#moon fairy Eddie Munson

[medusapelagia]

27 AU-gust: Fantastic Creatures

Rating: Teen and up Relationship: Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson WT: age difference (when they meet Steve is only a child and Eddie is older) WC: 1578

It's not the first time that his father hit him, but it's the first time that he ran away after.

His dad will be furious when he finds out that he left from the window.

It wasn't easy as they show in the movies, and both his knees are bleeding and his jeans are broken, but all Steve wants to do is run away from the house. Run away from the man that hits him every time he plays a little louder, the man that scares everyone away.

There was a time when he was different.

When Steve was happy to see him back home.

A time when they played together, and laughed and… and it seems so long ago now.

After his grandpa’s death, everything changed.

His father told him that he was no longer a kid and that he had no time to lose with silly fantasies and took away all his books, leaving him time only to do homework or sports.

His mother has tried to talk to him but with no success. His father has become only meaner and more violent, and so he has decided to run, convinced that if he runs far enough he will get to Aunt Mary's house.

He loves Aunt Mary's house, it's on the coast, and you can hear the ocean roar when there is a storm.

It's in a place called California and he knows that it's not close, but maybe if he keeps running he will get there, or at least he will be able to leave the woods and ask for directions to someone.

He shouldn’t be in the woods, his fathers always told him that they are dangerous, but he feels that his home is even more dangerous, so he keeps running.

He falls, getting all his clothes dirty, god, his father is going to be so pissed! 

He gets up but he can't run anymore, so he walks through the bushes. The moon is still shining and he can see her light in the dark and he feels less lonely.

He loves the moon. Her gentle brightness. 

"Are you lost, little one?"

Steve stops abruptly, looking around himself but seeing no one.

"You seem to need some help, don't you, little one?"

He turns around to find the source of the voice and he stumbles on some roots which come to the surface. He braces himself for the impact with the ground but he doesn't fall. A long white arm is holding him tight.

"Didn't you hurt yourself enough?"

The voice is sweet and calm and Steve lifts his eyes to find a beautiful man with dark eyes holding him.

It takes him a moment to see that the man has wings!

They look like dragonfly's wings.

"Do you like them?"

He nods, astonished. He had never seen someone so beautiful in his life.

The man smiles like he can read his thoughts.

"Tell me, where were you going all by yourself on this wonderful night?"

"I'm going to see my aunt. Mary. She lives in California.”

The man mumbles “California, uh? Isn’t that a little far from Hawkins?”

“It is. But my aunt lives there and I want to go live with her.”

“I see… You don’t like your home?”

Steve shakes his head “My dad hates me. He beat me. Look!” he lifts his jacket showing a big blue bruise on his abdomen.

“Does it hurt?”

“Only if I touch it.”

“Like this?” the man asks pushing harder on his abdomen.

Steve tries to pull away, but the man's hold is strong.

He whimpers, feeling tears in his eyes.

“Don’t cry, little one. It’s all gone.”

The man removes his hand and Steve sees that the bruise is no longer there.

“How did you do it?”

“Magic.” he replies with a smirk “Would you like me to heal your knees too?”

Steve thinks about it for a long time, it hurt a lot when the man healed him, but now he feels so much better, so he nods.

“My little one is so brave…” the man praises him, and then the sharp pain is the only thing that fills Steve’s mind.

“Now what?” he asks to the man when his injuries are all healed.

“Do you still want to go to California?” the man asks and Steve tilts his head, confused.

“Are you really magic?”

The man nods.

“Can you really get me to California?”

“I can.”

“Will you?”

“I’d rather prefer not.”

“Why?”

The man sits on the ground, gesturing to Steve to sit in his lap “I want to tell you a story. A long long time ago there was a moon fairy, with black hair and dark eyes, that was waiting for the little moon of his life. He waited for the longest time, and when he finally felt that his little moon was born, it was taken away from him.” he pauses, while Steve looks at him with interest “He got so mad that he threatened to break the entire world if his little moon wasn’t returned to him. So his guards, his friends, and even his enemies started to look for his little moon. One night, when the moon was shining very brightly, he heard his little moon crying, so he ran toward the sound and found a little man, wandering around the woods, all alone. He was the most beautiful child he had ever seen. His skin was white as the moon, his eyes golden as the stars, and his little ears were pointed.” he continues, tapping on the kid's nose and smiling at Steve’s little giggle.

“The moon fairy knew that the beautiful child was the little moon that was stolen from him, but to be absolutely sure he had to touch his soul. Will you let me touch your soul, little one?”

Steve is mesmerized by the man and he nods without even asking what that means.

The man hugs him even tighter, their forehead touches and Steve feels a gentle hand looking through his mind, through his memories, reading them like a book.

He goes back to the fight with his father, back to the time when he was happy, back to the first time he came home in a stroller, and finally back to the night he was born, on the other side of the moon.

“I knew it was you. They brought you so far from me that I couldn’t find you, but tonight I heard your cry and I came for you. Would you like to go back home with me?”

“Home?” He asks confused.

The man brushes Steve’s hair away from his face “I don’t know how those stupid humans could ever believe that they gave birth to someone so beautiful as you.” He continues hugging the kid “You are a fairy, Stevie, just like me. You are my soulmate and I would love to bring you back home with me.”

“A fairy?”

“A changeling. A fairy that was switched at birth with a human.” He explains to an even more confused Steve.

“But I don’t have wings.” He complaints.

“You will, once we are back home, the moon will make you stronger and your wings will finally appear.”

Steve stares at the moon, he always loved it and now he knows why he always felt so connected.

“Home?” He asks, still starting.

“If you want I’ll bring you there right now.”

Steve stretches his arms and the black fairy easily picks him up.

When he opens his eyes they are in a forest of white trees and his skin shines even brighter.

“Welcome home, little one.” The black fairy whispers in his ear while Steve feels his shoulders tingle.

The black fairy removes his jacket and finally, some little wings emerge from Steve's back.

They are small and tender, but they are wings nonetheless.

"I have wings!" he states, astonished.

The black fairy smiles "When they are strong enough I'll teach you to fly. Would you like that?"

Steve nods, eagerly, then he looks down at the little planet that he used to call home.

"Could I fly back to Earth?" he asks, and the older fairy's face becomes serious.

"You could. Not by flying but by magic. But why would you do that? Do you miss Earth?"

Steve thinks for a long moment about his family, his friends, his Aunt Mary, and her home near the sea and he finds out that he doesn't really miss them, it's only that they were familiar and all of this is not.

The black fairy picks him up, holding him on his hip like a little child and he finds himself grabbing his neck.

"I know that this is new and it can seem scary to you. But I promise that you'll love it. Can you give me a chance?"

Steve stares at the man who is holding him with more care than his parents ever did. But he doesn't know this man. He doesn't even know his name.

"You can call me Eddie." he says, and then he opens his wing "Are you ready to fly?" he asks, and after a moment they are flying over the trees toward a white castle. Steve's little wings wiggle in the air and Eddie chuckles "I'm sure you will start to fly in no time, little one."

Steve blushes at the praise, feeling more happy than he has ever felt before.

[sabbathbloodysabbeth]

Moon and Sun (soulmate au)

I’ve had this concept in my head for a while but just imagine Steve Harrington, the literal definition of the sun glowing and being the leader of the group. (I’m thinking this might be a fairy or magical au) where everyone has different powers that vary. Where there has been a long tale, a myth almost about how one day the sun and moon would combine. It’s very vague and people just assume that it’s the apocalypse, that the world was going to end. But there was no sign of that happening. There also has been a long myth of soulmates as well, where each soulmate would have a power that fits with their partners. (Example; one can see the future while the other can stop time) though once again that had been proven to be myth.

Though back to Steve Harrington, he was one of the most weakest people out there. Mentally strong but his powers were not what people expected him to have. He was the literal definition of a golden child. Freckles blossoming his cheeks, hair gold, eyes a brown that matched him perfectly, skin tanned and an overall glow around him. It had always been thought he would have the powers of the sun on his side. Being the groups light, but instead he doesnt. He has the power of water, water that is so dark that it could be said to be darker then the midnight sky. The powers were underwhelming compared to the rest of the group.

(Robin could shape shift into animals, Will could make drawings come to life, max could control emotions, Dustin could read peoples minds but also talk to them, Mike just had the power of being a asshole, Nancy had the powers of communication being able to convince anyone to do what she said, and Lucas (who was most definitely the strongest of the group) had healing powers, empathy (not as strong as Max’s but enough to where they understood each other) and superspeed. Thought out of everyone Lucas had been the most fitting of these powers all of them connected to his personality. )

Meanwhile, miles away there was Eddie Munson. A dark soul who lurked during the night. His hair was dark and his complex was pale. His Uncle had assumed that he would have some form of dark magic. But to his surprise the other had fire powers. The complete opposite of what you had expected from him. Fire wasn’t to far off from him but this wasn’t ordinary fire. It was bright, and of course hot but strangely more beautiful then anything than anyone has ever seen. Which was something you wouldn’t have expected from something so dark as Eddie.

Though a lot happens and Steve and Eddie combine. Two different worlds crashing at once as something orbital pulls them together. At first hating each other, they slowly start to realize they are the others missing puzzle piece. Finding themselves outside under the sky, the only time the sun and the moon shared the earth they kiss. Together they are one. Nothing changes at first, not until it clicks.

Steve’s water powers came from the moon, (which Eddie had been known as the moon child) letting him pull water while Eddie’s fire powers came from the sun (of course steve was known as the sun child of course). As events unfold they realize they are the prophecy of the moon and sun meeting and they are soulmates. Though soon they both become one, in sync. Steve discovering he can now control fire as well as water and Eddie can control water as well as water. Though that’s not the only thing, new powers bloom as their bond grows stronger. The power of the wolves join them, and the power of the plants.

Like ahhh idk if I explained this well but god I have so many ideas for this ship

I HAVE SO MANY IDEAS THAT I WANNA WRITE GOD WHY ME

[chaoticgood-munson]

Single dad Eddie taking his 5 year old daughter to her first ever ren faire after making her a fairy costume only to see you dancing with your giant wings like maleficent and horns and his daughter runs up to you and demands attention so you bow to her and dance with her and Eddie’s heart is melting watching this beautiful stranger make his daughter’s experience so magical and he also can’t help falling in love with you when you get on one knee so you’re at her level and hand her an amethyst and say “this will give you good dreams. Make sure your daddy bathes it in moon water every full moon so it keeps working.” He can’t help falling in love with you when he tries to introduce himself and you cut him off with “don’t you know it’s bad to tell the fae your name? They will have complete power over you if you do.”

And he can’t help but to blurt it.

“My name is Eddie. Edward. Edward Munson. I don’t have a middle name, but I could go get one if you want. Right now. Legally. I’ll go to the courthouse right now and add one. It can be whatever you want, sweetheart.”

And maybe you can’t help falling in love too

[tfyoulookingatgiuxs]

Do it again...

Vampire!Eddie Munson x Princess!Reader

𝐒𝐔𝐌𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐘: Night reigned in your great and powerful castle as a menace out there stalked, threatening the people who lived beyond. You were alone locked away for safety, but no one knew that you had a sweet and exciting visit from a creature who wanted only and only you.

𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒: 18+ SMUT!!! MDNI!!Unprotected sex, p in v, bondage, age gap, choking, dracyphilia, degradation (whore, slut ect..), pet names (pretty girl, princess ect...), dirty talking, fingering, spanking, dom!mean!Eddie, sub!fem!reader, praise kink, begging, blood kink, wax play, monster fuck, aftercare, secret relationship.

𝐀/𝐍: Sorry for my english, is not my native language. I really love this one, i hope you enjoy! (Please dont judge, this is my first smut i posted on Tumblr, hope you can support new writers.) I would defenitely brought another one-shot like this, beacuse a love Eddie in fantasy romance. Support new writers and reblog! (DIVIDER NOT MINE)

Night reigned over the kingdom of Nyzeen. It was populated by a large village that lived thanks to the king who ruled over them. A loyal and kind man who cared about his people and about making sure no one lived in poverty.

His kingdom was powerful and with equally strong and trained guards. He founded Nyzeen about twenty years ago at a young age, when he had enough courage to defeat Lilith, one of the most dangerous vampire women in the world, defined as the reincarnation of Count Vlad, an extremely dangerous vampire being who took pleasure in impaling own victims and then drain them dry by drinking their blood.

Lilith was defined as Vlad, a real devil, mother of all her demons called vampires today, created by the devil himself to take revenge on mankind by depriving them of their blood, and transforming them into part of his ranks.

The king, after defeating Lilith, took possession of the large and dark castle, creating the kingdom that it is today, saving the prisoners who were left there as a breeding ground for their uncontrolled hunger.

On that full moon night, the king found the love of his life among the unfortunate survivors, a woman with a wonderful appearance. The young king could not resist and married her, ruling at her side and they became husband and wife. One fine day, the king and queen gave birth to a beautiful and enchanting baby girl. You.

The day of your birth, in Nyzeen, was recognized as one of the days in which a sudden cold descended never felt before, while the forest present a few steps from the kingdom mysteriously expanded.

Many years have passed and you were close to adulthood, where you would soon have to choose your future husband and rule your future people. You were to become their queen, confident and fearless. Your mother still cries when she sees you today, in a short time you had grown up and it seemed like only yesterday when she held you in her arms for the first time. She was proud of you as was your father. To them, you were the most beautiful in all the realm, no one could resist your refined beauty. You were like a wonderful flower that bloomed in the blood of God, a divinity with an apparently monstrous appearance due to the dominant black color, but with the kindness and purity of a true angel from heaven.

However, in this beautiful fairy tale there was also a horrible threat that had been worrying the entire village lately. The forest that lay before the kingdom, also called The Black Forest, hid vampires who survived the war against Lilith. They caused the deaths of some inhabitants of the kingdom who had left to obtain some wood. The return of those blood-hungry creatures has sparked panic, but the king has promised to keep everyone safe and kill all those beasts that still infest this land. He hate them.

The vampire...

A creature as fascinating as it is on a scientific level is also extremely dangerous. It outlives man for thousands of years, maintaining a youthful appearance that masks its enormous age. Capable of transforming into bats, fog or werewolves, the predators par excellence. They have sharp canine teeth with which they tear the skin of humans and suck their lifeblood.

Their skin could change shades depending on how much blood they drank and they knew how to disguise themselves among humans, living among them as if nothing had happened. The books were full of information about them, and you couldn't hide that you felt some interest.

It was a cool night with a red moon and on that precise evening all the citizens of the kingdom locked themselves inside their homes, barring the doors and windows. Vampires during the red moon were ruthless and nothing would stop them. The only thing that could have kept them away was garlic. It was the weapon to keep them away, especially that night. Instead, your parents asked the more trained guards to lock you in your rooms and make sure nothing happened.

Not only were the lives of the citizens at stake, but also yours and that of the entire kingdom. You were the daughter of the man who defeated and ruined the vampire race, they certainly didn't find you nice...

Your room was dark and a few oil candles attached to the walls gave light. The windows were closed, including the small balcony that overlooked the castle's outdoor garden. You were calmly looking at yourself in the mirror while combing your hair. You were still in your long dress, you didn't feel like wearing your nightgown yet so you preferred to wait.

A tidy and sober dress, a true gothic princess after all. The only thing you got rid of was the corset so you could feel freer and more carefree.

You jumped on the spot when you suddenly heard a knock on the glass of your balcony, as if someone had knocked. You turned around but no one was there. You therefore decided to get up and go and check; you weren't afraid, not even of a possible vampire, maybe... it depends on who the vampire in question is. You were attracted by the reddish light of the moon, all in front of you, as if it had come to take you.

Incredible, you thought.

Someone's shadow appeared, you managed to see it, it was hidden behind the wall. You grabbed a knife from your thigh lining, then jerked open the entrance to your balcony. It was all so fast. The stranger managed to block your arms from behind, but you kicked him on the knee and as soon as he grimaced in pain you pointed the knife near his throat.

Only now did you realize that the sharp blade was grazing Eddie's pale white skin. Your tense muscles loosened as a giggle escaped his lips "I must say you've improved, princess" he said and you lowered the weapon putting it down and he licked his lower lip "I wasn't expecting any visitors" You stated walking back inside while the vampire followed you "I wanted to surprise you with the surprise effect" He said as he wrapped his arms around your waist and in the meantime you closed the balcony "Well you did it" You whispered as he placed his cold lips on yours skin pressing a few kisses.

Exact. You were secretly paired with a vampire, one of those who killed for food and who together with his cronies are wreaking havoc through The Black Forest. It wasn't your fault, you couldn't imagine it ending like this, actually it wasn't supposed to go like this, but fate had decided that way. That day when he pierced your heart like a sharp arrow you lost your temper, you couldn't escape, you couldn't resist, you were destined. A dream...a dream where love is nothing but passion, sin and chaos, nothing more!

You turned towards him giving him a sweet kiss while he held you close to him. You placed your hands on the now torn black shirt that showed the rest of his stomach. It was stained with that dark red liquid like wine but which for his tastes was even better than the wine itself.

"Why this sudden visit on the night of the red moon?" You asked then felt her nails as black as her arms fix one of your locks "I haven't seen my princess in days, I felt so alone, so I came to see you" curious how he chose today to come and see you , but in the end, it was fine, right? You had removed all the verbena plants you kept in your room, so it's as if you were waiting for his arrival. Verbena was an extremely rare plant to find and used to ward off vampires and witches' spells. Only people from the castle could take advantage of this very difficult to find flower, but you didn't think about it.

“My poor dear, I'm sorry for making you feel so alone” You said in an empathetic tone stroking his unruly curls “I couldn't imagine living a hundred years without your presence” he whispered making you blush and he kissed you again. He was hungry, more romantic than usual and what's more his grip was stronger than you remembered.

You separated while catching your breath and he could feel your warm breath on his chin "And you? How did my princess feel without me?" He asked. Your noses were together and you could notice his dark circles and brown eyes like a fallen autumn leaf "Bored. Without you, life here is still the same, nothing new" since your relationship was something secret , you and Eddie couldn't be together whenever you wanted, so it was normal if you didn't see each other for a week or even a whole month.

Eddie nodded "Well now you don't have to worry because I'm here princess" Yes. It was definitely VERY romantic unlike other times you two saw each other. You didn't say anything to him until he pressed a few kisses to your neck "If you're feeling peckish, just help yourself, you know I don't mind" You used a calm tone that would put Eddie at ease.

But he shook his head "I can't sweetheart, I don't want to bleed you dry" he positioned his face in the crook of your neck and you gave him a simple kiss. You had forgotten that on a night like this, vampires could be aggressive and uncontrolled. The younger vampires were extremely out of control and with a higher bloodlust, but Eddie, being a vampire who has lived over three hundred years, fortunately does not have this problem, but still he would have been uncontrolled if you let him drink your blue blood. But you would do it, you didn't care if he would drain you to death, you would do it for him.

“I would take the risk for you,” you told him as your hand ran through his messy curls. You felt his cold breath on your neck, sending shivers down your entire spine. It wasn't the first time Eddie drank your blood, the first time he tasted you he called it the purest blood he had ever drunk. From then on, Eddie demanded that no other vampire scum should touch you or your blood, you were his, and you wouldn't change that.

Eddie, hearing your consent, sank his fangs into your neck causing excruciating pain. You held back a scream by biting your bottom lip hard. He sucked your blood intensely and you heard him moan. The vampire's grip got tighter and tighter and you hissed something and then no longer felt that stinging pain. He licked the bleeding wound and you squeezed your legs together feeling some tingling.

At a moment like this you absolutely shouldn't be excited, but his teeth as well as his tongue dragging on your wound, it was a mix of different emotions for you.

You were so needy in that moment...and here you came to fuck on your big bed, while outside the knights started making a big mess. Eddie had you pinned to the bed, wrists tied to the headboard, dress now off leaving your skin exposed and on display. Escaping was now impossible...

The vampire had positioned himself above you, his fingers playing on your clit in circular motions, while with his other hand he held a white candle, dropping the now melted and hot wax.

“Eddie-” you called him as tears rolled down your cheeks “No” he said once again in a dominant tone. You absolutely had to come, but Eddie ordered you not to, he wanted to ruin you, and what better way than to drag it out? You moaned at the burning of the hot wax on your belly, you couldn't make too much noise, even if there was a racket outside you couldn't risk it "Look at you, you're so pathetic" he said with a grin as you almost screamed because of the wax that fell on your left breast “I bet you want my cock inside you so bad, huh princess?” You were too caught up in the sensations that it took you time to respond.

Spank!

“I asked you a fucking question whore” he said growling and squeezing your ass where he hit “Y-yes!” You said desperately "Please Eds-" you begged. The vampire laughed teasing you "Have we got our manners back, princess?" He asked as he threw a handful of hot wax on your nipple which this time made you scream but you tried to bite your lip to hold back "Yes Eddie, please make me cum" you looked at him with tears in your eyes and he smiled, blowing out the candle with a simple blow, placing it on the nightstand next to your royal bed. The vampire moved closer to your face to kiss your cheeks and suck some of your salty tears. One of his fingers had now entered you making you moan noticeably “Just like that” He whispered to you as he sunk his fangs into your neck, but lower near your collarbones. You felt all the pain and pleasure at the same time. The sound of his fingers sliding in and out of your pussy could be heard throughout the room, and you were seriously about to reach your limit "E-um" You tried to say his name and failed miserably "Come on princess, now you can cum, i want to be generous" he said pulling away from your skin, disinfecting the wound with its saliva. His approval was all you needed, and sure enough, you came wetting his ringed fingers and moaning throwing your head back “Fuck-” You vulgarly said abandoning yourself to the passion of the moment.

Your legs trembled as the vampire stood up looking fully at you. You were fucking gorgeous, now naked on your own bed, tied at the wrists, half your body covered in wax, cheeks wet from your tears and makeup now smudged. You were ruined, but not completely. There was something else you wanted badly, and that was his seed inside you. It wasn't the first time you had sex with Eddie, and for this you thought you were very lucky, because you didn't think you had ever enjoyed so much in your life, even if he was a mystical and dangerous creature, you were really grateful that it was him who took your virginity.

The vampire caressed your thigh and then gave a spank that made you gasp "You really like coming huh? My little slut" he wiped his lips dirty with your blue blood with his hand "Eddie please..." You continued to pray to him. You couldn't do anything else, you didn't care anymore, not even if someone could come in and catch you in that scandalous state.

“I hear you needy girl” He chuckled and hastily took off his pants, freeing his erect, needy cock. He couldn't wait to make you scream his name with just simple thrusts as your tears fall in pleasure.

You felt the tip of his cock tapping against your clit and then Eddie positioned his cock at the entrance to your pussy, then, without warning, thrusting in with a rough deal, you let out a moan as you screamed his name.

“F-fuck, you're so damn tight” he said as he placed his ringed hand on your neck pressing lightly “Now see about using that pretty little mouth to scream my name.” With this, the vampire, without hesitation, began to give firm thrusts, he was seriously full of adrenaline, you didn't think if it was because of the red moon night or if it was just a coincidence.

Every thrust got louder and louder, and every moan you made was just as loud. "Do you hear that, princess? All this noise?" He whispered and you heard some screams coming from outside. You couldn't seriously understand what was happening but deep down, you didn't care in the slightest, you nodded "People out there are about to be massacred, what about you? Oh of course, you're here getting fucked by a vampire" those words of his were like a fine iron blade pointed at the belly.

It was really true...

There was definitely a massacre going on outside and instead of worrying about it you were there tied to that bed getting fucked hard by a vampire.

"Who knows what your parents will think of you...just a little doll who loves to be fucked, isn't she?" His firm hand on your neck tightened even more making you gasp between your moans. Some blood had leaked from your wound, staining the pillows behind you. You nodded and he didn't accept this answer of yours.

Spank!

"Use your words, pretty girl" after this, Eddie sped up making you moan uncontrollably hitting that sweet spot inside you "Y-yes Eddie! I'm your little doll" You almost screamed as your breathing quickened and you began to sweating “Of course you are, fuck-” he let out a moan as you rolled your eyes up “Eddie- I have to-” the words died as more gasps filled you and salty tears wet the pillow next to you. "Cum all over my cock, princess" the sound of your skins flapping repeatedly was something vulgar and sinful "Fuckfuckfuckfuck-" You repeated throwing your head back once again as your pussy tightened around the his cock, you both came moaning in unison.

“Jesus Christ-” the vampire growled giving the last two thrusts, firm and strong filling you with his cum. Eddie removed his hand from your neck, revealing some marks you would have been hard pressed to hide, not to mention the bites caused by his hunger. He pressed light kisses to your neck and you tried to catch your breath “Everything ok princess?” He asked as he caressed your waist, you nodded looking at him. You were tired, exhausted, and Eddie noticed. He stood up taking a deep breath and took care of you by cleaning up the combined case.

You woke up the next morning under your linen covers, the sun's rays streaming through the window and forcing you to open your eyes. You turned your head to look next to you and saw the silhouette of Eddie sitting facing the balcony, the vampire was putting on sunscreen to avoid getting burned. You admired the vampire's back, he seemed to be sculpted from clay, a true historical statue, his messy but majestic curls were simply perfect, he was the most handsome man you had ever seen, and you would never deny it.

You noticed that you weren't naked like you remembered, but in your nightgown. Most likely it was him who dressed you and took care of you, you also noticed how for the first time the boy had slept with you. Because of your secret relationship, it wasn't usual to sleep together in the same bed without being discovered, but you appreciated this gesture on his part. Eddie turned around noticing you waking up "Good morning sleeping beauty" he smiled at you and you did the same still a little sleepy "How are you?" He asked walking closer to you, resting his pale back, like the rest of his skin, on the headboard "Good Eds. Last night though, you were different..." You added a note of concern and the vampire raised his eyebrow as put away the sunscreen.

“What do you mean sweetheart?”

"Last night you were upset. You were a desperate, howling demon. You scared me..." A small grin formed on your face as your nightgown was now on full display and the vampire's hungry eyes couldn't help less than admiring you "Aw, I'm sorry if this vampire scared you princess" he said sarcastically and came closer "Oh, my dear, please. Do it again..." you stroked his dark curls and he laughed "Come here naughty girl"

He smiled as he walked over and hugged you as you let out a soft laugh.

Who cares what happened to him last night! Now you just wanted to stay held by him for eternity.

[artiststarme]

Happy Halloween!

The first Halloween they have after the events of Spring Break is the best Eddie had ever had. He’d always loved Halloween with its mystery and secrets, the hidden horror found in the films, and the candy everyone passed out to the kids. He loved watching the kids of the trailer park dress in their second-hand costumes to pretend to be fairies, princesses, and pirates like he too had once before. But before 1986, he’d always been alone. He would smear makeup on his face and run door to door in the early evening before anyone else was out then he’d saunter home and hide from the bullies outside with a lap full of candy and the small TV screen playing a horror flick. 

Halloween of 1986 though brought a new opportunity. Eddie could put on a mask and cease to be the boy that everyone in the town despised. He would no longer be a “known” killer that mothers pulled their children away from. He wouldn’t be the idiot that flunked out of high school after three tries. He wouldn’t even be the freak that people sneered insults at. That Halloween night, Eddie was able to just be himself with his friends. 

He and Steve weren’t dating at that point, but he could feel they were close. Eddie saw the way his eyes never strayed quite too far away from him and felt how his hands reached for him whenever he turned away. It wasn’t different on Halloween. 

Eddie’s face was covered with black and white paint and his hair was let loose on his back, the curls unruly and full. He was masquerading as a member of KISS, the only metal band that Steve could stomach to listen to for any period of time. Above all though, he wasn’t Eddie Munson. 

Steve dressed as Ferris Bueller wearing a costume eerily similar to Tina’s Halloween Party several years prior and matched with Robin who went as his best friend Cameron Frye. The kids dressed in random costumes that meant little to Eddie beyond recognition that they were having fun. 

The whole Party went door to door in Loch Nora for the full size candy bars then around the Wheeler’s neighborhood for some of what Dustin called, “the cheap shit”. When the night was over and most of the houses were out of candy to pass out, everyone headed back to the Byers’ house for the sleepover of all sleepovers. They carved pumpkins and ate pie, they made pumpkin seeds and cookies, they almost gave Hopper a heart attack when they started a food fight that wrecked the entire dining room (Eddie started it but he’s taking that with him to the grave). 

When the kids were too tired and the girls had retreated to bed, Steve led Eddie out to his car where they watched the stars and smoked some cigarettes. They ate all of Dustin’s candy and traded secrets under the gaze of the brightened moon. Eddie’d long forgotten about his face paint up until the point where Steve’s lips met his in a light kiss that shot electricity through his bones. They kissed and hugged until their noses were cold from the chilly weather and they had no choice but to head back inside. 

It was the best night of Eddie’s life. 

The morning after was not. He woke up with a bruising jolt from Steve’s elbow making contact with his jaw. His stomach hurt from the excessive consumption of sweets and his lungs were tight from the chain smoking. Most of all though, his head hurt from the loud raucous of the kids finding his facepaint all over the lower half of Steve’s face. 

He dealt with the outraged confusion of the kids, the stern ‘talking-to’ (more like screaming match) from Hopper for defiling his adopted son, and even the not so subtle looks from Robin and Nancy. Everything was worth it in the end when Steve carefully wiped off the makeup on Eddie’s face with nimble fingers and gentle swipes until all that was left was some slight staining of skin and his lips meeting Steve’s. 

Halloween of 1986 was the best of many moments to come. It turns out that for Eddie, ‘86 was his year after all. 

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[blueywrites]

Where you and Steve swing with Eddie and Chrissy, and it gets complicated.

TO KNOW YOU'RE MINE (modern!swingers!au) (18+ only)

eddie munson x chrissy cunningham x steve harrington x you

fem!reader, chubby!reader, minimal use of y/n, body insecurity, swingers, angst, hurt/comfort. minor spoilers for the show 'The Last of Us,' episode three.

chapter eleven : angel (14k) | playlist | AO3 | next

🎵 in this au, deftones=corroded coffin. the playlist is a combination of R's sad girl music vibes and some foreshadowing. the songs for this chapter are #35-#36. #36, the title song, doesn't appear in the text, so you can play it whenever it feels appropriate.

I've been afraid all of my life

Crippled with anxiety, shame and doubt

And sometimes, sometimes I'd like to shout

At the top of my lungs and just let it out

What has that fear ever done for me

But hold me back?

What has jealousy and hate ever done for you

But remind you of what you think you lack?

So give me love and give me compassion

Self-forgiveness and give me some passion

I love you even if you don't love me

I love you even if you can't love me

Angel— First Aid Kit

There’s a moment upon waking on Saturday that you feel the same as you did twenty-four hours before. The moon is round and full; your earth is cold and numb. Its beams are peaceful, tranquil, sterile as they glint off your frosted leaves. You have not yet recalled the warm light that awakened your growth and left it just as quickly to the dark of twilight, the whisper of smoke that flowed into your lungs and left you breathless with poignant longing. You have not yet noticed the puffiness of your eyes, the rattle of your breath in your lungs, or the deep, rending ache at the bottom of you. 

You blink, and as the late sunlight falls across your eyes, you remember.

Penny had found you howling on the floor, puddled in your charcoal despair. Your sister’s arms clasped you tight as she sputtered her distressed confusion, begging you to tell her what was wrong. You’d worked it out in bits and pieces— explanations choked through trembling lips, halted by the gasps and sobs and whines of a wounded animal. You’d felt like a child when she rocked you, shushing you softly, petting your hair like your mother had when you’d come home from elementary school scraped raw from your friends’ rejection. In the moment, you hadn’t cared how childlike you’d become, more than eager to relinquish your twenty-four-year-old self to the comfort of your sister’s surety. She wiped your face clear of the tracks of your mascara, the color dark like charcoal to stain the sleeves of her sweater. It stained Penny, but in doing so, she took it from you— took it until your tears dried up, until your muscles trembled with relief and fatigue. Penny held you on the kitchen floor as you wrested back control of your body. You scrubbed your hands over your wet, flushed face, whimpering into your palms until you finally quieted. 

You picked yourself up then, moving through the steps of recovery: retreating to the bathroom to wash your cheeks, to run your wrists under warm water, to take deep breaths until they were no longer labored, the entire time avoiding the sight of your swollen face in the mirror. When you’d emerged, Penny was thumping the knife against the cutting board, holding firm as you offered in a small voice to take over again. Obstinate, your sister refused you, directing you to the couch with a firm hand and concern shining in her eyes. She finished your stir fry, serving you a bowl you thanked her for with a brief smile but ate listlessly before turning in for an early night. 

After the tease of Eddie’s presence, no longer can you feel pleasantly numb. Instead, now that the well of your tears has dried, you just feel empty. Bereft. Like the earth has been churned, disturbed; turned over and left wanting for what has been removed. But when you heave a deep sigh, breath stirring the motes floating like fairy dust in the shaft of light spilling from Penny’s beloved window, you reach tentatively down to find that your growth is still there, standing tall. When you run a finger lightly up its stalk, it trembles within, leaves quivering a response to your tentative touch. It hurts, like the soreness of a bruise, but it does not waver. You trace the green up to where it vines around your ribcage, tendrils peeking to greet your exploration with a gentle touch. And as you pull yourself out of bed, for the first time, you fully accept your growth. Yes, there is pain where it has been cut deep by the sharpness of flinty words and languished in the cold light of the moon, further wounded by the sudden reminder of what you have lost. But there is also strength. Your growth holds your bones, cradling them securely; its fruit has not fallen or begun to molder and rot. The realization that it cannot be uprooted— that it is a part of you— is not one of grief as it was last night. Instead, it is the acceptance that what Eddie tended inside you cannot be culled. No matter what happens now, you have what you need to thrive.

This recognition carries you through your morning routine completed many hours late, and you emerge from the shower with renewed vigor and a healthy flush to your cheeks. Where you might have clothed yourself in baggy comfort intending to spend the day on the couch wrapped in the television's mind-numbing noise, you instead dress to make yourself feel good in your skin: structured skinny jeans, a clingy long-sleeve, and fun earrings. The swelling around your eyes is soothed by cool eye cream, and the flush in your cheeks is accentuated by a fresh face of light makeup. Your hair isn’t left limp to dry slowly on its own. Instead, you style it, facing yourself head-on in the bathroom mirror as you run your fingers through soft strands. You’re pleasantly surprised to see bright eyes and the dimple of a smile that doesn’t feel forced, so far from the anguished girl you’d been the night before.

Penny is equally as surprised when you wander into the kitchen, stomach growling from the late waking hour, closer to evening than to morning. “Hey,” she greets you cautiously, jangling keys halting in her palm, eyes wide and locked on you as you duck to root in the refrigerator for sustenance.

“Hey!” You return her greeting warmly, your fond smile growing when you notice the worry furrowing her brow where she’s poised near the front door, coat half-on. “You heading out?”

“I— yeah.” She confirms even as she starts to reverse the motion, shedding her coat as she explains, “I didn’t think you’d be up for a while. I was gonna get the ingredients for your cake. I can wait and keep you company, though.” She hangs the coat on the rack, tacking on, “I’ll just go later.”

Your brows jump at the reminder. Before last night’s unexpected visitor, you'd told her about the cake you were planning to make this weekend for your coworker Sherry’s birthday on Monday. A box cake didn’t feel like enough to repay the years of kindness the motherly woman had bestowed on your office, so you’d resolved to make it from scratch: a decadent chocolate cake with a cup of fresh-brewed coffee as the secret ingredient. It’s not as difficult to bake as it might sound, but you do need to buy semi-sweet cocoa and powdered sugar for the buttercream frosting.

“Don’t you have Charlie’s awards thing tonight?” 

Penny exhales a long, weary sigh. “Y/n. I’m not going anymore.”

What ensues is a brief sisterly squabble in which Penny insists on staying home to take care of you, and you insist that you need nothing of the sort. “Look at me!” You exclaim, arms thrown wide in exasperation. “Do I look like I need you to baby me?” You soften. “I’m really okay, Pen. Charlie will be so disappointed if you miss his ceremony. It’s not every day your boyfriend receives the medal of valor in firefighting.”

Your sister huffs, grumbling, “It’s not the medal of valor; it’s a medal of valor. There’s more than one.” She runs her eyes over you, assessing, hedging, trying to penetrate through any facade you may be putting on. When she sighs again, this time in resignation, your smile widens to a beam. “Fine.” She concedes. “We can go to the store together, and then I’ll go to the ceremony.”

With a sharp huff, you cross your arms. “Pen—!”

Penny doesn’t win that argument either, begrudgingly acknowledging that you’re right; she wouldn’t have enough time to get ready if she accompanied you to the grocery store. You scarf down some food and make a list of your shopping for the week, and by the time you hear her clicking back to the front door, you've finished your list. You see her clasping her earring, now bedecked in high heels and a pretty dress. “I’ll be back tonight,” she promises you from the threshold. “Text me if you need me, okay?”

The tenderness in her voice is clear, and you look up from your list to flash her a soft, grateful smile. “I will, Pen. Love you.”

“Love you.”

–

The trip to the grocery store just down the street from Penny’s house is both mundane and soothing. It’s dated, but the aisles are always clean, and you slip into the anonymous sea of people doing their Saturday afternoon shopping, a small smile of contentment blooming on your face as your cart squeaks rhythmically with your easy steps. Methodically, you mosy down each aisle, reaching soft fingers toward fruits and vegetables, grains and rice. As you go, you scratch them from the handwritten list nestled in your purse, placed conveniently in the top basket of your cart. The routine of it all— the normalcy— brings comfort.

You reach the baking aisle near the tail end of your list, with only the dairy aisle left to be visited. The speakers are playing ‘Ain’t It Fun’ as you plop the floppy bag of powdered sugar absentmindedly into your cart, eyes scanning the shelves for the semi-sweet cocoa powder. You step back with a contemplative pooch to your lips, brows perking when you finally spot it on the top shelf. It’s pushed back from the edge, likely one of the last ones, not commonly restocked. You move in until your front is nearly pressed to the shelves, biting your lip as your wiggling fingers flop for the plastic tub. Futiley, you meet nothing but air and metallic shelving. You plant your hands on your hips, reassessing with squinted eyes and a more exaggerated pooch when you register a tall presence at your side.

“What’re you trying to get?” 

The unfamiliar man is middle-aged, donning a checkered shirt and kind crow's feet that crinkle in their practiced creases when he smiles encouragingly at you. You turn shy eyes back to the shelf. “The semi-sweet cocoa,” you say, motioning to the top shelf. “It’s too far back for me.”

Wordlessly, he reaches up, hand disappearing from your sight as it wedges between other containers of chocolate. It comes back quickly with your treasure, and the man drops it into your grateful hands.

“Thank you so much,” you say, and he meets you with an easy smile and a wave of his hand. 

“‘S nothing. Have a good one.” 

He’s turning away as you smile back. “You too—”

A familiar voice from behind interjects, feminine and light. “I can't believe I ever fell for that. Your innocent little sweet girl routine.”

Light but mocking. Feminine but laced with venom.

You freeze with dumbfounded shock, hand poised on the bar of your cart as your eyes flick and catch bright blue.

Chrissy.

Her appearance is startling, and not just because you never would have expected to see her here outside the city. She looks disheveled in a way only cool girls can pull off, but as your eyes dart over her, you realize that Chrissy isn’t artfully disheveled. She’s actually disheveled: hair a tangle of waves piled into a messy bun atop her head, face creased with old foundation, body wrapped in a puffy cardigan, its bulk on her tiny frame making her shoulders appear frail where they’re bunched by her ears. Her frame is tight with tension, arms crossed, dainty fingers digging tight into the fuzzy material, scrunching it in the crooks of her elbows. And on her face is an expression you’ve never seen: eyes big and glassy but sharp like steel, bow lips contorted in a sneer. There’s something beneath the surface of her powdery-soft skin, and it’s writhing like the coils of a lithe snake, poised to strike.

Chrissy’s hard stare doesn’t waver in the face of your wide-eyed surprise. Instead, she jolts out a hand, pink nails flashing to points at the end of her thin fingers. “Show me the texts, y/n. Eddie deleted them all.”

Your mouth goes dry at the demand, and your spread fingers twitch into a loose fist where your forearm rests on the cart’s handle, your wrist curling away from your purse. Your many late-night musical exchanges with Eddie flash in your mind, largely innocent aside from the occasional ‘sweet girl’ from Eddie and the daringness of your ‘Touch Tank’ send. Though, then there’s the last conversation from four months ago, arranging for you to come to see him at his show. Heat prickles down the back of your neck, discomfort tightening in your chest as you open your mouth to reply.

Not quickly enough, apparently, because Chrissy’s pressing on, that snake writhing with the twist of her lips. “Or,” she snaps, “maybe you’re too smart for that. Maybe you’ve deleted them all, too. Or maybe you’d stuck to calling him instead. Is that it, y/n? Have you been calling my boyfriend in the middle of the night, begging for his cock?”

You flush instantly hot with embarrassment as the crude word pops from Chrissy’s bow lips, eyes darting to the anonymous bodies in the aisle around you. Their eyes flash to the pair of you instantly with her exclamation. But the absurdity of the question, the utter wrongness of it, rouses you to action. Your voice is soft and edged with pleading as you turn to her fully. “Chrissy, what? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

She scoffs harshly, brows twisting up in incredulity. There’s so much venom in Chrissy’s voice that it’s hard to imagine it’s coming from her pretty mouth. “Don’t play dumb with me, y/n. I know you made up some excuse so he’d see you. ‘Oh,’” she whines mockingly, “‘my car is broken! Eddie, come save me!’” Her gaze goes flat. “And, of course, you convinced him to give you a ride home so you could fuck him in the back of his van.”

The weight of others’ silent gazes presses upon you from either side of the aisle. Deep mortification rises immediately and rushes down your spine, leaving you flushed and prickling hot with shame. It’s made worse by the knowledge that Chrissy’s accusations are on display for these anonymous others; their stares are oppressive as the viper strikes with dripping fangs. “Gonna deny it?” She spits.

There is the initial instinct to deny, to shrink away and hide. It would save face, rescue you from the judgment of those people pretending to shop, their ears honed to every word of juicy tension being exchanged in the baked goods aisle of the grocery store like a roadside spectacle. But it would be a lie. And there are firm roots at the bottom of you, anchoring you in the truth. 

So your green straightens your spine. White blooms tip up your chin. Your red fruit nourishes your tongue, unlocking your jaw as you gaze into the sharp blue eyes of your friend. “I won’t deny it,” you say, voice soft but not weak, gaze even. “Eddie did help me when my car broke down on the highway. He did give me a ride home. And we did sleep together.” 

Chrissy’s brow twitches minutely, eyes widening as you acknowledge it so plainly, making no attempt to evade the truth. She appears briefly to be at a loss for words, and it occurs to you that she must have expected you to argue, that you’d probably thrown her off by admitting the truth so readily. The remorse that leaks into your expression is sincere. “I know it was wrong. We shouldn’t have done that. I shouldn’t have done that to you. You’re my friend.” A lump rises in your throat as her face flickers. “I know I can’t ever make up for it, but I’m sorry, Chrissy. I’m really sorry.”

Chrissy’s eyes are big and glassy, though they’re still hard, as if she’s refusing to let tears fall. Her face twitches— brow, lip, nose, jaw— and suddenly she looks so frail, like with just one small nudge, she’d shatter into dainty little pieces. 

Everyone knows butterflies are beautiful, bold and boastful in their colors and patterns. It does something to a person, that knowledge; they come to expect attention and praise. They come to think they’re entitled to it. So it’s unfathomable— impossible, really— to consider that a moth, with its thick body and more subtle colors, could possibly turn the head of one who’d long been allured by the butterfly’s charm. It defies all that the butterfly knows. 

This monarch— this queen— has suckled her whole life from milkweed flowers, storing toxins in her body. Bold, beautiful, and boastful; powdery-soft, yet unable to be anything but poisonous. Chrissy Cunningham, doomed from the moment she nibbled the leaves of the milkwood, the only sustenance the world provided.

Your sincerity is not enough, and it never could be.

A mocking scoff falls from bow lips, and Chrissy’s eyes narrow nearly to slits. “You're so full of shit, y/n. You’re actually trying to convince me you’re sorry when I know you’ve been trying to get Eddie to leave me for months. It’s sick.” She cocks a hip, and beyond her, a mother and her daughter amble by the aisle; the older woman cranes her head to keep looking as they pass.

Your eyes dart to them briefly, but you’re shaking your head before Chrissy even finishes speaking, quick and earnest with your reply. “No, Chrissy. When I broke up with Steve, I talked to Eddie a few days later, and I told him that we shouldn't see each other anymore. I haven’t seen him for four months. I hadn’t seen him,” you correct, “until he came by yesterday. To talk,” you tack on, not wanting to imply something unintentionally. Your eyes search hers, brow creasing but stable in your truth. “I am sorry for what I did to you, Chrissy. But I haven’t been talking to Eddie.”

She shakes her head before you’ve finished speaking, just like you had, but the motion is sharp and jerky as if to dislodge your words from between her ears. “What, did you two rehearse this or something?”

You’re about to point out that it’s not rehearsed, it’s just the truth, but Chrissy changes tack abruptly, dropping her arms to ball her fists at her sides. Her voice becomes shriller, more acerbic with each word. “What did you do to get him to finally do it, huh? What lies did you feed him, you homewrecker? You stupid slut!”

The words are like a verbal slap, but not in the way she intends. The unfairness of it— of calling you a homewrecker when you’d made the torturous decision to break things off with Eddie to try to do right by Chrissy— summons more heat beneath the collar of your shirt, but not from embarrassment. Your creased brow tightens to a frown. “Look, I know you’re upset, Chrissy, and you have every right to be. But I’m not a homewrecker.”

Gone are wide smiles made charming by crooked teeth. Cute giggles exchanged across restaurant tables are distant memories. Instead, Chrissy’s laughter is jagged, edged with mania— a rattle in her throat, like the tail of a venomous snake. “You’re right,” she says, blue eyes glittering as she sneers, “You’re not a homewrecker because you’re just a temporary fuck. Once Eddie gets you out of his system, he’ll come crawling right back to me.”

A smooth customer service voice interrupts the music above your heads, announcing a special on certain varieties of Halloween candy. It hits you again— the absurdity that this sensitive conversation is happening in the baking aisle of the grocery store. It’s more than absurd, really. It’s a violation. But Chrissy is still ranting, all pretense of softness stripped from her voice as it pierces over the announcement. “—asshole is lucky to be with me. Lucky I’ve put up with his dumb shit for all these years—”

More than anything, this is what makes your chest begin to buzz, indignation tightening in your limbs. You raise your voice for the first time, questioning heatedly, “How can you even say that? Eddie’s a good man, and he deserves—”

You’re cut off with a hiss. “What do you know about what he deserves?”

Your reply is firm, decisive. “He deserves respect.”

Part of you is satisfied to see how Chrissy’s porcelain face goes pink with utter rage as you imply that you respect Eddie more than she does, that you care for him more than she does. And it seems that perhaps that’s what does it— what shifts Chrissy’s motivation from wanting answers to wanting to strike you hard and deep, to sink her fangs into your flesh and inflict damage. 

Chrissy Cunningham’s beautiful face contorts into something ugly. “No self-respecting guy would ever really want to be with a girl like you, y/n.” Her eyes flick you up and down condescendingly. “That fat ass is only good for one thing—”

“That’s enough.”

You blink, almost taken aback at the sound of your own voice. There is no wobble; it is commanding, firm enough that Chrissy’s dainty jaw snaps shut as if compelled, closing her fangs away. 

The bite of her insult is the culmination of everything you’ve always feared. That you’re not pretty enough. Not good enough. Not enough to truly love. But where those words would once have sunk into the empty earth at the bottom of you, seeping through the soil to poison you slowly, you’ve since been tended, and your green is verdant and tall. 

Chrissy’s venom falls like rain onto your green. It sizzles as it slides along the soft plush of your vines and stems, but it does not reach your earth. Your leaves quiver, and they flick it away. 

You meet the eyes of your former friend directly, and you do not waver. “You can believe me or not because I know the truth, and nothing can change that. But I won’t stand here and have you insinuate that I’m less of a person because of how I look. I know what I’m worth.” You take firm hold of your cart, fists tightening around the handle, swinging it around to face her. Chrissy flinches, and you merely quirk a brow as you calmly maneuver the cart around her. As you come up even with her, close enough to reach out and touch the fuzz of her sweater or the tangle of the strawberry-blonde waves atop her head, you regard her with one last cool stare. “Eddie makes his own decisions, and something tells me he won’t regret this one.”

Chin up, head held high, you guide your squeaky cart with even steps from the aisle, ignoring the weight of the stares you gather as you pass. You haven’t hit the dairy aisle yet, but you veer toward the front of the store to pay, body on autopilot as your mind replays the last few minutes of your life.

Once you stop in front of the self-check-out kiosk, it starts to hit you— the wave of emotion that rises as your adrenaline wears off. You’d been utterly blindsided by the confrontation with Chrissy, and in the moment, all you could do was react. Now, you’re left reeling. What just happened? Your fingers tremble as you hastily swipe your items across the sensor, dropping them into paper bags as you try to conceal that rising feeling. Your cheeks puff as you exhale shakily, inserting your credit card, foot tapping against the tile until that mechanical voice reminds you not to forget your receipt. You snatch it from the machine and contain, contain, contain until you load your groceries in the trunk and slide into the driver’s seat of your old blue car. The vehicle is now a reminder of your shame, which was broadcasted by your former friend for all to hear.

In the safety of your car, the tide overtakes you. Bewilderment and humiliation crest, manifesting in a trembling bottom lip and the hot roll of silent tears down your cheeks. You sniffle but don’t wipe your cheeks; instead, you pull out your phone and call the only person who can clarify what the fuck is going on.

This time, you think he might not answer, but breathless smoke greets you at the last moment. “Hello?”

There’s a sense of deja vu as you hear Eddie’s voice on the other end, close but distorted slightly. The loud grind of something mechanical in the background disorients you further, and your breath hitches as you try to speak through the tears. “Hello?” Eddie repeats his greeting with an edge of urgency. “Y/n?”

The sound of your name on his lips forces the gasp through your lips, a shuddering exhale of desperation and relief. “Eddie,” you choke, and his urgency increases tenfold.

“Sweetheart, what’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“I—” you sniffle, fingers fisting on your thigh as you push through your trembling. You’re trying to tell him what happened, but the wave of your emotion has the thoughts swirling in your head, stuttering out through clumsy lips. “I was in the store, and— and Chrissy was— she said all this stuff, and I— I don’t know what’s going on,” you end with a helpless whine, a plea for clarity punctuated with another thick sniffle.

Eddie sounds nearly as helpless, though also confused. “Y/n, I can’t really understand you.” There’s a brief pause, and then a question asked as if he’s afraid of the answer. “Are you crying?”

“Mmm—” a choked little whimper is all you can manage, but it must be confirmation enough.

“Where are you?” Eddie’s voice is so gentle and concerned that the tears flow faster. “I’ll come, sweet girl. Just tell me where you are.”

You’re only five minutes from home; it makes no sense to have him meet you in the parking lot. You run your finger over the seam on the steering wheel, lips twisting as you ask, “C-can you just come to Penny’s? I n-need—”

You don’t even have to finish the sentence. “I’m clocking out right now,” Eddie says, and your finger halts in its path, stomach sinking.

“Oh—” Your dismay is clear in the smallness of your voice. “I forgot you work Saturdays.” You swipe beneath your eyes with your free hand, steadying yourself with a deep breath. “Nevermind, you can—”

You’re about to tell him he can just come over after work, but Eddie doesn’t let you. “I’ll be there in twenty,” he says, and then he’s gone without another word. 

As you stare at your phone screen, guilt prickles low within you, but it can’t overwhelm the sense of relief that Eddie’s insistence brings. You keep the promise of clarity at the forefront of your mind as you drive the short distance back to your sister’s house, trying to ignore the thrill of anticipation that blooms low at the thought of seeing Eddie again. Still, the implications of Chrissy’s confrontation begin to seep through your defenses. By the time you’re unlocking Penny’s front door, paper bags loaded in your arms, you’re quivering for an entirely different reason.

You unload the bags onto the kitchen island and shuffle to the bathroom, somewhat reluctant to look in the mirror and assess the damage. When you finally do, you’re relieved to see you’re not as much of a mess as you’d feared, especially compared to last night. And it’s not like you’re trying to hide that you’d been crying— Eddie already knows you were. Thankfully, your mascara hasn’t really run aside from a small smudge beneath each eye, and though your cheeks and nose are blushed and hot, and your lashes are clumped and wet, a few tissues get you back into adequate shape. 

And good thing, too. Because, though it’s nearly incomprehensible since it’s only been ten minutes, someone is knocking on your door, and you know it isn’t Penny.

Deepening light spills across the paper bags on your kitchen island like the smoldering embers of the day have flared once more before fizzling out. Golden hour, you think absently, eyes locked on the mahogany door as if you can see through to the man you know is standing on the other side. Your heart thunders as you shuffle closer, the tide of your emotions rising again, prickling at your eyes. Relief, trepidation, anticipation, hope, fear. They all rush through you, thundering with each frantic pump of your heart as your toes nudge against the welcome mat. The metal of the doorknob is slippery in your palm. 

Slowly, almost shyly, you open the door.

Eddie is rocking on the balls of his feet, one knee jiggling, fist tapping his opposite thigh in a futile attempt to release the tension, but the motions ease as he sees you. All that’s left is the rapid rise of his chest beneath a grease-stained gray tank, visible thanks to the coveralls tied around his hips. 

The first thing you register is that he’s dirty. Impossibly dirty. His pale quartz neck is glistening and smudged with it, and the pits of his tank are darkened with the evidence of his labor. His curls are tied back but loosely now, a single head shake away from coming undone; the dark pieces falling around his jaw are frizzy, and his bangs cling to his forehead. His face is darkened by grime left behind by hasty swipes of those calloused fingers, which you imagine must have pinched his chin in thought, scrubbed over his face in consternation, and scratched at his jaw when the drying sweat itched him. 

Eddie is utterly filthy. But when he raises his hands, grubby and dark like charcoal, you want nothing more than to feel him stain every inch of you. Your face softens, the relief of his presence unable to be concealed.

“Baby—” The choked endearment seems pulled from involuntarily, and your breath hitches at the tenderness of it. Eddie’s brow pinches, brown eyes melting like honey as his fingers extend, seeking you as if by instinct. His eyes flick from your face to his hands as they reach for you, widening as if he’s just noticed the grease marring his skin. 

Those calloused fingers jerk back before they make contact with you, and the abruptness has you jolting back too. You only just now notice that you’d been leaning in, swaying toward him subconsciously.

For a moment, you and Eddie just stare at each other, the relief of your reunion ticking into awkwardness as you simultaneously flinch away. Quickly, Eddie blurts, “Sorry, it’s just— I’m a fuckin’ mess—”

Your brows flash up as you rush to reassure him, bumbling over yourself as you step back to make room for him to come in. “No, it’s okay, really—” You huff a little awkward chuckle in an attempt to dispel the tension, biting your lip as Eddie clomps inside and pauses on the welcome mat. As he makes a brusque attempt to wipe off his hands on his coveralls, which are surprisingly less dirty than his skin, you offer, “You can wash in the kitchen sink.”

Wide brown eyes blink at you, and you flush without knowing why. “There’s more room there than in the bathroom,” you explain before realizing that maybe Eddie thinks you’re telling him he needs to wash up to come in the house. You hasten to add, “I mean, i-if you want to.”

He answers after a beat. “Yeah, no, that’d be good.” He’s playing with his upper lip with the tip of his tongue, a nervous gesture that you need to look away from immediately. You can already feel your moths stirring, and you haven’t even gotten any answers yet. You can't afford to be distracted.

You lead Eddie to the kitchen and he trails after you, lanky limbs tucked close to his body like he’s afraid to brush against anything. The farmhouse sink is deep, concealing Eddie’s ink up to the elbows as he wets them and pumps dish soap into his hands, scrubbing over the length of his arms, almost up to his shoulders. Dirt swirls into white porcelain as he runs calloused fingers carefully, though somewhat sheepishly, over his cheeks, mouth, and chin, then down onto his neck and over his collarbone, dripping water to darken the gray of his tank. 

Brown flashes toward you, and it's then you realize you’re hovering.

You whirl away, snatching up the paper towels on the island and plopping them down beside him. You nudge them a little closer, eyes trailing over the hair that curls delicately at the edge of his ear. “Here,” you say, nodding your chin toward the paper towels when he glances over. 

“Thanks.” You nod, backing off and busying yourself by unpacking the groceries from your paper bags. A loud rip draws your eyes from a container of bright red strawberries back to the sink. You suppress a smile when you see the ridiculous amount of paper towels Eddie’s torn from the roll, though you can’t help the exasperated shake of your head as you pile the powdered sugar and cocoa together, fidgeting with them to occupy your fingers.

“Where’s— oh.” You hear Eddie cut himself off behind you, ears honed to the heaviness of his bootsteps and the creak of the garbage can as he lifts the lid to drop the paper in. You swallow, nerves rising as all goes silent. You glance over your shoulder to find him damp but notably cleaner than when he came in.

Hesitantly, you offer, “Do you wanna sit?” You motion toward one of the stools at the island. He accepts your invitation soundlessly, jerking over, awkward like a newborn colt as he folds himself onto the wood. Gingerly, Eddie places his elbows on the counter, moving slowly in your space as if overly aware he’s invading it. And, sure, you’d invited him here, but you can feel it too— that foreignness, same as you’d felt with his dark presence on the couch that first time in your and Steve’s apartment. After four months, it's conspicuous and unfamiliar in a way the shock of his presence yesterday hadn't allowed you to truly notice..

You’re unsure whether to sit down or stay standing, unsure what to do with your hands, unsure what to say. But when Eddie glances at you and away, back and forth again with little hesitant flits of his wide brown eyes, you call upon the green that grows sturdy through your center. It was you who asked him to come; it should be up to you to begin this conversation.

“Sorry I wasn’t making sense on the phone,” you start. “But thanks for coming.” You glance at Eddie, and he nods, expression open and waiting. “I guess I’ll just… start at the beginning. I was at the grocery store, grocery shopping—” your cheeks pink at the inanity of the statement, and you throw a little sheepish glance at Eddie. “As one does,” you poke fun at yourself, and a corner of his mouth quirks in amusement, though it doesn’t assuage the concern in his eyes. Your fingers begin to itch, so you grab one of the paper bags, folding it as you talk. You speak over the crinkles, musing, “I was getting ingredients for this cake I’m making for my coworker. I turned around, and Chrissy was just… there.” The folded bag gets placed on the counter, and you smooth it with your fingers, wondering how Chrissy found you, not even at your sister’s apartment, but out at the store. Your nose wrinkles in confusion. “How did she even know where I was? I haven’t talked to her in months. I don’t even know—”

It dawns on you suddenly.

“She must have used ‘find my friends,’” you say, eyes darting to Eddie in realization. “I forgot I had that on.” You suddenly register your fidgeting fingers and force them to still; shyness blooms, but you push through. “...Is that how you found me?”

Eddie licks along his bottom lip. “No,” he answers, holding your gaze. “I asked Steve.”

You aren’t sure which is more of a shock: Chrissy showing up out of the blue or Eddie asking your ex-boyfriend, who knows you broke up with him because of your feelings for the other man, to help him find you. You blink, dumbstruck, voice a little weak. Reeling from the implication of it. “And he actually—?”

Eddie’s brown eyes are soft with the knowledge you share, and he doesn’t speak. He just nods.

A welling of emotions rises in you then: a potent mixture of gratefulness and wistfulness, of poignant, bittersweet appreciation as you consider how, even though you’d hurt each other, it hasn’t changed who Steve is at his core. 

Despite his mistakes, Steve Harrington is a good man.

You manage a little smile, and Eddie does the same. You find yourself hoping that maybe the threads that tie Eddie and Steve together may not snap after all. 

“So what happened?”

Eddie’s smoke voice prompts you out of your reverie, and your smile turns wry. "She cornered me in the baking aisle, demanding to see the texts she thought you deleted."

Eddie huffs an incredulous chuckle, but there's no humor in it. "I'm so fucking sorry." He sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face and mussing his bangs in a move that makes your yearning bloom, though you know he didn’t intend it to. "I was gonna talk to you later this weekend. I spent all last night collecting my shit off the lawn and moving into Gareth's place—"

You interrupt, incredulous. “She threw your stuff outside?”

“Oh yeah,” Eddie chuckles, and there is some humor in it this time. It’s dry but present as he tips his head, adding, “She was... not happy.”

“I gathered that,” you say, not unkindly.

Eddie sobers, leaning back on the stool as he gazes at you. His voice is quieter when he speaks again. “What did she say to you?”

Chrissy’s shrill voice echoes in your mind, a haze of diluted venom that mists your green.

—you homewrecker, you stupid slut—

—asshole’s lucky I put up with his shit for years—

—he’ll come crawling back—

—a girl like you—

Leaves sizzle, and white flowers shake; you avert your eyes, voice a bit small. “A-a bunch of stuff, Eddie. You don't wanna hear it all.” He accepts your reticence with a reassuring nod, and gratefulness dilutes the poison. Your eyes catch on the powdered sugar and cocoa, a welcome distraction you latch to. “I need to start baking this cake,” you say. You’re surprised when Eddie perks.

“I can help you.”

You’re reminded of the other time Eddie helped you in the kitchen. How nervous you’d been watching him talk with Steve and Chrissy over on your couch. How his body nearly brushed yours when he reached up to take down the crackers; how you’d feared he was trying to make a move when you weren’t yet ready. 

Now you know he wasn’t. 

Now you know he never would have.

Before you can suppress it, a mischievous smile tugs at your lips. Eddie spots it, matching it with a bemused smile of his own. “What?” He snaps playfully.

Your amusement is clear. “Remember when you dumped the crackers on the tray the first time you came to the apartment?”

Eddie husks a chuckle, scrubbing a hand again over his face. When it drops, you’re surprised to see a tinge of pink. “I was nervous,” he admits. 

Shock and delight. “Nervous around little old me?” You tease, eyes sparkling. 

“Yes!” The word bursts out of him as he leans over the counter toward you, the tips of his ears still pink when he flops back again. “I dunno,” he says, a little bashful. “I just didn't wanna mess things up.” 

To know that beneath the bravado and his dark ink exterior, Eddie had felt just as you had... Warmth blooms as your moth wings flutter. You’re instantly more endeared to him. “You didn’t mess things up,” you say quietly, and you know he sees it, hears it— the evidence of your feeling. You take a quick breath, continuing on. “Okay. You can help me with the cake.”

Eddie scrambles up eagerly as you pull up the recipe on your phone, setting it between you on the counter. Together you prepare to bake, moving around each other carefully, feeling out the unpracticed rhythm of sharing a space. Eddie surveys the ingredients and retrieves the wet from the fridge as you gather the rest of the dry. You brew the cup of coffee and direct him towards the utensils— spatula to the right of the sink, electric beater in the deep drawer beneath it. As you grease and flour the pan, he asks you how to set the oven. And all throughout, you find the clarity you’d wanted, punctuating your discussion with little directions and adjustments as you bake together.

“So, yeah,” you say. “Chrissy wasn't quiet about it when she confronted me. She knew about the van, and she accused me of trying to, like, convince you to—” you stumble on the word, heart leaping, though you try to conceal it— “b-break up with her.”

Blessedly, it’s easier to talk about this as Eddie cracks eggs into the metal bowl, tongue tip sneaking between his lips. But at the waver in your voice, his brown eyes find yours.

“Shit,” he mutters, dropping his wrists to lean against the counter. “Fuck, y/n, I'm so sorry. If I had any idea she'd do that to you…” Eddie sighs, eyes heavy with regret. You find yourself wishing you could take it from him. “I didn't say anything like that, that you wanted me to break up with her or something. Probably shouldn't have told her anything at all, but she just—" 

Eddie breaks off, glancing away, jaw tight. The pain in his expression is clear, and you think of claws in his back, blood staining hotel sheets. Though it had been a shock that Chrissy knew about the van, and part of you wants to be indignant that you’d been blindsided, you can’t really be mad at Eddie. You’d seen it for too long— the hold she has over him.

Had, your mind whispers, and wings flutter.

"It's not your fault." Eddie shakes his head, curls coming loose, but you don’t let him dismiss your reassurance. You pause with the electric beater in the bowl, poised but off, ducking your head to catch his gaze. Once he looks at you, you continue earnestly, "You told her the truth, Eddie. I'm not mad at you for telling her the truth. You did nothing wrong."

Eddie quirks a half-hearted smile at you, though he does look relieved. Satisfied, you start the beater, and he talks a little louder over the whir. "She made all that up about you in her head because, well." He looks away, and you keep your gaze on the chocolate mixture in the bowl, hoping it’ll be easier for him to talk without your eyes on him. It seems to be, because he continues, "I did try at first. To pretend nothing had changed. But Chris, she could always tell when something was off with me. The more I tried to tell her everything was fine, the more she'd push. The more she'd need me to do to try to convince her." He rubs at his knuckles, and you know he's missing his rings. 

"She started, like..." When he pauses, you look up to see Eddie watching you. "Well, I dunno if you wanna hear this." 

You take a slow breath through your nose to resist the rise of your anxiety. You want Eddie to feel free to share, just as he makes you feel. And part of you also just wants to know. "You can tell me," you assure him. "If you want to."

Eddie runs his tongue against the inside of his cheek, eyes dipping to his hands as he holds the bowl steady for you. "Couple months ago she started dropping all these hints, like, that she wanted me to buy her a ring. Came to a point that I started working overtime just to have more time away from home. Kind of delaying the inevitable, in a way, but... I dunno. I knew what I wanted to do long before I did it." 

You glance up again to see him looking at you, face so soft, and it makes your throat go thick. "I just knew it was gonna be rough," he continues. "That she wasn't gonna make it easy. But then yesterday, when I heard you—" 

He breaks off, and you turn off the beaters, resting them on the counter. Chocolate batter drips slowly back into the silver bowl, and you keep your eyes on it, trying not to let your lip wobble. Eddie's voice seems louder in the sudden silence. Hoarse, more labored when he continues. "When I heard you cry like that— God, y/n, I just... It just all clicked into place for me. Honestly, I didn't care anymore how ugly it was going to be." He looks at you mournfully, eyes glassy, and your green squeezes you until your sternum cracks.

You don’t hesitate to cup his cheek, wanting to convey the depth of your feeling. 

Compassion for his situation; heartache for the way he needed to rend his flesh to get free.

Understanding for why it took so long; forgiveness for what he did to you yesterday.

And a tinge of guilt. Guilt that you’d been the one to ask him to stay.

"Eddie—" His name falls from your lips in a tender whisper, and when he lists into your touch, you hitch a tiny whimper. 

"I'm sorry, sweet girl," he whispers. "I never want you to cry like that again." 

Your growth reaches and strives for him, chest aching as your chin quivers. “I’m sorry, too,” you whisper. 

Eddie’s brow wrinkles in confusion but crumples when you clarify in a tiny, trembling voice, “I’m sorry I told you to stay.”

The understanding dawns between his eyes, and it’s the blooming ache of a bruise between you. You both sit in the moment until the emotional whiplash of the last two days begins to overwhelm you, stinging at the corners of your eyes. 

And Eddie can see it written on your face. He takes your wrist in his calloused fingers, pulling your hand gently from his face to press a brief, chaste kiss to your palm. The press of his lips soothes the mottling of your hurt, and as he holds your hand against his mouth, your thumb draws tenderly along his cheek. 

The understanding you and Eddie share is the blooming ache of a bruise, but now, it can start to heal. 

He released you gently, and when he speaks again, Eddie’s voice is hoarse and quiet, but the question he asks isn't what you expect. He motions to the batter between you, asking, "You want this in the pan?"

You chuckle, and it comes out a little watery. "I think I'll pour it," you say, smiling at the wry twist to his plush lips. "No offense."

“Wow.” Eddie throws up his calloused hands and huffs disbelievingly through his nose, but you know he’s not really offended. You pour as he scrapes down the leftover batter with the spatula per your instruction, and he opens the door to the oven for you so you can push the pan in carefully. As it snaps shut, the sound seems uncannily like the final punctuation at the end of something. Your clarity has been gained; all questions have been answered. The task has been completed. As you stare through the glass window to the baking pan beyond, the silence lingers between you, beckoning the question. What now?

You break it a bit lamely. "Thanks for helping with the cake," you say.

"Yeah, sure," Eddie replies, scratching the back of his loosely-tied curls. You wonder if this is it— if he'll leave now. You're chewing on your lip, eyes darting to him and away again as he does the same. 

And then his stomach growls loudly. 

"Shit," Eddie deadpans, and when you giggle, he husky a goofy chuckle back. As your humor subsides, it segues into a very clear choice. Eddie can leave and go on with his night, have dinner on his own. 

Or… 

As the offer occurs to you, you suddenly feel shy; self-consciousness squirms within at the thought of being rejected. Still, you glance at Eddie hopefully. "You wanna order some food?" 

"Yeah." The word escapes in an immediate woosh, and Eddie’s crooked grin is unreasonably charming. "Honestly, I could eat that whole goddamn cake right now. Just, like, raw." 

You hazard a guess. "You like Chinese?" 

Eddie’s grin transforms to a slow, spreading smile, fond as it dimples his cheek. You flush under his gaze, but it's not uncomfortable. It's nice. "I love Chinese," he says quietly, and you wonder what has made this moment what it seems to be for him. Before you can wonder too long, Eddie breaks it. "Just none of that healthy shit.” He eyes you shrewdly as if suspicious. “I want all the MSG." 

You snort, glancing up from your phone where you’ve started to Google the restaurants nearby. "You can have whatever you want, Ed," you throw over your shoulder. Your wings flutter pleasantly as he beams that goofy smile you’re so fond of, crinkling the corners of his eyes. What a dork, you think, and there’s nothing but affection in the roll of your eyes.

–

Eddie is, apparently, pickier about his Chinese food preferences than he initially let on. He adamantly insists on Chinese donuts, and the first three restaurants you find don’t have them. The timer for the cake ends up beeping before you’ve even placed your order, but you can’t be too exasperated. How could you resist that pout of his? Full lips pink and pooched, brown eyes so wide and warm and shiny as he tips his head and leans in, coming eye-level with you as his loose curls brush your shoulder. It’s downright criminal, is the thing.

Eddie beats you to the oven, pulling on Penny’s frilly oven mitts as you concede and call in your order. You’re only half-listening to the tinny voice on the other end of the phone, watching Eddie carry the hot pan over to the stove. He sets it down with caution before spinning to you with an air of triumph. You complete the order and head over, standing beside him to peer down at your cake. It smells wonderfully of rich chocolate that’s still succulently moist, wafting damp steam that kisses your cheeks. And as you both hover over it, heads close together, it hits you suddenly how domestic this feels— just you and Eddie, alone in the kitchen, admiring the fruits of your labor.

Your green quivers, yearning. Your wings flutter almost wildly, almost overwhelmingly so. You speak to distract yourself from the feeling welling up from the bottom of you. 

"So, um... you wanna watch something? I have Netflix."

Eddie quirks a mischievous brow, and you flush, smacking his stomach with your arm. It makes him beam instantly. "D'you have HBO?" he asks, and your brow crinkles. 

"No," you say, and you swear he lights up brighter than the sun. 

"Oh," he chuckles out the word, eyes nearly crinkled shut with joy. "You're in for a treat."

You get him set up with the remote so he can log in to his account on Penny’s television and ask if he wants a drink. You fill glasses, placing them on the coffee table as the screen prompts Eddie to choose a profile: a big E for Eddie, a big C for Chrissy. You brace for the blow, for the sting, but it doesn’t come. 

Eddie clicks into his profile, leaving Chrissy’s behind, and you don’t feel a thing.

Still, when you sit next to him on the couch, you leave a healthy gap between you, a few inches to avoid presumption. Eddie doesn’t close the gap, but he doesn’t seem bothered, either. His legs are spread comfortably as he navigates the menu, and his eyes don’t leave the screen as you ask, “So, what’s this treat called?”

“The Last of Us.” His broad hands dance with that familiar frenetic energy as he motions while he explains. “It’s based on a video game from 2013, but you don’t need to play the game to get it. Basically, the premise is that a fungus infects people and turns them into zombies. Well, not really zombies because they're not actually dead, just mind-controlled. But it’s close enough. It’s a post-apocalyptic setting; lots of nature overtaking the land, so the landscape shots are beautiful. And the reason for the outbreak isn’t as bogus as zombie shows usually are. It feels like it could actually happen, which I really like.”

You chuckle, tickled by his keenness, and Eddie flushes at the amusement in your expression, smiling bashfully. 

Subtly, you nudge in closer, shrinking the inches minutely. You don’t need to feign enthusiasm. “It sounds good. Let's do it.” 

Eddie seems pleased. “Cool.” He leans back before popping up straight again almost immediately. “Uh, just, fair warning, ‘cause I know you don’t like scary stuff. There are no real jumpscares in this, but some of it is kind of creepy.”

Despite the unease you would typically feel about that, you find yourself genuinely saying, “I think I’ll be okay. If it gets too creepy, I’ll let you know.”

Eddie’s free hand twitches in his lap like he wants to touch you, but he settles for a smile instead before pressing play.

Your food arrives a third of the way through the first episode. You'd been riveted and are now dismayed by the knock on the door despite the hunger gnawing at your stomach. You tap Eddie’s arm urgently, drawing his gaze. “Pause it!” You exclaim, clambering off the couch, intent on making the exchange as quickly as possible to return to the action. When the noise of chaos suddenly cuts as Eddie obliges you, it brings a sigh of relief.

Despite how engaging the show is, you find yourself looking at Eddie as he slurps his lo mein noodles, brown eyes wide. “Look, see how it throws itself around?” He talks through a mouthful, indicating the infected chasing Joel and his daughter. “That’s ‘cause when the fungus takes over a person’s brain, it isn’t trying to be careful with the body anymore.” He shakes his head in awe. “Fuckin’ metal.” 

You suppose it’s kind of gross, the way he’s talking with his mouth full, but the expression on his face is so boyishly charming that you can’t bring yourself to care. Between Eddie’s eagerness and your shock and dismay at the episode’s ending, you're hooked instantly. "Can we watch the next one?” You ask eagerly, not missing the brief smug twitch of his mouth, the one that means, ‘knew you’d like it.’ 

"Sure," Eddie replies, sounding casual. But when he brushes your hair back from your shoulder, lips twisting as if he's trying to contain the depth of his happiness, you can see it leaking through his bright eyes. 

As episode two eases into episode three and you begin to edge into binge-watching territory without complaint, you find yourself drifting closer to Eddie with tiny shifts of your body. First, your knees turn inward, then your shoulders tilt. Then you’re sinking back into the cushions on an angle, all the while seeking Eddie's light, half-subconscious and half-aware, though the aware part of you does nothing to stop it. And he's doing the same thing: spreading his legs, leaning back against the cushions, taking up space as he edges toward the center of the couch. Eddie inches ever closer until you finally feel his coveralls brush your hip and the heat of his armpit against your shoulder when he throws his arm around the back. 

When Frank climbs out of the hole in the ground and is greeted with Bill’s shotgun, your knee bumps against Eddie's thigh, and you keep it there. When Bill takes over for Frank at the piano, Eddie shifts until his side is pressing lightly to yours. And as Bill and Frank fall into bed together, you look at Eddie and feel your moth wings flutter, that rushing giddiness, that nervous anticipation like this is a first date. Because, for you, there's just something about eating in and watching television cuddled up on the couch, just you and a special person. 

There always has been. 

As episode three progresses through the years of the characters' lives, you press even closer to Eddie, relaxing as you feel him lean into you in kind. You relish the novelty of what you feel: the peace of being alone, the shared experience of doing something mundane with him, the emotional journey this television show is taking you on together. You focus on the physical sensations, too: the rise and fall of his warm chest, the tickle of his curls against your temple when he tugs you in with an arm wrapped around your shoulder, and your head falls to the crook of his neck. You even relish his scent, spicy and smoky but acridly tangy like motor oil and body odor, reminding you of the sweat and labor of his day. But you don't care. In fact, you tuck your nose against the gray of his tank, inhaling slow and steady as you let your eyes slip closed for just a moment, breathing in as much smoke as you can bear. You feel relaxed— not quite at the edge of sleepiness, but so utterly, wonderfully content.

When Eddie pulls your legs onto his lap, the arm wrapped around you tightening around your shoulders, you lift your head and smile up at him. But the hesitant concern on his face is unexpected. Your sleepy contentment fades at his expression. "What is it, Ed?" 

You reach tender fingertips to smooth the crease between his brow, and his face softens when you do. "This episode... it gets sad," he murmurs, brown eyes darting between yours to read your reaction. "Are you sure you wanna finish it right now? We can stop."

You glance at the men on your sister's television screen, how the sun shines behind them as they feast on red, succulent strawberries— the spoils of the months Frank spent tending the plants in secret. You look back at the man who has you wrapped up in his tender embrace, cradling you securely. "It's okay," you say, lips curving in a sweet smile. "I wanna finish it."

Eddie wasn't kidding.

Your breath stutters in your chest, chin trembling as you try to hold back your tears. You're tired of crying— you're cried out, really, from these last two days— but watching this might leave you no choice. Eddie's thumb rubs a soothing pattern along your arm, plush lips shushing against your temple as you crowd close to his side for comfort. You curl your knees up, almost in his lap as you clutch at his free hand. Sadness weighs in your chest, but you can't look away. The pain is just too bittersweet, and Eddie's closeness is just too precious. 

The third episode is nearly over when the door creaks open, drawing your heavy eyes. Penny freezes in the doorway, and you see yourself suddenly through her eyes: the room dark save for the glow of the television, empty Chinese food containers scattered messily on her coffee table, and her baby sister tangled up with an unfamiliar man on the couch, eyes big and glossy.

You tense slightly, pinned by her wide-eyed stare, but you don’t move away from Eddie. "Hey," you greet her cautiously. 

"Hey." Penny matches your inflection before her eyes flick over Eddie, a brow quirking as her eyes scan him— heavily inked arm thrown over your shoulders, your legs in his lap, his earrings glinting, his hair long and dishevelled. You’re at the edge of offense when she says, not quite critically, “Dirty coveralls on my couch?” 

Immediately, Eddie jerks, jostling you as he moves your legs off him and makes to get up, stuttering an apology. “Shit, sorry—” 

But Penny seems to be amused by his earnestness. “Nah, it's fine,” she says, and Eddie’s eyes dart between you and your sister as if he’s assessing whether to take her at her word. You roll your eyes toward her, not missing the smirk she tosses you before pulling off her coat and hanging it on the rack. You just know she’d taken pleasure from making Eddie jump. 

You gently guide Eddie back to sitting, and almost reluctantly, he resettles. When you put your legs back in his lap, he holds them there with a warm palm, touch tentative now with an audience. You blush with pleasure as his thumb traces lightly, so lightly, over your calf. You distract yourself by calling to Penny, "How was the award ceremony?" 

"It was good," she replies, closer than you thought she’d be as she passes by the back of the couch, heading toward her bedroom. Her tone is casual but edged with a sense of knowing implication that makes you want to squirm. You whip back around to face the television, noting that the episode has since finished. Eddie pauses it before the next one can start. 

Penny’s arrival hasn’t quite put you on edge, but it has changed the atmosphere in the condo. You and Eddie are no longer alone, no longer quite as peaceful as before. And it seems Penny's arrival has shaken Eddie out of that place, too, because he says, “It's getting late.” 

You glance at him to see his expression is largely neutral. You, on the other hand, can’t fully conceal your disappointment at the significance of his observation— that it’s time for him to go. You nod, hoping it doesn’t appear as reluctant as you feel.

Eddie is hesitant, quiet as he watches you, and you think maybe that neutral expression isn’t neutral at all. Maybe it’s just carefully guarding against his own disappointment. It could be just your hope talking, and you’re starting to think so, but then Eddie is leaning a little closer, and his lips are brushing your temple, and he’s murmuring, “Do you want me to go?” 

A low flutter. A rush of green. Your throat is dry, and you swallow to wet it. “No,” you whisper back. “Do you want to go?” 

You peek up at him, and light glows in honey brown. “No,” Eddie murmurs. 

You take a slow breath. “Okay,” you say, somewhat louder, but voice still tiny. You bite your lip. “My bed is small,” you tell him. Negotiating. Mitigating expectations. 

Eddie’s lips curl with a slight, fond smile. “That's okay.” 

You feel your own smile spreading. You keep the exchange going. “You'll need to shower first.” 

“So will you,” he counters, eyes alight with his tease. “I’m filthy, and you've been cuddling me all night.”

You feel heat rise, glowing in your cheeks. But it isn’t with embarrassment, and it isn’t with arousal either. “Yes, you are,” you say, sweet and tender. “And yes, I have.” 

Eddie’s calloused fingers squeeze warm around your leg.

–

The bathroom is right across the hall from Penny’s office, which is now your bedroom. The heat of the water is steaming up the mirror, but you can’t see it because you’re already concealed behind the curtain, standing under the warm stream that beats against your back, wetting the ends of your hair. You’re listening to the drops hit the basin and bounce off your shower curtain, and you’re not doing anything else. Though you stepped under the spray several minutes ago, you haven’t touched your soap yet.

There are two doors that separate you from Eddie. He’s sitting on the floor in your bedroom, which you know because he’d clambered down cross-legged before you left the room. He’d chosen a spot on the hardwood, away from the area rug and the rumpled comforter of your twin bed. He’d told you he didn’t want to get any of your things dirty.

There are two doors that separate you from Eddie, but your green knows how close he is.

Now that you’ve had a taste of closeness, you feel his absence keenly. Your wings are fluttering, frantic to find him. The heated spray is prickling the backs of your arms, running down your legs, reminding you of your nakedness. Reminding you that you’re currently bare and the man you yearn for is just a dozen steps away.

You and Penny never lock the bathroom door at home; if it’s closed, you both know not to enter. Tonight is no different, making what you’re considering an actual possibility. But Penny is home now, and fearing what she might think is the source of your indecision. Still, your green is reaching, trembling, striving for Eddie, and your sister already saw you cuddling with him on the couch. 

You just want to be close.

You decide that if Eddie can hear you through two doors and over the stream of the shower, great, and if not, so be it. You call his name.

“Eddie?” 

A pause yields nothing but the steady thrum of water on the curtain, and then you try one final time, projecting your voice a little louder. “Eddie?”

After a long moment, you hear a creak on the carpet just outside the bathroom and then his hoarse smoke voice, a little tentative and muffled through wood. “Yeah?” 

Nervousness surges, but you pluck up your courage, pushing through the pause. Your teeth scrape your bottom lip before you release it, but your voice still comes out softer and higher than you’d like. “...Do you wanna come in?” 

Your heart is thumping in your chest, eyes darting as you concentrate on listening. There’s no reply, but you hear the door creak open and close again. Your heart thumps harder at the sound of rustling fabric, and you know it’s Eddie’s clothing dropping to the floor; the curtain shifts, and you step aside, making room in preparation for him. Wings flutter and flap, and green tendrils reach until you see that face— white framed with black, tinged now with pink— peek tentatively beyond the curtain. 

Eddie’s eyes wander over your naked form only briefly before returning to your face. “Hi.” 

Your mouth curls. “Hi,” you echo him, pinching the curtain back so he can step in. He does so quickly so as not to let the water out, and the curtain pulls from between your fingers when he tugs it back into place, but you don’t notice because you’re just looking at him. 

The pale quartz of Eddie’s body is inches from yours where he stands under the spray, blocking it from reaching you. The water is already washing the grime away and soaking his hair, smoothing curls nearly straight. You follow the path of the water down the ink of his chest and arms to where it drips over ruddy knuckles and from calloused fingertips; you follow other trails down his soft stomach, over the plane of his hip, down the sparse hair on his legs and to his pink toes.

Eddie’s toes are a revelation. You’ve never noticed his toes before. 

You look up again into honey brown and sway closer to touch the wet hair now flattened to his collarbone. Eddie reaches for you when you reach for him, and his calloused fingers brush your waist. And slowly, by degrees, you close the gap until Eddie’s warm front is pressed to yours. 

Everything is pliant and slick, even the heat of his soft length where it presses between your bodies. Your arms wrap around his shoulders, and his wrap around your waist; you embrace each other in the water, in the haze of steam and humidity. You sigh against him when he tangles his fingers in your wet hair, and you turn your head to press the side of your face to his chest. Eddie’s heartbeat is steady under your ear, and his arms are firm around you; he’s so solid within your grasp, so wonderfully and unbelievably here. 

You only pull back when water splashes you in the face; he smiles warmly when you blink and releases you to wipe it away. 

"C'mere," you say then. "I'll wash you." 

You take his arms, and he lets you switch your positions, so he's out of the spray. "Am I gonna smell like you?" He murmurs, not looking all that upset about it. 

"Yup." You grin, reaching around him to indicate the shampoo bottle on the shelf. "Shampoo is here." 

Eddie dispenses a pump while you squirt body wash into your hands; he lathers up his hair, giving you a chance to run your hands over his pecs and under his arms, washing out the hair there. You take more body wash and clean him gently, soft palms trailing over warm wet skin, washing away the grime and sweat as the dirt follows suds down the drain. You clean all of him— the ink on his arms, his pale sides, his hips, his groin, his legs. Even the backs of his knees, which you bend to reach. 

This isn’t the first time you’ve touched Eddie. You’ve touched probably ninety percent of his body in the five months you’ve spent together in your arrangement. But this time, it isn't sexual; it's just intimate. You know it, and he knows it. In fact, when you draw closer to reach around and start on his back, and between you, you feel him semi-hard and hot against your belly, he even looks sheepish. "Sorry," he mutters, but you reassure him quickly. 

"It's okay," you murmur, gazing up into his face. "Let me get your back." 

You swap places so that he's under the stream facing away from you, and you gather the length of his hair, draping it over his shoulder. You wash the rest of him, running your hands reverently over the muscles of his shoulders, down the slope of his back to the dimples at the base of his spine, and then over his butt. His hips twitch at the tickle of your touch, and you both chuckle. “Okay,” you say, and he turns around to face you again, cupping your neck with a thankful hand.

“Your turn,” he says, and you pass him the body wash. He washes you carefully, calloused hands smoothing over your wet skin. Never lingering for too long; still not sexual, but not clinical, either. Sensual and tender, like he wants to take care of you. You sigh as you wash your hair, enjoying every touch as Eddie’s hands smooth over your shoulders and arms, your breasts and your soft stomach, the wideness of your hips, and the pliant fat of your thighs. He washes your legs, and you lean against him with a hand on his shoulder to lift your feet at his insistence. He nudges your arm so you’ll turn, and you oblige him, letting him wash your back with just as much care as you wash your face. 

Finally, the water begins to run lukewarm, and you both rinse off and finish up quickly. You grab Eddie a towel from the nearby rack, passing it over before gathering one to wrap around your body. The shower curtain rings clatter against the bar as you open it and step out, eyes catching on the rumple of Eddie’s soiled clothing on the floor and the plaid red of his boxers peeking from the pile. You purse your lips as you realize he has nothing to change into.

You turn to see him toweling off his inked arms haphazardly. “So, uh—” Eddie glances at you from beneath the damp tangle of his long bangs, and the sight of those warm amber eyes makes you flutter. “I just realized you don’t have any clean clothes,” you say.

Eddie’s brows shoot up, and he nods slowly. “Right,” he says, mouth tightening to a wryly amused line. “Well, shit.”

You giggle at his baldness, and his grin spreads almost involuntarily as he sees your mirth. “I’ll see if Pen has any of Charlie’s you can borrow,” you offer, slipping out the door and closing it behind you, hiking your towel a little more securely around your body as you knock softly on your sister’s bedroom door.

It cracks enough for her to poke her head out, expression expectant. “Pen,” you say, coaxing like only siblings can be, “do you happen to have any of Charlie's clothes that Eddie can borrow? Like some shorts and a t-shirt, or some sweatpants?” After a second, you resist a blush and tack on, “...or some boxers?”

She quirks a brow. “Isn't this the guy you were hysterically crying over yesterday?” 

You huff. “It's different now,” you grumble, and she just shakes her head fondly. 

"Lemme look." She comes back with a white t-shirt breasted with the firehouse emblem and a pair of comfy sweatpants. “No boxers, sorry,” she tells you. You nod and hold up her offerings, noting that both will be far too big for Eddie’s lanky frame. He’s not a small guy; it’s just that Charlie is a big guy. Still, beggars can’t be choosers. 

“Thanks,” you say, turning from the door. 

Penny stops you before you can get too far, and you whip around at the salaciousness in her voice. “Wrap it before you tap it,” she says with a smirk. 

You blush furiously. “Pen!” you hiss, “It's not— We’re just—” You huff, stumbling in your embarrassment. “We're just gonna sleep,” you finally get out. 

“Uh-huh,” she says as if she doesn’t believe you, but her eyes are soft when she sing-songs, “Goodnight, y/n.” 

“Night.” You grumble, bidding a hasty retreat back to the bathroom. You slip back through the door with your procurements to find Eddie with the towel now slung around his waist. You hold out your offering, and as he takes it from you, you realize you have another problem. Regretfully, you tell him, “I don't have a spare toothbrush.” 

“It's okay,” Eddie assures you, dropping the bundle of clothing onto the counter. “I can use my finger.” 

You squirm a little with self-consciousness, unsure whether he’ll find what you’re about to offer strange. “...You can borrow mine,” you finally say.

He looks at you, surprised. “You sure?”

“Yeah,” you say. “It’s fine. I don't care.”

And where you thought maybe Eddie wouldn’t want to use your toothbrush, you find instead that as you pass it to him, he looks at it for a moment, smiling softly. Subtle, as if he’s smiling to himself. 

There's intimacy in this, too: watching Eddie use your toothbrush and rinse it off carefully before passing it back to you. You've had his dick in your mouth, and you've swallowed his cum, but somehow this— standing at the sink, brushing your teeth with the same brush he just used while Eddie drops the towel and pulls on Charlie's too-big clothes, toweling off his hair by ruffling it like one would dry off a dog— feels more intimate than anything you’ve done before. 

You dart across the hallway in your towel, retrieving a pair of plain cotton underwear and a loose t-shirt from the folded pile of clothes in your closet. You hear Eddie enter behind you, but you don’t hesitate to remove your towel and hang it from the closet doorknob, pulling on your panties and shirt unhurriedly. You tie up your damp hair with a silk scrunchie, watching Eddie pile his soiled clothing into a bare corner of your room to be dealt with later. Together, wordlessly, you straighten your sheets and comforter, tidying your tiny bed in the warm, subtle lamplight of your bedroom. It casts shadows over Eddie’s face, deepening the sharpness of his jaw and the definition of his brow. When he glances up, noticing you watching him from the other side of the mattress, the amber of his eyes stirs your green and feels like home.

Finally, it’s time for bed.

You click out the lamp, and in the darkness, lit by cool moonbeams illuminating your headboard's contours, you and your light maneuver onto the tiny bed. There’s nothing quite like the slide of your fresh, clean limbs against the smooth sheets, the way it contrasts with the warmth of Eddie’s body, the way your damp hair kisses each others’ necks as you nuzzle together, shifting until you’re both comfortable. It takes a little while to find a position that satisfies you both, and with some humor, you say, “Told you it was cramped.”

You can’t really see him in the darkness, but you can hear when Eddie chuckles, and you can taste his minty breath when it puffs spicy against your lips. His voice is a rumble you feel more than hear. "You weren't kidding," he murmurs. "But I don't mind." 

Eddie can’t see the way your face softens, but it does. "Me neither," you whisper. 

You feel his arm shift, and your eyes flutter closed as you feel the tiniest brush against your forehead— a seeking fingertip. His touch is featherlight as he moves hair off your forehead and then drags that same hand back to lightly pinch the shell of your ear, dragging those calloused fingers down to the lobe. "Goodnight, sweet girl." 

You seek him blindly too, searching with your face until your lips are skimming his cheek. Now oriented, you move your head down to press a soft, tender kiss to the corner of Eddie’s mouth. And when you feel him melt into the bed, muscles relaxing against you, your growth— that yearning, quivering green— finally settles into contentment. "Goodnight, Eddie."

–

When the morning light chases away the chill of twilight, you wake first. The first thing you notice, before you’ve even opened your eyes, is the uncomfortable dampness of your body. You're sweating with the heat trapped under the covers, your front overly warm where it's pressed along Eddie's, belly to collarbone. But you can't be bothered to move. You don't want to disturb him. 

When you open your eyes, it’s to a wholly charming sight: Eddie’s nose is whistling slightly as he breathes, his mouth is half-open, and he's drooling on your pillow. Your soft expression transforms when you notice, lips twisting into a delighted grin. He's gonna be so embarrassed that he drooled all over my bed. After a moment of amusement, you move your arm carefully, dipping your hand beneath the hem of his shirt to draw your fingers slowly, so slowly up his back. You feel him sigh and nuzzle closer to you, a tiny sleepy grunt escaping from his lips as he closes them. Your affection for him rushes so strongly through you that you're left almost dizzy. 

The room is lit with the pale light of early morning, and you stare at the freckle underneath Eddie’s eye, the long eyelashes dusting his cheek. He looks so peaceful, the laugh lines at the corners of his eyes softened by sleep. You nestle your face closer until you can feel each exhale from his nose tickle your upper lip, and you close your eyes, basking in his nearness.

You don’t know how long you lay that way, tangled with Eddie, unable to tell where he ends, and you begin. Your lips are so close they almost touch when he shifts his face just slightly, and then they do— a tiny whisper of plush lips on yours, the slightest brush that has your moths fluttering to life. It almost seems incidental until you feel the arm slung around your waist tighten, bringing you closer. And Eddie might almost think you're still asleep if it wasn't for the fingers trailing absent patterns along his back.

Now that you know he’s awake, you return his kiss, pressing your lips to his with your eyes still closed. And in the light of morning that shines pink against your eyelids, before the world has fully awakened, the only sound that exists is the tiny smack of the kiss you give Eddie and the woosh of his contented sigh, a sigh you breathe in like gentle smoke.

When you move your head back, blinking your eyes open again to look into Eddie's face, the sight that greets you is new but so wholly, wonderfully welcome. 

Eddie's dark curls are splayed across your pillow, plush lips deep pink and puffy, eyes heavy with sleep but the color so deep and rich it nearly steals your breath.

Nine months ago, Eddie Munson was a stranger, sticking out like a dark mark in the pastel of the apartment you shared with your boyfriend Steve. He was foreign, unfamiliar; you didn't know him. 

Now, he smiles, and you know his gentleness; you know the light in his brown eyes. He who teased out the growth, who caressed the leaves between his calloused fingers, who shone tenderly upon it until it blossomed from the center of you. You're bearing fruit, the words of your soul, and you use them to nourish you both. 

When you break the silence, you don't exchange platitudes of good morning or question how he'd slept. Instead, you say, "I've never felt this way about anyone before." 

Eddie’s eyes search yours quietly until he husks a quiet question. "Not even Steve?" 

You don’t need to think about your answer. "No," you whisper. "Steve is a good man, but you see all of me in a way he never did." 

You watch Eddie’s throat bob in a thick swallow. "I think..." he whispers, wide-eyed and tentative. Like it’s a revelation; like it’s never happened before. "I think you see all of me, too." 

"I do." You brush the curls from his face, fingers like reverence incarnate. "I'm in love with you, Eddie."

And to see it— this man, who guards himself with ink and leather and chains— to see how you feed him with your words, how he swallows them up. To see how his expression becomes so vulnerable, pink on black and white; how he drops his armor and the gentleness of his eyes blooms over his whole face. You watch it, and you know it's something rare to behold. And then he speaks, plush lips spilling words that water your growth like rain.

"I love you, sweet girl. I love you." 

You’re blooming. You’re thriving. You’re rushing with the force of your joy until it stings the corners of your eyes. Eddie touches your face, wiping away the happy rain that has fallen and kissed your cheek. "Does this mean you're mine?" He asks, hushed and quiet, as if he’s afraid to hope for the answer. 

"Yes," you reply, fluttering toward the light that shines in beautiful brown eyes. "I'm yours, Eddie." 

A deep breath, a pinch of your brow. More than you ever thought you could ask for, but you do. You do. "And are you mine?" 

Eddie’s answer is immediate, husked like rich and heady smoke as he strokes your hair. "As long as you want me, sweetheart."

You want to say, Forever, Eddie. 

So you do.

"Forever, Eddie. I'll want you forever."

Eddie kisses your lips, and the taste of his mouth is sweet, sweet like ripe red strawberries, sweet with the promise of a thousand more kisses just like it.

"Then you'll have me, y/n. You'll have me forever." 

[inklessletter]

Ink's Art Masterlist

15/MAR/23 - Those eyes (Steve H. art) WIP FINAL

16/MAR/23 - Scoops Steve H. WIP + LINEART FINAL

18/MAR/23 - Robin Sketch Colour

20/MAR/23 - Eddie Sketch

21/MAY/23 - Max Mayfield Sketch

29/MAY/23 - Steve & Eddie Lineart

30/MAY/23 - You're Dangerous, Harrington [TTP] LINEART BASIC COLORS FINAL

02/JUN/23 - Are you real? [TTP] SNEAK PEEK LINEART GRAYSCALE FINAL

07/JUN/23 - Mine or yours? [TTP] SNEAK PEEK LINEART GRAYSCALE FINAL

10/JUN/23 - Harder, Munson [TTP] SNEAK PEEK GRAYSCALE FINAL

11/JUN/23 - Is this shit recording yet? [R: Mature] (not really showing anything explicit, though, just implied)

14/JUN/23 - Do we have a deal, sweetheart? [TTP] SNEAK PEEK LINEART BASIC COLORS FINAL

16/JUN/23 - Hey, sunshine. Doing alright?

16/JUN/23 - Your game is shit, Munson. [TTP] SNEAK PEEK FINAL

17/JUN/23 - The Moon told me about you. [TTP] LINEART FINAL

18/JUN/23 - Eddie, the Goblin King [TTP] SNEAK PEEK SKETCH LINEART FINAL

19/JUN/23 - You're crazy [TTP] SNEAK PEEK FINAL

20/JUN/23 - Elton John is on the radio [TTP] SNEAK PEEK LINEART FINAL

24/JUN/23 - Eyes on me. (Twin piece) [TTP] SNEAK PEEK LINEART FINAL

24/JUN/23 - Slower, baby. (Twin piece) [TTP] SNEAK PEEK LINEART FINAL

25/JUN/23 - Twin Pieces Together

27/JUN/23 - Category 5 pretty boy [TTP] SNEAK PEEK LINEART FINAL

29/JUN/23 - Meant to be [TTP] SNEAK PEEK LINEART FINAL

02/JUL/23 - Let me give you the summer [TTP] SNEAK PEEK SHAPES BASIC COLOR FINAL

06/JUL/23 - It has always been you [TTP] SNEAK PEEK SHAPES BASIC COLOR FINAL

9/JUL/23 - Twin Pieces Together (Summer Lovin')

9/JUL/23 - Treacherous [TTP] SNEAK PEEK SHAPES COLOR FINAL

10/JUL/23 - Lost on you (Eddie) [TTP] SNEAK PEEK LINEART FINAL (NOT RATED) FINAL (RATED MATURE)

11/JUL/23 - Lost on you (Steve) [TTP] SNEAK PEEK LINEART FINAL (NOT RATED) FINAL (RATED MATURE)

12/JUL/23 - Twin Pieces Together (Lost on you, Mature versions under the cut)

16/JUL/23 - Chasing the sun, finding herself [TTP] SNEAK PEEK FINAL

21/JUL/23 - No lips, only tongue [TTP] SNEAK PEEK LINEART FINAL

28/JUL/23 - He's a prism [TTP] SNEAK PEEK LINEART FINAL

27/JUL/23 - Under fairy lights [TTP] SNEAK PEEK LINEART FINAL

29/JUL/23 - Kissing you [TTP] (unfinished) SNEAK PEEK SHAPES

6/AUG/23 - Smoking hot [TTP] (unfinished) SNEAK PEEK LINEART

14/AUG/23 - It's a love story [TTP] SNEAK PEEK LINEART FINAL

25/AUG/23 - Don't look at me like that

25/AUG/23 - Jurassic Park AU [TTP] (very unfinished) SNEAK PEEK

30/AUG/23 - Did you mean around your neck? (hands study)

10/SEP/23 - Hard, ice, silver love (hands study) [TTP] (very very very unfinished) SNEAK PEEK

[neonponders]

Okay okay okay, just another quick one ~

Part 32 for @wrecked-fuse ‘s pocketverse 🍦🐺🧚🏻‍♀️🦇

Part 31 (werewolf!Billy pt. 1 haha)

( pt. 7′s art 🎩 ) ( pt. 9′s art 👀 ) ( pt. 14′s art 💨 ) ( pt. 19′s art 🦇 ) ( pt. 20′s art 🍳) ( pt. 27’s art 🦦 )

~ on ao3 ~

• • •

The full moon blended into a full day. Between two overeager werewolves and keeping track of little Steve, big Steve wasn’t able to track down Robin until the sun was up. It worked out, at least, that even in with his furry ears and fluffy tail, small Billy wanted to dance to the jazzercise, allowing Steve and Robin the time to repair the front doors.

“I guess we should’ve expected this, given little Munson’s wings,” she conversed while Steve mixed an old paint can from the garage. By some stroke of luck, Billy’s damage to the door could be glued back together. With that done, Steve calked over the cracks, Robin sanded it down, and they both rolled some small paint rollers in a paint tray.

“Eddie doesn’t have wings,” Steve countered and then paused. “Does he?”

Robin shrugged, only for her eyes to light up with epiphany. “Maybe he’s fae.”

“Yeah, let’s just pretend I totally know what that means.”

Robin ignored his tone and explained, “Fae, like fairies. They come out during the full moon too.”

“Then why does little Eds have his wings all the time?”

“The full moon is fun for fae people but they don’t, like, disappear the rest of the month.”

Steve finished the base of the door and used the newel post behind him to stand up. “Whatever he’s got, it’s Chrissy’s fun problem. I’ve got wolves in my house.”

“Well,” Robin countered as she dipped her roller for some more paint, “one and a tiny half.”

Steve had to huff a laugh and offered, “Do you want a drink?”

“Yes, please.”

Steve made a lap through the living room to check on the littles: Billy was having the time of his life on the coffee table while a large wolf lay curled up on the floor, near enough as if to cushion his landing if Billy leapt off the table again. On big Billy’s fur, lay small Steve, chatting away like a small king on a palatial rug or bed.

Big Steve had no idea what the little guy was talking about, but the wolf didn’t seem to mind as his blue eyes followed Steve around. On his way back from the kitchen, Steve set down some bottle caps of drinks, fruit cubes, and a dish of water for Billy, next to a plated sandwich.

Billy made a blunt sound of disapproval at him and Steve only shrugged. “Sucks to lose your thumbs. How you doing, little man?”

“Good,” little Steve chimed, unconsciously swaying in Billy’s warm fur, little legs crossed.

“You’re going for a swim soon, B-Man,” Steve announced on his way out. He got an enthusiastic Awooo! in return. Steve didn’t know how successful a bath would be during the full moon.

No sooner did he hand Robin a glass of water, that a familiar van turned into his driveway. The whole vehicle rocked with his brakes as Steve and Robin glanced at each other when the guy swung himself out of his car. Robin simply sighed at the absence of wings, whereas Steve waved to Chrissy stepping down from the passenger seat.

“Hey! Oh my god, what happened?”

“Depends, are you afraid of big dogs?” Steve asked.

“No? I’ve wanted a dog for years, but my parents have too many expensive rugs for a dog. Say hi, guys.”

Little Eddie sat happily on her head, bat wings fluttering behind him contently while the smaller Chrissy sat on her shoulder. He waved and little Chrissy greeted, “Hi, Stevie. Hi, Wobin.” 

Robin moved aside and waved an arm to gesture Chrissy inside. “Billy’s lost for words this weekend, but his little one bites more than ever.”

Chrissy stepped over the threshold, her body sending a breeze right into Steve and Robin’s face. They both recoiled as if they had been struck by a powerful wind. A wind that smelled like fresh rain, charred flowers, and strawberry brownies.

“Woah,” Robin blurted, lifting a hand to her nose.

“Wow,” Steve agreed, a bit too wistfully.

Eddie arrive at the doors, chuckling around a cigarette before he exhaled smoke. “We just got back from a show. Haven’t slept. Chrissy had a great time.”

Robin looked at Steve, doing the math a second faster than he could. When his large brown eyes stayed a little too vacant, she swatted his chest and murmured, “Eds might have wings, but she’s fully moon-charged.”

His mouth went slack as he exhaled a soft, “Ooh...”

Eddie started to step on the threshold, but Steve barred his path. “Finish outside.”

“Really?” Eddie huffed, and retreated. “When did King Steve stop smoking? Billy’s a goddamn chain smoker.”

Robin answered, in a tone that immediately warranted Eddie furrowing his brows in concern. “Speak of the wolf. What about Billy?”

Eddie stared down the foyer hallway at the large wolf that took up half the height of the walls. “Oh. So,” he swallowed. “You’ve had an eventful night too?”

Steve’s head whirled around at his little’s voice calling from where he rode on Billy’s scruff, “Hi, Eddie! Hi, Chwissy! Eddie, pwease bweathe fire outside. It’s dang’wous.”

Steve pressed his mouth in a tired, resigned line as he nodded his head. “I’ll open the backdoor. Take your time by the pool.”

Eddie nodded once and tapped his cigarette as he pivoted to go toward the backyard. Steve and Robin had to leave the doors open for the paint to dry, as well as to ventilate the smell around the wolves. Meanwhile, Chrissy squeezed past Billy with a hand petting over one of his ears. “Scuse me, Billy.”

He made a soft growl in acknowledgement and turned back into the living room. Little Eddie made quick work of taking flight and drifting down over the coffee table. “WOW! You look so cool! Can you crow like a wock star?”

The living room filled with Eddie and Billy trying to out-howl each other. The real race became how fast Steve could fill up the Barbie pool and scoop Billy off the table. “Okay, you. Pool time and then tacos for lunch.”

“Awoo! ” Billy answered, tail wagging between Steve’s fingers. Wolf Billy tread into the kitchen, pressing his large body against the island and allowing little Steve to slide off his neck right onto the counter. Then he slotted his narrow face right in between Steve’s legs.

“Guh-ack! Hey!” A warm, wet tongue laved the inside of his thigh. “Not now!--oh MY GOD.”

Billy transformed, taking Steve with him so he sat on top of human Billy’s shoulders. His voice was still a bit rough as he ordered, “Robin. Lifeguard.”

“Aye, captain,” she snorted, “if I can burn your ass off of my retinas.”

Unbothered, Billy strolled out of the room with Steve on his shoulders, the latter warning as he dodged doorframes, “I have ceilings. Billy - I have ceilings! ”

[koithelittle]

moodboards

wilbur-verse

little!dark wolf moodboard || x

day 1 of f.a.c. (fictional agere challenge) // no warnings // wolf themed

cg!wilma soot moodboard + headcanons || x

gn!little!reader // day 2 of f.a.c. // no warnings // artist + bear themed

flip!argbur moodboard || x

day 5 of f.a.c. // no warnings // winter blue theme

regressor!ghostbur moodboard || x

day 8 of f.a.c. // no warnings // baby blue and white theme

cg!godbur moodboard || x

day 9 of f.a.c. // no warnings // blue stars and Christmas theme

cg!clinic wilbur moodboard || x

siren/wilbur from tcfsv // no warnings // dark teal and black/white theme

cg!wilma moodboard || x

requested by @wilmaslittleflower // no warnings // yellow, brown, bear and art theme

cg!vampire!wilbur moodboard || x

no warnings // black, red and white theme

cg!cc!wilbur moodboard + headcanons || x

no warnings // brown, bear, bunnies and dear theme

cg!revivebur moodboard || x

no warnings // brown, yellow and white theme

cg!goddess wilma moodboard + headcanons || x

no warnings // pink, white and brown theme

cg!wilbur + puppy obsessed little moodboard || x

requested by @ax-y10 // no warnings // pink soft puppy theme

cg!wilbur with space/poetry loving little moodboard || x

requested by @burgundy-baby // no warnings // blue, tan and spacey theme

burgundy wilbur moodboard || x

requested by @burgundy-baby // non agere, standard moodboard // reddish burgundy theme

cg!darkwolf moodboard + headcanons || x

requested by @corner-of-void // no warnings // blue, grey and wolf theme

christmas with cg!wilbur moodboard + headcanons || x

no warnings // red christmas theme

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[moonchildreads]

small town

Chapter 13 - You Give Good Love

IN THIS CHAPTER: Vinegar fumes, an old photograph, and Eddie attempts to hang the moon [9.5k]

WARNINGS: angst, self-esteem issues, mentions of financial hardships, mentions of dead parents, small mention of period-typical homophobia (late 1960s)

A/N: i want to once again shout out my three fairy godmothers, my kindest merryweather (@duquesademiel), my loveliest flora (@justahappycloud) and my sweetest fauna (@gutterratt) for vibechecking dot and eddie's first big misunderstanding. also thank you for teaching me about 80s metal, you were right, dio's the last in line was absolutely perfect for this chapter. i keep thanking you three, and yet it is never enough. can't wait to hug the shit out of you in a month. <3

masterlist - prev - next | playlist

I found out what I've been missing Always on the run I've been looking for someone

Thursday, May 8th - 1986

Eddie Munson had the nagging feeling that something was wrong with Dottie Burke. He didn’t know what it was, but he was 100% sure that something was wrong.

For starters, she was being terribly secretive about that textbook she’d borrowed from the library the day before, going so far as waiting until he got up to go pee to return it without him getting so much as a glimpse of the cover. Then it was the fact that her bag looked particularly full and she wouldn’t let him carry it for her, quickly stashing it under her legs as soon as she climbed into his van. She kept her locker closed whenever he was around, and even changed seats to be far away from him during lunch, engaging with Jeff in a conversation about flowers, their heads down and eyes glued to the book they had open between them on the table. But what was perhaps bothering him the most, was the knowledge that the damn mystery card was still hidden within her backpack, tucked between her Home Ec notebook and her Chemistry textbook, taunting him with a peek of its pink envelope when Dottie rummaged through one of her pockets for an extra pen to lend to him during their shared English Lit class.

He couldn’t pinpoint if it was simply him being weird due to the recent discovery of his jealous tendencies or if she really was keeping secrets from him, but something had to give. He was getting increasingly paranoid over every little interaction they had and he wasn’t enjoying his current descent to madness at all. Eddie was planning on asking her if everything was okay between them as soon as they arrived at their destination, but when he pulled into the trailer park, he saw his Uncle gesturing at him to roll his window down, lit cigarette dangling from his lips.

“Don’t get out, boy!” Wayne shouted, jogging to the driver’s side of the van. “Need you to run an errand for me in town.”

“Can it wait?” Eddie asked, turning around in his seat to see Dottie gathering her things. “We were gonna-”

“I need you to take this to Terry,” he slid him a big manila envelope with Terrence McKee’s name scribbled on the front.

“Aren’t you gonna see him tomorrow during your meeting?” he furrowed his eyebrows, wondering what the hell did the old man need him to deliver to his Union buddy so urgently on a Thursday.

“Yes but he needs this today, don’t ask stupid questions, son,” Wayne said with an air of finality. “You know where he lives?”

“Yeah,” Eddie scoffed, disbelief tainting his next words. “It’s literally all the way across Hawkins.”

“You better get going then,” he patted the side of the van like one would pat a horse to get him to move.

“Do you mind if I wait for you here?” Dottie asked, hopping off the van before Eddie could answer. “I really need to pee.”

“Go on, I’ll keep her company until you get back,” Wayne said, dismissing his nephew with another wave of his hand. “Don’t worry about her.”

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Eddie told Dottie, uncomfortable with leaving her at his trailer while he wasn��t there.

“Take your time!” she smiled at him. “Drive safe, ‘kay?”

He nodded once before peeling back into the main road and speeding away. Standing side by side while they watched the van get smaller, Dottie and Wayne could feel the tension leaving their bodies now that Eddie was gone. The older man let out a low chuckle, like he couldn’t believe they’d gotten away with their improvised ruse.

“What was inside the envelope?” Dottie asked, noticing mischief twinkling in Wayne’s blue eyes.

“Half of today’s newspaper,” he grinned, and she was instantly reminded of Eddie’s face when he pulled off something wacky during Hellfire. “Called Terry earlier today, got him to play along. Hopefully he’ll keep Eddie busy for a while.”

“You’re so evil, Mr. Wayne,” she said, smiling up at him. “Thank you.”

“No problem, kid. Come on in, let’s get started before he comes back.”

Dottie stood with her hands on her hips in the middle of Eddie’s room, watching the pure black stain on the ceiling get more and more faded with each passing minute. The furniture was covered in trash bags to prevent it from accidentally getting damaged with the one-part-water one-part-vinegar mixture that Uncle Johnny had instructed her to concoct; the bucket holding the liquid was safely perched on a step of the small ladder Wayne had pulled out for her from an overflowing storage closet in the hallway. While she had been busy soaking the affected surface with a sponge, the eldest Munson had taken it upon himself to give all the carpets in the trailer a much needed refresh with an old vacuum that hadn’t been used in a while. If the loud sucking noises had been of any indication, there had been way more crumbs and dust accumulated in the living room than he’d hoped to find, and the less was said about Eddie’s bedroom floor, the better.

After half an hour had passed without any sign of her friend’s return, Dottie climbed the stepladder once more to begin cleaning up the mold with her trusty sponge and pink rubber gloves. She was pleased to find that just one swipe was good enough to remove almost all the gunk, but Uncle Johnny had mentioned at least two applications were probably needed to get rid of it completely. She was so absorbed into her work that she failed to notice a very familiar van parking outside next to Wayne’s truck; upon entering the quiet trailer, Eddie was confused as to why all the windows were wide open. Noticing that Wayne had fallen asleep on his armchair with their old vacuum at his feet, he tiptoed down the hallway towards his bedroom and pushed the door open, only to find his newest friend standing at the top of the little ladder his Uncle had gotten for him when he first came to live at the trailer park so he could reach the kitchen cabinets on his own.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he said, standing under the frame in shock.

“I’m cleaning!” she smiled at him like it was no big deal.

It was a big deal. It was a huge deal, actually, because Dottie cleaning up his own home embarrassed him to the bone. Suddenly, Eddie was back in middle school and the people he desperately wanted to be friends with were calling him dirty and trash and smelly, and the walls were closing in on him, and there was an acid smell in the air that reminded him too much of when Wayne tried to get rid of his lice by soaking his scalp with vinegar, which in turn reminded him too much of the acrid odor that was embedded into every corner of the house he had once shared with his Dad. Dottie’s usually gentle smile was now taunting him, and when he noticed that she was keeping her hair away from her face with one of his bandanas, deep seated shame bubbled up to the surface, bursting to get out of his system with no regards as to who it would run over in its path.

“Get out,” he gritted out, voice dripping with venom.

“W-what?”

“Get the fuck out!”

“I’m sorry, I-”

“Is this fun to you?!” he yelled, eyes hard on her figure still standing at the top of the ladder. “You think you can just come into my home and touch all my shit and I’m supposed to be okay with it?!”

“Eddie-”

“What are you doing?!”

“I’m helping-”

“I didn’t ask you for help!” he heard heavy footsteps coming up from behind him but he couldn’t stop the poison coming out of his throat. “What, was it interesting to see what it’s like to be a broke piece of shit? Did you get tired of hanging out in a shitty trailer? Or did you just want to add me to your list of good deeds? Poor Eddie, I saved him!”

“Edward!” Wayne’s voice cut his tirade short. The older man looked tired with the kind of fatigue only years of hardship could give you. “She just wanted to help you out! I gave her permission to do it, so stop yellin’ at her!”

“You… you knew about this?” he looked at his Uncle, betrayal twisting his stomach. “What the fuck, Wayne!”

“Ed-”

“No! Shut up! Shut the fuck up! Stay out of this!” Eddie kicked his door shut and threw all his weight on it, leaving Wayne knocking on the wood outside before turning to Dottie again. “You turned my fucking Uncle on me?”

“I didn’t- I just asked him if I could clean up the mold stain-”

“Do you think I need you to clean up after me like you’re my goddamn mother? Because I don’t! I don’t need you! I was doing fine before I met you!”

“I just wanted to help-”

“I’m not a child, Dot, you don’t have to treat me like… Like I’m some charity case you have to have pity for!”

A wet sponge flew across the room and hit Eddie square in the chest, right in the middle of his favorite Iron Maiden shirt he’d gotten out of a thrift store bin a few years back. The yellow projectile flopped to the floor where it hit the carpet with a squelch; Eddie looked up to Dottie to find her face had turned red, her jaw clenched in barely contained rage. She threw a fucking sponge at me, he realized, wary of what else could she’d throw his way. Her bucket was perfectly within her reach.

“Are you done?” she raised her voice, louder than he’d ever heard her.

“I-”

“I asked, are you done yelling at me?!” her hands turned into rubbery fists, eyes narrowing to look down at him from her vantage point. He didn’t dare reply. “I asked your Uncle for permission to clean the mold stain because that’s what’s causing your allergies. You’re getting sick from it and it could be dangerous!”

“How do you-”

“Do you really think it’s the first time I’ve seen mold in my entire life? Give me a break, Eddie, how sheltered do you think I am?”

“If you had such noble intentions, why didn’t you ask me about it instead of going behind my back and asking Wayne, huh?”

“Because you don’t let people help you! No, no, no,” she lifted her gloved hand to cut him off as soon as he opened his mouth. “You don’t get to argue back. Gareth has to hide gas money in your glovebox so you don’t try to give it back to him! Donny acts like he wants your peanuts so you eat the extra lunch he brings for you without complaining!”

“I don’t want your pity!”

“It’s not fucking pity! We want to help you out because we love you!” Dottie threw her hands in the air with exasperation. She exhaled loudly, shoulders sagging, defeated. “Don’t you fucking accuse me of seeing you as a goddamn charity case ever again, Eddie. If you can’t see by now that I think the absolute world of you, then I don’t know why we’re even friends anymore.”

There was a heavy silence in the room, and Eddie could feel his anger and humiliation turn to guilt. He stared at her with wet eyes, regretting every single word that had come out of his mouth since he’d returned from his strange errand. Dottie was breathing heavily, lips turned downwards, biting the inside of her cheek; he had seen that face before and instantly knew that she was trying her hardest not to cry. He felt like such an idiot. Of course that what he was feeling was completely justified but he had just accused her of essentially tricking him into a friendship only to mock him, like she hadn’t consistently shown him how kind and selfless she truly was.

Putting his pride aside, he launched himself across the room and wrapped his arms around her waist, burying his head into her chest and squeezing her tightly so she wouldn’t fall from the ladder she was still standing on.

“I’m sorry,” he said, clutching the back of the paint splattered shirt that had clearly once belonged to her Dad. She must have brought it from home to protect her clothes while she cleaned. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she said, pulling her gloves from her hands, letting them fall to the floor before dropping her arms around his shoulders. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. You’re right, I should have asked you before I did it. That wasn’t cool of me.”

“No, it wasn’t,” he agreed. “But I still shouldn’t have yelled at you like that.”

“No, you shouldn’t have,” she said, holding him tighter. “I would never pity you, Eddie, you have to know this. I admire you so much, I could never think any less of you. You’re one of my best friends in the whole world.”

“You’re one of my best friends too,” he admitted, looking up at her, his chin resting on her stomach. “I just… People are always judging, you know? And I don’t want you to see me differently because I’m… struggling.”

“I’m not trying to fix your life, or do charity with you. I just want to help you out the same way you help me out, and that’s what friends do for each other, okay? If you won the lottery tomorrow and moved to a big ass mansion in Loch Nora, I’d still help you out.”

“Because you love me?” he risked a little joke, testing the rocky waters between them.

“Yes, dumbass. Because I love you,” she said, fingers tangling in his wild curls, and despite the fact that he was sure his heart had never raced faster in his life, the waves lapping at his feet had never felt calmer.

If Eddie was taking more alternative roads and going slower than usual while taking Dottie home, neither of them said anything about it. They had spent the rest of their day together cleaning Eddie’s room as a team, her on ceiling mold duty and him wiping down every dusty surface and shoving things into his drawers and closet to deal with them at a later date. When they were done, they threw themselves onto his bed so she could quiz him on Sociology, trying to get him ready for his last test of the year before finals week. Wayne did not attempt to talk to either of them for the remainder of the afternoon, but he had hugged Dottie goodbye with a smile on his face and subsequently given his nephew a stern look that warned him about the scolding he was gonna get when he came back from dropping her off. Eddie had no doubts that his Uncle had overheard the rest of their conversation through the door and heavily favored her side of the argument.

“Are we still on for tomorrow?” he asked with a timid voice as he pulled into her street.

“You know I’m never gonna say no to tacos,” she said, turning in her seat to look at his profile. “Kinda been looking forward to it all week, actually.”

“Was really hoping you’d say that,” he admitted. “I’ve been looking forward to it too.”

“Taco Friday is still on then. They better be good or I’ll be so disappointed.”

“You won’t be, trust me. Best tacos you’ve ever had.”

“I’m counting on it. See you tomorrow, okay? Please go over your notes one more time before the test.”

“Will do, Captain,” he saluted, watching her jump off his van and walk backwards towards her front door.

“I mean it, Munson! I want to see you get at least a B or your ass is grass!”

“I’ll get you more than a B, princess, I promise!” he said, grinning when she rolled her eyes at him before scurrying inside.

He was in a fairly good mood again when he walked into the trailer, but instantly stiffened up when he saw his Uncle standing at the sink. He waited by the front door in silence for a few seconds before trying to disappear into his bedroom when Wayne put down the dish he was washing and turned around. His face gave away nothing as he motioned to the couch with his head. Oh, boy. Eddie sat down quietly and stared at the carpet. The eldest Munson crossed his arms and stood next to the coffee table, knee bumping Eddie’s to make him look up. He didn’t. The faint sounds of the trailer park settling down for the night were ringing in his ears.

“You two make up?” Wayne asked, getting straight to the point.

“Yeah. Sorry about the yelling.”

“S’alright. You know what she said to me? When she asked about the stain?” Eddie didn’t reply, so Wayne kept going. “That she’d rather have you angry at her than see you cough up blood.”

“I didn’t know it was toxic. I thought she was just… being judgy.”

“Now why do you think she was being judgy?” Eddie only shrugged and Wayne sighed, changing tactics. “You do things for her sometimes, don’t you, Ed?”

“I guess,” he could feel his ears start to get red.

“You drive her around, get her snacks. Made her that shirt for her birthday too, ain’t that right?”

“We’re friends,” he argued back, although he didn’t really know what he was getting agitated about.

“Do you judge her because she can’t drive herself?”

“What- no, of course not, I’m not an asshole!”

“Do you judge her when you buy things for her?”

“No!”

“Then what on Earth made you think she was gonna judge you, huh? That any of your friends judge you?”

“People like that always judge,” he grumbled.

“People like that?” Wayne repeated in disbelief. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know what it means,” Eddie finally looked at his uncle, exasperated. The older man lifted an eyebrow. “People that don’t live in a trailer park,” was what Eddie said. People that don’t have to decide what bill would hurt them less if it didn’t get paid on time. People that go thrift shopping for fun and not out of necessity. People that graduate on time, and go to college, and live in a suburb, was what Eddie implied.

“Y’know, for someone as perceptive as you, you can be really dumb sometimes,” he chuckled bitterly. “Open your damn eyes, boy. I know you ain’t blind. You’re not the only one who’s had a hard life ‘round here, so quit the self-pitying.”

Wayne could picture the cogs behind Eddie’s confused expression start to turn as he pondered on his words. A few seconds of silence passed between them before the eldest Munson fished his cigarettes from his shirt pocket and headed outside for a quick smoke. He turned around when he reached the door; Eddie was staring at him but his eyes were unfocused, mind miles away.

“Ed?” Wayne called, and his nephew’s head jerked violently, snapping out of his trance. “You be good to that girl, son. You don’t find people like that every day.”

Never in his almost twenty years of life had Eddie felt as productive as that day waiting for Wayne to leave for work. He’d vacuumed his bedroom carpet, put a new load of clothes in the washing machine, had dinner, washed the dishes, dried the dishes, and reorganized his tapes, all in an effort to keep moving, not stopping to think once. He was sitting at the kitchen table drowning himself in the dull black and soft gray of Jeff’s photocopied Sociology notes when his uncle finally laced up his boots, turned off the TV and headed out for the night, leaving him alone with the thoughts that could no longer be ignored.

He remembered the random five dollar bills he often found in his van: in the glovebox, between his tapes, tucked into the sun visor, laying on the dashboard. He’d always assumed he’d left them there while he was high or drunk after a gig; Gareth had never mentioned them and Eddie wasn’t a stranger to misplacing his own things so he’d never had any reasons to question his friend about it. He thought about befriending a freshman Donny when he was a junior, only a couple of months before he started selling weed and still couldn’t afford cafeteria lunches, bringing whatever little leftovers he could find in the fridge to keep his hunger at bay during the school day. He’d never given much thought to the fact that Donny kept asking him to trade a few peanuts or half his apple for a whole sandwich, not when his friend kept pulling excuse after excuse (“I hate this kind of cheese, please take it or I’m gonna throw it away”, “My sister made waffles for breakfast, I’m not that hungry”, “Dude, you know I love chocolate covered pretzels, come on, trade with me?”) and he was always happy to say yes. Donny hadn’t stopped doing it, only slowed down on the frequency once Eddie started selling and now had extra pocket money to spend on whatever he wanted.

Throat constricting, he looked down at the notes in front of him and saw Jeff’s handwriting spelling names and concepts he should be memorizing. Eddie hadn’t made the copies, Jeff had. He had gone to the library during one of his free periods and spent his time photocopying his own notes so he could give them to his long haired friend before their exam. Eddie wondered how many more things they had done for him throughout the years without getting so much as a thank you from him, and never once expecting anything in return. Never looked at him differently, never made fun of him, never questioned him. I’m a fucking idiot, he thought bitterly, before Wayne’s words rang in his ears. “You’re not the only one who’s had a hard life”, he had said.

Eddie twirled his pen in his hand, noticing it wasn’t his. It was Dottie’s fluffy pen, blue ink with a pink pompom that he loved tickling his own chin with. She was very protective of her things, never hesitating to lend them out to her friends but always having a sort of nervous anxiety until they were back in her hands. Dottie, who always waited to see what everyone else was picking at the diner before placing her own order. Dottie, who loved apple Kool-Aid and didn’t like sodas unless it was a special occasion, who knew how to bake and cook with whatever was in the fridge, who never threw away pencils until they were so small she couldn’t grab them anymore.

“Ah, fuck,” he said out loud, the weight of the words he’d carelessly thrown around at her rooting him to his chair.

Dottie who cut the toothpaste tube in half to get everything out. Dottie who always said “it’s thrifted!” or “I made it!” whenever someone complimented her on a piece of clothing that she was clearly proud of. Dottie who hated doing math but could calculate the price of things that were on sale quicker than she could read her own dice during a D&D session. Dottie, Dottie, Dottie. Eddie let his head hit the table, forehead sticking to a piece of paper. How had he missed all the signs? He’d accused her of looking down on him and all this time he’d never once stopped to think that maybe, just maybe, she knew exactly what he was going through. He’d been so concerned trying to hide all the things he feared she could judge him upon, and instead had been judging her all along.

He had to fix this. He had to show her that he was sorry for what he’d said, that he wouldn’t judge her anymore. That all this time he’d been wrong, and she’d been right, and that he was a Grade A Idiot who had gotten lost in his own head a little bit too much. Staring at an old camping lamp he’d found under his bed while he was cleaning, Eddie decided that to make things better he would simply have to hang the moon for Dottie.

Friday, May 9th - 1986

“Hey, Chris?” Eddie said, staring at the trees above him. “Could you do me a favor?”

“Is it illegal?” Chrissy replied, following the dancing leaves with her eyes.

“Absolutely.”

It was a sunny Friday, the kind of day that just made you itch to be outside, which was exactly what Eddie and Chrissy were doing after school while they waited for their extracurriculars to start. They were hanging out in their secret spot in the woods, lying on the seats of what they had claimed as their picnic table, looking up at the mostly clear sky while passing a joint back and forth under the wooden surface that separated them. Chrissy had been complaining about how someone on the Prom Planning Committee hadn’t booked the DJ they’d wanted on time and now the guy wasn’t available anymore; she had been scrambling all week trying to find a decent replacement or else everyone in their senior class was going to have to get down to someone’s cousin’s shitty mixtapes. As their shared blunt got smaller and smaller, she was thankful that she not only had a new vice to indulge in when things got overwhelming, but also had Eddie, who always listened and reacted accordingly to her frustrated rants.

“What do you need?”

“Can you sell me a couple of prom tickets? I really don’t wanna ask Kemper about them, she’s such a bitch,” he groaned.

“What did Luce do to you?” she turned to look at him, confused.

Lucy Kemper was a meek looking redhead that knew she was going to be an accountant since she was 12, and because of that, she’d appointed herself as the Committee’s treasurer as soon as she reached senior year. She said she didn’t trust anyone else handling money, so she’d taken it upon herself to be the only one selling tickets for both the junior and senior proms. Other senior students had, in turn, started calling her The Ticket Peddler - it remained to be seen whether it was an affectionate nickname or not.

“Well, for starters, Luce is the one that started that rumor about me stealing underwear from the girls’ locker room.”

“What? They literally caught Tommy Hagan breaking into a locker, Billy Hargrove dared him to do it as their last senior year prank, it was so gross. Why did she say it was you? Everyone knew it was him, it was all everyone talked about for two weeks.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Eddie said sarcastically, the smoke he had been holding in his mouth getting lost into the breeze. “That’s why she had to drop it, but that didn’t stop Higgins from interrogating me twice about it before your coach caught Hagan red handed.”

“I hated that guy, he was such a little creep. And I didn’t like how he treated Carol at all.”

“Carol Perkins was a bigger asshole than her dumbass boyfriend ever was,” he declared, offering the burning joint to Chrissy with a lifted eyebrow.

“Not to me! She was always really nice. She let me borrow a tampon once,” Chrissy said, taking a drag.

“Ew.”

“Periods are completely normal, Eddie.”

“I had to take Health class twice, I’m not scared of periods. I said “ew” because you borrowed a tampon from the Witch Queen herself. You know, I’m surprised she didn’t ask you to give it back, guess she wasn’t in the mood for a blood ritual that day.”

“You’re such an idiot,” Chrissy giggled, making him crack up too. “I’m sorry about Lucy, though. She shouldn’t have done that.”

The more time Chrissy spent with Eddie, the more she wondered how many people around her had been horrible to others right under her nose without her noticing it. She knew that Jason could be mean to the metalhead sometimes, but she figured it was just a guy thing; Eddie stood on tables and badmouthed Jason, and Jason did it right back to him, and so on and so forth. Her boyfriend wasn’t a bully, was he? They both gave as good as they got, neither shied away from conflict when it concerned each other, right? It bothered her to know that maybe she’d misunderstood the situation all along. How many times had she walked past someone being mistreated and not looked their way twice?

“Ah, don’t worry about it. Water under the bridge and all that,” Eddie waved his hand like it wasn’t a big deal. It was to Chrissy. “So, can you sell me two tickets today and hold three until next week? I’ll round up the money and pay you for those on Monday.”

“Sure! Why two today though?” she asked curiously, putting out the roach on the underside of the table and letting it fall to the grass before it began burning her fingers.

“I have another study date tonight.”

“Oh my god, are you promposing?” she suddenly sat upright, eyes twinkling with excitement. “I thought you said you were all going together as a group! What are you gonna wear? Are you taking Dottie to dinner before too? You have to get her a corsage, I can help you pick a nice one if-”

“Jesus Christ, slow down,” he said, clumsily lifting himself up from the bench until he was also sitting down across from her. “I’m not promposing, we’re still going with the guys as a group. I just… kinda fucked up yesterday and wanted to do something nice for her. Make things right, y’know?”

“Define “fucked up” for me, please.”

“I, uh, I got angry and said some things I didn’t mean. There’s nothing to worry about though, we talked it out and we’re fine. We’re going out for tacos tonight.”

“Another date that isn’t a date, huh? I’ll have the tickets ready for you after Hellfire on one condition,” she teased him. “I want first row seats at the wedding.”

“Sweetheart, if we get married, I promise you I’m picking you as my Maid of Honor slash Best Woman slash whatever that shit's called.”

“Deal,” Chrissy stuck out her hand for him to shake on it and he grinned brightly.

It occurred to her right at that second with his hand on hers, that once they left high school, this regular hangout she enjoyed so much was no longer going to happen. Their picnic table wasn’t gonna be theirs anymore, left abandoned for other misbehaving kids to take ownership upon once the new school year started. No more smoking together, no more listening to each other's cassettes, no more lying on the benches and pointing out funny cloud shapes until their faces were red with mirth. And now Eddie was talking about his future like she had a place in it, and Chrissy wondered if her future had enough space for Eddie too.

"Eddie? What's gonna happen after graduation?" she asked, tracing a happy face with crosses for eyes that was carved into the wood with her index finger.

"Dunno, I'll probably try to get a job during summer. Weren't you going to Asscrack, Ohio early for the preseason?"

"Yeah, but that’s not until August. And stop calling it Asscrack, Ohio! OSU is literally in Columbus!”

“You could have gone anywhere and still chose Ohio. What kind of demented person chooses to live in Ohio?”

“They’ve won the UCA Nationals three years in a row, I want to win too,” she shrugged. “But that's not what I asked, I meant it more like- I don't know, like, what's after graduation for us, y'know?"

"Oh," he looked at her carefully, trying to gauge her thoughts by her anxious expression. "Well, what do you want to happen?"

"I don't want us to stop being friends," she said, getting straight to the point. "I like hanging out with you, I like that I can be myself when you're around."

"I like hanging out with you too, really, I do, but I think your Mom might ground you until you're 30 if she ever sees us together," Eddie warned her.

"She doesn't have to know. We can… we can hang out in secret until I leave for college. And you can come visit sometime! You and Dottie and the guys. I’d love to see everyone again."

"You wanna be friends with the freaks?" he asked, disbelieving.

"You were the one who said I was a freak too!"

Eddie really wanted to believe her, he really did. He wanted to call Chrissy to tell her the news whenever something good happened to him, wanted her to come to The Hideout and watch Corroded Coffin perform before college inevitably made it impossible, wanted to pay her back for her support and advice by being there for her during hard times. He wanted her and Dot to become friends like he knew they could be, for them to have girl nights where he'd pick them up from a bar all rosy cheeked and giggly, singing Pat Benatar until they fell asleep in his backseat.

He wanted all of that, because he actually really fucking loved being friends with Chrissy Cunningham, Queen of Hawkins High and Head Cheerleader, but also because it would mean that they had never been so different after all. That high school cliques and hierarchy didn't mean shit once you were out of that dreadful place. That people could change, and come to understand each other and that maybe Hawkins wasn't the shithole town he desperately wanted to leave behind.

Eddie really wanted to believe Chrissy, but he didn't. Not entirely. Not yet. However, given recent events, he decided there was no harm in giving her the benefit of the doubt if she was so willing to extend it to him too.

“How about we start with you signing my yearbook and see where that leads us?” he offered.

“Only if you sign mine too.”

“Fair enough,” he smiled at her, and Chrissy had the feeling he wasn’t lying at all about her being his Maid of Honor-Best Woman-Whatever It Was Called whenever he got married.

And luckily for him, she was serious about accepting the offer too.

“Did you pick one?”

Eddie climbed back into his van with a bag full of Mexican food to find Dottie going through all his tapes, the cases balanced precariously on her thighs. The parking lot was quiet, but soon it would start filling up with misbehaving teens looking for a bit of fun on a Friday night. Hot Sam was another survivor from the Starcourt Mall fire; they had relocated to Mulberry St. in Downtown Hawkins after collecting a big fat cheque from their insurance company and had managed to infuse a little bit of nightlife into an otherwise deserted area. The owners were just grateful that the still-in-construction Taco Bell at the mall, in order to not associate themselves with a tragedy, decided to leave the town altogether instead of moving somewhere else, leaving the Hawkins Taco Kingdom to be disputed between themselves and the owners of Olé Amigo!, who quite frankly didn’t know what a poblano was even if it hit them right in the face. Dottie huffed loudly as Eddie turned on the van and began backtracking out of the parking lot, right hand behind her headrest.

“Why are all your tapes in the wrong cases?” she complained, snapping Mercyful Fate’s Melissa shut.

“Gareth thinks switching them out is the peak of comedy.”

“He’s such a gremlin,” she said, putting another tape in its rightful case.

“Which one are you looking for?” he asked, glancing at her hand shaking Dio’s The Last in Line’s empty case. Wordlessly, he ejected the cassette that was in his van’s deck and lifted an eyebrow. “It’s ready to go.”

“How did you-,” she interrupted herself and chuckled, shaking her head in disbelief while pushing it back in and pressing play.

He shrugged, heat blooming in his chest as the first notes of We Rock rattled his windows. It had been a coincidence, he’d been listening to it as he drove to school that morning, but there was a part of him that always got giddy whenever she willingly chose to partake in his interests. He knew she always carried around a couple of her fave tapes, and there were enough mixes with non-metal songs in his glove box, so the fact that she’d picked one of his favorite albums was nothing to scoff at. She didn’t always like everything he showed her, but she still tried to understand it because it was important to him, and that meant more to him than she’d ever know.

When they missed the turn that took them to the entrance of the trailer park, Dottie eyed him suspiciously, his face carefully schooled to look very nonchalant. His fingers were tapping the final beats to Breathless on the steering wheel when he pulled into a road flanked by trees on both sides.

“Eddie? Where are we going?” she asked, looking out of her window.

“It’s a surprise.”

“You know I don’t like surprises,” she said, hands starting to sweat and the skin on her neck prickling.

“I promise you it’s nothing weird,” Eddie said, lowering the radio to a low rumble and letting his right hand fall to her left knee. He squeezed it comfortingly, but it only made her more nervous. “There’s a place I like to go for a smoke at by the lake, I just thought you’d like to see it. We can go back home if you don’t like it but it’s not scary, I swear.”

“We’re going to Lover’s Lake?”

“No funny business,” he insisted. “It’s just a really pretty place to hang out. And we can leave as soon as you want.”

“Okay. Sounds nice,” Dottie said, heart racing as she placed her palm on top of his hand and squeezed back.

Eddie didn’t remove his hand from her knee until he had to change gears to get onto a dirt road, thumb rubbing in circles over the bone underneath her jeans. She wasn’t sure what was worse, the possibility of something happening between them or nothing happening at all. The anticipation was eating up her insides as he parked the van in reverse under a thick tree like he had done it a million times and killed the engine, cutting One Night in the City off. A gentle breeze ruffled the grass and leaves around them, dull silence threatening to swallow them whole.

“Stay here for a second, okay?” Eddie said, patting her knee a final time. “Don’t turn around, I’ll come get you when I’m ready.”

“Okay,” she answered, but her voice was swallowed by the loud slam of the driver’s door being closed.

She heard him walk all the way around the van, open the back doors and get inside. He shuffled around for a few seconds before he hopped off and hurried to her side, opening her door and unclicking her seatbelt.

“Close your eyes for me, yeah? I’ll guide you,” he said, nervous energy bouncing off his tongue.

“Eddie, you’re scaring me,” she admitted, voice weak, feeling his hand remove her backpack from her shoulder and the bag of food from her tight grasp.

“Trust me, you’re gonna love this,” he took both of her hands in his and started walking her to the rear of the van and closer to the shore. “Just follow me, follow my voice.”

“Please don’t push me into the water,” she said, memories swirling in her mind. Jeannie locking her into a dark closet at a birthday party while they played Hide and Seek. Howie “accidentally” shoving her into a muddy puddle during a rainy field trip. Eddie’s fingers gripped hers tightly.

“I would never, darling. Just a few more steps, I’ve got you.”

When they reached their destination only a couple of feet away from the van, Eddie let his hands roam from hers up her arms all the way to her shoulders where he gently applied pressure to let her know he was still there. He stood directly behind her, leaning forward a little bit to match her height.

“You can look now,” he muttered over her right shoulder, equal parts nervous and excited.

Eddie’s secret Lover’s Lake spot was a little natural clearing right across the lake houses that belonged to the privileged few in Hawkins. Most of them didn’t live there; their everyday addresses were located mostly in Loch Nora, but they used these particular houses as a weekend getaway sort of space, a secluded oasis in a shitty little town the rest of the country had forgotten about. Eddie found a certain charm in sitting in the back of his van staring at the twinkling lights of those giant residences, watching them throw their entitled rich people parties from a safe distance where they couldn’t see him intruding on their privacy. He’d get high and observe them come and go, the voices belonging to drunkards only rarely carrying across the water, wondering what would he do if he ever had a house like that.

The water licked the dirt edge with barely audible waves, crickets chirping in the distance, birds settling into their nests for the night. Dottie watched and watched, the moon reflecting on the unperturbed surface of the lake, the boy behind her sitting with his legs dangling from the back of his van, one of his cigarettes perfuming the air between them. It was peaceful; she could understand why he’d come here to clear his head, be alone with his thoughts.

“This is beautiful,” she whispered, not wanting to break the bubble that had formed around them.

“Told you to trust me,” he said, the side of his mouth lifting in a smile as she turned around to look at him.

If the lake at night had seemed beautiful, what was in front of her was downright mesmerizing. Eddie sat a little to the side, feet swinging back and forth in the air, his weight resting on his right arm while he held his half smoked cig with his left hand. Behind him, he had set up an upturned plastic crate covered in blue gingham cloth as a table, various cushions and blankets were strewn around on the hard wooden floor, and a small camping lamp rested on top of an amp that belonged to Jeff. The soft yellow light illuminated him from the back, his wild hair looked like a halo, his figure surrounded by his broken, frizzy curls. He had set her backpack to a side with his and the bag of food waited for them unopened on top of the crate.

“This is for you,” Eddie reached into his jacket and pulled out a thin envelope.

Dottie stared at it for a second before opening it, then at Eddie, and then back at the papers in her hand. Two prom tickets. One for her, one for him, she assumed. Is this a joke? It would be cruel if it was, and she knew him to not be cruel. Maybe to others, to bullies, but not to her. Trust me, he had said. The photo hidden inside her bag was screaming, begging to be released. She swallowed the knot in her throat and looked at him with wet eyes.

“W-what is this?”

“I was an asshole to you yesterday. A complete and total asshole and you had every right to throw your dirty sponge at me, and I’m sorry.”

“You were upset.”

“Yeah, I was, but… I guess I’m just so used to people judging me that I thought if I did it first, it would hurt less. And it totally doesn’t work like that,” he chuckled, flicking ash onto the grass. “I want to make it up to you. You’ve been so nice to me all this time and I’ve just been a fucking idiot.”

“No, you haven’t.”

“I have, but it’s okay. I’m not planning on being one anymore. Not with you at least,” he threw his cig to the side and extended his hand to her. Dottie accepted it instantly and let him pull her closer. “I know we said we were all gonna go together to prom, and that’s still the plan, nothing has to change. But I didn’t want you to have to buy your own ticket.”

“I’ll pay you back.”

“No,” Eddie held her hands in his. “It’s a thank you. For cleaning my room, for taking care of me when I get sick, shit, for helping me graduate. I’ll deny it if anyone asks because as Club Leader I can’t exactly pick favorites, but you’re at the top of my list, darling.”

“Really? Top of the list?” she whispered theatrically, thumb playing with his.

“There’s you, a small gap, then Erica because she scares me, a big gap, the rest of Hellfire, another gap, and Mike.”

“Why is Mike at the bottom?”

“Have you seen his hair recently? He’s trying to steal my look. Can’t have that, they’ll think I’ve gone soft.”

“You are soft,” she said, pointedly.

“I’m Satan’s lost son, princess, haven’t you heard? I’m corrupting children with my dice and cool dragon stories,” he grinned, thoroughly enjoying how easy it was to slip into banter with her.

Dottie looked at their entwined hands with a heavy heart. Here he was, opening up to her, accepting his faults and wanting to change, and she felt like such a hypocrite. All Eddie did was wear his heart on his sleeve. He was open, and honest, and even when he was scared and lashing out there was still a heavy dose of truth embedded into everything he said. He wasn’t a child who needed coddling, he didn’t want anyone’s pity because his life was rougher than others’. He just wanted to be Eddie, wanted people to look at him like that’s all he was: not a failure, not trailer trash, not a sob story. Just Eddie. And Dottie didn’t want to be Just Dottie.

Everything about Dorothy Burke had been kept under several padlocks from the moment she could talk, and every time something important happened, a new one would get added to the chest. There was a key for each padlock, but she guarded them fiercely, only lending them out to her Dad or one of her Aunts and Uncles, immediately asking for them back as soon as they had peeked at her secrets inside. There were systems in place to not have to talk about things. There were schedules, and lists, and routines. If everything looked right from the outside, then everything was right, so Dorothy Burke didn’t get into trouble, didn’t get bad grades, didn’t fool around with classmates who could look into her a little bit too deeply. Everything about her was so tightly wound and the screams coming from inside her backpack were so loud. Something. Had. To give.

“Eddie?” she mumbled. The sound of her own blood rushing in her ears was daunting. “There’s something you should know about me.”

“Okay,” was all he said, keeping his hold on one of her hands while she reached for her bag with the other one.

She put the prom tickets on the floor of the van next to Eddie’s thigh and opened the big zipper. He could see the pink envelope that had been tormenting him for a few days between two notebooks, but Dottie pulled out a piece of glossy paper instead. She pushed the bag aside like it had offended her, and offered the retrieved item to him. For a brief second, Eddie didn’t know what he was supposed to be getting from it. The man in the photo didn’t look like anyone he’d ever seen before, and the place where it was taken was a complete mystery to him. Only when he noticed a baby hanging onto the side of a white tub, yellow pacifier in her mouth and wild curls sticking out did it occur to him that this was a piece of Dottie’s past.

“That’s you,” he said, not really asking for confirmation.

“Yeah. And that’s my Uncle Johnny.”

“Wow. You were tiny.”

There was no date on the back of the photo and Eddie hadn’t been around too many babies to accurately guess her age, but he could tell that her Uncle looked very young. He was wearing an old dark red t-shirt with bleach stains and yellow rubber gloves, posing to the camera with a big grin and a sponge in his hand. He was cleaning something behind a white square thing; the full object wasn’t visible in the photo but if he had to guess, it was probably an appliance of some sorts. A washer or a dryer maybe?

“After my Mom died, we couldn’t afford rent on our own,” Dottie began, eyes stuck to the picture in Eddie’s hand. “My grandparents helped us for a few months but it just wasn’t sustainable in the long run. We had a lot of debts, my Dad was still paying his student loans, and there were so many medical bills, it was just… too much for one person to handle,” Eddie didn’t interrupt her, but tugged her a little bit closer so their knees were touching. “So when my Dad began looking into apartments closer to where he worked to save on gas, Johnny told my Dad that we should all move in together. His lease was up and I loved it when he babysat me, so it seemed like a good idea, y’know?”

“How old were you?”

“Around 11 months? I had just found out that if I grabbed onto things, I could stand up all on my own.”

“I can see that,” he lifted the picture. “Look at those chubby thighs.”

“Still got them,” she laughed. “My Grandma says I’ve got chicken legs.”

“Shit, princess, you can't say that and now show me those weird ass toes now,” he grinned.

“I said chicken legs, not chicken feet. Big thighs, small ankles,” she pushed him away jokingly and he pulled her even closer, his thumb rubbing back and forth on top of her hand.

“So you guys moved into this place?” Eddie looked at the photo again.

“Mm-hmm. No one wanted to rent an apartment to two 23-year-old guys with a baby, they thought it was weird. Like, what were they doing with a kid, y’know? They asked for my birth certificate once, it was such bullshit.”

“They accused your Dad of stealing you?”

“Yeah. It was just one time, and the guy was super weird, but still. I think… Well, I know a lot of landlords thought they were gay. And honestly who gives a shit if they were? Gay people need houses too! It’s not like they live in a magical land far far away. And especially in fucking New York City, like, Broadway is right there.”

“Yeah, no,” Eddie scoffed, his heartbeat rising a little bit. “Total bullshit. Fuck Reagan.”

“Fuck Reagan,” she repeated, and they both knew what they were talking about but it wasn’t the right place or time to discuss it. “That’s how Johnny became Uncle Johnny, actually. There was this apartment that was super cheap, great location, near a daycare, and the owners were this old couple, very traditional, so Johnny lied to them so they'd let us rent it. Said my Dad and him were brothers from different fathers, and had this whole speech about how family always helps family during hard times.”

“Go Uncle Johnny.”

“Honestly, he’s awesome. This is from the weekend we moved in,” Dottie pointed at the photo. “There was this old washing machine in the bathroom, the owners said we could throw it away ‘cause it was broken but when we moved it, the entire wall was covered in black mold. Like, you couldn’t even see the wall behind it, it was gross. My Uncle cleaned it up all on his own and repainted the wall so I wouldn’t get sick. That’s why I knew your mold stain was dangerous.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” she ground her sneaker into the grass. “I… It hurt when you said that I was treating you like a charity case because it wasn’t easy for us either while I was growing up, you know? We lived in that apartment for four years. There were only two bedrooms, and I shared a bed with my Dad until we moved on our own and my Uncle Rob built me a princess bed for my fifth birthday.”

“Fuck, I’m sorry, I- I didn’t know-”

“I’m not telling you this so you’ll feel bad. I’m telling you because I want you to know that I understand more than you think I do.”

“I know. I know you do, I’m just stupid,” he smiled up at her. “I do this thing sometimes where I convince myself that no one else in the world knows what it’s like to be me and Wayne has to remind me that I’m not as unique as I like to think I am. Not your fault, darling.”

“God, you sound like Ms. Kelly,” she giggled. “I think I’m… too emotionally constipated for my own good? I should probably work on that.”

“Is that not what we’re doing right now?” he set the photo to the side and finally let her hand go, only to pull her between his open legs for a hug. “Opening up and shit?”

“Yeah,” she let herself sink into his embrace. “Feels nice. Thank you for listening to me.”

“Thank you for sharing your story with me.”

They stayed like that for a few more minutes - just hugging each other, backs a little bit less loaded and hearts a little bit heavier. Before Dottie pulled away to put the photo and the prom tickets into her bag for safekeeping, she stopped for a second to kiss Eddie’s crown. It wasn’t a sexy kiss, or even a romantic one; she grabbed his head with both hands and cartoonishly said “mwah” loudly when she pressed her lips to his hair, but it was still charming enough to make him melt. He glanced at her hands and saw the damned pink envelope peeking out while she tucked away her things. Something was still left to give.

“Can I be nosy for a second?” Eddie said, lifting himself from his seat on the edge of his van to help her get in.

“Sure.”

“What’s that pink thing in your bag?”

“Pink thing?” she sat in front of him at their makeshift table and began unwrapping their forgotten tacos.

“Yeah, you were talking about it with Jeff the other day when we were at Gareth’s,” he said, acting nonchalant.

“Pink thing… Oh, you mean this?” she retrieved the envelope from her bag with one hand while she grabbed a plastic cup with her other hand. “It’s a Mother’s Day card! I always get one for my Mom and write her a little note.”

“That’s… that’s really sweet, princess,” Eddie said, suddenly feeling so very dumb. “You celebrate?”

“Yeah! Just like doing something special, y’know? I feel like she deserves it.”

“I get that. Wayne and I get breakfast at a diner and take flowers to my Grandma. ‘S nice,” he gave his taco a big bite. “D’you still wanna get together on Sunday? We can postpone if you have other plans.”

“Actually,” Dottie looked down at her food. They really were great tacos. “D’you wanna come over and celebrate together? I always bake a cake and do a little bonfire thing… It’s silly.”

“It’s not silly,” he shook his head. “I’ll come.”

“Yeah?”

“I mean, you are kinda bribing me with cake so…,” he said, downplaying the fact that the tips of his ears were red.

“You’re the worst,” she laughed and he beamed at her, a little bit of guac smudged on the corner of his mouth.

Maybe Dottie could trust Eddie with a key. Maybe she could give him his own to keep, so she couldn’t chicken out and ask for it back as soon as the morning sun made her rethink her choices. Maybe, with time, she could be comfortable enough to give him all her keys. But for now, eating the best tacos she’d ever had in her life with the boy who felt like getting into a warm bed after a long day, this first key was enough. It was only fair to give it to him; he’d given her a key to one of his padlocks too, after all.

taglist (comment below or shoot me a dm if you want to be added!): @munsonology

[panicatthediaz]

Runaway

Ladies and gentlemen, wolves and ghouls, it's October now! How wild is that? This is my entry for Day 1 of @eddiemonth. Fic's titled after the song prompt for the day, Runaway by Sword, that is in no real way in the fic. So, without further ado... werewolves :D

Warnings: Parent death. Not described in detail, but fairly obvious, at the very end. Wordcount: 1941

Eddie was itchy. So, so itchy.

His Ma said it was normal, and laughed a little at the face he made at that. The laughter was a lot louder when he tackled her into a hug, but she didn't stumble much, just swiftly picked him up for a quick squeeze.

He wondered if he’d be as strong as her, some day; his mother was the strongest wolf Eddie had ever met.

(He had been ten years old when he first wondered about Lauren Munson’s strength. His opinion hadn’t changed, even after everything that had happened later.)

“You two ready to go?” Wayne asked, poking his head inside the kitchen. Wayne had joined his Ma on full moon runs years ago, before Eddie even knew they were all werewolves.

To his nine-year-old self, that had been the coolest revelation. His parents had spent the last year teaching him everything he needed to know for his first shift. But neither of his parents warned him it would itch so much!

Wayne laughed when he told him that, ruffling his hair. “It does suck,” he agreed. “I think I was itchy that whole week, when I first shifted. Very restless, too”

Eddie looked up at his uncle, horrified. He thought that if he’d had to deal with this for anything more than a day, he would have gone insane.

His Ma laughed softly, shaking her head at the two of them. “You’ll get used to it in no time, Eddie,” she reassured. “Shouldn’t be itchin’ much after tonight.”

He looked at Wayne, who nodded seriously.

They were out of the door after his mom grabbed the bag of extra clothes. His dad was in the car, looking at them with a smile. He always looked a little happier during the full moon.

“I’ll see y’all in the park,” Wayne told them as he walked to his own truck.

There was no one out on the street, but Eddie still looked around carefully; he understood pretty quickly the importance of being careful after many horror stories, real and fairy tales alike.

Once he figured it was safe, Eddie ran to the car and clambered into the backseat, making his dad laugh as he stumbled slightly.

“Hey, kiddo,” he greeted, turning on his seat to face Eddie. “Feeling itchy yet?”

“So much!” he groaned, dramatically falling sideways until he was lying down. His mom entered the car at that moment. “Can’t wait to shift!”

She laughed lightly. Eddie knew she worried about how he’d fare when the full moon actually came, but he maintained that it was one of the coolest things about them all.

——

Well. Eddie knew it wasn’t gonna be painless. Everyone told him that the first shift is hard. But he was already exhausted, and he’d just shifted. He still had a run to get through!

He felt a nose poking his back, heard a nearby huff of amusement, but he didn’t move, not yet. He was left alone for another few minutes as the aches in his body subsided.

Now that he was getting used to the new shape, it wasn’t so bad. He flexed a hand — paw? — and knew it wouldn’t go unnoticed. He flexed the other paw, slowly working on getting all his limbs under him so he could stand up.

It was a little weird, this difference in… everything. In a move that felt very natural, Eddie shook his entire body as he stood, feeling a little more settled.

He blinked his eyes open slowly, adjusting to his surroundings. The full moon illuminated the woods well, but there was a sharpness to everything around him that he knew for a fact he didn’t have as a human.

It was kind of cool.

The first wolf he saw was a black one, lying down a few feet away from him in the middle of bright snow. He recognized his dad almost immediately. Once Eddie managed to focus on his face, his brown eyes looked proud, and he tapped one paw on the ground, calling him over.

Eddie moved on unsteady legs, slowly trying to gain confidence. His dad nosed at him once he got close enough — checking in — and grumbled something that Eddie registered as a question.

He tilted his head, unsure how to respond. They hadn’t actually talked about what would come after the shift yet. He had time to figure it out, though; as soon as he figured out how to move around on snow without stumbling.

——

The full moons that followed were easier. He still ached and felt sore all over, but it wasn't as disorienting anymore.

The four of them had just returned from a run. Wayne had already shifted back and left to get the car, probably for Eddie’s benefit; he’d run a lot, feeling free in a way he hadn’t expected. They are in the same park, the same four wolves spending even more time together.

(Pack runs had always been his favorite way to spend the full moons, even when the pack was reduced to two people. It took a good few years for it to properly grow once more, but it was a happy, united one. Eddie couldn’t complain.)

Despite the freedom, though, tonight he was exhausted. There was something about spring that seemed to have energized him in the beginning of the evening, but whatever it was, it was long gone.

He grumbled something meaningless, moving closer to his mom. She was still in wolf form, her dark brown coat almost disappearing into the night.

Using her side as a pillow wasn’t exactly soft, but it was warm and brought him comfort anyway — it was his mom, there was no comfort like his mom’s.

She nipped at his neck, causing him to shift around trying to escape her. He leaped away from her, growling tiredly, and earning a huff for his troubles.

His mom grumbled in response, glancing at his dad a few steps away from them. Nap with him, then. His dad — pretty much invisible at the moment if he hadn’t known he was there — was always the first to fall asleep after runs, and Eddie was always the one to wake him up when Wayne arrived with the car. But he didn’t want his dad right now, and he wasn’t above whining about it, not here.

She huffed, amused, but let him rest next to her all the same, in one of the best naps he’d ever had.

——

Eddie knew a few things about being a werewolf so far.

Eddie knew he had the size of a normal, near-adult wolf; knew that the actual adults, especially his mom, were much bigger than him.

He knew that being able to run with his parents and his uncle was the best part of it all.

It hadn’t taken him long, two or three moons, to get the hang of moving and communicating as a wolf; a lot of it came naturally.

What wasn’t coming as naturally was the control needed. It had been months since he first shifted, and, so far, he’d only been able to do it during the full moon.

And he understood it was early, it hadn’t anywhere near a year, but… he wanted the practice.

So, here he was, in the middle of the woods with his uncle.

Which, in retrospect, might not have been the best idea.

“Sorry, kid, I don’t know how else to explain it.”

He groaned, flopping backwards onto the ground. “This is hard,” he drawled.

At least it was summer, so if anyone showed up, the fact that Eddie was wearing nothing but shorts wouldn’t raise too many questions.

“I think you’re stressin’ about it,” Wayne declared a moment later. “It takes time, Eddie, you gotta let your body get used to it all.”

“I know,” he mumbled, staring at the sky. The late afternoon always had the prettiest colors during the summer. “It’ll come naturally when the time is right,” he quoted, with an honest attempt at imitating his father. It got a snort of laughter out of Wayne, at least. “I just…”

He trailed off. Wayne let the silence be only for a beat before he made a questioning noise. Eddie sighed.

“I don’t know,” he grumbled and closed his eyes with a sigh. “You guys are like, cool.” He raised a hand as if to wave his comment away. “The coolest people I know!” Eddie sat up once more and shrugged, not raising his eyes to meet Wayne’s. “I just… wanna be like you guys.”

He did look up when Wayne approached him, kneeling in front of him and ruffling his hair gently. Eddie grumbled halfhearted complaints about the curls becoming messy.

“Don’t think that’s possible, Eddie,” Wayne replied just as gently. “You’re probably the best part of us all, combined. Your own cool person.”

“Yeah?” Eddie straightened, trying not to smile too wide; given the way Wayne smiled in return, he probably failed.

“Definitely,” he reached out and patted his head. “Now come on.” Wayne stood up and helped Eddie up. “Let’s get some lemonade, yeah?”

——

It wasn’t even a full moon. It wasn’t even night, yet. Eddie had just wanted to help his aunt Mara gather some plants and flowers before fall truly set in, before their runs were closer to home because they couldn’t really justify not being bothered by the cold.

It was supposed to be the first step of his favorite part of the year.

But he’d heard the heavy steps, the distant growl. He saw his mom tense, noticed the scent that didn’t belong in early fall. He froze, clutching the jasmines in his hands and breathing deeply like his dad had taught him to.

Eddie heard the soft whimper, and looked up at his Ma. Whatever she saw in his face was enough to get her moving, taking his hand and walking briskly to a denser part of the woods.

They walked until they reached an old den made by the wolves in the territory, now abandoned.

“Shift,” his mom whispered, “and get in there.”

He would’ve complained about his clothes, but there was a stranger in the territory, and aunt Mara might have been hurt; he knew not to question his mom.

He wished he could celebrate, though; this was the fastest he’d been able to shift outside of a full moon so far, but other than a faint smile from his mom, there was no acknowledgment. There was no time for one.

She walked further into the woods, leaving Eddie to burrow into the den. But he couldn't stay, refused to.

Until he hit his growth spurt, he would look like a normal wolf, which there were plenty of in the surrounding area of his mom's pack; he could sneak back into the house and get help.

He crawled out of the den, listening for any approaching sounds, but everything was distant. Even the birds seemed to have momentarily stopped singing.

And so, he ran.

A pained howl echoed throughout the woods, closer than he’d expected — halfway to the house. He turned, seeing a flash of brown-black fur to his left, just in time to see his mom hunch over and almost fall into a growing pool of blood.

She was hurt. The whimper that escaped him was drowned out by her warning howl.

It was cut short by the sound of a gun.

Eddie was running back to the house before the hunter could overcome his surprise at his presence.

He knew, in a distant way, that she was gone. And without Lauren Munson, everything was about to change.

[witchthewriter]

Hi!! Would you be okay doing a big 6 birth chart ask, like you did for the anons for Jax Teller and Eddie Munson, but for Alice Cullen, please? Thank you so much!!

𝑨𝒍𝒊𝒄𝒆 𝑪𝒖𝒍𝒍𝒆𝒏'𝒔 𝒁𝒐𝒅𝒊𝒂𝒄 𝑩𝒊𝒈 𝑺𝒊𝒙

Alice is a very dreamy woman who seems absent-minded but is actually constantly seeing different options for everyone's future. She's friendly, kind but knows the rules that Carlisle has put down and follows them.

𝐒𝐔𝐍

𝑨𝒒𝒖𝒂𝒓𝒊𝒖𝒔

Independant, unique and forward thinking, this zodiac sign is the most open-minded in the group. Or ... one of the most open-minded. Alice would be the first person to embrace change and new ideas. Eccentric and prone to transforming herself (and a lot of that is how she looks - her hair, her makeup, and most importantly, her style. She loves her clothes. We know that because she changes a lot throughout the movies. It's like a different Alice in each four (although her personality does not.)

𝐌𝐎𝐎𝐍

𝑷𝒊𝒔𝒄𝒆𝒔

Dreamy, dreamy and even more dreamy. As we know, the zodiac signs when in the moon aspect are emboldened, and so having Pisces as her Moon sign makes complete sense to me. They're silly, odd and unconventional. Other people see them as weird, but those close to her know who she truly is. A seer, a mystic, a creature that can see into the future. And that impacts her personality a lot.

𝐑𝐈𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐆

𝑪𝒂𝒏𝒄𝒆𝒓

Having Cancer as her ascendant/rising sign, means she is one of those who understand the world through using their intuition and insight. Adaptable to change but has an innate need to find her true home and make it exactly the way she wants. Alice knows what she wants, but understands there are steps that need to happen before she can get what she wants (e.g., meeting Jasper and telling him they're mates when they first met.)

𝐌𝐄𝐑𝐂𝐔𝐑𝐘

𝑳𝒊𝒃𝒓𝒂

Diplomatic, fair and kind. Alice is in the middle of a lot of arguements; placating even when she doesn't seek out to. For example, when Bella is first meeting the Cullens, Alice breaks the tension with her, "We're going to be best friends!" Making Bella at ease, while also stifling Rosalie's temper. Even in the last movie/end of the book, she's the one that finds a solution and brings them to the Volturi.

𝐕𝐄𝐍𝐔𝐒

𝑷𝒊𝒔𝒄𝒆𝒔

Loving, accepting and forgiving of their partner's past - that is exactly the way her and Jasper's relationship started. Pisces Venus are often misjudged as being an emotional mess. But that's not the truth. Pisces Venus are just as sane as every other sign. They feel vulnerable, so they put up a strong front when it comes to romantic love. But once a Pisces Venus opens up, and lets you in, then you will receive the most gracious and overflowering amount of love.

𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐒

𝑽𝒊𝒓𝒈𝒐

Mars isn't just about what makes you angry or how you express your anger. It's your energy and action. How you take initiative and experience things.

Virgo Mars aren't known for being aggressive, rather, they have a sharp instinct that they use instead of falling into their anger. Virgo Mars hate to be rushed, they're refined and have a system wherever they go.

Although Alice may seem at times away with the fairies, she's got a fast-working and analytical mind. For example, in Breaking Dawn, she gives Bella clues about the plan - because Alice knew the opposition had telepathy.

[miela]

“𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦 𝐛𝐲 𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐠𝐧𝐢𝐳𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐡 𝐞𝐬𝐜𝐚𝐩𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝐛𝐲 𝐧𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭.”── Edgar Allen Poe

 ✧ WRITINGS ✧ PLAYLISTS ✧ MOODBOARDS ✧ LIBRARY ✧ GALLERY ✧ GRAPHICS {SOON} ✧

dividers by cafekitsune

✧ 𝐂𝐔𝐑𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐋𝐘 ✧

✧ reading: crimson rivers, bizzarestars / cadence of part-time poets, motzwolo

✧ audio reading: all the young dudes, mskingbean89

✧ listening to: {message from the clergy} - ghost

✧ watching: bridgerton (season i), the boys (season 4)

✧ writing: shattered memories 

✧ playing: hogwarts legacy (gryffindor run)

✧ researching: greek mythology, goth subculture

✧ 𝐀𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐌𝐄 ✧

my name is miela [mee-EL-Ah] but you can call me mae! ✧ aries, slytherin, infp-t, chaotic neutral, the helper ✧ i’m secretly a fox ✧ i am 28 years old {minors may follow, but dni in dms} ✧ {she/they} genderfae demigirl ✧ sapphic, panromantic, asexual ✧ biracial latina ✧ pagan-align spiritualist ✧ renaissance darling ✧ mythology enthusiast ✧ fantasy and sci-fi lover ✧ theatre kid ✧ bookworm ✧ gamer ✧ poetic artist ✧ musical storyteller ✧ creative writer ✧ graphic designer ✧ oc creator ✧ spider & snake tendencies ✧ tea and coffee connoisseur ✧ caffeine consumer ✧ alt fairy ✧ dark whimsigoth butterfly and elegant romantic goth luna moth ✧ nature lover, but will fight and flight when seeing a bug ✧ gave myself copper hair once and i never went back ✧ fangirl since 1996 ✧ spotify playlist queen ✧ pinterest moodboard goddess ✧ chronic tummy ache, headache and body pain survivor ✧ full bio here 

✧ 𝐅𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐎𝐌𝐒 ✧ 

marauders / hogwarts 1970s ✧ spiderman/spiderverse ✧ sailor moon ✧ atiny ✧ swiftie ✧ bvb army ✧ the dragon prince ✧ avatar: the last airbender ✧ shxtou guildie ✧ arcane/league of legends ✧ genshin impact ✧ demon slayer ✧ stranger things ✧ dungeons and dragons ✧ superheroes ✧ alt music ✧ kpop ✧ and many, many more!

✧ 𝐌𝐔𝐒𝐈𝐂 ✧ 

I listen to all types of music. literally anything and everything from around the world. here are some of the artists and groups i listen to to get an idea ✧ lindsey stirling ✧ ateez ✧ dreamcatcher ✧ one ok rock ✧ rolling quartz ✧ conquer divide ✧ starset ✧ black veil brides ✧ poppy ✧ hatsune miku ✧ paramore ✧ loveless ✧ honey revenge ✧ good kid ✧ conan gray ✧ olivia rodrigo ✧ coldplay ✧ aurora ✧ aidoneus ✧ evanescence ✧ meet me @ the altar ✧ waterparks ✧ ghost ✧ switchblade symphony ✧ banshee ✧ kordhell ✧ panic priest ✧ babychaos ✧ taylor swift ✧ hozier ✧ skott ✧ the oh hellos ✧  kero kero bonito ✧ gorillaz ✧ maneskin ✧ fleetwood mac ✧  billy idol ✧ nova twins ✧ odetari ✧ scarlxrd ✧ scene queen ✧ fka rayne ✧ upsahl ✧ twenty one pilots ✧ bibi ✧ jackson wang ✧ astari nite ✧ modern alibi ✧ muse ✧ pvris and many, many more.

✧ 𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐒 ✧

 lily evans {crimson rivers} ✧ regulus black {crimson rivers} ✧ pandora lestrange-rosier {marauders} ✧ robin buckley {stranger things} ✧ eddie munson {stranger things} ✧ gorou {genshin impact} ✧ venti {genshin impact} ✧ denki {chainsaw man}  ✧ usagi {sailor moon} ✧ minako {sailor moon} ✧ claudia {the dragon prince} ✧ zenitsu {demon slayer} ✧ eloise bridgerton {bridgerton} ✧ lexi howard {euphoria} ✧ {more to come}

✧ 𝐓𝐀𝐆𝐒 ✧

{more will be added as time goes on}

✧ asks {all those who wonder}: ask mae ✧ mutuals {fellow garden dwellers}: moots ✧ music {what birds whisper}: mae’s playlist ✧ writing {ink-stained dagger}: mae writes ✧ artworks {color-stained wands}: mae draws ✧ moodboards {petals of a flower}: mae’s pov ✧ original characters {born from the storm cauldron}: mae’s ocs ✧ thoughts {brain flutters}: mae speaks, mae thinks, mae yaps

[theupsidedowndoll]

About the Doll:

Commissions: Open, Details or see link at the bottom of post.

Names: Doll, Ary, A, most terms of endearment or pet names are also fine.

Pronouns: They/Them

Age: 25 => 26

Zodiac: Taurus, Sun: Taurus, Moon: Libra, Rising: Taurus

16 Personalities: INFJ-T: “Advocates gravitate toward work as counselors, therapists, psychologists, social workers, teachers, yoga instructors, and spiritual leaders. They may enjoy service industry positions that allow them to interact directly and build genuine relationships with their customers. Careers in health care can also be rewarding options, including occupations such as nursing, physical or occupational therapy, medicine, nutrition, or more holistic paths such as acupuncture.”

Education: Eventually going back to school for Paralegal studies and Massage Therapy, early Human Services training completed, Early Childhood and Psychology independently studied

Personality: Mom/Dad friend (have adopted younger friends, will do again), neurodivergent, omnisexual, gender fluid, polyamorous (exercised only when partner is consenting), Borderline Personality (pardon my mental illness)

Hobbies: Writing (original and fanfiction), Visual Art (original, fan pieces, portrait, character, still life, traditional, digital), Reading, Knitting (not very well), Fairy/Wiccan Bottles (very proud, will sell customs)

Belief Systems: Ars Goetian (Astaroth, Mammon, Asmodeus, Lilith, Beelzebub), Norse (Loki, Thor), Greek (Athena)

Interesting Tidbits:

Top 5 ships: Steddie (Steve Harrington x Eddie Munson), Hannigram (Hannibal Lector x Will Graham), Frenchie x Kimiko, Rin x Bon, Stilly (Steve Harrington x Billy Hargrove- under Alternate Universe Billy redemption head canons only- we do not stan racism or anything of the like in this family)

Last Song Listened to: Sing to Me by Missio for Death Stranding Timefall

Last Game Played: Cult of the Lamb and God Of War 4 (First Norse installation)

Last Movie Watched: actual = The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, YouTube= Sam and Colby’s The Conjuring House (paranormal investigations)

Currently Watching: Stranger Things (re-watch all seasons), The Boys (re-watch all seasons)

Currently Reading: Fanfiction mostly (last read: Can’t Fight This Feeling by thatbitttchbeanie on A03), In Search Of and Other Stories by Will Ludwigsen (I have a signed copy from a writer’s workshop at a university that is in the lap of a haunted porcelain doll I bought from a secondhand/thrift shop)

Collections: Tangled/Rapunzel dolls (i.e.: Disney Masquerade edition, Disney 10 year anniversary, porcelain variations), Porcelain dolls, dead moths (ethically collected post mortem), dried flowers, four eyes tees/shirts from Spencers, stones (ex: aventurine, Opal, and more)

Tattoos: moon and stars below corner of my right eye, a giant chest piece of a tree of life with a Celtic knot shamrock as the trunk and Aurora borealis behind it, left hip has Sans the skeleton with an echo flower crown and two Gaster blasters one on each side of him, right hip has Rin Okumora with Kuro, neck right side has a little water color fox

Piercings: nose on the right side (current), belly button (former, rejection from agitation- hit it with too many boxes while working order fulfillment), snake bites (former, took out for a surgery but holes closed before I could get the jewelry back in)

Other Appearance Facts: fun size/short, somewhat visually impaired (glasses/contacts at high strength)

Stories I’ve Written:

Master Post

I love to interact! Send Asks and Requests!

[loserarc]

@freakarc    /   “ may i have this dance? ”

it was a beautiful ceremony.  A beautiful, sunny spring day had mellowed into a beautiful, starry night. Steve might not have noticed the sky at all — wishes, in all ungiven honesty, that he hadn’t — but he’s sidelined himself. He figured he might find his old optimism in the light-dappled darkness. Then again, two cigarettes later, he’s yet to be convinced. The string lights dim across the grass, a present fear left to simmer once he hears Joyce’s laughter bubbling over an old doo-wop song. He can just make out the white dress dragging as she tugs Hopper toward the dance floor. 

Steve sinks further back on his bench. Realistically, he reasons with himself, what more could go wrong? Life had been normal enough before they were all thrown into the chaos, him and his blurry friends dancing under the fairy lights or hanging around the punch bowl where he’d left them. It’s a celebration. Well-deserved. 

Like him, the little flame between his fingers can’t decide if it wants to stay much longer, here and gone with the idle flick of his lighter. Things could stay normal this time, couldn’t they? His attempt is enough to force a chuckle as he digs through his suit pocket. Here again, then, peering up at the moon through his smoke. Before long, he’ll have to get over… well, whatever this is. He might just have to pretend he’s found what he was looking for when he gets back to Eddie and Robin. Maybe he’ll convince himself in the process. Hell, that’s all he ever had to do before. So, scratch that, he decides. Maybe it’s finally happened. He’s forgotten how to fake it.

But suddenly, the voice in his head isn’t his own anymore. He sits up. Too fast.  

“ Jesus, Munson— ”  He’s laughing as he swipes the ash off of his dress pants. It’s not Eddie’s fault. This feeling, the whatever it is remaining to be seen, must have left him jumpy and distracted. Now that he’s been brought back to earth, he can see the waiting smile on Eddie’s face, the wide and gentle eyes glimmering with a light of their own. He can hear the music has changed, too: this song is newer and slower. And Eddie’s holding out a hand. There’s a joke on the tip of Steve’s tongue — something about prom, how he’s thankful to have finally been picked — but he isn’t the right version of himself yet. He lets it slide as he stamps out his last cigarette. Then it’s easy: one hand in his, one finding his waist.  

“ Good days shouldn’t end. ”  He probably should have known that answer would come easier to him, too. That’s why he’s quickly forgotten about the proper placement of his hands, arms looped around just to hold him as they sway. Back and forth. He’s buried his face in the crook of his neck, and there in the dark, he thinks he might have found it. Something hopeful.   “ Can we pretend it won’t? ”  

[eddiesxangel]

Hi 🤎 I’m TJ, she/her, I’m 29, Gemini Sun, Pieces Moon, Capricorn Rising. This is an 18+ blog, if you are a minor please do not interact. Welcome to my little corner of delulu. ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

** = smut

Take Me to the Lakes camp!counsellor Eddie x camp!counsellor reader series (complete)

I don’t think we are in 1986 anymore? Eddie Munson x Reader series (ongoing?…tbd)

WILDFLOWER ** Older!Rockstar Eddie x PopPrincess!reader series (complete)

Hey Siri Play Jealous by Nick Jonas ** Bartender!Eddie x Wife Reader

I Do Believe In Fairies Eddie Munson Meet Cute

Clueless **Older!Eddie x Reader

Redemption **Eddie x reader

Babydoll **Dom!Daddy Eddie x Reader

My Little Bunny older!eddie x reader for #munnysonederful prompts

Me and You? Together? Queer!Eddie x f!bff!reader

The Kissing Booth Eddie x gn!reader

You Look Tense** masseuse!eddie x reader

Downhearted** Eddie x bestfriend!reader

Eddie’s Fantasy** knight!eddie x princess!reader

Noisy Neighbours Eddie x reader x gf

Be Quiet Darling Eric AQPDO x reader

Could this be Fate? Alpha!eddie x omega!reader

Requests

Just Friends **Perv!Eddie x Perv!BestFriend Reader

But you don’t even like karaoke?** Virgin!Eddie x Bestfriend!Reader

Just a Pinch **Eddie x reader

What Eddie Doesn’t Know ** brothers bestfriend!Eddie x reader

What Adam Doesn’t Know part 2 brothers best friend x reader

The Sweet Days in the Shire ** Eddie x virgin!reader

The Stroke of Midnight Eddie x GN!Reader

Show Me** older!eddie x virgin!reader

Show You** virgin!eddie x reader

Baby, Im Yours** jealous!eddie x reader

Fool Me Once jerk!eddie x reader

Driver Roll Up the Partition, Please** Rockstar!Eddie x Reader

Need You Now** friends to strangers to lovers Eddie x reader

Never Have I Ever **Eddie x virgin!reader

So High School Eddie x reader

Give Me Everything **bestfriend!eddie x plus!size reader

Dilf!eddie**

Baby Make Three** older!eddie

Just Peachy** Eddie x bff reader

1-800-HOT TO GO** Eddie x friend reader (most popular)

The Nanny Eddie x baby sister reader

Angel or Devil? Sub!eddie x mean!reader

Christmas Theme Fics

One Direction Eras

Older!Eddie Blurb**

Rockstar!Eddie imagine **

Rockstar!Eddie imagine #2 **

Eddie x reader**

Eddie imagine**

Eddie imagine #2

Virgin!Eddie blurb #1

Virgin!Eddie #2**

Eddie x reader **