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mushroom-words · 4 months ago

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Heaven's Just a Sin Away || Michael Langdon

Fandom: American Horror Story Pairing: Michael Langdon x Fem!Reader Words: 2277 Notes: This has been rewritten and reposted from a previous blog. This was actually the first thing I ever wrote for Michael, and I'm still proud of it to this day. Warnings: Virgin!Reader. Corruption kink, if you squint. Fingering. Dirty talk. Michael is a manipulative asshole, but that's why we love him, right? Summary: Michael calls you in for your interview and takes your virginity into his own hands.

“MY NAME IS Langdon, and I represent the Cooperative. Humanity is on the brink of failure. My arrival here was crucial to the survival of civilized life on Earth. I have been sent to determine if any of you are worthy and fit to join us.”

You had yet to make eye contact with Michael Langdon since he spoke to the group. There was an air about his presence which demanded the submission and obedience expected from a Grey. He was intimidating—and he had yet to say more than two words to you.

The silence was suffocating. You couldn’t tell if it had been one minute to have passed or ten since you were escorted into the office for your interview. It felt like an eternity. He hadn’t spoke since dismissing Ms. Venable and instructing you to take a seat in front of the desk. Langdon leaned back in his chair casually, fingers steepled as he studied you with an unreadable expression.

Ms. Venable had drilled it into your head that you were to respect Mr. Langdon. Her authority over Outpost 3 depended on it. You couldn’t bring yourself to meet his gaze until he broke the pregnant silence.

“I’ll tell you how this process works, Miss (Y/L/N). This interview determines where you go from here. You will tell me the truth,” he said. “Not the truth you think I want to hear. Not the truth you may have deceived yourself into believing. But the complete honesty we both know you’re capable of telling.”

Langdon stood and glided around the desk with the grace of a predator. Your eyes tracked his every movement.

“I will not tell you what criteria I am grading you on—things you may feel will be helpful might be harmful, and things you may feel will compel rejection may be your saving grace,” he continued. “If you omit any detail, no matter how small, I will know. If you lie, I will know. If you try to deceive me, I will know. Then this interview will be over, and you will die here. Painfully.”

You had no choice but to believe him. He was the first person outside of your fellow survivors at the outpost that you had seen since the bombs dropped. Ms. Venable and Ms. Mead often spoke of the Cooperative. Now their representative stood in front of you, looking as though the end of the world had little to no impact on his life. His red jacket and ascot was immaculate, his hair long and golden, and his eyes swirling stormily as they scrutinized your lesser appearance.

You felt vulnerable beneath his gaze. You knew then that you wouldn’t be able to lie to him even if you wanted to.

“I will do my best to decide whether you will leave this outpost alive or be eaten by the scavengers. Just answer my questions to the best of your ability.” His voice softened a touch, as though trying to reassure you, then hardened again like stone. “If you leave this room thinking you’ve got me right where you want me, you will be punished. Do you understand, Miss (Y/L/N)?”

You swallowed thickly, bowed your head, and nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Sweat slicked your palms and cotton seemed to fill your mouth. Your anxiety had spiked while just waiting for your turn, but now, as you sat in front of him, you felt especially vulnerable. Your life rested in this man’s hands. You knitted your hands on your lap.

“Do I make you nervous?” Honey dripped from his tone, but even with your head bowed, you could sense the smirk. He leaned against the front of the desk with a single hand supporting his weight. The fire behind you reflected off his rings. Langdon knew you were nervous, and you knew it would do no good to lie about it.

You confirmed, squeezing your hands together. You jerked when cold fingers tapped before grasping your chin firmly and tipping your head up to look at him. The gasp that pushed past your lips seemed to amuse him. His eyes danced in the golden flame of the candles. You couldn’t look away.

Langdon leaned forward until his face was inches from yours. You sucked in a sharp breath as his breath fanned over your face, ruffling a few strands of hair that frame your face. “Tell me, (Y/N),” he said, your name rolling from his tongue like silver. “Are you a good girl?”

While the question threw you off guard, he’d left no room to question what he meant. He asked so quietly, so intimately, and so knowingly. You remembered your grandmother would use the same words to describe unmarried women who hadn’t yet indulged in pleasures of the flesh.

You let loose a trembling breath. “Yes, sir.”

Langdon, seemingly pleased with your answer, hummed and dropped his hand. He backed up a couple of steps, straightening back up as he looked down at you. Your heart thudded in your chest, blood rushing in your ears. You wanted to run away, wanted to flee from the room and from his intense stare, but you couldn’t move. Your bottom felt rooted to your chair as his eyes locked with yours.

Slowly, he began to circle you. “But you don’t want to be,” he said. Steady footfalls led him around your chair until he stationed himself directly behind you. You jumped when his hands fell to your shoulders.

The heat of his body close to yours seemed to surround you. Your breaths quickened. His cologne intoxicated your senses, clouding your thoughts and leaving you dazed as he leaned forward.

His lips brushed against the shell of your ear, words flowing like silk as he continued, “You think about it at night, don’t you? Finger your virgin cunt at night when you think no one is awake to hear you. Fantasize about it might feel to be filled by a man.”

Heat boiled in your stomach. You swallowed hard. Your hands clenched the fabric of your grey dress tightly, like if you held it firmly enough, it would stop the ache throbbing between your thighs. You licked your dry lips and captured the bottom one between your teeth.

Langdon nuzzled your burning cheek with the tip of his nose, murmuring, “You want to be fucked, Miss (Y/L/N). Don’t you?”

You were left too flustered to speak. Your silence prompted him to pull back. He circled back around to the front of you. You lowered your eyes to avoid looking at him, half-hoping the next words out of his mouth would be a dismissal and half-hoping they would invite you back to his quarters. His voice had painted an image your mind couldn’t will away.

Suddenly, he pulled you out of your seat so you stood before him. Your startled gaze locked with his, captivated by the icy blues as you waited anxiously for his next move. Your heart pounded out a lustful pattern in your chest. Scenarios flickered through your mind so vividly you feared he could see them written in your expression.

He leaned in so his lips just barely brushed over yours, so close you could almost taste him. “Don’t you?” he repeated, softer.

“Yes, sir,” you whispered.

Langdon spun you around and pinned you against the edge of the desk. His mouth descended upon yours, swallowing the gasp from your lips. Your head swam with his intoxication. You grappled at the lapels of his jacket to keep yourself grounded. The desk dug painfully into your back, but he sucked you in so far you paid no mind to the ache. The incessant one between your legs was much more demanding.

He pressed you down onto the surface of the desk, pulling back to admire your swollen lips and flushed skin. “I can already smell you,” he sneered. His hands yanked up the hem of your dress, bunching it at your lower stomach. “You need to be dominated. Fucked. Used.”

Langdon’s palm rested between your thighs. He hummed at the dampness soaking through the thin pair of panties. His fingers suddenly pushed the garment aside to reach your folds. You mewled and arched your back at the feel of his cool skin against your burning flesh. He chuckled and wrapped his hand around your throat, holding you in place firmly while he dragged his fingers through your slit, brushing your swollen clit with each stroke.

“Fucking drenched,” he mused. “So sensitive. I’ve barely even touched you, and you’re already about to cum.”

The pressure around your throat increased as he suddenly infiltrated your entrance. His fingers scissored and pumped, the pad of his thumb glancing around your throbbing clit. You slammed your eyes shut to avoid watching as he gazed down upon your vulnerability. He kept a steady rhythm, withdrawing his fingers just to shove them back inside harshly.

You melted into a puddle beneath his touch. Every sweep of his fingers against your gummy walls pulled noises you didn’t even know you could make. He squeezed your throat hard and commanded, “Look at me, (Y/N).”

You obeyed without hesitation. Any blue in his eyes had bled into a stormy night sky. Your eyes nearly rolled back in your head at the sight. His thumb finally found your clit, rubbing it in harsh, tight circles. Your head floated off into the clouds the more oxygen he deprived from you.

You curled your fingers around the edge of the desk. Nails grappled at the wood desperately. “Oh God,” you whimpered. Your hips rocked against his ministrations, your body screaming for more friction. More attention.

“God? Not quite.” Langdon chuckled smoothly, withdrew his fingers, and slapped your cunt harshly. You yelped before letting loose a wanton moan. “Do you think God will save you, Miss (Y/L/N), if I decide you’re nothing more than a pretty pussy?”

Without further preamble, he shoved three fingers inside of you. You cried out as you balanced on the precipice between pain and pleasure. Tears burned your eyes. Your body felt like it had turned into lead and became putty in his hands. He curled his fingers and fucked them into you so roughly you could almost see the stars erupting across your vision.

Keeping his gaze trained solely on your face, he hissed between his teeth, “Is God going to save you when I take this tight, virgin pussy and peel it apart like a fucking flower?”

Your vocabulary whittled down to a series of incoherent noises. Your toes curled inside your clunky, knock-off Mary Janes, and your legs trembled like a leaf quivering in the wind. You finally broke his stare to throw your head back. You barely noticed how it thudded against the surface of the desk, too lost in the boiling sea of passion licking you from head to toe. Your hips ground desperately into his hand as his fingers continued to stimulate the deepest parts of you.

Fire ignited your writhing body. White noise buzzed in your ears as a series of explosions erupted behind your eyes. You couldn’t hear anything he said—couldn’t hear the cries tumbling free from your lips, couldn’t hear the way your nails scraped against the wood like they tried to keep her grounded to reality. Every nerve ending lit up, synapses firing left and right, crossing from one neuron to the other, dancing to the beat of every muscle contraction contorting your body.

When the final waves started to recede, your body fell limp under him. Your eyes fluttered open as they tried to find his features. Langdon slowly unwrapped his hand from around your throat and withdrew his fingers. You whimpered at the empty feeling in their wake.

He brought his fingers, glistening with your cum, up to your mouth. “Clean them,” he demanded. Voice cool, his composure as immaculate as when you first stepped into his office. So impassive.

Langdon pushed his fingers past your lips. You swirled your tongue around the digits, sucking the taste of yourself off his skin, letting your essence coat your tongue. Your tired pussy twitched.

After a moment, he removed them and said, “Now clean yourself up. You’re dismissed.”

Still blinking away the haze swirling around inside your mind like a thick fog, you pushed yourself up. He turned to stand in front of the fire, hands clasped behind his back regally like you weren’t even there. You slowly slipped off the desk and fixed your clothing. The insides of your thighs were slicked with her own cum.

You fidgeted with your fingers, hesitating to move from your spot. Your interview was over. Did this mean he’d decided what would become of you? You prompted him quietly and watched as he spun to face you. His expression had hardened to something unreadable, much like when you first been called into the office. A cold feeling slid down to the pit of your stomach.

You swallowed thickly at the abrupt change in atmosphere. “Did I… Did I pass?”

His lips turned up just enough for you to think you caught it. The fire seemed to cast a golden halo around his lithe figure as he sauntered towards you. His features seemed to soften some the closer he stepped. The silence gnawed at you.

Langdon let his fingers curl around your chin, tipping your head up so your eyes locked. He ran his thumb along your bottom lip, as though admiring the swollen flesh left in the wake of his mouth. You could only stare at him, transfixed by his presence.

He smiled gently. “No.”

#american horror story #ahs apocalypse #ahs x reader #ahs smut #michael langdon #michael langdon x reader #michael langdon smut #cody fern #🍄.ffn

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formosusiniquis · 1 year ago

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find your Suzie

Written for Day 2 of @stevieweek Gender Euphoria with bonus prompts t4t and Scoops. Coincidentally also hitting Day 5 of @steddie-week with Reunion/Getting back together lucky me!

Stevie Harrington/Eddie Munson WC: 7679 | T | No Archive Warnings Apply | CW: Features Eddie using the word tranny to refer to himself | Tags/Themes: Transfem Steve Harrington; Transmasc Eddie Munson; Steve & Robin Best Friends Forever; Steve and Dustin have a sibling relationship; Childhood Friends to Strangers to Lovers; Small Town 80s typical discussions of gender

AO3

It’s been a long summer.

That’s probably the least of what can be said about the month Steve has been working at Scoops. He has a coworker that hates him, the emotion he’s sure of the reason not so much. The kids only want to see him when he’s either giving them something or letting them in the back to sneak through to the movies. And his favorite kid isn’t even here.

Wasn’t even here.

It’s finally the week Dustin is supposed to be back from camp. And it’s not like Steve expects to be the first stop on the welcome back tour, Dust had sent a letter from camp -- surprising when he told Steve before he even left not to expect anything. Camp Know Where was the kind of camp, “that demanded your full attention the entire time you’re there, Steve.” Except when the counselors are requiring you to send one letter a week to the homestead so there’s no parents worried about dead kids or something.

That hadn’t been something anyone was afraid of when Steve went to camp. But he also didn’t have parents who cared if he went missing. If Mrs. Voorhees went nutso on his summer camp they would probably have just liked having the excuse to sue. Everything is a money making opportunity.

But Dustin’s Mom liked him, and Steve knew Mrs. Henderson would want first dibs on smothering her precious son with all of the attention that she hadn’t been able to give him in his month away. Then there was supposed to be some big Doorknobs and Dipsticks thing -- a name he was going to have to remember to repeat in front of Dustin just so Steve could appreciate the way it’ll make him groan.

Then after all that there will probably be time for Steve and Dustin time.

Which is only serving to make the day stretch longer. Because that’s the kind of summer it’s been.

After a month, it’s probably safe to say that nothing is really going to make this summer feel like a success. Something that he knew he was going to be able to say from the moment they handed him the uniform that it was going to be a miserable time. It was square and boxy, the ascot so long that the little red tie hung at his bellybutton. The shorts are okay, well they became okay after a trip through the dryer on the wrong setting changed them from baggy and saggy into something that cupped his ass and displayed a work safe amount of thigh.

He doesn’t even want to talk about the hat.

There’s a voice in his head that gets a little louder, a little more insistent with each shift as he puts on the uniform. There are only so many more things he can do while staring at his reflection in the mirror to make it shut up.

An end of the year haircut turned into highlights, when the thought of losing any of the length he’d been steadily growing out made him feel the same way getting called Little Guy used to make him feel. Which turned into figuring out the perfect way to get the blowout style waves in under twenty minutes, because he wasn’t spending more than that on hair that was going to get hidden under a stupid hat that was just going to push it back and make his forehead look weird. Which turned into noticing that his forehead looked weird so the things below the forehead had to look better so that no one would notice when the hat was on. The brown mascara had probably been Mom’s but could have been Nancy’s or possibly Carol’s, but either way it was sitting in the drawer of the third bathroom he looked in -- Steve knew it was there the whole time, it rolls in the drawer everytime he opens it looking for the nail clippers and every time it did he looks at it the way he thinks people who haven’t seen monsters probably look at snakes.

And the mascara was good. Gave him big, doe eyes that he liked watching in the mirror as the girl in there swayed this way and that, making sure the blonde highlights didn’t need to be toned to keep from going too brassy.

Only after a little while that stopped working too, and the mascara turned into a two step routine. Lipgloss, chapstick really, toned because it tasted like cherries.

And that was enough to feel like normal, for a little while longer. But the itch was there, a mosquito bite Steve wouldn’t stop itching until the skin was picked open.

But it was just loneliness. He’s always been like this. Left alone for too long without someone to distract him and he’s prone to spiraling.

The summer right before freshman year when Tommy and Carol both got grounded for a month for getting caught at the quarry drinking, he spent hours alone in his room wondering what life would have been like if he’d been born as a girl instead. Thanksgiving Break ‘84, without a girlfriend and his parents in Toronto or Cabo or Ohio, he sat alone in the living room with the curtains drawn as Some Like it Hot played on the TV. With a blanket pulled around his shoulders, he watched Daphne more than any of the others. Wondering if he could ever go back to being Jerry now that he’d gotten to experience being other. By then he could quote along with the movie by heart, he had seen it so many times he could practically play it in his head when someone else had it rented. He flopped down on the sofa in time with Daphne, spoke aloud into the empty house with her, “I'm a boy. I'm a boy. I wish I were dead.”

Now, in the middle of the worst summer of his life. He’s had the movie out so long he thinks it would be less embarrassing to just never go back to Family Video ever again. It’s been so long since his parents have been home or looked at the entertainment center he probably could have bought his own copy. He plays it every night until he wakes up to the static of the television. Still it’s not enough to keep him from laying in bed wondering about the girl who first told him to watch it and what she would think about what he is and isn’t now.

But Dustin is coming home and maybe he’ll bring the Steve Harrington he’s supposed to be in a suitcase or something.

The next day the blue of his uniform washes him out. That’s the reason he comes up with to rub a little bit of the pink Avon blush he found abandoned at the back of his Mom's vanity. A thumb rubbed gently through it, picking up just enough of the color that it shimmers on the pad of the finger. He rubs it into the round of his cheek. Swiping and rubbing at each one until it's impossible to tell if any of the color is still there or if it's just from his touching that's left them cheery and pink. The blush, the lipgloss, the mascara, the hair. Steve feels something like happy at the reflection in the mirror. Everything settling less like the costume he put on everyday since the middle of senior year.

Then Dustin gets home, and he's found a top secret Russian code.

They never would have made Jill or Kelly or Agent 99 wear a stupid fucking uniform like Steve's. But no one looks at him more than twice as he scurries around the mall with Dustin like the Moneypenny to the kid’s Bond or whatever.

He wouldn't hate it if the alt guy with the ratted out hair and vest browsing in the record store or the jazzercise guy looked a couple extra times.

Dustin stays at the mall for the rest of the day, hanging out in the back working on the code. In between customers Steve does what he can to help. Mostly that looks like trying to run interference with Robin. Her antagonism seems a little friendlier lately, but with her fun stolen now that Dustin was back -- and more important than trying to land a date he cared less about than sating the loneliness -- he could tell she was watching. When the mall is closed he walks Dust out the employee hallway, his bike shares the rack with Robin’s, the only two left even with cars still dotting the lot. He offers like every shift to give her a lift home.

“Like my bike would even fit in the trunk next to kid genius,” she says as she kicks off. Dustin unusually silent beside him. “I’ll catch you tomorrow, Harrington.”

The kid brother that forcibly adopted him stays quiet the entire time Steve is loading his bike into the back. But worry doesn’t set in until they’re pulling out of the parking lot and he still hasn’t said a word.

“So other than the girlfriend-”

“There’s really nothing going on between you and Robin?” Dustin interrupts, something steely but unsure on his face. “And don’t just say the same stuff about her being a nerd. You exclusively hang out with nerds. You obviously aren’t still holding on to that high school stuff anymore.”

He doesn’t know if it is that obvious, but even as he consciously setting that thought aside; the thought of dating Robin, taking her out and showing her off and possibly getting so far as intimacy, it feels weird. The kind of weird that thinking about dating Carol felt like, a half step in the direction of wrongness.

“Even if she didn’t totally hate me, dude, that’d be like if I asked you about dating El or Max.”

Belatedly, he remembers Dustin did have a capital T Thing for their random girl. But the comparison carries the correct weight.

“You have to find your Suzie then, man.”

It's hard to bite back the hysterical laugh, the thought that they'd rather be someone's Suzie. It's easier to push the twerp off than to touch that sticky, raw scab they couldn't stop picking. Still something about being in the car, the comfort of having their favorite kid back makes it feel safe to talk about a girl they’ve never stopped thinking about.

“I already met my Suzie,” a laugh makes it out before Steve can even think to stop it. “Literally Susan M. Even met her at summer camp, she called herself my boy named Sue.” Smiling out the windshield, they think back to that summer. It hadn’t been a reference they’d understood as a kid, not until Sue had made the joke again too close to one of the counselors. At home Steve had made Mom go get the album the song was on. They played it so many times they could find the track on the record without even looking.

“She called me her sweet Stevie,” they finish. It’s something they haven’t said to anyone.

That uncharacteristic quiet is back. Dustin looking at them; but with the softest parts of themself turned over, half exposed in a way even they haven’t looked at before, Stevie doesn’t look back. Just keeps driving the familiar path to the Henderson house.

“What happened?” Dustin asks, softer than they think they’ve ever heard his voice.

Maybe bringing up the lost summer camp love to a recent summer camp boyfriend wasn’t as smart as they thought.

“Tried to write but I guess they moved. People do that sometimes, I guess, send kids to camp so they’re out of the way during the move. Letter came back return to sender and she wasn’t at camp the next year.” They weren’t back the year after, determined old enough at 12 to stay home alone during the summer.

“Maybe you’ll find her again. If she was really your Suzie.”

“Maybe,” Stevie says. It’s easier than digging any deeper.

Later it won’t feel so much like digging when they’re sitting in the bathroom high.

Stevie feels like floating away, like underneath the skin it’s all bubbles. They’re there lifting up everything: the mood, smiles, secrets.

When Robin asks, “Have you ever been in love?”

It feels easy, for once, to bring up Nancy. It feels just as easy to say, “I think I met the love of my life when I was 10 years old and it was a girl who acted like a boy and treated me like a girl. Do you think that's like a sex thing and I'm just now realizing it?”

“I had a crush on Tammy Thompson and she liked you, that’s why I hated you.”

“Oh.”

The moment feels loaded. Bubbles popping in the air. Stevie doubts that’s what an OD feels like.

“Tammy’s such a dud.”

“What and you think I should have had a thing for a girl like you?”

Bubbles again, bright and fast and fizzy like a shaken up coke. Exciting, explosive.

“Yeah, well, at least I can sing.”

Dustin and Erica interrupt karaoke but Stevie can feel something solid setting into place beneath the foamed up feelings.

It turns out being an adult and not having to go to school leaves you with a lot of time to kill.

Being reported as the hero of Starcourt who pulled a bunch of kids and a coworker out of a burning building bought another year of living rent free in the Harrington house. That and the passionate bond with the female coworker who was still in high school. It was easy to make promises that neither of them planned to keep while on the phone with her parents. Lies laced with truth, the two of them would be leaving for whatever city Robin picked for college with every intention to stay bonded for life. That was good enough for Dick and Diane to look the other way for another year.

So with time and money to kill Stevie spent the hours Robin was in school looking for the kind of secret bookstores that Robin’s heard about. The ones with zines and pamphlets about people like them.

And they learn and they change. And she's chasing that feeling she felt in that dingy mall bathroom where her best friend called her a girl. She’s a girl, she’s a girl, she’s a girl. She sometimes feels like she’s Daphne at the end of the movie. Shaky and a few wrong sentences away from pulling off her wing and throwing in the towel.

And Eddie Munson is stealing her goddamn kids.

That’s a separate part of her new life. Not that it’s any less frustrating. She’s figuring out how to be her own person in a way that’s not gonna get her killed, and she has to compete for attention with the king authentic.

“If you’d just meet him,” she’s barely listening to Dustin’s insistences. She’s heard them all before and Keith is lurking somewhere in the store waiting for her to slip up.

“I don't want to meet your Geek Mother.”

“It’s Dungeon Master,” Dustin tails her around like a second shadow. “And I think you would actually have a lot in common if you’d just talk.”

“That there’s something wrong enough with both of us that we want to spend our free time with you gremlins?”

“Ha. No. You both like those shitty, pulp, horror novels, you both like cars, you both have a secret love of Johnny Cash.”

“Oh yeah, a real recipe for best friendship.” She rolls her eyes into the cover of Flashdance, somehow he feels like Alex will be more receptive than her brother. “I’ve got Robin, I’m not really interested in any more friends right now.”

“Okay, well, he’s kinda meeting me here so.”

“What? Dustin!”

The bell above the door tongs, Stevie glares daggers and nailbats at Dustin while she shouts out the required, “Welcome to Family Video.”

The sound of metal hitting something solid carries over the sound of Oxford Blues. Normally it’s the sound of feet shuffling on the carpet that gives her the chance to make sure she’s the right amount of everything. Surviving this slow paced transition on the virtue of already being known around town as a pretty boy, as long as she keeps the right amount of butch it’s fine. At least Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy keep their hair short. She’s taken them on as hair icons until she’s in a place where she can grow it out long like Farrah or Brooke Shields.

A place where hopefully she’ll be able to add the occasional skirt to her wardrobe. She adjusts the rise on her jeans, she’s got no idea where Munson is. It’s hard to track the slap of his chain in the store the way she can dragging footsteps. Tugging at the belt loops of her pants, the ones she got from the women’s side of the thrift store, she feels like it’s obvious from the cut they’re different. Swears they hug her differently.

She doesn’t know if she wants Munson to be able to tell, but he’s coming around the bend from the Romance section and she can’t really do anything about it.

“Henderson,” Munson greets even though his eyes are locked hard onto Stevie. It’s been a quiet day, maybe she left one of those butterfly clips El gave her in her hair.

“Eddie! Did you grab the movie you said you were gonna show me?”

“Where’s the fire, Henderson?” He has a nice voice. Pitched in a nice warm tone it has a husk she thinks she can feel. Gives her goosebumps. It’s not that she didn’t know that already, or maybe she didn’t, in all the ranting and screaming he did at school she thinks she remembers it higher. Cracking even as late as his junior year.

He’s looking at her again, something molten and complicated in his eyes, “Why don’t you officially introduce me to your favorite babysitter.”

Dustin sighs, full bodied and dramatic. “You went to school together, do I really need to?”

“No manners in these kids these days,” Eddie jokes. “You are not the same person I went to English third period with.”

Something bubbles up in the pit of her stomach, a little bit fear and a little bit joy at being recognized as something different. “That could be because you were barely ever in third period English.”

“Touche. And in that case it's all the sweeter to meet the fabled Stevie.” He grabs her hand by the tips of her fingers, sweeps his other arm out as he bows and presses a kiss to the little gold ring Robin gave her. She’s surprised by the sound of her own giggle.

“Can we be done with what’s happening here?” Dustin interrupts the fireworks happening in the back of her brain like a mindflayer on the Fourth of July.

“You were the one that wanted us to meet,” she reminds him.

“And I immediately regret it now that it’s happening. I need better impulse control, you and Ma were right.”

“Really are the best babysitter in the world, humility out of Henderson is like getting blood out of stone,” Eddie teases.

“You were coming out of Romance, what is this favorite movie you were going to show me?” Dustin demands now, a pink flush to his face like they’ve succeeded in embarrassing him too.

“I could like romance, I contain multitudes. And I said I was showing you my favorite horror movie, Re-Animator got shelved there a couple weeks ago. My favorite is a comedy and never on the shelves.”

“Someone just brought back Ghostbusters today, and we were holding Goonies for movie night this weekend, but the kids have seen it before,” she offers, taking a blind stab at the kind of comedies that might make it to Eddie Munsons's favorite list. It's really a puzzle made more for Robin.

"Excellent features both, but I'm afraid my favorite is a little more black and white. Caught Some Like it Hot in a Marilyn Monroe double feature at the Hawk with Wayne as a kid. Used to rent it at the Blockbuster all the time before I moved to Hawkins full time, it's always rented here so," he grabs Dustin by the cap, shaking the kid's head roughly back and forth, completely oblivious to the way Stevie's palms have started to sweat around the sticky case of Halloween.

"Who sorts their favorite films by genre?" Dustin asks, the question wobbling out of him with the shake of his head.

"I do, shortstack, by genre and all kinds of criteria your yet to be enlightened brain hasn't even thought to try."

"Sure, whatever, did you grab your favorite horror movie yet?"

Instead of answering, like a normal person might, Eddie Munson takes a step closer to her. He leans in close enough that she can smell the cigarette he must have smoked before he came in, the smell of his deodorant below that. His arm brushes against her lower back as he reaches and reaches.

She's gotta talk to Keith about getting the a/c fixed.

Eddie is close enough she can count the stubbly hairs of his not quite mustache. There's something about his eyes that reminds her of someone, but it's hard to place. Unlike the exact location of his right arm, currently brushing against the waistband of her jeans.’

And then he's gone.

In his hands he's got the black clamshell box of the movie, and Stevie feels a little bit like an idiot. "I could have moved."

"But then I wouldn't have gotten to appreciate the sweet, sweet smell of your hairspray."

With a sigh that could probably propel him into space, Dustin announces, "I'm going to the van."

And even though it doesn't really mean anything, it kind of feels like it might mean everything when once he's out of earshot she decides to tell Eddie, "I actually have that movie. That's why you can't ever find it, it's one of my favorites too."

Before he can finish the door alarm sound again, and she would recognize the sound of converse on the dirty store carpet even if Robin didn't immediately shout, "Stevie, you better get a brick someone locked your kid in their dirty van." She rounds the corner to find whatever scene she and Munson must make, the two of them too close together to be in a store with Family in its name right beside the horror section. "Oh."

"I'm across from Little Red, in the park," Eddie takes a big step back, hands stuffed in his pockets in a way that makes him look a million times more suspicious than if he'd just pulled away. She'd been right that it was a mistake to ever meet him. "If you wanted to bring that movie over sometime."

"We'll see, Munson."

He’s got the widest smile on his face that she only gets to appreciate for a second before he sweeps down low into a bow. The dimple in his face screams of a mischief that makes her think of childhood. “I know I shall, fair Stevie.” He nods at Robin, who trails him to the desk to check out while Stevie goes back to putting the returns on the shelf while they have that moment of quiet.

Moment of quiet from customers anyway, the second Eddie is out the door he takes Stevie’s last chance of peace with him.

“Were you just flirting with Eddie Munson,” the thought doesn’t tick up because Robin isn’t asking a question, she’s making an accusation.

“He was flirting with me.”

“But you were receptive to it.” She decides correctly and immediately. “Are you gonna go over there?”

Reaching under the counter for the wipes she’s started keeping there, Stevie carefully wipes off the gunk on her hands from the grimy video cases. Taking the time to try to figure out what she even wants to say.

“I’m just trying to survive. He knows who I am, who I was,” she corrects, “I’m not trying to do anything stupid that’s going to jeopardize our escape from Hawkins or being able to protect the kids.”

Pushing up to her tiptoes, Robin takes a quick glance around the store. Even though the room must be empty for her to even risk continuing the track Stevie has started them down, Robin still leans in close enough that she can smell the fruity scent of the gum that Robin always chews after lunch. “Maybe don’t jump to conclusions, you know the kind of rumors that go around about him. Like why he flunked gym twice before he got that doctor’s note, because he wouldn’t dress out with everyone else.”

She’s thinking about the guy who kissed the ring on her hand even when she says, “I think we already know that you can’t trust rumors. If they were all true then I’d be gay but compensating and you’d have gotten fired from the Hawk for letting the film burn because you were having sex in the bathrooms.”

“Part of that is true, I did burn that film reel.” She waves him off with a flap of her hand, stopping the movie on screen as it reaches the credits and tossing it to Stevie to rewind. She snags one off the counter at random and tosses it in the VHS player connected to the main screen. Stevie recognizes the start of Victor/Victoria as Robin leans against the counter in a way that screams she isn’t feeling as casual about the thing she’s about to say as she’s pretending she does. “And I mean, visually, it’s six of one or half-a-dozen of the other, right? You like both.”

“Okay, well,” she’s scrambling for something to say and she knows Robin can tell. “Eddie can just be my Vickie then, how about that?”

Stevie has backed them both into a conversational suicide pact. But she knows Robin well enough to know that she’s too scared to take the Vickie bait. While she’ll glare, and boy does she glare, she’d rather let Stevie get away with the blatant denial than admit she might have a real chance with her fellow bandkid.

“I think I’m gonna add Notre Dame to my application list.” She changes the subject, right on time.

When she’s holding a single VHS tape outside of Eddie Munson’s trailer with her hair carefully styled and her favorite lipgloss on. It’s too late to be wondering if maybe she’d been a little bit too right about calling Eddie her Vickie. The cab of the beemer is looking especially inviting, but she’s been in the Mayfield trailer when people have pulled up to their houses and there’s no way in hell that the Munsons haven’t heard her pull up.

A curtain twitches, like someone inside is aware of her internal debating. She tugs on the sleeve of the soft, colorblock sweater she’s got on, forcing the neck to ride a little lower on one shoulder.

And as the plastic case creaks in her hands she gives in and knocks.

Eddie is breathless when he answers the door, even though she was positive he was the one twitching the curtain just a second ago. He has a hoodie on that matches her out of season sweater.

“I wasn’t expecting you to actually show up,” he says, “I didn’t think to mention that my Uncle is asleep.”

“Oh!” She isn’t sure what else to say, standing on the porch with the news that she wasn’t actually expected.

“I just mean I would have told you to come by after he was awake so we could actually watch the movie.”

She glances back over her shoulder at her waiting car, “So should I-”

“No!” A strong hand closes gently as the friendship bracelet Robin made her around her wrist. “I’m not doing this right. I just mean you’ll have to kill some time in my room with me.”

“That’s some line.”

His eyebrows disappear into his bangs, the faint flustered pink that had been taking over his cheeks blooming into something someone who wasn’t staring intently at his face would notice. With a doglike shake of his head, he says, “This isn’t going the way I thought, hold on back to one.” And the door is shutting in her face.

When it reopens a bare second later, Stevie is sure she must be gaping.

“Hi Stevie, thanks so much for coming and bringing that movie we talked about. My Uncle is asleep in the living room right now, but don’t worry he works nights so he’s a sound sleeper. If you’ve got time, we can hang out in my room for an hour until he gets up and then we can watch it together.”

“Hi Eddie, thanks for giving me the 411 so clearly and without any possibility of confusion. It sure would be embarrassing to think that you hadn’t actually wanted me to come over.”

He pulls her in off of the front porch into a house that has things. After keeping herself awake last night worried that she would accidentally reveal something with her familiarity with the movie or that she wouldn’t be able to stop staring at Eddie. But with the mugs and the caps hung up on the walls, there are hundreds of things to distract herself with while she hangs out with him.

“Wayne’s a semi-professional thrifter.” Eddie tells her, it's hard to know if he's correctly interpreting her awe.

“Is he not good enough to go pro?”

That dimple is back, deep as the quarry dug into the side of his face as he drags her past the man in question, asleep on the pullout couch. “Oh he is, but he's too scared to quit his day job. He prefers to keep it a hobby.”

Before she knows it, she's a girl in a guy's bedroom on what's questionably a date. And according to some of the zines she's been a girl in a guy's bedroom a lot of times, at team overnights and birthday party sleepovers.

But this feels different right now. Maybe it's the knowing: that there isn't something wrong with her and that she is what she is. Maybe it's the not knowing, does Eddie have expectations for the afternoon? And she doesn't have a clue what he does and doesn't know.

As her wheels are spinning against the road, trying to grab onto anything to get moving, the babysitter brain kicks in. Instinct the snow chains of the mind, later she'll talk to Robin about whether she should be concerned about that.

“3 inches!”

Eddie freezes with his hand on the door, more like an inch from latching.

“I, um.” He's looking at her now, and she's scrambling for an explanation that sounds better than ‘I've listened to multiple baby teens complain about this particular prophylactic and now that I'm on the other side of the bedroom maneuver I'm feeling a little inexperienced.’ She just isn't sure how well that would go over.

“The hinges squeak, good call.” He flops down on the bed, beckoning her a little closer. All she can think to do is sit at the edge, it makes her feel prim, too proper and too aware of the way her body fits in this room.

After the silence starts to drag, and she starts to question whether or not she's made a single good decision since November of 1983, Eddie asks, “So, what makes Stevie Harrington tick?”

“What do you mean?”

“Single handedly supporting the social lives of a generous handful of mouthy teenagers via unpaid taxi service, enjoys black and white cinema or at least enjoys this movie enough to risk the wrath of the VHS gods,” he ticks each one off on his fingers as he goes. “What else is there that makes you, you? Do you like piña coladas, getting caught in the rain? You look like you could be into yoga.”

The tension breaks like it had never been there to begin with, she tries to hide her laugh in her hand. The door is open, and Eddie's uncle is sleeping. “Oh my god is that that Jimmy Buffet song?”

“Escape is not a James Buffet number, your majesty, that's Margaritaville. And you're dodging the question.”

He's calmer than she remembers from high school, but still that bright passion he seems to have for everything is too much to look at directed at her. The warmth of him as hard to look at as the noonday sun. “I don't think I'm that interesting,” she casts her gaze around the room instead looking at all the personality that Eddie has shoved into the place in the few years he's lived here.

“I think you're lying.”

His closet is bursting from its boundaries. A sea of black pushing its way out in a waterfall of clothes onto the floor.

“You think I’m lying about being boring?”

Jeans, shirts for bands she’s never heard of, a skirt.

“Tell me one weird fact about you, and I’ll tell you how you are definitely not boring,” he insists.

Skirts, multiple, now that she's looking she can recognize the shape of them. Is that a heavy metal thing? If she changed her style could she get away with finally wearing one in public.

“When I was a kid, I rode my bike to see 101 Dalmatians in theaters like six times. Then one day I found this fur coat in my mom’s closet and I made her get rid of it because I didn’t want her to be the kind of person who could own fur.”

“An animal activist,” Eddie says, “see, interesting. And proof of my bigger point that you, Stevie, are one of the best Hawkins has to offer. Aren’t you?”

It’s hard to imagine how he got there when she’s mentally rifling through his things, trying to figure out a way to ask about-

“They’re gifts from confused but well meaning long distance relatives.” Eddie explains, done politely ignoring where Stevie’s attention was actually focused. “I was a tomboy as a kid, so when they heard I was a tranny I guess they got confused. I felt bad donating them or throwing them away, made with love.”

That’s probably the bravest thing she’s seen that doesn’t involve flesh eating monsters. Stevie musters up the courage she taps into when fighting those monsters to say, “Me too, opposite direction. Obviously.”

“That would make you the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen then, Stevie Harrington. And definitely still the most interesting.”

Euphoria, big like soap bubbles, fills her chest. It already feels like she could float away when he asks, “You wanna try one of them on?”

“You wouldn’t care? You just said they were homemade.” She’s already off the bed though, running a thumb over the soft black cotton. Up close she can make out the faintly lighter blacks and greys of a flower pattern. It’s beautiful.

“Well I wasn’t blessed with the gorgeous ass you’ve got, but it should fit just fine.”

She doesn’t have to be told twice, it's off the hanger and clutched in her hands before Eddie’s finished complimenting her. And oh, that sends some of that bubbling joy flooding a little farther south.

That new not revelation is easy to table. Drowned out by the feeling she gets when the skirt swishes around her knees. Light and floaty as cotton fabric. She’s a balloon flying out of some kid's hand disappearing into the clear blue sky.

“What do you think?” She twists and twirls, the long fabric spinning out around her like a princess in a Disney movie.

“Pretty as a picture.”

Her eyes snap up from the swirling black of the skirt, in time to fall down deep into the dark expanse of Eddie’s focused gaze. Hot and heavy on her.

For a second, it throws her back to when she was a kid. Standing on the dock at the camp lake, a pair of dark brown eyes staring at her while her beach towel wrapped around her like a dress. Twisting this way and that, posing with a hand in her hair that had grown longer than she was usually allowed to keep it after a missed summer cut. They’d just climbed out of the water, fingers pruny and faces ruddy from laughing.

“How do I look?”

“Pretty as a picture!”

“Thanks, Eddie.”

Mouth open, whatever he’s about to say that warrants the way his eyes go soft and nervous is swallowed by an older man’s voice shouting down the hall, “Ed, you and your friend can come out and use the living room. I’m up.”

It’s refreshing, having one more person she can be herself with, fully. Having someone who understands even better than Robin what it feels like to be different. To feel the way she’s always felt. It’s hard to believe he hasn’t been in her life for forever the way he slots into it so easily.

But then maybe Dustin had a point, she has a way of attracting nerds.

And once they’ve found her they latch in and don’t let go. Feral cats every single one of them.

“Just put something on, Stevie, I swear to god.”

Eddie’s where he is most of the time these days, flopped sideways across her bed. Hair hanging off the side in a dark wave. Ratted out as it is it’ll defy gravity for longer than natural when he sits up again. But it looks beautiful now, the way Eddie always does.

“You say that now and then it’s all, ‘did the estrogen break your eardrums? How can you even like Wham?’ and ‘The only good thing Fleetwood Mac ever did was break up.’”

There’s a thump behind her, she doesn’t have to turn to know he’s flailed his way onto the floor. She does turn to see how his hair lifts up from the roots like the bride of Frankenstien. “I did not say that shit about Fleetwood Mac, Rumours is one of the best albums of all time.”

“No, you’ve just defamed everyone else in my record collection.”

“It can’t be everyone,” he groans, “your entire collection can’t be Wham and Huey Lewis.”

“You’re forgetting Madonna and Blondie, pretty sexist of you Munson.”

“No, the ladies are where your taste shines through. That’s my planned window in, you see,” Stevie turns back to her record shelf, carefully paging through each one while Eddie talks. ABBA, Adams, Benetar, Bowie. “I’m gonna make you a real rock’n’roll mixtape, get you on the right path. Joplin, Heart, The Runaways, Girlschool.”

She lands on the perfect album, tosses it on the table and starts it spinning. It’s not until the jaunty guitar starts bouncing that she realizes what she’s done.

“Shit, sorry, let me set it back. You probably want to listen from the actual beginning of the album.”

“No, no, leave it, it’s fine.” Eddie says in the toneless way she’s noticed he gets when he’s focused. “Do you always skip straight to this track?”

“Yes?” Stevie knows this is one of those times when the answer she’s giving is going to mean something even if she isn't sure what the question hiding under the first is.

“Is there- I mean, is this just your favorite song or do you always start three tracks in on the B-side when I’m not here?” His laugh is weak, and it’s noticeable when everything about Eddie is so sure and strong.

She tugs on a single lock of her hair, twirling it around her finger before tugging. A nervous gesture she’s picked up from Eddie, now that it’s long enough. “There was this kid I went to camp with, first love shit, you know. We lost touch but she called herself my Boy Named Sue all summer. When I got home this was the only song I’d play for months. It’d finish and I’d pick the needle up and put it back at the start for hours. I really hope she’s doing okay now, however okay looks like for her.

“Anyway, it’s just a force of habit. I can put it back to the start or pick a new album if you’ve got shit to say about the man in black too.”

There’s a dazed sort of reverie on Eddie’s face that he doesn’t snap back from until she moves for the record player. “No, no, play it again. I, um, shit- Okay, so I need you to not be mad at me.”

She doesn’t even need to look to set the track back to its start. Eddie’s got his hand fisted in his hair, pulling at it hard enough that it hurts her scalp, chewing at his bottom lip. Nerves have always made her a little mean. “I’m already feeling a little mad at you, say what you’re going to say.”

“I was going to tell you that first day we were hanging out,” he’s digging around in his back pocket for his wallet like it isn’t on a leash he could tug on like a dog, “we were sharing these mutual coming out moments and I thought, ‘now’s the time I’ll tell Stevie, everything is going to be great.’ Only Wayne woke up and ruined the moment and the longer we kept hanging out the harder it was to bring up again.”

“Just spit it out already.”

The photo insert hits her in the chest. Fumbling, she bats at it between her two hands before she’s able to get a firm catch. Raising both her eyebrows in a question Eddie barely answers with a wave of his hand. Even as she rolls her eyes, she looks down at the photo in her hands. A larger picture, carefully folded so that two kids are at the center. She recognizes the picture, has a copy of it in a shoebox in the back of her closet where she keeps all the tiny precious things she doesn’t want her mom to throw away when she starts decluttering. A picture of everyone who made it to the last day of summer camp, and now made center of this one is a ten year old Stevie with her arm flung tight around… Around Eddie.

“Surprise,” he says.

“You're? And you've been?”

“We moved right after that summer, I’ve told you the kind of guy my dad was. Not like evil or anything, just incapable of keeping his nose clean and he’d gotten into some trouble in Fort Wayne that sent us to Indianapolis for a bit. When I tried to write, I realized I’d either lost your address or it’d been thrown away.”

“What about when you got to Hawkins, with Wayne?”

“My voice still cracked when I got nervous, and you’ve always been the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen. And it wasn’t like I looked the same way I did when we were kids, and at first you didn’t either.” She remembers the way she styled her hair back then, the tragic mustache she’d tried growing freshman year cause maybe that would make her feel the way everyone else said she was supposed to. “You looked muted, sad. But then I saw you laughing, at an FFA party I was dealing at, and when you tossed your head back I finally saw Stevie again.

“And when Henderson started coming around talking about his best friend Stevie. Stevie, who was the coolest person in the world. Who kept taking on all the worst parts of the world to keep people safe. And I latched on to him as hard as I could hoping I might get to see you again. If it was puppy love when we were ten, I've got a whole dog pound now I'm so in love with you. Maybe that's crazy to say.”

She can't listen anymore.

“Eddie, stop.” Before he can shut himself down, shutter closed and make his excuse to leave, she lets her own confessions tumble out faster than she can think of what she even wants to say, “You have made me feel more like myself since we first met.”

Her skirt, a deep plum and stolen from Eddie's collection, gets tangled around her ankles as she knee walks close enough that she can touch him. “You've given me confidence and clothes and a name.”

“I added an -ie, Sweetheart.”

“And I like it! It feels like me. I feel like me, and you helped me get there.

“Maybe it is too early to say things like I love you, but I loved the boy who refused to make friendship bracelets for anyone else at camp but me and now he's just promised me a mixtape.”

Stevie knows she could go even longer, could give a Shakespeare worthy speech about all the ways she likes Eddie Munson and what he has come to mean to her as the summer love she cherished in her heart and now. She could, but it's swallowed by the press of Eddie's mouth against hers. An ugly, spitty, puckered lip, perfect first kiss.

She gently corrects the motion until the kiss becomes something sweet and gentle. The kind she'd been hoping for when she'd gone back to camp that following summer. Something that belonged to sunscreened skin and freckled faces. Soft, innocent. But felt just as right here in the bedroom she’d grown up in with Johnny Cash on the stereo and the scent of the perfume she was trying out hanging in the air.

Eddie pulls away, moving just far enough to lean his forehead against hers, his hand coming up to cup the back of her neck. She can feel each slow exhale against her mouth. “I’m really glad I found you again.”

“I’m really glad you found me too.”

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