#Gird everything

[cornyonmains]

I will forever remember 2022 as being the year BL figured out what whores (affectionate) we all are. They figured out the algorithm and called us ALL out this year.

[evilios]

🏺 On Fear of Gods.

Specific religion: ancient Greek polytheism.

Unsourced claims that "actual fear of the Gods was frowned upon in ancient times" remind me badly of the "everything before Christianity was good and now we have fear instilled in us by Evil Monotheism" and it bothers me so much so why don't we look at our sources.

I don't think it's wise to look at just poetic sources for votive claims, though poetry does show us another perspective on the feared and respected Gods, so I am using Homeric Hymns (trans. by Apostolos N. Athanassakis, *just my personal preference) as a source. Previous commentators in [ this post ] have already mentioned that many festivals, such as the beloved by many Thargelia, were festivals to appease Gods and shoo away the dangers awaiting old communities.

Let us look at cases of the Gods causing fear in the very people that do respect them:

Awe, reverence, and pale fear seized the mother; and she yielded her seat to the goddess and asked her to sit.

(to Demeter, 190-191)

All night long they propitiated the glorious goddess, quaking with fear, and as soon as dawn appeared they told the truth to Keleos, whose power reached far, as the fair-wreathed goddess Demeter had ordered them.

(to Demeter, 292-295)

Demeter is among feared Goddesses not just because she is amazing and deeply awed (though she is); her wrath brings devastation. Appeasing Demeter out of fear of what happens if you don't is simply a norm of the society her cult thrived in: one reliant on agricultural luck.

When you are here you shall be mistress of everything that lives and moves; your honors among the immortals shall be the greatest, and those who wrong you shall always be punished, if they do not appease your spirit with sacrifices, performing sacred rites and making due offerings.

(to Demeter, 364-369)

Persephone's becoming as the queen of the underworld is marked, with the words put into the mouth of God of the dead himself, by this statement: they will honor you or they will be punished. Aside from being a sweet thing to say to your newly-made-queen wife, it's a reflection of an ancient belief that non-appeased Gods are terrifying.

Through the precious tripods he entered his temple and lighted a flame to guide the ships, enveloping all of Krisa in light; and the wives and fair-girded daughters of the Krisians raised a cry at the radiance of Phoibos, for he instilled in them great fear.

(to Apollo, 443-447)

Apollo is not at all posing danger to these people. In fact, a few lines below, he wonders why they hide away in fear and instills courage in their hearts so they may speak. But he is feared for such is the nature of a God. His voice is "loud", his presence is "mighty". Like other immortals, he overwhelms you with the very presence.

When he saw Aphrodite’s neck and lovely eyes, he was seized with fear and turned his gaze aside.

(to Aphrodite, 181-182)

I should provide context: Anchises feels fear upon realizing that Aphrodite is divine. The very fact alone is enough to instill this primal reaction in him, because she is so much above him.

Now the god became a fearsome, loud-roaring lion in the bow of the ship and then amidships a shaggy bear he caused to appear as a portent. The bear reared with fury and the lion scowled dreadfully on the topmost bench.

(to Dionysus, 44-48)

Dionysus is probably the most obvious God to be afraid of: he turns into terrifying creatures most often, instills frenzy, and causes disruption and desolation if he's displeased frequently. Most people know the account of Pentheus or the story of Minyas' daughters. Dionysus is a notoriously fearful God.

A lot of mythical narratives serve to instill fear of misdemeanor, it is not a thing that only existed in Christianity: the idea of hubris is the idea of not crossing the clear-cut line between mortal and divine. If you do, you are punished as so many were, in myth. Ancient Gods are feared while being respected and beloved, those are not opposites of each other because the divine beings are not human despite sometimes appearing human-like. They are forces of nature, patrons of inter-human relationships, ones who control how things are done. And it just happens so that if things are done wrongly, they let humans know through signs, messengers, or punishment depending on the wrongdoing.

There's cultural background behind religions that cannot be overlooked just because it reminds you of aspects of Christianity and to say that recorded aspect of fear within many religions is an invention of Christian faith is simply disrespectful to these religions.

I'm not going to police your personal religious practice, this is not my business; so please do not make it about that. But there's a difference between having no fear in religion personally and claiming that it's historically a "Christian invention" that did not exist in some magical glorious ancient past.

[diorcities]

⠀   ⠀ ── ꪔ̤̥ ꪔ̤̮ ꪔ̤̫ nct dream on did you just . . . !

SMUT

mark has trouble sleeping every night due to his heavy workdays. his body seems to possess enough energy to keep him awake even when you know he's exhausted. so you ride him, slow, passionate. in search of his tense body to relax enough and he can go to the planet of dreams. howling him with the swing of your pelvis against his, rolling his length with your pussy while his hands venture to your breasts, pinching your erect nipples. but he's now more awake than ever.

seeing you so majestic, on top of him, your holy beauty, he cannot believe you're his. with your soft skin, and your soft breasts where he wants to dig his teeth. mark everything and show off as a trophy with others. feeling your pussy take him so well, fucking him so well. squeezing and clenching in intervals against his cock, wrapping yourself so tightly around his length, hearing the lewd movement of your pussy when he penetrates you.

mark looks at you from below with frowning eyebrows and shiny eyes, and a tingling sensation overwhelms you from head to toe, pulling your head back when pleasure runs through you and fills you with bliss, before you feel him pushing deeper and starting to pulse. you stop moving on top of him as he frees himself inside the condom while his fingers bury themselves in your hips, then his cheeks turn with blush as he realizes he was very, very fast. “did you just cum?”

long make-out sessions with chenle surely will drive you crazy. feeling his firm hands on your jaw so your head stays still, drinking your moans as his tongue swirl with yours. warm and sharpy breath hitting your face when he speeds up the pace of his rough thrusts, forcing you to wrap your legs behind his back while he shoves it in and out, sensing your narrow walls wrapping his dick just right. “look at you, so dumb for my cock,” he says with a sharpy breath while pounding you and sending you to subspace.

you are in a pure state of ecstasy, trying to soothe the knot in your stomach that grips your crotch. moaning and whining to release the fire that burns your insides, your nails bury themselves in the fresh skin of his back, and chenle growls, feeling the fissures that appease the wild feeling of seeing you under him so beautiful, watching your eyes roll when the intensity of his hammering increases, feeling your walls pulsate erratically.

your body aches when a flare of pleasure takes your breath away and your mind fogs up. a silky sensation melts in your belly and is released in pulsations outside of you, “o-oh, shit,” you scream, feeling him tense and slow his thrust until it's just a swing of hips against yours. you drown out a wail and open your eyes, gazing at chenle and the stars dancing around him, looking at the place where your bodies connect. “well, look at that,” he sighs, “did you just squirt?”

there is something fascinating about jeno after he trains. he comes overflowing with an essence when he gets covered in sweat that stirs your senses. you can blame your lunar cycle for that; you've always been fond of astrology, but there was a more raw feeling, of seeing him sweating while relentlessly fucking you that had nothing to do with your lunar humors. he looks at you in surprise when you drag him after he's showered to his computer chair, pulling down his pajama shorts and being surprised to see his cock ready for you. “i was also thinking about you, my love.”

jeno suppresses a hiss when he sees you stuff it full into your warm, moist mouth. sensing your delicate fingers feel the base and massage it while you go up to the tip and roll your tongue into his slit. sensitive endings cause him to startle in the seat and his features contract, and you smile with his cock still in your mouth, at knowing that. you savor his soft, thick cock under his gaze.

fleshy lips girding around his girth, tongue flat against his length, teeth rubbing against the sensitive skin, making the hiss finally come out of his lips. “f-fuck, doll. did you just bite it?”

your body twists beneath renjun as he penetrates you rhythmically, and your heartbeat does not take long to catch up, feeling him hammer you slow and deep, your body plunges into a wave of pleasure that leaves you numb and breathless. his cock buries itself and you drown out a scream, jaw tense as your head lolls back and your body arches towards him with an invisible force. completely in limbo, you try to avoid breaking free because it feels so good. filling you with pleasure with an overwhelming sensation that causes you to look at him while you free your climax.

renjun feels your walls wrapping him tighter and pulse as orgasm bathes your features. and you've never looked that breathtaking. noticing your legs wrapping around his waist so he can bury deeper and touch that sweet spot that makes you see stars and bite your lips the way you're doing right now.

your body undergoes spasms that decrease more and more until the sensation that squeezes your stomach is released and extinguished, leaving you craving for more. you spread your shaking legs for him in time when your eyes open to see him with his phone pointed at his cock still buried inside you. you exhale a laugh before he hovers over you and resumes the enveloping movement of his pelvis, “did you just take a picture?” he throws one of your legs over his shoulder and kisses you with passion, “can you blame me if i did when you look so good fucked?”

haechan leaves your body vibrating and in limbo to hover over you and draw a path of wet kisses from your stomach to your crotch. his hands wrap around your ankles and force you to flex your numb legs, opening them to position himself between them. you feel his hot breath in your intimacy before he traces circles with his wet tongue over your swollen pussy, licking the cum from your pussy, and pushing the rest with his fingers back inside. you bite your lips at the overwhelming sensation that takes your breath away, still sensitive, burying your fingers in his brown curls while he buries his inside you.

he laughs, seeing the effect he has on you. completely dazed by the way he fucks you. tasting so good after he made sure you cum enough times to be this brainwashed. seeing your body contorted twitching while covered in sweat that he sure licked. now, your silky arousal sends him towards the edge of jubilee, sweet, while his available hand squeezes and feels your belly vibrate when he licks your clit and shoves his fingers into you. “you look craving, baby,” he says in a moan.

his mouth leaves your intimacy and you already long for him, pulling you out of your slumber to see him direct his teeth towards the soft skin of your thigh. you drown out a hiss that sends a torrent of pleasure that eventually releases around your fingers. you could ask him but your tongue feels heavy and your throat pasty, but, did he just bite you?

your body tries to react to stimuli but you can't do it, letting jaemin use your body as he pleases, putting you in the positions he likes best, becoming his fuckdoll. feeling his arms hold you and forcing you to arch your back again whenever your shaky body hits the mattress, completely ecstatic at the way his cock expands your sensitive, throbbing walls for another round. cock hammering relentlessly, taking your breath away and clouding your senses.

jaemin sees you, and feels you around his cock, pulsing. watching your body succumb to his girth burying him and stimulating your intimacy even more. small hands making fists the sheets under your bodies. he wants to be so rough with you, just so you can scream and roll your eyes like that more. feeling your epitome slide and wet his dick tingling to break free inside you. covered with your silkiness and precum that forms a nice creamy ring at the base of his girth. pressing his palm to bend you more, he speeds up ecstatic at the sight of your butt trembling from his frantic thrusts. mesmerized that he doesn't realize that the firm grip on his wrist loosens after he feels your walls clenching again. so he hovers over you without stopping his ruthless motion to check on you.

he looks your drowsy eyes blink and your mouth spilling a silent pant, “did you just faint, princess?”

jisung shifts over you, burying his face in the crook of your neck. you feel him breathe your scent as he pushes his pelvis in, dick shoving deeper. you suppress a groan. eyes rolling back from the smooth sensation exploding in your belly. jisung and you moan in unison. running his hands below your knees, he bends his arm and pulls your legs, shorting the minimum distance separating your bodies. his pleading eyes gleam because of his cock being stimulated by you constantly clenching around him. his eyes close, squeezes, and hiss. he's so close. but not yet, seems to say your actions when you caress his hair. he pulls you closer into a kiss, and it seems to say, please, not yet.

jisung feels a blaze of fire tense his stomach and descend like a stream of pleasure to his nerve endings. staring into your eyes, watching you roll your eyes and moan that way while his cock pounds you mercilessly, hard and increasing the intensity at times, and slow and deep, rocking his hip against you, making you sigh as his world spins. he cannot hold back anymore. your walls wrapped around him, feeling you completely raw, he can't help but accelerate his thrusts and make you scream.

he shifts again, to gain more control. pushing against you, making you sigh and see constellations. arching your back in an involuntary movement of your body because you can't contain yourself, not when he's fucking you this good. a sweet sensation spills into you, and you hear jisung growl. “shit, sorry, baby.” but your head's in space and you barely connect dots when your body freezes and you writhe under his grip, releasing the euphoria in spasms, now feeling it gushing out. “did you just came inside?”

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

No Sugar Tonight 4

Character: Brock Rumlow

Summary: A regular customer becomes more than just a familiar face.

As usual, I would appreciate any and all feedback. I’m happy to once more go on this adventure with all of you! Thank you in advance for your comments and for reblogging ❤️

You look around the diner uncertainly. Brock slurps down his third coffee as you wring your hands in your lap. There’s a few bites of waffle left on your plate but you can barely stomach what you managed to get down. You don’t understand what he’s doing. 

He signals for the waitress and asks, no, tells her to get the check. He has a way of commanding everyone around him. Including you. 

His dark eyes narrow in your direction. You wonder if he can see your thoughts written on your face. You drop your gaze to the table and fidget. He sighs and wipes his mouth with a napkin. He crumples it and tosses it on his plate as he leans forward. 

“That syrup is all sugar,” he flicks the glass bottle. “You should have eggs for breakfast. Good protein.” 

You wince and look at him, “I’m sorry--” You don’t understand why he didn’t say anything before. 

“Now you know. I know you can listen. You can learn. When I tell you something, I want you to remember,” his voice is grizzly and grinding. “I don’t like to repeat myself.” 

“Uh, okay,” your brows tweak in confusion. 

The waitress returns and he pays in cash. He leaves her a tip but not a very good one. You only slide off the bench as he stands at the end and huffs. 

He keeps you ahead of him as he herds you out of the diner. You come out onto the street and dawdle just along the pavement. He comes up next to you and seizes your hand. You jolt in surprise as his callouses brush your soft skin. 

“I should go home--” 

“We’re going home,” he insists and tugs your arm. “I know you remember what I said.” 

You search the city street as panic rises up your throat, “but... I don’t know you--” 

“You know me. You need me.” He curtails your argument. “I don’t like you acting like this.” 

“I’m not...” you begin and shake your head. “I was only doing my job, sir.” 

“Not your job anymore. Things are different. How they should be.” He drags you down the sidewalk, yanking you into step as your soles scuff in reluctance. You have no choice by to keep pace. “You will have everything you need.” 

Your mouth opens and you snap it shut again. What can you say or do? He’s so much stronger than you. Besides, he already called your boss and ruined everything. 

“You’re really pretty, you shouldn’t make those face,” he says. 

You wipe the frustration from your features and put your head down. He clears his throat. 

“Stand straight. Good posture is important.” He girds again. 

You make yourself stand straight and measure your steps with his. He slows and you look around, searching for the reason. He approaches a black card and opens the passenger door. 

“In.” 

That’s it. His singular order. His hand creeps up from yours and up your arm and he nudges you. You obey. 

He shuts the door and goes around the hood. He gets in the driver seat and focus on starting the engine and pulling out into the traffic crawl. You shrink down and hug yourself. 

“Where... Can I get some of my things--” 

“Got em.” He snarls. 

You swallow the last of your resistance. You’re not sure what he means but you’ll take it as a no. You look out the windshield and watch the pedestrians and the taxis. Wait, you should scream! You should cry out for help! 

You peek over at the door and your hand trails towards the handle. The door locks with a thunk. 

“Do your seatbelt up,” he orders. 

You retract and do as he bids. He grunts and taps his fingers on the ridge steering wheel. He reaches over to clasp your wrist in his thick hand and squeezes. 

“I got a buddy on the force. Several. You wanna go for a ride to a precinct, I’ll take you there myself and we’ll see how that goes. You don’t needa be like this. I’m not hurting you, I'm helping.” He raises your arm and you whimper. You don’t know what to do. He pulls your hand close and he presses a kiss to your knuckles, a gesture both unnerving yet gentle.  

He lets you go and grips the wheel again. You rub your wrist as a tingle ripples in the back of your hand. You look ahead through the window then back at him. 

He’s a big man. Thick arms, broad shoulders, tall. His dark hair has a few strands of silver that blend into the rest and his jaw is shadowed with stubble. The cleft in his chin adds to his sinister appearance and an icy determination squares his features. 

“You can turn some music on,” he nods towards the radio. “None of that girly pop.” 

You hesitate but cautiously reach to touch the buttons on the dash. You scan through the satellite radio stations and find a song you know. The White Stripes. He hums but you can’t tell if he’s annoyed or content. You sit back and hug yourself. 

“I haven’t been mean so you don’t needa be scared,” he commands. Everything he says is an order, as if you’re his soldier. 

“Yes, sir,” you gulp. 

“Brock, baby, you can call me Brock,” he insists. 

[sterredem]

The adoption

Olivia Rodrigo x Fem!Driver!Ferrari!Reader

Face claim Pinterest girls

Warning fluff, not proofread, spelling mistakes (if you can’t handle it DONT READ IT! I have had enough people come in my inbox complaining about that. So if you know you can’t handle spelling mistakes or mistakes in sentences don’t read!)

Summary Olivia gives her girlfriend a gift for their anniversary.

Kind of a part 2 to this. It can be read as a stand alone

A/N short and rushed but I think it is cute. Again sorry for any mistakes. Really sorry that it is short but I didn’t have any more inspiration😭 this is more of ablution than a fic. I will also post a bit more of these short blurbs in this universe.

Don’t forget to reblog and comments! It helps a lot!

Real life

Adopting a dog or a cat was always something Y/n had wanted. And now that she was finally public with Olivia she had devoted that she wanted to finally do it. The reason that she waited being that she didn’t want to be found out by the public because of a dog (or cat).

So she talked about it with Olivia and her girlfriend immediately agreed to the idea, wanting some company for herself while Y/n is away doing her job.

And now that more people on the gird have dogs they thought it was the perfect timing, that being so that their dog could socialise with others.

And that is how Olivia and Y/n ended up on the coach in their home in Monaco (well more Y/n’a home but Olivia had practically moved in) on a free weekend, searching on their computer for any potential doggs.

When either of them found any options they would show each other and put it on a list with links in their notes app, they knew that getting a dog could not happen in one second, so they took their time to see what kind they wanted and to find the perfect one.

So once they did finally found ‘the one’ they decided to message the person responsible and see if they could adopt the dog. And while Y/n really wanted to be with Olivia while she handles the last things with adoptions and picking the puppy up, she couldn’t. Because she, sadly, had a race.

So Y/n secured to let Olivia handle the last things, with her having the most time in between shows and Y/n having to go to the factory and do training so not having any time to do all that.

And after a few weeks of waiting Y/n has kind of forgotten to the task that she has put Olivia on. And while Y/n forgot, Olivia didn’t.

Olivia has scoured the internet to search for any dog that they would like. And she found the one. So while Y/n had forgotten her girlfriend had had contact with a breeder and had done a lot of research. And she had devoted that she wanted to give the dog to Y/n on their anniversary, which would be in a few days.

So Olivia had fixed everything: food, toys, a place for the dog and, of course, the dog itself. Which was going to be a markiesje, a black one.

And then it was the time. It was their anniversary! They begun the day with a going out to eat breakfast (they were both to lazy to make food). Once they got back they relaxed and then it was time. Olivia had made a cover story for why they would need to go away; so she had said that they were going to eat somewhere and that it would be a surprise.

Unbeknownst to Y/n they were actually picking up their new dog.

Olivia had days that she needed to go inside to check something so Y/n had stayed in the car. Olivia had also fixed that they could pick the dog up in a place where a lot of good food places were so that her girlfriend wouldn’t get suspicious.

So once Olivia got back to the car with a little basket Y/n was beginning to question things.

Olivia got in the car and sat the basket on het lap.

“So… I may have lied a bit.” She said. “We will not be eating or going out eating. But… I did a lot of research after we talked a couple of weeks ago. And o finally got in contact with a breeder. I did a lot if research of which one was good and which one wasn’t. And they seemed to be legit. So I bought a dog. We still have to pick out a name.” Olivia ranted on. She was to nervous to look at her girlfriend reaction so she began ranting again. “We still need to pick out a name, but I thought you should get to do that. It is also your anniversary gift and-“ she was cut of.

In the kids of her ranting Y/n leaned over and gave her a kiss. “This is amazing baby! But do I get to see the dog now?” The girl asked.

Olivia blushed a bit and have the basket to her girlfriend. Y/n opened it and saw the cutest dog ever. It was a girl. “What should I name you?” She asked in a baby voice. “What about daisy?” She said while looking at Olivia.

The other girl nodded.

Daisy it was. Their new baby.

|———————————<3—————————————|

Instagram

OliviaRodrigo and Yourusername

Liked by SabrinaCarpenter and 4.736.936 others

Yourusername Meet my new baby; Daisy! Thank you my love for giving me this AMAZING anniversary gift💕❤️🫶

View all 19.836 comments

SabrinaCarpenter The cutest💕 liked by author

Alexandrasaintmleux Play date with Leo when?

Yourusername I’ll message you

LewisHamilton more dogs on the grid!👍

Yourusername Always good!

OliviaRodrigo Daisy 🌼💕

Yourusername 🌼💕

User1 PARENTS AFW PARENTS!!

User2 So cuteeee

User3 hey google! How can I be reincarnated as a dog?

User4 I have the same dog!

User5 not the dog owners of the grid in the comments😭😭

User6 Mothers!! (Literally)

User7 Happy anniversary!

User8 a baby when?

User9 they are only together for a year relax!

User10 Now I want a dog🫠

User11 Daisy is sucks cute name!

User12 I am going to convince my parents with this post to get a dog!

User13 will we now get more Olivia appearances in the paddock with Daisy?!?! That would be amazing!!!

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[lokisgoodgirl]

Harvest: The Lakes [Loki x Reader]

The Lakes Masterlist / Regular Masterlist Summary: (7) Fresh off Loki's revelation, its time to save Colin Robertson. Oh...and some other things too, I guess. Warnings: Minors DNI. Ex-Loki (?) Language. Mild angst. Plans and smug rehashing of plans. Soft smut. Domestic fluff. Sassy Satchel. (w/c 6.2k) Recommended Folklore Track: Invisible String

Despite protestations, Steve had set up a perimeter and concocted a list of bird-themed call-signs. He walked thirty meters ahead of you and Loki.

Every ten paces, the captain spun in a shifty circle and beckoned you on. “Oh, for goodness sake,” Loki grumbled as he re-hoisted a limp Colin Robertson across his shoulders. The man was drooling on him.

Thor brought up the rear of the rudimentary formation, ambling at the back with his hands in his pockets. The hat was still drawn low over his brow. “He feels awful,” you muttered. “As he should,” Loki said stiffly. “Thanks to him, this mortal finds himself at the mercy of another of his cunning plans. A perilous state indeed.” “You care,” you mumbled with a gentle smile. Loki narrowed his eyes playfully. “I shall have to dial it back a little, lest I become soft.” “Not much chance of that,” you whispered to yourself. Out the corner of your eye, you saw Loki smile.

From ahead, Steve released a strangled caw.

“What one’s that?” Loki drawled. The tap of Colin’s dead-weight hand sounded against his back with every step.

You frowned, looking around. “People? Aircraft? I can’t remember.” “The car.” Loki said flatly, pointing to a bright blue blob in the distance. From behind them, a crunch of running footsteps approached. “Almost time for the commencement of the plan, brother.” “It’s a terrible plan.” Loki snipped. Thor rolled his eyes. “Ye of little faith,” he rumbled confidently. Ten minutes later, the five of you hung in various stages inside and outside the Fiat 500. Rogers had pushed the front seat as far forward as it would go, climbing in to the back. Loki was positioned already behind the passenger side, crammed against the wall. “Just put him in the trunk,” Loki chided for the fourth time. “Oh pish, Laufeyson” Steve snapped. “The man could have a spinal injury.” Loki threw up his hands in resignation.

You leant against the bonnet, one of Colin’s arms draped over your shoulder. The other hung around Thor. The man drooped between you like a scarecrow. “Places,” Steve announced confidently before his face lowered and he sidestepped into the Fiat backseat. All you heard were huffs from Loki as Rogers shuffled into the middle. It was going to be tight. You and Thor moved forwards, ignoring the sad drag of Colin’s walking boots on the dirt track. With a little manoeuvring, the hiker was deposited in the back seat. His face smooshed against the window, faint clouds of condensation forming on the glass.

“God, I wish I had my phone.” you murmured to Thor as you drank in the absurd sight. Loki was staring pointedly out the window, shoulders scrunched to take up as little space as possible. Rogers face had flushed, hoiking the unconscious man further on his side.

Thor chuckled, gripping the open door. He leant towards you conspiratorially. “Gird thy loins, sister” he hummed. You grimaced. The passenger seat was as far forward as it could go, with Thor’s knees drawn up to his chest.

You sighed as you slid into the drivers side. The muscled pressure of Loki’s legs protruded through the back of your seat. You cleared your throat, fiddling with the radio. “You do realise, that if the police stop us then we’re up shit-” “-crud,” Steve cut. “-crud creek without a paddle?” Loki snorted with genuine laughter. You bit your lip, realising that just maybe everything was going to be alright. And not just for Colin. “Onward!” Thor boomed. Everyone groaned, covering their ears.

You drove cautiously through winding one track lanes. The hedgerows were in full autumnal blossom now. Gold and burnt orange foliage simmered in speckled sunlight. In the back seat, Colin was stirring. “We don’t have much time,” Steve’s worried voice chimed. He stroked Colin’s cheek. “It’s alright, pal. We’ll get ya where you’re going.” In the rear-view mirror, you saw Loki throw him an incredulous scowl.

“Ye Olde Fighting Cocks,” Thor read as the swinging pub sign grew closer. He laughed to himself, slapping his knee and almost hitting his face on the rebound. “Just like us, brother.” In the back seat, Loki scoffed. “Let’s just get this over with,” he muttered. You pulled into the carpark. It was busier than you would like. “Okay, just like we talked about,” Steve started. “Thor – you commandeer a table outside. Away from any hubbub. Agent, you’re on drinks duty. Loki and I will position Mr Robertson and get the heck outta there.” Everyone mumbled agreement. It wasn’t perfect, but it was visible. And it beat leaving him on a hillside. Thor pulled his hat down, stuffing errant strands of sandy hair inside. He produced a pair of chunky sunglasses from the glovebox.

“Avengers…” he began with gravitas.

“Don’t.” Steve snapped.

As it transpired, the only hubbub in the beer-garden was an old man stubbing out a cigarette by the entrance. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously as Thor’s bobble hat poked over the hedge. You quickly made yourself scarce, walking inside the tavern and collecting as many glasses as you could covertly carry.

Sidling between tables of chattering locals, you squinted out a passing window. Thor was leaning awkwardly against a picnic bench. You saw a flash of movement in the bushes behind him as Steve and Loki emerged, shuffling forward in a squat position. Colin dragged between them. They hoisted him to sit at the table, flipping his legs over the bench. He slumped forwards. The last thing you saw was Thor attempting to prop a fist under his chin. He failed Sliding out the front door, you made your way quickly over to the scene and plopped seven glasses on the surface. “Let’s go,” you said. “Where is the ale?” Thor said, face falling. “We’re not staying, buffoon” Loki scathed as the four of you made your way quickly back to the car. “That defeats the entire purpose.” Thor pouted all the way home.

You had walked ahead from the driveway to the cottage door with your heart in your mouth. It had been a tense ride.

All you could hear behind you was Loki’s hushed overtones requesting privacy from the others.

Noting the tremble in your hands, you unlocked and walked inside. Keep it together, you chided as you slipped into the kitchen and sat at the table, fidgeting. The front door opened. It closed with a creak and a thunk. You tried to steady your breaths as Loki hung up his jacket before rounding the corner, smoothing his hair while he looked at the floor. Suddenly your fingernails became very interesting.

His towering figure occupied your periphery, hovering before he sat in the opposite chair. Looking up, your eyes met his. You offered a weak smile. Loki cleared his throat.

The chair leg squeaked. "I want to be myself. My core self. The one that swells in my roots, I suppose you would say." he said abruptly. The words were quick and cold. "That's what I was attempting to convey... back on the hill."

He seemed nervous. You didn't think you'd ever seen Loki nervous. It made you nervous. He cleared his throat again, features softening. “What I have come to realise” he continued carefully, brushing crumbs from the tablecloth, “is that being with you...I often felt like that boy at the cabin.” He looked at you, tilting his head. His mind was a million miles away, but somehow – it was the closest you had ever been to him. “Except I didn’t know what it was,” he continued wistfully.

“I felt safe. Free. It felt...strange. I fought against it, with my arrogance and my selfishness. Like a dog in a trap, I fought against it with the only tools I had.” You looked down at your hands again, heart sinking. “A trap?”

Loki sighed. “I cannot pertain to the logic. Only my feelings. It was self-preservation. Or so I thought.” “It sounds like self-sabotage to me,” you murmured gently, pressing your thumb into your palm. “Yes.” was all Loki said.

After a few moments he stood.

You braced as he took a step forwards, sinking slowly to sit on his haunches. Your gaze swung to his thighs, thick and straining against the creases of his trousers. “I can’t promise I’ll be perfect,” he murmured. There was a pause while the weight of his considerations hung in the air. “But for you, I would do anything in my power. You know that, don’t you?” Tears began to prick your eyes. You swallowed, words coming out as a tremble. “I never wanted you to be perfect, Loki. I only wanted to feel like we were equals.” Loki slipped his fingers into your open palm. “I know that feeling,” he crooned sadly, drawing your hand down. He stroked the skin, looking at it like it might evaporate in his hold.

A gentle press of his lips warmed your wrist. “Am I being presumptuous that you might consider a fresh start between us?” he said tentatively, raising his gaze to meet yours through a dark fan of lashes. “As your ‘girlfriend’?” you questioned. A smile twitched. Was this really happening? Your heart was thundering. “No, Madam” Loki scoffed playfully. “My consort of course.” Your smile grew wider. Loki pursed his lips, brows rising in expectation as he ran his nervous stare over your features. You bit your lip, searching his eyes for any hint of insincerity. But there was none. And somehow, you knew there wouldn’t be.

The hand not being held by his slid up the curve of his jaw. You lowered, pausing by his parted lips. The god’s breath hitched.

“Loki,” you pleaded, no more than a whisper.

His name held weight when you said it like that.

In an instant, Loki closed the space between you, his mouth fastening to yours with a gasp.

Without breaking the kiss he rose, pulling you with him.

His hands cupped your face, fingertips pressing into your hair while his tongue cautiously caressed against your own. It was pure fire, twisting and scorching the path of troubles behind you.

Your knees caught against the chair as he tried to walk you backwards, making you both stumble.

He broke, panting. “Apologies,” he muttered, catching his breath as his large hand centred on your back.

You looped your arms around his neck, memorising the look of abject relief in his eyes. Kissing him softly, you caught his bottom lip between your teeth. Loki’s eyes narrowed, a subconscious thrust of his hips against your stomach making your vision blur. “We should probably let them in now,” you said ruefully, glancing sideways to the closed door. “I was hoping you couldn’t hear them,” Loki sighed. ‘Damn you and your heavy breathing, Rogers’ Thor chided behind the peeling wood. Loki reached for the handle, a quick turn and release causing Steve and his brother to sprawl forwards face-first to the linoleum.

Rogers sat up quickly, brushing himself down as his guilty eyes swung between you. “It was his idea,” he said as he nodded to Thor. “How very dare you,” Thor boomed. “The God of Thunder does not sneak.” “Ain’t that the truth,” Steve snapped.

The two of them stood, awkwardly picking at their clothes. Around the same time, their eyes fell on the space between you and Loki. Thor’s arm shot out, the back of his hand slapping against Steve’s chest.

Their gazes widened in sync. “Holding...hands?” Thor gasped. He and Steve gaped at one another. Suddenly the entire kitchen became a hive of screeches as the two men grasped on to the others biceps, jumping in a circle.

You started to laugh, hearing Loki’s embarrassed chuckle beside you. “Why are they so happy?” you murmured to him. Loki shook his head. “My brother had a cunning plan, you see” he said as he raised your interlinked fingers with a knowing smile. “Hold up,” Steve interjected. His serious face was back. “I gotta take some credit considering it was my idea, Odinson.”

Thor laughed mirthlessly, throwing his head back with a shake of his hair. “I think not, Rogers. If anything your contributions were the seasoning.” “Seasoning?”” Steve balked. “It was my idea to get them up here in the first place.” Thor released a grimacing smile. He patted Steve on the back. “Perhaps now is not the time,” he muttered as covertly as a fart in an elevator.

You yelped as Loki sat at the dining table, pulling you onto his lap. “No, I think now is most definitely the time” he purred as he linked his fingers around your stomach. You’d forgotten how solid his thighs were. Almost. Steve’s cheeks flushed. “Well, uh…you see, it started way back when uh-” “-Well,” Thor interrupted. “Apologies, Rogers – but the tale requires gravitas.” Steve rolled his eyes, as the god continued. “Around two months ago when your incessant moods had reached peak insufferability, I invoked Rogers aid in a minor detail of the piece-”

“-I bought this place,” Steve butted sharply. “Well, Stark did.” You and Loki looked at each other, frowning. “We figured you guys needed to get away somewhere neutral. Something official to force your hand. Back to basics, somewhere Laufeyson could be pushed out of his comfort zone with a range of activities he felt were-” “-Beneath you, brother” Thor quipped smugly. “And in tandem with my cunning plan, it was fool-proof.”

The two of them folded their arms, their facial expressions hinting that they had explained everything. “Yes? And?” Loki probed lazily. The breath from his words flooded your ear, lips ghosting the shell. You wondered if he was listening. He placed an absent-minded kiss at the tip of your cheekbone, nuzzling gently. “From there it was quite simple, really- for a fellow like myself” Thor postured, looping his thumbs through his belt.

Loki rolled his eyes as his brother’s smug voice boomed around the kitchen. “One of the many times you fell asleep on my sofa after a night of ale and moaning about blowing it with this one” Thor thumbed to you; “you were mumbling about the cabin.” “I was?” Loki asked. Thor nodded. “And it made me ponder what you were like back then. The same, but different. Not as much of a little shit. I thought it was time you needed a more targeted reminder – for all our sakes. In a place like this, a place like the cabin. Kind of.”

You felt Loki inhale sharply, priming a barb. But he let it go. You felt the tension melt against your back as his hands clasped tighter in your lap. “Oh brother, I thought you’d really arsed it up with that stunt on our second evening” Thor chuckled, nudging Steve in the ribs.

“But your denial was rather a boon, Agent. A catalyst which timed well with Rogers and myself's light exploration of his foils earlier that night. Commendations, sister, for resisting my brother’s seductions. His cock is a wily adversary, I am sure.” You smirked as Loki’s inaudible laughter pulsed against your back. You’d missed this. “Tell them about the fire,” Steve whispered shyly. Thor’s eyes lit up.

“Ah, well...Rogers here had the rather genius idea of luring you both to the fireside. Nothing fans the flames like...well, flames. My brother has always been a lush for elemental theatrics.” Steve beamed with pride while your eyebrows rose. “And destroying my room and all my stuff was…?” The question lingered as Thor shuffled awkwardly. “Collateral damage, sister. We needed you out of that bedroom. I may have slightly overdone it.” “We thought you were ready,” Steve added. “I signalled with the flashlight when I thought the ol’ heart-to-heart had done the business and then…”

He and Thor nodded sagely to each other. “So were the two of you like...monitoring us?” you asked, glancing at Loki who was blushing faintly. “Of course!” Thor boomed. “The two of you were the true field operation. Well, in a roundabout sort of way.” Loki burrowed his face in the curve of your neck, a smile spreading against the skin. “What about the two of you?” Loki purred, resting his chin on your shoulder. “All smoke and mirrors like the rest?” Thor flapped his hand in the air as Steve bristled. “You need not know the details, brother.” he blustered. “What matters in that you stayed in that room. With her.” Steve’s face was a deep shade of crimson. “It had to be realistic,” he muttered, scuffing his shoe on the floor. “We got ya!” he added weakly. “So is what he’s saying...true?” you asked Loki. “Did it work?” Loki chuckled, bouncing one leg as he considered his answer. You jiggled, gripping his bicep for balance. He shot the men standing shoulder-to-shoulder above him a sharp glare.

“From the wreckage of my brother’s tenuous plot I did scavenge a solitary golden thread of wisdom, yes.” Thor released one of his arms from the fold, pointing a fist to the captain. Steve shook it. “I owe you ten bucks, Odinson” he said ruefully. “You owe me more than that, Rogers.” Thor winked. Steve cast an anxious glance to you and Loki, acknowledging your bemused smiles with a curt nod. He cleared his throat. “Time for us to make tracks,” he said.

You frowned. “But Steve, we have like... two more days here.” Thor laughed, doubling over. Rogers shook his head. “You have two more days here. We are going to the spa.” “The spa?” Loki spat incredulously. “Without me?!”

Thor shrugged. “If you wish to join Rogers and I for an ‘erbal wrap and sauna privileges you are most welcome to brother.” He tracked his gaze to you, sitting on Loki’s lap. “But something tells me you’d rather stay here,” he added softly.

Loki’s face burrowed into your neck again, nose grazing your collarbone. “Quite,” he murmured. It was meant only for you. In the following twenty minutes the blondes made quick work of packing their belongings. You helped Thor locate his various nick-knacks, strewn clothes and hair mousses; passing each of them in turn as he leant his bodyweight on a second suitcase.

The captain’s bags were stacked neatly in the corner. He was frowning at the tower. “I feel like I’m forgetting something,” he murmured, stroking his chin.

“The crisper,” you said, trying not to laugh. Steve’s cheeks flushed as your eyes fell involuntarily to his butt. “Been enjoying the freedom, Cap?” you giggled, tossing another bottle to Thor.

When the last suitcase had been stuffed into the beleaguered Fiat, the blondes returned inside. You and Loki had stood at the doorway of the cottage, watching them. It was meditative. Winding curls of burnt orange ivy rustled in the air. There was no rush.

You turned your face, brushing your cheek against the wool of Loki’s jumper. He rested his chin on your head.

As they approached, you pulled away from the god and let your fingers trail longingly over his stomach as you sank back to the hallway. Loki winked, a small smile flirting at his lip. The warmth flooding your skin could be magic, you were sure. But something told you it wasn’t.

Thor tugged the sides of his jacket. “I take it this highly successful endeavour means that you will be of more pleasant humour to everyone then,” he chuckled.

“Regrettably, for the foreseeable future I shall be targeting my efforts of self-improvement to our darling Agent, here.” Loki purred, zipping his brother’s jacket up over his mouth. “I’m sure you understand it’s a process.” “Just consider me your spiritual Sherpa, brother-” Thor continued un-phased against the muffler. “And Rogers too, to a lesser extent.” “The day I consider that, is the day I may be claimed by the sanatorium, brother” Loki smiled dryly.

“So you’re still gonna be a boob to the rest of us? That wasn't part of the deal,” Steve whined, releasing a low whistle of discontent. Loki shrugged. “Apologies, gentleman.” he smarmed, resting a hand on each of their shoulders. He tipped forward earnestly. “Although when it comes to mocking you both; I will do my utmost not to pick up the gauntlets of temptation you throw so effortlessly down.” The three of them looked between each other.

“Excellent!” Steve chirped, shuffling sideways between you and Loki. You followed as he rounded the corner to the kitchen. Making immediately for the fridge, the captain un-balled a Tesco carrier bag from his pocket. Leaning against the door-frame, you watched as Captain America gingerly slid open the crisper. His lips pursed, pressing inward. It was all you could do not to fall to the floor. He reached in, carefully picking out each pair of underwear and slipping them into the plastic bag.

“I can see you,” he grit, throwing a knowing look over his shoulder. “And I would appreciate if the events of this trip stayed between the four of us.”

“Come, Rogers!” Thor boomed as he snuck up behind you, drawing you into a bear hug. You thrashed against his chest, before sinking with a relenting sigh into his hold. “Sister,” he whispered gruffly through a smile as Steve bustled past to the car. “I couldn’t be happier for you both.”

Loki gave a final wave as his brother and Rogers drove away down the rickety path. Thor’s hair whipped around his temples, the window fully rolled down and his head sticking out. Loki smiled, chortling softly as he closed the door.

In the kitchen, he could hear mugs clinking.

He straightened the front of his jumper, tucking his hair behind his ears. “Right…” he breathed quietly. Loki paced cautiously into the kitchen, memorising the way the low amber sunlight bathed your skin.

A goddess, he thought. “My goddess,” he said.

You turned, surprise peaking your brows before you smiled. “Hey,” you murmured shyly. It made his stomach flip. Wiping your hands on the dishcloth, you turned. Without stopping to think, Loki strode forward and kissed you.

He didn’t want to think anymore. Not today. His tongue slipped easily between your lips, the only sound the careful wax and wane of delicate skin and the melody of gentle moans. His fingers curled around the counter-lip, caging your body as your hands slid up his sweater, tugging. There was a quiet groan as you pulled away, sucking his bottom lip between your teeth.

“I’m going to take a shower,” you said. There was a look in your eye Loki thought he would never see again. His stomach did another turn. “Oh. Of course,” he muttered politely, standing back. Fingers slid down the chunky knit of his arm, grazing over his hand. They toyed with his own as you began to walk to the door, throwing a seductive glance back over your shoulder. “Come with me?” Loki’s breath hitched. “I’ll be right behind you,” he murmured. He was sure the tremor of his racing heart could be heard in his voice. “I’d prefer face-to-face,” you winked before disappearing into the hall. Loki’s mouth gaped. The god heard the creak of the bathroom door, the thick splash as water hit the tub from on high. It’s happening, he thought; amazed.

In this unfamiliar landscape stripped of all ornament. In the wreckage of his brother’s clumsy attempts at mischief, he had found what his heart had been search for; slipping against walls of his cluttered mind. A second chance. Loki did some quick calculations, finding his feet drawing him already up the stairs. He was certain that you weren’t on birth control, he remembered hushed whispers overheard between you and Wanda months prior. At the time, it had made him very happy indeed. He was even more certain he didn’t wish to enchant you – that was a conversation for a later time.

Nerves fizzed in his stomach as he pushed open the doorway to his brother and Rogers room. Where are they? Loki cursed every creaking footstep as he picked his way around the room, but what he sought was nowhere to be seen. Steve had stripped the bedsheets, leaving them folded in military position at the foot of the bed. The god peered beneath pillows, under the mattresses. He frowned. A minute later, he pushed the door of his own room ajar. And there, on the pillow, was a box.

A yellow post-it note was stuck jauntily to the centre. Loki whipped it up with a flourishing snap, holding it at arms length as he peered down. A gift, it read. Love you Little Brother, Thor :) xx x “I bought them,” Loki grumbled, picking up the box.

It was open.

He pulled out a set, splitting them in two as he released a quaking sigh. Tossing the chosen one on the bed, he slipped the extra back in its home. Nine remained.

We might need to go to that shop again, Loki mused as he picked up the solitary condom on the bed. He held it up to eye-level, thumb pressed against the foil centre as he steadied himself. “Loki?” you cooed from downstairs. Your voice was an angelic echo, misting through tile and steam. He shuddered, cock pulsing against his trousers. He made his way carefully down the steps, memorising the way the wooden banister glided and caught against his skin. If I could live in a memory, Loki pondered as his fingers pressed against the ajar bathroom door, it would be this one.

Rich golden sunlight flooded the room from the tiny window. The ageing white tiles and fittings were perfected in its amber glow, porcelain glinting with an asgardian sheen under nature’s filter. Behind the shower curtain, you were humming; a splatter of water from your wet hair hitting the base. Loki cleared his throat.

Your face appeared, clutching the thin shower curtain by your chest. You were smiling, eyebrows raised expectantly.

“Is the beige a permanent feature of your wardrobe now? Because if it is then I may need to rethink this whole thing.”

Loki’s arms crossed immediately, tugging the cable-knit over his head. It caught beneath his ears, the tinkle of your laugh singing against falling water. After a few seconds, the jumper was discarded by his ankles.

The god’s fingers flew to his belt, making quick work of the fastenings and pushing them to his feet. He hopped out of them, standing with a sudden flourish; shoulders rolled back. You looked from the pile on the floor to his eyes, one brow raised. “The old-fashioned way huh? That’s a first.” Loki cocked his chin. He bit his lip, enjoying the track of your gaze rolling hungrily down his naked body. One finger appeared from behind the shower-curtain, beckoning. With a heavy exhale, he stepped over the bath wall.

His cock slapped against his stomach, smacking the taut skin. You stood beneath the shower head, low pressure making it pour thickly to your skull before splitting to rivers down your back and chest. Loki swallowed. Water dripped in languid streams down your arms, trickling lazily through the part of your breasts. A droplet clung to your nipple, dangling as he would his tongue on the curve.

There was a quiet rip as he peeled the top of the foil square he held. Your eyes fell to the work of his hands, smiling as you savoured the journey back to meet his smoulder.

Loki gripped his cock, one slow slick of his fist all that was needed before he rolled the condom from the tip. He moaned, eyes fluttering closed as his grip tightened at the base.

Like a dream Loki found himself looming above you, the flat of his stomach pressed against the slick of your own. In seconds, his wetted body plastered to yours; his mouth swallowing against your open lips, his hands sinking into the glossed plump of your skin. Sighs mingled with steam as he moved you with ease against the tiles, the keening thrusts of your hips matching his own eagerness. Loki groaned as your digits curled around his throbbing cock. You released a dirty moan into his mouth as one finger slid between your folds. A growl bubbled in his throat at the feeling of your silken arousal hot against his fingers. Loki felt everything. The clench of your thighs around his wrist, the tug of his foreskin against your mound through latex, the depth of the longing in your kiss. Everything.

She is everything.

“-Wait,” he choked as he pulled away from the kiss.

Water hit the nape of his neck as he watched fear blossom in your eyes. Sodden tendrils of his hair curled against your collarbone. “Are you sure?” he swallowed. “About me-,” he finished, choking on the words. Your face softened. “It never ended for me, Loki” you whispered, barely audible against the water’s slap. He melted into the fingers sliding up the base of his skull. “It was always you,” he heard you say before pulling his mouth to yours. “It was always you,” he echoed between desperate kisses. Loki sank into old habits he could live with. With one hand steadying your waist, he drew your thigh to sit on his hip. A tremble ran up his spine as you manoeuvred his cock against your heat, the skim of your breath caressing his cheek.

And with a gasp, he pushed inside.

Loki’s hips nudged upwards, savouring the drag of your delicate walls wrapped around his length. It was more than he remembered. Or maybe that was new. But every clench of your sweetness around him, every slow tighten of his ass which rocked him deeper. Every moment burned with glittering with clarity, auburn leaves falling in slow motion. Your arms rested on his shoulders. Wet skin slurped as air pockets burst and kissed together. Water ran down, pooling against hands and lips and foreheads as it looked for any way between your bodies.

His name wisped in the steamed air; chanted from breathy moans and pitched sobs of pleasure. Loki could not recall when he had been happier. Perhaps, he thought, I never have.

But the only utterance he had strength for were broken syllables of your name.

Slowly he took you. Moulded to you. Melted into you. So slowly.

Your hands tangled in his soaking hair as Loki hoisted you higher. His hands slid beneath your ass, taking all the work as you slid back and forth along his length. He would never take the supple give of your skin as his tips sank deeper for granted again.

“Darling,” he sighed wantonly. It was punctuated with a slow roll of his hips.

Your eyes flew open, rolling back as your head tapped back against the tile. He kissed down the exposed length of your neck, slurping against rivulets that paved his path.

Waves of desire undulated in his belly, burning blood-red coals that radiated jolts of pleasure from the root of his cock. It pulsed with each measured clench of his ass.

They timed him perfectly, the stammering, gasping prayers of delight heralding your climax growing louder. Loki buried his face in your neck, softly biting up your throat.

“Darling,” he moaned repeatedly as his own orgasm reared. As if the loving word would disappear down the drain between his searching fingers. The invisible string that tied his heart to yours. It always had. You came with an anguished sob, fingernails digging into the meat of his shoulder-blades. One of Loki’s hands flew to the side, grasping slippery palms against tile before grabbing the curtain.

With the lightest of his tugs, the shower rail cracked. The palm flew above your head, smacking and squeaking down the grubby tiles as Loki felt his who body clench, trembling muscles tightening.

His foot slipped against the tub, the correction thrusting his manhood one final squeeze as he came with a crushing cry of your name. He juddered, the force of his cum filling the condom wrapped snug around his pulsing cock.

Your back began to slip down the wall, legs loosening their grip around his waist; spent. But Loki held you close. There was a dreamy smile on your face as your lashes fluttered, refocusing on him.

“I missed you,” you slurred while your fingers knotted through his hair. Water hit Loki’s back as he pushed you further against the wall with a rapturous kiss, wandering hands massaging the spill of your breasts. “I missed me too,” he breathed bitterly against your cheek. A finger trailed along his jaw, tipping Loki’s chin to face you.

“But I missed you more,” he whispered. And what’s more, Loki found, it was true.

The sun set, and then rose. Hours upon hours had passed, low afternoon sun spilling through the open curtains of Loki’s room. It was too cold to be anywhere else. But not in here.

You had lain tangled in each others arms, fingers grazing on skin between giggles and dozing and long conversations. And sex. Lots of sex.

His inhumanly long legs sprawled open. One lay bent, hanging triangularly over the side of the bed. You lay on your stomach, one hand propped beneath your chin while the other trailed lazily up and down your lover’s torso. His pale skin looked tan in golden sunlight. Loki watched you.

His eyes followed the path of your fingertips, pads dipping into every dent of muscle in their way which tightened and relaxed with each breath. Circling, dancing.

Loki shivered. A jolt of one knee rusted the bedsheet draped across his middle. You smiled, lowering to place a winding path of kisses as you edged the sheet lower. “We really should eat,” Loki murmured, stroking your hair as your lips kissed down his cock. You lingered on a taut vein, teasing your tongue along the pulse. What he meant is that you really should eat, but you appreciated the gesture nonetheless. It was the little things. Loki’s sharp inhale as you swallowed the tip made your stomach flip with pride.

His chin was pointed to the ceiling, muscles in his neck straining. Onyx hair flooded the pillow, his gentle cup of the back of your head vibrating with restraint. There was a rustle as the fingers of his free hand gathered the bedsheets in a fist, clenching and unclenching as you began to suck. “After…” he groaned with an attempt at authority.

With his cock stuffed in your mouth, you sidled over his leg, pushing his knees wider as you settled in. Your arms slid under his thighs, wrapping around him.

“After,” he gasped, before Loki Laufeyson turned to writhing slut-drunk pleasure beneath your touch.

On further investigation, it seemed you and Loki were shit outta luck.

The cupboards were bare, and it transpired that the Thor-decimated snacks you had grabbed last night between rabid lovemaking was the last of it. Loki spun, gripping the lip of the counter top. His neck was marred with purple bruises from your enthusiastic affections. They wouldn't last, but they looked so pretty while they did. “Let’s go for dinner somewhere,” he purred. You couldn’t help your snort of laugher. “What?” Loki coyed, pushing himself from the ledge. His hands slipped around your waist, grabbing your ass through the sweatshirt hanging down.

“It’s just...risky” you said, tilting your head. The two of you looked at each other.

You’d meant exposure. But sudden memories of every time you and Loki had gone out to eat flashed through your mind.

Selfies, a baying crowd desperate to touch him, autographs- on paper and skin. His endless adoration, drinking in the attention which fed his superiority complex like an assembly line while you faded from his mind. The Real World reared with the force of a slap.

“It won’t be like that again,” he murmured knowingly, tilting your chin up to face him. He gazed down through half-lidded eyes, frowning with sincerity. But he didn’t believe it. Not fully. And with trepidation, you realised, neither did you.

“Afternoon,” the waitress chirped as she handed you and Loki a menu. You thanked her nervously and pulled your cap down.

All around you was the polite buzz of conversation, local radio playing from a speaker behind the bar. Glass windows looked out onto the lake, endless sprawling water lapping at the shore beneath the window. The sun was beginning to set. Loki glanced upwards with a brief, dazzling smile. The woman’s eyes lingered on him as he ran a finger down the menu. They roamed up his arms, the chunk of cable-knit doing nothing to disguise the muscle beneath. On her gaze went, up the exposed curve of his lovebitten neck to the messy bun of dark hair knotted at base of his cap. Her stare widened.

Shit. You could tell the exact moment she clocked the infamous carve of his cheekbones as he sucked them in thoughtfully.

With a gasp, the waitress rocked back on her heels. “I hope you don’t mind me asking,” she whispered nervously, glancing between the two of you and then over her shoulder. “But are you…” she leant closer, using a menu to shield her face from view. “Loki...from the Avengers?” Loki’s eyes met yours.

The air tingled with her excitement, vibrating unspoken words and exclamations. Her cheeks were pink with embarrassment, or sudden lust. Or both. Maybe she writes fanfiction about him, you thought.

And as you looked at him, the realisation of this moment’s importance seemed to blossom in Loki’s eyes. An ache grew in your stomach.

Please, you screamed silently. Begging him. A vein in his temple twitched as he nervously adjusted his feet beneath the table. Despite her attempt at covertness, people were staring. A weak smile fluttered at your lips as the seemingly inevitable turn of events teetered on the precipice. First the pomp, then the ceremony of his public adoration.

It would break the dam. This week was different. But it wasn’t real life. You would sidle off to the shadows, wait and wilt as each and every person took their piece of him that he willingly gave.

As it always was, so it shall be.

Unless- Loki cleared his throat.

“Howay, man!” he balked in a bamboozingly accurate Georgie accent, incredulity feigned to perfection. “But I get it wi' that gadgie aw' the time.” The waitress laughed, fanning herself with a menu. “Oh,” she gasped through an awkward smile. “Well, -” she looked at you with a wink. “You’re a lucky one, miss.” Her footsteps retreated as you stared at the list of dinner options, not seeing a single one. Stunned, you felt Loki’s fingers curl around your hand. It was moist with anxious sweat against the menu.

He dipped his chin down, catching your eyes under the rim of your cap. His were wide and beautiful, the deepest, clearest blue you had ever seen. You felt breaths begin to quicken in your chest, tears of happiness threatening to spill over as his grip tightened. “No,” Loki murmured quietly across the table, the velvet tones of his own voice back in fully laden force. “I’m the lucky one.” Your breath hitched as he brought your knuckles to his lips. He lowered his gaze, pausing before raising it to slowly meet your own.

Sunset warmth cast golden hues against his skin, green speckles in his irises bursting in glittering sparks. He let your curled fingers rest against his mouth.

“I always was,” he whispered lovingly against the skin. And you believed him.

A/N: This series has given me SO much joy and I just want to say thank you to the people who've commented and reblogged your hearts out and just all-in-all love these fools as much as I do. I honestly truly wasn't expecting it. This won't be the last we see of this AU, I have something planned. But for now, I hope the story warmed you like some pumpkin-spice cocoa.

Tags @lokischambermaid @meowmeow-motherfucker @gigglingtiggerv2 @imalovernotahater @avengersalways @littledark11 @lokikissesmyforehead @simplyholl @fictive-sl0th @thedistractedagglomeration @loopsisloops @glitchquake @holdmytesseract @silverfire475 @fandxmslxt69 @morriggannlostinfandoms @marygoddessofmischief @xorpsbane @peacefulpianist @yelkmelk @wheredafandomat @mistress-ofmagic @acidcasualties @ozymdias @your-taste-on-my-lips @lokidokieokie @kikster606 @peachyjinx @tbhiddlestan83 @trickster-maiden @skymoonandstardust @justjoanne242 @thenotoriouserg @ladyofthestayingpower @wolfmoonmusic @brittbax @smolvenger @joyful-enchantress @kaleenjackson @fictional-hooman @kellatron55 @mrs-illyrian-baby @icytrickster17 @multifandom-worlds @muddyorbs @buttercupcookies-blog @megschaef98

[bizaar]

Cruel Summer Epilogue - Part One

Masterlist - Part One - Part Two

pairing: Eddie Munson x fem!reader

warnings: sexual content (18+) minors DNI (you guys they go the fuck off idk what to tell you, gird your loins), pregnancy, mentions of sickness and vomiting, traumatic flashbacks, angst, swearing (please let me know if I missed anything, there's a lot going on here)

word count: 23k (oof)

a/n: tumblr is really gonna make me split this thing up more than I already was going to — oh well, it doesn't matter because it's here! Forgive me for how I had to lay this out, and for everything that follows, because part two is going to be nothing but complete rabid bunnyfucking...

Melvald’s is slow today. 

Of course, that’s nothing out of the ordinary. Melvald’s is always slow. You don’t think there has ever been such a thing as a morning or afternoon rush within these cluttered walls, and you’re fine with that. 

You have to be, because it’s not like you have a lot of other options left in Hawkins. 

After everything went back to normal again — as normal as normal can be, considering the circumstances — you didn’t dare go back to ask for your job at Benny’s. You tell yourself it’s because you’ve got too much self-respect for that (and certainly not because you’re quite sure they’ll laugh you out of the building if you tried) so now you stock shelves at Melvald’s.

The hours are long and the pay is crap, but your commute is a quick ten-minute walk, and that’s more than you can ask for. Because you never got your car back after you went sailing out the front doors at Benny’s with the singular purpose of finding Eddie, getting out of town, and never coming back – a purpose you mostly succeeded in. 

Mostly.

You found Eddie, but you never managed to get around to getting out of town. You did eventually end up coming back, though only to discover that while you were away your trusty little Toyota Corolla had been towed.

Figures. 

Funny how you can’t just leave a vehicle sitting unclaimed in a private lot for over a month and expect there to be no consequences. 

By the time you got around to finding your car, you ended up having to sell the damn thing just to cover the impound fees, and you quickly learned that despite what all those sappy greeting cards like to say, you can put a price on your memories. Hundreds of hours of carpooling trips to and from school and the arcade and movies and innumerable Corroded Coffin gigs, all the jam sessions and make-out sessions and “you gotta hear this song” sessions that resulted in blown out speakers and deeply existential conversations and fights about nothing and everything. All the time and people, friends and lovers and emotions permeating it’s dingy cloth seats and hard plastic siding was whisked away in the blink of an eye. 

Your bittersweet adolescence, gone in exchange for a measly four thousand dollars. Somehow, you’re never going to forgive yourself for letting it go like that. 

And yet, for as sad as you were to part with and old friend, it wasn’t all bad, because even with most of that blood money sent off to the Roane County municipality, you still had a little left over. 

Enough to get the van towed out of the ditch and back into working order, at least. It wasn’t pretty, and it needed more work than any of you could really wrap your heads around just to bring it back to its previous semi-shitty condition, but it was alive and that was all that mattered. 

If selling your car meant that Eddie didn’t have to lose anything else, then you were happy to let it go.

Anyway, you like your walk to work. It’s short enough that it doesn’t give you time to think about anything that isn’t immediately in front of you. It doesn’t remind you of anything you might be mourning from back in the good old days, and it means, if need be, you can get home as fast as humanly possible.

Unlike at Benny’s, nobody at Melvald’s gives you shit if you have to go sailing out the front doors and across the parking lot to rescue Eddie from his demons.

That mile-and-back commute does not, however, keep you safe from the perils of being late for work. Not in the cold blue light of morning, when Eddie snakes his arms around you and holds you hostage, leaving sleepy, sloven kisses down the stretch of your neck and sending shivers up the length of your spine as he begs you for five more minutes, and five more minutes after that. 

You find that you have a hard time arguing with him on mornings like that when the only thing that can chase away the lingering sting of bad dreams and worse memories is to lay pressed together in a heap of tangled limbs, listening to the muted thump thump thumping of his beating heart and feeling the steady rise and fall of his chest as he breathes.

You’re spending a lot of mornings like that lately, laying in as late as you possibly can before slinking into work a cool twenty minutes late. And if anyone on Melvald’s barebones staff cares about that, you haven’t heard about it. Even if you did, the feeling would not be mutual.

Who gives a shit where you decide to spend your mornings? Mornings are for people who never came so close to losing everything, so what’s the harm in five more minutes? 

Plenty, it turns out, when you finally manage to extract yourself from that tangled mess of limbs and are hit with a wave of nausea like a speeding train the moment you sit up. You were late to work this morning, sure, though not because you couldn’t stop indulging Eddie in five more minutes, it was because you couldn’t stop your insides from turning into outsides and spent almost a full half hour with your head in the toilet.

You mostly don’t wanna talk about that. 

If you have to, you chalk it up to the bizarre sickness you can’t seem to shake. You just can’t stomach much of anything these days, except for herbal tea, and that is only consumed against your will, because herbal tea is gross, despite how it’s the only thing that abates your nausea. 

Well, you thought it did. 

Joyce Byers is on an extended smoke break, so you’re alone in the store when it hits you. 

One minute, you’re sitting behind the cash wrap, absently flipping through Cosmopolitan Magazine with a steadily cooling cup of stagnant bog water at your elbow, and then someone hits the ejector button. The next thing you know, you’re sprinting for the bathroom with a harsh squeak of Chucks on linoleum.

You barely make it to the stall in time to send your prayers to that eternal porcelain god.

Zero to sixty in half a second, just like this morning and every other morning this week. 

By the time you come slinking in again from the employee’s bathroom, wiping your mouth with the back of your hand, Joyce is still not back from her fifteen-going-on thirty minute break. There are no customers, no coworkers, just you and the lingering air of your spectacular Regan MacNeil impression – getting better and better every day – because it’s just another boring Thursday afternoon, and Melvald’s is always slow. 

Your insides cramp with the threat of sustained illness as you slide in behind the cash register, ready to resume the spell of your boredom, then, you find yourself face to face with a pharmaceutical ad you don’t remember seeing when you last flipped the page. 

You stare down at the image of a beautiful woman with her face stretched into a wide, open mouth smile, which is manic enough that you could easily mistake her for screaming rather than laughing. 

You begin to feel a cold, creeping dread raising the hair on your neck and arms as you read the copy. 

“Morning sickness? Not me!” 

Jesus Christ, you think with no small amount of disgust, Somebody got paid a million dollars to write this – and yet all it takes is those four measly little words.

They fall into place one right after the other, each with a hollow boom that sends shockwaves radiating out across the expanse of your body with goosebumps. A previously darkened part of your brain slowly begins switching on as the phrase is fed through its internal processor over and over until something starts to come into focus.

A question you haven’t yet asked yourself, and the answer you’ve been subconsciously dodging, like lightning in the storm of your sudden onset illness.

Morning sickness? Not me… surely not me…

Still, you immediately begin counting the weeks on your fingers and think yourself in circles, trying desperately to remember when you had your last period. Last week? Last month? You don’t remember. You’ve never been the type of person to keep regular track of something like that, though only because you never needed to. 

You were a virgin until you met Eddie and now you can’t seem to recall when you had your last period.

It takes you too long to remember, and when you do, you don’t believe it, so you count it out three times just to be certain and swallow hard against the sick feeling roiling in your esophagus.

January… February… March… March? No, that can’t be right… 

You rustle a piece of scratch paper from the register to draw it out so you can visualize it, and when the data still doesn’t change, you get up to go and find the calendar in the employee’s locker room just to be certain that it really is – June. 

According to your math, you haven’t had a period since March, and according to the calendar, that was two months ago. 

Holy Shit.

If you were thinking rationally, you might understand how two months could pass without a person noticing, especially when they’ve been living their life by the second. 

But you’re not thinking rationally, and if you were being honest, you haven’t been since last Spring. 

Time stopped for you in the other place, when Eddie’s heart stopped down on the wrong side of the world, and ever since you slipped back through, it hasn’t really started back up again in a way you can wrap your head around. You live your life by the days of the week, so how were you supposed to know something was amiss when your only basis of passing time is “it’s Thursday again,”? 

Something heavy settles in the pit of your stomach and you feel like you could be sick again as the facts begin to present themselves in neat little lines. 

You and Eddie are living together now. 

After everything that happened, when the dust finally settled on the Forest Hills trailer park, the folks from the Hawkins Lab came out from their fortress like feudal lords in lab coats. They took samples, corded things off with a mountain of red tape, performed test upon test upon test on the ruined contents of the trailer, and after all was said and done, it was deemed “uninhabitable”. 

Which meant the Munsons were out of house and home. Wayne, it turns out, could get temporary housing through the Plant, but only so long as he was actively working. Someone was going to have to be the steward of Eddie’s recovery once he got out of the hospital (and that was shaping up to be a full time job in and of itself) but if Wayne took any time off to take care of him, he was going to lose his bid for company housing. Without it, he would have to move the pair of them back into the extended stay rooms in the Motel 6 out on the interstate, which he could only afford to pay for if he was earning a steady paycheck – such are the perils of selling your soul to the company store. 

So, Eddie came to live with you in your icebox of a basement apartment, which seemed like the most practical, level headed idea until you were left alone and the reality of your sudden and total privacy settled in. It didn’t take long for the both of you to completely lose your minds in a haze of traumatic aftermath and unchecked hormones.

To you, it was the greatest idea anyone had ever had in the history of mankind – to your neighbors, Eddie moving in has been a catastrophic turn for the worse. 

Because at the end of the day you’re just a couple of horny kids, sharing four hundred square feet of space, most of which just so happens to be taken up by a queen sized bed. 

There have been noise complaints abound, but honestly, what did anyone expect to happen? 

And what did you expect to happen when all either of you seem to do outside of basic human function is fuck like bunny rabbits? 

You bury your face in your hands and choke on a horrified moan as you wrack your brain trying to think if, in fourteen months of domestic bliss, you ever once remembered to use protection..

The answer is a resounding no.

Who has time for condoms when you’re busy living your life to the fullest? What’s the saying? Wrap it before you tap it? Not me! You both almost died, remember? Live a little! 

At least that’s been the logic for fourteen fucking months. 

Jesus wept. 

In the silence of the store, in between the waning notes of royalty-free Muzak and the gentle murmur of outside traffic, you can hear the tick, tick, ticking of the overhead clock. Wretched time, quietly counting down the seconds as potential disaster comes hurtling toward you like an atomic bomb.

Your stomach is cramping again as you move out from behind the cash wrap and stagger over to aisle three on stiff legs–

Oh my God Oh my God Oh my God Oh my God 

– where you drop to balance on the balls of your feet and come face to face with the little white and purple boxes hanging there – pregnancy tests. 

You think back to the way you’d so casually racked them the day before and cannot believe it never once crossed your mind. 

Morning sickness. 

Except you aren’t just sick in the morning, are you? You’re sick all the time, any hour of the day… so it’s probably not that, right? You probably just contracted some weird parasite at the lake or from a bad burger and now it’s wreaking havoc in your guts, right? 

Right! a condescending voice tells you, It’s called a fetus. 

Your mind outright rejects the notion, but now that the idea is there, the hint of nagging possibility will not be dismissed. So you sit there, eyeing the vaguely feminine graphic design, promising quick results in big bold letters.

Ten minutes or less. 

You nibble your thumb and reach for the box before thinking better and stopping short.  

Do you really want to know? And what are the consequences if you decide you don’t? 

Maybe nothing. 

Maybe big ones. Big round baby-belly-shaped ones. 

You abuse your lower lip between your teeth and glance reflexively at your watch, which you discover is not there, but you’re too pressed to notice as you twist around to find the clock on the wall — half past one, and still no sign of Joyce. 

You turn back to the promise on the box burning itself into your retinas — ten minutes or less — and count the months again. 

The math doesn’t change. You’re definitely late, which means you are definitely— 

Shut up! Don’t say it, don’t jinx it! 

Then again maybe not…it’s a fifty-fifty chance, either you are or you aren’t. The answer lies in front of you, readily available in ten minutes or less. 

…So, what’s ten minutes? 

Joyce is still on a smoke break, so there is no one to cover for you, but what can possibly happen to an unmanned store in ten minutes? In Hawkins? On a Thursday?

Melvald’s is always slow — what are the odds you’re going to be hit with the first rush in the history of it’s time as a brick and mortar staple if you decide to pop back into the bathroom for a moment? 

Ten minutes more like.

You tell yourself it doesn’t mean anything as you snatch the box off the shelf and wobble back out of the aisle on stiff legs. 

Back to the employee’s restroom to take a pregnancy test – the reality of that information is profoundly disturbing. 

You’ve never taken a test before — never had to — but you distinctly remember instances back in High school where you’d been enlisted to stand guard outside of a bathroom stall while Carol Perkins and Tina Burton took “just in case” tests. 

You just want to sate a curiosity — just in case. What’s the harm in taking a test? 

It’s ten measly minutes. 

When Joyce finally comes back in, it’s been fourty-five minutes since she originally left, and you’re a vibrating ball of nervous energy. You sit, bouncing your knee erratically, fidgeting with the ring with the dark stone sitting snug on your finger – a promise, given, returned, and given again, pulling your t-shirt up and asking for five more minutes… just five more minutes – and she greets you with a tight-lipped smile.

You hardly wait for her to get through the door before you’re rounding the counter.

“I don’t feel well,” You say in a garbled rush, snatching your bag from where you’ve had it strategically stashed at your feet since you slunk back out from the restroom a second time, “D’you think it’ll be okay if I head out?”

She blinks back at you, and for a very brief moment, you’re terrified that for the first time since you started here, someone is finally going to give a shit about you leaving.

Thank God Melvald’s is always slow. 

“Oh. Sure, Honey. That’s–” Joyce begins, brows tweaked together in confusion as you rush past her.

You’re out the door and headed up the street before she can finish asking if you’re alright. 

You don’t think you could stand to answer that question right now, and she couldn’t help you even if you did. 

You need a quiet place to sit and think. You need to be swaddled in a blanket of cloying familiarity while you watch the rest of your world come crumbling down. You need… Eddie?  

No, a voice answers, startling you almost as much as what you’d learned in those previous ten minutes. You don’t need Eddie. Not right now, at least.

Right now, what you need is for it to be like it used to be. You need an adult, you need to go home, but you don't live there anymore, and your parents haven’t lived in Hawkins since the Summer of 1985. You can't even call them, because if you do, they’re just going to come down here and try to take you away again, like they did when you got out of the hospital.

You can’t have a repeat of that mess. You can’t leave Eddie, but you also can’t face him just yet. You need to be sure before you can go home, and before that, you need to get as far away from Melvald’s as you possibly can.

You briefly consider calling Wayne, just to try and get the closest thing you can to fatherly advice, but what is he going to do for you? What is anyone supposed to do for you right now besides tell you that you ought to have known better? 

You don’t need to be told what you already know. You need a second opinion, and you cannot get that sitting at home, socked in to four hundred square feet of domestic bliss with the ghost that haunts those walls.

But there is nowhere else you can go … not unless you want to make that long hike up Cornwallis and bang on the Henderson’s door like it’s the good old days and you’re there to babysit. 

You’re not about to submit yourself to the abject humiliation of Dustin (or, God forbid, Claudia Henderson) finding out, because you can’t just go closing yourself up in their hall bathroom for ten minutes (or less) with no explanation. You'd have to tell them what was wrong, why you couldn't use your own bathroom, and you're not ready for that kind of drama.

You can just picture the look Dustin would give you, admonishing you with a terse utterance of your name and a heaping helping of as much paternal disdain as a fifteen year old boy can manage. 

“Why weren’t you using protection?” He would demand, “— that’s the first thing they teach us in health class,” followed very quickly by a not so gentle reminder that “they hand out condoms at school like candy!” 

As if you didn’t know that. As if you (and everyone you knew) didn’t used to come home with those shiny little packages lining the inside of your bookbag like legal contraband. For the duration of your tenure at Hawkins High, you lived in the surety that you could open any drawer in your bedroom and be sure to find a condom there.

Not that you needed one. 

You were a virgin until you met Eddie, but none of that is any of Dustin’s business, and beyond the fact that you’re not in school anymore, you’re not going to go all the way up to his house just to take a pregnancy test.

You don’t need to, the soiled plastic applicator you’d hidden way down at the bottom of the wastebasket back in Melvald’s employee bathroom has already told you everything you need to know.

Suddenly, all you want to do is go home, crawl into bed and pull the covers over your head. You want to go back to the days of everyone telling you “you’re just a kid,” and you want to revel in the frustration of it.

More than anything, you want to smack yourself in the face for ever daring to suggest you were “grown up” enough for anything.

You’re just a kid. Eddie is just a kid. How could this have happened? Why on Earth didn't anybody stop you?

You just want to go home, but you can’t go home. Not yet, so you walk. One foot in front of the other, aimlessly without really seeing, and the next thing you know, you’re sitting at the warped, termite infested picnic bench in the woods behind Hawkins High, and you have no memory of getting there.

You know you should be more concerned about that.

Your shift is technically over at three, and you really should try to get home sometime around then (just so Eddie doesn't start to worry) but time was fake before you slipped back into the eternal dark of November ’83, and now you have no use for it at all, especially when you're so patently avoiding going home.

It seems like just yesterday you were sprinting out into the parking lot at Benny’s, ready to throw caution and everything you ever thought was important to the wind to go and save the jerk who’d so spectacularly broken your heart the previous summer – fifty-four Saturdays ago, your subconscious unhelpfully informs you.   

It’s a wonder you’d actually convinced yourself that anything of what followed that week could be the scariest thing you’d ever have to endure. Turns out, giant man eating bats and interdimensional wizards are nothing compared to realizing your period is two months late. 

You trace your thumb across the faded carvings in the tabletop and linger over your inscribed initials x E.M. – you did that, in the summer between your Sophomore and Junior year, in the first weeks of your official attachment to Eddie.

It felt like such an important gesture back then, but you had no idea what important looked like in those days.

You think back to those stupid kids who pledged to stand together against the world without knowing what that really meant, or just how viciously people could hate, and your heart throbs.

After everything that happened, Munson Mania in Hawkins has never been worse. 

The good people of Roane County had already done all the mental gymnastics to decide that Eddie killed Chrissy. It fit perfectly in their narrative about him, and it would be too much work to untangle the mess they made coming to that conclusion, no matter what the second coming of Jim Hopper said. Guilty or not, they whisper among themselves, point fingers, hurl insults, and shout accusations. 

Freak. Murderer. Psycho killer – qu’est-ce que c’est? – Barbed wire candy-grams for the town pariah, hurled like molotov cocktails, even in the light of the truth. The murky, inconclusive truth.

You had to learn how to adapt very quickly to the ramped-up prejudices of all these nice God-fearing people, because for a while there, Eddie couldn’t even walk down the street without fear of being reminded that everyone in this town thinks he’d be better off dead. The bolder of the good people of Hawkins have no shame about telling him so, either. 

Now, Eddie stays mostly out of sight of all your neighbors and you take care of everything that has to be done.

You go out, do all the shopping, work to pay the bills, keep your life support afloat and you bend yourself painfully out of shape to be his shield. You provide the bread and butter and all the love he could ever possibly need. You smother him in it, keep him well fed and swaddled in affection so that he never has to feel the cold touch of its absence. 

You're everything to him. Friend, lover, caretaker – you wish there was room for just a little bit of help in that, but Eddie doesn't have friends anymore.

He just has you.

Anyway, how are you supposed to explain to Adam and Jeff and Gareth that the Eddie lurking in the shadows of your basement apartment isn’t the Eddie they remember? What would they say if they knew he can’t make his fingers work well enough to play the guitar anymore, or that he can barely even look at his D&D books without breaking into a cold sweat? 

You know what they’d say – they’d want to know why. They’d want to know what the hell happened, because when they’d tried to visit Eddie in the hospital, they got one look at him before making a bullshit excuse about needing to leave, and he didn’t want to see them again after that. 

So now, when they call (and they so seldom call, these days) you tell them he's fine, and you hold them at bay, because it's your job to protect Eddie, no matter what. If that includes keeping all his friends in the dark, then so be it.  

If you can’t get around to explaining what happened to Eddie, and what is so terribly wrong with him, you can’t even imagine trying to break the news that you’re pregnant.

Christ, how are you supposed to tell people when you can barely conceptualize it yourself?

How are you supposed to tell Eddie?

He can barely hear that you’re going to be working late or picking up a shift, because it means he’s going to have to stretch his imagination to find ways to occupy his time without you. It means a change in his routine, and routine is all he has besides bad habits and nightmares.  

And now you’re just supposed to add a whole other person to that? One who can’t take care of themself or tell you what’s wrong or when they need something or when they’re on the brink of death or… or or or…? 

Your stomach is in knots again, because having a baby is suddenly starting to sound just like having a whole other Eddie to take care of, and you can hardly manage one of him. 

You have no idea how he is going to react to hearing that your tight little twosome is about to expand.

Eddie doesn’t have a lot of things that are strictly his, and when it comes to those things he is not exactly the sharing type. 

He’ll go blue in the face arguing he doesn’t get jealous, then turn around and have a conniption when you stay on the shore of Lovers Lake with Dustin and send him out in the boat with the others… dot dot dot - dash dash dash - dot dot dot…

You bite back the cloying scent of mildew suddenly filling your sinuses and dig shallow crescent moons into your palms until you feel your feet touch back down on Earth. Then, all the hideous questions you’ve been successfully holding at bay all afternoon come flooding in like the tide. 

What if Eddie doesn’t want this? What if this is one of those cataclysmic deal breakers and you lose him forever… again? 

And why does this all suddenly feel like your fault? 

In an instant, you’re once more brimming with that irrational anger, because if this is anyone’s fault, it’s his. He’s the one who always wants five more minutes, who pulls you back into bed and paws at your clothes and does all the little things he knows you can’t resist and takes and takes and takes. 

He’s the one who did all the work – what did Carol and Tina used to call it? The good ol’ pump and dump? 

How many mornings have ended with Eddie taking those five minutes more, then rolling over to go back to sleep while you run around trying to clean up the evidence and pull yourself back into shape?

He’s the master behind this little ritual, you’re just the vessel – and what is the vessel for if not to carry the seed?  

You need to walk, you need to think. You need to talk to Eddie.

You take the long way home, going past the haunts of your youth and all the places you don’t go anymore. All the places you’ll never go again — all the places that don’t exist like your childhood home, the Starcourt Mall, Benny’s Diner, and the cozy little double wide on the far end of town, and you think about how Hawkins is a ghost town that doesn’t know its dead. 

You walk, and you think about Eddie, like you always do.

You think about how bad those first few months were, about his nightmares and how he could barely stand to shut his eyes, let alone sleep because of the monsters waiting for him beyond the hypnotic pull of his circadian rhythms. You think about how in the beginning, sometimes he didn’t even have to close his eyes to become trapped down there in the dark again. 

You think about how hard you’ve worked to get him to where he is now, all the blood, sweat, and tears it has taken to curb the itch for all the bad habits that got infinitely worse in his attempt to soothe all the things that hurt. Everything you had to do to center your world around his needs, his worries, his recovery, to make him feel safe. It’s taken a long time, with a lot of set backs, and a lot of bad days, but you tell yourself that you’re happy to have them at all. 

Recovery is a road, not a destination, or at least that’s what Eddie’s physical therapists liked to say before he quit on them – if all you have to worry about is making sure the rent is paid and the pantry is stocked and the door is barred against the monsters out there, you’re fine with that. 

Nevermind your nightmares and all the little things you have to do to cope.

You’re only the one who had to sit there and lie to Eddie that everything was going to be okay while his lips turned blue and his eyes went dark. You’re the one who had to stand at a basin in the hospital and try to scrub his blood out of your clothes, your skin, your hair and lock your knees to stay upright while you did everything you could to try and keep your shit together.

You’re the one who had to sit at his bedside and tune yourself in to the new normal of monitored heartbeats and machines forcing compressed air into collapsed lungs, feeling so incredibly helpless to do anything but wonder how you ever told such a hideous lie. 

Everything is gonna be okay… you wish you could make yourself believe that. 

On your really bad days, that helpless feeling comes roaring back so powerfully you feel like you’re going to collapse in on yourself like a dying star. It's those days that you can’t pull yourself away from Eddie no matter what, where you need those five minutes just as badly as he does, because you’re the one who sat there and told him he was going to be okay and then watched him die.  

And then, when the feeling passes, you pull yourself up, straighten yourself out, and you go to work, because the only thing that matters is Eddie.  

He’s the only thing you can count on when the world gets too loud, the memories of that other place get too close, and you begin to feel yourself slipping away. He’s the only thing keeping you grounded, even if he doesn’t know it, and you’re suddenly so worried that introducing a third element to your duet will blur those lines again. 

You think about all your progress, how on your best days it almost feels like things are back to good, and you think about how all of that hard work is about to become extremely fucking secondary to the little parasite nestled in your womb – not a baby so much as a tapeworm.

The notion causes your insides to stir with anxiety.

How could you have been so careless?

And why would you or anyone expect anything else to happen when you’re just a couple of stupid kids playing house and sharing a studio apartment, which is getting smaller by the moment. 

Kids having kids. 

You should have known better. 

Because time isn’t real, the sun is starting to set by the time you finally make your way home, well past three o'clock.

Past Melvald’s and ten minutes down the street to the concrete stone steps and into the recessed well containing the red door, marked with a tarnished silver six. You can still see the faintest outline of the other two sixes someone recently graffitied on either side of the metal placard – just in case anyone happened to forget who lives here – and suddenly you think you can hear the distant tones of Iron Maiden playing somewhere beyond.  

Let him who hath understanding reckon the number of the beast, for it is a human number… 

It is not the first time you’ve had the misfortune of living in Apartment 666, and as you fumble with your keys and glare at the lingering shadow of permanent marker on paint, you are certain it won’t be the last. 

Funny how you never used to hate Hawkins before. 

Now, you’re painted red with the feeling as you plunge the key into the lock and twist it hard enough that someday you’re certain the blade is going to snap off (and then what are you going to do?) Today, however, is not that day. 

As you turn the key you hear the rotor shift over with a satisfying THUNK. You twist the handle, push the door, and nothing happens. 

You groan to stop yourself from screaming, because despite what you think, the door is not out to get you. 

You’re just having a very bad day. 

The humidity the humidity signaling the inevitable heatwaves of the Indiana summer causes your front door to swell and stick, and you have to give it a firm kick to force it open. You know this, despite how you may have forgotten under the weight of everything else currently on your mind. 

And yet, today, when the door sticks, it feels personal. 

You grit your teeth and shut your eyes against it as you put your foot in the door and give it one more solid push. It swings inward, taking you with it and sending you staggering across the threshold and into the apartment. 

The door swings shut behind you with a loud THUMP, and all goes quiet inside your head. 

Just like that, you’re home. 

A singular room made up of kitchen, dining, living, and bed area, all squeezed into four hundred square feet of what the landlord had originally referred to as “cozy living”, when it was just you and your broken heart.

Now, it’s a chaotic mish-mash of all your things and what you could salvage of Eddie’s before someone went and burned what was left of the Munson residence to a smoking husk. 

When you get in, he is sitting on the unmade bed wearing the same sweat-stained t-shirt and pair of ratty pants he’s been in for the last three days. His hair is greasy and hanging limply around his face, which is lined in the shadow of a patchy stubble. You try to think back to the last time you remember him showering, shaving, brushing his teeth, doing anything but laying in bed watching television.

You aren’t shocked when the memory fails to arrive. 

Don’t be unkind, that gentle voice comes again. You stamp it out before it can finish. It’s hard to be kind when all you have to cling to is the way things used to be. 

Eddie used to have hobbies and interests and friends. Now, he only watches television and reads the TV guide until he’s got it memorized and waits for you to get home so he can use you to chase his demons away.

Eddie’s depressed and you’re pregnant – it’s not much to go on, competition-wise, but the poison of your mood is inclined to suggest that you got the short end of the stick on that one, considering it’s his depression that got you that way.  

Nothing gives such an instant boost of dopamine like an orgasm, after all. 

The apartment is a mess. There are dirty clothes and dishes everywhere, mixed in with piles of the clean you have yet to put away. Socks and underwear hang draped off the backs of the two rickety dining chairs from where you’d washed them in the sink and lay them to dry six days ago. The bedsheets are pushed down and hanging off the mattress, exposing half a dozen Hostess wrappers sitting on the rumpled, stained top sheet. 

And there sits Eddie in the middle of it all with a hand down his pants and a lit cigarette pinched between his lips. 

Your blood flash freezes and boils. 

He’s supposed to be quitting. That same gentle – nagging – voice whines from the back of your mind. And he promised he wouldn’t smoke inside. 

You have to clench your teeth until your ears start ringing to shut that little voice up. 

“Hey!” Eddie yelps the moment you appear, leaping up and waving his arms around to try and disperse the smoke as he kicks the evidence of his afternoon indulgence off of the mattress and steps down with a hard thump – he’s limping ever so slightly as he crosses the room to you, “Hi! Shit… um… this isn’t what it looks like,”

Which is a bald faced lie – it is exactly what it looks like, and suddenly you can’t stop the mental tally of all the things you asked him to do today, and all the things that remain undone. 

It makes your skin itch, then as he gets closer, you see the holes in his socks – holes in his neck and ribs where he’d nearly been eaten alive – and you remember too late that you’d promised to pick him up a new pack of crew socks on your way home from work. You forgot. 

Part of you supposes that makes you even, and you stuff it down with everything else you’re not presently available to feel. 

You decide you don’t care. 

You don’t care that he’s smoking again even though he’s still not fully recovered from his collapsed lung, or that he gave up on physical therapy because it was too hard, or that he never does anything he says he’s going to and still always expects you to give him five more minutes.

And he probably still expects you to let him fuck you later on, even after all that. 

You don’t care you don’t care you don’t care. 

And after a moment, you’re surprised to find that you really don’t, (you do, you really fucking do) you’re just trying to see where the cigarette went when he less-than-subtly flicked it away.

The last thing you need to end your shitty day is to have the apartment burn down.  

Eddie mistakes your silence for anger, as he always does, and you watch him begin to fidget as he waits for you to speak. 

You don’t, because you don’t have anything to say, but also because he’s not wrong. You are angry.

You’re standing there, clenching your teeth and fists and doing everything in your power to swallow the urge to yell at him, or to nit pick all the things that are out of place in your apartment – no, not just yours anymore. He lives here, too – this is his home now.

“Where’ve you been?” Eddie asks when the tense silence becomes too much. “I was starting to get worried,” 

He reaches for you and you surprise yourself by letting him pull you into a tight hug that feels a tad too much like it’s meant to try and distract you from everything he evidently decided was less important than smoking cigarettes, eating Twinkies, and playing with himself. 

You’re mad as hell, and if you were paying any attention you would realize that the emotion is getting stronger by the moment, but you lean into him and snake your arms around Eddie’s midsection. You bury your face in his shirt and sigh against him as you chase the comfort of his embrace, waiting for the world to fall away and the cocoon of his safety to envelope you. 

Once upon a time, all you needed was a good Eddie hug to chase your worries away. Now, under his touch, all you can think is how he reeks of nicotine and smoke and days old deodorant and everything else that comes with unwashed boy.

But you have to remind yourself that you don’t care, because he says he was getting worried. 

“You were?” you ask, and your voice sounds odd against your ears. 

“Yeah,” he shifts back and holds you to the spot, like he needs to get a good look at you to make sure you’re still you and that nothing has changed in the few hours it’s been since you left that morning — he worries so much these days. “I went to get you from work when you didn’t come home,” He says. “But you weren’t there.” 

It sounds strangely accusatory, and you aren’t exactly sure what to do with that as a solid lump begins to form in the back of your throat. 

He rubs his hands up and down your arms in a soothing gesture, like he’s attempting to create friction in slow motion. It’s something he’s always done that has been comforting in the past, but right now it is only making a sore spot where he’s rubbing the skin raw. 

You look from his attempt at gentle, reverent contact to where he is carefully watching you, and feel your brows creep toward one another as that irrational anger begins to rise in the pit of your belly.

This is all his fault, and part of you seems to think he knows that, even if he doesn’t know. 

“Okay, I can see that you’re mad…” Eddie starts, doing his utmost to remain as diplomatic as possible so as not to set you off but also to accept no responsibility, “… are you mad?” 

You don’t answer. You don’t even look at him, instead you crane your neck trying to see around him to find that goddamn cigarette before it can catch and send everything up in smoke… literally. 

You feel Eddie’s fingers flex on your biceps.

“Don’t be mad. I was gonna get around to it, I swear, but then you didn’t come home from work and… and I was worried! I didn’t know where you were,” . 

Anger subsides — if only briefly — and you get almost all the way around to feeling guilty about that until you clock the cigarette butt smoldering on the yellowing linoleum in front of the kitchen sink, and then Eddie finishes his sentence. 

“...And I didn’t know if you were gonna be home for dinner,” 

He flinches when your head snaps around and you finally level him with a poisonous look. 

“So you smoked half a pack of camels and ate a box of Twinkies?” you scoff. 

You want to ask where he even got those, but then you remember. He went to Melvald’s looking for you, and when he didn’t find you there, he must have figured he deserved a treat for braving the big, scary world. 

He gets a treat and you get to watch your world crumble – you could spit fire. 

Eddie’s mouth falls open like he’s going to say something to defend himself, but then he just laughs. You can tell it’s out of nerves rather than humor, the way he always does when he’s caught red handed and doesn’t know what to say to get himself out of trouble. 

You would punch him if you weren’t half certain he would break into a thousand pieces if you did. Even then you’re not so sure you’d feel worse about breaking your boyfriend or having to vacuum him up off the floor after. 

“I was worried!” Eddie insists when you turn away and throw your keys into the dish with a thunderous crash.

“You said that already.”  You snap, storming across the tiny living space and stooping to pinch the half burned stock of cinders and throw it into the sink with a hiss. 

You almost wish that he would have just given you that kicked puppy look, then you could have at least felt bad about biting his head off. But no, he had to go and get irreverent on you. 

Hi honey, welcome home! I know I said I would clean up and do some house work and stop smoking so I don’t get lung cancer by the time I’m thirty and die, but you see, I can’t be fucked to care about anything but myself! But remember, it’s not my fault, I’m depressed!

You’d spent so much time worrying about what you were going to say to him, how you were going to break the news, but as you step out of your shoes and drop your bag onto it’s designated doorside hook, you decide that if he can’t be fucked than neither can you.

Those little pink lines say differently. 

You suddenly feel ready to burst. 

You cross to the bed, snatch up one of the pillows and press it to your face, then you scream as loud and long as you can. When you’re satisfied that your lungs are completely flattened, you lean forward and drop down onto the mattress with a muffled THUMP, and let the tide take you out. 

It’s just one more thing that douses you in a fresh layer of red. Because your first foray into real adulthood didn’t begin with moving in together, or engaging in excessive amounts of sex just because you could, or even the unexpected addition to your lives — it began with the waterbed Eddie had insisted upon. 

After he was discharged from the hospital, you learned very quickly that your mattress was too soft for his broken body, and the nice, “sensibly priced” one you’d gone out and tried to replace it with had ended up being too firm. 

After all that talk and research and careful consideration, all the work you put into trying to make him comfortable in his new home, in this new situation, and the mattress was too goddamn firm. 

Then came the waterbed, and Eddie’s first full night of sleep since leaving the hospital, and you didn’t dream of sending the damned thing back, no matter how badly you hated it. 

You still hate it as you lie there, coasting on the waves and stewing in all the ugly thoughts and feelings and emotions that you are meant to be safe from inside the vacuum chamber of your apartment. 

For a time, all you hear is the muffled sloshing of the trussed up waterballoon and the gentle murmuring of informercials playing on the half muted television. Then, you hear the slow thump of footsteps approaching and feel the mattress dip and slosh beside you. 

Your guts heave and for a brief, yet terrifying moment, the nausea returns. 

“...D’you wanna talk about it?” Eddie asks tentatively from somewhere not nearly close enough. 

“No.” You say, knowing well enough that this is not a conversation you can keep putting off. 

“Okay…” he says, sucks his teeth, then tries again, “D’you wanna hear about my day?”

“No.” You insist. 

“Great. So today, I got up at a reasonable hour and totally didn’t sleep in until two-thirty again. I did everything you asked me to and ate a healthy, full balanced meal and only watched, like, half an hour of tv – don’t worry, just PBS, Babe, only the really boring, educational shit. But I swear on my life, this whole place was spotless … and then out of no where – WHAM! You’ll never guess what happened.” 

He pauses for effect, and waits for you to play along, to rise to his prompting like you normally do, but he’s sorely mistaken if he thinks you’re in the mood for games. You wire your jaw shut and leave him waiting for you to answer. When you don’t, Eddie repeats himself,

“You’ll never guess what happened.” 

Finally, he prods you sharply under the armpit with two fingers, and you flinch, curling into yourself with the kind of high yelp that can only come from being tickled. 

“Ask me what happened.” he prompts when you uncover your face to glare at him. 

You tell yourself you won’t, but you’ve never been able to resist him, even when you’re mad. Especially when you’re mad, and especially with the way he’s leaning over and looking at you, all soft eyes and long lashes. Because in spite of the smoking and the lying and everything else, every part of you loves every part of him, even when you want to punch him in the face. 

“What happened.” You mutter reluctantly, not a question so much as a submission – Eddie smiles. 

It’s a half hearted thing that doesn’t reach his eyes, but you know what it’s meant to convey – Good Girl. Your heart skips a beat and you kick yourself for still being so stupid for him, even after all this time. You’re supposed to be mad at him. 

He shrugs. 

“Killer Klowns,” He says, and you roll your eyes.

“...you gotta be kidding.”

You turn away to bury your face back in the pillow, and Eddie keeps on talking and talking and talking, because that’s all he does anymore – try to talk himself out of trouble. Funny, the way he never seems to remember how that never works for him. 

“Baby? Baby – hand to God…” he says, pausing again. You just lie there and wait for him to finish, “...They were from Outer Space.”

And when his joking fails to garner any sort of joy, the sentiment goes out of him in an almost tangible wave. For a moment, there’s nothing but measured silence as the refrigerator kicks on and vibrates gently against his guitar, hidden from sight and collecting dust. 

In the interval of time between your release from the hospital and Eddie’s homecoming, you went looking for what could be saved in the wreckage of the Munson trailer. Thankfully, you knew where to look for what was most precious, like the family photos and heirlooms. You rescued what you could and replaced what you couldn’t, but there are some things that are too precious to ever replace.

Things like Eddie’s guitar.

When the world came tumbling down in those last few moments of whatever the hell happened at the end there, Sweetheart had taken brutal damage, and that was before someone burned the place down. She was barely clinging to life when you finally unearthed her from the rubble – all but one of her strings had snapped, the heat of the fire had caused her resin to bubble and warp, and without its protective layer, someone had been able to stomp her body nearly to oblivion. 

The violence of it broke your heart, and you’re not ashamed to admit you’d kneeled over her carcass and wept when you found her.

It made you physically sick to have to return her to Eddie in such a state, but there was only so much you could do without taking time and money you couldn’t spare to get her out to the Guitar Center in Indianapolis. 

She’d once been his prized possession, the focal point of his bedroom put on proud display, the only other woman in his life, now, she’s just some forgotten thing tucked into the space between the refrigerator and the wall, hidden from sight and collecting dust. 

Somehow that’s worse than any of it. 

Eddie told you it was because the apartment was so small and she fit so perfectly in that alcove, but you know it’s because after all that happened, he can’t stand to look at her. 

The refrigerator vibrates against her twisted body, and slowly, the room begins to fill with the muted buzz of a low E.

“I’m sorry, Sweetheart.” Eddie sighs, and it takes you a moment to realize he’s talking to you.

You feel the mattress dip as his hand comes down to rest at the side of your hip, caging you in beneath him, “I’m just trying to make you feel better… honest.” 

You heave a weighted sigh and roll over onto your back, throwing your arms over your eyes and baring down until you see spots and colors and stars. He settles down over you, and when you feel his weight come down to rest on your belly, your heart briefly palpitates. 

You have to stifle the urge to tell him to be careful, because he doesn’t know. How could he know? You haven’t told him. 

“I’m sorry,” He says again, and you can’t help yourself. 

“You’re always sorry when you get caught, but you always do it again.” You bite. 

You feel the corner of his mouth twitch against you and for a long time you both just lie there, wondering how the hell you got here. 

You like to think that under normal circumstances you might not stick around for so much bullshit, but unfortunately for you, your life never got back to normal after you put it on hold to go looking for the jerk last spring, and now you’re committed to him, warts and all. 

And the pair of you have always existed outside the bounds of “normal circumstances” anyway. 

It occurs to you now that this is exactly why you’d been so leery about coming straight home. You’d needed time to prepare before facing Eddie, to be certain before having to explain yourself, because it’s your job to protect him, but how are you supposed to protect him from himself, especially when he’s hell bent on following this path of self destruction to the end of the line?

But you’re still not certain, and you’re starting to think you really need to take another test…

“Where’d you go earlier?” Eddie mumbles dejectedly - you feel his voice rumble in the pit of your stomach and it sends the faintest stirrings of something you absolutely do not want to be feeling down through your central cortex – arousal. 

“Nowhere.” You say, distantly feeling your lips move and the vibration of your voice, but not hearing yourself speak. 

Before you realize what you’re doing, you shift your lower body, ever so subtly trying to move your hips up in search of a little friction.

Stop that, you silly bitch. You are not going to give him a pity fuck just because you feel bad about making him feel bad. 

You sigh. 

“I just needed to walk a little… stretch my legs… guess I lost track of time,” and then, “Sorry,” 

Eddie says something, and you are vaguely aware of responding – him asking if everything is okay and you dismissing the question, building up another layer of that lie and reassuring him that everything is fine…

At least, you think that’s what you said, you can’t be certain because his voice is still buzzing down through your belly and stirring that raunchy little pot, and you’re still fighting tooth and nail to stop your hips from squirming.  

You know if you don’t do something, you’re absolutely going to end up giving him a pity fuck, and that’s exactly how you ended up in the situation you’re in now. Because when Eddie calls, you come running, no matter what. 

I should tell him. 

You try to take another one of those deep, steadying breaths to banish the skittery tightness forming in your chest, and you choke on it.

Something begins to press in at the back of your eyes, welling up and crowding them in your sockets. Your vision blurs and before you realize what is about to happen, your lashes flood with hot, stinging tears.

You begin to cry. 

Goddammit. It really has just been a very shitty day. 

You uncover your eyes long enough to mask the motion of wiping away the wetness streaming across your cheeks by checking your watch, and you see that it is not there. A bright burst of panic sparks in your chest sending adrenaline shooting down to the tips of your fingers and toes before you remember how you’d removed it to wash your hands after being sick in the employee bathroom at Melvald’s. 

Before your life came grinding to a halt in ten minutes or less.

I should tell him. 

You imagine – you hope – your watch is still sitting there on the edge of the sink. And then you remember that it doesn’t matter if it is, because time stopped in November of 1983. 

Time isn’t real, it’s just another Thursday. 

You heave another one of those measured breaths – this one a little wetter and shakier than the last – and drop your arms to come down gently over Eddie’s shoulders. 

You sniffle and sigh, and he immediately twists over to look up at you. 

You look down and meet wide brown eyes – sad eyes – duller than they’ve been in months, red rimmed and ringed in dark circles like bruises. He’s so pale, his full lips are dry and cracked and raw from where you know he’s been biting at them. 

Eddie’s brows come together to form a deep crease of worry and suddenly your face is bracketed in his hands, brushing at the wetness you can’t manage to stem and apologizing endlessly for everything he’s ever done wrong. 

He doesn’t know what he did to hurt you, but he’s sorry for it. Sorry, sorry, always so incredibly sorry – how many times can someone say something before it loses all meaning? 

Sorry doesn’t mean shit coming from Eddie – yes it does, don’t be unkind.

He’s depressed, and you’re pregnant, and now you’re crying about it and he’s desperate to take the blame for it. 

To his credit, Eddie hauls himself up to meet you and pulls you into his arms, crushing you against him as you go to pieces. You can feel the uncertainty radiating off of him. 

He wants to know why you’re crying, so you should just get it over with and tell him, right? You can’t make the words come out, and now that you’ve started crying, you can’t stop. 

He deserves to know, but it’s your job to protect him, and so long as you keep this secret to yourself, he’s still safe from the harm it might cause. Everything is still okay, you just have to keep holding that door.   

It takes what feels like a very long time before you calm down, and even after you do, you just lay there facing each other, feeling Eddie’s eyes boring holes into your forehead. 

You have to tell him. 

“Are you mad?” Eddie asks before you can get the chance, reaching across to thumb away one last stray tear from the hollow beneath your eye – the lump in your throat threatens to swell again.

Tell him now.

You swallow hard and try not to choke on it.  

“Yes,” you say honestly, “But not at you … not really,” 

The corner of his mouth twitches again as he tries and fails to smile.

“Who do you need me to beat up?” Eddie asks in his best approximation of something he might have said once upon a time. It doesn’t hit quite the way it used to, and despite the shy smile that quirks up at the corner of your lips, you feel a sharp stab of grief for the person you lost on the other side of the world.

It's not a fair thought to have. He’s still here, part of him at least, and he’s fighting to get back to you with everything he’s got. 

You know he’s trying, and it immediately floods you with guilt. About biting his head off, about lying, about going missing long enough to leave him wondering what the hell could have happened to you. 

That was selfish of you, but you’re not going to apologize for it, because above everything else he said he was going to do, he promised to take better care of himself.

You suppose that makes you even. 

The silence that follows is unbearably weighted, like a sopping wet blanket – like the air in the other place – and you have to make yourself look at him to make sure you haven’t gone suddenly deaf, and to make sure he’s still there.

When you look, you’re not surprised to find that Eddie is looking too, like he’s had the same thought and it’s struck him with a bolt of blinding fear. You both do that a lot now, go checking to make sure the other is still there, even when you’re laying pressed against each other like this. 

He’s giving you that strange hard look you’ve come to know very well. It’s the same look he had on his face every time you caught him staring at you over the course of that long, terrible week last spring – the one he gives you when he knows something is wrong, but he is too afraid to ask on the off chance that he’s right about it. It’s the way his face looks all the time, now, ever since he got out of the hospital.  

Are we okay? He wants to ask, Do you still love me?

Because no matter how many times you tell him, it never seems to settle in. He always needs to hear it one more time. 

He always needs five more minutes. 

Just five minutes more more more more more –

Well, what about what you need? You’re the one watching your life fall apart, you’re the one who’s pregnant.

Then again, how do you know you haven’t been hallucinating the whole thing? You do have to tell him, but you really ought to take another test, just to be really, really sure before you share your findings with the class.  

A false positive isn’t unheard of. What’s the harm in a second opinion? You won’t know until you know.

Eddie follows when you sit up, and quickly takes your hands back from where you’ve begun scrubbing them furiously against your face, trying to rid yourself of the cloying miasma of salt drying tacky on your skin. 

“Don’t do that,” he tells you, and you don’t even bother asking him why. 

He does it because you would have done it to him. 

That’s how he operates now, relying heavily on what he knows you would do moment to moment, because he’s still that lost in the reeds. It’s the only way he knows how to take care of himself anymore: what would you do for him in any given situation?

The next thing you know, you’ve got your arms around his neck, squeezing him as tight as you dare, as tight as you think he needs to be held just to remember that he’s still here, and you wish like hell he would just pick up what you were putting down already. You wish he would know exactly what is going on with you without even asking, like he used to.

But you know he can’t, his mind is too clouded for the kind of clairvoyance lovers share anymore.

Eddie’s head thumps forward to rest atop your shoulder and strong arms – less strong than they used to be – squeeze you tight enough around the midsection to cause something in your back to pop. You don’t care. It’s grounding and it’s what you’ve needed all afternoon. 

You go chasing the feeling as you breathe in another two-count and exhale on three, twisting your head to bury your nose into the crook of his neck.

He stinks like days old sweat and your perfume. 

“I’m sorry I was mean,” you say into the filthy curtain of his hair, and you’re suddenly reminded of how you’d stood together like that in the dark of his bedroom a lifetime ago, counting down the moments you had to spare before you slipped back into the other place for the last time.

“S’okay,” Eddie slurs, and you feel the guilt of it throb painfully in your chest as you nuzzle against him, trying to slip beneath the surface and occupy the space beneath his skin. 

It’s the only way he’ll ever feel close enough without being inside of you – the gentle rumbling of your prior arousal begins to stir again, and you have to remind yourself that you’re not doing that.

“I love you,” 

He makes a soft sound and you feel his fingers flex against you, digging needily into your skin and pulling you up into his lap.

“Say that again,” he says, holding you against him.  

The fibers of his well worn t-shirt make the beginnings of a friction burn against your cheek as you shift to compensate for this new position – it’s hard to stay tucked against him now that you’re sitting above him, harder still not to sit right down and press the seam of your pussy against the bulge you can feel forming in his sweatpants. 

For the sake of your own self preservation – why? It’s not like he can get you more pregnant than you already are – you sit back on his thighs and bring your hands up to grace the curve of his throat. Eddie tilts his head back to follow and gaze up at you through his lashes. 

“Say it again,” he says, and days old stubble scratches the ridge of your knuckles as you stroke the side of his face.

“I love you,” you say thickly, for all the times you said it and he didn’t believe you, and all the times he needed to hear it and you kept it to yourself.

You listen as Eddie breathes out a shaky, charcoally sigh. His eyes slide shut and he lets his head drop forward to thump against your sternum. For half a blessed second, everything feels exactly like it should. Not like it used to, but as right as it possibly can be after everything that’s happened. 

It’s just you and Eddie. 

You and Eddie and the sea monkey growing inside of you.

Just like that, your brief moment of perfect peace begins to crack. You curl your arms around his neck in defiance of it and squeeze him a little tighter and do everything you can to hold it in place. 

He’ll be okay if you just hold him tight enough. Everything will be okay – nothing bad can happen when you’re together. 

Except for all the bad that happened at Rick’s Place and Lover’s Lake and on the other side of the world and… shut up shut up shUT UP!

Everything is going to be fine.  

You’ll tell Eddie your secret, and he’ll tell you that everything will be alright. You’ll figure it out, like you always do, and you’ll be happy to have whatever you end up with.   

You press your lips into the crown of his head, and he makes a soft sound beneath you. 

You tell yourself you ought t0 do it now. Don’t make a big deal out of it, but tell him and get it over with all the same so you don’t have to worry about it anymore. 

Eddie will help you – you don’t know how, but he will. He’s the only one who can help you, so just tell him. 

“Are you hungry?” You ask.

Coward.

He shakes his head and breathes a deeply melancholic sigh into your collar. Of course he isn’t, he’s full of sugar and coffee and nicotine, he’s not going to be hungry until next week. 

Still, you know he’s going to crash hard and be sick in the morning if you don’t make him eat something besides processed pound cake. He’s not hungry, but he’ll eat if you’re eating — the thought of food makes your insides clench and heave. 

“Are you?” He asks, shifting back so he can look at you again – in another life you watch him retreat to the stove at Rick Lipton’s place. 

“I made dinner,” that Eddie says, and you’re thrust into a memory of sitting with your heads bowed together over a flaking linoleum table, a sticky pot of Spaghetti-o’s and a hundred and one unsaid things between you — your stomach roils with nausea. 

“No, I’m good.” you tell this Eddie, your Eddie. 

That Eddie was your Eddie too, and sometimes you miss him so badly you can hardly breathe. 

You shift further back on his knees so you can look at him, really look at him, and tell him – you have to tell him – and you take his hands in yours. 

“Eddie, listen – there’s something we need to talk about…” You start, and feel him tense beneath you. 

You know what he’s thinking, more bad news. He’s about to lose something else, and you don’t have the heart to quell those fears just yet. If you get stuck trying to make it all better before it even begins, you’ll never get the words out.

You have to tell him. 

Deep breath in – the words sit on your tongue like burning coals, and yet you continue to fail to spit them out – just say it.

Two measly little words and it will be over. 

I’m pregnant.  

Say it, say it now … for the love of God, say anything.  

It’s only when you turn Eddie’s hands up to see his palms that you are saved from your sudden onset muteness as a spot of bright blood drying tacky in the creases of his hand makes itself known.

“Oh, my God!” You gasp, wondering how in the hell you didn’t see that before, “What happened?”  

“Nothing.” He mumbles, jerking his arm back to try and hide the wounded extremity. “It’s just a splinter.” 

You can feel your face pulling into a frown, even if you aren’t conscious of intentionally emoting, and you reach after him. 

“Let me see,” you say — Eddie says, because you’re out in the woods with two broken fingers that need setting and a black eye courtesy of Jason Carver, “Baby, let me see…” 

To his credit, Eddie doesn’t put up as much of a fight as you did back then, though only because you think after all this time he doesn’t have much fight left, and gives you his hand when you reach for it back in the here and now. 

Fingers in his, you turn his palm up again to scrutinize his shoddy work and feel your heart stutter.  

He’s dug a needlessly ugly crater into the calloused meat between his forefinger and thumb. Sticky, semi-coagulated blood is still oozing up in a ring around the faint shadow marring his flesh, and for half a second you’re afraid he’d gone and done something stupid like try to extract the foreign agent with a pair of scissors. 

When you look, you’re semi-relieved to see that it is only a pair of worn needle nose pliers balancing precariously on the bedside table. Still, you bite the pulpy mass you’ve spent the day chewing into the inside of your cheek until you taste blood to stop yourself from saying anything about it.

Eddie has always been such a boy, blundering through life and bashing his skull against problems because someone once told him to “use his head”. He always makes everything harder than it needs to be, and then wonders why he doesn’t feel any better by the end of it.

“I couldn’t find the tweezers,” he explains sheepishly.

You look up at him and gaze into those big sweet doe eyes — pretty eyes. Sad eyes. 

“They’re in the drawer —” You remind him, taking gentle hold of his face in one hand and squeezing, “—where they belong,” and then you push up to stand over him, “I’ll get them.”

You turn for the bathroom and don’t let go of his hand until the pull of distance demands it – his fingers slip from your grasp, and you blink back the beating of heavy wings and gnashing teeth, wrenching you out of his touch and into the dark of your mind’s eye.    

Across the room and into the little bathroom, you shut the door behind you. 

You click the lock. 

You don’t know why you do that, except maybe because you’ve been doing it all day, and you’re desperate for a moment to yourself in this four hundred square foot box of self pity. You tell yourself you only need a moment, but suddenly you can’t imagine that naïve girl who had been so ready to never have to bother with something like personal space and boundaries again.

What a foolish little thing she was.   

Young love doesn’t have the foresight for things like the shock of falling into the toilet at three o’clock in the morning because Eddie’s never lived with someone who doesn’t take a piss standing up and you’ve never had to navigate sharing a bathroom with someone who does. 

The learning curb has been steep. 

You drop the toilet seat with a loud clacking thump and you upend the grocery bag of prenatal contraband you’d smuggled out of Melvald’s. 

Part of you hopes Eddie didn’t see you grab your bag off the hook, but you suppose if he did, you’ll have to explain that behavior later, though at that point, you imagine he’ll have a lot more on his mind than wondering why you need to bring your purse with you to the bathroom. 

You drop your jeans, pee on the stick, and gnaw your fingers to the bone as you witness a little more of your life flash before your eyes with every passing second until you count out ten minutes … or less, as the packaging so boldly promised.

And when you receive your second opinion, you decide you could stand to get a third, so you lean over the bathroom sink, guzzle as much tap water as you can stomach and you do it all over again.

Colors and shapes and stars explode across your vision in a kaleidoscopic dance as you dig the heels of your palms into the jelly of your eye sockets and you wait … wait… wait to see what will happen next. 

There you sit, wringing your hands, bouncing your knees, and you wait ten minutes and ten minutes more until you get your results in thin pink lines and bright blue tabs and little green plus signs.

Positive results, which means… 

“Shit.” You hiss — the plastic casing creaks and begins to tremble in your hands, “Fuck!”

A sharp rap on the door sends you leaping damn near out of your skin and the test goes clattering to the floor. 

The action is followed by a cautious utterance of your name, muffled by layers of wood vinyl and hollow core. 

Your heart lurches– along the bottom of the bathroom door, you can see the subtle shadow of idling movement. You forgot about Eddie, and you wonder with a start just how long he has been standing there, waiting for you. 

For ten minutes or less, you imagine. You have to swallow the urge to tell him to go away.

“Are you okay?” He asks, and you suddenly feel ready to burst into tears again – goddamn hormones.

You glance down at the strip of plastic casing and cardboard bullshit, at the two pink lines standing boldly against the soiled backdrop and grinning wickedly at you for all the smart decisions you didn’t make over the course of the last fourteen months of domestic bliss.

The answer rockets to the front of your mind.

No. You’re not okay. You’re pregnant.

You swallow hard to try and banish the cobwebs blooming in your throat, and when they thicken, you swallow again. 

Eddie is speaking before you can decide how to answer him. 

“… are you feeling sick again?” 

You just manage catch to catch the burst of bitter laughter before it can come bleating out of you, and you shake your head for no one in particular.

“Yeah – I mean no.” You say unevenly, “I’m okay, I’m just–” Pregnant. “–feeling a little bit off.” 

You know between the vagueness of the answer and the discovery of a locked door between you, Eddie’s mind is bound to be spinning out with worry. 

He worries so much about everything these days — just wait until he finds out about the baby, that’ll really give him something to worry about. 

You listen to him shifting his weight from one socked foot to the other on the carpet, to the soft thump that follows and has you picturing him resting his forehead on the door jamb. 

You brace your hands on your knees and push up to stare at your reflection, eyes heavy and ringed with exhaustion, about to get so much worse when you’ve got a tiny helpless creature screaming its lungs out at you in the inability to communicate.

You hear the tentative rasping of your name eke out from behind the door, and watch the handle jiggle in the mirror. 

All you want is to go to bed, sleep this weirdness off, and wake up tomorrow to find that everything has gone back to normal. 

Not the normal of this morning’s blissful ignorance, but the normal of days past. Of school days and homework and gossip and when the only thing you had to worry about not getting caught sneaking out of class just to steal five minutes behind the bleachers with Eddie.

The salad days.

You just want things the way they were — Eddie the way he used to be and you the way you used to be, sitting tucked away together in his bedroom at the old place, before anything went wrong and it was just you and your dreams for the future. 

More than anything, though, you wish you could buck up the courage to tell Eddie you’re pregnant so you can drop this suffering in silence bullshit. 

You carefully wrap everything back in that same plastic bag you never want to see again and stash it in the cabinet beneath the sink, tucked in behind all your forgotten bottles of shampoo and cleaning supplies, where no one will accidently find them. 

Then, you push up on creaky legs and address the elephant in the other room. You don’t unlock the door.  

“I’m gonna shower,” you watch your reflection say, it is a hollow, robotic sound, and Eddie doesn’t answer right away. You can hear him just outside the door.

Thinking. Worrying. 

Pouting more like. 

And you know he’s going to ask before he even says it. 

“…D’you want some company?”

Bingo.

Never has a sentence embodied a more desperate plea to be let in — he may as well have been scratching at the door and whining like a dog who’s been locked out. 

Let me in let me in let me in please let me in. 

You clench your teeth and blink back another wave of those pervasive tears pressing at the backs of your eyes as a strange, misplaced resentment wells suddenly in you.

It’s a startling feeling.

Not the same as the cheap, petty anger you’d felt before but a black and violent thing that does not belong to you. It has no business existing inside of you, and yet here it is, telling you that you can’t stand it. You can’t stand how much Eddie needs you all the time. You give him everything you have and he always needs more. 

Just five more minutes, please just give me five more minutes. Don’t leave me, just love me, let me in, let me in Please please please.

It’s not his fault. You tell the violent feeling. He’s depressed. He doesn’t have hobbies anymore…

He doesn’t have anything anymore — it bites back, he just has you. 

You shake your head in melancholic defiance of these conflicting feelings.

He needs me. You insist.

He’s using you up. It responds. He’s smothering you.

And you hate the feeling for being right. All he does is take and take and take, and you’re nothing if not a fool for giving him everything he needs and then some. You love Eddie more than anything, more than everything, but if he doesn’t stop taking, there’s not going to be anything left for you… for this— 

“—Baby?” Eddie calls faintly, startling you again. 

You have to take a moment longer than is probably necessary to calm yourself enough to decide whether or not you can stomach his “company” right now. 

“No,” you sigh, “I just wanna wash the day off.”

You imagine the pang of fear lancing through his chest as an invisible box is ticked off: the second sign of trouble.

Locked door. His alarm bells are ringing. Can’t get to you. You’re trapped trapped trapped. Let me in let me in let me in let me –

There is the scratching of the chewed edge of his thumbnail digging into the painted wood, peeling it — probably causing another splinter — and you have to bite your tongue to keep from telling him to stop doing that, because you’re not going to get your security deposit back. 

Who cares about security deposits or contraception or personal space, you both almost died, remember? Live a little!

You turn away from the stranger in the mirror and face the door, forcing yourself to sound chipper as you make empty promises about the future to the foreign shell of the person you have to remind yourself you love. 

“I’ll be out in a jiffy,” you call unevenly, “…just let me rinse off, okay?” 

There is a long moment of disappointed silence before Eddie finally responds. 

“...Mm’kay…” 

Fading footsteps thrum a gentle beat as you step out of your abused and crinkled jeans. Oddly, you feel like you’ve spent more time out of them today than in them, and that might almost be funny if it weren’t for the circumstances.

There is a moment of peace as you continue undressing, then the rapid thump thump thump of returning steps. A sharp knock summons another one of those long-suffering sighs whooshing up from the deepest recesses of your body.

“What do you need, Eds?” You ask a little too harshly, pinching your eyes toward the bridge of your nose with your forefinger and thumb. 

You tell yourself you’re not angry with him, you’re just tired and uncertain and scared of that uncertainty. 

“Tweezers.”

Oh. Right. 

They’re in the drawer, neatly tucked away and exactly where they belong. Just where you said they’d be. 

You crack the door as far as you dare and don’t look at your boyfriend when you take his palm in your hand, despite the holes you can feel him boring into the top of your head. 

Don’t shut me out — please – oh, God, please let me in! he begs you with only a few short breaths as you pluck the thick spur of plywood from his hand and douse it in rubbing alcohol for good measure. 

Eddie hisses and bends to kiss you on the cheek. You let him do it, then shut the door in his face. 

If he didn’t know there was something wrong before, he’s bound to be crawling out of his skin with it now. 

You don’t care, and you feel terrible about it as you lean over the tub to pull the pin and turn the water on. 

The shower head roars to life, and as it fills the room with noise and steam, you can barely hear yourself think – thank God.

You stand under the stream and let the water run hot on you until it goes cold, and even then you linger and accept the beating it gives you. 

Eyes shut, senses dulled, body pinging with goosebumps, you feel your muscles begin to loosen and relax. The outside world goes swirling down the drain, and you finally let your hand creep up to touch your belly. You splay your fingers over the expanse of skin and hold it there, feeling for something, anything, some sign of the life lurking there among your guts. When you don’t feel anything — why would you feel anything when the baby is not even a baby yet — you try your hand at rubbing the spot, back and forth, like you’ve seen people do to their fake pregnant bellies in the movies. 

The results are middling beneath pruning fingers and the shower head is pinging ice at you now, stabbing you in the scalp, so you decide with no small amount of disappointment that it’s time to get out. 

Just as you expected, Eddie is waiting for you when you flick off the bathroom light and re-emerge into the bedroom/living room/kitchen combo.

You’re almost surprised to find that the room has been more or less straightened. It’s not clean, by any stretch of the word, but trash, clothes, and all manner of discarded knick-knacks have been removed from the floor and stashed in other strategic places. The bedsheets have been tidied in the best approximation Eddie can manage for making a bed, though you can’t say it looks much different than it did before. He couldn’t do it right before he had his guts ripped out, and time and practice has had no effect on that inefficiency. 

He’s sitting there on the bed, trying to look casual with his long legs stretched out, ankles crossed, arms crossed, fingers crossed, and you give him a weak smile as you enter, holding your towel and heading for the chest of drawers on your side of the bed. You stop short when you notice the clothes he’s laid out for you: an oversized Houston Oilers t-shirt you’d thrifted for him before he came to stay and a soft pair of shorts – how unbearably sweet. 

“Feel better?” He asks hopefully, boyishly, as you step into the shorts. 

You nod, and you can’t even call it a lie, because getting the muck of the world out of your skin and hair has made enough of an impact to improve your headspace exponentially.

At least you don’t feel like you’re about to start screaming anymore – Jefferson Starship is happy enough to do that for you, howling to the elusive Jane, still playing that same old game she never can win. 

Eddie’s put on the mixtape you made him in the summer of ‘84, which you’re not certain he’s ever heard the end of – if only because he can’t make it through Dancing Queen without saying something snide about ABBA and disco as a whole – but he’s trying to make it better.

You tell yourself that, in spite of everything else, you have to give him credit for that as you slip the t-shirt over your head and walk your towel back to the bathroom. 

And if he’s trying, then you’re a fool for not trying too, so you do your best to put a happy look on your face when you reemerge and jerk your thumb over your shoulder.

“Okay, your turn.”

His mouth drops open, but you don’t let him protest. 

“Go on – git.” You say, affecting a thick southern drawl to try and lighten the mood. 

Eddie just frowns at you.

“If you wanted me to shower you shoulda let me join you,” He grouses. 

You stick him to the spot with a pointed look.

“If I’d let you join me, we wouldn’t be getting clean in there, and you know it.” You press, “I mean it, Eds. You smell like a garbage truck. When’s the last time you showered?” 

He snorts and does his best to make the jab to his ego look like feigned hurt feelings, but you can see the edges of his mask flickering. Not even near death had been enough to dampen that ego of his. 

It’s a bizarre thing to witness what is left of the Eddie from before fighting for real estate with what has grown into the Eddie here and now. If you could capture it in an image, you’d hang it on the wall and call it “the duality of man,”, but that wouldn’t help you to get Eddie into the shower any more than your attempt at gentle coaxing. 

You have to resist the urge to offer some sort of trade off, because there are scant few things that motivate Eddie these days that don’t end with you opening your legs for him. And you have to remind yourself, once more for the people in the back, that’s exactly how you wound up in your silly little predicament. 

Back when you were in high school and still strangers to one another, there had been a wildly circulated rumor that Eddie would trade weed for head … funny how that has circled back to reflect you and your recent penchant for sexual bargaining chips – if you take a twenty minute shower, I’ll go down on you when you get out.

You don’t wonder how your shitty old friends would react to learning about that development in your behavior, because you rarely ever think about Carol and Tina these days. 

You do wonder how you’re going to get Eddie to stop giving you that sulky look while holding your ground.  

He needs to shower (on his own), and you need a little more time to yourself. 

You hate to press the issue, because it makes you feel too much like his mother – and you cannot even begin to unpack the Oedipal concept of that dynamic – but you absolutely cannot spend another moment pressed against his side and breathing shallowly under a cloying musk of days old body odor. 

“I’m fine,” He insists, crossing his arms and still trying to pretend like he isn’t bothered by your indictment of his personal hygiene. 

“No, you’re not.” You say, “You have to take better care of yourself. I know you don’t think it’s gonna make any difference, but I promise you it will. You’ll feel better.” 

Eddie offers you one of those half hearted smiles, and quirks his brow.

“You always say that.” 

“Yeah, so what? I’m always right. Do it for me, okay?”

It takes him a minute more of contemplative pouting, but eventually he relents, because for as soft as you are for him, he’ll do anything for you, even if it means bruising his ego a little. 

He slaps his hands on the bed and pushes up in the fading glimmer of a gesture he might have made back in the old days – your heart throbs painfully in your chest as you watch him flicker in and out of frame – then makes a show of stretching his arms high over his head. 

You watch as he comes to immediately regret the motion when his bad side hitches and he quickly remembers his limited range of movement. 

Eddie pretends like it doesn’t hurt as he makes his way across the room.

“Okay,” he says softly, pausing to kiss you on the cheek as he passes, “But only ‘cause yer so damn purty,” 

The affectation of the southern drawl you’d used before sounds much better on Eddie, and you lean fondly in to the press of his lips, not even bothering to be annoyed when he takes a cheeky handful of your backside. 

You feel your insides burn with what the touch suggests, and for half a mindless second, you tell yourself that maybe you could stand to follow him in there. Just to help him wash, of course, get the spots he can’t reach… nothing else…

Then, your rationality comes snapping back into place when Eddie strikes you hard on the ass with an open palm. 

You yelp in alarm more than pain and jump. Even after every time he has done that before, you never expect him to do it, and your face is burning as you turn to watch him go, disgustingly pleased with himself and snickering.

“Wash your hair,” you call, knowing it will add at least another five minutes to his shower, and your coveted alone time. “And brush your teeth.” 

Eddie acknowledges you with a dismissive wave and something grumbled under his breath as he disappears into the bathroom, leaving the door cracked in a stark contrast to the way you’d shut him out when you slipped away into the next and only other room. 

Therein lies the ultimate problem of your living situation. You keep trying to build a barrier, brick by brick, because you need your space, but Eddie needs it too, so every brick you put up he takes right back down.  

You feel a muted pang of guilt over that which dissipates the moment you hear the shower hiss on. Then, and only then, do you breathe a sigh of relief you didn’t realize you were holding. 

Your time begins now. 

Because you absolutely cannot abide the state of the bed, even after Eddie’s futile attempts to pull it into shape, you spend the full duration of Jefferson Starship’s regression back into the days of Airplane attempting to wrestle the top sheet into position as Jane fades into White Rabbit. 

Then, as the first strummed notes of More than Words begins to play, you brave the tide and pull the blankets over your head, curling in on yourself protectively. In the dark, the wet sloshing of the mattress is so much worse, so much weirder, and you try not to think about how womblike your cocoon suddenly is. 

You didn’t want the waterbed. You wanted a normal mattress to try and live your normal lives, but Eddie already wasn’t sleeping because of his nightmares, and you couldn’t stand to see him in any further pain, not when it was because of something you could so easily remedy.

Sure, it was a real kick in the teeth to have to send five hundred dollars you couldn’t afford down the drain on a mattress, but thankfully the retailer would accept an exchange on a product of equal or lesser value (emphasis on lesser) and that’s how you’d gone and found Eddie in some back corner of the store, starfished and riding the surf of the floor model waterbed like a blissed out Goldilocks.

The stuff of your nightmares.  

“Babe, it’ll be so cool,” he’d told you when he was trying with everything in his power to convince you to say yes.

He’d spouted some bullshit statistic he’d skimmed in a pamphlet at physical therapy about the benefits of hydrotherapy, and you’d informed him that sleeping on a giant water balloon was not hydrotherapy. But you were just so glad he was getting excited about something, and because mattress shopping is an exercise in twentieth century torture, you took it home for a tentative trial. 

Fourteen months later, here you lay, trying to relax, trying to sink into a quiet, thoughtless meditation, but you can’t stop your mind from spinning.

Because you hate this fucking waterbed. 

You hate the way it lists back and forth when you climb into it, and when Eddie slinks in after you and startles you awake with the sudden lurch of blaring panic, like stepping off a curb in your dreams. 

You hate the leaks it springs, you hate the crinkling duct tape patches that poke you through the sheets when you roll over. 

You hate how it holds the cold in the winter and radiates heat in the summer. 

But you don’t hate how happy it made Eddie to see it delivered, or how you’d lay awake giggling together that first night. You love the childlike glee you’d shared that night, taking turns bouncing each other on the creaking tide and whispering back and forth like kids having a sleepover. 

Of course, that giddy episode of play was the only prelude to what was perhaps the worst night’s sleep you’d ever had, but you’re almost happy to ignore that.   

In a turn of events which you pretend not to be shocked by, Eddie’s shower lasts nearly twenty-five minutes. By the time he shuts off the water and re-emerges, scrubbed pink, clean shaven, and reeking of peppermint, you’ve let the gentle rocking of the bed lull you into a sleepy stupor. 

“How was it?” you ask, regardless of what you already know.

You don’t ask him how long he actually spent washing and how long he just stood there under the tap (you also don’t ask if he allotted any of that time to jerking off in the distant hope that he’ll be satisfied enough to leave you alone) because the subtle change in his posture is all the evidence you need to know you were right. 

Like always. 

He looks over at you and smiles that same goofy smile that made you fall in love with him back in high school, and his brows come down. 

“Cold.” He says, “You used up all the hot water,”

Oh, whoops. He levels you with a sidelong glance which you imagine is meant to make you feel guilty for not letting him share the hot water with you, but somehow you can’t manage to get around to feeling that way. 

He’s clean, that’s all you care about.  

You can’t help but stare as he drops his towel in a wet heap and stands comfortably naked, pulling open drawers and looking for a pair of boxers and a clean shirt – wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles…

“Sorry,” you hum, watching with rapt, unblinking attention.

Eddie turns at the sound of your apology, and it takes a moment too long for your gaze to snap up when he comes to face you. You smile innocently, but he’s already smirking at you. 

“Are you?” he asks, “...or are you just enjoying the show?”

You tilt your head down to press your shoulder to your ear. 

“Maybe,” 

He rolls his eyes and steps into the faded blue plaid boxer shorts.

“Maybe, she says – move over, will ya?” 

You hold the blankets up for him to slide beneath. Pulling the shirt over his head, he settles in beside you and you sit together in silence, listening to the distant sounds of your mixtape playing as you wait for the bed to stop sloshing. 

You know deep down he secretly hates it too, but he’s too proud to admit when he’s wrong, especially after campaigning so hard for it. You don’t care, you’re in this for the long game — you’re gonna make him say it before you do.

You curl your arm around his back and immediately go to work knotting your fingers in the tangles of his hair, tugging gently at the damp baby hairs curling at the nape of his neck and making a mental note to help him comb it out before you fall asleep. 

Eddie rests his head atop yours with a contented sigh and you feel the poke of his tongue in his cheek as he swipes it over his teeth. 

“So, are you ever gonna tell me about your shitty day?”

“Who said I had a shitty day?” You ask.  

He breathes an easy chuckle out through his nose and you hear it rattle all the way down in his lungs. 

“You and that attitude of yours,”

 Before you can say anything in defense of your self, the next track begins to play, bringing with it the iconic intro to Dancing Queen. And because Eddie cannot abide ABBA, he is on his feet in an instant. 

The prelude to a great disappointment begins to well in your chest, because unlike Eddie, you do in fact remember being young and sweet, only seventeen, and you cherish those days – the earliest days of your entanglement with the town pariah, before you’d finished dancing around each other. 

“Eddie don’t–” You whine, but he’s already thumping across the room to the stereo sitting precariously balanced in your rickety bookcase. 

When he reaches the unit, he makes the executive decision that you can neither dance nor jive, and you will not be having the time of your life. He begins agitatedly punching buttons, and the song cuts out.

The track skips, and the next thing you know, your blood is thrumming along to the beat of a crunchy baseline, and Steve Perry is crooning you make me weak, and wanna die… and you know exactly what is coming next. 

The main event. The lovin’, the touchin’, the squeezin’... your insides squirm with an unhelpful reminder of your deep dark secret, and you muster every shred of self control you have. 

You will not be having sex tonight, no matter how good Eddie looks naked, no matter what he does to try and sway you, and no matter how much Steve Perry insists he’s tearin’ you apart… 

You cross your arms and breathe out hard through your nose with wavering determination as Eddie turns back to you, once again disgustingly pleased with himself. 

“That’s better,” He says, crossing back to the bed in two long-legged strides and throwing himself down beside you.

The mattress jumps and rolls, and your muscles tense as you do everything you can to stay upright and sulking.

“Why do you hate fun?” you ask as Eddie crawls over top of you on his hands and knees.

“Hate fun?” he echoes, like he cannot believe you would accuse him of such a thing.

“You know I love that song.”

 “Yeah, but, Sweetheart, this is a great song! It’s the best song on the list,”

Never mind the fact that he skipped three tracks to get there. You set your teeth and try not to take offense to his criticism of your taste in music because you’ve long since agreed to disagree.  

“This is a sex song.” You correct, resisting the asking fingers he’s begun to drum along your tightly crossed arms.

When you fail to open up for him, Eddie rolls his head to the side and looks up at you through his lashes in that very specific way he knows drives you just a little bit crazy.  

“It’s your tape, Babygirl,” he says evenly, “I’m just a humble disc jockey.” 

You snort out your displeasure with the statement, but you can’t deny it. Because you had indeed hidden Lovin’ Touchin’ Squeezin’ among the tracks on your Summer Fling mixtape back in the summer of ‘84 in the raunchy little hope that it would inspire Eddie to do just that to you, and you know that he knows that as well as you do.

So, whose fault is it really when he slips his hands up under your shirt and starts kissing your neck?

You curse yourself for being so unbearably hot for him back in the day, and for the way that, after two long years, nothing has changed.

“Can I make a request?”

He hums out an easy laugh.

“Nope, sorry. We’re only playing mood music for the rest of the night.” Eddie says, and you tilt your head dutifully back when he nudges your jawline with his nose, “Unless you were gonna ask for Dio, ‘cause you always gotta remember to leave room for Ronnie–”

“If you try to put on Holy Diver again I’m leaving.”

He giggles then – actually giggles – and this time when he kisses you, you feel the press of his tongue on your throbbing pulse point.

You tell yourself this is as far as you’re going to go. You can stand to let him suck a bruise into your neck if that’s what it takes to make him happy but you’re not going to have sex, even if you’re suddenly squirming beneath him to alleviate the thrumming between your thighs.   

With everything you still have to talk about, you can’t afford to let Eddie distract you like that.

Of course, you already know what he’s going to say, the question he’ll ask you — what do you want to do? 

You don’t want him to ask you that. You want him to tell you what to do. You want him to have all the answers and put your mind at ease because you’ve been driving yourself crazy asking yourself that question all goddamn day.

What do you want to do? What are you going to do? How far are you willing to let this go? 

Are you prepared to go all the way with Eddie Munson? You’d asked yourself that once in a situation not so dissimilar to the one you currently find yourself in.

Of course, that time had been significant, because it had been the first time, and even now you remember that cold November afternoon so vividly. You should have been in school, but instead, you were parked outside a record store an hour outside of Hawkins, laying in the back of a van beneath the boy you so desperately loved and letting him send you to pieces with a kiss.

It wasn’t a chaste, pretty kiss like you see in the movies — at least no decent kind of movie — it was a heavy, dirty thing, with tongue and teeth and gasping breath. He held your hands pinned above your head, and you lay there rutting up against him in desperate search of something that only your animal brain could explain. 

The natural progression of things, the way of the world and of girls and boys since time immemorial.

You might have briefly entertained the thought of having his baby back then, in the murky heat of the moment. In hindsight, you’re fairly certain that was just latent Darwinism reminding you that you are a mammal and that your only true purpose on this Earth is to breed – so breed, Baby.

And then your rational human mind prevailed, and asked you that terrible question: are you ready for this?

You’d thought you’d been scared of what the question meant then, but the virginal fear of the thing lurking between a boy’s legs — between your legs back then, prodding you through Eddie’s jeans and asking for a respectful permission you could not help but deny — holds no candle to the uncertain, impending future, which you no longer bother planning for.

Pledging your undying love as a horny teen fresh out of a very close brush with death is one thing, but tethering yourself to something and someone indefinitely?

Are you ready to commit to that with Eddie Munson?

Are you prepared to love him and take care of him on good days and bad, no matter what? Through night terrors and fugue episodes and days and days and so many hard days of wishing he would just snap out of it and come back to his old self?

Are you prepared to have his baby? 

“Ground control to Major Tom.” Eddie calls distantly, and you feel a gentle tapping at the center of your forehead, “Can you hear me, Major Tom?”

He guides you gently from the mire of your existential thoughts and fears, and you blink back at him as he waits expectantly for an answer to whatever it was he’d just said.

“Hmm? Oh — sorry, Eds,” you say absently, reaching up to cup his cheek in your hand, “What were you saying?”

He glares at you, but the effect is ruined by the shy twitch of his lips, quirking at the corners despite his best efforts to play mad at you. He’s still on his hands and knees, a mere inch of distance between your noses as he glowers at you in mock offense — how dare you not be fully engaged in the first steps of this stunning foreplay.

Oh please, as if you don’t do this every goddamn night. 

“Only that I need you so bad right now,” he says, “But it’s not so easy getting that message to Mars. I guess NASA’s not really in the business of passing love notes.”

You scoff and roll your eyes, hooking a finger in the collar of his t-shirt. The lingering effects of the shower waft up in a puff of clean air when you release the fabric, and even through the haze of shampoo and toothpaste, you can smell the bitter undertone of all the cigarettes he smoked today.    

“You need me so bad every night.” You remind him. 

He grins and you feel his teeth when he tips forward.   

“Can’t help it.” Eddie says against your lips, attempting to resume the stilted progress of his foreplay by ducking his head to press a less than chaste kiss to the space beneath your ear — flicking tongue, scrape of teeth – his voice reverberates against the drum and you shiver, “It’s Kafkaesque.”

You snort and wonder as he snakes his hands up under your shirt and takes your breasts in hand if that was meant to impress you. 

“Pavlovian.”

“What’s that, Sweet Girl?” He asks, changing direction without missing a beat.

Eddie rocks back on the balls of his feet, and lifts your thighs over his, pulling you down the mattress a tick – your head thumps against the headboard. Ouch.   

He helps you sit up straight with an apologetic hand, boring holes into you with those big dark eyes – pretty eyes. 

Hungry eyes Eric Carmen might have told you, were you listening to the radio and not Journey’s endless waning call of “nah nah nah-nah nah,”.  

“You mean Pavlovian,” you tell him, bracing your hands on his shoulders when he hugs you by the waist and pulls you into his lap.  

“How do you know what I mean?” he asks as you settle into this new position. 

You drum your fingers along his collarbones and tilt your head, smiling coquettishly as you innocently prepare to bore him to death. 

“Because Pavlov trained dogs to drool at the sound of a bell by ringing one every time he fed them,” you say, “and Kafkaesque suggests that you’re trapped in an authoritarian situation that you can’t escape, so I don’t think that really applies … unless you’re trying to tell me something about our relationship.” 

Eddie hums out a low, performative moan, deep from the back of his throat. It’s not so performative a sound, however, that you can’t feel the hard length of something prodding into the crook of your thigh. 

“I love it when you talk dirty,” he says, baring his teeth at you in a wolfish grin that looks almost like something the old Eddie would have done. 

Eddie before the trauma and surgeries and blood transfusion on blood transfusion on blood transfusion. 

You roll your eyes and trail your fingers down down down his abdomen until you’ve reached the less-than-subtle tent in his threadbare boxers. He draws in a sharp intake of breath when you skim your fingers over the tip of his bulge before taking an immodest palmful of his dick. 

Once upon a time you would have wilted at the thought of doing something like that, but time and practice and the way Eddie’s eyes slide shut as he nods his encouragement has turned a gesture like that into something as casual as late night television. 

He rolls his hips forward and you already feel a bead of heady wetness blooming in the fabric of his boxers when you swipe a cheeky thumb over his tip.

His breath hitches, and Eddie has to clear his throat to keep his voice steady as you begin to work him in your fist. 

“Go on,” He says, and you’re nothing if not happy to oblige.   

“You … getting a hard-on …every night at bedtime… is Pavlovian…” You say, stroking him in a measured up and down. 

Big smile, front teeth poking out, cheeks indenting with an elusive dimple, Eddie shakes his head, pulling you forward to press bodily against him, and sandwiching your hand indecently between you. He doesn’t stop moving his hips. 

“You’re so smart,” he rasps, and you detect the faintest hint of a quaver in his voice when you make a ring with your index finger and thumb, encircling the broad flare of him through the fabric and squeezing.

His mouth falls open on a heavy breath, and you close it right back up with a finger on his chin. 

Still moving in short lazy thrusts, he sighs against you and kisses the line of your jaw, teasing your head back once more with a gentle nudge and exposing the taught columns of your throat to him.

“It’s so fucking sexy.”

You fail to suppress a snort and are almost shocked when it doesn’t immediately kill the mood.

“Is it really that sexy or are you just horny?”

“Who says it can’t be both?” Eddie says, “You’re smart and sexy… and I’m super fucking hot for you right now,”

And because he absolutely cannot help himself when he is reminded of even the faintest hint of a song, suddenly he’s singing under his breath.  

“—hot-blooded, check it and see—” Eddie’s Foreigner impression plays against the waning backdrop of Journey turning over to Pat Benatar, insisting We Belong from the competing stereo.

It’s entirely too much, and you burst into a fit of undainty laughter.

“Don’t laugh, this is important.” He says, grinning, “— I got a fever of a hundred and three,”

When you don’t stop, Eddie kisses you, and even under the seal of his lips, you can’t manage to stifle your giggling.

Of course, now you remember why it’s more fun to fool around and have sex every night than it is to be sensible adults who keep their hands to themselves. Because that’s how you get the old Eddie back – fun Eddie – the one who made you lose your mind and fall in love with him that first Tuesday night at the Hideout a hundred Tuesdays ago. 

Even then, you’d loved him so bad you could have screamed. And you did scream, you recall. You’d screamed yourself hoarse even as Corroded Coffin got booed off stage because you were their biggest fan – their words, not yours – even if their name was stupid and made you giggle behind their backs. 

So what if you only ever see that version of Eddie anymore when you’ve got his cock in your fist? As if to punctuate the thought, he stammers over the next lyric and gasps out a breathy moan when you give him three quick jerks.

He laughs.  

“Naughty,” 

You giggle along and part his lips with a cheeky swipe of your tongue, happily swallowing every little sound he makes under your touch and feeling your insides begin to quiver in turn.

You’ll keep jerking him off because it’s fun to watch him steadily go to pieces, but you’re not having sex tonight – so, why do you have to keep reminding yourself of that?

“Babe,” Eddie says, lips clicking wetly as you part, “It’s not funny, it’s a serious medical condition – you don’t have to read my mind, to know what’s on my mind – Man, those lyrics are stunning.”

“Sheer poetry.” You say, nodding and his eyes light up.

“Right? Guy’s an artist,”

You’re still giggling when you feel the scrape of Eddie’s teeth along the tender veins lining your neck, pinching just a little too sharply on your jugular.

It sends a bolt of adrenaline shooting down like sparks to sting the tips of your fingers and toes, and suddenly it’s not nearly as funny or sexy as it was a moment ago.

You gasp. Fight or flight kicks in — you freeze.

Your heart hammers in your chest, your hearing whites out, – your hands are trembling as you struggle to unwind the soiled bandage tied tight around your broken fingers. You press it to the ugly wound in Eddie’s throat, spurting blood as he tries and fails to breathe through it – he coughs and gasps against the pain it causes him and chokes on your name in a way that makes you never want to hear him say it again… help me, it pleads, don’t let me die, make it stop…

You breathe out harshly and shake your head against the intrusive image of blood turned nearly black in the dark of that place. Your hands come up to brace firmly against Eddie’s shoulders, fingers trembling as you dig them into the muscle there, and you shove him without really meaning to.

“Stop—” You gasp.

It’s okay, you’re okay, You tell yourself, the same way you tell Eddie every night he thrashes awake in a blinding terror, You’re here. You’re safe, you’re home — just breathe. 

“Sorry—” He says immediately, “Too much?”

But you can barely hear him over the roaring in your ears.  

You focus on what you can see — the walls of your shared bedroom/dining room/living room, all your collective things illuminated in the amber glow of the flickering table lamp sitting across the room.

And you focus on Eddie, drying curls backlit and flyaway, framing his face — his handsome face — not spattered in blood and twisted in agony, but freshly scrubbed and tweaked in alarm and a less than subtle hint of concern. 

You’re okay, but more importantly, he’s okay, he’s here with you, and nothing bad can happen when you’re together — but you’d been together while he lay there bleeding to death, hadn’t you? 

“Are you okay?” he asks, all traces of teasing gone from his tone. 

It’s amazing how quickly he can shut it off when the mood shifts. Your sweet boy. 

“I’m okay,”

“What happened?”

“Nothing,” you say, “I just — I didn’t expect you to do that.” 

It’s bizarre that the motion triggered you like that, especially since you’re not the one who had your throat cut down there.

Down there. 

“...do you wanna stop?”

You fight to suppress a shiver and the urge to immediately agree – yes, you should stop, especially since you have no intention of letting this go any further than heavy petting, but you don’t want to be a killjoy.

You shake your head to try and disperse any lingering memory of that night – that eternal night – and absently pet the side of your paramour’s face.

“No,” You say, “No, we don’t have to stop.” But you’re painfully aware of the lack of enthusiasm in your tone.

Eddie’s brows furrow over his eyes, and you can tell he doesn’t believe you, so you tilt forward to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth. 

“Let’s keep going,” you say.

You kiss him, attempting to rekindle what has already begun to die out, and when he doesn’t reciprocate, when you try to kiss him again and he leans back, you feel your insides seize with disappointment. 

“I’m fine, Eddie,” you say, and he pulls a face.

“Liar,”

“I am. I promise.” 

You watch disbelief shadow his face and the muscle in his jaw flex. You can tell he’s getting impatient, not for the starting and stopping, but because he knows you’re not telling him something.

Isn’t that the understatement of the century?

After a moment, Eddie drops his head and sighs your name dejectedly, you try not to flinch or hear it forced out on a burbling bloody timber begging you to make it stop. He slumps onto his hip beside you and he walks two cheeky fingers up the length of your thigh before resting a hand at the top and giving you a gentle squeeze.

“—we don’t have to do this.” He says, “We can just go to bed.” 

You wish that were true. 

You rock back into the pillows and force yourself to smile, feeling your cheeks pull as your insides go tight and twisty. 

Sure, you could just go to bed with a chaste kiss and a “see you in the morning,” and wake up in a few hours to find Eddie on his third cup of coffee, watching late-night television and chain smoking. Or, and far more likely, you can wake up to him thrashing and screaming beside you through the endless circadian reruns of his death and spend the rest of the night trying to calm him down.  

No actually, you can’t just go to bed. You have to do something to help him relax, so that he’s too tired to do anything but sleep through the night.

And the best way to do that, you have found, is to get him off. As it turns out you can only therapy fuck your boyfriend for so long – approximately fourteen months – before it starts to have consequences, like unplanned pregnancies and his being unable to sleep without you getting him off first.

Your hesitation to answer speaks volumes, and Eddie finally shakes his head.

“Let’s just go to bed,”

“No,” you press, pawing at the front of his shirt and hating how whiny you sound as you say it, “I want to keep going.” 

“Don’t just say that because you think it’s what I want to hear,” he says a little too harshly.

“I’m not.”

“You have to tell me if something’s wrong, Sweetheart. I’m not a mind reader, I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me.”

It’s startling to hear, like the clanging of a bell. He knows something is up, and while he may not know what it is, Eddie’s not nearly as stupid as he pretends to be, and you’re a bad liar.

So, quit beating around the bush and tell him already.   

You don’t know why, but you’re committed to denying it now, so you wire your jaw shut and shake your head. 

“I’m fine, you just startled me. I didn’t expect you to do that,”

Eddie gives you that hard look again, and you do your best not to wilt under it. 

“And…?” 

“…And I’m–” Pregnant. “– a little tired…” Pussy. “…and my head hurts.” Stupid. 

Oldest cliché in the book — not tonight honey, I have a headache.  

When he still doesn’t let up, you throw your hands up in a lopsided shrug and catch his face to bracket on the way down, as if that’s going to do anything to soften the blow of rejection you’re trying so desperately to avoid.

Suddenly, it feels a lot like you’re the one about to receive it, and you hate how desperate that makes you feel. What are you fighting so hard for? You’re not having sex tonight, remember?

“I found out I have to go in on Saturday to do inventory,” you fib, pulling your shoulders up and fully committing to the bullshit subterfuge, “That’s why I’ve been cranky… sorry, I should have just told you.”

And then, Eddie’s shoulders drop and he relaxes under the blissful satisfaction of the truth. It makes you feel grimy, 

“Ah-ha,” he says, “Melvald’s workin’ you to the bone, huh?”

You nod.

“One box of Kotex at a time.” More like one box of neatly packaged pregnancy tests — results in ten minutes or less! 

Eddie's features soften, and he dips his head to brush his lips across the slope of your shoulder. 

“My Baby’s just tired, huh?” He hums against you, “Poor Baby...” 

You suppress a flinch and silently wish he would stop saying things like that. 

“Yeah.” You say dejectedly, “Anyway, there you go. My shitty boring day. Stocking shelves, live in technicolor,” 

Eddie hums thoughtfully and you watch as he begins a steady descent down your body.  

“That’s hot. Think we could get it on pay-per-view?”

You push up on your elbows just as he slides down to come face-to-face with your midriff, and you clear your throat. 

“Where do you think you’re going?” You say, as he slips a cheeky finger beneath the band of your shorts. 

He pauses to give you a sly look.

“Down unda,” Eddie says, grinning and effecting a thick Australian accent. 

Oh no, absolutely not. Jerking him off is one thing, but if you let him go down on you, it’ll be a one-way ticket to Stupidtown, and you’ll absolutely end up letting him fuck you. 

You’re determined not to let that happen, so you pull your knees up and cross your ankles over his back, squeezing tightly. Eddie makes a put-out sound when you cage him in and he finds he can go no further. 

“You got a passport, Crocodile Dundee?” You deadpan, quirking an unimpressed brow.

“Jeez, can’t a guy worship at his altar in peace?” he says, trying to wriggle free and butter you up in the same breath, “The goddess? My inspiration?” 

You roll your eyes but you don’t let him go when he begins to squirm in earnest. 

It is an effort in futility. 

Back in the day, you spent many an afternoon sitting around the trailer watching professional wrestling, and those sessions typically ended with you in a headlock after boldly claiming you could beat Eddie in a fight. To his credit, he always at least let you try before flipping you ass over tea kettle and holding you pinned to the carpet until you said “uncle”. In those days, you never stood a chance, but that was then, and unlike Eddie, you actually bothered to go to your physical therapy sessions and still have full functional use of your body. 

You’re not trying to hurt him, so you aren’t putting nearly enough pressure on his ribs to really hold him, but he’s out of breath before you’ve even broken a sweat.

“Release me, Foul Temptress.” He demands, struggling against you and the vice you have on him. 

You cross your arms and make a show of leisurely checking your nails. 

“Say uncle.” You say innocently. 

“You’re evil,”  

“No, I’m winning.”

When he stops moving long enough to glare back at you, you push out your lower lip in a feigned pout. 

“Had enough yet?”

You watch the muscles in Eddie’s jaw flex as he contemplates all the biting retorts he could possibly hit you with before evidently decides against retaliation. 

He sighs and goes slack against you, forehead dropping to knock against your belly, and you once again have to resist the sudden and bizarre urge to tell him to be careful.

He doesn’t know, how could he know when you haven’t told him yet? 

Of course, it’s only lost in this brief but looming thought that you momentarily let your guard down, and Eddie finds his ace in the hole.

He presses his nose to the tender softness of your belly and makes a gentle, needy sound, and your thighs involuntarily tremble. 

You unhook your ankles and let your feet drop to the bed on either side of his hips with two solid thumps that sends you rocking back and forth on a sloshing tide.

You don’t know when he started to work your T-shirt up, but suddenly your flesh is exposed to him and those damn lips. 

He doesn’t kiss you, so much as part his lips and breathe out, a long, quivering breath that has your throat closing up and your knees edging open far enough to let him drop and lay with his stomach pressed flat to your pubic bone. 

“I just wanna be good to you,” he says, muffled against your stomach, searching hands skittering up up up over your thighs and into the open legs of your shorts to grace the supple curve of your hip. “Wish I had something nice to say … to make it all better…”

He brushes his lips over the spot just beneath your navel and you feel something flutter there. 

You can’t be sure if it’s just the phantom sensation of your secret crying out to be known, or the way you’ve noticed how he’s begun rocking his hips into the mattress. He still has a hard on, after all, and he knows how much you like to watch him get himself off like that. It causes your breath to hitch in your throat, but you manage catch Eddie’s hands before he can get your shorts off.

Under the looming threat of complete and total mental blackout, you muster your courage, and try once more to pick up where you left off. 

“I – I have something to tell you … actually,” you say tentatively, worrying your lower lip and trying not to get caught on the slow, purposeful canting of his hips.

It piques his interest enough to stir him from where he’s tucked himself between your legs and turn curious eyes up at you, blown dark with needy expectation. 

“Oh, yeah?” His voice is a deep and husky rasp that sends a bolt of want like lightning down to the thrumming apex of your thighs. “Something nice?”

You swallow hard and, despite your subtle hesitation, lift your hips off the mattress to assist him this time as he slides your shorts down and discards them over his shoulder. 

They land softly over top of the lamp, plunging you into a sudden and deeply muted semi-darkness – mood lighting, something inside you suggests and you have to force yourself to watch Eddie work to keep from rolling your eyes.

You’re not going to have sex with him… but that doesn’t mean you’re not just a little curious to see what he has in mind. 

You know exactly what he has in mind, Stupid.

You forgot to make him eat dinner so now he’s just going to have to make due.

“I don’t know if it’s necessarily nice, but it’s something.” You breathe, watching transfixed as he eases your knees open as far as they will go, exposing the thin, damp fabric of your panties to the air.

He hums, a gentle rumble in the hollow of his throat that sends goosebumps flash freezing across your arms and legs when it catches on the end. 

Distantly, you see his hips jump as he catches on a fold in the sheets, and you throb in wanting commiseration.   

“… good or bad?” He rasps, punching a breath out from your already flattening lungs as he skims the junction of at the crook of your thigh with the tip of his nose and moves lower … lower. 

“Oh… good.” You say, voice an embarrassing octave higher than normal, “It’s good… hhmmaybe. I...uh... I-I haven’t decided yet.”

Teeth in the elastic of your panties, a sharp tug pulls his lower lip down before it snaps back into place, and he groans.

You fail to suppress a shiver as Eddie eases your legs up over his shoulders, still working his hips against the mattress at an agonizing pace. Suddenly all you want is to be the bed, laying beneath him as he rocks steadily into you, using you to chase his release, just like he does most nights. 

It briefly occurs to you that if you’re having that thought, it means you’re steadily approaching the point of no return. If you had any sense at all, you’d pump the breaks while you still can, but then you can feel the smooth plane of his face nuzzling the flesh of your inner thigh. You feel the press of his lips, and your tongue goes fat and useless in your mouth. Under the gentle prelude to the way he begins to press slow, reverent kisses along the expanse of your scar, you forget how to breathe, let alone do something so pointless as speak. 

The scar is the only physical thing you carry from that day you slipped through to the other side of the world. It’s a jagged, ugly thing that extends from your knee to your bikini line because while the initial wound had been expansive, the surgeon who attended to you that night last spring knew fuck all about fuck all and somehow managed to make it worse. You’re lucky, because most of your trauma is invisible, but you shouldn’t be thinking about that right now, you should be thinking about something normal, something sexy as Eddie continues with those soft, open-mouthed kisses, leaving cooling wet crescents over the length of the raised puckered skin, higher, higher…

And what’s sexy about scars and surgeons and the lingering evidence of eighty-four stitches?

Nothing, absolutely nothing, but it doesn’t stop you from reaching down to hook your fingers in the fabric of his t-shirt. You tug and pinch and gather material until you’ve made a little progress, trying to undress him while he’s busy grinding his cock into the bed, but you’re having a hard time getting it done from this angle.

Thankfully, the reverence of your touch does not go unnoticed — Eddie ceases his ministrations to push up on his knees and help you. Flushed and sweating, he reaches back and takes a fist full of the fabric, pulling the shirt over his head and discarding it in one swift movement. 

And then, just like that, you can see all the punishment he took trying to save you, down there on the wrong side of the world. All his scars and the evidence of just how close you came to losing him. Your heart thumps solidly against your ribs – yours is ugly, but his are worse, and you don’t think you’ll ever get used to seeing what those nasty little fuckers did to him. You keep that strictly to yourself, however, because Eddie already hates the way he looks bad enough without the burden of your opinion. He doesn’t need to know how they make you feel. 

You reach for him, suddenly desperate to touch him, and he takes you by the hand. He holds you firmly in his smoldering, blackened gaze, and you watch as he presses your index and middle fingers together. Then, he slides the compressed digits into the dark wet heat of his mouth and sucks on them until you’re flushed so hot your face has started to burn.

On the surface of your brain, the feeling of his tongue slipping up between your fingers, edging them open and flicking at the soft nook of flesh at the valley of their connection is unbearably gross, but that message doesn’t seem to make it down to the places where it matters. Nobody tells your animal brain that it isn’t the sexiest thing you’ve ever seen in your life. Your fingers go sliding out with a sickly wet slurp, and you shiver.

“Save these for me,” he says, “For later,”

Later? What the fuck is that supposed to mean? What’s going to happen later? You find, as he slides down the length of your body, that you don’t actually care. 

What happens in an hour or ten minutes (or less) is none of your goddamn concern when Eddie is busy parting your legs in a mirror image of the way he’d just parted your fingers.

You find you don’t have the capacity to wonder any further than that when he slips back down to prop your legs over your shoulders and hook his fingers in the dampened gusset of your panties. You breathe out a long, wanton noise that something in the back of your mind tells you is whorish when you feel the first puff of air fanning your bare pussy.

That damning something in the back of your mind suggests you should be embarrassed about that, but you can’t manage to feel anything but heated as he eases your underwear down your legs and banishes them to some far corner of the apartment.

Eddie kisses the nook at the highest point of your thigh, directly to the right of where he’s begun to trace the faintest ghost of a touch over your entrance, and suddenly all you can hear is your own heart pounding in your ears. He applies a whisper of pressure and dips into you up to the first knuckle, and you lay there, barely able to take it, wringing the sheets in your fists, telling yourself that at any moment cooler heads will prevail and you’ll put a stop to this.

Stupidtown looms on the horizon, and he’s barely even touched you.

Then, on top of everything he’s doing to you, Eddie has the audacity to try and get you talking again.

“You were saying?… ‘something good, maybe’ … but…?” he says, stretching the word lyrically in a way you haven’t heard him do in a long, long time. 

You don’t get the chance to revel in that before the question is followed by the sharp pinch of flesh between teeth as he bites you, just beneath your scar. Hard enough to bruise, but not enough to break the skin. You yelp and jump against him, but he holds you firmly to the spot so you can’t escape, then he soothes the offended flesh with the wide flat press of his tongue before sucking it in past his lips – it burns, and you can’t stand how much you like it.

“Hey, g-go easy with that, will you?” You try to tell him, “Easy…” but then he uses two fingers to spread your pussy open wide, exposing you to the air.

You trail off into a long, high whine, which turns sharp and loud when he flicks the blunt edge of his nail over your painfully neglected clit. The bundle of nerves screams, and your hips buck up hard enough to break the seal of the bruise he’d been busy sucking into your thigh. 

When he presses his thumb flat to that howling little bitch, you blow right past the point of no return. 

“Oh, fuck! – Eddie!” you gasp, and when he smiles you can feel his teeth as he gives you one last gentle nip for good measure. 

“Ask me nicely,” He growls, and you lose your goddamn mind. 

Never mind all of your bullshit principles. Never mind tests or little pink lines and blue tabs and green plus signs – you need him to fuck you, and you need him to do it now.  

“Please,” you cry, “Please, please, please–”

“Good girl,”

[exeggcute]

well it's been almost six months which I think is long enough to break my posting embargo, so, uh: guess what! I got liposuction lol. specifically hip/thigh lipo to quell some pretty wicked dysphoria that stemmed from having such a feminine silhouette… and I have to say I'm really, really pleased with the results.

tbh my initial plan was to keep things under wraps for good which is why I haven't said anything about it yet (and even as I'm typing this up I keep debating whether to post it or trash it)—partly because I was/am worried people might Act Weird about it and partly because I get a little embarrassed talking about bodygendershit in general. but here we are. one reason I do feel compelled to finally share, other than being super happy about how everything went, is that I haven't encountered a lot of discussions about body sculpting as a possible avenue of gender-affirming care (although, to be fair, maybe I just haven't been looking in the right places) and I figured at least one person out there would be interested to learn about what I did and where I've ended up so far.

anyway. pics/details under the cut—nothing even remotely risqué (or yucky), I just know that body image stuff is fraught + not everyone is eager to hear surgery talk.

to be precise: I got tumescent liposuction of the inner and outer thigh, plus this ultrasound thing to help the skin shrink. a different surgeon who I consulted (but ultimately did not go with for a number of reasons) said that even if I got the results I wanted from lipo, which he claimed was unlikely, the affected skin would look loose/baggy/weird forever... and that surgeon was wrong on both counts lol. my elasticity was great bitch!!!!

they didn't take out that much fat overall, only eight pounds or so, but it's way more about the Where than the How Much. my actual surgeon (who kicks ass btw) said lipo isn't that great for weight loss per se, and what it's really good for is sculpting targeted areas—so basically exactly what I did. six months post-op I actually weigh about the same as what I did pre-op, but the distribution has held steady; more weight goes to my stomach now and less, proportionally, goes to my hips since there are fewer fat cells in that area now. so my silhouette retains its new shape!

the overall change is admittedly on the subtle side, since I'm pretty short and have wide hip bones (and you can't change your literal skeleton) but it's still gone a looooooong way. the main thing I requested from my surgeon was "I want to fit in men's pants" and boy did he deliver.

also a good place to note that if you're in the las vegas area looking for a plastic and/or cosmetic surgeon—this guy is board-certified in both btw—then I absolutely have the guy for you. feel free to DM me for details. lipo is clearly his specialty (and it shows!) but he also does a lot of breast revisions/mastopexy (i.e., fixing implants that other surgeons did a bad job putting in), regular implants, and face work (particularly facial feminization surgery). one thing that sold me on this guy was an enthusiastic yelp review from a local stripper who said he hid the incisions for her breast lift in her armpits so none of her clients would notice that she'd had work done... a true master of his craft

okay you've scrolled enough so I'll give you what you're here for lol. I don't have many pre-op pics because I was obviously unhappy with how I looked and was not taking full-body selfies on a regular basis, but here's a few I took ~2 weeks beforehand:

these super thin men's joggers were my go-to dysphoria pants, to the point where I bought five pairs in different colors, but now they're so baggy on me that they have the opposite effect and make it look like I have wider hips than I do. so I retired them from my wardrobe...

...except not immediately because I had to wear compression garments 24/7 for the first three months post-op and these joggers were just loose enough to comfortably wear a medical girdle underneath them at all times, 110° degree temperatures be damned. (not that I was going out much for the first month since I was soooooooooooo fucking bruised and sore lol.) here's a few post-op pics in the same style pants:

(first pic is less than 24 hours post-op, about to go to my follow-up appointment, looking greasy as fuck because I wasn't allowed to shower yet; second pic two days post-op and also post-shower, thankfully; third pic is about a month post-op.)

so, like, CLEAR improvement already. I will not be posting pictures of my black-and-blue-and-swollen-all-over legs but considering how puffy I was from getting internally pummeled with a cannula it's wild that I still saw improvement literally as soon as I came home.

recovery was obviously not a blast in the moment but I got off easy, all things considered. I was supposed to get drains put in and was Not looking forward to that at all lol. the first thing I asked when I woke up after surgery was "how many drains?" because they weren't sure if I'd end up needing two or four, but it turned out the answer was zero. no drains!!!

I did have to lie with my feet elevated for the first two weeks straight, and had major bruising that receded over the first month (you could barely see my regular skin underneath all the mottled spots), but little to no nerve pain, no weird complications, and I was more or less back to normal after six weeks. also noelle took very very good care of me and was brave about injecting me with blood thinners so I wouldn't get clots and die :)

when I went into it I was fully expecting to get huge vertical scars up and down the sides of my legs (and had made peace with it!) but instead I wound up with four tiny incisions like this, each less than two inches long:

what's totally crazy is that the scars are basically Gone now. like even when I'm trying to find them I struggle to locate the ones in the front. I joked to noelle that if someone did an autopsy on me they might not figure out that I'd had cosmetic surgery, especially since the skin on my thighs is back to its normal color and texture. (in this scenario I like to imagine that it's dana scully giving me the autopsy and I'm in an x-files plot where instead of regular lipo I got alien lipo and mulder figures it out purely by accident.)

with lipo it can take up to a year to see the full results but I already feel so much fucking better in my body that seeing old pre-op pics throws me for a loop. and I can absolutely wear men's pants now—pants for short and stocky men, to be fair, but actual regular men's pants and not exclusively Pants For Men With Huge Butts And Legs. which is the only style I could even hope to fit in before. and even then it was a stretch.

big pic dump of shitty mirror selfies taken over the last few months:

:)

(also I really debated sharing this one but I already included it in the yelp review I left my surgeon so fuck it: here's a tasteful before-and-after in my undies where you can see my bare legs for easier comparison. left pic is one week pre-op, right pic is about five months post-op. including it as a link instead of embedding it in the post in case your boss happens to be reading over your shoulder at this very moment. also this is the one and only time you will ever see me stripped down on tumblr dot com so don't get used to it lol.)

[old-lorarri]

❨ main f1 masterlist | football masterlist ❩

𝐒𝐄𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐒

𝐂𝐑𝐀𝐙𝐘 𝐑𝐈𝐂𝐇 𝐀𝐒𝐈𝐀𝐍𝐒 → f1 grid x asian! reader

a series where asian readers, from all over, are showcased and appreciated because they deserve to be loved, respected, and treated like queens

𝐆𝐑𝐄𝐄𝐊 𝐆𝐎𝐃𝐒 → greek god! f1 drivers x partner! reader

a series of moodboards where formula one drivers are depicted as greek gods

𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝐎𝐅 𝐀𝐅𝐑𝐈𝐂𝐀 → f1 grid x african! reader

a series where african readers, from all over, are showcased and appreciated because they deserve to be loved, respected, and treated like queens

𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐈𝐑 𝐒𝐇𝐎𝐄𝐒 → wag! f1 drivers x fem! f1 driver! reader

a series where the readers are the drivers and these handsome gentlemen are the wags + collab w/ @solaireverie

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐑𝐄𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐄𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐒𝐄𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐒 → step dad! lewis hamilton x fem! young teen! reader

a series that documents the complicated life of a teen going through life as a child of divorce

𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐑𝐒𝐓𝐘 𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐒 𝐒𝐀𝐆𝐀 → f1 gird x fem! partner! reader

a series where formula one drivers go on buzzfeed iconic series and read thirst tweets about themselves, their partners and everything in between

[landwriter]

Picnic | Dream/Hob | 1.7K | G light and happy fluff, Hob loves springtime, Matthew hates giving dating advice, and the only pining is Dream pining for an A+ in dating, a thing that is both normal to want and possible to achieve

for Domaystic Drabbles, Day 4: Packed Lunch ty to @softest-punk for twigging me to the sweet @domaystic prompts. It got a little out of hand!

----

Hob had seen several thousand fine spring days. He’d seen keen snowdrops surfacing in February, a hundred congregations of crocuses bursting forth to greet the turning of the seasons, and entire delegations of wild daffodils lancing through leaf-fall and trumpeting their blossoms with an attitude that suggested they knew themselves to be the first and only creatures to master the colour yellow. He’d watched six centuries of human habitation dusted with the same fine pollen as alder and birch unfurled their catkins like festival garlands, and he’d— he’d gotten distracted again.

He blinked at the paper in front of him. He’d forgotten it was there. Or that he was meant to be grading it.

That, too: six centuries of the wild joy of spring distracting him from whatever passed for worthy toil at the time. Six centuries of the whiff of warm breeze setting off some yet-unexplained chemical reaction in his brain that made him want to dash outside and not come back in for weeks. Six centuries of him becoming temporarily mad and cheerfully insufferable to all those around him with the joy of it. He’d never get used to it, and Christ help him if he let anyone around him get used to it either.

“What a gorgeous day,” he remarked, to the untouched stack of student work.

It said nothing back, but he beamed down at it anyway, and then, sighing in the manner of a man happy to be defeated, turned his office chair to face the cracked-open window and watch the house martins build their newest nest.

---

“Matthew.”

“Yeah, boss?”

“I require your counsel. For a human matter.” Dream’s brow was furrowed, his manner grave. Hob, then.

Matthew inclined his head and hopped sideways in what he’d decided was the corvid equivalent of girding his loins.

“Hob keeps commenting on the weather on our outings.” He sounded anguished.

“The weather?” he repeated dumbly. Thank fuck. Two days ago it had been the number of orgasms human males required. Daily. Which, good for the two of them, but c’mon. Matthew had really not needed that knowledge about the kind of refractory period and appetite you acquire after half a millenia of boning. Hob, unfortunately, was Dream’s first human boyfriend, and the boss was setting about his new function with all the usual terrifying intensity and insane demands of perfection. In service of this, Matthew (unilaterally and undemocratically, he might add) had been named Arbiter Of All Things Men, which seemed kind of like a reach considering he was a bird, and one who’d been only, like, a little bisexual in his human life. The Corinthian was always skulking around. He wasn’t human either, but at least he’d fucked dudes. He’d have tips. Or Loosh! Loosh knew everything. She could give Dream books and send him off. Instead of Matthew trying to remember how the fuck dating worked.

“-time we’ve met this week.”

“Right,” said Matthew vaguely.

“What does he mean by it? He knows I cannot change the weather in the Waking. He asks nothing of me, and yet it is incessant.”

“Complaining about it, huh? Humans love to complain, boss.”

“No,” said Dream, looking wretched. “Worse. Earnest, ceaseless praise.”

“Oh. Sure. Of course.” What?

Dream was pacing the throne room like he was auditioning for community theater. “At the National Gallery, he daydreamed of the city park outside while feigning to contemplate a Pesellino. I took him to a production of Macbeth at the Globe, and afterwards, he said that even after centuries, it was never less than marvelous to watch. He was referring to the swifts feeding above us in the third act. Naturally.”

Matthew made a sympathetic noise. If he didn’t know when to keep his mouth - er, beak - shut, he’d say that Dream sounded like an insecure lover. Jealous, as best he could tell, of the change of seasons for stealing away some of Hob’s uncannily boundless affections.

“Well?” Dream stared at him in askance.

“Uh.” He floundered. Spring shit, spring shit. “You could take him on a picnic.” Yeah. Chicks loved picnics.

---

Dream had appeared in his office with a wicker basket that looked stolen from a Beatrix Potter story. A delicate gingham square peeked from the lid. It looked big enough to set up a naughty rabbit for life. He set it on Hob’s desk and then primly folded his hands behind his back.

“Hullo, you.” Hob stood and kissed him on the cheek. “What’s the occasion?” He suspected that there was none. Dream had been taking dating him very seriously. It was delightful.

“Matthew has suggested you require a picnic,” said Dream. Except he said it the way someone else might say The doctor has suggested it’s terminal.

Dream had been taking dating him very seriously. It was also, sometimes, awful.

“Oh, darling. That’s so sweet. But I don’t require anything special, you know. Just you, when you’ve got time to drop in. We could do something else.”

“We shall not. I have packed us lunch.”

“Alright, you stubborn creature. Maybe I do require a picnic.” He offered his arm to Dream. “Come on, I know a place.”

---

Lunch was too piddling a word for the spread Dream had packed. Lunch was a crust of bread and ale, or pottage. Lunch was a Sainsbury’s Egg & Cress Sandwich wolfed down with the last of the morning’s flask of Yorkshire Tea. This was a feast. A temple offering. For Hob. His chest twinged a little with affection. God, he was in love.

“This pleases you,” said Dream, who was looking unfairly elegant for someone sat on a gingham blanket with a bit of clotted cream on the side of his mouth.

Hob kissed it away. “Oh, yes.”

“More than our other...dates.”

“Oh,” said Hob, who was sometimes slow on the uptake, but after several centuries, didn’t miss much at all. “I’ve loved all of them. But this-” he gestured sweepingly around at Primrose Hill, the green ash shading them, the pleasant urban pastoral of joggers and families and dogs and other love-struck couples, all breathing in the same warm afternoon air, “-is exactly where I want to be, today. Outside, among all the life. In the thick of spring. It’s perfect.”

Dream followed Hob’s gaze, and studied the tableau. “There is nothing exceptional about this weather or setting.” He sounded as nonplussed as creature with nearly infinite age and knowledge could sound.

Hob laced his fingers through Dream’s, and tried to see what he saw. No great stories, really. Pedestrian daydreams of food and sun and sex, probably, of pay raises and summer vacations to Mallorca and Ibiza. Humanity being predictable, and life doing the same thing it did every year, to Dream’s uncountable thousands.

“No, I suppose not, but that’s why I love it, too. It’s familiar. Constant. Centuries, and it catches me out each time. It’s always arrived, no matter how bad things were for me. Always been there to celebrate with me when they’re wonderful. Like now.”

Dream looked sidelong at Hob. “Like now,” he echoed. Unsure, and stubbornly unwilling to make a question of it. The ache in Hob’s chest redoubled itself.

“Like now,” he promised. “It reminds me of you, too, you know. We always met in June, Dream. In 1789, watching the first trees budding nearly drove me mad with anticipation. Ninety-nine years and nine months. And you were always heralded by the same signs.” He traced circles on Dream’s pale palm, imagining it sun-kissed. “In 1989, when spring turned all the way into summer and you were still gone, I think my heart broke a little. I’d hoped, until then. That you were just late. With the swifts,” he said, quiet.

“Hob.” Dream had moved across the picnic blanket in his preternaturally fast way, and was now more or less in his lap, gripping Hob’s shoulders.

“Sorry,” he said, grimacing. “I’m being horrifically soppy. Must’ve been the scones. It’s alright. You’re here now. All that matters.”

“Robert Gadling,” said Dream. Hob blinked at that. He’d only ever gotten the full name treatment when Dream was still his Stranger, and only then when he’d disappointed him. “If you dare apologize for such a fine expression of your sentiment, I will be wroth with you.”

“Sorry,” he said again, smiling this time.

“I am honoured you associate me with the season you most adore. I would have it that you never pass another Spring waiting for me. If you wished such a thing.”

It sounded a little like a marriage proposal, which was something his heart really could not cope with the full size of at the minute. Not with so much love already around. Not if Dream didn’t intend to say it like that. He went for levity instead.

“Even though it’s driven me to distraction every time you’ve taken me out this week? Even if all I want to do for weeks is lie around outdoors and hold hands?”

Nearby, a baby started wailing. Dream, to his credit, didn’t even glance away. “Yes,” he said, perfectly solemn, perfectly certain. “Even then.”

“Well, that’s alright then,” said Hob, fighting an urge to start crying a little as well. “I would, as a matter of fact. Wish such a thing.”

They looked at each other, besotted, while the wailing continued.

“Only,” murmured Dream, “must it be in Anthropocene?”

“What?”

“Lie down, lover.” Hob did, a delighted suspicion creeping over him as Dream reached into his jacket pocket. Dream stretched over him, and spoke it low into his ear: “And I will take you to a Spring no man has seen.”

---

Matthew was eating scone crumbs and congratulating himself on his good sense to suggest a picnic. Birds loved picnics too. He hadn’t realized how much until this moment. Jesus. Picnics were a great idea. He was going to tell Dream that human men required them weekly during courtship.

“Thanks for bringing home leftovers, boss,” he said, spraying crumbs all over Dream’s shoulder.

Dream was too preoccupied to mind, or even notice. He waved an imperious hand. “It’s nothing. We absconded from the Waking shortly after we arrived. I have finally given Hob a worthy date. I showed him the virtues of picnicking in a Dreaming Spring.” Oh my god. Dream actually had been jealous of the weather. Because he hadn’t made it for Hob.

“What, no ants?” he offered.

“Hardly so prosaic,” said Dream. He glowed with satisfaction. “The very first.”

[linneakou]

In all seriousness, Biden dropping out changes everything.

We were looking at a surefire red wave in November; this isn't me hating on Biden, this is me looking at the polls in the swing states. Dems NEED to win the swing states in order to retake Congress and hold the White House, and those states were NOT swinging blue. Biden was dragging down the ticket, both because of his perceived mental deterioration (it doesn't matter what his actual diagnosis is, it matters how he LOOKS to the public and he did not look good) and because of his full-throated support for the war in Gaza. This was hurting his chances to beat Trump, who he should have been steamrolling (Trump has a billion criminal charges and over a dozen convictions! How could anyone lose to that??)

Trump getting shot at helped his optics, and there was only one way to retake the narrative. Dems were desperate, and it shows.

Kamala is not my ideal candidate but she does better in polls against Trump than Biden did. She has indicated she would be malleable when it came to Palestine. She's been at Biden's side for the past 4 years. Pair her with the right running mate and Dems have a chance. We can't fuck around with Project 2025.

Chins up, we are about to go to the DNC in Chicago. This is the endgame. Gird your loins.

[weirdly-specific-but-ok]

pt IX good omens on livestream, i'm not ok: S1E4

You did it, Good Omens fandom, my dear maggots. You broke me in every way. Now I'm here, and where I once spent my day peacefully being sad about normal things, I'm now sad about a random fact about nightingales I learned on a British ornithology site and this is just... the brainrot. It's real. Raise brainrot awareness. Prevention is better than the nonexistent cure.

Well, I've procrastinated this post by like 48 hours by drawing fanart and being mopey over Crowley and generally being asleep because I'm still on antibiotics and ill. So let us not procrastinate further. First, episode 4. Tally, hoes!

In preparation for the stream, I gathered two emotional support oranges, only one of which was gaseous, and an apple. This was so that rather than waste an orange on being gay for Crowley I'd use the apple for that, symbolic of his temptation in the Garden of Eden etc. I didn't know how badly this plan would go.

On Discord, our collective loins girded, I noticed with no small suspicion that everyone was muttering about the bookshop and whether I'd be okay. When I demanded frantically what happened to the bookshop (I THOUGHT EVERYTHING WAS IN S2) everyone shut up and told me the bookshop was in tiptop shape and it was all tickety-boo and nothing would happen at all in episode 5.

Spoiler alert it is not all tickety-boo.

We start with Aziraphale going for a jog to keep uh fit for exercising with Crowley, and he is interrupted by Gabriel, who is not Jimbriel, and is not naked, that is, we cannot see his arse yet, but we can see that he is an arse.

We then see not-Newt the deliveryman with his wife Maude and they are the only straight couple that the people on the chat care about. Calling him not-Newt is going to pose problems for me.

Crowley is being a smart baby, and researching astronomy. Poor Crowley. I love Crowley. Do you understand? I LOVE CROWLEY.

There is a lot of talk of spoons and forks and such innuendos. I make a joke about scissors being missing. The chat does not notice. I am disappointed in the gays.

I am so engrossed in the way Death says "deeAaaAAthHHhh" that I fail to notice Not-Newt get killed delivering a message to Death. This is going to pose problems for me.

I forgot about the apocalypse plotline till the horsepeople arrive. This is understandable. I care not for this 'world' ending, my new world is Crowley. I love Crowley.

Duck aliens fucking descend. This is not a joke. There are duck aliens, and they are supportive of trans people. Newt does not count their nipples.

The Shad guy doesn't care Newt found aliens. He is upset that Newt didn't find witches. If Shad was mowing his lawn and found gold, he would toss it aside because he is focused on mowing. I can respect that. People make jokes about Newt eventually finding a witch.

It is suddenly a Christopher Nolan movie. Someone corrects me and says it's more like Jerry Bruckheimer. I do not know what that is.

Someone says Crowley destroys the Bentley but for whatever reason, like a lot of people before, makes it a black box that you have to click to read. I don't mind that, I like clicking.

Aziraphale bought out a theatre for Crowley, like a Kdrama where the rich CEO buys out an entire theatre for his working class girl.

Adam goes through what I went through with OCD. It is not fun.

It is now a horror movie. Adam floats in the air. That was not a symptom I had with OCD.

Crowley asks Aziraphale to run away with him to the stars. Aziraphale says no. Crowley is upset and my baby Azi looks so sad and confused about everything he believes in. Great. I'm totally fine, I think as I start stuffing my emotional support orange into my mouth.

It is now a Home Alone movie. Crowley in gloves is sexy. Mmmmmmm yes. Crowley does great advertising for plant spray bottles as he murders and threatens demons.

I point out that the GO book says Crowley can do "weird things with his tongue" as I learned from the GO scent guide company page. It was after all the most relevant take-away from that page.

Disco Tony arrives. This is not a safe space.

AZIRAPHALE KEEPS TRYING TO DO THE RIGHT THING AND IS FAILED BY HEAVEN LEAVE MY BABY AZI ALONE WTF GO AWAY. THE ANGELS WALL SLAM HIM TOO. THAT'S CROWLEY'S THING YOU BASTARDS.

Newt and Anathema are cute. I DON'T NOTICE BECAUSE IM SO UPSET HE'S CHEATING ON MAUDE AND WONDERING WHY THE CHAT IS OKAY WITH IT BECAUSE I AM A FOOL WHO CONTINUES TO MIX UP NEWT WITH NOT-NEWT AND THEN THE CHAT TELLS ME NOT-NEWT DIED AND I'M CONFUSED.

Newt and Anathema are having sex. As an aspec person, I am very alarmed at the visuals.

Azi is failed by heaven and the metatron. Shocker. Fucking get away from Azi. Azi is miserable and looks like he wants to cry.

AZI IS EXORCISED AND THE FUCKING FLAME CATCHES IN THE BOOKSHOP AND THE EPISODE ENDS.

TAKE MY PAIN MOTHERFUCKERS. I WILL POST THIS AND THEN WRITE THE EP5 PART.

[dewitty1]

Fic Recs Wrap Up January 2024♡(੭ˊ͈ ꒵ˋ͈)੭*･:.｡. .｡.:*･゜ﾟ･*☆

The Wake-up Kiss by Justlikewriting

This time, when Harry found himself without a date for the Ministry Yule Ball, Parvati Patil was unable to step in. So, he was left with the only other viable option: to ask Draco Malfoy. Which would be fine, of course: it had been twelve years since the war after all. And they saw each other regularly now, meeting up with the same group of friends almost every Friday night. Harry, however, obviously hadn’t taken into account just how insufferable Zacharias Smith could be. Rec Post

The Binding and the Loosing by TheGoblinMatriarch @thegoblinmatriarch

Draco Malfoy is a reclusive academic who works on layered generational magic under the pseudonym Scholar Griseo. When he is contacted by a ‘James Black’ for help with a tricky situation with a magical House, he can’t help but notice the similarities between his potential client and Harry Potter. Since he can’t exactly refuse to help the Saviour of the magical world, Draco girds his loins and visits Grimmauld Place, where he ends up involved in what he must presume is one of those classic Harry Potter misadventures. Bonding, sentient Houses, domesticity ahoy! Rec Post

A True Entanglement by Booktopus @thebooktopus

One moment, Harry was minding his own business, going about his workday, and the next, he found himself being dragged across the Ministry by a red string that had somehow curled up in a pretty little bow around his wrist. A story of fate, smut, falling in love, and a string named Harold. Rec Post

Fire Meet Gasoline by lettersbyelise @lettersbyelise

When Draco’s anger management issues land him in St Mungo’s, he thinks his Quidditch career is over. But Harry, A&E Healer and notorious workaholic, is faced with a similar predicament. To save their jobs, the two of them decide to fake a relationship. All they have to do is convince their friends and employers… and not fall in love in the process. Simple, right? Rec Post

Everything is Relative to You by honeybeet @thehoneybeet

Potter was supposed to have lived. Draco is certain of this. That Potter would no longer walk the earth was tantamount to the sun moving west to east across the sky. If only he could have stopped this from happening, if he’d have known… It comes to him as ideas often did: too late. Or, Harry dreams of his past lives, and Draco is in every one. Rec Post

we’ll keep the king by BlueSundayCake  @bluesundaycake

On a cold December morning, Remus Lupin shows up on Severus Snape’s doorstep with a child with very familiar eyes. Rec Post

Evitative by Vichan  @k-vichan

In the summer before his fifth year at Hogwarts, Harry is drawn to a room in Grimmauld Place. Like the Gryffindor he is, he enters the room without fear. The room is a library, and Harry is surprised to find that he’s eager to learn.

Then he gets the bad news: he’s been accidentally expelled from Hogwarts, and he needs to be sorted again. Everyone is confident that he’ll go straight back to Gryffindor, but with what he’s been learning, Harry’s not so sure. Rec Post

The White Pawn by Soupy_George @soupy-george

When eighteen-year-old Draco Malfoy finds himself back at Hogwarts on the eve of Voldemort’s infamous return, he is confronted with the most difficult decision he’s ever had to make: Relive the 6th year at school he’s tried so hard to forget, or do the unthinkable and ally himself with Potter’s lot… Rec Post

Howlr by partialtopotter @partialtopotter

Howlr is the new dating application enchanting Witches, Wizards and Everyone in between. Are you looking for the one or a one-night stand; it’s all here folks. Howlr is sponsored by Weasley Wizard Wheezes, the same team that brought us the Spellular just two years ago. Ginny Weasley, famed chaser for the Holyhead Harpies, swears by the app, ‘guaranteed to make sparks fly,’ she says. The magic awaits you! Rec Post

Here are a few more fics I've read recently that y'all might like to check out as well!(ノﾟ∀ﾟ)ノ━☆ﾟ･*:.｡. .｡.:*･.*･｡ﾟ*:・ﾟ✧

Inevitable [Drarry] by violenttulips

After the war, Harry Potter becomes a talented Senior Auror with a penchant for injury in defense of his colleagues. Draco Malfoy leaves the country for five years and becomes an accomplished Specialty Healer. He comes back after he accepts a job at St. Mungo's Hospital. When they meet again, it's clear that Draco has changed significantly in the years since they attended Hogwarts together, and Harry finds himself strangely attracted to his former rival. But things never come easy for the Boy-Who-Lived, and that's not about to change now.

Learn To Fly by Ladderofyears @ladderofyears

January 2004: Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter are two of the finest Seekers in England, deadly rivals and secret lovers. As far as Draco is concerned, that's how it'll stay forever. He is betrothed to beautiful heiress Astoria Greengrass, and they are due to have a big summer wedding. Everything changes during a hotly fought Arrows versus Wimbourne game when Draco falls from his broom. To his huge shock, when Draco awakes in St Mungo's, he discovers he is pregnant. What will Draco do, now everything in his tidily compartmentalised life has to change?

He Comes Like a Thunderstorm by korlaena @korlaena

Draco is doing his best to balance the life he wants to live and the life he’s forced to live. He’s nearing the tail-end of a long, post-war probation when Harry Potter crashes back into his life with all the grace of a charging Erumpent, breaking through his carefully constructed rules and routine. Caught up in a whirlwind of sex and lust, Potter unwittingly shows Draco that his life as an Incubus doesn’t have to be as lonely and unfulfilling as he thought, but how long can it last?

Denouement by the_never_was 

Pale face in paler hands, he is devoid of color. He is only the moonlight. And he wonders if he'll find the sun. A story about Draco entering a period of change that will either shatter him or enfold him into Harry Potter's world.

( •ॢ◡-ॢ)-♡ I hope you enjoy these fics as much as I have! Happy reading, y’all! xoxo Carey  (◍•ᴗ•◍)♡ ✧*💜💙💚💛❤💗💕💖

[mynameisjessejk]

Lies We Tell Each Other

“It wasn’t so bad,” Kano said, waving one hand airily as if to brush Russo’s concern away. He was at what ought to have been Russo’s desk, quill in hand and ink smudged on his fingers.

Russo hummed.

Kano continued, “Tyelko made up with Irisse pretty quickly; giving them their horses back with all the yearlings took care of that. Ango and Aiko, pretty much too. That and Curvo made them some new armor. And you know Findarato was always going to let it go,” Kano added wryly.

Russo made a skeptical noise.

“Oh come on,” Kano said. “He was spitting mad, and fairly so, since we did kill his grandfather, but he’s always been too forgiving of us.”

Russo inclined his head. Point of fact, it had been his blow which had ended the life of Olwe of Alqualonde, and Findarato’s forbearance on that front was likely more pity than actual forgiveness. There was hardly anything in him left of the immovable older cousin the younger ones used to rail at for unfairness, after all.

Kano continued blithely, “And finding out Dad was dead and you were captured took all the wind- well,” Kano said, course correcting his word choice rapidly, “It certainly deflated his irritation.”

Russo cocked an eyebrow. Were they eschewing all nautical turns of phrase now?

Kano winced. “Okay,” he said. “So they’re a little touchy about burning the ships,” he said.

Russo huffed an exhale through his nose. Then he made a questioning noise. They did, after all, have more cousins than that.

“Well you’d know better than I how Findo took it,” Kano retorted. “Artanis was never going to forgive us anything ever, and Turno is always an arse, so I’m not sure I noticed a difference.”

Russo rolled his eyes. Turno and Kano just rubbed each other exactly the wrong way, and they always had. And no one in the family held a grudge like Artanis, except perhaps Curvo.

“Don’t look at me in that tone of voice,” Kano grumbled. “I was perfectly civil to Turno when I couldn’t avoid him, and everything really was fine while you were away.”

Russo couldn’t quite help his grimace. Away. As if Kano had been Acting-King because Russo had been on a vacation, or a state visit. A rueful chuckle bubbled in his chest; in a way it had been a state visit, if a uniquely terrible one.

“Want to let me in on the joke?” Kano drawled.

Russo took a drink of the cooling tea to gird himself, and then said, “Turno. Civil. Engineer.”

“Don’t pun at me, you harridan!” Kano protested.

Russo smiled serenely and drank more tea. He twitched his head in a slight jerk.

Kano made a grumbling noise, but set aside his quill. He obligingly came over the excessively-pillowed daybed Tyelko had installed Russo on that morning so he could oversee the ruling of the realm, and settled next to Russo. He fluffed a few pillows, and then he launched the little one that was always in Russo’s way across the room. “How does that always keep finding its way back?” he wondered.

Russo hummed contentedly and leaned into Kano’s shoulder. Kano would not have found the state visit joke funny, and if he was going to lie about things to make Russo feel better, Russo was certainly going to return the favor.

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

Dirty Work 51

Warnings: this fic will include dark content such as bullying, familial discord/abuse, and possible untagged elements. My warnings are not exhaustive, enter at your own risk.

This is a dark!fic and explicit. 18+ only. Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.

Summary: You start a new gig and find one of your clients to be hard to please.

Characters: Loki

Note: 50 chapters?!

As per usual, I humbly request your thoughts! Reblogs are always appreciated and welcomed, not only do I see them easier but it lets other people see my work. I will do my best to answer all I can. I’m trying to get better at keeping up so thanks everyone for staying with me.

Your feedback will help in this and future works (and WiPs, I haven’t forgotten those!) Please do not just put ‘more’. I will block you.

I love you all immensely. Take care. 💖

You cross your arms, trying to comfort yourself as you wait. The front door opens and the only harbinger of your visitors are their footsteps. The grim pall of the house swallows them up as they shuffle over the doormat.

You don’t look over as their figures appear as shadowy blurs in the edge of your vision. You’re too humiliated to face your guests. Not truly yours, but Loki’s. Like everything else; this house, the very couch you sit on, the clothes you wear. Isn’t that what he’d only just berated you for? Taking it all so ungratefully.

“Darling,” Frigga’s the first to speak as she approaches, almost sheepishly, “my, I’d say it’s lovely to see you both but you look dreadful.”

You wince as she nears and shrink down, bending your legs as you long to curl into a ball. You hug your knees and curl your shoulders. She hovers over you, turning to speak to the others.

“You must open the curtains, it’s awfully gloomy in here,” she demands.

Loki mutters but at a grunt from his father, he acquisces. You stare at the black pants as he tears open the drapes, the rod ringing with his efforts. Another figure looms close. Odin shifts and places his hand on the armrest behind your shoulders.

“I see all is in a state of fine order,” Odin proclaims dryly, “you have this poor thing hanging from the troughs–”

“Father,” Loki sneers as he faces the room again. He steps forward, trying to tidy his wild curls, made even more defiant by his neglect. You notice his attire; his shirt is untucked and clashes with his tan trousers. “I will not be lectured.”

“Oh, dear, look at her face,” Frigga lowers herself to sit on the edge of the sofa and touches your arm kindly, “her dressings need changing.”

You avert your eyes and bite down on your cheek. You’d almost forgotten your nose and the peeling bandages. All that wasn’t as dire as the walls.

“Mm, and that isn’t my fault, mother. It isn’t I who would injure her thus. Rather your golden child,” Loki spits. “If you’ve come to argue the point further, I haven’t the time to hear it.”

“Son,” Odin girds, “do not rile yourself with presumptions. We’ve come to make sure you are well, as any decent parents might.”

“Hm, because you’ve always been so eager to visit, father,” he scoffs.

“Eh, Loki,” Frigga squeezes your arm before she stands again, “we thought to share some news to you. In person as it were. You wouldn’t answer the phone but we do believe you deserve to have it straight from us.”

“Oh, what is it now? Are we celebrating the solstice?” Loki folds his arms and lifts his chin, “you can check us off as not attending, thank you.”

“Now, don’t be an ass,” Odin growls, “if you would hear us, you might not have the urge.”

“Why should I listen to you, eh? Did you listen to me? Did you hear me when I walked in bruised to the gills? Did you hear me over that lout’s lies?” Loki snarls, “you made no move to stop me going but here you are, pouting and begging forgiveness. 

“Well, let me make it clear, you and that cretin you call your eldest son, will not entangle yourselves in another of my marriages. It will not happen. I told you that morning and I meant it. He is no brother of mine and if you continue to pander to his misdeeds, then you will count yourself two children, not three.”

You tweak a brow and tilt your head as his rant swirls over you. Marriage? Surely, he only misspoke.

“Would you listen?” Odin’s voice booms, echoing around the room as he steps around the couch and punches his palm. “We do count only two children; you and Hela.”

“Right,” Loki says unconvinced, “certainly, you will do your best not to let me share a table with him again. We can pretend nothing happened. That he did not accost my wife. Just as before, it is under the carpet as we stomp it into submission.”

“Wife?” Frigga murmurs in confusion and glances at you. You feel her gaze but don’t meet it. You’re just as confused.

“I mean it,” Odin insists and turns to look at you, “I am ashamed that my son would hurt you, dear. Brute as he is, I cast him out. He is banned from the house and wiped from my ledgers. Should you wish it, I would gladly testify to his guilt.”

You don’t reply. Which son does he mean? The one who chased you through the night or the one locking you in the dark?

“Thor is not welcome in this family anymore. If you hadn’t run away…” Odin faces Loki again.

“Oh, forgive me for my skepticism, father,” Loki grimaces, “you’ve not exactly earned a lot of trust from me–”

“Nor you me,” Odin counters.

“You never gave me a chance,” Loki hisses, “very well then, thank you, oh, great father, for practising an ounce of good judgment.”

“Boy,” Odin wags his finger at his son as he steps closer.

“Boy?” Loki exclaims, “get out. Now.”

“Loki,” Frigga screeches, “enough. We’ve come all the way here to apologise to you and… her, and you are being insensible. Would you hear us?”

Loki rolls his eyes. He keeps one arm across his chest and bends the other to flutter his fingers dismissively, “you kept him in my life. You begged me to look past his slights for years and refused to see them until someone got hurt.”

“Yes, we were neglectful. Willfully blind,” Frigga says sadly, peeking back at you, “seeing you that morning, and now, the bruises, and her… we… we are very sorry and we can understand that it might be too late for all this but we only want to be heard.”

Loki is quiet, roiling as he breathes loudly. He swallows and sniffs, “yes, you should look at her and see what he did to her.” His lip twitches, “and if I had not been there, imagine what he would have done–”

You close your eyes as you feel a weight over you, feel the suffocating heat, hear Thor’s sinister tone, ‘little maid’.

“Stop!” You throw your hands up as your eyes snap open, “please stop, I don’t want to think about it.”

“Oh, dear,” Frigga spins and once more rests herself on the couch’s edge, “you don’t have to. Please, you’re safe. He won’t bother you again. I’ll be sure of it.”

You knot your fingers together and twist until your knuckles hurt. You can’t look at her, at any of them. You shake your head and shrug.

“As you can see, she is not ready for company,” Loki asserts.

“What I see is she’s being shrouded away in this crypt,” Frigga rebuffs, “she requires sunshine. She needs healing, not paranoia.”

“You don’t know what we’ve been through,” Loki accuses, “how can you know what she needs?”

“I have eyes,” Frigga snips, “darling,” she speaks to you, “would you like some tea in the garden? Just you, I wouldn’t want to infringe.”

You gulp and rub your neck. You nod, “yes.”

“See?” Frigga pets your knee kindly before she stands again, “I won’t tread upon your toes, son, you get her the tea and see her to the garden.” She sidles aside to stand with her husband, “and then you will explain to me this whole marriage business.”

You glance over at Loki, the same question nipping at your ears. Was he confused? Why did he say all that? Marriage, wife? No, prisoner and warden, that’s what it truly is.

✨

Slowly the doom recedes. The warmth of the sun beams down as you keep your finger hooked in the handle of the tea cup. You let the steaming brew go cold as your eyes devour the scenery. The greens, the violets, the indigos, and pinks. Colours all around.

You suck in deep breaths of the spring air, tasting the last dregs of dew and the floating pollen. You hear the council of sparrows hiding in the bushes and watch the pair of doves bobbing across the grass. Bees buzz between the blooming stems and insects flit back and forth through the air. The seasonal renewal is underway as a whole new world awakens.

Beneath the serenity, there is fear. This won’t last. This is just a brief respite from your desolation. A flicker of light in the dark.

So you bask in it as much as you can, for as long as you can. You can’t help but peek over at the french doors and wonder about what’s happening behind them. What is being said? Are Frigga and Odin still there? Is Loki still angry?

You cup your chin and take a sip. This is all you ever wanted. You only wish he would have listened to you. Why must someone else talk sense into him? Why can’t he just hear you?

Your vision hazes as you drift into the peaceful hue. The spring swallows you up and mutes your worries. You cling to that moment, knowing the end will come sooner than later.

The doors open and pierce the spring soliloquy. You look over as Loki steps out. His shirt is tucked in and he’s tried to comb his hair. Still, he looks out of sorts. His eyes are circled darkly and his cheek tics as his jaw clenches.

He watches you as he nears the table, standing across from you as he extends his long fingers to the iron surface. He takes a breath and looks around. He retracts his hand to rest on the back of the chair.

“May I?” He asks.

His request surprises you. That he would even want permission. After all, this is his home, all of this is allotted to you at his whim.

“Sure,” you sit back and let go of the teacup.

He drags the chair out and lowers himself. He bends his arms over the table and his head swivels again, as if searching for something. He clears his throat and turns straight. He stares at you as you peer down at the table.

“It’s beautiful out,” he comments, “the tulips are coming in.”

You nod, “yeah, they’re pretty.”

He exhales and shifts in the chair. He taps his fingertips then weaves his fingers through each other. He stills his fidgeting.

“How is your tea?”

You look down at the cup, mostly untouched. You raise your eyes to meet him and purse your lips.

“It’s fine,” you answer, “what’s going on?”

He circles his thumbs around each other and pushes his shoulders up before forcing the tension out, “I thought I would… come enjoy the garden with you, pet.”

“Oh,” you utter.

“Oh,” he echoes staunchly. “Unless, I am disturbing you?”

You shake your head, “I thought you wanted me to go inside…”

He frowns and lowers his chin, “I…” he begins then unclasps his hands and sits straight. He rests his elbows on the armrests and his cheek strains, “I want you to be safe.”

You nod and look at your lap as you think, “your parents said Thor is gone.”

“Yes, so he has been cast out. For how long, I can’t be certain,” he sighs, “but he is not my only worry.”

“What else—”

“If I’d not discovered your escape, you would’ve fallen and hurt yourself worse.”

“Loki, I… I’m sorry but I couldn’t–”

“And you do not eat when I bring you food. You hardly sleep.”

“What about you?” You toss back as you raise your head.

His lips thin, “yes, what about me. I am just as guilty in all this, I see that now.”

You’re quiet as you consider his admission. It’s a rare moment. Not exactly victory, but a consolation. As much as you can hope for.

“I appreciate all you have done but I… don’t want to be a burden anymore,” you say, “if that’s how you feel about me, I think we’d both be better off if I left.”

He goes rigid and his throat tightens, “pet…”

“Or maybe I could just be the maid again. We could go back to that. That would be okay.”

He huffs and hangs his head. He brings his fingertips together as he seems to argue with himself. Slowly, he lifts his head, “no, that simply won’t do.”

Your face falls, “please don’t lock me up again.”

Your eyes gloss as you pout, begging him wordlessly. He winces as his mouth slants, one way then the other. He mulls on your plea.

He tilts his head one way then the other, stretching out his neck. He slips his elbows off the armrest and grips the chair, pushing himself to his feet. He rolls his shoulders straight and rounds the table. He stops beside you and lowers himself down to a knee. You watch him, confused.

He takes your hand and draws it over the side of the chair. He holds it in his, stroking it as he peers up at you.

“You cannot be a burden or the maid, and you certainly may not leave,” he says, “you are going to be my wife.”

You blink. You’re not sure you heard him right. He squeezes your hand and you look down at his grip.

“Loki?” You babble.

“I haven’t picked a ring, I’m sorry,” he pulls your hand to him, leaning in to kiss it, petting it, “but perhaps you might help in that.” He puts his other knee down and moves even closer, “we will have a lot of planning to do, won’t we, darling?”

He angles to lean his head against your arm, keeping his hand on yours. You’re paralysed. He’s proposing to you but there isn’t any room for your rejection. Like all other things, it’s a command. You have to keep yourself from answering, ‘yes, Mr. Laufeyson.’

You look down at his dark tresses and let out the breath racked beneath your ribs, “I’ve never been to a wedding.” The statement is hollow and numb. You don’t know what else to say.

He chuckles and lifts his head to grin up at you, “well, how exciting that you’re first will be your own.”

[cal-daisies-and-briars]

Gird your loin's my dear Cal....

🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨

Consider my loins, uh, girded.

60 for 🚨:

---

This whole thing has, after all, been about her child having a relationship with them. 

“Please, Evan,” she says. “I’m willing to try to fix things. And maybe Mom and Dad are, too.”

How can she try to fix things? She isn’t the one who broke things. She isn’t the one who broke him. And he thought she knew that. 

“I don’t know that I am,” Buck tells her. “I would have liked time to think about it.”

Maddie nods, accepting his answer. But she looks disappointed. Disappointed in him. 

“Think about it?” She asks. “You know… It wouldn’t be like when you got back. You won’t be outnumbered. I’ll be there, Howie and Albert will be there. You can bring Eddie.”

Buck’s jaw tightens. He can see where this is going. How it will end up for him. 

“I’ll think about it,” Buck concedes. He doesn’t see what other choice he has. 

🔸🔸🔸

“You don’t have to go,” Eddie says, after Maddie leaves and Buck explains it to him. “You know you don’t.”

“Do I know that?” Buck asks.

“Okay, well I’m telling you. Just because Maddie wants a relationship with them does not mean you are obligated to do the same.”

And he should know, Buck supposes. Eddie hasn’t spoken a single word to his parents since Shannon’s funeral. Buck isn’t sure if that bothers him or if he’s at peace with it, but he’s holding firm nevertheless. Buck would, too. They cost Eddie years with Christopher. 

“Except, I can just see how this goes,” Buck sighs. “It’s just a visit now, but soon they’re invited for Christmases and Thanksgivings and birthdays, and if I can’t be there and play nice, I’m the one missing out on my niece’s life.”

Eddie thinks about that. “Yeah, that’s true. Sorry. You’re right.”

“I am?” Buck frowns, a little pathetically. 

“How often do I see my sisters?” Eddie asks. “It’s… You think you can keep it separate, but it’s hard.”

Fuck. 

Buck sighs. 

“I can’t believe she’s choosing them, after everything we went through.”

“I don’t think that’s what she’s doing,” Eddie says. “Chim doesn’t have parents around either, right? Maybe she feels like her kid is lacking something and she’s scrambling a little. I get that.”

Buck makes a small frustrated noise in the back of his throat. 

“So what are my options, Eddie?” He asks. “How do I not lose out here?”

Eddie contemplates this.