and visceral and real. It’s a real noise, not one you put careful, curative thought into, tuning it just right before you let it out. Because in this instance, he’s right! You’ve worked so hard, and for what! For fucking nothing! For it to blow up in your face! So you let out another howl– and it feels so, so good. A feeling of satisfaction, more than a feeling of relief–

–so Eddie screams too. God, that feels fantastic.

His is heavier than yours, obviously, because he’s a guy and he probably screams as a hobby in whatever metal band he supposedly plays in. But you like that sound. You like the way it seems to ring off the exteriors of the trailer, ricocheting around like a pinball in its machine.

A couple more painful sobs escape you, and Eddie’s taking tentative steps toward you, like you’re a snarling animal he’s trying to coax.

In ways, you are, but that’s because you feel hunted. You have to blink, through tears and through rain, but you see that his shirt is so soaked that it’s see-through. You can see a vague suggestion of a tattoo on his chest. You see that he’s fighting a smile.

This is so stupid. This is so ridiculous, that you could make a noise like that and completely short circuit the white hot anger he was spewing at you.

“Come inside,” he breathes, a little less than a foot of space between you, “You lunatic.”

Your head, so heavy on your neck, so heavy from crying, so heavy from carrying your spiteful brain around, falls against his chest.

“Uhh…” Eddie mumbles, hands hovering behind your back, not sure if he’s supposed to embrace you or if you’re about to rip his heart out of his chest. Either could be true.

You know what you’d prefer.

You’re positive he doesn’t here you exhale into his chest, into the mouth of the cartoon Satan, into the thrum of his jumping heartbeat. Sorry. I’m really… I’m so sorry.

“Hey,” he murmurs, “hey. Shit.” His hand finally rests in between your shoulder blades. You let him guide you inside, and he even picks up the book bag you had thrown in the mud. You reach, try to grab it from him, but he yanks it out of your grasp. Half teasing, half assuring you that it’s okay.

A squeaky, squelching silence settles between you two as you stand in his doorway. You’re creating a puddle near some old work boots. You wonder if they’re his– you’ve never seen him not wear those Reeboks.

“So… welcome,” he cringes, emitting a pitchy, awkward laugh. You follow him through to the kitchenette, which is identical to your kitchenette, except every surface is not covered in legal correspondence or empty wine bottles or too-expensive tchotchkes. The light in here seems dimmer, warmer. There’s a distinct aroma of stale cigarette smoke and old coffee, which you breathe in deep. “Sorry for the mess–”

“It’s fine. It’s good mess,” you say, a little distant. You peer around the place like you’re in a gallery.

“Good mess?” he queries, crossing to the kitchen sink where he attempts to wring his shirt out by hand– still wearing it.

“Lived-in mess,” you say. What you mean is, it doesn’t look like a mausoleum of a life someone left behind. A storage locker. A haphazard sarcophagus. Before you moved to the trailer, your house was so clean– that was a whole other problem. The same tchotchkes that are scattered on your counter were kept behind glass, only touched when your mother polished them, the only housework she ever did. You stare at a collection of trucker hats nailed along the living room wall, the shelf of novelty mugs that accompanies them.

“Living in mess? What is that, like living in filth? You better start showing this fine abode some respect before–”

“Lived. In. Munson, I said, lived in if you would just listen– it’s good, it’s fine. It’s n-nice.”

It’s warm in the trailer, you can tell, but you’re shivering. You bear down in your body, jaw all set so your teeth don’t start chattering again, but he hears it in your voice.

“Uh-oh,” he says, somehow not at all betraying any signs of being out in the freezing rain except for being entirely soaked. You bet his skin is still running hot, like you felt through his shirt, like you felt grabbing his wrist. “Star cheerleader’s coming down with a case of hypothermia. Right before the big game!”

He slaps his hands to his cheeks in mock horror.

“I’m–” you’re about to tell him a couple things; one, that you’re fine which would be stupid, because you are so clearly not fine; two, you’re not the star cheerleader anymore; and a third, forgotten thing. “--cold,” is what you settle on. It sounds small, vulnerable.

Eddie holds his breath for a second. You sound so delicate. Hard, terrible you.

“No, sure, of course you are,” he fumbles. The way his wet hair has flattened to his skull makes him look younger– exposing a nervous boy behind the metalhead posturing. “You can– take a shower. If you want. To warm up.”

Take a shower. In Eddie Munson’s trailer. Your eyelids flutter closed, taking on their own vibrations from the wracking of your body. This is a hell of my own making. “Yes. Sure. Thank you.”

“I can also,” he starts, crossing the kitchen again and knocking something over on his way– it just clatters to the floor, whatever it was, and he lets it, like he’s used to leaving crashing sounds in his wake. “I can take your clothes if you want. Put ‘em in the washer.”

You hesitate a beat, then follow him down a hallway.

“I probably have something you can wear,” he says. There’s a note in his tone that’s high and nervous. “You’re for sure gonna hate it, but hey– beats freezing to death.”

“Just barely,” you murmur.

“Huh?”

“This, uh– this is dry-clean only,” you correct yourself, gesturing to the uniform.

He rolls his eyes. “Of course. Only the best for the pom-pom shakers.”

He ducks into a room that must be his bedroom, but you don’t follow him. Instead, you linger in the hallway, near the dingy bathroom, staring at the corn themed wall calendar. Going into his bedroom feels too personal– too intimate, as if preparing to take a shower in Eddie Munson’s trailer only to change into his clothes isn’t intimate.

“I figured,” he says, emerging from the bedroom with clothes and a towel in hand, “since you like all that rinky-dinky-tinkly garbage, you wouldn’t hate wearing a Stooges shirt.”

“I–” the shirt is soft under your wrinkled fingers, as are the boxers he passes off to you. Boxers. You hold them up between your forefinger and thumb, stepping into the bathroom. “These are clean, right?”

Eddie stares at you for a second– then leans his head into the bathroom and shakes his sopping locks at you, just like a dog. You let out a shriek that he thinks almost sounds like an involuntary giggle. I’ll take it.

“No comment!” And he slams the door on you.

Then you’re standing. In Eddie Munson’s trailer. In Eddie Munson’s bathroom. Holding his old Stooges shirt and his boxers, with mascara running down your face.

You pinch yourself, hard, just in case.

The shower heats up quick–quicker than yours, you notice–and you rest your head against the tile as the steam swirls up around you. This is so weird. This is so fucking weird, and you can’t scrub away the weirdness fast enough. There’s not enough Irish Spring in the world. You reach into the shower caddy to replace the bottle and notice something familiar– wait, that’s–

Wait.

Do you and Eddie Munson use the same brand of shampoo?

You had to switch from your favorite to the best that the Big Buy had to offer, given the change in your personal means, and this was the top score in terms of quality. Eddie Munson apparently agrees– but better yet, you realize as a grin spreads across your face, Munson uses women’s shampoo.

It’s nice to have a fresh piece of arsenal to aim at him once you get out of the shower.

Toweling off and changing, you do give the boxers a wary sniff before you put them on– but luckily, they smell like generic detergent and aren’t stiff in any way. So you slide them on.

They fit snugly– naturally, given he’s all sinewy and you have hips. He is really sinewy, now that you think about it.

His wrist wasn’t bony, but it was active. Tendons flexing under the thin, soaked layer of his shirt. You wonder, absently, was that a tattoo you saw. What is it. What does it look like. Is it shitty. It’s his, so it’s probably shitty, but I want to see it. Does he have any more.

You shiver, slipping the Stooges t-shirt on, and blame your hardening nipples on the cold.

The cheer outfit is another problem. You emerge from the bathroom, clutching the still-sodden uniform with Eddie’s– Munson’s towel thrown over your shoulder.

“Do you have, like, a garbage bag or something?” you ask, eyes rising to look at him where he stands in the doorframe of his room. He’s still in his soaked clothes.

He takes a second to answer you, and when he does, his voice is all thick. Avoiding eye contact.

“Suuure,” and he disappears and reappears with a plastic bag, quick as a blink.

“Thanks.” You dump the uniform, sneakers and all, into the bag and make for the door.

“Hey, it’s still raining–” his voice follows you, as if you hadn’t heard the raindrop gunshots hitting the trailer roof.

“Yup,” you say, popping the ‘p’. You yank Munson’s door open and fling the garbage bag outside. It lands squarely between your trailer and his.

Munson appears over your shoulder, looking out at the garbage bag. His face is twisted in confusion, concern, curiosity.

“I got kicked off,” you explain, plain as biscuits.

“Off the pom pom squad?” he whispers, eyes flaring in surprise that you think might actually be real. You’re looking at his lashes again, fanning around the almost-perfect circles of his eye sockets.

“The very same.”

“Escándalo. What happened?”

“How about you go and shower first,” you suggest, poking a finger into his chest. He makes a little breathy noise, a little ‘unh’, that you don’t… hate. “Can’t have the star dork of the make believe board game club catch his death, can we?”

“Anything happens to me and you’re the prime suspect, babe,” he grins and snaps the towel off your shoulder.

“Hey!”

“This is the last clean one. What am I, a fuckin’ Rockefeller?”

Christ, he wants to jerk off into this towel but he knows that’s weird. That’s perverted. That’s fucked up. That’s everything everyone says about him and that’s everything you make him feel.

So he strips, turns the hot water to scalding and furiously rubs one out down the drain. One, because he feels bizarre about leaving you alone among all of his things for too long and two, because hot water is in short supply.

And three, because he’s achingly rock hard at the sight of you in his boxers, tossing your cheerleading outfit into the mud and the wet.

The metaphors. The implications. The feeling of your forehead against his chest. The stab of your finger in his sternum.

He cums jaggedly, almost silently, with his mouth rammed against his forearm.

If you heard him– God, you’d be so nasty about it. God, he’d never live it down. God, he’d love to know what you’d say.

He makes damn quick work of sudsing up and rinsing down, wrapping a towel around his waist– only to run into you as he’s coming out of the bathroom.

You stare. You stare at him, and Eddie’s mouth goes dry, and all the blood drains away from his brain. Again.

“Stare much?” he sneers, but only just about. Because his first instinct is to drop the towel and give you an eyeful. See what you’d do– hopefully something with your mouth. God, he hopes it’d be something with your mouth.

“Where are your smokes?” you snap back. “I know you have some.”

“Kitchen. There’s probably–,” he needs you to stop looking at him like that; like you’re going to snap his neck, “--kitchen.”

Eddie slams his bedroom door and smacks his face with three quick strikes. “Come on, man! Get it together!”

Because it’s go time.

He has to formulate some kind of plan.

He hadn’t exactly thought ahead when he invited you inside–or, demanded you come inside–and since you now had no place to go and Wayne had specifically told him not to go near you and your boobs were stretching out his dad’s old Stooges t-shirt…

Christ.

He’s entirely, massively, completely at a loss. Eddie paces around the room like an animal in panic, grabbing a Scorpion shirt and some worn flannel pants as he goes.

“Like, I’m supposed to go out there and do what? Ask her to hang out? Fucking paint her nails, read Cosmo? Study?! Jesus!” he angrily mumbles to his reflection, tearing the towel away and tugging his t-shirt over his sopping hair. “Hey, Lacy, you wanna beer? Who am I, Steve fucking Harrington? Jesus, Jesus, Jesus Christ, dude!”

“Munson. Are you talking to me in there?” He hears your voice from a minute distance away– see, that’s the thing about trailers. Small space, thin walls, and Eddie Munson’s voice travels at super speed.

He stops, seizing, cringing, shoulders hitching up to his ears.

That was not enough time to formulate a plan.

Eddie, jankily tugging his pants on, sweeps out to the kitchenette area like something is chasing him and stops dead when he sees you. You haven’t trashed the place. You haven’t even tried to stick your head in the oven, two things he was kind of concerned about given the way you were wailing outside.

You’re standing in the middle of the room with your hip cocked out, smoking a stolen cigarette and studying his uncle’s trucker hat collection.

All the air in the room seems to orbit around you like a tornado in slow motion.

How is it that you make an old shirt and boxers look like a skirt set? How is it that you can be sobbing your lungs out one minute, then the picture of poise and sophistication the next?

All that air and none left for Eddie to take a breath.

“Hey, Lacy,” he strains, “you wanna beer?”

“What,” you purr– like, he’s so sure that you actually purr, “You mean you’re all out of Sancerre?”

He does not know what the hell that is, but he can only assume it’s some rich people bullshit– and he’s relieved. You’re mocking him. At least that’s some tether to normalcy. She’s baa-aack.

Eddie rolls his eyes, not entirely meaning it, but if he beams right at you he’s going to give the game away.

“Think fast!” He tosses a can of the cheapest beer available at the Big Buy your way and you just about catch it, hands above your head and the cigarette dangling out of your mouth like Keith Richards.

“God, Munson,” you mumble around the filter, “What kept you off the basketball team?”

“Half a brain and a big dick,” he smirks, cracking the pull top and snatching the soft pack of cigarettes you’d left on the countertop. You cross from the living room, propping yourself up on the counter stool in a fluid movement that can only be described as feline.

“Well, we sure can account for one of those things,” you say, ashing with your right hand and tapping at your temple with your left.

“And the other?” Eddie asks, voice dropping a mocking octave.

“I’d sooner drink arsenic than find out.”

He raises his beer can to you. “In that case, cheers!”

Your mouth twists around a smile and Eddie can see you’re fighting hard to keep it at bay. And that you’re losing. You tip your beer to your lips and he braces his elbows on the counter, looking around for a lighter. He spots a Bic, but the trigger won’t light it– just sparks, no flame.

“That thing’s dead,” you say, “I lit this off the toaster.”

“Oh! Right,” Eddie goes to turn, but something chilly snaps to his forearm. Your fingers. Damn. What is it with you? Circulation thing or what?

“Don’t do that,” you shake your head. “I don’t trust you not to burn the whole trailer down.”

“This is my trailer, y’know.”

“Yeah, and I’m in it. So burn it down on your own time.”

You motion for him to light his cigarette off the half-burned length of yours and Eddie tentatively places the filter between his lips. You prop yourself up on the stool, ass raised from the seat, leaning toward him. He leans in too and you cup that little hand with the perfectly painted fingers around the cigarettes. Like you’re whispering a secret. You look down, focusing on making fire, but Eddie’s eyes follow the tiny crease of your brow, the slope of your nose. The little wipe of mascara still underneath your eye.

Tips touch and Eddie inhales just as you do. The cherried ends of the smokes glow orange and you pull back and Eddie just stays there a moment, frozen with the now-lit ember hanging out of his mouth.

You pull back and inhale that smoke like one of those chicks from those black and white movies Wayne is always watching. You exhale all daintily, in one perfect clouding stream. You’re all– you’re so–...

“Fucked,” you groan, shoving the heels of your palms into your eyes. “I am so fucked.”

Eddie finally tugs the cigarette from his mouth, filter gone a little soft with the low-level salivating he’d been doing. “Oh. The cheerleader shit?”

“Yes, Munson. The cheerleader shit.”

“What happened, anyway?” He resumes the position of being elbow-up on the countertop, which incidentally brings him a little bit closer to you. Incidentally. “You crack some skulls this time?”

“Huh,” you chuckle emptily, “Almost. Um, Tina more or less took me out at the knees. Which, I understand of course. If I were her, I would have obliterated me, but–”

“You’re not her, and it doesn’t feel awesome to be on the other end of obliterated,” Eddie nods, giving you a squint-eyed pout of mock-sympathy. “Poor Lacy. Getting shitkicked by the consequences of her own actions.”

Thunk! You punch him in the shoulder, which hurts and he gasps, but it’s so funny and categorically unladylike coming from you. These little peals of violence that keep coming off you are a seemingly bottomless source of amusement for him.

She’s so funny-looking when she’s mad.

“Fuck off!” you bark, as if reading him like a goddamn horoscope, but there’s a glimmer to your narrowed stare. “I got replaced by a sophomore, as if I needed an insult topping on that injury shitshake.”

“Oh, she Old Yeller’d your ass!” Eddie gasps again, chuckling heartily, “Took you out back and–” He mimes blowing your brains right out, nailing you right through the forehead. You stare at him square, unimpressed. “Who usurped ya?”

“Chrissy Cunningham.”

Oh. Well, isn’t that interesting. Eddie’s lips flatten into a straight line and he makes a little mmh sound. And you pick up on that immediately, being that you’re annoyingly perceptive.

“Munson! Come on!”

“What? Whaaat? I didn’t say anything!”

“That’s a child.”

“That is a sophomore and you said so yourself. Besides…” he trails off, pointedly crushing the butt of his cigarette into the ashtray until it’s oversquished. “...we have history.”

If his cigarette extinguishing was pointed, yours is needle sharp with the way you crush it into the ashtray right next to the remnants of his.

“Go on,” you hum, just like you did in the van that last night. I really wanna know. It’s conspiratorial and intoxicating and makes it feel like you’re on his side, which you know he’s not but it’s so, so tasty to think that for a second you might be.

Is this how you make everyone feel? Lull ‘em into a false sense of security? Hoard your ammo and go apeshit later?

Eddie draws back, nearly congratulating himself for doing so. “That’s for me to know, and you to die ignorant.”

The way your lips pop open is almost too good, your little doll face turning to a mask of betrayal too quick for you to hide it. Too quick for you to be all like fine! Keep it to yourself! You’re both totally irrelevant anyway! or whatever other bitchy retort you’re bound to come up with.

“Wow. Well, if that holds any water, Carver’ll shit,” you start, sipping on your beer, “His little virgin Mary deflowered by the devil’s first alternate.”

“Hey, I never said–!” Fuck. Fuck! How do you do that! Eddie pinches his lips together as you smirk over the rim of the beer can, all stuck under your gaze. Fly in the spider’s web.

“A-ha,” you say, irritatingly smoothly. “So nothing happened. She’s just spank bank material.”

“Didn’t– say that either,” Eddie mumbles, mind going annoyingly blank under your rapid fire tearing and the inebriating way you’re delivering it. He hates this and he has no intention of telling you to stop. The duality of man.

“Didn’t not say that, though.”

“You oughta be a lawyer,” he tells you, swigging deep, “the way you find a loophole in everything.”

“The way you want me to get you off, you mean.”

You come out with that, something so incendiary, oh-so-casually and slip off your seat. She can’t just do that. You’re padding around the living room again, bare footed and small-looking, but Eddie’s staring at you like you’re a hand grenade with the pin missing that also has the secret to everlasting life inside. Terrified. Fascinated.

A little stiff.

“What?” he breathes, but doesn’t really want you to answer the question.

And you don’t, you just keep looking around the living room with your arms crossed over your chest. “You need money to be a lawyer, Munson. To go to law school. To go to any school. And I don’t have that. And I foolishly figured getting a cheerleading scholarship would be a cinch of a backup plan, and now I can’t do that either.”

“What are you looking for?” he asks, finally willing his dick down and his legs to work, rounding into the living room with you.

“Your, like… stereo, or record player, or something,” you murmur, smoothing down his boxers over your hips. “It’s too quiet in here.”

Eddie blinks. What should really happen is he should say, no, stay out here in the silence, you insolent wench. Think on your crimes. Reflect. Repent. Stop being such a bossy little ballbreaker and give my balls a break.

“Room. Uh– it’s in my room,” is what he says instead.

“‘kay,” is all you say with a little shrug of your shoulder, grabbing your can from the counter and padding down the hallway toward that same bedroom. His bedroom. Eddie Munson’s bedroom with his bed and his shit in it. “Let’s go.”

How irregular does your heartbeat have to get before you classify it as a cardiac event?

There’s only so many times you can flagellate yourself with the ol’ what the fuck are you doing thing before it becomes redundant.

Songs get overplayed, nail polish color gets overused, trends die. Things become redundant all the time, and you discard them.

The notion of what the fuck are you doing in Eddie Munson’s trailer in Eddie Munson’s boxers walking towards Eddie Munson’s bedroom has become redundant because you simply are doing all those things. Not much point in questioning them. The chips have fallen.

An eerie calm had come over you when he was in the shower and you were staring at all of these trucker hats on the wall– if the insanity is temporary, you might as well lean into it. You can’t go anywhere else. You’re trapped. Might as well get comfortable.

“God, this place is filthy, Munson.” You, with your arms still bound across your chest, toe a discarded t-shirt out of your path as you move into the bedroom with that same reserved interest of a gallery-goer. The place is cluttered, posters and flyers and doodles torn out of notebooks tacked up on the wall in total disarray. Every surface area is covered in what could be organized chaos, but knowing Munson the little that you do, you doubt it.

To test the theory, you ask, “Where are your records? Tapes, anything?”

But he’s just lingering in the doorway, chewing on the end of a lock of hair. Watching you stand in the middle of the room with astronaut eyes, unblinking. It’s kind of– sweet, in a deeply unnerving way. He looks like a kid.

Your brow furrows, grimace turning your lips into a point.

“Fine. Ogle me like a goddamn lobotomy patient, then.”

You resume your perusing of his things, when you spot the most precious piece of hardware hanging by the mirror. A marbled black and red body fashioned into nasty spikes. You reach out to give the strings an aimless thrum but your wrist is rapidly snatched away.

“Nuh-uh. That’s where I draw the line,” Munson says, shuffling you away from the guitar like a security guard. A flash of something as your calves hit his mattress– him shepherding you toward your own bed, you drunk out of your gourd. “Siddown.”

And you sit, bouncing against the sinking mattress on impact. Rubbing at the spot on your wrist that his fingers had been squeezing. Staring up at him glowering down at you. “Ow.”

And Munson, it turns out, knows where everything is in his nuclear fallout of a room. He shoves a shoebox of tapes into your hands and nudges a bigger milk crate full of records nearer to you with his foot.

“Knock yourself out,” he huffs, flinging himself face-down on the mattress next to you. You jerk; always the court jester, this guy. “Not that you’re gonna find anything you want to listen to.”

A scoff flies out of your mouth before you’ve got a chance to suppress it– he’s gotta know, right? He’s gotta know he can’t just say shit like that to you without you fully activating that I can do anything you can do better–backwards–bleeding–in heels chip in your brain. You’ll show him. There’s nothing that matters to you more in the world right now than showing him.

Though, rattling through his box of tapes, each one bearing a different variation of hot chick and the Devil artwork, you’ve got your work cut out for you. W.A.S.P. Mercyful Fate. Dirty Rotten Imbeciles. Witchfinder General. Some band that’s literally just called Loudness, for Chrissake. As you flick and flick, hope wavering, one catches your eye. There’s a jump in your throat. Scrawled letterhead against a draped satin background. A photo of something you always figured was a headless marble statue, though you could never be sure.

“Why do you have this?”

No response from the corpse of Munson, presumably smothered by his own comforter.

“Hey!” you tap the back of his skull with the plastic casing. One eye appears, glaring up at you from the mattress. Rattle rattle goes the Cocteau Twins tape as you shake it in its case. “Thought this was haunted doll music.”

“Ow.” Munson slowly raises himself onto his elbows, looking like he’s about to start kicking his legs in the air behind him. Twirling his hair around his finger. A grin is edging onto his lips, lips he’s pulling strands of hair away from.

“Sometimes the five finger discount chooses you.”

A feeling akin to heat spreads rights across your breastbone. You want to pry, secretly. You want an explanation. Why would you take that? Do you like me, or something? But asking speaks it into existence, and the insanity is temporary, and you’re so waiting for dawn to break on it so you can resume some hobbled together semblance of a normal existence.

One that doesn’t include Eddie Munson stealing tapes that make you feel ticklish in order to, I don’t know, listen to them on his own so he can feel ticklish too.

He hadn’t listened to it, for the record. Not all the way through, at least.

He’d gotten as far as track two and had to switch it off, ejecting it out of the tape deck of his van with such speed that he was sure it’d shoot clean through the doors in the back. Too close, too real. That had veered a little out of the lane of objectifying you as someone whose crotch he maybe wanted to bury his face in and a little into the lane of you being like, a person. With feelings.

The events of tonight aren’t helping that case. He hoped that lying face down for as long as he possibly could might let them just unfold around him, like he’d roll over and you’d just be gone, no evidence left behind except for your hair in the drain.

But you demand attention. Eddie might be obvious, but you demand attention. His attention, at least.

He grabs the tape from you. “We’re not listenin’ to that bullshit. Try again.”

“Fine!” you snap, but there’s this irritating bemusement dancing around your face.

You lean forward from your spot on the mattress and tug the milk crate between your calves. Now, this is more your lane– in here, Munson’s got the classics. Or as close to the classics as he will deign to recognise. Zeppelin, Sabbath, Alice Cooper, Blue Öyster Cult– the combination of which you have something borderline mean to say about, but you’ll leave that ‘til later. You dig around, and then.

And then. Hello there, handsome.

In your hands are twelve inches of beauty, belonging to a grisly-voiced Tom Waits. Blue Valentine. Straight to the record player with this old bastard.

“People give this record too much shit,” you remark, and Eddie watches you as you tentatively lift a sock off the turntable. Yeah, he’ll cop to it, he doesn’t take such good care of some of his gear, but sometimes his brain behaves like a police scanner. Lotta channels operating at once. Anyway. Doesn’t matter. He’s watching you lift the needle onto the vinyl right now. “People say that this is a mediocre addition to the oeuvre, but what is mediocre about this–!”

Rousing strings seep from the stereo speakers– it’s Waits’ cover of Somewhere from West Side Story. Eddie knows it within the first half a second because, and now he’ll never admit it since he knows you like it so much, he has played this album to death.

Somewhere around the halfway mark of Christmas Card For a Hooker in Minneapolis, the record will skip because it's scratched. Or well-loved, if you ask Eddie.

“Fucking Robert Christgau thinks he’s being funny, doing this, y’know,” you sneer, examining the record sleeve as if you hadn’t seen it thirty thousand times before. Your copy had been lost in the move, among a number of your little sonic secrets. The records you’d keep to listen to by yourself, lying on your bedroom floor. “As if the whole core of Tom Waits’ whole thing isn’t heartache, the sentimentality of what-if. What if we could, what if life wasn’t garbage. That’s sentimentality, right there. It’s West Side Story, I mean, c'mon. Tom Waits is singing to us with his heart on his sleeve, but Christgau wants to suddenly be pedantic, turn around and be like, it’s a vaudeville act! because Waits sometimes also wears his dick on his sleeve.”

It’s a tirade you’ve often repeated to yourself, in your diary or alone in your room, pretending like you’re on a panel, pretending like you’re Susan Sontag and people actually give a shit what you actually have to say. You can’t exactly figure why you’ve said it again now. Maybe because you always found the strings on this song too much to bear without emoting, and you’re already vulnerable and tired.

Munson, for his part, has flipped over onto his back on the mattress. “Who?” he drones.

“Robert Christgau,” you say, momentarily distracted by the way his shirt has rucked up around his belly. No six pack. Some meat there. Tendons, like you’d noticed before. “Just one of the most seminal rock writers of our time.”

You have a well-thumbed copy of his Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies somewhere in a still-unpacked box.

Munson has a happy trail that curls like brushstrokes.

“You fucking trifler,” you grumble.

His face takes on that terrible look that he’d given you in the record store, all enraptured and cloudy at the corners of his eyes. Looking at you from where he leans on his elbows, one knee propped up, rocking back and forth ever so slightly. You want to shove it back down.

And see what he’ll do about that.

“How do you know all this shit?” he asks. Eddie can’t help this. He can’t help that he keeps changing his channel about you (again, police scanner) because one second you’ll be such a massive pain in the ass, then the next, you’ll say something so clever that it’ll make him want to vomit.

“I like music,” you say, flatly. You give it to him straight, because you suddenly feel searched. You clutch Waitsy’s printed face to your chest in an effort of self-defense. “And I like… words. Kind of makes sense that I would enjoy music journalism, if you’re not totally stupid.”

“I’m only a little stupid.”

“Debatable.”

“Wait, but I mean–” and he’s gearing up, because Eddie is about to ask you a real question. Something that’s been on his mind, the more ice shavings he can tear off of you. Considering you, all three dimensions of you– four, if you add in how much you like to punch him and stuff. “You’re like, incredibly smart, right.”

“Yes.”

“Like, perfect grades.”

“Almost. Save Kaminsky, because he can’t teach for shit and he can’t grade for piss.”

“And you’re a cheerleader… like, an important one?”

“Artist formerly known as, but yes.”

“And you’re on the newspaper.”

“Very perceptive, aren't we.”

“You’re also popular– or, yeah, were. You party and stuff. You’re always hanging out with those assholes who don’t do half the shit that you do.”

“Are you closing in on a point here, Munson?”

“How?” he nearly whispers, tone close to dreamy. “You’ve gotta have like, body doubles running around or something because no human person could possibly have that much time in the day. How the fuck did you do all that and also be running around ready to cite, like, an issue of the New Yorker from 1975, and not go completely insane?”

How do you know I’m not completely insane. Because, if he had ever witnessed how Jekyll and Hyde you could get, smacking the shit out of yourself with your hairbrush before you could turn on and be Lacy the cheerleader, Lacy the hot chick, Lacy the playground bitch, he would think you are totally insane.

You answer him half-straight this time.

“Diet pills.”

This makes him sit up, and makes you take a couple of steps back towards the bed. You flop down, tossing the Blue Valentine sleeve to the side.

“Diet pills,” he repeats.

“Oohhh, yes,” you nod, drawing the shape of the cylindrical pills on his comforter with your finger. You don’t really want to look up at him. “Rainbow diet pills. Soon as I hit my menses, I started lifting them from my mom.”

“Isn’t that stuff illegal?” Eddie murmurs out of the corner of his mouth, mimicking your criss-cross applesauce seating position. “It’s basically speed, right?”

“Said the drug dealer,” a snort bursts from you. You’ve moved your fidgeting, starting to braid your half-damp hair. “And it is. It’s fully speed. I was doing baby Valley of the Dolls at age thirteen.”

“That is fucked up, Lacy.”

“Yeah. Well. I'm a little fucked up, or haven't you heard?”

“There’s been rumblings.” Eddie watches your fingers work, weaving locks of hair, one over the other. He’s never braided his hair. He wonders what it might look like. You come to the end and twist it around your finger, at a loss for a hair tie. He sticks a finger under his leather and silver bracelet, digging out an elastic he keeps handy, just in case. There are a lot of times that Eddie needs to yank his hair out of his face just to focus. “Here.”

You mouth a silent thanks and wind the elastic around the tuft of hair. Tom Waits whines away about rain washing memories from the sidewalks and you feel weirdly… at ease. You’ve shared a couple of rainbow diet pills with Nicole and Carol (Tina doesn’t mess with amphetamines, a consummate athlete), but you’ve never had anyone ask you how you’ve managed to be the person you’re pretending to be.

To put the clues together about your impossible do-it-all identity.

And not react in disgust when he finds out you’re fallible.

“Hey,” Eddie says. Something about hearing you rattle off, not sniping for once, saying something real… it eased the heartburn. It has loosened his tension around you, a little. He figures it’s his turn to say something real. “I’m sorry I called you evil.”

Most evil twat at the twat table, you nearly correct. “You had grounds.”

“No, no, I didn’t. You–” this is actually harder for him to get out than he thought, “You’re trying. You’re trying really hard to make the best of a messed up situation, and maybe I should’ve seen that– but I didn’t, because it’s high school, and it’s dumb, and I’m trying too, and we’re all trying, just to survive this messed up microcosm of the world– and– and–" He huffs. It's you gazing at him this time. Eyes sparkling in the half-light cast by his bedside lamp. You're... really pretty. "Jesus, can you just forgive me so I can stop talking?”

“That’s a first,” you say. “Microcosm is a five dollar vocab word, Eddie.”

The way you say his name. “I’m a changed man.”

“Can you use adulation in a sentence next?” Your big grin is devastating.

He leans right into you, dastardly looking suddenly. “Is this provocation getting you hot, you psycho?”

Fingertips braced over your knees, your torso keening just the right amount of degrees to favor him, your stare making an unsubtle job of darting from Eddie’s lashes to his lips to his lashes to his lips…

“Maybe.” A beat. A heavy beat. “What are you gonna do about it?”

In any other world, with any other person, the wanting would completely make sense. Wanting him to say nothing more and just do, to plant a big, ringed hand either side of your hips and pull you into his lap. To crush his lips against yours. To dig his hands into your thighs, to wind your fingers into his hair. To feel the chill of silver traveling up, under the back of your borrowed shirt, to press down onto him and–

Hey Charlie, I almost went crazy-ayzy-ayzy-ayzy-ay–

Eddie doesn’t mean to, he really doesn’t mean to, but his head snaps away from you just as the record starts to skip.

Then the door slams.

Fuck.

“Ed?”

Wayne.

He totally forgot to formulate that plan.

author's notes: ZOOWEE MAMA HOW WE FEELING ARE YOU STILL WITH ME longest chapter in the fic so far. thanks for keepin up. i love you, let's not waste any time, i don't think i've got a lot of notes for you this go around but i love you - there is nothing more secretly pretentious teenage girl than loving joan didion and susan sontag (i know this because i was her, i am her to this day in fragments) but particularly joan didion on keeping a notebook really sticks to one's ribs. this is not the last joan didion ref in this fic, sorry for being unbearable - stella adler, the mother of method acting - steve harrington being the originator of the nickname lacy is a tribute to him showing signs of being a goofy motherfucker from day dot. please see this post. it was always there, we just couldn't see it in freshman year because of all the hairspray - what's going on with tommy hagan? does anyone really care but me, probably not. but for those that are keeping tick on the timeline (don't)- he got held back senior year, hence why he did not graduate with steve and is in the same grade as eddie, lacy, carol, et al. - WICKED LITTLE TOWN!!!! - the stooges t-shirt is yet another flight of icarus pick; al wears a stooges shirt and i creamed because i love the stooges. let's listen to one of my favorites - loudness are a metal band from osaka, japan! they got signed to an american label in 1985, but how did eddie munson get that tape in hawkins, indiana in 1984? well, my theory is that eddie loves music and jerry from main street vinyl loves benzos. a trade's a trade's a trade. - reader, you are an 18y/o girl who thinks you're better than everyone. of course you're stealing lester bangs' opinions on blue oyster cult and making them your own - and shitting on robert christgau bc you've got a wetty for tom waits - also, here is tom waits' cover of somewhere! my theory on eddie being a tom waits fan-- of course he is, that man looks and sounds like billy goat gruff and is a storytella just like eddie is. he would especially be into his later stuff, like the megalithic orphans album. y'all remember this song from shrek 2 - rainbow diet pills were a real insane thing! this seems more accessible than adderall for the time period, which modern!lacy would certainly have been abusing - for the time that's in it, let me present tom waits' anti-christmas song, christmas card from a hooker in minneapolis my loves, if you've still stuck with me this far, i thank you greatly. i know i'm nutso but i'm having fun writing this fic. i would've been writing it if nobody was reading, but it's a billion times better now that you are. reblogs are always appreciated, and the inbox is always open to chat shit ♡

#published by powder #in progress #hellfire & ice #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x f!reader #eddie munson smut #eddie munson fic #stranger things fic #e. munson by powder

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weirdgenetic-fuckup · 1 month

Text

The not so Princely Prince Charming

A/n: @d3vilstower thank you sm for requesting this, this was such a good idea and I hope I was able to write it in a satisfying way!

Warnings: Angst, yelling, smoking, smut, fingering(f receiving), oral(f receiving), creampie, if you think I missed anything let me know otherwise enjoy!

You met Slash in high school. He was an introvert, always keeping to himself at the back of the class, though he was also a trouble maker. He’d fall asleep in class, his grades were dogshit and he respected pretty much no one and only had a few friends he barely hung around. Yet you saw something so indescribably perfect about him.

Since you were known as a good kid, getting good grades, being nice to everyone, you were often sat next to the ‘bad’ kids in hopes that your good behaviour would rub off on them. Of course this never worked but if it got you a seat next to Slash you were more than happy to comply.

Whenever he fell asleep you put your sweater under his head to use as a pillow. You’d write extra notes and give them to him, whether he used them or not didn’t matter, you just wanted a reason to talk to him.

Occasionally the teacher would call on him when he was sleeping in an attempt to embarrass him. He’d wake up all groggy, you’d write the answer on a slip of paper and discreetly show it to him. This infuriated the teachers, neither you nor Slash cared.

Slowly he grew fond of you. Not in the sense that he was starting to find you attractive, he’d just never had someone treat him like that and the initial lust was morphing to a deeper connection.

He started bringing you snacks and he’d keep track of your favourite ones so he’d remember which ones to grab next time he was out.

Then he started sticking around you between classes, since he preferred to be alone he managed to get you away from your friends so it could just be you two. It didn’t always work and sometimes you’d drag him to sit at a table and actually eat with you and your friends rather than smoke out by the benches in the field.

It was a codependence thing at first. He wasn’t good at being around people and you were, the extrovert adopts the introvert situation.

Your friends weren’t all too happy to be sharing a table with Slash, with his big hair and crunchy clothes. He just didn’t fit in and they didn’t think he was the best for you, and they told you so to your face in front of him.

You always brushed them off, saying something about how you were just friends. And you kept that line when they called you to talk about it while Slash was between your thighs, struggling to hold back moans as he ate you out like a man starved.

Slash only came over when you were home alone because your parents were conservative, they hated the whole rock movement and sheltered you from it as best they could. Luckily, Slash showed you every part of it, even educating you on parts that he didn’t particularly care for because he didn’t want to shelter you either.

While you didn’t tell your parents who you were dating, you did tell them you met a guy. Of course they wanted to meet him right away and get to know him, make sure he was the right match for you, or rather them.

You knew they’d never accept him but you wanted him to meet your parents. Slash had helped you distance yourself from the lifestyle your parents had raised you in but deep down you still felt the need to have their approval. So you planned a dinner.

You brought Slash over after school, it took some convincing since he didn’t care too much to meet your parents but now you were at your front door, holding his hand tightly as you rang the doorbell for your parents to answer.

Your dad opened the door with a smile that quickly faded as he eyed the man beside you. “And this is him?” He asked, looking to you for confirmation. Slash also looked at you with an expression that just read ‘I told you so’. You ignored him.

“Yes, dad, this is my boyfriend.” You said with a bright smile. Your dad let out a heavy sigh and grudgingly reached his hand out for Slash to shake.

“Well, I’m glad that I’m meeting you, Saul.” You took note of how he phrased it.

“Slash, sir.” Your boyfriend corrected him. By your fathers expression you could tell he didn’t like that.

“You’re Saul tonight.” He stated and walked back into the house. Slash looked to you again, you looked back at him with a soft smile and pulled him into your home.

Dinner went worse than you expected. Slash had tried to remain civil, he was polite and didn’t speak unless he was spoken to. It was your parents that did everything in their power to tick him off, complaining about degenerate kids who did nothing but cause trouble.

You’ll never forget that night. Not the way they yelled at Slash nor the way he yelled back. It was like something snapped in him. You’d seen him upset before but nothing compared to this, he’d always been so soft spoken with you, sweet and compassionate. This was totally different.

You were sobbing and ran upstairs to your room, Slash followed suit. He slammed the door behind himself and locked it. You stared blankly at him, tears streaming down your cheeks while he threw some of your clothes into a bag.

“W-what are you doing?” You asked, voice shaky and weak.

“Packing.” He said in a firm tone, his voice raised.

“Why?”

“We’re fucking leaving!” He yelled, tossing the bag to you. It landed in your lap with a thud. Slash came over and held a hand out for you to take. “Now come on.” You hesitated. Could you really just pack up and leave your family?

Your parents started banging on your door, demanding to get in but you ignored them. Slash sat next to you, his hands on either of your shoulders. “Look, I’m not gonna up and leave you because you don’t want to come with me.” You sniffled softly as he said this and he wiped the tears from your cheeks. “I’d just rather you come with me than be stuck with them.” You nodded in understanding.

Slash pulled you closer, letting you rest your head on his shoulder. “I love you.” You mumbled. Slash stuttered in his movements for a second before squeezing you gently.

“I love you too.” He kissed the top of your head.

After that night your parents forbid you from seeing him anymore, even going as far as to tell your friends to keep an eye on you which you didn’t know about. You found out after bringing Slash over to eat lunch with you and your friends, that night it started an argument between you and your parents.

They made you switch schools so you wouldn’t have as much easy access to your relationship. They gave you strict schedules filled with extracurriculars to keep you busy and away from Slash. You still found your ways together, late at night you’d sneak out with him just to wander around.

As time progressed you drifted apart. It was no one's fault, the both of you simply happened to leave it. Maybe it was too hard on you, maybe his feelings for you faded. You never forgot him.

You found another man, one your parents approved of. You said you loved him, told everyone and yourself that, but he was just a cheap filler for the cavity left by Slash.

You watched from afar as Slash’s band took off, hearing about all his relationships, the things he got up to. You bought every magazine Guns N’ Roses was featured in, bought posters and their albums. Anything to bring little bits of Slash back into your life.

The man you met proposed to you with your whole family watching, of course you couldn’t say no. You wanted to, oh how badly you wished you could’ve told him and everyone else off for ruining your chance at love.

He never approved of your little ‘hobby’ as he called it. Always making jokes that seemed to cross a line every time. But you couldn’t say anything about it. This was the life your family wanted for you, a good man with a good paying job to support you and your soon to be family.

Your mother was happiest about this and helped you plan the wedding, which was really just her planning everything while you sat pretty for her, fake smile and all.

The wedding neared and you dreaded every day of it. You started getting rid of all your Guns N’ Roses things, knowing there was no use in keeping any of it anymore. You got into a routine of making three meals a day, getting a glass of whiskey ready for your soon to be husband every day after he got home from work.

You walked up the aisle in a dress you never liked, between families you never wanted, to a husband you never loved.

The priest went over the whole ordeal, asking for the vows. You’d memorised what your mother had written up for you. She needed this day to be perfect for her own little fantasy.

“And do you, Y/n L/n, take H/n L/n to be your lawfully wedded husband?” The priest asked. All eyes now on you as you stood at the end of the chapel, white wedding dress adorned as if you were innocent a day after you met Slash. You knew you should say it, it’s what everyone wanted.

You glanced at your parents and saw the fury in their eyes. You looked up to your fiance, his eyes sharing a similar glower. If you said yes now he’d never forgive you, you’d regret it every day of your life.

You shook your head, dropping the bouquet of pristine flowers in your hands and ran down the aisle, holding your dress up to keep from tripping over it. Everyone called for you to come back, a few even standing to run after you. Hands reached out for you, all of which you managed to avoid with the adrenaline rushing through you in the moment.

The grand doors opened and the cool air hit you. Right outside was a fancy black car you couldn’t forget even if you tried. Slash stepped out of the driver's side and stared at you, eyes wandering up and down your body in pure admiration for your beauty. “That dress looks like shit on you.” He said. You smiled, tears streaming down your cheeks as you ran to the car, quickly getting in the passenger seat.

Slash got back in, his arms going around you and pulling you in for a kiss. All those feelings you’d been trying to leave behind rushing back to you as his hands roamed your body, tugging at the uncomfortable wedding dress you’d been put in, plush lips meshing so perfectly with yours.

Your mother calling your name from the chapel doors is what caught your attention and you pulled away from Slash. “Drive.” You ordered.

“What?” Slash asked, caught off guard from the sudden loss of contact.

“Drive!” You repeated as your mother neared the car. Slash wasted no time in getting you out of there, ignoring the speed limit as he drove.

“Could you slow down?” You asked, reaching for his hand to get his attention. “You’re gonna get pulled over.” Slash shook his head.

“Don’t care, I can pay off a ticket.” You looked over to him and it really hit you. He came back for you. This was Slash. The boy you’d seen falling asleep in class, who got you snacks and followed you around because he didn’t know where else to go. The kid who gave you your first cigarette and laughed when you started coughing. Who held you when you cried.

Except now he was Slash, guitarist of big band Guns N’ Roses, travelling the world and fulfilling his dreams.

“Why’d you come?” You finally asked. You needed an answer after everything. He never tried to contact you. You never tried to contact him either.

His eyes flickered to you then back to the road. “Because I love you.” He said as if it was just yesterday you said that to each other for the first time. “I saw it in the papers that you were getting married to some guy, even in that picture I could see you didn’t want to be there.”

You held his arm close, clinging to it as he drove, leaning your head on his shoulder. “Thank you.” He kissed the top of your head and kept driving.

“Where are we going?” You asked when you realised you didn’t know where you were.

“My place.” He said simply. “Your family doesn’t know where I live.” You smiled and kissed his cheek.

You’d seen pictures of his house before. At night you’d think of what it would be like to live there with him. When you closed your eyes you could almost pretend he was holding you in that house, that smell of musky cologne and cigarettes washing away all your worries. Then you’d open them and still be stuck living this life you never wanted.

His house was much bigger in person. In a rich neighbourhood, surrounded by forestry. He drove up the long driveway and parked the car, getting out before you so he could open the door for you. He reached for your hand to help you out but you waved it off. “I can get out by myself.” You reminded him, he just smiled lovingly at you and held the door open.

His arm went around your waist, holding you close as he guided you into the house. As soon as the door closed he was on you again, lips crashing together, hands groping each other.

Your hands lost in his hair, tugging on it and pulling him in just as you used to, now with more need than before. Slash pulled at your dress until it ripped, tearing it off of you bit by bit. “Stupid fucking dress.” He grumbled in your ear. “Should’ve been me standing there with you.” He kissed down your neck, over your bare chest after he flung your bra away.

He cupped your chest, kissing, sucking and pinching your nipples, your back pressed against the door as he slid down your body. He looked up at you as he took off your panties and garters, watching every reaction you had as he started licking between your folds, tongue flicking your clit and dipping into you.

His hands held your thighs in a tight grip, one hand letting go so he could finger you and get you ready for him. Your hands were still in his hair, holding his head to your cunt as your hips buckled. Your legs were weak and you couldn’t care less, you were finally getting what you’d been craving for years.

Slash could feel when you were close, how your gummy walls fluttered around his talented fingers. He sucked on your needy clit, tongue flicking it repeatedly until you called out his name, a string of curses following it.

Slash got out of his clothes in a lustful haste to have more of you. He stood and grabbed you, pulling you tight to him as his lips met yours again. You pulled at each other, Slash picked you up and your legs wrapped around him. He stumbled over to a table, pushing into you and starting with an already brutal pace.

You bit his neck and he stumbled back, pushing you up against a wall when he regained his balance. He fucked into you like a mutt who’d found a bitch in heat. Loud moans left you while Slash’s grunts and groans rang in your ears.

He took a step back and nearly toppled over but managed to get you over to the couch. His face was in the crook of your neck, thumb rubbing your clit while his other arm held you to him, hips snapping into you harshly.

You moaned out his name, nails digging into his back. That knot came back in your gut. “Fuck! Slash-Slash, ‘m-’m close.” You whined, clawing at his arms. Slash sat up, lifting your hips over his and grabbing your arms, your knees hooked over his shoulders as he fucked you.

“Been waiting to see that pretty face cumming for so long.” He mumbled through gritted teeth. “Bet he never made you feel as good as I can, hm? Always pretended it was me with you, didn’t you?” You nodded, eyes rolling back as you came around his cock.

After being apart for so many years you couldn’t stop. You couldn’t process anything that was happening other than shocks of pleasure rocketing through you over and over again, Slash’s pretty fucked out face looking down at you when his eyes weren’t shut our rolling back.

Slash was barely conscious himself but he wasn’t done. Both of you were crying from the overstimulation, the couch was ruined and Slash had lost any sense of rhythm a while ago, only focusing on cumming again. Cum was smeared over your ass, his hips and abdomen as well. The room filled with the sound of wet skin and whining.

Finally Slash’s hips came to a halt as he came again, this time he let himself doing, laying his whole weight on you. You were both breathing heavy, hearts pounding.

After a moment you heard Slash sniffling. He moved up and lazily kissed your cheek, that was all he could manage. “I love you.” He whispered in your ear. “And no one’s gonna take you from me again, alright?” You nodded weakly.

You stayed there on the couch for the night. It was a mess, you were sticky and gross, so were Slash and the couch. Neither of you had the energy to move or clean up in the moment, even if you wanted to you found yourself asleep before you could make up your mind.

You awoke the next morning in a bed, all cleaned up and in clean clothes. Not your clothes but Slash’s. A band tee that was a few sizes too big for you and the panties you’d had on the day before.

Slash wasn’t with you but you heard music coming from downstairs and figured that’s where he was. You started getting out of bed but your knees buckled and you had to sit down again.

The bedroom door opened and your favourite boy came in with a bed table full of food. “You’re up.” He said with a smile. He came over and sat next to you on the bed.

“You learned how to cook?” You asked, seeing the small feast. Slash laughed and shook his head.

“No, I ordered out.” You smiled and leaned your head on his shoulder. He wrapped an arm around you and started eating, giving you a few bites here and there when he saw you weren’t eating. “Not hungry?”

You shook your head. “Just tired.” You said, kissing his cheek. Slash nodded but continued to give you bites, still wanting to make sure you ate.

You talked about everything that’s been going on in your separate lives, catching each other up on everything. Slash constantly assured you you wouldn’t have to go back to anyone, that you’d be safe with him and he wasn’t going to let anyone take you away from him.

Finally you had that happily ever after you’d been looking for, that prince in not so shiny boots with a guitar instead of a sword, a tour bus as his trusty steed. You didn’t care, he was yours at last and he finally had his perfect girl under his arm.

#guns n roses #guns n roses fanfic #guns n roses x reader #guns n roses smut #gnr #slash #guns n roses imagine #slash guns n roses #guns n roses fluff #slash fic #slash fanfiction #slash gnr #slash smut #slash angst #slash fluff

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nvreads · 13 days

Text

and i'ma love you girl, the way you need !

stoner!dabi x innocent!fem!reader warnings: inaccurate depictions of weed, reader is under the influence but everything is consensual, manipulative dabi, fingering but only for a few lines, not proof read

a/n: asks are open, send in a req or just tell me something :) first time writing anything remotely smutty, constructive criticism always appreciated!

you wordlessly glanced over at dabi, trembling hands desperately wanting to reach over and seek comfort from his touch. the two of you sat in the backseat of his car, the engine turned off and the windows cracked slightly. the cool breeze of the night seeped in, sending a shiver down your spine. you could hear cars driving by the empty parking lot or the occasional voices crossing the street.

sure, you trusted dabi. you had been together for six months, but you had never been high before, always too focused on school and family to even give other things a second thought.

when he first brought up the idea, you were quick to deny him. he tried coercing you with his sweet words, saying it'll make you feel good and don't you trust me? after catching you after a particularly stressful day, you just couldn't resist.

"relax, baby." dabi said suddenly, not even sparing you a glance as he continued rolling the joint in front of him. he could sense it, you figured; your nerves. maybe it was in the way you shakily breathed in and out, or the tapping of your leg against the carpet of his car.

"'m sorry." you looked away and rubbed your clammy palms against the fabric of your skirt.

after a few moments of silence, you could feel dabi's piercing eyes on the back your head as you looked out the window.

"c'mere." he muttered, and you heard the ruffling of fabric as dabi fished a lighter out of his pocket. you shuffled closer, your thighs now pressed against one another.

dabi placed the joint in between his chapped lips and cupped his hand around the end as he lit it. instantly, the smell of weed hit your nose, causing you to scrunch your nose and turn away. you watched from the corner of your eye as he took a hit, his chest rising slightly. his scarred hand came and grabbed your jaw so hard it was borderline painful, forcing you to look over at him.

"breathe it in." he pulled you in for a kiss, exhaling the smoke into your mouth. you whimpered softly and inhaled the smoke, just as he had instructed, yet you pulled away quickly and coughed violently, doe eyes filling up with tears at the burning sensation in your lungs. a soft chuckle came from beside you, and you fought the urge to turn around and glare at him.

"'s normal for your first time. you'll get used to it." dabi offered, still laughing softly as he brought the joint to his lips for another hit. "give it another try, yeah?"

despite the questioning tone in his voice, the scarred man roughly pulled you back in. you braced yourself for the burn as he exhaled the smoke into your mouth once again, though the painful feeling wasn't nearly as bad as it was the first time. shakily breathing out the smoke, you looked up at dabi with glossy eyes.

"startin' to feel it, mama?" he murmured, his thumb rubbing over your cheek softly.

"wanna try it again," you slurred, already feeling the slight buzz. dabi's features carried a subtle smirk. he could tell your tolerance was practically nonexistent. the man lazily brought up the joint to your lips, instructing you to inhale only a little bit at a time.

you circled your glossy lips around the blunt, not once breaking eye contact with dabi as you breathed in. you missed the soft groan he let out as you cheeks hollowed subtly to inhale the smoke.

after holding it in for a moment, you blew the smoke in dabi’s face with a giggle. the man turned his head and waved the smoke away, a mischievous smirk lingering on his lips. he placed a hand over your thigh, low enough to appear innocent yet high enough to make your stomach churn in anticipation.

as the two of you continued to smoke the joint, you felt his hand slowly start to drift up your thigh. by this point, the car was smoky and hot, and dabi’s feather like touch definitely didn’t help you cool down.

“want another hit before i finish it?” the scarred man glanced at you, trying to hide his smile at your red and hooded eyes. with a nod, you reached over to wrap your lips around it before he stopped you. he barely even gave you a moment to react as the hand that was ghosting up your thigh grabbed your waist and effortlessly hoisted you into his lap. in the position, you were practically straddling your boyfriend, leaving a subtle blush on your cheeks.

“wait,” you stuttered, squirming due to the unfamiliarness of the situation. you attempted to wiggle your way out of his grip, but dabi simply tightened his grip around your hips as one of his hands continued to hold the joint.

“what’s the matter, baby? just wanna feel you close. that’s not a problem right?”

you weren’t sure how to respond to that, yet your drug-induced brain encouraged the contact and even wanted more of it.

“i guess it’s not,” you muttered, unconsciously leaning into his lap as a low hiss came from him. the hand holding the joint brought it up to your lips and you inhaled the last bit of weed as dabi threw the finished blunt out of the cracked window.

you smirked mischievously as you suddenly pressed your lips into dabi’s, blowing the smoke you had inhaled into his mouth. catching him off guard, the man froze for a brief moment before inhaling the smoke and blowing it back out again into your face.

“now what was that?” dabi said, a grin spread across his face. one of his hands placed themselves on your inner thigh once again, yet it didn’t move any further. it simply lingered there for a moment, it’s purpose clearly to make you squirm in his lap.

"i dunno.”

it was obvious the weed had gone straight to your head.

“oh, you don’t know?” his trailed up your thigh until it disappeared under your skirt and his thumb pressed against your clothed cunt. you quickly squeezed your eyes shut, letting out a shaky breath.

“what are you doing?” you attempted to keep your tone neutral, but the words came out breathier then what you had wanted them to. your eyes scanned over dabi’s face as he remained silent and rubbed slow circles over your clit.

the sensation was muted with your lacy panties acting as a border, but nonetheless it made you tremble in his lap. your hips came down in a slow grind, desperately trying to get more friction and make the unbearable ache in between your legs go away. dabi grabbed hold of your hips for a second and stopped your movements before sliding your panties to the side. his finger trailed up your slit, gathering slick and running over your clit before sliding back down again.

"so wet. all f'me," dabi mumbled quietly, more to himself then you.

a soft mewl escaped your glossy lips as the man inserted one of his fingers into your puffy cunt, the odd sensation causing you to grab tightly onto his shirt.

"shh, baby. i'll make you feel good." dabi curled his fingers deliciously as he searched for your sweet spot, the burn from the stretch of his fingers causing your jaw to drop in a silent scream.

"just trust me. ill give you what you need."

#mha #mha smut #bnha #dabi #mha x reader #mha dabi #bnha dabi #touya todoroki #touya x reader #my hero academia #mha touya #dabi x reader #todoroki touya #dabi todoroki #dabi mha

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yelena-bellova · 1 year

Text

The First You - Joel Miller x F!Reader

Plot: Soldiers don’t start out scarred, there was softness once where bitterness now lives.

Word Count: 753

Warnings: one curse word, too angsty to be fluff, lil’ spoon Joel

A/N: Had zero intention for writing anything TLOU related, seeing as I have zero knowledge of it…but fucking Joel Miller’s living in my brain so I figured I’d put it to good use. Wrote this in about 30 minutes, might delete this in the morning depending on how I feel.

————————

The ache in my bones belonged to someone older.

I considered the pointless thought as I turned my key in the door, rubbing my shoulder with my free hand. Double shifts were going to permanently alter my posture. But the longer I worked, the less time I had to think about how everything around me had gone to complete and utter shit.

The smell of whiskey permeated my senses as soon as I entered. A sign that things had been particularly bad today. Usually he’d wait for me to being drowning our memories. I swiped my finger across the kitchen table, picking up a stray morsel of a pill. Something had triggered this.

I almost didn’t want to look across to the bed, knowing what I’d see. In a world where everyone was at their peak point of suffering, he somehow made mine worse. The knots in my stomach, the pain in my chest, the fear lighting up every one of my nerves. Was love supposed to feel like this? Or had the Cordyceps infected that too?

Working up the strength, I turned around and saw Joel, in a dead sleep that couldn’t be achieved without chemical aide. I took calculated steps, avoiding the floorboards I knew creaked. Getting a closer look, I waited for the worry wrinkles in his forehead to disappear. People were supposed to find peace when they slept. Or maybe they were twenty years ago. Joel looked as hardened as he was when he was conscious.

Twenty years. Joel didn’t speak of his life straightforwardly. It happened more in passing and involuntarily. His knowledge of construction came out when we’d slip in and out through the skeleton of a building. His love of music peeked its head out when a signal would come through the radio. His foot would let out a single tap. Never more. And I’d figured out what food he’d liked by which meals he ate the quickest. Decoding him was both a hobby and a religion.

I sat down on the bed, biting back a groan as my muscles screamed. Working extra was good in the moment, horrible in the long run. I felt Joel stir behind me and as quick as I could, which wasn’t very fast at all, I gently rolled him onto his side. He was so far gone, he didn’t fight at all. The pills were in full effect.

I wrapped an arm around him, taking in the warmth of his body. His frame was solid, developed from years of manual labor and later, brutal confrontations. His clothes smelled of sweat and smoke, telling where he’d worked in the afternoon. I wiggled up on the bed and pressed my nose to the back of his neck, searching out any part that just smelled like him. As soon as our skin touched, I felt Joel shift his arm to sleepily grab my hand. That was the catalyst to let my thoughts wander all the places I stayed away from…

Had he slept in on Saturday mornings? Did he watch football? Were the Cowboys his team? Had he ever wanted to see the world, or was Austin enough for him? What games did he and Tommy play as kids? What was his favorite color? Had he celebrated his birthday, or gruffly brushed it off? What kind of guy was he in high school?

What kind of father had he been? Had he played Barbies? Attended tea parties? Painted a bedroom pink? Made pancakes into shapes? Watched weekend cartoons? Eyed any boy that looked his daughter’s way?

What kind of partner had he been? Was he romantic? Spontaneous? Did he do the whole candlelit dinner thing or had he liked cooking at home? Had his kisses once been soft and tender? Had he taken his time instead of urgent because how much time could truly be left? Did he like to go dancing or did he just randomly grab his girl’s waist and sway in the kitchen? Did his brown eyes light up when his love entered the room? Had they ever been filled with anything other than pain deep enough to have put down permanent roots in his heart?

Who was the man I could have had?

It didn’t matter, I told myself as a tear fell, it really didn’t. I’d have taken Joel any way I could have him. His strength, his resilience, his heart…I wanted it all. But that didn’t stop my heart from knowing he deserved better. We deserved better.

#joel miller x reader #joel miller x female reader #joel miller imagine

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rixsjwb · 3 months

Text

crazy party

a little gojo frat x f!reader

warning:blood beating somebody up and ya, that's all I remember lots of foul language

the university you go to is probably one of the most prestigious in all of Tokyo, but you may expect students there to be quiet and stoic, complete opposite when you arrived.

In fact, it was a bit of a hellhole, constant frat parties being hosted, it's a little toxic at the school, constantly people hooking up with others that are taken or not. people picked on each other in a way that if the public eye saw it would be considered bullying.

but despite the shitty students here they were like the chosen ones, smart as shitballs, almost like everyone's your rival here.

but there was this one girl who always bothered you, emiko Tsukuba. She's one of the few popular girls at the school known for being a slut, but she's delusional to believe people think she's attractive.

I'm not sure what I did to get on her bad side, but after one of the seemingly popular guys looked at me, she wanted to harvest all my organs.

she would tip over my lunch tray, spit slurs at me, and has even gotten physical a couple of times but if i didn't have any good reflex, i'd probably be the talk of the school by now.

and here you were with nobara, a underclassmen you tutor, she's been begging you to go to the frat party apprently 1st and 2nd years arent allowed because what you assume is that there doing some illegal shit there.

and nobara wanted you to go and experience it so you could tell her what happened so she could know what to expect.

you were against it, as you didn't particularly take much of a liking in the popular people who acted as if they owned the entire school, but here you wore baggy jeans with a tight fitted shirt and some short heeled stilettos , and your hair put in a sleek high ponytail with a soft swoop and cute pins to hold it up.

"you're so cute!!, girl, you should dress up like this more. It suits you!!" nobara squealed.

you chuckle bashfully, now getting a little nervous.

you weren't going with anyone, really. You might see shoko and utahime here, but the way shoko talks about parties seems as if she doesn't ever wanna go. but you pray she's there so you don't look like some loser.

you bid your goodbye to nobara as you clip on the last earring and fix the bangles that hugged your wrist and you get a text from shoko asking if you're coming to the party she never thought you'd be going to one but here you were.

shoko said she's come pick you up so you guys can arrive together, so you sat on the curb waiting for her to pull up.

around 5 mins she finally came, you notice utahime is there, meimei and some other close friends of hers chatting in the back so you sit in the passengers with utahime and meimei.

"y/n never thought you'd ever go to these frats parties! even though I hate gojo for being a cocky brat, his parties do hit and mark history in this school..."

meimei chuckles seductively glancing at you. " y/n you look attractive could keep you all t'my self." all you do is chuckle as you have no idea how to respond to that other than muttering a soft thank you.

the ride was not as bad as you expected. Everyone in the car was chill, nice complements were thrown here , and there was a spice of shit talking emiko there, and the ride almost felt short.

when you pull up, you notice how dense this area is. So many people getting drunk and grinding on eachothers bodies, smoking, and the smell of weed was strong.

as you exit the car, you walk with the group of girls to the entrances, a security lookin guard flipping through a book with different profiled third and fourth year students.

a little creepy, but you'll let it pass.

as you entered the party, it was crowded,

people sitting in the living room playing spin the bottle, people chugging down alcohol, people making out, a typical party. guys watching as girls arrived, staring them down like a piece of meat.

this was just any typical party you'd see in a movie.

"stay by me y/n I'll walk you through this house I've been too many times."

the house was big, a mansion literally. and you were almost enjoying yourself as shoko and her close girlfriends found an area you guys can chill at and talk. It was all nice till emiko showed up.

"so this nerdy bitch decided to show up? never thought you'd be slutting yourself out y/n." she chuckled with her crew, you can feel your heart sink to your stomach the last thing you needed was her to annoy you.

you've had to hold back putting hands on her but if she gladly put her hands on you first you werent gonna hold back, you can feel as the crowd started to shift almost keeping eyes on both of you knowing shit was gonna go down.

" you shouldn't have came cause this is MY partie, you aren't aloud bitch so leave before I make you."

she said as a threat. You find it funny how she thinks she can intimidate you.

"don't you have other boys' cocks to slobber on? quit bothering me, go play your 50'50 on whether you get a UTI or not." you said you can hear people saying ohs in the back, but your irritated that she's bothering you at a moment like now, you feel your heart pounding even thought you don't mind fighting her you knew here and now was not the place.

you'd be the talk of the school, videos would surface around and best believe your probably gonna be pulled into the principals office to talk about this.

"what did you say to me you bitch?"

she said, offended, a suspense is being held in the air, and you're just waiting for her to strike.

"I called you a whore, cry about it?" you said deadpan spreading all over your face.

"bitch if you wanna fight let's go! I'll fuck you up you fuckin' bitch your a whore! hoes love me! are you jealous?" she said in a baby tone almost to agitate you, she mimics the hand movement a baby makes when balling their eyes out as she says "waa" over and over.

"jealous of a schizophrenia delusional freak? yeah, keep living in your psychotic fantasies." You smile. She looks at you like you had the audacity, and at that point, she just yells at you.

"come on y/n let's go that crazy bitch is freaking me out."

before you can leave she thugs on your hair and it's almost like a automatic queue for you to thug on her hair and cuff her repeatedly in her face as you pounced on her, you can hear people screaming but all you hear is a eerily sound playing in your ear.

her friends try to attack you too, but you manage to grab one by the hair and slam her right next to emiko and have a vipers grip in both their hair.

it was probably the best fight you've ever gotten in, the first ever one, in fact. you never knew you had this much anger in you towards her, as her third friend tries to fight you, you could've swore you won a guinness world record for giving her the most disrespectfull-est back handed slap across her face it was so hard she stubbed back and the crowd just kept opening up a passage way for her to fall.

you would've cackled saying it was some anime type fight when a strong character punches a villain so hard they get sent flying miles away.

but you were too busy beating up emiko, the one you never knew made you hate a human more in your life.

and just to make her feel better, she did land some good punches at your face, causing your nose to bleed a lot and some blood to drip on the floor.

but nothing compared to her red ass tomato face, with her friend beside her.

as your pretty much wrestling her trying to stay on top of her to over power her, a hand wrapped around your waist trying to tug you off of emiko you tried to keep your hands solely on her but with this person trying to hold you back you where losing your patience.

when you finally felt satisfied with how badly you'd beaten emiko you let the person tug you off.

"try that again bitch before I rip every strand out of your fucking head." you say and you spat the build up of spit and blood in your mouth on her, you just watched as she layed on the floor embarrassed and crying like a idiot.

this is what she asked for, and now that she can't even beat her own game, she's crying? you're the victim here.

you can feel the music bass started to calm down as your brought to a more secluded place, as the persons hand at the small of your back erged you to move.

your hand reaches to your face as you try to wipe the blood coming from your nose, but it just smudges it.

"never pegged you the type t'fight." you hear a baritone voice speak to you, but you don't say anything back.

you hear the door close but your quick to get back up to find a bathroom to clean yourself up.

"Whoa, there cutie going back to fight s'more? stay here ill clean your face up, mean while suguru will keep you company."

you hear the door close again as you watched a black wolfcut haired guy come up to you, gently pushing you to sit back on the bed, grabbing nearby tissue to get as much blood off your face. " y/n l/n, right? what happened? one thing I hear is people quieting down, and then people are going crazy." he said softly, cleaning off your face "I put a bitch in her place." you say flatly, your tired and you honestly wanna go home and cry your heart out.

you feel like transferring to a different school after you completely lost your cool, but you know it's not your fault.

you hear that same baritone voice chuckle near you, and your blurry eyes can finally see clearly again. you're met with him having a tongue piercing, baggy pants, and a jersey t-shirt with black stud earrings with a God-like sculpted face.

you hear the door open again a now albino head coming in with a box that looked like a med kit, "alright doesn't look like you have any cuts on your pretty face but use this for your nose maybe it'll help stop the bleedin." a nasal decongestion that you sprayed in your nose to stop the slight burning you felt.

"sorry for getting blood on your floor." you say somewhat weakly. You just wanted to up and disappear. " Nah, s'ight, I'll clean that up later, anyways mind telling me how a fight broke out?, had the clear the party early from the ruckus everyone was causin. can't let the police shut this place down."

he says as he pulls out wet kleenex tissue to better clean your face, but you eventually take it out of his hand to do it yourself. but you stay quiet.

"Don't worry, your pretty little mind most people probably left by now, want a driv-"

"you should've kept everyone here. Now everybody's gonna be talking about this stupid fight." you say a frown adorning your face.

"y/n you do realize you are popular, right? people just don't harasse you like they do to us because you're kinda scary looking, in the attractive way of course!"

you let out a confused noise that you now cringe and beat yourself up to in your mind as you listen to these two fine men talk.

"like hell m'surpised you showed up to satoru's party. never thought you were the party type." suguru said as he watched you intensely. but you try to ignore it as gojo keeps lending a hand to clean your face.

"you looked fuckin hot I'm not gonna lie." sayoru lifted up his hands like he was surrendering, you almost let out a whole heartedly laugh at what he said.

"yo this the dolls' phone?" a black short haired man with a distinctive cut on his lip entered a frown on his face, he looked stoic and scary.

but he gently hands you the phone as you stretch your hands out to get your phone.

so say this partie was a little crazy to turning out to be a nice day by hanging out a little with satoru and suguru and his close friends like sukuna, toji, choso and some other buddies of his.

satoru dropped you off at your dorm, and as soon as you got back, you hit the shower and snuggled up in your bed.

your phone blowing up with people @ing you to the fight video, your not gonna lie to yourself, but you abolished her, you can see comments flowing in saying how you looked badass and how emiko was just embarrassing herself.

but aside from those comments, you got text from shoko, nobara, yuji and megumi asking you if you're okay and to explain everything. also receiving endless praise.

the more obsessed you got with checking that one fight video posted of you, people were commenting along the lines of 'finally somebody shut her ass up' 'she was getting on my nerves fr'.

but another picture that made you go famous was a picture satoru toke of you, when he lead you to his room to clean you up, he snapped a picture of your bloody face you looked almost in a haze but people were eating that shit up.

post:

comments

shokoirieii: MY BADDIE Y/N😝😝, I'm afraid to say satoru, you have ate this picture up.

shokoirieii: y/n you should've came to me to clean your bueatiful face🙄

yujiitadori: omg what happend to angel y/n😣

suguru_geto:she went ballistic and was cool bout it

nanamibentobox: why are you violating peoples business satoru? you didn't even ask for consent before posting.

tojiflushitoru: she looks high but attractive.

y/nfanclud: she ate up I fear, SHE FUCKED THAT SHIT UP.

emikohatet: goo goo gaa gaa emiko got rocked😹

let's call it a night.

#gojo satoru x reader #jujutsu kaisen fluff #jjk x reader #jujutsu kaisen

29 notes · View notes

thisnameisnotspokenfor · 5 months

Text

Kingdom of the Stars Chapter 9: The Prince

Previous: Chapter 8

Next: Chapter 10

The prince.

She nervously nodded, waiting until he’d begun his venture towards the exit library before she quietly slid the journal into her satchel.

She had no idea if the count was suspicious of her, but she wasn’t particularly eager to find out as she followed him down the hall.

“It appears as if the odds are in your favor,” he said suddenly. His tone was surprisingly grim as he continued. “His Highness returned from Arendelle not too long ago and he’s been in his study ever since. He hasn’t been receiving any visitors, but it seems he’s willing to make an exception in your case.”

“Oh…I wasn’t aware that the prince had been traveling-,”

“Most aren’t,” the count interjected. “From time to time the king will ‘ request ’ that his nephew travels abroad.”

“That’s good,” Asha nodded, feeling a sense of relief that the count didn’t seem to share. “At least he hasn’t been confined to one place with no reprieve.”

“I suppose that’s one way of looking at it,” the count sighed as they reached the end of the corridor. “But it’s nearly impossible to escape unscathed from these things.”

She briefly debated on asking him for elaboration but she could tell from the quietness of his tone that he hadn’t intended to continue the conversation any further. So they resumed walking in silence until they had stopped at a pair of doors. With a grim expression, the count gestured for her to enter.

She nodded, quietly pushing open the door to the study as the count took his leave, silently disappearing down the dark hallways.

The study was thankfully better lit than the library as she saw the outline of a man standing in front of a table full of oddly shaped beakers, books, and jars.

He’d been muttering something to himself, as he flipped through several books. “It has to be here.” He sighed, sounding frustrated as he fervently tapped the table, before fully leaning against it. She watched as a small cauldron on the table slowly began to bubble. It was nearly shaking when she heard him call “Uh oh,” and watched as he hurriedly fanned the caldron’s emerging smoke away from himself. “That’s not good,”

“Your Highness?’ she squeaked, slowly slipping into the room as she shut the door behind her.

“Hmm?” he hummed, looking back at her in surprise. His dark disheveled hair fell around his eyes as he seemingly regarded her.

He’d changed a lot since she’d last seen him. Before he’d been lean and skinny, but now he nearly resembled a far younger version of his uncle.

“Is now a bad time?” she asked while glancing from him to the table.

She blinked, watching as he let out a friendly laugh. “No, no, now is a perfect time!! Hello Asha! Long time…no see.” He offered her a smile, before nervously glancing at the liquid in the pot that had now turned purple. For some reason, it smelled of rosemary and cinnamon…“Could you…give me a moment?”

“Of course! Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt your highness-”

“It’s fine,” he shrugged, nonchalantly throwing some powder into the pot. She watched in amazement as the pot shivered before slowly stilling itself and he nodded in approval. “There we go. All better.” He let out a sigh, before turning back to her, and leaned against the table once more. “Sorry about that, I’ve just been doing…a bit of what you’d call… midnight studying.”

She couldn’t believe that.

If Asha could list the many things Prince Ignacio was, a terrible student would definitely be one of them. Save for his lessons with his uncle and aunt, many of his past tutors could attest to the prince’s inattentiveness when it came to his lessons and studies.

Of course, this hadn’t meant that the prince was completely hopeless. He was just a terrible student in the traditional sense of schooling.

“What sort of midnight studying?” she questioned, while slowly approaching.

“Oh you know…just….things,” He paused, looking around the room thoughtfully before he gasped, hurriedly moving things from view. Several books flew across the room and she heard the sound of glass roughly clinking before he turned back to her. “Sorry,” he apologized after a moment of silence. “I definitely need to clean up this place.”

She nodded, unable to squash the feeling that he was acting…strange. The feeling only grew stronger when she watched how he stood there, looking slightly more awkward than anything else. Something that she knew would easily earn him the disapproval of both king and queen.

His eyes quickly searched the room before he faced her, grinning, “Ah! I just remembered- before we do our formal greetings and whatnot, do I-,” he paused, twirling his cape as he looked himself over. “Do I look presentable?”

She looked over the prince before giving him a small curtsy, “With all due respect Your Highness, your crown is crooked.”

His smile disappeared as she watched his hands reach for his head. “Really? Not again! Wait-,” she watched as his hand paused mid-air. “I’m not even wearing a crown!” He let out a laugh before he relaxed and pointed to her. “Ok, ok you got me. That was pretty good.”

“Consider it your punishment for never turning in your astronomy assignments on time,” Asha teased as she cautiously approached the now mostly empty table.

It’d been funny how before his exile, he’d been the only one in the royal family who’d given her astronomy any time of day. Sure the queen loved looking at her star maps now and then, but the prince wanted to learn about them! So Asha had tried to teach him, emphasis on the tried part.

Unfortunately, she’d soon seen exactly why the tutors had complained about the prince. Save for never doing his homework, the prince never cared for a star unless it had been one his uncle had decisively defeated in combat. This of course was a terrible way to approach astronomy in Asha’s opinion as she’d insisted time and time again that the stars were not monsters. It had only been unfortunate for her that stars apparently weren’t just big balls of burning gas either.

She watched as with a faint wave of his hand, some of the remaining jars on his table slowly began to hesitantly re-organize themselves. “So,” she begins, a bit hesitant to break the silence. “I heard you were in Arendelle?”

His smile faltered as she saw him cross his arms over his chest and look away. “I was.”

“How was it?”

He shivered before fully frowning. “Cold. It was way too cold for me and icy .”

“Did you visit during the winter, Your Highness?”

“I did-,”

“Ah, that probably explains the cold.”

“Normally it would. But I wasn’t talking about the weather,” he interjected somewhat cryptically, before glancing at one of the glass doors that surrounded them on either side of the room’s walls.

“Didn’t you also go to Corona?”

“I did. But considering how badly I got sunburnt, I don’t think I’ll be returning anytime soon. But on a much more positive note, I went to Scotland and learned a lot of archery..”

Scotland. She remembered reading about that country a while back as she asked, “Are you a good shot now?”

He grinned, mimicking an archer's pose, “Not as good as their princess, but at least I can look like I was aiming for the target!”

He quickly went on to delve into crazy stories about his other travels. Honestly, she’d been relieved to have heard he’d traveled so much, as it sounded far better than the alternative of being cooped up in a gloomy castle.

“But that’s enough about me,” he’d sighed after finishing the last story. “what about you? How have you been?”

“Honestly Your Highness? I’ve been fine-,” Well that was a lie. “Everything’s been the same old, same old for me-,” Wasn’t it a crime to lie to a royal family member like this?

“That’s good,” he answered, with a content sigh. She had half a mind to inquire about his well-being, but part of her feared his answer. She wasn’t sure if she’d be able to offer the words of advice or comfort he’d need. “I was honestly a bit nervous when I heard that you had come here wanting to speak with me…for a moment I feared…that you’d been…banished.”

She tensed at the word banished, before letting out a nervous laugh, “No, no Your Highness, thankfully. I’m here for a different reason.”

He let out a sigh of relief before leaning against the table, glancing at her, “Thank Goodness. But you do know you don’t have to keep up that whole ‘your highness’ shtick whenever my uncle, aunt, and the other nobles aren’t around, right?”

She quickly nodded. “I know, your highness! Er, I mean, Ignacio, sorry. It’s a bad habit. But I’m glad to see you again.”

He chuckled, leaning himself forward as he lowered his eyes toward the floor. “Me too, even though I will admit, I am curious as to how you managed to get out here. The ship for Antaris never leaves the week of a wishing ceremony. The captain believes it's bad luck to do so or something like that. He’s very superstitious.”

She slightly tensed, surprised that she’d nearly forgotten that until he glanced back at her, evidently waiting for her answer. “Well…I…I rowed- really really efficiently ”

“You rowed?” he repeated, his brows furrowing with either shock or disbelief.

She quickly nodded to the prince, “Yes. Exactly! I did.”

He squinted at her arms and then her, “All the way here? Why would you do that?!”

She feigned wincing as she gingerly rested her arm on one shoulder. “Well, you did point out there aren’t too many traveling options here at this hour.”

He frowned, “So you really rowed all this way?”

She shrugged, “I’ve done harder things,” she lied. “You know this.”

“Fair enough,” the prince surprisingly conceded, briefly turning his attention back to the table. Wait, he actually believed that? She thought in disbelief as she watched him arrange a few things on his table.

As bad as she felt for lying to the prince, she’d much rather he believed that she’d rowed across the sea than flew across it. “Geeze- and here I thought my aunt was the most athletic person in the kingdom,” he muttered, before moving a few books aside.

Wanting to change the subject before he asked anything else, she carefully looked over his shoulder towards the table.

Her eyes soon landed on one of the many books he’d left open. She could see that in one of the books there’d been a sketch of the sky depicting a light coming through the clouds as several calculations surrounded the page’s border.

However, what caught her eye was the name ‘SIRIUS’ which had been scribbled near the bottom of the page and hastily circled.

“Sirius?” she read, jumping as the prince’s hand suddenly slammed down on the page, effectively preventing her from reading any further words written on it.

“Ha, ha,” he laughed a bit nervously as she watched his fingers nervously comb through his hair. “Oh, that? It’s just some mindless doodling. A bad habit I picked up from you.”

She rolled her eyes, not feeling the least bit flattered as she turned to him, “I never taught you how to draw or calculate stars that your uncle didn’t ‘slaughter’ .”

“What?” he laughed with a hint of disbelief as she watched him carefully close the book behind his back before setting it back down on the furthest part of the table.” No, no I distinctly remember you teaching me how to draw stars. You know…regular ones?”

“That’s also funny, because I distinctly remember the prince of Rosas telling me that the only stars that mattered were the ones his uncle had defeated in, and I quote ‘brutal yet epic combat’ .”

She watched him cringe, “Alright so maybe you didn’t teach me to draw that particular star, but I’m sure if you gave me a brief refresher-,”

She stepped forward, politely crossing her arms over her chest as she looked from him to the table. “Sirius otherwise known as Sothis is the brightest star in the night sky, and was used to help the ancient Egyptians predict whenever the Nile would flood. It’s a significant star in mythology as well. But why are you interested in it now?”

He stepped past her, drawing his cape behind him as he responded with silence. She could see that he was whispering things to himself as if he was now deep in thought. “...an omen,” she finally heard the prince incoherently mutter under his breath.

“What was that?” she asked, confusion and surprise filling her as the prince finally regarded her once more.

“Oh I was just thinking out loud,” he said with an easy laugh that Asha did not return. She frowned, noticing how he fidgeted as his left eye twitched. It was a habit that few knew was a sure sign that he was lying.

But why would he lie?

“Are you sure it’s not because of what happened earlier tonight?” she asked, watching how his shoulders suddenly tensed.

“Oh you mean that huge light that was in the sky? Eh,” he shrugged, this time roughly rubbing his left eye. “I saw it and it honestly made me think of you and the astronomy lessons.”.

Alright, now she knew he was hiding something.

Not wanting to look as if she suspected him, she innocently asked, “Ohh! So have you taken a renewed interest in astronomy in the wake of such events, your hi- er, Ignacio?”

He nervously laughed before waving his hand dismissively “Heavens no! No offense, or pun intended…,”

“None taken,” she commented as she watched him stroll by towards one of the glass doors on either side of the room.

“Although, I am admittedly a bit interested in hearing your thoughts on the matter. What do you think that was?”

She shrugged, fighting to keep down her now rising nerves as she answered, “A passing comet.”

“Passing? Ha, I think I’d have to disagree with you there.” He opened one of the glass doors to a balcony as the cool night air entered into his study. She glanced past him and up towards the sky where she could still see the hole in the clouds. “I think whatever it was, it wasn't just passing. No, I think it was headed straight towards Rosas,” the prince whispered as he turned his eyes upwards, and she briefly saw his hands tremble. Then she heard him say, “ I’m not sure what it was, but I doubt it could be anything good,”

Shivering from the cool nightly breeze she asked, “If it was something terrible that landed in Rosas, don’t you think someone would’ve found it by now?”

He shook his head, “Not necessarily. A lot of strange things have been going on in Rosas lately,”

“Don’t weird things always happen in Rosas? A magical kingdom can only be so normal.”

He nodded in agreement, as she watched the breeze dishevel his hair “You know what? I can’t argue with that. Although I’d honestly say that these things are weirder than usual. I mean so many people have-” he paused mid-sentence probably thinking on how to elaborate for a moment. But instead, he closed his mouth and shook his head, “Never mind,” he sighed, before looking back over the small town and the sea.

“What? What is it?” she questioned, wincing as she remembered that she was talking to someone of royalty, she quickly added, “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t wish to.”

He leaned against the balcony railing as his blue eyes met hers, “Wish to? Did Asha just use the word wish? Sorry, I must be mishearing things-,”

“You know I meant it figuratively and not literally,” she groaned, feeling exasperated at how much trouble that had gotten her into tonight. “But what sort of weird things have been happening in Rosas lately?”

“Well I’m not sure how weird you’d consider them in the grand scheme of things but then again you were the apprentice that complained about ‘mysterious music with no visible source’, right?”

“Yes that was me,” she sighed, remembering how she had yet to find the source of said music. She truly hated that he remembered that.

He grinned, stepping past her back into the study as he motioned her to follow him. He quickly picked up an old rag that had been resting on a nearby window sill before he began to wipe the tabletop. “but speaking of apprentice…” His voice lowered as she watched him hesitate mid-wipe. “The others…they’re…still at the castle right?” She nodded, as he collapsed against the railing, releasing a loud sigh of relief as she watched him smile. “Good…How are they doing?”

“The others are fine,” sensing that he wanted details, she continued, more out of sympathy than anything else. “Hal does tours now and she writes songs that people seem to like. Dahlia is easily the best baker in the castle, if not the entire kingdom. Safi still sneezes, Dario is still Dario and Bazeema seems like she’s more...occupied now.”

He smiled, slowly nodding, as she watched him straighten himself, before placing the rag back on the windowsill. “That’s good! How have their powers been lately? Have they gotten stronger?

‘Their powers?’ she wondered as she felt her mind go blank.

She wasn’t sure what to tell him about that.

Sure she knew they had magical potential, but she’d never delved into the specificities nor had she known that said abilities had evolved into powers of all things!

She doubted they’d gotten stronger since Ignacio had last seen them, but she didn’t have the heart to disappoint him. Now, she felt conflicted about whether or not she should lie to him, even if it was only to get him to leave the island a bit faster. But considering everything he’d endured the past three years including the complete isolation from his remaining family and friends, she knew that he at least deserved to know the truth. “I’m…not sure. Honestly, I think they’d be able to give you a better answer to that question than I can.”

He nodded thoughtfully, before turning to her with a sudden alarm on his face that nearly frightened her, as she felt him quickly grab her shoulders. “They haven’t had their wishing ceremony yet, have they?!”

She quickly shook her head. She was unsure of which one had surprised her more- him grabbing her shoulders or the mere panic that was in his voice regarding the wishing ceremony.

The prince had always loved the wishing ceremonies. Perhaps his exile had left him feeling fearful that he’d be missing his friends' wishing ceremony, she reasoned before speaking, “No! Not yet. But the king and queen are planning to hold it this year in tandem with the astral ball!”

“As expected,” he murmurs, his voice lowering as she feels him let go of her before stepping back. She didn’t miss the cold note in his voice as she saw his eyes narrow. “And that’s why you’re here, right? Because the king wants me to attend this…event.”

“It wasn’t only the king,” she commented, watching as he withdrew two beakers from the tabletop before carefully transferring the liquid from one to the other. The liquid inside the beaker went from a friendly orange to a poisonous green and then a dull brown as she gently added, “The queen and the rest of us apprentices want you to come home as well.”

The scent of lemon and pine invaded her nose as she heard him scoff before placing the vials down with a bit more force than was necessary. “Is that what my uncle told you to tell me?” She could see the bitterness in his eyes as he refused to look at her.

It seemed as if they didn’t trust each other anymore, which in the strange world of royal politics, was something she could fathom and maybe even sympathize with. But said sympathy could only go so far when she had her Saba’s birthday on the line.

Thus she quickly realized that if she wanted the prince to come home, she’d have to redirect her efforts elsewhere .

Willing herself to stay calm, she began to speak once more, “Before I left, your aunt stopped me and told me to tell you that there will always be a place for you in Rosas. Regardless of what the king says-,” his grip on the beaker tightened as she continued, “even Dahlia wanted me to bring you home, her and the other apprentices. Everyone pitched in to help get me here because they all need you, Ignacio. Rosas needs you.”

He was looking at her now, and she could see that the ice in his eyes had noticeably melted.

Sensing a possible chance, she continued, “You say strange things are going on in Rosas, right? Well, what better way to address such things than by directly confronting them? So even if you do not come home for our sake, at least do it to prevent further disasters.”

He hesitantly nodded, as she watched him thoughtfully rub his chin and pace, “I could use this as an opportunity... I’d have to gather the others…That shouldn’t take too long, and once we’re all caught up…they’ll help me fix this. We’ll fix this.” He lifted his head, nodding with far more resolution than before as she watched him step past her and towards the door.

“The others?” she repeated, watching as he threw open the doors to his study, and gestured for her to follow him again.

The second she stepped out of the room she felt the doors slam behind her as she heard the sharp sounds of the study's door quickly locking behind her.

She wasn’t sure if the doors had locked themselves naturally or if it had been the prince’s doing.

But if he had noticed it then he failed to communicate it to her as she watched him nod. “Bazeema, Hal, Safi, Dahlia, and Dario…and…” his voice trailed off as he glanced at her. His smile noticeably faltered as he shook his head and glanced towards the hallways. “Be ready in an hour. If we depart soon, we can reach the mainland before Dawn.”

“Yes Your Highness, I-,” she started only to be cut off by the sounds of him bellowing for the count as he disappeared down the darkened hallway, effectively leaving her alone in the dark.

‘Both literally and figuratively,’ she thought.

She tried to ignore the pang of hurt that squeezed her heart as she tried to gather her bearings. Sure he’d always been very nice and approachable with her, but deep down she sensed that they didn’t have the kind of relationship that he’d have with the other apprentices. It wasn’t something that should’ve bothered her so much and she knew it. She could feel it the moment that she’d locked eyes with him tonight that he, just like everything in Rosas had changed.

He didn’t completely feel like the prince who’d gone out of his way to introduce her to the other apprentices before inviting her to their secret outings all those years ago. No, he felt…different, unfamiliar even, in a way that she couldn’t quite describe.

She’d been hoping that the prince would be open to helping her, and in a way he was.

He did want to do something about the strange happenings in Rosas. But he didn’t even want to divulge said happenings to her. Then he wanted to deal with them by rallying every apprentice but her. He’d even chosen Dahlia- the baker to help over her!

‘Maybe he hadn’t meant it like that,’ she tried to reason to herself. After all the prince had seemed distracted tonight, so maybe he’d merely overlooked her, just like how Rosas’ best playwriter had.

Just like how the town officials had.

She sniffled, not wishing to give the realization any more thought than necessary as she slowly began to make her way back to her room.

On her way back, her mind couldn’t help but replay one specific part of their conversation- Sirius . It had been the name that she’d seen written in his journal. The fact that he’d called the star an omen of all things was telling as well. Had he believed that the stars were connected to all these strange happenings? Clearly, he suspected that the bright light in the sky had been a star. But did he believe that the one that had arrived was Sirius?

It was certainly a possibility as she had failed to ask the star for his name when they’d met. She tried to fathom such a bright star looking like, well, that of all things. But stranger things had happened before, right?

Quietly pausing in the hallway, she glanced around, making sure she was alone before she withdrew the journal from her satchel.

She hurriedly flipped through the pages. Her eyes searched for any sign of Sirius. When she finally spotted it, it was on a page full of intelligible symbols, ink spots, and incomplete drawings. Her eyes scanned the page, taking in the large figure centering the page underneath the word ‘SIRIUS’

She wasn’t sure what to make of it. Something about the figure on the page felt…important, powerful even, but she just couldn’t figure out what.

After a minute or so of futile examination, she slipped the journal back into her bag and continued her journey back to her room.

She’d nearly reached her room door when she heard a voice down the darkened end of the hallway calling, “Miss Asha! Miss Asha wait!” She paused watching the familiar figure of the maid named Carolina approach from the darkness. She steadied herself, briefly catching her breath before she relayed her message. “The count wished for me to inform you that dinner will be brought to your room in a few minutes as it is advised that you begin packing for the journey tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” Asha nodded to the woman and gave her a respectful bow. “Please tell the count that I will be ready as soon as possible.”

The woman nodded, quietly disappearing down the hallway that she’d come from.

Alone once more, Asha tried to mentally prepare herself to deal with the problem that was the Star.

Maybe she shouldn’t have been so frustrated with the prince, after all, he hadn’t been the only one in that study keeping secrets. The only difference between the two was that she couldn’t afford to have her secret exposed.

If they could banish a prince, then there was no telling what they would do to her, a mere peasant!

Silently praying that Valentino had been successful in keeping the star entertained she cautiously opened the door to her room. She didn’t know what she had been expected to be greeted with as she’d stepped into the room, but seeing the star peacefully lounging mid-air with his back towards her wasn’t one of them.

Several books had been placed on the bed and floor as she caught sight of her storybook. It was open, resting in the hands of the star as he stared off into space.

Was…Was he lost in thought? What could he be thinking about so deeply? She wondered, partially surprised that the room and the rest of the castle were still in one piece.

She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what was heavily occupying the star’s thoughts as she carefully eased into the room, and quietly shut the door behind her.

If the star had heard her come in, he did not move to greet her.

That was… weird .

Well, whatever he was thinking about wasn’t her business anyway, unless it had to do with him thinking of the various ways he’d pay her back for restraining him earlier.

Then that was most definitely her business…

She cautiously made her way further into the room, relief filling her as she caught sight of Valentino, now comfortably seated close to the fire as he was eating the remains of the food Dahlia had packed for him.

She hadn’t remembered giving that to him, she thought before glancing into her satchel, taking note of the now empty spot where that food had once occupied.

She shook her head. She wasn’t sure just how or when it had disappeared from her bag, but either way, she was certain that it had been the work of the star.

She was halfway through the room when she saw the small goat excitedly jump to his feet when he spotted her. She hurriedly tried to shush him, only for him to loudly bleat as she winced.

This seemed to snap the star out of his daze as she watched his glowing eyes quickly spot her and a grin make its way onto his face.

Great.

“You’re back!” He said as he sat up in mid-air. Dread filled her at the noticeable sound of enthusiasm in his voice as he neared her. She stepped back, watching as the star loomed overhead as he remarked, “I was wondering where you went after your pet returned but you did not.”

“Sorry about that,” she lied. “I meant to return sooner but I had an audience…

“With the prince?”

“Yes with the prince,” she sighed before sitting down on the bed. She rested her chin in her hand as she stared at the balcony doors. They’d now been cracked open, allowing some of the breeze from outside to gently sway the curtains as she watched in silence.

Her thoughts nearly overwhelmed her as she reclined back onto the bed, staring at the ceiling.

“Did it not go well?” Asked the star nearly giving her a heart attack with his sudden appearance over her.

“Goodness!” she jumped, placing a hand over her heart before she frowned up at the star. “Of course, it went well! I got the prince to agree to come home and that’s all that matters.”

“Is it?” The star asked while staring down at her curiously.

She nodded, sitting up as he carefully floated away from her. “Of course it is. Now I’m one step closer to getting time off for my grandfather’s birthday. What more could I want?”

“I could think of a few things-,” the Star hummed rather thoughtfully as she darkly scowled. “It's only natural for people to desire or rather wish for more.”

“Even you?” she narrowed her eyes at him as she crossed her arms over her chest.

“What?” He asked, looking a bit taken aback by her words. “What do you mean?”

“Well, since it’s so ‘natural’ I was just curious if you’d ever desire or wish for more-,”

His eyes never left hers as he pointed to himself, saying “Me?” He shook his head. “No, I grant wishes, not make them.”

“So you’ve never wanted or desired more?” she furrowed a brow in disbelief.

He carelessly shrugged, as he answered, “Why would I? I’ve always had everything I’ve ever wanted or needed as long as I could remember.”

She snorted, a grin teasing at her lips, “I wouldn’t be surprised if people mistook you for this country’s prince with the way you're talking.”

He let out a laugh, his eyes quickly darting to the storybook in his hands, “That would be a rather unfortunate mistake really. But not entirely baseless considering that the prince and I do have one thing in common.”

“What’s that?” she asked, somewhat interested.

He grinned, his eyes looking towards her with a note of teasing in them. “You’re trying to get both of us to go home.”

“Ha ha very funny ,” she grumbled, even though she would admit that she hadn’t realized that what he was saying was more or less tragically true. Although one out of two victories wasn’t too bad, not when the first one was currently yet cautiously pending.

“But if I did have to make a request,” the star spoke again, now holding the storybook in his hands. “I think it would be with this. Valentino tells me that this is what humans call a storybook, or a collection of various stories, correct?”

She nodded, “it is. It contains fairy tales and stories from all over the world. My Mom bought it a while back on one of her voyages before she gave it to me.”

“Voyages?” he asked, his finger gently tracing the beautifully painted illustrations on the book’s cover. “You mean she would sail?”

She nodded. “Yeah, my Mom comes from a long line of merchants and sea explorers. Back when she was younger, she and my uncle used to sail everywhere to establish trade for their businesses. That was how she met my Dad.”

“Ah, I see! So your star map-making and navigational skills must run in the family then, right?”

“Eh not quite,” she confessed with a frown. Not wanting to give anything else away she changed the subject, “But what does my storybook have to do with your potential request?”

She watched as he hurriedly flipped open the book before stopping on the familiar page of Robin Hood. “This story,” he began hesitantly. “Valentino tells me that it is about an archer?”

“Technically yes. It’s about an archer who steals from the rich to give to the poor during the economically tumultuous times in medieval Europe thanks to the actions of the corrupt Prince John and his henchman, the Sheriff of Nottingham. Robin Hood is an outlaw so he lives in Sherwood Forest with all of his comrades who are famously known as his merry men. They have a ton of adventures with a lot of exciting escapades. It’s quite entertaining.”

“Well I suppose that puts the ‘Rob’ in Robin Hood,” the star muttered under his breath as his fingers traced the page’s beautiful illustration. “This story would be much better if they were all animals.”

‘Of course he would think that,’ Asha rolled her eyes. He’d probably make Robin Hood something weird like a fox or a banjo playing rooster.

“It’s a beautiful book,” he comments, abruptly interrupting her thoughts as she looks back towards him. “I only wish I knew what it said.”

“You don’t know what it says?” She blinked, as he shook his head. His eyes were still glued to the pages as she watched him squint. Sudden realization hit her as she felt her eyes widen. “Can you…can you read?”

“I can read,” he answers, his smile now noticeably missing. His expression was neutral but thankfully calm. “Just not the languages here on earth.”

“It’s ok if you can’t. I mean I probably can’t read star language,” she says gently, ever so fearful of incurring the star’s wrath before she continues. “I’m just curious how you can communicate with me so easily.”

“Oh that’s simple,” he answers. “Nearly every star can verbally communicate with humans no matter the language. And besides, the language you and I speak isn’t that different.”

“Really? I remember you said something to me when we first met and I didn’t have a clue what you were saying-,” she paused looking at him thoughtfully.

“But I knew what you were saying,” he replies. “Even when you were screaming and poking me.”

She stood to her feet, pacing as she felt the gears in her brain turn. “That’s amazing! Maybe your language is some sort of root dialect- a language that most other languages evolved from-,”

“Possibly,” said the magical being who was politely entertaining her scientific reasoning. “But I suppose that’s how far my lingual abilities go. When it comes to the written side of things…well… I guess it hasn't helped that we’re worlds apart from each other.” He turned the book sideways, squinting at the pages as she heard him mutter, “Not to mention the alphabet that I was told humans used seems to be extinct.”

“Fascinating-,” Asha breathed, excitement filling the space that her disappointment had once occupied. Amazing discovery aside, she’d found the star’s weakness. Something that she no doubt could use to her advantage- that was of course unless he was lying. But why would he lie? It seemed pointless unless he wanted to lure her into a false sense of security. Not wanting to be deceived, she inquired of the star, “Quick question, if you don’t know what the book is saying then why don’t you cast some magical translation spell to convert it into some language you could read?”

He shrugged, “I could do that. But I didn’t think you’d appreciate me tampering with your book without asking you first.”

She felt her shoulders slump, as her eyes widened. “Wow…I…oh.”

He faced her, his face filled with concern as she heard him ask, “What? What is it? Is something wrong?”

She shook her head, quickly regaining her posture. “No! No, it’s nothing, I mean, I was just a bit surprised that you’d be so…considerate about it.” Most people wouldn’t be, not when they were all so convinced that magic was the best thing that could happen to a person.

Her eyes lowered to her hands as she thought it over. “Thanks,” she said softly. “I appreciate it.”

She watched as a smirk slowly made its way onto his face as he combed his hair from his eyes, “Of course. I can tell that this storybook means a lot to you. Granted magic does make everything better, but if it’s not what you want-,”

“I think that’s highly debatable.” The words left her mouth without thinking as she froze. That was probably not the best thing to say to a magical being that could most definitely incinerate her.

Unlike her, he didn’t flinch. “What is?”

She cleared her throat, straightening her posture as she decided to risk it all. “Your words on magic making everything better. That’s not true.”

“Oh?”

Not wanting to go into any details, but still feeling too proud to take back her words, she continued. “Usually the best way to do things is through good old fashioned elbow grease.”

He chuckled, shaking his head as she saw him relax, “I seriously doubt that.”

“It’s ok, we’ve all been wrong before,” Asha says as she cringed, taking in the star’s expression.

That had been a mistake.

A wicked smirk had replaced his grin as his eyes practically brimmed with mischief. He didn’t seem angry, no, he seemed amused . It was almost as if he was reveling in some sort of hidden joke.

But Asha wasn’t joking nor was she in the mood to indulge in the star’s sense of humor.

Yikes. Was it too late to ask for the incineration option again?

“You sound like a skeptic,” came his voice, teasing yet challenging.

In any normal and sensible circumstance, Asha would’ve patiently and politely backed off. But her recent run-ins with the prince and the officials had left her sensibility and patience reserves dangerously low. So foolishly she replied, “If by skeptic you mean a realist then yes, I am very much a skeptic.”

She knew she was well past the point of no return when she heard him reply, “Alright, Ms. skeptic, tell me, can your good old fashioned elbow grease do this?” he asked, as she watched him move his fingers, amber-colored energy slowly appearing around her as she watched it form several figures. A prince battled a fire-breathing dragon, as she watched a pumpkin transform into a carriage. At the same time, several ballroom figures danced around the room, filling the air with a familiar shimmering golden dust.

“And that’s not even scratching the surface of what I can do,” the star drawled, as he feigned fatigue. She scowled, moving out of the way of a few passing golden stingrays. Although she hated to admit it, something was enchanting about seeing her storybook characters literally come to life.

But she wouldn’t let the smug-looking star know that.

“Maybe not Star Boy, but it wasn’t magic that put this book together and passed down these stories from generation to generation. It was genuine inspiration, talent, and hard work!” She huffed trying to ignore how his eyebrows had risen when she’d said the words ‘Star Boy’.

“ BLLLEEEAATTTTTT!”

Both of them turned to Valentino who had now approached. He roughly stomped one hoof on the floor before letting out a long series of bleats.

“What’s he saying?’ she asked the star who had slowly begun to nod at whatever Valentino was saying.

“He says we could settle this at the market decoration festivities tomorrow. Valentino, that's a brilliant idea!”

She shook her head quickly, glancing from the goat to the star. There was no way this would end well. “No! Absolutely not!”

“Why? Afraid you’ll lose already?” he queried before raising a brow in her direction.

“ No . First of all, you’re supposed to be helping me, not competing against me, remember ? Second of all, the only thing I’d fear for is you. Partially because you can’t use magic there but knowing you-,”

“Right,” he grumbled. “The legalities and whatnot…I appreciate your concern for my wellbeing-,” he paused, watching her silently fume. “But I think your pet has a point. We don’t necessarily need to compete against each other, more so than see whose way is more efficient and why. We both want the same thing, don’t we?” She nodded, although she felt uncertain how true those words were for the star. “So why not take the opportunity to show me just how amazing this ‘elbow grease’ of yours is? We could always flesh out the specifics of it later, that is of course unless you’re not up to the task-,”

She pointed to him accusingly. There was no way she was going to back down from this, star or no star. She’d prove that magic was just as unreliable and senseless as it had always been and always will be. Narrowing her eyes she snapped, “Fine. But the minute anyone catches or even suspects you of doing magic you’ll have to concede this argument to me.”

“As you wish-” he glanced down at her finger, his cape swaying as she watched him lower his feet to the floor.

She took a step back, her anger fading into misery as she sighed, “Please don’t say that-,”

“Don’t say what?” he asked, as he flopped down on her bed.

She frowned. “That four-letter word that starts with a ‘w’ and ends with an ‘ish’. I don’t make wishes. Not intentionally, and most definitely not magically. Never have and never will, and even if on the terrible terrible off chance that I intentionally did, I’m pretty sure that after tonight, I’d definitely resign from doing so.”

“So you’ll never make a wish? Not even ‘figuratively’?”

“ Never .”

He grinned, stretching on the bed as he turned to look at her through half-lidded eyes. “Never say never, my dear. Life has a funny way of proving people wrong.”

“I hope you’ll be this wise when I absolutely obliterate you tomorrow,” Asha grumbled under her breath as she reached for the ball of red yarn and sewing needles. Glaring at the source of her stress, who was comfortably lying on her bed, she quickly began to knit.

What she was knitting, she wasn’t sure, watching as her fingers moved the needle over and under, looping and tying the knots.

Maybe she should change her profession, she thought, watching as the star once again stretched on the bed before looking down at Valentino.

If the brightest star in the sky acted like this, then she’d hate to see what the dimmest star was like.

She didn’t get very far into her knitting when she heard another knock on the door. Praying that it hadn’t been the count who’d most likely be listening in, she set her sewing materials down before she opened the door.

Thankfully the person behind the door hadn’t been the count. Instead, it had been a maid carrying a tray full of steaming food. It contained a bowl of soap, a dish full of freshly baked butter rolls, seasoned vegetables, and crab that had left the kitchen and chef in disarray, the maid had joked (or at least Asha hoped she was joking).

After thanking her and taking the tray back into her room, Asha sat down on the bed. “You might as well get some rest now,” she called out to the star that she knew was most likely lurking somewhere in the room. “We leave in an hour..”

“Noted!” he called, reappearing in front of her as she watched him stare at her tray full of food. “Is that human food?”

“Yes. This is soup,” she said, gesturing to the bowl. Did he know what soup was? Judging from how his eyes widened as he took in the sight, she was willing to bet that the answer was no. “This is bread,” she pointed to the bowl full of warm, buttered rolls. “Some people like to eat it with soup. These are some vegetables, and…a crab that had a hard life I guess,” her nose wrinkled in disgust at the sight of the Not so tasty-looking crab.

“Would you like some bread?” she asked the star as he nodded. Just because she was planning to annihilate him didn’t mean that she’d let him possibly starve, that is if stars could even feel hunger.

She handed him a roll, watching as he thanked her before turning away from her and towards the balcony to eat it.

Her mind filled with questions as she watched him brush off the crumbs from his gloved hands.

Did stars eat and if so what did they eat? Did they even need to eat? Did they have digestive tracts? Not wanting to overwhelm her mind with any more questions she looked up at Star who had now resumed floating near her.

‘It seemed to be his favorite spot,’ she begrudgingly thought.

“Thanks. That was pretty good!” he said rather politely as she carefully sipped some of her soup.

She could feel that he was still intently observing her as she asked, “Do you guys have food in outer space?”

He shrugged, “I guess you could call it food, but maybe we have different definitions of eating.”

“What is a star’s definition of eating?”

“It’s different,” he answered cryptically. Knowing that he’d divulge no further information, Asha quickly finished the soup before devouring a piece of bread and some of her vegetables.

“You can have the rest if you like,” she called to the star as she placed the tray down on her bed and began to make her way around the room picking up the books that had been left on the floor. “You don’t have any allergies right?”

“Allergies? No, I don’t think so. I’ve been told that that’s mostly a human thing.”

“Alright, then it’s all yours I guess,” she stated before sliding a few books back onto the bookshelf.

Valentino joined her, carefully balancing a few books on his head before he made his way towards her. “Thanks,” she said, as she took the books from him.

Placing these books back was beginning to become a bit more challenging as the shelves grew taller and taller. Soon she was unable to reach the top shelf where the last stack of books needed to go.

“What are you doing?” she heard him call from behind her as he began to chew.

“Cleaning up” she grunted as her fingers reached in vain. “Like I said we’re going to be leaving soon so it’s only right that we leave this room as good as we fou-,”

“Allow me,” he said, his voice suddenly cutting her off as she felt the book she was holding suddenly ease itself from her grasp as the remaining books on the floor orderly placed themselves back onto the bookshelves. “There we go. Now it’s just as good as we found it.”

She stared at his grin, nearly speechless before she nodded and gestured to the books, “I appreciate help really, but…this…this doesn’t count.”

“Hmm?”

“I meant for whatever we’re going to be doing at the market that will hopefully not end in complete disaster. You helping me clean this up now doesn’t count for then.”

“Oh,” he replied, his face nearly neutral as she watched him slowly place himself down a few feet away from her. “Well that’s fine by me,” he sighed, holding her storybook up in one hand as he carefully shut it. “Because at the end of the day-,” she watched as the book carefully floated from his hands to hers. “I won’t even need it.”

“We’ll see,” she retorted, carefully slipping her storybook back into her satchel as she glared at the star. “Just be ready to go, ok?” He nodded, not offering her any sign of resistance as she lay down in the bed.

Unsure of whether or not to sleep she watched the star continue to float around the room, seemingly keeping himself occupied by conversing with Valentino as time slowly seemed to slip by.

It wasn’t long before an hour passed, and she heard the sound of the count’s voice from the other side of the door, “Asha!” he called, nearly startling her as she watched the star’s eyes quickly dart to the door. “Asha, are you ready? It’s almost been an hour!”

“Is that?” the star asked.

She shook her head. “Shh! Quick! Don’t let them see you like this!” she quietly hissed, watching as he nodded.

Now she heard the prince’s voice come from behind the door. “Maybe she’s just sleeping. If she rowed all the way here then she must be exhausted. Maybe I wasn’t being considerate when I wanted us to leave in an hour. Was that too much?” She heard him ask the count.

“I respectfully yet fully doubt that Your Highness,” came the count’s solemn voice. She then heard him mumble something that sounded suspiciously like a “weird bird.”

“Doubt what? You didn’t answer any of my questions!” the prince exclaimed as she watched the star’s form rapidly shift into a bird’s as he perched near the balcony doors, just as the knocking on her door resumed.

“Coming!” Asha called, quickly making her way towards the door as she opened it. Feigning a yawn she apologized, “Sorry Your Highness, I was feeling really tired- I didn’t mean to fall asleep-,”

Ignacio turned to the count nodding, “I guess that explains the talking. Some people talk in their sleep you know,” His words only earned Asha a glare from the count as the prince looked past her into the room. “Are you all packed?”

“Yes, Your Highness. I am ready to go.”

“Hey, Wait a second, is that a goat? Who’s goat is that?” he asked, pointing to Valentino who was peering up at him cautiously as he slowly approached.

The count immediately took a step back behind the prince as Valentino settled near Asha’s feet. “He’s mine,” Asha explained, watching as the prince kneeled, making himself eye level with Valentino. “His name is Valentino. My Saba gave him to me when he was born.”

“How old is he?” The prince asked with genuine interest as she watched him hold out his hand towards Valentino.

“Three weeks, I think. Although after the astral ball, he’ll be officially a month old.”

He grinned, “Congratulations! We’ll throw him a party if you want.” Valentino happily pleated as if gladly taking the prince up on his offer as he laughed. “I’ve heard a lot about the goats your family keeps,” he said as she watched him gently pet Valentino who happily bleated. “They say they bring luck and are legendary aren’t they?”

“Hmm I’d say that depends on who you ask,” she grinned, watching as Valentino’s chest swelled with pride.

Ignacio slowly rose to his feet, his eyes scanning the room before he frowned. At first, he squinted as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing before he cautiously took a step back. His face paled as she watched him tremble before he continued taking several steps back, earning him a concerned look from the count as well.

“Your Highness?” Asha called. He looked horrified as she saw him shake his head once.

She was nearly about to ask him what was wrong when she heard him say, “What…what kind of bird is that?”

#writers on tumblr #ao3 writer #ao3 fanfic #wish star #wish rewr #wish starboy #wish asha #prince ignacio #count mercado #wish disney #wish 2023 #wish au #wish

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anarcoqueer1994 · 2 years

Text

TW: mild sexual harrassment, talks of toxic relationship dynamics

Also I love me some Billy and some Harringrove but I also love Billy as a plot device for angst.

Steddie fic with Steve in a crop top

Steve and Eddie had been together a little over 6 months, getting together right after they defeated Vecna (for now.) Not that anyone other than their friends knew. It hasn’t necessarily been easy, both dealing with the aftermath of everything; Eddie’s bandmates weren’t the biggest fan of Steve, (not that he could blame them, he wasn’t great in high school), both were dealing with healing mentally and physically from the upside down, Eddie still being harassed for murders he was cleared of, and the constant underlying fear of being found out as queer, which could spell disaster in a small town like Hawkins.

Plus, Steve had other baggage he didn’t tell Eddie, didn’t want to add any stress to the other man. Of course Eddie knew Steve had dated Billy, but nothing specific. His short but tumultuous relationship with Billy the year before was his first time with a guy. But that relationship hurt. Billy was always like a storm waiting to happen. Some days it would be calm, but most days being with him was intense. He would go from almost hating Steve, violent outbursts, too many bruises to count both from inside and outside of the bedroom, to being gentle, charming, holding Steve softly and telling him how pretty he was.

Sometimes those sweet moments with Billy, would have Steve thinking crazy things. They would have Steve thinking he loved Billy. And one day, he made the mistake of saying it out loud. Billy was holding him, smoking a cigarette as they laid in bed. Steve’s head had been on his chest, and Billy was being particularly gentle, letting Steve absent-mindedly trace lines on his chest. The sex has been soft, and Steve was just feeling warm. So he let it slip out, “Love you, Billy.”

Billy had pulled away from him like he was touched by fire. “God, you always have to ruin shit by being so clingy, Harrington. We’re just having fun.” It took away that warmth Steve was feeling, made him recoil, feel humiliated. More humiliating than any physical bruise, this was a verbal verification that he wasn’t loved, that he was only good for Billy when he was playing purpose like a punching bag or someone to fuck, to spend time with, to hold…but never to love.

Looking back, even though the good was severely outweighed by the bad, Steve let himself buy into the goods, and excuse the bads. Even if this meant crying alone in his room sometimes, wishing to be brave enough to leave Billy, and not get sucked back in by a sweet gesture. He will never know if he would have ever been brave enough, Billy died with no resolution. He was heartbroken. He was relieved.

Eddie never made him feel scared, or hurt, or only there for something to do. Eddie was always sweet, gentle. Even in the bedroom where Eddie would sometimes dom, he was never harsh. He always checked in with Steve, made sure Steve was enjoying it too, made sure Steve was taken care of. Steve was sure he loved Eddie; he was sure that he was in love with Eddie. He loved the way Eddie could always make him feel good, comfortable. He loved the goofy, nerdy things Eddie so passionately talked about (even if he had to ask Dustin for some clarification at times.)

He found himself lighting up just thinking about seeing Eddie. But part of him was terrified to say he loved him out loud. He would remind himself that Eddie is nothing like Billy, that even if Eddie didn’t say he loved him back, it wouldn’t matter. Eddie wouldn’t be mad at him. But he could not overcome the part him that was worried that if he said it, Eddie would see how clingy and pathetic he is, and that Steve was only good at doing things for people, but not to be loved. So, he never says it.

He shows his love though in other ways, like holding Eddie’s hand while he drives, or picking out whatever new horror film came in for their movie nights because he knows his boyfriend loves it, even if he doesn’t. Sometimes, like today, it was gifts. He surprised Eddie with tickets to see Metallica a few hours away in Chicago. Metallica is definitely not Steve’s style, tending to lean more mainstream, preppy. But the look on Eddie’s face when he gave him the tickets meant everything to Steve. He looked so happy like a child on Christmas day. And the way he pulled Steve into heavy, needy kissed indicated how appreciative Eddie really was. Steve could pretend he was loved.

But now Steve was up in his bedroom trying to get ready for the show. Of course, his parents aren’t home, but he wasn’t alone. Robin came over and convinced him to let her help him get ready. Steve wanted to look like he belong at a show like that…but he also wanted to look good for Eddie. Billy used to not like when Steve would hang out with him in public, didn’t want him to embarrass him. Eddie has never been like that, but Steve is still nervous about messing up. He just wanted to make Eddie happy. So, when Robin suggested black eyeliner and nail polish, Steve reluctantly agreed. He wore a plain black, slightly baggy t-shirt and a new pair of very tight black jeans, hoping he would blend in.

“What do you think?” He asks her when she finishes with the eyeliner. He stands up off the bed where they were sitting to look in the mirror. He had put in the same rigorous hair routine as he usually did, not allowing that to suffer for the sake of fitting in.

She laughs “Why are you so worried?”

Steve rolls his eyes. “Come on, dude. Can you just answer the question?” He asks, obviously exasperated.

“You look fine, dingus. You literally always do.” She says matter-of-factly.

Steve pushes his hands against his, causing little dots to appear in his vision. “Ugh, I don’t want to look just fine Robin. What am I missing?”

“I don’t…” suddenly she pauses as a mischievous light fills her eyes. “Give me your shirt.”

“What?

“Give me your shirt. Do you want my help or not?” She demands

“Whatever you say.” He takes his shirt off throwing it at her face. She sticks her tongue out at him in retaliation.

She stands up, heading to his desk, grabbing a pair of scissors. As she does, she looks over and comments on his chest hair. “Henderson is right, you gotta tame that, man."

He smirks back at her. “Well, I haven’t had any complaints from Eddie.” He notices the scissors in her hand. “So, uh what are you doing?”

“You don’t have any emotional attachment to this shirt, right?” She answers with another question.

“Not really?” He answers more confused.

“Good.” And not even seconds later, she was taking the scissors to the shirt.

“Hey, hey what are you doing?” He steps closer, annoyance in his voice over his now ruined shirt.

“Helping you look good for your show.” She says as she finishes cutting, throwing the shirt back at him. From outside they hear a car honk, its Vickie picking Robin up. “Well got to go!” She hurries out the door before he has a chance to examine the newly altered piece of clothing. He hears the front door slam.

He holds the shirt out in front of him. It is way shorter than it was before. He is unsure but slides it over his head anyways. It hits him about mid-torso, leaving a little gap of skin between it and where his jeans sit on his waist. There is a small strip of hair visible leading from his belly button down to his jeans. He looks in the mirror, and with the eyeliner, and nail polish, and the clothes, he feels weird, but can’t help but feel a little pretty. He would never wear this around Hawkins, but maybe for a concert in a big city. He is still apprehensive, the scars sticking out slightly, but decides to go for it.

A little while passes before he hears the front door open. Eddie knows his parents aren’t home, so he had just come in. “I’m here, pretty boy.” He calls up the stairs. Steve can hear the excitement in his voice, ready to get going. “Let’s go!” He playfully yells.

Steve takes a deep breathe, knowing he would have to show Eddie eventually. That does not change the fact that he is still nervous with his new look. He yells down the steps “Okay…can you close your eyes?”

“What?” Eddie replies obviously confused.

“Come on, Munson, please?”

“Fine, whatever you say, baby.” Eddie gives in, closing his eyes. He is unsure why Steve is being so weird but goes with it. He hears Steve walk down the steps. He is now standing less than a foot away from the other man.

“Okay, you can open them.” Steve says nervously, his arms finicking at his sides because by instinct he wants cover up. Eddie opens in eyes and is very surprised by what he sees. He cracks a smile but before he can say anything, Steve starts talking again. Rambling. “Okay don’t laugh. I…I know it different and like probably dumb. It was Robin’s idea, you know the makeup and the shirt…and...”

He is cut off by Eddie grabbing his face and pressing a soft kiss against Steve’s lips. Eddie drops his hands down so they are resting on Steve’s bare hips. Steve looks at him unsure what to say. “Remind me to thank, Robin.” Eddie smiles, letting out a little laugh. “You look hot, princess. Well hotter than usual.”

Steve blushes at the silly nickname, Eddie has a million for him. He would never admit it out loud but princess is one of his favorites. “You don’t think it’s too much?” Steve asks, still nervous to be this far out of his comfort zone.

“Absolutely not,” Eddie assures him, running his finger along the little line of hair leading to his waist band. “Only problem is I might not be able to keep my hands off of you tonight.” Eddie winks. With that, Steve is mostly satisfied, feeling pretty and loving that Eddie thinks the same thing.

A few hours later, and they make it to the show. Steve hadn’t seen this many leather and spike clad individuals in one place in his entire life. He had grabbed a beer at the stadium to take the edge off, sometimes big crowds without easy exits still make him anxious. Honestly a lot of things make him secretly anxious these days.

He and Eddie stand in the middle of a huge crowd, not particularly far from the stage, but not that close either. He likes that with the big crowd, he has an excuse to stand extra close to Eddie, without arising suspicions. He glances over at Eddie to see a big smile plastered on his face. Steve can’t help but feel his heart flutter. Eddie had a way of doing that to him, especially when he has that big goofy smile plastered on his face. As the music begins, the already loud crowd starts to scream. Steve would honestly admit he hated it if it weren’t for his overly-excited boyfriend joining in. With Eddie, he finds it endearing.

As the concert progresses, Steve watches carefully as Eddie joins the mosh pit. He knows Eddie could hold his own, but it didn’t make him any less terrified whenever he watches those he loves do something that could cause bodily harm, and he loves Eddie. (Even if he can’t say it) He loses Eddie for second in the crowd. His heart begins to pound, flashbacks of almost losing Eddie in the upside-down play in his head. He is so focused on scanning for Eddie, and his own racing0 thoughts, that he nearly jumps out of his skin when someone squeezes behind him.

Luckily, as Steve turns his head, he sees it is the curly haired brunette. Eddie smiles at him, sweat covering his face but smiling like the luckiest man in the world. Steve smiles back at him instinctively. Before he can say anything, Eddie wraps his arms around Steve’s bare waist from behind, nothing he hasn’t seen straight couples do before. Heck, he has even done it to Nancy. Its perfectly innocent, normal…if they were straight.

But they aren’t straight, and Steve knows they would never do this in public, its not safe. Eddie obviously sees the distress in Steve’s face, tilting his head so Steve’s eyes could follow the direction. There he sees too girls making out, and a couple guys leaning into each out. Eddie says into Steve’s ear “We are in the big city, sweetheart…” Steve’s knees go weak at another one of Eddie’s pet names. “And we are at a fucking metal concert, we are good here. I want to show off how fucking hot you are and that you’re mine.” He smiles but then adds quickly “Only if you are cool with it, of course.”

Of course, Steve was cool with it. Billy would never want to show Steve off. Steve trying his best to stay in the background of the other man’s life. Billy didn’t even tell his close frineds. But he was learning that’s not true with Eddie. And if Eddie said this place was safe, he trusted him. He can’t help but blush knowing that Eddie thinks he’s hot and wants to show everyone they are together. As an answer, Steve turns his head awkwardly to kiss Eddie softly, nothing crazy. Quick enough to deny if someone had a problem. But Eddie still smiles anyways, holding Steve the rest of the concert, rocking their bodies together with the music.

After the show, they make their way to a little bar not far from the venue. They figured they would grab a beer and piss before hitting the road. It was full of folks coming from the same show. Steve stood by the bar, waiting for Eddie to come back the bathroom. As he leans forward on the bar, sipping his beer, he feels a pair of arms grab him from behind.

“Eds...” Steve laughs, the lightness from the evening taking over. “I think even in a big city, we gotta be careful at a bar.”

Steve freezes when he hears the voice respond, “Eds? No such luck, sweetheart. Names, Ricky. Seen you at the concert and thought you were fucking hot. Also you may wanna look around, honey. You are in a gay bar. No need to hide here.” Hot breath hits the back of Steve’s ear.

After a moment to process, Steve pulls away, turning to look at the guy. He was good looking enough, blonde hair, leather jacket, muscular, but Steve was not interested. He also looks around, only to notice the apparent queer clientele. He clears his throat “I’m with someone…Thank you, anyways.” He tries to be polite.

Before he can move away, the man puts his hands on either side of the bar behind Steve, locking Steve against the bar, with no place to go. He doesn’t want to start a scene. The guy was bigger and probably could kick Steve’s ass. “Aren’t we all? We are just having fun, sweetheart.”

Suddenly the pet name that made him go week in the knees earlier, felt gross, wrong. “I’m sorry, I’m really not interested.” Steve tries again.

The man’s tone gets less smooth, more aggressive. “How are you going to tell me that you came in here, dressed like.” He moves his eyes up and down Steve’s body. “And say you aren’t interested. Obviously, you wanted attention. Look around, every guy in here would love to go home with you.” He leans in trying to force a kiss on Steve, Steve doing his best to push back. He slides his leg between Steve’s legs.

“Stop, no!” Steve pushes him, trying to get him away. But he is bigger. “I’m not fucking interested!”

Before he can do anything else, he feels the man get pulled away. Then he hears Eddie’s voice. “He said he wasn’t interested!” He looks up just in time to see Eddie land a punch with his ringed fist. The man goes down, clutching his now very bloody nose.

He does not register what is happening, just Eddie grabbing his hand and pulling him out of the bar. They run for nearly 5 blocks before reaching where Eddie’s car is parked. Steve hears police sirens in the distance from where they came from, making sense why they ran.

Eddie gets in without a sound, frown on his face. Steve follows suit. He doesn’t speak out of fear of upsetting Eddie more. They drive for a while without talking. On he ride up there, they had held hands the entire time, and when they were at the concert, Steve felt so happy that Eddie was holding him. But now Eddie was upset, and all Steve could think about was the fact that it was his fault.

He keeps thinking of the what ifs. What if he would have just ignored the guy? What if he would have moved away sooner? Maybe he should have stayed in the bathroom with Eddie? Maybe he should have covered up more? They were having a great night, and Steve ruined it. After nearly an hour, as they drove on a dark, nearly empty highway, Steve broke the silence. “I’m sorry…” His voice is small, scared, scared that Eddie is going to realize that Steve was too much to handle. A small rebel tear he had been holding in rolls down his face.

A look of confusion fills Eddie’s face, as he stares ahead. This of course leads to more uncertainty for Steve. Without saying anything, Eddie pulls over, and for the first time since he started driving, Eddie looks at Steve’s face, illuminated by the nearby streetlight. His voice is soft, but tense “Sweetheart, why are you apologizing?”

That simple question was enough for Steve to start spilling what he was thinking about. “Because you were having such a good time, and so was I. And then I ruined it, I should have done something…pushed harder…and I am so sorry, Eddie. I’m sorry I made you mad, I’ll do better.” All his insecurities from Billy start to pour out. “Please give me another chance. I’m sor…”

For the second time tonight, Steve’s insecure ramblings are cut off with a kiss. Eddie’s kiss is more desperate this time, needy, intense. When he pulls away, Steve stares at him, confusion and worry still clouding his pretty features.

Eddie lets out a sigh, before reaching across the center console, softly grabbing Steve’s hand. “Stevie, you didn’t do anything wrong, I promise. I’m not mad at you. You made tonight great.”

“Really?” Steve replies, running his thumb over the top of Eddie’s hand. “Then…why have you been so angry since we left?”

Eddie swallows down an obvious lump in his throat. “Because…I was mad at myself.” Steve raises his eyebrow, not getting why. Now it was Eddie’s turn to ramble. “Everyone in town thinks I’m this freak, who is satanic and violent, you know? And like I am a freak, and I love that. But Like a lot of people still think I killed Chrissy. But I never wanted to you to see me as this violent guy. But before I could even stop myself, I left that guy bloody on the ground. He was just some guy, not some monster in the upside down.” Eddie’s voice is almost timid, like he’s afraid.

“Eds…” Steve reached his free hand to Eddie’s face, placing it gently on the man’s cheek. “I would never think that about you. You were defending me…” Steve leans in for gentle, reassuring kiss.

Eddie lets air out of his nose as the kiss ends. “That was part of it. Defending you…but if I was honest,” Eddie pulls his hand away as he talks. “part of it was…I don’t know, I guess I was jealous. Seeing some other guy trying to feel up on you, of course it made me protective, but it also pissed me off that it wasn’t me holding you, honey.” Eddie lowers his voice with the last word.

"You were jealous? Why?" Steve asks, oblivious to the fact that anyone would be jealous over him. "You're the only one I want, you know that, right?"

"Sometimes, that's hard to believe." Eddie says quietly, his own insecurities seeping out. He sees the look of panic cross Steve’s face, believing he did something to make Eddie not believe. "What I mean," Eddie corrects, "is you're Steve Harrington, king Steve. And I know I don't usually care what people think, but it's easy to see you are out of my league. Like way out of it, Harrington. And that guy from the bar, he looked more like he belonged with you. And I hated it because I couldn't blame you if you did want someone else, someone like him. Someone not like me. Someone like Billy."

Steve feels his heart sink, Was Eddie really comparing himself to Billy? "Eddie…it's true. You are nothing like Billy. And you never will be."

"Steve…" Eddie tries to interject.

"No, let me say something, okay?" Eddie nods reluctantly. Steve leans forward towards Eddie, taking both the other man's hands in his. "There is no one in the world that has ever made me feel like you do, okay? And I hate to admit it only because he is so cocky but Henderson was right again. He told me that you were cool and that I would like you. And he was right, so much more right than he probably expected. And I know it's cliche or whatever to say, but I think you are perfect. I don't want you to be like Billy. With Billy, it was so hard and it hurt more than it should have. " Steve looks away momentarily, never talking about these things out loud before. He takes a deep breath as Eddie squeezes his hands, sending little reassurances. Steve’s face shifts to a soft smile. "With you, it never hurts. You're funny, and passionate, so fucking hot." He laughs." You make me feel good. Like I'm enough. Like you want to spend time with me, and not just to fuck. Like I'm lov…"

Steve cuts himself out, scared he said too much. He almost said 'loved.' But he stopped the word from passing through his teeth. He is terrified to hope Eddie loves him. Billy had scoffed at his love, made him feel bad. Even Nancy called his love bullshit.

What Eddie does next surprises him. He leans forward, resting his forehead against Steve's, moving his hands from Steve’s to Steve's bare hips, feeling the skin against skin, running his fingers softly over the scars covering his side. It's like they are now in their own world, only noise around is the occasional car driving past. Steve stares nervously at Eddie, uncertainty still taking a toll. "Stevie, you are loved. I love you."

"You love me?" Steve asks, still disbelieving despite evidence to the contrary.

Eddie laughs at Steve's obliviousness. "I love you so much it scares me sometimes. It was all so fast and sudden but I knew I loved you, the moment I saw you walk towards Vecna, willing to sacrifice everything to protect the kids, to protect me. Very metal. And that love only grew as I watched you stay endless nights in the hospital with Max before she woke up, or when I watched you bus the kids around, or the way you listen to Dustin and I ramble about shit I know you don't care about. You are so good to Robin, and Nancy, and even Johnathan. You have been through so much, too. Robin told me about the Russians, and how they tortured you. And you never bring it up. You are always just taking care of people. You take care of me. I notice all the little things you do for me constantly, and big things." He adds. "Like tonight. I know you don't like Metallica but you did all this for me. And honestly, princess, all I wanna do is take care of you, in return."

Steve feels like his heart is going to pound out of his chest and flutter around the car. He's sure Eddie would bat it back down for him. Eddie loves him, and if he would have seen past his own insecurities, he would have seen that sooner. He whispers almost too quietly to hear, "I love you so much, Eds."

With that, Eddie moves his hand to Steve's chin, pulling him in for a tender kiss. It didn't feel rushed or desperate. It felt, pure, content, happy.

Steve pulls away slightly, their lips just inches apart. "How about we go back to my place, and I'll show you how much I love you?"

There was no real test, Eddie knew how much Steve loved him now, and Steve knew how much he was loved. But there was need, desire behind those words. He wanted to get Eddie to his bed and worship every part of Eddie’s body. He wanted Eddie to mark him up, to show everyone he was his. He wanted to fuck and love and just revel in the warmth of thier relationship.

Eddie, for his part, must agree, as he sped the entire way back to Hawkins

#stranger things fanfiction #stranger things #steddie #steddie fanfic #steve harrington #eddie munson #mentions of billy Hargrove #robin buckly

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quietly-by-myself · 2 years

Text

Shadow By My Fireplace - Chapter 29

Masterlist

In which, Cyril breaks down.

Thank you as usual to @darkthingshappen for beta reading. You're amazing.

CW: drug/alcohol addiction (opioids), opioids, overdose and death due to overdose, hospital setting, chronic illness, panic attack, caretaker has a breakdown, hospital whump, mass shooting mention, minor character death, brief suicide mention, emeto

===

One of the questions Cyril would have never been able to answer clearly was simple. What would happen if somebody he loved walked into the emergency department, dying?

Of course, there was always another doctor on call for that very reason. Nobody could act objectively.

Well.

That was the ideal. Sometimes, it happened, in those smaller, less equipped hospitals, the more rural ones that Cyril found himself working at, that doctors were alone to manage an entire emergency department. Sometimes, the other attending called out sick. Sometimes, the residents just quit. Hours were longer in rural hospitals. The patients were sicker, poorer, more in need.

In cities, perhaps doctors were praised. In rural medicine, Cyril was lucky to see a patient before they cut their own melanoma off. A backache in the rural emergency department was never just a backache.

That night that haunted Cyril every night was a particularly bloody one, but not because of a gang turf war or mass nightclub shooting like in the cities.

No, the plague of the country was far less dramatic: oxycodone.

Well, oxycodone was how it all started, at least. It was like a hydra. Once the doctor who’d been paid to overprescribe left, the problem sprouted two more heads. Cyril remembered in high school when only a few people knew the word “oxycodone.” Now, everyone knew it, along with heroin, codeine, and fentanyl.

All it took was one miscalculation and Cyril would be working twenty-four hours on his feet, fighting to save life after life that just didn’t get Narcan in time.

They had a word for it.

Oxycuted.

Cyril never thought it would be someone he knew.

However, that night, when a bad batch had found its way into town, everything changed.

The attending was down with the flu. They only had one resident on staff. Cyril’s eyes were red from a lack of sleep and far too many caffeine pills.

He wanted to go outside to smoke. However, there were far too many people pouring in, mothers with sons and sons with sisters.

Everything in Cyril’s world fell apart when the stretcher with paramedics came rushing in the back.

“Code Blue. Code Blue.”

Cyril froze. He recognized the face.

Oliver.

Oliver. The one he’d grown up with. The one he’d had his first cig with. The one that had asked him to start a band when he knew what little talent he had.

Oliver. His best friend.

What little food Cyril had managed to fit in between patients immediately came up. One of the nurses rushed over to him as he huddled over one of the hallway trash cans.

“Dr. Galanos, are you okay?”

Cyril shook his head. “It’s Oliver. Oliver Marchmont.”

The nurse looked at him sadly. “Dr. Galanos, you’re the only doctor here tonight. I’ll call Dr. Tharby to see if he can come in.”

Cyril knew what that meant. He stood up, accepting the paper-thin tissue that the nurse gave him.

As Cyril had to test Oliver’s reflexes to ensure his death after thirty minutes of trying to save him, the moment of peace they held for him didn’t feel real.

However, when Cyril had to see Oliver’s mother, tell her that her baby boy was dead, he couldn’t take it anymore. Holding her in his arms as she cried and cried and cried was too much for Cyril.

That night, he cried as he smoked his last cigarette. Cyril never cried. But, that night, he nearly jumped off a bridge from the depths of his sorrow. He felt like an awful person. Why was he the one who had to tell that woman, the one who was practically a second mother to him?

He would never return to the hospital.

In fact, after a few months, he never returned to medicine at all.

The farther he was from the hospital, the better. So, he moved where there wasn’t one for thirty miles.

His little cabin in the woods.

—

Sacha awoke during the night in pain. It wasn’t out of the ordinary, exactly. Sacha had lived most of his life since Master bought him in pain. Even then, five months after Master’s death, Sacha was still in pain.

Cyril had explained that it was likely permanent. Nerve damage, he’d called it. Pain from injuries that never healed correctly, too. Those years of medical neglect and endless tortures had taken its toll on Sacha’s body: neuropathy, migraines, essential tremor, tinnitus, vasovagal syncope, and a lot of other diagnoses that he didn’t care to remember.

Luckily, Cyril wasn’t Master. He gave Sacha medical care. He gave Sacha medicine. A pill of acetaminophen and a pill of ibuprofen did the trick most of the time. Cyril had offered to try to get him on longer-term treatment, but Sacha didn’t like taking pills. He’d take medicine when he needed it.

That night, the pain was bad enough that he decided on two acetaminophen and one ibuprofen.

He rummaged through the bottles in the medicine cabinet and pulled out what he thought were the bottles he needed.

As he laid his head down, Sacha felt especially sleepy. The pain was going away in a different way than usual. Sacha almost recognized it, but the medicine was also taking away any worry that he might have.

Before long, Sacha’s head hit the pillow and his eyes closed.

—

Cyril awoke with a start. Nightmares of the time before his cabin in the woods, that time before Sacha, had plagued him recently.

He was getting awfully tired of seeing dead bodies in his sleep. He was tired of seeing their lifeless eyes and their bleeding bodies. In some ways, his experience with Sacha had triggered it all to come back. He’d stopped practicing medicine because he didn’t feel like he was actually saving people. Now, in order to save someone who genuinely needed it, he had to practice again.

Did Cyril mind? Not really, though taking care of Sacha was definitely taking a small toll on him. Well, maybe small wasn’t the word. The toll wasn’t insignificant, but it wasn’t big enough that Cyril would want to get rid of Sacha. The very thought was repulsive. Cyril loved Sacha like a little brother. It was his job to take care of Sacha.

Eventually, Cyril decided to get up and get something to drink in the kitchen. He wasn’t worried about waking Sacha up. Sacha slept like a log.

However, as Cyril brought a glass down from the top shelf of a cabinet, he noticed a bottle on the counter.

“Hydromorphone, 5 mg tablets.”

Why did he still have those damn pills?

Immediately, he turned to Sacha. Had Sacha taken them? Sacha often woke up in the middle of the night to take pain medicine. Cyril had tried to convince Sacha to switch onto something long-term, but Sacha refused. He never gave a reason as to why, but Cyril suspected that he had a fear of long-term treatment after being drugged for so many years.

Sacha was sound asleep.

Almost dead asleep.

Cyril took the pills out, counted them. Sacha had taken two. He took two!

Panic overwhelmed Cyril as he ran over to Sacha and shook him.

“Sacha! Sacha! Wake up.”

At first, Sacha didn’t wake up. Dread filled Cyril’s blood like a poison. Sacha was dead. Sacha was dead.

He’d lost another one.

He couldn’t.

Surely, he had Narcan somewhere. Maybe it wasn’t too late to give it to Sacha.

“Sacha, wake up!”

Desperation filled Cyril’s voice.

In fact, he didn’t even realize when Sacha groaned. He was too busy looking through the cabinets for Narcan. He needed Narcan. He needed to save Sacha. He couldn’t lose another person. Not another friend.

“Cyril, what’s wrong?”

Cyril’s breath caught in his throat. Sacha was standing, breathing.

“You-”

Cyril stopped himself from asking Sacha if he was dead.

The panic suddenly came crashing down and Cyril felt tears in his eyes. Sacha wasn’t dead.

“You took two hydromorphone pills.”

“Two… what?”

Sacha squinted at Cyril. He sounded pretty tired, groggy, but he was still there. A lot more calm than usual, but not anywhere near being dead.

“Opioids. I thought you overdosed.”

Sacha shook his head. “I’ve overdosed before. I’m… definitely… tired, but not overdosing.”

Hearing that Sacha had overdosed before certainly didn’t calm Cyril down. However, he knew that he risked freaking Sacha out with his panic, so he quickly went to his room and slammed the door shut.

Cyril heard Sacha roll back over to bed. He’d ask in the morning what Sacha meant by that.

Still, he grabbed his shirt, placing his hand over his racing heart. Sobs broke through his chest. He kept himself quiet. He couldn’t stand to have Sacha hear him cry.

However, Cyril couldn’t hold it back anymore. He cried tears, remembering the dead body of Oliver laying on the bed. The cold of his dead skin. The hollowness of his dead eyes. Sure, the soul was impossible to prove from a medical standpoint, but from a physical one, a presence always left the room or was simply not there.

Oh, how Cyril longed to be in his garden, far away from the worries and fears that plagued him.

But it was winter. It was cold outside. There was no garden to tend to. Only the fears that he had to face head-on.

===

Tag list: @whumpsday, @i-can-even-burn-salad, @pigeonwhumps, @darkthingshappen, @pumpkin-spice-whump, @darlingwhump, @maracujatangerine, @just-a-whumping-racoon-with-wifi, @flowersarefreetherapy, @octopus-reactivated, @quietshae, @whump-blog, @inkkswhumpandstuff, @whumpycries, @whumpkinz

#shadow by my fireplace #whump #whumpblr #whump fic #whump writing #whump community #recovery whump #cyril #sacha #hospital setting #hospital whump #doctor whump #cw are above #drug/substance use/abuse #opioids #panic attack #chronic illness

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purposelynana · 10 months

Text

What Did I Watch: #35

This week, I thought a lot about the word 'forever' and it did sound scary. Infinite. No stopping. Just go on and on.

I think I'm going to stop watching Hidden Agenda. Because I never convinced there was a hidden agenda. I genuinely think it's going to pull up a plot twist a la David Fincher. But nope. No surprises either.

Am I hoping too much?

Perhaps.

Besides the missing hidden agenda (for now, who knows for the next 2-3 episodes), I have a tiny bit problem with how Dunk recited his dialogue. It wasn't bad acting per se, but it sounded to me like he read a script. The way he uttered words by words, especially during banter with Joong, or when their characters having overlapping sentences, it just didn't come out natural. Dunk particularly slow down his words so that Joong can caught up to him and making it as it seemed that he was interrupting him. And that happened so many times. I was like, in real world, no one ease off their chatter unless they were finishing their speaking or they predicted their listener about to interfere. I mean if you're engaging a very hefty conversation, would you care about your listener that much so that you could predicted that they were about to against you? I don't buy it.

It's like you have a script and yet you chose to let out words as if you read it and not trying to make it as sound as you in your normal fucking life. It was weird. I got agitated just by watching people speaking like they were in first grade's play.

(the gif was there when i was searching by 'hidden agenda thai'. might as well use it.)

I'm angry for the little things, in particular towards Thai BL. The lack of continuity between the scenes. The illogical choices in set designs (remember there were so many candles during the sex scene in La Pluie? yeah, what's the point?). Plenty of unnecessary characters to make up the episode. The shortage of adult stories where adult themes presented such as paying mortgage, or maybe sucked at your job, instead of having everyone just to making out in order to push the agenda of being adult. It's not adult. Having sex is basic necessities, even in high school they can do that. You know there is a life outside love. Show me.

So when Laws of Attraction came to my life, I was like, finally. Goodness gracious. Yassssss. I want to see people going to work and kick some asses and love is just a bonus. Arggggghhhhh.

It was on the same path as Modu which is great. It wasn't mind blowing-ly fantastic. But it was crazy and full of imperfect characters and not trying to be some pick-me girls. Like it's not "well I'm hot, I do smoke, I'm bad and I'm proud of it" kind of attitude. Charn is questionable and bad in a very messed up way, which is awesome. He doesn't want to be fix even in the name of love. Because if he wanted to be fix I hope he's going to psychiatrist.

My only beef is that it was very lakorn-y. It was so damn lakorn to point I laughed pretty hard at some scenes while watching it. The singing at the market? The cringiest thing I've ever watched. Crap, why did they have to do this?

At last, I'm about to share you a song and feasibly one of the main reasons I'm looking forward to Friday.

youtube

Please DeeHup for the love of god, you cannot mess this up. YOU CANNOT FUCKING THIS UP. Because you already have the base, which is an extraordinary story. The color palette and cinematography are top notch. The music is freaking wonderful. For the first time in my life of watching Thai BL, finally a good sound mixing. One of the fundamentals of visual media is a fucking sensible sound mixing. It is essential thing and can be very annoying if production just set aside that in favor of what, handsome people who cannot act. The hell.

I Feel You Linger in the Air is wet dream for technical maniac like me. Audiophile in me pleased. Cinephile in me satisfied. Acting? Come on, it's starring the great Nonkul.

Furthermore, the first 5 minutes of this show, is a cinema. The sound that comes out of it. The creeks on the stairs. The muffled bedroom voices. The eerily atmosphere created by a haunting score. Darling, sound can do wonder.

Sometimes I never cared on how story unravel before our eyes. And it's kinda sad for me because everyone having their own interpretation about stories, compositions, and frames. But rarely talking about sound and how critical it is to storytelling. Sound can tell you so many different things before characters uttered their words. Sound is the door between realism and fallacy. Good sound is able to make a visual presentation become such an immersive experience. Bad sound is a joke, a laughable attempt to making me trust to everything you presented.

Bold statements for bold times.

#hidden agenda #laws of attraction #i feel you linger in the air #what did i watch

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kickflipkidd · 1 year

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Ok ok tell me about Ash, I'm curious 👀 (Also, I have an oc named Ash and I want to see the difference too. It's a good name)

Thanks so much for the ask aaaaaaaOkay! So Ash is an OC pretty heavily under construction but I will tell you the things I do know about her!

-her maternal grandmother is Inuit and Ash spent a lot of time with her growing up and a lot of time around her sled dogs, who she helped raise (there is a lot more research I need to do to be certain I portray things accurately and respectfully but that is the basis I have at the moment, it's something I came up with when I was a lot younger and now want to actually flesh out)

-her father was in the army and when she was around 14 he got assigned to a base on the east coast so they moved from Alaska which Ash was Not Happy About

-but that is where she met Mickie, fell hard for them, and they took off together as soon as they were both 18, living in Mickie's car and busking/conning their way across the united states until they made it to the west coast and enrolled in a community college music program together

-Ash is a skilled drummer, she started learning when she joined jazz band in middle school and would stay after school to practice and teach herself the drum parts to her favorite metal songs. in high school she was center snare in marching band her junior and senior year (which in case you didn't know is basically the drumline section leader)

-she's a huge metalhead, it's by far her favorite genre, and behind that is punk. her favorite band, however, is... the Beastie Boys. her parents really liked them and she has a lot of nostalgia for them. she will defend their terrible music to her dying breath

-she struggled a lot with anger and discontentment growing up. got in a lot of fights, snuck out a lot. started smoking weed in high school to be rebellious but found it actually helped her mellow out a bit so she still smokes, but not nearly as much as she did as an 18-20yo

-she has waist length black hair with a side shave/undercut style. her fashion is what I want to call gothdykepunk? think black combat boots, worn and torn cargo pants, shredded metal band tees overtop of fishnet armbands, a sickass dragon necklace, a necklace made of safety pins, sharpie colored nails, and her dad's old army jacket atop everything. she's so much cooler than me

-in her efforts to be less aggro as she gets older, she ends up becoming pretty quiet in general (where she used to be accurately described as "loudmouthed") but remains the same amount of intimidating (MAJOR resting bitch face and vocal tone issues, and she's very blunt), so people tend to be scared of her on first impression. but she really isn't mean, she's just intense

-being a skilled drummer, she's strong as fuck and has very well devloped arm and shoulder muscles (aka my fucking weakness)

-she's so cool she really is but man. she's also just a big nerd. loves complicated board and card games and wants to make all her friends play them together and will explain the rules into the ground. the beastie boys as I mentioned. don't hand her the aux cord unless you like melodeath, bad 90's whiteboy rap, and the alt country songs that make her think of Mickie (Mickie plays banjo and accordion and grew up listening to early stadium country and Johnny Cash so they are particularly into the alt country scene and dragged Ash in with them)

-Mickie and Ash are queerplatonic life partners - Mickie is aroace, Ash is an allosexual lesbian who occasionally (with conversation and consent from Mickie) pursues casual sexual relationships with other partners (including a longterm friends with benefits relationship with Kit, a friend they make in college who basically becomes the third wheel to their gay little tricycle), but these two are in it together, ride or die, they love each other so much

-in the fantasy setting I'm working on writing, Mickie and Ash are both bards who travel together conning people and eventually join up with a group of revolutionary bandits and I just love them a lot okay

I sadly don't have any art of her yet but someday I will, there are definitely more things about her floating around in my head but those are some basic facts! as I said, under construction but I love her very much! thank you for the ask!!!

#oc tag #ash

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ewell15 · 2 years

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Fly - A Breaking Bad Semiotic Analysis

10.06.2022

(IMAGE: A fly lands on the smoke detector on Walter's ceiling)

Breaking Bad (2008) directed and produced by Vince Gillian follows protagonist Walter White as he comes to terms with the fact he doesn’t have much longer to live.

Walter is the average American high school teacher living with his wife, his son, Walt Jr. and an expected newborn. When Walter is abruptly diagnosed with progressive lung cancer, his life changes drastically. His first concerns are his family, he wonders how he can make sure they have enough money for when he does die. On a whim, Walter decides he'll use his chemistry skills for producing meth since that's bound to get him a lot of money in a short time. On his way, he picks up his former student, Jesse Pinkman, who turned out to be a drug dealer.

With his chemistry degree and Jesse working as his connection to dealers, Walter perfects a recipe that becomes well known in the region. He ends up working for a large supplier, Gus, who runs restaurant chain to cover up the sinister organization. Walter and Jesse work together for Gus who provides them with a lab and the tempting promise of three million dollars if they work for him for a few months. Walter is hesitant to accept the deal at first as his relationship with his wife is already in shambles. But Gus reminds Walter that "a man provides for his family" even when he's not loved or respected.

Throughout the five season series, Walter experiences the haunting and harsh world of the illegal drug trade. But Walter believes that he should be prepared to make any sacrifice for his family, even when his wife files for a divorce. The show has won 15 Emmy awards and still has a strong impact on internet culture despite being over a decade old.

2008 was a period of recession within the American economy and Breaking Bad encompasses the struggles of many Americans. Throughout the series, Walter makes decisions that aren’t in his favor in order to financially benefit his family. Much as Americans were struggling with housing and making ends meet during this time.

(GIF: Walter takes drastic measures to get rid of the fly in their lab)

Throughout Breaking Bad and Walter’s story, symbolism and intricate camera angles are used to further develop themes within the show. An episode where this particularly stands out is S3 E10 “Fly”. Throughout this episode Gillian utilizes symbolism and plot development to reach a peak in Walter & Jesse’s character arcs. The last thing you would expect in a show as gruesome as Breaking Bad is an entire episode dedicated to killing a fly. Though Fly is appraised for it's interesting interpretation of symbolism.

Through dialogue, “Fly” progresses into an episode about guilt and sacrifices that heightens as the “fly” weighs on the protagonists minds. Throughout this episode it’s evident that Walter has become engrossed within the details of their production. He is frantically trying to account for why the numbers from their last batch came up short. This sets the stage for Walter’s breakdown throughout the episode as he encounters the fly in the next scene. Walter, alone in the lab, decides that he must kill the insect before he can continue to cook.

He shows signs of insanity as he goes as far as throwing his shoe at a lightbulb the fly was on. Walter shows little ration as he follows the insect throughout the lab. He spends the entire night trying to kill the fly with no sleep. Jesse arrives the next morning, and he believes that Walter has gone insane.

(GIF: lipstick stained cigarettes which remain in Jesse's car even though Jane has long passed)

Everyone in Breaking Bad has their “fly”, the guilt that they can’t get rid of no matter how hard they try.

Each character has their own regrets and issues weighing on their mind. For Jesse, It’s the death of his first girlfriend, Jane, which occurred earlier in the series. Earlier in the episode, Jesse is seen reflecting on their relationship as he finds lipstick stained cigarettes in his glove box. Jesse feels responsible for Jane’s death as he was stopping her from ever making a full recovery from her drug addiction. Jesse believes that it was his fault that she passed and he carries this guilt throughout the entire series. Even though what happened to her was beyond his control, he still believes he could've done something about it. He can never truly escape that nagging feeling as he’s reminded through small objects every day.

Walter started producing methamphetamine to provide for his family as he didn’t have much time left to live. Though his production was based on a string of lies and excuses to his wife. She believed he was cheating on her at first, and even when she found out he was trying to help her, she wanted nothing to do with him. Walter sacrificed his ties with his family in order to ensure they were set for life. He has all the money and more to provide for their insurance and his children’s college expenses. But he doesn’t have a family anymore.

Walter feels responsible for his family falling apart even though he sacrificed everything to help them. The fly also symbolizes the lack of control that Walter has over his life. Just as Walter didn’t account for the insect causing an anomaly in the lab, Walter didn’t account for unexpected events throughout his life. Getting diagnosed with cancer was something he never planned for, as well as his wife, Skyler filing for divorce. These are things that are out of Walter White’s control, just like the insect which looms over his head, just out of reach from his self made fly swatter.

(IMAGE: The fly lands on Walter White's glasses)

As Walter and Jesse struggle to kill the fly within the meth lab, they come face to face with things that have been weighing on them.

And Walter, sleep deprived, confesses to Jesse that he’s not happy with the state of his life. There’s obviously something that he needs to get off of his chest. He tells Jesse that there was a “perfect moment that passed (him) by”. A few months prior, Walter had all the money his family would need. It was before Skyler found out how he got the money as well. Walter tries to pinpoint the exact day that would’ve been the best for him to die.

He tells Jesse “you want them to actually miss you when you’re gone”, thinking of how his wife seemingly despises him for his criminal activities. Walter pinpoints the exact night before everything went down hill. He had found himself inside of a bar, talking to a man. The man was Jane’s father but Walter had no idea at the time. Her father told him to never give up on family, and so Walter kept on going. Walter now makes the connection between what Jane's father told him and her death that night. Walter feels a sting of guilt as he realizes that even though Jane's father had such a positive outlook, family still failed him. He helped Walter to realize the value of family, and so Walter kept on living, solely for his family which is being held together by strings. Sitting there in the lab, the fly hovering above his head, Walter states that he should’ve just “lived up til that moment, and not one second more.” as everything went downhill afterwards. Days later, Skyler found out about where he was getting the money, and his family life completely crumbled. That exact night was the perfect night for him to go as he had all the money for his family and no suspicions. But he kept living.

(IMAGE: Walter confesses to Jesse how he thought about giving up as the fly looms over their heads)

Towards the end of the episode, the erratic Walter White, half asleep, tells Jesse to forget about the fly. Walter feels a bit better after sharing what was bothering him with Jesse. He tells Jesse to “let it go”, and that they’ll resume cooking in the morning. Unlike himself just a few hours ago, Walter could care less about the fly. He’s accepted that it’s a part of their environment now, much as he has accepted that he has to carry his guilt with him. But Jesse is determined to kill the fly that's been taunting them. And Jesse is finally able to kill the fly as Walter falls asleep.

Compromises and sacrifices are a huge part of the show. Through the symbolism of the fly, Gillian was able to develop characters further with simple imagery. The fly is a genus episode because at first it seems silly but upon further inspection, it is an amazing analogy. Gillian was able to capture the guilt that the two characters feel and use the fly to make them admit to this.

Despite everything, Walter wakes up the next morning to discover a fly in his room. No matter what the guilt that Walter carries will keep haunting him, even from a distance.

#breaking bad #breakingbad

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praeteritus-memories-muses · 4 months

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Name: Garry

Series: Ib

Continuity: True Ending

Age: 22

Height: 5'0"

Orientation: Homosexual | Non-binary (They/them)

Species: Human

Occupation: Clothing store clerk

Father: Unnamed

Mother: Unnamed

Bio:

Garry is an only child to a set of highly conservative parents, relatively. They actually lived an rather average life, one so ordinary that they almost never mentions it. Yet something happened as Garry had entered their second year of high school, they fell in love with a boy. Garry didn't know about their parents blatant homophobia due to their conservatism, even when their father made remarks about the month of June being pride month, they had still been in the dark as most youth do.

That summer, Garry came out as gay to their parents who were not pleased by them in the slightest. They begged them to go to a conversion camp or therapy but they at first would politely refuse, until they started hiding things like their cell phone and laptop while telling them it's what made them gay. It was getting so bad and dangerous that they were starting to physically abuse them on multiple occasions. Garry had enough and at age seventeen, packed their bags in the middle of the night and decided to stay at their current boyfriend's house. (Whom they never introduced to their parents for obvious reasons)

The stress of graduating high school and them running away from home so quickly had caused Garry and their current relationship to not really work out and broke up just after they graduated high school. Yet they weren't going to let any of this get them down. Now graduated from high school, they left town and went from bus to bus until they arrived at a city they never even heard of before. It's there they got a job as a clerk for a local goth centric store in the local mall.

Though all was not completely well with Garry. They were incredibly closed off from people and suffered a major smoking addiction, often smoking an entire pack in one day. It wasn't until they noticed how short they were on money from buying so many cigarettes a day that they would decide to quit, keeping lemon candies in their pocket to suppress their itch to smoke.

As an interest, Garry has always loved two things - art and sweets. When they heard the world famous artist, Guertena, was having an exhibit in the new year was when they worked their bum off to earn enough money to buy a ticket. they were still working a minimum wage job in a city, cash was still tight for them. Often times, he'd be so short on money that he exclusively bought his clothes at thrift stores and shopped at family owned discount stores for food.

Yet they finally were able to afford a ticket! Grabbing their tattered coat, lemon candy, wristwatch and lighter - they made their way to the gallery. There they absolutely loved all the beautiful art on display, but their personal favorite was The Hanged Man. They were a fan of the beautiful art of tarot cards and something about the meaning of The Hanged Man had drawn them particularly to that painting. Yet as they were enjoying it was when the lights went out and suddenly the floor turned to...paint? Which caused Garry to fall in.

They awoke in a place that looked like another gallery, but the room was all a deep red. Pieces that weren't even in the real exhibit were there, suddenly a vase appeared in front of them with a blue rose. A note told them "As the rose wilts, so do you." A concerning one indeed. As they wandered around, suddenly they were attacked by women in the gallery whose bodies had halfway come out and attacked them! Easily frightened, and absolutely hated horror movies, Garry ran for their life only for these women to surround them and begin to munch away at their blue rose, dying as they would consume the rose.

Yet they awoke perfectly fine and a little girl giving their rose back to them. It was a little girl in a simple red outfit, with a red rose of her own. They thanked her, but noticed this poor little girl was all alone. Garry actually adores children, often being very motherly and patient towards any child they met whether lost or had a question when they came into the store. They couldn't live with themselves to let a child go alone in this dangerous and strange world, so they'd go along with Ib and work with her to get out of the gallery.

It wouldn't be easy for Garry who frightened so easily. They were never a coward, but they definitely was easy to scare. They'd be brave for Ib if it meant she'd be protected, especially when she was so sweet towards them. Their bond would only grow in the gallery, Garry even giving her their lemon candy to calm her down from a nightmare. It was those candies they relied on as a crutch in not to smoke anymore and it seems it was this moment where they could let go of the candy too.

In the gallery they would meet a girl named Mary, who instantly showed animosity towards them. Normally, Garry encountered spoiled girls like Mary all the time and knew how to calm them down but it seems no matter what they did - Mary just had venom in her voice when speaking to them. It was to a point where Garry was suspicious and when they and Ib were separated for a time, they found a book containing a portrait of...Mary!!! Mary was just another painting come to life! Luckily they would confront her, where she ran away in fury.

Ib and them would suddenly enter a world completely different from the one they had been in, it was now a world drawn in crayon by what looked to be a child around Ib's age. They would wander around until they encountered Mary again, who this time was threatening to hurt them. Desperate and scared for their lives as Mary had a sharp palette knife in her hand to stab them, Garry gave Ib their lighter and Ib had destroyed Mary's painting. This killed Mary who was set ablaze and turned into a puddle of paint. The scuffle had caused Garry cut is hand where Ib gave them a handkerchief with her name on it to bandage it.

At last Garry and Ib would find a way to escape! Yet when they made it to the real world, neither of them could remember what happened. Just as Garry was checking out the rose sculpture, feeling a strange sense of nostalgia, Ib would approach them who seemed to remember everything, even showing the candy from their pocket and their own coat had her handkerchief in it. The two of them quickly regained their memories and although they had to go for the exhibit was closing, they promised Ib they should meet again sometime.

They would eventually meet with Ib's parents at coffee shop, where they'd explain to them how they had met their daughter when she had gotten lost in the exhibit. Of course, they gave the basic version of it as to not make them think they were a mad person. Seeing how sweet they were, they agreed that Ib could meet with them again sometime and the two would have a reunion at a local cafe where they served macarons (Garry's new favorite sweet). They've even met with Ib's parents quite a few times after that, who adore them so much that they allow him to babysit Ib when they're out. It's almost like Garry has the family they secretly always wanted after they came out, they even told Ib's parents of their status and they truthfully didn't care and often encouraged them. It's truly enough to make them cry. Who knew an art gallery would turn their life around?

Garry is a very gentle person, often very soft spoken and speaks with a very elegant tone to them. They don't view gender as black and white as others so they often will and hopes to be seen as someone who can break the barriers of gender. They also love art, sweets and occasionally gothic aesthetics. Though they haven't entered college yet, they do hope to someday work in fashion as a designer.

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082112 · 6 months

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Last week in Alaska. Yesterday I went about town and bought souvenirs and such and blew around 400$, went to the science center and bought 3 halibut plushies, got brunch with Jayden at Wildflour and talked about visiting her in Toronto, giggled about crossiants…

I ate alone at Beak and was the only patron while a Celtic music group riffed in the back (they sounded fantastic, they looked to mostly be over 50, they looked so happy and I was thinking wow life is just marvelous and music is a part of living well, and I ought to pick this up too, I’m excited for every year of my life!) and my food came out and it looked like Norwegian peasant food and I was SOOO PISSED. But it was actually amazing. The smoked salmon had a sweetness to it that was so good!

And I also visited Fate Accompli and said hi to Olivia again. Rachel (the owner) asked my name but recognized my face, and I chatted briefly with her and her husband Ken about moving to SF and leaving Sitka, spent 120$ there, and as I was making to leave she gave me a hug and told me to come around if I was ever in town again. I was happy! It feels good to be seen and to be welcomed by other people. And Olivia is very soft and cute.

Afterwards I went to Mean Queen with Jazz and Ben and Rebecca, and then we went to the monthly grind, which is this music variety show in Sitka. It was John Denver themed, but it took me literally 20 minutes to realize that. It was cute!

Afterwards me and Jazz and Ben went back and played Brawlhalla.

It’s my last week in Sitka and I’m feeling all sorts of affection and nostalgia for the place and people now, and I know part of it is the heart wanting to like places before you leave and part of it is the brain seeing all the good things, finally, but it still is really nice nonetheless. And sometimes I’m like MY GOD I WANNA STAY FOR SPRING SEMESTER but I also think it’s good I’ve signed a job offer and am also gonna try out something new this spring too (moving to SF, SWE, industry, etc). And it’s good I’m leaving with affection and happiness for this place. I feel like I’m at a point where I’m happy with my experience here and glad I came without any of the haunting deep pains that I had in earlier weeks.

Two weeks ago now I took a walk with Caroline after a particularly awkward class where we were talking about communities and I burst out: I hate the community I grew up in! It was so racist and hurt me so deeply! And they don’t deserve my love or my time. I don’t want to help them! And that night I took a walk with her and talked about racism and what I experienced and all the weird things I do now (counting the frequency which I talk in classes as to not be perceived, worrying constantly if my teachers see me as a real human being and not an echo of another Asian student, because that’s happened so many times) and sobbed on the docks IN FRONT OF HER (humiliating) and said: I wish I could’ve resolved this cooly and in silence and told you all of this without crying, and impressed you with my maturity and strength and deep regard for human emotion and poeticism, but I just look stupid. And she said, well, it’s okay, and you impress me with your thoughtfulness instead, and I said, well, I wish I could monologue dramatically and cooly to you about the state of race and personal experience and whatever instead of crying my eyes out, and she said, I would hate that, so there’s that. And I feel better after doing that. Having shared it with one person after keeping it away for so long is, in a sense, like sharing it with the world.

And I texted deets: the main lesson I’ve learned here is that it’s good to live with yourself. Life is easier when you don’t hate yourself for who you are all the time, and honestly it’s so true, and I’m so great, I don’t deserve to hate myself all the time! I was thinking to myself walking back along the dock the other day about the me of high school, and monologuing internally: I was crusty and bad-postured and irritable and insecure and terrified and fluttery and prone to acne, and I was magnificent. I had so much heart and saw the world with illumination and joy and infinite potential. I was a magnificent person, not without flaws, but magnificent nonetheless.

I don’t think it’s possible to live a life without regrets. But I would like to look back on myself and see the good at every point in my life, because I think everyone deserves that alongside humility.

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ironunderoos · 2 years

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Highschool au where bad boys Justin hammer and Quentin beck dare bad boy Tony Stark to flirt with nerdy peter parker. Sad or happy angst that is up to you

Oh boi anon, this prompt got me goiing! I love high school AU! 😍 I'm four chapters in and still writing 😊😅😆

Since I'm still editing a lot in later parts I'll post the first chapter now and hopefully the rest of the story over the coming days. Thank you so much for this lovely prompt!💖

Dare part 1

"Stark!"

Tony leaned on his locker and didn't turn at the voice calling his name. The sniveling but at the same time arrogant tone made clear that Justin Hammer was about to enter his personal space and despite him being his friend Tony did not particularly like him. Furthermore, he had no inclination to respond to someone barking his name. Enough of that at home.

Well, friends as a term was also a stretch when it came to Hammer and him. Their dads were business associates, very rich and powerful men in the weapons industry, and thus Hammer understood the life Tony led: being the single heir to a worldwide operating business, raised with more money than brain cells and getting more nanny time than family time - that kind of thing. Justin also tolerated most of Tony's antics or simply ignored them. However, if someone would have asked if he liked being around Justin, Tony would have had to admit that this wasn't the case.

"Stark! Stop ignoring me, asshole!"

Tony rolled his eyes but didn't turn. Hammer expected everything in the world to move as he commanded and if it didn't he used insults until it relented. He'd spent as much time in detention as Tony just because he couldn't get into his head that teachers didn't take it well to be called names. Luckily this was the last year of school for both of them. Soon they would be going separate ways (hopefully) and wasting their fathers' money on different universities.

Justin finally appeared in Tony's line of sight, his baby face screwed up in what might be anger. It looked more like a guinea pig with depression.

"Hammer," Tony finally acknowledged him and Justin's expression turned from angry to his usual mild discontent.

"You're an asshole," he stated for good measure and then, now that his was established, turned to lean next to Tony against the lockers. It was still a couple of minutes before the bell would call them to their first lesson and both boys used it to pose a little in front of the younger students. Justin mimicked Tony's bad boy image, even got himself a leather jacket and ripped jeans, but Tony knew that he changed into slacks in the backseat of his car before arriving home every day.

"Morning." Beck, the third member of their not-really-friends group emerged on Tony's other side. He didn't bother with wearing clothes that screamed what an independent and tough guy he was. He looked rather normal. Until you spend enough time with him to see the demons waving from behind his eyes. Nobody wanted to cross him since what happened in middle school.

Tony, Hammer and Beck were a bit of the bad boy gang of this tech oriented school. All of them had been caught smoking, taken their share of detention for skipping lessons and Beck even hacked the schools floor cleaner to make it flush the teachers' room with soap water. Beck wasn't rich, he hadn't seen a nanny or a butler in his entire life. But he shared Tony's aversion to playing by the rules and Justin's narcism, so he somehow belonged.

"I heard you fucked Christin Everhardlast night," Beck continued the conversation.

"You-... what?!" Justin turned to him, his face flushing red in an instant. He had a crush on the school's head girl for ages - one of the reasons Tony had done it.

Beck snickered, amused by the unrest he already caused. "Didn't you do her boyfriend last week?"

Tony shrugged. "I wanted to see what she liked about him."

Hammer looked as if he was ready to burst. "You're insufferable Stark! What did you do to get in her pants? Pay for it? I bet she did it for money right?" He sounded angry, but also a bit hopeful when he checked out Christin from afar.

Tony stared down on him, keeping the disgust only barely from his face. "I'd say I'm charming, Hammer."

Justin didn't look at him, too much was occupied with ogling Christine's ass in her tight jeans.

Beck snickered. "Confident, huh?"

That made Hammer turn back to them.

"Your so-called charm is bullshit. It doesn't work on everybody, Stark!" he sneered and crossed his arms in contempt.

Tony tried to ignore him but Quentin leaned in. He grinned. "You always hunt down the most famous and most popular, don't you? Like some kind of collector."

Tony eyed him suspiciously.

"They're all vain. Ready to become a scratch in your bedpost just because you're your fathers son."

Justin's eyes gleamed when he nodded. "Yes! That's it!" He completely ignored that nobody stumbled over themselves to get into his bed.

Tony however, glared at Quentin.

"What did you just say?"

Beck grinned. "No offense. People are like that. But I bet…" He made a dramatic pause that almost made Justin wet himself in anticipation. "I bet you're not so successful on someone more… smart. And humble."

Tony's eyes grew small. "And who might that be, huh?"

"Well…"

But Justin interrupted him. "Someone like… like…" he looked around. "Him!" He pointed to the other end of the hallway, to a boy in a too large sweater, who tried to reach into his locker without disturbing the group of girls standing in front of it. The girls didn't even notice his struggles until a pile of books, pens and papers poured out and tumbled onto the floor. Parker turned red as a signal light and apologized profoundly to the girls who stared at him. They turned and moved away from him while he crouched down to gather his things. He tried as best as possible to not draw any more attention as he already had and shoved everything back into the locker, but of course something stuck and the pile landed on the floor again.

Someone chuckled.

Tony cringed.

Finally the locker closed. His head between his shoulders Parker stormed off to the closest boys restroom - obviously to hide until the first lesson started.

Humble, huh? In a school like Midtown Tech, that was bound to produce future engineers and geeks, that boy was the nerdiest person Tony had ever seen!

"Peter Parker," Quentin quipped and Tony stared at him in disbelief. "Nice choice! Sounds like a bet, huh?" Before he could say a thing however, Justin butted in. "It is a bet. You get Parker to let you into his pants at the end of the week or your reputation is in shambles!"

Tony's fist wanted to meet that grin so badly, but he was one step away from getting suspended forever so he swallowed it down. It couldn't be so hard right? That Parker boy was obviously in dire need of someone. Anyone. That could also be Tony. He would have him wrapped around his finger by Wednesday and be done with it.

"It's a bet."

Part 2 can be found here

#starker #high school au #bad boy Tony #nerd peter #ironunderooswriting

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gifted-burnout-archive · 4 years

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Like It’s Now Or Never

Requested?: Yes. You lot wanted JaTP smut, so here it is.

Word Count: 10.5K+ (oops)

Author’s Note: Three things. 1. This was meant to be up last night, sorry. 2. This was posted and then deleted because Tumblr didn’t show any of the text. 3. I’ve based the concert off of this Sunset Curve: Greatest Hits playlist by @pattersonluke who I absolutely adore. Linking it here, please check it out!

Warning: smut, duh.

Quick Context: this is an AU where the band don’t die, so alive!Luke x Reader

Y/N Y/L/N was used to being overlooked by people.

It wasn’t something that particularly bothered her, a teen of rather nervous disposition, and often meant she was able to operate without interruption. At school, she kept good grades while never being touted as a scholar; at work, she picked up extra shifts and was her manager’s favourite without ever being called out as ‘Employee of the Month’. She was a quiet soul, something she had been told she got from her grandfather.

It made it all the more impossible for people to believe she was really managing her cousin’s rock band.

“Woah, woah…” A bouncer about twice the girl’s height knocked on the window of her car as she parked in the alleyway by the Orpheum, prompting Y/N to struggle with the old Volvo’s window crank until she could poke her head out and let the man finish what he had to say. “Sorry sweetie, you can’t park here. We’ve got a band playing tonight, need this space for official vehicles only.”

“Oh, that’s me. I’m an official vehicle. Manager to Sunset Curve.” Y/N responded with a smile, lifting her hand and stretching it out the window to greet the bouncer.

“You?” He asked, sincere in his surprise, and Y/N responded by rummaging around and locating the backstage pass she had been gifted earlier in the day. When the bouncer’s boss had told them the band had equipment arriving that night, the last person he thought would bring it was a teenage girl no more than seventeen.

“Indeed. Would you mind helping me bring the stuff inside?” She asked, waiting for the bouncer to step back before exiting the vehicle, jumping out onto the street and looking up at the towering man. “Everything’s labelled, if you just leave it in the hall it would be really helpful.” She explained, walking round to the car’s trunk and opening it up to show an array of neatly packed boxes and instruments. The bouncer followed, chuffing in pleasant surprise at how tidy everything looked: he was pretty sure that the t-shirts had been folded with tissue paper to avoid creasing. Not something he saw with every rock band. “Sorry, I’m Y/N. What’s your name?”

“Mac… Any order I need to follow or…” The bouncer asked, and Y/N shook her head, running round to the front passenger seat to lift out her handbag and a stack of pizza boxes.

“If you just get it in the hallway, Mac. I can sort everything out from there.” She smiled over, headed for the door. “I had a feeling I’d need someone’s help getting all this in with the boys on stage, so I’ve got you a pizza from Alfredo’s on 9th to say thank you.” She added, and Mac looked up with a smile. He had certainly never met a band manager who had bought him pizza before. Not just pizza, either: Alfredo’s on 9th pizza.

“I’ll be sure not to break anything then.” He responded, and Y/N tossed him over her car keys before pulling open the Orpheum’s side door with her foot and making her way down the hall.

A few steps into the building, Y/N was welcomed by feedback, the band starting their sound check, shortly followed by a wave of music that hit her like a high-speed train and caused her to pause. She took a moment acquainting herself with the volume change, a smile appearing on her face as she heard the familiar sound of her best friend’s voice before she made her way further into the building. She had been there the day before, dropping off the drum kit and amps, and she memorised the building’s floor plan, and quickly locating the staircase she needed to head down and taking it with a sure set pace.

It took Y/N no more than a minute to emerge from the tangle of backstage passageways onto the venue’s main floor, pizzas still perfectly balanced in one hand while she rummaged through her bag for something. She quickly made her way over to the bar in the room’s centre, setting the pizzas down on the countertop as she pulled an inhaler from her purse, and looked up as someone cleared their throat over the music.

Y/N’s eyes met those of the bartender, a girl maybe a year older than her, with her hand caught underneath the stack of pizzas Y/N had absentmindedly placed down.

“I’m so sorry!” She squeaked, lifting the boxes off the girl’s hand only to be met with a smile and light laugh.

“It’s alright, just teasing.” She called over the music, then gestured to the band. “They’re good, right?” She said with smile, and Y/N turned to look at the stage, finally taking the chance to stop and enjoy the music.

No matter how many times she saw her friends in action, their music always seemed to take her breath away. On that stage, the boys she had grown up with had never been more themselves. They radiated this confidence and energy that made you want to sing along, the sort of pull that Y/N had only witnessed with bands like Queen, ACDC: it was an undeniable star power. Up there, under the blazing lights and playing together, those boys had the ability to melt away all her troubles, make them vanish under the bang of drums and the shredding of guitar.

She watched until their sound check ended, clapping wildly and whooping along with the bartender as the guys caught their breath, taking it as her cue to head up there and join them, scooping up the inhaler as she made her way onto the stage.

“Thank you, we’re Sunset Curve. Tell your friends.” Reggie, Y/N’s very own blood, said into the mic, sending a wink towards the bartender and earning a punch in the arm from Y/N as she passed by him. “Hey!” He pouted, though it didn’t last long.

“Too bad we wasted that on sound check. That’s the tightest we’ve ever played!” Bobby commented as he set down his guitar and grabbed a towel, fist bumping Luke as he turned back around.

“Just wait until tonight, man, when this place gets packed with record execs.” Luke was practically vibrating with excitement, and Y/N smiled on as the boys congregated.

“Alex, you were smoking.” Reggie complimented their drummer as he came down from his stand, drumsticks in hand.

“Oh, no.” Alex responded with a shrug. “I was just warming up. You guys were the ones on fire.” He gestured to the other three.

“Could you just own your awesomeness for once?” Reggie asked with a waving of his hands that nearly hit Y/N in the face, but she was quick enough to dodge it.

“… All right, I was killing it!” Alex admitted, Luke’s hands coming up to pat his bandmate on the shoulders, shaking the lanky blonde a little from his own excitement.

“Nicely done, guys.” Y/N spoke up, the four pairs of eyes landing on her, each with a bright smile on their faces. Her best friends, all together, all happy: it made her heart swell. “First off, Alex.” She turned, tossing over the inhaler. “You left it in my car this morning. Don’t let it happen again.” He caught it quickly, mouthing a quick ‘thank you’ before shoving it in his pocket. “Second, I got Alfredo’s.” She gestured to the pizza boxes on the counter beside the pretty bartender and, in a chorus of whoops, the four guys rushed passed her and jumped off the stage, Reggie first to the boxes and shoving a slice of pizza into his mouth before Y/N had even got herself back on the main floor.

“You guys are really good.” The bartender complimented, continuing her previous activity of buffing the bar before the soundcheck had happened. For the first time in a while, she was excited to be working.

“Thank you.” Luke said with a dopey grin, sorting through the stack and pulling out the one labelled with his name, promptly digging into a delicious slice of pepperoni.

“I see a lot of bands. Been in a couple myself. I was really feeling it.” She continued, Y/N walking up and joining the boys, lifting out one of the pizza boxes and setting it to the side for Mac the bouncer, before sliding down Bobby’s and Alex’s. Reggie was already on his second slice.

“That’s what we do this for. I’m Luke, by the way.”

“Hi, I’m Reggie.” A muffled add on.

“Alex.”

“Bobby.” He winked at the bartender, and Y/N stifled a laugh at the dark-haired boy’s attempt at flirting.

“Nice meeting you guys.” Luke noticed the eyes Bobby was making at her a moment after Y/N, sticking a finger in his mouth before shoving it in the taller boy’s ear. “I’m Rose.” The bartender introduced, and Reggie quickly grabbed his cousin’s purse off the counter, opening it up and grinning when he saw a top and CD inside, pulling them out.

“I was gonna…” Y/N sighed as she watched Reggie turn back to Rose with the objects in hand, one of them being the shirt Y/N had planned to change into for that night.

“So, uh. Here’s our demo, and a t-shirt. Size beautiful.” He handed them over with raise of the eyebrows, Alex and Y/N groaning at the same time.

“Thanks! I’ll be sure not to wipe the tables down with this one.” Rose grinned, and Alex swallowed the slice of pizza he chewed on.

“Oh, good call. Whenever they get wet, they just kinda… fall apart in your hands.” He admitted with a nervous laugh, and Bobby leaned forward on the bar.

“Vegan-friendly though. I could… I could never hurt an animal.” He said with a dashing smile to Rose, and Y/N quickly realised why the boy had called her up not a half hour before to change his food order to ‘something, anything vegetarian’. “Hey Y/N, won’t you be needing a hand with the guitars? The boxes… stuff?” He asked, the girl looking up and rolling her eyes at Bobby before nodding quickly, picking up the pizza for Mac while Luke, Alex, and Reggie grabbed their own food.

“He had a hamburger for lunch.” Luke called as he followed his friends towards the hallway that led backstage, earning a glare from Bobby before he turned back to the pretty bartender. Y/N had a feeling they wouldn’t see him again until call time.

“I’ll be back in two, gotta get this to the bouncer. Dressing room’s down the stairs to the right.” Y/N instructed the guys, who headed off towards the comfy couches and air con while she made her way back to the side door, the contents of her car neatly stacked along the wall. “Mac, you are an angel.” She said softly to herself.

“Well, I try.” She received a reply from the bouncer, stood outside the door, and smiled wider, placing down his pizza on a shelf by the exit, and picking up her car keys from the surface. “Need anything else?” He called through.

“No thanks, I got it from here! Enjoy the food!” She said back, quickly lifting the first stack of boxes and balancing them along the corridor.

By the time she had finished moving everything to where she needed it; the t-shirts and demo CDs to front of house, the smoke machine and spare strings and picks to stage side; the guitars along to the dressing rooms, the boys had already finished their pizzas, and were now raiding the complimentary snack basket from the venue.

She kicked open the dressing room door to find her cousin and friends three quarters of the way through a fruit bowl of trail mix.

“You guys seriously never stop eating, do you?” She asked, setting down the instruments and collapsing into an armchair, letting out a sigh of relief. Her evening was only beginning, of course, but she was ahead of schedule, and felt she deserved to sink into the chair’s comforting embrace. “What do you think Bobby’s chances are of getting the pretty bartender’s number?” she asked, her eyes closing as her muscles relaxed.

“30, 40%?” Alex offered, receiving a laugh from Reggie.

“More like zero.” He said through a mouth of nuts and Reece’s Pieces.

“What, like you could get it, cuz?” Y/N asked, her eyebrow raising despite her eyes still being closed.

“Tell me why we let Y/N hang around again?” Reggie responded, his tone playful and lacking the malice one might normally accompany with the rhetoric, and Y/N’s eyes opened as a smile spread over her lips, the happiness radiating from them all.

“Maybe because she’s the person who got us this gig?” Luke offered, walking over and ruffling Y/N’s hair with a laugh as she swatted at him. “Plus, Alex and I are living in her garage…” He shrugged, and sent a grin Y/N’s way as she fixed her hair back to its original styling.

“Yeah, and!” Alex chimed in, leaning back against one of the vanity’s with his hands in his pockets. “None of you ever remember my inhaler. And I’ve never seen someone restring and tune a guitar as fast as Y/N… And like, also the whole best manager in the world thing.” He added, and Y/N found herself sitting up a little.

“To be honest Reggie, I think what the guys are saying is: I’m amazing, and you’re really lucky you play bass.” She teased her older cousin with a cheeky grin, earning laughs from Luke and Alex while Reggie looked on, a little confused.

“Wait, what do you mean I’m lucky I play bass?” He asked, not quite catching on to what she implied, and only making his three friends laugh more.

“Ok, ok.” Y/N said after a moment, pulling herself off the chair and walking over to the stack of instruments, lifting a tote bag from amongst the cases. “So, I was obviously out today doing errands.” She began, walking back over and sitting down on the edge of the chair Luke lounged in, the boy smiling up at her as she did. “But I made a little pitstop.” Her hands reached into the bag, her tongue sticking out as she felt around the canvas, quickly pulling out a square box. “Reggie.” She said with a grin, handing over the present to the boy, whose eyes had lit up like a kid on Christmas morning. He lifted the box’s lid off slowly.

“No way!” He yelled, lifting the device out the box with care, Luke and Alex leaning over to see what it was.

“I know you’ve been using one you bought at the flea market when we were 13 for years, and I thought… Well, you only get a first time playing the Orpheum once. Thought you should try it out on a new bass pedal… That also works with the banjo.” She smiled, looking back in the bag and pulling out the second gift as Reggie marvelled at the item in his hands. “Alex.” She called, throwing the next gift to the blond boy, who already had a feeling what might be inside the long, thin box.

“How much did you spend on this stuff, Y/N?” Luke asked as Alex lifted out a set of drumsticks, twirling one through his fingers and grinning from ear to ear as he noticed the engraving on them.

“Sunset Curve…” He said softly, showing the engraving on the butt of the sticks to Reggie. “Thanks Y/N.”

“Bobby can get his later, serves him right for flirting and not joining in on band bonding time so…” Y/N sat one of the gifts on the table before pulling the final present from her bag, an envelope with ‘Sunset Curve’ in cursive on the front.

“Y/N… How much did you spend on this?” Luke asked with a frown. He wasn’t the best at math, but he knew working part time at a diner did not cover the cost of a top-grade bass pedal and personalised drumsticks, plus whatever she had bought Bobby.

“Yours just took effort, Patterson.” She said with a smile, and Luke raised an eyebrow. “I worked some extra shifts, ok? Now open your goddamn present or I’ll take it back!” She exclaimed, reaching out to snatch the gift back, put Luke held just out of her reach.

“I’ll open it! I’ll open it, alright?!” Luke yelled as Y/N reached over him, stretching for the envelope. “But if you take any more extra shifts, I will personally come into that crappy diner and carry you out.” He warned, and Y/N sat back down, her hands tucked between her knees as Luke’s fingers tore open the paper. He tipped the envelope rip-side down, a letter falling onto his lap. Luke lifted it up to inspect closer.

“What is it?” Alex asked, Reggie still engrossed in his own present to notice the expression of shock on Luke’s face as he turned to a beaming Y/N.

“Is this real?” He asked, looking up at her. Y/N nodded quickly, and within an instant Luke had stood up and lifted her off the ground, spinning her as he hugged her by the waist, Y/N letting out a squeal as her best friend spun her around.

“Ok, why is it that Y/N gets hugs without even asking?!” Alex asked, receiving a middle finger from their lead guitarist, and prompting Reggie to walk over with his arms open. “Don’t touch me.”

“Well, this is why no-one hugs you.” Reggie muttered, and Luke finally set Y/N down, passing the letter over to Reggie, Alex quickly at the bassist’s shoulder.

“Dear Miss Y/L/N. The demo album you recently sent to our label crossed my desk this afternoon.” Alex read aloud, Luke holding onto Y/N still. “Sunset Curve is exactly the new sound I’ve been looking for… Looking forward to seeing them live…” Alex skimmed through his narration, picking out the most important phrases. “Looking forward to meeting you, Chris Baxter.” He stopped, looking up at Y/N and Luke.

“For a second I thought that said Chris Baxter, like Fall Down Records Chris Baxter.” Reggie laughed, looking around to see Y/N, Luke and Alex staring at him. “Wait… Wait, wait, wait.”

“Y/N got Chris Baxter coming to our show.” Luke almost yelled from excitement, the realisation quickly dawning on his bandmates and causing them to race forward, engulfing Y/N in a hug, the poor girl trapped in the middle.

“Need… To tell… Bobby.” She muttered out, struggling to breathe, and the boys let her go. She grabbed their rhythm guitarist’s present from the table, pressing the letter to Luke’s chest as she left. “What would you guys do without me?” She asked with a grin, and Luke smiled right back, his eyes trailing after her as she rounded the corner out into the hallway.

“Watch out, Luke.” Reggie said after Y/N was gone, snapping his fingers in front of Luke’s face. “You were practically drooling all over my cousin there.”

“He was drooling, Reggie. Puppy dog eyes and everything.” Alex remarked with a cheeky grin, and Luke frowned at the pair.

“She’s my best friend.”

“So you’ve been saying for the past 6 years.” Reggie rolled his eyes, starting back on the trail mix.

“Because it’s true.” Luke stated, his eyebrows gathering close, and Alex let out a laugh.

“Keep telling yourself that… At this rate, Bobby is winning the bet.” The blond sighed.

“What bet?” Luke asked again, sitting back down, turning the letter over to re-read the words.

“Well, Alex said you two would be dating by 16. I said 18. Bobby said never. Whoever is closest wins.” Reggie said with a full mouth, and Luke sighed.

“She doesn’t like me like that. You both know that.” He said softly, running his fingers over the name printed on the letter: Chris Baxter.

She really was the best friend a guy could ask for.

Y/N’s night was nothing short of busy.

After presenting Bobby with his new Capo for his guitar, she found herself rushing around once more: to get herself ready in the backstage bathroom, slipping on one of the tops she had packed so carefully in tissue paper since Reggie decided to give her own shirt away, fixing her hair and makeup, slipping into a pair of shorts instead of the yoga pants she had been running about in earlier; to set up the merchandise stand at one of the booths with their albums and t-shirts ready to sell; to discuss timings with the front of house staff; to chat with the light crew and stage hands about special effects and a last minute draw up for one of the song’s, which involved a spotlight on Luke.

By the time people were filing in, Y/N had drunk three cups of coffee and downed four cans of Coca-Cola, knowing the worst thing she could do was burn out.

However, it all seemed to be worth it. The crowd was killer, with more people than Y/N could have ever imagined making their way into the Orpheum. It seemed to be bursting at the seams, and by the time the house lights were going down, Y/N had sold half of their t-shirt stock and two-thirds of the CDs, not to mention the chant that had started to get the boys on stage.

“Sunset Curve! Sunset Curve!” The crowd cheered, a few of the faces ones that Y/N recognised from school, some complete strangers, but all of them here to see the boys play. As another group of kids came up asking for t-shirts, the resonating sound of Reggie’s bass filled the air.

All attention turned to the stage as Y/N’s cousin walked on stage, beginning to pluck out an improved bass line, applause starting up as he placed his right foot down and the sound became more and more distorted: he was making quick use of his gift.

Bobby was next, joining in on a melody line for nothing in particular, walking on stage and sending a wink to the girls in the front that left one stumbling into her friends. His fingers were nimble on the strings, making the work put into the skill seem effortless, and the crowd began to clap along in time with the beat.

The claps brought in Alex, who sat himself down at the drum kit and started a steady bass, snare, hi-hat line, gulping down the lump in his throat as he looked out at the crowd, adrenaline taking over.

“Good evening Los Angeles!” He called into the mic, the crowd exploding into cheers and applause, the three members on stage sharing a smile. “Are you ready to rock?!” He asked, receiving a unanimous shout of ‘Yes!’ from the few hundred people that had crammed themselves into the venue.

For a moment, everything went dead silent, Alex, Reggie and Bobby halting their playing and leaving the crowd confused, only to then continue with the thunderous applause as Luke ran on stage, taking his position at front and centre as Alex tapped his new drumsticks together.

“One, two! One, two, three…”

The whole show flowed perfectly. The band started with ‘Now or Never’, moving quickly onto ‘Rest in Peace’ and ’The Anthem’, the second of which got the crowd jumping along as the boys sang together. The feeling in the crowd was electric, and as their third song of the night ended, Y/N was sold out of CDs and on the last of her t-shirts.

“Welcome, everyone, to the Orpheum!” Luke called into his mic, Y/N looking up at the stage as he began to speak. “It is such an honour to be playing here tonight, it really is, and before we continue, we just want to thank you all for listening and sharing in our music.” He called out, earning whistles and clapping from the crowd. “We’re slowing it down for this next one, we hope you enjoy… Unsaid Emily.” Luke announced, taking off his electric and switching it for the acoustic sat behind him. Y/N watched him as he fiddled with the capo, a plectrum between his teeth and his whole body shimmering with a thin layer of sweat, captivated by her friend so much it took a yell for her to tune back into reality.

“Sorry…” She apologised to the girls waiting, giving them the t-shirt prices and taking their cash with a smile.

“Do you know the band?” One asked, pulling her t-shirt over the clothes she was already wearing.

“Yeah, I do. In fact-” Y/N started, but was quickly cut off.

“Will you give Luke my number?” The second asked, handing over a scrap of paper to Y/N, who looked at the phone number with astonishment.

“And Bobby mine.” The first demanded, placing her scrap of paper atop the other in Y/N’s hand before they shoved their way to the front row. Y/N slipped the piece into her shorts pocket, serving the next customer as Luke began to sing, sitting himself down on the edge of the stage and serenading the same girls Y/N just met.

Another two songs later, one of them being Alex’s original ‘Coming Clean’, and Y/N had closed up the merchandise stand, allowing the audience to take over that booth while she made her way back stage. She swung her way round the stair bannister, breaking into a light jog to reach the wings, quickly attending to the guitars that needed re-stringed, and setting up the smoke machine for the final number, a song Luke had written only a week or so before called ‘Bright’.

“So here's your holiday.” Y/N looked up from the smoke machine as Reggie came to the last chorus of the song he wrote, their penultimate tune of the night, Luke harmonising with him. “Hope you enjoy it this time. You gave it all away, it was mine. So when you're dead and gone, will you remember this night? Twenty years now lost… It's not right.” The pair sang with Alex and Bobby on backing vocals, the crowd with their lighters in the air, swaying along as Bobby played the outro, Reggie running off-stage with the applause, busted bass in hand.

“Got a fresh bass, little cuz?” Reggie asked, taking a moment to catch his breath. Y/N tossed him a towel to wipe down his hands and face of sweat, tuning the last string on the second bass. The pair did an exchange, towel and bass guitar. “Fog machine ready?” Reggie asked, and Y/N gave a firm nod.

“Now get out there and seal the deal. I saw Baxter earlier.” Y/N explained, giving him a thumbs up as he ran back on stage, and she knelt down to start the fog machine as Bobby plucked out the opening chords of their closer, Luke coming close to his mic to sing.

“Sometimes I think I'm falling down, I wanna cry, I'm calling out for one more try to feel alive.” Luke sang, Reggie coming in with a mellow bass line. “And when I feel lost and alone I know that I can make it home. Fight through the dark and find the spark. Life is a risk, but I will take it, close my eyes and jump.” Alex started on a bass drum beat, building up to the chorus, and Luke glanced over into the wings, spotting Y/N. She smiled and waved, quickly giving him a thumbs up as he continued. “Together, I think that we can make it, c'mon let's run. And rise through the night, you and I we will fight to shine together, bright forever. And rise through the night, you and I we will fight to shine together, bright forever.” Luke and Reggie sang over the screams and cheers of the crowd, Y/N watching on from the wings with a grin, Luke glancing over at her for a second time as Bobby took the next verse.

And for a second, she could have sworn Luke winked at her.

Y/N found herself busied for the rest of the song, packing up guitars while she kept a watch on the fog machine in her peripheral, refusing to look back at the stage until she heard the song ending. At that point, she started taking things from the stage area to the hallway by the side entrance.

“We’re Sunset Curve! Tell your friends!” She heard the band shout in unison as they ended their show, the applause alone enough to make someone’s ears ring.

She kicked open the side door, fishing her car keys out her pocket before hearing a polite cough to her left.

“Need a hand?” A deep, male voice asked, and Y/N looked over to find the voice’s owner. “Maybe you could point me in the direction of Y/N Y/L/N afterwards?” The man suggested, taking two of the four instrument cases Y/N had in hand, allowing Y/N to unlock the car’s trunk and place in the guitars.

“Might I ask who you are?” She quizzed, walking back to the side door, and smiling as one of the employee’s brought along the fog machine for her. She quickly picked hit up and waddled out to the car with it, setting it in carefully.

“Chris Baxter.” Y/N slammed the trunk shut as he gave his name, turning to face him with a surprised smile.

“Wow… Y/N Y/L/N.” She held out a hand, the man taking it and shaking firmly. “It’s... It’s an honour to meet you, sir.” She started, but he waved it off with a smiling, their hands dropping.

“No, it’s an honour to meet you.” Chris countered. “You had some balls coming in last week with that demo…” Y/N went red at his words, scratching the back of her neck.

“Traditional methods weren’t working?” She laughed nervously, and Chris grinned.

“No, no they weren’t. But blasting the album on a boom box in my record label’s HQ was certainly a risqué move, Miss Y/L/N.” He almost reminded her that her stunt the week before was a one-off thing, and Y/N nodded in agreement: she would never be doing that again.

“You did what?” Luke asked from the doorway, the four boys staring at her and Chris Baxter in shock, and her eyes widened, the girl quickly changing the subject.

“Sunset Curve, Chris Baxter from Fall Down Records. Chris Baxter, meet Bobby, Reggie, Alex and Luke.” She introduced, Chris walking forward and shaking each boy’s hand, unphased by their dishevelled and sweaty appearances.

“That show was… Absolutely terrific. I’ve already listened to the album three times this past week, and I didn’t know how you could top the sounds on that, but you all clearly can.” Chris complimented as he went down the line.

“The boys are, above all else, a live band.” Y/N chipped in with a nervous smile, begging the boys to say something, anything.

“Mr Baxter, thank you so much for coming.” Alex came back to reality first. “Your work with Pink Floyd on the Dark Side album was incredible.” He said with a smile, and Chris smiled back.

“I’m quite proud of that one, so thank you. And please, call me Chris.” He dropped the formality quickly. “Look, I won’t keep you. After a gig like that, you should all be out celebrating. I just wanted to say well done, and ask if a meeting next Monday would work for all of you? My label would be interested in signing you on, and of course you’ll be meeting with other teams… I just wanted to get right in there, show you all what we can offer.” Chris was blunt, straight to the point, and it caught them all off-guard.

“Did you just say…” Reggie trailed off from the shock.

“A record deal? With Fall Down?” Luke clarified, still rather astonished by whatever Y/N had done to get the biggest record label head on the West Coast to come to their concert.

“Hopefully more than one record, but yes.” Chris grinned, and Reggie had to nudge Bobby from his shock induced freeze.

“Next Monday is free for all of us, Chris.” Y/N stepped in, realising the guys wouldn’t do much good. “Shall we say 2.30?” She suggested, and Chris nodded, his hands going back into his coat pockets as he started on his way out the alley.

“You know where my office is, Miss Y/L/N.” He called back, four pairs of eyes landing on the girl as she took a shaky breath.

“You just…” Reggie started, but couldn’t find the words.

“Chris Baxter…” Bobby muttered.

“Best manager ever.” Alex assured.

“We did it…” Luke said softly, looking around his friends with wild eyes. “We played the Orpheum!” He yelled to the sky. The boys and Y/N soon joined in the shout, hugs shared amongst the team before they bundled together in a group hug, bouncing from the excitement.

“We need to celebrate properly. Tattoos?” Bobby suggested, to the delight of Reggie and the worry of Alex.

“The club on 6th?” Alex offered instead, and Y/N smiled as the boys tried to come up with a plan for their night out, slipping passed them back inside to collect the last of their belongings. The drum kit and amps would be a job for the morning, but everything else had to go, and as quickly as possible.

Where the guys were messy, Y/N was efficient and clean: the dressing room went from a bomb site to sparkling clean in a matter of minutes, which she packed into one of the boxes as a chap came on the door.

“Uh, Y/N?” The girl turned to see Rose, the bartender, stood in the doorway. “Tell the guys I loved the show. These,” she passed over a small bundle of cards no bigger than a credit card. “are for you. Record label execs, as Luke called them.” She explained, and the pair shared a giggle.

“Thank you Rose, I was just about to find you.” Y/N explained, slipping the cards into her back pocket. Rose left with a smile and a wave, allowing Y/N to head back out to the car, only to find that Alex, Reggie and Bobby had all seemed to have disappeared.

“Thought you could use the company.” Luke grinned, lifting the boxes that weighed Y/N down with ease, quickly slipping them into the back seat of her car.

“Luke, you should be out on the town, celebrating.” Y/N insisted, a hand gesturing to Sunset Boulevard and beyond, but Luke caught the hand in his.

“I’d rather help you out. I know for a fact you won’t let yourself have fun until everything is done tonight, and I have enough energy to power a jet plane.” Luke offered his assistance as his leg bounced and his hand locked with Y/N’s before he spun her under his arm. “Please?”

“Get in, Luke.” She responded with a happy sigh as she opened the driver’s side door, Luke bouncing so much on his way round to his side of the car Y/N wondered if he might have eaten a kangaroo by mistake.

“Do you want to stop for burgers?” He asked as they both got in, Y/N looking over at him with a smile and shake of the head, starting the car and following the alley to its exit.

“I swear to God Luke, you don’t stop eating.” She commented, but six years of friendship had made it blatant fact rather than speculation. “Are you sure you want to help me unload all this crap? You should be out with the guys doing something stupid.” She said, starting the short drive back to her house. She only lived a ten-minute drive from the Orpheum, though it never seemed like it. Her house was in the suburbs, tucked away at the end of a cul-de-sac away from prying eyes, and the change from city lights and gum-decorated sidewalk to perfectly-cut front lawns and uniform cherry blossoms trees along the road front made the drive feel like they were entering a completely different world.

“The quicker we do this, the quicker we both get to go out.” Luke shrugged, unable to stop his leg bouncing. “Music, can we at least put on some music?” He asked, opening Y/N’s glove compartment and rummaging through her CD collection. He quickly lifted a disk out and slotted it into the player, fiddling with the control panel of the car as Y/N tried to focus on the road.

The song came on as Luke watched Y/N with a smile, just waiting for her to connect the dots and respond to his song choice. It only took a few chords for her to get it, slowing at a stop light to quite clearly roll her eyes at Luke, who then decided to start singing to her.

“Left a good job in the city, working for the man every night and day. And I never lost one minute of sleeping, worrying about the way things might have been.” Luke put on the twang of the Creedence Clearwater Revival singer, throwing an arm around the back of her seat and leaning over to sing to Y/N, who was doing her best not to smile. “Big wheels keep on turning, Proud Mary keep on burning.” Luke sang right in her ear, and Y/N couldn’t help the giggles from erupting in her as she made one of their journey’s last turns. “And we’re rollin’, rollin’, rollin’ on the river.”

“Cleaned a lotta plates in Memphis,” Y/N reluctantly joined in.

“Yes Y/N!” Luke yelled.

“Pumped a lotta pane down in New Orleans. But I never saw the good side of the city, until I hitched a ride on a river boat queen.” She sang along, pulling onto her road.

“Big wheels keep on turnin’, Proud Mary keep on burning.” They sang together, pulling into Y/N’s driveway but staying in the car. “Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’ on the river.” The sang in harmony, before both brought up air guitars to play the iconic riff together.

“Ba da dum, ba da dum, ba da da da da duhda da dum!” They cried out, both in fits of laughter as Y/N shut the car off, the only light nearby being through the windows of the garage.

“Guess that nonna is fast asleep then.” She said with a smile at her home, the lights all shut off. She glanced at Luke, who was wiping tears from his eyes. “You stay quiet, alright? That woman deserves her rest.” Y/N scolded pre-emptively, and the boy held his hands up in surrender.

“I love your nonna! I won’t wake her, mainly because she lets me stay in your garage.” He pointed out, and Y/N smirked, the pair getting out the car in unison. Luke ran to open the garage doors while Y/N headed for the trunk, lifting out a few guitar cases. Despite the weight of them making her posture sag and her hands hurt, she strode towards the garage, liking the idea of finishing the mundane as quickly as possible: not so much for a night out in LA, rather for some more time with her friends.

“You know, I can’t-” Y/N started to speak as she walked past Luke, setting down the guitars and beginning to sort them into their allotted spaces in the room, only to look back and find the boy frozen. “Oh, right…” She mumbled, forgetting that this was meant to be a surprise for him and Alex later.

Amongst other things, and while the boys stayed over at Bobby’s the night before to get in a last night of practice before the Orpheum gig, Y/N had ventured into the garage to start loading her car, only to be met by cobwebs on their equipment and excessive layers of dust on every surface. She was in the garage a lot, sure, but most of the time she was popping in and out to hear new songs or tell the guys about a new gig she had booked them. And with Alex and Luke spending a lot of time in her house, quite happy to keep her nonna company over lunch with songs and idle chatter, Y/N hadn’t been properly in the garage for a while…

What Luke was gazing upon was an entirely new room from the one he left the day before: the single lightbulb that had lit the place the day before was gone, replaced by string lights that looped around the walls of the room; with surfaces dusted and polished, their clothes neatly folded into a chest of drawers Y/N had brought in, the musical instruments hung up on the walls alongside posters of the boys’ favourite artists. The windows had been cleaned, the floors hoovered and bearing a rug Y/N had found in her attic, Luke’s sofa bed sporting freshly made sheets, Alex’s blow up in the corner in a similar state, an extension of her house’s landline sitting atop one of the shelves…

And a mini fridge installed…

“When did you… How did you…” Luke stuttered in disbelief, Y/N walking back round him to continue unloading the car. “The lights and the guitars and…” Luke tried to start again, falling short of what exactly to say, just watching his best friend walk by and store things in their new locations. When he had asked to couch surf all those months ago, when she had replied without hesitation, Luke didn’t expect much. Then she offered the garage as a full-time hub for the band, and offered Alex a place to stay after coming out to his parents went even worse than expected.

And looking at what she had done, how she had turned the dusty garage into something more, into a home… He was amazed by the girl before him.

“Y/N.” He stopped her for making her last trip to the car, a hand on her arm. The girl looked up and smiled at him, and he smiled right back. “Thank you…”

“Anything for you, you know that.” She replied, meaning the words. It had been the same way since they were kids. “Get yourself a soda, check the voicemail. It’s the number I’ve been giving everyone who wanted to speak with Sunset Curve.” She explained, making her last trip out to the car for the smoke machine and a few loose items. Luke did as he was told, grabbing two cans out of the fridge and glancing over at the phone.

6 new voicemails…

“This… This is crazy.” Luke muttered, cracking open the can of orange soda and sitting on the coffee table as Y/N put the last of their things away, coming to stand in front of him. He handed up a can, which she took with a smile, joining him in taking a sip.

“Crazy is the right word, yes… But it’s exactly what you guys deserve.” Y/N said softly, ruffling his hair before starting a walk around the room.

“I know but… this is crazy. We have a meeting with Chris Baxter, Y/N! All because of you!” Luke jumped up onto the coffee table, standing tall and spinning around. “We have a shot at actually… Actually making this stupid idea work!” He said with a laugh of astonishment.

“Luke, you and the guys earned every bit of this. You are all amazing, and Chris Baxter would be an idiot not to sign you.” Y/N reminded him with a smile, and Luke held a hand out to her. She took it, getting up beside him on the table. “To Sunset Curve.” She proposed, raising her can of soda.

“To making crazy daydreams reality.” Luke offered back, the pair clinking their drinks together. “You know, we should keep this up. Do more crazy stuff tonight! I mean, we’ve been lucky so far.” He suggested, the sugar quickly mixing with his adrenaline and getting the boy hyped up once more.

“What do you have in mind, Patterson? I can drive us along to the club on 6th, the guys are probably still there. Or get us a taxi?” She suggested, coming down from the table and heading over to top drawer of the cabinet the mini fridge sat on, not noticing that Luke’s eyes had settled onto her. “Look! Red Vines!” She showed him with a grin, taking one out the packet and chewing on it thoughtfully. “You know, tattoos don’t sound so stupid now that I think about it.”

“No, Y/N… I mean doing something really stupid.” Luke said softly, and Y/N smiled up at him, oblivious to what Luke actually meant.

“What? You want to go cliff diving? Reggie would be up for it.” She grinned, and Luke felt the breath leave his body.

He wasn’t sure if it was the soda sugar rush, or the adrenaline from the show, or some subconscious death wish, but Luke couldn’t stop himself from jumping off the coffee table, couldn’t stop himself from walking towards Y/N. She was so beautiful, so kind, so sweet, so funny… His best friend…

And Luke took her face in his hands, pressing his lips to hers.

It was chaste, his touch disappearing just as Y/N was about to fall prey to her senses being completely invaded by Luke’s presence, her lips and cheeks tingling from where he had held her, her pupils blown from the shock, the attraction. She had never thought he would have liked her like that, but as he stepped back, surprised by his own recklessness, Y/N wondered why she hadn’t thought of him like that before.

In fact, as they stared at each other from across the room, both recovering from Luke’s actions, all she could think about was the past near seven years of friendship: every hug and hand hold, every joke cracked and song sung to cheer one another up. Her mind raced with memories of their road trip around California the summer before with the band, to their friend dates on the pier, to nights in the house or the garage, spending time with her nonna and Alex and Reggie. The nights they’d sleep over at each other’s houses, or the camping trip the guys and her went on at 15, the night she and Luke stayed up and named constellations in the middle of nowhere.

Suddenly, she was filled with an overwhelming sense of idiocy: because she had quite happily mistook her romantic feelings for her best friend as platonic… For years.

“Y/N, I’m so sorry.” Luke muttered, running a worried hand through his hair, trying to read his friend’s expression, to gauge some sort of reaction. “Fuck…” He said under his breath.

“Don’t be sorry…” Y/N responded softly after a moment, and Luke’s eyes met hers. “One of us had to make the first move, right?” She added nervously, wondering for a moment if it had just been a stupid, heat of the moment, action.

“You’re not mad?” He clarified, taking a step closer, and another. Y/N moved towards him too, lifting his hand in hers and interlocking their fingers, admiring the way his hand held hers, the callouses on his fingertips feeling smooth and firm as they brushed over her knuckles.

“Not one bit.” She promised, looking up at him their hands breaking apart, Luke’s hands dropping to her waist, travelling under her shirt to hold her bare skin like they had a mind of their own.

“Good… Because I’ve been wanting to do that for years.” Luke admitted with a shaky breath out. There was a pause, both double checking with the other they were sure of their actions before Luke’s and Y/N’s lips found one another again.

There was an element of it that felt forbidden, the unspoken rules the pair had laid out for their friendship must have had a subsection that clearly stated something like this could not happen, but neither cared. The kiss was hungry, sweet, borderline desperate as they stumbled backwards and Y/N’s back hit one of the support beams for the loft space, rooting them in place as Y/N’s hands moved from his chest to his neck, her fingers finding their way into the back of Luke’s hair. It was still damp to the touch with sweat, his skin smooth and near silky against her fingertips.

All Luke could smell, feel, taste, touch, was Y/N. Her perfume mixed with the smell of her shampoo had short-circuited his brain, her lips on his had him feeling lightheaded, the way her fingers in his hair pulled him closer had him lifting her legs up and holding her up against the beam by her thighs.

“This is so stupid…” Y/N muttered as she pulled away to catch her breath, eyes fluttering open to view Luke, his attention taking focus on the crook of her neck as he pressed a kiss to the soft skin. Her heart was thudding, ringing in her ears louder than anything she had heard Alex play, and as a whimper passed by her lips without permission in response to Luke’s attention, she was sure he could feel the erratic pace against her chest.

“Really fucking stupid…” Luke agreed with a smirk, looking up at her with nearly black eyes, only a thin ring of green around pupil left. “If you want me to stop, tell me now…” He said, his hands moving up the back of her thighs to the hem of the shorts she had decided on that night. “Or now…” He offered, pressing his lips to her collarbone, following them up until his mouth found her sweet spot and earned a moan from the girl in his arms. “Or now?”

“You’re an asshole Luke…” Y/N muttered, taking his face in her hands and pressing her lips to his, shutting him up with a swipe of her tongue that had Luke’s mouth opening and giving in to her lips, her mouth, quite happily.

When Y/N’s hands found the way to the hem of Luke’s shirt, the guitarist walked them over to the sofa bed on the other side of the room, breaking the kiss to make sure he didn’t run into the coffee table. He pulled a face as he dodged the room centre piece, and Y/N burst into a fit of giggles that Luke challenged by dropping her onto the bed.

The action wasn’t the only thing that left Y/N breathless though, biting her lip as Luke pulled off the sleeveless tee Y/N had been tugging on only moments earlier. She had forgotten for a moment that when Luke wasn’t play music, he was working out, and had to take a second to register his toned body that matched his arms.

“Liking what you see, Y/L/N?” Luke grinned as he teased her, and Y/N pursed her lips, glaring him down playfully before deciding to join in on the game.

“You’re not the only one who looks good naked, Patterson.” She countered, and though she wasn’t quite sure she believed the words, she was on a high and wasn’t planning on slowing do whatever had begun. She quickly pulled off her top, throwing the white tee with the band’s name printed across the front to the floor by the bed and holding herself up on her arms as she leaned back a little, a plain white bralette beneath. Luke’s mouth went dry at the sight of her topless, his jeans quickly became tight, and he actually found himself blushing.

“Seems you’re right there…” He breathed out, leaning over her, one hand giving him balance as the other lifted her chin and brought his lips to hers. An open-mouthed kiss, Luke’s tongue was gentle yet demanding, taking control of the kiss as Y/N found herself lying back on the fresh sheets, and Luke found himself on top of her.

She wanted him, and in that moment nothing else seemed to matter. It was like everything else disappeared as her body melted into his: the only sounds she heard were his groans and her whimpers; all she could feel was the cool cotton beneath her and Luke’s rough hand against her flushed face; all she could smell was sweat and his cologne, taste the orange soda that lingered on their lips.

“You’re killing me here, Y/N…” Luke muttered through ragged breath as he pulled away, sitting back on his knees, kneeling. Her thumbs had found themselves running along the waistband on his jeans. “Have… Have you done anything like this before?” He asked.

It was clear exactly where this was headed.

“Not all the way… No.” Y/N said softly, her breathing a step short of hyperventilation, but Luke was very much the same. They both had experience, they had both dated in the past. Hell, Luke and Alex were even a thing for a while.

“Ok, so we’re in the same boat then.” Luke nodded with a gulp, and Y/N raised an eyebrow, moving to mirror his sitting position, inching closer.

“What about the red head? Last summer? Hayley?” Y/N quizzed, and Luke let out a nervous chuckle.

“Yeah… You were going out with that Nathan guy… Might have lied a little bit about what happened with her…” Luke admitted, and Y/N threw her head back laughing. In retrospect, it had made her rather jealous.

“Good to know...” She nodded as she spoke, coming down from the laughter, the pair falling silent for a moment. “You know… We do this, and everything changes.”

“I know…” Luke said softly, sharply intaking as Y/N’s hands came back to his jeans’ waistband.

Her hands made quick work of the belt, Y/N looking up at Luke as she unbuttoned and dragged down the zipper on his jeans, the material sitting slack on his hips. He stood up at the foot of the bed, Y/N not hesitating to push the material down past his knees, the clothing quickly pooling at his feet atop his sneakers.

“Shit, I forgot about shoes.” Luke whispered, trying to slip off his sneakers with his feet, only to stumble back and have Y/N quickly catch him by the waist before he fell over. “Shit! Sorry! Sorry…” He laughed out, managing to get off his shoes and jeans as Y/N quickly got her own mismatched converse off. “I feel like you’re wearing more clothes than me.” Luke said softly, looking her over as he strained against his boxers.

“Maybe you could help change that?” Y/N wasn’t quite sure where the sexual confidence was coming from, but she lay back on the bed, her head landing on the pillows as she looked down the bed at Luke.

“Uh huh… Yep. Definitely.” He nodded, his jaw slack as he got back on the bed, his hands coming to the button of her jean shorts and taking off the denim at record speed, revealing a pair of high cut panties that matched the white bralette covering her chest. “Fuck me…” Luke muttered.

“That’s the plan, handsome.” Y/N grinned back, and Luke took his eyes off her body to look into her eyes, to look at her smile and the way she held herself and how she looked at him the way he always wanted her to look at him.

“This has to be heaven.” He smirked, leaning over and pressing a kiss to her cheek before reaching out to the side table to the couch’s right, opening one of the drawers and lifting out condom from an inconspicuous looking box.

“Not quite, but we’re getting there.” Y/N smiled sweetly, taking a moment to undo her bra and let it fall onto her lap, discarding it and her underwear as Luke rid himself of his boxers and slipped into the condom. “Are you nervous? I’m kinda nervous.” She admitted, and Luke leaned forward to kiss her again, gentle and soft. Whatever anxiety she had vanished as his lips touched hers, and with a nod for Luke to continue, her best friend moved onto the bed, his length lined up with her entrance.

As he pushed past Y/N’s folds, slowly but surely completely filling her, Luke let out a string of groans and curse words, all intertwined. He wasn’t alone in it, Y/N muttering her fair share of choice language as she became accustomed to his size, the slight pinch of pain she felt disappearing and being replaced with pleasure as her inner walls clenched around Luke’s member.

“Jesus…” Luke muttered, his breathing heavy, doing his very best not to ruin the moment by cumming from just the sight of Y/N below him, naked, moaning because of him. “Does that feel alright?” He asked, and Y/N nodded.

“You can move now.” She whispered, bringing his lips to her as Luke pulled out and started a slow and steady pace, filling her with each thrust. Y/N moaned his name into his ear, her hands threading into his hair once more as the pace picked up, only prompting them both to get a little louder.

The benefits of soundproofing the studio.

“Fuck Luke…” Y/N muttered, breathing heavier by the minute, her stomach forming into knots, tight and tighter in her abdomen as Luke’s thrusts became deeper.

The whole thing was slow and sweat: the heat outside only made the garage warmer, Luke’s forehead soon sporting a layer of sweat that had his hair sticking to it. Y/N’s fingers wrapped around and dug into his bicep as he rocked into her, the rolls of their hips synchronising and make for more pleasure shared.

It felt like a dream, for both of them. Luke never thought he would ever have Y/N as more than a friend, regardless of how he felt, never thought the goofiness and over-confident demeanour that had attracted her to him platonically would have ever translated to… This. Y/N had seen the girls and guys Luke dated, and while she wasn’t one to compare herself to others often, she realised she never made a move because she had never been Luke’s type before.

“Y/N…” Luke whispered, his own high fast approaching. He leaned down, pressing his lips to Y/N’s collarbone, nipping at the skin until it bruised, smirking at every moan he managed to elicit in response.

“Shit, Luke… I-” Before she could finish speaking, Y/N threw her head back into the pillows and let out a whimpering moan, her grip on Luke’s bicep tightening as the tension that had built in her stomach finally released in the form of euphoria, waves of pleasure tightening her core and leaving Luke to its whim as he moaned out her name, struggling to hold himself up as he spilled into the condom. They stayed like that for a moment, both breathing heavy and looking into one another’s eyes.

They had just had sex… Both admitted feelings of attraction…

The flash of headlights and the sound of a car rolling up had both of them freezing for a second before Luke quickly pulled out, Y/N scrambling to locate her clothes as Luke tied off the condom and binned it before finding his jeans. He tossed her over her t-shirt while she threw back his underwear, the sound of the boys’ voices quickly approaching the garage.

Y/N glanced down at the state of herself, opting to press a kiss to Luke’s cheek before disappearing into the bathroom to finish getting ready, leaving the guitarist to deal with his band.

“I swear to God, I can’t believe we’re doing this.” Alex said with a sigh as he opened up the garage doors to reveal Luke sat on the bed, fixing his shoes. “Wow…” He muttered, and for a moment Luke thought it was in judgement, that he and Y/N had been made immediately. But Reggie, Bobby and Alex walked into the room and started investigating the new layout, and Luke remembered than not an hour, he had been doing the same thing.

“She’s something else, isn’t she?” Reggie said with a proud smile, and Luke fixed his shoe on before getting up. “Luke, where’s Y/N?”

“Right here.” Y/N answered, walking out the bathroom with her makeup and hair fixed, and fully dressed. Luke smiled over at her, and she smiled back before turning her attention back to the guys. “What, the club on 6th realise your IDs were fake?” She asked, and Reggie started nodding before Bobby slapped his arm.

“I’ve convinced Alex of the tattoo idea. But we can’t go without the two of you. We’ve got a taxi waiting outside.” Bobby explained, Alex shrugging in defeat.

“I suppose they’d look cool.” He said with a smile.

“Awesome! I’ll meet you in the car, just got to grab my bag… And fake ID.” Y/N said with a smile, Bobby and Reggie running out to the car as she quickly grabbed her stuff. Alex turned to go, stopping at the door and turning to look back at his friends, to look at the messed up bed, noticing the red on Luke’s arm.

“You alright, man?” Luke asked, the guitarist putting a hand on Alex’s shoulder as Y/N glanced over, the blond getting a distinct whiff of a sweet smell from Luke…

Y/N’s perfume.

“Oh my God, you guys slept together.” He muttered, the two freezing.

“Alex…” Luke started: it hadn’t been more than two years since they had dated, and a part of him worried more than one friendship was ending that night because of what he and Y/N had just done.

“You’re crazy to think-” Y/N chipped in, but was cut off by Alex letting out a yell.

“YES!” He shouted, clapping his hands together in excitement. “Finally!!” He grinned, and Luke and Y/N took a joint sigh of relief.

“Wait-” Luke started, but Alex was already gone to share the news with Bobby and Reggie.

“Bobby, you owe Reggie $50.” The pair could hear Alex calling, met by gasps and grumbles from beyond the door. Luke and Y/N laughed as Alex left, but as it died out, they were surrounded by silence.

Neither was sure what to say, neither wanting to stay in the silence.

“Luke-” Y/N said softly, looking up as he walked across the room and pressed his lips to hers. His hands pulled her close by the waist, her hands holding onto his shirt, pulled up to her tiptoes.

“I think we should talk a bit more about what we want to be… We don’t have to do it right away, but I don’t think that this was a mistake… Or stupid.” Luke whispered as he pulled away, Y/N responding by taking one of his hands and interlocking their fingers with a smile.

“I think that sounds like a great idea.” She responded, letting her best friend, her something more, lead her out to the awaiting taxi, to their friends, with a smile on his face and joy in his voice.

Y/N Y/L/N was used to being overlooked by people, but in that moment, under the glare of headlights and with Luke’s hand in hers, with his kiss on her lips and her image in his eyes…

She had never felt more seen.

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