#because the quote has been stuck in my fucking head for like 3 days now.

[marclef]

my ass that isn't that great at animating desperately wants to animate this dumbass idea courtesy of a certain Fake Peppino related post.

should i go for it.

[jo-harrington]

Freaky Friday - A Stranger Things Story (Part 3)

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5

Word Count: 12.9k

Pairing: Eddie Munson x Fem!Reader, Steve Harrington x Fem!Reader, Eddie and Steve (Enemies to Friends)

Summary: Eddie thinks that Steve has everything in life handed to him on a silver platter (including his new girlfriend who Eddie has a crush on). And Steve just can't believe that the kids look up to Eddie the Freak, or that he lives his life without giving a single fuck.

Must be nice. But you know what they say, the grass is always greener.

Warnings/Themes: AU with no Upside Down. Angst, body swapping, dark magic/alchemy, unrequited love, mutual pining, fatphobia (if you squint?), Babysitter Steve, unresolved feelings, manipulation/deception, Things That Require Communication (Too Bad There Isn't Any), Reader gets a nickname (Honey), no Y/N if I can help it, Masturbation, Fantasies/Wet Dreams, To Quote JQ "There Do Be Willies"

Note: Guys...ok I tried I really did. First off once again thanks to @ghost-proofbaby, @big-ope-vibes and @trashmouth-richie for being my sounding boards for some things in this chapter. And then because they have been SO amazing with their writing and their big-brainedness, this chapter is dedicated to @myosotisa and @blue-mossbird.

You can find my masterlist here.

Please do not interact if you are not 18+.

Enjoy!

Before Eddie could react at all to Steve's appearance, Steve had launched himself off the bed, crossed the room, and pinned Eddie against the wall with an arm across his neck. The pressure was uncomfortable, but not enough to keep him from breathing or talking.

"How did you get in here?" Eddie questioned.

"It's my fucking house, Freak," Steve spat. "I know where the spare key is. Now, what the fuck did you do to me? To us. How the fuck did you do this?"

"Listen pal," Eddie grunted, trying to shove Steve off of him. Eddie wondered, fleetingly as he stared into his own rage-filled eyes, if he was actually that strong, or if it was just because Steve had better control of his strength. "I don't know what you think I could have done, but I was just as surprised as I'm sure you were when I woke up here this morning. In your fucking body."

"That's bullshit. You did this," Steve insisted. "You...did some satanic ritual—"

"Are you stupid? It's all a joke man," Eddie began. "I don't worship Satan, Hellfire's not a cult."

"Fuck you, you and your devil horns and latin chants during lunc—"

"I just played that shit up so my friends don't get beaten up by meathead jocks like you."

Fed up with being pushed around and accused Eddie went slack against the wall for a second, causing Steve's footing to falter, and with that he threw his whole weight against Steve, causing him to tumble back onto the floor. Eddie knelt over him, gritting his teeth, and fisted the front of his shirt.

"You think if I had some kind of say in my life, some kind of power to change it, I would still be stuck in a shithole like Hawkins?" Eddie sneered. "Stuck in that trailer, stuck being a student at Hawkins high for another day?"

"Except you're not stuck anymore," Steve retorted. "I am."

"Y-you think I would want to be stuck like this instead?" Eddie huffed. "King fucking Steve Harrington. Who has it all handed to him. What kind of life is that?"

"You didn't seem too miserable a few seconds ago," Steve pointed out.

Eddie let go of Steve and he dropped slightly, head bouncing slightly off the plush area rug.

Fucking Harrington can't even have hard enough floors to hurt.

Eddie stood to his full height and looked around the bedroom again—at Steve's desk and his lovingly filled-out calendar, at the plush bed, at the window that overlooked a swimming pool for fuck's sake—and wondered how fair it was that Steve could have anything he ever wanted, but never did.

What would you like me to say to that Steve? That you're right? That I would want your life? That you're an idiot and you don't deserve any of this? That I do instead?

"Where were you just now anyway?" Steve continued as he watched Eddie cross over to the window. "Take my car for a joyride or something? While I'm driving around your rusty old shitbox? Or...or—"

"Took your girl out for a date," Eddie interrupted and glanced back at Steve over his shoulder. "Or did you forget about her?"

"My gir—" Steve paused. "Do you mean...You took her out on our date?"

"I went through the motions today," Eddie explained. "Wake up in someone else's body, go to work at their job, take their girlfriend on the date they had planned."

"For someone who seems to have no idea how this happened," Steve grunted as he pushed himself off the floor. "You seem to know how to handle a situation like this pretty perfectly."

"How do you think I should have handled it? Driving around town screaming about spells and magic?"

Steve had the sense to look ashamed for a minute and Eddie smirked.

"What did you do today then, eh 'Eddie?'"

"I...I went to school," Steve started.

"Sounds like going through the motions to me."

"I went to find Henderson!"

"Wait a minute," Eddie turned to face Steve fully. "You told Henderson?"

"Yeah," Steve shrugged. "What was I supposed to do? He's part of your little band of misfits. Figured he might know some...counter spell and get me back in my body."

Eddie groaned and put his face in his hands.

Great, Dustin was going to actually think Eddie was the devil now.

"Did you tell anyone?" Steve asked dumbly.

"No because I'm not an absolute idiot," Eddie exclaimed, throwing his hands out. "Fuck, no wonder Buckley calls you a dingus."

"Well lah-di-dah, I'm sorry I don't have the mystical body switching handbook memorized like you do" Steve snarked and fell onto the bed, grabbing a pillow to hug to his body for comfort. "What would that even look like? A...a...pentagram with 'shut the fuck up' written in the middle in latin or something?"

Eddie froze.

A mystical body switching handbook.

A pentagram.

Or maybe a sigil?

"God, I can't even believe you went on my date for me. Did you even...how did you know I had reservations at the Club? Wait, is that what you wore? Jesus Ch—”

"Shut up!" Eddie interrupted. "Go back, what did you just say?"

"Uh....The Club?" Steve asked. "The...Country Club up in Marion? My dad plays golf there."

"No before that, you said—" Eddie stopped. "Wait, you were gonna take her for dinner at the Golf Club? Kind of a douche move there, Harrington. Even for you."

"Well where did you take her then?"

"Doesn't matter," Eddie dismissed, smugly filing away the fact that his idea for a date was better than Steve's. Country Club. "You said...a pentagram."

"Yeah? What about it?" Steve asked. When Eddie hesitated to answer, Steve grew concerned. "Please don't tell me you drew a pentagram and asked for...I don't know, better hair or something and now we're stuck like this."

Eddie ignored the dig at his hair.

"Not...exactly."

"Oh!" Mrs. Henderson looked surprised when she opened the door to find both "Steve" and "Eddie" on her doorstep. "What a surprise!"

"Hey, Mrs. H," "Steve" greeted with a smile, causing "Eddie" to roll his eyes. "Is Dustin here?"

"He is. With Will and Lucas. Since someone decided to cancel Hellfire Club," she glared at "Eddie" good-naturedly. "I can go get him for you; come on in. Did you boys have dinner? You hungry? I have plenty of leftover tater tot casserole."

"No thank you," they answered in tandem and crossed through into the living room and took a seat on the couch.

As she made her way back towards Dustin's room, the boys started to bicker.

"Why would you cancel Hellfire? I never cancel. Even when I'm sick."

"I’m sorry was this not a pressing matter? Your little club can’t skip one week?”

Mews jumped up and settled in "Eddie's" lap and Steve froze as she began purring.

Mews was never really a fan of Steve's to begin with, the few times Steve had come over to spend time with Dustin and the kids. It was mutual indifference, actually. She mostly stayed cuddled up in Mrs. Henderson's arms, but when she wasn't they gave one another distance. Steve had no interest in getting near the cat, and the cat had no interest in getting near Steve.

So for her to be comfortable and purring in "Eddie's" lap...it made Steve a little nervous. What if she bit him or clawed him or—

"Well, aren't you gonna give her pets Harrington?" Eddie reached over and started scratching between her ears.

"Uh...I'm not an animal person," Steve explained and Eddie gave him a dull look. "What if it scratches me?"

"Are you kidding?" Eddie scoffed. "First, she's literally the cuddliest cat in the world. Second, she's a she, not an it. And third, if she scratches you, technically she'd scratch me and I've already been scratched several times when I fed the baby raccoons at Forest Hills."

"The—Why are you feeding raccoons?" Steve exclaimed. "They're wild animals, they're feral."

"They're babies, they shouldn't be eating trash. Which reminds me, as long as we're stuck like this, you need to leave a can or two of tuna out for the stray cats once in a while."

Steve watched Eddie for a moment, waiting for the laughter to start or a punchline to come out of his mouth. And it never did.

"What is wrong with yo—"

"Eddie! Steve!" the boys jumped at Dustin and his mother's appearance. Dustin had wide eyes and a strained smile. "What a surprise! Eddie, how was detention?"

Eddie turned back to look at Steve with raised eyebrows and a manic grin.

"Detention?" Eddie asked. "When did this happen?"

"I was late to class. You know, like I am every day." Steve answered, taking a cheap dig at Eddie for putting him on the spot.

"Anyway!" Dustin began loudly. "Why don't you guys come on back. And we can discuss that surprise campaign for Mike's birthday."

Eddie picked Mews off Steve's lap and handed her back to Mrs. Henderson with another last little chin scratch, and then he and Steve followed Dustin back to his room where, indeed, Lucas and Will were waiting.

"Alright dweebs, get lost," Steve announced.

"No way, we're not leaving until we figure this whole body switching thing out," Lucas scoffed.

"You told them too?" Eddie turned to Steve and Steve held his hands up defensively.

"No," Dustin interjected. "I did. I needed Will the Wise's brain and Sinclair the Soldier's tenacity if I was gonna solve this."

"What about Wheeler?" Eddie asked.

The boys sheepishly looked at one another.

"Mike's not exactly the best at keeping secrets," Will began hesitantly. "And if Nancy found out...well..."

"And we do actually need to come up with some kind of surprise for his birthday," Lucas continued. "A quest to reverse a curse on two knights sounds pretty epic."

They all looked to Eddie for his input.

"Could be interesting," Eddie hummed and tilted his head back and forth in contemplation. "I might be inclined to give it a DM stamp of approval if we can actually figure this thing out."

The kids all cheered and started talking over one another, saying that they went to the Hawkins Public Library after school since Hellfire was canceled. They gathered several fantasy books and a folklore book, and when they asked about occultism at the reference desk, there was one book that had recently been checked out.

"Funny you should mention that," Steve piped up and pulled the faded red book out from where it was tucked into Eddie's jacket. "Eddie and I nearly tore apart his trailer trying to find it.

And they had.

After Eddie had dropped the news that he, indeed, might have been the cause of this switch—unintentionally—he and Steve headed to Forest Hills to find the book.

Steve honestly felt a little vindicated that it actually was Eddie who had done this to the two of them, but...he admitted that he might have let all of the mania about Eddie and Hellfire Club fuel his anger.

But as he stood off to the side and watched the boys flip through the pages with Eddie as Eddie regaled them with his campaign ideas and the sigil that had caught his eye, Steve couldn't help but feel that bitter vile jealousy begin to bubble up again.

How long ago was it that he was taking them to the junkyard to ride their bikes and find scraps and bits and pieces for them to use for their...LORPing...LARPing...

And it was fun, yeah, watching the little idiots get excited over hunks of discarded pipes they could use as staffs, and bent and dented garbage can lids they could use as shields.

But he had done all of those things in an effort to make Nancy see he was a good guy, and he had lost her. And he had kept doing those things because the kids were actually fun and like the younger siblings he had always wanted...and now they were arguing about the differences between Latin and Ancient Mycenaean with Eddie.

He just couldn't keep up.

So he took the route he always knew would keep him and his feelings safe: he lashed out.

"Alright, so," he put his hands on his hips." What's the verdict, how soon can we switch back? I don't want to be stuck smelling like weed for the rest of my life. Do you even wash your clothes, Munson?"

All four boys—well, 3 boys and one man—stared at Steve with wide, almost hurting eyes. And Steve realized...

Shit.

...he hadn't made fun of someone like that in front of the kids that way in a long time.

"I-I'm sorry, I didn't," he sighed and collapsed into Dustin's desk chair. "It's just been a really long day guys. It isn't easy being Eddie."

"Oh?" Eddie scoffed. "You just realizing that now Harrington? After one day of being me? You have it so fucking easy that it takes one day of...what? Being pushed around or called a freak or driving an old van that is not a rusty old shitbox, by the way. One day without your big house and your notes from your mommy and your neatly pressed clothes and your cute girlfriend doting on you?"

"And what do you know about my life?" Steve argued. "You don't know half of the shit that I go through! And you don't even care. You go around without a care in the world. Everyone you think is your friend is either afraid of you or looking for your approval. I heard from Janie Miller that you offered to give her free weed one time if she flashed you her boobs. You don't care who you're hurting or insulting or shitting on unless it's fun for you."

It was a miracle Mrs. Henderson didn't come to see what the ruckus was about because it just went on. Enough that they started talking over one another. One dig after another, one way their lives were seemingly better or seemingly worse.

The kids tried to interrupt them but they just kept going.

And Steve's breathing got heavy and his throat got tight, his eyes stung with unshed tears as he thought about...

The way everyone left him. The way he was actually alone. The way his dad couldn't see how hard he sought his approval. The way his mom only did nice things for him anymore was because he knew her secrets. The way his high school friends only liked him because of his popularity. The way that Nancy Wheeler never actually liked him at all, just liked the way he made her feel. The way that the kids left him behind for the next cool older brother kind of guy that came along. The way he was sure even Robin only half-tolerated him.

And the more that he thought those thoughts, the more...the more Eddie's body felt like his. The more he could feel every hair follicle on his head, the way every breath rattled his chest a little bit, the way his ears rang a little bit constantly from the loud music he always blasted in his van.

It got to be so much that it was scary.

But he and Eddie kept on arguing, until someone had the good sense to stop them.

"SHUT UP!" Will yelled and everything went silent. The two older boys stared at Will and he shrunk a little bit under their gaze. "I, uh, I think I figured out what happened."

"Well?" Steve snarked.

"...well I don't know for sure..." Will replied hesitantly. "I don't take Latin with Lucas and Dustin. B-but this right here. Alterius Oculos. Another's eyes?"

He pointed to the inscription on the page Eddie had shown them, right above the sigil.

“Ok what about ‘another’s eyes?’” Eddie asked.

“You need to…see through another’s eyes maybe.” Lucas offered. “Not literally. Figuratively. Empathize with them? Ms. Kelly told me about that a few weeks ago. Put yourself in someone else’s shoes.”

“Except, it’s actually literal,” Dustin snapped his fingers. “Because you two are actually seeing through one another’s eyes and wearing each other’s shoes.”

“So I drew the sigil, went to bed and we switched bodies to see through each other’s eyes and…understand each other better?” Eddie huffed. “I wasn’t even thinking of Harrington when I drew it!”

“What were you thinking of?” Lucas questioned.

Eddie quietly picked at his fingernails, and Steve looked down at his own hands—at Eddie’s actual hands—and saw the ripped up skin and closely trimmed nails. Eddie was a nail biter.

Eddie Munson was a nail biter and he was nervous and he was…

“I was thinking that…nothing good ever happened to me. That…I needed to have a reality check or something,” Eddie shrugged.

…Eddie was a loser. He didn’t have it all figured out. He struggled with things…beyond Steve’s understanding. Even because of Steve sometimes.

“Hey, uh,” Steve cut in. “It’s not like I did anything to help things last night.”

“What do you mean?” Will asked.

“I, uh, might have charged you extra for your movie rental just to get you out of my hair for a while.”

“I knew it!” Eddie exclaimed, pointing an accusing finger at Steve. “I knew you were pulling that shit on purpose.”

“Can you fucking blame me, have you ever met yourself?” Steve asked.

“Well, I certainly can say I have now,” Eddie grumbled. “So how do we fix this? How do we switch back?”

The younger boys all shared another nervous look.

“I guess…” Will began. “Do more things to understand each other. Just…do whatever the other would do…live each other’s lives.”

“For how long? Forever?” Steve scoffed.

“Lucas and I can translate the rest of this page,” Dustin offered.

“I’m sorry, Lucas and who?” Lucas asked. “You’re barely passing Latin.”

“Ok Lucas can translate the page while Will and I can do my best to help ‘Eddie’ navigate Hellfire Club.” Dustin held his hands out as though he was weighing his options. “And ‘Steve’ can just…not fuck up real Steve’s life. Or real Eddie’s life for that matter!”

“Can’t fuck up something that’s at Rock Bottom,” Steve grumbled.

“And maybe you two could work on understanding each other in the mean time?” Lucas asked.

Steve and Eddie stared at one another in a way that felt, to Steve at least, like a challenge. They nodded and Steve felt the unspoken “let the best man win” ring through the air.

Otherwise they were both gonna lose.

Eddie threw his head back with laughter.

"Swing and a miss," he called as you swung the putter at the little purple golf ball, over and over, without actually hitting it. "Honey, are you just letting me win? There's no way you can be so bad at this."

"We can't all be professional mini golfers," you laughed at him.

"Excuse me, that is 'mini golf champion,'" Eddie boasted. "They have my face in the Hall of Fame."

"Oh I didn't know I was in the presence of a celebrity," you bowed to him. "Maybe you could take some pity on a poor peasant and help me get this shot please."

"I supposed I could give you some pointers," he sighed dramatically and sidled up behind you. He wrapped his arms comfortably around you and his hands found yours on the putter. When he tried to get your body into position to make the shot, you pressed yourself back against him and rested your head on his shoulder a bit. "Hmmm, what is this funny business, honey? Trying to distract me?"

You wiggled your shoulders and relaxed, leaning your body further into his, emphasizing the softness of you against the hardness of him.

And it was only getting harder by the second.

"Maybe I'm trying to win?" you turned your head to look at him, breath fanning against his jaw.

"Considering I've made par on every hole so far—"

"I'm not talking about golf anymore Eddie," you muttered, shaking your hands out from below his on the putter so you could turn within his embrace and cup his face softly...reverently. "I...you know I've always had a huge crush on you."

"Honey, why do you have to tell me such sweet things?" Eddie asked. "It's our first date, I'm trying to be a gentleman. We're in public."

"And if we weren't in public?" You tilted your face closer to his, lips practically brushing against his. "Would you be a gentleman then?"

"Do you want me to be?" he asked breathlessly.

He dropped the putter and grabbed at your waist as he crushed his mouth to yours. It was a hungry sort of kiss, like he was a man starved. And when the joyous moan that came from you was as sweet as honey, Eddie resolved that you were, indeed, going to give him a sweet tooth.

Eddie's hands slid easily across the smooth surface of your shiny taffeta dress as he pulled you closer, causing it to rustle as it crinkled under his touch. It got harder to think as he savored your softness but he dreamed of what it would be like to be surrounded by all of you. To be consumed, and suffocated, and smothered by you.

He could have it...he could have you...

You pulled away momentarily and stared up into his eyes, yours glassy with want and adoration, something that he only ever hoped you would look at him with.

"Do you wanna answer the phone?" you muttered.

"W-what?"

"Steven are you up?" There was a knock on the bedroom door and Eddie woke with a start. He groggily looked around the room, at the plaid wallpaper and the tidy belongings.

Damn. The thing that he hoped was a dream was real, and the thing he hoped was real was only a dream.

"There's someone calling for you. Did you wanna answer?" Mrs. Harrington said through the door.

"Y-yeah, uh," Eddie called out and cleared his throat. "M-mom." The word was unfamiliar on his tongue, in his brain. Like a language that hadn't been practiced in quite some time.

He hoped, at the very least, Steve didn't call her "mommy."

He had been well on his way to an early-riser if he hadn't been woken up, but nothing was a bigger boner-killer than thinking of Mrs. Harrington as "mommy."

"Alright, come downstairs when you're ready; I'm making breakfast too. Your favorite."

Eddie pushed himself out of Steve's bed for the fifth day in a row. Threw on some of Steve's clothes for the fifth day in a row.

After the discussion with the kids on Friday night, he and Steve had agreed to go through the motions, make the best of living one-another's lives and actually put in the effort. Eddie told him about the things he did to make things easier around the trailer since Wayne worked nights--the laundry, grocery shopping, bringing home a little extra money by dealing—and Steve told Eddie the things he did—driving Robin to school, working at Family Video, his "health routines."

Although, Eddie would hesitate to call shaving his chest and styling his hair something someone did for their health.

He was also hesitant to maintain Steve's morning run, considering the fact that he hated running, but found that it was easier in Steve's athletic body than in his garbage bag one—Steve's words, not his.

They also set one non-negotiable thing each, that the other must do no matter what.

For Eddie, that was Corroded Coffin and their Tuesday gigs, like the one they had that night.

He had spent the weekend coming up with a plan for them to still play, even with Steve in his body and fully unable to play the guitar. Steve had even offered to learn some easy guitar riffs or chords, but Eddie had standards to keep. It would be his luck that on the night Steve was in his body putzing around that some....record label exec would walk into the Hideout. He wasn't gonna let that fly.

So they figured out that "Steve" would be spending some time with "Eddie" at Dustin's request so they could "reconcile their differences." And in an effort to learn more about "Eddie," he would go to Corroded Coffin's shows.

Since the "stage lights" were so bright and blinding anyway, no one would know that he slipped into the supply closet where his Fender would be plugged into the equipment, while Steve faked playing an unfortunately dead Sweetheart on stage. There was more to the performance than just focusing on the music...so he'd just have to hope that none of the guys gave Steve any cues that he couldn't see.

The singing was an easy fix. Jeff was working on his confidence; Eddie would just let him be the frontman tonight. No need to worry about Steve knowing any of the songs, let alone their lyrics.

He was an optimist when it came to music though. This would work.

For Steve, it was that Eddie did not talk to his parents outside of any quick, cordial conversations. And Eddie wasn't one to pry—he had his fair share of parental issues—it just seemed weird that the mention of Ma and Pa Harrington would cause Golden Boy Stevie to choke up the way he did.

Thankfully for Eddie, the Harrington's had vibrant social lives. Thomas Harrington worked late at the car dealership and then went out for dinner and drinks with his salesmen most nights Monday through Saturday. And on Sunday he got his clubs out of the hall closet and went to the Country Club to play with his other businessman friends for most of the day. Mary Harrington was just...unexplainably gone from the house for most of the day, most days. Eddie couldn't even explain when she was home to do all of the things she seemed to do around the house.

"Steve" had the day off of work yesterday so he was home for most of the day, and short of the few hours he had left the house to take you out on another date, Mary hadn't been home at all. Miraculously, when he returned at the end of the night, his hamper was empty, his bed had been made, his new schedule was written in his calendar, and his lunch was ready in the fridge for the following day.

Eddie wondered why everyone thought he was capable of dark magic when, clearly, Mary Harrington was the town's resident witch.

This morning was the first one that he had even heard her voice, let alone be the first time he would see her as he resided in Steve’s body.

Eddie crept down the stairs and into the hall, peering around to see if Mrs. Harrington was anywhere nearby then approached the little hall table where the phone was sitting off the hook.

"Good morning, this is Steve Harrington," he greeted as he pressed the receiver to his ear. "Fine purveyor of rental videos, microwave popcorn, and movie theater candy. How can I help you?" There was giggling on the other end of the line and he grinned.

"Please don't tell me that's how you answer the phone at Family Video?" you said, instead of a "hello."

"I will now," he promised.

"No!"

"You'll just have to call more often and stop people from actually having to hear it." His smile grew at your skeptical uh huh and he continued. "What's going on this morning, honey. I thought you had class."

He could envision you leaning against a payphone, twirling a finger through a lock of your hair.

"I have a few minutes," you explained. "But I just wanted to call and say I had a really good time last night."

He had taken you to the drive in to see a double feature—House on Haunted Hill and The Bat; Eddie knew you loved Vincent Price but "Steve" just had incredibly luck—but most of the night was spent talking and holding hands and at the end of the night, he got to kiss you again.

Eddie felt triumphant once again, knowing deep down that you would like the dates he had planned over anything Steve could have come up with.

Part of the discussion with Steve about how to go about each other's lives also included you. Eddie had hesitated and asked how Steve felt that someone else was dating his girlfriend and Steve had just shrugged.

"She's a good one, I don't wanna let her get away," Steve shrugged. "You'll just have to keep her warm for me."

"Is that really the best way to build a relationship?" Eddie asked. "Lies? Tricks?"

"She doesn't have to know you're not me," Steve explained. "Just...take it easy, don't do any of the good stuff until we switch back. You wanna know some of my favorite dating spots?"

So Eddie decided...if he happened to be stuck in Steve's body forever he could have you. And if he ever made it back to his body...well...Steve wasn't exactly as smooth as people thought he was. If he couldn't keep up the loverboy act Eddie had started, you would get fed up and dump him.

And Eddie would be right there to pick up the pieces.

"Oh yeah?" Eddie laughed. "Well I'm glad. I did too. What was your favorite part?"

"Uhhh...oh! That part when you—"

The two of you chatted for a few minutes, talking and laughing easily, before you told him you had to get to class. He needed to get going too, so he could drive Robin to school.

His chest ached a little when he hung up the phone.

"It's good to see you smiling, Stevie," came a voice from over his shoulder. He jumped, seeing Mary leaning against the threshold to the living room.

"Uh, good morning," Eddie greets her.

"Were you hungry? Figured we could have a little chat over breakfast," she smiled an obviously strained smile.

Shit, how did she know? What did she know?

"I actually have to get going," he jerked a thumb over his shoulder then put his hands in his pockets. "Take Robin to school...get to work, open the shop."

"Let me get your lunch then!" Her eyes crinkled at the corners and she dashed away. Eddie wondered if he could make an escape before she came back, but before long she was pressing the brown paper bag into his hand. "I put your allowance in there too. Remember Dad can't find out about it, Steve. Please...dad can't find out. Please."

"Oh...kay," Eddie frowned. Was that the reason Steve didn't want Eddie talking to his parents? Because his dad cut him off but his mom was giving him money instead? Well, Eddie could keep a secret, and enjoy the benefits of some extra pocket money. "Sure. Mom. Whatever you say. I've gotta go."

"You have plans tonight?" she asked. "I can leave dinner for you."

"Nah, I'll probably be home late," Eddie explained. "Going out with friends."

Mary's face fell into a neutral expression, then she rolled her eyes and sighed. It was night and day from how it was just moments before, and it was incredibly uncomfortable for Eddie.

"You can't do this forever Steven," she shook her head. "Keep me at arms length. I'm your mother. I'm trying."

"I don't...I'm sorry mom. I've gotta go."

Eddie scooped Steve's keys out of the little dish on the table and headed towards the front door.

"I'm trying, Steven," Mary called after him cryptically. "You can't be mad at me forever."

Tuesdays were your favorite day of the week.

Well they weren't...your favorite; did anyone even have a favorite day of the week?

To be completely honest, they were actually kind of nasty.

Tuesdays and Thursdays were the days you had the heaviest course load at the Community College. Your first class started at 7am—you thought they would be easy thanks to your early starts in high school, but you thought wrong—and aside from a brief, squeezed-in lunch break at 11:45, you had classes straight until 3. Tuesdays also meant Bingo at the Rec center and an early dinner rush of senior citizens at Benny's that started right at the beginning of your shift. So no breaks again until closer to 6? Or 7? Or later if the actual dinner rush ran long.

And Benny was a nice guy, right? He always let you take an extra 5 minutes when he made his rounds about the restaurant to greet the regulars.

But Lynn? The curmudgeonly opening waitress who had been around Benny's before it was even Benny's?! Who had been doing this for longer than you'd been alive? Lynn spent the tiny bit of overlap in your shifts criticizing everything you did.

Every. Little. Thing.

Usually you could ignore her, but on Tuesdays when you were just one...big mass of irritation, it took everything in you not to flip her the bird as she left. Just one big "fuck you, you miserable old bitch" to her back as she retreated to her clunky, old Mercury Monterey.

As soon as her tail lights were out of sight from the diner windows and she was a little too far to turn back and chastise you about something she forgot to earlier—she had done that enough for it to always be a valid fear—you got to breathe.

You suddenly gained a sense of serenity and joy.

Because Tuesday wasn't your favorite day. Tuesday nights were your favorite nights.

Corroded Coffin came in on Tuesdays. Eddie came in on Tuesdays.

You told yourself going into the day...well, now that you were dating Steve...it was going to be different. It had to be different. The date on Friday really felt like Steve had turned a new leaf; he was moving on from Nancy and was actually gonna give this thing with you a chance.

And your date with him the night before? It had been so perfect; you hadn't even thought about Eddie once. Well...actually...

That fleeting thought you had about Eddie on Friday night, wondering how he might kiss you, left a pit in your stomach. And it had returned with a vengeance after Steve had kissed you last night too. Enough so that it practically kept you up all night from guilt and made you call him this morning to tell him...

I really had a good time with you last night but when you kissed me I thought of someone else.

...to tell him what a great time you had, and that you were excited to see him again.

And it wasn't a lie. You were excited to see him. Excited for this change in him. Excited for the attention and affection he freely gave you during these last two dates that he, generally, hadn't given you during the first two.

You owed it to Steve, and to yourself, to give it a chance. And in order for it to be a fair chance, you had to make a clear distinction in your mind that...well...Steve was...your boyfriend now, and Eddie? Eddie was unfortunately just a friend.

A friend you wanted to kiss.

God this was gonna be difficult.

You could still be nice to him, still look forward to Tuesday nights when he and the guys would come in. They were fun nights filled with music and silly arguments and a textbook example of "boys will be boys."

You simply had to remember that all of those little extra things you did—make sure his favorite booth was free, ask Benny for pickles on his patty melt that he always forgot to ask for, or give him extra whipped cream on his slice of pie—weren't because you wanted Eddie to like you. Or notice you. Or maybe ask you out one day.

It was because you were his friend.

You had even come up with some foolproof plan to get the butterflies to stop flapping in your stomach when you did all of those little things for Eddie. Because you certainly couldn't stop doing them; that would be suspicious. Instead, every time your heart would beat a little harder for Eddie, you would just...think of Steve. His smile and his laugh and his kiss...

It would be so easy.

And certainly much easier tonight of all nights, as Steve walked into Benny's with Corroded Coffin, laughing along to some joke Jeff told before they had opened the door.

It would be so easy.

"Hey guys," you greeted nervously and turned to Steve. "What are you doing here?"

“What a lovely greeting Honey,” Steve chuckled and quickly glanced around before he pressed a quick kiss to your cheek. You felt your face heat up in embarrassment as Eddie and the boys watched the interaction, Dave and Gareth giving Eddie pointed looks, which he ignored.

How strange.

“Steve, please,” you laughed nervously. “I’m at work.”

“Well the boss isn’t around,” Steve pointed out.

“Uh…w-well I have your usual booth ready guys,” you greeted Eddie and his friends.

"Harrington's joining us tonight," Eddie pointed out. "Can we get a table or instead?"

"I can just pull an extra chair up to the booth," you offered, knowing Eddie really liked the view out of the window.

"Yeah," Steve agreed. "That booth does sound nice, Eddie. I don't mind a chair."

"No, we'll get a table," Eddie waved a hand dismissively. "Everyone good with that?" The rest of the guys agreed and Steve huffed an agreement beside you.

"Ok, uh," you stammered. "Wherever you guys wanna sit then, I'm the only one here tonight. And Ben. As usual."

It wasn't...terrible or anything, them wanting a table, it just threw off your cadence. If they had sat in the booth, you already had menus, waters, and silverware set out. Now you had to move everything across the restaurant because Eddie had beelined for a round table in the corner.

It was fine.

Steve hung back for a second and pulled you to the side.

"Hey, uh, is it ok that I'm here?" he asked. "You look a little flustered."

"Yeah, no I'm ok," you gave him a small smile. "Just wasn't expecting you. And I've had a bit of a long day. Kind of overdue for my last break too."

"You should ask Benny if you can take your break," Steve offered. "We'll be fine. The guys are hungry but they'll have to wait regardless."

"The...guys..." you narrowed your eyes at Steve. It felt too familiar coming from his mouth. "What are you doing here with them Steve?"

There was a beat as Steve's eyes got a little bigger and he looked down at his feet for a second before he cleared his throat.

"Listen Honey, I took what you said the other day to heart," Steve started quietly, inching a little closer to you. "About Eddie being your friend. I figured...he had something going on with him, I shouldn't have been so quick to judge. So I went to check up on him and...I don't know, turns out the guy isn't half bad when you get to know him."

"Really?" you asked blankly. You had no reason not to trust him but...going from calling someone a dangerous freak who should be in jail to hanging out with him and his friends in just a few days...seemed drastic.

But when you stared into his hazel eyes, there wasn't a hint of deceit in them.

"Sure," he shrugged a little. "I even went and watched his band play tonight."

"You did?" You were sure the craziest music Steve was into was Van Halen, if that. All of the tapes in his car were…rocky and poppy and nothing outside of the Top 40 charts.

"They're pretty good," he grinned. "Very good actually. They did Flight of Icarus and Mr. Crowley."

"You...listen to metal?" you asked with a frown.

"Uh," Steve shrugged again. "There's some good songs. And Ozzy. Who doesn't know Ozzy?"

"You gonna sit there and chit chat all night Harrington?" Eddie called from the table and the rest of the guys all chuckled. Steve's eyes hardened for a second but he gave you a gentle smile before he went to join them.

You didn't always go outside during your breaks; more often than not, you would sit in the kitchen, do some homework, and chat with Benny as he manned the grill. You'd think a middle-aged man and a 19-year old would have nothing in common, but Benny was honestly like an aloof father figure. He just stood there as you talked or complained about this or that, offered advice or lame jokes. It was perfect.

But tonight was just...confusing.

You tried to make the best of it, you really did. You brought the guys everything they needed, you smiled shyly when Steve reached over and held your hand as he ordered...

He even asked for a little kiss and you reluctantly gave him a peck on the cheek.

But it was Eddie.

He was being a real douchebag. Not to everyone else; just to you.

You had gotten their table set up and then went to check on the other customers and get their drink orders. But when you came back, he didn't even want his Dr. Pepper. He said water was fine.

When you asked everyone if they wanted their usuals—Patty Melts all around. No onions for Dave, extra sauce for Gareth, on a bun instead of rye for Jeff, and add pickles for Eddie—Eddie changed his mind and ordered a bacon cheeseburger instead. Ok, no big deal. It wasn't the first time he'd changed it up.

But then he had just been...picky.

The fries were overdone, the bacon wasn't crispy, it wasn't medium well.

You had brought his food back to the kitchen 3 times, and Benny even offered to kill Eddie for you to get you to laugh.

"He's a good kid but maybe it's his time of the month or something," Benny shrugged, urging you to let things slide. "Got bitten by a werewolf. Or turned into a vampire or something. I could even put some garlic powder on the fries, see if it does him in."

He then told you to go take your break, that he would take the burger back out and make sure none of the guys were having any problems with their food.

"Or else," he raised his spatula as though it was a deadly weapon.

Who knows, Benny kept things to himself, maybe he could kill someone with a spatula...

You were leaning against the grey stucco on the side of the building, enjoying the slight breeze, when there was a crunch of gravel off to the side. You turned your head to see Steve standing there with a small smile and his hands in his pockets.

"You doing ok, honey?" he asked.

"Yeah, just a long day like I said," you explained.

"How was class?"

"Stupid. How was work?"

"Stupid." He grinned wider. "I, uh, was really looking forward to seeing you tonight though."

You pursed your lips to stop the smile from making it onto your face.

"You really wanted to see me in my stupid uniform?" you asked, holding your hands out to emphasize the shapeless blue dress. "I look like Hazel."

"Did I ever tell you that I had the biggest crush on Shirley Booth when I was a kid?" You broke out in laughter. "What? What's so funny? Hazel might just be my type, did you ever think of that?"

"You are..." you started, but paused and shook your head dismissively as he got closer to you.

"I'm?" he questioned, leaning over to take one of your hands in his. He pressed a gentle kiss to your knuckles.

"You're not...what I expected Steve Harrington to be like," you muttered. His eyes went wide for a second as they darted back and forth between yours. "You're so much better."

"Of course I'm better, it's because I'm..." He faltered for a moment. "It's because I'm crazy about you, honey."

Your heart dropped into your stomach...

Steve was...crazy about you?

"You just make me wanna dance," he chuckled and took a step back, pulling you with him. He lifted your arm and made to twirl you around, and you laughed as you tripped on the gravel drive. He urged you to try again and you managed to twirl this time, apron flaring.

Round and around until you got a little dizzy and he pulled you to his chest.

"Hi Honey," he whispered as he rocked you back and forth to some unheard tune.

"Hi," you giggled breathlessly.

"Can I kiss you?"

"You don't always have to ask."

"But can?"

"Always."

Then his lips pressed to yours and you closed your eyes and you were surrounded by him again. Noses brushing, his lips softly pecking at yours, his hands tugging you closer as you reached up to hold his face in yours.

He pulled away briefly to drop little kisses on the corner of your mouth, then your cheek. Your eyes opened and you watched your own fingers thread through his hair, seemingly leading him further along to your neck, but instead it was just an unwitting follower because the choice to suck a bruising kiss at your pulse point was anything but yours.

You grasped at him tighter as something between a whimper and a moan exited you, and he chuckled in a husky, smokey way before laving his tongue over the abused spot.

You closed your eyes again, luxuriating in the moment and all things Steve Harrington...then it hit you.

All of the other senses got to you first—touch and taste, and sound and sight—and now it was smell. And it wasn't what you had initially associated with Steve, that bright, citrus scent.

It was musky and sweaty and spicy and a little bit sweet. There was a heavy undertone of tobacco beneath it all.

Eddie.

"Hey kid, break time's over!" Benny hollered into the night and you pushed yourself away from Steve, stumbling over the gravel drive once again. His hands reached out for you, to pull you back or to steady you, you couldn't be sure.

You regained your footing and batted his hands away to quickly fix your rumpled uniform and wipe at your lips with the back of your hand.

"You good Honey?" Steve chuckled. "You need a minute?"

"Uhh, yeah, I'll be in there in just a second," you waved him back inside. He gave you a wink and a smug smile before he turned and headed back to the door.

Your posture went slack for a second as you tried to control your heart rate and your thoughts. And where your head should have been consumed with thoughts of Steve, instead they were filled with—

"Nope! No. No more!" You stomped your feet and gave your face a few light slaps. "No more. Bad."

You took a few deep breaths, regained your composed service persona, and headed back in.

You spotted the guys table had been cleared, so you got ready for the best part of the night.

Benny was a realist who knew how to do burgers, fries, and shakes, and outside of that, didn't push the ticket. Which meant all of the desserts came from the local bakery every afternoon. They even came pre-sliced.

The whipped cream however? Benny was a connoisseur. He boasted to everyone that had the patience to hear about it that it wasn't cool whip, it wasn't from a squeeze can. If there was whipped cream on a shake or a dessert it was fresh.

"Nothing good in life comes without a little effort," he said the first time he handed you the hand-crank-egg beater-turned-cream-whipper that was, most assuredly, older than you.

So you spent the next few minutes plating everyone's desserts, whipping the cream, and getting it all looking perfect. It might have been the end of their meal, but it was the highlight of your night.

You would take a win where you could. Because everything else felt...

"Alright guys, time for dessert?" you asked, bringing the tray to their table.

You went clockwise starting with Eddie at the head of the table.

Cherry pie for Eddie, Apple for Gareth and Dave, Cheesecake for Jeff.

"And I didn't know what you'd like Steve," you told him with a sad smile. "But just let me know what sounds good and I can go grab it for you."

You were about to start putting dollops of whipped cream on everyone's dessert when Eddie pushed his plate further out from him.

"I didn't ask for Cherry," he said with a sniff.

Everything went quiet.

"Uh," Dave looked at the other guys at the table. "Cherry is your favorite man."

"I don't know, I'm not in a cherry pie mood," Eddie dismissed. He looked up at you "Can I get cheesecake instead? No whipped cream."

"S-sure," you smiled.

You were about to grab the cherry pie from the table to bring it back when Steve reached out and pulled it towards him.

"I'll just take this one," he reasoned. "Cherry actually is my favorite, and I am definitely in a cherry pie mood."

Eddie laughed.

"Whatever you say Harrington," he teased with a roll of his eyes. "Guess you have to get an extra long run in tomorrow if you're indulging so much. Mr. Star Athlete over here."

The

"I'm not gonna say no to cherry pie," Steve shrugged then looked at you. "Can I get extra cream on mine honey?"

He winked at you and you felt your face heating up, but you kept your mouth shut. You went around piping the whipped cream on everyone else's desserts, then ran back to the kitchen to get Eddie's.

As soon as the door swung shut behind you, you started to feel sick.

Something was wrong...

It was just off, you'd been feeling it all night. But you couldn't put a finger on it until now.

It was Eddie...

He was still his funny self...for the most part. But just like the other day at Family Video, he just seemed to be operating on a different frequency. And you wondered for a second if maybe it was you...or maybe it was Steve...maybe the fact that Steve was here and he wasn't...being very discreet with his affections. Neither were you, if you were being honest.

Was he...angry? Jealous?

He was the one to invite Steve out in the first place, so it seemed. Something just didn't make sense...

Steve had to admit that he was having fun.

It had barely been a few days of being Eddie Munson, but it was great. He spent most of the weekend with the kids learning the basics of DnD and putting together some things for a campaign.

He still didn't really get the whole game part, actually. But spending time with the kids? He wouldn't say no.

Having to go to school again wasn't...the greatest. Especially when all of the teachers seemed to have it out for Eddie. Steve just...started paying a little more attention, stopped being a general menace during class. He dug deep to remember some of the coursework from last year...and vaguely wondered how much Eddie didn't pay attention in class in the first place. Steve was not a model student and he could still remember this stuff, so he figured Eddie should be getting an A+ in all of his classes he was repeating now for a second time.

He was sorely mistaken.

Eddie's friends were also...pretty nice too, he had to admit. He had never really given the Hellfire Club the time of day when he was still at Hawkins High, aside from the obvious, but they were actually pretty nice guys.

The music though? It had been the highlight of his week so far.

Steve hadn't ever really understood what the big whoop the theater kids got performing but it was an adrenaline rush, something he hadn't felt for months since he was no longer a star athlete. He hadn't even been playing the guitar but the high of being on that raised platform, having the lights in his eyes, having his heart beat in time with the drum. He hammed it up a bit on the stage once he felt confident enough, like he had seen in one concert or another.

It wasn't the kind of music he liked, really, but he could get used to it if only to chase that rush.

And Steve had felt like a king again when Jeff had clapped him on the shoulder at the end of the set and excitedly gushed on that being the first time he had ever fully landed some solo or another.

Except..."Eddie" hadn't nailed the solo. Eddie had.

And as infectious as the celebration was, it made him feel a little guilty that Eddie couldn't even properly celebrate what must have been an exciting moment. Instead he just sauntered out from the little alcove they had set up and watched Steve take the credit for his accomplishments.

Steve went through the motions, just like they had agreed on, for the rest of the night.

They went to Benny's with "Steve" in tow at "Eddie's" insistence—he couldn't be left alone with Eddie's friends, he just knew he would fuck something up and give it all away—and had their late night bites.

And you were there, laughing and chatting and doting on all of the guys, especially "Steve." Even though it sucked watching you kiss his cheek, knowing it was really Eddie inside…it was nice to know that he had something to look forward to once he got back into his own body.

Something real. Something he thought he had with Nancy.

Now that the remnants of dessert were pretty much over and the guys were just shooting the shit until Benny kicked them out, Steve wandered across the restaurant to the old jukebox to pick out some music.

He briefly wondered what the response would be if “Eddie” picked something like Billy Joel. He couldn't give less of a shit though. "Eddie" might not like it but Steve was a little tired of metal after hearing it all night, after all.

"Hey Eddie?" your voice came from behind him and he turned to face you.

"Yeah, hey...uh...sweetheart," he gave you an easy smile. "What's up?"

"I just wanted to make sure you were doing ok," you explained. “You seem…I dunno, kinda off tonight.”

“What?” Steve faltered. He seemed off? How? If you could tell…could the others?

”Yeah you didn’t…want your regular order, you didn’t want pie,” you shrugged. “Didn’t even want whipped cream on your cheesecake.”

Shit.

How was it that he could flawlessly fake his way through a guitar solo, but not this?

"I...uh...," he started hesitantly, wracking his brain for an excuse. He dug deep, deeper than he thought was possible, and he came up with...

Dinner with his parents. His father pushing away a plateful of food. His mother looking tired and bored.

"Sometimes people's tastes change," he finished.

It was a painful answer for him to give...but he didn't think you and Eddie were close enough for your expression to crumple the way it did. It probably wasn't the kind of answer Eddie would give to a friend—he had seen how protective he had been over them even before this whole fiasco—but if it meant getting you off his back, he would easily do something that would push you away.

"You know I've been worried about you," you stared. "The other day, outside of Family Video. It was so incredibly scary. And if you're having a tough time..."

"Uh, yeah," Steve folded his arms across his chest awkwardly. "Sorry about that. It was just...just a bad high. I'm ok now. No need to worry."

"Ok," you nodded hesitantly. Steve thought you would just turn on your heel and walk away.

But you didn't.

“Listen I know we’re not…super close or anything,” you hesitated. Steve raised his eyebrows and nodded for you to continue. “I just…I want you to know you aren’t alone.”

“Thanks, uh, I appreciate that,” he nodded and smiled tightly.

"And if there is something going on, you can trust me."

"Of course."

"You know," you paused and looked down at your hands. It was several beats of you taking deep breaths and looking down at your hands, and Steve wondered if you were waiting for some kind of response...or thinking the right words to say next. You glanced up and frowned. "I had a-a c-crush on you in high school."

His heart dropped in his chest and suddenly it felt like Nancy all over again. Telling him that she didn't love him, telling him that it was over, that their relationship was fake, that she didn't even know she was ready to be in a relationship. Only to show up with Jonathan Byers to the Sadie Hawkins dance a few weeks later.

Steve thought everything was working out so well with you. He watched you...kiss his cheek.

Were you planning on breaking up with him?

He wanted to lash out, like a wild animal, tell you all of the things he wishes he could have said to Nancy.

Except...

Except he wasn't Steve Harrington at that moment, he was Eddie Munson.

And you weren't confessing your feelings in a way like someone with a crush would. You didn't look happy or excited. You didn't even really look like your usual sweet and kind self. You looked conflicted.

Because, he realized, he did watch you kiss his cheek. He, Steve, watched you kiss "Steve's" cheek.

If you weren't here to tell "Eddie" that you were breaking up with "Steve" to be with him, then what were you doing?

"I-I mean, we both did," you backtracked with a little laugh and Steve frowned. "Me and Terry. You remember Terry right? I mean, of course you do."

Steve didn't know who Terry was, but "Eddie" would.

"Of course I do."

""Right," you smiled. "Anyway, we both had a crush on you. And there was this time...I don't know, you don't want to hear about this."

"You're dating Steve now," he pointed out. "Why are you telling me this? Why are you telling me that you—"

"I guess," you interrupted him but hesitated again. "You seemed pretty lonely last year, all the times we talked. Even if they weren't...talks? Just small talk. But...after Mickey left for college and you stayed behind—"

That's right, Mickey Caldwell...and his sister Terry...

"--well you have the band and all...but...no one even wanted to be your partner in class but me. And now...you have to do it again and I'm sure it's even harder now."

Steve was catching on.

You weren't there to tell "Eddie" that you were breaking up with "Steve" to be with him. You were just being a good friend. Because even though Eddie had his group of misfit friends...

He was lonely.

Steve knew the feeling. Aside from Robin and the kids...he really didn't have anyone around either. He had just been thinking about how nice it was to spend time with Eddie and his friends after all.

Steve had been jealous that Eddie was spending all of this time with the kids...taking them away from Steve, when he was just as lonely as Steve was...if not more so.

It gave him an idea...

"So," you broke Steve from his thoughts. "If you ever...want to talk. I'm here for you. You have me, always, if ever you want."

You smiled then. Bright and hopeful.

"Well, thanks, sweetheart," he nodded and placed a hand on your shoulder. "I appreciate it...really...it's very nice of you. You're a really good friend."

He didn't see—didn't notice—how your smile fell as he walked past you to get back to the table with the rest of the guys.

Eddie walked into the familiar darkness of the Harrington house, a good exhaustion settling in his bones as he trudged up the stairs and into his bedroom. 

He went through the motions of getting ready for bed. with a peaceful smile on his face. It had been a good day, the likes of which he really hadn’t felt in a long time. If ever. 

The show at the Hideout then dinner at Benny’s. Dancing with you, kissing you, and holding you in his arms.

He could see your smile in his mind’s eye clear as day.

He didn’t want to delude himself into thinking it was love or…or happiness…it was just joy. Plain and simple. And it brought him so much comfort, knowing he could be the one to provide that for you.

Once he was in bed though, and he replayed specific moments over again, that comfort soon faded.

He tried to sleep, he really did.

But every thought he had, he thought of you. Looking perfect in your little uniform. Your laugh as you spoke to everyone, the special attention you gave him. You looked at him the way he always wanted you to.

You moaned the way he could only ever have imagined when he kissed your neck. It was filthy and still ringing in his ears hours later.

He’d wanted to touch you, just like he did in his dream that morning and it was even nicer than he had imagined.

The only thing that would have made it better was if he was in his own body. If it was him, Eddie Munson, that you were looking at and feeling things for and moaning for.

It was with all of that and at the reminder of the dream that he had been so rudely pulled from that morning, that Eddie started getting hot under the collar. 

It wasn’t about sex, really; it was intimacy. And that’s what he wanted more than anything. The closeness with you. To know you. To be with you.

He closed his eyes and imagined your smile directed at him again, the way you put your hand on his shoulder when you asked if everyone was alright, and then fixed his hair a little bit when you went to leave. 

His hair…he’d always been sensitive about it and even in this other body…in his own body…giving it a tug always helped get his motor running.

Eddie reached up and gave Steve’s hair an experimental tug, the short few days not nearly enough for him to be used to the difference in length and texture. It felt crunchy from all the product he had put in and it immediately felt uncomfortable on his fingers.

No touching the hair, noted.

He vaguely wondered, were his nerves on fire because this body was sensitive and aroused and receptive to your attention. Or was it because he, Eddie Munson, resided inside.

Only one way to find out.

He palmed himself over the comforter, then over his sweats, but it wasn’t enough. 

Eddie didn’t hesitate to strip himself of his sweats and the suffocating briefs, and he propped the pillows behind him in a more comfortable way so he could…well so he could watch if he wanted to.

Right now he just wanted to imagine. To feel.

The thought of touching himself had vaguely crossed his mind the other day, after he’d jumped into a cold shower shortly after he’d woken up with morning wood. He wondered if that was crossing a line though. Steve’s dick…was just a dick. Just like his dick was a dick. The same but different. And he’d seen different ones before and yeah some were weird or different sized…did it matter?

If Eddie thought about it from a mechanical sense…a car was a car, no matter who the owner was, or how cautious or rough the driver was…and even two cars of the same make and model could have their very unique quirks…

As long as everything worked and you got from Point A to Point B right?

So he closed his eyes and imagined.

You were there, of course, back outside of Benny’s. He was making you laugh and twirling you around, just like he had earlier that night. Watching your little uniform skirt balloon out just the slightest bit. It wasn’t ruffly or anything, just a standard waitress uniform with a straight skirt.

It didn’t take much touching to get him fully hard; he’d spent enough time exploring to know what he liked so he just let the feelings guide him in this new body.

He licked his palm several times then spit in his hand before he held the shaft loosely. He gave it a few loose strokes before he tightened his grip a little and twisted, hissing at the sweet friction. 

But this was his fantasy, so your uniform could be anything. Flowier, shorter, enough to see the frilly lace edge of your panties when he twirled you and the skirt flared.

“Didn’t know you were trying to turn this sweet moment into a peep show,” you giggled at him and swatted at his chest as he pulled you into his chest to rock together with him.

“I dunno honey,” he sighed. “I think I would be seeing more than just some lace if this was a peep show.”

“Well, what did you have in mind, big boy?”

The hand that had been resting near his head immediately went down to cup and squeeze his balls, and his throat got tighter as he held in a strangled moan. He wasn’t…too sure if he liked it all that much…but he was positive that he didn’t dislike it. He could make himself grow to like it if he needed to.

He stilled the stroking to run his fingers over the head; a favorite little move of his where he pivoted his wrist, letting the joints in his fingers run over the tip and around the head of his cock, hitting all of his sensitive spots in varying intervals. It wasn’t the same, his fingers weren’t as long now, as he noted while he was playing the guitar earlier. 

Regardless, pleasure still surged through him, so it got the job done.

“No peeking,” you whispered against his lips and you covered his eyes with his hands. He’d asked for your panties and you’d agreed without hesitation. If this wasn’t a dream, he would never have been that lucky. He chuckled as your hands pulled away from his and it took everything in him not to look through his fingers at the sound of the rustling of your uniform. 

Suddenly your hands were on the waist of his jeans, working the button open and the zipper downwards.

“Honey, what are you doing?” he teased. “You being naughty?” He just about pulled his hands away from his eyes and you snatched your hands away from him.

“Nooo,” you sing-songed. “No looking yet, I’ll tell you when.”

The ache for him to chase his release was different than he was used to. The best way to describe what he usually felt was…dulcet…smooth…it danced along his nerve endings and made him want more. Drove him to do more, to explore more. A siren’s song to tug and twist and tease until he was floating. But now it was almost…primordial. It leached into his skin and deep into his bones; a hefty, cloying need that would grip his entire being whole and drag him into the depths of the earth itself if it could.

It was a delicious contrast, the difference between the softness of your hand wrapped around him and the slight drag from your panties as you used them to help get him off.

You spit on his tip and let it mingle with his precum, let it slide over the sensitive skin.

Eddie spit in his hand again, trying to achieve that feeling that his imagination conjured up but was just outside of the corporeal.

“Do you like it?” you asked and he could hear the feral grin in your voice.

“I like it,” he moaned. 

“Do you like me?”

“I love you,” he said breathlessly. “Fuck, I would love you so if you just let me.”

He was close, it was euphoric. His nerves exploding, synapses firing as he twisted his hand around the head just so, squeezed his balls again, and then the base of his cock.

“Ok you can look now.”

And he did, directly into those mischievous, knowing eyes of yours as you looked right back at him.

“Cum for me Steve.”

And…he couldn’t…he couldn’t…

Eddie opened his eyes and stared around the room–a room that wasn’t his–looked down at the hands that weren’t his, touching the cock that wasn’t his. 

Because as much as Eddie could simply…compartmentalize and rationalize for however long he had been in his little fantasy…

It was Steve, it was all Steve. All you wanted right now was Steve Harrington and not Eddie Munson. You probably would never want Eddie.

And maybe one day–if he was still cursed to live like this, if he was stuck in this body until the end of his life–he could live with the fact that you wanted Steve.

But as his pleasure evaded him and all of the sad thoughts returned, he simply couldn’t escape the simple fact that his honey didn’t want him…she wanted someone else.

The guys had left shortly after your...interaction with Eddie.

Your confession.

The sweet kiss Steve had given you before they had left was...wonderful. But it was like the glue holding together the broken vase on that one episode of the Brady Bunch.

The feelings were building, the pressure too much, and before long...you sprung a leak and the reality of what you had done hit you. It had you shaking. Benny must have known something was wrong; he had asked you all through your closing tasks if you were alright.

"You good kid?" He asked. "Cuz I can finish up if you wanna get home. I know today's your busy day."

Truth be told, he always asked you that, but the extra edge of concern to his voice was a dead giveaway that you weren't doing a good job of holding it together.

“Nah Ben,” you smiled meekly. “I’m ok. Tired. But I’ll make it. Thanks.”

You started hyperventilating by the time you got into your car.

“Stupid, you’re so stupid,” you muttered to yourself. “How could you tell him?”

You weren’t even sure what possessed you to say anything, what compelled you to stop and say those dumb words.

You know, I had a crush on you.

What did you expect him to say...confess that he had a crush on you too?

Declare his undying love for you?

Instead he just called you a friend.

By the time you reached the 5th street intersection, you rationalized that, at the very least, you hadn’t mentioned that you still had a crush on Eddie. And as you pulled into your driveway, you were panicking again because…well what did this mean now that Steve was spending time with Eddie?

Would he say anything? God, did Steve already know?

It really was nice that Steve was hanging out with Eddie...they seemed to get along well enough. And yeah Eddie had the guys but…well, it wasn’t a stretch to say that Eddie could use as many friends on his side as he could get. He always put on a brave face but that didn’t mean he never felt lonely. Or alone. Stuck in a place he desperately didn’t want to be.

You just wanted to tell him it was ok. That he had you if he want—

"God, stop," you slammed your hands against the steering wheel as though it would force the thoughts from your brain. As though it would stop your heart from aching. "Stop thinking about him, you have to stop thinking about him."

Because the more you thought about Eddie, the more you’d want to comfort him.

And the more you wanted to comfort him, the more you’d want to hold him and kiss him.

And he’d made it plenty clear tonight that he didn’t see you as anything more than Mickey’s Kid Sister’s Silly Friend.

Or at least that’s just how it felt.

Another busybody townie who couldn’t mind their own business, who had to offer words of encouragement, who pitied him.

No. Not that. He didn't give people who pitied him the time of day. What if...

Bile rose in your throat as you came to a realization.

What if he didn’t just see you as another silly townie? What if he had known? He had known you had a crush on him all along, and he had taken pity on you. Because you were Terry's friend, he didn't want you to get hurt. And now that you were with Steve...he couldn't let you keep your hopes up anymore? You had a real boyfriend now.

That was it...

He was just...being nice to you all this time.

And that...hurt.

The realization of all that wasted time. Years spent thinking...hoping...

You made it into your house, went through the motions of getting ready for bed, and numbly said goodnight to your mom as your mind raced and raced and your heart broke even more.

It wasn't until you were tucked into bed, head filled with sad thoughts of every time you thought that maybe...just maybe Eddie liked you back, that you remembered.

Your diary.

Some silly old pink think that Terry had gotten you for your birthday years ago. You didn't write in it too often—you hadn't ever really been a diary person—certainly not recently. It was tucked into your nightstand underneath magazines and random junk from your school bag.

You sat up, turned the lamp on, and opened the drawer. You dug through the junk until you found it.

You flipped indiscriminately through pages filled with doodles and random thoughts. Until you came across entries from your freshman year at Hawkins High.

Silly things about class schedules and how mean Mrs. O'Donnell was and how you were not good in geometry.

And then...hearts and stars and flowers and one name repeated over and over and over...

Eddie Munson. Edward Munson. Mrs. Edward Munson.

You ran your fingers over the indentations your pen made in the pages as you read your own silly words.

Eddie invited us to sit with them at lunch.Terry said no, that she wanted to sit closer to the cheerleaders. Maybe they would be nicer to us if they actually knew we existed.

Eddie held open the door for me when I passed him in the hallway.

Eddie got his driver's license. He and his uncle fixed up this van and now he's driving Mickey and Terry to school. He asked if I wanted a ride too, said he would let me ride shotgun on Fridays. He's so sweet.

Eddie called me sweetheart today. I swear my heart stopped. I am dead. I have died.

Terry said she has a crush on someone but she won't tell me who it is. I really want to tell her that I have a crush on Eddie. Maybe if she knew, she could say nice things to him about me.

She likes him too. She wants him to ask her to prom. She keeps asking who my crush is and of course I can't tell her. Because he would obviously choose her over me, who am I kidding?

It's the last entry in the diary and the page is warped from old tears and scribbled over with pen.

After that day, you buried the diary in your nightstand. You kept your thoughts to yourself. Writing them down made them real and scary. Instead you let your secrets fester and grow and rot inside of your heart.

You didn't realize you'd started crying until fresh tears started hitting the already-warped page.

"Shit," you scrubbed at your eyes for a second and then stared at the journal as your throat got tight.

Eddie Munson. Eddie Munson. Eddie Munson.

His name written over and over and over again. Obsessively.

Nancy Wheeler. Nancy Wheeler. Nancy Wheeler.

Just like Steve had been with Nancy. Always talking about her and thinking about her.

All of your wasted feelings. From both of you.

But Steve had moved on. And so could you.

You ripped the warped page out of the diary and tore it to pieces. And then the next page. And the next one. Over and over until your thoughts and feelings were ripped to confetti on your bedspread.

No more.

It was time to move on from Eddie Munson.

Tag List:

@luna-munson83 @kaitebugg03 @invaderzia1 @delusionalbabe @secretdryrose @eddiesguitarskills @simplyundeniable98 @imaslutforcuddles @hanobe8 @josephquinncore @champagnejoker @strawberrysodaslut @fangirling-4-ever @sadbitchfangirl @rosaline-black @vxlkyrieee @aysheashea @micheledawn1975 @thora-jane @pricelessemotion @lfaewrites @hazydespair @realsuper-dark @novelnovella @jaime1110 @manda-panda-monium

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s2 episode 3 thoughts

here i am, once again. feeling lost, but now and then. i breathe it in. to let it go… and you don’t know where you are now, or what it will come to, if only somebody could hear

(it started with "here i am" to indicate i was once more taking my notes, but it spiraled into victorious lyrics. and then the song being stuck in my head all day. endless humming was done at the workplace)

and other such sentiments. let us jump in to this one.

first thing we see: a nice car. ARCADE!!!!! arcades are places of whimsy and i want to be at them. this is a mostly empty arcade. but someone stole this one dude’s game… i mean, it’s fair to lose your game when you leave the room, but this other dude in the pizza shirt is being rude about it 

HOLY FUCK IS THAT JACK BLACK???????

jack black is watching while his friend gets beat up but knows his friend has an ace up his sleeve…. and that ace is…. controlling the radio? and then electrocuting the guy who stole his game. to death.

jack black and lightning guy go back to gaming after some murder

this is sooo funny... i can’t wait to see what scully and mulder and jack black get up to 

we open to scully doing an autopsy in oklahoma and she is soooo pretty. she does not believe that lightning killed 5 people in the same small town. i would have to say that i agree with that conclusion. and four more have been killed, the sheriff walks in and announces!

this sheriff seems awful. “you know anything about lightning, agent scully?” do you know anything about being quiet?

he accuses her of not doing her homework because "they farm lightning there" (whatever the hell that even means) umm... okay so how did your farming kill 9 children you prick? do you not think that is, in itself, worthy of investigation? imagine if a cow farm all of a sudden had 9 murderous cows. would we not want to look into this, mister sheriff.

and why is mulder just watching all of this go down? just as i typed that she said “feel free to jump in anytime” “why? you were doing just fine”, he responds, and while i like his belief in her, he certainly could have lent a hand. he never is quiet and now he chooses to be... hmm. not mister quip all of a sudden taking a vow of silence.

(the credits confirm this is in fact jack black, as if i wouldn’t know him anywhere. i'd know him blind, by the sound of his footsteps, or however that one quote goes)

narrative shift! lightning boy, who is named "darin", is working at a car shop. and a woman customer is coming in. and oh, the way he is looking at her makes me want to explode. DISGUSTING MAN! he is saying he is sorry for what he said last night- now WHAT were you saying to her last night, young gentleman? had we not just seen him kill someone, i would still have found him scary and suspicious.

the agents are going to where the latest murder victim was struck. as scully reads a case file over the formerly very nice but now very fried car, mulder is squatting down on the ground in the parking lot. average strange man behavior. and while this is happening, scully has sunglasses on and she is serving. 

jack black is counting coins at the arcade. scully asks to talk with him and says she’s from the FBI and he goes “alright!” and it was perfect line delivery. no notes.

he pretends to not know who the guy who was killed was and then pulls a "oh, THAT guy" moment... LMAOOOO 

mulder is prowling about looking at video games. he uses the high score list to find clues, but i think he was just kinda wanting to play a little. or maybe he considers himself above such undignified pleasures. however, i do not, and think everyone should have a little arcade time.

they go off to the car shop to talk with darin, who has become suspect number one due to his many high scores set the same evening as the other fellow fried. darin gives mulder a mike and ike, which he takes, and offers another to scully, who refuses, likely using her doctorly knowledge to imagine that his hands have been in very dirty places. he denies knowing anything, and then makes mulder's phone blow up, as if that would detract from the suspicious aura about him. and that phone seems like it was expensive!!

darin is at home changing the tv channel. until jack black arrives. jack black has seemed to have entirely enough with this whole zapping thing, as he tries to get his friend to stop generating electricity, and begs him not to zap the cows again. the COWS? oh we need to do something about this kid NOW.

with all the muttering about zapping, i can see why it would make people not want to hang out with him, in addition to his many other unpleasant qualities. he strikes himself with lightning about 3 times, lays down in the grass, and then proclaims that he feels "excellent". at this point, i began to form a guess of what would happen to our dear friend jack black.

(and by the way, despite his friend's pleas not to, darin DID zap a ton of cows. truly a god-awful fellow)

the agents roll up to investigate the cow murder. and now that the sheriff has been established as a jerk, mulder is gonna get involved. talking about the frequency at which lightning can be detected and saying "see, i did my homework" yeah yeah it's impressive but you should have been there before.

the sheriff wants them to go away sooo bad omg. is he darin's dead beat dad or something? starting to think that is the only explanation for him behaving the way that he does. but a clue! they find a footprint at the lighting strike.

cut to scully making a plaster cast!!! i did not know this was a skill she was familiar with. she proclaims that it is a standard military boot, size 8 and a half. he seems really impressed she can tell the size of a shoe, until she tells him it’s right on the boot LMAOOO. he really thought she could just do that. why is that a skill she would have? great question!

she also finds antifreeze, which implicates darin. but how could he make lightning, she asks. girl idk.

oh this kid is a CREEP, even more evil than i had thought: he changes the lights on a stoplight to watch people get in accidents. what the HELL. can we do something about him?

jack black tries to talk him out of his weird doomer behavior, and says they should go to vegas, where he can manipulate the electricity to win big. and this seems to me a splendid idea! but darin says he won’t go anywhere without his teacher, who was the woman he was talking to earlier in a fashion that made my skin crawl.

oh! he wants to "prove his love". and his crush is married to HIS BOSS. when jack black points out the conflict of interest there, darin says maybe he'll fry his boss, and laughs as if this is a great joke, while his friend looks very scared.

the agents are in darin's bedroom now, a place no one has ever wanted to be. 

mulder picks up a playboy and she says something about being surprised he hasn’t read it already and he’s like “oh i have” and then quotes T.S. Eliot: "april is the cruelest month".

hello. why is he like this. why is he looking at porn and quoting poetry. is there something i'm missing.

but he finds a picture of the teacher in there (in between the sections he describes in far too much detail for my liking). things are adding up... darin is in love with mrs. kiveat. whose husband owns kiveat’s autobody...

mr. kiveat is at the sight of the accident that darin has created due to his stoplight interference, looking as if he might blow up (holding his shoulder and wincing) but no! he does not blow up. instead, it seems he had some sort of heart attack, which is maybe something electricity can do, i don't know. luckily the paramedics are already on the scene, but unluckily when they get to the defibrillator, it is dead all of a sudden. until darin comes and turns it on with his electric powers, saying he learned it from TV. very believable. /s 

mrs. kiveat is at the hospital after her husband is fried, and she spills her water, so mulder gets her a new cup. what a gentleman! if we ignore the earlier letting scully get yelled at by the sheriff and also detailed porn description. he tries to ask her some questions but she won’t answer.

so, they find this weird kid's medical records, and a few months ago he nearly died, and his blood is all weird. mulder does not know what that big medical word means, so she explains that it means he has too many electrolytes. haha another win for Doctor Mode enjoyers everywhere.

“i know it’s a leap, scully, but what if [darin's] electrolyte imbalance is somehow enabling him to generate electricity at levels much higher than normal?” <- well it is a leap. i'm glad he's self aware.

they once again try to ask him stuff, which he largely denies, but he asks if jack black had snitched on him. which he DID NOT do. they keep him in custody for a bit, and just need mrs. kiveat's testimony to maybe get him charged.

they're going to the teacher’s house, and for once, our duo waits to be told they can come in!!! i’m proud. they could tell this was an emotionally charged situation, with her husband being in the hospital and her being clearly traumatized from this evil teenage boy. he told his teacher he had “dangerous powers”- hence the earlier conversation about what he had said last night. well! if she testifies, they can certainly get him charged, right?

no. because the dumbass sheriff let the boy go. and now the teacher is gone. just after scully told her she was safe!!

jack black is turning off all the games at the arcade until darin turns them BACK on. he explains over and over again that he did not tell the FBI anything, but then Darin zaps him because he thinks he snitched. how the mighty fall…

(i just got a terrifying thought. did people think the creepy electricity kid was misunderstood and not actually evil, but rather sympathetic and hot? i pray this was not the case. nevertheless, i need to know. chime in if you're an expert on this fanbase)

back at the hospital, the power is going in and out, and a dead jack black is placed in the elevator. just to be really spooky, i suppose. it is time to secure the exits. i made a note that i felt mulder would be zapped here, but luckily he was not.

darin is prowling about the hospital, looking for the teacher, and scully has him at gun point. despite telling him not to move, he keeps moving, and i'm thinking, girl i know you don’t want to shoot a kid but he’s like Bakugo or something so we might have to make some hard calls here.

the teacher goes with him for some reason and scully is really horrified as he like. grabs her??? walks out holding her hand??? and he is talking about seeing through her dress and taking her anywhere she wants to go. somehow thinking that this is reciprocated and totally normal.

that is, until the sheriff pulls up, and she runs. mulder snatched her around the corner and keeps her safe. so darin's screaming about giving her anything she wanted. 

he is STILL screaming, getting himself struck by lightning, and he knocked the sheriff out. so he’s laying in the ground and twitching while the agents roll up and somehow get him into a hospital??

where we learned HE KILLED THE SHERIFF??? 

so the tests came back and he had nothing unusual. behind the door at the hospital, he watches the screen and changes the channel.

um. okay.

i’m not particularly drawn to creepy men manipulating women and listening to songs about using the bathroom so. i didn’t find this fellow particularly compelling. in fact i rather despised him, for he reminded me of people i went to school with, in a certain manner. interesting follow-up to the last 3 episodes which felt so carefully woven together. yeah, the creepy kid fries people. get with the program. 

i also don’t enjoy watching men like the sheriff be condescending to scully. i guess he got his comeuppance (died) but still. there was no real narrative reason for him to be as big of a loser as he was. i thought maybe darin was his flop son, but seems not. 

overall, this episode was not my favorite. i didn't viscerally hate it like the past episodes i have found too jarring to even give a full walkthrough or anything, but it was a strange jump from how tight that last 3 episode arc felt. i hated darin. i normally find a few cute moments, but i'm drawing a blank on any today, beyond scully being able to identify a shoe size and mulder being impressed before learning it was literally on the bottom of the shoe. if that was intended as a sexual innuendo, it's much funnier to image otherwise. but i guess we did get scully in sunglasses, so i can't complain.

the real winner here is jack black.

[lmskitty]

Hi again......If you don't mind, can I ask, what are your top 10 (or top 7) favorite media (can be books/ manga/ anime/movies/tv series)? Why do you love them? Sorry if you've answered this question before......Thanks....

Hi!!!

Tricky!

1. Jujutsu Kaisen

2. Gorillaz

3. Sailor Moon

4. Outlast

5. The Last Binding Series by Freya Marske

6. Neon Genesis Evangelion

7. FMA Brotherhood

8. The Magnus Archives

9. Fake (manga series)

10. Digimon

1. It brought me joy and fandom and friendship again and made me feel like myself after a very long time. I know the narrative can be traumatic but it also has these incredible moments that just feel you with awe (like Todo turning up to help Yuji fight or seeing Gojo do hollow purple for the first time) it just reminded me of everything I love about anime.

2. My first real fandom, the first thing I wrote proper fanfiction for. The lore and the music and the animation just amazed me when I saw it when I was 11 and I've not been happy with decisions they've made recently (overpriced merch in a cost of living crisis, NFTs to celebrate Plastic Beach?!?) I'll still always love them and be excited for new content.

3. First anime love, first time seeing a relationship with two women helping me to identify as bi (now I'd say pan) I grew up believing that to be a strong woman you had to disregard femininity and seeing Usagi be the strongest with her bunny drawings and her focus on friendship and love just rewired my brain.

4. I love horror, I was brought up with it but for a very long time nothing has scared me and I found horror media repetitive. Outlast genuinely scared me and I was SO happy and I love reading the character notes and comics.

5. I've talked about this series a bunch but A Marvellous Light was the first book I'd read in years that made me cry and just stayed in my head for ages. Everything I'd loved about harry potter but done properly.

6. I was at a sleepover at a friend's and someone stuck this on and everyone was talking and I was just glued to the screen because what the FUCK WAS THIS?!?!? I've watched it since with my husband and it still hits me so hard every time. It's such a powerful portrayal of depression and nihilism and how relationships can fuck you up. It's beautiful and I think it's one of the best anime's of all time.

7. The opposite of neon Genesis lol. Love and family and forgiveness and what it means to sacrifice for the people you care about. Devoured brotherhood with my husband and we were both in tears by the end of it. I'd also been told I couldn't have kids and we had struggled with a miscarriage and Izumi and Sig just hit me so hard. (I have a bub now tho it came out ok in the end) but the characters still feel so real and there's so many amazing moments.

8. I listened to all of this and played Minecraft with my husband till like 6 am on weekends. We would discuss at length our theories and it just holds a special place in my heart. It's perfect horror and John and Martin's relationship just means a lot to me. I related a LOT to Martin and loved the series and I've super been enjoying the Magnus Protocol too! Also that first fucking recording of Nikola Orsinov?!?!? We both sat still staring at each other genuinely freaked the fuck out and we still quote it at each other! "I mean, you can if you really want to, but you’re not going to like it." CHILLS EVERY FUCKING TIME!!!

9. I read a lot of BL manga with my friends (*old lady voice* back in my day we called it Yaoi!!!) And so many of them had terrible tropes and big hands. This was the first one I ever read that I still adore that had an amazing love story and plot. It was revolutionary to see an LGBTQ story not just about them being gay or coming out but it had real detective cases and murders etc and I still wish we could get a tv show of it.

10. When Gojo talked about Digimon I fell even further in love. It's the fucking best. I wanted to be Mimi so BAD as a kid my mum made me a Halloween costume of her and I thought I was so cool. My next tattoo is gonna be Lilymon. I grew up with it in the dub and it established my sense of humour for better or worse. The Digimon film is still my comfort film of choice. Matt was such a big crush I had when I was little and I wrote little stories about being one of the digidestined.

Those are my top 10!!!!

[anthraxplus]

the cultural phenomenon of barbenheimer has taken over my mind

i did barbenheimer with a friend yesterday and it really got me thinking.

first off - it was so weird having my local theatre be so busy. it's usually the theatre you can bet on being able to sneak anything into, and while we still definitely did sneak in a buttload of snacks, they had people actively waiting in the wings as ticket checkers. so it kinda sucked that we couldn't just do the whole thing for free. but that's a bit beside the point. the theatre was the busiest ive seen it in nearly 10 years. and i'm not gonna lie, seeing a "cultural event" happen in front of me was more jarring for that reason. and as the day went on, that image in my head stuck with me. the image that all these people showed up to watch barbie and oppenheimer.

we saw oppenheimer first, in a nearly empty theatre. we sorta did this by design - we started at 10am and picked oppenheimer first because less people would choose to be that insane. i was high and trying to get myself into an impartial mindset (even though i didn't think i would end up liking it). and i think all i should really say about oppenheimer is that it's 3 nearly endless hours that doesnt give anyone any time to breathe and ends up saying a bunch of confusing, disappointing, and outright false things. seriously, the amount of times the movie brushes off the fucking truth of the situation is absolutely disgusting. obligatory linking of shaun's video on hiroshima and nagasaki. i think everyone in the movie should be forced to answer why theyre proud of making 3 hour bland ass shit boring nuclear bomb apologia. this isn't even getting into how the famous oppenheimer quote is introduced by a manic pixie dream girl (who in reality was a stanford graduate and psychiatrist, neither of which i believe are ever touched on or expanded in the film) who hops off his dick mid-fuck, walks over to a bookshelf, picks the bhagavad gita off the shelf, opens it to the exact page and verse of the famous quote, asks him to read, and slides back on his dick between "now i am become death" and "destroyer of worlds." this movie released to critical acclaim. some are calling it a masterpiece.

after some burritos for lunch, my friend and i went to barbie. this was a packed theatre and mostly everyone was wearing pink. the red in my hair has faded to a pink, so i felt like i was part of something. kinda. anyway. some little kids were loud in the front but it wasnt much of an issue. i kept thinking of them whenever the movie would say something about the struggle to find identity in a world that hates you no matter what you do. did those little children listen to margot robbie say that she doesnt have a vagina? did they parse that? it was a great movie, if a bit scattershot. it shouldve been longer, if only to fully flesh out a couple ideas and help the movie feel a little less cramped. but they would never make a 2.5 (let alone 3) hour barbie movie that talks about not just what it means to be a woman, but what it means to be human in a world that is so often contradictory hostile and praising of you. what happens when the Other we defined ourselves by isn't static? do we become different as well in relation to them? do we stay the same? do we do both? what are women supposed to do in the world when everything they do is wrong but they're never allowed to stop doing anything? how do men develop their own identity when they are so often raised into mindsets where their individuality is replaced by similarly contradictory standards and a definition that only exists in relation to women? what did ken mean when he said he had "all the genitals?" barbie is far from perfect, but it manages to ask more honest and thought provoking questions (and offers its own interesting answers) about the nature of reality than oppenheimer does.

i'm struck by the dichotomy on display here. barbie may be the more financially successful of the two films, but it is not treated the same critically. for all barbie says, it seems to get overlooked for its (still impressive) design and acting. its metacommentary is mentioned but never discussed. its "witty meta humor" is listed as a huge selling point. oppenheimer, in contrast, is a vain and shallow film that says nothing and looks somewhat cool doing it. i wonder if there are any parallels here.

i worry for what this means for movies. a nearly empty theatre for a self-important movie that lists itself as its reason for existing is treated as if it says anything at all, and a packed theatre for a movie with a script similarly packed with commentary on our very state of being gets boiled down to "cute sets and witty banter." what did the audience members take from their barbenheimer experience? my area is not very progressive, and in my experience not very invested in growth of any kind. when america ferrera delivers one of the many theses of barbie in a tear-inducing frustrated monologue on how she's never seen as good enough no matter what she does, did the audience members feel seen? did they feel understood? or did they want her to stop talking so they could go back to looking at the cool barbie dream houses? when oppenheimer breezes through the discussion of which innocent cities to burn in an unholy fire with all the tact and deliberation a group of friends has when deciding where to have lunch, did the audience feel slighted? disgusted? or did they just want to see einstein on screen again like he's an iron man cameo?

i dont know where we go from here. it feels like a tipping point for what we want from movies, and i'm not sure audiences learned anything from the past 10 to 15 years of set-ups, tie-ins, and spin-offs. i want to believe something will come of the fact that so many people are seeing barbie. maybe, hopefully, something in it sticks with people and inspires some sort of change. just the smallest amount of evolution. right now i too feel like barbie when she sits in a park and looks around at everything the human experience has to offer, and starts crying from both joy and sorrow. a woman who is so often seen as disposable and empty understands the human condition in a way she cant express, and is overwhelmed by the crushing beauty and fragility it all rests upon. she is a human before she knows she is. she doesnt know who she is, but she knows she still Is. existence is confusing and no one knows what to do about it, and the least we could do is support each other as we figure out who we've always been. i hope this is what sticks with people instead of some half-audible dialogue about how hiroshima and nagasaki were justified. time will tell, though.

[scrumptious-finicky-illusion]

This has been going through my mind a lot lately. It's such a devastating reply to wield against assholes, bad-faith arguers, and the fucking fun police (aka puritanical busybodies, terves, and fascists).

I got fired from my new(ish) job 10 days ago. I loved the little group I worked with and a lot of other employees outside of the group. But I was a bad fit for the way the company wanted things done. I wasn't methodical enough, organized enough, or fast enough. I got written up for the things I did to address the problems they wrote me up for in the first place, and I didn't even think to push back on anything they said, even though I was literally using their methods to try and "improve." My last week there, my supervisor pretty much acted like I didn't exist. Which made me think that maybe, just maybe all the maximum effort I was putting in was finally paying off. Boy, did I feel extra dumb walking out of the office on Friday. Getting the silent treatment now makes me think they made the decision to let me go even before my probation period was up. I was am devastated.

Even though the job (technically the employees) gave me some weird this feels wrong vibes from my first week. At least it was better than my last job, which was pretty abusive from the get go, that I just kept tolerating and working around, for many years.

Cue me using all of last week to not get out of bed but also to go through all 5 stages of grief in random order (with the support of my partner). Financially we're okay. Mentally I've had my entire (tiny) stock of confidence in myself pulled out from under me, and my depression, which was slowly starting to lessen with me having a job, hit some new lows. Do you know how shameful it feels to talk to people who ask me about my job that I got fired? I don't either. I've just avoided talking to anyone who isn't either my bestie or living in my house (a whole two people).

But that picture up there, that particular quote, from a website I used to enjoy that got hijacked by a real life Justin Hammer, those words, now try saying something true and beautiful kept rattling around in my head.

I've been avoiding food. Feeling shaky because of low blood sugar feels better than feeling like I was so wrong blind about how things were going at my job.

My partner was away at a convention all weekend, so I got to be alone with myself in a way I don't often get to. No agenda, no plans, no putting everyone else first to allow me to neglect myself, just doing what I wanted when I wanted. It was great, because my life was finally quiet enough for me to hear what I wanted to do (or not do).

I left all my work crap in my car for most of the week. I brought my office plant into the house and saw it had a post it note stuck in the dirt. It had a phone number I thought I'd forgotten to get.

I cried.

I went to the grocery store to get one thing that my brain allowed me to eat (an ethnic cookie). I also bought a bunch other stuff, anything my brain even perked up a little bit at the thought of. I was debating fast food options while at the market, and once I was out, I decided not to think about it anymore and just go get the Loki Season 2 meal from the drive through. It's been so long since I just-- ordered a combo, the cashier had to ask me if I wanted a Coke. Yep. Large? Yep. So I got my two packets of Loki-show branded sweet and sour sauce.

<Kronk voice>And I drank most of that there Coca Cola fountain drink at 3pm in the afternoon. The one with the real sugar in it. The kind of soda I don't normally drink. You know, one that had more caffeine in that serving than I'd had over the entire month before. The quantities of caffeine I usually avoid.

The Large®.

</Kronk voice>

And then came the ideas. There were plot bunnies that I didn't just sit around and dream about. There was writing. There was some rewriting. There was more writing. I was up until 3 or so. Lay in bed until about 8:30 am continuing to work (but on my phone) Came out and put it on my laptop, kept going all day yesterday until 2am, and started again today until I felt about 80 percent done with the barf-it-all-out-on-the-page kind of writing and 20 percent done with the snap-all-the-pieces-onto-the-timeline-slash-grid editing.

I noticed that my writing is both architectural and garden-like at the same time. Like an espaliered apple tree.

(I think that's an apple tree.) You can make trees do tricks like this, and they'll produce hella more fruit in way less space, but only if you train it on a grid or wires or a lattice from a very young age. Every year the tree branches get a little bigger and a little longer, and you bend them carefully until they go the way you have planned. It's fussy. It takes time and regular attention (exactly the way my brain doesn't work).

But I can throw a few sentences on a page, keep going, look up at what came before and see that it needs a few words added in here and there, keep going, look up again and add a few more words in other places, again and again, etcetera, ad nauseum. Start at the top and do it all again. It's cool to see my sentences grow like that.

Should I say that acquiring The Loki Sauce cured my writer's block? It would be irresponsible to. But I think I will anyway.

If you are reading this, all the way down here at the end of the post, bless you. Thanks for reading.

[purlturtle]

Going through my drafts and found this ask list, posted by @dduane - I really like it, so I'm going to go for it. Here are the asks themselves; my replies I'll put under a readmore so as not to clutter your dashes.

what’s the last song that got stuck in your head? (for inclusiveness to any deaf people, which I apologize for not being skilled at: what’s the last creative thing you couldn’t look away from/kept coming back to?)

name a fictional character you identify with. why?

if you didn’t have to worry about money, what would you do with your life?

explain any philosophical ~epiphany you’ve ever had.

talk about a band/tv show/movie/book/fandom you love. why?

what gets you high? (chemical or not, as you wish)

would you rather die in a day or live forever? why?

if you could create an ideal nation/political system, what would it be like?

what’s your favorite story (in any form - book, tv, fanfic, storytelling, comics, song, anything)?

if you have any tattoos, and/or if you were to get any tattoos, what are they?

if you could go forward/back in time to any year, when would you go to and what would you do? (you have the option to come back.)

If anyone wants to do these, feel free!

1 - what’s the last song that got stuck in your head? (for inclusiveness to any deaf people, which I apologize for not being skilled at: what’s the last creative thing you couldn’t look away from/kept coming back to?)

"Do you wanna be an agent", because I just reblogged that. :D In fact the moment I hear a song, or see song lyrics I recognize, chances are near-certain that it'll become my earworm that instant.

2 - name a fictional character you identify with. why?

Deanna Troi, ever since I first saw her. I couldn't quite find the words for why, as a kid when I first watched TNG, but these days I know - it's her warmth, her emotionality, the way she can sense others' emotions (not just in a detached/observational way but in that she feels them as well). The way that that makes life among people who are unaware of that quite hard, and sometimes very lonely. The way that in order to function, she has to erect conscious barriers against not being flooded by other people's emotions. The way that because of all that, she is the first to strive to understand and empathize with even the worst of opponents (Armus). The way that none of that makes her weak, or a liability in the eyes of her crewmates and friends - on the contrary, they see her and her abilities as something to be cherished, something helpful, and something that is simply part of her. Also, she has a quote that I internalized as a teen, which has helped me accept myself and love myself just the way I am, and that in turn has helped me through so much in my life:

I'll never be longely, because I'll always have myself.

3 - if you didn’t have to worry about money, what would you do with your life?

Enjoy myself to the fullest. That includes taking in stories (reading, watching, listening) and putting out stories (writing). That includes good food, and the company of good people (online and IRL both). That includes a home that I love and feel at ease in. That includes visiting places I have always wanted to see, and re-visiting places that I liked seeing when I visited them before.

4 - explain any philosophical ~epiphany you’ve ever had.

Radical acceptance is a stance that changed my life. For me, that means that I accept what my self asks of me - a day of quiet? Sure, let's have a day of quiet. Chocolate for breakfast because I had a shitty night, sure, let's do that. I feel like shit right now and need to be angry and rail at the world? Yep, roger that, get it out of the system, and then let's do something good to come back to a balanced state of mind.

It also applies to other people in my life. Someone had a bad time and hasn't been able to continue our conversation, so I haven't heard from them in months, even years? And now they're back to say hi? Fuck yeah my friend, I'm glad you're feeling better now. Someone tells me they need to cancel plans we had because they're not feeling good? Thank you for letting me know, of course we'll cancel; I hope you'll feel better soon - and please let me know if I can do anything. I will take what you tell me at face value and in good faith. I will accept you, as you are, because that is how I want to treat people (including myself).

And it applies to life. Granted, that's the hardest: some things aren't easy to accept. And it doesn't mean taking things lying down - accepting doesn't mean liking; accepting just means "this is the way this thing is. I might not like it, but there's no use denying that this is the way this thing is. Now, can I change it?" I'm working on accepting that I am functionally/socially disabled now. There are a ton of things that are impossible for me to do right now, and I have no idea if I'll ever be able to do them again. Denying that, OR railing against that, is futile and counterproductive; it'll only deplete my energy to work out how to live with it. (like I said: not easy.)

5 - talk about a band/tv show/movie/book/fandom you love. why?

I love the Bering and Wells fandom and the friends I made in it. We're a bunch of whackos still talking over a show that stopped airing almost ten years ago; we still write, draw, make gifsets and other kinds of art, for these two goobers that we've all fallen in love with. It's a small fandom, at this point (it never really was huge to begin with), and quite the welcoming place.

6 - what gets you high? (chemical or not, as you wish)

Feels. As outlined in my reply about Deanna Troi above, I can easily feel what someone else is feeling. In the ideal moment, this creates such a positive feedback loop that I'm on top of the world. Even outside that feedback loop with others, I can call up any feeling within myself like someone putting a song on their internal jukebox - "oh, what shall we feel right now: love? Sure, a classic, let's go for it." And just like that, I feel love - for a person, for a place, for a song, for the whole world. And that's a pretty big fucking high, that is.

7 - would you rather die in a day or live forever? why?

Live forever. I'm so curious where we'll go, as a society. (I'm also often disillusioned and salty and unspeakably angry, but that hasn't diminished my lust for life yet.) If it's a choice between only these two options? Live forever.

8 - if you could create an ideal nation/political system, what would it be like?

I actually don't mind the one I'm living in - capitalism, but (hear me out, please, I'm not talking about the US/UK system, which is fucked) with checks and balances: social market economy. Sure, it could be better than what we're currently doing with it. UBI would be my first big change, and a big shift towards the left with regards to taxes and what they'll finance, and corporations and what they'll no longer be allowed etc etc. But yeah, we're not doing so badly over here.

9 - what’s your favorite story (in any form - book, tv, fanfic, storytelling, comics, song, anything)?

For people (the protagonist for sure, but others in the narrative as well) to find love. Be that romantic love, a found family kind of scenario (and if that merges with biological/legal family situations, i.e. someone in that group marrying or having a kid, sure, the more the merrier no matter what family bonds there are), friendship/platonic love, mentoring, etc. etc. The predominant emotion of my childhood and teenage years was a profound sense of loneliness, and I'm a sucker for stories in which people find a place where they aren't lonely anymore.

10 - if you have any tattoos, and/or if you were to get any tattoos, what are they?

I still want to get a tattoo that symbolizes my writing and Bering and Wells, and I also want to get one to remind myself that being highly sensitive is something to accept about myself and take pride in, even if it's hard to bear sometimes. Not sure yet what to do about the latter; I'm thinking of a flower or plant that is difficult to cultivate (needs the exact right conditions to thrive) but is also very beautiful if you can get it to thrive.

11 - if you could go forward/back in time to any year, when would you go to and what would you do? (you have the option to come back.)

Might go back and tell myself to actually take the step to break up with the people I stayed with out of a desire to make it work, until *they* broke up with me in turn? Then again, might go back even further and try to prevent Reagan and Thatcher from being elected? Then again, might go back EVEN further and have a dinner date with Katharine Hepburn, or Sappho herself.

Not going forward because, remember, I'm living forever anyway. I'll get there in time. The long way around.

[soft-boi-eli]

Hello Hello!

I just wanted to say I love your fics!

ALSO!

Could I request a CC!SBI X Gn! Insomniac Reader! Where the reader is an insomniac (Obviously-) but is somehow a pro at MC!

Like they are basically god at the game! They also REALLY enjoy horror games! They don’t get scared easily and LOVE horror movies! They basically love anything horror/creepy-

ANYWAYS!!

The reader lives off of ramen and Monster energy drinks (For fun-)! They have a Twitch (Which has about 18 mil followers and 14 mil subs!) and a YouTube channel (Which has 20 mil followers!)

They mainly play horror games (Obviously-) and MC!

You can do headcanons or scenarios/images with the SBI! Maybe like playing a horror game together or MC? OR! Maybe some things they do together? Or when they meet up? Or-to many ideas Nightmare-

ANYWAYS!

I don’t really care! And don’t worry about taking too long on it!

ALSO!

Maybe we could be friends? Only if you want too!

Remember to eat, drink, and get enough sleep!

<3

Yes. I lovesthese ideas and I'm gonna choose headcannons due to they are a bit easierfor me to write.

And yes I'm perfectly fine with being your friend! I'm actually happy to make friends on this app so yeah!

Pronouns:nonbinary

Tw: cussing. Insomia, mentions of horror movies. Mention of horror games. Fluff.

SBI with a horror streamer friend head cannons.

*Ahem* tommy wanted to paly a game with you so you choose a game that didn't look like horror until the middle. He screamed at the jump scare and it made both of your chats so happy.

When phil decides to play with you there is literally a silence after a jump scare. Everyone thought he had a heart attack and honestly so did you until he spoke up about accidently hitting his mute button when he jumped.

Wilbur. He's a bit better then tommy but more scared then phil would be. Any little noise won't get him but when it starts to get noticeable the noiseless to him. The jump scare, he'd fall out of his seat and stay on the ground for a bit. You ask if he's good and he literally doesn't answer. He's dead. You killed him. Congrats.

Techno. He'd handle them a bit better then everyone else. Not as good as you but heisnt very paranoid. He literally runs at the noises trying to get jumpscared. While you run after him telling him to stop because if he doesn't then you'd lose and die. And technoblade never dies.

If you all play together both tommy and wilbur pussy out. Techno last the longest and phil the second longest. While you remain the ruler of horror games.

Now how you all met was dream invited you to the dream smp to add to the chaos. Needless to say it got extremely chaotic due to you being on almost 24 hours. You first ran into techno. He seemed confused and skeptical.

You both found eachothers love for potatoes. You set up camp quote close to techno but not too close.

Phil popped in when he needed something for a build and noticed a new name. Talked to you in chat and asked to join your VC. You both found each other talking for a bit.

Wilbur was next. Wilbur got curious over the new person and just hoppedinto the same VC as you techno and phil. He was quick to realize that you were a famous youtuber. Mainly for your horror videos and your extreme Parkcore skills.

In minecraft that is.

Tommy noticing that all of you were in the same VC joined in with shouting. He was low key jealous that everyone was obsessed with you. Then he saw why.

You literally cracked jokes at his shouting.

"Is that an angry pomeranian? Nah nah. It's an angry child. Even better an angry blonde!" - you.

He was shocked and immediately started joking and laughing with you. He wasn't fully angry for long.

Now about your diet. When they heard that you had only eaten ramen and drank angry drinks they were concerned. You lived quite close to techno so when you guys met up he was shocked that you looked as healthy as you did.

He hated the fact that you literally didn't eat anything else.

You told him occasionally you have something other then ramen but you were just too lazy to really cook anything and that you didn't feel like burning the house down.

One month phil, tommy, wilbur, and techno decided to organize a month long sleep over so that they could celebrate your birthday. Phil being quote the father figure cooked different, but easy dinners every night just so you didn't eat only ramen that day.

When they actually arrived though you got a text from Phil asking about your address in your dms. Not think much of it you just sent him your location.

You were going to take a small nap. Just to bost your energy before you went and streamed later that night.

As you were sleeping there was a car heading to your house.

Phil, wilbur, tommy, and techno were all just existing in the car. And when they arrived to your house they didn't expect to actually see a clean house.

You woke to a loud knock.

When you opened the door in your half dazed state you expected a package. But to see four people standing on your porch.

You nearly jumped out of your skin.

You were stuck there blinking at them.

Finally snapping out of it you let them in. Confused on why in the ever loving fuck they were here.

Phil explained they were here to celebrate your 21st birthday and they were here for a month.

You stared at them for a while. Confused on what to do since you haven't had people over in almost 2 years.

But you got use to it.

So when you got done streaming and smelled something other then ramen you were thrown off guard. Like what was that. I haven't smelled that in years.

But after the second day you got use to it too.

For your birthday phil literally made a feast.

Like he found your favorite food other then ramen and cooked it. With that he prepared everything you could dream of.

Your sleeping habits. Let's dig into those.

I'm in no place to talk as right now it's 3:05 in the morning. And here I am.

But when they are over they don't let you stay up till no 3-4 in the morning. They all know the importance of sleep.

But there are those nights where no once can sleep and it results in a late night stream. And streaming for hours none the less.

The amount of accidental all nighters everyone has pulled was immense. But that's what happens with jet lag, adhd, and insomnia.

Literally you get tired randomly. Sleep for only 3 hours. Wake up. Drink coffee, energy drinks, highly caffeinated tea. And don't sleep till late at night.

Pillow forts.

It's a must and it happens. Horror movies, pillow forts, and snacks. Like you all are in this massive fort, watching horror movies, one by one you all are falling asleep. You and techno were the last up due to technos active mind and your body not letting you sleep.

You two literally just vide there, changing the movies from horror to some silly animated movies, like how to train your dragon, frozen, Luca, and many others.

You two pull an all nighter and it's actually a bet to see how long anyone else takes to notice.

You bet an hour. Techno says all day.

You won. Philza notices the worse eye bags under both you and technos eyes and immediately starts scolding.

He is papa bird and he won't let anyone of his children neglect their needs.

"Did you even drink water at all? You guys should of been sleeping not binge watching horror movies all night!" -philza

You could only offer a smirk, along with a laugh.

"I think we did I just can't fully remember. Also we were watching animated films. Not horror. Surprised you didn't wake up to let it go." - you.

You turn to techno.

"You owe me 15 bucks pig boy!"-you again.

Handing you the money he rolls his eyes. "Yeha yeah. Rub it in." -techno.

Ah yeah they found a horror game that you were scared of surprisingly. It was actually surprisingly you hadn't played it yet.

Outlast.

You had been holding off that game until you finished your other one but here you were. Bored out of your mind.

So you decided fuck it.

That game teriffed the shit out of you. It was so good though.

When you screamed they all came rushing up due to the fact that you never scream.

They say you out of your chair, on the floor, blinking. They thought you were hurt.

But you sat up and looked at your computer.

"Damn. That was actually really good." When you looked behind you and found the boys all staring you smiled and waved.

"You need something?"-you

"You screamed. We heard a thud. We thought you fuckin died!" -tommy.

"No I'm alive. My soul almost divorced my body but it's still quite here."-you

That day made highlights.

The popular y/n actually got jump scared. The one person who never screamed at horror games screamed.

When they left you were sad yes but they were still your best friends. Ready to talk when ever you want.

Sometimes I think that you guys talk all through out the night. Them forgetting that you were actually in a different time zone.

Sometimes they pop into your streams, be it MC, horror, you just talking to your fans, or even the once in the blue moon, cheerful games.

They just pop in and start talking to you. And you talk back like they were there since the beginning.

Phil is now one of your moderators too. Along with tommy, wilbur, and techno. When they pop in they make sure no one picks on you.

And since you are now close to the SBI. You are now part of it.

You didn't choose the fans did. But they are your new family. No matter what.

Even if they disagree with your eating habit.

Or energy drink addiction.

Or insomnia.

Or you mainly playing horror games.

Or you basically living in your streaming room.

Or even the nearly 24 hour streams.

I could go on but I'm not gonna.

I'm tired. But I can sleep. 2 days and I get to have a tour of my new school.

And it took so long to finally get into it.

We have been going through a huge hassle even before school started to get me enrolled.

And then we had to get me into this program.

But now on Monday I get to go in. Get a tour. Then start either Tuesday or Wednesday.

Anyway hope you liked. It's now 3:50 and it's no proof read I'm sorry

[dazenightmare]

I really just want to make a grocery store AU but all I have worked out is:

George as security cam boy that sleeps and only seems to wake up when something interesting is happening

SBI taking over the deli section, with Techno handling the meats, Phil making the food, Tommy serving people at the counter, and Wilbur who does literally nothing but just vibe and talk and nobody knows how he’s managed to keep his job

Tubbo as the roller-blade help boy who has a headset and roller skates, and does whatever task needs to be done (mainly restocking shelves). He is summoned if his name is even uttered into the walkie-talkie system

Sapnap as security near the doors who flirts with timid cashier Karl and goofball janitor Quackity, and somehow gets in a relationship with them both

Dream as the manager who’s always doing paperwork in his office, but always knows exactly what is happening in his store and takes over the store’s intercoms if need be

Eret as the receptionist at the help desk who every customer loves

Niki as head baker with the help of Ranboo and sometimes Fundy (god help them when Fundy’s in the kitchen)

Fundy and Awesamdude as the dudes in the back of the store who’s always unloading the trucks and keeping everything organized in only a way they and Tubbo can understand. Trust them, Dream and Techno tried.

Purpled as a cashier who if is encountered with something without a tag, will just silently put it in the bag depending on what it is

And Schlatt as the drunkard who buys drinks from the store and is always entertaining when he comes in

And the only scenarios in this AU I’ve worked out so far is:

1. If aggravated at someone(s) who works on staff, Tubbo will just say into the talkie system they have five minutes. When that five minutes is up, Dream goes onto the intercoms and says “Attention all customers and staff, be cautious, as rollerblade-boy Tubbo is now hunting (insert name) for sport around the store. Stay clear if you hear shouting or screaming, and cover minor’s ears in case profanities are used. I repeat, Tubbo is hunting (insert name) for sport. Teens, I suggest you get your cameras out.”

And sometimes, about ten seconds later, he comes back on with, “ATTENTION STAFF MEMBERS, TUBBO HAS THE CELERY STICK, I REPEAT, TUBBO HAS THE CELERY STICK! IF YOU WANT TO LIVE ANOTHER DAY, DO NOT HELP (insert name) IN ANY WAY!” And all staff members are just filled with fear, because only they know how painful it is to get smacked by Tubbo with The Celery Stick

2. The first time Schlatt stumbled into the store, he was high off his ass, and just looked at Quackity and Tubbo who were talking nearby and decided mine, proceeding to pick them up like sacks of potatoes and running towards the doors like a madman while the two teens screamed. This event continued as such: Schlatt being chased around the store at first by only Sapnap, but gains more chasers the more departments they stop by. This ends with him being chased by Sapnap and Karl (for their boyfriend), SBI (for their adopted brother), and Sam (for his unofficial son). It only ends when Purpled drops down from the fucking ceiling to crash Schlatt into the ground yelling “BEDWARS!!”

3. Sometimes, an absolute Karen will just be yelling at a bored looking Purpled for how “disrespectful” he was being, demanding to speak to the manager. He tells them he should be here in five minutes, but then the Karen goes “you haven’t even contacted them! Contact them right now!” After this, Purpled just smiles bitterly at them before going on to the intercom, saying in the perfect customer’s service voice, and I quote, “Attention all shoppers, there is a Karen on Aisle Five. Please stay clear if you see an angry tall man in a green hoodie walking to said aisle. Don’t want anyone unsuspecting to die. Again, if you see an angry tall man in a green hoodie walking towards Aisle Five, stay out of his path. Fellow teens, I suggest you get your cameras out.”

The Karens never come back to the store after listening to an angry Dream teach them common manners while a handful of youth were recording the interaction from a safe distance

4. “Bakery. Cashiers. Deli department. Management. My older sibling used to tell me stories about the old days, a time of peace when Tubbo kept balance between the bakery staff, cashiers, deli department, and management staff. But that all changed when Tommy of the deli department attacked. Only Tubbo mastered all four departments. Only he could stop the ruthless staff of the deli department. But when the store needed him most, he called in sick. A hundred hours have passed and the deli department is nearing victory in the Helper War. Two minutes ago, my sister and her friend journeyed to the cash registers to help fight against the deli department, leaving me and me alone to look after the bakery. Some people believe that Tubbo may not return within the next week, and that chaos will reign until then. But I haven’t lost hope. I still believe that somehow, Tubbo will return to save the store.” -Ranboo, during the Helper War

5. For months Quackity held a grudge against George because he somehow got locked in the supplies closet and the only person that would notice was, you guessed it, the person manning the cameras. But of course, THAT MOTHERFUCKER STAYED ASLEEP, LEAVING QUACKITY STUCK IN THE GODDAMN CLOSET FOR NEARLY FIVE HOURS BEFORE ERET FOUND HIM BECAUSE THEY NEEDED A BROOM

6. One day, nobody noticed that Wilbur wasn’t in the deli department until the intercom clicked on, followed immediately by, “Hello shoppers and staff! Welcome to another episode of Why Haven’t I Been Fired Yet? I’m your host, Wilbur Soot of the deli department. Today, we’re going to fill the manager’s office with as much glitter as possible before he gets back from the local Taco Bell, when I will be inevitability killed. Teens, I suggest you get your cameras out, because today will be a fun episode.”

[no-droids]

Mercy, Sabotage, and Dead Space

(gif credit to @redwyyne-archive)

Part One of The Bet series

Pairing: Poe Dameron/Reader

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 12.7K

Summary:

1. No sex.

2. No touching yourself.

3. No orgasms.

Warnings/Tags: DUBCON/NONCON elements, fuckboy Poe (OOC), Enemies to Lovers, degradation/humiliation, mentions of oral sex, SMUUUTTTTTTTT also I’m not sorry for what I did but you’re not allowed to read if you’re gonna get mad at me okay byeeee

***

This.

This shit, right here.

If the question was ever, “What’s the stupidest fucking thing you’ve ever let Poe Dameron somehow talk you into doing?” then the answer is this stupid shit, right the fuck here.  This is like.  You remember that one game, Mercy?  The one where you’d dig your nails in and twist arms and just needlessly inflict pain on each other as children until one of you cried uncle because someone somewhere once decided to turn torture into a matter of pride?

You always thought those games were fucking ridiculous.  Who can hold their breath the longest, who can handle a lit deathstick against their flesh the longest, who can take the hardest punch—who cares?  It’s child’s play.  It’s self-inflicted agony for the sake of bragging rights and even as a youngling, you refused to fall for it.

But then you met… fucking Dameron.

You know those people that… they don’t just rub you the wrong way, but literally every single aspect about their personality is sandpaper against wet skin and your whole entire being feels chafed raw just by existing in their general vicinity for an extended period of time?

You’re… you’re not usually a competitive—much less aggressive person.  You never have been.  It’s just not part of your nature.  If you ever excel at anything in life, it isn’t because of some secret, deep-seated desire to win or be better than anyone else.  You just… do you.  You do whatever you do, and if it’s good, it’s good.  And if it’s bad, it’s good.  Because at the end of the day at least it’s still you, and you’re okay with that.

But this?

This shit?  Right here?

“This is fucking dumb,” you say, because you know it’s what you both must be thinking so you may as well just get it out in the open.  “This is the dumbest fucking thing, Dameron.  What are we doing?  Why are we doing this?”

The grumpy, orange-jumpsuited figure sitting behind you just sighs heavily and slumps even further down in his bucket seat, as if it isn’t the first time you’ve tried asking this incredibly valid question (it totally is), bringing a palm down to thunk the top of the guidance controls between his legs in a quiet irritation you’re almost certain has everything to do with the very topic you’re trying to bring up. 

“Because,” comes that infuriating drawl.  You can only see his face from this angle by looking at his reflection in the transparisteel barrier directly in front of you, but even just imagining the way his mouth moves while he rounds out the words makes your jaw clench.  “The coordinates we picked up were scrambled and this rendezvous could be going down at any one of thirty-six locat—?”

“No,” you interrupt him with a scowl, “not why I’ve been floating in dead space in this Maker-forsaken ship with you for eight fucking hours a day since… fuck, what’s today?  Thursday?  Friday?  Nope, can’t be Friday, Friday’s our off-day.  Thursday, then. …Thursday?”  You shake your head.  “Ugh, see?  Time doesn’t exist when I’m not allowed to cum, life is like one never-ending nightmare.”

“Oh.”  He takes a second to think about it in silence, the calloused tips of his fingers scratching the side of his face while he considers.  It wouldn’t usually be as loud as it is right now.  Maybe it’s the haunting quiet of space surrounding the ancient powered down hunk of metal you’re both stuck in, inadvertently isolating and amplifying the sound—or maybe it’s because your copilot’s jaw is currently covered in a thick, dark beard that you swear barely took his testosterone-overloaded ass a fucking week or two to grow, if that.  Regardless, the dark bristles crunch loudly under his short fingernails and it takes you about a grand total of five whole uninterrupted seconds of the scraping sound to realize you’re grinding your teeth along with it.  “Well,” he finally says, “that was your stupid idea.”

“Hmmmmmmmno,” you contest firmly, wiggling your elbow back to poke at his shin with your index finger once, twice, thrice, until he finally slaps your hand away in quiet irritation.  To the misfortune of you both—and likely the other hundred or so pilots concurrently taking rotating shifts in these tandem x-wings in a glorified mass stakeout, the cockpit of this ship is just way too fucking small.  Your arm is squeezed uncomfortably against machinery and electronics to get to him from this angle and a light slap isn’t going to stop you now that you’re here.  “You—” (poke) “—have a superiority complex and decided to turn it into a competition, not—” (poke) “—me.”

“Oh, I have a superiority complex, okay,” he scowls and nods in vehement, fake agreement, finally giving up and letting you poke at will, but the appeal is lost as soon as you realize he’s over it and your arm eases back into your lap.  You watch his reflection look out of the viewport and scan the empty void of space for the twentieth time in the past five minutes, clearly just as desperate to get back to base as you are.  “So what is it you call saying—wait, no no, not even saying, loudly declaring—‘Of course I can go longer without sex than “wham bam thank you ma’am” Dameron, you brainless fucks, it’s a simple fact!’”

“Alright—I don’t sound like that, fuck you very much,” you return, in reference to his shrieking, high-pitched impression of you surrounded by your fellow pilots in the rec room when you’ve had a bit too much to drink.   “Also, you don’t have to finger-quote literally every single syllable of my fucking sentence, Dameron.  First and last word, that’s all it takes.  And if it’s so superiority complex-ey of me to state simple facts, then what is it you call saying ‘betcha two weeks worth of pay you can’t, pretty baby’?”

“Uh, easy credits?”  He immediately asks, side-eyeing your reflection through the transparisteel.  “ Easy credits.  Just begging for it.  Two weeks of your slutty, sexy, easy fucking credits just begging to be taken and used— ”

“You need to get laid,” you cut in to tell him bluntly, scrunching your nose in what you hope looks like disgust.  As per protocol, the power to the x-wing was cut at the beginning of your shift—what feels like a fucking eternity ago—as a preventative maneuver in case the target falls out of hyperspace unexpectedly.  Avoiding the scanners of a fleet that may never actually show means it’s cold and dimly lit in here—just starlight in front of either you, but you’re hoping he can gauge the severity of your revulsion with your back to him.  “You just turned my money into a sex object.  It was vile.  I feel violated on its behalf.”

“Sounds like you’re the one who needs to get laid,” he tosses carelessly back at you, and you roll your eyes with as much sass as you can physically muster, so tired of all the dodging.  You know this hasn’t been easy for him either, he just has too much pride to admit it.  “Besides, you’ve gotta be past the withdrawal stage by now.  Is it really all that bad?”

“The fuck you mean, ‘Is it really all that bad’?”  You snap at him, shuffling around grumpily in your seat, hating the way the bulky weapons controls sit right between your thighs and prevent you from closing them.  Withdrawal stage, ha.   “Of course it’s all that bad.  It’s horrible.  It’s the fucking worst.  And more importantly, how are you not having any trouble with this?  Oh, wait—that’s right,” you answer yourself before he has a chance to.  “Because you cheated.”

“I did not cheat,” Dameron’s reflection immediately challenges with an accusatory finger pointed at you.  “I did not.  When the fuck did I cheat?  I swapped housing assignments with your shitty roommate and slept in the bunk below yours for a month and a half—all because you don’t believe in the honor system—just so you could tell me I fucking cheated?”

You scoff, feeling your annoyance spark even more.  He’s always been able to get under your skin, but the neglect you’ve been forcing your body to endure is just throwing gasoline on an already roaring fire.  “Okay, first of all?  Rude.  I am a fucking joy to have as a roomie, alright?  I put up with your snoring, your 2:00 AM dinners, you blasting your radio while I’m trying to sleep, I barely complain about your body odor—”

“My snoring is adorable, I get snacky at night, only sad people with fucked up lives hate music, I smell amazing,” Dameron casually lists off on his fingers, the self-confidence so easy and unshakeable that you swear he’s almost preening at the compliments he just gave himself by the time he’s finished rebutting everything you can think to throw at him.  And, while you’d never admit it, he does smell good.  He smells… unbelievably fucking good.  Always.  Something dark and woodsy, you can never quite put your finger on.  It pisses you off, so much that you’ve made a habit of pulling a face of disgust whenever the warm, rich scent noticeably reaches you, hoping it deflates his ego just a little bit.  No such luck so far.  

“Whatever.  The point is I’m a good fucking neighbor, alright, I’m neighborly as fuck,” you grumble, crossing your arms over your chest defensively.  “And don’t make it sound like I’m putting a chastity lock on your balls every night, because you can fuck anyone you want.  In fact, I strongly fucking encourage it—I just want to know about it when it happens.”

Dameron smirks and you groan, already knowing what’s coming.  “You wanna hear it?”

Yep, there it is.  “Second of all—”

“Feel the whole bunk rock with it?”  He goes on, completely ignoring you.  “Use the excuse that you’re trapped up top so you can just stay there the whole time and listen?  You know you can do a lot more than just—”

“Second of all,” you project over him, “you’re seriously telling me you haven’t had any wet dreams then, hm?  No snorgasms?  Hmmm?  No happy naps?  No captain midnights?  No mattress fracking?  Hmmmmmm???”

His voice very quickly sounds… shocked.  “How many fucking euphemisms—?”

“Wait wait, one more—” you quickly interrupt, too much momentum to stop now, “—sleepskeet.”

You watch in immense satisfaction as his expression seems to progress through all five stages of grief, before he exhales a long, unamused sigh and scratches his beard again.  You want to pluck each strand of it out of his face one by one.  “Anyways.  Wet dreams are totally different and don’t count.”

“It’s not different!”  You burst out, unable to help yourself, “it’s an orgasm, and rule number three is no orgas—”

“I know what the rules were, Gold-Ten,” he returns calmly, and it infuriates you, how he’s always able to make it seem like you’re the instigator who’s overreacting.  And he knows exactly what he’s doing by calling you by your flight designation, and it pisses you off even more because calling him Black-Leader in any other situation besides active warfare just feels like an unnecessary reminder of his skills.  Why he’s currently behind you manning the guidance controls and why you’re currently stuck in the front seat with the bulkier weapons systems.  “The question is if you’re seriously that bad enough of a sport to automatically disqualify me because of something that happens to any human with a dick indiscriminately when we blueball ourselves.”

“But that’s the entire fucking point, Dameron!”  You shrill, throwing your hands in the air in pure exasperation.  “There it is!  You need it more than I do, you just said it yourself!  Not to mention I said I can go longer without sex than you can— sex , not orgasms, but as it turns out I win at both.  Now can we please call this shit off so I can finally cum?  This isn’t fun anymore.”

“Nope,” he says immediately, popping the P with a bit too much hard emphasis to be genuinely amused.  He’s frustrated, too—his voice is too pleased, too fake to not be masking irritation underneath.  “Sorry.  But this was also your stupid idea, so.”

“You’re insufferable,” you grumble, anger flaring equal to his, just way more… verbal.  And descriptive.  “Wet dreams don’t count, fucking right.  Tell that to the oceans of Kamino I got going on down there, huh?  I move on this seat wrong and I’ll slide off it—”

A loud slam of a palm against the controls suddenly echoes throughout the small cockpit, causing you to jump slightly.  

“Don’t,” Dameron snarls, “... say shit like that to me.  Not right now.  Not right now, fuck .”

You go quiet for a moment, not expecting that much of an outburst at something you considered to be a throwaway remark, but then… oh.  Something occurs to you, something… sinister.  Oh, well, now there’s an idea.

Everything inside you immediately surges up and burns at the thought—the mere whisper of a way out of all of this, quickly, without giving in and letting him hold your surrender over you for Maker knows how long.  It’s so fucking simple, you don’t know why you didn’t think of it before.  You don’t have to wait him out at all; instead, you just need to… entice him into giving in first.

Neither of you say anything for a while, and you don’t know what he’s thinking (nothing, probably—a dry tumbleweed bouncing across an empty desert landscape, you imagine) but you take the dip in conversation to consider a plan.  You can’t go at it too outright, it’ll be too big of a turnaround and he’ll see it coming lightyears away.  A halfhearted joke about your pussy tossed out without thinking is what catalyzed the most substantial reaction from him you’ve seen, so… maybe you can keep steering the conversation towards the idea.

“How many wet dreams have you had?”  You suddenly ask, your heart beginning to pick up in your chest as soon as the words are out of your mouth.

“Excuse me?”  Dameron grunts from behind you, and you catch his reflection raising a thick eyebrow at you.

You take a deep breath and disguise it by stretching your back out just a little bit, lifting your shoulder blades and arching the sore muscles there, before settling back down in your normal crappy posture once more.  “Now many times did you cum in your sleep?  Had to at least been once for you to claim they don’t count.”

“Why does it matter?”  He asks, completely sidestepping the question for the second time.  “It was involuntary.”

You shrug.  “Just so I know how many freebies I can get tonight.”

“No,” Dameron instantly counters, his voice dead serious.  “Not fucking allowed.”

“Why not?”  You ask, and this time, there’s significantly less challenge than you’d typically deliver it with.  Instead, your voice is soft, questioning.  Not argumentative, but curious, and there’s just enough of your point left unsaid that it’ll seem like he conjured the rest of the image himself.

There’s silence while he considers his response to the perfectly executed bait.  You assume you’re both picturing the same thing, because it’s what you’ve pictured almost every single night spent in this celibate hellscape.  The cool darkness of your shared quarters, the standard-issue sheets that still feel crispy and rough on your skin no matter how many nights you’ve slept in them, with one of your hands pressed tight over your mouth and two of your fingers circle your clit.

“You only get to do it if I’m in the room,”  he poses instead, and you swallow thickly, feeling your body tighten with an unintentional drop of pure heat through your tummy at the thought.  Maker, it must be really bad if Poe fucking Dameron is getting to you like this.  The bane of your existence shouldn’t make your insides twist in on themselves—at least, not in a good way.

“Not like I’d have much choice,” you eventually respond, keeping it purposefully ambiguous.  “It’s your room, too.  Unfortunately.”

Stars, it’s been so long since you’ve done this, since you’ve walked the fine line between flirtation and seduction, wanting to turn on the charm slowly—gradually ease it up like a hyperdrive lever under your fingertips so that you’re at maximum by the time he realizes you’re even there.  You take a moment to glance at his reflection, watching Dameron look back at you curiously, a flash of interest in his eyes.

“By the way, how does that one girl feel about us doing this?”  You ask out of nowhere, suddenly remembering the existence of his pretty little number.  You’ve seen her under his arm around base at least a few times, which is more than you can say for the rest of them.  “Red-Six.  Tall brunette with the tattoos—I don’t bother learning names, they all come and go.”

“Nihla,” Dameron nods with a wistful sigh, tilting his head to rest against his shoulder.  “Or, wait… Neah.  No—it was… Nalal.  Yeah, Nalal, I think that’s right…”

“Unbelievable,” you mutter.  “One of the greatest mysteries of the universe is how many people get in line for you, I’ll never fucking understand it.”

“They just want me for my cock,” he tells you without missing a single beat, sounding like he’s not joking in the slightest.  “It was starting to get obnoxious.  Glad I finally have an excuse to turn them down.”

“Unbelievable,” you repeat, stunned by how truly, mind-blowingly full of himself he is.  “You’re… fucking…”

You end up just staring at him and making a sound somewhere between a laugh and a scoff, at a complete loss for words, and Dameron eventually shrugs and continues on after you fail to form a coherent thought in the allotted time frame he provides.

“Now I can just tell them I’m in a long-running bet with Gold-Ten over who can sexually deprive themselves the longest and weirdly enough, they don’t seem all that interested anymore,” he remarks, tilting his chin up and rubbing at his beard again, and for some reason… the sound of it bothers you somewhat less now, the way he phrased that resonating deeper inside you than it should.  Lower than it should.  You blink a few times, almost shocked by your body’s unprecedented response to his admission—Poe Dameron uses you as an excuse to turn down sex with pretty girls?  Happily?—and your mind goes blank for a second while he watches you through the transparisteel.  “It’s alright,” he eventually goes on, tilting his head.  “Sometimes a sabbatical is good.  I do really miss pussy, though.”

“Well,” you finally tell him, oddly not having much else to offer at the moment.  “I’m sorry?  And… you’re welcome.  I guess.”

Dameron shrugs once more and makes an apathetic sound without opening his mouth, and you drop your stare down to the machinery between your spread thighs after feeling like you were looking at each other for too long.  The position started uncomfortable and seven hours later, it’s still fucking uncomfortable.  At first the discomfort twinged at your hips and lower back, but now the sensation seems to be… centering itself a bit more, finding a spot right between your legs, especially when his words echo through your subconscious and make you naturally want to push your thighs together.  I do really miss pussy, though.

You try to snap out of it a bit, try to stop hyperfixating on the way your underwear has felt sticky and wet for fucking hours now, but it’s so fucking difficult to chill yourself out when your body already went into this whole situation with a month and a half long stumbling block.  He’s not really doing anything at all—he’s leant back in his chair and staring out the window into the black emptiness of space when you steal a look once more, but something about how his casual responses are affecting you makes it seem like he’s the one currently seducing you.

Maker, you have to focus.   You have to control yourself.  You’re starting to feel a little warm in your thick jumpsuit—a particular shade of orange that does not compliment your complexion but you normally rejoice in wearing regardless.  It’s baggy and uniform and hides most of your curves and most importantly, it keeps you toasty on missions like this.  Space is cold —especially this far out in the Cauper Void, and there’s no fucking reason this powered down hunk of floating metal should feel as muggy and stifling as it does in here.

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” you suddenly hear yourself say, spontaneously, no thought put into it whatsoever.  One last try, one last attempt to avoid it, a last-ditch go at flight before he gives you no choice and you’re left with this one remaining option.  “This isn’t a good idea.  It’s… not healthy.  I don’t want to do this anymore.”

This gets a small chuckle out of him.  “I know you don’t, pretty baby.”

“Then let’s just call the whole thing off,” you propose once again, trying to lighten your tone, make it a… a friendly thing.  It sounds so fake, even to your own ears—since when would you be desperate enough to let the dreaded petname slide?—but granted, you know what they say about time and measures and all that shit.  “We can call it a tie, just go back to the way things were befo—”

He cuts you off and pins you with his gaze through the reflection.  “You realize that you begging me to put an end to your suffering is—ridiculously hot, mostly—but also only an incentive to make me keep pushing until you finally give in?”

You groan and comb some of your hair off your forehead, not liking the way it’s getting just the slightest bit damp.  “Fine, we won’t call it off, but can we at least just stop—”  You immediately catch yourself, not wanting to unintentionally push this too far too quickly, but your hesitation is clear and compelling enough for him to prompt you.

“At least just stop what?”  Dameron asks, and though you don’t think it’s intentional or even noticeable from his perspective, something about the way his voice sounds… husky.  Low to the ground.

“Stop dragging it out,” you breathe, your heart pounding.  Why is your heart pounding so fucking fast?  This is a fucking sting op, a facade, so why are you getting so caught up in the lie you’ve spun for yourself?  “Finish it.  Sooner, rather than later.  Quit being masochists about it, just fucking put it to—”

Maker, your eyes instinctively snap to his at your poor choice of wording, having almost said bed on complete accident.  Genuinely, you didn’t mean to phrase it that way, but at the same time, the thought of it almost burns you alive.  Fuck.  Dameron, and you, in bed.  It could be mean.  It could be rough.  A fight for dominance more than anything.  He’s bigger than you and he could make it fucking hurt, especially after going without it for as long as you have, but something about how double-edged that type of relief would be isn’t really sinking in for you right now.  Like a person slowly dying of thirst that’s fantasizing about drowning.  Regardless, the idea of a night with him and the sudden assortment of vivid imagery it provides is enough to get you to shut up and take a deep breath, just wait with your mouth shut for whatever his response is.

Unfortunately, you don’t have to wait long at all.

“This is cute,” he suddenly tells you, and you jerk back and sputter a bunch of consonants stupidly like he smacked you.

“Fuck you?”  Are the first recognizable words that can be heard.  “I’m not—this isn’t fucking— cute?”

“It’s cute,” Dameron repeats, hiding a soft smile from you with a few of his fingers pressed to his lips.  “You,” he says as he points at your reflection, twirling his finger around in circles, “trying to be all sneaky about it, go about your little performance.  It’s like… watching a little kid just blatantly fuck up a magic trick but they’re naive enough to think it’s working.  Keep going, I’m enthralled.”

You hold still for just a second as ice suddenly sinks through your tummy and clears away any trace of warmth you may have once felt from before.  Of course.  Stupid.  Stupid, you shouldn’t have even tried something like that, you don’t know why you thought…

Horrifyingly, you go dead silent and the lack of an immediate response from you hangs awkwardly in the still air.  You’re usually so quick with him, so fiery, letting the things he throws at you just glide right off you, but for some insane reason, you’re actually fucking… embarrassed?  A little bit?

You should say something, but your whole body is just frustratingly blank, almost buzzing in mortification, and it gets worse and worse the longer you stay quiet.  You don’t usually put yourself in a position to be compromised, and you certainly didn’t think the place he decided to jab this time had particularly thin skin.

You… you’d forgotten what it’s like to have someone laugh at you when you’re genuinely trying your best to flirt.

Well, it’s too late to say anything now, you think.  Now it’s just uncomfortable in here—true discomfort, not the typical angry silences.  You’re used to that, you’re used to huffing and crossing your arms and ticking your jaw through the breaks in conversation, refusing to say a word because you’re beyond pissed off.  This is different.  This quiet sits different in the air, this emotion hits different in your chest, somewhere vulnerable.  A crack in your armor he found without even necessarily intending to, but at this point, the stupid way you can’t seem to hide the wound from him is just as much to blame.

“So, uh…”  Dameron clears his throat as you shut your eyes tight against the awkwardness, but you can still feel a strange little shift in the air from behind you.  There’s something about the enclosed space, the quiet darkness surrounding you both, you feel… too close to him.  Sharing his air, feeling the energy when it’s cramped and you’re not able to just get up and storm away from him like normal.  You don’t like it.  You don’t like that you can immediately tell something has changed without being able to see him, that type of intimacy between you is pushing a boundary you can’t quite pinpoint but know exists.

You snap your eyes open and look over at Dameron’s reflection when he’s quiet for too long, and though you try to glare as fiercely as possible at him while you do it, the look on his face almost stops you dead.  The pure intensity raging in his expression, the way he’s got his eyes narrowed, flicking back and forth between yours, carefully studying you, wondering if perhaps he may have gotten it all wrong.  “I mean, y’know.  Theoretically speaking, and all.  If I broke, you’d let me fuck you?”

You… aren’t expecting that.

You don’t know why but your heart suddenly starts to race again, but it’s not the same as before.  Before it was speeding up and at an angle, like a rocket trying to escape a body’s gravitational pull, to go somewhere, search for something.  This time it just feels like it’s ricketing downhill, unsteady and out of control, about to break apart with every single pothole that rattles and slams through you.  Shit.  You didn’t expect the ultimatum would be presented to you so up front like that—you thought there’d be… some resistance, at least.  

Fuck, you take way too fucking long thinking about it, and your face feels warmer and warmer the more you mentally pick apart his specific phrasing, wondering where you should even begin.  You still haven’t said anything, but the damage is already done.  What should've been a firm, instantaneous go fuck yourself is left suspended, unanswered, open for interpretation.  You miss your window of opportunity to shut him down, you overshoot it by a longshot, and then you feel that spark of a what-if flare deep down once more.

No, fucking stop it.  Stop it.  Maker, your eyes do everything they can to not look at him while you concentrate and work to tap into your anger, stoking the flames of your fire to avoid feeling… temptation.  How dare he?  How fucking dare he do this to you, especially when there’s no chance to get out of here, to abort mission and cut your losses?  You clench your jaw and isolate that fury, magnify it until it’s the only thing you can feel anymore.

“My turn now,” Dameron eventually breaks the silence to clarify, blinking at you, and by this point you’re so fucking pissed off that you don’t recognize that isn’t actually a question.

“No,” you immediately snap, strung far too thin to deal with this new, treacherous territory with him.  Defaulting to normal is best, it’s easier.  “No, it’s not your turn, and fuck no, you can’t fuck me, not even if it means I win this stupid bet.  No to everything that has anything to fucking do with you, alright?  Don’t talk to me.  You’re lucky if I agree to sleep in the same fucking room as you tonight.  And—and?—I think your beard looks dumb.”

Okay, so maybe the last part was just a little bit childish, but you’re in such a bad fucking mood and you want to insult something he’s clearly just trying out for right now, hasn’t yet solidified as part of his usual appearance and unshakeable confidence in it.  It’s a downright lie—you think he might look more attractive with it than he ever has.  Effortlessly rugged and masculine, framing his face and making his eyes all the more piercing.

You don’t think it works, but regardless, he heeds your sharp words and says nothing for a good few minutes at least.  You had hoped the break in interaction would allow you the ability to reset a little bit, give yourself time to work through it, but it’s like the pressure in the air steadily increases regardless of how silent it is in here—or perhaps, because of it.

You can’t help it.  You flick your eyes to the transparisteel in front of you once more and catch his reflection staring directly at you, unmoving.  It jars you as much as it sparks your anger, and you glare down at your hands and give him a few seconds.  A few seconds of grace, of mercy, before you try again.

Sure enough, he’s still got his dark eyes pinned to you when you go to check once more, like he’s actually fucking thinking about something right now, which is just… astounding, for obvious reasons.  Mainly, the nerve of him.  The fucking nerve of him to be able to look at you like that, like he’s just entitled to study your every feature, searching your eyes for things you’ve never looked deep enough to find within yourself, making incredibly loud assumptions with his mind that he has absolutely no right to be making.

“Shut up,”  You snap at him defensively, feeling like you’re sweating buckets even in the freezing emptiness of dead space.  You can’t figure out if it’s a cold sweat or if your body is legitimately just malfunctioning under his stare.  “Shut up.”

You watch as his reflection suddenly drops his head back against the seat and rolls out the stiffness of his neck, blinking his eyes shut and raising his eyebrows like you’re completely overreacting, like he has absolutely no idea.  “I didn’t say anything.”

“You’re not that dumb,” you challenge.  “You’re… plotting.  Evil plotting.”

A thick eyebrow drops so that only one is quirked up, and a grin pulls at his lips.

“You’re right,” Dameron admits casually after a moment with his eyes still closed, his voice pitched low in the cramped ship.  “I was thinking about what it’s gonna take to get you to lose.”

You swallow against the dryness in your throat, starting to unintentionally bounce one of your legs up and down without even realizing it.  Fuck, this ship is small, it’s too fucking small in here—you gaze wistfully out at the vast endlessness of space, wanting to grit your teeth at the irony of being surrounded by the one thing you so desperately wish you had.

“I just have to find a weakness,” he shifts forward in his seat and reveals to you, bewilderingly shameless in his honesty.  Like all of a sudden you’re an accomplice to this endeavor instead of its target, as if he isn’t spoiling the secret by letting you in on it.  “Something that you like, that gets you going.  Something that riles you up, gets you all hot and bothered down there—”

“So you can exploit it,” you huff, slouching over a bit and trying not to sound like you’re pouting.

“—so I can exploit it,” he finishes happily, collapsing back into his seat like he’s glad you caught on so quick and he doesn’t have to explain further.  “Now we can do the whole routine—the bickering, the tension, the undeniable sexual chemistry we have—or we can skip all that and you can just tell me flat out what it’s gonna take to rev that pretty little engine up, because I want it purring.”

And, it’s so fucking weird, because the specific verbiage that would normally make you cringe just hearing it spoken aloud doesn’t inspire the typical response, even though it feels like it should.  It feels like you should be grossed out, it feels like a moment you should screw up your facial expression and act offended, but you’re… not.  This is actually fucking working, it’s unbelievable.  The undeniable fact infuriates you just as much as it stumps you.

“You do realize that everything you say is a game that two can play at, right?”  You point out, not really sure where you’re going with this but feeling heated about it all the same.  “What’s stopping me from exploiting something you like?”

“See now that’s a great idea,” Dameron announces, clapping his hands together happily and sending you jumping a few inches in your seat at the sudden sound, your hand automatically shooting up to rest on your thumping heart.  “I can tell you what I like, and you can just listen.”

Alright, no, wait—backtrack—

“How about I tell you what I don’t like,” you snip breathlessly, tucking your hair behind your ear and feeling all the blood rush to your cheeks.  Default to normal, default to normal.  “Your fucking attitude.  Your demeanor.  The way you talk down to me.  You don’t listen.  You walk around like you’re such hot shit just because you’re a good pilot but none of that means anything when you don’t ever fucking listen.  You’re terrible at it, doesn’t matter who’s talking—you don’t listen to me, you don’t listen to people who actually like you, you don’t listen to orders, you don’t listen to reason—”

“You think I’m a good pilot?”  He suddenly asks, and you have to take a second.  This cockpit isn’t designed for anything other than sitting, much less turning all the way around, but you’re sure you can find some way to throttle him from here.  He chuckles as you let out the loudest sigh you’ve ever heard yourself make—which, is an incredible feat you think both of you should be congratulated for—before Dameron eventually carries on.  “You could tell me that,” he admits with a shrug, a hidden smile on his face that he’s trying to bite back.  “Or you could tell me the truth.”

You shouldn’t encourage him, but you just can’t fucking help it.  There’s something inside you, something you can only compare to a morbid sort of curiosity.  Maybe you’re just a glutton for punishment, even more so than agreeing to this bet has already confirmed.  “And that would be—?”

“That you use anger as a defense mechanism because I touch a nerve you didn’t realize you had,” Dameron replies breezily.  “Have since the moment we met.  And that you maybe want me to touch something else, but you’re too stubborn and proud and committed to hating me to ever admit it.  You can admit it, it’s okay, I can touch whatever you need me to tou—”

“How about the emergency eject button?”  You hiss, finally feeling your frustration peak.  “Pop the top on this bitch.  Put me out of my fucking misery, right now.  You’ve got such a big head that the blood flow will probably keep your tiny little brain warm enough as long as you strap yourself down beforehand, I’ll wait.  And then you can go back to base, alone , and find another poor girl to emotionally torture since you probably don’t get enough of it from the ones you work your way through but can never remember the most basic things about.”

Remarkably, that actually shuts him up.  You’re doubtful the jab really hurts him, but you’re not going to feel bad about it either way.  He deserved that.  You cross your arms over your chest and don’t even bother looking at him, huffing and flushed with the climax of your ferocity, now left feeling strangely exhausted in its wake.  Eventually your breathing evens out and disappears into the silence, until nothing at all can be heard.

It’s like that for a moment—only a moment, before the loud tearing of velcro suddenly shreds through the quiet in the cockpit, completely rattling you.  Automatically your eyes shoot over to his reflection, watching large hands pull the orange jumpsuit apart at his chest and then shrug it over broad shoulders.  It’s not sexual.  It can’t be sexual, because there’s just no fucking room to allow it—it takes him forever to pull the long sleeves down his arms, but the way he drags it out somehow just increases your anticipation for an event you should have absolutely no interest in spectating.  He’s wearing a white sleeveless undershirt underneath and the jumpsuit bunches at his waist, making him look all the longer and more defined as he finally collapses back into his seat and reclines in it, the distant constellations bathing his lean torso in dim speckles of starlight.

Your gaze catches on every good part of him—it falls down the muscular lines of his neck and follows the thin gold chain wrapped around it, disappearing into the white of his scooping neckline.  His toned body finds a place to rest and stretch out without looking awkward or uncomfortable, coarse hair darkening his jaw and dusting the strong lines of his forearms—but it’s his eyes that make your heart stutter.  They’re endlessly deep and dark and knowing , and you can’t seem to look away from him, not even when he opens his mouth to address you.  

“You’re always so fucking mean to me,” Dameron remarks, and for just a split second—just a split second, you feel a stab of regret.  “I should eat you out tonight.”

Fuck, he hits the nail right on the head on his very first try, and just hearing the words come out of his mouth so effortlessly makes your pussy clench in on itself in need.  Nothing about his inflection changed from one sentence to the next, nothing in his voice made it seem like he just flipped the fucking galaxy upside down with just a few words.  To an onlooker who doesn’t speak Basic, they’d have absolutely no hint as to why your face is suddenly radiating heat at an industrial capacity, blazing hot enough to warm the whole cockpit.  You feel like you’re literally burning up with it.  You have to put a palm to your cheek to make sure it’s not actually on fucking fire.  “What— what did you just say to me?”

“That’s what you need,” he drawls, unbothered by the sharpness of your tone.  “What you’ve needed, ever since I can remember.  Should’ve done it a long fucking time ago, now that I’m thinking about it.  How long’s it been?  Tell me the truth, I know it’s been awhile.”

You feel like you’re being roasted alive like one of those hairy little Kowakian monkey-lizards that you’re pretty sure have sentient designation but are the first to be skewered and cooked over the firepit regardless.  Your heart is slamming against your sternum and you scramble to come up with an even slightly clever response after such an ambush.

“This is your plan?”  You raise an eyebrow at him, feeling a bead of sweat drop down your temple and onto the corner of your lashes.  Oh fuck, be cool, be cool.  “You think this is gonna work?  Ask me if I want a weak orgasm and rugburn on my thighs?”

“I can shave,” Dameron proposes quietly, lifting his chin and gently scrubbing the side of his cheek.  The sound of the thick bristles against his fingers makes you swallow thickly and push back very vivid thoughts of how his face would feel between your legs.  How soft and wet his mouth would feel at the center of that thick, coarse beard.  “Tonight, I’ll shave it off.  Make it nice and smooth for you.”

Something inside you surges up to assure him he absolutely should not shave, and you actually have to bite your tongue to keep it buried at the last second.  Stars, that was a close one, what the fuck prompted that?

“I don’t give a shit what you do,” you quickly return, resisting the urge to wipe your brow.  “Beard or no beard, makes no difference.  Foreplay is overrated, I’m not big on wasting time.”

“Oh, you poor thing,” he immediately laments—so quick , and the worst part is that the sympathy in his voice actually sounds sincere.  You’re having trouble looking him in the eyes right now, hearing the genuine pity come through in his tone.  “Who… who did this to you?”

“You said you want to figure out what I like, what turns me on,” you return, tucking your hair behind your ear once more and trying not to sound self-conscious.  Maker, how long until your shift is over?  You need to get out of here, this shit is… way out of your league.  “I’m not into it, so try again.”

“Really?”  Dameron takes a moment to look at you, furrow his thick eyebrows at you in barely concealed curiosity, before his head tilts sideways and drops to his shoulder.  “Normally I’d respect that, but I meant it when I said you need it.”

“We fucking hate each other, Dameron,” you hiss, a reminder to him as much as it is to yourself.  Fuck, you really don’t like where this is going.  “You don’t know anything about me, you don’t know what the I n—”

“I bet you think we’d fuck hard,” he murmurs, low enough that you have to take an unsteady breath and physically brace yourself for whatever is going to come from that dirty mouth next.  “You think that maybe I’d throw you around a little, give it to you from behind, teach you a fucking lesson for always talking back to me.  But that’s primitive shit, Gold-Ten, that’s not for you.”

Resist.  Resist .  You’re part of the fucking Resistance, for Maker’s sake, you’re taught to hold out until death in torture scenarios.  Since when did this tin can suddenly become a new POW camp simulation you have to train for?

“I want to take you apart so slow that you can’t talk at all,” Dameron continues quietly, and you close your eyes, biting your bottom lip hard enough to sting.  “We don’t even have to fuck—I mean, I want to, but mostly I just want to taste you.  Go nice and slow.  I want you on your back, so I can look in your eyes and see all that anger just… fade away.  I want to watch you try to fight how fucking good I’ll make it.  How hot it’s gonna be when you can’t glare at me anymore, when your pretty doll eyes go all soft and sweet and you finally realize that I’ve never hated you at all.”

Maker.  This is a trick.  It’s not a question, it shouldn’t be presented like one—this is a dirty rotten trick , and you’re not gonna fall for it.  You can’t fucking fall for it.  It’s a low blow, and you refuse to even acknowledge he said anything at all.  He’s lying to get your guard down.  He laughed at your flirting.  He’s a shit person, he’s using you, this isn’t real.

Real or not, you still gulp loud enough for him to hear it.

“We could go back to our room after our shift is over,” he offers out of the blue, and you have no clue why, but when he pauses and lets it hang in the air for a second, you don’t interrupt him.  You stay completely silent while he waits for you, waits for your typical snarky comeback.  You have it in your head instantly, you know what you’d normally say.  Your room.  It’s not ‘our’ room, it’s fucking your room that you’re generous enough to let him bunk in, a privilege he’s this fucking close to losing—but you can’t find it in yourself to say it right now.  Your anger is gradually losing the war to your arousal and you’re forced to watch every single small defeat inside you happen from the sidelines.

His reflection blinks at you through the transparisteel, his eyebrows raising just slightly at your prolonged silence, before he suddenly sits up a little and leans forward.

“And I could lock the door,” Dameron continues, lowering his voice, both in volume and register.  “The lights in there are way too fucking bright but I don’t want to be in complete darkness, so maybe we can turn them off and open the port shade, let just enough light come through to see.  I could turn on the radio, find something quiet, easy to listen to.  Something you like, I’ll let you pick it out.  And then… Wait, hang on, which bed?”

You clench your jaw and purposefully say nothing even as your pussy squeezes, glaring right through his reflection into the black void of space.

“Mmm.   Your bed,” he eventually decides.  “I want you comfortable.  You shower at night.  Your hair will be wet and you’ll be in those baggy pajamas that you think I can’t see your nipples through, the ones that I know you take off under your covers and then put on in the morning when you think I’m still asleep.  That’s good, I want you relaxed, so that maybe… maybe you’d let me take your panties off at some point.  And you could lay back and open your legs, and I could go down on you for a little while.  However long you need.”

Fuck.

No, this isn’t fucking happening.  Your lower muscles aren’t twisting in so hard that it actually fucking hurts, your pussy isn’t leaking through two layers of fabric under your jumpsuit, your body isn’t outright revolting against the sheer neglect you’ve put it through.  Maker, it’s fucking painful.  You have to clench your hands into fists and dig your fingernails into your palms before you can open your mouth.

“You want to know what I need?”  You nearly wheeze, a drop of sweat sliding down the back of your neck this time.  Your body feels like it’s three sizes too big for this cockpit and your skin feels like it’s three sizes too small for your body.  “I need you to shut the fuck u—”

“What you need,” Dameron purrs, sliding up closer behind your seat and sighing soft against the worn material of your headrest, “is a warm mouth to cum in.  Don’t be shy, pretty baby, you can tell me.”

You growl out his last name as threateningly as you possibly can before he purrs yours right back in your ear, and fuck, you’ve never heard it sound so sexual before.  Last names allow pilots to maintain a respectful distance from each other.  Flight designations are Resistance-wide, but last names are just… allies.  Not friends, not companions, but a vast network of people brought together by a common enemy.  It hurts to lose a first name.  But the way yours sounds rolling off of Dameron’s tongue is just too sinful, too intimate when calling you that is meant to sever intimacy by design.  He says it slow and makes it dirty, muddies it in the back of his throat as he slides up even closer to you, until his face is right next to yours as you stare at each other through the transparisteel.

“I’m really…” he pauses, before exhaling through his nose and swallowing thick enough to make his Adam’s apple drop and bounce up again, his tongue coming out to wet his plush lips as he blinks slowly at you with a heavy gaze, “… really good at it.  Call me Poe and I’ll do it for you all night.”

Shit, your pussy is just a fucking mess right now.  It feels like it’s melting sweet and syrupy all over your thighs, throbbing and pounding and clamping up and screaming at you to do something, at least press your hand down there to alleviate some of the aching tensi—

No— stars, no touching yourself is rule number two.  You drop your hands to your thighs and squeeze them, trying to reign yourself back in.

“I think you’re—just projecting,” you try, but turns out responding in general is just an all-around bad idea.  Nothing about it comes out right.  The ‘just’ sounds like your tongue is stuck to the roof of your mouth and your voice cracks on the word ‘projecting,’ but you don’t even have time to be self-conscious or embarrassed at how much you’re giving yourself away—all your energy has to go towards fighting the tightness between your open legs, how you’re so fucking turned on that you’re worried you’ll cum without even touching yourself.  Oh Maker, can you imagine?  How fucking proud of himself he’d be?  You can’t let that happen, but fuck, holding back something so appealing is so much harder than it sounds.

Tap into that anger, tap into that anger—only, you can’t suddenly find it.  Where’d it go?  Fuck, doesn’t matter, conjure it.  Quick, before it’s too late, get mad —don’t let him lure you into a… a false… 

Dameron tilts his chin down towards the line of your shoulder and then slowly turns his head towards your neck, breathing you in gently.

A false sense of…

His soft exhale makes goosebumps break out all the way down your arms.

… What?

“Maybe you’re right,” Dameron acknowledges, talking just under your ear.  You watch his eyelids dip and the dark beard brushes against your skin and you catch just a hint of that woodsy, spicy scent engulfing you.  Like… teakwood, maybe?  Stars, you don’t know, you think you’re starting to lose your mind.  What the fuck does teakwood even smell like?  “Maybe it’s just what I need.  You should exploit it, chances are I’ll still cum first.”

That rockets another painful spasm down low.  It hurts so fucking bad—fuck, maybe you could… rub yourself up against these weapons controls?  Just a little bit?  That joystick, right there, just ease yourself up against it just to nurse this wound a little bit…?

No, fucking— bad.  That’s bad, you have to stop—

“This isn’t real, this isn’t—y-you just…”  You flutter your eyelashes shut, digging your fingernails into your thighs like it’ll help break through the fog of his lulling voice, how fucking amazing he smells right now.  “You just want to win th-the b—”

“ Fuck the bet,” he tells you quietly, his head dipped low enough now that his lips brush against your neck, and you shudder so hard at the sensation that your shoulder almost knocks into his chin with it.  “You really think I’m doing all this for a fucking bet?”

Don’t trust him, don’t trust him, don’t—

Your deep breath is so stuttery and uneven that it’s technically just a series of shallow inhales all anxiously strung together, too desperate for oxygen to go about it legato.  It’s painfully obvious to him by now, it has to be, but you very quickly miss the shaky breathing as soon as he takes away your ability to do it all together.

“Let me taste you,” he whispers, his voice almost breaking with how gentle it is, how it sounds like it flips in and out of his register when he speaks this low.  “Right now, let’s make it real, let m—I know you have to be soaking fucking wet, baby, just let me try a little bit of it, please—I’m… holy shit, I’m so hard just thinking about it.”

“You c-can’t,” you stammer, reaching up to pinch the bridge of your nose in frustration.  At him, at the situation, at the painful throb of emptiness between your legs.  “Fuck, it’s not allowed, it’s against the rules—”

“It won’t be,” he assures you, and you hiccup when you suddenly feel his hand brush against your side, strong fingers branching out to curve against your ribcage.  “You don’t have to do anything, you can stay just like this.  Just a few seconds and then I’ll stop, I promise.”

Oh, Maker, it’s on the very top of your tongue, so unbelievably close to telling him something—but you don’t know what it should be.  You’re right at the tipping point, on a tightrope right between what you want and what you should want.  And, knowing you’re this close to giving in, Dameron slowly eases his hand down your side and starts to trail it inwards, and just the lightest brush of his warm tongue against your neck shatters any composure you have left.

You whimper and instinctively try to close your legs, but you fucking can’t— your knees are forced wide apart by controls and your whole body freezes when his hand slides down and folds gently along the curve of your pussy through the thick fabric of your jumpsuit.

The feeling of being held like this by him is just too good , cradled so perfectly in his palm as he opens his mouth and flutters his tongue out to taste your skin again, giving you a little more of it this time and letting you feel the roughness of his beard with the way his lips move.  Your breath catches, then he hooks his fingertips up just the slightest bit and pulls back, and you suddenly have to smack your whole hand over your face in a terrible attempt to stifle your loud gasp.

“Oh, Maker, I c-can’t,” you stammer against your fingers, not being able to trust him or your own body.  You continue to protest even after he moves back up, resting his palm low on your abdomen, letting the heat bleed through the fabric and transfer directly to your floor muscles as he lifts his head up from your shoulder.  “I can’t, we can’t, I…”

You can’t see him, but you know he’s looking at you.  He’s staring right at you through the reflection, studying the way you’re hiding your face from him, how you’re still melting, still losing your composure just from the warm palm pressed tight your tummy.

His touch leaves you for a second. But then the deafening sound of velcro ripping at the crotch of your jumpsuit has you dragging your hand down your mouth and your eyelids dipping.

“Dameron,” you breathe into your fingers, just as his carefully slip into the small opening and begin to work at the button to your pants. “Dameron, this isn’t—you don’t want—”

“You don’t get to tell me what I don’t want,” he grunts at you, and you try not to bite yourself at the sound of him unzipping things and yanking fabric to the side.  “What I really fucking want is the real thing, but I guess this’ll have to do for now.”

“I—”  Your mind whirs desperately, trying to process when his fingers wedge under your panties and down.   But he doesn’t give you a single fucking second.  As soon as the tip of his middle finger reaches your slit, he’s dropping it and sliding it through your slick, hot, unbearably neglected cunt.

“Fuck,” he spits, and you feel like you might be about to break your own fucking jaw with how hard you’re clutching it, trying so desperately not to make a noise.  The pad of his finger is rough and calloused as it drags against your clit in slow, tight circles, and you clamp your eyes shut and try to breathe normally, but it’s no use.  Fuck , it’s been so long .  You’ve been aching for it for a full fucking month and a half now and you know that even if he couldn’t feel it, he can hear how drenched you are right now.  It’s making an obscene sound as he steadily masturbates you with one heavenly finger, giving your body what it’s desperately craved for so many weeks.  “Fuck, baby’s pussy got fucking wet hearing me talk about how good I’d lick it, huh?”

That sends a bright flare launching through you and you gasp raggedly, both hands whipping out to snatch at his forearm where it disappears between your legs.  “No, shit, wait, stopstopstopstop stop , I—”

His hand slips out immediately and yet you continue to tremble like his finger is still right there, like your clit is just imagining it so vividly that it’s successfully convincing itself of the illusion.  The aching bit of flesh is burning, that good burn, the one that’s searing and bright that makes your muscles continue to chase the sensation long after the stimulation is gone.  Fuck, he almost made you cum.  He barely touched you for a few seconds and yet your fingers have to tighten into claws to slow your body down the fuck down, flexing against your thighs and trying your best to halt the impending climax.

By the time you’re able to wrangle yourself back from the edge and look at his reflection, his middle finger is already in his mouth and he’s blinking slowly at you, his pupils blown wide.  You’re breathing hard at him, staring open-mouthed at the way his lips are closed below his second knuckle, how he takes forever dragging it back out again.  You have to close your eyes.  You have to clamp them shut and keep them that way, knowing you won’t be able to look at him through whatever he’s going to say next.

Except, oddly, he doesn’t say much.

“Shit,” he breathes, dropping his mouth to your neck once more.  “Shhhit.  I…”

Your eyes snap open in sudden, blind panic when he doesn’t continue, horrified at the possibility that he doesn’t like it.  Dameron always has something to say, he doesn’t go speechless.  “Oh—Maker, is it not—?”

“Mmmfuck, just—” he grits, panting hot air against your skin, “—fuck.  Give me a second.”

You can only see the crown of his head with the way he’s angled, but you can see his shoulders a little further back.  They start… moving slightly.  Just the littlest bit, a smooth motion, like his whole body is slowly easing back and forth—

The nav controls are between his legs, you immediately realize.  He’s grinding up against them with how close he is to you and your seat.

And suddenly, it’s like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.  A ray of sunshine that breaks through the raging storm.  Dameron might cum in his pants like this.  Which means you’ll win, and arguably more importantly, you’ll finally be able to cum.  You don’t even take a moment to consider the potential consequences—how you’re going to have to withstand the stimulation until he succumbs to it, how you’ll have to outlast—but you’re not thinking straight.  You’re not really thinking at all.

“You can…” you suddenly hear yourself whisper, and your heart pounds in your throat when he instantly stops moving.  “One… one more.  If you want.  You can put your finger inside this time, it’s where I’m the… w-wettest.”

“Fuck,” Dameron croaks into the crook of your neck, his voice scraping low and rough and sending a tremor through you.  “Fuck, okay, yeah—”

His hand slides across your hip and down, but you catch him just in time.

“But don’t touch my clit.”  You try to sound as firm as possible through the breathlessness, still trying to put your foot down even when you’re giving in, and Dameron’s teeth come out as he stifles a soft groan into your neck in response.

“Yes, baby,” he murmurs obediently as his hand sinks down once more, and so diligently, he avoids it altogether.  His fingers slide under your panties and fall straight down to your entrance, down to where you know you’re the hottest, where your pussy is flexing and pushing wetness out with a steady, wicked throb.  The pad of his middle finger presses gently against the tight muscles there, rubs just the slightest bit to feel that resistance, and then the length of it eases inside you so slowly that your knees rattle against bulky metal.

“Fucking Maker , ” he hisses as he slides it in, his body making a sudden jerk against the controls.

Your eyes roll back at the feeling of something inside you after so long, after such a torturous buildup, and you grasp at his forearm again when it curls naturally up against searing pleasure.  Oh, it’s so good, it’s so good, your hands shake while he very carefully moves it in and out, the raw sparks of heat threatening to incinerate you as your muscles cling to every ridge of his finger.  He gets it sopping wet, bathes it so completely in your slick that you’re almost certain it’ll come out pruny and drenched.

“Shit, okay,” you pant, squeezing desperately around his finger, “o-okay, fuck, that’s enough.”

His hand pulls out… slower this time.  He slips his finger out of you quick enough, but he drags the tip of it through your folds as he retreats, just barely grazing your clit and making you jolt in your seat.  Shit, you don’t know if it felt intentional enough to fault him for it—mostly it just excites you, thrills you to have him edge you like this without really needing to put any effort at all into it.

Dameron lifts his head to sink his finger deep into his mouth once more, and you tremble as you watch him enjoy it, staring at the way his shoulders seem to relax as soon as your taste is on his tongue, how his face goes soft with it and he almost slumps.

Relief.  Genuine, not embellished.  He still doesn’t say anything after he slowly slides it out and blinks at you, no sugar sweet drawl telling you how amazing you taste, no candied words to make you give in and let him have another go.  You’re both breathing hard at each other, staring, waiting to see who will break first.

Stars, you… fucking like this.  You want him to keep going, but you can’t offer it again.  It’s just too exposing, too revealing to let him you’re actually really fucking enjoying this, you can’t—

“Do you w—?”  Your voice automatically comes out through the silence without your permission, sounding just absolutely fucking wrecked by this point, but his palm is already slithering back down as soon as you speak, and you make the softest little submissive noise in your throat at him taking immediate initiative like that.  He’s not as careful about it this time—his hand finds its target with less frill, his finger slides in quicker, sinking deep into your heat with little hesitation, lighting you on fire from the inside out, and you bite the meat of your thumb to stay quiet.

“Fuck, this is so hot,” he suddenly breathes next to your ear while your legs spasm and you gasp brokenly.  “This is so—fuck, pretty baby letting me do this to her, I can’t fucking believe—”

Dameron eases a second finger inside you this time, letting you feel that delicious stretch from this angle, unable to lift your legs or shuffle around to help and subsequently resigned to simply experience it the way he gives it to you.  Your teeth have probably permanently indented your bottom lip from how hard you’re clamped down, a testament to how much you’re trying to hold back the loud moan you miraculously haven’t released yet.  Somehow it makes it sexier, not letting him hear you, not having your own noises to drown out the spark of urgency in his voice beginning to peek through.

Shit, it’s too much.  You can only let him touch you a few seconds at a time before you feel that familiar tug towards mind-numbing bliss, and the more he does it, the more appealing that feeling then becomes.  It’s teasing you, floating right in front of you and calling into question what could possibly be so bad about just reaching out to meet it?  You could.  You could cum right now.  What’s two weeks of pay?  You could cum all night long if you want, that is a thing you can do—

Quickly snapping out of your hypnotic downfall, your trembling hands snatch at his forearm once more, and Dameron, the fucker, drags his fingers slowly over your clit on the way out— so not accidental, not even close to it this time, but the sensation makes your hips stutter upwards and chase it nonetheless.

“Fuck you,” you groan at his audacity, your chest arching as you drop your head back, “I said don’t touch my—” but two wet fingers slipping past your lips and onto your tongue muffle the rest of your sentence.  Your heart does half a somersault before slamming down early, the taste of your pussy filling your mouth as you automatically start sucking on them.

“None of that,” Dameron tells you softly, massaging his fingers along your tongue before pressing a sweet kiss under your ear.  “Be nice.  I’m being nice.”

You should bite him.  Instead, you just close your eyes and mphh weakly around his fingers, your body sagging as you give into it and let him explore your mouth with them, your lower muscles cramping up in painful desperation even when he’s not anywhere near that part of your body right now.  Your tongue even comes up to lick between them, swirl around them so soft compared to how hard you’re puffing through your nose.

Dameron slowly inches his fingers out, letting the tips of them rest against your bottom lip for just a brief moment, before his hand is moving again.  Not down, but back and around, so he can open his mouth and taste you another way this time.

Shit, you feel like you’re dying.  You need air.  Your hands clench into fists and you use the back of one to wipe the sweat from the bridge of your nose while he takes his time sampling you like this.  If anything, he looks just as blissed out as before, continuing to rub his crotch up against the solid metal between his legs and teasing you with it as much as he’s teasing himself.

“Maker, let me do this for real tonight, okay,” Dameron pants after dropping his fingers from his mouth, sounding like he’s fighting for his breath while you can’t find yours at all.  Your eyes flick down to watch the way his hand disappears behind the chair to grab the controls and push his cock up against them even harder, how he drops his forehead to your neck like he just can’t fucking handle it anymore.  “Fuck, I’ll shave, I’ll do anything you want, just let me—”

“Cum,” you gasp out before you can stop yourself, and there’s a moment after it where his hips suddenly stutter against the controls, and you both freeze.

Shit.  Shitshitshit, did that actually work?

No, you very quickly realize, his body isn’t spasming like it would if he finally emptied his load after a month and a half.  He’s just… holding there, his head buried in your neck, completely still.

You didn’t mean it like that.  Well… fuck, you did, but you didn’t realize you’d be that reckless about it, that upfront about reissuing the challenge.

Dameron pulls back to look at you from the side this time, but it’s too cramped—he keeps his head turned facing you even as his eyes flick up to the transparisteel to take in the finer details of your features, the thin sheen of sweat on your forehead, and the slightly alarmed way you’re blinking back at him, worried you just shot your blaster at him in the midst of a mutual ceasefire and you fucking missed.

You see the understanding in his eyes instantly fall into place, and it’s not fucking good.  Ohhhhhh no, it’s not good.  Your chest starts rising and falling rapidly, suddenly registering the position you just put yourself in.  Fuck, you didn’t think—you saw your opening, so clearly, you didn’t have time to think about the consequences.

“D-Dameron…” you try your best to placate.

“Don’t touch your clit?”  He asks quietly, the raspiness of his voice ripping a hole through you while his hand suddenly shoves its way back down your body once more.

“Dameron,” you whimper, your heart stuttering in panic as you grasp weakly at his arm reaching between your spread thighs, “Dameron, this is—this is against the r-rules—”

“You keep saying that,” he comments, his fingers easily finding the opening in your jumpsuit no matter how hard you flex your thighs against bulky mechanics to try and close them.  “How clearly do you remember the rules?  What were the rules again?

You open your mouth to respond but his hand sliding under your panties and down just obliterates any chance you were going to attempt.  No words, nothing comes out but a shaky whine as his finger sinks into your soaking heat, going right for the kill.

“Come on, baby, the rules,” Dameron reminds you when you never give him an answer.  “Tell me.  No fucking, no jerking off, and…?”

You suddenly struggle forwards in a last-ditch attempt at preventing the inevitable, hoping you can scoot up enough in your seat to escape his reach from behind.  But fuck, your thighs have been shoved wide open for nearly eight hours—none of the muscles are working the way they should be anymore.  There’s just enough room in front of you to get there and you probably would’ve been able to do it at the beginning of the shift, even with his hand between your legs like this, but you’re sluggish and your thighs pull sharp and urgent with the movement.  The frantic maneuver enough to veer his fingers off course just slightly, moving one of your lips to the side at an angle, and you keep pushing against the pain no matter how useless it is.

“—No cumming,” he finishes for you, and his other hand is slithering up under your arm and groping one of your breasts through the jumpsuit before shoving you back tight up against your seat once more, totally helpless against it.  “Probably have another fifteen minutes or so before our shift ends.  Better hold it in, pretty baby, because this one is all you.”

“This—this isn’t fair, this is—”  The second the slippery pad of his finger presses hard against your clit, you’re biting your lip to cut off a breathless whimper that slips out.  “This is… is sab— sabotage— ”

“Oh, I know,” he moans next to your ear, mocking your high plea of distress with a fake, overly sympathetic whine.  “Feels so fucking good though, doesn’t it?”

Fuck, it does.  The build feels like an orgasm in itself, just working your way to it.  You’re already so unbelievably close after just a few seconds of direct stimulation, an obvious consequence of originally agreeing to such a hardcore edging workout.  You’re pouring sweat, so swollen and tight between your legs as you do everything you can to revolt against your body’s needs.

“Oh fuck, stop touching my clit—” you gasp raggedly, heart thundering in panic while your lower muscles start to immediately seize up, “oh—fuckfuckfuck— Poe, take your finger off m—”

Instead of doing it, his hand just slows down until the tip of his finger comes to a halt, maybe less than an inch over top of it.  You still can’t catch your breath though, not when you feel yourself throbbing against absolutely nothing, the calloused pad holding perfectly still over the bundle of nerves.  The swollen bud still arcs and flares at a steady frequency, building and building, and you choke out a wordless garble, absolutely fucking furious that this is what’s gonna make you cum.

“Don’t make me cum,” you switch up your sentence but not the terrified plead in your voice, the way it’s pitching up and out of control in the dead quiet of space.  He doesn’t even acknowledge it.  “Don’t make me cum, don—”

“Say it again,” he prompts instead, and lightning arcs up your spine.

“Poe,” you wheeze, the words coming from you without thought, your fingernails digging into his forearm even as your hips jerk up into his touch, “fuck, don’t make me cum, Poe—please don’t make me c—”

“But it’ll be so good,” he counters lowly, and your clit throbs in desperation at the richness of his voice when he speaks like this, saying things from deep in his chest.  “It’ll be so fucking good when it happens.  Stars, you’ll feel so much better, won’t you?  Cum right now and I’ll give you as many as I can until we have to go home.”

“N-No,” you whine, feeling his teeth scrape at the crook of your neck.  “No, I can’t—”

“Cum for me,” Dameron raises his voice, sharpening it into a direct order.  “Right now.  Come on— fucking make yourself lose.”

“But I—I—” you sob, starting to feel your body curl inwards, nearly about to succumb to the burning, the tightening, right on its last breath, “I-I don’t want to cum—”

“And I don’t fucking care,“ he hisses while your hands start flexing unintentionally, grasping helplessly at his immovable forearm where it disappears between your legs, the dark hair sliding under your fingertips as you claw desperately at it.  “You’ll fucking cum when I tell you to cum and you’ll like it, you disrespectful, cock-deprived, bratty little—”

And then everything goes dark.

No, literally.  The stars disappear.

The cockpit is suddenly shrouded in pitch blackness, and you’re almost certain it’s because you pass out, except then Dameron is all but ripping his hand out of your jumpsuit and cursing repeatedly in alarm.  You crumple in on yourself, eyes clamped shut and not hearing anything, right at the peak of your ecstasy and ready to soar into the light completely unassisted, your muscles doing all the work on their own—

“—shit, they’re way too close—” you hear his voice shout, “—we have to turn the engines on—Gold-Ten, baby, turn the fucking eng—”

You’re almost there, you’re almost there, you’re gonna cum, you’re gonna fucking—

Your first name, roared out in startling, blinding panic.

You don’t often hear it.  Just during roll calls mostly, but only if you’re flying with a different squadron and need a new temporary flight designation for the day.  First names hurt.  You can’t remember a time you’ve ever willingly told anybody yours.

Your head jerks up to look at his reflection but something else beyond the transparisteel takes immediate precedence.  Your brain takes about two seconds to catch up before thundering terror slams through you and halts your previously inevitable orgasm in its fucking tracks.  A runaway train about to launch off its tracks suddenly slamming directly into a megaton force-field of cold, hard fight or flight instincts.

A staggering fleet of First Order ships silently plunging out of hyperspace on all sides—your powered-down x-wing stationed right in the middle of the drop location.

***

Stay tuned for part two coming soon!!

[highest-tinfoilhat]

I'm pretty sure that my comfort TV shows all have "canon"™️ autistic characters and since I recently self diagnosed and have been learning more it seems more evident:

The IT Crowd

One of the 3 main characters, Moss (played by Richard Ayoade), is the most "obvious" autistic character. In the sense of how certain traits have become stereotypes with media representation. He misses social cues, avoids eye contact, has to know how many staples are in his stapler, can't read between the lines, etc. But after many rewatches my HC is that Jen and Roy are both on the spectrum too. Jen is really good at masking and has been able to maneuver neurotically spaces, probably out of compulsion/force. Roy doesnt care to mask as much but seems less obvious due to his non-stereotypical traits. His own gf called him "emotionally autistic"

MPGIS

They're really fucking dumb but tbh I mostly love how much and how they cuss. That and they have the most ridiculous quotes that get stuck in my head and make me giggle for the next 3-4 days. Trisha and Brittany have always been my favorite character. Brittany for the cursing (obviously) but Trisha has recently seemed aspie to me. Most obvious evident to me is season 1 episode 6 when she's talking to DeAndre. Sounds like conversation scripts to me but what frustrates her is that she is not getting the typical positive responses that neurotypicals have to chosen scripts.

Bob's Burgers

Tina Belcher is without a doubt on the spectrum to me. Seems self-explanatory to me. She has been my favorite character since I first started the show. Honorable mention for Teddy, i think he's on the spectrum too. [side note: the entire Belcher family is neurodivergent]

Jake and Amir

This YouTube series is dumb in all the best ways. My hc is that Amir is a product of very early pressures of masking/conforming by abusive parents. That trauma led to him desperately needing a sense of belonging so he grabs what are/were popular beliefs but all the worst ones. He tries to repeat common sayings without understanding the nuance of them. To boil it down, he was essentially pushed into psychopathic habits of chameleoning and imitating/faking emotions due to his severe social isolation. Am i overanalyzing? Yes of course! But that doesn't mean I'm wrong

Bojack Horseman

Now without a doubt Todd is neurodivergent and maybe it's self indulgent but i like to think he is ADHD and autistic. Can I actually think of "proof" right now? No but it's a head canon so....

I also think it of note that no matter diagnosis you throw on him, his character has never been invested in masking or trying to fit into neurotypical roles and rules. The man lives off of vibes and as someone who has recently stopped trying to have a full out plan for life i find it inspirational and a good model to follow

Justice League (2001)

I am specifically referencing the animated series because that is where I've seen the most Martian Manhunter content [outside of comics of course] The analogy of feeling alien hits with a lot of autistic people and i know i felt like that growing up as well. But the added feature that he can shape shift to "look normal" and fit in, is what really gets it for me. Obviously when shape shifted (i.e. masking) most of his (social) interactions go a lot smoother because he can play the part. But his attempts to be himself while connecting with the other JL members have been unfruitful or awkward. He's straight to the point and doesn't bother with giving false truths for the sake of someone's feeling - these most specifically align with austistic stereotypes and traits. Do i think the creators had that in mind? No but it's another hc i find comfort in

This is all I've got for now but if i think of more, I'll add more

[elldell1204]

Hair Me Out - Spencer Reid x Reader

Y/N wears her hair in many different styles, and her boyfriend, Spencer, seems to appreciate each one in different ways.

A/N: So, I just wanted to add, I try to make my ‘reader’ as ambiguous as possible, that way you can identify with them more. However, I struggled with this one, as I am a white female with straight hair and not much knowledge of (though deep appreciation and love for) natural or curly hair, seeing as I have little to no experience. Therefore, I have tried making this as inclusive as possible but I’m sorry if at any point seems too specific and you can’t put yourself into the story. Feel free to call me out on anything you aren’t comfortable with!

Warnings: Slight sexual themes, swearing, normal Criminal minds stuff (let me know if I missed anything)

wc - 3,217

Dutch Braids -

You and Spencer had just gotten off from work about an hour ago after a gruelling day with an equally stressful case. Which is why as soon as you were both showered, dressed in the comfiest clothes you could find and waiting for the takeout to arrive, you were both sprawled out on the couch in front of a movie, having no energy left to talk, let alone move when there was a knock at the door. Seeing as you were the one with less of the other person’s body parts draped across you, you got up and answered while Spencer didn’t move an inch. You couldn’t blame him; the poor boy was exhausted.

Around twenty minutes later, you’d both eaten, leaving your plates on the coffee table in front of you with the mental promise to wash them later, and were back to snuggling into each other, getting as close as you possibly could to soothe each other after the day you had. Your head was tucked neatly into Spencer’s chest, your knees drawn up to near your chin in the foetal position, making yourself as small as possible. Spencer was the opposite; spread like a starfish with his arm around your back and his head rested against the back of the couch.

If someone were to ask you what the movie was about, you wouldn’t have a clue where to start. Truth is, you felt like you were stuck in-between both the lands of sleep and consciousness, due to wanting to spend some time with your boyfriend (despite him being your work partner for the best part of sixteen hours) but also wanting to sleep for three days. In attempt to make yourself just a little bit more awake, you started trying to focus on different things around you. First it was the quote on the front of the main character’s t-shirt, then it was the Metro you could faintly hear as the last train of the night rattled by, then it was Spencer’s finger tracing up and down one of your braids that you’d done quickly after your shower.

“Spence?” You murmured the first words spoken in practically an hour.

“Hmm?” He hummed in response, his half-lidded eyes shifting to your face that you had lifted to face him.

“What are you doing?”

“What do you mean?” His voice was merely a whisper, and if you weren’t listening for it, the only way you’d know he was speaking was from the vibration of his chest.

You gestured to your hair with your finger, and only when he realised did he stop what he was doing and chuckle lightly and dreamily.

“Oh, sorry, I’m not sure, it just feels soft, I guess. I’ll stop.”

“No, no, it’s okay, you can keep going.” You smiled at him, mustering up the energy to lean up and press a sweet kiss to his lips before retracting back to your previous position.

Ponytail -

To say you were having a bad day was an understatement. You usually like to try and stay as positive as you could be when chasing a serial, paedophilic murderer, but there’s only so many deep breaths and coffee breaks you can take before you really start to get pissed off. Not only had you been stuck in hot and sticky Texas for near a week, but you had also been put into single rooms at the hotel you were staying at. Now, not to sound ungrateful (because you very much are of the fact that you at least have a roof over your head), but only having one single bed to a room means that you can’t snuggle with Spencer after a long day, and these were proving to be very long days.

And to add to the problem, Hotch was constantly on edge since the start of the case, with the victims looking a hell of a lot like Jack, and when you were the closest person to him on that first day when his tensions finally boiled over, you had been the one in the firing line of his rage. Which you can take. You knew he didn’t mean it, and if he had to take his frustrations out on someone for a few days so he could do his job with a clearer head, you were happy to be the target.

But now after a particularly rough six days, your patience was wearing thin, and everyone on the team could see it, which is why they offered you and Spencer any jobs they were assigned that would get them out of the stifling police precinct. And you knew they had good intentions, but even that was starting to annoy you.

So now you were sat at the table in the conference room, a pen between your teeth as your eyes frantically search over the evidence you have piled in front of you, desperate for the answers to this case to fly off the page and hit you smack dab in the forehead so you could just go home and have a fight with a pillow or something, anything to destress.

You heard the footsteps coming from the doorway, but you refused to turn around. If it was Hotch, you swear to god you might actually lose your job with what you were thinking of doing if he was short with you one more time. If it was Morgan ready to hand you a first-class ticket to visit the slightly wrinkly and very smelly coroner again, you might actually flip the table.

“Hey, Y/N.” Spencer greeted you warmly, sitting on the table to your right as your eyes slowly lifted to meet his. No, not Spencer. Hold it together, Y/N, hold in your rage, he’s done nothing wrong. “Oh, I haven’t seen you with your hair tied back in a while. I like it.”

Such a sweet statement, and yet it broke you. You could see in his face the moment your eyes lit aflame with anger, and you couldn’t miss the harsh swallow he took to brace himself for your fury.

“Well, Dr Reid, let me teach you a lesson, shall I? 3 reasons. One, it is way more practical for kicking someone’s ass, and right now, I would love nothing more than catching the sleazy son-of-a-bitch who is deriving pleasure from this,” You gesture violently to the crime scene photos splayed out in front of you before continuing to spit your venom. “And beating the living shit out of him until he’s crying out for his mommy. Two, do you know how many officers have tried to flirt up a storm with me in the past week? Way too many to count on one fucking hand! One even went so far as to try stroking my hair like a goddamn cat, and so to avoid that situation, I have put it in a ponytail, because if anything of that nature happens again, I won’t hesitate to break someone’s arm. And three, I usually have it down because most men think you’re dumber when you play with your hair, or I can play seductive to get what I want without a warrant fifty percent of the time. But seeing as we have absolutely nobody on the suspect list right now, and the sheer fury I possess at this moment, I don’t foresee the possibility of me needing to be either of those things, do you?”

Your lungs were heaving once you were done, and poor Spencer looked like you just told him you were a Russian spy sent to kill him. Your eyes were locked onto each other’s, and when you came back to reality from your rant, you recognised the softness and love in his that you were grateful for every day. Granted, they were a little masked by fear right now, but you’d admired him often enough to be able to spot even the faintest hint of your favourite emotions.

You let out a deep sigh, signalling you were back to your normal self as much as you could be right then, before dropping your head into your hands to rub your eyes with the heel of your palms.

It was then you felt the unmistakeable warmth of Spencer’s hand rubbing soothing patterns on your back as you gathered yourself together, bringing tears to your eyes as you opened them once more to face him.

“Oh, Spencer,” You whispered, grabbing his hands tightly with yours, lifting them to your lips and pressing sweet kisses to his knuckles. “I’m so, so sorry. You didn’t deserve that at all.”

“It’s okay, my love.”

“No, it’s really not. I never should have raised my voice at you, especially when it’s not your fault at all that I’m frustrated.”

“Y/N, I understand.” He smiled at you, a small and sympathetic one, but it calmed you nonetheless as he stood, pulling you up from the chair to wrap his arms tightly around you. You gripped onto him like he might run away if you didn’t, breathing in the warm scent that is so unmistakeably Spencer. Your vision was now cloudy with the tears that so desperately wanted to spill, but you were adamant you wouldn’t give the local cops the satisfaction of seeing you with wet cheeks. Luckily, Spencer knows you better than anyone.

“There’s a park a few minutes’ walk from here with a small duck pond. Would you like some fresh air?”

You nodded frantically against his neck as you finally let go, allowing him to lead you out of the precinct, hand in hand, his thumb running softly over yours as you walked.

“I don’t deserve you.” You mumbled, leaning in closer to him as you carried on down the path.

“Nonsense,” He whispered, pressing a kiss to your hair. “We deserve each other. Just remind me not to get on your bad side; I like having both of my arms functional.”

Bed Head -

A blaring alarm at 6am has to be up there with one of the most annoying things on the planet, and I work with Derek Morgan. You let out a groan, your arm floundering around to find the source of the wretched noise. Groaning in defeat of not being able to do it with your eyes closed, you cracked one open, locating your phone, and finding sweet relief in the snooze button. A very overexaggerated yawn left your lips as you attempted to stretch your arms over your head in an effort to wake up, only to find one immobilised in the grasp of your boyfriend.

You took advantage the rare opportunity of waking up before Mr Alarm Clock himself (also known as Dr Spencer Reid) by allowing yourself a few minutes to admire his form in the golden sliver of sunlight escaping the outside world through the gap in the curtains. It was only when your alarm went off again after the five-minute snooze timer did you try to wake him up.

“Spence, baby, time to wake up.” You whisper, attempting to gently coax him from his slumber. When that didn’t work, you laced your fingers through his mousy-brown curls, scratching lightly at his scalp, just how he likes. Only then did you receive a response in the form of a muffled groan into his pillow.

“C’mon, my love. We need to get ready for work.” You spoke softly, pressing a delicate kiss to his forehead.

You chuckled lightly, wrapping your arms around his torso as your legs entwined. “Okay, my sleepy darling. But only five.”

“Mmm, five more minutes.” He mumbled, nestling his face into your hair as he pulls you closer than you thought possible.

Safe to say you took breakfast to go, just so you could bask in each other’s embraced for a little longer than five minutes.

Post-Sex Hair -

You climbed from his lap gently, unsure if your legs could hold yourself up as you panted heavily. Practically throwing yourself down beside Spencer on the bed, he took the opportunity to grab your hand, lacing your fingers with his as you laid your head on his chest. You were both still a little dreamlike in your post-orgasmic haze, and when Spencer began to press kiss after kiss into your hair, you didn’t hesitate to enjoy them.

“You’re so beautiful.” He whispered into your hair, punctuating his statement with a final kiss for good measure.

You looked up from your position, shifting slightly so you were face to face, and scrunched up your nose. “Really? Even with sweaty sex hair?”

He chuckled, and you followed with a giggle of your own as he leant over to capture your lips in a sweet kiss. “Especially with sweaty sex hair.” He whispered with a joking edge to his voice, his lips brushing with yours.

“Well, I’m pretty sure the team wouldn’t love my sweaty sex hair, so I better hop in the shower.” You smiled, kissing him quickly once more before climbing out of the bed and walking towards the bathroom, a sway to your hips.

As you reached the door, you turned to shoot a smirk over your shoulder at the blissed-out boy behind you. “Oh, are you not joining me?”

You swear you’d never seen the boy move as fast as when he clambered from the bed and chased you into the bathroom.

Straightened -

There was something about going undercover that equally excited you and creeped you out. Especially tonight, when you were having to go under in a club to catch a guy who was killing adulterous wives. You were the closest person in the team to his type, so it was a no-brainer to choose you, really. Didn’t mean you were happy with it, and it seemed that Spencer wasn’t either, if his clenched jaw was anything to go by.

Well, you were going to do it no matter what, so why not get yourself dressed up and try to bring some joy back to a less than ideal situation? That is why you were stood in the locker room of a precinct on the west coast in a red crushed velvet minidress with black heels, a fake wedding ring and straightened hair, and you couldn’t lie, you were totally feeling yourself.

“Woah, Y/N, you look…amazing.” You heard Spencer say as he entered the room.

You turned your head and smiled at him, feeling a little flustered as his eyes trailed over your form. You attempted to push your dress further down your thighs as he walked to you, his hands encircling your waist from behind and his head perched on your shoulder.

“It’s not too much is it?” You mumbled, looking down at yourself to do a final once over.

You felt his fingers under your chin, lifting your head to look him in the eyes through the mirror, ones filled with love and a hint of desire that set your skin aflame. He brushed your hair aside from your neck to trail kisses down the side of your throat, eliciting a breathy sigh from your lips.

“No, Y/N, you look badass.”

You giggled at the word that seemed so foreign coming from Spencer, but that was soon muffled when he spun you around by his hands on your hips and his lips hungrily met yours. Your lips moved against each other’s, his tongue coming to swipe at your bottom lip in a request for entrance. You granted it, and soon you felt your back collide with the cool metal of the lockers. You grabbed a fistful of his shirt as you explored his mouth with your tongue, relishing in the taste of him. You laced a hand up into his hair as you felt a hand that he had at your waist moving to your ass, gripping it roughly, causing you to moan into his mouth.

“Reid? Y/L/N? You two lovebirds ready?” You heard Morgan mock from the doorway and you both immediately jumped apart like some sort of invisible wall had shot up between you.

Looking around to see that Morgan wasn’t in your eyeline, given that the lockers luckily blocked you two from his view. But not from earshot, seeing as you could quite clearly hear his hearty chuckles as his footsteps got quieter and quieter.

You looked up at Spencer, his hair dishevelled and his tie askew, a look of both embarrassment and amusement at being caught making out like two horny teenagers adorned his face. A grin broke out on your lips, which he mirrored, and soon you were both laughing hysterically as you sorted yourselves out in the tiny little mirror on the wall, attempting to make it look like you weren’t a few seconds away from tearing each other’s clothes off, before re-joining the team in the conference room.

Messy Bun -

Ugh, cold and flu season. You swear you never make it through it unscathed. And it seems as if your battle was commencing today. You woke up feeling dreadful; runny nose, scratchy throat, constant sneezing, and red-rimmed eyes. Attractive.

There was no question in having to call in sick, so after throwing your hair up in the messiest of messy buns and locating the snuggest blanket, you dialled the number. You could practically hear the wince from Hotch when you started having a sneezing fit down the phone. Now you weren’t sure if you could look the man in the eye when you went back.

Once that torture was over and done with, you were feeling sorry for yourself and decided on a warm cup of tea and a dose of shitty daytime television. You were halfway through some over-enthusiastic talk show when you heard a knock at your door. Refusing to leave the blanket behind that you’d burrito’d yourself in, you shuffled over to the door.

You didn’t expect a very sympathetic looking Spencer on the other side of the door, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a welcomed sight.

“Hey.” You croaked out.

“Hi. How are you feeling?” You gave him a look that said it all, and he chuckled lightly. He lifted the bag he had in his hand. “I brought the best cure I could think of; chicken noodle soup.”

“I don’t want to get you sick, Spencer.” You whined, wanting nothing more than to curl up into his side but holding onto your selfless and rational thoughts by a mere thread.

You smiled at that, stepping aside to let him in. He passed you and went and got comfortable on your couch, grabbing a fork on the way. When you met him in the living room, he was ready and waiting for you with his arms open for you to snuggle into.

“Don’t worry about me. Now come on, your soup is getting cold.” He smiled, making grabby hands at you.

You made your way over, sinking into his embrace as he passed you the container and your fork. After a few mouthfuls and several minutes of listening to his steady breaths and thumps of his heart, you were feeling much better.

“Thank you.” You mumbled once you were finished and had placed your empty container on the coffee table in front of you, nuzzling further into Spencer’s chest. “I love you.”

“I love you too. Now sleep, I’ll still be here when you wake up.”

Didn’t have to tell you twice.

[softyoongiionly]

BlackHeart Bakery

Who says Halloween can’t be romantic?

Pairing: Emo! Jungkook x Reader

Word Count: 3.7k

Genre: fluff

A/N: HI OMG IM SO SORRY THIS IS LATE. I love you, I hope you like it. I’m sorry it isn’t longer but, I still can’t wait for you to read it.

-you never imagined that the quirky lil bakery down the street from your university would change your life  

-But it did

-“Omg shut up, you’re so dumb.”

-“Rawr xD”

-“Did you just say rawr xD out loud??? That totally defeats the purpose of its existence...”

-“Don’t cite the deep magic to me witch, I was there when it was written.”

-“And now you’re quoting the chronicles of narnia- alright just go back to sleep you big dummy...”

-“Mmm but you married a big dummy so what does that say about you”

-“Jungkook don't spoil it oh my god!”

-“Like they don’t know what’s coming already- spoiler alert losers! I get the girl.”

-“I hate you...”

-“Mm yeah- I love it when you talk dirty to me baby. The last time you said that- we ended up fuc-“

-“Ok! That’s enough! Our story begins...”

-Jungkook’s bakery was quite famous around your city

-If people didn’t come for the gaudy Halloween decorations  

-They came for the music  

-Exclusively pop punk, if you’re wondering

-It was like 2009 everyday  

-Which was comforting, considering the world has gotten a little

-Tricky

-Since then

-But anyways

-If they didn’t come for the music or the decorations

-They came for the AMAZING espresso  

-And the spooky themed treats

-But if you’re being honest

-You think the main thing that keeps them coming back

-Is Jungkook  

-If his sweeping black hair didn’t get you

-Or the adorable cheeky twinkle in his eyes

-It was the tattoos and the piercings  

-He looked like he walked right off of a black veil brides music video set  

-He was hot

-This was obvious

-But he didn’t seem to think so

-You had come to the conclusion that he was oblivious  

-he shoved his feet into his big black doc martens every morning  

-Slipped on his beaded bracelets and studded chokers

-Pulled his fall out boy t-shirt over his

-Massive

-Tattooed

-Biceps

-And just thought hm

-I’m pretty average I guess (lol)

-That’s a direct quote from him btw

-Men truly are hopeless

-Jungkook opened the bakery two years ago

-He had mentioned to you that he had saved up money from his 3 part time jobs to put a down payment on the building  

-Which was wedged between a sex shop

-And a thrift store

-And honestly his bakery

-Blackheart Bakery, if you’re being specific  

-Fits right in

-Jungkook refuses to hire new staff

-“They won’t do it right.” He whined to you one day

-“One time I tried to hire this guy and he put the sugared googly eyes on the cookie skeletons ALL WRONG”

-“How do you put googly eyes on wrong?” You had giggled

-“you just do- i- See? This is exactly why I can’t hire anyone...”

-You had started chewing on the end of your pencil in the midst of your laughter

-It was an unconscious habit

-And it makes Jungkook shift uncomfortably, his hands moving off of the top of your table

-“Don’t do that...” he had muttered, smirking to himself as he walked back behind the counter  

-he did that a lot

-He’d mutter something  

-Mildly flirtatious under his breath and then  

-Just walk away

-It was quite confusing

-But honestly you had a feeling he was just a filrty person  

-You certainly weren’t the only girl he smirked at

-Not that you pay attention

-Ok  

-Maybe you do  

-Kinda  

-Pay attention  

-but it’s not your fault!!!!  

-You just  

-Can’t help but feel a little jealous

-You kiiiiiinda have a little thing for him

-Ok

-Maybe it’s a big thing  

-Maybe it’s a massive

-Gigantic

-Towering  

-Crush  

-But look at him!!!

-You simply couldn’t be blamed

-It was his fault  

-Yep

-That’s what you’re going with

-It was Jungkook

-And his tight t shirts

-His ripped jeans

-His dangly earrings

-His tattoos

-His big

-Stupid boots

-Ugh ok

-Focus  

-You have work to do

-The whole reason you began coming to Jungkook's cafe was so you -could find a consistent place to study for your exams

-You were in school to become a teacher :)  

-And teachers have to study very very hard  

-Educating the youth is no easy feat  

-Jungkook had asked what you were studying during the first week you arrived at his spooky house of baked goods

-“Oh I’m an education major”

-“Ahh so you’re getting an education about...education.” He concludes

-“I love it.”

-“So meta.”

-“Are they educating you on the disparities between impoverished children and wealthier children?”

-His wide eyes were brimming with genuine curiosity  

-You kind of got a kick out of how candid he was about such heavy conversation topics

-“Not as much as they should be but, I’m actually writing a paper on a similar topic right now...”

-This caused a brilliant grin to come over his face

-It was almost blinding really

-And it made your heartbeat all wonky  

-“Of course you are. You look smart like that...”

-He had backed away from your table then, seemingly satisfied

-Had you passed the vibe check?

-“I’ll leave you to your paper.” He nodded to your laptop but as he walked away, he pivoted back towards you on and the heel of his combat boot, “welcome to Blackheart Bakery by the way, let me know if I can get you anything.”

-Another brilliant smile is sent your way  

-“Thank you.” You had smiled back, sending a tiny wave his way

-Which in turn, made HIS heartbeat all wonky  

-You’re cute

-Like really cute

-And despite how often it may seem like his eyes are elsewhere

-They are ALWAYS on you

-Every chance he gets he is glancing your way

-Smirking to himself at how endearing you are

-Brow furrowed

-Lips pouted in concentration  

-Completely oblivious to his gaze

-He has to remind himself to look away  

-He doesn’t want to be a creep

-“Creepy men deserved to get kicked in the teeth...”

-He’s said this to you before when another patron had made you uncomfortable

-Jungkook kicked him out immediately  

-“If you don’t leave, I’ll have no choice but to kick you in the teeth. One, because I can’t compromise my personal philosophy and two because you’re making my favorite customer uncomfortable.”

-Oh look there goes your heartbeat again

-WONKY

-The guy leaves in an angry rush, flipping Jungkook off in the process

-Saying something about leaving a bad Yelp review  

-He doesn’t care tho

-He definitely doesn’t want to be a creep

-You’re just so  

-Pretty

-Ugh

-He rolls his eyes at himself behind the espresso bar

-The latte in front of him neglected  

-In need of a bit of foam

-“Focus Jeon, she’s just a chick...”

No wait

-“She’s just a woman. A woman who I respect, like I respect all women...”

-He’s been watching a lot of feminist theory on YouTube

-He likes staying educated  

-And also fuck the patriarchy

-The man waiting for his drink has arched a brow at this point, wondering if his barista has lost his mind

-“Uhhh medium...” he checks the cup for his awful hand writing, “ghostly toasted marshmallow latte!”

-“Thanks.” The guy mutters, throwing a judging look Jungkook's way  

-He gives him a lazy salute as the guy struts away with a briefcase in tow

-“Thaaanks.” Jungkook mocks him, his face scrunching up in annoyance  

-Stupid man

-With his stupid briefcase  

-As Jungkook is pulling out a batch of cream cheese frosting stuffed pumpkin muffins  

-Or as Jungkook calls them

-PUNK-in Muffins

-Movement at the counter catches his eye

-is that

-”oh shit...” He grunts, hastily wiping his hands on his apron and rushing over to the counter

-normally he would meander

-stroll

-or even slump to greet any new guests at this hour

-and by this hour

-he means 45 minutes before closing

-Jungkook’s bakery is open til midnight on weeknights

-9pm on Sundays

-and 3am on Saturdays (for the culture of course, gotta keep it spooky)

-tonight happens to be a Friday night and the person awaiting his assistance is

-you

-”You’re still here?” He gawks, the black polish on his nails glimmering as he punches in a few keys on the register

-You offer him a tired and slightly amused smile, “No. Y/N died around 4:30, you’re speaking to her ghost. Please leave your message after the tone.”

-Jungkook cracks a smile, his palms resting on flat on the counter, “Do ghosts check their voicemails?”

-“Oh of course not but, I will be checking yours because you have access to caffeine.”

-Jungkook laughs

-no...he giggles  

-and it’s fucking cute

-but you digress

-“I feel like I should cut you off...this is your 4th latte; I’m pretty sure you’re 80% caffeine at this point...”

-“Noooo, don’t do that.” You whine slumping against the counter, “I just need to finish this one page...”

-He quirks a brow as he scribbles something on your cup, unimpressed with your statement, “You said that three hours ago. I’ll make you another one but I’m not putting an extra shot in.”

-Your face turns up in protest but he click his tongue against his teeth , shaking a manicured finger at you

-“Ah ah- nope. I don’t want to hear it. You either take that or I’m making you a hot chocolate and shutting the buildings power off.”

-With a dramatic sigh, you concede

-“Ugh fine. Here-” You go to hand him your debit card but he shakes his head

-“Put that away.”

-You want to protest but given the fact that he’s made the rules thus far during this interaction, you doubt you’d be able to stop him.

-A smile appears on your face then, appreciative of his generosity

-“Thank you.”

-He merely grins, waving you off before rolling up the sleeves of his black Blink 182 shirt

-as soon as his tattoos are out

-all the moisture leaves your mouth

-you try your hardest not to stare at him

-expertly, he eases the espresso shots into the milk, tongue poking between his lips in concentration

-and you

-being sleep-deprived

-and a little loopy

-decide to  

-flirt????????

-if you could even call it that

-which you could but you shouldn’t

-“For the record, when I finally dig my way out of this of mountain of death I’m stuck in, I will definitely take you up on that hot chocolate...”

-Jungkook’s brow quirks at the tone of your voice, his hands suddenly itching with nerves

-was that

-was that flirty?

-should he flirt back?

-“My hot chocolate is legendary. You won’t be disappointed.” His lips display a small grin as he places the lid atop your finished latte, “Also mountain of death is a great name and I WILL be stealing it.”

-You giggle

-again

-“and I WILL be suing you for copyright.”

-He laughs now, wiping up the bit of milk he spilled

-the sinewy muscles in his forearm tensing and untensing

“Good luck getting me to show up to court.”

-and that’s kinda how it was between you and Jungkook

-for like six months

-it was a little bit flirty but never anything to push either over you over the edge.

-and speaking of being on edge

-recently, you had gone from vacationing in your timeshare on the edge

-to signing a 35 year mortgage contract  

-4 bedrooms

-2.5 bathrooms

-of pure

-unrelenting

-stress

-you could feel it in the middle of your back

-shoving itself up between your shoulder blades

-your body seemed to ache with it

-the worst part being

-it was Halloween

-You should be out with your friends, having fun

-wearing itchy costumes and drinking sugary drinks

-but instead, your headed towards the bakery to work

-Jungkook was behind the counter, smiling happily at a family dressed like the cast of scooby doo

-from what you could see he was wearing a skeleton onesie

-his jet black hair tousled perfectly above his head

-he looked adorable

-(and hot)

-He notices you instantly, his face turning up in surprise

-you offer up a small wave and head over to your table

-you know he’s going to say something about you being there but

-you don’t really have much of a choice

-this work has to be done

-it takes him a second to spot you but when he does

-he seems to perk up

-his smile brightening as he looks back towards his customer

-as you’re setting everything up, you feel a presence (not the spooky kind) at the end of your table

-it’s Jungkook and he has your regular order in one hand, along with something wrapped in skeleton-patterned parchment paper

-“I know, I know.” You acknowledge before he’s even able to chide you for being here

-He smirks “What are you doing studying on the holiest day of the year??”

-You giggle

-“The holiest day of the year huh?”

-“Of course. Halloween is the one night a year that the homies can dress like total -sluts and no one can say anything about it.”

-This makes you giggle again

-“And you went with slutty skeleton huh? I love it- it’s like as naked as you can possibly get.”

-He chuckles, gesturing to his costume

-His floppy black hair getting in his face

-“Damn right baby.”

-The way he grins tells you the pet name is a joke

-But the deepening of his voice gets to you anyway

-“Thank you for this. I promise I’ll get out of your hair early tonight.”

-“The only thing I’m worried about getting out of my hair is this white spray paint. You’re welcome to stay as long as you want.”

-He’s put a streak of white spray paint in his raven locks

-Why? You’re not certain

-Does it look good on him, like everything else does?

-Absolutely

-Its been a few hours since your night of studying began

-Jungkook’s dropped off two free lattes since you’ve arrived  

-As well as a slice of his ‘I write cinnamon not tragedies’ bread

-Which was equally hilarious and delicious

-You caught him glancing over at your table a few times but you didn’t think anything of it

-He’s probably just checking to make sure that no one needs your table

-His bakery is packed most nights but Halloween is a special night at Blackheart Bakery

-He has a trick or treat counter set up with free (homemade) candy

-A photo op complete with a fake haunted house backdrop

-A Halloween playlist

-And a bunch of discounts on his signature lattes and food

-you watch him amongst the chaos

-He is completely unfazed

-He seems elated at the amount of customers he has

-he grins and laughs at something a man dressed like Thor says at his counter

-he seems entirely in his element

-you realize that the denial tactics you’ve been trying out haven’t been working

-because this floppy haired, tattooed, slutty skeleton/baker kind of has a hold on your heart

-you’ve been friends for a long time now

-he always makes sure you’re taken care of

-he always asks if you’re ok

-he always gives you this little grin

-it feels like a secret sometimes

-but maybe it’s been his way of letting you know where he stands

-he’s been bringing you lattes and pastries for months now

-he never charges you full-price

-he always reminds you not to work too hard

-he

-fuck

-he likes you doesn’t he?

-you look back over at the counter to see him bending over and handing a skeleton cookie to a little girl dressed like Captain Marvel

-he laughs at something she says

-his eyes focused entirely on her and whatever she seems to be proclaiming to him  

-your heart goes wonky again

-alright

-enough is enough

-you’re doing this  

-Jungkook’s done so much of the work thus far

-it’s time for you to seal the deal

-and if he rejects you, well…

-you can just crawl into a hole and never come out again

-easy peasy

-You can feel his eyes on you as you get up to take your place in line

-luckily there isn’t anyone else behind you

-rejection with an audience would certainly be worse

-Jungkook has his witty comment ready for you as you approach the register

-“I know for a fact you haven’t finished your third latte and I’m not making you another one until-“

-“I’m not here for another latte.” You laugh, trying to ignore the thrashing of your heartbeat

-“No? Well, are you finally going to try my Welcome to the Blackened Chicken Parade Burger then? I’ve been asking you for like three weeks…”

-god he’s fucking cute

-“I’m here to ask you out.”

-Jungkook swears he feels his heart stop

-“You’re here to…”

-He repeats the first part of your response as his he didn’t hear you

-his black fingernails anxiously tapping against the countertop

-“I’m here to ask you out- on a date.”

-Jungkooks face seems to go through various stages of confusion before a shy smirk presents itself on his pretty mouth

-“Me? You’re asking me-“ He places a hand on his chest, “-out on a date?”

-“Yes!” You laugh, slapping the counter a bit too hard, your nerves getting the best of you, “Are you down?”

-He shakes his head but his answer contradicts his movements

-“So down, beyond down. There is no one on Earth who is more DOWN than I am. Yes. My answer is yes. 50000% yes.”

-you can’t help the smile on your lips

-“great. So are you free next Friday then?”

-He grins with his teeth this time, nodding emphatically  

-“Consider the shop closed.”

-and so it was

-you returned to your table moments later  

-feeling on top of the world

-you did it

-you asked Jungkook out

-and he said yes

-and now you

-NOW YOU HAVE A DATE WITH JUNGKOOK

-LOOK AT YOU GO

-TAKING CHARGE

-you try your best to engage with your studies but with Jungkook on your mind

-its really hard

-roughly two hours later, things at the bakery have finally started to slow down

-“Hey uh- Y/N?”

-Jungkook's voice that pulls you out of your studying trance

-he’s standing at the entrance of his back room, waving you over with his hand

-and who are you to deny him?

-you make your way over there, annoyed at the instant increase in your heartrate

-he stands awkwardly to the side and gestures to the boxes on the metal rack

-“I just remembered that I’ve never given you a tour of the place. I give all my regulars a tour of the stockroom and my office and uh-”

-he cuts himself off and clumsily cups your cheek

-he pulls you into a kiss

-a really good kiss

-his lips are so warm

-he smells like cinnamon

-you could literally die happy

-The ridiculous nature of his first attempt to kiss you, makes you giggle into his mouth

-you feel him smile, his hands smushing your cheeks together as he pulls away

-“Ok I lied. There is no tour. I’ve just been watching you focus on your computer for the last two hours and you’re just really fucking cute and-”

-this time, it’s you who cuts him off

-“You better give me an actual tour next time. How else am I going to steal your secret recipes?”

-he scoffs in mock offense

-“Ah ha! So that’s the only reason you asked me out huh? Should I be calling you Plankton instead of Y/N? Ew no wait- that would make me Mr. Krabs and he’s a dirty capitalist...”

-You laugh, “Oooh good point. Guess you’ll just have to be Karen, my computer wife.”

-This makes him laugh now and the sound warms your soul

-“I could live with that- I like your last name better anyways.”

-with another kiss, your adventure with the emo baker of your dreams begins

-It may have been Halloween but it sure felt like Christmas to you

[canary3d-obsessed]

Restless Rewatch: The Untamed Episode 03

(Masterpost)(Previous Episode) 

Warning: Spoilers for all 50 episodes!

 Wei Wuxian demonstrates the purple nurple technique of the Jiang Clan

Should’ve Used Trivago

The Jiang Clan’s reservation got cancelled while they were on the road, so they are going to wander around this small inn for hours being fussed about it, rather than trying another inn. Yes they say the other inns are all full but…so is this one, now. 

The Jin Clan sends an advance party to fancy up the inn for them.

Fuckboi Wei Wuxian

Wei Wuxian decides to use his considerable powers of prettiness to get them a room.  He drops some poetry on Mianmian and brazenly flirts with her before shifting to properly introducing himself and asking for a room. 

This actually works.

...until her boss shows up.

(Much much more after the cut!)

Worst Person // Best Jin

Jin ZIxuan is an ass and a snob. 

I guess we have to give him credit for having a beautiful sidekick and never hitting on her, given that his dad is a rapist and one of his half-brothers is (reputedly) a sex pest and the other half brother is (definitely) an incest perp. But I feel like it doesn’t take much to be the best Jin of his or his father’s generation.

The Jin folks are snobs and talk about how great their fancy and expensive stuff is. It’s an interesting contrast with true connoisseur Nie Huaisang, who loves everything that is fine and beautiful and can quote stacks of poetry off the top of his head, but is not even a little bit of a snob. 

This Tea Smells Like Farts

Ok, let’s talk about generation names in the Jin clan. Ru is the name for Jin Ling’s generation, hence his courtesy name Rulan. The name for the current generation is apparently Zi (子), because both Zixuan and his jerk cousin Zixun have that as their name.  Sect Leader Jin Guangshan would seem to be using the generation name Guang, but then names his son Jin Guangyao so…the whole system breaks down. 

Anyway, my point here is that even considering generation names, if I had a baby and named it Zixuan, and my sister-in-law promptly had a baby and named it Zixun, I would slap her. 

Find you a lover who does not make you feel like this 

Jin Zixuan is mildly intrigued by his betrothed, and expresses it by being rude to her in front of Wei Wuxian, starting a chain of events that will culminate with Wen Ning’s fist going all the way through Jin Zixuan’s chest.

Side Note: Look at these young Jiang Brothers and their casual shoulder hugs. Sigh.

Wei Wuxian’s Combat PlayBook

When Wei Wuxian wants to throw down, he starts with smack talk, moves along to boundary crossing, then to direct threats, and then brings out a weapon if he hasn’t won already. 

Here he starts shit with Jin Zixuan by complaining at him for taking up too much space and having too many sycophants.  Then he goes for the unwelcome shoulder touch. 

Having been sufficiently provocative to get someone to draw a sword and threaten him with physical violence, he shifts to formal verbal sparring. 

This gets the other guy to back down, because even at this age no-one actually wants to tangle with Wei Wuxian, and Wei Wuxian gets to claim the moral advantage, although he still doesn’t get to keep his hotel room. 

Actually Not A Fan of My Sister’s Betrothal

Jin Zixuan and Jiang Yanli have the first of many, many moments of heterosexual ineptitude together. Wei Wuxian quickly rescues them.

Hi, I’m Young Master Cockblock.

Neither of the boys understands what Yanli sees in Zixuan and neither do I, at this juncture. He does improve later after multiple beatings from Wei Wuxian.

This Is The Day Your Life Will Surely Change

Yanli’s encounter in the Inn is the first step toward the inexorable end of the three of them as a unit, although it’s still a long ways off. They are all growing up and she and Wei Wuxian are both going to fall in love at summer camp, like in a 1980s teen movie but without the virginity betting (presumably). 

Meanwhile poor Jiang Cheng is going to be swept along just trying to keep up with events, which becomes the story of his life for the next two decades.

Welcome to Transylvania

We meet Wen Ruohan. He is boring and he sucks. Also I’m summarizing the Transylvania parts out of order because they break up the rhythm of the story. And are boring and suck.

We meet Xue Yang. He seems nice.

Wen Ruohan’s living room is like a shitty nightclub where everyone is too drunk to dance except Xue Yang.

Dee Jay: Undead undead undead, Bela Lugosi’s dead

[OP can’t get a video to embed in this post with looping enabled, so the alternate version of this joke has its own post right here. That will teach OP to get fancy.]

Anyhoo

We meet Wen Qing. She is the bestest most wonderful girl in the world but this isn’t actually when we find that out. 

Right now we just find out that she is absurdly pretty, that she loves her brother deeply, and that she is helping Wen Ruohan with his “take over the world by murdering cultivators” project. OKAY, PROBLEMATIC, BUT SHE IS THE BESTEST GIRL OKAY? 

Gatekeeping

The Jiang Clan don’t get another inn but they do manage to change into immaculate white robes while they’re out on the street, so - nice work, Jiang Clan. Be free!

They get stuck outside the gate because they don’t know that the secret to getting into Cloud Recesses is to set the gate guard on fire. 

Walking Thirst Trap Hanguang-Jun

Lan Wangji shows up and everyone except Yanli, who is already in love with Sir Golden Pants, makes thirst faces at him. Including Jiang Cheng tho he will never admit it. One girl in the background is actually biting her knuckle. 

Note: Lan Wangji knows exactly how fine he is. Look at his fucking hairstyle. 

He is sixteen years old. The only person in the entire cultivation world with fancier hair is Nie Mingjue, and that’s because he indulges his dìdi’s braiding hobby. 

Wei Wuxian loudly stage whispers that LWJ is their key to getting in and LWJ is is like, not fucking likely, person I didn’t glance at yet. 

But then Wei Wuxian says a smart cultivator thing about the puppet dude, and Lan Wangji turns around and has the first of many long mutual staring sessions with this boy he totally isn’t going to like at all.

Jiang Cheng has a bad feeling about the future: a 2-frame gif

Unrelated gardening note: the red-crack puppet is more commonly grown in Gusu and Dafan, while the black-line puppet is native to Yiling

I Must Arrange a Date with this Uninteresting Boy

The rest of the evening is a series of tests that Lan Wangji puts Wei Wuxian through. Wei Wuxian doesn’t know this and Lan Wangji probably doesn’t exactly know it either. 

First he sends WWX back to town to get the invitation. Yes, go get it. Not your entourage; YOU, talky person who thinks he can manipulate me and is smart and looks...intriguing. Go find it and come back. 

When Wei Wuxian complains, Lan Wangji silences him, which is literally the most boss move he could have used on smooth talking Wei Wuxian. 

You tried, Fuckboi.

Would you like to try some more because I think I would like you to try some more

Jiang Cheng is the Better Baby Brother

Sorry, he just is. Wei Wuxian is all about being taken care of and adoring Yanli without actually doing much for her. Jiang Cheng is the one who thinks about her feelings and giving her what she needs, even to the point of arranging that wedding rehearsal dinner so she can be with her favorite brother again -- the favorite who isn’t him, much as she also loves him. 

Date Test 1: Can You Get In.

Once Wei Wuxian is definitely gone, Lan Wangji shows up again and collects the entire retinue, guaranteeing that Wei Wuxian will be stranded outside the gate when he gets back.  LWJ doesn’t wait by the gate; he goes and waits up on the roof instead of going to bed or whatever else he’s supposed to be doing. Because he already knows the route Wei Wuxian will be taking. 

Wei Wuxian passes the “get in through the wards” test with no problem besides a minor headache and bent fingers. 

Is that Xiao Zhan’s hand or did they use a double-jointed hand model?

Date Test 2: Fight Me (Lan Wangji’s Combat Playbook)

As soon as Wei Wuxian shows up on the roof, Lan Wangji picks a fight with him. 

LWJ fights all the time; he’s perfectly comfortable when he’s fighting and it’s a good venue for him to express himself. His style is graceful and aggressive. 

Attack attack attack strike a pose, vogue, you know it.  

He starts by going all in on swordplay, but that doesn’t gain him the advantage; Wei Wuxian fends him off without ever drawing his sword. Which is probably the hottest thing that has ever happened to Lan Wangji in his young life.

Do you like me better when I’m horizontal? 

Next Lan Wangji deploys the pettiness by breaking WWX’s wine. Then when Wei Wuxian starts insulting him he upgrades to next level pettiness by dropping another silence spell, this time with the added bonus of preventing WWX from drinking. 

Wei Wuxian’s Combat Playbook, Redux

Meanwhile Wei Wuxian is running his own fight routine, starting with a charm attack, which doesn’t work at all. 

Are you admiring the moon? 

He keeps trying to de-escalate for the first phase of their fight, until they reach a pause and he reflects that Lan Wangji has real skills. As soon as he makes that determination he goes on the offensive - with words. 

He very formally says he’s too busy to continue fighting, and turns away, which is a pretty solid roast when you say it to someone who’s been trying really hard to kick your ass. Then he continues defending easily until Lan Wangji uses the wine against him. 

At this point the gloves come off, with Lan Wangji lecturing Wei Wuxian, Wei Wuxian making ad hominem attacks, Lan Wangji forcibly shutting him up... 

...and then throwing him on the floor in front of Lan Qiren and Lan Xichen. 

Sincere Grief for the Death of our Colleague

Lan Qiren and Lan Xichen feel really bad for their disciple who has been horribly turned into an undead creature. Ha ha j/k

Date Test 3: Face the Authorities

Lan Wangji gets to pick Wei Wuxian’s punishment.  This probably won’t awaken anything in him. 

Surprise surprise, Wei Wuxian actually passes the Authority test with flying colors. Lan Qiren doesn’t like him, but listens respectfully to his thoughts about the undead cultivator. And Lan Xichen clearly does like him.

When Wei Wuxian learns that Lan Wangji was nice to his sister, his entire demeanor changes, to such an enormous degree that Lan Wangji starts to run away.

He’s not going to let this boy (who has passed all the tests oh no he passed all the tests) make out with him in front of his family like he is obviously planning. 

But once again, Wei Wuxian’s cultivation knowledge captures Lan Wangji’s attention and breaks through his reserve. 

This Hardy Boys moment is the beginning of their cultivation partnership.

Lan Wangji is brave but is extremely constrained: by the authorities in his life and by his own rigid reserve. Wei Wuxian is brave and is also free. His companionship gives Lan Wangji an opportunity to engage with a much broader range of the things that interest him than he’s ever had before. 

After Wei Wuxian has been sent to bed, Lan Wangji stands outside and -- just as WWX had suggested at the beginning of their date/fight -- admires the moon, with an expression that’s anything but upset. 

Sure, sex is cool (probably), but have you ever analyzed a walking corpse with a beautiful boy in the moonlight?

If you’ve got your true honey Life can be pretty funny If you've got money, money to burn Rooty toot toot for the moon It's the biggest star I've ever seen

The Fine-as-Hell Brothers

Alone together, Lans Xichen and Wangji talk over the various things on their minds. 

Xichen: What the fuck is up with you? ...Rooftop fights and dropping spells on boys?

Wangji: You and uncle were ignoring me so I was making my own fun

Xichen: Yeah, we are dealing with this zombie situation; shit’s going to hit the fan

Wangji: what are you going to do about it?

Xichen: fuck-all

Wangji: Well, you can rely on me

Xichen: I totally do. So how about you get to know this Wei kid, he seems like a fun ride.

Wangji: *death glare*

Xichen: You know, since Dad died you’ve become even more uptight. I wonder if I’ve been too strict with you?

Wangji: Um, you think? 3000 fucking rules, dude. Fortunately I’m not going to go off the rails and fall in love with my polar opposite and cause havoc in the cultivation world or anything like that.

Xichen: good, me neither

Outtro

Writing prompt: Lan Xichen’s secret nightly letter to his Mom’s memory or spirit (your choice), in which he confides in her about his day. May be written in flute solo form. 

(As always if you use this prompt feel free to post a link to your fic in comments!)

Soundtrack: 1. This Is The Day by The The  2.  Bela Lugosi’s Dead by Bauhaus 3. Rooty Toot Toot for the Moon, Greg Brown version 4. Madonna, Vogue

Bonus: FineAsHell-Jun

Episode 04 Restless Rewatch coming soon!

[tsuumu]

hii! i really like your blog so far, you’re writing is really good! this idea just popped up in my head so idk if it’ll actually make sense but i’ll try lmao. so could you write some headcanons of sugawara, tendou, and kuroo w/ a shy s/o who gets jealous of some girls that come up to them, and she tries to tell them that shes jealous, and how they would react to that? thank you so much, and i’m sorry if this doesn’t make sense lmaoo :)

kuroo, tendou and sugawara with a jealous s/o.

good evening anon! this req is written in a school setting with various s/o personalities. i really hope you like it. <3

(the kuroo section is CONSIDERABLY longer than the other two and i apologise for that!! D: )

• nekoma’s volleyball team had become quite popular after the nationals tournament, where they had fought tirelessly and with extreme talent for everybody to see. people knew of the members and especially of their handsome captain. kuroo was prideful of his position and liked to flaunt his team’s successes to those who were interested, unknowing that they were probably more interested in him.

• he’s been talked about a lot lately. your friends always want updates on your ‘volleyball prince’, to which you promptly swat them away. he’s not a famous person. he’s just a high-school boy. a really cute, out-going, intelligent high-school boy.

• kuroo spends his free time in classes with girls on, around and at his desk, happily answering all the questions they gave him.

• unfortunately, you’re not so pleased. since tetsu had chemistry exam prep, his class has moved just a few doors down from yours. usually you wouldn’t get to see him during class because the lab work was done on the other side of the school, however he cheerily mentioned the change to you this morning whilst you were walking together.

• it happens as you’re on your way to your next room, stopping abruptly at the thought of the walk and peering in to see what was going on. after a short few seconds of scanning, you catch sight your boyfriend’s signature, dark hair. he’s chattering away to his female classmates.

• you really can’t help but feel a slight pang in your chest.

• you’ve never been overly protective or possessive of kuroo, at least, there had never been circumstances that lead you to feeling that way. you just stand there momentarily, staring at the varying expressions of the girls. tetsu is so oblivious. they’re totally hitting on him. you can’t help but sigh out. yes. he’s the talk of the town right now but wouldn’t you stop to ask him if he’s even single? you’re not angry, just a little bitter that you couldn’t sit with him like that and let them know of your existence.

• one of the girls closest to kuroo punches his arm lightly and you focus your attention back on them. you can’t figure out what on earth the actual conversation is about but she keeps placing her hands on his arms when she’s laughing or speaking enthusiastically.

• you’re not a fan of that at all, it makes the jab at your ribs heavier. you decide, ‘fuck it’ and push on the door to open it. it’s entirely on impulse and the nervousness sets in when the classroom quitens and -give or take- twenty eyes are set onto you.

• the second kuroo turns his head, he stands up at once, that shit-eating grin you know and love dearly plastered all over this face. it’s like the conversation with anybody else ended the second he saw you.

“woah. i didn’t know the next teacher was gonna be the love of my life! no, but seriously, what have you done to him, babe?”

you push on his chest lightly and tell him to quit it, cheeks burning at how loud he is, before embracing him tightly and wrapping your arms around him. you feel much safer.

• yaku chucks a piece of balled paper at you two from another area of the classroom.

“hey, you two. i know we signed up for chemistry but not your chemistry!”

• kuroo just throws it back, before kissing you on the forehead. you mumble into the fabric of his button-up that you’re just on your way to your next lesson and you’ll probably be late now. you just wanted to see him and tell those girls you’re uninterested. he chuckles out, moving back slightly to tuck a strand of your hair behind your ear.

“well i’m glad you did. this was the best surprise ever.”

• he leans closer, pressing his lips to your ear in a coy whisper.

“what girls? there’s girls? i thought they only made one in this entire world just for me. if it’s not another you, i’ll pass.” the corners of your mouth tug into a smile, burying your nose more into him.

“hey, kitty. as much as i’d like to keep you in here forever, like a cat that very obviously has another owner, i’ll just have to see you after class. i’ll be right outside your door. okay? now scram.”

• he flicks your forehead and walks with you to your next class. you grumble playfully. on your way, you meet eyes with the girls earlier. they’re shell-shocked, previously unbeknownst of your existence, you give them a small wave before holding his arm tightly and smiling to yourself.

• tendou is the life of the party wherever he goes. everybody seems to know him and it’s not always because of volleyball. he just seems to be friends with everyone. he’s the type to be chatting with teachers, students, the old, the young. he’s a mood setter and everybody loves him.

• you fell for him. hard.

• before dating him, it made you a little agitated that everybody got along with him so well. you never knew if his smooth words and instantaneous charm were factors of all his conversations. you could never approach him, since you’d never been good at displaying romantic intentions through actions. unfortunately, these small thoughts persisted even after he himself approached you and asked you out for coffee after school one day, despite not knowing you at all. even after he kissed you on the step of your door months later. even after he eventually begged you to be his.

• you aren’t too big on publicly displaying your relationship. initiating PDA was never your thing. you weren’t embarrassed of him at all, you just preferred to stay completely professional and education-orientated when in school. he’ll tease you, once even told you you remind him of a female ushijima... before staring at the ground to reflect on his own comment and taking it back vehemently (he doesn’t want to imagine dating his best friend in front of you).

• whenever you ask him if girls talk to him, he hushes you copiously, assuring you that every man and woman that’s entered his life after you as resembled humanoid blobs in purple uniform. he has eyes for only you.

• you’re a little cold, you tend to be when jealousy sets in. like that one day your friend told you that this notoriously pretty second year had approached him, handing him a blank lined sheet and asking for his help with her english work. you found out later that she’d thanked him with fluttering eyelashes and big smiles, before frowning down at the paper.

• he’d ended up practicing his signature over and over on the page because -and you quote- “i suck at english too but this paper was good document-signing practice, so thanks!”

• a relief washes over you. you and tendou are stark opposites, in fact, the only time you ever feel obliged to lose your cool is over him. however, you know he’s loyal. he loves you very much and hopes that you’ll come to trust him with your entire heart one day.

• you vow to work on it, hard.

if sugawara was my s/o i’d just accept that everyone else would probably fall in love with him too

• this boy is made of honey. the first time you laid eyes on him was during first year, noir jacket slung over his shoulder, beautiful, silver hair rustling as he tried to shut the class window as you walked in, you were hooked.

• you felt utterly helpless at how infatuated with him you were. your friends all felt the same way. picture: sighing together and staring whenever he did ANYTHING. he was so sweet to absolutely everybody. nobody could ever bring them selves to defy, ignore or be aggressive with koushi. from the start it felt like you had competition.

• you’re a happy-go-lucky, loud-mouth shithead with an abudance of enthusiasm and energy but this third year makes your knees shake. walking up to him on a summer’s evening to ask him out, you could barely even talk. luckily, he did all the talking for you. your time together has been nothing but loving history.

• sugawara likes to spend his free time with you, often lunches, where he’s adamant on feeding you lots and lots of his own cooking to ensure you’re well-fed.

• imagine your surprise, when you’re walking, hop in your step, over to your usual meeting place and see your boyfriend sitting with another girl, feeding them. your heart practically falls out of your ass. steps slowing, you don’t even try to hide your alarm as you approach him. koushi’s face is to you, smiling and laughing. he catches sight of you and waves happily.

• your expression doesn’t change. you’re confused, hurt, unsure of how to act. should you just pretend like everything is fine? you feel like criticising them but they’re just eating. god, you’re overthinking this.

• “(y/n)! say hi to hinata!”

huh?

the girl turns around.

oh god.

• hinata’s blowing unattractively on strands of hair that are stuck to his face, before leaping up to greet you. he’s wearing a god damn wig.

“ah! (y/n), hi! i took totally weird, don’t i. it’s for this stupid drama class. i seriously thought i’d get to act and do fight scenes and look super cool to girls but instead, they made me dress up as a high-school girl! it’s ‘cause i’m short, they said!”

• you’re not even listening, just wallowing in your shame at how panicked you were.

“—i ran into sugawara and he let me try some lunch, have you eaten?” you shake your head, before grinning and suddenly grabbing the younger boy, trapping him in a playful headlock and making him squirm.

“oi, hinata. you gave me a scare, makin’ me think some doe-eyed lowerclassman was chatting up my boyfriend!”

• he whines and apologises profusely. koushi just sits and laughs, munching on his lunch and watching you give the poor boy hell. he’d never dream of that, he know you’d do worse to him if that were ever the case.

[zontiky]

au where the apocalypse was never a threat or a concept to begin with

*cracks knuckles* now i could make this a decent upbringing au OR i could make it EXTREMELY COMPLICATED and you know me you know exactly what im about to do ;)

reginald THINKS he’s prepping them all for the apocalypse but reginald is a child-abusing FOOL and an alien BASTARD and there’s no apocalypse there never was there never will be. the world is safe and sound but the hargreeves children aren’t.

five runs away from home and gets thrown into april 1st, 2019. the world is thriving. he did it. he tries to get home but he can’t because he’s stuck and im now realizing that everyone reading this post has seen a million fics with this exact concept but FUCK YOU THIS IS MY CITY NOWWW

so he’s stuck in 2019 and he’s like ah fuck ah SHIT what now! and goes to the academy and it’s not like he was super far away from it in the first place. he didn’t even make it a mile away it’s like a 5 minute walk back home lmao

now because reggie thinks there IS an apocalypse he still killed himself and i hate him a lot so cough ahem anyway

five shows up on the mansion and expects dad to be sitting there in his office, doing his evil dad evil villain thing yk the drill

but instead he comes in to an empty house. mom is unresponsive. he cant find pogo (dont ask where pogo is. hes doing monkey butler things ok). and diego is climbing in through the window

five freaks out because WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU THIS IS MY HOUSE and jumps diego and diego goes down HARD because WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT MY DEAD BROTHER?? MY BROTHER WHO DISAPPEARED 17 YEARS AGO?? WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCKKKK

so they try to beat the shit out of each other for a second and by that i mean five tries to beat the shit out of diego whos gained his senses by now and is trying to convince his brother (his BROTHER) that technically he lives here too please stop punching me

luther comes downstairs.

“IS THAT FIVE???”

“SHUT UP AND HELP ME THIS LITTLE FUCKER CAN PUNCH”

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA”

they manage to calm him down when five catches sight of diegos tattoo

WAIT I FORGOT THAT THE FUNERAL WAS BEFORE APRIL FUCK NEVERMIND SCRAP THE PAST 13 BULLETS ABORT MISSION

so five lands in april, goes to the house, and by then the hargreeves have cleared out and are back to doing their own thing more or less. he comes up to the door and grace (pogo has fixed her by now because i said so) welcomes her son back home like he never even left

she gives him a hug

reginald is gone and she hasnt seen her sun in years and dammit, he deserves that hug okay? she gives him a hug.

five pulls away. mom hasnt hugged him for years because he stopped letting her and he’s not about to change his mind now

“where’s everyone?” he asks. he doesn’t even consider that everybody is gone, because where would they go? or maybe it just hasn’t hit him exactly which time he jumped into, maybe he still hasn’t made the connection exactly what age his siblings are now, maybe he has but he still hopes he can deny it for a little while longer

grace wants to hug him again but she refrains. she calls his siblings

one by one, in the span of the next week, she gets ahold of them and calls them back to the academy. “important news,” she says. “you’ll want to -- you’ll need to be here,” she says. “your brother,” she says, and her children listen and come back home

luther is at the academy when five gets here. because, where would he go? he can’t go back to the moon, and dad is gone, and he’s never even been on a bus alone before, where would he go?

when five sees him for the first time he almost cries, because he’s so much bigger and taller and older and what happened to him??

this is his new reality. this is the new luther

but it isn’t, it can’t be, because five is going to get back home and he’s going to fix it, he’s going to fix this and he’s going to grow up just like his siblings did, and it won’t even be long before he’s back home almost two decades ago.

vanya is next to arrive, and five almost -- almost -- smiles at her and gives her a hug and teases her how she’s still shorter than him, but she has such a blank expression on her face and the way she looks between the portrait of him (he hated that portrait from the beginning, he wanted to burn it because hes back now, isnt he? and he’ll go back home and not leave again, but pogo didnt let him) stops him. it will only be a couple of days and he’ll be going home already, he tells grace, so maybe the others dont even have to come here. she nods and smiles and says nothing

diego comes a day or so later, dragging klaus along, and five is stunned by how they look once again. diego looks battle-hardened and angry like he never did just last week, five’s last week, but now he scowls and doesn’t stutter and dresses himself in black and he lives alone and diego looks so lonely but five doesnt think about it because its not his business and he knows better and its diegos own damn fault for cutting contact, isnt it? and even if it weren’t five will go back and fix it all

five knows klaus has been doing things for a good year or so know, but this -- living on the streets, giggling even as diego forces him inside, making lewd jokes with his eyes out of focus -- he couldn’t have even imagined. he stamps down the feeling of i should have been there to help stop him and doesn’t think how sad and angry at their father seeing klaus like this makes him feel, instead he forces thoughts of it’s his own fault he ended up this way and i’m going to get back and fix this (but that’s not a thought he has to force. he will. he has to. it won’t even be another week before he figures out how to get home)

allison gets there next. she took the first plane she could get on to get home and pushed off all her appointments but she had a family emergency just last week and it was hard to get away and she looks so sad even when she opens her arms for a hug and five cant help but relent and give her one. diego scoffs and allison lets loose a dig thats more of a barb thats more of a sharp sentence splitting the air and hitting her brother square in the chest. five doesnt say anything but his stomach twists. just a week or so and he’ll fix it because even as children they never said things like that to each other

he waits for ben to come last. he must be the most adjusted of them all, right? ben read a lot last five saw of him, and hes one of the smartest of them, and secretly five always thought that ben deserves to have friends that he doesnt live with

ben doesnt come

he asks mom and she smiles and he asks the others and they look away and he asks again and someone -- and it doesnt matter who because his ears are ringing and hes stumbling back and falling onto the couch -- says that ben died. ben died years ago.

ben died four years after five left

fives head is spinning and he needs to get back, he needs to stop it he needs to fix it he needs to make it all better because it was never supposed to be this way

(you thought this would be a happy au didnt you?? haha bitch think again)

(it is but they have to get there smhhh)

klaus laughs and elbows the air next to him and five asks, he doesnt beg, he asks him if he can summon ben

everyone scoffs. rolls their eyes. klaus is high as a kite and hes holding a bottle of whiskey and he looks like he hasnt been sober in days. weeks. years. and he’s a liar and ben is gone for real, im sorry, five. i know this must be hard for you

that can’t be right. five wasnt there for all of klaus’ lies and stealing and drunken sobbing. five remembers klaus rolling a joint at the breakfast table like it was last week -- and it was, it was, he’ll fix it still, but to five klaus is still just his brother. just klaus

he asks, not begs, five doesnt beg but he comes damn close in this moment, to tell him the truth

and klaus looks around and ben whispers please, klaus, just try and five is looking at him with wet eyes and he’s thirteen he’s so young and -- he can’t say innocent. none of them have ever been innocent, not since reginald hargreeves adopted them all those years ago. but five...

he tells the truth. and five believes him

so anyway five cant get back and then they decide well ok five while youre staying here we might as well buy you some clothes. ones that arent literally 20 years old. jesus these uniforms are ugly

my jaw is clenching so hard and im cold asdflksdh so im gonna end this here and maybe rb it and continue lated idk 😳😳

WHOOP this is getting away from me i know u didnt come here for quote poetic unquote bullshit but weihfsdkjdhskf THATS WHAT UR GETTING I GUESS XX <3