#Direct-to-Chip Cooling

[chemicalmarketwatch-sp]

Exploring the Growing $21.3 Billion Data Center Liquid Cooling Market: Trends and Opportunities

In an era marked by rapid digital expansion, data centers have become essential infrastructures supporting the growing demands for data processing and storage. However, these facilities face a significant challenge: maintaining optimal operating temperatures for their equipment. Traditional air-cooling methods are becoming increasingly inadequate as server densities rise and heat generation intensifies. Liquid cooling is emerging as a transformative solution that addresses these challenges and is set to redefine the cooling landscape for data centers.

What is Liquid Cooling?

Liquid cooling systems utilize liquids to transfer heat away from critical components within data centers. Unlike conventional air cooling, which relies on air to dissipate heat, liquid cooling is much more efficient. By circulating a cooling fluid—commonly water or specialized refrigerants—through heat exchangers and directly to the heat sources, data centers can maintain lower temperatures, improving overall performance.

Market Growth and Trends

The data centre liquid cooling market  is on an impressive growth trajectory. According to industry analysis, this market is projected to grow USD 21.3 billion by 2030, achieving a remarkable compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 27.6%. This upward trend is fueled by several key factors, including the increasing demand for high-performance computing (HPC), advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), and a growing emphasis on energy-efficient operations.

Key Factors Driving Adoption

1. Rising Heat Density

The trend toward higher power density in server configurations poses a significant challenge for cooling systems. With modern servers generating more heat than ever, traditional air cooling methods are struggling to keep pace. Liquid cooling effectively addresses this issue, enabling higher density server deployments without sacrificing efficiency.

2. Energy Efficiency Improvements

A standout advantage of liquid cooling systems is their energy efficiency. Studies indicate that these systems can reduce energy consumption by up to 50% compared to air cooling. This not only lowers operational costs for data center operators but also supports sustainability initiatives aimed at reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions.

3. Space Efficiency

Data center operators often grapple with limited space, making it crucial to optimize cooling solutions. Liquid cooling systems typically require less physical space than air-cooled alternatives. This efficiency allows operators to enhance server capacity and performance without the need for additional physical expansion.

4. Technological Innovations

The development of advanced cooling technologies, such as direct-to-chip cooling and immersion cooling, is further propelling the effectiveness of liquid cooling solutions. Direct-to-chip cooling channels coolant directly to the components generating heat, while immersion cooling involves submerging entire server racks in non-conductive liquids, both of which push thermal management to new heights.

Overcoming Challenges

While the benefits of liquid cooling are compelling, the transition to this technology presents certain challenges. Initial installation costs can be significant, and some operators may be hesitant due to concerns regarding complexity and ongoing maintenance. However, as liquid cooling technology advances and adoption rates increase, it is expected that costs will decrease, making it a more accessible option for a wider range of data center operators.

The Competitive Landscape

The data center liquid cooling market is home to several key players, including established companies like Schneider Electric, Vertiv, and Asetek, as well as innovative startups committed to developing cutting-edge thermal management solutions. These organizations are actively investing in research and development to refine the performance and reliability of liquid cooling systems, ensuring they meet the evolving needs of data center operators.

Download PDF Brochure : 

The outlook for the data center liquid cooling market is promising. As organizations prioritize energy efficiency and sustainability in their operations, liquid cooling is likely to become a standard practice. The integration of AI and machine learning into cooling systems will further enhance performance, enabling dynamic adjustments based on real-time thermal demands.

The evolution of liquid cooling in data centers represents a crucial shift toward more efficient, sustainable, and high-performing computing environments. As the demand for advanced cooling solutions rises in response to technological advancements, liquid cooling is not merely an option—it is an essential element of the future data center landscape. By embracing this innovative approach, organizations can gain a significant competitive advantage in an increasingly digital world.

[harleyrrojar]

Direct To Chip Liquid Cooling Solution

Accelsius LLC specializes in Direct To Chip Liquid Cooling solutions, offering efficient and advanced cooling technology for high-performance computing systems, ensuring optimal thermal management and enhanced operational efficiency. Visit them to know more!

[self-spaghettification]

shout out to sthormiii singlehandedly making the orphan queen movie

ORPHAN QUEEN MOVIE POSTER⁉️

[dollfacefantasy]

How’d you think frank would react to reader in subspace! You’re literally one of the only people writing for frank and your writing is so so brilliant!🙂‍↕️

frank castle x fem!reader cw: mdni (18+), smut at the beginning but after that it's just fluff, brief daddy kink a/n: thank you so much angel <33 i gotta keep my fellow frank freaks fed 😤

frank knows you're dropping from the broken whine you let out and the way your hands become grabby, pulling at his shoulders to try and get him as close as physically possible. you always get that way when you start to sink.

he has you on your back beneath his muscular frame, your knees hooked over his shoulders while his cock batters your pussy. his pelvis slams against your center over and over in rough thrusts. he's just pounding you in search of his release.

you'd already cum twice. once on his tongue and once on his cock. the static of overstimulation chipped away at your sensibilities and made you vulnerable. it left you needing him. depending on him.

"just one more for me, baby. c'mon. i know you got it in you," he grunts as his eyes flutter.

"mmm... frankie," you whine. your glossy eyes search to connect with him amidst the haze of lust surrounding you. you babble out the next word while blinking slowly. "daddy..."

he groans at the slurred quality of it. "i'm right here, sweetheart. just gotta cum for me. squeeze me nice and tight."

in this state of mind, defiance isn't an option. you feel your belly starting to flutter along with your legs beginning to flex. the orgasmic spool inside you unravels as though his words work as a direct physical command.

you cry out and arch your back. your arms loop around his neck to cling to him like you're at risk of losing him. your teeth dig into your bottom lip as more choked, pitiful sounds explode out of you. he can feel tears leak from your eyes against his shoulder. you're so close to his ear that he can hear the soft sniffles.

"that's my baby. that's my girl. my good fuckin' girl. so fuckin' good for me, fuck," he grumbles against your skin, his own words trailing off and becoming incoherent.

he presses down on you harder to the point that you're completely squished against the mattress under his weight. his cock is so deep inside you that it'd probably hurt if you were more lucid.

most of the time, he was more gentle with you. everywhere but the bedroom, he treated you as though you were a tiny doll made of glass. when he was close like this though, on the brink draining his balls inside you, being careful felt like something only possible in dreams.

he crashes over the edge hard, growling against your neck and clutching the sheets. his breath comes out in ragged pants as pure euphoria washes through him. you let out tiny squeaks below him, but they're not of much concern right now.

it's after the blissful fog settles that he tends to you.

he rolls off of you once he's almost all the way down. his back hits the bed, and cool air flows between both of your bodies. you lie there for a few moments as if you're dead. if not for the quick rise and fall of your chest, that's what someone may think. your eyes stare at the ceiling, blank and unthinking. tears trail down your temples.

after a few seconds, you start to turn onto your side. you curl up, pupils still cloudy and face void of any specific emotion. in these brief eclipses after sex and before totally settling down, your mind gets stuck in a weird limbo. all you can think about is him. you want him holding you, touching you, taking care of you. but you can't ask for it. can't verbalize the desire for any of that. in the beginning stages of your relationship, he thought you were trying to forget he was beside you.

but now he knows better.

he places a hand on the divot in your waist and pulls you back to him, not letting you draw in on yourself. his nose brushes behind your ear while his lips plant soft kisses on your throat.

"no hiding from me, babydoll. you did so good," he whispers. his hand caress your warm skin, trying to reel you back to him.

you still don't have any words, but your muscles relax for him in an instant. he can feel it under his fingers.

"that's right. i got you, daddy's got you," he mumbles, "let's get you cleaned up."

he rises to his feet on his side of your bed and drags your limp body across it so he can hoist you up into his arms. in your more playful moments, he might throw you over his shoulder, tease you about how he used to have to carry guys like this when he was in the marines. but you're not giggling or squirming right now, so he doesn't.

he scoops you up like a bride and walks over to the bathroom in your apartment. that's when you start coming back a little. you nuzzle at his chest, your warm breath fanning across his muscle.

"there she is," he mumbles.

inside the bathroom, he sits you on the countertop. you lean back against the mirror while he goes to turn on the shower. the surface is cool on your skin. your eyes flutter shut as you relax a bit more.

only seconds later, he's back in front of you. he stands between your thighs and cups your face in one large hand. as quickly as they shut, your eyes pop back open to look at him.

"how're you feeling, pretty girl?" he asks, voice quiet and rough.

you nod in response as if it's a yes or no question. pushing off the mirror, you drape your arms around his shoulders again and press your face to his skin.

"'m ok," you sigh, "just a little sleepy."

"yeah, you are," he says with the hint of a smile gracing his features, "you can knock out as soon as we're done, ok? just let me take care of you."

again, you nod. you never had any objections to handing control over to frank. he lifts you from the counter again and walks into the shower with you.

the hot water streams down onto your bodies below. it trickles from his skin to yours, relaxing both of your muscles. you shut your eyes and keep your head on his shoulder. his fingers twirl in small patterns on your back as he sets you down. the tile is cold on the soles of your feet. you still have to lean against him for balance.

vaguely, you feel his hands running over your body. they’re slippery, slicked up with your sweet-smelling body wash. you swear you hear his deep voice humming, vibrating in his chest beneath your ear, but it could be your imagination.

in total, it feels like the shower is only seconds long. you know you’ve been in there for longer, you felt him run through your whole routine. but time melts away in your mind when you're in this state.

as soon as you’ve acclimated to the smooth surface underfoot, he’s guiding you off of it and onto the cushioned mat outside the shower. you stand there, managing a few lazy blinks.

he laughs softly at that. “few more minutes, sleepy girl.”

with an old towel from the rack, he dries you off. he’s quick but thorough, getting every last little bead of water off of you without being tedious about it.

he scoops you back up after that. your arms and legs latch around him, holding on as he carries you to the bedroom and plops you down on the bed.

“time for sleep?” you yawn, stretching your limbs a bit.

"nice try but you gotta put on some clothes, baby. don't want you catching a cold," he says before heading over to the dresser and grabbing a top for you along with some panties.

"that's not how it works, y'know," you correct while lazily watching him return to you. he tosses the scraps of fabric next to your body on the mattress.

"oh you're a doctor now, huh?" he mutters before tapping your ankle, "put your legs up."

you do as he says without complaint, lifting your legs high into the air so he can pull your panties over them.

"i'm just saying, i wouldn't get sick from sleeping naked," you yawn.

shaking his head, he grabs one of your outstretched arms to pull you up right. despite regaining your ability to speak, you still looked at him with that same dreamy smile you got when you were blissed out.

he tugs the sweatshirt over your head. it was one of his, one of the newer, softer ones you'd bought for him. he'd owned it just long enough and worn it the right amount of times needed for it to smell like him.

"there you go," he says softly and pulls you to his chest for a few seconds. he just feels you in his arms for a moment, pressed against him, safe and sound. as much as you loved being babied, part of the reason he took care of you was for himself too.

he kisses your forehead and then lets you lie down.

"you get comfy, babydoll. i'm gonna put some clothes on, and then i'll be right back," he says before departing to tend to himself for a few minutes.

when he does come back, he's surprised you haven't passed out already. instead, you're tucked under the blankets and curled up to a pillow, waiting for him. you reach out with another grabby hand to signal your desire for him.

"i'm coming," he mutters as he rolls onto the mattress beside you and loops his muscular arm behind your head.

you nuzzle right up to his chest, draping your own limbs over his body. he feels your lips lay a small kiss on his chest.

"get some sleep, baby. don't want you to be all cranky in the morning," he murmurs and shifts a little to engulf you with his frame.

"you're the one who gets cranky..." you reply. but you follow along anyways and shut your eyes. his body heat combined with your soft bedding has you drifting off in no time.

[okwonyo]

LIKE I LOVE YOU ⟡​ when they are jealous𓈒

𝗦𝗢𝗕𝗥𝗘──── 𝗂 𝗐𝖺𝗇𝗍 𝗒𝗈𝗎 𝖼𝗈𝗇𝗌𝗍𝖺𝗇𝗍𝗅𝗒, 𝖾𝗍𝖾𝗋𝗇𝖺𝗅𝗅𝗒, 𝗎𝗇𝖼𝗈𝗇𝖽𝗂𝗍𝗂𝗈𝗇𝖺𝗅𝗅𝗒.

【 𝐄𝐍𝐕𝐈𝐃𝐈𝐀 】 𝑑’── enhypen & f!r 12OO fluff established relationship ˊᯅˋ kissing skinship

骚人 ܃ this is so silly ..

reblogs⠀｡ ｡ feedbacks please

HEESEUNG

he wouldn’t lie, especially not to you, by saying that he is not the jealous type. he already knows how obvious it is, at least to you, that’s for sure. when he has a woman as pretty as you are by his side— of course, he doesn’t like whenever someone try to take what is so pretty and so his.

he tries to stay discreet about it, however. he is not the kind to make a scene or pull you out of this conversation with the man that is obviously trying to hit on you. he thanks the deity that made him lucky enough to be loved by you. he loves to see a man getting rightfully rejected.

he can’t help the smile from creeping on his face when you come back to him. he tries to play it off, like he doesn’t care. “was that a good conversation?” he asks, eyes fixated on the man you were talking to earlier.

he knows he miserably failed at playing it cool as soon as the words leave the barrier of his lips. he closes his eyes and mentally slaps himself while you wipe your head towards his direction, with a wide teasing smile, “lee heeseung, are you jealous?

JAY

this further proves a point you established a long time ago— which is that your boyfriend should have never downloaded any social media in the first place. but especially tiktok should be banned from his phone.

“is this seriously how you would answer?” crossing his arms, the man asks. his raised eyebrow gives him a serious look that shouldn’t be funny, but desperately is to you. his expression slowly turns from an annoyed one to the slightest and most lovely pout you have ever seen.

you weren’t aware of how upset he could get over roleplaying fake scenarios he made in his head. all of them starring you getting hit on by a guy he made up in his head. it surely comes from a trend he saw on tiktok and thinking about the current situation makes you giggle even more.

in the middle of the mall, with the chips’ alley on his side and the soda’s one on the other, he looks too cute for you to make fun of him. you whisper as you kiss his pout lovingly, “no, ‘m sorry.” and it immediately turns into a smile.

JAKE

he is not the jealous type. he doesn’t get annoyed at guys that hit on you nor at the ones that stare at you in public—because he would do the same, honestly, if he didn’t already have you. and even if you are dating already, staring and flirting at you, he really does it a lot.

but, if there is one thing he is possessive about, it’s your attention. he loves to have your eyes on him, he loves when you laugh at his jokes, he loves when you don’t pay attention to anyone but him.

therefore, he almost feels like crying when he watches you study. your eyes won’t leave you laptop, and you look so pretty under the spring’s sun rays shining through the windows — he wants to have your attention on him.

from his position on the bed, laying on his side has he looks at you next to him, he pokes your arm cutely. “babe,” he calls you, a gentle pout on his lips when you look at him. “can you give me attention, please?”

SUNGHOON

he never says it. whenever he is jealous, he never talks but it shows through his moves, through the way he acts. with how much of a fan of public display of affection he already is, it gets worse whenever he gets jealous.

all it takes is a single thing, something that you might almost miss— but he doesn’t. he notices right away, whenever someone is looking at you a little too much. with that gaze that says that they want a taste of what is his.

“what is wrong with you?” you laugh quietly at the way your boyfriend pulls you close to him, at how he wraps his arms around your waist from behind and hides his face in the crook of your neck. here, as you are in the queue for the movies.

you may look like those annoying couples that can’t stay away from each other in public spaces, but he doesn’t care. he hums against your skin, “nothing, i just want you close.”

SUNOO

“are you talking to you boyfriend?” his voices appears behind you out of nowhere. you wipe your head to the voice’s direction, just to see him peek over your shoulder.

saying that your heart jumps out of your chest is an understatement. the surprise his voice created in you is ridiculous, confirming that you almost forgot he was there.

you push his shoulder playfully, “don’t do things like that?” you laugh and he rolls his eyes. he doesn’t stop trying to find something in your phone, looking at it like it personally offended him. you chuckle out of disbelief, “don’t tell me you were getting jealous.”

he doesn’t answer, still looking at your phone screen to see that you were on a clothing website. one look through your showed basket to tell that you were one click away from buying all the items. “and don’t tell me you were going to buy this without my card.”

JUNGWON

there is nothing that makes him more happy and proud of himself than making you happy. he adores how joyful you are, how your smile shines so bright whenever he gives you something you love.

he was beyond happy. until the human sized hello kitty plushie you just got became his rival. ever since you kissed him as a thank you, your eyes have not left the cartoon cat. you have been holding it as if it was your lifeline for a while now.

his eye twitch when hello kitty follows you to your shared bedroom, “your boyfriend is here,” he says, a little sulky when he watches you put the plushie between your side of the bed and his. “can you give him cuddles too?”

you don’t even have the time to put the plushie on the side nor to think about doing it before he does it for you. then in a instant, all his warmth and weight is pressing you into the mattress.

RIKI

he doesn't like it when it happens, he doesn’t like it all. he feels it, blossoming in his chest and creeping through his throat as flowers in the beginning of spring. he tries to not let jealousy take over him so easily.

but sometimes, he just can’t— and it’s always over the smallest things, about the silliest situation. it’s not like he can help it, especially right now. he knows you have been friends with that guy for a while, it doesn’t make him less jealous, however.

he stands with his hands in his pocket while you and the guy whose name he forgot are talking. he towers over you both and stands tall as he stares down at the man in front of you. your boyfriend is intimidating, he knows it, by the way the other’s eyes shoot towards him. good.

he wants to show off even more, to let his presence known. so he slides his hand out of his pocket before wrapping it around your waist. then he pulls you closer in a swift mention as you giggle.

taglist open + net— @sgz-net

[yuurei20]

June 22 Seiyuu Talk Show Summary

(Disclaimer: not exact translations, paraphrasing and summarizing)

It opened by showing the seven music videos, hosted by VAs for Cater🔸, Jamil🐍, Vil👑 and Rook🏹 !

🏹 says that while changing back stage, he and 👑 were singing Pomefiore’s song together 🎶

First topic: Twst MV Corner

Heartslabyul's song 🔸: I didn't think that we would ever be singing. It's been 5 years. When I heard it I thought, "Finally, the day that Cater will sing has come!" I always thought it would be neat if he could sing one day, as he is a member of the pop music club.

Scarabia's song 🐍： I thought it was a really cool song when I first got it, that rhythm. I recorded first. When 🦦 recorded he messaged me and said "I listened to your part and recorded to match you. It is really cool."

🏹 imitates Ortho in Ignihyde's song, it is amazing

Diasomnia's song (Talking about how they couldn't read the kanji of the lyrics.) 🔸：Could you all read any of that? 👑：I had to look words up. 🏹：They used the "you" kanji (耀) from my name. I'd never seen it used anywhere before.

Second Topic: 5th Anniversary Reflection Talk

Memories from Twst 🐍：Book 4 overblot's recording. Was very nervous, it left such a big impression on me.

🔸：In the very beginning we all recorded together. The feeling of "Twst is really beginning here," the senpai VA, how I was going to portray Cater Diamond--I was so nervous. That very starting moment left a big impression on me.

👑：Vil-sama had a lot of dialogue in Book 5. There was a lot of going deep into the character. Memories of recording the songs together…

🏹：Vil-sama had a lot of dialogue in Book 6, too. 👑：I had a feeling that there was a lot of time spent particularly on Vil-sama's recordings. I do not know how it was for everyone else, but…when there was something I came up with on my own there was always additional direction. I came to know Vil-sama very well.

Main Story Book 7: Reflection Talk (Showing sprites from Book 7 dreams)

🐍：I am actually a pop-nii-san. So I got to be a little like that in the dream. I really enjoyed it.

👑：Muscley Epel. I had no idea they would go as far as that.

⚠️Book 7 Spoiler Start

🔸：The thing that surprised me the most was the great things that Cater said when waking Ace up. "Cater Diamond, this is the man that you are!" I started to cry. I recorded together with ❤️ and almost cried there, too.

🏹：When debating who to wake up first, Ace or Trey, Cater recommends Ace first because Deuce was lonely. It would obviously have been better to wake Trey up first but Cater was like a big brother and offered to wake Ace up first for Deuce, instead.

⚠️Book 7 Spoiler End

Overblot group solo songs are coming!

Riddle: Red Heart Rage Leona: Still Infallible, Until Tangible Azul: ABYSS Jamil: Snake and Blink Vil: Crépuscule Idia: GGWP Malleus: 祝福 (shukufuku / blessing, name of Malleus’ unique magic)

👑：This is our first time hearing these, too. I really want to hear the full songs too. 🐍：I was so nervous just now. I was peeking out into the audience from backstage to watch audience reactions.

Full songs are to be released on Aniplex YouTube from July!

Then came discussion of the goods available for the Blazing Jewel Live. There are special lights that change color not only according to dorm, but each character has a unique color!

🐍: Can I try on the jacket 👑: You’re never going to fit 🐍: It fits! 👑: Wait that’s so cool

🔶 peeling the jacket off of 🐍 they are so funny

Announcement: oveblot animation by Cloverworks to be added!

MAIN STORY BOOK 7.5 ANNOUNCED!

Overblot Idia is coming 6.27!

New event: Chip and Dale!

[forkfulofflavor]

Churro Saltine Toffee Ingredients: 40 salted saltine crackers 1/4 cup granulated sugar 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 1 cup unsalted butter 1 cup brown sugar 2 cups white chocolate chips Directions: Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C). Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or aluminum foil and arrange the saltine crackers in a single layer. In a small bowl, mix together the granulated sugar and cinnamon. Set aside. In a small saucepan, melt the butter and brown sugar. Bring to a boil and let it cook for about 3 minutes until the mixture turns a deep caramel color. Pour the caramel over the saltine crackers, spreading evenly with a rubber spatula to cover all the crackers. Bake the crackers for 5-6 minutes, or until the caramel is bubbly. Add the white chocolate: Remove the pan from the oven and immediately sprinkle the white chocolate chips over the hot toffee. Let the chips sit for 5 minutes to melt. If needed, place the pan back in the oven for about a minute to help the white chocolate melt. Once melted, use a spatula to spread the white chocolate evenly over the caramel layer. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar: While the white chocolate is still wet, sprinkle the cinnamon-sugar mixture evenly over the top. Let the toffee cool completely. For faster cooling, place the pan in the refrigerator for about 10 minutes. Once set, break the toffee into pieces and serve. Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cooking Time: 10 minutes | Total Time: 20 minutes Kcal: 320 kcal per serving | Servings: 12 servings This Churro Saltine Toffee is a delightful combination of sweet, salty, and crunchy flavors. The salted saltine crackers form the base, while a buttery caramel layer coats the crackers, giving them a rich and crispy texture. On top, melted white chocolate adds smooth sweetness, which is perfectly complemented by a dusting of cinnamon-sugar to bring that classic churro flavor. It’s an incredibly simple recipe that comes together in just minutes, making it perfect for parties, holiday treats, or a quick snack when you’re craving something sweet and crunchy. Break the toffee into bite-sized pieces for easy serving and enjoy the addictive combination of flavors and textures!

[achilles-rage]

Cookies

summary: you and buck bake cookies at 3am.

word count: 1.8k

a/n: hey... how y'all doing... i am finally making my comeback!! if you missed my post from yesterday (i answered a bunch of asks so now it's pretty far down there), i'm gonna be posting again, but probably less regularly. i've been stressing myself out i think by feeling the need to post a fic every 2/3 days, otherwise i feel like shit, so i'm trying to get away from that mindset, so i hope that less fics are okay!! i love and appreciate you guys so much!! anyway, enjoy<33

warnings: none, purely fluff, no use of y/n, fem!reader, plus size!reader, race inclusive!reader

The light from the fridge casts a light across Buck’s face, harshly contrasting the dim light coming from the television as he opens the door to grab the ingredients he needs. 

“The butter needs to be room temperature,” he tells you sadly, glancing in your direction as he places the eggs and butter on the kitchen island. Your legs are dangling off the counter as you watch his every move, the cool counter pressing against the backs of your thighs in a way that makes you shiver in your sleepy state. 

It’s late; 2:30am the last time you checked, and you and Buck had the silly idea to pull an all-nighter, since you both have a few days off of work. Just like you used to do with your friends when you were kids.

“I’m sure they’ll be just as good. And, a lot better than store bought cookie dough,” you tell him with a soft laugh, rolling your eyes. 

Honestly, you’re just glad Buck has agreed to bake cookies for you this late. While you were watching a movie, the main character was making cookies, and suddenly you needed chocolate chip cookies. Like, immediately.

"Definitely better,” he says with a smirk, giving you a wink before pulling out the rest of the ingredients from the cupboards.

He helped you onto the counter before he began his work, telling you that he wanted to make them for you, and that all he needed from you was to sit there, look pretty, and keep him company. And with a face like that, how could you say no?

You watch as he measures out his dry ingredients, then mixes everything together, but he pauses every so often to give you gentle kisses, the ends of his curly hair tickling your forehead each time. When his hands aren’t somehow all sticky from the dough – you quickly learned how messy of a baker he was when you first started dating – he’d place a hand on your thigh, taking comfort in the warmth of your skin and the fact that he could feel the goosebumps under his palm. He always knows that you’re sleepy because you get cold, and your skin erupts in goosebumps.

“What do you think you’d be doing right now if we never met?” you ask quietly after a few moments of silence. He looks up at you from his bowl with furrowed brows, tilting his head to the side. 

“Is this the beginning of a breakup conversation?” he replies in a slightly teasing tone, although you can practically see the gears turning in his head as he studies your expression, and your body language, and your eyes.

Your eyes soften, and you immediately shake your head, giving him a reassuring smile as you hold your hand out. He reaches out for it, not letting it hang in the air for longer than a second or two, and lets you pull him forward until his body is positioned right between your legs, although with his hands all doughy, he opts to place his wrist under your palm.

“Baby, I have absolutely no intention of breaking up with you anytime soon. I was just thinking. How different would our lives be if we never met?” you say as you wrap your arms around his shoulders, letting your hands dangle behind his head as his lay on the counter on either side of you, making sure not to get your pajamas dirty from the dough covering his hands.

“They’d be very different. I’d be fast asleep right now, that’s for sure,” he teases with a cheeky smile. You laugh softly, rolling your eyes. It may have been your idea to pull an all-nighter, but he happily agreed that it would be fun. You didn’t even have to try to convince him.

“I’m serious,” you say with a laugh, leaning forward slightly, “I don’t know what I’d do if I never met you.” Your voice is softer now, a hint of vulnerability creeping in. You met Buck purely by chance, and you still think it’s a miracle that he took interest in you, despite him thinking the exact same thing about you.

“I’d be looking for you,” he says after a moment, shrugging as if it’s that simple. And to him, it is. 

Your eyes soften, and your head tilts to the side as your throat suddenly gets tight with your growing emotions.

“For me?” you ask in a teasing, yet slightly disbelieving tone, and he shrugs again with a nod. There’s no hint of uncertainty in his eyes.

“I’d be looking for someone who makes me happy, and who knows what I need without me even having to think to ask, and who is so beautiful that I can’t even believe that they’re with me. So, yeah, you.” You smile, feeling your face heat up. You can practically feel the love radiating from the deepest part of him and into your chest, and while your entire body suddenly feels warm, your cheeks feel like they’re on fire. Suddenly, you’re not so tired anymore.

“I’d be looking for you, too,” you reply, feeling tears prick your eyes as you lean forward and let your forehead rest against his. Buck has to keep a sliver of his mind occupied on not putting his hands on you, no matter how much he wants to feel your soft skin under his fingers. He wishes he washed his hands before coming over to you, but he wouldn’t have dared to let your hand stay raised in the air longer than a split second, just like he wouldn’t dare to part from you right now.

“Yeah?” he whispers, breathing in the faint scent of your body wash now that he’s so close. He wants to touch you so bad, and his self-restraint is wearing thin.

“Mhm. Except maybe without the snoring. I’ve never heard anyone that sleeps so loud.” You match his tone, letting out a soft laugh as he suddenly pulls his face back with a scoff, his brow raised and a smirk growing on his lips.

“Really? Because I seem to remember getting a text a few days ago saying that someone thought it was too quiet to sleep while I was at work,” he challenges, his eyes moving down to your lips for a second before moving back up to meet your gaze, the smug smirk still plastered to his face as you fight back a smile.

“I sent that in a moment of weakness,” you argue quietly, pursing your lips to stop the grin from making its way onto your face.

“Hey, come on, don’t pretend you don’t love it,” he continues, his hands now raised off of the counter and hanging in the air. They’re dangerously close to your waist; if he could touch you, he’d be tempted to tickle your sides to see that gorgeous smile grace your face, but he holds back. Instead, they just remain frozen, almost able to feel the warmth radiating from your soft body.

“I plead the fifth,” you tell him, reaching down and grabbing his wrists. You saw them out of the corner of your eye, full of dough and dangerously close to your pajama top, and the last thing you want to do is go upstairs and change.

You hold his wrists out between your bodies, and all Buck does is chuckle, rolling his eyes and murmuring a soft “brat” before leaning in and catching your lips in an intoxicating kiss. 

In the heat of the moment, you let go of Buck’s wrists, instead grabbing onto his hoodie and pulling him closer to you while your legs wrap around his waist, and he lets his hands go up to your cheeks. Neither of you notice at first, despite the sweet smell of brown sugar filling your nostrils, and he deepens the kiss, letting his lips work in tandem with yours as he savours the feel and taste of your mouth on his. 

Your noses brush against each other as you tilt your heads, and a low hum escapes Buck’s throat as his tongue meets yours when you part your lips. All you can focus on is each other as the oven beeps behind you, signalling that it’s time to put your cookies in, and Buck’s stubble scratches your face in a way that makes your head spin. You’re pretty sure the fire alarm could go off right now, and you still wouldn’t part from him.

You finally have to pull away to catch your breath, and when you do, you finally notice that your cheeks are now sticky. You giggle softly, and you can’t bring yourself to be upset with Buck about it. Not when he just kissed you like his life depended on it.

“Finish my cookies, Buckley,” you whisper after a moment of looking into each other's eyes, and then he finally pulls away from you, immediately missing the feeling of your thick thighs wrapped around him.

“Yes ma’am,” he murmurs, then dumps the chocolate chips into the mixture before mixing, humming in approval when they’re fully combined.

You take this time to wash the dough off your skin; not bothering to go upstairs to actually wash your face, rather merely using a wet paper towel over the sink to wipe off the residue. You know you’ll regret it later, but right now, you wouldn’t dream of being that far away from Buck. Not when the soft light from the tv mixes with the overhead oven light, and the soft sound coming from the credits of the movie envelopes the main floor of Buck’s loft and makes you feel so safe and calm.

When the cookies are in the oven, Buck helps raise you back up onto your spot on the counter, then makes himself at home between your legs, wrapping his arms around your plush middle and resting his head comfortably on your shoulder. You wrap your arms around his shoulders immediately, letting him melt into you as you wait for the timer. The steady feeling of his breath on your skin makes you feel even more at ease, if at all possible.

You don’t talk for those 10 minutes; you just bask in each other's presence. It’s past 3am now, you’re sure of it, but neither of you care. All you care about is how good it feels to be in Buck’s arms, and to know that you’ve found someone to bake cookies with in the middle of the night, just because you felt like it. Someone to bake cookies for you despite being so tired. Just because he loves you so deeply.

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[shield-secrets]

Bad Day - Dr Michael 'Robby' Robinavitch

I guess this counts as coming out of semi-retirement? anyway my heart will always belong to strong, silent, slightly emotionally unavailable men. Enjoy two idiots simping over each other. And please be kind. I'm a little rusty. Pairing: Dr Michael 'Robby Robinavitch x younger!nurse!reader Word Count: ~2.5k Warnings: none. does centre around babies so if that's not your vibe I get it

It had taken almost 2 extra hours but finally all the charts were complete. Every patient was handed over to the incoming paediatric nurses and you were finally cleared to go home. 

There wasn’t anything exciting waiting for you, no social plans to speak of but after the day you’d had that wasn’t such a bad thing. Some shifts left you buzzing with anxiety (or, very rarely, joy) that needed to be directed outwards but this one had left you drained down to your bones. 

They happened less frequently now that you’d left the Pitt but dealing with tiny, innocent little humans in such critical condition was a different kind of hell from the casualties that tumbled into the ED in a never ending stream. 

Robby had warned you about it when you’d announced that you were accepting a new position upstairs in the paediatric wing but you’d mostly chalked it up to his disappointment that one of his favourite day shift nurses was leaving his department. 

The ED had never been your true calling, just a stop along the way to the babies that needed your help the most but that hadn’t made the decision to leave any easier. All the members of the Pitt had become your pseudo-family after 2 years working side by side. Samira had even planned your last birthday party when you’d said that you ‘couldn’t be bothered celebrating’. But in spite of those wonderful relationships there had been one in particular tethering you to the teeming mass of chaos that was The Pitt. 

Michael Robinavitch, MD. Known publicly as the Senior Attending Physician for Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital. Known to his staff as Dr Robby and to you as….something else. 

More than a boss but not quite a friend. Someone who refused to share his personal life had somehow weaselled his way under your skin. Just from a slight change in his posture or the inflection of his tone you’d instantly know how he was feeling, often turning up at his side with a granola bar or a coffee cool enough that he could down it in between patients. 

Over time he started to do the same for you - even though technically as a nurse you didn’t fall under his line of reporting. You’d be sitting at the hub, inputting patient data only to look up and find one of his favourite choc chip peanut butter power bars balanced delicately on the top of the monitor. Neither of you ever discussed it, just quietly kept each other motoring along despite the hurricane threatening to engulf the ED. 

“Alright. Get out of here” Angela, the senior paeds charge nurse, demanded as you handed over your keys to the prescriptions cabinet. “Before something goes wrong and we have to drag you back” 

“More than happy to comply” you laughed, brushing away the strands of hair that had escaped the bun you’d secured at the nape of your neck 10 hours ago. “See you on Monday” 

“Ah to be young” the older woman sighed wistfully, lifting her glasses to rest in her cloud of grey curls. “I hope you’re getting yourself out there. Not wasting your youth doomscrolling on that infernal phone” 

With a gentle shake of your head you reached under the desk to retrieve your bag. If Angela knew that your plans for the next 48 hours involved rotting on the couch and maybe scrolling through Hinge for the forty thousandth time she’d go on an hour long rant about how time was wasted on ‘pretty things like you’ and that you'd regret not getting out there when you was old and grey like her. 

Maybe there was a shred of truth to that but how could you dedicate yourself to finding a boyfriend when you couldn’t get a certain moody doctor out of your head. There had been other guys over the years but no matter how hard you tried they just couldn’t compare to the emotionally unavailable attending that haunted your dreams. 

Pulling your ‘infernal phone’ out of your bag you frowned to see a message from Dana waiting for you. It had only been there for ten minutes but the content had your insides lurching. 

Any chance you’re still here?

Frowning down at the screen you shouldered your bag, typing out a quick response. 

Just about to bail. Everything okay?

As soon as you sent your message a reply popped up underneath. 

Bad day. Could you come down?

She didn’t need to elaborate for you to know exactly who she was talking about and instead of taking the north exit towards the parking structure you were turning left, straight for the lift down to the Pitt. 

Dana barely managed a smile when the silver doors slid open. She just gestured with her pen to the dark windows of the staff room where you could barely make out a familiar silhouette. 

“So. The Pitt was sucking extra hard today?” you asked as you slid the door shut behind you. 

Letting loose a sigh that could rattle bones Robby slowly turned and the pure devastation on his face had your heart squeezing.

“Yeah,” he admitted after a pause. “You could say that” 

Irritation twisted under your pale pink scrubs. 

There was always more to it. Prying feelings out of Robby was like pulling blood from a stone. Even if you spent all night trying he wouldn’t part with anything but the bare minimum - the smallest amount of vulnerability that would get you off his case.  

And as much as you wanted all of it, to take all of the pain and darkness off his overburdened shoulders, you wouldn’t force his hand. He deserved soft and gentle and kind. 

“Any plans after work?” 

“Does sleeping for 16 years count?” he chuckled, rubbing a hand along his salt and pepper chin. 

“You got 16 years off? Wow. Maybe I should have been a doctor” 

He huffed a laugh at the joke but the accompanying smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. Dana had been right. A bad day indeed. “Do you have a minute? I think I know something that might help” 

He let you take him without complaint, leading him back through the buzzing ED and over to the elevators. As if sensing it was futile he didn’t even ask where you were going. Whether that was a sign of his trust or exhaustion you couldn’t tell, but his hand was warm in yours as the two of ventured up to the maternity ward. 

“You have to promise to keep this a secret” you said as you came to a stop outside a set of white double doors. “Technically we’re not meant to do this but I have an…arrangement” 

A dark brow arched in question but you ignored it, pushing the doors open slowly to reveal a sea of newborn babies resting in perspex cradles. Just the sight of the tiny newborns wrapped in pale yellow blankets set your heart fluttering. 

Babies weren’t everyone’s thing, that had become abundantly clear in your 8 months in paeds, but in your perfectly correct opinion there was nothing quite as soothing as holding a warm bundle in your arms after a hard shift. 

“You come in here often?” Robby asked, his voice low as to not disturb the sleeping patients. 

“From time to time” you admitted before grabbing two yellow paper gowns from the dispenser on the wall. “Angela turned me onto it after we lost a set of premature twins. Nothing helps sooth the sting of death like brand new little lives” 

“Or just an excuse to cuddle babies” Robby teased, a twinkle of amusement in his brown eyes. 

“Well it’s a better coping mechanism than standing on a ledge” you shot back. 

“Next time I see Jack up there I’ll suggest it to him” 

A snort of laughter echoed through the silent room. 

“Come on. I’ve got the perfect one” 

“What, you evaluate the babies for cuddle-potential?” Robby asked as the two of you slowly weaved your way through the rows on cradles. 

“No. I ask my spies which ones are the calmest so I know who won’t cry if I pick them up” 

“You have spies?” 

“All the best nurses have spies. You don’t think Dana has her own little network?” 

“Oh I know she does” he agreed. The ED would be engulfed in flames without his favourite charge nurse. Never mind that she was his most trusted source about his favourite topic. You. 

Right at the end of the middle row a tiny little baby waited for your eager hands. With well practiced movements you scooped baby Purcell out of her bed, cradling her delicate body to yours for a minute before turning to the man next to you. He took a half-step back but you were too fast, lifting the package up and into his impressive arms. 

For a split second fear flashed across his sculpted face before melting into an expression of pure contentment. 

A crease formed between the baby’s brows and your heart lurched with fear that she’d wake up and out your very much against hospital policy activities. But thankfully after a small wiggle she settled down into Robby’s arms (and honestly who could blame her). 

You could have picked up your own little bundle of joy, your favourite L&D nurse had texted you a list of 5 babies who would love to be held, but putting even an inch of space between you and your former attending sent an ache through you. So instead you stepped closer, heart skipping as you leant your cheek against the massive expanse of his bicep. Even through the thick fabric of his navy hoodie and the yellow gown his heat pulsed against your skin sending sparks of electricity down your spine. 

How you’d ever managed to get any work done around this man was one of the universe’s best kept secrets. With his sad puppy eyes and streaks of grey colouring the hair at his temples he was utterly hypnotic. The whole point of this trip was a quick hit of dopamine but it was quickly devolving into a completely different monster. How foolish you’d been to think you could go from not seeing him for weeks to standing side by side in a nursery and not get sucked into the vortex that was Robby. 

The two of you could have been standing there for five minutes or five hours it was impossible to tell. A different kind of quiet had settled over the room, wrapped you both in a bubble of calm. 

“I used to think I might have this someday” 

Robby’s confession rumbled through him, vibrating the thick muscle pressing against your cheek. 

“You still could” 

Your voice was barely above a whisper as you tried to speak around the ache in your throat. 

“I’m too old. Too broken. Wouldn’t want anyone wasting their time on me” he muttered, not taking his eyes off the baby snoring softly in his arms. 

You couldn’t help but blink in surprise. 

“Robby. You’re a very intelligent man but that might be the dumbest thing anyone’s ever said” 

He frowned, accidentally jostling baby Purcell in his arms who let out a dainty squeak of protest but he didn't take his eyes off you. You were staring up at him, eyelashes framing your sparkling eyes with a playful smile pulling at the corner of your lips and for a split second he forgot how to breathe. 

“What do you mean?’ 

He was almost afraid to ask. That you might be laughing at the notion of him ever wanting a family when his career consumed every waking moment of his day and often his nights. That there was clearly something wrong with him if he'd hit fifty and not found someone willing to start a family with him.

“Robby. Any woman would be lucky to have you” 

A bolt of lightning shot through his chest. 

If only you knew. 

If only you knew that from your first shift in the ED he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about you. That each time his hand brushed yours during a procedure it took every shred of his self-control to stay upright. That even the scent of your shampoo sent him in to a tail spin and he’d been equal parts ruined and relieved when you’d gone up to the fourth floor, hoping that some distance might free him from this crippling crush. Except that it had only worsened it - leaving him in a constant state of anxiety and relying on Dana for any scrap of information she had about your wellbeing. 

Clearing his throat with a soft cough he turned his eyes back to the little girl and the gentle slope of her button nose, willing himself not to ask the question that was burning a hole in his sternum. But surrounded by fragile human lives with the lavender scent of your shampoo flooding his senses he had no hope. 

“Do you want this someday?” 

To anyone outside it might have sounded like an innocent question but you knew Robby too well. Knew the intricacies of his tone. Something lingered at the edges of it, something deeper that had a jolt of nerves sweeping through your stomach. 

“As many as I can have” you replied, subconsciously leaning further into his arm and his heart lurched against his ribs. 

Of course. You worked in paeds. Naturally you were pro-children but he hadn’t quite put two and two together and the thought of you holding your own child had his stomach tumbling so violently his heart skipped a beat. 

Would he walk into the ED one to have Dana report that you’d met someone? Would he spend every day guiltily wishing that he’d receive a report of your breakup and still sit on the sidelines, too afraid of not being enough for you that it happened again and again until one day the breakup never came and he lost his chance forever? 

How was he meant to live in a world where someone else had the honour of being your man when he was just realising that it was the only job he’d ever want. 

Putting himself first didn't come naturally to Robby. It was his fatal flaw that had been pointed out by his loved ones on more than one occasion but for a single heartbeat he managed to silence the voice screaming in the back of his mind that he didn't deserve happiness long enough to speak the words burning at the tip of his tongue.

“Have dinner with me” 

It was barely more than a whisper but in the silent nursery it was practically a shout. Smiling into the paper gown your eyes slid up to his face to find Robby staring resolutely at the little girl but the scarlet blush growing on his cheeks betrayed his nerves. 

Because even though it was ridiculous - if you said it out loud you’d sound insane - it wasn’t just dinner. 

It was an invitation to a whole different future. 

Michael Robinavitch was a lot of things; brilliant, moody, funny, withdrawn, older. 

And also unequivocally yours. 

And you were his. 

This tension between the two of you wasn’t something awkward or strained. 

It was a question that had waited 2 years to be asked. 

And standing there in the dark nursery with his guarded heart finally cracked open there was only one answer. 

“I thought you’d never ask” 

[lazysoulwriter]

define this feeling ── pedro pascal .✦

requested! thank you. content: casual-to-something-more, soft angst, established situationship, Pedro catches feelings first, gentle reassurance, lots of quiet intimacy & tender humor.

---

Rain rattles against the kitchen window like a drummer who won’t quit, steady and insistent, turning the downtown lights outside into watercolor streaks. You’re propped on Pedro’s counter, sock-clad feet swinging while he searches his fridge for something resembling dinner. It’s the kind of easy, half-dressed weeknight you two have perfected over the last couple of months—just close enough to feel like home, just distant enough to keep anyone from labeling it.

Or so you thought.

Pedro clears his throat. “Okay, hypothetical.” He pulls out a carton of eggs, sets it down, then meets your eyes. They’re too warm for hypotheticals. “Let’s say two people… spend an embarrassing amount of time together. They cook, they kiss, they do other things—” You grin. “Extremely hypothetical so far.” He chuckles, but his knuckles drum the countertop. “And this has been going on for, what, seven… eight weeks?” “Ten,” you correct without thinking. Something flickers behind his smile—satisfaction, maybe hope. “Ten. Right. So at what point—” he breaks an eggshell with more force than necessary, yolk slipping into the bowl— “do they talk about what they actually are?”

Your heartbeat stutters. You’ve dreaded this conversation, convinced it would come from you first and break whatever fragile magic you’d been enjoying. Seeing the question in his eyes instead knocks the breath from your lungs.

“What we are?” you echo, stalling for time.

He nods, wiping his hands on a dish towel. “Yeah. Because I keep trying to file us under ‘casual,’ but it doesn’t feel like a file big enough anymore.”

You hop down from the counter, suddenly restless, and start lining up two mugs—his chipped Star Wars one and your stolen diner mug. A silly ritual that shouldn’t feel intimate but does. “I like… the way things are,” you offer carefully.

“I do too,” he says, voice low. “But I like you more.” When you glance over, he’s leaning against the stove, hair a little mussed, earnest brown eyes locked on yours. “And I’m starting to think—I don’t know—recipes probably need name labels, but people shouldn’t.”

Your laugh comes out shaky. “That’s not how labels work, Pascal.”

He sighs, tipping his head back toward the ceiling like he’s searching for a script up there. “Look, I’m not asking for an essay or matching tattoos. I just…” He steps closer, fingers brushing your wrist as if he can’t help himself. “Sometimes I want to introduce you as my something, and the words get stuck.”

There’s the thrum of rain, the tick of the wall clock, the wild fluttering of your pulse. You’ve protected this almost-relationship because you’ve seen titles ruin things—turning soft colors harsh, casual laughter into expectation. But you’ve also never seen someone tiptoe around your fears so gently.

You lift one shoulder. “What would you want to call me?”

“Depends.” He chews his lip. “Can I audition a few?”

“Audition away.”

He holds up an invisible cue card. “My girlfriend—too high school?” Your cheeks warm. “A bit.” “Partner?” he tries. “Grown-up but sounds like we started a law firm.” You snort. He brightens, encouraged. “Ooh, how about favorite person? Too sappy?” “It’s… adorable,” you admit, heart loosening. He tosses the imaginary card. “Okay, okay. Unpopular opinion: I sorta love girlfriend. I like that it sounds like you got promoted from friend to something secret and cool.”

You stare at him, this man who already knows your coffee order, your allergy to mango, the silly way you hum theme-park tunes when you’re nervous. The word girlfriend used to feel like a cage; now it sounds a little like belonging.

He laces his fingers with yours. “I’m not pushing you,” he murmurs. “I just need to know if we’re going in the same direction, or if I’m the only one who keeps picturing you borrowing my sweats five years from now and yelling at me for forgetting to record whatever prestige series you love.”

“That’s a very specific future,” you tease, voice wobbly.

“I’m a very specific man.” His forehead rests against yours. “So… what are we?”

Your answer tumbles out soft, certain, surprising even you. “I think… we’re two people who made something casual and then kinda accidentally fell into something real.”

He pulls back just enough to search your face. “Accidentally, huh?”

“An unplanned road trip,” you clarify, “where neither of us wants to turn around.”

His grin blooms, crinkling the corners of his eyes. “So… girlfriend?”

You inhale rain-scented air, feel his thumb tracing lazy circles on your wrist, and let the word settle on your tongue like sugar. “Yeah,” you breathe. “Girlfriend.”

Pedro kisses you before the final consonant finishes vibrating in the air—slow, deliberate, like he’s sealing an envelope. His hands cup your jaw; yours fist in the hem of his faded T-shirt, anchoring yourself to this new certainty.

When you finally break apart, he whispers, “Can we celebrate by making ridiculously buttery scrambled eggs and dancing to ‘Sway’ in the living room?”

You laugh, giddy. “That’s how you celebrate?”

“It’s the only way.” He taps your nose. “Stay over tonight?”

“Girlfriend privilege?” you ask, eyebrow arching.

“Exactly. Comes with free coffee in the morning and an illegally comfortable hoodie.”

“Then it’s a deal.” You squeeze his hand. “But tomorrow, I’m auditioning a label for you.”

He presses a kiss to your knuckles. “I’ll wear whatever name you pick, mi corazón. As long as it’s tethered to yours.”

Rain keeps drumming, eggs sizzle, and somewhere between the first bite and the last spin across the living-room floor, the word casual vanishes for good—replaced by the quiet certainty of something worth naming, worth keeping, worth growing.

---

✦ please do not copy, repost, or translate this work. © lazysoulwriter // i write with a lot of love and care, so please respect that.

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---

[ladyrosemone]

Open arms

This life is amazing when you greet it with open arms

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LADS x No-Mc

Tw!: Thoughts about attempting to take one's life (superficial but there), reference to depression, reference to therapy.

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The time after a breakup shouldn't hurt this much, but you have the right to feel this way after going through five in a row in the space of half a year.

Eros must hate you, what did you do to him? Did you offend him in some way? Is it because you said Valentine's Day was a day dedicated to compulsive, capitalist buying and selling without any real love? You was kidding! You were younger and wanted to be cool, not because he should curse you like Apollo after mocking your archery skills!

Maybe if you hadn't done that, you wouldn't be in your apartment right now, eating chips and drinking sugary Coke, watching a romantic comedy that's not funny at all, suddenly crying as if your brain wanted to remind you in every scene between the protagonists that you're not experiencing that, that you're the filler character who helped the male lead realize he actually loved the female lead and leave her at the altar on their wedding day. Yes, that specific.

So what now? What's next for the poor extra in her own movie? The one who didn't ask to be the woman in the trial? What's left for her?

You don't believe in destiny, or in happily ever afters that come out of nowhere, or in all that Valentine's Day nonsense (Yes, now it's against you, Eros), but maybe, just maybe…you need a divine sign, something to push you out of the hole you've been hiding in since your last breakup.

…

Of course, nothing would happen, why would it? The universe is just a collection of molecules about to collide and cause another Big Bang at any second—

Ring Ring! Ring Ring!

- Hello? -

- Hey! - Ryan, your dear paramedic friend, whom you've unfairly been avoiding since Zayne admitted to loving someone else - How are you? I heard it didn't work out with that colonel -

There was no need to reply; your silence was the only response you'd been using lately - Look, I have this pass for a hike to Mount Huangshan, all expenses paid, the girls are going too! -

- I don't know, Ryan, I don't feel ready -

- I understand - He sighs - But it's not fair that you rot in your house while the others go off in some kind of…polyamorous relationship, It's not fair! -

- …What about them? - In the background, his friends could be heard scolding him for being so direct, for saying that over a phone call, for saying it in the first place, while the man tries to defend himself, even he sounds remorseful.

- We didn't want you to find out like this - admits a female voice, her friend Minji, the most sentimental of the five, a creative soul who, indirectly, was the one who encouraged her to go out with the artist.

- Come on! It's time to leave your cave! - Yinou's voice chimes in, strong and demanding, a leader who doesn't leave any of her people behind.

- Come on! Please come with us! - chimes in a smaller but no less strong voice. Daiki was the most protective of the five, also the most vocal in his thoughts and a guiding light on their craziest adventures, just like the one you can experience if you decide to go out.

But can you? Leave your nest, your dark but comfortable home, safe from the pain other people can cause you…

- Sorry guys, I…- The television flashes with a colorful commercial, the happy music and vibrant images catching their attention. She's a presenter, a smiling woman who talks about support groups, techniques for leaning on someone when you can't do it alone.

"And remember, if you have to lie to yourself to be happy, you have to get out of there"

Even if it was a generic phrase, a self-help brand slogan, a product being sold with a yellow phone number, those words echoed in your head.

What are you doing? Why are you letting yourself get so down? Why do you give so much weight to the pain? There's a whole world out there! But what if…

No, you shouldn't think like that even if it's the easiest thing to do, you shouldn't believe that even if it's the most comfortable thing to do, you shouldn't give up - Come pick me up first thing in the morning -

The echo of the celebration had never made you feel so happy before.

━━━━━━✧❂✧━━━━━━━━━━━━✧❂✧━━━━━━

Trust the process, you always tell yourself, trust the process.

Accepting that outing was the best decision at the time, the fresh air felt like a respite for your cramped limbs, walking made your muscles remember how to move, you'd even say you enjoyed catching up with your friends, each busy with their own lives and careers who still made room in their schedules to hang out with you.

But when the euphoria wore off, when the trip ended and everyone went their separate ways, you felt that loneliness again, suffocating you until you were breathless, with the thoughts that were once your allies now the most powerful enemies that have tormented you. You don't want the solitude of your apartment, suffocating and tense, like a horror movie playing every minute and every second. The saddest thing is to think that once this place was your sanctuary, your safe place, and now it's nothing more than a memory of things that were.

It shouldn't feel like this. You don't want to feel like this anymore, but you don't know what else to do or where to look…

Unless…no…you won't sink that low, you can do it on your own; but the way it's gone with this, taking it on yourself only makes you sink deeper into a grave you don't want to reach yet. A broken heart really shouldn't feel like this, but it feels like the world is ending, like nothing makes sense anymore and the only way out is the unthinkable.

No! Stop thinking like that! Why do you suddenly think like that?! You're not like that! You're brilliant! Smart and charismatic! You're interesting and feisty! Loyal and caring! Kind and honest! You're so much more than they thought you were worth…! Why do they keep showing up?!

You're tired of feeling like this; helpless, exhausted, and tearful, as if any breeze would knock you down, you hate how it feels, the weakness in your bones and the weight of the world on your shoulders. Seriously, of all the things that could have brought you down, was a bad love the reason? Pathetic.

- You're not pathetic - you find yourself whispering, your subconscious (or maybe conscious) trying one last time to put up a fight -Just tired…-

You should seek help.

━━━━━━✧❂✧━━━━━━━━━━━━✧❂✧━━━━━━

Years ago, you believed in fairy tales.

Obviously for your age, a child who imagined himself flying on dragons and ruling castles that were actually playgrounds. But at the end of the day, you believed in happy endings and in love that triumphs in the end.

But you had to grow up, and when you grow up, you must forget that.

You don't have a tragic story, you weren't a laboratory experiment, or an enchanted princess thief, your parents didn't die in a dramatic accident or anything like that, just one day…you decided to open your eyes, to understand that not everything is like in fairy tales where the righteous always win and the wicked are punished. Life isn't black or white, it's a blurred gray that swings like a coin about to fall, these are lessons you learned like anyone throughout their life. Perhaps what's different about you is that you hide the emotional aftereffects that come with the lesson, good or bad, you repress it inside like someone who keeps jewels in a safe.

It wasn't fair, but it was the cards you were dealt that made those relationships not work out; but if there's one thing you should be clear about now and always, it's that it wasn't your fault they ended this way; no, repeat it in your head, you did enough.

You loved enough, listened enough, cared enough, and now you've suffered enough. Look in the mirror one last time and begin your own relationship with yourself; heal yourself little by little, but return to being that person who shines on their own.

It will take time, a lot of time, but you have the patience and companionship to achieve it. You don't need a partner or a spouse, not right now.

And that's okay; now is the time to heal.

━━━━━━✧❂✧━━━━━━━━━━━━✧❂✧━━━━━━

[chemicalmarketwatch-sp]

Strategic Roadmap to Liquid Cooling Adoption (2025–2030): Comprehensive Liquid Cooling Adoption Guide

As global data demands soar and AI workloads grow more intense, data centers are under pressure to boost performance, efficiency, and sustainability. The shift from traditional air cooling to advanced liquid cooling technologies isn’t just a trend—it’s becoming a strategic necessity. Our liquid cooling adoption guide explores the critical roadmap for successful adoption between 2025 and 2030, empowering manufacturers, engineers, product developers, managers, investors, and industry professionals to stay ahead.

Why Liquid Cooling Is Gaining Traction

By 2030, data centers worldwide are expected to double their power density, largely driven by AI and HPC workloads. Air cooling struggles to keep up with this level of heat dissipation, while liquid cooling offers significantly higher thermal efficiency and reduced operational costs. Beyond performance, it supports environmental goals by lowering PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) and reducing water consumption through closed-loop systems.

Key Phases in the Strategic Roadmap

1. Evaluation & Feasibility (2025–2026)

Conduct ROI analysis, including CapEx vs. OpEx savings.

Identify workloads and zones within facilities most suitable for retrofitting.

Benchmark against industry standards and early adopters’ success stories.

2. Pilot Implementation (2026–2027)

Deploy liquid cooling solutions (e.g., direct-to-chip, immersion) in test environments.

Monitor thermal performance, reliability, and integration challenges.

Engage cross-functional teams—engineers, product managers, sustainability officers—for feedback.

3. Scale & Optimize (2027–2029)

Expand deployment to mission-critical systems.

Optimize infrastructure for liquid-cooled servers, such as facility piping, heat exchangers, and secondary loops.

Develop in-house expertise and build partnerships with liquid cooling vendors.

4. Full Integration & Future-Proofing (2029–2030)

Standardize liquid cooling in new data center builds.

Plan for emerging technologies like AI-optimized cooling control and hybrid cooling architectures.

Incorporate sustainability metrics to align with ESG targets and regulatory frameworks.

Strategic Considerations for Stakeholders

Manufacturers & Product Developers: Design hardware compatible with both air and liquid cooling; invest in modular systems to ease integration.

Engineers & Managers: Focus on retraining staff, adapting maintenance procedures, and updating monitoring tools for liquid systems.

Investors & Industry Professionals: Prioritize companies with clear liquid cooling strategies and partnerships, as they’re better positioned to capitalize on next-gen data center demands.

Benefits Beyond Cooling

Liquid cooling isn’t just about thermal management. It unlocks:

Higher rack densities and compute power per square foot.

Lower total cost of ownership over equipment lifecycle.

Stronger alignment with environmental sustainability initiatives.

Ready to explore the details? Download the PDF Guide - Strategic Roadmap to Liquid Cooling Adoption (2025–2030) and start your journey toward future-ready, sustainable data centers.The 2025–2030 timeline offers a realistic, phased path to adoption. By following this liquid cooling adoption guide, stakeholders can mitigate risk, capture efficiency gains, and lead innovation in the data center market.

[lowkeyerror]

Basically My Boyfriend

Jennifer Check x Reader

Word Count: 2k

Notes: Reuqested, friends to lovers, smut, fingering, cunnulingus, virgin!reader

Summary: It’s a Friday night and Y/n and Needy are spending it bored in Jennifer’s room. When Needy mentions she passed on date night for it, Jennifer and Y/n push her to go. This leaves Jennifer and Y/n alone for the night, and something that started as a joke between the two quickly transforms into something more.

An: First request in forever hope its alright 🫣

Etc. Masterlist | More Jennifer Check

For being a girl as popular as she was, it was assumed that Jennifer Check would have more friends than she would know what to do with. Even despite her bitchy attitude, the attention she garnered from her looks alone was good enough reason to want to be around her. The thing is that Jennifer wasn’t stupid she knew that people would use her to gain social standing. It’s part of the reason that Jennifer didn’t really “do” friends.

The people that were close to her had been close to her for as long as anyone could remember. Needy and Y/n were the only real friends that Jennifer had. She liked it that way.

Jennifer didn’t need to explain herself to the pair, she didn’t need to dumb herself down, and she didn’t have to pretend to be nice. She could just be herself, which was seeming like more of a luxury these days.

“Jen, hello? Earth to Jennifer Check, where’d you go? I think we lost her Annie,” Y/n was waving her hand in front of the brunette’s face, while talking to the blonde at her side.

The three of them were piled into Jennifer’s room, on a Friday night.

Jennifer’s back hit the bed, “I’m so bored, we should’ve went to the bar tonight, I heard Low Shoulder was going to be there.”

“Not a chance. Annie and I would’ve been miserable while we watched you go play groupie to those losers,” Y/n follows suit lying flat on the bed.

“Needy knows how to party, besides she could’ve brought her boy toy.”

Needy rolls her eyes, but lays on the bed too, “You know I don’t like it when you call him that.”

“Precisely why I do it Anita,” Jennifer comments.

Needy lets out a sigh, “You know I canceled a date for this and he was really cool about it.”

Jen and Y/n sit up at the same time and say, “You what?”

“It’s no big deal.”

“It’s only 8, you have time. Tell him to come pick you up,” Y/n says looking at the blonde.

“But I already told my mom I was sleeping over,” Needy whines.

Jennifer gives the girl some words of encouragement, “You are going to sleep over… just at Chip’s. Now call your boy toy, first tell him to thank us, and then tell him that you should see a movie tonight.”

Just as the pair instructed Needy calls her boyfriend and he says that he's on his way.

“Are you guys sure you’re ok with me bailing?”

Y/n nods, “Go get laid, Annie. One of us deserves to tonight.”

She shoves your shoulder, “ Shut up you’re starting to sound too much like Jen.”

The dark-haired girl laughed, “Well you didn’t say she was wrong.”

Whatever snarky remark Needy was going to say dies as her phone rings. Chip is outside waiting for her.

“Remember, if he doesn’t give head, he’s better off dead,” Jennifer says as she pushes Needy out of the house.

“Meet us for breakfast tomorrow, the usual spot?” Y/n suggests and Needy nods.

“I’ll see you guys later.”

Jennifer and Y/n wave to her as Chip drives off in the direction of the movie theater.

“And then there were two,” Y/n says.

“You’re such a predictable nerd, I knew you would say that,” now it’s Jennifer rolling her eyes at you.

“Hey, need I remind you that you picked this predictable nerd to be one of your two friends. The other which is almost the same predictable nerd,” Y/n says as they walk back up the stairs.

Jen scoffs, “You’re nothing like Needy. For starters she’s with her boyfriend tonight, while you’re here with me.”

Y/n is quick to counter, “You’re basically my boyfriend anyway.”

“Oh am I?”

Y/n nods as they re-enter Jennifer’s room, “Yup.”

“And what could have possibly led you to this conclusion?”

Y/n jumps into Jen’s bed, “Well it’s Friday night and you have me in your bed.”

“You haven't heard of a hookup?”

Y/n closes her eyes briefly, “You like me too much for it just to be a hookup.”

Jen doesn't respond, instead she lets her eyes roam Y/n's figure. She’d be lying if she said the thought hadn’t crossed her mind once or twice. Y/n was in a way, exactly her type. Maybe a little more dorky than She'd usually go for, but Jen thought Y/n’s loser tendencies were endearing.

So, as she found herself alone with girl on a Friday night, no Needy, and no parents; she thought she'd try something.

Jennifer climbs onto the bed and straddles Y/n’s waist. The weight on her, made the girl open her eyes. She was slightly startled as she looked up at Jennifer.

“Maybe you’re right, definitely wouldn't call you a random hookup,” Jennifer’s face took on a look that Y/n had only seen her give other people.

Particularly boys that Jennifer would spend random nights with.

“What’re you doing ?”

Jennifer flips her head to the side, “We’ve known each other a long time, right Y/n?”

“Right,” the girl beneath her speaks breathlessly

“Have I ever told you how hot I think you are?”

Her hands reach for Y/n’s, guiding then to sit first on her thighs before sliding them up to her hips.

“Jen,” Y/n audibly gulps.

The dark-haired girl, giggles before rolling her hips down on Y/n. The dorky girl’s hands tighten their grip on Jennifer’s waist.

“Fuck Y/n, don't you want me?”

“Jennifer,” Y/n says more firmly this time.

Jennifer rolls her hips again, “You’re really going to make spell it out for you, aren’t you? You know, I like you right dingus, I've wanted you for a while now. You’re a dork, but I want you to be my dork.”

“This can't be real?” Y/n’s confusion peaks through.

“Let me show you how real it is, Y/n,” Jennifer’s look becomes less predatory and more desperate.

Y/n’s face began to heat up, “Jen I haven’t-”

“I can teach you,” she speaks gently, her hand caressing Y/n’s face.

“Promise me this isn’t just a hookup or some fucked up game you’re playing with me,” Y/n’s insecurities poke at her.

Jennifer leans down, so she is mere inches away from the other girl. Her hair falls, tickling Y/n’s face. Her eyes are softer than Y/n had ever seen as their breath mingles together.

“I like you, genuinely; no bullshit. We don’t have to do anything, if you don’t want-”

Y/n kisses her in the middle of speaking. It’s delicate and airy. A type of kiss that Jennifer isn’t used too. It takes the wind out of her.

“Be gentle with me Jen,” Y/n whispers against her lips.

She nods, “I’m going to worship you.”

Y/n feels her face heat even more. Jennifer connects their lips again. She holds back on the ferocity, but let’s the passion shining through the kiss. The sound of their lips colliding with each other and their shallow breaths made the room feel ten times hotter.

Y/n’s hand subconsciously left Jennifer’s waist to slink up and under her shirt. The skin there was cooler than she expected. Her touch was light but became even lighter as her hands skimmed over Jennifer’s bra.

Jennifer sits up breaking the kiss causing the girl beneath her to whine. Jen laughs at the sound before pulling her shirt over her head. Y/n’s eyes dilate at the sight of her abdomen. A small smirk tugs at Jennifer’s lips upon seeing Y/n’s reaction.

Her bra comes off next. Y/n’s eyes scale up Jennifer’s figure , lingering at her now exposed chest. As if she’s testing the waters the Y/n sits up. She keeps eye contact with Jennifer as she takes one of the more experienced girl’s nipples in her mouth.

She sucks lightly, closing her eyes as she runs her tongue across the stiff peak. Jen moans at the sensation nearly cradling the girl’s head further into her chest.

“Can I see you baby?” Jennifer says through her teeth, her free hand gripping the waistband of Y/n’s pants.

Y/n doesn’t answer her immediately, needing to give the other nipple the same attention as the first. She then trails hot open mouth kisses from Jennifer’s breast up to her neck stopping to whisper in the girl’s ear.

“Take it off.”

Jennifer doesn’t need to be told twice as she carefully removes Y/n’s shirt and pants as well. She pushes the girl to lay flat against the bed again. This time instead of straddling her waist, Jen stays near the foot of the bed, spreading Y/n’s legs open.

“You’re so wet for me already,” Jennifer sees the dampness through the other girl’s underwear.

She kisses up Y/n’s thighs, tentatively. She keeps eye contact as she gets closer and close to the Y/n’s cunt. Jennifer places some teasing kisses on Y/n’s clothed pussy, causing the girl to squirm.

“Can I-"

“Please,” Y/n begs before Jennifer even finished the sentence.

Her hip lift, encouraging Jennifer to take them off. Jennifer obliges sliding the soaked panties down Y/n’s legs.

“Fuck.”

The sight alone was enough to cause Jennifer to lose her composure. She couldn't take it anymore. She didn't hesitate to dive her face into Y/n’s pussy.

“Holy shit,” Y/n almost sits up as Jennifer’s tongue swirls around her clit.

Jennifer’s tongues moves fluidly through Y/n’s folds. Playfully going back and forth between teasing the entrance and sucking on the clit.

Jennifer vibrates with pleasure as your taste coats her mouth making her dizzy.

“You taste so good baby, can I put a finger in? I promise you’ll like it.”

Sweat covers Y/n’s forehead as she nods, “Fuck me.”

Jennifer slinks up Y/n’s body to connect their lips. Y/n almost cums as she tastes herself on Jennifer’s lips. This kiss is sloppier than the rest they shared but neither girl cared. The feeling was intoxicating.

While they kiss Jennifer slips her middle finger inside of Y/n. The girl mewls into Jennifer’s mouth. The dark-haired girl groans at how tight Y/n is around her finger. She could already feel the walls pulsating trying to pull her finger deeper inside.

“You’re so tight Y/n, have you even fingered yourself? Feels like I’m the first thing in here, fuck. I can’t wait to stretch you out, fill you up with a fat plastic cock. Have you moaning my name.”

“I haven’t Jen, I haven’t had anything but your finger inside of me. Fuck, add another, stretch me. I want to be good for you, Jennifer,” Y/n whines trying to gain for friction.

Jennifer listens to the girl and slowly pushes in another finger, she can feel Y/n twitching around her.

“Be a good girl and cum on my fingers,” Jennifer ‘s thumb begins to rub circles on Y/n’s clit.

Y/n falls over the edge, nails digging into Jennifer’s back as the only thing she could say was Jennifer’s name, over and over again.

Jennifer is carefully to bring Y/n down from her climax, not wishing to overstimulate her now. When she feels enough time has last, she removes her fingers from inside the girl.

She holds Y/n’s tired stare as she sucks the juices off of her fingers.

“Kiss me,” Y/n reaches for Jennifer, pulling her bavk down into a kiss.

“Addicting, isn’t it?” Jennifer pecks your lips again.

“Let me return the favor,” Y/n mumbles.

Jennifer can tell the girl is exhausted from her own orgasm. Though she would love nothing more than to have Y/n please her, she feels like it would be taken advantage of the girl.

Jennifer shakes her head, “Maybe later, let’s get you cleaned up first.”

Y/n goes to protest, but Jennifer’s soft gaze on her, stopped any rebuttal.

After a quick shower both girls were back in the bed this time clean. They laid facing each other, their hands interlocked. It was Y/n who ended up pulling Jennifer into her grasp.

“I didn’t know you could be so… sweet,” you tell her truthfully.

Jennifer rolls her eyes, trying to distract Y/n from the blush that was building on her face, “You’re such a dork.”

“I think we already established that already. What we haven’t established is when you’re taking me out?”

Jennifer scoffs, “Why do I have to take you out? You could ask me out you know.”

Y/n shakes her head, “Nope, you’re the boyfriend. So you’ve got to ask me out.”

Jennifer huffs in faux-annoyance, “Fine, I’ll ask you out, but you’re explaining it to Needy.”

Y/n pecks her lips again, “Deal.”

[dollfacefantasy]

dark and mean Rick X whiny reader, s5 beard era??? (Ugh loveee😩) maybe reader annoyed him so he fucks her attitude away<3

NO BACK TALK ♡

pairing: rick grimes x bratty!fem!reader

cw: nsfw (18+), p in v, brat taming, age gap (20s, late 30s), daddy kink

a/n: brat tamer rick you know that's my shit 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫 thank you for the request <33

"What was it? What were you saying back there?" Rick's raspy voice huffs against your ear.

A shiver goes down your spine as his hot breath lands on your skin. Sharp contrast to the cool night air all around. Your body is already shaky enough from his hips' brutal thrusts against your ass.

He has you pinned against the back wall of the church, split open on his cock. This spot is close enough to the safety of the group while providing the privacy he needs to have his way with you. Your cheek squishes against the wood, a small stream of drool trickling South on your chin.

"N-nothing," you whimper, "Was just trying to tell you- ah! Just wanted to tell you..."

Your voice trails off as the sentiment of your point becomes less important than the bliss Rick's length is battering into you. Soft moans drift from your lips as your mouth hangs open. He tuts and shakes his head, pressing more of his weight into you and rutting against your backside with more force.

"You're still tryin' to talk back?" he asks, "Still think you had a reason to give me all that attitude?"

"I said I was sorry," you whine, bottom lip jutting out on instinct.

This is the game you play with Rick. You're sure by now everyone else is sick of being unwilling bystanders to it, but you can never get enough. Ever since you met the older man, the two of you mixed together like a stray match in a keg of gunpowder.

He tries his hardest to lead this group. You know that's true. But life fucking sucks in the apocalypse. It's not your fault if you get a little fed up with things sometimes.

You take it out on him cause it's easy. You disagree with his plans without coming up with any of your own. You complain about assignments you're given. You whine about the lack of supplies and direction. You roll your eyes and sigh during minor disagreements while nearly throwing a fit for larger ones.

For the first six months he knew you, it drove him fucking crazy. He went to sleep at night dreading waking up because he knew he'd have to deal with you the next day. At one point, he was convinced that he'd die of high blood pressure before any walker got the chance to kill him.

But then he figured out the secret to dealing with you. It wasn't too long before the prison fell that he learned this little trick. The two of you were the only ones awake, and you had another huge fight about some inconsequential bullshit. He was supremely frustrated. You weren't showing any signs of conceding that you were being ridiculous either.

It's like a blur in his memory now, the way he pinned you against the hard brick wall. He tore open the tiny shorts you had on. And that was when he learned. Your pretty little pussy was like your control center. He just had to hit the right buttons to bring you back to normal.

Now when you act up, he gives you the chance to fix it. You'll say something in that pitchy tone of voice and pout at him, and he'll raise a brow. He'll ask you to repeat yourself. If you continue the challenge, he still tries to be civil and talk you down. But once you push too far, you end up with a firm hand wrapped around your wrist, dragging you away from the rest of the group.

That's what happened tonight.

He scoffs at your assertion that you'd apologized. "You said sorry when you realized you were in trouble," he grumbles.

His fingers dig into your waist, feeling the soft skin left exposed by your t-shirt that's riding up. Your toes curl inside your sneakers while your fingernails scrape against the chipping paint of the church's paneling.

"I still meant it," you insist.

"If you're so sorry, tell me why I have to teach you this same fuckin' lesson over and over again," he growls.

"I dunno... cause you didn't do it good enough the first time?" you offer.

He gives your hip a smack for that and shoves you harder against the wall with a forearm across your back. You can feel the cool silver of his watch on your shoulder blade. Your tits are just as smooshed as your cheek is now. You whine in response, your feet floundering against the dirt below, but he keeps fucking into you hard.

"Cute. Keep talking back like that and see where it gets you," he says.

"I was just joking, daddy," you respond with a little sniffle for maximum impact.

"Oh, I'm daddy now?" he mocks. Neither of your attempts at sympathy seem to have struck a chord. "I'm daddy when you want me to be nice to you, but not any other time. Do I have that right?"

"Nuh uh..."

"Yeah. You won't listen to me. Won't do anything I ask without givin' me hell. But the second you get tired of taking it like a big girl, I'm your daddy," he taunts.

You squeak as he yanks your hips against his pelvis particularly hard. His tip rams right into that sweet, spongy spot inside you. It knocks the breath from your lungs. Your knees start to buckle beneath you.

He watches as you really begin to slip. With a sigh, he pulls his cock out of your dripping hole. You whine about that too, of course, but you don't have time to complain before he flips you around and hooks his hands behind your knees. He folds you in half against the wall and slides right back into the slick heat of your cunt. His hips rock against you like they never stopped.

"Look at you. You think you have any right to question me when you can't even stand up on your own? When y'need daddy to do everything for you," he mutters.

You mewl and arch your back, but he keeps you exactly where he wants you. His shaft slams into you over and over, chasing the feeling of your walls clamping down on it. You can't fight back against what he's saying cause any semblance of cohesive argument has been fucked right out of you.

"Did-didn't mean it," you choke out.

"Then say sorry like you mean it," he breathes.

He pumps into you harder and deeper, making it difficult for you to answer. But you try your best because you're getting close, and after you cum, it'll be damn near impossible.

"I- I'm sorry, daddy. Didn't mean to make you mad. I'll try to be good and listen," you say before a whine cracks your voice and causes your head to drop forward.

He nudges your face up with his nose before rewarding you with a kiss. "That's my girl," he mumbles, "Gonna listen for me. Accept that you don't know what's best, hm? That you need me to take care of you and make the decisions?"

You nod with your quivering lip and glossy eyes.

That gets a little smirk on his lips, and he kisses your pout once more. His hand snakes around to thumb at your clit. The rapid fire swipes are all you need to topple over the edge and let go. You tense up and cover your own mouth, muffling your cries with your palm.

"There you go. Let it out," he grunts.

He grits his teeth, holding on long enough to fuck you through your high. As soon as you start to come down though, he pulls out and spills his seed onto the dirt beneath you.

His body shudders against yours, another set of harsh breaths blowing against your neck. You lean your head against his. The sweat that dampens his scalp smears on your cheek.

The both of you hold the position for a few moments longer before beginning to untangle. He sets you back on the ground, keeping his hands on your waist until he's sure you're stable. You pull your discarded shorts back on and adjust your shirt while he zips himself up.

When you're put together again, he grabs your wrist like he'd done earlier but with a more gentle touch. He pulls you flush against his body and encircles you with his arms, keeping you pressed to his chest. His hand rubs up and down your back in soothing strokes.

"My baby. All tuckered out and settled down for me now, yeah?" he whispers.

You nod, your eyes already feeling droopy with the calm that comes after release. His embrace is so warm it lulls you further into this docile, dreamy state.

Rick rolls his eyes again, but there's not as much irritation this time. A good fuck mellows him out just like it does you. Plus, in moments like these, he can admit to himself that he has a small soft spot for his little brat.

He sways back and forth with you for a few moments, planting occasional kisses on the top of your head.

"You gonna behave when we go back inside?" he murmurs.

"Yeah," you answer softly.

"That's my girl," he says, patting your ass before turning you loose. He lets you walk back around to the entrance first. While he has a great time putting you back in line, these trysts aren't really something he wants the whole group being hyper aware of. It's after a few minutes have gone by that he heads in himself, ready to mix back in with everyone else as if nothing had happened.

[lovebugism]

📼  ; ONCE BITTEN, TWICE SHY | 1/2

summary: by the summer of 1987, eddie munson has mastered the art of dying and coming back to life again. but worse than that: he can't seem to stop running into the pretty lifeguard from hawkins community pool. the grumpy ol' vampire slowly learns to love sunshine in the afterlife. (23k)

pairing: vampire!eddie munson / ditzy!sunshine!reader

contents: fem!reader, strangers to friends to lovers, fluff, hurt/comfort, extreme canon divergence (most of the events of st3 and st4 still happen but starcourt is still standing, some people aren't dead, etc.) (i'm just here to have fun, honestly) cw for mentions of grief and ptsd, mentions of blood

( best listened with headphones, full fic playlist here )

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

          she lives in the place in the side of our lives

          where nothing is ever put straight . . .

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

Being a vampire sucks.

No pun intended.

Eddie Munson’s too tired for puns. He’s too tired for most things, really.

That’s what they don’t tell you about being a vampire — it’s not nearly as cool as The Lost Boys make it seem. He isn’t any stronger now than he was the night he died. He isn’t any faster, either. And if he’s capable of shape-shifting into a bat, he hasn’t tried because the thought of becoming the thing that killed him feels like more of a purgatory than what he’s been doomed to already. 

He didn’t even get a cool cape out of it, which is more of a bite than anything, honestly. 

No pun intended.

All Eddie’s got to show for his death are the patches of marred skin on his stomach to prove it. And a couple of pointy teeth — which, so far, have only tasted his own flesh because he’s bitten his lip with them more times than he can count. And, yeah, maybe he’s got a heightened sense or two, but that’s it. It’s not nearly as cool as it sounds, either. Enhanced hearing and sense of smell are just code for being constantly overstimulated.

Eddie misses being alive. He misses not knowing what blood tastes like. He misses forgetting to eat all day and accidentally having ice cream for a first meal — which he’d then scarf down like a man starved until it inevitably made him sick, so that he could then complain about how sick he felt. 

He misses the consequences of humanhood because now he’s half-corpse, half-god — a dizzying mixture for a boy who used to just be somebody’s kid.

And what does Eddie do to cope with it all? He gets his weekly mint-chip cone at Scoops Ahoy.

Steve passes the ice cream over the counter with a kinder smile than Eddie’s used to. His skin is freckled and golden against the dark navy of his uniform. So full of life. The child’s sailor outfit hasn’t stopped being funny, but Eddie scowls at him ‘cause he’s jealous. He’s never been anything but pale, even before death, but he can’t exactly catch a tan now, can he?

“You look good,” Steve Harrington observes, distant but meaningful. 

The wild-haired boy ahead of him doesn’t seem nearly as poorly as he did a day or so ago, when he looked somehow more like death than the day he actually died. He’s got his usual color back now. A telltale sign of a recent feeding.

Eddie flashes the boy a dubious, brown-eyed glance. “Are you flirting with me?” he jokes with his ringed fingers curled around the waffle cone, too monotoned to sound as playful as he means.

Steve’s face screws. “No.”

“Damn.”

“See! That’s what I’m talking about!” the brunette proclaims proudly, waving an accusatory finger in the other boy’s direction. “Eddie from yesterday wouldn’t have made that joke. Eddie from yesterday wouldn’t have said anything, actually.”

“Well, Eddie From Yesterday, hadn’t eaten in two weeks,” the boy deadpans. (He isn’t talking about food, either). “And Eddie From Yesterday was so exhausted and filled with an inhuman rage that death was funnier than making stupid jokes.”

Steve tries not to cower at his faux-seriousness. “Touché,” he nods.

Eddie hands the boy the last bill in his wallet. Steve makes out his change and, like a total idiot, dumps a dime onto his palm. The silver hits his skin like a drop of acid rain or molten lava. Eddie winces at the burn, hissing through his teeth as he jerks his singed hand back. 

“Why are you giving me dimes, man?!” he shouts over the sound of clattering coins.

“Shit!” Steve grimaces. “Sorry, dude— I forgot.”

“Oh, you forgot?” Eddie bites in a mocking tone.

“Yeah! Sorry if I can’t remember everything about—” Steve pauses his rant to peer around the shop with cautious eyes. He quietens. “—Vampires, alright? Sue me.”

Eddie watches the boy scramble to gather scattered coins –– coth hat askew on his head, scarlet tie in his way. The sight alone makes him laugh. A sharp exhale through his nose, but a laugh nonetheless. “You know what? How ‘bout just keep the change?”

“You keep the damn change,” Steve grumbles under his breath.

“Nice one.”

“Shut up.”

Eddie takes a big bite from his fresh scoop. He lets the sharp peppermint and deep chocolate concoction melt in his mouth. The strange combination was always the best distraction from the coppery tang of blood lingering on his tongue. 

Distracts because the metallic taste never quite leaves him, no matter how often he washes his mouth out. The taste of death always persists. Not in a poetic way, though. It’s more like a mouthful of old pennies.

Only problem is, he can’t really taste it now — the tart mint-chip or the pint of blood he’d choked down yesterday afternoon. The sensuous scent of hibiscus lilts along an otherwise still breeze, sudden and very overwhelming. It’s powdery and floral, rich and fruity. A fragrance sweet enough to make him ill, and it’s accompanied by the rhythmic flip-flop, flip-flop of rubber sandals.

Eddie glances mindlessly over his shoulder, then nearly breaks his neck at the force of his double-take. The candied scent, he finds, belongs undoubtedly to the pretty face behind him.

You saunter into the ice cream shop like a rolling summer cloud — with a walk that’s as soft and delicate as you look. There’s something thaumaturgical in the honeyed atmosphere that follows you in, still unceremoniously punctuated by the flip-flop, flip-flop sound of your shoes against the linoleum.

You are, unsurprisingly, as pretty as the raspberry, marshmallow, lily-of-the-valley scent radiating from your sunkissed skin. There is much of it on display now, and what little is covered is hardly left to the imagination.

Straight from a shift at Hawkins Community Pool, your mandated uniform clings perfectly to your torso — a pretty, scarlet one-piece that scoops deeply at the chest. Stamped on the center is a pool floatie and two surfboards that make a more summery skull-and-crossbones shape. ‘Lifeguard’ is written just beneath it, right over the swell of your breasts.

You wear a pleated skirt on your lower half to match. The bouncy fabric rests scandalously, and perhaps unintentionally, low on your hips. A faint sliver of your skin is showcased in a way that drives him hopelessly wild. And you’ve paired it all with a pair of too-big sunglasses on your head and a cherry sucker in your mouth. 

Effortless. A total cakewalk of perfection.

Eddie Munson and Steve Harrington have never known much about either. 

The latter is still trying to dump change into the tip jar when he goes to greet you. Your eyes link, the words get stuck in his throat, and the coins scatter to the laminate all over again. Steve tries to catch them at first before realizing how utterly uncool he must look. He makes a bigger fool of himself by just letting them fall.

“Hey. Hi. Wel—Welcome to Scoops Ahoy,” the brunette clears his throat. He props his hands along the countertop and feels a rogue penny stick to his clammy palm. “You’re not lost, are you?”

Steve forces a lopsided smile at his sorry excuse for a joke. Eddie rolls his eyes. You blink at him and pluck the cherry sucker from your mouth — which has left your lips softly swollen and tinted a rosier shade.

“This is where pretty boys in tiny sailor outfits sell ice cream, right?”

Your deadpan expression makes it difficult to gauge whether or not you’re joking. Steve’s face glows red at the sort-of compliment. He nods rapidly until the words catch up to him. “Yeah— Yeah, it— It is, actually.”

You smile at him, tightlipped and warm. It fills the windowless shop with glittering sunbeams. “Then can I have a scoop of rainbow sherbet, please?”

Steve raps his knuckles against the counter and nods again. “Yep. Coming right up.”

Eddie takes another hearty bite of his ice cream while you linger at his side — a couple of feet away but feeling much closer than that. As the minty chocolate melts slow on his tongue, all he can taste is the fruity-floral scent of you. 

It makes his head go all swimmy because he knows your blood must taste the same. Like velvet. Or an expensive red wine people spend half a fortune on. He can hear the soft wooshing of your heart, too. Soft and unhurried. Gentle like an ebbing and flowing tide.

He shouldn’t be thinking this way, he knows. He fed yesterday; he should be feeling halfway normal by now. But your scent is dizzying still, and much stronger than Eddie figures it should be. If he’d met you a day or more ago, when the need for a feeding was quite literally eating him alive, he’s not sure he would’ve been able to contain himself.

He doesn’t think he would’ve hurt you, per se — because he hasn’t actually hurt anyone yet. Not in this stage of his afterlife, anyway. But it would’ve taken all the waning strength left in him to stop himself from doing something unthinkable. And that thought alone is somehow more terrifying than death.

Neither, however, is as scary as your gaze meeting his. 

Your eyes lock, and only then does Eddie realize how long he’s been staring. His blood runs cold. Cold-er. An eon blinks as he tries to recover from his hopeless leering. (He’s just as useless as Steve The Hair Harrington, turns out).

“Hi…” he murmurs through a mouthful of mint-chip once he realizes he’s got nothing else to say. How’s a freak like him meant to talk to someone like you? A walking fairytale of ethereal chaos?

You move the cherry sucker to the pocket of your cheek with your tongue. Through it, you mumble, “Yeah. I guess I am.”

Eddie laughs before he means to. His pink lips curl into a smile, and the inside of the delicate skin scrapes the fangs threatening to poke through his gums. They fit just perfectly over his canines, typically veiled by his gums until it’s time to feed. Or until he’s faced with a pretty girl who smells like Heaven and looks just the same, apparently.

He hides his grin behind his fist and scoffs a breathy laugh.

Your face twists in a delicate look of confusion. “Why’s that funny?” you question once you’ve plucked the piece of candy from your mouth.

His smile ebbs instantly. “Oh. It’s… It’s not— It’s not funny, actually,” he stammers, chocolate eyes wide and round like a pair of buttons.

Your frown deepens. “So you don’t think I’m funny?”

“No, it’s— it’s not that I don’t think you’re funny, I just— I think that—” Eddie stumbles over himself trying to get the words out. He inhales deeply through his nose and swallows hard. “I’m a little confused, honestly…”

There’s a brief moment of silence that passes like minutes. 

There’s something distinctly wild in your unwavering stare. It possesses a sort of magnetism that makes it impossible to look away from — though Eddie desperately, desperately wishes he could. But because he can’t take his eyes off you or the fire swimming laps in your irises, he catches a flicker in your gaze. A flame. A spark.

A smile quirks at the very corner of your mouth before a brighter beam blooms there. A sunshine sort of giggle sputters past your lips. “Oh, gosh— You should see your face right now,” you manage through a fit of laughter, swatting his shoulder with your free hand (a little harder than he thinks you mean to.) “I’m just kidding! Seriously. You can laugh now. It’s okay.”

Eddie doesn’t find it all that funny anymore, but your gaze is pretty and expectant, so he forces out a faint laugh just to appease you. He gapes in confusion the second you look away.

You’re a strange thing. Pretty, yes. But still very, very strange.

When Steve passes you a rainbow scoop on a waffle cone, you fish a crumbled bill from the chest of your swimsuit. The boy takes it with a trembling hand — like touching the cash is touching you in some way — and struggles to recall basic arithmetic when he makes out your change. 

Eddie watches you savor one last taste of your diminishing sucker, lips curled around the lolly before popping audibly off of it. “Is there a trashcan—” you ask and glance around the shop.

“There’s one back here,” Steve offers mindlessly. “I can chuck it.”

Your hands brush when he takes the paper stick between careful fingers. Silky sunkissed skin sweeping against silky sunkissed skin. 

Eddie’s almost jealous. He wishes he could touch you in such an innocent, accidental way — or anyone, really. But his blood stopped circulating about a year or so ago, and he’s had a glacial disposition about him ever since. Sometimes, when he’s just freshly fed, he feels sort of warm. Sort of normal. But that only lasts about an hour or so before his skin goes wintry and grey again.

“Thanks,” you lilt with a kind grin, sandals squeaking as you step back from the counter. You arch a brow, and the sweet smile turns suddenly mischievous. “And don’t worry about the change. I’d hate for you to make a bigger mess.”

You tilt your head and take a kitten lick of your scoop, fighting back a giggle when the sailor boy gapes at you. You spin around and flip-flop, flip-flop out of the ice cream shop — back to whatever fairytale you came from.

The scent of ripe fruit and freshly-cut flowers leaves with you, along with the lavender haze Eddie had been swimming in since he saw you. Drowning in, more like.

Steve laughs at your sort-of joke until the mist passes. Only then does he seem to notice the coins still scattered across the countertop and the half-eaten sucker in his hand. His fluffy brows pinch together in a very evident confusion — like he’s just woken up from a dream.

“…What the hell was that?” he muses after a few long moments.

Eddie shrugs and takes another bite of his half-gone scoop, tasting it for the very first time now that you’re gone. “No idea,” he answers through the mouthful.

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

          once you get it, you never wanna quit (no, no)

          after you've had it, you're in an awful fix. . .

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

Eddie finds you again several minutes later. Not between the pages of a fantasy book, but on a lone bench by the bus stop. 

You finish your rainbow sherbet in silence, people-watching behind a big pair of Sharon Tate-style sunglasses. The sight of you alone makes him trip over his feet, like you’ve got your own gravitational pull that makes him stumble on thin air just to be closer to you.

“Oh—” The huff spills accidentally from his mouth when his sneakers scuff the pavement.

It garners your attention accordingly as you turn slowly towards him. You lift your sunglasses to your head again, just to squint at the vividity of the golden hour. You flash the boy an ice-cream-stained smile, tight-lipped and warmer than the setting sun — like he’s one of your old friends who deserves to be looked at so kindly. (He’s neither.)

“Hello!” you greet brightly as you lift the waffle cone to your mouth. You take another bite and add through the mouthful. “Again.”

“You’re still here?” Eddie squints, ‘cause he’s not sure what else to say.

“I’m on lunch—” you answer, slightly slurred through the melting ice cream on your tongue. A milky drop of pink and orange falls to the side of your thumb, and you lick it away mid-sentence. “—Late shift.”

Eddie hums with a slow nod, squinting one eye to block the sun. 

His pale skin buzzes, even under his leather jacket and dark thrifted tee. It isn’t because he’s hot, though. He hasn’t broken a sweat — not even swaddled in the ninety-degree evening — because he lost the ability to somewhere between getting eaten alive and rising from the dead. 

The sunlight just makes him feel a bit weaker than usual. Hungrier, too. And he hates being hungry because it makes him feel viciously ravenous. Like a total barbarian. Cruel and angry and inhuman. So he tries to stay out of the sun when he can.

He knows he should start plotting his way out now, but talking to you is like getting caught in a spider’s web. He gets all tangled in his words, netted in his want to impress you. He ends up superglued in a trap he isn’t totally sure he wants to get out of.

“Must be a slow day then, huh?” Eddie jokes dryly.

Your face twists. “Hm?” you wonder wordlessly as your tongue darts to the corner of your mouth.

“I just meant that— You’re a lifeguard and everything, right? And you— You’re dry, so… There must not have been a ton of lives to save today,” the boy explains, gesturing wildly with ringed hands. He laughs at himself and sticks the trembling limbs into his jacket pockets. “That’s… That’s what I meant.”

You don’t seem to notice his sudden floundering, or the way he can hardly make out an intelligible sentence when you’re looking directly at him. He can’t tell if you’re just kind enough to ignore it or if you’re just totally aloof. He hopes for the latter.

“It’s a lot less swimming than you’d expect, honestly,” you confess as you analyze the melting cone in your hand. You twist your wrist with your face pinched in concentration — like deciding whether to bite into the pink, green, or orange bit is that intense. “It’s just a lot of, like, blowing whistles... And walking around…”

You choose the raspberry pink side in the end, crunching as you bite into the waffle cone.

Eddie nods in response — not because he’s really heard you, but because he feels like he sort of understands you in some way now. You were sweet raspberry in the flesh. The color pink incarnate. Gold and glittering, like the sunset was fashioned in your likeness.

But then you smile up at him, with crispy wafer crumbs clinging to the raspberry-lime-orange concoction on your mouth, and the moment feels a lot less poetic than that.

“Sometimes I just wanna be like, ‘Jeez— Can’t one of you fuckers at least try to drown or something? God,” you mock in an accent that’s hardly your own, giggling at yourself halfway through. 

You flash Eddie another expectant smile. Grinning with all your teeth as you wait for him to laugh with you.

It takes him a second too long to force another chuckle — still trying to gauge how serious you are — but you don’t seem to mind. “Right. Well, uh… Here’s hoping, right?” Eddie quips with a crooked smile, lifting his right hand to flash his crossed fingers.

You giggle louder at that. Laughing with him, and not at him, for the first time since he started making a fool of himself in front of you. 

His chest swells like he’s still got a functioning heart hiding there. It’s sparkling and warm, full of pride, almost like he’s alive again. Truly alive. He realizes, then, that he never wants to stop making you laugh.

When your giggling ceases, you hum a contented sigh and take another sloppy bite of your ice cream cone.

Eddie watches you — unblinking, like a total freak — and tries to figure out if he made you up in his head. 

You were like a fairy-tale princess come to life. An enchanted form of imagination, slightly childlike and effortlessly romantic in a way. You were the kind of girl who held butterflies on the tip of her finger, who reached out to touch the stars at night, who shared her secrets with the moon when no one else would listen.

You’re the kind of thing that only exists in dreams. You have no real sense of reality, accordingly, which Eddie thinks only proves his point.

With sunshine glittering in the strands of your hair, your eyes flit back to his. Eddie averts his gaze suddenly (and very obviously) from yours, but if you’re perturbed by his leering, you don’t show it.

Instead, you look at him the same way you’ve been looking at him this whole time — like you’ve got a world of magic secrets hidden in your eyes. Like you want him to come searching for every single one of them.

“Did you— Did you walk here, or…?” the boy trails off, eyes falling to your rubber sandals. 

He hopes you hadn’t. It’s far too hot, and the pool is quite a few blocks from here. From what little he’s learned about you, though, he figures you’re probably crazy enough not to care.

“Bus,” you answer plainly, pausing mid-bite.

Eddie blinks. “The buses stopped running a half hour ago… You know that, right?”

You freeze. Melted ice cream pools at the edges of your mouth. A very loud answer, even in its silence. 

There’s a very audible crunch-ing sound as you chew through the too-big bite. You bring your palm to your chin to catch rogue crumbs and blink up at Eddie with wide eyes. 

“…What?” you wonder pitifully in response. Though, with your mouth still full, it sounds more like a deep, muffled, and utterly pathetic, “Wah—?”

“They stop running here at six-thirty.”

You swallow, face screwed.“Why?”

Eddie shrugs. “Beats me.”

You turn away — staring far off at the parking lot but looking at nothing, really. Eddie feels like he can finally breathe now, without your eyes strangling him.

He watches you go deep in thought and wishes he could see what the inside of your mind looks like. He imagines it’s full of confetti. Wild, glittering thoughts and a handful of sparkling confetti.

“Well…” you huff after a few moments, a deep and whimsical sigh. You look down at the melting cone in your fist and try to find a silver lining in the swirls of pastel colors. “‘Least the ice cream’s good.”

“Are you gonna walk?” Eddie wonders aloud as his chest pinches with misplaced worry. He crosses his leather-clad arms over himself in a feeble attempt to soothe the ache there — to smother his palpable empathy, which makes him feel like your burden is his to carry. 

He doesn’t have to. Carry it, that is. It’s not like you’re not asking him to. But he can’t ignore the overwhelming urge to help you — this strange, elven princess who needs rescue by a lowly bard way out of his element. It’s an instinct that borders on primal.

“Do I have a choice?” you respond rhetorically. Eddie shrugs and you shrug back, unfazed. “I can walk. The sunset’s pretty… And there’s a dog park on the way there, so… That’ll be fun, I guess.”

Eddie’s dark eyes flit to the sky, where the sun’s slow descent paints the wispy clouds in vivid colors of blush and honey. He understands the simple beauty of it but rarely ever gives it a passing glance.

He spends most of his sunsets inside, hiding from the pretty golden hour behind closed curtains. He cowers under his blankets like a child (‘cause his tiny square window is west-facing, painfully so) and tries to tell himself that he’s not as hungry as he feels.

That he’s not hungry at all.

That he’s still normal.

Eddie looks back to you a moment later, features twisted with uncertainty. “I’m pretty sure the park’s gated after sunset…”

You don’t ask him how he knows that, and he’s grateful. He figures you must assume that he’s got a dog of his own, which is a lie he’s happy to stick to. 

It’s better than admitting that Jim Hopper nearly caught him dealing a couple years back and had to make a quick escape through the park — where he then had to hop a locked fence he didn’t know was there. It wouldn’t have been so embarrassing if he hadn’t rolled directly into dog shit when he fell to the ground. That’s a secret he’ll take to the grave. 

If the Chief takes mercy on him, anyway.

“Well… The sunset’s still pretty,” you conclude with another sigh, because at least that can’t be taken from you. 

Eddie watches you take another bite and makes a very pointed decision not to tell you that that’ll be gone soon, too. By the time you walk back to work, the sky will be a muddy mixture of orange and lilac and navy. Hardly a thing worth looking at.

He lets you revel in your little nothings anyway.

“I should— I should probably go. I have a… thing to get to, so…” he trails off, chuckling at his own hopelessness. His worn sneakers scuff the pavement when he steps back from you. He scratches at the small curls twisted at the nape of his neck and tries to find the words to say goodbye. “Uh— Have a good rest of your shift, I guess. Hope it’s more… eventful.”

You smile at his stammering and his poor excuse for a joke. 

“Thanks,” you nod. “Have fun with your… thing.”

Eddie nods once. His smile wavers only slightly when he turns away. His cheeks puff as he exhales a deep breath — which he hadn’t realized he’d been holding until now. 

He stops short at the edge of the sidewalk. Doesn’t even make it off the fucking curb before his guilty conscience catches up with him. It stops him like a force field and weighs heavy on his chest with a similar strength.

He turns quickly again, curls whipping around his face. “Do you… Do you want a ride?” he blurts with a squint in his deep chocolate eyes. 

The offer is hardly from the kindness of his unbeating heart. He just wants to make himself feel better, if he’s honest. He wants you to decline, actually — so then he’d be alone, and his conscience would still be clear.

Your eyes widen softly at his offer. You shift on the hard bench. It squeaks quietly under your weight. 

“Well, I— I wouldn’t— I wouldn’t wanna intrude,” you tell him, stumbling over your words for the first time in front of him.

Something about it, how shy you’ve suddenly gone, makes you feel a bit more human compared to the glittering creature Eddie made of you in his head.

The boy shrugs. “You wouldn’t be.”

“No?”

“No. It’s just… on the way…” Eddie insists, sighing to himself, because Hawkins Pool most definitely is out of his way. “So, you know… It’s no problem.”

There is a beat of fleeting silence, filled only by a whispering summer breeze and muddled conversation from distant mall-goers. Eddie’s eyes dart over your features, twisted softly with a faraway look of worry. 

The anticipation has his heart in his throat. He isn’t sure now what answer he wants to hear. Both might equally break his heart. A double-edged sword.

Your chest deflates with a dramatic sigh of relief. A lazy smile tugs at the corners of your mouth. “Okay. Good. ‘Cause I didn’t wanna be, like, too eager, you know? But that would be… super duper nice.”

“Good thing I’m a super duper nice person then, huh?” Eddie jokes with a tightlipped smile, which ebbs into a scowl the moment he turns away from you. 

He becomes a storm cloud of annoyance as he stalks across the parking lot. Less so because of you and more so because of his deep-rooted sensitivity, where everyone else’s emotions demand to be felt by him and him alone.

It’s a very strange thing, indeed: to be dead and yet still carry the crushing empathy of a person with a bleeding heart.

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

         real to real is living rarity, people stop and stare at me

          we just walk on by, we just keep on dreaming . . .

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

Eddie doesn’t look back to make sure you’re following him. He knows you are. He can tell by your lingering strawberry-vanilla scent, and your rhythmic footsteps in rubber sandals that trail just behind him. The incessant flip-flop, flip-flop, flip-flop quickens as you rush to keep up with his longer strides, trying hopelessly to finish your ice cream and talk at the same time.

“Adam— my manager— he’s such a hardass. Like, if I was late today, he definitely would’ve fired me,” you ramble and crunch hard into your cone. “Well… maybe not fire me… ‘Cause we’re kinda short-staffed right now— But he definitely would’ve given me a lecture! Like, dude, just because your dad owns the joint, doesn’t mean you have any actual authority over me, you know?”

You giggle loudly at yourself. Eddie just nods in response, barely listening, and not bothering to glance back at you.

You continue anyway, through a mouthful, no less. “Except, he kinda does have some authority, I guess. Since, you know, he’s the one who signs my checks and everything, but… You know what I mean.”

The boy ahead of you stops suddenly in place. Your sandals scuff the pavement to keep from running into the back of him. He turns to face you, brunette curls flouncing, and your heart skips at the proximity. He’s much too pretty for anything else.

You can smell the cologne spritzed on his neck from here. A high-pitched and very boyish cedarwood that makes him somehow more endearing. There’s something floral in it, too — perhaps from the conditioner making his hair all shiny. And the subtle powdery scent, you figure, comes from his old Back Sabbath tee. An evident hand-me-down of some sort. 

You can see more of him like this without having to ogle like a creep. His brown eyes are so dark they’re almost black, but you can see flecks of gold in them, too. His pronounced nose is dotted with pores and faint freckles you think you could count if he let you. There are a couple of spots on his jaw, too — some still red, others already scared over — that make his scowling face more youthful.

He’s got a couple of dark circles under his eyes, which you think means he doesn’t get as much sleep as he should. He’s got a pair of perpetual smile lines beside his mouth, too, which must mean he laughs a lot (even if he isn’t now). And he’s got a subtle furrow between his bushy brows ‘cause he’s totally the quiet, observant type.

You’d like to think you’re taking a closer look at him than anyone else in Hawkins ever has. Where they see a freak with crazy hair and a dangerous attitude, you see an old soul with young eyes and a wild mind.

“Is this you?” you wonder aloud, with ice cream clinging to the corners of your mouth.

Eddie lifts his hand and taps the key fob twice. The rusted tin can behind him unlocks with a hearty ca-chunk. He fakes a tight-lipped smile, “Yep.”

You rush around the hood then, hurrying for the passenger seat and struggling to finish the rest of your ice cream. Eddie eyes you expectantly as he lifts himself onto the chipped pleather of the driver’s side. His deadpan face twists with amusement as you inhale the remaining bits of your ice cream.

Your eyes go wide when you catch him staring, cheeks jutted like a chipmunk’s. You wipe your mouth with the back of your hand, then swipe your palms together. “Sorry— Sorry, I didn’t—” you swallow hard and try not to choke. “I didn’t wanna get ice cream all over your van.”

A laugh sputters from Eddie’s mouth, a more boyish sound than you thought he was capable of, and he hurries to cover his mouth with his fist. He can feel the sharp stinging of his fangs as they stab slowly through his gums, more prominent now that you’re so close to him — smelling as sweet as you look.

“Well, this isn’t exactly a sports car,” he scoffs. “I don’t think you have to worry about that.”

You swallow down the rest and hop in beside him. The faux leather of the passenger seat has grown distressed with time, sticking to your sunkissed thighs where your skirt doesn’t reach and poking you in places. The smell of his cologne stains the interior, along with a more subtle, skunkier scent.

You have to tug extra hard on the seatbelt — once, twice, and then a third time — before it gives.

Eddie sticks the key into the ignition and twists. A heavy metal guitar solo blares suddenly through the speakers, rattling the old van and making both of you lurch with a momentary panic. 

“Shit!” the boy curses as he reaches for the blasting radio. He turns down the volume with pale, lanky fingers, wide eyes flitting from the console to the pavement as he peels out of the Starcourt lot. “Shit… Sorry.”

You shrug a bare shoulder. “It’s okay. I listen to my music loud, too. I’m pretty sure I’ve blown out the headphones to at least two Walkmans by now.”

“Yeah?” Eddie hums with a lazy smile. “What kinda stuff stuff do you listen to?”

You purse your lips to the side and avert your gaze as you ponder the question. “Van Halen, definitely… Dio and Def Leppard occasionally— oh, and don’t even get me started on Ozzy Osbourne.”

Eddie feels like his heart’s in his throat. It settles there and makes it hard to breathe while his anxious hands fidget on the steering wheel.

You can’t be this pretty and like all the music he likes. It’s just not fair. It’s like the universe is trying to kill him. (Even though it kinda already did that once.)

“Are you joking?” he wonders aloud, laughing with furrowed brows. His chocolate eyes dart from you, to the winding road before him, and back again. The soft smile on your lips blossoms into a more mischievous thing, and he nods slowly to himself. “You’re… You’re joking, right?”

“I might’ve been looking at your cassettes, yeah.”

Eddie’s gaze flits downward to where he keeps his tapes stacked in a cubby beneath the console. His chest aches with a distant embarrassment. “Right…” he huffs.

“Real answer?” you offer with a twinkle in your eye, spinning in the seat to face him more. You tuck your feet beneath you and count each name on your fingers. “Cyndi Lauper, Madonna, ABBA, and Blondie. That’s my top four— Not in that order, though! I love them all equally.”

“That makes… a lot more sense.”

“Do you have any of their tapes we could listen to?”

Eddie scoffs a faint laugh until he realizes you’re being serious. His tightlipped smile ebbs as he answers, “I can’t say that I do. No.”

“That’s too bad,” you huff and slouch further in the passenger seat. You gaze out the window with a faraway look in your eyes and start rambling before you mean to.

“I’ll let you bum one of mine, if you want. You can borrow my copy of Arrival, that’s one of my favorites! My most favorites. Or Super Trouper, maybe. I love that one, too...” You deflate with a heavy sigh. “Shit. I can’t decide— Which one do you prefer?”

Eddie stammers for an answer. He feels like you’re barely speaking his language.

“Screw it. I’ll just make you a mixtape,” you decide firmly. “It’s impossible to pick just one.”

Eddie nods wordlessly to himself, unconvinced that he’ll ever actually see you again — like this, anyway. With you making a home in the passenger seat of his van, which has never known a pretty girl like you before now.

“You could always swing by the pool if you want,” you offer with a hopeful grin. “Adam lets me man the radio sometimes.”

“Does he?” Eddie hums indifferently.

“When I wear my bikini, yeah.”

His face screws at the thought of someone taking advantage of you in that way, with you perhaps too gullible to understand. “Well, Adam sounds like a dickwad,” he grumbles and shifts his grip on the steering wheel.

“A massive dickwad,” you giggle like it’s your first time ever using the phrase. “One time, I played my Billy Joel tape, and he called it pedestrian. Pedestrian! Not only is that, like, totally sacrilegious or whatever, but it’s also extremely pretentious. Just call it lame or something, you sound arrogant.”

When your rambling ceases, you can hear Eddie laughing. Really laughing. Not just that weird breathy sound he keeps making. It spills from his mouth like sunshine, though he tries to stifle it with a fist pressed to his mouth. And even though you don’t remember saying anything particularly funny, you laugh alongside him.

“Why do you cover your smile when you laugh?” 

“Why do I do what?”

“You always put your hand over your mouth when you smile,” you observe with a curious squint. “Did you know that?”

Eddie’s tongue darts over his protruding fangs, which peek in faint slivers from his pink gums now. You would only see them if you checked his mouth like a dog, but he gets self-conscious about it, anyway.

“No. I didn’t. Must be an old habit, I guess,” he stammers, lying through his teeth as he turns into the parking lot of Hawkins Community Pool. 

The crowd there has seemingly ebbed with the setting sun, which he’s grateful for. He stays on the far edges of the property still, lest he draw any unwanted attention. ‘Cause the only thing more recognizable than his wild hair is the tin can he rides around in.

His ringed hands curl around the gear stick. The van jerks softly when he puts it in park. Eddie clears his throat. “We’re, uh— We’re here.”

You get distracted easily, and he’s grateful for that, too. You drop the conversation entirely as you reach for the seatbelt. The buckle clicks when you unfasten it. “Thanks for the ride, Eddie,” you chirp with a pretty smile.

His head snaps in your direction with enough force to give him whiplash. His mouth opens and closes like a fish as he gapes at you. He struggles to find the words to say. He thinks he’d rather face a hundred demobats (again) than have this conversation.

“You…” he swallows hard, adam’s apple bobbing. “You know my name?”

You shrug, oblivious to his otherwise very palpable fear. “‘Course I do.”

His heart would stop if he weren’t already dead. He thinks the force of his current shock could jolt it into beating all over again. Though, he figures he has no right to be so surprised. He is Eddie Munson, after all — the town freak who didn’t murder Chrissy Cunningham but left her to die instead. 

No one knows that she’d been long in the dying before Eddie ran like a coward. No one knows that there was nothing he could do to stop the dark wizard from killing her. No one knows that he died trying to avenge her death despite all that. And no one ever will — save for the handful of teenagers who saved Hawkins alongside him. 

Eddie knew, from the moment he rose from the dead and made it out of that godforsaken hellscape, that he would never be seen as the hero. He didn’t want to be. He just wanted to be a kid.

But here he is now. A half-dead and hated thing. A creature not worth loving.

And here you are, smiling at him like you intend to love him back to life.

“So… So you know what happened with… With the…” He talks with his hands and struggles to make the words out. He always has. He always will.

You nod before he has to. “Yeah. I think I just… I figured that wasn’t something you wanted to talk about with strangers—”

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” he insists.

“Then me not bringing it up was a good thing, right?”

“I mean, yeah, but—”

“Well, I’m hearing a lot of talking for someone who doesn’t want to talk about it,” you mock, not totally unkind, just a little bit strange. 

Eddie almost laughs at that. “I’m just— I’m confused.”

“About what?”

Now, he really lets himself laugh because the answer’s rather obvious. 

“Because most people are scared of me!” Eddie blurts with a cynical chuckle, gesturing wildly with his pale, ringed hands. “Everyone thinks I’m some— psycho-killing murderous freak.”

“Well, I don’t,” you insist, all pretty in your way, as you shift on the worn pleather seat beside him. “That’s gotta count for something, right?”

You unlatch the glove box ahead of you and help yourself to its contents. The junk inside clatters together while you search very obviously through it, rambling mindlessly to yourself as you do so. 

“You like mint-chip ice cream cones smothered in sprinkles. And your initials are sewn onto the waistband of your jeans— like you’re gonna lose them or something. And… there’s a Blondie tape hiding in here.” You giggle to yourself and flash him the cassette.

Eddie blinks at you like an owl. “That’s not mine.”

“Secret girlfriend?” you tease with a scrunched nose.

“Secret tape,” he confesses before plucking it suddenly from your fingertips. 

There’s a whole story behind it that he’d tell you if he could. About how he couldn’t leave the house for some weeks after he came back to life and how his friends brought him things to pass the time. Robin Buckley had an elaborate assortment of board games that bordered on concerning, and Dustin Henderson had brought an entire library to his trailer. 

The rest of them put together a selection of tapes for him to listen to. He can’t be sure now if Nancy Wheeler really gave up her prized Blondie cassette or if Mike Wheeler did it without her knowing.

You struggle to bite back your laughter as you sort through the center console next. 

“See! That doesn’t exactly read psycho-killing murderous freak to me, Eds. Honestly, it kinda reads as someone who’s never hurt anyone in their whole life, who probably wants everyone else to stop hurting them—” You cut yourself off with a gasp. “Ah! Here it is.”

You dig a rogue ink pen from the depths of the console. A bright smile tugs at the edges of your lips. Eddie’s still struggling to breathe when you reach for him. “Can I have your hand?”

“Why?” he wonders with pinched brows.

“You’ll see,” you lilt mischievously and take his ringed hand in your smaller one. 

He worries, briefly, that you might comment on how cold he is for the middle of summer. But if you notice it at all, you don’t mention it as you scribble your number onto the back of his hand.

Eddie grimaces when the tip presses hard into his pale skin. “Ow…”

“See? You’re just a big baby,” you joke, giggling quietly to yourself. You click the pen with your thumb as you part from him. “There. Now you have my number.”

Eddie flashes you a dubious glance, unsure of what he ever needed your number for.

You answer his silent question like it’s obvious. “So I can give you the mixtape.”

“Right,” he hums with a slow nod.

“Well, I’m gonna go clock back in before I get a total earful from Adam,” you sigh and reach for the metal door handle. “Thanks for the ride, Eddie.”

“Don’t mention it,” he shrugs nonchalantly as you slide out of the van. The back of your pleated skirt rises softly in the process, flashing a glimpse of your ass. He swallows hard and stammers. “Just— Just, like, be safe, or whatever.”

“Or whatever,” you mock with a lighthearted chuckle.

“Well, this is a crazy world we live in, haven’t you heard?” Eddie jokes to cover up his blunder. He tilts his wild head to his shoulder as a pink smile forms crooked on his mouth. “I hear psycho-killing murderous freaks are roaming the streets these days.”

He expects you to laugh, but you grow strangely serious instead, furrowing your brows as you mumble to yourself. “Crazy World... That’s a good song, actually. I should put that on the mixtape—”

You forget to say a proper goodbye as you close the door behind you. The rusted metal hinges screech before slamming shut. You walk off towards the pool house without another word, flip-flopping the entire way to the front gate. Eddie watches you go with his features twisted in a subtle mixture of shock and awe.

Steve Harrington was right. What the hell was that?

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

         oh, how could i ever refuse?

          i feel like i win when i lose . . .

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

Three days pass before Eddie sees you again. Not that he’s counting, anyway. He debates, however, calling you on the second one — but by then, your number had long disappeared from his hand. He decided, then, to count his losses and pretend he wasn’t as boyishly heartbroken as he felt. 

Missing you was a double-edged sword. He never wanted to see you again, but he mourned for you always. He prayed he’d never run into you like before but searched for you in all the faces he met. It was agony. 

When he drops Dustin off at Scoops Ahoy after a long afternoon of campaigning, Eddie tells himself it’s not with intent to run into you there. He tells himself it wouldn’t be the worst thing, but not to get his hopes too high. That he’d only make a fool of himself. That it’d be better if he didn’t see you at all.

He’s left grieving anyway when he doesn’t immediately spot your face in the dwindling crowd of the ice cream shop.

“If it isn’t the man of the hour,” Robin lilts from where she sits at one of the tables, obviously on her break and eating from a bowl of the rainbow gummy bears they use as toppings.

“You dweebs talking about me?” Eddie scoffs as he shoves Dustin light-heartedly ahead of him. 

As soon as he crosses the threshold of the small shop, you come very suddenly into view. You sit ahead of Robin, in your usual uniform, and with your usual rainbow sherbet cone. You steal a few rogue gummy bears from her cup and dip them into your ice cream, which has started to melt with your distraction. 

He stills in place, struck with a bolt of blue. Your pretty, summer scent hits him full force, then — slaps him in the face and demands to be noticed. You flash him a small smile, and he has to remind himself to breathe.

“Not at all,” Robin answers with a knowing smirk.

Steve scoffs from where he wipes down the counter, tendons flexing in his golden arm. “Only for ten straight minutes.”

“We were talking about how I gave you my number. And how you never called,” you explain to the poleaxed boy, tilting your chin to your shoulder to peer at him from beneath your lashes. A mischievous smirk hints at the corners of your lips. “A girl could start to wonder, you know?” you tease, only partially playful.

Eddie stammers for an explanation. He feels like his heart’s in his throat, like it’s closing on him, and like he can’t really breathe.

He blinks rapidly as his head starts to swim. He zeroes in on your heartbeat, though he knows he shouldn’t. It’s a soft and rhythmic whoosh, whoosh, whooshing — like that of an excitable baby deer. His hands ball into fists until his dull nails leave crescent shapes in his palms.

Dustin gapes at the sight of you. “You’re real?” the strange, curly-haired boy blurts.

“Me?” you ask with pinched brows, motioning to yourself with the ice cream cone.

“Dustin!” Eddie scolds, nudging him pointedly on the shoulder.

The boy cowers. “Sorry. It’s just… I thought you were, like, an imaginary person Eddie made up or something,” he admits, squinting his hazel eyes and crossing his arms over his chest. You flash him a dubious look until he elaborates obliviously. “‘Cause Gareth was making fun of him for not having any friends outside of Hellfire and stuff—”

“Hey,” Eddie snaps to get the rambling boy’s attention, tapping the brim of his Thinking Cap. “Shut up.”

“What’s Hellfire?” you wonder aloud.

“Book club,” Eddie lies.

You grin with furrowed brows. “You talk about me at book club?” 

“I mentioned you. Once. ‘Cause Gareth asked— And I didn’t call because the pen smudged,” Eddie answers all at once, swallowing hard when he feels bile building in his throat. He can’t get your heartbeat out of his ears. Or your scent out of his nose. It’s suffocating, all of it. “Does that clear everything up, or…?”

Steve hisses through his teeth. Robin scoffs. You blink at him with wide eyes, hardly expecting him to be so short with you. “Uh-huh,” you nod with a forced smile.

Eddie would apologize for it if he didn’t feel so sick. But now he teeters on the knife’s edge of nausea, unsure if he’s going to faint or vomit or both. So he fakes his own smile and inches towards the exit. “Great. I’m gonna— I think I’m gonna go—”

“And leave us with babysitting duty?” Steve scoffs. “How nice of you.”

Dustin frowns and flashes the makeshift sailor his middle finger.

Eddie fumbles to come up with an excuse. “I just remembered, uh— Wayne wanted me to record Cheers tonight, and I totally forgot. The ol’ geezer’ll kill me if he misses an episode, so… I gotta run.”

He ducks out without another word, grimacing at himself because he’s usually a much better liar than that. The others can surely see right through him. They know that he’s unwell — that he’s just hungry and impossibly overstimulated. 

But you don’t. You don’t know him at all, and maybe that’s exactly why you rush out of Scoops behind him.

Eddie shoves the glass exit of Starcourt Mall with trembling hands. The summer breeze rushes over him immediately, billowing through his hair and clothes. He takes his first good breath and the swimmy feeling of nausea starts to fade.

The hunger remains even still. The ravenous thoughts remain, too — of your heart between his teeth, beating on his tongue, and your blood tasting of sweet red wine.

When he starts to scare himself, his mind tells him that he’d never hurt you. That he hasn’t yet, and that he never will. But still, the thoughts are there, and they hardly ever leave.

Your fresh berry scent covers him like a shroud as he rushes to his casket (his van, really, but the symbolism fits.) You struggle to keep up with his longer strides, pleated skirt flouncing as you hurry behind him — a kicked puppy who doesn’t know when to stay back. 

“I don’t mean to annoy you, you know?” you call after him.

Eddie stills and spins sharply around to face you. You stumble back on rubber sandals to keep from running into him, trying not to cower when he towers suddenly over you.

“What?” he asks with his features swirled in confusion and distant suffering.

Your wide eyes dart over his pallid features, more sallow than you remember. You forget everything you were going to say as concern drips from your pretty features. “Do you feel okay?”

“I feel— fine,” he stammers, less than convincingly.

“Okay…” you nod, unconvinced, then repeat yourself. “I don’t mean to annoy you, by the way.”

Eddie shrugs. “What makes you think you annoy me?”

“I dunno,” you answers, sheepish in a way he hasn’t seen you before. You shift your weight on your scarlet sandals and talk wildly with your hands, looking everywhere but at him. “I kinda talked your face off a few days ago, and then I made that stupid joke about you not calling, and I just… I realized you don’t know me all that well. And that I can be kind of a lot sometimes. Or, you know, a lot of the time. But it’s not like I mean to be, you know? I don’t mean to be a burden or to—”

“You’re not a burden,” Eddie blurts.

Your breath catches as you blink at him with wild, glassy eyes. He gets the feeling no one’s ever said that to you before and tries to ignore the stinging in his chest.

“No?” you echo in a mousy voice.

“Not even a little bit,” he answers instantly.

You inhale a shaky breath that leaves through your mouth in a sigh of relief. “So you’re not upset with me?”

“No,” Eddie scoffs. “You haven’t done anything to upset me. So far, anyway.”

You nod to yourself at the reassurance. “Okay. Good. I just— I thought you ran off in such a hurry ‘cause you didn’t wanna be around me or something.”

You chuckle to yourself, feeling silly about it now. 

Eddie shifts awkwardly ahead of you ‘cause you’re not too far off.

“Do you… Do you want a ride?” he offers despite himself — despite his overwhelming feelings for you and despite the fact the buses are still running for another fifteen minutes. 

He chucks his thumb over his shoulder and flashes you a sheepish look. Because he isn’t sure of what to say now, or if he wants to leave you at all.

You duck your chin and scrunch your nose, too pretty for your own good. “If it’s not too much trouble?” you lilt.

Eddie only grins. “Who says I don’t like a little bit of trouble?”

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

         under those white street lamps,

         there is a little chance they may see . . .

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

He survives the golden hour, but just barely. Eddie hides from the setting sun underneath the covers, writhing on the thin mattress as he waits for the ravenous feeling of insatiable hunger to pass. It never does.

Instead, he feels the absence of you most ardently. He withers away as he grieves for you, like a wilting flower craving sunlight. But he’s nothing but a pale, gray, and exhausted thing now — an unloveable creature aching for a feeding. 

“Wayne…” Eddie grumbles tiredly, half muffled into his pillow. When he receives no response from his uncle, he musters the strength to shout. “Wayne!”

Footsteps trudge down the hall, bulky work shoes heavy on thin carpet. His bedroom door creaks slowly open, and his uncle stands beneath the frame of it — wearing the thick navy coveralls that has his name sewn in cursive on the chest. His weathered hands work at the buttons below the collar.

“What is it, Ed?” Wayne wonders in a gravelly drawl.

Eddie takes in a rattling breath, peeking one eye open to look at his uncle. His vision’s too swimmy for anything else. “Can you call Hopper?” he slurs like a sick child.

Wayne’s graying brows furrow in worry. He squints at his nephew across the bedroom, languishing beneath his covers and growing more waxen by the second. He’s typically only this miserable when he hasn’t fed in weeks.

“You hungry again? It’s only been a couple days.”

“I know,” the boy grumbles, squirming on the mattress like he can’t get comfortable. “I just don’t feel good...”

Wayne can see that much from here, so he doesn’t put up any more of a fight about it. He fastens the cuffs of his sleeves with wise and suddenly anxious hands. “I’ll give him a call before I head to work… You gonna be alright without me?”

Eddie nods against the pillow, curls frizzing around his head. He responds in jumbled slurs, “Mhm. ‘M alright. ‘M just… real tired…”

“I’ll call Hopper,” Wayne repeats, firmer this time, before shutting the door behind him.

Eddie spends the next half hour rotting away in the lonely trailer. 

Jim doesn’t bother to knock when he arrives, but it’s not like he needs to. He makes enough deliveries of the riboflavin kind to Forest Hills that he deserves his own key.

Besides, Eddie could smell him when he pulled into the driveway — the pint of blood he carried with him, more so. It’s a deep, rich, and powdery scent. Nowhere near as sweet as you. But then again, he doesn’t think anything could be.

“What’s the special this time, Chief?” Eddie jokes with a small huff as Hopper helps prop him against the headboard. 

The mustached man is still clad in his khaki work uniform, gold badge glinting in the lamplight. His hardened face remains in its usual deadpan frown, though his bushy brows furrow in a subtle confusion. “Do you really wanna know?”

Eddie thinks for a moment, then sighs. “No…”

Jim opens the brown paper bag sitting on the nightstand. He pulls out a plain styrofoam cup topped with a lid typically used for coffee. The thing looks innocent enough, save for a few drops of crimson staining the white of it, likely from an overfill. 

There was a time when Eddie could do it himself. Where he could puncture the blood bag Hopper delivered and pour it into one of the mugs he and Wayne have been collecting for years.

He stopped being strong enough for that a while ago, though. The sight of blood makes him queasy now, which is ironic for very obvious reasons.

The chief does most of it for him now, though Eddie thinks Hopper likes it best that way. 

“Here you go, kid,” Jim says as he passes the boy his cup of liquid scarlet. He holds the lid of it in his other hand, face screwed at the coopery smell engulfing the small bedroom. “Try not to think about it too much, alright?”

Eddie takes the cup in a trembling fist and squeezes his eyes shut so he can’t see its contents. He forces himself to down it in one go — equal parts because it’s easiest that way and because he doesn’t want to be too much of a baby in front of the chief. 

The blood tastes like a strawberry milkshake as he swallows it down, but that’s always the easiest part. It’s the after that’s so ruthless. After the overwhelming bout of starvation passes. After he’s half normal again. That’s when the blood starts to taste like blood — all metallic, like a bunch of old pennies. That’s when he feels like a monster.

Eddie groans when the cup is fully drained. He passes it back to Hopper with his eyes still shut. The man takes it with one hand and pats him on the shoulder with the other. “Good job, kid,” he mumbles, dropping the empty cup back into the bag. 

The boy relaxes against the pillows with a shuddering breath.

Jim waits until then to interrogate him. 

“What happened between now and four days ago?” he asks with his arms crossed over his chest, towering over the boy’s bedside. “This is the first time you’ve needed to feed more than once a week. Hell, it took Wayne and me almost a year to convince you to feed more than once a month.” 

Eddie shrugs lazily, lips jutted and eyes lidded. “Nothing happened.”

“I need to know, kid. So I can keep you safe.”

And so I can keep everyone else safe, too, but he doesn’t say that part.

“It’s just— This girl,” Eddie confesses, then grumbles with a sigh. “I don’t know, alright. It doesn’t even matter.”

Hopper squints. “What girl?”

“No one,” Eddie insists, then cowers under the man’s glacial stare. “Fine. Some-one. She just— makes me go all weird or whatever. I don’t know.”

Jim hums, nodding softly to himself and trying not to be too amused at the thought of Munson having a crush. He scratches at the coarse hair underneath his chin. “And is… staying away from this girl an option, or…?”

Eddie ponders the question for a moment, then exhales a chest-deflating sigh. Just like he did when questioning the origins of the blood in his cup. You were a lot of the same in that way — a thing he needed to survive but wasn’t strong enough to face.

“No… I don’t think it is…”

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

Hawkins Community Pool is strangely liminal after dark. The property itself is illuminated by only a few amber streetlamps, with most of its light coming from within — from inside the wooden pool house and beneath the sparkling cerulean water. 

Eddie parks his van on the darkened edges of the parking lot and tries to find the courage to leave it. The crowd is minimal now, having lessened significantly since he dropped you off some hours ago.

There are only a few stragglers left, most of them teenagers soaking in the last few minutes before closing. He’s grateful for that much. The fewer eyes on him, the better.

If he wasn’t being ogled at with gazes hardened with disgust or softened with pity, people weren’t looking at him at all. Their attempts to keep from staring were perhaps more blatant than they realized.

Maybe they didn’t want to be rude, or maybe they wanted to pretend he wasn’t there at all. It made Eddie hyper-aware of himself either way, which is why he often preferred to stay hidden.

He idles by the chain-link fence, swaddled in the humid summer air that smells overwhelmingly of chlorine and dewy grass. It takes several agonizing moments to catch your attention.

You dance softly in place and mouth the lyrics to a song Eddie can only make out vaguely from here, while the girl beside you stands perfectly and unenthusiastically still. 

You freeze when you catch Eddie’s gaze. Confused at first, then surprised. It takes a matter of seconds for both emotions to mix together and leave you a bumbling ball of excitement. 

The boy raises a ringed hand in a curt wave, which you reciprocate with a much more enthusiastic one. You turn to your co-worker and mouth something Eddie can’t hear before rushing to the parking lot to meet him. The flip-flopping of your rubber sandals grows as you make your way to him, along with the rustling of the windbreaker you wear over your bikini.

It’s a modest scarlet two-piece, with a high waist and a halter neckline — but much more of your skin is on display than Eddie’s used to. (If there was any time he needed to be grateful for a recent feeding, it was now.)

“Hi…” you greet, panting heavily as you stand before him.

“Hiya,” Eddie grins cheekily.

“I… I didn’t know you were coming.”

“I didn’t either, honestly.”

“Did you, uh— Did you and Wayne get to watch Cheers?”

It takes Eddie a moment or more to recall his earlier lie. He nods rapidly in response, perhaps too quickly to be truthful, but you don’t seem to notice. “Uh, no. Not yet. He’ll watch it when he gets back from the graveyard shift.”

“Okay. Cool,” you beam, eyes sparkling as they dart over his features — which have seemed to gain a bit of their life back. He’s still pale, but his eyes are less sunken in than they were. The dark chocolate of his irises swim with a melted honey color. “You look a lot better, by the way. Than you did when I left, I mean. I was scared you were getting sick.”

“Nah, I just… Needed a breather, I guess,” Eddie admits with a breathy chuckle. “I was with Hellfire all day, and… Babysitting’s a tough gig, turns out.”

You laugh alongside him, noticeably less forced. “No, I get it. I basically spend all day babysitting, so…”

“Right. I shouldn’t be complaining.” Eddie scratches awkwardly at the back of his neck and grimaces when his rings get caught in his hair. It takes a very noticeable moment for him to gain the courage to ask the question on the tip of his tongue. “Can, uh— Can I see your hand real quick?”

Your brows pinch. “Why?”

“You’ll see,” he lilts with the same mischievous smile you used on him some days ago now.

He holds a ringed hand expectantly out for you. Your gaze glimmers with intrigue as you put your fingers in his paler, colder ones. You watch him dig in his jacket pockets for a moment before pulling out the same ink pen you’d rescued from the depths of junk in his center console. He clicks it with his thumb, and you jerk your hand out of his.

“Wait!” you blurt. 

Eddie flinches, feeling like he’s done something wrong, like he must’ve hurt you in some way. 

Your features screw in a pinched look of concentration as you stick your hands in the pockets of your windbreaker. “I’m pretty sure I have a marker in here somewhere— Ah! Here it is!” You’re smiling all over again when you pass him the black Sharpie. “So it won’t wash off before I get to call you.”

“Right,” Eddie hums with a slow nod, taking the marker from you. He bites back a smile when he catches you shoving a pack of sparkly stickers back into your pockets. “What are those?”

“Stickers,” you answer, then grimace when you realize that much was obvious. You rush to elaborate. “For the younger kids that have older siblings. They usually get dragged here, and nine times outta ten, they haven’t learned how to swim yet, so… I try to make ‘em feel better with sparkly things.”

The grin Eddie tries to hide blooms very suddenly across the expanse of his pink lips. His chest swirls with a warmer feeling because you’re sort of his sparkly thing, in a way. A bright and glittering thing that makes him feel whole without trying.

You offer him your hand again, shier now. He wraps it in his larger one with fingertips that border on glacial. You fight back a shiver while Eddie uncaps the marker with his teeth. He mumbles through it while he scribbles his number on your wrist.

“Don’t let this scrub off before you get to call me like other idiots do, alright?” he jokes, flashing you a sparkling stare beneath his lashes.

“I’ll call you the second I get home,” you promise with a firm nod. “I’ll write it down, too, so I won’t forget.”

Eddie caps the marker with a lopsided grin sitting lazily on his mouth. “And it’s only for emergencies, alright? Like, if you need a ride or… A spare Blondie cassette that I may or may not have in my glove box.”

You nod again, this time with a giddy and very poorly hidden smile. “Emergenicies,” you parrot, so he knows you really heard him.

(You call him the second you’re back from your shift, though Eddie expected nothing less from you. The emergency in question? You missed him too much.)

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

          this is stranger than i thought,

          six different ways inside my heart  . . .

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

You decide to visit him that weekend, unannounced and unexpected — which is basically how you entered his life in the first place.

You’re a smiling thing on his doorstep. A rival to the early morning sun beaming in rays behind you. Eddie squints one eye and grimaces at the brightness of each.

“Morning!” you chirp like a songbird.

“What are you doing here? How’d you even find me?” Eddie grumbles tiredly, rubbing his sleep-swollen eye with his fist. He wears his slumber all over — in the wild curls, and in the wrinkled shirt that used to be Wayne’s, and in the baggy plaid pants sitting low on his waist. 

The complete and utter opposite of you: an angel kissed with the summer season.

The sun sparkles in your hair. The warm breeze billows in your clothes. The scent of something sweet clings to your skin — of fresh cherries, vanilla cake, and swathes of dewy grass. Each is tantamount to your bone-crushing beauty, which borders on whimsical and intimidating now.

It’s weird seeing you out of your uniform. A strange, but welcomed sight. You’ve traded the mandated bathing suit for a flouncier dress. The thin cotton fabric clings to your torso and drapes over your thighs like summer rain. It’s a scarlet number, gingham-patterned, with two white bows for sleeves. 

Eddie’s tired eyes rake over your pretty form despite himself. He gapes when he finds the raging scrapes you wear on both knees, a bright crimson color to match your strawberry aura. “Jesus Chr— Are you okay?!”

You follow his gaze, bending softly at the waist to peer down at your legs. You press the skirt of your dress down with your palms, and your chest pinches at the sight of your raw knees.

Your eyes flit from the fresh scratches to the concerned boy ahead of you. “Which question do you want me to answer first?” you wonder with wide, sheepish eyes.

Eddie repeats, firmer now, “Are you okay?”

“I’m totally fine,” you shrug with a beaming smile before rambling an explanation, talking absentmindedly with your hands. “I decided to buy a bike after I got my paycheck, but I don’t really know how to ride it yet, so I’m trying to teach myself, and I… kinda accidentally swerved into a ditch on the way here.”

Eddie’s chest flares with a primal feeling. He can’t stand the thought of you hurt — can’t stand the thought of you hurt and him not being there to help you. “Okay…” he wavers with his face still screwed.

“I wasn’t stalking you, by the way! Scout’s honor!” you blurt, holding up four fingers instead of three. “I just knew you lived at Forest Hill’s, and, I mean, the van is a dead giveaway, Eds.”

“Fair enough,” he huffs.

“Besides, I really wanted to bring you something, and I couldn’t wait until I saw you at Scoops because the anticipation was driving me crazy—” You lose yourself in thought and slide past him in the doorway without thinking. 

Eddie just blinks and shuts the door behind you. “And… What is it… Exactly?” he wonders cautiously, only partially fearful of the answer.

It takes you a moment too long to answer him, as you get lost in the sights around you. The trailer was bigger than it appeared on the outside, not messy by any means, but very lived in. 

There’s a folded cot in the corner beside the recliner and a small square TV across from it playing morning cartoons. Vintage baseball caps line one wall, and a collection of mugs line the other. Everything feels like a self-portrait of the Munson family.

“The mixtape I promised,” you answer finally, spinning around to face him again. You pull a plastic cassette from the pocket of your dress and gesture with it in a nervous hand. “I was starin’ at this thing all night, and I couldn’t stop thinking about you— about giving it to you, I mean.” You correct yourself with a nervous laugh and rush to move on. “I’ve always been super bad with gifts— I can’t keep ‘em a secret to save my life. I’m good for, maybe, five seconds, and then I’m just like, gosh, I can’t wait anymore, you know?”

You realize you’re rambling and trail slowly off. You swallow hard, muster a wavering smile, and motion for Eddie to take the cassette. You watch as he studies it with a careful hand — pale and lanky and devoid of his silver rings.

“You made this for me?” he mumbles after a few moments.

“Well, I told you I would.”

“Yeah, but… You made this? For me?” he repeats, with a different inflection. ‘Cause he doesn’t know who else to put it. Doesn’t know how to tell you he doesn’t feel half deserving of anything you could give him.

You giggle in response. “You said you didn’t own anything ABBA. Or Madonna. Or Cyndi Lauper— so obviously, I had to make you an entire compilation of their discography. I’m not an asshole,” you laugh. “And I put a few of my favorite songs on there, too…. And songs that made me think of you and stuff…”

Eddie smiles before he means to. It’s a strange thing, he finds, to be thought of in such an innocent way — to be looked for in the places where he couldn’t physically be. He ducks his chin and peers at you with glimmering eyes. “Yeah? Like what?” he humors.

You don’t miss a beat. “He’s so shy!”

Eddie flinches at your singing — the volume of it, more so. Your voice rings across the quiet trailer, and a laugh sputters past his lips.  “Yeah. Alright.”

“That sweet little boy who caught my eye!” you continue and reach out for him, digging your fingers into the junction of his neck and shoulder. His skin is milky white, smooth, cold to the touch.

“Okay!” he chuckles and swats you away with a playful hand. “I get it!”

“It’s the Pointer Sisters,” you grin.

“I’ll take your word for it.” 

His chocolate eyes dart back and forth between both of yours, momentarily lost in the way you’re looking at him — with your eyes all squishy around the edges. He’s not used to being looked at so softly. Or being noticed at all. 

He swallows hard and averts his gaze. Your scrapped knees enter his vision again, weeping a bright scarlet that threatens to drip down your shins. He ignores any instinct of hunger. 

“You’re bleeding pretty bad, by the way.”

You only feel the ache when you’re reminded of it. Your stomach gets all swirly at the sight of your bruised knees, rubbed raw and stained with the grass that partially cushioned your fall.

“Gosh…” you mumble to yourself, clutching the skirt of your dress in your fists. You flash Eddie a sheepish look and a wavering smile. “Any chance I could bum a bandaid?” 

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

The bathroom is a tight fight, but you make it work.

You sit on the counter, per Eddie’s instruction, while he retrieves the first aid kit collecting dust in the medicine cabinet.  He sits on the edge of the bathtub across from you, way out of his element (in more ways than one), as he cleans your cuts with trembling hands.

His throat is tight with nausea. His head swims with it, too. White stars speckle his vision that he tries hard to blink away. The sight of your blood, diluted and pink on the white tissue, makes him weak.

He isn’t sure if it’s instinct or desire that makes him want to swallow you whole, but the primal urge to consume you is there — in the figurative sense, of course; to bury his teeth in your neck and have a piece of you forever. 

Being between your legs in such close confines is ample enough distraction, though.

You push the skirt of your pretty gingham dress up the expanse of your thighs to give him space to work. You sit with them slightly spread, too — enough to reveal a sliver of your underwear, he thinks. Eddie isn’t sure if it’s intentional or not, so he fights the boyish urge to catch a glimpse of the most private part of you.

“Jesus…” he huffs and chucks the napkin into the bin. With the blood and the grass stains now wiped away, he can see the scratches more clearly. Your delicate skin is abraded and raging with it. Like you fell and kept on falling. “Did you get mauled by a bear or something?”

“In the knees?” you quip.

“Looks like it.”

“I just wanted to match my dress,” you shrug. “That’s all.”

Eddie opens an alcohol swab with his teeth, then meets your pretty smile with a scowl. “You’re hurt. It’s not funny,” he deadpans after spitting the package from between his teeth.

“It is a little bit, though,” you argue just to argue, scrunching the bridge of your nose. He presses the damp wipe to your knee, and you flinch at the sudden stinging feeling. “Ow!”

He smiles at your pouting. “Maybe a little,” he concurs.

“That was mean!”

“You told me to distract you, so I distracted you. Sue me,” the boy shrugs, feigning innocence, as he reaches to toss the swab in the trashcan beside the counter. 

The sight of wadded tissue, all stained with your ruby-colored blood, makes his breath catch in his throat. The ground starts to sway beneath his feet. His eyes go lidded and heavy. His mouth waters with need.

Eddie shakes his wild head in a feeble attempt to remove the ravenous thoughts from his brain, but all it does is make him dizzier.

He blinks wildly as he reaches for a bandaid in the opened container beside him. It slips from his clammy, tremoring hands. He fumbles to grab it again and slaps it to the counter beside you.

“You okay?” he hears you ask, sitting right in front of him but sounding much further than that.

He sits up again and clears his throat, gaze dim and glassy. “Yeah. Yeah, just— Just give me a second…” He breathes hard through his mouth. Eyes squeezed shut. Knuckles going white around the edges of the ceramic tub. 

You watch with a wide, inquisitive stare as you smooth the bandages over your knees yourself. Your concerned gaze flits from the pallid boy ahead of you, to the plasters on your skin, and back to him again. 

“If blood makes you queasy, you coulda just said,” you joke, trying to make him smile, ‘cause you hate seeing him so ill. “You didn’t have to torture yourself just to help me.”

“Blood doesn’t make me queasy,” Eddie tells you, though he’s still slurring his words.

“Then why do you look like you’re about to hurl?” 

His glazed-over eyes are slow to open. “That’s just my face,” he deadpans.

“No. You have a pretty face, Eddie,” you insist as your giggling swells like sunshine in the tiny bathroom. “It’s just all scrunched together, like you’re gonna be sick or something— like this.”

You swirl your features in a manufactured look of drama and pain. Brows furrowed, nose scrunched, mouth snarled. Eddie chuckles before he can help it. The sick feeling still lingers, though not as obvious now. 

“You are bizarre. Did you know that?”

“I did, actually,” you giggle. 

Your entwining laughter fills the bathroom’s close quarters. The glittering noise echoes through the small trailer and finds Wayne at the doorstep. He toes off his work boots and pauses at the sound of giggling — one familiar and lower in pitch, the other foreign and sparkling. 

His socked feet pad down the length of the carpeted ground until he finds the door between Eddie’s bedroom and the kitchen’s edge, already ajar. It creaks loudly under the man’s calloused palm when he pushes it slowly open.

His tired eyes widen at the sight before him — a pretty girl on the sink with a pair of scrapped knees, and Eddie sitting on the tub ahead of her with bloodied tissue in the bin beside him.

Wayne’s heart falls to ass like a steep drop on a rollercoaster.

You smile brightly at the strange man. “Hello!” you greet with an enthusiastic wave.

He blinks slowly at you for a moment, then nods politely. “Hi there,” Wayne says in a deep and gritty drawl before turning to his nephew. “What’s goin’ on here?”

“Nothing,” Eddie blurts, all wide-eyed and fidgeting. He struggles to be casual as he swipes his clammy hands over his thighs. “We were just, you know, hanging out…”

“Everythin’ alright?”

Eddie nods quickly, then stops when it makes him queasy. “Yeah,” he answers, clearing his throat. “Yeah, she just— fell on her bike on the way over, and—”

He flinches when you gasp. 

“Wait! You’re Wayne!” you shout with a sudden recollection.

The man tries not to recoil at the volume of your voice — much too loud for so early in the day, like a chirping bird outside his window. He forces a tightlipped smile and nods again. “I am,” he tells you.

You smile so wide your eyes squint at the edges. “You have Eddie’s nose!”

Wayne laughs, a single scoffed breath. “What can I say? Big noses run in the family.”

“Well, I happen to like ‘em that way,” you insist with a casual shrug, kicking your feet back and forth from where you’re perched on the counter. Your heels meet the cabinet in several rhythmic thunk, thunk, thunks.

When you look down at your bandaged knees, Wayne and Eddie share a look without you.

The older man raises his greying brows. This girl is bizarre, Eddie can hear him saying. 

He nods wordlessly at his uncle’s silent observation, as though to say: I know she is, and I happen to like her that way.

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

          i guess you’re just what i needed,

          i needed someone to bleed  . . .

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

The plastic case of the cassette you made him clatters on the dashboard of his van, filling a silence that would otherwise be occupied by you. 

Eddie’s passenger seat, cracked and worn with age, feels strikingly empty without you in it. Which is strange, ‘cause your presence used to frighten him once. It does, still, he thinks — but now he mourns the haunt like an old, empty house. 

He drives his rattling tin can across town to Hawkins Community Pool, with a cup of rainbow sherbet rattling in the holder at his side, like an offering for a ghost he no longer wants to exorcise from the home behind his ribcage.

“It’s gonna melt before you get it to her,” Robin remarked with a smirk as she scooped ice cream with an expert hand. “You know that, right?”

Eddie bowed his head and tried to hide behind his curls. “Not if I run real fast,” he joked sheepishly.

The pastel sherbet softens quickly in the summer heat. (Not even the van’s middling A.C., pointed right in its direction, could keep it sufficiently cool.) The muted hues of pink, green, and orange begin to swirl together as the milky concoction undulates in his ringed fist. He hopes you don’t mind and prays you see past his feeble attempt to be kind.

“Well, well, well…” Billy Hargrove lilts with a pretty pink smirk at the sight of Eddie Munson’s familiar face. He lifts his sunglasses to the top of his mulleted curls and rests his magazine on his lap. “The dead has risen…”

The poor boy sticks out without trying, despite his desperate attempts to stay hidden — all but swimming in his leather jacket, baggy jeans, and wild hair. He’s a pale, death-touched thing floating in a sea of golden life. 

But, unlike the contemptuous leers from the other patrons, (some who are still certain Eddie killed Chrissy, and others who have always seemed to look at him that way), Billy Hargrove only smiles. A fake, sardonic grin that shows none of his teeth and shines mostly in his eyes. 

His squinted ocean gaze glimmers like he knows all of Eddie’s secrets — which is only half-true. Billy knows what the end of the world did to him, because it almost killed him too, once upon a time.

So, no. He doesn’t know all of Eddie’s secrets. 

Just the biggest one, maybe. 

Despite being largely immune to the summer heat, Eddie still feels the burn of embarrassment stinging his chest. Clawing behind his ribcage like a thousand ravaging demobats. The hot-cold aching of wishing he were dead ebbs when you turn to look at him over your shoulder — when your wide eyes of sparkling hope lock with his darker, dead-er ones.

There’s an undeniable spark of delight in your irises, though Eddie doesn’t know what for. No one’s been this happy to see him in a year. No one’s been this happy to see him ever.

Something about it makes his stomach hurt. Or maybe it’s just the way you and Hargrove are sitting behind the front counter together, like a couple of old friends, with glowing sunkissed skin hugged tight in scarlet bathing suits. 

In that split second, Eddie feels like he’s in high school again — a loser, not yet dead, pining for the pretty girl way out of his league and praying the basketball jock doesn’t shove him into the bleachers.

If you notice the momentary fear in his eyes, you don’t show it.

And if you care that he’s a loser, you don’t show that, either.

“Eddie! Hi!” you greet, giggling as you push yourself off the countertop. Your pleated skirt swishes around your thighs as you rush to him. Your matching sandals pad rhythmically along the stone floor. The flip-flop, flip-fop sound echoes through the shaded breezeway.

Eddie doesn’t know how wide he’s smiling when you’re finally standing ahead of him, but he can feel it burning in the apples of his cheeks.

“You haven’t been around for lunch,” he says in place of a greeting, fidgeting with the cup of melting ice cream in his fist. “I was scared that you keeled over or somethin’.”

“You were worried about me?” you wonder aloud, voice a few octaves higher than he’s used to. You purse your smile to the side of your mouth and scrunch your nose. “Aww…” you croon and dig two fingers into the junction of his neck.

Your touch is soft and warm and less than gentle.

Eddie cringes, effectively set aflame by the electricity of you. He shrinks back with a wavering smile and finds himself grateful that he’s too dead to blush these days — or else you’d see how hopeless he is. 

You ramble an explanation while his skin buzzes.

“I’m a little slow on my bike, turns out, and I couldn’t make it back here in time,” you tell him, which rests his anxieties a little.

Eddie’s been worried about you ever since he patched you up in his bathroom. Everyone’s been worried about you, in truth, ‘cause it’s a well-known fact that you’re a total klutz.

“And after being late for the third time, Adam got kinda mad at me…” you continue, shifting on your feet. “He got really mad at me, actually. I wore his favorite bikini, and he still threatened to fire me. I was, like, oh shit, I’m actually in trouble—”

You giggle to yourself, but Eddie feels like there’s a knife between his ribcage. A sharp, burning, and pulsing urge to get you away from all of these assholes. To get you out of this town. God knows it doesn’t deserve you.

He swallows hard and tries to joke. “Must’ve been real bad then, huh?”

You exhale a dramatic sigh. “Yeah, so… I’m kinda trying to get back on his good side and everything. It’s easier to just stay here. I would’ve called, but I— I didn’t think you cared that much.”

“I care!” Eddie scoffs, pale face swirled with offense.

“You’re the one that said emergencies only!” you mock through another pretty giggle.

“Abandoning me for a week is an emergency.”

You light up like a goddamn Christmas tree at that. 

“See! I knew you were worried about me!”

Eddie scoffs again and looks away. He focuses on the crowd bustling outside the breezeway because it’s easier than meeting your eyes. Until one of them catches his gaze and flashes him a leery look, anyway. Then he feels like he might puke. 

“Not at all,” he answers in a playful deadpan, clearing his throat when his voice shakes. “That’s definitely not why I decided to bring you a… half-melted cup of rainbow sherbet.”

His chocolate eyes avert to the plastic container in his fist, swirling the milky pastels again for good measure. When he looks at you again, it’s through his lashes and with his head bowed sheepishly.

You smile with your lips curled under your teeth — obviously giddy and trying hopelessly to hide it.

“I thought it was for me, but I didn’t wanna assume,” you admit quietly, cheek squished into your shoulder.

“It’s basically a milkshake now,” Eddie mumbles and extends his arm. His voice shakes as much as his hand does. “Sorry…”

You beam at the pinched look of worry on his face. “I like milkshakes, too, silly,” you giggle and take the cup of melted ice cream from him. 

Your fingers are gentle and strikingly warm as they brush his colder, paler ones. Warm like dragonfire, or an old house bathed in candlelight, or a freshly sharpened blade through the heart.

Eddie bleeds out on the pebbled concrete as you turn away. 

You rush back to the counter you leapt from, balancing the container in one palm as you bend over the top of it. A satiny summer breeze rolls through the shaded shack and billows through the pleats of your skirt, lifting the thin fabric to reveal the thong of your one-piece — a sliver of soft scarlet running between your thighs.

Eddie’s undead heart lurches into his throat. He turns his gaze to the ceiling until the wind passes.

Billy looks up from his magazine to smile at you with his teeth. “This your boyfriend, sweet thing?” he asks as you pluck your straw from the styrofoam cup you were just drinking from.

The nickname floats on the humid air and strangles Eddie accordingly. Your mouth curls around the end of the bendy straw before you give him a proper answer. You blow hard to dispel the remnants of room-temperature water before sticking the plastic into the milky concoction in your fist.

“Yes,” you answer plainly, then take a long sip of the softened ice cream. You shrug with the raspberry-orange taste on your tongue. “He’s a boy. And he’s my friend,” you lilt. “Jealous?”

Billy laughs. Loud. 

“Of Munson?” 

You nod quietly, straw caged between your teeth.

He laughs louder and slouches in his swivel chair. The golden muscles of his toned chest flex as he flashes you a quieter smile — one that might say he knows a lot more than you do if you cared enough to read the signals.

“I can’t say that I am, no,” Billy hums, faux sympathetically.

“Well, maybe if you were a little nicer, he’d be bringing you food, too,” you tell him, very matter-of-fact about the whole thing, as you spin on the heel of your rubber flip-flop and saunter away. 

Eddie grimaces when you’re ahead of him again. “Please tell me this isn’t the only thing you’ve had today.”

Your face screws as you take another sip. “No,” you answer with a firm shake of your head, though the word comes out garbled from the fruity concoction in your mouth. You swallow it down and confess, “I had half a Poptart for breakfast, so…”

“That’s… not breakfast,” the boy monotones, then motions his wild head to the cup cradled in your right hand. “And this isn’t lunch.”

“Well, I told you I don’t have time to get lunch,” you argue like a child, soft and sheepish, head bowed to avoid his unwavering stare. You stab at the softened ice cream with the plastic straw, leaving holes in the pastel swirls, as you mutter to yourself, “And I can’t make it for myself, either. I’m not adult enough for that yet.”

Eddie feels it again. The sting of empathy in his chest. The primitive need to help you that makes it hard to breathe most days.

He shrugs his leather-clad shoulders and crosses his arms over his chest, tucking his trembling hands under his armpits.

“Well— Maybe— Maybe I can, you know, bring you something?” Eddie offers, stumbling over himself the entire way through. He shifts on his feet and swallows through the frog in his throat. “Like, when I have the time, or whatever.”

He doesn’t tell you that he always has the time. (‘Cause he only works nights at The Hideout now, and spends the rest of the day’s many hours rotting in bed.)

Your face pinches into a girlish pout. Something soft, but sterner than he thinks he’s ever seen you before. “I can’t ask you to do that.”

“You’re not asking. I’m offering,” Eddie argues. “And I’m not doing it outta the kindness of my own heart, either— It’d just make me feel better to know you’re not totally withering away whenever I’m not here.”

You try hard to keep your scowl. But then your chest starts to glitter like a thousand sparklers in July, and you’re beaming before you can stop it. Eddie watches the pretty smile curl slowly on your lips despite your futile attempt to hide it.

“What’s that look for?” he cautions.

“Nothin’,” you shrug, smiling with the straw between your teeth. “I just like you.”

Eddie forgets to breathe and dies all over again, right at your feet.

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

         only boys who save their pennies

         make my rainy day!

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

Most Tuesdays, some Wednesdays, and every Friday — (the mornings after his late night shifts at The Hideout) — Eddie Munson buys you lunch. 

He stands at the counter of Benny’s Burgers and pays with the rogue quarters and crumpled bills he finds in random pockets of his jacket. The bearded man looks on in slow-blinking bemusement while the boy counts out the $4.89 your sandwich costs.

Benny ends up throwing in free fries for the effort.

It takes Eddie an embarrassing amount of time to realize you were sneaking money into his pockets every time he visited you, even though he told you not to pay him back. Even though you swore you wouldn’t. (He’ll never believe another one of your stupid Scout’s Honor promises again).

Saturday comes, and Eddie’s cleaned out ’til his next shift on Monday. 

He thinks he’s handling it pretty well — the very palpable lack of you — but the contrary is written all over his face.

He’s sprawled out on the sunken-in couch in the living room with the headphones of his Walkman around his neck. Madonna plays muffledly (and far too happily) as he stares up at the ceiling, trying to make constellations of your face from the cracks and water stains.

Dustin watches his best friend grieve from the other side of the coffee table and sighs. “It’s the sandwiches, right? You guys hate the sandwiches?” he wonders aloud, but to no one in particular. “God, I knew I put too much jelly in them—”

“The sandwiches are amazing, Dusty-Bun,” Robin insists from Wayne’s recliner, with a mouthful of PB&J jutting out her freckled cheek. Her chipping maroon nails are stained with crumbs as they flash an ‘ok’ symbol in his direction.

With grape jelly on the corner of his mouth, Steve mumbles from the floor in front of her, “Doesn’t explain why Eddie’s still sulking over there, though.”

“Exactly!” Dustin huffs, flailing his arms.

Eddie rolls his eyes. He exhales a heavy breath that makes his chest deflate, then turns to face the eyes staring back at him. “I’m not sulking,” he grumbles like a rain cloud.

“Yeah. It’s the pouting that’s so convincing,” Max scoffs from Dustin’s other side, blinking at him from behind her glasses as she fakes a tight-lipped grin. 

Eddie just squints at her. She’s not nearly as menacing as she used to be. Not when her ocean eyes are bugged out from such thick lenses, anyway. Now he finds her sort of adorable, in a subtly intimidating way — like a kitten holding a pocketknife.

“I’m not pouting, either,” the wild-haired boy retorts, features scrunched in a soft pout.

Lucas wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “He just misses Barbie,” the boy croons playfully.

Eddie blinks at him with a flat face. “Barbie?” he echoes.

“Yeah,” he shrugs, voice high. “Barbie.”

“Am I supposed to know who that is, or…?”

“Oh, you know who she is,” Lucas nods with a boyish chuckle. “Very well.”

He keeps on laughing about it until Max elbows him hard in the shoulder. Steve misses the silent cue as he tears off a piece of bread crust, snickering to himself at the inside joke.

He pops it into his mouth and meets Eddie’s gaze, emotionless and expectant. His eyes widen as he stammers for a response.

“The girl— Your girl— She was at Jazzercise the other day,” Steve explains, then swallows hard. “She was with that pretty lifeguard, too. What’s her name again?”

He looks instinctively up at Robin for an answer. Eddie beats her to the punch. 

“Billy Hargrove?” he monotones.

“Ha-ha.”

“Heather Holloway,” Robin tells him.

“Heather!” Steve exclaims, snapping his fingers. “I’m pretty sure I dated her freshman year, actually… Or was that Heather Hart?”

The boy loses focus quickly as he goes deep in thought. Fluffy brows pinched, honey eyes squinted. A heavy silence lulls over the crowded living room, and Madonna’s muffled voice grows louder. ‘Cause we are living in a material world, and I am a material girl!—

Before Eddie has time to be embarrassed, Steve shrugs at himself. 

“Doesn’t matter. Anyway. She was at Jazzercise with Heather just, like, dripping in pink. Pink leg warmers, pink leotard, pink tights…” Steve trails off again, stare glazing over like he's imagining you all over again. “It was crazy…”

Eddie’s face swirls in disgust. Not at the thought of you, of course, but at the notion that your beauty is perceptible to others. That he isn’t the only one who can see you, admire you. He is not the only one you’ve threatened to kill with your piercing stare, and the thought alone makes his stomach twist.

“You’re such a boy,” Eddie scoffs.

Robin leans forward, freckled face solemn and serious. She rests her elbows on her denim-clad knees and slowly shakes her head. “No… It was crazy,” she echoes more earnestly.

It sounds different coming from her. It means something different coming from her, too. Eddie’s brows raise and disappear beneath his curly bangs. “Oh, yeah?” he hums with bated breath.

“Yeah,” Robin answers with a disbelieving sigh.

“Hence, the nickname,” Lucas nods, seemingly missing the meaning ‘cause the only other girl he’s cared to notice besides Pheobe Cates is the redhead sitting beside him.

The girl with magnifying glasses over her eyes and legs that don’t work as well as they used to. Despite the circumstances (involving dark wizards and a certain death), Max hasn’t changed at all. And neither has the way Lucas’ teenage boy heart beats for her.

Eddie scoffs a tired laugh. He turns back to the ceiling and throws an elbow over his eyes. “I’m gonna tell her you guys call her that behind her back, by the way.”

“It’s a compliment!” Dustin defends, a few octaves higher than normal.

“Or you could tell her to her face,” Max offers with an absentminded shrug, folding her napkin into a weird shape in her lap — only ‘cause she’s fidgeting, of course, not because Dr. Owens said it would help ease the stiffness in her fingers. (Being dead might’ve taught her some things, but listening to figures of authority is not one of them.)

“She’s working today. Billy said so.”

Eddie peeks at her, flat-faced. “Did he?”

“Yeah. Means you can go visit your girlfriend instead of bitching and moaning about how much you miss her all weekend.”

“She’s not my girlfriend, Mayfield.”

“That’s beside the point.”

“No. That is entirely the point,” Eddie argues, laughing more sincerely now. “Other than the fact that the sun will literally kill me.”

Max’s light eyes narrow into thin slits behind her clunky glasses. She says the hard thing out loud, without blinking. that the rest of them are already thinking, anyway.

“You’re already dead, Munson.”

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

          hey, you, with the pretty face,

         welcome to the human race!

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

No wonder the streets seemed so apocalyptically empty, Eddie thinks to himself as he walks through the front gates of Hawkins Community Pool. Because every goddamn person in town has chosen to spend their Saturday here.

Benny from the diner sits by the kiddie pool next to the entrance, watching his daughter wade in the shallow water. He looks like a different person without his grease-stained apron on. His swim trunks are bright red and slightly too short for him, his Hawaiian shirt is unbuttoned to reveal his beer belly, and his face is burnt everywhere but under his sunglasses. 

Jason, Andy, and all the rest of their goons hog the picnic tables while pretty girls sit on the tops of them — wearing their expensive bikinis and basking in the sun like it’s shining just for them. The boys laugh and shove at one another, trying to pretend like they’re far too cool for it all.

Familiar faces fill the blue water, but it’s hard to make them out in the crowd. Everyone’s swimming and splashing and stuffed within the chain-linked fence like cattle. They all go blurry, like a bunch of indistinct shapes before a backdrop of bright colors. Like a Claud Monet painting, if he ever cared enough to paint uninspiring Midwestern towns.

It’s far too packed to feel self-conscious ‘cause this is the kind of horde you drown in. But that just means it’s catastrophically overstimulating. For Eddie, most of all, who’s sorely out of place in his leather jacket and baggy jeans and dirty sneakers.

The boy cranes his neck to search for you, dark eyes flitting wildly over the crowd — once, twice, and then a third time.

You’re nowhere to be found, and he knows this because your face is far too pretty and not easily missed. Your sweet hibiscus scent is equally absent, drowned out by the overwhelming smell of chlorine, sunblock, and sweat.

If you were around, he’d know it.

“She’s not even here!” Eddie huffs, lifting his arms only to drop them dramatically at his sides. Any arguments about his pouting are surely moot now. Even he can feel the petulant scowl pinching his features.

Max, equally confused, stands at his side and pushes her glasses up her nose. “Billy said she was working today. I heard him on the phone. He definitely said it,” she observes, mostly to herself, ‘cause she can’t stomach being wrong. “Well… He said he was opening with the two prettiest girls in town, so I figured one was probably Heather and the other was—”

“Barbie?” Eddie finishes flatly.

“Yeah.”

“Well, she’s obviously not here, so… Let’s just go back home and do— literally anything else.” 

Eddie spins on the heel of his worn sneaker with the intention of going back the way he came. His van is parked crooked, anyhow. Steve complained as much when he parked his shiny new BMW right beside him. He figures he should probably get back before someone slashes his tires. Again.

He nearly runs into someone the second he turns around. Someone standing far too close for comfort, in a bright red bathing suit and matching skirt, with too big sunglasses on the top of her head.

“Who’s not working today?!” the person shouts loudly in his face, with the evident intent to scare him.

Eddie stumbles back into Steve, who promptly shoves him forward again. It takes him approximately that long to realize it’s you.

You guffaw when the rest of them jump in fright — a loud and heavenly sound that refuses to be drowned out by the droning of a million different conversations.

“I totally got you guys!” you exclaim, giggling so hard your head tilts back. 

Eddie laughs with you, mostly in shock, as he clutches his chest where his heart isn’t beating.

“Admit it! I got you a little?” you say, pinching your thumb and forefinger and squinting through the sliver of space between them.

“Yeah,” the boy huffs a forced laugh. “Yeah, a— a little bit.”

Visibly delighted by his words, you beam brighter than the golden hour sun.

“I knew it!” you grin before your eyes flit over his shoulder, to the group of friends gaping wordlessly behind him. You scrunch your nose sympathetically. “Sorry… You guys were just collateral.”

“You know I have a bad heart,” Steve complains for the sake of complaining, clutching his chest over his short-sleeved button-up. He flashes you a stern look and gripes, “That shit’ll kill me.”

Your eyes narrow in a challenging squint. “You’re twenty-one years old, Steve.”

“Yeah,” he scoffs. “And being around you ages me five years.”

“Well, then, I guess we’re gonna have a very long, very happy life together. Aren’t we, Stevie?” you retort with a sickly sweet smile that Steve meets with a scruffy-faced scowl. 

Eddie watches the brunette boy roll his eyes like he wasn’t getting half-hard at the thought of you at Jazzercise an hour ago. It makes him only partly jealous.

He could never dream of being so casual around you. ‘Cause when your eyes find his again, it feels like his stomach’s doing backflips. It’s like he blinks, and he forgets how to speak.

“So!” you chirp. “Family trip?”

Eddie opens his mouth and doesn’t realize until that moment that every word in the English language has left his brain. Robin shoves him hard in the back to put his head back on straight. The words fly from his mouth like a pull-string doll.

“I didn’t wanna bother you, but these idiots forced me into it.”

“Good. You need to get out of the house from time to time, Eds— You’re getting so pale,” you ramble and reach suddenly for his face. Eddie freezes when you take his chin by your thumb and forefinger. The warmth of your velvety touch sets his skin aflame; more so when you look directly into his wide-eyed gape and say, “There’s nothin’ wrong with needing a little sunshine, Eddie Spaghetti.”

“Weird,” Max muses with a sarcastic lilt. “That is exactly what we’ve been trying to tell him, too.”

Eddie shoots her a glare — the best he can, anyway, with your hand still cradling his jaw. He can only see the redhead from the corner of his eye, but the smug smirk on her freckled face doesn’t go missed.

Your fingers slip from his face, and Eddie feels like he can breathe again. He feels strangely empty, still, without you touching him — like he’s starving, or like he’s never been touched before now. Sometimes, it feels like both are true.

He wonders if that’s just the price he has to pay. If being near you means feeling like he’s dying and coming to life all at once. There’s a nagging voice in the back of his head that tells him he’ll pay it, with your pretty fingers strangling his neck and all.

“You’re MADMAX, right?” you wonder aloud to the girl with auburn plaits draping her freckled shoulders.

She’s mostly a stranger to you now, but you think she must mean a great deal to the rest of them. They talk a whole lot about the redhead with chunky glasses who acts like she’s way too cool for it all but defends her Dig Dug high score like her life depends on it. 

The girl nods and crosses her pale arms across her chest, flashing you a suspicious, tightlipped smile. “Yeah. Which means you must be Barbie?”

“Barbie?” you echo.

Eddie chimes in then. “That’s what these freaks call you when you’re not around,” he says, nodding his wild head to the group of aforementioned freaks behind him.

Your face twists as you bring your hand to the center of your chest. “That is the nicest thing anyone’s ever called me before,” you respond, strangely sincere.

Lucas smiles from over Max’s shoulder, nodding like he’s proud. “You’re welcome,” he tells you.

Dustin stands just beside him with a conspicuous paper bag under his arm. You squint past Eddie and over to the curly-haired boy. “What’s that?” you blurt.

It takes him a second too long to answer. “Oh. Uh. A sandwich—” he stammers vaguely, extending his arm towards you. You take the sack from him without thinking twice and rifle blindly through its contents.

“PB&J?” you guess with an inquisitive arch to your brow. Dustin nods, looking pleased by your assumption. Your arm stills suddenly within the crinkling brown sack, and your eyes narrow into thin slits. “With the crust cut off?”

“Uh… no.”

“Good. That’s obviously the best part of the whole sandwich,” you respond, almost to yourself, as you pluck the snack from the bag. 

You unwrap it from its plastic seal and take a hefty bite in one fell swoop. Your eyes flutter shut like it’s something gourmet, and not just something Dustin slapped together on his kitchen step stool at home.

“Thank you for this,” you mumble through the wad of food in your cheek. “You’re officially my new best friend, Dusty-Bun.”

“Rude,” Eddie scoffs.

You swallow hard and fight back a smile, like you were hoping for that exact response. “And who said you were my best friend in the first place, hm?” you argue playfully, waving the half-eaten peanut butter jelly sandwich in his face. “That is very presumptuous of you, Eddie Spaghetti.”

Your pleated skirt flutters at your hips when you spin on the heel of your plastic sandal. You flip flop, flip flop out of the shaded shack and towards the sunshine and unadulterated chaos. The rest of them follow behind you — save for Dustin, who migrates to Eddie’s side with a far-off gaze.

“Sure she’s not your girlfriend?” the kid wonders, never once taking his eyes off the back of you.

Eddie looks down at him with a flat face. “I’m sure,” he monotones.

Dustin grins wide, likely forgetting that other people can see it, too. “Good,” he hums to himself.

“Don’t get any ideas, Henderson,” the older boy blurts before he means to, then tries not to cower under the expectant glance he gets. “You’re obviously way out of her league.”

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

The group fits in pretty well despite being the self-proclaimed outcasts of Hawkins, Indiana.

Steve most of all, but that usually goes without saying. He looks like small-town royalty in his brand-name polo and too-expensive navy swim shorts. He’s lost his touch since high school, though, as he tries and fails to flirt with Carol Perkins’ sister.

“So, Amber— What’d you say you were studying again?” you hear him ask as he lingers awkwardly by the longue chairs.

“My name is Autumn,” she corrects in a drawl that’d give a valley girl a run for her money.

Steve, oblivious to his blunder, only smiles. “Oh, cool. That’s, like, definitely in my top four favorite seasons—”

Robin, in a strange turn of events, is much more casual in her flirting than her co-worker-slash-best-friend. She spotted Vicki the second she walked in, sitting with a few girls from yearbook and rubbing sunscreen onto her supple skin.

She pretended she didn’t, though, which only made it that much more obvious that she had. Vicki waved at her once, then again to invite her over, and Robin was far too awkward to decline. 

Now, she sits gracelessly with a bunch of half-strangers and her biggest crush, looking only slightly out of place in her frayed shorts and Steve’s baggy tee. She nods politely in conversation and thanks the universe for making it so damn hot today. At least now she can blame her burning freckled face on the golden setting sun.

Dustin and Lucas, meanwhile, stuff their faces with ice cream sandwiches in a feeble attempt to consume them before they melt. The softened vanilla leaves messes on their fingers and faces, making them look somehow more boyish than their respective Spiderman and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle swim trunks.

Max sits off to the side of them in her own chair, partly overstimulated, and trying to let the piercing sunbeams ground her again.

Eddie Munson, however, in his attempt to blend in, only draws more attention to himself.

He sits beside your post, shaded beneath a wide umbrella, in the same attire you’d see him in on any other day. The baggy jeans, and the thick leather jacket, and the Corroded Coffin merch. He’s dripping in black and silver but hasn’t yet broken a sweat. You don’t know how, though. ‘Cause you’re hot just looking at him.

You pluck your plastic whistle from your mouth to ask, “Are you sure you’re not burning up over there?”

Eddie laughs before he means to because the answer’s obvious to him. 

The last time he felt an ounce of heat was when he was bleeding out on the dirt floor of an alternate universe — when crimson blood ran warm over the mangled skin of his chest and ribs. He’s been colder than ice ever since. And he keeps forgetting you don’t know about any of that.

“Yeah. I’m sure,” he answers, angling his head to face yours.

There’s a white cast on his grey face from sunscreen deliberately not rubbed in. It feels like a shield in some way. Not in the warm-blooded human kind of way, of course, but in the vampiric curse kind. The kind that would otherwise make him debilitatingly weak sitting outside like this. Now, he feels somewhat normal.

The golden hour sun sits like a halo behind your head. He squints one eye to see you better. “If you wanna see me shirtless, you can just say that,” he jokes. “Instead of beating around the bush and everything—”

“I wanna see you shirtless,” you blurt in a strange monotone that makes it hard to tell if you’re joking or not.

The boy falters. Tries not to choke on his own spit. There isn’t a world where he can flirt with you where you don’t immediately snatch the upper hand. It’s like you’re immune to that sort of diffidence. Eddie wishes he was, too.

“Wow,” he scoffs after the few long moments it takes him to recover. “Way to be blunt, sweetheart.”

“You told me to say it!”

You give him a lazy shrug and a lazier smile as you swap the bright red lifeguard buoy to your other arm. Eddie shifts uncomfortably in his seat, as though physically affected by the way you look at him, and the plastic pool chair makes a weird squeaking noise beneath him.

“Yeah, well, most people tend to be more subtle about it.”

“I’ve never been subtle about anything in my life.”

You turn back around to scan the busy pool, and Eddie feels like he can breathe again. A laugh rattles through his tight chest as he quips, “I’m starting to realize that about you, actually—”

“God. Stop flirting,” Max groans from your other side, who has otherwise been so silent that Eddie was starting to forget she was there. She doesn’t turn to look at either of you from where she lazes on the lounge chair. “Sitting with Steve would be more bearable than this.”

“Yeah, Eddie. Stop flirting with me,” you grouse, obviously playful, and without missing a single beat. You glare at the boy over your mostly bare shoulder and try hard not to smile. (He can’t see it in your eyes, anyway, though.) “I’m trying to talk to my new friend MADMAX. Gosh—”

You spin on the heel of your plastic red sandal, and your matching skirt twirls with you. Eddie can’t take his eyes off the back of you. He forgets how to blink when the fabric swishes to give him a brief glimpse of your ass.

He’s always hated the sun, but he loves the way it kisses your skin — leaving you glistening and mouthwateringly supple. 

His fangs threaten to make an appearance when a warm breeze carries your cotton candy cloud scent to him. His gums start to burn with the sharp ache.

“—Hi, MADMAX,” you singsong to the scowling girl, grinning with your cheek pressed to your shoulder.

“You can just call me Max,” she deadpans. “You know that, right?”

“But MADMAX is so much cooler. And it suits you way better.”

“Does it?” MADMAX wonders with an unenthusiastic hum.

“Yeah. Maxine is a name for an old woman. Or, like, one of those ridiculously expensive French poodles,” you ramble and turn back to the pool again, head bobbing as you scan the crowd. “But MADMAX? Now, that is a name for a badass with really cool hair and a sick pair of reading glasses.”

There’s a beat of silence, filled only by the sound of splashing water and the buzzing of a thousand distant conversations, as Max tries to bite back a laugh. It sputters past her anxiety-bitten lips before she can stop it — a strangely airy giggle from such an intimidating girl. 

She shakes her head, still, to pretend she’s above the childish giddiness.

Your face screws in feigned offense. “Don’t laugh!” you scold.

Which, of course, only makes her laugh harder.

Eddie lifts his head, finally taking his eyes off you to gape at the redhead across the aisle, who hasn’t laughed like this since the world ended. 

It must be something strange you alone bring out of them, he realizes. Something special in you that the end of the world didn’t steal like it did everyone else.

“These guys bothering you, newbie?” you hear your manager call to you, only partially drowned out by the surrounding laughter and shouting from the bustling crowd.

His voice is annoyingly distinct. It’s deep and articulate in a way that makes him seem smart. You don’t know if he really is, but you do know that he’s really a raging asshole. 

Adam stands before you, gold and glittering under the setting sun like God’s first creation himself. He’s got veins up and down the length of his muscular arms, and a bulging chest that he waxes every two weeks like clockwork. He’s Steve The Hair Harrington pretty without an ounce of the charm.

“Huh?” you call back, brows raised and eyes wide, just to make him repeat himself.

“I asked if these guys were bothering you,” Adam repeats, flicking his cleft chin back to get the blonde curls out of his eyes. “You look distracted.”

“What guys?” you wonder with an innocent furrow to your brows.

The man’s emerald eyes flit instinctively over your shoulder at Eddie, who everyone has been trying and failing not to stare at this whole time. 

You wonder if Eddie notices it, too — if he’s gotten immune to the constant leering or if he’s bone-crushingly aware of it all. Either way, no one deserves to be ogled at like that. Like some kinda zoo animal. 

Everyone always walks on eggshells around him, refusing to look him in the eye out of fear he might bite. But you know he doesn’t have the teeth for it.

Despite that, you look at Eddie over your shoulder like he’s a stranger. His eyes are wide and swimming with apprehension as the chocolates of them dart between you and the man made out of chiseled marble. 

Adam knows that you know him. You know he knows it, too. Which makes lying to him all the more fun.

“I’ve never seen this man before in my life,” you shrug.

Adam squints and crosses his too-big arms over his chest. “Doesn’t change the fact that he’s loitering. Along with the rest of these kids—” He looks around him with a visible disgust. 

Max pretends he isn’t there. Dustin and Lucas, meanwhile, forget to be casual as they cower under his stare with their ice-cream-stained faces.

“It’s a public pool, Adam. Everyone's loitering. Duh.”

You turn away and stick your whistle back in your mouth. You chew absentmindedly at the plastic and scan the pool for any reason to use it.

Adam’s neck twitches. An angry sort of tic he didn’t know he had until he met you. “You’re still on the clock, newbie. If I see you gettin’ distracted again, I’ll—”

You blow the whistle. Loud. And for far longer than you probably need to. 

The high-pitched chirping rings in Adam’s ears from the close proximity. He flinches away accordingly.

“No running, please!” you shout sweetly to the pudgy middle school-aged boy on the other side of the pool. (His babysitter always brings him here so she can sunbathe, and he’s always roughhousing in the deep end. Billy’s developed a personal vendetta with him over the summer.) 

The suddenly quiet pool returns to its deafening chaos a second later.

You flash Adam a cheeky smile. “You were saying?”

“I was saying that I’ll take it out of your paycheck,” the man bites, angled jaw clenched tight. “You’re already on thin ice. Understand?”

Your lip juts in a feigned pout. You nod slowly, eyes wide like a puppy he’s just kicked.

“One more strike, and you’re cleaning toilets, newbie.”

“Ah, I knew that’s what this was all about…” you lilt seductively, lips curling into a mischievous smirk. “You just want to see me bending over—”

You lean closer toward him until your spearmint breath fans across his chiseled jaw. Your bottom juts out in Eddie’s direction, until he can see the very bottom of your ass from beneath your pleated skirt. It makes him as flustered as Adam the Asshole, who stalks off on long legs quickly after, sufficiently embarrassed.

You laugh at the back of him until he disappears into the crowd again. The bubbly sound ceases the moment he’s out of earshot, and your smile ebbs into a girlish pout. “Dickwad,” you mumble under your breath.

You recover from it all rather quickly while Eddie struggles to remind himself to breathe. His mind reels as he, for the first time ever, grapples with the very real possibility that he might actually be in love with you. Or that you’re not real at all, and that this is just Vecna’s doing — long gone but still putting visions in his head somehow.

He doesn’t know which is worse.

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

         oh, what a strange magic!

         oh, it’s a strange magic!

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

The golden-orange sky turns a milky pink and lavender. Eddie’s friends, sunburnt and sufficiently pruned, don’t leave until the first star blinks faintly in the sky. The rest of the crowd goes with them, bustling bodies spilling out in a swarm.

It takes the rest of the gang several long moments to realize Eddie isn’t behind them. (You told him you forgot your sunglasses, and he offered to get them for you, ‘cause he’s nice like that and everything.)

(He doesn’t know the sunglasses are currently hiding in the pocket of your windbreaker.)

“What, where’s Eddie?” Dustin wonders aloud to the rest of the group, head flitting wildly in search of the misplaced metalhead.

“He went to the bathroom, I think,” you blurt the first lie you can think of. “He was talking about a nervous tummy or something. I don’t know.”

Steve scoffs like he senses a non-truth. “So, he’s leaving me with babysitting duty again?” he quips with a cynical, lopsided smile. “How predictable.”

“You say that like we’re the spawn of Satan or something,” Lucas jokes.

“You aren’t?” the oldest boy deadpans.

Dustin flips him off with a chubby finger and a flat face.

They bid their leave tangled in mindless arguments and lanky limbs. You watch them leave with the understanding that Steve’s 733i will be a tighter fit than it should be, crammed with a bunch of rowdy teenage boys. You feel sorry for Max and Robin most of all. 

Steve’s car peels out of the parking lot one moment, and Eddie returns the next.

“I couldn’t find your sunglasses anywhere,” he confesses sheepishly, face twisted like a puppy’s as he scratches awkwardly at the back of his neck. “I don’t know. I think some asshole might’ve stolen ‘em—”

“Oh, no, it’s okay,” you shrug with a tightlipped smile. “I found them in the, uh— In the lost-and-found bin.”

“Oh. Okay. Cool,” Eddie stammers, nodding slowly, just before a smile tugs at his lips. You watch from beneath your lashes as the subtle realization curls on his face. “You had ‘em the entire time, didn’t you?” the boy wonders in a low voice that makes your stomach do whirl.

“Yes,” you squeak in a mousy voice, then ramble before you can stop it. “But only ‘cause I wanted everyone else to leave! You know, so we can have a real date and everything…”

“As opposed to the fake ones we’ve been having?” he jokes with pinched brows.

“Exactly,” you nod, strikingly sincere. ‘Cause the constant carpooling and melted rainbow sherbet dropoffs had to have meant something. 

“As tempting as that sounds, sweet thing,” he humors, scrunching the bridge of his nose. “I do think I might be actually coming down with sunstroke.”

You turn your head wordlessly to the entryway of the shack. There’s only a sliver of the night sky visible from here, but it’s navy blue and sparkling with so many little stars. You look back to Eddie with a dubious glint in your eye. “The sunset twenty minutes ago, Eds.”

“Yeah, but… I’m still sick.”

He removes his hand from the pocket of his leather jacket and balls it into a fist over his mouth. He coughs once, trying hard to make it believable ‘cause he hasn’t been truly sick since the winter of ’84.

That’s perhaps the only cool thing about being a vampire — he’s basically got Superman’s immune system now.

“Well, I actually learned how to treat sunstroke while I was in training,” you lilt with an air of mischief in your voice as you take a daring step closer. The scent of sunscreen and cheap musky cologne clings to his skin. Something about the combination of the two is maddening.

You’re filled suddenly with the primal urge to bite into him like an apple. But you refrain, lest you scare him off.

Eddie’s caught in a similar dilemma, but with perhaps realer consequences than that. Your natural marshmallow-passionfruit scent suffocates him like a pillow to the face. His fangs threaten to force their way through his gums as his head starts to swim.

He ignores every vampiric instinct swirling in his mind and focuses, instead, on the pretty smile curling at your lips.

“Bet ya didn’t know that, did ya?”

Eddie swallows hard and shakes his head. “No, I— I don’t think you ever told me that,” he stammers, then clears his throat when the words get stuck there. He puts both hands back in his jacket pocket, balling them into fists until his nails bite into his palms.

“First, you gotta take off your clothes—”

“You’ve been trying to get in my pants all day,” the boy laughs. “You realize that, right?”

“—And then you gotta cool off in a very luxurious community pool.”

Eddie gets what you’re playing at, then. His smile ebbs almost instantly. “No,” he dismisses with a stern shake of his head. His deep chestnut curls, frizzed with the late-summer humidity, sway around his jaw. “No. No way.”

“Oh, c’mon! Please,” you whine. “The pool closes in, like, half an hour— Then it’ll just be us! We can swim together!”

“I don’t know how,” Eddie whines back, head tossed and face screwed. “Seriously. I grew up in a trailer park. No one ever taught me how to swim, alright? I’ll drown.”

Something about that seems to please you, as your pout curls slowly into another smile. You meet the boy’s wet brown eyes with a gaze that glitters something wicked.

Eddie can see your head spinning with a thousand bad ideas from here. His heart would race at the thought of getting into trouble with you if it was beating still. 

You’ll bring him back to life yet.

“Don’t worry, Eds,” you shrug with a sure grin. “I’d give you mouth-to-mouth in a heartbeat.”

                            ꒷꒦꒷꒷꒦ (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) ꒦꒷꒦꒷꒷

The pool glows a vibrant sapphire color. It makes the surrounding amber streetlamps seem dull in comparison. The water is as blue and crystalline as an early summer sky. Eddie figures you must be the sun, swimming in the center of it all. 

You wait patiently in the shallow end — out of both your windbreaker and pleated skirt for the first time in front of him — and swipe your hands over the water, letting it drip like liquid diamonds from your fingers. You hum quietly to the slow song playing on the boombox across the way, which now houses the mixtape you made that Eddie seems to take with him everywhere. 

The boy shifts uncomfortably at the head of the pool, feeling awkward in the pair of swim trunks you found for him in the break room.

You’ve never seen so much of him before. His paper-white legs are a lot longer than you expected, ‘cause his baggy jeans hardly do him any favors. And his arms are a lot muscular, too — likely from moving band equipment and bussing tables.

He’s already so pretty to begin with. You don’t know what he’s got to be such a Nervous Nelly about.

Eddie knows he’s making it harder for himself. It’d be a lot less awkward for the both of you if he just took his shirt off and jumped in the water. But he’s paralyzed by the misplaced panic that strikes that lightning in his chest. And by you, ogling at him like he’s a pretty thing that deserves to be ogled at.

“Stop staring,” he calls to you, pretending to be playful but meaning every bit of it. “It’s makin’ me nervous.”

“Would it make you feel better if I closed my eyes?”

“Much.”

You put your hands over your eyes, to make him feel better and all. Though, you can’t help but peek between the slivers of your fingers as he strips himself of his Corroded Coffin tee.

His torso is as long and lean as you imagined, with sprinkles of hair on his chest and the pudge of his tummy that trails into his borrowed trunks. You try very hard not to stare too long at the gray scars embedded in his pale skin.

Everything seems to come easier to him when you’re not looking at him. He slides the black fabric off his pale, pale torso, tosses it to his feet, and hurries to hide in the water in one fell swoop.

The chlorine makes his nose burn, but the water feels like satin on his skin. It’s soft and warm and smooth against the cold, sharp edges of him.

“You can open your eyes now,” Eddie scoffs when he notices your hands still over your eyes. He can see you blinking at him through the slits in your fingers. “I know you’re peeking.”

“I was not!” you gasp, mouth agape with a playful offense.

“Well, you weren’t exactly being discreet about it, sweet thing.”

“These are very nefarious accusations you’re making, Eddie Munson…” you scold with arched brows and wide eyes. The water ripples faintly around you as you stalk towards him like a predator to prey, eyes narrowed in a challenging squint. “Are you prepared to back them up?”

The boy cowers slightly under your unwavering stare. “I don’t like the way you’re looking at me right now—”

And he was right not to. ‘Cause you’re lunging suddenly towards him in a flash.

The water splashes violently around you as you wrap both arms around his neck and sweep him off his feet. Literally. You kick his legs out from underneath him, then catch him before he can fall completely backward. Both his downfall and his savior, ironically.

“Ha!” you shout in his face, the tip of your nose brushing his.

“Jesus!” Eddie gasps in response, still heart lurching in his chest.

“I asked if you were prepared!” you defend like you’re innocent, like you aren’t still cradling him in your arms — the only thing keeping him from going under.

“Not for this!” he yells back. 

Only then is he able to take a good breath in. He can smell the velvety scent of your blood from the achingly close proximity. He can feel your heart beating in his own chest from where you’re pressed so intently against him. It makes him instantly dizzy.

He fights back the primal urges that would otherwise drive him mad.

“Jeez…” he huffs, fangs burning. “You’re a lifeguard— You’re supposed to stop people from drowning.”

“Yeah, but no one ever needs saving,” you whine. “It’s so boring.”

His chocolate button eyes flit back and forth between both of yours. “You tryin’ to save me, sweet thing?” he jokes.

You squint. “Is it working?”

“Yeah, actually… If you let me up now, at least.”

He’s grateful when you do, though he mourns the lack of you when you step back a few paces.

His damp hair sticks to his skin when he rises to full height. He shakes his head like a dog, and you giggle when a few rogue droplets fly your way.

“You have freckles on your shoulder,” you observe distantly, eyes darting across the faint amber spots on his pale skin as you try to make constellations out of them. “I didn’t know that ’til now.”

Eddie’s lips jut downward as he peers at his arm from the corner of his eye. “Not really,” he shrugs.

“You do!” you insist. “There’s not many, though. I could probably count ‘em if I wanted.”

“Maybe on our second date.”

“I didn’t know you had a tattoo here, either—” You poke him in the chest, a little harder than you probably mean to. 

Eddie winces and rubs his palm over the fading black widow under his collarbone. “Well, you don’t know everything about me,” he quips. “I like it that way. It keeps you on your toes.”

Your face pinches into a girlish pout. “Only ‘cause you never tell me anything.”

“I tell you loads of things,” Eddie laughs.

Your frown deepens. “You never told me about the picture of Ozzy Osbourne you keep in your wallet.”

“…How do you know about that?”

“Dustin told me.”

“Of course he did,” Eddie huffs. “Remind me not to tell that little shit anything ever again.”

“You never told me about how you got those scars, either,” you blurt, eyes trained on his milky white torso. Beneath the clear, rippling water, you can see the parts of his supple stomach that are marred and turning pink.

You don’t realize what you’ve said until your gaze flits back to his startled one. Your eyes widen as you ramble quickly, “You don’t have to! I’m not trying to… I’m just— I’m just saying. ‘Cause, you know, Steve has the same ones… On his ribs…”

“I’m not even gonna ask how you know that,” Eddie jokes with a (mostly) feigned jealousy.

“Billy does, too. He’s got the same lookin’ scars on his chest,” you continue. “And then I started thinking, you know? I thought, since you all know each other and everything, maybe something happened to you guys. Like, in the earthquakes or something.”

Eddie swallows hard and debates on spilling his guts. 

He swallows his secrets down like bile, in the end.

“Yeah. You’re— You’re not too far off, actually,” he answers with a breathy, bitter laugh. He scratches at the back of neck, if only to busy his anxious hands, and flits his gaze to the velvety night sky.

The blinking white stars there ground him when the world starts to swim — reminds him that he’s on Earth, in Hawkins, and not in the hellscape he died in.

That was his final thought as he took his last breath that spring. How strangely fitting it was that there were no stars in the Upside Down.

“We, uh… We kinda went through hell and back, but, uh… ‘Least lived to tell the tale, right?” Eddie scoffs at himself, then remembers Chrissy — how young and full of life she was one moment, and how her wide blue eyes were sucked out of her skull the next. He recoils then, feeling like he’s said the wrong thing. “Wait. That was— That was insensitive. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“What are you talkin’ about? You’re right,” you assure him with a quiet, emotionless laugh. “You guys survived. You got lucky. We all did.”

Eddie peeks at you beneath his lashes, through the wild curls sticking to his face. “Where were you?” he murmurs. “When… When everything happened?”

“Crying into my milkshake at Benny’s Burgers,” you answer without missing a beat. The memory’s far too vivid for anything else.

A laugh sputters from Eddie’s throat. He’s sure you must be joking. You blink at him like an owl, and he goes solemn all over again. “Oh. You’re… You’re serious?” he mumbles.

“Yeah, I was… feeling sorry for myself over something stupid, and then the ground started shaking outta nowhere— like the universe was trying to say, ‘Hey, this could be soooo much worse, dude,’” you ramble quietly to yourself, skimming your fingers over the water’s surface. “…But then I found out people actually got hurt and everything, so I was like, ‘Oh, maybe I shouldn’t make this about my stupid broken heart, actually.’”

Eddie’s tight chest deflates with a wavering exhale. He didn’t know you back then, but something about knowing you were okay makes him feel better. ‘Cause, yeah, he died and all, but he couldn’t stomach the thought of Vecna taunting you.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” the boy confesses in a honeyed whisper.

A soft smile quirks at the edges of your lips. “I’m glad you’re okay, too, Eddie Spaghetti.”

Your hand reaches out for him. Almost instinctively. Like he’s a whole universe with his own gravitational pull.

Your palm settles soft and warm on the outside of his torso. Your thumb grazes the marred skin over his ribs, and Eddie tenses at the foreign feeling. You jerk back instantly.

“Oh. Shit. Sorry,” you stammer, face twisted apologetically. “I didn’t— I should’ve asked first.”

“No. It’s— It’s okay. Seriously,” Eddie assures with a rapid nod. There’s a faraway look in his chocolate eyes, almost like he’s daydreaming. He feels like he is, anyway. ‘Cause he’s never let anyone this close before.

“I just… I wasn’t expecting it. That’s all.”

Do it again, he says in so many words. Please, I think I might need it.

You reach for him again, more hesitant this time. Your hand settles over his scars again, and you breathe hard through your nose.

Your stomach twists with a phantom sort of ache, like you can feel every ounce of the pain he surely experienced back then. Thinking about how hurt he must’ve been makes you hurt, too.

Eddie can see it written all over your face. How much you ache for him.

He can’t stand it. 

He cups your cheeks between trembling, unsure hands. His touch is softly calloused and colder than ice. He tilts your jaw gently upward, urging you to meet his gaze once more. Your eyes are wet and glittering when they lock with his heavily lidded ones. Your mouth parts to say something, anything. But your brain doesn’t work fast enough.

‘Cause Eddie's kissing you before you can blink.

He tastes distinctly of nicotine and boyhood. Of midnight, full moons, and neon lights. You can feel every groove in his bottom lip from where he picks at it with his teeth. Every sensation is new to you, like cool sparkles of excitement in the pit of your tummy, but it’s strikingly familiar all the same. Nostalgia for something you’re experiencing for the first time warms the center of your chest.

You breathe hard through your nose. The gust of air tickles Eddie’s cupid’s bow as he parts from you, lips smacking apart in protest.

Your eyes, still yet to blink, remain wide and glazed over. “Whoa…” you sigh to yourself.

Eddie’s unsure of how to gauge your reaction. His face swirls with horror.

“What?” he mumbles, still cradling your face between worried hands. He can’t tell if your cheeks are heating or if he’s just colder than usual. Perhaps both are equally true.

“Nothing,” you answer quickly, still slightly faraway. “I just… I got a weird sense of deja vu just now…”

The boy forces a quiet laugh. “Who else have you done this with?” he quips.

“No one!” you blurt. “…But I think I might’ve dreamt about this once.”

“Really?”

“Definitely.”

“Was it better than you expected? Or should I just see myself out now—”

You lean forward to chase his mouth. The cerulean water ripples faintly around you. Your lidded gaze never wavers from his rosy lips, which you’re realizing now are all but begging to be kissed. You don’t know how you never noticed it before.

Eddie’s smiling too wide to respond appropriately.

“Why are you laughing?” you frown.

“I’m not!” he responds through breathy chuckles.

“You are—”

Eddie leans forward in a flash, pressing another chaste kiss to your pout.

You’re all smiles again the second he pulls away, bursting at the seams with a sort of giddiness that could give the sun a run for its money. 

He knows, somewhere deep down, that he shouldn’t make you this happy. He doesn’t even deserve the chance. But here you are anyway, smiling so wide at him that your eyes are starting to crinkle at the edges — showing him that there’s still sunshine in the dark, reminding him what it means to be living.

“Does this mean we get to do this forever?” you wonder in a mousy voice.

“What?” he chuckles. “Kiss?”

You nod wordlessly, blinking up at the boy with wide, wet eyes.

Eddie nods quickly back. 

“Then yeah…” he wavers, chest aching and gums burning. 

He loves you so much he’s gone hungry for it. For you.

He longs to devour you, in every way imaginable, and you want to devour him just the same. He can tell in the way you stare at him when you think he isn’t looking — in the way you stare at him even when he is looking — and in every one of your movements that urges him closer, closer, closer.

Your gaze is debilitatingly intense. Your attitude is mind-bendingly strange. You’re ruining his life, and Eddie can’t believe there was ever a time he wasn’t kissing you.

“Yeah,” he repeats, firmer now. “As long as you want.”

if you made it this far: i love you. so sorry for making you read something so long. i'd kiss you on the forehead if i could. also pls consider reblogging! this took me so so long to write, and it really helps a lot! thank u, love u (▰˘◡˘▰)

[innisgreens]

hello, little doves!! 🕊️ to celebrate the announcement / release of THE SIMS 4: ENCHANTED BY NATURE and the long-awaited fairy occult type (i’m very much hoping and assuming), i’ve created my very first challenge — a whimsical, fairy-themed CAS challenge!

i’ve kept it short and sweet with seven prompts, and i’ve also included some vague visualizers for each for anyone who’d like a little extra inspo — but of course, feel free to go in whatever direction the prompt takes you!

𖡼.𖤣𖥧 woodland whimsy — a fairy cas challenge 𖡼.𖤣𖥧

one — dewdrop whisperer

a visualizer, if needed: soft petals, early light, mist-kissed lashes, bleary eyes, fresh fawn tracks, the hush before birdsong, forgotten earl grey tea left to cool, wild peony, young clover, sweet birch sap.

two — mushroom guardian

a visualizer, if needed: damp moss underfoot, warm soil, toadstools, a log fallen across a bog, iridescent beetle shells, the low thrum of the forest, crackling underbrush, frogs croaking in a shaded hollow, spiced cedar, moss-covered bark, black pepper, dried sage.

three — storm sprite

a visualizer, if needed: wild wind, static on the skin, the sharp bite of ozone, blades of grass, petrichor, a sky split in two, crushed violets, wild mint, windchimes, laughter on the wind, the flutter of startled birds.

four — moonlight trickster

a visualizer, if needed: a silver grin, a firefly trail, a giggle at a campfire, full moonbeams, cricket symphonies, night-blooming jasmine, smoked vanilla, star anise, plum juice.

five — keeper of the wild garden

a visualizer, if needed: smoked rosemary, a whispered secret, wildflower honey, the shimmer of a bee’s wing, berry-stained fingers, sun-warmed thyme, rosehip tea, bubbling brews on a stove, beeswax candles being lit.

six — crystal-winged regality

a visualizer, if needed: a sunbeam reflecting off a still pond, a monarch butterfly wing, the forest canopy, polished river stones, white amber, silver fir, the first frost, echoes through high trees.

seven — heir of lost things

a visualizer, if needed: forgotten buttons in the soil, a threadbare blanket, the damp earth beneath laundry hung to dry, a call from afar, chipped tea sets, the memories of last time, dried lavender, dusty rose, faded cardamom.

please tag me at @innisgreens or @cutietrait and use the #innisgreenscas tag so i can see your lovely creations!