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trashmouth-richie · 1 year

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Eddie x Fem!reader

master list

summary: feelings burst. Fluffy. Fluffy fluffy. Eddie helps reader when she finds herself in a bind.

warnings: no minors gtfo- eventual smut in the series.

W.C: 11.8k 🫣

A/N: per usual thank you the my beta readers @sweetsweetjellybean

Clunk

Clunk clunk humm

You were already late for work this morning and now this? Must be a fucking Monday. This must be that bitch karma’s payback for you talking shit about Eddie’s van the other night when he backed it up to the garage to unload some shit he salvaged from the junkyard.

“You would think that since you’re a mechanic, you could tune up that piece of shit so it isn’t so fucking loud.”

Eddie scoffs and rolls his eyes, unloading another arm load of car parts from the back of the van to the middle of the garage, “don’t dog on the shaggin’ wagon, you know how much ass I get in this thing?”

The unspoken agreement you had with Eddie the other night after spilling your guts about your past, gave you more patience towards him than ever before. Instead of finding him repulsive, you two were almost friends.

“No I don’t and also I don’t care.” you say taking a bite of a ham sandwich.

“More than a public toilet seat,” Eddie boasts, “Ladies love it, feel like I’m Shaggy or something.”

More like his other four-legged snack-loving friend.

“I really hope you use a rubber, don’t wanna extend the Munson blood line anymore than you have to,” you bite back.

“Oh sweetheart, I always wrap it with the groupies, especially watching Jas bounce from Gareth, to Big D to Walt all in one night.”

“Well look at you, Mr. Perfect bill of health.”

Eddie smiles widely a stupid grin plastered on his face, “I’m so good at the doctors they even give me a sticker. ”

Now here you are, stranded at the gas station east of town, past Merrill’s pumpkin patch. Losing all faith in your sanity, you slam your hand into the steering wheel one more time. Your chunky boots clunk across the pavement as you pull the door towards you, a dingy brass bell dings overhead, alerting the gas station attendant that someone has entered the store.

“Back again?” the balding creep with the greasy combover presses. His coke bottle thick glasses full of breakfast pizza slime from his fingers from pushing them up on in place after sliding down the oils on his nose. A brown paper bag with orange spray paint sitting next to it sat on the counter, and a tinge of orange around his mouth.

With no time for small talk or shooting the shit with the local bachelors of Hawkins, you simply need to borrow the phone and call… fuck. You didn’t want to have to call Boom’s, but the other shops didn’t open yet, and you didn’t know any of them. The decision was made.

“I need to use the phone,” you say laying your hands on the counter.

“No can do, this is a business line,” he spits, bits of his barely chewed breakfast falling from his over stuffed mouth.

Irritated beyond belief you say through gritted teeth, “What? My car broke down, I need to have it towed.”

Showing no sympathy, the combover greaseball says, “That sucks, don’t it,” a throaty chuckle erupts from him. Clearly the man got off from making next to little effort in helping someone.

“Listen,” you say peering over the counter to read the slobs name tag, “Ralph— you’re going to give me the goddamn phone so I can get my car towed, or I’m going to tell your boss about your little huffing habit. Got it?”

His cheeks crimson at your threat, “…what’s the number?”

After dialing it wrong three times, Ralph’s oversized fingers and his altered mind getting hung up on where the 4 was on the dusty rotary phone, you hastily reach across the counter and grab it and the Hawkins phone book. Flipping through the worn yellow pages, finding the number yourself and slotting your fingers in the appropriate places to get the number correct, it finally starts ringing.

Angrily tapping your foot, the serenade of dial tone ringing loud in your ear.

“Boom’s” a bored voice says, after ehat seems like hours of waiting.

“Hey, — is Eddie there?”

A scoff is heard from the other end of the phone, followed by an annoyed voice, “Why who wants to know?”

You don’t have time for childish games with whoever this fucking prick is. “Jesus Christ what is it with assholes today? Is he there or no?”

“I don’t know, you stupid bitch— why don’t you tell me if Eddie is here or—”

A scuffle is heard as the phone falls to the ground.

“What the fuck did I tell you? Huh? I’ll drop your ass just name the time and place mother fuck— hello?”

“Eddie?” You ask exhaustedly.

“Tooty? Oh shit, you miss me so much you’re making calls to my work?”

“E—” you begin, frustration rising.

“Or did you call to gossip? Ooooh, tell me all about the salon drama, is it that blonde again, damn just slap her already I know you want to.”

“Ed—!”

“Shit if you’re worried about going to jail I’ll come bail y—”

“Edward Joseph Munson!”

There was a pause on the other end of the line, “Did you just use my full name? I only hear that when I’m in trouble with Wayne.”

“Will you listen to me?! I need help. I’m at the gas station east of town and my car won’t start.”

“What? What happened?” Eddie asks, his joking tone immediately fading to concern.

“I have no idea, but I’m already late for work—can you come pick me up?”

“Usually this is where a please would be.”

“Eddie!”

“Ooh even begging?”

“Goddamnit,” you say under your breath, “Eddie will you please, come get me?”

“That a girl, see that wasn’t so hard. So where are you?”

Eddie rolls up in an old orange and white tow truck, head banging with a cigarette hanging limply from his bottom lip. “So what happened?”

“Well I drove here, got gas, and then it just wouldn’t start.”

“Damn, I wonder if your starter is out.”

“Great, so what the hell does that mean?”

“Well, I’m not sure if it is that or not, but if it’s not that— it means that your car is probably going to need more work than it’s worth, but I won’t know until I get it in the shop.”

“Son of a bitch.” you curse, covering your face with your hands and tipping your head back up to the sky. Could this fucking day get any worse?

After buying the house last year, your savings were completely wiped out, the last few months you had been pinching pennies trying to build it back up

“I’ll tow it, but I don’t think Boom has any loaners right now,” Eddie explains, “but since I’m such a kind, handsome, good roommate….”

You roll your eyes.

“I’ll bring you to work.”

Shock evident on your face, “You sure?”

“I mean its either that or the city bus, and last I checked—Hawkins doesn’t have one.”

Eddie agrees to give you a ride until your car is fixed on one condition, the band gets to use the garage for practices again. Too tired to fight with him, you give in.

He backs the truck up, moving the steering wheel with one hand the other hanging out of the window, his tongue poked out through his lips. He jumps down from the truck and maneuvers the wheel lift into place by your front tires.

The muscles in his forearms jut out, tattoos dancing with each movement and covered in a thin sheet of sweat as he grabs the chains from the flatbed and hooks them along your front tires, securing them into place. Your car is lifted slightly giving enough clearance to be able to tow.

“Ready?”

Bouncing along side Eddie in the tow truck you sigh heavily, “fuck, I hate Mondays.”

“Okay, Garfield,” Eddie chuckles, turning down the radio and glancing towards you, a cigarette balanced between his teeth, “could always be worse,” he digs into his front pocket for his pack of cigarettes and hands them to you.

You smile weakly and take the pack from him, plucking a tanned filter from the pack and shoving it between your lips. Before you can even say that your lighter is in the car, he’s leaning over. A scratched zippo with a fading design on it, in his hand already flicked open, the flame threatening to go out with the help of the lazy breeze through the open driver’s side window. It’s the same lighter he’s had since you first bummed a cigarette from him when you were thirteen.

Leaning towards him you put the cigarette into the flame, inhaling deep— the cowboy killers burning the pinky tissue of your lungs. He flicks the lighter closed with a metallic snap and smiles out of the corner of his mouth at you. Suddenly your lungs aren’t the only thing burning.

“Thanks,” you say, trying to avoid the skips in your stomach, “I usually prefer menthols, but I guess, these’ll do,”

“Always gotta bust my balls dontchya?” Eddie laughs, a stream of smoke billowing out from his nose. “Hey, uh— I’m not trying to tell you what to do, but that gas station is rated 5 stars on the creepiest place in town.”

You glare your eyes at him, absolutely not having it, “they have cheap gas.”

“There’s a reason for that, and every drug dealer in town sells out of there,” Eddie scolds.

“You would know,” you say in a hateful tone.

“You’re right,” Eddie protests, looking at you earnestly, “I would know— it’s not a good place to be— no matter what time of day, so stay away from it.”

You knew he was trying to look out for you, and from what Steve said, — he blamed himself for the things Chad did to you. But it was never his fault, he didn’t know just like most of Hawkins didn’t. You lived with the Wheeler’s and not even they noticed until you walked home that night. You decide to let it be. For once in your life agreeing to what he had to say.

“Alright,”

Boom’s was on the opposite side of town, the rest of the drive you listened to Eddie hum along to the radio and snuck a peek at him playing air guitar. Despite him being so foul, and a royal pain in the ass, he was actually a decent human being.

No other men in their twenties could help you through your panic attack, aside from Steve. But Eddie? He was different from Steve in ways that you couldn’t grasp. You didn’t find yourself staring at Steve. Even if you had been swimming with him on more occasions than you can count. Sure he was good looking, but you never once understood why the girls at the pool practically flocked to him. Eddie hardly ever wore a shirt around you and your stomach ached each time you saw his broad shoulders and tattoos. Steve was like a brother to you, he scolded you and gave you advice, all with his hands permanently attached to his hips. A mother hen among his friends. Eddie teased and taunted you, his irritating behavior and the way he chewed his food, the way his hair was everywhere in the bathroom, the way his hair looked when he was fresh out of the shower, a towel slung on his hips. The way his hips made a ‘V’, small trail of hair from his belly button to his waistband. Fuck.

Is it hot in here?

What the hell were you doing?

There’s no way.

No fucking way.

Nope, not today.

Not ever.

…

But what if?

Eddie couldn’t understand what was going on with you in the passenger seat. Instead of bitching at him like normal, you were staring out the window. Looking as if you were fighting a storm in your cute little head. Maybe you were reliving the past. Silently suffering through something that he should have been there to stop. But judging from your reflection against the dirty window, you didn’t seem to be crying.

After that night, Eddie was putting in more effort to make sure you felt safe. He gave you distance. Avoided the bathroom in the morning, and stopped making dick jokes altogether. He still joked around, still acted like an idiot— but his perverted meter was dipped into the green zone, the safety net.

He meant what he said, you didn’t have to be afraid with him around. And he would do whatever he could to prove that to you. So when you called Boom’s earlier and asked for help— he dropped everything to make the trek across town to pick you up. Especially when you told him the gas station you were at. Known for being the skeeziest one in town, he worried about you being there alone.

Seeing the tow truck pull into the parking lot, Sean and Aaron had their noses pressed against the glass, the cheap flimsy blinds hung crooked over their heads.

“Damn,” Aaron exclaims, “you were right, that is her.”

“Told you, Munson hasn’t shut up about her since he moved in. Wonder if Chad knows where she’s been hiding.”

Eddie parks the tow truck and you both climb out. He gives you the keys to his van and tells you he’d be right back. Walking into the shop with a whistle on his tongue, he goes into Boom’s office. He’s sitting at a worn down wooden desk. Papers, and receipts clutter space where a framed family picture might be. A steaming styrofoam cup of coffee in Boom’s left hand suggested he stopped at the donut mart, and a dozen of glazed holes from heaven would be sitting in the break room, their sweetness tantalizing the crew all day.

Eddie raps his knuckles against the yellowed paint by the door frame.

‘Yep,” Boom chirps without looking up, reading the daily arrest records in the Hawkins Post.

“Hey, I brought Tooty’s Escort back, I’m going to bring her to work quick and when I get back I’ll move it.”

“What’s wrong with it?” Boom gripes, not looking up from the paper, sipping the coffee slowly.

“Dunno, I’ll take a look at it— “ Eddie shifts his weight from one foot to another, “I was wondering if I could maybe work on it after hours, or on the weekends.”

Boom considers what Eddie is saying, “off the clock?”

“Yeah, or maybe I could take some of my tools home? Work on it there?”

Boom thinks for a while, taking a sip of his coffee. His pudgy finger hovering near the name “William Hargrove” mulling over if he knew him. He finally looks up, “Whatever you wanna do, Eddie, you’ve got keys—I trust you.” Boom offers, “just don’t let those other two jackasses know what you’re doing and who for— that’s all they’ve been yappin’ about since you left this morning.

Eddie rolls his eyes, “I’m just helping out a friend, don’t know why they give a fuck.”

“Personally, I don’t give a shit— but you’re my best mechanic, and those other two are on their last strike with me. One more time I read their name in this paper and they’re both out of here, and when that time comes— I’m sure they’ll be lookin’ for someone to blame.”

The familiar scent of stale weed and a spilled rotting beer in the back of the van flood your nose. Even though his van was a dirty pile of shit and it stunk like hell, you’re thankful for Eddie taking time out of his day to help you.

He could have easily told you to fuck off, hung up on you the minute you called. But he didn’t. He kept good on his word even when he didn’t have to. He doesn’t owe you anything and yet here he was, proving to you again, that he could be someone to rely on. You peer at him through your lashes, falling deep into a spell of fondness. He was always clean shaven, showing off his babyish features. If you didn’t know his age you wouldn’t guess he was over twenty two, his youthful pale skin a glow like the moon across a lake at midnight. The deep browns of his eyes squint in the bright sun, his dark eyelashes almost kissing his cheeks. His thick ringed fingers tapping on the steering wheel as ‘Holy Diver’ plays gently in the background. The bob of his Adam's apple jutting out as he swallows and takes a drag from a cigarette.

You barely recognize your own voice when you say barely above a whisper, “thank you, by the way— not just for today but for the other night,” your fingers go back to the same nervous habit, twiddling the end of your cream lettuce hem shirt.

“Of course,” he says, a look of shock on his face, “I know I like to give you shit, but I wouldn’t leave you stranded somewhere.” He looks over at you lazily and smiles. The kind of smile associated with cool guys on tv, the kind of smile that’s crooked and truly only on one side of the face. And for the first time, you smile too, letting the warmth radiate through your body, venturing into places that you have to readjust your crossed legs to avoid entirely.

Pulling into the backlot of the salon, where you and Nancy smoke cigarettes and read trash magazines, you jump out thanking him again, the creak of the door slamming back into the frame as you wave goodbye.

“What time?” Eddie yelled after you, silently admiring the way the sun catches your face, highlighting your features, the slight breeze catching your hair, he can’t help the smile that dances on his lips. “What time are you off work?”

Walking back to him, he’s leaning his head back on the head rest, an arm hanging out of the window, a stupid grin on his face.

“My last client is at five and it’s just a cut, so probably six o’clock, why?” A creep of jittery shock threatens your nerves, fluttering your stomach and sending waves of fluster through your body.

“Thought I’d pick you up, unless you wanna walk home?” He smirks, tracing the small paint chip near where his fingers set on the door.

Biting your lip and moving back on your heels you make your way back to the door, “Okay.”

“Alright, I’ll be back at six.”

“Six” you repeat, turning on your heel and walking into the salon.

Eddie has thought about you all day, the cards of life and the hand you were dealt were shitty. But he was happy he was around to help in any little way he could. He thought maybe he was crazy, seeing shit when you smiled at him, a sort of shyness in the way you flirted by dipping your head into your shoulder almost giddy at him picking you up.

But that couldn’t be.

The rest of your day was monotonous. Shampoo sets, perms, cuts, rinse and repeat. The long haired metalhead hardly left your mind. When it’s just you and Josie left in the salon after your last appointment, it’s 5:30. She sits down, exhaling loudly. Her long dark braids trailing to her waist, cascade down the length of the chair as she leans back.

“Broke down again? Girl, you need a car that actually works.” Her hot pink fingernails dip into a bag of skittles, popping them into her mouth.

“I know,” you sigh, throwing yourself into your salon chair, “hopefully in the next few months I’ll have enough saved to get myself a new one.”

“So how did you get here? If we had someone else in the salon today I would have came and picked you up,” her mouth puckered into a sucking expression as she pops another skittle into her mouth.

“My roommate… he works at Boom’s so he towed it there and then brought me to work,” you express nonchalantly.

“Ooh the rich one who you used to work with?”

“Steve?” You say with a laugh, “No, Eddie Munson.”

“Eddie Munson? Why does that name sound so familiar? Ohh the infamous Hawkins bad boy, my cousins used to run around with him, some club or somethin’ ”

“Yeah, that's him, he’s turned himself around quite a bit since high school though.” The annoying need to defend him is obvious in your tone.

Josie’s eyes go wide, “Wait—“ she says, pointing a pink nail at you, “he had a girlfriend. He’s living with you? Shit, you’re a brave one.”

Heat creeps to your cheeks, the thought of Eddie having a secret girlfriend that you didn’t know about was almost torture on your soul, “no, no girlfriend… that I’m aware of at least.”

Speak of the devil and he will be present.

Opening the door with the sun waning behind him, peeking an orangy-yellow glow through his unruly curls, stood Eddie. His coveralls are full of motor oil and brake fluid. Black grease is smeared across his face, and his hands. Bandana still snug around his head.

“Oh shit,” Eddie blurts, eyes scanning around the room, bouncing from your face to Josie’s. Clearly uncomfortable in such a clean establishment. “Sorry, I’m uhh, a little early.”

Josie’s eyebrows are turned up in shock, her mouth slightly agape. “Damn, you’re the roommate!?”

Before she can embarrass you any further you blurt, “Josie, this is Eddie,” holding out a hand and pointing, introducing him to her, “Eddie this is my boss and the owner of the salon, Josie.”

Eddie waves with his fingers, “so you’re the one lookin’ after our girl here, the mechanic?” Josie asks.

“Uhh, yeah that’s me.” he puts a hand on the back of his neck and rubs it slow

Josie stands and walks towards you, a clicking of her heels and munching on her candy as she grabs your hand and drags you upwards, dragging you to the back of the salon.

Eddie looks around the room. The salon is decorated in light washes of pink and green and flowers decorate almost every surface, White painted baskets hang from the ceiling holding fake flowers. The salon chairs are black as are the mats under them. Green sinks in the back and cabinets overhead. Two mirrors on each wall and station with a name and family pictures decorate them. Eddie can’t help but notice that where you were sitting, there are only three pictures. A photo of you and Nancy looking like it was taken last summer, you’re holding up the keys to the blue ranch style house he now calls home. Another picture is of you Robin and Steve, in green Family Video Vests in front of the counter. You and Robin are both pulling one of Steve’s ears and he’s making a monkey face. The last picture is of you and Eyeball as kids, a portrait more than likely taken at a JC Penney’s.

“Don’t forget to lock up, okay? Enjoy your day off tomorrow. Eddie, be good to her!” Josie calls from the back, the heavy metal door slamming as she leaves for the night, a smile painted on her lips, shaking her head.

You walk back towards Eddie, he’s sitting in your chair, poking around at all of the different brushes and curling irons that were on your station. Your tired eyes scan him and find him in the mirror. “What is all this shit?”

“My tools to style, cut and color people’s hair.”

You’re standing behind him. You hesitantly grab one of his curls in between your fingers, noting how silky and smooth his hair is despite the split ends. “You could probably use a trim, Eddie. When was the last time you had your hair cut?”

“You think these curls have been in a salon? Please! I cut it myself thank you,”

“I can tell,” you mutter under your breath, going full hog and untying his sweaty bandana and tossing it onto the counter. “Come on, let’s go wash your hair, and then I’m gonna give you a trim.”

“You’re not cutting my hair.” Eddie protests, arms crossed and resisting.

“Your ends are dead, if you don’t take care of it now, it’ll keep going further up and then you’ll have to shave your head.”

Eddie practically trips standing up quickly. “Those are fighting words.”

“Do you really think I’d do that?” You ask in a bored tone.

“Actually no, but— okay fine! Only because you went to some fancy school.”

Eddie stomps over to the sink and sits down with a plop in the smooth cushioned black chair. You follow behind him and place your apron back around your neck, tightening it around your back. You lean his chair back telling him to lift his head from the headrest as you gather his curls into the basin.

Turning on the water and testing the temperature on your wrist, like a mother testing a bottle making sure it isn’t too hot for a baby, you gently put the spray into the ends of Eddie’s hair, gently working the spray up the length of his head to his scalp.

“Is the water okay?”

“Ow, holy shit!” Eddie yelps, his body flopping around like a fish out of water. You immediately turn the faucet the other way, apologizing profusely until you realize Eddie is shaking with laughter.

“Oh fuck, … you…” more laughing as he chokes out his words, “should have seen your face.” He mimics your face and bursts into a fit of giggles, you aren’t sure how long he would have kept it up if you didn’t put the hose directly into his face and throw a towel at him.

“Wipe that grin off your face or I’ll wax your eyebrows.” You spit at him, letting out a small laugh.

Mumbling from under the towel is faint but you swear you hear the word bikini.

Eddie finished cleaning his face and lays his head back into the sink again, you don’t ask this time but immediately start wetting his hair. “So,” he says, closing his eyes, so water won’t get in them, “I think I figured out what is wrong with your car.”

“Oh really? Is it going to be an easy fix?”

Not wanting to admit to you that he was working on your car for free or that he would borrow as many tools as he had to to get your car fixed, he settles for a half truth.

“Shouldn’t be too bad, gotta get some parts ordered for it.”

You let out a groan, “oh God— how much are they?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Exactly what I just said, don’t worry about it, now treat me like one of your clients and tell me all the hot gossip in your life.”

Taking three giant pumps from the white shampoo bottle in the cabinet, you gently massage it into his scalp. Letting the cool smooth pearlescent liquid suds up. His hair feels like brown ropes of silk in your hands. All the years of having your hands in someone else’s hair were nothing compared to the odd feeling of lightly working the suds into Eddie’s mane. Baby soft. Luxurious in ways that contradicted the metalhead image he wore so well like a coat of armor.

You weren’t the only one admiring the way his hair felt in your hands.

Eddie is fighting hard not to melt into a puddle right there in Josie’s salon. Your hands were like magic against his scalp, your nails lightly scratching small circles against his skull. He was sure he’d fall asleep if he kept his eyes closed for any longer. It was the closest thing he could compare to what heaven would be like. Hints of tropical coconut mixed with crushed pineapple filled the air. He didn’t even realize you were talking until he opened his eyes and caught a glimpse of your mouth moving over him. Your face was concentrating on the story that you were telling, but it fell on deaf ears. He was in a trance. The scrape of your nails against his head was almost pornographic to him. The way your eyes were trained on the job at hand. The way your lips parted and moved as you told the story. The animated look in your eyes, sparkling with each slow blink, your eyelashes teasing him.

He had never noticed the features of your face before. Usually if he was this close you were staring up at him and pointing one of those glorious fingernails into his chest, yelling at him— eyebrows pulled in, your face set in a scowl. But now here you were, scratching an itch he didn’t know he had. Filling a void he wasn’t aware was missing. He could die right now and he wouldn’t even know it. It was almost orgasmic the way you were making him feel, all with just simply washing his hair.

He caught himself before you could notice it. He crossed his legs and willed himself to think of anything else. Shutting his eyes and imagining the least sexy thing he could think of. Not wanting to ruin the moment between you both and make you never want to trust him again because he had got an accidental semi while staring at you while you were wrist deep in shampoo, scrubbing his scalp like a woman in the 1800s washing clothes on a board in the creek bed.

Nobody had ever washed his hair before, that he could remember at least. He never wanted it to end.

“…but that’s crazy right? Like she’s a psycho!” The hazy fog of lust finally left Eddie’s mind, his other four senses returning. Looking at your face and seeing that you were hurt by the story you had explained, and ashamed that he wasn’t even listening, he agreed, not even knowing if he should.

“What a bitch.”

You giggled, smiling down at him. Finally realizing you had been scrubbing his hair for almost five minutes, lost in the story. A stupid distraction to force yourself away from the feeling of the silk length of his hair, the way it felt in your fingers. Not wanting to let it slip away. You gather it all in one hand and grab the hose with the other, starting at the crown of his forehead, you rinse the suds from his hair.

Bubbles circle the basin. Disappearing down the drain along with the same shared feelings of lust and yearning. Shoved down deep away from the surface, hidden beneath hardened surfaces, shielded away from the inner depths of the softening heart.

You ended up cutting half an inch from Eddie’s curls, careful to not lose yourself in his hair again, almost cutting yourself in the process. Hee watched with wide sad brown eyes with each snip. “It’s like I’m watching you cut parts of my soul away.”

You roll your eyes, “It’ll grow back, and when it does it’ll be healthier and longer.”

His bangs were the next to be trimmed, not even half an inch taken off. You place a leave-in conditioner spray to keep his curls soft and to help with the tangles. Knowing full well that Eddie didn’t even own a hair brush.

When you finish and are sweeping up his curls, Eddie stands shaking his head like a dog and running his fingers through it. “Alright, I’ll admit, it does feel better.”

Since the agreement was made for the band to practice every other day of the week in the garage, Eddie had been bringing you to work, and picking you up. On days the band wouldn’t be practicing, when he dropped you at home, he would leave immediately after, sometimes not showing up again until midnight. Coming home tired as all hell, and just like you had done weeks before, a Tupperware of food with instructions on how to warm it up taped to the lid, would be waiting for him in the fridge, each and every time.

There was no more yelling from you when the three members of Corroded Coffin showed up. There were also no more beer cans or greasy food wrappers on the ground either. Instead a trash can sat in the corner, and Eddie paid for pizza after you ordered it.

Actually the band was pretty good. You would never tell him that, that would simply go to his head. And with the ego he already had, he didn’t need another boost of confidence, leave that for the groupies. So every Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday night the band got together, playing covers from their beloved 80’s metal Gods and sometimes original songs they would write. All of them thankful that you let them practice in the garage, Big D picking you up into a bear hug and swinging you around like a rag doll.

“Jesus Christ, D, this is why the ladies run from you, you’re too aggressive, put her down!” Eddie barks. A pang of burning in his chest at the sight of you in someone else’s arms.

Big D sets you down and apologizes, “sorry Toots, and hey speaking of ladies, whatever happened with you and those hotter than hell twins?”

“Oh shit, Gareth hollered, “Fuck dude they were all over him, surprised he’s even able to walk with the way they were strung around him like cats in heat. You usually can’t wait to tell us about it, bragging until the next gig about it at least.”

“That’s cause he probably didn’t do shit, too chicken shit to handle them.”

Your stomach flips, so it wasn’t something you remembered wrong, there were two girls that Eddie had brought home that night. A strange feeling of angst washes over you, coating your mind with uncertainty mixed with inadequacy. Your cheeks warm, embarrassed by the way you are feeling. Excusing yourself to go order the pizza, you don’t see the way Eddie dismisses the guys, blowing them off with a “why don’t we keep our sexcapades to ourselves.” Or the way he throws a full beer at Big D.

After ordering the Corroded Coffin special, two large pepperonis, two large sweet and swine, and an extra large order of cheesy breadsticks— you go into the cupboard and bring out several bags of chips and five paper plates. Your favorite, sour cream and onion, and Eddie’s favorite, cool ranch Doritos. You let your mind wander. Thinking about him with those two girls. Realizing this is probably where he went at night after he dropped you off.

No need to feel like that when he was just your roommate, you shake the jealousy from your head. Just Eddie. Barely a friend. Yet he was still going out of his way to take you to work every day, till doing the chores you both shared. You let the silly feelings drop, carrying the chips and plates to the garage, shutting the door behind you. Pulling up your usual lawn chair, listen to the band play and finish painting your toenails.

When the boys end the song, they start again on the conversation they had started before playing, “dude I’m not dressing up as KISS again this year,” Jeff whines to Gareth “took me forever to get that white paint off my face. And don’t even get me started on the eyeliner.”

A spray of beer soaks the ground as Eddie spits it out, laughing hysterically about the memory of watching Jeff struggle lining his eyes like Paul Stanley. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, “yeah I agree, I’m not painting your ugly mugs again this year, what else are you thinkin’?”

“We could all be different villains from scary movies. Freddy, Jason, Michael Myers’s, and Pinhead.” Big D suggests, taking a drag from his cigarette.

“Nah, no chicks wanna fuck something scary. I don’t know about you— but I tried all of last Halloween to get some tail and no girl would even look my way with all that clown paint on.” Gareth huffs twirling his drum sticks in his fingers.

“What about you Tooty?” Eddie asks earnestly, “Do you and Robin go bar hoppin’ on Halloween or do you usually stay home like an old lady knitting sweaters and handing out black licorice and molding fruit?”

Making a face at him, you paint the last coat of polish on your toe nail. “Actually, Nancy and I usually throw a party. Costume contests, kegs, beer pong… we kinda go all out.”

Eddie picks his jaw up from the floor, scoffing, “no way— Nancy Wheeler and you, throwing a rager on Halloween? I don’t buy it.”

“Call Steve and ask him, he’s the reigning Cherry Lane Halloween costume contest winner for two years running.” You say with a smirk on your lips, stretching your legs and crossing them at your ankles, the pretty maroon polish catching the dim light in the garage. “You guys are more than welcome to come, obviously it’s on Halloween night, and the only stipulation is to bring a good costume, and $5 for the keg.”

Eddie moves his tongue over his teeth, twisting his body to look at his band mates, all three of them shrugging and nodding. “Yeah, we’ll be here,

“Yeah, if you think you’re up for it. Sure.” You say nonchalantly.

The smell of mildew and damp carpet currently being air dried with a fan stung your nose. The soggy basement and the crumbling foundation of Sally’s Secondhand in downtown Hawkins was a hidden gem and only open in the afternoons on Mondays and Wednesdays, but they had decent prices and good quality items when you were in a pinch if you could learn to breathe through your mouth for the time you were there.

“So how’s the roomie situation going?” Nancy asks, holding up a hand mixer with two mixing parts and a wooden handle labeled for .10¢. You had scored gold when you found a gently used, practically brand new waffle iron. It was wedged between two cook books for only $2. The same one Karen Wheeler had used on Sunday mornings. You were hunting for discounted Halloween decorations still not sure on what you were going to dress as and Halloween was this Saturday, Nancy was searching for spare camera parts for Jonathan and a toy cowboy hat for her costume that she wouldn’t tell you about.

Putting a masking taped bundle of forks into the blue plastic grocery basket, your forks magically kept disappearing everytime Eddie brought leftovers to work, you let out a sigh, “It’s going okay, better than it was in the beginning. He’s fixing my car up and I cut his hair a few weeks ago. I um.. also told him about Chad.”

Nancy stops dead in her tracks, blue eyes wide, her small mouth agape, “wh-what?!” Nancy was shocked at the news, you nonchalantly delivered like saying ‘fine’ when some asked how you were. She knew how frightening that situation was for you, it was scary for her too. Seeing someone she loved and cared about hurt in ways she couldn’t even fathom.

“We ran into him while getting groceries—like a month ago. I had a full blown panic attack, and Eddie, he helped me through it.” You go into detail explaining everything that had happened. Leaving out the part of you being comforted by Eddie and the gentle way his thick hands caressed you while you sobbed into him like a child who lost their cat.

Nancy's face goes from shock and softens into content, “wow, honestly didn’t think he had a caring bone in his body, he always seemed like such an asshole.”

“I mean he still is, don’t get me wrong— I don’t think he’s giving donations to the local churches or anything, but he seems a little more reserved, if you will,” you say, adding a floral embroidered set of towels for every day of the week to your basket.

“Hmm,” Nancy says with raised eyebrows, and nodding her head, a silent confirmation of approval. Always looking up to Nancy, almost as if she was your real life sister, you admired her. She was always put together, whether you were shopping during the week or at home, she was stylish in a way that said, I will run the world, and have dinner on the table at 6. Her white huarache sandals matched her high waisted pink pastel shorts and white button sleeveless blouse. Effortlessly stunning.

Moving along the aisles you and Nancy both finger through the clothing racks. Pulling out neon prints and a pair Madonna—esque white lace gloves, they probably belonged to that muppet singing idiot, Tammy Thompson. Chuckling at how fashion trends in high school were borderline ridiculous. a denim vest in your size with safety pins on each hem gave you an idea for your costume. Finding everything you needed you were ecstatic to put it all together.

The carpet squashed beneath your feet the further you got into the store. The back room held vhs’s, records, tapes, and books. The records were in a milk carton next to a shelf of adult themed books. The fading sharpie written sign reading “Adult fiction for Women 25 cents” posted bold along the top of the shelf. Nancy discreetly placed, “Thursday and the Lady” by Patricia Matthews into her basket, covering it with matching salt and pepper shakers, a crimson tinge to her rouged cheeks.

Diving into the records you flip them towards you as you lazily scan through them. Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, Thriller by Michael Jackson, Abbey Road by the Beatles, Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, stuck to the back of it was a small single, Ode to Billie Joe by Bobbie Gentry. It had been years since you heard it, tucking it into your basket, Nancy clears her throat nervously, the blush evident in her cheeks, “I’m ready if you are.”

The Saturday of Halloween the salon was closed, giving you Robin and Steve plenty of time to decorate for the party tonight. Eddie was working but was scheduled to get off around 5, just in time to come home and get his secret costume on.

Orange pumpkin printed garbage bags filled with autumn foliage lined the streets of Cherry Lane. Toilet paper streamers were in Mr. Derry’s tree, a prank the seniors of Hawkins High did to him every year, including egging his front door. Vinyl witches hung from doorknobs. Plastic ghosts holding jack-o-lanterns littered lawns. Fake strings of cotton resembling cobwebs with bendy plastic spider thrown around like glitter, lay atop shrubs. Orange lights were wrapped around the trees in your front yard, flimsy ghosts made of white sheets were hung from the branches. It was a child’s Halloween paradise.

“Higher, no lower, well now you’re just doing it wrong.” Steve was in charge of Robin who was in charge of decorations. The beer pong tournament would be in the basement, every strand of Christmas lights you could find were lighting the ceiling, table set up and cups in place. The tournament bracket started with Mike and El playing against Jeff and his girlfriend Ash. The kegs would be delivered later. Buckets ready for ice sitting on the deck. Robin and Steve were still arguing over who had the better costume last year. Twisting black and orange streamers together and hanging them in the doorway to the bathroom.

In the kitchen, you’re finishing up the Jell-O shots, small clear dishes full of cherry red jello made with everclear. A bitter threat to anyone brave enough to eat them. The spinach and artichoke dip is prepped in the fridge, along with 10 packages of crescent rolls, 5 packages of hotdogs, the fruit cut and ready to be put into Steve’s horrendous Jungle Juice that you would actively be avoiding. Nancy and Jonathan were bringing pinwheels and rotel dip. Dustin and Susie are in charge of bringing candy. It’s going to be a blast.

“Be right back,” Robin and Steve call out as they leave to go get their costumes. Putting the finishing touches on your costume your hand shakes with nervousness while swiping mascara on your lashes, the pre party jitters wracking your nerves. The ring of the doorbell startles you. The obnoxious ringing should be a dead giveaway but you don’t recognize it until the door is wide open and you’re face to face with Jesus Christ himself and three nuns. Or as you knew them, Eddie, Gareth, Jeff, and Big D.

You aren’t sure whose mouth is hanging open more. Yours or Eddie’s. Eddie is wearing a long sleeved cream colored gown, complete with a crimson sash. His usual black leather boots on his feet and a crucifix in his hand.

Eddie is the first to laugh, hands held out like he’s blessing the house before he enters it. “Aww sweetheart, you really are my #1 fan aren’t you?”

You are dressed as the most annoying on the planet, pain in the ass, voted most perverted of all of Hawkins: Eddie. When shopping with Nancy you found the vest, adding a few hand sewn patches and the best replica of Eddie’s DIO patch on the back, even shoving a pack of reds into the pocket, it looked pretty good. A twin of the aforementioned jackass. Borrowing Nancy’s cheap leather jacket when she went as Sandy from Grease last year, and putting holes into a pair of jeans and washing them as many times as you could to fray the edges, it was perfect. Complete with a horrible curly wig that you thought was a life dog upon seeing it.

“I was going for scary and scary annoying,” you shrug, “think I nailed it.”

“As hilarious and surprisingly accurate your costume is, the real winner for the party is going to be us” He gestured to him and the nuns. “figured I’d go as something that everyone says I need more of and you recognize the boys right? They’re dressed as your friends from work.”

The kegs finally show up and Eddie blesses the delivery man before he leaves. Fully throwing himself into character. Dustin and Susie are the first to arrive, dressed as Mrs. Doubtfire and Sally Ride, the first woman astronaut to go into space.

Dustin laughs so hard he cries at your costume. “Oh my God please you have to say, ‘forced conformity, it’s what’s killing the kids!’ Please Tooty Holy shit!”

Mimicking Eddie perfectly you saunter away and scream about society and how good Metallica is.

“Oh haha, so funny Tooty,” Eddie pouts, holding a beer funnel in his hands, “come on Henderson let’s see you put your money where your mouth is.”

The backyard is sprayed with foamy beer as Dustin very much can not put his money where his mouth is. Gareth’s up next, chugging like a champion and doing a lap around the backyard like he won a trophy. Eddie and Jeff shotgun beer, Eddie winning by a mile. Laughing and putting his hands in a praying gesture to bless Jeff for his shortcomings.

The rest of the party goers show up, Nancy is dressed like Annie Oakley wielding a fake shotgun and a straw cowboy hat and a long brown dress with fringe hanging from the shoulders. Jonathan and his long haired friend Argyle arrive behind Nancy dressed as Sonny & Cher. Argyle had given up the fast moving life in California once a Surfer Boys pizza arrived in Hawkins. He delivered to the house so much during the nights that Corroded Coffin was practicing that he had your order prepped and ready to go by the time you had called it in. He’d show up so blitzed out of his mind that he’d forget he was at work, sharing his different strains of weed with all the Corroded Coffin boys.

Robin and Steve are in the kitchen, ladling jungle juice into empty cups. The duo dressed as Thelma and Louise, Robin wearing a black muscle shirt and sunglasses, and Steve wore a white tank top with a neckerchief. Both talking in horrible southern accents.

Eddie is standing next to Argyle in the living room both holding almost empty cups of the forbidden jungle juice, deep in conversation about something called Purple Palm Tree Delight, but knowing them, it had nothing to do with a lavender paradise. You reach around Eddie to grab a pinwheel, taking a bite when Argyle, clearly stoned, goes wide eyed leaning into Eddie his eyes still transfixed on you he whisper yells.

“Yo, I swear to God, I just saw two of you.”

“Argyle it’s me, Tooty.” You explain standing next in front of them trying not to laugh. “This is the real Eddie, I’m just dressed like him for Halloween.”

Argyle leans forward and whispers into your ear, “Yeah okay man that’s what the aliens would say before they clone us and take over.”

He leans back and takes two big steps backwards, eyes wide in a horrified daze, before disappearing down into the basement.

“Don’t think I’ve ever said this before, but that guy smokes way too much.” Eddie chuckles, downing the rest of his jungle juice and eating the fruit at the bottom of the cup.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” you warn him watching with your own gut twisting as the sweet juices of strawberry slither down his chin and down the slope of his neck.

“Sweetheart,” Eddie says, smacking his lips, “I’m twenty six years old, I can handle my liquor.”

“Okay,” you reply, “just so you know, the fruit soaks up all the alcohol and Steve presoaks it all in everclear the night before. Last time he ate all the fruit he spent an hour in the bathroom crying about his love life or lack thereof. And besides, we have to play in the pong tournament in a half hour.”

“We?” Eddie asks, lips turned up and a slight blush to his cheeks, “I didn’t sign up for beer pong.” His dark eyes pour into yours.

Heat creeps up your neck as you reach for a Jell-O shot cracking the lid off and circling the dish with your finger before sucking it into your mouth.

“I signed you up,” you say, reaching for another Jell-O shot, “everyone had a partner but Argyle and Will, so I paired you with Argyle, and I’m with Will,” you slide your finger around the Jell-O dish and suck the cherry gelatin into your mouth, savoring the bitter bite to your tongue before you crush it between your teeth.

“You better bring your A game Munson,” you say, taking a step into him and poking him in the chest, “because I don’t lose.”

Eddie isn’t sure if it’s the alcohol that’s making him feel this way or you but suddenly he can’t stop blushing, laying the charm on thicker than peanut butter, “oh really?” he asks intrigued, “Well babe, I don’t think you know this but I’m the Forest Hills Trailer Park Pong Champion for eight summers in a row, so technically,” he’s leaning forward now, whispering low to get his point across. Your breath hitches in your throat, you can feel the tickle of his lips against your ear, his hair is brushing against your face, the faint smell of motor oil stuck in his curls, “I never lose either.”

He pulls back and your eyes lock. The heat flooding your cheeks burn, the ache in your stomach travels south and pulses with want. You can’t deny it to yourself, even dressed as Jesus Christ, Eddie is the best looking guy you’ve laid eyes on, and you were melting at the way his dark eyes gazed into yours, a smirk placed on his lips as he brushes his tongue over his bottom lip to catch the remnants of the horrific fruit juice. His eyes never leave yours as he takes the Jell-O shot dish you’re holding and sets it behind him on the table. The tension could be cut with a knife, thick and heavily hanging in the space between you both. Eddie opens his mouth to speak but is interrupted by El screaming for Mike to get to the backyard instead of puking in the kitchen sink. Her Alice in Wonderland wig askew on her head and holding Mike’s mad hatter hat between her hands.

Running to open the sliding door you get it open just in time for Mike to projectile vomit off the deck.

“Christ, what did he eat?” Eddie asks from behind you, “damn Mike you’re such a pussy!”

“His dumbass didn’t eat all day and when he got here he decided that Jell-O and fruit would be a good option.” El says, rubbing his back as he pukes again and again, “I don’t feel bad for you Mike!”

Wiping his mouth on his forest green jacket sleeve, he murmurs, “Babe, I’m fine, seriously, a few pieces of bread and I’ll be in tip top sh—“ puke splatters wetly against the grass again.

You grab El’s hand and squeeze, “let me know if you need anything, okay?” She nods and smiles sweetly.

“C’mon,” Eddie says behind you, “let’s go so I can kick your ass in beer pong.”

You turn your head, half facing him, “game on, Munson.”

The sharpie bracket on poster board continued moving forward thanks to Steve’s basketball knowledge. Jeff and Ash beat Mike and El, Nancy and Jonathan beat out Gareth and Big D in a very close came both opponents having one cup left. Steve and Robin were beat out in the first round by Dustin and Susie, something King Steve would never be living down. Nex on the bracket to play would be you and Will playing Argyle and Eddie. Honestly it should be a piece of cake, a walk in the park. Will wasn’t the most athletic but last year him and Jonathan got second place against you and Nancy so the odds were pretty high. One thing you were absolutely certain of was that you would not be losing to Jesus and Cher tonight.

The basement is packed with everyone besides the ill Mike and faithful El. Argyle and a pink lensed Will are in the corner smoking a fat blunt the sequin jacket he’s wearing sparkles through the haze of smoke and the catches the lights. You haven’t seen him since Nancy and Jonathan’s wedding. But he’s letting his hair grow out, finally letting the bowl cut Joyce insisted on him having all throughout middle school and high school go. Steve has Dustin in a headlock for teasing him about winning against Mr. Hawkins High basketball star of 1985.

“Ya know for once, I was actually good, like really good, Steve overthrew the last cup and it was game over once Susie got the ball. She’s strangely amazing at beer pong. Probably found the mathematical equation from the distance of the table and her elbow to the solo cups.” Robin rambles on, only stopping to get her breath. “How are you? I haven’t seen you all night. Killer costume by the way, if you can’t beat ‘em be ‘em right?”

Robin and her absolute no filter mouth, always make you laugh, linking your arm with hers, “I really like your and Steve’s take on best friends driving off a cliff together to evade police.”

“JESUS CHRIST!” someone yells from upstairs.

Not missing a beat, Eddie can be heard returning the exclamation. “You rang?”

Rolling your eyes and looking his way, you laugh when you see him, holding up his arms in praise.

Robin’s voice bringing you back to the conversation, “Epic right? Steve thought we could be conjoined twins but then decided against it when he figured there was a small chance he could possibly get lucky tonight when that black haired girl at his job kept hinting that she wanted a date with him.”

“What!” you shout, “He never told me this!”

Robin rolls her eyes and takes another drink from her too foamy beer, “he’s nervous, I think he really likes her but doesn’t wanna fuck it up like he does everything else.”

Steve deserved to be happy and to have someone love him. He was always making sure everyone else was okay, you smile at the thought of him with a girlfriend.

“So,” Robin presses, wiggling her eyebrows, “Eddie looks good tonight,” a wicked smile dances wildly on her lips.

“I’m not at all buzzed enough to have this conversation,” you say, taking a peak at Eddie through your eyelashes, he was laughing loudly at something Steve had said, head thrown back, exposing his neck.

Will joins your side, reeking of weed and heavy musk cologne. “Tooty!” He squeals, wrapping you into a tight hug, “the house looks so fucking good I can’t believe it, also I heard that you’re living with Eddie? I’m going to need all the details!”

“It’s so good to see you, look at your hair!” You say holding his arms. Will threads a hand through his hair and laughs a little.

“Thanks, it’s new but it’s kinda growing on me, now, spill it. Tell me everything.”

“Next game!” Nancy announces, advancing her and Jonathan to the next bracket. “Argyle/ Eddie vs Tooty/ Will.”

Will grabs your hand and drags you to the beer pong table, “after?” He asks and you nod your head.

Eddie and Argyle are standing on one end, you and Will on the other. The cups are arranged into a triangle and filled with the warming pitcher of keg beer.

“You ready to go down groveling, sweetheart?” Eddie sings from across the table, eyes squinting when he leans on the edge of the table smiling at you.

Your stomach flutters, taking a long swig of Will’s jungle juice, staring Eddie down as you gulp the vile liquor and fruit punch combo down, “You ready to get your ass kicked, Munson?”

“Woo! That’s balls back ba-by,” you sneer, hooting and hollering as Eddie begrudgingly tosses the balls back your way. It was almost as if Argyle and Will weren’t even there, this game was between you and Eddie. You were definitely buzzed, between the warm beer and the Jell-O shots you had eaten you were feeling good.

When you miss the first cup, Eddie makes devil horns at you and howls at the moon like an idiot. You sink the next cup, earning a high-five from Will, and a sly grin from Eddie as he removes the cup and chugs the warm beer. He’s secretly excited that you’re so happy, letting loose, in your element, surrounded by your loving friends. You glowing with a sense of freedom. In that moment when your eyes caught his, he knew he was in trouble, you were wrapped around his finger and he didn’t think of hardly anything else, but you, your beautiful smile, the way your hair caught each light you were under. He was in deep, and for right now, he was perfectly and utterly okay with that.

It’s Argyle’s turn and he surprisingly sinks both cups, being awarded with balls back, as you and Will each take a cup and drink the suds down. Trying to distract him, you whip off your Eddie- esque wig and toss it towards Eddie, shaking your hair out like a wild woman.

Unphased by your antics he does it again and you groan. Four in a row? This guy was half asleep the entire game and all of a sudden he’s an athlete? They only have 1 cup left. Tension rises and the room goes to silence at Steve’s request. Argyle sinks it. Eddie erupts into cheers grabbing Argyle by the shoulders and jumping up and down.

“Redemption attempt!” Steve shouts, giving Will the ball. Will takes it with nervous fingers, blowing the ball to dry it slightly as you chug the last cup. He only has two cups to make. Will tosses the ball and the room goes silent, it feels like it’s in slow motion, or maybe that’s the alcohol. The ball soars through the air, bouncing against the rim of the cup lapping up the foamy beer, before it falls off and teeters off onto the table.

Argyle raises both hands in the air, “VICTORY!” the room erupts with cheers. Will apologizes profusely but you hug him tight, telling him you were happy he was your partner.

“Next game is Jonathan/Nancy vs Jeff/ Ash starting in 20 mins!” Steve hollers. The basement clears out as people go upstairs to use the bathroom and refill their drinks.

You expect Eddie to be gloating, cocky beyond belief. But he’s the opposite, coming up to you slowly, head bowed, upper teeth practically biting his lower lip in half.

“Good game sweetheart,” he says barely above a whisper, “not gonna lie, I really thought you guys were gonna win.”

Holding your chin high, face only inches from his, the brown pools of colored whiskey stare into your eyes. Placing a hand on his chest, the alcohol gives you enough of a push to cross the line. The thin gauzy material of the gown he’s wearing is sticky with sweat and warm from the heat radiating from his body. “Told myself I wouldn’t lose to Cher and Jesus tonight.”

Eddie let’s out a throaty laugh, “can’t believe he pulled that off, he didn’t make a cup all game.”

“Guess you get to continue wearing that tarnished crown, speaking of wardrobe… where the hell did you get this outfit?”

“You know that church across from the police station?”

“The one with the Jesus statue inside?”

Eddie raises his eyebrows and gives you a knowing glance, waiting for you to catch on.

“No way! Eddie! You broke into a church and stole an outfit off of a statue?”

“Amen,” Eddie says roaring with laughter, “ahh c’mon you can’t tell me it wasn’t a genius idea.”

Rolling your eyes, “I wouldn’t exactly call it genius, but funny? Yes.”

He laughs again, “not everyday I get a compliment from myself,” he says eyeing your costume, “you do make a pretty cute Eddie Munson if I say so myself.” he wasn’t even thinking anything of it, just blurted it right out.

Flirting came easy to him almost as a second nature, he was never nervous around women, usually finding the game of sex not just something he was good at but conquered with ease. But this, here, with you? Was a slippery slope. A different game for him entirely. He was a pawn amongst you and you were the queen, striking down whoever came near, holding all the power.

Your cheeks heat from his compliment, blood rushing through your body and warming your skin, he holds your hand to your chest, stroking your fingers with his thumbs.

A thousand bolts of lightening ignite you, he smells like smoke, ashy and burning, the cheap keg beer on his breath as he smiles softly at you.

“Tooty!” Steve calls from the top step, clinging onto it for dear life, “are you down there?!”

You’re the first one to break away, pulling your hand from his grasp, threading them together at the last minute, finger tips clinging to each other like velcro. The flames between you both extinguished fast, no oxygen left in the room to keep it going.

Getting to the bottom step and turning, you give him one last glance and a small smile, before trotting up the stairs to Steve.

Eddie opens the patio door to find Gareth and Big D blowing smoke into the sky and talking about the best DIO song.

“Shit man, where have you been? Didn’t your game end like 15 minutes ago?”

Eddie thinks of a lie quick, “Taking a piss why you wanna watch?”

“That’s weird,” Big D questions, “cause Gareth just came out of the bathroom unless there’s a magic bathroom you haven’t told us about.”

“What are you guardian of the toilet?” Eddie says slotting a cigarette between his teeth and flicking his zippo open.

“I mean he’s got a point,” Gareth interjects, “where have you been tonight, turning water into wine? Or are you healing the blind?”

“Cool it, Whoopi,” Eddie bites, “the fuck does it matter where I was or wasn’t?”

“You’ve changed dude. Used to be a ladies man, different chick every night. Smoking and drinking all night watching the sunrise. Fuck man you were hell on wheels. Then all of a sudden you move in here and you’re acting like the Pope, fixing up her car off the clock, bringing her to and from work, you’re like her fucking babysitter.” Gareth exclaims.

“Fuck off man, she’s Eyeball’s sister, and I’m just looking out for her.” Eddie grits through his teeth.

“Or,” Big D suggests, “you like her, I mean you still haven’t even told us about the twins— and you stare at her like she’s about to combust at any moment.”

“Yeah and what do you two know about anything?” Eddie spits.

“Clearly not shit, but you’re all fucking riled up about a girl you don’t like.” Gareth flicks his cigarette and goes inside, Big D following.

The door opens again, “listen man, I’m not in the mood for your stupid fucking advice.” Eddie groans, turning to see Steve standing at the door, an empty pitcher in his hand. “Shit, sorry, thought you were Gareth.”

“Nope kept my habit at home,” Steve says with a chuckle, setting the pitcher on the edge of the deck, “nice party, huh?”

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees, “ya know when Tooty first told me that her and Nancy threw a party every year I didn’t believe it, turns out I was wrong about her, seems to be a theme of mine lately.”

“She doesn’t let a lot of people in, but once you’re here, it means she trusts you, respects you.” Steve explains.

Eddie smiles softly, ashing his cigarette.

“She cares about you, ya know? She might not want to admit it— may even be scared to admit it to herself, but she likes you.”

Eddie gives him a look. Sure you were nicer to him, not threatening to kick him out anymore. You had let the band practice in the garage, even staying out there to hear them play. But that didn’t mean anything did it?

“How many times do you think she’s cut my hair?” Steve inquires, leaning next to the railing on the deck beside Eddie.

“I don’t know,” Eddie says honestly, “a dozen?”

Steve chuckles, “Never, not once, never even offered. You think she made elaborate meals for Nancy when they lived together? Wrong— she barely touched the stove. You move in and she’s changed, for the better. It’s like she’s coming back to life, and the only common thing in that equation, is you.”

Eddie mulls this over, could Steve be right? “I don’t know man.”

“I may not be Mr. Relationship but I do know Tooty, and you’ve softened her edges. Tamed that frightful girl we all love and adore. She’s got walls up, keeping people out, but not around you, not anymore.”

Eddie hangs his head, his heart bursting with sad euphoric bliss. He couldn’t go about this like any other conquest. And with you it would never be how it was with the other women. Faceless broads in mini skirts, praising him, doing whatever he wanted them to. He never saw you in that way. Holding you on a pedestal about the rest. He hadn’t been in a relationship in years. One too many times of being cheated on was enough for him. But you were hurt too, more so than he was. He was still licking his wounds with anything willing and able. You? You were a shell of yourself. He couldn’t act on this like he would with anyone else. He cared about you too damn much to make you feel like you couldn’t trust him again.

“And I know you care about her. Everytime I look at you you’re staring at her like a sad little puppy.”

Eddie looks up then, looking at Steve like he held all the answers to life’s questions. He turns and leans against the deck, elbows on the railing just how Steve was facing the house.

“Yeah, you’re right, I do care about her, more than anything. So what do I do?” He asks Steve.

Steve shrugs, letting out a loud sigh, “keep doing what you’re doing, she knows you care about her, just don’t disappear on her.”

Eddie turns his head from Steve and catches sight of you through the patio doors. He can see you taking a Jell-O shot with El, Robin and Nancy. A sleeping lump of clothes on the kitchen table with black hair must be Mike. You light up the room as you laugh when Robin makes a repulsive expression after taking her Jell-O shot. He can’t hear your full laugh, it’s faint through the glass. But, he doesn’t need to hear it to know the sound—having heard it more and more the last few weeks, the way you throw your head back when something is really funny, sometimes covering your mouth. He’s certain he’s never seen anyone more angelic in his life. Like you have sucked all the air from the room, even dressed in a sheer mockery of him, you’re radiating a glow that makes his heart swell. He has never cared about anyone the way that he does for you.

Seeing him through the doors standing next to Steve, he has a smirk on his face. A sudden rush of shyness creeps up your neck and you turn away from him, but you reciprocate his actions, smiling at him. A small gesture that melts him on the spot.

Eyes trained on you but still talking to Steve, Eddie beams, “I’m not going anywhere.”

A/n: see you in volume vii

Hope you all enjoyed this. There were some little hidden Easter eggs in this chapter, go to my askbox if you found them 💕

readmore eat my ass or this line you decide, whore.

—

#eddie x fem!reader #eddie x you #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson fan fiction #eddie munson #eddie munson angst #eddie x y/n #stranger things season 4 #stranger things #eddie munson smut

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thatsrightice · 6 months

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THE LEGEND OF BRADY’S CREW AND THEIR CRASH WAGON

The crash landing we see John Brady’s crew conduct in Part 1 of Masters of the Air was not their first. On Christmas Eve of 1942, Brady’s crew took off on a training mission but crash landed in the snowy mountains of Evanston, Wyoming due to inclement weather and a lack of gas. No one was injured thanks to Brady’s skillful flying (and Harry Crosby’s Scottish descent, according to the young woman who found them).

Afterward, the crew received a brand new B-17F, serial number 42-30071. Though officially titled “SKIPPER”, the Fort had immediately been given a name: “BRADY’S CRASH WAGON” in homage to the legend of their training accident.

Their second crash landing, the one we see in the show, actually occurred at an Air Depot in Warton on the east coast due to the landing gear being frozen. Their belly-landing damaged their aircraft so they were forced to take a train to Diss and then a truck to Thorpe Abbotts.

42-30071 “BRADY’S CRASH WAGON” would be repaired and sent to the 96th Bomb Group. It was irreparably damaged in another belly-landing on April 18, 1944 and scrapped.

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chronically-ghosted · 8 months

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between the earth and sky (lover, share your road - prologue) series masterlist | AO3 Link | part i

chapter rating: T (series: E)

word count: 1.1K

chapter summary: how Joel Miller's forefathers came to settle the southern plains

chapter warnings/tags: references to genocide (human and animal), racism

a/n: Miller County was a real place!

Vincente Ramón Morelos with his wife María Guadalupe Rodríguez Saldaña went in search of a better life in 1848.

Exhausted from the bloody revolution against Spain, then the devastating loss at the hands of white “rebels”, the childless couple leave the southern hill country by the San Antonio river to go north, to find peace, in a place that the Anglos have never touched — so promised Señor De La Cruz, a former comandante like Vincente, who shared his dream of wide, open spaces, and a sky that stretches into infinite possibilities.

This land they marched across, with its barren trees and flat golden spreads, is nothing like anything they’ve ever seen before. The wagon chain the Morelos follow whispered in hushed, awed tones. María reached out the side of the wagon, letting her hand brush against brown thistles, watching how the reed springs under her fingers, how it tickles her palm. She never knew the earth could be so soft – teasing her with some great secret it’s eager to share. She looked to her husband and he glowed beneath the rich blue sky and bronze sun. Maybe this was God showing her how to fall in love with a new home.

Towns became few and far between. In a transitory cattle town, Vincente listens to two vaqueros tell stories over a loose game of poker about a briefly-disputed patch of land, five hundred miles east, one that exchanged ownership three times before disappearing into obscurity. But a single name settled permanently, before its township ever could: Miller County. Vincente quietly related to that blurring of identity, a loss of a permanent place to be known and loved, so when going through towns of white Texan Anglos that distrusted his olive skin and aquiline nose, he told them his name was Vincent Miller and he was, like all others, looking for a place to call home. He found it north of what would become Amarillo, and south of what would be Dalhart, between the Canadian and Red River, rivers that never seemed as endless and deep as the Gulf from his childhood.

By the spring of 1852, Mary (formerly María) and Vincent, established on their acre of land, had welcomed two girls and were expecting a third child, who ended up being a boy. This boy was given the name John (though his mother called him Juan at home) Tomás Miller, after Mary’s grandfather. As a boy, John learned from his father Vincent to listen and trust the Kiowa, the Comanche, the Gods of the Grass Sea, who were said to have been born with a heart of a buffalo. Who walked with prairie chickens and raced the pronghorn antelopes. Recognizing a kinship with nomadic blood of the Millers – once Morelos – the Comanche taught them what it meant to use the land as one uses a brother for support. Use in kind, but treat just as kindly. Avoiding what the Anglos referred to as “dry farming” because it was only the Anglos who believed, by sheer force of will, they could make rain come down from the sky. The Comanche were shocked by their arrogance. As he grew older and stronger beneath that heavy sunshine that had endeared his mother to these foreign lands, John maintained his father’s relationship with The First People, even aiding them in keeping the encroaching Anglo homesteaders off the lands of the buffalo and the blue grama grass.

When John married in the summer of 1885 a woman whose skin burnt easy in the sun, but had hands rougher than a sailor’s, Vincent was surprisingly happy for his son, because Jennie Sarah Hansen was quick-witted, brave, and possessed a rare quality when it came to the regards of the Tejanos and The First People – compassion. Disowned by her own family for such a trait, Jennie came to live with John, his father Vincent, his mother Mary, with letters from John’s two sisters and their families coming from down south every month.

Joel Ramón Miller was born in the late fall of 1891, followed shortly there by his brother, Tom – Tommy, because Tom was too serious for a boy with a smile like that – and the lineage of working under blue skies in endless dunes of buffalo grass was passed down, third generation of Vincent, who lived to see his oldest grandson turn five before quietly, with dignity, leaving this world in his sleep.

Tommy Miller continued to look towards the sun and, as a young man, followed it west. But Joel, like his father, like his grandfather, like the land itself, kept watch over the ones he loved from the porch of that a-frame house, the one his father built for his mother. For a time that included a woman with dark skin and darker eyes out of Alabama. And then it was just the baby who came from her, who came from him. Sarah, named after his mother who was as fierce and resilient as the buffalo grass and as beautiful as the endless sky.

As far as Joel Miller was concerned that was enough. The two of them – him and his babygirl, with the plums and the maize, and the secrets of this wide wilderness handed down in partnership from the Comanche and the Kiowa, because the Millers knew what to keep and what wasn’t theirs, or anyone’s, to own.

Until the day came when the buffalo were slaughtered by the thousands, and the once great Gods of the Grass Sea were felled, both driven to extinction by a force that held no compassion or concern for the lands it swallowed.

The cowboys over in the XIT, runners of cattle in the land that used to tremble beneath the hooves of thousands of buffalo, started to complain first. Rumbled that no good was to come of any of it; the American government gave too freely; real estate agents and land developers promised too much. Those arriving in the prairie came only for the green that the wheat boom offered, and had misjudged the quietness of the plains for emptiness.

Joel Miller watched as towns bloomed overnight, model E’s rumbled off the new railway lines, and nesters and sodbusters burrowed into their dugouts like wolf-spiders — at the cost of the beautiful, bellowing sea of grass. The bison were long dead, the Kiowa and Comanche now ghosts between the stalks of blue grama, and a wind was coming in from the north.

It whispered to those who could still listen and would heed its warnings.

And Joel Miller, with his only daughter, listened and waited and didn’t like what he heard. First, the drought came. Lasted ten years. Then the economic freefall that blew out entire financial systems on a global scale.

And then, like a ghoulish nightmare, a specter of death that came from the ill-resting spirits of the bison, came the dust storms.

The air crackled with electricity, car radios clicked off, overwhelmed by the static. Ignitions shorted out. Waves of sand swept over the roads. Children were lost and found thirty feet from their back doors, dead, suffocated on dust. Five thousand feet tall, wider than entire cities, this was blind vengeance, a reckoning well-deserved.

And for the first time in his life, Joel Miller was afraid.

series masterlist | part i

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railwayhistorical · 4 months

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Covered Wagons: A Series

This is a southbound freight on the Chicago & Alton, later GM&O, then ICG at the time of the photograph. The location is Shirley, Illinois, just south of Bloomington.

Bloomington was known as a haven for F-units in the mid- to late-1970s. I was able to photograph the so-called covered wagons several times before the charismatic locomotives were ether scrapped or sold off (most in 1977). A couple went to the MBTA: they were rebuilt and served commuter trains in the Boston area.

Four EMD F3s are seen here powering this train headed south toward East St. Louis. I followed the train and will post additional images in subsequent posts.

One image by Richard Koenig; taken November 21st 1976.

#railroadhistory #railwayhistory #chicago&alton #gulfmobile&ohio #illinoiscentralgulf #icg #shirleyillinois #shirleyil #mbta #coveredwagons #f-unit #f3

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writingquestionsanswered · 7 months

Note

I’m so stuck in my fantasy novel. My protagonists need to do some sneaking and researching and such to figure out what the antagonist is up to, but I feel like I can’t make it interesting. It’s supposed to be mysterious, but the antagonist is also smart and isn’t just leaving clues in the street. They’ve also been framed for some crimes because he knows they’re coming after him, so they can’t just go ask anybody on the street for help either. But I’m so stuck.

Adding Interest to Fantasy Investigation

Well... in any mystery, no one is "just leaving clues in the street," you know? The whole point of clues is they're subtle hints of an event that were inadvertently left behind.

So, where you can start is with your antagonist's goal and plan... what are they trying to accomplish and how? In other words, when you say your characters are trying to figure out "what the antagonist is up to,' what *are* they up to? And what are they doing in an attempt to accomplish that?

Look at each of the steps the antagonist has to complete in order to accomplish their goal and break those steps into smaller steps. Look at every facet of each step and think about ways clues might be inadvertently dropped. So, for example, let's say you have an antagonist whose goal is to get the current king dethroned and replaced by a heroic-looking usurper who is in fact their puppet, and one of the steps they need to accomplish is throwing a battle which, when lost, will cause the people to lose faith in their king. And lets say one of the steps in throwing said battle is leaking information to the enemy that allows them to ambush a supply caravan that was headed to the king's army. And lets say he accomplishes this leak by paying a peasant boy to sneak into the enemy's camp and deliver the information.

What are some clues that could inadvertently be left behind for the investigating protagonists to find? Well, for one thing, there could be a witness that saw one of the antagonist's associates coming out of a mill where he wouldn't normally have been. And maybe, upon closer investigation, the protagonists discover that one of the miller's sons was seen talking to this man and then disappeared for two days. Maybe they talk to the boy and he claims the man simply asked for directions, and explains his time missing by saying he got lost in the forest. But... further investigation reveals that one of the boy's playmates saw him in the town square, where he climbed into the wagon of a man who fits the description of the antagonist's associate. And maybe the protagonists are able to trace the journey of said wagon through a few witness reports, and find that the boy climbed out of the wagon and followed a particular path into the forest. Looking on a map, they see that this path leads due east into the enemy camp. These are not clues what were intentionally or even clumsily left by the antagonist, but rather little elements that, when looked at closely, became hints as to the bigger picture.

Ultimately, that's what you're going for here... and see how much more interesting that is? Because now there's interest in the process... finding out the associate was in the village, at the mill, and seen talking to a boy. Finding out the boy went missing temporarily. Tracing the wagon's path and they boy's path into the forest... There are many opportunities to create mystery and tension with the investigation.

I hope that helps!

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

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ask-the-crusaders-of-stardust · 7 months

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Hello and welcome, trainees and newcomers to the foundation!

It's time to put on your training wheels and get on the wagon, as we speed through Southeast Asia and the Middle East with our dear friends, the Joestars and co.

- The Speedwagon Foundation

Read the introduction comic here.

Keep reading for info and TOS down below (Do not interact with the blog if you have not read the TOS! It's at the very end.)

This is Project Ask the Crusaders of Stardust! An ask blog dedicated to the main cast of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders. What can you and can you not expect from this blog? For one we will not have a set schedule for posting. "We" is right, we're two people running this blog. Namely @starplatimoon (Mod Moon) and @kuttblueberry (Mod Blueberry). We're very passionate about these guys and the story of part 3, and we have our own AU and RP we will pull inspiration from when it comes to moving the story forward on this ask blog. So expect the unexpected when it comes to what may happen... We will both be drawing and writing for this blog, but one of us may have more responsibility for writing certain characters than the other. Specifically, Mod Blueberry writes more for Joseph, Avdol, and Kakyoin while Mod Moon writes more for Jotaro and Polnareff. It's just the way we like to do it. This blog is fully a collaboration! We'll be putting credit where credit is due at the end of posts, we may forget sometimes or simply choose not to, however. There may be room for ships such as Avpol and Noritaro to develop down the line. And while that may be the case, we don't want this blog to revolve around ships, but the character's general dynamics and story! And to just goof off and have fun. That too. While the blog is "sponsored by the SPWF" and you're welcome to commit to the bit, you really don't have to pretend to be a newbie SPWF employee. Treat this like you would any other ask blog, there are no rules in that regard. But we will be touching on actual rules for a TOS at the end of this post that we implore you to check out before interacting with this blog or sending asks! And lastly, roleplay-themed asks and magic anons (AKA stand users) are allowed but we might not indulge in it regularly. But there may be events in the future that touch on more fun ways to interact with us, whether that be "a sudden influx of stand users!" or whatever. We do what we want.

!!!TOS BELOW PLEASE READ BEFORE SENDING ASKS/INTERACTING!!!

Don't spam the same question/message, we will get to you. And if we don't, it's probably because you broke one of the other rules OR it's already been answered in one form or another. (Although we may revisit similar themes, time will tell).

No s*xually explicit questions (Or the ghost of Erina Joestar will come back from the afterlife to whack you across the head with her ghostly cane).

No proshippers or proship themed asks. (For you who don't know what that means: Proshipping includes ships that have inc*stial/p*dophilic/abusive themes. This also includes aiming suggestive comments or asks towards Kakyoin and Jotaro, do not do that)

Related to the above, do not send in asks if you indulge in proshipping, in fact, do not interact with this blog.

We are not looking for more mods. Just the two of us, we can make it. If we try <3

Do not repost our art without credit (this does not include reblogs here on Tumblr). But if you want to use our art as say a profile picture or header, you can WITH credit. This also goes for if anyone wants to dub over our comics or such, that is allowed too, with credit.

Do not badger us if we decide to take breaks or go on a hiatus, we have our own lives. This goes for literally any ask blogs out there, do not stress the mods out!!!

If you break any of these rules, you may earn a block, be mindful of that.

On a happier note, aside from abiding by our rules, have fun! This blog was made for fun and we hope you will have fun, we sure will. (If we don't, read bullet point 7.... just kidding.... or am I.....)

Thank you for reading all the way to the end!

Credits:

Blog header by mod Moon and mod Blueberry. Joseph, Avdol, and Kakyoin were drawn by mod Blueberry. Jotaro, Polnareff, and the background was drawn by mod Moon.

Profile picture by mod Moon.

Crusader chibis by mod Moon and mod Blueberry. Joseph, Avdol, and Kakyoin were drawn by mod Blueberry. Jotaro and Polnareff were drawn by mod Moon.

#jjba #jojo's bizarre adventure #stardust crusaders #jojo part 3 #jotaro kujo #noriaki kakyoin #joseph joestar #jean pierre polnareff #muhammad avdol #mohammed avdol #ask blog #fanart

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talonabraxas · 9 months

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Babylonian prayer to the Gods of the Night pullulū rubû wašrū sikkūrū šīrētum šaknā ḫabrātum nišū šaqummā petûtum uddulū bābū ilī mātim ištarāt mātim Šamaš Sîn Adad Ištar īterbū ana utul šamê ul idinnū dīnam ul iparrasū awātim pussumat mušītim ēkallum šaḫūrša kummu adrū ālik urḫim ilam išassi u ša dīnim ušteberre šittam dayyān kinātim abi ekiātim Šamaš īterub ana kummīšu rabûtum ilī mušītim nawrum Girra qurādum Erra qaštum nīrum šitaddarum mušḫuššum ereqqum inzum kusarikkum bašmum lizzizū-ma ina têrti eppušu ina puḫād akarrabu kittam šuknān šumūšu ikrib mušītim (TRANSLATION) The princes are closely guarded, The locking-bolts lowered, the locking rings placed, (Though previously) noisy, the people are silent, (Though previously) open, the doors are locked. The gods of the land (and) the goddesses of the land, Shamash, Sin, Adad and Ishtar Have entered into the lap of heaven. They do not render judgment, they do not decide a case. The night is veiled. The palace, its chapel, the cella are obscured. The traveler invokes god, but the one (who offers) a decision remains asleep. The judge of truth, father of the impoverished girl, Shamash has entered his cella. The great ones, the gods of the night, Bright Girra, Warrior Erra, The Bow, the Yoke, Orion, the Furious Serpent, The Wagon, the Goat, The Bison, the Horned Serpent, May they stand by so that, In the extispicy I am performing, In the lamb I am offering, You may place the truth Alan Lenzi. Reading Akkadian Prayers & Hymns: an Introduction. Society of Biblical Literature. pp. 71-82. Plate with Cuneiform Script: Pray to the Night Gods. Place of origin: Ancient East, Babylonia Date: Early 2nd millennium B.C. Medium: Clay

This is an extispicy prayer that used to be recited when performing divination at night. Its logic follows that, as the city’s activity declines for the night, the main gods retire as well, which makes sense as nighttime was probably very dangerous in ancient times. So instead one ought to seek the guidance of the ilī mušītim “gods of the night”. Here the term refers to the stars and constellations, plus fire god Girra (also called Gibil) and the fierce war-and-plague god Erra (syncretized with Nergal).

The constellation the Babylonians called the Bow, qaštum, is probably part of Canis Major, and the Yoke is Boötes. Orion was called Šitadarrum, Šitadallum or Šidallum, often spelled using the Sumerian logograms SIPA.ZI.AN.AN, meaning “the true shepherd of heaven”. The serpent is Mušḫuššum, one of the 11 chaos monsters reared by Tiamat, but tamed by Marduk and made into his pet in the Enuma Elish. It possibly referred to the Hydra constellation. The Wagon is famously Ursa Major and the Goat is Lyra. The Bison and Bašmum, “horned serpent”, however, are still unidentified.

The appellation “gods of the night” also appears in another prayer as part of the Maqlû (burning) rituals, a series of exorcisms and uncrossings performed in the small hours all the way until dawn.

This prayer unfortunately isn’t that useful for the modern pagan, as it’s a bit too specific, but one may find some use still in the lines rabûtum ilī mušītim / nawrum Girra / qurādum Erra / qaštum nīrum / šitaddarum mušḫuššum / ereqqum inzum / kusarikkum bašmum/ lizzizū (“The great ones” down to “may they stand by”) in nightly stellar invocations for whatever maybe-not-quite-licit matters you may want to perform.

(If you plan on singing or reciting this, please remember that “š” sounds like the English “sh” and “ḫ” is guttural)

May the gods be praised!

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city-of-ladies · 8 months

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“Women were included in the ranks of this fully mobilized society. Prokopios, aware, of course, of the legends of the Amazons whose origins he traces to the region of the Sabirs, reports that in the aftermath of "Hunnic" (i.e. Sabir) raids into Byzantine territory, the bodies of women warriors were found among the enemy dead. East Roman or Byzantine sources also knew of women rulers among the nomads. Malalas, among others, mentions the Sabir Queen Boa/Boarez/Boareks who ruled some 100,000 people and could field an army of 20,000. In 576 a Byzantine embassy to the Turks went through the territory of 'Akkayai; "which is the name of the woman who rules the Scythians there, having been appointed at that time by Anagai, chief of the tribe of the Utigurs." The involvement of women in governance (and hence in military affairs) was quite old in the steppe and was remarked on by the Classical Greek accounts of the Iranian Sarmatians. It was also much in evidence in the Cinggisid empire.

These traditions undoubtedly stemmed from the necessities of nomadic life in which the whole of society was mobilized. Ibn al-Faqih, embellishing on tales that probably went back to the Amazons of Herodotos, says of one of the Turkic towns that their "women fight well together with them," adding that the women were very dissolute and even raped the men. Less fanciful evidence is found in the Jiu Tangshu which, s.a. 835, reports that the Uygur Qagan presented the Tang emperor with "seven women archers skillful on horseback.” Anna Komnena tells of a Byzantine soldier who was unhorsed with an iron grapple and captured by one of the women defenders as he charged the circled wagons of the Pecenegs. Women warriors were known among the already Islamized Turkmen tribes of fifteenth century Anatolia and quite possibly among the Ottoman gazfs (cf. the Bacryan-z Rum "sisters of Rum")”.

Golden Peter B., “War and warfare in the pre-cinggissid steppes of Eurasia” in: Di Cosmo Nicola (ed.), War and warfare in Inner Asian History

#history #women in history #warrior women #warriors #Akkayai #6th century #historyedit #historyblr #central asia #scythians #sarmatians

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hussyknee · 1 year

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Let me make this very clear right now.

Israel is not a legitimate state.

Zionism is no longer an abstract belief in a Jewish homeland but the ideological battleground of pro-Israeli colonizers.

Bombing two million civilians in an open air prison in retaliation for the actions of the underground militia you empowered by invading a country and killing civilians for decades is still genocide.

If you believe objecting to the razing of Gaza means supporting Hamas's attacks on Israeli civilians you are simply justifying genocide.

Look up the bombing of Warsaw 1944

The US has elected to support this open war crime.

Which is what the US's entire military history has been about.

If you try to whitewash or apologize for Biden to stop the USAmerican left splintering in next year's election you are a racist imperialist scumbucket who's already proving you will never hold your leaders accountable.

None of this excuses going after vulnerable Jewish minorities in the rest of the world, in fact, the more you harrass and endanger them, the more you will shore up support for Israel, because scared people have no choice but to circle their wagons around the only people offering them refuge.

This is exactly what happens to Palestinians with Hamas. Persecution of minorities leave them no choice but to support whoever will defend them.

For people to make better choices they must have the freedom to choose.

Support for Palestine must be unequivocal, because peace only happens when you take the chainsaw away from a maniac trying to kill people with it for throwing rocks at them.

This is not a fight against Jews but against the violent colonial apartheid state created by USA and Britain because they didn't want to deal with the Jewish refugees and but wanted a foothold in the Middle East. It meant they could frame the Jewish diaspora as people that belonged to another country and manipulate them via a state over which they had no representation or political agency. It is effectively a Sword of Damocles they have been dangling over the heads of Jewish diasporas disguised as support for a Jewish homeland.

Fascism knows no race or religion. It's about fear and power sold as the price of stability and safety. No group of humans will ever be inoculated against its lure, no matter how keenly they have suffered.

No human being is acceptable collateral. If you fire on a human shield you are as much murderer as those holding them up and must answer for it.

I will be treating any discourse on this as a free blocklist. My people, the Sinhalese, did exactly this to Sri Lankan Tamils. There are no variations in the ethnofascist playbook. The blood on our hands will never wash away, and it will not for you either.

"Yeah but Palestinians elected Hamas in a free and fair election—" y'all elected Bush twice because a handful of Saudis killed 3000 people in one attack. So maybe understand that terrified people who are actually being genocided also want to be led by the biggest bully, and shut the fuck up.

#israel is a terrorist state #free palestine #genocide #colonization #war crimes #american imperialism #joe biden #fascism #knee of huss #politics #current events

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peppershark · 3 months

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WOLFER --- The real California history behind the Tomione Fic

Convict Lake Camp (OwensValleyHistory.com)

When I was a kid, my family frequently visited Bishop, California. I can still feel the light-headed enchantment of hopping out of the van at a relative's green, creek-watered ranch shadowed by towering granite faces of the High Sierras. The dusty road and sage-sharp aroma propelled my imagination two hundred years into the past.

Wolfer is set in 1890 Bishop Creek, and while some of the location names are changed to fit the story, the town really had ranching barons like the Sacred 28 families, churches which exerted certain levels of social power with the well-to-do folk, boarding houses for mill workers and on-farm worker housing for fruit pickers and cowboys--or perhaps the odd wolfer.

It's amazing what you can dig up when you're procrastinating working on your WIP, lol. I did a lot of initial research while writing a Gingerrose fic set in post Civil War Bishop Creek.

Here are some things I found.

Main Street, Bishop Creek 1880 (OwensValleyHistory.com)

In Chapter 1, Tom rides down Main Street to the marshal's office (played by a grudging Severus Snape) and runs into Hermione.

Way off into the upper right you can see the steeple of the First Baptist Church on Main Street.

East Line Street, Bishop Creek (OwensValleyHistory.com)

Tom chases Hermione to Line Street, where he pushes her up against the Brown's Machine Shed, which is of course re-named to fit Lavender Brown's family.

(OwensValleyHistory.com)

Check out that snow! Sitting at 4,000 feet of elevation in the foothills of the East Sierras, the snow can get quite voluminous.

W.D. Roberts Ranch, Round Valley (OwensValleyHistory.com)

The ranch near the dry saltbeds of Owens Lake where Draco visits Harry, (by way of Mad Eye Moody) might have looked like this.

Cerro Gordo photo taken some time between 1871 - 1879 (OwensValleyHistory.com

We get a brief glimpse of the Cerro Gordo silver mine when Draco and Harry ride off into the sunset together for a night of wild debauchery. The brothels and bawdy houses within these sprawling mining towns would have perhaps been some of the only public places for late 19th-century gays to be themselves. Miss Lola's was among the more famous, and I'm struggling to find the website where I originally learned this this but I believe she hosted queer sex workers and provided space for an early LGBTQ+ scene.

The silver mine itself brought together a richly diverse group of fortune seekers. I accessed California census documents and found that while Bishop Creek was mostly white, Cerro Gordo had a much more diverse population (interestingly all marked with 'I', even Latinx names).

I did a phone interview with the Inyo Historical Society and chatted for an hour with a local historian, telling him I was getting context for a novel. (He didn't need to know that my novel was also a fanfic, hahaha.) The historian told me the mine had Mexican, Black, Chinese, and Indigenous populations working as miners, teamsters (people who drive wagons), cooks, brick masons, farm laborers and all kinds of interesting jobs related to running the mine.

Main Street in Bishop Creek, 1878 (OwensValleyHistory.com

One thing that sticks out in my mind from the conversation with the historian is how the white and Mexican ranchers demolished the irrigation canals the Numuu Indigenous tribes had dug to create a green landscape in Owens Valley. Native Americans have been 'farming' America's landscape for thousands of years in a low-impact way. In Chapter 4, Tom muses on this detail as he's setting a wolf trap on Rosier's ranch.

Perhaps the most illuminating account of the region comes from Sarah Winnemucca, daughter of Chief Truckee (after whom the town is named). Sarah travelled as an advocate for Indigenous rights and cataloged her experience and the story of white settler colonization in her book, Life Among the Pauites: Their Wrongs and Claims which you can read for free here.

Thank you for diving into California history with me!

Read Wolfer here.

#wolfer #tomione #historical fiction #historical fic #hermione x tom

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upontherisers · 5 months

Text

in the cold spring

a/n: i'm in a writing mood recently! disclaimer: i haven't read mota or on a wing and a prayer yet so i do not know anything about jack kidd's life beside what is available on the 100th bomb group's website, so consider some details ~exaggerated for dramatic effect~. title is from ml burch's "i feel like giving you things" and this fic is about neither the cold or the spring, but it fits.

Goddamn Air Exec.

Jack says goddamn Air Exec from the moment Bucky tells him that Hughlin recommended him, through two rounds of meetings with Harding—call me Chick—and Bowman—call me Red, through moving into the ops barracks, through shaking a thousand hands, and through getting a desk. Goddamn Air Exec. Goddamn Egan, goddamn Hughlin, and goddamn Air Exec.

His crew, his fort, and his dignity all because Bucky purposely flunked out of the tower. And Buck vouched for him! Goddamn Cleven and goddamn Air Exec. All of his training out the window for a desk in a corner office. He can’t even see the runway through the blinds, just the backroads of East Anglia and occasionally the Land Army girls and their cows. Five hundred hours of flight school for a desk in a corner office and a secretary.

“A secretary?” he asks as Harding points at a small station outside Jack’s newly-labeled office.

Chick nods. “Yes, Lieutenant Keene.” He looks around the busy floor, eventually settling on who he’s searching for. “There she is… Hazel!”

A head pops up from the mass of moving bodies and paper and a woman quickly makes her way across the room, weaving through the crowd with practiced ease. As she approaches, she’s smiling with a brightness that goes all the way to her warm, round brown eyes, hand outstretched for another yet another handshake. Goddamn Air Exec, but he’s less bitter about it.

“Jack, I assume you’ve met Lieutenant Keene—”

“Hazel, I insist.” Her grip is firm and as warm as her eyes.

They met the few times when he had to go to Bucky’s office—his office now—and she was waiting at her station outside. He remembers her as polite but busy, inoffensively curt. Not one of the staff who blathers away, overly chipper and overly interested in the reason for his visit, but also not one of the ones who snaps at him to sit and wait and then ignores him like he’s the reason they’re losing the war. Hazel’s friendly and effective, a good temperament for a C.O. He wonders why she’s in here and not up in the air.

“Good to see you again.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Jack, I insist.”

Her smile widens just so, and he has a feeling that they’re going to work well together.

She turns to Chick and nods to where she came from. “Last of the after actions for the 418th—” Jack pretends that doesn't hurt to hear. He should’ve been up there with his boys. Goddamn Air Exec. “—I’ll have ‘em to Sheila in fifteen, and I’ll be at my desk after that, in case you need anythin’.”

It takes him a moment to realize she’s speaking to him, and he mumbles an ‘of course’ at his shoes. He’s a man who gets waited on now; it would take some time to get used to. She departs with another smile and heads back into the fray.

As Chick leads Jack around the rest of the space, showing him charts and maps and a million other semi-familiar faces, he remains acutely aware of Hazel. She’s speaking to a WAC as they go over some maps, marking here and there, her encouraging smile no doubt prompting stellar work from the younger girl. He’s reminded of Ev, the way his friend’s genial countenance can turn a boring day kicking around the hard stand into a respite and a rough flight home from a mission into a night at a comedy club.

Then he misses his friends—Ev, Dougie, Crosby and the man the navigator has become since getting kicked off of the Crash Wagon. He misses hearing DeMarco and Cleven bicker as they climb into their fort, that damn dog never far behind as Lemmons likes to sneak him out onto the hard stand. He misses the feeling of sitting in his seat and the controls roaring to life under his fingers as he hears his crew get ready at their guns. He misses looking out the window to see Ginny settling into her cockpit to his right, grinning like it’s Christmas morning and popping her gum into her headset receiver to set off Knick Knack at her navigator’s seat.

He even misses Bucky and his plane-to-plane chatter, always vigilant, always watching out for his squadron, his group, and the rest of the wing. He misses the man Bucky can be in the air as opposed to the faux-apologetic fast-talker that landed Jack at a desk in the first place. Goddamn Air Exec.

But then he comes back to Hazel and the scrunch of her nose as she stretches her arms above her head with a yawn. She slumps back onto the desk she’s sitting on, looking around the room curiously before meeting Jack’s eyes and nodding. He nods back before Chick drags him off to some new wonder.

She’s at her desk in fifteen minutes like she told him she would be and sticks her head into his office with a smile. She smiles a lot. “I’m back. Holler if you need anything.”

By the time he can look up from the file he’s puzzling over, she breezes back to her desk and immediately busies herself at her typewriter.

He doesn’t know what to do with her. The other C.O.’s have their secretaries do the standard—take memos, keep their schedules, make coffees—but that seems insulting. She’s here to win a war; he wasn’t going to send her scrambling for sugar. On the other hand, it’s insulting not to utilize her, as sharp and reliable as she is. His father would find her a task and a ring, which he had with his last three secretaries. Jack had no intention of using his rank like that. He’ll find something for Hazel to do. It just has to be the right thing.

And he searches for too long, it seems, because after three days of greeting her when he arrives in the morning and occasionally asking her where certain stationery was stored, she steps into his office post-lunch and plops down in the chair in front of his desk with a sigh. Her eyebrows raise and she wears a bemused smile as she folds her hands in her lap. She reminds him of Bucky for a moment.

“Was it something I said?”

He shakes his head. He’d been hoping she wouldn’t notice his lack of engagement, or perhaps would lean into not having much on her plate. “I’ve never had a secretary before.”

“Most men haven’t.” She leans forward and starts picking at a chip in the wood of his desk. “Your job is my job, too.”

“You seem busy enough.” She does. Every time he looks out into the hall, she’s up to something, whether it’s at her desk, in the filing cabinets along the walls behind her, or somewhere on the ops floor. She knows what she’s doing; he’s the one who’s lost.

Her mouth purses. “Not for long. I’ll be done with the backlog Bucky left by EOD.”

“I’m sorry he left so much—”

Her exaggerated eye roll surprises him. “That’s the point, Jack. It’s too much work for any one man.”

Goddamn Air Exec.

“But that’s why you got me. We’re a team… so,” she raps his desk twice, “put me in, Coach.”

He wants to say something, to have an important Air Exec order or some example for her to follow, but as he looks into her expectant face, he comes up short. He hasn’t eaten yet today, but he’d shoot himself in the foot before he ever made her go to the mess for him. She reads him like a book, which only further rankles his sense of command.

“Well, what’s all this?” She spreads her hands over the papers in front of her.

“Interrogation logs, new crew files—” He points at a pile Chick’s aide had delivered that morning. “I need to get those back to Harding as soon as I sign them.”

“Sign ‘em now and I’ll run ‘em over.”

“No.” This is exactly what he’s been avoiding, assigning her utter tedium.

She pushes the papers toward him. “C’mon.”

He blinks at her before opening the file. It’s some report or inventory request, or both or neither, which he has no idea why he has to sign, but he’ll do it because that’s job along with waiting around and going to briefings and briefings about briefings. Not even a week in and he was ready to crawl out of his skin or at least out the window. Chick denied both his requests to fly so he’s truly stuck in this office for who knows how long. Goddamn Air Exec.

Two signatures, three, four, five—Hazel points to hidden dotted lines, flipping through the pages without a second glance, and Jack can’t help but feel like she’s tying his shoes. That probably flew with Bucky, but it wouldn’t with him. They gave him the promotion because they knew he could do the job well and he agreed. This is something he could be good at. A team of subordinates was a perk of the job, expected for a man of such a station, and he’s grateful that folks were will to help out, but he’d grown up watching secretaries turn from aides to mother-wives and he doesn’t want that for anyone, especially a gal as nice as Hazel. He’ll find something for her to do.

He signs the last page and closes the file as Hazel stands, hand outstretched. Pausing for a moment, he doesn’t pass it over quite yet. “I don’t want you being my errand girl.”

She reaches across the desk and plucks the file from him. “It’s my job.”

She turns on a graceful heel and heads out across the floor, making it to Harding’s office and back before he could find it in him to stop staring at her confident, unaffronted gait. Bright laughter—the brightest he’s ever heard—bubbles out of her as she tucks her skirt under her thighs and takes a seat at her desk.

“You could’ve signed three more reports in the time that took me. Now I’m gonna have to wait for you.” She tsked. “Wastin’ both our time.”

She’s tying his shoes again and that lights a fire under his ass for the rest of the day. He clears the files that had accumulated on his desk plus two rounds of parts inventory from the hard stand and he gets a memo off to London requesting more birds. He feels satisfied by the time he flicks off the light and gathers his jacket and coat. It sure wasn’t flying, but it felt like making a difference all the time. He didn’t know he could do that from behind a desk.

It takes some soul-searching, but he manages to light his own fire for the rest of the week. He maintains his composure through the worst of it, a long fog delay that had half his pilots climbing into the tower to beg him for clearance, a ‘misplaced’ delivery of Mae Wests that somehow ended up with the 418th before they came to ops, and another declined request to fly from Harding. Goddamn Air Exec.

The job gets easier each day, especially with Hazel right outside the door. It does feel more like a team than subordination as they move around each other, trading reports and memos without having to speak. Still, she’s a few steps ahead of him—coming through the door before he can call her to pick up a file, finding this or that form before he can realize he’s misplaced it—but he’s determined to catch up. He comes in early on Saturday and has the summarized after action reports in Chick’s office before Hazel’s arrived for the day. It’s a good feeling when her eyes go wide in surprise and her cheery mouth finds its usual smile.

“Well, I suppose we’re even now.”

“No,” he shakes his head, “not even close.”

If they’re really going to be a team, he’s going to even the playing field. No more having her play governess. Neither of them are here to clean up after someone else.

That evening, Hazel is leaning into Chick’s doorway as Jack leaves for the day, chatting with Sheila.

He mumbles a ‘pardon me’ as he passes and her face lifts at the sight of him. “Major Kidd! We were just talkin’ about you.”

“You were?” he asks as they fall into lockstep on their way out.

“We were sayin’ how nice it is to have an Air Exec who knows what he’s doin’.”

“Bucky tried his best.” He’s lying.

She knows it and she snorts. “He was fun to have around, certainly.”

It’s quiet as they walk. The flights have stopped for the day and if he strains his ears he’d be able to hear the crews working away on the hard stand, but there’s no need for that now. That’s another thing he’s learning—when he’s doing the job and when he’s not. With the warm evening air and the blazing sunset in front of them, he’s grateful for the time off the clock.

He looks at Hazel and is struck by the sight. The light washes her dark cherrywood skin in a velvet glow, sending shadows of her lashes and her nose across her face. He’s suddenly jealous of Bucky and he doesn't know why. She catches his eye and smiles. Blanching, he clears his throat and stares at the ground. His boots are the cleanest they’ve been since he’s been in England now that he’s out of the grease and dust of the planes. Goddamn Air Exec.

They’re nearly at the ops barracks when he realizes that he doesn’t know where she’s going. Does she live in the barracks? Is she one of the girls who’s at a billet in town? Why doesn’t he know? Shouldn’t he know? She’s never in the mess and is so rarely at the Silver Wings. He wonders what she does with her time. He realizes he doesn’t know much about her at all, not her hometown, her family, where she was before the Air Force. The Oberlin pennant on the wall in his office had prompted her to ask into his life, but that’s because she’s always where he is, but he’s never where she is. He wants to be.

“Where’re you headed?”

She comes to a stop. “Home.”

“Where’s that?”

Her wry smile makes his heart skip a beat as she turns down the path leading toward the enlisted barracks. “Good evening, Major.” She never calls him that.

“Some of us’ll be at the pub tonight—Chick, Red, Bucky… it’d be good to see you.” He takes a half-step toward her so as not to yell the offer, maybe she’ll take it if he’s gentle. Part of him hopes she’ll say yes. He wants time with her outside of keeping the group on its feet, just an hour to hear her laugh, to ask her where she gets that charming accent from, to ask her for a dance. Part of him hopes she’ll give him one more good smile and walk away, that she’ll remind him there are rules, lines to be maintained. He’s not going to become his father.

“Good evening,” she repeats and he watches her go. He doesn’t have time to dwell on the ache in his chest as Cros yells at him from across the way. He’ll have his night and she’ll have hers.

He’s not sure if he should apologize for being out of turn when he sees her next, clear the air and make it clear that he’s not… he isn’t going to be that man. He reasons to himself that wants to know her as a teammate, in the same way he’d come to know the members of his crew. It’s what any good leader does. There’s a short speech ready to go when he enters HQ Monday morning after seeing the forts off.

She greets him as politely as she always has, but he gets the feeling he probably wouldn’t be able to tell if she’s upset. Her cards are meticulously close to her chest while she learns about the people around her. It’d be a good quality in a C.O. He thinks of all the women he’d just sent to Norway—Ginny, Vera, Amelie, Suzanne. Hazel would fit right in.

There’s a small box on his desk, no sender address upon investigation. “Hazel?”

“Yeah?” she asks as she gets up from her desk.

“Do you know who this is from?” He’s popping open one end with his letter opener.

“Oh, well,” she starts, folding her arms and leaning against the doorframe, “it’s from my momma” Her inflection is that of an embarrassed and entertained daughter.

A swath of white silk flutters to the floor and he picks it up. It’s a scarf decorated with rows of small and large flowers. From… from her mother?

“I—I, uh, I wrote her about you and she insisted on sending it. Bucky got one, too, when he started.”

He couldn’t recall Bucky ever wearing a scarf. “What’d he do with it?”

She scoffs. “God knows. I don’t think he remembers getting it. It was one of his… one of his mornings.”

“Hungover?”

“Still drunk.”

Closing distance, she takes the scarf from him gently and tosses it around his shoulders. She’s so near now as she starts tying it and he can look at her while she concentrates, her eyes glittering with that hope that never seems to fade. Does her mother have the same eyes? The same round apples of her cheeks, the lovely point of her chin? And her perfume, the faint hint of roses he occasionally gets during the day now in full force as she works. He feels flush and he doesn’t know what to do with his hands or where to put his eyes or what to say. A woman who’d only heard about him in letters sent her daughter to war and is sending him beautiful scarves. That’s the kind of woman who would raise Hazel.

“I always tell her that this is unnecessary, that y’all have mommas of your own to fuss over ya,” she says as she adjusts the knot at his neck and smoothes her hands over his shoulders.

“I—I don’t,” he stammers out.

Her eyes widen and he hates the kick in his chest. “Oh, I’m—I’m so sorry, Jack, I had no idea.”

He waves her off but can’t quite find the words. There’s a yearning suddenly, one he left in the dark years ago, and he doesn’t know what’ll come out if he tries to name it. Hazel puts a comforting hand on his arm and looks at him sympathetically. “Well, I’ll tell my momma to keep sending scarves… only if—if you wouldn’t mind.”

“I could use a few more of these,” he says, glancing down at the knot at his neck. He probably looks ridiculous wearing it without the rest of his flight gear, but the accomplished smile on Hazel’s face is worth it. He’ll bear all the stares in the world if it keeps her smiling.

She gives him one more once over before returning to her desk. “It’s a good color on you.”

“Matches my eyes?”

“Something like that.” She winks.

His stomach flips; he thinks of his father and three weddings.

“Oh,” she calls, “you can keep it on.”

He raises an interested eyebrow.

“The Telergma mission, you’re going. Chick sent authorization this morning.”

Three days later, Ev’s the only one who comments on Jack’s new gear after they finally get the all-clear for engine start.

“That from Franny?” his co-pilot asks. It’s a good guess; his sister would send something like it.

“Lieutenant Keene’s mother sent it.”

Ev scoffs with a shake of his head. “Your secretary’s mother is sending you scarves? Goddamn Air Exec.”

Yeah, Jack thinks, smirking out the window and sitting a little taller. Goddamn Air Exec.

#my writing #hazel keene #jack kidd x oc #masters of the air #straighten up and fly right #jack x hazel #some of y'all have neat little banners for all of your works and i want one of those i just don't know how to make them #also this ended up being way more of a jack character study than a true intro to hazel because i wrote it in his pov instead of hers #also i can't decide if this universe is in present or past tense. who's to say

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the-obnoxious-sibling · 9 months

Text

in which buggy doesn’t sleep well, missed breakfast food so much in prison, tells tall tales, and schedules a—not a date. a… day to catch up with an old… person. shanks. whatever.

the next part to this story, which is a follow-up to this one, which was itself a second take at—actually, here’s a tag for all of the near miss stories & related talk, go there if you want the context. (i’ve linked to the chronological order sorting of the tag, so you should see the “thinking about near misses in east blue” post first.)

Buggy was still mad at Galdino hours later, when he got fed up with his feet being tripped over in the dark and the rest of him (sitting up in the rigging, sulking hiding just sitting) had gotten cold. But given the very limited space on the Red Force, it was either bunk with someone or sleep on the deck, and Buggy was not about to do that. The men—ugh, now Galdino had him doing it!—were way too excited about following Buggy’s every move, he shuddered to think what they might do at night. Assuming he could even get to sleep with all of them hovering like that.

So if he was bunking with someone, there was really only the one option: the only other guest on this ship who’d treated him like a human being.

But he wasn’t happy about it.

Galdino paid him no mind, using a borrowed mirror to inspect himself as he prepared for bed, applying a thin layer of wax along the edge of his hairline. When he was done with the mirror, he silently held it up so Buggy could look himself over. He used pretty long-lasting makeup, the better to survive bloody fistfights and brackish ocean spray—and some of it had even survived the sterilizing baths they dunked you in when you arrived at Impel Down! Buggy would write to the brand, to tell them to use that fact in their advertising, but that degree of longevity probably wasn’t a huge selling point now that Ivankov and his ilk had escaped the prison.

Anyway, nothing had happened today that could really mess it up. His face was fine.

…it could use a touch-up, though. Just to solidify the linework on the crossbones, make the edge of his lip really crisp. Buggy touched the corner of his lip, considering, and very much against his will recalled how it had felt for someone else to touch that part of his face.

It had been a long time.

Not so long that Shanks’ hand was the first to touch him since Shanks, mind you. But a long time all the same.

He scowled, and threw himself into bed. Touching up his makeup—and who, exactly, would he be doing that for?! That kind of thinking could wait until morning. When, hopefully, he would have recovered his sanity in full.

As he was drifting off, Buggy heard Galdino roll over and say, softly, “You may think of that guy as some dope you used to sail with, but fact is he’s an Emperor. One who’s taken an interest in you. I’m just trying to look out for you.”

“And who asked you to do that?” Buggy muttered into his pillow.

“No one,” Galdino acknowledged. “But if I’m hitching my wagon to yours—and it sure looks like that’s what’s happening here—I want to make sure we aren’t about to ride off a cliff.”

With that grim visual in his head, Buggy sunk into an uneasy sleep.

The next day dawned warm and bright. Buggy had thoughtlessly picked a bed that sat under the one small window in the room, right where an early morning sunbeam would shine in his face. He groaned a protest, but unfortunately, once up he was up. Leaving Galdino to sleep his fill, he stretched, grumbled, and made himself presentable.

(This did not involve touching up his makeup in any way.)

A handful of Red-Haired Pirates were also up and about, though Buggy couldn’t tell how many were early risers and how many had been on watch overnight. A few nodded at him with the bleary eyes of hungover men. Uneasy at the acknowledgement, however small, Buggy ducked into the mess, praying that there would be something hot to eat at this hour.

Prayers were answered in the form of the ever-grinning Lucky Roux, who was setting out large pans of a few types of porridge under warming lamps, with toppings (both savory and sweet) laid out in small bowls. Buggy opted for oats with some dried fruit and syrup on top, something that would fill him up and leave a sweet aftertaste. Though he might go back for the rice porridge later if he could get a soft-boiled egg to go with it… oh, eggs. He’d missed eggs.

There were also two steaming pots of liquid sitting to one side, one a tisane that smelled oddly familiar—after a moment, Buggy remembered the hangover cure Rayleigh had sworn by, and had to bite back a nauseous stab of nostalgia. He went for the other, not caring what it was so long as it was hot. It turned out to be awfully bitter, so he stole a bit of the porridge syrup to sweeten it.

Loaded down with food and drink, Buggy set himself up next to the kitchen, facing the rest of the mess. No one would be able to sneak up on him but Roux, and the day a man that size could—

“Any special requests?”

Biting back a shriek, Buggy spun to see Roux poking his head through a small window between the kitchen and mess. “I’m no short-order cook,” he said with a grin, “but this early I’m happy to make people what they want, so long as I have the ingredients on hand.”

What Buggy really wanted was a hot dog. Fuck, he missed bread. And meat. But he didn’t want a cheffy take on it, he wanted the greasy sausage and halfway stale bun you got when you bought a hot dog at a boardwalk. Since that wasn't likely to happen… “Over-easy eggs and toast? Oh, and ham, or bacon, whatever meat you’ve got.”

“That, I can do.”

Buggy dug into his oats, watching other men slowly creep into the mess in varying states of wakefulness and dress. The most tired looking came straight to the kitchen, where Roux already had plates waiting—the night watch men, then, being rewarded for that unpleasant duty. That was smart, Buggy thought, reluctant but firm in his admiration. If he ever got a really top-tier chef in his crew, that’d be the way to get people to do the worst chores: give them good food after.

“Building Snake says we're making landfall this afternoon?” one of the night watch guys said to another. Buggy tried to lean in without making it obvious that he was eavesdropping. “Seriously, that soon?”

“We need to resupply if we're gonna keep housing these guys for much longer,” the other replied, glancing over at a cluster of Whitebeard Pirates around one table, Marco’s distinctive tuft of fiery orange hair poking out of the center. “We buy goods today, give all of them shore leave so they aren't in the way while we load up tomorrow, and if the winds favor us we offload the clown and his troupe the next day.”

Buggy twitched. What now?

“Oh, did Rockstar find the Buggy Pirates already?” Roux asked, handing the pair of men their plates. “When’s he gonna learn he doesn't have to work so hard to impress us?” The three of them shared a laugh over this overachiever who’d apparently found Buggy’s ship in under a day. (The hell were they doing so close to the Calm Belt?) Leaning down to hand Buggy his requested dish, Roux said, “Only three days from your crew! That must be a relief, huh?”

Ignoring the startled looks on the night watch pair’s faces as they ran off—yes, Buggy had been here the whole time, so good of you to finally notice—Buggy grabbed the plate and breathed in deeply. Eggs soft as silk, bacon just the far side of well-done, toast triangles gleaming with butter… god damn, but it was worth being awake at this hour to get quality food. “It’ll be nice to be home,” he said around a mouthful, “but I’ll miss this.”

Roux burst into big, booming laughter. “You guys! Always so appreciative of good food. I’d expected to rate higher than prison fare, but I’m flattered to hear I’m also better than your usual!”

In the middle of stabbing the yolks of his eggs with a sharp corner of toast , Buggy squinted suspiciously up at Roux. “What do you mean by ‘you guys?’”

“I mean Roger Pirates, of course!”

Buggy blinked.

“Shanks is always happy to eat whatever, but he can’t hide how much happier he is when I make his favorites. And that Silvers Rayleigh…” Roux shook his head.

Buggy nearly choked on an egg. “You’ve met Rayleigh?!”

“Oh sure, about ten years back? We’d barely been on the Grand Line six months, just hit Sabaody and were debating whether to move forward to the New World or stay in Paradise a little longer, and suddenly Shanks was running off to talk to this old man. Of course I had to feed him, if just to prove to the guy that I deserved my job. He really—” Roux sniffed the air, spun around and yelped, and disappeared back into the kitchen.

So that was how they had Rayleigh’s hangover cure on this ship. “Sabaody, huh…?” Buggy wouldn't have thought he’d end up there, with how often world nobles visited the place. Did Rayleigh have a death wish? Or was he just old enough at this point to escape notice? Buggy snorted. Lucky him.

A storm of feet came thundering from out on the deck, drawing the attention of most of the room—until the mess door flung open to reveal a cluster of men in ragged Impel Down uniforms. They spotted Buggy and cried out, “Captain Buggy! There you are!”

This got eye rolls and looks of annoyance all around, which Buggy almost wanted to join in on. Seriously, did these guys need their hands held on the way to the bathroom too?

“Here I am,” he said dryly, sipping at his drink. “Don’t you people remember what mealtimes are? Where else would I be at this hour?” Ignoring their responses (“Of course! Captain Buggy’s so smart!” “So logical!”), he edged a little closer to the wall, having a feeling he was about to get crushed.

The men did flock to his side the second they were able—attempting to offer choice bits of food to him, like he didn’t clearly already have something better on his plate—but their devotion was thankfully balanced by respect, and they didn’t sit so close he couldn’t breathe.

They were still totally incapable of keeping their mouths shut, though.

“Captain Buggy, will you tell us of another of your adventures?”

Buggy bit back a grimace as pirates less enamored with him gave his group a dirty look. Yeah, he wouldn’t want to be in tight quarters with them either, if he were hungover and not a Buggy fan. But how could he ignore their request? “Sure! Anything for you guys!” What stories hadn’t he told yet…? “Have I told you the story of… how my crew acquired our fiercest member, Richie the Lion?”

“A lion?!” “No, Captain Buggy!”

“Alright, then. It all started when my brave crew was exploring a jungle island, years ago…” The actual story of how they’d gotten Richie was nothing special—it was really the story of how he’d met Mohji, a mistreated performer in an East Blue circus where Buggy had hidden out until the first time someone mentioned his nose, at which point he wrecked the place. But who here would know if he adapted the story of a day he’d spent on a jungle island with Captain Roger and Shanks? (…besides the obvious person, of course.) So he wove a tale of cleverness and might, of Captain Buggy spotting a dangerous beast that had a crying child trapped up in a tree and tricking it into pursuing him instead, only for the lion to be instantly tamed by his sheer power… and of course, Buggy being richly rewarded for the rescue.

“And that’s why we named him Richie,” Buggy concluded. “After the riches and fortune he brought me that day.”

“How touching!” “How bold!” “How amazing!”

How exhausting. “Now,” Buggy said, mopping up a smear of egg yolk with his last corner of toast, “are you satisfied for the moment, or do you need another—” Glancing up, he nearly choked on his bite. Shanks was standing in the midst of the men, sipping from a steaming hot mug and watching Buggy with an amused smile on his face. That fucker definitely remembered being stuck up a tree with a lion clawing at their feet. “Shanks! W-what do you want?”

“Oh, don’t stop on my account,” he said, glancing down at the man sitting across the table from Buggy. It seemed the men had been so captivated by Buggy’s storytelling that they hadn’t noticed Shanks either; now that they had, they quickly moved to accommodate him. Taking the suddenly empty seat, he set down his mug—Buggy’s nose wrinkled up, it was the hangover tisane—and leaned his chin on his fist. “If you’re taking requests, how about when we first met Oden? That’s a good story.”

“I—that—” Like hell Shanks just wanted a story.

Lucky Roux got Buggy’s attention, and held out a plate clearly meant for Shanks; it was the same kind of breakfast he’d favored as a child, down to the diced tomatoes perched atop the eggs—originally a deterrent to keep Buggy from stealing his food, at some point it had become a highlight of the dish for Shanks, the freak.

…maybe he did just want a story. For all that he was an Emperor now, Shanks didn’t seem to have changed much as a person. Buggy passed the plate along to Shanks, and tried to relax. “That is a good one.”

Turning to the men watching this exchange wide-eyed, Buggy barked out, “Now, who among you swabs recognizes the name of Kozuki Oden, once heir to the shogunate of Wano?!” This got a couple of looks of recognition, but mostly confusion—except for, from the far side of the room, a few angry grumbles. Buggy laughed. “Don’t tell me the Whitebeards still hold a grudge? Just because our crews fought for three days, and Oden chose to come with us in the end?”

This garnered a far more impressed reaction from the ex-prisoner crowd, and some narrow-eyed looks from the Whitebeards. Oh, they definitely still held a grudge. But Shanks was smiling ever so slightly, and that was enough to make Buggy smirk and say, “Well, feel free to offer corrections if you think I’m telling the story wrong.”

And then he told the most overblown, exaggerated version of events he possibly could.

Some of the Whitebeard Pirates threw out corrections—and insults against Buggy’s memory and honesty—but Buggy gave as good as he got, Shanks occasionally chimed in with falsely innocuous comments like “that’s not how I remember it” to their corrections, and the story was all the better for the pushback. That was the thing with lying: the larger lie sounded more believable when someone objected to small details, because your audience assumed that everything that hadn’t been corrected must be true.

For all the insults and slander tossed around about dead men, the mood in the room was significantly lighter by the time Buggy finished the story. Most of the Red-Haired Pirates had left, their duties for the morning calling, but the former prisoners and Whitebeard Pirates lingered to hear Buggy out until the end, with Oden and his family sailing off on the Oro Jackson, Whitebeard’s men calling out fond farewells and complaints at his disloyalty in equal measure.

Even Marco the Phoenix was convinced to speak up at that point, saying, “Pops never forgave Roger for that, yoi,” with a slight, sad smile.

“For stealing Oden?” Buggy snorted a laugh. “If you wanted him to stick around, you should’ve gone to the last island yourselves! That man wanted adventure, and we were going on the greatest one imaginable.”

Marco protested—Oden had been like family to Whitebeard, didn’t that mean something?—and with the story complete and the breakfast hour long passed, the crowd began to disperse. (They’d learned yesterday that people who lingered in the mess tended to get roped into dishwashing duty, whether they were crew aboard the Red Force or not.) A couple people still remained: Shanks, who’d spent so much time egging on the Whitebeards that he’d scarcely touched his food; Marco, going back for a third or fourth cup of the not-tisane; and a few especially devoted ex-prisoners, staring starry-eyed at Buggy.

“The last island…” One of them breathed. “Captain Buggy, what’s it like?”

Buggy blinked. “Laugh Tale?” He glanced at Shanks, who was watching him with a perfectly neutral expression, then down at the bitter dregs left in his cup. What to say? Buggy flushed. He wouldn’t—couldn’t—lie about this. “I, uh, I don’t know.”

“What?!”

“We didn’t go,” Shanks said, getting a grateful look from Buggy and surprise from the rest of the room. “Buggy got sick, and I stayed behind to look after him.” This won Shanks some undeserved admiration from Buggy’s fans—what a sacrifice he’d made, and for Captain Buggy’s sake! Yeah, right.

…well.

Well.

What other reason could he have had, to stay behind?

Galdino’s (terrible, awful) words from yesterday popped up in Buggy’s head. Gah, surely not that! Surely he hadn’t—not back then. Surely he didn’t now, for that matter! Buggy grimaced. It wasn’t like he could just ask, not around all these people.

Not around them. But maybe…

“Shanks, I—”

“Listen, Buggy…”

They blinked, dumbfounded. After a moment’s silence, Shanks gestured for Buggy to go ahead.

Buggy scratched at an itch along his jawline. It would be nice to be back on the Big Top, where he could get something like a clean shave again. But before that… if he could just get the question out. He gritted his teeth. Why was asking for things so hard? “Yesterday, you said you’d like to sit down and catch up if you weren’t so busy. If you really meant that… I hear tomorrow’s gonna be a shore day, at least for people who don’t have a real role on your ship, so I was thinking…” Buggy shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe we could do that? Can you spare an hour for me?”

“Yeah!” Shanks grinned, so wide and bright Buggy could hardly bear to look at it. “Yeah, I’d love that. But forget an hour, I can give you the whole day.” When Buggy frowned, puzzled, Shanks explained, “I was about to ask you to spend time with me.”

Buggy laughed under his breath. “Figures.” All those nerves for nothing! If he’d just kept his mouth shut a few seconds longer, Shanks would’ve asked, and then Buggy could’ve looked like he was doing him a favor by giving him exactly what Buggy wanted. Oh, well. Turning to the men hovering behind him, Buggy snapped, “You hear that?! You boys are gonna have to find something else to do tomorrow, I’m gonna be too busy to hang around telling you stories of my greatness!”

“Yessir, Captain Buggy!” (“Wow! An elite captain-to-captain meeting!”)

“And if any of you dare to follow or interrupt us, you’ll live to regret it! Spread the word!”

The men disappeared obediently. Buggy let himself bask for a moment—god, but it was nice to be listened to. Even if they did take it to extremes. And even if they only did it because they thought Buggy was a pirate on Captain Roger’s level, and not just a kid the guy had taken a liking to. And even if… with a little sigh, Buggy turned back around. Gathering up his dishes—even if he managed to avoid dishwashing duty today, clearing his place was the least he could do—Buggy glanced up at Shanks and froze at the look on his face. That fond little smile… heat rushed to Buggy’s cheeks, and he groaned, shoving a hand in Shanks’ face.

“Don’t look at me like that!”

“Like what?” Shanks laughed, pushing Buggy’s hand out of the way, still looking at him like…

“Like—” Buggy remembered Galdino’s words and violently shoved the memory down. He remembered a similar look on Shanks’ face, years ago, and violently shoved that memory down too. Getting to his feet, he floated his stack of plates through the kitchen window and bolted. “Just don’t!”

But even as he left, he knew Shanks’ expression hadn’t changed. He was still looking at Buggy like he liked him.

And Buggy had just agreed to spend the day with him tomorrow.

What had he been thinking?

#notfic #every day this thing gets less and less notficcy… i’ve capitalized things this time (gasp)#well ao3 crossposting *is* gonna happen so i might as well make editing for that eventuality easier on me #the near miss fics #one piece #shuggy #shanks #buggy

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