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thisapplepielife · 1 month

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Written for a @astrangersummer.

Tip Your Driver

Of all the shitty service jobs Steve's had, this one is definitely among the worst.

And he's been stuck working some pretty shitty jobs over the years, both before and after they moved out here. If he hadn't hated the one at the shoe store so much, because ew feet, he wouldn't be doing this in the first place. At least that was in one location, a steady paycheck, and not that far from their apartment. But, he didn't know that feet draw in some weirdos, so here he is, lugging other people's shit around, because he needs the money.

He just sighs as he pulls up in front of the address on the app. He double checks the posted numbers over the garage, and it seems to be the right place. Everything matches enough for him to call it good.

The house is really nice.

It's not in The Hills or anything, so he hadn't expected something so nice.

Now, Steve doesn't mind delivering groceries, not really, but this guy, Eddie it says, ordered a bunch of heavy shit, and the tip was only the mediocre bare minimum. Which, he wasn't that mad about, until right now, after he's seen the house this guy lives in.

No, now he's pretty annoyed.

Whatever. Par for the fucking course from Fancy Pants Rich McGee over here. How the hell you spell chauffeur? Chauffeur. Indeed. Maybe he should make tiktoks about situations just like this. Robin keeps hounding him, saying if he'd just do it, that he could rake in a little extra cash.

He's skeptical.

Steve looks back at the house.

Oh well. He left his money behind for a reason, the only thing he kept was his car because his parents were dumb enough to put it in his name. And honestly? It does him no good to be jealous or whatever the fuck he's feeling right now.

At least this guy had been responsive, and pretty nice, when answering Steve's messages about substitutions and out of stock items. Not everybody is, unfortunately, acting as if Steve is the one stocking the store himself.

Steve opens the back hatch of his car, and leans in to grab the first items to be left at the door, as requested. If they don't see you, they feel less bad about the shitty tip, Steve's learned.

But it's fine. Steve doesn't want to deal with anyone face-to-face today, anyway. Because he needs to hurry. He and Robin are already a couple days late on rent, and he's gotta try to make up the difference today. If not, they're gonna be fucking screwed. Why is this city so goddamn expensive to live in? It's bullshit.

"Let me help," comes the voice right next to him, and Steve jumps, hitting his head on the open hatch door.

Now, he's skipped over annoyed and has been vaulted straight into pissed off.

Partly at himself for being so far in his own head that he didn't even hear this guy approaching, but mainly at this asshole for even being in his personal space in the first place. He needs to take about three big steps back.

"Oh, fuck! Sorry! I didn't mean to startle you!" the guy shouts, and Steve hasn't even seen this asshole yet, but he knows he hates him.

"Most people don't help unload the car," Steve snaps, turning to look at him, and the guy is looking back at him with big, big brown eyes. Robin would call them doe eyes, without a doubt. Well, fuck. Fine. Steve softens his tone, "It's okay. I just wasn't expecting you."

"Sorry," Eddie says again, still too close. "I'm Eddie. I ordered the groceries. Can I help? Please?"

Steve nods, and lets him reach in and grab his own case of water, while Steve picks up a few of the sacks. It's the least the guy can do, now that he's given him a headache. Literally.

Steve carries the sacks towards the porch, and leans over to put them down.

"Just come on in," Eddie says, and the door swings open, banging against the rubber doorstop on the wall.

"Don't bang the door!" comes the yell from the other room, and Steve peers into the house and sees an older guy sitting in a lift chair, with a walker in front of him.

"It's my door, old man, I'll bang it if I want to!" Eddie yells back, but there's no heat there. Steve can hear the teasing affection in his voice, and Steve can't help but smile.

"Don't come crying to me when there's a hole in your wall. Can you patch drywall? Because I can't right now," the guy, probably Eddie's dad the way they're bickering, snaps.

Eddie ignores the question from his dad.

"C'mon, this way," Eddie says, looking over his shoulder at Steve, as Steve lingers on the step.

Well, no. That's not. You don't go in stranger's houses. It's, like, rule one. And just good common sense. Which apparently Steve has none of, because he does follow Eddie into the house.

Robin will kill him, if this Eddie dude doesn't kill him first.

Steve puts the bags down on the counter, and heads back out to make another trip, Eddie following, "That's my uncle. He's just crotchety that he had to have his broken hip replaced, and now he's dependent on me for the near future."

Steve laughs, "Well, maybe don't bang the door and he won't be crotchety."

"You heard me. It's my door," Eddie says, smiling wide. He's pretty, very pretty. Long, dark hair tied up on top of his head, and heavy tattoos all along his arms, creeping up onto his neck.

He's honestly gorgeous.

Steve wonders if he's famous. He doesn't look familiar, but he looks like he could be famous. And his house is pretty fucking nice. This is L.A. Everybody is somehow famous in L.A. Except for Steve and Robin. They are definitely not famous.

Unless he's a tech bro? But he doesn't really look the type.

Either way, famous or not, Steve smiles back, can't not, not when he looks like that, then asks, teasing him, "Well do you know how to patch drywall?"

"Fuck no. But I could hire someone to fix it if the door knob somehow gets through the stopper."

"Well, at least you have a plan," Steve says, and Eddie laughs.

"He just hates the city. Hates my house. Hates everything. Except me. He loves me," Eddie says, as he grabs a case of Gatorade in one hand and the case of pork and beans in the other.

That's a lot of beans.

"That's a lot of beans," Steve says aloud, even if he doesn't mean to, even if he knows better than to comment on other people's groceries.

But Eddie laughs. "Tell me about it. Man likes what he likes, though. There's no changing him now."

Steve nods, grabbing another handful himself. It's nice that Eddie is taking care of his uncle.

"I'm not usually home much, hence all the groceries being ordered at once. Sorry about that. The cabinets were pretty bare, and I just didn't want to leave him home alone. He's still a fall risk, even if he keeps insisting he's not."

"That's okay, I understand. Big orders are more common than you'd think," Steve says, stepping back into the house that he's probably not going to get murdered in, thankfully.

Big orders are common, he's not lying about that, and more often than not, the tips offered for shopping hundreds of items, are less than you'd think. So, this order wasn't even out of the ordinary. Not really. That's why Steve took it. Some pay was better than none, especially today, that's for sure.

"Still. I'm grateful. You saved my ass today, man," Eddie answers.

"Well, it's my job," Steve says, and Eddie laughs.

They finish bringing everything in, and Steve nods at Eddie, "Okay. I think that does it."

"Here," Eddie says, and plucks an envelope off the counter, "I always worry that your tips in the app will get eaten up by the corporate assholes taking their cut off the top. So. Cash is king."

Steve takes the envelope. A tip he doesn't have to report? Why thank you, Eddie.

"Thank you. You didn't have to do this, or help bring it in, you know? But I appreciate both."

Eddie smiles, "Thank you for getting all that shit for us. We both appreciate it. Don't we Wayne?"

Wayne grumbles, but Steve's pretty sure he doesn't appreciate anything right now. He knows he wouldn't either, if he had broken his hip.

They say their goodbyes, and that's that. Steve will never see Eddie with the pretty eyes ever again.

At the next red light, Steve opens the envelope, expecting an extra ten or twenty bucks, maybe, but is shocked to see that there are three, insanely crisp one hundred dollar bills inside.

Holy shit.

That's way more than he usually makes in a single day. Two days, even. Just by delivering one order that he didn't think was gonna pay well at all.

And he got to look at a hot dude for a minute or two.

It's enough to cover what they were short on the rent, even. It might not have felt like a lot of money to Eddie, if he handed it over so readily, but it feels life-changing to Steve, right now. He remembers when three hundred bucks wasn't anything to him either, back when he had access to all his parents' money and all their unhappiness.

Now, it's different.

Robin's gonna shit.

Hot damn.

Thank you, Eddie.

"Booyah," Steve says, slapping the envelope on the counter.

Robin picks it up, and thumbs through it. It has Eddie's tip, and the few extra bucks he picked up during the rest of the day.

"Oh my god, no way! Where did you get this much cash, dingus? Are you turning tricks on the side now?" Robin asks, and Steve laughs.

"Yes. I thought I'd see what I could get for this ass," Steve says, turning and pushing his ass outwards in her direction.

She doesn't even look, but says, "Honestly, you might be worth more than this, as much as I hate to admit it," she comments dryly, and he smiles.

"No, some rich dude that ordered a bunch of heavy shit gave me a big tip," Steve explains.

"That's what she said," Robin teases, and her eyes are still wide as she looks at the bills in her hand, "Seriously, though. Thank you, rich, old dude," Robin says.

"Rich, but not old. I think he might have been famous in some way. YouTuber? Musician? I don't know. Nice house."

"Well. Describe him. Let's Google him," Robin says, wiggling her fingers in the air like she's stretching before this big task she's about to undertake.

Steve isn't sure searching for him is gonna work, but he lets her try, "Eddie. Probably a little older than us. Lots of tattoos."

"Was it Eddie Vedder? Please tell me you know who Eddie Vedder is, dingus?"

He knows who Eddie Vedder is, Jesus.

He gives her a look, "Not that old. And he was heavily tattooed. Is Eddie Vedder tattooed? Plus, this guy had dark eyes. Really dark. And no flannel."

She keeps looking on her phone, showing him options, "Him?"

No.

"Him?"

No.

"Him?"

"No. Not him." None of them are. Nobody she shows him is the same guy. So, he thinks of all the famous Eddies he knows of.

"Was it Eddie Van Halen?" Steve asks.

"Since he's dead, probably not," Robin says.

"Oh," Steve says. He didn't remember that. And he'd be too old, anyway. "We're looking for someone that looks kinda like young Eddie Van Halen. But with tattoos."

"You're obsessed with the tattoos. Was it Ed Sheeran? He has lots of tattoos," Robin asks, and he rolls his eyes.

"Robin. I think I know what Ed Sheeran looks like. This man was not ginger. Dark hair, dark eyes. And he was American. Maybe this guy is just rich? Not famous at all. It doesn't matter. I'll never see him again, anyway. We'll just thank him from afar for saving our asses today."

Robin sighs heavily, and puts her phone down, "If you'd got yourself a rich boyfriend we'd have it made all the time."

"Well, I'll work on that," he says sarcastically.

At least for now, they can pay another month's rent. That's a big win. Huge.

Maybe they can keep their heads above water, now.

And they do, by some sort of miracle. It was only three hundred bucks, but that was enough of a windfall to get them back in the black. And somehow they've stayed ahead since, for nearly two whole months. They haven't been this stable financially since they arrived in town.

Today, Steve flips through the different apps he drives for, trying to decide what order to take, when he sees a huge pizza order. The order is absurdly big, but the tip is decent, and picking up a stack of pizzas is infinitely easier than shopping a whole-ass grocery list. Steve's just seriously questioning if it'll all fit in his car.

He's gonna risk it.

Luckily, it does, but there are pizza boxes piled high in every seat and the rear. He definitely doesn't have hot bags for all of them. Hopefully he doesn't get caught in traffic.

The area seems familiar, but when Steve pulls up in front of the house, he knows why. Eddie. Only, the last time it was groceries, not food, that he delivered here.

There are vehicles everywhere. Clearly some sort of party, Steve thinks, to require this amount of pizza. And as soon as Steve steps out of the car, Eddie is out of the house, being trailed by three other, mostly leather-clad, guys. It'd look threatening, if Eddie wasn't smiling so big.

"Steve! When I saw Steve was my driver, I was like, maybe? But Steve's a common name, and there was no picture, so I didn't get my hopes up, but hey! It is you!" Eddie shouts, moving to the back of the car, "Watch your head this time, sweetheart," Eddie adds, and Steve is sure he's blushing.

He just stands there kind of dumbly, watching as Eddie commandeers his order right out of Steve's vehicle. Eddie's definitely unusual.

Eddie hands stack after stack of pizzas to the waiting guys, making them carry the bulk of it. And Steve watches as they ferry them off towards the house, Steve not having to even lift a finger this time.

Now, it's just him and Eddie standing on the curb.

Eddie holds out an envelope, and Steve looks at it.

"Man, thank you, but you tipped so well last time, you really don't have to again."

"I want to. You provide a service, I want to pay for that service," Eddie says, shaking the envelope, and Steve reluctantly takes it. Whatever is inside, will really help him and Robin stay ahead. It did last time. He's not really in a position to say no, even as well as they are doing at the moment.

"Thank you, truly," Steve says, tucking it into his pocket, "How's your Uncle Wayne's hip?"

Eddie smiles, so fucking wide, "You remembered! He's good. Great. Headed home soon, which I'm certain he's thrilled about. He's definitely never coming here again. I'll have to go home when I want to see him."

Steve laughs, "Glad to hear he's better, if annoyed."

"Do you want to stay?" Eddie asks, "We're having a little going away party for him. The more the merrier. Or, is your shift not over? You could come back?"

Steve doesn't have a shift, he can clock in and out to take orders as he pleases, and right now he'd really like to accept Eddie's offer. Even if it's probably just Eddie being polite. A pity ask, if you will.

"You don't have to invite your delivery driver into your house, you know? I could be a murderer."

"Unlikely," Eddie says, "and I'm not inviting my delivery driver. I'm inviting you, Steve."

Steve thinks over the options, and then nods. He can go in for a bit. If he's uncomfortable, he can get right back on the clock, no harm, no foul.

"Okay, let me park," Steve says, and he does just that. Putting the envelope of cash into the glove box without opening it. He doesn't want Eddie to see him scrounging through it. That feels tacky.

The pizza boxes are already open on every available flat surface in the kitchen and living room, and Eddie shoves a paper plate into Steve's hands, "Eat. Drink. Be merry."

Steve nods, and grabs a slice from the nearest box. He's not picky.

The house is full of people, and a lot of them seem vaguely famous. Like this is an industry thing, instead of a going away party for an old man with a newly not-broken hip.

Steve's worked enough of these events. They tried the catering thing for a while, and it was fine, for Steve anyway. Robin was just a little too clumsy to carry trays of dainty hors d'oeuvres around rooms filled with beautiful women in expensive dresses.

This isn't any of that though. This is cases of beer being chilled in kiddie pools, and dozens of pizzas. Fancy house, but not a fancy party. Steve spots Eddie's uncle sitting by himself on a couch, a beer resting on his knee and a paper plate of pizza on the arm rest.

Nobody else is sitting by him, so Steve goes over, "Can I sit?"

Wayne grumbles something that could be yes, could be no, Steve's not wholly sure, but he chooses to go ahead and sit down beside him.

"How's your hip?" Steve asks.

"Who are you?" Wayne asks, looking at him, suspicious.

"Steve. Uh, a delivery driver? I've brought a couple orders to you guys now. And Eddie invited me to stay."

Wayne nods, and goes back to his plate, "Hip's fine. Ready to go home."

"Where's home?" Steve asks, and he's not sure why. Clearly this man has no interest in making small talk with him.

"Indiana," Wayne says.

"Hey! For me, too. Small world."

"What're you doing in California, then?" Wayne asks. "Trying to get into show biz?"

"No. No way," Steve laughs, "Not for me. Uh, my best friend? Robin? She wanted to move out here. Wanted an adventure. And I wanted her to be happy. So. Here we are."

Wayne nods.

"Did you break your hip in Indiana and Eddie dragged you all the way out here?" Steve asks.

"No," Wayne answers, "I came to visit him and broke my hip before I got out of the airport. This is why I don't take vacations."

Steve smiles, "That's bad luck. Sorry."

Wayne nods his head, and Steve assumes that's the end of this conversation, and they sit in silence for a few moments.

"You're Steve? The one that brought the groceries a few weeks ago?" Wayne asks.

"That's me," Steve confirms.

"He's been talking about you non-stop. I was like, just order more groceries. So, he tried. It was never you. Now we have more food than he'll ever eat. Probably need to take it to the food pantry."

Steve grins, looking down at his plate. He isn't sure what Eddie would want to see him for. They definitely aren't on the same level.

Eddie is across the room, talking wildly with his hands.

"He's a good kid," Wayne says, quietly, "All this? Not him. Not all of him, anyway."

Steve looks back at Wayne, "What do you mean?"

"All this fancy shit. I'm proud of him that their music has done so well. But he's a good kid. And he just wants to be happy."

"Don't we all," Steve says.

"People take advantage. If you're here for the money, for the fame. Just. Move on. Eddie would give it to you. But he wants something more. Needs it, I think."

Steve thinks he could be something more. But he doesn't really have anything to offer Eddie in return, and maybe heeding Wayne's warning wouldn't be such a bad idea. What business does he have getting involved with a famous musician? None.

"Got it," Steve says. "Well, I'm glad your hip healed."

Wayne grumbles at that, and it makes Steve smile.

Steve puts his trash in the can, and looks around. The hallways are lined with platinum records, news articles, and he leans close to read the name. Eddie Munson. Corroded Coffin. He's never heard of them. He'll have to look them up on Spotify.

He doesn't belong here.

He takes one last look at Eddie.

Eddie Munson of Corroded Coffin.

He tries to memorize his name, his band, so he can tell Robin later, solving their little mystery.

And then he ducks out of the front door, walking down the long driveway towards his car.

"Hey, Steve! Wait!" Eddie yells from behind him, and Steve slows.

"Hey, man. Thanks for having me," Steve says, turning to look at him.

"You're leaving already?"

Steve nods, "Work, you know."

Eddie nods, "Okay. Well. Come back. Anytime."

"Thanks, Eddie," Steve says, because he's pretty sure Eddie means that, "Enjoy your party. I'm glad Wayne's hip is good as new."

Steve turns to keep walking.

"Steve. Uh," Eddie says, and Steve considers pretending he didn't hear him. It'd be easy. The music is loud, probably pissing off the neighbors, but Eddie keeps talking. "Listen. I like you. Yeah, I know. I barely know you. But. We got good vibes, man. Can you not feel that?" Eddie asks, and when Steve turns to look back at him, he sees that Eddie's hands are shoved deep into his pockets.

He looks nervous.

He's famous, clearly rich, and beautiful. He could have anyone he wants. But he looks nervous talking to Steve. Who delivered the pizza. Make it make sense. Goddamn.

"Eddie," Steve says.

"Do you not feel it? If you don't, I'll leave you alone. I swear. But if you do…"

Steve nods, "I do. But I'm a delivery driver. I live in a tiny apartment that I share with my best friend. We barely make ends meet. You could have anyone. Why would you want me?"

"Because I like you," Eddie says, "and I want to get to know you. I didn't grow up with anything either. I'm not old money. I'm new money. Brand new. So. I'm not that out of touch yet."

Steve smiles. He's old money, he just doesn't have access to it anymore. Eddie's new money, and doesn't know how to handle it. They'd be quite the pair.

Eddie keeps talking, trying to wheedle a date out of him, "Just. Let me take you out. Just us. Let's see if there's anything here," he says, motioning his hand between the two of them.

Steve wants to, he really does.

"Okay," Steve finally says, "nothing fancy. A normal date."

"We can definitely do that," Eddie says, and reaches into his pocket, pulling out his phone. "Let me give you my number."

Steve rattles off his number, Eddie texts him, and it buzzes against Steve's thigh. Already coming through, showing he's serious.

"Dinner? Movie? Bar? You name it," Eddie offers, eyes never leaving Steve's.

"Dinner's good. Nowhere fancy, though," Steve warns.

"Do I look like I like fancy places?" Eddie asks, looking down at his own clothes.

And Steve's eyes cut back to the gorgeous house.

Eddie laughs, "Fair enough. But I don't."

"Can you go out in public? Or are you too famous?" Steve asks. "I'm not familiar with your band, sorry."

Eddie laughs, "I think I like that you aren't, sweetheart. That means that maybe you like me, just for me. And I can go out. Nobody cares about me all that much."

Steve nods. Alright. They can go on one date, and see how it goes.

Well. That's how it goes.

Very, very well.

So well, that Steve's now satisfied and loose in Eddie's bed, when Eddie laughs, rolling into Steve's shoulder, face pressed to his skin. Lips kissing his shoulder, biting at him gently. Playing with him.

"What?" Steve asks, smiling as Eddie slides his hand into his, squeezing. "What's so funny."

"I tipped my driver," Eddie chokes out, laughing around each word, pressing his crotch into Steve's thigh.

Steve laughs, looking down at this ridiculous man clinging to him, "That you did. And damn well."

If you want to write your own, or see more entries for this challenge, pop on over to @astrangersummer and follow along with the fun!

#a stranger summer #week fifteen #prompt: modern au #stranger things #steve harrington #eddie munson #steddie fic #wayne munson #stranger things fic #robin buckley #stranger things 4 #steddie #platonic stobin #steve x eddie #thisapplepielife: short fic #thisapplepielife: a stranger summer

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pandora-writes-one-piece · 14 days

Text

The Meet Cute - Law's Story - 1

Source for pic

The Great Pretender 1

Word Count: 4145

Tags For The Whole Story: Fem!Reader; Law is a soft dom; you have bratty tendencies (not all the time); voice kink; praise kink; cursing; very suggestive behaviour and innuendo from the start; sexual tension; teasing; so much flirting; romance; slow-burn; fluff; slight angst; mature audiences (though explicit NSFW moments will be properly tagged on the chapter); possessive Law; protective Law; soft Law; teasing Law; manipulative Doflamingo; inappropriate Doflamingo; fake relationship trope; only one-bed trope; reader has some anxiety issues; reader is a control freak and perfectionist; modern day AU

Special Warning: English is not my first language, I apologise for any possible spelling or grammar mistakes.

Special Warning 2 : I advise reading the introductory chapters first, as they give a sense of the story, introduce characters and locations and, this chapter starts off immediately after the Sanji chapter. Your first interaction with Law is in those chapters! If you don't want to read the other characters, I recommend reading, at least, Law's Chapter since it's their first interaction!

Summary: After moving away from the hustle and bustle of Grand Line City to help your father around the property following a horse-riding accident - and in the hopes of healing your broken heart after your asshole ex-fiancé cheated - you settle into the country calmness of the Calm Belt. You and Law (your father's doctor) start to build a flirty friendship because of your father’s procedure. So much so that when he’s invited to Baby 5’s wedding (his cousin), he asks you to be his date. His uncle Doflamingo - who is filthy rich - is very adamant on finding a suitable wife for him. Seeing as he wants to avoid that, he asks you to pretend to be his girlfriend for the weekend.

Notes: First chapter of Law's story! I'm already writting chapter 4 so I think it's safe to start posting this. I'll try to update regularly, but life usualy kicks my butt so I'm aiming for one chapter per week (though this can change!) Also, this story is more sugestive than Ace's was, since reader has slight kinks (described in tags) that will influence the story. Read the tags, people, they're important! I guess this is it. Have fun!

Tag List: @rosidaze @beachaddict48 @armiliadawn @jintaka-hane @sprinkklz

Masterlist for previous introductory chapters.

|Chapter 2|

The ride home is uneventful. You have come out empty-handed from your job hunt and, as your car drives by the clinic, you remember that there is still a very serious conversation to be had with your father about his surgery. He has to have the surgery as it will improve his lifestyle.

Shanks is eating chips straight from the bag as he screams something at the players of a football game on the TV when you arrive. That is all fine. Except his posture, however, makes your eyes twitch. He's completely hunched over, and every time something exciting happens in the game, he jumps, throwing his back as if he doesn't have an injury on it.

You bang the front door especially hard just to get his attention - he hates when you do that - but he simply yells an angry ‘careful, bug!’ without tearing his eyes from the television. Sighing, you enter the living room and place your body in front of the TV.

“Hey! My game!” He yells, hands in the air and another jolt to his back.

“Dad! Your back! You want to throw it out again?” You cross your arms in defiance, moving your body as he moves his head, blocking his view even as he tries to see behind you.

“Bug, I'm being careful.” He whines, clearly more interested in what’s going on behind you.

“I'm going to set up an appointment with Dr. Law. We are going to schedule the intervention and you are going to get surgery. But first, you will speak with him and get all your fears and worries out of the way. He seems very competent. You're in great hands. Do you agree?” Stomping your foot down, you raise your eyebrow at him.

“Can I have some time to think about-...”

“Not if you want to see the game!”

Shanks grunts and falls against the back of the couch.

“And don't make those sudden movements! You'll throw your back out!”

“Fineeeee!” He drags the ‘e’ so much that he sounds like an exasperated child. “Schedule the appointment.” A heavy sigh parts his lips. “Now get out of the way, bug.” You remain stoic, eyebrows raised even higher now. “Please?” He begs as he sits very straight on the couch.

At that you nod in satisfaction, turning to leave the room and already dialling the clinic’s number to schedule an appointment at Law's earliest convenience.

-*-

Unfortunately Law's schedule is not the same as your father’s, and there will be about a week where their schedules conflict. So, after speaking with your father and assessing his fears and worries, you decide to go alone to this appointment and see where it gets you.

Does it seem silly that you are looking for the cutest dress to wear to the appointment? Maybe. But Law is freaking eye candy. How can you not want to look good and maybe catch his eye? And the only other thing he saw you in was torn clothes, so this time you want to be presentable.

Besides, you can't stop thinking about those tattoos… Just how many does he have? How far down do they go?

Sighing you deem yourself ready. Your father is with his neighbour and friend Benn Beckman, helping him around his property, so you pray your car works, pat it nicely, like your father told you to, and off you go.

Once you enter the clinic, Kaya is ready for you with a wide smile. You can't help but smile back at her, even though you know she is going to tease you about Law.

“Good morning, Kaya. How are you today?”

She sing-songs your name as she pulls your father's file from the archive on the computer. “I'm doing very well, thank you. Just getting ready for another chapter of my novel!”

You arch an eyebrow, an intrigued smile on your lips. “Oh? What are you reading?”

Kaya giggles with a hand covering her mouth. “A romantic novel about a young doctor who falls in love at first sight with a patient's daughter. It takes her a bit longer to realise he's the love of her life, but she's getting there.”

The unamused look on your face only makes her giggle more. “That's not funny, Kaya.”

“It is to me! I have a bet going on with Shachi and Penguin. It's about you two, but I'm not going to tell you what it is. I have a lot of money riding on this thing, Usopp would kill me.”

As she fills you in about who Usopp is, and you lean on the counter, engrossed in your conversation, you don't sense someone approaching.

“Nurse Kaya, you are paid to do your job. That does not include idle chitter-chatter with patients. I was calling you so you could let Mr. S. in.” He says your name and his low voice makes it sound like the most beautiful word in the world. “Good morning. I hope you're feeling well.”

“I-... Hmm, hmm!” You cringe internally and hiss through your pursed lips. A college graduation and a master's degree and this is the best you can do? Shit.

Spying the hint of that sexy smirk he showed you last time, he glances around the waiting room. “No Mr. S.?”

With a heavy sigh you shake your head. “He ‘couldn’t make it’.” You emphasise with an eye roll and air quotes. “But I want to ask some questions to assuage his fears, if that’s alright with you?”

Nodding, he gestures towards his office. “Follow me.”

Your feet immediately follow him without contest. There's just something in the assuredness of his voice that makes you want to do as he says. Not to mention that now every time you do something he asks you to, all you can hear in the back of your head is that slurred, low-vibrato ‘good girl’. And damn it, just thinking about it sends shivers down your spine.

After entering his office, he follows you, closing the door behind him and sitting across from you, his hands resting against his chin with his fingers entwined.

The combination of his piercing amber gaze and the hand tattoos is making your heart race and you're glad you're not hooked up to any monitor now.

“How have you been feeling?” He uses your name again and you gulp, actually thinking before uttering your response so you can articulate a clever answer this time, or an actual answer.

“Perfectly fine. I'm in good health, Doc. Physically at least because if you could peek at my ebooks or listen to my audiobooks, you would say I'm unhinged!” You snort before regaining composure and cursing internally because that was way more information than necessary. “Fine, I'm fine!” You add with an eye roll.

What is it with this man and his ability to render your brain into mush?

“That's good.” You almost have to stifle a whimper. “And how's your father?”

This is a safe topic, so you feel more relaxed as you lean back and cross your legs, forgetting for a moment that you’re wearing a tiny summer dress.

“His back has been fine, his habits, not so much. I fear he might come back sooner rather than later. And he's so afraid of the surgery that just speaking about it sends him bolting out of the room like lightning. I swear-...”

You stop talking as you notice that Law's hands have risen from his chin and are now covering half of his face leaving only his amber gaze - which is fixed on your bare thighs - and the slightest hint of pink on his cheeks.

Shit.

You just gave the doctor a peep show.

Blushing, you uncross your legs and tuck them neatly to the side, like the old etiquette books demand, resting your hands on your lap as Law realises he was staring.

Though he seems unfazed. “Well that aligns with what we've seen since discovering the hernia. Mr S. completely ignores caution when moving around and doesn't want to hear anything related to surgery.” He sighs and you tilt your head. So he was paying attention, not just staring at your nearly exposed thighs.

You reach into your purse and take out your notebook with a sigh. “He has questions. I did some research too, so I jotted down a few more. If he won’t come here, then I need to be reliable enough to give him the right information. I’ve divided the questions by theme and organised them from the most common to the really crazy ones my father came up with and-... what?” You ask, annoyed at the amused look he’s giving you. “Do I have something on my face?”

He chuckles softly as he leans back in his chair. His piercing gaze should be unsettling, but instead, it makes your heart race and leaves you breathless.

“It's not that. You're a control freak with a need for organisation and planning, and an endless search for perfection. You have high standards and expectations of others, but mostly of yourself. Am I right?”

Your mouth hangs open for a moment before you snap it shut, your cheeks flushing red. He’s right on the money.

“Is that a proper diagnosis, Doctor?” You ask, crossing your arms in defiance.

“No, not at all. I'm not a psychiatrist. That was just a random guess.” That damned smirk again.

“Random?” You raise an eyebrow, a chuckle escaping your lips.

“No. Not random at all. I tend to always be in control, so I understand it. But, there are ways to just… let go… and relax.” That damn sexy smirk is back again and you realise it does things to you. “But we’ll talk about that some other time, if you’re interested.”

A warmth spreads through your cheeks as your body responds to his intense gaze.

“How about this, you lend me that notebook and I’ll take a look at all your questions. We won’t tell your father anything, and I’ll make him a house call with the answers. If we ambush him, he’ll have to hear us out.”

Biting your lower lip you run his plan through your mind. It’s flawless. Shanks will be caught by surprise, with no way to escape.

“Sounds good!” You say smirking as you close the notebook with a light tap. “But I’ve paid for a full consultation. What should we do with the rest of the time?”

He makes a low hum, almost a grunt. Something primal and instinctive that makes your hairs stand on end. But when he speaks, his voice is calm. “The way I see it there are two options. Either I do a full checkup, or you ask for a refund. Which we don't offer.”

Well that isn't fair at all. He’s playing you like a fiddle.

“Law, you're being unfair. That’s hardly an option at all. I just said I didn't want to waste this consultation.”

When he leans forward, his chin resting on his hands again, giving you a perfect view of his hand tattoos and long, slim fingers, you gasp for breath.

“No point wasting it. Hop on the table.”

You don't know why your heart keeps pounding at an insane rhythm against your chest, but if you are about to be examined by a doctor, he’ll immediately realise that you're nervous. Still, you get up and do as he says, because, once again, you find it very hard not to obey his commands.

Taking a deep breath and trying to calm your racing heart, you climb onto the examination table, fixing your eyes on your legs instead of on him. But when he approaches, you realise he's wearing spotted jeans. He looks like a cute leopard. How did you not notice that before?

“Look at me.”

You do. Shit. What's with his hold on you?

Law points his flashlight at your eyes, one at a time, testing your pupil reactions. You try to focus on the light, but all you can see is the yellow of his eyes. And he's very close.

“Follow the light.” He moves it up and down, left and right and you follow it. Your breath keeps coming out in shallow pants and you scream at yourself in your head. You're being ridiculous! This is an exam! A professional one!

“Now open your mouth wide and stick out your tongue for me.” You swallow hard before complying. In most of your books what follows this command isn’t exactly office appropriate. His gloved hand cups your jaw gently, opening it further as he shines the flashlight into your throat. “Say ah!”

The sound you make is rather sinful. You can't help it. You told Kaya you weren’t interested in men in general and you weren’t interested in Dr. Trafalgar Law in particular. But your body didn’t get the memo your brain sent out. Because you're twitching, throbbing, and clenching. And he is just there. Ready for grabbing and taking.

But you have to be rational. You’ve just met the man. There's undeniable attraction, but there's no way you'll act on it. However the way his pupils darken at the sound that leaves your lips makes you realise that the attraction is mutual.

And the two of you could have so much fun together.

You close your eyes and dig your nails into the examination table, making the paper crinkle and tear beneath your fingers as you ground yourself.

“You can close your mouth now.” His voice sounds hoarse, so he clears his throat as he takes a step back, removing the stethoscope from around his neck and placing it near his ears, not yet covering them so he can speak with you.

“I'm going to listen to your heart, lungs and abdomen, checking for murmurs or abnormal noises, is that alright?”

It's the first time he asks permission to do something and you realise it's because he's going to have to touch you, so he needs consent. “Yes.” Your voice seems weak and distant, charged with desire and want. You're pretty sure he picks up on that tone as well, but he doesn't comment on it.

He places the stethoscope in his ears and the flat part against your chest. He starts with the lungs. “Deep breath through the nose.” Once again you follow all of his instructions. “Out through the mouth.” He keeps moving the piece on your bare chest and back, repeating the orders. His gloved hands are warm, big and firm and they make you feel things. “Your heart now.” He states and you gulp. Your heart is not going to be beating at a normal rhythm at all.

He notices immediately as a small chuckle escapes his lips. You drop your gaze to your lap again as you bite your lower lip. “Interesting.” He replies and you don't really ask what he finds interesting, knowing the conversation could veer down very dangerous paths.

Removing the stethoscope from his ears, he asks you to lie down as he reaches for a sheet, placing it over your lap and covering your legs. “Can you pull up your dress so I can listen to your abdomen?” You notice him asking again. He doesn't want to make you feel uncomfortable.

And you're not.

“Yeah.”

Adjusting the sheet to cover your panties, you pull the dress to expose your belly and he listens to whatever odd sounds come from it. There's a spot he touches on the side that tickles you and you squirm and twitch with a hearty laugh. He seems surprised and looks at you with a glint in his eyes before resuming the examination.

“Palpation next. Abdomen first to check for irregularities.” He looks at you for confirmation and you nod. This whole ordeal is overwhelming. You try to look away from his form, his eyes and his hands, but it’s impossible. He’s focused on his task, professional and attentive, yet… There's a hint of mischief in the way he looks at you every time he presses your flesh.

And you can’t help but to blush as your breaths grow more and more ragged.

“Joints and muscles next.” His hands trace your ankles and calves, then your knees - front and back - before climbing towards your lower thighs. You hold your breath, but he doesn’t go higher. “Sit up.”

“Yes, s-... doctor.” The flush in your cheeks nearly rivals his own. Neither of you expected this reaction. You were about to call him sir? Stupid, stupid, stupid! You should really start reading self-help books instead of filthy smut. But his voice… Law’s voice is deep, assured, commanding! You can barely help the way you want to bend to his words and do everything he asks of you.

In fact, you’re pretty sure he’s deepening his voice on purpose. He’s been using a more commanding tone since the beginning of the consultation. He probably picked up your little kink when you told him to call you a good girl when you met. And now he’s taking full advantage of it.

Trying to push the whole ordeal behind you, you sit up and close your eyes, willing your mind to focus on something other than the sheer sensuality of a freaking doctor’s appointment!

He keeps touching and squeezing you. Wrists, elbows and shoulders are next. “You’re doing very well.” He says, adding your name and making you blush even more. If you weren’t sure before, now you are. He’s doing it on purpose.

And damn, it's working!

“Open your eyes.” You try to fight it, pressing your lips together and shutting them even tighter. “I need you to look at me while I do this, can you?” There’s tenderness beneath the firmness of his voice, and the combination sends shivers down your spine. Yet again, you do as he says and open your eyes, only to find his face directly in front of yours. “Good.”

Fuck. You’re about to declare the time of death for any decency you thought you still had, because the huskiness of his voice is enthralling and mesmerising.

His tattooed hands wrap around your neck and you gasp, your pupils dilating as your hands grip the paper beneath you. His smirk is no longer veiled as he now knows exactly the effect he’s having on you. His fingers move, pressing against your thyroid and under your jaw, and he lets out a satisfying hum that you instantly want to hear again.

But closer to your ear, much, much closer.

Fuck, fuck, fuck!

“No nodules, that’s good. Now, take a deep breath, relax. You did very, very well.” You want to scream. You want to cry or smirk or laugh. Anything to express the warmth you feel in your chest from his praise.

You discovered this little kink of yours some time ago but you were always too fearful to ask Ichiji, your ex-fiancé, to explore it in the bedroom. Ichiji was, by nature, violent and controlling, but in a frightening way. You never meant to tempt or provoke his behaviour intimately. Yet with Law…

Your mind was already picturing all kinds of scenarios, each hotter than the last. You knew, you just knew that you were screwed. There was no way you could get this man out of your head now.

Even though he was very professional with his touching. It was your head that created all the scenarios. Your horny head!

As he sat down by the computer, typing away notes on your file, you composed yourself by pulling your dress down and passing your fingers through your hair. Taking a deep breath, like he said, to steady your racing heart.

When your eyes landed on him again, his professional demeanour was back in place, as if it were a cloak he had donned over himself after all this teasing. “Tell me, have you done any palpation of your breasts?”

“What?”

The chuckle that escaped his lips was low and soft. “Self-examination? Looking for nodules or abnormalities. A breast checkup?”

Oh. Dumbass. “Yes, yes! I have. All is well.” With wobbly steps you return to the chair in front of him.

“Any concerns with your health? Something that feels off, or any indispositions? Headaches, stomachaches, or any other aches?”

You keep shaking your head at his suggestions until a snort escapes your lips at his last suggestion. “Does heartache count?” Then you immediately blush and lower your eyes. Thinking about Ichiji earlier revived very unpleasant sensations within you.

Law stops typing while his piercing gaze returns to you. “I can’t offer any medical assistance for that, per se, but I can always lend an ear, if you ever want to talk about it.” As you glance up, the smirk on his lips is replaced by a stern smile. You nod and mumble a low ‘thank you’.

“Anything else?” He’s not teasing now, nor being playful. He’s being strictly professional and that makes you realise he was teasing you on purpose during the examination.

“No, thank you.” Your voice still seems very small. You thought that the mere mention of your ex was not enough to alter your state of mind so much, but it really affected you. Maybe it had something to do with being highly stimulated by all the sensations Law was provoking and then crashing when you came down from that high just by thinking about Ichiji and the heartache he caused you.

His eyebrows scrunch and he stares at you for a while, waiting for you to add something else. When you remain silent, he gets up. “Okay. You’re all set, then.”

“Thank you, Law.”

And without barely saying goodbye, you hasten out of his office, quickly saying goodbye to Kaya and telling her you have to run some errands and you can talk some more another day - since you already settled the payment when you arrived.

You had just unlocked your car when you heard your name. It’s Law’s deep rumbling voice again and you almost gasp.

“Law?”

He approaches you without his doctor’s coat on and you blush as your eyes take him in. His t-shirt shows off even more tattoos on his arms. Just how many tattoos does he really have? And why do you want to trace them all?

“Can I have the notebook?” You look at him with a raised brow. “You said you’d leave it with me so I can review the questions.” He says with a slight chuckle at your aloofness.

“Oh!” Smacking your forehead with your palm, you reach into your purse and hand him the notebook with a slight shake of your head. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” He takes it in his hand and fidgets with the ribbon from the page marker. He looks slightly embarrassed and you don’t know what to make of it, since he seemed so sure of himself in his office. “Did… did I go too far?”

The look on your face is one of surprise. Does he think you’re acting like this because of his teasing?

“No!” You almost scream. A soft chuckle escapes your lips as you try to compose yourself. “Not at all! You were very…” Endearing? Seductive? Sexy? Irresistible? “Professional. I’m just…” Another chuckle escapes you, accompanied by a sigh and a dismissive gesture. “I’m a mess! I’m still terribly affected by my past relationship and-... well, thinking about him stirred up some bad memories. I’m sorry.”

Now it’s your turn to be embarrassed. “There’s nothing to be sorry about. It’s completely understandable.” He seems much more at ease now that he’s sure you weren’t weirded out by all the teasing.

“I’ll be reviewing these, then. I’ll make sure to schedule a house call so we can surprise your father.”

“Oh!” You gasp in surprise as you reach for the notebook again, fishing a pen from your purse and quickly scribbling your number on one of the pages. “There’s my number. If it’s a surprise visit we don’t want Shanks to be the one to answer the phone.”

Your easy smile makes him chuckle as he, once again, takes the notebook, tucking it neatly under his arm. “All right. See you soon?”

You nod. “Yes, Law, thank you.” He nods back but, before leaving, he reaches behind you, his arm grazing your side as he opens the car door for you. Such a random, simple gesture has you blushing, and once again thinking about how, in four years of relationship, not once had Ichiji held a door open for you.

Muttering a muffled ‘thank you’, you climb into your seat. Law says goodbye again before closing the door to the car and walking away.

You let out the biggest sigh to ever escape your lips as your head falls forward against the steering wheel.

Why did your father’s doctor have to be so freaking hot?

|Chapter 2|

#one piece x reader #one piece #x reader #op #the meet cute #modern day au #reader x law #trafalgar law x reader #law x reader #trafalgar law #law #trafalgar d law #trafalgar d water law #reader insert #Spotify

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strangermarvelss · 2 years

Text

the pain of letting you go- e.m (pt 10)

Pairing: Ex!Eddie Munson x Ex!AFAB!Reader

Summary: eddie has a solo therapy session and a sit down talk with wayne about everything that’s been going on

Warnings: angst, eddie pov, mentions of past trauma and abuse (please don’t read if the topic is sensitive for you), crying, eddie having a breakthrough, wayne being the g.o.a.t and talking some sense into his nephew, cliffhanger ending

Word Count: 3.7k

A/N: part ten of the series is here! can’t believe it’s almost done, it feels unreal. thank you to everyone for the continued support! reminder: if the topic is sensitive for you, please do not read. also, my two years of taking psychology in high school really came to play in this chapter, so if it doesn't make all kinds of sense, be gentle with my fuzzy brain recollection ! one last thing: eddie's backstory might sound a lot like billy's but that's just how i think it would be in this series! enjoy! :) -sava

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“Do you want to start by telling me what brings you here today?” The lady in front of him asks, her notepad open and a pen situated between her index finger and thumb. Eddie shifts, readjusting his sitting position on the stiff couch in the spacious office as he looks back at the therapist in front of him.

He did exactly what he said he would. He got home that day that Christopher got in the fight and dialed Jonathan Byers’s home number, asking for the name and number of the therapist he and Will used to see back in Hawkins when their parents were getting their divorce. He thanked the man and hung up, quickly dialing the number Jonathan provided and made the first available appoint for the Monday after Thanksgiving, thanks to a recent cancellation.

Everything he said that day was true, he wanted to make it up to you and he would put the work in for that to happen. He spent the holiday alone, except for the breakfast he had with Wayne before he went back to bed to prepare for his shift at the plant that night. He mentioned wanting to talk with the boy, concerned about his lack of Thanksgiving plans. Eddie hadn’t really kept Wayne in the loop with everything that has happened between you and him, not wanting his uncle to look at him differently for acting so stupid. He was already beating himself up over the situation, he didn’t need more people he loved to turn against him.

“I’ve been an idiot lately,” he tells her simply, crossing his arms in front of him, putting a barrier between his heart and the unfamiliar woman. She smiles a little, looking at her notes before turning back to him.

“Happens to the best of us sometimes. Care to elaborate?” She questions, raising a brow. Eddie lets out a sigh, before opening his mouth to speak once more.

“I asked my wife for a separation, for a really stupid reason, and now that we’re not together anymore, I-I feel nothing but regret and I just want her back,” he explains.

She takes a moment to write in her notebook, before turning back to Eddie. She examines him for a moment, looking him over and Eddie squirms under her intense stare. Therapy was new territory for him. He often wondered how much better his life could’ve been if he attended regularly as a kid, but with money being tight and his asshole father not seeing the point, it was never a solid option. He probably could’ve saved himself a lot of heartache and trouble if he had a healthy outlet to express himself like this, really talking about his problems instead of blasting music and getting high to forget all the troubles the universe threw his way.

“This ‘stupid’ reason you said…what exactly was it? What led you to want to separate from your wife?” She inquires. Another sigh leaves Eddie’s lips as he braces for judgement.

“I-I’m in a band, called Corroded Coffin. I have this bandmate, his name’s Gareth. He made some silly joke about my rockstar image being ‘tainted’ because I’m married to the only girl I’ve ever dated and been with sexually, and already have a kid. Like I said, it’s really stupid, but, I guess I just…let it get to me.”

“And why do you think that is?”

“Why do you keep asking why?” Eddie snaps a little, already getting a little irritated. “I thought you were supposed to tell me all that. Tell me what’s wrong with me so I can go and make shit better.”

“We have to work through it to get to the root of the problem, first. Together,” she answers him, sending him a sweet smile. He huffs, pressing himself further into the uncomfortable couch. “Now, is what your friend Gareth said true? That you’ve only been with one girl your whole life?”

“Yeah, it is. No one ever looked at me that way before Y/N and I started dating, and it just felt right. Then she got pregnant, and we got married after she graduated,” Eddie explains a bit.

“Did you feel like you married Y/N out of obligation? Because you got her pregnant?”

He takes a moment to think. To reflect on the entire 8 years you spent together in a romantic relationship, and the years before that you spent as friends. He always loved spending time with you, whether you were friends or more than that. He remembers the time he realized he had feelings for you:

The summer of 1982 was hotter than you both wanted it be, even at night. You and Eddie were hanging out in his trailer, listening to his Black Sabbath album ‘Mob Rules’, blasting it with the windows wide open for the whole trailer park to hear. You both were on your third beer of the night, not wanting to celebrate the Fourth of July at the annual fair Hawkins threw every year thanks to Mayor Kline, but instead just having a relaxing night in the trailer, which is why it was okay for you both to blast the music after quiet hours began.

You were both laughing at some silly joke you said about his neighbor’s cat, the alcohol evident in your system and the fuzziness swirling around in both of your brains making any and every thing sound like the best joke in the world. He noticed how sweet your laughter was, and the way your nose crinkled when you giggled at his jokes, your lips curling into the brightest smile he’s ever seen and how you tilt your head back when you found something particularly funny.

The butterflies were beginning to swirl in his stomach when you flopped on the bed next to him, laughing so hard he thought you’d pee all over his bed and stain it further, since you’d already gone several times that night thanks to the alcohol in your system. He thought he could just laugh at hearing your laugh for the rest of his life, seeing the bright twinkle in your eye when he turned towards you and heat spreading to his cheeks thanks to the staring.

The laughter died down, the two of you looking at each other with soft eyes and reaching for each other. He grabbed your arm, running his ring clad hand up and down your soft skin, and you went to brush his growing mane out of his face. He felt his heart beating so fast in his chest, thinking it might pop out of him and explode all over your pretty outfit, which was a low cut tank top and high waisted shorts due to the heat, not that Eddie was complaining.

It felt sudden when you pressed your lips to his, but he didn’t care all that much as he quickly melted into your touch, bringing the hand that was once rubbing up and down your arm to cup your face gently. The two of you had been friends for a while, but it wasn’t weird to be kissing in that moment. The heat that was created between the two of you as your lips moved against each other felt so nice and comforting. Like it was bound to happen any day. Like Eddie always said: It just felt right.

“No, I didn’t feel like I needed to marry her out of obligation. Her parents maybe think that, since they kept hinting towards it throughout the pregnancy, but I didn’t feel pressured by them or her. I did it because I wanted to,” he finally answers the woman before him. She nods at his answer and quickly scribbles something in her notebook again.

“And why did you want to? Think back at how you felt around that time in your life. What made you decide you wanted to spend the rest of your life with her in the first place?”

“Being with her made me feel truly happy for the first time in my life. I had a shit childhood and everyone bullied me up until I graduated at my third attempt at a senior year, but whenever we were together, even before we were dating, it felt like I didn’t have to worry about ever being unhappy. I just felt-I felt like maybe life didn’t have to suck as much as I used to think it did.”

“Good, that’s good. I think we’re starting to get somewhere. Can you talk to me more about your childhood?” The therapist asks, readjusting her position in the chair in front of him, crossing a leg above her knee and readjusting her notepad. Eddie’s breath hitches for a moment, swallowing it down quickly after. He never reveled in the details about his childhood too often. The last time he had to was some comment Christopher made about a family tree he had to make for school, and he had asked about where his mother and father were and why he only had one set of grandparents he went to visit during the holidays. It wasn’t a lengthy conversation between him and his son, not like it was when he told you all those years ago. He wanted to save that story for when Chris was significantly older. Please, it all still felt very fresh, as if it was happening yesterday.

“Um, yeah…yeah I can. My mom, she was the sweetest woman. Always did her best to care for me a provide some kind of normal childhood with what little we had. But my dad…he was a total prick. An angry drunk who used to beat us every time we breathed wrong. He and my mom would fight a lot, arguing about money and other pointless shit in the end. But it always ended in him ‘winning’, getting a few too many smacks in and taking it out on me when I would try to defend her,” Eddie begins, his hands clasped in front of him as he leans forward on his knees, one leg bouncing uncontrollably as he speaks.

“One day, thinks got a little too heated between the two of them because he lost his job at the body shop he worked at, being drunk on the clock and all. They got into a screaming match, apparently, because money was becoming tighter and tighter, and when he lost his job, my mom was the only one with a stable income coming in. He…he hit her. No, not hit. He punched her. He was going at her and just hurting her worse than he ever had. She ended up in the hospital, broken ribs and eye swollen shut, but panicking about how much it would cost her instead of worrying about her injuries. But she figured it out and once she was better, she left Hawkins. S-she promised she’d come back and get me, and we’d go live in a city together where we didn’t have to deal with that asshole, but after two months of getting the brunt of all his anger about it, I lost hope. Then six months after she left, my dad got locked up and I was put in my Uncle Wayne’s care.”

She nods at his words, taking in all the information spilled at her in such a short amount of time as she writes faster than Eddie thought anyone could. Eddie’s chest feels tight as his mind brings him back to his past. The pain from his father’s fists and the smacking sound he’d create against his chubby pre-teen face still fresh and the exact reason he was so worried when Christopher got into a fight at school. Sure, Eddie knew how to defend himself against bullies when the time called for it, but he tried to not get physical when he felt the need to get violent. The fight with his son, plus the smack you landed on his face when he was being a jealous dickhead about Steve, took him back to the small house he lived in on the outskirts of Hawkins with his father’s harsh words ringing in his ears and horrible actions making his skin sting.

“Do you ever find yourself running away from conflict, Eddie?” The therapist asks, pulling him out of his thoughts.

“Um…yeah, I guess sometimes I do. But Y/N and I didn’t have any conflict when I asked for the separation, it was because of what Gareth said,” he replies. She hums to herself, raising her eyebrows a bit a shaking her head.

“But what if it was something deeper than that?” She ponders.

“What do you mean?”

She closes the notebook momentarily, setting it on the side table closest to her chair and clasping her hands in front of her. “What if you had a deeper reasoning, something that didn’t click into place until your friend said the joke. Eddie, with all the stuff you just told me, it sounds like the abandonment your mother caused you to feel could have something to do with this, as well as a bit of self sabotage.”

The abandonment was spot on, with the grudge he still held for his mother for leaving him in the hands of an abusive piece-of-shit still very present. But self sabotage? What on earth could he have been sabotaging? And for what reason?

“I’m going to need you to elaborate further, doc,” he pleads.

“Well, you said you never felt truly happy until you were with Y/N. Things were going good between you, so there could’ve been a small part of you just waiting for things to get bad again. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. So instead of you going through any sort of pain on the receiving end, you initiated the bad stuff before it could happen to you. And running away similar to how your mother did, but not exactly the same,” she explains to him.

Eddie feels as if a lightbulb went off over his head as he listens to what she says. It all makes sense, because there was always a small part of him that told him he never deserved anything good in his life, words his father would spew at him continuing to stay with him many years later. He finally felt happy and let his head overthink that, not truly being able to soak up the feeling and throwing away the best thing he’s ever witnessed in his life. The words the therapist said, mixed with the insecurity of his lack of experience, all made Eddie feel semi-better about knowing what exactly led him to acting so stupid.

As happy as he was to get to the root of the problem, he felt like even more of an idiot for doing so and putting you through the shit that was going on with him. What if he managed to get this kind of help earlier, before acting on Gareth’s words and being a mini manwhore? What if he just talked about how he was feeling instead of keeping it to himself and letting you suffer in the process?

“That actually makes a lot of sense doc…thank you,” he breathes out.

“That’s why I’m here. I think we’ve made some great progress for today, and I’d like to try and see you once more before your family session coming up in a couple of weeks. Talk to the receptionist out front and see where they can squeeze you in,” the therapist says, standing from her chair and extending her hand to him. He shakes it as he stands himself, digging his hands in his pocket before walking out of the room and out into the lobby where the front desk is located.

—————————————————————————————————————————

Staring at Wayne’s truck in the driveway, Eddie takes a deep breath before turning the engine to his van off. Exiting the vehicle, he takes the few steps until he reaches the porch, climbing the stairs and walking in the front door. Wayne’s figure is relaxing in his recliner, feet extended as he watches a show on the tiny television. He meets his nephews eyes, Eddie giving him a shy wave before setting his keys on the kitchen counter.

“Hey boy,” Wayne greets him, pushing the recliner back into the regular sitting position and standing. He walks over towards the kitchen, his arms extending and wrapping around his nephew quickly. “How’ve you been boy?”

Eddie shakes his head, laughing a little as he looks to the floor. “Not good Uncle Wayne. Pretty far from being okay, if I'm being honest”

“C’mere son, lets sit down and talk,” he gestures towards the kitchen table, the two chairs already situated a bit for people to just slide it, the two men having a habit of not pushing them in. Eddie sits down, wringing his hands together as he rests the against the table. Wayne slides in, taking a sip of his drink as he looks at his nephew. “Tell me what’s been going on with you and Y/N.”

Eddie’s eyes shoot up to meet Wayne's, panic in his face hearing his uncle say the words. Wayne hated gossip, so there was no way someone else managed to tell him the situation before he did, right?l

“How did you-“

“Now you know as well as I do how fast word travels in this damn town. I may not like to gossip, but my ears do perk up when they’re talking about my nephew. I would’ve liked to hear it from you though, so talk to me son,” he explains, cutting the younger man off.

“M’sorry Wayne, I just didn’t want you to be mad at me and be disappointed in me. I've already put you through enough shit...I-I just didn't want to add onto that,” Eddie admits, hanging his head low in shame, staring at the wooden table and tracing the cravings he did years ago with his fingertips.

“Eddie I could never be disappointed in you, and I mean that.”

“Thanks Wayne, I appreciate that,” he pauses, continuing to trace the carvings. “I really screwed things up with Y/N. I got in my head and let her go…and now I feel horrible. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever done, and you know me, it says a lot.”

“Yeah son, I do know you. And you’re right, that is the worst thing you’ve ever done,” Wayne tells him. Eddie’s eyes widen, staring at his uncle crazily, a breathy laugh leaving his lips. “No, Eddie, I’m serious. I’ve seen how that girl has changed your life for the better, and leaving her like that was just cruel. She and that boy of yours love you so much, but I can’t for the life of me understand why you did it, because I know how crazy you are about her. So what the hell?”

Eddie frowns, hearing the disappointment in his uncle’s voice. He knew how stupid it was letting the one person other than Wayne who has ever treated him with any kind of love that he deserved go like he did, trading the simple family life for the rockstar life he’s always dreamed of. But now that he had that rockstar life, he hated what he gave up in order to have it. Losing you and your son wasn’t worth all the potential record deals and never having to worry about money again.

“I know Wayne…I know I messed up. But I’m trying to do better-I am going to do better. I just came back from a therapy session, and we’re going to go as a family so I can see just how much this has effected them and see what I can do to be good to them. I want to be back in their lives and come home to my family every night and tuck my son in without him hating me. I want to lay in bed with my wife at night and hear all about her day and hold her in my arms as we fall asleep, then wake up and do it all over again. I never thought that’d be something I could want, much less have, but now that it’s almost out of my grasp?” Eddie stops, feeling the tears fall down his pale cheeks as he tries his best to compose himself in front of his uncle, turning away and rubbing his eyes with his thumb.

He keeps the sobs to himself, not wanting to look more pathetic than he already felt. He knew it was stupid to cry over his own mistakes, but it just showed how much he cared for you and Christopher. He loves you both so much, and despite everything, he wants nothing but happiness for the both of you, whether that includes him in your lives or not.

Wayne stands from his chair, walking over and taking Eddie’s figure in his own, wrapping his arms around the boy’s shoulder and holding Eddie’s head close to his figure with his free hand. Eddie immediately hugs him back, his face burying into one of Wayne’s legs as he turns his head to the side, looking out at the living room before closing his eyes once more, fresh tears spilling over the edge.

“I don’t want to lose them, Wayne. I can’t,” Eddie mumbles out. Wayne nods, patting his nephew’s head as he tries to soothe him.

“I know boy, I know. But you have to keep putting in the work. I know you love them, and they still love you, I can see it when I see Y/N around town sometimes with the way she still manages to flash me a smile. So go and be a better man for them, the husband and father they need you to be and get your head out of your ass,” Wayne says.

Eddie smiles a little, pulling away from his uncle and rubbing his tears on his sleeve. He was going to do whatever you needed him to in order to be on good terms again. He knew things wouldn’t magically heal over night and that he’d be welcomed back to his home with open arms next time you saw both of them, so he would wait as long as he needs for you to be ready and let him back into your life.

That is, if you still really wanted him there.

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imminentinertia · 7 months

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Pre DFF finale: brain churning, latching on to genre

I've nearly lost count of the number of genres Dead Friend Forever has pressed into service, but I'm trying to make a list, because I love this very good post on DFF and horror genres by @chaos0pikachu and that made me think about how much it's been throwing us around:

slasher essentially a frolicsome and fun horror subgenre, if not for those who see little amusement in some characters terrifying and murdering others:

the first frenzy about the curse of the film, Por impaling himself spectacularly

the masked would-be killer chasing various characters, notably Phee and Jin having to hide in something that looks very much like a funerary box

mystery thriller trying to solve one or more puzzles:

is Non alive, where did he go?

possibly the mystery of who is the killer with the mask - but that's more of a slasher staple and less of a mystery to be solved, slashers don't necessarily reveal the murderers' identity

horror of personality the villain is human and technically normal, but is awfully murderous and/or sadistic etc.:

Fluke's descent into madness - I think him shooting Top goes here rather than into the slasher basket, because it's notably done in front of everyone and not by the/a masked killer

Tan-New's losses escalating his focus on revenge

Keng being subtly menacing underneath the friendliness

note that Non's descent into vengeful violence doesn't count towards this genre, as he's the main victim in all the genres DFF uses

erotic thriller what it says on the tin, it's suspenseful but there's sex:

Tee, White and The Hand

Keng's arc including his manipulation of Non

Phee having sex with Jin with the primary secondary purpose of getting closer to the friends group

social drama and how. Surely they didn't have to go this hard. School bullying, money trouble and debt all the way into inhuman terms for repaying, class divide and upper class suppression of lower class, police corruption, inadequate health care, power abuse, motherfucking organ trafficking, the list goes on and the shift from episode 4 to 5 left me reeling.

Most of the genres DFF makes use of are of the horror/thriller variety, and while social drama definitely can cross-pollinate with other genres, DFF injects some social commentary into the first four slasher episodes but then drops the horror/thriller entirely. Then it proceeds to do a very well crafted critique of a number of societal issues, with no hint of anything horror-y, until it picks the suspenseful genres up again in the later episodes. I was still reeling when they turned the social commentary back into those.

gangster this may be stretching it a little because DFF doesn't really tell any stories from the gang life POV and the organised crime is present mostly as a threat to the characters, but:

Tee is a (low-ranking and untried) member of a criminal gang, working for his gangster uncle, and part of the story is told from his POV

and there's even romance! sweet sweet passion, affection, wooing etc. etc. etc.:

Phee falling like a broken parachute for Non and proceeding to do all the cute things in the world with him

Tee and White with their meet-cute and not too unsettling relationship (White has some lines that hint about a dynamic that may not be all sweet)

I'm sure I've forgotten about ten genres and subgenres.

There's one episode left, and while I fully understand wanting it to turn slasher/vengeance thriller/etc. again and MURDER ALL THE ASSHOLES IN CREATIVE WAYS, I'm very curious about what genre notes they end this on.

Personally I'm still stuck in the social commentary and expect the finale to be Mike Leigh levels of unhappy, but with a Final Girl walking away, and I have no idea at all who that would be. It would depend on how many Sharpened Screwdrivers it gets on the Leigh Scale (probably fewer than I think, it's probably not supposed to end entirely unhappily. 4/10?).

(Side note 1: for terrific examples of social commentary horror, check out George A. Romero's films.)

(Side note 2: horror of personality is one of my favourite genres and my absolute favourite such film of all times is Michael Haneke's Funny Games. I love it, it nearly made me throw up and I don't know if I can recommend watching it.)

#dead friend forever meta #dead friend forever

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obsidiancreates · 1 year

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Taishen's Guide On Being The Best Uncle You Can Be

(Somehow I hit exactly 1,400 words for this. I just wanted to say that because that is a damn satisfying wordcount.)

It takes just about a year after traveling with Gricko and Frost for Gideon to start being called "Uncle Gideon" whenever Gricko mentions him to Hootsie.

"He sure warmed up to us quick," Kremy had said one night, sitting by the campfire and keeping an eye on his roux. "Callin' us family already seems a little much, don't it, Gid?"

"Yeah, but he's a fuckin' weird little guy. Not really surprisin'."

"True."

Truth be told, Gideon doesn't mind it. He thinks Kremy doesn't mind the "Uncle Kremy" title either, because there's always just enough room in the budget to buy Hootsie a trinket, or snack, or new little hat. And sometimes Gideon decides not to go back for thirds of whatever Kremy cooks so Hootsie can have seconds, and sometimes Gideon doesn't even need to hold back because Kremy sets aside extra just for her.

The first time Gideon accepts it aloud, though, is when they're staying in a little inn, and Hootsie is dancing just for fun in the tavern area, and someone throws a tankard at her and calls for the "wild beast" to be thrown out.

The man finds himself thrown out, his throwing arm broken, and the shout of "That's my fuckin' niece, asshole!" haunting his drunken dreams.

"That was very violent, Gideon," Gricko says later as they're all prepping the single room they could get. Hootsie is curled up in the corner, a little rattled still, but Gricko already has his pack set out and is making up a little bed for both of them where she lays. Gricko's tone is scolding, but he mouths "Good job," when he knows Hootsie can't see it.

"People shouldn't be throwin' things at her," Gideon says with a shrug, fluffing up his thin-as-paper pillow as much as he can. "She's just a baby."

"Your little baby niece," Gricko says with a wide grin. "Isn't that right, Hootsie? You've got big strong Uncle Gideon to protect you!"

Hootsie looks up at Gideon with those giant round eyes and hoots. Maybe Gideon's starting to catch some of Gricko's strange brand of cookoo-bananas, but Gideon could swear she looks and sounds grateful.

"Yeah yeah, I'm Uncle Gideon, we all heard me say it." Gideon gets into the bigger bed in the room as Kremy and Frost play a game of cards to determine who gets the other one (card counting versus slight-of-hand cheating, mind-reading versus shadow magic, it's tough to know who'll win) and shuts his eyes. The sounds of shuffling cards, Gricko telling Hootsie a bedtime story, and the bed likely splintering beneath Gideon's own weight lull him to sleep.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gideon walks into a tea shop. He doesn't really drink tea, that's more Frost's thing, but he's here anyway.

He doesn't question it, as is the nature of dreams.

"Finally!" an excited voice rings out in the empty shop as Gideon finds himself sat down at a counter. The golden dragonborn on the other side grins brightly at him as he pushes a cup of fresh tea forward. "I've been waiting so long for you to finally realize you're an uncle!"

"Uh... what?" Gideon takes a sip of the tea. It's actually not bad. He didn't know tea could be spicy.

"That little owlbear has a lot of support, but that doesn't mean you can take being her uncle any less seriously." The dragonborn gestures at an ink painting hanging on the wall, of himself and a younger dragonborn girl. "Mei Li taught me just how important this role truly is, and I'm going to help you be the best possible uncle you can be."

"Hey man, listen. I appreciate the fuckin' thought and all, but, I don't know who the hell you are!"

"You won't remember once you wake up anyway," the dragonborn says, pouring himself a cup of tea and pulling a stool over to his side of the counter. "We've talked a few times, actually. But those were usually extremely upsetting times, and now we finally have something to celebrate!"

"Celebrate with tea?"

"I know you prefer alcohol, but if I can get Skrimm to enjoy tea I can get you to enjoy it as well."

"Well, I dunno why I'd need any advice on bein' an uncle, 'cause it seems pretty fuckin' easy t'me." Gideon knocks the rest of his tea back. The cup is full when he sets it down. "Give her treats, buy her stuff when she wants it, and punch guys who're fuckin' dicks to her."

"Those are all part of it," the dragonborn agrees, "But there's more to it than just spoiling her and protecting her. You have to nurture her as well!"

"I mean, Gricko's her dad, he's the one who's doin' all the raisin' and stuff."

"If you all lived in a town, that might work out just fine. But you're always on the move! You're the only four constants in this young girl's life, so you're all very influential on her as she grows!"

"Aw, man. I gotta be a good fuckin' influence now? I just got outta havin' to watch my every fuckin' move all the time, man."

The dragonborn seems to deflate, suddenly growing weary and ancient. "I'm... very aware. But I promise it's nothing like that. I just mean that Hootsie is an impressionable little girl right now, and it's a good idea to teach her important, valuable lessons."

"... Like... if somebody's bein' a fuckin' dick, she can bite their fingers off?"

"Well, I don't know if I'd encourage it to be that extreme, but self-defense is a good lesson, yes! And self-respect, it's much easier to defend yourself when you respect yourself and your value."

"Okay... I think I get it. And uh... knowin' when somebody's talkin' a load of bullshit."

"Exactly! Not to insult anyone but, you and I both know that Gricko can be... quite gullible. I mean, I understand him, I was very much the same way for most of my life, and can still be now. Oh, I remember Skrimm told me that a certain gesture was a universal greeting-"

"Which one? This one?" Gideon flips him off.

"That's the one! He always managed to find me when no-one else was around and pull pranks on me like that." The dragonborn laughs a little, fond. "Oh-ho, when it was a matter of life or death I was truly distressed, but now it's easy to look back and laugh."

"Alright, so, make sure she knows she can bite people, make sure she knows when she's bein' tricked, and I guess... make sure she knows how to get outta tough situations!"

"That's another great idea!"

"Man, I knew this whole uncle thing'd be easy." Gideon knocks the tea back again and looks around the shop. There's lots of ink paintings like the one he saw before, with these two dragonborn enjoying life. One catches his eye, of the man who sits across from him letting the young girl ride around on his shoulders.

"That'll be easy too," Gideon says, gesturing at the painting with cup in hand and sloshing spicy tea all over the floor- or would, if it ever hit the floor, but the tea just ceases to exist before it makes an impact. "Fuckin' piggyback rides and life lessons, easy as hell."

"And best of all, rewarding. It's an incredible joy to care for a child, as much as it is a serious responsibility." The dragonborn looks around. "And if you see Yorgrim when you leave here, let him know about the piggyback rides you plan to give. I think he'll appreciate a little warning."

"Who?"

"You're right, I'll tell him. I think you're waking up now anyway."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gideon picks Hootsie up and plops her onto his shoulders as the group exits the inn and gets going. Hootsie gives a startled hoot at first, and then looks down. Her face lights up, eyes ghetting as big as possible, and she gives another, more excited hoot as he leans over to watch everything from her new height!

Taishen sighs happily as he watches, and looks up at Yorgrim. "Does that help soothe some of your old wounds?"

Yorgrim huffs a little. "It's... bittersweet."

Taishen reaches up and pats Yorgrim's arm. "I understand. ... Tea?"

Yorgrim is quiet for a moment before sighing and holding his hand out. "Thank you."

"Of course, my friend."

#legends of avantris #once upon a witchlight #icebound #gideon coal #taishen fireblossom #fanfic #my attempts at fanfic

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valdiis · 5 months

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Character Traits: Daephrin Astramente

— B A S I C S

Name: Daephrin Rosamar Astramente Nicknames: Dae, Lark, Samar, 'hey asshole!' Age: Somewhere around 32 Nameday: 15th sun of the 3rd Umbral Moon Race: Ishgardian Elezen Gender: Cisgender male Orientation: Bisexual and yes, please Profession: Sky pirate, treasure hunter, leather-worker, professional scoundrel

— P H Y S I C A L A S P E C T S

Hair: Warm black and windswept; straighter when it's very short or very long, wavy when it's a little shaggy. Eyes: Vivid emerald. Skin: Sun-tanned and lightly freckled. Tattoos/scars: No tattoos, a fading burn scar on his upper shoulders.

— F A M I L Y

Parents: Lucarian Astramente and Ilystra Rochenoire. Lucarian was a Temple Knight and Ilystra a noblewoman. When Lucarian married her, the official name of the noble house changed to his surname instead of hers. House Rochenoire was known for producing profound intellects and the Astramente line a knack for navigation. Ilystra died of pneumonia and several months later, Lucarian dropped dead of a heart attack. They say that couples in love rarely survive one another. Siblings: His older brother, Sarin, was a lancer and died in the Dragonsong War. His younger brother, Onaerion, is currently the head of House Astramente. Grandparents: Daephrin never knew them, but the Rochenoires were stiff, devout Ishgardians who had fallen on hard times and were very pleased to marry their daughter off to a relatively wealthy Temple Knight. The Astramente family was proud to count a Knight among their sons; they were mostly traders and trackers, barely a step above scoundrels but for their wealth. Wealth hides a multitude of sins. In-laws and Other: Though he is formally dating one man and unofficially entangled with another, Dae doesn't have any in-laws at this point. He has an Astramente uncle he's never met, but his mother was an only child. Pets: While he would like to have live pets one day, he fears he can't care for them at this time with his lifestyle. Instead, he has Sniffer, Spotter, and Sparrow - mammets made for him by his lover, Jaxon. Sniffer is a delightful little cat-dog mammet that sniffs out treasure. Spotter is a spider-like trap finder. And Sparrow is a bird-shaped recording device.

— S K I L L S

Abilities: Daephrin is quite a decent leather-worker, though he makes no fuss over it. More of a fuss is made over the fact that he's a crack shot with any ranged weapon of any kind (a manifestation of the Echo), including thrown knives. Just don't hand him a lance; he'll put someone's eye out. He knows Allagan programming language and technological construction. He can play piano pretty well. Hobbies: Aforementioned leather-work and Allagan treasure hunting. Airship maintenance for fun and profit.

— T R A I T S

Most Positive Trait: Dae is charming nearly to a fault. He can convince snakes to dance on their tails and Monetarists to part with their gil. He's got the perfect mix of a kind air, a clever mouth, and a fast mind; it makes him easy to trust, even when you probably shouldn't. Most Negative Trait: He is horribly, terribly self-centered. He struggles to put himself in other people's shoes or to think outside himself. He's working on it, but he's still pretty selfish.

— L I K E S

Colours: Black, gold, green. Smells: Well-oiled leather, bay rum, sun-warmed wood, his lovers' colognes (Jaxon and M'rath smell different, but equally amazing), fresh citrus. Textures: Silk, leather, black cat's fur, lacquered wood. Drinks: Whiskey, tea, hot chocolate, coffee, the occasional orange juice.

— O T H E R D E T A I L S

Smokes: Not anymore. Drinks: Sometimes. Drugs: Once in a great while, though he did more when he was younger. Mount Insurance: Uh... No? His usual mount is a motorbike, as he has not the facilities to care for an animal. (In practice, he rides a kamuy because I love them, but he wouldn't know what a kamuy is.) Been Arrested: He has so far escaped the law, but his luck may one day run out.

#ask meme #Daephrin Astramente

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noirgasmweetheart · 3 months

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Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here today to lay to rest the $3.99 that I blew renting "the Constant Nymph" on YouTube.

Who knows what that four bucks could have become, had fate been kinder? A Reese's Big Cup? A triple cheeseburger from McDonald's? An IronStrange sticker from Twin Cities Con? A pet rock from a thrift shop? An over-priced Frappuccino? The possibilities are endless, the lost potential infinite.

(Cue bagpipes).

Spoilers below

I knew the movie wasn't good, but I had at least hoped to get some screencaps of the elegant outfits, and some clips of Peter Lorre being sexy. I've never had trouble taking screencaps or recording clips from YouTube rentals in the past. But someone really doesn't want me sharing anything from this movie.

Possibly because of the pedophilia.

Yes, this "romance" is about a tween girl in an overall dress and pigtails lusting for a 50-tear-old pimp, and briefly her 80-year-old uncle. And the 50-year-old pimp lusts for the pigtailed preteen dressed like Ragedy Anne. The pimps wife, rather than be horrified for her (I think) child sister, is instead just jealous. While Lady Slut and Mini-Slut spar over Count Geezer, Peter Lorre glides in thr background like a raven, alternating between looking sexy and looking dismayed.

"When I did this in 'M,' all the crooks in the city organized an epic manhunt, stuffed me in a bag, tossed me down a staircase, put me on trial and tried to execute me. But when a rich asshole does it it's 'romantic?'"

Alright I'll admit it, I didn't watch the whole movie. I skimmed around. Even without the gross pedo plot, it's just boring as balls to me. But God damn, there were so many cool outfits and hairstyles and cool rooms I wanted to screencap. And I wanted to clip PL's scenes to share with the fan base.

"Why are so many of my most attractive roles in my worst movies?"

The movie ends with a tragic death. The death of my $3.99. I think Mini-Slut also dies, from boredom maybe. Oh, spoiler.

Ok Charles Boyer isn't really a "geezer" at this age, he's actually a pretty attractive older man...EXCEPT in this movie, where he absolutely IS a geezer compared to his love interest who resembles a freaking Powerpuff Girl.

Great, now I'm seeing this gross movie retold in my head with the Professor and Bubbles in the lead rolls, Ms. Bellum as the jealous wife, the Mayor as the monocled uncle, and Mojo Jojo as Fritz, just channeling the audience's reaction.

#peter lorre #fritz #the constant nymph #charles boyer #rip my $3.99 #sexy #that last tag is for pl #not the actual “romance”#power puff girls #ewe #pass the brain bleach #squirrel #bagpipes #powerpuff girls

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childotkw · 2 years

Note

I love your ruination au! I have so many questions like when will it be posted? How many chapters? Will Otto and Chrispin get turn into dragon feed? What are everyone's reaction like? And most importantly, does Lucemond get married?

Everyone talks about wanting to see Daemon and Rhaenyra’s reactions to Lucemond but what about Jace or Aegon's reactions? It'll be hilarious. Them two older brothers bonding over their younger idiot clueless brothers.

I kinda want Luke to have a lock of white hair maybe caused by the storm's lighting or something cooler. Makes him look like he was touched not just by The Stranger but by the gods of Old Valyria themselves.

And since Luke likes to bite, Daemon will definitely teach him to include that into his combat fighting as well. Like just imagine doe-eye smol Luke just ripping a man's throat out with his teeth? His bottom face painted with blood? Cannibal will probably roar with proud victory. And Aemond doesn't know if he should be scared or turn on by that.

Don't mind me but just picturing:

When Rhaenyra’s soldiers found out Lucerys will be leading them into battle as commander, a lot of them are irritated and some even scoffed openly at how obvious the nepotism was. A young boy barely 15 years old has no place being in that position of power.

Until he silently lands with Cannibal to meet his skeptical fleet of soldiers. Cannibal doesn't roar, breathe flames or even land heavily to immediately command their attention. The silence in the courtyard was deafening. How could a creature so big be so utterly quiet?

But he draws himself up to his full height so every man can see the multitude of scars that adorned his body and be reminded exactly why he is called Cannibal. This was a dragon even before House Targaryen and lived through archaic times. And who feeds on other dragons.

Lucerys then emerge out of nowhere and the men are confused. There are no signs of a harness on Cannibal, surely the young prince did not rode his dragon without any equipment?

But they see his thicker leathers, the silver lock standing out in his brown hair, the dark unsettling look in his stone cold eyes, and realise he did. Lucerys quietly took in the faces of the men he will lead, nodded once and strode off to his tent without a word. When they looked back to where his dragon was, Cannibal had disappeared. What?

The uneasiness prevented even the most loud-mouthers from voicing their doubts though. The stupid ones who did went missing but emerged days later, shaking and a shell of their former selves.

Then, in their first battle against Green troops, Lucerys led them to victory and went and ripped an enemy's throat out with his bare teeth.

No one questioned his leadership since then.

Thank you! To answer the first few: not sure when I'll post but hopefully soon, not sure on chapter count but I'll tentatively aim for twenty as a max, I shan't reveal what will happen to Otto and Cole but I am critical of their characters so that might bleed through in my writing, there are too many people to list what all their reactions will be but I hope to do them all justice when the time comes, and as for marriage...perhaps.

I think Jace's reaction to Aemond would be an immediate and stern 'no'. He does not want his baby brother with their psycho uncle that almost killed him - but he also knows that Lucerys has become a bit unhinged and so he's pitting his need to protect him against the knowledge that Lucerys is now fully capable of tearing Aemond apart if he hurts him.

With Aegon, I'm currently writing him as a bit of an asshole. He definitely had an inkling that Aemond was more than interested in Lucerys since basically forever. So he's less surprised and more cynically amused by the hole his brother has dug himself into.

And lmao Aemond's wires are crossed because he gets uncomfortably hot whenever Lucerys bares his teeth at him. Everyone side-eyes him because he's really not subtle.

Also, I love the little scene! The unease and disbelief from people, seeing Lucerys rock up without harnesses or saddle or even bloody rope to keep himself in place; and them all knowing the rumours around Cannibal - it just builds a magnificent picture. His reputation would be so goddamn scary once he takes to the battlefield.

#anonymous #HOTD #ruination au #lucerys velaryon #aemond targaryen #lucemond #cannibal the dragon

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bizaar · 2 years

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Cruel Summer - Part 4

First - Previous - Next

pairings: Eddie Munson x fem!reader

summary: After breaking up, you and Eddie do your best to soldier on with your lives, but you slowly begin to discover that there is a stronger line of connection keeping you together than just history…

word count: 5k

warnings: angst, mentions of Starcourt Mall deaths, as always, so sorry if I forgot anything!

A.N.: babysitter!reader part 4 - the timeline is a little wonky regarding the Starcourt events, but time is a manmade concept and therefore doesn't exist so you'll have to forgive me! the return of Uncle Wayne, MVP and still the #1 dad figure

You spent the rest of the summer hanging out with Dustin, Lucas, Max, and Mike, for lack of anything better to do while you waited out the ticking clock counting down to school starting again. You told yourself you were just trying to help fill the gap that Will had left in their lives after the Byers’s big move to California, all the while fully aware of and ignoring the way you were trying to fill the gaping, Eddie-shaped hole in you with all the nonsense that went with the Party’s teenage boyhood — plus Max, who still kept you at a healthy distance, despite having known her for the better part of two years now.

You don’t hold it against her, she’s got enough on her plate dealing with the implosion of her family in the wake of her brother’s death. Billy was an asshole and you had not enjoyed a single moment you'd ever had the misfortune of spending in his presence, but it didn’t make it any less shocking to hear he’d died in the fire that destroyed the Starcourt mall, along with countless others, along with a friend you’d known since childhood.

It leaves you a little more than shell-shocked, thinking about the weeks you'd spent with her while you were trying to ignore the way Eddie was avoiding you in the weeks leading to the breakup. Thinking about how much time you'd spent in and around the Mall.

Your old group of friends had not been so fond of Eddie, in fact, they’d outright hated him, and had unsuccessfully tried to warn you against him when began to show interest in you. When their warnings about steering clear of the freak fell on deaf ears (how could you resist the way he’d smiled at you in those first moments, so boyish and shy, stumbling over his words and making an absolute fool of himself?) they’d decided to give you a bullshit ultimatum to try and save you— him or them.

Of course, you’d chosen Eddie outright, much to their outrage. It had seemed like the right move at the time, despite the social suicide you committed in doing so. You didn’t care about lost popularity, you would have gone to hell and back for Eddie, and your so-called friends would never understand that, so they'd cast you away like yesterday's trash, along with any social standing you'd held at Hawkins High. You didn't care — being popular was exhausting, and you much preferred the life you led with the so-called freak... that is until not even he wanted you.

Eddie's sudden absence from your life did not go unnoticed, and when he disappeared, one of the kinder girls from the old guard reached out — for pity or old times sake you could not tell— but suddenly you were spending days at the public pool and nights at the Starcourt Mall. It was shades of your life before Eddie, spending the summer like the average American teenager and silently wondering where the hell your stupid boyfriend was.

Your friend died the night the Starcourt Mall burned to the ground. She'd begged you to come out with her that night, and you'd declined, partially because you had absolutely no interest in third-wheeling with her and Billy Hargrove, but mostly because you were too caught up stressing about what Eddie's problem was and why exactly he was ignoring you.

If you’d gone with her that night, you might be dead too.

You attended the funeral, where you were ignored by the rest of your old friend group — the joys of social pariah-ism— you could hardly make yourself care, much too caught on the jagged edge of thinking very hard about your own mortality. You think about your family, about Dustin and the Party, about all the people you care about and all the people who care about you. You think about Eddie, too, of course, and you wonder bitterly whether he would even go to your funeral if you’d died while he was so busy avoiding you. You can’t say.

Eddie hates funerals.

In the end, it doesn’t matter, because you didn’t go with her that night and you didn’t die, so you don’t have to worry about whether or not your shithead ex-boyfriend would come to your funeral.

The final weeks of summer come and go, and you manage to stop thinking about your breakup and your mortality long enough to throw your weight into helping to prepare your gaggle of children for the looming threat of High School. You spend full afternoons in the Wheeler’s basement, walking the Party through what they can expect as freshmen like you’re running an incredibly intense session of D&D. You do your very best to channel that same gravitas you’d seen in other examples of Dungeon Mastering (watching Eddie) affecting your “serious babysitter” voice and laying down anything and everything they will need to know.

The effort is something akin to herding kittens as everyone is far too distracted with their own nonsense. Dustin only wants to talk about everything that has changed since you graduated High School and continually – annoyingly– asks if you are okay (you assure him time and again that you are fine but still, he insists on asking), you can't tell if Mike misses Will or his weird little girlfriend more and spends hours upon hours moping pathetically, and Max and Lucas are so busy breaking up and getting back together that you're fairly certain they haven't heard a word you've said over the course of the long hours you've spent lecturing them.

It is extremely annoying, but you can't deny that you're thankful for the distraction, considering it is very hard not to think about Eddie all the time when he is everywhere you look.

Not physically, of course, you haven’t seen him since that terrible night, but he is always there, scorched into every inch of this town, clinging to you wherever you go like an inky black shadow that you cannot wash away no matter how hard you try – and you have tried.

You are so goddamn thankful when the first cool breezes of autumn begin to blow, bringing with them a rush of change that would have normally been enough to send a thick slurry of panic rushing through your veins.

They hit one right after the other, with enough force to give you whiplash.

First the breakup, of course, then the end to your adventures in babysitting – you were strangely okay with the way that long era of your life had been ushered into its final chapter, if not a little embarrassed about the way you’d sat blubbering on the Henderson’s couch when Dustin broke the news.

He was right, fourteen was too old for a babysitter, and at the end of the day, you were happy to let him cut the apron strings, even if you couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that you’d been fired.

Next came your friend’s funeral, followed very quickly by your family’s sudden announcement that they would be leaving Hawkins for upstate New York, where a shiny new promotion awaited your father. You, in turn, shocked them by insisting you would not be joining them, and while your parents put up a fight, there was ultimately nothing they could do to change your mind.

Your childhood home went to market, and as such, you were forced to clean out your room, which meant you were forced to address the box of all the things that reminded you of Eddie that had been sitting in the back of your closet since August.

You ended up leaving it on his porch in the middle of the night in a fit of moody pique, and you told yourself you didn’t care what he did with any of it. Part of you hoped he would just burn it all, and that it would allow you to be done with each other once and for all.

You'd had to let yourself hate Eddie just a little bit just so that you could finally try to start healing, and you'd been surprised by how easy it was to get there.

You’re not over him. You don’t know if you’ll ever be over him, but what you do know is you can’t condemn yourself to wasting away over something so silly as adolescent heartbreak, like some kind of fragile Victorian heroine.

You’ve got other shit to worry about besides the fact that Eddie Munson doesn’t love you anymore … and yet you still spend far too much time thinking about the way he’d pulled away from you that night, how he couldn’t look at you when he broke your heart – fucking coward.

Could be worse. You tell yourself, You could be dead.

It doesn’t make you feel any better. Your lease on your icebox apartment was approved the same day you went to ask after the “help wanted” sign in the window of the diner formerly known as Benny’s.

They hired you on the spot.

It feels a little bit like admitting defeat, considering how you’ve always sworn you’d rather jump off a bridge than willingly submit yourself to the slow death that is customer service, but you didn’t apply anywhere for college, so it’s not like you had a lot of other options.

To his credit, Dustin had tried his hardest to get you a job at Family Video alongside Robin and Steve, but it had been an exercise in attempting to move heaven and Earth.

You are not on good terms with the manager, because Eddie is not on good terms with him.

Keith used to run Hellfire, back in the day, and from what you understand he’d had a hard time letting it go when he’d graduated. You don’t know all the sordid little details, you only know it was extremely awkward while you and Eddie were dating, and it hasn’t gotten any better now that you’ve broken up.

It was bad enough having Keith stare daggers at you from the various dark corners of the Arcade when you would chaperone Dustin and the rest, but then it became a Herculean feat just to try and rent a video.

There’s no shame quite like having to beg on your hands and knees just to be allowed to rent some campy horror movie you’re really only planning to put on as background noise while Keith just stares back at you from behind his cold dead eyes.

It’s not your fault he doesn’t like Eddie, but he’d decided it was your problem. Guys like Keith never let go of a grudge, and regardless of your relationship status, you would be forever branded as the mistress of the enemy, so no Family Video for you.

It’s for the best. Robin is nice, but you don’t really know how to interact with Steve, particularly now that he’s supposedly turned over a new leaf. You guess he’s fine, considering he actually lets you rent videos without putting up a fight, but he was entirely unpleasant in school, particularly when Eddie came into the mix, so you don’t trust Steve by default, regardless of the way Dustin worships the ground he walks on.

As far as you’re concerned: once a mean girl, always a mean girl.

Despite how work keeps you busy and how you don’t babysit anymore, you still see Dustin as often as always. You have a standing invitation to join the Hendersons for dinner any night of the week – you go over on Wednesdays. Claudia, as she’d insisted you call her now —you still can’t shake how strange that feels — always makes too much food and sends you home with a Tupperware of leftovers, because she’s worried you aren’t eating enough.

Dustin talks about school and his new friends, and whatever news he has from California, and he tries and tries and tries to get you to come and meet said new friends because he’s worried you are isolating yourself.

While you appreciate the sentiment, you just don’t have time – someone always needs you to cover a shift, and no matter how many hours you work your paycheck doesn’t seem to get any bigger, and your bills don’t get any smaller.

So far, being an adult is far less fun and freeing than had always been advertised, and you're starting to feel like you've been sold a bill of false goods.

It’s December, and one of the first punishingly cold days of the season when you find yourself bored at work, standing in the corridor between the front of house and the kitchen, trying to warm your hands and talking to a coworker.

There are an infinite number of things you’d rather be doing than listening to a grown woman bitch about her kids, but the heating at the diner is on the fritz, and the only real respite from the chill is the salamander, where food goes to die under the heat of the lamps. You tell yourself it’s better than standing around, listening to the same old Christmas music, shivering under the itchy cotton dress that is your uniform, so there you stand, hands extended, zoning out, nodding periodically, pretending to commiserate.

She’s going on and on about how she’s dreading the holiday break because school days are the only time she gets to herself anymore and you’re biting your tongue to stop yourself from asking why she didn’t think to use a condom.

Her kids are elementary-aged and apparently singularly evil, and you kick yourself as you suddenly remember how you’d oh-so-casually mentioned in your first week of employment that you used to be a babysitter.

You’d just been trying to get to know people, to make new friends at work, and now you hate yourself for daring to be so genial. Serves you right. You can practically feel the question bubbling up between you.

She’s laying it on thick, hinting at her desperate need for someone to watch them “just for a few hours on nights and weekends,” (as if you even had the time for that) and you’re biting the inside of your cheek until you taste blood, praying to anyone who might happen to be listening that she doesn’t ask you to babysit her demon children.

Like divine intervention, the bell of the front door chimes – Thank you, God, Tiamat, Ozzy Osbourne … whoever! – and you take it as your window of opportunity to offer an apologetic smile and bolt into the dining room. Cold be damned, you will not condemn yourself to nights and weekends being tormented by screaming brats.

The spike of adrenaline that cuts through your midsection freezes you to the spot as you realize who has just walked in through the door. There stands Wayne Munson, shrugging out of his winter coat and sliding into the empty booth nearest to the front door.

You notice each other at the same moment, and he freezes, like a deer in headlights. Embarrassingly, the pad of paper you’d fished from your apron pocket in anticipation of taking an order slips from your fingers and clatters to the floor. Your heart has dropped into your stomach and the blood is roaring in your ears so ubiquitously that you can no longer hear the tinny din of Jingle Bell Rock playing over the radio.

Before you realize what you’re doing, you’re scanning the frosted windows in a panic, looking for that familiar mop of dark curly hair, following behind. You know if you see him you’re probably going to turn around and run right out the back door and never come back.

It takes all of your limited brain power to convince yourself that Eddie is not about to walk through that door. You know perfectly well that he won’t set foot in this diner. It’s part of the reason you applied here, being one of the few places in town where you knew you would be safe from a chance encounter – his mother used to work here… before she died.

The silence in the diner is deafening. It feels like a very long time before you manage to come back to yourself enough to pick up the pad of paper, square your shoulders, and approach the table.

“Hiya, Wayne,” you say, hoping you sound somewhere halfway to cheerful. Your voice cracks. “Sorry about that I–” you were about to say you didn’t recognize him, but suddenly you can’t bring yourself to lie, and now you’re silently working your mouth, gaping like a fish out of water. “I…I don’t know.” You shake your head and try to laugh about it. It sounds strange and robotic, “Sorry.”

He gives you a craggy smile and dismisses the notion with a gesture that is so entirely Eddie, you suddenly can’t breathe.

You try to think of the last time you’d seen Wayne. June – graduation. He’d brought you flowers and given you a shy hug and you’d felt so stupid craning your neck to look around him, trying to spot the familiar silhouette in the crowd. Eddie wasn’t there and Wayne could only say that he was real sorry about it. No excuses, no explanation, just an apology.

You suddenly wish you were still in the hallway, listening to your coworker complain about her brats.

“Don’t know what you’re sorry for.” Wayne mumbles, “You didn’t do nothin’ wrong.”

You find yourself exhaling slowly through your nose, releasing the breath you hadn’t realized you’d been holding, and feeling a weight lift from your shoulders. It’s an odd relief to hear him dismiss the silent fears you’d been wrestling with since the summer, wallowing in the agony of “what did I do wrong”.

It’s good to know Wayne doesn’t hold anything against you.

Still, you fidget with the pad of paper, picking at the wire spiral holding it together as you search for the right thing to say.

“S-so … um… how’s –”

Don’t say it don’t say it don’t say it – how’s Eddie?

You have to clear your throat to banish the thought.

“How’ve you been?” You stammer, gesturing vaguely.

You could kick yourself for how stupid you sound right now, fumbling around like you were strangers, just because Eddie had decided he didn’t want you anymore, like some old plaything he’d outgrown. You could kick him for that, too.

“Fine. Good.” Wayne says, nodding, “How about you? Ain’t seen you since…” he trails off like he’s realized what he was about to say —ain’t seen you since y’all broke up — obviously. “Well… we heard you’d left town is all.”

We.

“No, just my folks.” you explain, “I rent a place in town.”

His face brightens like he’s relieved to hear it. It makes you feel strange and you half wonder if you are going to regret telling him that later.

“Oh,” Wayne says. “That’s good.”

You nod, too busy fighting the urge to bolt back into the kitchen to wonder what’s so good about it, and admonishing yourself for being so suspicious.

This is the most awkward conversation you’ve had in a very long time and you cannot wait for it to be over.

Of course, it’s then that you remember that you are a waitress and actually have some kind of obligation to do your job.

“You want coffee?” you ask, cringing at how brusque the question sounds.

If your tone is aggressive, Wayne makes no mention of it as he rubs his calloused hands together in an attempt to warm them.

He nods.

“Yes ma’am.”

You turn on your heel, your beat-up old converse squeaking obnoxiously on the tile, and stalk back to the counter. It occurs to you too late you didn’t ask about cream and sugar, but you remind yourself you know Wayne well enough to know he takes his coffee black.

It is yet another piece of intimate information you hadn’t been entirely sure what to do with until this very moment. You wonder briefly how much of this interaction is going to make it back to Eddie.

You can just imagine Wayne rolling up into the trailer that evening – maybe Eddie’s on the couch, maybe he comes out of his room to investigate the sounds of his uncle returning home.

“Hey, Kid—” Wayne will say, “You’ll never guess who I saw today.”

You bitterly hope it ruins his day, knowing you’d stuck around after he’d all but begged you to leave. It’s still so much easier to hate Eddie than feels right.

You return with a mug and pot of coffee, pouring and indulging yourself in a little self-destruction as the steam wafts up and burns your knuckles. It’s just hot enough to feel fantastic on your frigid fingers.

Suddenly, like an intrusive thought, you're caught wondering if Eddie ever got the heating fixed in his van. It had crapped out the year before in the middle of a deep freeze and you'd spent many a day sitting huddled together, trying to keep warm and having very tense conversations about the possibility of whether a space heater would blow up in the back of the van.

“How do you like it?” Wayne asks suddenly, bringing you back to the moment. “Your new place?”

You blink at him, trying simultaneously to ground yourself in the moment and think of the right thing to say before shrugging your shoulders.

“It’s okay.” You mumble, running your thumbnail over the grooves in the plastic handle, “Actually, I kind of hate it..."

You don’t know why you’d said it, only that it felt natural, like complaining to your dad about a grown-up problem he might have a fix for, only Wayne’s not your dad.

He hums, “You got bad neighbors or somethin’?”

“I’ve got leaky pipes.” It feels a little like oversharing, but suddenly you can’t stop the truth from flowing out of your mouth.

Wayne snorts into his mug as he takes a sip of his coffee, leveling you with a sly look from the corner of his eye.

“Don’t we all?”

His eyebrows jump and even though it takes you a moment to process the joke, you shock yourself by laughing out loud. Too loud. The sound of it echoes obnoxiously around the diner, nearly empty as it is at 1:30 on Tuesday afternoon.

It makes you sound like a crazy person, but you’d nearly forgotten about Wayne’s penchant for Dad Jokes.

You can’t remember the last time you’d laughed in a way that wasn’t some stilted thing for someone else’s benefit, to try and convince them you were fine while you were silently holding yourself together, trying not to fly apart at the seams.

It feels good.

“Hey, there she is.” Wayne smiles shyly into the mug, “It’s good to see you again, Sweetheart.”

It’s like a dam breaking as the awkwardness of the moment evaporates and your affection for the man comes rushing back in.

You can feel the corners of your mouth pulling up and you smile at the joke, at the notion that someone is happy to see you, at being reunited with someone you didn’t know you would miss so much.

Suddenly, you’re so pissed at Eddie for being so selfish that you’re half inclined to smash the coffee pot. Wayne had been your friend, a father figure in the absence of interest from your own.

You wonder briefly if he’d let you hug him. Like he’d anticipated the whim, Wayne gestures to the seat opposite him.

“Can you sit and talk a little?” Wayne asks, “I think we owe each other a few rounds of catch up,”

You twist and look around the dining room, at the singular creepy regular perched on his stool at the end of the counter, outstaying his welcome and doing his best not to show how he’s watching you.

It’s a ghost town, and not likely to gain so much as a single customer until school lets out. You tell yourself you can either go back into the hallway and take your chances at refusing to babysit the apparent hellspawn of your coworker, or you can sit and talk with Wayne for a few minutes.

It’s an easy decision to make.

“Mmmm, I don’t know,” You hum, “We’re pretty slammed.”

Wayne smirks as you slide into the booth opposite him.

You spend the better part of an hour with idle chatter, catching up. You do most of the talking, complaining about your apartment and all its problems, your job, how you wished you’d applied anywhere for college, and how expensive it is to live on your own.

Wayne listens, nods, and drinks his coffee, and you don’t talk about Eddie, despite the way you can feel him lingering between the two of you.

It almost feels like getting back to normal and you fool yourself into thinking that if you shut your eyes, you could imagine sitting at the tiny dining table in the living room of the Munson trailer, talking to Wayne about your day while you wait for Eddie.

You can almost pretend he’s still right there, that any moment he’s going to come trotting out of his room, usher you up from the table, and lead you out to the van, though not before bidding Wayne so long, and thanking him for the chat. Sitting there, talking with Wayne, you can almost pretend Eddie still loves you...

Of course, all good things must come to an end, and suddenly the bell chimes as the door swings open announcing the arrival of a gaggle of high schoolers. Their presence shatters the stillness as they file in, laughing and chattering and assaulting you with the golds and greens of the Hawkins Tigers splashed across their letterman jackets and cheer uniforms.

You feel a strange sadness with the way the moment ends so abruptly, and how Eddie’s inky shadow is suddenly gone taking all the air out of the room with it.

Somehow, it's like time here in the diner exists in a vacuum, and after he leaves you’re never going to see Wayne again. Because he belongs to Eddie, and you have no right to breach the post-breakup walls that have been erected.

He got Wayne and the band and all the guys at Hellfire in the divorce, and you got to not die in a mall fire. It doesn’t seem like a fair trade-off: your life for everyone in it?

Once again, foolishly, you are struck by just how badly Eddie had hurt you, and you can’t help but wonder if he knew what he was doing, if he’d gone out of his way to do everything in his power to break your heart.

Still, you can’t bring yourself to damn him, not with Wayne sitting right there — it would feel too much like a betrayal. You were the only two people in the world who saw Eddie for more than what the rumors had made him out to be. You were the only two people in the world who loved him.

You hate yourself for the sharp pang of grief that lances through your chest and try not to think about how much you’re going to miss Wayne when he leaves today — how much you miss Eddie.

It makes you a little misty-eyed.

If he sees it, Wayne pretends not to notice, because he is a gentleman.

You watch the high schoolers file into the large booth on the opposite end of the room and wait to see if your co-worker will come out to take their orders. She does not.

Of course.

“Well, that’s my cue.” You sniff, clearing your throat and scrubbing furiously at your cheeks to try and banish any lingering emotion.

You push up from the booth, contemplating the milkshakes, French fries, and forced pleasantries in your immediate future.

“What do I owe you?” Wayne asks, fishing for his wallet.

You shake your head.

“Coffee’s on the house.” You cut him off before he can protest, "No, you don’t have a say in the matter. My gift to you.”

You start across the floor, towards the far booth where the social elite of Hawkins High have piled in and are talking animatedly about something you’re sure you wouldn’t have been interested in even when you counted yourself among their ranks.

You before Eddie.

You cringe as you come to recognize a few faces in the group and are busy bracing yourself for the impending “hey, didn’t you use to…?” when Wayne calls your name.

You turn on your heel and stare back at him, where he is scratching the back of his neck and averting his gaze. Another gesture that is entirely too Eddie – somehow it’s a little more comforting this time.

“Let me know when you’re free.” Wayne offers, gesturing vaguely, “ I’ll come by and see if we can’t do something about those pipes, and all the other stuff.”

It’s a slow change, but you can feel your face splitting into a grin, warmth blooming in your chest. Wayne Munson, the gentleman handyman.

You nod and watch him get up from the booth, shrugging back into his coat and tipping his hat to you as he makes his way to the door. Suddenly, you are brimming with the possibility of a next time, something almost like the way things used to be.

Not with Eddie, of course. You're fairly certain that you're never going to see Eddie again, and you suppose some small part of you has started to make peace with that, but Wayne is family. It is almost enough to scratch that Munson itch you’ve been feeling since August, no matter how it might leave you feeling afterward.

You decide in an instant that you can stand to hurt your feelings a little bit and indulge yourself in the next best thing.

You can’t stop yourself from calling out,

“Hey, Wayne – same time next week?” You posit, tugging nervously at the sleeve of your dress.

He turns, thinks about it, then smiles.

“Yes ma’am. I’ll be here.”

Taglist: @harrys-tittie @r-a-d-i-0-n-0-w-h-e-r-e @itsrainingbisexualfrogs @thicksexxualtension @ganseysgff @scoopsr0bin @peanutbutter-y-jams @audhd-dragonaut @clilxlx @alexandriaemily20 @averagestudent03 @but-vanessa @cosmictime45 @timelordfreya @forever-war

#eddie munson x you #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson #cruel summer #stranger things fic #reader insert #some of the taglist inexplicably isn't working apologies for that I hope everyone who wanted to be included gets to see this!#i just really love wayne munson i have a lot of feelings about that man and they are all positive #cruel summer fic

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adoriels-tears-if · 5 months

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Spoiler

So my Mc she is indifference with Arthur. Mostly doesn't know what to think of him. But she is nice to him and what not. Like she wouldn't mind having him as a friend I think.

But when it came to talk with Cecilia it was interesting seeing Mc saying she hates him. But it makes since he gets to live his life. Doesn't have to hide who he is and can go out in the world and not worry about being different.

I also choose the run away option and it was so sad seeing that my Mc thinks that no one will miss her. Since they now have Arthur in their life and pretty much can fill it. But to be honest my girl been thinking of running away bc One: mother saying she don't have a kid. (Which hurts) Two: uncle choosing Arthur and Three: Mc has to hide her ears and can't be who she is.

Also I wanna know how much Arthur heard and did he also get taken or just us?

I can't wait to find out who the voice in our head is. Because obviously they know when shit is going on around us and what not.

Also sorry for long post. 😅 but I wanna say it was really good but fucking sad lol. So do keep up the good work and make sure you take care of yourself. 🙂

------------------Spoiler for the Last Update-----------------------

I'm glad you liked the update Anon and that the choices were quite satisfying. In the "go" option, I put a sentence like, Mc has been thinking about leaving for a while, which encompasses all the thoughts you stated for your little Mc, but maybe I should make it clearer?

Arthur heard 👀

The Shadow Walker only took Mc, he wasn't going to linger when there were 3 Tears in the house (4 if you count Arthur.) I really need to find a name for him, Lee is his familiar, but I have no idea what I'm going to call this asshole.

The voice knows a lot, the poor thing has been saying Danger at every turn since the beginning! I bet Mc regrets telling it to shut up!

It is fucking sad!!! And I'm writing even sadder stuff as I reply (Right there, on the side tab of my computer.) Let me get to the anniversary chapter! Please please, please!

I have water but I think I need something stronger…

#Adoriel's Tears #The May 24 Update

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francesminos-tt · 1 year

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greens!wins au

Jacaerys is sent to the Wall and becomes a black cloak, Lucerys is sent to OldTown, and Joffrey becomes Daeron's sworn protector.

Daemon is apparently dead and Alicent begged Aegon to have Rhaenyra and her children sent to a faraway place, making her swear that she would not return to kings landing

Or Joffrey becomes "protected" in OldTown?! 👀

You can decide!

But the point is, Joffrey hates the greens but he swore to his mother to be loyal and not do anything stupid.

And so he grows up, he's not Daeron Targaryen's friend, he's a prisoner.

but anyway they fuck hehe daeron is an idiot sometimes but he has a crush on the boy joff! he hates joff's mocking laugh when daeron asks him to stay after a night of sex, he hates knowing he's not the only one joff fucks, he hates how quick joff is to lash out with cruel words, he hates that joff knows how much daeron wants him but doesn't give a shit.

daeron is an asshole sometimes and makes joff do things just because he has the power! most of the time it's because he's a jealous idiot lol

you can write something about them plss 🥺☹️ thank you in advance:)

Joffrey Rivers was not a knight, though he acted like one, fought like one, spoke like one, and dressed like one. He was only a squire of Daeron the Daring, a heroic knight who earned his name by bravery and valor in battle. Daeron was also a prince, while Joffrey was officially declared a bastard and stripped of all titles and privileges. He was kept in King’s Landing as a prisoner, while his brothers, also declared bastards, were sent to the Wall and Old Town respectively. Jacaerys was made to join the Night Watch, and Lucerys was sent to study in the Citadel. Joffrey was made Daeron’s squire, and was to live under his uncle’s supervision.

The lords and smallfolks alike praised for King Aegon’s mercy towards his half sister and her unholy bastards. Rhaenyra was in exile, never to set foot in King’s Landing again. His mother and his older brothers were all gone, so it was on Joffrey to look after his younger brothers, Aegon and Viserys, who were the King’s wards.

Joffrey cleaned the horse dungs and began to wash the steed for Daeron. It was not his job as a squire to prepare the horses, but Daeron made him do it as a punishment for Joffrey ‘dishonorable behavior’.

Hypocrite. Joffrey cursed silently as he brushed the white horse. The reason why he had to so the stable boy’s job was because Daeron caught him kissing the stable boy, and made a fuss about it.

If you like stables so much, you can stay in here and tend to my horse. Daeron said after he dismissed the stable boy. The poor lad was immediately thrown out of the castle with nothing but a gold dragon and the lingering feeling of Joffrey’s lips.

Joffrey didn’t like the stable boy much. He was just bored and the boy was conveniently there. Not many people could resist Joffrey’s charming smile and teasing touches. Joffrey had grown up beautifully, his jaw softer, his cheeks plumper, his lips fuller, and his eyes dark like the deepest of sea. Few could resist Joffrey’s eyes. One glance from these obsidian orbs was enough to drag men into the abyss of Joffrey’s charms.

Joffrey had taken to bed so many knights that he had lost count. Those knights were called merry knights of the bastard, as they all competed for Joffrey’s affection.

Joffrey took extreme effort to make sure Daeron was one of them.

“There you are.” Daeron’s mocking voice came from the entrance, “I thought you had drowned in horse dung.”

“Sorry to disappoint, but I have not, my prince.” Joffrey continued to brush the horse, sparing no glance at the regally dressed prince.”

“You still stink.” Daeron whispered in Joffrey’s ear as he wrapped one arm around Joffrey and buried his nose in the brunette’s nape, “Like a stable boy.”

“That’s what you get for sleeping in the stables.” Joffrey replied coldly.

“Are you playing hard to get now?” Daeron tightened his arm and slapped Joffrey’s ass hard with his free hand.

“Are you the only one allowed to flirt with a stable boy now?” Joffrey half turned his head to spit at Daeron, “You can harass me but I can’t kiss a boy?”

“You are not a stable boy.” Daeron declared, tilting his head forward to lick Joffrey’s mouth.

“No? I have slept in the stables for the past week and done the work of a stable boy. If that doesn’t make me one, what else does?”

“No.” Daeron’s tone was calm compared to Joffrey’s outburst, “You are too high to be a stable boy.”

Joffrey’s breath caught as Daeron’s face came dangerously close.

“I am too low to be your plaything, my prince.” Joffrey threw Daeron a death glare, “Let go of me. I am your prisoner, not your toy.”

But Daeron didn’t let go. Joffrey didn’t know if Daeron was doing this out of spite, or his youngest uncle truly took a liking to him. Daeron grabbed Joffrey’s wrist and dragged him to the corner of the stable, where lay a stack of hay. He turned Joffrey over roughly before taking a hold of the brunette’s ass and began to grope.

Joffrey tried to push him away, but Daeron the Daring was no ordinary knight. He had trained hard and sharpened his skills during these years, and now he had become stronger and more skilled in arms than Joffrey. He was a true prince, while Joffrey was a loser and a bastard.

“I can kill you now.” Joffrey whispered, pulling the dagger he kept in his boots all the time.

“Be my guest.” Daeron shrugged before sliding his finger into Joffrey, a confident smile on his lips.

Joffrey moaned as his grip loosened on the dagger.

#house of the dragon #joffron #hotd #daeron x joffrey #my asks #joffrey velaryon #daeron the daring

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peppermintquartz · 1 year

Text

Rest

Miguel O Hara, Peter B Parker, Mayday Parker

Across the Spiderverse, G

He's just so damn tired. Everything is loud, and bright, and frenetic, and he can't look away, because if he looks away, some Spider-person or Spider-Thing out there is going to mess up in a way that he could have stopped it if he didn't look away.

But, God, he is tired. Lyla is bugging him to go to bed, but how can he when every other minute some Spider-Thing/Person/Robot is threatening to rebel against a Canon Event from occurring and thus risk the collapse of the entire human-arachno... Okay, fine. SPIDER-verse, whatever.

Stupid anomaly kid.

Poco a poco se anda lejos, he thinks as he searches another universe to identify their Spider-Person/Object/Phenomenon. Sometimes he finds them already broken. Those, he offers the scant comfort of all the other Spiders. Sometimes they have yet to face the toughest moments, and he has to deny all contact with them until they're ready. He has seen hundreds or maybe thousands of Uncle Bens, of police captains, of Gwen Stacies.

Of Gabe, of Dana, of-

"No, sweetheart, don't bother your uncle Miguel, ah f... I mean, ah, heck."

Miguel holds back a curse and shuts his eyes to count his breath, getting all the way to ocho before someone crashes into his chest and he instinctively wraps his arms around a giggly, tousled Spider-toddler.

Obviously that's not her designation, but it's not as if Mayday will be out in the field.

Peter B. Parker swings up and lands on the platform with a soft thud and holds out his arms for his daughter. "Thanks for catching her. She's really into hide-and-seek now and I am dreading to find out if she has invisibility powers."

Miguel surreptitiously squeezes Mayday before handing her back to her father. "I told you not to bring her here."

"We're all Spiders! Safest place in the multiverse." Parker raps twice on the side of his head. "Touch wood."

Miguel holds his tongue. Parker has been through the Canon Events and, much as Miguel doesn't want to admit it, is one of the most resilient and resourceful Spider-Men out there.

Y tiene a su esposa e hija, his heart supplies and he shuts away that pang of loss. Peter B. Parker's earned it. He has gone through the heartaches that make Spider-Man Spider-Man.

Mayday burbles something. Miguel turns to look at her and is greeted with a face full of webbing.

"Nab! Un Mi-el nab wimmee. Nab!"

Pulling the webbing off his face, Miguel frowns and asks Parker, "What's she saying?"

"I think she wants her nap," says Parker slowly.

"Un Mi-el nab wib MEEE!" Mayday yells, more webbing shooting from her wrists that lands on Miguel's chest. Before Miguel can rip the webbing off - seriously, what the hell, Parker, babies should not be equipped with webshooters - Mayday has latched onto Miguel's front. Her little fingers dig into the uniform and he cradles her diapered behind with his left forearm before she can lose her grip.

Lyla chooses that moment to pop up. "I think Miss Parker wants you to nap with her."

"What? No. I have to look through the next-"

"You haven't slept for 37 hours," Lyla interrupts sweetly.

Parker is alarmed. "Thirty-seven hours? Oh hell no, you go take a nap with Mayday right now, down there where I can keep an eye on her and you."

"Parker, I have to keep looking-"

"I have eyes, and Lyla can assist. You go take a nap." Parker narrows his eyes, like he can be anywhere near intimidating in his fuzzy bathrobe and slippers. "Don't make me web you to the wall."

Miguel wants to challenge that, but Parker may just do it because he is a bas- an idi- a really stupid person, so he holds Mayday closer to himself and jumps down to the floor of the room to find a corner where he can still keep an eye on the entrance.

"Close your eyes," Parker threatens with a smile. "You don't want me to sing a lullaby, do you?"

Miguel covers Mayday's ears with his right hand and his chest. "Shut up, asshole."

Parker grins. "Take a nap, Miguel. I promise I'll keep an eye on everything." He stares when Mayday yawns and snuggles up to the stoic Miguel. "And you take care of my baby girl now."

#across the spiderverse #miguel o'hara #peter b parker #mayday parker #miguel's not swearing even in his head because he has a baby in his arms

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filmnoirsbian · 2 years

Note

Shameful crush night (but it's complicated):

I went to a private school where most classes were small, around 25 kids, so everyone knew everyone. Rumours started to spread that I had a massive crush on a boy in our year who happened to be a huge bully (yes, he was an asshole to me). I literally despised him, dreamt about embarrassing him in front of our whole school as revenge. Long story short, we did not get along. Still, my parents were close to his parents because our younger brothers were best friends and we were forced to hang out, only making rumours worse. It's been a decade and childhood friends and old classmates still bring him up as my crush. What they don't know is that we're legally related. He's my cousin, my aunt married his uncle some years back. It's funny seeing people's reaction to it, they're instantly uncomfortable and start to backtrack. A telenovela type mandela effect 'crush'. Fate is funny that way, I'll be at his wedding but not as the bride. He's still an asshole btw

Thank you for sharing this, but as it doesn't involve an actual crush, it does not count for scn ⚖

#asks #shameful crush night

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sansxfuckyou · 10 months

Text

as it was

Summary: Kyle gets high easily, Kenny lives in the woods, Cartman learned how to sew, Stan brought a potted plant of marijuana- they all miss hanging out together like kids

Warnings: mild blood, weed, swearing, check Ao3 port for full tags.

Authors Note: ngl, i took the wrong edibles, got a little bit fried, wrote this when i woke up, hope ya'll enjoy and if you do consider dropping a reblog or checking the Ao3 port

If there was one thing Kenny enjoyed about all that time he spent hanging around Stan was the knowledge he had inadvertently gained about how to grow weed. It got him one of his first jobs, clipping buds down at Tegridy, and definitely got him through harder times. But at that, it also let him not experience extreme withdrawal after exiling himself from town when the times got impossibly rough.

He doesn't remember why he did so in a picture perfect memory, but he's heard from his friends that the town has become a tourist attraction of sorts now that he isn't fucking the places population count every day. He shoots, he bags, he eats, and succumbs to the loneliness that not even a stack of playboys and homebrewed edibles can cure. Sure, the CBD high is nice for joint pain, but he'll forever mourn the winter he lost the plants that actually gave him a real high.

He lost so much that year, three separate strains, Citrus Dream, one he smuggled that he swears smelt like oreos (he called it Sugar Rush), and his dearly beloved Uncle OJ, a gift from Stan directly with heavy orange overtones. He ended up burning the remains, it left him locked to the cabin for a solid two weeks even with the windows open. He hasn't been able to shake the lung pain since, even after a death by bear attack.

He's smoking his last bud of the year (sadly nothing more than CBD), tossed it into the wood stove to just smoke out the place, when there's a knock on his door. The woods don't usually send something to knock on his door and kill him, try to kill him at least. They usually snuffle around the porch and blacked out windows while he circles with his shotgun, ready to shoot at any moment because that's dinner. Instead he grabs the pistol, cocks it, and gingerly walks up to the front door.

"Open the fucking door, Kenny!" Another knock, much louder, much more aggravated.

"He's probably out hunting," The voice is a bit more hushed.

The sound of something dropping on the porch, "I smuggled a plant just for him and he's out hunting when we finally track him down, what a fucking waste."

"Just leave it on the porch,"

"It'll freeze!"

"It's just weed you stoner piece of shit!"

"You're one to talk considering you're Tegridy's most loyal customer asshole!"

Kenny swings open the door to find three familiar faces, one of which standing in between Cartman and Stan to prevent them from killing each other. On the ground beside Stan is a plant that reaches up to his waist in size, crystalized bits clouding the leaves.

"Hi Ken," Kyle said, loud enough to snap Cartman and Stan from their bickering.

"I'm pretty sure you guys are gonna get frostbite if you make another dumbass trek out here," Kenny answered with.

"Then move out of the fucking doorway and let in your friends," Cartman snapped as he shoved aside Kyle with ease.

Kenny gladly slid to the side and his friends filtered in one at a time, except for Cartman who retreated back to the car. Stan hauled in the plant.

"What flavor is it?" Kenny asked eagerly as he reached for one the buds.

"No taste tests man," Stan chided, "But, it's just another Uncle OJ, dads thinking about canceling the line."

"Randy's canceling Uncle OJ? But, it's the Tegridy special."

"Apparently someone found a stray clipping laying around and cloned a fuckton of plants from it, it's all over town,"

"I could go down there and burn it,"

"Don't be an idiot," He placed down the plant at the foot of Kenny's bed, "You remember how to tend to these plants, right?"

Kenny nodded, "Obviously, I've been living off that CBD one you got me since Citrus Dream and Sugar Rush were lost in a cold snap."

"You lost Sugar Rush?" Stan asked.

"Again, cold snap, out of my control," Kenny retorted with.

Three bags of something are dropped at the door before Cartman nudges the door shut with his foot. Kenny glances over to find said bags to be some of those reusable bags the world practically mandated.

"I swear to god Kenny, you need to start chipping the ice on your porch," Cartman snarled as he slid down to the floor and reached into one of the bags. He pulled out a bundle of magazines, "They stopped printing playboys after you left."

"They stopped printing playboys?" He sounds distraught.

Kyle gave a hum, "Just recently, you're lucky that Cartman is still a sleaze who can't get laid."

"Shut up Kyle!" Cartman cleared his throat, "As I was saying, I got all the playboys you don't have," He handed the bundle to Stan who handed it to Kenny, "Thought you might enjoy them cause unless you're making love to the things you kill then you aren't getting any bitches out here."

Stan fakes a disgusted gag at the notions, Kyle scrunches up his face in disgust, Kenny just shrugs.

"You'd be shocked at how good of a dildo a single barrel shotgun can make," There goes his filter, there went his filter, he lost it a long time ago. And judging by the reactions his suspicions of fucking oneself with a gun being not normal are confirmed.

"And I'm glad to say that you haven't changed a bit," Cartman said as he rummaged through a second bag. He tossed a pack of something to Kenny, who held the package looking rather perplexed, "Advil, for when your CBD tolerance is so high you'll overdose before you get relief."

"You know me so well," Kenny said as he popped open the top drawer of his desk and slid it in along with all the other things he never made use of.

"That I fucking do," Cartman said before pulling up and chair next to the wood stove. He pulled out a sewing kit, "Karen asked me to fix up your jacket."

Kenny shrugged off his parka, "I'll have you know it's just fine," He said while tactfully avoiding the large tear. He balls it up and tosses it to Cartman, "Since when did you learn to sew?"

"Since he outgrew the largest size," Kyle sneered, rolling onto his stomach atop the comfortable mess of blankets.

Cartman just ignores the comment, "I'll have a hard time taking a eulogy seriously if my mom is wearing one of her slut dresses in the coffin."

"So you're gonna make your mom a dress for when she's dead?" Stan asked as he dropped down onto the floor next to the bed.

"Look, would you attend your dads funeral if he was wearing boxers with pink hearts on them and nothing else? I thought so," Cartman said as he came too a patch that was falling off, underneath it was a large gash.

"That's," The ravenette has a hard time finding a good word, "Sweet," Not the right word at all but it'll do.

There's this comfortable pause of silence between them, like they're just four idiot kids at the bus stop all over again. The crackle and pop of fire is the only difference, and the fact that the burning smell of weed is starting to lay heavy on the air. Kenny slides open the bottom drawer of his desk, the drawer he fills with the cool things he finds.

"Think fast,"

Kyle barely has time to react to the words, let alone catch what's being thrown his way. He props himself up against the wall a bit as he inspects the thing, "What is it?"

"Cool looking stick I thought you might like," Kenny answered with as he pulled out another thing and tossed it to Stan, "Cool looking rock."

"I don't get anything?" Cartman teased as he pulled the patch back into place, one leg crossed over the other.

Kenny sifted through his drawer of trinkets before tossing one to Cartman, "Grenade pin."

The brunette stuffs it in his back pocket, "Wicked."

"How come he gets the coolest thing?" Kyle whined as he twirled the stick between his fingers.

"It's swarming with whatever germs are inside of a bears liver," The blonde said and Cartman shudders at the notions but does nothing to get rid of the gift.

He just echoes back another, "Wicked," as he ties a knot in the embroidery thread and moves onto another tear. "How teared up did you manage to get this ratty old thing?"

Kenny shrugged, "It gets the job done."

"You'd be better off just running 'round stark naked with how fucked this thing is," Cartman said with a condescending edge to his voice.

"Fatso, watch your mouth, he could kick us out," Kyle snapped to the best of his ability. He rolled back onto his stomach with a hum.

"How much THC was in that weed?"

"What weed?"

"The stuff you're burning right now, I can smell it," Stan said.

"None," Kenny said, he grabbed the glass jar and tossed it to Stan, "All of it's CBD, I lost the goods in the cold snap man."

The ravenette popped open the jar and took a heavy huff. He coughed a bit at the potency, "First of all, use separate jars for separate strains, secondly, I'm pretty sure some OJ rubbed off on the bud you're burning."

"What makes you say that," The blonde twisted his chair to rest his chin on the backrest. He tapped steel tipped boots on the ground.

"I think Kyle's getting fried," Cartman said, nodding towards the redhead, "That or he's never used CBD and the sudden lack of stress and back pain is getting him wasted."

"Shut up,"

"He's baked," Cartman said confidently.

Stan gives a hum, "Can't get baked on CBD."

"CBD highs are wicked good for sleeping," Kenny countered with before a jacket came colliding into him, "Give some warning!"

Cartman said nothing as he rearranged his sewing kit, "You're so fucking lucky I know how to sew."

Kenny just rolled his eyes and tossed the bundle of fabric to the floor, "So, Kyle's fucking stoned."

"I'm not," Kyle said, he sounded just a bit distant, "I don't usually sit around in a room full of weed smoke."

"Any suggestions on what the fuck to do?" Kenny asked.

"We could just chat," Stan offered, "Chattings nice."

"I could go shoot up a rabbit, cook something up," Kenny offered cautiously.

"Want me to make sure they don't have sex on your bed?" Cartman offered.

"Those two are dating?" He sounds incredulous as he asks, pivoting to face Cartman a bit more.

"We are not dating," Stan growled out and Cartman just laughs.

"Whatever your arrangements are, I want some," He's joking, a bit, he's definitely not genuine when he says it, "Besides, that bed needs to see some action."

"Don't die out there," Kyle chimed in with from the bed.

Kenny tugs on his parka, bright orange now faded, and slings on his gun, "I won't, be back soon."

"I'll deal with the fire while you're out," Cartman offered up, but Kenny knows it's not an offer you say no too.

-/-/-/-

Cartman did a damn good job stitching together Kenny's jacket, it hasn't held this much heat for a long time. He manages one rabbit, shockingly plump despite the stringiness winter months usually cause. It's blood is splattered across the white fur in such a way it's almost comical, it's still warm as hauls it back.

He nudges open the door and slides it shut with his foot, clicking on the safety and dropping down his gun. He drops the rabbit on top of his desk of many purposes and reaches into the middle drawer for his skinning knife.

"Kenny, help," Came Cartman's hushed voice from the bed.

The blonde startled just a bit before turning to face Cartman who had Stan and Kyle leaning onto him from one side. They're asleep and curled up together under one of Cartman's arms. Kenny frowns, "Did you guys have sex without me?"

"Dude, first of all, gross," His nose wrinkles in disgust at the thought alone, "Second of all, they dragged me over- and lastly, can you open a window before I get thoroughly smoked out."

"Yeah, totally man," He perched himself on his chair to pop open the highest window. Cool air filtered in comfortably as he sat back and and returned to skinning his catch.

"I brought food,"

"I know,"

"You've been eating enough lately, right?"

"I've been living off of rabbits," Kenny gave a snort of laughter at the idiocy of Cartman's concern, "In all seriousness, definitely not, I usually have some berries in the spring."

Cartman went to move, and it drew a whine from both Kyle and Stan. He glares at Kenny, "You will not tell anyone of this."

"I won't," Kenny lied as he shucked sectionals of muscle from bone. It was a swift job, he had two piles on either side of the desk and another splash of blood on the one framed picture he had of his friends.

"You should come back to town sometime," Cartman said, what he didn't say was that he missed Kenny, that was implied.

"No can do," He reached for the pot always resting on the back of the wood stove. It had leftover broth from yesterdays meal, it was still good. He pulled it closer to the hottest part of the stove top before dropping in the bones to boil away the nutrients.

"You seriously don't wanna hit up the Peppermint Hippo with me?"

"I've moved on,"

"Sure you have, look at your walls, pinups as far as the eye can see," There's this shaming shake of the head.

"That's different!" He slid the meat into a separate bucket and sealed it shut.

Kenny defiantly left the room, hauling the bucket into the snow to keep the meat chilled. He hangs his jacket up above the wood stove to dry it off and leaves his boots at the door.

"Room for one more?"

Cartman shrugged, "It's your cabin," he still held out an arm for Kenny despite trying to be aloof.

That's more than enough incentive for Kenny to launch onto the bed which creaked in dismay at the unprecedented amount of weight. He pushed himself against Cartman's side and his friend tugged him even closer, resting his head against Kenny's.

"Dude," Kenny began, "This is-"

"Pretty gay? Just shut up or I'll leave you to deal with Stan and Kyle on your own," Cartman finished, threat to his tone despite how quietly he spoke.

"Alright," He hoisted himself up a bit more, to rest some of himself on Cartman, "If the bed breaks I'm blaming it on you."

And Cartman laughs, a single note, "Sure you will, I'll try and rake up enough cash to buy you a new one if it does."

"Thanks man,"

"You're welcome,"

"No like, for coming on up, I missed you guys,"

"You should come to town sometimes then,"

"Walk all the way there to just be disappointed by the fact that Karen is still stuck at home? I'll pass,"

Cartman pauses, "Still, you should come to town,"

"Wow man, you're so compassionate,"

"It's one of my more desirable traits,"

Kenny just curled up into Cartman a little bit more, hand rubbing his upper arm gently. He drifted off into a comfortable haze of half sleep pretty fast while pressed up against Cartman. He gently held onto Stan and Kyle, tugging them a bit closer despite his better judgement, thank god they're asleep.

"Love you bro," Came Kenny's sleepy words, "And Stan, 'n Kyle."

"They're asleep,"

#south park #kenny mccormick #eric cartman #kyle broflovski #stan marsh #south park fanfiction #stylennyman #if you so desire to read it as such #writing #fanfic #fanfiction #tw weed

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sabbathbloodysabbeth · 2 years

Text

Painted Skin

Square and Prompt: A2 Prank gone wrong (and then Right)

Rating: Mature

Word Count: 3403

Ships: Steve Harrington x Eddie Munson

Warning; this one shot results from bullying, it’s nothing to bad but bullying is in this

Major tags: are listed below, I made sure to put warnings up before this though steve is hard of hearing in this as well

Summary; Eddie, like a bunch of other kids is forced to go to the pep rally or what he likes to call it the prep rally. The school has a tradition of dumping water on a poor kids head (with constant before hand) but this year something else gets dumped on Eddie and Steve Harrington. Resulting in both of them having to help each other get cleaned up in the showers. (This is a very clean one shot to smut even though it sounds like it lol)

Mention; @steveharringtonbingo

Note: Eddie and Steve aren’t close but they are aware of each other and have had a few conversations before this happens

Eddie stumbles over his feet a little, nearly falling on his face in the stands. Nothing or anyone had tripped him. It was all him. The clumsiness had gotten better (or worst) since he was a toddler. He wasn't sure if that was true, all he knew was that he would start some days without one single bruise on him and land in bed later that night with small bruises on his skin. Over his knees, on his arms. Anywhere really. Constant blue and purple painted his skin along with the tattoos. It was so common that his Uncle had stopped questioning them years ago. While balancing himself from nearly falling, he could already feel the bruise on his shin forming. A small scrape as well from where he skimmed it against one of the metal steps. God only knows why anyone trusted him anywhere near the stands. Which was why he was a tad annoyed, he wasn't here on his own record. Today was the annual pep rally for Hawkins. A day that he hated just as much as he hated Valentine's Day.

The day was just every single jock showing off to the school. Playing tug of war, competing in numerous stupid games while every student watched. The gym was always loud, everyone always yelling. It had everything Eddie hated. Loud noises, asshole jocks, and sweaty teenagers being forced to be squished up against each other because of the lack of space in the bleachers. It was also a pain in the ass finding a spot to sit as everyone quickly saved spots for their friends and became huge dicks about it. Which was how Eddie had started out trying to sit in the far back, and ending up in the front row. Anxiously picking at the Jean material on his ripped skinny's. Tracing a small bruise that was on his knee that he doesn't even know happened. Looking forward as his heart raced in his chest. Anxiety high as he fidgets with anything he can touch. His rings, his shirt, or his hair.

The principle had started to stand in the middle of the gym talking into the mike that kept cracking a little, making it sound like he was going through puberty. Eddie didn't bother listening to what anyone had said just zoning out into his own thoughts. His eyes were carefully watching everyone's movement as he bites his lip. Thoughts wondering if he should get a lip ring. Give him something else to fidget with. Like any other year tug of war goes first. All of the jocks getting worked up and sweaty over something so stupid. The losing team throwing a small fit before being escorted to their side of the room. While the other cheered like they won the god damn war. Like any year, the hugest jock of them all would go to the middle of the gym floor and talk. For the past two it had been Steve Harrington. This year is was Jason, a sixteen year old brat who got his way more then anyone.

Like everyone else, Eddie had heard about Steve getting a very bad concussion during a fight with Billy last year. Not only did he hear but he knew. He wasn't close to the guy but he talked to him on occasion, shockingly. He knew that it was so bad to the point he wasn't even allowed to be on the basketball team anymore. Which must have sucked for the senior, who Eddie had finally found sitting with a group of kids. A curly haired brat with a baseball cap whispering in his ear intensely and throwing his hand around along with Lucas Sinclair. A kid he was familiar with as it was well known he was the reason along with Max, that Steve and Billy got in a fight anyway. Something about the two dating, he wasn't sure and he didn't care. His suspicions of Billy being racist was confirmed and he made sure to avoid the guy like the plague. Which thinking about the guy made him look around for him. Not seeing him anywhere was a bit suspicious.

Though his eyes move back to Jason. Who was going on about god knows what. His voice was drowned out by the constant whispers surrounding the crowd. A lot of Steve Harrington and Billy Hargroves being tossed around. Eddie decides he was tired of it all and slides on his headphones, clicking on the tape and letting it play. Drowning out everyone else to the lyrics.

"Come on feel the noise, Girls rock your boys, we'll get wild wild wild, wild, wild, wild"

After that everything starts to go by much faster with a blur. Of course Eddie knew about the tradition of dumping water on a random kid in the gym. But normally the kid was told so before hand, as that was the teachers terms for allowing it. This year, it was different. Eddie had truly been minding his own business when he catches sight of someone going behind Steve Harrington. Furrowing his eyebrows he assumes it's water, finding a funny way of including the old king of Hawkins high. What he doesn't expect is to feel something cold going over his head right as he watches yellow paint going over Steve Harrington's head. Who seems just as shocked, but was holding himself a lot better then Eddie. Who had jumped up as his headphones start to glitch, hair starting to stick to his forehead as he realizes this wasn't water. Looking he catches onto the culprit, and with out hesitated throws a punch. He's seeing red, literally and figuratively. Red paint going over his face and he has to quickly wipe it from his eyes as students were screaming not wanting paint on them and some were laughing.

Eddie laughs when he watches the guy who did this to him slip and fall in the paint. Yelling out in pain. Eddie is pissed and his Walkman was ruined. Turning his head he sees Jason looking smug as hell. Breathing in paint fumes, Eddie had already figured out it was him. So had Steve Harrington who was walking up behind him. Eddie wiggles his fingers at Jason who was grinning, which falters as he looks confused. Before he's being swung around and punched in the face but a very pissed Steve Harrington. Who proceeds to spit yellow paint out at him. Eddie moves trying to get off the stands but he's falling himself, landing on his ass as he angrily throws his Walkman to the side. Looking around he could also see that he and Steve weren't the only victims. Jonathan Byers and some random kid from band were also hit.

Eddie can barely hear anything over the crowd, that he doesn't catch on to Steve Harrington standing in front of him with a group of kids. They were yelling and flipping people off and Eddie already could tell he liked the red head. Who was taking wads of paint off from Steve and sprinting after who ever said something and smearing paint on the back of their shirts. He looks dazed as he realizes the King was extending his hand to the freak. He hesitates and Steve looks a little hurt by it, the curly hair boy with the cap looks like he's about to chew his ear out. Not wanting to be on the wrong side of that kid he takes Steve's hand. Feeling the red paint smearing with the yellow creating a orange like color as he's lifted up. Stumbling a bit as his sneakers, that were once white slip through the paint nearly taking him and Steve out. He chuckles awkwardly as he regains balance from the others sturdy shoulders before they move off of the stands. Eddie is ready to disappear, but is awkwardly led to the locker room to get washed up.

His head was swimming with all of the kids voices and the reality of the situation was dawning on him as tears form in his eyes. "Everyone shut up!" He yells voice cracking. His hands moving to his ears a bit as everyone's heads snap to look at him. Steve takes control as he moves to grab his wallet out.

"Max, go buy dish soap, shampoo, conditioner, and maybe olive oil." Steve rambles out. "That will hopefully help get the paint out of our hair." He instructs sending the kid off with Lucas stopping Dustin. "You know where my key is, stop at mine and go grab some extra clothes. Some for Munson to." He says leading the situation. If Eddie wasn't freaking out he would be impressed. Though he can't think to much about it as he's shoved into the locker room. Stumbling over himself as Steve groans wiping paint from his forehead again. Not saying anything as he starts to pull his shirt off. Eddies face is red for different reasons then just the paint. Glancing down at the others chest hair before Steve's whistling snapping in front of his face.

"Come on Munson, I'm pretty sure you want to try and get that paint out of your hair before it dries." He comments as he moves over the shower already having done this a million times. Stripping down to his briefs, and thank god he keeps them on as he gets under the water. Yellow paint already going down the drain. His shoulders are tense as he coughs a little, the fumes were strong as he tries to get clean. Eddie hesitates before moving and pulling his clothes off, staying in his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Boxers. His embarrassment was growing as he try's to figure out the shower. He has always made sure not to come in here. With the whole being gay thing, showering with a bunch of jocks after gym didn't seem like a good idea.

Steve glances over and moves forward turning it on for him, getting a little to close as he leans back. Groaning as he pulls at his hair a bit. Eddie blushes as he looks down seeing that his drain looked like a murder just took place as the red paint goes down. A knock is heard from the door and a teachers head is poking in, it's Mr.Clarke as he asks. "Hey you boys alright?" He can't see the showers as the lockers blocked them from view. Steve hesitates before he gives a honest answer.

"I have yellow paint in my ears, and I can barely hear to begin with what?" He yells loudly. Eddie furrows his eyes as he gets the others attention.

"He's asking if we are alright?" Eddie asks. If it was any other situation it would be very weird seeing Steve Harrington watching his lips trying to understand what he was saying. He looks confused as Eddie moves a hand mouthing a don't worry about it as he yells.

"It looks like a bloody war zone in here Mr.Clarke! How would we get paint out of our hair?" He asks loudly. Hearing the door closing a bit.

"Maybe dish soap? I'll go grab some and bring it in for you guys." The older man says quickly running out the door leaving them alone again as Steve starts to wash himself up. Eddie was struggling with his curls and was definitely going to rip his hair out. His worst nightmare happens when Mr. Clarke comes back in. Getting the okay to walk in holding huge things of dish soap. Cringing the older man comments.

"I think it would be a easier if you guys helped with your guys hair." He advices. "I know it's awkward but, you guys will probably rip more hair out if you can't see what's happening."

Steve furrows his eyes not hearing what he was saying. "What?" He asks. Looking between the two guys before Eddie punches his nose already hating the idea.

"Mr. Clarke said it would be easier if we helped each other out with our hair." Eddie says loudly making sure to get close to the others ear. Steve's face goes a light pink as he frowns a little before shrugging.

"I mean- that sounds right. If you don't punch me in the face until after." Steve says with a snort as he fought with paint taking the dish soap. Waving for the other to come to him. Eddies face is red as he moves. The whole thing isn't sexual or anything, it's rough in a not so good way. Just steve moving his hands in his curls pulling them a little while Eddie's cursing. Already feeling a headache forming. Whining as Mr. Clarke kept watch at the door. They were in there for a long time. Both their skin was stained and Eddie's head hurt when Steve finally pulls back. Eddie hears their teacher cursing as shoes squeak coming in.

"Steve!" A light lisp is heard from the name as Dustin comes in. Scrunching his nose up when he catches sight of Steve's chest. "Dude you need to shave your chest Jesus Christ." He complains as he moves setting clothes to the side. Bringing shampoo, conditioner and extra dish soap in. "We couldn't find oil." He admits as Steve furrows his eyes a bit trying to make sense of what he's saying. Dustin groans as he moves his hands a bit, it looks crazy as Eddie looks confused.

"What are you doing?" He asks confused.

"Signing dumbass," Dustin sasses moving his hand to dramatically flip him off after he signed the words he said. Eddie hears Steve laugh softly as he he says softly.

"Sorry, my hearing aids were kind of ruined in the process. I cant hear all that well right now," Steve says to Eddie. Not even thinking about saying anything. Eddie frowns as Steve moves pouring shampoo and starts to scrub at his scalp to get soap out. Letting it sit as he adds. "Now can you help with my hair?" Steve asks.

Eddie hated how intimate this all was. Turning and pouring dish soap in his hand and moving it in the others hair. Careful not to tug his hair as he scrubs it out. "Oh what happened to Byers and the other kid?" Eddie asks. Realizing they weren't in here as well getting washed up.

"The other kid started having a asthma attack so they had to take him to the hospital, while Jonathan ran off. Probably to go home and get washed." Dustin explains. "Though why don't you move Steve so he can face me so he can join the conversation." He comments. Eddie listens as he moves getting the other to turn.

Steve looks confused before Dustin signs something to him. The paint is really a pain in the ass getting out. Groaning he has to get on his toes a bit to reach as they were the same height. All of the dish soap was used and once again they are separated as they go under their own showers. Washing their own hair better. Dustin had left to go wait for Steve outside. Mr. Clarke also left to go chaperone the kids as well leaving them alone again. Neither of them speak until the clothes situation happened. Eddie blushes as Steve offers to have him choose what he wanted to wear. Between the polo shirt and the yellow sweater the yellow seemed more reasonable.

Separating to go change, Eddie slips a pair of dry boxers on. It was weird and he didn't want to think about it as he comes out in a pair of blue Levi's and the yellow sweater. He moves pulling his hair up in a bun as his guitar chip hung loosely on his chest. Thankfully the paint came off from that easily. Steve was changed now and scrunches his nose up as he looks at his clothes. Grabbing what he needed from them before just throwing them in the garbage. Eddie does the same, sad that his band t was ruined. His shoes now had red pant dried on them and Steve's were yellow.

Steve starts to talk again. "I'm sorry." He says gently.

"For what?" Eddie asks confused as he makes sure he looks fine.

"I don't know, I just used to be apart of that crowd?" Steve says. Having a better time hearing the other without the water going or the paint in his ears. He's sure he would be picking yellow out of there for a long time.

"Well big boy, I'm not the only victim here." Eddie points out.

"Yeah I know, I'm going to apologize to Jonathan and the other kid later." Steve comments. Eddie frowns when he sees the other genuinely doesn't believe he's a victim.

"Dude, you are also a victim here. Your hearing aids were ruined!" Eddie comments loudly.

"Well I can easily replace those," Steve waves off as he gets awkward. Eddie huffs a bit as he moves to grab the pen off from the sign up board on the wall. Where everyone signed up for teams.

"Well, Steve. I think it was pretty metal that you punched Jason in the face." He says with a grin moving to write his number on the paper. Handing it to the other.

"Call me later so I can return your clothes." He says with a chuckle as he leaves. His walk away was supposed to be smooth like they were in the movies. But instead he was taken by the principle along with Steve to the office. His face is red as he sits in the chair being scolded for punching two assholes in the faces. Of course the assholes who were at fault were being treated like angels.

"Steve are you even listening to me!" The principle snaps. Face red from the whole thing.

"No I'm not, you know why?" Steve says sounding bitchy. "Because one of those assholes poured paint and ruined my thousand dollar pair of hearing aids." He snaps.

The principle is about to say something but Steve doesn't give him a chance. "My father will be hearing about this," he says louder then intended. Waving for Eddie to leave with him. They were in there less then five minutes. Now they actually depart. Eddie leaves with a red face as he went home to a empty trailer. Wayne was most likely out still as he moves quickly getting changed.

He had expected a phone call that night but it doesn't come for a few days. He finds himself outside the Harrington residence knocking on the door with the folded clothes in his hand. He smiles brightly as he sees Steve. Who was gesturing for him to come in.

"I expected to get a phone call sooner Stevie." He comments.

"Well I really couldn't, I had to wait for my hearing aids." Steve chuckles. Eddie makes a oops face feeling guilty as he hands the other his clothes. Steve waves it off before getting excited. "Oh, I have something for you."

He says gently as he runs off coming back with a box. Eddie frowns as it's forced into his hand. He takes it before opening the box gently. Eyes going wide when he sees a new pair of headphones and a new walkman with a few tapes underneath it.

"Me and Dustin went shopping, we couldn't tell what tape you had but we bought a bunch just in case." Steve says with a happy smile. Eddie grins as he looks at them. Whistling.

"Oh stevie." He grins as he looks up. "Thank you." He says moving pulling the other into a hug. He had always been a hugger so this was no different. Even though he barely knew the guy in front of him, he had already felt like he's known him forever. Though he catches the other by surprise and they are both falling. Steve's laughing as Eddie's face is red as he quickly helps the other up. A small scrape on his elbow from hitting the floor. The both of them are awkward and stumbling over their words as they apologize to each other but Eddie knew that the scrape on his skin and the light bruise next to it would be one of his favorite memories in the entire world. Of course after the embarrassment left him.

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