#Go figure I talked about this one even more than I did about Legends

[undercityrezident]

My Commentary on Pokemon Scarlet

Way back in—wait, when was it… April, May? February even?—whenever it was we saw the first trailer for Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, I was gobsmacked because I absolutely did not expect to see a new Pokemon game so soon. I was taken so by surprise by it that I was almost confused. I was thinking to myself, “Man, it feels so soon after just getting done with Pokemon Legends: Arceus that I’m still coming down from it. And there’s already another one coming on the horizon. Is it too soon? Did they even have enough time to make this game?”

Yes, as a Pokemon fan, I was asking myself: am I getting too many Pokemon games too quickly?

It feels like there’s some measure of absurdity in that, but having read and written work about crunch time in the video game industry (not on this blog, but for school), I feel like the cost for Game Freak putting out another game would be too high. And I don’t mean monetarily. I’m sure they’re raking in the green, but I’m talking about other costs: the costs to the sanity of developers and the costs to customers on the quality of game they’re getting for modernly full-priced triple-A games. I could also cite the cost of Game Freak’s reputation but I don’t know if that’s worth mentioning in the same breath as the former two. Plus, I’m starting to worry the franchise and the Pokemon Company no longer have the esteemed reputation they once had for putting out great quality games.

Okay, let me try and turn the tracks on this train before it becomes a full-on rant on my annoyances with video game industry standards and my tendency to wax on at length about where the Pokemon franchise is going. I’m here to review Pokemon Scarlet. Yes, just Scarlet. I’m only paying for one of these games. I’m a student and don’t have money to burn on both versions. Given what I saw, especially toward the end of the game, maybe there are some differences in Violet that make for a different tone in the story, but I won’t be able to account for that in this review.

I should also list out where I am in the game so that folks know exactly where I’m coming from when I write this review so I can get flamed in the manner of: “Oh Rez! You need to do this, this, and this to get the full experience of the game!” I do think I’ve completed most of the actual substance in the game to make what I feel is a legitimate review. But, like my other reviews, this is largely something for me to just get my feelings about the game on some medium so I can properly look back at it later and either cringe or feel some sort of justification for my struggles, frustrations, or feelings of accomplishment. At any rate, listed below are what I’ve done so far for context so that you, my few-and-far-between readers, can see the context from which I’m coming at this assessment of Pokemon Scarlet. Suffice to say, from this point on, there’ll be major spoilers:

·       I’ve completed the main three storylines.

·       I’ve finished the Area Zero arc that comes after the three storylines.

·       I’ve gotten about 320 or so out of 400 pokemon in the pokedex.

·       I’m still working on the four ghosts Professor Raifort tasked me with finding.

·       I still need to find another Sweet Herb Mystica for Professor Saguaro.

·       I did my victory lap with all the gym leaders.

·       I finished my first School Tournament.

·       I’ve peeked into just about every nook and cranny in Paldea’s huge map.

Ok? We good on establishing where I am? Ok, let’s get to the meat and potatoes of this review.

The World of Paldea

Pokemon, especially in more recent generations, has been notoriously slow to start their games and hook me in. Lengthy tutorials and exposition are the names of the game with Game Freak. I can’t entirely blame them, as they have to make introductions that help new fans integrate into the game while also cementing established or new features for veterans. That said, it takes quite a while for us to get to a point where we feel like we’re finally being unleashed on this promised open world.

Pokemon Scarlet has this problem too, unfortunately. Grant you, I’m an obsessive explorer who has to see everything available to me—side content and every little hiding spot on the map—before I push forward in the plot. Still, I think streamlining the introduction up through to when the treasure hunt starts would make the start of the game feel a lot less dull for me. My interest wasn’t truly seized until I finally found myself starting on the game’s three main quests.

That said, this world is expansive and, at least at a distance, pretty to look at. Paldea has some great vistas and I definitely wouldn’t mind settling down to live there if I had the chance. Compared to other open-world games that can feel quite empty, this one feels pretty lively from the differing environment types and the fact that pokemon… are… everywhere. You won’t go more than 20 meters before you see another lone pokemon, or even a swarm, that either draws your interest or force you to change course to avoid them.

On top of that, Paldea has a littering problem that certainly needs addressing. There’s a wealth of items both visible and less so scattered around the region. If you’re one to build up your stock of potions and other battle-item essentials, you’ll barely have to spend money at stores, as the world itself seems to provide it in abundance for the obsessive explorer such as myself. I usually only had to restock on pokeballs at stores, mainly due to my obscenely bad luck with pokemon catch rates.

And exploring has other perks too,  such as how I was able to catch my adorable ghost pupper, Greavard, early due to a Tera Raid Battle in the first area. That was a nice find and a treat to start with.

Beyond the starting area, the game offers a diverse landscape. From grasslands to a scorching desert to a, chilling mountain, Paldea mixes up its environments. Admittedly, it seems mostly green and grassy at the start, but the diversity comes when it’s needed: toward the middle and the end of the game. Sorry, no fiery volcano level for you fire-type lovers, though the fire types themselves aren’t absent in this game, so don’t worry.

Of course, there are barriers to this exploration. Compared to some other open-world games, you can’t just go anywhere immediately, at least not without consequence to you and your feeble starting team. While you can choose how you explore, either east or west from the main city, or both if you want to be like me and inflate your playtime, the pokemon levels in the zones increase from area to area. I had hoped that levels would scale with you and the number of badges, titans, or squads you’d bested, but sadly, that level of dynamic world adaptation was not programmed into this game. I think it would’ve greatly enhanced the fluidity of game completion if you were able to truly go about and do this game in any order you wanted, but maybe there were some logistical issues that I wasn’t aware of that necessitated the existing system.

Barriers also exist in the form of what capabilities your ride pokemon, the legendary Koraidon (or Miraidon if you’re playing Violet) is capable of. While I don’t recall anything essential to game completion being put firmly off-limits (except for the final titan requiring surf) by these mechanics, it does open up new, more convenient, and more fun ways to explore the landscape. Once you’ve unlocked the ability to dash, high-jump, surf, glide, and climb, the world really opens up to you and you feel like an absolute badass as you explore even the roughest, most remote regions of Paldea… even though it’s your ride pokemon doing all the work.

That said, for all my praise, there are a few issues I find with this world.

I would be remiss if I didn’t discuss one of the big things that have been on everyone’s mind when it comes to this game: the graphics. I’ll try not to dwell on it too long, as countless people on the internet already have. But, as I said before, the game looks great… at a distance. Get up close though, and that’s a different story.

Like in Pokemon Legends: Arceus, the textures leave something to be desired, and the framerates for characters, pokemon—or any moving object in the distance, such as a windmill—are absurdly choppy until you get close enough for the game to decide to start rendering them at an acceptable rate. While I’d thought Legends would be a tech test for this generation and thus would improve on its performance, I found the graphical quality and framerate issues to be even worse in this game. I would even caution those with any sort of epileptic condition to prepare themselves for flickering lights in places where shadows keep appearing and disappearing without apparent cause. I know I found it a bit of an eye strain at times.

Admittedly, I recognize a lot of these issues stem from the fact Scarlet and Violet are ambitiously large games and their zones aren’t rigidly segmented like in Legends, but we’ve seen other games from earlier in this console cycle perform much, much better—cough, Breath of the Wild, cough. Again, I chalk this up to the obscenely short development time on the game. There are clearly optimization issues and other ways this game could’ve been smoothed out if the proper time and care had been taken. But Game Freak seems quite obsessed with the idea of putting out a Pokemon game every year. And this isn’t the only part of the world that suffers as a result.

While there’s a diversity in landscapes in Paldea, there’s very little creativity in the naming of these regions. The towns and a few specific areas get names: Glaseado Mountain, Asado Desert, and Casseroya Lake just to name the ones I can recall off the top of my head. But the great majority of areas and regions don’t even have a name. Now, if this were an unexplored, unestablished region, that would make sense. But Paldea, as noted in the game’s own history class, is a region that’s been inhabited for thousands of years by a once-powerful empire and is now a modern country. You’d expect some great naming conventions for the areas in-game. Instead, all we get are descriptors along the lines of “South Province: Area One” or “North Province: Area Two.” While I understand the Great Crater of Paldea being named Area Zero for dramatic effect and the idea that it’s generally been a place humanity has not been able to colonize or explore until recently, I don’t think that naming theme did any favours outside of that forbidding place. I think so much character could’ve been added if they’d named these areas properly. And yes, I know we’re talking about a franchise that routinely names areas “Route 17” or “Route 22,” but this is a game that’s supposed to defy standard conventions of the franchise with its open-world concept. The naming of its areas should reflect that initiative as well. Again, this lack of polish in even the naming smells of the limited development time the game was put under.

That all said, I do think Paldea is an amazing place and I’m happy to have been able to explore every little cave and cliffside. Exploration of the massive landscape is even encouraged from an in-game perspective, with flight points gained from finding Paldea’s ten famous landmarks. From Cortondo’s Olive Fields to Glaseado’s Peak, the world is fun to explore, and I actively encourage you to do so, especially if your goal is to fill your bag with potions or to fill your PC with mons.

How We Play in Paldea

The gameplay in Pokemon Legends: Arceus gave us a new way of looking at how a Pokemon game could play—or even should play. It was tailored for a new paradigm and design philosophy that I hoped the franchise would take: give the players the choice in how they approach exploring the world and catch pokemon. You could chuck an endless stream of balls at pokemon after creeping around in the grass and luring them over with bait to ensure a better catch rate. Or you could dive into battle and capture them the conventional way. It was liberating to have the ability to choose.

In that regard, Pokemon Scarlet took a step backwards.

I will wholeheartedly admit, discovering couldn’t catch pokemon in the same way as I did in Legends put me off the game at the start, probably contributing to my dislike of the game’s introduction. Instead, I was forced to get into a battle, weaken the wild pokemon, and throw balls until I get it while my poor team members soak hits for every failed catch attempt—not something enjoyable as someone with shit luck when it comes to catch rates. Now, I won’t say that the system in Legends was perfect, but, thinking Legends was a tech test for this generation, I figured that the system would be improved upon. The fact it wasn’t implemented at all was disappointing, considering how they decided to iterate on the open-world concept that Legends brought to the table. I got over it as I played, but the wish for this more dynamic way of approaching how I filled out my pokedex was something that teased the back of my mind the whole time I played. At least quick balls are still in the game, thank Arceus.

One thing that I’m fine with being left in the misty past of Legends was the new battle system. It was intriguing and a nice departure from the main series’ methods, but I found it rather unpredictable, especially combined with the absurd power and tendency towards revenge KO’s that littered Legends. The traditional way of doing battles still seems more balanced to me, though I’m not opposed to Game Freak trying their hand at the other system again when they inevitably try to do another Legends-type game. Maybe they’ll refine it enough next time that I’ll like it over the current system. But, in the meantime, the main-line battle system works well enough, and I still enjoy it.

Imported, to some degree, from Legends, is the ride pokemon system. While you had several different pokemon that could help ferry you around Hisui’s landscapes, in Paldea, you have one legendary pokemon you get near the start of the game. As you complete tasks in the titan pokemon storyline, your legendary ride, Koraidon, gains the ability to dash, high jump, surf, glide, and climb. What’s more, it ties almost neatly into the story being told in the titan storyline, making it feel both rewarding and helping to cement your bond with your goofy lizard on whose back you’re on the majority of the game. I have and will continue to advocate for the riding pokemon model, as it’s far superior to the HM system from the days of yore and fits very well into world traversal in Paldea.

That said, crossing Paldea is not without its own set of pitfalls, and not due to the adverse weather conditions you’ll face—and believe me, with the majority of your battles, even gym battles, taking place outside, you’ll be dealing with plenty of that. I’m talking about, yet again, something that’s taken the internet by storm: the glitchy and scuffed way you interact with the world.

Now, I knew going into this game that it wasn’t polished, so I set my expectations low. I also knew that the internet has a way of blowing things way, way out of proportion. I’m pleased to say that I didn’t encounter anything game-breaking, nor any goofy character model glitches, and I had only full-on game crash (though plenty of slowdowns that had me spamming the save feature for fear that I was on the cusp of one). I didn’t even fall through the world once! But I did freak out when I saw a whole squad of Golduck come out of a cliff wall to try and assault me. And there were plenty of times I saw pokemon simply standing partly inside a wall, reminding me of poor Han Solo in his slab of carbonite from The Empire Strikes Back.

I wasn’t always completely fortunate in avoiding glitches and issues though. As battles tend to reposition your character for space, my character was placed on a slope that ended up having me slide ingloriously into the sea after the battle was done, and there were plenty of times I couldn’t even see my pokemon battle since it spawned into a wall as a part of the battle arrangement. And I can’t forget the time I skidded around Levincia City on Koraidon stuck in his downward falling animation until the game decided to black out and reset me. I’ll be honest, all these instances made me laugh out of the sheer absurdity of it. None of these glitches caused me too much delay or caused a loss of progress, but these are all things that could’ve been handled so much better and allowed me to immerse myself in the game that much more deeply if the game had been allowed to bake for another six months to a year.

Another thing that could’ve benefitted from that time is something I find a lot more damning and frustrating though: the user experience. What do I mean by this? Well, to start, menus were laboriously slow to load sprites of pokemon, particularly in the box menu. Considering how often I went into this menu, I feel like I could’ve shaved several hours off my play time for time spent loading the pokemon in the boxes. As well, I found myself rarely changing my look and clothing because my character model took twice, or even thrice as long to load as my pokemon in their boxes. I find myself confused by why menus are so slow, considering that they have nothing to do with the world, which I imagine is what takes up most of the processing power. Again, this might be an optimization issue that isn’t as easy to resolve without more time. Worse yet, sometimes menu elements would overlap in annoying ways, such as experience screens popping up over status bars in double battles, or prompts overlapping pokedex text when I’d caught a new mon. And then, on top of this, about 10% of the time I picked up a new item and it popped up a text box to explain what it was, it would disappear before I pressed anything else, leaving me no chance to read it and have to play a game of “What’s this new item that’s popped up in my inventory!” Not fun when your back is stuffed full of goodies already.

But another thing I should mention that frustrated me was how the world didn’t pause when you did. I found it interesting, and perhaps even charming at first, to bring up my menu to muck around with my team while wild pokemon wandered up to me and made their cute little noises as they looked at me with all their curiosity and wonder. But later in the game, I found it an absolute pain, since most pokemon were aggressive, and would actively camp your spot while you were paused, so that the moment you vacated your menu, you would be thrust into a battle you didn’t want. Heck, even during battles the world continued to move around you, which I have to admit, was kind of cool. I loved the idea of drawing a crowd of pokemon to witness our battles in the wilderness. But even that got tiresome as the fifth Tauros charged me immediately after I finished with its companion’s battle, leaving me in a chain of endless battles that, more likely than not, left my team a wreck as I tried and repeatedly failed to run away from them. In a sense, it almost resembled griefing from MMOs I used to play, and that didn’t leave a great taste in my mouth.

And you know how that problem was solved in Legends?

You could—quite literally—move your character in battle and run away physically. How amazing would that have been? This was another feature inexplicably absent from Pokemon Scarlet that I loved. Moving your character in battles, even to the degree you could have yourself being knocked over by standing in the way of moves, was goofy and fun: feelings I have and want to continue and associate with the Pokemon franchise. It would’ve likely solved most or all of the problems I had with griefing pokemon and the weird battle position issues.

But, all of this aside, the classic core gameplay of pokemon is still present and still works very well. But that’s the thing: it’s just the classic stuff. In terms of gameplay, we had something great on our hands in Legends, even if it was an unpolished gem. I had so desperately hoped it would be refined and made to gleam in this game. But alas, that is not what we received. I’m hoping, as time and the series goes on, that we can revisit these new ideas and implement them into the main games to help the series evolve beyond the standard that’s been repeated for nine generations now.

The Distinct Stories of Paldea

Much as the introduction of the game is mired by a slow start in terms of gameplay (i.e. the delay of the true appearance of the game’s open-world nature), I found the opening of the game’s story to be equally underwhelming. I won’t say that I ever expect much in terms of story from the Pokemon games. The series has never been too well known for that sort of thing, barring a few exceptions like Gen 5’s attempts to cast a shadow over the concept of pokemon battling and ownership with N and Team Plasma. That said, even from the first trailer explaining the concept of the school academy angle the story was taking, I was not a fan of the idea. Having finished the game, I’m still not fond of the school angle.

While it’s certainly possible that a school setting can make for exciting narrative works, it fell flat for me here, and frankly, I don’t think it’s a great fit for pokemon games in general. It worked to a minor degree in Pokemon Sun and Moon’s anime, but I still would’ve liked Ash to have just travelled around Alola more as opposed to resetting to the school all the time. But this isn’t about what Ash did in the anime. This is about what school means for these games. And I think it really was wholly unnecessary since we ended up leaving school for an independent study/journey anyway.

To me, the initial school arc of the story was fodder, and all it did was set the stage for us to travel around the region on our treasure hunt and introduce us to the characters. Setting the stage for our adventure and introducing characters are admirable goals, but we didn’t need all the lengthy pageantry that came with our enrolment in school to meet these characters. Hell, we met Nemona, our rival and precious battling-obsessed cinnamon roll, at her house minutes after we set foot out of our own house and we didn’t need much more than that to realize what her character was about. I would’ve been just as fine with meeting Arven through a sandwich shop that could’ve doubled as a good way to tutorial us through the picnic system and learn about the titan/herb mystica quest from there. As for Penny, it’s harder to integrate her storyline without the school setting. Maybe the school could be a resource used on the side rather than being forced through it and the Starfall Street quest line could’ve been what introduced us to the school as an option for additional tips and interactions. I do love that the school seems to function on post-secondary rules in terms of when and how you enroll and how you take classes. As such, emphasizing that quality by making interacting with the school an option rather than something forced and contrived would’ve felt a lot better and more interesting to me.

That said, I do love all the teachers at the academy. They’re all rich with personality and zest, and it was perhaps the sole redeeming quality of the whole school concept. Feel free to let me know which professor you liked the best, and why it was Professor Raifort.

But, once you’re past that nonsense and finally get the chance to travel Paldea, the school angle tends to fall a bit into the background. Yes, you’re still on your treasure hunt, but the school angle is played down on two of the three questlines. The school setting constricted us, but thankfully, the freedom of travelling for our independent study feels a lot more liberating. I just wish we’d gotten to it a bit faster.

But, as I mentioned, and as most of you have no doubt heard from trailers and the like, the game is split into three quests. Now, in the way I played the game, I chose to complete the challenges levied by each questline in batches based on their area and level range. I’m not sure if you could zip through a single quest line without rapidly falling behind on your required levels, but it seemed to me that completing these quests a little at a time and swapping to another seemed to be the best way of going about the game while levelling at a steady pace. Swapping also helped to pace out each story, since there wasn’t a whole lot to each one: there are eight gyms, five titans/herbs, and five gangs affiliated with Team Star. Not quite enough to make each one feel like a deep, rich narrative if you chose to hyperfixate on one to the exclusion of all others.

But that’s fine! I feel like the intended method was to space out these encounters so that you could take in Paldea one province at a time and dip into these storylines little by little. I think it’s very much to the benefit of the game’s story to have separated these ideas into three distinct narratives because it gives some much-needed focus on certain story elements. The previous iterations of the Pokemon series lost out on this opportunity due to these elements being subjected to a homogenized blend of badge collecting versus intermittent interference by the games’ villainous teams. It made each of these smaller stories a little richer for it.

“Victory Road,” the game’s quest for collecting badges, pits you versus the gyms as you have in most previous Pokemon games. It’s simple, tried and tested, and true to form. And you get to see the lovable Nemona time and time again. There were times I wondered if she was stalking me, and there’s even a one-off comment she makes that plays on that worry, which did make it feel pretty funny in the moment. But that doesn’t stop Nemona from being endearing and adorable and one of my favourite rivals for her sheer exuberance and energy. You also get to talk with her a lot more than most of your rivals historically, so that in itself helps make her a more relatable and enjoyable character to see grow with you. Or rather, she tends to watch you grow and keeps testing you along the way, given she’s already at the top of her game. It’s an interesting angle to take on a rival, and an actively supportive one compared to most friendly rivals in previous games, and one I enjoyed very much. Also helps she’s cute as heck.

As to the gym leaders themselves, I’m happy to say that Game Freak has continued with the tradition of making interesting personalities and main/side-gigs central to their characters. There are some big hits and small misses in my opinion though. Iono is a standout for me, with her gym challenge showing off her personality and her very transparent need to get more views and subs as a streamer. In her case, I’m not sure if she was written like that to be a reflection of what the developers think of people in that profession or as a parody, but she’s easily one of the most memorable gym leaders.

Though… Grusha… I love that man. He’s so cool… But no really, the fact his background has him lecturing you about being reckless as a trainer as a way to emphasize the lesson he learned after an injury led to the end of his snowboarding career—and subsequently being so cold about it… haha—really speaks to great characterization in my books. It’s especially apparent when you beat him a second time that it was a hard lesson for him to learn and something hard for him to overcome.

And if we’re talking about personality in a gym leader, we definitely need to mention Ryme, the MC of RIP! She’s fantastic but suffers from what Piers did in Sword and Shield, that is to say… she, and a lot of people in this game, really need some voice acting. Especially when it comes to these musical gym leaders and characters, there’s so much awkwardness in seeing character swing and lip-sync to a beat but with no actual sound or song to back it up.

On the other end of the gym leader theming spectrum, I found Tulip to be an odd choice for the psychic type. The link between her personality, motivations, and the psychic type didn’t stand out for me as much as that with other gym leaders. Also, I think Tulip might’ve been abusing her friendship with Professor Dendra to get her to run the psychic gym challenge, but I might’ve been reading into it a bit much.

Also, on a minor note, I felt some of the gym challenges lacked the depth they had in Sword and Shield. I know that isn’t saying much, but a few of them felt… almost tacked on compared to others. Again, I bet this was a problem due to the limited development time.

Of course, at the end of this storyline, we had to take on the Elite Four and the Top Champion: Chairwoman Geeta. This was an interesting challenge in itself because it started with an interview where you had to pick a gym leader you had the hardest time with. For me, it had been Larry, the normal-type gym leader. And guess who was the third member of the Elite Four: LARRY! I thought, for certain, this meant that your choice in those questions actively influenced whom you’d meet in the Elite Four as your third challenger. Suffice to say, I was crushed when I found out it was a mere coincidence. I thought it was an absolute stroke of genius that these questions might influence how your elite four fight went since it was so odd to have an interview before the battles. The idea of disguising that one choice with all these other questions seemed so clever to me, especially for a Pokemon game. But nope… it was just Larry all this time. Which is fine, I love the guy, but how brilliant would it be if they brought in the gym leader you had the hardest time with? Ah, well, for a little while, I was awed at the idea of Game Freak doing that.

As an aside, I do want to compliment Pokemon Scarlet on the idea of making champions a level of trainer, rather than a distinct, singular trainer in this region. I think it makes a lot more sense and I hope it’s an idea they carry forward into future games.

But this game doesn’t just have the gym challenge; next, we have “The Path of Legends” questline featuring Arven, a young man who I was decidedly not a fan of to start until we learned his secret. That secret: he’s a softie for his dog for whom he’s going on a whole mythical quest to save. There’s a lesson here in narrative: if you ever want to make a character more sympathetic and relatable, have them pet a dog. No, but seriously, the moment we learned about Mabosstiff and Arven’s dedication to that big, good doggo was perhaps one of the most tender and heartfelt moments in the game. And then we got more of that as our dark-type dog friend got more and more of its vitality back with each new herb mystica we found. On top of that, each time we found one, it felt well-earned because each of the titans’ fights felt pretty epic, or at least fun and well-earned. It definitely felt reminiscent, perhaps even a bit old-hat, as it felt like we were fighting a mix of an alpha pokemon and a totem pokemon. But the encounters added more variety to the world and the story itself. And learning about Mabosstiff merited enough motivation on my end to look past the gimmick central to this storyline.

Finally, we come to “Starfall Street,” the third storyline featuring Penny, our adorable friend with their eevee backpack. Now, never let it be said that pokemon did anything with any sort of subtlety. This storyline’s twist is easy to see from a mile away. After encountering Penny when she’s accosted by Team Star thugs trying to be a bit pushy about getting her to join, we get a mysterious call from someone named Cassiopeia who puts us on a quest to dismantle the various squads making up Team Star: five in all. We take on the extremely entertaining and goofy personalities of the leaders of these gangs (Mela, Giacomo, Atticus, Ortega, and Eri) to have them surrender their positions as leaders and essentially dissolve the squads one by one. As we go on, we learn an intriguing and, at times, touching story about a group of students who were victims of bullying who come together to fight their oppressors. As someone who was bullied, I absolutely loved this idea and could only dream of something like this happening. It turns out they succeeded, but at a cost that had their big boss—no not the one from Metal Gear—disappear on them and leave the squads to grow out of control and become something of a menace. We learn more and more about these five leaders’ precious friendships and, in the end, I almost felt guilty for having to continue along our path and end Team Star.

Now, remember that plot twist I mentioned earlier? As it turns out, Cassiopeia was their big boss. And in another big, though easily foreseen twist, Cassiopeia was revealed to be Penny herself. As a shy, computer-savvy type, we got to see her little by little over the course of the story as someone who gave you supplies during your quest to end Team Star. Given this character development, it was easy to see that she would’ve been Cassiopeia, but it didn’t make the story any less impactful for me. Her bond with her allies made the final battle with her all the more enjoyable and climactic. Also, an all-eeveelution team? Ballsy, but I like it! Goes nice with your backpack, Penny!

I have to say though, one of the standout moments of that questline was the incredibly transparent attempts of Director Clavell, the school’s headmaster, to disguise himself as an outrageously pompadoured student. The fact the game lets you poke at the disguise through dialogue options was a great touch.

Now, despite having these individual questlines, if you want to reach the end of this game and Area Zero, you need to complete all three. I like this because all these stories diverged near the start of the game, and I love the idea of them converging again to help finish it off. Moreover, the new friend group formed by your character, Nemona, Arven, and Penny, has some quirky clashes in personality and dialogue that makes me want to see all four of them go on more adventures together. It makes me want to go out and find fic for all four of them just being goofy on their off-time.

However, despite this high note of companionship, the story’s ending left me feeling a bit off. The revelation of Sada’s work in the crater bringing back pokemon from the distant past (the incarnations of those pokemon very are cool and I love them) using a time machine felt a bit jarring after everything leading up to it. It felt like a bit of tone and genre whiplash to me, especially when the game revealed that Sada we’d been interacting with was an artificial intelligence of all things, even going as far as to say in dialogue that we don’t possess that technology yet, but the resources in the crater made it possible for all these things to happen.

Again, I know not to expect too much from a Pokemon narrative… but really? This felt so… forced and contrived. I don’t know… like… someone was forced to write this under really tight time constraints? Oh right, just so many other things in this game. I should’ve expected even Pokemon’s writing would suffer under those conditions. Now, for those who played Violet, and got to see futuristic pokemon and Professor TRON MAN, I imagine that this seems more on theme for a story involving the future and advanced technology (assuming it had the same story beats, I have no idea if it did or not). But for Sada and the theme of prehistoric pokemon… this seemed way off base for me. At the very least, the clash between your Koraidon and the opposing Koraidon that ousted it from the crater had a heartwarming ending, especially with it getting strength from your companions’ encouragement. But overall, the final moments of the main story felt unfulfilling to me after so much hard work put in to recover from the terrible start the game had in its story.

Overall, the story had many ups and downs. Still, for the most part, especially concerning the titan/herb questline and Team Star, there was more to sink my teeth into than in a lot of previous Pokemon games. I’m glad I was able to endure the start of it to get those parts, but it’s just a bit sad that the ending flopped for me. But it’s not just the story we’re here for when we play these games, is it? It’s the pokemon!

The Pokemon of Paldea

So having 400 pokemon in this game’s pokedex seems like a pretty good haul to me, honestly. I haven’t been privy to any debates, so I don’t know if there’s a fuss being made online about how not all the mons are in it again like they did for Sword and Shield. Whatever the case I’m pretty happy with the lineup we got… except for no Heliolisk and Helioptile. I got lucky with them in Gen 8, so I guess I’ll be thankful for that and their presence in New Snap.

That said, I love a lot of the new variants and mons that we got in general. I won’t dive too deep into all of them because this review is already getting long enough as it is, but I’ll say that when I played, I went for all new pokemon that were added in this game for a variety in my final teams.

They were:

·       Skeledirge

·       Pawmot

·       Arboliva

·       Squawkabilly

·       Garganacl

·       Mabosstiff

·       Rabsca

·       Tinkaton

·       Veluza

·       Annihilape

·       Clodsire

·       Cetitan

·       Baxcalibur

Not only did I have fun using all of these, but I thought most of their aesthetics and designs were top-notch. But I used plenty of others throughout my journey and loved all of them too. I won’t mention them all here, but shout-outs to my new favourite pun pokenames: Capsakid and Scovillain. My favourite new designs and concepts (aside from the above) were found in Naclstack, Lokix, and Brambleghast. Overall, I loved all the new additions and variants. Except for the new Dudunsparse… I mean, I’ve seen so many fan-evolutions of it that looked so much better and more creative than making it bigger and adding more sections to its body.

The prehistoric variants were killer though, especially Great Tusk, Scream Tail, and Sandy Shocks (I always had wondered what the magneton line would look like before modern times, if they even existed). Also, have you ever heard of a more metal name than Roaring Moon? Probably not. And I’ll admit, I still think Koraidon and Miraidon look goofy to me, but given that I’ve formed a bond with Koraidon over the game, I’ve been able to overlook it.

The Music of Paldea

I always have to talk about music in new Pokemon games. It’s practically a genre unto itself for me and one of my favourites to boot. I do like how they tackled overworld music in this game. They made a theme for each of the four provinces and then had different remixes and reorchestrations of it in different regions of each province, including towns and named areas like the Asado Desert. Some might think this could be lazy or uncreative, but I think it was well-executed, such that I enjoyed most iterations of each province’s tune. Heck, even the wild pokemon’s theme in that area was adapted from those themes too, which made musical transitions so smooth. I loved it!

Except for the south province’s tune. I got tired of that one very quickly. And I could see how people could easily get tired of any of the ones I liked if they spent too much time there or had negative experiences associated with the zone.

That said, you cannot hate the West Province’s theme. It’s objectively amazing in all its forms and you cannot convince me otherwise.

Of all the gym themes from previous generations, this one took me the longest to warm up to. But I did, and I’m glad they kept the final crowd-chanting version when the gym leader’s down to one pokemon as they did in Sword and Shield. However, while there generally is a crowd around your gym battles, I feel like the crowd chanting suited the big stadium settings of Galar more than it did here, so it didn’t feel like it belonged as much. That said, it didn’t detract from the experience.

Meanwhile, the Tera Raid theme was a banger (and one of the ones that Toby Fox contributed, from what I understand), as were most of the battle themes throughout the game.

Overall, the array of music in this game was very solid and well-composed. While many musical pieces were derived from each other, they helped link the world together and made for a fantastic experience for the ear that synced up to what you saw and did.

My Final Thoughts on Paldea

So, we’ve been through it all. The gyms. The titans. The squads. The sandwiches. Admittedly, I didn’t do much picnicking, but that’s something I might do more of later, but the few times I did it were charming.

Actually, that’s what this game has in abundance: charm. And I don’t mean the fairy-type move.

This game has a lot of faults, I won’t even try to deny that, nor should I. The fact that Nintendo has been offering refunds for this game is a damning spotlight on the poor condition of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet on its release. I didn’t go into this game with much hype at all because, funnily, we have too many Pokemon games. Almost one a year it seems like. It’s way too much. There’s something to be said about building up anticipation. Hell, I don’t even remember seeing this game very heavily promoted, which might speak to how crunched they were to get this done. I imagine they barely had time to do anything to advertise it, let alone finish it properly.

But below all that scuffed, unfinished woodwork that makes up this game, seemingly teetering on the edge of collapse as you see it creaking and bending sometimes, there’s a lot of heart put into it. Every time I play a Pokemon game, I can see that the developers behind it love what they’re doing it shows in the soul of the game. From the goofy pics you take after every major game accomplishment—Kofu’s stands out to me in particular in my mind—to some of the more ridiculous dialogue that either had me facepalming or laughing hysterically, there’s a charm in this game that I can’t ignore.

That’s what keeps me coming back. That’s what makes me love these games and put up with the other nonsense I’ve ranted about throughout this review. It speaks to that child in me and makes me smile as I sit on a couch in these cold winter months looking for entertainment.

Is this the best example of a top-tier Pokemon game? No. Is this the best example of what a Pokemon game could be? No. Pokemon Legends: Arceus still holds that prize for me. But it’s part of what I hope are just growing pains for this franchise as it struggles to transform into something new and incredible. I wonder how much more fun I would’ve had if I could’ve played this game like I’d played Legends.

But I still did have fun while playing this game. I did my fair share of shouting at the game for bullshit too, and some eye-roll moments at some technical nonsense, but that’s nothing new for this franchise. Hell, it’s nothing new for me with video games as a whole. But in the end, I did have fun.

What I want is to have more fun. I want to see this franchise take what it’s learned from SV and Legends and make a truly stellar game out of it next time.

And. I. Want. Them. To. Take. Their. Time. Doing. It.

That’s how we’ll get the incredible, technologically impressive, open-world Pokemon game that so many people have been pining for. And I’m willing to wait for it.

[ryebread0605]

Hello, if it's not a bother I would like to ask Jamil Viper with a reader like Gigi Grant, a genie who appeared in the movie 13 Monster Wishes (Monster High)

This is such a fun ask as someone who adored monster high growing up! No specification was given so I’m gonna do a mix of both smut and fluff! 

When he was sorting through the treasury, making sure nothing was stolen by some of the more sneaky dorm members, Jamil’s eyes fell upon something that made his eyes widen. A golden lamp, just like the ones in the stories of the sorcerer of the sands. It had intricate swirling details and diamonds encrusted in floral designs. Checking to make sure no one was around, he picked it up slowly and carefully. Sure, he had heard the stories of the genie growing up, but he simply thought it to be a way to downplay the insane power the sorcerer of the sands held. So, without thinking anything of it, he rubbed away a dirt spot on the lamp.

He nearly dropped it in shock as what looked to be a spirit emerged, dressed in dark red silks and adorned with golden jewelry. Your voice sounded like that of a sirens, luring him in as you spoke the words he had only heard of in legends, 

“Thank you for awakening me, master. How may I be of service to you?” The way you approached him reminded him of how he would approach Kalim, he had never expected to someday be in the position where someone else was his servant. Sure, he had long dreamed of it, but he never once imagined it would be anything more than a silly dream. 

“Sevens I’m going crazy, im hallucinating…” he just couldn’t believe this was real, although he lifted his head to the sound of your soft laughter. With a smile, you approached closer and gently took his hand in yours, looking up at him with the warmth and comfort he had never experienced before. And just like that, he understood for once what it felt like to have someone care about him. 

The first few days of having you around were… interesting… to say the least. He was still very hesitant to ask anything of you, especially anything that had to do with Kalim, but slowly overtime opened up more and more. It started small, just him asking to help him carry the clean clothes to Kalim’s room or to help sweep the lounge floors. It felt… nice. Having someone else help him made the chores more bearable and the chats you would have during them sometimes even made him smile. 

When he asked you for the first time to hug him, he was shocked by how gentle and loving it was. Not restrictive like Floyd’s or overpowering like Kalim’s, just soft and comforting. Almost like you wanted to make sure he could pull away if he wanted. But why would he want to, when it felt so natural and so right to be in your arms. That was the day he discovered how truly touch starved he was and how much your touch in particular made him feel safe. He still felt bad asking you for things, but your reassurance that your purpose was to answer to him made him feel slightly better.

(NSFW begins here please do NOT continue if you are a minor!)

As the days turned to months, he began to have a different kind of want for you. He noticed himself staring more as you did tasks and blushing anytime you smiled at him or hugged him. It took him talking to Ace of all people after a basketball game to figure out what was happening. 

He was in love.

He knew he couldn’t ever actually confess to you, but maybe he could find something else. And so, he called you into his room one night to ask you for a favor.

“You wish.. for me to do that? Are you sure master?” Your voice wasn’t one of hesitation despite your words, instead one of wanting to make sure you were hearing him correctly.

“Sevens it’s hard enough for me to even ask this.. p-please don’t make me ask again..” he covered his flushed face with one hand but quickly widened his eyes as he felt your hands on his belt.

“Very well master, I hope I can please you well.” 

He had his hand over his mouth desperate to muffle his moans as the other hand gripped his bedsheets, eyes shut in pleasure as your head bobbed up and down on his cock. Your tongue swirled along the rosewood coloured tip as saliva rolled down your chin. Looking up at him, your eyes locked with his brown ones before he gripped the back of your head and forced his cock down your throat, thick strings of cum flowing from his dick as he let out a muffled moan. Pulling your lips off with a pop, you licked your lips with a smile.

“I hope I did well, master. Maybe I can please you other ways sometime”

[i-loved-silly]

can I request a part 2 of the monster in the woods?

maybe darling goes by again with fruit and meat for him in a nice basket as a way to say sorry for leaving him alone for so long and just as darling is about to leave the monster snatches them up and brings them back to their resting place (cave, lake, whatever!!)

thank you <3

Yan! Monster in the woods pr2

Part 1

A couple of days after you previously saw the monster, you wonder why the legends made them out to be so cruel. They seemed nice, gentle even. They looked soft to the touch, your curiosity kept nagging at you along with the strange feeling you’d get whenever you’d gaze at the woods. Something was calling you in, whether you realized it or not.

You decided to pack your things and go—not really though. You picked up the same basket from last time and packed some snacks. Maybe it’d be hungry again? You went to the local butcher to pick up some raw meat, packed your favorite berries, jams and bread. Would it be so wrong to perhaps take them something nice as an offering? You weren’t sure if that was considered insulting or polite.

Your walk in the woods was quickly interrupted, a little shuffle in the trees behind you and then in front of you. You turned your head a couple of times until the familiar, large figure of the monster came into view. The soft, whispy fur that made up for hair was more matted than the last time you saw him, messy too. If only you knew how relieved and…thrilled the monster was to see you again. It nearly trembled from excitement as your surprised expression turned into a meek, polite one. Almost as if it was a bother for you to suddenly show up in his territory. But no, it was an opportunity. This time he’ll make sure he never loses you again.

You started politely saying how the basket was for him, as a gift or offering, however he wanted to take it. All he could do is stand there, staring at the basket then at you. Maybe he was starving, or maybe you gave him so much butterflies whenever you spoke so nicely to him. He couldn’t help it, no one had ever shown him this type of kindness. He had to…

As you were talking, you were suddenly—quite literally, snatched up from your spot. Your feet were no longer planted on the ground and your arms instinctively grabbed onto his shoulders with a yelp. Whatever heart he had leaped in his chest.

Forgetting the basket for the time being (he’d bring it later. He was grateful afterall ) he started sprinting towards his home, the one place he knew he was safe at. And now, you two would share it. The food you brought him, he saw it as a proposal. He managed to become even more infatuated with you at that second, he tried to be the gentlest with you despite his excitement. He usually moves on all fours with his elongated limbs, now he used one arm to lift you against his chest, while his larger hand effortlessly supported half of your back.

You felt like you were riding a horse upside down, your hands tightened around his shoulders as the wind whooshed past your head.

At last you felt the monster slow down, you slowly opened your eyes that were previously shut tight. The monster leaned down to place you back on your feet, but you didn’t move. You were frozen in place, your nails digging into his shoulders and your chest heaving as if you were the one doing the running. The monster was patient, as still as ever as you slowly unwrapped your arms from his body. He huffed out of disappointment.

You backed off enough to see its face, still mostly covered by his hair. It tilted its head at you, why did you look scared? Weren’t you happy that he took you away from the village, your home, back to his home? He’ll take care of you so much better.

A slender hand reached up slowly, to avoid scaring you more. He was sensitive to emotions, but he didn’t know how to deal with them. He could feel your fear, he didn’t like it. His hand was warm against your cheek, his entire palm almost the size of your face with blunt claws on each finger. His thumb wiped away a stray tear on your cheek, you flinched when you thought you heard him growl at the sight.

…

Was he purring?

It was almost funny until you realized where you were at. Somewhere in the woods you’ve never seen before. The trees overgrown and roots sprouting from the earth, right behind his large figure was the beginning of a stone mountain . And right in the middle…a gaping, dark cave. You snapped out of your thoughts when his hand started gently pushing you towards the cave. The pads of his fingers on your upper back. He made a quizzical noise when you didn’t budge.

Instead of getting angry, he whirled behind you and began nudging you with his head, the soft furs tickling your neck. You didn’t miss the sharp inhale he took of your hair. You shivered, slowly walking towards the cave’s entrance.

Turns out the cave wasn’t that deep, there was a curve to the left before you were met with a dead end. At the dead end was the darkest point of the cave, you barely managed to see a nest-like structure. Branches and leaves, along with his shedded fur made up a giant cushion that somehow still seemed too small for him.

You were once again swept off your feet as you were suddenly picked up by your waist like a doll. The monster curled up on the nest and immediately shoved you between his chest and arms, your head right below his chin. He made that content purring sound again, snuggling you up like a teddy bear. He was so glad to have you with him, he couldn’t have waited any longer.

He’d figure out all your necessities later, for now he’ll enjoy being with his long lost darling.

[specialagentlokitty]

Zuko x reader - one more time

Hey can I get a Zuko x reader where the it’s Legend of Korra era but what it is is that Korra or Bolin just anyone in the main group ask about his past s/o who was the reader and he talks about them in a sad old man way taking about his deceased lover 😭 thank you - Anon 💜

Korra had been trying to figure everything out, and she realised the only connection she had to Aang, the one that knew him when he was going through the same thing was Zuko.

So she visited him, and spent as much time as she could asking questions, asking for advice and help.

“I’m sorry Korra, but this is not something I’m so good at, (Y/N) was better at giving advice than I ever could have hoped to be.”

“(Y/N)? You’re partner?” Korra asked.

Zuko nodded his head and gestured for her to follow him.

He led her through a lavish garden, nearly cared for, and when they reached the middle he showed her a large statue and Korra stared at it.

You were absolutely stunning, you looked young, beautiful, elegant, yet powerful and a fair ruler.

“Wait.. I think.. I think I spoke to them. In the spirit realm.”

“You did?”

They both sat down in the bench opposite the statue of you.

“Yeah, they were the one that told me to come speak to you, that you would know what to do.” She said.

Zuko smiled and chuckled softly as he stared up at the statue in fondness.

“They always said I knew what to do, even if I didn’t realise it straight away.”

Korra looked at the former fire Lord, and she looked up at the statue of you.

“What were they like?” She asked softly.

Zuko smiled softly, turning his head to the floor before he looked back up at the statue.

“They were… they were strong, stubborn, like Katara, but peaceful and loving like Aang. They saw the beauty in everything around, but they were one of the bravest people I had ever met.”

Korra listened carefully as Zuko told her all about you.

He told her stories from when you two first met, how you had left the nation to fight with Aang, and you would always mock him for not being able to defeat you.

Then how he fell in love with you, on the day of the war ended, while he was fighting with his sister you risked your life for not only Katara, but for him too.

He loved your stubbornness, and your smiled that could light up a room on the darkest night.

“They were more then anything I could’ve ever asked for, they gave me the love and the forgiveness I never have asked for from anyone else…”

Zuko sighed, running his finger alone the lone wedding band on his finger.

“They were the love of my life and more…”

Korra reached out, placing her hand on his arm, making him look at her.

“You’ve done them proud, they told me how proud they were of you, and how much they miss you.” She said.

He smiled softly and looked at her.

“Really?”

“Yeah, of course.”

He nodded his head and looked at your statue before turning to the young avatar.

“Do you think you can talk to them again?”

“I.. don’t know. Maybe.”

“If you do please give them this. I was going to give it to them on the our anniversary before they passed, I’ve carried it ever since.”

He handed over an old letter, and she took it, slipping it into her pocket.

“Of course, will you tell me more about them?”

Zuko smiled and carried on talking, and Korra just sat there listened to his stories.

She knew he was lonely, she heard from Katara how you were never without one another.

To loose your lover so early and have to go on through life without them? She couldn’t imagine how lonely and how painful it must be.

She heard the way he talked, the sadness in his voice, the tears brimming his eyes as all he could do was stare at the statue.

Korra looked at the statue and she saw something behind it, and all she could do was stare at the spirit.

She didn’t need to compare the looks to know immediately who it was.

She watched as you walked over and sat in front of your statue, resting your elbow on your knee, and you rested your chin on your palm as you smiled at Zuko.

“Ask him to tell you about the time he proposed to me.” You whispered softly.

“Can you tell me about the time your proposed to (Y/N)?”

“You really want to hear about that?”

Katara flicked her eyes to your spirit, and you gently nodded your head.

“I.. (Y/N) wants to hear it.”

“They’re here?”

Zuko knew the avatar could see spirits, talk with them, and he knew since the spirit realm was opened more and more were pouring through.

He never thought that you would come through though.

“They’re here…” she smiled.

Zuko looked around and Korra pointed to where you were sat, and all she could do was smile as he smiled to himself.

“It was supposed to be elegant, I had a large ball planned, everyone was invited, everyone was waiting for me. (Y/N) wore the most beautiful clothes you had ever seen, made out the finest silk you could ever see. I was walking down the stairs, and I tripped, falling the rest of the way and I knocked (Y/N) over along the way.” He laughed.

You laughed as well and nodded your head.

“I was so embarrassed I quickly left and (Y/N) followed me, out to this very garden and we stood in very spot. They kissed me, and told me that it was okay, and I asked them there and then if they would marry me.”

He twisted the wedding band on his finger.

“They teased me and kept putting off the answer, and I went to walk away thinking it was them rejecting me… I tripped again…”

“But they said yes.” Korra smiled.

“They did. But not before laughing at me first.” He chuckled.

Korra watched as his face turned to sadness.

“It was the best marriage I could’ve ever ask for… but they got sick… they tried to fight, to hold on but they wouldn’t do it anymore. They passed away in their sleep, they never got to watch our children grow up, they never saw the kingdoms grow closer.”

Korra couldn’t handle it anymore, she knew she shouldn’t do this, but she felt like she owed it to Zuko, for everything he’d done.

“Close your eyes.” She said softly.

Zuko did as he was told and she placed a hand on his head, whispering something she stepped away.

“I.. I don’t know how long it’ll last, but I hope this helps.”

She handed him the letter he gave her and stepped a few steps back, watching him open his eyes and he stared directly at you.

He smiled and you stood up, walking over to touch his face.

Maybe she was breaking a lot of rules, but Korra knew he was breaking inside without you, he’d been so alone without you for so long she wanted him to have some time with you, even if it was just a few minutes

[farfromharry]

Ozzy Munson | Eddie Munson fic

Eddie Munson x Cheerleader!Reader

Summary: When paired together for a project you think it’ll be the end of the world, and at one point it feels like it is, but then it turns out to be the best thing that ever happened to you

Word count - 19,507

Warnings - angst, language?, mean reader at times

━━━━━━━━━♡♥♡━━━━━━━━━

Everyone knew when the dreaded baby fortnight of health class was coming. It was like a legend amongst the seniors this time of year, reiterating all the past stories they’d heard from those older about how terrible it was. 

It was all your friends could seem to talk about as you waited for the first bell of the morning to ring. You were all just lingering in the hall, nearby your class. You hated that they kept reminding you of what was to come when that bell did ring. In your class there was only you and Chrissy, your fellow cheerleaders weren’t supposed to start their assignments until later in the day. You supposed at least you could get it out of the way. 

The conversation came to a sudden end when a certain individual started to make his way down the hall. Eddie Munson was a fiend when it came to the cheerleaders at Hawkins. “Ladies,” he greeted, flashing you all his infamous smirk. 

You rolled your eyes, scoffing under your breath. He was ridiculous, you seriously couldn’t stand him. And he’d noticed. “Y/N, glad I could make you smile,” he teased. “I’ve really missed seeing any emotion other than bitchy on your face.”

He managed to get on your every last nerve and you had no idea how he did it. It was like a talent he had. Or maybe it was just because you’d known one another for so long. But it seriously irritated you no matter what it was, and you swore that one day you would figure out how to put a stop to it, even if it consisted of humiliating him so bad that he just could never face you again. 

“Go to hell, Munson.”

“Only if I see you there. But for now, I guess I’ll have to get by with seeing you in class.”

The little minions of his, that were in his club, joined him, telling him it wasn’t worth it to get into it with you. They practically had to pull him away from the confrontation. If there was one thing he could manage, it was to take things too far with you all. If the basketball team found out and got involved, he would truly be screwed. So they always came to save the day.

You were incredibly grateful when he left, apparently less so than your friends who couldn’t stop discussing the encounter and his disgusting presence for the next fifteen minutes until the bell rang. 

Once in the class, it was easy to zone out when the man was droning on. You got the basic idea he was presenting, take care of the fake baby and its fake needs, work together with your partner, get graded at the end based on how well you did. A very simple concept. It didn’t need such a long winded explanation. 

You only came back to it when partners were mentioned. You hoped he would give you the choice to pick your own, but of course if he wanted his students to pass then that was a terrible idea. He also didn’t feel like making it unfairly easy for some. Within this class, you had a pretty terrible grade, unlike some, and the man knew you would surely only pair yourself with one of your friends who could do the work for you and bring that grade up. He wasn’t going to let that happen. 

You felt like you were holding your breath as you waited for your teacher to call your name alongside your designated partners. It was awful when he wouldn’t let you pick your own, this class wasn’t exactly swarming with your friends. There were more people than not that you didn’t want to be friends with. 

“Y/L/N and Munson…”

You could have sworn your heart dropped in that moment. Of all the people in the room, he and his little band of freaks were probably the ones you wanted to stay away from the most. He was the worst of it though. It wasn’t your fault that he had such a distaste for jocks, or jocks had a distaste for him, that had begun long before you became a cheerleader. But it was easy to fall into the roles of disliking one another because of where you were in the schools ‘social hierarchy’. 

He turned around in his seat at the front of the class with a wide grin on his face. He didn’t love the idea of working with you, you’ve made his life hell before– well, more-so your friends than you– but he was going to look forward to making this tough on you. 

He flashed you a wink, to which you rolled your eyes and scowled at him. You really didn’t want him to know that he was getting to you. 

As soon as everyone was partnered up, he made you all move into seats beside your ‘fellow parent’ so he could hand out the fake babies. Ever the gentleman (clear sarcasm) he made you move seats right to the front, refusing to do any of the work himself. “This is gonna be a fun couple of weeks, don’t you think sweetheart?” he teased. 

“Fuck off, Munson.”

You could hear him laughing to himself at the knowledge he’d riled you up already. It really was painfully easy to do so. Your arms were crossed over your chest, slouching in your seat as you called him a million and one different insults in your head. There was laughing from a couple desks over, and when you looked over your shoulder you noticed Chrissy, giggling to herself at the interaction. With a swift middle finger, you took to ignoring her, repeating over and over in your head how much you hated Eddie Munson. 

“Eddie,” Mr Guillermo announced, capturing the boy’s attention as the baby was passed to him. His eyes flickered between the two of you, and you were sure you could see something menacing behind his gaze, he knew what he was doing when he paired you up. “I’m expecting good things from you. Not like you haven’t done this before, and I’m sure you’ll do it again.”

Eddie saluted the man. “I keep coming back only for this assignment, Mr G. How’d you know?” Part of you wanted to laugh, and you hated yourself for it. 

He ignored those words, entirely. “I even made sure to give you the same one. Seeing as you’re pretty well acquainted already.” 

“Ozzy! Oh how I missed him.”

Mr Guillermo decided he was bored entertaining the kid, moving on to hand out the next child to the couple behind you both. All you had to do for him to hand it over was hold out your hand. He thought it was a little prissy that you just expected to get what you wanted by holding out your hand, but there he was doing it anyway. It allowed you to get a good look at the robotic baby, up close now rather than from afar in Eddie’s arms. It was a lot more creepy looking now than before.

“You named it Ozzy?” you asked. “Like Osbourne?”

He scoffed, though he was actually really impressed you knew who that was. “Yes. And he’s not an ‘it’, he’s a baby. How are you expecting to pass this class if you’re calling your child an it, mom.” He was already taking the assignment much too seriously, and you had no idea how you were supposed to make it through till the end— even if it was only two weeks— without tearing your hair out.

“This is gonna be unbearable,” you muttered under your breath, turning in your seat so you could glare at him. “First of all, don’t call me mom. Second of all, Mr G made it pretty clear this is a partnered project. If I want a good grade, I need to do some of the work.”

“Don’t worry princess, this is my third time doing this, I’m basically a pro. You’ll get the best grade in this damn class if you just let me do it.” The last two times he’d done this, he basically passed with flying colors. This time he was more or less assured to only get better, and if he would be forced to do it for a fourth time, he may as well actually be a dad. If he was ever going to accidentally knock a girl up, at least he knew he was prepared for fatherly responsibilities. 

You didn’t think he had any right to be proud about repeating his senior year three times, yet here he was, wearing it like a badge of honor. “I can’t stand you,” you complained, dropping your head down onto your arms that were resting on the desk. 

You heard him mutter something about divorced parents and trouble in paradise to the dumb baby, which led you to further hide your face. You had no idea if you could actually get through the next two weeks doing this with him, or if you’d ask for another partner within days, or give up altogether. Lord knows you wanted to. 

Becoming a parent alongside Eddie Munson might possibly be the death of you.

»»——⍟——««

It was you, alone, that made the decision that Eddie would take the first shift with ‘Ozzy.’ It was mainly because you just didn’t want to. You hadn’t exactly given him the choice though, you just got up from your seat when the bell rang and left him sitting there with the baby. 

The lack of communication meant that you hadn’t created a schedule or anything, so Eddie had no idea when he was supposed to hand the baby over to you. But after having it for the entire morning, he decided he really didn’t want to deal with it any longer. He’d gotten more than a few glares from peers and teachers. Most of his teachers already didn’t like him, and this definitely wasn’t helping his case. So the first chance he got to drop the kid on you (lunch), he took. 

He couldn’t find you at first, so he had to sit there at his lunch table with a pout on his lips and a fake baby on his knee. His friends thought it was amusing, but he was quick to shut down any jokes coming his way. 

“Dustin, I swear, if you open your mouth one more–” he trailed off when he saw the small herd of cheerleaders enter the cafeteria. Now was his chance. 

He abandoned his stuff and his lunch, getting to his feet and marching right over to the table. He almost ran into various innocent students, throwing out apologies left and right. They weren’t really his concern right now though, you were. All your friends seemed to notice him at once, and he could tell they made some kind of comment about him that alerted you. 

“Oh, god,” Marriane muttered. 

Your head cocked, then you looked over your shoulder in wonder. “What?”

“Freak alert.”

You knew exactly who she meant when she said that. It was sort of Eddie’s nickname around this place. It was actually used more than his own name was. In a way it was sad, but if he cared he never made it known. Although, maybe it was because you didn’t know him well enough for him to confide in you about it. 

“What do you want, Munson?” Chelsea questioned.

He offered a sickly sweet smile to the girl. “Chelsea, always nice to see you. But I’m here to bother Y/N for today, you’re safe.” You rolled your eyes at the sound of that.

You plastered on a fake smile, turning in your seat to be able to look at him. You noticed he had that baby in his arms, holding it like it was a real one. He wasn’t joking when he said he was basically a professional. “Munson. How can I help?”

“You’ll be taking Ozzy tonight. Better get some practice now for when you’re completely alone taking care of a screaming baby.” The grin on his face made you seethe with anger. For someone who claimed they would do all the work, he sure as hell was dropping a lot on you right now. You didn’t know how to do anything with this baby, and he wanted you to take the first night? He was insane. 

You forced a laugh. “And when did we decide this?”

“When you dropped him on me and ran out of class,” he reminded you. You watched as he took a shred of paper from the pocket of his dark colored jeans, followed by a pen that he handed you. “Write down your number, or address, whichever one you’re willing to actually give me so we can talk about this assignment away from judgy eyes.” He shot a few glares to your friends, all of whom were still eyeing him with disgust. 

As much as you didn’t want to, you scribbled down the number of your home phone, slipping it back into his hand along with the pen. It wasn’t as hard as he thought it would be to get you to do that. 

“Awesome, now that that’s settled, you can come drop him at my place around noon tomorrow.” He more or less forced the baby into your chest, leaving you no choice but to take it like you didn’t want to. He seemed all too happy about pissing you off like this. 

You shook your head, beginning to protest before he began walking away, refusing to give you the time of day you wanted to tell him you wouldn’t do this. Once you lost him in your sights, you let out a groan, slamming the fake child down onto the table. You were frustrated, angry with him in general, but your irritation got worse when the baby began to cry, loudly. 

You could basically hear Eddie’s laughter from the other side of the room, and it only furthered the way your blood boiled. 

A sudden spurt of laughter from opposite you at the table made your brow furrow. When you turned to see Chrissy laughing to herself, you shot her a glare. She tried to stop, for your sake, but just like earlier today in your class, she found it inherently funny that you were paired with him of all people. “Oh, this is gold.”

“Shut up, Chrissy,” you grumbled.

»»——⍟——««

Even though you didn’t want to, like Eddie said, you took Ozzy home with you. Your parents were more than confused when you entered the home with a fake baby in your arms. Your brother going as far to make some joke about how he knew you’d end up a teen mom.

“Don’t those things usually take nine months? I feel like I should know, I’ve had two,” your mother teased. You sighed, setting the thing down on the counter with a glare to it.  It made your mom laugh to see you look at it with such hatred, she had no idea where it stemmed from, but she wouldn’t get it even if you told her 

“This is Ozzy. He’s the fake baby I have to take care of for health.”

She nodded, and that seemed to pique your dad’s interest. “Oh, I remember that assignment. They’re still doing that? Who’s your partner?” he asked. You hated that he’d asked, you would have rather kept it to yourself, all for the sake of starting a discussion about the boy you didn’t like. 

“Eddie Munson,” you muttered, under your breath. 

Your mother gasped. “Oh, sweet Eddie! I haven’t seen him for so long, gosh I forgot about him.” You forgot about the woman's love for him, how she’d always thought he was one of the better people around you in childhood– despite the poor boy’s home life– but then one day he’d disappeared from your life without a trace. She’d questioned it before, but you always brushed it off so you didn’t have to talk about it, though she’d always had her suspicions it was due to the fault of your cheerleading friends. And she would be right.

You tried to laugh it off, hoping you didn’t have to talk about him anymore. Other than the fact he was supposed to be really well practiced at this assignment, there wasn’t really anything good you could say about him. “Yeah.”

“You know, that’s actually how me and your mom got together,” your dad said. 

That fact hadn’t ever actually been made known to you. You knew your parents had met back in highschool, highschool sweethearts actually, but they had never told you specifically about what happened. It was nice to hear, incredibly sweet to know, but you felt like that piece of information was going to lead to something else you weren’t necessarily going to like. And you would be right. 

“Who knows, maybe you and Eddie will end up like me and your mom after this whole thing.”

You scoffed. Safe to say you didn’t find that amusing, you just grabbed a snack and headed upstairs where you could forget all about the assignment. 

You set it down somewhere far away from your bed, where it could be kept out of sight and hopefully not heard. But in a weird way it still felt like it was watching you, and you wished you would have fought harder for Eddie to take it home with him.

The first thing you did was get some homework out of the way, it meant you were free to focus on other stuff over your weekend. That took longer than expected, but once that was out of the way, you wanted to take a shower, feeling like you needed it after being around Eddie for so long earlier in the day. 

The baby was left in your room, deciding it could be left alone for as long as it would take for you to clean yourself. However, you didn’t realize how wrong that would be. 

You had barely stepped under the water when you heard it cry for the first time. You huffed, dropping your head onto the shower wall in irritation. The water was switched off and you wrapped a towel around yourself, basically marching back into your room intending to shut it up as fast as possible. Turns out it just needed holding or something, which pissed you off even more. Why did the fake baby need to be held? You were busy. 

As soon as it calmed, you were off again, hoping this time you would be undisturbed. Of course you weren’t. 

This became a routine. You would be under the water for barely two minutes, and the baby would start screaming in your room again. It happened a few times, with you going between rooms, before you called it quits, marching down the stairs with a towel on and dripping wet hair, fake baby clutched in your arms possibly a little tighter than a baby should be. 

“Can you please, take this thing for a little? I’m trying to shower and it won’t stop crying.”

Your parents looked amused at your annoyance, but they took it nonetheless. A cranky Y/N was never a fun Y/N to be around. They would know, considering they’d raised you. “Of course. We’d love to spend time with our grandbaby.”

You still despised that they were leaning into it so much. They truly were as bad as Eddie with it all. You handed the baby over to your father, who immediately coddled it with a concerning amount of care. All you could do was roll your eyes and trudge back up the stairs, hearing them coo over the fake baby much too loudly, just to get on your nerves. 

Thankfully, this time around it went smoothly. You managed to take your shower in peace, then do your whole routine afterwards without being disturbed. But after that, you had no choice but to face the music again and take charge of that dumb baby. 

For the rest of the night, it didn’t bother you much (which you would be eternally grateful for). It actually allowed you to get a good night's sleep for a while, a few hours at least, and in the end it wasn’t even the thing that woke you up. 

The sound of the phone ringing was far from a pleasant way to be woken up, especially when it was all so sudden. You had been completely knocked out, wanting to get a full rest so you could go ahead with your plans the following day. It was a Saturday, so you were supposed to be getting up bright and early to hang out with your friends. You’d thought maybe if anything was to keep you up, it would be that damn plastic baby, but no, it was someone deciding to call you at four am. 

The time was actually the only reason you picked it up, just in case it was an emergency or something along those lines. Funnily enough, it wasn’t. Much to your dismay, it was Eddie deciding to be an asshole. “Hello?”

“Wakey wakey, sleeping beauty,” he teased. You groaned, already tempted to hang up so you didn’t have to listen to his idiocy. It was like he could already tell what you were thinking though, and he demanded you didn’t put the phone down, and instead heard him out. “I just wanted to see how Oz is doing.”

There was a long silence following those words that convinced him you either hadn’t heard him, or you’d hung up, but he could still hear your breathing. “Are you kidding me! You woke me up at four am to ask how the fake baby’s, fake doing?”

You heard him huff. “Stop calling him fake, he’ll hear you,” he insisted. 

“Oh my god, Eddie, I’m hanging up.”

“No!” he said. “Hey, if we’re gonna co-parent then we have to communicate!” 

You hated to admit that he was technically right. There was no way you could pass this assignment if you didn’t talk on the regular, at least for these next two weeks. After that you never had to talk again if you didn’t want to, and you probably wouldn’t if you had it your way.

“Not in the middle of the night, Eddie!” 

The yelling made him shy away a little bit. He suddenly went quiet, and you felt a little bad for scolding him like that. But then he opened his mouth again and you felt like you could rush over there and strangle him. The exhaustion was spurring you on. “But is he okay? Can I talk to him?” he questioned.

If he could see the look on your face, he would be surprised an individual could show so much annoyance towards a single human being. “I’m hanging up now,” you told him. 

He tried to protest, but evidently the line went dead very quickly after you uttered those words. His pleas were useless, essentially. 

You’d hoped that was the end of it. As soon as you’d put the phone down, you huffed, then turned over in your bed, pulled your covers up as high as your chin, and closed your eyes again. You planned on going straight back to sleep, so you could be well rested by the time you got up to head out to your plans tomorrow– with enough time to drop the baby off at Eddie’s trailer. But it seemed he had other ideas. 

The phone rang again, much to your dismay. You cursed under your breath, letting out a long breath that was supposed to let out your anger so you didn’t completely explode on him. It didn’t work though.

You raised the phone to your ear, not being nearly as polite this time around. “What do you want!”

He laughed, nervously. “I fear this is a bad time,” he tried to joke. 

You weren’t planning on sitting there at four am and listening to his stupid behaviour. “You’re gonna be the one to wake the baby if you don’t stop. So, Munson, go to sleep and leave me the hell alone, for the love of god.”

»»——⍟——««

The next morning, despite all the mishaps in the night involving your sleep, you were up bright and early. It was practically the crack of dawn, but you still started to get ready for your day. It actually brought on a wonderful plan that you thought would be very enjoyable. If Eddie wanted to dump the baby on you at a time he knew would be inconvenient, you could easily do the same to him. 

After getting ready and leaving your house, you headed for the trailer park, baby under your arm probably looking like a crazy person. Though you wouldn’t have looked out of place in this area of Hawkins all that much. 

You still remembered which trailer he lived in all the way back to when you were a kid, he hadn’t moved since the last time you’d been there. Despite how long ago that was. When you made it up the small porch to the door, you made sure to knock extra harshly. You felt a little bad for whoever else was inside, but they weren’t your concern right now. 

It wasn’t opened straight away. In fact it took another round of loud knocking for someone to slowly open the door and reveal you. Thankfully, the person opening the door was Eddie, just the guy you needed to see. 

“Morning, Munson,” you chirped, looking at the very clearly disheveled man. His hair was a complete mess, unbrushed and all over the place, falling out of the loose bun he’d thrown it in last night. His eyes were barely open, and the sun was clearly blinding him, which he tried to block out with his hand. He was still in pajamas, and your knocking on his door seemed to be the thing that had woken him. “Don’t you look refreshed,” you poked. 

“What are you doing here? It’s so early,” he whined.

You beamed, this was exactly what you’d hoped for. “Here’s your baby. Take care of him today, I know how much you missed him last night.”

He was still out of it as he took the baby that you pushed into his chest. You weren’t planning on saying anything else, just bidding him a goodbye and turning on your heel to leave. That would have been the plan, had you not been caught by his Uncle, the man having wondered who was at the door and talking to the kid so early in the morning. At the sight of the familiar face, though the one he hadn’t seen in years, he greeted you fondly. “Y/N? Hey, how are you? It’s been a while.”

The smile on your face wasn’t a fake one, you didn’t need it to be when it came to Wayne, he was truly a sweetheart, unlike his nephew. He had always been kind to you. “Hi, I’m good. How are you?” 

“Great, actually. ‘M just making breakfast, would you like to join us?”

Both you and Eddie jumped at trying to turn down the offer, the boy insisting you were busy and you saying pretty much the same thing. In reality, you had time to kill before you were due to hang with your friends— the one part of your plan to annoy Eddie that hadn’t been entirely thought through— but you really couldn’t think of anything worse than being forced to sit and eat with the boy you couldn’t stand. “Really, it’s okay.” 

“No, come on in.” The sweet look on his face made you feel like you couldn’t say no, even if you desperately wanted to. “Anything for Eddie’s lady friend.” 

You could hear the boy protesting that nickname to his uncle as you took a step inside, being pointed to the kitchen where breakfast was cooking. Wayne made some quick excuse about how he’d ‘be right back’ and then you and the boy your age were left standing there awkwardly in the room together. 

There were a tense few moments where neither of you really knew what to say. You didn’t want to be rude to the boy in his own home, you’d done a lot of things but that just felt unacceptable to you. And Eddie didn’t really know what he could say that wasn’t overly mean.

You decided to try and break the tension. Just by being polite. “So, uh, you guys do this every single day?” you asked. It seemed a little excessive, the full spread. You couldn’t imagine they managed to eat it all, everyday without fail. Sometimes you barely had enough time to grab toast before you left for school.

His head shook, messy curls moving with him. “No, uh, every Saturday. It’s his only day off, so we usually spend it together.” The confession made your heart sink a little. You were well aware Eddie hadn’t had the greatest home life in the world, and it was just him and his uncle now, So the fact you were dumping this baby on him, on the one day a week they got to spend together, when all you were really doing was going to meet your friends; you felt bad.

“That’s sweet.” 

The awkward silence was back, and it seemed like it was there to stay.

When the older Munson came back you were overjoyed. It felt as though a little bit of that tension slipped away. “Take a seat. You kids dig in. Maybe little Ozzy can even have some too.” 

Your brows raised. “You know its name?” you asked, a little shocked.

The man chuckled, beginning to plate up his food as he motioned for the two of you to do the same. You were a little more hesitant than the boy beside you, all because you weren’t in your own home, but you eventually followed along. “Are you kidding? I’ve seen that baby every day for these same two weeks, for the last three years. I’m very familiar with my fake grandson by now.”

Almost like he knew he was being addressed, the baby began to cry in Eddie’s hold. “Very familiar with that sound too.” 

“So am I after someone dumped him on me yesterday.” Your words were obviously aimed at the curly headed boy, who just glared back at you, mumbling something under his breath like the baby knew he was talking to him. 

Wayne found your bickering entertaining. He thought you were like actual parents, a married couple who loved one another but couldn’t help but argue at every little thing. 

You whined, not liking that none of them were taking you seriously when you said you hadn’t enjoyed taking care of it. “Seriously, it wasn't cool Eddie, I didn’t want that thing last night.”

“Stop calling him a thing! He can hear you,” he insisted. You rolled your eyes, flipping him off when you thought Wayne wasn’t looking. He was though, but he wasn’t going to scold you, he was actually enjoying watching this go down. He had no idea how the two of you had gone from borderline friends as kids, to enemies now, but he was absolutely going to let you know he found it hilarious. You were so much more alike than you realized. 

You were relieved when the baby finally stopped screaming, though you had to admit it was a little entertaining to watch Eddie pretend it was a real baby. He shushed it as he swayed with it in his arms, and he practically cheered silently when it stopped with the ‘tears’. He was taking this whole thing more seriously than you ever would, so you supposed you could thank him for that when you ended up with a good grade. 

“You're good with it,” you commented. The ‘it’ had him glaring at you, but it only made you grin wider. You lived for pissing Eddie off. “Okay, fine. I guess he’s pretty cool.”

“He gets that from his daddy,” he boasted. 

You hated that you laughed. There was no way for you to even cover it up, he’d seen it, and he was going to bathe in the fact you found him funny. If it was anyone else you probably still would have been giggling at the dumb joke, but you were determined to keep up a facade that it was a shitty joke and nothing more– it had just caught you off guard that’s all– or at least that was what you were telling yourself. 

That one moment had seemed to break all the tension that had been lingering since you got there. From that point onwards, the three of you were laughing openly, making jokes left and right that brought the room’s atmosphere up to joyful, rather than distasteful. 

You left the Munson trailer that day with a smile on your face. In a way it felt like you had a different view of Eddie, one that you used to have before highschool hit. You didn’t think of him as quite the same freak as you did when you first saw him this morning. Only, you were going to have to keep that information to yourself if you didn’t want to be ridiculed alongside him. 

Turns out, sharing a breakfast with Eddie Munson really gives you a new outlook on the guy.

»»——⍟——««

Despite being held up at breakfast with the Munsons, you still had an ample amount of time before your plans with your friends. You got to the cafe early, just taking a seat and ordering water for the time being until they arrived. As you thought back to how you spent your morning, you didn’t notice the small smile inching its way onto your face. If you had, you would never have believed you were grinning at the thought of Eddie Munson. 

“What’re you smiling at?” you heard, snapping out of your daze to find Chrissy and Marianne taking a seat each opposite you. It quickly dropped, and a heat found its way to your cheeks. 

Thankfully, you were saved the task of coming up with a lie to tell them, when the bell above the door rang, signaling the rest of your friends bundling through the door, talking loudly as they slotted themselves into any spare seats at the table you’d picked. You were truly saved by the bell. 

After everyone was settled and had ordered their drinks, and the occasional muffin– not that you could eat anymore after the large breakfast you’d consumed– conversation seemed to take a turn and point directly to you. You didn’t love being the topic of said conversation, especially not when they were using it to bitch about people, but there wasn’t much you could do when it was seven to one. “So, Y/N, how’s it going with Mr Freak?”

At first you were unsure what she meant, still coming down from the high of the morning, but then it clicked. “Eddie?” you asked. She nodded, though pulled a face at the sound of his name. “It’s uh, it’s alright, I guess.”

They laughed. “Alright? You’re not actually starting to like that freak are you?” It’d probably be the funniest thing in the world to them if you admitted that you started liking Eddie Munson. He was less than worthy of being friends with one of Hawkins cheerleaders, and they made that fact known every time they saw him. “You’re not gonna be the next social pariah, are you?”

You forced a laugh. “No, god no. That freak? I just meant… he’s not tried to make me an unbearable, weird nerd yet. He’s kept that to himself.” He had actually kept all the nerdy stuff from you, but that was because you hadn’t asked anything about it. You just didn’t have much of the heart to say anything else about him that was meaner. 

There was a chorus of giggles, followed by your ‘friends’ delving into a round of mocking Eddie relentlessly. They didn’t hold back, and usually neither would you, but it didn’t feel right now. There was something in your gut that was telling you it wasn’t right to make fun of him, not when he wasn’t even that bad. 

It was now when you realized that your friends were the entire reason you stopped liking Eddie in the first place. There wasn’t exactly a better reason than that. They’d just been a huge influence, when they maybe shouldn’t have been. But now was too late to take back everything you’d ever said and done. 

Maybe now you could change though. Sure you couldn’t take it back, but you could try and make up for it all. Prove you were better.  

»»——⍟——««

The first health class after you were handed the babies, was more to check on your progress than teach you anything. Until your names were called for you to go up and talk to your teacher, you and Eddie just sat there, talking while you waited. 

The more the two of you talked to one another, the better you began to get along with him. He wasn’t as bad as you’d tried to make him out these past few years, and the same could be said on his behalf for you. But just because you didn’t think he was so bad after all, didn’t mean that your friends didn’t still hold their grudges against him. Conversation was about your interests, though you didn’t have that much in common, but you at least tried to seem interested. 

“So, cheerleading… that seems fun.”

It was the only thing he could think of, and it made you chuckle. It was clear he had absolutely no interest in your hobby. “It is fun, I enjoy it. It’s exercise I guess, though maybe the people could be better,” you commented. 

He scoffed. “You think?” He was obviously being sarcastic. You both knew you could do with better friends, but there weren’t many great options in Hawkins. It just so happened that you might have picked some of the worst ones. 

“I know they’re, well, horrible, but they can be okay sometimes.” It was the truth. When you were alone with some of them, they could be the greatest friends you ever had. It was when they were in a group that they seemed to change– they obviously felt like they needed to impress everywhere by being cool and mean. “Some of them value popularity too much, I think. Other than that, they can be sweet.”

He didn’t entirely believe that, he thought some of them were just the mean girls at heart that they acted like. But he wasn’t going to argue with you on it. You changed the topic for him anyway. 

“Uh, so, you’re in a band right? Corroded coffin. What’s that like?”

He couldn’t believe you even knew the name, he didn’t actually know how you knew it, but he wasn’t going to question it. He liked the fact that you’d remembered that small detail about him– and that you weren’t mocking him for it like your friends would do. It was a positive change. 

“Amazing actually, I love it. You should come see us play at the hideout sometime.”

You thought about it briefly. “Maybe I will. I’m sure you guys are great.”

It was actually easier than you expected to find a common interest. You didn’t think you would at first, but then the address of his band reminded him of something you said a few days ago. “You knew Ozzy. Is the princess cheerleader secretly a metal fan?”

It was a well kept secret, though you never thought it needed to be a secret in the first place. You thought it was beyond weird to have to keep your music taste unknown, but your friends were odd in that way. If they knew the sort of bands you liked, they would probably isolate you quicker than they had Eddie when they first started high school. 

“You could say that, but I can’t say I’m that big of an Ozzy fan.”

His jaw dropped, like you’d just said the most despicable thing he’d ever heard. “What? He’s part of, like, the greatest band ever. Even better than Metallica.”

Now was your turn to be hit with the repulsion. “No way. Metallica are so much better than Black Sabbath!” you argued. His face twisted into one of disgust. Right then and there, he could’ve claimed you were just as bad as all the others. Though he would only be joking this time. 

“I love them both, but you’re crazy.”

There was a tap on your shoulder that pulled you out of your heated debate with Eddie. You turned to see one of the basketball players you didn’t really know, holding out a folded slip of paper towards you. He edged it closer to you, and you took it with a tight lipped smile. Those players could be so awkward at times, he could have told you who wrote it, at the minimum. 

You found the note was from Chrissy, who was extremely curious as to why you seemed to be getting along so well with Freak Munson. Your eyes searched the room for her as your heart slowly sank into your stomach. No longer did you feel the easy feeling you had when you and Eddie were talking, she’d spoiled that atmosphere. When you locked eyes with her across the room, she furrowed her brows, nodding her head slightly in the direction of the boy next to you. You just shrugged, growing sheepish. 

Eddie, although curious as to who was sending you notes, didn’t ask, nor did he notice the sudden change in behavior when you turned your attention back to him. 

There wasn’t exactly much time for him to figure it out considering Ozzy began to cry. It was like perfect timing. The boy aimed to make some sort of joke about whose parent's responsibility it should be to stop the crying, but you weren’t laughing by the time it left his lips. “The better parents got this,” he teased. All eyes were on the two of you and you just wanted it to stop. 

“Uh, you do it. I’m gonna run to the bathroom.”

To say the two of you had just been bonding five minutes ago, he didn’t know where the sudden coldness in attitude had come from. He had expected you to jokingly contradict his teasing. He didn’t have time to ask, you were gone before he could even pick up the baby. “Okay… Looks like I’m doing it then.”

»»——⍟——««

The Munson boy didn’t see you again until later that day, like after the final bell had rang, signaling for everyone to go home. He managed to catch you before you got into your car, offering you a shy smile. He was unaware if he’d been the cause of the energy change earlier, so he was a little timid when approaching you. “Hey, I was wondering if you wanted to take care of him together for a little while. We’ve probably got more hope of passing if we do it together.”

You didn’t know if that was true, considering you’d done most of the project already in individual shifts, never actually together aside from the time you shared breakfast with him. It did make sense though, so surely there could be no harm in agreeing to it. “Yeah, um, come over in an hour?” you suggested, earning a nod. “You remember where I live right?”

There was another nod and a promise to be there near enough on time. He took off afterwards, with Ozzy held under his arm securely as he jogged back to his van. There was a faint smile on your face as you watched him go, but it quickly faded when you noticed the cluster of judgemental stares just a short distance away. You hadn’t even known your friends were there, but you didn’t plan on hanging around to find out what they had to say about the interaction you just had. 

Once inside your car, you let out a deep sigh, hating that it felt like you were living some sort of double life. You wanted to be kind to Eddie, even if it was just for as long as this project lasted, but he was actually funny, and sweet, and you didn’t have to try to like him. Your friends on the other hand… well that was a different story. You thought they needed to give him a chance, though they probably never would. 

“Way to go, Y/N. Picking the most accommodating friends possible,” you grumbled. 

The drive to your home was silent, filled with the thoughts of how you were supposed to win in this scenario. How did you stay friends with Eddie, and your cheerleading buddies all at once. And even as you pulled into your driveway, you still didn’t have an answer.

You headed into your home, stumbling across your mom in the kitchen, knowing you needed to tell her about your plans. “A friend’s gonna come over to study in a little bit. Is that okay?” you asked. She looked unsure, but that was primarily because she wasn’t a huge fan of your friends. You knew once she found out it was Eddie, she’d be all over the idea. “It’s Eddie,” you sighed. 

Her entire face lit up. “Oh, that’s great! I can’t wait.”

“Try to keep the excitement to a minimum. We don’t want to scare him away,” you teased.

There was a knock on your door not that much later. You’d been putting chips into a bowl for a snack, but you paused to go and answer the door, letting the boy follow you inside after a quick greeting. 

“Want anything? Chips?” you offered, holding the bowl out to him. Ozzy was in one hand, but with the other he took a greedy handful, winking at you when you scoffed and pulled the bowl away. You hadn’t intended for him to have so many, but now like half of your snack was gone. He was just proving that he had, very literally, not changed since he was a small child. 

You were planning to take off upstairs when your mother caught you. 

“Eddie, oh hello!” your mother greeted, pulling the boy into a tight hug he couldn’t escape from. It would have been funny– the look on his face– had it not meant that your mother had decided she loved the boy like her own son. She wasn’t supposed to be so accepting of him already, you were still trying to wrap your head around the fact you didn’t hate him. 

The woman was practically suffocating the poor boy, so of course you had to step in and save him. “Okay, mom, let him breathe.”

You guided him away from her, allowing him a moment of peace. He liked the affection though, he didn’t tend to get all that much. If your mother wanted to dote on him, he was happy to let her, even if it made you a little disgruntled. 

“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I’m just so happy that Y/N finally has a friend over.”

Your brows furrowed, eyes narrowing as they looked in her direction. “I have friends over all the time,” you pointed out. And you did, your house was like the main hangout spot, and your mother was almost always there when they did come over. You had no idea what she was talking about. 

“None that I like,” she muttered, hoping it wouldn’t offend you too much. If you were being honest, it wasn’t a big surprise at all. In fact, it was always a bigger surprise when someone did like them. You could hear Eddie chuckling quietly, and you gave him a swift elbow to the rib, which earned a groan of pain. Neither of you were planning to address that your mom had referred to Eddie as a friend. 

“Well, before you decide you hate anymore of my peers, we’re gonna go to my room and take little Oz with us.” You took the plastic baby from the boy, pressing a dramatic kiss to its head as you began to lead the way out of the kitchen and to the upstairs. 

The Munson boy offered your mother a polite smile, though he was amused that you were finally accepting Ozzy in the way that he did. After that tiny interaction, he turned and followed you blindly, like a little lost puppy. It would’ve been charming if he didn’t keep tripping over his feet– courtesy of him not looking where he was going, which he probably should have known was really dumb. 

You laughed at him more than once, and if you caught him on a good day he might admit that your laugh made him feel some kind of way. But as for now, he’d keep that information to himself. 

The few hours together in your room were spent with Eddie putting off study, taking care of Ozzy and the occasional burst of conversation when the boy couldn’t keep a random thought to himself. It continued throughout the entire time he was there, but by the end of it, you were much more happy to entertain him.  

“You know what,” he began, head dangling over the edge of your bed, eyes focused on where you were sitting on the floor of your room. Your eyes were drawn from your textbook to his face, and the sight of him so comfortable in your room brought a smile to your face. “I’m really glad we got partnered for this project. I’ve missed talking to you.”

It wasn’t what you were expecting him to say, it’s probably the most vulnerable he’s been with you. “I think I have too.” 

You watched as he climbed off of your bed, moving to sit beside you on the floor, he did it under the guise that he’d help you with your studying, but considering he was a three time repeat senior, you didn’t know how much help he could really offer. He’d probably end up just sitting there and bothering you the whole time. It was very Eddie of him.

That was exactly what he did. Every time you tried to turn a page, or scribble something down, he was there to try and mess something up. Whether it was poking your cheek or tugging on a strand of your hair. He was always there. 

“I swear to god, Munson. I’ll kick you out if you don’t get your hands off of me.”

He chuckled, placing his hands in his lap to show you he wouldn’t bother you anymore. That didn’t last long though, not when he then kicked his foot against your leg. You groaned, dropping your pencil and shooting him a heavy glare. “You’re so annoying,” you whined. 

You didn’t realize how close the two of you had gotten amidst all the teasing, but now it was all you could focus on. If he inched forward only slightly, you were positive your lips would touch. And you hadn’t yet decided if you’d mind. You didn’t get to though, because before you could edge close enough to actually share a kiss, there was an interruption.

“Eddie! Your uncles on the phone,” your mom called. 

The yell snapped you both out of the situation you had found yourselves in. Your cheeks grew hot, and you could see the way his tinted a light shade of pink. The two of you had almost kissed, and you had no idea how you had let that happen. “I should, uh, go see what that’s about. He probably wants me home.” He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck nervously, eyes looking anywhere but at you so you didn’t have to face what you’d just almost done. It was something that was going to be put to the back of your mind so you didn’t have to deal with it anytime soon. 

“Yeah, yeah, go.”

You smiled at him as he got up to his feet, grabbing his stuff and rushing to the ajar door of your room. “Do you want to keep Ozzy tonight?” he asked. 

“Yeah, that’s fine with me.”

And with that he left, offering you a small smile that seemed a little forced, before taking off. You let out a breath when he was finally out of sight, letting your body relax. You hadn’t even realized how tense you’d been before. Eddie Munson was doing weird things to you, and you didn’t know he had the power. But, you seriously needed to figure out how to put a stop to it before it got bad. 

»»——⍟——««

Halfway into the second week of the project, when the big test you’d been studying for was approaching, you felt like you were on the very edge of sanity. You were so close to tripping over to insane. 

You’d thought the almost kiss would have made things weird with Eddie, but it actually just made you closer. You had graciously offered to take Ozzy for the night, considering Eddie had told you he had a gig at the hideout. You were just trying to make things easier for him to handle, but now you were beginning to seriously regret being so kind. The screaming while you were trying to study was sending you crazy. You were desperate for the baby to be quiet, but it seemed like all it wanted to do was ruin your night. 

At first you tried sucking it up, but then everything started to pile up and you were positive you were going to scream if you didn’t solve the problem. So although you tried to put it off for as long as physically possible, eventually you just couldn’t, you had to give in and call him. 

You had no idea how far into the set he must be, or if he’d even be able to answer the call, but you were seriously begging that there would be a miracle or something and he would. You stood there by the phone like an idiot, twirling the cord around your finger to try and soothe your nerves as it rang. You were so terrified he wouldn’t be able to come to the phone, and really you didn’t know what would happen if he didn’t.  

It took a few rings, so many that you thought it wasn’t going to be picked up, but at the possible last minute, a rough voice came down the receiver. “Hideout,” the unknown man said simply. 

“Hi, um–” It was like all legible thoughts left your brain. You had no idea how to describe Eddie to the man that might not even know him. “I’m looking for Eddie. H-He’s in the band that’s playing.” You could hear the music over the phone, and it was loud, your only sign that the band was in fact still performing. It made you feel even worse. 

“Munson?” he asked. He obviously knew him very well. 

“Yeah, yeah. Munson.”

He told you to hold on, then must have taken off, because all you heard was more or less silence and the faint sound of the band. It did suddenly stop, and it brought the tears from earlier back to your eyes as the guilt set into your stomach. You had a fear that he was going to be so mad at you, and you didn’t think you could take that. 

“Hello?” He sounded confused. You supposed being told to stop your set and answer the phone to some random girl didn’t really give someone a lot of context. He probably even considered not bothering at all, but now here he was. 

“Eddie? It’s me,” you said. You really hoped he would recognize your voice just from that. He did, your voice practically played on repeat in his head all day everyday. 

You could physically hear the confusion twist into concern when he next spoke. Getting a call at the bar he hung out was arguably the biggest red flag ever that something was wrong. “Y/N? What’s wrong? Are you okay?” he asked. All the questions came at once, questions to you, ones he needed himself answering. There were a lot. 

“I’m– I don’t want to ruin your night, but I really need your help.”

Those words didn’t instill him with the confidence that you were okay. If anything it made him more bothered that he wasn’t already by your side. If he could solve your problem, then he definitely would, but he was still yet to learn what it was. “Okay, um, where are you?”

“At home. I-I’m not in danger or anything, just need some help.” Even if you weren’t in immediate danger, he could tell you were on the verge of tears, or already in tears, just from how your voice shook with your words when you spoke. “I- It’s probably stupid, and I’m dragging you away from your fun. I’m sorry, Eddie.”

“Hey, no worries,” he assured. His voice sounded so kind that you wanted to cry all over again. It was becoming a very familiar feeling this evening. “I’ll be right over. Give me, like, twenty minutes and I’m yours.”

Your thank you was barely loud enough to be heard, but he caught it just before he hung up. He hadn’t thought his night would end so early, it usually didn’t when he was performing with Corroded Coffin, even if it was a school day, but he was happy to cut it short if you needed his help, and you seriously sounded like you needed his help. 

He was even quicker than he said, which told you he’d been speeding. Usually you’d chastise him for being so unsafe, but you didn’t have the energy this time around. 

By the time he knocked on the door, you were so exhausted from your own emotions that the words just fell out. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” you began to furiously mutter as he stepped through your door. He had barely even gotten a foot through before the words started spewing out of your mouth. He hadn’t yet been able to tell you that it was okay. “I know you were busy and I really didn’t want to call, but I–”

He shushed you, shaking his head. He could hear Ozzy’s screams from somewhere in the house, but they sounded muffled, like you’d tried to hide it or something. Usually it would’ve made him laugh, but he didn’t think now was the time. “It’s okay. We were about finished anyway,” he promised. It was a lie, there was actually a while left in their show, but they could play without him. Plus it wasn’t like many people would miss him, there were only around four people in the audience. You didn’t need to know any of that though. “Tell me what’s going on.”

You’d never seen him so caring and concerned, but it was a nice change. “I– I have to study, and I don’t get half the stuff i’m supposed to a-and I can’t get the dumb baby to stop crying,” you whined, the tears spilling over your cheeks as all your problems came back to the surface of your mind. “I just… I’m overwhelmed,” you concluded. 

He frowned, though in true Eddie fashion, he couldn’t resist cracking a joke that he hoped would make you feel better. “You know, you really shouldn’t talk about our child like that.”

You rolled your eyes, but nevertheless still chuckled a little bit at the comment. It wasn’t enough to completely cure your sadness, but it helped. “Shut up and please make it stop,” you begged, eyes pleading with him desperately. 

He didn’t need to be asked a second time. As those words left your mouth, he took off, heading in some random direction in the hopes that he might find where you’d hidden the baby. It didn’t occur to him until after a while that he could have just asked you where it was. So he headed back to where you were standing, still in the same position looking as sad as you were before. “Where exactly is our child?”

The fact he referred to Oz that way made you smile a little. “Uh, he’s in my closet, under a few blankets and pillows and stuff,” you said shyly. It made him cackle that you’d gone to such an extent, and it was probably the exact opposite of what your assignment said you were supposed to do. This was more like what Eddie thought being your partner would be like. 

“You’re so amazing, sweetheart.”

The pet name made you flush. You wouldn’t have been surprised if he could feel it from all the way over where he was standing. It slipped out so casually, and you weren’t even sure he had noticed it, but it made your stomach flutter. Little did you know, he had noticed. He hadn’t meant for it to come out, it’d be something he’d been calling you in his head, never with the intention for it to be spoken allowed, but now he was freaking out. He just hoped you hadn’t found it too weird. 

Thankfully, he wasn’t to notice any embarrassment on your face, he had already turned away in his own humiliation before he could see yours. 

He scurried away to your room, already knowing the path from his visit the other day. You left him to it for a little while, needing a moment to breathe and clear your head before you joined him. You also needed to know that the crying had stopped before you headed up the stairs, just so you didn’t explode. 

You thought ten minutes was a good amount of time. And you’d been right. When you ascended the stairs, moving down the hall to your bedroom, he was standing inside, Ozzy in his arms as he swayed a little from side to side. It was a cute sight, and it further solidified your idea that with all this practice Eddie would surely end up being an incredible dad. 

“How do you do it?” you asked, sounding more than amazed at his abilities. He scoffed, downplaying his talents. There was no way you were going to allow that though. “Seriously, Ed. He was screaming for like three hours before you showed up.”

You watched him wince, which didn’t look like a good sign of something. You had no idea what that something was though. “What?” you quizzed. 

“That’s gonna really mess up our grade,” he teased. 

You scoffed, slapping your hand against his chest. He laughed loudly, setting the now calmed baby on your bed somewhere. Your attention wasn’t on that though, you were much more focused on the boy himself. 

It felt like he was a miracle worker. You hadn’t ever looked at the Munson boy like you did now, like he was some sort of guardian angel sent down to you. Maybe your thoughts were clouded, maybe you weren’t thinking straight, but he had never seemed more attractive than right now. 

He must have noticed a sudden shift in the atmosphere too, because there was a glaze that came over his eyes when he looked at you. You couldn’t begin to explain, but you weren’t going to try to. 

There was a weird sort of magnetism that suddenly appeared between the two of you. You felt yourself edging closer to him, and you from two weeks ago would probably have recoiled in disgust, but you were the one leaning into it most right now. So much could change in such a short time and it shocked you to think about it really. You wouldn’t change it for the world though, even if you were given the choice to. 

Eddie must have been feeling the same way. His hands lifted from his sides, settling on your face so he was practically cradling it. It was the most loved you’d felt in a while, and you really hoped he felt the same way about it. 

His touch on your cheeks made your heart pound in your chest. Your breathing was noticeably heavier, though you really hoped he didn’t notice your nerves. You’d be mortified if he knew how tense you were right now. “Y/N…” he whispered. His thumb was stroking over your cheek, which could definitely feel the heat on your face. 

“Just kiss me,” you hissed. 

As soon as he heard those words, sort of his confirmation that this was okay, he was lunging forward. You had zero idea how it had happened. To say you hated the guy such a short time ago, you were pretty much solidifying your changed feelings for him now. He was gentle with it, though you could tell he was holding back, whether that was for your sake or his. You would have been perfectly happy for him to kiss you with vigor though.

Your hands got tangled in his hair, and although he would usually hiss at the terrible pain that shot through his scalp, he found he didn’t mind it so much when it was you. He never thought the day would come when he was in this position, but here he was, a prime example that wishes do in fact come true. 

You were first to pull away, but not because you particularly wanted to, just because you needed to breathe. You couldn’t imagine passing out from lack of air while kissing Eddie was going to do well for any potential relationship. 

“Wow,” he whispered. You chuckled nervously, though you really hoped he didn’t mistake those nerves for disgust or disappointment or anything. He didn’t. He just no longer knew what exactly to say to you. You were the same way, feeling like a shy school girl all of a sudden. Never had you kissed someone and wound up with that reaction afterwards. Eddie was just… different. 

“Yeah,” you sighed, dreamily. 

There was a beat of uncomfortable silence before he spoke up. “I’ll take this rascal for the night. Let you have a nice break.” You were happy to have him take the plastic toy, wanting it as far away from you as possible for the night. A peaceful sleep was all you could ask for. With each word he edged a little closer to your front door, though really he didn’t want to leave. If he could stay with you, especially after that kiss, he would jump at the opportunity. “Goodnight Y/N. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Goodnight.” You watched as he descended down your yard to his van, which you noted was parked hastily half on and off the curb. It made you chuckle, but you also found it sweet that he’d been in such a rush to get to you. At that realization, that he’d cared so much that he probably broke multiple driving laws, you couldn’t let him leave so easily.

“Eddie?” you called. He stopped walking, turning on his heel to look at you. He hadn’t expected you to jog up to him, but within seconds you were standing in front of him, grinning widely. It was the happiest he assumed you’d been all night, and he was glad he could be the cause. You didn’t say anything else, just pressed a sweet, quick kiss to his lips. A goodnight kiss you would have called it. “Thank you.”

He was blushing like crazy when you pulled away, and although this was now officially the second time he’d kissed you, it had caused him to be a stuttering mess. “It’s no p-problem.”

»»——⍟——««

The whole night you were thinking about that kiss with Eddie. Your dreams were filled with the way his hands caressed your face, how soft his lips felt against yours. You were still actually rather surprised how soft his lips had been. You woke up the next morning with that same dumb smile on your face that you’d fallen asleep with. 

You almost couldn’t wait to see him when you woke up. Getting ready consisted of you practically bouncing all over the place with your excitement. It just couldn’t be contained. However, you didn’t have the pleasure of catching him before class. He was nowhere to be seen. Eddie wasn’t exactly Mr Punctual, so you suspected he would arrive much later than he should. You would just have to deal with seeing him when he finally showed up. 

You thought you’d seen his van in the parking lot, but considering there was no sign of him inside, you assumed it was just a similar model or something that you mistook for his. You hated to admit that it made you a little disappointed. 

But, you trudged inside anyway, and found some way to busy yourself while you waited for your class to start. It just so happened though, that it looked like you were going to have to entertain your friends. Although you tried to avoid them, keeping your head down while at your locker, hoping they could just walk past and miss you, they spotted you right away. Maybe it was the bright cheerleader uniform that gave you away. “Y/N!” one of them called in a high pitched, grating voice. 

You looked over your shoulder with a faked smile. “Hey,” you greeted. 

“Feels like we haven’t seen you in forever. You haven’t abandoned us for Munson have you?” Chelsea chuckled. To her that was probably the funniest mental image in the world, but you just had to hold back from rolling your eyes. 

“Can’t have our girl with that freak. Sort of ruins our reputation.”

You frowned. “Stop,” you whined, before you could really tell yourself to shut up. It felt wrong to be letting them speak about him like this. If he was here now he would probably be devastated too. He might not always show that the stuff people say about him gets him, but you’ve started to notice he takes stuff to heart just like anyone else. You’d noticed in conversations with him recently that he was pretty self-deprecating at times, but the stuff he said was stuff you’d known your friends to yell at him. It made your stomach sink each time. 

Little did you know, out of the corner of her eye Chelsea had seen the mane of curly hair coming out of a nearby classroom. It was the same one he held his club in, and in tow was one of his younger friends who frequented Hellfire. “Oh, come on. Are you really going soft for that loser? What happened to the girl who used to despise him more than we do?”

It was in that moment where you felt painfully pressured to join in. You wished you had the strength to walk away, tell them no or stick up for him. Any of those things would have been a billion times better than giving into what they wanted and being horrible. “I’m obviously only using that freak for the grade. He just started getting clingy, can’t take a hint apparently,” you laughed. 

They had somehow timed it just right, so Eddie walked by just as the laugh tumbled out of your mouth. It felt like someone had just staked him in the heart, and he had no idea how he was supposed to react. Although the pain was only emotional, it really did feel physical for a while. He could’ve sworn his heart was cracking in his chest. Dustin saw the previous joyful expression on his face drop.

“Come on. Let’s get out of here,” the kid suggested. He didn’t think his friend needed to be subjected to anymore of this cruelty. 

He wouldn’t budge though, he was still standing there. He needed you to see the pain you were causing him, how you’d made him feel in the hopes it would drown you in guilt– if you could even experience such an emotion. “I didn’t know you were so shallow,” he called. It was clear to him that this was the first time you were realizing he was there. There was a fear slipping into your eyes, and you resembled something like a deer caught in headlights. “Glad to know what you really think of me.”

“Eddie–”

“No. No, I wouldn’t want to take up anymore of the princess’ time. I’m clearly not worthy.” He turned on his heel and began walking the other way. There wasn’t even anything down there that he needed, but he just knew he couldn’t face walking past you like that. Dustin followed, shooting you a harsh glare over his shoulder for hurting his friend. For the last couple days, due to all of Eddie’s girly ramblings about you, he assumed you’d changed, but now here you were proving that idea wrong. He couldn’t even imagine how truly crushed his friend was, or how pissed he was, considering Dustin himself was pretty damn pissed. 

The look of betrayal on his face hurt more than words could explain. The guilt was multiplied by at least a million. You knew you shouldn’t have said anything, you didn’t even know why you opened your big mouth to say something in the first place. It was dumb, painfully so, and it was going to take a lot to try and make up for this. And it was going to have to start with you rethinking who your friends were. You couldn’t claim to have a crush on a guy if you surround yourself with all these people who openly mock him, and you didn’t even come to his defense. 

“Excuse me,” you muttered quietly, pushing your way through the group of girls who didn’t even hear you, just so you could follow after him in the direction he took off. They didn’t know where you were going, but even if they were curious, you wouldn’t care to explain to them. You didn’t need to justify having to swallow your pride in order to talk to a guy they thought was a social reject. 

You had to chase after him like a scolded puppy, calling his name more than once. All eyes were on the two of you as you walked the maze that was the halls of the school. If he finally did give you the time of day to talk to him, you knew there was no way you could do it in front of all these people. They didn’t need to hear it. 

“Eddie, please, just give me two minutes,” you begged. The way you pleaded with him seemed to get through to him for a minute. He paused, despite Dustin’s insistence that he shouldn’t give you the time. 

He was whispering something to the kid that you couldn’t hear, but it must have been something along the lines of him giving the two of you some time. Henderson made it known how angry he was when he walked past you, glaring so harshly that you thought his look would kill you if it could. You couldn’t do anything but look away from him in discomfort, he was proud of himself at the fact he’d made you squirm. 

As soon as Dustin was gone, you took that as your sign to get started. “I’m-I’m sorry,” you began. You heard him scoff, but you also couldn’t blame him for that, that was in fact an incredibly lame ass apology. You just didn’t know what else you were supposed to say to him. 

“You’re sorry? Is that all you have to say for yourself?” People seemed to think it was exciting to watch you get yelled at by the resident freak of Hawkins. Eddie notably didn’t like jocks, and they’d seen him start arguments with Jason on more occasions that they could count, but never once had he gone for a cheerleader like this. It was like a once in a lifetime thing. 

Your eyes were growing teary. You knew it was pathetic to try and cry in the hopes it would make him kinder. It was completely unfair actually, but you weren’t sure what else to do. “I-I don’t know what to do. What do you want me to do? I’ll do anything.”

He huffed. “You want to do something for me?” It was more of a rhetorical question but you nodded after it nonetheless. “Leave me alone. Go back to your great life, and your perfect little friends, and stay away from me,” he hissed. 

He hated the look that crossed your face, but he hated even more that he was so upset by it. Why did you still have control over his heart when you’d been the one to rip it out of his chest in the first place? It wasn’t like he had done anything to deserve it. “Is that really what you want?” Your voice was so quiet that he almost didn’t hear it, and he wished he hadn’t because that sentence was truly the final thing that solidified the crack that ran down the middle of his heart. His answer to this was going to finish the both of you. 

He didn’t want to say yes. No matter how much his brain screamed at him to tell you no, he couldn’t listen to it. “Yes.”

You inhaled shakily, visibly holding back tears that his words had brought to your eyes for the second time. You wished you had just never opened your mouth, then you really wouldn’t have been in this situation. “Right. Okay.” If you could have just left it at that, the two of you might have ended on the slightest of better terms, but you just had to open your mouth again. “Are you sure there’s nothing I can do? I-I don’t think you realize how serious I am when I say I’ll do anything.”

It looked as though he might have considered it for a second or two, but ultimately he decided against it. “I have to get to class,” he muttered, attempting to walk past you. 

Your hand wrapped around his bicep though, a small smile crossing your face. “Since when have you ever been on time for class, Munson?” you tried to joke. He didn’t seem to think it was funny, trying to brush you off of him. It only served to make you more sad if anything. You frowned as you removed your hand from him like he wanted you to. “Sorry,” you muttered. 

It was painfully awkward. You tried to offer something that would make him feel better, a kind act that was meant to try and get you back on his good side. “I, uh, I can take Ozzy for the day, and night, if you want.”

He had forgotten that the baby was still in his grasp, probably much too tightly considering the anger in his body right now. But he didn’t care about that so much. Now that his attention was drawn back to it though, he realized how much he didn’t want to spend the rest of this project trying to act civil with you. “Forget it. I’ll finish the project on my own, that way you can go back to being Hawkin’s perfect, princess cheerleader sooner.” It stung a little, but you supposed you’d earned it. 

He was completely avoiding your gaze, and you wished you could have said you blamed him. “Eddie…” Your voice was so weak that it almost convinced him, but he was determined to be stronger than that. He wasn’t going to give in to you just because he felt bad, you had made him feel so much worse than you were feeling right now, you deserved to feel like this. He didn’t even look at you as he walked away. 

If you didn’t have a class that you needed to get to ASAP, you could have potentially broken down into tears right there. You felt horrible, in a way you’d never felt before, and the guilt was already eating you alive. 

»»——⍟——««

It had been days since Eddie last spoke to you, and you felt like you were having withdrawals. Your original plan was to essentially never speak to him again after your project was over, but now you actually found yourself missing him and his shitty jokes. It was incredible to you how close you could get to someone in less than two weeks when doing such an involved assignment together. In any other situation, Eddie probably would have made a joke about how Ozzy now had to suffer with divorced parents, but that was missing too. There was a lot less humor in your days.

It wasn’t like you hadn’t tried, you had attempted many times to talk to him, but he didn’t want to hear it each and every time. He wouldn’t say anything to tell you to go away, he just ignored you. He actually wouldn’t even look at you. It made the class you were partnered together for painfully awkward. 

“Hey, Eddie,” you greeted, wringing your hands together nervously. He didn’t look up from where he was scribbling in his notebook. He never actually did work in this class, you knew that much, so you knew he wasn’t planning on starting now. You didn’t let him tell you you couldn’t sit beside him, you just sat down. You did hear him grumble about it though. “How’s it been going with Oz?” 

Before all this happened, he would have been over the moon that you were referring to Ozzy with a nickname, rather than calling him an ‘it’ still. Now though, he hadn’t even allowed you to take him for any period of time– not the days you were scheduled for, or the nights– he’d been doing it all. You knew he must have been exhausted, and you wished he would just ask for your help. You never thought you would be willing to care for a fake baby that just screams all the time, but now here you are. 

He didn’t answer you, which had you sinking down into your seat more. You were embarrassed. “Miss Y/L/N, is there something you’d like to share with the class?”

You had been so caught up in Eddie that you didn't even realize the class had begun. Now all eyes were on you, Chrissy and the other jocks snickering in their seats at the expression on your face. You had gone from a kicked puppy to sheepish. 

Your voice was quiet when you spoke. “No, sir. Sorry.” The man had noticed you looked a little more down today, and he put the pieces together and assumed it was something to do with Munson. He didn’t know what teenage relationship bullshit was going on, and he absolutely didn’t want to get into it, but he would step in if he thought it would affect your grade. For the most part he knew it would be fine, considering Eddie was always good with this assignment, but he would intervene if he had to. 

He nodded. “Alright, then. So today’s task requires communication. I’m expecting you and your partner to consider the financial responsibilities of having a kid. Are they going to college? How are you going to save that kind of money? It’s vital that you talk about this.”

The gesture made you smile at Mr G, grateful that he’d picked up on the fact you were trying to right a wrong and given you this opportunity. He flashed you a smile, one that he knew you’d recognise as being for you. Even if he was annoyed previously that you’d been talking when he was trying to conduct his lesson, he still had some decency to try and help. You didn’t talk again until he set you off on your tasks, giving you all the okay. 

“So, dad, you emotionally ready to plan for Oz to go off to college? Won’t be too sad watching him go?” When he didn’t respond you tried to crack a joke, hoping you could earn a smile or something at the least. “They grow up so fast don’t they?”

You watched as the metalhead’s hand shot up in the air. It took barely a minute for your teacher to recognize it, nodding his direction. “Can I go to the bathroom?” You visibly deflated, but it wasn’t like the older man could tell him no if he wanted to. 

“Sure.”

From there you were left sitting by yourself, taking Ozzy from Eddie’s desk and playing with the dolls hands for something to do. Your teacher felt pity for you, even if he didn’t know the full story of what was going on– he did have some idea considering gossip spread like a wildfire in high school— but he usually stayed out of it. Right now there was nothing he could do, so it seemed, that would help.

After failing to have Eddie actually speak to you directly, even at the instruction of your teacher, you thought your only other option was to approach his friends. 

You took your chances when you couldn’t see him at the lunch table. Him and his friends sat at the same one every day, so you knew where to look, but you had to wait for an opportunity when he wasn’t there. That wasn’t often. It took a lot of waiting, and glances over your shoulder that probably made you look pretty obsessive. But eventually, you watched as he left the cafeteria for some reason, giving you the perfect chance to head over to the table to talk. 

“Uh, hi,” you greeted, coming to a stop at the end of the table. They all turned to look at you. Some looked confused, others looked annoyed, and one of them, Jeff you thought his name was, seemed like he was prepared to greet you. That was until Dustin nudged him and shook his head. Though he was one of the youngest sitting there, it very much appeared like he was sort of running the show. The distaste within them all at the sight of you made you even more uncomfortable than you already were upon approach. “Looks like he’s told you guys then. But I just, I want to apologize, please.”

Your eyes were pleading with anyone of them that would look at you, but it seemed like none of them wanted to hear it. “Dustin,” you called. “If anyone could convince him to give me another shot, it’s you. Please.” Everyone had turned to him now, to try and gauge what he was thinking of doing. 

There must’ve been something about you that changed your tune since the last time you held an interaction with the younger boy. Whether that was your eyes, what you were asking him, or maybe he just realized you were serious about this. He thought a lot of things about the cheerleaders within this high school, but he didn’t think a single one of them would go to these kinds of lengths to embarrass someone they saw as even less than beneath them. 

It was probably that which gave him the confidence you were genuine. He cared about Eddie, and if he thought there was even a slight risk being posed to his friend, he wouldn’t go through with what you were asking of him. “Well, he’d totally not love it if you dropped those friends of yours, and he’d probably not love it if you made some sort of grand gesture to show him you were serious,” he said, raising his eyebrows and flashing you an awful attempt at a subtle wink when he spoke. 

It took you a second or two to catch on, but when you managed it was like a light bulb went off in your head. Everyone at the table, despite the fact they were still confused, saw the way in which your eyes lit up, a gasp tumbling past your lips. You placed your hands on Dustin’s shoulders, kissing his cheek gratefully, ignoring the way he blushed brightly. “You’re a lifesaver.”

With that you scurried away, bidding the table a few half-hearted goodbyes. You had a plan to concoct, so there wasn’t really any time for you to waste. You needed to find a quiet place as soon as possible where you could sit and brainstorm what this big grand idea might be. That place happened to be the library, which was basically empty considering it was lunch time. It was perfect. 

The dropping your friends part would be easy, you could say one wrong thing and you would be dead to them in seconds. So, as long as you said something about Eddie’s good nature, it would be fine. As for a gesture that would change his mind about his feelings towards you, that would be a little more difficult. Eddie was already quite the extravagant guy, so you thought it would be difficult to do something that would impress him. But you were sure you’d be able to manage eventually. There had to be something you could do that was so out of character for you that it just screamed ‘I have a huge crush on you’.

You were very stuck in your own thoughts for a while, the end of your pencil in your mouth as you chewed mindlessly. You were so distracted that you didn’t notice someone else coming into the room at first, not until they spoke to you. “Excuse me, do you–” He stopped when he realized what his mistake had been. He hadn’t realized he was speaking to you until you raised your head, though in hindsight it probably should have been obvious. Maybe it was the jacket thrown over your cheer uniform that meant he just didn’t notice. 

“Hi,” you said, weakly. The clear look of disgust on his face made your chest ache. He just scoffed, shaking his head and trodding further into the library. It looked like he was looking for something, probably one of his nerdy ones. 

With a sigh, you realized you didn’t particularly want to still be there when he came back from being lost amongst the shelves, not if he was only going to look at you with those same hatred filled eyes all over again. You didn’t know how much more of this cold shoulder you could take from him. 

“I’ll win you back Munson,” you whispered, eyes in his general direction though you could only see quick sightings of him as he moved along the shelves. “I swear by it.” 

You began to pack up your things, hurriedly. Thankfully, you managed to head out before you saw him again, but he saw the back of your retreating figure just as you left the doors. He felt a little disgruntled. His half a question had been the most interaction he’d had with you in weeks. Though he was the one who was rejecting any form of communication with you, he had to admit he did miss talking to you.

»»——⍟——««

To say you were nervous for the day was an understatement. Your regular life was going to change for the sole reason of a boy. You had thought about it deeply, whether you wanted to make such a sacrifice for some guy that you decided you had feelings for within a week, but then you thought of all he’d done for you and made you feel in those seven days– which was so much– and then you knew this was the right decision. 

Upon entering the school, the first thing you needed to do was track down your fellow cheerleaders and give them a little piece of your mind. It wasn’t hard to find the preppy girls with the bright uniforms and high ponytails. They were in the courtyard, some sitting, others standing around and mocking anyone they set eyes on. 

Maybe if you hadn’t seen Eddie with a couple of his friends just around the corner, you might not have gone through with it, but you knew at that moment that it was really important for you to do this. Not only was it for him, but you as well. It’d make you feel like a better person to know you weren’t tearing people down everyday like they were. You might have been doing it for a while, but now was the time you put a stop to it. 

Even if you wanted to turn back last minute, they happened to spot you before you could consider doing so. 

“Y/N, there you are! We didn’t think you were ever gonna show,” Chrissy said. Usually you would have faked a smile as they all turned to welcome you, but not this time around. They were a little confused as to why you weren’t in uniform, you always were normally, it was sort of the rules. “Why aren’t you dressed for practice?” she asked. 

It was a little difficult for you to grasp how exactly to begin what it was that you wanted to say, so you thought you needed to just spit it out while you still had the guts. “I actually need to talk to you guys about something.”

Chelsea gasped, feigning sympathy. “You can tell us anything. We’re all friends here.” Her tone was painful to listen to. It was so clearly fake that you pulled a face. Usually you wouldn’t bother acknowledging it, but it was bothering you more than it ever had before right now. Now that you had mentally addressed the fact that they were pretty unbearable to be around to the average person, you found you couldn’t tolerate them any longer either.

You took a deep breath, partly to calm your nerves and partly so you wouldn’t scream at Chelsea for being so aggravating. 

“I’m quitting,” you said simply. “I don’t want to do cheer anymore.”

There were a couple gasps here and there, and though they pretty much all seemed shocked, some didn’t care as much as others did. Some were more confused than shocked. You deciding out of nowhere that you were quitting cheer, right after the events that transpired with Eddie, seemed too convenient for the two things not to be related. And of course, someone had to open their big mouth and question it, but not in the nicest way they could. “Is this because of Munson? You’re doing what that freak wants now?”

You were completely unaware that Eddie could hear your entire conversation, and he wasn’t exactly overjoyed about the way he was being spoken about. He assumed you were once again going to let those comments about him slide and he didn’t think he wanted to stick around to see how this panned out. So, with little words spoken to his friends, he took off. 

You rolled your eyes. “This isn’t because of him, it’s because you guys are assholes,” you told them. You saw the slight hurt on their faces, but surprisingly didn’t feel bad about it at all. “You’re, like, the worst friends anyone could ever have.”

Marianne scoffed. “Like he’s any better?”

“He is. He’s so much better than any of you will ever be.”

It seemed like none of them really knew what to say. They hadn’t expected this to be the way the conversation panned out– not in a million years actually. “You’re actually defending that freak, right now?” one of them asked. 

You huffed. “Stop calling him that. He has a name!” Even though you had originally felt slightly bad for how things were going down here, the more you spoke and the more they insulted the boy you liked, the more you were grateful that you’d gotten the weight of all of this off of your shoulders. The way your pisces had picked up meant attention was being drawn to you all now– once again you couldn’t have cared less.

“You know what, Y/N, if you’re gonna be his guard dog then you’re off the team.”

You laughed, right in their faces, it was like they had completely disregarded the statement that had started this whole discussion. Could they really kick you off of the team if you had quit moments beforehand. “I’m perfectly okay with that. You’re doing me a favor actually.”

Little did you know, although that conversation hadn’t exactly been heard by Eddie, it had been heard by one of his friends who would be sure to tell him exactly everything that happened after he left. Jeff was positive his friend would want to know. 

After the way you spoke to your ‘friends’ earlier today, you didn’t exactly have anyone to sit with when lunch rolled around. It meant your plan would be able to be carried out easier, considering your full attention could be put on to it, but it did mean you looked a little odd lingering in the doorway of the room. 

In the cafeteria, you had to wait for Dustin’s signal before you were going to make your little scene. He was supposed to tell you when the perfect time was, not only for Eddie, but when the room was at its busiest. The two of you agreed that although it would be terrifying, it was only really meaningful when the most people were there. If you were admitting your love to a crowd of only a couple people, then you weren’t really showing that you meant your words. Instead, you would wait until the peak of lunch, when Eddie had a dip in conversation that would give you the perfect opportunity. 

The signal was a simple wave that you were waiting for. You leaned against the doorframe of the cafeteria entrance, eyes locked on the table where the hellfire club sat, talking theatrically amongst themselves like they always did. Your eyes were on Dustin specifically, though occasionally they would stray to the head of the table where the boy you were desperate to impress sat– unsuspecting of what was about to go down. 

As soon as you saw that brief wave you headed over, ignoring the murmurs from your old friends when they saw you pass by. “Eddie?” you called, sweetly. 

However, he was far from so kind to you, turning to look at you with what could only be called a look of disgust. He sighed, dropping his food back into his lunchbox. “Why can’t you take the hint? Have you really not noticed that I don’t want to talk to you?” It was the first time he’d spoken to you in days, and the most words he’d said in a while now. 

You may have been easily pushed away before, but now you weren’t taking no for an answer. “No, this time you’re going to listen to me.”

He was about to protest, but then you turned to Dustin before he could. 

The curly haired kid offered you a hand, to which you thanked him, stepping up onto the chair and then the table in tow. Eddie was watching you in complete confusion, looking between you and Dustin in the hopes that one of you would give him some idea as to what was going on. He didn’t like being out of the loop like this, and he had no idea when you and the kid had gotten so friendly with one another, but he didn’t love it. 

You cleared your throat, shaking off your hands in an attempt to get rid of all the nerves. “Excuse me?” you yelled. Munson’s heart sank; this wasn’t what he was expecting– he couldn’t even try and take a guess of where this might be going. The chaos of the room calmed down, all eyes turning to look at you. “I have something to say,” you announced.

There were some people who yelled things at you, saying that they didn’t care or stuff along those lines. It earned some laughs, but you weren’t going to let that stop you. 

You took a deep breath, glancing at Eddie once before you looked out around at the groups of people watching you. It was slightly intimidating, especially when you could see your fellow cheerleaders giggling and pointing at you, making literally no effort to hide it. “I’m in love with Eddie Munson!” you yelled. 

There was a chorus of gasps from various places around the room. “You what?” you heard Eddie ask. He sounded entirely shocked. 

Rather than look out at the crowd, you turned to look at him again. This time around you spoke directly to him, rather than to all the other people who didn’t really need to understand the weight of your words. You hoped this way it would appear as though it was coming more from the heart. “I think I’m in love with you. And I’m sorry for being such an asshole, but I need you to forgive me.”

He looked like he didn’t know what to say, so you took the opportunity of the silence to keep talking. 

“I– I wasn’t fair to you, but it’s only been a couple days and I miss you already. And I miss taking care of that dumb baby with you,” you laughed, coaxing him into a chuckle as well. To anyone who wasn’t a senior partaking in the baby assignment, they probably thought you sounded crazy– or you’d actually had a child with Eddie– which was another shocking admission if you had. You liked how promising it was that he was laughing with you. Surely that meant you were back in his good graces. “I don’t know how you did it, but you enchanted me, and I don’t think I can come back from this.”

He was standing there with his arms crossed over his chest, a look of interest on his face. It was like he was thinking over what you were proposing, and he wanted to make you sweat. But you could tell he was trying to bite back a smile. “I mean, I guess Ozzy’s missed his mom.”

Your entire expression changed. Those words had filled you with a hope that you couldn’t begin to explain. “So, what d’you say? Give me a second chance?” 

He motioned for you to get down from your place on the table. Like the gentleman he was, he helped you down, and only then did you start to feel a little shy. You didn’t know what it was, considering you’d just been perfectly fine with hundreds of eyes on you. Something felt different now, whether that was just because it felt more real or intimate, you didn’t know. “Hi,” you whispered. 

“You just can’t take no for an answer can you?” he teased. You were glad you could pick up on the fact he was joking, otherwise that sentence would have killed you. He beamed at you as you shook your head, and it was something about your smile that told him he had to kiss you that second. He couldn’t wait another moment for this, not when the last time he’d kissed you had been forever ago. 

You weren’t sure who initiated the kiss first, but you didn’t even care, it just felt right. You both knew people were watching, which probably should have made you a little uncomfortable, but for some reason it didn’t, you actually hoped your ‘friends’ were watching so they could realize how wrong they’d been. Right now you were just completely blinded by everything Eddie. The way his lips felt, the tightness his hand used to grip your waist– like he was scared of you disappearing, and the way your senses just screamed him. 

He was the first one to pull away, though his hand found the back of your head and kept you close. 

You rested your forehead against his, uncaring of those who were still watching you. Most had turned away by now, deciding they didn’t care one bit about your private life, but there were still a few stray spectators. You really didn’t plan on paying them any attention though, not when you knew they were only interested in using this as gossip they could spread around. “I’m so glad this went well,” you breathed, painfully relieved. “Do you know how embarrassing it would have been if you just rejected me while I was up there?” 

That thought made him laugh. “That’s what I should have done. Got your heart racing a little bit,” he tormented. You rolled your eyes, bumping your fist against his arm. His laughter died down a little, the boy suddenly becoming serious. “Thank you. I seriously appreciate the effort you went through to make this apology. No one’s ever done something like that for me before.”

It felt like an honor to you to be able to provide him with love he’d never gotten before. “Well, I plan to be around for a while, so there’ll be plenty more where that comes from,” you promised. His whole face lit up. 

“I hope so.” Despite the fact there were still people around, specifically Eddie’s younger friends who were still very much intrigued in the fact the boy had finally managed to get a girlfriend, he kissed you again. 

If the kids wanted to stare like you were some sort of tourist attraction, that was on them. Though they were still planning on vocalizing their disgust. “Guys, come on, your child’s watching,” Mike attempted to force you apart. To be fair to him, it did work, the two of you pulled away from each other laughing, turning your heads to where Ozzy was planted on the table where Eddie had been sitting. 

“Your friends are weird,” you muttered, grinning up at him so he knew you weren’t being judgy, just ‘observing.’ 

He nodded, squeezing you into his side. There was a kind kiss placed on your temple. “Well, you better get used to it. You’re one of us now.”

+ Bonus scene:

Graduation day was a day Eddie never thought he’d see. Out of the three he should’ve seen, he was actually only on his first one. It was an achievement for everyone, but it was a different level of achievement for him. And it was even more incredible that he actually had a girlfriend to share this with. He thought that was another day that would never come. All around, today just felt surreal. 

Wayne had cried once already, though the younger of the two insisted he couldn’t do it again unless he wanted him to get emotional too. And for the most part he’d been able to stick to that promise. 

You and Eddie met up outside the school, something that was pre-planned so the two of you could hang out before the ceremonies started. Your parents were with you, along with your younger brother, the four of you in conversation while you waited. They were actually the ones who noticed him first, and they looked more excited to see him than you did. They loved the idea of you and Eddie– your mother had always thought it was only a matter of time before the two of you got together. 

You only realized he was there after your parents stared over your shoulder for too long. “What are you guys looking at?” you asked, looking behind you to find the two Munson’s approaching– with Wayne fussing over the tie he’d made Eddie wear– he kept claiming it needed to be straightened. 

A small squeal left your lips, rushing over to him before it became clear to him that you were running at him. He was taken a little off guard by your body colliding with his, but he accepted your hug nonetheless, wrapping his arms around you. He was in a better mood than you thought you’d ever seen him– maybe that was because he was finally making it out of school.

“I missed you,” he muttered, pulling back from you to place a kiss on your lips. You grinned, trying not to flush at the behavior, he very easily made you flustered. “You saw me last night,” you reminded him. 

He shrugged. “Still missed you,” he told you, before you pulled him back in for another kiss. To say he was the one claiming he missed you, you were the one who was desperate for him to keep kissing you. Since the day you’d made things official, only a few months back now, you had adored him. At first he thought you might go back on all you said to him the day you admitted your feelings, but you weren’t ashamed of being with him like he worried you’d be. 

The sound of a throat being cleared had Eddie’s eyes snapping open. At the sight of your father, he pulled away– though he didn’t exactly want to. “Uh, as much as I love this greeting, your dad’s sort of watching.” He was right, and it looked as though the man could kill. You groaned, brushing your nose over Eddie’s before you fully pulled away. 

“Well, in that case, we should get going. Let’s go, Munson,” you instructed, tugging on his hand to lead him inside the school building. 

It was all over so quickly. You didn’t know how but it barely felt like any time at all had passed before you’d walked the stage, grabbed your diploma and were now being engulfed in a hug by your loving boyfriend and his uncle. Your family had already suffocated you with love, so now it was their turn. Plus you thought Eddie deserved even more love than you’d received, and both you and Wayne were happy to give that to him for as long as he pleased.

“Munson! I wanted to talk to you.” The sound of a voice calling his last name made his head turn. It also unfortunately meant that your hug had to come to a swift end.

Eddie hadn’t expected for Mr G to need him for anything, but when his beloved teacher called his name, he felt like he had to see what it was that he wanted. It wasn’t like the man could give him detention or anything of the sorts– which he was glad for considering he’d given some of the teachers a few of his true thoughts about them. He’d used some colorful words. 

“What’s up?” he asked.

For a second the teacher's eyes flickered to you, offering you a kind smile when he noticed you were there. It actually made the moment better.

“I’m probably not supposed to. But I thought I’d give you this, for old time’s sake.” He offered out the fake baby that resulted in your relationship, a sweet gesture. It was probably less than practical— in what world does a graduating twenty-year old need a plastic baby from his health class— but it was more about the memories that made it important. You could have sworn you saw Eddie’s eyes water a bit. “The batteries are out, so it won’t start randomly crying or anything. I just thought you might like it. As a reminder of something good that came out of having it for so long.” 

The younger of the two nodded, and you and Wayne watched on fondly. “Thank you. Don’t know how I’d get by in that big cruel world without my Ozzy,” he joked, but the thank you was completely genuine.

Conversation was made for only a short time longer. He bid you and Eddie good luck, and the two of you thanked him for being the indirect reason your relationship had begun, and then all of you were on your way, back with the final member of your little, funny family.

++Bonus bonus scene:

When you and Eddie got together back in highschool, neither of you truly thought you’d last. Even if you wanted to be with him forever, the odds weren’t in your favor, it was rare that highschool relationships made it past college— even though Eddie wasn’t going to college.

But here you were, almost a decade later against all odds. You’d gotten the degree you’d worked your ass off for, with your boyfriend taking the time to visit you at your college of choice as often as he could, and you had landed yourself a pretty decent job that you were proud of. Meanwhile your boyfriend was beginning to make it big in the musical world like he’d wanted. He started off his proper music career the same way it had run in highschool. A couple days a week he’d perform at the hideout, while working part time elsewhere for the money. One day he just got lucky, and now here he was on his way to stardom with you by his side.

Things were good, even better now that there was the impending arrival of your first child. It had been unexpected, but you and Eddie were over the moon either way, and you were going to try to be the best parents you possibly could be— even despite your jobs that require so much time and work. You’d do anything to make it possible to give this baby the most love and best life they deserved.

Just because you had begun to plan for them, didn’t mean you’d considered arguably the most vital part about having a baby. The two of you hadn’t thought about baby names, at all.

The realization didn’t even hit you until you were lying there in the hospital bed, squeezing Eddie’s hand half to death as birth kicked your ass. He was trying to help as best he could, stroking your hair and letting you take your pain out on him. The pain in his hand was nothing compared to what you were feeling, he couldn’t really complain.

“We didn’t pick a name!” you hissed, a sob bubbling up in the back of your throat from the pain. He tried to reassure you that it didn’t matter. He’d heard people say in movies and such before that sometimes the name just comes to you after you see your baby for the first time. And he was desperately hoping for your stress levels that it was true. “We’ll get one baby. I promise.” 

You winced. “There isn’t really a lot of time.” 

He was a lot more concerned about you than a name right now. What was important to him was that you just got this baby here safely, without worrying about anything else. And he told you that, to which you hastily agreed when you were informed it was time for you to start pushing. Though you were terrified beyond words, you didn’t really have much of a choice. But at least you had Eddie there every step of the way to calm your worries in any way that he could. 

There was never a moment where your hand went unheld, or you felt even slightly alone. He was proving once again that he was the most perfect man you had ever met. This was furthered when he showered you in praise after your baby, a healthy baby boy, was set on your chest for the first time. Both of you were emotional, arguably him more than you, but he still made sure you felt eternally loved.

“Any names spring to mind?” he asked, trying to rapidly wipe at the tears leaking from the corner of his eyes. He heard you laugh, like a part sigh of relief, and another part so overjoyed.

Your eyes were difficult to pull away from the baby on your chest, but you managed long enough to look your lover in the eye while you provided him with an answer to his question. “Ozzy,” you breathed. “His name’s Ozzy.” 

The nurses might have thought it was weird, because they didn’t understand the backstory behind the name like you and Eddie did, but it meant more to the two of you than you could ever begin to explain. You watched as your boyfriend’s eyes welled up at the mention of the memory that had brought you two together in the very beginning. “That’s perfect. With that name he’s gonna be the coolest baby ever. If only Mr G could see the real Ozzy Munson.” 

You hummed, stroking your thumb over his tiny head. It felt like an impossible task to be able to cherish all the features of the newborn in the way that they deserved. “Maybe he can after things calm down a little. I’m sure he’d like to see the family he played a part in creating.” 

Eddie beamed, dropping a kiss to the top of your head and then Ozzy’s– though the one Ozzy got lingered for much longer. “I think that’d be awesome.”

━━━━━━━━━♡♥♡━━━━━━━━━

eddie munson taglist - @pastel-abyss-x @lilylilyyyyyy @spideysbae @lexi-2004 @escape-in-time-x @liltimmyst @fandomxo00 @youcantseem3 @sharnnnnnn @dreashappyworld @audhd-dragonaut @liltimmyst @ruinedbythehobbit @eddiemsbandana

[thisgirlnamedblusy]

Could you please write a G!P Donna fic where Reader finds it incredibly hot whenever Donna finishes inside of her. Idk I just want more Donna smut in my life. I appreciate your contributions to the Fandom.

Yess!!!! Thank you for your request and for your kind words!!! I hope you like it and sorry about the language mistakes :))))

Take me in the church

Pairing: Donna Beneviento x Fem! Reader

Warnings: G!P Donna, smut, Minors DNI

Word count: 4,904

Summary: Maybe to go to church was a good idea after all...

N/A: Sorry about the language mistakes!!! Requests are open!!! I'm waiting yours!!! I love you all!!! :))

“Give me another one,” the Angie doll said, pretending to think about what her master move was going to be in such a simple game.

“As you wish...” You hummed, amused by her lack of care, taking another card from the small pile. “Mm, 23, you went too far, I win again.”

“What? 23 is greater than 17,” the doll protested, indignant at your invincible list of victories. You rolled your eyes and shuffled the cards again.

“I've told you a thousand times, Angie. If you go over 21, you lose,” you explained, putting a card in front of each one again.

“Cheater!” The puppet screeched, enraged because she was unable to defeat you. You laughed amused, taking the opportunity to give the puppet a gentle push.

“I never cheat... Only in love,” you joked, looking at your card and bringing the rest closer to Angie.

“Donna won't like to know that,” the doll threatened, to which you raised your eyebrow.

“Give me a card and shut up," you said, making another attempt to destabilize Angie's fragile balance.

Why were you playing blackjack with a porcelain doll? The answer was anything but simple.

Born and raised in a remote village, your life was never interesting. Only that strange cult, those creatures, could make you live some kind of adventure. But not even the adrenaline that you and your friends experienced while running away from some Lycans could compare to what you felt that day, the day when your desire for exploration took you to go to forbidden places.

Nobody knew what exactly was behind that blazon of a moon and a sun. No one knew exactly what or who Donna Beneviento was. She was a Lord, serving the supreme witch, Mother Miranda. Her dark and mysterious figure gave rise to many legends, many rumors, each one more extravagant.

You figured you must have been afraid to meet her, when she caught you snooping around her grounds. Quite the opposite. That air of mystery, that stoic pose, that black cloth hiding her face. Fear was the last thing you felt.

Surely that attitude of yours of ignoring or evading problems with a good dose of charisma was what scared Donna, at least enough for her not to kill you by setting foot on her estate.

A simple villager, that's what you were, but one who wasn't afraid of her, one who didn't hesitate to smile at her presence. Saving your life was the first of her miracles. Falling in love was the second.

Shy, sick and lonely, Donna had no one but her doll, anyone who wanted to talk to her, or at least try to. You came into her life the same way she came into yours, accidentally, but that didn't mean it was something temporary. No, it wasn’t temporary at all.

The talks became a routine. You even left your friends aside to enter that dark forest every day, becoming more and more interested in her, until her interest inevitably turned into attraction.

Donna had a lot of things to learn. She didn't know about love, about people. You weren't a particularly patient girl, but with her, it was different. After an innocent time, of kisses, of caresses, of Donna's fear of showing her face. The rainy afternoon in which your lips did the work arrived, colliding with hers. “You are beautiful,” you said as you looked at her wounded face, the beauty that horrible black fabric hid.

Everything else was a matter of time. You stopped living in the village to live with her, you left everything behind, and you didn't regret it. You have never been happier.

“What do you have?” You asked, carefully studying your possibilities.

“18,” Angie said, with a threatening tone. It would be better to let her win that time...

“Wow, I'm 16, you win,” you said amused, preventing the doll from seeing what cards you really had. A sinister laugh invaded the room. Oh, maybe it was a mistake, now she’d be rubbing her victory in your face for all eternity.

Fortunately the sound of the elevator interrupted the doll's mocking songs. Donna spent hours in her workshop and you didn't want to bother her, well, most of times.

Her mourning figure appeared in front of you, walking slowly and elegantly. You frowned.

“Look, the Ghost of Christmas Past,” you murmured amused, getting up from the ground and walking towards the lady in black. “Donna, what are you doing with the veil on?” You asked curiously, moving the black fabric away to kiss her lips.

“Mother Miranda is going to give a sermon in the church,” the lady explained, with that soft, hoarse voice that betrayed its lack of use. You rolled your eyes, disappointed.

“Today?” You asked with disappointment in your eyes. She nodded slowly, caressing your cheek in a sweet, messy way. You loved that innocent way of loving you. Well, innocent most of times.

“That's how Mother Miranda wanted it,” she said, making your stomach clench because of your anger. You hated that the priestess was always one step above you.

“But, Donna...” You sighed, lowering your hands to her waist and gently pulling her body, putting on your best pleading face. “Today is our special day,” you lamented.

She tilted her head, curious about that phrase.

“If I haven't counted wrong, there are still three months until our anniversary, (Y/N),” she said, amused, letting to be hugged.

You shook your head.

“No, is not that. You don’t remember? Today is the day you lost your…” You purred in her ear, making the lady in black step back, embarrassed.

“Okay, okay, yes, I remember. You don't need to say it,” she said shyly, avoiding your gaze. You laughed amused, raising and lowering your eyebrows seductively.

You knew that sex, like love or human relationships, was a unknown subject for Donna. She was never with anyone. She never had the chance to experience something like that, at least until you came. That fact made her feel stupid, a loser. You kept reminding her that she wasn't and, well, you didn't care about her body, nor about the changes that the Cadou had caused on it.

“I had thought we could celebrate... Maybe in the forest, like that time,” you whispered in the best seductive voice you could muster, one that you knew made her shiver.

Donna laughed, but she shook her head, putting the hands on your chest to keep you from coming any closer. Surely if you did, she would have fallen into temptation.

“I'm sorry, tesoro... But I have to go,” she said with a sad tone, alleviating your disappointment with a kiss on the cheek. “You can come with me.”

“Me? To church?” You asked ironically, crossing your arms. The lady nodded again, picking Angie up from the floor and holding her in her arms.

“Mother Miranda knows you all. It's not the first time she's asked about you,” Donna commented, walking towards the door, closely followed by your disappointed figure. You mumbled something incomprehensible, luckily.

“Well, let her keep asking,” you said with a dry tone, looking away from the lady. “I don't care.”

“Please, my love, do it for me. I don't want anything to happen to you,” your girlfriend pleaded, holding your hand and trying to destabilize your cocky pose. You looked away with a disinterested gasp.

“Oh...” You sighed, shaking your head. “No, I better wait for you here.”

"Come on, then we could take a romantic walk in the forest, like you wanted,” Donna said, insisting almost desperately.

“Donna...” You growled, in the face of that cruel blackmail that certainly wasn't that cruel. “Oh, okay, okay, you win, I'll go with you. But then we'll do what I want, deal?”

“Thank you, tesoro,” she said, happy to have won that dialectical battle, giving you another kiss on the cheek as a reward and taking your hand, dragging your reluctant body towards the door.

“You owe me one, huh?” You said, closing the door behind you. Donna nodded effusively and pulled you across the grounds. You certainly didn't really want to go to that church.

The road was hectic, but it was true that walking with her in a place other than the old house was refreshing, and not just because of the cold of that place.

The church was packed, full of villagers who used to be your neighbors. The regret of being there hit you hard when their gaze was directed towards you, followed by an indiscreet whisper, which was surely talking about you.

“What are you looking at?” You asked one of your former friends, who immediately turned his head away as Donna led you by the hand to a secluded corner of the building.

“Stay here, my love... Don't worry, I won't be long,” Donna whispered to you, caressing your hand and leaning to kiss you through the black fabric of her face.

You sighed and shook your head, watching as she walked away from to take her traditional spot near the altar. Looking around, you leaned against the wall with your arms crossed. At least you weren't around those suspicious glances.

“(Y/N), what a surprise,”  a velvety voice brought you out of your thoughts. Her winged figure and her ridiculous priestess robes gave her away from miles. Miranda.

“Mother Miranda,” you said without much interest. Maybe you were putting too much trust in the relationship you had with Donna. Maybe you shouldn't be so brazen, showing your disdain for the village leader.

“I'm very happy to know that Donna has managed to bring you back to the path of the Black Gods,” she said amused, with a sardonic smile under that golden mask. You frowned and sighed, holding back your urge to swear.

“She’s very convincing,” you murmured, looking at the lady in black, who didn't take her gaze off of you.

“I guess so,” the priestess commented, placing a cold hand on your shoulder and walking, fortunately, away from you.

At least you were standing and didn't have the ability to fall asleep. The sermon was boring, sinister as always. You were very tired of pretending that this woman was a Goddess or something, but it would be better to play along and pretend, for your own sake, and maybe Donna's.

Even so, you couldn't help but look at the lady in black from time to time, with a mocking smile, mocking Miranda's words with extravagant grimaces. Just as you thought, that had its effect, causing Donna to shift nervously in her chair, hiding her laughter from her siblings and her Goddess.

“Go with the blessing of the Gods, dear subjects,” Miranda finally said, extending her arms in an extravagant way, making those present bow and little by little left the building along with the rest of the Lords, except Donna, who stood up slowly, walking towards you.

“I shouldn't have brought you here,” she whispered, annoyed but amused, crossing her arms. You shrugged, pushing that horrible fabric away again and kissing her lips quickly and exaggeratedly.

“You sure had fun,” you joked, to which she responded with a quick tap on your shoulder and one of those adorable shy giggles.

“Yes, and that's not right,” she protested, taking your hand, caressing it slowly while Angie surrounded you with her usual teasing.

“I can't help it, I love seeing you smile,” you whispered in her ear, making her laugh again and shake her head.

“You haven't seen me,” she said, pointing to her veil.

“But I know you smiled,” you joked again, taking a look at that small chapel. “This place gives me chills. What about that walk?”

“I would love to, (Y/N),” Donna sighed, walking towards the exit.

You felt relieved, but before you could leave the church, something caught your attention. You had never been the best of believers, and you had never paid attention to the altar of that building. Your curiosity made you walk towards it, where some old photographs were framed next to the annoying Mother Miranda's prayer to the Black Gods.

“What are you doing?” The lady in black asked, following you cautiously. You pointed to one of the photographs, hers.

“Nothing, just taking a look," you said. “Seriously, Donna, that photo?”

“What’s wrong with it?” She asked curiously, looking at her own gray and sad portrait.

“Why do you always look like a wandering soul?” You joked, making her step back confused.

“It's just a photo, (Y/N)” she whispered, annoyed by your comment. “Let's take that walk.”

The tug she gave on your wrist was useless, since you had no intention of moving from that place. The empty and mysterious church stopped giving you chills to send other types of ideas and sensations to your body, some dangerous ideas.

“Come on, (Y/N), we can't stay here,” she told you hurriedly, as if your look was giving away your intentions.

“Why not? Is prohibited?” You asked amused, playing with the offerings that were on a small table.

“Well, not technically, but...” Donna murmured, stopping you from putting a grape in your mouth and leaving it back in the basket. “Come on, stop fooling around and…”

“What? I'm not doing anything wrong,” you said amused, with a dark look, sitting in the chair occupied by the lady in black during the sermons.

“Didn't you want to go for a walk that much?” Donna asked, looking around her, checking that the doors were closed and no one could see your audacity.

“Yes, but now I feel like being here,” you said ironically, crossing your legs. “You, heretic, you are going to be devoured by wolves for hiding your beauty,” you joked, making her sigh and shake her head.

“Heretic, heretic!” Angie repeated, jumping up and pointing at poor Donna, who snorted in annoyance.

“Look what you've done, you've excited Angie,” the lady in black complained, who extended her hand toward the puppet to keep it still.

“Have I excited you too?” You purred standing up from the chair and hanging tenderly around her neck, making Donna walk backwards until her back hit the wall.

“What? Oh, (Y/N), please don't...” She said, her breathing labored by your approach, being interrupted by a finger that was placed under her veil and rested on her lips.

“Shh, be quiet, Beneviento, this is a church,” you whispered in her ear, biting her earlobe, making her squirm, trapped between you and the wall.

“You're making me nervous, tesoro,” she said, avoiding your caresses as best she could. Your lust had been unleashed and the naughty thoughts that ran through your mind only grew stronger and stronger, as did your desire.

“Am I? Great,” you joked, tilting the black fabric from her face to be able to kiss her better, to be able to deepen that kiss in a hot and sensual way.

“We must, we must go,” Donna stammered, releasing from your grip and adjusting her veil.

“No, no,” you joked, grabbing her wrist and moving poor Donna against the wall again.

“Don't do that, per favore,” she begged, while you moved her veil away again and brought your body even closer to hers. You laughed when you saw her so nervous. Oh yeah, that was going to be funny.

“Your sweet words aren't going to save you now,” you whispered, enjoying her confused and nervous look. “If you want to get out of here, you have to confess yourself, my love.”

“What? Confess?” She asked, shaking her head. She was terribly nervous. You could see it in her trembling. That was something you planned to use to your advantage.

“Come on, it will be funny,” you said with a smile, this time more tender, caressing her cheek. You wanted to make her nervous, but you didn't want her to lose her temper. Anything but that.

“I think we have different concepts of what is funny, tesoro,” she said, laughing nervously, but also, with some amusement.

“Well, whatever you want, I'll start,” you said, still smiling, making her open her mouth to say something, but she regretted it at the last moment. Maybe you have gotten her curious. “Do you want to know what my confession is?”

Your hot words and cheeky whispers made her entire body suddenly tense, finally knowing what your intentions might be. Donna just stared at you and shook her head, slowly.

You bit your lip and approached her ear again, feeling her heavy breathing very close to you.

“I confess that I love when you cum inside of me,” you whispered with a low voice, with a mischievous smile. “Nothing makes me feel better than your sem…”

“(Y/N), stop that,” Donna said, getting even more upset, blushing at your rude words, something that always made her excited, even if she denied it. “You know I hate when you talk that way.”

You raised an eyebrow, but didn't move away from her, running your hand down her body to the small bulge noticeable between her legs.

“Well, it seems like your body is happy with my confession,” you joked, caressing her budding erection through the fabric of her dress, causing her to gasp in embarrassment and turn her head away. “You are so sensitive… I love it, Donna.”

“Come on, let's go. We can, we can continue talking about this at home,” she said, stammering, repressing her desire to close her eye and let herself be carried away by the pleasure of your caresses.

You shook your head, directing your lips to her neck, kissing it lovingly, sinking your teeth into her skin, making her gasps become less and less discreet.

“No, my love. Not at home,” you said seductively. “We’re going to talk here.”

She shook her head, grabbing your wrist so her erection wouldn't be released from her dress.

“W, wait, (Y/N), not here,” she said, almost surrendered to the pleasure, a terribly exciting sight for you.

You crossed your arms, but didn’t desist in your actions, kissing her on the lips to silence her fears. Donna was partly right, someone could show up there at any moment, but that only made it more exciting, even more so when Angie was lying limp on the floor.

“What is my punishment for my sins, Donna?” You asked, bringing her hand to your chest, making her caress your body inside your dress. No matter how much she denied it, the situation was also exciting for her.

“Your... Your punishment?” She asked, her voice cracking with pleasure, from feeling your naked skin in such a forbidden place. She was already yours, she couldn't escape anymore, and she didn't want to do it either.

You nodded with your most relaxed gaze, searching hers for any sign that this was too much for her. You could see her nervousness, but her arousal was much more evident, which made you continue.

“Maybe you want me to kneel and beg for your forgiveness, do you want that, darling?” You asked, lowering yourself to the floor slowly until the wood collided with your knees and your hands traveled along the black fabric of her dress.

Donna didn't know how to respond, she just looked around again and then at you, as if her conscience was fighting, deciding whether or not it was a good idea. After a sigh of relief, a slightly sinister smile formed on her face.

“Okay, fine, kneel, (Y/N), but if it's a punishment, it'll have to look like one, don't you think?” She told you with a nervous voice, but with that point of seduction that revealed her excitement, apart from her body, of course.

“Oh… And what is it going to be?” You asked, making big eyes and a face like a good girl who wanted to be punished.

“You won't see my face,” she whispered, bending down to take your chin and kiss you before covering herself with the veil, making you bite your lip again.

“Oh... Well, your face isn't exactly what I wanted to look at...” You teased, playing with the black fabric until her shaft was freed from its prison, shiny, hard from your words and your lack of sense of risk.

“You better use your mouth for something different than talking. I don't want to hear you,” she said, grabbing your hair with her hand, releasing a dominant side that you didn't know about, but that sent a wave of pleasure between your legs.

You laughed at the obvious shyness that her words still betrayed, but you obeyed immediately, grabbing her erection and kissing the tip, running your tongue delicately over her skin, making her entire body shiver with pleasure.

You moaned against her as her hand forced your mouth down, to surround her length with your lips in a hasty manner. In that way, her haste was revealed, but you, oh, no, you were in no hurry at all and you managed to be the one who controlled the pace.

“Hurry up, (Y/N),” the lady in black demanded as your hand joined the movements, matching the rhythm of your mouth. You smiled wickedly, licking her shaft again, ceasing the gentle movements of your hand to make her moan at the lack of contact.

You shook your head, lingering on the tip with an almost painful slowness, causing her grip on your hair to tighten, lifting your head towards her.

“What have I told you?” Donna asked, with her face hidden by her veil, something you didn't think would excite you that much. “Come on, hurry up, get it over with.”

“Hurrying is not good, Donna,” you said amused, only using your hand to stimulate her, making her protest with a snort and a strong tug on your hair. No, no, you weren't going to let the fun end so soon, but hey, you didn't want to make poor Donna suffer either. Her erection trembled anxiously as your lips surrounded it again, this time moving faster and faster, in a constant rhythm that elicited soft, discreet moans from the lady in black.

“That, that's it... I'm so close,” she murmured, following your movements with her hand buried in your hair. That was the signal for you to move away from her, for your mouth to abruptly leave her erection, causing Donna to protest by hitting her fist against the chapel wall.

“What the hell are you doing? Keep going, (Y/N),” she said nervously, annoyed by your attitude and the things you forced her to do. You ignored her words and grabbed her hand, leading her to the altar.

“Who's the rude one now, huh?” You ironized, putting your hand in your dress to let your underwear hang from one of your ankles while you sat on that small altar, next to the photographs and sermons of that sinister cult. “Come here, Donna.”

The doll maker breathed heavily, nervously, but she obeyed, approaching your outstretched legs and grabbing them tightly, digging her nails into your skin.

“I will never forgive you for this,” she hissed angrily, as her hips got closer and she positioned her erection at your wet and hungry entrance, making the moans now yours.

You murmured in satisfaction when you noticed her shaft slowly entering you, making your body stretch to let it pass, a sensation that you loved almost as much as what you had confessed a few minutes before.

“Wait, slow down, you're big, Donna,” you said when you saw how rushed she was. She looked at you, but you couldn't know how, that black veil hid her face, as well as her intentions.

“Does it hurt?” She asked, with a sinister tone, going deeper and deeper until she was completely inside of you. You shook your head, hissing at the feeling of your walls tightening around her prominent erection.

“It doesn’t, but you know that I need some time to...” You said amused, closing your eyes due to the sensations that her movements sent to your body.

“I already told you...” She said, grabbing your legs, spreading them further apart to gain more access when she began to move her hips. “…That we don't have time.”

“Oh, Donna,” you moaned, letting yourself be carried away by her erratic thrusts, by the sound of the objects on the altar shaking from the movement. “Yes, yes, keep going…”

She just moaned in response, keeping a steady pace, enjoying the way your body adapted to her seamlessly. It was a quick, improvised, passionate act, far from routine. You couldn't ask for more in a special day like that.

The possible dangers and risks of doing it in a place like that were clouded by the pleasure, by how Donna moved inside you, by how your advances had that effect on her. She was weak, susceptible to temptation. At that moment you were the tempting demon, and she was the poor sinner who let herself be carried away by your words.

That situation, combined with seeing the photograph of the stupid Mother Miranda trembling under Donna’s thrusts, was much better than you thought. An act of revenge on your part, an act of love that was superior to Miranda’s simple, confusing sermons.

“You're so tight, (Y/N),” Donna commented, letting you know that her modesty had disappeared the moment you made that confession. Donna was shy but her body made her say or do those kind of things when she was as excited as she was at the moment. You could feel it. You could feel her hard penis crying out for its release.

You smiled, biting your lip and reaching out your hand to take hers, so not to make this a purely carnal act. The love you felt was far superior to that pleasure and you knew that the lady in black loved to feel loved, to feel that for you it was more than just a funny time.

“I love you, Donna,” you whispered, moving your hips when she stopped, confused by your words, breathing hard.

“I love you too,” she whispered back, stopping digging her nails into your skin, forgetting what she was doing for a moment.

“Come on, keep going, I'm close,” you said, shaking your body to make her resume her movements, something she did hurriedly, but slower, romantically. Unexpected, impromptu sex was fine, but when Donna got romantic… That was something out of this world.

“Is that true, (Y/N)?” She asked, controlling the intensity of her movements, preventing her near release from preventing you from feeling yours. “Is it true that you like me to do it inside?”

You widened your eyes at those rude words coming out of her covered mouth. Her movements were becoming more precise, sliding smoothly inside you, making a feint to get out, which made you look at her with wide eyes.

“Yes, Donna, it’s true, please... I need it,” you said with a pleading tone, seeing her intentions, seeing what punishment she had thought for you.

“But what kind of punishment would that be?” Donna asked, amused, playing with her hips, continuing to give you that pleasure, that feeling that you wouldn't get what you wanted so much. “Maybe I should do it outside, don't you think? That's how you would learn.”

“You wouldn't dare,” you hissed, moving your hips closer until your body was completely on the edge of that sinister altar.

“I don’t know, it depends on you,” she said in a distracted voice, raising your legs and moving her hips elegantly, emphasizing the pleasure that her thrusts gave you.

“I'll be good, I promise,” you said pleadingly, noticing how tension began to form in your body. Just thinking about her release made yours even closer.

“Mm,” she murmured, increasing her speed, not being able to control the pleasure she felt. You noticed her erection trembling more and more, getting closer to filling you up.

When you knew the end was near, your body sent you one of the best orgasms you had ever experienced, releasing your legs from her grip and moving them in a disorderly manner, while your screams began to echo through that small chapel.

“How scandalous...” Donna said, suppressing her own moans as she felt your walls holding her tightly, preventing her from leaving your body.

Before you could respond, a loud moan followed yours. Donna leaned over you, releasing herself the way you wanted, inside of you. Her heat invaded your insides, caressing it in a wet and pleasant way, in a way that made your body cry out for another release, which did not take long to arrive, making you lean over her and hug her intensely while you felt her heat slid off your body, soaking your dress.

“It’s been good, huh?” You said amused, getting up from the altar, dedicating one last superb look at the priestess's portrait while Donna kept her shame in her dress, trying to catch her breath.

“We shouldn't have done that,” she murmured, shaking her head and picking up poor, inert Angie from the floor.

“That's what you say now. You loved it,” you joked, giving her a nudge, which made her head turn quickly towards you.

“Shut up. Don’t even mention it. I don't want to hear about this again, is that clear?” Donna said shyly, embarrassed, to which you rolled your eyes and ran after her, leaving the church.

“Should we take a walk?”

[aangarchy]

Netflix atla live action review ep 4-6

So, they completely ruined Bumi. Spoiler warning.

The more episodes pass by the more confused i get with the choices that were made. I wrote down commentary for the episodes and the thing that i wrote down the most was "why does this happen?". The writing is incredibly confusing and messy, feels too rushed in some spaces and too slow in others. There's just... so much going on and so little at the same time. They brought in elements that in the OG don't get introduced until later in s1, s2, the comics, or even the legend of Korra. The reason these things get introduced so early here is not clear at all, because they don't serve any purpose other than to be an obstacle to Aang, Sokka and Katara on their way to the North.

Mai and Ty Lee are.. there. They get introduced earlier but they don't serve any purpose at the moment other than stand around, watch Azula train, ask questions so that Azula can give us the answers the viewer needs. My guess is they only got introduced for the audience who watched the OG to go "oh we know them!". We get the secret tunnel story earlier too, but it has absolutely nothing to do with love. Somehow "love is brightest in the dark" now correlates to the badgermoles being able to sense a human's emotion. It's a waste of a storyline, doesn't teach us anything about love, gives us Omashu lore which is useless bc neither Sokka nor Katara actually use love to escape the tunnels. Also Oma and Shu are lesbians now, but you only know that bc they changed Shu's pronouns. Wow, so progressive! We have lesbians in the story now! Boy do i feel represented as a sapphic!

We get Koh early on as well, but his entire gig got changed. Now suddenly he doesn't steal faces but he "feeds", and hunts using the fog of lost souls (which is tlok lore mind you) as a tool to trap humans. We introduce the mother of faces (comic book lore!), or rather pendant of her that Koh owns. There's no reason for her to exist in this story though other than to be an easter egg to everyone who read the search (Not even the majority of the fandom!) and to offer a solution to this problem we've created, which is Koh capturing our friends in order to eat them and us not being able to convince him into letting them go. There's no feeling of dread in the Koh scenes at all because the whole problem of not showing emotion is just not a thing now. No suspense, no fear, just a weird cgi clown face worm. The worm doesn't even menacingly circle around Aang to invoke a feeling of being surrounded, it just sits there. I also just don't understand why Koh is here already bc now who is going to give us information about Tui and La?

This decision also creates a problem that Hei Bai's story just isn't about Hei Bai anymore. We get fed a few lines from a talking fox about how the forest spirit got hurt, but there's really no solution? Aang buries a pinecone in front of the statue and tells him not to give up hope but he didn't even really need to do that, because Hei Bai wasn't the one kidnapping villagers! It was Koh. Why did we appease Hei Bai if Koh was the real villain? Hei Bai/Koh's story leads us to Roku, but Roku is completely useless. All he does is undermine Kyoshi's advice to Aang, tell Aang about the mother of faces pendant so he can appease Koh, and then we leave. I knew in advance Roku wasn't going to warn Aang about the comet here bc Albert Kim already told us working with a deadline like that with child actors is just impossible. But with Roku suddenly not being Aang's main Avatar guide he just gets nothing to do. There's no suspense in this part of the story either, bc the time limit of the winter solstice isn't a thing here at all. Aang also ends up flying over Fire Nation borders without issue, and gets led right into the sanctuary without the puzzle of figuring out how to open the door, and without the problem of Zhao's soldiers waiting for him when he comes out. It creates this issue of there not being any excitement, at least for me. I genuinely am getting a bit bored with the show, which was never an issue with the OG for me. There's a reason all of this extra material didn't get introduced until later on. There's too many characters and they all get too little time to really do anything useful, they're not fleshed out, the stories aren't thought through and it ends up getting very confusing and boring. I'm genuinely curious for the perspective of people who have never watched the OG cartoon, bc i wonder if they're even able to follow along without prior knowledge of this universe.

Bumi is just... not Bumi. They completely changed his character to be this bitter old senile man that resents Aang for abandoning the world. This doesn't make any sense because in this version of the story Bumi shouldn't know that Aang is the Avatar at all, because Aang was told right before he disappeared! So why does Bumi immediately know that Aang is the Avatar, and why does Aang immediately recognize him? Also the original point of Bumi's tests is to get Aang to approach fights and puzzles from a different angle, so he can learn versatility as the Avatar. But here the tests are just happening because Bumi is mad at Aang for leaving and wants to get back at him for being gone so long. He says some lines about Aang having to learn to make hard choices and you can't rely on your friends, but Aang ends up proving him wrong in the end! What is even the point of Bumi's part in the story now, except for him just being another obstacle on the way to the North Pole?

There's a lot of instances where I feel like the bond between characters gets completely lost. We barely spend any time with the side characters like the mechanist, Teo, Jet and the freedom fighters, and the people in the spirit village. It makes some scenes feel very out of place. These storylines all happen at once, and they don't get their individual moments to shine. We have no room to feel betrayed by Jet or Sai, because we barely got to know them to begin with. Jet and Sai only spend time with One member of the gaang each, but when their betrayals come to light the rest of the group acts devastated, as if it was their dear friend. Sokka also gets really mad about the Jet thing, but he only met Jet once when he smuggled them into Omashu, and Jet didn't even tell Sokka his name. He said it afterwards when Katara met him again. It makes absolutely no sense why Sokka is yelling at Katara for trusting Jet only bc she finds him attractive, when Sokka wasn't even there during all of that!

The sense of family between the gaang that we get from the original also just doesn't happen here. Especially because these characters so far have spent more time apart than together. Aang constantly gets separated from Sokka and Katara, leaving no room for them to bond. We get Katara and Sokka bonding, but they shouldn't need those types of scenes because they're already siblings (which isn't very clear in the show either btw!). I ended up forgetting that Sokka and Katara were trapped by Koh, bc we spend so much time away from them (a whole episode, which is now an hour!).

I have little to no criticism for the Blue Spirit story. Want to guess why that is? Bc they left it pretty much untouched. We even get a little bit of an extra scene, with Zuko and Aang talking while Zuko recovers after getting hurt during the escape. I liked this choice, especially bc it highlights how conflicted Zuko is.

This is where we get Zuko's backstory. I have one question here: why did they make Ozai more sensible and less ruthless? Was that a Daniel Dae Kim decision? Bc it feels like a Daniel Dae Kim thing to do. They're very on the nose with the way Ozai is abusing Zuko and Azula, but then they turn around and make this man visit Zuko after he burned him and praise Zuko about finding the Avatar. I understand that they did this to show how Ozai uses Zuko's accomplishments in order to push Azula, but even if it were to do that: the original Ozai would NEVER. The problem here as well is that they don't let the viewers draw any conclusions themselves anymore. They're holding the viewer's hand through the whole thing, leaving no room for nuance or doubt.

I just finished episode 7 and 8 and I have Things To Say. None of which are good. Writing it down is challenging so it might take a day or two.

[d3pressed-caffiene-addict]

Hazbin Hotel Ep 5&6 Oh My God (Major Spoilers)

I am having so many thoughts, this is just a brain dump

-LUCIFER. He’s so pathetic I love him

-Jeremy Jordan you fucking legend. I’m a big fan of a lot of his work and was excited to see him in this but I was slightly unsure if he was the right casting since I expected Lucifer to be more of a high and mighty/snobby figure, but with the way they characterised him HE IS PERFECT.

-“TAKE THAT DEPRESSION”

-The Lucifer vs Alastor rivalry is beautiful

-“Ha ha, fuck you.”

-Father figure Alastor

-HIS EARS GO BACK LIKE A CAT WHEN HES ANGRY I CANT

-MIMZY’S ARRIVAL. I know most of us know the lore about her and Alastor being developed as a couple before it was scrapped but I really like how they are in the show

-Even if it’s just crumbs I’m so excited to be getting snippets of Alastor’s lore. It’s wild to keep going back and forth between “aw he actually cares for and protects his friends” and “oh my god he’s a fucking psycho”

-Speaking of that the scene with Husk holy shit. Poor man looked terrified

-The confirmation that Alastor’s also stuck working for someone, it has to be Lilith surely. I know some people will call it predictable because a lot of theories are coming true but personally I think it’s from good worldbuilding/foreshadowing

-ALASTOR IN FULL DEMON FORM JUST ANNIHILATING EVERYONE and then he just goes “Ah that was fun, now back to it”

-I kinda like the parallel between Al and Mimzy & Angel and Cherri where they invite their friends to join them if they want to, even if neither of them take it up initially maybe we’ll see them join the hotel in the future?

-BABY CHARLIE

-I really expected Lucifer to be a dickhead and a shitty dad, but he seems to be an overall better guy than most people in hell

-CHERRI BOMB ARRIVAL! And she’s Aussie now fuck yeah represent

-I still love her and Angel’s friendship even if she is a terrible influence. Everyone’s got that friend who’s solution to a bad day is just self-destruction but they mean well at least

-DARREN CHRIS TOO, THE MUSICAL THEATRE/BROADWAY ACTOR CASTING IS STACKED

-Emily is so sweet I love her

-The Molly cameo is so sweet, I was waiting for her to appear somewhere but lowkey forgot she was in heaven. Honestly though how did she get there when the rest of her and Angel’s family got condemned for what they did together? Maybe she left the mob or something idk I just hope we get to meet her properly at some point

-Heaven’s real fucked up? Yeah not shocked

-VAGGIE?? FALLEN ANGEL REVEAL?? AND SHE WAS AN EXTERMINATOR???? I know most of us called it but holy shit I didn’t expect it to be confirmed this soon

-Adam is such a dick but he’s so much fun

-I love that Charlie was gonna start her court presentation with definitions like a high school essay

-“Consent is a good name for a sex club” the gentleman Husk truthers gonna have fun with this one

-Pentious hitting on Cherri is hilarious and totally not the same level of subtlety I flirt with when I’m drunk

-Hearing more and more about how Val treats Angel is so sad especially with how casually he talks about it since it’s just another day for him

-Him parenting drunk Nifty is beautiful

-“You wanna play with the kitty?”

-Valentino is my #1 enemy

-Seeing Angel stand up to him to protect his friends is making me feel feelings. Like he knows that he’s gonna be treated even worse for it but I think he’s reaching his tipping point and shits gonna go down soon

-Also I know there’s a popular theory that he’s gonna die soon and a lot of the theories are coming true so I am scared. I kind of don’t think this one’ll happen though since he’s the fan favourite and its just too soon to take that much of a risk. Plus Vivsie’s admitted he’s the best written character and it’d be such a waste of all that development

-More sweet moments between him and Husk, they’ve gotten me so invested in this ship so fast

-The fact that most of heaven didn’t know about the extermination?? Wild

-Idk how I feel about the timeskip between Ep 4&5, they’re only a month away from the extermination now. Yes it’s making the stakes feel higher but I do wish we’d been able to see more of that time for the relationship development, all the characters seem much closer than before and we’ve only seen bits of how they got there

-I really wish they’d greenlit more than 8 episodes to pace things a little better but I’m glad we have season 2 confirmed

-That last minute ‘reveal Vaggie’s past to Charlie, boot them out of heaven and then cut to credits before she can react’ is gonna torture me until next week

-I don’t disagree with past criticism that Vivzie’s female characters can feel a bit underwritten but I think it’s getting better

-“We’re coming to the hotel first” plus all the theories that someone’s gonna die are fucking stressing me out man

Anyway hope you enjoy the brain dump, this show has once again consumed my thoughts

[thewertsearch]

EB: […] i'm not sure if i actually want to encourage you to go off fighting him… EB: because as strong as you probably are, it sounds like he is REALLY strong. EB: and even though you killed tons of people, i think i would still be pretty sad if you died. […] EB: so maybe you should just let us handle it? at least we won't fight him directly.

Well, if you actually manage to destroy the Sun, Jack will be significantly weaker, albeit still threatening.

If we can't convince Vriska to back off, maybe we can convince her to at least delay her attack. Once Jack's no longer a First Guardian, she'll be able to swoop in for a duel she could actually win.

Against Semi-Perfect Jack, I'd give her even odds - but what are the odds if she leaves now? Does she stand any chance against a Jack at the height of his power?

Well, maybe. I know I just joked about her getting annihilated, but Aradia did prove that God Tier powers work on him. Vriska's luck stealing is capable of some pretty astounding feats, but is it really enough to compensate for their enormous power differential? Luck can only take you so far, after all.

I'd give Perfect Jack a huge advantage in this fight, but a Vriska victory isn't completely out of the question, and I can see a few ways she could clinch it.

For example - what are the odds of Jack's Ring falling off?

Is it a million-to-one chance?

Is it a sixteen-million-to-one chance?

AG: You know how I said I couldn't rel8 to the attachment you have for your guardians? […] AG: Well, I guess that isn't completely true. AG: There are adult trolls who we can rel8 to, if we choose to, and if we are lucky enough to discover who they are. AG: 8ut it is not really in a familial sense, at least not socially speaking, the way you understand family. They are more like figures of legend, who are said to have more in common with us genetically than any other troll. 8ut we can never meet them of course. Only look up to them, and follow in their footsteps, 8ecause they died centuries ago.

Wait, so Mother Grubs are sitting on the same DNA for centuries?

I suppose that's why they're ancestors, rather than parents. It's a little strange that Mother Grubs hang onto the same genetic templates for so long, but this is alien biology we're talking about. Anything is possible.

Can the same genetic templates be reused multiple times, then? Can one single ancestor have multiple descendants, allowing trolls to have siblings as well as parents?

...hey, they might even have grandparents! If every troll has an ancestor, then your ancestors will have ancestors themselves, and they'd be your second-order ancestor, too.

AG: I am completely certain it is true, and I know who mine is! AG: I have 8een doing my 8est to honor her legacy for most of my life. AG: I even named my roleplaying character after her!

So this is why she’s so gung-ho about Marquise Spinneret Mindfang. Lay it on us, Vriska!

don't think about baby vriska being forced to kill don't think about baby vriska being forced to kill don't think about baby vriska being for

AG: It was 8efore I ever started gaming, or rounding up other kids to feed my lusus. AG: I was nearing the age where I would 8e expected to feed her.

::::(

[mskenway97]

I've been wanting to write this for a long time and with the skills this character has, I've been itching to write this.

ROTB Mirage x Fem!human!reader

Cap 2

Curious cat

Words: 1.506

Summary: You started noticing something strange in your neighborhood, while you were watching something weird. You decided to investigate it to find some surprise.

Warning: g/t content, g/t fearplay

You've been saving money for a long time, working hard… Living in New York was expensive, but it was your dream since you were a little girl, the city of opportunity. For now you had started in a waitressing job, the hours were horrible, the bosses didn't treat you the way you wanted but it was the best you could do until one of the interviews gave you the job you wanted. You came home late, the nights were pretty quiet and you had to be alert for anything. You were always taught to be cautious, to say that living alone had a risk but you thought it was better to take a chance, you never knew what you might find along the way. You had heard all the time of urban legends: monsters, shadows that took you away. "Nonsense" you thought every time they mentioned it, you may be from the village but it doesn't mean that because you are from the village you believe in those unfounded legends. Although today while you were working, you had heard a couple of customers talking about a ghost car, you laughed when you heard it and tried to dissimulate. "People should focus on real problems not urban legends" you thought as you packed up to go home. The way though you kept thinking about what the customers talked about. A ghost car… You couldn't get that legend out of your mind even as you went to sleep, I'm sure you'd get over that thought tomorrow. But it didn't happen that way, every time you heard more and more about that car, something that made you more and more curious, you had a big defect, when in your mind there was an idea that didn't disappear until you found out what was going on.

Until one day you decided to investigate all the rumors that were going around: you had gathered that it appeared only at night (as in all legends or horror stories), it was always found in abandoned parking lots, it was a gray car with blue racing stripes… "I lack more information there is something that does not fit me in all this …. And the people who have found it? Or something else?" you thought while looking at the notebook of notes about what could be that mysterious vehicle. The following days were spent asking the supposed "people" who had seen that car… All the words they said were not credible: that it disappeared in front of their noses, suddenly they saw three cars instead of one… others said they saw a giant figure… This last one already seemed ridiculous to you from everything you had heard, what was going to be next, an alien? Absurd. Although if I found a good story I could give you some more credibility and help anything or maybe you were fixated on an idea that was impossible… Here's to making your life a little more dynamic. The bad thing is that you would never know where that car was, it did not keep a fixed position, so in order to find it you decided to ask someone who would surely know about the car. Reek was a man who knew more about robberies than anything else, but if there was any information about that car he would surely know something about it. So you met up with him in a neighborhood in Brooklyn while he came in smiling:

The man was always walking around with a licorice in his mouth, he was more cooperative after I told him you would give him some dough.

-Girl, are you sure about what you're going to do? Some of my colleagues were looking for that "ghost car" - said Reek while showing a picture of the car.

You took a better look at the picture and it matched the descriptions that everyone you had asked matched. You were more interested in the make of the car? You had wanted a car like this since you were a child, in fact you were saving up to buy one for yourself.

-Just give me a location, Reek, and I'll give you the dough. I'm sure it's nothing. Plus you know how to avoid the cameras, right? - you said as you were pulling out some bills Reek rubbed his hands together.Well if you give me a little extra I'll even deactivate them…

-Just this or I'll tell everyone you're stealing cable TV… Reek was a little offended to hear it and rectified what he said to you. He gave you everything you needed. This time it was in a parking lot not far from the residential area, but the neighborhood was not very well known… That's why it was guarded. The idea was that Reek would create a blackout while you went inside. It seemed like a perfect idea and the sooner you figured out what that car was, the calmer it would put your mind at ease. Finally the night you were waiting for came, Reek had left you a place where you could turn off the power, it didn't seem too difficult, you just had to lower some switches but when you arrived you saw that they were already down.

But instead of running away you decided to enter, seeing that the doors were open, the parking lot was in a closed place that did not even have a guard, only people took advantage of it to leave their vehicles "for free". You approached carefully, you hid among the cars to see a group of thieves approaching the car. Everything seemed normal until you saw that it had disappeared in front of them, not only that the lights had gone out around it, to show the same car several times and repeated all this all the time until the thieves ran away. If you didn't see it you wouldn't believe it, it was really happening as all those people were saying. You stayed in your position while you stood up and heard a voice in your ear:

-You thought I didn't see you? You jumped back to see that the car you were leaning against was the grey car you were all looking for, you quickly ran to another part of the parking lot that seemed to be more isolated while breathing heavily.-You're making it too easy for me, girl…. You jumped again to see the same car next to you, your face went blank as you saw that gray car. You were trying to react, you ran away from it.

-Come on, I'm not that scary… Come here little girl - said the giant gray being. You were thinking it was a dumbbell as you were hiding under a car. Suddenly you heard silence all around you, except for the watch you were wearing.

Tick,Tick No matter how hard you ran… You felt its presence all the time, playing with your mind… You had only one word in your mind: run away…

But running away to where your mind was racing, your heart felt like it was going to burst then you heard some big footsteps around you.

-Come out wherever you are, girl? No matter where you hide… I'm going to find you - said that giant robot while you saw him walking away from you to another floor of the parking lot. You didn't think about it and picked up your cell phone to see that the car where you were hiding was lifted as if nothing by that gray robot, you tried to run again to stumble and find three of them. You were completely surrounded, while one of them picked you up and made the rest of them disappear, you tried to move but he was holding you in his servo as if nothing. You were completely terrified trembling… completely at their mercy. The giant gray robot pinched you on the cheek.

I have to say, of all the humans I've seen… I found you the most curious. At least you didn't faint or run away. You've got some guts. You were trying to get away from his touch but he had too much strength to dodge it, you're literally like a doll in his hands.

-Let me go! Possessed car! - you said as the robot laughed at the sound.

-Possessed car? Come on, my name is Mirage… I don't want to let you go yet," he said as he transformed into a car while leaving you on the seat.

-Let go of me! Let go of me! - you said as you kicked everything you could.

I'm sorry, curious kitty… I can't see if Optimus will let me stay with you. I'll take good care of you," said the car as it pulled away to a location.

You tried to kick more but it was impossible, your curiosity had led you to a moment you never expected. To the mercy of a giant being that saw you as its kitten. Curiosity caught the cat.

[receival]

baldur’s gate 3 starters.

the following is a collection of sentence starters from larian’s baldur’s gate 3. part 2.

look at me - i’m not a monster.

stay back. i don’t want to hurt you, but i will.

no. you’re not one of them at all.

i was ready to run you through. my mistake, friend.

that’s far enough. what’s your business down here?

you revealed our location? that tongue gets any looser, (name), and i’ll cut it out.

reckon i might miss this place.

this place is more dangerous than i thought.

well, don’t you cut a fine figure.

sometimes i’m jealous of that girl. ugh - to feel so invincible again.

in your expert opinion, what’s the best way to kill a devil?

i’m certain there are answers out there. we’ll find them together.

there’s no story. none that you’re entitled to hear, anyway.

you can tolerate a great deal of suffering, so long as it has meaning.

until then, all i can do is endure.

please try to understand that it’s not something i can just talk about freely.

perhaps there’s potential in you.

honestly, your faith is your own concern. i won’t judge, one way or the other.

i think i did well by joining you.

you already know my biggest secrets. what more can you ask?

that wall’s an illusion! hiding what, i wonder …

sun, moon, and stars will still be there, waiting for us.

this place is pretty spectacular, isn’t it?

no book or painting could ever do its strange beauty justice.

a perfect ring of mushrooms … nature, or magic?

hmm. i thought that might’ve done something.

another illusion. is anything real down here?

i’m more concerned with this ‘twit’ who set a spectator on you.

a rival - a mere footnote to my legend. you should be more concerned with who i am.

the fools must have turned back. or, better yet, died in the search.

i need no more rivals. try to take this as a compliment, yes?

this presence … this magic is not divine, but fey.

little? i am a god! and i’m gonna rip you - tear you - wear you for a hat -

don’t do anything hasty, now.

i’ll just kill you and claim it for myself.

i’m the lord of murder - i’ll show you why.

if you’re expecting me to drop to my knees before you, forget it.

a wizard’s tower is his sanctum, a private place for research and respite. but as this wizard’s not home … i say we take a peek.

a strange place for a button. especially one that doesn’t work.

what good would it do for me to be troubled? we can’t save them all.

you’ll have to speak slowly. i find it quite difficult to concentrate with my condition gnawing at my insides like a teething displacer kitten.

the whole village is falling to pieces …

hey, maybe we can scare up a few dusty bottles of wine somewhere.

i like your way of thinking. split any takings we find?

what creatures live in water this dark?

i’m a rabid dirty dog. and i bite.

i could’ve killed you before you even noticed me, but i didn’t. stand down.

i can be discreet. no need for bloodshed.

share? you really are in the wrong place.

a bleeding heart, are you? reckon i’ll just roast and eat it.

what in the hells did you do to that corpse?

you do plenty for me, more than you realize. but this cannot be remedied.

are you alright? is there anything i can do to help you?

enough. bickering won’t save your friend.

run away, then.

(name) - i was so worried! did they hurt you?

who cares? we’re together now, thank gods!

i’m grateful, don’t mistake me, but … why help us?

freeze it, cock-stench. we aren’t done just yet.

pay up, and you get to skink away. resist, and i gut you.

drop it. i don’t owe you anything.

your incompetence has been my ruin.

stop! no more innocents will die today, (name).

you care for the weak. most curious.

you so much as touch me, and i’ll tear you from limb to limb.

ah - another treacherous soul walks among us.

i ain’t going down easy.

you been a shit since i laid eyes on you, (name).

strike him down. prove your faith.

your silence speaks to your heresy.

look, you have no idea what you’re dealing with …

it’s the whole damn reason we’re here, and i’m not leaving without it.

the mission comes first.

and i thought i’d heard it all. that’s some cambion-level deception.

i go where there’s shit to stir. and there’s no shortage of options.

i can’t remember much, truth be told.

centuries of torment will do that to you.

you’ve been naughty. and you know what happens when you’re naughty.

just who in the nine hells are you?

well, well. aren’t you a luscious thing?

been a long time since someone stuck their neck out for me like that.

you have a manner of irresistible desperation about you. i like it.

you know, i’ve been thinking. and i think there’s something i should tell you. nothing big or terrible, just … a small little detail about me that hasn’t come up naturally.

i want to join you - to fight by your side.

i’m sorry for barging in like this, but i had to come find you.

i won’t let you down. i promise.

we all have our burdens, one way or the other.

i’m trying to say that you’ve earned my trust in a way very few ever have … i want that to mean something.

freedom - i’d forgotten how it felt. thank you.

if you have a moment, i’d like your opinion on something.

the problem is this: a preponderance of evidence that i am a terrible adventurer.

i can’t risk re-capture. i barely escaped last time.

it was a mistake. and not one we’ll repeat.

i don’t know. he was kind of fun.

we can’t just invite danger in to our hearth like that. we must be more careful.

most monsters will think twice before making a meal of me.

an old hunter’s trick - if you can’t mask your scent, spoil it.

i prefer a weapon to stench, thanks.

you’re a monster hunter? not what i imagined.

whatever you’re hunting, your stench alone will kill it.

a quick wit is rare indeed.

know how to ask, and they’ll share that knowledge. if you’re fool enough to pay their price.

speak plainly. what is she?

i think you’re mistaken - this place looks innocent enough.

truth is like a blade, my friend. we can arm ourselves with it - or just as easily find it pressed against our throat.

i would not put you in danger.

your coyness is getting boring. tell me.

you take insult where none is intended, my friend.

how thoroughly invigorating it is to stand by one’s friend in the face of danger.

you best have one hells of an apology for me.

you must have mistaken me for someone else.

that wriggler swimming in your brain juice is a bit of an inconvenience, isn’t it?

that’s none of your concern.

don’t change the subject.

keep that hole under your nose shut.

let’s not involve ourselves in this place any longer than is necessary.

you want to play the hero so badly? fine. let’s make this interesting.

gods, it’s hot in here.

i’ve had better days. and worse ones.

i am, after all, the villain of the tale.

you truly are a soul that steels my own.

you are as thick as they come.

even i am tired of the sound of my own voice.

i stand at a precipice, but if you do not give up hope, neither shall i.

all of this … it must feel like a betrayal.

you bastard! you ruined it, you ruined everything!

slow down - what did i do?

this is an interesting way of thanking me.

i don’t need this. good luck getting out of here on your own.

i know i should head home, but … i can’t bring myself to leave.

(are you alright?) / not even a little bit. but i will be.

she favored me like a child favors a captive pet.

i promise i will not betray your trust.

i cannot thank you enough.

you will face (name)’s judgement.

i wish you could have visited at a better time.

you had no right to intervene.

you’re not one of us.

copper for your thoughts?

always a delight to speak to you.

did i play games like this in my youth? was i sweet once?

what are you doing? i’m busy here!

nothing beats the taste of stolen beer.

come on, now. they’re just having a bit of fun.

let’s do what we have to do, then get out of here.

smell’s like burnt flesh.

hold out your arm so i can mark your flesh.

i’m here to spill your guts across the floor.

pain without purpose is a terrible thing, wouldn’t you agree?

i often feel i like raw pain too much. it scares me.

as long as the story ends in death, it’s all the same to me.

forgive me, but - that look in your eyes. something terrible has happened to you.

what i see in your eyes, in your soul, is only natural.

we’ve all suffered in these dark times. it is little wonder you hear scars of pain and anguish.

touch me and you’ll lose your hand.

the pain you suffer will cleanse you - do not fight it.

you look tired. should i take over?

welcome the pain. let it become part of you.

that looks like it’s going to bruise.

not that i’m suggesting we stop for a drink, of course.

i wouldn’t want to place all my faith in blind luck.

sympathies won’t help me to survive.

your life, much like your words, is meaningless. end the latter to save the former.

looks like the booze got the better of them. they’re practically unconscious.

they’re dying for me. all of them.

why don’t you take a closer look? i’ll observe from back here.

please don’t open the creepy book!

toddlers are easier to please than you lot.

you know, i never pictured myself as a hero.

all i want is a little fun. is that so much to ask?

having performance issues, (name)?

never have i met such troglodytes.

i was hoping you wouldn’t notice i was gone.

i suggest we admire it from afar.

it would be too much to hope that’s nothing to do with us, wouldn’t it?

i go my own way - alone.

i’ll feed your innards to the ants before i do that.

[haruhey]

Wish I Never Met You

check out my masterlist!

Word count: 4k

Fluff | Angst | Thank you @weretheones and @normanplusdaryl for betaing <3

You’re part of Daryl’s past, but you could also be his future.

or

A bad day leads the two of you to each other.

or

Whoever said it’s better to love and lose Never loved and lost you

Daryl barely made it through sophomore year.

In all honesty, he was impressed he even got to junior year. When Merle left at the tail end of spring, he - in all of his younger brother naïveté - thought he would come back before the semester ended, taking him from the dump they called a house and from that asshole they had the unfortunate pleasure of calling their old man.

But July came and went, then August, and by the time the new school year rolled around, Daryl stopped waiting for him - just shouldered his backpack and went to school because where the fuck else was he supposed to go?

He gave the whole school thing two weeks. It was enough time to mark off attendance - to lay low before he traded his backpack for his crossbow and started hunting for that weird butcher shop three blocks down to make some money - and he had intended on following it.

Intended, being the right word, because the plan went to shit the second Mr. American History started pairing people up for those dumb, mandatory, biweekly collaborative projects.

Intended, because it just had to be you he was paired with, didn't it? His stupid classroom crush he tried so hard to stop thinking about?

He remembers seeing you for the first time in some math class in sophomore year, and he’d, in his hormone-ruled, bored-out-of-his-mind teenage brain, spent the better half of the period just looking at you. He never worked up the courage to say anything about it to anyone, but you were the prettiest thing he’d seen in his 16 years on Earth, and he hated the way you made his hands all clammy.

Even years later, he looks back on the months he spent being your friend, and he still feels that crushingly familiar clench of his chest.

Maybe it wormed its way almost permanently into him those weeks he first sat next to you in American History. It was a compulory course and both you and he hated it. The teacher - Durand, but Daryl took to calling him Dickhead and Deranged just to see which would make you roll your eyes the hardest - was a notorious douchebag, round glasses over a nose that was entirely too big to stay on his face and three strands of gray hair that seemed to be holding onto his head by spite alone.

He never seemed to take Daryl seriously, even though Daryl knew more than double the amount of history you did. You could pick his brain for hours about the pirates and the Sumerians and the Cherokee and their legends, and he’d let you, despite the glare that marked over his face for anyone else.

In exchange, you let him pick your brain, too. Over the piece of apple pie the two of you would share on the rare occasion you’d both scraped together enough to figure it would be worth buying, he asked about your future. He tried picturing himself with you through it all despite knowing there was nothing for him outside of this shithole town, and he listened to you talk.

He could listen to you talk for hours.

You had big dreams, considering you came from the same place he did, but he had faith you could do it. He knew you could, and even looped his pinky with yours, your thumb pressed up against his while he promised to make it to graduation. He had to watch you toss your cap and flip the bird at 4 years of hell, didn’t he?

But then winter came, and with the Christmas break rounding the corner, Merle came back too, peeling into the dirt road in front of the Dixon dump and taking Daryl along with him. You remember coming back when the second semester started, the same room that had once been used for History now a Government class, and you had hoped to suffer through it together.

You made it through one school week until you’d started asking around.

Nobody got themselves involved with the Dixons - with their surly tempers and their permanent scowls, but you’d gotten into the habit of ignoring those words when you were with Daryl - so when no answers turned up, you weren’t really surprised.

You figured he must have finally gotten his out from his old man.

It was only at graduation that you’d found out what happened to him, overhearing one of the principals talking about how both of Will Dixon’s sons had run away from home and how he’d drunkenly bragged about finally beating sense into them, and, though you knew it was selfish, as the ceremony ticked on, you still hoped Daryl would come back in time to watch your cap toss.

He never did.

When he finally did come back to Georgia, it was a little over a full year later. The old lady that ran the diner the two of you hung around after school had told him that you got a scholarship offer in May - some bigshot school out west - and that you’d packed your bags and left in August.

You weren’t set to come back until the year ended in April, and he wasn’t planning on staying.

He wasn’t planning on making staying anywhere a habit, and, in the blink of an eye, twenty years passed.

A second blink and the world fell.

Everything changed so quickly that it truly did feel like an instant as minuscule as a blink - the dinosaurs had the meteor, and life before them had the ice age - and he couldn’t help but wonder if this was just a breath before a new age flooded in.

It seems like everything he thought about was about the future. Some of it he would have considered trivial before - when the next meal would come, when the next time he’s going to fill his canteen is and where the next source of freshwater is - but, in this blip of time, he hesitates to call it that.

Sometimes, when he went out on his bike or shouldered his crossbow and slipped his knives into his holsters, he thought about how Li’l Asskicker and Carl would grow up - how they would never really get to be kids in the same way Rick probably wanted them to be - and almost nothing he did felt trivial anymore.

It scared him, he guesses - how much he cared about those kids and how much everyone else did, too.

He wished someone cared about him like that when he was younger.

It was good, though, this pressure. Daryl was never really one to half-ass anything in the first place, but with the intake of Woodbury and the Council’s decision to start bringing people in, there was a new drive to care. It rippled through the prison, and he liked it, being a part of something bigger than himself.

He felt like someone new.

Someone that mattered - that did good - instead of being some asshole with a bigger asshole for a brother.

At least, he did until he saw you.

Two weeks after taking in the people of Woodbury - with one week spent out recruiting and another spent in the infirmary because they’d met some less than friendly people who definitely did not fit the recruitment criteria - he saw you from around the corner, an all too familiar face helping Carol with meal prep in the courtyard.

He didn’t eat lunch that day, and to say he avoided you was an understatement.

There was something about you that brought back feelings he would have rather left in the past. You reminded him of when he was a teenager, stuck in his shitty hometown with his piece of shit old man and no way out. But at the same time, you reminded him of those nights spent down at the creek, skipping stones and staring at the stars, that comforting lack of second-guessing because he knew he was, for the first time in his life, in the company of someone who actually wanted to spend time with him.

You reminded him of that diner with the warm apple pie, and he never could forget the first time his heart ever beat against his ribs like it was too big for his chest.

But, most of all, you reminded him of first love and his broken promise - of a future he could never have had.

Daryl hated it, being confronted with his past like that.

So yeah, maybe he did revert back to his old ways of hiding and just trying not to think about his problems, and yeah, maybe he did take one too many runs back to back so he wouldn’t have to keep fighting the urge to look for you despite simultaneously being scared shitless at the thought of talking to you, but it was successful in staying away from you, and that’s all he cared about.

Or, well, he thought it was.

Because, though it’s been nearly two decades since you’d thought about high school - with it long since becoming college, and college into adulthood - it’s crossed your mind more than you’d liked to admit lately. It’s an odd feeling, an ill-fitting nostalgia creeping through the holes of your blanket-covered cell bars, but it was oddly comforting. You never thought you’d ever think of that place as comforting, but maybe it wasn’t high school that you found yourself chasing in the dead of night.

It was him.

Daryl never really knew how popular he was - here, and back then, when those minutes before and after gym class divulged into shushed remarks about his looks and half-serious confessions of crushes muttered to the secrecy of the changeroom’s four walls - but you did. You were always on the other side of it, silent in your agreement.

Woodbury - or, well, ex-Woodbury - was no different.

He’s a far cry from that scrawny little kid you split your lunch with all those years ago, but there's still the linger of boyish handsomeness to him that made your cheeks heat when you thought about him too long. There was no mistaking him for anyone else, but that subdued, ultraviolet warmth you’d grown familiar with was gone from his eyes.

He’s not seventeen anymore, flipping his uncut hair from his face as he taught you how to skip stones and catch fireflies, but you wanted to talk to him all the same. There’s not much left from the old world - let alone much that you could have considered good, or wanted to remember - but he’s one of the few things you’d cared enough about to keep safe from the pulling tide that faded your memories.

He made that shitty town more bearable, even if it was for those few months. Gritting your teeth and enduring had become tiring until he’d grimaced at that first History Inquiry project and made you laugh with the annoyed upturn of his lip. 

You’d planned on thanking him at graduation, but he’d left months before then. 

You’d planned on a lot of things to be frank, but there’s no reason to linger in the past when now is a shell of what then was.

There’s even less of a reason when now feels heavier than then ever was.

Today would have marked ten days without incident, a first foray into the monumental double digits until the sun had set behind the return of the run crew’s RV and Beth was forced to flip the number back to zero.

It’s been four hours since they came back - a quarter of the group gone from the unfriendlies they’d met, another dealing with the aftermaths of the encounter and one more made up from those the crew’s recruited - and it’s the first time in those four hours that you’ve left the dingy wing of the infirmary.

You didn’t hate it in there. Far from it, actually, with Hershel and the others being half-decent company and seeing the work you did benefiting people, but the infirmary, especially on days when the crews rounded back, meant the stinging smell of blood and death lingered no matter how much you scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. It stuck to every crevice on your body, and it permeated. Guilted you for not trying hard enough and not knowing enough.

On days like this, everywhere you went seemed too small and too unforgiving, and you’re not sure if you can stand tossing and turning in your bunk. The night sky is a friendlier sight than your ceiling, and the view from the abandoned watchtower is a hell of a lot better than the tiny, barred-up window at the corner of your cell.

If you’re lucky enough, maybe sleep will steal you for a couple of hours before the sun comes up. At least enough to make it through the next day.

You have faith it will - you can already feel the first wave of exhaustion pull at your bones.

Taking a breath, you press your hands into your pockets after pushing the door to the Prison open and slipping out. Autumn is beginning to seep through the cracks of summer and the nights are starting to get colder, but your jacket should be enough until you climb up and find sanctuary in the sleeping bag you’d left there three days ago.

It doesn’t take long to reach the door - if you jig the knob to the right before twisting and skip the third step from the top, the trek upwards is close to silent - but when you open it, the creak yields, at first, an expletive before the annoyed voice tears through the quiet.

“I already told ya I ain’t talkin’ ‘bout-”

The volume of him makes you take a step back, the sound of a man making your body lock up for just a second before you recognize the mess of hair atop his head and the wings stitched on the back of his vest, and you make quick work getting to him, crossing the platform in a single stride.

“Daryl?”

And he’s quick to realize the person speaking to him isn’t Carol like he’d thought. Though he really really really hopes it’s not you, the familiarity of your voice leaves little room for speculation, even before he turns his head and - for the first time in a long time - really, really looks at you.

“Oh.”

His heart beats in his ears and locks his throat before he can muster up anything else to say, and for a second, you wonder if you should introduce yourself to him. 

“Sorry, I, uh, wasn’t expectin’ no one to be here.”

But the knowing upturn of his eyebrows - his apology, and the way he scoots himself over to make room for you the same way he did in those library reading nooks - tells you you don’t need to, and your shoes slide against the concrete as you drop down to a sit.

He remembers you, too, the sweat of his hands too obvious with the fact, even though he wishes he didn’t.

He wishes there wasn’t a familiarity in the way you sidle your body against his, swinging your legs underneath the railing and over the balcony, and he wishes he couldn’t feel the heat coming off of you.

He wishes it didn’t wrap him up like the warm rays of sun, and he fights down a smile at the fact that you always were so bright. He wishes he didn’t remember you like that - glossed over in a blinding, yellow hue.

Daryl wishes he never remembered you like sunshine - he wishes he didn’t still.

Picking up the glass next to him - just to occupy himself and bide the time until his nervousness hopefully washes away into general apathy - he takes a sip before setting it down and taking a pull of the cigarette in his other hand.

The smoke is slow to fill his lungs, but he welcomes it anyways, holding it there as the nicotine-drawn buzz settles in his brain, and then he breathes it out, angling his head up and away from you.

You never liked it, the Malboros he’d swiped from his old man that he’d keep tucked in the smallest pocket of his worn-down backpack, but you’d told him one night, not unlike the one you’re both trying to find solace in right now, that you were scared of what his father might do if he found out.

Then you slipped in the obviousness of his health, just to break the tension of vulnerability, but it hit Daryl like a truck, the fact that he’d never had someone think about him like that before - like they actually cared.

“Heard your brain cells can rot if you do that.”

He raises an eyebrow at you only to be met with a small smile playing at your lips and the slightest bit of a sparkle in your eye, and the taste still lingering on his tongue reminds him of what he’s been doing. The glass is half full with the room-temperature whiskey he’d tried to make himself feel better with after stitching up his own wounds, and there’s ash from his smoking gathered beside one of the railing's poles, and despite the knowing you’re probably right, he sighs, waving your concern away.

“Ain’t worried. Don’t got a lotta them anyways.”

The cigarette between his fingers is lit still, and he takes another drag before the grayed end of it crumbles to the floor, fighting the upward tug of his cheeks at the sound of your amused huff and your quick response.

“That’s why you gotta take care of the ones you still have, Daryl.”

Scoffing, he tilts the edge of the glass towards you, holding it out for you until you take it from him, and he tries not to think about how the tips of his fingers burn when they brush up against yours. It’s not as sweet, the innocence of a teenage crush long since faded into the dull pang of expired love and loss, but it rushes through him all the same.

He would have offered you a cigarette, too, but you’ve never been one to pick up habits that bad.

A comfortable silence falls over the two of you then, the sky offering a serenity the two of you are less than strangers to, and you wince from the liquor when you finally take a sip. It’s nothing like the moonshine he’d smuggled from his dad’s stash - it went down a hell of a lot smoother than you remember that shit going - but your tolerance has taken a nosedive since weekends unwinding and inter-departmental parties had ended.

Besides, the only places you could get alcohol back in Woodbury were way above your paygrade.

Placing the cup back onto the concrete, you steal a glance at Daryl, spending just a second studying the curve of his nose and the jut of his cheekbone. He’s more handsome than he’s ever been, and you can feel the heat rush up your neck before you blink away the thought.

Get a hold of yourself.

But you can’t, not when he’s so close, and you’re not sure if it’s wholly unselfish, what makes you drop your eyes down from his face, but you do, and you realize why he was so on edge when he heard the door open.

He’s fidgeting. Ever since he put out his cigarette, he’s restless and can’t quite figure out what to do with his hands in the same way he was when you’d asked him why he never wanted to go home back in the school library, and it sends you back, too, a familiar pit growing in your stomach. It’s like he’s that kid again, scared of telling you - or, well, people - things that hurt because his stupid brother and dad drilled into him that he’s less of a man for even feeling hurt in the first place, and it’s equal parts infuriating and concerning.

You can tell that the gears are turning in your head as you try to piece him together; a run crew came back just today, and you haven't seen him in a little while. It doesn’t take a genius to make the connection - especially with everyone’s propensity to talk about how Daryl brought them in - and though you might regret it, you decide to pry.

Not pry, just ask.

Conversation used to flow so easily between the two of you. Were you naïve to hope it would again?

“Bad day?”

It’s small, your voice, teetering in the air with its uncertainty, but Daryl doesn’t seem to notice. Instead, he glances down at the space between you, wrapping his fingers around the highball before meeting your gaze, and he bites the inside of his cheek, weighing the option of telling you or not.

“Jus’ tired is all.”

And though he hesitates those first few words, your eyes are so kind - so genuinely caring - that he can’t stop himself from saying more.

That was what he was scared of.

Why hasn’t he let you go? 

“Sick’a fuckin’ losin’ people.”

The frustration when he speaks is palpable, and you’re not sure if it’s bravery or stupidity that makes you move - maybe it’s both, culminating in your own desire that someone would finally see through your crippling bravado and offer you a hug or something - but your hand snakes out to grab his before you even think, shaking it slightly in the strength of your squeeze.

Then he freezes, and for a second, you think you must have overstepped - that he’s going to push you away and yell at you and leave - but he doesn’t. He just takes a breath, the heft of it rising his shoulders then dropping it as he squeezes your hand back harder, a silent thank you in the press of his fingers against yours.

But still, he lets go, afraid the warmth in his chest might make him do something he regrets, and you chew at the dried skin of your lip, thinking about the right thing to say.

Fuck, you could never navigate things like this - it got better as you got older, sure, but words always seemed to fall short when it came to you and him - and when you finally settle on something, half of you wonders if it was just because you thought it better than nothing.

“I feel you.”

Because what else are you supposed to say? That it’s going to be alright and that he shouldn’t blame himself because it's so blatant he is? It’s thin ice you’re walking on, the fear of sounding patronizing drowning out the spark of hope you want to light him with, because you remember the man he was. He’s never had anyone fighting in his corner, and you’re not callow enough to think he thinks of you as something - someone - different.

But he does. He does think of you as someone different, and he wants to say more, but he doesn't know where he stands with you, or with himself. If he says what he’s thinking - that he feels like it is his fault and that he’s not sure if he could ever stop feeling like that. That he’s scared shitless and like it’s some big joke that people actually look up to him for things - wouldn’t that make it feel too real?

So he doesn’t. He just tips the lip of the glass against his and takes another sip to make sure his mouth is occupied, staring down at the bottom ridge of it until you speak again, and he’s helpless to do anything but look at you.

“At least it’s beautiful out tonight.”

He’s sent back to twenty years ago then - the scrawny redneck you’d somehow deemed good enough to be your friend forcing his old habits back to the him of the present - and he can’t help the squeaked little noise of a response. Words have always been hard for him, too. They’re hard for him to think of and even harder for him to form, and it’s made worse by the fact it’s almost like he’s back at 16, convinced that you’re too pretty to talk to.

“Yeah.”

And though you hear his hum of agreement, he never looks away from you, admiring the curve of your familiar smile and the rise of your cheekbones.

The lurch of his heart comes back then - the same beat against his ribs that he hated all those decades ago - and it’s stark then, the realization you’ve never really left him.

“Ain’t never seen nothin’ like it.”

Pressing his lip to the edge of the glass once more, he welcomes the burn of whiskey when you smile at the moonlit horizon, and he watches as you lean your chin against your arms.

You’re beautiful - more beautiful than all the colours in the star-speckled sky - and he could stare for hours.

[crazylittlejester]

Opinion time

honestly, I like the hero of time as much as the next person- OOT is one of my favorite games in the whole entire series and I love the characterization Jo-Jo gave him, but that doesn’t mean I can’t admit he’s an extremely flawed character

and I mean this in a good way, Jo-Jo wrote a character you can know did bad things and still like him /pos

but I didn’t like how, in the timeline parts, wind does confront and ask him “why did you leave?” And times only response is, in my own words

”I left it behind cuz I felt like it LMAO”

..????? yes he took percussions to make sure ganon “didn’t come back” (which.. he did, time knew the seal would break eventually. ganon literally screams out about how much he hates him and is coming for his descendants)

leaving an entire world behind to rot is just written off as “shit happens” and you can’t say “well time didn’t know what he was doing” because, at some point, yes he FIGURES OUT his actions have consequences /nm

Imagine being rulie, your entire world is a wasteland and you ask the guy who CAUSED its downfall “why does my land suck so much” he just goes “oops my bad”

in the child timeline he just fucks off, in the downfall timeline he dies, comes back, and says forget everybody else, he only really started giving half-a-shit in the adult timeline with twilight. We can see this with his blatant favoritism over him.

anyways this was me screaming at the clouds about how time isnt a cookie cutter hero, he’s flawed and he’s made mistakes and honestly? It makes his character better and more enjoyable. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk (feel free to give ur opinion on the matter)

okay sorry for any spelling mistakes or oddly autocorrected words, this was kinda a lot longer than i thought it would be alkjslkjs 😭

Okay this is an incredibly interesting perspective and I’m not sure I’ve seen anyone else with this exact take on Time. I have a much different view of his character and his actions, though it was nice to read yours! /gen

First off, I completely agree that Time is a incredibly flawed person, and that’s part of why I love his character so much. He is not perfect, he is not the best leader, he makes mistakes. I genuinely think that the only reason he’s leader of this group and why the others tolerate him being the unofficial official leader is because even they can acknowledge that Time is just the best person for that role. He is not a perfect leader, he is not and I don’t know if he’ll ever truly reach that, but looking at the other options, he really was the best for the role. (Warriors would’ve been incapable of fully separating the others from the military in his mind, Twilight wouldn’t have been able to go off as Wolfie without causing mistrust or doubt towards him in the beginning, and Legend simply didn’t WANT that. The only other person who possibly could’ve lead the group would be Sky, and while I do think that could work, Time has way more experience)

Time has made a lot of mistakes, in his games, in the comic, he’s not flawless. I think in the comic (LU) we most commonly see this through how he’ll say things that come across as incredibly flat, snappy, or a bit harsher than what was really necessary for the situation. And this is just something it seems like he’s always been like, at least with how Jojo characterizes him, because in that one sketch with him and Malon when they were younger, he said something that did very much come off as snappy/rude, and he immediately realized how what he said sounded and tried to make an attempt to apologize. In the most recent update, we see how his stress and emotions made him much snappier and harsh towards the others than he really needed to be. I’d even argue in some moments, when he’s talking about his past and we see parts of his past, he’s a BIT arrogant. He certainly isn’t that way anymore, or at least he’s not as arrogant, but we see some moments where he comes off ass a little full of himself, the one I remember the clearest is the expression on his face when he got into Gerudo Town and a bit how he was talking about it. He’s also able to admit his flaws and that he was too distracted and let that get in the way of him helping the others while Twilight was hurt

Where I disagree with you (AND THIS IS ALL MY OPINION AND MY INTERPRETATION) is on Time’s thoughts surrounding the whole timeline thing. I do not think he had ANY idea that he was creating a whole other timeline, nor do I think he really even had a choice. He was sent back in time in an attempt to stop Ganon from destroying everything, and I believe he’s spent all the years since thinking all he did was go back in time. I don’t think he ever even considered the fact that Wind’s timeline continued on without him there (screenshots taken from Timeline Talk 1, art credit to @/linkeduniverse)

He DIDN’T know what he was doing. He was like, 9-10 in the body of (roughly) a 17 year old, he was doing whatever he was told by Zelda, Rauru and the sages, the goddesses, whoever. And I don’t think ANYONE realized the consequences of sending him back in time like that. I genuinely think that this right here is where he realizes not only that the timelines split, but the timelines split because of HIS adventure/journey. And when faced with the idea that every time he used his ocarina he abandoned hyrule (kingdom) he seems horrified (also from Timeline Talk 1):

I also don’t think the others have any idea at all that Hyrule and Legend are on a separate timeline from everyone else. I think everyone who comes after Time on ANY timeline has heard of him, but Legend and Hyrule haven’t had the chance really to talk about their timeline with Time, at least not really like how Wind did. And even if they had, again, Time DIED in their timeline, which could not possibly in any way have been his fault 😭

So yeah, he did leave Wind’s timeline (which is the adult timeline), but he genuinely had no idea that it got ABANDONED. I think the way he was looking at is was like erasing and starting anew and not just writing over what was already written and leaving that there (if that makes sense). And even if he had realized he completely abandoned that time, I’m not sure it would’ve even been possible for him to go back, and if he HAD, there’s only one Time. Twilight either wouldn’t have been born, or he’ve been born in Wind’s timeline. Which raises some INTERESTING theories because if Twilight had been there, would his game have happened? If it HAD, would Wind even be a hero? Given that whole theory that Wind doesn’t even have the hero’s spirit and he CHOSE the hero life instead of the other way around. That’d honestly be so interesting to explore!! I kinda wanna write a fic on it

Time did was he was told to do, he did was he was guided to do by people older than him or who had more ‘power’ than him. He was around ten years old, I don’t think he had a “Lmao fuck this shit” attitude when timeline hopping, I don’t think he understood he was timeline hopping at all. He didn’t understand what he was doing and he had the weight of the world on his shoulders, he was just trying to survive, and I’ll even bet he really thrived on what little acknowledgement and appreciation he got for saving hyrule (kingdom) because he seems (to me at least) like after losing the Great Deku Tree and the Kokiri he was REALLY lonely

And yes, he definitely for sure has a soft spot for Twi. But aside from Twi JUST being his descendant, I think Time feels bad that Twi followed after him in the hero business. He probably realized Twilight was descended from him and then really LOOKED at him and saw everything that young man went through and Time probably felt AWFUL. And after realizing that Wind’s entire timeline suffered because of something he did, I’m sure he feels the same way towards Wind. Because he may not be Time’s blood, but he’s a KID and he’s been through so much. Also there could be an argument made that Time is such a hoverer around Twi rn because he was hurt. I’m sure Four could’ve been the one who was hit and Time would be hovering over HIM instead

TL;DR: Yes Time is incredibly flawed. That’s what makes him interesting, that’s what makes him a good character, I wouldn’t like him very much if he were perfect alkjslksj. But I do not think he intentionally abandoned the other timelines, nor do i think that has anything to do with why he seemingly favors Twi. He was a kid, I don’t think anyone understood what was happening. I think if Wind had never spoken up, Time never would’ve known

(also Timeline Talk 1):

but thanks for sharing your perspective! It’s always interesting to see the different ways we see the same character :) /gen

[crimeronan]

alright. WHAT is a Raven Cycle. What is this story about. All this time seeing you pointed about these people, but it took me ages to figure out what the "trc" tag even stood for -- that poll you just reblogged in fact. I'm ready. Give me the pitch.

HI.

the raven cycle is a series of four books by maggie stiefvater: the raven boys, the dream thieves, blue lily lily blue, and the raven king. there is a follow-up trilogy called the dreamer trilogy made up of three books: call down the hawk, mister impossible, and greywaren.

(my 'cdth' tag is my tag for the sequel series, which i like even more than trc.)

it's a YA modern fantasy series set in a small town in rural virginia. the series focuses on a gang of five teenagers (a sixth joining in book 3/4) who are all dealing with various magic bullshit in their lives. one is looking for a dead welsh king along a ley line in the mountains of virginia, because legend says that the king can be woken and grant a wish.

the problem is that this boy, gansey, is going to die.

we know this because the one girl in the group (sorry women. there are more women in cdth i SWEAR), blue, saw his ghost on st mark's eve. which means he will die within the next year. why did she see his ghost?? because he's either her true love, or she killed him.

or, you know. both. if you're a girl who's cursed to kill your true love with a kiss. as she is.

blue does not want to kill anyone. blue also does not want gansey to be her true love. they get off on the wrong foot entirely and she decides he's the devil for a little while. blue is overall having a bad time with the world and her place in it and the fact that she's the only non-psychic person in a family of psychics, And Also She Doesn't Want To Kill Anyone.

so the question is -- for all four books -- what..... would make her kill gansey. how is gansey going to die.

gansey's three other closest friends are boys in varying states of emotional turmoil.

ronan, who is where my URL comes from, is a suicidal bipolar maniac alcoholic who spends all of his time trying to kill himself. and is also magic as fuck. and hiding it. and going out street racing with a guy who wants to eat him. and they're kind of fucking about it. they technically never fuck except like. they're kind of fucking about it

adam is a trailer trash kid paying his own way into the elite boarding school that gansey & ronan attend. his dad is physically abusive to the point of adam's life being in constant danger, but adam refuses to accept gansey's offers of help or safety, because he's determined that nobody else ever Own him.

noah is a quiet kid with a violent past that gansey cares about very deeply, getting into all of his backstory involves major book one spoilers but it is. Rough.

the plot points in the series are complicated to explain because there's a lot of mythology and strange worldbuilding and psychic bullshit and magic all going on and playing off each other. but the series is about these five kids being in a giant pseudo-polyamorous relationship and loving each other and hating each other and wanting each other and killing each other.

it has some of my favorite relationship arcs of all time in any media, ever, and also it like. taught me how to write. LOL. so if you're here from the owl house (??) or from a different fandom and you like how i talk about characters and how i write character conflicts and character arcs and character relationships....... U Get All Of That Shit In The Raven Cycle.

and that's it!

[guy-writes]

“Ye know they say this house is haunted” (John “Soap” Mactavish x GN! Reader)

Warnings: Shadow figures? No pronouns for reader other than ‘you,’ pre-established relationship, Johnny scares reader lol

You and Johnny are taking a small road trip to stay at his family’s farm, he decides to make a quick pit stop to show you an old hang out spot of his. It does not go as he planned… 

For @glitterypirateduck vacation mode challenge! This was inspired by prompts 42: Ghost tour (even though ya’ll aren't touring lol) and 77: Road trip. This was also heavily inspired by something that happened to me, sadly I didn’t have Soap there to help lmao

“What is this?”

“An abandoned house.”

“I know, but that doesn’t explain why we’re here…”

You and Johnny had been on your way to visit his parents’ farm. It would be a nice getaway for you both, considering how hectic your lives have been recently. 

Well, that was before Johnny – under the guise of ‘taking a short cut’ – had led you here, to this abandoned house. It had definitely seen better days. The outside was rotting, shingles had fallen off and there were a few holes near the bottom of the house. The windows were either boarded up or broken and whatever paint was left was clinging onto the brick for dear life. You watched as Johnny walked over to the rickety stairs and tested his foot on it, decided it was alright, then walked up them to get to the door. 

“Johnny- what the hell are you doing?” 

“Aw, c’mon, I just wanted tae show ye the old hang out spot.” 

“You and your friends hung out here?” You gave the house a once over again before giving him a deadpan stare. It didn’t help that the sun was setting. It wasn’t hard to believe he and friends used to hang out here, this was Johnny you were talking about. The more you stared at him the more he was giving you that look. The look that pleaded with you to just humour him this once. Sadly it worked- It always did. You found that your feet had taken you right beside him on those rickety stairs. He gave you a cheeky grin before taking your hand in his and opening the door. It creaked so loudly, Johnny opened it so fast that the door hit the wall with a bang. 

“...Oops,” he didn’t look all that apologetic and stepped forward, gently pulling you along with him. You both stepped inside and immediately were hit with the scent of dust and mildew. 

The inside didn’t look that much better than the outside. It was rotting away in there, most of the furniture was gone but the ones that remained were covered in greenery that was taking over. The floor had a few holes, when you looked up you could even see into the second floor. The floral wallpaper (or what was left of it) was peeling or ripped off the walls. You coughed lightly from the amount of dust in here and covered your nose. 

“Ye know they say this house is haunted,” Johnny said, he had a mock serious look on his face.

“Ah, now you're pulling my leg,” you gave him an unimpressed look, the only thing haunting this house was the dust. You let go of his hand and started poking around the house, might as well do something. Going near the kitchen you spotted nothing in particular, besides some debris and a lone table. 

“It’s true, this house is basically a legend… They say a farmer and his wife lived here, but somethin’ happened that made the wife go a wee bit mad before murderin’ her husband.”

“Johnny, that sounds like something thirteen year olds tell each other on the playground…” You grumbled out, growing more and more unimpressed at him. You were starting to think he was up to no good. He gave you a small pout before shrugging his shoulders nonchalantly. 

“Fine, don’t believe me, but when ye encounter the angry ghost of the wife don’t come runnin’ to me for help,” he imparted before sauntering over to the stairs and going up to the second floor. You could hear the creaky floorboard under his feet as he walked around. You rolled your eyes before exploring the kitchen more. You noticed that under the table there were newer floorboards, like someone fixed that area up. You pushed the table away, seeing that it was a crawl space, you lifted up the cover and discovered some photos. 

You picked one up and saw a younger looking version of Johnny along with four other kids. They looked to be goofing off in the living room of the house, it looked much cleaner than it does now. Johnny still has that boyish grin that he gets when he’s having fun. You smiled, taking a look through the other photos in the pile. Most of them were of Johnny and his friends goofing around or fixing up the place. While shuffling through the pile you heard a loud bang coming from the second floor. It made you jump and whip your head around towards the stairs. 

“Johnny! Are you alright?!” You shouted.

Johnny never answered you.

Growing a bit concerned you pocketed the photos and walked over to the stairs. You looked up towards the foyer and saw nothing there. You shuffled your feet, starting to grow uneasy now. It was too quiet, besides the wind that was howling. The upstairs looked darker than the rest of the house, that’s where most of the boarded up windows were.

“Johnny?” You called out again.

Still no response.

“John MacTavish, this isn’t funny!” You shouted. You swore you heard some shuffling towards the end of the foyer. But you still got no answer from him. You huffed, growing more uneasy but now you were frustrated. 

“Soap I swear to god if you scare me…” You called out again before moving to go up the stairs. Once you made it to the top, there were three rooms presented. Two seemed to be bedrooms and one was a bathroom. It was way dustier up here than downstairs. You grumbled as you walked over to the bedroom on the far right. There was nothing but a dusty, stained up mattress, a broken wardrobe, and rotting vanity desk with a cracked mirror. 

“Boo!…” Someone whispered in your ear, wrapping their arms around your torso and bringing you closer towards them. You screamed, spinning on your heels so fast your arm whacked the person behind you in the stomach. 

“Steamin’ bloody Jesus!... Mo ghraidh, are ye tryin’ to kill me?” You saw Johnny rubbing his stomach in pain, even if you didn’t hit him that hard. You huffed in annoyance, crossing your arms and giving him a pointed look.

“Maybe I should ‘cause of the stunt you just pulled… I thought something happened!” You exasperated, you were happy he was fine (minus the hit you gave him) but that was uncalled for. You pinched his nose as revenge.

“Ack! Ah’m sorry, okay?? It was funny though…” He mumbled out before snickering to himself and that earned yet another pinch from you. 

“Uh huh… laugh it up mister…” you playfully rolled your eyes at him, you did see the humour in it after the initial annoyance dissipated and laughed along with him. Johnny looked over your shoulder towards the vanity desk, his laughter dying out. He squinted his eyes towards what he was seeing in the mirror. You raised an eyebrow, frowning at the focused look Johnny was giving.

“What the hell is that?” he whispered.

“What?” You asked, turning around to have a look but before you could- Johnny took your hand and started gunning it towards the stairs. 

“What?- What!?” You pressed, you turned to look behind you and saw in the mirror there was a tall, dark shadow in the corner of the room where the vanity was pointing. You saw its head following your moments as you both ran out the room. You felt a cold chill go down your spine as you let out a blood curdling scream. You both made it to the stairs, but running down them was a challenge. Johnny was trying to make you run in front of him- but they were too narrow and the edges of the steps were smoothed. 

That, combined with both your clumsy footwork, made you end up falling on your back and sliding down the rest of the stairs. You almost took Johnny out with you if he wasn’t holding onto the railing. He yelped, watching helplessly as you slid down the rest of the way. You started crying from both the fear and pain you felt. Pain was shooting up your back, your spine took most of the hit when coming down. It also burned, you tried getting back up but straightening out caused you to cry out in more pain.

Johnny quickly scooped you up in his arms and threw you over his shoulder. He sprinted the rest of the way to the car. Your back was in immense pain and being jostled around didn’t help. Once Johnny was at the car, he carefully placed you in the passenger's seat before running around and throwing himself in the driver's side. He stared out towards the road, panting lightly from the excitement of it all. The pain in your back was subsiding but you feared that your back was all scratched up from your slide down. You flinched but adjusted yourself to sit up right.

“Are ye alright?” Johnny finally asked.

“Yeah- I think I’ll live…” You groaned out. 

“Want me to check it?” You nodded your head and turned your back towards him, closing your eyes so you didn’t have to stare at the house. He gently lifted your shirt up, you heard him take a sharp intake of air through his teeth.

“Is it that bad?” You worriedly asked.

“Well… It could be worse…? Yer back is scratched to hell plus yer shirt was a bit torn from the fall,” he explained. He let go of your shirt, letting it fall back to its original spot. He gave you a reassuring rub on the shoulder, away from the injury, and kissed your temple. You shuffled back to face forward once more, sighing from pain and slight exhaustion. You opened your eyes and looked over at Johnny. Concern and regret was written on his face.

“My ma has some ointment and bandages at the house, we’ll patch ye up when we get there,” he kissed your head again before turning the keys to turn the ignition on. He started driving towards his family’s farmhouse, not making any more spontaneous detours. You had time to ponder what the hell just happened a few moments ago. Both you and Johnny had seen something in that vanity. A dark, shadowy figure as tall at the ceiling, was that even real?

“Did we actually see what we saw? Or are we just really tired from the drive?” You tried to rationalise. But it didn’t make sense that you both saw the exact same thing. Johnny seemed to tense for a moment, shuddering softly to himself.

“I- I don’t know… Ah was making that whole story up to scare ye- I didn’t think…” He wasn’t sure what to say about the situation, sure- he liked watching those cheesy ghost videos but he never actually thought they were real. He groaned, not liking the way his little stop turned out. You could see he was sitting with his regret, like that ghost showing up was any of his fault. You patted his thigh in a comforting manor before remembering something. You waited until you got to his parents’ house though. 

“We’re here,” Johnny parked the car with a tired sigh. 

“Hey… uh, I found something interesting while at that house,” You fished around in your pockets, pulling out the stack of photos you found. You gave them a once over, none of them were ruined during the chaos. You handed him them and he gasped in recognition. He had a fond smile on his face as he flipped through the photos.

“So,  are you going to explain why those were hidden under the floorboards?” You inquire once he’s done flipping through them. 

“Aye, it was just for safekeepin’, we wanted to hopefully go back and fix the old place up more,” he explained, “Obviously that never happened but I’m glad ye found these, mo ghraidh,” he kissed you softly and that seemed to be the end of that. 

…

Johnny’s ma was currently fussing over your back injury. While she was cleaning and disinfecting the wound she was scolding Johnny for bringing you there in the first place. It was kind of funny watching it all play it out. Your attention was brought away from them when his older sister walked into view and cleared her throat. 

“What’s that behind your friend John?” She picked out the photo she was talking about and handed it over to Johnny. He seemed to pale slightly once he saw what she was talking about. He just silently turned the photo towards you and his ma. There in the right corner behind Johnny’s friend was the thing you both saw in the vanity. 

“Man, I guess you’ve got a stalker,” You joked. Johnny’s ma initially gasped in horror before laughing at your joke.

“That’s not funny, hen,” he grumbled.

WC: 2,152

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[portraitofalinkonfyre]

Burning Love

Chapter 5

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The rest of the chain was outside by the time you managed to waddle downstairs, huddled around a cooking pot with Wild at the helm for breakfast.

"(Y/n)!" Wind greeted, waving you over with his bandaged arm, drawing the other's attention. You waved groggily, plopping down next to the youngest hero on a nearby log. "Is Four okay, we haven't seen him yet."

"You say that like we haven't been hearing him," Legend muttered with a scowl. You were too tired to defend Four's honor, so you just waved off the pantless hero with a scowl of your own.

"Well, he's alive."

"Goodie."

"Legend, I swear to Hylia—"

"OKay!" Warriors cut off your impending insult with a loud clap of his hands. "We'll continue this when everyone's had coffee, yeah?"

"Great plan," you shot him a thumbs up while Legend muttered something ineligible in the background. Wild materialized behind you with a cup of steaming goodness, handing it over wordlessly. "You're the man, Wild."

"I'm the man," he parroted, returning your high-five with the speed of a shooting arrow.

"So," Twilight interjected and the seriousness of the conversation instantly increased. "He's cleared for travel?"

"More or less," you sipped your coffee and felt a bit more Hylian than you did a minute ago. "I still haven't figured out what's going on with him," you paused, an idea hitting you harder than Wind's windhammer. "Time, didn't you mention a library being here?"

"The Town Archive," the oldest hero intoned, expression contemplative as he mulled over your idea. "I've visited it once before, but it's certainly old enough to have some information."

"It sounds like the best place to start," Sky joined the conversation with a hum. "We don't know how dangerous his ailment is, or even what it is, for that matter."

"I agree," said Hyrule, turning his curious gaze to Time. "How many books do you think it holds?"

"Hundreds, I'm sure," Time answered, tone curiously wistful, and if you weren't drooling at the thought of all that literature, you sure were when Wild passed you a bowl of egg-fried rice. He looked up with a resigned expression. "Four, how kind of you to join us."

You glanced back quick enough to watch Four half-stumble down the stairs, shuffling over in a distinct rendition of Wind's impression of a 'penguin'. "Good morning to you too, old man," he plopped down beside you and accepted Wild's procured bowl of rice with a grateful hum. "Where's my coffee?"

"You're too young to be drinking that," Legend replied, taking a very loud, very obnoxious sip of his own.

Four cocked his head, puzzled. "I'm am?"

"And I'm the Queen of Lorule."

"...You're not?"

"No."

"That's... unfortunate."

"Sigh."

"Anyways, what were we talking about?"

"You, short stack," said Warriors. "We were about to ask if you wanted to stay behind and recuperate?"

"Why would I?"

Warriors deadpanned. "You're not exactly at one-hundred percent, and someone's got to protect (Y/n)—"

"Um, rude," you crossed your arms over your chest, your spoon sticking out of your mouth like a pipe. "Bold of you to assume I'm not coming with."

Silence.

"Jeez, tough crowd..."

"You're tough," you retorted before realizing that wasn't the insult you'd been hoping for. "Anyways, the library might be our only shot at helping you, Four," you said, bumping shoulders and ignoring the withering gaze Twilight sent the shorter hero. "And! Books!"

"Can't miss out on that," the blacksmith responded with a grin.

"It seems we've come to an agreement," Time observed. "We leave in ten," he paused at Wind's puppy dog eyes, sighed, and somehow managed to look five years older. "...or when Wind has finished his breakfast."

Everyone cheered as Wind brought his spoon to his mouth in slow motion.

The town archive was unlike anything you'd seen before. Tall and imposing, its shadows towered way over your approaching group. Four's side was warm against your bare arm as you led him forward, not for lack of trust, but after seeing him wobble down the inn stairs, you were taking no chances.

"Woah," Four breathed. "It's bigger than my old forge."

"Yeah?"

"Definitely."

"Are you sure? You're not pulling my leg?"

"I think you'd know if I was pulling your leg."

"I hate you both," muttered Legend, and you didn't need to see his face to feel his undoubtedly dark glare burning holes into your back.

"Aw, let them be," Wind came to your rescue. He looked at you and winked. "He's just upset because he had to listen to some couple flirt last night."

"Wind."

"Sorry, we," he amended sassily. "had to listen to some couple flirt last night."

"...Was it good?" You asked with mounting terror.

"Not at all, but we're not allowed to talk about that."

"For good reason," Legend hissed. "It was the worst thing I've had the displeasure of hearing, and I've listened to Wind snoring."

"Hey!"

"We're here," Time announced, and you'd never been more grateful for a subject change.

The heavy wooden doors creaked open, the rusty metal plaque on the right one glinting softly in the sunlight. Squinting with all your might, you managed to make the scrawled lettering out to be "Town Archive", which was about as accurate as you could get here.

The group shuffled in, and you were instantaneously impressed at the impossibly large bookshelves lining every veritable wall, closing in on the lectern in the center in ordered rows. "Wow," you said in awe, deftly release of Four to peruse the massive directory on said lecture. Your hands glided the leather cover of the colossal book, only pausing to sneeze when you opened it and a cloud of dust shot forth. Most of the boys had begun to scatter, chatting individually about what they hoped to find—though you were sorely tempted to scream that libraries didn't have Lizalfo talons when you heard Wild make that particular quip—but Twilight, Time, and Four remained silently by the entrance.

"How many trees you reckon it takes to make a book that big?" Twilight asked in a hushed tone.

"More than one," was Four's response. "A big one... or four small ones."

Your eye twitched at the nonsensical exchange, but you forced yourself to refocus on the directory.

"...Why are you like this?" Time sounded as exasperated as you felt.

Your pointer finger traced down the 'D' list, eyes scanning over every title with fading interest. You had already searched over ten pages, and not a single thing had stood out among the dizzying selection. It was beginning to seem that you would never find an answer to the conundrum, which was as painful as it was maddening. As a medic, it was your sworn duty to help the sick, even more when the sick person in question was your dear friend, and you were determined to not add to your list of regrets.

Until you flipped to a random page, seconds from burying your head in your hands, and something finally caught your eye.

"I found it!"

"Found what?" Four appeared at your side almost instantaneously, flanked by Time and Twilight.

You tapped the scrawled title with a blossoming grin. "'The Complete Guide To Hyrule's Races'!"

"That sounds promising," Time's expression was curious. "Do you think you can find it?"

"I can try," you shut the book, the pages thudding together with a thud of finality. "The directory said it should be on the second shelf in one of the back rows, so I'll start there."

The heroes bade you good luck as you headed off in search of your prize. Twilight grunted softly as soon as your cape fluttered from view. "Ya know yer only diggin' yourself into a bigger hole, right?"

"Huh?" Four's face was the picture of confusion, but Twilight knew it was all a ruse.

"Don't play dumb," he chided. "Ya haven't given it any thought?"

Four's gaze flicked between the two heroes, and Time, who looked as though he had seen enough, motioned them to one of the quieter corners of the library. "Now," the older hero's gaze felt like a piercing beam. "What's this all about?"

Twilight snorted, tossing his head in Four's direction. "Wouldn't be about nothin' if he would man up already."

Time stared at the smaller hero, clearly demanding an answer with the sheer force of his mind alone. Too bad that Four didn't feel like passing out details of his (nonexistent) sex life like they were candy.

"It's no one's business, old man," he crossed his arms over his chest, expression a nigh-perfect recreation of Legend's resting-bitch face. "And that's final."

"It's only goin' to get worse," Twilight ran a hand down his face, eyes turned to the ceiling in a plea for divine intervention. "An' it's that medic's business, too."

"What about (Y/n)?" Time's gaze hardened protectively; the old man cared for you and it showed clearer than day on his scarred face. "Four."

"Don't," the smithy fixed him with an unusually harsh glare. Time's working eye narrowed; something was amiss and he was determined to find it. "You're not part of this, none of you are."

"So ya admit it's a problem?" Twilight interjected.

"No!" Four snapped. He sighed, running a hand through his hair. "I need more time, you can't expect me to..."

"We aren't expecting you to do anything," Time said slowly, looking equal parts ready to throttle someone and offer one of them a hug, just as Twilight muttered under his breath: "'cept what's right for ya and that medic."

Four bristled. "It's not like that."

"It could be."

"I can't— you have no idea about any of this," the smithy's face was growing redder and redder, irises flashing blue, as he growled. "S-So stay out of it!"

"Oh, we have some idea," Twilight shot back. "Don't tell me ya've forgotten our conversation?"

Four's expression twisted in discomfort, but it was quickly replaced by annoyance. "How could I forget?" he snarked. "You know they're not—"

A memory of last night flashed in his mind's eye, but Four dismissed it; there was no way you saw him... like that, he wanted to scream. You were just too nice for your own good. He tried not to think of the way your gaze roved his body when he undressed, chalking it up to misplaced curiosity. How could you want him when there were so many other options, as much as it pained him to think it?

"—it's fine, I'm going outside."

Twilight opened his mouth to fire back, only pausing when Time laid a hand on the rancher's shoulder, shaking his head with a somewhat defeated expression. Twilight huffed, but held his tongue.

Until cheery footsteps broke through the silence and your head peeked around a nearby bookshelf. You grinning vibrantly when you caught sight of them, and it was the most beautiful thing Four had seen in his life. "There you are, I can't believe you all disappeared on me like that!"

"Sorry," Four said rather sheepishly. His gaze snapped to the crumpled sheet of paper in your right hand. "What's that?"

You shrugged, holding it out for him to examine. Twilight shifted closer, subtly sniffing with a look of barely disguised interest. "I thought notes from a scholar would be more useful than a textbook, is all."

"It was a textbook?" Time questioned, and you made a face.

"Unfortunately," you grimaced harder. "I've seen enough of those things to last a few lifetimes."

"We can tell," Twilight observed, tipping his head to the barely legible symbols covering the page. Four wrinkled his nose, slightly miffed at the unfamiliar language. "Can ya read it?"

"A bit," you answered. "It's written in ancient Hylian."

"Ancient, huh?" Twilight leveled a knowing look in Four's direction. The shorter hero growled and shoved at his chest, and the rancher surrendered with a guffaw. "Ah'right, ah'right!"

"Do I even want to know?" you deadpanned.

Crash!

"Fuck!" came Wild's distinct screech, and you nearly tripped over yourself rushing to the source of the noise. Four moved to follow, but halted when Time's hand sealed around his wrist.

"Four."

"Let me go."

"What is it, exactly, that you are afraid of?"

Four's eyes narrowed. "I'm not afraid."

"Ya are," Twilight joined the fray with a jaded frown.

Four tried yanking his arm away, but Time's grip held true. "What do you know? It's not like you—"

"Wrong," the rancher interrupted tersely. "'M trying to help ya because I am the only one."

Four froze. Surely he couldn't be implying...

"Don't give me that look," Twilight drew closer, towering over the smithy with a distinct wildness in his usually calm eyes. "Ya never thought ta' question why I leave fer a week every six months, or why I don't go off alone with yer little medic?"

"Y-You don't like (Y/n)?" Four was at a complete loss for words as the realization hit him harder than one of Wild's bombs. "How—"

"This ain't about me," Twilight's tone took on a distinct snarl that had Four wondering how he hadn't connected the dots in the first place. "It's about you and yer problem with makin' things easy on yerself. Ya think distance will make everythin' fine an' dandy? I can promise ya, it won't."

"But—"

"You can only deny yer nature for so long," there was a distinct sliver of regret in the older hero's tone that made Four wonder what exactly the rancher had experienced to look that way. "An' once it's gone, you're never going to get it back."

"Guys!"

All heads turned to you, and Four felt the inexplicable urge to gather you in his arms and never let go. Until he noticed your panicked expression and lack of paper. "Come on," you urged hurriedly. "We've got to get the hell out of here."

"What happened?" asked Time, beating Four by a millisecond.

Your expression turned grave. "Lizalfos,"

"In the library?!"

Sigh. He'll get it eventually. ALSO Twi, you dog!

Just as a disclaimer, I've never played OOT so I have no idea if the term 'town archive' even exists in their world, but I'm going to pretend it does for the sake of the smut.