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#the way everything was resolved i also didn't like
saistappen · 12 hours
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Helpful friend | LN
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Warnings — alcohol
In which you just wanted to help lando
or
In which rules are suddelny broken
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The bass was literally pounding in my ears, while the floor beneath my feet seemed to vibrate more with every step I took.
The lights were dimmed and every now and then a few colorful lights flashed on for a few seconds. It smelled of sweat and alcohol.
Sweaty bodies rubbed against each other so that there was barely room to squeeze past.
My mood slowly hit rock bottom as I tried to get away with saying 'May I? ' which left my mouth in a continuous loop, squeezed past the dancing crowd.
Tonight should actually have been a good night. I was in a club in London with Lando, Aarav, Ria, Niran and Max Fewtrell.
Lando and I had been back in London for a while, where we had bumped into the part of Team Quardrant that we didn't get to see very often.
We had spent the whole afternoon filming a few challenges for the YouTube channel.
Afterwards, we had been driven here to the club, where we wanted to party a little, just like old times.
Everything had gone well at first, until a stranger spilled the contents of his sticky drink on my lap and I had to queue in the long line to the loo for about 45 minutes until I could somehow wipe the sticky liquid off my dress.
The dark stains had been clearly visible in the bright light of the toilet, despite my panicked rubbing around, unlike now in the lushly lit club. Here you could only guess at the stains.
As I squeezed past sweaty bodies and struggled to keep my mouth shut, my eyes wandered through the crowd, searching.
Hoping to get a better look at one of my friends, I stood on tiptoe, but it didn't help much.
Inwardly, I cursed myself for not having worn higher heels. But they probably wouldn't have helped me in this stupid light, which barely provided any light at all.
An annoyed sigh left my lips when I was bumped into again. My eyes closed reflexively and I waited for another sticky liquid to be poured over my body.
But nothing happened.
I slowly opened my eyes and looked into Ria's face, who was looking at me radiantly. Her lipstick was a little smudged, while her hair sat a little disheveled on her head.
Before I had rushed to the toilet queue, I had left Ria alone on the dance floor, where she had probably continued to dance extensively and wildly, as her appearance told me.
" Hey, there you are! " She shouted over the loud music and wrapped her bare arm around me so that I wouldn't get lost in the crowd again.
" I've been looking all over for you, where are the others? " I also called out to her, whereupon Ria raised her eyebrow in confusion and had to think for a few seconds about what I had just asked her.
I couldn't blame her. Ria had already had a bit of alcohol, so my best friend took a little longer to think.
" Over there! " The dark-haired girl pointed her index finger in a certain direction, where I spotted Lando and Niran.
The two of them were standing on the platform where the DJ booth was located and a DJ was just about to heat up the crowd, so a loud roar went through the crowd and I was sure I would wake up with a headache in the morning.
Of course, where else would Lando be?
My best friend had recently become quite interested in the whole DJ thing, so Lando took every opportunity to look over the shoulder of a DJ at work.
" Are you coming with me? " I asked Ria as I took my eyes off Lando and Niran. But Ria was no longer standing where she had just been, but disappeared straight back into the crowd, which literally swallowed her up.
I took a deep breath and resolved to hold my breath from time to time over the next few minutes as I made my way to the DJ booth. Because there really was nothing more disgusting than the smell of sweat.
I kept getting elbowed in the stomach or back, so that my fingernails began to dig into my palms and I had to control myself not to accidentally kick them.
What felt like an eternity later, I had fought my way to the DJ booth. I leaned my head back to look up.
However, once again there was no sign of the Formula 1 driver.
That couldn't be true. How could everyone keep getting away from me?
Once again, my eyes wandered back and forth frantically as the DJ turned the music up a little louder so that I almost had a sudden hearing loss from the large speakers not far away from me.
Grumbling, I pressed my hands firmly over my ears. I had nothing against going to a club with friends to have a bit of fun and dance the night away.
But if there was one thing I loathed more than anything, it was incredibly loud music, lots of people and the smell of sweat.
" Where are you guys? " I mumbled more or less to myself as I found an empty crate and stood on it without hesitating.
I was finally a bit taller and could clearly see over some of the heads of the dancing and drinking crowd.
From a distance, I could see Max standing at the bar with his girlfriend and Aarav and Niran dancing strangely with Ria.
But where was my best friend?
My heart automatically began to beat a little faster, while a slight fear crept up inside me.
I knew that Lando couldn't handle too much alcohol and that he often forgot when it was time for him to stop because of the so-called peer pressure.
I had already seen Lando do strange things when he was drunk.
Lando was the kind of person who was initially quite funny under the influence of alcohol, but things changed abruptly soon afterwards and the McLaren driver quickly became tired.
I had occasionally found him sleeping in the strangest places, such as in the middle of a hedge, leaning against a tree or in front of a flower store.
Suddenly, I spotted the curly-haired man from afar, pushing open the back door of the club and seemingly disappearing into the backyard.
I quickly jumped down from the crate, almost falling over, but quickly caught myself.
I had to hurry to catch up with Lando in time before the Brit could even begin to think strange thoughts.
With difficulty, I literally boxed my way through the crowd towards the back exit. With every meter I walked, I prayed to find Lando in the backyard.
Maybe he just needed some fresh air or a break from the loud music, which I couldn't blame him for.
As I pushed open the steel door, the cool night air of London came straight at me, making me shiver in my sleeveless dress.
I wrapped my arms protectively around myself as I stepped further into the dark backyard and the door slammed shut with a loud thud and the club's music could only be heard muffled.
But the bass could still be clearly felt, so my knees began to tremble slightly.
The backyard was only lit by a single lamp hanging crookedly from the wall of the house, threatening to fall out of the wall with the next bash.
" Hello? " I asked into the barely lit alleyway. To my right were two large garbage cans and countless cigarette butts. The club staff and some guests always had to disappear here to smoke.
To my left was a residential building with a few lights still on, which I couldn't blame given the volume. Although I rather wondered how anyone could voluntarily move next door to a club.
A narrow corridor between the apartment building and the club led back to the street. But the corridor was pitch black.
" Lando? " I almost whispered as I pulled my cell phone out of my small pocket and turned on the flashlight.
What I was doing here was probably a good start for a horror movie. But to be honest, I only felt the slightest hint of fear, which was probably due to my alcohol intake.
My feet slowly walked towards the corridor, which was now slightly illuminated by my flashlight and I could see a little better.
And then I discovered something.
Lando sat leaning back against the brick wall with his head in his hands.
" Lan! " I shouted, almost relieved, as I ran the last few steps towards my best friend and crouched down in front of him.
He raised his eyes and looked at me. His eyes were slightly glazed and had lost their shine, while he was quite pale around the nose.
He must have thrown up.
" There you are, " he slurred slightly as a smile spread across his lips and he wrapped his arms around me.
Surprised by this embrace, I more or less lost my balance and stumbled onto Lando's lap.
My eyes widened as Lando's mouth let out an 'oops' and he began to giggle.
I felt the heat rise to my cheeks and then I began to clear my throat in embarrassment before quickly rising from his lap.
At any other time I probably would have enjoyed this, but definitely not in a drunken state.
" Are you okay? " Lando inquired anxiously as he stood up and began to sway. Another soft chuckle escaped him as he rested his hands on the wall.
" Shouldn't I ask you if you're okay? " I asked as I carefully grabbed Lando's arm to support him.
" Until just now...No..." he mumbled as he slowly put one foot in front of the other and left the dark backyard with my help.
" And now? " I asked when we had finally left the dark alley behind us and were back on the street, which was still a bit busy.
A few cars and pedestrians were still on the road at this late hour and their presence made me feel a little safer.
" Now yes! " Lando beamed. " Because... because you're here. "
Without being able to do anything about it, my stomach began to tingle slightly thanks to Lando's words.
I knew he was drunk and probably didn't even remember what he was saying, but those words still made me feel pretty warm.
" Are you taking me home? I feel sick and I'm suddenly so tired," Lando sulked and then emphasized his statement with a loud yawn.
" I'll do that, but if you feel sick, let me know straight away, okay? "
Lando nodded tiredly. Before I called us a cab, I wrote to the group of friends that Lando and I were already on our way back.
I hoped that one of them would read the message and not panic and search the whole club for us.
It took a few minutes for Lando and I to wait for the cab. While we waited, the Brit told me some weird story about gorillas and red lollipops, which I didn't even understand the context of, but it had certainly been entertaining.
Lando hadn't said a word the whole cab ride, so I assumed he had fallen asleep.
But when the cab stopped at our address, Lando was suddenly wide awake again, so the British man gave the cab driver far too much money and then jumped out of the car.
Without saying a word to the cab driver, I also jumped out of the car and ran after Lando up the driveway.
" Where is the key? " I asked as I came to a halt next to him and Lando's eyes almost fell shut again.
"Jeans," he mumbled and then lifted his arms to give me more room.
Smiling, I reached into Lando's back trouser pockets and shortly afterwards pulled out the key to unlock the front door.
" This is where I live? " Lando looked around the hallway with wide eyes after I had switched on the light and closed the door behind us.
"yes" , I smiled as I put the key in the little bowl on the sideboard and then took off my shoes and put my bag down next to it.
Lando hated it when someone entered his home wearing shoes. He couldn't understand why you could feel at home with shoes on.
But the drunken Lando didn't seem to mind, because when I told him to go upstairs, the Brit ran up the wooden stairs without taking his shoes off first.
So while Lando ran upstairs, I quickly scurried into the kitchen to fill a glass of water and get an aspirin.
Hoping that Lando had already finished brushing his teeth and was in bed, I ran up to the bedroom.
But the bed was empty.
The glass of water and the aspirin found their place on the bedside table, next to a photo of Lando, his friends and me, before I ran over to the bathroom, where the light was on and Lando was sitting on the closed toilet seat, holding two wrapped toothbrushes in his hand.
" What are you doing? " I asked carefully, but apparently not carefully enough, as the Brit flinched and pointed the pink and yellow toothbrush at me.
"Phew, I thought you were a burglar," he mumbled, which made me giggle quietly.
" What are you doing? " With a nod, I pointed to the toothbrushes Lando was holding.
" I wasn't sure if the toothbrush in the cup belonged there, so I'd better get two new ones from the cupboard there," Lando pointed with his index finger to the cupboard under the sink to make it clear to me where he had got the toothbrushes from.
I know, Lando, I said to him in my mind, because I was the one who had got the toothbrushes for him and put them in the cupboard.
"This is yours, Lan," I explained to Lando as I grabbed the orange toothbrush, moistened it with water and then put toothpaste on it before holding it in front of Lando's nose.
"Cool, orange! " he grinned as he took the toothbrush from me and began to brush his teeth in slow movements, his eyes getting smaller and smaller.
" Are you going to be okay? " I asked him with a grin after I had put the packed toothbrushes away again and watched him for a few seconds.
" Brushing your teeth is sooo tiring. Has it always been? " he mumbled with the toothbrush in his mouth, causing a few blobs to drip onto his black shirt.
" Sometimes it's annoying, yes. Come on, I'll help you so it goes faster. "
I squatted slightly in front of Lando and started to help him brush his teeth. I had the feeling that I was looking at a small child and not a 24-year-old man.
After we had successfully brushed his teeth, I followed Lando over to the adjoining bedroom, where the Brit was already slipping out of his clothes.
By now he was hardly swaying, so I was sure that the alcohol was slowly disappearing from his body.
When Lando stood in front of me shortly afterwards in just his boxer shorts and I saw his muscular chest in the dim light produced by the bedside lamp, I almost fainted.
It would be a lie if I said that I hadn't had my eye on my best friend and found him attractive, because he really was.
However, there was a certain rule in our circle of friends that made it impossible for me to fall in love with my best friend, even though it was somehow way too late.
" Ohh, I forgot," Lando mumbled as he reached for the hem of his boxer shorts and tried to take them off too.
" Stop, stop! " I exclaimed in near panic as I pressed my hands over my eyes to avoid seeing my best friend naked, even though I would have loved the view at another time.
" Huh? " Lando asked, and without having to look at him, I knew that he was now standing there with a totally confused face and furrowed eyebrows.
" They stay on. " I slowly released my hands from my eyes again and was pleased to see that Lando was still wearing his boxers.
The dark-haired man nodded sympathetically.
I pulled a pair of sweatpants and a shirt out of his closet, both of which he was supposed to wear to sleep.
The Brit, however, dropped his butt onto the bed and stretched tiredly while he made no effort to get dressed.
So I had not only brushed my best friend's teeth, but also helped him into his clothes.
"You're the best," Lando mumbled as he finally slipped under the light-colored comforter and adjusted the pillow a little.
" Is there anything else I can do for you? " I asked after picking up his clothes, which were scattered randomly on the floor.
" If I asked you if you would stay, would you? " The gleam in Lando's eyes slowly returned, while a smile spread across his lips.
His question almost made the clothes I had picked up fall out of my hands again.
My heart skipped a beat as my hands began to play nervously with the fabric of Lando's shirt.
This had all gone a bit beyond our previous friendly boundaries. But sleeping in a bed with him would go completely beyond the scope, wouldn't it?
I couldn't just give in to Lando's drunken state because my heart in love wanted to scream yes out loud.
" Please ", he almost begged, while I still didn't move and almost clutched his clothes tightly. " You can wear something of mine to sleep in too. "
This sentence didn't make Lando's request any easier, because the butterflies woke up in my stomach, flapping their wings gently back and forth in my belly and my cheeks became slightly warm.
" U-uh...uhm you know that's against the rules? " I asked in a squeaky voice.
God, why were the rules suddenly so important to me?
" But there's no one here who made the rules. So no one needs to know about this, right? After all, I've always been against the rule that you can't date anyone from your circle of friends. "
Another grin formed on Lando's lips as he slowly pulled back the comforter and stood up.
A few steps later, the Brit stood in front of me.
"Besides, it's already too late for that rule anyway," he breathed more or less into my ear, causing goose bumps to spread all over my body.
And before I could even begin to open my mouth to say something back, Lando walked over to his closet and a short time later pushed some clothes towards me.
" I won't take no for an answer, because I know you feel the same way. "
With these words, Lando pushed me into the bathroom and before he closed the door, he winked at me.
And so he left me with an explosion of emotion.
I didn't know how long it had taken me to collect myself and then leave the bathroom changed.
All my emotions had gone so crazy with Lando's words that even after the long time I had spent in the bathroom, I walked back to the bed with trembling knees.
Lando was still awake. He lay covered up in bed and began to look me up and down with a grin as I scurried over to the free side of the bed.
My cheeks turned red again, so I quickly pulled the comforter over me and started tugging at the hem of Lando's shirt, which I was wearing, from under the comforter.
There was quite a big gap between Lando and me, which the Brit didn't seem to like.
He quickly wrapped his right arm around me and pulled me so close to him that my head automatically rested on his chest.
And so I could hear his rapidly beating heart.
" Do you hear how fast it beats? It always has since you've been around me," he more or less breathed to me as he wrapped his arms protectively around me and I felt a gentle kiss wash over my hair.
Damn, what was he doing to me?
My cheeks heated up again and my heart began to beat faster. Our hearts were probably fighting to see whose heart beat faster.
" Lando ", I whispered into the darkness a few minutes later, but it was too late.
The Brit had already returned to the land of dreams and left me alone with my rapidly beating heart and my thoughts.
And I hoped that he wouldn't regret this when he woke up tomorrow.
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ryin-silverfish · 2 days
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Stray thought: something I found the "SWK is manipulated into the Havoc!" take often obscures is his fear of death. Y'know, the very reason he begins his quest for immortality in the first place, and I'm glad the LMK show at least paid some homage to.
Death is but one of the many sufferings that accompanies existence and samsara itself. So is his fear of death and the desire to avoid it. The problem is? The way desires and attachments work, getting what you want doesn't solve the deeper issues.
First, he sets out to avoid death for himself. Then he did that, and also made death null for as many of his fellow monkeys as he could find. But it isn't enough, no.
His own immortality will not grant the safety of all of his subjects, his friends, and all the good stuff he has ever gained that rightfully belong to him, mind you, and he is responsible for. So he just needs to find a way to hold onto them, forever and ever and ever.
Since he has an abundance of creativity and intellect, but not the wisdom to match, his solution is to find the "Hows" rather than asking the "Whys".
Keep stacking up the powers, the immortalities, the allies, the weapons, the victory counts——which eventually became its own rewards, the thrills, the satisfaction of getting away with yet another daring heist, the feeling of invulnerability.
But let's go on a tangent and talk about book!SWK. When he came back after getting banished, he found his monkeys bullied by the Monstrous King of Havoc, wrecked the guy, and rescued his subjects. Immediately afterwards, he emptied the armory of Aolai Kingdom to arm his monkeys and robbed the dragon kings blind to arm himself.
Yeah, seeing a bit of a connection here. He is pulling off these heists to protect against perceived threats to him and his people. Then, moving on to the First Havoc, when he came back to his monkeys, he was surprised at just how much time had passed since he departed for the Celestial Realm—���10+ years in the Lower Realm!
Yet, after the First Havoc is resolved, he happily stayed in the Celestial Realm for half a year, without remembering that meanwhile, at least a century had passed for his monkeys and demon allies. In a sense, he had become detached from his subjects, despite his first instinct still being "bring my buddies all the divine wine" after he got sober and returned to them.
I don't know you, but I feel like he probably expects everything to stay the same while he was gone. He isn't yet selfish, but certainly self-absorbed, in that he doesn't seem to realize that his actions can have consequences for people other than himself.
Like, if he is in his old "Monkey King" mindset, he may have comprehended that the Celestial Realm will treat him and his monkeys as a single entity that will be collectively punished for his misdeeds. But by becoming the Great Sage, he has drifted away from his duties as a king, which sets the stage for his behaviors during the Second Havoc.
After the 72 caves of demon kings have all been captured during the first wave of attack, his reaction is basically "lol, at least they didn't get any of my monkeys". This, I think, is the point where he is showing true selfishness instead of just being self-absorbed. Like, if I were one of his non-monkey allies and I heard that, I'd be pretty pissed.
The thing with the unrestrained freedom of the Havoc is, by cutting himself loose from all the rules and norms and disregarding every potential consequences, he is also unknowingly severing his tethers to others and alienating himself from his people.
Which is how I interpret SWK becoming so disheartened when his epic battle with Erlang terrified his own subjects into a rout, he just turned and fled——he realized that they, too, were seeing a monster.
He is no longer fighting for his people's safety, but an idea of them, who will always look up to him and do okay without him and never perceive him as a threat, and when that idea is shattered, so does his will to fight on.
I feel like the same could be said for his pursuit of immortality and power: it started off as a way to rid himself of existential fear and defend against concrete threats, but the list of "things I must do to secure my happy eternity and what is rightfully mine" just keeps growing longer and longer, until he's only focused on that sweet, sweet feeling of reward whenever he ticks off a checkbox and tunes out everything else.
After all, the more you have, the more you can potentially lose. A never ending cycle, exacerbated by his desire to never lose, until it all comes crashing down, figuratively and literally.
Back to LMK: People always point out that Azure worships this idea of SWK, and never quite sees SWK as his true, flawed self. Which I agree, but also: SWK does this too. He, too, loses sight of the actual people he's fighting for.
"I did it for US!"
The thing with a claim such as this is, multiple people can all try to do everything for the idea of "us", instead of something that may actually help each other, then feel wronged when their efforts essentially amount to nothing.
"We were all on a path of self-destruction."
For this statement to land, the self-destruction has to genuinely be each character's own doing. The fallout can, and is indeed magnified by what the others did or didn't do, but ultimately, the causes of their consequences come from within themselves: their own obsessions and attachments.
And making SWK the exception, the innocent figurehead and scapegoat, removes the complexity from the character while outright ignoring the few implications of the show that actually have some basis in book canon and are kinda interesting.
I rest my case.
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time-is-restored · 7 months
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btw not to make everything about My Fucking Guy but i honestly think one of the things that seperates q!phil out from the other islanders is the approach he takes to dealing with the lack of agency + control all the islanders have over whatever the fuck the federation's doing.
it shows up most prominently whenever tubbo is excitedly telling him about the 'progress' he's made with cucurucho or various investigations (ie: trapping him into a corner with the 'do you have free will' questions), and phil always shoots it down w an immediate 'that doesn't mean anything. curucuho will say anything to mess with you. you can't take anything he says as true.'
and it's not that phil is... a paticularly pessimistic character? he's just EXTREMELY practical. like, he's yet to give up on anyone EVER finding ANY answers (he was the one who initially gave the federation that one week ultimatum w the cage for a cage stream), he just doesn't trust the idea that curucuho is ever going to voluntarily give them. they're uncontrollable + senseless - you might as well argue with the weather.
and like, if that's how he sees the one (1) and only point of contact the islanders HAD with the federation for months, it explains a lot abt his characters lifestyle! ofc he sits on the wall all day, talking to his kids, and keeping his head down. he believes that the federation wants nothing more than to drag the islanders into sick games + tasks just so they can fuck with their head (ie: curucuho revealing he was the one cellbit gathered all that information for). and while he can't totally PREVENT any of that from ever impacting him, he can make sure his kids are well fed, well protected, and as happy + comfortable as he can manage. this is objectively not a perfect situation, there is a guaranteed amount of suffering + fear that he can't mitigate, but he can at least account for it.
like, he REFUSES to engage. whenever curucho shows up, he treats them with total ambivalence. he's not going to get riled up by anything they do, he's not going to get super attached to the guy, he's just gonna laugh it off and irish goodbye it when things drag on. the ONLY time he's strayed from that general guiding principle has been since he's lost his eggs, and can no longer afford to let the federation's fuckery go: those are his fucking kids.
hence the completely unprecedented levels of outward rage and sadness and terror he shows throughout the birdcage streams - almost all directed directly to cucurucho. it's all a completely fair + proportional response to the horror the islanders are being subjected to, but it feels so different bc until now, q!phil has been so dedicated to not reacting, and not giving the federation any sign that they're actually getting to him.
#qsmp#q!phil#LIKE. does anyone else think this! i genuinely believe its like one of the major#traits of his character i feel like u can trace it through Everything.#the man lives with the constant knowledge that sometimes all it takes is a tempting ravine and a badly timed creeper to end a life#whether that life belongs to a stranger or someone you love more than anything else in the world#you COULD rage against that. you could scream and shout and tear your hair out and grieve for the futility of it all#but what does that change? the days march on. death waits either way#and that's not to say he's a laizesfair kind of guy. anyone who's seen him stress out abt chayanne's risk taking + freak out#whenever his kids don't have enough autofeed grist can see that he cares DEEPLY. which resolves into his very distinctive#defensive + protective playstyle. the goal is not to win the fight the goal is to *survive* the fight etc#but the only way that mindset doesn't spill out into unchecked paranoia + complete agoraphobia is with acceptance#'shit happens: the philza minecraft story'#i also think it even manifests in the nightmare sequence w his last words to chayanne? 'they didn't want us to live. we were never supposed#to survive' or whatever the exact wording was#he is FURIOUS and deeply hurt and sad abt the deaths he says so explicitly later#but at the time the first thing he reaches for is. exhausted acceptance. it wasn't their fault. it wasn't his fault. they did their best.#they could only do so much in the face of the federation's Overwhelming Hostility. y'know?#mine
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I think the hardest thing in writing for me sometimes is the like “show don’t tell/let people communicate through subtext/Normal People don’t just walk around openly explaining their motivations for everything That’s Unnatural” thing because like.. I literally DO walk around openly explaining my motivations for everything, that is how I talk, I am an analytical detail oriented over-communicator who explains everything as thoroughly as possible and and will give a fully detailed 2 minute long answer to something simple like “how are you doing today?” .. like it’s hard to make things sound Natural and Normal when you yourself are inherently unnatural and abnormal in your methods of communication to an extent lol
#''hey. whats up? you look kind of sad.. is something wrong?''   normal answer (apparently how people are supposed to talk): *looks away#remosefully and stares into the distance* ''n-no.. I'm fine. don't worry about it.''   abnormal answer (how I would respond): ''Yeah I#'m mostly fine. I was just thinking about what the future is going to be like 30 years from now and if I'll ever actually accomplish anythin#g that I want to. which makes me feel X way for XYZ reason. you see because I had a dream last night that made me think of *continues to exp#lain my exact emotional state and inner thought process completely matter of factly in exact detail for 5 more minutes*#tfw you would be a badly written character if you existed in a story lol#This is also why I struggle making conflict because most conflicts can be resolved through conversation and I personally love to have long#detailed conversations about everything. Like literally I don't have hardly any conflicts interpersonally because if something happens it's#immediately followed up with like ''hey sorry if my tone of voice sounded a bit pointed or harsh. when you were talking to me I was trying#to balance all the stuff I was taking up the stairs and also my leg hurts so I think all my mental energy was being used there and I just#didn't feel like talking. I should have just said 'wait a minute and we can discuss it inside' instead of trying to end the conversation qui#ckly in a short rude way.' ''oh yeah thats fine. I thought it was something like that. sorry for hounding you about the topic as well. i#havent eaten in a while so I think I'm just a bit prickly at the moment. we should both rest for a while and destress from the store#trip and then talk about it later. maybe after lunch?' 'sure. sounds good.' like LITERALLY. lol#it is so hard for me to write characters who are bad communicators or don't understand their own internal states or arent constantly#analyzing their own actions to understand what they do/don't feel and why and what the cause of it is and etc. etc. etc.#I just naturally want everyone to perfectly undertsand everything and communicate amazingly and have complete self awareness and#logical presence of mind gjhbj.. which like.. of course comes across as unnatyural and also those type of people rarely ever get involved in#conflict and conflict is APPARENTLY what drives stories (even though I don't like most conflicts and just want to resolve them lol) so ...aa#I mean you can get around this to some degree by the fact that (at least in my opinion) no rule for dialogue is 100%. dialogue is good if it#sounds naturally like it comes from the character who said it. It can be meandering and pointless and rambly IF that matches the character.#it can be dry and overly self aware IF your character is that way and it suits them. So like throwing in a few detached scholar types or lik#e '5000 year old cave dwelling hermit' type people is good for me and works BUT the thing is an ENTIRE cast of characters can't be that way.#at some point - even in a setting where everyone is reserved and academic (like a research camp in the wilderness full of scholars and stuff#) still SOMEBODY has to be the one who's conflict prone and doesn't pristinely understand all of their emotions and etc. etc. Because statis#tically that is still literally the majority. Kind of like my tendency to make everyone 100% aromantic and asexul when it's like.. YES.. may#be 2 or 3 or even 4 out of 10 of them could be that way. but like.. an entire group? a diverse group of 10 people from all walks of life and#EVERY single one is like that??? hgjh . you have to add realistic variety#As much as I'm pro 'have more stories where sex or romance are literally NOT involved at all in any capacity since it's already oversaturate#d in media' I'm also dedicated to realism. alas. (at least as realistic as you can get in a fantasy setting lol)
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poptartmochi · 8 months
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suddenly thinking about the oracle again... idk if she would be so friendly to lana, if we're being fr
#on the one hand she functions as a way for s4 to resolve and thus she has to Be Helpful#BUT.. wouldn't you Also feel some type of way if all this shit started going down in your lonely abandoned desolate Fuck Off Dimension#because your old friend and compatriot was upset that the reincarnated soul of your OTHER friend didn't care abt them#and also your upset friend was possessing the body of your THIRD friend like a meat puppet#and then a You .009 Inches to the Left shows up to try and fix everything (same thing that you did milennia ago that left you stuck in the#desolate fuck you dimension) like... surely the jaded and calloused You would feel some type of way about#the ghosts of your past fucking up your melancholic silence to do the same shit all over again#and then to see a version of you come to fix it again.. it'd feel like an affront right? like somebody laughing at you?#i think it'd be fun if lana had to beat the oracle's ass in a duel and have a monologue about the Power of Friendship#something the oracle lost sight in the passage of time.. cynicism has taken over your heart etc etc#like.. the oracle sees it as a fool's errand (haha like the fleet foxes) to try and resolve this because haou yubel and. uh. the prince ??#they cannot be reasoned with in a way that matters. if they're all together again then they will devour each other and the world around them#and it's better that they've returned to the Fuck You Dimension to do it‚ because less people will be caught in the crossfire now#sorry to the high schoolers who foolishly followed these people here lol 🤪#but if we all just die in the fuck you dimension then it will Finally be Over‚ as it should have been so long enough#and lana is like... 1) FUCK you 2) SEEK THERAPY?#and she whoops the oracle so thoroughly that the oracle realizes that these kids are Not Actually the Same#in which case.. huh.. maybe there is something redeemable here.. ok i guess i will be ur comrade now#loosely thinking abt it‚ i think that parallels aster's fuck you love is real moment this season.. AND#it contrasts syrus' disillusionment arc.. the oracle would probably loove syrus lol! they said these bitches hopeless! fuck you jaden yuki!!#sriracha.txt#lana#oracule momence
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apricotesque · 1 year
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i deserve multiple awards for being able to sit through midge's storyline in this season actually!
#not to be dramatic!! but!! my god . . .#her writing regarding her feelings towards shy up until his wedding was. STUNNINGLY inconsistent idk#like everything from her revenge monologue to her anger and bitterness towards him except for that?? one singular scene#where she cries upon finding out about his wedding?? and idk maybe the purpose of that scene was probably to illustrate that despite#her resentment she still feels remorse for him but the way it was executed in the context of the rest of the plotline just felt#really out of the blue#and the way she acted at the wedding . . .#i will admit her apology towards him in the bathroom went a lot better than i thought it would? like it felt more resolved than i expected#but i honestly still struggle with how to perceive her apparent anger at him beforehand#i feel like it rests on how midge's “i was angry you left us on the tarmac because i wanted to apologise to you on the plane”#is meant to be intended?? if it was supposed to be seen as some kind of 'plot twist' like gasp she was angry bc she didn't actually get to#express her regret and explain herself towards him!! in that perspective the execution still felt. kinda poor#if it was supposed to actually be expected (although that's. probably unlikely) the execution also felt. quite poor 😭😭#god i don't know but i did still get the feeling that the gravity of the situation should've been reflected on more instead of focusing#on how bitter midge felt towards him the whole time#like. she TRULY fucked him over lmao i really have no other way of saying it she really messed him up#a very soft part of me wants to see it positively resolved in some way at least in the next season#but also at this point i have lost QUITE a bit of faith in the writing 💔💔#anyhow. idk. rest of the season was fine ig?? still processing but hey i discovered 'someone to watch over me'#ella fitzgerald's cover is very lovely :'')#the marvelous mrs maisel#na.txt
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ghostgirl101 · 2 months
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Imagine if Paul Atreides claimed you as his destiny: PART Ⅰ of Ⅱ
|| Word Count: 1.5K || Angst → Fluff ||
A/N: I had this as a big idea that I had to get down before the basic headcanons and stuff, so here's my take on our Lisan al Gaib 😎 if you like this then hit me up for some relationship headcanons and the like, I'm up for it all. Enjoy reading or watching the movie if you haven't already - I'm going again lol, and screen X is the best way to experience it fr Also I feel like I should write a second part to this lmao, if you liked what you read?
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You weren't one for dreams of destiny.
The dreams you had seemed meaningless, confusing, nothing to do with what ifs and what could. Not like his.
But you always seemed to feel some kind of atmosphere, an aura you couldn't quite shake off, even when you woke up from the darkness. There was no face to go with the voice, the voice in the dark that called to you in whispers that you didn't understand. Beautiful words that weren't yours, but sounded so soft and gentle and powerful, as they reached out to you from distant lands.
You could never place them, pin them down and study them, understand them, until the day the Emperor was challenged by a ghost of a lost House, thought to be dead, left to be forgotten. You stand near the Emperor and his guards and men, the Great Houses looming and listening from higher above, as the Fremen fill up the space to watch the confrontation in spirited anticipation.
The life debt was paid. The late Emperor was overthrown. The ascendancy of Paul Atreides rose and took from the throne to claim it.
His attention flicks from his eyes boring coldly into the Emperor's, to meet yours, his voice smooth and set, full of conviction and force.
"Our destiny is together. I'll take her."
Your eyes widen slightly as his words sink in, blinking through the shock and incredulity that rushes through you and makes your heart race in apprehension and wonder. Though his voice twins with your wandering dreams, you don't know whether to feel fascination and longing, or fear and cautiousness at some greater force beyond your understanding, playing out before your very eyes.
"I..." your voice falters in uncertainty and disbelief, and you try again. "Excuse me?"
"You heard me well," Paul responds with an undying, stoic certainty that's almost unnerving. "As I know you."
His eyes study you, his Spice-stained blue eyes bleeding into yours, scanning every freckle on your face and curve of your outfit. Assessing you, knowing you, ridiculous throngs of power filling his aura and projecting onto you with his intense stare. You have to fight not to shiver under it, ultimately failing.
"What of me?" is the wisest reply you can think of before the silence stretches into dangerous uncertainty.
"Everything," Paul says evenly, but there's no mistaking the challenge and determination in his tone, almost daring you to reject him, to disagree, a built-up desire of dreamt promises resolving his stand. "I choose you, as my Empress. We will rule together, over the Empire."
Scepticism and bewilderment washes over you and makes your blood heat and stir, retreating into silence as he takes a step closer to you, gazing at you as if you're the most curious, exotic being he's ever seen.
Desire threatens to override Paul Atreides' reason, clinging onto the hope and chance of a narrow way through to light, a light that could only be sought out with you by his side. Without you, there was nothing in sight but pools of blood replacing luscious marine life and oceans running through Arrakis, disarray and disillusion at every turn and infecting every heart.
You were absolutely perfect.
And you were already his, long before this moment, before you and he were born into the world and named. There was no manipulation needed, because everything was laid out for him to take, welcoming him to rule and grow higher and higher. Fate had bonded you and strung you along to here and now, and as you blink up into his bright eyes that narrow slightly at you, frowning softly as if you hadn't understood his demand.
"Do you know what I am?"
You pause for a moment, speaking slowly and cautiously, as the crowd of Fremen and the wary, late Emperor watch on in tense wordlessness. "You are Leto Atreides' son. Former Duke of Caladan."
"What I am," Paul repeats evenly, "not who I am." He stares at you in silence for another beat, before speaking up again. "Do you know of the Bene Gesserit?"
You stop yourself from glancing in Lady Jessica's direction just in time; the runes patterning her skin, her once soft eyes now spiked with an unfamiliar darkness of ages past. Anyone could get trapped in her watchful glare, and her son's holds almost as much intensity.
"No," you decide on hesitantly.
"Kwisatz Hederach," he adds, taking another step forward until you can feel his breath tickling your cheeks, standing above you with unspoken grace and vigor. "I see the future. A part of me is the future."
His hand is suddenly squeezing yours warmly and tightly, making you flinch slightly and glance down at them before looking back up at him.
"In this future, I am with you."
All you can do is stare at him in awe and wariness, not knowing whether to let your curiosity guide you, or distance yourself as far as possible from the boy who reigns over the dunes.
"Why?" you whisper, the crowds seeming to fade around you as you focus on the boy in front of you, his fingers tangling with yours boldly.
"I've seen it," Paul insists, his tone a touch softer in thought and wistfulness. "All of it. When I am with you..." His grip tightens over yours, the fire in his eyes returning. "We're unstoppable."
"And..." your words dry before you can speak them, and you will yourself to go on, unable to break away from the deep blue hues of his gaze. "And without?"
His jaw visibly clenches at your question, and his hand drops yours, shaking his head only answer as he glances away in slight frustration.
"You don't have the leisure of choice. It's all been made for you, written in the sands and stars, and what you need to do is walk in its path. I will show you the way. You have no other. Do you understand?"
The firmness is strong in his words and glare, making you look away from him too, still in a slight stun over the rush of events. In less than a day, your freedom has been stripped to this young man's desires and destiny, entwined with yours. You, who barely knew him until now, only familiar with his voice, his words, that echoed and rang in your head like a lullaby.
But this feels so harsh and strict. The eyes of the former Emporer linger between the two of you, and Paul's army of Fremen stand behind him attentively, some gazing at you in admiration and hope, of their messiah's promised bride. And she is beautiful.
"That's unfair."
"The future is unfair," Paul says calmly, his collected, cool tone wavering for a moment. "But it will be so much worse without you by my side, and I will not accept that. Not for my people... not for myself."
You stare at him in fascination and caution, lost for words. His fingers rise to brush against the skin of your cheek, sending tingles in their wake and making you fight back the automatic reaction, your eyes following his surprisingly gentle touch. Two fingers trace down the shape of your cheek down to your chin, tilting your head slightly upwards. Just one step closer, and your lips would be touching too.
"Name anything," he murmurs to you, the Fremen straining to hear his voice as it reaches you effortlessly, his expression earnest and determined. "Anything. And it is yours. Only if you willingly wed me in turn. Not as a concubine, nor a mistress."
You blink, then blink again, taken aback as a million thoughts and suggestions race through your mind and make your head spin for a split second. You glance at the elder Emperor, who gazes back at you and the infamous Lisan al Gaib wearily, his eyes clouded with sombreness and light spite.
"I... I don't," you shake your head, overwhelmed by an impossible choice. "I don't know..."
Paul's expression softens into a smile you haven't seen before, one that makes your cheeks flush with colour as you watch him; a gentle, amused smile that's somehow familiar and unfamiliar all at once, one meant just for you, as he disregards his surroundings.
"You will know," he replies quietly, "and I will have you, and protect you, rule with you. Love you. As I am meant to."
Paul suddenly brings you closer, pulling you into a searing kiss without warning. The exotic, earthy taste of the Spice on his tongue floods your senses and sends shudders of ecstasy and heat coursing under your skin and hushing the myriad of thoughts buzzing in your mind in an instant.
When he pulls away, all too soon, you find yourself chasing his lips before you catch yourself, and Paul gives you another soft smile, his forehead resting against yours as your eyes lock.
"And as I long to," he finishes against your lips, his words grounded with a look of protectiveness and desire that makes you instinctively relax further in his hold.
⊹⊹⊹
From beyond you both, his mother smiles slightly at the scene, a hand hovering over her rounded stomach.
The first step has been made.
══════════════⊹⊱≼ part two coming soon ≽⊰⊹══════════════
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niuxita21 · 1 year
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ClassofO7 really had a chance to do something interesting in terms of romantic pairings with so many complex f/f relationships to explore if they didn’t want to forego having a “main slow-burn ship” with an all-female cast (Zoe/Amelia obviousy but also Genevieve/Saskia and even Phoebe/Renee) and yet they went with the laziest option possible in terms of representayshun by making the one lesbian character the comic relief side character whom it’s clear they never had any intention of giving a romantic storyline to
#and whom tbh I probably would have a hard time taking seriously in any attempt at a romantic storyline#it's like characters like jason mendoza or rogelio villanueva or orla from derry girls who are great for comic relief#but who stretch the limits of suspension of disbelief when trying to sell them as capable of sustaining a romantic relationship#with someone who is actually a fully formed 3-dimensional character#le sigh#a few episodes back I was gonna make a post about how my investment in this show and desire for a second season#were contingent on how they resolved the saskia thing because my GOD she was a monster in the first half of the season#I assumed that at worst there wouldn't be any lesbian characters and that was actually something I could get past#turns out the saskia thing was resolved in a pretty stellar way (episode 5 was FANTASTIC) so I thought we were in the clear#and now I'm questioning my attachment again for the ONE reason I didn't even consider lol#I understand that not everything needs to be about romance and that a show about female relationships such as this one is good enough#I just think this was a case in which an overarching serious romantic storyline would have really worked#and now I kinda don't want to continue getting invested in all these relationships where there's SUCH great buildup#only to know it's not gonna amount to anything (and now also with the possibility of dudes being added to a potential season 2)#(I still have one episode left to watch but it's a pretty safe assumption I think)#such is life you win some you lose some I guess#thoughts no one cares about
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bonny-kookoo · 5 months
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Jungkook
𝐒𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐎𝐥𝐝𝐞𝐫 | Attachment
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There's something growing between the two of you- or are you simply growing closer?
Tags/Warnings: Aged up!Jungkook, Younger!Reader, Age Gap (9 years, JK is mentioned to be 34/35), Angst, Mature romance, Jungkook's ex wife, mentions of past physical abuse, mentions of alcohol abuse, fluff, flirty Jungkook, fluff!!, reader is a bit jumpy, some more lore, smut, slow sex, position changes, mentioned round two, some angy jungkook (but not at reader), some angst in the end but it's all resolved dw
Length: 7.2k words
There is no taglist for this fic.
-> Masterlist
A/N: I did not proofread this I'm sorry
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"Do you even know where we're going?" Jungkook worries, sitting next to you on the subway, but you just shrug.
"I know how to get back though, that's more important." You simply say, making him even more nervous.
Jungkook isn't used to giving up control like this. He's not used to being spontaneous and just doing things out of the blue because you feel like it. Things have to be structured, planned out and with a Plan B to go with it in case something goes wrong. He's an overthinker, and it shows, as he keeps looking around and asking.
"Just relax. There's a park nearby that I wanna go to. We can get some food close by and just eat it there." You say, and he sighs.
"I'm sorry." He admits, leaning back into the seat to try and relax more.
"Its alright. Most people panic whenever I talk about trips I take." You laugh.
"Do you travel a lot?" He asks, and you shrug.
"Used to. But.. he was more of a homebody. Didn't like staying at hotels." You explain, watching the scenery pass by next to you outside the window. "He kind of ruined it for me because he'd just.. continuously point out flaws in everything." You say, and Jungkook listens quietly. "Flaws that I'd.. overlook most of the time, because, nothing's ever perfect anyways, so why focus on that all the time?" You giggle, looking at him now.
"I'd disagree, but also agree." He chuckles. "There can be perfect things. It's just a matter of perspective, and how it's perceived by someone." He offers. "What's perfect to one might not be for another." Jungkook explains, and you nod.
"Thats the more.. complicated way of explaining it, I guess." You joke.
"I tend to overcomplicate things." He bashfully agrees, making you lean into him, resting your head against his shoulder.
"You'll.. tell me when I get too much, right?" You ask quietly, and he nods, arm wrapping around you as if to reassure.
"I will, don't worry." He reassures you, before he moves to pull your hand up to kiss the back for it-
A gesture that makes you blush, especially from the people around you fawning over it as well.
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He's caught off guard when you walk around in nothing but underwear, visibly unbothered by him seeing you like this.
"Do you.. want to join me?" You ask. "The tub is a bit small but..?" You question, looking over your shoulder at him, who looks oddly unsure. Considering you both have had sex twice now- or more so once, really, it's odd to think that he's like this now. Is it because the nature of your.. whatever it is, has changed?
You're no longer just strangers without any connection. There's something deeper now growing. And maybe that's what's putting him under pressure.
"If you'd like me to." He shrugs.
"Only if you want." You say. "I won't be upset if you say no. I'm a big girl, I can handle rejection." You giggle, and he chuckles as well, smile a bit less tense as before.
"I'm sure you can." He agrees. "Though I'd be stupid to reject." He jokes, getting up to walk closer to you.
"Or simply cautious." You shrug. "Nothing wrong with that." You remind him, but he simply nods, and follows you into the bathroom. The water is streaming in, hot, soap bubbling up. Jungkook watches how you easily shed your last items of clothing before you sink into the water, and he does the same now, revealing himself bare to join you in the barely big enough tub behind you.
You're comfortably leaning against his front, very obviously not shy about this at all- and in a way, oddly enough, it seems to rub off on him, as he feels himself relax with you so close. "I want to move into an apartment with a bathtub one day." You giggle randomly.
"Does yours not have one?" He asks, and you shake your head.
"No, it's too small for one." You deny. "Does yours?" You ask, and he hums his answer.
"It.. I have both. One guest bathroom with a shower. The main one has a tub." He explains to you. "Maybe.. you could come over someday. See it for yourself." Jungkook chuckles.
"Hm. Maybe. When you want me to." You say.
"I do want you to-" He starts, feeling like he needs to argue- though he's not sure what about.
"I know, but you also don't, and that's fine." You laugh. "I.. you know, I kind of get the vibe from you that.." you start, but drift off.
"..that?" He softly urges, hands now moving underneath the water to find yours to hold.
"..that you're not used to.. you know. People asking for permission. Or just.. I don't know." You shrug. "You're always so surprised whenever I do nothing but simply take your feelings into account. You seem so caught off guard whenever I ask you if you're okay with things." You tell him, and his eyes stare at the slowly disappearing soapy bubbles on the water surface as he begins to think.
It's true that it's not common. He's the man- always has been one, and with that always came the burden of decisions. Evelyn always took the things he did for granted- saw it as something natural. The fact that he provided her with a place to stay, money and security was just a given to her, and so was the fact that whenever she decided where to go for dinner, or what to do on his days off. He always drove her to her appointments, always had to please her, treat her right, because that's always been his role to play.
So, you're right. He's not used to being given a choice, asked for permission, or questioned whether or not he was okay with something. And it's become so normal for him, that he truly believed that that was how things had to be like-
and maybe that's also why he was so hesitant with you. Why he still hesitates.
What if he does something wrong? What if he decides something you don't like? What if he's not what you want him to be?
You want him to be himself. But he's not sure he even knows how to be himself anymore.
"You should.. be more selfish, you know?" You say, voice echoing off the walls a little as you move around in the water. "Then I won't feel so bad every time I want to ask you to do something for me." You laugh, joking- but he catches the hidden words.
"You can ask anything of me." He chuckles. "Trust me, I can make decisions just fine." He reassures you, placing his hands on your shoulders.
"I'm not doubting that!" You laugh. "But just- You're.. really nice, and I'm kind of scared I'll screw this up." You sigh, trying to sit up and lean away from him- but he holds you towards him, keeping you close.
"There's no 'screwing up' for either of us. We might not work out for reasons, but I doubt we'll really.. screw up like you say." He offers kindly. "I kind of.. just want to be with you for the next few days. Nothing more, nothing less."
"In what way?" You almost whisper, and he chuckles against your skin, pressing a kiss to your bare shoulder.
"In whatever way you'd like." He hums against your skin, hands traveling up and down the length of your arms.
"What way would you like?" You ask, and he leans his head a little to rest his face in the crook of your neck.
"Right now.. exactly this." He sighs out. "I'm enjoying this a lot." He reveals, and at that, you lean back into him, and you can feel the way his lips twist into a smile against your skin.
"Is.. what made you fall in love with uhm.. Evelyn was it, right?" You ask, and he nods.
"I'm not sure." He admits. "She was pretty. She liked me, or at least that's what she told me- asked me out one night, and I just said yes because why not?" He shrugs, water sloshing around a bit at that movement. "I didn't.. have much interest in her back then, but I felt like it could just.. grow down the line."
"I mean, she's still pretty from what I could tell." You giggle, though he shakes his head. "No?" You wonder, and again, he shakes.
"Not anymore." He denies. Maybe conventionally attractive. Physically." Jungkook sighs. "But inside, she's just.. ugly."
You nod at that. You understand what he means.
"What about Greg?" He wonders, since the situation seems as good as ever to gain some more information on the guy he's never even seen before.
"He was.. or, you know, isn't as tall as you. A bit shorter. Uhm.. harsher facial features." You remember. "He always looked a little intimidating to me. But I thought it was just appearance. He used to be really nice to me, you know?" You explain, before you sigh. "But.. I don't know. Over time, after we started living together, it just went downhill." You explain to the man currently holding you. "There were warning signs before, sure- but I thought he was just stressed."
Jungkook listens, and makes sure you know that he is doing it- though he also provides some slight physical comfort as well.
"I should've left when he started to yell at me. Insult me, you know? But I didn't. I thought, if I was nice enough.." You stare at the bubbles slowly dissolving. "..I thought it would be okay."
"You were in love." He reassures you. "And we do stupid things when we're in love." Jungkook admits, making you nod as you lift your head a little to look at him.
Finally realizing that while his situation might not have been the same-
he still understands. More than anyone else.
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The next day starts rather.. interesting to him.  
He's wondering how long it'll take for you to snap- because he's noticed that some of his habits and behaviours are clearly getting onto your nerves. But he's not hiding any of it away- you need to face the truth after all, that he's no angel, and no perfect man without any flaws. He's not sugarcoating things- but you are. And he's waiting for you to drop that façade.  
You're never truly relaxing. You act like you are- but he knows you're not.  
Meanwhile he's just himself, even exaggerates some of what he knows are his nasty habits- and you're just quietly stepping over his pants thrown in the middle of the floor in the hotel room, though he notices the way your eyes cling to them for a good second. And when you actually trip over them on your way out, it's when you finally decide to speak up. "Jungkook?" You ask, and he hums, lifting his head from his phone to look at you. "Can you.. could you maybe try and I don't know.. put your clothes in one place only?" You ask, meekly, and that's when he notices something important. When he realizes something. 
You seem awfully.. wary saying that. Almost fearful.  
Oh. 
"Of course." He nods, getting up to put them away- and your reaction to that, is that just instantly fall into apologizing for your words- as if what you said could've insulted him in some way.  
"It's just that you could lose something you know?" You hum, wringing your hands anxiously. "And maybe you trip too and-" 
"It's fine, really." Jungkook reassures you after dropping his pants and shirt that's been laying around in his still opened travel bag, now turning towards you. "Come here." He sighs, and you do, walking close to him until he pulls you in and hugs you. "I'm not mad." He offers, and from the way you tense up, he realizes he's hit the nail on the head. "I'll never be mad- never like that. I can promise you that much."  
"I'm sorry." You apologize. "I know you're not like that-"  
"But it's a habit, I get it." He offers, before he lets you go to look at you properly. "I can imagine why you feel like you have to apologize right now- but there's no need to pacify me." He tells you. “I’m not angry.” 
"I know. I'm sorry- I never thought you were like that either." You sigh.  
“Small steps.” He chuckles. “We’ve got time.” he reassures. “Let’s go out and see if we can find a restaurant we want to eat at, hm? Something casual.” He teases lightly, making you nod.  
Just like he said- it’s a habit.  
You’re so used to having to justify your actions, having to apologize for everything, having to just suck it up and get over it that it’ll be probably a long road until you’re truly free again. Does he want to deal with that? Maybe not, maybe he’s just too nice to say it right now because you’re..  well, stuck together in this hotel on this trip together for a few more days to come, since he ended up making an entire week out of the three day trip. Maybe he just doesn’t want to make you uncomfortable,  because he’s just a nice guy like that.  
“Hey.” He rips you out of your thoughts. “let’s order room service instead.” He offers, and you’re confused.  
“But you wanted to eat out?” You wonder. “and.. we’re wasting an entire day by staying inside-“  
“We’re not wasting anything.” He chuckles. “I went on this trip with you to spend time with you. Which is what I’m doing right now.” He offers you, pulling your hands to have you close as he sits on the edge of the bed you both share. “you’re getting stressed. Tell me how I can help you.” He asks gently, as you sit on his thighs, unsure.  
You don’t know why you’re so on edge today. You can’t turn it off.  
“it just feels like.. any second now, something might happen.” You sigh, playing with the buttons on his shirt. “I’m not used to things being so.. okay.”  
“I understand that.” He nods. “you’ll get used to it in the future, I promise.” Jungkook makes sure to tell you, before he takes your hands again. “can I.. ask you something? And please don’t.. I’m not going to say the things I’ll say because something is  wrong with you or anything.” He says, and you nod for him to go on. “have you considered.. talking to someone about your past experiences? Someone professional?” He wonders, but you shake your head.  
“I feel like.. it wasn’t bad enough to really go to therapy for it. Lots of people go through tough times like that, and they manage just fine.” You shrug. “I’m just being dramatic about it. Like you said, I’ll get used to it with time.” You defend yourself by instinct.  
“You’ve been through something traumatic. There’s no.. threshold of how bad something needs to be to be able to seek out help.” He explains with a gentle tone of voice. “I’m not going to force you, obviously. But just so you know, your pain isn’t invalid just because others had it worse.” He says. “Think about it, at some point. Doesn’t have to be right now.”  
“I’ll.. keep it in mind.” You nod. “thank you.” You offer him, and he nods as well.  
“Nothing to thank me for.” 
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Jungkook is agitated.  
He’s been silent for a bit now, desperately searching for a spot to charge the electric rental car at- but all he finds are either in use or out of order. It’s raining too, meaning there’s not really anything you both could do other than just drive back to the hotel- but this charging spot has to work now, or the car won’t make it back.  
Everything is just going wrong.  
From the restaurant reservation somehow getting mixed up, to his phone constantly ringing because people won’t let him have his days off- poor device slipping out his hand at some point as he’d wanted to take it out the pocket of his pants, clattering to the ground, screen cracked in several places. Then, he’s informed of something urgent at work- he’s needed back earlier than he wanted to take time off for, meaning you’ll have to pack your things tonight already to fly back home by tomorrow morning.  
And now, as he gets out wordlessly to take the charger from the station, he reaches his breaking point.  
“fucking hell!” He barks out as he’s back inside the car, hand hitting the steering wheel once as the car denies any further distance. And he’s got tunnel vision too- not noticing the way you instinctively flinch next to him.  
But it’s just a habit of your body. Your mind knows that Jungkook’s anger doesn’t work like you’re used to.  
He’s on the phone, talking to a coworker when you take the chance to undo your seatbelt, before you open the door. His hand reaches out, softly holding your coat to send you an confused glance- worried even that he might’ve caused you distress. But you  give him a smile in return, and get out to walk into the gas station, finding an employee.  
“Sorry- I was just wondering.. the charging station outside doesn’t seem to work?” You ask, and the man behind the counter nods.  
“Oh? Yeah it does it sometimes. Let me come check it, it’ll probably just need a restart.” The man shrugs, taking some keys with him before he walks back out with you trailing after him. “Ah yeah, stupid thing got a little crazy again. Go sit inside though, you’ll catch a cold!” He laughs, waving you towards the car standing in front of the little station. “let me know when it starts charging.”  
You instead walk to open the trunk however, fetching an umbrella instead to hold over the man’s head- something he laughs at but thanks you for either way as he taps around on the panel.  
Jungkook watches from inside, using this moment to calm down again.  
He didn’t think at all. Did he scare you? Probably, considering he can be quite scary to other people as well if he gets frustrated like this. He hates how things like these just bubble beneath his skin all day until it boils over- especially considering that he’s been so eager to make sure that you know he’s not one to get angry easily. And yet here he is, having just yelled at a car for not working.  
Maybe he’s not the right person for you after all. You need someone calm and collected, not someone like him.  
Suddenly, the car chimes up, telling him it’s finally starting to charge- and outside, you’re thanking the man with the thick grey beard with a grateful smile, one he returns just as warmly before he walks back into the gas station with you. And when you emerge back out, you’re holding two cups of coffee to go- rain soaking your hair as you hold the closed umbrella beneath your arm.  
Inside the car again, you offer one of the cups towards him as if nothing happened. “I didn’t know if.. you liked sugar or creamer with yours.” You say. “so I brought some of both.” You say, putting the little packages of sugar and creamer on the mid console- where his hand suddenly finds yours, silver rings catching your attention for a second.  
“I’m sorry for earlier.” He apologizes, fingers tracing your cooled down hand that holds your own cup of hot liquid. “I didn’t mean to get so riled up.”  
“You’re stressed.” You shrug. “Its understandable. Just.. maybe take a moment to calm down right now?” You offer, and he nods, a soft smile on his lips.  
“thank you.” He says, before you nod and reach for the sugar packages to dump some into what he realizes is tea.  
“The car is really quiet when it drives.” You say, and he nods, taking a sip from his coffee.  
“It makes no sound.” He confirms. “the most you hear.. are really just the wheels on the road. The engine isn’t  loud at all.” He explains.  
“so when we drive fast it’s not the engine getting louder?” You ask, and he shakes his head.  
“No. It’s all just friction, and the air passing over the car.” He tells you.  
“Its kind of funny how far we’ve come.” You say, slipping out of your shoes to get comfortable in your seat, rain falling onto the roof of the car. “like, we have cars that we can just.. charge like phones. It feels weird.” You giggle, resting your head against the seat, while your back leans against the door.  
“Do you have a driver’s license?” He asks, and you shake your head.  
“I’m too scared to drive.” You deny. “I couldn’t handle memorizing all the rules and keeping them in mind at all times. I rather.. like being the passenger.” You nod. “you drive really well. I’d sleep if we went on a road trip.” You say, and he smiles.  
“I take that as a compliment.” He tells you, and you nod.  
“It was meant to be one.” You affirm. “earlier.. it was funny.” You say, suddenly not looking at anything- and he knows what you mean by ‘earlier’. “it’s like.. my body still reacts the same, but my head knows there’s no danger.” You explain. “they’re.. detached, in a way.”  
“I’m really sorry I lashed out like that.” He apologizes again.  
“don’t be.” You shake your head. “I need to face those situations too. There’s..  no use in wrapping me in bubble wrap. After all, you wanted to see if I can handle you, right?” You ask, and he nods. “See? I think my mind can. My body might not to some degree.”  
“we can work on that.” He gently offers. “your.. body will learn too. I want you to heal with me.” He says, and you nod.  
“I want that too.” You say. “I want you to heal with me too, even if all I can offer is just.. well, nothing.” You laugh, but he shakes his head.  
“You offer me this.” He explains, eyes watching you as his hand reaches out to tuck some of your hair behind your ear. “you offer me a break. A.. moment to calm down, like you said.” He reminds you of your words.  
“if that’s what you need, I can be just that.” You say, and he nods.  
“I couldn’t ask for more.” 
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You’re late, but he can’t bring himself to care. 
He’d told himself to wait and not really indulge in any of this as long as you both don’t really know for sure where you want to take this- but you’re like a drug he can’t help but fall back on, a habit he can’t shake off. And it all happened so naturally, no words spoken as you both simply understood what the other was craving.  
Right now, everything is slow. You’re not even really undressed, him having kicked off his underwear beneath the covers, having had to somewhat get up and pull his travel bag closer to find a condom in there he had packed just in case, even though he did not plan for this.
It should have been his moment of realization. But he just couldn’t hold himself back after the lazy, but warm and almost comforting foreplay you two had indulged in after just having woken up, barely conscious.  
Your shirt is simply pushed up to reveal your naked skin beneath, and his hands are slow as they tug your underwear down your legs, sticky with your arousal from the earlier pleasure he’d brought you with nothing but his hand. You’re so warm from sleeping so close to him underneath the blanket you shared, eyes closed as you enjoy his offering of affection to you, kissing up your neck as he positions himself above you.  
There’s still no need for words. And he also fears that any sentence uttered by him could shatter this delicate moment between the two of you.  
Even though you should’ve woken up an hour ago, making you terribly late now, he just has to have this right now. It’s not just sex, and he hopes it’s not just that to you either- because this feels like a soft confession that’s not done in words, but actions instead. You really do offer him a feeling of weightlessness, as if time doesn’t exist, and no one expects anything of him. You just take him as he is, no questions asked.  
Maybe you’re this timeless because it doesn’t matter to you yet, considering the difference in age between you two. Should he feel bad about it then?  
Possibly. But then again, just like he’s using you to escape his own responsibilities and the pressure of his life, you’re using him just as much for a stable person to hold onto and rely on. And he’s fine with that. A good, healthy relationship should always have a balanced exchange. Give and take in equal amounts. Will this all become a problem in the future? Will you one day realize that he’s not able to offer you all the experiences you should have made in your twenties?  
Maybe. But even so, he realizes you’re right. It still wouldn’t be wasted time, if it’s spent with you.  
So what if he has to book and pay for another flight because you’ll surely miss the one he chose last night? He really couldn’t care less, because there’s no way he’s going to rush this. It’s the first chance at proper sex with you, finally a moment where he can give you actual attention as you deserve, not some quick fuck in the car or random blowjob on your couch. This isn’t just to satisfy your urges.  
This is a chance for him to show you love. 
And it’s clear that this is new to you- because you’re restless, as if you’re constantly expecting him to change pace, go faster, begin to rush towards his own pleasure. But he doesn’t, because that’s not his goal at all. His actual goal is to somewhat prove a point to you- that what he’s offering is not what you’re used to, in no way. He doesn’t see you as someone replaceable, someone who just has to be there, who has to listen to his every demand and do exactly as he says.  
No- he wants you to be yourself. He wants you to gain back that autonomy you rightfully deserve.  
Because one of the biggest things he noticed is how you constantly seem to live in a state of trying to pacify him at all times. As if you have to make sure he’s always happy and content with decisions made and words said, and he wonders just how bad your past relationship must’ve been to cause you to develop such behavior. So right now, he’s attempting to show you that he’s quite honestly the most calm around you anyways, even if you don’t do anything at all but exist alongside him.  
That’s enough already. He doesn’t need anything special from you, but yourself.  
Do you feel it? The way he’s pushing himself inside you isn’t an act of pure lust, but an attempt to connect with you, oddly enough. Jungkook has never seen sex as just that- but he has to admit that with Evelyn, the act had lost it’s appeal to him over time, mostly because he both knew that she was seeking out other people’s company aside from his own, and also because it just felt empty and unfulfilling to him. There was nothing to be gained from it, not for him at least- it only made him feel dirty and used, and towards the end of his relationship with her, he couldn’t bare to really let her touch him any longer. 
No matter what intention she had.  
But right now, with you, he’s feeling something- an urge he’s not felt in a long time, an excitement for possibilities and an eagerness to explore. And right now, he wants to take his time, watch you squirm beneath him, maybe even push you towards the limit of your patience. Will you beg?  
Why does that sound so arousing to him?  
He’s curious to know what you enjoy, what you want to explore, what you think about when you feel that specific need. He wants to ask what it was like before, has so many questions- but he also doesn’t want to speak right now, feels like this is neither the place nor perfect time to have a conversation like this. So instead, he just does what feels right- 
And judging by the way you sigh and reach out to touch him as well, it appears to be exactly what you like as well.  
Though he can also spot that impatience of yours growing, his smile not possible to be hidden as he rests his forehead in the crook of your neck, simply enjoying the closeness of it all as his hands run up and down over your body, exploring what he’s already seen before by now. But it doesn’t get old, doesn’t get boring- it never will be, most likely. He doesn’t know how long this will last, how long you’ll stay with him, or how long he’ll stay with you- but he wouldn’t mind to have you at his side long term, he knows that much.  
Or at least, he wants to try and make this permanent. 
Your legs wrap around his waist, clearly a sign of your dissatisfaction with the way he only occasionally actually moves, if anything, this all could count more as cockwarming than anything else. And now’s the time he has to break his silence, as he chuckles against your skin, placing faint barely felt kisses against the side of your neck. “What’s wrong, darling?” He purrs almost, while your hands move to rest on his shoulders.  
“Move.!” You complain, and he loves the demand so much. Not because he wants to go faster, but because you demand anything at all- something you should do more often. Maybe this is his way to go, moving forward. Maybe he could fuck some confidence into you.  
He surely wouldn’t mind doing it that way.  
“I am moving.” He teases, his low tone still raspy from lack of use during sleep causing your core to clench around him.  
“Our flight..” You mumble, fingers running over the back of his neck, causing him to involuntarily shiver.  
“I’ll book a different one later.” He denies, adjusting his position a little, pressing himelf as deep as he can inside you, leaning back to have his hands on your thighs, fingers running over the warm skin.  
“But that’s wasted money..” You say, unable to really resist his touch however, your arguing weak in nature and delivery. “And you’re needed back at work..”  
“I’m needed here, right now.” He instead teases, using your legs to pull you closer, slowly starting to thrust, your chest swaying alongside the pace he sets. “By someone I find way more important than work.”  
“But-” You start, but he decides to play dirty now, delivering a particularly hard thrust to shut you up or at least give him the chance to speak before you can finish your sentence.  
“You’re important.” He simply chuckles. “Right now, and afterwards, too.” He makes sure to tell you, before he leans over again, faces close. “Can I kiss you?” He wonders, eyes falling to your lips for just a second. “You can say no. I won’t be upset at it.”  
But you nod. “I want you to.” You say, for a second questioning if your words might’ve been too demanding- but it doesn’t appear to be the case, as he leans in to catch your lips, first kiss between you both passionate and warm- not hot, nowhere near burning. It’s like a promise, a silent gesture of devotion from him, an offering of his to show that he’s actually taking this seriously. 
He’s in it now. This is no longer just playing around.  
He’s not going to tell you he loves you- because he’s not there yet, and he knows neither are you. But he truly believes that these feelings can grow if he nurtures them well, and if you accept them and let him plant them in your heart. He wants the vines of what might grow to connect you both, because that’s what you both deserve.  
He knows his own worth. And he wants you to know yours, too.  
His lip piercings are a little foreign, but in a way, they make it a unique experience to you. Or maybe it’s the sincerity he has in his actions, the way he treats you, the fact that he pays so much attention to you as well during this whole thing. You’re not used to this. He doesn’t seem to expect anything of you, and it makes you a bit anxious.  
But even that, he notices.  
“Let go, darling.” He chuckles against your lips, barely apart from you. “I’ll take care of you.” 
“But shouldn’t you be taken care of too?” You worry, and he just smiles.  
“This is more than enough for me, trust me.” Jungkook responds, moving a bit faster now. “I just want you.” He tells you, and you're sure he doesn’t know the weight of that statement. 
Or how long you’ve waited for someone to say it like that. 
Because even though it’s said right now, during the act, but it’s not actually sexually charged. It’s not said in the context of ‘I want you right now’- but it’s more generalized. He wants you.. In general. Not just in this moment, or for this specific action.  
So when you simply trust yourself in the heat of the moment, turning the tables or more so positions, you feel a strange sense of confidence as you now ride him, his hands on your hips taken by yours, fingers intertwining while he watches you for a moment, clearly fighting the urge to just relax and close his eyes, sight of you too pretty to miss. But he can’t help it, leans his head back into the pillows with a lazy smirk on his lips, pulling you closer to wrap his arms around you, slow pace all you both need as you push each other over the edge, coming undone at different times- but still, that doesn’t make the moment any less meaningful.  
He keeps you in this position for a moment while he spills into the condom inside of you, not utterly exhausted, but entirely satisfied nonetheless. He feels nice, like his mind and body have been reset, truly giving him a fresh start to the day as he finally opens his eyes after bathing in his own afterglow.  
A glance to the side offers him the time. Your flight has left almost half an hour ago by now. 
“We missed it.” You mumble sleepily, and he nods, before he playfully manhandles you around to lay on your back on the bed again, pulling your shirt over your head. “Jungkook!” You laugh, and he chuckles along, attacking your shoulder and neck with kisses and even bites, visibly energized now.  
“Good.” He purrs against your skin. “Up for a round two?” 
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You feel a bit embarrassed. 
You’ve been home for two days now, and you miss him. Terribly so. Even though you try and occupy yourself with work, your mind keeps going back to the time spent with him, and you’re conflicted. Should you reach out? Text him? He told you he wouldn’t mind, but he also seemed a little stressed about work, so you probably shouldn’t bother him.  
Maybe you could ask Tae? 
But he doesn’t really give you an answer, somehow sounding oddly reluctant even to just talk about his friend in any way, and it makes you suspicious. So today, you finally jump over your shadow, and text him- just to get no reply for hours. It’s not until later that day that you receive a phone call instead- his voice sounding tired. “I’m sorry I’ve been silent.” He simply says, and you’re immediately alarmed.  
“What’s that noise in the background?” You want to know, because it sounds very much like something you’re very much familiar with. And with the way he dodges an answer by sighing first, you just know what’s going on. “Which hospital are you in? Do you need anything?” You rant. “What even happened?” 
“Nothing happened-” He quietly argues, sounding awfully like a scolded child almost, but you cut him off.  
“Well something clearly happened for you to be in hospital!” You argue, before you calm down. “I’m sorry, I just-” 
But Jungkook reassures you as always, giving you the name of the hospital he’s staying at, as well as the room he’s in, so you can visit him. And the moment you walk in with some snacks approved by the doctors, you feel like you’re the one in need of medical attention.  
“What happened?” You weakly ask, carefully sitting down next to his bed where he’s in, a hand running over his face, careful not to twist the delicate tubes connected to the needle in his arm.  
“Just an accident.” He says, though he’s not looking at you- and it makes you anxious.  
“What accident?” You ask, and when he doesn’t answer, you press on, unable to keep your emotions in check properly. “Jungkook please. You said we should be honest-” You softly say, and he sighs, licking his lips.  
“I.. Fell asleep.” He mumbles quietly. “While driving to a meeting. I was late, and it was.. Just for a split second- and suddenly it all went to shit.” He explains. “I was- the road was empty. And it was so fucking late, I- don't know what I was thinking.”  
It’s quiet after that, apart from staff and visitors moving outside in the hall, barely heard through the closed door, but the machine that’s keeping close measurement of his vitals occasionally makes a sound.
Jungkook barely manages to look at you, and when he does, he’s not sure what that expression on your face means. You’re looking at a nasty bruise on his wrist, face unreadable, before you eventually speak again.  
“Jungkook.” You say his name, and your voice is bone chillingly serious, demanding his full attention.  
“Don’t you ever do that again.” 
Your words are heavy, full of emotion and yet delivered in a monotone anger that makes him realize the gravity of the situation. He’s lucky he didn’t hit anyone in that tiny second, should be forever grateful nothing major happened at all except for his car getting crashed beyond repair.  
“I’m sorry-” He begins, but you shake your head, speaking after you take a deep breath as if to collect yourself.  
“No, I don’t want an apology.” You deny. “You can’t do this.” You say, and he’s a bit unsure what you mean, when you turn to look at him with glossy eyes. “You can’t make me get attached just to... pull something like this.” You say. “That’s cruel, Jungkook. You could’ve killed someone.” You tell him, and he nods, quietly. “Get a cab next time, or have someone drive you, fuck I don’t care!” You become a bit louder now. “But you can’t do this. You can’t be this selfish.” Is your response, as you finally properly look at him, close to tears. “I’m starting to need you, Jungkook.” You confess.  
“You can’t leave me alone like that.”  
And at the first tear falling, he chooses to ignore his physical pain, to move over a little and have you sit on the side of his bed, clinging to him as the full force of it all hits you, arms reaching out for him, grabbing hard at the hospital gown he’s in, desperate to hold him.  
As if you need to know he’s still there, that he’ll be fine.  
“I’ll make sure to rest properly from now on.” He promises, hand that’s not hooked up to anything running over your back as you cry into his chest. “I’ll take better care of myself. I promise.” He tells you, and you nod, though you stay close.  
It takes a good moment for you to calm down again, and when you are, he uses that energy you both have now to dig a little deeper.  
“I’m sorry I didn’t reach out, by the way.” He tells you, and you shrug. “No, I mean it. There’s no excuse for it.”  
“You were busy.” You mumble, but he shakes his head.  
“Doesn’t matter.” He denies. “I’ll make more time for you. I need to rest anyways, and even after I’m healed, I should take a step back in general. Like I said-” He offers, wincing a bit when a movement causes him pain. “-I have to take better care of myself. For you.”  
“I’m sorry.” You mumble, detaching yourself a little from him again as you sit up, feet dangling off the edge of the bed. “I’m getting clingy already-”  
“No, please.” He encourages, giving you a soft smile. “Be clingy. I promise you, I’m just.. It's just a bit odd to me at the moment.” Jungkook reveals. “I’ve not had someone care for me in such a way in.. A while.” Or ever, he wants to actually say- but he doesn’t want to put so much pressure on you.  
He can leave those big confessions to a later date.  
“Should I.. do you need help at home once you get out of here?” You wonder. “I could help you? Or, maybe you can.. I don’t know-”  
“I’d really appreciate your company.” He smiles. “And your help too. But mostly your company.” Jungkook teases, making you laugh in relief.  
Not just because he clearly looks worse than it actually is- 
But also because his smile looks oddly youthful- and most of all, truly genuine. 
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kiwi-bitchez · 7 months
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Double Down, Triple Threat 
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Summary: insecure!Eddie x bartender!Reader
Eddie is constantly flirting with you after his Corroded Coffin sets at the Hideout, and you have the bad habit of flirting back. What happens when you overhear a conversation that wasn’t meant for you? Maybe you’ve had the wrong idea about the cocky metalhead who negs you for free drinks. Now you need to take it into your own hands to resolve some built up tension. 
Smut, as always, with a touch of angst but generally fluff/happy ending. 
Word count: 18k (eek! in retrospect I maybe should have split this into multiple parts but...fuck it, brevity has never been my strong suit LOL) Buckle up for a doozy.
Content warnings: smut, afab reader with she/her pronouns, use of y/n, alcohol consumption, smoking, the devil’s lettuce, mention of Eddie's scars and sustained injuries (slightly canon divergent obviously because our boy is ALIVE here, but the events of season 4 generally stand otherwise), also Eddie does some negative self talk where he refers to himself as mutilated but everything is happy in the end I promise, and scars are nothing to be insecure about he's just down in the dumps you feel me?, oral (fem receiving), fingering (fem receiving), unprotected PIV sex (plz use protection irl), pet names, reader and Eddie shower together
A/N: I know it’s been a hot minute since I’ve posted a fic on here, but I hope all y’all who are still riding the Eddie Munson thirst train enjoy this :) I’m trying to regain the motivation to write more, so hopefully more fics to come soon (no promises though lol) (maybe some Steve? Steddie x Reader? Let me know what y’all want to see.) I
"I'll have the usual," his hoarse voice and boisterous presence cut through what few other customers sat at your bar, forcing your attention his way.
"Yeah, and what would that be?" you try to give him your best deadpan voice, unsure yet if you were in the mood for his antics. 
"Come on, like I ever order anything other than a whiskey and coke," his curly dark hair stuck slightly to his damp forehead, not having bothered to wipe the sweat from his brow in between the stage and the bar. If you could even call it a stage. It was more of a sad corner with an extension cable and a few amps that his grunting bandmates were lugging back into their truck while he very helpfully came over and tried to flirt with the bartender. You were the only bartender. On Friday nights anyways. 
"That's because you're unoriginal," his drink was already half made as you flick your eyes up through your lashes at him, knowing he was watching you intently, not that he was particular about how his drink was made by any stretch. "You're actually going to pay for it this time," you slid the glass over to him, "I'm not joking."
"You wound me," he tries his best to give you puppy dog eyes, "but I'm pretty sure Randy mentioned something about drink tickets when we negotiated our new Friday slot."
"That's not a thing," you make up menial tasks behind the bar to keep your hands and eyes busy while he relentlessly chats with you, "never has been. Plus if I keep giving you free drinks you'll get the idea that I like you or something." 
Fuck, you told yourself you should stop flirting back with him. Your first excuse had been professionalism, which didn't make a lick of sense considering you were a bar back at this hole in the wall that paid local bands in drink tickets, apparently. Your second excuse had been that as fun as Eddie was to chat with, you hardly knew anything about him other than his loud band and his drink order. 
Unfortunately he liked to chat and sooner than later you knew more about him than you wanted to. Your newest excuse? If you kept flirting back with him he might get the idea that he could see you outside of this dingy bar, and you liked the comfort and safety of the three feet of wood separating you, it kept you from doing something you might regret. 
"Don't act like you didn't like our set," he threw the rest of his drink back, "I saw you watchin' from over here."
"Yeah, well you're kind of hard to ignore, you know, with the volume and all," your voice had a too-playful tone that you mentally noted to dial back on. 
If you were being honest, Corroded Coffin was one of the weekly acts that you didn't entirely mind. Most were groups of middle aged men trying to relive the glory days by booking a weeknight at the Hideout, instruments barely tuned and a setlist that was decades out of style. While Eddie's band certainly wasn't everyone's cup of tea, you found yourself tapping your foot along with their songs more often than not. At least they were original, you’d give them that. 
He held his glass up to signal a request for another. "Go help your friends carry all your shit," you swiped the cup from his hand, hating that you focused on how your fingers briefly touched his, "and then I'll make you another. And I'm charging you for both."
"Whatever you say, babe" he spun around three or four times on the bar stool before sauntering off and finally assisting with moving the amps and drum kit. You rolled your eyes, not that he was watching you anymore, but more to keep yourself from checking out how his shirt clung to his torso. His black t-shirt was always a size too small, revealing his tattoo covered arms that you never allowed yourself to stare long enough at to make out what any of them were. 
Eddie was nice. As much as you liked to push each other's buttons and joke around, he was a lot more respectful than most patrons that tried their hand at flirting with you. He never said anything gross or disrespectful, not something you could say about most men who've had more than a few beers. 
But you didn't want to risk pushing any boundaries with him, because you work here, and his band plays here weekly, religiously. You didn't want things to get weird, and as much as you learned how to avoid certain patrons, there was only so much space between the 'stage' and your station behind the bar. 
Despite this, you have his second drink made before he finishes putting his stuff away, and you haven't started a tab for either of them. A big smile stretches across his cheeks when he notices his already-made drink set by his stool as he walks over from the back door. You couldn't help but feel a tiny smile creep up on your face as well. 
"Really made me work for this one, huh?" he takes the first sip while still standing before setting back into his seat, "truly amazing service, best I've ever had, really." You glare at him while cleaning some cups absentmindedly with a rag. "Not sure if you can tip on a drink ticket though..."
"Fuck off," you giggle and throw the wet towel at him, "you can't charm your way into TWO free drinks you ass."
"Aww you think I'm charming?" the flirtations between you were always edged with sarcasm, which you both found a lot easier than admitting 'hey you need to stop looking at me like that or else I'm going to keep thinking about pinning you against this countertop.'
"No, I don't, which is why you're PAYING for both those drinks," a lie followed by another lie, and you both knew it. "Where'd your band go?"
"Why? 'm I boring you?" he didn't mind taking up all your attention when the other bar patrons were either too drunk to stand or too old to even notice that a metal band had performed for the past hour. "No one's ever accused Gareth of being more interesting than yours truly. Plus he doesn't drink anyways, so your venture capitalist instincts wont work on him." He raised his drink to punctuate his joke before taking another long swig. 
"Ha ha," you don't give him the satisfaction of a real laugh, "I just wanted to make sure you had a ride home in case you try and swindle me into making you a third drink."
"Oh no, I told them all to scram, that I had a hot date with you and my unsettled tab," he leaned over the bar, trying to eliminate as much space between himself and you, "plus I've got a friend coming by to pick me up in a bit. So if you wanted to make me that third drink in exchange for me keeping you company while you close up, I certainly don't have any reason to turn you down."
"Fine," you point at him with a stern finger, "but this one'll be more coke than whiskey."
"Deal," he pointed his finger back at you, moving carefully in so the tips of your pointers touched. This made you genuinely laugh, unable to keep up a wall for too long around him. 
He finished his second drink while you ordered last call, and settled up with crumpled cash and mumbled thank you’s from the few remaining drunks. After closing up the cash register you make him that more-coke-than-whiskey drink as promised, and get to wiping down every sticky surface. 
"What's your drink?" he asks.
"Hmm?" you glance over from your hunched over position, trying to get the wet rag across the underside of the bar where someone had clearly spilt what appeared to be an entire pint of light beer. 
"You know my drink order, I wanna know yours." you stand up straight and look at him. 
You consider pushing back and demanding why he wanted to know, but it was late and you only had so many quips left in you, "Gin and tonic with extra lime." You get back to soaking up the spilt mess.
"Woooooow," his drink was finished and he took it upon himself to grab the broom from behind the bar and start sweeping up the bottle caps and tracked in dirt, "and you had the nerve to call me unoriginal."
"I'm not some creative rock and roll guitar guy like you, I don't need to be original, I'm just a bartender," you let him keep sweeping and start checking off other tasks from your closing list.
"You aren't just a bartender, give yourself more credit than that babe," he held up the dustpan full of crap, silently asking where to put it and you hold open a mostly full garbage bag for him to dump it into before tying it off, "judging by your drink order I would also guess that you're, hmmmm, an 85 year old man."
"Oh my god," you slap him on the arm with another half dirty hand towel, "in that case, you're doing voluntary manual labor just to flirt with this 85 year old man, so maybe you need to reevaluate your priorities."
He takes a few steps forward, not quite caging you against the bar, but nearly there. "And how am I doing? Is it working?" He's the closest he's ever been to you, jokingly sliding the broom around your feet, pretending to sweep while maintaining searing eye contact.
As the which-one-of-us-is-going-to-learn-in-first question buzzes around you, an irritating light flickers through the big front window, indicating someone had pulled their car right up to the curb with their high beams on. Eddie scrunches his nose up, and your urge to kiss him somehow grows despite his annoyed expression. "That's my ride."
You give him a small nod, turning your head to try and squint to see who could possibly be picking him up at this hour, but not making out much through the foggy glass. "I suppose I can manage the rest without you," you grab the broom from him, fingers touching for the second time tonight, "see you next week, rockstar."
Eddie wants to do something smooth, a wink or a clever line, but instead nervously gives you a nod and is out the front door before he can give it a second thought. The minute the door closes behind him you let out all the air you had been holding in your chest, both frustrated and slightly relieved. Eddie on the other hand- was bursting with regret and frustration, immediately running his hands through his hair and pulling a cigarette out of his pocket. 
"Absolutely not," Steve craned his neck out of his car that always looked like it had just gotten a fresh wax and detail, "at least five feet away from the beemer if you're going to light that." 
Eddie rolled his eyes, considering putting the cigarette back into the carton and getting the fuck away from this bar, but ultimately gave in and pivoted on his heel storming back towards the brick exterior and slumping against it as he flicked his lighter and took an aggressively deep pull. 
"What's your damage?" Steve moved out of the expensive car, keeping a bit of distance from Eddie but close enough that the two could talk, "That bartender you like wasn't on or something?"
"She's inside closing up now, so keep your fuckin' voice down" he gave Steve a glare and then immediately an apologetic look for being so prickly, "I'm just bad at this shit, man."
"You can't be that bad at it, Gareth and Jeff said the two of you eye fuck across the room every Friday night," Steve shrugs, understanding Eddie's drawback but knowing his friend rarely gives himself the benefit of the doubt. 
"Yeah, well, that's not the hard part," Eddie rips his cigarette and presses his wild hair deeper into the brick behind him, exhaling upwards. 
You had taken note that Eddie's ride hadn't left yet, so you busied yourself for a minute before deciding who cares if you had to give him an awkward wave on your way across the parking lot, so you locked up and grabbed the trash to take to the dumpster out back before leaving for the night. 
You really didn't mean to eavesdrop, but as soon as the back door clicked you heard their muffled conversation from around the corner. Rather than give away your presence with the clanging of the trash you gently set it against the wall and moved forward silently, staying out of sight but well within earshot. 
"Flirting is the easy part, she's fuckin' easy to talk to, man" Eddie's voice carried, and you felt guilty but continued to listen, "I don't want to just fuck her though, I want to like, date...her."
"Oh," Steve's voice dropped knowingly, "well that's... good, I guess, that you like her like that."
"Well even if I didn't like her like that and was only looking to fuck her," he sighs out, and you carefully listen while furrowing your eyebrows, trying to make sense of their conversation, "she's gorgeous, and no girl that hot- scratch that no girl at all want's to fuck some mutilated freak."
"Don't call yourself a freak," Steve's voice seems apprehensive. 
"Yeah, sure, but you can't say I'm not mutilated." There was a beat of silence, and you didn't have time to think too much about his words before he went off again, voice laced with thick sarcasm, "Oh hey babe, so glad you were able to look past that I live in a trailer park and all my neighbors think I'm a satan worshiping murderer, but I hope you can be cool with my singular nipple and weird lumpy scar tissue, I know it's super hot, you're gonna have to get in line." His voice carried easily far past your hiding spot. 
"You're not giving her much credit dude," Steve was still apprehensive to respond, knowing how Eddie got when he started to spiral, "Maybe she's not that shallow."
"It's not that," Eddie's voice started to calm, "I'd just rather take my twenty minutes of flirting after our Friday gigs than risk it and have her look at me like she's sorry for me or something." 
With that he snubbed out his cigarette butt with the toe of his combat boots, let out a big sigh, and moved to get into the passenger side of Steve's car. You take a few slow, careful steps back towards the slumped garbage bag and wait until you hear the engine start and see the lights pull out onto the opposite side of the road. 
Fuck. Part of you felt incredibly guilty for listening to what was obviously meant to be a private conversation, especially a private conversation about you. But your gears were turning far too fast to get hung up on guilt. 
You always felt apprehensive about Eddie because you figured he was a flirt, a player, the kind of guy who talks to all bartenders like that, and you just happened to be the one he flirted with after his Corroded Coffin shows. You never wanted to get too invested in making him smile or waiting around for him to chat you up, because you know how most guys are, especially guys who carry themselves with that much confidence. And you were fucking wrong. 
Now fully realizing that the ball is in your court, you need to plan your first move. You decided, Eddie was worth taking the risk. 
It was truly a shot in the dark, but if your intuition ended up being a bust then no one would know about your wasted afternoon other than yourself. The following afternoon you drove aimlessly up and down the unpaved residential streets of the trailer park. There were two in town but you had a pretty good feeling that this was the one. 
You only started to feel stupid when you got some confused and slightly angry looks from people going about their business, hanging laundry or smoking on their porches, scrunching their noses and trying to make out the unfamiliar car driving in circles around their neighborhood. 
Aha! There it was. You knew that your gut could only fail you so many times when it came to Eddie. Exactly what you had been looking for, a big black and blue 1971 Chevrolet van strewn with dents, patches of rust, and, your telltale sign, a homemade Corroded Coffin sticker crookedly placed on the faded chrome of the bumper. 
Step one, complete. Step two was contingent on Eddie even being home. The presence of his van had you feeling hopeful. 
You attempt to rid yourself of lingering nerves with a deep breath and silent pep talk. You park adjacent to his van and hop out before your legs can convince you not to, and suddenly you've rung the doorbell and are standing with your hands clasped nervously in front of his door. 
"Just a minute," you hear him yell from inside, step two, complete, "What're you here for? Cuz I only got weed right now so if you're..." his hollering voice trails off from inside as he catches a glimpse of you through the screen. "Y/n? What the fuck are you doing here?" 
"Jeez, hello to you too," you try to lace your voice with the same flirty edge that you always took with Eddie, but you didn't have the comfortable barrier of the bar or the security of being the person serving him his drinks. 
"How the fuck do you know where I live?" His tone wasn't quite angry, but it was bordering on more pointed than just confused. 
"Sorry, I didn't mean to drop by totally unexpected," you suddenly felt vulnerable, regretting this whole stupid plan, "I can go." 
You start to scurry back to your car and hide your face forever, but he cuts you off with, "No, no, just, why are you here?" He softened his voice, and came down the stoop to hover over you on the last step. 
"Well," here goes nothing, "last night I felt like we sort of got interrupted." You pause, trying to gauge his reaction, "And I couldn't stop thinking about it, and I didn’t want to wait a whole week to see you again."
"Oh," his face and reaction didn't give you much of a clue as to what he was thinking. 
"And," you started filling the empty air with words, as you often did out of anxiety, "I know where you live because I've heard you sing 'fuck everyone in the trailer park, I'll play my music and curse your existance' probably a thousand times, it really wasn’t that hard to figure out where you live." 
He let out a chuckle, despite being deep in the throws of processing your earlier statement of feeling cut off. Of course he wanted to see you outside the confines of the musty bar, he just hadn't expected it to be like this, so sudden. "Well that's fair. I’ll give you double points for perception."
"I didn't mean to interrupt your Saturday," you began to reel again, "just wanted to tell you I'd like to hang out with you sometime, preferably not at The Hideout."
"Can sometime be now?" he hopped down from the last step and gave you an inquisitive smile, nose slightly scrunched and giving you butterflies. 
"Yeah, sometime can be now. You promise I'm not interrupting anything?" you felt a wave of relief, his energy had fully shifted from confusion to your comfortable flirty banter.
"Just a packed bong and have some laundry I probably wasn't going to do anyways," he suddenly realized he either had to invite you inside, which would be slightly embarrassing given the current state of his trailer, or suggest a secondary location, "you hungry? We can grab lunch or something?" 
He offered to drive, and you suggested sandwiches and beer to go for a backseat van picnic. He was relieved that you were down with doing something so casual, no stuffy cafes or overpriced food. If you were more than happy to suggest eating deli counter sandwiches in the back of his clunky van then maybe he had less to worry about than he thought. 
The passing moments between you had him realizing he truly didn't know much about you. Your job, how you had no problem snapping back at rude customers, and most recently your favorite drink. He wanted to know more, and quickly did as you had a 'regular' sandwich order and gave him directions to a side street that looked out onto a small lake, explaining that you'd eat lunch out here sometimes when the weather was nice. He parked the van in reverse, letting the back doors swing open, giving you the perfect bench looking out to the scenery to sit back and eat. 
"All my years living 'round here, I've never been to this spot," he noted through bites of sandwich wrapped in white paper.
"Yeah, most people know the spot across the lake with the rope swing and all that," you gesture across to where there was a popular jumping rock littered with empty beer cans, "too crowded for me though, it's more peaceful over here." 
"Sorry if I was a bit rude earlier," he started, but you quickly cut him off before he could finish his apology.
"No, no," you move your hand over to gently grab his mid gesture, "don't apologize, your reaction was incredibly reasonable."
"I just-' he started but you gave his hand a squeeze, "I really am happy you decided to come by, I didn't want you to think otherwise."
"I'm happy you chose lunch with me over a bong and laundry, that was some tough competition I had," he rolled his eyes at you.
"Don't make fun of me," he nudged your side, "I'm usually pretty wiped from Friday's show and trying to think of clever things to keep up with you, so my Saturday's are usually pretty lazy," your shoulders rubbed against each other, "being a washed up wannabe rockstar and flirting with a girl way out of my league can really do a number on me."
You share a soft giggle but reassure him that playing live music, even if it is only for you and a crowd of five drunks is still pretty cool. "Plus I like that you dress like this all the time, it's not just an act, this is just how you are," you gesture to his ripped jeans and ring clad fingers.
"What did you expect, babe? Surprise me at my trailer to find me in a polo and khakis?" the suggestion alone had the two of you laughing, brainstorming an alternate universe where Eddie was an accountant by day and only let his rocker side loose on Friday nights. 
"If you aren't secretly an accountant, what do you do when you're not playing music, if I may ask," you realize this was really one of the first personal questions you'd exchanged, keeping things punchy and surface level until this point.
"Ah, well," he scratches the back of his head, "although I wish the drink tickets we make at The Hideout were enough to cover rent, I work down at the body shop, you know the one down the street from the grocery store? My uncle knew some guys there and hooked me up with a job fixing cars after high school, and it's not too bad, I'm not half bad at it either, so that's where I'm at."
"You just really keep getting better and better, huh?" at first he wonders if your comment is sarcastic, but you continue "So what I'm hearing is you'll look at my rattling engine for free? I know nothing about cars and am always worried the people at the body shop are going to overcharge me."
"I only charge in sandwich dates and drink tickets, so you're in luck," he responds quickly without giving it much of a thought. 
You take a second, "What about dinner dates? Maybe movie dates too? Are those acceptable payments for your mechanic expertise?" 
"Not usually, but I'll make an exception for you," he responds after a few beats, realizing you wanted to see him again, and not just at the bar. 
You both are looking out at the lake, the buzzing energy around you making you nervous to look at each other. So you just tilt your head sideways to rest on his shoulder, "Phew, that's a relief, because I have a lot more of these planned."
"Oh yeah?" he shifts his body towards you, lifting your head from his shoulder and finally meeting his gaze, a stupid grin plastered across his face, he couldn't help it. "Which one of these dates do I finally get to kiss you?" You let out a breathy laugh, half amused by his corny line and half surprised he was being so forward. 
"Hmmm, I'm not sure," you pretend to think it over, stringing this out was killing both of you, but you couldn't help but push his buttons a bit more, "I'd say I'm kind of a third date kind of gal."
"Three? As in three from now or three including this one?" He seemed genuinely concerned, causing a genuine laugh to slip through the act you were putting on. 
You move your hand to his chest, faces closer than they had ever been. You had always been sucked into his big brown eyes, but now you saw flecks of honey and deep browns that bordered on black in them, faded freckles dotted across his cheeks, a chapped patch on his lower lip that had clearly been the victim of some anxious chewing. "I'll make an exception this time, for you."
He let you make the first move, leaning in and gently pressing your lips to his, soft and slow. You could feel his breath catch in his throat, prompting you to pull back and look at him through fluttered lashes, as your mouth parted slightly to ask him if that was okay, his big ring clad hands cupped the sides of your cheeks and pulled you right back into him, kissing you like he was afraid you'd evaporate if he ever stopped. 
The wind was knocked out of you. You couldn't be bothered to breathe when your attention was solely focused on his lips, his tongue, the sharp intake air he sucked in between slotting your top lip down to your swollen bottom one, nipping with teeth and holding your face so close. 
After a minute of soft whimpers and exploring the new intimacy you pull back to finally catch your breath, fully ready to ignore the need for oxygen and lean back in when you see his face, rosy and buzzing with excited energy. 
"Sorry, if that was kind of a lot," he realized you had given the sweetest peck and he proceeded to practically shove his tongue down your throat. 
You however, were already brushing his apology off and leaning in for more, missing the feeling of his big hands cradling your face, sending tingling shockwaves down your body. Before you could lunge back at him and take more of what you wanted, he takes your chin in between his fingers and tilts your head up to his.
"I don't know if you can tell, but I'm sort of crazy about you. And I really don't want to fuck this up, but I've wanted to do that for a really long time.” 
He could tell by your pout that you were begging for another kiss, and he couldn't refuse you. You were completely lost in it. Learning that he let out a little gasp when you ran your fingers up into his hair, that he would catch your bottom lip in between his teeth when you started to pull away and he needed more, that you were already completely wrecked for him. You weren't even conscious of the fact that you were now fully seated in his lap, sandwich wrappers and empty cans long pushed aside. 
Part of you wanted to wait, to let things build up organically over time and get physically intimate when the moment felt right. But fuck it, the moment felt right now. 
Any apprehension or worry of scaring him off dissipated when his thumb ran across your cheekbone, his other strong arm holding you steadily against him, you don't think you could wiggle away if you tried. Swirling in your apprehension you also fought the urge to press your hips down into his and grind against him harder. You wanted to let him take things at his pace and not rush anything, but fuck you could feel his cock getting hard between your legs and it was driving you insane. 
He dragged the knuckle of his middle finger up your neck along the curve of your jaw, speaking softly into your kiss, "can I kiss you here?" pressing his touch into the side of your neck.
"You can do anything you want to me," you pant back, slightly embarrassed at how desperately horny that came out.
"Fuck," he groaned out, cock noticeably twitching against his black jeans and into your thigh, "you can't say shit like that to me."
"Sorry, sorry," you try to gain your composure and lift off him slightly, “I-"
He took a hold of your waist and pulled your back down into his lap, diving into the side of your neck and nipping and sucking until he found the spot that made you squeeze your thighs slightly around him. "Anything I want requires a lot more time and space than we have right now, pretty girl." He mumbled into your neck in between kisses, his words making your back arch slightly more into him. "Plus I need to be a gentleman," you rolled your eyes at this. 
"Since when have you ever worried about that," you tug his hair back to force him to look at you.
"You really want to know what I want, right now?" he quirked an eyebrow.
"Really, really," you let your weight sink down onto his lap a touch more, feeling the stiff length under his jeans slot between your thighs a bit deeper, making his breath hitch before he could respond. 
"I want you to lay back on those blankets up there," he nodded towards the few crumpled up blankets he had shoved behind the driver's seat, "and let me eat your pretty pussy until you're screaming loud enough for the people across the lake to hear."
Whatever you were expecting, it wasn't that. 
This unexpected burst of sexual confidence threw you for a loop, as you were fully prepared to be the one making all the big moves. Your mouth hung open slightly, struggling to form a response when all that was swarming through your mind was holy fuck, holy fuck, that was so hot, what the fuck do I say. 
Rather than respond with words you just roll off his lap and start moving deeper into the back of his van, propping your torso up on bent arms and sending him back a suggestively raised eyebrow. He swung his legs up over the ledge and took one of the doors with him, sliding into the van and quickly shutting the other as well. 
It took a second for your eyes to adjust, the previous sunlight coming in from across the lake was cut off, and the light source now was only coming from the front windows, making things darker but not invisible. You quickly had no trouble making out Eddie's slender form shuffling around and getting situated in between your bent knees, urging you to lay back a bit more and relax as much as your body would allow against the lumpy blanket pile. 
"This is okay?" he asks while leaning down to pick up where you had left off a moment ago. 
"Yes, fuck," you wiggle up into his form, wanting as much contact as he would allow, wrapping your arms around his neck and pulling him down into your lips. 
It all had moved faster than you were used to but fuck if it didn't feel so right. Why did you feel more comfortable with this person you hardly knew than you had with your past few long term relationships? He just had this way of taking your nerves and throwing them out the nearest window. 
After sucking on your lower lip until it was puffy and slick he dips his chin into the crook of your neck, dragging his perfect nose up your jugular and nestling into the junction of your neck and ear, licking a stripe all the way. You wanted to desperately buck your hips up into his, but only allowed yourself half the satisfaction of lifting your thigh slightly to give him more space to sink deeper into your slumped form. 
When Eddie’s life flashed before his eyes, on more than one occasion- actually- he wasn’t particularly satisfied with what he saw. In the moments before what he assumed was death, his brain searched for the best moments to accumulate and reminisce on before his body succumbed to the untimely demise he was facing. It wasn’t much. 
He wished he had more than smiling moments with his D&D club, a few killer performances at the Hideout, no killer audiences, some nights of revelry with his friends, and a few forgettable hookups in dingy bar bathrooms. That couldn’t be it, right?
In the wake of his life flashing, fading, and flashing again, he made more space for good things. After his shows now he let himself think about you, and how much he liked you, let himself try his hand at flirting. Because if he was going to come anywhere that close to death again, he needed more to show for it than a few trysts with nameless girls and an unnerving amount of scar tissue. 
So he wasn’t about to fuck this up. If someone came at him with an axe tomorrow, at least he’d have the memory of you splayed out beneath him in the back of his van, lips shiny and cheeks rosy. If his life were to flash before his eyes again it wouldn’t be as bad.  
“Do you know how long I’ve thought about this?” he mumbled into your neck, his denim clad thigh pressing perfectly in between your legs. You could only hum back as if to say, “no, tell me.”
“I think you do know,” his teeth grazed upon your earlobe, sending a jolt through your hips and finding solace in the friction between your thighs with his.
“Yeah, I know,” you breathe out, arching your neck down to nudge the tip of his nose with yours, “do you?”
“I didn’t have a clue,” he mumbled into your lips before slipping his tongue against yours, sickly sweet and laced with all the regret of not asking you out sooner. 
You let your ankles hook around one another, locking your hips together and earning a deep rumble of a moan from the man trapped. “I recall you mentioning something about the people across the lake hearing me…” you playfully trail off, equal parts confidently flirty and deeply desperate for him to act on his earlier promise. 
He had nudged his way down into the neckline of your shirt, licking and nipping at as much of your breasts as he could find, fingertips grazing the waistline of your pants. Part of you wanted to just lay here and let him have his way with you, but the conscious part of your brain recognized the insecurities he expressed in that conversation you weren't supposed to hear, and signaled you to be as forward with him as you could be. 
“Fuck,” you struggled to pry your hands between your pressed bodies to reach your jeans button, “Eddie can I take these off, I want to feel you.” 
With your hands moved south, you managed to undo the clasps of your jeans while also running your hands upwards towards his shirt, wanting to feel the skin beneath. 
It was subtle, but impossible for you to miss, when your fingertips grazed his lower stomach and trailed up his t-shirt his body shifted into a tense state for just a moment. You could have easily missed it. It took all of a millisecond for him to subtly jerk away from you and redirect the attention to your now unbuttoned pants. His hands were dragging the material down your thighs before you had a moment to register the way he averted your touch. 
He playfully tossed your bunched up pants over his shoulder, as if they had anywhere else to go other than the three feet of van between him and the doors. After that flashed moment of shyness, you noticed nothing but a playful smirk on his face, smile crinkled at the corners of his cheeks and eyes full of wild mischief. 
His hands spread against your thighs, digging his fingertips into as much skin as the width of his palms would allow. 
“So fucking perfect,” he drank you in, hardly noticing the moment you pulled your shirt and bra over yourself, but dumbstruck as soon as his eyes caught sight of your reveal.
Knowing he had yet to put his money where his mouth was, he adjusted downwards and let his flushed cheek make contact with your thigh. In that moment he vowed to let the sight of the little damp patch in the center of your cotton panties stay forever in his mind. 
He didn’t let a single thought register in his brain before he leaned forward and let his tongue lick a fat strip up the middle of your clothed center, adding dampness to the apparent arousal already there. 
“Jesus,” you were slightly taken aback at his action, letting your head fall back, while still lowering your gaze down to where his hooded lids and pink tongue sat in between your thighs.
He reveled in the feeling of being between your thighs, letting his tongue play around the center of your panties for a few strokes before the twitching in your legs signaled that you had had enough of his teasing. 
Taking a blissful moment to hook his finger through the crotch piece of your underwear and pull it to the side to reveal your slick center, he simply couldn’t help himself. He pulled back and drank the sight of you in, panties wet with your arousal and his spit pulled to the side and your perfect cunt finally in his sights. 
The groan he let out only tripled your level of neediness for him. You let your chest puff up and hips gyrate forward at nothing to signal that you needed him, like, now.
Before you could even think of something snarky to say to get him to get on with it, his entire face was fully buried in you. An involuntary ahhh escaped you as he let his entire tongue press as far into you as space would allow. 
“Ohmygod,” all coming out in one breath, “fuckeddie.” 
He groaned deeply into you at the feeling of your pussy on his mouth, your taste, how your hips twitched slightly when his nose pressed against your clit. He didn’t even think about all those drunken chats with the boys or stupid cosmo articles he couldn't help but read, eating your pussy didn’t require any thought, he could only feel. 
Your sighs were like a song to him, every sharp inhale and subtle whimper, he caught it all and it was the most beautiful music. He let his tongue swirl faster when he heard your breath hitch, gripped your thigh tighter when you let out that beautiful exhale. 
“So fucking good for me,” he mumbled into your inner thigh in between licks, fully pussy drunk and ready to stay here forever, “fucking perfect.”
After some selfish exploration, he settled on a steady rhythm against your clit, making your back arch and whines jump an octave. 
“Eddie, Eddie,” you groaned, feeling embarrassed how needy your voice already sounded, “can you use your fingers too, please.” Desperate. That’s how you felt, and you couldn't help but be self conscious for any more than a moment, as he immediately headed your request. 
Guitar fingers. You fucking knew it. You always found him attractive and charming, but immediately scolded yourself the moment you started speculating about those damn fingers. If he could learn Metallica solos in private, what else could he do?
Curling upwards in that magically delicious motion that had you already seeing stars, he glanced up at you upon entering and was met with the glorious sight of your mouth hanging open and eyes fluttering shut. 
You simply couldn’t be bothered by the rickety van floor beneath you, the sad lumpy pillow propped under your head, or the stagnant, vaguely cigarette scented air around you. Nope. No thoughts other than the tightening knot in your stomach and how those pretty brown eyes peered up through too-perfect lashes at you in between sinful strokes. 
“Making me feel so fucking good,” you hardly recognized your voice as your own, “please don’t stop, Eddie, please…”
And there it was, euphoric bliss found in the back of a pot dealing metalhead’s van. Your thighs quivered and your brain lost all capacity for thought. All you could feel was the sudden wash of pleasure, the pulsing between your legs, and the tongue and fingers fucking into you as if it was the last thing he ever did. 
Writhing, trying to keep your moans down despite his verbalized promise for them to be heard far and wide, you try to control the jerk of your hips and grip on his hair. You rode out your orgasm, far sooner than you would have liked. You wanted to revel in it. 
After months of relentless flirting and suppressing your attraction to him, you wish you could have held your orgasm off a while longer. You simply couldn't allow yourself to bask in the velvet of his tongue or the tickle of his bangs on your thighs. You needed it too badly to hold off. 
Coming down from your orgasm, a broken moan cracked from you and let him know to slow his roll. In between catching your breath you catch a view of him sucking your release off of his slick fingers, and almost throw yourself at him, beg him to jump your bones. But all you can do is let out a breathy laugh and find the strength to prop yourself up on your elbows to get a better look at him. 
“You come?” he asks, slight snark to his voice.
You muster up the energy to bop him upside the head and ruffle his hair along the way. “Fuck off,” you respond, still breathless, “you know I did.”
“I know,” he cocks his head, still admiring your form, your flushed face and rise and fall of every breath, “It’s polite to ask, though.”
“Ah yes, Eddie Munson, most polite man I know,” you flop back onto the mismatched pillows.
“Hey!” he pretends to sound offended but only manages to tug at your heartstrings, “I’ll have you know, that I am a delight.” 
“Can’t argue with that,” you reach down to feel your dripping folds before hunching forward to search for your underwear, which haven't traveled too far from his knees on the van floor.  
You wanted to return the favor, do more than return the favor, but something about his shift in demeanor and the way he angled his body away from yours slightly to adjust his hard cock in his pants and keep up the too-casual post-orgasm conversation had you thinking it was more than him being too polite to accept your advances. 
“Shit, what time is it,” he begins to shuffle towards the front of the van to check the time while you awkwardly gathered your clothes and redressed, fully assessing that whatever fooling around in the back of this van you were doing was officially over. 
“I, uh, have a few errands to run,” he sounded apologetic, not like he was making some excuse to get you out of his hair, “I can drop you off, or you can come along for the ride…”
There is was, your affirmation that he was just as desperate to hang onto this moment together as you were. 
“I actually have a shift starting pretty soon,” you regrettably admit, “and as much as I’d love to ditch it and be your passenger princess, the Saturday tips are usually the bulk of my rent money so…” 
He understood, he hated how much he understood. 
“What time do you get off?” He didn’t even try to hide how eager he was to see you again, again in ten minutes, again later tonight, again tomorrow, again as many times as you’d let him. 
“Get off? Pretty sure I did that like three minutes ago…” you joke and appreciate his huff of a laugh, “Um, I’m closing, so probably not until like two or three. Don’t worry though, I can give you my number and we can do this again when we’re both free.”
“I’m free later… at two,” his expression was dead serious, “or three, or four, or whenever.” He noticed your brows shoot up and words start to form in your mouth, before you could speak he cuts in, “If you won’t be too tired or anything. I can pick you up?”
“It’ll be pretty late Eds,” you were falling into the trap of his puppy dog eyes, “you don’t need to wait up for me like that, I promise we can see each other again, tomorrow even…”
“Tell me to fuck off if I’m being pushy,” he took your hand in his and mindlessly stroked circles into it with his thumb, “but I’m sort of a night owl, not big on the whole sleeping thing anyways, and I’d love to pick you up from work later.”
“Okay,” you agree, the soft earnestness of his voice snared you, and considered the magic he had just worked between your legs, who were you to say no. The glimmer in his eye and quirked smile at your response had you wishing you had said more than ‘okay,’ wondering what kind of look you would have gotten from a ‘yes, please,’ or ‘I’d love that.’
He drove you back to his trailer, not letting go of your hand during the ride, not even to turn up the music at his favorite parts. He offers to follow you back to your place, insisting that waiting for you to shower and change into work clothes and then drop you off at the Hideout was “on the way” to these supposed errands he had to run. 
You roll your eyes but start to accept that this is the kind of guy Eddie is, insincerity undetectable when he makes these offers. You invite him in, but he opts to wait outside with a cigarette, pacing a bit and then forcing his legs and mind to still by waiting in the drivers seat. 
“Hey hot stuff,” he wolf whistles as you exit your apartment, dressed in your usual black shirt and jeans for work, apron balled up in your bag to put on once you arrive. 
He’s sweet, and sincere. As much as you liked the jab banter between the two of you at the bar, you think you might prefer his sarcastic jokes mixed with sweet compliments and longing gazes more. Not that you weren’t getting that from him at the bar before, there were plenty of longing gazes there too, but now the shared glances are heavy with the knowledge of what his tongue feels like on your cunt. 
A sloppy, exaggerated kiss on the cheek and a ‘go get ‘em tiger’ sends you off into the bar, where your hands will be pouring cheap liquor for the next several hours but your mind will be solely occupied with what your post-work date with Eddie entails. 
The drink special of the night was a mix of anxious anticipation and lustful yearning, shaken too aggressively and served with sunsteady hands. Luckily the Saturday rush kept you mostly focused on vodka sodas and Guinness pours, wiping down sticky surfaces and making change for impatient customers. 
You had assistance behind the bar, and that also meant assistance closing up, finally allowing yourself to start peeking through the window to see if Eddie held up on his promise. Of course he had. He’d been waiting in the lot, scoring a few sales from exiting patrons who knew him previous deals, since long before the bar closed. 
You wipe your sweaty palms onto your apron and ball it up into your bag before bounding across the parking lot towards Eddie, who always seems to have this effortless charisma buzzing around him, a cigarette dangled from his pretty lower lip and posture just slouched enough to still be sexy. Maybe you were biased at this point. 
He pulls you in by your waist, angling his chin up to blow the smoke up into the sky rather in your direction. 
“How was work?” Your cheeks were already starting to grow hot at the feeling of his pinky finger landing on the strip of skin between your shirt and jeans, “Miss me?”
“Bartending’s a lot easier when I don’t have your nosy ass pestering me for free drinks,” you cock your head at him, silently asking for a drag of his cigarette, which he immediately understands and complies, “wasn’t too bad though, happy it’s over,” you exhale. 
“If you’e hungry there’s some fries and a milkshake by the passenger’s seat,” he let you slip from his grasp to spin around towards the van door.
“For me?” you peek through the window, realizing he didn’t just mean extras from his dinner earlier, he had gone out of his way to pick you up a post-work snack.
“Unless you aren’t hungry,” he moves to hop in the drivers side, “In which case you can practice tossing fries into my open mouth while I drive.”
You let a few fries fly across the car seat in his general direction, feeding him the occasional one directly, but inhaling most of them shortly after you peeled out of the parking lot. 
“D’you want me to bring you home, or…” you knew where he was headed with this, a nervous edge to his voice. 
“We can hang out back at your trailer if that’s okay,” you say mid-fry, “as long as I can take a quick shower I don’t mind chilling there.”
He grins like a giddy schoolgirl and grips the steering wheel just a touch tighter, and drives just a bit faster back to the trailer park. As anxious as you felt during your shift, you can’t be bothered to overthink with Eddie leaning towards you with his tongue lolling out of his mouth, making googly eyes at the shake you were downing as his way of asking you for a sip. 
He put the van into park before the wheels had even come to a complete stop, hustling around the front to make sure he was the one to open your door. He had spent some of the time you were away straightening up his trailer for the first time in a good long while. Empty beer cans were cleared and he even changed the bed sheets. It still wasn’t the Ritz or anything, but at least he can say he tried.
He tried to busy himself with locking the door behind you after entering, not wanting to see if your eyes drifted over to the mess of records and smoking pariphenelia that cluttered the coffee table, or the chance that the mixture of heavy metal and nerdy posters strewn about would draw a judgmental reaction. 
When he let his gaze drift back to you, you weren’t looking at any of that. You were looking right back at him, already leaning up on your toes and asking, “Can I kiss you again?” 
A mumbled “of course” had you wrapping your arms around his neck and melting into his touch, finding his lips already on yours before you could go in for the kill. 
The kiss started off French-fry-and-strawberry-shake flavored, smiling into his lips as the anticipation of seeing him again after only a few short hours slips away. 
“Thank’s for spending so much time with me today,” you whisper in between sticky sweet kisses, “and for the fries and-“
He took your cheeks in his hands and smushed your lips into his mid-sentence, pulling back to see the puckered fish face he held between his hands. 
“You’re welcome,” his big button eyes bore straight through you, as if he saw all of you and more, “but you don’t have to thank me, I like being with you, and I ended up eating most of the fries anyways,” he trails off, cheeks rosy and lips slick from your claim on them.
“You wanted to shower?” He cuts himself off, and feels stupid for it. He knew he could keep kissing you and kissing you and kissing you, and the only thing holding him back was his anxious brain and big mouth. 
“Oh, yeah,” you were a little surprised that he remembered, and chose to bring it up now, “if you don’t mind. I always feel a little sticky after work, you know, with the Hideout’s C health rating and all.”
With a smile that nearly knocked the air out of you, he took a deep bow like some silly court jester and motioned down the trailer’s only hallway. You took your lead and followed his outstretched arm, figuring there were only so may doors that could possibly lead to a bathroom. 
“Oh, shit, wait,” you hear him scramble behind you, shuffling past into the door you assume to he his bedroom, emerging milliseconds later with a crumpled towel in his balled up hand, “you’re gonna want this.”
“Thank you,” you’re slow with your movements, wondering how he was acting so squirrelly, like a middle school boy around the girl he wanted to take to the dance, even though he had you fully spread out begging for him in the back of his van only hours earlier, “is the shower big enough for two?”
You meant it equally suggestive and genuine, knowing full well that not all showers are built for partner bathing. However, the fear stricken look that washed across his face for a millisecond before scrunching up and setting to neutral had you thinking you had just asked if there was a built in hot tub or something like that. His mouth hung open and for a moment that conversation you weren’t supposed to hear replayed in your mind, maybe you had to take this slower than he was willing to let on. 
“Just looking for someone to massage my scalp, that’s all,” you try to jokingly play it off, keeping your invitation open but concealing it with a joke to double back on just in case.
“Yeah, it’s- uhhh,” Eddie, who was always quick with a comeback was suddenly lost for words, “It’s the size of a normal shower, yeah.” It’s not like he could lie, all you had to do was turn around and size it up for yourself. 
You take the towel from his white knuckled grip and pivoted towards the door that was close to having burn holes from where his laser focused eyes were shot. You give him a wink over your shoulder, figuring that was enough of an invitation and vague enough of an excuse for him to leave depending on what he wanted. You hated this line you were towing, knowing more than you should- yet still feeling so in the dark. 
He was right, it was a normal sized shower. A bathtub with a sliding door and a detachable shower head with only one working setting. There was a rack with three-in-one and a bar of dove soap, which should have annoyed you but made you giggle instead. You let a quarter sized drop of the generic body wash slash shampoo slash conditioner lather into your hands when you heard the bathroom door creek open, purposefully left unlocked. 
“Hey, is it okay I’m in here?” He sounded so genuine in his concern, unknowing you were on the verge of begging him to get in the shower with you. 
“Yeah,” you borderline shout over the running water, “here to help massage my scalp?” You let your tone stay light and joking despite being deadly serious. 
“Wow I didn’t realize your hands were really that delicate and incapable,” he tried to match your energy, but an anxious edge remained present. 
“I mean,” you searched for your words, “I’ve seen you play Metallica, I know those fingers could surely get this pine scented crap deep into my roots.” You let the suggestive comment linger, nervous after a beat of silence passed. 
“If you really need my help,” you heard him shuffling around , “who am I to turn a damsel in distress away?”
You felt your cheeks get rosy and shoulders wiggle with excitement as you caught the shower door jerk open. Your face was towards the shower head, and you only turned a quarter of the way around before Eddie stepped in behind you and those guitar-string-calloused-hands gripped your shoulders and twisted you back towards your view of the water stream. 
“I’m gonna make you a deal,” his voice was coated with as much charisma as he could muster, his worries only poking through enough for you to notice, “I’ll give you the full treatment, but you can’t turn around.”
You were willing to play along with about any game he suggested. If he asked you to bend over backwards you’d extend your spine as far as it could go. 
You stood with your front as straight towards the shower head as you could, only feeling his presence behind you and his gentle hands lay on your shoulders to assure you wouldn’t turn around. 
“Just let me take care of you,” he edged closer, letting you feel his naked body enter your space, his face craning over your shoulder to gauge your reaction, “Just stay like this and let me feel you.”
It was less of a question and more of a plea, the only thing more pathetic sounding was the whimper that slipped out of you when you felt his body press against your back, warm and hesitant to press all the way into you, but close enough for you to feel his skin. 
“Okay,” you let your head lull back onto the space between his collar bone and shoulder, keeping your eyes closed, not that you could see anything from this angle anyways, “I’ll stay just like this, promise.”
“I just-“ you could hear his walls come up, suddenly trying to find the words to explain himself to you, “I’m not-“
“Eddie,” you whisper, eyes fluttering open to glance up at him as much as you could, “it’s okay. I’ll stay just like this, I’m just happy to be here with you.”
You gently found his hands resting at your hips and guided them up to your soapy scalp, “We both know the real reason I called you in here anyways,” you joked, and angled your head straight forward so he could run the pads of his fingers all through your 3-in-1 coated hair.
He let out a light chuckle at your joke, nearly feeling it catch in his throat as all the passed time of insecurity and locking his feelings away welled up and shattered with the intimacy of washing your hair. What did he do to deserve having you like this? For you to understand and want him to stay anyways? 
As much as his emotions clouded his vision and stunted his breathing, the rush of blood in between his legs broke his internal monologue. As overwhelmed as his mind was, his body couldn’t be convinced to focus on anything other than the sudsy girl pressed up against him, letting out little noises of satisfaction as he let his fingers absentmindedly massage away. 
“This’s nice,” you lean back into him a bit, “it’s like masturbating, you know? Always feels better when someone else does it for you.” You didn’t feel too guilty about the sexually charged comment, considering the fat rod that was pushing into your lower back. 
He let out a short chuckle, but his breathing was rapidly turning heavy as the air clouded with steam and your wet body rubbed against him, fully arching into his erection as if you wanted to get a better feel. 
“Can I wash the rest of you?” his request is polite, but his voice is lust filled and bordering on begging. 
You hum in agreement and lift your arms to let him slip his hands around you, one crossing your chest and the other reaching around to get more gel, “It technically is shampoo and body wash, and I was promised the full treatment here.” 
As much as you wanted to keep joking with him, finding silly things to comment on to break the tension, your resolve was quickly going down the drain as his big hands lathered you up. 
“You’re so beautiful,” his voice is just audible over the rushing of the shower water, “I’ve always thought so, but now I fucking know it.” 
His warm breath against your ear manages to cut through the heat of the steam, making you shiver despite it all. “Eddie,” you whine, his hands running up and down your torso, spending more time on your chest than the rest, but surely showering you in as much attention as his hands could reach.
Knowing that tone from earlier, already committing to knowing your body as intimately as you’ll allow him to, he immediately gives in and touches you exactly where you want him most. 
Most of the bubbles had dissipated, and he held you close to him, with one hand splayed across the center of your chest and the other dipping down to run two fingers through your now parting legs. 
He could feel the slick of your folds, standing out from the water cascading down your body, so warm and wet in a different way. 
“Fucking hell,” he groans out, letting his hips roll forwards slightly to find some friction against your backside, sliding his fingers from your hole up to your clit a few experimental times before letting his middle and ring fingers dip into you. 
When he had gone to town on you earlier in his van, which somehow felt like a million light years ago, you had taken a keen interest to the way his metal rings brushed up against your inner thighs and lower lips when he slipped his digits into you. As much as you had reveled in that new sensation, he had taken all his jewelry off along with the rest of his clothes and reservations before joining you in the shower. And now you could grind down onto his hand until he was completely buried to the hilt of his knuckles, no demon heads or upside down crosses in your way.
You wanted to wiggle and writhe around, feeling a bit week in the knees and desperate to buck your hips down against his pumping fingers. He pressed your chest tighter against him, lips pressed up against your ear, “I thought you promised to be good and stay still for me.”
He could feel your pussy clench at that, letting out a satisfied chuckle and  plunging his fingers right back into your cunt, letting the meat of his palm massage your clit in perfect time. 
“S’ this what you wanted,” his voice had the full bodied confidence of a man who didn’t just ask you to not turnaround to see him without a shirt on, “for me to be all sweet and wash your hair, then make you cum on my fingers like the dirty girl I know you are?” 
The smallest fraction of you wanted to be a brat and joke back at his silly use of shower innuendo, but your mind was almost entirely committed to the feeling of his hands on you and his dick rutting Into the meat of your ass.
“Eddie,” you could barely squeak his name out, “Eddie, can I touch you too, please? Please?” While his voice had been pleading before, you were literally begging to get your hands on him. 
“Like this,” you manage to open your eyes, head still resting against his shoulder and your hand snaking back to where his cock pressed into you, not fully grabbing it but motioning towards it with your hand. 
He snatches your wrist up with the hand not occupied with your tightening pussy, and for a second you fear that you had crossed a boundary. 
As much as you were willing to comply with not looking, you were bursting at the seams to touch him, make him feel good, show him how much you wanted to be right here with him and nowhere else. 
Before your mind could race any further, come to a screeching halt and apologize, he guides your hand up underneath your chin and demands “Spit.”
Your short circuiting brain dashes from his fingers, remaining crooked inside of you, his request, and the tone of voice he used to ask. You were fucked. Drool leaks from your lips before you even have the chance to process his words other than the immediate feeling of oh fuck yes. 
He brings your spit coated hand back to reach around, allowing you to wiggle it in between your wet bodies and find his eager cock already arching into your touch. 
He only faltered for a moment, the consistent dizzying pace of his fingers inside you stuttered the moment he felt your slick palm take an experimental stroke. The moan he let out was involuntary, along with a breathy “Oh, shit.”
Obviously you couldn’t size him up visually, but the weight of him in your palm was enough to have your mouth watering and thighs squeezing his wrist a bit tighter. Uncut? Maybe? With a pretty patch of curls to match his mop top? 
“Just like that, please,” you whine out into the steamy air, the two of you finding a joint rhythm between your hands and subtly rolling hips. 
“Your pussy feels so fucking good, so warm and tight for me,” every other word slurred into the curve of your neck. 
“You’re gonna make me cum,” you try and match his increasing speed with your hand, “Eddie, please don’t stop, I’m-“
“Shhhh,” he was getting lost in it too, “I’ve got you.”
Your legs turn to jelly, but he keeps you steadily upright with his support on your chest, focusing entirely on you despite the welling orgasm of his own rapidly approaching. 
It’s the crack in your voice that pushes him forward, the high pitched breathy moans crumbling and releasing the noises of pleasure from deep within your chest. His name  mixed in with ahhhs and uhhhs as if his name is the only word you know in this moment. 
“That’s right,” a sense of confidence welled in him as your limp body twitched against his and your cunt squeezed his relentless fingers, “cum all over my hand, doing so good for me.”
Despite your orgasm wracking your brain and body succumbing completely to whatever Eddie was willing to give you, the thought of collapsing into the shower floor never crossed your mind. He held you so close and steady against his chest, it crosses your mind that you may not be putting any weight onto your feet at all by this point. 
Rather than catch your breath as you come down from your quaking orgasm, you slip deeper into the throws of pleasure, biting your lip and craning your neck backwards so he can see the fucked out expression on your face. A few more steady, enthusiastic pumps mixed with a desperate kiss, wet and at an awkward angle, breathless and needy, perfect and dizzying, sends Eddie over the edge with you.
The deep rumble of his chest against your back as he groans into your open mouth, encourages you to keep your pace as he gently fucks himself into your hand. He’s spilling into your hand and halting his wiggling fingers buried inside you, letting the momentum that the two of you had built up come to a pulsing end. 
The two of you stay tangled in each other for a moment, hands sticky and brows dewy with sweat despite the running water, which had long lost its heat and now settled at a less than comfortable lukewarm. Neither one of you wanted to move. Eddie would have stayed there until his legs cramped and the shower turned ice cold. 
His eyes were screwed shut, head tilted back, still holding you close until you wiggled from his iron grip to bring your cum covered fingers up to your lips to suck two of them clean. 
“Jesus Christ,” he was thankful that he had opened eyes in enough time to witness that, “You’re gonna fuckin’ kill me, you know that?”
You let out a mischievous giggle with his cum coated fingers still in your mouth, glancing over your shoulder to catch the look on his face. Equal parts hungry to pick you up and fuck you against the shower wall right now, and melting down to nothing and slipping away down the drain, unable to even start comprehending what had just transpired between you two. 
You let your fingers go with a pop and turn back around, “Don’t act like you weren’t going to do the same,” you let the chilling water hit your face, focusing on anything other than turning around and lunging at him, wrapping your body around his and letting your skin melt into his. 
He gives into temptation and lets his pruny fingers meet his tongue. He knew what you tasted like from your escapade in his van eaierler, but he’d seize any change he got to take in as much of you as he could. 
“That was,” he started, unsure how to sum how he felt, good, great, perfect, none of those words felt correct, “fuck, yeah- that,”
“Me too,” you press your back into his again, “Thank you Eddie.”
Before he can stumble over his words any more, you ask if he’s okay for you to shut the water off, and you ask if he’d be willing to spare some sleep clothes for you to borrow. You curiously stay in the shower while he takes your excuse for him to leave unseen. 
After toweling off and slipping into the old t-shirt and boxers he left folded up on the counter for you, you found him already dressed and in bed, set criss cross and packing a bong. 
“Post-shower-orgasm smoke, cuddle, then sleep?”
“I’d love nothing more,” you get cozy among the pillows and let the swirling smoke and easy conversation lull you into a comforting half sleep. 
An easy energy settled between the two of you, a silent understanding that you weren’t going to ask him questions, and a building comfort that made him almost ready to show you. 
You slept tucked into his side, and didn’t even mind his snoring or tossing in the night. Every time he rolled over, your sleeping form just found a new way to mold into him. It was the best he had slept in months. 
A steady stream of sunlight blazing directly through the blinds and into your eyes pulled you from your slumber, gorging your groggy eyes to open and crunched up limbs to search for room to stretch. The involuntary fluttering of your eyes and long extension of your libs was far beyond your control. 
“Oh!” You whisper out to yourself once your brain manages to catch up with your waking body, realizing the somewhat compromising position the night had thrown you into, your leg hiked up and clinging to Eddie’s waist, with both your arms scrunching up his t-shirt and leaving a strip of stomach exposed. 
A negligible, unnoticeable few inches between where his sweatpants hung low on his hips and where your gripping arms had balled up his hole-ridden t-shirt stood before your gaze. 
You didn’t mean to stare, and the moment you caught yourself doing so, you quickly and quietly removed your tangled limbs from his and repositioned yourself so that he was half spooning you, eyes facing far away from his unintentionally exposed scar tissue. 
You knew it was probably going to be worse than you were expecting. You hadn’t dedicated much thought to what it could be, or what maybe had happened. You just knew it made him feel like he wasn’t worth your time, and you needed to make him feel seen and safe enough to know that that couldn’t be true. 
Everyone has insecurities, sure. There are surely parts of yourself you weren’t eager to share with the world, let alone someone you’re romantically interested in. You had moved past being astonished that someone who wore gaudy costume jewelry and sang boisterous music for a bar of twelve patrons with the energy of someone who had sold out Madison Square Garden would ever shrink into their shell the way you had seen Eddie. Now, laying in his bed and knowing that whatever it was, the scars were more than what was on his skin.
“Mfffmmm,” he groans and shifts behind you, wiggling beneath the sheets and snaking his arms to wrap around your waist and pull you close into him, “This is nice.”
His morning voice was scratchy and barely above a whisper. 
“I think you just like that my butt is all pressed up on you,” you joke, dodging admiring that you’d rather be here than anywhere in the world in this moment. 
“Yeah, I’m not complaining,” he digs his nose into the side of your neck, “But you smell nice too, ’s nice to wake up to.”
“That 3-in-1’s really doing it for ya?”
“No, you do smell like that a little, but more just like yourself. Girl smell.”
“I’ll get started on that perfume line right away. Girl Smell. Might be a million dollar business venture.”
“I just woke up,” the sleep in his voice melted away and his hands running up and down your sides were more deliberate, “Don’t make fun of me. Plus I’ve got a pretty girl in my bed making me all nervous.”
“Anyone with magic fingers like you has nothing to be worried about,” you keep the conversation playful but allow the unspoken truth, that he truly has nothing to worry about with you, be spoken.
“You just like ‘em cuz I washed your hair so well,” he plays with a strand, letting his finger pads dig into your scalp and scratch away, massaging a bit harder after you let out a satisfied groan.
“You must have lots of practice,” you reach an arm back blindly and half smack the side of his shoulder before finding his messy bedhead, staying resolutely facing the poster-covered wall. 
“You’ve got really pretty hair for a boy,” you let your finger wrap around a curl. 
“For a boy?! Excuse me, I have pretty hair period.”
“Yeah, suppose that’s true” you giggle at his joking defensiveness, “It’s incredible that it’s this nice considering you use the same thing to condition your hair as you do to wash your balls.”
“If you show me what kind of shower products you like I’ll replace the three in one,” he nuzzles his face into the hand playing with your hair, “but maybe the three in one is what’s keeping it so luscious.”
“I wanna wash your hair next time,” you say absentmindedly, meaning it wholeheartedly, with little anxiety after that you had implied a next time. 
“Yeah maybe next time,” his voice trailed off, still soft and flirty but edging on a tone that let you know this conversation was just about over. 
“Eddie,” it came out as hardly more than a whisper. You wait for him to respond but the gravity of the silence between you quickly became unbearable and you needed to break whatever tension this was. 
“I meant it yesterday when I said I wanted to go on more dates with you. You know that right?”
“Mhmm” he mumbles into your shoulder, still holding you against him.
“We have a lot of fun at the bar and stuff,” you search to find your words, “But I want you to know that I don’t just like you cuz you make me laugh and have magic guitar fingers. I like pretty much everything about you so far, and I want to know you more if you’ll let me.”
Your voice wavers, and your message is perhaps more vague than you would have liked, but the deep exhale he lets out conveys that he hears you loud and clear. 
“I know I’ve been…” he starts, “It’s just that I…”
“It’s okay Eddie,” you flip around, rolling so that your chests are pressed together and noses are almost touching, “I don’t want to push it. You can tell me when you’re ready, I just want you to know that I like you a whole lot and I don’t think there’s much that could change that right now.”
His eyelashes flutter shut, forehead touching yours, “Thank you.” 
“Unless you have a huge chest tattoo of something wildly offensive, or like a tramp stamp that says ‘I heart Ronald Regan.” He appreciates your natural ability to make him laugh even in situations like this. 
“Nah,” he pulls back and gives you a serious look, “Fuck Ronald Regan.” 
The two of you burst into a fit of giggles, rolling deeper into the sheets and settling into a comfortable cuddle again, with your head on his chest, face angled up to his and legs all tangled up.
Coming down from the beginnings of the conversation that had been lingering above both of your heads, you place a few reassuring kisses up his jaw and find your way up to his parted lips. 
“Mmmm,” he hums into the deepening kiss to signal you to stop, “I probably have mega morning breath,” he huffs into a cupped hand which makes you laugh and flop your head back into his chest.
“It’s okay, if you do then I do too and didn’t notice,” you peek back up at him, “But if you want to brush teeth and get your day started I won’t stop you.”
“No, no,” he grabs your cheeks and pulls you back up for a smushed kiss, “I wanna stay here all day with you, if you’ll let me. Our second date, we can order a pizza and watch movies here, won’t even have to put pants on.”
“That sounds really nice, I don’t have work today so I’m all yours.”
“All mine,” his grin reaches the apples of his cheeks, “I will go brush my teeth though, cuz I think this second date involves a lot of kissing.”
“Got a spare I could use?” you shuffle out of bed before situating yourself  on the edge of the bed, “Or do you brush with three in one too?”
“Oh my god,” he chuckles, “you with the three in one. After today I promise there will be three separate shower products stocked and ready for your use.”
He manages to find a spare toothbrush in the closet and keeps you wrapped in his arms while both of you take turns spitting into the sink. Looking at the two of you, eyes still crusty from sleep, in the scratched up bathroom mirror, a weird sense of domesticity washes over the two of you. 
Eddie realizes that less than 48 hours ago he was too nervous to make a move to kiss you, and now he was already thinking about making room for your toiletries in his bathroom. 
As comforting and easy it was to do normal everyday things with you at his side, he couldn’t help but notice your nipples poking through his oversized t-shirt you slept in and the way your toothpaste full mouth was framed by your perfect, spit slicked lips. 
“You got a spit kink or something?” You half joke, pressing your ass into the growing rod you could feel nudging against your side.
“Sue me,” he spits and wipes the corners of his mouth, pulling you by the waist into a minty kiss. “Bed? All day?”
“Mhmm,” you agree and lean in to kiss him again, standing on your toes and letting out a shriek of surprise when he scoops you up bridal style and travels the short distance to his bedroom. 
“Eddie!” You yelp out as he gently tosses you back into the pile of sheets. 
“I know I’m no Hulk Hogan, but moving guitar amps is pretty good strength and conditioning.”
“Shut up, you never help your friends carry the equipment.” You think of all the times you watched his poor bandmates lug their equipment after a show while he seamlessly flirted with you. 
“Not when you’re around, you’ve got me there.”
As promised the two of you laze around all morning, bowls of cereal in bed and a bowl of weed to accompany it, switching between fits of giggles and tangled in the sheets while a B horror movie plays on the little TV set propped up near the end of Eddie’s bed. 
He tells you about how he used to live with his Uncle in a trailer down the street until he saved up enough to start renting his own, the three attempts to finish high school and the relief when the local mechanic shop hired him despite his reputation around town as a satan worshiper. He talks a bit about his friends, some who’ve stayed in town and others who’ve long moved away. 
You listen attently, taking in every spared detail. In return he asks you about where you’re from, why the hell you had moved to a bumfuck town in Indiana to be a bartender. He assures you that you wouldn’t have liked him if you had known each other in high school and you laugh and tell him you were far from popular yourself. 
After inhaling a large pizza and running out of VHS tapes you demand a “post pizza bloated cuddle” to which he happily obliges.
“Wish we could do this every day,” he pulls you into him.
“Then we’d need a much bigger movie selection, and maybe body doubles to go do our jobs,” you don’t disagree, although lazy and uneventful the day felt perfect. 
“Don’t wanna go to work tomorrow,” he whines, holding you a little tighter.
“Me either, but we can’t be in this lazy cuddle bubble forever,” his hands came up to massage and scratch your scalp, which he now knew you loved, “but next time we’re both free maybe we can have that third date.”
“If I remember correctly, date three is when I finally get to kiss you,” he jokingly smooches behind your ear and down your neck. 
“Only if you behave,” you reply sarcastically, “you’ve been such a gentleman lately, but you’ve been pushing it mister.” 
“I’ve never been accused of being a gentleman before,” his voice trails off as he buries his nose into your neck, “Will you let me be a gentleman now, make you feel good?” His tone was suddenly dripping with lust, sending a rush of arousal through your already so-relaxed body. 
“Mhmm,” you agree and let your body mold back into his a bit more, pressing yourself against him and letting his hands start to wander.
You arch your neck around from your spooning position and search for his lips, your kiss starting out gentle but not staying that way for very long. 
“You’re just somethin’ else,” he breathes out in between heated kisses, his eyes big and round, earnest, making your heart swell.
“Can I make you feel good too?” you roll your hips into his erection, your breath catching in your throat when you feel it pulsing under his boxers and pressing into the space between your legs. 
You flip around to straddle him, not hiding your intention to grind yourself down onto his covered cock, moans from both of you interrupting the hungry exchange of tongues and lips.
A shaky breath grabs your attention and he finds the air to exhale out, “Can I fuck you?”
You bring your hands to his cheeks to pull him into a deep kiss, continuing to rock your hips against him, giving him words as well you mumble a “Fuck yes, please, please Eddie.”
He finds the hem of your shirt and slips it over your shoulders, the momentary break in kissing makes you whine. He immediately makes it up to you by paying delightful attention to your exposed chest, leaving sloppy wet kisses on every inch of skin he had access to, “fuck”s and “so perfect” breaking them up. 
You instinctively reach down in between the two of you to take his hard cock into your hand, still pressing your core against it, but taking the rest into your hand to stroke him over his boxers, the choked out moan that escapes him is the prettiest sound you’ve ever heard.
You’re losing yourself in the feeling of his weight in your palm, sitting up to see his gorgeous fucked out expression, pinched eyebrows and flushed cheeks.
He swore he’d died and gone to heaven, despite all his sins, with you above him, lip tucked in between your grinning teeth as you rubbed up on him. Fuck, there was no going back after this.
You lean down to resume making out for a moment, missing the feeling of his nose pressed into the side of yours and his too-perfect eyelashes brushing the tops of your cheeks. 
“We can, um-“ you catch your breath, hips stuttering as you find your words, “I can turn around. Or we can make a blindfold or something.” 
His heart swelled at the thought that amidst fucking yourself against his lap you still had the courtesy to think of his comfort, his obvious insecurity, the elephant in the room that he was so desperately trying to shoo away. 
“I want you,” his voice strangely steady, “and I’ll let you have me, no stipulations.” 
You nod with a “Please.”
“Only because, I plan on fucking you every chance I get,” his tone makes you clench your thighs, “So we might as well rip this bandaid off now, because if you’re going to be my girlfriend I don’t want you worrying that I’m hiding something from you.”
He flips you over so you’re now laying beneath him, eyes still glassy with lust and mind swirling with the words he’s just let out.
“I’m gonna take off my shirt now, and I don’t want you to pretend like everything is fine, or that you don’t notice anything, because that’ll be a thousand times worse, okay? I know it’s bad. It doesn’t hurt or anything, but I know it’s not easy to look at.”
With that he pull this black t-shirt off by the back neck collar, and bares his soul to you. You can tell he’s examining your face for a reaction, very carefully managing your facial expressions for his benefit. 
He was right, it wasn’t easy to look at. Only because it made you wonder what horrible thing had happened to leave half of his torso, hip, thigh, and what you could only assume traveled onto his back as well, left entirely torn away and scarred. 
“And-“ he cut off your wandering eyes with his words, “Don’t ask what happened. I’ll tell you eventually I just- We can’t have that discussion if we’re about to have sex.” 
You nodded with understanding, you knew better than to ask. 
You think that your snooping and seed of knowledge helped hide some of your shock, his comment about missing a nipple dampening your realization that he was telling the truth, the scar tissue running so deep that his entire pec was covered in a jagged pink , slightly mishapen scar tissue, and leaving his opposite nipple to stand alone on his chest. 
The one thing that did leave you in a bit of shock was half of a tattoo on his hip that abruptly ended where the scar tissue started. Some sort of zombie head, the black ink lines all coming to a halt when’re his skin had been injured.
You let a tentative hand come up, fearing he’ll flinch away, but he doesn’t. You touch his chest, feeling the textural difference as you let your palm run across his chest and down to his hip. 
“You know, I still think you’re super hot, right?” You try to assure him, but he only lets out a dry chuckle. 
“I mean it,” you sit up a bit, pulling your hand from its exploration of his skin and bringing it to your own chest, using three fingers to cover your left nipple, “you’d still like me, right?” 
The softness in his face almost made you jump up to wrap him into a hug, you wanted him to know that everything was okay and he was safe with you, whatever happened was in the past and he didn’t have to worry. Although the moment was emotionally charged, neither of you could ignore the fact that you were both ravenously horny for each other. 
“I’m sorry you felt like you had to hide this from me,” you pull his face down to yours, “but I’m glad you showed me, because I’m so fucking ready for you to ruin me.”
He lurches forward and lets his body weight collapse down onto you, your legs widening to wrap around his hips, arm and legs locking him against you. 
Feeling his bare chest pressed against yours, lips on your neck and hips rutting into your spread legs, has your head spinning. 
“Please Eddie,” you whine, “let me feel you.”
Without missing a beat he shoves the waistband of his boxers down just enough to reach his thighs, hard dick springing free in the little space in between you, and he snatches your wrist and shoves it in between your bodies without unlatching his lips from your collar bone. 
“Oh fuck,” you couldn’t see what you were grasping, just like in the shower, but you didn’t dare push him off of you to catch a glimpse. He was all over you, hands tangled in your hair, groans and whimpers hardly making their way out in between the wet sloppy kisses he spread across your neck and chest. 
He slips a hand down your body, gracing your ribcage with his fingertips, a stark contrast to how they suddenly part your lips and rub the pool of slick from your hole up to your clit. 
“So wet, this for me?” He quirks and eyebrow and sinks a digit into you, causing your mouth to open and hips to wiggle up to ask for more.
“Yes ’s for you,” you breathe out, wanting to give him some pushback, wipe the smug look off his face, but not finding an ounce of courage to do so. You just let your head lull back and eyelids flutter shut as he curls his fingers perfectly inside you. “All for you.”
You use your free hand to push your underwear as far down your hips as this position will allow, not wanting to shift your focus from the feeling of him on your lips, his pulsing cock in your hand. 
“Need you,” you gasp out, partially at the feeling of his knuckle deep fingers buried inside of you, and equally the fucked out look on his face looming over yours, eyes blown wide and mouth parted on the verge of begging for more, “Eddie, need you to fuck me, please.”
He sits up and removes his fingers from you, earning a wince and a whine. He helps crunch your legs up to remove your panties, leaving your legs raised and crossed over one of his shoulders. He takes a moment to kiss your ankle and tenderly run his hands down the length of your leg. He took the moment to take off his own boxers, leaving you both bare in front of each other for the first time. 
“You’ve got a pretty cock,” you complement him earnestly, it was pretty. He gave you a halfhearted scoff and an eyeball in return. “No Eds, I mean it. It’s big too, good thing you got me ready with your fingers. That and I’ve been soaking wet for you for like 48 hours now, so it shouldn’t be a problem,” you giggle. His shy smile tells you he’s willing to take the compliment. 
You let your legs fall from their perch on his shoulder and fall to either side of his hips, opening yourself up to him. He’s staring, mouth half agape. It’s nothing he hasn’t seen before, but to have you laid out like this before him, fully ready to give yourself over to him and wanting him wholly in return, how couldn’t he stare. 
You let your hand stroke up his cock, bringing his attention back to where the two of you nearly met. You angle him closer to you, you’re slowly pumping fist brushing against your own center. He snaps out of his trance and nudges your hand away, using his own grip to tap his thick cock against your opening. 
Tap, tap tap. His head meets your slick folds, hips jerking slightly with every tap.
“Don’t tease me Eds,” you push your hips forward and are only met with him rubbing his dick into the outside of your pussy, “want you inside, need it so bad.”
He want’s to be a bother and continue his teasing, watching your writhe and squirm, but he can’t find it in him to deny you, so he presses the tip in and gauges your face for a reaction, only finding babbling bliss and pleas for more. 
He’s sinking into you at an agonizing pace, craning down from his kneeling position above you to frame your head with bent arms and his lips on yours as you moan into each other’s mouths, him filling you more and more. 
Your hands are in his hair, keeping your foreheads anchored together, breathing in tandem. He finally sinks all the way down and you can feel it in your lungs. You wrap your ankles around his back and squeeze him into you tighter, not wanting him to move just yet, wanting to just feel how deep he filled you up for the first time. 
He lets out a shaky exhale and squeezes his eyes shut, “You were fuckin’ made for me,” he punctuates this with a subtle roll forward of his hips, lips falling into yours as if they had nowhere else to go. 
You let your legs fall back, unclasping his hips, and move your hands from his wild hair down to his thighs, pushing him to start fucking you. 
“Feel’s so fucking good,” you whisper into his mouth, your hands hardly assisting him anymore as he pumps in and out of your slick cunt, almost knocking the air out of you each time. 
He grabs your chin with the hand that’s not propping himself up, “look at me,” his pace doesn’t falter and your mind nearly turns to mush, “you’re mine now, yeah?”
“Yes Eddie,” it comes out as a broken sob, your eyes barely able to focus on him with how close he was, “all yours, only yours.” Your mind had barely made the decision to say the words before they had escaped your lips, a dumbfounded truth serum setting over you in your cock drunk state. 
You knew it to be true though, there was no going back after this, and you were willing to give yourself over fully, and accept anything he would give you. 
“Ahh, fuck” you let out after a particularly harsh thrust, fists now dripping the sheets beneath you. 
“So fucking good for me,” his hands now found purchase on your hips, setting a rhythm between you that only a musician could. 
Through glassy eyes you admire him. Curly bangs stuck to his forehead, frantically thrusting torso making his tattoos look like stop motion cartoons, and through it all the scars are hardly noticeable. If anything, they’re just another part of him, the person between your legs that you found incredibly sexy, insecurities and all. 
His perfect hands slid from your hips to your shoulders, now using the weight of your torso as leverage to fuck into you harder. His eyes bore into yours, searching for eye contact and finding your reassuring gaze that told him this was everything you wanted and more. 
“Yes, yes, oh fuck,” you babble out. His little grunts and whimpers send volts of electricity to your core and fog your mind with lust and desire.
He moves a hand down to meet your center, palm splaying across your abdomen and keeping you pinned to the bed, thumb methodically catching your clit with each thrust. He didn’t have to ask if it felt good, the rolling back of your eyes and mouth so wide he could see your molars were enough of an indication that he was headed in the right direction.
“Mhmmmm,” you could hardly form words, but smiled up through your fucked out gaze at him, wide beam and lust fulled eyes telling him that he couldn’t possibly be making you feel any better than you do right now. 
He leans back a bit, balancing himself on his thighs keeping his pace, thumb on your clit and eyes locked into yours. Through a groan he brings his unoccupied hand up to his face, biting down on the knuckle of his pointer finger, trying not to blow his load at the feeling of you squeezing around him. 
Of course, this only made him look hotter to you, and thus you flexed around his cock even tighter. 
Unexpectedly, he pulls out of you completely and before you can muster up the breath to complain, he’s dipped his lapping tongue against you. He fully buries himself into your cunt, cutting off the rhythm, of his cock with the somehow perfectly timed pulsing of his hungry tongue. 
You can’t help but cry out, arch your hips, and send a hand flying to his hair to ground yourself. Through frantic panting and wet slurping sounds you think you can make out a “just had to taste you.”
Completely breathless, you can hardly conjure a response before he’s plunging into you again, fucking into you deeply and capturing your parted lips into a passionate kiss.
Something takes over you, and you’re suddenly wrapping your legs around his hips and using some found momentum to flip the two of your over. Suddenly, you’re on top of him, his curls splayed around his pretty face and body laid flat beneath you. 
Before you had a moment to question yourself, you anchor your hands onto his shoulders and try your best to pick up the pace he had set earlier. Hips rolling and wet slapping sounds coming from between you. 
“Jesus- fuck,” he stuttered in his movements, unsure if he wanted his hands on your face or your tits or your hips or… they landed on your ass and he wouldn’t argue with his first instincts. 
“Eddie, I’ve wanted you like this for so long,” your words were breathy and mixed with lustful gasps, “always wanted to have you like this.”
“We could have done this a long time ago, huh?” He tries not to think about all the time wasted, and instead fantasies about all the making up for lost time you’ll do in the near future. 
“You were always giving me those eyes while you played with your band,” you looked angelic to him, face hovering above him, framed only be the poor overhead lighting and flickering VHS menu of the last film you’d finished, “I always wanted you, just wasn’t sure you wanted me like this too.”
Your statement was simple enough, but he knew what you meant. You wanted him more than a fuck, and that’s what he had been worried about all along. Now, to have you sunk down on his cock like this, telling him that you had been scared in the same way as he had, only made him roll his hops up into you and pull your cheeks down for a sloppy kiss to seal the deal. You were finally on the same page. 
Switching from a bounce of your hips, you lean back slowly and shift to more of a roll, keeping his cock buried deep inside of you while you gyrate your hips. Your arm extends back in between his spread legs to keep you stable, your torso finding its own rhythm in the midst of pleasure and fucking yourself onto his cock. 
“So fucking perfect,” he gasps out, hardly able to take in the sight of your body writhing and rolling above him. He manages to find bait of sense in his brain and brings his hand back to your lower stomach, thumb flicking over your clit with every thrust of your hips. 
“Oh,eddieohmygosh,” it came out as one breathy syllable, “pleasedon’tstopthat.”
He gently fucks himself up into you, matching your movements and not throwing you off of the sinful rhythm you’ve set, just managing too punctuate each bounce with the raise of his hips into yours and the increased pressure of his thumb on your clit. 
“Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck,” he loves the way each breathy word out of your lips is matched with the beautiful bounce of your tits, “Eddie, you’re gonna-“
He doesn’t change a thing, the pressure on your clit, the arch of his hips, he would sooner die than rob you of pleasure or ruin this moment. Every moment he get’s to look at you, he thinks it’s the most beautiful you’ve ever looked, but he knows for sure that this one takes the cake. 
“Ahhh, I’m-“ you don’t  have to finish your statement for him to know you’re cumming on his cock, the pulsing squeeze of your walls and intense concentration from him not to bust on the spot, and rather to focus on the parting of your lips and the twitching of your hips on his. 
“That’s it,” he keeps his thumb on your clit, but lets up on the pressure as soon as he feels you jerk against him, “that’s my girl.”
You lurch down and wrangle him into a kiss, only wanting to feel his lips on yours as you come down from your orgasm. You’re still slowly rolling your hips against his, but focused more on the feeling of his cheeks under your palms and his lips on yours. 
“You okay?” He asks in between tongue tied kisses. 
“Yes, perfect, thank you,” you arch your back into him a bit, “ready for more.” 
Although you were fully prepared to bounce on his cock until he came, you were pleasantly surprised when his large hands surrounded your waist and hoisted you up off the bed. He wanted to try and keep his cock inside you, but accepted defeat as he managed to situate on the edge of the bed.
He shifted around you and situated himself in between your legs. You laid out, everything below the knees hanging off the edge of his hand-me-down mattress. He stood above you and lowered himself to land a few wet kisses on your breasts, his hard cock pressing into your needy center. 
He jerked you up by the underside of your knees, pressing your thighs into your chest and sinking down into your open pussy, causing a deep groan to emit from both of you.
Here he was, scars and all, standing above you and thrusting into you as if it was the last thing he would ever do, and he looked like an angel to you. 
More thoughtful than you may have initially given him credit for, his thumb finds your clit again and he politely, yet breathlessly asks, “Can you come again for me, pretty girl?”
How could you say no to that. You dumbly nod and throw your head back against the sheets, your hands balled up at your sides as he thrusted into you, grunting and moaning your name. 
“So fucking good Eddie,” you manage to squeak out, “You make me feel so fucking good.”
“Ah fuck, yeah, yes,” his voice nearly jumped an octive, signaling his release. “Where should I-“ he began to ask.
“Inside,” it came out as two syllables in-between breaths, “It’s okay you can come-“
“Fuuuuuck,” a strangled moan and a collapse of his arms, along with the delicious pulse of his cock inside you signaled his release. 
Before you could eve catch your breath, regain consciousness of the situation, he was reeling back and replacing his softening cock with two fingers. He latched his lips to your clit and began to suck in time with his finger’s replication of his cock’s earlier movements. 
“Oh my god,” you were truly taken aback, his face buried in your cunt and setting you back on track to your building orgasm. 
It didn’t take more than a minute and a half of him slurping your mixed releases from your cunt and bullying your g-spot with those damn magic fingers to send you hurdling towards orgasm number two, shaking and crying out his name. 
It wasn’t until your legs were truly shaking and your hand was searching for his forehead to push him away from overstimulation that he finally let up and let up of your pussy with a wet pop and a smug look.
“You come?” He asks again, just as he had in the back of his van. 
You don’t have the energy to respond, only roll your eyes and flip him the bird as you flop back down onto his bedsheets. 
He managed to get you a warm rag and a cold glass of water, stroking your har and asking if you felt alright.
“Feel perfect Eddie,” you say after a long gulp, “you took such good care of me, you always do.”
He stroked your hair and positioned the two of you back comfortably beneath his sheets. “Thank you,” he starts, but you cut him off with a kiss. 
“No, thank you,” you kiss him again, “for trusting me.” The look in your eyes could nearly make him melt. “You’re really something special Eddie, I mean it.”
“Special enough for a fourth date?”
You smack his chest and bury your head into his neck. “I don’t think we have to count dates if I’m your girlfriend now…”
Those dimples you adore perk up on his cheeks, and he bear hugs you, scarred chest and all. 
“What time should I set the alarm for tomorrow?” He asks with a sorrow in his voice. 
“How about never,” you roll over to trample him with another kiss, smothering his body in yours, knowing you’d be luck enough to have many moments like this soon to come. 
A/N: I'm sorry I have long lost the tracking of a taglist (crying emoji) don't want to bother anyone who asked to be added the last time I wrote a pic ten thousand years ago, so I hope this reaches everyone it needs to <3
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The crushing | joel miller x f!reader, 5.2k
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Summary: This is the story of a man who had everything in the palm of his hand and traded it all for an empty space in the hollow of his heart. Or This story follows Joel, two to three years after he cheated on his wife.
Warnings: 18+ MDNI, ANGST, cheater!Joel, Joel's POV, this is NOT “The Falling” from Joel's POV, brief mention of smut (p i v) but nothing too graphic (I think), self-loathing, depression, therapy, flashbacks and memories from the past, alcohol consumption, Tommy being a supportive brother (eventually), as always let me know if I missed anything!
A/N: Ok, so, Joel gave me a whiplash on this one, he was either staring at me through the screen giving me nothing, or he was mumbling unintelligibly in my ear while I was trying to keep up with him. It started out as a final chapter, but I really think that this part should be Joel's POV and the next and -probably- final one should be the resolving, however that may come. I guess it can be read as a standalone, but if you're interested, it's a sequel to “The Falling”. I edited it seven thousand times because I kept adding things along the way, so I hope it all makes some sense and there are not too many mistakes.. Thank you for taking the time to read anything I write! Love you all! 🥰😘
P.S.: I just wanted to take a moment and let you know that I really appreciate everyone who has read, liked, commented, reblogged and asked about “The Falling”. I honestly didn't think a single soul would take the time to read that kind of story. It means more than you know and I didn’t take lightly how close to home this fic hit for some people; yet you’ve given it a chance, sharing some of your own experiences with me. I love you all, take care and I'll see you -hopefully- in the comments! 🥹🫂
Dividers by @cafekitsune & @saradika-graphics
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...need your reassurance...
...your only focus…
...for the foreseeable future...
He did make it his sole focus. Because of course, he closed the deal, even after he left that damn table like a madman. He still found a way to get what he wanted. That's the man he was. And he wasn't sure if he hated himself for it or not. But self-loathing was a daily occurrence now, so one more reason added to the list was nothing he couldn't handle.
For two years he would wake up every day, is it called waking up if he doesn’t sleep at all?, he would work his ass off, he would go home, he would sink into despair and then he would start all over again the next day. A vicious cycle consisting of 730 days in a row. The deafening silence within the walls of the house was excruciating, the loneliness was unbearable. Even the light penetrating through the windows seemed different than when you were there with him, a dullness surrounding every corner of the now barely lived in space.
You. He hadn’t seen your face in 730 days. He hadn’t smelled your scent or touched your soft skin. He barely listened to your voice anymore, any form of unavoidable communication, you preferred to be conducted by the lawyers, or via text messages, at the most. At the 731st one, he finally knew, something had to change. He couldn’t repeat another day, like all the others that came and went. He simply couldn’t.
Tommy suggested that therapy might help Joel, a few times, but he refused every one of them. Maria was keeping her distance, her place was delicate, being his brother’s wife but also his wife’s best friend. Surprisingly, she was the one who finally got through to him.
“Are you gonna stay a recluse for the rest of your miserable life, then?” Maria wonders, switching her gaze between Joel and the dining room. Everything was untouched, as you left them when you moved out, but the place felt empty, depressing, probably mirroring Joel’s existence.
Joel sighs, closing his eyes briefly. “I’m not a recluse..”, he snarls through his teeth, rolling his eyes at her. He was more than eager to be done with the dinner his sister-in-law insisted on having in his house and be left alone, in his natural state. Alone. Infuriating woman.
“What do you call that?”, Maria persists, goddamn lawyer to the bone.
“What?!” Joel spits back pissed off, looking at his brother next, for support.
“That!” she gestures around his body and his surroundings. “The way you go on for the past two years! Either get over it or do something about it!”, she doesn’t hold back, even when Tommy proposes a gentler approach. Yeah, look where it got you, is the paid answer, so Tommy steps back, shaking his head and raising his hands up in surrender.
“You’ve got him on a leash, hm?”, Joel jokes absentmindedly, “Can you breathe alright, Tommy boy?”, earning himself a hard glare from Maria.
“Maybe the wrong Miller is on a leash..” Maria mutters, causing Tommy’s eyes to widen in horror.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”, Joel retorts doing a double back at her.
“Means that freedom is for those who can bear it.”, Maria throws her napkin on her plate and leaves the room. Joel remains silent, pondering the meaning of her words. It would be a long time before he understood what she meant.
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Therapy was hard.
Therapy was hard because he had to do it for himself. He had to concentrate on himself. He thought, being the contractor that he was, that he would walk into the room, get the answers he needed and fix his marriage, just as he rearranged the bricks and the wood and the steel on the construction sites.
But this wasn’t about his marriage. His marriage and the way it crumbled down was the aftermath, he came to learn. It was the outcome of insecurities, selfishness, lack of communication, ungratefulness.
He got it all wrong. Everything. Every little thing. He had to rewire his brain and change every point of view he was holding onto. Honesty. Honesty was the key.
“Why didn’t you reach out to your wife after that night?”, his therapist insists.
“I respected her boundaries.”, Joel was quick to respond.
“And what were those?”
“She didn’t want to see me.”
“Did she say that?”
“No-, I mean-, the way she left that night, she didn’t say much in general. But she blocked my number, so.”, he shrugs in defence.
“So, how can you be so sure that she didn't want to see you? Even if you're right, it doesn't mean that she didn't expect a reaction from you, or that you weren't allowed to try, if that’s what you wanted.”
“Why would she? I upset her, she needed time to think, work things out.”, Joel explains.
The therapist swipes her fingers over her lips, contemplating her approach. “Joel, you walk into your bedroom, into what is supposed to be a safe place and you see your partner with another person in an intimate moment. How does that make you feel? Just say the first words that come to mind.”, his therapist changes the point of view.
Joel shudders just at the thought of it. You, naked, flushed, lips parted and swollen, skin sweaty, breaths short and pupils blown wide, coming for anyone other than him. It would utterly destroy him. “Furious, pissed, betrayed, heartbroken.. I think I would lose it, if I’m honest.” he admits instantly, in his haste to throw the abomination of this image from his thoughts.
“I see. But in her case, you think your wife was just upset?”
“No, of course not.” Joel slightly frowns, shaking his head.
“Do you think she felt all those feelings that you just described to me?”
“I believe so, yes.”, god this is so hard.
“You believe so?” the therapist pushes, again.
Joel’s nostrils flare from the sharp inhale, “I know so.”
“So, she wasn’t just upset.” the therapist concludes and Joel agrees without meeting her eyes, “No, she wasn’t.”
Over time, Joel came to realize that his choice of words was a subconscious attempt to diminish the seriousness of his actions.
“You said in a previous session that you gave space to your wife to work things out.”
“Yeah, it was only fair.”, Joel confirms.
“So, it was hard for you to give her that space?”
“Yes, of course, I missed her every day.”
“Was that a constant in your relationship?”, the therapist wonders.
“I’m sorry, I don’t follow.”
“How did you work things out as a couple, before? I assume you had difficult times as partners, no?”
“Nothing major to be honest, my wife was a very calm and reasonable person. If anything occurred she would talk to me about it.”
“And how did you respond to that?”
“Uh, I was there to listen, we always found a solution together as a couple.”
“Hmhm, so, what changed this time?”
“What do you mean?” He knew exactly what she meant.
“Why didn’t you talk to her? Communicate with her? Maybe help her see your side of things, like you did before, find your way out of this together, as partners.” his therapist explains. “And even before the infidelity, did you let her know that something was bothering you, that you felt differently?”
"I didn't feel differently about my wife. My feelings for her never changed.", he immediately corrects her. "My love for her was never the problem," he confesses and it's the first time since his therapy began that he's shared something so personal, so private.
“But there was a problem, something was wrong if you felt the need to be intimate with another woman. So, why did you keep that from her?”
Joel opens his mouth already knowing he does not have an answer. Or that he doesn't want to give one. He shakes his head, raising his brows in a silent admission that he can’t answer that. Or he won't. His gaze is fixed on a loose thread on the fabric of the couch, his fingers keep picking on it.
“Joel?”
“I- I don’t know what you want me to say, I don’t know.” he keeps shaking his head. He can’t answer that. He won't.
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He was so angry when he left the session that day. He was so angry at you. He was angry at your honesty, your clarity, your courage to have a mind of your own and to speak it freely, knowing full well that probably no one else shared the same opinions as you did. That's what he loved most about you, but now he hated it.
“Own it, Joel. Own what you have done. At least that way it will be worth something. Otherwise it was all for nothing.”
This was one of the last things you said to him on the phone, while he was trying to persuade you to change your mind about the divorce. You were always so brave about those matters. Matters of the heart, of integrity. He remembers you always talking about things that he found admirable but utopian. Easy in theory, hard in practice.
“I need to be able to sleep at night. I need to own my decisions; not because I’m always right, far from it, but at least I know I’m being honest with myself. And that matters.” he recalls one of your late-night talks.
You usually found it easier to share your most vulnerable thoughts once you were thoroughly fucked and satiated. When Joel held you in his arms, your breaths almost shared over the same pillow, your scents and your fluids mixed together.
“We’re all imperfect beings, flawed; we all feel embarrassed when we fuck up,” you continue, “it’s hard to admit our mistakes to others, I get that. But deep down we always know what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. Admitting it only helps us to be present in our lives.”
“Be present?”, Joel seems fascinated by the way your mind weaves your thoughts together into deeply rooted beliefs.
“Yes, my love, there's no greater freedom than to live your life truthfully.” you smile at him, softly. Your sleepy eyes roam his face affectionately. Your fingertips caress his jawline, your thumb pressing lightly against the bare patch of his beard. He can feel your devotion pouring from your fingers and sinking into his skin at that moment.
“That’s one of my greatest fears, you know. Living my life in ignorance, in a lie.”, you whisper your deepest insecurity against his soft lips. His hold on you tightens as he rolls you onto your back, nestling his hips between your welcoming thighs. You are safe in these arms. His arms. You surrender to him, body and soul. You can feel his growing erection pressing between your folds, already wet from your combined releases. He tenderly brushes his lips against yours and slowly licks his way into your parted mouth, as he intertwines his fingers with yours. He enters you in one fluid, slow thrust, his warm exhale cooling your wet lips. “Then let me give you something real.”
Thinking back to those moments, Joel couldn't reconcile himself to the fact that he was the one who had brought that fear of yours to life. What broke him was that it was not a lie. Your life together had not been a lie. He loved you. In fact, he was burning up for you. He was a man of control, but not with you. Never with you. You consumed his every thought; being around you for too long made his lungs constrict in pain, begging for a deep breath. Sometimes he was worried sick that if he completely let himself love you like he needed to, he would suffocate you. He loved you. And it killed him that his actions suggested otherwise.
But at some point he had to be honest with himself. He was just protecting his ego. He was trying to get the upper hand out of a shitty, compromising situation. He wasn't being thoughtful, he was being selfish. He was biding his time. He thought the longer he left ‘it’ untouched, the less it would hurt when the inevitable time of confrontation came. He was scared out of his mind that he would lose you forever. No second chances, no redemption, no reconciliation.
No lingering scent on his pillow as your hair pools there, under his chin, as you nestle your face between his neck and shoulder, breathing him in. No laughter through the enormous house, damn, why did he build it so big; you never clarified what the disbelief in your eyes meant when he said he built this house for you, while he pulls you up on your feet for a silly cowboy dance.
No more gentle touches, no more noses brushing together as a silent goodbye in the kitchen before you rush off to work. No more turning around just before you open the door to leave, running to him like a little girl, giving him quick, hungry pecks on the lips while he laughs on your mouth, squeezes your butt cheek and slaps it playfully to say goodbye. Later, baby, he would promise you, his teeth nipping at your earlobe and he could feel your skin crawling with anticipation.
No more I love yous, either breathed, either whispered, either panted, as he makes a home for himself inside your warmth.
When did he fuck you last? He used to have you every day. You craved it every day. You craved him. Why did he stop telling you he loved you every chance he got? When was the last time you said it?
A week before that fateful night, when you touched him longingly, aching for him to touch you back and he told you he had work to do, he wasn’t a teenager anymore. Why the hell did he say that? Why did he sit there and watch the light fading from your eyes? I love you, you said with a sigh against his temple and walked out of his office defeated. Why did you say that? Did you know? Did you suspect? Why didn’t you fight him? You should have said something, anything, pushed him, punched him in the chest, woken him up. Would he have woken up? Or did he need that to come to his senses? Does he have to fall? Does this falling ever stop? Does he have to let you go? Will you come back to him? Does he deserve you?
Days blurred seamlessly into one another. Joel drifted further and further away from everyone. The house haunted him, all the progress he was making within the therapy walls was dissipating once he stepped inside the cold space of his empty house. Leaving the confines of it was his first thought in the morning, while he hurriedly dressed to go to his office far earlier than necessary and his last when he closed his eyes, as he laid his weary limbs on the couch, chasing still your now long gone scent on its fabric, knowing another sleepless night was his only companion until the first rays of sunlight hit the floor-to-ceiling windows to announce the beginning of another day.
People at work tiptoed around him, not knowing how to act. It was as if he was there, but not really. He was focused solely on the Marks project, mechanically going through board meetings, paperwork and supervising the construction site. He. Just. Wasn’t. There.
Joel, will you please sign the papers?
He simply stares at the text message for a good full minute, his thumbs hovering over the screen of his phone. This was one of the rare occasions you had initiated communication with him, always about the progress of the divorce.
No, no, I won’t, the little toddler in him screams, stamping his little feet on the ground.
The papers are not ready.
Joel texts back. He keeps it simple, frightened he might not get an answer back.
Joel, we both know they are. I don’t want any of your assets or your money; this is an easy signature, please.
An easy signature? You think he cares about the houses, or the cars, or the money?
You know I can’t accept that. The house is yours and so is a good part of the money.
The point was to share this house together, Joel, don’t you think us splitting up kind of defeats the purpose? And what on earth makes you think I would ever want to go back in there?
So, there’s nothing I can do to make this easier for you?
Easier? You think money or property can make up for what you’ve done?
Of course not, I wasn’t implying anything like that. Just wanna do something for you, anything.
Can you turn back time?
Of course, he can't. So, he doesn't know what to say to that. He just keeps staring at the screen, lost in thought. After 2 minutes another text follows.
?
You know I can’t..
Sign the papers. Please.
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“Is there anything in particular you want to talk about today, or should I take the lead?”
“Actually I’ve been thinking a lot about that night.”, Joel suggests for the first time. He usually lets the therapist decide where to steer the conversation, then simply refuses to elaborate until he feels ready to talk.
“What about it?”, he shifts his gaze from the window to the direction of her voice.
“I should probably rephrase that. I’m always thinking about that night, repeating it in my head again and again and I’m troubled by something I realized.”
His therapist nods to signal that she's listening.
“Why did she just leave? The more I think about it, the more it doesn’t make sense to me. She just left. No shouting, no breaking things, no attacking either me or-”, her. “Why she didn’t stay? Why she didn’t insist that I leave? She was just- so quiet.”
The therapist smiles in recognition of Joel's near breakthrough. They were beginning to get somewhere, his empathy nudging him under the surface.
“I'm really glad you mentioned that, Joel, so I'd like to take you back to that night and try to understand what might have been going through your wife's mind at that moment," she explains.
“So, she walks into the house, finds her safe space violated by her husband, and she chooses to handle the situation calmly and quietly-” Joel tries to stop her, but she already knows what he's going to ask. “I can't tell you why she chose that path, that's for her to answer, only she knows why.” His therapist continues, “She is making one request of you and one request only, can you tell me what it is?”
“She asked me to leave the house.”
“Hmhm.” the therapist looks at him expectantly.
“I just wanted to talk to her.”, Joel elaborates, “I thought that if I refused to leave, she would accept to listen to me.”
“So you forced your needs on her, while she was in a particularly fragile state of mind.”
“I should have made my intentions clearer, you mean?”
“I mean, that maybe you shouldn’t have had any expectations in the first place. Why do you think was so important to you, to explain yourself right at that moment?”
“Because I knew it was probably the last time I would see her for a while, I just wanted to ease her pain, why is that so wrong? Should I be indifferent? Would that be better?”
“Did it ever occur to you that you might be depriving her of her right to choose?” Come on, Joel, break some eggs.
Joel now begins to make connections. He rubs his hand over his face, the realization of what has really happened crushing him. “Oh, god, I-” He's been so selfish from the start. He hasn't shown you any respect, not even at this delicate moment. He didn't give you a choice as to whether you wanted to listen to him or not. He didn't even let you choose where you wanted to stay. He just made you leave the house. Did he make you believe he wanted you to leave? That he wanted her to stay? Because he didn’t. Fuck. “-I never thought about it like that.”
Fuck.
How could he be so blind? Why was he so blind?
His therapist insisted on it. Because no matter how much progress Joel made over the course of a year, he never revealed the true reason behind his infidelity.
“Joel, we’ve talked about a lot of things; you’ve tried really hard to make this all about your wife and about understanding what she was feeling and how your actions have affected her, but as I keep reminding you”, she smiles understandingly, “you’re the one in therapy, you need to heal your wounds before you even attempt to heal hers. And although it is in fact a really noble thought, this” she gestures between them, “can only work if you do it for yourself. I know it may sound selfish, but I promise you, it is not. It is the exact opposite.”
Fuck.
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“Yeah?”, his voice hoarse from sleep as he answers the door after the insistent knock at it. Tommy looks at him surprised once he opens it, “You’re sleeping, already?”. No, he wasn’t. He wouldn’t call it that. But when he goes almost a week without any proper rest, passing out is the right word for what he’s doing. “Yeah, I guess I dosed off..” Joel lies. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to see you.” Tommy responds as he squeezes himself through the door to enter the house. “Yeah, sure, come on in.”, Joel mutters under his breath. “You just saw me at work this morning, is everything all right?”
“I just came to check on you.” Tommy confesses uncomfortably.
“You could have called.”
“Would you have answered?” Tommy deadpans.
Touché.
“Tell Maria I’m fine, Tommy, no need to worry about me; go spend the night where it counts.”, Joel replies in an attempt to push him away, as he walks farther into the house, rounding the kitchen island.
“Hey, brother, I’m here, I am here for you.” Tommy’s eyes narrow in pain and concern as he stares at his sibling's back, following behind him.
Joel exhales hard through his nose, his grip tight as he grabs the edges of the counter, his head lowering between his shoulder blades.
“You shouldn’t, nobody should.” Joel sighs, rubbing the pads of his fingers across his forehead.
“Ok, that’s enough.” Tommy snaps at him. “Enough self-loathing, enough resignation. Enough. You’ve punished yourself enough.”
Joel laughs at that. “Is that right? Is it enough for you? What about her?” he asks, his head turned to the side, looking at his brother over his shoulder.
“What?” Tommy is genuinely confused.
Joel turns his back, resting his waist on the edge of the counter, now looking straight at Tommy. “I should have what? Just get on with my life? Let it all be water under the bridge? Disrespect her even more?”
“Jesus..” Tommy mutters, pinching the bridge of his nose with one hand, the other resting on his hip, his eyes shut in frustration.
“Are you doing this for her? Does she even know that?”
“It doesn’t matter, Tommy!” Joel raises his voice, exasperated. “I’m not doing this for her, I’m not doing anything for her, apparently and that’s the problem.”, his voice breaks, the lump in his throat too big to push down. “She’s not here anymore, Tommy.” he’s standing fully on his feet now, pushing himself away from the counter, leaning slightly forward, like he’s trying to make his brother understand; his eyes are glazed, Tommy had never seen him so devastated before. “She’s gone. I’ve lost her.”, his palms clenched in fists in front of his chest, resisting the urge to wrap them around his shirt and rip it to shreds, as he wants to do with his heart.
“I thought therapy was working..” Tommy whispers, his eyes dropping to the floor beneath him.
“Oh, it’s working, all right!” Joel chuckles in irony, sniffing his nose. “I’m getting a front-row seat, witnessing what a piece of shit I am-”
“Hey!” Tommy tries to cut him off.
“-what on earth was she doing with me to begin with, is beyond me.”
“HEY!” Tommy's eyes bulge out of his sockets, angry at his brother's self-deprecating words. Joel bends his waist forward, puts his elbows on the island in front of him and lets his head sink in again.
“Ok.” Tommy breathes deeply to ground himself, his hands in a position of a prayer in front of his mouth, “Ok, we could both use a drink.” he realizes, as he moves to open the cupboard to grab two tumblers and the whiskey from the shelf with the drinks. “..or five.”
The two brothers drink their first round in silence, both calming their nerves down. Tommy refills their glasses without asking; he knows this is going to be a long night.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.” Tommy begins, pushing Joel’s drink back towards him. Joel wringles his brows in confusion, “What are you talking about? You’re always there for me.”
“No, I haven’t, not really.” Tommy admits, “I let Maria take over when all this happened and I’m sorry.”
“There was nothing you could do, Tommy, don’t sweat it.”
“Let me say this, please.” Tommy raises his hand, his palm facing his brother. “I was just- fuck, we all knew how much you loved her, how much you loved each other, so when it all went down, I just didn’t know how to deal with it. What to say to you, how to comfort you. I didn't know how to deal with you.”
“You blamed me.” Joel says matter-of-factly.
“No-”, Tommy weakly refuses but Joel shakes his head dismissively, interrupting him. “It’s ok, Tommy, you should.”
Tommy looks embarrassed, his cheeks slightly pinkish, not only from the whiskey. “It’s just that I- I couldn’t reconcile the image of the man you were with her, with.. you know..”, he stutters.
“..the image of a cheater. Say it.” Joel adds.
Tommy shakes his head, like he still can't believe what's happened. “Besides, while she was staying with us those first few weeks I saw how devastated she was, man- she was a shell of a woman, so I was confused, I didn’t know how-”
“Tommy. Tommy, it’s fine.” Joel feels his skin crawl visualizing you like that in his head, cutting his brother off once again; he deserves every ounce of mistrust and he knows it.
“No, it’s not.” Tommy insists. “Yes, you fucked up. Brother, you really did. You did a number on her-”, Joel’s body tenses instantly at his brother’s words, his jaw clenching as his eyes darken, moving down to his hands, his grip on the tumbler tightening, his knuckles turning white and Tommy stops abruptly, “shit, sorry, I didn’t mean-”, his face twitches with regret.
“It’s the truth. That’s exactly what I did.” Joel’s gaze seems detached as if he's somewhere else right now.
“What I meant to say, is that I should have been there for you in spite of what has happened. I can see you're suffering, it's taking its toll on you, it has been for some time now; tell me what I can do. How can I help you?” Tommy seems almost desperate, like he’s the one in need of redemption.
Your text flashes through his mind, can you turn back time?, making him smile bitterly.
“Can you turn back time?” Joel's repeating your question and as the words leave his mouth he can feel your presence next to him. That's the most he felt of you for the last three years. He's almost blissful.
“You know I can't.” Tommy sighs. Joel laughs earnestly, the irony of the moment too good not to appreciate.
“Joel, brother, please, just talk to me. Help me understand. You act like you’re the one who’s been cheated on. So, what happened? Why did you do it?” Tommy is pleading with him to give him anything.
Silence fills the room for much longer than either of them would like. Joel feels torn between telling his brother everything or keeping his mouth shut. He wants to tell him, he hasn’t told a soul, but he’s not sure he can get the words out. He’s not sure he can bear to hear the words coming out of his mouth. He’s not sure he can substantiate it, make it real. Because that’s how it feels. He talks about it and it becomes real.
But maybe this is the right thing to do. That’s what needs to be done. He needs to talk about it. He needs to tell the truth and admit the pain he’s caused. Make it real for you, too. Perhaps it is time for him to give you what is rightfully yours. Acknowledgment.
Joel’s made up his mind. He’s gonna talk to Tommy. He lifts his glass to down his drink for some liquid courage, freezing his hand in mid-air as the next words fall from his brother’s mouth. “First of all, who was it?”
“What?” Joel's eyes search Tommy’s through his glass for an explanation.
“Who did you do?”, Tommy clarifies.
Joel feels like he’s been struck by lightning. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Who did you fuck, Joel?”, Tommy begins to feel confused, are they not on the same page here?
“You don’t know?”, Joel can barely speak now, his voice low in shock.
“No one does, not even Maria; she never told anyone.”
You told nobody? Not even your best friend? Why on earth would you do that? Did you feel ashamed? Was it just too much to talk about?
But his brain takes pity on him, helping him for once to understand. He’s connecting the dots while your voice fills the corners of his mind through his memories. His head is swarming with images of you standing in that walk-in closet, remembering what you said the last time he saw you. You’re the one I married, not her. I expected better from you, Joel, not her.
You were right.
It didn’t matter who it was. That is why. He was the one making the choice. He was the one breaking his promises, breaking your trust, breaking your heart; breaking you. He was the one who should have known better. He was the one who should have been honest. Easy in theory, hard in practice.
He feels a fresh wave of pain scattering through his body. He welcomes it. Damn, he’s craving it. He’s glad you chose to withhold the identity of the woman. Not because somehow it’s making it easier for him to defend himself, on the contrary.
There’s no one else to blame. Nobody. Just him. All of the anger, the resentment, the disappointment, all of them on him. He embraces them all. Everything. He will take it all, swallow it down and let it rot inside of him.
Joel tells Tommy everything. Everything, but her name.
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Taglist: @southernbe, @orcasoul, @auteurdelabre
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meggtheegg · 7 months
Text
FNAF Movie Theory...
I'm pretty sure there's still one major plot twist in the universe of the movie that's been set up for a sequel but hasn't actually happened yet. Heavy spoilers under the cut:
After watching the movie in theaters and then revisiting a few scenes on Peacock, I'm still kind of convinced that Mike Schmidt is Michael Afton.
Here's my reasoning. A lot of the characters spend time acting like they know something the audience/other characters don't, and those things are...mostly resolved. But some of them just...kind of aren't.
The main thing that sticks out to me is William's whole storyline. Starting with the scene where he offers Mike the job, his behavior is almost explained by the movie's logic. He sees Mike's name, seems...kind of deeply upset, looks at him very closely, stands to get coffee, and has a moment of visible internal conflict. Then he instantly offers him the Freddy's job. The way the movie frames this, it seems to be saying that he recognized the name of one of his victims, realized this was the kid's brother, and decided to kill him right then and there. Which is passable as an explanation, but it has a lot of holes, if you look deeper.
Why would William so instantly recognize a fairly common last name as the brother of some kid he killed that wasn't even anywhere near Freddy's? Why did he kidnap/kill Garrett in the first place, in some random forest in Nebraska? Why did he see the name on the file, then immediately stop and examine Mike's face so closely, when Mike's memories/dreams pretty clearly show that they never saw each others' faces when Garrett was taken? Why did he send Vanessa to "keep Mike in the dark" if he purposely gave him the job to get him killed? Why not have the animatronics kill him right away? He didn't know that Mike was searching for the man who took his brother, and while he could have maybe guessed he was still actively haunted by what happened based on Mike beating up a guy that he thought was kidnapping someone, it still feels like a weird choice to go and hire him, then just have him do the job with no issue for a few days.
As for Vanessa, we see that she's been cleaning up William's messes for years. Why is Mike the one she changes her mind and stands up to her father for? There's no implied romance between the two and no particularly meaningful connection beyond them both having family issues. I guess she cares about Abby because she's a kid, but kids getting hurt clearly never stopped her from helping her father before.
And, on a more meta level, this is Scott and his storytelling style we're talking about. The man puts plot twists inside of plot twists and everything always ties back into the Aftons, somehow.
So, here's my theory: I think that Mike is William's kid, but Mike's mom left Afton when he was young and remarried the man that Mike thinks is his father.
It seems convoluted and maybe cliche, but if it's true, then suddenly there's an answer to all of those questions. "Michael Schmidt" isn't exactly an eye-catching name, unless you had a kid named Michael and your ex-wife married a guy with the last name Schmidt. Garrett's kidnapping, then, becomes an act of intentional, petty revenge rather than an extremely random coincidence. Giving Mike the job and sending in Vanessa suddenly becomes about piecing together how much he knows and figuring out if he's worth trying to reconnect with or is just a threat that needs to be killed. (It feels worth noting that William is as far as I can remember the only person to call him Michael in the whole film. He also very pointedly never says "Schmidt" until he's decided to kill Mike and suddenly announces his full name out loud. If he went by Michael as a little kid, that is what William would default to calling him, but if he took the new husband's last name, that would be like like salt in the wound that he wouldn't want to voice. By finally saying it out loud, it feels like he's making the decision to fully separate himself from Mike.)
As for Vanessa, if Mike is her brother, it makes sense that he would be the person she'd turn against William to save. It would be weird for her not to tell him, but she could also be trying to protect him, in some way. There's never any mention of her mother, and it seems like it's just been her and William for a long time. Also, ending the movie with her in a coma feels like a strange narrative choice, but it makes sense if she knows information that's purposely being kept hidden for the sequel.
Of course, it could just be that the movie has kind of messy writing and I'm trying to fix it because I want there to be a deeper reason for it. Maybe there is no Michael Afton in the movies, or maybe he's off chilling and doing his own thing somewhere and we'll see him in the sequel. Only time will tell.
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cambion-companion · 9 months
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Here’s ya girl who has gone completely feral over astarion. He’s the babiest baby. Okay, here’s the prompt. My characterisation could be a bit (or a lot lol) off bc I haven’t played the game Y E T so feel free to change the things that seem OOC.
Established relationship, but the beginnings of it, on a mission to find a way for astarion to be in the sun again. Reader has given astarion time to work on his sexual trauma so they haven’t been having sex for some time. Reader is 100% ok w that. But they have a big argument over something (not related to sex) and astarion doesn’t know how to resolve the situation other than reverting back to his seductive artifice and using sex as a way to ensure his safety (in this case, emotional safety). Reader figures it out because they (or she) are not dumb. They reassure astarion and he lets himself be vulnerable but also, it turns out that astarion wants that sexual intimacy. But reader decides this will be all about astarion and making him feel good and loved. Body worship, astarion’s praise kink, just everything focused on astarion’s pleasure in a way he has never experienced and that makes him completely unravel once he comes. Not a subby reader, tho. You know me, I don’t do subby.
If this is too long of a prompt, just the sexy part will be ok. Thank you so much, i have such astarion brainrot DDDD:
I Want to Live
word count: 1700
gn!reader x Astarion | Baldur's Gate 3 fanfic | 18+ only
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"I don't think we should use the tadpoles for anything, Astarion." You put your hands on your hips, glaring at the sulky Elf in front of you.
This tense conversation between the two of you had gone on far longer than you'd have liked. Astarion seemed insistent on using whatever advantage the Illithids had unintentionally given your party. Despite not yet knowing the implications of doing so.
Astarion's silver hair glinted in the firelight that warmed your back, his eyes shone like droplets of blood. "You might as well leave me alone, spoilsport." He waved an imperious hand in your direction, sneering at you in the way he knew would hurt you most. "Since you insist on being boring and unimaginative."
You ground your teeth. "I'm trying to keep us safe."
"And a fine job you're doing, my sweet." His lilting voice was dripping with sarcasm. "Why don't you ask Arabella how her parents are doing?" He paused, then feigned surprise. "Oh wait..."
Your eyes widened as a jolt of genuine pain lanced through your heart at his callous words. Astarion was aiming to do damage and, like always, he knew how to push your buttons.
Magic sparked at the end of your fingertips as you fought to control your rage. It was the lack of verbal response that alerted Astarion to the fact he might have pushed a little too far with you. His face almost looked regretful for a moment, or perhaps it was a trick of the firelight casting shadows across his features. You didn't gain much insight because of the tears blurring your vision as you quickly turned away and strode as far away from the vampire spawn as you could.
Shadowheart, who always seemed to overhear everything, cast a worried glance your direction before leveling a glare on Astarion who still watched after you with a blank look.
You sat yourself upon your bedroll before the campfire and listened to Volo squeakily tune his lute. Wyll and Gale were over by their tents chatting and Lae'zel sat on a boulder by the river sharpening her sword.
You had thought Astarion would understand and perhaps even agree with you, and the rest of the camp for that matter, that the parasites should not be utilized to gain control of other beings. It was convenient and downright useful, yes...but not worth an unknown cost.
You had thought...since that night when the two of you had become intimate...that he'd maybe come to care for you. But that jab about Arabella's parents, who you'd failed to save, only confirmed that the vampire did not have your best interests at heart.
Sighing, you moved your bedroll away from its usual place beside Astarion's and arranged it next to where Karlach slept. You could feel multiple pairs of eyes watching you move about but you didn't much care at the moment.
Karlach gave you a curious and concerned look as she came over and got comfortable for the night. "Are you alright? I could hear you and Astarion going at it...and not in the fun way."
You grunted and moved your body to the side so you could scrape out a rock that had been digging into your back. "It's fine. He's just an ass." You said these words loud enough for him to hear.
Karlach shrugged and nodded as if this were common knowledge. She gave you a jolting pat on the back before getting comfortable in her own bedroll.
As the breathing patterns of your companions slowly deepened in slumber, you could not find any rest. You tossed and turned as best you could in such primitive sleeping arrangements. You missed your bed back in Baldur's Gate above the taproom of the Shadowcat Claw, the familiar bustle of voices and a mug of ale in your belly lulling you to sleep. Out in this wilderness, with the thought of your argument with Astarion tugging at your thoughts...you had to get up.
As quietly as you could, you slid out of your bedroll and got to your feet. A quick observation of your companions told you they were all in a deep sleep. All except Lae'zel who sat on the boulder still, keeping silent watch. She nodded at you curtly as you passed and didn't ask any questions, for which you were grateful.
You crept through the foliage down to the place in the forest by the river where you and Astarion had had your midnight tryst. You could still feel his moonlight hair running through your fingers, his fangs on your neck as you arched it just for him. The trust...you thought you had at least earned a little bit of his trust.
"I thought I'd find you here." His voice was velvet, it shivered straight through your defenses to your heart.
"I wanted to be alone, Astarion." You tried to keep your own voice cool and collected, but you ached to hold him in your arms again.
Astarion had followed you from the campsite into the woods. He'd been fully aware of your restlessness, of course he had. He entered your line of sight now, looking very much like a cat stalking its prey. His ruby eyes were dark and trained on your face. "Come now, you're far too obvious for all this bluster. Do you not want to feel me again?" He gave you a crooked smile, showing his teeth. "A second taste, perhaps?"
You felt the hollowness of his words and saw the carefully arranged expression he wore like a mask. Beneath the facade you could make out the telltale twitch of a facial muscle, the tenseness of his eyes, indicating anxiety.
You sighed. "I thought we were passed these games."
"Games?" Astarion's tongue flicked out to wet his lips. "Games are all part of the fun, my dear. So good at getting the blood pumping."
You folded your arms. "I want an apology."
This tripped him up. For a moment the facade slipped, and he seemed genuinely taken aback. "Apologize?" Then he was back to his usual bluster. "Me? Apologize for what?"
"For having a go at me today. Bringing up Arabella's parents when you know how upset I am about it." Astarion made a noise as if to speak but you cut across him. "That was cruel, Astarion, and I deserve better from you."
"I didn't..." Astarion sighs heavily, his eyes glancing down to the ground then back at your face. "I apologize." The words seemed to pain him in some way. "I wanted to get a rise out of you, that's all. Now let's forget about that and have some fun."
You raised an unimpressed eyebrow, saying nothing, simply watching his face lit in the silver moonlight. His unconvincing grin slowly slipped off his face, a troubled frown replacing it. The two of you looked at each other for a long moment. Finally, you spoke.
"You're testing how much I care for you, aren't you?" Your voice was soft, almost inaudible over the rippling stream.
Astarion seemed momentarily taken aback, he seemed to consider taking shelter once more behind his mask of pompous indifference. But then his shoulder's slumped slightly, the fists at his sides loosened. That was all the answer you needed.
You stepped forward and placed your hands around his, tugging him closer. He did not resist, his footfalls light as ever as he drew near. Close enough to feel his breath warm your lips.
"I care about you, Astarion." Your voice was still soft amidst the rustling leaves and sparkling water. "I discourage you from using the tadpole's powers because I couldn't bear to see your will overtaken by yet another monster."
Astarion was silent for a long time, his scarlet eyes turned silver as a moonbeam fell across his pallid face. When he spoke, his voice sounded strained. "What if it's too late for me? To be anything other than a monster? My only choice is which one." He laughs forcefully, bitterness twisting his mouth.
"I won't let that happen." You encircled him tenderly in a hug, pulling him to rest flush against your body. "We're in this...together."
"Together." The word was echoed back to you, his voice framing the syllables as if it were a foreign tongue.
You turned your face into him and kissed his neck softly, feeling his body tense in your arms and then slowly relax. You kept your lips against his skin, over where Cazador had sunk his fangs all those centuries ago.
Astarion's hands slowly slid up your hips to rest against your lower back as he held you close. Your lips caressed his neck, throat and trailed up to his jaw until you pressed a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth. "I love you." You murmured.
You felt him tense again, not pushing you away, but his hands tightened on your back. "I..." Astarion hesitated. "I'm not quite ready to say those words back to you, my dear."
"I know." You felt no anger, no hurt. You accepted him however he wished to come to you, grateful for this rare moment of vulnerability beneath the stars.
You pushed him back gently until his back made contact with the base of a large sycamore tree. A huff of air left his lungs, quickly claimed by your mouth as you kissed him hungrily this time. Your hands made quick work of his clothing and Astarion became eager to help the process along.
"Vixen." He murmured and you laughed against his lips, your tongues teasing each other.
"You're beautiful, Astarion." You held his face in your hands and kissed his mouth lightly, not allowing him to turn away even as the compliment made his eyes search yours for hints of disingenuity. "I want nothing from you in return." You said firmly, reading his emotional turmoil through your shared Illithid connection. "This is just for you." You kissed his mouth, his cheek, his forehead. "To keep."
Astarion's head fell back to rest against the tree trunk as you continued lavishing affection upon him. He moaned your name softly to the night sky as you slowly sunk to your knees before him, the dirt and rocks digging unheeded against your knees. His fingers twisted in your hair and guided you to where he wanted you most.
"Good, my love." You praised him, your words causing his body to shake with increasing pleasure. "Show me."
The night was long and full of bliss. A genuine exchange of pleasure, without the previous facades and plays at affection. You felt the change as surely as he did, and when the others awoke in the morning it was to find your bedroll pulled back right next to where Astarion lay curled against you.
~
"You owe me five gold, Shadowheart." Gale mumbled.
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girlgenius1111 · 4 months
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wrong.
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r is dating an older woman. her teammates don't approve. when r and her girlfriend breakup, she hides it from her teammates, determined not to let them know that they were right.
angst + fluff. breakup obviously. protective barca :)
When you'd decided to ignore your teammates feelings about your girlfriend, you didn't imagine it would end as terribly as it did. You chalked it up to them being overprotective, which they were, rather than them being right about her, which they also were. She was 28, and you were 19, and you knew they felt that she was too old for you. You were one of the younger players on the team, which you took as something of a challenge, as if you had to prove your maturity. That wasn't why you were dating someone so much older, but it was certainly a perk. You thought they'd be impressed when they met her, but they were not. They waited until she left to tell you that they thought it was a bad idea, that she was too old for you.
This only really strengthened your resolve to keep seeing her, much to your teammates frustration. They'd all tried to speak to you about it, promising that they just didn't want to see you get hurt or taken advantage of, but you wouldn't hear any of it. You all fell into an unspoken agreement to not discuss your girlfriend, as it was the cause of countless arguments, and they clearly weren't changing your mind. Alexia had finally thrown up her hands, saying that if you wanted to be immature and not listen to them, you were free to do so, but that you shouldn't expect them to be there to fix it when it inevitably ended poorly.
Alexia was just frustrated and worried, and she hadn't really meant it. She thought that was obvious; her and the team had made it clear, she thought, that they were always there for you. No matter what. They'd proven it, time and time again, but Alexia's words rattled around in your brain for days after she said them, and you were unable to pretend they hadn't hurt. Still, you pushed it to the back of your mind, confident that you wouldn't need your teammates, because nothing would go wrong.
-----
Of course, everything did go wrong. You had gone to your girlfriend's apartment to surprise her with dinner after training one day. You were in the kitchen, preparing to start cooking when you heard her key in the door. She was on the phone when she walked in, sitting on the couch and continuing her conversation, and you decided to wait until she was off the phone to announce your presence.
"No, really, it's fine. She doesn't have to know, and besides, she's just a bit of fun. She's 20, she can't possibly think I'm serious about her."
You felt nauseous. As far as you were aware, you were the only 20 year old she was seeing, which meant she was talking about you. It only got worse from there.
"I definitely prefer you, baby. Her body is nice, obviously, but I could do without her personality. She's young, and annoying, and she doesn't know how to shut up. I don't know how her team tolerates her, honestly, I can't spend more than a couple hours with her unless we're partaking in... other activities, and then her mouth is pretty busy."
You can hear the smirk in her voice, and you swear you can feel your heart fall out of your chest. She was speaking so carelessly about you, so cruelly. You felt used, and suddenly self conscious about everything you'd ever said. Was she right? Did you talk too much? Did the team secretly hate you? It only took you a few seconds to decide that she was probably right. She was older, the age of a lot of your teammates, and it seemed incredibly likely that they felt the same way.
Your embarrassment quickly turned to anger, though, as it often did, and you grabbed the flowers you'd brought her, and marched out into the living room. Her eyes widened, hand dropping the phone, and you threw the flowers in her direction, as well as the key to her apartment she'd given you, before walking right out the door, taking care to slam it behind you.
-----
You thought you were handling it pretty well. You walked right out of her apartment and to your car, driving home. You didn't cry, that would be ridiculous. What was there to cry about? You should have known it would end like this. You couldn't stand the thought of hearing your teammates I told you so's, nor the thought of them sticking to their guns, and not being there for you when you needed them, because they'd warned you. You decided that you wouldn't need them, then, which definitely was not fueled partly by your ex-girlfriend's words about them probably hating you. No, you were fine. Everything was fine.
You woke the next morning sadder than you'd been the night before. The anger had faded, leaving a hole in your chest, where the words you'd overheard were etched permanently. You knew that, in this state, it would take just one person asking if you were okay for you to break, and that was not an option. You would act as normal as possible, no one would suspect anything, and you could cry when you got home, not before.
-----
You wished you didn't have such perceptive teammates. You could have sworn you'd acted normally, completely normally, as you headed into the locker room that morning, joking around with Pina and Ona, and doing your best to keep a smile on your face. It was like the older girls had some internal alarm that went off when you weren't okay, and you felt their eyes flitting over to you throughout the morning gym session.
Still, you held strong, avoiding the girls that were watching you carefully, instead spending time with the younger girls, who were happy to joke around, which keep your mind off things. Your first real test came in the form of Lucy Bronze.
Everyone was walking out to the pitch, when she fell into step with you, slinging an arm over your shoulder.
"How did your surprise dinner go?" She asked. You'd completely forgotten that you'd told Lucy about that. She was one of the only ones who could be civil when talking about your girlfriend, taking the time to ask you about her, even though you knew she held the same opinions as the others.
"Oh. Fine. It was good." You replied shortly, and Lucy couldn't help but be slightly confused when you shrugged out from under her arm, and jogged away. You weren't one to spare details when telling a story, but you had evidently not wanted to talk about it. That wasn't like you.
"What special dinner?" Ingrid asked, coming up on the other side of Lucy as you literally ran away. Mapi was on her other side, also looking curiously at Lucy.
"She was surprising her girlfriend by cooking her dinner last night," Lucy explained and Mapi frowned.
"I don't like that girl." She stated plainly. "She's not good enough for our pequeña."
Ingrid rolled her eyes. "Everyone knows how you feel about her, love, you don't need to remind us every time she's brought up."
Mapi ignored her girlfriend. "She answered strangely, no? Normally she's talktative whenever someone asks about her girl, but she ran away from you." The Spaniard observed, watching as you sprayed water on Pina's head, your smile not quite reaching your eyes.
"Yeah, I guess. You know she hates hearing how much everyone dislikes her girlfriend though, it was probably just that." Lucy dismissed, but Mapi's eyes stay trained on you.
"Hmm."
"María, please don't get involved in that again, you know how upset it makes her when everyone has something to say about her relationship," Ingrid said reproachfully, fully understanding the look in her girlfriend's eyes.
"I am not going to get involved," Mapi defended. "I am just going to see if anyone else has any observations..."
Ingrid sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Don't mention this to Alexia until you're sure something is going on, she'll freak out."
"I won't." Mapi promised, distracted. Ingrid walked away to talk to Frido, and Mapi immediately found Alexia standing with Irene, and marched over.
Ingrid abruptly stopped talking, watching as Mapi seemingly did exactly what she ahd told her not to do.
"What?" Frido asked, following Ingrid's eyes to where Mapi was standing with the captains.
"Mapi's convinced something happened with y/n and her girlfriend, and I told her not to say anything because you know how y/n gets, especially not to Alexia, and look. She's doing exactly what I said not to." Ingrid sighed, exasperated.
"I don't like that girl." Frido said, frowning at the mention of your girlfriend.
Ingrid threw her hands in the air. "No one does! That doesn't mean we have to get all up in y/n's business. The more we push, the less likely she is to listen to us."
"Alright, relax, I agree with you." Frido said. Ingrid glared at Mapi from across the pitch, the Spaniard very obviously avoiding eye contact with her girlfriend. Jona called them over to start a drill, then, and all conversations came to a halt. For now.
-----
You weren't oblivious to the increase of attention on you after talking to Lucy, but you were determined not to acknowledge it. Your teammates were stubborn, though; almost as stubborn as you. You were walking off the pitch at the end of training, towards the locker room, when Alexia and Mapi appeared on either side of you.
"How was your night last night?" Alexia asked innocently, looking at you out of the corner of her eye.
"Fine?" You asked, feigning confusion.
"Do anything fun?" Mapi wondered.
"No." You said, because you weren't sure you could even discuss your ex at this point. Lucy had brought it up before, and you'd barely made it through that brief conversation.
"Really?" Both girls said in unison. You rolled your eyes.
"Yes." You huffed, getting frustrated, and they could tell. Alexia grabbed your wrist, stopping you, and her and Mapi moved to stand in front of you, blocking your path inside.
"Lucy said you did something fun with your girlfriend?" Alexia asked, raising a hand to shield her eyes from the sun. Mapi's arms were crossed, and it really felt like you were in trouble.
"Yeah, we had dinner. Can I go now?"
"No, you're being weird. Did something happen?" Mapi said, stepping closer to you.
"Nope," you shook your head stubbornly.
"Pequeña, you seem upset," Alexia reached out a hand to rest on your shoulder, but you moved out of the way.
"I am not upset." Your voice was completely devoid of emotion, and Mapi and Alexia exchanged looks, not used to you acting so stand offish towards them.
"If something happened, you can tell us," Alexia stated, not deterred by your behavior.
"I don't even know why you care, you said you didn't want to hear if something happened." You scoff. Your face is one of anger, but your body language radiates sadness.
"When did I say that? I always want to know whats going on with you."
"Alexia, you told me not to come crying to you if you ended up being right about her." The blonde was speechless, absolutely stunned that you had taken that to heart.
"I wasn't being serious, y/n." She said quietly, somewhat gaining an understanding of why you were being so resistant to them. You remained quiet, gaze fixed on the grass under your feet.
"Seriously, pequeña, if something happened with you and your girl, you can tell us." Mapi cut in. You groaned, running a hand through your hair. You weren't getting out of this, you knew.
"We broke up. You guys were right. Happy?"
"I am so sorry, y/n." Alexia sighed, moving closer as if to pull you into a hug. Instead, you pushed in between her and Mapi, stalking towards the locker room.
"No you aren't. You don't have to pretend you care. You don't want to hear about it, and I don't want to talk about it." You snapped over your shoulder, ignoring the way they followed you, calling your name.
You made it inside the locker room, aggressively throwing your things into your bag, and stomping back out towards the parking lot, completely ignoring the way every member of the team was watching you, concerned. Alexia and Mapi stood in the door, once again blocking your path.
"Y/n, stop," Mapi said. The room was quiet as everyone watched the standoff.
"Move." You said through clenched teeth. You were blinking back tears, and Alexia and Mapi softened at the sight. You took your opportunity, shoving them out of your way, and walking out without a look backwards. This time, the girls didn't follow you out of the room, instead looking like they were at a complete loss for what to do. As you walked down the hall, you heard the unmistakable voice of Ingrid cutting through the silence.
"María, I TOLD you not to bother her." The room erupted into conversation, and you left the building, wiping angrily at the tears falling down your face.
-----
You made it home, showering and fighting the urge to just get in bed and fall into misery. Instead, you focused on de-girlfriend-ing your apartment. There wasn't much, as you'd only been together for a few months, but you'd filled a garbage bag of her stuff, and headed down to the dumpster. You threw the bag out, and it didn't bring as much satisfaction as you'd hoped it would. You walked back to the front door of the building, rather dejected, when a voice called out to you.
"Y/n, you haven't been answering any of my calls," your ex said, jogging to where you stood frozen by the door. "Hey, baby," she continued, wrapping her arms around you and trying to pull you in. You unfroze, shoving her off you.
"Don't touch me." You snarled, backing into the door.
"Don't be like that, you weren't supposed to hear any of what I said."
"Is that supposed to make it better?"
"You're being dramatic, y/n, stop being so sensitive. This is what I was talking about, you won't even have a mature conversation with me about this." The girl standing in front of you was completely unrecognizable, to you at least. You wondered if this was the person all of your teammates had seen.
"There's no conversation to be had. We're done. You are a horrible person, and I never want to see you again."
Her face contorted in anger. "Did your teammates tell you to do this? They're probably just tired of hearing you complain, y/n. They barely put up with you, you aren't going to find anyone other than me that will." She reached forward again, trying to hold onto your arm, and there wasn't any room behind you to back up. Her words felt like a slap to the face.
"Don't touch me," you said again, voice much weaker this time. You couldn't believe what she was saying; it was like she was a completely different person suddenly, yet she still knew you, and knew exactly what to say to hurt you.
"No, you're gonna hear what I have to say," she said, clearly frustrated with you standing up for yourself. Her hand closed around your wrist, and you prepared to pull away, to run, when another voice shouted out from not too far away.
"Get your hands off her," Mapi growled, coming from seemingly nowhere to shove your ex away from you. Her and Alexia stood, shoulder to shoulder, not unlike how they had earlier, glaring at the girl in front of them.
You jumped as a pair of arms wrapped around you, settling when you Ingrid stepped in front of you, bringing you in close to her chest. You clung to her, not really sure why you were so afraid. You knew your ex wouldn't have hurt you, but she really scared you when she'd tried to grab you, and you wanted nothing more than to be as far away from her as possible.
"You do not ever touch her again, understand? Or you will not enjoy what happens to you." Alexia warned, her voice angrier and more threatening than you'd ever heard it.
"Are you okay?" Ingrid asked, drawing your attention away from Alexia. You nodded shakily, gripping tightly onto Ingrid's sweater. She was blocking you from really seeing what was going on, positioned directly between you and your ex. You could still hear her though.
"Whatever," she scoffed. "She's not worth the trouble." Mapi made an angry noise, and Alexia started forward, but Ingrid's voice brought their focus back to you.
"She's not worth it. Let's get pequeña inside." The Norwegian said, shooting both girls a meaningful look. They watched your ex walk away, as you unlocked the front door, and headed towards the elevator. No one spoke as you stepped in, taking it up to your floor. They filed out of the doors after you, still silent, following you to your door.
"You don't have to stay." You said quietly, fiddling with the lock.
"We're staying." Alexia responded firmly, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Her and Mapi were still practically radiating anger as they entered your apartment. Ingrid was angry to, you could tell, but she hid it better, focusing instead on getting you a glass of water. She handed it to you, as her and Alexia took seats in your living room. Mapi remained standing, whole body still tense. You sat, in the corner of the couch, bringing your knees up to your chest. Your teammates hated how small you were making yourself, how shaken you seemed.
"Are you okay pequeña?" Alexia asked after a minute, scooting closer to you on the couch.
"Fine." You said. You were fine. She wouldn't have hurt you, you knew that. Everything she said, though, did hurt. It felt like she'd picked out your biggest insecurities, and told you that they were true. You'd been vulnerable with her, more than you'd ever been with anyone else, and she'd used it against you the second she could. You weren't overly eager to share anything else, not right now. This wouldn't fly with your teammates, though, that much you knew. They'd come to apologize, probably, but they wouldn't leave until they were sure, absolutely sure, that you were okay. One word answers weren't going to convince them. "I'm fine, really. She startled me, that's all."
They didn't look convinced. You supposed that was fair; they'd need more than that.
"Seriously, I'm alright. I dodged a bullet, clearly."
"What she said..." Alexia started, but you stopped her, shaking your head.
"I really don't want to talk about it."
"Too bad." Alexia said.
"Ale," Ingrid said, shifting uncomfortably. The blonde ignored her.
"She is completely wrong, pequeña. We don't put up with you, y/n. We love you. We always want to hear what's going on with you, and what you have to say. You know that, don't you?"
You shrugged, really wishing they hadn't heard that part of the conversation.
"Can you tell us what happened with her?" Mapi said softly, finally taking a seat in the chair next to Ingrid. You hesitated, and it becomes very clear to them that you've internalized what they heard your ex say to you. "We want to hear, we want to help."
"I didn't mean what I said before, y/n. That because we warned you about her, we wouldn't be there if things went wrong. You could ignore every piece of advice I ever give you, and I'd still want to be there for you. Every time." Alexia cut in, resting a hand on your knee. You didn't shift away from her this time, which she took to be a good sign.
With a sigh, not meeting any of their eyes, you told them everything. Everything she'd said on the phone about you, the things that made your cheeks burn with humiliation, your stomach twist with anxiety. The words felt like they burned on the way out of your mouth, the fear that your friends would agree with them almost choking you. Of course, they didn't.
You'd barely finished talking when Mapi abruptly rose from her seat, hands clenched in tight fists and walked without a word into the kitchen. You looked after her, confused, but Ingrid just shook her head.
"She's angry, she just needs a minute."
You nodded slowly, trying to wrap your head around the fact that Mapi was so angry on your behalf that she could barely contain her feelings.
You looked to Alexia, her hand still resting on your knee, finding her deep in thought. She cleared her throat before speaking.
"You are right, pequeña, you definitely dodged a bullet. I am so sorry she said those things about you. None of them are true, not even one. You are a wonderful, thoughtful, kind person. You deserve so much better than her."
You nod your head weakly at her reassurance. You weren't convinced, but it made you feel better, if only marginally. Mapi reentered the room again, sitting not in the chair she was in earlier, but squishing herself into Ingrid's chair. It was always interesting to watch them together; wherever one of the struggled, the other picked them up, always, without a second thought. Ingrid scooched over in the chair, face unchanged and still fixed on you, wrapping an arm around her girlfriend and squeezing her shoulder comfortingly. Mapi visibly relaxed once her body was in contact with Ingrid's, like all of her muscles had un-tensed, and some of the anger was pushed out of her body.
That was how a relationship was supposed to be, you thought. You'd never felt more like an idiot in your entire life, yet still, your insecurities swirled around your head, and you felt like you were drowning in them.
"So you don't... you don't think she was right?" You ask in a small voice, peeking at the girls' faces. They all look shattered at your question, like it was causing them physical pain that you thought it possible that they didn't actually care about you, that you believed even a word of what that awful woman had said to you.
"No. She is completely, entirely wrong." Alexia said, sounding like she was pleading with you to believe her.
"I just thought she really liked me." You whispered, and it appears Alexia couldn't hold herself back anymore, moving closer and smooshing you into her arms. You cried softly into Alexia's sweatshirt, never having been more grateful in your life for anything, than you were in that moment that she was there, that all of them were there. Your captain wrapped you up safely in her arms, and the strength with which she held you did even more to convince you that she meant what she said; she wanted, more than anything, to be there for you.
"Voy a matar a esa puta." You heard Mapi declare. Alexia hummed in agreement against you.
"You're not going to kill anyone, María." Ingrid dismissed. "Not by yourself, and you'll have to beat me to it."
You looked up in surprise, seeing a satisfied grin on Mapi's face, and a fiery look on Ingrid's. If you ever wondered how 2 seemingly different people made a relationship work, you had your answer. Deep down, Ingrid could be just as protective, just as reckless as Mapi was when it came to people she loved.
You tried to pull away from Alexia, having stopped crying, but her arms only tightened around you.
"No, you are staying right here, where no one can ever make you sad again." Alexia said decisively. You stifle a laugh, but give up your attempts to escape. Your words come out slightly muffled when you speak again.
"Can you guys not tell everyone about what happened? They can know we broke up, but the whole team will just freak out if they know what she said, and I don't want to deal with that."
Ingrid and Alexia easily agree to your request, but Mapi remains silent. Finally, you do pull away from Alexia to stare suspiciously at the defender. Ingrid is tilting away from her girlfriend, an exasperated expression on her face.
"María, what did you do?" You asked. Mapi smiled sheepishly.
"I may have asked Lucy and Mario if they were free later to pay your ex a visit, and I also may have told them what we overheard."
"Mapi," you groaned.
"I didn't know you didn't want people to know! Besides, it will be easier to scare her away from you with more people. Especially those two!" You weren't impressed, but Alexia evidently was, a contemplative expression on her face.
"No, Ale, please don't let this happen," You begged, switching your attention to the normally more cool-headed individual.
"You can't go threaten that girl, no matter how much she deserves it." Alexia said, and Mapi deflated, a frown finding it's way onto her face. You sigh, relieved. "At least not right away. We'll give it a few weeks, until she lets her guard down."
"Alexia!" You yelped, and she simply smiles softly at you.
"No one messes with our pequeña. Ever." Alexia shrugged, relatively unbothered by your slight annoyance.
It wasn't actual frustration, though. You knew they were just joking around. Well everyone except for Mapi; she was definitely being serious. Regardless, it felt good to know they had your back; like further confirmation that they didn't feel at all how your ex had said they did. You should have listened to them from the beginning, but more than that, you should have never listened to your ex, not when everything your teammates did today, and everyday, proved her to be wrong.
-----
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scarletttries · 9 days
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When Fallout Characters Fall In Love... (Fallout Show Request)
Pairings: Cooper Howard/The Ghoul x Reader, Maximus x Reader, Norm x Reader
Author's Note: Thank you to everyone who has sent in a request for the Fallout show, please keep them coming as this is definitely the show that I'm thinking about the most at the moment! Also let me know if you want a part two of these headcanons or something similar :)
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The Ghoul:
- Cooper Howard couldn't put his finger on exactly when he had accepted that the life he now led would be one devoid of love, but it was a hollow feeling he carried in his chest wherever the wasteland took him. Maybe it was in the decades he'd spent wandering and gaining a reputation as a heartless cowboy without an ounce of mercy. Or the fact that he hadn't met anyone that had stirred up a single emotion inside him, fearing the aching betrayal of his wife would haunt him even as lifetimes passed. Maybe it came to him in the way he flinched each time he caught his reflection in the few unbroken windows he passed, flesh slowly forming caverns and creases where once there were only the faintest of lines that showed endless signs of life. The wasteland was no place for love. That's what he had decided.
- But even in the fall of civilization there's room for a surprise, and you were certainly one of those..
- He heard rumour of you before your bounty crossed his desk, a runaway scientist from a mysterious body known only as The Institute, a target to everyone for the sheer volume of classified knowledge you might possess.
- A life on the run was no easy one, and Cooper knew that better than anyone, so it didn't take long for him to track you down to a small town just on the outskirts of the radiation's no man's land. His gun was cocked as he strutted towards the half open door of the rundown house he'd narrowed your location down to, glancing at the poster in his hand one last time before he burst inside. Even from the poorly illustrated version of you, he could see your eyes were kind, almost hopeful, like you still believed science could make right what had gone so wrong in the last 200 years. He almost felt a tinge of guilt as he steeled himself for a fight, saying a silent prayer that you wouldn't be behind the walls in front of him.
- Stepping in carefully he expected traps, or an army of robots to jump to arms, but instead he found you travelling alone, a small satchel of papers clutched in your arms as you stared him down with a calm resolve that caught him more off guard than any weapon.
"Do you still believe there's hope for this world Mr Howard?" Your voice was soft, not the trembling fear he was so used to hearing. You stared up at him without a trace of disgust in your expression, your eyes locked on his as he considered your question, and then lowered his weapon.
"And what if I do?" His heart ached at the question, so hardened by years of cynicism that even the idea of hope and goodness were almost too heavy to bear. He felt more human than he had in years as you slowly inched towards him, the creaking floorboards beneath you cutting through a tense silence that had The Ghoul feeling like he was back on a movie set, everything so perfectly orchestrated to have his stomach in knots. And then you extended your hand to him and gave him the most genuine smile he could remember receiving in this whole sorry chapter of his after-life,
"Then I think we could really make a difference. Together." Your pip-boy screeched as his irradiated hand stretched out to reach yours, but you didn't flinch, gently squeezing the twisted flesh as you shook on what you bought felt in the depths of your souls was going to be a meaningful partnership.
- It would be a straight forward life trying to use your research to get the world back on track for there to be joy and peace again. But with The Ghoul by your side you can expect; a personal bodyguard who cares more about your safety than his own by far, a gleaming look of pride in his eyes any time you tell him which Cooper Howard film was your favourite, the slow and steady acceptance that he is still worthy of love even in his new twisted form, and Cooper being endlessly grateful that you are the person who wants to give that love to him.
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Maximus:
- All Maximus had ever wanted was to be a knight of the Brotherhood. He wakes up every morning and does his best every day just to try and earn his spot in this family of welded metal and unflinching loyalty. It wasn't until you arrived on the base that he started to realise there were other ways he might form a family.
- A nearby village had been half destroyed by raiders until the Brotherhood stepped in, clearing out the violent scavengers and bringing anyone with skills they could utilise back to base for assessment. Maximus was sitting alone, nursing the most recent wounds inflicted by his so-called brothers when he watched you march in alongside two soldiers, the final evacuee of your faded community, a distance in your eyes that he felt akin with from his own home's destruction. You could feel his eyes on you before you spotted him, a rag damp with blood pressed to his nose as he sat huddled against a corrugated iron shack.
- Despite the sheer joylessness of the situation, Max couldn't stop himself from sporting a smile, waving at you like you had locked eyes across the schoolyard not some barren military base. Whatever he hoped for in that moment seemed to pay off as you waved back, a small laugh escaping your lips at the absurdity of his blood soaked grin. He watched as the knights around you escorted you to the medical tent for a check up, waiting until they left their guard posts beside you to sneak behind the off-white fabric, following some unknown instinct he'd never felt call to him before. You bolted upright where you perched on one of the medical beds as he appeared, visibly relaxing when you recognised him from outside and once again waving in his direction. His mouth worked faster than his brain in that moment, heart hammering in his chest as the words gushed out with his new found affections,
"I used to live in Shady Sands. I know what it's like to have your home destroyed, your family hurt, everything changing all at once. But you're safe here with the Brotherhood, and even if it doesn't feel like it today, things are going to be okay eventually. Also I'm Maximus and if you ever need to talk to someone, I'm, like, around all the time, and no one else really wants to talk to me so I'm probably going to be available... " He trailed off as he tried to recover what had ended up a far more embarrassing sentence than he'd hoped, his lungs burning as he realised he'd forgotten to take a breath through his whole winding spiel. But when you smiled at him any shame seemed to float away, and as you patted the bed and nodded for him to take a seat beside you, the once lonely squire suddenly felt much closer to finding a family than he had surrounded by his brothers.
- As you settle into life on the base, you and Maximus only grow closer. Expect; late nights of sneaking out of your dorm so you and Max can stare up the stars and plot your escape from this life, fantasising about what a life beyond these walls and this world could be like for the two of you, someone who has your back no matter how bad things get and how low you feel, and truly some of the most god awful flirting you will ever hear.
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Norm:
- Growing up in the Vault, Norm had always been told the value of belonging to a community, and how everyone in the vault was just a big happy family. But none of that stopped Norm feeling like an outsider, like he didn't quite operate on the same wavelength as the rest of the cheerful strangers he shared his deep underground walls with. After a few of the annual exchanges between vaults, he had all but given up on hoping to meet anyone he felt he could actually feel close to.
- When his overseer father had finally decided it was his turn to continue the vault's legacy and be part of what Norm considered an archaic tradition of arranged marriages between the linked vaults, Norm couldn't have been more resistant. He pleaded for the council to reject his nomination, begging them not to force some young hopeful to be subjected to his notable lack of enthusiasm for the rest of their life in this dutiful swap, but with limited options of eligible young men, he soon found himself staring down the doors of your vault. The suit previously used by his fellow bachelors had been tailored to within an inch of its life to try and fit his slight frame, the shoulders still feeling like they hung off him, threatening to swallow him up along with ground as he watched the round door slowly start to roll open.
- He thought this whole thing was stupid and outdated, and he knew there was no way he could actually find someone to love and love him in return behind those doors, so why was his stomach so full of butterflies as slowly your face started to appear in the artificial light of Vault 33. He waited to see you throw him a false smile, going through the motions as much as he had planned to, or even a look of disappointment that he was not the man you had been picturing as the door crept open. Instead he really thought he saw sincerity in your eyes, a thoughtful understanding as he choked out his name, his stammering not going unnoticed by his sister who quietly chuckled behind him.
"It's really nice to meet you, Norm." You spoke each word with intention, like it wasn't just a rehearsed greeting but an honest confession that sent sparks flying in the air between you.
- Suddenly the pressure of matrimony didn't feel so all consuming. And maybe this system was more advanced than he had appreciated. And there might be a small chance that he wasn't destined to spend his life feeling like he was on the outside, that he might finally have someone that could take him as he is, darkness and light, for better or for worse.
- Whether you stay in the vaults, or make your move to the surface world, with Norm by your side you can expect: Sarcastic comments muttered under his breath at inopportune moments just to see the way you fail to contain your laughter, being the sounding board for all of each other's thoughts and feelings no matter how serious or silly they might be, Norm clinging to your side through everything knowing that he only feels himself when he's stood in your light, and being the one person Norm would do absolutely anything for, bringing out the bravery and intelligence that was always just below the surface of this sweet man.
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theoddest1 · 4 months
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Okay so this new episode that came out (Episode 4) was poorly handled.
TW /// SA
- No warning before the show starts...why? And even if there is no way for Viv to add one, for some stupid ass reason, why didn't she announce to the fandom properly "Hey, this will have very deep topics and imagery that may not be suitable for all audiences."? Why have arguments on threads and fail to do this very easy thing. At least if the episode came out, people would get a heads up, and the word would spread faster PLUS people would see that you at least TRIED
- The episode opens up with a scene of CNC porno played for laughs in an episode that tackles SA. Complete tonal whiplash. Why did it have to open up with Angel showing everyone a porno? It serves no purpose other than to get a cheap laugh (that never came) out of me or anyone else who watches and because of the topic of the episode revolved around it. I'msure that if the episode WASN'T ABOUT SA, that joke would not have been there....but it is. There was legit no good reason to start this fiasco off with such a tone deaf opening.
- Charlie is actually fucking useless and a burden in this episode, serving no other purpose other than being the gateway to further the issues that befall Angel when "trying" to help. This all screams forced. Worse of all, Charlie does nothing to actually HELP Angel out of this, even though he has a clear black eye thanks to it all and literal mirrors breaking as a result of the abuse. We never see an actual development between the two thanks to her foolishness and garbage writing, and it's resolved easily as if this is some early Disney cartoon season that's on a strict deadline. Regardless of whether she apologized or not, she essentially caused the issue and did NOTHING to actually clean her mess. The goddamn B A R T E N D E R had to be used to salvage the pieces. So far, Charlie, as a character, is utterly pathetic and has been a burden to the cast twice so far. Vaggie, who tried to prove herself (moreso Vaggie's fault for going the extra mile for no reason but an obstacle nonetheless), also had an issue that involved Charlie's utter lack of a backbone. Hey, what was it that Charlie said in the pilot that her dad taught her and one of the only thingsshe learned from him? "You don't take shit from other demons"
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- Only one scene from the abuse shown was handled well, and it was when Charlie visited, screwed everything up, and Val asked Angel to come to his dressing room. Aside from that, the whole SA imagery is jarring. While this time, the fast pace of it all is not bad, the quick shift into it all with Angel switching from enjoying to hating, to smiling, to frowning, ALONG with the quick pace of it all with the PRIOR KNOWLEDGE SHOWN and the SONG PLAYING, I am getting mixed messages here. Imagery? Shows Angel getting assaulted multiple times with either a forced smile or for some reason ENJOYING sex with Val and the role play situations showcased, is he INTO his abuse? Lyrics? He seems to find arousal in Val controlling him. The song legit reads as follows
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"Addicted to this feeling, I can't help but swallow"
This doesn't read like he is "forced" it reads like he is yearning the toxic relationship. Now if this was one of the main issues with the abusive relationship, where it was a codependency built on romanticising the abuser and Angel learning to break free from that horrible view of someone who never loved him and actively harms him, this lyric would make a lot of sense....but that's not what we are shown at all. From the jump, we are shown that Angel HATES being with Val, to the point of him straight up avoiding his texts and voice messages, they actually do an okay job (despite the shoddy voice work) on showcasing how manipulative Val is and his outright explosive temper through this scene in episode 2. We see that Angel does NOT wanna have association with Val, is tired of it all, and even got drunk to down his sorrows. Yet these lyrics present it all as though it's just a very rocky love life like those songs you hear on the radio with the singer lamenting about how awful their relationship was but still miss their toxic boo-boo. It just...doesn't read like an SA song and could mean anything regarding the type of abuse he is facing. It's kinda vague in hindsight. That's MY take on the lyrics, though.
- Husk's song is a trash fire. He sees Angel is down in the dumps and proceeds to talk shit about him pretty much relaying his sorrows, saying it's okay to feed into your vices, and downplaying the actual situation at hand. So let's get this straight.
Angel- A sexual abuse victim forced into sex slavery to appease all sorts of people's sexual desires whether he likes it or not, including pleasuring his pimp who physically abuses him often all cause he sold his soul
Husk- Gambled his life away and lost his title as overlord, serves under Alastor all cause he sold his soul.
How is this even...the same at all? Even if Husk is lacking some context, he SEES that Angel normalized drinking roofied drinks and works for Val SOMEONE HUSK SHOULD KNOW ABOUT AND WHAT HE DOES but nah, screw Angel. Even if he honest to God (irony) wanted to actually help, why tf would Husk think this was sound advice? Why does Husk just SUDDENLY care? No build up, no memorable dynamic, no nothing. Realistically, CHARLIE should be the one singing with Angel or maybe Vaggie because she heard the story from Charlie. Not Husk. He is self aware enough where he knows this "advice" wouldn't work but nah. Nothing about the song makes sense. Telling someone going through it that "you're a loser" pretty much a no one, an insignificant individual, when VAL has made it clear that Angel would be nothing without him...yeah no the only reason why this whole song "worked" was cause the writers wanted it to, so Angel is happy with being a loser for being a victim of SA and selling his soul to someone who abuses him in various ways consistently.
This episode is terrible
Jarring for any newcomers
Who have no idea who these characters are
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