#whump-it-like-its-hot

[signalhill-if]

I HAVE AN ASK that I actually thought of while working earlier so HERE GOES c:

Lets say, the world didn’t go to shit, and our beloved characters are transported into the year 2023. What are they doing? How are they holding up? Job wise, and just in general? How is what they’re doing different from canon, now that things like social media and all that ‘fun’ stuff is around, if it’s different at all?

Thank you for the question! And also thank you to the anon who asked a very similar question that I forgot to answer 🥲

Rather than just saying what they'd do if they were in the present, I'm gonna sorta Modernify their canon lives because it's fun :) Also, SPOILERS BEWARE, I'm obviously not including anything super spoilery about the plot but if you want the character's backstories revealed naturally in the game then maybe don't read because there's a bunch of new stuff here!

Doc's trajectory in life is a lot different, in a world where he can actually get a proper education. His dad was a veterinarian for a horse racing place, and he didn't exactly have the most wealthy upbringing, but he was comfortable and learned a lot about horses. His dream was always to attend medical school, but money was tight- until he started dating Yvette in his first year of university, who helped him get into dealing drugs. After getting his MD, he started working at a not-for-profit local clinic, and oversees their needle exchange program. He still owns a sniper rifle in our universe, but he doesn't use it (usually)

Yasmin is the daughter of a prominent media mogul who was recently assassinated, putting her even more in the public eye than she already was. She had a wealthy but miserable youth, one of those rich kids who was privately tutored and never really had friends, y'know? At a young age, her mother died, and she's been in a spiral ever since. She had a brief but stormy relationship with KC in college. Since then, Yasmin's become a minor social media star, posting moody selfies and doing a lot of drugs with her influencer friends- specifically, Yvette.

KC grew up poor with a struggling single father and took the idea of "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" seriously. She worked throughout high school to get into a good college for business management, with a mix of money saved up from part time work and scholarships. She excelled at soccer in high school and wound up playing for her college's varsity team. Through a mutual "friend" she met Yasmin, and the two of them dated until KC got a job at Yasmin's dad's company and realized how terribly it treated its employees. She got heavily involved in the (successful) effort to organize a union at the company, and since then has been involved in helping other baby unions with their organizing efforts.

Yvette found it hard to stay in the closet from a pretty young age, and growing up in a place where that was frowned upon, he learned to be resilient and self-sufficient. As an adult, he moved to the big city and befriended a wealthy drug dealer while working as an escort. Through some questionably moral events, he wound up in charge of this operation with the other guy... out of the picture. From there, it all happened so fast- buying the club (which he named the Rose and Thorn), the fancy car, the nice condo. Living the dream. But he has his sights set even higher ever since he befriended Yasmin, the heiress to a multimedia throne.

Levi had a sheltered youth, attending private Catholic schools in Quebec alongside his childhood best friend Maxime. He excelled in his studies, but Maxime was always a step ahead of him, especially in the area of religion. Despite being an attentive student, Levi struggled with anger issues and was a target for bullying throughout his youth. When the two were seniors in high school and Levi's long-time bully disappeared under mysterious circumstances, they decided to move away and start a new life together in the big city. Here, Maxime's (or now, Aldrich's) spiritual ideas flourished, getting the attention of people on social media. But being labelled as a cult leader is barely better than their youth.

[krotiation]

"You can't ship rhack, it's toxic!!" Wrong, that's exactly why I ship it

[whump-queen]

“You did so well”

It’s the way whumper says it—the way they speak to whumpee. It’s their voice—half the time angry, biting, and degrading, only to mutate into something sickeningly sweet in the aftermath of the pain, when whumper leans in close with sticky murmurs of affection—of mocking praise.

A toxic, slimy liquid that drips from whumper’s lips and oozes thick and heavy down whumpee’s ears and neck and shoulders.

It makes whumpee’s skin crawl. 

Or at least, it did.

At first. 

But there comes a point, during the more creative of whumper’s tortures, where the pain becomes too much, where the excruciating burn of the knife or the sear of the brand is blacking out whumpee’s brain and shoving their head deep underwater, shrinking their existence down through a tiny pinhole, only to be materialized again on the other side, dazed beyond belief, panting and shaking and still bound in whumper’s arms. 

It’s those precious few moments of reprieve in the aftermath, where the warmth of whumper’s shoulder against their cheek is enough for whumpee to sink into it— For their teeth to unclench, for their shoulders to slump against whumper’s torso, for their shaking knees to crumple into whumper’s lap.

For each part of them to give up—to give in— until they’re spilling hot tears into the fabric between shaking, heaving breaths, staining whumper’s shirt with the small beads of blood that still weep from their bitten lip.

Whumper only holds whumpee’s head tightly against their shoulder and let’s them ride out the sobs. 

tags—>

taglist: @whumpshaped  @whumpsday  @emmettnet  @a-whump-sideblog  @whump-it-like-its-hot  @wolfeyedwitch  @whumper-soot @unorganisedalienrubbish  @kira-the-whump-enthusiast @hidden-dreamland @whumpedydump @lonesome--hunter @ashh-ed @whump-in-the-closet @oriantthegiant @banditosong @anonymustyou @feralwhump @jieunie-23 @whumpasaurus101 @morning-star-whump @whmp @captain-bo-bob-bobby @the-beasts-have-arrived just ask to be added or removed <33

[whumpshaped]

also not to be a robotfucker on main but do u ever think about how all the little sex toys we made feel soooo good and how itd be so cool to have a little robot partner. and how that could turn so fucking whumpy so quickly. do u ever think abt robot noncon. no? just me? ok

[kenobihater]

you ever write up a combination of words you're really proud of at the time bc you think it's vivid but it's actually so atrocious that you remember it eight years later bc it's burned itself into your long-term memory? just me?

[montammil]

Whumpee is brought back to life by Whumper, maybe Whumper is a mad scientist who brought them back for fun or research, or maybe Whumpee died and Whumper just couldn’t handle the idea of their precious Whumpee being dead (especially if they were the one who killed them in the first place).

Then they meet Death, or in other words, Caretaker. At first, Caretaker is ready to kill Whumpee for real, because they don’t believe anyone should have the right to escape death, but then they find not only is Whumpee incredibly abused, but also Whumper is the one who brought them back.

...so they take pity on them and grow rather protective of Whumpee, and decide to not only spare them, but become their friend and protector.

[boxwinebaddie]

good morning team nina! i’m sorry for being a little here nor there, I WANT TO BE HERE REALLY BAD! but my laptop actually finally stopped turning on, which thanks a lot, rest in pieces ( oF SHIT, i Hated that thing! i will say its v hard to answer my asks without a laptop…smh)

but more importantly and the shit Cherry on top of Shit Mountain rn is, i’m currently pretty fkn sick bc one of the kids got me which already sucked…then halfway through yesterday i…completely??

Lost My Voice???

LIKE ITS GONE!!!???

tldr: i sound like an insane v foul demonic cross between roz from monsters inc and a cursed squeaky toy getting run over by a million cars on the highway and i can’t hit any notes higher than like a Bass in choir??? horrifying

but yeah my chest feels like a trash compactor or is that just my cold dead heart beatin idk what’s that like i'm evil n i made jk in my image

i lied im very rs-coded

[bibewilderedandbuck]

why do i feel like i can SEE the moment tk realizes he's high.

and that LOOK carlos gives her. That wide eyed moment where the music changes and you realize that those dark eyes can be used to express all kinds of things.

[cordeliawhohung]

a fox cries; never howls (1/3)

an alternate universe to In Limbo | simon riley x fem!reader | masterlist | AO3

you're a stranger across the counter. you want so desperately to crawl back over, but it will never be the same anymore.

cw: mafia!au, can be read without prior In Limbo knowledge but it does help, non-con/rape, pedophilic undertones, forced prostitution, abusive relationships, abduction, forced medical practices/treatments, self harm, suicide attempt, mention of abortion, mention of pregnancy, reader is described as having long hair for plot reasons (can be natural, braided, etc), Simon is not the abuser in any of the tags previously listed, whump with an eventual happy ending but it's going to hurt until then.

Each time it happens, you tell yourself it’ll be different, but it never is. 

Broken promises lay in glistening shards around the heels strapped to your feet as you grit your teeth through the pain. No matter how much you beg and plead, it’s always the same. That visceral ache shooting through the core of your being still brings tears to your eyes the same it did the first time. It will continue to plague you. Haunting your cheeks in messy streaks as it drips onto the counter your hands so desperately palm at. Each tear that splatters by your fingers shimmer with black flakes. Running mascara. It stains everything it touches — especially you.

You’re prettier that way. Ruined. At least, that’s what you’ve been told. 

Always pretty on your knees; bent over; looking up; crying; pleading; beg; beg for it; and keep crying; yeah, just like that. 

Your skin is scarred, marked in the shape of greedy lips, and it stings like the wound is fresh. Words seep into the soft tissue where it continues to fester. Burrows its spindly roots until it can bear fruit. You could pull at the stem all you like, but you can’t escape the fact that it’s now a fundamental part of you. The only thing keeping your bones from crumbling. This mantra. This throe. 

“Not tryna hide, are you?” 

Avaricious fingers dig into the firm cartilage of your throat as you’re yanked back and forced to look at yourself in the mirror. The ripples of your defilement echo throughout your body — and you’re forced to watch it. The bounce of your breasts and the smudged makeup dripping along your cheeks. In some odd way, you are a masterpiece. You’re sculpted of nothing but obloquy yet carved just like if you were made of stone. You would close your eyes if you thought you could get away with it.

But Marco likes when you watch. Savors the tremble of your lips as your eyes find him in the mirror. Pristine teeth glint in the pallid light. Perfectly white and straight. He always takes care of himself — of his appearance. It shows in the carefully carved muscles that flex in his abdomen as he pistons into you; in the well groomed locks of his dark hair. This is the sweetest liquor he could ever indulge in — enjoying not only destroying you, but of making a show of it. 

He must always be the performer and the audience; having his cake and eating it too. 

A fury of grunted whispers slice straight through your ear drums. It’s a hardly comprehensible slurring of English and Russian, and though your fuzzy brain can’t make sense of it, you know what it means. Marco teeters close to the edge, hands dragging your body back against him as he holds himself flush against the crux of your ass. Hot warmth spills into you, and despite the hand around your throat, you’re finally able to breathe. This impiety does not offer you comfort in your tainted skin, but it offers you the one commodity you rarely seem to come by: rest. 

That incessant ache lurks deep in the pit of your stomach, even as Marco pulls out, but it’s quiet. Doesn’t demand your attention. You feel the dull throb that harasses the raw tissue of your cunt, and you try not to wince as you feel his seed spill out. Chuckling, he releases your throat in favor of wrapping his fingers around your hair, bunching as much as he can into the palm of his hand. It’s overgrown. Messy and dead. But he refuses to allow you to cut it. 

Nothing about you gets to change without his permission — not even your appearance. 

“Look at you, my sweet little girl,” he coos. Sharp teeth nip at the side of your jaw and you wince. You’re surprised his mouth doesn’t unhinge; that he doesn’t shove you into his maw and swallow you whole. “So goddamn perfect. Can’t get enough of this pussy. Christ.” 

When Marco backs away, you swear your knees will give out. Without his puppeteering hands to hold you up and bend you to his desires, you’re nothing but mush. A disgusting mess of smeared eyeliner and dripping cum. You can hardly stomach the sight of your body in the mirror. Neck littered with faint teeth marks, body bare and on display — used and abused to his content. You’re abhorrent. A pathetic creature you can’t stand to behold. 

Marco’s belt clinks just as a knock rattles the door. Your heart thuds loud enough in your ears that it nearly drowns out the sound of his heavy footsteps crossing the glorified dressing room. You attempt to steady yourself as you back away from the mirror, but the straps of your heels dig into your toes. They’re the only article of clothing you’re allowed. Marco says he likes the way they make your legs look longer. Likes the angle it gives him when he bends you over to fuck you.

When you turn to face him, he’s already sitting on the loveseat shoved into the corner of the room. A fresh bottle of mead sits on the tray next to him, and he pours himself a generous amount before knocking it back for a sip. The soft amber liquid overflows and dribbles past his lips, soaking his bare chest. His verdant eyes find you as he collets the drink on the tips of his fingers, then sucks them clean one by one. 

“Didn’t you hear that knock? You have a guest,” he says, tilting his jaw toward the door. 

With each step you take, you feel Marco’s seed dribble down your legs. It makes a sticky mess between your thighs, and you know he wouldn’t have it any other way. This is how he marks you. How he makes sure everyone knows who you belong to before he lets them take a piece of you home. 

A stranger with a thick neck stands at the door when you open it. His eyes are an odd shade of grey that sends a shiver down your spine as he looks you over, greedily drinking in the sight of your bare body. The chill of his gaze gets worse as the door closes behind him. He begins to crowd you and the sharp stench of vodka fills your nose. There’s something familiar about him. Every man in this club is familiar to you, in some way. Always hazy. Too fuzzy to place a name to. You think it’s your brain’s way of protecting itself. Of purging the bad things done to you as best as it can, lest you crumble in the palm of Marco’s hands. 

The sharp point of your heel catches on the plush rug that sprawls out in front of Marco’s feet, and you squeak as you nearly lose your footing. Both Marco and the stranger chuckle. The cacophonous tone grates against your eardrums, but you hide your discomfort as you stare at the ground. You wait. For the exchange. For the banter. They speak in Russian with one another through laughter as cash is passed to Marco. The air is still cold, and your thighs are still soiled, but the stranger looks at you like he would never dream of having any other meal than you. 

“Well, go on then,” Marco prompts. You look up at him with dull eyes. He swirls the mead in his cup as he tilts his head. “On your knees, babe. Wants to use your mouth tonight. Be a good girl, now.” 

Comply. Listen. It’s all you can do. So you sink to your knees like the well behaved girl you always are. Resting on your haunches, you look up at the man with a tight throat. He smiles, and your stomach drops. Roils and screams as he begins to unbuckle his belt. As he fishes himself from his trousers, you remind yourself all things are temporary. Especially pain. 

Nothing lasts forever — though, it often feels like it will. 

When it’s all said and done — when you’re thoroughly used — Marco walks you to the door like a gentleman. Hastily adorned clothes hang from your body as you pull your jumper tight around your core. Your cervix still aches from the virulent abuse it had taken earlier, but you attempt to ignore it as he opens the exit. Your only reprieve from this nightmare is that he didn’t parade you throughout the club like this; looking like a whore for hire. Tonight, he allows you to take the back exit far away from prying eyes. 

Cool night air cuts through your scanty clothes, and you stare out at the vast space of the car park before you. Weekdays bring little business and customers to Makarov’s club. Most of the strippers who work for him end up lazing around in back rooms and closets, getting drunk or high enough that they can forget all about their shitty night. 

You wish you had that luxury. 

“Hey,” Marco hums, grabbing your wrist. You turn to face him. Dim shadows from the flickering hallway lights cast his face in darkness, but the glint in his eyes is unmistakable. “See you tomorrow, babe.” 

He sends you off with a kiss. Sloppy and wet — he likes messes. Savors making one out of you. Sweet mead and mint seeps into your mouth as you kiss him back with a tight jaw. When his hands caress your cheeks, pulling you closer, you wonder if he can taste the brine and bitter cum that lurks in the back of your throat. If he relishes in feeling every single way in which you’re destroyed. 

“See you tomorrow,” you murmur. 

Breathing only comes easy the moment you’re locked in your car. The movement is fluid — that gentle expanding of your chest — but it’s still agonizing. Diaphragm seizing with the sobs you fight back, it’s another reminder that you’re alive. As long as you draw breath, you don’t belong to yourself. 

Hot tears sear down your cheeks as you turn the key in the ignition. A gentle rumble follows as the engine hums to life. It’s a smooth, quiet purr. A car that’s much more expensive than you deserve. A lovely gift from Marco. It’s not at all uncommon for him to give you things. Expensive things. A car; an apartment; clothes — you’ll pay it back eventually. The numbers just add up to the big debt that’s hung over your head since you were sixteen. It ebbs and flows but not enough to save you. Not enough for you to belong to yourself again. 

As you bring the heels of your hands up to wipe your eyes, a gentle glow catches your attention. It moves. Dances and swirls in the numbra of the car park. Blinking, you focus on it. Golden yellow embers flicker and fade as life is breathed into them. It’s faint, but it reminds you of the well adored fireflies in America. Squinting, you can make out the outline of a car. It sits patiently and silent, but the windows are cracked. Faint smoke swirls through the openings where it climbs into the dull night sky and dissipates. 

Someone sits inside of the car, puffing away, but when your eyes lock onto the fingers pinching a cigarette, they freeze. Glowing embers quickly smother and die somewhere inside of the vehicle, and you’re left with nothing. You stare into the darkness, and it stares back. You feel its gaze tingling along your spine. Sniffing, you look away from that void. Be it man, or be it monster, you know nothing ever happens to you without Marco’s permission. 

That sentiment is equally as terrifying as it is comforting. 

When you arrive home — to the apartment paid for with your own body — you shower. No amount of water and soap is enough. You can lather yourself in all of Marco’s favorite scents, but the mint on his tongue still follows you everywhere. As you exit the bathroom, you leave feeling just as disgusting as when you entered. Nothing but some sordid creature that hardly knows how to take care of herself. 

Looking at yourself in the mirror, you feel sick. Golden glitter still stains your eyelids, and the teeth marks on the side of your throat have only grown more noticeable. Still, nothing is worse than the mark on the back of your neck. Though you can’t see it, you feel it. It makes your skin itch and crawl, and you find your fingernails tearing at it. As if you could rip it off like a bandaid. But it stays. Festers and embeds itself deep inside of you. 

Swallowing, you try to forget it as you continue to dry off. This is your brief moment of comfort, where you’re too far out of reach and well out of sight. Your only reprieve before you spend another night rotting as a trophy of glitter and bone. 

Weekends are better, but only marginally so. Wide eyed men fill Makarov’s club to the brim with wads of cash and twitchy fingers. Lingering gazes and hands brush against the crux of your ass and the back of your neck as Marco parades you through the crowd by your wrist. With your strappy golden heels and matching exiguous outfit, you’re flashy merchandise. Something soft and sweet he flaunts in an attempt to make a quick quid or two as a way to fund his means of pleasure and keeping control of you. While you’d normally spend most nights on your hands and knees, on busy nights, Marco allows you to earn your living in an honorable way —

— dancing. 

Sharp heels tap on soft mahogany as your hips and arms sway, practiced and repetitive, atop a round table. Dull music thrums and shakes the dust off your bones as the men on the crescent sofa surrounding you chat and laugh the night away. Marco’s in the mix of them all, cold glass resting on his knee as his foot taps against the floor. A hazy film covers the spring green of his irises as the liquor settles deep into his marrow. Each time you rotate his way, you watch his pupils dilate. A vast forest covered by the smokey darkness of that void, he licks at the alcohol on his lips as he stares at your clothed cunt. 

His fantasy fills your mind before his own can even make sense of it. Every spare glass and bottle that litters the table around your feet would be thrown on the floor in an instant just to put you on your back. To open your vulnerable stomach. To tear off the little clothing protecting your feeble dignity and truly put you to work. He’d spread your limbs and pin them like a specimen to a board, and he would cut and slice until you have nothing left to hide. Until there is nothing left of you at all. 

“Babe!” 

Marco’s voice cuts through the discordance of the crowd, and pulls you out of a nightmare and back into the present. Your terrifying reality. Slowly, you turn to face him, and he looks up at you with a grin on his face and a card stuck between his fingers. That sly haze still obscures his vision as he offers you his hand. Numb to the feeling of his skin against your own, you take it and allow him to help you down from the table. He wastes no time in dipping his fingers into the strap of your lingerie where he secures the card beneath the band. 

“Looks like you’ve got work to do,” he teases. 

Warm hands settle on the curve of your hips as he guides you to turn around, faced away from him. Then, they wander up. Greedy fingers brush along the line of your spine before they find purchase in your hair, grabbing it as if he were trying to help you put it up. You hate how long it’s gotten. That he won’t let you cut it. He doesn’t care if it’s straight, curly, braided — anything. Marco wants it long. Uses it like a leash in which he keeps you bound to him with. 

“I know you’re a good girl, so I’m sure you won’t forget, but a little reminder never hurts,” he coos into your ear. Intoxicated breath fans across the side of your face as he leans closer to breathe you in. A shiver prickles across your skin as he kisses the back of your neck, and your throat involuntarily contracts at the sensation. It’s as if he’s marking you again. Branding you. “If this… patron wants more, I get to watch.”

Swallowing, you nod as best as you can with his fist gripping your hair. “I know.” 

Chuckling, he relinquishes his grip on you before stepping back. “Of course you do, smart thing you are. I’ll be waiting here for you.” 

You wait until you’re well away from Marco and his friends before you fish out the card he stuck beneath the strap along your hip. A pitched ringing plagues your ears as you enter the VIP section of the club. Things are quieter. Less crowded and the speakers don’t blare as loud. But the silence allows something malevolent to burrow inside of you. It festers as incessant tinnitus and broiling nervosity in your stomach. A wordless, desperate prayer breathes past your lips as you approach the room in which your patron awaits you. 

You pray he is kind. You pray that he wants nothing more than to hold you and vent his problems, like others have. 

When you open the door and step into the threshold that always makes your palms sweat, you think for a single fleeting moment that you are lucky. The room is abandoned. Dim lights illuminate the dull leather of the couch in front of you and yet there is no man sitting there for you to serve. Gentle music drones over the wireless speakers, giving the impression that there should be someone here with you. The attendants even set out the ice and whiskey for his drink. It now thaws on the tray, water nearly overspilling in its decay. 

Brows furrowing together, you look down at the card to ensure you haven’t misread it in your haze. The attendant’s handwriting is chicken scratch. He always manages to make a nine look like a zero, but you’re certain this is a six. The door clicks shut behind you as you sigh, too defeated and confused to make sense of this confusion. A pit forms in your stomach at the thought of slinking back to Marco with some saturnine cloud hanging over your head. 

If you can’t find work tonight, he’ll make some for you. 

That pit quickly becomes a gaping hole the moment a fat palmed hand clasps over your mouth. Cardstock flutters out of your fingers like dainty butterfly wings, and hits the ground just as your back collides with an immovable chest. You don’t scream, but your heart nearly stops when you feel the cold press of metal against your throat. You are stuck in a vicious cycle. One of fear and sharp blades you’ll never wield yourself. 

“Not a fuckin’ word.” The voice that growls in your ear rattles your spine as the words erupt in his chest. Faint tobacco stains his fingers. Its earthy aroma seeps into your nose as your hands tremble against his tattooed forearm. “Don’t wanna hurt ya, so make this easy and listen to me, yeah?” 

Marco has taught you plenty well enough that the word no should be expunged from your vocabulary, so you nod. 

“Good.” 

You’re as stiff as a board when this stranger releases you. No amount of curiosity can get you to turn around and face the violent truth, not even as a thick jacket is tossed over your shoulders. The fabric is warm. Freshly removed off of the man behind you and placed on you as if it were a blanket. He presses his hand on your lower back and despite his caution, you still jump. 

“We’re going for a quick drive. Easy now. You’ll be home before sun up. C’mon,” he mutters. 

There is no such thing as saying no. There is no such thing as fighting. 

The knife vanishes from your sight but it’s all you can think about as this stranger leads you through the haze of the club. Everything blurs around you as you’re escorted to the nearest exit through quiet hallways that reek of cheap perfume. The only thing you can focus on is your feet. The glittery heels that match perfectly with your pedicure. You want to trip. To fall forward and hit the ground. Cry out and demand attention. The hand on the small of your back is all too grounding for you to make any mistakes. 

You approach and exit through an emergency fire door and the alarm doesn’t trip. Night air hits your skin like razor blades as you’re escorted across the car park. He shoves you into the back of a black car, and you only squeal a little when he slams the door behind you. When he situates himself in the driver's seat, the car hums to life and quiet lights flicker on just enough to scarcely illuminate his face in the rearview mirror. His eyes are dark. The darkest you’ve ever seen. 

“There’s a blindfold in the seat next to you. Put it on,” he orders. Stuck on autopilot, you do as he says. It’s a thick scrap of cloth, something you hastily tie around your eyes and knot at the back of your head with trembling fingers. It only touches your skin for a fleeting moment before it’s soaked in briney tears. “Don’t even think ‘bout takin’ it off.” 

Not even your morbid curiosity can convince you to peek from between the threads. The word no is not in your vocabulary. Neither is disobeyment. 

Each turn the man takes as he brings you to some unknown destination has you swaying in your seat. Every pule that leaves your lips is smothered behind the palm of your hand as you wipe snot along the ridges of your knuckles. You do well to keep the aftermath of your fear to yourself. Even though this man has abducted you — something that was all too easy for him to do as you fawned. You’ll surely pay for this when Marco finds you again — you do not want to ruin the coat around your shoulders with spit. 

Of course you think of escape. You always do. It’s a self soothing daydream that florescences in the neurons of your brain. Unlock the door. Open the handle. Jump out. It’ll hurt. It always does. And it’ll hurt when you’re caught, but it always does. 

You don’t move. Freedom is just a dream.

Despite the knife he greeted you with, this man is surprisingly gentle. His touch is soft when he eventually parks the car, and his fingers do not dig too terribly into your skin as he helps free you from the back seat of his car. You do not trust his softness as he leads you into a room that smells like alcohol and cigarettes. Nicotine burns your nose as you’re settled into a plush seat, and for a fleeting moment you think you were only driven around the block before being thrown right back into Marco’s maw. 

That theory is proven terribly wrong when your blindfold is ripped from your eyes. 

A man with impressive tepidity sits across an antique wooden desk. Rich red walls close in on you. Crushing. Looming. Smoke blurs the space between the two of you as he puffs away at a thick cigar, blue eyes scanning a single piece of paper. He’s dressed nicer than you anticipated. A dark button up shirt, neatly combed hair and groomed beard — he hums to himself as his eyes scan the page in front of him before they land on you. You look away as if his gaze has burnt you. Instead, you focus on your nails and the manicure Marco made you get last week. Baby pink gel; his favorite color on you. 

“It’ll take more than crocodile tears to tug on my heartstrings, love,” he hums. 

The climate in your mouth suddenly becomes sere. All the snot and saliva that had built up before seems to vanish at his words. He’s nonchalant; terrifyingly so. 

“I don’t… uhm,” you attempt. 

“No need to explain yourself,” he interjects. “I understand. We all need to make a living.” Pausing, his eyes flicker back to the paper in his hands. “You’re Marco’s girl, aren’t you?” 

Thick obloquy heats the pit of your stomach as your fingers twitch. That term — that title. It fills you with more shame than you can name. You attempt to swallow down the cotton-like dryness in your mouth as your hand paws at the back of your neck. Expertly manicured nails scratch at the skin, and you wish nothing more than to peel back the layers of your epidermis and toss them aside to rot. 

Stiff, you nod. 

“John Price,” he introduces. 

He drops the name like it bears weight. As if it should crush you with each heavy letter that it carries, yet it doesn’t add on to the anxiety raging in your stomach. Your hand falls back into your lap as you dare to look at him once more. His eyes are sharp, as if he’s using his gaze alone to cut back your layers, but there is nothing to show for it. No secret except for a sour ignominy that you’ve carried for so long it imprints in your very skin. 

“Has Marco not told you about me?” he asks. He’s not upset; or if he is, he hides it well behind curious eyes. 

“No,” you answer truthfully. 

John chuckles. “Thought the man would’ve at least told his benefactor about me.” 

You blink. “...Benefactor?” 

“No need to play dumb. Like I said, it takes a lot more than faux tears to get me to feel sorry for you.” 

Your fear and confusion grips you so relentlessly that you don’t even feel it anymore. It’s wound so tightly around you, restricting blood flow to your body, that everything tingles if it is not numb. This man — John Price — gives you no chance to rest or fix your muddled thoughts. He tosses the paper in his hands across the wooden top of the desk, and your eyes nearly cross at the numbers printed on the pristine sheet and the amount of commas between them. There’s math. Addition and subtraction. Transactions of a bank account with a name at the top: 

Marco Anatolijus Smirnova

Funny. You’ve never seen his full name before. He’s only ever been Marco.

You’ve only ever been his girl. 

While you stare at the numbers, John throws question after question at you, none of which you know how to answer. He asks about transactions. He asks about what they’re for. Each and every time he’s met with the same answer. You are just as clueless as him. Marco does not concern you with his real work. The work that gets him enough money to have a bank account as padded as the one you’re looking at currently. 

His finances make the sparse contents of your stomach curdle. The amount of money you owe him for your unfortunate existence is trivial compared to what he already has. So minuscule it would hardly budge his savings. Marco has been making you work half your life away for something akin to a mere couple quid to him, and it stings just as bad as it always does. Seeing it at face value just how trapped you are — how Marco owns you and always will. 

“Don’t get coy with me.” John’s getting frustrated. Each question he presents you with is met with the same carking response of I don’t know. It’s nothing but the truth, but he seems to be informed otherwise. You’re significantly less important than he believes you to be, but the man looming behind you doesn’t help in settling your nerves enough to explain your situation properly. “Word on the street is Marco’s girl supplies him with his spending money. You’re tellin’ me I heard wrong? Or are you too daft to ask him what he’s using his finances on?” 

You swallow. What a polite way to put it — the things Marco does to you. 

“He… He makes money off of me but I… I don’t know how much or what he uses it for,” you choke out. “Well, I… I know a little bit but it’s not, it’s not like, whatever you’re asking, it’s just… it’s stupid things, it’s like, my housing or… it’s not… important.” 

There’s a quiet beat that settles between you and John, and you feel whatever vexation he harbored for you previously quickly evaporate in the air. He’s silent for so long that you force yourself to look up at him. You’re expecting curiosity, even the most morbid of iterations. John Price is not curious. You can tell by the way his jaw unclenches and eyes soften that he finally understands what you’ve been too inept to say. 

“How long have you been workin’ for him?” he questions, softer this time. 

“Since… I was sixteen,” you reply. 

“Sixteen?” He’s appalled. Repeats the word like it’s the worst taste he’s ever had on his tongue. “What’s he making you do for work? Dance?” 

Shame sears the back of your neck, leaving nothing but wounded, marked skin in its wake. You palm at the burn. Try to will it away with desperate fingers, and the movement causes the coat resting limply around your body to slip off your shoulder. This is the first time you’ve considered lying to John. Omitting the truth just to save the small shred of dignity you still have left, no matter how imaginary it might be. 

“Yeah. I… dance on stage but he… has me do private sessions too but he… sometimes he-” 

A hand brushes against the side of your arm and you flinch so hard your teeth nearly pierce through your tongue. Weathered wood squeaks beneath your weight as you freeze after nearly jumping out of your skin. This well meaning hand that startled you so terribly is well meaning. It pauses in its endeavor to cover your body once again with this stranger's coat, and instead lets it fall. You had almost forgotten all about him — the strange man who stole away Marco’s favorite toy from right under his nose. 

John and the stranger share a look as you retreat back into yourself. Hands folded over your bare lap, you didn’t feel naked until they finally understood who you are — what you are. Pristine nails dig into your palms as you swallow back the bilious vomit that threatens to spew free. 

“If we take you home, will you be safe there?” His eyes land back on you, but you can’t bring yourself to give him the same courtesy. 

You shake your head. “He’s going to be so mad. He… he pays for my apartment. I don’t have any money of my own. I don’t have a phone. I… There’s nothing. I have nothing. Marco’s provided everything for me and I never… he never gave me the chance to…” 

“I understand,” John interjects, carefully quelling your rambling. He waits for a moment before leaning back in his chair, retracting every bit of malice he exuded while interrogating you. “I’m sorry, love. Should’ve done our research better.” 

“It’s okay… Marco didn’t leave much of me to find.” 

John’s eyes darken in a way that would leave most men with their tail tucked between their legs. You’re too busy making yourself small to notice. “We’ll fix that.” 

In the next few hours, your life changes drastically. It’s sudden and feels just as violent as everything always does, yet it is intimidatingly soft. The gazes that are cast your way scream pity instead of lust, and you are handled with so much care you’re convinced you’ve become nothing more than a tchotchke. At least these men treat you with fragility rather than flippancy. 

You learn the man who took you from Makarov’s club is named Riley. You’re able to get a better look at him without the blindfold and terror willing your vision elsewhere. He’s intimidating. Arms drenched in ink, it’s almost enough to smother the scars that map the story around his body. It can’t shroud the ones on his face. The thin line that dissects his eyebrow, or the one on his nose which only makes the curve of the bridge more dramatic. His eyes are darker than anything you’ve ever seen before — so empty and yet full at the same time; nothing but a contradiction as he watches you pull his coat tighter around your shoulders. 

It is decided that — for your safety — you are to live with Riley until it is determined you are out of Marco’s reach. 

Despite your apprehension, you can’t say no. 

Riley’s house feels like a den. Well guarded but comfortable, the plush cushions that cradle you on the couch feel false. Fake. Everything does, but it’s mostly you. Your hair. Your clothes. Your skin. Nothing about you is tangible, not even to yourself. 

You’re still swaddled in Riley’s coat by the time he tells you that your room is ready. Really, it’s his room. You want to tell him you’d rather sleep on the couch than in some stranger’s bed, but you can hardly bring yourself to speak a single word to him. He scares you, but not in the way people usually do. It’s not the fear of pain that he riles within you, but rather something light. Something that flickers and sputters, waiting to grow. You smother it as he hands you proper clothes to change into. You don’t know where he got them from or why they fit so well, and you don’t care to ask. 

His room is… what you expected of a man like him. Plain walls, sturdy wardrobe and bed. A wristwatch ticks on the nightstand. It laments quietly, so much so that you only notice it when you sink into the mattress. He’s changed the sheets and pillowcases for you, but it’s not enough to snuff out the faint scent of tobacco. You like it, you decide. Or rather, you don’t mind it. Grounding earthy notes are much better than the synthetic chemicals Marco soaks himself in. 

Sleep comes about as easy as you expect it to. A TV drones on quietly in the living room as you toss and turn among unfamiliar sheets. Dull anxiety claws within the cage of your chest, but it holds itself at bay better than you anticipated. Or rather, you are just too numb to fully appreciate the pain. You should be afraid. You know it, and it’s lurking there even if you can’t fully feel it yet. 

It manifests suddenly as you feel the ghost of Marco’s hands on you. His teeth digging into your skin, demanding flesh. He wets his maw with your blood just as he wets his cock with your cunt. It sears. Rips through you in the brutal way it always does. Raw. Sinew on bone. And you don’t cry because it’s what he wants. He wants that brine and that sapor and he’ll claim it with claws and a smile. 

His mantra pants. It sweats and drips. It’s wet on your ear. 

There’s no escaping him.

You wake just after the sun does, and it is only then that you cry. 

Grief is the quintessence of escape. You’ve crossed the threshold — you were dragged beyond it — and now there’s no way back to the way things were. Your life wasn’t good, and it was far from comfortable, but it was familiar. You only know how to navigate things when bound. Chained to an unforgiving master. How are you supposed to live with free hands? 

What happens when Marco yanks your leash and finds no tension? 

What becomes of his favorite toy — Marco’s girl — then? 

By the time you finally gather the courage to leave the room, you find Riley in the kitchen. It’s what drew you out of your hiding spot originally; that scent of freshly cooked food. Sizzling meat and steaming eggs. He works at the stove with his back turned to you, arms dancing above the heat as he fries up a breakfast that should make your mouth water, yet it fails to do so. 

“Morning.” He hears you before he sees you, but he pauses with a spatula in hand to look at you from over his shoulder. He gestures to the island in front of you — something you suspect was only built to compensate for the lack of counter space on either side of the stove — then hums to himself as he turns his attention back to his work. “Breakfast’ll be finished soon, if ya wanna grab a seat.” 

There’s a stiffness that plagues your limbs as you sit on the high top chair Riley pointed to. It rolls off you in waves. Taints the air; souring it with your presence. You are not comfortable in this place — with this man. His palm haunts the chapped skin of your lips the same way his chest haunts your back and you can’t help but wonder what he and John would have done to you had they deemed you guilty. If they had looked at Marco’s girl and saw an opportunity rather than a pitiful creature, would you be sitting here now? 

Breakfast is a quiet affair of scraping plates and muffled chewing. Riley doesn’t sit next to you. Rather, he stands on the other side of the counter with a bowed head as he shovels egg and bacon into his mouth as if he’ll starve if not. He tries to rest his elbows on the counter, but it’s too low. It curves his spine uncomfortably, and he shifts as if standing on hot coals. 

Hunger does not pull at your stomach. Nervosity fills you to the brim — too full to consume something other than the ache. 

“I’m sorry ‘bout last night.” Riley’s nearly finished with his food by the time he speaks, prompting you to look up at him for the first time since you sat down. All you’ve managed to do for the last few minutes is drag the tip of your fork around your scrambled eggs. “Boys really thought you were dangerous. That you were workin’ with Makarov and Marco. Shouldn’t have grabbed you like that.” 

Dull teeth dig into the wet flesh inside your cheeks. “It’s okay.” 

“It’s not okay,” Riley argues adamantly. “But I am sorry.” 

It’s difficult to discern the purpose of his apology. Is it to make himself feel better for what he did? For dragging you out of that club and into John Price’s office? To interrogate you until your innocence was proven? Does he say sorry to comfort himself, or you? To prove he’s not as monstrous as he looks with dark eyes and tight lips. He is, after all, awfully kind for a monster. You have yet to meet a beast that knows how to apologize without digging their teeth into you afterwards. 

Perhaps his apology is truly for you. To settle fried nerves. To make you feel safe. 

You know better than that. 

You were safer in the clutches of Marco’s jaw than you are now. 

“Riley, can… can I ask something?” 

A cheeky remark bubbles along his tongue. You just did. He takes one look at you and decides to bite it back. “Course.” 

A noisome lurch pulls at your stomach, embittering the sparse bites of food you were able to force down your throat. Thunder roars in your chest as your heart attempts to break free — leave your body behind to rot while it escapes. 

“Would I… Could I get the pill?” you ask. 

“The pill?” he repeats. 

“Yeah, like… the… the morning after pill?” 

His silence doesn’t surprise you, but it stretches long enough to be concerning. Looking up from your cold food, you’re met with soft eyes. They’re the softest ones that have looked at you for what feels like ages. Gentle. They don’t greedily rake over your body to soak in every twitch of your skin — rather, he reads you. Between the lines and and in the margins, he devours every word. 

For the first time in your life he makes you feel more like a victim than a toy, and you’re not sure if that feels any better. 

“Will you be alright by yourself if I go buy it for you?” he asks. There’s no judgment; only pity. 

You nod. 

Riley mulls it over as his tongue swipes along the back of his teeth. When he straightens, he brings his plate with him as he steps back and hums. Your attention is quickly brought back to your hands as he sets the dish in the sink to be cleaned later. 

“Alright.” You try not to choke as he motions to your plate. “Should eat. I’ll be back soon, yeah?” 

Once again, you nod. “Okay.” 

Not a single morsel has been consumed off of your plate by the time Riley returns home, and you are not in your seat. Disappointment buzzes at the base of his skull, but he’s not surprised. He knows what it’s like to be too full to eat — to be plagued with something not even hunger can triumph. He sets aside the pill box to clean up after you. Food in the bin. Plate in the sink to be washed later. 

It’s quiet. It’s never this quiet. Not even when he’s home by himself, which he usually is. Riley stands in the kitchen with furrowed brows as he looks around the room like he’s misplaced something. His keys. His lighter. 

God, he could use a smoke. 

Heavy feet cause old wood to creak as he pokes his head into the bedroom. An imprint of your body still dips into the mattress from this morning, but it’s gone cold. He was going to stay politely stationed in the doorway until the thought flickers across his mind that you’ve left. Got too scared of the brute whose home you’re trapped in and ran off. Away. Hiding from the world — from Marco. 

There’s little reprieve to be found when he notices the light shining through the crack of the bathroom door, but it’s smothered the moment he hears you crying. They’re pathetic, stifled pules. Ones you attempt to desperately hide, yet they bleed out of you anyway. He wants to leave you alone, to let your emotions wash over you, but he can’t. 

Even with your crying, the house is too quiet. 

“Everythin’ alright?” 

Both his voice and knock startle you, and your sobbing swells. Breathing out of control, he can hear you choke on the snot flowing through your sinuses. You’re panicked, and he realizes that this is more than grief. More than anxiety. More than fear. 

You’re terrified. 

You’re standing in the bathtub like a scared cat when Riley opens the door. Tears stream down your face. Relentless. They nearly glisten as bright as the kitchen knife in your hand. 

You told yourself it would be easier for him to clean up the mess of your corpse if you killed yourself in the bathtub. Blood festers and rots in the smallest of crevices, but there’s none of that to be found in the ceramic that surrounds you. However, you’re having trouble getting any blood to flow at all. You’re not sure if it’s you or the knife, but you’re hardly able to break the skin on your wrists. The crimson blood that flows through your minor cuts feels trivial. There needs to be more. 

It’s not enough. You’re scared that you might have to stab yourself. Spill your guts in the tub. Witness your offals for yourself before you fade away. Something. You want to die, but you don’t want it to hurt. 

You don’t want it to hurt, but you need to leave. 

“Hey. Hey, easy now.” Riley feels as if he’s talking to an animal. Some feral cat poised to bite and scratch if he’s not cautious. He approaches you with his palms faced out in surrender, and the walls around you seem to close in. “You don’t wanna do this sweetheart. Give me the knife.” 

“You don’t understand. I can’t. I can’t do this. You-You don’t know what he’ll do to me. Marco he... It’s- I- fuck, I can’t. I can’t do this, please just let me do this.” 

Each word is muffled. So far from your ears that it hardly reaches you. Still, they spew along with your cries. It doesn’t deter Riley from closing in on you. Swallowing the spit building on your tongue, you hold the knife with both hands. A simple kitchen blade, now brandished like a weapon. It’s nearly laughable. You couldn’t even kill yourself. How can you expect to hurt him? 

“I know it doesn’t feel like it, but it’s gonna be okay. We’ll make it okay, but I can’t do that if you’re not here.” His words feel stupid in his mouth, but he knows he has to try something. “Please. Give me the knife. I don’t wanna hurt you. Hey, give- fuck.” 

There’s a lunge. Grabbing. Blade on skin. Blood on tile. 

Riley meant it when he said he didn’t want to hurt you, but you still cry out as he yanks you out of the tub. Once again, your back is against his chest. You are enveloped by him as the two of you sink onto the bathroom floor, held down by his weight, and it is then that you truly can no longer hold yourself together. Vision darkening, chest ceasing; you panic. It rips through you with shaking hands and writhing legs, causing your feet to kick at the dull kitchen knife at your feet. 

For a moment, you are lost. Consumed by overwhelming grief and fear, and still Riley holds you through it all. You feel his heart beating against your spine, feel the exhale of his lungs dance on the top of your head. It’s a flicker in the darkness. In the primal fear of knowing you are still somehow chained to the man who has abused you for countless years. 

Dread transcends physical space. Marco planted it inside of you the first time his lips found the quiver in your throat. 

“Breathe, sweetheart. I’ve got ya.” 

Riley’s voice fades in like radio static. Disconnected and muffled, yet growing evermore clear. Then, it hits all at once. The slight sting of your wrists and the ache in your leg. Did you trip? You feel the growing bruise pulse and throb on your shin, and another one in your hip. It’s hardly bearable, but neither of them are as uncomfortable as the warm, sticky mess seeping into your shirt. 

It takes several seconds for you to realize it’s blood. 

“There, good. It’s alright,” Riley whispers. His voice is thick — heavy enough to make your stomach sink. 

“Am- Am I bleeding?” you stutter. 

“No, you’re alright. Don’t worry ‘bout the blood.” 

But you do. You worry about it because you don’t want it to hurt, you don’t even think you want to die anymore — you just want it gone. For it to dissolve around you, or for you to waste away into dust. Your chin rests against your chest as you look for the source, scouring your own body for the wound. Your wrists, your arms your legs —

— the wound is on Riley. 

Blood gushes through a gash on the top of his forearm, obscuring your view of the damage. It’s just as steady as every stream you ever used to jump over as a child. It slices through the meticulously crafted ink that graces his skin, and you feel as if you’ve cut through the canvas of a painting. Ruined something good. Something more useful than yourself. More than that, you hurt him. 

“Oh my god, your arm,” you gasp. 

“It’s nothing,” Riley attempts to assure. 

“There’s so much blood, I-I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to.”

“It’s nothing,” he reiterates. “Just a cat scratch, sweetheart.” 

His cat scratch takes twenty minutes to patch up. You count the time on the ticking of his wristwatch as you lay in his bed. Body too weak and afflicted with malaise to make something of yourself, you stare at the ceiling as you listen to him hiss and grunt. It’s the blood, you’re sure. Despite the flow, he manages to smother it to nothing more than a scab beneath pristine dressings. 

It takes him another ten minutes to clean you up. He assesses the wounds you left on yourself — shallow horizontal cuts along the delicate skin of your wrists. You stare at them as he cleans and bandages them, and you tell yourself the sting from the antiseptic is what makes your eyes water. 

You’ve created a mess for nothing, and Riley is the one paying for it. 

“There.” He secures the last piece of tape on the gauze. It feels unnecessary. Band-aids would have sufficed, and you tried to tell him as much only for him to mutter something about infections. “Not too tight?” 

You shake your head. “It’s fine.” 

Content, he hums as he steps away from the bed, gathering up items off of the nightstand. You watch as his fingers swallow rolls of tape, forearm flexing beneath his own dressings. Teeth digging into your bottom lip, your heart lurches, as the guilt pierces through you like a blade. You’re not sure why it lurks. Is it because you hurt him? Because you tried to leave a corpse for him to come home to? 

“I’ll get you some water. Ought to take that pill sooner rather than later,” Riley says, turning to leave the room. 

He only makes it a few steps before you stop him. “I lied.” 

Pausing, his eyes find you with more confusion than you expected. “Yeah?” 

“I lied about… needing the pill. I just said it so you would leave,” you admit. You push yourself up from the bed, legs swinging over the side of the mattress to sit and properly look at him. “When… I first… Marco used to make me take birth control. Like, the actual pills. I got pregnant anyway. Made me get the IUD after that. It’s more effective, so I don’t think I’ll really need it. I mean, I’ve never needed it before, so…” 

Listening, Riley nods as you bare the raw parts of yourself. It’s impossible to share without that warble in your tone — that pain that always leaks into your voice — but in some strange way, it feels good. Refreshing. You’re airing out an old, festering wound that hasn’t ever seen the light of day. 

“You got a kid to take care of? If they’re with Marco-” 

“No,” you interrupt. Riley’s words die on his tongue. “No, he… he made me get an abortion, too. It’s for the best, really. Kids shouldn’t be around that monster anyway.” 

Again, he nods. The house feels loud. Every inch of the four walls around you seems to buzz with an energy you’re not privy to. 

“Well, some water wouldn’t hurt. Food wouldn’t either, since you never finished breakfast,” he continues as he turns. “Want anything specific?” 

He’s so… casual. Nonchalant despite the trauma you subjected him to. He should be angry with you. Furious at having made a mess; at having hurt him. His entire life was turned upside down the very same moment yours was — he should hate you for it, but he doesn’t. 

“Whatever’s easiest.” The floorboards are loose by the door. They squeak as he crosses the threshold, and you feel your stomach lurch. “Riley?” 

Pausing, he turns on his heel as his head pokes back into the room. “Yeah?” 

So calm. So patient. 

“Thank you. For everything. I just… Thank you, Riley,” you choke. 

For the first time since he caught you in that club, he smiles; small and kind. 

“Just Simon to you, yeah?”

follow @daughterofcore for updates/notifs

[seaweed-whump]

So you know how when you get a new dog you socialize them by having them meet other dogs? its so they dont get freaked out by other dogs being around but anyway I was thinking about that w/ pet whump and then I started thinking about all the other ways we treat dogs (they're not all bad but doing it to a person seems like fun prompts yknow?)

(note that not all of these are ok but they are somewhat common)

Anyways we got

- kennel training

- restaurants that set out a bowl of water for pets on hot days (yknow the ones that look like theyre most slobber than water bc all the pets drink out of the same bowl that doesnt get replaced all day)

- letting random kids pet your pet so they learn to put up w/ bullshit

- hand gesture commands

- only feeding them once or twice a day/forgetting to feed them

- spiked collars

- public washing places in pet stores (like petco)

- pet halloween costumes

- kids being assholes to pets bc they wont get in trouble

- leaving in cars

- outside pets

- flavored treats

- those brain stimulation toys (like you put the treat in the ball and they gotta try and get it out)

- social media accounts for pets

- posts about pranking pets

- *ahem* breeding places

- animal control being called on loose pets

anyways im sure theres more but. i was thinking about these ones

[signalhill-if]

🍊 for Levi PRETTY PLEASE?

(Sorry I haven't gotten to these yet, I had an absolutely awful day yesterday!)

The question boils down to "what is their favourite food?" and the answer is...

TOURTIÈRE!

I never know how to answer these questions but I know this French Canadian* bastard would eat the FUCK out of a good tourtière. As would I. I am also that French Canadian* bastard.

For those of you who do not know, tourtière is a delicious meat pie from Quebec, which is often served for French Canadian Christmas dinners 😌 I could never make a world where my grandma's tourtière doesn't exist, and therefore I am making it canon that this is a common food for special occasions in the North.

Yum....

* Levi is technically not French Canadian cause despite the North absolutely being Quebec, I refuse to make it canon. Also I'm technically not French Canadian, only half, I am an Ontarian 😌

[darylssunshine]

daryl x reader

“whoa hey, you’re bleeding.” reader maybe not realizing it until she looks down. falling into his arms and daryl callin for help. whump whump whumppp . set at the prison ?

Family

word count: 1.1k

a/n: finally getting into the swing of things with requests. hope you enjoy anon <3

~~~

The sounds of people yelling and the banging of chain link fences echoed throughout the prison courtyard. You jabbed your knife through yet another walker, grunting as you pushed it through its thick skull. You, along with everyone else in your small group, including Carl, had been at this for at least an hour now, but it was necessary to keep the prison safe. Still, the constant stabbing motion had your upper arm aching. Probably acid and bile rising up from your stomach, too.

“I got the last one!” Glenn called out from the middle of the formation, sticking his knife right in the middle of the walker’s eye. Audible sighs of relief could be heard from the group, along with a victory ‘whoop’ from Carl. Standing right beside you, Daryl was flicking the excess undead blood from his knife and his hands, wiping the rest on his pants. He shaked a stray hair out of his eye then wiped a hand down his face, sighing and sheathing his now blood-free knife. 

“Jesus. Glad that’s over. Can’t wait to do that again tomorrow.” He scoffed, leaning against the fence and stretching his overused right arm.

“I know, right? My arm is killing me. Gonna have to… ” You trailed off, suddenly feeling a wave of dizziness wash over you. You leaned your arm against the fence for support and lowered your head, squeezing your eyes shut. 

Daryl stopped leaning against the fence and took a cautious step forward towards you. “Hey, you okay?” 

You immediately snapped your gaze back up to the archer, desperately trying to seem like you had your shit together. “Yep. Yeah. I’m okay.” You placed your free hand on your hip to simulate normality. That’s when Daryl looked you up and down and his eyes suddenly went wide.

“Woah, woah, woah, hey, hey! Yer bleedin’!!” He quickly stepped toward you, glancing down sporadically. 

You placed your hand on your stomach, discovering the right side was wet and sticky. It was, in fact, blood.

“Fuckin’ damn it.” You mumble, before going limp and falling into Daryl’s arms, him catching you by the armpits. 

His heart immediately started racing when he caught you and layed you carefully on the dying grass. The few that surrounded you stepped back to give you some space. He instantly got on his knees and inspected your injuries, praying to whatever deity was listening that you hadn’t gotten bit. After a string of mumbled expletives, he shouted, “I need some fuckin’ help over here!” To no one in particular, his frantic eyes never leaving your closed ones.

What he didn’t see happening behind him was Rick rushing to get Hershel, while Maggie and Glenn hurriedly grabbing a makeshift stretcher and bringing it to wear you laid. He quickly got to his feet and helped you onto the stretcher. He was by your side the entire time and throughout all of the noise and chaos, you could swear you could hear Daryl whispering, “They’re gonna be fine. They’re gonna be fine.”

—

You groggily opened your eyes and instantly felt a stinging on your right side. The events of the past hour flooded back, and you wince. You cautiously felt the area, and thankfully you felt a clean bandage.

Judging by the beige ceiling and the firm yet surprisingly comfortable mattress you were on, you had been placed in Hershel’s room. You slowly moved your head to the side, expecting to be met with an equally beige wallpaper, but to your surprise, you were met with a sleeping, hot headed, brunette, redneck.

He was spread out in a chair he had brought from the dining room. His head was lolled towards you, his hair in his eyes and snoring quite loud. You smiled, heart slightly skipping a beat at the thought of him not wanting to leave your side.

“Hey.” You rasped, cringing at your own voice. 

Daryl, being a naturally light sleeper, immediately blinked awake. It took a second for the fog of sleep to leave his brain, but it left fast when he realized that you were awake. That you were alive.

“Holy fuck. (Y/N.) Hey. How’re ya feelin’?” He rambled, scooting the chair closer to the bed and sitting on the edge of it.

“Like shit. But I’ll be fine.” You sighed in response. 

“Good.” Daryl said softly, letting out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding. “Hershel said you probably got scratched by a walker. That true?”

You averted his gaze from his and started picking your fingernails, a nervous habit you’ve had since you were a child. “It happened while we were dealing with that hoard. I didn’t wanna make a scene.” 

You heard him sigh deeply and didn’t speak for a moment. You turned your head back towards him, and he had his head in his hand, almost willing himself to speak. He looked up and his eyes looked redder and puffier than they were before. “Why th’ fuck would ya do tha’?”

You slowly sat up in a somewhat sitting position to better look him in the eyes. “We all have to protect this place, Daryl! This family! It’s something that most don’t have these days.”

“We coulda had one less person in th’ family if you’d told me about tha’ any later.” He motioned to your wound with a nod of his head.

“You guys can function without m-” You were cut off from your half-joking comment.

“I can’t, ‘kay?! I can’t. So shuddup. Don’t say tha’.” He suddenly raised his voice a little, making you shut your lips and look at him with your full attention.

“Look. I don’t want ya gettin’ hurt. I care about ya. Always have.” He gazed into your eyes with such a fondness you could’ve started crying right then and there. And you would’ve, if he didn’t look away from you in sudden embarrassment. “Yer the only one who keeps me sane ‘round here.”

You sniffed, chuckling to cover up the tightness growing in the back of your throat. “That why you stayed and kept me up with your snoring?”

“Shuddup.” He repeated, sounding exasperated, but you didn’t miss the slight smile on his face.

He then stood up, flexed his probably sore neck, and put a reassuring hand on your shoulder. More heat blossomed onto your cheek at the sudden contact.

“Gonna go get Hershel now that yer awake.” He said softly before walking towards the door.

“Can you bring me dinner after pleeeeease?” You asked, your hands in a prayer motion and your eyelashes batting.

He turned around in the doorframe, his hands in his pockets.

“Sure. ‘S a date.” He drawled, winked, then walked away like nothing happened.

Maybe you should have thanked that walker before you stabbed him.

[redactedrem]

You know what? Fuck you. *Ponifies Batman*

Guys I'm so excited to share my newest project of ponifying the Batfam, it started out small with the hypothetical "I wonder what Batman would be like in a mlp universe." And then the project kept getting bigger and bigger.

If anyones interested in my world building/ headcanons surrounding this project, you can see it under the cut. (I didn't want to make the post too long.)

Incase anybody couldn't read my bad handwriting, I gotchuuu.

-(First pic) Bruce Wayne: Bruce had got his cutiemark the night of his parents death, after the grief had broken his spirit and he realized that he never wanted anypony else to feel the same pain as he does. (He has a fake cutiemark to cover up his obvious destiny)

- The first pic is pretty self explanatory, but I want to make it clear that Bruce's destiny isn't "My parents are dead so now I dress up as a bat and beat up mentally ill folk". Because I've seen people on here give hot takes on cutiemarks that directly link them to a ponies destiny.

This goes for specifically in the mlp fandom but (for the sake of being on topic) I'll use the the example of that one post where someone gave the hot take that Jason would get his cutiemark in the warehouse right before he dies (or after he dies? smthing like that) because "It would be really fucked up to know that you were always destined to die." And listen, I can appreciate some good Jason Todd whump as the next guy but knowing that this would be based in a mlp universe . . . just doesn't sit right with me.

It sounds less magical that way. Its like saying that Rainbow Dash was always meant to be the fastest flyer, so theres no point in trying to compete with her. So uhm, trying to stay on topic here. My personal hot take is that a pony's cutiemark is symbol of something that they do/ a skill or talent that they have that makes them happy. And whats a more magical and fulfilling destiny than doing something that makes you happy for the rest of your life?

Looping back to Bruce, he didn't get his cutiemark the moment his parents died, but I like to think that he got it sometime later on in the night. After hours of being checked on by the police, getting looked at by the paramedics, and after Alfred took him home. Its 1:40ish in the morning and tiny foal-Bruce is just staring at his bedroom wall feeling numb and dissociated to hell. And sometime after processing everything that night- he just decides that this is the worst thing that has ever happened to him and that he will do anything to make sure that nopony will ever feel the same pain that he has felt. And then-- Ta da!! Cutiemark!! Too bad neither he or Alfred got to experience the excitement when they both saw it the next day :')

(Edit: I didn't know where to put this detail, but Bruce's fake cutiemark is based off of the "Make It Wayne" TV logo from this fanfic here )

-(Second pic) The Bat: This is heavily inspired by Flutterbat, I know theres canonically already a race of bat ponies made from Lunas stunt as Nightmare Moon. But I chose to go through with the Flutterbat route because batponies are a race, and have bat-like features 24/7. In comparison Fluttershy maintains her pegasus appearance by day and transforms into Flutterbat at night (ALSO with there being implications that there are "Triggers" for her transformations in the day too!!) Which adds the "Vampire." right in front of her batpony title.

I might do a lil comparison chart between vampire batponies and regular batponies in the future or something. But for now I'm focusing on my batpony Bruce Wayne headcanons so yea. My point is that I felt like making Bruce a "vampire" batpony would give him a more solid secret identity with also the bonus of a really metal origin story.

Now we all know that the canonical origin story of batman is that a few months after the tragedy of his parents death, Bruce had fallen into a cave? a well? a pit? of bats and triggered a fear of bats since then. Later on he decides to become Batman so he can invoke the fear of bats he once had into the criminals of Gotham. Yadda yadda yadda.

Now canonically, we don't know the exact science on how Fluttershy turned into Flutterbat. What we do know is that at the time, pony magic is not researched enough for Twilight to be aware that Fluttershys "Stare" is her own form of pony magic and that it would interfere with Twilights spell.

Do you see where I'm getting at here? Uhmm don't ask me what exactly happened in the cave, I'm doing this for fun and thinking about it too hard makes me spiral. But uhmm something something- Bruce looked at a bat in the eye and decided to embrace his biggest fear to fuel his cause, and his already traumatized and fucked up pony magic had transformed his body- something something. (Edit: I didn't think about this until now but maybe Fluttershys "Stare" and Bruces "Bat Glare" could be a usage of the same form of magic? Just a thought)

I'll probably come up with a more suitable explanation in the future, but like I said. All of this is just for fun.

[arctrooper69]

As Iron Sharpens Iron

"As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another." Proverbs 27:17

Chapter 15:

Previous // Next

Warnings: Heavy whump in this one - blood, broken bones, pain. Loneliness.

--------------------------------------------------

The cold seeped from the damp ground, settling stiffly in your aching bones. Shattered, whimpering gasps sucked desperately through panicked lungs, burned as if the air around you was poison. You blinked, letting out a groan to dispel the awful groggy confusion, desperately trying to wake yourself from whatever nightmare you’d fallen into.

Panic flooded your veins, threatening to consume you in its blaze. It was dark - so suffocatingly dark.

Stop. Stop.

You tried to calm the race of spiraling thoughts before they inevitably became too much and you lost control.

Panicking will not help you here. Breathe. Focus. Please.

Screwing your eyes shut, you tried to concentrate, to calm the rushing beat of your heart.

What can I see? What can I smell? What can I feel? What can I taste? What can I hear?

You forced yourself to open your eyes. Dark. But as your eyes adjusted, the smothering inky blackness slowly abated into rocky shadows dimly illuminated by the constant twilight far above where you had fallen.

The deep musk of damp dirt sank through your senses. It was somehow calming, grounding. The earthy scent that lingered in the air, reminded you of Hunter.

Everything reminded you of Hunter.

That was when the panic hit again, spiking into a new high as you shifted on the ground, sending lightning bolts of pain riveting through limbs that wouldn’t move. Each breath suddenly tore at your lungs with such a sharpness as if there were some creature trying to gouge its way out. The agony beneath you wrenched a scream with startling ferocity only to find it cut off by spasming lungs as muscles tensed and locked to protect themselves from further harm.

It took several long seconds to relax once again, crying out softly through clenched teeth, determined not to fight against the pain, but to let it wash over you.

Fighting only made things worse. It took discipline and a lifetime of practice but now you feared it was all in vain. This white hot fire, that burning, freezing, grating pain felt all consuming and ready to swallow you whole.

You weren’t a clone but you were trained for this - trained to endure the pain that threatened to overcome all reasoning and logic.

Pain is only a symptom. Find the source.

Hunter’s voice. Hunter’s voice echoed training that had been drilled into your brain time and time again. Of course, he would have received similar training, but that didn’t matter now. Why was it his voice that your mind conjured up in its panic to stay alert? Why was it Hunter’s voice that so calmly soothed fiery nerves? That professional and strict command laced with a hint of compassion and genuine concern - the perfect mixture that made him so complex. A puzzle you so desperately wanted to solve.

Breathy whimpers and half-conscious groans slipped over bleeding and bitten lips.

It hurts, I know. But you need to focus.

Closing your eyes, you fell back to that training, guided along by that handsomely rugged voice keeping you grounded.

My hands are still bound behind me.

You took another breathe, hissing through your teeth at the renewed explosion of tortured nerves. My ribs…. Definitely broken. A stuttering groan leaked from quickening lungs that once again threatened to rip themselves free like the tears that leaked down your face. That pressing pain and panic surged, no matter how little you forced your lungs to inflate in the vain hope of lessening that sickening grate of what was surely must be bone against bone.

Focus!

His voice spoke again from your mind, this time with an edge. Firm and impossible to ignore.

You’re bound with rope of some sort. Your ribs are most likely badly bruised or broken. What else? Breathe through the pain. In and out. Come on, you know how this works.

Eyes, now well adjusted to the darkness, scanned the area. Mind, falling back on that trained discipline, spoke again in Hunter’s voice. Your leg. Do you feel it?

You did. You had been, though a sense of denial still seemed so desperate to dampen the growing dread. That deadly sharp throbbing that shot up your leg had now become impossible to ignore, yet you still couldn’t bring your eyes down to look.

You can do this, cyar'ika. His voice was softer now - more compassionate - though it still held that air of authority that would compel you to obey his direct command. That little nickname of his cyar'ika, what did it mean? The voice inside you that was Hunter, begged for you to come back and find out.

You have to survive. You have to make it back.

Steeling yourself, you pushed onwards, forcing yourself to draw your eyes down to the pain screaming for emergent attention.

Oh kriff. No. No, no. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

It seemed surreal, like looking down on your own body from miles above. Legs weren’t supposed to bend like that. Bones aren’t meant to jut out in awkwardly violent angles.

Almost as if on instinct, through suddenly heavy, lidded eyes, you pulled your wrists closer, moving through violent bursts of pain, to find a rock, or anything that might cut a rope.

Good. Good girl.

Nothing felt quite real anymore. You were floating - like in a dream.

Just a little more wiggling and the bonds would be loose enough for you to pull your hands through. Tears fell automatically from your eyes as every movement sent white hot razors up your leg from where it sat beneath you, bent awkwardly, bone protruding from the skin

The familiar cold chill of clammy sweat sprang up from your skin, soaking your ruined clothes. Nausea gripped your stomach in a vice as you felt your vision tunnel once again.

No. No. No. Cyar’ika no. Open your eyes. Breathe. Cyar’ika come back to me! That subconscious voice seemed to wither and beg. Come on. Please.

You grit your teeth, inhaling a long, shaky breath, then slowly let it out. The process repeated once more as you willed the nausea and lightheadedness to pass.

There. Got it.

Another dizzying wave of pain shot up your leg, but at least your hands were free.

So much blood. Gotta fix that.

Your hands shook and you could only watch as they seemed to take on a life on their own.

Stars danced before your eyes, stomach flipping before suddenly exploding upwards in a dizzy sick as you vomited into the rocks beside you.

The cool damp of the ground felt soothing now, as you found your cheek suddenly pressed against the dirt.

“...H-Hunter…” the name slipped over numb lips in a quiet whisper. Funny how that was still an instinct. But now that calming subconscious voice was quiet. Gone, not unlike the real thing. Reality was cruel and ruthless.

Hunter’s not here. Hunter can’t save you. None of them can. That voice of stark reason and logic seemed laced with a bitter and vicious mockery. It’s only you now. It always has been. It always will be.

“Trust no one” had always been your mantra. Until you met that strange little group who called themselves the Bad Batch. They ran like soldiers, expedient and efficient, yet they acted like a family. Against your better judgment, you’d let yourself grow attached. You allowed this small, insignificant group of clones to take down your walls and worm inside like a disease, filling all those cracks and edges with their quirks and ideals.

And Hunter.

Ever strong and ever confident to the physical eye, though you knew the uncertainty and fear of failure that lay beneath scarred skin. It was similar to your own. Hunter understood you, better than the others did. You thought like him, slow to trust, yet now you felt protected by him and he knew you’d do the same for him. You made a good team - perfectly combining your own sense of adventure and duty with his own.

A sudden realization hit you like a ton of bricks.

I love him. I'm in love with him.

The realization hurt more than the sickening angle of your leg and the throbbing of your ribs.

I never got to tell him. I'm going to die alone.

He thought you hated him.

It hit you just then, the full weight of loneliness, of trying so hard to be self-sufficient despite knowing that you would never be enough. The self-sabotaging cycle of craving to belong, yet running from those who offered a hand. Always running, never stopping lest that hanging sword above saw fit to drop and cut you down.

Now it had. This cold and unforgiving moon was going to swallow you, chewing with rocks for teeth and the awful rumble of its tectonic stomach that threatened to digest. Its mocking voice whispering in every cloud of dust:

You are alone and there is no one to blame but yourself.

No one but Cid knew where you were and you’d made her promise not to tell. Even the treasure hunting mercenaries were gone, taking with them any hope of dialog - no matter how crude and hurtful the language, at least it was a voice. Now the silence was loud, but your own thoughts were deafening.

Alone. Alone. Alone. You’re going to die alone.

Perhaps the others would come looking for you, but they would not find you - that greed born of anger and hurt had drawn you to a place where you were not strong enough to survive.

But another voice - another piece of your broken consciousness - stirred, whispering beneath that oppressive blanket of doubt.

They will find me. Hunter will find me. Hunter always finds me. We are iron and though we can be dulled, iron was made to sharpen.

--------------------------------------------------

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[petit-etoile]

Enemies to Lovers scenario with Astarion; The two are close enough to be friends, Tav accidentally calls him starlight, you decide how Astarion reacts to their little slip up.

ours are  untidy souls

pairing: astarion/tav wordcount:  1,126 content warnings:  no fighting but the aftermath,  minor mentions of injuries but no-indepth descriptions other tags:canon compliant, canon-typical violence, introspection, character study, hurt/comfort, whump, pre-relationship, gender neutral tav, human!tav archiveofourown: here.

tag list: @azrielshadows1nger, @pandimoostuff, @faevi, @microskies, @foreverthemaraudersera, @queenofthespacesquids, @claryvoyantfray, @6doodlaang14, @anne-isnotokay, @itshimbotime, @yeeteth-the-raven, @sessils,@8-opossums, @worryknotdear, @abirdaboxandachippedcup, be added to the taglist here

summary:

‘It is bitter,’ he says. ‘It will heal,’ you tell him. ‘It might hold a grudge,’ he says. ‘It will survive,’ you insist.

The Grymforge Guardian falls with little regard to its creator. Steam billows from the cool metal, and the Forge has broken pieces off of it that may never be repaired. You sag against the lever for but a moment to catch your breath. You wait for the ground to cool and the red-hot metal to return to a more natural color before tentatively touching your the toe of your boot to it. You decide it's cooled enough.

You race over to the second lever. Shadowheart is quick to make it to the center to check on Karlach who is lying next to the Guardian in a bundled heap, but you race to Astarion’s side and kneel next to him on the smoking platform. He’s resting against the other lever, head forward, and everywhere you touch is bruised and sweaty. You push his curls back from his forehead and cup his jaw so that he’s forced to look at you, and although the flickering of his eyelashes makes your stomach ache, he’s breathing and that’s good enough for you for now.

You push your hand against his shoulder and feel the heat leave his body to meld into yours. Astarion’s lungs fill with air in relief, and when he opens his eyes, he meets your gaze unevenly.

‘Don’t rush, starlight,’ you say cautiously. ‘Take it easy until Shadowheart can come to you.’

Astarion’s eyes soften and he closes them quickly to hide the betrayal. All around him lay the bodies of the imps he fought. Honestly, the team you put together handled it pretty well with little to no practice, navigating as one despite the  strange levers and a gargantuan thing swinging at them. You thank the gods for giving you Karlach, because the thought of you potentially having to go head to head with the Guardian by yourself almost makes you wish the worm would finish eating your memories.

You take in all of Astarion’s wounds. Little bites and nail scratches, a bruise on his cheekbone, but mostly, the heat has made him malleable and exhausted in your hands. You take it upon yourself to heal some of the more minor injuries he has. He doesn’t seem to breathe as you pour a drop of your potion into a bite on his shoulder or a nasty burn on his thigh, but he does stop you before you can take a better look at his cheek.

‘I’m fine,’ he says shortly.

‘Are you sure you don’t want me to tend to this?’ you ask.

You do touch his bruise then, and Astarion hisses at you like a wild beast. Before, you might have flinched away from his scary display but after these last few weeks, you know better. He’s scared of your kindness. He doesn’t know what to expect even though your hand is delicate. You press your thumb against a tender purple knot, and you can tell that it takes all of Astarion’s willpower to not snap at you.

‘Maybe I will let Shadowheart take care of this one,’ you say nervously. ‘It seems tender.’

Astarion’s jaw clenches. He thinks.

‘No,’ he says with finality. ‘I think  —  I think I would prefer it if you did it.’ 

You watch the pretty curve of his neck bobble when he swallows. He turns his chin towards you and refuses to look at you. He’s being brave. He’s being willing. Slowly, you touch the bruise again with shaking fingers.

In a move that reminds you all too much of Scratch and the Owlbear, Astarion leans his head into your touch. You’re captivated by the tremble in his eyelashes, the slope of his eyebrows as he fights a scowl, and the sad way he frowns. You feel his cheek for any sign of the unordinary, but there’s nothing but a bruise.

‘I don’t think a potion will help with this one, unfortunately,’ you whisper. ‘There’s nothing  —  There’s nothing wrong with it.’

‘It is bitter,’ he says.

‘It will heal,’ you tell him.

‘It might hold a grudge,’ he says.

‘It will survive,’ you insist.

Astarion says nothing. If the bruise is hurting him, he doesn’t acknowledge it. All he does is rest in your hands as if lifting his head on his own is too much effort. You allow him this touch. It’s the first time he’s allowed you to initiate anything even remotely affectionate. It makes your eyes water a little to think about it. You decide to say nothing lest it embarrasses him. You cherish this moment and slowly, you ease him into your arms more so that he’s leaning against your upper body, his ear at your heart.

Quietly, Astarion says, ‘Say it again.’

At first, you aren’t sure what it is that he wants. You want to tell him that he will heal, that he will survive, that he may not forgive or forget, but that he will overcome. Instead, you pet his hair as carefully as you can to avoid jostling him and press a tentative kiss to the top of his head. He burrows deeper into your arms and sighs like a weight has been lifted off his chest. In some ways, you think it has. You hold him as gently as you can.

‘You’re going to be fine, starlight,’ you say  —  and you’re partially shocked at how easily it rolls off the tip of your tongue. You’re almost certain that Astarion huffs at it, but he isn’t upset. No, it’s something entirely else.

You’re holding something delicate in your hands. Astarion would not be like this with anyone else but you. He trusts you, and honestly, the thought terrifies you. It’s not that you have to be careful. It’s not that you have to be cognizant. It’s that there is something so genuine about the bond he is offering you on his own terms. He is choosing to be vulnerable with you. It makes your throat close up.

You would cry if you weren’t so worried about everyone. Astarion eventually pulls away from the safety of your arms and appraises you himself. He smudges smoky residue away from underneath one of your eyes and takes a look at a nasty cut you received to your scalp, but all it takes is a little drop of the potion shared between you to get it to where it doesn’t need stitches. You two sit facing one another, your hands meekly in your lap, Astarion sagging forward as though his only desire is to find a bed. Eventually, he looks up at you and with faint exhaustion clouding the openness of his features, and chews on his bottom lip.

‘You can say it again,’ he says.

You smile for the first time in hours. ‘Alright, starlight.’

[powderblueblood]

HELLFIRE & ICE — eddie munson x f!oc as enemies to star-crossed lovers

CHAPTER SIX — IN MY ORBIT

PREVIOUS | MASTERLIST | NEXT

summary: it's escape from new york, if by new york you mean eddie munson's trailer. he knows you need to stay away from him, you know he needs to stay away from you, but honey... who else is gonna tell him there's an 'e' in roane county? content warnings: MINORS DNI obviously, my god. we've got your usual here-- mentions of masturbation, both male and female, white hot motherfucking yearning of the sexual and emotional kind, a surprise nancy wheeler, little women references, sticking it to the teacher we don't need no education style, eddie munson says acab word count: 12.2k

Dear hooker from the Christmas card in Minneapolis, can you shut the fuck up? I need to think!

Dear Bilbdoolpoolp, you nutty sea bitch goddess, do me a solid and send me a diversion– tear the roof off this trailer– I need to think!

Dear Lacy, quit looking at me like I just bit the head off your Virginia Woolf doll. I want to suck face with you so bad, like really goddamn bad, and you seem like you want to do it to me as well, what with your whole, like, big doe eyes and all that shit, but I need.

To think. 

It’s not what Eddie wants to clamp over your mouth, but it’s what you’re getting. His hand, his whole ringed hand, which takes up the better part of your face so all he can see is your eyes flashing from possibly turned on (jury’s still out) to confused to plain angry. 

“Mmmphmph!” you squeal against his hand, and he pulls his most panicked, most pleading expression out of the bag. 

“Lacy! Lacy. Lay-cee,” he hisses, teeth grit and spittle flying,”Do me a favor, do me a favor for once in your life and be. Cool. Be cool.”

His fingers slide from your mouth and your jaw is set all hard. “Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?!”

Right. Ice princess. Totally. Totally. “When I said be cool, I meant be quiet!”

“Ed.” That gruff rumble is coming from right outside his door. Eddie holds an index finger to his lips, and motions, like a goddamn kindergarten teacher, for you to do the same. Because that’s all you seem to understand. And you roll your eyes, but you do it anyway. And he– fuck, you’re cute. 

“Yee-aah?” he calls back, tone about as even as the Appalachian mountains. 

“Can I–”

“No!” Eddie barks, seeing that door handle twist a fraction of an inch. What would Wayne do, if he caught you in here? Would his brain explode all over the trailer? Would that be the end of the last truly good Munson family member? I mean, probably not, but he’d be all disappointed in Eddie and that would be worse. So much worse. “I’m not… Decent.”

You, still with your finger planted in the indent of your cupid’s bow, do a bad job of suppressing a snort. “Who are you, Rita Hayworth?” you hiss, and Eddie raises his hand to seal your stupid lips up again. Stupid. Lippy. Stupid lips. You bat it away, motioning like, okay, I’ll be cool!

Who the fuck is Rita Hayworth, anyway?!

“Well. Get decent,” Wayne says, a single knuckle rapping on the door–that means get movin’, “Need to talk to you.” 

And far be it from Eddie to keep the man he’s effectively betraying by stowing you away in his bedroom waiting. Up like a shot, he lifts the needle from the skipping record, pausing by the door before he heads out to meet his fate. 

He can tell by the look on your face that he’s blown this. Whatever it is– was. He had a perfect precipice of a moment, and he’d totally shot himself in the foot. But Eddie would sooner see you alive and unkissed than dead of pneumonia in the freezing rain, ‘kay? Call him a hero, whatever. 

“Just–”

“--shut the fuck up,” you whisper, hands drawn up in surrender. Realizing that there’s nothing funny about this situation. “I got it.”

The door whumps closed behind him, shaking the entire trailer in its wake, and you wait all of three seconds before racing to it and pressing your ear up against the paint-chipped wood. 

What’s going on out there? Is it about me?

How could it be about you? Unless Munson’s uncle had some kind of sixth sense, some breach in his cerebrum that alerted him once you crossed the threshold of his precious trailer. Come to think of it, you don’t remember seeing a second bedroom in this thing. 

You’d be lying if that didn’t elicit a little pang of pride– my trailer’s better than your trailer, you jealous? Doesn’t answer the question of where the Munson uncle sleeps, but at least you and your mother had a two-bedder. 

To your flaring frustration, the Munson men have opted to use an indecipherable muttering gravelly man octave with which to discuss this pressing business. That could or could not be about you. Insanely inconsiderate that this is the one time that Eddie Munson isn’t the loudest voice in the room, a ball of fury and sound and action knocking over everything in its wake. When it was the one time you actually wanted to hear what he had to say.

You also regret to inform yourself that that wasn’t all you wanted from him, up until about forty-five seconds ago. 

The white-hot embarrassment of being caught ready to throw a leg over him–the white hot embarrassment of being caught holding onto his wrist in the record store, of him catching you falling out of his van–descends over you in a wave that almost takes you out at the knees. 

But you’d wanted it– you did, in one suspended moment that you couldn’t pawn off on being high or drunk or wildly angry, sobbing soaked out in the rain. You had looked at Eddie Munson, in his dark, bottomless eyes and took in his slope of a Grecian nose and his dumb, effusive mouth with the pink lips and the pretty teeth and you had wanted it. Him. Him and the nebulous it that he would inevitably end up doing to you. 

He wanted you back. You thought. 

When Eddie slips back into his bedroom, you’re peeking through his blinds. Your trailer remains in total darkness, that criminal slip of a key obviously still jammed in the lock. You look over your shoulder at him and his brow is set in such a weird and distant crease that you think– shit. Maybe I hallucinated all that. Maybe that was all me. 

“What are you doing?” he asks, voice flat and near silent. What happened out there?

“My mom,” you start, “She…”

Never came home, is where you were going with it, but you don’t get to finish. “Okay,” he says, all absent. He flicks off the bedroom lamp as he passes it, this unconscious motion that leaves you both stranded in a blue-tinged darkness. 

In the moments it takes your eyes to adjust, he’s sitting next to you on the bed.  

“I’m gonna sleep on the floor,” he tells you. His irises are shiny and hard and serious.

Oh. The kind of tension you want to poke at. 

“Don’t be stu–” 

“I’m not bein’ stupid, Lacy.” 

You blink. Your faces are close. In the dark, the fractals of him would be easier to not remember in the daylight. You could pick out the parts you wanted–his cheekbone, his jutting jawline, the sloping corner of his mouth–and not puzzle them together in the morning. You could separate it. It could be fine. A non-event. 

“It’s cold,” you press, your voice low and solid, “and you don’t have another comforter.”

“How do you know that.”

Lucky guess. “I just do.” Just let me have this without having to ask for it.

I am a little afraid, I don’t know of what, and you’re the last solid thing I can grab onto.

Or lay next to. 

“What side of the bed do you sleep on?” 

“All of it.” God, he’s so obstinate. 

“Pick a favorite.” 

His mouth–his mouth–scrunches up the way a shitting cat’s might. You puncture the silence with a visible shiver. This staredown is horrible. 

“Fuck. Fine.” Point to Lacy. Eddie, arms out, gestures to the side of the bed furthest from the door. “Get comfy.”

In a scramble, you dig yourself under the comforter, pulling it all the way up to your chin. But now the shivering has started, and there’s no sign of stopping it– real, muscle seizing, teeth-chattering shivering. 

Eddie mumbles something like Jesus Christ, or God help me or some other plea for mercy, and slides in beside you, pitching himself at the very edge of the mattress. Arms folded over his chest. 

“You gotta quit shaking!” he hisses.

“I am fuh-reezing!” you seethe back. 

You kick your knees up into your arms, facing away from him and curling yourself in the tightest of balls and really, really working hard on calming down your wracking because, honestly? Little embarrassing.  

The mattress crreeaaaks. A shift in weight.

“Are you really that cold?”

You put that shaking to good use and nod in the affirmative. “Ice princess, right?”

Like you were putting this on for show. God, he’s such an asshole. 

The way he gulps is borderline cartoonish. “Okay.” A shaky breath. “But we have to not make this weird.”

The mattress shifts again and you feel his weight edge closer to you. You relax a little from the fetal position, head craning to peer over your shoulder. He was– hovering, as much as one could hover when lying in a horizontal position. 

“Munson, are you trying to cu–”

“Stop it. Stop making it weird. I’ll throw your ass out that window and it’s a cold snap and you’re already cold blooded so you’ll, like, double fucking freeze to death.”

But he wouldn’t. Of that you were fairly confident. 

Eddie’s hand edges toward your waist, positioning his front side ever closer to your back, which feels… not horrible at all, until–

“No. Nope. That’s not gonna work.”

You have to bite back a smile. Boys. Boys and their stupid, simple penises.

He flops back against the mattress, head angled to the ceiling. Awkwardly, he jigs an arm up, like some puppeteer’s yanking his string. His hand hits you square in the back of the head.

“Ow–”

“Shut up. Get under here.”

Slowly, and almost shyly, you rotate your shivering body a cool one-eighty degrees and find him concentrating resolutely on the ceiling. You glance up. There’s black mold on that ceiling. You wish you had noticed that before, but when up shit creek, et cetera. Inching and inching, you settle in next to him, head nestling into his armpit. 

His arm gingerly curves around you.

You bring your hands up to your mouth, fingers curled in fists like a little kid. 

Your leg brushes against his, accidentally, racking up the leg of his flannel pants. You can feel the hair against your bare calf– strong, ticklish.

And you can hear his heart.

Jackrabbity. Thu-thump-thu-thump-thu-thump.

So’s yours.

He is so warm. 

“Hey,” he whispers, tone a little softer this go around, “Can I ask you something?”

You do a tiny swallow and hope it’s not obvious. “I guess.”

“... Does it stink down there?”

Eddie Munson smells like cigarette and soap and that warm smell from the dryer. You inhale and hope it’s not obvious.

“Yes. You’re ripe. It’s disgusting.”

“Good. ‘night, Lacy.”

“Goodnight, Eddie.”

–

Eddie wakes up with a painful inhale and two of his rings tangled in your hair. 

Shit! Fucking shit! See, he was supposed to stay awake, stay alert, make sure Wayne didn’t like, suddenly develop a tendency to sleepwalk and stumble into his room while you were all… curled up next to him. With your freezing little ice blocks for feet. And your lashes fanned out across your cheeks. And your tiny little kitten snores, you goddamn bitch. 

But for as freaked out as he was–and is, girl in his actual human bed and everything–Eddie started nodding off here and there. And suddenly, here and there became the morning sun beaming directly into his stinking retinas from a crack in the blinds. 

He is now hyper-aware of your hand curled beneath his sternum and your boobs pressing against his side.

The following procedure needs to be handled delicately, like a bomb.

Because the other thing, among all the other other things, is Woody fuckin’ Woodpecker has come calling this morning too. 

Now, blue sky situation, ideal world, you’d just be able to scoot that hand a little lower and help him out with such an issue. But since he blew any shot of you wanting that along with any semblance of dignity he held in your eyes last night, that is a no-go. 

He needs a Bible level miracle to will himself soft and untangle his rings from your hair without you waking up. And he also needs to wake you up and smuggle you the ever-loving fuck out of his trailer. 

Careful, careful, careful– he starts picking strands out from around the silver, wondering how the hell he let himself just… tousle his hand around in your hair without, I’unno, getting turned into a pile of dust.

Then you make this noise– this little mewl, like mmnnrgh?, and Eddie’s entire body skips a beat. He needs to commit it to memory, record it to the ongoing multi-track mixtape he’s unconsciously been creating in his mind. Lacy’s Greatest Hits, featuring dick-in-fist chart toppers such as Who Died and Made You My Parole Officer?, Sorry, I Don’t Teach Remedial, and an eight hour loop of you saying his name. Eddie. Eddie. Eddie.

He wants to pull you on top of him, rings-in-hair and all, and kiss all the broken little mmnnrgh?s out of you ‘til you don’t have the breath to make any more. ‘til all you’ve got is his name on your tongue, your Siberian cold hands under his shirt. 

And if he keeps thinking thoughts like this, he’s gonna kill himself!

This is not helping. You are not helping. 

With some absolutely saint-worthy maneuvering on his part, Eddie gets his fingers free of your hair, but it’s not the gentle tug that wakes you up–

It’s a certain eardrum-perforating WHOOP-WHOOP.

Eddie Munson never thought he’d see the day where he was thanking whoever down there that’s lookin’ out for him for the sound of a cop car. Instant boner killer.

But also–

“Issat-thefuckin’-cops?” you slur at an almost normal volume, rising from underneath Eddie’s arm. 

He shushes you, all harsh and wiry and you’ve just woken up, bleary-eyed and not yet able to comprehend your surroundings. Which, boy howdy. He darts to the window like an animal alarmed, peering out through the blinds. 

“Oh, you gotta be fuckin’ kidding me.”

“What’s happening?” you whisper-ask, slapping consciousness into yourself with a palm to either cheek.

“Lacy, on a scale from one to ten,” Eddie seethes, scanning his view from the window, “How likely is your mom to report you as a missing person in under 24 hours?”

Your stomach drops with an acidic, awful clunk. Going out and making a fool of us. Your mom, caring only when she absolutely has to. 

“Eleven.” 

Eddie turns his big, siren-eyed stare on you. 

“Then we gotta get you outta here. Like. Yesterday.”

You, now, you’re at a total loss. A total loss that’s made your blood turn bad under your skin, a total loss that has made you want to strangle your own mother, but a total loss where it actually matters. “I can’t believe she’d–!”

“Don’t matter, sweetheart! Does noooot matter– this the first time you ever got the cops called on you or something?”

You blink, remembering red and blue lights outside of your house in Loch Nora. But that wasn’t for you. Technically. Figures why you suddenly feel morning-sick nauseous, though. 

“Well, mazel tov,” Eddie says, misreading the memory and starting toward his door. 

You scramble for him, tugging at him by the bottom of his t-shirt. “Where are you going?!” 

“Running interference. We need a distraction,” he tells you, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Okay, sorry for not being an accomplished criminal.

“Interference. Yeah. You’re good at that.”

He hits you with a sneer. “Not my first rodeo. You post up by that window and watch– when the coast is clear, I’ll give you a signal.” 

“And then what?” 

“And then– and then what?!” Eddie gasps, totally incredulous that you’d even try to ask– to seek his guidance, or whatever, “And then you’re on your own, kid! I’m already about to throw a match into the powder keg of your stupid hot mom, I’m not gonna stick around to watch her blow up!”

A quiver escapes your pinched lips, one that nearly says don’t go. 

You’ve been taking care of yourself for a long time. That’s not the problem. The problem is tasting what it’s like when somebody helps you and realizing you haven’t had your fill. That, and your mother’s wrath which is your father’s wrath if you blow your cover and word gets back that you were hanging out in Al Munson’s boy’s trailer. 

Nuclear fallout. Worse than Eddie’s room. 

Eddie notices that you’ve been quiet a half-beat too long– and not just because you are both pressed for time, he puts his hands on your shoulders. Reassuringly, hurriedly. He shakes you, pump-pump, snap out of it. 

You’re still gripping the hem of his t-shirt. 

“Hey.” His voice is quieter. “This is gonna be fine.” 

“Before you go out there, I– I need to ask you something.” It’s all compulsion. Why are you helping me? Why are you being nice to me? I don’t deserve you being nice to me. 

Do you regret not kissing me last night? Do you regret not doing it right now? What am I supposed to do if I regret it too? 

“Lacy?”

“Did you fuck Cass Finnigan in the ass?” Oh, yeah, there it fucking is.

Complete bafflement. Eddie seems to completely short circuit, powering back to life with a groan. “Wh– how did you know that?”

You huff, because it’s all you can do. 

“I’m the goddamn Oracle of Delphi.” Finally, your vice grip of his shirt loosens. “Well. Go get ‘em, tiger.” 

Okay, insulting.

Eddie stalks out of the room, head reeling on several different strata levels. By someone’s infernal grace, Wayne has already left for the day–it’s 7AM; way to get a headfirst start on inconveniencing the boys in blue, Lacy’s mom–so Eddie has ample space to flail his arms around wildly, frustratedly, cursing himself out before grabbing his uncle’s insulated parka from the coat rack and heading out the front door. 

“Officers,” he says, half-wishing the zip on the jacket would choke him out so he wouldn’t have to put himself in the line of fire like this, and for what. “What’s uuuup?”

“Perfect.” That clipped yap comes from behind a cloud of smoke, teeming out of your mother huffing back a Dunhill. “There’s the little curr himself. Ask him where my daughter is, why don’t you.”

Well, now Eddie sees where you get it from. 

“Shouldn’t you be on your way to school, son?” one of the officers (Callahan, if Eddie’s last speeding-ticket-receiving memory serves) drawls, clearly not all too concerned with the happenings here. But, considering to your mom, who can resist a Blanche DuBois type in a crisis, right? Definitely runs in the family. 

Eddie lets his tongue loll out in an exaggerated hack-cough. “Sick day.” 

“Then you oughta be inside, right?” Cops, man. Our nation’s greatest thinkers.

“I would be,” he says, taking on the haughty tone of– well, of your mother, “was it not for that obnoxious weew-weew of yours rousing me from my sick bed.” He even clutches at the lapels of the coat, shivering for effect. That one’s for you, baby.

“And y’know what, while we’re on the subject of noise…” You weren’t wrong when you said that he’s good at running interference– because he’s good at being a nuisance. “I’ve been meaning to put a call into you guys. You guys, police guys.” Eddie moves to stand in the negative space between your trailers, however many feet it is. 

“See how much distance it is from here–” he points to his trailer where, if you’re not totally fucking this up, you’re watching from the slits in the blinds of his bedroom, “--to here?” Other arm goes up. He’s standing there like Christ the freakin’ Redeemer, and the cops’ attention is pulled right to him because he’s got priors and he might do something weird and they’re idiots. Your mom is all about Eddie too, forgetting to be concerned and distraught for half a moment. 

Munsons have that effect on people. 

“... yeah?” Callahan says, prompting a wild-eyed Eddie to go on. 

“I should not be there,” again, a nod to his own trailer, “and be able to hear Englebert Humperdinck from in here.” He waves a wild arm toward your trailer, edging a couple steps closer to it. Big ol’ brown eyes here locks his gaze on your momma. “Lady, that’s crazy. What are you doing playing ballads that loud?!” 

Lacy Sr goldfishes back at him, mouth bobbing, presumably-last-night’s lipstick bleeding. Still so very hot. 

“I mean, look, I get it, you’re writing a letter to daddy in jail–and that sucks, and if you need company, you know where to find me–but can’t you do it a little quieter?” Eddie says, a wholly believable impression of a flabbergasted man. The cops almost seem to buy it. 

“I am not in there playing records–” “Right, you’re too busy letting your daughter go missing under your nose. Listen, ma’am, this might not be Loch Nora, but around here, we got respect for our neighbors!” Oh, he is a honey-glazed Christmas ham. 

A honey-glazed Christmas ham that is advancing towards your trailer door and dragging the attention of the attending adults with him, indicating you with a subtle two-finger salute that you better get out of his. 

You snap the blinds back into place. Motherfucking go time. Until you realize that you have no shoes to speak of, just your book bag and whatever’s left of your steely reserve. You’d tossed your sneakers into that bag with your sodden cheerleader get-up– where the hell was that now? 

You shove on the sizes-too-big work boots by the door and make it happen. 

Eddie’s out there just pantomiming like his life depends on it and you take the steps in front of his trailer two at a time, as silently as is humanly possible– and fuck, it’s cold out here, but the cold helps! The cold makes you faster, more decisive, more agile simply down to the fact that you need to get out of the fucking cold. Adrenaline is sparking off at the base of your throat, making you a little dizzy but a lot determined. 

You catch Eddie’s eye as you sneak, sneak, sneak around the back of your trailer. He gives you a not entirely subtle thumbs up and yells, “Yes! Yes, I think it’s an issue pressing enough for the law, I am a goddamned high school senior! I can’t study if the dulcet tones of Paul Anka are breaking my focus every five minutes!” 

“Thought it was Englebert Humperdinck?”

“She’s got a catalog of records on her like you wouldn’t believe!” 

Then it’s just hands on the outside of the trailer, feeling around for like, a trap door, some loose paneling, anything. 

“Oh, so we couldn’t have sprung for a model with a freaking back door?!” But a window is kind of like a back door, you realize, and you’re a goddamn cheerleader. You’ve got a core of steel.

A lot of elbow grease is required to slide open the window of your tiny living room, but by god do you crank that thing. Army rolling onto the couch and into a bunch of boxes of breakables–living mausoleum, great to see you again–you freeze. That’s a lot of clattering. 

“Did you hear that?” Your mother’s voice. 

“I’m shocked you can hear anything at the volume you’re playing those Rat Pack records, duchess.” Eddie. You choke out a silent laugh as you dash to your bedroom.’

Alright. Alright. I gotta make it look like I was up to something… First word that comes to mind? Slutty. Because that’ll make the police no longer give a shit what you were doing (she brought it on herself) and effectively redirect your mother’s rage. 

Hands tear off the borrowed boxers and Stooges shirt and grab the first thing in your mess of half-unpacked clothes. A form-fitting jersey dress in dark blue, which you throw on without thinking of underwear. A calf-length pea coat on top of that. The nearest pair of loafers to go with. You’re not formulating this outfit, okay, but one cursory look in the mirror and it sure does scream walk of shame. 

But at least it doesn’t scream walk of shame from trailer across the way. 

Then, your front door creaks. “No, I know I heard something in here…”

Fuck! Fucking fucker! As delicately as humanly possible–so, not very–you ease yourself out of your own bedroom window, book bag in tow. 

I’ve gotta make this look believable.

You land on the ground with a soft thump, mere feet from your front door. There, Eddie is holding up the rear of the party walking into your trailer. You, not a goddamned second to lose, break into a soft jog and do a fucking make-believe loop around Eddie’s place, heart hammering in your ears. 

You, a professional in willing your own reality, call out a super convincing, “Mom?” as you approach your trailer from the opposite side. 

As if you just got here. 

“Lacy?!” she squawks, darting right back out from whence she came. She barrels past Eddie, the two Hawkins police officers following close behind. 

“What is… going on?” you ask. Lying– you come by it natural. 

“Where the hell have you been?!” your mom shrieks, and she would slap the shit out of you if she could. You see that much in her fiery eyes. “You know, I came home this morning to a key broken off in the lock of our door and you were nowhere to be found! Nowhere!”

You cannot help yourself, unable to stomach her self-righteous display of motherly concern. “So where the hell have you been ‘til this morning, Mom?”

Her mouth hardens into a line. Comin’ real close to getting backhanded in front of the cops. 

“I came back after cheerleading last night,” you explain, eyes going all earnest and wide as you include the cops in your little spin– paying special attention to Callahan, because he’s not not a little cute, okay? “It was raining like crazy, and I was trying to unlock the door and–you know how that lock sticks, Mom–my key just broke off! In the door! I was like, gee, what do I do? And you weren’t home, Mom. And I had no idea how I could reach you. Mom.” The second she gets you alone, she’s going to strangle you. Worth it, for the look on her face. “So I went to a friend’s.”

Callahan seems to drink in your disheveled appearance. “A friend’s, huh?”

“Just a friend’s, Officer,” you simper, batting your eyelashes, trying to steam up the little piggy’s horn-rimmed glasses. “Promise.”

In the near background, Eddie Munson silently gags. You have to force the corners of your mouth down to keep from smiling.

“I’m so sorry to have wasted your time, gentlemen.” Your mom’s chipped manicure tightens around your bicep. “Get inside that house. Now.” 

“Hardly a house. Doesn’t even have a goddamn back door.” 

The cops give a good ol’ salute and get to getting, their quota for community service just about totalled for the day. Passing by Eddie on your way to the front door, your mom rolls her eyes. “Typical.”

Over your shoulder, you throw him a twisty little grimace. A mouthed thank you. Seriously.

“You ladies keep that racket down, now,” he calls and watches your mom muscle you past the doorway. 

Slam goes the door, the trailer seeming to shudder with it. And then it’s quiet. Still. Eddie sighs out a big, cold lungful, his eyes trained on your front door. Without the immediate distraction of you, the memory of last night’s hushed and furrowed conversation with Wayne gathers over him like a stormcloud, heavy with thunder, pregnant with rain. 

Your dad called.

Al Munson never calls. He just shows up. He never calls, unless he’s trying to take the temperature of a place. A place that’s recently been occupied by a family he had a significant part in completely blowing up– yours.

Eddie has… no idea what he’s supposed to do about that. 

Because Eddie Munson deals in absolutes. 

And he, unfortunately, evidently, obviously, absolutely cannot stay away from you now. 

–

So following the events of that fateful Friday, you had no good goddamn idea how to behave. You spend the weekend without a single sighting of Eddie Munson, much to your confusing chagrin, and you really did try your very best to behave normally about this. 

But for the first time in a long time, you were completely alone. 

No chittering friends to distract you. No stilted lunches with your mother. No conversations into rusted handsets through shatterproof glass. 

You drifted around town, retreading haunts that really should have elicited some kind of feeling in you. They used to, y’know, when you escaped the neon of Starcourt (before it burned down) for the mothball-scented stacks of the bookstore.

Which, fittingly enough, was just called The Bookstore. Way to establish a town-wide monopoly. 

Toeing around the shelves, chipped nails clutching a Simone de Beauvoir book you’d already read but lost and didn’t exactly intend to buy, you willed yourself to give into the curse of familiarity. To woo yourself with recognizable surroundings. To pretend like your whole worldview wasn’t skewed by a Stooges t-shirt still lying under your pillow. 

The boots, you’d left in an inconspicuous position by the front door. 

The rest of it, though… 

Consciously, you’re reaching into the shelves of the philosophy section, reorganizing the whole thing because they’ve completely blended the Eastern and Western flavors (and even have a little theology thrown in there, for Chrissake). Unconsciously, you’re thinking about how you’ve been wearing that Stooges shirt in some respect since Thursday. How Friday night found it rucked up around your breasts as you squirmed under the covers, two fingers in radial motion in your panties, muffling gasps into your shoulder. Thinking about him gripping you by the shoulders, leaning into you in the half-light, his hair fanned out on his pillow as his arm sloped around you. How Saturday found you with such white-hot shame that you couldn’t even think about him grinning at you without cringing. How Sunday, today, in the bookstore, finds you wearing it under your bottle green sweater. 

You’ve lost your mind. Your entire mind. The Woman Destroyed, indeed.

So, maybe it’s better that you’re spending the weekend solo. But of course, the moment that thought occurs and you yank a copy of Fear and Trembling off the shelf, you’re looking down the barrel of something just awful.

Red-rimmed eyes, bucketing tears and sniffling, there’s goddamn Nancy Wheeler. Full on weeping, in your bookstore. What’s worse is, there’s no passing this off– there’s no pretending you never saw it, like you normally would, because she makes direct eye contact with you. 

“Ohgh–!” is the noise she makes, a kind of snotted-up exclamation, a congested gasp of surprise at your own dissociative gaze intruding on her private moment. 

God, you’re so tempted to just slam the Kierkegaard book back in place and high tail it out of the place. 

But you don’t. 

From your confessional box-esque view, you can see that weeping Wheeler is clutching a copy of Little Women.   

“Don’t worry,” you murmur, the bookstore always making you take on a library-hush tone of voice “They don’t all die of scarlet fever.”

It catches Nancy off-guard; she lets loose a little heh-heh, despite her crumpled expression. “I know,” she says, voice all uneven from her tearfulness, “I’ve read it a million times.”

“Which part got you this go around?” you ask. “The book burning? Meg and that pitiful violet silk debacle? Jo’s sham marriage?”

“Jo doesn’t end up in a sham marriage,” Nancy spikes, wiping under her eyes with a delicate knuckle. You wish to god this girl would turn ugly just once. It’s sickening. 

But you were right on this one, and you knew it. “Does so. She spends her whole life refuting the idea of getting all shacked up like Meg, only to settle down with a man, what, twice her age?”

“She loves him.”

“Does she? I mean, she loved Laurie too, in a way.”

“You think she should have ended up with Laurie.” Nancy says this to you in a way that’s almost condescending. A tear drips off the tip of her perfect nose. Fucking joke.

“Don’t be so goddamned simplistic, Wheeler,” you sigh, rounding the sagging bookcase so you can meet her in her aisle. Because you’re right, and you’d like to be face-to-face when you tell her so. “Jo shouldn’t have ended up with anybody.” 

Her brow crinkles. “That’s way too sad.”

“Really?” you scoff. You’d have expected Nancy Wheeler to cop to a narrative undertone a little better than that. “All Jo wants is freedom– to live as she pleases and write as she pleases. It’s totally diminutive to just marry her off in the end. Jo deserves to be alone. Make her life completely her own. She doesn’t need Friedrich, or Laurie. She’s enough– she’s Jo March, for Jesus’ sake.”

A seed in this triggers something in Nancy and lets out a big old yelping sob– one that makes Ivana, the take-no-shit owner of The Bookstore, lean over the counter and glower at them. Library hush, remember? You take a couple of steps forward, shielding Nancy from view. 

“Okay, what did I do? What’s going on here?” you ask– you kind of hiss, actually. 

“I’m sor– no, it’s nothing, it’s stupid!” she blubbers. “Just… God, they all get to be a lot sometimes, don’t they?”

And immediately, you know exactly what she’s talking about. Your friends. Your friends loved to shit on Nancy Wheeler, both to her face and behind her back– though it was more of the latter on this on-again phase of her and Steve’s rocky romance. Steve had shared some not-stern-enough (as far as you’re concerned) words with you guys, basically asking you to lay off Nance. Yes, she’s a nerd. Yes, she kind of thinks she’s better than you guys. Yes, she kind of can’t hang. But she’s Steve’s girl, and that’s what matters. 

To her credit, she’s made an effort with you all this time, despite all the ribbing. Despite your pointed coldness toward her. 

She doesn’t see kindness as a weakness. You do. 

It occurs to you that you’re wrong. 

“Tell me about it, sister,” you mutter, hugging de Beauvoir and Kierkegaard to your chest. 

“I’m sorry,” she sniffs, meeting your achingly dry eyes with her big, sparkling wet ones. You hate a pretty crier. She looks like a fucking woodland creature. “For how they all treated you, I’m sorry. I should have said something.”

Ah, because you were victim to some not-so-sly digs too. Nancy was probably relieved the heat was off her for once. 

“I believe that,” you say, and you do. She’s got no real good reason to lie to you, especially being that you’ve been such a pill the entire time you’ve known her. “But what did we expect, y’know. Lie down with dogs and all that shit.” 

“Right,” she nods. Peers at the books in your hands. “That’s pretty… heavy stuff.” 

“What, this?” you flash her the Kierkegaard, “Wait, shit, this isn’t Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas!” 

Nancy laughs as high and clear as a bell, and you feel kind of… good about it. Proud of yourself. The sound dies between you, a touch of awkwardness coloring the moment. 

“Listen. Nancy.” Your tone takes on a seriousness; this is advice you usually save for yourself, but… you don’t know. You’re feeling charitable. Inspired by recent events, maybe. “All of these people are bottoming out in the middle, okay? You don’t need to worry about them. Their relevance in your life is… fleeting, at best.”

“Is that how you feel?”

“Yes,” you tell her, and mean it, “Always have.”

“Didn’t always seem that way,” she says, a tilt to her head. Her bloodshot eyes are studying you. “You seemed pretty wrapped up in them, from what I saw.”

“I’m a chameleon, girl. I adapt to survive.”

“Is that how you feel about… all of them?” There’s weight behind that question. “Bottoming out in the middle?” 

She means Steve. You can tell she’s also afraid that she thinks the same thing. Sweet, devastatingly handsome, unambitious Steve. Lionhearted, driven, stratospheric Nancy. She’s going places. He’s going to his shift at Family Video.

“You’re not ready to hear my thoughts on that,” you say, reaching for the book in her hand. Out comes your fountain pen and you’re scribbling in the inside cover. “But you should call me, when you are.”

“Okay, but— you know this means I have to buy this now,” Nancy chuckles.

Amateur.

“Not necessarily,” you say, taking a step closer and slyly slipping the book into the open tote she’s carrying. You pat the wide-eyed Wheeler on the shoulder. 

“Sometimes the five finger discount chooses you.”

–

Monday morning finds Eddie Munson not just on time, but early for first period. He’s here before you are, sinking further and further into his seat as he anticipates your arrival. Of all the freakish things he’s done in his whole entire life, this behavior is the freakiest. 

But he couldn’t help it. It was a weekend of strategically watching through the blinds so he could avoid you if you left the trailer, and sometimes catching you watching him back. Though, your blinds still aren’t fixed, so it’s not like there was some vice-versa catching going on. What? Shut up. It’s been a confusing forty-eight hours. 

He’s slept so poorly that he’s actually hallucinated you in that cursed Stooges t-shirt a couple of times, pacing past your bedroom window. 

These visions have led him to have quite the cramp in his dominant hand. 

Which is not great, because he’s probably going to have to re-take this pop quiz that Kaminsky is apparently handing back today. 

And a cherry on top of this weirdo shit cake is Ronnie Ecker is sitting diagonally across from him at the top of the classroom, looking all concerned and stuff. 

He hasn’t told her anything. Not about you and your impromptu sleepover at the trailer, not about his dad’s looming and uncertain return, nothing. 

He’d gone over to her place on Saturday to work out some kinks in some Hellfire stuff, but he’d spent most of the time standing in the middle of the living room, zoning out at the TV as an episode of Murder, She Wrote rolled on. 

“Dude, what’s the fucking matter with you?”

“Wh– nothing! Angela Lansbury, man, she’s really. Uh. Magnetic.”

But as much as Ronnie had pressed, and she had pressed because she’s a presser, no juice was coming out of this little orange! No siree fuck. Eddie had done such a good and painful job of saying nothing that Ronnie had completely sold herself on the theory that the black mold in his bedroom had finally entered his brain. 

Which, I mean, eventually it will, right. 

Point is, Eddie is now shitting himself because he knows that the second you walk through that classroom door, it’s gonna be written all over his face. Maybe not in such excruciating detail as I helped her out of the rain and she put her head on my chest and she smoked a cigarette so pretty I almost died and we listened to my–our?!–favorite Tom Waits record and we almost kissed but I did technically sleep with her if you want to be super nit-picky about it, but. Ronnie’ll know something. 

And Eddie has an idea how Ronnie will react– and it matters to him how Ronnie will react. Always has, always will. And she is going to beat him to death with her Trapper Keeper, probably, screaming bloody murder about what a moron he is for letting this happen. 

But also, she might not. Because she’s always kind of admired you from a distance, too. She would kind of be all shy whenever she came out of a Biology class that you two shared. It was super weird, because Ronnie doesn’t do the crush thing. 

Is this just the deadly nightshade effect you have on people, or what?

Fuckshit. Shitfuck. As if he willed your arrival into existence, there you are. Breezing through the door in some belted velvet getup, with your shiny little shoes. They’ve got ribbons attached, winding around your ankles like you’re a ballerina or some bullshit, a terrible, sultry ballerina with daggers for eyeballs that are aiming right at Eddie. 

He diverts his interest to his textbook for the first time in his academic career. 

And he prays, prays, that you still don’t want to acknowledge him in public– that you’ll just sit down in front of him and ignore him. 

Somebody down there likes him.

You take your seat, leaning back further than you need to and flicking your hair all over his desk. It’s almost like every other Monday, but this time it feels pointed. 

“Well,” Mr Kaminsky sighs, following you in the door and looking as bedraggled as ever. “You should all be ashamed of yourselves.” 

He clicks open his briefcase, clearly imagining the silence in the classroom to be worth much more than it is. “Some of the worst quiz answers I’ve seen on record.” 

Your hair smells familiar, Eddie thinks. Like a mixture of your rich, smoky floral perfume and his shampoo. 

“That’s what you get for pulling a shittily written paragraph-answer pop quiz on a half-taught section, dumbass,” Eddie hears you mutter. 

Kaminsky calls your name. “Something you wanna share with us?”

Eddie watches your shoulders stiffen. “We’re not even halfway through the section, Mr. K. How are we supposed to answer questions on something we haven’t been taught?” 

“Hilarious, coming from you,” Kaminsky says, stabbing a finger in your direction, “because you’re one of the only aces.” 

“Just because I passed doesn’t mean I agree with the way I was taught,” you level, and Eddie can see by the way your shoulder blades shift that you’re folding your arms. “I read ahead, anyway.” 

“Great. You can continue that independent learning streak,” Kaminsky smirks, “in detention.”

“Oh, that is bullshit!” 

Christ, Eddie wants to kiss you between those tense little shoulderblades. All the way down your spine.

“Yeah? Be my guest–Lacy? They call you Lacy, right?–and take two. Now, if there’s no more objections to my teaching methods? No?”  

Thunk. A stack of papers lands on Ronnie Ecker’s desk. “As the only other person who scored a hundred and hasn’t given me any lip, go ahead and pass those back, Miss Ecker.” 

Ronnie, god love her, does as she’s told. But not before doing a little rifling through the stack and scribbling something on one of the tests. The papers sail back through the classroom in a whirlwind of white, take one, pass it along. 

You’ve got Eddie’s, and you hold it over your shoulder without so much as turning to look at him. Which is what he wanted, what he needs, sure, but what he actually wants is for you to accidentally graze his hand so he has an excuse to hold it and maybe eat it.

He snatches the test back, all nerves. Unsurprisingly, a big fat D for duuuuhhhh plants itself in red like an ugly lipstick kiss at the top of the page. Eh, at least it wasn’t an F. You take the victories where you can get ‘em these d–

All of a sudden, you’re snapping back around, grabbing Eddie’s paper back from his desk. 

“Hey–!” he hisses, almost knocked unconscious by another bloom of your perfume. “What’re you doing!” 

You, again, do not even deign to look back. You just stretch a single index finger back in his general direction– a Lacy-coded sign to fuck off, I’m busy. You hunch over the paper for the remainder of class, seemingly checking and re-checking and going at it with your precious fountain pen. 

He spends the next forty minutes in a cold sweat, mind racing, until the bell finally rings. 

Then it’s a dash, with Eddie trying to grab you and you heading straight for Kaminsky and the both of you just slamming into his desk. 

What in the everloving fuck could she be doing now? 

“This is a C grade,” you state, plain and simple. Kaminsky just flops his khaki-wearing ass into his chair. 

“What are you talking about?” 

“Eddie’s test. You mis-graded him.” Wait, this is– is she helping me? “You docked him points here, here and here when the answers were perfectly fine.” 

“I think I know how to grade a test, Lacy. I’ve been doing this, for a job mind you, since before you were even a twinkle in your convict father’s eye.” Woah, Kaminsky. Straight for the jugular. 

But then Eddie notices you seize in the tiniest of flinches and decides he kind of wants to punch out this teacher. “Look, hold up, we don’t–”

“Fine. Compare it with mine.” You smack your test paper, with its circled red A, on the desk next to Eddie’s. He squints, and he recognizes it, because he’d recognize Ronnie Ecker’s handwriting anywhere– up top of your sheet, scribbled, HARD AGREE– TOTAL BULLSHIT. “They’re basically the same answers. I mean, same content, same major point– the sentence structure leaves a little to be desired, but he’s got the right idea.” 

Snared.

“Wait, really?” Eddie’s eyebrows raise. Okay, even he didn’t know that. He barely remembers even taking this test. He can’t be sure he didn’t cheat, but he’s not about to mention that now… 

You look at him, right at him, for the first time today. And shrug, with your one little shoulder, like you love to do when you’re too cool to speak. 

“And you give a shit… why?” Kaminsky says, asking the question we’re all pondering. 

“Peer tutoring,” you tell him, enunciating those words like you’ve taken elocution lessons. You could’ve. You’re, apparently, full of surprises. “I’m rehabilitating my image.”

Kaminsky is going red, red, and redder under that collar. 

“Which is why I won’t be able to make it to detention. Either of ‘em.” 

“Now, you listen to me, you little hoity-toity madam–” the older man says, shooting out of his chair to lean almost nose-to-nose with you. Eddie reaches a hand out, to either pull you back or slap this dude, but you sense it coming. Push it away. Ow. 

“Mr Kaminsky,” you say, all mock gasp, “What is Ms Kelley gonna say when I tell her that you’re getting in the way of me enriching my fellow students’ academic experience? Is that really the kind of environment we want to foster here at Hawkins High?”

You hit the teacher with a sneer of a pout, boxing him right down to size. And Kaminsky actually retreats, like physically backs off. 

“Fine. Fine.” The teacher grabs a red marker from the cup on his desk, harshly scribbling on the ‘D’ on Eddie’s test and marking up the whole paper with a massive fuck-you ‘C’. “Best of luck with that rehabilitation, Lacy. If this is the company you’re keeping, you’re gonna need it.” 

“Neato threat, real original!” you chirp, and it’s all venom in those vowels as you gather the tests back, “Knew you’d see the light, Mr K.” 

Eddie, of course, follows your hard little steps out of the room like a loyal mutt. But not before he turns and aims a whaddaya gonna do! flavored shrug at Kaminsky. “Go Tigers?”

“What?” In the hallway, he struggles to keep up with you in a sea of jostling students. “And how?” Dodging a backpack. “And–” Marry me? Tripping a freshman. “Gareth! Watch where you’re going, man!”

“Kaminsky wants to play hide the klobása with Kelley.”

“The what?”

“Czech sausage. He’s Czech– Christ. He wants to bang her.” 

“Oh.” Get in line, my man. He watches you twist your combination lock with a grace that’s frankly unnecessary. He’s fidgeting where he stands. So much for avoiding you, but he was doomed from the start in that regard. “That was– woah, back there. Like, I think you might have just single handedly raised my GPA.”

“Good. So we’re square. Indy County Tech Center, here you come.” You deposit your books, grab some more, and flick his newly-graded test at him so that he has to catch it in midair. Then, a slam! of your locker door and you’re gone, making tracks down the hallway in your little ballerina shoes. 

“Lacy– Lacy, wait up.” Eddie finally falls in step with you, following wherever you’re going. “I’m feeling some hostility here.”

“Wow, point to Munson. How perceptive,” you snit, not meeting his eyes.

“Are you mad at me?”

“How could I be mad at you? I don’t even know you.”

“Lacy, don’t be a bi–”

That makes you stop dead, stabbing a finger in the air near his chest.

“Do not fucking call me a bitch.” You mean it. God, but you mean it, and he can see it; you’re about to boil over, just about holding it together. Your big eyes flutter at him and he feels like he doesn’t have kneecaps. You suck in a jagged breath, hard expression faltering. “I feel like an idiot. If you really wanna know. I thought–...”

“You thought what?” he asks, and he kind of knows, but he also thinks that might be blowing shit way out of proportion. You look down, tugging a piece of lint from your sleeve. Eddie verbally nudges at you, because if he touches you, he might a) crumble or b) be on the receiving end of some blunt-force trauma. That binder you’re holding is huge. “Lacy. You thought what?”

“I just–... You ignored me all weekend,” you say in this little mouse voice he was not expecting to come from you. Except, he had heard it before. I’m cold.

But so what? She’s– she’s always cold.

“And? You’ve ignored me, like, my whole life.”

“I know that, but…” This is difficult for you to choke out. Bodies pass into classrooms behind you and soon enough, you two are alone in the hallway. Again. But there’s no sniping, no snarling, no cur-like behavior with your teeth exposed. “I didn’t hate being in your trailer.” Oh my god. Oh my god. “Hanging… out with you, I didn’t–” Holy shit. Eddie does not know where to look, what to feel, what to think, what to do. And he shows it as much, kind of just gap-mouthed staring at you, willing himself to say something smooth– or at least nice. But when you glance back up at him, finally, it’s a look of defeat. 

“Look, whatever. Congrats on your C. We’re even. So you can forget it.” And you move around him, ducking through the door of AP French. 

Not you can forget it, like in your dreams, Munson, but you can forget it like it was right there and you blew it, buddy.

The classroom door clicks closed and Eddie bends at the midriff, feeling like he’s been stabbed. 

–

You felt like you were trying to digest a rock until the final bell rang– though, c’mon, you didn’t know what you could have possibly expected. Eddie Munson is Eddie Munson, and you’re you. And you’d thought it yourself, it was an instance of temporary insanity. Dawn broke, the harsh light of day illuminating all the reasons why you two being anything less than contentious semi-strangers was a logical impossibility. 

So what if you wanted to kiss him. You’ve wanted to kiss a lot of people and haven't done it. It hadn’t killed you. 

However, it hadn’t gnawed at you like this either. 

Nancy Wheeler called, by the way, which means she stole that book off the back of your advice–that, or paid for it once you left the store, a flurry of charming apologies fluttering around her head like Snow White’s attendant birds. Typical. But she’d called, and you two had had an awkward forty five second conversation where she asked you if you’d mind awfully if you looked over her latest piece for the Streak. 

Something about spotlighting female business owners in Hawkins. 

“Coffee’s on me!” she’d said brightly, so super-duper keen. You all-of-a-sudden hated to put a damper on her, so you said sure. 

“But I’ll be uncompromising. I want you to know that.”

“Of course. That’s why I asked you.”

It occurred to you then that Nancy Wheeler, in her way, might actually look up to you. 

How fucking weird.

And sure enough, there she was, waiting for you in the parking lot once you gathered all your stuff from your locker. She leans against her car, wearing a corduroy skirt and a sweater that you don’t even really hate, and throws you a casual wave. The thing about Nancy and her consistent commitment to kindness toward you was she wasn’t even asinine about it– she never chased you around the playground, begging you to put on her friendship bracelet. If she did, you could actually hate her. Hate her for being cloying and desperate. You could call her all the shitty words for saccharine in the book and feel justified. 

But that is, regrettably, not the case. 

You almost say something like, Thank god your car is out of the shop, I’m sick to death of walking in these shoes, before you remember you made up that thing about Nancy’s car being in the shop. In order to skip class with Eddie Munson. 

And just as you’re crossing the lot to her wood-paneled station wagon (family car, you’re guessing?), that very same Eddie Munson skids directly into your path. Like, gasping for breath. 

“You di–huhh, you didn’t hear me calling you?” he says, straining against his lung capacity. 

“Jesus!” you jump, “No!” 

You really didn’t. You must have rage-tuned him out. 

“Oh, right. Oh, fuck, you walk so fast. Gimme a second here,” Eddie wheezes, hands on his knees. “You– you want a ride home?”

You look over his shoulder to a very perplexed looking Nancy Wheeler and find yourself fighting a smile. Motioning for her to wait a sec, you turn back to Eddie. “I’m good. I got a thing with Wheeler.” 

“Wheeler the priss?”

“And Lacy the bitch,” you remind him of that epithet he’d pinned on you like a corsage. 

He clocks it and grins. Eddie’s grin lands like a dollop of cream in your otherwise shitty coffee. You do not like this about him. At least, not right now.

“The dynamic duo.”

“Yeah, we’re gonna go solve crimes,” you roll your eyes, kind of over the whole bit already, “You’re making us late. What do you want, Munson?”

Eddie holds up a ringed finger, uno momento por favor, and digs around in his pockets. Candy and gum wrappers and an old, crushed cigarette soft pack all fall out during his cavity search until finally, he produces a crumpled piece of bright yellow paper and thrusts it toward you. 

“It’s no Harrington kegger, but you are cordially invited.”

It’s a flyer. Corroded Coffin, Live at– Oh. Oh. It’s been painstakingly hand-doodled and photocopied, the pencil marks where mistakes have been erased still visible on the print. 

This is his band.  

You, in only the way you can, study it with a quirked brow– a look of dismissal, one might even say. Your eyes slowly raise to meet Eddie’s, who looks as if he’s about to start hopping from foot to foot, there’s so much nervous energy thrumming under his leather jacket. 

Fwump. You palm the flyer into his chest. You nearly feel the physical sensation of his heart sinking. 

Then, you pluck your fountain pen from thin air, uncapping it with your teeth. 

“There’s an ‘e’ in Roane County, dumbass.” 

With the delicate nib, you scratch the letter onto the misspelled place name, using his chest as an upright writing desk. You can actually feel his breathing becoming all uneven. His grin rounds out its corners and becomes a smile, and you can tell the difference between those two expressions now, apparently. 

“Does that mean you’ll come?”

“That means I know where it is,” you say, capping your pen and leaving him clutching the flyer to his chest. 

“Friday! Ten PM!” Eddie yells after you, hand cupped around his mouth. “Roane County Quarry! With an ‘e’!” 

Nancy meets you with a look of total bemusement as you finally tug open the passenger door of your car. She watches Eddie watch you, almost tripping over his Reeboks as he walks backwards toward his beat up van. And you read every inch of the look she’s giving you. 

“He is my neighbor, Wheeler.”

“Yeah! He seems like a… super nice neighbor. Really friendly.”

“So not ready to talk about that yet,” you mutter, beating back a blush that’s threatening to color your cheeks. 

Nancy giggles– bubbly like phosphate, friendly-teasing, not pointed, not mean. Weird feeling. She turns her keys in the ignition. “But when you are, will you call me?”

–

You’d swear Corroded Coffin were about to be on the cover of Circus, the way Eddie has been… well, Eddie-ing out at rehearsal all week. He’s thrown not one, but two temper tantrums about the boys not sounding tight enough (“We need this clown car tight, you clowns!”) and has received not one, not two, but three perfectly aimed drumsticks to the head, courtesy of Ronnie Ecker. 

The third one was just target practice, but he earned the other two. 

“What has crawled up your ass, dude?” Jeff, a sophomore that can admittedly out play every single one of them in bass and every other instrument, demands. 

“I bet I know what crawled up his ass,” Ronnie glowers from behind her snares, “Or should I say who.”

Now, Ronnie hadn’t witnessed Eddie giving you that flyer, or your copyediting work on it, but she had that preternatural thing where she could feel it when Eddie was out and about doing some dumb stupid dumbass bullshit. Like those dogs that can detect earthquakes. She’s full time on the beat detecting earthquakes. 

“Cool it, Jessica Fletcher.” Maybe Angela Lansbury really did do a number on him. “I quite simply want us to sound good, for once. Not Hideout good– good-good. The Quarry is a big deal! Like, a literal big cavernous deal. You want a dry run for the Garden? This is our shot, maestros.” 

“Are you seriously comparing Roane County Quarry to Madison Square Garden?” Cyrus, their second guitarist and first-rate vocalist, says with narrowed eyes. “Something did crawl up your ass.”

“And die,” Ronnie agrees.

“And now the death stench is in your brain,” Cyrus adds.

“And the stench has turned toxic.”

“And the toxicity is killing off your brain cells one by one by one.”

“And we’re gonna get on stage at the Quarry, and your head is gonna explode–”

“Just like Scanners,” Cyrus and Ronnie finish in such an eerie unison that it actually raises goosebumps on Eddie’s arms. 

“Fuck, are they serious?” sweet, gentle, naive Jeff asks, brown eyes flared in alarm. Something about being a child prodigy in one arena makes you so desperately gullible in everything else.

“No!” Eddie barks. “We just– we’ve gotta be good.” 

Because what would Lacy say about what Robert Christgau would say about us?

Something cutting like a scythe, brilliant like a diamond. 

But for your part, you don’t know much about metal. 

I mean, you’ve got a vague familiarity with the genre– you’ve got a subscription to Rolling Stone and Creem (RIP), for god’s sake. The roots were far more accessible to you as a whole; ‘Smoke on the Water’ by Deep Purple has the kind of intro you can paint your nails to, for example, and ‘Immigrant Song’ by Led Zeppelin feels like hotwiring Billy Hargrove’s car and driving it over a cliff (in a good way).

The absolute thrash of it all, though? Your one musical blindspot. And you weren’t quite sure how keen you were to lift the veil on it 

Regardless, you decided you were going. You were going to show up at Roane County Quarry, ‘e’ included, and dip your toe into the kind of lawfully insouciant scene you’d always fantasized about, ever since you read your first Kerouac.

Granted, the metalhead-and-allied contingent of Hawkins weren’t exactly the Beat poetry set, but you doubted they’d be boring. You imagined a lot of leather incorporated into the outfits. At least one of them would have a switchblade. Maybe there’d be a Hells Angel there. 

The only way to know is to go. 

Something Eddie possibly failed to consider, being that he has molten lava in place of a bloodstream, is that it is positively arctic on this fateful Friday night. So sub-polar is the goddamned weather that you have to dig out your warmest coat. 

Your warmest coat isn’t exactly the desired attire for a thrash rock show happening in a quarry. 

“What the hell is she wearing?” come the murmurs as you slip your way through the modest (but gathering?) crowd, all finding heat around fires set in trashcans and mouthfuls sunk from bottles in brown paper bags. Girls with hair so gelled and spiked and backcombed that it looks sharp and flammable give you dirty looks, and the looks their boyfriends give you are even dirtier– and not even in that way! Misogyny in rock and roll, alive and fucking well!

You spot Eddie Munson in the near distance and bend down, grab a pebble, and pelt it at his denim-and-leather clad back. He spins, alarmed, on alert, and does a bad job of dimming how he lights up like a goddamn Christmas tree when he sees who’s launching projectiles at him. You. He’s all lit up, looking at you. 

You glance away. Like, yes. The miracle has arrived. Calm down.

Then his face falls a teensy bit.

“What–” 

“If you ask me what I’m wearing, I’m going to scream,” you say, crossing your fuzzy arms over your fuzzy chest. “And we’re in a quarry. Sound carries.” 

Eddie reaches out, hand all gnarled like Dracula or something, and pets you on the arm of your coat. 

“Guys, get over here.”

“No–” you start, but all of a sudden, all four members of Corroded Coffin are taking turns stroking the arm of your fur coat. “Stop that. It bites.” 

“Eddie, can you confirm or deny that it bites?” Ronnie Ecker says in a tone you’ve never heard Ronnie Ecker use before– knowing, biting, a little nasty. You’re not sure whether or not to be offended by that, but… you like this look on her. 

Or maybe you just like when anyone gives Eddie Munson shit. 

“He’s never had the privilege,” you say and shoot Ronnie a sly look. Just to test the waters. She blushes. Point to Lacy.

“Alright, let me go ahead and nip this in the bud before it begins,” Eddie cuts in, manually removing Ronnie’s petting hand from your upper arm. He flourishes a hand out in front of you, a half-bow, a consummate dork. “We’re almost on. May I escort you to your seat, m’lady?”

“Jesus Christ,” you mutter, committed to the contrarian bit for the time being, but let him lead you all the same. “They reserve seating in this ditch?”

“Not for everybody!”

“Why am I getting special treatment?” You don’t know what answer you’re expecting to that question. 

“Lacy,” Eddie levels, stopping dead at his van and looking you dead in your face, “you wore a mink coat to a metal show. You’re not a VIP, you’re a liability.” 

“What, dead animals aren’t hardcore enough for you people anymore?” you drawl as he props open the passenger door of the van. You take his hand, as you’ve taken his hand a handful of times now, in a way where it’s almost ordinary. But then, halfway in and halfway out of the van, you pause. 

“Oh, no. This just won’t do.”

“Whaddaya mean?” Eddie mumbles. 

“Well, I’m not gonna be able to see shit from here.” 

“Where do you–”

“I’m getting on the roof, asshole.” 

You slam the door on him, rolling down the passenger window. All hands and swinging limbs, careful not to snag your tights on the peeling paintwork, you clamber out the window and up onto the roof of his van. Settling your ass down, crossing your legs over his windshield, you flash him one of those winning smiles. He smiles back.

There’s a buzzing in your stomach. It’s not from the flask of whiskey you’ve been sipping from, but you’re willing to lie. 

“Cheerleader,” he teases. 

“Break a leg, Munson,” you say, cheersing that aforementioned flask to him. “Snap it clean off for me.” 

There’s not a whole lot of pre-show faffing about (you didn’t time your entrance to hang around) before Corroded Coffin takes the stage. And god, the sound is horrendous. You can barely hear the banter up top (winning, you’re sure) from the band’s frontman– which, to your shock and awe, is not Eddie. It’s a fellow senior named Cyrus Painter (great name, by the way), who you vaguely recognize from Math and from the Hellfire table you crashed that one time. He doesn’t seem to hold much of a stage presence beyond glowering and muttering darkly into a microphone that’s barely picking up his voice, but all importance of that seems to go right out the window as soon as they hit the opening chords of their first song. You think it might be called ‘Whiplash’. 

And it’s good. 

It’s almost perverse, how technically accomplished it is– like, high school bands should not be this technically accomplished, but then you twig that Ronnie is in band. Like, the marching band. And so is that other kid on the bass, the one who they featured in the Streak for winning a bunch of teen virtuoso awards. Cyrus carries the song with the beautiful grace of a wrecking ball, but–and you might be biased–the one that’s putting the texture on this whole operation is the lead guitarist. 

Eddie’s not in band. Eddie’s not technically perfect. But it’s Eddie that’s throwing shots of gasoline down the hatch of this fire-breathing dragon. This would be way too neat of an outfit if it wasn’t for him, fingers flying so fast over his fretboard that he barely touches it, scuzzing up the surrounds of the thrash metal with an almost bluesy warmth. 

Warmth. Of course it’s warmth. Of course it’s searing fingers and sweat you can almost see teeming from underneath his bandana, even in the sub-zero temperatures. It’s Eddie, throwing his whole self into this. 

A shot of pure admiration followed by a twinge of envy. 

You wonder how he does that. 

The song concludes, barely leaving time for whoops and applause before they launch into another. They’re laser-focused, locked in like Chrissy Cunningham in that goddamn basket toss, and you kind of get it. It’s not for you, but you kind of get it. This is sword swinging fucking music, slay the monster fucking music. 

Dungeons and Dragons fucking music. 

It’s all build, all fantasy, all story, all rage and rush and ravenousness. And before you know it, it’s all over, and you’re applauding– applauding more reservedly than you feel you want to. 

“I’m comin’ up there!” There is Eddie, who’s apparently made a beeline from the milkcrate stage to his van, under the pretense of loading equipment. Which he’s managed to do in what seems like thirty seconds flat. 

A gas lamp of eagerness and pure energy, he’s blazing bright and clumsily hoisting his way onto the roof to sit with you– he doesn’t have your muscular strength, so he has to kind of swing a leg and roll his way up there, almost knocking you over. 

“Woah!” you giggle as he collides with you, reaching for your flask with a gimme that. He hoists himself up next to you, tugging off his bandana and running a hand through the flattened waves to give them a little oomph again. But Eddie right now, he’s all oomph. 

“So,” he nudges you, eyes gleaming, “Don’t leave me in suspense, Lester Bangs. Whatdja think?”

You screw your lips up, sigh hard through your nose. “I don’t know how to tell you this, Munson…” 

“Hmm?”

“...but it didn’t suck.”

“Really?” Eddie’s eyes gleam, like you just scored him that ‘C’ grade all over again. 

“Re–ally,” you nod, pulling the flask from him, “I mean, Ronnie? She’s fucking John Bonham.”

“I keep telling her that.”

“And that kid on the bass–?”

“Jeff.”

“Jeeeeff. Him and Cyrus, right? Dead set on a Pulitzer.” 

“I’ll take your word for it.”

You let the trepidation hang between you for a beat or two, letting Eddie’s eyes search your face with a big fat uuummm? Hello? as you take an achingly long pull of that whiskey. 

“Am I forgetting somebody?” you murmur. 

“Oh, fuck you!” he barks through a laugh. You’re both shoulder to shoulder, his breath blowing warmth onto your cheek because of how far his voice projects. “C’mon, Lacy. I can take it.” 

“Can you?”

“Don’t tease me, ice princess.”

“‘Don’t freeze me’, you mean.”

“Dammit.” 

“Gotta be quick on that trigger.” 

“I know.”

“Like you are on that fretboard,” you finally hand it to him. “I mean, shit, Munson.” 

“Really?” he says again; he is beaming, glowing from the inside out. He’s radioactive, this kid. You cannot, cannot, cannot stop looking at him. “Really shit, Munson?”

“Really shit Munson!” you exclaim, a little louder than intended–blame the whiskey. “Where’d you learn to play like that?”

“Who, me?” Eddie shrugs, stretching his arms over his head. “I’m a self-made man, baby.” You think, for a second that he might try and pull that corny movie theater move where the boy stretches only to drape his arm over the girl’s shoulder– and you’re half-relieved, half-disappointed when he doesn’t. 

“Incredible,” you say, when you could’ve said bullshit.

That makes him… almost shy. He glances away from you for the first time since he’s sat up here. “Yeah, well. Gotta while away the hours somehow.” 

“Can I ask you something?” It flies out of your mouth before you have a chance to stop it. 

“If it’s about what I was doing out at that crossroads with my guitar, then no.” 

“Can we be friends?” It’s nearly medical, the way you ask him. Like you’re verifying symptoms. And he’s taken aback– maybe it’s how straightforward you are about it, or maybe it’s the weird, tender lilt to your tone. Eddie blinks.

“... do you mean right here right now friends or actually acknowledge each other in the hallway friends.”

“I mean full time at your lunch table friends,” you say. Suddenly, your throat is very dry. “You can even carry my books if you want to.”

Eddie’s eyes narrow, and his voice seems to narrow with them. “I don’t know. Sitting with us sorta requires that you join Hellfire…”

“Friends need boundaries, Eddie.” 

“Price of admission, babydoll.” The way he rolls his head over his shoulder is… shut up.

You pause, honestly kind of mulling it over. 

Eddie hitches himself a little upright, a lightning flash of concern dashing across his face. “I”m fucking with you. Yes, we can be friends…” he breathes out a laugh, washing you over with that studying look again, ”What a weird way to ask.”

“But weird good, no?” you say, and you say it all bright and searching– like you’re looking for his approval. 

Eddie, with his hand braced against the roof of the van, directly behind your back, leans in so that his chin is resting on your mink-covered shoulder. He looks up at you, revved up on post-show adrenaline and a little of your whiskey. It is now, you realize, a little hard to breathe. Eddie Munson smells like cigarettes and soap and garbage can fire and sweat and rock and roll.

“Weird like you’re a weirdo, Lacy,” he hums, “And I aaalways knew it.” 

Bangbangbang! The sound of Ronnie Ecker’s balled up fist on the side of the van makes you both nearly jump out of your skin, two skeletons too close for comfort. 

“Guys, I hate to break up–whatever the hell, but I’ve still got a curfew!” she yells. “And my Granny’s got a gun!” 

You and Eddie, you and your friend Eddie, look at each other and burst into nose-first laughter, snorting away. Giddy, giggly, stupid. And the funniest part is, you really think you’ve killed it. 

By saying let’s be buddies!, you think you’ve put a stake right into the pitter-pattering heart of the nebulous other feelings you find yourself feeling when you look in Eddie’s eyes, at his lashes, at his hands, at his neck. 

For a clever girl, you are so, so stupid.

author's notes: here we here we here we fucking go! i'll admit i'm a little delirious writing this because it's REDACTED past REDACTED but i needed to get this up and outta me. and also because y'all deserve it, being so supportive and nice to me AGAIN. i can't get over youse. dyou wanna get married - bildoolpoolp, a real goddess from dnd! her areas of control are darkness, insanity and revenge to which i say: lacy that u? - virginia woolf doll came to me in a dream and then i found this article about a virginia woolf doll. all i want for christmas? virginia woolf doll. stones in pockets not included - rita hayworth, always decent - got me feeling like miss tayla the way i'm burying meaning in eddie's dialogue! - the oracle of delphi, one of our baddest bitches on record - calling lacy's mom a blanche dubois type was admittedly shady of me but... if the shoe fits. - i'm zeroing in on officer callahan based almost solely on how much joy i get from watching him in search party, a show about terrible awful millennials that takes a turn you'd never see coming! THIS IS A FORMAL REQUEST FOR YOU TO WATCH SEARCH PARTY - in case you wanted a visual for the stooges t-shirt eddie gave lacy - LITTLE WOMEN ALIGNMENTS AS I SEE THEM: nancy is a stone cold jo march with a touch of beth around the ears, lacy is amy sun amy moon jo rising, EDDIE IS AN AMY, steve is a meg sun amy moon - also jo march is a lesbian and if you really want to talk about it, trans. i'm not citing a source for this i don't need to - jessica fletcher you beautiful bitch - y'all remember ms kelley, the hot guidance counsellor? right???? - nancy the priss and lacy the bitch-- make us solve crimes! - the missing 'e' in the corroded coffin flyer is a real fucking thing from that hawkins memories box you can buy. i love that boy and he can't spell and i want it framed. - circus, a rock magazine that was neck and neck in notoriety with rolling stone. here's ozzy on the cover in a tutu! - scanners is a perfect film from 1981 by my baby daddy david cronenberg! (cw for head explosion in the trailer) - listened to smoke on the water or immigrant song lately? no? well, we were all raised by school of rock so fix that - alright so the corroded coffin lineup of it all. i've long held the belief that eddie is in fact not the vocalist but is, on charisma alone, the de facto frontman (think russell hammond in almost famous). cyrus is named for the mountain goats song the best ever death metal band in denton which makes me cry if i think about the freaks in corroded coffin being the best ever death metal band out of hawkins! when you punish a person for dreaming his dream, don't expect him to thank or forgive you! they will both outpace and outlive you! - lester bangs! i did another almost famous/real life reference :( which is also a deep cut lacy reference that may or may not be explained - john bonham died! thaaaaaat's all for this round, folks. thanks again for sticking with me, likes and reblogs and comments are always so appreciated and who knows if i'll write even more next time! COZ I SURE FUCKING DON'T!!!! okay love u hellcats x