#scared all the time baybee

[ghostsinthecellar]

I smell a vague smell of smelly and my brain is doing alarm bells but I don't smell the smell strong and there's no heat or light coming off the breaker boxes so I don't know if I'm being paranoid or if I used the hot water heater too much today or what and it's driving me insane

[sysig]

TMP 1 Adventures (Patreon)

[devotedlystrangewizard]

oooooh you want to let me main tank so baaaad

[fatallyaddictedtofiction]

Im just gonna allow myself to yap about supernatural and see where destiny takes me. SIDENOTE IF U WANNA TALK ABOUT THIS WITH ME LITERALLY PLEASE I WANT TO PLEASE INTERACT WITH ME.

Okay first of all im starting with the start (s1+2). BEST LIGHTING TO MOOD EVER EVER EVER. Like you want dark scary monsters??? ITS THERE. I remember there being a reason they changed the lighting (smugly: yes i listen to the podcast) but i CANT REMEMBER. The characterisation of the macho eldest son coded scared eldest daughter Dean is unreal and parallel in epicness to repressed queer allegory something is inherently wrong with him little brother. The brief moments of emotional vulnerability. Dont get me STARTED on Dean's monologue in the s2 finale i'll start crying. It's crazy how rude john is to Dean like excuse me he raised your kid and now ur bitching about him? Try saying thank you for once. I think the only reason john actually said im proud of you was because he realised when azazel said it dean was like "ur not my dad" and to john it was a little "oh shit" moment. Sam has every right to be angry but every time he gets angry at dean something in me shatters a little because deans trying so hard for himself and sam and sam doesnt know who or how to lash out (emotional dysregulation baybee) so aims for deans jugular like nooo honeyyyy noooooo. This era was the best sam in my opinion.

Rest of the show down here:

Onto S3-5. Cant remember jack about season 3. Season 4 CASTIEL MY BELOVED MY LIGHT MY LIFE MY REASON FOR LIVING. Absolutely loved everything about Weird Cas and i wanted more of him why did they have to domesticate him. His and Deans dynamic was impeccable and yk something??? I wanted to see Dean in hell torturing people i wanted to see it on his face how much he hated that he enjoyed it and i wanted to see Cas' face at watching the righteous man lose. Like the best we got was Yellow Fever GOD I LOVED THAT bit when he was hallucinating the book and it said "you gonna cry?" Like so many people think thats a funny episode but it makes me so sad because he is DYING and from such a young age hes been told to stow it away, lock it down to the point hes HALLUCINATING IT. Cas falling for dean. Im sorry i just. They are the best love story. LUCIFER. He was scarier back then, but i do love later seasons lucy too. Something about the peeling skin and the "we will always end up right here" just slapped. ENDVERSE EPSIODE god so good can we just take a moment to think about it. Okay cool thanks okay. Demon blood Sam arc was fun but had unfulfilled potential. Cant give you specifcs rn its late and my brain needs to get this all out so if you know you know. The whole meta stuff with Chuck was eh until he was confirmed as god and then i was like duuude the faint strings of marionettes are glistening in the sunrise like how do we know --- im getting ahead of myself.

S6-11. I know, its a big chunk. But basically the whole thing could be renamed "Crowley's unrequited love story". Cas and crowley were the best duo i almost forgot like they are genuinely so funny together and i bet it would be great to be tortured by them UMM THE BETRAYAL i honestly loved Cas' episode the only thing i didn't like was how the reveal itself was done like... Idk just a bit... Kryptonite???? Anywho i Loved the tension between Dean and Cas DEAN LOOKED BACK. Um leviathans were my favourite monster but they became so dumbbbb after washing up liquid killed them. BOBBYS EPISODE ALWAYS MAKES ME SOB MY EYES OUT "i raised two boys and they became heroes" allow me to DIE. Also damn impressed a shot to the head didnt take him down but it was lovely to see Deans first world, first solid rock properly crumble around him (forgetting john okay he wasnt a healthy rock) . PURGATORY DEAN JDJSJDJDJD kill me please his fight or flight mode was SO. So sad we didnt get more of purgatory like i would pay to see more i would kill probably but we'll overlook that. Benny my beloved. They definitely all got together Cas included like who wouldnt at that point. Smth i didnt like is how wheneer they went back to purgatory, unlike how dean described it "360 battle 24/7" or some shit like that it was EMPTY. Like please,, i know the plot needs convenience BUT PURGATORY ISNT SUPPOSED TO BE CONVENIENT. But dean recrafting his own memories to make himself believe that he failed to save Cas rather than what he perceived as Cas giving up on him- hang on i dropped my jaw somewhere, gimme a sec i need to go find it-- LIKE. HHHH. The whole mind control shit going on with Cas because his ties to Dean had been severed (saw a post about that and loved it but cant rmb it) and HIM BEING THE ONE TO BREAK IT. The crypt scene mmmm i love. Want more. Mark of Cain dean was literally my favourite. A violent, mentally unstable man who also has bad mental health and is often covered in blood? Yes pls. Cas being with him every step of the way. I havent mentioned Sam in a while. Hes just kind of been there. Hate that he slowly became 2D. Far away in the background hes got his worried expression and is rocking, saying "Dean? Dean? Cas? Jack? Dean?" Like writers why did u strip his personality except for worry. Do Not get me started on the whole Amelia thing ill stab someone. But yeah cas saying he'll watch dean murder the world is my universe :). If someone said that to me id say "omg really?" And develop a huge fat crush (somehow). CHARLIE DYING WAS AN ABOMINATION When they brought back Eileen why not charlie like. Dont bring characters back at this point because theres all sorts of issues grr. Amara was cool af but i didnt like the whole amara x dean stuff because it was just weird. Luciferrrrr hes so girlypop i love him DEAN DIDNT KNOW IT WASNT CAS but thats only because lucy purposefully wore less clothes around him to distract him.

S12-14. Im running out of steam. MARYYY. It hurt to see Sam get along with Mary becsuse he never knew her as anything else while all dean wanted was a mom and that wasnt who she really was anymore. He loved her so much but couldnt break through that barrier of "it wasnt the perfect marriage until after she died" vibes. God that scene in s5 where its suggested dean saw +/ smelled what happened to Mary and he was literally backing himself into a corner BROKE me. Havent mentioned the Wayward sisters but please know they are so important to me they are my everything. Jack is also. Loved Kelly, very sad she had to die. Wanted Jack to be a baby but thats not good for television is it. But i love Jack so much hes such a sweetie who can kill with a thought. Alternate universe michael and Michael!Dean was epic af but michael dying like that was so anticlimactic gonna be honest i think they were just reaching for ways to lose Jacks soul. Garth GARTH!!! Hes so cute. I loved all those "hand recorded" episodes btw like ghostfacers and that one teen wolf type stuff. Dean hiding in his room is so me. Free Will Theory is so fucked up at this point ur sat there saying gods been pulling the strings this whole time and i supposed to be okay with it?? I so get why deans angry but i definitely think thats something Chuck emphasised (crappy excuse for crappy writing) to an extreme level because WHAT. Like dude. I cant even describe how out of character he felt at some times.

S15. Currently rewatching and cant rmb much of it. 3 characters dead in the first 3 episodes. They either kill off all side characters or we dont hear from them at all to tie up or shove away loose ends. I cant even talk abiut the finale please i cant rn im way too tired. It straight up didnt need to exist, it could've only been 19 eps. Cas. Castiel. He did want you my darling.

[frankensteins-mt-dew]

my brain is back on its mighty nein baybees bullshit

imagine Fjord and Beau (post ruidius chaos)going to liberate the orphanage where Fjord grew up and make it their mission to get the kids to good homes and also make the orphanage a much better place.

They meet and care for so many kids of all different races in that time, but some have latched on to them.

Literally, in Fjord's case. From day one a half orc that can't be older than four grabs on to Fjord's pinky and follows him everywhere. He doesn't speak, but he is very smart and knows everything and everyone in the orphanage. When Fjord mentions leaving for the night the boy releases his pinky and bear hugs his leg. After a bit of gentle parenting from him and Beau, Fjord accepts his fate and goes home to Jester with a kid on his leg. Jester's exuberance scares the boy at first, but she wins him over with sweets and hamster unicorns. Soon he starts opening up to them. His name is River. He likes pancakes. He's scared of storms, even dark clouds make him panic. He hates his tusks, too. Fjord and Jester never really sit down and discuss adopting him, or even ask River. It's clear without any words or labels that they are a family.

Beau has a rough time with this project. Sure, the first few days are great. The kids are cute, and they look up to her. But there are so many of them. And they are so loud and sticky,how are they so sticky, when did that even happen? But she knows what it's like to have a shitty childhood, and works to make sure they won't have one any longer. There's one that's different than the rest. A half elf baby that Beau almost didn't know was there. She's quiet but curious, eyes always wandering, and content to just lay around. Beau makes a baby Bjorn to put her in while she herds children and does paperwork. It's strange, she never in a million years thought she'd be anything close to nurturing. She's not even doing much. But this kid seems content with her, even smiles up at her when Beau looks down from her work. When Yasha comes by she is swarmed by children. They treat her like a jungle gym and she could not be happier. She takes turns caring for this nameless baby and is in awe with her. How tiny she is, her big beautiful eyes. Yasha nicknames her Bug and tells her stories. There's no changing her mind, this is their baby, she tells her wife. There's just the question of her name, now. They make lists of names for her: flower names, names conventionally used for boys, weather names, warrior names. Nothing seems to fit her. Then one day Beau notices she has a red birthmark on her back at the base of her neck, where she herself has a tattoo to remember a fallen friend. Then it's clear what their little girl's name is. Soon after, they throw a party at their home to introduce the rest of the Nein to their daughter, Molly.

[chemicallywrit]

What a week in audio drama! Happy Audio Drama Sunday folks, can we talk about some episodes????

🎥 @thesiltverses comes through once again with an absolute banger. Val is chilling—Val has always been chilling—but this week seeing her vulnerable was somehow. Worse. Hey Chuck??? Run, maybe? And if you���re lucky a treason charge will be the best you can hope for. Don’t think too hard about the worst.

🌄 @midnightburgr my beloved, I love you Midnight Burger. I adore the Hood’s Pocket crew and how delightfully normal they are in the face of time-traveling cowboy outlaws. This show continues to bring the wittiness and smarts firmly alongside compassion. It’s so beautiful.

👁️ Why must you hurt me, @hellofromthehallowoods? We’ve heard Nikignik in some bad emotional spots before, but this ep was three kinds of heartbreaking. Can we talk about the sound Nikignik made—

🚬 I feel like @radio-outcast’s strength is their expert combo of the surreal and the tangible, and that’s doubly true when our heroes are trapped in an illusion as they have been for a minute. It makes it all scarier what happens to Helix at the end of the story, and all the more a relief when the happy ending comes. For now. Enemies abound and surround our heroes, but they will carry on.

🐍 There’s no show like the Magnus Protocol to make me just so so scared of a tiny hole a squirrel made. Like I yelped aloud. That team knows how to hecking GET you. And in the office romance department, I find whatever Alice has going in mighty compelling. I’m sure that will be totally fine.

🚀 I started @jumpleadsscifi this week and I am honestly delighted. I love a sitcom, and I’ve finished episode five, which means we’re to my favorite part of the sitcom: getting just a little bit sad with it. Jump Leads is about two underqualified star trek-like officers whose job it is to fix time and space—though mostly they just mess around. I love it.

🔎 YOU WERE ALL RIGHT ABOUT SHERLOCK & CO. This is what I wish BBC Sherlock was. This means everything to me. I’m obsessed. I’m barely even finished with the first episode. It’s amazing. THE MUSIC.

🐰In Inn Between news, I’m about to ruin all y’all’s lives, and in Re: Dracula news, WE ARE BACK BAYBEE. In The Dead news, Run Rabbit will be back this week! We also are finishing up recording the next story for The Dead, which I’m so excited about. Stay tuned!

For real, this month is looking a little thin, and if you felt like giving me a tip, it would really go a long way. Thank you! See you next week!

[honeybee-bard]

WIP Wednesday

I took a lil break from posting WIPs/snippets this past week but we're back baybee! This is from the oneshot I'm working on for the Kinktober prompt "hate sex". It's an Astarion POV piece!

“I could kill you,” you growl. “But you won’t,” she says with a shit-eating grin. She’s right. She’s always right, and it’s infuriating. She shouldn’t be able to read you like this. She shouldn’t be enjoying this. She should be scared. She should be absolutely terrified. “I think,” she continues, “that there are a couple of things you’d rather do than kill me. And right now, I’m pinned beneath you, helpless and entirely at your mercy. Nothing is stopping you from doing exactly what you want to do to me.” You can feel it every time her heart skips a beat, every time her pulse quickens. You can feel the thrum of her lifeforce, so strong and so very close. She tilts her head to the side, baring her neck. It feels like an eternity before you let instinct take over, though you know it was likely only a matter of seconds. Her blood is sweet and warm on your tongue, just as it had been the night she let you feed on her before. That’s what started this, started you inexplicably wanting her while still finding her absolutely infuriating. Her insistence on doing good and helping everyone extended to you as well, you had realized that night. She kept helping every godsdamned orphan and refugee you crossed paths with, delaying your search for a cure over and over again. It enraged you. It drew you in. It led you to having her pinned beneath you with your fangs embedded in her flesh and gods, she’s still not scared of you at all, is she? With a dagger to her neck and your teeth in her throat, she’s still not scared.

No-pressure tags: @bardic-inspo @kimberbohwrites @locallegume @pinkberrytea @nyx-knox

[reallyromealone]

I don't know if you already have one like this but can you do a teen reader w/ bonten having them meet his boyfriend for the first time like they didn't even know he had a boyfriend til this point

I have written so many fanfics I genuinely can't remember if I have written something like this

Anyways I hope you enjoy!

Also I didn't feel like making up a boyfriend so cross over baybee

(Name) was nervous.

Today he was introducing his boyfriend to his dad's.

"Dads, this is my boyfriend Hinata!" (Name) said introducing the most feared men japan to his sweetheart boyfriend "since when phave you been dating?!" Sanzu said incredulously and (name) looked confused "what do you mean? I have told you guys about him loads of times!"

"We thought you were talking about a friend!"

"Oh my god we let you sleep over at his house!"

Hinata was nervous as he stood before the most feared men in japan who were all acting...well like dad's.

"I thought you guys knew!"

"Well clearly we didn't!"

"Well let's just go to the diner! We can talk about this there!"

And that's how poor Shoyo ended up between his boyfriend and one of his dad's, a tired looking platinum blond in all black "so shoyo... What do you do?"

"O-oh! I'm in the volleyball club!"

"Really? Any good?"

"I would like to think so sir!"

"What are your intentions with our son?" Mikey asked seriously and leaned close to the orange haired teen who looked scared but tried to remain confident.

'for (name)!' Hinata thought, deciding to treat this almost like a volleyball game, win against the parents to get (name).

"I want to take him on dates and love him!"

"Define love?"

"Cherish him and hold his hand and make him feel like the only man in the world!"

Bonten could tell when someone was lying, it came with the job and they knew damn well this kid was honest with them "what do you plan on doing with your future?"

"Professional volleyball Sir!"

"Kids?"

"DAD!" (name) cut in with a heavy blush "were fifteen!"

"I wanna know if we're getting any grandkids..." Mikey said simply "dress them in little clothing, give them annoying toys..." Ran chimed in and (name) groaned, knowing his dad's were having fun teasing him.

After the dinner that Hinata tried paying for but Bonten didn't let him "save your cash for dates kid" Mochi said gruffly and Hinata nodded "I'm gonna walk Hinata to practice!" (Name) said sweetly to his dad's, the Bonten babies security guard beside him "alright, be safe" takeomi said lighting a cigarette and watching the two walk back to the school.

"You think they liked me?" Hinata asked his boyfriend and (name) grinned "they loved you!"

[mamawasatesttube]

Hi hello,

Random question, but what do you headcannon cassie to look like and dress through-out her teens into adulthood? Both as wondergirl and as cassie? On that same vein, what adult superhero name do you like for her?

Anywhoosies, wishing u a great day!

late teenage into early 20s cassie is grappling with comp het pretty hard and tries to grow her hair out and dress more femme. she hates it but she doesn't know she hates it for a hot minute. this is both as wonder girl and as cassie because she barely exists as a civilian at all for a long time. "cassie sandsmark" publicly was wonder girl for a while, and she tried coming up with a fake name and identity to be a civilian again in tt03, but it was rough on her and she ultimately gave up on it.

so i think that really just weighs on her - she's a hero 24/7, she's leading the titans, she's basically letting the vigilante life consume her and she's gonna crash and burn out hard any day now. i think donna sees this and goes hey... you know you don't have to be exactly like me, right? in fact i think you need a vacation. let's go to themyscira for a bit. and its big sis lil sis bonding time but also for the first time cassie catches herself thinking um... women 😳 women? 😳 oh god. women 😳 and she has a whole crisis about it.

when she comes back from her vacation she does feel a lot more in touch with herself. the problem is that what she sees there (dissatisfied with her work-life balance, worn out, starting to confront her internalized homophobia) freaks her out. so she kind of has a crisis and hacks her hair off with a pair of scissors in the middle of the night and then looks in the mirror like. oh GOD. what did i DO??? oh god oh fuck who do i know who can fix this and won't ask me questions if i say i don't wanna talk about it hhghnggrhgnn...

so she shows up in kansas wearing a beanie at like 1am like kon Please. help. 😭 and she feels So guilty bc he's her ex and he's still kind and loving enough that he does get out of bed despite having an early morning with farm chores, and then he's all sleepily shuffling to the bathroom with her like here. sit. i'll fix your bangs. jeez. and the vibes are so... you know. bathroom light late at night spilling into the hallway. he's cutting her hair. krypto is peering at them from the doorway like why the fuck are you awake. cassie's on the verge of tears bc she wants to tell him why she did this but she's terrified it'd hurt him if she was like i think i was never actually in love with you

but when she finally says it he just stares at her. and then stares at her some more. and then he starts? laughing?? and at first she's kind of hurt like uh. that was serious and also pretty hard to say, what's so funny. and hes just almost in tears holding her hands in the bathroom by the sink like. cassie. ive been so scared of telling you i think im gay. for like. 3 months now. cassie i hooked up with an alien several weeks ago and i had a whole crisis i just refused to tell anyone about. um. yeah. and she's like. YOU WHAT? ALIEN HOOKUP? CONNER KENT? and hes like NOOOO WE ARENT TALKING ABOUT IT. YOURE A LESBIAN LETS TALK ABOUT THAT. but its like. oh! and they click back into place as best friends instead so much more easily than they ever dated. it's about the late night catharsis of it all.

this is a lot of words to say that after this i think she embraces the short hair and starts leaning into masc presentation again. i am a butch cassie truther for LIFE. get that girl some cargo shorts and a carabiner for her lasso STAT. i'm talking those truly heinous cargo pants that unzip at the knees to become shorts. formal cassie rocks the blazer with a bra underneath look. cassie lingerie is a tank top with no bra. she's butch to the bone baybee

as for her adult hero name, i still kinda waffle about it but i've Tentatively settled on "xenia"!! it's taken from one of zeus's epithets and has to do with hospitality, kindness, and the protection of strangers (yknow those rules about breaking bread with strangers etc, those are also called xenia). the og meaning had to do with the idea that a stranger could be a god in disguise so you should always honor strangers, but i think cassie would do a sort of converse of that with it, like i've got the power and i'm gonna use it to protect people i don't know, not for the idea of a boon but because it's who i am. still potentially workshopping this, though.

[bizaar]

Cruel Summer - Part 9

First - Previous - Next

pairings: Eddie Munson x fem!reader

summary: After breaking up, you and Eddie do your best to soldier on with your lives, but you slowly begin to discover that there is a stronger line of connection keeping you together than just history…

word count: 11k

warnings: swearing, descriptions of Chrissy's death, fluff, slight angst, awkward situations/second-hand embarrassment (lmao but honestly some people need it)

A.N.: Part 9 is here baybee! Now that the honeymoon phase is passed we're gonna get some questions answered whether we like it or not -- also? don't ask me why like half of the taglist is refusing to work, I hate technology :|

You hadn’t planned on falling asleep, but the overall stress of the day added to a lack of any kind of proper sleep the night before had lulled you into a false sense of security and sleep’s gravitational pull.

You were out before you’d even realized you were dozing — the press of a hand gently shaking your shoulder jolts you into waking.

It’s dark now, and for half a terrifying moment, you have no idea where you are, pushing up and glancing around the room with your head on a bleary-eyed swivel. There is only the faintest light shining in from elsewhere, casting strange shadows, illuminating the unfamiliar room and all its furnishings in an uneven amber glow.

There is a figure kneeling on the dingy carpet in front of you, but you don’t have time to be scared before his familiar features come into focus and everything comes rushing back to you – the shag rug, the dark green walls, the outdated seventies furniture – Rick’s place on Lover’s Lake.

That’s where you’d found Eddie.

You feel your heart thump in your chest at the realization and use it to anchor yourself to the moment, to him, kneeling in front of you.

You breathe a marked sigh of relief and sink back into the dingy couch cushions as Eddie reaches up to tuck a stray lock of hair back from where it has fallen into your face. 

“Hey, sleepyhead,” he says softly.

You reciprocate the greeting, mumbling it as you crush a fist into your eye to wipe the sleep from it.

Somewhere in the very far back of your mind, you’re reeling with how exceedingly gross it is to know that you’d been sleeping on Rick’s couch.

You don’t want to know what kind of disgusting secrets are lurking beneath the cushions where you’re currently sitting, but you’re not even really thinking about it — you’re too busy looking at Eddie, all dark eyes, long lashes, and messy curls that you can’t help but instinctively reach out to smooth down.

His eyes are puffy and red-rimmed, and his clothes are dirty and pulled out of shape, but he looks happy, incandescently so, with the same big lazy smile spread across his face that always warms your insides.

He’s a wreck, and he’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen, though most importantly, you can’t believe he’s actually here. 

Part of you had been so certain you’d imagined the whole thing – finding him here, wrapping yourself up in his arms, kissing him breathless – how many times have you dreamt some version of this exact scenario over the past eight months? How badly had you wished it would be as easy as that, to simply stumble upon him like he’d just been sitting around all this time, waiting for you to find him?

Of course, you have to remind yourself that it actually hadn’t been “that easy”, not in the slightest, and you have to subtly pinch yourself just to make sure you aren’t still dreaming. 

The location does nothing to help because honestly, Rick’s place? Of all the places in Hawkins — in the world, really, it makes perfect sense he’d be here, considering it’s the last place you would ever think to look, and you feel rather stupid about that.

“What time is it?” you rasp.

“Quarter to seven.” 

His answer leaves you a little more than dumbfounded.

So much for your grab-and-go mission.

“Jesus.” You yawn, body trembling as you stretch your limbs to the furthest point of their reach.

“Yeah, you were dead to the world there for a minute, Sweetheart.” Eddie hums.

You can feel yourself pulling a face, one that Eddie mirrors, pushing his lower lip out in a gentle, pouting mockery of you.

“Hungry?” He asks, patting your knee as he stand, “I made dinner.”

You watch him retreating back to the light in the other room, and quickly come to realize that it is the kitchen. 

There is a little table and several mismatched chairs sitting together just past the doorway, illuminated by a bare, incandescent bulb hanging from the ceiling and casting harsh shadows. 

You can’t imagine what could possibly constitute “dinner” under these circumstances, but the pervasive growling of your stomach betrays your wariness of anything prepared in the meth lab that is Rick’s kitchen, so you push up on stiff legs and follow Eddie across the worn shag carpet to the other room, hugging yourself tightly as you go. 

“Is it a good idea to have that light on?” You ask warily, suddenly recalling hearing something about Rick’s most recent arrest, “What if somebody sees?”

“Don’t worry, we’ll be careful.” Eddie calls from the other room, you stop short as he pokes his head out to give you a wry look, “Unless you’d rather sit around in the dark?” 

He’s gone again in an instant, leaving you chewing your lower lip. 

You really wouldn't, considering Rick’s house is creepy enough in broad daylight, but you don’t have to tell Eddie that. 

Your sneakers make soft sounds on the stained linoleum as you cross the threshold from carpet to kitchen, where you find Eddie standing at the stove, stirring something sticky in a dented silver pot. 

For half a moment, it’s all you can do but stare at the broad form of his back, the stark familiarity of him, standing there cooking as casually as if the stove were his own. 

You can hardly wrap your head around it, suddenly being here in the same room like nothing ever changed. Strange as it is, it fills you with a calming sense of contentment that is almost enough to make you forget the time you’ve spent without him — then he twists at the waist to look back at you over his shoulder, licking his lips where he’d just tasted whatever it is he’s cooking, and he smiles that same old lopsided grin.

It hits you like a bolt to the chest. 

He’s here… he’s really here.  

You move before your mind can catch up, and whatever it was Eddie was starting to say is cut off with a harsh grunt as your body collides firmly with his. You snake your arms around him and hug him back tightly into your chest and breathe a contented sigh, pressing your cheek into the space between his shoulder blades.

You feel his hand come up to rest over yours instantaneously, and for a moment you both just stand there, holding one another, swaying ever so slightly to your own circadian rhythms. 

“You okay?” Eddie asks softly after you breathe out another one of those long sighs. 

You would tell him you’re fine, happy even, incandescently so, but there is an inexplicable lump of emotion forming in your throat, rendering you momentarily speechless. 

When you don’t answer right away, he tries to turn to look at you. You press tighter against him because suddenly you’re just about ready to cry. 

“I missed you so much,” your voice is tight and thankfully muffled against layers of denim and leather, but you can feel the gentle rumble of his own contented sigh rolling through Eddie’s body and into yours. 

“Yeah — yeah, I missed you too, Baby… God, you have no idea...” 

You’d expect the reciprocation of the notion to fill you with a happy emotion, like some kind of wonderful relief, but for some reason, it fills you instead with memories of the previous summer’s grief, and it makes the knot in your throat swell painfully.

All that pain and misery and he’s just been sitting around missing you too? It doesn’t make you feel any kind of happy emotion, in fact, it makes you feel terrible. 

A heavy silence fills the room, bringing with it a tangible weight. He feels it as sure as you do. 

“Hey, come on — what’s the matter?” Eddie asks, and you can’t help but get stuck on the harsh breath you’d been trying to steady yourself with.

“Nothing,” you lie, propping your chin up on his shoulder, “…it’s just — what happened to us, Eds? Why’d you shut me out like that?”

You feel him tense ever so slightly beneath your touch, and very quickly he turns his attention back to the stovetop. 

“Nothing happened…” he mumbles.

“Then why’d we break up?” You press, jerking him back and jostling him like you intend to try and shake it out of him. 

He sighs, slow and shaky like he’s been anticipating you asking him that question — dreading it. 

“I don’t know…” Eddie shakes his head, causing his shaggy curls to dance across his shoulders and tickle your nose where you’re leaning on him, “It was just a lot of change really fast and I couldn’t get out of my head over it. I guess I freaked out.”

Your mind rejects the answer and you bristle against the growing tension you can feel bleeding into the room — suddenly and infuriatingly, you can’t get Steve’s maddeningly condescending tone out of your head. 

Oh, you freaked out? Is that what we’re calling it?

“Nothing changed.” You huff. 

“You graduated,” Eddie insists, turning his head to look at you – you glower at him over his shoulder but he continues before you can object, “I didn’t … and suddenly everything was so different, I got scared that things were never gonna be like they were … just you ‘n me, you know?”.

“No, I don’t know…” you press, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Eddie, what was different?”

“You were.” He says flatly, like he hates to admit it.

It hits you like a slap to the face and you can’t help but recoil from it ever so slightly. 

“Me?” You choke. 

“I know you didn’t mean anything by it, but it was like all of the sudden I wasn’t important to you, and … fuck, I don’t know… it hurt my feelings.” 

The feeling is mutual, and suddenly you feel a heady defiance rising up to replace the knot in your throat.

“That’s stupid.” You mutter sullenly, petulantly even, because how could Eddie ever be anything but important to you? He should know that, but the sentiment strikes a chord in him.

“Is it?” He bites, “The way you kept blowing me off to hang out with your old friends…what was I supposed to think?”

He says it like it’s a dirty word, and you can’t even manage to get your feelings hurt over it, because, despite the venom in his tone (which you don’t appreciate) he’s right — you knew he wasn’t graduating, and you knew he was upset about it, even if he never said so. 

You suppose if you really wanted to be obtuse, you could make the argument that he never brought it up because Eddie has always been a chronically bad communicator of his feelings, so how could you have possibly known anything was wrong?

But then again, you always know when something is wrong, and you chose not to ask him about it in favor of wrapping yourself up in the preparations for your own graduation – not out of some malicious selfishness so much as careless oversight – and the subject went entirely ignored as a result. 

You would tell him that you’d only been hanging out with your old friends because he was acting so weirdly distant and ignoring you, but you can’t muster the fight.

In an instant, all the defiance goes out of you, replaced this time by a sickly sense of understanding.

All this time you’d been stuck feeling sorry for yourself over how Eddie had pulled away from you, shut you out, you realize much too late that from his perspective it must have seemed like you’d done it first. 

It makes your chest hurt to think how self-centered you’d been – maybe your initial instinct about the breakup had been right, maybe it was all your fault.

Eddie clears his throat then and makes a soft, defeated sound that shoots you full of holes.

“I dunno… I guess I figured you were finally getting sick of me or something…” He sniffs.

“What do you mean finally? …Eddie—”

He is quick to continue before you can finish, giving a lopsided shrug that he uses to mask the way he wipes his cheek on his shoulder.

“No big deal,” He says unevenly, clearly struggling to mask the tremble in his voice. “Bound to happen eventually.” 

Oh, Eddie… your poor sweet boy… 

You hug him a little tighter.

“No, it’s not,” you insist, “… I’m so sorry I made you feel that way.” 

He hums out his answer, a gentle laugh that has his smile faltering ever so slightly.

You press a kiss to his neck and nuzzle him there. Eddie leans into your touch and chuckles. 

“…I wish you would have said something.” You sigh.

“Yeah, well, you know me, I’m stupid.”

Then you grit your teeth and poke him hard in the ribs.   

“No, you’re not,” you growl. 

Eddie flinches against the jab and laughs out loud, and you don’t even manage to feel bad about it because as much as you know he hates to be tickled, he knows how much you hate it when he self-deprecates like that.

“Take it back, Munson.” 

“Okay, okay, I take it back — go sit down, will you? The food’s gonna get cold.”

You don’t immediately release him though, as the thought of staying like this and holding him a little longer is suddenly much more appealing than food. 

When you linger too long, Eddie says your name firmly, in a way that you suppose is meant to be a warning, if not without a good dose of humor. 

You heave a moody sigh and relent, releasing him and retreating to the little dining table – though not so little as the one back at the trailer. You sink into one of the rickety folding chairs, tucking your hands between your thighs, and pulling your shoulders up to your ears as you watch Eddie put the finishing touches on your meal with a dramatic flourish that sends salt scattering to every corner of the kitchen.

“What did you make?” You ask. 

You hadn’t been able to see into the pot over the slope of his shoulder and now curiosity gnawing at you. He turns and triumphantly reveals the slimy contents of the pot and you feel your stomach clench.   

Spaghetti-o’s. 

You don’t know why you expected anything different considering Eddie’s culinary skills are expressly limited to: microwaving leftovers, boiling water for top ramen, and throwing a can of condensed bullshit into a pot. 

Still, you wrinkle your nose and make a harsh sound of disgust in the back of your throat.

“Oh, don’t give me that. Beggars can’t be choosers,” He chides you, “You wanna eat or not?”

You eye him warily, biting your cheek and hating yourself for even considering it. 

Sure, Eddie’s going to eat it too, but he is like a raccoon. He’s lived so long off of processed foods and junk that his stomach lining has since turned to steel, so he can eat most anything and not bat an eye. Your stomach, however, is not so strong, and it is cramping with memories of a particularly intense bout of Spaghetti-o-induced food poisoning – still, you haven’t eaten all day…

Eddie tips the pot and shakes it at you in a way you imagine is meant to be tantalizing, and in spite of your better judgment, you nod sullenly. 

He rewards you for it by filling your plate with a wet smack of sticky o’s, sauce, and freeze-dried meatballs. 

Fantastic. 

Eddie falls into the seat across from you and sets the pot down onto the woven trivet sitting on the placemat in front of him – you’re surprised that Rick has even got amenities like trivets floating around in his kitchen, or placemats for that matter. 

You watch as Eddie immediately tucks in with the wooden serving spoon which, you can’t help but note, is almost too large for his mouth, stuffing his face like it’s his last meal. 

Your attention does not go unnoticed.

“What?” He barely manages to get the word out through the mouth full of processed pasta he’s got, his face smeared in a Glaswegian smile of sticky red sauce.

“You’re not even gonna use a plate?” 

Eddie levels you with a blank stare as he chews, like he’s really got to think it over. Then, after a moment of contemplation, he swallows, wipes his mouth on the back of his hand, and extends it to you across the table.

“Hi, I’m Eddie, nice to meet you.” 

You smack his hand away and roll your eyes — eight short months, and somehow you’ve forgotten just who it is you’re talking to? You’re a fool. 

Eddie breathes an airy laugh through his nose and you can’t help but try and suppress your own smile at the bizarreness of the situation you’ve found yourself in, eating Spaghetti-o’s in Rick Lipton’s kitchen like you haven’t got a care in the world. 

Once again, you are struck with how it’s like nothing has changed, sitting across from Eddie and sharing a meal like this. It’s familiar in the most comforting way, despite the circumstances.

If you closed your eyes, you could almost imagine you were back at the trailer, sitting together at the littler-than-this-one dining table after a long day, unable to decide if you were more disgusted or amused by the painfully audible smacking and slurping of Eddie’s eating habits.

He finishes the pot in record time, then furrows his brow and gestures to your untouched plate.

“You’re not gonna eat?” He asks, tongue darting out to lick the excess sauce from where it is smeared across his face.

You shake your head, deciding in an instant that you can stand to sustain your hunger a little longer.

“You can have it.”

“You sure?” though he doesn’t wait for you to answer before he drags the dish back towards himself.   

You give him a pointed look, to which he shrugs and sets himself to the task of inhaling his second helping. 

You avert your gaze and turn a wandering eye on the dingy little room, taking in Rick’s knickknacks, what few of them he has.

It’s sparse and messy and makes you miss the comfort of the trailer’s clutter, all of Wayne’s mugs and hats and keepsakes… the treasured Garfield mug that you had won the highest honor of being allowed to use, much to Eddie’s complete and total outrage (he is not allowed to do much more than look at that mug because of his tendency towards dropping anything and everything that passes through his hands.) 

You wonder with a quiet despair how much of the clutter is still there and how much will be impounded as evidence. 

Then suddenly, much to your despair, you can’t stop picturing the trailer the last way you’d seen it, cordoned off with police tape, harboring the ruined, twisted body of Chrissy.

You feel your stomach heave and have to resist the urge to press the heels of your palms into your eyes until you see stars like you’re half afraid they’re going to fall out of your head – like Chrissy’s had. 

You can’t stop your brain from going around and around in a desperate attempt to fill in the blank as to what could have possibly happened to her. 

You know you’re never going to be able to stop yourself from thinking about it, and it’s going to drive you insane. As much as you hate to bring it up, you have to know what happened to Chrissy…

You watch Eddie carefully, fully entrenched in the task of filling his stomach and blissfully unaware of how you are about to ruin his evening.

“Eds…” You start slowly, chewing nervously at your thumbnail, “Can I ask you a question?”

He hums absently in response but doesn’t look up, still too busy shoveling Spaghetti-o’s into his mouth, one spoonful after another. 

You hesitate, and the prolonged silence is enough to finally make Eddie glance up at you through the thrush of his dark lashes. He’s licking his lips again, looking so painfully boyish as you watch the shadow of anxiety creep in to shroud his features.   

You bite the inside of your cheek and watch him watching you, fruitlessly wracking your brain for the most diplomatic way to ask.

Only there is no easy way to ask about something like this, so you just ask.

“...What happened to Chrissy?” 

He flinches and instantly breathes out a harsh, shaky breath, almost as if you’d socked him in the stomach with the question.  

Eddie drops the spoon into the dish with a muffled clang and pushes back in his chair like he’s suddenly lost his appetite, and for a very long moment, he is a sphinx, completely and utterly unreadable. 

It makes your insides squirm with unease as you watch him fidget. The tip of his pink tongue darts out to sweep across his lips as he averts his gaze, he twists the clunky silver ring on his middle finger and clears his throat. 

It’s nearer to half a minute before he finally answers, though only after being prompted a second time.

“Eddie…?” 

“She didn’t – it wasn’t – I don’t know,” Eddie quickly shakes his head and starts picking at a flakey piece of laminate, curling up from the tabletop. “I don’t know what happened to her.”

You feel something sink inside of you to be so summarily dismissed.

“Okay…” You say carefully, suddenly afraid you’ll say the wrong thing and cause him to shut down completely – you hate to do it, but you have to know, “Well… can I ask what she was doing at your place?”

His head snaps to attention and you watch color bleed into his cheeks in a hot flush, almost like you’ve just accused him of something untoward – or maybe more like you’ve just caught him – you banish the thought before it can finish forming. 

He sits gawking at you, wide-eyed like he cannot possibly imagine how you could know that Chrissy had died in the middle of his living room. You try to smile, almost apologetically, but you only manage to press your mouth into a tight horizontal slit.

“It’s the first place I went looking for you…” You explain, offering him a lopsided shrug, “I…Christ – I saw her, Eds.” 

“You saw her?”

You nod, chewing your lower lip and hating how it feels like an admission of guilt, like you’d been intruding on something that you were not meant to see – which is to say a literal crime scene – but you hate even more the way it forces Eddie to move to defend himself. 

“I didn’t do that to her.” He says immediately.

You barely let him finish before you’re leaning across the table and shaking your head, desperate to assure him that you don’t assume that for a second

“I know,” You say immediately, “Believe me, I know … but –” He’s watching you warily now, like he doesn’t trust you and it makes your insides twist in on themselves, you have to take a deep, steadying breath before you can continue. “… Eds, I just need to know what happened. I need you to help me understand.”

Eddie hesitates a moment before scrubbing at his face with his hand. He slumps back in his seat and swears harshly under his breath, then lingers in a long silence like he’s trying to decide what to say.

You, in turn, sit and wait with what you tell yourself is an infinite well of patience and not a bundle of nerves perched on the literal edge of your seat.  

“She just…” He starts before stopping again. “Nothing happened, okay? Between me and ... and Chrissy?” He insists, leveling you with an edgy look and turning his hands over on the tabletop like he means to show you he’s got nothing to hide. “I need you to understand that before we go any further..."

You feel your heart begin to palpitate. It wasn’t what you’d meant in asking him what had happened, but it doesn’t shock you any less.

"Okay..." You say slowly, unevenly, suddenly unable to stop hearing Gareth's words about whatever Eddie did with Chrissy...

It seems to put him at ease, at least a little bit, and you're not entirely sure what that means.

"She only came over to buy..." He says firmly, "I swear."

You can't help but choke a little on that tidbit of information.

“Chrissy?”

Eddie nods.

It takes all your willpower to suppress the hard scoff of bitter laughter bubbling up in your throat because you can hardly imagine soft-spoken, sweet, angelic Chrissy so much as speaking to Eddie without bursting into flames or something, let alone soliciting drugs from him. 

“Chrissy Cunningham wanted to buy drugs... from you?” Your tone is much harsher than you’d intended, but there is nothing you can do to suppress the biting edge of cold jealousy creeping in on you. 

It’s stupid to be jealous of a dead girl, you remind yourself, but you can’t help it. 

Eddie nods again, slower this time, and you can’t decide how you are supposed to react to this information, considering the recessed part of your brain that has been subtly attempting to drive you crazy wondering what they were doing together last night. 

He’s not even technically your boyfriend anymore… so why does it feel like he just told you he’d cheated on you?

You don’t know how you feel, so you tell yourself you’re relieved, because at least now you know she wasn’t there to fuck him, which, in the grand scheme of things, would have somehow been more believable than the concept of Chrissy soliciting drugs from Eddie. 

Still, you can feel your face flushing bright and hot with stress as your mind turns the argument over and over, asking yourself did he? All the while simultaneously assuring yourself that he didn’t—wouldn’t. Would he? 

You grit your teeth against the conflicting voices as a louder thought shoulders its way to the front of your mind – one tiny little detail screaming at you to tell you it doesn’t make sense.

“… So… why couldn’t you just sell to her out of the back of your van like you do with everybody else? Why’d she have to come over?” 

Eddie fidgets with his fingers and shrugs, and you feel your stomach tighten as you realize he’s actively avoiding looking at you. 

“She wanted pills because she said she couldn’t sleep – nightmares or something, I don’t know.”

You’re suddenly — unhelpfully — reminded of a conversation you’d had with a particularly snotty ex-friend one afternoon at lunch in your tenth-grade year, back when the extent of your interactions with Eddie was strictly limited to stealing shy glances at one another across the lunch room. 

“Oh gross, are you swapping eyes with the Freak?” She’d scoffed when she twisted around to see who it was holding your rapt attention. 

You’d quickly muttered an excuse about just being friendly and fixed your gaze on your lunch, blushing under the heat of your friend’s calculated gaze — and then she’d leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially to you. 

“You know I heard he’ll trade weed for head,” and you’d nearly choked when she continued. “I’ll bet if you let him fuck you in the back of his van he’ll give us some blow,”

You’d gone on to learn that Eddie did not, in fact, sell cocaine — just weed and pills, he’d assured you — and you never asked him whether the rumors were true about trading his stock for sexual favors. In the grand scheme of things you didn’t care if they were, but now you can’t stop thinking about what Jeff had told you about the last he’d seen of Eddie — headed out to his van with Chrissy… 

You can’t get out of your head over it. 

“…So you brought her home?”

His eyes widen in alarm as you can only assume he has finally come to realize how this all sounds. 

“No — it wasn’t like that, I swear — Sweetheart, come on, you know I don’t carry pills around – you know that.”

You do know that. Very well in fact — still, you have to bite the inside of your lip to keep from asking the terrible question your psyche keeps poking you with: did you fuck her? Or perhaps rather, were you planning to fuck her? 

Stop it stop it stop it stop–

“…So she came over, but I couldn’t find my stash – the place is always a fuckin mess, I mean… you know how it is –”

You wish he would stop telling you what you know and cut to the chase. You make yourself nod because Eddie is giving you this strange, sidelong look that you can’t decipher, and you want him to know you’re listening, despite the way your brain is busy tearing itself in half. 

“...And I wasn’t even gone a minute, but when I came back she was just standing there, like – like she was hypnotized or possessed or something.”

You can feel a cold dread creeping in on your chest, like icy fingers closing around your heart as your dream comes rushing back to you. 

“And I was shaking her, trying to get her to come back, but she wouldn’t wake up… she just wouldn’t wake up… and then the lights started going on and off. Flickering like… like it was a goddamn horror movie or something… and then she –”

Eddie’s voice hitches and goes tight as you watch the color drain from his face and his eyes glaze over like he’s reliving the moment — you’re doing your best to keep yourself from reliving it too – the ubiquitous cracking of bones snapping up out of place, eyes being wrenched back into their sockets. 

You fail to suppress a shudder, but thankfully Eddie is too far off in his own head to notice.

His hands are shaking where they’re still turned up against the cracked and stained tabletop, his rings clinking ever so softly against each other.

Absently, you reach across the table to steady them, if only as a force of habit.

In spite of your fears and what your mind is telling you he did or didn’t do, you remind yourself that whatever happened was traumatic enough to send him running for his life, and whatever happened, he deserves the chance to explain himself.

This is about Chrissy and how she ended up like that, not whether she slept with your boyfriend — ex-boyfriend— before it happened. 

“One minute she was fine and then she wasn’t moving and I tried to get her to come back but – I swear to God, you’re gonna think I’m crazy – she started fucking floating…” 

It makes you feel sick, and you still can’t pinpoint exactly why – maybe because some irrational part of your brain had been holding out on a hope that it had only been a terrible dream, that maybe you were experiencing a weird but brief bout of insanity that was bound to pass, that none of this was real. 

“…Floating,” you hum, your frustration with the situation causing you to inadvertently sound skeptical of the whole thing.

You watch in horror as Eddie’s face contorts with disappointment.

“...Oh, Christ… you don’t believe me, do you?”

You try to suppress the spike of anxiety it sends lancing through your midsection – shit, fuck – because this was exactly what you had been worried about. 

“Hey, no, that's not what I –” You start, attempting to try and backpedal, but Eddie is already shaking his head, like he cannot believe what he’s hearing, like somehow you’ve betrayed him.

“Jesus – you think I’m making this up?” He asks, his voice lilting with despair. “Why would I lie about something like this?”

“You wouldn’t.”

“What, you think I cheated on you and now I’m lying to cover my own ass?” Saying it out loud only serves to convince him that it’s exactly what you think, “Are you fucking kidding me?”

All the jealousy and paranoia goes out of you as your heart beats erratically with the need to fix this before it goes too far.

“Eddie, please, just listen–” You press, but he cuts you off.

“No, stop it— don’t do that —I know how crazy this sounds, okay? I get it, but that’s what happened and nobody is going to fucking believe me because it’s so goddamn crazy!” He cries, fisting his hands in his hair and hanging his head. 

You could kick yourself for how spectacularly you’d fucked this up, but you’re afraid to say anything to try and smooth it over for fear of only making it worse, so you sit and hold your breath and wait for Eddie to react first. 

You listen to him breathe, a harsh in and out punctuated by flushed, simmering emotion threatening to boil over. 

It’s a long time before Eddie comes down again enough to come out from where he is hiding behind his hands. His face is flushed and he sniffles, wiping the back of his hand across his nose before he makes himself take a deep, steadying breath. 

“Why are we even talking about this?” He huffs. “Seriously, what have I ever done to make you think I could cheat on you?”

You fidget anxiously in your seat, trying to decide how to explain yourself, and decide in the last moment to shift the blame a little – it’s not untrue, after all.

You give an uneven shrug. 

“Jeff told me he saw you getting in the van with Chrissy and I guess I let myself go a little crazy over it …”

He makes a harsh sound and rolls his eyes. 

“Fucking, Jeff — you know he was probably just trying to make you jealous, right?”

“Yeah… guess it worked…” You mutter, trying and failing to hum out a humorless laugh. “It was stupid… sorry.”

Eddie just shakes his head. His voice is thick and he barely manages to keep it from trembling as he speaks.  

“Baby, I promise, I’m telling you the truth,” He insists, “Chrissy came over to buy pills. That’s it. Okay? I didn’t kiss her, I didn’t fuck her — she didn’t even sit down, Man. Nothing. Happened.”

Only something did happen last night, and Eddie knows that as well as you do. He rolls his eyes and moves like he’s going to cover his face again before stopping himself, “Jesus — nothing except…” He trails off. 

He can’t say it, but he doesn’t have to. Nothing happened except that she died. 

You set your jaw and try again to smile, deciding in an instant that it’s enough and that you can set aside any jealousy or suspicion or any of those other ugly feelings – you can be angry about it after this is all over if you still need to, but for now, you’re on Team Eddie, no matter what.

“Okay,” You say simply, “I believe you.”

Eddie gives you a flat look and tucks his arms that much tighter over his chest. You watch his jaw flex as he considers it. 

“What, so it’s just that easy?” he scoffs.

You shrug.

“It can be.”

He shakes his head and sucks his teeth like he doesn’t believe that for a moment and averts his eyes again, electing to turn away and stare off at a point in space rather than look at you.

You don’t know how any of this became your fault — except that you’re a goddamn moron continuing your string of making the worst decisions possible — but if blaming you is what makes Eddie feel better, you’ll shoulder it.  

You sit together then in a tense silence as you try to wrap your head around this whole thing.

It doesn’t make any sense, hypnotic trances and floating up off of the ground, but then again how could something like that happen to a person? More importantly, it’s just like Eddie said, why would he lie about something like that?

He wouldn’t.

Eddie’s a lot of things, but he’s not a liar. You know that for certain, which means this is real, whatever the fuck this is, and you’re both in way over your heads. 

At least you can share in that dilemma together, that is if he’ll still have you after this titanic fuck up. 

Under the table, you push forward to nudge his shin with the toe of your sneaker, offering an apologetic smile when his inky gaze slides over to you. 

“...So, she started floating,” You prompt, “What happened next?”

Eddie heaves a sigh and uncrosses his arms, almost like he’s forgiven you for your perceived lapse of faith. Almost. 

“She started floating…” he gives you a pointed look, like he’s daring you to question it a second time, “...and then —”

He trails off, and for half a second he clenches his jaw as his eyes are wet and shining with tears again, but he swallows the emotion and lets his lids slide shut as he grits his teeth and forces the words out.

“And then that was it." He says, "Then she was gone…”

You know he’d spared you the gruesome details, which your psyche is more than happy to deliver to your inner eye.  

You believe him — not so much that part about Chrissy wanting ketamine— but you have this terrible sinking feeling that it’s not going to be enough, and no one else is going to, no matter what you do.

Even if somehow you miraculously come up with bulletproof evidence, a literal smoking gun, you know it’s still just going to be Eddie’s fault because he’s a Munson and that means the town will have already decided his guilt— that’s why you need to go, get as far away as fast as possible.  

“Okay… obviously that’s a lot to take in, but thank you for being honest… it was really brave of you.”

He snorts bitterly. 

“Not that it’s gonna do any good – I mean, even without my name dragging me down, who in their right mind is gonna believe any of that?”

The complete and utter defeat in his voice is heartbreaking, and you’re suddenly so desperate to snap Eddie out of this pathetic version of himself, this exposed nerve of a person.

You purse your lips and shake your head.

“I wish you would stop feeling so damn sorry for yourself,” You mutter, glancing up to see if Eddie takes the bait of your tough love.

He does, sitting up to blink incredulously at you – you just shrug.

“It’s like I said, we’re gonna figure this out.”

“How?” He sniffs. 

“I don’t know,” you say honestly, “But we will.” 

After a very long moment, nods in a way that makes you think he doesn’t expressly believe that, but there’s nothing he can do about it. 

“…Okay…okay…” he says, almost like he’s trying to convince himself. 

It takes another one of those long, shaky breaths to steady himself enough before Eddie sits up and viciously scrubs his hands over his face. 

He sniffs and clears his throat, and offers you a weak smile, and you feel your insides warm a little. 

“So what now?” he asks.

“Now… we get you as far away from here as fast as we can… don’t ask me how, I haven’t figured it out yet.”

“Well, whatever we do it’s gonna have to be in your car because the van’s gone.” He huffs, gesturing vaguely, “Crashed it in a ditch out near the quarry.”

“You– you crashed?”

“Yeah, it’s totaled. I don’t really wanna talk about it.” He mumbles.

You know you shouldn’t laugh, but you can’t stop yourself from snorting undaintily, and you have to clap your hand over your mouth to keep your cool.  

“Eddie…” You press. 

He gives you an incredulous look, brows furrowing over his eyes as he stares back at you because you’re laughing at him. He just told you he crashed his van in a ditch and you’re literally shaking with the effort to keep yourself from laughing – it’s a losing battle. 

“It’s not funny,” He presses, despite the way you can see him fighting the upturn of his lips. 

It only spurs you on and you grin at him. 

“It’s a little funny.”

“Jesus Christ, you’re such a brat,” He huffs, still fighting to keep himself from smiling as you sit there fully entrenched in a fit of giggles, “I’m fine by the way, thanks for asking.”  

“I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m laughing…” you gasp, breathless from the way your stomach muscles have begun to cramp, “It’s just … God – it’s been a really long day.”

“Really? That's a bummer because my day’s been great.” Eddie says sarcastically, propping his chin up on his fist and drawing aimless circles into the cracked and flaky linoleum. “I mean, clearly you know how fucked my day has been – but anyway, I’m sick of talking about me. How was your day, Dear?”

He folds his hands neatly in front of him when he says it and smirks at you.

You roll your eyes.

“Well, I almost got arrested this morning – it’s a long story, I was looking for you.” you huff when Eddie’s eyebrows jump up to disappear beneath his curly fringe.

Then you remember your little Toyota sitting abandoned in Benny’s parking lot.

“Oh, shit, and my goddamn car died.”

“Shit indeed. That leaves us pretty much stranded.” 

You heave an aggravated groan and wrestle with a strange hope that nobody decides to tow it, despite how useless it is to waste any energy on that kind of thinking, because once you get out you’re never coming back – now you just have to get there.  

“Hey, come on, Sweetheart, take a dose of your own medicine, we’re gonna figure it out, remember?” Eddie teases, gently kicking the toe of your shoe beneath the table. “So, what’s plan B?” 

Good question. You chew the inside of your mouth and wrack your brain for solutions.    

“Well…” You start, “Wayne gave me some money—”

It’s enough to snap Eddie out of whatever is left of his pity party and he perks up to the closest thing you’ve seen to his normal self yet.

“You saw Wayne?” he asks, voice lilting up with surprise.  

You nod. 

“Yeah, this morning,”

Eddie narrows his eyes at you. 

“Before or after you almost got arrested?” 

You can feel yourself pulling a face again as the memory of how foolish you’d been to go barging into a crime scene like that returns to you in full force. 

“After,” you mumble sheepishly, “He kind of, sort of bailed me out.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right.” Eddie hums, deflating a little as he begins to fidget with his rings again – you suppress the urge to reach across and take his hand to make him stop – one of these days he’s gonna break his finger, twisting it like that. “… is he pissed at me?”

You feel your brows come together over your eyes, and you realize a moment too late that you’re more or less glaring at Eddie, but you can’t really help it. 

You can’t imagine why he would even ask you that, how could he ever imagine that Wayne would walk in on what he’d found waiting for him at the trailer that morning and immediately jump to anger?

Fear, sure, for the scene he’d stumbled upon, for the lack of ability to find Eddie afterward and all the hideous possibilities his absence implied, of course, but anger?

You realize with a start that it’s probably how Eddie’s father would have reacted, had he been in Wayne’s shoes.

You don’t know much about the man, there’s a reason Eddie won’t talk about his childhood after all, but you know he is a son of a bitch, wherever he is, and you have to swallow the misplaced anger that realization stirs in you. 

“No, Eddie, Wayne’s not pissed at you. He’s the one who sent me to come find you.” you press, and when he continues staring back at you like a freshly kicked puppy, you dig your hands into your pockets and fish out the crumpled bills.

“Look,” you say, laying them flat on the table between you, “He gave me this and told me to get you out of town… he made me promise I wouldn’t leave you… not that I would anyway … even if you are a jerk.”

In spite of everything, it pulls a short burst of laughter out of Eddie, which leaves the faintest hint of a genuine smile spread across his face.

It’s so good to see him smiling again.

“Aw, man,” he breathes, chuckling softly to himself, “So, I guess you kind of like me, huh?”

You scrunch your nose and feign disinterest as your insides go warm and fuzzy when Eddie looks at you in shades of the same way he’d stolen those shy glances at you from across the lunch room all those years ago. 

You love him so much you can’t stand it, so you shrug.

“You’re alright, I guess.”

Eddie hums thoughtfully, still fidgeting with his fingers.

“That must’ve been weird.” He begins, “Seeing Wayne?”

The question strikes you as odd, and you answer honestly without really thinking.

“Not really,” you say, “I see him all the time.”

Of course, it’s only then that you remember that there is no possible way Eddie could know that, and you feel a strange sense of alarm jump up into your throat when he pulls a face, like you’d let slip a secret you’d sworn never to reveal — only you’re the one who had made Wayne promise not to bring Eddie up in any way shape or form including but not limited to not telling him about your weekly visits.  

He doesn’t get the chance to ask you about it before there is a sudden and violent banging at the front door. 

It sends the pair of you leaping out of your skin. 

Eddie hits the floor as the doorknob begins to rattle, and you jump up out of your seat with enough force to send the chair clattering backward to the ground.

You jump up, much too late, and pull the chair for the overhead light, instantly plunging the both of you into darkness. It draws the attention of the newcomers instantly. 

You hear Eddie say your name frantically from somewhere in the dark and you feel your heart leap up into your throat.

“Go hide!” You hiss but you can’t see well enough to tell whether or not he obeys.

Suddenly, the knocking and rattling are punctuated by voices, most specifically a high drawn-out shouting.

“HELLOOOOO – REEFER RICK! ARE YOU THERE–?”

It takes you a long, terrifying moment to recognize the voice, but when you do you are flooded with relief. 

It’s only Dustin – thank God for that – and he’s not alone.

“Dude… what the hell, don’t just shout that.” Steve hisses. “Have a little discretion, will you?” 

You heave a sigh, clapping your hand to your forehead as you rock back on your heels. The tips of your fingers and toes sting with adrenaline as you rush to the door and whip it open, flooding the room with what little light there is from their flashlights and startling the group of familiar faces just outside.

You’d all but forgotten they were coming, but just like that you suddenly have a Plan B. 

+++

Dustin knows he should be happy considering how miraculously everything fell together.

They found you, and you found Eddie, just like he knew you would.

He knows he should be pleased, but that feeling is hampered by the very small part of him that had begun to hope beyond hope that they would not find the two of you together, that maybe they wouldn’t find Eddie at all and he’d never have to think about the two of you making out in a photo booth in the Starcourt mall ever again. 

And he's unfortunately been thinking about that all day. It's really kind of ruining things for him.

But now here you all are, together, just like he’s wanted all year, and Dustin feels like he’s going to crack a tooth for how tightly he’s clenching his jaw.

You’d whipped the door open and damn near given everyone heart attacks in doing so, hurried them all inside to the weird, dated house that stank of weed and burnt spaghetti, and then promptly realized as you switched the kitchen light back on that Eddie was nowhere to be found.

It set Steve off immediately, much to Dustin’s chagrin. He’d really hoped you two had moved past the bickering, but he was quickly coming to understand that it was probably a fool’s hope.

“Seriously?” Steve snapped, watching you turn in fruitless circles around the house, looking for Eddie, “You had one job here and you lost him?”

“Eddie? Okay, game’s over, you can come out now!” You called, doing a very poor job at hiding the rising anxiety in your voice by calling out in a lilting, sing-song way, “Olly olly oxen free!”

“Steve, come on.” Robin chided quietly, as you slipped into the other room, “Give her a break,” 

“You come on, don’t you think it’s just a little bit ridiculous?” Steve huffed, running a hand through his perfectly coiffed hair, “What kind of babysitter loses the goddamn kid?”

You took the opportunity to come back into the room then, if only to defend your reputation.

“He’s not a kid, okay? He’s a grown-ass person. And I didn’t lose him, thank you very much, I told him to hide when you morons came banging down the door like you were trying to wake the dead.”

“First of all, that moron you’re talking about is all Henderson—”

Dustin did not appreciate the sentiment, but he didn’t have time to stand around complaining about it, so he cut Steve off before he could get really catty about the whole thing.

“Did you guys set up a designated hiding spot or something?” He asked. 

You shook your head, resting your hands on your hips and frowning and you gestured to the room.

“No, but this isn’t a big house. There are only a handful of places he could be.”

That’s what they’d said about Hawkins proper, and it had still taken them hours to stumble upon this lead, but Dustin wasn’t about to start naysaying his own operation, so the party split up and went looking for Eddie — you, Max, and Robin stuck to the house while Steve and Dustin slipped out into the boathouse and promptly found Eddie hiding under a tarp.

Steve nearly lost his head for it.

Dustin froze and stood helpless as Eddie jumped up and slammed Steve against the wall with more force than he would have guessed the metalhead could muster, and thankfully the commotion brought everyone running. 

And then you’d all but tackled Eddie to the ground to pull him off of Steve, which Dustin couldn’t deny was kind of amazing, despite the very tense few moments it took to talk Eddie down after.

The next few minutes were an exercise in patience.

They needed to know Eddie’s side of the story, clearly, so they waited as he explained what happened as best he could. 

Dustin did his best to remain impartial, because regardless of whatever he was currently feeling, Eddie deserved the chance to explain himself. Still, it was very distracting, watching you watch Eddie — looking at him like he was the only person in the goddamn room, and Dustin couldn’t help but get a little bent out of shape over it. 

If anything, it was rude, ignoring everyone else in favor of one person? Certainly very uncharacteristic of you, who always went out of your way to make sure everyone felt included.

This was much more like that weird dopey version of you that existed under the spell of your stupid boyfriend – Dustin had to quickly remind himself to merge the two images, because there was said stupid boyfriend, sitting on the floor of the boathouse, looking like a kicked puppy. Eddie freakin Munson.  

God, he hates this so much. 

And then it was his turn to explain things, which Dustin quite possible hated more than any of it because suddenly he was having to lay it all out there, everything he never told you about the double life he’d been keeping from you over the past few years, about Eleven and the Upsidedown.

You didn’t take it well, because how does anyone take the news that there is another world just beneath your feet full of monsters who periodically violently claw their way up into yours? That everything you think you know about what has happened in your town over the past few years is a conspiracy to keep that world hidden? 

No, you don't take it well at all, particularly when it leads to a bizarrely frank discussion about what they thought could be behind this — some kind of spell caster, Dustin and Eddie collectively decide, Vecna.

You make a harsh sound of disbelief, snapping everyone’s attention to where you stand with your arms crossed and your brows furrowed. 

“I’m sorry, Vecna?” you say, “Like in your stupid D&D game?” 

It hits Dustin like a fist to the gut and suddenly he feels too winded to defend himself, despite the way he tries.

You never thought D&D was stupid before, but he supposes it’s never been anything but a game until now. 

“It’s not stupid—” He insists.

“It’s also not real, Dustin,” You snap, “Something seriously fucked up is happening here and we need to figure out how to deal with it before something arguably worse happens.”

God, you’re mean today.

It’s Steve’s turn to make a snide noise then. 

“Worse than what happened to Chrissy?” He huffs.

Eddie flinches and you bristle, immediately reeling on him. 

“Steve— do not fucking start. I swear to God, you’re only making things worse.”

And just like that you’re back to fighting, the same way you had been in Family Video.

It’s exhausting putting the two of you together, honestly, Dustin doesn’t know how he ever thought you could be friends.

“How the hell am I making things worse?” Steve chokes, “Your boyfriend’s the one who came at me with a bottle.”

Dustin feels his insides heave and go tight at the mention of it, though not as violently as they do as you proceed to perhaps the worst thing anyone can possibly say at a moment like this. 

“He’s not–” you bite the sentence off in an instant, like you only just realized what it is you’re about to say, and more importantly, who you’re about to say it in front of. 

Of course, everyone knows what it is you were about to say.

Strangely, it makes Dustin’s heart seize, because for as jealous he is, he is suddenly very aware of the way Eddie’s head snaps to attention. His brows come together over his eyes in that same hurt look that always makes Dustin feel like he needs to protect him. 

The room grows eerily silent, and you clamp your mouth shut, eyes wide and cheeks burning as you stand stock still.

“Not what?” Steve prods, and Dustin could wring his neck for it. 

For all his good qualities, the worst thing about Steve is how he just can’t leave things where they lie.

“Hello?" he says, making a show of waving his hand in front of your face, "Who’s not what?”

Dustin knows you might have slugged him had you not been so caught up in your dreadful misstep. 

“Nothing, nevermind,” you say, shaking your head dismissively.  

“No, go ahead and say it,” Eddie says then, a little quieter but with no less bite than Steve had – he’s standing behind you, ever so slightly removed from the rest of the group and looking a little too rough around the edges for Dustin’s liking.

You blanch and whip around to face him, shifting your weight from foot to foot as he stares you down, and Dustin resists the urge to put himself between you.

He honestly doesn’t think he could move if his life depended on it, 

“She’s talking about me,” Eddie informs the group, as if everyone didn't already know, then addresses Steve, “– that’s what you said, right? That I came at you? So it’s me…” 

Finally, Eddie turns his gaze back to you and it’s the worst thing Dustin has ever seen, watching someone who knows they’re about to have their heart broken prepare for the worst. It’s like watching a car wreck, terrible and ugly and frightening but you can’t look away. 

Suddenly he doesn’t know who is the bad guy here, who he needs to step in to defend. 

“Eddie, it’s not–” you start, your voice is small and clipped, and you barely manage to squeak the sound out.

He shakes his head slowly, like he doesn’t want to hear whatever excuse you might be drumming up. 

“I’m not what?” Eddie prompts you again. 

“...You’re… you’re not – fuck – you’re not my … my boyfriend.” You stammer, glancing nervously around the room, down to your toes, and then sheepishly back up at Eddie, “You’re not my boyfriend, Eds…”  

Then tension is unbearable, like you finally saying it had sucked all the air out of the room. Even Steve seems to be feeling particularly shitty about this whole exchange.   

Dustin exchanges a tense look with Robin, who looks like she's trying with all her might to shrink into her jacket and disappear.

Somewhere further into the room he hears Max mutter something to the tune of “Yikes”, and he can’t disagree with her.   

For a long moment, nobody says anything, and the silence is a yawning chasm ringing in Dustin’s ears. 

Eddie breathes out hard and rocks back a step, almost as if you'd reached out and stabbed him.

He grits his teeth and pulls a face like he’s trying to smile, and nods.

“...Yeah,” he says, “That’s what I thought you were gonna say,”

“Eddie—”

“I don’t want to hear it.” He snaps in a way that makes Dustin bristle.

You recoil ever so slightly, and he watches a strange, hurt look flash across your face as Eddie turns and stalks to the other side of the room. 

You follow and Dustin’s insides go tight – how did that go so wrong so fast?

He moves like he means to follow you but Robin grabs him by his sleeve and quietly ushers him and the rest of the group back toward the house.

He follows, but he can’t stop looking back over his shoulder, trying to catch one last glimpse of you and Eddie standing huddled in the back of the boat house before the door closes behind him. 

After it's shut, everyone proceeds to stand in a stunned silence, all seeming to share the sentiment that what they just witnessed was painful enough to make them all feel like they’d just been broken up with. Dustin feels like he could vomit. 

“Well, that was excruciating,” Steve mutters. 

Max scoffs from where she’s sunk down onto the couch.

“Only because you didn’t have to listen to them break up the first time,” she says flatly. “By the way, what just happened in there? Totally your fault.”

Steve recoils sharply like she’d socked him in the face and opens his mouth to protest – nothing comes out. He looks to Robin for assistance, but she shuts him down in an instant with a slow shake of her head. 

“Take the credit for that one, Stevie.” She says, “You’ve graduated to wrecking other people’s love lives as well as your own.”

The sentiment seems to hit him hard, as suddenly Steve is sinking down into a particularly ratty-looking armchair and staring off at nothing in particular with the faintest hint of distress masking his features. 

“Jesus Christ, I’m a menace,” he says, a little more than stunned by the information that has suddenly come to light.

Dustin stands watching the door, wondering whether he ought to intrude, play mediator.

That’s what you do when your friends are fighting, right? Mediate, make them come to some sort of agreement, and shake on it? Only it’s not Mike and Lucas fighting in there, and Dustin is suddenly way in over his head. 

Part of his rational mind is telling him that it’s none of his business, he ought to just let the pair of you work out whatever is going on between you, but the rest of him is too muddled with the conundrum of everything he has learned today. 

Eddie broke your heart last summer, so that makes him the enemy, but Dustin is pretty sure he just stood there and watched you break his right back, which is good in terms of the mission to avenge you, but terrible considering Eddie is the object of his current mission – to find him and protect him at all costs, and he just stood there and let you trample him into oblivion. 

Some avenger he is.  

It’s a goddamn mess and Dustin is damn near ready to tear himself apart over it. He knows it’s not his business, but curiosity gets the better of him and before he knows what he’s doing, he’s got his ear pressed to the door. 

He thinks he can hear you saying something, and he certainly hears Eddie raise his voice. Everyone hears it, in fact, and it brings their attention to where Dustin is pressed against the solid core. 

“Dustin – what are you doing?” Steve calls, sounding suddenly very dejected. 

Dustin dismisses him with a wave, but Steve’s admonishment of him is very quickly backed up by Robin. 

“Leave them alone.” she insists. 

Dustin shushes them harshly, he can’t make out what you’re saying, but you’re clearly arguing.

“I’m just trying to make sure they don’t need me to step in!” He hisses, missing the sound of approaching footsteps. 

The door whips open and Dustin staggers forward, very nearly falling flat on his face at your feet. 

You sidestep him without so much as a second glance and storm through the house to disappear down the long hall off of the living room.  

Dustin watches as you go, helpless to do anything but stand there as his insides twist themselves into knots, and then Eddie appears in the doorway, stumbling over his own feet in his attempt to follow and looking exceedingly chagrined as he calls your name. 

Somewhere further into the house, a door slams, rattling the walls and the clutter tacked to them. 

Dustin feels a strange and bitter sense of schadenfreude wash over him as he watches Eddie flinch against the sound and slump back. 

He swears harshly under his breath and pushes his hair out of his eyes. 

“Good job.” Dustin says flatly and prides himself in the way he withstands the dirty look Eddie gives him. “Are we ready to make a plan now? Or do you two want to fight some more.” 

Behind him, Dustin hears the dull rumble of a chorus of disappointed sounds from the rest of the group, but they all get up and file back into the boat house to give you a little space while they discuss the next course of action.

The strange hostility that jumps up in Dustin’s midsection is a bizarre contradiction to the strong pull of friendship he feels toward Eddie, but every time he starts to come back down, he thinks back to the polaroid photo strip he’s still got crumpled in his pocket, and the fire revs up again.  

Over the course of the next twenty minutes, plans are set in motion. Eddie is safe, for the moment — even if he is a stupid jerk — which means Dustin can relax a little.

Now if only he could stop his mind from spinning around in circles wondering just what the hell Eddie must have said to you to make you storm off like that. 

Dustin can’t help but notice the way Eddie keeps glancing at the door every few seconds, like a helpless puppy just waiting for you to come back.

He has to resist the urge to tell him to give it up because you’re not coming back – he really hopes you’ll wise up this time and not come back — but at the same time he is gripped with the urge to sidle up to him, assure him things are gonna work themselves out. 

The conflicting notions are going to drive him crazy.

Dustin snaps his fingers for Eddie’s attention.

“Hey, you wanna do us the courtesy of paying attention while we’re trying to save your life?” he snaps.

Eddie blinks stupidly at him, brows furrowed like he can’t believe his audacity, but Dustin doesn’t wait around to hear what he has to say about it. 

It’s well past midnight by the time the plan is finalized, and you still haven’t emerged from the room you’d shut yourself into.

It had been decided that they’ll go back into town and run their own reconnaissance mission, Eddie will stay put with a walkie-talkie, and everyone will remain in regular contact until they can get a handle on whatever the hell is going on. Now Dustin just has to figure out where you stand with all of that.  

He finds you in the back bedroom, sitting on the floor at the foot of the bed with your legs crossed. It reminds him of the way you used to sit on the floor in his bedroom playing Atari – Dustin wishes you were back there, in happier times before you had to worry about things like stupid boyfriends and monsters and interdimensional spell-casters. 

“Hey,” he calls from the doorway, startling you to attention. 

You sit up a little and offer him a meager smile, though he can tell you’ve been crying what he imagines were angry tears. Your cheeks are streaked with them.

“Hey yourself.” You sniff, quickly brushing any lingering wetness from your face and wiping your nose across the back of your hand. 

Dustin wonders briefly if you’d let him hug you – he contemplates joining you on the floor, but he can hear Steve in the other room rallying the troops.

“We’re headed out, in case you wanna hitch a ride.” Dustin says, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. 

You sit silently for a moment, staring through him rather than at him, then sniff and dismiss the notion with a flippant wave. 

“Nah, I’ll stay.” You say.

It makes his stomach clench. He’d so hoped you would come with them, even if he knows it's better that someone stays to keep tabs on Eddie.

Why does it have to be you? A tiny, nagging voice is crying out from somewhere inside him, though he knows the answer well enough. He’s got photographic proof crumpled up in his pocket. 

“Really? Even after…?” Dustin trails off, unsure of how to really describe what he’d just witnessed as anything but a lover’s quarrel, which he is violently opposed to.

You wrinkle your nose and shrug, smiling for what he thinks must be his benefit. It doesn’t reach your eyes. 

“Yeah…” You mutter, “Somebody’s gotta stay and babysit him. Figure it ought to be me.”

Dustin can hear Steve calling his name from the front room – wheels up, let’s go –  and he hesitates, before venturing to take a step toward you. 

You watch him carefully as he does. 

“You don’t have to, you know.” Dustin assures you, “I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

You force out a quiet chuckle, and the corners of your mouth twitch as your smile begins to fail.

“Of course he will, I’m gonna make sure of it.” You say. 

Steve is honking the horn now, and shouting Dustin’s name, which is completely counterintuitive to everything they just went over about keeping a low profile. 

Christ, he could strangle him. 

“You better go,” you say, gesturing through him toward the car, “Daddy’s callin’.” 

It’s not you saying it though, just like all those other times you said something that was wholly uncharacteristic of you, and entirely your boyfriend.

Eddie, Dustin reminds himself. It’s Eddie.

Just a little too mean for no good reason at all. Somehow it’s a little less jarring to hear, now. 

He’d always wondered how someone could rub off of another person like that, how you could pick up their little phrases, begin to talk like them, but he supposes Eddie is Eddie – his favorite person in the world besides you, of course, he doesn’t know how you could know him and not have him rub off on you, just a little. 

Dustin takes the walkie-talkie from where it is strapped across his shoulders and hands it to you. You take it and turn the clunky device over in your hands, still smiling that hollow smile as you fidget with the dials.

“We’ll be back tomorrow, but in the meantime—”

You don’t let him finish.

“Yessir, call you if we need anything.” You say, making a show of saluting. “Channel two, right?”

“R-right.” he says. 

That’s the frequency he and the party always used before Will moved away, and Dustin is more than a little touched that you would remember.

Of course, then he can hear you chiding him gently, because how could you ever forget? You were a party member, weren’t you? 

“DUSTIN!” Steve shouts from the front yard, “WE ARE LEAVING WITH OR WITHOUT YOU.” 

And then he hears Eddie calling from the front room.

“Henderson, will you get the fuck out of here before he blows a gasket? Jesus Christ!”  

Dustin looks back to see you staring out toward the front room again, frowning, and he feels a sudden desperation pulling at him.

The party doesn’t split up – you should be going with them.

“… You’re sure you don’t wanna come with?” He asks sheepishly, suddenly feeling like that same eight-year-old kid who was so desperate to impress you the first time you babysat.

You roll your eyes and push up to your feet, taking him by the shoulder and leading him to the door.

“Bye Dustin.” You say and shut the door firmly behind him.

Dustin lingers a moment, breathes a deep, steadying breath, then jogs down the hall into the living room.

Eddie is sitting slumped on the couch fidgeting with his fingers – he glances up at Dustin when he feels him staring. 

“I gave her the walkie.” 

“Cool.” Eddie says flatly, and then when Dustin continues to stare at him, “What?” 

“...Be nice to her, okay?” 

Eddie levels him with a dour look and Dustin half expects him to make some kind of snide comment, but he thinks better of it and breathes out a heavy sigh. 

“Okay,” He mutters, sounding more or less defeated.

Dustin turns to leave, then stops short. 

“Are you guys gonna be okay–?” 

He doesn’t let him finish. 

“Bye Dustin,” Eddie says, in a strangely perfect mimicry of you that sets Dustin’s teeth on edge.

It's one thing to hear Eddie speaking through you, but you speaking through Eddie?

Christ, that's just weird...

And then the roar of the engine indicating that Steve is actually trying to leave him behind lights a fire under Dustin's ass.

He whips around and bolts out the door to catch Steve's Mercedes just as it's pulling out of the driveway.

Dustin slides into the back beside Max and barely manages to get his door closed before Steve hits the gas again, ignoring the way he chides him for making everybody wait, and doing his best to suppress just how goddamn stressed he is that things are about to take a turn for the worse. 

taglist: @harrys-tittie , @r-a-d-i-0-n-0-w-h-e-r-e , @itsrainingbisexualfrogs , @thicksexxualtensionaltension , @ganseysgff , @scoopsr0bininn , @pbs-theundeadmaggot , @audhd-dragonautagonaut , @clilxlxx , @alexandriaemily200 , @averagestudent03 , @but-vanessa , @cosmictime45 , @timelordfreya , @forever-war , @munsonzzgf , @chervbs , @irisabrams , @mopeymopeymouse

[swamplatibule]

GREETINGS it is 9:25 PM on a Sunday as i write this. My hands are shaking rn but that’s probably a result of the energy drink that gave me heart palpitations earlier </3 anyway it’s time for

Lantern Eclipse!

Lantern Eclipse takes place in a world that ended a while ago! Roughly 100-odd years ago, a combination of weird mold creatures, magic nature spirits, and good old-fashioned nuclear radiation completely took over, resulting in the destruction of the vast majority of manmade areas! Most major cities have been completely overgrown with mold and megaflora, save for a few “havens” scattered few and far in between.

Don’t @ me i’ve lost track of how many apocalypse paracosms i have and that probably says something about my psyche that I’m not ready to hear

ANYWAY. Our story takes place in one of those havens, called Guardian City, which is mostly known for its massive size, wild amount of neon lights, and also the really intense military organization called the Shepherd Division that runs the place like the navy! Or like. Half of it. There’s also the violet district that takes up maybe a fifth of the city, which is mostly controlled by various mob kingpins, drug lords, etc. technicallyyyyy the Shepherd Divison is supposed to control the area, but they generally let the violet district remain as is in exchange for all their bullshit not spilling over into the “respectable” areas.

Also I feel like i should mention that Guardian City is huge. Like the size of Montana. There’s a massive wall surrounding its border to keep the plants out, but you cannot see that wall from the center of the city

ANYWAY. This is all basic background info. Now it’s meat time baybee

This is one of those stories where there are several separate plots with entirely different casts of characters going on at once, so I’m just going to go over one of them for now because it’s getting late and as previously mentioned my hands are shaking so bad rn

The first person we need to meet is Fairywren Merlo! She was a skater boy <3 Fairywren is my darling dearest who can do no wrong. She’s also a mercenary for hire and has most definitely killed before. She has a sniper rifle, roller skates, autism and a dream!!

^ that would be her in Normal WorldTM i still have yet to decide on her canon outfit

The next person you should know about is Eddie Duncan, who i described in my notesapp as “like if colonel sanders murdered people. Charming in a gross way, like a marginally more evil televangelist with a gun.” Eddie is an INCREDIBLY influential figure within the violet district - he’s rich, he has the Shepherd Division in his pocket, and he’s also incredibly dangerous, so everyone wants to stay on his good side. Do people like him? Depends who you ask. Everyone, however, is scared of him. To be more precise, they’re scared of his “hunting dog,” the silent, nameless masked man who follows his every command. we’ll get back to these two later.

now, fairywren is Good At Her Job. a bit too good at it. she gets a job to kill some random ass guyTM who she’s never heard of, so she does it! very well! EXCEPT turns out that was the son of a very important member of the shepherd guard, and the guy who hired her to kill him has now vanished, leaving her a) unpaid and b) being searched for by the shepherds. uh oh!!

the best solution she can think of is to get out of the city, but she doesn’t have any means of surviving outside the city until she meets Eddie, who brings her and a few other mercenaries along on some Top Secret Project that he’s working on which requires them all to venture outside the city wall and search for some lost artifact he needs. fairywren and the others are mostly just there to kill mold monsters and be human shields for him.

they go the first few days without seeing any trouble aside from the usual freaky wasteland monsters, and then uh oh! they get ambushed by a group looking for that same artifact! and this is where the “hunting dog” i mentioned earlier becomes Very Important!

he is what’s known in Neon Eclipse as a “terror” - an ageless, human-appearing creature that feeds only on human flesh and is nearly impossible to kill! they’re like vampires but. worse <3 I can go into SO much detail about them but i will restrain myself for now because it’s story time. but. anyway. everyone in their party watches him absolutely rip through all of their attackers!

obviously Eddie’s hired guns aren’t too pleased about traveling out in the middle of nowhere with a guy who would 100% eat them if given the chance, but Eddie assures them that he’s entirely under control. see, each terror has a “heart,” usually in the form of some small weird looking stone. If someone else gets their hands on it, then they can use it to force the Terror to do whatever they want! and Eddie keeps the heart of his nameless follower on a cord around his neck!

turns out Eddie and his older brother used to be in the business of researching terrors about 40 years ago! they stumbled upon the one that now follows him everywhere while he was asleep, and Eddie’s brother got a bit too close and. well. oopsie!

but hey he might be down a brother but at least he has Some Fuckin Guy on his side

some shit happens, and one by one, everyone else in the party dies in various terrible ways until it’s only Eddie, Fairywren, and the terror left. Then Eddie finds his artifact! yay! buuuuut he doesn’t want any witnesses so Fairywren has to die </3 alas! She manages to escape - barely - but it’s hard to outrun a terror for a few minutes, let alone forever. Eddie catches up to her within a few days, and things are looking Very Bad for our dear fairywren, who is now face to face with death.

BUT. instead of attempting to fight the terror! fairywren shoots Eddie! she fully expects the terror to kill her after, but seeing as the guy commanding him is now dead, he takes his heart from Eddie’s body and leaves! and also starts laughing, which is the first noise Fairywren has ever heard him make. spooky

Fairywren is now completely lost in the cursed wilderness with no way back! BUT she eventually catches up with our terror friend (who can talk now thanks to not having Eddie forcing him to be quiet anymore) and they get to be friends <3 yippie <3 she also gives him the name Ford (she suggested harrison ford because he’s her favorite actor but our terror friend thought harrison was a dumb name) they’re still lost but at least they don’t have to worry if they’re attacked and she is mostly confident that he probably won’t murder her

n e way! that’s one major story thread written, who even knows how many left to go 😭 yay

taglist: @burningivy @shrimpnymph @diphtheria420 @parasdreams @dremieblur @acircusfullofdemons @daydreaming-memories (lmk if you want to be taken off the taglist pretty please!!)

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

So my last Animal Crossing poll, which Marshal won by a hair, got me thinking. I’d have to BUY Marshal because I don’t have his Amiibo on hand, and that gave me pause. I’ve bought so many AC Amiibo cards already that it almost became an addiction.

But then it hit me: I have a bunch of cards! So instead of spending money, and to make up for the other poll being tossed out, I have a new week-long poll to have you all decide who the REAL last boy on the island will be from out of the cards I have! The winner will join the island after my vacation!

Beneath the cut I will make the case for each of these choices! In addition, here is my current island roster:

Ankha

Barold

Beardo

Cephalobot

Marina

Muffy

Petri

Roscoe

Ruby

Tiansheng

1. Julian is genuinely one of the prettiest smug villagers, as well as one of my favorites overall. He’s a feminine male unicorn with slick style and one of the cooler houses among the mythical creature villagers. Plus I have a perfect spot for his house: A field of flowers on a seaside cliff.

2. Hans was my first smug villager, and has come and gone off my islands more times than I can count. He’s an absolute Chad, a buff yeti boy with style who unironically says “groovy” as his catchphrase. He’d also be a unique animal unlike most other choices.

3. Dobie is the best wolf in the game. He’s a cranky old grandpa, AND he’s a writer (meaning he’s literally me). The only downsides I can think of is I can’t ship his wrinkly ass with anyone, and that my daughter really seems to not like the wolves in this game (they scare her I think).

4. Pietro is da Jokah, baybee! He’s one of the most colorful characters around, and his clown style almost makes up for how awful his house is compared to his house in New Leaf. Almost.

5. I’m not too keen on another jock joining my island (Tiansheng is more than enough), but come on! It’s Kevin Bacon! Plus his catchphrase is “Weeweewee!”

6. Drago needs little elaboration as to why he’s cool: He’s a fat, lazy dragon who likes to eat and whose house looks like a Chinese restaurant. He’d make a good buddy/boyfriend to Tiansheng, I think.

7. Sasha is basically the ultimate femboy twink of the game, and he’s a bunny! He’s also the only male character with the fashion hobby! It is a bit weird hearing the himbo slob dialogue coming out of his mouth, though.

8. The underdog of the bunch. Elvis is the only character I have a card for who has never been on my island. He has a really cool house and he’d be a unique animal (there’s no other lion).

9. I love Cephalobot. I know I’m trying to vote him off, but he is a good buddy and he is cute. I guess I’m not opposed to keeping him for now.

10. There are other villagers I like who I could easily time travel for like Raymond, Chops, or Tucker. This would be first come, first served; whoever I like most that pops up first gets in.

[the-siren-in-your-fridge]

I’m into two musicians who’s fanbases are famous for decoding secret messages and such and the differences between them is absolutely wild because one of them bends over backwards to figure out the next album and they’re almost always wrong OR the “proof” they find is visible from spaces whereas the other one will will take out all the previously proven theories, compare them with new evidence, and come up with not only the next single’s release date but what the album will be about this time based on a couple changed album covers

I am, of course referring to Taylor Swift and Twenty One Pilots

(I don’t consider myself a fandom member of either because they’re both rabid fandoms in different ways and I’m not into that but I’m a long time follower of the music so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ a fan but not a fandom member)

And obligatory: if you’re having fun in a fandom, keep it up! I’m merely comparing accuracy between two fandoms based on what I’ve seen from both. No musician is better than the other or whatever

Taylor Swift’s hints for her next rerelease are so obvious and yet the fandom STILL can’t catch on. She’s on a two year schedule for releasing new music (this was offset by 2020 but since then we’ve gotten new stuff in 2022 and now we’re getting some in 2024) and a two year for rereleasing albums which she tells you she’ll rerelease based on merch/ticket prices. I saw a piece of merch that was $20.10 and I knew we’d get Speak Now TV in 2023 and then 1989 after that. Very easy to pick up on and yet the fandom STILL bases their theories on when we’ll get Reputation TV on how many fingers she holds up at a certain time??? Come on now

But the Twenty One Pilots fandom is not fucking around one bit. Album covers changed? Well based on lore (that I don’t follow because I’m too scared of the intricacies to keep up), we’ll get a new single on February 29th because reasons (I don’t actually know and I’m too scared to know lol) and what did they tell us a few weeks later? Exactly that. They’re on a three year schedule for musical release so naturally when they go on hiatus for a while and then people start getting cryptic letters and finding weird posters around the world, that means the hunt is BACK ON BAYBEE

Idk I just think Taylor Swift’s “conspiracies” are very easy to pick up on but the fandom digs into places they won’t find anything and Twenty One Pilots purposefully makes conspiracies that the fandom is used to and easily decodes. Both yield results that fit the musician’s intention lol

[prince-rowan-of-the-forest]

To Make a Heaven of Hell (6/?)

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After messing up cooking canned soup, Virgil decides maybe he'll try his luck going to a restaurant with some of the others instead.

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Chapter warnings: None as far as I'm aware.

Notes:

It feels like it's been ages - I'm not sure if it actually has or not, or if I'm just imagining time passing again, but hey.

Chapter 6! We're getting new characters next chapter baybee

Just for copywrite sake btw, unless I specify otherwise I did not come up with any place names in this fic lmao. All credit to that goes to Jaysea.

“So,” Emile said sitting Virgil down on a nearby bench, “How’re you finding the Hellp Desk?”

“Oh- uhm- it’s pretty good?” Virgil said, frowning, they hadn’t quite been expecting an interrogation when they got down here, then again, maybe Emile was just curious? “I mean - they’re all really nice? And I’m glad I’m allowed to stay with them - gives me something to do.”

“That’s great! Keeping busy is such fun, and I’ve heard the desk is great for some catharsis too,” Emile winked, Virgil was pretty sure that was referring to beating up pedophiles with spiked bats, but he couldn’t be certain.

“Yeah,” Virgil nodded, “Judy makes great snacks too.”

“Oh her pies are just the best aren’t they?” Emile laughed, “She shares them with us sometimes - oh! So whats your paradise like? Assuming you have one, of course?”

“Oh-” Virgil said, trying to keep himself from visibly recoiling at the question, but already he felt that sick feeling pool back into his stomach, what would Emile think? When he found out that Virgil was still to much of a coward to even approach his door? “I…”

Emile watched him for a moment, face falling, “Oh… are you like Ruggy? A hell-bound soul working for the desk?”

“No- no, I have a paradise I just…” Virgil quickly corrected, before mumbling, “Can’t accept it…”

The demon’s frown turned into something a lot more sympathetic as he patted Virgil on the shoulder - giving him a second to move away before doing so. Virgil accepted the touch just a little stiffly.

“I see, well - we have a lot of souls come through here, ones sent and ones who have paradise,” Emile said, “You’re more thna welcome to come down here to chat whenever you’d like.”

“Really?”

“Sure as sugar’s sweet!” Emile grinned, standing back up, “I gotta get back to work, but I'll see you round?”

“Sure,” Virgil shrugged, Emile winked at him before walking away, tail swaying behind him. 

Well. That was something that just happened. 

Virgil didn’t move from that bench for a long moment - long enough for another one of the demons to stop and ask if he was alright - but eventually he stsod up, ran himself through one of the breathing exercises an old friend had taught him back in the mortal world and walked out of level one as confidently as he could possibly manage.

—-

Another night, a few days later, Virgil had been left alone in Lily’s house once again. She had left a couple things out in the kitchen that he could make up for dinner - and she’d also given him the names of a few decent restaurants and pubs he could go to instead the second night he had stayed with her. 

It was odd, Virgil thought as he attempted to cook up a can of soup using the stove, how quickly he’d adapted to this lifestyle. He wasn’t even so scared of going near the oven now. 

But it was strange, too, because Virgil hadn’t had a parental figure in his life for… a few years, and even when his parents were around they weren’t… good.

They wondered if the relationship they seemed to be gaining with Lily was something like what a parent was supposed to be. At least to a teenager. 

There was no reference point - nothing in his previous life was at all similar to this, especially not his own parents. So this was uncharted territory. Virgil felt a little bit like he was wading through the ocean wearing a blindfold, he had no clue which step would end up with a rock through his foot. 

And he knew he was being overly cautious. Lily wouldn’t hurt him, he knew that now. The old fear was just still there nagging at the back of his mind. 

The soup was… disappointing. Virgil didn’t think you should be able to fuck up canned soup - especially not in paradise, literally all he needed to do was heat it up, but somehow he’d messed it up anyway. They sighed and got rid of the disgusting soup before looking - for the first proper time - at the list of restaurants Lily had stuck to the fridge. 

None of the names were familiar to him - maybe one or two he had heard in passing, but he hadn’t yet been anywhere other than Common Grounds. Going out somewhere would mean good food, but it would also mean eating alone around strangers and potentially getting lost. So, for obvious reasons, Virgil didn’t really want to do that. 

Maybe he didn’t have to go alone, though.

Pulling out their phone, Virgil opened up the groupchat Lily had added him to and contemplated sending a message. 

The groupchat consisted of everyone they knew at the Hellp Desk - as well as a number of users he didn’t know the identities of. He was fairly certain that one of them was Remus’ twin brother, specifically the one with a Disney profile picture with the nickname ‘Your Prince Charming’ who constantly talked about theatre and insulted Remus. Two of the chat members had matching profile pictures (of the angel and demon characters from that one show he’d seen all over tumblr a few months before they died but had never gotten round to watching) and Virgil was fairly certain they were Emile and his husband now that he’d met the demon. 

There were a few users who he couldn’t guess the identities of, though, he assumed they were just more of Lily’s friends and family and tried his best not to throw his phone whenever one of them talked to him. He was used to interacting with people online, it wasn’t that different if he had the very real chance of meeting these people he kept sending dumb memes to in person at some point. 

Currently there were no conversations going on - but it was rare for the groupchat to be quiet for long. Virgil wouldn’t be interrupting anyone if they sent a message, so why were they so nervous about it? Maybe because he’d never been the first to start a conversation here before? Maybe it’s because he was making a request this time, and not just sending a reactive meme or responding to a conversation. 

Virgil took a deep breath and let it out with a shake of their head, this was a non-issue, barely even a problem, not something to be stressed about, just send the damn message. 

<xx4llpanic-nod!scoxx> Hey guys - is anyone around? I wanna get something to eat but don’t wanna go alone ._.

<xx4llpanic-nod!sc0xx> Just wondering if anyone wanted to come with maybe - haven’t decided where yet or anything

<xx4llpanic-nod!sc0xx> I don’t want to get lost

<xx4llpanic-nod!sc0xx> or stared at, yknow. But it’s fine if not no pressure. 

<xx4llpanic-nod!sc0xx> Sorry I’m spamming - i’ll shut up.

Virgil paused in their word vomit, trying to take deep breaths, they’d sent something now and that was great. Now he just had to wait for a response - oh, and he should probably apologise about the smell in Lily’s kitchen. 

<xx4llpanic-nod!sc0xx> Oh, wanted to say sorry abt the smell in ur kitchen @Nearamir I fucked up canned soup. 

<TacoTime> How do you fuck up canned soup??

<Your Prince Charming> I’ve done it.

<TacoTime> Yeah but you’re you, I’m asking how baby V fucked up canned soup.

<xx4llpanic-nod!sc0xx> Literally no idea man idk what to tell u.

<Nickel> Greg and I are spending tonight in my paradise - sorry V! I hope someone will go with you <3 (also, are you okay?)

<xx4llpanic-nod!sc0xx> Other than the crushing weight of eternal existence? I’m fien, soups not tho.

Virgil sighed, unsure if he’d even get a response at this point. They all seemed distracted by the soup disaster, but hey-! Only one person had actually said they couldn’t go so far. Of course, he knew that meant Greg couldn’t either, Lily and Bel were all out doing something too, so they wouldn’t be able to either, which left…. Not many people. Now that he thought about it. 

<TheMonsterUnderUrBed> HEy emo u wanna come w/ me and the front deathk nerd we were gonna register for trivia at luckyleaf if u wanna come n get smth 2 eat??

Virgil sighed in relief, okay, maybe it was Remus - who he wasn’t sure he was comfortable eating around - but Logan would be there too. Seeing him again would be pretty cool, he still needed to say thank you properly for the help when Virgil first arrived. Besides, Logan seemed nice, he wouldn’t mind seeing if they could be friends… Lily had said eternity was better the more friends you made. Virgil thought it would be worth a shot. 

<xx4llpanic-nod!sc0xx> K cool! I’ll tag along - where should I meet u?”

<TheMonsterUnderUrBed> yk tir na nog? meet us in 15?

Virgil sent back a hasty thumbs up before rushing back to his bedroom to find something to wear more appropriate for generally being outside than what he was currently wearing (a cat t-shirt and sweatpants, to be exact). He was fairly certain the gate to Tír na nÓg was just along a hallway he passed on the way to Hell. He just hoped he was remembering right. 

Once he’d changed into something far more appropriate for leaving Lily’s house and fixed his hair, he rushed back out - nearly disturbing Max - and grabbed a bag too, just in case. 

After checking themself over in the mirror, Virgil headed out into the paradise realm. 

Fifteen minutes after seeing Remus’ message, nearly on the dot, Virgil found himself stood waiting outside of the gate to Tír na nÓg, he could actually see the pub Remus had mentioned a little further down the hall, but he’d been told to wait here, so wait here he would. As Virgil waited for Remus to arrive with Logan, he began to wonder if he had actually missed them, or read the message wrong - or gone to the wrong place, maybe. But almost ten minutes later, Remus arrived, bouncing along the corridor with a disgruntled and ruffled looking Logan in tow. 

“Hi!” Remus grinned once they’d stopped in front of him, “Logan, emo, emo, Logan.”

“We’ve met,” Logan said, straightening the tie he wore under a blue diamond patterned sweater vest. Virgil wilted a little at Logan’s harsh tone, did he not want to be here? - or did he not want Virgil here?

“Hi,” Virgil said weakly.

“Hello, Virgil, I’m glad to see you made it out on the right side,” Logan said, tone immediately becoming less harsh, though it still had that same professional air about it - Virgil wondered if Logan was just like that. 

“Yup, I’m glad I’m here too,” Virgil chuckled, “Um…”

“I heard you had taken up a position with Hell’s help desk,” Logan prompted as they began to walk, Remus seemed happy to walk alongside them, humming along to some tune and swinging Logan’s hand - which Logan either hadn’t noticed that bay’d grabbed or didn’t care about. 

“Oh yeah - I uh- Judy introduced me to them and Lily sorta… adopted me, I think,” Virgil chuckled, “Oh wait- Remus?”

“Yesss?” Remus said, letting go of Logan’s hand and turning to walk backwards so xa could look at Virgil, “What’s up?”

“You mentioned signing up for trivia-” Virgil started, before being cut off.

“Oh yeah! I almost forgot! Me and Lo are signing up a team for the trivia!” Remus giggled.

“Yes,” Logan nodded, before noting Virgil’s confusion, “Every month Luckyleaf hosts a large trivia night, in which varied teams will compete, Remus has convinced me to enter a team with him and a few others this month.”

“Oh cool, sounds fun,” Virgil said, smiling, “Who’s on your team?”

“Me, the nerd, obviously, the shark, the intern,” Remus listed off on fizz fingers, “Oh, pinkie-pie and the coffee angel, though we’re one person short.”

Virgil stared in confusion as Remus raised an eyebrow, Logan sighed.

“Remus and I, Sharkie, Dantillian, Emile and his husband Remy, our team is called ‘Logan and the nincompoops.’ which I personally find distasteful but Remus is certain it’s humorous.”

Virgil snorted, “You said you were one person short?”

“Yeahh - we can’t find anyone else who’s chill with just doing this for fun, they’re all too competitive, and I heard Jan was on the Roman deity’s team again so we’re gonna get crushed anyway.”

“I am only doing this because Remus believes it will be funny.” Logan said, “Especially if we somehow do decently.”

“Remus is right, that is funny,” Virgil laughed, “Is anyone allowed to participate?”

“Yeah! Anyone!,” Remus nodded, “Why, d’you wanna?”

Virgil couldn’t help how he blushed and went quiet. He did want to join, a trivia tournament where he wasn’t actually expected to be super smart sounded like a lot of fun, they’d know everyone there - except Emile’s husband, they wondered what he was like - but if Remus didn’t want them…

“You’re welcome to be part of our team, if you would like to join,” Logan followed up on Remus’ comment, “We’d be glad to have you.”

“I’m no good at trivia,” Virgil said, before frowning, “Well - I suppose unless ‘Tumblr trends and holidays’ comes up as a topic.”

Remus snorted, “I mean, maybe, we’ve had some weird shit in there before, but yea, it’s chill - we’re called ‘Logan and the Nincompoops’ for a reason, y’know.”

“Right,” Virgil said, looking around at both of them, Remus looked to be vibrating out of eir skin with excitement, while Logan was more subdued, Virgil could see the hopeful glint in his eyes, “Yeah, sure, I’d love to join.”

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General tags: @full-of-roman-angst-trash @reptilianrapscallion420 @your-local-random-dino @cutebisexualmess @glacierruler @roseianxiety @bella-bugatti-frogetti-baguetti (if anyone wants to be added, let me know!)

Hell's Belles AU tags: @awitchbravestheverge @twoalpacas @goldnskyart @anxious-mess19 @doteddestroyer :)

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[small-artist-oc-showdown]

A collaborative OC story with your partner, huh? Well it looks like YOUR PARTNER’S OC FROM THE SAME STORY IS HERE AS WELL!! SAY HELLO TO @insertsona’s LUCIFER!! He’s ALSO some kind of canine who goes by he/him!

...Oh. Ohhhhh boy. Fun fact, this was the first REALLY long submission I got! Cut time baybee :3

“oh god where do i start. uh. he has a toyhouse here -> https://toyhou.se/17736012.lucifer 

lucifer is a character in my partner and i's collaborative oc story!!! hes the oldest brother of five hes aroace hes my poor little meow meow he even becomes a twitch streamer (canonly)((after he gets better)) 

his introduction to the story is through being spoken about negatively . he casts a shadow over his younger brothers narrative and leaves an aching hole in everyone else's. when he finally makes a physical appearance it only hurts. 

hes a guy who spends so much time trying to forget the past that its arguably all he thinks about. a guy that holds on and doesnt let go even though he wishes he could. a guy that is so pathetic and yet so strong (to me.) a guy that despite his best efforts he is still just like his family and that every decision hes made linked back to how much he Cared. how even though he comes off as cold and distant below that he Cares. he cares so much and it Hurts and its killing him a little and it Scares him. 

he just wants his family to be okay even if he cant be!!!! he wants the best for the people he loves even if that doesnt include him!!!!! he wants things to be okay for the others and hes so scared and . he doesnt know what to do or how he can fix anything and he cant bring himself to think about what already has happened and everything hurts so much and he Hates It and he wants to move on but god he Cant and hes still holding onto an old friendship even after everything even though he wants to hate that old friend and . your honor 

he tries so hard to be strong he tries so hard to keep himself together but he is slowly falling apart . he cut out his own siblings in an act motivated by some twisted concept of protecting them . he cant handle change to the point that change breaks him . but he wants things to change. he wants things to get better. hes tired of this. but he cant handle change. hes tired, hes overworked, hes frustrated, hes falling apart, hes Afraid. hes Afraid, he is Afraid, He Is Afraid.”

Poor guy :[ Why should you vote for him?

“a vote for lucifer is a vote for pathetic men everywhere!!! hes got all the best dynamics . tragic siblings . tragic childhood friends . tragic losses . you name it he has it (tragic edition) . he has soo many issues hes like a wet paper towel . hes my son wet who has every disease he was born in a wet cardboard box all alone do you understand me 

you should vote luci because i am literally obsessed with him and can go on a very long rant about him unprompted . i have a 243 song playlist for him that i still add more songs to . is this anything”

[stepfordgoth]

Sometimes you have a string of frustrations that occur in a short time period and then something else small happens that usually you could laugh off but it ends up being The Last Straw and suddenly all of your frustrations come to a head and you're standing in your driveway trying not to scream at the top of your lungs and scare your neighbors dog. And that's just life baybee.