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st-fanartist-recs · 2 months ago

Text

Okay, I have some final (for now) thoughts on the two of them… 18+, MDNI 4.5k

older!fem!Harrington!reader x eddie munson

cw: blood/minor injury, pregnancy scare

eddie's interlude here, index here

The guilt is practically dripping off you as you slip back inside the house. It clings onto you like your damp dress, thick and viscous like Eddie’s spend that sticks between your thighs. It falls off of you in heavy droplets that splatter on the hardwood floors, creaking deafeningly loud when you try and make a break for it up the stairs.

The dishwasher is running in the kitchen, its low hum and the agitating water inside the only sounds in the darkened, still house.

Until someone clears their throat.

“You have a nice walk?”

Your foot hovers over the bottom step and you flinch as a lone light flicks on in the living room, illuminating Vivian where she sits on the couch. And you don’t even attempt to explain yourself.

Because in less than a second, your sister seems to have surmised everything.

From one glance of you standing there dripping wet in her foyer, the dress that she bought you basically ruined, she can easily guess at your litany of crimes against decency.

It’s why she was the Valedictorian and you weren’t voted Most Likely To anything.

She stands and strides towards you, the shiny material of her silk pajama set swishing around her legs with every step. Every inch of your skin burns with white hot humiliation under her gaze.

“Viv, I…”

She lifts her hand and you fall silent at the sight of the folded piece of paper between her fingers.

Instantly, you want to touch the pocket you thought you had slipped the note inside, even knowing it must be empty. She looks you over with stern eyes and holds it out for you to take.

“Get cleaned up and come back down,” she says.

You take advantage of her vagueness by getting in the shower. You let the scalding water run over your skin until it’s starting to tingle approaching numbness. You scrub Eddie from between your legs until he’s swirling down the drain along with the mud and bits of grass stuck to your feet.

You never meant to be gone as long as you were.

It wasn’t a plan. You really, genuinely believed you could go say a decent goodbye to Eddie and still be back to help Viv clear the table before she even noticed you were gone.

And maybe you would have, had you not been so reluctant to leave his side.

You could have laid there forever with your head on his chest, listening to the rain with one ear and the beat of his heart with the other. With his hand cradling your head, his fingers stroking the nape of your neck like he was playing a song.

He didn’t try to convince you not to leave—at least not in so many words.

He said ‘I wish’ a lot, almost like he was casting a spell. I wish you could stay. I wish I could go with you. I wish things were different.

But his incantation doesn’t change anything.

He’s still got school to finish. Not to mention his friends, his band, his uncle—his life.

It’s all here and yours is there.

The hot water won’t hold out long enough for you to avoid what’s waiting for you downstairs, so you finally pull a waffle weave robe over your raw skin and tie it too tight around your waist.

When you return, Vivian is waiting in her seat at the far end of the dining room table.

In front of her sit two glasses, clear crystal ones filled with two fingers of brown liquor. It’s not the garnet-colored port she takes in the evening, and you can smell the oaky top notes of some surely expensive bourbon that’s probably been in a decanter in John’s office for years.

She says nothing when she sees you, just nods at the seat adjacent to hers.

You take it and sit there silently, waiting for all the admonishments you know are coming.

It’s all the same things you’ve been hearing in your head the entire summer—any spare moment that wasn’t filled with Eddie was riddled with that bitter, berating voice that sounded suspiciously like your mother’s coming from deep in the furthest recesses of your mind.

What were you thinking? How could you do this? You’re humiliating our family, you’re destroying our reputation, you’re making a mockery of all that we’ve built—everything we’ve worked for. You might as well go to the cemetery and spit on your father’s grave. That’s how much respect for him you’re showing, you spoiled, selfish—

“Did I ever tell you about my swim lessons?”

Her voice is soft. So soft, you have to look at her to be sure she really spoke.

And even then, you’re not entirely convinced.

“Your…” You shake your head, confused. “Viv, you were all-state in swimming. What are you—”

“It was the summer we had the pool resurfaced. I started going to the country club with the girls instead. And there was this lifeguard.”

She swirls the glass on the table in front of her, the facets in the crystal catching the low light.

“He was young. Handsome. He came on to me so strongly, he was so…brazen.” The corners of her lips curled in a barely-there smile at the thought. “And I knew it was inappropriate, but I couldn’t bring myself to stop. I liked the attention too much, I suppose.”

You study the side of your sister’s face as she raises her glass and drinks. You knew things with her and John weren’t ideal, much as she tried to pretend they were. But you never imagined…

“He said he could give me private lessons. That he knew a hotel where we could meet with a pool we could use. It, um…it went on much longer than I’m proud to admit.”

She downs another swallow of her bourbon, finishing off the glass. You stare down at yours with tears threatening to well in your eyes as you speak and you try not to let them fall.

“It’s not just about attention, Viv,” you say. “He’s special. He’s important.”

Her lips purse and she nods mutely.

“Maybe so. But you’re not stupid.” She tilts her head at you, coaxing you to meet her eye line. “I think you know this can’t happen. I think that’s why you’ve still got that look on your face.”

The next day, you make the drive back to the city. Alone.

You get the keys to your new place and spend your first night eating pizza on the one piece of furniture in it—a mattress that had belonged to the old tenants, who left it for you so they didn’t have to haul it away. It’s not bad, considering it was free, and you weren’t exactly in a position to turn it down when your bed is being slept in by your ex and his mistress girlfriend.

On Saturday, you sit on the front porch and read, waiting for Steve to arrive in the U-Haul with the rest of your boxes and the scant amount of furniture salvaged from your old life.

You wave when he pulls up, only for your hand and face to fall when a familiar head of dark curls tied down underneath his skull bandana pops out of the cab from the opposite side door.

His smile is as nervous as yours feels when he gives you a tiny wave, and you do your best to act normal as the three of you start to unload. You fail miserably, though, when you go to pass him a box and his hand grazes yours, nearly making it drop.

You don’t say more than two words to one another the entire morning, never managing to find a moment where Steve is out of earshot. But you feel his eyes on you and can hardly keep your own off of him. By the afternoon, his white tank is nearly translucent with sweat, darkened patches of it sticking to his spine and ribs, the lines of his tattoos showing through the soaked material.

He stops periodically to tug it from his chest, trying to get some airflow. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think he was trying to torture you.

Steve finally takes a break, sitting outside on the porch swing and draining a bottle of water. You’re in the kitchen, unpacking boxes of dishes when you feel Eddie’s familiar presence behind you.

Tucked away into the little nook in front of the door that leads out to the garage, you’re only just out of sight of the living room. It’s the first time all day Eddie’s felt safe enough to approach you.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, coming to stand beside you. “He just asked if I was busy today. I swear, I didn’t know what we were doing until I got there.”

You glance over your shoulder, keeping an eye and an ear out for your nephew, and look back at Eddie with your skeptical brow and discerning eyes. God, how he’s missed that look. It takes everything in him not to kiss it off your face.

“And you didn’t try to get out of it?” you ask.

“I did,” he smirks. “Just not very hard.”

“Eddie—”

“I’m kidding,” he chuckles, his voice and gaze softening as he licks his lips and stares at yours. “I just…I wanted to see where you live. I wanna know you’re gonna be okay.”

Shit.

There’s a pang in the center of your chest at his words, a jolt that runs through all the nerves in your hand as if it’s fighting to reach out for him. But the sound of Steve’s footsteps makes you shrink, pulling away. Eddie swallows hard and nods resolutely before he turns to leave.

As he does, his pinky just barely grazes yours.

So light, you might not have believed it happened had you not seen it with your own eyes.

You feel that jolt again, that tiny tremor in your muscles as your brain demands for your hand to reach out and wrap around his wrist, dragging him back into you. But the screen door slams, jarring you out of your swirling thoughts.

Steve huffs as he drops one of the boxes in your living room and pokes his head into the kitchen.

“Coffee table is the last thing,” he announces.

“Shit, shit, shit—FUCK!”

Expletives fly out of both Steve and Eddie’s mouths as the table slips from Steve’s grasp. It makes Eddie wince as the rough wood digs into his hand and the sting of splinters makes him lose his grip. Its legs hit the floor and Eddie stumbles forward, his hand coming down on the glass top that shatters almost instantly. Blood dribbles from his hand and Steve stares in shock.

Panic makes your chest seize and you swoop in, helping Eddie to steady himself.

He doesn’t make a sound, but his arm trembles as you hold it tenderly to assess the damage. The deepest cut is across his palm and there are some others scratches and scrapes along his wrist, but nothing deep enough to warrant stitches and no glass embedded in them that you can see.

“Steve, drugstore—bandages,” you order curtly.

He grabs your car keys, already out the door as you’re leading Eddie to the kitchen.

At the sink, you rinse his arm and hand as best you can, but it’s difficult to see if there’s any glass or splinters in them as it’s still bleeding. Pressing a paper towel against it and telling him to hold it there, you leave to look for your tweezers and return with them and a bottle of antiseptic from the bathroom. You rinse the wounds again and clean them. Eddie hisses at the sting, but he doesn’t pull his hand back, leaving it laying in yours as you bend close to study his palm.

Out of your peripheral, you can see the way his chest expands as he inhales the scent coming off the top of your head. He swallows the urge to tell you how he missed that smell so much he bought a bottle of your shampoo. But it still doesn’t smell quite right. There’s something missing.

Something specifically, unmistakably you.

“I’m sorry about your table,” he whispers.

“Don’t be,” you chuckle. “You did me a favor, I kind of hated that thing.”

Eddie smirks, thinking you were trying to make him feel better, but it isn’t a lie.

The thing was hideous. A wedding present from some relative or another you’ve always secretly suspected hated you. But of course Viv would never let you throw away a gift…

He hisses again and winces as you pull out a shard of wood. You shush him gently, rubbing small circles with your thumb over the pulse point in his wrist, feeling how his was racing. Your own isn’t doing much better, still thrumming with the spike of adrenaline when you saw him fall, when the sound of class cracking blotted out all other thoughts besides HELP HIM.

It was so loud in the moment, but now it’s too quiet. The room is too still and he’s far too close for you not to be thinking about all of the other times he’s been this close. It’s all you can do to keep your mind on the task in front of you until you hear his soft intake of breath.

“You know,” he starts quietly, “you’re not that far from Hawkins…”

“Hold still,” you say, even though he didn’t move.

“But I could visit you, we could still—”

“Eddie, please.”

The brokenness of your voice quiets him for the moment as you grab one of your clean dish cloths and start to wrap it around his hand, letting his blood seep into it. Staining it forever.

“This will do until Steve gets back,” you murmur, tying it off. “Too tight?”

He curls his fingers, testing it. You still can’t look directly at him, especially not when he speaks.

“Tell me why,” he says softly, his good hand coming up to brush the hair from your face with his knuckles. “I know you wanna be with me too, I just…I need to hear why not once and for all.”

His hand covers the side of your face, cupping your jaw and rubbing his thumb across the apple of your cheek. He watches your lashes, waiting for your eyes to lift and meet his, but you refuse to let them. They flutter as you stare at his other hand still being held delicately in yours, eyes stinging with tears you blame on the isopropyl alcohol.

“You’re so young,” you sigh. “You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. You should be out in the world, you should be making the memories you’re gonna look back on when you’re my age.”

Eddie’s head shakes and his hand slips smoothly under the warm curtain of your hair. He grips the back of your neck and dips his head down to make you look him in the eye.

“What good are they if you’re not in them?”

The edge of the countertop digs into your ass as he presses you up against it. He fists the back of your shirt in his injured hand, bunching up the material as he kisses you ferociously. It’s the last ditch effort, the Hail Mary pass with no thought or logic behind it—just pure, unbridled hope.

There’s no noise that can make it to your brain over your heartbeat pounding in your ears—just the sound of please, please, please whispered against your lips in between feverish kisses and sighs you can’t stifle as his knee slots between your own. He grinds his thigh against your heat, relishing the way your body unravels for him—shuddering, clenching, convulsing with need.

Neither of you hear the door.

“What the fuck is this?!”

Yours and Eddie’s heads snap sideways, your lips breaking apart but your hands still grappling and tangled up in one another. Steve stands in the kitchen door, the plastic bag he got from the pharmacy on the floor with the gauze and medical tape rolling across the tiles.

“It’s her?!” he exclaims, his eyes so big it’s like they’re exploding. “She’s who you’ve been losing your goddamn mind over? You’ve been sneaking around behind my fucking back?!”

“Steve, listen—”

“It’s not what you—”

Both yours and Eddie’s pleas fall on deaf ears. Steve backs away, holding out his hands as if to strike nothing and then raking them through his hair and dragging it back as his mind spirals.

“Stop, stop! This is so fucked, this is crazy, this is crazy, this is crazy—”

He’s shouting at nothing in particular, not even able to look at either of you, but jerking his hands away when you try and reach for him. It seems to bring him back to the moment, horrifying as it is, and he turns his crazed eyes back on you, face overflowing with anger and shock.

“How could you do this?! What the hell were you thinking?!”

He looks back and forth between you and Eddie and neither of you is sure who his question is even directed at. You can tell he wants to leave, wants to run, wants to drive home and maybe never look you or Eddie in the eye ever again. But he can’t. Because even when he’s the maddest at Eddie he’s ever been…he can’t leave his friend behind with no way home.

Or maybe he’s just staunchly opposed to leaving the two of you alone.

“Just finish up so we can go,” he snarls, crossing his arms across his puffed up chest.

He stands over you, fuming and glowering at you both as you wrap Eddie’s hand in gauze. None of you say a word. And once you’re done, Steve just shakes his head and stomps outside to the truck. Eddie’s head hangs low as he follows, stopping to squeeze your hand one last time.

Later that night the phone rings and you snatch it up off the cradle, clutching it to your ear.

The drive helped Steve calm down, though he threatened to make Eddie get out and walk about a half-dozen times. His friend evidently spared him the grittier details, and he took responsibility for all of it—flirting with you, going after you so relentlessly, doing whatever he could to see you.

You stare down at the dishcloth still stained with blood and the guilt forms a lump in your throat.

“He says he loves you,” Steve mutters into the phone. “Do you…I mean, are you…”

“It doesn’t matter,” you tell him quickly. “And this isn’t Eddie’s fault, either. I was supposed to be the one looking out for you and I let you down. I never should have let it go as far as it did.”

You took a deep breath, bracing yourself by gripping the frame of the door.

“I’m so, so sorry, Steve. I never meant for this to happen. I never meant for you to get hurt.”

The line goes quiet as Steve thinks. You can hear the heavy puffs of air he’s pushing through his nose and you bite down on your lip, fingers twisting up the phone cord as you wait.

“So it’s over, then?” he asks at last.

And there’s no way you could know this…but somehow you can sense that Eddie is there.

You can almost see him sitting in the kitchen, his elbows on the table, hands folded into a fist he’s resting his chin on, kissing his knuckles as he listens to the conversation.

You look one last time at the rag beside you.

The blood has darkened in the past few hours, oxidized from exposure to the air. No bright red pulsing life left in it. Dead.

“Yes,” you say firmly. “It’s over.”

It takes a couple weeks for Eddie to stop calling.

The first few times, it’s just to check on you. To make sure you’re doing okay. To see how school’s going. It’s mostly harmless. But you know it will do so much more damage if you don’t cut it off now. So you finally find the fortitude you never managed to in the summer and tell him you shouldn’t talk anymore. That you can’t.

That it’s only going to make it worse.

You’ll forget, you tell yourself.

Eventually you’ll forget how his rough hands felt running up and down your sides; or how he would squeeze and grip you as he took you from behind, pulling you up so your body was flush with his and you would stretch your neck to kiss him over your shoulder; how he would cover his mouth to block a moan as you took him into your mouth and he would look at you with those eyes.

Those big, round, pretty eyes you can’t help but to see in every cup of coffee you pour. And by the next time you visit your sister, his smell will have been washed out of the guest room sheets.

Ironically, it’s right after you tell him you can’t talk to him anymore that you realize you’re late.

You know there’s no way that you’re pregnant. Between birth control and your age, the chances are infinitesimal. You know it has to be stress. You know it’s all in your head, this odd and off-putting sensation in your body. And the test you take is just a precaution, nothing more.

Still, you can’t help but cry when it’s negative.

Not because you wanted a different result, but because it makes you realize the only way you might have wanted a kid is if it was his.

Time goes by. You visit Hawkins for some holidays, but you don’t see Eddie. Viv finds out (and passes on to you as subtly as she can) that after he graduated he and his band decided to go on tour, heading for California and playing at any dive bar that will book them along the way.

Every couple months, Steve sends a postcard from whatever country he and Robin are currently terrorizing on their post-grad “summer abroad” that’s now going on two years. He doesn’t write much, lots of different thoughts strung together, things he saw that made him think of you.

Always trying to say he was sorry without coming out and saying it.

Eddie’s name only gets mentioned once, after he met up with them at a music festival in Berlin.

You sort of love the thought of him there.

You think he must fit in well with all of the other eclectics, the artists, the musicians. Months later, you get a package in the mail with foreign stamps on it. There’s no name or note inside, just a teddy bear in a shirt that says “I ♡ Deustchland.”

It sits in your bathroom window until the golden brown fur on his back half is bleached beige.

You date here and there. You even fall in love once in a while. It’s not forever, though. You don’t know if you even believe in “forever” anymore.

Or if you ever did.

You get back into the hobbies you let fall by the wayside after you got married. You finish a novel and the University Press wants to publish it. You get some money for it. Not a lot, but enough that when the head of your department is retiring and asks if you want to buy the house you’ve been renting, you can swing the down payment.

You paint and decorate every room precisely how you like it, with absolutely no one’s opinion to worry about besides your own.

You hang string lights in the backyard and host garden parties that are mostly a flimsy excuse to drink wine with your fellow professors and gossip about how all the other departments aren’t nearly as fun as yours. It’s during one of these you find out you’re on the short list for tenure.

It’s not a bad life. It’s a good life, even.

Full and realized and complete.

There are bad days and better days, but some things are always consistent. Leaves turn color in the fall. They pile on the ground under branches that are barren by winter, only to bud again in the spring. And summer always comes back around, the days getting warmer and longer.

It’s at the end of one of those days you find yourself still at school catching up on grading. Summer vacation has all but begun, most of the campus deserted with everyone scattering on all their varied adventures once finals were done.

Your feet are aching in your heels as you slump into the seat behind the desk up at the front of the classroom, the pile of exams making your eyes tense with a burgeoning migraine.

One not helped at all by the stifling heat.

Your department’s building is so ancient—in desperate need of some updates and lacking in all modern amenities like air-conditioning. You flap a hand in front of your face the whole way over to the window. It squeals in protest as it opens and chipped paint flies off in little shards of white.

A breeze wafts across your face, the scent of freshly cut grass filling your nose. It’s one you’ve always loved, but still can’t help but feel a twinge of sadness when you smell it now. The sound of a weed whacker below draws your eyes to the man using it, trimming the grass along the edges of the concrete path that runs between your building and the one next door.

And he is just…stunning.

Still young, but older now. Muscles still taught and defined in most areas, but getting softer in others. Instead of ratty cut-off shorts and a tank top touting some metal band, he’s dressed in dark coveralls emblazoned with the logo of a landscaping company—Fantasy Greenscapes.

His company, in case you couldn’t guess by the silhouette of a dragon on the logo.

The sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, flashing familiar glimpses of black ink on alabaster skin. His hair is still long and wild, but he’s got it tied back and pushed out of his face with a pair of protective earmuffs. A pair of sunglasses shield his eyes, but the mirrored lenses are just about the same shade as the deep brown pools you know are behind them.

The blades on the weed whacker slow and stop completely when he pauses, taking a moment to take off his glasses and wipe his face with a skull bandana you’d know anywhere.

And as he does, his eyes drift up towards your classroom window. He smiles when he sees you, teeth flashing in that same grin you see every night in your dreams, and he lifts his hand to wiggle his fingers at you in a wave.

prev┃next

I just wanna say thank you to everyone who read this story, particularly those who took the time to reblog and comment with your thoughts/reactions. It's only because of you that this vague, nebulous idea somehow morphed into this thing that contains some of my favorite writing I've ever done.

And for that, I'm eternally grateful. I hope you enjoyed this final part. Love you, mean it xx

#rebelfell

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st-fanartist-recs · 2 months ago

Text

Evidently never gonna be done with thoughts of these two... 18+, MDNI 4.8k

older!fem!Harrington!reader x eddie munson

cw: unprotected piv, finishing inside

cont'd from here, index here

The ride back to the house is silent.

No music playing. No words being said. Just the rumble of his van’s engine and the spin of its tires making the floor vibrate underneath your feet. Eddie’s hands keep tensing, his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel never loosening as he navigates the deserted, winding backroads.

The trip that seemed to take only minutes on the way now stretches on interminably. Like when you wake up from a dream and the elasticized time snaps abruptly back in place and you realize your alarm has been going off for over an hour and now you’re definitely late for work.

You swallow thickly as you stare out the window at the blur of trees whipping past, your fingers twisting in your lap as you pick at the skin around your thumbnail. You rack your brain for some words, any words, that might be helpful. That might somehow fix this mess you’ve made.

But there isn’t a lot left to say after the lake.

Eddie, don’t, you can’t say stuff like that.

Why not? It’s the truth, it’s how I feel, I—

Because this can’t go anywhere! I’m leaving, I’m going back to—

Then I’ll leave too! I’ll go with you, I’ll go wherever you go, I just want to be with you.

Stop it, you don’t know what you’re saying.

He tries to tell you he does mean it. He means it more than he’s ever meant anything in his whole life. He doesn’t care about Hawkins or his stupid community college classes or his handful of odd jobs he could do literally anywhere. He’ll pick up and move. He’ll work. He’ll take care of you.

He’ll do anything so long as this doesn’t end.

What about Steve?

You stare at him plainly, certain you’ve delivered a death blow. And his face does flicker, if only for a moment, as the guilt that’s been festering in his gut for months finally shows through. And even as he shakes his head as determinately as he can, the waver in his voice is unmistakable.

I’ll…I’ll explain it to him.

Explain what? That we fucked on every available surface in his house?

Eddie shrank at your harsh words, not ready for the anger that flashed in your eyes, nor the vitriol that rose in your voice when you so crassly described the best summer of his life.

No! Well…yeah, but—I don’t know, I’ll figure it out!

Okay, and then what? We date? You practically spat the word out. Show up for Christmas dinner at your best friend’s house? Sit across the table from him as his aunt’s…as my…

You can’t even say the word “boyfriend”—it feels so juvenile, so high-school.

The argument drags on until the deep, brilliant midnight blue sky begins to tinge gray with the arrival of a cold and sickly dawn. Eddie probably would have kept going until the sun rose, until it hung in the middle of the sky, until it had set and come back up all over again. But you told him as calmly as you could that you had to go back.

It was time.

His van practically crawls to a stop in the driveway, the screech of his brakes mixing with the soft tweets of birds just beginning to stir. He shifts it into park and reaches up to grab the keys and cut the ignition, but you lay your hand on top of his to stop him.

“I don’t think you should stay,” you tell him, forcing back the wobble in your voice.

And the way he looks at you when you say it makes you feel like you’ve been stabbed. His face crumples, his brow pinching together, his mouth contorted in an ugly shape more snarl than frown.

“Don’t do this…” he says, gritting out the words through a clenched jaw. “Please.”

And it’s not the sort of begging you’re used to hearing out of him. It’s not an eager plea for you to kiss him or touch him, nor a cheeky request to fuck you somewhere you could get caught. This is real begging. It’s him clawing at you from behind a chain link fence, a lost puppy who wants only for you to take him home from the pound.

Not asking for anything but you.

“Eddie, we can’t—”

He reaches out for you, his hands coming up to cup the sides of your face, his touch somehow soft and tender despite the rigid tension you can see in his arms, in his back, in his shoulders.

“We can do anything we want,” he whispers.

His breath is warm on your lips as his forehead rests against yours. He really believes it. And god do you want to believe it too. But…

“I’m sorry.”

Tears brim along your lashline as you wedge your fingers under his to wrench them from your face, rushing to get out of the van before he can stop you. Your footsteps thud on the concrete as you retreat inside the house and lean on the door in the foyer until you hear him backing down the driveway and the glow of his headlights has disappeared completely from view.

You drift back upstairs, heading for your sister’s room that has lain untouched since they left. Past all the places you and he defiled this summer. Past your bed with its rumpled sheets that still smell of Camels and cologne. Past the guest room where Eddie barely slept, lying awake at night thinking of you instead. Past the answering machine and its flashing red light that signals a new message has been left, one you’ll listen to in the morning with bleary bloodshot eyes.

It’s your sister letting you know they’ve changed their flight. They’ll be home tomorrow.

Which is now today.

Having John and Viv back in the house is an adjustment.

Upon playing their message, you and Steve did a sweep of every room trying to get it back up to his mother’s impeccable standards you’d let slide since your arrival…in more ways than one.

You don’t see much of Steve’s father, which feels normal because you never do. Even after all the deals he closed this summer, he somehow only has to work more now that he’s home. Most mornings, he’s up and headed to the office before the rest of the world has hit the first snooze on their alarms. And some nights he stays until long after the rest of the house has gone to bed.

It gives you and your sister lots of time to talk. Well, it gives her time to talk. And the one thing she simply can’t seem to stop talking about is how incredible the yard looks.

She keeps looking out the windows and sighing wistfully as she stares at the haven Eddie has created. She starts to take her morning coffee, her afternoon tea, her evening glass of port out on the patio just to marvel at the perennials just beginning to flower. She’s beyond thrilled.

And you’re…fine. At least you can pretend like you are. Most days.

It’s easy to slip back into the state of numbness that was your home base after everything with your ex. But with him, you had just felt mad. There was no guilt or remorse eating away at your insides. No bottomless pit of doubt in your stomach, no needling thoughts of regret gnawing at you constantly. No part of you left wondering if you’d made a terrible mistake.

Or rather, another one.

What’s really not helping is Viv going out of her way to berate you about how you’re going about this all wrong. She’s quick to scold you for moping around the house, asking if this is what you’ve done all summer. She’s adamant you should be getting back out there—back on the bike or the horse or whatever other tired ass cliche you preferred.

It’s during one of these rants that the phone rings and mercifully cuts her off. Steve is calling. He left his lunch at home and he’s wondering if someone can bring it to him. Vivian grins.

“Your aunt would love to. She was just saying she needed to get out of the house.”

And she’s not wrong, even if it’s her and not the house you need a break from.

But as you make the turn into Family Video’s lot, your stomach drops at the sight of the brown and white van parked out front. Eddie’s long frame leans on the hood, unlit cigarette dangling out of his mouth, his hands resting on the hips of a girl he’s got pressed up against him, his fingers toying with the frilled hem of a baby pink top that flashes the bare skin of her lower back.

Your neck is as stiff as death as you walk past, keeping your eyes glued to the door in front of you, trying to ignore the breathy laugh that floats on the air and punctures your brain. You yank on the handle a little too hard, the silver bell overhead even louder in your already ringing ears.

Steve lets out a loud groan of relief when he sees you, or rather when he sees his lunch, and he tears into it right there on the sales floor. He’s the only one on today and the store is deserted— everyone likely at the pool or out enjoying the last few weeks of freedom and warm weather.

Or going for a gold medal in tonsil hockey.

You fold your arms across your chest and lean on the counter, sneaking a glance over your shoulder you know you’ll regret. Most of the display going on outside is obscured by the decals and posters on the windows, but you can still see plenty.

Eddie’s head dips to whisper something in that girl’s ear and you feel about as tall as the crumbs scattering from Steve’s sandwich.

As he chews, your nephew’s gaze follows yours out the window. His brows raise as Eddie grins and he starts to run his hands down the curve of her spine, slipping them snugly into the back pockets of her jeans. Unable to see the grimace on your face, Steve just nods approvingly.

“About time,” he sighs as he rips off another bite. “He’s been like…catatonic lately.”

The sourness in your stomach only curdles further until you mutter out a goodbye to Steve and turn to make your escape. But the very moment that you do, that girl is taking Eddie by the hand and pulling him along behind her into the store. You and she nearly collide at the door, close enough you can smell the sickly sweet peach lip gloss she’s wearing.

“Oh! Sorry, ma’am,” she says, blithely smiling as she floats over to the new releases.

Behind her, Eddie stands staunchly in the doorway. He takes up the entire exit, his dark clothes seemingly absorbing all the light in the room as you lift your chin to look him in the eye.

You expect to find contempt. Something callous and unfeeling. More than merely smug, you’re sure he will be dripping with arrogance and condescension. Because he’s got every right to be, doesn’t he? You really think I cared about you? Don’t you see how fast I can replace you?

But when you do look at him, there is only pain etched into his features. He holds your gaze for no more than a few seconds, but it feels like an eternity. You think that all of civilization could be crumbling into ruin around you and you would never know because you can’t stand to tear your eyes away from his. And you don’t, until he drops his head and turns sideways to let you pass.

His cologne stings in your nostrils as you do, and your arm brushes the edge of his denim vest. And you don’t make it but a block away before you have to pull off onto a side street and cry.

For the next two weeks, the sky is permanently gray.

Dark and mottled clouds roll in sometime that evening and suddenly even the smallest sliver of sunshine becomes as precious as real gold. Their coverage is dense and the air becomes thick and muggy with humidity that only gets more oppressive, yet never gets any closer to breaking.

Every day, the house seems to get smaller. It’s like you’re a rat in a maze and the scientists who are studying you keep removing portions of it until you’ve been boxed in with no escape. But the idea of going out, the thought of running into Eddie again, is too much for you to bear the risk.

The only thing that brings you any sort of solace is that the school year will start soon and you’ll have work to distract you again. Truthfully, the only reason you have yet to extract yourself from Hawkins is because your new housing—a little craftsman you’re going to rent from the head of your department at the university—won’t be ready for you to move in until the end of August.

But the looming threat of your departure somehow only encourages Vivian.

You should have known something was up the moment she said she wanted to have a “family dinner” to celebrate your last night. You should have known when you came into your room and found a bag from her favorite department store sitting on your bed containing a sundress far too floral for your taste. It might as well have had a post-it on it that said “Wear Me” like your mother used to put on your school clothes when she laid them out for you in the morning.

If you were smart, you might have thrown it out the window. Or maybe even climbed through it yourself and scaled down the trellis to make a run for it. Instead, you put it on. And your feet are like lead on the steps as you come down to find your sister bustling around the dining room.

Your brow furrows as you count four place settings. “I thought Steve had a date,” you say.

“He does,” she hums, shooting you a sidelong glance. “And so do you.”

“Viv, no. Please don’t do this—”

“I haven’t done anything!”

She throws her hands up and smiles, but all the faux innocence in the world can’t disguise that glint of mischief in her eyes. You open your mouth to protest, but you’re cut off by the doorbell.

“That must be him,” she titters, flapping a napkin behind you to shoo you into the foyer. “Go on, now, don’t keep him waiting!”

Eddie parks his van down the street from Steve’s house, under the cover of some tree branches that hang low over the road. He smokes two cigarettes down to the filters and debates on a third as he tries to summon the courage to get out of the car. Every part of his body seems to be at odds with him, unwilling to settle until he finally kicks open the door and gets out.

His feet carry him forward in long, determined strides but they falter when he sees a car he isn’t expecting sitting in the driveway. It’s a cruiser. One Eddie found himself pulled over by on more than a few occasions, being scrutinized by the giant hulking man now ringing the doorbell.

Hopper.

He’s not in uniform. In fact, he’s more dressed up than Eddie has ever seen him, all trussed up in a sport coat over a button down that he’s actually buttoned. Shit, is his shirttail tucked in?

“Munson?” he says in surprise. “What brings you here?”

But before Eddie can answer, the door is opening and it's you on the other side. Eyes widening when they land on him and then blinking furiously when you realize Hopper is there as well.

“Um…hi.”

It’s hard to say who looks more uncomfortable as you step aside so Hopper can come in and you exchange some stilted pleasantries. You remember him from high-school and you aren’t all that surprised the town’s terminal bachelor is the one your sister has decided to foist upon you.

What is surprising is that Eddie is here. And his eyes are searing into you, while you have yet to fully acknowledge him. In all honesty, you're not entirely convinced he isn’t a hallucination. Only when Viv appears and glides into the chaos like a parade float do you actually believe it.

“I thought that was you, Chief. So glad you could make it—Oh, Eddie!”

Her eyes fall on the boy still hovering in the doorway, her hand coming up to her chest.

“I’m so sorry, dear, but Steve’s already left for his date. Wait right here, though, I have some money for you for all that work you did.”

“No, you don’t have to—”

Eddie takes a hurried step forward, his white sneakers finally breaching the threshold. Vivian is already gone, though, rushing up the stairs. Leaving you alone. With both of them.

“Hey…Hop. John’s in the den, if you want a drink,” you tell him, pointing the way.

With a terse nod and a gruff sound you presume is him answering in the affirmative, Hopper heads down the hall and leaves you and Eddie to your uncomfortable hovering. He leans on the narrow table in the entryway, staring at his own hand as he traces the edge of the wood with his finger, the rest of his hand closed in a fist. He won’t look at you now. Won’t lift his chin an inch.

“What are you doing here?” you whisper.

Eddie just shrugs, staring now at his sneakers he’s scuffing against the oriental rug under his feet. His mouth parts slightly, but no words come out. His chest rises with the breath he draws, but he swallows his non-response when he hears Vivian at the top of the stairs.

“Here you go, dear,” she says, handing over the envelope full of cash with his name written on it that’s been sitting on her bureau for weeks now.

His head shakes. “You really don’t have to—”

“Nonsense! You did such beautiful work out there, it was so wonderful to come home to. You ought to think about going into landscaping.”

Vivian just about forces the envelope into his hands and he mutters out a thank you, tapping his fingers on it and making furtive glances towards the door as she whirls around to you.

“You two met, right?” she asks. “He must have been here all the time working.”

“Y-yeah, yes, we—”

“Thank you,” Eddie says, stuffing the money into his back pocket and reaching for the doorknob in one motion. Still not looking you in the eye. “I’ll, um…I’m sorry to disturb you…”

He goes to leave, one foot already out the door when she suddenly stops and looks back over his shoulder. You feel your breath catch, his gaze finally lifting to meet yours.

“Have a good night,” he says quietly. And then he’s gone.

The door doesn’t slam. He doesn’t even shut it particularly hard. Still, you can’t help but flinch as it closes soundly behind him. There’s something so final about it, but it doesn’t feel like enough after everything that’s happened—it doesn’t feel right for it to end with something so hollow.

Vivian just smiles and loops her arm with yours.

“Ready to go find the boys?”

You walk Hopper to the door after dinner, more or less coerced into it by your sister.

There’s a slight scuffle as you try and figure out how to say goodnight to one another. He winds up reaching out a hand as big as a bear’s paw and clumsily pats your shoulder, almost like he is one, when he seemingly can’t decide between hugging you or shaking your hand.

Chuckling through it the best you can, you keep the same fake smile you’ve worn all night firmly plastered in place until the door closes with him on the other side. And you stand there for a minute, not too keen on going back in the kitchen for your impending cross-examination.

But then your eyes land on the vase sitting on the table in the entryway. More specifically, on the folded piece of paper tucked behind it with only a ripped edge peeking out.

You reach for it, flashing back to a ringed finger tracing the edge of that table, fist clenched around something, and your hands shake as you unfold it to read Eddie’s note scrawled inside.

I’m parked down the street.

It’s just starting to rain as you hurry down the driveway, skulking through shadows as you walk along the quiet street. In the distance, you can hear the rumble of the approaching storm as fat raindrops hit the top of your head and slide down your scalp through the forest of your roots.

A pitch black sky overhead matches the road under your feet, scantly lit by a lone streetlight. The wind picks up as you look around for Eddie’s van and just when you’re starting to think he must have left already, you spot him on the side of the road under the cover of some trees.

At first all you can see is the glowing orange dot at the end of his cigarette, but his face steadily comes into view as you approach the driver’s side door. A blatant attempt to avoid what you know will happen if you climb in the passenger seat.

The rain starts to fall a little harder as he rolls his window down. It soaks the ground at your feet, clouds of steam rising from the pavement. The air is thick and heavy, like standing in a bowl of soup. It has your shoulders sagging with the weight and your lungs struggling to draw breath.

At least that’s what you let yourself believe.

“How was your date?” Eddie asks with a bitter laugh that does little to disguise his disgust. You shake your head, pushing back a wet piece of hair clinging to your cheek.

“It wasn’t a…It was just dinner.”

The hurt in your voice makes his eyes round and soften, cheeks hollowing as he takes a long drag. Seemingly breathing in as deeply as he can to steady his own frayed nerves.

“I was afraid you might have left already,” he says.

“No,” you tell him, eyes falling to your feet. “Not ‘til tomorrow.”

He nods.

“I, uh—I know I shouldn’t just show up like this. But I wanted to tell you…” His jaw is clenched, bottom lip shaking almost imperceptibly, corners of his mouth turning downwards as he stubs out his smoke. “I need you to know that I don’t regret it. Any of it.”

He lifts his gaze to meet yours on the last words, brown eyes like twin black holes that hold all the mysteries of the universe. There’s a terrifying vastness to them, a depth you’ve only barely scratched the surface of. Your lips press together and you pinch your eyes shut as your hand creeps up to rest on the door, fingers curling around it as raindrops splash on the interior.

The thunder only gets louder as the storm nears, the rain now falling in a rapid patter. Here it is, you tell yourself. This is what you knew was coming. This is where you knew you’d end up.

“I don’t regret it either,” you say, raising your voice over the sound of the rain, forcing down the tremble in it. “And I…I’ll never forget it.”

You can only hold his gaze for a second before you have to look away. And as you do, you give the door a tight squeeze, wishing it was his hand instead.

“Bye, Eddie.”

Your feet carry you away like you’re on autopilot.

You’re barely conscious of the steps you take or the direction you head in as the rain ramps up to a downpour and fully soaks through your clothes. Your head is spinning and foggy, unable to register much of anything until one sound breaks through—the creak of the van door swinging open and slamming shut, followed by the splashing of water under sneakers.

The solid weight of his hand on your shoulder makes you start as he turns you towards him, the rain falling harder and the wind blowing faster all around. The trees overhead whip back and forth in a frenzy, their branches dipping low and their leaves swirling wildly in the air.

“Eddie, someone could see—”

He wraps his hands around your wrists to wrench you closer, pulling you into his body, both of your faces splattered with rain, barely able to see anything beyond each other.

“Let them,” he breathes out before his lips slam into yours.

The sound of the storm is only magnified inside of Eddie’s van, every drop of rain on the metal roof practically deafening as you climb through the rear and your bodies slide against the floor. The carpet inside is rough and scratchy, the fibers imbedded with decades worth of dirt and crumbs and tobacco and weed particles, but you can’t find the will within you to care.

All you can think about, all you can focus on, is him.

His kiss is harsh and punishing, lips mashing rough against yours, teeth clacking as he devours you. Aggressive and bruising in a way that, deep down, you know you deserve.

Your wet clothes cleave to your bodies as you struggle to drag them off, steadfast in their refusal despite your feverish attempts. Eddie’s jeans and boxers only make it to the middle of his thighs before he’s pushing inside of you and a strangled moan releases from his throat.

The stretch makes you writhe, the stinging pain quickly becoming an afterthought as your need for him overrides everything else. You fist his wet shirt in your hands, rivulets of water trickling down your forearms as you clutch it tight to pull his body as close to yours as it can get.

Adrenaline races in your veins as he begins to thrust and you realize it’s the first time he’s taken you bare, the velvet of his skin dragging against your walls with nothing to separate you.

He fucks you fast and hard, your legs kicking up to wrap around his waist, your ass burning from the friction, your muscles tightening and tensing with every move. His whole body is quaking as he drives himself inside, the van rocking, teetering like it’s about to tip over the edge of a cliff.

He fucks you like it’s the last time he’ll get to, because he’s pretty sure it will be.

“Let me come in you,” he groans in your ear, more command than request. “Want to fill you up, want you to feel every…fucking…drop…”

The words are grunted out in time with his thrusts, his hips pushing deeper with every heaving breath, his cock twitching inside you as your walls pulse and tighten around him.

“Fuck, Eddie, oh my god!”

Your fingers weave into his wet curls, twisting them in your grasp at the root, tugging his head up and holding him there so you can stare into his eyes, your own vision strained in the dark.

Lightning flashes through the windshield, followed instantly by a clap of thunder. So close it could have struck right outside. For an instant, the van is illuminated and you see his face fully—eyes wide and wild, hair half-dried in damp coils, tattoos stark against pale skin that glows white.

It only lasts a second, but it shows you everything you need to see.

“Come, Eddie,” you gasp as the lightning dissipates and the whole van rattles from the force. “Want you to come for me, come in me—”

And he does. As fast and hard as the lightning strike, Eddie’s cock bursts with rope after rope of his release spurting inside of you, your center tingling as the feeling of it spreads throughout your body. The noise he makes in your ear is ungodly. It pours out from deep in his throat, guttural and resonant as the echoing claps of thunder. He drops all of his weight onto you, shaking from the force of his orgasm as you’re flattened between him and the floor.

“It’s okay,” you coo softly, your fingers loosening your grip on his hair to stroke it instead, nails dragging soft and slow against his scalp.

He shivers at your gentle and soothing touch, inhaling shaky breaths of you with his face pressed to the juncture of your neck and shoulder. Safe and dark and warm.

“I love you,” he says, his voice cracking in a dry sob as his tears slide off his cheeks to mix with the rainwater and sweat on your skin. Your throat clenches as you swallow, still trying to force down the words that have sat heavy in the center of your chest for weeks now, fighting to be said.

Finally, finally, finally, they make it out.

“I love you too.”

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#rebelfell

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st-fanartist-recs · 2 months ago

Text

The One with the 700 Thread Count Egyptian Cotton Ghost by Softhargrove

@chrisbitchtree

Rating: General Audiences

2,349 words, 1/1 chapters

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply

Tags: First Kiss, First Meetings, Fluff, Slice of Life

Summary:

Steve is on vacation in San Diego with his father over Halloween. While there, he meets and spends a night with a local skateboarder.

This rec is a part of Artist Highlights.

Our featured artist is chrisbitchtree

Know a stranger things creator that deserves some love? Submit through our asks!

#harringrove #chrisbitchtree

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st-fanartist-recs · 2 months ago

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Straight from the tortured Eddie department...

18+ MDNI 3.9k

older!fem!Harrington!reader x eddie munson

cont'd from here, index here

Not a proper “part” of the story, more like an interlude of bits and pieces of Eddie's side. I'm also not liable for any of this — @bettyfrommars made me do it. cw: binge drinking

Eddie never had a real girlfriend.

He’d had plenty of imaginary ones—tieflings or elf maidens or dryads that made their way into his campaigns after floating around in his head for a few days. He put himself to sleep imagining he was rescuing them, adventuring with them, defending their honor. All that hero shit.

But as for real life, he’s never had anything…consistent.

There was that thing with Chrissy Cunningham his third and final senior year when he got to act on his middle school crush for a grand total of a month and a half before she took off for Notre Dame. He decided that barely counted, though. Especially after hearing she was dating girls now.

Other than that, his rap sheet detailed little more than a string of messy and hasty hook-ups with people who wanted to “get with the freak” just to say that they had, or randoms at the Hideout who would fuck anyone as long as they played guitar.

He’d thought a lot about it, though. For years, he had to watch people at school getting so totally, nauseatingly wrapped up in one another they could barely see past their own noses.

And it made him want to vomit almost as much as it made him burn with jealousy.

After he was done mock-retching with his friends, he secretly wondered to himself what it might be like to have someone like that in his life. Someone whose smile he looked forward to every morning. Someone whose hand would reach out for his in a crowded hall. Someone who was always as happy to see him as he was to see them.

Most days the possibility seemed too fantastical to even entertain, but Eddie never had much luck when it came to resisting impossibilities.

Things changed a little after he graduated, but only in terms of quantity.

His community college was only one town over from Hawkins, but it was like a different world. No one there knew the Munson name or the baggage that came along with it. No one had been cheated or scammed or lied to by his father. No one held Eddie liable for sins he didn’t commit.

Girls started going for him because they liked him, not because they wanted to get something out of him. Still, it had never breached that casual containment. Just about everyone was planning on eventually transferring to a “real” school, and they weren’t looking for anything serious.

Neither was he, truth be told. He was just having fun—learning what he liked, what they liked, what he could do to make them like it more.

To like him more.

He quickly garnered a reputation for his giving nature, and for the first time in his life he didn’t mind it so much that people were jumping to conclusions about him based on hearsay.

It gave him hope, tiny as the spark of it was. He thought someone, somewhere, someday, might want something more with him—something more formal. Something beyond drunk make-outs at parties, or too-quick dates that were little more than pretense for getting him in bed.

Even Steve confessed he was sort of jealous.

Girls were dying to date Steve, though.

They fell in love if he so much as flipped his artfully disheveled hair in their direction. He came home from school every break lamenting over yet another girl who had gone and caught feelings for him and how he wished he could trade places with Eddie once in a while.

And Eddie just had to sit there with a stupid, cheesing grin on his face like he was living the dream. All the while feeling like the biggest fucking fraud in the world.

But then there was you.

Eddie had never felt like this about anyone. And he knew, logically, that you weren’t his girlfriend. How could you be when he had never so much as taken you on a proper date? Or held your hand? Or touched you without first having to glance around to be sure the coast was clear?

But you were still his something—his something that was unlike anything else.

And, yeah, it had kind of been a joke when it started. Not a joke-joke, just…the kind of shit he always did. Messing around. Shooting shots from half-court he was certain wouldn’t even graze the net. Flirting with you was just…fun in a way it hadn’t been for him in a really long time.

He thought at first he just liked the challenge. Clearly, he irritated you. He could see it in the fiery glares you gave him, in the way your hands would land on your hips, in the way your mouth would press together in a hard line. And it made him all the more determined to make you crack.

Then you and he started talking more, started talking about real stuff, stuff that mattered—and holy shit were you cool.

There was a bite to you, a witty snark that never faltered. You viewed the world through a wry lens, but there was a softness that bled through when you talked about your favorite songs, or a novel you had taught in one of your classes, or a movie you’d seen enough times to quote from memory.

And, god, were you beautiful. Not in a “for your age” way or a “could tell you used to be” way— just in the way that you were. The way your nose scrunched when you smiled, your lips quirking to the side; the way your hips swayed as you danced to records you put on; the way your brow wrinkled when you were deep in concentration and made Eddie wish he could reach out and smooth it down with the pad of his thumb.

Just…everything.

And all he could do was think how fucking out of his league he was. Not that he believed he really had a chance. Because he didn’t…obviously.

Right?

He thought he must have died and gone to heaven the night of that party. He climbed those stairs all but certain he was going to be sent right back down them. But he was more than willing to take that risk, more than ready to debase himself on the off chance you were feeling even a fraction of what he was. To know once and for all that he wasn’t making all of this up in his head.

Because that night on the patio you hadn’t said you didn’t want to do this. Only that you couldn’t.

And that girl from his Geology lab last semester who laid it on so thick only made it painfully and blatantly obvious to Eddie that he couldn’t settle for something less than anymore.

He didn’t want to waste any more of his time with anyone who wasn’t you.

Eddie didn’t go home after you left him in the van.

Wayne wouldn’t be back from the plant for a few more hours and he couldn’t stand the thought of facing the desolate wasteland of his trailer.

That, and it was sorely lacking in alcohol.

Instead, he parked in the narrow alley behind the Hideout. It was way, way past last call—the sun was rising for chrissakes—but Eddie knew where Bev kept the spare key from his bar-back days.

He didn’t count how many shots he poured for himself, the pools of liquor that splashed on the bar serving as a kind of tally until he passed out on a pillow of folded arms. Hours later, he came to with Gareth shaking him awake calling out his name. He’d found him still slumped over the bar, barely able to hold his head up, about to slide off his stool and onto the sticky floor.

Eddie peered at his friend with bloodshot eyes, vaguely recognizing the blob of floppy and tawny colored curls. “C’mon, man. Time to go,” he said, casting a grateful and apologetic look at Bev, who had been kind enough to call Gareth and not the cops when she came in to do prep and payroll.

He and his girl Annie had to carry him out, one of Eddie’s arms slung over both their shoulders.

“S’over…she…she…” he slurred, shaking his head as they stumbled out to the gravel parking lot and he squinted into the unbearably bright sun, “I jus’ don’no what I did, I just—”

His drunken babbling only grew more incoherent as he flopped over in the backseat of Gareth’s car, his face smushed into the cushion. Annie looked back at him from the passenger side, folded over on himself as he curled up in a little fetal ball, her brow pinched together with concern.

“Who’s he talking about?” Eddie heard her ask.

Gareth just shrugged, casting his own forlorn look back at his friend before he turned the key.

“I’ve got no idea.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be camping?”

Eddie smirked back at your cocked brow as you appraised him where he stood on the front steps, a six-pack in one hand and bouquet of flowers in the other. He glided past you inside of the house, swinging around and walking backwards to the kitchen with a wide grin spread across his face.

“I got sick,” he explained, flashing a cartoonish pout. “Steve came to pick me up and I couldn’t even come out of the bathroom. We’re talking major chunkage, babe. I was a hazard.”

Your face crinkled at the visual, but you laughed as Eddie swaggered towards the island.

In his head, he was still congratulating himself for his stellar performance and patting himself on the back for the added touch of canned peas he’d brought with him into the bathroom to pour in the toilet intermittently during his moaning to really sell the ruse. Theatrical wizard that he was.

The camping trip had been in the works for ages, way before all of…this…had started.

It began mostly as an argument in which Dustin was adamant just because he’d only ever been to computer camp, it didn’t mean he didn’t have any survival skills. The other boys had scoffed and jeered and mocked as they were wont to do, until they finally landed on their solution of going camping the weekend of Will Byers’ birthday.

Eddie and Steve were drafted as supervisors-slash-babysitters, and even though Eddie had actually been looking forward to it, the promise of a weekend alone with you was too enticing.

There were a lot of things Eddie couldn’t do with you—real dates, public displays of affection—but with Steve gone, Eddie could stay in your bed all night. He could wake up to you in the morning and coax you from sleep with his gentle kisses peppered along your jaw until you stretched out your arms and released a deep and satisfied groan he could practically hear already.

“So they left?” you prompted him, eyes bright with fascination. Eddie nodded smugly.

“And wouldn’t you know, as soon as they did…I made a miraculous recovery.”

“Well, isn’t that convenient?”

You took the flowers and brought them to your nose to smell. He’d joke later that he stole them out of the neighbor’s yard so you wouldn’t know how he stood at the farmer’s market all morning picking them out. Asking the owner which ones meant what until he gave up and started going for whatever he thought looked best together.

Whatever he thought looked like you.

The beer bottles clinked as he set them down in favor of getting his hands on you instead.

For someone who thought he was going away for the weekend, you certainly had dressed like you were going to see him. Long, flowing skirt that skimmed the tops of your bare feet. A slit in it that showed off a daring amount of leg. A tank top with a deep scoop neck that accentuated your chest and made him eager to bury his face in it. A fresh spritz of perfume on your neck.

Eddie took your hand and spun you into him, pressing himself against your back, his arms curling around your waist to keep you pinned there. You sighed at the feeling, tipping your head back to rest it on his shoulder, giggling as he nuzzled the sensitive skin behind your ear.

His hand squeezed the one of yours he was holding while the other ran up your thigh, fingers slid into the slit of your skirt and traced the edge of your leg until he felt you shiver and squirm.

“So…” Eddie hummed. “What do we do now?”

Your sister's room had remained untouched since her departure, but the en suite bathroom was another story. The jacuzzi spa tub was an anniversary present she got herself after John forgot…for the second year in a row.

It was wide and deep enough Eddie could sit up against the back of it with you between his legs, the smell of lavender and clary sage wafting up and swirling in the air as the jets bubbled.

You dribbled soapy water on his arms and ran your hands over them, making his tattoos shine. And he chuckled as you wriggled against him until he couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Turn around,” he husked in your ear, his hands on your hips already urging you forward.

Water sloshed and splashed on the floor as you maneuvered yourself around to face him, your legs thrown over his hips, arms slung around his neck as you slid against one another—the head of his cock rutting against your clit until you were whining, mewling, crying out with need for more.

You leaned in close, tips of your noses brushing as you rocked against him, but you don’t kiss him the way he remembers it happening.

He tries to catch your lips, to get them to meet his, but his neck won’t move. None of him will, even as he screams in his head for it to do so.

You chant his name instead, your voice echoing off the gleaming marble and tiles.

“Eddie…Eddie…Eddie…”

“Eddie! Eddie! EDDIE!”

The hard thwap of a pillow on the back of his head drags Eddie fully out of his dream. Warm, frothy water turned back into his dingy, stained sheets and your body morphed into the pillows his arms and legs were curled around as tight as he could. He lifted his head, still pounding and beer-logged, and blinked until the blurry shape looming over him turned into Steve.

“Whad’youwant?” Eddie grumbled.

“It’s like two o’clock,” Steve said. Not quite condemning, but certainly not lacking in concern.

Eddie shrugged, reaching for his nightstand and the graveyard of beers there. He started lifting them one at a time until he found one with some weight to it and brought it to his lips. It was stale and warm on his tongue and he grimaced as he drank, but he tried to drain it all the same.

“Dude!” Steve’s eyes widened and he snatched it from his hand. “Stop!”

“What?” Eddie barked, glaring up at his friend.

Steve slammed the can down, making the other empty ones rattle and fall to the floor. “Seriously, what is going on? You’re freaking me out here.”

“S’nothing,” Eddie muttered, dragging his sheets back up over his head. They smelled like the malt and hops seeping out of his skin and it didn’t take long for the ripeness of his B.O. to permeate the little pocket of air around him. He couldn’t even remember the last time he showered.

The mattress sagged extra as Steve sank down to perch on the edge of it. He stared at the lump under the sheets and his voice tightened nervously as he spoke to it.

“Look, you don’t have to tell me what’s wrong,” he said. “We’re just worried is all, and we want to help. Wayne, Dustin, the band…all of us.”

Not all of you, Eddie thinks.

And there’s a part of him—a spiteful, bitter, angry part—that almost wants to tell Steve everything. He almost wants to drop the bomb once and for all and make you clean up the mess.

But he knows he can’t.

Because the thing he hates the most of all, is knowing how right you were.

Eddie had talked a big game about telling Steve, explaining it to him, but there wasn’t much point when it was never going to go anywhere. And it was foolish of him to believe it ever could.

Because what exactly was he supposed to do? Run off to some ivy-covered university? Tag along at cocktail parties and mixers with the rest of the faculty and have them whisper behind your back about if you were together or if he was your son?

Or worse yet, starting rumors about you sleeping with a student? No fucking way.

He got it now. You didn’t have any choice but to end it once Eddie had gone and spewed all his feelings all over you. And had he known what would happen, he might not have gone through with it. But he also knew he would have ended up in the exact same place, regardless.

He was just so sick and tired of not saying it. Of acting like he didn’t feel it.

Because it was the first time he’d felt so sure someone would say it back.

Eddie doesn’t answer Steve. He just stays under the sheets until he finally leaves. Breathing in his own breath, wishing he could slip back into his dream to relive the part where he climbed out of the tub and took you straight to bed. And you had tumbled into it with him where you rode him until your muscles were limp and the room had filled with the golden haze of fading sunlight.

He was pretty sure that was the weekend it had happened. He couldn’t say it yet. Couldn’t so much as acknowledge it, or admit it was something he even wanted to say.

But it was there.

It was that feeling in his chest, that warmth and fullness he’d been chasing his entire life.

He finally felt whole.

As usual, Steve assigned himself to babysitting duty. He started showing up every morning to bang on Eddie’s door and make sure he made it to work. And on his off days, he dragged Eddie into Family Video and made him participate in he and Robin’s bemoaning of their sordid affairs.

And despite everything, Eddie hangs on their every word. Not sure which was worse—waiting for Steve to mention home (and by extension, you) or living in constant fear of him doing so.

But it’s not until the day Steve forgets his lunch that Eddie faces the worst possible scenario.

“Alright, great. Thank you,” Steve says in the receiver, voice strained despite the relief he feels.

He hangs up the phone and pushes his hands into his messy hair, eyes closing as he massages his temples with his thumbs in an attempt to stave off his hangry episode.

“Mommy bringing you some num-nums?” Eddie teases. Steve just sighs.

“Nah, my aunt is coming.”

A loud siren sounds in the movie Steve is playing, but it’s not nearly as loud as the one going off in Eddie’s brain. He jerks his head up, his eyes wide and alarmed. If you left Steve’s house right when he hung up the phone, Eddie had maybe fifteen minutes before you would be here.

His feet are frozen in place, glued to the wildly patterned carpet under them, his body being torn between fight and flight. He could just leave. That was probably the smartest decision. He could run right out of here, making up some excuse about forgetting that he needed to be somewhere.

He could leave. And yet it was impossible to will his legs to move so he could do so.

The feeling is overwhelming, almost nauseating—a horrendous combination of being desperate for something to happen and yet totally dreading the possibility. Because as much as he wanted to see you, as much as he’d been hoping to run into you in town or to catch a fleeting glimpse of you, the reality of it was terrifying. Because him seeing you meant you would see him like this.

Ruined. Destroyed. Pathetic.

He was looking better than he had the past few weeks, having rediscovered bathing and some color coming back to his cheeks.

So that was something.

But he’d still not been sleeping great. Staying up all night hunched over his composition notebook filling it with scribblings of lyrics so overwrought and dramatic he could hardly imagine actually showing them to the band.

Shit, they’d probably laugh him out of Gareth’s garage if he did.

It wasn’t enough to look okay, though. Even if he looked perfect, even if he had the sun shining directly out of his asshole, it wouldn’t be enough. He needed to look like he hadn’t so much as thought about you in weeks. Like he hadn’t lain in his bed for days looking for your face in the stains on his ceiling. Like he hadn’t written the start of twenty-some letters only to wind up scratching through the words until the blacked out paper shredded beneath the ballpoint.

Then like an answer from the heavens, or more likely somewhere significantly further south, the bell over the front door jingled and Krista Washington walked inside.

Eddie remembered her from Hawkins High. She’d always been kinda shy and quiet, barely brave enough to buy a measly joint off Eddie now and again. But once she graduated and got out from under the thumb of her snobby cheerleading captain, she had come into her own a bit more.

And her eyes still glittered with that same old fascination when they fell on Eddie.

Eddie didn’t think. He didn’t debate. He didn’t take a second to consider how colossally stupid of an idea this was—he just walked straight up to her and he poured every ounce of Munson charm he had to his name into getting her to follow him outside to talk by his van.

It wasn’t until he heard your car, your brakes screeching because he never got the chance to change out the pads like he’s meant to do, that he realized what a piece of shit this move made him.

While Krista, bless her heart, could have won an Oscar for a part she didn’t know she’d been cast in. Staring up at him with fluttering lashes and parted lips, that look in her eye like,

“C’mon, genius. This is where you kiss me.”

And he could do it. Eddie saw some movement inside and he was pretty sure you were headed for the door. He might be able to time it just so that you step outside the moment Eddie’s lips touch the shiny, sticky peach gloss on Krista’s mouth.

He could do it…but he doesn’t.

He knows he never would have.

Instead, he tucks his chin down into his chest and his hands drop from their spot on her waist. His face is riddled with regret, but Krista is hardly discouraged.

“Come on,” she says, taking his hand in hers and tugging on it. “Let’s go pick out the movie we’re gonna watch later.”

He lets her pull him along with her to the door, seeing in slow motion that you and her are going to run into one another. He watches silently as you nearly collide, never taking his eyes off you as Krista drifts away from blocking his view of you. And it’s killing him to do it, but he shuffles to the side so you can pass. Leaving only just enough space so he can catch one last whiff of you.

And was it so crazy for him to think (hope) you look half as miserable as he feels?

prev┃next

shout out to the song that I cried too many times to when I was 26 and a dumb boy made me realize I can't regulate my emotions for shit. it wasn't shocking news, but still.

#rebelfell

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st-fanartist-recs · 2 months ago

Text

Masterlist

for the Pick Your Poison blurb game

18+ONLY

Eddie

drifter!Eddie/concert venue/payphone

nightmare!Eddie/drive-in theater/farrah fawcett hairspray

darkSiren!Eddie/concert venue/switchblade

drifter!Eddie/cemetery/blanket

gargoyle!Eddie/cemetery/guitar

dark!SirenEddie/motel/guitar

nightmare!Eddie/abandoned building/blanket

Steve

biker!Steve/swimming pool/photograph

hybrid!Steve/concert venue/farrah fawcett hairspray

hustler!Steve/concert venue/lucky coin

nightmare!Steve/drive-in theater/halloween mask

Both

nightmare!Steve & gargoyle!Eddie/thrift store/photograph/mixtape

more coming soon

#bettyfrommars

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st-fanartist-recs · 2 months ago

Text

don't say you need me (it's understood)

vampire!steve x deliveryDriver!fem!reader

summary: you are a delivery driver who gets extra hazard pay to bring blood to the vampires of Crimson Alley, but this time, you get up the nerve to ask Steve for something you have always wanted. This story has a surprise ending and an appearance from vampire!eddie. Steve is not a typical vampire. Slightly True Blood au. wc:6.3k

18+ONLY, mature themes, Steve is a vampire but he is also something else, reader's first time feeding a vampire, smut, drinking blood, sensitive!steve, lovesick!steve, monsterfucking, doordash delivery for vampires, oral for all, reader wears a sportsbra, unprotected p in v, creampie, self-inflicted knife wound.

author's note: I've had this one in my wip's for a while, and it was going to drive me crazy if I didn't finish it. My Steve fics rarely see the light of day, but I can't stop writing them for some reason. This is my last little detour before I go back to working on my other series. Or, until I get distracted again, which will probably be in two minutes.

Part 2 smut extra Wolf Moon

Part 3 fluff request

The way you earned money lately was not your dream job, but it paid the bills. Food delivery was a necessary evil with your life being as chaotic as it was. The particular app you worked for paid better than the rest because of the “hazard pay” you accrued for some of the deliveries that required more “risk”.

The risk in question had you delivering blood to the local vampire population, most of which lived in a particular section of the city called Crimson Alley. It wasn’t just an alley; there were apartment buildings and a long street full of picket fence houses, all with heavy, black out curtains over them during the day.

One minute, you’re leaving tofu Pad Thai on someone’s doorstep, and the next—-you’re casually dropping off a grocery bag full of type O.

It was dark, of course, when you made your final delivery before clocking out. You took on as many deliveries to Crimson Alley as the app would allow, mostly because you needed the money, but also—you weren’t afraid of death.

Most of the vampire clients who signed up for deliveries on the app were decent, law abiding ghouls, but there had been two noted incidents where the vampire in question only wanted a live human to feed on, and ended up draining the delivery driver before disappearing into the night.

You told yourself they were just rumors, but also, you spent quite a bit of time ruminating on what the sensation of fangs breaking your skin would feel like.

The receipt stapled to the front of the paper bag from the blood bank said Harrington, and you matched it with the information on your phone before making your way up the sidewalk. It was an old, vintage building with renovated apartments inside, and so you punched in the alarm code from the notes in your phone, waited for the beep, and then made your way up to C5.

Two female vampires were just leaving as you stepped into the foyer, and they seemed to be dressed for a night on the town. You jumped back to make room for them, and they excused themselves with a laugh and a wave, fangs exposed, as if they were any other living humans going out for drinks. That was the great thing about vampire specific blood banks and the recently invented blood substitutes; fed vampires, for the most part, were happy vampires. Sure, there were those who still lusted after the chase and the thrill of the kill, but most of the newer vampires were surprisingly chill.

The customer requested that you hand the delivery directly to them, which meant you had to knock instead of just dropping it at the door and bolting.

But, as your finger rose to touch the doorbell, the door opened, yanking back into the apartment so fast, and you scrambled back, startled, testing the handle of the bag with your vise grip.

“Oh, shit, sorry,” the vampire said, smiling around his fangs, wearing Wayfarer sunglasses even though it was dark outside. “I didn’t mean to scare you, my bad.”

“You didn’t scare me,” you stiffened, shaking your head, hoping that was the correct answer, since the customer is always right.

In the next few heartbeats, the two of you looked over each other. Your vampire customer had a full head of lush, dark hair, just long enough to tuck behind his ears, and a solid, muscular frame. He had on a white shirt that was of little contrast to his pale skin, rolled up to the elbows and unbuttoned to expose a swatch of chest hair, black pants that made it look like he was getting ready to go somewhere fancy, and a pinky ring with what looked like a skull on it. He smelled like sandalwood and vanilla tobacco, and your mouth produced an overabundance of saliva that made you swallow and choke a bit.

Steve liked what he saw so much that he didn’t want to remove his sunglasses, so that he could continue to look you over without you seeing his eyes move. But, eventually, he did, sliding them up on top of his head, clearing his throat.

“Harrington,” he said, leaning against the door frame, forgetting why he was about to leave the apartment in the first place. “That’s me, I’m Steve.”

You introduced yourself, and then lifted the bag up in the space between the two of you. “Would you like me to set this by the door, or—?”

“Oh, damn, yeah, of course,” he chuckled fondly to himself, as if remembering a private joke. “I can—yeah, sure, here—I’ll take it.”

You passed it off and he opened it to look inside as if he didn’t know what he’d ordered.

“Alright,” you backed up, offering a low wave. “I guess I’ll be going,then? As long as everything looks okay.”

“Sure,” Steve said, uncertain, still staring into the bag. You turned on your heel to head for the stairs. “But, wait—” he called after you.

You spun around to face him, rubbing your lips together, wondering if you were crazy, or if the vampire was trying to flirt with you.

Steve held the bag with one hand and let it fall to his side while his other hand shoved into his front pocket, smirking at you in a way that screamed trouble. “Would you like to meet up later? After your shift? For a drink, or something?”

Or something.

This wasn’t a good idea, you told yourself, as you turned around to accept his invitation.

“I’m free right now,” you told him.

—-------

Steve didn’t have a plan; he just knew he didn’t want you to go.

“Were you about to leave?” You asked, gesturing to his outfit as you accepted his invitation inside the apartment.

“Nowhere…special,” Steve looked you up and down again, forgetting that his sunglasses weren’t covering his eyes. He was about to go and meet up with his friend Eddie, but he’d shoot him a text real quick and let him know he got “caught up”. Eddie had canceled on him at the last minute more times than he could count, so his conscience was clear.

Steve had eclectic taste, and the first thing you noticed was the Depeche Mode poster on the wall, along with some original art, oil abstracts, and there was a retro sense to the place: a boombox from the 80’s, a panasonic tv/vcr combo on a stand in the corner and a 1960’s wicker rattan chair with a big, dark blue cushion. He had a large collection of vinyl in vintage, wood apple crates stacked up the wall, and a yellow kitchen table set that looked like it was right out of the 1950’s.

You turned to ask him a question, but he was right there on your heels, and your chests pressed into each other, your noses almost bumping, and that was when you took a closer look at his fangs. They weren’t long, obnoxious fangs like in the movies, and could almost pass for normal, albeit extra sharp incisors, but for the way they extended down further than the rest of his perfect teeth.

“Do you ever accidentally—” you motioned to your own tooth, tapping it.

“Bite my own lip? All the time,” he gave a snort. “My tongue too, and it fucking sucks.”

He offered you a beverage and you were surprised to find out he had human food there.

“I have several human friends. I cook for them sometimes too,” he assured you from the kitchen which was around the corner. He carried the grocery bag of blood in to pour some out for himself, and then you heard the top pop off a beer. But then he peeked his head around the corner, raising his eyebrows at you. “Did you think all vampires were hermits that just hung out with each other in a cave somewhere? Like in The Lost Boys?”

You put your hands in your back pockets and went over to take a closer look at the bat with nail spikes through it that was mounted like a trophy above his stereo system. He came out carrying a wine glass full of a deep claret liquid, and handed you the beer, gesturing to the futon with his elbow.

He’d only known you for a few minutes and he already wanted to kiss you. He could see the heartbeat in your throat from where he sat, and he wanted to take a sip from your lifeforce and then kiss you with his bloody lips, smearing it down your chin. He couldn’t smell any other man or partner on you, but he also couldn’t let you walk out and be with someone else; he was actively attaching to the scent of your blood, and if you stayed any longer, he’d have to do something about it.

You took a few gulps of your beer, thinking that if you didn’t make you move, you’d lose your nerve. A chance to be consensually bitten by a vampire did not come around as often as people would think. Especially for the modern vamps of today who’d been following a set of rules for decades. Most vampires had specific humans they “bonded” with, be it a familiar or a partner, or they ingested a specific type from the blood bank or blood substitute. Vampires were very finicky creatures, and the blood had to taste good in order for them to want to ingest it. The way it tasted had to do with a certain mix of hormones and chemistry, you really had no clue.

After a bit of small talk about where you came from, and how long Steve had been a vampire—he was turned in 1996 by an ex he didn’t want to talk about—you set your empty beer down on the rectangular wood coffee table and sat back.

“So,” you bobbed your head a few times. “Here we are.”

“Yes,” he inclined his glass to you, taking the last sip of his Type O claret. “Cheers to us.”

And then, there was silence, but for the sound of people chatting out in the hall, the low hum of the Depeche Mode song It’s no Good, and your heartbeat in your ears.

But then, you just blurted it out, and Steve started to talk at the same time.

“How would you feel if I asked you to—”

“I have to confess that I—”

You licked your lips. “You go first,” you said on a nervous exhale, fiddling with the arm of the futon.

“No, you—please,” Steve sank down and rested his head on the back of the cushion, his gaze lingering on you in a way that made your cheeks hot. You couldn’t help but notice the bulge in his pants was abnormally large even though it wasn’t even erect.

This was crazy, what were you even doing in his apartment? Your friends would be screaming obscenities at you if they knew, telling you to pull out your colloidal silver mace spray and run. But yet, all of your blood seemed to be tickling at the surface of your skin, wanting to escape.

You turned in your seat and Steve’s eyes followed your movements, watching how you bent your knee up and scooted towards him..

“Here’s the thing,” you cleared your throat, finding your words. “I’ve never been bitten before, by, you know, a vampire, but I’d really love to know what it feels like. I fantasize about it, sometimes.”

In an unexpected turn of events, Steve abruptly got to his feet, mumbling, “not another one,” as he put his back to you and rolled his head from side to side, walking away.

“Wait,” you stood up too. “What do you mean, ‘not another one’? Do delivery drivers normally show up here asking you to bite them?”

When he faced you, his eyes were full of weary disappointment. “I’m not turning you, okay? I will never turn anyone as long as I exist,” and then he rounded the corner into the kitchen and you heard the wine glass drop into the sink.

“Hold on,” you followed, coming up behind him as he bent forward to brace his hands on the countertop. He appeared so suddenly distraught, your hand hovered at his lower back for a while, wondering if you should touch him, and then you finally did—feeling his cold skin through his shirt like winter marble.

You made a few comforting circles with your palm, and he let you, secretly closing his eyes at the soothing nature of your touch.

“Hey,” you whispered. “I don’t want to be a vampire. And even if I did, I would never want to put that on you, a complete stranger.”

This admission made him stand, and you watched the way the ends of his hair caught on the collar of his shirt, shoulder blades flexing under the material.

You rested your hip by the sink, eyeing his back muscles. “I’m kind of embarrassed now, that I admitted that to you,” you laughed a little then, at yourself, at the situation, looking down at your nails. Could you have fucked this up any harder?

You barely had time to register that he had turned around and was coming toward you, it all happened in a human blink. But then he had your back pressed flush against the wall by the fridge, one hand cupped your throat while the other pinned your hip. It knocked the air out of you, but it also turned you on, and he returned your stare with a flicker of uncertainty. Silky brown eyes that seemed to go ink black as the pupils expanded.

He brought his cheek down, rubbing it against yours, inhaling the scent of your hair, his words a tight whisper at your ear. “Why do you want me to hurt you?”

“I-I don’t want that,” you stammered, knees wobbling as he sniffed along the side of your face and down your neck; his skin was cold and it made your nipples hard. “I just want to know what it feels like to be…needed like that.”

Steve snapped his head up to look at you; brows clenched, cherry lips parted. The urge to taste you, to feast on you, had him questioning almost a decade of sobriety from using his fangs to feed. His teeth ached, his stomach growled. The light in the kitchen was on, and aside from a lamp in the living room and the street lights from outside, the rest of the apartment was dark.

Steve nudged your nose with his; lips an inch or two away from yours. “Maybe…just a taste.”

You lifted your chin to kiss his pouty lips, but he pulled back. “We can’t do that, though. We can’t kiss.”

You searched his eyes, confused.

Steve released your throat, and the tension of the moment subsided. “It’s too…intimate. I can’t risk an attachment to a complete stranger.” You could tell he was using your words against you, and you wondered why that description bothered him so much. You were both, indeed, strangers, and you didn't know how else to categorize him.

“I want it to be a good experience, though,” he hushed, taking your hand, guiding you back out to the living room. “It’s the least I can do.”

He told you to wait there while he got a towel from the closet; he didn’t want blood on his new futon. If only you knew how many offers like this he’d turned down in his life; if only you knew how nervous he was to break this seal with you.

“Should I lay down or sit up?” You asked. Your mind was having a hard time registering that this was actually happening.

Steve came back and plopped down onto the squishy futon. His shirt was off, and your eyes locked on the patch of chest hair over his milk white skin. “It’s less messy this way,” he gestured to his bare chest, and then he raised an eyebrow, his face serious. “Are you comfortable straddling my lap?”

“Facing you?”

Steve dropped his shoulders, giving you a look, and then he patted the cushion on either side of him.

You were about to drop your knee down to do as he suggested.

“Oh wait,” he stopped you, giving you an open, earnest expression. “Do you want to take your shirt off? It might get blood on it. It’s been a while since I’ve done this.”

You looked down at your shirt. It was a vintage concert tee, and you didn’t want to risk it. “Um, yeah, okay,” you had a sports bra on underneath, so this was fine.

Steve watched you remove your shirt with a hitch in his chest, but then looked down when you finished and tossed it over the chair.

You climbed on top of him, bracing your hands on his shoulders. “You’re so cold,” you observed. “You make me want to get you a blanket.”

“You’re all the warmth I need,” he muttered, shifting as your core settled above his cock, his hands tentative at your hips.

“Listen, it’s probably going to sting, or hurt, even,” he coached, watching the plump artery in your throat. “But once I start drinking, your endorphins take over and it should feel…good, in a way.”

You nodded, pushing your shoulders back.

“Now, come forward,” he continued, pulling you close so that the two of you were skin on skin, his fingers spread out on your back. “And tilt your head to the side, just like that.”

Steve’s mouth watered as he took in the sight of your neck so exposed to him, like an offering. It reminded him of way back when he used to confuse the gift of blood as a form of love. Back when he was naive and bursting with wet dreams about a home and a family and one love forever.

A few seconds passed and your chin rested on the cool muscles of his shoulder. You could feel his breath on your skin, tingly like wintermint gum.

“Should I count down?” He asked.

“No, I’m fine,” you returned with an edge of irritation. “Whenever you’re ready.”

You adjusted yourself in his lap and it made his cock throb, and now he was nervous that you could tell how aroused he was. It’s been a while since he drank from someone he wasn’t in love with, and his cock assumed it was its turn to get involved too.

You felt his lips tremble on your flesh as he brushed over the spot.

“Okay, here we go,” he mumbled. Steve’s stomach growled again as he made “O” with his mouth over your big, thumping artery, swiping his tongue a few times over your salty barrier.

But then his teeth broke the surface, making you choke and clutch his arm.

It did hurt, in the same way thorns from a rose bush hurt, and your adrenaline surged, preparing your body for fight or flight, but Steve’s arms were strong, and now they had you caged in a vice grip.

The sweet hesitancy of consent was gone now that he knew the honey nectar in your veins.

Now, his animal urges made him growl as he drank from you; whimpering, even, when he felt you ease into it, shifting to be closer to him.

There were only a few seconds of that sharp pain, but then as he sucked, you felt your pussy flutter and bloom—a reaction that you had not expected. You closed your eyes, vibrating, leaning into each pull, turned on more and more by his wanton need for you. A trickle of blood trailed down along your breast and it made your skin raise with gooseflesh.

Steve jerked his mouth away with a gasp after about a minute, breathless. He looked at the dripping fang marks in your neck, and then, without thinking, he kissed you there. He released his double arm lock on you and held your upper arms, his forehead dropping to your shoulder.

“Fuck,” be breathed. “That was so good.”

“You can have…more,” you whispered, keeping your head tilted to the side.

Steve swallowed hard: the temptation was real. “I can’t,” he managed. “I’m afraid I’ll take too much.”

You wanted to cry out in disappointment, to beg for more. But then, Steve picked up the towel and started wiping you off. He pricked his finger to heal the fang holes with his blood and you felt a sizzle as they closed up and vanished.

You couldn’t look at him right away, but when you finally did—you saw the trickles of your life force in the corners of his mouth and the strawberry wine tinted hue of his lips. His cinnamon brown eyes that had somehow turned hazel Your need was too great, and before you could stop yourself, you were leaning forward to flick your tongue out to taste the evidence of his feast.

Steve turned his head and that was when you remembered the rule: no kissing. He was the Julia Roberts Pretty Woman version of vampires.

But a twitch of his cock against your inner thigh from inside his jeans betrayed him.

“Oh, fuck it,” he hissed, acquiescing to his own desires, holding the back of your head to find your mouth. He kissed you deep, without any hesitation. It was innocent and urgent, like a man who had been starving in many different ways for a long time.

The taste of your blood in his mouth had your eyes rolling back in your head. There was something about the closeness of it; the way he received nourishment from you. You wrapped your arms around his neck and kissed him back, not paying any attention to the way your hips were grinding into him.

“Wait,” there was a smacking noise as Steve pulled his mouth away. He ran the back of his fingers down your cheek. “Do you want this? Do you want…me?”

Your lips throbbed and felt bruised, and you nodded, unable to form words.

Steve would regret this the next day, he knew he would. He wasn’t one of those people who could do casual intimacy like Eddie and Argyle. He wondered if he was hypnotized by your blood, wondered if maybe he’d see clearer in the morning. But right then, he didn’t care.

You crossed your arms over yourself and pulled your sports bra off, watching Steve’s breath catch at the sight of your nipples. He took one in his mouth, swirling his tongue, moaning as he did so, and you flexed your hips against him. His sucking popped off as your mouth went to his neck; you didn’t kiss him, you just planted your lips there and said:

“I love knowing my blood is inside of you.”

And for some reason—that was it for Steve.

He gasped, clamping his hands onto your thighs, locking you in place. “Wait…fuck…oh shit—”

You felt him tremble and arch his pelvis up, his hips stuttered, and then his head dropped to your arm with a strangled cry.

“Hold on…did you just?”

“I’m afraid so,” Steve admitted with a tight, aggravated sigh. “Excuse me while I—”

He motioned for you to move out of his lap, but you stayed there, lowering your head to find his eyes. “Can I clean you up?”

Steve shifted, feeling embarrassed and a little uncomfortable, about to decline your offer, but then you were sliding down between his legs, pushing them wider with your shoulders. Your attention went to unbuckling his belt and zipper, but then your eyes flicked up to meet him, hovering there.

“What are you doing?” He asked softly, lifting his hips when you needed to scoot his jeans and red boxers down. You saw the wet spot where his tip had exploded and the dark hair around the base of his cock. You grabbed onto his length to bring it out of hiding and Steve shivered.

“You don’t have to—” but your lips were already on the fat, sticky tip, licking down the vein and the excess that dribbled down his shaft. His cum didn’t really have a taste—it reminded you of something with a clear flavor, like glycerine. He was semi-hard now; caught between being done and getting excited again. He threw his head back onto the couch, exposing his throat to the ceiling, Adam’s apple jerking as he swallowed back a whimper.

His hips bucked up when you took the tip to the back of your throat, and Steve’s fingers dug into the couch, wondering if he should touch you. “Do you like the way I taste?” He asked in a hush.

You nodded, meeting his gaze again, kissing the head of his cock. “I want more.”

Steve leaned down to grab your face with both hands and coaxed you back up into his lap for another depraved kiss; moaning into each dive of your tongue.

“It’s my turn,” he said with a crooked grin, rubbing his nose on yours, and then he flipped you over with surprising strength. You pushed your jeans down as he pulled them, yanking the denim all the way off your feet. They landed inside out in a crumpled pile nearby. He kissed down your breasts, your stomach, flicking his devilish tongue along the soft curve of your hip.

Your legs stretched out to meet the width of his strong shoulders, cursing when his tongue licked a stripe up and down your slit a few times. When his mouth pulled away, there was a string of saliva connecting you to his chin, and he found your eyes before he moved to taste you again.

He lifted your thighs up off the couch—god, he was so strong—and licked down even further, until his tongue fluttered at your tight muscle back there, making both holes clench. Your torso was almost bent in half when he looked up at you over your pussy. “Do you like that?”

“Don’t stop Steve, please,” you gushed.

He took that as a yes, smiling to himself, continuing to work you over in that spot.

He lowered you and moved up to suck your clit and sank two fingers in a little too fast, making you tighten up for a moment. “Shit, your fingers are so big.”

He made a guttural growl, staring at the way his fingers stretched you, and it sounded so unlike the noises he made thus far, it made your eyes snap open.

“More,” you gasped, taking his head in your hands. Your fingers threaded through his hair that was a bit crunchy from styling product.

He slipped a third finger in and your cunt pulsed around him, making his cock get stiff and leaky again. “Fuck, you’re going to take my cock so good.”

The throb of the artery in your inner thigh caught his attention and so—that was all he could think about.

His fingers went in to the last knuckle, and twisted them a few times.

Your jaw went slack with a moan. You watched his mouth lift off an inch so that he could stare at the spot just below the curve of your hip. You could almost hear his thoughts, they were so loud, and the thought of him feeding on you again made your cunt tighten like a fist.

“Fuck, Steve, please do it,” you whined, squirming. “Take more of my blood.”

Steve felt like a man out of control. Like the vehicle had already flown off the cliff, but he was still trying to work the break and steer. There was no hope for him now—he might as well release his grip on the wheel.

His fingers curled up inside you as his fangs nipped at your tender flesh, toying with you. When his his sharp teeth finally sank in, he didn’t give a shit about staining the couch or his clothes—he didn’t care if you could tell how much he fucking loved this.

When his mouth locked onto you, your pussy clenched around his fingers, and you were whimpering, clutching the back of his head, encouraging him, “moremoremore.”

Steve had to push himself off of you with all of his strength, sending the couch sliding back a few inches with you on it, knocking over a table and a lamp that went crashing to the ground. Your flesh was still leaking as he stumbled back, breathing quick and heavy, mouth and chin wet from his meal. His jeans were still down his hips a bit and his cock curved angry and sticky against his belly.

“Cover it,” he braced his hands behind him on the carpet, gesturing to your inner thigh, but you weren’t quick enough. “Cover it now!” He barked, wincing, baring his teeth.

You reached over for the towel and did as he asked, wrapping it around your thigh, securing it with your hand, watching whatever struggle he seemed to be having with himself. It looked almost as if Steve was…changing? The hair on his chest and arms seemed to grow thicker right before your eyes and his jaw muscles strained as if making room for more teeth.

Once he caught his breath, his eyes locked on your cunt—so open and ready for him—and another animal growl escaped his chest. You watched his cock twitch a few times, a sticky strand of precum connecting to his stomach.

No words were needed as he grabbed you by the crook of your knees and yanked you off the couch. You yelped only because his movements were so fast and your lower back skidded on the rug, but you were equally opening yourself up wider for him, spreading your knees out.

He knelt before you, chest hairier than ever, and his eyes flicked red for a moment. He stretched his thick cock down along your slick and with one thrust, buried himself to the hilt, making you both throw your heads back with a cry.

“Fuck,” you wanted him deeper, you wanted all of it. Tears pricked at the corners of your eyes from the size. He put one hand at your shoulder and one at the crease of your thigh and began to pound you onto his cock as if you were a toy. Your breasts bounced and you kept eye contact with him as your jaw went slack, feeling a mounting orgasm already teasing in your core.

Steve’s hands no longer resembled the hands of a man; they were completely covered in hair now with curved claws. Honey brown fur covered his flesh entirely, and his nose was more of a snout as his eyes bore into you, burning an orange red. His mouth was wider, teeth bigger and sharper as he revealed them to you in a sneer; his tongue lolling out thick and sharp.

You were not afraid though, and he could see it in the way you regarded him, as if the change had not taken place at all. Your curiosity was piqued, but you were not disgusted, nor did you look away.

The curse, it was real. He had not dared to tempt it for so long, thought maybe he had outrun it, but now he was mating you and he didn’t know how to stop.

You didn’t want him to stop. You wondered if maybe this was what happened when some vampires had sex—you’d never tried it before.

His strong, animal hips slammed against you; muscular, hairy legs splitting his jeans open so the seams ripped to accommodate his size.

“Steve, I’m gonna cum,” you gasped, brushing your fingers over your clit.

Monster Steve’s movements sped up and got erratic as you screamed his name again and the fire in your belly swelled to your entire body, exploding like firecrackers behind your eyes.

Steve barked and locked you up against him, balls deep, as his cock pumped everything he had inside of you; body tensing, muscles straining.

You were both panting when your eyes found each other again. He searched your face with his feral eyes as his cock jumped a few times inside of you. You wondered if he had lost the ability to speak since he hadn’t said a word since the transformation.

He unhooked his hand from your shoulder and ran a claw down your face, gently, parting your lips with it, and then drawing down your throat.

There was a knock at the door, and somewhere in the deeply muffled civilized part of Steve’s brain he thought: “Shit, I forgot to text Eddie.”

You looked around, wondering what to do, wanting to cover yourself up, and Steve pulled out of you, savoring one last look at his cum leaking out before he bolted to the fire escape window on all fours and then crouched there.

“Steve?” Another man’s voice came from the other side of the door. “Yo Steve man, what gives? I waited at the bar for like two hours.” He knocked on the door again, and then tried the knob. “I’m going to use my spare key if you don’t answer, man. It’s not like you not to text.”

Monster Steve growled low, staring across the room at the door, snarling like a dog.

Getting the hint that maybe Steve didn’t want anyone to see him like that, you jumped up to find your clothes when you heard the key in the door. You had your shirt on and were struggling to button your jeans when the door opened.

You rushed over to greet whoever it was and found yourself face to face with another vampire, but this one had long, dark messy hair, and bangs that were too long, and a leather jacket over his Alice in Chains tee shirt.

“Hey,” he paused, offering a confused smile to expose his fangs. “I’m Eddie. Is Steve here? We were supposed to meet me but he—-”

That was when Eddie caught sight of the huge, hairy monster dropping from Steve’s fire escape and into the street.

“Shit!” Eddie cursed, pushing passed you, yelling for Steve.

You both made it to the window in time to see monster Steve bounce over the hoods of several cars like something out of a DC comic, and then bolt down an alleyway on all fours before climbing up the next building.

Eddie turned to you, the only human in the vicinity, and cursed. “You let him drink your blood, didn’t you?”

“Well I—” you stammered, trying to catch sight of Steve from the window again, but he was long gone. “I-I didn’t know that vampires couldn’t—”

“Most can,” Eddie sucked in his bottom lip and put his hands on his hips, looking around. “But not Steve. He was already a werewolf when he was bitten and turned into a vampire, and if hybrids drink blood directly from a human, they turn into a beast, like what you saw.” Eddie glanced down at how your jeans were unzipped, and then he quickly looked out the window again. “Especially if there is some type of sexual act involved.”

Eddie paced back and forth in a line for a minute, wondering what he should do—-who he should call.

You swallowed so hard there was a click in the back of your throat. “How long will he…be like that?”

Eddie scratched his forehead, parting his bangs. “It’s really hard to say. Could be hours, could be weeks. But the problem is—” Eddie trailed off, thinking about the last time this happened. “----he’s out there all alone and there’s no way to find him or catch him. He’s stronger than any vampire or a werewolf now.”

You told Eddie a little bit about who you were as you collected your things and went out in the hall with him so he could lock the apartment back up. You told him that you didn’t mind waiting there, until Steve came back. Maybe he just went for a run to stretch his monster legs?”

“That’s way too dangerous,” Eddie promised. “Once Steve is back to Steve again, he’ll want to know I kept you away from him, that I kept you from danger,” he walked you out of the complex and down to your car. “The smartest thing you can do right now, sweetheart, is go home and wait for things to go back to normal. I’m sure he’ll call you when he returns to himself.”

You thanked him and shook his hand, even though you knew Steve didn’t have your number.

You had a plan you thought might work even better.

Once you got back to your place, you showered, cleaned up the sticky trail of Steve’s cum down your inner thigh, and then wrapped a towel around you and went to the kitchen to find a sharp knife.

You went out to your modest balcony on the 6th floor of your building, and blinked against the breeze as a hand-shaped cloud circled the moon. The stars were bright and the air smelled of honeysuckle, and you held the blade of the knife tight before yanking it through your grip.

It slit the flesh of your palm like butter, and you bit your lip against the pain. You squeezed your fist in the air—a summoning on the wind—and watched the dark red flow trickle down your forearm.

You let it drip onto the railing, all along the cement ledge, and then left the sliding door open and made a trail of droplets on the floor to your bedroom.

And then, you waited.

#bettyfrommars

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