#promises fic
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// Promises // Pt. 1
Eddie Munson x Reader
Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 3 // Part 4
Word Count ~ 3,004
Summary ~ When a new girl in Hawkins strikes the younger members of Hellfire as one of Eddie’s ‘lost sheep’ types, he’s encouraged to reach out. She’s standoffish, for the most part, but Eddie manages to break the ice with a genuine admiration of her art. It’s a start, but by the time the bell rings, he’s thankful to have at least gotten a foot in the door...
Warnings ~ Profanity; bullying; Tolkien lore(?); use of she/her pronouns, though the main character’s details are kept to a minimum, only being plus-size is explicitly stated - so I hope it can still be enjoyed as a “reader” experience!
Author’s Notes ~ So, I’ve been messing around with this one for a while, and it really just started off as some private comfort drabbles for myself. I connected with Eddie’s character almost immediately, especially since I went through some similar experiences in school - up to and including some unflattering rumors. Some of the main character’s details, interests, and expressed sentiments may be specific, but all-in-all, I wanted to keep it a “reader” friendly experience for my fellow Eddie lovers. I'm disabled, so I can't promise a consistent posting schedule, only that they'll arrive as soon as I can finish them - that said, my addled brain can sometimes overlook some editing errors. If it's glaring, I don't mind being notified, but if it's passable, let it pass~
I did make a small time adjustment to be able to (time appropriately) include some themes and media I plan to reference in the future - so the year is 1987. Enjoy!
“Trees of Valinor” photo by Aronja-Art!
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It was a long-awaited Friday, one of the first of the new school year, and the cafeteria buzzed with electricity. Mostly due to the anticipation of some sports ball game, or another, but in a friendly corner, toward the end of a familiar table, a group of voices clamored amongst themselves, excitedly, blissfully ignoring the energy generated by the rest of the room.
"New semester, new campaign! C'mon, Eddie, man!" A scrawny sophomore groaned. "We've been doing nothing but one offs for weeks now!"
Sliding a pretzel between his lips, the head of the rattling table lifted an eyebrow with a coy smile.
"By failing to prepare, Wheeler, you're preparing to fail. S'not my fault if you've refused to see my, mmh, readiness exercises as anything more than mere placeholders." He chuckled with all the sinister theatrics he could muster, bringing a laugh to the table, and gasps from a cluster of girls seated nearby.
"My sincerest apologies." Eddie gave them a cordial half-bow from his seat, which garnered him only a few odd looks and an eye roll. ‘Can't win 'em all.’ Though he'd grown quite used to that, thinking nothing of it as he turned back to his flock. "...a-a-anyway, we'll see how that lack of preparedness serves you in your daunting trials ahead."
"Daunting trials, he says. This guy!" A heavy-set boy to Eddie's other side droned in a tone half in disbelief and half in delight.
It was Hellfire Friday, once again.
"Indeed, and I expect you, one and all, to come prepared. Each of my, ahem, 'one offs', came packaged with a lesson." He rolled his head toward Mike with a smarmy grin. "A clue, if you will, that will aid you in your arduous tasks. An' no repeats if you weren't paying attention, been writing that shit for weeks. Not my fault if you refuse to appreciate it."
"At least give us a hint, man!" Gareth pleaded over the rim of his soda can.
"'Fraid not, my little adventurers! All will be revealed in due time, now huddle up; got a few things to keep in mind, yeah?"
In his best commanding voice, Eddie began to ramble a bit, seemingly enjoying the sensation of spinning an intricate tale - or the sound of his own voice, it was hard to be certain sometimes. All heads leaned in, hanging on his every word, save the far-gazed Dustin at Mike's arm who continued to gaze, curiously, out the window.
He sipped chocolate milk through a straw, idly, as he sat pondering something in the courtyard. For a moment, he looked as though he might get up, but quickly sunk back down into his seat. He had seemingly gone ignorant to the hum of voices around him, until he was snapped out of his daze by a pretzel grazing the tip of his nose.
"Am I borin' you, Henderson?" Eddie asked, another pretzel between his fingers, ready to be flicked.
"N-No, it's just-" Dustin began, grabbing for a napkin.
"Then why, oh why, is my little sheepie looking so lost again?"
"Rude, dude." Gareth mumbled under his breath.
Dabbing at his chin, and a few spots on the table, Dustin looked to Eddie apologetically; nodding, reflexively, if only to keep peace at the table for the time being.
"S-Sorry man, I just… n-noticed something, that's all." He gestured toward the window he'd been staring out.
"Well, clearly it wasn't all the effort I've been puttin' in for you guys, eh?" Eddie eyed him for a moment as he got to his feet, turning on his heels toward the row of windows behind them; the smirk on his face betraying the fact he was hardly upset at all.
A few short strides, and Eddie pressed his nose flat to the window pane, dark eyes scanning the busy school yard for whatever could have pulled Dustin's attention away from the gory details of their impending campaign. For several long moments, he noticed nothing particularly out of the ordinary, just the regular passing of the odd group of students here and there.
"Not sure what's got you so utterly transfixed out here, Henderson." His voice was slightly muffled as he comedically kept his face pressed to the glass, gathering him more than a few strange looks.
"So, as I was saying-" Eddie began again as he started to turn around, stopping only when his gaze crossed with that of a group of wild jocks.
Rather, he noticed them as they continued to enjoy pretending he didn't exist, lest it suited them - all the better for him, really, when it came down to it. Though their utter unawareness of the twisted, mocking face he made at them against the window pane was, admittedly, a bit disappointing. Content that whatever had been interesting had passed, and his antics would go unnoticed, Eddie made to turn around once more, before spotting what must have surely been the point of Dustin's fixation. Maybe?
At the far side of the yard, a girl sat hunched intently over a broad sketch pad, utterly engrossed in her task. Her ample thighs giving support to the wide, thick paper as she rested her back against the warm bricks - an array of fine colored pencils sat upright in a pouch by her knee, along with several others spread out within easy reach.
"Whoops!" An unfamiliar voice bellowed overhead. The girl barely had a moment to look up, before catching sight of her pencils scattering across the pavement and grass, neatly punted by one of the boys as they passed.
"My bad!" Said another, purposefully skipping a step to ensure his heel came down hard on the few that remained at her side, splintering the wood, and crushing the soft cores to a useless dust.
Snickering to themselves, the group didn't even take a moment to break their passing stride as the girl, with more patience and grace than the situation deserved, placed her work aside to gather her belongings back, before more were carelessly ruined underfoot by students scurrying by.
"Should be more careful!" A cocky blonde at the head of the group called over his shoulder with a mock tone of concern.
Jason Carver. Eddie was unfortunately familiar with the popular, well-liked, golden boy. He could almost remember a time when the two of them might have been friends, or at least not so stereotypically the antithesis of one another, but that time had long passed. Though Jason rarely participated, actively, in the antagonistic antics of his peers, he was woefully slow, if not completely unwilling to stop it.
Eddie grimaced sympathetically as he watched the girl gingerly weave her hands between passing legs, trying her best not to get her fingers stepped on. Holding his tongue between his lips for a long while, his train of thought was broken only when Dustin's gently inquisitive voice beckoned to him.
"I mean, I'd just never seen her before. Out there, by herself, never talking to anyone, and it's been that way for days. Weeks? I don't know, I guess I was just thinkin', y'know… little lost sheep?" He grinned and shrugged, unsure if it was his place to make such a suggestion. Eddie spoke often of passing the mantle to his younger group members but, at present, seemed rather content to be in the position of decision making.
Turning back toward the table, his face stern, Eddie opened his metal lunchbox and swept anything he hadn't finished, inside and slammed it closed. Lacing his fingers he cracked his knuckles, and nodded to the group members in turn, wordlessly. He hadn't anticipated playing shepherd today, on this, the day his longest and most brutal campaign yet began, but when had anything expected ever really happened to him? He'd made it his duty to look after people like those he called friends, those like Dustin, Lucas, and Mike - and they were the ones for whom he strived to set an example.
Besides, Higgins couldn't keep him here forever. Right?
"Good lookin' out, Henderson." Eddie clapped an amiable hand on the boy's shoulder. "Hellfire's gonna need people like you, when the rest of us ascend to the great beyond, eh?"
"Like that'll ever happen." Gareth snorted at him.
"Never say never, big boy." Eddie pointed a finger under his nose, giving it a friendly flick before skipping a few steps away.
"I'll catch up with you all tonight, same time, same place. Come prepared." He tossed a wink in Mike's direction.
Eddie had never considered himself much of a hero; it was easier to play one behind an inch tall figurine. Better even yet, to devise the machinations that would drive little would-be heroes toward their goals. On paper anyway. Damsels usually found him a cause for their distress, or at least tended to cross the street or double check their car door locks when he passed by.
Yet there he stood, a few bold strides away as Dustin's Damsel gathered the last of her sullied supplies, looking rather helpless, knees down on the sidewalk. Yeah, that looked enough like distress… and there was a first time for everything. Usually.
From the corner of his eye, he spotted one of her pencils that had likely been scattered in the brief fray and stooped to pick it up. Letting it roll across his palm, he admired the deep red hue or "crimson lake" as the silver, inlaid label called it - he knew next to nothing about art and what supplied it, but it was clear these were no discount bin Crayola. ‘Crimson Lake’ he thought to himself, lost briefly in thought; almost worthy of being the name of a campaign landmark. Leaving his dungeon planning for tonight’s festivities he finally stepped toward the girl, who'd yet to get to her feet, and held the pencil down to her eye level with the most genuine smile he could muster.
"Missed one!" He tried to twirl it, smoothly, between his fingers like a baton and only succeeded in sending it clattering onto the concrete. Critical miss.
"Ugh." The girl cringed at the sound and snatched the scuffed pencil off the sidewalk, securing it before more damage could be done. "Thanks, I guess?"
“Oof, hey, that’s not usually how that trick goes, my bad.” Eddie grinned, trying to smooth over his moment of embarrassment, quickly looked for any distraction from his fumble, a segue back to his trademark charm. Scanning for any additional pencils she might have missed, his eyes instead fell on her sketchpad and he was immediately, unabashedly, drawn in.
“Oh, this, th-i-i-s here? This is sick!” Resisting the childlike urge to snatch the paper up for a better look - he figured her belongings had been mishandled enough for one day - he crouched over the drawing she'd been working on and rubbed his hands excitedly. He licked his lips, eyes scanning the page back and forth, taking in the level of detail she’d managed already, and even he could tell it was only half finished.
"Sweet! It's… it's the Trees of Valinor, right? Oh man, this is so wicked. A lady of culture and taste, I see, to suffer the Silmarillion." He mimed tipping a hat, cordially, in her direction before turning back to admire the piece once more.
The girl was quiet for a few long moments as she got to her feet and dusted herself off, hopeful to preserve any shred of dignity she had left. Eyeing the strange boy for a moment she was flattered at his admiration of her work, to be sure, though curious as to what had drawn him to it now.
"Yeah… yeah it is. You, um, you recognized it? Just like that?" She asked gently; her encounters thus far at Hawkins High, including today, had seemingly left her unsure of who could be easily talked to.
"Oh, hell yeah!" Eddie lit up again, with no small amount of enthusiasm.
He'd been a rabid fan of Tolkien since he could remember knowing how to read. Even if the text didn't always make sense to his young mind, he'd devoured them again and again, enamored by the high fantasy lore. He could probably quote them by page number at this point, but one step at a time.
"Look at that, Laurelin, there…" His fingers traced the curve of golden boughs on the paper, again, careful not to actually touch it. "...and Telperion. Oh man, how'd you get it to look like true silver like that? I know, I know the magician never reveals their secrets but, damn, this is bitchin'!"
She watched curiously as he pored over her drawing, like a frantic boy, never having seen someone so enamored with art derived from, what most would call, nerd literature. Nevermind being able to recognize it at first sight. It brought a tentative smile to her face for a moment, before she laid eyes on the remains of a pale gray pencil, now mostly splinters.
"Doesn’t matter how, guess it'll never be finished." She bent to pick up the pencil, surprised at how well it still clung together, even if it was entirely useless now.
"Huh?" Eddie broke his gaze with the drawing and glanced up; he was fairly sure whatever was in her hands used to be a pencil. "Ah, damn, ruined, huh? Those dudes are such pricks, let me tell ya', don't feel too special, they pull that kinda’ shit with everyone who doesn't fit their mold."
"I'll try not to let the royal treatment go to my head?" She raised an eyebrow, knowing he meant well, but it was difficult to see much good, given the circumstances. "Fuck, these are expensive. Ack, uh, excuse me."
"Far be it from me to judge the speech of a woman scorned." He raised both hands with an unapologetic grin, though behind it lay a bit of an empathetic gritting of his teeth. Something in her voice told him they wouldn’t easily be replaced - a feeling he knew well.
She sank in on herself for a moment, and he couldn't tell if she was simply embarrassed at the outburst, or if something else was eating at her entirely. He knew the cost to have and keep something important to you, and the fear of having it ruined or lost… so quite likely the latter.
"I'm Eddie, by the way." He scuffed the toe of his shoe against the awkward silence blooming between them.
"I know."
"You… know?" He tilted his head to one side and studied her profile as she set about packing her things. His uncle had always warned him overindulgence in the herb would stunt his brain, but he was certain he'd never spoken to this girl before today.
"We have chemistry together. Though, you tend to spend most of it asleep, yeah?"
"Ohh, yeah that's right after lunch! Full tummy, it's nap time for growing boys, you know?" He patted his belly, hoping to elicit a laugh - but understood her sustained silence, all things considered. "Those who know me, call me ‘The Freak’, those who love me call me The Dungeon Master."
She tilted her head in his direction with a slight eye roll and a smirk. It wasn't the laughter he had hoped for, but it was a start.
"I see, and which would you prefer I call you?" She studied him for a moment as she hoisted her bag onto one shoulder, just in time for the bell to ring.
"We-e-ell, that remains to be seen. Right now, I figure you're hovering pretty close to 'freak', but if you churn out sick pieces like that?" He gestured to her sketch pad again. "I'm hopin' we eventually land at Dungeon Master."
His infectious grin failed to rouse her, yet again, as she pointed to the bound drawing book just behind him.
"Mind handing me that?"
"Oh, yeah, sure, sure, here…" Tenderly, he wrapped his fingers around the edges of the paper and handed over her collection of masterpieces. Clicking his tongue as he watched her fold it closed and tuck it under her arm, wondering what other treats for the eye it held. "Eddie. Eddie is fine for now. We can work with that, yeah?"
"Right. Well, 'Eddie Is Fine', I've gotta' be off. We, uh, both do… I guess."
"Yeah, right, 'cause the bell… oh, wait, I had something for you. Red, red, your red." He patted his pockets a few times, remembering vividly picking up the pencil he'd used to break the ice between them. Ice that was rapidly reforming.
"You… you gave it to me already." She wiggled her fingers, teasing him about his prior, pencil twirling mishap.
"That I did!" He said with feigned, and utter confidence. "Just makin' sure you remembered, you know? Sweet shade of red, by the way. ‘Crimson Lake!’ Hey, so listen…"
He looked up to see she'd already turned and begun to walk away, and he hadn't even made his proper pitch yet. Not a man to take no for an answer, at least not the first or third time, he jogged boldly to her side, trying to stoke the embers of conversation again.
"So, listen, mind if I talk while we walk?" He grinned down at her as his presence parted the hallway crowd for them.
"I don't think you've stopped talking yet. You pour all your points into charisma? I'd say that investment isn't paying off."
"Whoa! Attack of opportunity, and she knows when to strike. I like it… so uh, you're new, and I've got this thing I'd be interested in you being interested in…"
Hopefully, he could get his spiel out before they reached the door; not that he was averse to talking through another boring lecture, of course. It’d be a refreshing change of pace for his typical nap period, anyway. Still, she at least seemed to be listening, so far, and utterly unashamed to be seen walking with him; he'd thank a lucky roll for that.
#eddie munson#eddie munson fanfic#eddie munson x reader#eddie munson x plus size reader#eddie munson x female reader#stranger things#stranger things fanfic#promises#promises fic#slow burn#fluff n stuff#honestly nervous as heck to be sharing my stuff again but here we go#yes I named it after the Megadeth song#I love it so much
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COMMENT ON OLD FICS, I BEG YOU!
I swear to god after like a week people will still be reading but nobody leaves comments anymore and I just want to make it absolutely clear that I would be excited and elated to get a comment on these fics one hundred years after I post them.
A FIC IS NEVER TOO OLD TO LEAVE A NICE COMMENT ON. GO FORTH AND COMMENT!
#ironically as i was writing this i got a comment email for a month old fic lol#i love you person who just left me a comment!#ao3#if youre ever like 'would it be weird for me to leave a comment on this years old fic?"#i promise you the answer is no#it would be awesome of you
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perhaps catching up a bit wouldn't hurt?
#hidden hands au#no promises or specific days but chapter 1 of the fic will be up when it's ready! thank you for your patience!#i will also try to answer asks but i'm very slow i apologize </3#five nights at freddy's#five nights at freddy's fanart#five nights at freddy's au#fnaf#fnaf au#fnaf fanart#michael afton#mike afton#charlie emily#charlotte emily#fnaf michael afton#fnaf mike afton#fnaf charlie emily#fnaf charlotte emily#fnaf marionette#fnaf puppet#my art
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rediscovered some texture stuff i had in csp :DDD a fun time!
#damianya#sxf#spy x family#damian desmond#anya forger#my art#bebbies!!!!#i finished applying to uni and ive got an interview soon so I THINK I CAN MAKE THAT FIC REC POST I PROMISED SOON !!!!!
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I love how even more unhinged this site gets when ao3 goes down. I hope you all survive.
#ao3#ao3 down#it's just maintenance#we will be fine....#promise#may you all survive#time to reread pdfs of my own fics
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dating simon riley means constant clinginess. large arms wrapped around your waist at any given moment, simon is most comfortable when he's holding you. after being away from a long mission, he'll find you wherever you are in your shared apartment and silently crawl into your arms like a puppy. he'll bury his face into the crook of your neck, slowly inhaling to bask in your scent that he missed more than anything. with an amused chuckle, you'll wrap your arms around his warm torso, gently rubbing his back. "no hello?" you'll tease, to which you always earn a content hum in response, along with simon's hold tightening ever so slightly.
dating simon riley means lots of playful teasing. if you make a typo in a text message, he'll begin spelling the word as your typo for the rest of the day. if you believed in a silly fact, he'd bring it up for the rest of your life. "this is like when you thought our blood was actually blue" he'd snicker, which would cause you to whine for him to stop and swat his arm.
dating simon riley means constantly being cared for. simon is a man who can do everything, or at least tries to. he somehow manages to get to all the chores before you do, which has ended in you reassuring him that you can handle it many, many times. when doing something potentially dangerous like standing on a ladder, handling a knife or using tools, simon will constantly glance in your direction to make sure something won't slip and injure you. like a spidey sense, he's quick to pull you away or come to your rescue if you're in a situation where you're about to hurt yourself. "you alright?" he'll mumble softly, dark eyes laced with worry that is a rare sight to be seen by anyone else.
dating simon riley means you have a second wardrobe. his large clothes are just too comfortable to resist, and he's often left searching the apartment for a shirt that you had placed amongst your own clothes. though, he makes no effort to steal them back from you, as seeing you in his tshirt, his boxers and his hoodie fills him with a loving possessiveness. he'll walk into the kitchen to see you turned away as you wash dishes, wearing one of his shirts as a short dress. managing to silently sneak behind you even with his bulky frame, he'll wrap his arms around you from behind and place a kiss against the nape of your neck. "you look so pretty in my shirt, love." he'll then purr into your ear.
dating simon riley means seeing a side of him that many never do. whether it be physically or personality wise, you see so much of simon that you can't remember the last time you referred to him as ghost. his large pointy nose, his dirty blonde hair that he always forgets to fix in the mornings, and his lopsided smile that appears when you tell the corniest of jokes are all things that many have never seen and never will. he speaks so softly to you; a low tone that you can feel reverberating in his chest when you lay against him. simon is kind, patient and vulnerable with you, and will mutter the words "i love you" against your lips, just loud enough for only you to hear.
dating simon riley means being friends with the rest of the 141. you were the one who wished to host hangouts at your apartment, wanting those closest to simon to like you. despite their intimidating demeanors, you quickly realized just how kind they were. they know just how important you are to simon, which is a rare feat in itself, so they would never treat you in an ill manner. soap will always refer to you as "the missus" when speaking to simon, which never fails to make you giggle when you overhear their conversations.
masterlist
#just a small blurb bc i wanted to write smth#im working on fics i promise!!#simon ghost riley#simon riley#ghost cod#call of duty#ghost x reader#simon riley x reader#mw2#mw3#modern warfare#fluff#headcanons#x reader#imagine
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Trigger Tease(r)
Pairing: Mob!Bucky x Reader
Summary: Before his morning briefing, your mob boss husband decides to take a pit stop in the sauna with you.
Warnings: 18+. Oral (f!receiving). Gentle fingerfucking. Praise and degradation. Daddy kink. Dirty talk. Bucky talking you through it. Bimbofication if you squint.
Notes: @sluttylittlewaistenthusiast - you inspired me 🪽 I just had to crank out a little teaser for the third installment of Wedded Bliss. I hope y’all like it 💓
Full version here
In between breakfast and the start of your husband’s early briefing, you found yourself situated in much the same way you’d been spending a lot of time these days: pinned up against the wall of a wood-paneled sauna, Bucky’s broad shoulders supporting both of your legs as he buried his face deep between your thighs. You sighed.
“Hold still,” Bucky grunted, voice muffled as he tried to keep your slick, squirming body in place above him.
You yelped and seized a fistful of his hair when he wedged his tongue even further inside you, nudging your clit with his nose almost too teasingly and deliberate.
“I can’t…help it,” you bit back, ignoring the brief glare you earned from your husband as soon as you said it, “Your tongue’s just so— s— James!”
This time, Bucky let out a full-throated groan when you yanked on those poor wet locks of his—‘Gonna make me bald by next Christmas if you keep doin’ that, honey’—and he pried his head from your legs just long enough to knock you flat on the sauna bench close by.
The western red cedar seared hot on your skin, already flushed from the exhaustion wrought by Bucky’s tongue; you hardly had the strength to hold yourself up when he pushed you onto your back and crawled over your body.
“How ‘bout my fingers, doll? Can you take a couple’a those for me?” Bucky crooned above you as he stroked your hair, bathed in pure sunlight pouring in from the windows. His voice was a touch more sympathetic now.
After all, this was your third orgasm of the morning. It really wasn’t fair for him to use that biological weapon of mass destruction he liked to call his tongue when he knew how sensitive your clit would get from just one ‘O’. Even his hands might be too much in your current state.
Bucky was busy peppering your skin with kisses, working his way from the base of your neck to the crown of your head, when you whimpered and tried to fight a smile.
“Finger,” you corrected him, “Just one finger, Barnes.”
You would’ve thought you’d just thrown your wedding ring in his face and told him to eat shit. Just one?
“How’s one finger s’posed to stretch you out for my cock, huh? Practically had you screamin’ when I stuck it in last night,” Bucky wasn’t one to hide his amusement, grinning even bigger when you swatted him on the arm.
“Who said anything about your cock?” You tried to keep cool as Bucky’s fingers trailed right back down to the place you felt yourself throbbing, aching for his touch, “You have a meeting in ten minutes.”
“Meeting doesn’t start until I say so, my love,” Bucky reminded you just as his index ghosted over your folds.
In truth, he was willing to play this game any way, and for however long, you wanted it done, so long as he was the one bringing you pleasure. Be that his cock, his finger, or all fucking five on one hand, Bucky just wanted to get you off. It was better sustenance to him than the whole damn meal the two of you had eaten that morning.
Bucky kept it down to one digit and lightly circled your bundle of nerves when he sensed you were ready.
You gripped his forearm and shot a quick look between your legs, still in disbelief as to how he could make you feel this good so soon after you’d cum twice before. You felt his lips drift over to yours and steal a few kisses.
“Always doin’ so good for me,” Bucky praised, moving his finger in circles. When you whined against his mouth, he pressed it even harder, “Such a good girl for daddy.”
“James,” you breathed, clenching your legs together.
“Everything OK?”
“Uh-huh.”
More than OK, in fact. That delectable coil of sweet, euphoric release was already swelling gently in your tummy. Bucky moved his finger even faster.
“Tell me how it feels,” he murmured low in your ear.
Bucky loved seeing you try to articulate your feelings—relatively fresh and new to your world, still—while he was giving you pleasure. Adored the way you winced and whined and arched your back into his touch as a whole blustering hailstorm of sensations crashed over you.
He sank his tongue in your mouth as he kissed you, as if trying to extract the words from between your lips. Your response, in consequence, came somewhat stifled.
“Mm— feels so, oh—” Your voice broke off in a moan when Bucky tightened his circles, “—so good, daddy.”
“Wanna show daddy how good and cum for me?”
Bucky knew by the way you were whimpering under his hand that the tendril in your stomach had almost tripled in size. It wouldn’t take much to tip you over the edge.
“My sweet girl,” he said, rubbing your cunt at the same time he was stroking the back of your head, gently, “Feels so nice down there, doesn’t it?”
You rolled your hips against the bench and nodded. Your breaths were short and ragged, panting helplessly into Bucky’s mouth when he adjusted his hand just a little: pressing the pad of his thumb to your clit, with his index moving down to your entrance. Pushing inside you.
“Another,” you choked, not thinking.
Bucky met your desperate gaze and nodded, knowing this was exactly what you needed to make it over the precipice.
Still, he wouldn’t be Bucky if he didn’t tease just a bit.
“I thought my wife wanted one finger,” he hummed, brow pinching inward.
“No, no.” You could’ve shrieked when he curled the digit, “Want more— Bucky, please, please, I need more.”
Again, your husband appeared to nod in understanding, but his fingers didn’t budge. He worked his thumb a little faster and watched you writhe on the seat beneath him.
“How many, honey? Don’t wanna hurt my baby.” His words were all kindness, it seemed, but his tone laced with shameless condescension—the kind that said, yes, I know you need this, and no, I won’t indulge you just yet. Bucky was the worst when he wanted to prove a point. You could’ve ripped at his clothes and torn them in two if you weren’t both stark naked and shrouded in steam.
You opted to pull at his hair instead.
Bucky winced, but the smirk never left.
“I said how many?” he pressed again.
“Three. Four.” Fuck if you knew.
Your husband raised both eyebrows and hummed, a single finger still plunging in and out of your cunt in quick succession. He teased the tip of another at your entrance and smiled even more when you whined.
“Needy little thing, isn’t she?”
“Bucky—”
“Just wants to fuck daddy’s hand to get herself off, hm?”
Bucky didn’t bother to mask his sweet, degrading tone any longer as he talked down and teased you to no end. It drove him half-insane to see you squirm around, rut your hips, let him say the filthiest fucking words he could conjure up, and just bob your head to whatever he said. His impeccant wife and her insatiable needs—Bucky couldn’t even begin to express how turned on the sheer dichotomy got him. He stared in your eyes, all glossy and soft, and felt his cock stand even more rigid on his belly.
He didn’t give a shit if he’d taunted you enough or not; he just shoved his middle and ring fingers alongside the first and clenched his jaw to start fucking you hard with all three.
Your whole face contorted with pleasure, tinged with the faintest shade of discomfort at the tail end of it. You’d forgotten how big his fingers felt all together.
“Bucky,” you whined, mindlessly clawing at the wrist that was moving back and forth, fast, between your legs, “B-Baby, slow— slow down a little.”
But Bucky was deep in the zone. He knew you wanted it too—sensed that you liked to play it safe when it came to your pleasure and grew a little timid at times it got to feel too much—and he needed to talk you through it.
Rather than turn his head and keep to himself as he got you up to your peak, Bucky pressed his face down to yours and nodded again—this time with a tender sincerity.
“Feel a little stretch down there, huh?”
You didn’t have to say anything, just whimpering in time. Bucky kissed your forehead and let you fold into him as his fingers wreaked havoc down below. He kissed you again, and again, and in between kisses, mumbled,
“That’s daddy’s sweet, needy little slut.”
“My perfect fucking wife, so good at taking my fingers.”
“Gonna be nice and stretched out for my cock, hm?”
Every syllable spoken aloud was like a brand new catalyst for your impending release. You barely nodded your head, opened your mouth and whined pathetically, but that’s exactly how Bucky wanted you. Exactly how you needed to be, bucking your hips in time with the cadence of his fingers fucking inside you, and soon, those whimpers were turning to moans as that soft little helix inside you reached its breaking point.
Bucky brushed once or twice more against your sensitive spot, and suddenly you were coming undone all over him—crying his name, clawing his skin, squeezing your legs so tight around his wrist you feared you might snap it in two, and then getting kissed again, over and over while Bucky drank in your every sound, and the few tears that sprung to your eyes as they always did, like sweet nectar.
You were still moaning, curling your tongue feebly against his own and leaning into him as far as you could, when your husband slipped three fingers up between your mouths and pushed them past your parted lips.
“Suck,” Bucky said, gritting his teeth as he watched you, “C’mere, honey, taste your cunt on my fingers.”
You took him in and sucked your arousal off his fingers just like he asked. Took him by surprise and dragged a mindless, lazy, half-crazed and careless tongue all over his hand, where your juices had no doubt collected too.
That slutty, fucked-out look you gave him—like your brain had all but fallen out of your head with the orgasm he’d given you—was everything Bucky could’ve wanted.
He climbed on top of you and took the base of his cock, rock-hard and weeping tears of precum from the tip, almost drunk from the feeling himself. His mouth hung open as he dragged himself over the seam of your cunt.
“I need to fuck you.”
Taglist (STILL HAVE TO UPDATE THIS I'M DUMB AS SHIT): @vicmc624, @she-could-never, @mcira, @kentokaze, @identity2212, @unaxv, @buchi91, @ordelixx, @stinkerbelle007, @opibarnes, @wilsons-striped-ties, @desigirlxx, @pono-pura-vida, @geminiflanagansblog, @fandomsfeminismandme, @buggy14, @sky-full-0f-fl0wers, @buckysdoll1520, @armystay89, @minimarvelingmarvel, @kunakizen, @ghostiebby06, @blackhawkfanatic, @dameron-grant-spector, @sushiseoks, @deansapplepie, @mrsjoequinn, @lunaroserites, @first-edition, @kaybaby2494, @jaggedsi, @excusememrbarnes, @daisychainsoflove, @mostlymarvelgirl, @diannana, @shawnberry, @yujyujj, @urmomsalex, @mrs-bucky-barnes-73, @athenabarnes, @christinabae, @wintrsoldrluvr, @bethbunnyy, @i-heart-smut @dixsond
#THE TITLE WILL MAKE SENSE LATER I PROMISE#it’s ‘tease’ not ‘teaser’ in the full fic that was just my attempt at humor#bucky barnes#bucky barnes smut#bucky barnes fanfiction#bucky barnes fic#bucky barnes x reader#bucky barnes x you#marvel#mcu#mob bucky barnes#marvel smut#marvel x reader#james buchanan barnes#james bucky barnes#mob boss bucky#mob!bucky
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Saw someone mention how Steve tends to get defensive when he's anxious and it stuck with me, so here's my take on the "Steve breaks a dish and has a panic attack about it" trope
cw: descriptions of nonstandard panic attack, implied/referenced child abuse
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The distinct sound of shattering porcelain is followed by a vehemently hissed, “shit,” and then silence.
“Steve?” Eddie calls from the couch into the kitchen. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Steve calls back, but his voice sounds tight in the way it does when something definitely isn’t okay.
Eddie pushes himself up and moves to the doorway, looking in to see what the trouble is. The kitchen of the house he and Wayne had been “gifted” by the government isn’t exactly huge, and he has a straight line of sight to where Steve is standing by the sink, eyes squeezed shut as he pinches the bridge of his nose, and to the red and white shards of porcelain on the floor by his feet.
“Hey,” Eddie says, but Steve doesn’t look up; if anything, his posture only gets tenser. “You’re not cut or anything, are you?”
“No,” Steve says, and his tone is still a little off, but he doesn’t sound like he’s lying.
“What was that, anyway?” Eddie asks.
Finally, Steve takes a deep breath in and opens his eyes, looking down at the mess on the laminate. “Mug.”
As soon as he says it, Eddie recognizes the colors for what the design must have been. “Shit, the Campbell’s one?”
Steve doesn’t say a word, just gives one sharp nod.
Eddie sucks a hiss of breath in through his teeth. “Shit,” he says again. “That was Wayne’s favorite.”
“I know,” Steve says tersely. “I’m sorry.”
His tone is definitely weird. “I mean, I’m sure it was an accident, Steve–” Eddie starts.
“I’m sorry,” Steve says again, almost snapping this time. “I’ll clean it up.”
“O-kay,” Eddie says slowly, watching as Steve jerks into motion and moves over to the corner where they stash the broom and dust pan.
“I’ll apologize to Wayne when he gets home,” Steve says as he starts sweeping up, even though Eddie hasn’t said a word.
“He gets home at, like, six in the morning.”
“I’ll make sure I’m up,” Steve says shortly.
“Steve, you can just tell him what happened later, he’s not going to stand around demanding an explanation. I mean, seriously, you think Wayne is gonna be pissed if you’re not there, immediately scraping at his feet when he comes through the door?” Eddie scoffs, but Steve remains silent. Eddie watches as he finishes sweeping in short, sharp motions, brows pulling together as Steve apparently fails to pick up on the joke. “…he won’t be, y’know.”
Steve shrugs. His expression has gone eerily blank, and he takes the dustpan over to the garbage can to dump it.
“Hey, don’t–” Eddie reaches out, and Steve jerks to a stop just in time. “You don’t have to toss it, man, we might be able to glue it back together.”
Steve sends Eddie a sharp look. “I’m not gonna be able to hide that it was broken, Eddie,” he says slowly, as though this should be painfully obvious.
“I’m not suggesting we hide it, I’m just saying we might still be able to use it,” Eddie answers in the same slow manner. “It’s not junk until you’re sure you can’t fix it.”
“Right,” Steve snaps, dropping the dustpan on the counter so sharply that the shards of porcelain clink against each other. “Can’t even clean up right.”
Eddie frowns, stirrings of defensiveness rising up in his gut at Steve’s continued sour mood. “I didn’t say that. I just said we might be able to fix it.”
“Fine. We’ll try to fix it,” Steve bites out, turning away from Eddie so he can put the broom back in the corner.
Eddie shakes his head, unwilling to engage with whatever snit Steve’s got himself worked into. “What happened, anyway?” he asks instead.
Apparently, this is the wrong tactic.
“What happened is, I’m too stupid to even do the dishes right,” Steve declares as he whirls back around. “Is that what you want to hear?”
“What?” Eddie is baffled, suddenly caught in the middle of an argument he hadn’t even realized was happening. “No! Why would I want to hear that?”
Steve throws his arms up, a demonstration of giving in. “Well I already said I’m sorry, and I am, and I don’t know what else you want from me!”
The heat of Eddie’s own temper is beginning to flare, but he does his best to shake it away because he still doesn’t know what the hell is going on and he doesn’t think getting angry will help. “I don’t want anything else from you! Why are you acting like I’m yelling at you? I’m not, I’m not even upset about the stupid mug, so what the hell is your deal?”
He takes a couple of steps into the kitchen, reaching out for Steve, hoping just to touch some part of him. Physical contact has always been grounding, has always been a comfort for them both; it almost seems like they can communicate better if they can just be in contact somehow. Instead of reaching back, though, Steve tenses up; it’s not exactly a flinch, but it’s as if he’s bracing himself, as if he’s waiting for Eddie to–
Eddie takes in the painfully blank expression on Steve’s pale face, the way his chest is rising and falling in quick, shallow breaths that he can’t quite seem to control, the way he’s angled himself just slightly away from Eddie, and suddenly Eddie feels cold.
It’s as if he’s waiting for Eddie to hit him.
Eddie wonders how the hell he hadn’t realized he was walking through a minefield until he was already standing in the middle of it.
(It still takes him by surprise, sometimes, that Steve’s anxiety, his panic, tends to look more like anger. That he tends to lash out like a wounded animal when he feels backed into a corner, hurt too many times in moments of vulnerability to do otherwise.)
(It takes him by surprise, but he’s learning.)
“Steve,” Eddie says softly, dropping his hand slowly back to his side, “I’m not angry.”
Steve stares at him, almost confused, like Eddie’s not doing it right, like this isn’t what’s supposed to come next. Eddie sort of wants to break something (he thinks, briefly, that he’d like to start with the fingers on Mr. Harrington’s right hand, and then move on to his left).
“It’s just a mug, Steve, it’s okay. No one’s upset about it,” Eddie says. “I’m preemptively speaking for Wayne, because I know he’s not gonna be mad at you. Seriously, getting upset over a broken cup? Does that sound like something Wayne would do?”
Slowly, once he seems to realize that Eddie is waiting for an answer, Steve shakes his head.
“Does that sound like something I would do?” Eddie asks.
Steve shakes his head again, though he’s still watching Eddie with something approaching trepidation.
“I promise it’s fine. I’m not angry,” Eddie repeats, and chances a couple of steps closer to Steve.
Steve doesn’t react this time, no tensing, no flinching, no verbally lashing out, and so Eddie lifts a hand again, reaching slowly for Steve’s. Steve lets him.
When he gets his fingers wrapped around Steve’s own, Eddie can feel how cold they’ve gone, can feel the fine tremble of adrenaline working through them, and can’t quite choke down the noise of sympathy in his throat. He tugs on Steve’s hand.
“C’mere,” Eddie says, invites him by lifting his other arm, but leaves it up to Steve.
It only takes a moment for Steve to step in close, and when Eddie lets go of his hand to wrap his arms around Steve’s shoulders, Steve reciprocates by cinching his own arms tight around Eddie’s waist. He takes one sharp breath, and then another, and Eddie can hear the way they shake going in and out.
“There you go,” Eddie says quietly, rubbing Steve’s back.
“I just dropped it,” Steve says, his voice a little hoarse. “It was an accident.”
“I know it was,” Eddie assures him. “It’s okay.”
“It was an accident,” Steve says again, and Eddie wonders how often someone has believed him – how often he’d ever even been given a chance to explain.
“It was an accident,” Eddie agrees. “You’re okay, Steve.”
Steve lets out a little noise, like maybe he’s trying to laugh, but then he pulls in another shuddery breath and rests his chin on Eddie’s shoulder. “Okay.”
In a little bit, Eddie might lead Steve to sit down on the couch, or maybe just take them both up to bed, because fuck doing the dishes after this anyway; he’ll make sure to leave a note for Wayne about the mug (ask him not to bring it up until Steve does, to not even jokingly make a thing about it), but for now, he concentrates on holding Steve close.
He’ll stand with him as long as it takes for the shaking to stop, for his breathing to even out, for him to relax even just a little against Eddie, and he'll promise, as many times as Steve needs to hear it, that it’s okay. Things will be okay.
[Prompt: Embracing your partner]
#steddie#steve harrington#eddie munson#stranger things#eddiesteve#solar wrote#cw child abuse#referenced but does not take place in the fic#cw panic attack#even if it doesn't look like one at first#soft ending though as always I promise
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posting this with absolutely no context
#am i a cryptid now? i log on like once in a blue moon to post cringe and then leave again#ace attorney#apollo justice#tikki#random stuff#my stuff#ooookay okay okay okay. anyone reading the tags can have a LITTLE context‚ as a treat#so. sitting on my ao3 currently is an unfinished fic with exactly this premise#i want to finish it so bad. it haunts me every day. people leave such nice comments and everything#but i just have no motivation. trust me i've tried#i thought that perhaps drawing it might finally kick my brain back into gear#i'm so sorry readers i'm sorry i WILL finish it i promise it's not abandoned#it was so much fuuuuun#tikki are you seeing this. cringefail author who keeps playing video games instead of writing lmao#anyway goodbye friends i am gone again. logging off once more
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"What the fuck did you do?"
Eddie wasn't expecting hostility when he answered Jeff's phone call, his best friend's usual calm demeanor replaced with open annoyance. And yeah, okay, the annoyance itself wasn’t new, but Eddie doesn’t think he’s actually done anything recently to earn it.
"Well-"
"Actually, no. I'll tell you what you did. You retweeted photos of Steve Harrington - internationally beloved heartthrob actor Steve Harrington - along with the caption 'not to sound like a subby slut but GOD I would be his puppy baby boy in a heartbeat'. So I guess the better question is, what the fuck were you thinking, Eddie?"
Eddie's jaw clicks shut because- yeah, he had done that. Had seen those photos of Steve smoking circling the internet and spent god knows how long just staring at them, had curbed the desire to shove his hand down his pants by posting a single thirst tweet about it.
“I was thinking, Jeff, that I'm allowed to post whatever I want to my private fucking twitter, man. I mean it's a free country, isn't a guy allowed to make a horny tweet about a sexy man every now and then?”
“You are, when you actually post it to your private account and not our award winning band's main account.”
No. Oh no. There's no way Eddie actually-
He rips his phone away from his face to open twitter, and realizes two things simultaneously. One, Jeff is right, he had posted it to the band's account. Not on his private, locked, personal account, but on the account that's actually open and free for literally anyone on earth to look at.
The second thing he realizes is that their notifications are currently flooded with responses to Eddie's tweet, somehow racking up into the thousands in the few hours it's been since.
Jesus Christ.
“Eddie?”
The metalhead jerks back into the moment and put Jeff on speaker so he can scroll through the horde of replies, says “Fuck, I fucked up. Are we gonna have to do damage control on this?”
In the mess is a reply from Gareth's own personal account: @ corrodededdie stop tweeting from the band account challenge 🙄🙄🙄
”Maybe. There hasn't been any type of response from Harrington or his people, but they might ask us to take it down if it blows up too much.“
Eddie hums, thinking they might be too little, too late about it blowing up too much, and flips over to his main account so he can reply to Gareth's little jab appropriately. He isn't surprised to see that he has a couple of new messages, probably from other people wondering just what the fuck Eddie was thinking, but when he goes to check them-
He's never been happier that he turned on messages from followers only, because then he would have missed this, missed Steve Harrington's little profile picture beaming up at him from the screen of his phone, along with a new message request.
”Jeff, I gotta go,” he says, not even realizing he's cut the other man off.
“Eddie, what-
”Harrington messaged me. I'll call you back.“
Eddie doesn't wait for a response as he hangs up on Jeff, and his hands definitely aren't shaking as he opens the message from Steve. And listen- Eddie is a fan of the guy, that much should be obvious.
Steve had grown in popularity around the same time Corroded Coffin had; he’d gotten some part in a drama film that had skyrocketed him into stardom, and Eddie fell in love the moment he saw that gorgeous face on the silver screen for the first time. He's never had a chance to interact with the guy, has been in the same place a few times but always missed him, like ships passing in the night, but Eddie's been fine with pining from afar, just like every other person on the planet that's even remotely attracted to men.
Besides, even with how popular Corroded Coffin has gotten over the years - a couple of Grammy’s here, a dozen chart topping metal songs there - Eddie doesn’t expect Steve to just. Know who Eddie is.
With all of this in mind, Eddie is expecting some kind of semi-casual request to take the tweet down, that it's not a good look for his image-
Anything other than what Steve actually sent.
'If you're puppy baby boy, does that make me Master? Or Daddy?'
And Eddie-
Eddie slides down, sinks into his couch cushion as all of the blood in his body suddenly shifts, rushing to fill his dick like it's a fucking race. The phone almost slips out of his hand and he fumbles it briefly before taking a deep breath.
Is Steve serious? He wouldn't send that if he wasn't serious, right?
This could be it, could be Eddie's one chance to impress Steve, to get his foot in the door of Steve's interest. He bites his lip and types out a reply, something quick that he sends before he can change his mind.
‘I’m open to either, actually. Do you have a preference, sir?’
He doesn’t expect the typing indicator to come up immediately, and just knowing that Steve is somewhere right now, typing out a response to Eddie, is enough to have him nearly vibrating in his seat.
‘I’m partial to Daddy, myself.’
Fuck fuck fuck.
Eddie takes a breath, tries to think of a response that isn’t just ‘Please, Daddy, can I sit on your massive dick that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about since that one indie film you did that just had all of your junk out in the open?’
Steve saves him by sending another message.
‘But maybe we could start with Steve, and possibly dinner? Though I’d be happy to see where things go after that.’
He- What-
Eddie must have stopped breathing, because the next time he takes a breath his lungs burn, his mid races because there’s no way Eddie’s long term celebrity crush just asked him on a date. He sits there long enough that the screen goes dark and he scrambles to turn it back on, sees the message still there, real and unchanged.
There’s no way he can say no to this, to Steve, and his hands shake as he types out a response.
‘Dinner would be great. Just name the time and place, Daddy.’
#like everyone else those new pics of joe keery left me kind of#feral. horny. slutty.#so i channeled my feeling a bit#i miiiight do more of this but no promises#steddie#steddie fic#steve harrington#eddie munson#steve x eddie#rockstar eddie munson#actor steve harrington#joey writes#ficlet#fun fact: eddie's tweet was my actual real life message to my friends about those pics
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// Promises // Pt. 2
Eddie Munson x Reader
Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 3 // Part 4
Word Count ~ 2,998
Summary ~ After failing to bring his new acquaintance to the inaugural night of Hellfire's new campaign, Eddie crosses paths with her as he returns home; surprised to find he also has a new neighbor. He's pleased to find, with a little herbal remedy, she's more willing to relax and make conversation with him. Less pleased is he to find why she's so typically on edge in the first place.
Warnings ~ profanity; smoking, marijuana; implication of drinking; (blink and you'll miss it) negative self body image; implication of past abuse; abusive commentary from a parent; use of she/her pronouns
Notes ~ Reader/Main Character now has a hometown from a neighboring state! [Edited!] My medication-addled brain can sometimes overlook some editing errors. If it’s glaring, I don’t mind being notified, but if it’s passable, let it pass~ Reminder the time is adjusted to 1987 - enjoy!
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Requested tags: @eddieswifu @missfangirl-slightly-obsessive [To be added for future updates, shoot me an ask!]
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→
Under the flickering of a dying street lamp, Eddie crouched some dozen or more feet behind his trailer, prodding and scraping at the remnants of some failed culinary endeavor, mostly shrouded by the dark of the evening. It, once upon a time, had been something his uncle had left for him before heading out to work. He thought, anyway. Wayne had always looked out for him the best he knew how, but when it came to domesticity he left something to be desired.
"Rest in beans, for we hardly knew ye." He groaned sarcastically under his breath turning the saucepan over and letting the contents flop, unappetizingly, into a shallow culvert. He stumbled slightly in the dim light cast from the back door, cursing to himself silently for having promised he'd replace the burned out bulb on the porch. He would of course, that is… eventually.
Almost sure the burnt abomination had been properly banished to its swampy demise in the ditch, he turned to head back inside; just as the acrid stench of burnt food was replaced by the smell of something just as pungent but much more familiar. For a moment, he grumbled at the thought of having left his freshly rolled joint slowly burning, wasting, in the kitchen ashtray, but, no this wasn't wafting from the back door he'd left haphazardly askew. Eddie had been known to be careless from time to time, but certainly never wasteful, at least not when it came to letting his own things go, literally, up in smoke.
Placing the ruined pan on the rickety boards of the back landing, he scanned the hazily lit roads and side yards that wound between the motley assemblage of the trailer park. His nose twitching a bit, his eyes came to rest on the dull glow of a lighted window, in a home he'd been sure that up to… maybe two or three days ago had been dark. From it spilled light enough to illuminate a vaguely familiar silhouette; at least it should be, having just become acquainted with it hours before.
"That you, Sweet Red?" He called, loud enough for her to hear, but hopefully not to disturb the neighbors. Ah, but what did he care? There wasn't a person in this place who hadn't become familiar with his shenanigans, save perhaps the newcomers. Licking his lips a bit, he felt a little awkward calling out to her by no name more than the thing that first introduced them: her sweet shade of red pencil. A real charmer.
Leaning against the back bumper of a beater with rusted out siding was the slumped and diminished form of the new girl Dustin had pointed him toward earlier in the day. She sighed, nearly exasperated, while exhaling a slow stream of white smoke. Pretending for a moment not to hear him, her eyes watched him all the while he approached; placing an animated hand over his eyes, as if it could at all help him see better.
"So, you really do live here in our little slice of heaven, huh?" He rocked back on his heels, close enough now she could see the broad and genial grin on his face in the milky light of the window.
Scoffing slightly, she took another long drag off the joint pinched between her fingers, gazing hard into the sky and blowing a small, deliberate cloud between them. Eddie only returned her mock amused look and took a deep breath amid her smoke, like he was taking in the smell of fresh roses on a summer breeze.
"What, you think I’d lie about something like that? Looking to impress you?" She spoke finally, her voice a bit hoarse; besides, she knew he didn't mean it, not in any way that mattered. "Not much to brag about is it? Living in a place like this?"
"Oh, and sour, I see." He chuckled, sidling up next to her and resting his elbows on the trunk of the car. Her eyes fell on him again, and she couldn't help but half-heartedly return his infectious smirk. "Don't worry I'll be careful not to scratch the paint job." Spreading his fingers wide he rapped his heavily ringed knuckles against a particularly rusted portion of metal, producing a dull, monotone melody to fill the growing silence between them.
"Quite the lair you have." She spoke again, after a long while, turning her gaze in the direction Eddie had come from; not entirely sure which trailer he'd come out of, but they all looked the same in the dark.
"You know," Pausing to take yet another drag, she coughed a bit, halfway toward a laugh as a playfully mocking tone rose in her throat. "...for a Master and all. The Dungeon Master."
"Well the thing is, this is all just temporary, y'see?" Eddie smirked slightly, though his tone conveyed all seriousness, at least as much as his Munson charm could manage. "Yeah, my uh, Fortress is under renovation right now. My Fortress of, uh, you know, Solitude. Should only be a little while longer, and I'll be back on my throne, deep in my l-l-lair. " He threw up his fingers into a pair of teasing air quotes.
"Heh, s‘that so?" She couldn't suppress a laugh at the way he wore sarcasm like a well-tailored suit; and oh, how well it fit him.
“I was hopin’ to see you there tonight, y’know? I think Henderson was, too, but hard to tell with him sometimes.”
“H-Henderson?” She cocked an eyebrow at him, hardly knowing anyone in this new place by name.
“Ohh, right, right, you didn’t get a chance to meet the guys yet. Y’might see him on my heels sometime, ah, kinda’ short, dorky lil’ shrimp of a kid, curly mop top, insufferably nerdy. Too smart for his own good and boy will he never let you forget that… infectious little smile, though, give the little shit that much.” Eddie clutched his fist dramatically as if he'd been robbed of some rightful achievement. "He, uh, spotted you first."
“Hmh, sound kinda’ fond of the kid, if I didn’t know better.”
“I mean, yeah, but I’m fond of all my lil’ lost sheepies. Y’know, in their own special way.”
“Sh-sheepies?” She chuckled, not even sure if she was amused, shaking her head a bit. “The hell?”
Eddie scuffed the toe of his shoe against the gravel between them, looking a bit awkward at having to explain himself. It was a patronizing little pet name, to be sure, but no one had ever really questioned him on it before - to those he’d reached out to it just made sense.
“Yeah, you know, those who don’t really fit in anywhere, separated from the flock, or maybe never had one to begin with? When you don’t shape yourself how society says you should, you get squeezed out, gets lonely. I guess I just like lettin’ people know that being themselves ain’t a crime, and there’s a seat for you at the table, I dunno’...”
“No, no, I… I get it.” She said softly, nodding. The sense of calm brought on by the joint she’d been nursing really seemed to open her up a bit more than she’d been earlier in the day. “The opposite of courage isn’t cowardice, it’s conformity.”
Eddie jumped slightly on the spot and clapped his hands once in, what appeared to be, excitement. “See? You do get it, you really get it! Damn, that’s poetic, you wanna’ help me write a campaign?”
“Heh, I got it from some book of my dad’s I found layin’ around in a box years ago, it just really stuck with me is all. Besides, I still haven’t decided if I’m into your little… club, or whatever.”
"You should really co-o-ome," He echoed their earlier conversation, "visit my lair and all. Have fun, make friends, and torment tiny adventurers in a labyrinth of irony and plo-o-ot twists."
"Need ogres to man your dungeons so badly?" Her tired eyes glanced down at herself, without so much as a hint of hiding what she meant.
"Hmm, all full on ogres I think - too demanding, and they keep wrecking the plumbing, you know how they are." He faux pouted for a moment, skirting around her feeble attempt at self-deprecation. Not on his watch.
Drawing himself up to his full height he eyed down at her with a grin, standing nearly two full heads above her. "How about a halfling to fetch my ale and tend my… uh, tomes and such?" Smooth.
"Will quest for food." She chuckled without missing a beat.
Eddie let his head fall back as he laughed, feeling as though the tension between them had finally begun to break. Shaking his mop of loose waves he caught another whiff of the ribbon of smoke swirling from her fingers.
"A toke for the needy, m'lady?" He put on an exaggerated frown and a ridiculous peasant accent to go with it; cupping his hands between them as if he genuinely expected her to oblige.
"Nah, this is about the last of my stash from home!" She hissed softly, carefully extinguishing the joint, and tucking it safely into a small, silver cigarette case she produced from her back pocket.
"Classy. Knew it didn't smell familiar, it sure isn't my stuff, anyway. Besides, I can get you more if you need it, but..." He raised a finger with a saccharine grin. "Only Sweet Girls get a discount."
"Thought I was sour, now." She crossed her arms, looking as though she were trying to protect herself from something; Eddie perked an eyebrow, as it certainly didn't escape his notice.
"Ah, I’m beginning to think you're like one a'those Sour Patch Kids. You know? First one, then the other?" Smiling softly he returned her cross-armed gesture. "Fortunately, I like both."
Her eyes grazed him up and down for a moment; his expression oozing with confidence she wasn't used to men like him wearing - then again, she wasn't used to men like Eddie Munson.
Averting her eyes for a few painfully long moments, she avoided his charming gaze. There was always something waiting behind a smile like that, at least in her experience; something waiting to take advantage of, or make a mockery of her. The least she could do for herself in this forced fresh start would be to never get swept up like a fool again.
"No, no, I get it." He spoke, cutting through the stiff silence like a knife. "It's special, y'know, a little bit of home and all. So, uh, where is 'home', if a displaced Dungeon Master may be so bold as to ask?"
Relaxing her shoulders a bit, her eyes traveled back to him and he nodded reassuringly. He'd noticed her apprehension and though he still wanted to offer a hand of friendship, he respected the time she'd need to open up, or tried to, at least.
"No place you ever heard of." She muttered toward him, fishing in her pocket for a pack of Tic Tacs to cover the smell of stale smoke on her breath. This time, without hesitation, she shook the pack in his direction with an offer to share.
"Ohh!" He placed his cupped hands out again and readily accepted as she shook a few out for him, grinning comically like a goblin at his hoard.
She couldn't help but laugh as he chuckled, making exaggerated lip smacking sounds as he poured the mints into his mouth. Good lord, he hoped his pathetic attempts to get this poor girl to relax were working; he hadn't felt like this much of a ridiculous ass in so long.
"Now, even as a three-peater, geography never tripped me up that badly. Y’know, you got your six cardinal directions, fifty-two states, but…" He paused his antics to roll the Tic Tacs around with his tongue. "You're gonna' have to be a lil' more specific than that for me, I'm afraid."
"Kentucky." She said with a bit of a dejected tone; Eddie couldn’t figure if it was just a bit of homesickness, or she expected him to make fun of where she came from. Instead, he only leaned back, lounging lazily against the back of the car again, and turning his eyes toward the sky.
"Ahh, yes, Kentucky. Home of the, uh… colonel…" Puffing out his chest he spoke of a place he'd never been as though it were both familiar and mystical, though it was clearly neither. "The Colonel and his mighty army of Fried Chickens !"
Ah, she'd expected that one, too but with his shameless delivery she laughed, truly this time; a warm laugh that resonated in her chest, clear and genuine, that brought a smile of relief to Eddie's face.
"Y-yeah?" He sputtered incredulously, surprised she'd found that amusing, much less laughed.
"Is, heh, is that all you know about it?" Her voice was more even, less guarded now. "I'm not surprised."
"Well, yeah… until now." He righted his posture, keeping a respectful distance between them as he rested his hands in his pockets and gave her the best smile he could muster to match her warm, candid laugh. "Now, I know you."
There was another silence between them, though this time it was tinged with the comfort of familiarity, rather than the pang of awkwardness. There was some, as of yet, unknown camaraderie between the two of them, some understanding that only those who'd experienced it could see behind the eyes of another. Maybe he'd just been imagining it, wanting to see it, like he wanted to see the comfort and relief in the eyes of every lonely soul he tried to reach out to. Still, he'd like to think not, maybe it was different this time. He wasn’t sure if she felt the same budding familiarity between the two of them, but he could only hope.
There was no way to tell if he'd successfully opened the door of friendship or not, but he'd certainly been knocking until his knuckles were raw. He was at least able to release a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding when she finally smiled softly and nodded. If the door wasn't open yet, he could hope it was at least unlocked; it was a start.
"Yeah, Dungeon Master, I suppose you do." The tension in her voice had faded to a comfortable warmth and he grinned without realizing. With an exaggerated flourish of his hand, Eddie bowed so deeply his hair nearly brushed the ground.
"Now, now, enough with the formalities m'lady. Merely 'master' will suffice."
Suddenly she reached up to cover her mouth, and he half expected her to feign some sort of retching at the audacity of his display. His smile only widened as he realized she was suppressing a laugh, her arms shaking slightly at the effort - as if she couldn't give him the satisfaction of knowing she'd finally succumbed to his humor.
"Wha-a-at? That? C'mon, I only just… wait what was that?" He stepped a bit closer and cocked his head to one side as she muffled a small sound behind her hand, and he giggled with delight.
"Did you just? Little snorties? Oh nooo, my heart, little piggy laughs!" He clutched his chest dramatically, swooning as though her embarrassed laughter was all it took to pierce his heart.
"N-No, stop it!" She wheezed, waving her free hand at him. "It's terrible!"
As if on cue, the door to her trailer snapped open with an unflattering clatter. Out stepped the silhouetted form of a staggering woman who, had she not been clinging to the door frame, surely would have tumbled face-first onto the gravel drive below. Eddie jumped slightly, turning toward the noise as he saw all sense of life and joy drain from the girl beside him.
"You makin' all that goddamn noise out here?" The woman's raspy voice echoed into the night, before taking a long drag off the cigarette resting between her fingers. "I'm lockin' this door in ten seconds, and yer ass ain't in here it's sleepin' on the porch."
Before Eddie could ask or say another thing, he looked back on her suddenly deflated form which, moments ago, lit up the dull night; all vibrancy and life in her extinguished like a wet match.
"Gotta' go." She muttered, trying to duck past him and make her way inside.
"W-Wait a sec!" Hands faster than his brain, Eddie leapt forward a bit and grabbed gently at her arm. He immediately regretted it as he felt her body stiffen and jolt at the sudden contact, knowing he'd made a mistake. Quickly he let go, hands raised in clear view, in hopes of letting her know he'd had no ill intent.
"Was…" She began roughly, stopping herself to briefly soften her tone. Perhaps it wasn't him she was annoyed with after all. "Was there something you wanted from me, Eddie?"
"Listen, I just… you seemed, a-and I wanted…" He began several times, but nothing seemed to come out just right. The sudden tension turned his tongue sideways in his head and he sighed deeply, trying to gather his thoughts.
Waiting a moment, she turned and headed toward the front door, with intent that told him right away that the half-lit woman's threats weren't merely idle. She'd acted on them before, and would again.
"Look after yourself, little lamb. These don't have to be the worst years of your life…"
He wasn't sure, but he liked to think she'd heard him before the sharp slamming of the front door behind her left him standing, alone again, in the chilly night.
Huffing, he puffed his cheeks and sauntered back toward home. Wondering if he'd made a friend or closed a door forever, he kicked at the loose gravel on the main drive; snickering sardonically as one skipped a few times and collided with the weathered "Forest Hills" sign just off the path.
"Welcome to paradise…"
#eddie munson#eddie munson fanfic#eddie munson x reader#eddie munson x plus size reader#eddie munson x female reader#stranger things#stranger things fanfic#promises#promises fic#WHEW I'm excited to be working on this one OH MAN#I can't promise such a consistent posting schedule with my disability#BUT I WILL TRY#PLEASE ENJOY!!
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It’s the fourth time this week Eddie’s been late without a phone call.
Sure, his job has him working weird hours - Steve gets it. But he also knows his schedule and he knows the days Eddie works at the bar til close and he knows the days he’s supposed to be home before dark, and he hasn’t had a closing shift once this week.
Yet he came home near ten tonight, and Steve had been worried and nervous and yes, sure, a little - a lot - insecure about it, and maybe he’d lashed out first, or maybe Eddie had, Steve doesn’t know, but he knows they’re standing in the living room shouting at one another and it’s all coming to a head and he can’t stop himself, can’t keep from getting loud and angry and–
"Do you even want to fucking be here?" he yells.
"Not when you're acting like this!" Eddie says, and Steve's throat goes tight like there's a fist wrapped around it.
Not when he's acting like this, he thinks. Not when he's being too needy. Too pushy. Too demanding.
Something in his brain feels like it rewires. Their relationship flips on its head, and suddenly fear is coiling in Steve's stomach, not anger.
He'll lose Eddie if he keeps pushing like this. If he demands too much of his time, pulls him away from what he'd rather be doing, makes himself too much work, he'll lose him. Eddie always said he wasn't going anywhere. That he loves Steve, wants to be with him, will never get tired of him. Steve was a fucking idiot to take that at face value.
He feels sick to his stomach. He wants to apologize, wants to tell Eddie to forget all about what he said, wants to show how sorry he is, but between one moment and the next he's feeling like a guest in his own home, and he's very familiar with how it feels to be unwelcome.
So instead he shakes his head. Eddie wants to be left alone, probably. Doesn't want to see Steve when he's mad at him. Doesn't want to deal with him. He'll make himself scarce.
"I'm staying in the guest room tonight," he says stiffly, and turns away, only faltering a little when Eddie mumbles 'what the fuck ever' behind him. He flinches when Eddie slams the front door and closes the spare room so quietly it barely even clicks.
–
Eddie gets home late.
Like, late-late. Steve hears the front door open as he's staring at the clock on the bedside table, the bright red numbers burning into his vision. Why did they even put a fucking clock in here, he thinks. It's the guest room. Why did he insist on furnishing this room like someone might live in it? Like this was a home people would be in and out of, like their family would come and stay with them long enough to need an alarm clock on the bedside table?
Desperate, a voice in his head hisses at him, desperate and needy and full of wishful thinking that someone would want to stay around sad little Steve Harrington long enough to need anything--
Eddie's coming down the hallway. He's trying to be quiet, but he forgot to take his shoes off at the door and his Reeboks squeak a little against the hardwood. It's a familiar sound. Comforting, usually. It's how he knows his honey's made it home safe when he's out late, that tell-tale squeak and the little stumbles when he's tipsy and making his way through their home after a long gig.
There was no gig tonight, though, and Eddie's footsteps are steady and even despite the soft sound of rubber on wood. He isn't drunk, Steve doesn't think - and is that better or worse? That he left after a fight and didn't even go somewhere to drink it off. Where has he been, if not their usual bar to think about what they'd spat at one another, trying to think of solutions, of apologies?
And is Steve really owed an apology? He was overbearing. He was pushy. He was demanding and authoritative and too fucking much all over again, and Eddie lashed out in response, and does Steve deserve an apology after all that? He's been going around in circles with himself all evening about it, arguing in his own head, saying yes I deserve one because my feelings were hurt and no I don't deserve one because I lashed out first and how does he answer this for himself? He doesn't know.
He knows he'd do just about anything to make the empty feeling in his chest go away, though. Knows that he'd shove his hurt away and eat his words and apologize to Eddie and never, ever push again if it meant he knew where they stood. If it meant Eddie would forgive him and never storm out like that again, if it meant Steve knew he wouldn't be left alone like this to wonder if Eddie was coming back.
And he feels so dramatic - he can hear Robin's voice already, telling him it was just a fight, that there's no reason to get this worked up about it, but Steve can't help it. Slammed doors and loneliness are the soundtrack to his childhood and he can't help the panic he feels when someone he loves leaves.
"Do you want to be here?" he'd asked, like a fucking idiot, and Eddie hadn't said yes. Steve swallows around the lump that's taken up permanent residence in his throat. Reaches to swipe a hand over his face, rubbed raw, eyes burning with tears he won't let fall because what right does he have to cry? He brought this on himself. He always brings it on himself.
Eddie's feet are still squeaking their way slowly down the hallway, he's trying not to wake Steve - or is he just trying not to be noticed? Impossible, if Eddie Munson is in a room Steve is going to notice, how can he not? He's been yanked into that gravitational pull and there's no escape for him, not anymore, he's a moon circling around the solar system and Eddie is the sun, burning bright and pulling focus and what is Steve to do in the face of that?
He keeps his eyes fixed on the clock. Watches the display change when a minute's passed. Feels his heartbeat stutter when Eddie's shuffling, squeaking steps pause outside the guest room.
They keep a hall light on at night. It's on a dimmer, turned down way low, but neither of them do well with complete darkness. Too many nightmares, too many shadows haunting and hunting the both of them. Steve can see the muted glow of it from beneath the door.
He can also see when Eddie comes to a stop because his feet block that light. Two shadows in the doorframe, obscuring the soft haze of warm orange that creeps in a half-moon over the carpet, and Steve stops breathing. There's a soft shifting noise, fabric over wood, a gentle thunk when Eddie leans against the guest room door, and Steve almost calls out to him. Almost says I'm sorry, I didn't mean it, please don't leave again, please don't leave me, but the words stick in his throat. Ball's in Eddie's court, as it should be when Steve fucked up so bad, when he tried to ruin it all, when he made Eddie so mad that he left when he promised Steve he would never do that. Eddie's a good man. Keeps his word. Steve's the problem, Steve is always the goddamn problem, always will be, ruins and stains everything he fucking touches–
The shadow disappears. Steve squeezes his eyes shut so tight he sees lights popping behind his lids. Those shuffling squeaking steps continue their way down the hall. Steve feels like he's going to throw up but he didn't have dinner so there's nothing in his belly but bile and nothing comes up even though his throat is tight and his stomach is fucking rolling.
The bedroom door - their bedroom door - creaks on its hinges. Steve keeps meaning to put some WD-40 on it but he kind of likes that it makes a noise, that when he's asleep it's just loud enough to wake him halfway and tell him to anticipate the warm wash of tobacco and sandalwood that will cloud him when Eddie slips beneath the covers. Lets him know he's about to be grabbed and groped a little bit, sweet little kisses pressed to his shoulder and neck and jawline until he's got a face tucked into the curve of his throat, until he's giving a sleepy smile and winding his arms around a trim waist and dragging Eddie in close, sputtering and laughing tiredly as wild hair gets in his face and mouth before he falls asleep again, wrapped tight around the love of his life.
None of that tonight, apparently - and he doesn't blame him. No, he hears the bedroom door creak and it feels like a punishment that he deserves and his eyes burn and burn and burn and his face is wet now, he can't help it, and he wipes at it again angrily, takes the soft blanket to his face and why is it so soft why does Steve try so hard when he knows he won't get anything back why does he try to build a home when he's never had one and never will and is going to lose the one he's clawed onto so desperately and tried so hard to keep–
The door creaks again. Steve takes a stuttering breath. Eddie's steps are soft now as they come down the hallway, bare feet on the floor, almost silent as he creeps his way closer. Steve clenches his teeth so hard his jaw aches, anything to hold back the sounds he wants to make - he can't let Eddie hear him. He can't let Eddie know he's crying. That's manipulative, isn't it? Crying in front of the person he hurt? He won't do it, won't be that selfish, but that shadow appears at the base of the door again. Steve can't help the shaky inhale he takes, and it sounds so fucking loud in the quiet of the guest room, choked and echoing.
"Baby?" Eddie says, voice low and quiet, rapping so gently against the door with one knuckle. "You in there, Stevie?"
Just the sound of him is enough to send his heart crashing around in his ribcage, fluttering and jumping and making Steve tense. He wants to answer but he can’t get the words to form, his throat feels sealed shut, and he wonders if he should answer even if he were able because what could Eddie possibly have to say right now? It can’t be anything good and Steve doesn’t know if he can take it right now, in this room that makes him feel like a guest in his own home - but isn’t he always a guest? Isn’t that what he’s made to be, a temporary stop in everyone else’s story?
But he’s not ready for Eddie to move past him yet. Not tonight. Let it happen in the morning if it has to happen, let him put this off just a little longer. Just please, not tonight. Not yet.
But Eddie’s never been known for his patience, and the click of the latch has Steve slamming his eyes closed. Too late to roll over and hide his face, but he’s got enough time to duck down and tuck most of his features into a pillow. He tries to let his body relax, to let the tense lines of his muscles uncoil and his shoulders drop and his fists unclench, but he can’t tell if he’s managed it and the ache in his palms from his blunt nails tells him maybe he did, but it won’t help much.
Eddie makes his way across the carpet in silent steps, and the mattress dips with his weight as he sits on the edge of it. Steve’s fingers twitch to reach for him, but he just curls them into the sheets instead and hopes the motion looks absent enough to have happened in his sleep.
He smells sandalwood and tobacco and feels the warmth from Eddie being so near but it feels like there’s a wall between them, one he can’t cross even if he tries, one he’s barred from so much as touching.
He works hard to keep his breathing even but it’s hitching now and then despite his best efforts, shaky and too loud in the silent room, but he keeps up the charade even though the end of it all is perched right in front of him. And it’s Eddie who puts an end to it. It was always Eddie who was going to put an end to it.
“I know you’re awake,” he says, and Steve squeezes his eyes tighter like that’ll make it untrue, like he can just drift off in a second if he wills it hard enough. Eddie shifts on the mattress, and Steve curls tighter into himself. “Let’s just hash this out, huh? Get it over with.” Steve bites his tongue so hard he thinks he might taste blood. It’s that simple for Eddie - but it’s always simple, isn’t it? Cut and dry, plain as day, Steve is the only one who can never see it coming, it’s written on the goddamn walls for everyone else.
He risks peeking through his lashes but Eddie’s got his back to him so it doesn’t even matter, not really. Eddie isn’t looking at him and so Steve allows himself to look, takes in the hunch of Eddie’s shoulders, the curve of his spine beneath his thin pajama shirt - he’d changed, when he’d made his way through their creaky bedroom door, took off his clothes and put his pajamas on and kicked off those tennis shoes, they’re probably in a pile at the foot of the bed for Steve to trip over and he will miss tripping over them, he’ll miss it terribly.
He wonders if he’ll need to move. If he’ll have to find a new place and separate out all of their things into his things, if SteveAndEddie’sStuff will become Steve’s stuff and Eddie’s stuff. Or maybe he’ll just start staying in this guest room, maybe that’s why he furnished this room so completely, because somehow he knew he’d end up alone in it.
“I’m sorry,” Eddie says, and Steve inhales sharply.
“Don’t,” he says, and somehow he keeps his voice steady.
“So you are awake,” Eddie says, and he tries to sound teasing, sound playful, but it drops like a stone in this space between them. No room for levity in the dark cloud Steve’s filled this room with. He wishes he could be easygoing and let go gently, but it’s Eddie - in what world could he take losing him graciously?
“Yeah,” he says, and he stares at Eddie’s back as the other raises his head, but he still doesn’t turn to look at Steve, and he wishes he could at least look him in the face when he rips his heart out of his chest.
part 2
#steddie#steve/eddie#stevexeddie#eddie/steve#eddiexsteve#steddie fic#my fic#listen i was in the mood for steve whump and i won't apologize for it#don't worry there's plenty of eddie whump coming in part 2 i promise
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I cannot emphasize this enough: sometimes the draft sucks because you keep looking at it. It doesn’t actually suck. You just need to post it and stop beating yourself up.
#fic#fanfic#fanfiction#writing#writing things#ao3#archive of our own#I promise bestie#it’s the same energy as#‘do my friends all hate me or do I just need to go to sleep’#seriously all the cool moments and scenes you write will never be as cool to you since you’ve read them 109 times#but the readers will be seeing them for the first time!
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sweet child o' mine | pt. i
purely just some fun and games putting big grumpy joel miller slap bang in the middle of a romcom. i hope you guys enjoy. dedicated to big sis @mrsmando, who is the light of my life, let herself be completely swept away by this idea into unhinged, whimsical mania with me, and who inspired so many lil details for this story. love u, zhort x
pairing: neighbor!joel x fem!reader
summary: you strike up a deal to attend a wedding with your neighbor as his date. what could go wrong?
warnings: age gap (late 20s reader, late 40s joel), grumpy!joel initially finds reader mildly infuriating, cursing, alcohol consumption, discussion of a car accident (non-graphic) & dead parents, softdom!joel as per, fingering, handjob, comeplay, spitting, drunk unprotected one night stand, creampie, praise kink, one mention of nausea (but nothing happens, my little emetophobic angels), someone falls pregnant and it's not joel miller i'll tell you that much. honk if you love cats!!!
word count: 9.8k
series masterlist | main masterlist | playlist | follow @macfroglets w notifs on to be the first to hear when i post 🩵
It’s just gone seven on a Saturday night when his knuckles rap on your door.
The sun casts tall, angled shapes on your living room wall. Lights the pages before you in a glow of tangerine. Refracts through the glass tumbler on your coffee table and bleeds the amber liquid onto the pale wood surface. Everything lit in some variation of gold, everything bowing its head quietly as the day begins to turn its back.
The house is still. The world feels still, as though transitioning. Like you’re sat in a waiting room, leg bouncing, anticipating something you don’t know to look for yet.
Perfect, comfortable, still – until he’s on your porch. And he knocks again.
You snap your book shut and slide it across the table, nudging the heavy glass. The ice clinks, irritated.
“You mind fastenin’ your…delicates to your clothesline a little better?”
His voice shoulders its way into your hallway before you’ve even pulled the door back enough to see him. Not that you need to see him to know who it is. You’ve lived in Austin three years now and met only one person with a voice as low and toneless as Joel Miller’s. Slung in sarcasm, dripping with disdain. All that.
You cross your arms and slant against the doorframe, unable to mask your amusement. “Excuse me?”
He answers by lifting his left hand. From his pointer finger hang a tiny pair of white panties, lace pattern fluttering in the late summer breeze. You glance over his shoulder as you steal them from his grasp, balling them in your fist.
“Uhuh. They were sitting on my back lawn. I have company tonight, y’know. I can’t have women’s underwear just – lyin’ in my damn yard.”
Your head tilts. Ears prick. “Company? You hostin’ somethin’?”
His shoulders drop with a sigh. “No. I am not hostin’ anythin’.”
“Good. ‘cause I’d want an invite.”
“If I were hostin’, you’d be the last person I would invite. And you know that.”
“Ouch,” you pout, “that hurts, Miller. I watered your plants while you were off visiting your brother last month. They woulda died without me there.”
“And I am grateful to you,” Joel grumbles, “but that doesn’t mean I need those anywhere in view of my kitchen window.” He throws a pointed finger to your elbow, where your panties sit scrunched in your fist.
You look down to the froth of frill spilling between your knuckles, and back up to his dark features – his glower casting a shadow over the hazel eyes and deepening the creases between his brows. You smirk, a realization dawning.
Company – that he doesn’t want seeing a pair of someone else’s underwear.
“You have a date.”
Joel’s tongue flicks across the inside of his cheek. He glances over his shoulder and speaks through his teeth. “No, not a date,” he quietly tells the street.
“But you have a lady comin’ over. Or at least – someone you don’t want seeing these.” You unfold your arms and twirl your fist. The gentle wind lifts the lace.
He grunts. A low hmph. Agreement, you think.
“Sounds like a date.”
He hisses, “’s not a date.”
Your stare doesn’t slip from his. Not when his brows tighten, not when his jaw does, too. Not even when he sucks a breath between gritted teeth. Your smile widens.
Finally, with a sigh, he concedes. “It’s…it’s somebody Tommy ‘n Maria are tryna set me up with. Alright?”
“So – a date.”
“If you don’t –” Joel’s head flicks over to his own driveway at the same time his hand lifts, a pointed gesture you read as – shut the fuck up. “We’re just having a few drinks. Just – hangin’ out.”
“Just hangin’ out,” you repeat, eyes widening. “One-on-one. With some woman who – Wait, Tommy’s in Wyoming. How the hell do he and his wife know someone way the hell down here?”
“From before they moved. And – Maria ain’t his wife. Yet. They’re getting married next month.”
Suddenly the sun reappears over the dark horizon. The evening begins to clear up, make sense again. You lift your chin, nodding.
“Right, right. So, she gonna be your plus one, or…?”
The understanding raises his heckles again. Exasperated, he asks, “How many damn questions are you gonna –? I’m only here to – to return your –” He nods once more to the pale fabric in your hand.
A laugh shoots from your nostrils. “What’s the matter? You don’t like – whatever her name is?”
“Laura.”
“Laura,” you breathe.
“And there ain’t nothin’ wrong with her. She just – she…”
“She…?”
“She has, like, five cats, and it’s just…hair, everywhere. And at their engagement party, she spilled an entire margarita down me. Right down my –” He sweeps a hand down his front, balling his fists again once they reach the hem of his shirt.
Your lips turn, amused. “Five cats. Cat lady Laura. Well. Have fun, I guess. Thanks for these.”
He acknowledges your raised fist with a bashful glance. He’s already halfway down your front steps when he says, “Keep an eye on your laundry from now on,” and strides off back to his own place.
Joel has lived here his whole life. In Austin. You’ve no idea when he moved in next door, just that he was here when you did. You don’t know much about him at all – the fact he even filled you in enough to tell you about his date is shocking enough.
The day you first arrived, U-Haul truck squealing to a halt by the curb, he found himself unlucky enough to be stood in his front yard watering the blond patches of his grass. He saw you struggling to open the rear door of the truck, and with a grumble and a glance across the street for a more eager rescuer, he tossed his hose and came over to help.
He unclicked the heavy latch and pushed the door up with enough ease to put you to shame. And he seemed to feel some obligation when he saw the mass of belongings stuffed in the back, to help you unload them. Didn’t seem overjoyed by the thought, mind you, what with the sigh he let slip when you hopped up and held out the first box.
He indulged you for no more than one hour. Answered every question you had about the neighborhood, dodged every one about himself. He told you about the couple across the street with the newborn baby, told you about your neighbor on the other side who pretends to garden just so she can snoop on everyone else’s business. And as soon as the last box thudded down on your gleaming living room floor, he nodded, and paced back over to his own property.
He's a good guy. You know this much. He’s a dick to you most days, but he’s honest, and he’s kind when you catch him in the right light. He takes deliveries for you when you’re not home; he once drove Diane to the vets when she showed up on his doorstep in the dead of night, Fred the Jack Russell ailing in her arms.
He’s observant. Noticed just this summer the three different plumbers who showed up to your house in the space of two days, and came over as the third guy was leaving – his shining bald head low between his shoulders.
‘s the matter? Joel asked, watching the navy overalls sink into the rusted vehicle.
Kitchen sink’s leakin’. Fuckin’ – nobody can fix it.
He shouldered you out of the way with his then-trademark sigh and left twenty minutes later, your kitchen finally free of the dripdripdrip you’d been plagued with for a week straight.
He’s good. He’s a good neighbor. But, man, is he private.
You’ve never seen the inside of his place. His body blocks it anytime you’re on his doorstep. He has a brother, you know that – though, only since last month, when he asked you to keep an eye on his garden – and you know, now, that the brother is getting married.
You know that he likes country music, know he plays guitar – accidentally. You heard him one day in the spring, when he left his window open and you were lounging by your pool. When he looked out and noticed how you’d angled your sunbed to listen, really listen, he slammed it shut.
You know he’s single and childless and has been for at least the three years you’ve lived next door to him.
You know little fucking else.
The words on the curled pages seep into one another. You’re staring through the book now back in your hands, the shape of your living room blurring around you: the brick fireplace, the still, red light of the TV. The lulling sway of the sheer curtains, pushed like the tides by the air through the open window.
You cross your ankles on the coffee table. Your lips purse. Tongue dabs at the smoky-sweet singe of whiskey on the flesh of your cheeks. From here, you can see the street outside Joel’s house. If – when – Laura pulls up, you’ll know. And you’ll be here to watch. Survey. Observe.
See what kind of woman a guy like Joel Miller takes to his brother’s wedding.
It’s nine fifty-two when she eventually leaves.
She’s been in there two hours and seventeen minutes. Her car – a kind of rotten green Chevrolet with one tail light out – sits patiently out front, like even it can’t wait to help her fucking disappear.
You’re hoisting a swollen black bag down your drive when his porch light flickers on and his front door opens. The glossy plastic exhales as it slumps against the trashcan. You dust your hands. Joel hasn’t noticed you yet.
“…so nice gettin’ to properly know you,” Laura’s crooning, sidestepping as Joel walks calmly down to her car. Ushering her. You hold back a laugh.
“Thanks for comin’,” he says, his voice falling flat in the windless evening. He’s a step ahead of her, like a parent leading their child away from the park. She’s still babbling about his six-string.
“Maybe next time I can hear a little somethin’…” she says, and you know from the way he halts that Joel hears the same questioning tone you do, the way somethin’ curls up at its end.
“Maybe,” he says, curtly. His words curl down. And then nothing else, and Laura – who, now that she’s a little closer, stood on the curb by her car door, you notice has sweeping golden hair which flicks away from her plump cheeks, and bright eyes which dazzle in the dusky glow – is forced to cough up one last chance.
“I gave you my number,” she says, then, “I didn’t get yours?” and this time, it’s definitely a question.
Joel pretends to pat down his pockets. “I musta left my phone in the house.”
You can’t help it. A scoff bursts from your lips. But he still doesn’t look over.
“Well,” Laura tugs on the handle, “thank you for a lovely evenin’. I’ll hear from ya.”
Joel smiles but puts a hand on the door, like he might slam it shut for her if she tried to backtrack. But she doesn’t. She swings both legs in, pulls it closed, and the engine spurts to life.
As she pulls off, Chevrolet jolting a little, you notice the bright yellow bumper sticker plastered squint beneath the license plate. You walk silently over to Joel, grass prickly under your socks.
“Honk If You Love…Cats,” you murmur, shoulder brushing off his bicep.
He sniffs. Tightens the grip his arms have on his chest. His eyes are fixed on the one red light, slowly shrinking into the distance. “Don’t even.”
“Good date?”
“I said don’t.”
“She talk much about her cats?”
“Goodnight.”
“Did you ask their names, at least?”
He’s backing up, crossing the dark lawn towards his front steps. He looks you up and down, his lips a flat line. Your sweat shorts. Your bare legs. The tight vest top molded around your breasts. His eyes shoot back up. “No more questions. No more pesterin’ me.”
“Nothin’ about the cats? Seriously, dude?” You lift your arms, grinning after his dark figure, swaggering up the porch steps.
Joel ignores you. He disappears through his front door and the light is snuffed. You slink back up to your house, grateful for the blanket of darkness covering the skip in your step.
Eleven hours later, you’re stood in front of your bedroom mirror.
The day melts against your window. Brilliant blue sky, cradling soft puffs of snow-white clouds. Crows on Diane’s roof cawing, slowly yellowing trees rustling. The bright, hot square across your front where the sun forces her way in.
You turn, taking the loose hem of your sleepshirt in your fingers, and pull it over your body, tossing it to the foot of the bed as you examine the pattern of colors hanging from inside your closet.
You take them one by one, tug them free, slot them back in. Eventually you settle for a gray hoodie, cropped and loose. As you haul it from its hanger, there’s a whine from the wooden cabinet. A squeal. The top shelf rips from either side, dropping to the closet floor and taking the pole with it.
“What the f–? You gotta be fucking kidding me,” you growl, stepping forward to run your fingers along the splintered wood where the nails have ripped themselves free. Four black holes, jagged insides of the closet pricking your fingertips.
The crumple of clothes and hangers sulks up at you pathetically. You fall back onto your bed with a sigh, staring up at the ceiling. The fan whirs slowly, scooping your gaze and throwing it in lazy circles.
The closet was old, anyways. Was here when you moved. It’s probably about time you had some new ones built. But fuck, that’s gonna cost. Ripping the old ones out, building them from scratch. The fan pulls your eyes back around to twelve o’clock.
Joel’s a contractor. He could do ‘em. Might give you a discounted rate, too, for all the times you move his newspaper from his front lawn to his doorstep for him. Either that, or he’d want something in return. And what handy skills do you have? You once knitted a scarf for you grandma for Christmas. Maybe not Joel’s thing. You can cook mac ‘n cheese – though one lousy meal isn’t payment enough for an entire wall of solid wood, two panes of glass and two days’ labor.
A favor, maybe. An IOU. What the fuck kinda favor does Joel Miller need–?
You’re hopping over the tiny burst of hedge between his yard and yours before the thought is finished, bending to scoop his newspaper up and slotting it under your arm. He answers just as you lift your fist to pound on his door for a second time.
You slap the rolled paper into his chest. “I have an idea.”
He squints at you in the summer light. “Wh–? Didn’t I tell you not to p–?”
“I’ll be your date.”
Joel blinks.
“I’ll be your date,” you repeat. “I got a wardrobe needs replacing. You do it, for free, and I’ll be your date.”
“Your wardrobe?”
“Crapped out on me this mornin’. I don’t want to pay for some stranger who’ll overcharge me ‘n do a half-assed job. Fix it, ‘n you don’t have to take cat lady Laura to Tommy’s wedding. And you can fix my kitchen sink, too.”
“I already fixed your kitchen sink.”
“It’s back at it. Drippin’ all through the damn night. Drip drip drip –”
“Alright.” Joel’s palm is up again. He does that a lot when he’s talking to you. “Alright. Wardrobe ‘n sink.”
“We have a deal?” you ask, extending your hand.
His chest fills with a thoughtful breath. His eyes scan you up and down, lingering somewhere a little lower than your jaw for a second. And then, the heavy weight of his palm against yours. The tightening of his fingers around your wrist. One sure shake.
Deal.
Two weeks before the wedding, you’re at Joel’s door again.
He’s in a black tee, dark sweatpants slung low on his hips. His hair is damp, fringe still dripping onto his forehead. He runs a hand through the gray-singed brown and stares at the tangle of fabric slung over your arm. “The hell is this?”
“Do you know what you’re wearin’?”
His eyes roll up to meet yours. “Do I know what I’m wearin’?”
You nod. “You’re the best man. Guessing Tommy has you covered?”
“Black suit,” he says, after a beat.
“That’s it? He ain’t got no theme?”
Joel’s head cocks. “I don’t do themes.”
You roll your eyes, ducking under his arm fixed against the doorpost. He manages three words of protest and then shuts the door in resignation, turning to watch as you take his stairs two at a time.
“You are so damn annoyin’, you know that?” his voice echoes behind you.
“You want this date or not, Miller?” you call over your shoulder, following the route through the identical house to your own bedroom – thankful when you nudge the door and it opens to reveal his bland, colorless decor. “Very…gray,” you note, feeling the shadow of him over your shoulder.
You throw the dresses down on his bed, satin and lace and pink and green swimming between one another on his sheets.
“I’m not wearin’ a dress.”
You glower at him. “Ha. We have to match.”
He rubs the towel against the back of his head, drying the dark hair. “Match how?”
“Y’know, your suit ‘n my dress. If I’m your date, we have to match.”
“Already told you. I’m wearin’ a black suit.”
“Right. But, like – what color tie? And can it be any of these colors?” You hold your hands out, surfing over the sea of shades. “Maybe,” you lift your eyebrows, eyes darting to the pale teal color, “this one?”
Joel entertains you for all of five seconds, lifting his cheeks in a false grin before they deflate. “No. Black.”
“Joel.”
He slings the towel over his folded arms, and looks at you plainly. “Black,” he says again, in a tone of voice which sounds something like a door being slammed shut.
Your eyes thin, and you gather your dresses up in one swipe. “Can you just –? Will you make sure that you match my corsage, at least?”
“Why the hell are you so hung up on this?”
“I’m not. I’m just tryna make it believable. You turned down cat lady Laura, this is what you get.”
He sighs, tossing the towel over to his laundry basket. “I will make sure I match your corsage. Happy?”
“Happy. Are you ready?”
“Give me five minutes.”
You huff, head rolling back. “You are so prima-donna, Joel Miller.”
With a sarcastic chuckle, he shoves you out of his bedroom to get dressed. You saunter down his stairs, drinking in every detail of his home as though it’s the only chance you’ll get to see it.
It probably is, when you think about it. You don’t imagine he’ll be inviting you over for drinks anytime soon.
Your eyes move along the wall as you slowly thump down his stairs, thrown from framed photo to framed photo – a black and white photo of a man with a tousle-haired boy on his lap, the kid’s tongue sticking from the corner of his mouth as he wraps his small hand around the neck of a guitar; an out-of-focus Christmas photo, a family of four sat in front of a million multicolored orbs dotted along the branches of a tree; a kid with skinned knees crouched by a German shepherd, his lanky arms hooked around the dog’s thick neck.
One brown suede jacket hangs from a coat peg at the bottom, Joel’s boots sat loose and unlaced beneath. A dark blue blanket draped over the back of his couch. A painting of a moose over his fireplace. Shelves lining one entire wall decorated with carved-wood animals, with more photographs of times gone and memories made, with books and DVDs that lend your fingertip with a heap of white dust as you drag it across their spines.
Enough to paint a picture, not quite enough to show you the colors. The tones, the depth. Despite your best efforts, the man remains a mystery. You settle with the fact he will never be fully revealed.
The creak of his stairs turns your attention from the guitar on the wall around to his tall figure, fixing the collar of the loose flannel over his shoulders.
“You ready?” Joel asks, bending with a groan to reach for his boots.
“Yep,” you reply, leaning forward to glance into his kitchen while his head’s down. The most you manage to observe are the light drapes, the sunlight shooting through and bouncing off of a white-topped island.
“’s go,” he says, keys dangling from his finger.
It takes twenty minutes to drive to Home Depot.
You chitter in Joel’s ear the entire time, reading from his handwritten list of measurements and supplies needed for your new closet. ‘n how do you know this is all enough? Because I know. What if you get started and it’s not? I won’t; it’s enough. You sound so sure. That’s ‘cause I’ve done it before, kid. You take many closetless girls out on fake wedding dates, Joel?
“What’s our story, then?” you ask in the store, fiddling with hanging packets of door hinges while Joel reads thrice over his note. Your hand dives into the bag of M&M’s he begrudgingly bought you at a gas station on the way.
“Our story?” he mumbles back, the words slipping under the mental math you can see going on behind his eyes.
“Like, when people ask how we met. What’s our meet-cute? Both reached for the same door hinge, our hands touched and lit aflame? That kinda thing?”
He doesn’t laugh. Your smile dampens instantly. You kick his boot. “Joel.”
“’sec,” he frowns, “I’m focusing.”
You lean close, pushing on your toes to study the folded slip. His scrawled numbers, the pencil lines blunt and smudged in the creases of the paper.
“Twentytwofortysixeightyninetyfivesixhundredelevenfourtwelvenineteen–”
Joel’s lips seep a maddened sigh; he glances down the aisle like a store attendant might separate you from him if he demanded with enough passion, or maybe if he slipped them a twenty.
“Do you mind?” he barks, his expression a brick wall for your giggles to fall flat to the floor against.
“Home Depot’s your stomping ground. Why the hell do I gotta come watch you pick hinges and timber?”
“Because it’s your damn closet I’m fittin’. Just –” he swipes two packets from their peg, tossing them into the shopping cart, “– come on.”
Joel makes off down the muck-colored floor, the overhead lights reflecting harshly in the shiny surface. The front right wheel of the cart trembles as it rolls, nervously leading the two of you down an aisle lined with cylinder tins and pamphlets on Choosing the right finish.
“So, are your parents gonna be at this wedding?” you ask, taking the cart from Joel’s hands when he drifts off to study a shelf of wood varnish.
His jaw turns towards you, and then back to the tin in his hand. “Yeah. Why?”
“Do I get to meet ‘em?”
“No.”
“Oh, come on. You’re not gonna introduce your date to your mom and dad?”
He scoffs, stealing a handful of candy. “My fake date?”
“They don’t know that. Let me meet Mr. and Mrs. Miller.”
He holds two tins up, offering them to you like answer to your question. “Matt or gloss? Guess it don’t really matter if I’m painting ‘em after.”
“Stop fuckin’ ignoring me. I hate when you do that.”
He leans in close, lowering the matt varnish into the cart. “You think I’m gonna introduce you ‘n your potty mouth to my mom?”
You smirk, eyes narrow. “Dick.”
“Funny. What color paint you want? You said something about duck egg?”
“Planning on repainting my room that color, yeah. Hey, you could –”
He swats your pointed finger away, taking the cart back. “We shook on new wardrobe. No changin’ the deal,” he mutters, wandering over to the rainbow of paint tins on the opposite side of the aisle.
You follow him over, eyes moving from blue over to green, the tins plastered with the fake smiles of families and fluffy pet dogs on the front. “Where are your mom and dad from?” you ask.
“Austin,” he replies, eyes squinting to read the small print on the back of one vibrant shade. You shake your head and guide his wrist back to the shelf, where he obediently sets the heavy tin back. “Never known anywhere else,” he adds. “What about you? Where’s Mr. and Mrs. Potty Mouth?”
“Uh,” you swipe at your nose awkwardly, “they’re up in Allandale. That’s where I grew up.”
“That so? I got a cousin who used to live that way. Used to take my bike up every Saturday. He lived right by this old car shop, all these old classics they used to fix up ‘n resell.”
“Yeah,” you say, “right next to the cemetery, right?”
“That’s the one,” Joel says, lifting paint tins to the light and setting them down again. “They live nearby?”
Your breathing shifts, starts to claw its way up your throat. Your chest heats, skin lighting with an irritating anxiety. “They’re, um,” you gulp, “they’re in the cemetery.”
Joel pauses, letting the tin slip from his grasp with an echoing thud against the wooden shelf which reverberates in your ears a second too long. “Oh,” he says, set on your expression.
“It’s okay – I don’t mind. It’s – it was a car accident, back when I was eight. I wasn’t in it, or anything. I grew up with my grandma. Really, Joel, I don’t mind,” you add, when his face falls and he begins to apologize.
“I had no idea,” he says, and you break the eye contact before you break a fucking sweat.
“’s all good,” you murmur, lifting paint tins of your own now, focusing on deblurring your glossy vision, “I got to buy a big house with the money they left.”
It thaws him a little. He snorts, and taps the lid of the tin you’re holding. “That one’s nice. You, uh – you okay?”
You finally turn back, the world clearer, colors no longer bleeding into one another through sharp tears. “Yeah. I’m fine. We got everything?”
Joel nods, and wheels the cart around. “You can meet her, if you want. My mom. She’s a little full on, but I reckon you can handle her.”
You smile, following him down the aisle.
A month after he delivered your underwear back to you, you’re back on Joel’s doorstep.
Your hand flicks nervously at your side as you wait for him to answer, petals of your corsage quivering. The clip of his footsteps echoes down the stairs, a deep sound growing louder and louder until the door clinks open and you’re separated only by air.
Joel’s eyes scan down your body at the same time yours scan down his. Black suit, sure enough, just without the jacket, and with his tie slung around his loose collar. You both freeze when your eyes meet again, your lips silently forming the shape of an avalanche of words that refuse to sound until Joel’s do.
“Wow, you –”
“– look great, I –”
“– nice dress, is that –? Sorry –”
“– no, I’m sorry, you were – sorry.” A laugh pushes from your throat. “You look – you look good. Scrub up well, ‘n all that.”
“You too. You – Yeah. That’s a nice color, after all. You suit it.” His eyes linger on your chest, your breasts draped in lustrous silk, decorated with the glint of golden jewelry. You notice.
“Thanks. After all?” You snort, and Joel’s exterior seems to crack a little.
He steps back, ushering you in. “Alright,” he says, taking the tote with your change of clothes from your wrist. He watches across the street as you step over the threshold, his fingertips light on your back as you pass by, like little shocks of lightning up your spine. “You know what I meant.”
Your dress swishes around your ankles, your heels clicking along his varnished floor. Your arms lock around your torso, holding your pashmina in place while Joel totters around, tossing his jacket over his shoulders. His shirt stretches from his tight waistband, fabric flattening against his tummy. Your eyes shoot north again when he speaks.
“You mind doin’ my tie? It’ll end up squint if I do.”
“Sure,” you reply, stepping forward.
He buttons the top of his shirt and lifts his chin, staring at the wall behind you as you tug on the black fabric, the silk slipping through your fingers. You steal glances at the trim of his beard, his pink lips beneath the dark bristles; the slope of his nose, the lines on his worn skin.
He’s rough around the edges, sure, a man in his late forties. But there’s something soft about him, something familiar and…comfortable. The pages of a used sketchbook, the lived-in material of a favorite dress.
You pull the knot higher until it’s sitting in the notch below his Adam’s apple, smoothing it down and giving his chest a light pat before stepping back again.
“Thanks, darlin’,” he mumbles, and a spark lights in your chest. “Oh,” he says, holding a finger up and disappearing into the kitchen. He returns with a little white box, holding it out for you to see.
Your cheeks swell, eyes flitting up to acknowledge the proud look on his face. “Very nice. Good job.”
“You can do the honors,” Joel says, handing you the boutonniere by the stem.
You pin it through his lapel, straightening it with a focused glance. Joel’s eyes are on you, watching the flutter of your eyelashes, the tilt of your head. “There,” you whisper, leaning back.
He extends his elbow, something of a smile on his lips. You don’t see it often. It beckons a mirrored expression.
Arm in arm, Joel leads you out to the truck, where he helps you up and waits for you to scoop your dress into the footwell before closing the door. You watch patiently as he locks the front door, slings both your bags over his shoulder and jogs back to the truck, tossing them in the backseat before joining you in the front.
“How come he didn’t send a limousine? Or a Jag, or somethin’?”
“You think we’re made a’ money?” Joel asks, smirking.
You return the smile, wrapping your shawl over your body. “Can I pick the music?” you ask, earnestly, a tinge of sweetness to your voice.
Joel glances over again, reaches behind your headrest to reverse out of the drive. He runs his tongue along his top teeth. “No,” he says.
Three hours later, Tommy and Maria are married.
The wedding is…big. Joel’s family is big. The venue – a rustic hotel suite, fairy lights draped from the rafters, blooming flowers sprouting from crystal vases, lace tablecloths and tied chair cushions and wax dripping from thick, naked candles – is big.
Joel’s been good about it – that friendly neighbor you see all too little has been kicked into high gear. He delivered you by hand straight to his mom – a small woman with silver hair neatly twisted into an updo at the back of her head – who took your hand and held it tightly all the way to your seats.
Kind and warm, she asked where you were from, how you met Joel, how long you’d been dating. She offered you some tissues before the ceremony started, then winked and nodded in Joel’s direction as the bridesmaids swept down the aisle.
You lingered behind the photographer while he took photos of the wedding party, instructing them to shuffle a little closer, that’s it; ma’am, with the red hair, lower your bouquet a little; alright, now, everyone: big smiles!
You worried that Joel had kept the same placated smile frozen on his face for so long that it might never melt away, might never return to the stoic scowl you’re so used to seeing on him. You didn’t even realize you were staring at him, until he waved you down, flicked his hand, and beckoned you over to the group.
You hesitated. I don’t know if I –
Get over here, girl, Tommy had called, grinning alongside his big brother.
The two Millers slotted you in like a jigsaw piece between their bodies, two arms wrapped around your back – Tommy’s, loose on your shoulders, and Joel’s, tight around your waist. He held you close, squeezing you into his side while the photographer praised the party and snapped photo after photo, the flash burning into your eyes by the time he clapped his hands and thanked you all for your patience.
Drink? Joel had asked, and you’d responded with one thumb up, the other massaging your eyelids. He squeezed your shoulder and disappeared into the crowd of bodies.
He’s still over there – by the bar, a wooden structure draped in ivy and studded by steel bolts. His beer in one hand and your wine in the other. A lean, poised figure stood opposite him – her dress a royal purple, her hair a wave of brown spilling over her bare shoulders.
She’s beautiful – a striking charm which draws your eye to her like an arrow directly through the sea of bodies between here and there. Her languid movements, the slow roll of her neck to sweep the hair from one side of her body to the other.
Her head falls back in laugher, her bejeweled hand falls softly on his arm. Your throat closes sharply. Joel nods, angling as if to make off, but she holds onto him and leans in. He laughs, then, at whatever her full lips whisper into his ear, and he finally breaks off from her and returns to you.
He pushes the glass by its base across the smooth tablecloth. Your fingers brush over one another as you trade, the stem sitting between your index and middle. He’s warm, his knuckles kissing yours.
“How was it, then, talkin’ to my mom?” Joel asks.
You smile, propping your chin on the heel of your palm. “I like her. She’s funny.” And then, when he tosses his head in response, “Who were you talkin’ to?”
Joel follows your eyeline over to the woman in the purple dress. The glint of white crystal on her neck. The drama of dark hair on pale skin. “Uh,” he wanders around your back to his chair, “we used to work together.”
Your nails tap against the glass. “Oh, yeah?”
He sniffs. Doesn’t meet your eye. “Yep.”
“You were talking to her for a long time.”
He watches a blue orb dance over your head on the wall, a spot of light from the disco ball over the dancefloor. “Lotta memories.”
“Why won’t you look at me?”
His eyes plummet. Fall from the string bulbs straight to your face, sparkling in the rainbow lights. “You want me to look at you? There.”
You grin. “’s better. If you stare up there long enough, they might stick.”
“Safer to have ‘em stuck on you, is it?”
“Mhm,” your voice echoes around the curve of your wine glass, “better view. So, who is she?”
Joel shifts uncomfortably. He twirls the bottle in his fingers. “We…we were together for some time. A few years.”
“An ex,” you muse, stain of lipstick left on the rim of your glass. “How many years?”
“Eight.”
You almost choke on your drink. “Eight – eight years?”
Joel nods, waiting for you to catch your breath. Expression never changing. Bottle still twirling. “Haven’t seen her in a while. We were just catchin’ up.”
“Eight fucking years. Why the fuck aren’t you married?”
He scoffs. “That’s a fifth-date question.” He lifts the bottle to his lips, tongue pushes against the glass.
“I don’t need five fuckin’ wardrobes,” you quip, and he laughs. Like, genuinely laughs. His head tips back, his teeth show. Your chest swells, confidence and relief blooming there. She didn’t make him laugh like that – not from where you were watching.
It becomes something of a mission in the back of your mind – tallying up how many times you can make his chest shudder, his shoulders jerk. How many times he leans in closer and repeats whatever you said, eyes closing over and hand hitting his thigh. How many times he looks at you and your stomach flutters, the blood cartwheels through your veins, the bones of your ribcage readjust and make room for the swelling of your heart.
Within four rounds, you’ve lost count.
The thudding beat of the music muffles in your drunken ears, like it’s coming from the next room. Your gaze fixes on the vase in the center of the table, the bouquet spilling over the glass. The wide burst of speckled lilies, the humble blush of tulips between. The colors soften and blur the longer you stare at them.
The jerk of Joel’s shoulders stirs you from your daydream. That’s one more.
“What?” you ask, head rolling to look over to him.
“You still in there?” he asks, one word slurring into the next like waves lapping.
You scoff, looking back to the pink flowers. “You know who has tulips?” you ask him.
He lifts his eyebrows. Who?
“Alice.”
“Brown?”
Your head nods heavily. “One time, she was out getting her mail, and I had just pulled up in my car on the phone to my best friend – he’d just broken up with his girlfriend, it was a whole thing…” You bat your hand. “Anyway. She pretended to tend to her tulips for forty-five minutes while I sat talkin’ to him in the driveway.”
Joel’s head tilts back with a burst of laughter. “She hear every word?”
“Every – damn – word. Stood by the fence listenin’.”
“That woman is som’ else,” Joel says, shaking his head. He stares down at the bottle between his fingers. His thumbs play with the curled corner of the label. “Didn’t I warn you about her?”
“Mhm.” You smile, realizing he has the same memory that you do, locked up somewhere in his mind. The sweat running down his temple, the dark patch between his shoulder blades. His hands gripping the heavier boxes, leaving you to carry the linen, the base of a lamp. Nodding as he wandered back over to his own porch, calling back for you to Holler if you need anythin’.
The high squeal of the Sweet Child O’ Mine intro snaps you back to the wedding reception. Tommy and Maria are playing air guitar on the dancefloor over Joel’s shoulder. You unstick your gaze from his white shirt, unsure how long you’ve been fucking staring.
Joel sits forward, drags his chair across the polished floor closer to you. He fixes the strap on your dress, untwisting it before settling back again. Your eyes follow his fingers as they leave your shoulder and sit back on the curve of his thigh, lifting when his voice breaks through to your eardrums.
“What room number did you say you were, again?”
Your shoulders roll. “Thirty-four, I think.”
Joel nods. Points to himself. “Thirty-six.” And then he glances over his shoulder, watches as Tommy kneels before Maria and rocks his head, his messy mop of hair tossed across his shoulders. The older Miller brother turns back. “Think they’ll miss us if we call it a night?”
“We’re callin’ it a night?”
“Figure if I’m headin’ off then you won’t wanna be sat here by yourself,” Joel says, and he’s right. He stands up, sets the half-empty bottle on the tablecloth and stares down at you. “I’m callin’ it a night,” he tells you. “You comin’?”
The colors in the room spin like the reels of a slot machine. Your fingers sit lightly in his outstretched palm, and you pull yourself up alongside him.
“’s a good girl,” he mutters, looking over your shoulder to the doorway, and your eyes sober up long enough to catch the flicker in his eye.
You totter along the hallway, arm in arm, anchoring yourselves together. Whichever way one sways, the other inevitably follows. You’re laughing, and Joel’s hushing you, warning that there are folks tryna – tryna sleep, we’re in a fancy place, hey, da-rlin’, no – you gotta shhhut up.
“Great party,” you decide, finally docking against your door.
“Yeah,” Joel agrees, leaning a little on the wall. The gentle glow of the hallway lights him perfectly; the strong angle of his jaw, the curve of his cheekbones. The hazel pools that make up his irises, the swollen circles of black in the middle. And the twinkle in them, like the moon reflecting on dark water, every time his gaze lifts to you.
He’s different tonight. Maybe it’s the alcohol. The way it colors everything in a peachy film, all objects softened and rosy and shapeless. But he feels different, too. You suddenly realize, shoulder pressed hard against the cold doorframe, that you’ve never touched one another more than you have today. His elbow in yours, his arm around your waist, his hand through yours as you danced together.
“Are you tired?” you ask, head rolling.
“Tired? No. Drunk, yeah. Not tired.” He laughs again. It’s infectious.
“You wanna come inside?” you ask, words leaping from your giggle.
He takes ten seconds to consider it. Slumps into the wall, steadied only by his forearm pushing him back upright. His watch face catches the light behind him.
“Yeah. Fuck yeah, I do.”
Your hand fumbles in your clutch for the keycard, swiping the handle and pushing down heavily. You spill into the dark room, light sneaking in from the sconce outside your window, and spin back to face him, his hand locked tight with yours.
Joel follows you slowly as you back towards the bed, kicking your heels off and tripping over the skirt of your dress. When your legs hit the plush mattress, his body leans into yours. Your lips ghost across his, your words pushing them apart one by one.
“This ain’t – part of the – agreement,” you murmur, the coarse hair of his beard scratching your chin. You pull apart his tie, loosening the knot.
“Changed my mind,” he replies, collapsing on top of you on the bed.
Your head rolls back when his lips suck into your neck. You wrestle with his belt, with the waist of his suit trousers. “No changin’ the deal, remember?”
“Tell me to stop.”
If you had any intention of answering him, your body overrides it. Words lassoed and dragged back down where they came from, your throat opening only to gasp when Joel’s teeth graze the flesh of your breast. His fingers tug on the straps of your dress, letting them fall from your shoulders until your chest sits exposed.
He drags his tongue along your skin, dipping between your tits while his hands massage them, fingers pinching your nipples. Your back lifts and his hands move beneath, following the curve of your spine to where your dress pools loose around your waist. He pushes down, slinking the smooth fabric from your body.
“You fuckin’…” He clicks his teeth, laughing behind them. Another flush of heat washes over your skin.
You giggle, bending your knees to cover the lace panties he knows all too fucking well. Joel stops you, pushes your legs back down with two heavy hands.
“Don’t get shy now, baby,” he murmurs, opening your body up again. “You were so happy about me seein’ ‘em a few weeks ago, no?”
“’s different,” you reply, tang of alcohol fueling your words, “now I just want you to take them off me.”
He cocks his head, drinking every word you’re handing over like it’s water from an oasis. “Such a dirty girl, ain’t you?”
You pull him closer by the collar and line your mouth against his, the tip of your tongue wetting the inside of his lips. “You got no fucking idea,” you whisper, whipping the shirt from his torso.
Joel growls, flipping you over and pulling you by the shoulders flush against his chest. You hook an arm around his neck, turn to grant him access to your lips. He kisses you like a starved animal, savoring every taste, teeth nipping at your tingling lips.
His hand curves around your hips, pushing beneath your underwear to cup your mound, middle finger pushing on the spongey hood of your clit. Your head falls limp against his collarbone, back arching as Joel holds you steady with an arm around your waist.
“’s alright, baby,” he coos, his tongue licking the shell of your ear. “I’m gonna take good care of ya. Gonna give you what you need, alright?”
A strangled moan unravels across your tongue, echoing into Joel’s mouth. Your hips begin to gyrate, meeting the rhythm of his hand, his finger massaging rough circles into your clit. He smirks, peeling the panties down your thighs.
“Attagirl,” he breathes, “you want it bad, huh? Gettin’ so worked up so fast. Here.”
He removes his hand from between your legs, ignoring your moan of protest and replacing it with two fingers on your bottom lip. “Open,” he instructs, and you obey like a fucking dog. He slips them in, thick and heavy, and waits for you to coat them with your wine-stained tongue.
Joel pushes down, forcing a muffled gag from your throat which lifts the corners of his mouth. He shakes his head lightly, whispering, “You got it, ‘s okay.”
A thread of saliva strings between his fingers and your lips when he lowers his hand again, trailing his fingers through your folds until he’s dancing along the seam of your cunt. You jolt forward; Joel hauls you back.
“Just fucking – do it,” you whimper, your walls clenching around nothing.
He holds his fingers together, curling and inserting them in a painfully slow motion. Your knees widen on the mattress, body sinking down by instinct to meet his fist, to feel his thick fingers and wide knuckles as deep as they’ll go.
You gasp when Joel begins hooking them inside you, nudging against your walls like your heartbeat against your clit. Your hand lowers, slipping beneath his loose waistband, beneath the elastic of his boxers and around his already solid cock.
Joel groans, fucking you harder on his hand. “Fuck, just like that, baby. You feel what you do to me?”
“Uhuh,” you reply, voice wanton and broken.
You squeeze him, your fist moving up and down, his warm skin following the movements of your tight grip. His tip is already soaked, precome staining his underwear, dribbling down your thumb.
Joel uses his free hand to shove his pants down, crumpling on the floor at his feet when they free his cock. You carve your mouth around his, the two of you exchanging breath and flicking your tongues together as you fuck one another’s hands, the room slowly filling with the hot, muggy smell of sex.
Joel’s the first to cave. With a jerk of his hips, he takes you by the wrist and frees himself from your clutches.
“You’re gonna make me come, darlin’,” he murmurs, pulling his fingers from your cunt.
“That’s kinda the point here,” you reply, teeth bumping into his in a grin.
Joel shakes his head, lifting his hand, glistening with your arousal. “Gotta feel this fucking pussy first.”
You smile, parting your lips for him for the second time, suckling on his fingers and licking them clean of your own salty slick. His cock draws sticky trails on the seam of your thigh.
“Yeah,” Joel breathes, eyes fixed on the place where you close around him, “that good, baby? You gonna let me taste you?”
You release his fingers and he pulls you in, tongue slipping against yours with a groan which vibrates against your jaw. When your lips part, you hold your mouth open, your tongue sat on your bottom lip.
Joel reacts instantly, collecting a bead of saliva in front of his teeth and letting it drop into your mouth. You moan and swallow it, a cocktail of beer and whiskey and slick. Joel watches as you lick your lips, the stained-pink coated in a thick, white shine.
“Alright,” he says, letting you fall forward onto the bed. He jacks himself a few times, spitting into his hand and using it to coat his cock.
“Want you to come in it,” you whine, wiggling your ass for him as he lines up at your slit. You can feel the arousal gathered on his tip, dripping down your cunt.
“Yeah, baby,” Joel growls, a smirk on his lips as he watches himself slowly disappear inside you. And then –
You both fall silent, mouths hanging wide open as you each feel the width of his cock and the tightness of your cunt. The way your body opens up to accommodate his size, the direct pain and ethereal pleasure of Joel pushing into you.
“Fuck,” he groans, your pussy drawing him in with a sweet, wet sound. “Been thinkin’ about this all fuckin’ day, baby. So damn gorgeous in that dress.”
You slowly move your hips back to meet him at the base of his cock; dark, trimmed hair bristling against your lips. Joel’s hands lock around your waist, holding you steady with his entirety buried inside, letting you adjust to him.
He’s so fucking big, so wide and deep that your breath tears rugged from your lungs, barreling up your windpipe. Your walls squeeze tight as he pulls out like your body refuses to let him go, like your cells understand better than you do that you were made for this – made for him. Like the only place in the world that he belongs, is somewhere deep inside you.
So big that it hurts, each time he fills you up and stretches you wide open. The pain an eye-rolling, lung-closing, limb-shaking sensation.
Your elbows give, falling chest-first onto the mattress while Joel fucks you hard, his hands gripping your hips. Your cheek and breasts flat against the sheets, your back arched. He slams into you, edging you closer and closer with each meeting of his warm skin against yours, each sopping slap of come and saliva.
The mattress shifts above your head, two valleys where his palms push down heavily, then the weight of his body at the back of your thighs. He towers over you, hips hammering so hard that you’re forced to hook your fingers around his wrists just to stay on the same fucking planet.
“Gonna – fuckin’ – come – baby,” he spits, his jaw locked tight. “You want it in this little pussy? You think she can take it all?”
“Mhm,” you whimper, the edges of your words rounded by the silk sheets. “Joel, I – fuck –”
“Yeah, she can,” he agrees, playing with the hair spilling across your shoulders and taking it in a fistful.
The hazy drunken blur begins to turn over in favor of something sharper, something electric pulsing through your veins. Every part of your body alive, everything rising to meet the same high, the same release. You cling onto him, body beginning to melt beneath his.
Joel’s lips press between your shoulder blades. “Don’t fight it, baby, let go. I got you.”
You moan his name in one last pathetic attempt before the world whitens. You clench around him as a deafening orgasm shocks through your body, curling your back and forcing your nails deep into Joel’s wrists.
“Fuck, baby, fuck me,” Joel gasps. He slams into you one final time before you feel the staggered pump of his come flooding between your walls. “Ahh,” he groans, pushing apart your ass cheeks to watch the trickle seep from your cunt. “Good fucking girl. Take it, baby. That’s my girl.”
He turns you over onto your back and you wrap your arms around his shoulders, pulling him against your body as he thrusts into you again, tenderly pushing his spend deeper inside. It draws a strained moan from your throat.
“’s alright,” he coos, hips slowing against yours, “just feel it, baby. You feel how deep I am?”
“Uhuh,” you cry, nails digging into his skin, damp with sweat.
“So fuckin’ full of me,” he says, more to himself, before collapsing alongside you, holding your thigh on his hip, his tip still sheathed inside you.
You lie like that for a while, listening to the distant hum of music from downstairs, the party still raving in the belly of the hotel while you two lay in content bliss somewhere in its ribcage. Tracing one another’s features, learning the lines on Joel’s face, the flecks of gray in his eyebrows – all the parts you’re never close nor brave enough to get to know.
His right hand massages your plush waist, his left arm a pillow to rest your heavy, dizzy, drunk head on.
“I wanna do it again,” you whisper, the words sneaking out between heavy breaths.
Joel nods. His bottom lip sticks with sweat to yours. His hips push a little neater into you. “I wanna do it again, too.”
“I wanna do it all night.”
He hasn’t stopped nodding. He shrugs, tightens his grip around your shoulders, and tilts his head. “Then let’s do it all fucking night,” he says, and his lips slam back into yours.
The morning after the wedding, Joel drives you home. The truck soars down the highway, the two of you an uncomfortable distance apart. The same sobering distance you’ve kept all morning – the unreal aftermath of sex.
The rolling waves of bedsheets between your bodies; the sun sifting her long fingers through his hair as she peered through the curtains. The way you’d silently pushed yourself from the mattress, fragmenting your movements and allowing the spring to dip a fraction at a time so not to wake him. The spongey feel of the hotel carpet under the balls of your feet as you’d tottered to the bathroom. The sharp shot of the lock sliding into place, echoing like a bullet.
He waited until you finished showering to get ready himself. Sat on the edge of the bed patiently and watched your shadow beneath the door, the to-and-fro of your silhouette breaking the sliver of golden light as you dressed your sticky body. When you pulled on the metal lock again, he was sat on the edge of the bed with his elbows on his knees, pinching the bridge of his nose. His bare shoulders were curved, and tanned. You blinked twice to store the image and turned away as he stood.
He says he feels hungover. You say you do, too. It’s the closest you come to talking about it. You hop out of the truck in his drive, your tote bag hooked on your shoulder. The canvas gnawing at the silk inside. Joel tells you he’ll see his end of the deal through in a couple weeks.
“Real busy with work,” he mutters apologetically, his wrists still balancing on the steering wheel.
“That’s good,” you tell him, nodding. “I ain’t in any rush. I know where you live, so.”
A relieved laugh pushes from his lips. “I will get to it,” he assures you.
You shrug casually. “Whenever, Joel.”
You don’t talk for a few days. A few days bleeds into three weeks. You find yourself stood by his front tires, throwing his newspaper onto the porch and scampering when it lands. The noise like a bomb dropping.
Slowly, as the month draws on, you become braver and braver – daring closer and closer to his front door, until you’re back to marching up the steps like you own the place, depositing the roll on his doormat. Rubbing your thumbs against your fingers to feel the ink like satin.
The door cracks open as you make your way back down his steps one bright morning.
“Hey, kid,” Joel murmurs, reaching down for the paper with a groan.
“Hey.”
“You doin’ okay?” he asks, leaning his forearm against the door.
Your head tilts back and forth, your hand lifting to shield your eyes from the sun. “Think I ate som’ bad, maybe. Weird stomach this mornin’.”
Joel’s chin angles. “Hope it ain’t contagious. Was thinkin’ I could get that closet started for you, maybe tomorrow?”
The offer takes you off guard. You buffer for a few seconds before answering, “Sure. Sure, just, uh – just come over whenever, I guess.”
“Nine work for you?”
You nod. “Nine’s good. See ya then.”
It’s something like nine when you find out.
You wake feeling groggy. Tired, sluggish. A heavy ache pulling on your breasts as you rise from bed, tender and swollen. You stand in the bathroom, milky morning light filtering in through the doorway, and your stomach lurches. Waves of nausea deep in your belly, rocking back and forth, swirling and spiraling.
You’ve a box under your sink. It makes sense. Before Joel was some date from Hinge, who fucked you against the wall of his living room and who snored so loud that you left before the sun came up. Negative. Like always.
But it never hurts to be sure.
The pack tears like it’s liquid in your hands. Peels back to reveal the plastic white test, the bubblegum pink cap – like it’s something fun and sweet to place the direction of your future into this little device. A clinical compass needle.
Three to five minutes. You set it down on the counter and drag yourself back through to your room, lifting your bedsheets, tucking them under the mattress, heaving your pillows back into place against the headboard. An uncomfortable heat boiling under the surface of your skin, a prickle of sweat clinging to the nape of your neck.
A sickly taste harboring on your tongue, you pad back to the bathroom and swipe the test up. Your eyes scan past the result window to the counter as you reach for your toothbrush – and then snap abruptly back to the tiny oval. Your outstretched hand freezes in midair. There’s no fucking w–
Your arm swings back to reach for the light cord. The bulb hesitates – flickers, like it’s unsure whether to reveal the truth to you. It knows something you don’t. It’s seen something it doesn’t want to show you. You stare at the pregnancy test.
Two little pink lines stare back. And Joel knocks at your door.
#forgive me for it not being clm or sof#they're coming very soon i promise#this was too fun an idea not to chase#i have the attention span of my labrador retrievers (nil)#joel miller#joel miller fic#joel miller smut#the last of us#tlou#macfrog#neighbor!joel miller#neighbor!joel#babydaddy!joel miller
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Glad You’re Here
Oscar Piastri x insomniac!reader // Tangerine Pt. 1.5
Masterlist // Tangerine Part 1 // Part 1.5 // Part 2
It’s been raining where I live this week and I couldn’t get this version of Oscar and reader out of my head. So, here you go- a little companion blurb from Oscar’s POV.
Word Count: 1.1k
find my other fics here, including the original one for this blurb!
Warnings: none
Oscar loves sleep. He could sleep anywhere, could fall asleep at the drop of a hat. It’s been an issue, actually- he habitually snoozes through alarms and constantly naps when he should be doing more important things.
It’s been an adjustment, dating you, because of that. It’s not that you don’t like sleep, you just… can’t. Honestly, it breaks his heart, because while tumbling into his bed at the end of the day is a relief for him, for you, it’s the opposite.
He’s watched you get worked up with exhaustion to the point of tears far too many times. He wishes he could take it all away, that he could reach deep into your brain and press the magic button that would let you sleep. You’ve tried lots of things- chamomile tea, melatonin, warm baths, hot milk and honey, but nothing seems to help.
That is, until Brazil.
It’s the end of a triple header, which is exhausting in its own way. You’re dragging, have been for days. He can see it in your eyes when you give him the update before qualis, can see the way it pulls at the corners of your lips. He wants to wrap you up in a hug and hold you there until you get so bored you fall asleep- though that doesn’t work, either. But the two of you are in public, surrounded by coworkers, so he refrains.
Dark clouds roll in over the track and cut the session short, which is less than ideal. Oscar climbs out of his car, frowning when he notices you’re missing from your usual spot in the garage. It’s odd, but not impossible. You could be in the bathroom, could be in a meeting- he’s not sure.
When he’s made it through his debrief and you’re still not back- which is odd since you’re a part of his team- he starts to get worried. Finally, he asks, trying to sound casual about it. It’s not necessarily a secret that the two of you are dating- the important people know, important being your bosses. He leans towards one of your closer coworkers, asks them if they know where you are.
“Oh, she left, I think,” she says, and Oscar feels even more concerned. “She said she didn’t sleep well last night, I think she wasn’t feeling good.”
Oscar blinks, rubs his thumb against his knee under the table. It’s odd that you wouldn’t have texted him before you left. He wonders if you went to your hotel room or his, feels a stab in his chest at the thought of you all alone and not feeling well. Not sleeping well the night before is an understatement- he knows you didn’t sleep at all, actually. You’d stayed in his room and read a book, a little light to read by and his head in your lap.
Once they dismiss him to head to the hotel, he beelines for his driver room to gather his stuff. Lando’s trying to make small talk on the way there, and when Oscar opens the door he’s following behind him. Oscar stops in his tracks, though, and Lando bumps into him, opening his mouth to make a comment when Oscar raises his hand and shushes him.
You’re there, curled up on the massage bed, tightly wound. You’re asleep.
“Oh,” Lando whispers. “I’ll go.”
Oscar nods, closes the door, walks over carefully. Your lips are barely parted, lashes tangled together, arms curled protectively around yourself. He watched the soft rise and fall of your shoulders, absolutely entranced.
The thing is, Oscar doesn’t actually see you sleep very often. When it does happen, you usually fall asleep after him, and then you wake up before him.
All of the tense energy is gone from your body. Your hair has fallen into your face, a strand across your lips that moves with every breath you take. He’s pretty sure you’re wearing one of his hoodies. You look so soft, like you’ve melted into the massage table. He wants to curl himself around you, into you, keep you close and warm and safe.
He sends Lando a text, asks him to knock quietly when the car to the hotel is ready. Then he locks the door and crosses the room. He’s so careful when he climbs onto the makeshift bed with you. He takes it inch by inch until he’s got you under one arm, his chin on top of your head. He doesn’t dare pull you close like he’d really like to, afraid of waking you up-
“Osc?” You say, voice soft.
He curses himself out in his head. He shouldn’t have risked it, should’ve just let you sleep, should’ve known this would happen. You’re going to kill him, probably- the one time you fall asleep easily, and here he is, ruining it.
“Sorry, baby,” he says, sighing. “You looked so cozy, I just thought- I didn’t mean to wake you.”
In response, you wrap one of your arms around him and pull yourself into his chest. Your cold nose brushes his neck, lips against his collarbone. You yawn and turn your face so that your cheek is pressed to his chest.
“S’okay, m’glad you’re here.” you mumble. “The storm made me sleepy.”
The rain is still pelting the side of the garage, sending the sound through the room. Every so often, there’s the distant sound of thunder. He wonders if a sound machine would help you sleep, tucks it away into his brain to try later. Right now, he brushes his lips against the crown of your forehead and rubs your back.
He opens his mouth to say something again, but then he feels it- your grip on him loosens, and your soft, even breaths wash over his neck. He pulls his head back just slightly, finds your eyes closed and your lips parted once again. You’re adorable when you’re sleeping. The relaxed look on your face makes his heart clench in his chest. He keeps rubbing your back lightly, afraid that if he’s stops you’ll wake up again.
He’s not tired, but he stays anyways. He stays and watches you sleep, even if it’s mildly creepy, even if Lando will definitely make fun of him for it if he ever finds out. He doesn’t know how long your sleep will last, so he’ll cherish every second of it.
On the car ride back to the hotel, he buys a sound machine off of Amazon. You try it the next time you can’t sleep. It doesn’t work. He waits until then to tell you the truth.
He absolutely hates thunderstorms.
a/n: thank you for all the love on the original fic!!
taglist: @4-mula1
#oscar piastri oneshot#oscar piastri fanfic#oscar piastri x you#f1 fic#formula one fluff#formula 1 fluff#oscar piastri x reader#oscar piastri blurb#tangerine!verse#< I have started the tag but no promises on more in this universe… guess we’ll see though?#honeywrites
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guy who doesnt dance x guy who will drag you onto the dance floor
#theyre so sillay :3#i need to find irl ace attorney friends bc ive only met like 1 person who really knows what it is ToT#my art#digital art#artists on tumblr#ace attorney#apollo justice#klavier gavin#klapollo#i put them in fancy little outfits bc they're at an event or smth idk#i just like making fancy outfits lol#i want to redraw my old pre 7 yr gap designs bc that fic still lives in my mind and i want to do smth for it#its: the phoenix and other early birds#and its SO FUCKING GOOOODDDD#if you like apollo and you dont mind his aa6 backstory you'll love it i promise <3 read that fic okay bye :D
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