#yes I will be doing this for the 1.x trailers at some point | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

Visit Blog

Explore Tumblr blogs with no restrictions, modern design and the best experience.

Fun Fact

US Tumblr user growth rate is estimated to slow down to 4.1%.

#yes I will be doing this for the 1.x trailers at some point

leclercsainzz · 6 months

Note

hello love x

i was wondering if you could potentially do one where the reader is an actress and is in the new hunger games movies and everyone ships her with tom but she’s also dating lando … could you make a love triangle situation with these two?? like maybe she hangs out with tom more than lando or something idk lol u can come up with anything (you can decide who the endgame is) sort of like a illicit affair or where maybe she is seeing tom and everyone is aware of it idk??? (at this point im just saying nonsense i think lol)

ILLICIT AFFAIRS

PAIRINGS: lando norris x gf!reader / tom blyth x fem!reader

TYPE: social media au

WARNING: // cheating implied

part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - part 4 - part 5

yourusername

liked by landonorris, tomblyth and 689,736 others

yourusername: making this movie was hands-down one of the best experiences of my life thus far! i cannot wait to share more behind the scenes content with you all:)) and with only one week to spare .. see you out there on our press tour!

view 5,846 comments

landonorris: can’t wait!

landonorris: proud of you, my love!! ❤️

↳ yourusername: ilyyyyy 😘

↳ user: lando being a supportive bf >>>

↳ user: alexa, how to get my own lando norris?? 😭

user: she’s so pretty, i can’t

user: after reading the book, i just know this movies gonna break me 😩😩😩😩

user: LANDO LET ME HAVE HER, PLEASE

user: SCREAMING!!! CANNOT WAIT!!!!

user: i have been looking forward to this movie since they announced it, can’t believe we’re only one week away

joshandresrivera: who’s the cute guy at the end??

↳ yourusername: just some guy i know 🤷🏻‍♀️

user: caNnot wait, omggggg

user: read the book and idk if i’m mentally prepared

user: you look soo good 😩😩😩

songbirdsandsnakes: our lucy gray ❤️❤️

user: i’m actually freaking tf out about this alapapalddbsod

user: YES YES YES YES YES

oscarpiastri: can i get free tickets?

↳ yourusername: absolutely!

↳ user: i love this duo so much 🤣

user: movie of the year incoming????

user: the movie hasn’t even come out yet and the amount of snow x lucy gray edits i’ve seen just from the trailer alone 😩

↳ user: i just know once the movie comes out they’ll be all over tiktok …. i can’t wait tho!!!!!!

user: i just realized that jason schwartman, viola davis, and peter dinklage are in this too!!! alwnsofnf

user: i’ve seen the trailer like 10+ times, can’t wait!!

hunterschafar: ❤️

user: will josh and jlaw be in this??

↳ user: noooo 💀 bro, this is set 64 years before them

user: she’s playing lucy gray right???

↳ user: yes

user: AHHHHHH

user: can’t wait for all the interviews omg!!!!

user: yn and the hunger games???? SIGN ME TF UPPP

user: soo excited over this

user: i wonder if lando will be attending the premiere

yourusername

liked by landonorris, oscarpiastri and 675,758 others

yourusername: last race with my favorite boyyy 🥺🧡

tagged: @landonorris

view 4,846 comments

user: LAST RACE??? WHYYY????

↳ user: she starts press tour tomorrow for the hunger games

user: ima miss seeing you in the paddock 😩

user: ima miss you in the paddock 😩 but i cannot wait for the hunger games press interviews

user: his smile 😩😩

user: my fav papayas 🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡 + oscar

user: the first pic 😭😭

user: last race??? nooooooo

user: wait, im confused …. why’s she leaving???

user: gonna miss you

user: last pic 😩

user: YN?!?!!? YOURE LEAVING??!?? 😭😭😭😭😭

user: my favssssss 🧡

user: ya’ll acting as if she’s leaving forever and won’t see her again lmaooo 🤣 she’s doing press tour bc the movie she’s in comes out in a week

landonorris: 😘😘😘

landonorris: gonna miss your cute face 🥺

↳ yourusername: gonna miss you tooo, pretty boy 🥺

user: the way he smiles around her

user: wait when is she leaving???

↳ yourusername: a little after the race

↳ user: wait why tho??

↳ user: she starts press tour tomorrow since her movie comes out next week lol

oscarpiastri: that smile thoooo 🤭

user: where is she going????

user: THE best couple

user: what movie is she going for?

↳ user: the hunger games

↳ user: WAIT FRR????? is it the new one???

user: parents, frrrrr 😍

user: can’t wait for press tour, i just know she’s gonna slay

carlossainz55: pic creds to me, thank you 💁🏻‍♂️

↳ yourusername: 🙄🙄🙄 yea yea

↳ landonorris: 😘

↳ user: ynlando who??? i only know carlando ❤️🧡

user: they’re the reason i believe in love ❤️❤️

user: the way he looks at her, bro 😭😭😭

↳ user: he’s sooo in love, i can’t 😩😩

user: we won’t see ynlando for a while 😭

user: my ynlando heart 😍😍😍❤️❤️

yourusername

liked by landonorris, hunterschafer and 689,945 others

yourusername: thank you, berlin ❤️ @thehungergames

tagged: @tomblyth @hunterschafer @joshandresrivera

view 7,526 comments

user: THE REFERENCE OMG!!!!

user: MOTHER IS SERVING, OOH MYYYY 😍😍😍😍

user: he’s sooo fine!! but he looks EXTRA FINE with the buzz cut & blonde hair 😮‍💨

📌 pinned

↳ yourusername: told yaaaa @tomblyth

joshandresrivera: ohh hiiii 👋🏼

user: yn came to serve

user: tom’s the new white boy of the month!!!

user: HER PINNED COMMENT

user: tom’s soo good looking 😩

user: she’s so beautiful 😍😍

hunterschafer: WERK

↳ yourusername: are we about to kiss rn?

user: okay but why do i ship her and tom?? 🫣

user: idc what anyone says, she looks gorgeous! 😍

user: ngl but tom and yn look good together 🤷🏻‍♀️

↳ user: she’s got a bf and he’s got a gf

user: this man’s gorgeous but i also gotta remember he’s the one responsible for finnick’s death

↳ yourusername: same bestie 🥺

↳ user: OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG

user: okay but her and tom look soo good 😩😩

landonorris: stunning 😍

landonorris: you’re gorgeous

↳ yourusername: 😘😘😘😘

↳ user: them >>>

↳ user: missing them rn 😩😩

user: dress is gorgeous! she’s gorgeous! i just don’t like the top of the dress, if i’m being honest

tomblyth: ❤️❤️

user: cannot wait till the movie is out!!!!

user: tHe second slide and fourth slide slandnslsmd

user: oBSESSED 😩😩😩😩

user: i can already tell yn and tom are gonna be my fav duo

user: tom tho 😍

user: you look soo beautiful, i can’t 😩

user: 😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍

user: i’m already a simp for president snow, and the movie hasn’t even come out yet

user: TOM, OMG 😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨

user: THE WAY SHE PINNED THAT ONE COMMENT 😂 yn being a coriolanus simp confirmed???

user: everything about you is soo slayyyyyyyyyy

user: nothing beats the original cast but they all look sooooo good, i can’t even lie

user: the dress reference 🤩

user: PLEASE GIVE TOM MY NUMBER!!!! OR GIVE ME HIS NUMBER EITHER IS FINE WITH ME

user: is it just me or does tom look better with the buzz cut and blonde hair???

↳ yourusername: you’re not the only one 😩 ive told him several times!!!!!!

yourusername

liked by joshandresrivera, landonorris and 699,947 others

yourusername: world premiere for @thehungergames 🇬🇧

view 6,836 comments

user: THE THRID POST ALSNDKDKDMDNSN

user: i ship

user: why do they look so in love in that third slide??

joshandresrivera: 🧡

user: yn, babe, where’s lando????

user: that don’t look like lando to me 👀

user: the chemistry is INSANE 😮‍💨

landonorris: you’re killing it, babe ❤️

↳ yourusername: 😘😘 love yaa

↳ landonorris: i love you moreeee 😘

↳ user: parents 😭😭😭

user: i hope her and tom date, they look so good together

user: ya’ll gotta stop shipping tom and yn, yn’s literally dating lando and tom’s got a girlfriend

user: tom and her look so good 😩😩😩

tomblyth: love you, gorgeous ❤️

↳ yourusername: ❤️❤️

↳ user: IM SORRY WHAT??!???

↳ user: excuse me??? sir????

user: TOMS COMMENT AKALSMDN

user: the chemistry is INSANE

user: he called her gorgeous 😭😭😭 brb gonna go cry

hunterschafer: YUPPPPP

hunterschafer: serving as always!

user: MOTHER IS SERVING 😍😍😍

user: obsessed with you and tom 😍😍😍

user: if i were lando, i would be crying in a corner rn

user: why do they look like a couple in that third slide??

user: toMs’S COMMENT!! he called her gorgeous

user: ya’ll shipping her with tom as if she doesn’t have a bf

↳ user: have you ever heard of cheating??

user: ya’ll see the interview?? she called him delicious and said that it’s so easy to fall in love with him 😭😭

↳ user: she said, “and getting to work with that is delicious to an actor like me” bffr she never said anything about it being easy to fall in love with him 🙄

↳ user: actually she did proceed to talk about how easy it is to fall in love with him?????? if anything you bffr

user: @landonorris come get your girl

user: she’s so touchy with him 🙄🙄🙄🙄

user: LANDO OPEN YOUR EYES

user: we’re all thinking the same thing right?? 😏

user: they’re definitely fucking around

tomblyth

liked by yourusername, hunterschafer and 678,927 others

tomblyth: thank you, l.a. 🤩

tagged: @yourusername @joshandresrivera @hunterschafer

view 5,936 comments

user: ngl but yn and tom look cute together

user: PARENTS FRRRR 😍😍😍😍😍

user: lando & yn >>>>>

user: they have sm tension

user: ya’ll are crazy if you think yn would leave lando for tom

↳ user: and youre crazy for not thinking that maybe yn already cheated on lando with tom 🫢

user: @landonorris @landonorris @landonorris

user: lando’s busy trying to win a race while yn’s busy fooling around with tom

yourusername: SNOW FALLS ON TOP!!!

↳ user: yes, on top of you

↳ user: nahhhhh 😭😭😭

user: how’d you know about the tattoo??? 👀

yourusername: love yaaaa ❤️

↳ tomblyth: back at you! ❤️

↳ user: @landonorris

hunterschafer: cute

↳ user: how does it feel to third wheel all the time?

user: yn’s literally soo gorgeous!!! 😩

user: if i were yn, i’d be all over him too, idcccc

user: lando’s stronger than me bc if my gf was like this with another man id be going apeshit

user: they’re 100% having an affair

↳ user: ohh definitely!

↳ user: the fact that he knew about her tattoo that none of us knew about says a lot!!!! this man has explored her body

user: yntom >>> ❤️❤️❤️

user: i wonder if lando knows about the tattoo tom was referring to

↳ user: that man is clueless like the rest of us

user: @landonorris

user: not ppl tagging lando 😭😭

↳ user: he’s gottta open his eyes

↳ user: @landonorris

imessage

— author’s note: this is simply for the story, i’m aware that rachael and tom both have partners

pt2?

2K notes · View notes

loveronlineee · 2 years

Text

Oh, Worm? (Eddie Munson x Reader)

Masterlist

Eddie Munson x Reader (She/Her)

Warnings: none

Synopsis: Y/N asks Eddie the “Would you still love me if I was a worm?” question

Y/N Notes: none

Okay I saw this request from an anon and immediately had to do it. This it a super short one but I hope you guys still like it!

Wanna be on the Eddie Munson tag list? Look here!

Wanna request something? Look here!

Y/N and Eddie relaxed on the couch in Eddie’s trailer. They often did this on Saturdays; going to one of their’s and just hanging out. It didn’t matter what they did, as long as they were together. YN sat with her legs crossed at one end, reading a book. Eddie lay across, his head resting on Y/N’s lap as he tried to nap.

The trailer was quiet. Only the sounds coming from the tv at a low volume. Y/N put down her book.

“Hey Eddie?”

“Yeah?” He answered, eyes still closed.

“Would you still love me if I was a worm?” Eddie looked at her, a little confused. After a moment of silence, Y/N got a reply.

“Wait why are you a worm?” Y/N shrugged.

“I don’t know just answer.” Eddie looked up at the ceiling, thinking.

“So did you turn into a worm just now or were you born a worm?”

“Does it matter?” Y/N chuckled. Eddie sat up and turned around to face her.

“Yes! Because if you turned into a worm right now, I would be really sad.” Eddie began to ramble, using his hands a lot to help him explain. “But I’d still take care of you, give you some nice soil to live in. But if you were born a worm, then no.”

“No?!” Y/N faked offence.

“How am I supposed to fall in love with a version of you that doesn’t have your face, your body or your personality??”

“Hey I’d still have my personality!” The couple began a joking argument. Smiling as their voices got louder. Eddie stood up from the couch and began pacing back and forth.

“But I’d never hear you sing, or throw me a sarcastic comment! I’ll never see you get excited when your favourite show is on or dance to my music! What’s the point then??” Y/N grinned and stood up, wrapping her arms around his neck.

“Only you could answer that question and make it romantic.” Eddie grinned back and held her waist. They closed the gap between their lips then pressed their foreheads together. “I love you.”

“I love you too Y/N. I’m glad you’re not a worm.”

Tag list: @Mikinyi @justaproudslytherpuff @angelicjinwoo @k12baby @spiderman-berries @ruhro7 @justanotherhappyidiot @dontcallmesavvy @kenzi-woycehoski @gh0stm3g @lagataprrr @spencersbookbag @ygrworld @ambernicole90 @alwaysbeenfamous @angelsarecallin @voteforevilthoughts @iameddiemunsonshair @hellf1reclub @phobles-world @isshecleverorisshecrazy @olrjmarvete @b-bella9 @ultraoliviajeromethings-blog @beatlebeesstuff @korescomaactually @bilesxbilinskixlahey @darkened-writer @nightless @gnkkstarz @cullenswife @killergoddessmm @preciousbabypeter @uselessbutinteresting @frogtits1 @lotus-es @padfootpottah99 @siriuslysmoking @enoumen-t @marrigold-2002 @nightless @the-mysterious-miss-s @olrjmarvete @evie-119 @rand0m—fangirl @felicityofbakerstreet @lotus-es @v0idl1nq @stv-1-ncent @eiviea @iheartcb @grumpyy-bearr @purple-flamingo @eddiessoulmate @violetrainbow412-blog @mcueveryday @marauders3rawh0re @ravenhood2792 @dragonalpha54 @slytherinintj13 @pastel-abyss-x @missscarlettangel @charli123456789 @henhouse-horrors @erikaar @golden-hoax @fairynamjoonie @caramelkatsukis-bitch @sun-faced @somerandomasgardian @helensophie @avobabe87 @s-u-t @superheavymetalunicorn @low-keyyyyy @carliuxima @avarose06 @ticharluv @ijustfndamilldllrsthatsmnefgt @gia-maybank @takemetoneverland420 @notbeforelong @lovepity @falling4uke @emiijemii @chocolatestudentllamabanana @milkiane @montgomery-fucking-gator @girl-in-the-chairs-void @ourheartsofsteel @simp4fictional @sakurarou @nyctophiliiiiaaa @just-that-bi-girl @ieatrocks1 @beautifulrunwaymodelwombat @geeksareunique @chiggennuggie @levylovegood @eddie-swhore @char1389 @chaerwithluv @annikin-im-panicin @mmmxmo @cestlavie03 @selenelouvel @thanatophobiawilldestroyme @unicorntrooper @jmj-1312 @nxrdamp @funn-sizedd @idblamekate @miraakswhore @7myoi @vintageleather @lemongirl5910 @hermie62 @tuskjohnny @madcosss @vinnielovesmel @michaelfuckinglangdon @bbyharlow @bakugouswh0r3 @bookswillfindyouaway @im-a-nobody-101 @jellyfishbeansontoast @steph88w @kendallpaige @strawberrykittey @abbyeey @rocking—and—rolling @dragons-dejavu @ghoulsgraveyard @spiderstyles04 @piratedelusion @your-mom-is-smoking-hot @lxffy-icon @kaiya3333 @my-obsession-spn @eddiemvnsongf @bicallison @rivuh-stone @summeritalyrain @hanihans @noa-keselman @hangel0veb0t @xbreezymeadowsx @official-maddibrown @sugabops @shoutokozume @joyfulstar81 @dontwaistyourtime @wintersdarling @gnkkstarz @pleasantlycrazyworld @oinomniaparatuso @magnet-girl @e-girl-on-the-server @antisocialthat70sshow @ma-tara @golden-thv @shamidreamer @crypticlxrsh @squishymochiuwu @kovieky @existentialjams-blog @caelin32212 @kissmyquill @lunar-flwr @whiskeypowder @vhscillian @alisslahey @prongs-girlfriend @afs1 @lilsubbysblog @melodiclovesong @same-panic-different-disco @stormyparker @madnessismylover @obi-wanakenobi @nerdboylover @waterfallpussyprincess @cailaif @cherrybean1116 @cal-is-not-on-branding @dragqueen-scully @underrailed @elrose1532 @anxiously-sad @haroldpotterson @nicodoesntexist @ruckusbowzeus @liviav @eddiemunsonlomlll @moonbeampillgoth @seiphira @sweethearteddiemunson @ahoeforharlow @stcrrjoon @tnu-ree @dootys @rengokuiloveu @findleynovadachs111 @reincarnationoftheparty @friednickelfestivalwolf @capybergara @wolflover384 @othermonsters @chibipeachu @waitalice @possible-yandere @katsukis1wife @ofherscarlettwitchways @defnotarobot @iameddiemunsonshair @ilovehotdads001 @thoughtsofdarc @letmeplaytheliontoo @aunicornmademedoit @barnaclebeeshive @shutthefupdoll @mushywutty @eddiemunsonsfavbitch @anangelwhodidntfall @smol-book-nerd @eddiesmxse @salembridger @houseofpyschoticwomen @moonisu @paola-carter @bay-did-nothing-wrong @ladypeaches4summerluv @the1withchampagneproblems @athenata @munsonxharringtonx @havecourage-darling @bea-bo @yelenas-princess @tototini @winchester-angel @riddle-munsonswhore @imheadintothemountains @mimikyu-of-death @heystaystray @stiles24 @realmoose @emilyymbbb @killmewithafanfic @frankiethedarkangel @insssanemind @hello-shirousa @kylokilupin @hxneybeehxlland @cherrypieyourface @imareallycoolperson @watchingteav @zervopoulouu @harringt8ns @spiderrrling @forsaken-letters @namjoonskitten @fayetheenthusiast @authorlovers @myglitteryrose @denibaby @sunflowerbebe07

#eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #reader x Eddie Munson #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson fanfiction #st eddie munson #eddie munson fluff #edddie munson #stranger things #stranger things season four #stranger things x reader #stranger things season 4 #stranger things imagine #stranger things spoilers

4K notes · View notes

projectdrow · 4 months

Text

How the Bad Batch can end well

So here are my 5 thoughts on season 3 and what’s to come after. I recommend @eriexplosion if you like reading interesting thoughts, analysis and ramblings, a lot of their recent posts inspired this one.

First of all, the trailer was a work of art. It gave us some really random scenes, but also some very direct information that we can speculate on like crazy, if we want to. Also, the title-episode list comes in handy, I will refer to it.

1.) Episode 1-3 one go

I’ll come back to why the show needs to end before May the 4th later, and that’s another reason for the multiple episode days.

When a streaming service like Disney drops more than one episode, they often do so because they think viewers might be lost, because the single (first) episode does not have the full “boom-bang-drama” potential.

I think we’ll see the liberation of Crosshair, maybe even Omega, in the first three episodes. The trailer makes no secret of the fact that Cross will rejoin the team. So this story will not be the main focus of the whole season and the first episode might built up solely for the climax of the escape/liberation in episode 3. At least something heavy will happen at the end of “Shadows of Tantiss”

2.) Omega as the main character

Omega’s character is a very typical tool in storytelling. Throw a character who knows nothing into an established system, so she learns everything with/for the viewer. Sure, the boys are main characters, too, but Omega is the point of view of the kids(! - I’ll come back to that later)-show we’re watching. She can’t be gone for that long, because I don’t think season 3 will be a “Omega’s adventures on Mt. Tantiss”. I think episode 6 and 7 (“Infiltration” and “Extraction”) the latest will bring her back.

3.) So what’s the story?

Actually, and some might say that’s a big take, a lot of the first episodes will be about Tech. I don’t think I need to elaborate to anyone why it makes no sense for him to be dead and never had.

When we first saw this Clone X, there were some interesting “Undercover-Tech” ideas, but after analyzing the trailer in more depth and especially what appears to be an attack on Pabu led by this Clone, well, I think that’s Tech. And not undercover, no, the full on brainwashed, highly dangerous Imp!Tech. Episode 10 is called “Identity Crisis”, which could very well be Tech’s. But they’ll get him back, don’t worry, also because the second part will be about the BB finally deciding what to do with their lives. Which leads directly to 5.), but first:

4.) (Almost) no one dies

Two reasons. First: We already had that devastating Tech-death scene. He AND Asajj will be brought back from the dead this season. Any further death this season wouldn’t convince anyone anymore, not even the kids.

Second: The kids. It’s still a children’s show. Yes, Star Wars kills of characters in them too, but @eriexplosion made a very good point in this post: That’s not what this show is about. TBB has been about the struggle of Clones finding their place, finding family, finding a meaning. All of that would be for naught, and that’s why I think everyone survives.

Also: The last episode is called: “The Cavalry has Arrived”.

5.) About the future

I think the Bad Batch was intended to be released earlier. As well as the trailer. But with the strikes and Filoni being promoted, their was a lot going on. With the triplet opening and the double episodes, we’ll finish on May 1st. And that would be just to perfect to announce the follow-up-project on May 4th. I see another Clone series on the horizon. The Clones work, the people love them, it’s all there, the characters, the stories, the animation. It’s a safe bet for Lucasfilm. And sure, it would work with Rex, Cody and more as main characters, but the Batch was intended to be and is a stark contrast to the “Regs”, especially if they get Cross and Tech back.

Sure, Omega could be the leading figure again, but… nah. I am writing this because I’m absolutely convinced that we won’t have seen the last of the complete BadBatch after season 3.

Star Wars is about Hope. So I hope.

#The Bad Batch #Star Wars #TBB speculation

101 notes · View notes

ilovetulips · 2 years

Note

Can you write a Steve Harrington request where he gets pouty/jealous when Officer Callahan has a known crush on the reader (let’s say he was a senior when she and Steve were freshman) and it suggested that she flirts with him to distract him so they can get away?

steve harrington x fem!reader

the ‘house on wheels’ steve was designated to drive wasn’t exactly subtle, so it obviously drew attention from the officers guarding the trailer park that night. how were you supposed to explain the reasoning behind such an odd mix of people driving a camper-van? everyone instantly started panicking.

“shit. shit, shit! we’re screwed!” dustin shouted amongst the sound of everyone bickering. you’d caught onto a few things people said, curse words flying through the air while you sat in the front with steve.

“just- just shut up!” steve shouted, pinching his nose in frustration. successful however, as the group stared in silence at the boy.

“holy shit, is that callahan?” max said, leaning forward and squinting slightly towards the tall man with a flashlight walking towards you.

“oh for fucks sake…” steve mumbled under his breath. it was known that officer callahan had a crush on you, he wasn’t one to make it low-key. ever since you guys had a few classes together in high school because of the mixed grades system in place, he’d taken a liking to you. you’d never reciprocated those feelings, and when you’d found steve… well callahan was the least of your concerns.

“oh! oh! [Y/N], you can get us out of this. just, talk to him. he’s going to listen to you he’s like… in love with you or some shit.” eddie chimes in, unhelpfully.

“do i have to?” you reply, turning in your chair to avoid the piercing glow of the torch 10 steps away from steve’s door.

“no time. no choice, please [Y/N].”

you turn to look at steve to gain his approval, but his door is already being opened by the infamous officer. the policeman wasn’t really paying attention until he’d looked up at hearing the sound of your voice bickering with a hidden eddie; still suspect #1.

“you guys do know that this area is— [Y/N]? oh wow uhm, hey. what’re you doing?”

your eyes widen as he recognises you, causing you to turn around slowly and place a smile on your face. “ohmygosh! no way, phil? haven’t seen you in so long sweetheart, what’ve you been up to?” the faux sweet tone you laced your voice with was sickly, but you had no other choice.

he leans his hand on the driver’s side door, shifting his weight to the side. “nothing really, missed your face around here.”

“ahem.” steve cleared his throat loudly, causing the police officer’s head to snap towards him.

“i’ll come round to you, [Y/N]. driver seems a bit angry.”

he slams the door shut and walks around towards the main door on the side of the vehicle. you place your hand on steve’s, comforting him slightly before stepping towards the door and avoiding the mischievous glints reflecting in everyone else’s eyes.

“shut the fuck up, henderson. keep laughing and you’ll blow it.” you pointed towards him, before pulling your shirt down to reveal more of your chest. you’d hiked your skirt up slightly too, hoping your cleavage and thighs were enough to distract the boy outside from asking too many questions.

as soon as you open the door, an instant blush hits callahan’s cheeks. eye-level with your breasts as you slowly walk down the stairs and waving your hips side-to-side slightly, he didn’t know where to look. “are you okay, honey? you look a bit distracted there.”

“oh! yes i’m, fine. you look fine. great! you look great.” he brings his fist to his mouth, coughing into it as your smirk grows. you’d always enjoyed having an affect on people like this, something about it made the blood rush to your head. he dropped the key in his hand, it falling to the floor with a small sound.

“oh! let me get that for you…” you say, leaning down and bending over while looking up at him with sultry eyes. he had a perfect view down your shirt, his stare trained directly to your cleavage.

“phil, babe. eyes up here, yeah?”

“yeah. sorry, sorry. what are you… are you busy tomorrow night?” he’d got the courage to ask.

“mmm, not sure. how come?” you know perfectly how to give off an innocent act, doe eyes looking up at him through your eyelashes and your nail placed between your teeth.

“you- fuck. you wanna go on a date? with me, darlin’?” he had managed to back you up against the side of the van, hands placed on the sides of your head. little did you know that everyone was not only watching and listening in on the interaction, but steve was livid. his eyes flicking up to the side mirror to see him getting close to you, the reflection playing in his mind.

“oh… i don’t know. would you be able to do be a favour for me if i go with you?”

“sure. yeah, anything for you. have i told you how good you look tonight? like seriously…” he lets out a loud wolf whistle, and you have to hide your discomfort.

falling back into character, you twirl a strand of your hair in your hand and giggle. “thanks so much, officer. would you be able to let me and a friend or two through to the park, honey? we have a friend there and i’m just…” you fan your face and look up, pretending to fan away tears. “sorry. i’m just so worried about her.”

“hey. don’t cry, i’ll let you through, just this once though.” he places his hand on your face, swiping under your eyes and you could only imagine steve.

“oh! thank you so so much.” you pull him into a hug, making sure he becomes intoxicated by your scent before pulling back. “i’ll meet you tomorrow night. 7 o’clock at the diner, yeah?”

“perfect. so perfect.” he says, looking down towards your chest again.

you leave him with the sound of a sickening giggle before closing the door and leaning against it inside the camper. you feel like you’re going to be sick.

everyone looks at you with wide eyes. “holy shit. you just did that…” “[Y/N]! you fucking genius!” “oh my god, that was perfect. how’re you so good at that?”

you laugh against the door, waiting for the silhouette of the pining officer to disappear before walking back towards your boyfriend in the front seat. you see the small pout placed on his lips, and his fierce grip on the steering wheel; knuckles white with lack of blood flow.

“hey… stevie your hands are gonna hurt. don’t do that—“ you lean towards his hands, but he pulls them away and looks towards the window on his left.

“steve…?” everyone behind you were immersed in their own conversation, mostly quoting things you had said to win the officer over and fawning over your performance too much to pay attention to you and steve right now.

“are you okay? i’m sorry, i didn’t actually mean anything i said to him! i was just—“

“i know.” he scoffs, the harsh sound ringing in your ears.

you only nod in response.

he quickly stepped on the gas, the vehicle jerking back to life as you all go back to eddie’s trailer to go over the plan again. you both sat in silence, on the drive there and when sitting on eddie’s couch.

“for fucks sake steve, stop sulking. the tension coming off you two is literally making my hair frizz, so go somewhere else and sort this shit out.” robin says, quite loudly while pointing towards the both of you. you agree with her, his sulking was unnecessary as you’d already apologised. so what was the issue?

you grab his hand and guide him towards eddie’s small bathroom. leaning against the sink, you look up at him.

“what’s the matter, steve? and don’t lie to me, please. you haven’t let that pout leave your lips since i got back to the van.”

he attempts to pace back and forth in the cramped room, running a hand through his hair before finally focusing on you. he cages you in, hands either side of your hips while he stares at you.

“did you enjoy flirting with him, [Y/N]? hmm? enjoy the way he trapped you against the side of the camper?”

“what? no! are you crazy, why would i enjoy that?”

“sure looked like you did.” he looks down at you, pulling your shirt down to match how it was when you distracted callahan.

“steve… what’re you—“

“i’m so mad right now. seeing him… get that close to you while you looked like this. thinking he had a chance. fucking hell.” he sighs heavily out of his nose.

“are you— you’re jealous! aren’t you?” you prod at his chest, smirking up at him.

“of course i’m jealous, [Y/N]! i’m your boyfriend, nobody else should be able to get that close to you.”

“babe…” your hands smooth his chest before locking around his neck and pulling him towards your face. “you’re the only one for me, ‘kay? not officer callahan. he’s creepy… and his breath smelt bad. i was only doing it to help everyone.”

that earns a breathy chuckle from the boy standing over you. “yeah?”

“oh yeah. only reason i got through all of that was because i imagined it were you.”

you leaned forward, pecking his lips a few times until the small pout encasing his plush lips turned into a smirk.

“like this?” he lifts you by your hips and places you against the door, mimicking the position you had found yourself in earlier.

“so much better when you do it, c’mere.” pushing your lips together, you feel steve’s tongue lick a stripe along the perimeter of your parted lips. the passionate kiss was soon turning heated, hands fumbling over each other’s bodies and dizzy heads spinning through the hot room. that was until you’d both heard a whisper from outside the door.

you pulled away, both of your eyebrows furrowed as you looked at one another. another mumbled whisper sounded from the door, and you realise instantly what’s happening.

before thinking twice, you open the door. as suspected, multiple bodies tumbled to the ground; none other than lucas and dustin. they smiled dopily up at you and steve, whose hand was tightly gripped on your waist.

“what’d you hear?” steve dared to ask.

“nothing! just some weird, water sounds. sounded like eddie’s pipes have gone bust or something.”

you can’t hold in your laughter, giggling in the two boys’ confused faces as steve joins you. they look at each other, even more confused than before, then huddling together to whisper again as they walk back into the main room.

“you should get jealous more often, harrington.”

“hm?” he hummed into the top of your head.

“so you can kiss me like that again. my legs nearly gave out.”

he chuckles again, before picking you up bridal-style and walking you back to the main room. “can’t have that now, can we? how else are you gonna show them thighs off to officer heart-eyes tomorrow night?”

you smack his chest with a smile, “you’re such an idiot, steve harrington.”

865 notes · View notes

gingerylangylang1979 · 1 year

Text

I am not dooming and glooming over Carmy x Sydney post-trailer

I know what we all saw and I saw it coming. Ever since there was a casting call for an old friend named Claire, I was like, enter a potential love interest. And now we have some flirty banter and she has a recurring role. But you know what I don’t really care. I gave side-eye when the casting was announced as a knee-jerk reaction and was a bit startled at the trailer upon first watch. But really, I’m mostly unbothered at the end of this day.

1. We don’t know what the relationship was, is, or could be.

2. If it is romantic, I’m actually seeing the positive because it means Carmy could have a girlfriend. If it is a thing it establishes that Carmy is into women and open to love. If sex is involved, he’s not asexual. If he’s not into women or asexual it’s not the worst (and if he was with a hot guy, I’ll except it and enjoy the visuals, cue Angel)... but it ruins my ship, so yeah I have feelings. I wouldn’t stop watching the show over it. But those things not being true means I get to watch Carmy be romantic with a woman. That doesn’t make me a villain. Of course I want it to be with Sydney, but Carmy is fine and I want to see him in a romantic situation. Sue me. So if this girl is the vehicle that proves there is a romantic pathway with a woman in his story line and I get to see him get down those are wins for me. Not the grand prize, but I’ll take it. Because...

3. She could be the in-between girl if something does happen. How do we know if they get together it’s a long term or end game relationship? These things happen all the time. Someone is introduced mid-run that doesn’t last until the end.

4. While whatever interactions are happening with this woman, Carmy is also spending a lot of time with Sydney outside of the restaurant. Yes, they are cooking, but it’s cooking together. They are bound to get to know each other more. I wouldn’t be surprised if she dropped that he made the best meal she ever had at some point at his apartment and weirdness ensues. Sydney also seems to be spending a lot of time with Carmy AND Sugar. I love it. It goes with my The Bear is a Mom & Pop restaurant established in 2023 agenda. Time with the fam building the place together.

5. Carmy & Sydney actually may never happen. We were told they are platonic so it shouldn’t be a huge shock if it doesn’t happen. Disappointing as fuck, yes, but I can’t be hostile about it. We are just shipping what is essentially a crackship that we are hoping is a slow burn. I still have hope but I also am not genuinely seething. I have my moments then get over it.

6. Or they could and this is just part of the epic sneak attack slow burn. Only time will tell. Maybe a long shot but I did see what looked to be Carmy in therapy. I’ll keep hope alive with Ayo’s sentiment that Carmy and Sydney would maybe be possible after therapy and two seasons. I’m being optimistic.

I dunno. If this makes me lose my shipper card, my apologies. I’m just being objective despite my wishes. I’m trying to keep this fun.

#the bear fx #carmy x sydney #chefs kiss #bearney #carmy berzatto #sydney adamu

78 notes · View notes

agent-cupcake · 1 year

Text

Dramaturgy

Ah yes, another commission to fund my gamer lifestyle from the incredibly lovely and patient @novcaine (thank you <;3)

Pairing: Vampire! Claude von Riegan x f!Reader

Synopsis: Trying to cope with the sudden death of your eccentric father, you fall down a rabbit hole of conspiracy, curses, and your very strange (and very tragic) family history, leading you to the small town of Old Derdriu—and its darkest secret.

Warnings: explicit smut, dub/noncon, kidnap, drugged sex

Tags: horror elements, urban fantasy, blood kink, very unhealthy romantic dynamic, overstimulation, "orgasms make your blood sweeter" trope

Word Count: 27.3k

Notes: I read a few horror stories in an attempt to get the tone right for this one which, as I'm sure you'll notice, heavily influenced me while writing. I really got caught up in lore crafting for this one as well, although the real fun was matching up the serious stuff with Claude's personality.

Act 1

“Thither, full fraught with mischievous revenge,

Accursed, and in a cursed hour, he hies.”

9th day of Verdant Moon

As long as I can remember, it’s been just us two. Me and dad against the world. Explorers, adventurers, wanderers. Rogues who chase the horizon to keep the sun close, that’s what he says. Said. There’s always been somewhere new to go, we never stayed anywhere long enough to cast too long of a shadow.

That’s, more or less, what I said over his ashes. Not that there was anyone around to hear it. A eulogy for nobody. But it was true. It is true.

Once upon a time (that’s what people say, right?), it must have been when we spent a summer in Arundel living out of a camper trailer because we didn’t have an air conditioner and spent most of the time outside, I asked him why. I don’t know why I remember it so well, but the air smelled like bug spray and pine and campfire smoke. Not ours though, we hardly ever have fires. Dad claims it’s ‘reasonable’ caution. Claimed.

That night, I don’t know what compelled me to ask, but I did. I asked, “Why do we move so much?”

He said to listen carefully, and I did, because he never sounded so serious. He said that we have bad luck. He said that it was like water, that it’d pool up around us like a puddle if we stayed still. And I asked why, of course, because that was a confusing thing for him to say.

And he said, and I’ll never ever forget this, “it’s in your blood.”

I think. Back then, the distinction between ‘your’ and ‘our’ was virtually nonexistent. And maybe, just maybe, my memory is faulty, and he didn’t switch from a collective pronoun to a singular one. I could be seeing ghosts that aren’t there, convincing myself of untruths to explain some of this. It could have been ‘your’, and it could have been ‘our’, but the point is the same no matter how I split it apart.

I’ve got bad luck. It’s in my blood. I try not to think about that because I don’t want it to be my fault somehow, I don’t even know what I would do if it was.

But I have to know.

II.

“Excuse me, are you Cheryll Bates?” you asked hopefully, standing at the side of a table where an older woman in a bright pink cardigan sat. Nose crinkled and mouth slightly open in the way only people of a certain age could mimic, she adjusted her blocky red glasses higher to peer up at you. The lenses magnified her small, dark eyes like a bug, not helping the discomfort you felt beneath her unwavering gaze as she scanned you from head to toe.

“You’re the Macbeth girl?” she finally asked. It took you a moment to realize what she meant. Macbeth, your mother’s last name—a name you only learned of, along with the woman herself, a month previous.

“Uhm, yeah, that’s me,” you said, hoping you didn’t sound as immediately unsettled as you felt. “May I sit?”

“Be a waste of time if you didn’t,” she said with a slight tinge of an accent, gesturing to the opposite seat with a plump hand. It was the wooden kind with a quilted cushion and long skirt, matching the borderline stifling cozy atmosphere of the cafe. The kind ripe with this musty, dusty, patchouli and tea leaf smell you associated with old women and antiques.

“Thank you for meeting with me,” you said as you sat down, anxiety making your movements awkward. Although Cheryll Bates wasn’t your blood relative, knowing you were related at all was surreal. Throughout your entire life, you’d never heard a single mention of family, of a mom or uncle or grandparents or even a stray cousin twice removed. You should have felt excited, and a part of you was, but you couldn’t stop messing with the cardboard sleeve on your tea, your eyes flitting around the small cafe every few seconds.

The answers that had gotten you this far had only served to unravel the very fabric of your existence, but you sought them all the same. You had to. Dad used to say that knowing was often uncomfortable, but ignorance was an agony like no other. He said all sorts of wise things, although you learned recently that the truth was not one of them.

Cheryll’s mouth worked like she was sucking on something, fine lines fanning out around her lips. The sluggishly swaying Tiffany lamp above cast her in an odd, unflattering light, her dark eyes that much more unnerving beneath the shadows.

“I liked your mama, she was a sweet girl. How much did Indy tell you about her?”

Indy, as in, your dad. The man who raised you, who cared for you. It was a nickname he had earned in school, apparently, after the titular adventurer and archeologist from an old movie.

“My dad never told me a single thing,” you said, trying not to sound too affected. If you thought about this all as some sort of research project, it was easier. If it wasn’t your life, you could view it dispassionately. So that’s what you tried to do. “I am… aware of what she did though.”

“It was a terrible thing,” Cheryll said gravely. “Of course she’d already left you in Enbarr with Indy at that point, came home crying that she had a baby girl, that she couldn’t trust herself to even hold you. Nobody had any idea of why she was so upset, we thought she had lost her mind. And then your daddy came to try and bring her back and… well. I can’t imagine how a person could do such a thing.”

Something within you twisted in sympathy of that statement. Even reading an abstract report made your stomach churn. Self immolation as a means of murder suicide wasn’t very common, mostly because it wasn’t practical. The report had no answers for the hows and the whys, only dry facts.

“Do you think it was postpartum depression?”

Again, Cheryll stared at you with that sour purse of her lips, almost like she was sizing you up. “It was that family of hers,” she said. “I’ll tell you straight, the Macbeths weren’t quite right. Not to say it was their fault, what happened to them, but I won’t glorify the dead, neither. I don’t believe in it. I never wanted my Liv to marry that boy, I knew only bad things would come of it.”

“What do you mean?” you asked.

“Didn’t you read about what happened to them?” Cheryll asked, an edge of indignation in her voice. “One after another…” She didn’t finish that statement, closing her eyes to visibly, even theatrically, shudder. Then again, having seen the string of death certificates, you didn’t exactly blame her. “I went to a psychic when Liv told me she was getting married to that Macbeth boy, and do you know what they said? Don’t let it happen. But I did. I let her marry into that family, and I’ve had to live with that every day since.”

“But none of it was on purpose, was it?” you asked cautiously. “The fire was an accident.”

“An accident,” Cheryll scoffed. “An ‘accident’ that happened right after the two of them had a baby girl. Just like the ‘accident’ that killed your mama’s baby sister. Do you think what happened with your mama was an accident?”

“I thought,” you said slowly, trying to remain calm, wiping that thought from your head and your palms on your jean-clad thighs, “that my mother committed suicide.”

“All that girl ever wanted was to be a mama. I’m telling you, there was something wrong with the Macbeths and she realized it too late. They were cursed, all of them and especially the girls.” Cheryll paused, contemplating her tea. “That’s why your parents met in the first place. Indy was doing research into the families involved with that tragedy in Derdriu and they were the only two he could find.” Cheryll took a sip, frowned, then continued in an even softer voice. “I s’pose your daddy must have been just as cursed as your mama, but I didn’t know him very well.”

“What tragedy?” you asked.

“The Rain of Blood, they call it.”

“I’ve never heard of that,” you said, getting out your diary to write it down.

“Reign, not rain,” Cheryll said, peering at your notepad. “Like a king, reign.”

You erased the word, rewriting it. “Is it a story, or something that happened?”

“It happened,” Cheryll said. “He and your mama always had a laugh about that, said it was why they had such rotten luck.”

“Rotten luck,” you repeated under your breath, more to yourself than to her.

“They thought it was real funny,” Cheryll said, pulling you from your thoughts. “Indy scorned all the ghost stories, he said that it was a matter of history waiting to be uncovered. It seems like he changed his tune as soon as he saw what happened to them.”

You thought about your dad who got itchy when you stayed in one place too long, looking over his shoulder like he was being chased by something you couldn’t see. You thought about the puddles of bad luck forming beneath your feet.

“He might have,” you said, not wanting to think too hard about that. “Do you remember what he said happened? In this Reign of Blood, I mean.”

Cheryll impatiently waved her hand. “You’d have to find a book or something, I couldn’t tell you other than that. The town burned down after. That’s why you’ve got Derdriu and Old Derdriu. They were connected before the incident, but Old Derdriu had to be completely rebuilt later.”

“So Old Derdriu is newer than Derdriu,” you said, unsure if you were understanding her correctly.

“Oh, except for the ruins, they kept those,” she said, her head tilting as she remembered. “The castle from way back when Leicester had Kings and Dukes and the like. But I couldn’t tell you any more than that, I’ve never been.”

You wrote that down too, tapping the eraser against your lip as you contemplated all of this new information. Cheryll was drinking her tea, obviously wanting to finish this up.

“Thank you so much for meeting with me, I really appreciate it,” you said. “Is there anything else you can think of about my dad or…?”

“I’m going to tell you what I wish I had told my daughter,” Cheryll said, looking at you head on. “Leave, now. Go spend the summer on a beach in Enbarr with other kids your age. There’s nothing for you here.”

You swallowed hard, nodding. “Yeah, I… Yeah. I’ll think about it, thank you.”

III.

21st day of Verdant Moon

Being alone is worse than I thought it would be. Having to do everything by myself, figure out how to buy tickets and schedule stuff and all of that, it’s exhausting. But if I think about that too much I’ll cry and if I cry I won’t stop so all I can do is try to figure out what the hell any of this means. It has to mean something, doesn’t it? Or it’s all just insane nonsense and I’m the unfortunate product of a long line of nonsensical insanity, left to drift through this world with nothing but a payout from a trucking company and ghost stories from an old widow and some undiagnosed madness that was never treated because I had no idea I had a family history of mental illness because I was lied to, over and over again.

I can’t think like that.

Earlier, after I left that cafe, I remembered something. It’s weird to have all of these little memories popping up now, things that seemed so insignificant at the time. Maybe they are and I’m just trying to backfill information to explain all of the crazy things I’m learning about my dad and my family. I don’t know. I was just thinking about how during my first year of high school, my dad had a brief stint as a mechanic northwest in Elidure before working through the various little towns scattered around the old border between Adrestia and Faerghus as a construction worker—he even let me borrow the Indech branded pickup truck he’d gotten as a property manager on Lake Teutates to drive to my junior prom. The same truck where I got my first kiss playing spin the bottle with some people I was sort of friends with. I can’t even remember his name. It’s funny, almost. I remember that he tasted like the shitty booze we were all drinking and got way too slobbery and wore a purple tie and that I could see the Big Dipper right above his head but I don’t remember his name. Moving around so much, I guess, I never really bothered to remember things like that. After I graduated, dad and I left it all behind to spend a year on the Rhodos Coast. I liked it there. It was charming. But I always knew we wouldn’t be there long, dad got these twitchy sorts of tics when we stayed anywhere too long.

Anyway, the point is, I mentioned wanting to go east, to Gloucester or something because I heard they had mild summers, and he said no in a completely flat voice, nothing like I had ever heard from him. He didn’t even look me in the eye, just said no. We went to Gwenhwyvar pretty soon after that, and I didn’t bring it up again. Again, it could all be innocuous. It could all mean absolutely nothing. But I wonder. What if it did? What if there was a reason he wouldn’t take me here? A real, true reason that didn’t have to do with the horrible things that happened to my family? If he seriously thought I was cursed, why didn’t he tell me? What was he hiding? Well, I’ll never know that.

I looked up the Reign of Blood and barely found anything, it’s all some witchy weird occult stuff and ghost stories. The castle itself is called El Dorado, and it’s this sort of icon of superstition, but especially the Reign of Blood which is used as an explanation for why so many people disappeared in the fire. People debate if it happened more than they discuss what might have actually taken place. A part of me thinks that Cheryll was just messing with me, or lying. I don’t know why she would, but it makes more sense than the alternative. Who am I to believe that somehow I’m involved with this huge conspiracy? People who are hurting make up all sorts of weird things to try and come to terms with their pain, I’m just feeding into that.

I should leave. If dad didn’t think it was a good idea to be here, maybe it’s not. I should move on, that’s what he’d want, right? Keep on moving, never look back, chase the horizon.

I’ll leave. There’s no point in any of this, it’ll just keep hurting. I’ll leave. Tomorrow.

IV.

Before you left the city, destination TBD—but that was a lie, wasn’t it? You knew exactly where you were going, you just didn’t admit it because you knew it was stupid and the mark was the last person to admit they’d been conned—you stopped at your mother’s childhood home. It was a white farmhouse style place on the very edge of what used to be a suburban neighborhood but was now quickly giving into the urban sprawl. The Macbeths hadn’t lived there for over twenty years. You could see each of those years weathered onto the house. It was where your aunt died as a young girl. How? You weren’t so sure. Cheryll mentioned illness, but the official record only gave the date of her passing. That was a few years before your grandparents followed.

If you expected to feel something upon seeing the place, you were disappointed. Not even a twinge of disquiet that’d come with seeing a place possibly haunted by the dead.

You felt nothing other than a vague curiosity, a pang of regret, or melancholy. Never, not once in your entire life, had you lived in an actual house. The longest you had ever stayed in one place was Enbarr, where most of your earliest memories took place. And then there were a few years in Mozghuz where your dad taught history, and another few in a small Varley town where he worked as a consultant for a local museum. But those were apartments and townhouses and just you and him. No family, few friends. A life of transience, of existing ephemerally, always in a state of maybe or going or somewhere else.

A tingling sense of unease settled through you right then, although not because of the entirely benign house with which you were having an intense stare down. Why were you here? Not only at this long abandoned home, but in Leicester, in Edgaria. What were you searching for other than ghosts? Were you seriously going to believe in the superstition of an old woman who went to psychics and still grieved for her daughter? Bad things happened, sure, but that was true in a lot of families. That didn’t mean anything, you just wanted to assign meaning retroactively because of your pain.

And it did hurt. It always hurt. You lived in a state of in-between and those gaps were yours to fill all by yourself, overflowing with the pain you pretended you didn’t feel. Staring at the old house, you were acutely aware of the in-between. If you closed your eyes, you could imagine him standing next to you, filling up that empty space.

“Are you lost, Mr. Jones?” you would tease. “I doubt you’ll find the Lost Ark all the way out here.”

He would groan and ask who told you about that embarrassing nickname, and you would tell him that it was-

Well, you wouldn’t. Because if he hadn’t died, you would never know Mrs. Bates or that you weren’t actually his daughter or that his friends called him Indy.

The sound of rattling plastic on concrete startled you out of your increasingly dangerous thoughts. The next door neighbor was dragging in his trash bins. He was an older man, his face wrinkled and tan like leather, his posture a little hunched.

“Excuse me,” you called, trotting over to him. It was a long shot, but better than nothing.

“Huh?” he asked, looking at you with his thick, bushy eyebrows furrowed.

“Sorry to bother you,” you said. “I was just wondering how long you’ve lived here?”

“How long?” he clarified, his big eyebrows shooting up. “Huh. Gotta be fifty years, give or take.” He laughed, a dry, crinkly sound. “Too long, I say.”

“Did you know the family that lived here about twenty-five or so years ago?” you asked, gesturing to the big white house. “The Macbeths.”

As soon as you said the name, he tensed up, his friendly demeanor freezing. “Why do you want to know?”

You raised your hands innocently, surprised by the instant reaction. “I’m their… their granddaughter,” you told him. “I don’t mean to trouble you at all, I’m only curious.”

His cheeks puffed before he let out a big breath, that defensive posture shifting. “I hate to say that I can’t tell you much. They were always a real private family, kept to themselves mostly. It caused one heck of a scandal, the way everything ended. Don’t s’pose it sat right with anyone, not after-” He cut himself off, thin lips drawing inwards. “No, it’s not my business.”

“Please, I just want to know,” you said, still placating. “Anything you can tell me, I’d appreciate.”

He nodded, but his eyes were still cautious. “I’ll tell you this, the missus was very unwell,” he said. “When the youngest daughter died, people spread all kinds of nasty rumors about her involvement. Completely outrageous, what they said. But towards the end, she wasn’t quite right in the head, always talking about some curse. It was no thing ‘sides the agony of a grieving parent, but people took it as an admission of guilt.”

“It was all an accident though, wasn’t it?” you asked. “Nobody was at fault.”

“Exactly. If you want my honest opinion, the family had bad luck. There’s nothing more to be said, what with all those little ‘uns involved.”

Bad luck. The sun beat down on your skin, sweat beading up on your spine and hairline, but you shivered, casting a sidelong glance at the house as if it was somehow watching you, as if talking about these things was dangerous in any way, as if there was a looming manifestation of a bad luck over your shoulder, drooling in anticipation of getting you now that you were the last Macbeth left.

“I see,” you said, forcing a smile for the man. “Thank you so much for your time and honesty, I really appreciate it.”

“Of course, have a good day, miss.”

Act 2

“Who now is plotting how he may seduce Thee also from obedience, that with him, Bereav’d of happiness, thou may’st partake His punishment, eternal misery”

Essar, Hanneman, “Final Look at El Dorado.”

Excerpt from National Geographic, Vol. 162

September, 1991

“It was with great honor that I accepted the final invitation to visit El Dorado, the famed yet forgotten home of Leicester’s Duke, and eventual king, Claude von Riegan. The massive, not to mention opulent, castle sits in the cradle between Riegan and Albrecht, kept safe by the steep basalt wall to the south and acres of privately owned forest. For all of its grandeur and majesty, these gilded halls hide dark secrets, secrets that may never be truly known. Historians quibble over the voracity surrounding the chilling Reign of Blood. Was it, as many say, a tragic plague sweeping the population? Could it have been a cult formed following a period of famine? Or, as some fear, does this golden fortress hide a terrifying past of human sacrifice and Faustian bargains? These secrets are what has led to the permanent closure of El Dorado and…

“…For my tour, and indeed, the last ever tour of El Dorado, I was given a set of very specific instructions for the sake of my safety and the conservation of the historic site. The first demanded I stay close to my guide. The second instructed me to only enter rooms filled with natural sunlight. This, I was told, was the surest method of determining which rooms were safe. Truly, health concerns are as much a part of the closure as anything else, it is simply too risky to maintain. I was…

“...Despite the stories of prowling monsters and dangerous curses, nothing came of the tour, save for these beautiful photos I was able to capture in the hopes of memorializing what was once a golden beacon of wealth, nobility, and power. As of today, El Dorado is entirely inaccessible. Trespassers will not only be gambling with their own safety should they wish to enter, they also risk severe jail time and steep fines. As I…”

II.

The Sagittarius Express left Edgaria at nine the morning, and it would arrive in Derdriu around eight that night. Named after the starry archer, it was a fairly straight shot connecting the two major cities. It would be shorter in a car, but you couldn’t bring yourself to get in one of those. After spending the night in Derdriu proper, you would take the gondola up to Old Derdriu.

Settled into your compartment with only two other people—and one of them had been passed out cold ever since you boarded—you continued your research. In general, you were poorly versed in Leicester history. You knew there had been something going on with one of their dukes wresting power away from the nobles to consolidate power and drive out the domineering Church of Seiros, going so far as to annex some of Faerghus’ land, but not necessarily any details beyond that.

When you looked into the Reign of Blood and Old Derdriu, the castle El Dorado showed as the first result. It was the only structure that remained when the rest of Old Derdriu was razed to the ground. Those were the ruins Cheryll mentioned, the home of Claude von Riegan, duke turned king. Information about the event was sparse. Even when you did find information about El Dorado or the Reign of Blood, to say there was discourse surrounding it was an understatement. And that was assuming you could find historical facts rather than ghost stories. None of this was helped by the fact that, a hundred or so years before the Reign of Blood, King Claude von Riegan mysteriously disappeared. Such a tantalizing yet inexplicable vanishing act gave rise to stories about his occult dealings. Some people said he was cursed by the goddess Sothis for his vendetta against the Church of Seiros. Since El Dorado was his home, his story muddied the waters when it came to researching the Reign of Blood.

As the train pulled out of the station, you pulled up one of the more promising sources you had found: a Xerox of an old Life magazine article penned by some old guy named Hanneman Essar. The quality was terrible, compressed and squeezed dry of detail, but looking at the photos of the once grand castle made you more certain than ever that it was important. Something about the place drew you in, even as you glanced over your shoulder for the cold claws of whatever bad luck your father warned you of. There was no point in asking yourself why, or if you should or shouldn’t—you already knew you shouldn’t—because your course was set in stone. Carved out long before you arrived in Leicester.

Those sorts of thoughts, the ones that toyed with the idea of fate or destiny, were entertained in the back of your head, the place where you pushed every other unpleasant or undesirable or stupid thought.

It was better to focus on facts.

“Are you interested in El Dorado, young lady?” the man sitting next to you asked. You slowly lowered your tablet, looking up at the speaker. A mustached blond man with blue eyes, his eyebrow quirked curiously. “It’s rare to see someone your age taking an interest in history.”

That bristled you a bit, both his pompous tone and the implication. Even when your father worked other jobs, his fascination with history never waned, and it was the only area of your education that never faltered from constantly moving schools.

“It’s an interesting place, don’t you think?” you asked in a measured voice.

“Yes, it most certainly is,” he agreed. “A place most ripe with curiosity and fiction, a paradise for the easily fooled tourists they usher in.”

“What do you mean?” you asked.

“I should think my meaning is clear. The people in Old Derdriu spread ridiculous stories about El Dorado to stimulate their tourism, all for a place that they have shut off to the public,” he said. “As for the source of my interest, I am Acheron Phlegethon. I don’t doubt you’ve heard of me. I’ve debunked several famous hoaxes across Fodlan, including the fiction of Shambhala’s subterranean civilization. Now I have set my sights upon the legendary vampires of El Dorado.”

“Vampires?” you asked, your eyes widening.

Acheron squinted at you suspiciously. “I thought you said you had done your research.”

“I only just started,” you said, shrugging in an attempt to hide your ignorance. “I guess that explains why it’s called the Reign of Blood.”

“Bah, a fiction,” Acheron said, waving his hand. “There is no evidence of the cult they claim existed, let alone of the vampire they insist was the leader. Tell me, if the town or its people were truly cursed, why did retribution stop with a single fire that could easily be attributed to a natural cause? The deaths are the same, nothing more than a result of the violent beasts that are known to prowl that area. As I said, they sell these stories to bring tourists into their town. It really is the most insidious scheme, one that I will not tolerate. My next book will be the most comprehensive look at this scam to date, it’s sure to be a hit.”

“How do you know?” you asked. “Do you have any evidence that it’s a lie?”

“Evidence?” he asked, baffled. “Why, common sense. There is no such thing as vampires or curses, need I any better evidence than that?”

“Yes.”

Acheron’s eyes narrowed further, his mustache twitching. “It seems you are too young to be sensible. I recommend you continue to study historical facts instead of believing in superstitious bunk.” He paused, his head tilting. “If you give me your email address, I can add you to the preorder list for my next book. I’ve no doubt that you would find it most edifying.”

“No, thank you,” you told him.

“Hm, very well. I shan’t disturb you further,” Acheron said, pulling a pillow around his neck and a set of headphones from his bag. “Oh, and good luck with your research, young lady.”

“Thanks, you too,” you told him, although he was already pulling on an eye mask and probably couldn’t hear you.

You turned away from the man to look out the window, your thoughts whirling. If you believed that your family could be cursed, couldn’t you also believe in vampires? The logical side of your brain said no, emphatically rejecting the notion because it was ridiculous. Utterly insane.

Something in your gut said otherwise. The tight lead ball of anxiety burning in your stomach, the thing drawing you towards Old Derdriu despite everything that screamed at you to stay away. You looked again at the distorted photos of El Dorado, trying to imagine it in its prime. It must have been a sight to behold, unlike anything you had ever seen before.

It didn’t matter what you did or did not believe. It was just like you told Acheron, you needed evidence first. Rubbing a hand over your face, you returned to your reading.

III.

24th day of Verdant Moon

I had a dream last night. Sometimes I get these wicked nightmares which I guess makes sense considering what happened but last night it wasn’t a nightmare which almost makes it worse because when I woke up crying, it wasn’t just because I was alone, but because I feel so alone that it hurts, it hurts bad. People aren’t made to be alone. I don’t know how to be anything else than a set, a pair. It was always just me and him and now that he’s gone I have a gaping hole in my chest and I think that if I chase down answers it’ll mean something but I know it won’t, I’ll wake up just as alone as I did this morning.

My brain conjured this idea of a man just to taunt me, I think. A beautiful man who looked at me like he knew me, and I knew him even though I don’t. I woke up the second before our hands touched and just like that we (we, us) were out in the nothing of Fodlan’s great empty flatlands and there was a high wind warning and a great big semi-truck with Ernest Shipping painted on the side and a “rate my driving” sticker on the back. And then there were squealing tires and creaking metal and crunching glass and so much noise from all sides as the world closed in around me, the cab of dad’s vintage SUV giving way to make room for something else crudely forcing itself through. The wind was screaming, and so was I. But dad wasn’t, he didn’t make any noise as his body got crushed. Dead on impact, the first responders said. And yet, after I wriggled out of the mangled mess of what must have been a car—moments before it caught fire—I was relatively unharmed. A miracle, they said. Lucky, they told me. If dad hadn’t swerved the way he did, it would have been me who died. And it’s not even like I’m traumatized, right? I can write about this all I want, I told it to the police and the lawyer and everyone about it and it’s all fine, I’m perfectly fine, I’m well adjusted and alone and accursed, and I want to scream and be angry and cry until I’m all dried up but nothing, nothing is going to make it stop, all I can do is chase down this fantasy and shove all of this down because if this is what sanity feels like, I don’t want to be crazy.

In that dream, the man I saw had beautiful eyes. Blue green, like a sea breeze or something else equally poetic and reckless, surrounded by these thick, dark eyelashes. Now that I’m awake, all I can do is ascribe meaning to the meaningless, but it was like he was inviting me to him. I’ll be in Old Derdriu tomorrow and I’m probably just losing it but I keep thinking that it's where I need to be.

IV.

Old Derdriu was more or less what you expected. Small, quaint, and beautiful. It had the unique mixture of mountainous charm and oceanic appeal, giving the fresh air a green, salty weight. You spent the first day getting a measure of the place, glad for the mild weather. There was some displeasure when you realized one Mr. Phlegethon had checked into a room right next door to your own the day before—he even attempted to catch you in another conversation before you excused yourself—but you were quickly absorbed into your preliminary attempts at researching the small town.

Although all of it was only a prelude to, or maybe a distraction from, what you truly wanted. After lunch, you rented a pretty metallic bicycle at a place on main street. It fit the scenery, looking a little dated with its tall handlebars and a basket. An uncomfortable reference considering why you were here. All the same, hi-yo silver away, you left town to follow the northeast highway as per the directions on the map you bought earlier. Unfortunately, you quickly realized what you had already known to be true. El Dorado was exactly as inaccessible as Mr. Hanneman explained in his old article. The dirt road turn off was gated and locked, the rusty fence adorned with a large, angry “PRIVATE PROPERTY” sign. Even the famous golden tower could not be seen through the overwhelming barricade of trees.

Standing there on the empty road, the bike propped between your legs and dust and the thick scent of pine filling your lungs, unease worked through you. It came upon you slowly, and then all at once. The world was telling you to leave. Winds quieted, birds hushed, even the sunlight dimmed a shade. But something else beckoned you, calling out so vividly you felt yourself lurch forward a step, the bicycle wheels turning a notch. A wild and insane part of your mind was prepared to abandon it right there and break past the intimidating tree line, damn the consequences or legality. You even thought you could probably find El Dorado yourself, no matter how deeply it was buried, that its call would lead you directly to it. Blood following blood, an innate tracker buried in your DNA that had gotten you this far.

To spite the heavy silence, you laughed at how ridiculous that thought was. A wild, uncomfortable laugh. The trees swallowed the sound whole.

Turning around, you rode back into town. Only a part of you truly understood the choice you made while standing there in the stillness of the forest, although you knew absolutely that it was the only possible ending.

28th day of Verdant Moon

I looked it up. People can create false memories, it’s a symptom of trauma or mental illness, our brains are suggestable and weak and we just make stuff up by mixing real things with other information. Other information, like all of this weird shit I’ve been reading about El Dorado and Old Derdriu and the original Lady Macbeth and everything. Witch, wiccan, whatever. Vampires aren’t enough, curses aren’t enough, why not just add in a witch? Why the hell not.

The dreams I’ve been having, I think it’s something like that. Constructed memories of El Dorado and that same guy, the one with the pretty eyes. It’s weird though, maybe normal, they’re not bad dreams. Just about the castle, and him. It’s a break from feeling like I��m going to suffocate on all of this. They don’t feel real, exactly, just…

I don’t know, there’s no point in dwelling on it, I’m probably doing more damage by thinking about it so hard because then I just remember how alone I am and start tearing up and it’s so stupid. This journal is going to be used as a case study one day. People go wild for crazy women, right? There’s a whole cast of them flowing through my veins.

VI.

Acheron’s premise that the people in Old Derdriu hoped to make money off of the notoriety of their past was ridiculous. Questions regarding El Dorado were answered bluntly, but icily. Most people seemed like they wanted nothing to do with the dark history, especially not to make a profit off of it. You could say that you understood and respected it, but your frustration only mounted the more you realized how inaccessible the truth was. Your entire life had been built on convenient ignorance of unsavory history, and here you were.

Again.

That was fine. Your dad faced all sorts of difficulty in his historical research, you remembered him complaining about it on more than one occasion. So you did the thing that wasn’t committing felony trespass and went to the library to gather information. Research.

The library in Old Derdriu was easy to track down, within a short ride from the inn. What you didn’t expect was what you would find. In the front, it was fairly typical. The reading area and magazine shelves and receptionist desk, even a few computers along the wall. But, behind the front desk was what you could only describe as a tower of bookshelves. The unconventional arrangement had you craning your neck to look up, shocked at how the shelves expanded upwards for what looked like three floors with twisting stairs and platforms providing access to the collection. Every place that could store a book, had a book. You couldn’t even begin to imagine how they were organized.

A lone girl sat behind the desk in front of the tower of books, the only other person in the front. Her name plate read Flayn, and she twirled one of her long curls around her finger as she idly flipped through a magazine. When you approached, she looked up with a big smile.

“Hello!”

“This is… the library?” you asked.

“Yes, it is. Welcome,” Flayn responded sweetly. “If you need assistance finding anything, I would be more than happy to help.”

“I would really appreciate that,” you said, tearing your eyes from the tower of books to look at her directly. “I’m looking for books about the history of this town, specifically El Dorado. I’m not particular, whatever seems the most informative.”

She blinked, her smile lapsing somewhat. “Of course,” she finally said, standing up. “If you take a seat at a table over there, I will see what I can find.”

“Thank you so much,” you said with a nod. Slowly, admiring the scope of the library, you walked over to one of the tables and sat down. While you waited, you pulled out your tablet to continue flipping through websites that had mention of El Dorado. This one was old, the kind with a black background and dark red cursive font. There was very little to actually be learned, it was a ghost story that told a risque tale of blood sacrifices and a sex cult.

It was all ridiculous, of course, but one line gave you trouble, made your stomach turn uneasily.

Why was it fire? The author wrote. Not, I think, to rid the town of some undead threat. After all, the vampire was hiding away in El Dorado. No, they chose fire to burn the witches.

“Excuse me,” somebody said, calling your attention away from the unsettling words and up to the narrowed green eyes of an older man.

“Yes?” you asked, trying not to look guilty beneath his piercing glare. You hadn’t done anything, but something about him made you feel as if you had, you just didn’t know what it was yet.

“From your request, I can only assume you are researching El Dorado,” he said, his voice as stiff and stony as his demeanor.

“I am.”

“And what, may I ask, is your reason for conducting such research?”

You floundered for a moment, caught off guard and confused. Finally, you shook your head and shrugged. “Curiosity, I guess,” you said.

“Are you in any way associated with a man who calls himself Acheron Phlegethon?”

“What?” you asked, confusion replacing the discomfort. “No, not at all.”

“Are you sure?” he pushed.

“Well, I’ve met him. He tried to sell me his books,” you said, frowning.

“Are you sure that’s all?”

You realized pretty quickly what this man was actually asking, what he wanted to hear. “I’m here for… personal reasons,” you explained. “This place has meaning to me. Er, it had meaning to… someone very important to me.”

“I see,” the man said. You could practically see the calculations going on behind his stare, your words reduced down to ones and zeroes as he analyzed them.

“Is that okay?” you asked.

“Yes, of course. I would never withhold knowledge from the genuinely curious. I suggest you start with this one,” he told you, setting down a large book bound in green. “It offers the most comprehensive history of Old Derdriu. These,” he set down two more books, “are supplementary material. While I cannot vouch for their factual integrity, they provide further insight as to what researchers have discovered about Old Derdriu.”

“Thank you,” you said, pulling the books towards yourself, almost afraid he would take them away. There was that feeling, that possessive need. A craving, even.

His lips thinned out as he considered you, his icy expression locked in place. “I ask that you do not cause any trouble while you’re here. The people who live here have suffered enough harassment.”

“I understand, honestly,” you said emphatically, although his warning made your stomach clench and you weren’t lying, but was it really the truth that you weren’t going to ‘cause trouble’? Did you mean that? Could you?

VII.

[The following text are segments taken from letters found in the attic of a Derdriu home with other antiques. Forensic analysis can date them as being contemporaneous with the burning of Old Derdriu, however much of the contents have suffered such severe decay that entire sentences and paragraphs are illegible. Due to this, it is impossible to determine the author or glean any further context. Notes have been added in an attempt to clarify certain points, but without support, all researchers can offer is speculation.]

“My dear sister...discovery, but I fear I will not…seems that my death is inevitable, all I can do is…she offered me a chance, a slim hope that is buried beneath the earth…”

“...sister… bad news… if something good came of it, does that make it right?... better left buried lest we… believe in such stories?... truly be Claude? [this is possibly a reference to Claude von Riegan. The mysterious circumstances surrounding his disappearance have long been a point of interest for those interested in the occult—See page 127 for further information]... put my trust in legend, or… risk my soul for… shall sleep, tomorrow we will return to the site and search for…”

“…I know nothing of the truth, it is obscured by… can trust, she claims… of the Agarthans [The “Agarthans'' are another popular yet unproven occult group based upon an ancient civilization. Artifacts supposedly associated with them were found in El Dorado]... and Lady Macbeth hopes to… blood and soul, I…”

“...forgive me… of my selfishness and hubris. I am frightened… a blight upon us… she will suffer the curse of Seiros [The goddess of the Church of Seiros, who has historically been used as an occult figure following the purge of faith from Liecester]... and yet it is too late…”

“He is awake. The Reign of Blood has begun.”

[This line is one of the most contested within these letters. Since it is on its own page, with this single preserved sentence written in a shaky hand, there are those who argue it was included in order to bolster the cult and supernatural narrative surrounding El Dorado and the burning of Old Derdriu. If these letters are accurate, it is the last communication documented from any of the 257 people who disappeared, likely perished in the fire that reduced the town to ash.]

VIII.

“Hold on a moment, young lady,” a familiar voice called. You paused, turning to face Acheron as he hurried down the hall, stopping you from entering your room.

“Yes?” you asked, more than a little suspicious. With the key in the lock to your room, at least you had a swift method of escape.

Acheron came to a stop, dramatically swiping at his shiny forehead. “I have a proposition for you.”

Your jaw dropped a little at the blunt statement. “I-I don’t think-”

“We have the same goal here, no?” Acheron asked, steamrolling over your obvious conclusion without the slightest shred of self awareness. “To discover the truth behind the infamous El Dorado. And yet we are waylaid by these pesky townsfolk at every turn. I have had enough of it, I say. It’s time to take action.”

“What do you mean?” you asked hesitantly.

He looked around the empty hallway before leaning forward, lowering his voice conspiratorially. “I have it on good authority that the castle’s security is not as good as they would have us believe. If one knows how to circumvent it, that is.”

You considered him for a long moment, chewing on your lip and refusing to openly indulge your immediate excitement. “What are you saying?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Acheron asked. “I would see the famed El Dorado for myself.”

“It’s dangerous to go inside, people get sick,” you said.

“Bah. The stories about any sort of lingering sickness within its walls are wildly exaggerated. The local youths brag about having visited as a rite of passage. If those scamps can make it in and out, I see no reason to believe I should be capable of anything less. I, of course, am extending the offer to you only out of courtesy. You hunger for the truth as desperately as I, do you not?”

You considered him for a long moment, wondering if this was some sort of setup.

“When do you intend to go?” you finally asked.

“Tomorrow night,” Acheron told you. “I would quit this dismal town as quickly as possible. All I need is good footage and photographs of the inside.”

“Do you have the right gear?”

“Gear?” he asked, frowning.

Of course it would have been too much to think that a man like him would think this through. “Yes, gear. Flashlights, a map, the right kind of clothes—”

“Is all that really necessary?” he asked, cutting you off.

“Have you ever done something like this?” you asked, omitting the fact that you hadn’t. But, unlike Acheron, you had common sense and some experience with night hiking. “You can’t just rush in unprepared, you’ll get hurt.”

“Hm.” Acheron’s mustache twitched and you could tell he was thinking up some way to argue with you. But, eventually, reason won out. “Very well, I shall procure whatever is necessary tomorrow.”

“If you buy this stuff town, they’ll know what you’re planning.”

Acheron’s eyebrows furrowed. “Then I shall make a trip into Derdriu and return in the evening, we can meet at the road leading to El Dorado upon my return.”

You wanted to argue, to deny your interest on the basis of not wanting to break the law. The risk factor was far too high, you were a fool to go along with it.

“I found a book today that has the plans for the inside, I’ll find a way to make a copy of them,” you said, anxiety and anticipation going wild in your gut because you knew how wrong this was, but you also knew that it was what was bound to happen from the start, something you couldn’t change or control. “Let me give you money, I’ll make a list of what we’ll need.”

Act 3

"The monstrous sight

Strook them with horror backward but far worse

Urged them behind: headlong themselves they threw

Down from the verge of Heav'n"

31st day of Verdant Moon

This will only end in the hallowed halls of El Dorado, an owed price for the folly of Lady Macbeth, damning her bloodline, bringing a curse to us all.

Yeah. Like this is some sort of fucking movie or something. I wonder if insanity is a legal defense for criminal trespass. I don’t think I’m insane, but isn’t that what crazy people all say? Yes officer, I only broke into this blocked off historical site because I had a dream where a beautiful man told me to. Also, incidentally, I had to figure out if I’m cursed or not so I can decide if I’m the cause of my dad’s death. Oh, and you might be interested to know that my great great great great whatever grandmother was a witch and vampires might be real.

It’s foolproof.

II.

Acheron was right that sneaking into El Dorado was easy. Too easy. Disturbingly easy. After you got past the gate, there was only a security booth to creep past which should have forced you into the view of security cameras, but a convenient hole in the fence circumvented that obstacle. If you were even slightly more worried about getting caught, or maybe slightly less desperate to see inside, you would have given up right then and there on the grounds that breaking and entering shouldn’t have been as simple as ducking through some trees and making a tense, but relatively short, trek through the woods.

All sense left you when you broke the clearing into what used to be the grand lawn of El Dorado, the vague threat of getting caught by angry landowners falling far to the wayside as you stood in front of the grand majesty of King Claude von Riegan’s personal castle, staring down the centuries old castle with equal parts trepidation and excitement.

Other than the cicadas and frogs and slight wind, the night was very quiet. Acheron fiddled with his camera, getting ready to take footage of the inside. All you had to potentially take photos with was your phone, although you weren’t inclined to gather evidence of your crime. It was enough to watch, to look, to commit this sight to memory.

And what a sight it was. Nothing like you had ever seen, except in dreams that were not dreams but you didn’t dare call memories. Overgrown with thick, possessive greenery and fallen into a state of dull disrepair, the castle was truly a breathtaking spectacle, the years of ruin only added to the sense of tragic mystery. It was nothing like the stout fortresses of the west, or the elaborate Imperial complexes in the south. Terrible with its jagged maw of an entrance, the intimidating golden tower looming above. Beautiful, the result of long lost artistry. Foreboding and alluring.

No longer were you looking over your shoulder out of paranoia, but staring down each window and shadow of the castle’s aged, inscrutable countenance for some sign of the life you could practically feel thrumming from within. But, even suffering from the hyperactive state of distress, you knew you couldn’t leave. It wasn’t interest or curiosity, it was a fixation, an urge, a compulsion.

You had to go inside.

You had to get away.

“Wait, before I forget-” You pulled out the set of walkie talkies you had brought. They were the ones you and your dad used when you went hiking. You didn’t want to think of that. “Testing, testing, one two three.” Your voice, crinkling through the static, exited the other walkie talkie.

“What is that?” Acheron asked, raising a thin eyebrow.

“Walkie talkies,” you said, handing him the second. “In case we get separated somehow. There’s no cell service out here.”

“Do you intend on making a private excursion?” he asked.

“No, but…” you looked at El Dorado, uneasiness once again sinking through your gut. It was as if the castle itself was watching you, the eyeless windows winking in the moonlight. “Just in case.”

“Hm.” Acheron clipped the walkie talkie onto his belt, and so you did you. It was too bulky for your little sling bag. “Well then, after you.”

“What?”

“You have had more time to familiarize yourself with the layout, it’s only natural that you should lead the way.”

You wondered if Acheron was scared. It was difficult to tell if he was any more pale than usual, and he wore the same blustery confidence as usual. It didn’t matter. If he got scared and bolted, you would do this alone. You were getting used to that, right?

“Okay,” you said. You weren’t scared. Maybe you felt a little nervous. But you weren’t scared.

Staying vigilant for any strange movement or sounds, you ascended the cracked, overgrown steps, telling yourself over and over that you were not afraid. There were no such things as vampires, ghosts, or curses. And if there were, you would know for yourself. Answers. You would get answers.

The large door was mostly intact, but it was stuck in a perpetual state of half-open. Almost like an invitation. A horror cliche. There was a pinch in your bladder and your heart thudded too heavily in your chest and the animal part of your brain didn’t want to breach the shadows and go inside. You were propelled not of your own free will, but of some existential force that tugged you forward. Step by step by step until you were inside the breezeway, the central entrance hall of El Dorado.

The general plan that the two of you had discussed before sneaking into the private estate was to get into the Golden Hall, the three story vaulted ballroom off of the northern wing. It had been the jewel of the gilded paradise of El Dorado, but nobody had seen it for decades because of the infection that supposedly filled the inside of the castle. The path there would take you through the breezeway, the atrium, the courtyard, the pleasure plaza, and the dining room. Not into the heart of El Dorado, but deep into its rotted guts.

A very quiet, but incredibly persistent, part of your mind pushed you there with the hushed notion that it was where your dreams took place. You had to confirm for yourself that it was completely different in real life, that your mind was making things up. Even if you gleaned no further insight from this misguided exertion, settling that fact would go a long way in convincing you once and for all that you weren’t cursed, just a little mad. At least one of those problems could be solved with medication.

Broken glass littered the breezeway, hidden like little jewels within piles of leaves and refuse and the broken bits of castle that had wilted to the ground. You tried to imagine El Dorado’s beauty in its prime, shining gold and inviting, sunshine filtering in through the dome ceiling and high windows, wind playfully teasing the long curtains. But you couldn’t, it was too dark. Darker than you might have thought, darker than the thickest section of the woods, so dark that the places outside of the range of your ThruNite seemed to be physically encroaching shadows rather than void of light.

Hanneman had been told to only go into rooms where the light touched, that it was the only way to stay safe, but that didn’t seem factually sound, did it? Surely that wasn’t the most accurate method of determining which areas were safe. The only thing that actually feared sunlight, if myths and legends were to be believed, were vampires. There was no sunlight now, and you doubted vampires feared LED’s.

Gripping your light in a sweaty fist, you forced yourself forward, the ground crunching beneath your boots. The terrible, heavy dread got worse with each step. It sat like a weight right behind your sternum, beating behind your eye. The other part of the feeling, the insidious part, was the familiarity.

Bad. Bad. Bad.

You wanted to explain the feeling as nothing more than animalistic paranoia and some malignant fear of the dark, but it made the fine hairs on the back of your neck stand on end, your breathing picking up. All across the breezeway—throughout most of the castle, really—balconies lined the halls and rooms. You couldn’t see what was above, there was no light coming in, not even diffused moonlight. Somebody could have been watching from above and you’d never know.

Keep going. It was fine. Everything was fine.

“I told you that this place was safe,” Acheron said, startling you. “If it weren’t, this level of upkeep would be impossible. I have little doubt that they hire people to ensure the roof doesn’t cave in for occasions just like this.”

You exhaled, looking around with that thought in mind. He had a point, the place did seem a little too well maintained for the number of years that had passed. Then again, maybe it was just good construction. Or maybe something that still lived here. Something ancient, something immortal.

The two of you left the breezeway, entering the main atrium hall. Hanneman had featured many many photos of this room in his article; he had been fascinated by the intricately carved stonework. It was too dark to see much of that now. In fact, you very badly wanted to get out of the atrium as soon as you entered it because of how unnervingly dark it was. Two tiers of balcony circled around the ground floor, shadows lurking ominously right behind what was left of the railing. Every little sound echoed, rippling through the motionless air. High above, a chandelier caught the shine of your flashlights, moving with some breeze you couldn’t feel.

Something made a sound, a scuffling. To your right, on the stairs. You flicked your flashlight to it quickly, your hands shaking with adrenaline.

“Did you hear that?” you asked breathlessly, nervously holding the light on the steps as if to keep them from moving. But there was nothing, just the large stone staircase and decaying walls and long-abandoned artistry memorialized and forgotten in some old Life magazine article.

“Hear what?” Acheron asked.

You exhaled harshly, looking away from the empty stairs and kicking yourself for being so jumpy. It could just be a stray animal. That’s what you told yourself. Rats, racoons, birds, any number of things could have made El Dorado their new home.

“Nothing.”

There was some relief when you entered the courtyard, even if the scent of overbearing foliage and vivid green rot was nearly suffocating. At least there was more air, and you could see the stars twinkling above. Full, or almost full, the moon draped the open space in silvery light. Ignoring the overgrown shrubbery, flowers, and grass, you looked around at the balconies wrapping around the second floor. The construction of El Dorado was almost made for someone wanting to spy on guests. Or intruders. Acheron was talking to the camera but you weren’t really listening, too busy focusing to hear any sign of movement, trying to find what was making you so uneasy.

Vampires in El Dorado. Lurking in the dark, in the moonlight, waiting for ignorant fools to wander in. A missing king, a goddess’s curse, a burning witch. The Reign of Blood. You could almost smell it, the tangy iron of blood and the thick smoke of a town burning to the ground.

“Are you coming?” Acheron called.

You shook your head in an attempt to cast out those thoughts before scurrying to catch up, passing the large stone fountain that had once been the featured centerpiece of the courtyard before the ripe overgrowth took over. The standout piece was a large, intricately carved deer. Once, it must have been a magnificent beast, but now its head was cracked in half, the prongs of one set of antlers sticking out of a murky film covering the stagnant water settled in the basin. Something dark grew over the broken statue, starting on its fragmented head and dripping down to give the gruesome illusion of blood. It watched you pass with the remaining stone eye, forever frozen in a proud, alert stance.

A breeze trembled throughout the courtyard. The castle taking in a breath. You shivered, pointedly forcing your gaze forward.

Acheron lagged behind to force you to take the lead under the pretense of messing with his camera, leaving you to enter the so-called pleasure plaza first. Careful to not get caught by the jagged row of broken glass and wooden teeth attempting to bar your entrance, you stepped into the decaying mouth of El Dorado’s recreation wing. This was the place where Leicester’s elite once came to enjoy themselves, a yawning space that time had seen to shambles. Because of the many doorways and hiding spots, this room was even more unnerving than the atrium. You would have to cross it to get where you needed to go.

If you were being entirely honest, you weren’t sure you had any desire to see the Golden Hall anymore. Rather, you weren’t sure it was worth the stress of getting there. Considering the unreasonable fear you felt going through areas you knew to be safe, you worried what you might find in a place nobody had seen for so long, worried about what secrets were better left to die. And that pulsing, pounding, beating of familiarity just kept getting worse, harder, closer. Louder.

You needed to get out.

You needed to know.

Inhaling the sweet scent of rot and age, you continued onward, your footsteps hollow against the sinking floor. Each sweep of your flashlight caused the shadows to move, to crawl away from you as if to hide. It hit each object without any subtlety, erasing details and making the darkness that much darker.

You forced yourself to carry on. Carefully, cautiously, unafraid. That’s what you kept telling yourself. Show no fear and all that. Although, that began with the presumption that there was something around to see your fear.

Your skin erupted in painful prickling chills almost as soon as that thought came to you. And then, in the same moment or before or after or so close you couldn’t tell the difference, you saw movement out of the corner of your eye. You flashed your light quickly around the room, hoping to catch a glimpse of a rat or some other disgusting but inoffensive animal to reassure yourself that you were safe because you still had hope that this was all innocent, that you were the crazy one for believing in ridiculous stories of the supernatural.

Something retreated behind the doorway.

Your stomach sank with freezing cold ice and panic. That was no rat.

A person? It certainly seemed human sized. Those were footsteps too, weren’t they? Disguised beneath the sound of your own? And if it were somebody with authority, somebody who wanted you to leave because you were trespassing, they wouldn’t be lurking around watching you. So that meant it was somebody doing the same thing that you were. But, somehow, you didn’t feel as if it were another trespassing explorer. You felt it in your gut.

“Acheron, hold on,” you said quietly, stopping.

“Yes? What is it?” he asked loudly. Too loud, bumbling around with his footsteps echoing against the walls as he turned to face you. You winced, holding up a hand to shade your eyes from the glare of his light.

“We need to leave,” you told him, speaking softly and calmly. “Now.”

“But we’ve hardly seen anything,” he said. You couldn’t see his frown, but you could hear it.

“I’m telling you, we need to leave,” you said softly, desperately trying to remain calm. “We’re not alone.”

“Someone is here?” he asked loudly, shining his light in a large circle, catching it all on camera. “Show yourself!”

“Acheron!” you hissed.

“Don’t you want a head start?” an unfamiliar voice asked. No. Not unfamiliar. Jarring though, because you didn’t recognize why you would know it. What memory was attached to that disembodied sound.

Acheron let out a high pitched sound of terror which scared you nearly as bad as the voice, almost causing you to fall over.

“Who is that? Show yourself!” he demanded. No answer. Of course there was no answer. No sound, not even the faint echo of footsteps.

“We have to leave,” you murmured, more to yourself than to Acheron, your voice an octave too high with stress. “We have to get out of here.”

“It’s nothing. I told you that the local youths often come here, did I not?” he asked, maintaining that feigned sense of control. “I demand you show yourself!”

“Acheron, please,” you begged, tugging at his jacket. He kept his camera fixed on where the voice had come from. It was from the hall branching off of the entrance out of the pleasure plaza and into the courtyard, essentially barring your most direct route of escape.

“You really ought to listen to the lady,” the voice said, just as casual, just as playful, just as recognizable. You hadn’t really been aware of a distinct echo beforehand, but the room was large enough to cause the voice to bounce around, to obscure the speaker’s location. Not only disembodied, omniscient. And you were stupid and crazy but you were acutely aware of how dangerous this was, it was a primal instinct to recognize danger.

Freeze finally ran its course, returning some semblance of sensation to your numb limbs to take flight. You didn’t think, you ran, turning away from the voice to bolt in the opposite direction. Right then, you didn’t care whether or not Acheron decided to follow. Since you couldn’t leave the way you came in, you picked the nearest door. Terror thundered in your chest, a compliment to the sound of your footsteps on the rotting floor. You, with Acheron right on your heels, entered into a music room or another sitting room, or some other area where the wealthy and powerful whiled away their hours of excess. You shouldn’t have looked behind yourself, but you did and you could see, silhouetted in the moonlight from the courtyard, the unmistakable form of another person. And then you were pushing Acheron further into the dark with a fistful of his jacket, driven only by the need to get away. The door was intact enough for you to throw it closed behind you, and the sound rattled through the air.

The scent of wet rot was stronger back here, but you didn’t even think about stopping. The door didn’t open as you both scrambled through the room and into the hall, but you knew from the plans that there were other ways in and out of most rooms in the castle. If not directly, then from above, or even from below.

“This is the wrong way,” Acheron told you crossly, although his control was fraying with his labored breathing.

“Just run,” you told him, pushing at his back. You could have let go and run past him, but you were too scared of being alone, of having to navigate this dark, creepy place by yourself.

He didn’t argue. Or maybe he did, you didn’t even know, couldn’t hear anything over the pounding of your heart and harsh breathing, your body synthesizing musty air into iron-tanged rasps that cut up in the inside of your throat. You had no idea where the hallway you ran into led, but it didn’t really matter. Away, that was what mattered. The hallway was narrow and stank of humid rot, entirely dark save for your flashlights, but the room at the end had windows, filling it with blessed moonlight. Slamming the door behind yourself again, you continued forward, stumbling to keep up with Acheron.

Until you were yelping in surprise, the floor giving out beneath your feet. There was a brief moment where gravity hooked beneath your bellybutton and yanked, and then the floor hit, and it hit hard. Although you instinctively tried to fall in a slightly upright position, the momentum dragged you into an awkward roll, your body curling so as to protect your head. For a miniature eternity, there was no air, there was no thought in your head, there was no light save for the blinding radiance as impact blazed white hot agony through your head. Gasping, writhing on the cold, hard floor, you blinked teary eyes, staring at the hole that had just eaten you with some vague idea that you were dreaming, that this was all a made up fantasy. It was unreal, and it was painful.

A moment later, a beam of light hit your face. So bright, like a little sun. You sucked in a lungful of air, tasting blood. Then, almost unconsciously, you jerked sideways and lurched around onto your knees. The pain enveloped you in a mad rush all once, your empty body dry heaving with nausea. Only, there wasn’t enough air to expel the sour bile in your stomach, leaving you to choke and suffocate on nothing instead. That tapered off into a few pathetic coughs a moment later, your entire body shaking and clammy.

“Oh dear,” Acheron said, his voice thin with fear. “Are you hurt?”

All you could manage in response was a groan, and then a broken sob. But fear was a good motivator to get moving, and adrenaline shocked your system enough to force you upright. Now that you could remember, more or less, how to breathe, the worst of the damage was where you had initially landed on your hip, your shoulder hitting nearly as hard a second later. It sent violent, lurid pain straight down your arm and leg, the entire left side of your body alight as if from a branding iron.

“I’m fine,” you croaked out, not knowing if it was true but knowing that it needed to be true.

“Thank goodness,” Acheron said, his voice heavy with relief. “I don’t suppose you see any way to climb back up?”

You couldn’t see anything outside of the hot spotlight from above, your ThruNite had gone dark and skittered away somewhere into the shadows. At first, you only felt panic at the realization, terror that you were stuck in the darkness. It took you a long moment to think past the pain and the dark and the fear to remember that you had a backup light. After a few tries of fumbling with the zipper on your sling bag, you got your sweaty fingers around the yellow plastic base of your second flashlight. It was nothing so good as the hefty ThruNite, emitting a buttery yellow glow, but it was something. You waved it around, although you knew it was a lost cause before looking. The hole you had fallen into was rotted all the way through, leaving a few jagged boards around the edges, some of which you had brought with you on the way down, and parts of which were embedded in your hands and knees. There was no way back up.

“No,” you said, painfully staggering to your feet and brushing yourself off as best you could. “I’ll have to find the stairs, I think… I think there’s some in the southern wing. Meet me there and we can—”

“And stay here?” he demanded. “Are you mad? No, no, I simply cannot. I shall… I shall run and send help. Yes, that is the best course of action.”

You squinted against the blinding beam of his flashlight, mute with confused shock for a long, silent moment.

“Acheron, you can’t do that,” you said softly, more bewildered than afraid.

“You cannot expect me to retrieve you myself,” he said defensively.

“No, no. You can’t just… just leave me here,” you said weakly, panic closing in around your heart, ice fizzling out like bubbles in your head.

“I will not put myself at risk for your own carelessness,” he told you harshly. “If you remain there, the rescuers should find you quickly.”

And that was it. His light disappeared, leaving you blind and blinking up at the hole in the desperate hopes of seeing his face, of seeing some sign that you weren’t actually alone.

“Acheron,” you called, unable to keep your ragged voice soft. “Please don’t leave me here.” Nothing. You called out again, and nothing. No footsteps, not even the sound of doors opening or closing, although the violent rush of blood could have covered noises like that. And then there was only your heavy breathing and the sour bite of vomit in your throat and the creaking sound of the castle’s breathing in time with your own.

With shaking hands, you got out the walkie talkie. It took you two tries to find the button, and then the sound of static. “Acheron?” you asked. “Do you copy, Acheron?”

You didn’t get an answer. At least, not from the walkie talkie. You heard something. From far away, up above, you heard this howling, like an animal, but very distinctly human. Your guts lurched, a shiver slithering down your sweaty back, all the way through your body.

You quickly pressed the button down again. “Ah-Acheron?” you asked, looking around the empty room. The shadows of decaying furniture followed your yellowy light, almost mockingly avoiding it. “Acheron, are you alright?”

The speaker let out a little burst of static, startling you. “Sorry, he’s pretty busy right now,” a crinkled voice on the other side said. “Can I take a message?”

You paused, your chest clenching. “Who is this?” But you knew. You knew very well, you just didn’t know.

“Your guilty conscience. Trespassing is a serious crime.”

“Where is Acheron?” you asked. “What did you do to him?”

“Do to him?” the man asked, sounding like he was offended by the question. “Nothing. He ran off as soon as he saw me, so now we’re playing a little game of hide and seek. Sorry, no girls allowed this round. You and I can have a match when I win, okay? Okay, so you’d better start looking for a really good spot.”

Your mouth was open, gaping with no sound coming out. You felt nearly as winded by this as you did from the fall, unable to think, to formulate any rational reaction. “I-I don’t understand.”

“You’ve never played hide and seek? Oof, your childhood must have been a real bummer. The point of the game is that you hide and I seek. Simple, right?”

“I’m not… not playing,” you said. “I just want to leave. Please… Whatever this is, I… Please stop.”

“Come on, where’s your sense of sportsmanship? Even this coward is giving it a chance.” He paused, and then raised his voice, calling out to someone else. “Isn’t that right? Why don’t you tell her what a good time we’re having?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to... We’re sorry, so please don’t… don’t hurt him,” you begged, your voice wobbling with tears and panic.

“I’m not sure I get why you’d defend a guy who was willing to abandon you here. I mean, who knows what could happen to a girl like you in a scary place like this. It’s practically falling apart. Not to mention all of the creepy and dangerous things that could be lurking around.”

You shook your head, blinking back tears. “Please,” you said, although you weren’t sure what you were pleading for.

“I’m in a good mood tonight, so I’ll give you some advice. First of all, the basement is no good. There aren’t very many escape routes, you’ll definitely get cornered. And, I don’t know if this is true or not, but I’ve heard that it's haunted.”

“Please stop,” you begged. “I’ll leave, I’ll leave and-”

“Hey, hey, don’t panic,” he said soothingly. “You’ll need to save up all that energy for running. Oh, and you might wanna ditch the walkie talkie, it’s a dead giveaway.”

All this time, you had worried about vampires. But it made more sense that some lunatic would use this place as hunting grounds. Preying on the stupid and reckless and your delusions that you were somehow cursed and connected to this place. You were cursed alright. It was the worst curse of all—blind naivety.

“Please stop,” you begged again. It wasn’t that you wanted to talk more with the potential lunatic, but hearing his voice was better than not hearing it because at least it meant you weren’t entirely alone down here in the dark. But there was no answer, just some static. “Hello?” You asked, your voice even weaker. “Hello?”

No answer, over. Over and out. Ten-four.

You stood there for a long moment, sore and sweaty and trembling, your body all at once wrung out and over energized, your heart beating way too fast. The light didn’t reach far enough, it was like the shadows were gnawing at the edges of it, attempting to retake their territory. A little part of your brain understood that you weren’t capable of thinking rationally, the part that recognized the insanity of all of the actions that led you here. But knowing that and overcoming blind, animal panic were two different beasts entirely.

Escape. That was all you could do. At first you thought about searching for your fallen ThruNite, but you were afraid to linger in here too long. You had no idea where it had ended up, there were too many places in the room it could have been hiding. That left you with the weaker incandescent light and, if that failed, your phone’s flashlight.

Your past self was a lot smarter than your current one, thinking to bring some water. That cured the rancid tang of metal in your mouth, settling you somewhat as you considered your options. Rather than abandon the walkie talkie, you shut it off. It was stupid, but you couldn’t just abandon your sole source of connection to any living beings. You checked your phone as well, but the same NO SERVICE bar sat at the top.

There was no other way than forward. The room that you fell into didn’t have doors, only dark, decaying holes where doors might have once been. The one on your left was the source of the dank, rotting scent. It was completely flooded, the water covered with an inky, oily film, your light reflecting off of it unnervingly. When you steeled yourself to venture forward, you realized that the hall was slightly flooded as well. Not more than an inch or so, but enough to make your boots wet, and enough to make each footstep splash and squish, rendering stealth impossible. Then again, the light made that impossible anyway. Shining your light both ways, you debated which way to go, trying to remember the castle plans. The trouble was that you had no idea where you might have fallen. Everything was dark and creepy and awful and you just wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere else. To close your eyes and imagine your way out of the situation, to stay right there without ever moving and escape.

After a second of despair and terrified self pity, you went right.

If you followed the hallway, you would find a way upstairs. That made sense, there had to be some practicality to the design of this forsaken place. Or, that was all you could hope for. In reality, the dark and uncertainty threatened to turn your guts inside out, vomit biting your throat as you skirted along the wall. It was so quiet, unnaturally so. In the silence in the absolute void of light, your mind conjured noises. Extra footsteps, the sound of breathing. Echoes where there shouldn’t have been.

You were afraid to blink, that when you opened your eyes something would appear in the beam of your flashlight. But you didn’t want to see anything, either, it would be better to face death ignorant to its face. You wanted to shield yourself from whatever horrors might exist.

Staying in place was a death sentence, going any further was uncertain terror. The man said the basement was haunted. By what? Ghosts? Witches? Vampires? Murderers?

Did it even matter?

Each open doorway you passed came with the anticipation that something would jump out at you. Or, worse, that you’d look in and see the dark silhouette of something inside. Somehow, that thought was almost as terrifying as being assaulted. Animals attacked on sight, true predators were the ones who were patient enough to lurk, to wait, to watch, to toy with the fear of their prey. And that’s what you were. Prey.

On and on. Down the deep dark hall, your footsteps squelching on the damp floor, down down down to the corner where you turned, your light terrifyingly weak, nothing more than a pathetic glow against the all consuming darkness. The moment you saw a set of stairs, you could have wept with relief. Maybe it was stupid because it wasn’t as if they would lead you anywhere good, but those stairs were the best thing you’d ever seen. You gave into the spine tingling fear and ignored the pain of your body to run to them, splashing out of the water and taking the steps two at a time.

There was no door at the top, just a sharp bend leading into a wider hall, the stairs tucked away and likely used by the servants. You didn’t care. This hallway wasn’t flooded, and the scent of death and decay wasn’t nearly as strong. It left you with the same problem though. Where did you go from here? Where were you?

Relief soured into dread. Now that you were upstairs, the game had begun.

It would have been smarter to shut off your light, but without any source of ambient illumination, you would be completely surrounded by the darkness. You stayed very, very still, straining your ears in an attempt to hear any stray sound, anything out of the ordinary. But there was nothing. The castle creaked and groaned, and your heart raced, and your ears rung faintly.

Indecision and fear nearly paralyzed you. Like drowning, you had no idea of which way was up, you were merely thrashing in the blind darkness, hastening your own demise in your desperation to live.

You found yourself walking without thinking about it, clinging to the wall with some idea that it would protect you. Just keep going. There was a sharp turn and then you realized that there was a light ahead. At first you thought it was a trick of your imagination, but you switched off your flashlight and blinked fast to adjust to the darkness, eventually making out that it was light. Soft, pale moonlight. That meant outside, that meant escape.

Continuing to cling to the wall, you hurried towards the opening, eventually turning to the corner and finding yourself within your originally stated destination. At least you knew where you were. Nowhere near the exit.

What rotten, twisted irony. You could almost laugh if you weren’t so close to tears. The Golden Hall, now flooded with thin silver moonlight, was exactly as beautiful as the name suggested. You knew it not from the second hand descriptions—they didn’t even begin to accurately describe the sweeping, luxurious ballroom—but because you had seen it before.

Far above, the cold moon observed you through panes of broken glass. So close, yet impossibly far. Taunting, tempting, representing an unreachable whisper of freedom. Your knees almost buckled, giving into the pain and exhaustion as you considered having to brave even more of the castle if you were ever going to get out alive. The Golden Hall echoed your own personal despair, a decaying corpse of what it once was, its profoundly decadent construction fallen to ruin. But you could imagine—remember, it was a memory, constructed or otherwise—how it looked in its prime. Shining, lustrous gold. And a man, one with entrancing eyes and a sly smile. His hands had been cold but the feeling was so warm, your own heat igniting you both.

“The point of the game is to hide, you know,” someone said from behind you. In your despairing trance, you had gone further into the ballroom. Now you whirled around, clutching your chest in terror. “Although I am impressed you found your way up. Even I get the creeps going down there. Somebody really ought to do something about the flooding.”

Shaking hard, you flicked your flashlight on, illuminating the man in its weak, yellow glow. He didn’t shy away, looking at you head on. His footsteps were slow and measured, impossibly graceful. Yes, yes of course. So obvious, so brutally, painfully blatantly obvious that it would be him. In the dim glow of your light, the most you could make out was the gold wink of his earring, but you knew without seeing that his eyes were that lovely shade of green, tinged with the romantic oceanic blue, so striking against his tan skin and black eyelashes. You knew that as surely as you knew the creases of your palm, or the constellations in the sky.

“I admit,” he said, breezing past your silence, “I do have a slight advantage. You hurt yourself when you fell, right? I could smell your blood all the way from the catwalk. I’ll let you know if it tastes as good as it smells.”

“Stay away from me,” you demanded, surprised at how clear the words sounded despite the saliva pooling on your tongue.

“I mean it, you smell really good,” he said, ignoring you and continuing forward. “Hey, why don’t you make this easy for me and put down that light? Nobody likes a sore loser.”

“I told you-”

“Yeah, yeah, stay away,” he said flippantly. But he did stop, tilting his head in consideration. “You’re not going to make this easy, are you? Fine. If you’re going to run,” he gestured behind himself at the exit into the dark hall, “now’s your chance.”

You didn’t think about the cheeky smile he wore, or the mocking tenor of the offer, or the reason he might let you run in the first place. You just did it, just ran, not looking back. There was blood in your throat and your entire body ached and you weren’t entirely sure you knew where you were going, but you didn’t pause.

Step after pounding step, your heart racing, your breath coming out in sharp little gasps. Through the hall, which spanned miles and miles and miles, into the dining hall with its dust and cobwebs and ruined finery. You hit your bruised hip on the doorway which nearly sent you tumbling onto the ground. The red hot pain was so intense you had to stop and lean on the wall, your body physically refusing to go forward.

Could you hear him? Were those his footsteps coming down the hall or your own telltale heart with its madness inducing beat?

There was no time for your pain. If you couldn’t get away from here, you would die. That was a fact. Rubbing your sweaty palm on your hip as if to soothe it and sobbing dryly with all the pitiful disgrace of a child, you took off again.

When you burst out into the pleasure plaza, the place of that first confrontation, hope reignited in your heart. It didn’t matter that there was still a significant dash to the exit, at least you knew where you were. Ignoring all else, you retraced your original ill-fated steps out into the courtyard. The moon was hidden behind the golden tower, peering into the front of the castle and leaving the courtyard nearly as dark as the halls. It didn’t matter. You raced across, blindly passing the one eyed deer in his long night vigil.

Until your toe caught on a loose rock, and you launched forward onto your elbows and knees, skittering forward across the ground. Once more, your flashlight was flung from your grip and landed somewhere ahead in the dense foliage. A harsh yelp left your mouth and you collapsed, completely boneless and exhausted and in genuine, insistent agony. Everything ached and the terror was relentless, pain consuming every panicked thought and infecting every inch of your body. You were doomed. Damned. Dead.

Footsteps approached from behind. Easy, casual, measured. You flipped onto your back, wincing at the weight it put on your bruised hip. Your pursuer didn’t look dangerous. The outline of his messy curls gave him an innocent silhouette, and his hands were empty of any weapon.

“Ouch, that must have hurt,” he said. “You should be careful, you could injure yourself if you don’t watch where you’re going.”

“Stay away from me,” you got out between gasping breaths.

“I bet you’re tired from all that running, huh? That’s fine, I think we’ve had enough fun for the night.” Without pausing, he dropped down onto his knees, one between your legs and the other astride your hip. You cried out in protest, getting your trembling arms beneath yourself to crawl backwards, but he caught you by the strap of your sling bag, and then with a fistful of your shirt to keep you in place, caging you in with his body. You couldn’t see the color of his eyes, they were only dark as he leaned down over you.

“Stop it, please,” you begged, weak and trembling, tears sliding down your flushed cheeks, mixing with the sweat. “Just let me go, please.”

“I’m sure you get this all the time, but you smell unbelievably delicious,” he said, his nose brushing your sweaty neck. You could feel your pulse jump against the thin skin there and you held completely still, a million thoughts slamming into each other all at once in your head. Vampires, murderers, insanity—anything and everything but most of all was just the mindless, irrational terror and despair. You were going to die. In a final spasm of rebellion, your back arched and legs kicked, but your body was caught between the jagged ground beneath and the firm press of his body above, pinned flat. And your hands weakly pushed at his chest, but it was a lost cause, and he wasn’t listening to your constant mumbling pleas to stop.

Another pathetic sob hiccupped in your chest. You wanted your dad, you missed him. You needed him. And then you went limp because, now and forevermore, you were alone.

“Come on, you don’t need to cry,” he murmured sweetly, a smile in his voice. You didn’t respond, staring up at the starry sky above. They were cold and without shape or form. Indifferent to your pain.

The touch of his lips on your neck was shockingly cool, you almost wouldn’t have believed it was a mouth until you felt the needle-like puncture of fangs. That made you jump, squealing, but he held you in place which was probably a good thing because he was biting your neck and that could get dangerous fast. The pain sharply worked down through the rest of your body, the unnatural intrusion of something beneath the skin sending you right back into high alert. And then his lips closed around the created wound to suck.

A little whimper left your mouth, almost confused because even with the unambiguous pain of being bitten, there was something more. The wet release of sensation that followed the bite bloomed out from the point where his fangs pierced your neck in a flizzling wave. He sucked hard for a moment, but then went stiff against you, pulling back with a sharp intake of breath to stare into your eyes.

He looked shocked, almost innocent if it weren’t for your blood smeared across his mouth. “You’re…” He breathed out that word faintly, reverently. There was meaning there, a meaning that you understood. Letting out a little laugh, a bubble of genuine exuberance, he released your shirt so that hand could delve into your hair, so he could pull you into a kiss.

His skin was impossibly cold, unalive, and you could taste your own blood as he licked between your lips to part them. While his eyes were squeezed shut, dark eyelashes resting on his cheekbones, yours were wide open.

The kiss wasn’t violent, it was amorous. And familiar. He held you, practically cradled you against him. He felt it too, he understood what you had known from the moment you saw him.

There was no way to escape the violently seated weight of your own body, of every sensation and feeling he inspired within you. Although, in another situation, the kiss might have seemed sensual, it was only grotesque and terrible. A display of affection in a moment of horror. You didn’t want it, your body thrummed with fear and pain, but you also felt yourself giving into the overwhelming wave of defeat. Even with all that was unnatural and terrible, this man’s kiss was imbued with some sort of cosmic sense of belonging.

If the pain weren’t so sharp, you probably would have relented.

Instead, you used it as an opening, as your final chance to reject this twisted insanity. Your hand scrambled out to the side, blunt nails scraping the ground and open wounds packing with dirt. But you found what you were looking for. Stray rubble, forced up and broken by the relentless roots of new growth, nature overcoming manmade structure. You wrapped your bloodied fingers around the chunk of displaced stone and swung at his head, thrashing against his grip at the same moment.

It was enough to displace his body from on top of yours, maybe out of surprise because you certainly didn’t feel any human give of flesh and bone beneath the weight of the rock. You didn’t stop to consider that, or anything. He grabbed the strap of your sling bag as you scrambled away and you unclipped it without thought, refusing to let it catch you, to keep you trapped. It didn’t matter, you didn’t need it. You needed to escape. You were little more than a wild animal, the taste of your own blood on your lips, blood dripping down your neck, fear infecting every cell of your being.

“Wait a second,” he called. Disgruntled, not pained.

The first few steps, you were practically crawling, your back hunched like a beast as you used pure momentum to carry you into the atrium. And from the atrium to the breezeway, your back painfully straightening out, hip screaming in agony. You didn’t think about it, you just continued forward. Ran out into the night, ran through the woods, sticks and foliage catching your clothes and skin, ran down the dirt path to the road. There wasn’t a single thought in your head to get help, just to get away. And then you were flying through the night on your silver bike, your body pushed past the point of weary, into some territory where you weren’t even sure you were actually alive anymore, just acting because you had to act. Although it seemed to take hours of cycling down the dark road, there was this vague impression that no time at all passed before you were coming up to the inn, the bicycle’s wheels crunching across the gravel alley before you ditched it.

Your room’s window was still open, the way you left it so you didn’t have to sneak in and out the front. The lights were on and they were warm and bright, inviting. You scrambled in, bloody and filthy and sweaty and shaking, and slammed the glass pane shut so hard it rattled, pulling the blinds shut to protect you from the night.

And then you wept, and you retched, and you waited for sunrise.

Act 4

“Die he or justice must; unless for him Some other able, and as willing, pay The rigid satisfaction, death for death.”

1st day of Horsebow Moon

It’s all real. There is something living in El Dorado. He got Acheron, I waited all night and he never came back and they’re saying that he left yesterday but I know he didn’t. I left him there. I abandoned him there. I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault.

If you find this, it means he came for me too.

II.

A woman sat in the waiting room of the police station when you entered, her legs crossed as she casually read the paper. There was nobody else around, not even at the desk. A lazy fan swiveled in the corner, whirring loudly but not doing anything to cool the room so much as it just pushed around the warm air. It made the high necked shirt you were wearing that much more uncomfortable. Trying very hard to hide your limp—your hip wasn’t seriously injured, but you’d have a hell of a bruise for weeks—you walked up to the desk, peering into the back to check if anyone was there. No luck. It was almost eerily quiet.

“Are you here to talk to the police?” the woman asked, looking at you over the top of her paper.

You opened your mouth to respond before settling on nodding instead.

She turned to the next page, her attention drawn back down. “What about?”

You hesitated, not knowing how to answer, or even if you should. Before leaving the inn, you hadn’t thought very hard about how you would present your story. The only evidence you had was your sore body, but you had to do something for Acheron. Even if he was annoying and rude and unpleasant, that didn’t mean he deserved to be dead and forgotten.

“I know all of the folks on the force,” she explained. “I’m sure I could help you out.”

“I… I’m here to give a statement, that's all,” you told her, aware of how hoarse your voice was. You sounded and looked rough, there was no hiding it.

“Well, they’re at lunch right now,” she said. “Why don’t you sit down and wait with me?”

You looked at the empty desk, and then at her, and then sat down, once again trying not to wince at the way your hip complained. Really, your entire body complained. You used practically half a bottle of Bactine trying to clean up the mess of shredded skin on your hands, elbows, and knees. Not to mention the bruising.

“I’m Judith, by the way,” she said.

“It’s nice to meet you,” you said.

“I take it you don’t know who I am,” Judith said, a hint of amusement in her eyes. That perked you up, just a bit. Not in a good way. So lost in your own miserable anxiety and fear, you hadn’t really considered how off putting her demeanor was before now.

“Should I?” you asked.

“You might be interested, at least. I’m the owner of El Dorado and the surrounding property.”

You felt the blood fade from your face, your empty stomach twisting with guilt and fear, the sore muscles clenching uncomfortably.

“Don’t make that face,” she said, folding up her paper. “I’m not here to report you.”

“I-”

“That’s not to say I couldn’t,” she said, cutting you off, “but I figured I’d give you a chance to do the smart thing first. It’ll save both of us a lot of trouble if we agree that nothing happened last night and move on with our lives.”

You froze. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Do you know the punishment for felony trespass?” she asked.

“Acheron’s still in there,” you whispered, adjusting your high necked shirt again. “They have to save him. Somebody has to do something.”

“I heard your friend left town,” Judith said.

“No, I saw him. He was real, and he got Acheron,” you insisted, tears welling up in your eyes. The words didn’t make any sense, even you weren’t entirely sure how much of it you meant. What you thought, what you felt, what you believed. Your head pounded with a violent headache, your entire body sore and clammy.

“I don’t know what you think you saw, but hallucinations are a side effect of things like black mold,” Judith said, her eyebrow arching. “It’s dangerous. There’s a reason that place stays locked up.”

You opened your mouth to argue, then closed it. Could that be true? Maybe Acheron had left after all, you weren’t exactly in the clearest of mental states. He could have escaped, it was what he intended. And the rest of it, the man who stalked, taunted, and attacked you, maybe there was some other explanation for that. Maybe you really were losing it.

“You can go ahead and make a report, if you want,” Judith said. “It won’t matter. All of the evidence points to your friend packing up and leaving. Without a body, the only crime here is yours. They’ll bury you in whatever charges they can make stick.” She paused, giving you a sideways glance to make sure you were listening. “None of that has to happen. No report, no paperwork, no crime. You go back to your inn, pack your bags, and leave town. Everybody’s happy.”

A couple of answers came to mind, and then a couple of complaints. Eventually, you just nodded.

“See? I knew we could handle this peacefully.”

“I’m scared,” you said softly, the pitiful admission leaving your mouth without thought.

Judith sighed, looking at you with a disapproving mixture of compassion and pity. “Don’t worry. Even if there was something there, I promise you that it’s not getting out any time soon,” she said, a flicker of understanding in her eyes. That passed quickly and Judith stood up, tucking her paper under her arm. “I have to go. It was nice meeting you. I’d say that I hope to see you later, but-”

“I’m leaving soon. Tonight if I can,” you said quickly, getting to your feet as well.

“I thought that might be the case. Well, then. Have a safe trip.”

III.

1st day of Horsebow Moon

I took a nap earlier, while the sun was still out, and dreamed of him. He wants me to go back. Maybe I should, maybe it’d be better if I did. When he kissed me I… I don’t know. I think about it and I’m not scared, I just want to cry. My heart hurts. Why?

I wish it had been me too. I really do. We could have gone out together in a blaze of glory, us rogues. At least I wouldn’t be alone, I wouldn’t be thinking that when he touched me, I didn’t want anyone or anything else, and I felt-

I can’t think like that.

The past is written in ink and stone and blood and ash.

I’m leaving tomorrow morning, it was the earliest time I could find to get out of here. I’ll have to get back in a car. Thinking about it makes me sick, but there’s no choice. She says it’s not real and I know that’s a lie. The bite on my neck is real, I couldn’t have made that up. She’s lying. They’re all covering up for this, that’s all I can think. Earlier when I ordered food, the delivery guy acted so strange, like he knew. It’s insane to think, but I swear, everybody in this awful little town is in on it.

I put the note from earlier under my mattress, just in case something happens tonight. For some reason, I keep thinking that it will, jumping at every little sound. The walkie talkie keeps bursting out static, like it’s connected to the other one, but that’s impossible because Acheron had the other one and the range isn’t that long. I could have sworn I heard a voice from it while I showered too. Maybe it’s connected to another channel. Maybe I’m insane. Maybe I’m going to die. Maybe he’ll come for me.

Death doesn’t scare me, not really, but I don’t want to die alone.

Act 5

"And should I at your harmless innocence

Melt, as I do"

Fiercely clawing your way out of the heavy shackles of sleep, you shouted yourself fully awake, thrashing in an attempt to escape an unknown threat, sickness churning violently in your stomach. Being awake hurt. Why had you been asleep? Everything hurt. Fear was more potent than pain and you forced yourself to breathe, to focus on your confusion and make sense of the world around you. Unfamiliar, although that in and of itself wasn’t dangerous. You had always existed in a state of ever-shifting unfamiliarity. What was wrong, what was dangerous, was that you knew where you were. Rather, you had a feeling.

“Woah, woah, easy,” he said, backing away with his hands up. You blinked rapidly, panting, trying to fight your way out of the haze. The tide of unconsciousness threatened to consume you once more, lapping at your heavy head, urging you back down. It was nearly more than you could take to keep your eyes open, but you fought it. Something was wrong, you needed to be awake. As your vision brightened bit by bit, you met a pair of green eyes, and your blood turned to ice.

“It’s you,” you said, your voice soft and close to breaking, mushy in your mouth. Nearly inaudible. Everything was sore and stiff and painful, and it was so unbelievably hard to keep yourself from drifting again. It had to be a drug in your system, but you couldn’t think properly to know how or why. “You… You’re-”

“I usually go by Claude,” he told you with a winning grin. And it was a smile you knew. Intimately, honestly, a smile so familiar you ached.

You blinked hard, shaking your dizzy, heavy head in frustration, unable to accept what you were seeing and hearing. No matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t remember the last thing you’d been doing before you woke up here, the squishy bit of brain behind your eyes pounded at the effort. And that name. You knew it, you had long attached it to the man in your dreams no matter how little sense it really made.

Or maybe it all made perfect sense, and that was why you were so scared. Claude von Riegan, resident vampire of El Dorado.

“I… What happened?” you asked weakly, tearfully. “Why do I…? Dizzy…”

“Don’t worry, that’s from the little concoction I slipped into your food before that kid dropped it off,” Claude said. “It’s not poisonous or anything and, trust me, I would normally never use such underhanded tactics, but I couldn’t have you ruining things by making a big fuss. It’ll wear off soon.”

“No no no,” you muttered, your words bordering on incomprehensible with the effort they took to get out, “this can’t be happening. This can’t…”

“Would you feel any better if I told you it wasn’t?” he asked nonchalantly, sitting on the sofa across from the bed, his arms spanning the back in a casual position.

With blurry vision, your eyes took in the room around you. It seemed normal enough, if lavish. Big bed, large furniture. The smell though, that was distinct. Not rot, but old. Aged.

“You have been having an awful lot of weird dreams lately,” he continued thoughtfully.

You exhaled harshly, going still. Then, slowly, you met those playful green-blue eyes. They danced with candlelight and mirth. Enticing, exactly like in your dreams.

“I hope you don’t mind, I got bored while you were asleep and had a little peek at your diary,” he told you. “I’d love to hear more about that strange, beautiful man who haunts you in the night. He sounds intriguing.”

Had you written about those dreams? You couldn’t remember what you might have put down, usually you just went in and dumped as many thoughts onto the page as possible. The invasion of privacy was like a knife to the bone, but you couldn’t think of what you should do about it, the world was too abrasively heavy to know what to do with anything. Tears gathered in the corner of your eyes. Tears! Like you were going to cry! It seemed impossible to fight, like you were just as helpless to yourself as you were to what was going on.

“It was fascinating to see how much you pieced together. I’m glad you’re smart, I really am. It’ll make this a lot more fun.”

You shook your head again, which didn’t help the dizziness. “I want to leave,” you said, “I don't want to be here, I can't…" Your voice slurred a little, like you weren’t in complete control of your body. Your thoughts too, they kept getting away from you, slipping out from your grasp.

"Out of curiosity, where would you go?" Claude asked.

You sniffed pathetically, your thoughts falling to an abrupt halt against the question. "What?"

"If you left town right now,” he said, “where would you go?"

You stared at him, unable to figure out what he meant.

"You don't know, do you?" Claude asked, but his tone was all-knowing and smug. "I thought as much."

"I do, I just…" you said. But you didn't. You had no idea about anything. What you would do, what you were doing, everything was a confused mess and you just needed to get out of here, get away. Your breathing was picking up, your heavy head spinning with it.

“Shh, calm down,” Claude said gently, switching from the couch to the bed. It dipped with his weight and you didn’t think to move away, just stayed where you were and looked at him, attempting strength but only managing desperation as you tried not to break down completely. “I can tell you’re scared, but I’m not going to hurt you.” He paused, smiling non-threateningly. “And, you know, I wouldn’t have had to do any of this if you didn’t play hard to get last night. So why don’t we agree we were both in the wrong and move on? Forgive and forget, no harm done.”

“I-I want to-to leave,” you insisted, taking inventory of yourself to figure out if you were even capable. Everything was so foggy, disoriented, your body unbelievably heavy. It was getting better, but slowly. You weren’t sure you could leave the room, let alone escape.

"Sorry, but that's not gonna happen," Claude said, and it wasn’t a threat but the casual way he spoke made the statement that much worse. He was simply telling you something that was. A fact, a forgone conclusion.

"Someone will… will come looking for me," you said with more confidence than you actually felt, grasping at straws to make your case because you didn't have anything else.

"I wouldn't be too sure about that," Claude said. "They still think that I'm too weak to leave, seeing as the Macbeth bloodline has completely died out and all." He smiled at that, meeting your eye knowingly, unflinchingly. "Without the blood that roused me from my accursed slumber, there's no way I'd have the strength to steal somebody all the way from town and back."

Pieces began to shift into place. Slowly moving, scraping together as your fogged brain did its best to comprehend what he was telling you. The vague outline existed, but you couldn't quite pin it down, couldn't quite see the whole.

"My blood…" you mumbled, pressing your hand to the puncture wounds on your neck.

"But," Claude continued, ignoring you, "let's say that they know you're here. It's not impossible. Are you really going to place a bet on complete strangers risking their lives for you when they can't even be sure you're still alive? Personally, I wouldn't."

Your breathing, already unsteady, was only getting more out of hand the longer this conversation went on, the pressure behind your eyes mixing a headache with the threat of tears. A hot flush worked its way through your body, a sure sign of genuine panic, some potent mixture of terror and the effect of whatever drug he'd given you.

“Hey, calm down. I'm not trying to scare you,” Claude said, “but I'm not gonna lie to you either. So let’s get to know each other a little. I’m sure I’ll surprise you.”

Surprise you? The enormity of what was happening finally settled somewhat. He had kidnapped you, presumably by drugging you. He had killed somebody. Many people, maybe.

“Are you going to kill me?” you asked, your voice trembling and small.

Claude huffed, slight irritation wrinkling his brow. “No,” he said. “Frankly, I’m offended you’d even ask.”

“You’re crazy,” you said. “You… you killed Acheron, you…” You put a hand to your neck again. The needle-like punctures had bruised, the skin tender and sore.

“Okay, okay,” Claude said, trying to placate you. “I know I might have gone too far, and I’m sorry. I promise I won’t do that again. I was just a little excited, you know? I’ve been stuck in this place for centuries all on my own, too weak to leave and haunted by the ghost of my terrible, yet sympathetically tragic past.”

He paused, eyebrows up as if expecting you to say something, prompting you to say something. How could you possibly respond to that? He spoke so fluidly that you could almost miss the way he casually threw around the word ‘centuries’ as if it were normal, as if it made perfect sense.

“Doesn’t that make you sad?” Claude pushed. “Doesn’t your heart just ache for the pain I must have been feeling all this time?”

“You’re crazy…” you whispered again, unsteadily sitting up against the headboard, drawing your legs closer to yourself to put as much distance between the two of you as possible. You couldn’t ignore the evidence that there was something weird going on here, but you couldn’t ignore reason either. A crazy guy with razor sharp teeth living in a castle famous for its vampiric and occult ties hunting and killing trespassers was more reasonable than the alternative, wasn't it? You couldn’t just give up and submit to the fantasy, not entirely. You needed to make this make sense, to find a valid explanation other than the impossible.

“You already tried that one,” Claude told you. “And, for the record, I’m not crazy. If you think about it, and I know you have, this is meant to be. Who are we to deny fate?"

“Fate?” you repeated. “No, that’s…” Crazy. It was crazy. Everything about this was insane.

“Then why are you here?” Claude asked, raising an eyebrow. “Ah, actually, don’t answer that. I already know. Oh! Speaking of which…” He stood up to find something, pawing through the mess haphazardly left on one of the tables before straightening up with a phone in hand.

“That’s mine,” you said, tensing up.

“Yeah, you left it here. Aren’t you glad I took care of it for you?” he asked, waving it around as if to taunt you into lunging for it.

“Give it back.”

“What’s the magic word?”

“Give it back.”

“Ooo, how very charming,” Claude said, oozing sarcasm. But he gave it to you anyway, tossing it onto your lap casually before sitting back down. “You know, if you’re going to break into creepy forbidden castles, you probably shouldn’t take something so important. Especially the thing that has all of the information about where you’re staying, what you’re doing, who might care if you go missing suddenly… Or, actually? You should do that, it makes things easier for me.”

You clicked the home button, greeted with your familiar background, a flower your dad found for you on the lake. That was last year. Not so long ago, but it felt like a lifetime. You weren’t sure what you were looking for as you swiped the screen to unlock it. There was no service here, you already knew that. The phone may as well have been an expensive brick for all the good it did you.

“I’m astonished by how much information can be crammed into such a tiny little device,” Claude said. “Although, in your case, there wasn’t very much to find. No friends, no family, no home… I’m sorry about your dad, by the way.” His voice lacked all levity when he said that, almost like he meant it.

“Don’t,” you said, stiffening. But it was a weak kind of anger. Whatever he had used to drug you sent your emotions way out of whack, fear and anger and sadness getting all knotted up and leaving a lump in your throat.

“Nobody to worry that you’ve gone missing. Nobody for you to miss,” Claude continued to muse. “Nothing for you to leave behind. If I didn’t know any better, I’d wonder if you weren’t waiting for this exact thing.”

“That’s… You’re wrong.”

“Of course, I do know better,” Claude said, ignoring you, “I know why you risked life, limb, and the law to break into my humble abode. Rather, I know why you think you did. You want to know why you’re cursed, and why all of these terrible things happened to you. You think that when the truth is laid bare, it won’t hurt anymore. Once everything makes sense, you won’t feel so alone and scared. You and I are pretty much the same in that regard. I can’t stand not knowing things.”

You shook your head quickly, refusing to hear his words. He wasn’t right anyway, he was just assuming, just pretending like he knew you for the sake of some twisted power trip. Then again, he was right, wasn’t he? Your brain wasn’t so focused that you could simply deny the truth, deny that you thought answers would make the pain stop.

“Amateur prose aside, you’re right about almost everything—the curse, Lady Macbeth, Old Derdriu, me. You are cursed, Lady Macbeth was a witch, I am a vampire, and so on and so forth,” he said flippantly, disregarding the supernatural as if they were matters of tired fact. “But I have to say ‘almost’ because you’ve misunderstood something very important. Honestly, your little tirades border on willful ignorance sometimes. I can’t tell if you’re intentionally missing the point or if you’re just that obtuse… Er, no offense. You know what I’m talking about, right?”

“No,” you said.

Claude huffed, frowning. “You’re probably the only girl in the world to come face to face with the literal man of her dreams and still insist that you don’t believe in fate. I’m actually a little amazed right now.”

“You’re lying,” you said. “You’re lying so I… Because I’m…”

“You’re not insane, if that’s what you’re going to say,” he told you bluntly. “You’re not weak either. No, you just want a way out, don’t you? There’s nothing for you out there, you know that. You’ve been searching desperately for someone to swoop in and give you direction again.”

“No,” you said again, refusing to hear those words or to believe them.

“Careful,” he said, “if you lie too much, I might just feel compelled to do something about it.”

Your breath caught, your body freezing in place. “You’re crazy,” you whispered, tears burning your eyes.

“Aaaand back to square one,” Claude said, rolling his eyes. “Okay, I see we’re not going to get anywhere like this. Time to move on to Plan B.” He twisted up onto his knees, like he was going to crawl towards you.

“Don’t come near me,” you said with wide eyes, clumsily scooting away, covering your neck defensively. Your body wasn’t moving correctly, your limbs awkward and ungainly. Although, if you were honest, he didn’t look that intimidating in the warm light. No, he looked beautiful. That was the point, wasn’t it? Those green eyes, the soft hair with one little curl flopped over his forehead, the pretty face, the little gold earring, all of it was meant to entice. Vampires were beautiful on purpose, they were both bait and trap.

“I told you, I’m not gonna hurt you. All I want is to get to know you a little better,” Claude said innocently. “Thing is, I’m a hands-on kind of learner.”

“Stay away from me,” you told him as firmly as you could manage, watching him distrustfully with this terrible tingling sense of anticipation. Like you wanted him to do something.

“I mean it. Fear and pain makes your blood all sour. Pleasure, on the other hand…” He trailed off with a grin, letting the implication speak for itself. “Well, we’ll get there.”

“No,” you said, winding up your arm to throw your phone at him. It was hard to keep your arm lifted, the muscles were so heavy that they trembled with the strain. Claude’s eyes widened, and then narrowed, his irritation obvious.

“Oh, come on. There’s no need for that.”

“Stay away from me,” you said again, your voice coming out more like a whine. At this point, your thighs were clamped so tightly together that the muscles ached, your arm wavering from the weight of your phone. Claude reached for your wrist, but you dropped the phone before he could do anything, deciding to make your escape instead.

There was no surprise that you, unsteady and dizzy and drugged, nearly fell off of the bed when you tried to jump onto the floor. You definitely would have face-planted if a set of cold hands didn’t catch you.

“I know this is happening pretty fast,” Claude said, gently pulling you against him. You couldn’t do much to stop him, your head spinning, your mind on the fraying edge of sense from the sudden shake up of blood. He was inhumanly cold, but the fabric of his buttoned shirt was soft. The smell was wonderful, clove and orange and something lower, masculine. “Believe me, if I could give you more time, I would. But we have to make do with what we’ve got, right? And I’m…” His arms tightened around you, not that you were at risk of escaping. When you nervously peered up at him, Claude caught your eye hungrily. His throat worked hard as he swallowed. “Honestly, I’m starving.”

“Stop,” was the most you could offer, slurring the word. You realized that there was no heartbeat in his chest. Of course there wasn’t, he wasn’t alive. His cold hand slipped beneath the hem of your shirt, tracing along the warm, sensitive flesh of your back, to your ribs. “No,” you protested, squirming. His body was unyielding and firm against your own in the most intimate of ways. You had never been this physically close with another person, not like this.

“It’s okay,” he told you, his nose brushing the crown of your head.

“It’s not.”

“It is,” Claude affirmed, unendingly gentle. He was tracing little patterns on your back that made you shiver. You should have been fighting to get away, but the scent of him was intoxicating, and you felt… Not peaceful, there was too much about all of this that was uncomfortable and scary to be peaceful, but you didn’t feel displaced. “You don’t want to be alone anymore, do you?”

Your composure finally collapsed, tears welling up in your eyes. You hid them against Claude’s cold, empty chest, clinging to him because you had nothing else.

“It’s okay to let it all go,” Claude told you, continuing to pet your skin sweetly. “I’ll make you forget, at least for a while. I don’t want to brag, but I’m the best you’ll ever have. I’ve had a few years of practice to really hone my technique, you know? You won’t remember a thing by the time I’m done with you.”

Your heart pounded heavy and hard once, twice.

“What do you mean?” you finally asked, mumbling the words against him to hide your red face because you had a feeling you knew what he meant, the price he’d demand to cure your loneliness. In a way, it made sense. Another piece of a puzzle that would fit in just as it was meant to, as it had been destined to.

“Wait…” Claude pried you away from his chest, gripping your chin to force you to meet his eye. You tried to avert your gaze, but there really wasn’t anywhere else to go, anywhere to hide. “What do you think I mean?”

Your thighs squeezed together, heat rising to your face.

“I dunno,” you said, trying to squirm away, overly aware not only that you were in his arms, but practically cradled in his lap.

“I can’t tell if you’re being coy or not,” he said. “I guess it doesn’t matter either way.”

“What doesn’t?” you asked.

“I’m talking matters of the heart,” Claude said, letting go of your face to wrap an arm around your waist, his grip impossible to fight even if you weren’t still dizzy and leaden from the drug. “And matters of the body. More specifically, your body.” His other hand delved down, slipping beneath the elastic waistband of your sweatpants to press against you through your panties. You hissed out through your teeth, thighs clamping down around his hand like a vice. Claude only groaned, his palm grinding against you. “I’ve gotta say, it’s awfully cute. You’re so warm and soft.”

“Stop,” you protested, your voice thin and your face hotter than ever.

“Pleasure makes your blood sweeter,” he said, the air of his words brushing against your ear. “The more, the better.”

You shook your head, hiding your face against his chest. “I… I don’t…”

“It’s a fair deal, don’t you think?” Claude asked, his fingers teasing you through the thin fabric, curling to press between your folds, skimming over the sensitive flesh beneath. You squirmed, your hands weakly tugging at his wrist. “We both get something out of it.”

“I… don’t…” you stammered out again, not sure where you were going with it.

“And it’s much more respectable than a messy quickie out in the courtyard. Blood as precious as yours deserves to be savored in its finest form,” Claude said, dragging his finger over your clit, the extra friction of the fabric adding to the sensation. You shuddered hard, heat sinking low in your gut. “I think we’ll start with three and go from there.”

“Three?” you asked breathlessly, your head spinning so hard you had to rest it against his chest.

“Yeah, I’m going to make you come three times,” Claude said, his tone more than a little indulgently condescending. “To start with, at least. You know, to sweeten you up. It’ll soothe your nerves too. As for what happens from there…” He shrugged, the movement impeded by the way he was cradling you. “I like the spontaneity of figuring it out as I go. It’s more romantic, don’t you think?”

“Nn…no…” you said, your stomach sinking, sickness and something else—something that was decidedly interested in the proposal—swirling dangerously low within you. Claude hadn’t stopped teasing you through your panties, and you weren’t really pulling at his wrist anymore so much as just holding on.

“What, are you thinking more along the lines of four? Five?” he teased. “We’ve got more than enough time to kill.”

“That’s not…” You whimpered, holding tighter against him when he wedged the fabric between your pussy’s outer lips to grind even harder against your clit. It bordered on too rough, but it was working as intended, your clit swelling hot and needy, your hips jumping forward in an unintentional chase for more. “I can’t… do that.”

“Did I mention how good I am at this?” Claude asked. “Not that I get the impression you’ll be too terribly difficult.”

You whined in objection, squirming in a half-hearted attempt to escape.

“That’s not a bad thing. The opposite, actually. Like I said, the more, the better,” Claude said, his other arm wrapping around your waist to adjust you, to make it easier for his other hand to work between your legs. You were too sensitive and you didn’t know how much of it was natural and how much of it was from the drug, only that pleasure was pooling up quickly in your core.

You swallowed against the excess saliva pooling on your tongue, past the lump in your throat. “I… I don’t…”

“What?” he asked. “You don’t… something. Sorry, I didn’t catch the last bit.”

“I…”

“You weren’t going to lie and say you don’t want this, were you?” Claude asked, his cold lips brushing the shell of your ear. Your hips jerked, your mouth falling open. You could feel the way your body was coiling up tense, desperate to come. It would be a quick flash of pleasure, hidden and tight beneath your clothes, but it was still pleasure, it was still good.

“I’m—mmm…” You pressed your lips together to stifle yourself, holding even tighter against him. The wave of heat was building too fast, too frantically. Exhaustion, drugs, your general mental degradation, you could pin the blame on any number of external factors so you didn’t have to take responsibility for what you felt. The result was the same though, and it was you and you alone who chased the tantalizing build of pleasure.

“Do you feel that? That’s the sweet, sweet feeling of me being right yet again,” Claude said, saccharine and smug. “Feels good, doesn’t it, sweetheart?”

It was the pet name that really did it. Nobody had ever said something like that to you, and the heavy weight of it in his voice pushed you over the edge with an anxious little jerk of pleasure and a choked noise in the back of your throat, with a hot flash that made your clothes feel too tight, that made your clit pulse beneath his touch, rubbed raw with the friction of fabric. It was awkward and cramped and thin and it was everything, you clung onto him as the fizzles of heat sparkled out, your muscles contracting, your mouth open and silent.

When it was over, when Claude quit rubbing those evil little patterns over your sensitive clit, you let out a shuddering breath, trying to calm yourself down. Without the distraction of pleasure keeping you on edge, you felt the bite of nausea in your throat. The recognition that this was wrong, and that you had no idea what to do to fix it, or even if that was possible.

“The thing is that when you come, your body releases all sorts of hormones. It’s a fun little cocktail that behaves in basically the same way as sugar. For me, at least,” Claude explained, unceremoniously dumping you onto your back in a boneless splay. “A couple of orgasms is… It’s like the difference between gnawing on a day-old biscuit and savoring a cinnamon bun with icing.”

“What are you doing?” you asked. You tried to hold onto him, but Claude easily knocked your arms away so he could pull your sweatpants off. They were cast somewhere to the side before he hooked a cold hand under your knee, lowering himself between your legs. “What-”

“I’ve got a bit of a sweet tooth,” Claude explained, looking up at you with bright eyes. He looked so innocent, so sweet. So mischievous. “You don’t mind, right?”

“Mind what?” you asked, trying to close your legs, to hide yourself from him. The panties you were wearing were old and plain, far from anything even approaching sexy. But the idea of removing them was worse, you couldn’t stand thinking of him looking so forwardly at your bare pussy. The humiliation would kill you. “Please stop,” you said, your voice pinched and small.

“Oh, wow, would you look at that?” Claude asked, his finger tracing the wet spot soaking through your panties. Your hips twitched, the muscles in your thighs tensing. “It looks like you don’t want me to stop.”

“Don’t look,” you said, squirming in an attempt to get free.

“Don’t look?” Claude repeated, feigning guilelessness. “So it’s okay if I touch, but only so long as I keep my eyes closed? Good to know.”

“No, that’s not-”

He cut you off, his tongue replacing his fingers, dragging over the wet spot with a depraved sort of intensity. And his eyes, as he said, were closed. Already, the sane thoughts of sickness and doubt were beginning to scatter anew, your body responding to the promise of new pleasure. Claude exploited that, continuing to lickyou through the damp fabric of your panties while you squirmed, settling for covering your face in place of fighting him off. Not that he was looking.

“You’ve been alone for a long time, haven’t you?” Claude asked, hooking his fingers beneath your panties to slowly peel them off. You fought that, but it wasn’t hard for him to wrench the cotton from your grasp, the elastic tearing before he got them all the way down and off. When he ghosted his cool fingertips over the bruise on your hip, you shivered. “I’ve barely done anything and you already came once. Every time I touch you, it makes you twitch. I thought you were just discrete, not writing about any boys in your diary, but the truth is that you’ve had nothing to write about, right? Well, until now, that is.”

“What are you doing?” you hissed down at him, finally panicking enough to grab his hair, trying to pull his head out from between your legs, shame raging a horrible storm within you. Claude groaned, flashing a grin up at you as he casually tossed one of your bare thighs over his shoulder.

“Yeah, you can pull my hair all you want. I don’t mind,” he said, his cold lips brushing your inner thigh. You thought of his fangs and how easily they had pierced your neck, falling still as he passed the artery there. But that wasn’t his destination, you realized. Claude separated your outer lips, staring at your bare pussy for a long moment before his head dropped forward.

You yelped when his cold tongue began to draw relentless patterns over your swollen clit. His fingers kept you spread open for him and you couldn’t breathe, every single muscle in your body pulled taut in preparation for the orgasm you were being enticed into. Disgust and humiliation remained constant, sure, but it wasn’t enough to dissuade your body from the pleasure.

Even when your thighs closed around his head, certainly suffocating him, Claude didn’t falter. Even when you pulled at his hair, even when your hips jumped against his face, he just groaned, doubling down. He had to have been putting on a performance, considering how loud he was, eating you out as sloppily as possible so you had no choice but to revel in the depraved noises. The rest of it was all you. Your moaning, your whimpering, your gasping. Your body didn’t belong to you, you couldn’t force yourself to stay still, couldn’t stop the noises from leaving your mouth, couldn’t stop the hot coil of pleasure from building and building and building.

“I c-can’t,” you got out breathlessly, “I-I… I can’t.”

“Just keep telling yourself that,” Claude said, looking up at you from beneath thick, dark eyelashes. “It’ll make this a fun surprise. For you.”

Forcing your hips flat against the bed, his wicked tongue continued to push you even closer to the precipice. You whimpered, tossing your head back because there was nothing else you could do. It was embarrassing and awful and you hated it, but you knew you weren’t far off. Heat ballooned up in your core, all of your blood seemingly rising to the surface and making your entire body too hot, too tight, too tense.

Claude’s lips closed around your clit and sucked and you came with a helpless cry straight out of some trashy porno, your entire body tensing and shuddering and completely overcome with nothing except for the raw sensation of pleasure. By the time you were spent, your fingers were twitching, the rest of your body limp and sweaty.

“See what a difference a can-do attitude makes?” Claude asked, looking up at you with a big smile. You shook your head, breathing too hard, too fast. Unable to meet his eye. “As in, I can make you do anything I want. Funny how that works out.”

“I-I need… a moment.”

“No you don’t,” Claude said. Messily, hungrily, he moved up from between your legs, his lips tracing your abdomen, your stomach, your ribs, pushing your shirt up to gain access to more and more of your bare flesh. When you realized he was trying to remove your shirt and bra, you fought it, desperate to retain some modesty.

“I don’t want-”

“Ah, ah, ah,” Claude scolded. “Remember what I said?”

With his supposed can-do attitude, it wasn’t difficult for him to get your shirt and bra up and off, shoved past your shoulders and arms until the knotted wad of fabric dropped onto the floor. You tried to cover your bare tits, but Claude barely paused, simply slapping your arms away so he could map your chest with his mouth too. Palming one breast, pinching the aching nipple between cold fingers, he wrapped his lips around the other.

“Claude, I don’t-”

He effectively shut you up by biting your nipple. Not with his fangs, and not hard, just enough to make you squirm, writhe against him like you had last night, stuck between his unyielding body and the mattress. Sweaty and hot and desperate, but now for completely different reasons.

You made another sound that was intended to be his name but didn’t come out that way, it was barely language, and far from comprehensible.

Claude groaned, the fingers of his other hand pushing into your pussy at the same moment, driving right past the tense muscles of your entrance and deep into you. The weight was enough to make you really moan, the feeling of him stretching out your inner walls electrifying your entire body. You could hear how wet you were for him, feel how easily his fingers curled and scissored inside of you, reigniting the little ember of need low in your core. His mouth switched to your other nipple, leaving the first red and aching, and all you could do was hide your face, one hand threaded through his hair as if looking for an anchor point. You thought you needed a break, but already you were back in it, already wanting to come again.

His fingers fucked into you with a sloppy sound. In and out, curling and scissoring and not at all gentle. Not that it mattered. Your body was entirely pliant, moving with him. More than that, responding to each swipe gleefully, needfully, pulsing around his cold fingers and sucking them deeper, your back arching to press your chest harder against his mouth, your thighs squeezing his hand to keep him in place.

“You’re tight,” Claude said, pulling off your nipple with a slick pop. “Is it possible that you’ve been saving yourself for that special someone?”

You shook your head, more than a little aware of the way his taunt made you tighten around his fingers. So close. Just a little more and you were going to come for him, the heat having gone from a smolder to hellfire beneath your blushing skin, your entire body wound up.

“Do you mean to tell me that you haven’t been suffering all by yourself, waiting for your prince to show up and take care of you?” Claude asked, making his point with each hard thrust. “Cause, I’ll be honest, that’s what this feels like to me. Sensitive, tight, needy… Those are all classic symptoms of neglect.”

It was difficult to breathe. Difficult to think.

“Please,” you breathed out and you weren’t sure how he heard you, you could barely hear yourself over the crushing thrum of blood in your ears, but Claude responded with a groan.

“By the way, that is the magic word,” he said. Despite the quip, he fingerfucked you roughly and carelessly. His mouth on your tits was beyond pleasurable. It was exquisite, terrible. You came again, your entire mind clearing out as pleasure shuddered through you, stoked by each thrust of his fingers. They kept on curling, teasing, grinding against your g-spot, going as deep as they could each time. Your orgasm felt like it lasted too long, leaving you wrung out, shaking and almost confused. Maybe that was just because of how hard you were breathing, your brain wasn’t getting enough oxygen.

Sweat slicked your skin and tears had dripped down your cheeks into your hair and everything glowed when you managed to blink your eyes open.

“You don’t mind, right?” Claude asked, his mouth moving up from your sore nipple to your neck. His hand hadn’t stopped moving, fucking into you. He pulled his fingers out only to add a third, to add that much more impact to each thrust.

And he. Didn’t. Stop. Claude didn’t so much as pause when he bit into your neck, pushing you past numb overstimulation, past the discomfort, and right back into the cruel build of yet another orgasm. Unlike last night, the piercing sting of his fangs into your flesh was only good, hazy bright red and sharp, followed by the sweet, cool release of his mouth fixing around the wound to suck. It hurt, but the pain was only an aspect of pleasure. And when Claude groaned happily, his tongue lapping at your blood with the same desperation you felt beneath the assault of his fingers, you moaned openly.

You came again when he bit into your neck a second time, his fangs digging into your flesh mercilessly. The needling sting made you writhe, but his fingertips curled at the same time to press against your g-spot and you couldn’t help it. At this point you were so wet it was dripping past his fingers, slicking your thighs and the bed. Claude sucked even harder at your neck, enough to make you lightheaded.

Whining, you pulled halfheartedly at his hair. Not for him to stop, but because you wanted him to fuck you. Actually fuck you. At this point you probably were insane, but you didn’t care, all you could imagine was how full you’d feel, pierced by both his fangs and his cock.

“You want another?” Claude asked, pulling away from your neck. When he pulled back, his lips were wet with your blood, his green eyes alight. “Some girls would be begging for a break right about now.”

“I…”

“No, no. It’s okay to be a little greedy sometimes,” he said, grinning, the picture of poise and control despite the lunacy swirling within his gaze.

“Nn-no, I want you-you to—” You let out a high pitched mewl when his other hand dropped to touch your clit in time with his fingers inside of you, writhing desperately, helplessly. This wasn’t what you wanted, you didn’t think, but already sense had flown from your mind, replaced by the intense dread and need that had reduced you to a babbling, mindless thing.

He had to have known what he was doing to you, how far your mind had degraded, but that didn’t seem to matter to Claude at all. Torturing you with the dual assault of his fingers, he moved back down your body, muttering for you to hold still before his fangs punctured your inner thigh. Biting the sensitive, giving skin hurt in a different way than your neck, but you were already on your way to coming against and when he sucked hard on the wound, you just whined, gripping his hair in a desperate attempt to stop yourself from falling apart completely.

Claude moaned, sucking hard as you sobbed and moaned and trembled through another orgasm, dripping and squeezing his fingers, twitching with overstimulation and pain and pleasure and the raw rush of ecstasy. He finally let up when you whined, his mouth releasing your thigh and pulling his fingers out of you with a final little press against your g-spot that made your legs jerk. What little sense you might have had before was long gone.

“Now… What was it you wanted me to do?” asked as he sat back. “You were mumbling, I couldn’t quite understand.”

You turned your face away from him in embarrassment, still trying just to breathe, let alone speak. Claude laughed indulgently. Warm, sweet, even affectionate. He leaned over you to press a kiss to your neck, lapping at the beads of blood that had welled up. Even as you burned, he was cold.

“Look at me,” Claude told you softly, sweetly.

And you did, meeting his eyes again because you were beyond refusing. What you didn’t expect was for him to take advantage of the way you were gasping for air and shove his fingers in your mouth. They tasted like you and maybe a distant part of your mind was disgusted by that, but it was so much easier to do what came naturally and suck on them, your tongue cleaning his skin of your wet arousal. The reaction seemed to amuse him, and, curiously, he pushed his fingers a little deeper. Predictably, you choked. Claude pulled them out with a spill of saliva. Filthy, but everything was already so wet, the added mess made little difference.

“Oop, sorry,” he said without the slightest shred of repentance, sitting up and unbuttoning his shirt, tossing it aside. You could barely remember what had happened to your own clothes. “I’d hate to put words into your mouth, so why don’t you tell me what it is you want.”

You shook your head, closing your eyes in an attempt to collect yourself. More than ever, reality loomed as a detached concept, floating above you and below you but not quite stable. There were reasons that was probably dangerous, but you couldn’t think hard enough to know. Every time you tried, it was just the heavy thump thump thump of your heart, and sweat, and your heavy, heavy head.

“How about I tell you what I want, and you can let me know if it's agreeable to Her Highness?” Claude asked playfully. You peeked at him from beneath your eyelashes, barely coherent enough to be surprised that he was naked. Beautiful, the warm tan of his skin belying the bloodless cold beneath. Vampire biology, as it turned out, was comparable enough to human biology. “I want to see how many times I can make you come on my cock before you either beg me to stop or pass out. Preferably while enjoying a little more of your blood.”

You blinked, some sense returning to your head as your eyes followed the trail of dark hair down his abdomen to his cock. A bit of fear because the sight of his hand stroking it made you very aware of what was about to happen, and then his words registered and you froze up entirely.

“Oh, don’t make that face, that was a joke,” Claude said, scooping you up. The world rolled, your head heavy and limbs limp. “I won’t let you pass out, you’d miss all the fun.”

“Dizzy,” you muttered, trying to hold onto him for stability, everything he just said fleeing your head as the reality rolled and twisted and shifted incomprehensibly. You couldn’t be afraid of what was happening when you didn’t even know what was happening, although that was distressing in and of itself.

“You’re okay,” Claude said sweetly, brushing a lock of hair from your face, capturing your attention back onto him. Something to hold onto. “I’ve got you. Just relax, let me take care of you.”

Amidst the blurry, disorienting world, his eyes were familiar and clear. Beautiful. You must have muttered something in the affirmative because it made him laugh, the sound rumbling in his bare chest. Claude kissed your lips, your cheek. Then you were turned around and falling forward. It was difficult to balance on your hands and knees. He had to settle for your knees and elbows, your arms were trembling too much to hold you.

“You really are gorgeous, you know that?” Claude said, his hands tracing over your waist, down your hips. He didn’t put any pressure on the hurt one, simply tracing the very tips of his fingers across the ugly bruise. With how sensitive the skin was, it actually felt good, tugging a harsh shiver down your spine. “I’m serious. I mean… Look at you. Not that you can. I guess you’ll have to take my word for it.”

Shame made a brief reappearance as Claude groped your ass, playing with your body a moment before spreading your cheeks, exposing you enough to run the tip of his cock through your slick folds. That made you shiver even harder, your body tensing up, your pussy squeezing around nothing, dripping a little more in anticipation.

“A meaner man would make you beg,” Claude said, nudging the blunt head against your hole. You exhaled shakily, desperate and nervous and filled with red hot lust.

“Claude,” you said.

“You’re lucky I’m so nice.” With that as your only warning, he nudged his hips forward. Once the head was in, you were more than wet enough for him to slide in smoothly.

But Claude still took his time, holding you tightly against him to fill you with little rolling thrusts, his cock dragging against your fluttering inner walls bit by bit so you could feel everything. He held onto the headboard with one strong arm, the other holding your back flush against him which was good because, especially now that you were so full, you had no control over your body. In contrast to your feverish, sweaty skin, Claude was cold and smooth, his flesh unyielding and hollow. Your pussy worked around his cock, adjusting to his size. Any discomfort was easily smoothed out by how right it felt. How perfect.

“Scratch that, you’re going to be lucky if I ever let you leave my bed,” Claude said, his voice a bit harsher, more affected, his arm tightening around you.

You whimpered, your body unintentionally responding to what should have been a threat but only registered as a delicious promise. Claude still hadn’t moved. Every little movement made you tighten and flutter around him, a new reminder of how deep he went, how completely full you were. Claude groaned in turn, the sound muffled against your neck.

When he bit you again, you could feel the way your cunt clamped down around him, your hips desperately twitching in an attempt to make him move. The piercing ache of his fangs spread through your skull, your spine, and then his lips latched onto the wound as if to soothe it. The sound of Claude sucking against your skin was beyond lewd, sloppy and wet and needful.

“Please,” you whimpered. Not to make him stop, but to make him move, to fuck you properly. He pulled off of your neck with a slick pop.

“I thought you’d want me to be gentle,” Claude teased, pulling out of you slowly. He didn’t take on the sensual tone of a lover, remaining playful despite what he was doing. “But that’s not true at all, is it? You want to be used. You want me to fuck you so hard you won’t be able to walk, let alone escape from my devious schemes. Then you’ll have no choice but to be a pretty little blood bag for the mean, mean vampire of El Dorado. Am I right, or am I right?”

The words made your cunt tighten despite yourself. “I-” When he thrust back into you, his hips smacking loudly against your ass, you could feel everything. Every ridge, every vein, it was rough and rocked you forward. Only, he held you in place, leaving you with no escape.

“Exactly, I’m right,” Claude said, repeating the motion, making you cry out pathetically. “Of course, I almost always am. You’d think I’d get sick of it at some point and say something wrong just for a change of pace, but…”

You weren’t really listening to him. How could you? Each thrust was hard enough to practically throw you forward, but the cage of his arm kept you in place so he could keep up the rough pace, fucking into you like you were little more than a doll. You wanted to meet him halfway, wanted to participate, but you were too far gone to possibly keep up. Luckily, Claude didn’t seem to mind either way.

His fangs buried into your neck directly on top of the wound from last night and it should have hurt horribly, but instead it threw you over the edge, your pussy tightening around his cock and your body trembling as you came. The sensation was hard and rough and completely physical, pleasure blooming out from the place where his cock slammed into you and spreading outwards in wonderfully sensitive sparks of heat.

Claude growled. You could feel the vibrations in his chest, his throat. The iron tang of your blood mingled with the filthy scent of sex, and the sound of him slurping at the skin of your neck was nearly as lewd as when he ate you out, like the sex was the same as the blood drinking, the two acts intrinsically linked.

The inside part of your consciousness remained in the heavy, hot confines of your body, desperate for a break so you could come down from the orgasm but unable to deny some hot, painful desire for more. The outside part of your mind floated above, like a balloon, disconnected and distantly interested in what was happening, almost like this was a dream. The two parts warred. One mind focused only on Claude and the pure physicality of it all, the other in a state of disbelief that any of this was happening at all.

Neither mattered, really. Within your chest, your heart raged in a double time beat, racing against the blood loss and the syrupy thick pressure of exertion. Superficial pleasure raced over your skin like electricity. Claude bit into your neck again, drinking even more of your sweetened blood with desperate fervor. You tensed up, realizing that you were going to come again with a twinge of panic. Your body rebelled at the idea, but it would be more painful to deny the pleasure, it would leave you shaking and wanting and desperate and it would hurt.

“You just can’t get enough, can you?” Claude asked. You moaned wetly, pathetically. He licked a wide stripe up the side of your neck. Even now, his tongue was impossibly cool against the bleeding wounds.

He let you fall down, pushing your torso into the mattress. You went without protest, boneless and limp. Claude held you up by the waist, his thrusts slowing down as he experimented a few times. You didn’t really realize the point until your body jerked with intense, almost aggressive, pleasure.

“That’s it, right?” Claude asked, a smile in his voice. You weren’t sure why he asked in the first place, your body’s reaction to him hitting your g-spot was more than telling. It felt good, beyond good, but it was in an electrified, panicked sort of way because at this point you were overstimulated and dizzy and every time he fucked into you it was unbelievably pleasurable, so much that it hurt. It didn’t help that Claude was being so rough, his thrusts losing tempo. And you just took it, jerking each time, spasming around him, moaning helplessly, that coil of heat building with too much intensity, with too much raw-nerve pressure.

“C-aa-n’t,” you gasped out between thrusts, your voice heavy and wet.

“Can too,” Claude told you, twisting your hips a little, enough to add that little bit of extra sensation. You pressed your face against the sheets as you came, your moans coming out practically as sobs because of how utterly overstimulating it felt as your pussy unintentionally clamped down around Claude’s cock, forcing more pressure on your g-spot, cruelly dragging out your own orgasm. He was muttering something, praise maybe, but you couldn’t hear it above the roaring of blood in your ears.

Pretty soon Claude moaned loudly, layering your name with the heavy sound of pleasure. You realized that he was coming too, slamming into you roughly before his hips stuttered, flush with your ass. You shook and gasped and whined, your pussy fluttering and squeezing him, accepting the torment. Inviting it even, dripping around him even as he buried himself too deep inside of you, finishing with a few heavy thrusts.

Claude laughed lightly after a few moments, although it sounded more like a sound of exhilarated joy than humor. You hoped he wasn’t laughing at you, although you couldn’t do anything even if he was.

He kneaded your ass, spreading your cheeks to watch himself pull out of you with a rush of wetness. Shame had burrowed deep into your gut, but you felt enough to pull away, to press your thighs together as soon as you had the chance.

“I may have gotten a teensy bit carried away,” Claude admitted.

You didn’t open your eyes or respond, not even when he threw himself down onto his side and gathered you against him. He was cool and smooth, his flesh inhuman against your own. You were the feverishly sweaty one, although you realized as he held you how cold you felt on the inside. Cold and sore and empty.

“I know you’re not asleep,” Claude said, nuzzling against the side of your neck, lapping up the blood before sucking lightly at the freshest wound, groaning at the taste.

You didn’t move. If you did, if you acknowledged the cold or him or the discomfort or anything, you would have to deal with how awful you felt. Blood loss felt a bit like altitude sickness, at least insofar as it left you lightheaded and nauseous. The sore overstimulation was different, but you definitely didn’t want to deal with that. Mostly, you just wanted to stop existing and shirk the discomfort and pretend that none of this was real.

Claude pulled away from your neck, smacking his lips contentedly.

You continued not to move as he adjusted himself, his arm leaving your waist to reach for something off to the side. “Can you sit up a little?” Claude asked. Your head spun as he pulled you upward regardless of your answer, the world lurching. Your pussy leaked uncomfortably, coating your thighs and the damp sheets. Every inch of your body either ached or felt clammy and sour. Your head pounded with a headache. Your skin was too tight, sweat dripping into the scrapes and bitemarks. A straw appeared at your lips, urging you to finally open your eyes. “Here—drink this.”

You looked at him from beneath fluttering eyelashes, meeting those pretty green-blue eyes before looking at the bottle he held.

“Whassit?” you asked, your voice slurred and barely recognizable. Your stomach protested at the thought of taking anything, but your mouth was bone dry and tasted like blood.

“Water,” Claude said, pushing the straw past your lips. You just accepted it. Maybe you shouldn’t have, he already admitted to drugging you, but you weren’t thinking clearly and it was easier to just do what he said. “Humans need a lot of water. Especially after losing so much fluid.” He paused, smiling playfully. “Do you always get that wet or am I special?”

You blinked at him, taking in a few more mouthfuls of water before dropping the straw. Claude set the cup aside, wiping the excess water from the corner of your lips, and then smoothing over your hair, pulling you against his chest happily. It was easiest to let it happen. He really did smell good, spice and citrus and musk and Claude. The man of your dreams, he called himself.

“They thought they could trap me here forever. After their massacre and the fire, they…” Claude didn’t finish that thought, his voice troubled. There was no heartbeat in his hard, muscled chest, but you could feel the rumble of his voice. “She had family, sure, but her blood was cursed. No Macbeth woman would be able to release me from this place ever again. And then you came.” He paused, petting your hair again. “More than once, if I recall.”

You groaned softly, eliciting a laugh from him.

“Yeah, that was in poor taste. Unlike you, who tastes excellent,” Claude said affectionately. A moment later, he sighed, returning to a somewhat serious tone. “Anyway, the point is that, vampire or no, I’m man enough to admit that I needed saving just as badly as you. That’s enough, isn’t it? We really should stick together, us accursed outcasts.”

You didn’t say anything, you weren’t sure what you were meant to say. Your thoughts, still, were little more than confused slush. And, more than that, you weren’t sure that was the sort of thing that needed a response.

Claude accepted your silence and kissed the top of your head. And then he just held you. Not like he was afraid you would leave him, but like he was afraid you would cease to exist altogether, his arms nearly desperately keeping you pressed against his chest, his hands brushing your back or nose ruffling your hair as he reminded himself that you were still there.

And maybe those thoughts were just projections, but you didn’t think they were.

II.

1st Day of Ethereal Moon

Now it’s just us two. Me and Claude ruling the world. Explorers, adventurers, wanderers. Rogues who hide behind the horizon to keep the night close. I told him that the other day and it made Claude laugh. It didn’t hurt even a bit to say, either. Dad would like him, I think. Claude likes discovering things and chasing mysteries and all that too. There’s always somewhere new to go, we never stay anywhere long enough for people to notice our shadow. It can be hard sometimes, but I’m not alone. It’s as good an ending as any.

Happily ever after.

#claude von riegan #fe claude #claude von riegan x reader #fe claude x reader #fe3h #fire emblem three houses #my writing #not sfw #tw.drugging #tw.dubcon

243 notes · View notes

thelilsem · 1 year

Text

Neteyam x Reader

Summary:

Y/n was dragged to the world of pandora, to help track and capture Jake Sully. But she refuses and on an unexpected event she is able to join the Sully family. After earning their trust by helping them she soon grows closer to them, especially to a certain someone who starts seeing her in a different light.

Notes:

This is my first avatar fanfiction so i hope you enjoy it. This might start out slow and then pick up from their. Also this fanfiction is for enjoyment purposes so the story line will differ a bit. *Also i do not own avatar or its characters*

Chapter 1

(Sorry this chapter will be based more on y/n and how she joined the sully family. *Also you may change your fathers name, i just picked one cuz (f/n) looked weird to me*)

"Hurry up kid" Quartrich hissed in a menacing voice as he pushed me, making me almost fall. "Well if you wanted me to walk faster you could take these off" I hissed back as i lifted my hands that were covered by some handcuffs, blocking my fingers so i wouldnt be able to grab anything or anyone. "Shut up and keep walking" He snapped, not bothering to look at me, as he passed me i mimicked him. It wasn't long before we came to a stop where an abandoned trailer was being covered by vines and nature, there was also a robot on the ground with what appeared to be an arrow sticking out of it. Quaritch seemed to know where we were as he told us to stop and he looked around, I found a nice place to rest and sat down.

We had been here for about a minute and i started to sense eyes, they weren't menacing but scared. 'I hope thats not a Sully' I thought to myself, after being brought here of my own accord they told me that i was to help capture Jake Sully and his family. Since my tracking and spying skills were compared to an expert adult, they tried to brainwash me to help them. 'To bad for them, my father told me to never betray Jake Sully or anyone else. Or he would haunt me with his spirit until my death' A shiver ran own my spine as I remember how scary he would be at times, as i came back to my surroundings i noticed that only some of the soldiers were with me and the rest were gone.

Then i heard some shouts from the forest, it didnt take long for quaritch to come out with 3 blue kids and one human boy. They all tried to break free but failed, they shoved the two boys next to me and kept a hold of the two other girls for bait. The kids looked confused as i tried to greet them, but failed since it just looked like i lifted my hands. "Hey brat, no talking with the rest. And dont you dare to plan an escape, or ill shoot you" Quartrich said as he hit my head with the back of his gun "I'll rather commit seppuku then let the likes of you kill me" I snapped back, earning another hit but this time on the side of my cheek, which resulted in a cut on my lip and some bruising "Shut up" He said as he walked away "Ass" I muttered as i turned to look at the kids, who now looked a bit scared. But i noticed that their hands weren't completely covered like mine so i got an idea.

"Hey, can you reach this" I whispered as i slowly got close to the human boy, he seemed on guard but still looked at what i was pointing. "Yes, why?" He asked not trusting my intentions, made sense since i was with the enemy "Its a knife, use it to cut off those things." I whispered again, as i looked around i motioned for him to hurry in case a soldier came. The kid looked at the blue kid before taking the knife and quickly cutting the cuffs. "Alright now pretend to still have them around, ill make a distraction so you guys can run" I said before standing up and walking towards the guy that had the little girl "Hey man I think your being to rough there, why dont you relax?"

I said with a chuckle making the guy mad as he pointed his gun at me now and lowered the girl a bit "Shut up Y/n-" Before he could finish his sentence an arrow went through his face, from then arrows and bullets started to fly "Shit" I muttered as i tried to invade the stray bullets, as i hid behind the old robot i saw a soldier run after the little girl "You gotta be kidding me" I huffed as i quickly stood up and ran towards him, before the man could grab her i slammed my cuffed hands on his head. Making him pass out, the little girl turned to look at me scared "You okay kid?" I asked as she nodded, i heard more poeple coming this way so i muttered sorry before grabbing her as i started to run "Do you know which way you need to go?" I asked as i ran and tried to not fall, she pointed in a direction and soon i stopped as i saw the kids and their parents. As they saw me with the girl they pointed their weapons at me,

"Woah, chill out mr.Sully" I said as i put the girl down and she ran to her parents "Stop, she helped me" She begged her parents as she hugged her mother "She's with the enemy" Her mother hissed as she was now ready to let go of the arrow "Hey do you really think they would handcuff me if i was with them?" I asked as i lifted my hands still very much cuffed "Maybe its a trap" The woman said, she seemed to not want to do anything with me

"Mom it's true, those guys even treated her worse than they did with us" The blue boy who had been captured spoke up as he walked up to her "Then if your not cooperating why were you with them?" Jake finally asked as he took a step forward "They dragged me to this planet and tried to brainwash me to help.....you know you do look like the description my father told me. Just blue, and taller." I said as i sat down, I hadn't noticed before from all the adrenaline but i had gotten hit on my thigh. It wasnt deep nor on any nerves, but it began to hurt.

I guess mentioning my father saved my life "Who is your father?" Jake asked intrigued as he examined me "Leo (l/n)" I said as i tried to break the cuffs by slamming them on the ground "You are Leo's kid?" Jake asked as he lowered his gun, shocked at the news "I know, its hard to believe a man like him would have kids." I chuckled as gave up on getting the cuffs off

"By the way can you remove these? And also the tracker that's on my shoulder" I said as i rose up, the woman didnt seem convinced still as she stopped jake. But jake whispered to her and continued to come towards me "I mean if you want i can keep the cuffs, just remove this damn tracker" I said as i moved the shoulder that had the chip, jake took out his knife and moved my shirt colar to see where the chip was. Luckily there seemed to be a scar where they had placed it so jake took it off quickly and smashed it.

"Neytiri take the kids and go back home, I'll take this one to the lad to get a checkup" Jake said as neytiri sighed reluctantly before nodding and walking away with their kids "Im sure you've noticed but they are after you mr.Sully, they are also targeting your wife but mostly you" I said as i followed jake "Yea i could tell, do you know anything else?" He asked "Other than wanting to capture you and basically take over pandora....No, they had me locked in a room since i wouldn't cooperate" We continued to talk as we got to the place he was taking me, as we got their we were greeted by some humans who i assumed were the scientist who had stayed behind. They examined me before taking off my cuffs "Man it feels great to finally move my fingers" I said with a chuckle as i stretched and popped them

"Y/n i brought a change of clothes, jake said that you will be joining him so i brought na'vi tradicional clothes" Norm said as he layed down some of the cloths smiliar to what jake and his family were wearing, he smiled before leaving the room to give me some privacy "Guess its better than what im currently wearing" I muttered as i took off my clothes and started changing, it didnt look bad with the avatar body but boy did it feel uncomfortable.

The thing that bothered me the most was the scars on the side on my ribs. I had gotten it while trying to escape from a car, but failed as I got stuck and got dragged on the ground for a while. The wound was pretty big but luckily the scar was smaller. I also had some from a few cuts here and there. Once I was done seeing myself in the mirror I exited the room. "So did any of my knifes carry chips?" I asked norm as I walked up to the table where the pile of knifes were "Nope, I scanned them and nothing showed up so they are good to go"

Norm said not turning away from the screen, I grabbed my knifes and started to strap them. Two went on my waist and the other two were hidden knifes that went around my wrists (assassins creed reference). Once norm was done examining whatever was on the screen he turned to look at me "Woah, that's a big scar" Norm gasped "Haha yea, I got it while trying to escape. Didn't turn out the way I wanted it to" I chuckled

Afterwards norm showed me and gave me a simple paragraph of my health. Overall he said I was healthy and didn't have any problems. "Are you sure you'll be fine going back alone? It's gotten dark and Pandora is dangerous at night" Norm said worriedly as I exited the building, he followed me as he put on a mask. "I'll be fine, I want adventure. Being in a cell for a while really made my body tense, I'll be sure to keep my surroundings in check" I said with a smile as norm sighed before handing me a map "But if you die I won't take responsibility"

He said as I started to walk away and waved goodbye. Norm didn't go back inside until he saw I had completely vanished into the jungle.

#neteyam #avatar #neteyam x reader #neteyam headcanons #the way of water #avatar 2 #x reader #imagine #x you #female reader

145 notes · View notes

romancomicsnews · 3 months

Text

5 Non-MCU Characters I'd love to see in Deadpool & Wolverine

Superbowl Sunday saw the return of everyones favorite Merc with a Mouth Deadpool in the trailer for his upcoming new movie Deadpool & Wolverine.

And as usual, Marvel hooked me.

Some fans have seen it as a return to form for the MCU, others as business as usual for Ryan Reynolds, and some just couldn't get over the little bit of Wolverine we got.

Myself, I was mainly focused on one thing. Aaron Stanford.

For those not in the know, this clip from the trailer shows Aaron Stanford returning as minor villain and asshole Pyro from the original X-Men Films. He was a sidekick to Magneto, and has a rivalry with Iceman in those movies.

The return of Pyro from the X-Men films confirms what most fans expected: we will see old heroes and villains from the Fox era, not just Wolverine.

And while a few have been already revealed through casting news or set photos, there are plenty more in store for us, I'm sure.

This got my head gears turning, so I decided I'd look back on the old Fox films to see who I want to return, even for the briefest moment or cameo.

None of these have been confirmed officially, so you are spoiler free from here on out. But I must warn, once I put this ideas in your head, you may be mad if they don't show up.

5. Animated Deadpool Voiced by Donald Glover

*sigh* The project I wish existed.

In 2017, Donald Glover was in development and given the green light on an animated Deadpool show. The show was to premiere on FX in 2018. However, for unknown reasons it was cancelled, and never debuted, leaving fans and Donald Glover displeased.

After the success of films like Spider-Verse, and Glovers involvement with Marvel, having him come in for a scene where he fights with or against Ryan Reynolds Deadpool could be a fun nod to the fans and maybe give the project the boost it needs to somehow come back.

But alas, I'm still hoping Spider-Verse will bring back Spectacular Spider-Man, so what do I know?

4. X-23

If there is a character ripe for a spin-off from the old X-Men universe, it was definitely X-23.

It's surprising to me she hasn't been revealed as a main member of the cast. She's a character I think few people talk about anymore, but was a crucial part of the film. I'd say Logan is up there and one of the best superhero movies.

Dafne Keen and Hugh Jackman made Logan such an impactful moving film. I'd love to see where the character has gone since Logan, and see how them reuniting effects the film.

Not to mention if she fought Deadpool, it would be one hell of a good (and kind of funny ) fight.

3. Apocalypse

Do I like this character? Absolutely not.

Do I want him here just for the Moon Knight jokes? Yes.

I actually think theres a good Apocalypse in Oscar Isaac somewhere. Having Deadpool and Wolverine at one point face the X-Men's Thanos sounds pretty cool, and Isaac is a great comedic and dramatic performer who deserves another shot.

I wouldn't mind a CGI version that looks more comic accurate, like Beast in the Marvels.

But again. I really just want Deadpool to say "So are you Steven or Marc?"

2. The Human Torch

Similarly, I want the Captain America jokes.

But if there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that Human Torch was by far the best part of those Fantastic Four movies.

There's just so many things you can do with it!

We can have him in the frosted tips, in a new Fantastic Four uniform. Maybe even have him fight Pyro, stop a fire guy with a fire guy. Or have him come out from behind a train like Captain America in Infinity War, but it's Johnny.

Having Evans play across Reynolds even for a bit would make so many fans happy and get more cheers then No Way Home.

Besides Evans has done a cameo in a Shawn Levy film starring Ryan Reynolds once. He can do it again.

1. Legion

The rumored main villain of this film tends to have a very particular vendetta with Charles Xavier. So why not use his son to acquire power?

Legion is the acclaimed show from Noah Hawley starring Dan Stevens as David Haller, a mutant with schizophrenia and basically unlimited power.

Dan Stevens is incredible in this show, and I think bringing in such a powerful X-Men character would make for some fun interactions and extreme stakes. Not to mention the insane visuals, all while delving deep into the psyche of both are protagonists.

While I doubt all of these characters show up, if one or two do, I'd be extremely happy. We'll just have to wait and see.

Thank you so much for reading! Please consider following, and check out my socials and other sites here! And let me know: Who do you want to see in Deadpool and Wolverine?

9 notes · View notes

dustofthedailylife · 2 years

Text

It's Always Darkest Before the Dawn

Chapter 1 - The Mission

→ All Chapters || → Next Chapter

→ Main Masterlist

Summary: You’re a Fatui Agent, tasked with assassinating the one man who three years ago had almost suceeded to shatter the entire organization out of sheer hatred and thirst for vengeance. The best way to get close to someone? You make them fall in love with you - only that you didn’t plan on catching feelings yourself.

Pairing: Diluc x Fatui! Reader (gn)

Chapter Warnings: Mild swearing, Dottore is a bit crazy, very mild violence, talk about assassination. Mostly neutral chapter, neither fluff nor angst (yet)

A/N: I'm back with some more Diluc food because the Harbinger trailer did things to my brain! I plan for this to be a multichapter fic. I'm aiming for around 5-6 chapters for now. The rough outline stands, I just need to write it out and will try to keep updates as consistent as my schedule currently allows it. If you reblog or give me feedback, it always greatly motivates me to keep working on it! Please enjoy! <3

You entered a big, dimly lit room that smelled like a mix of parchment, candle wax and ink. On the far end stood the very person who had summoned you here, his back was facing you and he was intimidatingly staring at the chess board in front of him. Pierro, more commonly known as The Jester, was the First of the eleven Harbingers and the leader of the entire organization known as the Fatui. You’ve been part of them for a little more than a year now and have managed to make quite a name for yourself as a spy within their ranks.

“You have arrived.” The white haired man remarked and turned around to face you. Twisting a faint mint glowing queen piece in his hand before slamming it back down onto the chessboard with a loud bang.

“Mondstadt… trouble is stirring there that needs to be taken care of.” He kept his eyes pinned on the chess piece and spoke slowly while deliberately putting an emphasis on every word he spoke.

Pierro’s presence was oozing authority and was exceptionally suffocating but you tried to hide your nervosity. The atmosphere in the room grew noticeably tense and you could feel how it made the hair on your neck stand on and how it weighed you down more and more with every passing second.

“I’m assuming you summoned me here because you need my assistance, sir?” You inquired, earning a silent nod from the man.

“You are assuming correctly.” He gave you a nod and grabbed a letter off a table near him and slid it across the desk you stood in front of. A red wax seal with the Fatui emblem engraved on it decorated the back of it. “All the information about your target is in this letter. You may refer to it at any time again. Everything we know about him is here.”

“Target? I have to kill him?” You gulped. With a rising heartbeat you could feel how the nervousness seeped into every fiber of your body. Without question, you had already assisted in committing several felonies during your time with the Fatui and also did some dirty work in the shadows for them yourself - but murdering someone had never been on your agenda so far. You knew what you had signed up for when you joined, but that didn’t help with the painful knot in your stomach right now either way.

“Why yes of course, what else do you think we do here?”, he bit back with a sharp tone, making you flinch and letting you know that you shouldn’t poke the bear any further.

“Your target is a young man named Diluc Ragnvindr. You might’ve heard his name before or rather the one of his product - Dandelion Wine from the Dawn Winery, however it is nothing we like to consume here in Snezhnaya, but that is besides the point now. He’s quite the celebrity even beyond the borders of Mondstadt, oldest son of a rich wine tycoon and part of the former Mondstadt aristocracy." He took a dramatic break from his speech to pour some Fire Water from an intricate bottle on his desk into a glass and took a sip out of it before slowly pacing up and down in front of you.

You opened your mouth to pose a question about the matter but Pierro cut you off before you could even attempt to inquire further.

"Now, you may be rightfully wondering, why him? Well, about three years ago he infiltrated our midst and managed to decimate quite a number of our members to get our attention. He was on some sort of personal vendetta against us, archon knows why, and it looks like he wants to continue where he left off the last time. Back then, he almost succeeded in killing Pulcinella, so in turn we, too, made an attempt on his life but unfortunately he barely escaped our grasp thanks to some underground intelligence network that we hadn't been able to track down at that time.”, Pierro came to a halt in front of you again and set down the glass on the desk, boring his ice blue gaze straight into your soul.

“Why now? Why didn’t you kill him already if you knew where he was the whole time?”, you asked nervously, fiddling around with the hem of your sleeve.

“We decided it would be best to lay low and watch. Pantalone has booked the Goth Grand Hotel a while ago and we have stationed our men there for the time being. Our spies in Mondstadt have been monitoring him for a while now and things are starting to become…aggravated.", he elaborated and tapped the letter that was still sitting on the desk.

"Keep in mind, he is a particularly skilled fighter so, you will most likely not be able to beat him in a one on one combat situation, and while I am fond of your capabilities, I may remind you that he cleared entire camps with our forces single handedly after all. I’ll leave the means of how you’re going to execute this assassination up to you…I trust you are up to the task, agent?"

"Of course, sir." You exclaimed.

"As expected. You have admirable talent, agent, I've had that feeling about you ever since you joined us. Fulfill this mission and I may propose to the Tsaritsa to promote you to the status of a Harbinger. What do you say, Paglaccio would be a fitting name, don't you think?" An evil smirk that chilled your bones appeared on his face.

Promoted to the status of a Harbinger? Not even in your wildest dreams had you dared to think such an opportunity would ever arise. If that wasn't motivation enough, nothing ever would be. You needed to succeed, no matter the cost.

Back in your room at the Fatui Headquarters you started packing your bags for your, hopefully not too long, trip to Mondstadt. Basically all you needed to do was go in, find and kill this guy and then hurry back to Snezhnaya and get promoted to the status of a Harbinger. It would be more exciting if you wouldn't have to get your hands dirty doing so, but you assumed the other Harbingers have done worse things to get to the position they're in now. After all, this was for the greater good and having someone slaughtering your people for no evident reason was worse than what you were about to do, right?

A harsh knock on your door halted your thoughts. As you looked up you could see a man with faint mint blue hair and red eyes standing in your doorframe with a mischievous grin. Dottore was one of the Eleven Harbingers and if you were quite honest, that man seemed even more intimidating to you than Pierro.

"Good, I see you're packing already!"

"I am. Is there anything you came to see me for, sir?"

"Cut the formalities, you're going to be on equal standing with me and the others soon. Pierro told me, Paglaccio does have a nice ring to it, don’t you think so as well?" He cooed with a wicked grin that sent cold shivers down your spine and made the blood freeze in your veins. "But yes, you assume correctly, agent, there is in fact something I came here for."

He took out a mysterious slim-looking object that was wrapped in a red silk cloth and carefully placed it in your hand.

Slowly unfolding the fabric around it revealed an intricate looking dagger with small red jewels in its handle. In the middle of it you could make out a strange blue liquid and something that looked like a button on the end of it.

"What is that?", you carefully inquired to which Dottore just replied with an even more malicious grin and a low chuckle making the hair on your neck stand on end.

"This, my dear comrade, is a modified dagger. Seeing as it was my fault that Mondstadt pest got away alive last time, despite being wounded, I decided that he shouldn't be able to manage to do so again… the blue liquid you can see in there is a very potent poison I concocted, stab him with the dagger and push the button at the end of the handle and the integrated syringe in the blade will inject it right into his veins.”, he made a pop sound with his lips and looked wickedly excited about his little creation. “The little mouse will stop squirming within no longer than five minutes… as for an antidote, there is none, not that you would need it, surely. Overall this should prove useful in executing your task."

You wondered who he tested that poison on so that he could tell you about it in such great detail but at the same time you weren’t sure you even wanted to know. You carefully wrapped the cloth around the dagger again and thanked Dottore for it, to which he replied with a sardonic grin before he excused himself and went back to work.

Once he was gone you realized how much you had held your breath while he had been there. He was supposed to be your colleague and direct equal soon and you asked yourself if, despite that, you’d ever get used to the suffocating presence of the Harbingers. Maybe it was because you were their subordinate and just a lowly agent of the Fatui still? If that would change, only time would tell.

You sat down on your bed and took out the letter you had been given earlier and cracked open the seal. Inside you found a several pages long document and several photos of your target including all the info the Fatui could gather on him.

Diluc Ragnvindr allegedly was the only son of Crepus Ragnvindr who died due to circumstances unknown to the Fatui. Soon after his untimely death Diluc went on his personal vendetta against the Fatui, presumably because of some past business deals that went wrong between the Dawn Winery and Snezhnaya.

Flipping to the next page revealed a couple of photos that were taken of him. He had long, flaming red hair that he wore in a ponytail and usually wore a black coat with a white shirt underneath. Not a bad looking man at all, quite modest even – considering he is supposed to be some noble snot from the former Mondstadt aristocrats he didn’t look at all what you had expected.

Reading further through the notes revealed that he wields a pyro vision and mainly uses a claymore. However during the time he fought against the Fatui he didn't even carry his vision on him. Impressive, you thought. Just how strong exactly was he?

You remembered that Pierro also mentioned that you wouldn't be able to strike him down in one-on-one combat earlier, so you'd have to come up with some kind of plan in advance. This certainly explained why he had emphasized it, because whoever this man was, it was without question that he was strong and most certainly not your match in a direct standoff.

You skimmed over the pages further and aside from some alleged character traits that were marked as “questionable” or “to be confirmed” your eyes trained on one single word - unmarried. This was certainly something you’d be able to use. The best way to get in assassination range without endagering yourself - you play pretend, act in love and then when they least expect it, strike them from behind.

Now you only had to find a way to wrap him around your little finger somehow.

About a week later you found yourself in Mondstadt in a small room in an inn you had booked for a couple weeks in advance. The first few days upon your arrival you mostly spent buying new clothes because you certainly couldn’t walk around in your work attire, collecting more information on your target and sketching out a rough plan. You’d need to get to know Diluc first, somehow make him attached to you so he lowers his guard, ideally kill him in his sleep and then boom - mission success and Harbinger status secured.

What you were able to gather from the gossip of the locals around town so far is that he was hard to approach, can seem quite cold at first and doesn’t trust people easily, but despite that loves the city and would do everything to keep it safe. You’ve also gathered that he seems to have changed quite a bit compared to three years ago before his run in with the Fatui and the death of his father.

A deep sigh escaped you as you took your eyes off your notes and leaned back in your chair, carding through your hair with your fingers. All this desk work had made your eyes sore and you could feel a headache creeping up. It was time to call it a day and get out of your room for a while, and what would be a better destination than the Tavern of the man himself, the Angel’s Share. This way you could actually connect your free time and work efficiently and possibly stumble upon some more information on Diluc and if you were lucky, even run into him.

As soon as you stepped out of the inn, you inhaled the cool night air and began heading in the direction of the Angel's Share. The streets were dimly lit by the sporadic street lamps scattered around town and the yellow glow that was falling through the windows of the houses lining the street. It was fairly quiet aside from some tipsy townsfolk who were already making their way back home.

You kept following the street further but as soon as you were about to turn around the corner you were suddenly being pulled into a side alley and a gloved hand was pressed over your mouth. It was too dark to make anything out so all you could feel was the hand and the warm breath of your attacker on the shell of your ear. With eyes blown wide, every alarm signal in your body went off at once and you began to struggle to try and get away from the unknown man's grasp.

"I've been looking for you, agent, but you rarely leave your room these days. How do you plan to fulfill your mission if you lock yourself up, hm?", He whispered in your ear. The way he spoke to you gave away he was with the Fatui as well, which caused you to stop struggling around in his arms.

"I was ordered to bring you some more Mora." He slid a bag of coins into your pocket but just as he was about to loosen his grip to let you go again, a flash of black and bright red entered your vision and charged past you, pinning your colleague to the ground faster than you were able to process it, knocking you down along the way, too.

The mysterious figure was looming over your colleague like a dark shadow, quickly knocking him out with an aimed punch to his temple, before quickly turning around to begin approaching you. You were sure this evening couldn't have ended any worse - first you almost got scared to death by being pulled into an alleyway, now followed by most likely being killed by some self-proclaimed vigilante. Your mission would end before it even started. You hastily started crawling back in panic, trying to gain distance from the intimidating man but were stopped as soon as your back hit the wall of the alley. You closed your eyes shut and tried to come to terms with the thought that this is where it would all end for you… but it didn’t.

A few long seconds went by before you realized that the stranger didn't see you as a threat and thus wasn't out to attack you, instead he was holding out his hand to you, offering to help you up. Baffled you hesitated briefly before you grabbed his gloved hand and let him pull you back on your feet.

As soon as you were standing you were able to get a better look at him. He was wearing a black mask on his face that would've at least revealed the color of his eyes if it wouldn't have been so dark in this alleyway. He was tall and wore an all black attire with a black cape with a hood on it that he had pulled over his face as much as possible. The little you could make out was that he had his eyes trained on your face. It was at that moment you realize you had heard descriptions of him around town before. This must be the famed “Darknight Hero” everyone keeps talking about.

As soon as he was sure you were able to stand on your own again he let go of your hand and nodded before rushing off into the night and disappearing as fast as he had appeared, leaving you behind with knees that felt as if they were giving in any second again and an unconscious Fatui agent on the ground.

After all this, you sure as hell needed some booze to numb your nerves.

The remaining way to the Angel's Share remained quiet and you were glad to be surrounded by some cheerful drunks in the Tavern who got your mind off things for at least a little bit. It had certainly been a day, additionally it was easy to get lost in your own head and mission, after all, it's not an everyday occurrence that you're tasked to take someone's life and actively gather information to be able to do just that. It was a strange feeling but in the end it would be worth the cost. And who knows, the night was still young, you might be able to gather some useful hints here tonight as well, this establishment was the one of your target after all.

"Here is your Death after Noon, my dear!" The barkeeper slid your drink over the counter of the bar with a hospitable smile.

"Thank you, sir!"

"Call me, Charles. We're all like family here, no need for formalities."

You nodded in response and took a big sip out of your glass as you tried to eavesdrop in on the conversation on the table that was close to the bar, because you thought you overheard them ushering the name of Diluc Ragnvindr in some context.

"Say, you're new around here, aren't you?" Charles interrupted your eavesdropping with a curious undertone. You had to swallow an annoyed sigh, instantly regretting the choice to sit directly at the bar. You definitely needed to be careful what you were saying and how you were behaving towards townsfolk, one wrong word could lead to blowing your cover and failing this mission and you couldn't let that happen at any cost.

"Yeah, I just arrived here a couple of days ago, I wanted to start fresh. See a little bit more of the world, you know."

"I see, where are you from if you don't mind me asking?"

Oh, you minded, but you couldn't let it show, so you just forced a smile and faked politeness.

"I'm from Inazuma.", you lied.

"Inazuma! My, oh my! A lot of things went down there I heard, glad I didn't have to go through all that myself. You must be happy the Sakoku Decree was lifted so you could get out, right?"

"Yes.", you replied bluntly. Charles nodded in response with a content smile that you forced yourself to return. Everything about this town was annoying you to your core and made you miss Snezhnaya more with every day you were forced to stay here. The people here were all way too nosy for their own good and on top of that, the barkeeper might have caused you to miss some crucial information on Diluc just now due to it as well.

"What do you work as? Did you find a new job here already?", Charles continued just as you thought he'd be done borderline interrogating you.

"I haven't found one yet, I'm still searching."

"Oh! Well, if you don't mind, I could speak to Master Diluc, he wanted to hire someone new to help around in the Tavern anyway. Unfortunately he isn't around anymore right now because he went out to run some errands earlier, so you just missed him by about half an hour. But if you're interested, why don't you come around at, say… 10 in the morning tomorrow and I'll introduce you to him? How does that sound"

Well, that certainly was an unexpected but welcome turn of events. Despite your initial annoyance with Charles he turned out to be quite useful after all.

"Oh, wow, really? That would be amazing. I'll definitely be there!"

Things were certainly about to get interesting.

Taglist

@irethepotato @ranhaitanisbraids @x-zho @stygianoir

If you want to be added to the fic specific tag list leave a comment under this chapter or the fic masterlist linked up top. Want to be included on my general taglist? Leave a comment under my taglist linked in my pinned post)

193 notes · View notes

strawbrygashez · 8 months

Text

Tyler Durden x Postal 2 Dude

Donuts (Part 1)

Yes I know this is super cringe & random. I’m sorry. I love crossing over different fandoms I’m into soooo yeah. This takes place during the time Tyler leaves the narrator and uhmmm I dunno, just be nice to me please 😭 Sorry for any mistakes and whatnot.

————————————————————————

Time goes by fast when you’re having fun. Well, as much fun as you can have in the small chaotic town known as Paradise, Arizona. The plan had been to keep moving around from town to town, state to state but a certain chance incident happened that put that plan on halt for the time being.

And as Tyler laid there finishing what was left of his ‘post coital’ cigarette, on a mattress that desperately needed to be replaced, he felt the one who put a pause on his plans, move from under the sheets as they laid on top of him. Glancing down, he couldn’t help the smirk that tugged at his lips when he was met with the scowling ginger who was peaking only their head out and squinting their stupidly bright green eyes.

“Ya finally done hiding in your cocoon there sweetheart?” He teased as he plucked the cig out from between his lips before blowing a small puff of smoke right into the other mans face. It barely affected him besides the groan he let out as he lazy fanned the smoke away. “Dickhead.” Was all he muttered before resting his chin back down on Tylers bare chest.

Tylers boy-ish smirk melted into more of a genuine smile as he stared into the others eyes. It really was genuinely insane how vivid of a green shade the mans eyes were to Tyler. Out of all the men and women he has messed around with, none had such captivating eyes and not even in a romantic sense. This guys eyes just had this interesting quality to them where they looked just like gas station puddles when the light hits them a certain way… At least that’s what they reminded Tyler of anyways.

Once he focused fully back on the man and the way he was still squinting, Tyler chuckled before only just seemingly now remember something important to the other. “Oh yeah..You poor baby.” He mockingly coo’ed again as he carefully reached over to grab the discarded pair of sunglasses on the poor excuse of a side table. “Poor Dude can’t go without ‘em for five seconds.”

Dude grumbled something or another under his breath before snatching them out of Tylers hand and sliding them back on. “Yeah, yeah. And you can’t wait even a second for me to get up to turn the lights off before we fuck.”

“Well that’s on you for not turning the damn lights off before we fell asleep.” Tyler pointed out as he put what was left of his cigarette out on the side table. “If you got bad eyes when there’s light then why-”

He was cut off when Dude placed his hand over his mouth. “Shut it. I was tired and you were too.” He lazily muttered.

Under his hand, he felt Tyler grin again before the blondes mouth opened and bit down on his pointer finger, a bit too hard to be considered ‘playful’.

Dude let out a loud “OW!” before quickly pulling his hand away and rubbing his finger off onto the bed sheet to he the spit off. “Motherfucker…”

Dude had to have been one of the most worth while people he’d been around in quite a while. Not only was he witty, oddly charming, and pleasantly ‘weird’, he also could just tell Dude was at ‘rock bottom’ and perhaps been so for a while. Dude was the perfect personification of all Tyler had ever preached about from self destruction to not letting your things own you. Hell, he was doing even better than him in that regard. Instead of living in a house, Dude owned a little run down shitty trailer home and all he really had outside of that was some dog that was out running around named ‘Champ’.

Another thing about Dude he found interesting was the whole ‘Postal Dude’ name. Tyler was pretty sure even the worst parents in the world wouldn’t have picked a name like that out for their kid. So he’d come to the conclusion that Dude also decided not to let a name ‘own him’.

The more he thought about Dude, the more he thought about how if something were to happen to himself, he’d have no problem at all passing ownership of ‘Fight Club’ along to Dude. Dude would have to fight….a certain someone for that position but he didn’t want to think of that ‘certain someone’ right now. Maybe, hypothetically, it would be easier to let him in on Project Mayhem. Honestly he wouldn’t have been surprised if Dude had already been in on Project Mayhem. The first thing he’d seen Dude do was something basically torn straight out of a page of Tylers book. And what did he do specifically? What happened at their chance meeting?

Well, while Tyler had been trying to get a hold of someone on one of the phones right outside some gas station, he watched as this weirdo, fully grown mallgoth dressed man walk out of the gas station with a box full of donuts, walk around back (passing Tyler), poorly hide himself behind a bush, unzip his pants, and piss onto said donuts. This all of course before he zipped his pants back up and tossed one of them at a nearby cop.

Once the cop stopped, the pisser quickly turned around before they could tell he’d thrown it and to Tyler’s surprise.. The cop then proceeded to pick up the ground donut, eat it, and then violently vomit.

Of course Tyler had to introduce himself to this odd specimen and since then, he’d somewhat glued himself to Dudes hip and helped him with whatever daily tasks Dude had planned and what turned from just being what was supposed to be a three day stop, turned into about three weeks. Three weeks he’d spent staying with Dude in his little trailer home. What was even more surprising than that though was the fact they’d only had sex one other time before today.. and Tyler was usually the of guy to participate in ‘marathon sex’. The only reason why he assumed it ended up playing out like this this time was because Dude was just one of those people who had more to offer than a quick fuck to Tyler. He had his own unique opinions about life, morals, and just wasn’t someone you’d meet to often. Nothing usually captivated Tyler more when it comes to people like him.

As he was currently thinking of the fact they’ve only gotten down and dirty one other time, he realized something. “Yknow, I hardly ever fuck gingers. Especially ginger guys.” Tyler spoke as he slid his fingers into the others hair.

He couldn’t tell for sure but it looked like Dude closed his eyes at the contact. “Hmm… Am I supposed to feel honored by that fact?” Dude asked with a hint of sarcasm. It was kinda hard to tell sometimes, he spoke mostly in a monotone voice. Tyler answered anyways, “Yknow it baby”, followed by a slight tug of his hair, to which Dude whined. Not in a particularly pleased tone, one more out of annoyance. “Agh. Stop that.”

“I thought you liked-”

“Being manhandled. Yes. Just not right after you just fucked me to near death.”

Tyler rolled his eyes but rubbed the spot he’d tugged his hair from. “Lame. Must take you a while to get it back up, huh?”

Dude ignored what he just asked for now and opted just to now lay the side of his head against him. Seeing that Dude wasn’t as defensive as other people Tyler knew, he just chuckled again as he continued to play with his hair.

Tyler hadn’t been much of the type to cuddle but for some reason, he didn’t mind that much since it was Dude. Maybe it was because he could tell Dude was a loner. Tyler always found himself enjoying messing with the loner types anyways. That or despite the fact that he loved that Dude got into trouble and mischief almost every day, he knew deep down that a break every once in a while was good and to be honest..Dude wasn’t too bad on the eyes. He somehow looked really pathetic but also rugged and dangerous at the same time. It excited him.

It had been quiet for a while as Tyler pondered different things involving Dude until the ginger finally broke the silence. It almost made Tyler jump since he was sure he’d fell asleep.

“How much longer are you staying?”

“Huh?”

Dude let out a yawn before moving around a bit to look up at him while still on top. “How much longer are you sticking around for?”

Tyler was silent a moment before raising a brow while grinning. “Why? Want me out of your hair already?”

“No I was just wondering since I’m uh- running low on food ‘n shit. Plus I thought you said you were traveling around. I don’t know why anyone would wanna stay more than a day in this shit hole. Unless you’ve been going out and doing stuff or-”

“Have you seen me go out without you since we met dumbass?”

Dude frowned slightly at the name calling. “Well- no but I doubt you’re sticking around for me so..”

All Tyler could do in response was roll his eyes and push Dude off of him so he could sit up and stretch finally. Dude didn’t seem that offended though as he just ran a hand over his face, still groggy.

“-sounded like such a girl….” Tyler mumbled as he popped his back.

Dude frowned again, glaring at him. “What was that?” He asked. “Nothing hun.” Tyler replied shaking his head with a smile before he turned his head to look over at the alarm clock. “It’s still pretty early. Wanna go grab breakfast somewhere?” He asked the man laying next to him who still looked one minute away from falling asleep. “Mmmmgh..fineee. Just give me a couple more minutes to get up.”

#postal dude #fight club #uHMMM I’ll see how this one does and if it’s ok I’ll post a second part 🧍🧍 im scared pls be nice #postal dude fanfic #this fic doesn’t actually have much to do with donuts I just suck at naming fics LOL

15 notes · View notes

andantexvii · 2 years

Text

// 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!

---

Requested tags: @eddieswifu @missfangirl-slightly-obsessive [To be added for future updates, shoot me an ask!]

---

→

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!!

118 notes · View notes

sunnyie-eve · 2 years

Text

Celebrity Crush || Theories & More

Paring: Joseph Quinn x Original female costar

Word Count: 2479

Summary: It’s the second day of many for season 4 interviews

Warnings: cute interactions

A/N: For this I’ll be using my OFC in Trouble in Hawkins for this OFC to play her.

Last: Interviews Day 1 | Next: Adorable habit

"Well we don't match today." Joseph smiles as he sees me walk over to the table to get a drink and snack on the mini donuts. "I would lose my mind if we matched today because if you dressed like me..." I start to laugh. "Just keep dressing like you know I would never." He eyes my outfit. "Got it." I nod my head and head over to my seat. "Just gonna keep eating while we start, huh?" I giggle at Maya. "I'm starving so, yes." She says before we all get ready.

Joe was first asked a question followed by Joseph, then me. "Presley, what obstacles does Skylar face this season and was there any difficult scenes for you?" The girl asks me. "This season Skylar has some trauma and relationships problems. I'd say there's two scenes that were difficult for me. Without giving away too much, one there was multiple sets for literally one scene with just me and one other person so it took a long time, and another scene was slightly a physical struggle because of weight." I say making Joseph slightly chuckle behind me because he knew what I was talking about. "You calling me fat?" Joseph asks as we move onto the next person. "I didn't say that. You're putting words into my mouth." I turn around pointing my finger at him.

The guy asks Natalia about being back with the whole pandemic thing. Joe gets asked about Steve and Dustin because fans love them. He explains that yes but Eddie's also there so Steve and Dustin are at ends at time. "Don't forget about me." I put my finger up. "Yeah, Skylar there's too but like with Dustin there's Eddie there for her too." He adds. Maya gets asked about how stranger things changed her life while Joseph gets asked what can fans expect from him. "Presley, seeing from the trailer and what Joe said, What can we expect from Skylar and Eddie? Is there another Billy and Steve situation going on?" He asks me. "Umm... for starters Eddie and Skylar are best friends this season. He's there for her while she goes through things while Steve isn't. So I wouldn't say it's another Billy and Steve situation, but to some people could say that it is though."

The next guy asks what of our characters features do we miss or enjoy playing. Maya talks about how Robin and Steve are very supportive this season. Joe didn't think about his character but Maya's. He then asks if we ever tried learned D&D during the seasons. "It's very complicated. It's seemed really cool to get into, sit you just really have to sit down." Natalia explains. "Yeah, I tried learning to play and it's fun to be apart of but there's just so much. And sometimes the planning and yeah... it's just not for me. Joe, you love D&D right?" I look back at Joseph and he makes a face doing his tongue thing I found adorable. "I can't believe you're owning up to that. I can't believe you." Maya tells him so he explains him playing for the first time.

The four of them get to take a break before we do the theory video but I had to go do my friendship test with Sadie. "Ahhh!" Sadie points at my outfit and I see today I sorta match with her. "Oh my god!" I laugh walking over to her. "We're so gonna pass this test now." She gives me a hug. "I hope we do but then again we're sorta going against Millie and Noah." I shake my head because they were best friends and basically a chaotic brother and sister duo. "We so got this. We're basically sisters." She says before we start.

"I'm Presley." I smile then look at Sadie and she introduces herself. "And we're doing a friendship test." I start. "And Noah and Millie will also be completing a friendship test so we will see who's really best friends." Sadie smiles. "Like you said, we got this." I nudged her with a smile. First we had to mimic a hidden talent. "You have so many though... Oh, she has the ability to pick up languages fast. She also can name what language it is when she hears it." Sadie snaps her fingers at me. "I don't consider that a hidden talent but okay. For you there are so many too. You can sing but that's not a hidden talent because everyone knows that... Ugh." I try to think of one. "Can being an incredible spy player be an answer?" I give her a look. "That's my hidden talent." She agrees. "She always wins it's ridiculous."

"Trust falls? I trust you but can you catch me? I'm bigger than you. Let me take my shoes off." I laugh. "I'll catch you don't worry. I'll go first because I completely trust you. I'd trust you with my life." She gets ready to fall back. "Okay. Whenever you're ready." I let her know ready to catch her. "Told you I trust her." Sadie smiles at the cameras. "So you trust her?" The producer asks me. "Of course I do, but if I go down... I know she's going down too." We laugh. "You ready?" She asks me. "I promise we both won't go down." She makes me lean back and she gets me. "Told you." She hugs my waist as I laugh.

Next we had to compliment each other with emojis. "Okay, there's a smiling face with hearts, the upside down smiley face, purple heart, the shh face, and a fox." Sadie sees what I sent her. "It's because you're such a lovable person, you can be serious and funny when needed, you're someone I trust with secrets, the heart because I love you and you know that's the only color I use, and your foxy." I explain them to her. "Okay, I got music notes, halo smiley face, heart, an alien, and birthday" I smile at mine. "I fall in love with your voice when you sing, you're such a sweet person and anyone can talk to, I love you, you're a bit out there at times when you open up to people, and fun to be around." She smiles so I hug her.

Next was rapid fire questions so stretch my arms making her laugh at me. "What is you friends favorite snack on set?" We're asked. "Oh, the seaweed crackers." I point my finger at her. "I do and you always have a bag of munches near you." We high five each other. "Biggest pet peeve... People eating with their mouths open and loud." I make her nod her head. "I can't choose one because there's so many. People in general." She laughs, "Like walking too slow, attitudes, singing songs when you don't know the lyrics, using words the wrong way." She starts a list. "Yeah, just people." I laugh.

Next was what each other's zodiac sign was, "Oh my god it's either Libra or Scorpio..." Sadie looks at me confused. "Well I at least know you're an Aries. Wow, Sadie.." I cross my arms. "My mind went blank..." She pouts. "Scorpio but I don't feel like one when I read things I go, no no no that's not me." I explain answering her. "She's a morning person." I roll my eyes. "And she's a night person." Sadie laughs. "Our sleepovers are terrible. She crashes about at 11 at night." I look at her. "I don't see how you can stay up till 3am or even longer sometimes." She shakes her head at me.

"I knew we were gonna do well." Sadie hugs me. "I was nervous because it was Noah and Millie but then again we're like sister." I hug her back. "Thank you for testing our friendship glamour. We'll see you next time." We tell the camera before we end it. "What do you have next?" She asks me. "Stranger Things Fan Theories with the Joe's, Natalia, and Maya." I pop my neck. "Remember how you said I'm someone you trust with secrets..." She follows me as we walk off. "Yeah?" I look at her confused. "Why haven't you told me you have a crush on a new cast member?" She gives me a little smile with a wink. "I don't know what you're talking about." I laugh at her. "Come on, Presley... I know that look. Season two with someone that played my brother. Remember I was the only one who knew you two secretly dated while we filmed the whole season..."

"Shut up before someone hears you. We were secret for a reason." I slap her arm. "Even though I know, I still want you to tell me." She grabs onto my arm. "I don't have a crush on Joseph. If that's what you think." I glare at her. "I don't think, I know." She glares back at me. "I gotta go." I leave her. "I know the truth!" She yells as I leave the room going to the other four for the next thing I have to be apart of. "It's nice for you to join us again." Joe smiles as they stand and sit around. "Thank you for letting me come back." I smile at him. "How'd it go?" Joseph asks as I go sit next to him. "I think we did better than Millie and Noah. Sadie got one question wrong in rapid fire. It was about my zodiac sign." I let him know. "You're a Scorpio." He says making me look at him shocked, "I never told you what I was though." I eye him. "But I remember your birthday so I know what your sign is." He makes me smile.

"Excuse me." Joe forces himself to sit between Joseph and I on the couch so I give him a look, "Us men stick together." He makes me laugh as the girls take their set on the other side of me. "We barely fit." Maya says as we try to not squish each other on the couch. As we start we all introduce ourselves. "PaulDePaola theory is; The whole show is just an elaborate D&D game. The kids are actually all grown up and fantasizing about their imagined childhood nightmares. Love this theory." Joe reads it off and we talk about it before Joseph goes next and doesn't know how to pronounce the name making us laugh. "Aydnalgl theory is, Eleven will end up being the villain, whether of her own accord or under the control of the Mind Flayer. I'd say this is the most feasible theory." Joseph tells us. "That could easily happen." I agree.

"Animestrangerthings theory is; I'm probably going to get negative comments, but I'm going to list off facts as to why I think Robin is a Russian spy." Joseph reads another one. "I guess I learn Russian alarmingly quickly. Appear from nowhere... I like the idea." Maya nods her head. "Snoo-22937 theory is, Wow I've been so focused on the chest hair, I never realized that Steve was wearing Eddie's jacket in the sequence. Maybe this could mean Eddie could have sadly died and Steve wears his jacket as a memorial sort of thing, just a theory." Joe reads. "For one it's a vest." I add. "Yes, a very metal Dio vest." Joe agrees. "Yeah, you do have a distracting chest though." Joseph says making me laugh. "Yep, I had to wax it for season whatever." Joe agrees. "Season two because you had to be shirtless in the showers with Billy and Tommy H." I let him know as Natalia takes the theory's now.

"Mas Sonia theory is, If you notice in every season there is a death of a character that starts with the letter B: Benny, Barbara, Bob, Billy. The only character remaining is Becky. Also, we had some scenes with her mom and Kali the girl with the 008 tattoo but the story is not completed I think." She reads as they talk I stretch my arms behind Maya and Joe. I accidentally hits Joseph shoulder making him smile while I apologize. "ShayWolfie; I feel like it's possible that Nancy might die saving Robin's life. They're going to be together and paired up for the entire season. Robin was once Barbs best friend too so I'm sure they're gonna bond over that." Maya reads then explains the book.

"This is from Twitter. Crysteries theory is, Max gets powers and becomes an avatar sort of person for the Mind Flayer. I don't know." I read and give my thoughts. "No one's gotten powers." Maya adds. "RachelLeishman theory is, Alexei is also still alive with Hopper cause Alexei deserved better." Natalia reads and we all agree. "itslunacassidy theory is, so my first theory is I definitely have a feeling a major character (or 2) is going to die this season. My list is Steve, Dustin, Skylar, Nancy or Max." Natalia reads the next one. "I'm order of preference or?" Joseph asks making me glare at him. "Rude." I let him know. "StrangerEmmie theory is, could there be some elements of time travel next season? There was several hints of this last season. Including the obvious Back to the Future reference." Maya reads the next one.

"CookieCutterButter theory is, Skylar and Steve break up because he's still in love with Nancy. Now Skylar will get with Eddie but when she dies, Steve will realize she was the one all along." I read and we all start to laugh. "Man I see some people really want me to die. No but that's a theory alright." I nod my head. "Heather Anton's theory is The Upside Down is just another portal to Middle-Earth. Samwise has gone to return to Frodo, his one true love." Joseph reads. "I'd love that to be true." He adds and Maya was confused so we explain. "Look at this dude theory is Max is being possessed and that Eleven is going to get her powers back. Of course Steve might die only cause he's laying down in the season 4 trailer as if he was dead." Maya reads and we says it's strong.

Once we were done I walk over to Joseph, "When Vol 2 comes out fans will be saying Eddie deserve better." I let him know as we start getting ready to leave. "I don't think so." He says making me look at him. "Are you kidding me? Fans are going to fall in love with Eddie as soon as they see him/you." I place my hand on his shoulder. "You could be right." He thinks about it. "Not could, I will be right." I laugh. "I mean how can they not fall for the Joseph Quinn." I give him a smile.

#stranger things #joseph quinn #joe quinn #joe keery #gaten matazarro #natalia dyer #millie bobby brown #noah schnapp #maya hawke #stranger things 4 #stranger things s4 #eddie munson x henderson #eddie munson #stranger things eddie munson #steve harrington x henderson #steve harrington

121 notes · View notes

mrsjellymunson · 8 months

Text

Hello! 👋

Hi, hello, I’m Kittie and I’m obsessed with Stranger Things, plus other weird and bizarre TV and films. Welcome to my Masterlist! (Yes, I’m finally calling it that 😆). I’m married to Eddie Munson and there’s nothing you can do to change my mind. I write for Eddie Munson (x fem! or gn!reader) and sometimes Steddie, and a single Joe Quinn RPF has made it in here somehow. I hope to write for other characters at some point, and already have ideas for Mr Clarke and some of the girls.

I’m new to fandom (and old, in Tumblr terms at least), so I might get things wrong while I find my feet so please be kind. I’m new to writing but am enjoying myself immensely. I’d love to be friends so please feel free to message or ‘ask’ 😊

🔞🔞 Important: I post and share mature and dark content; DO NOT interact with my blog if you’re under 18 🔞🔞 I block blank, ageless and inactive blogs so if you want to follow me please put something in your bio, including your age/age range.

If you’d like to be on my ‘everything taglist’, or for anything specific, just drop me a comment, ask or message 😊

Content key:

💗Fluff ❤️Mature themes ❤️‍🔥Smut 🖤Dark themes 🌟Most popular 👌Personal favourite

MASTERLIST 👇👇👇👇

EDDIE MUNSON:

Series:

KNOCK AT THE CABIN (Eddie Munson x fem!reader, post-S4) [ONGOING] Prologue❤️🖤 Part One❤️🖤 Part Two❤️🖤💗 Part Three❤️🖤💗❤️‍🔥

THE BIOLOGY TUTOR (Eddie Munson x fem!reader) [ONGOING] Lesson 1: Female Anatomy ❤️❤️‍🔥🌟 Lesson 2: Male Anatomy 💗❤️‍🔥🌟👌 Extra Credits 01: Communication Skills❤️❤️‍🔥 Extra Credits 02: French💗❤️

Oneshots, 5+1’s, short fics, drabs (newest first):

That Was You? 💗 (Eddie Munson x fem! or gn!reader) 1.6k. A meet cute in a record store.

Take Care of Me 🖤❤️💗 (Eddie Munson x fem!reader) 7.4k. Eddie rescues you after a disastrous date REQUESTED

The Boy Is Mine, Kittie’s edition: an Eddie Munson community-building writing exercise 💗❤️ (Eddie Munson x fem!reader) 1.6k. A romantic night in at the trailer, using prop & dialogue prompts

Candyman, Candyman, Candyman 💗 (Eddie Munson x fem! or gn!reader) ~2.1k. A Valentine’s 5+1: Five times you get to give Eddie a kiss, and one time he kisses you back

S.A.N.T.A. BABY 💗❤️‍🔥👌 (Eddie Munson x fem!reader) ~10k. A festive 5+1: Five times you embarrass yourself in front of Eddie, and one time you don’t…

Hello, Stranger 💗❤️🖤 (Eddie Munson x gn!reader) 6.2k. A stranger buys weird stuff at odd times, and as the cashier at the local hardware store you’re not sure what to make of it…

Thinking About Dom!Eddie’s Thighs ❤️❤️‍🔥👌 (Eddie Munson x gn!reader)

Something To Crow About 💗❤️👌 (Eddie Munson x gn!reader) Eddie dresses as Eric Draven.

Leaving Hawkins? Come Again Soon! ❤️❤️‍🔥 (Eddie Munson x Patrick Verona x fem!reader). Eddie and Patrick make your last night in Hawkins a memorable one (coming soon)

STEDDIE:

Ficlets/minifics, all <600words (newest first):

The Counter Argument❤️‍🔥 || Top & Tail💗❤️👌 || Turning P!nk💗 || Fool Me💗❤️

‘It’s My Birthday!’💗❤️ || Pin Me❤️ || The Edge of Insanity❤️❤️‍🔥 || Fill Me (dom!Steve)❤️‍🔥

Fill Me (dom!Eddie)❤️‍🔥 || Filler ❤️🌟👌 || Play Me💗 || What’s His Name Again?💗

Find Me ❤️🖤 || Teach Me❤️❤️‍🔥👌 || Steve’s Keychain💗 || Mud Cakes & Pancakes💗

Special Treatment v2❤️ || Special Treatment v1❤️

JOSEPH QUINN:

Happy Halloween, Love ❤️❤️‍🔥🖤 (Joseph Quinn x fem!reader, RPF) wc: ~4.4k. Joe raids the costume department at work and conspires to make this Halloween your most memorable yet

Fic recs (coming soon)

BTW if you come across anything like typos, inconsistencies, broken links or whatever please let me know, I honestly will not mind! 😍🙏

I’m still fairly new, but I already understand that comments and reblogs are the lifeblood of this site. Please support each other and share the creativity! 😘

99 notes · View notes

bludhavents · 2 years

Text

Lover

pairing: Eddie Munson x timetraveler!reader (no use of y/n)

summary: 4 times you have to cover after accidentally revealing the future, and the one time you don't.

word count: 1.8k

never seen a timetraveler x eddie fic but it truly speaks to my heart.

You knocked on the door of the trailer, furrowing your eyebrows at the sound of commotion coming from inside before the door quickly swung open to reveal Eddie. There was a wide smile on his face and his hair was windblown despite him being indoors.

“Hey,” he greeted coolly, motioning for you to come in. You raised your eyebrows, following him through the kitchen.

“Hi,” you replied. There was a mess of cereal across the counter and you figured that had been the cluttering you heard when you were waiting. It was best not to say anything about it as he lead you into his room. A small grin graced your face as you saw The Fellowship of the Rings face-up on his bed. He hurried to swipe it away and clear you a spot to sit. “You’ve read The Lord of the Rings?”

“Uh, yeah,” he answered, surprised. “You know about The Lord of the Rings?”

“Of course. I mean, I haven’t read the books, but I’ve seen all the movies. Kind of confusing at some points, but I think I understood most of it.” You laughed lightly, but stopped when Eddie’s face fell. It startled you, and you quickly realized your mistake.

How could you be so careless?

“What do you mean movies?” He asked as if you’d struck him over the head out of nowhere. He was completely frozen, hunched over the bed with the book under his palm.

“Sorry, um-- I think maybe I’m confused. Are Star Wars and The Fellowship of the Rings the same thing?” You questioned, internally suffering from the greatest bout of embarrassment you’d ever experienced. It was an idiotic question, quite possibly the worst thing you’d ever said out loud in your entire life. Eddie’s stature remained stoic in front of you, but his eyes narrowed judgmentally.

“No.”

“Oh. Well I think I was thinking of those. Have you seen them?” Your attempt to recover the conversation was pathetic, truly.

“Yes.”

“Great,” you said after a moment. “So about the project…”

The lunchroom was loud, and you had your backpack on the floor under the bench as you sat there, silently eating. The table was empty except for the boy sitting on the far right corner on the other end of the table. Usually he wasn’t there, and you had to wonder what could’ve happened for him to be banished to the recluse's table.

“You read comics?” Eddie’s voice startled you and you accidentally poured your water over your trey, cringing as your food got soaked. “Shit, I’m sorry. Shit.”

“Don’t worry about it.” You turned to face him with a smile that fell quickly as you realized that he was holding your bag in his hands, holding up your Wolverine comic and taking the seat next to you. “Put it back, Munson.”

“Oh, last-naming me, I must’ve messed up,” he teased, simultaneously put the book back in your bag with the rest of your supplies. “Okay so why didn’t you tell me you were a freak, too? What if I wanted to borrow your comics?”

“I would’ve said no,” you deadpanned. “And I’m not a freak. I’m so very cool and mysterious and perfectly unfreaky.”

“Who’s your favorite x-men?” He ignored your joke.

“Gambit.”

“Who?” He asked, stealing a soggy chip from your plate.

“Remy LeBeau,” you tried, watching his face contort. Apparently Gambit wasn't an 80's hero. If he was, Eddie surely would've known about it, and judging by his face you were speaking a foreign language right now. “Shit. Uh, I mean, Pyro. St. John Allerdyce.”

“Pyro sucks. Who the fuck is Gambit and why don’t I know about him?” He called you out, looking at you with raised eyebrows. Usually he brushed off your dodgy behavior, but apparently today he was feeling extra confrontational.

“Sorry, Munson, gotta keep up my whole mysterious thing. Can’t share my intel. Surely you’ll understand,” you spoke with a fake casualty, grabbing your bag and leaving him sitting at the table with your soggy lunch.

Steve’s car was crammed with you, Eddie, and Robin in the backseat as him and Nancy sat upfront. The three of you were rummaging through his cassettes, groaning at the lack of diversity within his taste.

“I’m surprised he even has cassettes,” Robin admitted. “He always struck me as just a listen-to-what’s-on-the-radio kind of guy.”

“Now that you say that I’m gonna agree.” Eddie pointed to her sharply, tossing another trash album into his lap.

“Word.” You said, picking up an old Christmas Tunes tape and laughing. “Dude, this is hella weird. No rap, but you have Christmas Tunes?”

“Did you just say ‘hella’?” Nancy turned around in the front seat to face you with an amused look on her face. Your eyes widened, looking at Eddie and Robin to see if they would come to your defense, but both looked just as confused as her.

“What? You guys have never heard of the word ‘hella’? Slang, like, for really?” You questioned, desperately trying to figure out what was going on. Shit. Hella was from the 90s, most definitely not from the 80s. Not that they could call you out on it, they'd just make fun of you for the rest of eternity because the only way to play it off was to make yourself look stupid.

“No.” Eddie said. “You mean like Hell? Hell-uh?”

“Must have heard it wrong on the TV,” you excused with a wave of your hand. “Forget it, where’s your music, Steve? This has to be a joke.”

“Hella-fucking-shitty choices here, Stevie-boy!” Eddie winked, tossing the tapes up front, earning a loud groan from Steve.

The batteries in your Walkman died during the middle of third period, and you rushed to find Dustin in the lunch room as soon as the bell rang. He was exactly where you expected, sitting with a sandwich in-hand at the Hellfire table with Eddie and the rest of the club. You walked there quickly, nudging him in the shoulder to get his attention.

“My girl!” Eddie greeted, but he shut up when he saw how serious your face was as you looked at Dustin.

“Do you have two AA batteries?” You asked without greeting. He stared back at you with wide eyes, swallowing the bite of his sandwich and nodding quickly. “Can I have them? Please? And thank you.”

“Sure, let me get them.” He grabbed his bag and dug around in the front pocket, pulling one out and then fishing for the other for a solid minute before finally finding it lodged in his pack of gum.

“Dustin I have never loved anyone the way I love you,” you cheered, grabbing both sides of his head before turning to face Eddie. “Edward, I need a screwdriver.”

“What makes you think I have a screwdriver?” He asked, a teasing lilt in his voice. You stared back unamused.

“Give me the damn thing before I take it and shank you.”

“Jesus, what the hell is even going on right now?” Mike asked from across the table. It was easy to ignore him.

“Seriously, what’s it for?” Eddie asked, screwdriver now in hand. Of course it was inside his jacket. He wouldn’t give it to you unless you told him.

“I’m gonna stab Carver,” you deadpanned. He didn’t budge. “Eddie! My Walkman broke and I need to replace the batteries. Please, give it. I'm having withdrawals.”

He unclipped the Walkman from your waist and unscrewed the battery cover himself, taking out the old and putting the new ones in before closing it back and putting the headphones on himself, pressing play and smiling when it worked.

“All fixed.” He handed it back. “I didn’t know you liked Black Sabbath.”

“Yes, Dehumanizer is their best album,” you replied, still stressed. You put the headphones on for yourself and threw a fist in the air when the sweet sounds of Paranoid filled your ears. It took everything in you to not kiss Eddie right then and there. “Eddie Munson you are the love of my life and I am forever in debt to you. Dead serious right now, I’ll do anything for you. Eternally grateful, lover.”

“Glad you’re so excited about this.” He raised his eyebrows. “But Dehumanizer isn’t a Black Sabbath album. What’d you mean to say, lover?”

“Hell if I know!” You were too happy to correct your mishap. Your legs carried you away from the table, but your voice still shouted. “Edward Munson, I will jump your bones one of these days. Say the words, lover, say the words!”

And he laughed hysterically as you ran out of the cafeteria with Black Sabbath blasting through your headphones.

“You don’t have to be a good guitar player to be successful,” you told Eddie. “Look at Kurt Cobain, he’s the most popular grunge musician of all time, and he sucked at guitar.”

“Kurt Cobain? Grunge?” He asked, eyebrows raised as he gently tuned your guitar for you.

“Sorry, I made all of that up.” It was a lame ass excuse. You were getting sloppy, constantly slipping up and saying things that weren't appropriate for the time period

“I don’t think you did,” Eddie said seriously. “You always do that. Are you a fuckin’ alien or something? Always saying words we don’t know, songs that don’t exist, superheroes that aren’t part of the X-Men as confirmed by Dustin who owns every single issue of X-Men.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Your heart was beating out of your chest as he set the guitar down and walked over to you, leaning his back on the foot of the bed.

“You’re lying,” he whispered, looking over at you. “I’m not mad, I just wanna know. Where are you from? Why do you talk about all of this stuff that doesn’t exist?”

“I think telling you will completely mess up the course of humanity,” you said, voice shaky.

“You’re a time traveler.” His voice was matter-of-fact. You dropped your head in your hands and blinked hard. Of course he’d figure it out. “What year are you from?”

“I-I’m not a time traveler, Eddie.”

“What year?”

“2022.” Your stomach twisted. “It’s currently 2022 in my timeline. Then, I was taken one day, by this guy. And he sent me here. I don’t know why, and I can’t leave. I’m just stuck here, where I don’t belong. Without my family. My mom is fucking ten years old right now!” You cried, sobbing into your palms. Eddie wrapped his arms around your shoulders, pulling you into him.

“I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry that happened to you,” he said. “What do you want me to do? Should we be trying to find a way for you to get back home?”

“I’ve tried. Succeeded, and been thrown back in here. It’s impossible. Just-- I don’t really want to talk about it. Ask me something, I’m sure you’re dying to know everything about the future. Fuck the timeline, ask away, lover.” You chuckled sadly, leaning out of his hug and letting him wipe away your tears.

“Does Black Sabbath break up?” He asked, eyes wide.

“Yes, in 2017. But a lot happened before that, people came and went and it was a lot, they weren't the same. Next question?”

“Shit, ok, hold on." He paused. "The Lord of the Rings movies, you knew they weren’t Star Wars. They’re real?”

“Totally. Each book gets made into a movie. There’s also 3 Hobbit movies. Plus, the Star Wars franchise is still making stuff. They’ve got a ton of shows and movies. Also, superhero movies are at an all-time high,” you confessed. “Jesus, I’ve wanted to tell you all of this for so long, Eddie.”

#eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x timetraveler!reader #eddie munson #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x y/n #joseph quinn #eddie munson lives #eddie x reader

90 notes · View notes

corrodedseraphine · 2 years

Text

dreamland | eddie munson x harrington!reader #1

pairing: eddie munson x harrington!reader

summary: After breaking up with Jason, you end up in a pretend relationship with Eddie to piss your ex off. The more you know each other the more the pretending dissappears.

the story is also avaliable on ao3

masterlist | eddie munson masterlist | general masterlist

Sorry for such a weird beginnig! Hope u like the rest.

"What is wrong with you Jason?!" You started screaming seeing him kissing Chrissie. "Do you really have to be so hopeless to cheat on me at the party you took me to yourself? you're just a worthless asshole!" You poured a drink into his face, turned on your heel and left the house.

Your head was full of thoughts, you felt humiliated and angry. You couldn't go home in this condition, not now. The house where the party was was near the trailer field where Max lived. Hoping that you would be able to stay with her you headed that way. The road was rough considering how much alcohol you had consumed. The darkness that surrounded you turned out to be soothing, you felt invisible, no one could see you. You liked this feeling. When you were there the sounds of an electric guitar reached you. They were calm, gentle, as if by magic. Without being fully conscious you followed them until you reached Eddie Munson's trailer. Feeling a surge of courage, you entered the trailer, walking quietly down the corridor looking for the source of the sound. Eddie was sitting on the bed visibly focused, as if in a trance. Leaning against the entrance to the small room, you watched. You listened to everything carefully and let the music occupy your thoughts, but at some point it quieted down.

"um.. hi?" his voice brought you back to reality.

"Oh shit, I am so sorry!" Panicked, you began to walk with a quick step towards the exit, only now did you realize what you had really done, you entered the house of a stranger boy, whom you only know by sight, only because you heard the nice sounds of the guitar. Sounds like madness! The closer you got to the exit, the faster you walked, and when you were on the stairs you fell down the stairs. "Damn it!"

"Hey, easy stalker" Eddie Smiled. "What are you doing here, y/n?"

"I don't know…"

"Okay, let me help you." He grabbed your hands and helped you get up.

"I am so sorry Eddie, I just were walking here because I wanted to go to Max's but I heard this beautiful sound and I really don't know what I was thinking, I feel like a freak now, I am so sorry!" you started explaining yourself.

"I am not mad, actually I am glad you liked it." He laughed. "I have one more question… are you drunk?"

"Just a little bit…" you hid your face in your hands "This is so embarrassing!"

"do you know that this is not the right time for walking alone?"

"I know, I was at a party with Jason, but I saw that asshole kissing Chrissy so I had to get out of there!"

"Your brother knows what happened? can he pick you up?"

"what? Steve? no he doesn't know and he can't see me like this, he will be furious!"

"Okay, calm down. Come inside, I'll make you some tea and cool down a bit huh?"

"Thank you…"

After going inside, no one spoke. The situation was incredibly strange for both of you, happening on the fact that this is the first time you are actually talking to each other. You drank the tea in silence. If someone ever told you that you'd be drinking tea in Eddie Munson's trailer one day, you wouldn't believe it. But it was happening. It was as real as possible.

"Um, Eddie?"

"Yes?"

"Would you play the song you played earlier?"

He didn't answer, with a smile he went into the room, and you followed him. You sat at the end of the bed and leaned with your back against the wall, and he began to play the pleasant melody anew. He sat with his back to you, wanting to take advantage of the fact that he was not looking you lay down on the bed. Just for a moment. You thought. Feeling the alcohol slowly leaving your body and, listening to the peaceful sounds of the guitar without knowing when, you fell asleep.

91 notes · View notes

Last Seen Blogs

eliradio-blog

eli-radio

nihthelm-moved-blog

υηɗєя ηιgнтѕнαɗє

astromechas

tired in pastel

vertikaacademy

Vertika Academy

asansattari

Untitled