#its hard to tell but shes wearing a veil ^_^

[teddydeer]

my real life daughter her name is princess blossom bunny ;w; lil picture of us under the cut!<3

her eyes are a lil uneven she is so perfect

[babydollmarauders]

SECOND TRIMESTER — JACK HUGHES

jack hughes x fem reader

part of the el!hughes au

summary: when y/n (Lovie) is having trouble sleeping and her pregnancy hormones are at their peak, Jack convinces her she won’t make his injury worse by riding him.

warnings: NSFW CONTENT, p in v (unprotected), pregnancy sex, slight degradation, praise. (2k words)

notes: everyone’s been asking for a Jack and Lovie smut, so i thought when better to do the first one than when Lovie is feeling extra needy?

my husband and i lay on opposite sides of our mattress.

i’m curled up on my side, one leg curled up towards my stomach and laid on a pillow, facing my husband but at least two feet apart from him. meanwhile, he sprawls lazily on his back, scrolling on his phone.

i peek an eye open to look at him, stretching out my arm and placing my hand on his naked torso.

Jack glances over at me in thinly veiled amusement, an expression of disbelief curtaining his face.

“so, when i try to cuddle you, you push me away and tell me to stay on my side of the bed, but now you wanna touch me?” he gapes, glancing down at my hand that’s plastered onto his abs.

“precisely.” i state, my voice groggy and words drawled, “we touch on my terms, and right now, i can’t sleep and i need to feel you.”

“but i can’t cuddle you?” his full bottom lip pokes out in an exaggerated pout.

“no. you’re like a furnace and your spawn has made me into one too.”

“my spawn.” he echoes my words with amusement, “is that what we’re calling our baby now?”

“mhm.” i hum in confirmation, readjusting my leg on its pillow and wiggling my body. “i forgot how hard it is to sleep while pregnant.”

Jack locks his phone, discarding it onto his nightstand.

“is there anything i can do to help you sleep?” i mull over his offer, carefully considering each option that my mind thinks up.

there’s only one that really interests me, but as soon as my eyes land on his injured shoulder, i shake my head.

“no.” i finally tell him, but he cocks a brow at my hesitation.

“you sure?” he questions, “because based on the look on your face, i’d say you thought of one.”

i eye his shoulder again, thinking it over once more; but this time, his eyes follow my line of sight before he sighs.

“you’re not gonna break me, lovie.” he ushers me forward until i’m curled up into him, my medium sized bump pressed against his side. “i’m fine and i’ll continue to be fine even if we cuddle.”

cuddle.

he thinks i’m afraid of cuddling him.

he thinks cuddling is what will help me fall asleep.

“that’s not what i want.” i murmur, barely above a whisper.

“huh?” his fingers dance lightly up and down my back, sending goosebumps throughout my skin.

“i didn’t wanna cuddle.”

“then what is it you need, lovie?” he asks in a hushed tone, his baby blues gazing into mine as i look up at him.

i press my lips to his chest, mumbling out my next words, “i wanna ride you.”

“i can’t hear you, baby.” my eyes flutter closed, a silent sigh leaving my lips when i realize i’ll have to repeat my statement.

“i wanna ride you.” i repeat, slightly louder this time.

Jack’s hand freezes on my back, eyes widening just slightly before they go back to normal.

“forget it, i’ll go make some warm milk or something.” i huff, making a move to roll away from him, but his hand wraps around my forearm, effectively stopping me from getting far.

“c’mere.” he orders, darkness clouding his eyes as his pupils blow out.

his chest puffs a little when i do as he says, crawling back over to him and sitting on my knees beside him. i look down at him, hair falling to curtain my face.

“you wanna ride me, baby?” one corner of his lips quirk up in a smirk, “you wanna sink that pussy down on my cock and get yourself off?”

my breathing is becoming labored, my thighs clenching at his dirty talk, and he immediately takes notice.

“you do.” he confirms, “you wanna wear yourself out and make a mess on my cock.”

a whimper draws up from the back of my throat, nodding my head hastily.

“go ahead, lovie.” he urges, pushing the comforter down and kicking it off his lower body.

he’s half hard already, his bulge beginning to strain against his gray sweatpants. my body reacts to the sight instantly, my dampening core becoming a puddle.

but before i can jump on my husband, i hesitate, looking back down at his injury.

“are you sure?” my voice is small and meek, unsure in my actions, but when i look into his eyes, i find them darkened with lust, pupils blown.

“fuck, baby.” he groans, throwing his head back on his pillow. “yes, i’m sure. now please, just ride me.”

he doesn’t have to tell me again, i make quick work of stripping off my oversized t-shirt, laying on my back and hooking my thumbs through my panties before trying to yank them down. but my bump prevents me from getting very far in this position.

“Jack.” i whisper, a little embarrassed by the predicament.

“yeah, lovie?” i can hear the amusement in his tone, making me roll my eyes.

“can you help me?” his face pops up in front of my own as he sits up, leaning over my body.

“i’ve got you, my love.” he takes over for me, hooking his index fingers in the sides of my panties and pulling them down my thighs.

“thank you.” i tell him as he throws the now dampened panties in a vague direction towards our hamper. “now lay down.”

he chuckles at my attempt of demanding, laying back down anyways.

i roll back over and get back on my hands and knees, crawling over my husbands body and hovering over his thighs.

“hi, beautiful.” he smirks, letting his fingers trail up my sides, but his hips jerk when my own hand comes down to palm him through his sweatpants. “fuck.”

i bite my lip, tugging at the hem of his pants until they finally come down just enough for his erection to spring out. i lick my lips at the sight, any other time, i would gladly take the moment to get my lips on him, but right now? i need him in other places.

i crawl higher up his body until my face is hovering over his, lowering myself just enough to capture his lips with mine.

a soft moan pours from my lips to his, my hips lowering to grind upon his hardened cock. his hips buck up, his hand now tangling in my hair as he pulls me in deeper. his tongue grazes my lips, urging me to open up to him, and i do so eagerly, letting his tongue into my mouth to battle with mine.

“Jacky.” i whimper against him, grinding myself down onto him again.

“sit on my cock, lovie.” he gruffs, and it’s just the push i need in order to grasp his length in my hand, lining him up with my entrance before i finally sink down onto him.

my head tips back, a moan escaping my parted lips, and his hand immediately covers my mouth.

“gotta be quiet.” he states, voice strained as my walls envelop his cock. “Luke and El are sleeping right down the hall. you don’t wanna wake them, do you?”

i eagerly shake my head, enticing him to let his hand drift away from my mouth and down to my full breast. he squeezes roughly, pinching at my nipple and pulling it.

my hips grind against his, my clit dragging along his pelvic bone, but i bite my lip to hold back my sounds.

“good girl.” he praises, causing a full body shiver to encase me.

i lift myself, beginning to bounce on his dick, and the squelches of him rubbing through my wetness spur me on, lowering myself closer to his chest in order to hit a better angle.

the tip of his cock hits my g-spot and my eyes roll back, my jaw going slack as i drag my hips up and then back down.

“you’re doing so good for me, lovie.” he whispers, leaning up to let his lips graze the shell of my ear. “this is what you needed, isn’t it? to fuck yourself on my cock like a good whore? get yourself all tired out?”

i whimper behind pursed lips, nodding my head, “yes, Jack. fuck.”

he leans back down, his head back on the pillow as his fingers grip at my ass. a strangled noise escapes his throat, his cock twitching inside of me as i swivel my hips.

“just like that.” he breathes, his hips beginning to buck up in order to meet mine.

my breathing is heavy, my hands forming fists on Jack’s chest as i begin to feel that familiar pressure settle in my stomach.

“oh my god.” my words are panted out, my legs starting to ache, but i push myself to finish.

“not god, baby. just me.”

my teeth sink into my bottom lip, a squeak leaving me as my hips begin to stutter, the knot in my stomach growing tighter and tighter with each meeting of our skin.

“Jack, i’m gonna-” i can barely finish my sentence, being cut off with a whine as his thumb finds my clit, beginning to rub circles into it.

“cum for me.” he orders, rubbing faster with each passing second, “make a mess on my cock so you can sleep.”

my walls squeeze him tighter, my legs shaking and my breath catching in my throat as my orgasm hits me. my hips halt in their movements, but Jack’s don’t stop, rather fucking up into me to ride me through my release.

until finally, he falters, his rhythm becoming sloppy as he reaches his own orgasm, his hot cum spilling into me in ropes.

his hand cups the back of my head, pulling me down so his lips meet mine, and i let him moan against them.

our bodies press against each other, as we lay there basking in the afterglow of sex, my eyelids fluttering open and shut, my body on the precipice of sleep.

“did it work?” he asks me, a gentle hand running up and down my back.

“mhm.” i hum, “are you okay?”

he sighs as i peer at him through my lashes, scanning his face for any sign of pain.

“lovie, i’m fine. stop worrying about me.” i pout at his response, nodding my head and laying it down on his chest.

“so what made you want this?” he questions, “the last couple months if i even try to insinuate sex, you look like you wanna beat me with El’s blocks.”

i press my lips to his chest, stifling a laugh.

“damn second trimester hormones.” i huff, “i’m so horny all the time right now.”

the corner of Jack’s lips quirk up in a smirk, “i think i love the second trimester.”

“shut up.” i giggle, rolling my eyes as i finally lift myself off of him, getting off the bed.

i leave my husband behind in order to use the bathroom and change back into my t-shirt and some new panties before i lay back down.

“okay, you can cuddle me.” i decide right after a hefty yawn.

“too late.” he says, an exaggerated pout playing at his lips. “i don’t wanna cuddle anymore.”

“too bad. i’m your wife and i want cuddles now so i get cuddles, because i’m carrying your child.”

Jack feigns an exasperated sigh, pulling me in so my back lays against his chest, his hand resting on my bump. he peppers light kisses up my shoulder and the side of my neck.

“i guess.” i can hear the smile in his tone, making me giggle.

“there is no guess. you love me.” i state, my hand coming down to lay on top of his.

“yeah, i love you.” he playfully concedes, pressing one last chaste kiss to my neck. “so much.”

“i love you too.”

sleep pulls at my consciousness, my eyes falling closed as i let out one final yawn, and just before i fall asleep, i can register the feeling of Jack’s hand soothingly rubbing my bump.

[cheolism]

for you, the world

seungcheol x gn! reader

summary: feeling as though seungcheol's feelings towards you had changed, you confront him.

wc is approx 2.4k

genre: angst and comfort. idol au.

warning/notes: a reference to the feeling of being choked. depression and anxiety from both cheol and the reader. mentions of depression and anxiety. serious discussions of feelings, feeling vulnerable, being honest even though it's scary.

request: how do you think scoups reacts when the love of his life asks him to love her more than she loves him

author: i realized you wanted a reaction and not a oneshot too late!!! but here's the requested reaction

You were twisting your hands, wringing your fingers and scraping your nails against your skin. You refused to look at Seungcheol, staring at his feet where he still wore the sneakers he had hurriedly put on before going to practice that day, having had no time to do much else after waking up late.

It wasn't hard to see the weariness on your face, not when you held your body away from him, as if he was a stranger you were about to bare your heart to and not the man you've been dating for four years.

You were wearing mismatched socks. Your sweats were uneven, one leg having rolled up to your knee and the other bunched loosely around your ankle. The hoodie was his, and Seungcheol knew that if he were to press closer he would be able to smell his cologne.

"Baby," Seungcheol began, hesitant.

You shook your head roughly, cutting him off. "Wait. Let me get all this out first. I'm trying, Cheol, it's just -- it's hard."

He nodded. Seungcheol smoothed his hands over his pants, trying to rub off the sweat that had begun to collect there. He would be lying if he ever tried to say he wasn't an anxious person, but concerning your relationship? Seungcheol always thought navigating your relationship was like sailing a under the brilliant sun, using its brightness as a guide.

But all of a sudden he felt as if the sun had given to darkness and rain, thunderclouds cracking overhead and stirring the sea; he was in uncharted territory, and he felt as if time was beginning to work against him.

You took a deep, shuddering breath, composing yourself. "I'm just -- it's hard. Being honest. Not in the way that people think. If someone asks me my opinion on something I'll give it, but this. Being honest like this is hard."

That's what Seungcheol liked about you. You were honest. It dripped off of you just like your sweetness did, just as thick as honey. You were honest with your words, but with your expressions moreso. More than once, when Seungcheol pointed out a certain look or expression you got, you would explain that your face was your weakness; even if you had ever managed to tell a lie, your face would give it away.

But this honesty, the honesty you were trying to give to Seungcheol, was different. It wasn't telling Minghao that his brightly colored outfit wasn't coordinated, no matter how Minghao would try to convince you otherwise. It wasn't your look of disgust when Mingyu tells a joke that doesn't land.

It was the honesty of taking your soul out of your chest and revealing it. It was showing someone the deepest, darkest thoughts that lingered in the back of your mind, in hidden corners that no sunshine could ever reach.

It was, Seungcheol knew, the same honesty that had him calling you at three in the morning, sobbing, as he felt his depression grip him around the throat and squeeze to the point of no return.

So he was still and silent, observing you. Letting you speak.

"I think --" you tried once, twice, voice and heart rebelling against one another. "I feel. I feel, wrongly, horribly, that -- that you don't love me anymore."

For a moment Seungcheol didn't understand what you were saying. It was like when someone suddenly speaks about something that happened long ago, a veil of fog over the memory before it was revealed.

But then the accusation filtered through his ears, through the fog. It pierced through his brain and landed in his heart, digging into it, puncturing.

He opened his mouth immediately to protest. Seungcheol loved you. He loved you.

When he was younger and still bright-eyed, when he sang about first loves and flower paths, when it felt like it was him and his members against the world, Seungcheol hadn't really taken much stock in the words he sang. They were words that Jihoon so eloquently wrote, each holding the considerable weight of their future success and whether it was worth it -- whether Seventeen was worth it. But they were words.

But then he met you, dated you, fell in love with you. And he understood what it meant when they sang about feeling clumsiness around a crush, when he had the irresistible urge to tell you about his adoration for you. Every single word he ever rapped or sang seemed to have made sense. Every single word, from the first ever song to now, was for you. It was all for you, even if he didn't know it at the time.

And now --

Now you were saying --

"I know -- I know what you'll say," you rushed on, having seen his bewildered look. "I know it. Seungcheol, I know you love me. I know it. I know, I know, I know.

"But at the same time --" Your voice cracked, and you turned your head sharply. Your arms moved to cradle yourself, squeezing your shoulders. "At the same time I have this voice. This thought. And of course I was able to ignore it, for the longest time I did. But now --"

Seungcheol watched as you took one deep breath, lungs filling. You held it for three seconds; released. You did this twice more, eyes squeezed shut, shoulders rising and lowering.

He immediately recognized it as something he taught you. He had researched ways to soothe oneself and had stumbled upon this breathing technique. Seungcheol remembered your wide eyes as you looked up at him, awed with how well it worked.

"Now," you said, voice calmer. You still didn't look at him. "Now it's like you don't even want to be around. Around me. You get home late from practice, getting stuff to eat with the guys after. And that's fine! Of course it's fine for you to hang out with them, of course it's fine for you to hang out with your friends. I'm not saying that. I'm not.

"But you come home late, past the time I can stay up because of work. And then I wake up and you're still asleep. And on the weekends you wake late, because you're exhausted, of course. But you wake up late and have no time for anything other than a shower and a meal before you go running off to practice. And it repeats."

You reached up, rubbing at your nose. You had been crying, Seungcheol realized. "Or you go and hang out at Hybe with the boys. And I can't go there. You know that. Or hang out with them and their friends, their expensive and shiny friends, and you know how I am with strangers. You know what it's like to be the only dull thing in a room of shining people."

And he did. Fuck, he did.

"You don't even text me," you cried, your voice finally giving out. Your hands went to your cheeks, furiously rubbing. Seungcheol wanted to cross the room to you in that instant, to take you into his arms and press kisses to your forehead and tell you to save it, that surely this conversation could wait for another day.

But he knew it couldn't.

Not when you were crying over it, not when it was so obviously driving you to exhaustion worrying about it.

"I text you all the time. I text you about every single fucking thing that makes me laugh or smile because I think it'll make you happy. I tell you about whatever dog I see, about whatever kid I see running about. And you just -- you don't even respond.

"And I know the messages usually aren't about anything important. But I just -- you can't even acknowledge it?"

You took a deep breath, trying to calm yourself. But it was no use. You were sobbing. You were sobbing like your heart was breaking, and Seungcheol knew his was.

"It's like you won't even acknowledge me," you sobbed, chest heaving. "You won't even look at me, it feels like!

"Seungcheol," you slapped a hand over your mouth. You weren't even stopping your tears now, not even wiping them away. It was just as bad as seeing you trying to hide them, Seungcheol thought.

It was like you were giving up.

"Seungcheol," you began again, voice thick, "why can you love me like I love you? Why can't you love me just even a fraction more than I love you?"

It was like you had been preparing him for the plunge. You put him in lukewarm weather, then cold. Each and every word of yours was preparing Seungcheol, was giving way to some horrible truth that was clawing out of the back of your mind, leaving its dark corner. But then you picked him up out of that cold water and plunged him into Arctic water, the temperature shocking him and electrifying his body.

Because nothing, nothing, could ever prepare him for that.

There were a few things Seungcheol couldn't imagine you ever saying. He couldn't imagine you ever saying that apple juice was better than orange; that football was better than basketball. Just like he never, ever, could have imagined you saying that you doubted his love for you.

It was like you and Seungcheol were standing in the rain. It was soaking your clothes, making your hair cling to your head. There was no sun, it being hidden by thick dark rain clouds. Both of you could hear the rain smacking against the pavement.

But, nonetheless, you were turning to him and saying how you liked bright and sunny days like this one.

Then, Seungcheol realized, the two of you weren't just standing in the rain. He was being pelted with it, his love so obvious for you that it seeped into his clothes and in his very being. But, even though you were standing beside him, you were holding an umbrella, protected from the rain.

You were quiet in front of him, shrinking back into yourself. You were turning your shoulders from him, clutching at your elbows as you hugged yourself. Still you were hiding your eyes from his. "I'm sorry, Cheol. I know it's ridic --"

Unable to help himself, Seungcheol was shooting off the couch. Your body was in his arms before he really realized what he was doing. He was pressing your body into his, feeling your elbows awkwardly dig into his chest, your face dig into his collar. Almost instantly your tears were soaking his shirt.

"Listen," he started, voice thick and stern. "Listen to me, baby. I have spent every day of the past three and a half years loving you. I have loved you through some of the worst fucking days of my life."

Seungcheol pulled away, his hands going to your cheeks. He wiped at your tears, your eyes shining from them. You sniffled; he echoed it.

When had he stared crying?'

"You listen to me," he said, feeling his jaw clench. He didn't let you look away, turning your face to keep his eyes trained on yours. "I have loved you even when I hated myself. Even when I didn't know how I could love anyone or anything, I loved you.

"I loved you when you showed up for our sixth month anniversary wearing that cute smile and the little cherry earrings. Remember them? I loved you when you took me to meet your grandparents, loved you when I brought you to mine and my grandpa couldn't believe how I managed to find someone as sweet and kind and clever as you to call my own.

"I loved you when you got Josh to teach you how to make bracelets so you could make one for me. I loved you when you sat with Jeonghan and made me that silly Lego flower set. I loved you when you stayed up far-too-fucking-late to FaceTime me on tour. I loved you when you got me that silly little fucking bear at the Airport Giftshop for way to much money just because you said it reminded you of me.

"I loved you when I did nothing but sit in the dark. When you would show up with food and love and just hold me.

"That doesn't just go away," Seungcheol breathed, blinking to try and see you through his tears. "I've always loved you. Always. Nothing can change that."

You burrowed into him, your hands clinging to his shirt. Seungcheol squashed you against him, feeling as if even a centimeter of space between the two of you was too much.

"I'm sorry." He licked his lips, pressing his eyes shut and laying his head on top of yours. "I'm so fucking sorry. You should never, ever, feel as if I don't love you. As if I won't fucking climb Mount Everest naked for you. As if I wouldn't give everything I am to be the one privileged enough to spend the rest of my life beside you.

"You are so important," he said. "You are so important. To me, to the members, to your family. To my family. To every single fucking person you've ever met. You are worth so much more than I could ever give. But I will spend the rest of my life giving, giving you my love and adoration."

You nodded against his chest. The two of you stood there in the dim light of your living room, arms wrapped around one another. Seungcheol sighed, squeezing you.

"I will send you texts every fucking minute of every hour," he vowed, as if such a thing could mend your broken heart and erase the past hour of tears. "I'll send every bird, dog, cat, mouse -- everything. I'll make you show up to every after-practice dinner. I'll drag you out of the apartment in pajamas if I have to. I'll wake up bright and early and make you a gourmet breakfast."

"No, you won't."

Seungcheol laughed weakly. "You're right. I can try, though." "I'll appreciate whatever you give me," you murmured into his clothes, voice still small and weak from crying. "Even a bowl of cereal."

But you didn't deserve a bowl of cereal, Seungcheol thought. You didn't deserve a text every minute, didn't deserve a picture of every fucking animal on Earth. You didn't deserve dinners after midnight, didn't deserve omelets or bacon or sausage.

You deserved the world.

And Seungcheol would spend the rest of his life giving it to you.

[scoupsahoy]

leaving like a father, running like water

[crossposted to ao3]

It’s 1991 when Steve finally does what his father’s been telling him his entire life, which is: he grows up. Hawkins is stuck in time, a ticking time bomb, a place that’s never really needed him.

That’s okay. People needed him to stay for a while.

Robin needs him. Stuck to his side, constantly over his house, hardly going back to her own. He hears fighting from the inside for a while before he stops taking her back. Violence and vitriol and venom. And he needs Robin, too, needs her to be by his side, needs her to put him back together after the town splits down the middle.

It’s mainly her.

The kids needed him for a while, but they were always stronger. More magical. He was a piece of shit when he was their age, didn’t understand a single fucking thing, and they just knew. They’d lived entire lives right under his nose. They’d fought and won and lost and lost and lost and won, and they were always smarter than him anyway. More resilient.

And Hawkins can hardly be called a place anymore. It’s gray and rotten and barren, and the kids live there because they grew up on its streets and underneath them, but Steve. Steve has only been beaten down by this place, realizes he has to grow up somewhere else.

His parents give him the house and he sells it immediately. No one’s buying land in Hawkins, but it’s land, the town will take it, they’ll take anything they can get, and so will Steve.

They drive west until they hit Las Vegas and they get hitched at one of those sleazy casinos so people stop asking questions.

Steve dips Robin low and kisses her on the cheek behind a veil and the drunk witnesses don’t notice that her cackle is at the ridiculousness of people ever thinking they could be together. And hopefully in a while she’ll be one of those girls on the news wearing a shirt that says Lavender Menace but she could never have been that girl in Indiana.

And Steve. Well.

Before they really decide to leave, Steve gets drunk and hooks up with a guy he’s never met before and never seen again, a drummer in a little metal band playing just outside Indianapolis when he was convinced he was just testing a theory, and then Alexandria Brown, who had a fucking tongue piercing, just to make sure girls still get him off, and then Ronny Jackson, who was in AP Calc and a huge loud weirdo but otherwise gives him the best orgasm of his life. And he otherwise chases what Robin lovingly calls “the Munson High” until it clicks for him.

He leaves because without the kids to take care of, because he can’t play mother hen forever, Hawkins is nothing but a rotting open grave.

So they drive farther and hit San Francisco with ring pop rings and get a nice two bedroom apartment from a landlord who doesn’t ask questions, and that becomes home.

Steve is twenty four when he decides to grow up.

The problem with growing up is the growing part. Stretching his limbs and pounding at his muscles and working long hours lifting heavy boxes onto wobbly shelves for nine hours a day. He sees ghosts in the grocery store and monsters in dogs on a walk and it’s hard out here pretending this has been his only life. But at least there’s beer.

“Steve,” Robin flies through their front door, crumpled flier in hand, right when Steve cracks the can open. “Put that down.”

“Why?”

“We’re going out tonight. This was in our mailbox. I think it’s a gay club.” She smacks her hand on the counter, spread out over a piece of paper, probably too excited to realize there’s no way Steve would be able to read it.

He puts his beer down anyway before asking what should be an obvious question, because he actually isn’t trying to turn into his father, and because he’s a good friend. “Why would someone slip a flier for a gay club into our mailbox?”

“I think Addie and Rose from down the hall put it in there. Doesn’t matter. Go with me.”

And. Steve stares at his beer and the tiny television they got when they moved in so they wouldn’t die of boredom. They were going to watch Turner Classics or something because that’s what they always do on the weekend.

He looks back at sweet, hopeful Robin and sighs. “One of these days I’ll say no to you.”

“No you won’t,” she says, bright and shiny, runs into her closet of a room to get dressed and shouts through the apartment. “Also, for the record, you need to get laid!”

“Say it louder, I don’t think Addie and Rose heard you.”

“Don’t say that unless you mean it, because we both know I will.”

So Steve puts on real clothes, nothing too nice, and runs a comb through his hair. It’s a bit longer now than it was when he was a kid, long enough to give him hat hair at work, short enough that he’s not immediately clocked as a freak.

On the walk there, Steve decides his primary goal is to make sure Robin has a good time. His secondary goal is to make sure neither of them get into too much trouble. And the third, if the first two goals go well, is to get head in the bathroom, or, if he’s really lucky, give head in the bathroom.

They haven’t been in San Francisco for very long, considering how long they stayed in Hawkins, but there are regulars in their neighborhood, people he recognizes from work, people he recognizes from the store. It’s like they’re making a life here, almost.

The bartender is a guy who’s jogging route passes in front of their apartment most mornings on their way to work. His grizzled face breaks into pleasant surprise when he gets his eye on them.

“Oh, I recognize you two,” he says, pointing two fingers at them. His voice has a midwest twang to it. Kind of reminds him of home, not that he needs reminding. “That married couple up by that one deli. You guys lost?”

“We’re not.. really married,” Robin says, in that ridiculously un-subtle way she tends to.

Steve shoots her a look. “We’re legally married.”

“Yes, but as friends,” she emphasizes, shakes her naked ring finger at the bartender before leaning both elbows onto the bar and resting her head on her fists. “Tell me, do women frequent this establishment?”

If anything, despite the anxiety burning Steve’s ears red, the bartender at least seems amused. He nods over to a corner of the club closer to the stage and she’s immediately off in that direction, leaving Steve alone on a barstool with a man who knows way too much about him now.

Most of the rest of the bar is empty. Being a club, most people are on the dance floor or in dark corners or against the stage. Steve’s always been the kind of guy to sit by the sidelines. At least, since he graduated.

“She seems quirky,” the bartender says, no malice in his voice, pouring a drink for another patron and sliding it down the bar.

“Yeah, try living with her.”

He heaves a belly-laugh that makes Steve make real eye contact with him for the first time since getting in. “I’m Ricardo.”

“Steve.” They shake hands, firm and friendly.

“Not lost, then?”

“Nope.”

“Thought so,” Ricardo says, though Steve does a quick check of his hair and his clothes, see if anything gives him away. And he must be tense, because he continues. “Hey, relax, let me make you a drink if you want. We don’t bite.”

That shocks a smile out of him, enough to ask for a rum and coke. And Ricardo nods, and Steve tries to remember how to be social again like he hasn’t spent the last five years exclusively hanging out with teenagers and Robin. “That’s a shame. About the biting.”

“Don’t you worry about that. I could introduce you to a friend. He’ll do anything if you ask nicely enough,” he laughs, handing over the drink.

Steve squashes down how flustered that makes him. Robin’s right. He does need to get laid.

“It’s kind of funny, actually. Thinking about it, you’re exactly the kind of guy he usually goes after.”

“What’s that mean?”

“You know. Athletic. Good hair. Very normal looking,” Ricardo makes vague gestures at Steve’s general likeness and he tries not to take it personally. “He usually comes by on Saturdays. In case you were curious.”

“What’s his name?” Steve asks, even though he’ll probably forget, by the amount of rum he can taste in his drink and the way a man with more than one tattoo on his neck looks at him from down the bar.

He does manage to remember, because it’s kind of a weird name. And pretty quickly Steve decides that hooking up with someone in a bathroom isn’t too much trouble to get into at all, and Robin is loud and excitable across the club and he shouldn't worry about her too much anyway. So Jacob with the neck tattoos drags him into the bathroom by the hair at his nape and pushes Steve to his knees and the roughness of it gets him off without even being touched.

And his jaw is sore and his knees are bruised and he thinks about the guy named Winn who usually comes in on Saturdays, who likes guys that look like Steve, who will do anything if Steve asks nicely enough.

On the way out Robin has another girl’s lipstick on her teeth so she can’t say anything too scathing, but she does give him the Munson High stare.

He climbs into her bed that night because he has dreams about monsters and bats and open graves. He thinks about Eddie Munson after five years of him being gone, after only really a few days of knowing him, never knowing what he tasted like and chasing it anyway.

•

It was 1986. Eddie Munson died.

•

It’s 1991, deep into summer, and Steve sweats through his work uniform every single fucking day, takes twice as many showers as he can probably afford the water for, and sometimes it’s so hot in California that he starts to think he might be seeing things.

Robin tells him he’s been hit in the head too many times, which is objectively true, and if he were more self-preserving he’d probably benefit from going to a doctor about it. His father would call him crazy, he knows that, too.

Sometimes at work he’ll see a new-hire with Dustin’s curly hair, the style he had it in years ago when there was a chance he could grow up normal. And Steve will go home on those days and call the Henderson home phone until someone picks up and tells him he’s safe.

And lately, on Friday afternoons after work, when he goes straight from work to the grocery store to pick up whatever he can for dinner, he swears he catches a glimpse of Eddie. Just for a second. Like he’s a ghost.

And there are things wrong, always, the hair, his style, the walk, it has to be a hallucination.

Eddie’s been dead for five years, dead in a different state, in a different universe. And there’s no one to call when he gets home.

The feeling of it sits in his gut and festers like a poison. He doesn’t know why it’s getting worse since coming here. Chasing the Munson High.

They don’t go back to the club very often. They probably should. Robin needs to get laid just as badly as Steve does, but he’s never been the type to let loose when he felt responsible for someone else, not since Nancy. San Francisco is big and gay and new and it’s not quite home yet, and they’re from smalltown Hawkins, Indiana. He doesn’t know how to let his guard down.

But.

“We’re going out tonight,” Robin tells him, sitting next to Steve on their little couch with a sandwich and swinging her legs across his lap as a table.

“We are?”

She nods, smiles, speaks with a mouth full of food. “Yep. We’re going back to the club. And I’m the designated driver.”

“You don’t drive,” Steve blinks. “And we walk there.”

“Then I’m the designated walker. I’ll cart your little drunk self back home. Unless you go home with someone else, of course.”

“What the hell are you going on about?”

Robin smiles her little Robin smile, the one where she’s clearly feeling pity, which she knows Steve hates, and will not apologize for it.

She puts a hand on his shoulder. “Your nightmares are back again. You’re worrying too much about me and everyone back home,” back in Hawkins, she means, their old home, “and it’s Saturday night and as your wife, I’m forcing you to go out and get drunk and get laid and stop worrying about other people for once.”

“There’s plenty of things to worry about, Robin,” Steve points out, even though it’s a losing battle.

“I’m a big girl, Steve. The apocalypse isn’t coming to San Francisco, and I’m pretty sure if it did I’d be able to handle it until you sobered up.”

She’s right. He knows she’s right.

Fuck. He knows she’s right.

So he lets Robin eat her sandwich and he gets changed into something that won’t make him die of heatstroke (because if he survived the past eight years and throws it all away in the basement of a club, he’s going to march into hell pissed off). And he makes himself look good and he wonders if Jacob with the neck tattoos is coming tonight, or maybe a drag performer, or maybe Winn who knows Ricardo.

They come up with a game plan on the way, because Steve is nothing without a game plan, basically the only thing that’s kept him alive this long. He’s going to get as plastered as he likes, and Robin is going to hopefully hook up with a drag king, and they are going to check in at midnight. And if Steve goes home with someone, he’s going to let her know before he goes, and he’s going to have a good time (this, she is adamant about), and he’s going to call her if he plans on spending the morning in bed.

Robin tells as much to Ricardo when they get in, orders Steve shots before setting his watch to go off at midnight like he’s fucking Cinderella. She looks Ricardo right in the eyes and demands him, “make sure he gets plastered.”

And get plastered Steve does.

“I was wondering when you’d be back,” Ricardo says. “Not really your scene?”

Steve leans an elbow on the bar. “It’s not that. I like to be careful. I know that this is San Francisco, but still. We’re from Indiana.”

It’s a half-truth, at least. Indiana itself was part of the problem, it always was. Not safe for Robin, not safe for him. Steve always had to pick the safe option. Tonight is really the first time he’s not going to worry about it.

The world is a scary place, even without all the monsters. Ricardo must understand that. Steve takes another shot.

“Illinois.”

The liquor burns down his throat this time, hits him like a punch, “What?”

“I’m from outside Chicago,” Ricardo says, which explains the midwestern accent.

Steve breathes, the buzz starting in his chest. “How long did it take for you to get used to this?”

“Kid, we’re all still getting used to it.”

He takes another shot at that. He thinks about the things he’s getting used to, the new place and the new world and the way the world spins. The way the ground here isn’t cracked and rotten and part of hell. The way he doesn’t have to worry about getting an annual concussion, hopefully, if he watches out, if he follows his rules.

He thinks about Eddie, which is a bit funny, because he doesn’t think he’s tried to think about him in a long time. Sometimes it happens like that. You know about someone for years and then you know them for a few days and then.

Impact.

And if he’s being honest, he’s never going to get laid like this. Sitting miserable at the bar. It’s a club. There are people and performances and men that he doesn’t have to be afraid of.

Steve has to do more than just survive, now. It’s been eight years of surviving and he gets to live.

So he gets plastered. Sloppily so, finds Robin and kisses her wet on her forehead and lifts her up for the girls by the stage and wingmans until she’s giggling and slapping at him and threatening divorce.

He gets bullshit drunk, chases his Munson High, grinds against a man with lots of eyeliner, hair so long he’s pretty. He tells him so against his lips and his hips. Doesn’t learn his name before he’s sitting back at the bar, a moment that hardly sobers him.

He sits for a while and breathes and people-watches and talks to Ricardo, and there’s a man with sunglasses down the bar, staring right at him. His hair is cropped short and he’s covered in tattoos, and Steve flags Ricardo down.

“Am I really drunk or is that guy staring at me?”

Ricardo smiles, response sloshing around in Steve’s brain. “He’s definitely staring. I told you that you were his type.”

“Oh shit,” he says, “that’s Winn?”

Steve doesn’t stick around long enough to hear anything other than the confirmation. And if Winn gets tense, Steve is too drunk to notice. He wants to drink and he wants to make out and he wants this guy to do whatever he wants with him. He wants to flirt and get in his pants and go home with him. And he’s a reckless drunk and he’s okay with it.

“Hey,” he says when he sidles up, rests his elbows on the bar.

“Hey.”

His voice is gruff and deep, surprisingly so. And he looks out into the crowd for a bit, so Steve can peek behind his sunglasses to see what they’re hiding. “I was wondering if you were planning on buying me a drink.”

Winn smiles, and it’s bright, even if it isn’t huge. It looks shocked, unused, awkward in the lips like they’ll crack open. Steve wants to get bloody on them.

“Now why would I do that?”

“You’ve been staring at me all night,” Steve says, even if he doesn’t know that it’s true. It’s true enough. “And Ricardo told me that I’m just your type. Was wondering if you’d ever make a move.”

“Wow. And you couldn’t make a move of your own?” His voice wavers a bit, a teasing jolt, something familiar, weirdly.

Steve drags his eyes down Winn’s body, his plain black shirt, and dark wash jeans, and the lean muscle that sits underneath. “What do you think I came over here for?”

“You’ve got me there. But I don’t think I was staring at you.”

“I’m pretty sure you were.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m wearing sunglasses, so I could have been staring at anything,” Winn says, turns his shoulders towards Steve’s, like they’re closing in on each other.

“You’re looking at me now, at least.”

“That’s true.”

“Any chance you’ll be looking away any time soon?”

It’s fun. Their back and forth. He can tell Winn likes it too, cheeks red, even when the lights change to flash yellow and blue and green. His voice cracks higher for a half second. “None.”

There it is.

“Good,” Steve says, curls his fist into the front of his shirt and pulls Winn down to him. He can feel the snag of chest hair in his hand, swallows the little groan he lets out into his mouth. He wants to get drunk on that, too.

He knows how drunk he must be, out in the open like this. He knows how selfish this must be, and he couldn't give less of a shit about it. Steve wants.

Winn hesitates for a fraction of a second, the kind of second that drags on when you’re drunk, and then kisses back the kind of kiss that empties your entire mind. His tongue is hot, licks into his mouth like fire, and he doesn’t taste like liquor. It’s just cigarettes and sweat and Steve wants to drown in it.

It turns out that Winn is the take control type. The do whatever you want if you ask nicely enough type, if he’s remembering correctly. He’s solid and bone-crushing and not nearly close enough. Steve is desperate and hungry in a way he hasn’t let himself be in years, doesn’t care about the consequences, wants Winn to make a mark on him that won’t go away.

And Winn gets them both drinks, gets Steve just what he likes, takes his own shots like they’re nothing. He downs them like water and Steve stares at his throat like he wants to build a home inside of it.

There’s a little bit of talking, but mainly making out, and a lot of touching hip bones and exposed biceps and the tender skin at the juncture of Winn’s neck, and ordering drinks and feeling reckless and not giving a shit.

And then his hands are in Steve’s hair, pulling, kissing him again and again, and his knees nearly collapse right there.

“Take me home,” Steve finds himself saying. “Your home. Take me to your place.”

Winn laughs, a sharp sound, “You’re a little drunk, buddy.”

“Sober me up then,” Steve says, slides his free hand up Winn’s leg. He tests a theory. “Please?”

And that does something.

He is pretty drunk, and otherwise his blood isn’t particularly focused on his brain function as much as his dick, honestly. But still, Winn makes Steve dizzy with it, with want and need.

It’s quick and reckless. Steve tells Robin he’s going home with Winn, that he’ll call a cab in the morning, and she salutes him on his way out.

The air outside is just as stale and hot as the club, and Steve leans into Winn’s arm while they walk.

“I hate how hot it is here.”

“You might have come to the wrong place, big boy,” Eddie says. Or, well, Winn says it, but Steve stops short in his tracks, feeling like a tape getting rewound, cranked slowly. It’s five years ago all of a sudden, just for a second, and Winn catches Steve by the bicep and if Steve were feeling more like himself he might have flexed or flirted or something. “You alright?”

And he’s back in the present, skipped ahead with a scratch. “Yeah.”

“Don’t die of heatstroke on me. I have water at my apartment. It’s not far.”

It really isn’t far. Winn keeps his sunglasses on even though Steve can hardly see a foot in front of him as it is. He wonders for a second if Winn has real eyes, or if he sees through his lenses like screens. Or maybe he can’t see at all. That seems unlikely.

He wonders if Winn has Eddie’s eyes, too. Big and brown like he’d never seen before or seen since. The real Munson High: not a guy with long hair and rings and tattoos and weird interests, but a guy who looks at him like that, like Eddie did. Intense and sure and determined and unafraid.

“You remind me of someone,” Steve says, sloshed, uninhibited.

For all accounts, he should keep his mouth shut. Steve is actually trying to sleep with this guy, and he can’t imagine that comparing him to his admittedly life-changing but violently dead friend from five years ago is going to be appealing.

And this guy is cool, Steve tells him so. His style and his walk and his demeanor and how he tastes like cigarettes, the kind you roll yourself.

He thinks, maybe, keeping it lighthearted will be best. If this is the final destination of the Munson High, it doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Or scary the way seeing the ghost of him in his grocery store is.

Winn keeps him talking, though. “Someone nice?”

“Oh,” Steve blinks. He isn’t quite sure, which seems unfair, but he doubts Eddie thought Steve was all that nice either. “Maybe. He was nicer than me, maybe. He was good, I know that. We had a lot going on back when I knew him, but you have the same kind of smile. And manner of speaking. All that.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

Steve is too drunk really to read into the way Winn’s posture changes, maybe it has something to do with the fact that they’re at Winn’s apartment already. It’s not far at all. In fact, Steve could probably make it back home in fifteen minutes if he wasn’t so far gone.

His apartment is small and a bit messy, and it’s quiet and a little impersonal. Not much on the walls, no pictures of family around. And sometimes it’s like that here, he’s learned. Not everyone has a Robin. But at least Winn has a Ricardo.

The entry space isn’t too warm. It’s actually nice and cool. Cooler than the club, certainly cooler than the outside. Like, Winn must have good air conditioning. “Jesus Christ, are you rich or something?”

“I can’t believe that you of all people would ask that,” Winn says. Steve doesn’t bother asking what that means but he wonders. He looks for hints in Winn’s sunglasses or the familiar weight of his hands.

“I feel like I can breathe,” Steve takes a deep breath and spins, almost topples over, and Winn catches him by the shoulders. Firm hands. Familiar. They’re familiar. “Woah, thank you.”

“Not a problem, dude.”

There it is again. That tone of voice. Steve has got to be fucking hallucinating, honestly, all of a sudden overcome by this pulling in his chest.

“Is dude really an appropriate thing to call someone you’re trying to sleep with?” He flirts, the only cylinder in his brain that’s firing like this. Everything else is fighting drunken confusion and Eddie and trauma. And it’s not fair that this is happening now.

Winn’s sunglasses are still on. “You’d be surprised, Stevie.”

He stumbles and trips over a cable and it feels like 1986 again and 1985 and 1984, and it’s a black and slimy vine, something that will slither around his neck and ankles and choke him out. And the next few hours are a confusing haze, because he collapses in Winn’s arms. He gets taken to the couch, a fucking ugly thing, and he can’t breathe and it’s humiliating.

It’s been a while since an episode like this. The first few weeks in San Francisco were like that, peeking around every corner, distrustful of every shadow. And the feeling of being back there mainly sticks to nightmares, something he can blame on his dreams.

But he got used to it. He got used to San Francisco and normal problems like being broke and hating your parents.

Steve knows what’s real and what isn’t. He’s smart. He hasn’t gone insane. He’s not crazy, except, he definitely looks crazy to this guy. This poor guy. Not-Eddie. Eddie’s not real. Or, not anymore.

He never should have come here. He should be with Robin. She knows what’s real too. She can talk him down. She’s good at it.

He can’t see for what feels like an hour or what he knows is realistically only a couple of minutes, and then he can, because Eddie or not-Eddie rubs circles into his back and puts a glass of ice water in his hands and tells him how cold it is. He narrates the droplets of condensation that track down his skin and into his watch, which still hasn’t gone off yet.

This is the longest night of his fucking life and that’s saying something, it’s saying too much.

“You’re okay, man,” Eddie or not-Eddie says, calm like he’s used to this feeling, when nobody could be. Nobody but the group of them who fought monsters in alternate dimensions, who were nearly killed off and then paid off by government organizations. It’s why Steve and Robin came here in the first place. To get away from it. Somewhere where no one would know. So they wouldn’t have to see the effects of it every day and breathe the awful polluted air.

A chill runs up his spine. The air conditioning whirrs. A thought comes to his mind: he likes it cold.

And he thinks he’s hyperventilating again, he must be, because Winn is concerned and takes off his sunglasses and Steve gets a good look at his eyes and they’re Eddie’s. Like he took them from him. Like the world is fucking with him, like they never won at all and this is Steve’s fucking ticking clock. Like the last five years weren’t real, like nothing is real.

By some grace of God, that’s too much for his brain to handle, and he passes out right there on Eddie’s couch in Eddie’s arms in San Francisco in 1991.

•

It was 1986. Eddie Munson almost died.

•

It’s 1991, and Steve wakes up hungover in a room he’s never been in before. It’s dark still, and his head is pounding, and he’s sure it’s from the alcohol. But it centers around his eyes like he’d been crying, something he doesn’t let himself do all that often, and it floods back.

His eyes barely adjust and there’s an old Metallica poster on the wall and a stack of books in the corner of the room and a guitar pick necklace hanging from the corner of a mirror and nothing else.

Nothing else recognizable, at least. Nothing else personal, not that Steve can really say he knew Eddie personally. It’s nothing like Eddie’s room at home five years ago, the one he had to clean out because Wayne and Dustin were too heartbroken to do it themselves. With his guitars and posters and fliers and lyrics and chord progressions. With his drugs that they threw back into Rick’s house. That he and Nancy made sure to keep far away from the kids, because God fucking forbid they touch them.

It’s too dark to tell if this is the Upside Down or one of those clock hallucinations or if it’s just night.

There’s no reason Eddie Munson should be alive.

There’s no reason, really, that Steve should have been thinking about him for so long, anyway. For thinking of Eddie as this special thing to him, a high he’s chased for years, a person he recognizes pieces of in strangers on the street. That must be what this is. Punishing him for not letting him go. When he hardly fucking knew the guy.

But that’s not right, either.

He’s shaking, and the bed creaks with it, and the door opens slowly, and he holds his breath until Eddie walks through.

Because Eddie walks through. His hair is cropped and his neck is scarred and his face is older. There aren’t rings or patches or buttons on leather and denim. He looks different and exactly the same, and the light from the other room floods from behind him like a halo, like he’s a ghost.

Steve knows that this can’t be his imagination, though, can’t be the effect of some spell or hypnotism or post-traumatic stress, because he’d never imagine Eddie like this. Barren.

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” Eddie says, like it’s a normal thing to say, like this is a normal thing to do, and Steve kind of wants to kill him again.

The light flickers on, bathes the room in an ugly yellow. “What did you do?”

“What?” Eddie stops short. Water spills over the rim of a glass Steve didn’t notice he was holding. “You had a panic attack and passed out. I brought you to a bed.”

Steve shakes his head. “You died! You died five years ago! What did you do? Did you make a deal with Vecna? With the guys at the lab?”

“Jesus, no!” Eddie steps forward and Steve tenses. His eyes flash, and they’re just as big and swirling as Steve remembers, but they’re dark, and he holds his other hand out, placating. Is he a vampire? Is Vecna even dead?

“Was any of it real? Is any of it over?”

Exdie crouches, and he takes off his shirt, and Steve must still be a little drunk because he stares at his chest and the curls of hair scattered around. But behind that, more clear now than it was in the club, is scarred, discolored patches of skin, poorly stitched together, healed but slowly. Painfully. The scratches and scars run lightly up his arms and his chest, up into deep pinks and reds at the base of his neck.

“I didn’t die,” Eddie says, patient, practiced, like he’d been prepared to be found out. Which begs the question: what was the fucking point? “I nearly died. I thought I died. But I didn’t.”

Steve fumes and he tries to follow and he stares at Eddie’s skin, thinks about all the people he couldn’t protect.

“We mourned you. Dustin was,” Jesus Christ, it hurts to think about, “torn in half. You let us all think you died, but you let him think you died. We would have helped you.”

Eddie stares like he’s brokenhearted, and Steve is done talking. His throat hurts and his head hurts and he’s too fucking old for this. He dares Eddie to explain himself.

•

It was 1986. Eddie Munson didn’t die.

He really did think he was going to. He’d already accepted it, and if Dustin got to live, he would have done it over and over again indefinitely. He would have relived the pain forever, and he knew it even when it was excruciating and he tasted blood and venom and whatever else.

The only thing he wouldn’t relive was Dustin’s face, dirty and tear-tracked and sobbing.

Eddie faded out and faded back in. He couldn’t open his eyes, but he heard the others come back, heard them tear Dustin off of him, heard the rumbling of thunder and the splitting of earth.

One thing Eddie learned when he was young, when his dad put his mom in the hospital, was that hearing goes last. The last moments wrapped up in loud silence.

He didn’t know if he believed in heaven, but the screams and the cracking and the laughter from Vecna sounded a lot like hell, especially when it didn’t stop. When it kept going. When he thought he was dead.

But hell seemed to spit him back out.

Didn’t want him. Go figure.

He was hardly alive, though. Alive in the sense that he was sometimes conscious and his heart was chugging, pushing blood around his body.

And eventually, in Hawkins, real Hawkins, he crawled until he ended up in the Hendersons’ backyard. He’d heard a story once, right before he died, that Dustin had taken in a little monster until it could live on its own.

It was a long shot, but he was hoping the kid would be willing to do it again.

He was.

Eddie bled sludge onto the concrete of Dustin’s cellar, and Dustin stole antiseptic and gauze and painkillers from where they were keeping Max in the hospital and from the donation drives and wherever else, Eddie never knew. He soaked needles and string in hydrogen peroxide and sewed him up in the really gnarly gashes that wouldn’t scab over, placating Eddie with whatever was in his mother’s liquor cabinet.

And it was fucking hell.

He will never remember most of it.

But as soon as he could stand upright he cut his hair short and hitchhiked to Indianappolis and took a one-way bus to California and didn’t look back.

There was no way he could. Every step was a miracle. He was a man on the run.

But nobody except his uncle knew that his name was Edwin, that his mother’s maiden name was Langley. Nobody except Rick, who’d made him a fake ID before he got sent to prison so he could run off to San Francisco after he graduated, or after Wayne got sick of him, or after shit got really bad.

And well.

It killed the poor kid, he knew it, but he hoped that knowing he was alive would lessen the blow. Even if he swore him to secrecy. The kid was loyal. Could keep a secret.

Dustin is nothing if not stubborn. Packed Eddie’s bag with a note with his home phone number and a radio frequency and a threat, a promise, to tell the police exactly where he was if he didn’t confirm proof of life at least once a month.

An extremely charming scribbled note on a piece of paper he would keep in his bedside table that read: I WILL MAKE ELEVEN FIND YOU. LIVE.

So Eddie Munson – if you asked his ID, Edwin Langley – if you asked anyone else, Winn the Mechanic – didn’t die in Upside Down Hawkins, Indiana in 1986. He laid low for five years in San Francisco, a place where people run to all the fucking time and don’t ask questions, didn’t make too much money, didn’t make too many waves.

He got rid of anything that would identify him. That was the hard part. All Eddie Munson had was his identity. Was his band and his music and his club and his loud personality. And he’d never held himself back for anyone.

He figured, though, if he was going to hold himself back for something, it would be for the teenagers who fought monsters. Maybe, he thought, this way he’ll win. There’s no other way for them to win.

Eddie knew his odds. Every day was a stealth check. And for five years he rolled high enough. It helped staying mainly sober and playing the new performance of being mysterious and quiet. Like that was a new game in itself.

And then, one day, a drunk and traumatized Steve Harrington rolled high enough on investigation to crumble the whole thing down.

•

It’s 1991. And Eddie Munson didn’t die.

He was alive when Wayne and Steve organized a pathetic little funeral for him with sticks and pins and guitar picks buried into the ground on the right-side-up of where he got attacked by the bats. He was alive when Steve and Lucas spent nights in Dustin’s room, giving them a break from the hospital room and making sure they were doing okay.

For Christ sake, he held Dustin while they mourned.

Eddie was alive when Steve sort of pieced together why he was so heartbroken. When Robin asked why he kept Eddie’s jean jacket hung on the back of his desk chair, why he didn’t bury it or give it to Wayne. He was alive when Steve was confused and tired and drove out to Indianapolis and went down on some drummer with long hair and big eyes who called him baby and pretty and gave him a warning before coming down his throat.

When Robin coined the term Munson High.

And Jesus Christ, Steve is exhausted. He’s nauseous and dizzy and hungover and his mouth tastes like shit. He’s only pretty sure this whole thing isn’t an elaborate mind game.

“I don't understand, dude,” Steve says, running the palm of his hand flat down his face.

“What don’t you understand?”

Steve kind of wants to kill him again. “Why did you have to be dead? Why didn’t you tell the rest of us? Why didn’t you tell me? We were friends!” He clears his throat. “And why the fuck did you take me home tonight knowing damn well who I was?”

Eddie counts the questions off on his fingers, formulating his thoughts, and it’s infuriating to watch. Knowing that Eddie has had five years to think about this, and Steve is falling over on himself like a fucking idiot. Blindsided.

He speaks, and for some reason it sounds the exact same as it has in Steve’s memory, and it hurts. “The town wanted me dead, man. There were people coming after me with pitchforks, no questions asked, there was no saving me. Not after Jason died. Not after it broke national news. I couldn’t be missing or sent to jail or any of that shit. I had to be dead or they would kill me. And if they couldn’t kill me, they’d kill you guys for keeping me alive.”

Steve clenches his jaw and it sends the violent sting of a migraine into his eye. “We would have done it. We needed you–”

“That’s why you guys couldn’t know. You would try to fix it. If you knew I lived, you would patch me up and take me to your magical girl’s friends with the government and they would wave their wands, but I would be public enemy number one, and that was never going to change or get better,” Eddie says, a crack in his voice like he’s frustrated, like he has a right to be. “I’ve been public enemy number one since the kids in Hawkins found out who my dad was. It never fucking changes.

“I told Dustin because I knew he wouldn’t ask me to stay after I’d already made up my mind. I didn’t tell you because I knew you would. You would have asked me to stay and I would have done anything for you back then. And now, too. I just can’t say no to you, Stevie.

“But,” he finishes, “you needed to focus on the bigger picture. If you thought there was any shot I would make it, you would have taken it, and you would have gotten yourself killed.”

Steve breathes. He can’t do much to argue with that, but the parts of it that were personal, that made Steve feel like stained glass or the open mouth of a cave, like he was something Eddie could really see, those parts are hard to swallow.

“And?”

“And,” Eddie says. “I haven’t seen you in five years and I never got to kiss you back then, I never even thought of it as a possibility. And my cover was broken and I was drinking even though I don’t do that anymore, and you asked to go home with me, Steve. I already said I can’t say no to you.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh,” Eddie relaxes into a position more familiar, barely. The ghost of a posture Steve recognizes from five years ago. He wonders if he’s still the same or different in Eddie’s eyes. “And I wouldn’t have slept with you under false pretenses, I just figured you’d rather not be in a dark little gay club when you realized I was Eddie.”

He’s a little too tired for this. A little too broken. It’s a little too much.

Steve wonders if he would feel his heart stop if it did. Or if it would just feel like the same dull ache he’s been feeling for five years. More than that. Since his world turned upside down.

“You’re stuck with me, now. You got that?”

Eddie smiles, and it’s something so massive and heart stopping and sickening that Steve worries if it’s real at all. It’s just different enough. Five years older. Relieved and real.

“Yeah,” Eddie says, waterlogged and broken and also whole.

Steve would hate to break this, but he glances at the clock and feels a tension about a fifteen minute walk away. “You’re going to have to deal with Robin, though. And Dustin is going to have to deal with me”

•

In 1996 there’s a wedding in Hawkins, Indiana.

•

It’s 1991. Steve unlocks his apartment, cramped and kind of ugly, and full of life.

“Hey Rob?”

Robin calls from her little closet room. “No honey I’m home? Where has our love gone, Stevie?”

“Uh,” he shifts by the door. “I ran into someone last night.”

“I thought you went home with that Winn guy. Did he fuck your brains out? I should have told him about your history of concussions before I let you leave…” Robin trails off when she turns one of the snug corners of their apartment and makes eye contact with them.

And Steve can only imagine how they look to her, considering everything. Steve bringing home a man who looks more like Eddie Munson than is probably healthy for him. Looking exhausted, his eyes are chapped and red from last night. And Eddie looks kind of terrified, which he should. It’s a blessing that Nancy is on the other side of the country, because Eddie would be dirt in the fucking ground, probably.

“Hi,” Robin looks Eddie up and down with so much intensity that Steve can feel the heat of it. “I’m sorry. I’m Robin. I need to steal Steve away for just one minute.”

“Robin,” Steve manages. She looks away from Eddie and gives Steve a scathing Munson High stare. It quiets him.

Eddie speaks, though. That same old voice. “Robin.”

It’s pleading, almost. And it works. Steve and Robin joke about being able to read each others’ minds, but it’s like something really happens then. Exactly how he thought she’d react: confused, and then suspicious, and then almost angry.

“What is this?”

She doesn’t give either of them a chance to respond, just walks up to Eddie and pulls on the collar of his shirt. Steve looks too: the smattering of scars, years healed over but still gnarly, raised, skin crawling over itself like veins.

There’s this little quirk in the scars on Steve’s stomach, marks that never faded, speckles of black, like shards of venom from the bats stuck inside him. They play just underneath the pale scars on Eddie’s neck. And Robin’s face breaks.

“What the hell is this?

“I’m–” Steve thinks there’s going to be an apology from Eddie, half-formed, scared and desperate in a way that tears Steve’s heart in half even though it’s only just been mended. But Robin launches forward, unsteady on her feet, wraps both arms around his neck.

“You were gone,” Robin croaks into his skin. “I saw it.”

Eddie rubs her back, and Steve’s heart lurches at the memory of her and her brave face when they found Dustin hovering over his body.

“I’m sorry.”

“How are you here? Did they–” the government, the Lab, the Russians, the creatures, “did they take you away? Are you under witness protection? Who’s Winn?”

Eddie’s voice shakes while he explains it again, and Steve shakes while he hears it again, and Robin watches and listens with her usual intensity, careful and horrified and spinning cogs in her brain while she puts the pieces together. She’s always loved a mystery. A puzzle. She asks the right questions, gets the right answers.

“You’re not going to run away again, are you?”

Steve watches Eddie’s face. This beautiful thing. It crumples the tiniest bit, and Steve’s always been attuned to these non-verbal signs, these warnings. So for a second, there’s a wet anguish in his eyes, and Robin’s fingers curl hard into his shirt like a threat, and Steve worries that whatever comes out of his mouth will be a lie.

It’s too much like 1986 and Eddie’s smiling at him, curly and beautiful, promising that he’s not a hero. Like it’s 1987 and Dustin is sitting at Eddie’s grave like he doesn’t know where he is. Like it’s 1988 and Steve on the phone with his parents, telling them things are fine. It’s 1989 and Steve is telling Robin that he’s fine. 1990: this town isn’t sucking the soul out of him, he can stay for the kids, he deserves one more year as a kid himself, he still has something to offer.

It’s 1991, and Steve knows how to lie, and he’s never been afraid of being lied to. He’s only ever been afraid of the truth.

–

In 1996 there’s a wedding in Hawkins, Indiana. There’s no big white spectacle event at the town’s once-gaudy now-dilapidated church, no priests or preachers. The bride never believed in all of that, and the rest of them haven’t bought into it for at least a decade.

It’s a small ceremony. Steve walks Max down the aisle. He whispers to her that Lucas started crying the moment he saw her, Max says she knew he would, and Steve laughs, delighted.

He drops her off and falls back into Lucas’ groomsmen line, punching him in the shoulder on the way, lands his hands on Dustin’s shoulders and squeezes.

He catches Robin’s eye on the other side of the aisle. She’s still wearing their wedding ring, but she’s playing with the lace on Nancy’s shoulder, and Nancy’s smiling in a way Steve’s never seen from her.

It’s been a decade free of evil in this town, and Steve doesn’t often come back, but it’s moments like this where Steve remembers that this was his home, once. There aren’t towns like this in California, smattered with woods, filled with people who have always known him, who he doesn’t have anything to lie about to.

Eddie’s there. He hasn’t been to Indiana since he crawled out ten years ago. He’s sitting, playing with hair he’s been growing back out for five years.

There’s a tattoo on his ring finger, now, black and sprawling.

Steve stares at it the entire time.

–

It’s 1991, and Steve is back in Eddie’s apartment. There’s a nice radio in the closet, and the two of them sit on the cool ground in front of it.

Steve hasn’t taken his eyes off of Eddie in hours, what’s felt like years. He edges closer, like Eddie is a stray, like he’ll scamper away. And Eddie at least seems to understand. Press back, knowing there’s fear that he won’t.

He’s warm. That’s one of the most jarring things.

He still remembers how cold he felt, years ago, bleeding through his clothes, through Steve’s hands.

And now he’s warm and alive and Steve wants to be burned by him. Seared. He wants Eddie so close he leaves a mark.

Eddie turns to look at him, raises an eyebrow, “ready?” And he waits for Steve to nod before he turns on the radio and plays with the frequency.

“Obi-Wan to Luke checking in…” His eyes flicker up to Steve’s. “Over.”

Steve smiles. Of course Dustin is Luke. He’s almost surprised he isn’t Han.

It takes a few seconds for Dustin to respond, undeniably him, attempting to hide his excitement in the way he’s never been able to pull off. “Luke to Obi-Wan, confirming check-in. Is everything alright? We just spoke last week. Over.”

“Just peachy, young Skywalker. Though I do have a visitor. Over.”

“Are you compromised?” Dustin’s voice crackles with his natural intense panic. “Over.”

“No,” Steve leans into the microphone, keeping all points of contact with Eddie like he’ll float away. “But you are. Over.”

There’s a bit of amusement that Steve can see in Eddie’s eye, a smile that he can’t look away from. It makes this whole thing feel less massive. Everything’s felt massive for almost ten years, and Eddie just dissipates the whole thing. Like magic. Eddie’s fucking Houdini.

“Shit.”

“You didn’t say over. Over,” Eddie says, voice light.

It’s ridiculous, all of a sudden. Easy. Even though everything is an awful disaster, it’s easy.

“Shit… Over.”

–

In 1996 they stay at the Motel 6 on Cornwallis after the reception. They slow dance in the little space next to the bed, entirely sober, both of them. Drunk off each other, almost.

They don’t sleep, because they fuck like rabbits, and because Hawkins is still a little too haunted to get real rest, and because the Motel 6 is still a piece of shit even after rebuilding it in the 90’s.

The sun rises and it stays there.

[lilbitdepressed27]

Donna Beneviento/Fem!Reader

Summary: your her soulmate

Warnings: none

WC: 2.9k

Authors note: to the anon who requested a Donna/reader I hope you like it :)

You had been running for quite some time now. Having to avoid the villagers was hard enough as it is but now it was raining and you felt like your legs could give out at any second. This could have been easily avoided if you had just kept your trap shut. But no, you had been in a saloon gathering your bearings and trying to figure out why you were in this village.

Since you were a child you had a pull in your heart that made living uncomfortable. When you had asked your mother why, she had thought you were sick and took you to the doctors. But when they found nothing your mom thought you were crazy and just wanted attention. So you stopped telling her when your chest would start hurting and doing the weird pulling. This went on till you were twenty-two. Once you had the money you allowed the pull to lead you.

That's how you ended up in Romania. This hadn't been nothing like what you saw on the internet. The place had given you a weird vibe. Feeling like you went in a time machine and went back a few good years. This place was like a darker version of red dead redemption. But you'd do anything to get answers on the weird pull. So you thought it'd be smart to ask the bartender at the saloon.

It was not.

He screamed witch and that's how you ended up running through the dark forrest. You were able to escape being burned to death. You were bleeding and you were sure you were bruising as well. Having to fight your way out of there. Then you had no choice but to run into the forrest. Never would you have thought that you would be chased with torches and pitchforks.

But at a certain moment they stopped and you only had a second to catch your breath. You fumbled with your inhaler. Taking deep breaths trying to calm down your racing heart and aching lungs. Just when you caught your breath, you heard the villagers once again closing in.

"Fuck." You whizzed out. You noticed the most turning a weird yellowish color. Before you could really take in what was happening as you were running up the hill you stumbled on branches and roots. You heard the screams of terror from those villagers. You tried to run faster but you were losing energy quickly. Hearing the footsteps behind you grow closer. At the heavy breathing of those villagers.

Right when one of the villagers, you noticed it was the bartender that called you a witch was only a few inches away from grabbing you he suddenly, stopped? Causing you to fall and roll into a ball covering your head. You heard the bartender screaming and begging but you didn't pay them any attention.

The silence that followed was loud. The only thing that could be heard was your heavy breathing. You tried to find your inhaler with out rising your head. But you came up empty. Whimpering in pain when breathing was becoming harder. You felt what could be a small hand tapping your shoulder. When you looked up you saw that the hand belonged to a doll. That was moving on its own. Even though the doll was creepy in her white dress you saw she was holding your inhaler. She held out her wooden arms offering you the inhaler. Even though the doll was straight up terrifying, you felt...safe. You took your inhaler with shaky hands. And took it, shaking it before taking two puffs.

You stood on shaky legs feeling the dolls hands helping you up. You weren't sure why it was helping you but as long as it didn't hurt you. You figured it was safe.

"Th-Thank you." When you were able to calm down you looked down at the doll. Eyes widen when you saw a woman in all black, wearing a veil. Standing behind the doll. She was around your height. You stood a few inches taller. The familiar pull growing stronger when your eyes connected with the woman. Even though you couldn't see the woman's face you could feel the connection. The pull of the heart getting stronger. The woman held out her hand. Her rather small hand.

"Come with me, you'll be safe." A feminine voice rang out. The pull again was the thing to lead you to take the woman's hand.

**

You came to learn that her name was Donna and the doll was Angie. She was your soulmate apparently, Donna had explained she felt the same pull. Which was why she was in the woods last night. She had felt the pull stronger than ever and closer she got to you the stronger it got but it also grew warmer.

Soulmate.

This beautiful woman was your soulmate. You haven't seen her face but you knew she was beautiful. She sounds beautiful. Her voice was smooth, it was something you could listen to all day. She had explained how she researched on the pull.

When Mother Miranda had found out about the pull. She had barged into her home and demanded to know about it. Mother Miranda had never heard of such a thing and she wanted to know. Donna had explained it the best she could. Angie was the one do most of the explanation. When they were done Mother Miranda had told her that she’d never find her soulmate. That she’d never be loved. That any one would run the other direction when the saw her face. The words had echoed the her brain the more she thought of her soulmate.

But when the pull had started to feel closer to her she shot out of her house. She couldn’t believe it. Her soul mate was coming to her. From the pull she could feel that you were in danger. Angie had also felt it. They both hurried towards the direction of the pull. Finding you in a fetal position. A man standing in front of you with a axe, ready to struck down. Angie was the one to attack the man. But Donna had finished the job.

No one was to hurt you.

Donna had been surprised at how calm you were taking everything in. Ever since the fall of Mother Miranda things had been quiet. Her siblings kept to themselves and their areas while she stayed alone in hers. She couldn't complain. She liked being alone with her friends. The dolls have always been here with her, making her feel not as alone. But with the pull she had always felt this longing for someone. She was the smartest of the lords but yet she couldn't explain why she had this connection with you. The overwhelming need to protect you from the those villagers. Was so strong it was something she never felt before.

Donna knew from the moment she saw you she wouldn't be able to let you go.

*

It had been a week since you found your soulmate. You had yet to see her face, which you didn't mind you wanted her to feel comfortable with you. You and Angie got along pretty great. She was basically a child in a dolls body. It was how Donna had explained it to you.

"Look see that's a lion and I'm right there petting him. He really likes the belly rubs." You were showing Angie pictures you had taken with your Polaroid camera. You had plenty of pictures from the journey of following the pull. You taken the pictures of everything little thing you encountered on your journey to her. Hoping to show who ever was at the end of the pull.

"That's so cool. It's like a big kitty."

"Well they kinda are, lions, tigers, jaguar, leopard and snow leopards are big cats."

You and Angie continued to look through the pictures on the floor. She had moved to sit on your lap. You leaned back on the couch where Donna sat. She had a book in her hands but you could feel her eyes on the back of your head. You could tell that she was also looking at the pictures.

"Who's that?" You heard Donna finally speak from behind you.

You looked down at the picture to see that it was one of you standing facing the camera with a beaming smile on your face. But what was behind you was a woman. An older woman, your grandma. She was a beautiful older woman with an even more beautiful soul. She had believed you all those times you'd tell her about the pull. She had told you she had felt the same pull that lead her to your grandpa. He had been a great man. Your grandparents had always believed you. It was the main reason why you decided to follow the pull. Your grandpa passed when you were twenty and the year that followed your grandma passed as well. Her final words go you had been to follow the pull. Leaving you with an allowance that would cover your journey and then some.

In the picture the older woman stood right beside you. Your smile had matched with the older woman, Donna took in the older woman features noticing the burn mark covering the right eye of the older woman. The burn scar was huge, long and covered most the woman's right eye. The half of the eyebrow was gone due to the burn. But never the less the woman smiled.

"Oh that's my grandma. Uh she was attacked when she was younger." You said in a gentle voice, remembering how your grandma told you about her day she was attacked. "She was attacked all because of the color of her skin."

"Oh I'm sorry, people can be cruel to those who are simply different."

In the way she said it, you knew she was speaking from experience. Your heart screamed to go comfort her but you didn't want to make her feel uncomfortable.

"Yea, but I loved my grandma either way and so did my grandpa. I don't think I've ever seen someone so in love. What my grandparents had was special. It's what most be would die for." Angie was still in your lap looking at all the picture that had any type of animals in them. Which happened to be a lot.

"Your grandfather didn't care about the scars?"

The question was asked with so much disbelief, confusion and longing?

"Yea he didn't care. He always admired her beauty. Reassuring her that there was no other woman like her. Grandma always said that the scars had made her insecure but with grandpa around he would always do whatever he could to make sure she knew that she was loved."

"Sounds like he was a good man." It seemed like she was deep in thought.

"He was."

****

The day carried on you and Angie spending time drawing. Donna was in her office working on some paper work while she was also talking on the phone.

“Don’t take it personal Y/n. We have had a hard time trusting others. It’s not you really. She just needs time.” The doll whispered.

“I’ll give her all the time she needs. I’m not going anywhere Angie.”

You continued drawing in silence cracking some jokes here and there. Making the doll laugh. It was until you heard the a soft raspy voice call your name from behind you. You turned around and saw Donna standing there fiddling with her fingers.

“I would like for you to stay. But I also would like for me to explain somethings to you.” Her voice coming out confident but you could also hear the shakiness in her voice.

“Okay Donna we can take it at your pace.”

She sat down on the floor with you her hands smoothing out the nonexistent wrinkles on her dress. With some hesitation on your part you took her hand in yours. You heard the hitch in her breathing. It took her a second for her fingers to intertwine with yours. But when they did you swore she could hear your rapid heart beat.

“I have a this cadou, this has caused a deformation on my left eye. It’s also allowed me to control Angie and control plantes. Cause hallucinations. Moth-A woman named Miranda had put it in me after she killed my family. She had manipulated me, I was alone and scared and she used that to her advantage. Miranda was a terrible person, she wanted me to use these abilities to hurt others. I couldn’t do that, when the time came my siblings who were others in Miranda’s control had developed a plan to take her down. We were successful. Since then I’ve kept to myself.”

With every word you had felt the anger in you grow. You didn’t care that she had, powers? You didn’t care that she could kill. You didn’t care about the scar she was obviously insecure about. You loved this woman. Your soulmate. To know that there was a woman that hurt her physically and mentally. You had wanted to murder that woman.

“The day I saved you, I used my abilities to make those villagers see their worst nightmares. The pollen around my home has always affected others. But to you. You had breathed it in and you were fine. I want would love for you to stay here with me Y/n. These past days you had proved to me that you would. I just hope you would still stay after I show you my face.”

The hold you had of her hand you gave it a gentle squeeze. “Donna I’m not going anywhere. That’s a promise.” With a shaky exhale she let go of your hand. Her hands raising to her veil. Your heart breaking when you noticed how they shook.

“Donna you don’t have to sh-I want to. Really. I just never shown anyone.”

The first feature you noticed was her soft plump lips. Her skin was pale but it looked so soft. Then followed her nose but when you saw her nose you also saw the start of her scar. The more she lift her veil, the more the you were able to see the scar. It was like nothing you’ve ever seen before. But what really got your attention was her eye. Her eye color was a beautiful dark green. Almost looking gray. You couldn’t help the smile, she was the most beautiful person you’ve ever seen. You hands raised up to touch her cheeks. Hovering momentarily asking for permission.

Donna looked you in aw. There was no sign of disgust or horror in your eyes. It was quite the opposite. She took in that your eyes were filled with love. Something she’s never experienced. She couldn’t help the tears that filled her eye. The way your hands cupped her cheeks when she gave the okay that you could touch her. The way your soft hands caressed her cheeks. The way your touch just made her feel so loved. She couldn’t help but to lean into your touch.

“Oh Donna. You’re beautiful, no stop-” You didn’t let her pull away from your touch. You knew you’d have to make her believe you. You’d keep trying till she accepts that she’s beautiful or you die. “You are Donna. This scar just shows how strong you are. You said yourself, that Miranda did the experiment on many others and they didn’t make it. You did. You’re strong. You’re beautiful. And you’re my soulmate. I’ll love you till the day I die.”

Your hands still cupping her cheeks. She had brought up her own hand putting it over yours. “I’d love nothing more amore mío. Ti ho aspettato così tanto.”

You smiled letting out a small chuckle, “I don’t know what you said but that was hot. I didn’t know you spoke Italian.”

With a heavy blush on her cheeks at the compliment Donna smiled, your thumb wiping her tears away. “I said I waited so long for you, I did not know what I was messing at first. But know I do. You. I was missing you.”

You moved your hands and wrapped your arms around her waist. You leaned forward just a bit. Your foreheads almost touching. “You don’t have to wait anymore. I’m right here. And I’m not leaving you or Angie. You’re stuck with me now.” You leaned in and stopped your lips only inches away.

Donna bit her lip, ‘be brave’ Angie repeated in her head. She leaned in the rest of the way. She couldn’t describe what it felt like to kiss you. Her soul had never felt so happy and complete. Her heart felt like it would be best out of her chest from the happiness she felt. Her sister Alcina spoke of the feeling. Donna had listened how Alcina spoke about the carpenter that worked in the castle. Donna had always thought that she’d never experience the love her sister had. But here she was. Kissing her soulmate.

Donna laid your arms after the kiss. She rested her head on your chest. Listening to your rapid heartbeat. The longer she laid there she heard the steadiness of your heart rate return. It was a rhythm she could listen to for a long time. She felt your strong arms around her body like a weighted blanket. Making her drift into a deep sleep.

It was the most peaceful sleep she had ever taken.

She was loved.

Mother Miranda was wrong.

:)

[kintsug1kitsune]

welcome to the library [short story ; no cw]

"Welcome to the Library, dear guest."

The doll at the front desk bowed dutifully. It was wearing the Library's fine black longcoat, suit and tie, and its brown porcelain body was delicately powdered with makeup.

"Uh, hey." 92 Jagged Edges was a rather small and squat woman, brown-haired and plain, with many scars, wearing only a haphazardly-tucked button-up shirt and jacket, and worn slacks with combat boots. "Thank you. I'm here on behalf of--"

"Firmament," the doll answered, bowing again. "The Director knows. She will be coming to greet you…" Its head canted up at thin air. Jag followed suit, but slower, perplexed.

And then, in a warping of that air, there appeared another doll.

No. It looked false and mechanical, joints and all, but its flesh was darkness, about 170cm tall--shorter than Jag--pooled together into a figure neither dark nor light, humanoid but not human, wearing a far more embroidered Library robe, bismuth thorns and flowers, and a tie with a special clip: roses, a tome, a sword, and a singular "I" marking it. The sheer aura, as if the Library around them bent to accommodate her…

"Hello there." She smiled, all fangs, two magenta eyes--no, far too many eyes, it was hard to tell--under the broad brim of a Witch's hat, veiled. "I heard a representative from Firmament Corporation was coming. Thought I'd welcome you in. I am the Library Director, Cynithe."

The petitioner took a gulp and bowed politely, herself. "Ma'am. 92 Jagged Edges, intelligence officer, Firmament Corp. Call me Jag."

"Jag," the Witch tasted. "Good name. Wonderful. What can I do for you, Jag?"

"I'm here for a book. Uh--obviously," she chuckled, trying not to let sweat bead down her forehead.

"Yes, I expected as much," Cynithe smiled, as if she was sharing a joke.

"Heh. Yeah, I'm looking for the specs on a certain weapon." She paused a moment. "…The mirror-splitter."

"Oh, I see." The Director hummed and tapped her chin; her gaze betrayed nothing, empty beyond belief. Hungry. "Why? Is Firmament going to war?"

"We have reason to believe Raze Corp's going to employ it."

"…Walk with me."

Not thinking for even a moment of refusing the Director's vast will, Jag followed as they began walking further into the Library's halls. It was better-crafted than anything she'd seen in in human-made lands; elegant pillars lined the walls, strips of pure light illuminated everything in comfortable gold. The ceiling was far overhead, the floor was fine stone, and soon the hallway out of reception emptied them onto a vast balcony.

A ring--layers of rings--overlooked the Library's grand center, a massive tower crossed with bridges and stairways, railings hewn with flowery designs. It was, for all its greatness, very empty; dolls went here and there, a few patrons of different kinds milled and searched, some seemed engaged in conversation, and yet others were reclining on one of the many red couches, smoking, drinking, laughing. But for its size--it was quiet, serene, even, if not a little eerie.

Jag whistled low. "Nice place you've got."

"Thank you," Cyn said, "I do think I look lovely."

"Ah, right--the Director is the Library itself. Or, that's what I heard," she hurried to say.

"You heard right," she nodded back, leaning on the near rail to watch everything. "I am the Library, the Witch of the Endless Night."

"I see. It's an honor to be, uh… in you?" Jag frowned a bit and followed her lead, leaning on the railing.

Cyn laughed, a sound like a thousand mortals being cut down and church bells shattering. "You're welcome, love. Now. Do you know what a mirror-splitter is?"

"Vaguely," she answered. "I've heard it's some sort of weapon." The Director hummed, "Potentially. It's inspired by witchwork, a device that is capable of slicing through possibility. It can render divinations of the future, as it was intended to do, or… it can cut possibilities away."

"I… see?"

"Imagine that you toss a coin." Cynithe flicked her claws and an ancient nickel medallion appeared amidst her fingers.

"Uh, a coin. Right, that used to be used as money." Jag watched curiously.

"Yes. Now, it can be heads," she showed one side, "Or tails," and showed the other. "When I flip it…" She used a thumb to launch it into the air--caught it, and slammed it over onto the top of her other hand. "Now, it can be either heads or tails, and we don't know which."

"Right, I see."

"But if I were to use a mirror-splitter, I could cut the possibility of it being tails. Do you understand? There would be no choice but for it to be heads, in any reality."

"…Huh."

She let the coin out--tails, as it happened--and let it vanish into darkness. "If used on a living being, it could force them to be only one thing. It could force a singular outcome for their existence. Or, it could erase all possibilities of their existence at all."

"That… Nobody should use that. If anyone made that, it could destroy free will forever. Let alone people--the implications as a weapon…" Jag gripped her hair and shook her head, eyes wide, frowning.

Cynithe looked understanding. "Mhm. And your employers want it."

She shot her gaze up to the Director. "No-- I can't let them have it. I can't let anyone get ahold of it. Fuck my job."

"Good, you understand the problem. Do you have a head for books, Jag?"

"--Uh?" She cocked an eyebrow. "I guess? I'm in charge of gathering and organizing company intel. I do my share of paperwork, filing, and that shit. Wait, are you offering me…?"

"Not a job," the Witch shook her head. "A position with me, here. You know you cannot return empty-handed to Firmament."

"Pft, they'd cut my heart out and burn it just to make a point," Jag spat.

"And neither of us want you to return to them with the schematics for a mirror-splitter."

"No…"

"Work with me. Become a Librarian, and we will recover the mirror-splitter plans from Raze Corp." The many-eyed stare affixed to Jag was empty… but still far from as vile as the looks in her managers' eyes.

She nodded. "Sounds like a plan, Director. Let's get to it."

Cynithe smiled.

"Welcome to the Library, Jag."

[vonpharma]

w[h]ip wednesday

i forgot to post last wednesday! oops

this is from my day 3! the working title is "and the gay one still wearing his cravat"

There’s an omen in the way it’s her sore throat that wakes her, not Miles’ car coming to a rumbling halt. Franziska blinks languidly at the iridescent blur of traffic all around her, runoff from the sprinklers trickling onto the still-steaming blacktop and turning them to mirrors in the newborn night. In the last flash of sunset, the palm trees look black against the sky.

She sniffs sharply and suddenly, the nonspecific area behind her nose and eyes feeling uncomfortable and buzzy. The California dusk slowly crystallizes around her—headlights and streetsigns, the overpass across the way, the undefined purr of engines idling in the… parking lot. They’re in a parking lot.

To her left, Miles pulls his keys from the ignition, and the system clicks off with a quiet beep. Franziska realizes she’d been sleeping with her arms wrapped around her waist, and she tightens her own grip on herself, as if trying to hold it all together.

Her voice scrapes against itself as it tries its damnedest to manifest, “Where have you taken me?”

Miles looks unbothered, pawing around his pockets for something. 

“Creme Royale parking lot.”

Narrow-eyed and exhausted, Franziska blinks owlishly at him.

“Why,” she croaks, “are we in the Creme Royale parking lot.”

“Because the drive-thru line was too long,” says Miles. “Do keep up, Franziska.”

There is an air that Miles wears like a veil across his shoulders when he has no interest in elaborating further. Thus far, the only people who seem able to yank that metaphorical garment from its place there are Phoenix Wright, and Franziska on a good day. Today is decidedly not a good day—evidenced by the fact that she somehow fell asleep in Miles Edgeworth’s obnoxiously loud, fuel-inefficient slag heap of a car—and so she lets him be aloof and dodgy, saying no more to him as he goes. The locks shove themselves back into place with a n oddly abrasive sound, and Franziska leans her head against the car window, feeling uncomfortably warm.

When did she fall asleep? The day’s events run together like paint, each so oversaturated a colour that the blend just ends up an ugly grey in the end. No sooner after she exited the car had the discomfort in her throat returned, as if the shameless munching of cough drops she’d been doing all morning had been for naught. Holding a growl behind her teeth, she soldiered on—trekking the campus in razor heels with briefcase in hand, meeting with countless students, giving her two-hour lecture to a circular room of enraptured, bright-eyed kids, relishing in all the attention and praise. 

Miles was, as always, incorrigibly kind, and so he’d been right there to pick her up as the sun was dipping, and she remembers the ache had made its way clear down to her legs at that point, and her voice was beginning to become a measly imprint of its usual deep, rich tenor… and she had tried to remain dignified as she more or less collapsed, unceremoniously, into her brother’s car. He had asked something about if she’d had a nice day, and she had mumbled out some manner of insult in response, and then… nothing. She woke up in the parking lot, sweating in the fool’s passenger seat.

Why’s it so damn hot? The only thing that stops Franziska from diving for the AC is the way just lifting her arm pulls hard at her nerves. What the hell is wrong with her? Dark a thought as it is, she feels like she had more arm strength than this the day she got shot. 

It’s a useless endeavour, in any case. As she sits there quietly seething with heat and rage, the digital numbers on Miles’ car radio tell her the temperature is already cranked as low as it can possibly go. No doubt he saw her sweating like a maniac and did so in an attempt to spare her the shame, Miles would never keep it that cold on purpose. That thought strikes again—revolting. The idea that he notices at all sits sourly in her stomach, disgust and childish gratitude swirling into a terrible amalgam that unsettles her bones and prickles her skin.

Finally, he is back, with one of those cardboard multi-cup holders braced upon his flowering palm as though he’s a server at a fine dining establishment. If she were anyone else, looking in from the outside into this strange existence the von Karma disciples live in, the whole picture would probably be comical—this grown man in Classical-inspired courtroom regalia, cravat and all, tiptoeing over potholes and buckled asphalt in a fast food parking lot in an attempt to balance his…

Ice cream. 

He is carrying several containers of ice cream.

[leiascully]

X-Files OctoberFicFest Day 13: Sheer

This year, I'm using the October 2022 prompts from @artpromptcal.

Scully's face looked gauzy, as if she were wearing a veil. Something borrowed, he thought vaguely, though it didn't obscure the blue of her eyes. Something old and something new and they'd have a party.

"Mulder," she said from somewhere underwater. "Mulder, you hit your head."

"'m fine," he tried to say. It didn't seem to be terribly successful - Scully's brow furrowed. She folded to the ground awkwardly, as gawky-graceful as a fawn, pulling his head into her lap. Her fingers traced through his hair. He must be less fine than he'd thought. She was never this tender when he was fully conscious. They couldn't afford it; dear things came too dear, and they'd paid over and over.

"Mulder, you likely have a concussion." He voice was soft. "I'm going to look at your eyes. Lie still."

"Mm," he said. Her cool fingertips touched his eyelids. He didn't flinch. The light was too bright and it painted the inside of his skull with pain, but Scully knew what was best for him. When she took her hands away, he let the dark slide back over him.

"You'll be all right," she said. "I called an ambulance. Given your medical history, I'd rather be careful."

"No birthday parties," he mumbled.

"It is, isn't it," she said, still stroking his hair. "Happy birthday, Mulder. You gave yourself the gift of head trauma."

"Hah." It wasn't a laugh, just an exhalation.

She smiled at her own joke. He could hear it in the lilt of her voice. "I'll save your other present for later."

He opened his eyes just enough to see her. There was still some sheer layer between them, some barrier made visible. He was tired of being granted supernatural abilities at the expense of his body and mind. He wanted to tell her her presence was gift enough, but his mumbling mouth wouldn't enunciate. He wanted to peel away that layer, to lift it back over her head like a wedding veil, revealing them to each other at last.

"Rest a little," she said. In the distance, he heard the wail of a siren drifting closer. "Maybe they'll give you a sticker for good behavior."

He closed his eyes again, soaking up her warmth, her thighs round and soft under his hard round skull. But there was some kind of peace, in those moments when the universe averted its eyes. He believed that.

[moonlightazriel]

Son of the Darkness XI/// Azriel X F!Reader

Summary: Hidden for so long The court of shadows thrived, and things were great until the high lord's death, now the next in line should assume the crown of high lord of shadows, will he accept his duties?

Warnings: Smut

Word Count: 1,7K

Notes: I’m back! Sorry for the wait, I just wanted to deliver the best for you, you deserve only the better.

Son of the darkness masterlist

Main Masterlist

The atmosphere felt magical, Azriel could feel it in his blood, singing along to the rhythm the musicians were playing, he felt different, he felt stronger, an empty feeling in his chest like he was missing something for years, the magic danced along his soul, invading his body and mind, making him feel more powerful than ever.

It was the last day of the festival. The inner circle had arrived yesterday, and they had a really good time walking around the streets and on Kincardine at night, Morrigan was ecstatic to be in a new nightclub, she made everyone dance and drink, but all Azriel could do was look at her.

*At Kincardine*

“Keep staring brother, this way you may see through her clothes or her organs” Cassian said drunkenly and Azriel sighed, he had been watching her all night, and she looked beautiful. And he wasn’t the only one to notice as other males tried to approach her, which made his blood boil in his veins and he wondered if that’s what she felt when she interrupted his dance a few nights before.

“Fuck off Cassian!” He said through gritted teeth, but his brother was right, he should stop staring, but he was mesmerised by her eyes. Getting up, he walked to her and asked for a dance, he held her so close during the dance, that her perfume was still lingering on his shirt hours later.

“You look devastatingly beautiful tonight.” He had said at some point, his lips brushing her neck as he did so. She inclined her body more into his own, allowing him to lick her neck, making her shiver. Y/N was intoxicated, not by alcohol, but by him, she was never into public demonstrations of affection, but how he touched her made her melt. She allowed him to explore her neck, placing sweet kisses and a few licks, her lips were parted and she breathed his name, a faint whisper reaching his ears.

His head snapped up as he heard his name on her lips, his cock awakening in his pants, his hands grabbed each side of her face, making her look up, and look at him, he brushed her lips inclining his head to kiss her when she pushed him away, breaking the trance around them.

“I have to go.” It broke her heart to say that, she wanted to be kissed by him, she wanted to find out what he tasted like, she wanted it so badly, but even above the song, she caught the giggling, her eyes finding the source rather quickly, a group of females with a disapproving look on their faces.

“Some are saying you’re warming his sheets for more power and status in court.” The words rang in her head, a low blow on herself, she worked hard to get where she was, and she wouldn’t let people think otherwise, so she pushed him away and ran to the safety of her home.

*At Tornan Manor*

“Where’s Y/N?” Cassian asked, he was wearing a red suit, Azriel had the green one and Rhysand wore silver, the three brothers matching the festival colors.

“I haven’t seen her since yesterday.”

“Did you scare her off?” He joked!

“Did I already tell you to fuck off today? No? Fuck off Cassian.” He walked away from his brother, leaving a laughing Cassian behind. The party looked amazing, the moon was casting a red glow in the room, and it was almost at its highest, but he kept looking for her, he wanted to make things right with her.

The music changed, for a more sensual melody, no one was singing now, the music involved his body and his bones, he could feel it everywhere. The people cleared the middle of the room and a group of females entered, they were wearing chained face veils, and the one he could see was Evanore, she was wearing silver, a huge headpiece adorned with flowers and moons, and chains around her body. They were all wearing bras with jewelry sewn onto them, low-waist flowy pants, with two huge slits in each leg, and no shoes. The other dancers wore black, disguised by the veil, but one of them, closer to Evanore caught his attention, those mesmerizing eyes, he knew them.

They moved like serpents, their body was as fluid as the music, they moved perfectly synchronized, and no one dared to look away, to hypnotized by the song and by the dance, their hips moved along the beat, they spun and they jumped, was the most beautiful dance he was ever seen, and as the moon finally hit its highest, they shone, brighter than the jewelry adorning their bodies, brighter than the starts. Azriel felt his power growing, everyone could feel, years missing this ritual, all the magic contained, begging to be released, it was all his now.

He looked at the dancer again, she was moving her hips as the song came to an end, it was like she was staring into his soul, and then it clicked! It was Y/N, she was the dancer that he couldn’t force himself to look away. She looked at him with hunger in her eyes, almost like she wanted to devour him. His heart was beating fast, and it took him 1 minute to notice the black line shining in between them, the one thing he always wanted to have, the mating bond.

He touched it, explored it, too marveled at the feeling, all his assumptions were wrong, he had a mate, and it was her, the person that did not want him, and made it very clear last night. They needed to talk, even more now. He walked to her, whispering for her to follow him before he walked away, he ended up in the library, and he could hear the soft steps of her bare feet against the soft rug.

“What’s wrong?” She asked, removing the face veil, a beautiful, dark makeup underneath. She was fucking beautiful.

“Why didn’t you kiss me?” His voice was low, the only sound in the room.

“I can’t! I have my duties and obligations and I can’t be seen kissing the high lord, what would people think?” She whispered.

“For fuck sake, I can’t pretend anymore.” He paced around the room angrily. “I can’t pretend that I don’t fucking desire you, all for your fucking duty and pride, I won’t do this anymore.” His eyes were so full of emotion that she stepped away. “I want you, so much that it pains me greatly, I need you, I want to kiss you so badly that I might drain the life from you if I do so, I can’t keep pretending, afraid of what others might say.” He closed the distance between them, so close that they were breathing as one. “I hid my feelings my entire life, afraid of what people would fucking say, I AM THE HIGH LORD, I have the power, I can do whatever I want. And I want you.”

His hand grabbed the hair in the nape of her neck as he pulled her closer, their lips perfectly molding together, she tasted so sweet, so addictive, he slid his tongue on her lower lip, begging for permission, she parted her lips, allowing him to explore her mouth, she couldn’t hold back the moan, her whole body reaction to him, she had her share of lovers before, but no one compared to Azriel and they haven’t even fucked yet, her mind drifted, thinking about his tongue exploring other parts of her body.

He wanted to take her, to make her beg for him, to make her so drunk with him that nothing would taste good after, ever. His cock painfully throbbed in his pants, she desperately roamed her hands around his chest, moving up and down, a little lower each time, until she brushed his cock.

“On your knees!” He ordered and she obliged, the sight of her like this in front of him sending more blood to his cock, she waited as he opened the buttons of his pants and let it slide down his legs, his underwear following right after, releasing his cock from its torturous prison. “You’re only going to stop when I say so. Do you understand?” She nodded. “Use your words!”

“Yes, High Lord!” The words rolled off her tongue so sensually that he almost came with them, her hand reached for him, her thumb spreading the pre cum all over the extension, her hand was cold against his warm cock. She stroked him two times before she wrapped her lips around him, he moaned, loud, as she licked the tip, her tongue rolling around it making his knees wobbly.

She sucked and what didn’t fit her mouth, she stroked with her hand, his eyes rolled to the back of his head, the smell of her arousal sending him even closer to the edge, he wanted to feel her, but he also didn’t want it to stop, her lips were soft around him, warm and so so good. He didn’t know how long he would last if she kept sucking him like that like she couldn’t get enough of him.

He tried to hold back, but his cock twitched, one, two times when he noticed, he was already spilling his seed down her throat, she happily drank all of it, licking him clean before she released his cock with a loud “POP!” She got up, cleaning the smudged lipstick from the corners of her mouth. He reached his hand out, he wasn’t done with her yet, but she walked backward.

“We’re not going to fuck.” He stared at her incredulously. “Not when we have so many guests, would be so rude.” She shook her head, walking closer to him, her lips glued to his ears and the same finger on that damned sensitive spot on his wing. “And a High Lord should never be rude. We’ll finish this when we don’t have anyone around, those poor people don’t deserve to hear me screaming when you fuck me the way I know you want.” She dragged her finger again and bit his ear.

She was almost at the door when she turned around again. “Feyre told me some interesting things about wings, can’t wait to test them out.” She smirked and walked away.

⋆˙⟡☾𖤓☽ ⟡˙⋆

Taglist: @allison-rosewood-maximoff @devilsfoodcake22 @fieldofdaisiies @valeridarkness @brekkershadowsinger @margssstuff

[hannahlikeso741]

No Promises in War. (1/?)

Summary:

It is the start of the Second World War, and Sebastian enlisted just to find his role in life. Little does he know that a promise to a comrade would serve as that purpose.

Warnings: Character death, mentions of War and Injuries, rated M to be safe.

Pairings: Sebastian x Ailey (F!MC) with past Ailey X Leander Prewett.

This is the result of a chat session with @subastian-swallows Sebastian WW2 bot. I loved the plot that I decided to write it but I didn't want to use my own MC for this, so hence with @blueraineshadows 's permission, I am using her MC Ailey Rivers for this. Enjoy!

War… War finally reared its ugly head again. 

Sebastian sighed, knowing he hadn’t much of a choice. Where’s he going to go? A boy just shy of twenty-two with no prospects and aimless. At least the army would make him a decent man or so he thought. His uncle served in the first war, warned him against the draft, telling him of how fearful of him to go over the trench, of the sounds of gunshots and bombs echoing in his ears. Those thoughts never left his uncle, as he turned to the bottle to forget. 

Sebastian snorted bitterly. He didn’t care about what his uncle said, he only left behind a letter that he will be enlisting, for his own selfish purpose. 

And now he is here, in the barracks as he is getting ready to be drafted to France. 

He couldn’t sleep, staring at the bedframe of the top bunk, the room cramped with snoring soldiers. It is hard to get comfortable on such thin mattresses, but Sebastian mentally told himself he should enjoy it while he can. Screw it, he can’t close his eyes, not when there is a battle to be won! Sebastian gave a sigh but then… he heard someone shuffling what seems to be paper. His ears got curious as he turned to his side. 

Sebastian saw Leander Prewett sighing, looking at a particular photograph and giving a kiss. Sebastian smirked as he hissed, making Leander turn towards his direction. 

“Oi Prewett! Who you kissing~?”

“Get some sleep, Sallow!” 

The pair argued in hushed whispers as Sebastian got up, attempting to snatch the photo away. Leander tried to fight back, but the photo landed on Sebastian’s hands. Leander groaned as he saw Sebastian smirking, then giving a low whistle.

“Oh my Prewett… who is this?”

Sebastian had only expected a pin up of a model on a postcard but what greeted him was the photograph of a woman. She looked so happy, wearing what seems to be a silk dress and a veil in the curls of her hair. Leander snatched the photo away, looking a bit disgruntled. 

“She’s… she’s my wife. Just newly married before I got drafted.”

“You’re married?”

Sebastian raised an eyebrow at that statement. Leader strikes the entire platoon as the quiet one, unlike those who complained about getting the draft or some that were just patriotic. Leander strikes Sebastian as someone who just had work to do so he can go back home safely. Still, Sebastian felt bored and wanted to poke some more.

“You are a lucky bastard.”

“Oh fuck off and get some sleep,Sallow.”

“C’mon… tell me what’s she like?”

Leander gave a sigh, seeing how Sebastian’s curiosity will be the death of him and he only wanted to get some sleep to face the battle in the morning. Sighing, he decided to indulge Sebastian, describing her as best he could. 

“Her eyes are like the summer sky… bright and clear. Her dark hair just enhanced those eyes even more, but… nothing can top her smile, especially when she looked at me on our wedding day. How am I so lucky to land her… a woman who is so supportive, creative and just so full of life? I just… I count my blessings to call her my wife. Even the mere mention of her name makes me gush… Ailey… that’s her.”

Upon hearing that, Sebastian knew Leander meant every word as he gave the other an awkward pat and smile. 

“You do love her. Now get some sleep… there’s a war on.”

Leander let out a sigh of relief as he laid his head on the flattened pillow, the picture of Ailey pressed hard against his chest.

…

The bombs and the gunshot sounds were too true, Why… Why didn’t Sebastian listen to his Uncle?! If only he could take it back, run away from it all he would… 

If only Sebastian wasn’t trying to push back from further invasion from the Nazis. 

“RETREAT! RETREAT! RETRE-”

Sebastian turned his direction as he saw his commander got shot in the head, falling to the ground unresponsive. The sight scarred him so. Quickly, Sebastian ran back to the direction he came from, holding on to his helmet as he tried to evade further gunshots. 

“FAND JEMANDEN!”

Sebastian heard that sentence as he faced a Nazi soldier, ready to shoot him dead. This is it… he is going to die here, he ran out of bullets and can’t shoot. But somehow… he didn’t expect what was to happen next. Sebastian watched the Nazi soldier clutch his chest, blood sputtering as he fell to the ground. 

“RUN SALLOW!”

Sebastian recovered from his shock when he saw Leander urging him to follow in his direction, further away from the battle. Sebastian can’t recall how the pair managed to reach safety, he could only try to calm himself down and process what just happened. 

At the safety of the makeshift camp, Leander handed Sebastian a cup of water. Sebastian took it in earnest, looking up to Leander. The next words from Leander’s mouth haunted him.

“You owe me Sallow.”

…

“Fuck Prewett!” 

Sebastian continued to press on Leander’s wound, swearing he is crushing on Leander’s intestines at this rate, panting hard. How… How did things go so wrong? They were just supposed to evacuate, they were so nearly there, so near towards the sands of Dunkirk…

Leander, pale and exhausted as he lay dying on the ground, mustered every last bit of his strength when finally held Sebastian’s wrists, trying his best to speak. Sebastian didn’t want to believe it, not when they were so close… 

“Prewett, stay with me! The boats are coming, you will go home to Ailey…” 

“S-save it Sallow…” 

Leander’s breaths became shallow as Sebastian paused, his face in disbelief. He could feel his strength fading, as he tapped on his chest pocket. Sebastian got the message and with trembling hands, reached out to find that same photo of Ailey looking back at him, full of life and joy. Leander managed to slip out his wedding ring and handed it weakly to Sebastian.

“P-protect her… Find her. From… one soldier… to… another… Promise me….Sallow… You… owe me…” 

Sebastian could only nod as Leander’s eyes began to lose their light in life, his breath shaky as Leander breathed his last. Sebastian wiped away any tears he had, looking out as the sandy beaches of Dunkirk greeted him, with tiny boats risking their lives to rescue whatever that was left at the British forces in France. He closed Leander’s eyes, holding his hand one last time, barely able to mutter a sentence before he darted off to join the rest. 

“I promise, Leander. I’ll find her.”

…

“Damn it, just a flesh wound, I have dealt worse!” 

Sebastian yelled at the medic that was wheeling him into a makeshift hospital, holding down as his shoulder got hit by a stray metal pole that barely missed him. Sebastian trashed as he was being wheeled into the patients bay, the medic yelling back. 

“You have cold sweat and are losing more blood! Stay still, soldier!” 

You owe me…Sallow. 

Sebastian felt himself being pinned down as he tried to fight but the medic was right. He didn’t want to address the shaking in his body, the pounding of his heart rate or the blurry vision as a team quickly got to work, trying their best to heal him with whatever limited supplies they had left.

Where did it all go so wrong? From France to Dunkirk to here now… Sebastian is losing focus, not wanting to doze off in the fear of not being able to wake up. Too many battles since then, unable to get a decent night’s sleep from random attacks, all the rush of it became too much. He needed to stay alive, he still owed Leander… He still needed to find her, find his Ailey… his only promise as Sebastian felt his body surrendering, the urge to sleep was too great as his body finally relaxed and took a well deserved rest. 

That sentence. It haunts him, jolts him, urging him to wake up. As quickly as he fell asleep, his body woke him up, air reaching in his gasping lungs and his heart quickened the beat. Sebastian's eyes took in his surroundings, as if feeling he was still in France, his encampment being raided. The shock slowly faded as he registered the crowded room, doctors rushing to anyone that needed help, nurses scuttling about. Sebastian took the time to realize he was a lucky one to be placed in a bed compared to some who were laying on stretchers or just a fabric on the ground, groaning in pain or too shocked to speak.

First time? His mind thought bitterly.

Sebastian now felt that pain seeping into his injured shoulder, resulting in him grunting for a bit. Pressing against the wound with one hand, Sebastian tried to get up, but he saw a pair of feminine hands urging him to lie down.

“Stay still… your stitches are going to tear if you move about.”

Stitches? That isn't so bad, just dress his wound and he will march to the front lines again. Sebastian grunted in protest, wanting to just get back in the front lines until…

His eyes must have been playing tricks on him. That nurse holding him down, urging him to rest … it can’t be.

Now in real life, Sebastian took note of her blue eyes, the dark auburn hair… the freckles on her cheeks. This is… surely it must be. 

“A-are you… Ailey?”

The nurse looked startled, wondering how Sebastian found out her name. She didn't have a name tag on. 

“How did you know?”

“Um…”

“Ailey quickly now, no chit chat when others need our help!” 

The voice of the other nurse made Ailey snap out of it and not wanting to address the awkward question. Sebastian was also too stunned as Ailey quickly replaced the old to new bandages on his shoulder wound, scuttling away as quickly as she came, rushing to aid another patient. 

Sebastian blinked, confused for a moment before he looked at his shirt that was ripped, placed in the chair next to him. With the limited mobility and the sharp pain where the stitches are holding together, he fumbled about towards the chest pocket, noting the ring and the photograph was still intact. He glanced at the photo again, then looked back at Ailey’s direction. 

It is the same person, he was sure of it. The only difference was that the light in her eyes was dimmed, her lips didn’t hold a smile anymore from being tired and bogged down. Sebastian sighed as he lay back, the wound clawing at his nerves to remind him to rest. He felt the urge to sleep again but at least he could tell Leander from up above he found her.

…

For the next month, Sebastian has been looking eagerly for Ailey. He asked around the hospital staff, most of them not really bothering with his questions as there was too many injured, or some saying they will let her know, but so far, no luck.

Maybe Sebastian creeped her out and she was avoiding him, oh no. He dreaded the thought, he didn't mean to. And now with all the enquiries he must have seemed like a pest. Oh dear. But that would need to be put aside as the doctor looked over his wound.

“All set, soldier. You can head to the barracks now.”

Phew, he thought. He could now move his left arm again with no stitches or needed morphine. Sebastian nodded as he got out of his hospital bed and dressed up in his uniform, ready to report back to duty. But first he had something to ask, which led him to go to the receptionist, looking overworked and annoyed. Sebastian led out a sigh.

“Hello… um… I'm looking for someone.”

“Well you aren't the only one. Got a name?”

“It is a nurse… her name is Ailey?”

“There are multiple Aileys and there are so many nurses that come and go. Be more specific, I need a surname.”

“T-Try Ailey Rivers or… Ailey Prewett.”

The receptionist put out her cigarette as she scowled, looking through the enormous files. The tapping of her fingernails as she scanned through her thick glasses with tired eyes made Sebastian anxious. It was too slow, too unbothered for the soldier who is too used on being high alert, solving things as fast as he can. He can feel the need to just want to jump over the desk and search for Ailey himself, nothing is being done… 

“Here.” 

She found her? Sebastian’s brain only thought of that, his pulse racing as the receptionist pointed at a name, with a picture next to it. It is her. 

It didn’t take him long.

“Ailey Prewett, her shift just ended five minutes ago.”

It as all he needed when he dashed out, heading towards the exit without even thanking the receptionist. Sebastian ran, looking out into the busy London streets of passing cars and pedestrians as his eyes frantically looked out for her. 

[faerunsbest]

I'm imagining Zevlor in an arranged marriage. At the altar, has never met his bride, but she looks human from what he can tell; she's wearing a veil over her face. The poor lass couldn't find anyone else to take her, and Zevlor was confident that he could at least keep her safe and secure while he lived.

But his face absolutely falls when the veil is pulled back and he sees a beautiful tiefling woman who has had her horns removed and filed down to nothing. He feels so much for her in that moment, realizing how ashamed her parents were, and how much hurt and pain she must have endured. He traces the nubs gently with his fingers as tears well in his eyes; how could anyone have hurt this poor girl?

aww bitches its an angst party now, you dont know how much i love the concept of a non human doing form of self mutilation to pass as human i had a whole comic for my hawke on da2. wish istill knew what happened to it any who

on the honey moon zevlor can see theres more, more that went wrong or more efforts made to conceal her heritage. was a kindness to keep her? Hard to tell when her ears clipped and shaped to mimic human ears, skin with blotches of discoloration where it had been bleached to a more reasonable color. her nails where filed down passable round edges and he knew, he knew that hurt. he knew it was open and raw despite the color on stop.

she was determined be his bride, so she undressed for him and pain struck him again. long surgical scars following the path where he knew her ridges to be.

she panicked when he put his arms around her and couldn't help crying. she had been damaged in every possible way in order pass as something she wasn't . Zevlor no matter ho much he hated himself would find a way to help her see herself for all she was as beautiful. but for now he would try and dull the main that he was sure was just under her fingernail, just under the skin trying blot out her horns

[minetteskvareninova]

Ranking Magnificent Century (Kösem) Wedding Dress

Welcome to Another Frivolous Post About Magnificent Century, from yours truly Minette! This time about... Well, you've read the title. Really, if you accept the show's highly anachronistic aesthetic, there aren't that many outright bad dresses in either show; most of them range from decent to absolutely stunning. The functionality isn't always so great, for example the show always goes so hard for bling in every situation it's not always easy for it to convey unusual splendor in terms of, like, dresses for special occasions and so on. With that said, most wedding dresses do a good job of standing out from the rest of the woman's wardrobe. Either way, I am going to exclude people who just put on their regular dress, like Fatma sultan, as well as Armin and Huricihan, for whom I couldn't find any good pictures (and in any case, Armin would be excused on account of just being poorer than the rest of the brides, or placed near the bottom for the awful dress that also has the audacity to be white).

RANKING PROPER

18. Hürrem

Yeah, sorry to all of the fans out there, this one is actually kinda awful. The show absolutely loves its wacky headdresses, and this is one of the undoubtedly worst ones. It has been dubbed "Micky Mouse ears" by my sister, and you can absolutely see why. The dress at least is merely boring instead of actively offensive to one's sight. Like, seriously, is there literally any difference between what the great Hürrem sultan put on for her wedding night and just... What she always wears?! Disgrace, I tell ya.

17. Akile (wedding night)

I might be more generous towards these if we saw them for more than five seconds and had any idea what they were going for. Like, from afar they almost look like a wedding nightgown similar to the one Mihrimah wears, except Mihrimah wears it in her own bedroom and doesn't have to move trough any corridors in it (as far as we can), and also the golden belt, styled hair and headdress make it seem like these are actual, proper dress??? Either way, decent nightgown, shitty regular dress that also just happens to be white. For shame.

16. Dilruba (secret wedding)

This one almost seems like a regular dress, except there was some attempt to make a proper wedding gown out of it (that goes beyond a single red shawl thrown over her head - hi, Nigar). Really, it seems Dilruba here just put on the nicest red dress and tiara she owned, added a wedding veil, and that was about all she could do in this situation. Which in context seems actually plausible. Either way, this one is decent, but it sadly suffers from its provisory nature, so it goes here.

15. Akile (arrival in the palace)

This one just looks too normal for me to put it very high. Yes, even bellow most white wedding dresses. I mean, at least as far as the normal dress go, it's very pretty? It just doesn't stand out, is all.

14. Telli Hümaşah

I really, really dislike all the white sparkly dresses of MCK season 2. The red wedding dress aesthetic of MC/MCK is more unique than the stereotypical white, plus the white dresses tend to be extremely tacky. This one actually isn't that bad, I love the the silhouette and the fact that it doesn't use TOO much silver embroidery. However, the hair tinsel brings it all the way down. One of the ugliest headdresses in the show hands down, only to be beaten by Hürrem's micky mouse ears.

13. Atike

Tacky. As. Fuck. It looks like something a modern very nouveau riche bride would pick. The headdress leaves me especially cold. That said, it's not downright ugly, so I'll give it a pass. And, hey, Atike is just a one tacky bitch, so what gives.

12. Gevherhan

This one isn't really that pretty, but it has earned my forgiveness over Atike's by virtue of being marginally less tacky, and also recognizably a Gevherhan dress. Falling in line with its wearer's personal style, while also going the extra mile as the wedding dress should is always the gold standard in my eyes. Also, the headdress is decent (and something Gevherhan wears just this once, which is nice). Still, nothing to write home about. It's not even bad enough for tasteless jokes about Gevherhan killing herself because she has to wear it and junk.

11. Fahriye

I am mostly just puzzled by the choice of colour here. I mean, I wouldn't like white, but at least I'd understand it. Is it just because it's the last of her God knows how many weddings? Well, no, since there's clearly no consistent custom on these things. Nigar and Fatma wear their normal dress (and I'd like to just comment here on just how fucking unfair it is to Nigar; like, if you're going to lowkey ruin her life, you might as well put her in some nice dress), Gevherhan has proper wedding dress, and I guess what they put Hatice into is also normal dress but also looks like a wedding dress, because that's Magnificent Century for ya, things don't always make sense here. Anyway, Fahriye's dress is confusing colour-wise, but at least it has the decency to be very, very pretty. I dig the more traditional silhouette, reminescent of an Aslanger painting, and the embroidery is decent in patter, the overabundance of sparkliness notwithstanding. Also, I absolute adore the headdress.

10. Mihrunissa

In isolation, this is pretty underwhelming. I strongly suspect this is just a regular dress Mihrunissa found at the bottom of her wardrobe. BUT. You absolutely cannot accuse it of not being in her her very distinct style! Now, Mihrunissa's very distinct style with her dubshit stiff bodices is ugly and I hate it, but this dress fits into it pretty neatly! Also, Mihrunissa's kickass turbans kinda balance the bodice out. Not to mention, the necklace contrasts with the simplicity of the rest of the outfit very well. One of the most effective accessories in the show hands down.

9. Farya Bethlen

Oh, look, a white wedding dress with silver embroidery that ISN'T tacky as fuck! And it fits into the rest of Farya's wardrobe (even if it does remind me of the pain that Farya's tricorn look caused me)! And it has a very pretty headdress! My only complaint is that it's white, but I guess you can't get everything you want.

8. Mihrimah (wedding dress)

This one is... Fine. Decent. Standard. Just about what one imagines when it comes to Magnificent Century wedding dresses. We're definitely in the "good" part of this ranking. Also, I like this one's headdress too. I have absolutely nothing else to say about it.

7. Dilruba (public wedding)

This one is just, like, step above Mihrimah's, mostly because the buttons absolutely SLAP. This despite the fact the tiara is... Kinda not good? Like, it looks fine from the profile and with a veil, but on its own is definitely one of the worse tiaras in the show. Other than that, it's just as standard as Mihrimah's.

6. Hatice (wedding to Hüsrev)

I wish this one wasn't reused into oblivion, except maybe during that one conversation with Süleyman, so that people can appreciate just how much it slaps. Like, I don't know if that was the intention, but the shadow of Hatice's first wedding dress looms large over this one, and I for one am here for it! The tiara looks like if someone took out most elements from the first one, embroidery is silver instead of gold, and much less splendid, the colour is a much darker shade of red... Just. One of the standout costuming moments in this show, hands down.

5. Mihrimah (wedding night)

I wish wearing a super sparkly nightgown was a thing for more brides on the show! Or, at least I assume it's a nightgown. Like, Nurbanu later wears it as regular dress... Whatever. The important thing is that it's kinda hard to compare it to the rest of the wedding dresses, but it's undoubtedly the best nightgown, so...

4. Mihrimah (wedding procession)

"This dress is my funeral shroud" - Is that a complaint, because gurl, I would indeed die for that dress. I don't even care about its strange colour, or that Mihrimah, the spoiled princess that she is, gets a special dress for her wedding procession AND a special nightgown. This one is just too damn iconic, to the point that it even stands out in the sea of iconic looks Mihrimah's wedding contains in spades. Everything about it falls into place so well - the stunning embroidery, elegant jewelry, even the strange headdress has its own charm. We are entering the iconic looks territory here, folks. Things will only get better.

3. Nigar

Aside from Armin's, this one is the only wedding that doesn't concern top 1% percent of society (although it probably does about a percent bellow that, after all, this is still a society in which like 90% of people are subsistence farmers). But it blows wedding dresses of actual princesses (with one exception) out the water. It checks all of the boxes - it's red, fits Nigar's personal style while going the extra mile, and of course, it's real damn pretty! I even considered it for the first spot, if you can believe it. An absolute waste for a fake wedding, I tell ya. But great wedding dress is the least our best girl deserves.

2. Kösem

I hate that Kösem the super special Mary Sue got to marry Ahmet when even Nurbanu didn't, but at least we got this beauty out of it. It's not that spectacular on its own, but the headband, earrings and especially the absolutely epic cape together create a cohesive, truly unique look that I just can't get enough of. Also, Beren is super mega hot here, fucking sue me.

1. Hatice (wedding to Ibrahim)

...I have no justification for this one. Objectively, it's very solid, even a top 5 material, but is it really THE best wedding dress in this show? And the answer is yes, because I fucking said it and this is my list. I love everything about it so much! The gorgeous embroidery! The amazing jewelry set! The stunning tiara! Is it all a bit too much? Maybe. But too much is just enough for me in this case. Also, Hatice is by far the most beautiful woman on this list, so eat your heart out. This dress is an absolute icon, a gold standard that most of the rest had failed to live up to.

That's all dresses I could remember. If you have any complaints about this very objective and scientifically rigorous list, address it kindly to Minette!

[illarian-rambling]

Thanks for the tag @mk-writes-stuff!

Find the Word Tag

My words: star, panic, weird, break

(Pulled from Mortal God book 2)

Your words: bitter, palace, stumble, rotten

(I'll tag @the-angriest-author @autism-purgatory @super-writer-gal @trippingpossum @steh-lar-uh-nuhs and anyone else who'd like to join!)

.

In Unity, 'night' earned its title only shakily. No stars could peer past the veil of foundry smoke, the moon only a hazy shadow of its full glory. Instead, streetlamps took the place of these celestial bodies, and as they were new to the world, they performed their duty with overzealous fervor. Artificial lights of every unnatural color reflected off of artificial clouds. Even the looming islands hanging overhead like leaden raindrops shed their own pools of illumination.

It... unnerved Vermir. The ancient woman had worked hard to reacquaint herself with the trappings of the times after five hundred years imprisoned at the bottom of the ocean. For the most part, things were wonderful now. Machines could make books in a fraction of the time it would take someone to copy one, medicine could treat anything from water in the lungs to a broken skull, and that was to say nothing of the leaps and strides taken in the field of magic.

Yet even still. Night should be dark, peaceful---a time for the mind to wander, free from the constraints of the day's duties. There was nothing quiet or peaceful about this place.

.

The third garment put the first two to shame. It was a floor-length skirt with a high waistline, two rows of buttons running down to hip level. The shape was pretty simple, all in all. It was the embroidery that made it something spectacular. A tapestry of pale wolves, dagger-billed cranes, bearded unicorns, and gauzy specters cavorted through a moonlit forest, tracks leaving lacy flowers in their wake. It looked rather more like an art piece than something a person would dare to wear. Mashal imagined it still smelled like lhara and manic panic.

.

So far as he could tell, the guard wasn't throwing the fight in the slightest. Sweat dripped from the man’s face as the Duchon stepped around his kick as casually as closing a door. Before he got his foot back down, they delivered a blistering crescent kick into the man’s other thigh.

The entire crowd winced, Mashal included. He remembered that pain. There was a nerve that ran along the upper leg and it looked like the Duchon had hit it right on the money.

However, they pulled back instead of closing in, allowing the guard to stagger back up. A bloody-knuckled grin crept onto the man’s face, answered by a graceful bow from the Duchon. The two tapped fists, then continued with the match.

"This is weird, right?" Mashal whispered to Cee'es. "I thought the Skysheerian nobility considered violence a base thing."

.

Mashal took a simulated breath and made to continue. "The localization rune, when run through a calido-- calidioorogenic cycle, will flip on its axis, pushing magic away from the Veil instead of pulling from it, creating a thin spot. If"---The man paused briefly to smother a yawn---"the cycle is repeated and the axis is flipped once more---"

Astra tapped her pen on the top of the tome, causing him to glance up. "Mark your spot, take a break."

"Huh?" One of Mashal's eyes flickered as he blinked, lending very much to his tired posture. "But you said this chapter is important?"

"It can wait. We've been here for four damn hours now," the witch said. She then pointed to the looming stacks and the valley-tunnels between them. "Go stretch your legs. I was fixin' to review my notes anyways, 'fore we get any further. I gotta brush up on all a' my Veil axes."

Mashal cocked his head. "How many are there?"

"Thirty-three," Astra answered without batting an eye.

"Well, in that case, I will gladly be taking my break." The man stood with a stretch, bronze plates all clinking softly together. "I'll be back in five."

[h4rr0wh4rk]

Harrow Cosplay Planning 2: The Hard Part

Friends, the harder yet more fun aspect of this cosplay is designing my version of Harrow's necromancer robes. While one could look at the series as sci-fi and have a lot of fun trying to design something more sleek and futuristic, like Harrow's canonical cover outfit, I have a deep love for historical costuming and overly ornate bullshit of all sorts, and as such will be leaning heavily into anachronism for the Reverend Daughter of Drearburh's more officious garments.

The line from chapter 7 about Harrow's disembarking outfit reads,

"Harrowhark did not care for any herald. She had drifted out like a black ship in sail, a bony figure wreathed in layers and layers of night-coloured cloth with a lace overcloak trailing behind her; adorned with bones, painted like a dead woman, eyes blindfolded with black net."

"Layers and layers" and "ship in sail" are the first things that give me ideas. When I think of the silhouette of a "ship in sail" I think long not wide. Now, maybe most of the train comes from that lace overcloak, but I think we would have more fun if the main gown itself had some volume in the skirt. I want to avoid any horizontally boned skirt supports, (so no drum farthingales, panniers, or crinoline cages) in order to maintain that long not wide effect. Initially, I thought about basing the main gown on a houppelande, specifically the one pictured here:

Rogier van der Weydan, c. 1443-1445

But as I thought about the practicalities of cloth usage in the ninth and this line Harrow has in chapter 6 of HtN, where she notices Jod's all-black attire, "he was dressed simply, as per usual, in a black shirt and trousers. The lack of tint had always pleased you. It was very Ninth, even the collar and the cuffs of his shirt that were scruffy and pilled from too much wearing," it became clearer to me that the houppelande was too wasteful in its fabric use. That fits more with one of the Tridentarii's diaphanous dresses than Harrow. So I looked instead to a much less wasteful garment, the kirtle:

Dieric Bouts, ca. 1455

Specifically, one that has the opening on the side like this example.

Daisy Viktoria Medieval Dress Pattern

But with more of this shape when standing. I like the continuous cut of the front pieces of the bodice and skirt, and we can add volume and length at the rear gore without adding bulk or extra fabric to the front or side gores.

I want to do a side button (because they actually have buttons! Woo not the 13th century!) opening to try and do something stupid. Given Harrow's propensity for turtlenecks, I want to try and add a side buttoning high neck collar, though whether that gets added to the kirtle or lace overcloak is anybody's guess right now. But if it does end up on the kirtle, getting into the gown will probably be easier if all the openings are on the same line.

To create the "layers and layers," the black kirtle will get a black shift and petticoat, an apron, a shawl, maybe a separate collar garment, kind of like a structured fichu, and the lace overcloak, which will objectively be the hardest thing to source. I'm not adding a surcoat because this is my design and I don't feel like it, it doesn't fit my goth 13th-century rococo vibe.

Speaking of rococo, I am tossing around the idea of adding robe-a-la-francaise-style box pleats to the gown to help support the length idea, but that might be too much.

The veil is a tad confusing. The way it's described in the quote above, as Harrow's "eyes blindfolded with black net," implies it may be more of a fascinator or even a true blindfold, but earlier in that same chapter, Gideon describes how, “The expression on the other girl’s face wasn’t disinterest or distraction, as she’d assumed; even through a layer of veiling, she could tell that Harrow was near-incapacitated with concentration,” making it seem like the veil is over her whole face. Out of a deep love of overdramatics, I'm taking the executive decision it's a full-face veil.

The veil I'm taking from Victorian mourning veils. I know it describes it as "net" in the quote, but in HtN, the Lyctor Hood is contrasted with it as such, "your new hood, unlike good Ninth House furze, was transparent enough to let you see quite clearly". I did some googling, and today it seems like "furze" is just a plant otherwise known as gorse, not a type of cloth or veil. However, if Harrow's veil were simply netting, she would be able to see out of it easily. I think this is a case where Gideon's unreliable narration and inattention to detail is kicking in. As such, I feel justified in using a more densely woven fabric for the veil itself.

The Met, Mourning Veil, 1900-1920

While this is technically probably Edwardian, the crepey silk used was common throughout the Victorian era.

I also like this type of headband I keep seeing fan artists (I will try to find sources and links in the coming days) put Harrow in to anchor the veil, so I would make a version that is not 50 dollars and is probably smaller.

ZiptieJewelry

The shoes would just be the shoes I get for the other version of this cosplay.

Adding all of the bone beading to the gown will be a bridge I burn when I get to it, it's going to be rough rough rough. I have no idea what I want to do in terms of rococoing this up, so expect at least a part 4 of the HCP series about that, (3 will be grease paint research) even if HCC (Harrow Cosplay Constructing) begins in the meantime.

If you made it all the way down here, thank you for reading all of that I am excited to work hard on it and show you what I come up with, and if you didn't:

TL;DR Gonna make a black kirtle for the necromancer robes and add some accessories

[journeyintofiction]

hey can u do another shuri x reader where the reader has an ed and shuri doesn't notice it at first because of being in the lab so much but finally does when it gets really bad. its okay if you're not okay with writing about this topic I've just been struggling with mine rn.

TRIGGER WARNING: this fic will discuss an eating disorder, not in depth but still can be very hard to read, so if this is triggering please, please, please do not read! Your mental health comes first so feel free to pass on this one :) I am writing this purely from my own experiences and everyone's experience is different and valid. 

To the anon: I am so sorry you have been struggling recently :( just know that you, your thoughts, and your feelings are 100% valid!

Word count: 0.8k

Happy reading :)

It's been 13 days.

Shuri has been in the lab consistently for 19 hours a day for 13 days in a row. I know realistically this is her way of coping with grief and coming to terms with her brothers and mothers death. But I can’t help but feel forgotten and cast aside during her mourning period.

“Will you be joining us for breakfast Ms.Y/N?”

I turn to the door of my room and see Aneka and Ayo looking in my direction with curiosity and thinly veiled concern.

I shake my head and give them a brittle smile, “No not this morning, I went on a walk earlier and got some fruits afterward.”

They look at me for a second then nod and say, “As you wish.”

I knew they were concerned, to be honest, everyone was worried about me and it was obvious in the way they looked at me. I knew that I was restricting myself again even though I consciously knew I shouldn't. Shuri was a big help in getting me to recover from my eating disorder, she made sure I ate, got the right balance in food, and always fostered a positive environment around food. Since she was in the lab 24/7 now, I started to relapse and go back to my way of thinking. Between the stress of everything I just started to eat less and less partly because I didn’t think I deserved to eat without her.

I sigh and get up to tidy my room a bit before I decide to try and go to the lab, which she locked me out of earlier in the week. I think that's what triggered me into a downward spiral, the denial of my presence hurt deeply. It may not have been done with malice, but it was excruciatingly painful nonetheless. As I fold up some clothes I look at myself in the mirror and I’m genuinely taken aback by the person staring back at me. I didn’t realize that not eating consistently and in good quantities would take effect so fast but it was scary. My face looked thinner, I looked paler than usual, and I had dark circles under my eyes that seemed pronounced.

I move from the mirror on the verge of tears because I can’t stand to see myself so I quickly finish tidying up and move to the door and open it. I see two Doras stationed outside my door who look at me with concern and I just muster up my best smile and say hello before moving down the hallway.

I reach the lab doors and attempt to open them to no avail and with a huff, I call out, “Griot?”

“Yes Ms.Y/N?”

“Can you tell Shuri I would like to see her as it is urgent?”

I wait expecting a reply from Griot, but to my surprise, Shuri herself opens the doors to the lab. She waves me in and I take a moment to examine her, she looks sad and tired but otherwise healthy. When I get into her area of the lab and sit down she turns to fully look at me and she frowns deeply. I see Okoye and Nakia are one room over and the only thing separating us is the soundproof glass. They smile and nod to me before turning their backs to give us privacy, at least the glass was soundproof so they wouldn’t hear the extent of our conversation.

I look back at Shuri and she looks upset but before I can speak she says, “Have I done this to you?”

I take note of the pained expression she wears and the sadness in her voice as if it physically pains her to see my slowly relapsing. I bite my lip and say, “I’m not going to lie, you are partly the reason but the majority of the fault lies with me.”

She looks pained and just nods then asks, “do you…eat enough?”

I know this is her way of asking if I eat three times a day and snack in between while also trying to not trigger me. I decide to be honest and shake my head and hear her sharply inhale before gently taking my hands in hers.

She pulls me into a hug, “I’m sorry my love.”

I shake my head, “Don’t be sorry, you were grieving and you still are.”

She stops me and looks dumbfounded for a moment, “That doesn’t mean I have an excuse to stop caring for those I love.”

I just nod, “Please, just don’t shut me out of the beautiful head of your Shuri.”

She takes a deep breath and looks into my eyes, “ We will get better together, right?”

I smile and nod, “Yes, together.”

A/N: Hello wonderful people! If you made it to the end, thank you as I know this is an exceptionally heavy topic to discuss and write about. Again this was written from my own personal experience and I wasn’t super explicit because I don’t want to trigger anyone! As always my requests are open :) 

[kokorowoutsu]

-- JMF '24: Change Doesn't Come Easy

"... I do not know what happens to us when we die, but I like to hope that maybe... we get a chance to sit with all those we have loved and talk to them one last time."

The air hung heavy on the beaches of Alola -- Ashe 19, Kianga 18. The two barely knowing each other but already like siblings. Such a comment had been unexpected in the silence, but she often wondered how his mind worked, this mysterious young man she had met in the rain. She didn't know exactly what was on his mind either, but his eyes... his eyes held such a forlorn expression that it made her feel somber -- at least for what she could feel with being numb to everything.

Noting her Eevee and his Zoroark watching them, she carefully reached out to lay a hand on his, prompting him to look over at her as she cast her gaze skyward. She swallowed down her emotions hard, the urge to cry coming forth.

"... I'm sure you'll get to see them if you look hard enough before that." She pauses. "My gr--..." She trails off, taking a moment to correct herself. "... Someone I love told me once that when people go, you'll often find them not just beyond the Great Veil, but also in the little things they did." She paused then. "... But I wonder if that counts for the pieces of you that didn't exactly get to live either?"

Silence greeted her question and what hand she had been resting hers on gently laid itself to her head, pulling her over to rest against his gently, softly. "I cannot answer such a question because I seek that answer too... but I can tell you that it is something we will probably question for as long as our long lives take us through." He had tried at least, and Ashe was grateful for it.

--

Stirring from her dream, Ashe sat up in the late afternoon, the sun pouring through, the sounds of people outside talking and things being lifted for the preparations to the festival. She swore she heard some familiar voices of acquaintances they have made from the festivals too, but her mind was locked onto the memory... dream? she had had. Maybe it was prompted by the fact Grusha had asked a question not to anyone, but to himself she supposed, about this idea of 'change' and not just that, but the idea of moving on.

She had long pondered the idea of the 'Ikiriyo' she had heard about as well and it hadn't took long for her to see shadows of a girl wearing an Eevee mask, crying softly, and she was guarded by a second girl -- a teenager who radiated anger, still wearing an Eevee mask. Ashe knew who they were and while she had every intention of settling things, she had caught them out of the corner of her eye every time something bad had happened to Willow who was curled up with Larvae presently nearby. She hadn't said anything to Leon just yet, but angered surged through her because they sought to harm her daughter. Her future -- her chance at happiness... all because she hadn't made things right with them yet. She supposed it was her own impatience that was showing in them, that led them to act in such a way and not give her the time to do so, but she still felt fury towards the Ikiriyo she gave off.

Rubbing her temples, she got out of the futon and went to sit beside her daughter, all too aware that she was being watched by said Ikiriyo right now. She felt something brush against her in that being Lucky, and slowly both turned to look at the spirits with a mix of hurt and anger. They cowered back but remained firm in remaining.

Ashe said nothing to them, but she and Lucky turned back to watch over Willow and Larvae, one ribbon finding its way around Ashe's arm as the woman softly exhaled to try and release a bit of tension that now had found its way into not just her body, but her heart as well, in preparation for tomorrow's festival.