#and misery is both a good book and good movie

[wkdwtchoftheest]

Why are most Stephen King movies sub-par B movies? Like some things are genuinely good, but most of them are bad.

[luveline]

𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐛𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐬 | 𝐞𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐞 𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐧 

summary eddie munson is super weird. he holds your hand too tight, he has a fascination with your neck, and he can’t give a hickey to save his life. good thing you’re super weird, too. [20k]

warnings two losers falling in love!! vampire!eddie munson, ditzy!reader (kind of), fem!reader, smut mdni (p in v, unprotected sex, oral fem receiving, general heavy petting and kissing, praise), fluff, hurt/comfort, angst (eddie struggling with guilt and grief). canon divergent (the events of volume 2 take place but there’s a mostly happy ending i.e. everyone good lives and everyone bad dies) TW eddie doesn't have suicidal thoughts, but he does think about it briefly. not with intent or anything like that though. requested here for my halloween party <3

(㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ)

Eddie Munson never wanted to be a vampire, and he wants that on the record. 

It's a ridiculous existence. It's embarrassing. It's nothing like all the movies and books promised him. 

He's looking at you, Bram Stoker. 

In Eddie's mind, Stoker’s nothing less than a liar and a sycophant. 

"Who's dick were you bouncing on, Stoker?" he demands to know, kicking fallen leaf mulch under his feet angrily. "Need'ta fucking impress some vampire lover with your over-exaggerated, over-powered, ridiculous descriptions? Great. Hope it was worth it. Meanwhile I'm here, self-esteem half the size of a grain of rice because I can't scale a building with my bare hands." 

Eddie would know. He's tried. 

He's not genuinely angry with Bram Stoker, but he'd rather take his frustrations out on a guy who's been dead for a hundred years than take them out on the demobats, because he doesn't want to even think about the demobats. They're all dead too. Not before they'd had (see: devoured) their pound of flesh and changed his life for the worse, though.

He shakes his head to drive out the memory like water in his ears. It's easier to pretend none of that shit in the upside down ever happened. (Impossible to pretend. He begs himself to try anyway.) 

He’s pissed because science fiction has promised him a lot of things and reality has delivered on none of them. No super strength, no impermeable skin. He is faster, but that's more a reflexive thing than anything else. And being faster doesn't make running fun. That’s impossible.

Sunlight breaks through the treeline and his skin crawls. Science fiction didn't get that right, either. The sun doesn't hurt. It's just really, really annoying.

He covers his eyes, winces at his itchy hand, pulls his sleeve over his fingers and covers his eyes again. "This blows," he says, and means it. 

In Dracula, the sun nulls Dracula’s supernatural abilities. Eddie doesn’t have any abilities worth nulling, unless you count echolocation.

He doesn’t. 

He walks another five minutes up the road toward Forest Hills when he realises you're behind him. His senses are enhanced now as a bat’s might be, hearing fine-tuned and dialled up every second of the day — which makes living in a trailer park where everyone thinks he's a murderer an acute misery — but he's as prone to distraction as anyone else. Especially when he gets stuck in a memory.

Eddie throws his gaze over his shoulder and finds you thirty or forty feet away, talking to yourself under your breath. He knows you more for your sounds than your appearance. To be able to put a face to your mindless babbling is a mystery solved. Of course you look like that. A skirt made of soft looking fabric bounces over two cute thighs, a pretty lacy corset type of thing that isn't too tight outfits your top half. You look more like a vampire than he does. 

"Hi, Eddie," you call.

His eyes widen, a deer-in-the-headlights kind of surprise. If you notice how he's frozen you don't show it, continuing to push your bike toward him. The tick of the wheels grows louder as you get closer, two hands on the handlebars with wrists draped in bracelets, both silver and fabric. 

Besides your jewellery, your arms are bare. You must be freezing. 

"Hey," he says. 

He doesn't know your name. He doesn't know how you know his, and he’s too awkward to ask. 

Your sounds peak as you close the gap. The wet scrape of your dirty black canvas shoes over shining asphalt, the soft puff of your breath, the clinking sounds of whatever trinkets you have in your bag. If he focuses, he can make out the tiniest pinches of fabric. Your short sleeves rubbing against your arms, your bra straps stretching over your shoulders. 

Eddie takes a deep breath and tries to diminish his senses. 

"Where's your van?" you ask curiously. 

"Piece of shit kicked it in the middle of town. Just my luck." 

You pause at his side, looking him up and down obviously but without the judgement or irreverent disgust he's come to expect from near about everybody in Hawkins. 

"That's not good," you say succinctly. 

It's such a genuine response that Eddie can't find it in himself to be sarcastic. 

"God awful," he agrees sullenly. 

You nod and start to walk again. Eddie falls naturally into step beside you, matching your pace without thinking. 

"You should get a bike." 

He laughs. Coughs to cover it up. "Yeah?" 

"They're way more reliable than a car, and it doesn't hurt the zone." 

Eddie squints. "The o-zone?" 

"Is there another one?" 

You're still so serious that he spares you the ridicule he might dole out to anyone else. If Dustin had said something like that he would've ripped the kid a new one, but you're rather sweet in an odd way. You have a soft manner of talking — each word sounds like you've thought its pronunciation through meticulously beforehand. 

He ignores your question and points at your bike, ring catching the sun. "Why aren't you riding it?" 

"My chain slipped." 

"So much for reliable." 

That makes you smile. Eddie feels it like a punch, a flat palm slapped into his chest. 

"You can't put the chain on yourself?" 

A brisk breeze whips your hair, your earrings. The left kisses your cheek, a silver heart-shaped hoop with pink beads that click together. You lean into it, face tilted to one side as a perplexed smile plays on your sticky lips. "You can do that?" 

"Sure, you pull it back around the gear. It's easy." He hesitates for a moment, and then feels guilty about hesitating. "I'll do it for you, if you want." 

"The guy in no. 62 has been charging me ten dollars." You don't sound as angry as you should, in Eddie's opinion. 

"I'll do it for nothing." 

You beam at him. His chest feels like a bruise. 

Pretty girls don't like Eddie. Not before Chrissy, not after. He's trying to work out your angle, what it is that you want. 

Or maybe you don't know. 

As soon as you find out who he is, you'll turn your pretty nose up at him and walk the other way. He shouldn't smile at you, he definitely shouldn't fix your bike. 

He can't help it. He's so starved for positive attention that he follows you all the way through the park, westside to east. 

He checks the driveway of his own home and smiles mildly when he spots Wayne's new car. It's new in the sense that it's different. It's actually way older than the one he'd had before, the one he'd pawned to pay for Eddie's — well, Eddie's everything. His check-ups, his court dates, his goddamn bail. In the same way that this trailer isn't the trailer, but an older, smaller one as far away from their first as possible. 

Kid, if I had the money…

Wayne hadn't needed to finish. If he had the money, they'd leave. Leave Hawkins, leave Indiana. Settle down in some other mediocre Midwestern state with all the same creature comforts and none of the "You were acquitted but literally none of us believe you didn't kill someone," motif. 

All they have now is debt, each other, and the Great Munson mug collection. 

Eddie keeps his head down as they pass the old trailer. Nobody lives inside now. Only termites. 

He can taste blood by the time they reach your home. Far from the metallicity of his human blood, Eddie's blood now harbours a bitter taste. Not quite like coffee but with that same overwhelming earthiness. He pulls his teeth from the bitten flesh of his bottom lip and quickly raises a hand to his teeth, alarmed. 

No knife-like points. Normal teeth. 

"Are you thirsty?" you ask him. 

Eddie flinches and drops his hand. You've parked your bike against the wooden lifts of your porch and are halfway up the steps to your front door, hand clasped loosely on the railing. 

His heart fucking pounds. 

"I have grape juice?" 

"Right," he says hurriedly, "right. Yeah, that would be awesome." 

Duh, you meant juice. 

You send him another endearing smile and pop up the last of your steps and into the front door. It's not locked. He doesn't follow, thinking you must live with somebody (who's gonna know exactly who he is and tell him to get lost).

He turns his attention to your bike instead. It's easy enough to fix. He rolls the bike so its handlebars are resting against your concrete driveway and covers the top bar of the metal body with his sneaker to stop it from toppling. He rolls up his sleeves and bares his arms, but pulls them back down immediately when he remembers the white-purple whorls of scar tissue lurking underneath. 

"Fuck," he mutters. Everything is a reminder, all of the time. He can't escape what happened. 

It's everywhere. 

He's getting his fingers under the chain when you reappear. You've layered up, bracelets and naked arms hidden by a black hoodie. 

The wind blows and your skirt shifts. From his position he can see a ladder hiding in your tights where your inner thighs are pressed together. He whips his gaze up like a high-school perv caught sneaking peeks in the girls locker room and notices the stitching on your chest for the first time.

"You like Dio?" he asks excitedly. 

"Who?" 

He wilts. "Uh, your hoodie. Dio." 

"I got it for three dollars in the bargain bins," you supply helpfully, all pep as you climb down the stairs and offer him a glass cup adorned in dainty enamel flowers. "Is Dio good?" 

He waves his hand at the glass apologetically. "Two seconds…" Lifting the chain with the second hand, Eddie tugs and then feeds until the links are lined up with the bumps on the big chainring. The skin on his fingertips get pinched and his eyebrows pull together in pain, but it's a mild irritant at worst and after a moment the chain is back in place. 

He pulls his hand away and wipes dark grease down the front of his jacket. "I think I did it." 

You're glowing, earrings like a metronome as you ask, "That fast? You're awesome."

He turns the pedal and your back wheel spins in time with his heart. You're awesome. When was the last time somebody who wasn't Wayne said anything like that? 

Although Dustin had told him he thought Eddie was a much cooler, more fucked up version of the guy from Van Halen the other day. 

You're just saying that 'cos we're both called Eddie, Eddie had said morosely. 

Learn to take a compliment, dude. 

When they aren't pity compliments, he might. 

Eddie lifts your bike back onto the wheels to show you that it's working perfectly. You giggle your evident pleasure. "Oh, thank you, thank you!" you say, super sweet even as grape juice sloshes over the rims of your flowered glasses and drips down your fingers. 

"Here, let me," he says, taking the glasses from your purple-stained hands. 

You kiss your hands clean which is a thing, a lot to watch. Eddie admits to himself that he thinks you're really pretty, recognises that that is a bad thing to think considering the likely very short life span of your acquaintance. God knows you won't be saying anything as friendly when you find out who he is. 

"You're so nice," you say. It feels like you're talking more to yourself than him. "Thank you. It's slipped off three times this month, and ten dollars is ten dollars. Wait, do you want ten dollars?" 

"My services were administered charitably.”

Your smile grows. You accept your glass and take a small sip, eyes lit up as Eddie steers your bike one-handed to rest against the porch. 

"Do you wanna come inside? I don't have any of the Dio, but I have Blondie." 

He holds in a throwaway comment about real rock and roll, astounded that you’d ask him. "Your folks aren't home?" 

"I'm twenty-two." 

Eddie squints at you. "Seriously?" 

"You didn't think so?" 

He shrugs. It's not that you don't look twenty two. Or even that you don't act twenty two. But it's been a long time since he met somebody living alone in the park. Forest Hills is where poverty comes to settle. 

"A boyfriend?" 

"Just me and mister Porterson." 

"That your grandpa?" 

"That's my pet fish."

He smiles. It's his first real, authentic smile in days. He's genuinely elated by your offer and your attitude, but he doesn't know how to handle it, struck with a sudden nightmare of you, afterward, telling somebody you'd invited him in and he'd tried to hurt you. It isn't fair of him to assume you'd do anything like that. You've been nothing but sweet and sincere this whole time. 

Eddie hasn't let his guard down in a long time. 

You're giving him this wide-eyed, imploring look that promptly suffocates any fear. 

And in a week, when she finds out who you are and feels betrayed, feels tricked? What then, Munson?

"You know what happened?" he asks.

"What happened?" 

"Two years ago. Chrissy… Chrissy Cunningham?" 

Don't say her fucking name. 

Your expression clears as clarity blooms. You take a step. He needs a second to realise you've come forward rather than away, fingers twitching toward his hand. 

"I know about it. I'm sorry that happened to you." 

He stares. 

This is a trick. Two years and he can count the amount of people who believe him on his two hands, and only because they'd all gone through it with him. Sometimes there are outliers, logical people who seem to realise Eddie couldn't have killed all those people, couldn't have been in all those different places without leaving any evidence behind. And sometimes there are people who agree he didn't kill Chrissy, but he's a coward for leaving her to die. (She’d already been dead.)

Eddie doesn't know what he thinks. Wayne sets the record straight every now and then with a clap on the shoulder. You did what every parent wants their kid to do. You lived. I can't ask for more than that. 

"You don't believe it?" 

"That you hurt her?" You hold his gaze, face practically impassive. "No, I don't believe it." 

He pulls in a breath that fills every inch of his chest. "I could learn to like Blondie," he says. 

— 

You're standing in the driveway of Eddie's trailer with a heavy bag over your shoulder, face to face with a man who kind of looks like him but not really. You assume it's his uncle because who else could he be? If you hadn't seen him here you'd never guess. 

"Eddie's mom must've had strong genes," you say. You bring your shoulder up toward your cheek thoughtfully. "He didn't get any of your face. Was she pretty? Eddie's really pretty." 

"She was," he says, peering down his nose at you. 

"I got sandwiches. Do you want one?" 

"What kind?" 

"I have ham and cheese, or ham and lettuce and tomato, or I have pumpernickel cookies. Is Eddie a vegetarian?" 

"Why?" 

"'Cause I only brought one cheese and cucumber, and I have dibs." 

He climbs down the last couple of steps and is still taller but definitely less imposing, face covered in scratchy salt and pepper stubble and crows feet deeply embedded into the corners of his eyes. He looks like a man who has been tired for a very long time. You make a mental note to bring him some lavender for his pillow on your next visit. 

"You're Eddie's new friend?"

You nod your head briskly. "Yes, sir. I'm Y/N." 

He opens his box of camels like a pro, bottom pressed to his chest. He tucks a cigarette between his lips and pulls his lighter out. He doesn't light it. 

"It's nice to meet you," he says eventually, voice warming. 

You search through the mess of your skirt for the zipper on your bag and peel it open, pulling out your tupperware of cookies and cracking them open to release the fragrant smell of cinnamon and almonds. It's a heady scent, fitting for the holiday season approaching. 

You offer Eddie’s uncle a cookie.

"Thought pumpernickel was bread," he says gruffly, taking one. 

"It is, but there's this little town in France that makes these every year at Christmas and they call them pumpernickel biscuits," — he takes a bite and winces at the hard snap — "you're s'posed to dip them in hot chocolate." 

"You don't say." 

You nod happily and he moves aside to let you pass. 

"Thanks, kid." 

You turn back to him with your fingers curled around the door handle. "Of course! It's really nice to meet you, Mr. Munson, sir." 

"Wayne is fine." 

You laugh and repeat his name in a similarly rough voice, letting yourself in as Eddie had told you to do. You find him immediately in a man-made corner of the living room, pale and in his pyjamas. The trailer is open planned, a living room they’ve divided by propping a couch against the kitchen counter, a slim hallway leading to a cramped bathroom and the single bedroom. It's exactly like in your home. 

You're somewhat surprised to see him in pyjamas. Eddie doesn't wear comfy looking clothes out of the house — you've only ever seen him in jeans and jackets like a real rockstar. 

"Are you ready?" you ask.

You've invited him to come and search for bugs with you. Catching any kind of bug, whether beetle or butterfly or spider, is really scary, but you need to be able to catch them to draw them. 

You'd expressed this to him over the phone and he'd said, "I can come and help. I have good reflexes." 

He rubs his hands over his knees. There's a blanket pooled around his feet, a quilt he must sleep with, and the room is decorated with not a whole lot of stuff but enough to make you take a step back. 

"Is this your room?" you ask, enchanted. 

"Kind of." He pulls his hair from behind his ear, obscuring a pale cheek. "I don't think I can come with you today, I'm sorry. I meant to call you." 

You toy with a dark thigh high sock as you ease out of your shoes, height drastically decreasing. "That's okay, we can stay here. I brought you a sandwich. I brought you two sandwiches," you correct. 

He nods. Rather sadly, in your opinion. "Alright. Thanks." 

You step over a tented paperback and hand off the cookies before sitting down beside him on the couch he's occupying. It's smaller than the one against the wall and round like a clam, lots of room for your legs to stretch out. 

"I feel like a pearl," you say. 

You and Eddie have been friends for a little while now. Long enough for you to realise he's either depressed or mentally unwell in some way. You hardly mind keeping him company on his bad days if he needs somebody, so drawing bugs will have to wait. 

His hair is limp, not totally greasy but not super clean either. His face looks fresh enough, though the bags under his eyes make you frown. 

You pull your purse into your lap, thighs covered by the thin layers of your midi skirt. "I have just the thing for you," you murmur. 

"Yeah? Bring me another bracelet?" 

You like that he sounds eager. Making his bracelet had been a challenge, lots of knotting and double knotting, three restarts and one small under the breath tantrum. It's not anything special, black and white hearts seven strands wide, but he'd been very appreciative. 

"No, but I can make you another one if you want. I mastered the inverse chevron last night." 

He hums. You pull a saran wrapped sandwich from the depths of your crowded bag, glad to see it's mostly intact. When you open it up you find that it's the ham and lettuce and tomato one, so you drop it into his lap haphazardly and move onto the next. 

"Aha! Here," you pull a cucumber from your sandwich. "For you." 

He takes it between two tentative fingers. "Thank you?" 

"For your eyes." 

"There's cheese on it." 

"I'll still work," you assure him. 

"M'not putting cheese on my eyes." 

You laugh because he probably shouldn't put cheese on his eyes, cucumber adjacent or otherwise. "Okay, don't. I'll make you a hot towel." 

He drops his hand on your arm as you go to stand. You like how he touches you, soft but not scared. "You just got here. Stay here." He pats you nicely. "Tell me about work last night." 

You settle heavily into the seat beside him, your thigh to his thigh, your hip squished against his hip, doughy flesh separated by nothing more than a strappy tank top and a cotton long-sleeve t-shirt. His heat quickly becomes yours, a sinking transference of warmth. 

"Well," you begin, cheek turning into the couch to face him. "It was mostly okay. I dropped another plate, but this time it didn't have a stack of waffles on it." 

He smiles ruefully and sinks back as you had. Neither of you eat your sandwiches. "Progress. Taking it out of your pay?" 

"Yes, definitely." 

"Discrimination." 

"That's what I said! I said, Sarah, I was born with butterfingers and you know that." 

"She didn't budge?" 

"Dishwashing all week next week. Whatever, though, 'cause it's Saturday." 

He laughs and shakes his head, his gaze dropping to your neck. He does that sometimes. You can't blame him; you wear a varying assortment of necklaces because you think they're pretty, and you're glad he likes them too. 

"See my new one?" 

"What?" 

"New necklace." You look down at your chest and pull the newest addition from between the cups of your bra. "It's real silver." 

"It's nice." 

"It's surprisingly heavy. Wanna feel?" 

"That's okay," he says, slightly strained. 

Right, you think. I'm talking a lot. 

You press your lips together in a mild pout and look at him through appreciative eyes. He's a very pretty boy, all soft and pale and sweet dark curls.

"Do you want me to put your hair up?" 

His lips part before he talks. "I don't know if you should." 

"Sure I should. It's getting in your eyes, right?" You take his hand where it's laid unsuspectingly in his lap and slip the hair tie from around his wrist, his fingertips tickling the inside of your palm. "Sit forward, Eddie." 

He takes a deep breath, holds it, and sits up. You twist and then realise you need some more height, pushing a leg under yourself to kneel next to his lap. 

You weave our fingers softly into the hair at the front of his face and rake away in lieu of a brush. After it's mostly tamed you pull it all into one hand and wrap the tie at the base of his head. You hum to yourself as you go, pleased when his lovely curls behave. 

"Voilà," you announce, moving back on your haunches. 

He breathes out. "Thank you." 

You reach for a curl you'd missed at the very front and encourage it behind his ear. He has subtle indents in his cheeks today like he's in need of a good meal, and his skin is colder than it should be when you flatten your palm. 

"You need something to eat," you fret. Your fingertips stroke under his eye, your thumb his smile lines. 

He moves away slowly. 

You pull your hand back into your lap. "Maybe we can go out and get something, if you don't like the sandwich?" 

"What?" he asks, pale lips taut as he simpers at you. "Are you kidding? This is about to fix everything that's wrong with me." 

His enthusiasm emboldens you. "It so will! There's ham and cheese too, if you prefer that one." 

"Get it! I'm gonna eat both of them." S

Eddie eats both of his sandwiches and you eat your own, the two of you with your heads dropped back against the couch as you watch TV. There's a guy you've never seen before running around the streets of Chicago city centre looking for people to be in his play. Eddie's seen it before. He repeats dialogue in time with the characters, performing each line. Impressive, what with how tired he looks. 

"What did he just say?" you ask, mouth full of cucumber.

"He said he's gonna throw himself off a bridge," Eddie informs. "Poor guy. I know the feeling." 

You swallow harshly.

"Seriously?" 

Your sad tone surprises him. 

"I- No, I'm kidding," he says, scratching the base of his throat, friendship bracelet his only adornment.

His nervous itching makes you even more worried. 

"If you did wanna do that, you can talk to me-" 

He baulks, tongue poking out past his lips as he licks the corner of his mouth. "Thanks, sweetheart," he says, pet name like a kiss. It sounds silly but it really feels like one, right in the centre of your chest. "But I'm fine. Promise. It was a bad joke." 

"Okay," you say, letting your suspicion shine through. You hold his eyes. 

You haven't known Eddie long. It feels like you met yesterday, though really it's been two or three weeks. You fit together in a way you hadn't expected and adore more than you can articulate, two funny puzzle pieces.  

"Well, I just wanted you to know. I like being your friend, I don't want you to disappear."

He laughs and licks his lips, a rough, chesty sound. "I don't want you to disappear either." 

Tires crunch outside, a shushing sound and then the sharp shriek of a jeep being put into park. Eddie perks up considerably, his shoulders straightening. 

"Hey, Chief," Wayne calls. 

Trailer walls. Basically made of cardboard. 

"Hey, Wayne. Where's the kid?" 

You can't hear what Wayne says after that, words stolen by the TV. 

"Is that Chief Hopper?" you ask, trying to catch a glimpse of him through the mostly shuttered blinds. 

"Yeah, he- He's friends with Wayne." 

"Why's he wanna know where you are?" 

"'Cause I got into so much trouble." 

You bite your tongue. His tone is hard, not stern but almost, and you realise you've overstepped as you usually do. You want to apologise but you don't want to pick the wound, eager to gloss over and make him smile again. 

"It's pretty cool, isn't it?" you ask him.

"What?" 

You spread your legs wider to slide onto your thighs and make him the taller one again, legs bent in a 'W' shape. "Coming back from the dead! First Will Byers, then Hopper." 

Something surfaces in his expression. An irony. 

"The undead," you croon, aiming for a smile, a laugh. 

He cracks. "The undead," he agrees, smiling in bemusement. His eyes are a funny shade of brown. 

—

Eddie shoo’s you home early that night but tries to do it kindly. He feigns exhaustion, a facade that's difficult to uphold when his entire body is thrumming with want. If there's one thing Eddie hates about being a vampire (there are literally hundreds of things he hates, but this one's special) it's that he wants to hurt the people he likes a thousand times more than the people he doesn't. 

He can't explain it. Your blood is more appealing than any lonesome stranger's. Your pulse is practically music to his ears when you sit beside him. He'd kill himself before he ever hurt you, though. Or that's what he likes to think. Whether he has that amount of control is debatable. 

No. He would kill himself before he hurt you, or Wayne, or any of his friends. 

Steve can see the way that he's feeling on his face. 

Hopper's delivery set to one side, a tall glass with blood congealed in a sticky ring at the bottom, Eddie curls under his huge quilt and tries not to pass out. Blood sate feels the same as a thanksgiving food coma. It's awesome. 

He hates how good it feels. 

"Stop feeling guilty," Steve says. 

"He doesn't look guilty to me," Dustin says beside him, taller than the last time Eddie had seen him but still miles off of Steve's tall stature. He's changed his hat again, this one a garish green. It's not a good look. 

"He looks like he's napping," Robin says, delighted. 

"Can you guys go home?" Eddie asks. 

"Shithead." 

"What Steve means to say," Robin corrects, grinning her huge, catching smile, "is that no, we aren't going home. We brought games." 

"I don't wanna play games." He does. Eddie needs the distraction, because eventually the blood sate will fade and all that will remain will be self-revulsion and a cruel desire to do something awful. 

"I do not care even slightly," Steve says, deadpan, as he sits right there next to Eddie where you'd been sitting before. Steve's nowhere near as soft and he doesn't smell as nice, but Eddie's honestly glad someone is willing to sit next to him at all. 

"Ouch, what the fuck?" 

Dustin looks up from where he's sat himself on the floor. Robin giggles in her seat on the coffee table. 

"Munson, are you fucking shedding? I just got stabbed." 

"They don't work like that. They retract." 

Eddie feels at his broken gums with his tongue. There's a clean incision where his fangs come out and then snap back inside after a time. They're remarkably thin, fitting in front of his natural incisors neatly. 

Steve grumbles, hips lifted and hand searching under his butt for whatever it is that jabbed him. He retrieves exactly what Eddie had been expecting but hadn't had the forethought to prepare a lie about with a shocked gasp.

"Is this an earring? You don't have your ears pierced." 

He swallows, knowing it's a very guilty gesture, and meets Steve's eyes straight on. 

Funny how Steve's hair speaks as much as his expression, bobbing as he nods his head to emphasise each word, "Munson, do you have a girlfriend?" 

Silence. 

"...Not really." 

"Holy shit," Dustin says, sounding extremely pleased. "No way." 

Robin tucks her short hair behind her ears, hands paused in disbelief at her neck. "Actually?" 

"I have a friend," Eddie admits. 

"Thank god," Steve says, dropping your heart earring onto Eddie's thigh. The silver feels extremely hot over his pyjamas, like it's been held in the centre of a blistering hearth. 

"I really thought Steve was gonna have to take one for the team and give you a pity handie," Robin says agreeably, scratchy voice coloured by genuine awe. 

Eddie groans, "Harrington, get this shit off of me. You know I can't touch that." 

"I forgot," Steve lies. "Can you wait? My hands are busy." 

—

He has Steve put your earring between two pieces of kitchen towel and holds onto it. He doesn't see you for a week, and he keeps your damn earring in his pocket that entire time worried it's gonna slip out and brand him at any second. 

Finally, you call him. He pretends he wasn't waiting. 

"Hello," you say, like you're announcing something. 

"Hey. How are you?" 

"Eddie, I need your help. Badly." 

He flinches up where he'd been leaning casually, hard enough to make Wayne jump. Eddie smiles at him placatingly and mouths a poor sorry, turning away to pretend there's a semblance of privacy to be found in such close quarters. 

"Are you okay?"

"I gotta find a rainbow leaf beetle. Do you have a torch?" 

"...What?" 

"They only come out at night, so I'm gonna go look but I don't have a torch that works." 

He relaxes, the lilting cadence of your voice enough to make his whole night. You sound so pretty even through the phone. He suspects you could hold any pitch, deep or high, and you'd still sound nice. 

It's all in the way you — he says this with love — perform the words. You speak like each word you're saying has equal importance, and it's calming.

Even when you say stuff that's nonsense to him.

Right now, you don't sound upset or even worried about not having a torch, simply curious to know if he has one. If he focuses hard (and he's been trying not to, as you deserve your privacy) he can hear you all the way across the park, shifting from foot to foot in your bedroom, carpet crushed under your heels. 

The action makes him think this might be more urgent to you than you'd first admitted. 

"I have a torch." He also has amazing night vision. Like, impeccable. "Can I come help?" 

"You want to?" 

"I'd love to. Are you going out tonight?" He leans back to glance out the window. "The rain is finally stopping." 

"Yeah, tonight! Is that okay for you? We could go tomorrow if you can't." 

You're willing to change your plans now that he's asked to go with you. It's a gesture as lovely as you are. Eddie doesn't think you'd ever think it of yourself; your kindness is so intrinsic you don't notice it, like the fine stitching of a leather bound book. Integral and widely unappreciated.

"That's perfect."

Wayne raises an eyebrow when Eddie relays the conversation. "You're going out in the middle of the night with this girl to… look for bugs." 

Eddie crosses his arms over his chest. "I swear." 

"Be honest with me, kid." 

"I am!" 

Wayne swirls his coke can around in his hand as he thinks, a reluctance evident in his scowl. Eddie knows he's way too old for a guardian's oversight like this but he lets Wayne have a say because Wayne loves him, and Eddie doesn't ever want to put his old man through the turmoil he went through when he ran away. If that means a curfew in his twenties, Eddie's okay with that. 

"If you're going to have sex with this girl, I'd prefer you did it here. You have to treat women with respect."  

Eddie shivers, full body. "Wayne," he groans, covering his face. He can feel his cheeks pink under his palms, that's how quickly his embarrassment rises. 

"I know you're more responsible these days, and you're a grown up. If you want a girlfriend and you want to do adult things with her-" 

"Jesus Christ." 

"- then that's alright. You don't have to fool around outside." 

He drags his hands down on his face, pained. "It's not like that. You met her, you know she's…" 

"Strange?" 

"Alternative." 

"No, you're alternative. She's cooky." 

"Don't," he says. He knows his uncle isn't actually being cruel, so he lets it lie and fights for his own cause. "We aren't messing around. She genuinely wants me to go find these bugs with her. And…" He hates himself. "She has her own place, you know? If we were going to-" 

Wayne seems stricken by the same mortified embarrassment as Eddie, raising a calloused hand in surrender. "Spare me." 

"Thank you," Eddie says, spinning on his heel to hide in the bathroom for a while. It's only when he's sitting on the closed toilet does he realise Wayne hadn't mentioned his more dangerous ailment. For a time, he'd been a normal (debatable) person having a normal (horrifying) conversation with his dad. Not a vampire. Not somebody who ruins everything he touches. 

—

"It's so quiet," you whisper. 

For you, Eddie thinks. 

You're in the forest surrounding the aptly named Forest Hills trailer park, wielding your borrowed torch carefully into the dark. Eddie's following in your footsteps, trying not to smell everything that's on you today and failing. 

You smell like a person as everybody does. Over that is your soap, a faint hint of milk and honey that sticks to your skin even after you've washed it away. Over that is your deodorant, 'unscented', and over that is your perfume, which he likes most. It's a mix of smells, some Eddie doesn't know and some he does. There's lavender, though that might be down to the bunch you'd brought for his uncle wrapped in newspaper, and there's something fruity he can't quite put his finger on, all of it wrapped up in a cloying pairing of vanilla and coconut. 

"Eddie?" 

"What?" 

"Are you okay? You're almost as quiet as the trees." 

If only you knew the trees aren't quiet. 

"I'm alright," he says quickly, catching up to you where you stand a few feet ahead. "What are we looking for?" 

Best change the subject. How to explain he'd been smelling the notes of your perfume? 

"They rest on tree trunks. You have to be careful, any sudden sound or light will scare them away. But if you flash the torch on them, they shine like oil stains." 

He loves when you talk. "Where'd they come from?" 

"Place called Snowdon. They're so rare, they think there's only about a thousand alive there." 

"Well, how did they get here?" 

You laugh under your breath, so quiet he would've missed it if he wasn't enhanced. "I don't know. How do beetles get to different places?" 

"They fly?" 

A twig crunches under your shoe. 

Eddie tips his head to the side, thinking. "If there's only a thousand, how-" He stops, your circle of torch light growing further and further away. "Are you sure that they live here?" 

"No, but if they do we'll be the first to find them." 

"So they've never found any out here? In- In the midwest?" 

"Not yet. Where'd you go?" 

He shakes his head in an affectionate disbelief. "Right behind you." 

You search in silence for a while. Eddie wishes he could say he was mad, or even mildly annoyed, wishes he had even the slightest regard for his own time, but really he thinks any time with you is time well spent. Especially if it's helping you do something you want to do. Whether you find your rainbow leaf beetle or not, he feels better knowing he's out here with you to keep you safe and in company. 

Conversation is sparing. He doesn't mind. Your footsteps fill the sound and he finds even that stupid detail charming, the crunch, the pick up. His own are silent, a rare advantage to his terrible affliction. 

"Any other beetles you want me to keep an eye out for?" he whispers. 

"I'm not sure…" You turn to face him, torch pointed at your shoes. Rubber toes touched together, you lean in until you're all he can smell. Perfume. Blood. "If you see any cool spiders, too." 

"You have the mason jar?"

"You know I do." 

More than you realise, he thinks. The glass clicks in your bag. 

There's enough light reflected to see the most minute details of your face. Your nose, the circle of your irises but not their colour. He suspects Eddie from early '86 wouldn't have been able to see hide nor hair, and it wouldn't shock him if you were technically blind right now.

"Thanks for coming out with me. I was gonna ask you." 

"Yeah?" 

"Yeah, but I didn't want to come on too strong." He can sense your smile even though he can't see it. It's in the way your breathing deepens. "I know I can be a lot to deal with." 

"Who told you that?" 

"What?" 

Eddie doubles down.. "Who told you that?" he sounds heartbroken. 

He kind of is. Yeah, you're weird — Who cares? Who isn't? — but you're not a lot to deal with. He doesn't 'deal' with you.

"Everybody tells me that. All the time." 

"Everybody's stupid." To say it so loudly, scathingly, is sweet. It's therapeutic. "They are. This whole town is stupid." 

Your fingertips touch his thigh. He's willing you to turn the torch up and see his face, because he has a lot of feelings on display that he isn't brave enough to say out loud. 

"You never make me feel stupid," you say softly. 

"You're not." 

You giggle breathily at his vehemence, fingertips pressing in with a touch more pressure before you pull away and shine the torch deep into the trees. 

"This whole town is stupid," you mumble. "But not you." 

He thinks of his friends who are definitely stupid, but he loves anyways. He's about to add them to the not-stupid (subjectively) list when he remembers Steve's discovery: your earring burning a hole in his pocket. He'd been carrying it for long enough now to forget all about it. 

"Hey, I have something for you." 

"You do?" 

"Don't get too excited. It's not a gift." 

He digs in his pocket for the tissue paper wrapping and hisses in shock as the silver plating of your hoop graces his index finger. You shine the torch at him. His eyes ache like he's been stabbed and he slams them closed, hand pulled to his chest. 

How embarrassing. 

"Eddie, what happened?" you question loudly.

He winces at the sudden overstimulation. Slowly, he blinks, and finds you staring at him in a worry that softens every feature, even your nose. He doesn't know the logistics. 

"It's okay. Stabbed a paper cut on the back. Your earring's in my pocket, the heart?" 

"The hoop? I thought I lost it." Your worry turns to confusion and then melds into joy. You step forward and fish in his jacket pocket for your earring. 

"Steve found it." 

"'The hair'?" 

"Yeah, the hair." 

You both laugh and yours heightens when you find the earring, pulling it out like a knife to be brandished. "Yes." 

"I meant to tell you a dozen times that I had it." 

"You're the best." 

There's a crunch of wood somewhere to the left like something heavy falling over.

The forest sprawls in every direction and the trees tower, their presence looming as skyscrapers. The wind ruffles the topmost branches and their trunks groan with pressure. It's enough to freak Eddie out super sense or not, feeling suddenly like he couldn't protect you. He could hear the individual droplets of drool dripping from a lynx's bloody maw, and he can sense each twig underfoot before he takes his next step, but none of that is going to keep you safe in the face of real danger. 

"Maybe we should head back," he says tentatively.

"Okay. Do you want to come over?" 

His breath catches. "You want me to?" 

"Yeah, we can watch movies, I have leftover pasta." 

That sounds more like what he should've been thinking. "I don't wanna keep you up." 

"What kind of pasta?" he asks. 

The torch flickers. "With the tiny tomatoes. You'll like it, super creamy." 

"How do you know?" 

"You like Alfredo," you say astutely, hitting the torch into the palm of your hand. It flashes weakly, the shadow of the trees flickering and so dark they're violet. 

"Try tightening the handle." 

You turn the barrel of the torch and the light switches off completely. You try to undo what you've done to no success, the sound of plastic rubbing plastic almost as loud as your heartbeat. Your pulse falters and then grows to racing when the light fails to come back on. 

"Eddie," you say, sounding unsure. It's a new sound on you. "I don't know where we are. How are we gonna get home?" 

Your admission is like a dousing of ice water over his head. "You don't know what direction we came from?" 

"No, do you?" 

Eddie wouldn't know if he couldn't hear the sound of the electricity pylon buzzing somewhere to the right. But how can he explain that? "Uh, we were turned around."

You creep to his side and grab his arm with both hands. "Are you sure?" 

"Hey," he says gently. "Hey, it's okay. I know where we are. We'll be fine." 

"Are you sure?" you ask again. 

"I'm positive." 

You take a deep breath that doesn't erase your shakiness, a failed attempt at self-soothing. "I really don't know where we are." 

"You're not afraid of the dark, are you?" 

"Not really… I don't wanna get lost out here." 

"You won't. I know how to get back. C'mon," he prompts, pulling his arm to encourage you forward. 

You let go of him and navigate a few steps by yourself. He weaves through the trees, waiting for your heartbeat to slow. 

It doesn't. He opens his mouth to reassure you again when you gasp, kicking your foot against a root and tripping. You barely fall, catching yourself on the trunk of a tree, and Eddie remembers himself. You can't see the trees. That's why you're worried. You can't see anything. 

Then the smell of blood hits him like a freight train. 

—

Your hand stings where you caught yourself, palm scraped down against harsh bark. 

"Shit," you mumble. 

You're panicking badly, and you're confused as to why Eddie isn't. Not only was it fucking stupid of you to come out here with only one torch, it was stupid of you to assume you'd remember what way was home. It was stupid of you to come here tonight for that stupid beetle, and stupid of you to drag Eddie along. You're an idiot, and now you're bleeding. 

Your eyes sting with tears, pain like a popped seal. I'm so stupid. 

"Hey," Eddie says, his tone silky soft, "you're okay. Let me help you up." 

You hold your hands out. 

"Eddie, this is weird." Hopefully he understands that weird means scary.

He takes your hands, fingers closing slowly over your bloody palm. His breath is loud as he pulls you up toward him like he's panicked but his grip stays kind, and you abandon the notion when he rubs over your knuckles with his thumb. "It's alright." 

He doesn't sound the same. 

"Eddie, we can't see." 

"We'll go slowly, okay? I'll put my hand out and we'll walk around anything that gets in the way." 

"Yeah," you say hurriedly, heart bump-bump-bumping against your ribcage. 

He keeps one hand, the injured one, and starts to drag you slowly through the trees. His grip tightens as you go until it starts to ache, until it feels like it might bruise. 

"Ouch, Eds. You're hurting me," you say, going for a lightly teasing tone and missing the mark. 

Instantly, he eases off. "Sorry, sweetheart. You hold onto me, alright?" 

You do as he'd asked, hand clinging to him as he leads. He doesn't squeeze you again, walking slowly as he'd promised, and the closer you get to the edge of the forest the clearer it becomes. Light pollution from the centre of town leaches through the trees like water trickling from an overflowing basin. 

His second hand is in his pocket. 

"Here," he says after you've traversed to the very edge of the forest. "There's the park. We're bona fide explorers." 

He looks out toward the park and you look at the side of his face. Something isn't right. Something uncanny. 

You drop your gaze from his face to your joined hands. They come apart, blood smeared in both your palms like two halves of a dripping heart. 

— 

There is something weird about Eddie. As a residential freak of Hawkins you think you're an authority in this, and you don't feel guilty for judging him. Your brain can't stop going over your night in the forest. For days you play the scenes back and for days you lose the details. You forget how the wind had tousled his hair, how he'd smelled, what he'd said. 

You remember the way he'd squeezed your bloody hand. You remember the way he'd spoken, strained. 

Not strained like he didn't want to comfort you, he had, but strained. 

Restrained. 

You're poking at the shallow cut half-healed now in your palm at work when a dude walks in, very tall, handsome, and gunning straight for you. 

You straighten your badge and hide your bracelet heavy wrists behind your back, receding slightly as he approaches. He slows in front of you. 

You have a light bulb moment. 

"The hair," you say.

He scowls. "He told you that, huh. Typical." 

"You're Steve?" 

"That's me." Steve crosses his arms across his chest, his back to a booth, your back to the diner bar. "You're Eddie's new friend." 

"What counts as new?" A month and a half doesn't feel so new to you. 

"Trust me, you're new." 

He has the strangest patch covering the outside of his left wrist, the same peculiar scarring that you can see on Eddie's waist when he reaches for a glass out of the kitchen cabinet. You don't ask because you're not a dick no matter how curious you find yourself, but it makes your heart skip. What is that? You'd assumed Eddie's was road rash. Now you're not so sure. 

He tucks it under his arm. 

You meet his suspicious gaze. 

"You want coffee?" 

"No." 

You kick your foot, shoe sliding over the shiny waxed floor with a squeal. "Is Eddie okay?"

"Did you want to come to a party next Friday?" 

"No," you say honestly. "Like a cult?" 

"What?" 

"Are you initiating me into your cult?" 

He finally smiles, eyes creased with amusement. "I'm inviting you to our club." 

"Club where you chew on each other?" 

You look pointedly at Steve's wrist. 

"No. Club where we play board games and drink jiffy pop. Come or don't, doesn't matter." 

"If it doesn't matter, why are you asking me?" 

It's a strangely intense conversation to have this early in the morning. Patrons chatter about work, coffee gets poured. The diner smells of syrup and sugar and bitter cold-press. You're both in work apparel, both refusing to move back. If this is some kind of shovel talk then that's fine, and if it's a test you're determined to pass, even if Eddie's been super weird lately. 

"I'll come if you promise not to eat me," you say. 

"It's really not that kind of club." 

—

"I had the weirdest visit in the entire world today," you declare, stopping in front of Eddie's porch with a smile. 

"Yeah?" he asks without looking up, guitar in his lap and pen scribbling over a lined notebook.

You wait for him to stop before you continue, leaning forward with both arms braced on the porch by his feet. "Steve Harrington came to see me, and he was super mean. You said he was nice." 

He frowns at you. "I told you he was a dick." 

"You like him when you tell me stories." 

"How mean?" Eddie asks, patting the seat beside him. 

You climb up onto the porch and plop down onto the couch, worn leather cold with the weather and damp in the seams. 

You take a strand of his hair and curl it around your finger. "Not really super mean, but he was, like, acting like I killed a baby." 

"He's like that." 

You sigh and lean your cheek against the couch cushion, watching Eddie's stubble move as he tamps down a teasing smile. "He invited me to a party next weekr." 

"It's not a party- Sweetheart, what are you doing?" 

You tickle his cheek with the end of his hair. "Nothing." 

"M'gonna sneeze." 

You tickle him again, fine dark strands brushing over his pale cheek. He's a very ashen guy, you've found. Likely because he barely goes out in the sun and he doesn't eat enough. You draw circles around the apple of his cheek and grin softly at his growing smile, a sweet, silly thing. 

"I'll tickle you back," he warns. 

"Promise?" 

He steals the curl back and tucks it behind his ear. 

"You're not a cannibal, are you?" 

Eddie chokes on air. You startle at his coughing and move to pat his back, palm slapping a steady rhythm into his shoulder. When he calms down you run your hand down the length of his arm, long sleeve t-shirt soft beneath your touch. You linger at his wrist and decide to hold it. 

He drops his pen and your hand travels until he's caught your thumb. He kneads it in his fingers.

"I'm not a cannibal. Why would you think that?" 

"I don't, but you and Steve are in your club, right?" 

"Hellfire wasn't like that," he says heatedly.

"No, not- Not that one." 

He doesn't say anything. 

"You have… He has this scar, on his wrist. Like something bit him, or-" He turns to you and he looks formidable and upset and himself, not mad at you but raw emotion in his expression anyhow. It's gone as quick as it came. 

"When all that… stuff happened," he begins quietly, "we got hurt. A couple of us." 

You drop your head, ashamed at having pried.  "I'm sorry, you don't have to tell me anything else."

"Don't be sorry…" He squeezes your hand and lets it go. "Don't worry about it." 

"Okay." 

"We usually call ourselves a party, these days. Not a club." 

"Do you really play board games and drink jiffy pop?" 

"Sometimes we get really crazy and order a pizza. You should come." 

You realise as he says it how much his wanting you to go had mattered to you. Eddie's your friend, and you don't think that you're going to stay friends much longer.

"You think your friends will like me?" you ask, voice descending to a new kind of gentle. 

He puts down his guitar and his notebook. His full attention is something you've come to really enjoy, not because of the hunger you often see flitting across his face — though that's neat —, but because of the inklings of adoration clinging to his smile when he looks at you. His blinking lashes. He smiles at you and just slows. A usually frenetic boy calmed. 

"Maybe not Mike. Mike doesn't like anybody. Except for Will," he muses.

"What about you?" 

"What about me?" 

"Who do you like?" 

"I like all of them." He juts his cheek toward his shoulder, conceding, " I think Dustin's my favourite. He's funny. He's funnier than I am, and he's the smartest kid I've ever met. And he knows it." 

Your eyes focus on the pink outline of his upper lip as he speaks. It's a pleasure to be this close, and see him in this kind of crazy detail. When you go home tonight you might try to draw him. You'll probably forget.

It's the kind of smile that deserves to be immortalised. 

"I really like your smile," you tell him, hoping it'll last a little longer. 

It stretches. The pink outline turns white. "Shut up." 

"I do. I've seen a thousand different smiles but I've never met someone who smiles like you do." 

"How's that?" he asks, edging toward you, face a mirror in which you can see your own charmed expression. 

"Like you," — you shake your head with your lips parted — "know a secret. Something you won't tell anybody." 

His smile abruptly ends. 

You've nothing if not a talent for saying the wrong thing. 

"A good secret," you amend. 

He picks up his acoustic and gives it an experimental strum. "Maybe one or two," he agrees. 

Relief catches you. You nibble at the inside of your lip and watch his fingers work over the neck of his guitar, tipping your head so you can read the words he's markered over the body. 

"This machine slays dragons," you murmur to yourself. "Yeah? How many?" 

"Just the one." 

"Save any princesses?" 

"Not yet." He plucks at the strings, lost in thought, before turning to you with eyebrows raised. "Can you play?" 

You exhale out of the corner of your mouth as he pushes the guitar into your lap, an arm coming around your shoulder, the other reaching to guide your curled forefinger to the strings. You turn to face him, watching him talk with a growing fondness. 

"It's easy, I swear. We'll do Call Me. Blondie's basic, even a baby could play it." 

He realises you aren't listening and raises his gaze, shiny brown irises stuck on your lips. This close, it would be worse if he didn't look at them. 

You glance at his, an obvious thing, half a wish. If he only lifted his chin. 

Your breath mingles. 

"It's easy," he says again, a murmur of his usual volume as his gaze pulls back up to yours. "I'll show you." 

You wonder if he can hear your heart pounding; it's deafening. You wait, and you wait, and you turn your eyes back to his guitar and clamp your fingers down against the struts so he can't see them shaking with adrenaline. 

—

Eddie sits beside Steve and tries not to admit to himself that Steve Harrington is, horrifyingly, his best friend (along with the rest of the party, obviously). Steve is the closest in age and Eddie can't make excuses (though he tries and tries and tries), Steve understands how much Eddie doesn't ever want to talk about anything that's happened to them, so he talks about literally everything else instead. 

"It was the weirdest pawn shop I've ever been in. They had, like, a wall of combi's playing the same video at the same time but all slightly delayed." 

Eddie blinks. 

Steve turns his head from the TV, having expected a response. "Did you say something?" 

"No." Then, because he's not a dick. "Sorry, Harrington. Want me to sit on your other side?" 

"What for?" Steve says. Not because he denies how he's hard of hearing, but because he denies having conversations with Eddie. 

He does end up moving to Steve's other side with a pathetic excuse. "I can't see the TV." 

Steve doesn't say a word until he's sat down again. "Sorry I was mean to your girlfriend." 

"Yeah, what was that about?" 

"I was cranky because it was early and I don't want her to damage the integrity of the party." He gives equal weight to both reasons. 

Eddie snorts at him. "Since when do you care about the integrity of the party?" Steve barely acknowledges that they are a party. He thinks that's a very nerdy way to say friends. 

"Since always, dipshit." 

"And inviting her to join the party was the solution because…?" 

Steve drinks the rest of his coke and pretends to really care about what's on TV. "If," he begins after a minute, refusing to look at Eddie, "something happens with her, and something happens to you, that damages the integrity of the party." 

"Steve," Eddie says, jaw dropped down to his chest, "do you have a crush on me?" 

"Oh my god," Steve mutters. "Oh my god," he says louder. "I can't stand you." 

To prove his point, he gets up from the couch with a wrinkled nose, stops to tap his shoe gently against Max's where she's sitting in the armchair across from the coffee table, and disappears into his kitchen. 

Steve Harrington cares about me enough to give Y/N the shovel talk. 

He feels kind of great about it. 

But he's not sure your the one who needs warning. 

That night in the forest, Eddie had almost snapped. There are rules to follow if he wants to keep people safe, self-imposed, Hopper-imposed, and he's broken too many with you already, the most important being no close proximity when he's hungry. Eddie doesn't even realise he is hungry half the time. He'll be standing by you and he'll want to touch you, and suddenly it's like he's three weeks in to the month without sating. 

He thinks about kissing you and suddenly he's thinking about biting you, and hurting you, and it's literally tearing him up from the inside out. 

How can he want to do that to you? 

"You look so depressed and pathetic," Dustin says out of the blue. 

Eddie pouts and falls back into the couch, Steve's fancy throw falling onto his shoulder. "I used to like you," he says, taking in Dustin's outfit with a kind of parental approval. He's getting older and it shows, slightly more handsome than he had been — he's kept all his baby weight and it suits him, his full cheeks surrounded by the softest brown curls Eddie has ever seen. The outfit stays immature, a funny t-shirt and ill-fitting pants. 

"Sad. You have a sad face," Dustin says. 

"Go play with your nerd squad, please." 

He doesn't listen, collapsing in Steve's still-warm seat like a cheap tent and crossing longer, thicker arms over his chest. He smiles at Eddie genuinely. "Where's your girlfriend?" 

"No." 

"Where's Y/N?" 

Eddie tips his head so he can see past the coffee table and points to where you're almost hidden, sitting with Robin on the floor by Steve's sideboard. You have a basket of tapes in front of you, the two of you trying to choose what's going in the stereo. Eddie prays for anything but Blondie. 

You will most likely choose Blondie. 

"What does she like?" Dustin asks curiously. 

"Everything, kind of. Why?" 

"I wanna know what to say when I talk to her." 

Eddie smiles at his friend's face, a soft, surprised thing. "I don't know if she knows anything about the radio but if you're happy about it she'll be happy too. She's a good listener."

Dustin picks at a piece of lint on his t-shirt bearing a white and black print of a dog wearing sunglasses. "So you talk to her?" he asks without looking up. 

"I mean, yeah. What else do you do?" 

"With a girl that likes you? Huh, let me think." Dustin laughs and ruins his own sarcasm, pointer finger laid against his chin in a show of thoughtfulness. 

"It's not like that," Eddie says lightly. 

"It could be." 

"Could it? I mean… I don't even know if she'll stick around. And I feel bad 'cos I can't be honest with her." 

"Why not?" 

"Hopper said he would literally put me in the hole if I even thought about it." There's no need to expand. Dustin would know better than anyone what he's talking about. 

He cringes at the thought, self hatred a hot poker down his throat. He must've said it to Dustin a hundred times when he finally came around from his coma (that wasn't a coma, but a death, and then a rebirth). I can't believe I put you through that. I can't believe I put you through that. I'm so sorry. 

I'm just glad you're alive, Eddie. 

And for a while, Eddie hadn't felt the same. The world he'd woken up to was hard. There had been lawyers and grief and guilt and becoming. He doesn't have the words to describe how it feels to become something new, something that needs to hurt people to live, something that will hurt people to live, whether Eddie wants to or not. 

The loss of choice is suffocating. 

Though moments like this with his friends– they don't make it 'worth it', they're just how it had to happen. There isn't a scenario where Eddie could give up. He can't leave Wayne, and he can't leave Dustin. He can live with the grief of what he is if it means other people don't have to live with grief of what he isn't. 

"Eddie, are you okay?" 

He's missed something. Dustin isn't the only one looking at him. 

He curls a hand around his forearm subconsciously. "I'm fine. I think I'm gonna go to the bathroom, actually. Gotta piss real bad." 

"Eddie-" 

"I'm fine, Henderson." He puts on a good show, patting Dustin's arm. His heart, usually so slow these days, has enough life in it to ache. 

He can't have been in the bathroom for five minutes when somebody knocks on the door aggressively. He's expecting Steve, pissed at his disappearance and likely preparing a speech on attention seeking behaviours and how they're hurting the youth of America, so he opens the door with a tired glare. 

He finds you, beaming and pretty, dressed ridiculously nicely for his idiot friends. 

"Hi," you say. He can hear something from Blondie's Parallel Lines playing from the living room, familiar because it's your favourite album. "Any room for me?" 

Eddie moves back. You close the door behind you. The bathroom becomes a vacuum of your sounds and smells. 

"They didn't have any Dio," you say with a smile. 

"I honestly wouldn't expect any different." 

"You could've brought some tapes, your mix from the van," you suggest. "I love that one." 

"Which one?" he asks, and he can't help it, whenever he's with you his voice crops to a dulcet murmur. The urge to speak to you as you speak to him is unconquerable. 

"One with the winking smile on the slipcase. I really like it." 

"You can have it." 

You lean against the sink. "I can?" 

"Mm. Whatever you want." Especially when you look like this. 

You smile at him, your 'thank you' smile, all sticky fondness and mischievousness. He has no idea what you're thinking. 

"'S a small bathroom in a huge house," you marvel. Your voice echoes "Where does he shower?" 

"There's an upstairs bathroom." 

"Two bathrooms? That's-" 

"Audacious?" 

"I was gonna say overkill." 

Your candidness has him shaking with laughter. He clutches at his sides, arms crossed and leaning forward. You visibly take in his appearance, eyes panning slowly over his clean hair. He'd taken care to look like somebody you might want to look at tonight. 

"Why don't you sit down, Eds?" you ask, eyes creased with an unreadable emotion. 

Eddie feels blindly for the toilet lid and pushes it down so he can do as you ask, wondering why you're asking.

"You look very handsome today." 

He hugs himself. "As opposed to every other day, when I don't?" 

You take a step forward, a second, hands playing with the hem of your shirt. Your outfit today is delightfully simple, a pressed black t-shirt long enough to cover the waistband of your pleated skirt. There's an expanse of thigh that makes his heart beat spin out, one longer than the other where your thigh-high is falling down.

He wants to pull it up. 

"C'mere," he says. 

You take that last step between his shoes and he reaches out, getting his fingertips under the elastic of your sock and tugging it upward over the soft fat of your leg. Your hands come up to his shoulders for balance, and you say, "No, you look handsome every day. Today you look very handsome. I made the distinction." 

He covers your thigh with both hands, looking up into your face as you look down. "You look really pretty today," he says boldly, fingers spreading behind your knee. 

"Thank you. Do you like my t-shirt?" 

It's a screen print of Debbie Harry. Eddie tries not to roll his eyes. "I love it, but your dedication to Blondie is seriously worrying, sweetheart." He gives your leg a short squeeze and pulls the most giggly smile out of you yet. 

"Like Madonna." 

"No!" he bemoans. 

You laugh and grow closer, arms on his shoulder, a hand threaded into his hair. "Cyndi Lauper?" you suggest. 

He puts a hand on your waist as you move in for a hug. Your arms wrap around his neck and the tops of his shoulders, cheek crushed to the top of his head. 

He'd ask if you were okay if he thought you weren't. You're not upset or seeking comfort. You're affectionate. You've been getting more and more touchy for weeks, as he has. Stolen touches, your almost-kiss on the porch last week. 

"No, not Cyndi Lauper," he says, his hand skirting around your back to pull you in properly. 

"R.E.M?" 

"God, no. Where are you hearing all this junk?" 

"The radio." 

"Tuned into the wrong station." 

You pet the back of his head. "Yeah," you say softly, "I think I was." 

The hug is shorter than Eddie wants it to be. You make one of your happy sounds and pull away to get your hands on his face, stroking curls from his cheeks with a protective touch. "Handsome," you say, turning your hand to stroke his cheek with your knuckles. "Pretty. You have really big eyes, Eddie, so brown, and so…" You tilt your head to one side, face inching forward. 

He turns his face to suit, to fit, breath held as you close the gap. 

"So pretty," you murmur, and kiss him. 

His hands are limp and then alive, one clutching your hip, one splaying against your chest. He can hear the thud of your heart clear as day — you're bumping with excitement as you kiss him. It's a delicate, tender thing, the party suddenly far away, the music drowned by the sounds of your breathing. You kiss as you talk, as you move, gentle but with bursts of ardency. Your lips are a blissful heat, the tip of your nose smushing into his as you part your lips over his. 

He lifts his chin higher, his neck craned to receive you. He's savouring every movement. Each pause for breath that you take. The feeling of your inhales over his quick-bruising lips. 

Your hands play in his hair so sweetly it makes his eyes burn with an embarrassing amount of emotion. He screws them closed and squeezes up your waist, steadying himself as you feel along his bottom lip with the tip of your tongue. 

You don't get much further than that, seemingly pleased with your own brazeness or perhaps his touch, eyes glowing with mirth as you pull away. 

"Sorry," you breathe, not sorry at all. "You just really looked like someone should be kissing you."

You're flushed. Eddie can practically see the heat emanating off of your cheeks. He can feel it. 

He stands up, your pulse a ringing in his ears. The wet valves of your heart opening and closing. 

"Eddie?" you ask quietly, lifting your head to meet his eyes as he walks you back into the door. 

His gums sting. A click. 

It's a compulsion. 

His hands curl around your elbows, holding you in place. Your eyes are wide with confusion, your lightly swollen lips parted. He can see the tiniest slip of your pink tongue. 

He holds your gaze as he leans in. Your eyelids flutter closed. You wrap your arms around him as he descends, totally trusting. 

He's a meaner kiss than you are. He starts slow but swiftly loses a handle on it, kisses short but insistent, hot presses like little crescent moons against your barely open mouth. 

His hands move up your arms, a near vice-like grip until he finds your sleeves. His fingers slip underneath, hands hungry for your warmth. 

You make the worst sound anyone has ever made as he moves back, like something has been ripped from you. A gutted gasp, near silent. 

He placates as he wades back in. Thumbs rubbing your arms, lips mouthing damp kisses down your face. The corner of your pout, the hill of your chin, the skin under your jaw. Your head tips back against the door with an audible thud. You exhale hard. 

Eddie can't feel his hands. 

Your pulse hammers under his lips. He kisses it once. He can't think. He can't breathe. 

"You're always cold," you whisper, your hands drifting lazily under the fabric of his t-shirt. Your fingertips trail up his spine. "But your lips are warm." 

He kisses your neck, his lips parting slowly, a hair's width a second as he sucks your skin into his mouth gently. It's barely a kiss. He does it a second time. A third. You start to laugh, a golden sound. 

The point of his fangs touch your skin and you stop. 

Eddie closes his mouth abruptly. His hand leaps to your neck and he feels your heart skip as he holds you still. "I'm sorry," he says, nose rubbing over the damp spot he's left behind, your teased skin. 

Your heart hikes again. 

"I'm sorry," he repeats. He pulls away, an agony. 

"It's okay," you say. Your breathlessness says otherwise.

Eddie takes as many deep breaths as he can stand, wanting to clear his head and filling it with you instead. Your everything; your smell, your skin. Your limp hands against his back. 

"I didn't hurt you, did I?" he asks when he gets a look at you, your unreadable expression. He takes care to keep his head angled down so you can't see the lower half of his face. 

"I don't think you could." 

You cup his cheek in your hand and he leans into it, his weight against yours.

"I wanted to tell you something," you confess. 

"What-" He licks his lips, wincing when his fangs slide into his tongue and scrape grooves across his taste buds. "What was that?" 

"I know you…" You pause, fingertips rubbing at his cheek.

Does she know? Eddie thinks, horrified. He hadn't realised how scary waiting could be. A thousand worries condensed into a handful of seconds. Does she know?

How could she not?

You press your palm to his cheek with more insistence. "I don't want you to think you have to hide anything from me. I know you have scars," you say, fingers sliding into the soft baby hair at the back of his neck. "You don't have to cover up. You don't have to cover any of it." 

"I won't hurt you," he says, trying to convince himself. 

"I know." 

-

You stay a while longer. Eddie's friends pretend that you hadn't been alone in the bathroom for an inordinate amount of time together. You thank them all silently and less so, trying to talk to as many of them as you can. 

There's Lucas, who's really, really nice, and his girlfriend Max, who's less so. She gives you an unimpressed look through her thick-lensed glasses, but you compliment her crutches and she comes around. 

There's Mike, who actually isn't anywhere as bad as Eddie had described him. He's not frosty or standoffish, he's sweet and he asks questions. There's a girl with him that you don't catch the name of, and a boy on her other side. 

There's Dustin, who you adore immediately, Robin, who you adore more, and then there's Steve. 

Steve offers you a pretzel like you're more than familiar. He strolls right up to you with a bowl of them in hand and doesn't leave until you've eaten half of them. 

There's a couple of people you don't manage to talk to at all, and you feel guilty about it all the way home. 

"What if they think I'm rude?" you ask, tired eyes locking onto the stereo system. The time blinks analog in the dark, 12:59AM. 

"They don't, don't worry about it. You have lots of time to get to know them, anyway." 

You hum and turn to his face, indulgent because you know he can't look back. "You're not too tired to drive, are you?" He's spent. Yesterday had been one of his bad days. 

"I'm fine." 

"You say that all the time," you observe, dropping your cheek into the passenger seat's headrest. 

"I'm fine all the time." 

"Liar." 

"Nuisance." 

You huff a laugh through your nose. The strands of his friendship bracelet, the small beads at the ends, swing like pendulums in the gap between his arm and the steering wheel. You can see the rough skin of a scar creeping out from under his sleeve. 

"Mike was really nice," you say. 

"He has a bleeding heart." 

That feels accurate. "He reminds me of you." 

Eddie rolls his eyes. You feel for every detail, the strange tension between you like a gaussian filter over everything. He's gorgeous in a horrific way, heartbreakingly pale, eyes dark as pitch, hands restless. They squeeze alone the wheel, thick fingers curling tight until his knuckles are stark white. Running down the back of his hands are veins like rivers. They're more purple than green. 

"Eddie," you say, playful, a tiny bit insecure. 

"What?" 

"Wanna stay the night?" 

His hand moves forward on the wheel like he's revving a motorcycle, the tendon in his wrist rising to the surface. He clenches. "Not sure it's a good idea." 

"Just to sleep. It's late." 

"I don't know if I can sleep next to you." 

You don't wanna say please. You don't want to ask Eddie to do anything he can't or doesn't wanna do. 

He pulls up outside of your house with his mind already made up. He gets out of the car and you follow his lead. He locks it, shoves the keys in his pocket as you join him on the path up to your porch. 

He's been in here enough times to know what it looks like, but for some reason you find yourself checking his face, worried about what it is he thinks of your things, all your mismatched trinkets, your stained glass lamps, your life as you let yourselves in. He ducks through the beeded curtain into your bedroom wary that they'll get tangled in his hair like they sometimes do. 

"Do you wanna call Wayne?" you ask, gesturing to your telephone on the right hand side, nestled between a stack of books and a cup full of coloured pencils. 

You pull your knee up to your chest and unlace your shoes one at a time. Eddie punches the number into the phone and holds the receiver to his shoulder to do as you're doing. It takes him less time to pop his sneakers off than for you to get out of yours. He's just taken the phone back into his hand when Wayne picks up. 

"Wayne?" he asks softly. "Didn't wake you up, did I?" 

You can't hear his response. 

"I'm gonna stay with Y/N tonight. Yeah, we had a good time. Yeah…" His eyes drift to you as you peel out of your thigh highs.

"Yeah, I'm still here. What?" He meets your eyes and it feels accidental, because he throws his eyes to your bedsheets and turns his face to the wall. "No," he says firmly. 

You scrape together something to wear for bed and some fresh underwear and leave for the bathroom, telling yourself that nothing is gonna happen so don't get your hopes up but not wanting to get caught out if it does. You freshen up, brushing your teeth and washing your face.

You stare at yourself in the mirror and wonder if you should've left your face-powder and your mascara on. Maybe even the skirt. You'd looked nice and pretty for the party. Now you look like yourself, still pretty but without those extra touches. Will he care? Does it matter? 

You debate your pyjama pants considerably. 

There's a lot happening. 

Eddie is… Eddie is something else. He's different, you'd known that for a long time, and his kiss had confirmed it. 

He's something out of a science fiction book. 

Well, nobody's perfect. 

Whatever he is, he'd kissed you. You'd kissed him and he'd responded, he'd come back for more, and now he's sitting in your bed when he could've gone home. You bring your hand to your neck and crane to one side, fingertips poking at your unbroken skin. His hickey's haven't even bruised. 

You screw the pants up and drop them into your laundry basket. You take off every piece of jewellery on your person. 

"Do you wanna use the bathroom?" you ask from behind the beaded curtain. "I left a new toothbrush for you on the sink." 

"Yeah, desperately, I…" He takes you in as you emerge. Fresh-faced, bare-legged. As naked as you've ever been in front of him, physically and otherwise. 

Eddie meets you where you're standing. He's ditched his jacket, and for the first time since you met him you can see the full length of his arms.

"You're not wearing your bracelets," he says, looking between your bodies. His hand twitches toward yours. 

"You have tattoos," you say. 

"They were better, before." 

There's a misshapen mess of black splodges near the crook of his elbow broken up by scar tissue. One arm is less scarred than the other, an almost perfect flank of white skin. 

"Is that a puppet? He's super spooky." 

"Mh-hm." 

You bring your hand to his tattoo and feel over the skin. It doesn't feel like it's there. Eddie holds your wrist and the two of you move together, your fingertips stroking up until you're wrapped around his bicep. 

Eddie brings his free hand to your collar. His index finger straightens, encouraging your chin up so he can ease forward and kiss you. He's firm, eager, and your lips curl up into a smile underneath it. He turns his head to the right and you fall left, smile worsened when you feel his own start to form. 

He nudges your nose. You take it for a telling off and laugh. "Sorry," you apologise, kissing his top lip. 

"You're making this difficult," he chides. 

Despite any sternness, Eddie loosens his grip on your wrists to slide his fingers between yours, pressing your joined hands to your chest. He leans back down and he's careful, almost methodical in the way he kisses. Chaste pecks, hot and precious as tiny stars. 

You reach for his waist. 

Eddie kisses you a final time and steps back. "I'll be back," he promises. 

You lower your chin, flustered and perplexed by his sudden departure.

Walking around to the right side of the bed, you click on your bedside lamp — a beautiful glass and foiled contraption that throws dainty stripes of stars and hearts over everything close in the dark — before climbing in. You sniff one of your pillows experimentally, trying to remember when you last changed the bed. You decide they're acceptable even if they really smell like your hair oil and flip them around to be safe, plumping them up with your hands.

You've curled up on your side and almost succumb to your fatigue when Eddie returns, bringing with him the smell of spearmint and a fuzzy feeling in your stomach as he shuts off the light and sits on the opposite side of the bed, facing you. The hair around his face is damp with water, baby hair's limp. 

"I'm sorry I don't have anything for you to wear, I-" Youre cut off by your own gasp as Eddie kisses you, his hand on your neck, his nose bridge sliding into your own. You hadn't been expecting it, and it's no less dizzying than any other kiss he's given you today. 

"It's okay," he murmurs lowly, lips pressed to your lips, "have to wear you, is all."  

You huff a laugh into his mouth. "I swear I'm always laughing when I'm with you," you muse as Eddie dedicates himself to your bottom lip. You cup the back of his head. "You're amazing." 

Eddie groans and eases back. "I'm not good with words, sweetheart. To tell you how I feel about you." 

You push one of your legs toward his knee. "...You can show me." 

He shifts in the bed until he can lean over the entirety of your chest, hands cupping your face and lips poised hovering over your own, a millimetre of space between your mouth and his. "Okay," he says quietly.

He dips down. You can feel his bottom lip tremble, and then he's kissing you too hard to feel it anymore. You wrap loose arms around his back. 

"Are you sure?" you whisper to him. 

He rests his nose against your cheek, eyes closed, drawing the tiniest left to right. "I want you," he reassures. 

"And you're okay?" 

"Yeah, sweetheart. I'm okay. Do you want to?" 

"Yeah. More than anything." 

Another loving kiss against your cheek, Eddie moves down, down, down. "Tell me if I do something you don't like," he murmurs, top lip dragging and leaving a line of dampness to the base of your throat. 

He adorns the canvas of your neck in half-moon contusions, big hands caressing your shoulders, your chest. You hold your breath as his fingers pass over your nipple, fighting to keep in any embarrassing sounds. 

Eddie disagrees with his plan of action. You shiver as he brings his lips to a close and his bottom teeth scrape upward, as he pulls his head up and says, "C'mon, angel, breathe." 

He follows his command with a manipulative touch, a circle over your nipple that makes you shudder. He kisses you and it feels like a thank you, pressure, a heat as his palm smooths over the bump of your tummy to your thighs. He squeezes the outside of one and for a while you can kiss him back, and then he pulls your thighs apart and you break away. Eddie follows, kisses you even when your reciprocation is weak. 

He pushes your thigh flat to the bed. 

You feel the heat of your excitement start to grow. Your stomach aches with the want to be touched. 

"You're like a space heater, you're that warm," Eddie says, hand coasting down the inside of your thigh. He squeezes until fat melds under his fingers. "Are you scared?" 

His whispering in your ear, his hand as close as it is to where you want it, it winds you up like a coil. You sigh as his thumb strokes the edge of your panties, sound coloured by an awful, devouring desire. 

His face presses further into yours in reaction. 

His touch is like the tide. He wades in, away. His thumb strokes inward over something soft and then his whole hand moves back to your thigh. 

"Teasing," you utter. 

"A little… Why, is there something you want me to do?" 

His clueless whispering is infuriating and exciting at the same time. Your heart races and you can't discern if it's more lust or love.

"Touch me," you plead, pouting, knowing he's a pushover.

Anticipation stabs like a needle in your tummy as he slides his palm over your cunt completely. He rubs a careful, almost casual rhythm into your panties with the breadth of his fingers, lips kissing a lazy stripe up to your forehead, where he rests his face. You both watch his hand move past the valley of your rising chest. 

"M'gonna pull these off, yeah?" He sits up, fingers pushing under the sides. "Lift your- yeah, thank you, sweetheart." 

You buzz with his pet names, his soft voice, the feeling of your panties sliding up to your knees and his gentle exhale. You swear you can feel it fan over your slit. "Shit…" he moan, pulling at your spread cunt. 

He looks like he's in pain, eyebrows pinched together and murmuring curses as he circles the wetness gathered at your entrance. You turn your head searchingly as he starts to ease his index finger inside your heat, a gentle probing. 

One becomes two. He muffles your sighing with firm kisses, amorous praises, "That's it, baby, relax," as he works you open, fingers wet with slickness but not enough. He changes his position, pushing his middle and marriage finger inside and curving as his thumb slides up your slit looking for the bead of your clit. 

Slow, slow circles. "There, huh?" 

You shiver as he pushes in deeper, fingers as far as they can go. He spreads them wide, drops reassuring kisses all over your face when you keen. It's so new to have him kiss you at all, and to have him touching you — you're melting into nothing right there in his hold. 

"I got you. Tell me if it hurts, okay?" 

"Want you to- I want you to fuck me," you murmur, arms wrapping around him so you can hide your face in his neck. 

"Fuck. Fuck, baby. Gonna fuck you just as soon as I can fit," he murmurs back, sinking three of his thick fingers into your snug cunt. He pulls wetness out with every thrust, a line of slick dribbling down onto the sheets underneath. He wipes it upward and pushes it back inside, his chest heaving. "Y'so tight, gotta take my time. Take our time." He rubs his nose against your head until he can kiss the highest point of your cheek. "Make sure you can take it." 

"I can." 

It doesn't bear repeating how quietly you're speaking, a mouthing inaudible under the wet, rhythmic thud of Eddie's pinky finger slapping your sticky cunt as he ups the pace of his finger-fucking. 

"I don't think so," he coos, pulling his fingers from your cunt and making a show of spreading them wide. Your slick ribbons between them, almost invisible in the dark. "Ruin your sheets before any of that, maybe." 

Eddie sits up and gets his hands under your armpits. You laugh as he tugs you up so your shoulders are on top of the pillows, but you don't have time to be confused. He quickly moves to kneel at your feet and pulls your leg over his shoulder, your back lifting unevenly from the sheets. 

He starts with a sweet kiss pressed to the skin closest to his mouth, your lower thigh, and then works his way up, open mouthed, barely kisses at all until his hair whispers against your sensitive cunt and he's nipping at the stripe of skin between your thigh and the place where you most want his attention. 

"Pretty," he says into your damp skin, lips shining. You reach down to stroke his hair behind his ears, worried he's gonna get it dirty. 

He looks at you from between your thighs, his eyes dark in the dim light, their lashes long and soft where the outermost flutter into your skin. He's lovely. 

He holds your gaze as he pulls back to your inner thigh. "Pretty everywhere," he says salaciously. 

His lips part over your skin and you think he might bite you, a bruising hickey, but he pushes you down flat to the bed by your hips and kisses your clit, a simple kiss. Your fingers weave deeper into his hair. Your fingernails scratch lightly against his scalp, every tiny lick or kiss reflected in the minute tightening of your hands. 

He goes slow, mouths down, kisses wetter and wetter as he reaches your entrance. "Poor girl," he murmurs, hands pulled down to further scandalise. He sinks two fingers inside and laughs into your cunt. You squirm. 

"What happened? You're dripping on my fingers." Your thighs draw closed around his head as he curls his fingers against a soft spot.

"Eddie, can you-" You swallow. "Please. Please." 

He pries your thighs open and rubs them soothingly, lapping at the heat of your cunt in face of your pleading. His tongue appears broad and flat up the centre of you until he's kissing on your clit, fingers pumping in rhythm. Your fingers work into his hair and he groans, the vibration enough to make you whimper under his mouth. 

He laps at your clit messily and you tip your head back, breath coming in tight pants. You don't know what you say, only how you say it, desperate "please,"s and keening "Eddie,"s. 

His thrusts grow in enthusiasm, fingers rubbing eagerly against something sweet. You pull your legs up and nudge his face to your cunt insistently, thigh shaking as you hold it up. Eddie doesn't need any more encouragement, his pretty pink lips suckling at your clit until you see stars. You make a pained little sound and try to move away from his kissing, startled at the intensity of your high. 

Eddie lets your clit pop out of his mouth with a lewd, slick sound, his hands moving under your thighs and pulling you closer. "Good girl," he says, rubbing his wet face against the inside of your thigh. He inhales hard as you are, though he pauses to kiss your kneecap and pat your leg. "Good girl, sweetheart." 

"I'm sorry," you say breathlessly, hands pulling his hair from his face. Pleasure rolls through you in hot waves. 

"For what?" 

"Tugging on your hair," you explain, shoulder pulled up to your cheek.  

Eddie kisses your tummy lovingly and climbs on top of you to do the same just under your chin. "It’s okay, sweetheart, I like that shit. That was good, huh?" he asks, lips dropping down to yours all wet and warm. 

He's not bragging, he's genuinely asking. 

You nod into his kiss, your hands coming up to his sides. You swear your ears perk up as he unzips his jeans and eases them down, a hand disappearing into the mess of fabric. He moans quietly at the first touch. 

You move his hair out of the way to watch. Eddie tugs at the length of his cock with a cruel hand, a short dribble of pearly precum sobbing down the tip and under his fingers. He spreads it as it goes, the slickness emphasising the ridges and veins of his cock. You can see it throb, if you look close enough. 

He sits back and eases his jeans and boxers down enough to reveal a thatch of curls that brush his hand with every pump downward. 

"You okay?" he asks, smirking. 

You pull your shirt over your head and your chest warms at his adoring smile. "Will you take off yours?"

He doesn't hesitate like you worried he might. He sheds his t-shirt, pulling the fabric over the back of his head and dumping it off the side of the bed. 

You take in his chest and it's abundance of ragged scarring still purpled with newness. He has a tattoo over his heart, a black whorl of legs and eyes. Fine dark hair crawls from the middle of his chest down his navel, joining with the thatch of coiled hair surrounding his aching cock. You shuffle forward and wait with two tentative hands held aloft until he says, "It's okay," before you touch him. You run your hands down the soft slopes of his waist. 

"Does it hurt?" 

"Not anymore." 

"Can I kiss it?" 

He snorts. "Prefer you kiss something else." 

That really makes you laugh. You dot a kiss against his jaw and can't make yourself stop, dropping them all the way to the skin behind his ear. Your hand creeps lower as you go, held to the curve of his tummy. His skin is hot to touch the lower you go, and his stomach feels solid, a heaviness you know all too well. 

"Can I touch you?" you whisper into his ear. 

"Please." 

You drop your forehead against his chest and he brings his hand up to cup the back of your head. His cock pulses as you wrap your hand around it, skin smooth and slick as you palm slowly up and down. You watch in awe as a bead of precum wells at the tip, Eddie's rough breathing loud overhead. 

"Lie down, Y/N," he says, hand moving behind your naked shoulders. 

"What way?" 

"How do you want it, sweetheart? We'll do it whatever way you want." 

You think about it. Whatever way you want. No matter how indulgent, you know he means it.

"Will you spoon me?" 

He pushes you gently and follows behind, dragging your body into his front and angling your hips, cock hot and prodding your back. He gets his hand under your knee and pulls it up, splaying your cunt. You jump in surprise as he pushes his cock through your folds, tip rubbing against the still sensitive bead of your clit. 

Eddie wraps his arms around you, hugging you from behind. "You wanna put it in for me, baby?" 

You reach between your bodies and take his sticky cock into your hand, shifting until the head nudges against your hole. He sinks in inch by inch, arms tightening around your waist and grinding you down onto his cock until you're whimpering. 

You grab at his arms with your hands and tether yourself to him as he starts to rock his hips, his thrusting tender and his face turned into your neck. 

He presses his hand flat to your abdomen, an anchoring point as he moulds your weepy cunt around his length, each slovenly movement into your heat spreading you that little bit wider. 

"Fuck," he says finally, sounding seconds from a black out. "Oh, fuck- You're tight. Gonna fuck you open slow, okay?" 

You're pretty sure you'd let him do just about anything. You bring his hand to your mouth and kiss every white knuckle, every freckle you can see on the back, and when he bottoms out your cover your lips with his stolen hand to smother a tearful gasp.

Eddie's thrusts are spearing in their steady rhythm, a dirty slap ringing with every punching thrust forward. You curl in on yourself and hide your mouth in the sheets, wet pants smothered by fabric. Eddie's grip falls to your hip, where he pulls your body back and forces your cunt open even deeper. 

His cock pushes into your sweet spot sudden and emphatic. You moan and he stills, rutting into that same space without pulling out until you're babbling his name, body knocked forward with every thrust. 

Eddie turns your face toward him as much as he can without hurting your neck, your moans echoing in time with each thrust. "There you go," he says, "wanna hear how good it feels." 

If he cares that you can't answer him he doesn't show it, arm coming up under you arm to grasp at your chest, your breaststroke soft and aching under his hand as he squeezes tenderly. His cock kisses at the sweet spot inside you intermittently; you're dizzy with it. 

Eddie can't keep quiet either, his moans breathy, his breath hissing between his teeth when you clamp down around him. "Fuck," he begs, dragging his cock out of your heat, "fuck, Y/N." 

He says your name like the syllables alone are appraising. 

You can tell when it gets too much for him. He slows. His face drops into your shoulder, and he matches his pace to the wet kisses he leaves behind. Your wetness feels stickying, each of his thrusts snug. 

His breath hitches, ragged pants accompanying every slow push of his hips. "Where's my girl?" he asks, eyes still closed as his hand abandons where it'd been squeezing the bump of your tummy to search further downward, fingers disappearing into your folds, short curls wet with slick. He can't find any purchase. You roll your hips, chase his touch and the pleasure that comes with it. 

He groans into your shoulder. It sounds more pain than pleasure. 

"Are you okay?" you ask, trying to turn in his arms. He holds you in place. "Eddie?" 

"Yeah, fuck, I'm okay." He grinds up into your cunt. "Fuck, you're perfect." 

"Will you kiss me?" 

He does. It's nowhere near the bruising press you'd wanted. It's too careful. 

"Listen," he murmurs, "I'm gonna get you on your front, okay? Gonna make you feel so good," he promises, waiting for you to nod before he pushes your shoulder away from him and climbs up behind you. You lay flat on your stomach and Eddie settles on your thighs, a heavy weight. 

He pushes into your cunt with two fingers first, the new position allowing for a new pleasure. He pumps in and out and swaps his fingers for his cock quickly after, bearing the full weight of his body into your back as sinks to the hilt. 

You both moan in time, hands fisted in the sheets. 

He kisses your neck, lips parted, and his teeth feel so sharp that your heart sinks as it had in the bathroom. 

"Eddie-" you start. 

He pulls away, stops every movement. 

"Eddie," you say again. What are you supposed to say? You both know what he is. 

There's a lull where neither of you knows what to do filled by your too-fast breathing.

"I won't hurt you," he says, hands rubbing up the length of your back and then under. He holds a hand over your heart. He drops his lips to your back. "Do you want me to stop?" 

He must feel your pulse calm under his touch, but he still asks again when you don't answer. "Do you want me to stop? It's okay if you do. You're okay, baby, I promise." 

You steal a pillow from against the headboard and rise up on elbows. Your admission comes weak but completely honest. "Fuck me, Eddie, please... I want you. I want you-" Your murmuring's interrupted by a sharp breath as Eddie starts to move again, the head of his cock pushing into your cunt, a slick, perfect feeling. 

He moans from the back of his throat as his cock pushes into you again and again, hips smacking the dough of your ass as his pace quickens. You hug your pillow tightly, tears popping up in the corners as he ruts deep. 

"Being so good for me," he groans, clamped down on your hip with a vice-like grip. "Fuck, you feel so good. Fucking clinging to me every time I pull out, baby, Christ." His blasphemy is punctuated by a thrust that has you sliding up the bed, sheets wrinkling under your arms. You spread your thighs and wetness pools at your clit as his pelvis thrusts into you, driving pleasure so deeply it aches in your hips.

You moan pathetically and reach back to hold his hand, wiggling your fingers. He takes it in one and presses your arm against your lower back with the other, struggling to maintain a steady pace as he gets close to cumming. You're a babbling stream of sounds as he fucks in deep, swollen sweet spot tapped against mercilessly.

He throws himself back on his haunches, cock dragged out of your heat. 

You pull your legs out from underneath him and curl onto your side to watch, eyes wide as white spurts of pearlescence jump out of the head of his reddened cock and drip down the bumps of his fingers. He leans back, his stomach and thighs tensed with every pump. 

He groans through a smile, moan's coloured by a happy, relieved laughter. "F-uck," he drags, fisting his cock dry. 

He meets your eyes as the last of it slides down onto his stomach. 

You smile softly. "Fuck," you mumble. 

Eddie wipes his hand in his jeans like a fucking hooligan and tucks his cock back into his boxers with a wince, and then he collapses on top of you. He's sort of nice about it, his arm over your shoulder and his face behind your ear. 

"Fucking beautiful," he praises, dropping his head back on the bed so you're face to face. "You're so fucking pretty. So perfect." He kisses you. "You're perfect," he repeats, staring intently into your eyes. 

You pull a hand from between your legs, smelling of sex. Eddie literally couldn't care less if he tried, and he lets you take his face into your hand without complaint. 

He gets his arm under your arm and starts to rub your back. "You want me to take care of you again?" he asks, eyebrows raised gently. "Yeah?" 

And you would let him, you would, but you need to see them for yourself. 

You touch your index fingertip to his lip. 

"Can I see?" you ask. 

He loses his boisterous joy, tamps it down. He realises that he can't lie, that he hasn't been lying, and he nods. You tremble as you pull his lip up over his canine tooth, excited and scared.

A sharp, exceptionally white tooth pokes out of Eddie's gums. You're taken aback, though you'd known exactly what you'd find.

A fang. 

Blood oozes at the gums. 

"You're bleeding," you worry aloud, touching your finger to the dark beading at the base of his tooth. 

Eddie's eyes rove over your face thoughtfully. He pulls your hand away from his lip and sets it on his neck instead. "They always do that. The gum heals, breaks when they wanna come out." 

"How often do they come out?" 

"A lot more since I met you. Whenever my adrenaline spikes, they seem to think it's… feeding time." 

That is a dizzying thing to learn. 

You're not sure how you feel, but you know one thing: he's Eddie. "It's too bad," you say, forcing a lightness that turns real more easily than you expect. "I really want to kiss you right now." 

He strokes your cheek with his thumb. "I really wanna kiss you too. Maybe a small one?" 

You find yourself leaning forward, unafraid. 

He kisses you once, twice, three times, the two of you holding each other's faces and covered in mess. Slick and sweat and blood. The hearts and stars from your lamp spray over his hip and paint him with pinks, greens, oranges, a rainbow cutting over his trim waist. You rest your hand overtop, feel his keloid scars like hills under your fingers. 

"My boyfriend's a vampire," you mutter, bemused at fate.

Eddie blinks at you. "I'm your boyfriend?" 

"Yeah, I think so. Don't you?" 

Eddie pulls you into his chest and doesn't let you go for a long, long time.

-

Your first time watching a blood sate is weird. 

For one, Chief Hopper is firmly against it. He's got his kid with him, the boy from the party that Mike had been so heavily doting on, and if he didn't you might think he was a pretty scary guy. 

"I think this is stupid," the chief says plainly. "I think this is stupid, I think you're stupid," — he points at Eddie where he's sitting sickly in the round couch — "and I think you're plain crazy, kid." He points at you last. 

You beam at him. "People have said that about me." 

His kid laughs. 

"Will," Hopper says tiredly, "go sit in the car." 

"Look, Chief, I know I messed up, okay, but she kind of stuck her hand in my mouth and I didn't really have a choice." 

Wayne looks at you with new eyes. "You did?" 

You nod at him faux-seriously. 

"And what gave her the inkling that you might have had something in your mouth worth looking at?" Hopper says, which is hilarious. You laugh behind your hand. 

He gives you a disapproving look that you completely ignore. If you'd taken notice of disapproval you would've stopped having this much fun years ago. 

"Uh, well, she might have… felt them?" His pitch rises. 

Hopper looks like he's about to blow a gasket when Will says, "What was he supposed to do? Never talk to anyone new ever again?" 

"He did a lot more than just talk to me," you say. There'd been a fixed bike, phone calls, lots of sandwiches, bug hunts, an entire sketchbook full of drawings. 

"I told you to wait in the car," Hopper says.

Will grins and raises his hands in surrender. "Bye," he mouths. You wave. 

Hopper waits for the door to close before he continues. "I get it, when you're a teenager you think your hormones are the end of the world-" 

"I'm almost twenty three." 

Hopper pinches his hand closed. "But you do not understand the danger that you are creating here."

"Like a stake-ing," you whisper, very very quietly. Eddie's the only one who can hear you, and he laughs so hard he snorts. 

"I'm glad you find this funny." Hopper's tone could not imply the opposite any more. 

He hands Wayne a paper bag that audibly sloshes and stalks out, his anger a palpable cloud of steam rising off of his shoulders. Eddie seizes up beside you at the sound, lips parting as his fangs come through. You don't touch him because you value your blood inside your body, only slide away from him and smile. "You okay, handsome?" 

"Kid, maybe the chief is right. We don't know how Eds is gonna act with you here," Wayne says. 

You nod respectfully. You like Wayne, and he knows about all of this stuff more than you ever could. 

"No," Eddie mumbles, putting his hand out for you across the couch. 

You take it without thinking. 

Wayne sighs. You can hear him grumbling as he disappears from view into the kitchen and puts a pot on the stove. There's the sound of a bag being punctured with a knife, a wet slosh. Eddie's grip on your hand tightens. 

You're still fascinated that he even drinks blood in the first place. That's wickedly sickening. Wicked, because it's cool that he's a vampire, with his impressive hearing, senses and smell. But sickening, because if you had to drink a pint of blood every couple of weeks you'd throw up. 

"I read about a new blood-sucker." 

Eddie raises his heavy head. "Another bug?" 

"No, a finch! A vampire finch. They're really pretty, Teddy. They're small and brown with long beaks and they drink blood because there's barely any water on their island." You give him a loving smile. "They aren't parasites. S'just how they had to change to survive." 

He squeezes your hand, this time on purpose. 

"Are you gonna come and have it in here, Eddie?" Wayne asks, one last shot at separating the two of you.

"I'm okay," he says loudly. His eyes trace your smile. "Really." 

It can't be fun to have two people watch you drink a warm mug of blood, but Eddie finds it funny. He keeps laughing every time he brings the rim of the glass to his mouth. 

"I can't do it if you're looking at me," he says. 

Wayne rolls his eyes and looks away. You cover your face with both hands and part your fingers to spy on him through the gaps. He makes it look easy, draining the mug basically in one long pull, though his hunger turns violent as the cup empties. He chokes. Blood trickles down from one corner of his mouth. 

You automatically want to reach over and wipe it away. Wayne grabs your arm before you can and gives you a fatherly look that says, I wouldn't do that if I were you. 

"Shit," Eddie says, slamming his now empty mug down on the coffee table. It makes a grating sound like a ground mortar and pestle. He sits as far back on the couch cushions as he can, nausea clear on his face. 

"Deep breath," Wayne says. 

"Fuck, Wayne." 

"You're aces. Deep breaths." 

Your heart hurts watching Eddie like this. He covers his mouth with eyes closed tightly and breathes hard through his nose. Already there's colour coming back into his face, not a lot but anything is an improvement. He'd been practically grey. 

When Eddie pulls his hand from his mouth blood has spread over his lips and jaw. Your eyes widen.

"I'll get the shower running," Wayne says, slapping his knees as he stands. He stops before the hallway. "Good job, Eddie." 

The boy in question slouches into a ball on the sofa and nods into a cushion. You wait for the sound of Wayne pulling the shower cord that turns on the hot water before you stand up, head tipped to one side. 

"You okay, handsome?".

"Tired." 

"You want a hug from me?" 

"Is anyone else offering?" He opens one eye to peek at you and grins at your distraught expression. "I'm joking, I'm kidding. C'mere, before I start bawling." You sit and then flop onto your side, pulling your legs up next to his. "Such a frowny face." His voice is adorably tired.

"Better than yours. You look like someone from Night of the Living Dead, baby." 

Eddie's arm lies limp like a dead fish over your waist. "Lemme nibble on your brains," he says, words thick as dark honey, eyes closed. "Just a snack." 

You're waiting for someone to pull the rug out from under your feet. No way your boyfriend, your cries at the end of every movie, brings you flowers because he felt like it, won't step on cracks in the sidewalk boyfriend just skulled a glass of O-negative like it was a milkshake. 

You feel guilty as soon as you think about it. He's not confined to all his softest parts and he never will be. He's snarky and angry and loud. He plays guitar like a real rockstar and he doesn't take anyone's shit. He's a survivor. A glass of blood every now and then was never gonna stop him. 

You keep wondering if you should let him suck your blood. It could be hot. It could also probably be the worst idea ever, a relationship faux pas up there with proposing after a month or saying I love you on the first date. 

"What are you thinking about?" he asks. 

You brush the hair out of his eyes with your ring finger. "Embarrassing relationship fumbles." 

"Oh yeah? Like letting your girlfriend watch you drink human blood from a mug shaped like Woodstock?" 

"Least it wasn't Snoopy." 

"God forbid." 

"Is it always like this?" You stroke your hand down his face and rub along his jaw with your thumb. "D'you always get sleepy?" 

"Yeah." He turns his face so your hand covers his mouth. 

You've stopped wearing silver jewellery, your wrists bare besides the endearingly awful friendship bracelet he's constructed for you. Not a friendship bracelet, he'd corrected. You're not kissing other friends, are you? Because that's really gonna put a downer on this whole thing.  

You dip your forehead to his chin and the two of you lay there in silence. You can smell blood, a thick, metallic stick permeating every corner of the room. It's especially strong between the both of you. 

"Do you wanna bite me right now?" you inquire without opening your eyes. 

"Not really. Blood sate kicks in quickly. It's the worst for, like, the first ten seconds after. Now I wanna sleep, but Wayne's gonna make me shower." 

"Maybe I can shower with you." 

"I'm sure he'd jump for joy if you suggest it." 

"Really?"

Eddie kisses your hand. "No," he says with a giddy laugh. 

"I'll pretend I'm gonna sit on the toilet. Keep watch." 

"How will you stop your hair from getting wet?" 

"I'll lean out." 

Eddie laughs even more than he had been, peeling laughter that warms you from the inside out as he kisses your hand again. "That'll definitely work." 

Wayne clears his throat. 

"Shower's hot. I'm going out. For an hour." Eddie perks up. His uncle looks him dead in the eye. "Don't make me regret this." 

And while Wayne had been under the impression you and Eddie were gonna have some grown up fun together in the shower, what you really do is an innocent act of affection: you wash Eddie's hair. 

"You have to lean your head back," you chide. 

"I am." 

"More than that." 

"There's no room." 

You're lucky you both fit. You're freezing standing behind Eddie, the only relief the warm water that trickles down from your hands to your elbows as you draw circles in his scalp, working the shampoo into a fine lather. 

"How did you get blood here?" you ask, scratching rusty flakes from the hair behind his ear. 

"I don't know. It gets everywhere. Like eyeshadow." 

You push your chin over his shoulder. "You wear eyeshadow?" 

"For shows." 

"Really?"

"Is it hard to believe?" 

You encourage his head under the water and rake your hands through his curls, encouraging the soapy water down to the ends with patient hands. "Lip gloss too? Hey, can I do your makeup?" 

"Maybe tomorrow," he bargains. While the shower has helped to wake him up, lethargy remains thick and unshakeable as adamant. 

You kiss the wet ridge of his shoulder blade, picturing his pretty face decked out in dark liners and sticky balm. "Thank you." 

"I haven't worn any in a long time. Haven't played a show in a really long time." 

You wring the water out of his hair and search in the steam for his conditioner. It's mostly empty. "You could put on a show for me. I never got to see you play," you say, shaking it really hard. A dollop collects in your hand and you work the dregs through the ends of his long hair. 

"You want that?" 

"I think you're the best guitar player in the world." 

You're not joking. He's the best, and he plays guitar. And he's pretty good, semantics aside. You love sitting out on the porch with him and listening to him play old rock songs off the top of his head. You could watch his hands move over the strings for hours. 

"If that's the case, I can definitely put on a show. Make-up, costume, stage dives. The whole nine yards. Anything for my girl." 

You roll the ends of his hair between two coated palms and step back. "There. You have to let it soak in for a couple of minutes." 

Eddie turns with a grin, angling his chest and hair forward, away from the stream. 

"Whatever will we do?"

You wipe an escaped streak of blood off of his bottom lip and smile. "I have no idea." 

You kiss. Eddie leans down and you move up, damp noses glancing off of each other. You're used to short kisses, never enough to make his heart race in case it prompts an unnecessary appearance of his fangs, so when Eddie encourages your lips apart to wade in deeper you pull back questioningly. 

"Blood sate. I'm 'sated'. They won't come out." 

Your jaw drops. "For real?" 

He shakes his head with a pleased smile. "For real. Kiss me sick, sweetheart." 

You throw your arm around his neck and drag his face to yours, kissing with an ardency that both surprises and amuses him. He laughs into your open mouth until suddenly he's not laughing at all, only breathing, pushing against you with the same urgent force and the same adoring smile. 

"Does this mean you can give me a hickey?" you ask enthusiastically. Eddie has yet to give you a proper love bite.

He leans back under the show spray and pulls you in with him, laughing when you dissolve like rice paper in his arms, finally warm. There's never been a sweeter sound. 

/\^._.^/\

thank you for reading! | my masterlist | my halloween party

if you enjoyed reading his, please consider reblogging. i promise it makes a huge difference

[mswyrr]

The more I write Lucy Gray having "screen time" in my fic, the clearer it becomes to me that the movie simplified her and "prettied" her up a fair bit away from the book in ways that make me sad. In the book, she can be a bit of a freak (affectionate) and frank about killing (when necessary to survive) and the messiness of living.

There's her and Coriolanus having a far more frank conversation about their kills--and her desire to kill Coral--in the book than in the movie, for example. And, as dkaluuyaegot has pointed out on Twitter, in the book Lucy Gray writes her love song, "Pure as the Driven Snow," for Coriolanus after he kills Mayfair:

She cares about trying to be a good person (trying to stay on the right side of the line between good and evil), but she's not legalistic, self-righteous, or rigid about that. She knows what it means to live in a broken world with a lot of bad options in front of you. She sees it as a struggle and one where you will be pulled all over as you try to walk a decent path --she doesn't think we get out of the mess of living clean, none of us-- and what is decency to her? I think she centers it in her Covey and their values:

"The Covey believe you’re put on earth to reduce the misery, not add to it" (437)

Her morals aren't absolute rules so much as guidelines and orientations toward living. She's not naive (she knows damn well they live in a dystopia) and she's not drawn to outside authority structures, apart from her Covey, or direct political action, so she's pretty independent and matter-of-fact minded about things.

The movie makes it seem more "good girl falls for bad boy" and that's really not it - they're both pretty gray, and well matched in that, before he crosses over into the darkness. The main, important difference is that she is pretty gray as a conscious choice with clear lines--her personal and Covey ethical guidelines--and he was gray because he was torn and in the process of deciding.

re: the lie. If he'd told the truth, it's interpretable what she would have done in the end, but I think it's pretty clear that Lucy Gray would have, at minimum, heard him out and certainly not turned him in. Turning anyone in to the Peacekeepers seriously goes against her values.

Coriolanus is a brainwashed Lawful Neutral dumbass before he breaks bad and he thinks if there's order and rules a system must have some legitimacy to it, but Lucy Gray knows better. She knows these authorities exist to impose wrong, not right. There's no justice to be found there, and handing someone over to them is adding more wrong to the world.

[heavens-moonlight]

𝗕𝗢𝗥𝗗𝗘𝗥𝗟𝗜𝗡𝗘𝗦 | 𝟬𝟭 : 𝗠𝗜𝗦𝗔𝗗𝗩𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗨𝗥𝗘

SYNOPSIS | 02 : THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT

Author’s Note: The following chapter will be where the misery starts but I wanted to build character and friendship dynamics here first. Updates won't be as frequent (because of one word: life) but I have pre-written a lot for this drama already so I'll see this work to the end! Hopefully this is enjoyable so far, and feel free to let me know what you think (or what you want to see in future chapters)! Until next time! ♡

"THE INNOCENT CIVILIANS HAVE LOST, AND THE MAFIA WON!"

Your heavy palpebrae that moments earlier masked your vision in dimness, adorned with a trace of gentle sleepiness, slowly flutters open at the announcement, eyes emerging from the veil of unconsciousness. Finding yourself awakening with an overwhelming and unshakeable wave of trepidation washing over you, your chest tightens in palpable distress. The heaviness pales no less in comparison to the weight of an anvil sinking down atop your sternum, lungs punctured by bowed bones.

You sit there in a state of unease, mind racing with apprehension and discomposure, searching for answers to the troubling sensation coursing through your body. The sense of foreboding grips your heart tightly like an invisible vice, leaving you breathless and unable to shake off the unwanted feeling.

In a haste, you slide open the window beside you, the glass screeching against rubber weatherstrips expanded by scorching summer heat. Through the humidity, a light breeze brushes past, breathing air and life back into you. It's not hard to recognize the way your subconscious whispers insistently that something is amiss, the combination of uncertainty and uneasiness blending together into something you can't decipher.

Your hand comes to rest against your chest, heart pounding strongly and ceaselessly against your ribcage, almost as though wanting to escape from its confines. It sends you reeling, akin to an out of body experience. For some unexplained reason, confusion clouds your thoughts as you struggle to clear the thick shroud of fog encasing your entire being, the mist muddling and settling deep within you. A haunting sense of premonition creeps over as if some elapsed memory shares in its ominous secrets. Yet, try as you might, you could not uncover the source of this inexplicable anxiety. You're left clueless except for the empty feeling both in your mind and soul, like you have forgotten something important.

When your breathing returns to normal and your pulse has settled back into its regular rhythmic beat, you shake your head to clear it of the sudden upsetting thoughts. Only then do you realize you had fallen asleep at one point, head tilted back against the warm and worn peeling leather seats of the bus. The sound of loud conversations and even louder hum of the engine, the smell of smoke, and the bump of the vehicle's wheels on uneven pavement brings with it a gentle sway of movement that returns to you a sense of comfort you can't put into words.

Glancing down at your lap, you notice that you had left the entirety of a horror movie playing on your phone, the end credits having long since rolled endlessly, words drenched in red blinking cursorily across the screen. You rarely experienced nightmares, not even after indulging in disturbing content, and certainly not when it's broad daylight out still. So then, why now?

The sound of a book plopping down to the ground pulls you out of your reverie and you lean forward to pick it up, folding it closed to survey the front cover.

흰나비의 살인.

The White Butterfly's Murder.

You smile to yourself. It was so like Yoon-Seo to read a murder mystery on a school trip, the same exact one you had gifted to her only yesterday for her birthday. A love of thriller was what brought you both to be such good friends in the first place, and it didn't seem those like-minded interests would diverge any time soon.

"Yoon-Seo ah..." Scooting forward in your seat, you lightly tap her on the shoulder and she jolts upright, turning back to look at you, unreasonably startled, a shiver running down her spine. "What's wrong?" Your grin drops slightly at her growing restlessness, face now pale as if she had encountered an apparition. Her eyes shift back and forth, guarded for a microsecond before snapping back into her usual self.

Yoon-Seo takes noticeably deep inhales, drawing the attention of Jung-Won, her seat mate for the ride, who pauses mid-coding to look over, displeased.

"What did you dream of?"

"I'd rather not say."

"Han Seol-Hwa. Lee Yoon-Seo.” Jung-Won clicks her tongue teasingly, pointing a finger from you to Yoon-Seo. “I'm making it a rule that you guys stay away from blood, murders, and deaths this trip, alright?"

You roll your eyes good-naturedly. "Alright, I promise you eomma. No more nagging Yoon-Seo and I."

Jung-Won scowls at you playfully, pushing her glasses up higher on the bridge of her nose and you stick out your tongue in her direction impishly. Yoon-Seo laughs quietly at the exchange as you hand her back her book.

"Thanks, Seol-Hwa."

"Tell me all about it later when we've arrived." Despite muttering it under your breath to avoid being heard by Jung-Won, you fail miserably.

"Seriously?!"

You and Yoon-Seo laugh together as Jung-Won goes on a tangent about how psychologically, scary things are not good for young, impressionable minds, fingers click-clacking away all the while. Fortunately preoccupied, she doesn't notice Yoon-Seo sending you a wink, a hidden promise between you two to indulge in the realm of the supernatural regardless.

A resounding and victorious scream travels all the way from the back of the bus and you turn around to observe the friend group seated there.

"See?! I told you all Yool was the Mafia! Let's play again," Eun-Ha says, arms crossed. "You idiots never listen to me, do you?" She slaps both Yeon-Woo and Eun-Chan on the back of their heads as petty punishment.

"What can I say? You simply can't kill the master." Yool leans back, legs thrown atop the headrest of the seat in front, a proud smile stretched across his face.

As they're about to commence another game, Jin-Ha gets relayed a message through Seung-Bin. "Tell them that Kyung-Jun is sleeping and to shut the hell up."

"YAH!" The random shout is so out of place and entirely uncalled for, but it's effective for the time being. "Kyung-Jun is sleeping," Jin-Ha parrots, obedient. "You guys are always so fucking loud that we can hear you before we can see you!" Met with blank stares all around, he's finally satisfied at the reduction in volume and goes back to looking at something Seung-Bin points out to him on his phone. Unbeknownst to him, the rest switch to eyeing him in disfavor behind his back.

It wasn't hard to see the hierarchy of the bullies' group, although Jin-Ha most likely doesn't notice anything wrong with the skewed power dynamics.

Kyung-Jun unpredictably opens his eyes, turning to glare at Heo Yool specifically, but when he swivels back around again, your eyes meet coincidentally and he simply stares, an unreadable expression on his face. You avert your gaze hastily, not wanting to stir up trouble with the bullies, especially not Kyung-Jun who was quick to anger if someone so much as breathed wrongly in his direction.

Your eyes search the rest of the bus lazily before landing on Jun-Hee, sleeping peacefully unaware, head tilted towards the window. The sunlight bathes him in a soft yellow glow and you can't help but stare as a single ray of light filters through the curtains, slanting lightly across his face. You etch every slope, every contour, and every dip of his countenance behind your eyes so that the image of him doesn't fade.

The comfortable rise and fall of Jun-Hee's chest, synchronized with his steady breathing is so serene that it captivates your heart. In high noon, the gentle curves of his face seem even more soft, accentuated by the calmness enveloping his features. Fondly, you observe him in the morning's bright golden haze, and in the beauty of the falling sunbeams, you wonder if he'd ever see you in the same way.

A rolled-up piece of paper hits you square in the face and you finally drag your gaze away long enough to see who it is. Whipping your head around, you're met with snickers from Hyun-Ho and Dong-Hyun, who don't even try to hide they're the culprits.

You're being obvious. Hyun-Ho mouths the words discernibly. Just sit next to him if you're going to gawk.

You chuck the paper ball back toward him and it smacks him in the mouth, your nose scrunching up in focus mixed with annoyance.

"I think that's the most creative way I've ever seen someone being told to shut up," Dong-Hyun voices approvingly, shooting you two thumbs up.

"Are you my friend or hers?" Hyun-Ho asks childishly, somewhat snubbed.

"To be honest, she can be more frightening than you at times even though she's half your size."

You giggle to yourself as the two start squabbling in their seats across the aisle from Jung-Won and Yoon-Seo.

For the most part, after having transferred to Yooil High, you were fairly well-liked by everyone for your just and nonjudgmental attitude. That, and you pretty much kept to yourself, stayed out of trouble, and knew not to dig your nose in other's business if it didn't concern you. You weren't popular by any means, but not a single person had a true reason to dislike you and you hoped to continue that track record.

By a stroke of bad luck, your parents died a few years ago in a car accident, and you've been living with your cousin Hyun-Ho ever since, adopted by your aunt and uncle-in-law. They have been nothing short of welcoming and loving, and the same goes for Hyun-Ho, who acts no less like your real brother. Sure, he's annoying at times but it's just his overprotective nature and ease of accepting the older sibling role. You got on quite quickly with Yoon-Seo and Jung-Won, and Hyun-Ho made sure you adapted to his own friend group, introducing you to his best friends Jun-Hee and Dong-Hyun. You loved your companions dearly, all incredibly close and inseparable ever since you could remember.

But you couldn't remember when you began to see Jun-Hee as more than that.

Friends.

It's not the first, and it certainly won't be the last time you remind yourself of that fact.

Just friends. Nothing more and nothing less.

Except, you're not the only who was harboring feelings for him. Where you were quiet and discreet about it, So-Mi is loud and unabashed. It's hard to ignore and pretend you don't hear her snapping pictures of Jun-Hee shamelessly and without permission, the shutter ticking in quick succession.

"Isn't this crazy? It's like a photoshoot, right? How does he look like that? Even while sleeping?" So-Mi rattles off questions in awe, more to herself than anyone else.

Woo Ram doesn't miss a beat in his reply. "I'll tell Jun-Hee about your crazy obsession with him."

"Could you, please?" So-Mi widens her eyes, batting her lashes imploringly. "I'll use that as an opportunity to tempt him."

You hear Ji-Soo's laugh ring out brash and clear. "This delusional girl, seriously..." she chides. "You've been saying that since last year. When will you actually find the courage to tell him?"

That's the question you ask yourself also. You don't blame So-Mi. Sometimes, you think it might be better to not have been best friends with him. It only complicates your feelings further, too afraid to ruin years of friendship, but also too filled with wishful thinking on the mere possibility of it growing into anything beyond that.

Sighing, you turn to look out the window, trying your best to tune out their conversation even though it doesn't work. There's not much to hold your attention when the scenery is endless stretches of barren trees and even emptier infrastructure, or lack thereof, rolling by.

The setting sun dyes everything in a blaze of orange, making it appear as if the city was burning, the sky collapsing.

"Seduce him now," Yu-Jun taunts, voice giving way to his utter lack of confidence in So-Mi's coquetting abilities, knowing full well the impossibility that the two would ever end up together.

"Cut it out! It will happen soon...just not here." So-Mi tries to shush her friends as they holler at Jun-Hee teasingly, with all intent to wake him up.

Woo-Ram and Yu-Jun successfully manage to rouse him if the sound of So-Mi's indignant squeals is anything to go by, coupled with the unmistakable clicking of her phone's camera shutter, pressed by accident this time around.

Somewhere in between listening and musing, you had begun to doze off again when you feel the seat shift and sink beside yours. The movement is so light and careful that you don't pay it any notice at first.

"Hey, I thought when you flirt with someone, they're supposed to come to you and not away from you." Ji-Soo's snickers mix in with So-Mi's annoyed remarks aren't as jarring as you thought it'd be after everyone was subjected to the silent rule earlier.

You feel your head droop forward before someone touches the side of your face gently, fingers grazing the curve of your cheek to angle your head into the broad line of their shoulder.

The pads of their fingers trace the underside of your jaw in a featherlight motion, and you lift your face in alarm, curious as to who would do such a thing especially if they weren't necessarily close to you

Eyes trailing upward, your vision refocuses and they widen at the sight of Jun-Hee staring down at you, gaze soft and unwavering as he stares, transfixed, pupils shining. One hand is hanging in midair, held steady to shield your face from the sun.

You open your mouth to say something, anything, but no words come out, a frozen expression of surprise on your visage.

Jun-Hee's lips tilt slightly upward, the motion bunching his cheeks up, almost as if he was trying hard to suppress his laugh.

Pulling yourself together, you sit up properly and lean away from his shoulder. "Sorry."

You don't notice Jun-Hee's smile dropping imperceptibly and the light in his eyes dimming as you're no longer within close proximity. "Why are you apologizing?"

"It's nothing." The response is too dismissive even to your own ears as you can't conjure up an excuse for the sudden pretense, or for your outlandish behavior.

It would be quite a long bus ride, sitting next to each other, both not knowing what to say.

The space between Jun-Hee's eyebrows crease together in confusion, but he doesn't push the matter further.

You clear your throat awkwardly, shifting in your seat to sit on your hands. When did simply talking to him become so hard to do? You've hidden your feelings for years without problem, so why was it so different now? Those feelings changed and grew. "When did you come to sit here? Weren't you just sleeping earlier?"

Jun-Hee knocks his shoulder into yours, a teasing lilt to his voice. "You were watching me?"

"Pft, as if," You deny with lackluster confidence, scoffing. "I was just observing what everyone was doing."

"Right..." He elongates the word. "...And what I was doing was sleeping. That you watched." Jun-Hee looks at you again, a deadpan but knowing look on his face. Flustered, you duck your head only for him to mirror the movement, subtly leaning his own toward yours and trying to catch your eye. It ends up with him chortling as your forehead nearly collides with your knees in the slouched over position you had subjected yourself to.

Knowing full well you were being made fun of without a hint of malice, you twist your body sideways and lean your back against the window, turning to him with a glare. "Is this fun to you?"

As he laughs, you find yourself wanting to follow suit, but stick to the bit of maintaining your mock angry façade, slapping him on the arm. If anything, he continues to chuckle, barely flinching, finding your reaction rather amusing.

"Don't worry. I promise I didn't sneak any pictures." It quickly registers to you that he was clearly teasing So-Mi for earlier. You can't help the scandalized look on your face, cheeks puffing out as you try to hold in your laugh. "I guess you did notice a camera being pressed up to your face, huh?"

"Kind of hard not to with all the noise." He shakes his head in annoyance. "But I am still sleepy." Jun-Hee pulls your arm so that you're pressed against his side again, no semblance of space remaining between the two of you as he lowers himself, sinking further down into the seat, eyes shut and head now leaning against your shoulder.

"Jun-Hee..."

"Let me borrow your shoulder for a little while."

You're about to pull away, thinking he's playing around when his grip tightens on your arm.

"Think of it as returning the favor from earlier. We can call it even."

Making a vague sound of neutrality but not moving, you relax, and Jun-Hee lessens his hold, adjusting his position to be more comfortable. "Are you going to watch this time too?" His hand squeezes your forearm once.

"Dream on," you kid.

"Maybe I will," he answers with certainty. "Until it becomes reality."

"I didn't know you were this affectionate with everyone."

"Not just anyone. Only you," Jun-Hee mumbles, tilting his head further into the crook of your neck. His lips move dangerously close to the juncture of your shoulder, your pulse point centimeters away as he shifts around, finding the most relaxing spot to rest.

"Don't say things you don't mean." You can't bite your tongue fast enough as the words tumble out unprompted. That was supposed to be an inside thought no one else should be privy to but yourself.

"Who says I don't mean it?" You tense up beside him, at a loss for words, but Jun-Hee doesn't point it out, more than not nice enough to ignore it for your sake. "I'm self-proclaimed as your favorite." He bumps his knee against yours. "I know you better than anyone else."

"Do you, though?"

"...Of course, I do."

But you don't know that I'm already halfway in love with you.

"On what basis, mister?"

"Best friend privileges."

"Right..."

You stare down at the top of his head, Jun-Hee unaware of your blatant staring and the way your smile fades at the same time one appears on his face.

"That's acceptable, no?"

"Of course, it is. Best friends. That's what we are..." You trail off.

And I guess that's all we'll ever be.

Hours later, the sky has since darkened and you can see the visible outline of the full moon on high, light not concealed by the stars weakly glimmering to illuminate the night.

Most, if not the entirety, of the students on the bus were asleep, except for you and your two lovable, but mischievous best friends sitting in front of you.

Yoon-Seo and Jung-Won peer over the back of their seats like cute meerkats, only their eyes visible, phones raised suspiciously in your direction.

"You're welcome in advance," Yoon-Seo says cheekily, showing the widest grin you've ever seen on her, eyes crinkling as Jung-Won stifles her laugh behind her hand. At your persistent eye signals, they sink back down into their seats, satisfied after overfilling their camera rolls.

As the bus slows down, indicating that your class was nearing your destination, the road gradually begins to get rougher and bumpier. It's a surprise Jun-Hee still hasn't woken up yet, sleeping soundly away still leaning on you.

Deciding to mess around with him, you slightly pivot your body so it's facing him, leaving enough room for his head to not fall off your shoulder.

"Jun-Hee," you call, tilting your head down in front of his.

"Jun-Hee ah." The bus is rocking him, lolling his head forward along with the movement, his face nearly downturned.

"Wake up, sleepyhead." Your shoulder is no longer acting as support when you turn your face directly below his and peer up, tilting your head like he had done to you miles back, smiling at his obliviousness to the harmless prank, peacefully undisturbed in his slumber.

"Kim Jun—" The bus lurches abruptly, running over a speed bump the driver misses, and your words die in your throat as it jostles Jun-Hee's body forward and consequently his head toward your own, his lips meeting yours. The next slope in the road, and the fleeting press of the accidental kiss fades away, but the butterflies in your stomach refuse to settle.

You're motionless, eyes wide, hands immediately coming up to touch your lips where they're still tingling from the lingering imprint of Jun-Hee's lips against your own, barely registering just how close his face is to yours still, remaining asleep all the same.

"Kids, we're here!"

Your teacher's announcement snaps you out of your thoughts and you hurriedly sit back as Jun-Hee's eyelids sluggishly part, the first thing they focus on is you. He grins drowsily, and you wonder what can truly fix the irreparable damage to your heart.

Get a grip, Han Seol-Hwa.

Forcing a smile that you hope isn't as awkward as it feels onto your face, you decidedly withhold the truth about the incident.

"That was the best sleep I've had in a while," Jun-Hee tells you, leaning closer to be heard over the ruckus of everyone moving around in their seats, wanting to alight the bus the moment it stops.

You scoot back reflexively with your face aflame, still not over what had happened.

Jun-Hee also pulls away, worry mixed with bewilderment evident on his face. "Are you alright?"

"What do you mean?" You cringe internally at how guilty the tone of your voice comes out.

"It's just..." Jun-Hee regards you for a moment, studying your face as you avoid his searching eyes. "You've been acting a little weird since this morning."

"I'm tired is all," you lie through your teeth.

"If I—"

Suddenly So-Mi appears next to the two of you in the aisle, eyeing you up and down judgingly. "Jun-Hee, the teacher said he wants to talk to us."

As Jun-Hee gets up but doesn't reply, you swiftly scoot out of your own seat and attempt to scurry away to where Yoon-Seo and Jung-Won are waiting for you by the wheel, wanting to avoid the dreaded conversation you knew was sure to follow.

So-Mi dismisses your presence completely, standing into the empty space between the rows in an effort to block Jun-Hee off.

His eyes count your steps and before you can move even a feet away, he grabs ahold of you, fingers wrapping securely but tenderly around your wrist. Your pulse quickens beneath your skin, and you wonder if he can feel how rapidly it bounds under his touch.

"Seol-Hwa—"

Jun-Hee appears a bit dejected for some reason you'd rather not dwell upon. You gaze down at his grasp on you before turning to face him.

"Didn't you hear me?" So-Mi interjects, trying to make him focus on her by stepping into his line of vision, but his eyes remain fixed only on you. "Seonsaengnim needs both of us for something."

Your fingers graze Jun-Hee's as you slowly remove his hand, much to his reluctance. To the bitter distaste of So-Mi, he doesn't seem like he'll go along with her any time soon. She directs her glare at you once more, and you sigh quietly, not wanting to be in the middle of this interaction one bit.

"I'll see you later Jun-Hee."

"Wait—" He tries to grab your hand again, but So-Mi is quick to turn his shoulder away, making up filler dialogue.

Given the slip unintentionally, you speed walk toward your friends, and the three of you descend the steps. You feel Jun-Hee's stare burn through the back of your head yet refuse to turn around.

Maybe if you leave everything that happened on the bus and the thoughts along with it, you'll go back to being yourself soon enough.

The teacher is pacing the edge of the curb looking perturbed, voice frustrated as he speaks into the phone, the person on the other end not comprehending a single word.

Before you can tune into what he's saying, Yoon-Seo taps you on the forearm, whispering, "Have we been here? Why do I feel like I have? It's so familiar..."

"All the youth centers look the same," Jung-Won settles, rummaging through her backpack. "Yoon-Seo, Seol-Hwa, I'm heading in first. See you inside."

You wave to her as Yoon-Seo stands beside you, unmoving and gazing up at the third-floor window of the building.

"Yoon-Seo...?" You move your hand back and forth in front of her face, and she finally blinks, her gaze returning to normal.

"What is it?" she responds absentmindedly.

"That's what I should be asking you." You halt at the blank expression on her face staring back at you.

"I thought I saw something..." She points at the window but when you look, squinting against the dark to focus your eyes, all you can see is the white curtains billowing back and forth from the window barely cracked open.

"It's only the wind. Your mind is probably playing tricks on you." Yoon-Seo seems assured by your answer for the time being, nodding. You rap on her head lightly with a loose fist, mock admonishing. "Aigoo, Miss Detective. The books are taking over your imagination."

Yoon-Seo laughs and shoves you playfully. "Don't act like you don't also live and breathe all things horror."

"But I'm not the one seeing things, am I?" Raising your eyebrows at her teasingly, Yoon-Seo simply rolls her eyes and links her arm with yours.

"Come on, let's go. It's cold out here, and I want to see the rest of this place."

The two of you enter the lobby, and the first thing you take note of is the pure white marble statue of a girl, sitting atop a pillar and staring down into nothingness, eyes soulless and devoid of emotion. It’s melancholic in a way, a personified goddess, yet alone and ostensibly powerless.

"Yoon-Seo, don't you think those eyes remind you of anyone?" You fix your gaze on the figurine closely, examining the features etched haphazardly into the rock. Whatever intention the sculptor had, you couldn't find the purpose for the seemingly out of place decor.

Yoon-Seo nudges you. "Now who's the one with the wild imagination?"

"I'm being serious here."

"I don't see any resemblance to anyone we could possibly know. There's no informative plaque on who it may be either."

You shrug. "Maybe it's just me then."

"Aren't you two going to scan?" Jung-Won ushers you and Yoon-Seo toward the flyer:

[ sᴄᴀɴ ᴛʜᴇ ǫʀ ᴄᴏᴅᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴄᴏɴɴᴇᴄᴛ ᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡɪ-ғɪ ᴀɴᴅ ɪɴsᴛᴀʟʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʏᴏᴜᴛʜ ᴄᴇɴᴛᴇʀ ᴀᴘᴘ ᴀᴜᴛᴏᴍᴀᴛɪᴄᴀʟʟʏ ]

"This place has an app? What for?" you question.

"Hmm, I'll just stick to this paper booklet they have instead." Yoon-Seo decides quickly, rifling through the readily available printed maps.

"You'll have to lead me around," you say in all earnestness. "I'm very direction disoriented."

Jung-Won doesn't even try to hide her smile. "We can tell."

"It's not my fault I was born like this." You dramatically fall back onto Yoon-Seo. "Would you two really lead me astray as my best friends?"

Yoon-Seo giggles behind you. "No way. We saw how dazed you were getting off the bus earlier. You need all the help you can get."

Jung-Won snickers, shaking her head while dragging you and Yoon-Seo through the double doors of the gymnasium where the rest were gathered.

Everyone is off scattered into their own respective friend groups, your trio throwing your backpacks haphazardly on the floor before sitting against the wall of bleachers yet to be pulled out.

Jun-Hee and So-Mi enter shortly after with the teacher, engaged in a discussion. You look away before they can notice, and focus on the girls attempting to practice for their performance instead, Woo-Ram filming their efforts. Joo-Young pushes Mi-Na out of her spotlight and steals it openly, not that Woo-Ram minded. If anything, he holds the camera ever-sturdier, a newfound excitement apparent this time around as he zooms into her face. His happiness is short-lived however, as Kyung-Joon turns off the speakers nonchalantly, forcing the girls to start over from the beginning, much to their irritation.

Despite what you decided on earlier, you can't help but throw glances over in Jun-Hee's direction. He's seated at the table reserved for school council members by the entryway, overlooking everyone as So-Mi talks his ear off, undeterred by his indifference.

"Stop staring. You're going to wear away his pretty face," Yoon-Seo jokes from your left.

"I wasn't staring," you reply back half-committally, knowing she's caught you in the act.

"You totally were," Jung-Won joins in, slowly leaning her head on your right shoulder. "Let me borrow your shoulder while I code."

"If she's allowed, I should be too," Yoon-Seo copies, mirroring Jung-Won from your left side.

"Careful, that one's Jun-Hee's. You'll have to wait your turn, Yoon-Seo."

"Oh my god," you groan, embarrassed, hiding your face into your hands as the two laugh beside you, kicking your feet from both sides with theirs. "You two are merciless."

"Are you going to deprive me of the best sleep I'll ever have?" Yoon-Seo snuggles closer, hugging you tightly to her.

"Yah! Lee Yoon-Seo!"

You had the intention of taking Jun-Hee off your mind by hanging out with your friends, only for you to see bits of his personality in Yoon-Seo, their long-time friendship having had them taking on one another's mannerisms.

"I'm using my best friend privileges." Jung-Won pats you on the knee. "Stay still."

As Yoon-Seo and Jung-Won squish into you from both sides, you can't help but giggle at the sheer absurdity of the reenactment and their dedication to coming up with jokes on the fly. You try to fight back the onslaught of laughter, but it's entirely pointless in their presence. Traitorously, your eyes crinkle in mirth, half-crescents resting atop your cheeks as your laugh tinkles in the shared space, making the other two giggle along, shaking with glee where they're pressed against you.

Jung-Won eventually caves and sits up properly when all the hooting you and Yoon-Seo are doing keeps rattling her laptop, messing up her coding. A permanent smile sits on her face though, watching you two bicker.

"Jung-Won, help, I need my inhaler. I can't breathe from laughing so much," Yoon-Seo gasps out, holding her stomach.

"I'm not getting it for you."

"I can't believe you would tease me at the expense of your asthma." You push Yeon-Seo away, sniggering as she goes back to clinging onto your arm and laying her head back on your shoulder.

Jung-Won turns to look at you and Yoon-Seo briefly, her eyes shifting to the side momentarily, a ghost of a smile settling on her lips before she resumes attention to her laptop. "Don't look but Jun-Hee is watching."

Right as she says that, you make to move your head, but Yoon-Seo expects it and holds your chin in place with her hand, pinching your cheeks playfully.

"I said don't look!" Jung-Won chuckles.

It throws Yoon-Seo into another fit of giggles as you try to speak through your puckered lips. She releases her hand quickly after, and you drop your head to lean on the crown of hers, giving up.

You elbow Jung-Won in her side. "Were you messing with me?"

"Why would I?" she says innocently, typing away.

You look at her pointedly. "Yeah, you totally wouldn't."

Jung-Won holds her hands up in a motion of surrender. "I'm not this time, really. Seeing So-Mi angry is my favorite past-time."

"So mean," Yoon-Seo sing-songs.

"And you had no part in this?" You poke Yoon-Seo in the cheek. "Who told you to have an annoyingly cute and kind best friend?"

"You mean you?"

"You know what I mean."

"It's true."

"Guess I'll have a crush on you instead."

Yoon-Seo chortles with laughter. "So, you do admit you like him!"

"I didn't say that!"

"I read between the lines."

“It was one line!”

"This really sucks," Jung-Won says off-handedly, scrolling through the app. "I can make something like this in a day."

"Huh?" Yoon-Seo inquires, lost.

"You really didn't scan the QR code earlier? It was installed automatically. Give me your phone. I'll do it for you."

"No, it's okay. I'll get by. It's a short trip."

"I wouldn't put it past Yoon Seo to carry around the paper map for two whole days," you jest.

"Careful, you can't even navigate well, Seol-Hwa."

Jung-Won snorts at Yoon-Seo's jab.

"You got me there. If you tell me to walk back the way we came from I'd probably end up walking in the opposite direction."

Yoon-Seo shakes her head in fond disbelief.

"I'm not getting any signals in here." Jung-Won holds her phone up high, arm stretching.

While you watch as Jung-Won moves her device around to figure out the cause of the lost signal and no connection to Wi-Fi, Yool rushes past, making a mad run for the storage room. Adjacent to the bleachers where you and your friends were sitting, he flings the door open with purpose and digs through the contents of the room. Various apparatus gets upended from their designated places, the speed and sheer amount of hiking gear, equipment for ball sports, as well as other items meant for the gymnasium flying out from the doorway is nothing short of the effects in a comedic cartoon. Knowing how much of a jokester Yool was, you pay it no mind and turn back to the task at hand.

You pull out your own phone to try and locate even one bar of cell phone service, only to be met with the message that the vicinity was an unserviceable area. "That's weird. We're not in a remote place or anything like that. What happens if the power goes out, then?"

Right as you say that, static from the speakers produces head-splitting screeches, causing everyone to recoil with palms over their ears in annoyance, the lights flashing once before cutting out.

With everyone fearing the worst, a few remain unmoving while screams of the rest bounce off the walls, echoing in the spacious room. You and Yoon-Seo however, have no reaction, more curious than anything else.

"Why did you turn the lights off?" Someone you can't put a name to probes in the dark. "Turn them back on!"

Following in haste after one another, the students make good use of their phone flashlights, aiming it at the court's center, revealing a figure cloaked in white standing as clear as day amidst the obscurity of the room.

While the majority cower in fear, clutching onto their friends, Hyun-Ho imperturbably throws a basketball at the unknown prowler, knocking them over in one go.

"Ouch!"

The white sheet is flung off theatrically, and out crawls a disheveled but cackling Yool.

"Aish, seriously," Hyun-Ho admonishes. "Quit goofing around."

Kicking the blanket to the side away from his feet, Yool raises his hands up in the air dramatically, acting to the end. Not a single person has managed to find the overhead lights in the meantime, the only ones illuminating the outline of his thin frame were the stage bulbs operating on a different circuit.

"While I have your attention, you guys have to listen up," he begins conspiratorially. "I heard a harrowing tale that's been passed down to everyone who steps foot into this building." Yool looks from one classmate to the next, more serious than he's ever been. "They say a female high school student took her own life here." He continues on as gasps and murmurs spring up around you. "There are things you absolutely can't do." He waggles his pointer finger dramatically for emphasis. "Don't look back after glancing in the mirror past midnight, and ignore it even if someone were to grab your ankle while you are asleep. If you don't follow these rules..." Yool pauses for staged effect before walking in broken steps like he’s possessed, arms and legs bent in odd angles, rushing straight toward the dancers still seated on the floor.

"...YOU'LL SEE A GHOST!"

Shrieks pierce the room as someone manages to flip the lights on again with perfect timing, ending Yool's one-man show.

Jung-Won clucks her tongue while you and Yoon-Seo look at one another. You were expecting her to be as nonchalant as you were, all her readings considered, but she's staring straight ahead, spooked.

"Earth to Yoon-Seo?" You touch her hand and she flinches, causing you to jump as well from her unexpected reaction.

"Huh?" She whips her head toward you, still zoned out. "Sorry." A forced smile settles on her face, an infrequent sight to her usual bright demeanor. "Don't worry, it just felt like deja vu for a minute."

"You said something similar earlier. Are you sure you're doing okay?" Your voiced is laced with worry.

"See, this is why I told you two to tone it down with the heebie-jeebies. You're only scaring yourselves." Jung-Won pats your head and then Yoon-Seo's in turn. "We should go to our rooms anyway. They all have too much energy they can't wait to waste away," Jung-Won states, gesturing to everyone milling about.

"Let's go?" You pull Yoon-Seo up, and she nods in return, reassuring you that she was finally present and not off and away in her thoughts.

As the three of you leave, your ears perk up at the last thing you hear Yool say.

"Did you guys really believe it?" His sentence is cut by a boisterous laugh, pleased to no end at the affirmative from his friends. "Eyy, come on now, it was just an innocent and fake joke. None of us are going to die. Not tonight and not for a long time to come."

SYNOPSIS | 02 : THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT

© 𝐀𝐥𝐥 𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐭 𝐠𝐨𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐍𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐇𝐚𝐬 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐞. 𝐈 𝐝𝐨 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐝𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬 𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐥𝐮𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐥𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨, 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞, 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐳𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧, 𝐧𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫-𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐭. 𝐀𝐥𝐬𝐨, 𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐝𝐨 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐠𝐢𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐳𝐞, 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞, 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐮𝐭𝐞, 𝐨𝐫 𝐮𝐩𝐥𝐨𝐚𝐝 𝐦𝐲 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐞𝐥𝐬𝐞𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐦 𝐢𝐭 𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐚 𝐝𝐢𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐞.

[damn-stark]

Chapter 11 It almost worked

Chapter 11 of Sugar

A/N- PLEASE THEY JUST WANT TO BE A HAPPY FAMILY!!

Warning- Swearing, Sweet tooth rotting FLUFF, angst, pregnancy talk, spoilers, long chapter, intended sexual activities and just soft and small sexual scene

Pairing- Suguru Geto x Gojo!fem-reader, (future) Choso x fem!reader

Takes place during- Jjk 0 movie

(Let me know if you want to be tagged)

————

“You’re late,” he whispers and hands you the book he carried in his hands.

You sigh deeply and glance at the door he walked out of before you look down at the tiger-like curse protecting the door as if some stranger is going to just waltz in and take what he’s protecting. You’ll have to thank Suguru for that, he didn’t want her to be left unprotected when the both of you weren't around; even if she's safe living in a community full of sorcerers, and is taken care of by a sorcerer.

Then again it’s not like it actually matters now; the tiger curse bonded with whom it was assigned to protect; the same way Toji was bonded with that worm that Suguru only got after his death.

“And you’re here,” you deadpan and walk past him to knock on the twin’s door. “Nanako, Mimiko, I’m home,” you announce in a softer tone than what you used with Suguru.

“Yeah, we heard!” Nanako shouts, and neither of them bothers to get up.

“Goodnight!” Mimiko shouts back. “Love you!”

You smile. “Me too! Good night!” You exclaim and then sigh as you turn to make a beeline towards your room without stopping by Suguru’s side.

“What did you do?” He asks calmly.

When you enter your room you put the book down on the shelf and instead grab your pajamas. “I went to a bar with Yuki,” you share. “Did you…end up going over there?”

You don’t need to be specific, he knows. So he answers. “Yes, but I didn’t get any of the action. I only saw the aftermath…the children were saved,” he reveals, making you stop just as you were getting other stuff, and turn to face him with a soft pleading look.

“Tell me Suguru that what you did had meaning,” you say quietly and put your clothes down to step closer to him. “Not everything else, but what you just did today.”

Suguru’s eyes soften and he closes the gap by grabbing your cheeks and pulling you closer to him. “Of course, there was, baby. And we are so much closer to our goal because of it,” he shares with growing excitement. “The curses that littered that school were excorized within seconds after Orimoto Rika was released. All of them, even the bigger one I let out. I didn’t get to see it, but the aftermath…” he trails off and smirks deeply. “It was truly promising. So yes, it has meaning.”

You let out a deep relieved breath and nod lightly. He nonetheless continues. “I’m so much closer to giving you and the girls the world I promised,” he whispers, causing your lips to tug to a smile. “We’re so much closer to ending this misery. I just need that curse and it will all be worth it.”

You hold his gaze and see only reassurance in his dark eyes. So that’s what you feel, comfort. There’s no ounce of doubt anymore, he never lies to you for you to have doubts, and he always accomplishes the promises he makes to you and the girls. So the guilt and hesitation you felt, melt away with his words, and with his fired-up excitement and loving gaze.

Others would see this, hear this, and call it madness perhaps, but all you hear is comfort and hope.

“Okay,” you whisper softly. “Okay, I’m sorry I got upset.”

Suguru shakes his head and caresses your cheeks. “It’s okay don’t apologize.”

You smile wider and grab his hands. “I’ll help you,” you let him know confidently. “We’ll get this curse together, whatever it takes.”

Suguru grins and nods. “Whatever it takes,” he repeats and brushes his thumb over your bottom lip before he begins to kiss you slowly as if teasing you.

You try to deepen the gesture, but he pulls back and begins to press a trail of kisses down to your neck.

“I need to take a shower,” you say breathlessly as you try to focus on anything else but his soft lips. “Suguru,” you muse.

Said man moves up and smashes his lips on yours, this time he’s quick and rougher, he shoves his tongue in you, making you gasp and go weak in the knees. Just as you’re about to stumble he slides one hand down to the back of your knee and slides your leg up to hook it around his waist, while he uses his other hand to grab your ass and lift you up to then throw you on the bed.

You laugh and before you know it, he’s taking his shirt off and flashing a smirk.

“Suguru,” you repeat again. “I’ve been out all day, I need to change out of these clothes at least.”

He snickers. “I’ll help you with that, after all you promised earlier didn’t you?”

You beam at him and welcome him with open arms. When he’s on top of you neither of you wastes any time to rip each other's clothes off and leave each other completely nude.

“Did you lock the door?” You ask him as you wrap your arms around his neck.

Suguru nods as his eyes roam your body. “Yeah, yeah,” he says breathlessly before he leans down and begins to press kisses on the collar of your neck and slowly moves his way down, making you ball the material of the bedsheet as your heart races, and your breathing gets heavier as he fills you with burning desire.

“Suguru,” you gasp breathlessly.

“Hm?” He hums and pulls his mouth away to grab your legs and pull them apart to plant kisses on your inner thigh, making you close your eyes and get lost in the sensation of his lips, of his breath unfurling over your skin, and his warmth over the part where you desire his touch the most.

“I asked for the pictures from your shoot today,” he says between kisses. “And darling, you looked absolutely breathtaking.” He pulls back and you groan in protest, making him snicker. He then moves up to hover over you again.

You would be impatient and flip him over, but instead, you look into his eyes and smile with awe. He mirrors your smile and leans in closer to you, causing his long hair to fall down like a gentle stream around your head, and shielding the single light you had left on in your room.

Neither of you say anything, you just watch each other, study each other's nude bodies basked by the dim light, and look up again. It’s been 11 years since you’ve been together and you still grow flustered under his gaze.

“I love you,” he muses endearly, “Mrs. Geto.”

You giggle and gently cup his cheek and tuck strands of his hair behind his ear. He leans into your touch and kisses your palm.

“I love you, Sugar,” you whisper with a beaming smile.

He grins and then nuzzles his face in the crook of your neck to begin kissing you again. “Mrs. Geto,” he whispers against your flesh.

——

*FIVE YEARS BACK*

You to Nanami: Can we talk, please?

You rapidly knock your knuckle on the table and wait. He might not respond right away, he might not even look at it at all. After all, it's been years since you’ve last talked and seen each other, but you have time to wait; the twins are at school, and Suguru is at his Religious group. You can wait.

Nevertheless, only a few minutes pass before a message comes in from Nanami.

Nanami: Yeah, where? When?

You sigh with relief and feel happy tears fill your eyes. You just thought he’d never want to talk to you again.

You: Right now? Uhm maybe your place? Or somewhere quiet?

Only seconds pass this time before you get a response.

Nanami: Okay, we can meet up at my place. Want me to get a car for you?

Oh? He’s changed, he doesn’t sound so moody anymore. He would’ve never offered to get you a ride before. He would’ve made you pay actually.

It’s a nice change.

You: No, I’m fine, I have my ride. Just send your address.

Nanami doesn’t fret to send his address, he doesn’t interrogate you any longer and just assures you that he’ll be right there. Albeit when you reach his apartment complex you end up waiting in the lobby for him.

You still have plenty of time before the girls are out of school so you don’t grow anxious, you read a book and ignore the wandering stares of the passersby who recognize you from magazines, billboards, and runways they've seen you in. You are a bit nervous to see Nanami again after 4 years of going without contact, but your current concern outbeats that so thankfully that’s not your top priority.

“Y/N?” You suddenly hear your name being called.

You close the book and stand up off the chair.

“Sorry I’m late,” you recognize your friend's voice. “There was traffic.”

You turn around and finally face him, noticing that he no longer has bangs, his hair is a lot shorter and more neatly styled. He looks a lot more muscular now too, or at least it seems that way, he used to be so skinny before. And he looks so formal in his suit. He honestly looks great! A little tired, but hey, who isn’t?

“Nanamin!” You exclaim and run over to him to throw your arms around him.

Regardless of the previous anxiety, and your current concern you still do feel excited to see him.

“Y/N,” he mutters as he gently taps your shoulder before he grows more stiff and pulls back slowly to look down at you. You follow his line of gaze and smirk before you step back and sigh. “I’m sorry, were you working?” You ask with guilt. “It looks like you came out of work. I’m sorry, you should’ve told me to wait—”

“No,” he cuts you off as he reaches for his blue tie to loosen it. “It’s fine, the day was boring anyway. Are you okay? What’s wrong?” He asks and meets your gaze, catching the difference in your eye color and blinking repeatedly with surprise. He doesn’t ask about it though and you don’t comment on it either, you just exhale deeply and feel your concern take priority once again.

“Uh, can we go to your house or something?” You ask.

“Yeah, sorry.” He quickly says and doesn’t waste any more time, he leads you to his apartment. And you have to admit the walk there is pretty awkward, neither of you knows what to really say, and you both have questions ready to ask, but neither of you makes the first move.

When you walk into his studio apartment that’s a different story though. It may not be big, but it’s still very neatly kept, and pretty fancy. The view is great too; you can see the city from his apartment.

“Wow, Nanami, this is very nice,” you muse as you take your coat off while you study his place. “Very organized too.” You smile and look for any sign of a partner just so you can be prepared if they walk in and think the worst.

“Are Geto and you still together?” He finally manages to ask.

You nod. “Mhm, we're married now,” you share with a nervous laugh. “We’re going on almost three years now.”

Nanami scoffs softly. “Sounds like him. Where is he?”

You put your coat on his rack by the entrance and continue to give him your back as you take your shoes off. “He’s at his facility. So working,” you share. “I wanted to talk to you alone.”

“Are you okay?” He asks again as he waits for you by his entrance.

You exhale deeply and share a breathless laugh. “Well, it depends,” you mutter and turn around to face him and catch him off guard.

“Uh,” he breathes out as he looks down at your belly.

“Big breakfast,” you tease as you see him continue to look at you with shock.

Nanami clears his throat awkwardly so you burst out laughing and tap your swollen belly. “I’m fucking with you,” you assure him. “Yeah, I’m knocked up. Don’t worry, it’s not yours.”

Nanami rolls his eyes. “Glad to see you haven’t changed,” he remarks.

You giggle and follow him as he guides you over to his couch. Before you can sit though, he props up pillows and pulls over his footrest like a nice gentleman.

“Nanamin,” you whisper and grab his arm. “It’s okay, I'm just pregnant not invalid. Thank you though.”

He doesn’t listen and tries to make your spot as comfortable as possible before you sit down. “What do you want to drink?” He asks as he steps back. “I have uh, day-old bread. Or crackers. I can make you something.”

You flash him a smile. “No, I just ate breakfast not so long ago. But some water is fine.”

He nods and walks off to his kitchen.

“Do you have a partner?” You probe. “I don’t want them to come home and freak out because they see me here. I’ll feel bad.”

“No,” he quickly answers as he grabs a glass cup. “No partner. You’ll be fine.”

You hum softly and gently fiddle with the edge of your skirt.

“How,” he interjects as he serves water in two cups. “How far along are you?”

You smile softly. “Five months,” you announce. “So halfway there.”

Nanami returns and places a cup of water in front of you before he places his cup down and sits down across from you. “Does…your brother know?” He asks, making you grow stiff and annoyed.

“No,” you deadpan. “He doesn’t know. I haven’t seen or talked to him in four years.” You sigh and take the cup of water to take a long sip, feeling every ounce of excitement, relief, and joy wash away.

“Look,” you change the subject with a more melancholy look on your face. “I’m sorry I made you get out of work, I just didn’t have anyone else to turn to. Tsukumo is away, and…Shoko…I haven’t talked to her in four years, plus, I don’t think she’d want to talk to me, so I thought of you. I hope that’s okay, and I know it’s bad that I call you just to come here and burden you with my problems, but I couldn't think of anyone else.”

“It’s okay,” Nanami assures you softly. “I know it’s been a while, but we’re still friends.”

Your eyes fill with tears and you can’t help but flash him a sad smile at the mention.

“So please don’t be afraid to share your burdens with me,” he adds.

You draw out a deep breath and place the glass down as you gather up how to express yourself without bursting into tears. He never rushes you, he waits until finally you find a way to share. “You know my stance with non-sorcerers. Suguru thinks the same way,” you interject softly. “Albeit he hates them a little more than me, he has no tolerance for them. He…killed his parents so as to not make an exception…” you trail off and draw in a shaky breath and take another sip of water as you grow nervous and scared.

“And,” you add. “I guess I'm scared. I mean, he loves the idea of having the baby. He’s so excited and protective, but what happens when the kid doesn’t have cursed energy?” You finally manage to express your concern. “What happens then? He’ll hate me and the baby. And I’m scared because of it. I mean I can deal with him hating me, but the kid?” You ask rhetorically and feel tears escape from your eyes. “And I know it’s way too soon to tell, but I’m still scared.”

“Why should you be though?” Nanami questions, making you sniffle and look over at him—“you come from a long line of strong sorcerers. Geto is a strong sorcerer. I’m sure your kid will be just as exceptional.”

You manage a faint smile, but that fades away quickly. “The Zen’in’s had Toji,” you explain. “He was born with no cursed energy. And I hear that they have another one who’s just the same. It’s not rare for kids from sorcerer families to be born like non-sorcerers.”

Nanami sighs and nods softly. “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he says and then goes quiet for a moment. “But,” he then adds. “I don’t think that’ll be your case. Even if it was, that’d make Geto a deadbeat bastard if he’s willing to hate his kid because of something they couldn’t control.”

He might be right, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that you’d feel like it was your fault. And it doesn’t take away from the fact that you’d live with guilt for the rest of your life for your child because her father couldn’t love her.

“Yeah,” you mumble. “I guess you're right.”

“And if it happens you always have your brother,” he adds, making you grow stiff and annoyed.

“Please,” you mutter with that clear emotion. “I don’t want to talk about Satoru.”

“Y/N,” Nanami scolds you. “I can’t tell you to forget what happened, but he’s still your brother.”

You clench your jaw and shrug. “I don’t care. He left, so I’m leaving him behind. So please don’t bring him up anymore, and don’t tell him about anything. Don’t tell anyone.”

Nanami sighs and nods. “Okay.”

You hum and wipe away your tears.

“Look,” he continues to say. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about. I’m sure your kid will turn out to be a sorcerer. I’m sure that they’ll be as strong as you…”

You smile softly.

“And if they don’t then…you always have a place here. You and your kid.”

You gasp softly and tears rush down your cheeks. “Thank you,” you murmur. “You’re nice. Nicer than before that’s for sure.”

Nanami scoffs and smiles softly at the ground. “I was a moody teenager then.”

“Weren't we all?” You agree. “Are you still a sorcerer?” You can’t help but ask since there’s really nothing either of you can do about your situation right now. You just needed to talk to someone and hear their advice.

“No,” Nanami reveals. “I quit that. I’m a working stiff now. You?”

“Well,” you sigh and sit back. “I hunt curses, yeah. I do odd jobs with Tsukumo, but right now I am on maternity leave.” You laugh softly.

“Besides that,” Nanami adds. “I see you’re doing well for yourself. I mean you're doing your dream job.”

You grin and nod. “Yeah, you remembered! Yeah,” you repeat. “Well after I dropped out, I worked to get stronger, but after that, I said what the heck, I’m going to try, and next thing I knew I’m walking down runways and shooting for magazine covers.”

Nanami smiles and nods softly. “Good for you. I'm glad you could follow that dream,” he shares. “I don’t think it would’ve been possible if you stayed at school.”

You hum in agreement and drink more water, and as you do, you feel the baby kick so you jolt up and rush over to your friend. “Oh my god, give me your hand,” you say quickly and grab his hand regardless. “She’s kicking, wanna feel?”

Nanami looks down at your belly and hesitates before he mutters his response slowly. “Okay?”

You beam at him and press his hand against the spot where you feel her kick. Rather than looking down you watch Nanami, and see his breath catch, and his eyes widen slightly as he feels her.

“Cool, huh?” You muse. “The twins love to lay on me and feel her move.”

“Twins?” Nanami asks as he pulls his hand away.

You nod. “Yeah, we adopted twin girls that Suguru rescued…Maybe we can hang out again and you can meet them. They’re my pride and joy.” You mention with a soft smile.

Nanami hums softly. “Yeah. That’d be nice,” he agrees.

You beam at him and then sit back in your seat to add something else about the baby. “Suguru and I wanted to name the baby Yu, if it was a boy, just like—”

“Haibara,” Nanami finishes for you as his lips tug to a soft smile.

You nod softly. “Yeah,” you whisper. “But it turns out we’re expecting a girl, so now, we’re clueless as to what we want to name her. Suki is up in the air, or Kiko, but we’re still debating. So if you have a suggestion that’d be great.”

Nanami chuckles. “I wouldn't have a clue,” he says.

“Well,” you sigh. “We still have four months left to decide, so.”

“Are you scared?” Nanami interjects. “To have your baby, I mean.”

“A little,” you admit. “But mostly I’m excited. I can’t wait, I want to meet her already.”

“You know out everyone I never expected you to have a kid,” Nanami shares softly, catching you a surprise. “I thought your brother would, but not you. Now that you’re expecting one, I’m happy for you, y/n. I’m happy that you found a way to live your life outside of our messed-up world. I know you'll make a great mother.”

Happy tears fill your eyes and your heart skips a beat. “Thank you, Nanami. Thank you for everything,” you tell him sweetly. “I hope we can continue to talk and hang out so you can meet her. So we can continue to be friends as well. I missed you, you know.”

“Yeah,” he whispers. “School was never the same after you left…I missed you too,” he admits, making you grin softly.

Your fear about your child’s future won’t go away, but you’re happy that you got your friend back in your life. You really missed him.

——

*NOW.*

“Hello! Can I come in?!”

“Oh, your child’s awake,” you whisper against Suguru’s chest as you’re snuggled up against him after you exhausted yourselves after last night's passionate activities.

“It was getting late,” he comments on the fact that your daughter always wakes up at the same time every morning and never fails to come to your room first—“Yes, Satori, you can come in,” he addresses the visitor as he caresses your back.

The door opens and the sound of stomping paws rush in and skid to a stop by the bed.

“What did I say about that curse in the room?” You question as you keep your head on Suguru’s chest.

“Mommy!” Satori ignores you before you feel her jump on the bed and crawl over to throw herself on you. “You’re finally home.”

You hum. “I got home late, sorry, Chipmunk.”

Little arms wrap around you and her long strands of hair fall over your face. “We missed you,” she muses.

You pull your arm out from under her and hug her tightly against you. “I missed you too.”

“Guess what?” She asks, making you open your eyes and meet her dark brown eyes looking at you already.

“What?” You whisper.

She leans close to your ear, causing her black hair to cover your eyes as it falls all over the place now. “Daddy said we’re going to buy your birthday present soon,” she whispers loudly.

“Excuse me?” Suguru cuts in. “That’s supposed to be a secret, Chipmunk.”

Satori giggles. “But daddy, I didn’t tell her what it was.”

You smirk and glance at Suguru. “You’ll tell me, huh?” You ask your daughter.

Satori pushes herself up and stabs her knee in your ribs as she does, making you groan.

“Well,” she mumbles. “No, because Nana said she’d take away my dolls if I did.”

You giggle. “Oh, don’t worry she won’t.”

“But last yesterday—”

“The other day,” Suguru corrects her.

“Oh…the other day, she hid my doll! And she didn’t want to give it back,” she whines and pouts. “She’ll do it again. Daddy, you have to tell her something,” she complains and throws herself on him, making sure to squeeze herself between him and you even though his other side is empty.

She always does this. She’s like…Satoru in that way, always wanting Suguru’s attention for themselves.

“I’ll talk to her,” Suguru assures his young daughter. “Okay?”

Satori nods and continues to push you back with her feet so Suguru can hug her instead. “Are you going to work today?” She asks him.

“No, I’m going to be home all day today,” he says with a smile, causing her to squeal—“what do you want to do today?” He asks. “Maybe we could go harvest some apples with your mommy and your sisters?”

“Apple pie?” She asks. “Uncle Larue makes the best.”

Suguru smiles brightly and nods. “Yeah, we can definitely ask him.”

“Yay!”

“What about me?” You complain as you’re left on the edge. “I’m cold over here.”

Satori and Suguru both look over at you at the same time, and their resemblance shows off as they’re side by side. She’s literally a mini him except for in personality, she probably takes after you in that. Or…he who shall not be named anymore.

“Well,” Satori mutters as she lays her head on Suguru’s neck. “I guess you can be with us.”

Suguru snickers, and you move yourself back to lay beside your daughter.

“You know,” you muse as you cover her with the blanket. “You used to sleep on your daddy’s chest all the time when you were a baby.”

Satori rolls her eyes. “Yes, Mommy I know, you tell me all the time.”

You smile brightly and drag yourself closer to Suguru. “And I used to lay right here and watch you guys sleep,” you add.

Satori can’t help but smile as she clutches onto Suguru as if he were going to disappear out of the blue. If she could, she’d go with him everywhere, she’d even go with him to his religious facility, but he says she’s still too young to be there so she stays home with Belinda, or you, or the twins instead. She’s attached to him though, and infatuated with the curses he can manipulate. She’s not scared of them like you were at her age. It makes you glad.

But regardless, this attachment is born out of how spoiled she is by Suguru, which is why she wants to go everywhere with him, he spoils all three of them. And you too. And you can’t say you don’t like it because you do, especially when he spoils the girls, it makes your heart flutter.

“Hey!”

You look over at the door and see Nanako walk in with her hand on her hip. “When is breakfast going to be ready? We’ve been waiting,” she complains.

“Maybe you and Mimiko can make breakfast?” You suggest teasingly as you sit up.

Nanako doesn’t like your joke though, and scoffs before she walks over and throws herself on the bed. “Hey we should catch that scary movie that came out last week,” she says, making Satori gasp.

“No! We’re going to pluck apples today!” She exclaims.

“We can do both,” Nanako argues.

You look at her with concern. “Maybe something not scary?” You suggest.

“You lost the bet,” Mimiko interjects as she slowly makes herself inside the room. “You promised one scary movie.”

Tsk.

You groan softly in protest. “This totally sucks, but I guess you’re right.”

“So what about it, Geto?” Nanako presses as she places her phone down.

Suguru looks up at the ceiling and speechlessly recoils over the fact that he’ll have to be stuck in a theater with non-sorcerers, but he doesn’t actually express his complaint, he sighs instead and nods. “Okay, that’s fine.”

Nanako grins and goes back on her phone, letting you glance over at Mimiko and smile at her as you pat the empty spot beside you.

She looks at the spot for a second before she slowly makes her way to your side to lie beside you.

“For now though,” Suguru adds. “Why don’t we go eat, hm? Satori why don’t you come help me?” He asks.

The little girl finally gets off him and claps joyfully. “Okay! Yay!” She exclaims and quickly climbs off the bed to run to the bathroom first. Suguru follows her and helps her brush her teeth, leaving you with the girls alone.

“So,” Mimiko interjects. “Are you guys closer to getting that special grade curse?”

You sigh and feel her head fall on your shoulder, letting you lay your head on hers as you explain the situation. “Well, not really. But we want to get her soon, Suguru just made his first move though, so we’ll wait a bit until we make our next move before we finally go for the win.”

And you did wait, a few months. You didn’t want to get caught before you could come up with a good strategy to take the curse, so you waited a few months before Suguru decided to make his next move to finally lure Okkotsu out to see the power Rika was blessed with for yourselves.

“Do you really think he’ll release her?” You doubt Suguru as he helps you up on the end of the beam that’s several feet over the abandoned shopping center.

“I’m sure he will,” Suguru assures you as he summons the worm curse to wrap it around his shoulders. “With the semi-first grade curse I’ll release, he’ll have to if he wants to save his friend.”

You hum and lean against the wall to wait for the students they sent out for this mission. “Well if he doesn’t and I get some kind of disease up here,” you complain. “I hope you’re ready to cremate me.”

Suguru scoffs at your over-dramatic comment and stands across from you to watch the entrance.

“If he doesn’t bring out Rika then what?” You ask seriously this time. “The cursed-speech user has his limits, you know. Knowing my brother and the school, Okkotsu is probably already training with something else, so if he doesn’t bring out Rika then what?”

Suguru rubs his chin and looks over at you to meet your gaze. “Well then if they're in trouble you can jump in and help them, we can’t risk Okkotsu dying without having her out. The veil will give you cover so you won’t be seen when the job is done.”

You scoff with amusement. “Jump in and look like some whack job just hanging out ready to save kids in veils? They’ll figure us out on the spot.”

“Well,” he argues. “You wouldn't have to get down, an air technique will be discreet and execute the curse without you having to be seen.”

You sigh and nod. “Yeah, that’s right, but he’ll know for sure.”

Suguru nods. “He’ll know today regardless of what happens,” he says. “So it won’t matter. Let’s just hope they don’t protect the kid and make it impossible to reach.”

You chuckle. “Yeah,” you comment on that matter sarcastically. “That’ll happen.”

Suguru snorts softly. “Yeah, you’re right,” he agrees with you. “But he is Satoru’s student, who knows maybe he’s different.”

You avert your gaze and frown at the thought, but you also hope that Suguru’s right about Satoru protecting Okkotsu, because at least he’ll protect the kid better than he protected you that day nine years ago.

“Look,” Suguru breaks you from your thoughts. “They’re here.”

You take a peek past the wall and see a skinny boy in the school uniform with short white hair and a scarf around the bottom of his face—that must be the cursed speech user.

You then spot Okkotsu next to him. Suguru had found his school ID, so you knew what he looked like, but what’s way more visible now is his dark eye bags. Plus he wears white rather than a usually dark-colored uniform. Why?

Yet that’s not the most outlandish thing about Okkotsu, now that you’re close to him you can’t help but freeze and gasp with shock as you quickly feel his cursed energy. It’s impressive and terrifying at the same time. It’s also a lot more than Satoru’s ever was. It’s so…unbelievable.

It would’ve been nice getting to know him now that you see how special he is, but, oh well.

“Come on,” Suguru whispers excitedly. “It’s almost time.”

A veil is drawn so you push yourself away from the wall, but continue to hide under the shadows until a pack of low-level curses create some tornado in the middle of the shopping center. You use that as cover and walk further down the beam to sit in the middle with Suguru beside you.

The curses are busy with the students so they pay no mind to Suguru or you, letting you watch as they form an orb and get louder. Before you know it though, you make out the cursed-speech user walking to the curses, so you use your cursed technique and form a thin water shield in front of Suguru and you, just in case.

The cursed-speech user is strong, so it’s unknown how far his sound waves will reach, and water catches sound waves so it’s better to be safe than sorry.

“Explode!” A voice booms out through the silence, and with that single command all the curses combust, and luckily only the aftershocks of the explosion reach you.

“Truly amazing,” you muse. “I’ve never seen that in action…I would’ve liked to have that technique, it’s cool.”

Suguru glances over at you, you can feel his stare from the corner of his eyes—“like you would've actually enjoyed not being able to speak,” he interjects.

You tilt your head to the side and meet his gaze with a smile. “Ugh, so true,” you agree.

“Maybe our next kid can have that,” he comments.

You snort and retort. “Now how are they going to have that, it’s an inherited technique, dork.”

Suguru smirks and shrugs whilst you both look back down at the scene. “It can happen, it can be a rare case, but it can happen.”

You shake your head and listen as he proceeds to lower a veil, “emerge from darkness, blacker than darkness. Purify that which is impure,” he chants.

The person who lowered the other veil must be weak if Suguru can cover it with ease. So your brother isn’t the one supervising his students today. That’s good to know.

“Here we go,” Suguru murmurs as he releases a short light blue curse with a big nose and tusks.

Once the kids see it you see Okkotsu reach for his weapon, so you lean forward with curiosity and hope to see the curse attached to him. But Suguru’s curse attacks first, and the cursed-speech user counters by only managing to twist the curses fingers.

“Nice try,” you praise the boy while he falls down. Your eyes then drift to Okkotsu as he runs over and drags his comrade away from the curse, letting you sit back and focus back on Suguru as you wait for their next move.

“Anyway, how many kids do you want?” You ask.

Sure you’ve asked before, but answers change.

“How many ever come out,” he says and turns his head to meet your gaze.

You huff. “I need a clear answer,” you counter. “I’m going to be the one carrying them, and popping them out.”

Suguru draws in a deep breath and drifts his gaze away as he thinks

“Maybe until we have a boy?” You suggest.

“Well,” Suguru breathes out. “What if we have a boy next? I want at least three more.”

You laugh softly. “Three? Man. Okay.” You nod softly in comprehension. “Well, you might get your fourth soon after this morning.”

Suguru’s lips pull to a smirk and he tilts his head. “Well, I can make that a definite possibility later.”

You mirror his smirk. “Oh? Is that a promise?” You tease.

Suguru leans towards you. “We can make it a binding vow,” he whispers in a soft and soothing voice.

You watch him with an enamored look before you beam at him. “No need,” you assure him. “Let’s do it. Maybe go on a nice date, and not do it at home? A hotel?”

Suguru grins. “Well, okay. That works,” he agrees, “I know where to take you too.”

“Oh?” You probe excitedly.

“It’s a surprise though,” he teases.

You hold his gaze for a moment before you smile timidly and then look back at the scene as you see Okkotsu walking out to face the curse. You expect—hope he’ll display Rika, but he only imbues his blade with cursed energy.

The curse gives him everything it has, but Okkotsu proves to be what you expected, a trained swordsman. Even when he gets wounded he keeps Rika in and instead helps the cursed-speech user come out and give the finishing blow. Much to your disappointment.

“Well,” you breathe out and stand up while the kids walk away. “This blows.”

“Oh, what do we do about the veil?” You hear Okkotsu ask.

“What a shame,” Suguru interjects as he swings his leg off the other. “We came here to see Rika,” he says while the worm curse gives him the ID. “As a fellow special-grade, I was hoping to meet him soon. I needed to deliver something he dropped, too.”

“Well,” you groan with distaste. “Looks like we’ll have to move to plan b.” You press your hand on your hip and groan.

Suguru gets up and while he lowers the veil, the worm curse drags itself over to you to drape itself on your shoulders. You smile at it and scratch the top of its head before you caress his head with your cheek as he presses himself against you.

“Let’s have a family reunion first,” Suguru says as he makes room for you to walk past him. “Go over our plan and then move to plan b.”

It’s been ten years. You did good at avoiding your older brother for ten years, now you’ll break that streak and probably see him again at the place that holds the most memories of your cherished teenagehood.

“We’re going to have to lie to Satori,” you mention as you walk out of the emergency exit. “If she finds out who we’re going to see, she's going to want to stick along.”

“You don’t want them to meet yet?” Suguru queries.

You sigh and drop your head when you land on the alleyway by the shopping center. “No,” you deadpan. “Not yet. At least…not there. I don’t trust people not to go tell my family about her. The school is too public.”

Suguru hums in comprehension. “They’ll eventually know you know. We can’t hide her forever.”

You lift your gaze to look at the end of the alleyway and nod softly. “I know, but I want her to at least know how to defend herself a bit before they find out. If they—”

“They won’t,” Suguru cuts you off to assure you. “I won’t let them hurt her.” He reaches over and grabs your hand, not caring what people might say since he’s wearing his Buddha costume. “The curse I gave her won’t let it happen, and you and our family would never let it happen.”

You hold his gaze and feel the comfort you seek by that simple look. When you walk out of the alleyway and join the sidewalk to go to your waiting car, you go back to the previous topic.

“I was promised a show,” you comment as you let go of his hand to hug the worm's head. “We only got to see the fucking preview. If you can even count that as a preview,” you grumble.

“Well I didn't—” Suguru cuts himself off as he hears you mimic him.

“Stop that,” he mutters.

You mirror his serious facial expression and do it again. “Stop that.”

Suguru groans and rolls his eyes, making you and the worm smirk.

“You know Satori has started that habit too,” Suguru points out with annoyance. “I see where she gets it from now.”

You ignore him and wrap the worm around your shoulders before you interject seriously as if you’re upset. “Do you know what’s not right?”

“What?” Suguru doesn’t fret to probe.

“Left,” you interject with a growing smirk as you try not to laugh at your own joke.

Suguru sighs deeply and quickens his pace to try and reach the car faster. You finally burst out laughing and don’t wait to run over and throw yourself on his back.

“It’s a joke!” You say between laughs. “Laugh! It’s funny, I totally got you.”

“You’re such a dork,” he murmurs with a soft smile.

——

*THE NEXT DAY*

“Please! Help me! It’s been months and Geto has not accomplished his duty to me!” Kanemori, one of Suguru’s donors exclaims through heavy and exhausted pants.

“Duty to you?” You mock him and laugh softly before you look away from your nail to look at the sweaty man with disgust. “You see,” you sigh and prop your elbow on the armrest. “I would, but I hear that you’re behind on payments, so I will recommend talking to my husband about your condition,” you roll out and offer him a feigned smile. “Albeit I'd watch my tongue if I were you, my husband isn’t as merciful as me.”

Mr Kanemori drops his head and groans before he mutters. “Bitch.”

Nanako gasps as if he had offended her, but you simply smirk with amusement.

“All these years and you’re still nothing but Geto’s slutty housewife,” he sneers out of anger over the fact that you didn’t help him exorcize the curse that clings onto him.

“Well,” you sigh nonchalantly and only seem to piss him off more since you remain calm. “Maybe that’s true, but just remember the only reason you’ve lived this long is because of me. He could’ve killed you the first month you fell behind on your payment, but I told him to give you time. So do you have it?” You ask.

Mr Kanemori swallows thickly and parts his lips to make an excuse, but you cut him off. “Oh, well, what a pity. It looks like it’s time I be a good housewife and take out the trash.”

You swiftly flick your wrist and shoot off a blast of wind that slams into him so hard that he flies out of the room.

“Anyway, what were we talking about before?” You move on quickly as the man stumbles on his feet and begins to yell.

“Geto! Give me Geto! Geto!” His footsteps recede and his voice lowers as he gets further away. “Geto, control your wife—”

Before he can finish his complaint he gets cut off by Suguru, you imagine, he really hates it when people try to bad-mouth you; both non-sorcerers and sorcerers alike. It’s something he’s done since you were teenagers, but now as he’s grown more ruthless, he doesn’t tolerate it whatsoever. It’s something you can say you’re very proud of.

“Oh, that’s right! Miguel,” you bring up your previous conversation before you were so rudely interrupted. “What did you want to show me?”

Said man approaches you and shows you his arm to point at a dark spot. “Come on tell me, does that look cancerous.”

“I’m no doctor,” you mutter as you grab his arm and take a better look. “What does that look like to you Mimiko?”

Mimiko leans over and glances at the spot, and shakes her head.

“You know what?” You snicker. “It’s an age spot! You’re just getting old.”

Miguel pulls his arm away and shoots you a pointed look that makes you shrug.

“I don’t know what you expected, I’m not a doctor,” you remind him. “But maybe it’s that cream you’re using. It’s not a good product. I can give you something better if you give me that recipe I’ve been wanting.”

Miguel folds his arms over his chest and shakes his head. “No, it’s a recipe passed through generations of my family,” he says. “I won’t just hand it out to anyone.”

You scoff. “We’re family,” you point out.

Miguel shrugs. “Yeah, and I still won’t give it to you. I’ll keep making it myself for all of us.”

You pout. “You suck.”

He snickers and Mimiko joins him. You frown and before you can counter, Suguru bursts through the doors with a smile on his face as he comes in shouting. “The time is right, my family.”

You shift in your seat and watch him approach you, and your family gathered around you at the end of the room.

“Let’s lower the curtain on the age of monkeys,” Suguru adds joyfully and stands beside you. “And build a paradise for Jujutsu sorcerers. First, we must tell the cornerstone of the Jujutsu world, Jujutsu High.”

What a pain in the ass. You really don’t want to see him again. There’s a chance he might not be there, he could be busy, but you feel like there’s a higher chance that you will see him when you go shortly. What will he do? What will you do?

You can’t attack anyone yet, but will your anger heighten, or will you not feel it anymore? When you think about what he did you get annoyed and upset all over again, you hate that he left, but seeing him face to face can be a different story. It can bring a rush of many unwarranted emotions.

And sure, you can keep your cool and control your emotions when it matters, but you worked so hard to try and suppress the agony, and getting reminded of that won’t be good. But then there’s the other possibility…and that is that you might not feel anything at all anymore and you’ll just have to live with the fact that he hates you now, that everything you once were is a simple memory.

Maybe that’ll be the worst of all. You can live with being upset at each other, you can tolerate not talking to each other, fighting too, but having him hate you?

Then again why should it matter if he hates you? You stand on different sides of your world, no matter what happens he’ll never come to terms with the ideology you follow. So should it matter if he hates you or not?

No…

“Why not catch them off guard?” Toshihisa interjects. “Won’t that work better? If we plan it good we won’t even have to fight long.”

“A surprise attack is often beneficial,” Suguru says. “But not this time. If we go in with a surprise attack all the sorcerer's that work at the school will be there and foil everything. We need them to be distracted and away from the school for our plan to work, which is why we’re letting them know.”

“What if they try and attack you now?” Manami questions.

“It’s highly doubtful,” you cut in. “They won’t risk putting the students at risk, but if they do try anything that’s why I will go with Suguru.”

“I’ll go too,” Miguel volunteers.

“No,” Suguru rebuttals. “I don't want them to see you yet. Your weapon is an advantage against Satoru Gojo, I'd rather keep that a surprise until the battle.”

Miguel doesn’t argue, he nods in comprehension, letting Suguru then look at Larue. “Will you come, Larue?” He asks. “There’s a high chance they won’t attack, that’s not my intention today either, but if they do then can you help us?”

Larue rolls his head to the side and then nods nonchalantly. “Yeah, sure.”

You offer him a thankful smile and then get interrupted by a shout. “Hey, I want to go too!” Nanako exclaims as she puts her phone down. “Plus there’s this crepe spot close to there that I want to try, so can we go?!”

Your eyes brighten and you sit up and cut in with the same excitement. “Hey, and there’s that shopping center near there that I want to go to too, so that totally works out, yeah, Suguru?”

Suguru and you look at each other, and he hesitates but ultimately gives in. “Yeah, that’s fine. Now as to battle plans let’s discuss that after dinner tonight? It’s been a while since we’ve all been together like this.”

Without hesitation everyone agrees, making you and him happy.

“So now,” he moves on smugly. “Let’s go declare war.”

You sigh deeply and don’t feel your dread go away at any moment during your way there. So it’s a good thing Suguru decided to use one of his flying curses to travel on and make things quicker, or else you would have lost yourself in your wandering mind.

Then again it’s not like returning to Jujutsu High actually resolves anything, or makes things quieter within you. It’s only a trigger for memories of your past to rush through you and make your complexity only feel worse.

“Ugh, what a piece of junk,” you complain as you take a look at part of the school and notice that it hasn’t changed in the past nine years since you’ve last been here. “This place never changes.”

Suguru grabs your hand to help you out of the bird's mouth, while he also takes a look at the school. “Tell me about it,” Suguru agrees.

“Yuck!” Nanako exclaims with disgust as she leans over the bird's mouth. “Geto, Y/N, is this really Tokyo? Feels like the sticks.”

You put on sunglasses and scrunch your nose in disgust as a wave of nostalgia hits you while you keep studying this damned school.

“Nanako,” Mimiko interjects softly. “That’s rude.”

“What? But don’t you think so, too, Mimiko?”

You finally look down and see Okkotsu and the speech-cursed user along with one of Yaga’s cursed corpse, a panda, and one of the Zen'in girls, the one with no cursed energy.

“Come on!” Larue exclaims as he leans towards Nanako. “Get off already!”

“Aren’t you cold?” Nanako rebuttals, causing you to snicker.

“Yeah or do those nipple covers come with built-in body warmers?” You tease, making Nanako laugh while Larue glares at you.

“Who are they?” Mimiko interjects, pulling your gaze back to the students.

“Whoa!” Nanako exclaims as she points ahead. “It’s a panda!”

You sigh and share a knowing glance with Suguru before you cut in. “Bunny, it’s not polite to point,” you gently remind her.

The girl ignores you and proceeds to take pictures. “How cute!”

“And who are all of you!” The Panda directs at all of you. Which they should've done the moment you all landed. You could’ve easily killed them already—“Intruders aren’t allowed in, by Yuta here.”

“Kelp!” The cursed-speech user agrees? Or disagrees? Is he hungry?

“Huh?” Okkotsu rebuttals in confusion.

“No sign of him yet?” You ask Suguru.

“Not yet, but someone will be here shortly, hopefully,” he says.

“Go home before you get beaten!” The Zen’in girl bounces off the others' comments. “By Yuta!”

“Huh?!”

Suguru lets go of your hand and zooms over to Okkotsu to take his hands and finally introduces himself while you wait for the others to get here. “Nice to meet you, Okkotsu. I’m Geto Suguru.”

The other kids look at your husband surprised at how fast he got to Okkotsu, while the boy looks at Suguru nervously and kind of confused.

“Huh?” Okkotsu says. “Oh…nice to meet you…” he trails off.

“You possess a truly wonderful power, I see,” Suguru continues to say. “I believe that great power ought to be used toward great ends. Have you ever questioned the current state of the world? This world where Jujutsu sorcerers act in secret in order to protect the order of commonplace society.”

“Did Geto and you really come here?” Mimiko asks as she approaches you.

You watch Suguru as he pulls back from Okkotsu and nod. “Yeah, a long time ago now,” you say quietly.

“You see,” you listen to Suguru add while you watch him walk around the boy. “There’s this established paradox saying the strong must accommodate the weak.” He turns and throws his arm around Okkotsu’s shoulders before he dramatically expresses himself. “It’s so deplorable!”

You walk over to the short fence with a smile on your face as you find his whole act over dramatic. “He’s so dramatic,” you mumble to the ground as you hide your smile.

“I’ll say,” Larue agrees with you. “How much you wanna bet he was rehearsing that on his way here.”

You snicker and lean back against the fence as you look over at Suguru with a straight face and a stifled laugh.

“The apex of all creation has halted its own path of evolution!” Suguru adds louder. “It’s nonsense.”

You have to admit though, that he does look pretty when he makes those faces.

“It’s high time mankind reconsidered its strategy for survival!” Suguru says. “Which is why we’d like you to help us.”

“Help with what?” Okkotsu asks, and as he does you gasp softly as you catch the glimpse of short white hair through the trees. And you know it can only be one person.

“We’re going to kill all non-sorcerers,” Suguru reveals nonchalantly. “And create a world with only Jujutsu sorcerers.”

The kids react to what was said, and you react with the same disbelief as you finally see him after nine years. It’s a good thing you have sunglasses, it’s actually why you brought them, so he wouldn't look you in the eyes, but the shades don’t hide your face nor do they block his.

You see him clearly, you notice he actually looks like he got fucking taller. He wears bindings over his eyes now instead of shades, which is probably more convenient. His hair doesn’t like it’s that shaggy anymore, it looks more neatly styled now which suits him better. And he looks like he got more muscular, but you can’t tell all that much with his baggy clothes.

And another thing is clear, your anger, that resentment you felt after he left you in that house with your abusive family, is all still there. You still feel it raw and burning within you. It’s still alive—or is it something else? Anger for what could’ve been if he had taken you home that day, if he had come in any of those 5 days that you spent getting tortured. Is it guilt too?

No…it can’t be that…

It’s just pure anger.

“Could you stop preaching your crazy beliefs to my students?” Satoru speaks in a voice that has grown a bit deeper, but not that much.

Nevertheless, he then turns his head and you see him face you. His eyes are hidden, but you can feel his stare linger on you even as you look away.

“Satoru!” Suguru exclaims happily. “Long time no see!”

Mimiko seemed to have noticed your reaction to seeing your brother so she gently hooks her arm around yours, making you look at her and smile softly as you grab her hand and caress it gently.

“First of all, get away from those kids, Suguru,” Satoru adds, making you look up and see that more sorcerers have joined this confrontation; Muscle-head Yaga, Mei-Mei whom you just saw a few months back, Nanami whom you actually saw a couple weeks ago when you went to hang out at a bar. You also see Ijichi whom you haven’t seen in over ten years, he looks so much older, like, older than your brother even.

There are other sorcerers you don’t recognize, and there’s no Shoko. But that’s good, you don’t want to see her disappointment, you can’t face it. That’s why you avoided speaking to her over the years, no matter how much you miss her.

“I had heard this year's first-years were all outstanding students,” Suguru says with a smirk. “Now I understand, it was all your doing. A special-grade cursed human, a cursed corpse mutation, the descendant of the cursed speech users, and…the Zen’in clan's failure.”

The girl swiftly points her blade at Suguru and sneers, “you piece of—”

“Watch what you say,” Suguru cuts her off with no ounce of remorse, his voice is cold and his threat is sincere. “Because I don’t need any monkeys like you in my world.”

With that said the shy-looking boy slaps Suguru’s hand off his shoulders and counters. “I’m sorry. I don’t really understand what you’re talking about, but…I can’t help anyone who insults my friends!”

You smirk at his sudden confidence and speechlessly praise the boy for defending his friends; even the Zen’in girl whom you actually don’t dislike, after all, if she does have heavenly restriction like you’ve heard she has, then she’s special. Just like Toji Zen’in was.

“My apologies,” you hear Suguru tell Okkotsu. “It wasn't my intention to upset you.”

“Then what exactly did you come for?” Satoru asks as he puts himself between Suguru and his student.

“To declare war,” Suguru reveals with a smug smirk before he faces all the other sorcerers. “Everyone gathered here, open your ears and listen closely! On the coming December 24th, when the sun sets, we shall conduct the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons,” he says and steps back so everyone can see him as he makes himself clear.

“It will take place in the crucible of curses, Shinjuku Tokyo, and the holy land of Jujutsu, Kyoto. We will unleash a thousand curses upon each place,” Suguru shares. “And of course, their command will be massacre. If you wish to avoid a scene straight out of hell, come and stop it with all your might. Let us freely curse each other!”

You smirk confidently as everyone falls in shocked disbelief at the horror that was announced, but then through the tension, Nanako screams, causing Mimiko to lean towards you, and you and Larue to lean away out of embarrassment.

“Geto!” Nanako breaks the tension. “The store’s gonna close! And Satori and Belinda are already there!”

“Oh, it’s already that late?” Suguru asks as he looks back at her calmly before he looks over at your brother again and speaks to him one last time. “I’m sorry, Satoru. These girls just insist on getting crepes from Takeshita Street.

“Hurry!” Nanako interrupts.

Suguru begins to turn but adds one more thing. “So I’ll be taking my leave.”

“Bunny,” you mutter with annoyance as you turn to walk back to the bird. “What did we say about interrupting?”

“Okay, but don’t act like you don’t want some too, plus the faster we get out of here, the faster we get to go shopping!”

You grin. “That’s so true! You’re so smart,” you praise her.

“Good grief,” Suguru sighs as he walks back to the bird. “I don’t see what’s so good about a place with so many monkeys,” he says.

Mimiko lets go of you, and you help her back on the bird as you peer back to look at Suguru. “Okay, I changed my mind,” you interject. “No shopping center, we want to go to the mall.”

Suguru proceeds to grab your hand to help you up. “You and who?” He asks as he dreads it.

“The twins, Larue, me, and Satori of course!”

Suguru scoffs. “Sure she does, you know how much she hates spending time there. So how about you guys go, and Satori and I go home,” he tries to make an excuse.

You flick your wrist and brush him off. “No, I want your opinions on things,” you whine. “Plus,” you add with a growing smirk. “I forgot my wallet at home.”

You didn't.

Suguru sighs deeply and just as he’s going to agree, he gets cut off by your brother. “Did you think we’d just let you leave?” He questions.

“You don't want to do that,” Suguru warns him whilst he pulls out a giant curse before him, and multiple smaller ones to surround the students. “Your precious students are within my range. And my y/n has made sure to keep your co-workers out of range.”

Just as he says that you make sure to use your cursed technique to raise a wall made of dirt from the ground to block the other teachers, and the other sorcerers from reaching the students.

“Well, everyone,” Suguru finally brings this all to an end as he grabs onto his bird. “See you on the battlefield.”

The bird closes its mouth, leaving you basked in darkness and your thoughts as it ascends and flies away.

——

*LATER*

“Suguru?” You call out and then slide the back door open to see Nanako standing behind him with his long and dark hair in one hand and a brush in the other. You see Mimiko sitting on the ground beside him, hugging her stuffed creature. Satori’s tiger curse is here of course and makes itself small as it lays under the chair, while Satori is, of course, snuggled against Suguru as they sit on a chair under the grand and naked Momiji tree.

“What does that word say?” You hear Satori ask.

You don’t want to interrupt the moment so you lean against the doorframe and watch the way Nanako brushes Suguru’s hair, the way Mimiko finds peace in her silence, and the sight of Suguru reading a book while Satori tries to read her own.

“Well,” Suguru says, and you watch him point to the page. “Can you try and pronounce it?”

Satori blinks and looks up at her father with a pointed look before she rebuttals. “Well no, silly, that’s why I asked.”

You hold back your laugh, and Suguru scoffs in slight disbelief but he can’t help but smile with amusement.

“Okay,” he breathes out before he helps her. “Well, it says, remember.”

“Oh,” Satori mumbles. “I knew that.”

“I know you did,” Suguru says with a stifled laugh.

You grin at the interaction, and then quickly pull your phone out to take a discreet photo of this adorable moment of Suguru with his girls. And after you take it you admire it with a soft smile as you affirm to yourself that one of your emotions that you know you didn’t feel when you saw your brother, was regret.

Moments like these are why you will never regret the choices you made and the path you followed. It’s all you wanted even when you didn’t even know you wanted it. So if it meant having to live without your brother for the rest of your life just to see sweet and tender moments like these then you’d take it. You don’t want to let go of this moment. Peace and a home is all you’ve ever wanted and you don’t want to let it go. Even if there’s an empty little gap, you could still live happily here in moments like these.

“Y/N?” Suguru breaks you from your stupor. “What are you doing over there? Why don’t you come and join us, Firefly.”

Okay, you can live without that name.

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t call me that,” you mumble as you walk over to them. “What are you reading?”

Suguru lifts his book to show you the cover before he responds. “Colors of a Mother, the book you told me about.”

You grin. “Really?” You ask as if he doesn’t read every book you recommend to him. “Do you like it?”

Suguru nods. “I do,” he says. “It’s a very good read…” he trails off and pushes himself up to give you his seat, but you shake your head.

“No, you can stay there I’ll sit on the ground with Mimiko,” you tell him and unfold his leg to sit on the ground between them. “What are you guys doing out here anyway?” You probe. “I was looking everywhere for you. Miguel and the others are on their way now.”

“Well the girls caught me brushing my hair so they asked if they could do it,” Suguru lets you know. “So we all came out. And Satori is doing her reading homework.”

“Yeah,” she grumbles. “But it’s too hard. Why can’t you just read to me instead.”

“Because I’m reading my book too,” he rebuttals. “You just have five pages left. You can do it.”

Satori sighs deeply and goes back to reading to herself. Suguru goes quiet as he returns to his book, and the twins don’t speak as they’re busy with what they’re doing, letting you lay your head back against the chair to smile softly at the blue sky.

You never let go of Suguru’s hand and he gave you all this; a nice and big house that you’re both comfortable in, he helped you start to build your sorcerer community, he gave you your daughters, a protective family, and he gave you peace and happiness. Most importantly he gave you hope that everything you wanted could be achieved, that there can be a better world.

The world and hope was so blurry before, but it’s so clear now thanks to him.

“Geto,” Nanako interjects softly. “Who’s Satoru Gojo anyway? He’s super strong right?”

Oh, but there’s still that situation of your brother…right.

“Hm,” Suguru agrees and goes quiet for a moment before he continues softly. “He was my best friend. But we fought and it’s been like this ever since.”

You need to ask Suguru how he felt after seeing Satoru after ten years. He can act nonchalant but you know there must’ve been some kind of emotion when he saw Satoru.

But when he asks you what will you say? Yeah, well nothing has changed. Which is true. You’re still angry. But…will this anger last forever? You couldn't help but think of that after you left the school.

You managed to be friends with Nanami even with your differences in morals, so can’t that be the same with Satoru? There has to be a point where your anger will slowly fade away won’t there?

“Daddy,” Satori interjects. “When will I get to meet Uncle Satoru?” She asks, making you drop your head and frown at the ground.

You owe it to her to try, don't you? To try and maybe see past that anger and animosity? Ever since she found out about him she’s been adamant on meeting him, Nanami’s and Suguru’s stories of their past only help to fuel her desire.

“Well,” Suguru answers softly. “I’ll be honest, I don’t know yet. Maybe soon, but I can’t promise you anything.”

Satori sighs. “But I want to see him,” she whines. “He’s mommy’s brother, right?”

“Yeah, but things are…complicated right now,” he tries his best to assure his daughter.

“What does that word even mean?” Satori asks in an annoyed voice. “Com—what is that?”

“Hard,” Suguru lets her know. “Things are hard right now.”

“Well,” Satori sasses him. “Make them easy.”

You snort softly and feel Suguru nudge your leg with his foot so you don’t encourage her behavior.

“It doesn’t work like that,” Nanako counters her sister.

“Well Daddy can do anything,” Satori argues. “So yes it does.”

“Not this time,” Suguru lets her know honestly. “Sorry, Chipmunk.”

Satori groans, and your smile falls as you think about that debate whether to look past your anger or not. Regardless of it all, Satoru is the only family member you have who is worth anything, that you actually want Satori to meet and interact with. Everyone else, well, they can all go to hell for all you care.

“Mommy!” Satori exclaims and suddenly wraps her arms around your neck as she rests her cheek on the top of your head, causing her loose strands of hair to fall on your face. “Why can’t you make things easy so I can see Uncle Satoru.”

You swallow thickly and try your best to avoid the complicated topic. “Because,” you mumble. “It’s not that easy. Life is,” you sigh. “Hard that way.”

You know she probably doesn’t truly understand, but you can’t find any other way to explain it but in that way. You don’t want to tell her why she hasn’t met her uncle, why you’ve held a grudge over him for ten years. No matter what, you won’t bad mouth your brother to your daughter.

“Well,” Satori adds. “Can you and Daddy try?” She asks.

You sigh and nod. “I will,” you assure her. “I’ll try.”

“Okay,” she whispers and pulls back to sit back against Suguru.

“Now,” you move and sit up straight. “Why don’t you come here so I can fix your buns.”

“Mhmm, no,” she flat-out says. “I want Daddy to do it, you always leave them funny.”

It’s not your fault she moves a lot.

“Satori,” Suguru scolds her softly. “That’s not very nice.”

Satori exhales deeply. “No, Mom, thank you,” she grumbles.

“That’s okay,” you assure her and can’t help but smile at her. “Anyway,” you roll out playfully and stand up to grab Suguru’s arm and pull it up so you can sit on his lap. He secures his hold right away by wrapping his arm around your waist.

“We should take a picture!” You suggest excitedly as you pull out your phone. “Nanako, Mimiko come here!”

Nanako lets go of Suguru’s hair and wraps her arm around Suguru and you as she rests her chin on his head and beams at the camera. Mimiko walks over and stands by her sister to lean forward and smile softly. Satori presses her cheek against Suguru’s, while he presses himself closer to you and smiles softly.

You grin at the camera and capture this sweet and tender moment of you and your family together.

.

.

.

.

.

A/N- Was Satori created just to be a piece of Suguru for Satoru, after Suguru’s death? Yes, yes she was.

Tagged- @deniseabad1928 @secondary-character-25 @starlightanyaaa

[kingmagnificoofrosas]

They love you - they would do anything for you!

Words mean nothing if there's no action to prove them true!

The whole statement from the "evil book" - mind you- "bound for all eternity, nothing can break or bind the evil" is a capital B big fat lie!

A dear anon has already mentioned this before here on my blog through an ask. The gullibility of Amaya and the rest of the people of rosas almost hurts. Of course an evil book would tell you there is no way to get out of the dark!

Disney isn't the first and only one who has been spreading the message of "True love breaks evey curse and true love overcomes all. And darkness can never be greater than the light."

From the christian perspective, it's more than clear that everything said by the evil book isn't trustworthy as far as salvation goes! Evil isn't stronger than the good and never will be!

It's also intersting to note that the evil force (green evil magic) is potrayed as this shadow entity 👇🏼

Also, why trust the words of something that literally does nothing but evil and harm?

Even if we look at the whole Magnifico situation purely objectively, like my cousins daughter, not through the lense of faith and leaving the knowledge of trauma aside, the "He's a villain now and can't be saved" is utter nonsense!

The first half of the movie we are told and shown Magnifico's true intentions. His ambitions and desires. We saw him being genuine all the way. He's always been honest and kind. He never lied, played or manipultated anyone and even further explained multiple times how he feels and why he does what he does. And then we are shown "the book" the big bad thing that will defenitly do harm and take posession of Magnifico should he use it!

That's the information! If Magnifico uses the book, he will be "controlled" by the evil from this book! This is what even Amaya said! Plain and clear.

Also, geeky side fact to the orgins of the book : Magnifico didn't get the book himself, nor did he built the evil lair where he later on created his staff. From the art book we know that he found both the book and the evil lair during the renovations. [ He's built his castle on top of an already existing building ] That means, Magnifico didn't even go to pursue such a book. He found it and kept it. Cause we already know why - trauma rooted fear, anxiety, paranoia.

If someone is controlled/posessed by something, it's more than clear that the person isn't at fault for the actions done by the evil in them! Just look at the insane difference!

Oh yeah ... I know a posession by evil if I see one. And in this case, we had the facts served on a silver tray. It's not even a guessing game.

The only thing we can hold Magnifico accountable for is the fact he did reach for the book. But then again, we also need to consider WHY he did. Reason - his trauma! He was terrified!

If the book hadn't been there, believe me, this poor man would have had the worst mental breakdown and we would have probably found him huddled together on the ground suffering out his panic attack.

People don't understand the merry go round of thoughts a traumatized person has. And the emotions that come with it. In a situation as intense as Magnifico's we do have a domino effect. Or a wildfire-effect. One tiny spark on dry grass will eventually lead to a big fire. He was already triggered and highly stressed out, and severly traumatized people oftentimes aren't able to make the best decissions - or decissions at all.

If I think about it - if I had suffered a trauma as intense as Magnifico, already more than burdened with anxiety, fear and paranoia, and then something happens that triggers me immensely, I spend an entire night feverishly searching for an answer or solution, no sleep, no food, immense stress…. on top of that, no one in the entire kingdom that truly understands me ... Boy, I'd probably freak out and snap too.

The most support he's gotten during his spiral of misery was a pat to the shoulder. Not one single hug, no truly comforting words, a gentle stroke over his cheek, a kiss, truly loving words. That poor man got nothing!

Btw this is a quote from my cousins daughter. And she told it to my face randomly before I could even say anything! She said "You know, Magnifico isn't bad. The book is. He only wanted to protect everyone but the book made him evil. Bad book!"

And if that wasn't already enough, her younger brother watched the movie as well and then also randomly told me, "Bad book!" Furthermore - I wheezed and cried of laughter, because 1. I didn't expect this and 2. it was absolutely brilliant! - The daughter sat at the table and was drawing again, and then she told me, "The movie ... the magician and the bad book ..." The title she gave WISH! She made Magnifico the protagonist and the evil book the villain! Exactly right!

Anyway, then it happens, everyone KNOWS Magnifico is "controlled/posessed" and yet all of the sudden he himself is the evil? What??

In the past ten decades, disney had always done a fantastic job in displaying true evil and the - true love always wins - message. Even with quite recent movies such as Tangled, Frozen, Encanto etc. We've been introduced to the trauma topic and that "antagonists" can and should be saved.

I mean, I'm absolutely glad that we got Magnifico the way we got him, but I'm enraged about the toxic stance toward trauma.

If I'm looking at what disney did in the tangled series with Varian and Cassandra, who both had a short time period where they've been pushed down the "villain" road by trauma and by the hurt of not feeling valued, seen, heard or treated right and how this got resolved, I can only shake my head at what disney did in Wish.

Cassandra as much as Varian in fact- especially Cassandra- threatened the whole kingdom and also strived to hurt Rapunzel more than just once.

And she wasn't directly posessed by evil but heavily manipulated and blinded by it. All her "Evil actions" were completelty on her! And Rapunzel stressed that no matter what, she'll never give up on Cassandra. Why? Because she truly loved her! Because she knew that this evil wasn't who she truly is.

Rapunzel said "Even when I look at you now, after all that's happened, no matter what we've done to each other, I still see that look in your eyes. You're my best friend, Cassandra, and I will never give up on you!"

Can you imagine what could have been if Amaya and all the citizens of Rosas would have had that attitude towards Magnifico? Truly loving him for who he is and not only seeing him as a source for favours? They all simply didn't care! If they had, they wouldn't have given up on him as quick as the snap of a finger.

So we've seen antagonists and semi-villains getting redeemed before and we've seen the "True love conquers all" more than enough, and now, especially with Magnifico, disney and some ignorant haters want to tell us that this isn't what could have happened to Magnifico too?

It's ridiculous!

And the citizens of Corona forgave both Cassandra and Varian!

Now, once more, the "book" said - nothing can bind the evil magic! Yet this is exactly what happened after the people of Rosas unified and sang! The lights glowing in their chests is actually symbolic for their hearts unifying! It was immediately stronger than the hold of the evil magic, even though the book said, it's untouchable!

The evil magic was bound, "star" was set free and Magnifico pulled into the curse realm. You cannot tell me if they all had done the same thing with the goal in their hearts to free and save Magnifico, that they wouldn't have succeeded.

[ladytauria]

against expectation

Pairing: Tim Drake/Jason Todd Words: 8.6k Rating: Explicit

Content Warnings: Mildly Dubious Consent

Jason knows how he smells. When mating season comes around, he’s prepared to spend it the way he always does—alone, in his den, doing his best to block out the howls outside. Albeit this time with a little more self-care involved. He’s not prepared for Tim to show up at his door, in rut and ready to chase him. The surprise is the only reason he accepts the challenge. Omega Jason Todd Week Day 6 → Free Day

thank you to @deepwithintheabyss for supplying the title & also reading this over for me <3 (and helping me with the chase scene~) mwah, ily

>> AO3 <<

Jason hears the first howl as he leaves the bathroom. He scowls, scrunching a towel over his curls.

Moonlight pours through his curtains; casting the parts of his den not lit by lamplight in deep blue shadow. The second full moon of autumn has come… and with it, mating season. Jason’s least favorite time of year.

All over Gotham, alphas, and betas, are beginning their hunts. They’ll track down whoever has caught their scent, and—should their prey be willing to run with them—hunt them until sunrise… or they catch them.

His glands ache. Scent pours off of him, so thick none of his usual tricks to suppress it help. The shower eased it a little, but it still burns his nose; acrid like smoke and too-sweet like rotting fruit. His senses are sharper, too. It’s not just his nose—it’s his ears, eyes, even his skin is more sensitive, making him twitchy.

Just about the only good thing about it is that Jason, and all other vigilantes, get the night off.

Jason digs through his drawers until he finds a pair of pants that don’t bother his skin. He doesn’t even bother digging for underwear. He knows from experience that nothing will feel right, and he’ll just end up yanking them off at some point. Tonight…

Tonight is about comfort.

It’s not usually.

Usually, this time of year, Jason holes himself up in his least favorite safehouse. Least favorite, because he always has to burn them after; his scent sunk in so thick even the best scrubbers are unable to get rid of it. He spends his time pouring over casework or doing equipment maintenance, misery pouring off of him in droves.

This year, Jason is trying something different.

Something gentler. Softer.

He’d begun the night with an epsom salt bath, scented with a little oil. Something light. Delicate. The kind of scent he wishes he had. He’d trimmed his nails, taken care of his cuticles… even taken the time to shape them before painting them. A full mani-pedi in his bathroom. Then he’d rubbed lotion into his scars, his calluses, until his skin was as close to baby-soft as he could get.

Now, he has a pair of headphones waiting by his nest, next to a stack of books and movies… and a box of stupidly expensive chocolates, just as an extra treat for himself.

Jason is determined to make this… if not a good night, at least a less miserable one.

After pulling his sweats and a very loose shirt on, he crawls into his nest. He had made it fresh that morning; the blankets, sheets, and pillowcases all freshly washed and soft. The whole thing smells light. Airy. Jason allows him a moment to simply breathe it in before he wraps himself up in blankets and pulls his laptop over.

A movie first, he thinks, running his finger over the stack. Something familiar. Comfortable. Pride and Prejudice first, then… the Princess Bride. Both guaranteed to sweep him away for a while. He puts the headphones on. Not noise-canceling. As nice as it would be to block the howls out completely… Jason’s hackles rise just thinking about cutting himself off from one of his senses.

By the time the movies are over, the howls should have died down.

Warm and comfortable, with chocolate blooming on his tongue, he could almost fall asleep. Almost. His instincts are too sharp, anticipating a hunt that will never come.

>> continue on AO3 <<

[autumnslance]

Werlyt in Lorebook 3

So Werlyt gets a page expanding on its location and history a bit, to be expected as the new Encyclopaedia Eorzea 3 goes over both Shadowbringers and Endwalker content. What they do with its history as an Imperial province again paints Gaius in a better light...in ways we already knew were IC for him as established in earlier content, while also being straight up out of Machiavelli's The Prince in a way that makes complete sense for the Empire when dealing with conquered provinces, and how we've even heard before how some of them are ruled very much like native Garlean regions.

See, one of the oldest tricks in the literal book is you conquer a province, and especially if it proves unruly, you give it a nasty governor. Use them to root out the rebellious factions, while also tearing apart the old systems, stripping resources, crushing the populace, etc. THEN you send in a Reasonable Guy to take over who ousts the bad vicious leader, restores order, treats the people well, and so on. Now that new governor--and by extension his emperor for sending him--looks better in the eyes of the people, a problematic political/military rival has been killed/broken politically, the unruly elements have already been culled, and the people are just grateful for a reprieve from their misery. More acquiescent and "this isn't so bad after all."

Another famous literary example (and with a new movie a few months out) is Dune; once Harkonnen takes back Arrakis, he sends one nephew, Raban, who is literally nicknamed "the Beast", to be a horrible bully of a governor. His job is to root out the remaining loyal Atreides and quash the local Fremen. Then once Raban's atrocities were at their peak, Harkonnen meant to send in his heir, Feyd-Ruatha, to be the golden prince who would get rid of the problematic Raban (lethally if needed) and be accepted by the people as a decent leader. Of course, Dune's story rolls out differently, but the play is the same.

The Garlean Empire did the exact same thing in Werlyt.

For 30 years the subjugated nation was oppressed and stripped of resources. When the Empire's attention moved toward Othard and the military presence thinned enough a rebellion rose up, it was still crushed, but not before the previous viceroy was killed in the revolt.

Then Gaius van Baelsar came in and restored order. We already knew Gaius had a habit of appointing the right people for the job, regardless of race and social standing; he continued that in Werlyt, and was otherwise a good governor, working to ensure the populace was cared for, administered properly, even improved education and literacy rates. So after a few decades of crushing abuse...now Werlyt had a "reasonable governor" who treated them like people and took care of them, if still under the auspices of the Empire. They made it look like a better deal, and the previous guy was a mistake that shouldn't have happened.

This also tracks with pre-Praetorium Gaius as the "true believer" of Garlemald's Imperial mission of taming the "savage" lands and ushering them into the "civilized" ways of the Empire and adding those peoples' knowledges, cultures, skills, and might to the Empire to make everyone better. That "unity" aspect he and other leaders like Quintus van Cinna spouted while missing the hypocrisy. Gaius was a good governor because he thought that was the entire point--and then also led to his opposition of the Meteor Project. He never wanted to wipe Eorzea out, he wanted to bring it under Imperial control and govern it as he had Werlyt.

So for twenty years, Gaius was the reasonable governor getting good grades in cultivating Werlyt as a respectable and flourishing province of the Empire. Then he was sent to Ala Mhigo to conquer that, and through it the rest of Eorzea.

...And then Valens van Varro took over Werlyt and pretty much overnight undid everything reasonable a decent governor would do because of his jealousy over Gaius and his own ambitions for power, especially after the civil wars left the Imperial throne vacant. Also cuz again, they have to spend this branch of story making Gaius look better by making Valens cartoonishly bad at everything. Rather than trusting what they already wrote about a complicated man who truly believed in his mission until forced to see how he had been a pawn sowing misery his whole life. But they've tended to rewrite Gaius and his on screen characterization a lot as it is, and with Garlemald not getting an expansion of its own (they had considered it but ultimately worked its fall into ShB and EW), it feels like they hammer this point in Werlyt to speed run what was supposed to be an actual rehabilitation arc for the character.

And then it once again frames the quintent as rebellious heroes who thwarted Valens plans to use them and the Weapons project for his own ends and sure we'll let that go cuz the folks in Werlyt need something. They do have a named leader (Talbot Hunte) and a government set up and none of it really mentions Gaius, though we know they put him in charge of their military. Cuz yeah, he was one of their conquerers--but they also know that they can work with him and that he knows how to run an army effectively.

Also all the quintet are literally named "aan Baelsar" in their entries, though the main thing I noticed there was that Milisandia did in fact dye her hair red to account for the discrepancy in her child appearances in the various flashbacks. Apparently it was cuz she noticed Alfonse seemed very fond of one of their caretakers at the orphanage, and so Milisandia changed her hair to be the same color to try and get his attention, quietly pining for him for years but never letting him know about her not-quite-sisterly affections.

[lonelylonelyghost]

Re-watch of The Spirealm. Episode 37

Wu Qi, the bestest bff ever. Everyone needs some Wu Qi in their lives! Wu Qi needs some Wu Qi in his life

"Even you want me to send Ruan Nanzhu to his death?"

"Lingling, you have to figure it out. If you don't enter the Door, he'll die. But if you go, he might survive.

It's obvious. The game can't be fixed without Ruan Nanzhu. He must go, no matter what, even if he is doomed. But if you go, with your strength, you two might have a chance to come back. You can make a choice between all the players and him. But he has no choice. He has to sacrifice himself to save others."

"I understand why I was given up and why he hid the truth from me, but I just don't want to accept it. I feel like I'm a fool who can only accept the consequences and understand him."

So what are you afraid of? Losing Ruan Nanzhu? Let me tell you. I'm not afraid of losing you. Because I know that it's the beginning for you to be yourself. That's the point of being your friend, isn't it? I'm going to lose you at the end of this road, I'll still take this farewell trip as a journey. I can accompany you on your last journey, just like what you can do for Ruan Nanzhu. It's a friend's duty, right?"

"I... I'm not sure if I can make it."

"You can. You can do it. Haven't you always wanted to use your game designer skills to change the world? This is the right time. You're saving the world, Lin Qiushi."

I had to take frequent breaks during these last few episodes, to watch those multi-hour long youtube videos talking about terrible straight romance books, because this shit is literally breaking me.

On a brighter note, I love that Yan Balang's situation is becoming worse for him, reflected by how his surroundings become shabbier and shabbier.

He started from owning a whole building to him ending up in a shitty crowded apartment, with debt collectors banging on his door. The interesting thing about him is that he's extremely intelligent and cunning (as we've seen in the 10th Door), but his hubris and greed destroyed everything that he has built before.

He deserves this misery and no glory

🖕

And Xia Jie being in love with that loser. Appropriate punishment, but honestly pretty sad. I might feel bad, but I don't actually

🖕

🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕

They managed to make everyone here despicable to such an impressive degree

"I'm leaving."

"I have no choice. I didn't have a chance to say goodbye to Zaozao and Qianli. But I have enough time to say goodbye to you. I don't want to miss it. So I'll say goodbye to you ahead of time. No matter what, I won't forget you."

😖😖😖😖

Here's Johnny!

Art that kills

Nooo, our favourite fluffy gangster is back!!!

🥹🥹🥹🥹

"Be careful. Not everyone you meet at night is a friend. They could be monsters. Destroy the game. Good luck."

😭😭😭😭

YEY!! I will cheer for his death every time I see it

My girl!!! 🥹🥹🥹🥹

And her stricken face when Nanzhu and Qiushi told her that they couldn't stay for long 😭

But the last we see her, she's still smiling

I hate this show

"This is the place where we first met!"

"Welcome to the world of the Doors."

Bondage-Don't-Stop-Murdering

Our kind gays bring all the coolest Door Gods to the yard!

And I like how all three of them are a different type of menacing. Zuozi is a cute girl straight up from a Japanese horror movie, Lady in the Rain is a refined gothic beauty, while Xiao Jiu behaves in this not-exactly-human way (the way she stares here is uncanny), because she's half-beast (I think???). I would both kill and die for them all

Our best boyyyy 🥹🥹🥹🥹

God, what an absolutely incredible thing they did aaaaaa

Sitcom. 2000 episodes. Just them hanging around, discussing home remedies, new fluffy tights, and going to each other's Doors for some hairstyle and fashion advice, killing bad NPCs in the meantime.

I never knew I needed this in my life. I want it. Now.

PLEEEASE🙏🙏🙏🙏

And the way Xiao Jiu chokes on her own hair like a cat lmao

Also her hands are AWESOME

[madangel19]

hi bff i cant remember if u have reqs or anything open rn but i wld sell my soul for some sweet snowy cozy raindrop fluff

Sweet and cozy Raindrop fluff coming right up, boss!

Warnings: None, but there is some very brief implied spice

Word Count: 1110

The snow fell heavily outside, turning the church courtyard into a frozen winter wonderland. Siblings of sin, both young and old, were outside throwing snowballs at each other and having the time of their lives. Even some ghouls had joined them, pelting the older siblings with snowballs and making snow angels with the younger siblings.

Dewdrop took one look out the window and decided it was the perfect time to stay inside. There was no way he was going to go out in the cold when it was nice and cozy by the fire in one of the many living rooms. The books were ignored as he scrolled through his phone. He kept getting pictures from the ghoulettes with updates on what was going on outside. They kept asking him to come out, but he told them no each time. 

He only liked the snow when he was inside. It was pretty to look at, but he wasn’t going anywhere near it. He was better off bundled up inside, but it sucked being alone when most everyone was having fun outside. Sure, his beloved pack members would come back inside and he would warm them up if they asked, but being away from them for just a short period of time made him unhappy.

Dewdrop got another video of Cumulus being bombarded by neverending snowballs by Swiss and he grumbled, tossing it to the side and pulling his fuzzy blanket closer to him.

“Those snowballs would melt in my hands,” he grumbled, picking up a remote and turning the TV on. He might as well pass the time with a movie.

“Oh, there you are. I’ve been looking all over for you, Dew,” a familiar voice said from the doorway. 

Dewdrop perked up and turned his head to see Rain walking into the room. The water ghoul was bundled up in his comforter, looking beyond miserable, but upon seeing Dewdrop, the misery melted away into relief. 

“Hey. You slept in,” Dewdrop said, smirking as he scooted over to give the water ghoul space on the couch. 

Rain never slept in unless it was too cold. Whenever it got cold like this, the water ghoul would rarely ever leave his room unless it was to get food. Dewdrop could recall the many times he had to heat up the poor ghoul on many cold nights.

“It’s fucking cold and no one was in the den,” Rain grumbled as he went to sit next to Dewdrop.

“Yeah, most everyone is outside having fun,” Dewdrop replied, pulling the water ghoul closer to him. Rain sighed and cuddled close to him, keeping the comforter on top of them both as he wrapped his arms around Dewdrop’s middle. 

“So it’s just us two inside then?” Rain asked, adjusting himself so that he laid comfortably on top of Dewdrop. The fire ghoul grunted and laid back on the couch. The water ghoul was cool to the touch but after a few moments of being held, he warmed up. 

“Yup. Just us. I’m sure the rest of the pack will need warming up whenever they get inside,” Dewdrop said, running his fingers through Rain’s silvery hair. Still cool to the touch, but so pleasant to feel. The water ghoul purred happily, resting his head on his chest.

“They can lay by the fire. I’m not letting you go anytime soon,” Rain murmured, wrapping his tail around Dewdrop’s waist for good measure. 

There was no arguing with that. Dewdrop chuckled softly as he held the water ghoul close to his body. Having him here made him feel all the better. The others could play outside for as long as they wanted, but once they came asking to be warmed up, he was just going to direct them to the fireplace or they could help each other warm up.

“You gonna sleep over tonight, Dew? You know how cold it gets in the den when it snows,” Rain said, giving him a knowing look that made Dewdrop’s cheeks grow warm.

“You don’t have to ask me twice, babe. A sleepover sounds amazing,” he replied, pecking Rain on the cheek. The water ghoul sighed happily and nuzzled him back.

There was a notification from Dewdrop’s phone, but he ignored it. Another video of the ghoulettes losing at a snowball fight most likely. Instead, he grabbed the remote again and put on a random movie. Frozen. 

“How fitting,” Rain crowed.

“I’m not like Elsa. The cold bothers the fuck out of me,” Dewdrop replied, making the water ghoul laugh before getting comfortable in his arms and the nest of blankets again. 

“Is that Frozen I hear?” Copia asked no one in particular as he walked through one of the many hallways in the ministry. He had just come in from being outside and had gotten into a dry change of clothes. After making a visit to the kitchen where a large batch of hot chocolate was being made, he decided to walk around with his cup.

Most of the siblings and ghouls were still outside, but he noticed a few were missing. Rain and Dewdrop had to be somewhere in the ministry. Knowing them, they were probably curled up in front of a fire, but where they together?

His thoughts were interrupted when he heard a familiar song from that Disney movie and he decided to investigate. Some younger siblings were probably watching it together. Joining them wouldn’t hurt.

He came across an open doorway where the music was coming from and the smell of a fire. He smiled and looked in, taking a sip from his hot chocolate. He paused when he saw the sight before him.

Dewdrop and Rain were cuddled up on the couch, fast asleep in each other’s arms. Rain was on top of Dewdrop, his head poking out from the comforter that engulfed them both. Dewdrop looked crushed, but there was a pleasant smile on his face. Both ghouls looked so comfortable as they slept together, their purrs drowning out the movie. It would be a grave mistake to interrupt them to let them know about the hot chocolate. 

“Ahh, how sweet,” Copia whispered. He wished he had his phone on him to take a picture of the ghouls, but he had left it with Sunshine who wanted to take pictures and videos when they were outside

He noticed the lights were still very bright in the room and he turned them off. The only light came from the fire that was slowly dying. Dewdrop could easily reignite whenever they woke up.

“Sogni d'oro. Sweet dreams, you two,” he said, turning to leave the ghouls alone.

[sol-consort]

Aliens discovering our movies, art, books and video games and realizing why they’re all so precious to us

Like, a turian who comes from a high ranking family but just doesn’t have the abilities or skill the rest of their family has and it’s kinda outlasted for it puts on this old human vid called Encanto out of curiosity and by the end of it they’re a sobbing mess (whatever the turian equivalent of sobbing is) because “Mirabel just like me, fr fr.”

An Asari who just lost her first bondmate to old age and finding one of our sad songs about loss feels so touched by it and listens to it over and over again until she’s processed her own grief.

A Quarian who feel moved by a beautiful sculpture made of scrap metal and spare parts because it reminds them of the flotilla; a fleet of ships all held together with ductape, thread, and a prayer and yet still something beautiful.

The vibes I get from the other species is that they make their vids, games, books, and songs just to entertain, just background noise to fill the silence. Maybe they carry a deeper meaning sometimes but nothing compared to humans who pour their souls into their projects. Humans make fantastical stories out of the little parts of our lives that others can relate to and feel seen.

The handprint paintings on cavewalls come to mind. How instinctive drumming your fingers is how natural humming feels, how your brain spins stories before bedtime unprompted.

As much as war and disease have been parts of human history since the dawn of time, since the first spear was filled down, likewise music and art went with it hand in hand ever since the first flute was carved out, made from hollow birdbones and mammoth ivory, dating back to the time of ancients.

It's therapeutic. No one can deny the benefits of art on your mind and soul. It is what makes life worth living for many, the whimsy, the joy, the passion, the elation, the misery, the envy. The good and bad mirrors and reflections of our inner most desires, shameful feelings, and most creative ideas.

While the other species definitely don't lack in their culture and art—turians face tattoos borrowing from the batonical designs of nature—there is something to be said about the elcor deciding to adapt hamlet out of everything

There is a reason it's human music you hear playing at any self-respecting galactic club, ranging from the Citadel to Omega's own bars, the lights, the atmosphere, the valvety seats and soundtrack has a clear human touch. The human fashion which took over the asari modern wear like a swarm, inspiring many new designs combining the best of both worlds.

Humans aren't the only creative species, nor the one who care most about art. Rather, art comes naturally to us, all of us picked up colouring and drawing as kids, the urge to sing along to the radio, the desire to decorate your room, to spend hours moulding and sculpting characters in videogames even if they're end up wearing a helmet for the reminder of the story.

Art to us isn't necessarily a refined and polished thing like it is to the asari, neither is it an intricate impossibly complex dance with thousands of layers like the elcor. Our art is primal and integral. It's messy and often flawed. It's as mundane and common as the hair on our bodies, and it's everywhere. We breathe it into the world. Otherwise, it might sufficate it inside. It's so embedded within our whole existence that we are often blind to the more mundane forms of art, glossing over the way looking at sunsets gets our hearts slowing down.

Beauty was never the purpose of art for humans, but relief, communication, and self expression.

We look for art in everything, for a story under every unturned stone, for a poetic meaning behind the alignment of the stars, drawing shapes from their formation and assigning it meanings.

The other species could see that. it's what helped our reputation recover faster after the whole First Contact incident. What made the other species forgo their "bullies" perspective of humanity once they sampled our food, tasted our drinks, and were gifted bouquets of our flowers with cursive apologises worded so thoughtfully.

Art is the one thing you can't take from a human, we resort to it even during the most grim times of our life, especially during that, seek comfort in someone's creations, even quietly make our own versions inside the privacy of our heads. Just because art happens behind closed doors—or brains—doesn't mean it didn't happen. It's not a tree, it never required an audience to exist, its purpose is its mere just existence.

It's even infectious, wasn't the humans who got a krogan to agree and film a romantic comedy about falling in love with a human?

Do you think the hanar aren't absolutely fascinated by our tales of the sea, the ruthless spiteful ocean we seem to fear as much as we revere. The sirens, the krakens, the sailor shanties, the beautiful ships, and intricate wood carvings meant to bring luck.

Maybe the Turians can't get enough of human "coming of age" cheesy romcoms because our depictions of teenage rebellion and daring to be "selfish" and come into your own personhood is such a taboo amidst their military culture.

Or maybe they loathe it.

Instead, they prefer the stories about humans coming together to solve problems, realising the strength of cooperation, of beehive-like efficiency and utter trust in one another. Be it war films about soldiers coping with the cruel world while finding warmth in their comrades, or depictions of larger revolts where a whole population works together to put an end to their tyrannical leaders.

Maybe they're secretly Marvel fans, who knows.

Art doesn't have to be deep. It can be fun just for the sake of fun. Simple self-indulgence at its purest form. For every great classical piece of literature has been surpassed in sales by an erotica romance novelette with a shirtless cowboy on the cover.

I think the salarians would watch love paradise and other romantic reality shows about humans competing for one human's affection, hand in marriage, sometimes roses are involved—but salarians watch it with the same intensity of football fans watching a match, it is their own game of thrones, they don't care much for the sex but by the stars the "picking a mate" drama and gossip is equivalent to catnip for salarians

[gallyl]

NBC Hannibal: Dogs and Dinners

There is a tv trope "adopt the dog", which helps us like a character and see their good side. Will's character exposition is clear: he saves a dog and cares for a big family of strays. The dogs manifest his good sides, humanity. However, we are also hinted at Will's repressed dark instincts, because domestic dogs are still animals that hunt and kill. They are pack hunters too, and Will's fighting pose in the finale is "on fours", "a wild dog". The domestic and the wild co-exist.

It would be unfair not to demonstrate a humane side of Hannibal during his introduction. We see him working as a psychiatrist. His job almost mirrors Will's job: Will is an empath who analyses psychopaths to put them in jail, and Hannibal is a psychopath who analyses normal people to help them fix their lives. But not all of his patients are actually recovering, and his approach is unorthodox. I don't think his job is a true reflection of his humane side. As in the case with Will, we should look into his house and see the his own character exposition, just as intimate, instinctual and double-sided.

It's his cooking. At first sight it's merely a depiction of his darkness. But if we break down the idea of cooking to the basic instincts (like with Will's dogs), we will feel Hannibal's humanity. For him, cooking is not only eating. It's feeding. And Hannibal likes to feed. Feeding is a paternal instinct, a social, protective behavior. And we have seen many times in the show that Hannibal has paternal instincts, likes socialising and can be protective not only on his behalf. Hannibal uses feeding for manipulation as well, yes, but even in those cases feeding people is his idea of creating connection and affection.

Here are a few examples. After Jack asks Hannibal in the first episode to be gentle with Will, Hannibal, the stag that he is, does the opposite: invades Will's hotel room uninvited and puts him on his antlers with compliments and home-made breakfast that fits Will's simple tastes. When Hannibal tries make Abigail attached to him, he cooks her "breakfast for dinner" and mushroom tea. He makes coffee for Will, when he's in hospital, makes soups to Will, when he's unwell. He likes when someone helps him in the kitchen.

Hannibal doesn't invite people for dinner only when encessary. He does it at every opportinity. He has many "friends" in cultural circles that he loves to entertain. And he feeds them human meat, which is rare and risky to get. There's cynicism in that behaviour but also a need to share and connect at a high cost. Hannibal is generous and hospitable.

Hannibal "likes to eat in a company" and yet it's never simply that. Extended cooking scenes, exquisite dishes and lavish dinners - too lavish even for a small gathering… He’s obsessed with cooking. It's a manifestation of his darkness... and aching humanity. Eating and feeding co-exist.

There may be some evidence to this in canon. In the book/movie “Hannibal rising” (both written/scripted by the original author of "Hannibal") little Lecter starved with Mischa during the war. Mischa was his first beloved human, and he became her parental figure after premature death of their parents. A special emphasis is made in the movie on Hannibal feeding her. His experience of hunger was not only about misery but also love and caring for another person and putting their needs above your own.

Will: Have you ever been a father?

Hannibal: I was to my sister. She was not my child, but she was my charge. She taught me so much about myself. Her name was Mischa.

Before the finale Bedelia says her famous line:

"Could he daily feel a stab of hunger for you and find nourishment at the very sight of you? Yes."

This line is a big box to unpack, but a big idea is that Hannibal is harmless now. He no longer needs to eat Will - or indulge into cannibalism with him - to connect. His love overpowers trauma and killer instincts. In the finale he does exactly what Bedelia predicted: he finds nourishment at the very sight of Will in his house, only sharing wine like in the good old days, and Will feels safe and protected in his presence. And this is a really nice touch to Hannibal's character development.

[chris-continues]

Studying with a Sprout

NOTES: Made for @h4venpha , I get how tiring school can be. ILY MAN and meeting you has been absolutely wonderful, I'm honored and grateful to call you my friend and mutual <3

TAGS: @vashfantasy @captaintweet @lune010 @millionsvash @astrathecowboy @macncherries

With the promise of classes starting up again, priorities shifted.

Of course, classes were expected to be at the forefront of that list. A job, if you had one, and of course everything you have has to always be clean, and of course you’ve got to be happy! You have so much going on!

You sighed, head in your hands. Already everything felt so heavy and dizzying. Your overpriced drink you’d tried to treat yourself to only served to remind you of how you had to watch your expenses, wonderful. Life is hard. It beats down. It’s tiring. The burnout that awaits you each day is inevitable, a ticking time bomb and some days it overwhelms you, enveloping you whole and drowning you in a seemingly endless stream of misery.

Of course, your friends get it. Especially one of your best friends, Vash. Who you’d found to be great company while studying, even if it’s on call. You didn’t feel like leaving your room today, checking back to your discord tab to see if he was still studying.

It was a comforting sight. Him, cross legged in his chair with his headphones adorned with a little crotcheted sprout. It was cute, really. “Mm? You ok?” He peered up at you from his book- shit, caught you staring.

“Just tired.” You exhale, propping your head on your hand. He looked at you from the video call, long bangs brushing his eyelashes. The sprout on his headphones shifted as he leaned forward in his chair, "Mm, I get that. Honestly, you should take a break. Pomodoro." You quirked an eyebrow, "Has it even been 4 hours?" "Time is relative." He winked, grinning slightly. God, he was so pretty. Something about his smile eased some of the ebbing ache in your head, although still present. "You know what? Good idea. I'm breaking out more snacks." "I should too." He bit the inside of his cheek in thought, "Nai said pizza pockets don't make for a good study snack, but agree to disagree." His laptop shifts, shuffling heard through your speakers as he presumably makes the gourmet meal of pizza pockets.. sigh.

"You got any plans for this weekend?" Vash questioned from across the kitchen, voice echoing. A few noises escape him as he fumbles with the bag, trying to open it with his teeth. You catch a glimpse as his canines pierce a corner of the plastic, "Whoop whoop!" He pumps a fist into the air, elated. "But uh, yeah, any plans? Was hoping we could try for another movie night..? If you were interested." His eyes are wide, cerulean with a tinge of green surveying you. Honestly? Even when you are tired, movie nights with Vash are welcome. At one point, you both just respectively napped at his place. (To your disappointment, separately. On different sides of the couch.) While watching a movie! Fun friend things.

“Yeah, I’d like that.” You didn’t think a smile would make an appearance upon your lips tonight, but Vash struck the impossible once again. Even in your sleep deprived, overworked state he could lift your mood. “You got any ideas?”

He flashes you a knowing grin, “You know I’ll say Star Wars.”

“And you know I’ll say yes.”

Whatever he wanted, you were up for.

[forthegothicheroine]

Horror novel recommendations

@allthestoriescantbelies​ asked for horror novel recommendations, so I thought I’d throw one together to post on the blog! Largely focused on non-gothic stuff since I’ve already made a gothic lit list over here.

As a general warning, all horror books listed here will have potentially triggering material. If you want more specific trigger warnings, you can ask me or see if people have listed them on goodreads or storygraph.

My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix: I know you’ve read this, but I’m putting it on the list because it is one of the scariest books I’ve ever read, about a teenage girl in trouble and the only other girl willing to help her. I’m told the movie makes it much more straightforwardly comic rather than horror-with-jokes, which disappoints me. I’m a big fan of Hendrix in general, though I know you (and plenty of others!) find him hit-or-miss.

Red Dragon by Thomas Harris: Another one I believe you’ve read, but for reference, it’s the best serial killer thriller I’ve ever read. Francis Dolarhyde is a much more interesting character than Hannibal Lecter, I will die on this hill.

We Will All Go Down Together by Gemma Files: Centuries ago, the Five Family Coven made a deal with the Fairy Queen, and their descendants have been doomed ever since. I could have just as easily recommended Files’ book Experimental Film- if you like one, read the other as well.

The Drowning Girl by Caitlin R. Kiernan: A schizophrenic woman has two different memories of her ex-girlfriend and the horror that followed her- was she a werewolf, a mermaid, or were both memories wrong? This is Kiernan at her most heartfelt and most accessible; if you like this and want to try her grosser stuff, read The Very Best of Caitlin R. Kiernan.

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski: A haunted house in a haunted film in a haunted memoir, written in a work of visual art. I won’t blame anyone who bounces off this, but give it a try!

Carrie by Stephen King: If you’re only going to read one Stephen King, make it either Carrie or Misery. I don’t feel like any film adaptations have captured all the aspects of this tragedy about a girl who deserved a better life and the town who didn’t save her while there was still a chance, including the epistolary format.

Rolling in the Deep by Mira Grant: This novella was followed up by Into the Drowning Deep, but I found Rolling in the Deep much scarier. It’s brisk and high-tension to watch a semi-fake documentary team put together, piece by piece, just what the monsters are that pursue them.

Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge: The Great Pumpkin, but scary! Seriously, though, if you are willing to accept the concept of a boy with a pumpkin head and a knife and a yearly child sacrifice, this is short and a lot of fun.

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones: Just an elk killed when some kids were blowing off steam. Just an elk damning the rest of their lives. (Jones’s My Heart is a Chainsaw was too sad for me to recommend as a favorite, but I am curious about the sequel.)

The Wolfen by Whitley Striber: I wanted to include a good werewolf novel on this list, and The Wolfen wins by far for interesting creature design. (The runner up was The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan.)

The Auctioneer by Joan Samson: A very atypical entry on this list, closer to Twin Peaks than your average thriller. A rural town is turned into a capitalist police state when a slick salesman comes to see what they’ll allow him to do. It turns out, it’s a lot.

The Drive-In by Joe R. Lansdale: The only “splatterpunk” I’ve ever loved, this is an absurdist nightmare about a southern drive-in crowd who get stuck in a world with only the movie screens and each other, turning into literal and figurative monsters. Usually published with the sequel, since both are short, though I didn’t like the latter as much. If you like it, read one of Lansdale’s short story collections.

As always, reblog with suggestions of your own!

[hyperfixated-gvf]

Double Trouble

On the twelfth day of Tropemas, hyperfixated-gvf gave to me:

A Danny x Reader x Josh Tropemas ending!

Christmas Song Pairing: “I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm" by Dean Martin

Trope: Cuddle For Warmth

~~~

Pairing: Danny Wagner x Reader x Josh Kiszka

Warnings: Language, smut, threesome, Josh x Danny content

Words: 4.8k

Author's Note: Well, we stuck to the schedule much better than we did last year, so I count it a win. I feel like I cheated Danny gals out of a solo fic, so I have a second version of cuddle for warmth that I might one day release, who knows. There also might be a little treat for any of my other Sam/Danny pairing lovers out there -- stay tuned.

Most of all, I know there has been a few Josh x Danny x Reader fics written recently, and you should all definitely go check out @streamingcolors-gvf and @tripthelightfandomtastic because they both have some things. I swear this was one of the first fics I wrote for Tropemas and am not in any way trying to ride the waves of their glory (I would drown, their content is too good and almost intimidated me out of posting this but 🤷‍♀️) so I hope you all enjoy the last (official) Tropemas fic!

Cheers to another successful year of Tropemas! 🥂

18+ / MINORS DNI

~~~

“I told you guys this motel was sketchy as fuck,” you said into total darkness, the already-spotty lamp having shorted out and left you with nothing but the howl of the wind outside that was whistling in from some crack in the window. Not that the boys had really any say in where you’d had to pull off for the night. It was more just to share your misery, since it loves company and all that.

But that wind — you could feel it in your bones. The old heating unit underneath the shitty caulking job stood no chance at combating the chill of the room, and the fact that the sheets on this pull-out couch bed were threadbare and withheld no fucking body heat at all had you shivering in your pajamas. If there were ever a time you wished you’d listened to your friends when they told you that nice, fluffy, matching PJ sets were the best, it was now. But you ran hot when you slept – not that it mattered when it was -15 degrees outside and a balmy 5 inside.

“I wonder if Jake and Sam have it any better,” Josh said softly from the bed. When flipping coins, you’d unfortunately come up with tails, meaning that the master suite would not be yours for the night when you were forced to pull the van into a horror-movie motel to avoid killing all five of you on black ice. You were so close to the cabin the boys had booked, too – so close – but the ice storm had rolled in just as the sun went down, and you, along with several other drivers, apparently, had to make due with the rooms available at Cockroach Central. 

Jake and Sam in the single Queen, and you, Josh, and Danny in this crappy ‘Queen sized with a pull out couch’ icebox.

“I doubt it,” Danny sighed, voice deep with interrupted sleep.

You weren’t surprised that he’d found the ability to sleep, even with the ice hitting the windowpane and your breath crystallizing in the air; he always had that ability, Danny. But as another gust of icy wind shook the windows, and you felt the subsequent cool air permeate your already-cold cocoon, you let out a barely audible whimper-groan.

You didn’t think it was loud enough for the boys to hear, but apparently you were underestimating how small the room was. “Are you okay, Y/N?”

The next noise that came out of your mouth was frustrated, and it wasn’t directed at Josh for asking, but you’d taken the last shift driving and you were exhausted, except now it didn’t seem as if you’d be getting any sleep at all. “I’m freezing,” you admitted, and you heard immediate shuffling from the bed.

“Why didn’t you say so earlier?” Danny asked from above. “Come over here and get warm, dummy.”

But you hesitated. You knew that the boys would give you the shirt off their back if you asked for it, but you didn’t want them to sacrifice their own comfort and sleep for you – it was one night, after all, and they had been cooped up in the van just as long as you had. “I mean…is there even room up there?” you asked, still sorely tempted to join them, despite your pause. “I don’t want to kick you guys out of bed.”

“We’ll make it work,” came Josh’s voice next. “We grew up shoving as many people in a bed as we could, Y/N, come on.”

And, well, twist your arm. You pushed your thin blankets off and scurried over to the bigger bed, which had a mattress that retained heat and two other bodies to contribute to the task of keeping you warm. 

“Oh my god,” you groaned blissfully, teeth still chattering as you settled into the space between them that they made, citing ‘maximum warmth’ when you’d told them you’d be fine taking the edge. “If I’d known you guys were living space heaters, we’d have been sharing a bed from the start.” 

Josh’s hand crept over your hip from where he’d instantly wound himself around you under the blankets. The cuddling wasn’t new — Josh was a tactile person on his worst days, and a cuddle buddy was a cuddle buddy. But the way he was vigorously rubbing his hand up and down your body was ruffling your sleep shirt, Danny, on just the other side of you, was going to be pressed against exposed skin if he didn’t stop soon.  “Shit, Y/N– even your pajamas are cold.”

“I know,” you sighed, smacking your lips together in contentment. If you’d been a cat, it would’ve been a purr as you began to feel your feet again. “I’ve been shivering in them since we got here.”

Not to be left out, Danny crossed one big hand over Josh’s arm to feel for himself, and your breath stuttered a bit. It wasn’t as if you were immune to their talent and good spirits, and you had eyes — you knew your friends were an attractive bunch. But you never let your fantasies run too amuck; you were an avid sleep talker, and you’d never recover if something slipped out while your dreams took you places you dared not think about during the day.

Places like here, plastered against both Josh and Danny while they warmed you up. Perhaps not in the way you wanted in your limited fantasies, but you were nevertheless in bed with them, their hands all over your body. You hummed at the contact, shifting your shoulders to shake some of the energy they brought with their touch off.

“Why’d you wait so long to tell us you were cold?” Danny asked, lips so close to your ear he barely had to murmur for you to hear. That distance was soon made even scarcer, as Danny tugged Josh closer on your other side so that you were all three a mess of tangled limbs, cuddling to keep every ounce of warmth between you.

You shrugged with the space you did have, and tried to turn on your side towards Danny, your ass already becoming numb. You were a side sleeper, anyways, so you’d end up in that position regardless. The two men adjusted with you, Josh pushing forward to melt against your back while Danny pushed back and let you get comfortable before assuming his position again, nearly brushing your nose with his. 

At this point, you were glad the lights had shorted out, because at least there was a chance Danny didn’t notice either your blush or your surprise that he’d rebounded back in so close. You had no choice but to ball up your hands and let them rest against his chest, feeling the rise and fall of his breaths from the front, and Josh’s from your back. 

“Um…I told you. I didn’t know if there would be enough space.”

Josh chuckled against the back of your neck, making you shiver – but this time, not from the cold. “Well, here’s your proof. There’s always room for you, Y/N.”

“Good to know,” you squeaked, growing embarrassed at how much just the simple pressure of their bodies against yours was making you wet. You knew you couldn’t blame yourself – it’d been a few days since you were alone enough to get yourself off, and this was the first time you’d been in an actual bed since you’d left for this spontaneous cabin getaway with the boys. And when you were in a bed, your body demanded orgasms; it was something of a Pavlovian response at this point.

Now you’d be tired and horny in the morning, but at least you wouldn’t be cold. Although you were beginning to question which was worse.

Danny’s lips quirked up, and you squeezed your eyes shut. He’d most certainly heard the change in pitch of your voice, and you felt a chuckle rumble shake his chest and escape as a breath through his nose. “That was cute,” he breathed. “Is there something the matter?”

Josh’s hips shifted back, and his lips were at your ear, next. “He’s right. I can feel your heartbeat from your back, Y/N. What’s going on?” His words had turned sultry in a matter of seconds, and your face burned, feeling a little foolish for thinking that they wouldn’t be able to feel what they were doing to you in their proximity. 

Although, the response other than a serious ribbing from the both of them was unexpected. You’d have expected them to make fun of you, not do…whatever this was. Unless this was their way of teasing you (not in the good way). “Fuck you guys,” you mumbled. It was a cruel joke either way, and you were beginning to wish that you’d just layered up and stayed in that stupid pull-out bed.

Danny caught your chin with the knuckle of his pointer finger, and tipped your face up to his. “Oh yeah? Is that what you want?”

Every function screeched to a halt, and you couldn’t find the words to answer. 

They were serious? This wasn’t a joke? They wanted to fuck you – together, in the same bed – just because they’d felt your heartrate pick up a bit and your breathing become uneven?

Josh rolled his hips into you again, and you were suddenly made aware that he was hard in his flannel pants. Hard and warm against your ass, in such a good way that you couldn’t help but press back into him. You were rewarded with a small groan and the feeling of his fingers tightening on your hips. “Shit, Y/N. Don’t do that unless you’re gonna answer Danny.”

“I…yes?”

“Yes? Like, a question? Or, ‘yes,’ for sure?”

The situation was evolving very quickly, but you must have been hornier than you imagined you’d be, because it was difficult to find reasons to decline their generous offer. “For sure,” you said, tucking your lip between your teeth as you waited on baited breath to find out what that answer would bring.

Like racehorses let out of the gate, the response was whip-quick, and you gasped as that lip you’d held captive was dragged from its place by Danny’s mouth, and Josh groaned, “Oh thank god,” before tugging your hips back into his erection. “You’ve got us wrapped around your finger, Y/N, you had to have known what your little noises would do to us.”

“Little noises?” you gasped out, hand reaching up to tangle in Danny’s wild curls as he began to nip across your jaw. “You mean…normal ones?”

Danny pulled back, and his absence was missed, but the sight of him shucking his shirt off was a welcome one. “Caught,” he said with a smirk. “It’s just you. You drive us crazy, no matter what you do or where you do it.”

The sentiment was cheesy at best, but you chose to disregard that fact in favor of letting Josh drag your own shirt off your body, too. “Yes, yes,” he said impatiently, fingers crawling over your bare skin, stopped only by the sports bra you wore, “we’ve been thirsting over you, sweet thing. I’ve thought about this beautiful body of yours so many times. In the still of the night,” he whispered, slipping under the flimsy material covering your breasts, “when I can’t help myself. Like right now.” 

You let a small noise slip out as he softly rubbed his thumb over your nipple. It wasn’t enough for them, though, and Danny quickly nudged Josh’s hand. “Let us see you. Josh wasn’t the only one thinking dirty, filthy thoughts when it came to you,” Danny said, laid back down so that the blankets were once again keeping the rising heat in.

Your sports bra came off, and you wriggled out of your pants, as well, knowing that they would be one of the next items on the list, and then you were naked. Naked, and Danny was naked, too, and when you settled back in, you realized that Josh’s cock was now hard and hot and leaking against your ass, meaning that he rounded the company out, and it was officially a threesome.

Josh backed up, though, so that Danny could put you on your back and trail kisses down your throat until he reached your breasts. You mewled when he took your nipple into his mouth, and it seemed that broke Josh, as he put a hand on the base of his dick and squeezed. Your noises must have actually done it for him. “Mmmm, Danny,” you sighed, foot sliding up the mattress in pleasure. Danny shifted so that he was straddling your thigh, and he ground down once, his cock twitching against your skin.

“You’re so soft,” he murmured against your skin. “Are you soft everywhere, I wonder?”

His words were the only warning you got before his fingers slipped between your lips and spread your wetness across your pussy. “Oh, yeah,” he groaned. “Soft and so fucking wet. Josh, feel how wet our girl is.”

Josh didn’t need any more prompting, and he joined Danny between your thighs, his fingers side-by-side with Danny’s thicker, coarser ones. Your whimper and squirms were met with an intensified touch – Josh took the plunge and dipped a singular digit into your entrance, and you felt as though you’d combust if things didn’t progress soon. 

“Soft and wet,” Josh agreed, his finger pressing forward and pulling back gently. “Finally get to feel you, Y/N. How do you like to play, sweet thing?”

Danny hummed, still mouthing over your stomach. “Did you like it when we played with your pretty little tits? Or do you like Josh’s finger inside you better?”

You were becoming frustrated with their sudden slow-down after taking advantage of the whole bed situation so quickly. “I like them both– I just need more,” you whined, your pussy clenching around Josh’s finger as you tried to fuck yourself faster. “Come on, guys, I know you can do better.” You switched tactics on them, goading instead of whining, and Danny chuckled against your skin.

“More?” he asked, looking at Josh. “What do you think, Josh– wanna fill her up a bit? Add a couple of fingers?”

Josh answered in action, fitting a second finger in beside the first and upping the speed, angling his fingertips to run along your walls until he found that sweet spot inside of you. You gasped and bucked your hips, but Danny held you down gently.

“Shit– right there, Josh!” you affirmed, stilling so that he could focus on that spot.

The lights suddenly flickered back on, and everything paused as you took in the now lit-up scene with blown-pupil eyes. You all three blinked at each other, drinking in the finer details. Finally, Danny’s lips quirked up in a smirk and he pressed a kiss to your hip while Josh continued fingering you.

Josh’s next words weren’t directed at you; he’d heard you, and he wasn’t budging on his positioning, but instead, he met Danny’s eyes and smiled, which you barely caught with your eyes fluttering shut as they were. “Better, she says,” he scoffed, gently mocking your nettling. “If there’s anything I’ve learned about better, it’s that fingers are always better with a mouth. Daniel, care to assist since you’re already down there?”

“More than happy to,” Danny said with a shark-like grin, and your lips trembled with a moan as you watched him converge with Josh’s fingers, then felt his tongue envelope your clit, rolling pressure and darting around in circles like a pro.

This man knew what he was fucking doing.

“Hot fuck, you guys,” you keened, their combined efforts quickly uncovering your growing orgasm. “Have you– ahh– you done this before?” you asked shakily, vacillating between closing your eyes to take in the sensations and watching them both work between your legs.

Josh and Danny shared an amused glance, and you realized that the question wasn’t as pointed as you meant it to be – you’d be the first to claim that you weren’t in the state of mind to care, but you also found it in you to roll your eyes when Josh said, “Yeah, a couple of times,” for the both of them, since Danny’s mouth was occupied, his lips suctioned around you.

“I meant together.”

Josh chuckled and then pinched his pinky and thumb together so that he could bind his middle three and slowly delve them into you underneath where Danny was. “No. But we did talk about it when we got drunk together once. Only once,” he assured quickly, “we didn’t, like, plan this all out beforehand. The opportunity presented itself, though, and you seemed into it…”

You let out a breathy laugh. “Seemed?”

“Touché,” he said, three knuckles deep into your wet core and building a steady rhythm that pushed you higher and higher.

Danny’s contributions were exacerbated when he grasped the undersides of your thighs and pressed his face into you as hard as he could while still trying to avoid taking away Josh’s ability to finger you. 

“Ah– ah,” you croaked, back arching as the coil grew tighter. “Guys, I’m gonna– fuck me, I’m right there; I’m gonna cum, just keep going!”

“No need to tell us twice, sweet thing,” Josh cooed. “Come on, now, let go. You can cum pretty all over my fingers, all over Danny’s mouth. Show us how you do it. God, you look so beautiful,” he babbled, fingers working faster inside of you as you cried out once more and fell off the edge of the cliff.

You fisted the sheets with one hand, and with the other, you pushed Danny’s head away, spasming with overstimulation as he kept sucking you up even as you came down. “Danny– that’s a lot,” you gasped, hips twitching from the force of the orgasm. 

He listened, and pulled away just as Josh withdrew his soaked fingers, rubbing them together and then spreading them apart, where they webbed with your release. As Josh brought them towards his face, Danny caught him by the wrist and beat him to the punchline, his lips – still glistening with your cum as well – wrapping around Josh’s digits and sucking them clean.

A shock of arousal shot through you at the sight, and you were liable to fall apart and never be put back together again when Danny popped the fingers out of his mouth and was immediately pulled into a searching kiss afterwards. Josh’s hands remained firm, one on the side of Danny’s neck, and the other tangling with Danny’s at his side. He was smirking when he pulled away, and the side-eye he sent your way told you that he was aware of what he was doing to you, how he was playing you.

Like a damn fiddle.

“You taste like an angel,” Danny remarked, turning his attention back to you. “Doesn’t even matter where I get you from.”

“Come here,” you huffed, guiding him into another kiss, this time pushing your tongue into his mouth, as if you could taste the remnants of all three of you together. You could feel the tip of his cock catching your tummy every so often, though, in the hovering position he was in, and the desire you had to be dicked down by these men returned in full force. “Fuck me, Danny,” you breathed against his lips. “I want you inside me. Please.”

“Shit,” he cursed gently, lowering himself so that he was covering every inch of you from head to toe. You were totally encompassed in him, so you wrapped your legs around his waist to lock him in. 

Josh looked on, slowly stroking his own cock to find relief. “Go on, Dan,” he encouraged. “Give it to her like she’s asking.”

“Begging,” Danny corrected, running his thick head through the result of their sloppy-wet work. “I’ll fuck you so good,” he promised, lining up with your entrance. “Get you to cum again for us so that I can see this time. I can’t just miss out on feeling you clench around some part of me.”

You popped your hips up, trying to get him to slide into you (it would have been easy enough with how wet you were from your last orgasm). “I’ll cum for you,” you keened impatiently, “but I need you to actually fuck me first.”

Josh snorted. “Still a little spitfire even with a dick in you, aren’t you?”

You were about to retort that there wasn’t a dick in you yet, when Danny finally pushed past the initial resistance that served as a reminder that you really hadn’t taken much more than your fingers and a small vibrator recently. He was substantially bigger than yours or Josh’s fingers, even three of them.

“Yeah,” he hissed, throwing his head back as he eased in. “Open up for me, angel; let me in that pretty, pink heaven.”

Josh laid down beside you, plastered to the length of your body as you wrapped your legs around Danny’s waist and encouraged him to start moving. The hand that wasn’t still stroking himself snaked up your body to pinch and play with your nipples as your breasts jiggled in time with each new punch of Danny’s hips to yours. 

You could smell Josh, so close to you, even beyond the scent of sex that was slowly permeating the air around you. “Danny fucks like a god,” you whimpered to no one in particular, barely holding onto your sanity as you were filled to the brim time and time again.

Danny’s grip on your hips tightened at your praise, and your attention was yanked back to the man currently rearranging your guts in the middle of the night in a crappy motel while one of his best friends waited his turn. “Say it to my face.”

You met his heavy-lidded gaze, and reached up to him. He leaned into your palm, and you smiled at him. “You are crazy good at lighting me up, Daniel Wagner.”

“Warm her up, make her burn, ” Josh murmured, leaning over to replace his fingers with his tongue.

With the warm, wet swirl around your nipples and Danny’s hand making its way to press down on your lower stomach, changing up the angle that he hit inside you, you were more than close to your second orgasm. “Feel that, Y/N?” Danny huffed, slowing to grab your hand and push it to where he’d been a moment earlier. “Feel how fucking deep I am?” 

Maybe it was because you wanted to feel him, or perhaps you weren’t imaging it at all, but you could have sworn that each time Danny’s hips smacked into yours and he sheathed himself balls-deep, you felt him nudge the heel of your hand where it impressed into your stomach. Regardless of whether you could with that hand, though, you could certainly feel him in other ways, so you whined and nodded, focused on the sensations.

“God, you take me so well, Angel. Wanna live here,” he whimpered, hips stuttering as he joined you on the precipice.

“In a shitty motel?” Josh joked, re-inserting himself into the situation. “Or so far up Y/N’s cunt she’s gonna have a hard time thinking about anything else for the rest of the trip?” 

Danny panted, hot and loud, and grunted as he embodied his livelihood: rhythm, reliability, and consistency in each slide into you bringing you both closer and closer to the edge. “The second one.”

Josh nodded, slipping his fingers down to circle your clit, obviously reaching the end of his patience and no longer willing to wait his turn . “That’s what I thought. Can’t blame either of you, really,” he sighed, pushing himself up on one arm to kiss whatever breath Danny had left in his lungs away.

Even then, Danny didn’t falter, and his steady thrusts soon paid off. You both gave into the pressure, and Danny yipped out his orgasm against Josh’s lips, topping it off with a deep groan as he emptied himself into you, shallowly pumping himself through it before he collapsed onto his forearms, lips brushing yours as he caught his breath.

“Are you ready to take Josh?” he whispered, pressing a sweet kiss to your mouth before you could answer.

“Before that, actually,” Josh interjected, moving in closer and encasing you in their body heat again now that the chill was creeping back in and cooling your sweat quickly, “I’m gonna need you to move off our sweet Y/N, here. There’s something else I’d like to do before I get to follow in Big Dick Dan’s footsteps.”

His hand was running up and down Danny’s bare back, and you felt the rumble of laughter rise from Danny’s chest, so there was no surprise when a laugh that was a little too loud escaped his face, now crinkled up in joy. “I swear they don’t call me that. I’ve never heard that nickname in my life,” he giggled, and Josh pursed his lips exaggeratedly from beside you.

“Not to your face, maybe.”

Danny did as Josh asked, though, and gingerly pulled himself out of you, sighing as he finally rested his entire weight on the bed at your side. Josh quickly took his place, eyes roving over your lower half and then meeting yours once he apparently found what he was looking for.

Making his way down your body, he wet his lips. “Let’s see if you still taste as Danny has so lovingly named you, Angel,” Josh said, lowering himself to fit in between your thighs. He wasted no time in spreading you apart and lapping you up with the flat of his tongue, catching the slow drip of Danny’s cum as it leaked out of you.

The gasp that flew out of your mouth sounded offended, almost, and Danny’s fingertips dug into the skin of your arm, where he’d been caressing a few seconds earlier. 

“Fuuuuck,” Danny rumbled, low and long. “How’s his mouth feel, Angel? Is it as good as it always looks onstage?”

You moaned with your lips sealed shut, pushing your hips into Josh’s mouth. “Better,” you sighed, eyes fluttering closed. You stayed like that, with Danny reaching up to stroke your nipples and kiss your neck while Josh ate you out enthusiastically, slurping and sucking until he had his fill and came up for breath.

He looked slightly crazed, pawing desperately at your thighs while he rocked his hips, cock catching the sheets in a way that must have been driving him insane.

“Come on, Josh,” Danny cooed, pulling your leg over so that you were laying on your side, spread for Josh since Danny hooked you in his elbow. “You’ve gotta be so hard. Give it to her. She’s got another one in her, right, Y/N?”

You bit down into Danny’s shoulder as you nodded, then met Josh’s gaze. “Come on, Josh, come and take me higher. Get us in the fast lane.”

Josh positioned himself behind you, cuddling as you had been at the beginning of the night, but now you were much warmer, and much more fatigued. As he shakily guided himself to your entrance, slicking up the tip of his dick with what he’d left behind, he pushed in slowly and said, “You have us for the entire night, angel, no need to rush.”

“Yeah,” Danny hummed against your open lips, spread in the ecstasy of being stretched once more, “no need to rush at all. We need to keep you warm all night.”

…

Jake and Sam were already waiting for you in the lobby when Josh and Danny had managed to drag themselves out of bed. Considering they hadn’t been the ones fucked half to death until the sky began to lighten, you were unsympathetic to their whines about being tired, and were quite proud that you managed to walk all by yourself without the assistance of a wheelchair.

Sam caught sight of you first and waved you over, looking restless and jumpy and ready to leave. “This motel sucks. The coffee is cold and I’m pretty sure from last year, so I’d skip it,” he huffed.

Sam wasn’t a huge coffee drinker, so the fact that he’d been desperate enough to try coffee from the ancient-looking carafe was a surefire sign that he hadn’t slept well either.

For entirely different reasons than you, Danny, and Josh, but he didn’t need to know that.

“You seem a little grumpy,” you smirked. You saw recognition on his face and turned to see Danny and Josh finally stepping out of the stairwell, since the elevators didn’t work. 

“Yeah, because I couldn’t fucking sleep when it was in the negative inside the room. Were you guys freezing last night like Jake and I were?”

You doubted the others would need much convincing to stop for breakfast and coffee, so you just shrugged your bag over your shoulder, shook your head innocently, and smiled. “Nope,” you said lightly. “I was toasty all night long.”

~~~

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[novelconcepts]

vannat besties and 98.

98 - Recovery/Hospital

Natalie wakes slowly, a groggy muddle of heavy limbs and cotton-ball brain. Something is beeping. Her bedroom does not tend to beep.

Her arm doesn't usually have a needle embedded under the skin, either. Huh.

Bleary-eyed, she turns her head against a pillow not nearly beaten-in enough to be her own. There's a railing on the bed. The walls are sterile, the color of eggshells. It smells awful in here. So clean, her head aches with the punchy vinegar tang.

Or, maybe, her head aches for other reasons. The reason she's here, in a hospital bed. Where was she last? A bar. Her car, revved to 80 on back roads. A whisky bottle clamped between her thighs, the leather of her pants squeaking when she reached down and hoisted it free.

"You're lucky they didn't arrest you, you know."

She snaps her head off the pillow and immediately groans. Definitely a head injury. And a hangover. She's had plenty of both over the years to recognize the severity of that knock upon her proverbial door.

A chair has been pulled alongside her bed. In it sprawls Van Palmer, legs draped over one spindly metal arm, a paperback open in her lap. She looks tired. Unimpressed. Judging by the state of her hair and the suitcases she's hauling around beneath her eyes, she hasn't recently slept.

"What're you doing here?" Natalie rasps. Her throat is all needles, no matter how hard she swallows. She needs water, but the idea of drinking anything sends her stomach reeling.

Van doesn't look up from her book. "Behold. Your emergency contact."

"Since when?" Natalie didn't set that up. She'd have remembered. Probably.

"Since Tai redeveloped her sense of humor, I guess."

Natalie frowns. Tai. The one who paid for her last stint in rehab. The one who chucked Natalie on the shoulder, said, "You got this", and spoke no more of it. Her skin prickles at the memory, at the need of it. She hated Taissa paying. She hated Taissa walking away before she was even settled inside. She hated Taissa, though not half as much as she hated herself.

"I total the car?" It's not the real question. The real question is a splinter in her heart. I kill anyone? I hurt anyone? Why am I still doing this shit, Van?

Van's head bobs noncommittally. "Nothing a decent shop can't fix. You busted your head good, and you've got a stress fracture in...I don't remember. One of the ribs. Like I said, you're 98% luck."

Natalie scoffs, which hurts her throat and her head in equal measure. Doesn't do wonders for her heart, either. "Yeah. I feel real lucky."

"You should." Van looks at her, finally, and there's a heat in her eyes Natalie has seen in years. It sings of a cabin, a deck of cards, a queen of hearts. "I've seen this movie, Nat. We both have. You really want to watch it all the way to the credits this time?"

Natalie sinks into the firm mattress. She's twenty-four, far too old to be feeling cowed by an old friend aiming bullet-precision disappointment. The fact that it's Van is what counts. The fact that it's Van, who isn't smiling, isn't swinging her legs free to lean over Natalie's bed and squeeze her hand.

This is what Tai was playing at, she understands. Setting Van as the one they'd call. Tai always did know how to see the whole field.

"I'm sorry," she whispers. Van's sneakers flutter-kick in the air, her shoulders pulling back so she can inspect the ceiling.

"Yeah, Nat. That's always the first step."

She's furious, it's clear. Furious that Natalie would do this to herself. Furious that Natalie, of all people, who knows better, would play this game with fate.

But furious isn't enough to propel her out of her seat, this room, Natalie's misery. She ducks her head back to her book, and, without another word about Natalie's choices, begins reading aloud. She's right in the middle, some book about gods and road trips and wars. She does different voices for characters Natalie hasn't met before, and somehow, Natalie feels like she's known them her whole life.

Natalie listens until she falls asleep, and for a little while, the shame recedes.