#(As always the truth is somewhere in the middle)

[thisblogisaboutabook]

Bad Idea, Right? - Part 10

Eris x Reader/Azriel’s daughter - Angst - Fluff

The final chapter is here! Thank you to everyone who has read this series. There will be an epilogue coming soon as well.

Part 9 Series Masterlist

Warnings: Language, sexual references, restraint and use of dagger (not as dark as it sounds, no pain involved), referenced alcohol/drunkenness, smitten Eris is sexy as hell

“You.” Y/N pointed a finger into Eris’ chest, her shadows whirling violently into a vortex surrounding her. She stepped closer, digging the finger further into his chest. “Are. Insufferable.”

Eris only smirked and honestly- he wasn’t sure if it made him a pathetic male but he didn’t know whether to feel sad, aroused, or enamored. He suspected he was somewhere in the middle of all three.

That vicious little scowl. Those delicate hands he knew the feeling of so well, how her fingers spent so many nights tracing along every indention of his body, as if it were an extension of her own. There was a thrill that came with knowing they were just as capable of violence. Perhaps he should have been afraid, he so often forgot just how she so quickly raised in the rankings of the Night Court - and it wasn’t because of who her father was. No, she’d earned it all on her own merit.

It made her all the more enticing.

“What?” She withdrew her finger, crossing her arms and cocking her head in a predatory manner. Gods, she was delicious.

He was a lech and desperately needed to sober up before this conversation was to be had.

Eris ran his fingers through his hair, tussling his auburn locks in a way that, though he was too disheveled to notice, had his mate’s pulse thrumming with desire.

Stumbling slightly, Eris held up a single finger in front of her, with a request of, “Please hold.” as if that would stave off the impending shitstorm she was about to throw at him.

To his surprise, one her eyebrow only flicked upward with amusement as she took a stride backward, gesturing with a wave. “It’s not like I have anywhere to be, Eris. By all means.”

Fumbling to the corner kitchenette in his apartment, Eris reached for a tonic on the top shelf, extending one to Y/N in silent offering, to which she bitterly remarked, “If anything, I need more alcohol to get through this, not a sobering tonic.”

Eris understood, truly he did, but he also was not about to discuss this with her under the influence of alcohol. His feelings for her were not fleeting, they did not come from lowered inhibitions, they did not even come from their bond, they came from his heart. And oh no, he wasn’t about to let her hear him pour his heart out just for his lovely mate to feign that she couldn’t remember due to however many bottles of wine she and Layla had consumed earlier in the evening - if the vineyard aroma pouring from her every breath was any inclination to her state of sobriety.

Leaving his arm extended, Eris gave the tonic a little shake. Y/N let out a flustered sigh, swiping the tonic from him and throwing it back like a shot of liquor.

“Good girl.” He smirked.

“Don’t start with me.” She spoke coldly, that scowl again returning to her lovely face.

That glare. Those narrowed golden-flecked eyes, the purse of her plush lips. Gods, she really did it for him and she had no idea. He didn’t know if he’d ever get enough of it. For every mask of irreverence he’d ever been forced to wear, she dropped hers for him. Sure, she’d placed hers in specific circumstances but this - this prickly, headstrong, determined female didn’t try to win him with flattery or simpering, least of all faux niceties.

No, any glimpse of feeling he caught from her, that was real. It was all her. It always had been. And tonight, the mask he’d so long worn to protect her from him, or he from her, at this point he wasn’t sure which it was - tonight the mask would drop. The truth of their bond was out, there was no more holding back, no more distancing, no more skirting around webs of half-truths. She wanted all of him? He’d give it all.

Eris raised a groomed eyebrow back in his mate’s direction. “Are you going to scowl at me all night or would you like to work things out?”

He beamed internally at the sight of those rolling eyes, her hand placed on a cocked out hip as she let out a huff of annoyance. “As I said, insufferable.”

He only gave a wry smirk in return, stoking the fire within his own mate further.

“Stop smirking at me, Eris. This isn’t amusing.”

Eris took a step toward her, leaning down to only centimeters from her face, grin widening, his voice turning low, seductive. “Come on, little Shadowsinger. Wipe this smirk off my face.”

With that shadows flew at him with all their force, hauling him off his feet and back into a chair at the small dining table fifteen feet away.

Shock crossed his features, smirk faltering momentarily at the sheer force.

He’d been restrained by her shadows many times before but had never seen their full potential. Testing the bonds binding his wrists behind the back of the chair and the ones tying his ankles to the legs of it he realized just how truly stuck he was.

And he wasn’t quite sure whether to be aroused or nervous.

He was somewhere between the two.

She sauntered toward him, hips swishing with each movement, heels clacking on the floor with each slow step. That skin tight dress only amplifying the sway of her curves. Stopping half way toward him, she spirited a dagger from the pocket realm - a dagger he’d gifted her during one of their escapades.

He’d told her it was just laying around and he had no use for it - but truly he’d had the piece forged for her with protective enchantments that would alert him should she ever be in a situation she couldn’t get herself out of.

Death by his own mate, at the tip of the dagger he’d given her. If it brought her a few steps closer to him, it didn’t seem like such a bad way to go.

Though he knew she would never bring him harm.

The click of her heels on the floor continued as she closed the remaining distance, leaning in. Eris’ heart raced at the pure submission of his position, pupils dilated.

Aroused it was. How could he be nervous with her this close. Yes, it was definitely arousal.

She leaned in, her warm breath caressing the shell of his ear. “Where’s that smirk now, High Lord?”

A thrill rushed through him. “Do you like it, little Shadowsinger? Having the High Lord of Autumn completely at your will? I’ll burn the world for you, should you only ask.”

She pulled back, wildfire sparking in her eyes for a moment. He didn’t miss the shift in her scent. She inhaled, eyes fluttering shut, that gleam in her eyes banking.

“What I want, Eris Vanserra, is the truth.” She stepped forward, the tip of her dagger dragging down his chest, lower, dancing a little too closely for comfort to his favorite appendage before skirting around the area and down his thigh.

Giving a faux pout, she crooned, “I’d hate to ruin this fancy get up of yours, I know how you love your finery.”

Eris swallowed, “I do.” His gaze met hers with utter sincerity, allowing her to see the truth in his amber eyes. “And you’re the finest I’ve ever laid eyes on.”

She waived his words off. “You love me?”

Eris didn’t balk. “I’m not sure there’s a word to describe what I feel for you, Y/N, but love is a good place to start.”

A slight whimper left her at the admission. She’d heard him say it in that moment she winnowed away from the gallery earlier that night but this, the look in those eyes, the intention in his tone. She knew he meant it.

Eris started at the quick withdrawal of her shadows unpinning him to the chair. He remained seated waiting for her next movement. He didn’t need the force of her shadows to be completely at her will.

And so he waited, heart rate elevating slightly in anticipation. She dropped the dagger, straddling his lap, Eris nearly coming undone by the feel of her warmth against him. Gently resting a palm to the defined edge of his jaw and tilting his face toward hers, she whispered, “tell me everything.”

Eris stood, resting his hands beneath her thighs, keeping her pressed close to him. Bringing her to a chaise in the seating area, he seated himself, positioning her bridal style in his arms. She didn’t fight, remaining pliant in his arms, she looked to him and he nearly fell apart at the look in her eyes. Uncertainty lay there, but something more, a look he’d given her so many times when she was sound asleep, safe in his bed.

Adoration.

He would not squander this opportunity to share his feelings, to give her the answers she had asked him repeatedly for.

He tucked her head into his shoulder, one hand wrapped around her thigh, his thumb running up and down the exposed flesh beneath her slightly hitched gown.

The crook of his other arm cradled her neck as he ran soothing strokes through her raven-black hair.

And so he began, he told her of the night he’d found her, how he’d been mesmerized by the way she held her own against the two lecherous brutes who’d corralled her into the back alley of that bar in his court, how the bond snapped for him then.

He told her of the night he’d naturally gravitated toward her at a court function, the first time he’d seen her since the night they’d slept together, how fear struck him but it was too late to divert away from her without drawing further attention. Not because he didn’t want her, but because he needed her so fucking badly that he couldn’t risk any attendees discovering his weakness, discovering her.

She already had a target on her back as the niece of the High Lord of the Night Court, the daughter of the Spymaster, but as the mate of another High Lord, she’d all but have a target saying “kidnap me for leverage” on her back.

And then he sighed, a bit of self-loathing lacing his tone. “I have never claimed to be a good male, Y/N. I am selfish and I covet things of value, and you, you’re a fucking treasure. You are everything. I couldn’t stay away. I hoped the hook-up’s would be enough but I only craved you more. I need you to understand, I am centuries older than you. I have lived life, I have been with countless females and males-“ He didn’t miss the slight tense of her body at the mention of his past affairs. “I have traveled, I’ve seen the worst life has to offer, I’ve seen the beauty of life, I have experienced it all and I can confidently say that you are the best this life has to offer.”

He let out another sigh, “But you, you deserve more than to be tied down at this age - and Y/N, if we were mated, if we sealed the bond, I couldn’t share you. I told you I’m selfish. And if you’re mine, you’re mine alone. There will be no others.”

Chill bumps rose on her thighs at the admission. Silence settled between them momentarily before she looked up into his eyes with her brow furrowed. “What about your bargain with Uncle Rhys?”

He only let out a bitter laugh. “I gave him the information of the bond, and the promise of a favor that he could call in at a later time - so long as it was mutually beneficial to our courts - in exchange for his silence until you recognized the bond or I told you of it.”

“And this,” he briefly removed his palm from her thigh, motioning at the apartment, “was mutually decided between us, a safer haven for you and I to escape to than for you to constantly be sneaking off to my court. I wanted to be able to come to you too.”

She hummed at the answer, processing. She pressed her face against his shoulder, muffling her words, a rare show of vulnerability from his vivacious mate.

Eris gave an amused smirk. “What was that?”

He felt the heat of her breath as she let out a sigh. “How do you know you love me? That it’s not just the mating bond?”

“Y/N, look at your mother and my brother. Well, perhaps don’t think on that for too long. Mates, mates who are happily married to others. If I recall correctly, your own High Lord’s parents were mated and unhappy.”

He cupped her jaw, forcing her gaze to meet his.

“You. I love every bit of you. You may be from the Night Court but I’ve witnessed the fire that burns within you, flaring hotter and brighter than that of any in my court. I wanted you from the moment I laid eyes on you regardless of the fact that the bond snapped right after.

I look at you and I see a female who can hold her own, who doesn’t balk from brutes who feel they are entitled to her, a female who is fearless and passionate. A female who somehow manages to wear her heart on her sleeve, while guarding it ferociously. A female who can be both vulnerable and vicious.

You are more than I could have ever asked for, more than I’ve dreamed of, more than I deserve. And if you ever decide to be mine, Y/N, then your heart is mine forever. Mine already belongs to you. Until then, I will wait forever if that’s what it takes. The world is yours, this life is yours to live as you please, and I will cherish you unconditionally whether you’re with me, conquering continents, or warming the bed of someone else.”

Eris felt ease at the relief of letting it all out - though it was both terrifying and thrilling. He sat in silence, letting her absorb everything he’d said. He wanted to speak these words for so long and now she knew everything. Whatever happened next was her choice.

To his surprise, after she contemplated all that he’d laid out for her, she let out a scoff. “You say I can warm someone else’s bed like you haven’t ruined all others for me. You fuck with fire in your veins and I’m the moth to your flame.”

Huffing a small laugh, Eris pressed a kiss to her hair. “I can’t say I’m disappointed to hear that.”

She let out a small, contented sigh. “I think, I’d like for us to try courting. Truly courting, no masks. No lies. Just you and me.”

Eris’ heart swelled at the response. A guilt that had risen in him quelling. He still worried that she’d feel pressure to accept the bond after his admission, so the aspect of courting - well, he’d be the best damn courtier in all of Prythian for his little Shadowsinger.

“I’d like that too.” He whispered into her hair.

They remained in companionable silence for the next couple of hours, Y/N falling asleep in his arms - that little snore he adored so much reminding him just how safe and unguarded she felt around him. They had all the time in the world.

Eventually he nodded off only to be awoken by her stirring, “Come on, Eris, let’s go to the bed and sleep. You’re too old to sleep comfortably in this position.”

Letting out a gasp of mock offense and scooping her up, Eris carried her to the bed. The earliest signs of dawn shining in the window.

He watched as she drifted back to sleep, fighting sleep himself as he had a task to attend to this morning. Her shadows roused to which he only shushed them, whispering of his plan, seemingly settling them.

—————————

Y/N

I jolt awake to find my shadows at rest and no Eris in sight. My heart drops slightly at that. After coaxing my shadows for a moment, they whisper of my mate’s whereabouts.

Slightly puzzled, I sift through Eris’ armoire, throwing a cream colored sweater of his on over my dress, put on my heels, and wander into the street beyond the wards, winnowing to him.

I find Eris crouched down in my mother’s garden. I watch quietly, surprised that he hasn’t noticed my presence as he spirits a bag from the pocket realm. A bag, I realize, from the toy shop he’d visited while we strolled through Velaris the previous evening.

He pulls out a few pieces of doll furniture, whispering quietly. A bit of motion catches my eye and a flicker of light.

My heart races as the warm, glowing light flickers in my direction. Eris looks over his shoulder to find me, giving a genuine smile. Gods, that’s a genuine smile that I could get used to.

He tilts his head in a “come here” gesture.

I walk towards him and can’t believe my eyes. A fire sprite has found her way to my little sister’s Sprite garden.

“Hello!” Her sweet, tiny voice greets me. “I hope you don’t mind me taking a rest here. I’ve been dying to visit the city of starlight that I’ve heard whispers of from my sisters in the woods.”

“The High Lord of Autumn,” She gestures to Eris, “spoke to the High Lord and Lady of Night, granting me a visit and spoke of the perfect place to visit.”

I look to Eris in awe but before words can escape my mouth a squeal of excitement sounds out behind me as my little sister rushes out in her night gown. “Azalea, it’s so early!”

“You’re not exactly quiet.” She retorts.

I laugh to myself because we were indeed quiet and she just has an exceptional aptitude for being nosey, but I keep it to myself.

“Oh!!!” The fire sprite squeals. Floating to Azalea. “Look at you! And your wings! They’re lovely.”

Azalea beams at that, the biggest, brightest smile I’ve seen in my life shining from her sweet face.

To my complete and utter joy, Azalea rushes to Eris who is still squatted down arranging the doll furniture he’d purchased, flinging her arms around his neck. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” She squeals, her little wings fluttering. She lets go of his neck, bringing out the biggest moon eyes she can muster with a little pout.

Oh she’s good. I muse to myself at her show of guilt.

“I’m sorry for what I said at the gallery. I don’t like when my sister is sad.”

Eris only smiles. “I don’t like it either, Azalea. I made a bad decision. You weren’t wrong.”

She looks to me, and I give her a smile. So she asks “Did you guys make out?”

I slap my palm to my face. “Up, Azalea.” Eris tries to stifle his amusement. “It’s make up. And yes, we made up.”

She grins. Satisfied with his response and returning to the sprite. Eris stands, placing an arm around my shoulders, guiding me down the garden path and leaving Azalea to pepper the little sprite with her incessant questioning. I look back against the house to see my father and mother standing. My mother in a robe and smiling sweetly at us as she’s tucked under my fathers arm. He says nothing, pointedly trying to ignore that I’m wearing last night’s outfit with a sweater thrown over it.

Ironically, this is the most wholesome walk of shame I’ve ever done. Father only flicks his gaze to my overjoyed little sister, to me, and back to Eris, raising a steaming cup of tea to his mouth and giving a nod of approval.

With that, Eris walks me to the edge of the wards, prepared to winnow to his place. We should go back and sleep but now that I’m no longer fighting the fire raging between us, I have filthy little plans for my High Lord that have nothing to do with rest and everything to do with the bed - among other surfaces.

I look to Eris, my mate, taking in the handsome planes of his face, his gorgeous jawline, the freckles splattered across his face, the coppery red of his hair warmly illuminated by the light of dawn.

My heart is full. We will take some time to truly enjoy the courting process and I cannot wait. I’ve never had the pleasure of truly dating someone given my family and their intimidating presence but Eris isn’t afraid. He understands me. He loves me.

I turn to him, raising myself to press a kiss to his cheek, catching his amber gaze.

“I love you, Eris Vanserra.”

———————————

A/n: Thank you to everyone who has read this series! This is the final part of the main storyline and there will be an epilogue chapter published soon as well. Stay tuned as I’ve left it open for a potential spin-off series/second act of this story or some bonus chapters at the least. If I do this, I will continue tagging those who have been tagged in the main storyline. Just shoot me a message if you want removed from tags for any bonus chapters or the potential spin-off series. 🥰

ACOTAR list: @lilah-asteria

Eris list: @angiedsv

Series tags: @b0xerdancer @myheartfollower @ang-taylorsversion @acotarobsessed @uniquecolorwizard @justasillylittlegoofyguy @thelov3lybookworm @starryhiraeth @5moremin @azrielsmate3 @coolepowersthings @isa1b2h3 @inloveallthetime @julesofvolterra @deeshag @starswholistenanddreamsanswered @courtofbatboydreams @yourmumsdumptruck @nebarious @glitterypirateduck @mybestfriendmademe @acourtof-wingspan @paleidiot @anae-naea-zacheria @fandomarchiveilyd @bloodicka @12358

#acotar #sarah j maas #a court of thorns and roses #azriel #a court of silver flames #a court of frost and starlight #a court of mist and fury #a court of wings and ruin #eris fluff #eris vanserra #eris vandaddy #eris x reader #Eris x Azriel’s daughter #acotar x Olivia Rodrigo #eris angst #acotar fluff #acotar angst #night court #Shadowsinger

[xmasterofmunsonx]

Now That We Don’t Talk

Pairing: Steve Harrington x reader + Eddie Munson x reader (ex!Steve mostly)

Not for minors: includes drinking, language, mention of death of family members, etc. not for your eyes if you're under 18, please.

Word count: 13.5k (yikes !)

Author's note: One shot I've been sitting with this one since 1989 TV was released. I'm not 100% on this, but after reading and reading and editing even more, I think it's perfect and as best as I’m going to get. The pacing seems similar to the song, it gets quicker as it goes on, and has a nice abrupt ending. I hope you enjoy it, this one means a lot to me because I’ve put so much time and thought into it. I really thought the quick pacing at the end would ruin it, but like I said I wanted to mirror the quickness of the song. Totally open to some smaller one shots from this ~*universe*~ to elaborate more on any of the years or moments. I’d actually love that if anyone was interested in requesting anything 🩷

“You went to a party, I heard from everybody, you part the crowd like the Red Sea, don’t even get me started. Did you get anxious though, on the way home? I guess I'll never, ever know… now that we don't talk”

Summer 1987

You sighed, kicking your feet at the water in the pool. Your best friend Robin sat beside you, you both were sipping beers you’d practically been nursing all night at this house party you knew you’d have to drive your boyfriend home from. It was your last summer in Hawkins- hopefully forever.

Last spring you’d lost your mom in the “earthquake” of ‘86, and Robin’s family had taken you in until you figured out your plan. You were both reminiscing over the past year living together, and the previous years of the cursed things you and your group of friends had been through in Hawkins and the upside down- the losses, and the victories. Through all of it you’d been on and off with Steve after he’d dropped Nancy- you had her to thank for that one. You’d always had a thing for Steve, ever since middle school, but he only had eyes for Nancy and you knew you never stood a chance. It wasn’t until they broke up, you helped Steve’s wounded heart and then you two became a couple.

You fell in love quick- who wouldn’t? Steve was beautiful, and he was an absolute dream of a boyfriend. Minus the baggage of his stuck up family who hadn’t taken to you so kindly. You two had decided that moving together out of Hawkins would be the best thing for both of you, to leave the memories and nightmares behind, and start a new life somewhere.

You knew Steve was inside of the party, likely hanging out with his “friends,” drunk out of his mind like usual at these. For once he wasn’t hosting, this was a house equally as nice as his, but was some girl’s house from his senior year- but he was still, as always, the life of the party. You looked out across the yard to see that Nancy was rocking in a wooden swing in the back corner of the yard beside Jonathan and Eddie.

“I can’t believe he can still drink like this.” You finished off your beer, crushing the can beside you on the cold concrete surrounding the pool.

“Me neither. He’s doing okay?” Robin’s voice was laced with concern.

“Yeah. I mean, considering… he’s got his good days and bad days, but don’t we all?” Truth be told, Steve had kind of turned into a little bit of a mess. But everyone knew it, and you were all there for each other when you needed extra support.

“I just worry he’s gonna have a breakdown when he gets out of here and he actually has to work for things, aren’t you?” Robin spoke, and the thought had crossed your mind too, but you always seemed to push it out of your head.

“We’ve got everything lined up, thanks to good ole Harrington money.” You chuckled, annoyed but also a little thankful for the fact that he was still supported by his parents, equally just as shitty as they were absent from his life.

“Speaking of, have you laid eyes on him lately?” You checked the gold watch on your arm that had been a Christmas present last year, initials engraved into the inside of the dainty band around your wrist. You realized it had been quite some time since you’d seen him, but that wasn’t unlike him at a party this size. You would tend to be found outside away from everyone, and he would be inside seeking attention from everyone after a few beer.

“Been a minute, I’ll go check on him.” You stood to get up, but felt a hand pulling you up in assistance as your legs climbed out of the warm water of the pool.

“Better come with you, I gotta pee anyway.” Eddie suddenly appeared by your side. You two entered the party, tossing empty cans into the trash can in the crowded kitchen. “Hey, uh…” Eddie stepped in front of you. “Maybe let’s get some fresh air first?”

“Quit being weird, I need to make sure he’s not passed out somewhere already.” You tried to shove past him, but he wasn’t letting you by. “And fresh air? We were just outside.”

“Listen sweetheart, I don’t think-” his voice was deep, and quiet as he gently placed his hands on your shoulders.

“Eddie.” You stamped your foot like a child at your friend. “Move. I’ve seen him really fucking drunk before, we leave in a week, and I knew it was going to be bad tonight, but I can take care of him.” You peered around his frame, seeing what looked like a clear path parting in the sea of people.

It was all leading to your boyfriend Steve, with another girl sitting on his lap. The girl who just so happened to be hosting this party, a brown glass bottle on the coffee table pointed directly at where Steve sat on the couch.

Not only was this girl on top of him, but they were going at each other like feral animals in front of everyone at this party. You stood there, speechless as you watched. Her hands were pulling him in closer by his brown hair, the hair that you loved to absentmindedly play with, and his hands were splayed out across her back and you watched as they slid down to her ass, pulling her into him.

The chatter of the party, hoots and hollers by the shitty old jocks that peaked in high school had stopped, as did your heart as you felt it crumble in front of you. Everyone had realized you’d walked in the room except Steve himself.

“C’mon, I’ll get you home-” Eddie guided you backwards, but you shoved him forward.

“I don’t have a fucking home, Eddie!” You didn’t care who heard you. “HE was my home. How stupid was I to think that Steve fucking Harrington was my home, and we were supposed to start a new one together and leave this godforsaken, cursed, upside down town behind?! But that’s not happening now, is it, STEVE?!” You were screaming at this point. The girl straddling Steve was wiping lipstick and spit off of her face as she smirked at you, and Steve was horrified as he looked at you.

“Honey-” he started, using your favorite name for you that now made you feel more sour than sweet, as he pushed the girl off of his lap and made his way to you, you could see his dick was half hard in his too tight pants, “-it was just a game of spin the bottle, we-”

You kneed him in the balls and walked over to the girl who was still smirking as if making out with Steve was some accomplishment. “You can have him.” you told her as you ran out the front door of the gigantic house.

You had never felt so small. Steve always made you feel small, everything he had was big, but never did he make you feel this small. His house, new cars, big family events- when you only ever had your mom. And now, you didn’t even have her.

You heard the door slam behind you and you assumed it was Eddie, “Eddie, I’m fine to drive home.”

“I-I can’t leave Hawkins.” The voice clamored out.

You turned to see your coward of a boyfriend, well, ex-boyfriend now, “What did you say?”

“I can’t leave.” He ran a stupidly large hand through his stupidly gorgeous hair. “I was going to tell you tomorrow, my parents told me that if I go, I’m cut off forever. Like, from everything.” He gestured in front of him as if he was showing you some grand image of his future.

“And? You decided to make me look like a fucking fool at a party, days before we’re leaving? How long have you known?”

“Just a few weeks.” He said as if it were nothing, as if it meant nothing to him.

“A few weeks, Steve?! You didn’t think you could tell me sooner? All of my shit is packed into boxes- fuck, you’re the one who helped me! And now you made me look like a goddamn idiot in front of everyone, which makes me want to leave even more now but I can’t! Steve, we’ve been planning this for months.”

“I’m really fucking drunk, and she climbed in my lap, and-“ he was slurring his words as he approached you.

“Bullshit, my friend.” Eddie had appeared out of nowhere, yet again. He placed his hand on your shoulder to gently push his way in front of you to keep you out of Steve’s line of sight. “I saw it through the sliding glass doors. You held your hand out like some type of a goddamn gentleman and welcomed her onto your lap like it was a golden throne.” His hands wildly waved in the air as he spoke. “Steve, you’ll never know what it’s like to lose everything. You’re too fucking scared to leave mommy and daddy’s silver platter of life they’ve handed you.” It was true- Steve had everything handed to him, and you knew Eddie had lost so much in his life like you had.

“What, so you’re just gonna turn on me like that, man?” Steve walked up to Eddie like he was intimidating, but Eddie never waivered.

“What am I supposed to do, man?” He mocked. “Nancy, Jonathan, and I all saw it. As soon as I saw she was getting up from the pool to come inside I tried to slow down what was happening so at least she didn’t have to see it, just hear about it, but your dick brain just kept on making out with her.”

You interrupted the boys bickering. “We’re done, Steve. I don’t care how drunk you are, it’s not an excuse. You knew that was fucked up, and we are done. Between that in there, and you being too much of a pushover to your parents, I can’t do this anymore. You can pick your shit up from Robin’s front porch in the morning. I’m still leaving.” You stomped past him to your car, not giving a single fuck about how anyone was getting home that night who depended on you. You knew they’d understand. And for all you knew, Steve had another bed already lined up for tonight.

“Baby, baby. Please. Stay so we can talk and figure this out-” Steve was practically pleading with you.

“There’s no more figuring this out, Steve. We’re done.” You tossed the gold watch onto the dewy grass outside of the window of your car, and drove off.

“You grew your hair long, you got new icons, and from the outside, it looks like you're tryin' lives on. I miss the old ways, you didn't have to change, but I guess I don't have a say… now that we don't talk”

Fall 1988

It had been over a year since you’d been back in Hawkins, and had it not been for Robin’s birthday, you might have gone another year. Or more.

You pulled up to the familiar house that was your home for a short while, to be greeted by her parents with big hugs.

“How’s the big city?” They both asked as they grabbed your bags from you.

“It’s uh, Chicago is a lot different. But it’s good.” You smiled. You were doing great for yourself and had managed to swing a job at a venue/bar that more than enough covered bills, and you had been promoted to a manager position that you proved yourself perfect for once you started bringing in bands that you made commission off ticket sales. “Keeps me busy, that’s why it’s been so hard to get back home. But I couldn’t miss my best friend’s birthday, so here I am!”

“Your bed is already made, so stay as long as you want to. Or can, whichever. Robin’s upstairs getting ready.” You thanked them and skipped up the stairs to her room, the door cracked open and you could hear her on the phone mumbling and then saying goodbye as you chose to open the door.

“Wow, you look-” she turned around with a grin on her face as she saw you appear in her doorway.

“Tired? Old?” You laughed at yourself.

“Hot.” She looked you up and down, and you guess you’d changed your look some since you moved. You leaned more into the style you wanted to in the freedom of your new city, adorning your skin with a few of the tattoos you had always wanted, wearing darker and edgier clothes. There weren’t as many judgmental eyes like you’d been under in Hawkins, especially like when you were dating Steve.

“Thanks. You look the same, but more… you. But of course, not a day older.” You hugged your friend and kissed her on the cheek. “So what are the plans for tonight? Dinner, then…?”

“Dinner, then Hideout? Eddie’s playing a show tonight and it’s almost sold out.” She stated as she finished up her lipstick.

“What?!” Your jaw dropped, you’d kept in touch with almost everyone, including him, but he’d completely left that out of his phone calls updating you on his life. “Sold out? I mean, they’re good but-”

“He just got signed by a small label in uh, in Chicago. So everyone is really excited, it’s kind of a big deal show for them.”

“What?! Why wouldn’t he tell me that?!” You and Eddie had regular phone calls- they had become weekly, sometimes a few times a week just to catch up with each other.

“Don’t tell him I told you, he really wanted to tell you tonight but you know I can’t keep a secret, so I had to tell you before dinner. Also, Steve-is-coming. So the show is basically their congratulations on signing, and my birthday dinner is how we got you back here to celebrate both. Because we knew you wouldn’t come back for any other reason.” Robin couldn’t have talked any faster than she was, and once you realized everything she had said, your stomach sank.

“That’s fine, I kind of expected that he’d be there. I know you guys are still friends.” You’d gotten over Steve- sort of. The guys in Chicago were hotter- way hotter, and you were meeting plenty of distractions to take your mind off of how Steve had broken your heart. You just… hadn’t talked to him in over a year. You knew very little about what was going on with him except for the fact that he was following in his dad’s footsteps, and you didn’t really care to know much more than that either. “Just promise you’ll sit beside me at dinner.”

“Got you covered. That was Eddie on the phone, he’s gonna sit on one side of you, and I’ll sit on the other. Steve is bringing his girlfriend since he’s back home for the show, too.”

“Is it…”

“Yeah, it’s her.” Robin looked sad as she admitted the truth. “Don’t worry. You look way hotter than her, and you’re not a shit person. Steve’s here like once a month anyway just to see her, so-”

“What do you mean by he’s here once a month?”

“He moved to Indianapolis, his dad got him a job there like last fall? I think? It wasn’t long after you left. And he comes home all the time to visit her since she’s finishing out college here.”

“Oh, so he can move to a big city as long as he’s got a big time girlfriend back home? Nice logic.” You rolled your eyes as you two made your way to your car.

Enzo’s was the only nice restaurant in Hawkins, and it had survived the “earthquake,” so they were still in their original location in the center of town. The big booth had been reserved for your group of friends and you were actually buzzing with a little bit of excitement to see them.

“Hi!!” Nancy peeked around the booth, and you stood up to hug her and Jonathan, and they slid back into their spots.

“Damn, look at you!” Eddie held you at arms length with his Cheshire Cat grin on his face before he pulled you in for a hug, and you wrapped your arms tight around him.

“Look what the cat dragged in.” You bickered back at him. You lightly threw a punch to his bicep, “I heard we’re gonna be neighbors?”

“You told her?!” His big brown eyes looked to Robin, who shrugged, as you three slid into the round booth, leaving two spaces on the other side for Steve and his date.

“Can’t keep a secret! You know me!” Robin shouted over you at Eddie as you watched his face turn a light shade of pink.

You patted his leg resting by yours, “I’m really happy for you. If you need a place to play, I know someone that can hook you up, you know that?”

“I mean, I wasn’t gonna ask but-” You let out a chuckle at Eddie’s bashfulness that hadn’t changed one bit. You knew the guy in charge of booking bands would trust you to do anything at this point, so he would definitely get Eddie on the regular schedule to get more buzz going for him.

“I only have one other person to run that by, and I’ve got him wrapped around my finger. Don’t worry about it.” You felt his hand drop down to yours with a squeeze, at the same time Steve was walking up to the table. You took in his looks- his hair had grown longer, his choice of dress that had once relaxed was cleaned up more than ever. “Where’s your date? Or did you think this was a business meeting?”

Everyone held in chuckles as you roasted Steve’s attire and he looked at you with no semblance of a laugh.

“Robin said Enzo’s, so I dressed nice!” He defended himself as he sat down.

“Oh that’s right, daddy still buys your wardrobe too, so you probably didn’t have anything else to wear.”

“Hey, hey.” Eddie leaned in to whisper in your ear, hand still atop of yours, “Let up on him. This is Robin’s birthday. Now, at my show, you can tear him to shreds.” He winked at you as he leaned back into his seat, not letting his grip go.

Dinner went as expected, actually better, you were all laughing and joking like you hadn’t been absent the entire last year. You avoided Steve’s gaze all night, focusing on anyone else who was talking, and you looked at your food when he spoke up.

A small cake was brought out for Robin, and all of you sang happy birthday with smiles on your faces as Eddie put on a complete show for everyone in the restaurant, for which he received applause for. He was never one to care about what anyone thought of him, but it still surprised you he had the confidence to be so loud in such a nice setting.

“Separate or together?” The waitress came around after everyone had finished their meals and cake.

Steve reached for his wallet, “I’ve got everyone.”

“No, I’ll get mine.” You reached for your wallet, but a familiar hand stopped you.

“I’ll get the two of us, and he can get everyone else.” Eddie spoke, handing the waitress cash. The table was awkwardly silent.

“Smoke?” You asked him, and he gladly nodded his head, and you forced Robin to get up, so you two could go outside for a moment. “So what was that check thing about?” You held your cigarette to your lips, and Eddie leaned in with his zippo to light yours for you before he lit his.

“Just wanted to remind him what an ass he can be sometimes. You smoke now, big city?”

“Comes with the territory, I guess.” You rolled your eyes and laughed as you both smoked half of your cigarettes on the quiet sidewalk. You stared down at some of the repaved concrete and traced the cracks where the old met the new. “When are you and the guys moving?”

“Well, I was going to ask you. So Robin must have left out that the label kinda… only signed me. Like just me, and they’re setting me up with a band. So I’ve gotta be there as soon as possible to sit in on auditions and-” he was absentmindedly scratching his head as he was talking 90 miles a minute.

“What? Only you? What about the rest of the guys?”

“They’re actually pretty cool with it. They don’t want to move or anything, they want to stay here. I think they’re too afraid to leave their families after everything, and-”

“What about Wayne?” Your heart was a little broken thinking about him leaving Wayne behind.

“Couldn’t be more thrilled for me. He’s still livin’ off that Hawkins Lab hush money, so he’s part time and can come see me whenever he wants.” He took a long drag, before he looked away, then back at you. “Anyways, I was going to ask, I know it’s last minute but can I crash at your place for a tiny little while?” He now scratched at the stubble on his chin and raised his eyebrows in question.

“Eddie, I only have a studio apartment. It’s like, right above the bar.” You thought of how cramped it might be with the two of you living there. You’d come to love your small studio, and you were never interested in ever really sharing your space.

“I know, you’ve told me. I won’t get in your way, I’ll hardly be home when you are. And as soon as I’m there for a few weeks and figure out where I want to stay, I’ll get a lease. I just need some time to look around for somewhere reasonable. I promise in- in maybe less than a month? They gave me a big enough sign on I can pay for your whole month of rent, too. I’m just-“ he stuttered, “I’m actually pretty nervous about going somewhere I don’t know anyone, and I think having a little piece of home with me would be good to keep me centered.” He dropped and kicked out his cigarette at his humble confession, and raised his hands in surrender. “But I totally get it if you don’t want me in your hair everyday, I’ll just get a hotel and-”

You thought about it for a few moments, and you realized it may not be that bad to have Eddie around. You two got along fine, and you talked about mostly everything already so you could cut out the weekly phone calls if he was already there. “You can stay. As long as you need. I’ve got a pull out couch with a mattress, so you’re in luck. I don’t need help with rent, but you gotta keep the place clean, and no random people coming home. I don’t let any of my dates or the regulars at the bar know I live up there because things can get weird, and I like laying low. So if you wanna get with anyone, you gotta do it somewhere else.”

“Oh yeah, because I’m totally swimming in pussy right now.” He scoffed as you two walked back inside, and you were thankful he led the way in because your cheeks were tinted pink at his sarcastic comment. By now, everyone was standing up from the table to head over to the venue for Eddie’s show. You all split up into your separate cars.

“So, did he ask you about moving in?” Robin couldn’t even wait for the car door to shut before she started questioning you.

“Jesus, do you know everything?” You started your car and drove towards the Hideout.

“Yes. I do.” Robin said, excitedly.

“Yes, he did. I told him he can stay there as long as he needs to. Just no random girls or parties or anything.” You left out the comment he’d made about girls,maybe wanting to save it for another day.

“I told him you’d say yes.” She looked out the window, “so… Steve?” You looked at her and shrugged, “what do you think?”

“He looks different. Like he’s just turning into his dad already. Everything he hated, everything he wanted to get away from with me. He’s turning into it.”

“Yeah, he’s uh, a piece of work. Have you thought about talking to him?”

“I have no interest in that. I don’t need to talk to him.” You shut down the conversation as you turned your radio up, driving the back roads to the sketchy bar you hadn’t been to in what felt like years.

-

“Shots on me!” Steve slammed down another round of tequila shots on the sticky high top bar table you all had sat at to have a good view of the stage. You grabbed one and toasted as Steve remarked smartly, “Oh, so you’ll take alcohol from me, but not dinner? I see how it is.” Your crew were all feeling a bit loose already, the drinks at the Hideout were cheap and you were all buying rounds back to back. You rolled your eyes and shot him the bird as the tequila burned down your throat.

Eddie’s band started playing moments later, and the whole bar crowd turned their attention to the stage. He introduced themselves, announced his new plans, and everyone cheered for him. You were beaming at your friend, the town “freak” who was finally getting his shot at what he wanted in life, and people were seeing him for who he was and not what he was known for that was never true.

“Grabbing another one, you good?” You asked Robin over the loud music as you nudged her shoulder. She shook her head and you got up, pushing your way through the crowd to the bar. You felt a hand on your lower back as you waited for the only bartender to come over to you and jumped, immediately pushing the hand away.

“Couldn���t let you go alone.” Steve was standing entirely too close to you for comfort.

“I’m a big girl, Steve. I’m just fine.” You told your drink order to the bartender after Steve did, leaving you two with a few moments of silence.

“You look good. Like, really good.” You watched as he ran his hands through his hair while he obviously checked you out, clearly nervous to be seeing you again. You caught him staring at the tattoos peeking through your sheer black top.

“Thanks? I guess now that I don’t have to impress anyone’s parents I get to dress how I want.” You were feeling a little extra sarcastic and snippy tonight, but you were a few drinks in and didn’t care.

“Can you cut the shit like that?” He immediately came back at you with sassiness.

“No, Steve. It’s been a year, I had to move on and you broke my fucking heart and I had to fix it myself. You fucked this up on your own.”

“Can I fix it?” He reached for your hand, but you pulled it back.

“No, you can’t. I don’t need you to make things better.”

“Listen, I know I fucked up. Everything here reminds me about it. I regret it all the time- but just think about all the bullshit we’d been through. I wasn’t in a good place.”

“Think about all the bullshit we went through? Steve, I was there too, and on top of it all, I lost my mom. All the more reason for you to not cheat on me- you do realize that was wrong to do to me after everything we’d just had happen to us? I wasn’t okay either, I’m still not sometimes, but I know cheating on my boyfriend wasn’t going to be the proper way to deal with things.”

“I should’ve told you sooner, I shouldn’t have done anything that I did. But you know how my parents are, honey.” He pleaded with his big, soft eyes as the word made bile rise in your throat.

“You have absolutely no right to ‘honey’ me, Steve.” You scoffed. You suddenly remembered his date had never shown up. “Your girl stand you up?”

“No, she can’t stand metal so she’s going to come near the end of the set so she can hang out. It would be nice if you could be cordial.” Steve scratched at his bicep- he’d taken off his nicer shirt and jacket, and was now just in his solid undershirt and his well fitting pants to not stand out as much here.

“Cordial, Steve!? I have to be cordial to the girl you were fucking behind my back, the girl who attempted to ruin my plans to get out of this town? Because guess what? I found out you were a bullshitter about that too. I don’t know how you can stay here or visit so much Steve. I’m so scared something is going to turn to red and dust falling from the sky before my eyes and I’ve not even been here a full day.” You were immediately mad at yourself for confessing something so big to Steve. “I’m not going to be mean, but I’m not trying to make a new friend.”

“I’m sorry.” He solemnly said as he took a sip from his fresh drink. “I’m scared of those things too, I still see it if I close my eyes for too long sometimes.”

“Yeah? Well, I also still see the smug look on her face when I walked into the house that night.” You grabbed your drink and made your way back to the table, where Robin had been watching the interaction the whole time. Steve quietly joined the table a few moments later looking like a hurt puppy, and then he stepped away, leaving his drink.

“You good?” Your friend nudged you in the side.

“Not really, no. But I got some things off my chest, so at least I can say I talked to him.” You drank the rest of your drink down in a few sips, and looked to the stage to distract yourself. “I did say I’d be… not mean once she gets here. But I can’t make any promises.” You started replaying memories of the last time you saw Steve in your head, and you could feel the resentment surfacing again- you remembered the shame you felt when the whole party was looking at you yelling at him, the proud look on the girl's face when she realized that you’d seen the two of them.

Eddie was looking at you with concern. He subtly motioned for you to come over to him. The stage at the Hideout was barely considered a stage, so it didn’t take much for you to get to him, and since he was in between songs, he crouched down while the rest of the guys checked their instruments.

“We got two more songs, wanna go sit in the back? There’s a couch, and more tequila, and no Steve.” You nodded at him, holding back some tears of frustration. “It’s okay, I’ll be there in a bit.” You nodded as he patted your head, ruffling your hair up a little as he stood tall to continue onto the next song.

You sat on the questionable couch in the back room of the Hideout while the muffled music continued on- you’d been back here a few times before but never by yourself, and “security” knew who you were so you were immediately let back. It felt weird, and you felt bad for leaving your friends but you really weren’t in the mood to talk about the past, or try to reconcile it especially since Steve was still with the girl he cheated on you with. Your thoughts were interrupted by Eddie bursting through the door, and then he quickly shut it.

“Hey.” He was out of breath, almost panting as if he’d run back to get to you as quickly as he could but you knew it was from the performance he was giving on stage. “You alright?”

You wiped a tear that was trying to fall as he walked in. “Yeah, I’m fine. He tried talking to me at the bar and I’m just… I’m not interested in trying to keep any type of friendship going between the two of us.” You watched as Eddie wiped the sweat off his face with the bottom of his shirt, revealing his abdomen that was littered with scars from ‘86. Your stomach sank at the memories. “You would think after everything he’s been through- we’ve been through, he would’ve changed his ways but I guess he hasn’t.”

“Fuck him. I mean- obviously don’t… you already did, but, forget about him.” He poured two shots and handed one to you, you probably shouldn’t take it but the night wasn’t ending anytime soon- they were kicking everyone out of the bar and keeping it open later for the band “and friends”, so you knew you’d be here a while tonight. The tequila burned as it went down, and you wiped your mouth on your am as you handed Eddie the shot glass back.

“It’s hard to forget about him when you guys are still friends with him and I have to hear about him. I always tune it out. I didn’t ever want anyone to take sides. I was an idiot tonight and brought up how I hate being back here, and being so afraid of something else happening from the upside down, and I just feel so dumb for letting him in.”

“You heard me that night, he’s too much of a pussy to leave the comfort of his parents pocket. And I stay away from him as much as I can, I don’t need a charge under my belt after getting my name cleared.”

“Ugh, why does he have to be so fucking pretty though?” Your drunk thoughts were leaving your mouth before you realized it. You thought about his golden blonde highlights, his warm eyes, and how his clothes always fit him just right.

“Because he’s Steve Harrington and that’s who he is.” Eddie plopped down beside you. “You’re really fucking pretty too, though.”

You rolled your eyes and lightly hit Eddie’s arm again, “Stop it. I already said you can crash at my place, you don’t have to get all sweet on me.”

“No, I mean it.” Eddie was looking at you as you looked to your side at him. “You’ve always been pretty, and I’ll be sweet on you if I wanna be.”

“Munson, you don’t have to keep flattering me to make me feel better.” He was one of your close friends too, but he’d been there for you when Steve hadn’t been. He called to check on you all of the time, sometimes more than Robin.

“I’m not just trying to flatter you, I mean it. You’re stunning and you look beautiful tonight.” His hand rested atop yours and gave it a light squeeze, making butterflies appear in your belly.

You mentally told yourself you couldn’t do this again- start crushing on a close friend, and potentially lose them. Especially with him about to be signed to a label and getting better known. Your brain was already running a thousand miles a minute with the way he was looking at you.

“You think so?” You asked with a smirk, and you saw a glimmer in his eye. “Well, you certainly have aged well in the time I’ve been gone too, Mr. Rockstar.”

“Oh yeah?” His voice got deeper as he scooted closer to you and let out a small chuckle. “In one year?”

“I’m too drunk to answer that right now.” You laughed and rolled your eyes.

“Oh no, I love drunk you. I get all the juicy gossip from you after a few drinks. You think I’m not too bad now, eh?”

“You heard me.” You said, facing him and crossing your arms.

“Yeah, I did. And I kinda wanna hear it again.” Was this really happening? In the back room of the Hideout? You’d been a little flirty on the phone with him sometimes, but it was hard to read into what he really meant without seeing him, and you never knew with Eddie because he was always a flirt with everyone.

“I said you weren’t bad, Munson.” You felt your face warming up. “Always thought you were cute, but I was too wrapped up in Steve-”

“‘S just Eddie, sweetheart.” He looked cocky as he interrupted you and tucked a piece of hair behind your ear- a classic, cheesy move that made you blush. He looked… good. His curls were wild and untamed, but you could tell he had started to take better care of them recently because they were more defined. His jaw was sharper, his face was capable of growing some more facial hair. His features were showing a little more- the wrinkles by his eyes, the subtle dimples, more freckles. How were you suddenly this close to him?

“Is this a bad idea?” You asked out loud to him.

“I don’t think so.” He stroked your cheek with his thumb and shook his head. “At least not for tonight, let’s have a little fun, yeah?”

You nodded, and leaned in and kissed him. You never made the first move, so you didn’t know how much to put into the first kiss. You felt hesitant, but once you were pulled in more by Eddie’s grip on either side of your face, all hesitancy fell to the wayside. You felt dizzy from the passion that he kissed you with. Both of his hands were practically squeezing your face, and you took the queue to straddle his lap, and he let out a sigh as you rested your weight on his thighs.

“Been wantin’ to kiss you for years now, Jesus Christ.” He chuckled against your lips. “Harrington was so fucking stupid to lose you.” He leaned in again, and you allowed him to take over.

“Alright people let’s go- oh! Oh! It’s happening!” Robin opened the door, making you pull back from Eddie quickly.

“Shut up, Buckley.” Eddie turned to shoo her away, and you blushed at your seat upon Eddie’s lap. “We were just talking.”

“You look awfully close to me. Listen, Steve’s girl is out there now, and I’d rather watch paint dry than sit out there and talk to them. Come out and have some fun, please!” She whined as the two of you stood up.

“Give us a minute, Robin.” You pushed her out of the door and closed it. As soon as you turned around, Eddie was cornering you against the door. “What?” You blushed.

“Didn’t get to finish that kiss.” He grasped you by the side of the neck and pulled you into his lips, hungrier, and needier than the first two times. You were breathing heavily into the heated kiss as your hands roamed his body, he was sweaty but you didn’t care- you were too, from the crowded room earlier. “We can talk later, just wanted to test the waters first.” He smirked as he pecked your lips and reached for the door handle behind you.

As you exited the tiny room, Eddie’s hand fell to your side, where he laced his pinky finger with yours and guided you through the shrinking crowd to the bar.

“Water?” He asked you, pulling your hand up to the bar and lacing his fingers with yours, proudly.

“Yeah, for now.” You said, a sheepish smile on your face. You felt a pair of eyes on you from the corner of the bar where Steve sat with his girlfriend, and you ignored them and focused on the water that the bartender had given you.

“Just ignore him. They’ll leave soon anyway, she doesn’t feel safe here or some bullshit like that. I gotta go pack up my stuff really quick, you good to stay here?” He had moved his hand to your lower back, and you nodded. “M’kay. I’m out back if you need me.” He placed a quick kiss on your cheek, then jogged away.

“Details, please.” Robin quickly replaced Eddie, turning her body completely to you, giving Steve her back.

“What?”

“Oh, come on! You two were kissing!” She was yelling unnecessarily, used to the loudness of the bar before people had emptied out, and you leaned forward to put your hands over her mouth. “And that, before he just left?!”

“SHHHHHH!! So what? I’m a little drunk, and he looks reeaaally good tonight.” You two giggled, “He’s a really good kisser.”

“Knew he had it in him. He’s been talking about seeing you again for weeks. MONTHS! I figured he would’ve tried kissing you at dinner when you two walked out, but-”

“Robin, how can you not tell me that he had a crush on me?!” You wanted to squeeze your best friend.

“How could you be so blind?! He told me it started in high school. Then you started dating Steve, and he got mixed up into our group and he felt bad about his crush because you were with Steve, so he never thought he’d have a chance but now everything is just… falling into place. Meant to be.” Robin was out of breath again because she was talking so quickly and you just laughed at her spilling the details out so quickly- it reminded you of how Eddie would talk when he got really excited about things too.

“You really thought he had no feelings for you? Why do you think that metal head idiot called you almost every day for the last year? To make sure you were okay? No, he likes you. He really, really likes you.” Your friend told you as you turned around to see Eddie walking out the back door of the bar, catching a glimpse of you before he walked outside, carrying his equipment.

-

Somehow you found yourselves at a house party, because of course, you always did. And it was at Steve’s girlfriends house, because of course it was. God only knows how late it was now, the Hideout had kicked you out earlier. Eddie had driven your car to the house- he’d had the least amount to drink, and you and Robin had sat in the backseat and giggled the whole way. You completely missed the way he was watching and admiring you in the rear view mirror for the 15 minute drive back to town.

“I can’t believe that I thought this was what I wanted.” You drank the mystery juice out of the red cup and leaned against the kitchen counter, looking at all of the same people you remembered from school. You noticed how more people were high fiving Eddie, or saying hey to him instead of just calling him “freak”, or using him to buy weed while you two stood together.

“It’s comfortable, it’s stable. You haven’t had much stability your whole life, so I can understand the appeal.” Eddie took a puff from his joint and you politely declined, afraid to mix the two tonight since you were already so deep into drinking alcohol.

“I know but still. This house is fucking gorgeous, you know? They never have to worry about anything like bills, or-”

“But look at how unhappy they are.” Eddie said, pointing out the lack of smiles on some of the party goers.

“You’re just saying that because you’re high and happy right now.”

“No, I’m not. I’m saying that because it’s the truth. They’ve got all the money in the world but they’re still so fucking miserable with themselves they’ve got to keep throwing parties to relive the old days and feel like they’re peaking again.” Eddie rambled on for some more time as you caught yourself staring at Steve. The way his mouth turned up when he smiled- why was it so charming still? “Helloooooo?” Eddie bumped your hip beside you, and you stopped staring immediately.

“Sorry. Zoned out for a bit. Can you hold my drink while I go to the bathroom?” You handed him your cup and he took it, but you giggled as he took a sip and almost gagged on it at the sour, bitter taste.

You were doing the thing in the bathroom where you stared at yourself and realized how drunk you really were. Fuck. You fixed your hair, and washed your hands, and as soon as you opened the door, there was another force behind it that opened it and they let themselves into the bathroom.

Of fucking course, it was Steve Harrington. And you were entirely too drunk for this.

“Like what you see? Saw you staring.” You rolled your eyes, but you couldn’t help but blush. He placed his hands on your waist gently and waited for a reaction from you. When you gave him none, he took a step closer. “Only got a few minutes, what do you say? I saw the way Munson was all over you. Probably tried to get his paws on you backstage, didn’t he?” Steve started kissing your neck and you knew you should’ve pushed him off, but fuck did his mouth feel good, and familiar.

“Yeah, and he did.” You fought a moan, but lost once he reached the spot on your neck that drove you wild. It was a secret spot, Steve had found it one afternoon while you guys were lazily making out in his bed, under the sheets, and he used it all the time.

“Bet he didn’t make you feel this good, did he?”

“Steve, you’ve got a girl-”

“She’s upstairs puking right now. I missed you.” He said as he continued attacking your neck. You draped your arms around his neck and he refocused his attention to you. “Please, can I kiss you?”

You should’ve said no, you should’ve walked out before you leaned in and answered his question without saying a single word. The kiss was hot and heavy, Steve’s lips felt different than Eddie’s- they were smoother, and his kiss was softer. You weren’t sure you liked it anymore, but you kept on. His hands roamed your body, and he moaned as he felt you up, your body feeling different than the last time he’d seen you. Your fingers went to his thick, chocolate brown hair and you ran your nails through his scalp, earning a moan from him.

“Fuck I missed you.” He looked at you, and even though he was also drunk, you could tell he meant it.

“Yeah.” You panted, and dodged his next kiss. “I-I can’t do this, Steve. You completely crushed me. I just got over you, I can’t give this another try. I can’t believe I let myself kiss you.” You still had your arms around him, and your fingers were toying with the hair at the nape of his neck.

“C’mon, honey. You know me better than anyone. I can’t tell her any of this shit I’ve been through, she’ll think I’m fucking crazy.”

“You should have thought about that before you kissed her.” You pecked him on the cheek and left the bathroom, fixing yourself as best as you could as you made your way back to the kitchen. Eddie was making a small deal in there, and his eyes immediately caught yours. You hesitated for him to finish, and he tilted his head to go outside, and you pushed through the familiar sliding glass doors to wait on him.

“Feel good after that?” He asked, his hands tucking into his jacket pockets. “Couldn’t have made that anymore obvious, honey.” The nickname was laced with venom.

“Eddie, I- I really did have to pee, then he came in there to talk and I-”

“The door get jammed? You couldn’t unlock it? Had to make out with king Steve in the bathroom for the door to unlock?” He coughed out a laugh. “I can't believe I thought you might’ve actually been over him.”

“I wish it were you.”

“You know, I know I jumped into the gang pretty late so I missed the beginning history of you two, but-”

You lunged forward at Eddie, shutting him up for once. “Shut up, we made out and all I thought about was how I wish it was you I was kissing, not him.”

“You mean it?” He asked you, his eyebrows raised.

“Yes, Munson.” You rolled your eyes at him.

“Can Robin get a ride home without you?”

“Probably, why?” You asked as the taller, curly haired boy made himself impossibly closer to you- you could still smell the show on him, the sweat, the spilled alcohol, the cigarettes, and you wanted it.

“Because you’re mine tonight, if nothing else. I wanna take you back to my place. Go find her, I’ll be waiting in your car.”

“O-okay.” You nervously answered him and walked back into the house. “Robin!” You pulled her away from a few people.

“Word travels fast. You better get out of here soon, because she already heard about you and Steve.”

“Perfect. Can you get home?”

“Yeah, I can, where are you going?”

“Great, I’ll see you tomorrow.” You jogged out of the house, and towards your car where Eddie was sitting with it already cranked up and running. “She can find a way home, she said.”

“Say less, my dear.” Eddie put his hand on the back of your headrest as he looked back to reverse out of the parking spot in front of the house, then he sped off to the direction of his and Wayne’s shared house. You knew Wayne worked nights still from all of your late night conversations with Eddie.

Your stomach turned thinking about what was going on right now, what was about to happen. And he must’ve known, or been able to read your mind.

“We don’t have to do anything but sleep- I’ll even sleep on the couch. I just wanted you out and away from him. I can’t see you getting hurt by him again.” His hand rested on your knee, and his thumb rubbed gentle circles as he drove.

“But you said-”

“I know what I said, but I’m high and horny as hell, but I can keep my dick in my pants unlike someone else we know. And you look too fucking good tonight, you told me you got some tattoos but you didn’t tell me you had this many? S’driving me wild.”

You blushed as you watched Eddie run a hand through his hair, something he did when he was nervous. “You left out that you were even more handsome than ever, too.” You commented back, but it wasn’t even the top of surface of what you could say about Eddie and how he’d changed over the last year. You got to his house, the porch light was the only one on, and he hurried with you to the front door since the fall air was creeping in and you weren’t appropriately dressed for it.

“What about your van?” You asked as you walked in, and kicked off your black boots.

“I’ll get it in the morning, they’re used to me leaving it overnight sometimes.”

“Thought you weren’t drowning in pussy, Munson?” You joked as you approached him, your arms reaching up and wrapping around his neck, as his pulled you in by your waist.

“I’m not, but I could be if you’d let me. And I told you, quit with the last name shit. I like hearing my name out of those pretty lips.” Alright, he was smooth. You’d give him that. You both leaned in and continued making out, feeling each others bodies over clothes, shedding jackets on the floor, before he broke the kiss and guided you back to his room. “I swear I wasn’t expecting any guests so just give me a few and I’ll clean up.”

“Honestly it’s fine, I think I’m a little bit too drunk for anything tonight anyway, but don’t think I’m not interested-”

“Hey, I told you that’s fine.” He kissed the top of your head. “I am gonna have to shower and take care of some things before I go to bed but I’ll grab you a shirt so you don’t have to sleep in this getup tonight.” He roamed around his room and gathered a soft Iron Maiden shirt for you, and a pair of plaid boxers from a drawer. “Can’t promise the shirt is clean but I haven’t sweat in it, but it’s the softest one I have.” He tossed them at you before he left to shower, and you changed into them and tucked yourself into his bed.

“Hey.” You felt a gentle nudge on your shoulder, waking you up. My god, the sight that greeted you. Eddie was sitting on the side of his bed, his hair towel dried, he was shirtless, in a pair of boxers, and you could see more tattoos on his torso mixed in with all of his scars. “Take a picture, it’ll last longer.” He chuckled. “Want me to sleep out there? It’s up to you.”

“Nu uh.” You peeled back the comforter and sheets for him and he climbed in, laying down and facing you.

“I need a tattoo tour tomorrow.” He said through a grin. “Show me yours if you show me mine?”

You rolled your eyes, “Fine.”

Eddie tucked hair out of your face and looked at you. “Meant it when I said you were beautiful.”

“I’m sorry I kissed Steve tonight.” You felt terrible about it, honestly.

“It’s fine. I almost expected it. The dude gave you no closure. But I can say it feels good to know you wished it were me you were kissing and not him.”

“I don't have to pretend I like acid rock, or that I'd like to be on a mega yacht with important men who think important thoughts. Guess maybe I am better off now that we don't talk. And the only way back to my dignity was to turn into a shrouded mystery, just like I had been when you were chasing me, guess this is how it has to be now that we don't talk.”

Chicago->Hawkins, 1989

“Hey, babe. I made coffee. You gotta get up, the studio needs me in an hour, then we gotta leave.” You groaned as you were being woken up, you had worked the bar until 3 am the night before and stayed until almost 4 cleaning up the huge mess. Eddie had left the bar around midnight because he had some recording to do today before you left for Hawkins- Dustin and his friends were all graduating this weekend and you couldn’t miss it.

“But it’s only 10, please let me sleep some more.” You rolled over in your cozy bed, letting the comforter swallow you now that no one else was in it.

Eddie’s month-long stay ended up never ending. You had a breakdown at the thought of him leaving and not being in your apartment every day. He’d slept on the couch for a few weeks, and then one night you told him how you really felt.

The two of you’s relationship had intensified quickly, and progressed to dating after a month of being around each other. It was your first relationship that felt right, that fell into place so easily without any drama, and you were happy.

“You know good and well if I leave you asleep you’re not going to get up. I’m only going to be there for an hour, I just have to sign off on a few things. You still have to finish packing too.” He kissed your forehead as he handed you the warm cup of coffee.

“Do we have to go?” You pouted over your first sip. You wanted to see your friend’s graduation, but you dreaded the inevitable. And Eddie had promised to play a show back at home with the guys, so you’d be spending a few nights there.

“Yes. We do. I mean, you can stay, but you’ll get awfully lonely here, dontcha think?” He leaned in and winked, “remember what happened last time I said I was going to leave?”

“I guess so.” You groaned as you sipped the coffee. “What if I see him?”

“What if? Baby, you don’t need to worry about it.” He placed his hand on your thigh, which was covered by your comforter. “It’s been so long ago, and he’s just there to see the kids graduate too. We’ve avoided him any other time we’ve gone back to see them, haven’t we? He’s not like a monster that’s gonna get you or anything.”

“No, but he’s Steve fucking Harrington and he knows how to ruin a good time.”

Eddie sighed in defeat. He knew how anxious seeing your ex made you, there was nothing you or him could do about it. He changed the way your friend group was forever after he hurt you.

“You get to see Robin though, and we get to stay at her new place!” He tried to cheer you up. “Babe, I really gotta go. Finish packing, take a shower, and I’ll be home before you know it.” He pecked your lips before he left you lying in bed with your coffee and a tummy full of anxiety.

-

“Presenting the class of 1989!” Principal Higgins announced over the loudspeaker in the gymnasium. You both stood up to applaud the class as you watched them throw their hats in the air- something you remember doing, and you felt Eddie’s arm wrap around you as he pulled you in for a hug.

“You know, I would've shot Huggins the bird if I wouldn’t have been in the hospital.” Eddie leaned in to make you laugh.

“I know. You’ve told me, multiple times. At least you got your diploma.”

“Yeah, because he was sick of me and my satanic worship cult.” You rolled your eyes and chuckled as the two of you exited the gym, waiting for your friends to meet up with you.

Robin and Nancy found you both quickly, giving you gigantic hugs, and asking you questions about how you were doing. A few minutes later, the graduates had made their way over and you watched as Eddie’s smile reached his eyes and he almost squeezed the life out of Dustin. You could tell how proud he was of him, even though he was one of the smartest kids you both had ever known.

You gave him a hug next, “Proud of you, kid.”

“I’m not a kid! I’m an adult now, you know that? I’m going to college soon!”

“Still just little dusty buns to us.” You said and you were pulled into Eddie’s side quickly, almost knocking you off balance. You were used to his clinginess by now, so it didn’t make you think twice about it until you saw Steve approaching the group. Everyone else greeted him like normal, but Eddie just kept you by his side as Steve said a quick hi to both of you.

You knew he had to know or have heard about you two dating. Eddie was on the phone with Dustin when he could, and you were always in touch with Robin and Nancy.

“So, we're ready to party, or what?” Steve clapped his hands together to interrupt the conversation.

“Let’s go!” Lucas shouted and you all split up into your groups. You heard your name being called, and you looked back. Steve was standing there and waved you over. Your heart tugged a little at the look on his face- he almost looked somber.

“You can go talk to him if you want, I’m not stopping you.” Eddie said, “We’ve gotta at least make an appearance at the party at his house. He might have something to say.”

“Fine, but watch if I need you to come rescue me.” Eddie pulled you in for a quick kiss as if he were making sure Steve knew that you were his, and you walked over to Steve with blushed cheeks, and butterflies in your stomach.

“Hey, I just wanted to talk.”

“Figured so, that’s why I came over here.” God, you sounded like a fucking idiot. How could Steve still look so good? You quickly checked him out to see he had dressed in pants that fit him perfectly, a short sleeve polo that was fit to his biceps just right, and his hair looked better than ever since he’d still kept some length on it.

“Are we, are we good?” He was stuttering, something you knew he only did when he was nervous.

“I mean, we’re fine? I guess. I’m over it, I’ve moved on.”

“Clearly.” You could tell the word came out of his mouth faster than he could think about what he was saying, “Are you happy?”

“Y-yeah, I am. He makes me really happy. I’m glad to be out of here, away from all of the past bullshit that happened here. And I’m glad to be away from here, with him specifically. I basically run the bar now, probably going to buy in in the next year or so depending on where Eddie goes with the band, if nothing else it could be some passive income while we’re on the road. What about you?” You kicked at some grass while you waited for his reply.

“Things are good. We just bought a house here, wedding is next year.” That was something everyone had left out of telling you. “Just proposed a few days ago, but the house had been in the works for a little while.”

“Oh wow, congratulations. I’m sure your parents are thrilled.” He looked at you funny, “I mean it this time. I’m not being a sarcastic asshole.” You both laughed a little.

“You look really good. I mean, not trying to be weird but you look like yourself. Like you’ve figured yourself out.”

“Feels like I have, finally. I think getting out of here was the best thing I could’ve done for myself. It feels weird being back here, you know? I wonder how many people really know everything that actually happened. Does she know?” You weren’t sure why you were bringing this up now, but you were curious.

“Hell no, do you know how insane that would sound?”

“I do know, I lived it too.” You said wistfully. You looked back to see Eddie looking at you, and you gave him a small wave of recognition. “I should get back, it was good to catch up.”

“Will I see you both at the house? Still drink tequila?” Steve asked.

“Yeah, still tequila. We’ll be there.” You both exchanged a small hug before you walked back to Eddie, your smile growing bigger as you reached your boyfriend, realizing you’d made some positive progress in your relationship with Steve.

“What was all that about?” Eddie asked as you two walked back to his van. “Took long enough.”

“He was just making sure we were good, and asked if I was happy, apparently he’s engaged and they bought a house together. He just proposed a few days ago.” You said as you hopped into Eddie’s car.

“Weird.” You noticed Eddie’s grip on the steering wheel was tight and you picked at your thumbs out of nerves. You reached up to turn up the radio volume, but he stopped you. He never did that.

“What?” You looked over at him, he was rubbing his face with the hand that wasn’t on the steering wheel.

“I might just drop you off and head over to Wayne’s. I’m really not in the mood for a party tonight.” He said, looking straight ahead.

“Eddie, what? I’m not going without you, I’ll just go see Wayne too. You’re the one who said we needed to make an appearance. It’s for the kids, it’s their graduation.”

“Nah, you seem like you want to go catch up more with your old pal Steve.” Your eyebrows furrowed as you looked at your boyfriend.

“Eddie, what are you talking about?”

“You couldn’t take your fucking eyes off of him. You couldn’t even hide that you were staring at him, basically drooling over how good he looked.” Silence filled the car. “See, you’re not even going to deny it, are you? You played the whole, I don’t wanna come back here card for all the wrong reasons. You didn’t wanna see Steve because you still have something for him, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t! I’m sorry if that’s what you thought, but-”

“Oh come on, anyone with two working eyes can see the way you were practically undressing him.”

“Eddie, I was not. It was a conversation that we needed to have, it was awkward, but at least now we’re on speaking terms. Beyond that, there’s nothing there with Steve. Yes, he’s still attractive- you’ve even said that yourself but if you pulled over on the side of the road right this second I’d fuck you in the backseat, okay? There is nothing about Steve Harrington that I want anymore. I don’t want that lifestyle, I never did, I thought I did- but I don’t. I don’t want to come home to a guy who won’t let me touch his shirt because it might get wrinkled or ruined, I wanna be with someone who doesn’t care what happens to their shirt when I touch it or tear it off of them. I want to be with you, Eddie. You’re it for me.” You were out of breath, and you looked over to see him staring straight ahead at the road in front of him. “You’re the one who told me to go talk to him! God, just take me to Robin’s if you’re going to be a bitch like this today.”

“Was going to anyway.” He scoffed and you turned in your seat to stare out the window and hold back tears. You two never fought like this. Ever.

Hours had passed, and you and Robin got ready together before leaving for the party at the new Harrington house. You’d changed into something more fun for the party- a mini skirt with tights, your black doc martens, and a cut up band tee from one of the local bands that had passed through your bar one night.

“Eddie’s really not coming?” Robin spoke halfway over to Steve’s new house. She knew the way, so you let her drive. She also said she’d be DD tonight, only having one drink at the time of arrival and nothing else.

“I guess not, he was being so not like himself earlier. He swore that I still had a thing for Steve and that I was undressing him as we talked. Robin, Eddie has said he thought Steve was attractive before. Anyone with two eyes can see that.”

“He’ll get over it, he’s probably just feeling insecure about it because of the last time we were all at a party together.” She brushed it off, but you couldn’t as you bit the inside of your lip.

One hour into the party, and you were drunk. You didn’t know how many tequila sodas with lime you’d had, but it was enough that Robin was already giving you the eye. You spent so many of your nights at the bar not drinking, that you wanted to have fun tonight celebrating the kids graduation before the show at the Hideout the next night.

“Having fun?” Steve slid up beside you as you were pouring another drink for yourself.

“Your bar has definitely improved since high school parties.”

“Where’s Eddie?” He was quick to look around for your boyfriend.

“Oh, I don’t know. Robin and I came here together because Eddie was too much of a bitch to me earlier, saying we were- like you and me- were undressing each other with our eyes while we were talking at graduation, and even though I told him if he pulled over on the side of the road I’d-”

“Whoa, whoa, I don’t need to hear all of that. I was just asking where he was because I wanted to talk to him too. Do you know if he’s coming at all?”

You shrugged as you skillfully cut a lime wedge and tossed it into your cup. “No idea. Guess we’ll have to find out later.”

Later came soon enough, and it happened to be when everyone had decided to jump into Steve and his fiancé’s pool, most of you in whatever clothes or underwear you had on under clothes. No one was thinking twice about it either, since you’d all been friends for so long and were a little more mature about this type of thing. And you were all pretty drunk at this point in the night, too.

“Cannonball!” Dustin yelled as he jumped in, splashing you and Robin for the tenth time tonight.

“Uh oh, the fun just got here.” She said to you as she pointed her finger towards the back gate. You watched as Eddie opened the gate and stalked over to the pool, and scanned the pool of bodies for yours. Your back was to him, so you secretly hoped he wouldn’t see you, maybe? You were at the point you would’ve been happier going home alone with Robin and he stayed at Wayne’s.

“How’d he find the house?”

“The uh, invite is probably on my fridge or something. I left a key under the mat in case I wasn’t home yet when you guys came by to drop your stuff off, so I can only assume that’s how he has the address?” You couldn’t hear what she was saying as you blankly stared at her, feeling Eddie’s eyes on your mostly bare back.

You heard him say your name loud enough for you to hear, but you ignored him and took another sip of your drink. He repeated himself, but louder and you felt like a child getting in trouble with their parents.

You slowly turned to look at him, and he was crouched by the edge of the pool. He curled his finger at you to come towards him. You waded through the pool and with each step your stomach felt sicker and sicker- you wish it was from the alcohol, and not your nerves.

“You decided to show up?” You joked, leaning against the pool.

“Why the fuck are you in your goddamn underwear in Steve Harrington’s pool? Get out.” His voice was thick with disgust.

“No, I’m having fun.” You shook your head.

“Come on, we’re leaving.”

“I’m having fun with Robin.” If you could stomp your foot like a child right now, you would have.

“Do you want me to drag you out of there? I don’t want his eyes on you.”

“Not like it’s anything I haven’t seen before.” Suddenly Steve was beside you- a safe distance, but enough to hear the conversation. “Got a problem, Munson? Didn't wanna come party?”

“Fuck off, Harrington.” He spat at him, and you were disgusted by both boys pissing contest. You heard a swoosh of water, and suddenly Steve was pushing against the edge of the pool to climb out. Dripping in water, in his boxer briefs, he stepped closer and closer to Eddie.

“She’s having fun, leave her alone.” Steve stated boldly.

“I can make my own decisions.” You tried to hoist yourself out of the pool and you miserably failed. Eddie stepped over to offer his hands, and you took them to skip having to walk over to the pool steps. Very quickly, Eddie was shrugging off his jacket and draped it over your shivering shoulders.

“C’mon, let’s get you dressed and out of here.” He tried to coax you but you hesitated.

“Why didn’t you come here sooner?” You asked.

“We’ll talk about it in the car.” He said, pulling on your hand gently. Steve looked between the both of you, as his fiancé walked up behind him, placing a hand on his shoulder. Of course her underwear was more intriguing than yours- it probably had cost Steve a fortune and a half to purchase and it was the type that probably would be ruined in pool water.

“I want my question answered Eddie. I was waiting all night for you to come here, and-”

“I said, we’ll talk about it in the fucking car.” He got in your face and spoke through gritted teeth. You had absolutely never seen him like this- and then you saw it. His eyes were bloodshot- and not from weed, red from crying.

“O-okay.” You agreed and quietly followed, grabbing your clothes on your way out. You didn’t bother putting them on, you just climbed into the car and Eddie turned the heat on as he started to drive off slowly.

“I went to see Wayne and he told me that my dad died. I don’t know why I’m so fucking upset, I hated the man, but-” you put your hand on his leg as he choked on a cry.

“It’s your dad, shitty or not, it’s still your dad.”

“Then, to see you, in your underwear, in the guy who broke your fucking heart into a million pieces pool while I’ve spent the last year of my life helping you put them back together all while falling in love with you, I just- I don’t fucking get it, man.” He was doing the thing where he cries but laughs it off because he’s so upset. “I thought I was past this, thought we were past this but I guess not.” The rest of the ride was completely silent. Eddie took a deep breath as he stopped the car in the parking lot of Robin’s apartment complex. “Please tell me you’re over him.”

“Eddie, I’ve told you a thousand times-”

“I can’t take you lying to me.”

“Do you want me to say I still love him?! What kind of answer do you want from me, Eddie? I’m telling you the fucking truth. I let you move into my place, I sleep beside you every goddamn night and even before we were officially dating, just the thought of you not being feet away from me on that stupid pull out couch was enough to make me realize I wanted you, you’re the one I want. I don’t want that life Steve has, I’ve told you time and time again. I’m so fucking happy with you Eddie. I don’t want the fancy cars, the big trips, the overcompensating with a big house. I want our life we have right now, the one we’ve made over the last year. This is why I don’t like coming back here, because it brings up all of this old shit that has settled like dust already. I don’t want anything to do with Steve Harrington anymore. Okay?”

“Okay.” He answered, and turned off the car. He slowly got out of it, and walked over to your side to help you out- your ass cheeks had stuck to the leather of the seat and he walked behind you to keep you decent.

The next morning came and went quickly, all three of you were far too hungover to do anything more than to eat junk food and watch movies in Robin’s living room. The shrill shriek of her phone made all of your heads pound, and she couldn’t get up off the couch quick enough to answer it.

“Yeah… she’s fine. Uh huh. He’s here too. Okay. Ooooookay, then.” Robin hung up the phone and sat back down. “Steve’s not coming to the show tonight, he said he’s sorry.” Eddie sighed a sigh of relief, and you swallowed loudly enough to make him look at you with wide eyes.

“Sorry, just… feel like I’m gonna be sick.” You hopped up and ran to the bathroom, and slammed the door shut. About ten minutes later, you heard a knock on the door and the door slowly opened and you looked up at Eddie from the seat you’d taken on the floor. He joined you, and asked if you were okay.

“M’fine, just drank too much last night. Don’t let me do that again tonight.”

“Well, Steve won’t be there, so I don’t suspect you’ll have to drink away your feelings.” He muttered as another hurl came up, and Eddie held your hair back for you.

“I cannot be your friend, so I pay the price of what I lost, and what it cost- now that we don’t talk.”

1993

You fixed your eyeliner in the mirror with the shakiest hand you’d ever had. You messed up again, and muttered a “fuck” loudly to the room of your closest girlfriends.

“Let me help, your eye is going to be raw.” Nancy sat down on the bench beside you and you turned to her in your white silk robe to let her fix your makeup.

“Probably going to cry it all off anyway. When I went out to grab drinks, Dustin said Eddie’s a wreck too.” Robin chimed in and you looked at her quickly.

“Nervous? Is he going to call it off?” Your stomach churned at the thought of it.

“The man would do anything for you. I think we’ve all seen that over the last few years. Now, sit still before this eyeliner wing ends up in your hairline.”

It was yours and Eddie’s wedding day, finally. You’d both opted for a small wedding, with his bandmates, old and new, your closest group of friends, small family members, and no one else. Eddie and his band had blown up the music scene over the last few years, and you’d been along for the ride the entire time with him- all of the ups and downs. A big wedding was something you never wanted, and with his newfound fame, it made more sense to keep it small and intimate.

Your hands were shaky as you paced the now empty bridal suite, surely you’d worn the carpet down by how many times you’d walked back and forth. You didn’t know why, but you just felt something was off. You mentally checked everything off on your list and you weren’t forgetting anything. Your handwritten vows were in the hidden pocket of your dress, Robin had Eddie’s ring, and Dustin had your ring.

Then came the knock on the door. You hesitated, not wanting it to be Eddie trying to sneak a peak in your moment of solitude before the ceremony.

“Who is it?” You asked through the thin, wood door.

“It’s me, Steve.” The voice on the other side was shaky as he spoke. You hadn’t seen him in a while, probably a few years actually. He’d gotten married, but Eddie was on tour so you couldn’t make it back home. The weekend of Steve’s wedding was actually one of the only weekends Eddie didn’t have a show, but you didn’t question Eddie when he said he needed to have a weekend off and not go home for the wedding. You didn’t want to go alone, so you stayed back too. “Mind if I come in?” He sounded scared, but he probably was. There had been absolutely no communication between you two in a very long time, and it was all on your side.

“Yeah sure, but not for long.” You opened the door to see him standing there, dressed smart as always.

“You look absolutely stunning.” He took in the sight of your intricate lace gown that showed off your tattooed skin, and complimented your body shape perfectly.

“Thanks, but I don’t think you should-”

“You’re absolutely right. I shouldn’t be here, so I’m not. I’m leaving, but I didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye.” Your eyebrows furrowed. “Clearly you don’t want us to be friends, so I was shocked to even receive an invitation to your wedding, but after thinking about it more, and now seeing you- I really don’t need to be here. I talked to Eddie, and he had a letter to give to you, so he gave it to me to give to you before I left.”

You paused before speaking, and you looked at the man who stood before you holding a letter from your almost husband with shaky hands. He’d changed a little bit, but you both had. His scars on his face were lighter but still there, and you couldn’t help but wonder if he’d told his wife how he got it yet. Had she even asked yet how he’d gotten any of them, at that? The golden highlights in his hair were still there, shiny as ever. And his eyes were warm, warm like his nickname for you- honey.

You were speechless as you continued to stare blankly at him, your mouth couldn’t form any words, except “Thank you. Bye, Steve.” He nodded, smiled, and walked away, and out of your life forever.

You decided you couldn’t be friends as you watched him walk away, with all the things you’d lost- like the pieces of your heart that you’d never get back, that he’d taken without asking. You watched him through the window as he wiped an eye, hoping it was the wind causing the tear, but by the way his hair stayed in place you knew it wasn’t. But you knew he’d felt the same way, come to the same conclusion.

You couldn’t be friends anymore, you couldn’t even talk.

#eddie munson x reader #steve harrington x reader #stranger things #stranger things fanfic #stranger things one shot #eddie munson #steve harrington #eddie munson x you #Steve Harrington x you #eddie munson stranger things #stranger things fanfiction #stranger things fic

[reflectismo]

One interesting part in John’s manuscript of Paul’s affidavit is his note in the margins regarding the section where Paul talks about the growing musical differences between him and John. In particular, John underlines Paul’s statement that “[John] he was no longer interested in the performance of songs which he had not written himself.” John counters this comment with “Paul was guilty of this for years. Witness ‘let it be’ clip.”

The ‘Get Back’ clips have shown us that not all was dire between them at this time. But I do believe John’s comment is valid and crucial in order to understand the feelings wrt. the unity (or the lack thereof) felt within the group and how that played into the role dynamics of the band at this point. At the very least, it indicates to me that a lot more was going on than just simply John being completely checked out from the group in the later years.

#(As always the truth is somewhere in the middle) #John Lennon #Paul McCartney #The Beatles #1970 #The breakup

[icewindandboringhorror]

examining a seemingly normal image only to slowly realize the clear signs of AI generated art.... i know what you are... you cannot hide your true nature from me... go back where you came from... out of my sight with haste, wretched and vile husk

#BEGONE!!! *wizard beam blast leaving a black smoking crater in the middle of the tumblr dashboard* #I think another downside to everyone doing everything on phone apps on shitty tiny screens nowadays is the inability to really see details #of an image and thus its easier to share BLATANTLY fake things like.. even 'good' ai art has pretty obvious tells at this point #but especially MOST of it is not even 'good' and will have details that are clearly off or lines that dont make sense/uneven (like the imag #of a house interior and in the corner there's a cabinet and it has handles as if it has doors that open but there #are no actual doors visible. or both handles are slightly different shapes. So much stuff that looks 'normal' at first glance #but then you can clearly tell it's just added details with no intention or thought behind it. a pattern that starts and then just abruptly #doesn't go anywhere. etc. etc. ) #the same thing with how YEARS ago when I followed more fashion type blogs on tumblr and 'colored hair' was a cool ''''New Thing''' instead #of being the norm now basically. and people would share photos of like ombre hair designs and stuff that were CLEARLY photoshop like #you could LITERally see the coloring outside of the lines. blurs of color that extend past the hair line to the rest of the image #or etc. But people would just share them regardless and comment like 'omg i wish I could do this to my hair!' or 'hair goallzzzz!! i #wonder what salon they went to !!' which would make me want to scream and correct them everytime ( i did not lol) #hhhhhhggh... literally view the image on anything close to a full sized screen and You Will SEe #I don't know why it's such a pet peeve of mine. I think just as always I'm obsessed with the reality and truth of things. most of the thing #that annoy me most about people are situations in which people are misinterpreting/misunderstanding how something works or having a misconc #eption about somehting thats easily provable as false or etc. etc. Even if it's harmless for some random woman on facebook to believe that #this AI generated image of a cat shaped coffee machine is actually a real product she could buy somewhere ... I still urgently #wish I could be like 'IT IS ALL AN ILLUSION. YOU SEE???? ITS NOT REALL!!!!! AAAAA' hjhjnj #Like those AI shoes that went around for a while with 1000000s of comments like 'omg LOVE these where can i get them!?' and it's like YOU #CANT!!! YOU CANT GET THEM!!! THEY DONT EXIST!!! THE EYELETS DONT EVEN LINE UP THE SHOES DONT EVEN #MATCH THE PATTERNS ARE GIBBERISH!! HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE THEY ARE NOT REAL!??!!' *sobbing in the rain like in some drama movie* #Sorry I'm a pedantic hater who loves truth and accuracy of interpretation and collecting information lol #I think moreso the lacking of context? Like for example I find the enneagram interesting but I nearly ALWAYS preface any talking about it #with ''and I know this is not scientifically accurate it's just an interesting system humans invented to classify ourselve and our traits #and I find it sociologically fascinating the same way I find religion fascinating'. If someone presented personality typing information wit #out that sort of context or was purporting that enneagram types are like 100% solid scientific truth and people should be classified by the #unquestionaingly in daily life or something then.. yeah fuck that. If these images had like disclaimers BIG in the image description somewh #re like 'this is not a real thing it's just an AI generated image I made up' then fine. I still largely disagree with the ethics behind AI #art but at least it's informed. It's the fact that people just post images w/o context or beleive a falsehood about it.. then its aAAAAAA

[sheathandshear]

I guess what bothers me about a lot of disability justice approaches to healthcare -- the "doctors must trust that patients are the experts of own bodies" approach -- is that this is the perspective of people with high health literacy written for audiences of people who also have high health literacy, most of whom I think truly do not grasp just how many people have extremely poor health literacy, especially those from groups who for reasons of race, class, ethnicity, immigration status, gender, and/or often a combination of these factors are less likely to have access to accurate health information and culturally competent, trustworthy healthcare providers. When it comes to health and wellness, quite a number of people in our society don't know jack about shit! Even more hold a number of factually inaccurate folk beliefs that range from unhelpful to dangerous. (Hell, even if you have a high degree of health literacy, you probably hold some unexamined false beliefs too, because that's how culture works!) It's true that people are the experts on symptoms as they feel them, but most people are not experts on what those symptoms mean in a medical sense or what can be done about them.

It's a massive blind spot and a symptom of the larger problem of Disability So Educated -- that the vast majority of disability/chronic illness advocates/activists are heard ARE experts on their bodies, because they've had to become experts, but they were able to do so because they are a) literate in English, b) medically literate, c) information literate, and d) have access to and understanding of how to navigate the internet, whereas your average person, particularly your average disabled person, is not. And if you want to create a radical healthcare system that is truly equitable and just -- as opposed to an oligarchy of the educated, i.e. what we have now -- that proposed system has to account for both EDS/MCAS/POTS patients who come in with a 4" three-ring binder of medical literature AND patients who firmly believe that ivermectin cures COVID, vaccines cause autism, co-sleeping with infants is safe, there's no difference between a rescue inhaler and preventative medication, and having an average blood sugar of 600 is perfectly healthy as long as you feel fine.

#health is complicated! the various factors and motivations that go into health behaviors are complicated! #but it often feels like disability justice folks get VERY wedded to the patient-is-always-right narrative #(and as a disabled person you encounter many doctors ranging from dismissive to malicious to incompetent to well-meaning but ignorant) #and ignore everyone and everything that might challenge or complicate that narrative which is... most disabled people #and most abled people! #we've gone from (doctors) the patient is NEVER an expert to (disability justice folks) the patient is ALWAYS the expert #from experience the truth is on average somewhere in the middle #but I get very defensive of all the acutely and chronically ill and disabled patients I work with who disability justice advocates... #...use as rhetorical props without seeming to have much interest in or understanding of their actual lives or personhood #(and don't even get me started on the rampant ageism in many disability advocacy circles predominated by younger people) #agh. complicated! it's complicated! #health care #disability #adventures in nursing #politics #chronic illness

[lenievi]

KIRK: Recommendations. MCCOY: I have one. I recommend survival. Let's get out of here.

Kirk: hmmmm what about no? Our orders do not say stay alive or retreat. Our mission is to investigate.

McCoy: we’re all dying, Jim

Kirk: hm... We’d better get out of here.

#lately i think that jim and orders is an interesting thing to think about #he is by a book soldier and he listens to orders - sometimes to a fault - the galileo seven for example #except when the ship and the crew is concerned - that's how he also gets around the prime directive #even though one episode is like 'the captain would die and let his ship to be destroyed rather than interfere' but on the other hand #the instances of kirk 'breaking' the PD was because someone else already messed around/enterprise was attacked #and ofc then there is his obsession - even though he does have a logical explanation #but i just can't agree with the popular take that kirk would break rules only for spock because it simply isn't true #he isn't nonchalant about breaking rules as the pop-culture makes it out to be but he also has the option to disregard orders if he deems it #right. #and he did disregard orders in obsession - he disregarded the fact he needed to deliver medical supplies - that he was right about the #danger doesn't matter #i know it's cool to see kirk as someone who would put his friend(s) above other things but... he also literally sacrificed spock twice in #the show #jim thought that he had killed spock in return to tomorrow #getting him to vulcan was something he'd do for others as well. he did ignore orders about yonada because he didn't wanna leave mccoy behind #the episode just doesn't make a big deal out of it #idk this doesn't even make sense but i started to feel that people who are like 'gotta protect kirk from flanderization' aren't always #entirely objective. i mean i'm not objective either lol #but kirk breaking rules all the time and kirk breaking rules only for spock are two extremes and the truth is somewhere in the middle imho #tos nonsense #in any case i probably just need to stop reading other people talking about kirk lol

[holyshit]

.

#mess anon #i think it's a reasonable thing to say since a lot of regular people are involved and it's become such a media shitshow #that it must be rough to be associated with all the drama surrounding it either way tbh #whether it was a complete mess bts a slight mess or not a mess at all #and the reality is we do not know what is true- we have hints that something went on mainly regarding florence #and obv the gross shia bs #but there's also a lot of the stuff that people are taking as fact are coming from anon sources- a lot of which could easily be fake #considering how much of a public spectacle this has become and people love to contribute to the drama fake or not #so the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle like with all these kinds of things because shit just keeps getting piled on #and i do feel bad for all the people involved who were just doing their jobs and are now dealing with such a public spectacle #attention anon #ehh i think it's a complex subject bc i do think he is a perfectionist and probably does want everything to come together like he planned it #so i wouldn't be shocked if he legitimately hopes it doesn't leak #but i don't consider people listening to leaks to at all be a moral issue. i always listen to leaks for artists i love #and it's never stopped me from supporting them through streams etc #so it's always annoying to see people make it into this huge moral Disrespect when you can't avoid the spread of information #of this scale once it's out- it's ridiculous to think otherwise #and acting like they're evil and awful for having a different opinion than louis might have #about the unavoidable spread once a leak happens #and i think no matter how he personally feels about it- he probably is realistic about it being a common thing that happens #and wouldn't put blame on individual fans for it lmao #but alas

[assarivanguard]

left a glowin review for my local chemist and they complimented my writing, ig i should actually put stuff out there

#its weird i always view my writing as subpar and other people are like nO ITS GREAT and idk which is the truth. probs somewhere in the middl

[todays-xkcd]

"Some people say light is waves, and some say it's particles, so I bet light is some in-between thing that's both wave and particle depending on how you look at it. Am I right?" "YES, BUT YOU SHOULDN'T BE!"

Orbital Argument [Explained]

Transcript Under the Cut

[Cueball and Megan are arguing. Cueball is raising a finger while Megan's arms are outstretched. White Hat stands between them, both hands out in an equivocal gesture.]

Cueball: The sun orbits the earth!

Megan: The earth orbits the sun!

White Hat: When two people disagree, the truth is always somewhere in the middle. Maybe the earth and the sun orbit a common center!

Caption: It's annoying when people are right by accident.

#xkcd #xkcd 2898 #orbital argument #webcomics #astronomy #middle grounds #the middle of the devil's advocate

[pollyanna-nana]

One of the most tragic and compelling aspects of Dunmeshi, to me, is that we’ll probably never know (unless Kui tells us lol) how Delgal actually felt about Thistle. I’ve seen people say that he genuinely cared for him as a brother and his journey to the surface was to save him from his madness as much as it was his people. I’ve seen people say that he saw Thistle as nothing more than a fancy accessory or tool that ended up going astray. Others I’ve seen (and personally agree with) say that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. But honestly, I think any one of these interpretations has the potential to be correct… and that’s just heartbreaking.

After all, Delgal is dead. Like, dead-dead. The very first chapter of the manga starts with his spirit leaving this mortal coil, taking that answer with him. And…

How he talks about Thistle here… it’s interesting. He does not ask for him to be talked down, or captured or imprisoned, but instead “defeated”. Which Mithrun interprets as asking for his death… which is reasonable, because that’s likely how the vast majority of adventurers interpreted his words, too. Obviously as he was crumbling to dust he probably didn’t have the capacity to be particularly verbose or explain the complex backstory to how the kingdom ended up this way, but the effect is the same no matter how he may have felt with it. He asked for Thistle to be killed.

But… even in situations where he wasn’t under any such time limit to explain what was going on, he still seemed not to. Most glaringly:

Yaad seemingly has no idea that it was Delgal’s fault that Thistle sought the demon’s power. Obviously he couldn’t talk to him about it because Thistle was, uh, a little out there by that point, but why didn’t Delgal explain? Was he embarrassed? Mournful? Couldn’t find the words?

Delgal was scared of dying. He wanted prosperity at any cost, and how could Thistle possibly refuse? Did he even realize that what he was the one who pushed his own brother— One who basically helped raise him despite being a child himself, and in many ways is still a child— down this path? Or was it like watching an overzealous employee misinterpret directions?

The way Yaad describes things here makes it sound like Thistle simply dug too deep in his studies and fell into madness, but we know that’s not true. Delgal didn’t “suggest” he learn magic, he wanted a mage who could help himself and his people defy death, which he admits to Thistle openly:

So, why? Why not tell his grandson, at least, the truth of the matter? Did he worry it might make the remaining residents more likely to upset Thistle, and therefore suffer the consequences? Did he just not care? For what it’s worth though, Yaad does suspect the truth from Delgal’s behavior.

He “always blamed himself” for his descent into the dark arts. This is just Yaad’s observation, and that’s without knowing that it was quite literally Delgal’s fault Thistle went down this path. So, why? Why was it all kept a secret?

Of course, this made things ripe for the winged lion to manipulate to its advantage. Clearly despite knowing he’d pushed him into using it, Delgal still thought the lion was a force of good that was misused by Thistle as a result of his madness. His face in that last panel is particularly haunting. He looks terrible, gaunt and pale with overgrown hair and missing teeth. Had he gone mad, with grief and sorrow, as well?

Could he no longer see Thistle the way he did when they were younger? No one can ask him, because he died long before the story even began.

To go back to the original question, well, how did Delgal see Thistle? None of the previous points make a definitive answer any clearer, and I think that’s just brilliant. And so, so tragic.

#polly speaks #dungeon meshi #dunmeshi #dungeon meshi spoilers #delicious in dungeon #thistle dungeon meshi #Delgal #yaad #the winged lion #thistle posting #dungeon meta #This has been stewing in my head for a while #I just. sobs. I both hate and love Delgal bc it’s so ambiguous how much he actually cared about Thistle #he definitely wronged him in any case but the severity is up in the air. and more importantly Thistle will never know either which is part #of what drove him to go so far to prove he was worthy of his family’s love and affection #aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa #ok I’m normal. I’m normal #I’m so normal #(lying) #(sorry)

[togglesbloggle]

Voltaire's Prayer

“I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it." -Volaire’s letter to Étienne Noël Damilaville, 16 May 1767

I’m inordinately fond of sex, in the political sense.  It’s saved us so often from the worst parts of ourselves.

As far as anti-authoritarian elements of the human experience go, sex is right up there with curiosity and the search for truth- maybe even more so.  When a new tyrant comes to town, shutting down the universities and the libraries is only the second thing they try.  The first thing is to regulate human sexuality to within an inch of its life.  Rules for marriage, rules for courtship, rules for which genitals may touch and where they may touch and when they may touch.  Rules for who and rules for whom.  Rules for which kinds of sex must doom characters in literature, rules for which things may be described as sexy, rules for which things may be described in a sexy way.

Of course they do!  If you’re trying to bind a large polity together under a common ideological narrative, to render people predictable enough to quash dissent and legible enough to exert power through them, the last thing you need is a bunch of folks running around being horny about stuff without permission.  Nature gifted us with a great capacity for reason and community; we have the innate opportunity to learn about ourselves and our neighbors, and to form complex societies based on that understanding.  It was Aristotle who first called us the political animal, and the fruits of that extraordinary capacity will always be within our reach, if only we can come together within a shared understanding.  The invention of the city is the great triumph of our species, and with it we conquer the universe.

But also this extraordinary, reasoning mind has been sculpted from the raw clay of a biology that’s anchored in sexual reproduction, and this ends up being very, very funny.

The problem isn’t so much that the sex instinct exists, per se.  It’s how it’s implemented.  Like most biological forms, the full complement of 86 billion(!) neurons in your brain aren’t encoded in a particular configuration; the brain is much too complex to be described so precisely in the only ~725 megabytes or so of human DNA.  The particular shape of your brain is in there somewhere- the lobes and subregions responsible for vision, memory, cognition, all that- but only up to a point.  The genius and fundamental limitation of genetics is that, below a certain level, the genes instead describe a process for the production and reproduction of specialized cells, and simply constructs them in such a way that they can be relied upon to order themselves as they go.

This is all well and good when we’re talking about kidneys and livers, but the fact that you can encode any kind of specific behavioral instinct in a brain this way is nothing short of a minor miracle.  Think about it!  Spiders don’t have a ‘spider web’ gene, the gene is for ‘proteins that come together in self-assembling electrochemically sensitive gelatin tissue which, when complete, encodes patterns that operate organ systems such as legs and spinnerets in such a way as to reliably create silk webs.’  This is absurdly impressive, and also completely insane.

What I’m getting at is, powerful behavioral instincts in a complex animal aren’t precise instruction manuals by which we pursue evolutionarily advantageous behaviors.  Sex and eros are prior to logic or language, let alone strategy.  Sex is a double-thick electrical wire discharging lightning bolts right through the middle of our cognitive centers, installed in the brain by a surgeon wearing mittens.  It’s an untethered firehose whipping chaotically through the cathedral, unpredictably spraying golden reliquaries with substances unmentionable.  It’s the first and greatest anarchist.

I really can’t overstate my gratitude for this.

Obviously this results in any number of deeply goofy outcomes by way of kinks and odd sexual practices- it gets tangled with pain centers, with random bits of anatomy and proprioception, with our taboos and aversions, with our greatest terrors or our greatest yearnings or just arbitrary stimuli from adolescence, and of course it gets enmeshed so often with our notions of power and submission.  It imbues these things with a fascination and potency out of all proportion with their mundane meanings.  And ultimately, you end up with human pleasures and human values that diverge so far from banal evolutionary imperatives as to be all but unrecognizable.

Even when this process somehow manages to propagate through the brain in such a way as to drive behaviors that are legibly aligned towards some adaptive constraint- e.g. heterosexual mating practices resulting in biological reproduction and careful childrearing- it’s still madness.  Love and sex penetrate deeply across tribal and national and racial boundaries, across economic interests, across battle-lines and enmities.  We become traitors, apostates, emigrants, and artists.  Declare a law, and in short order some hot-headed young people come along to break it in the name of sexual passions you could not possibly have seen coming.  Divide your neighborhood into us and them, and by the time the ink is dry on your proclamation there will be a forbidden relationship across the fence.  There is no social order, no ethical system, no theory of human nature that can entirely withstand contact with the full spectrum of human sexuality, because sex and eros are always going to be exactly as bonkers as the complexity of the human mind and culture will allow, plus a little extra just to be sure.

This isn’t always a delight, of course.  Many prohibitions exist for a very good reason, and the chaos of human sexuality makes no exemptions for true evil.  Some of us end up really, truly victims of this process.  But for all the dangers, the chaos at the root of all this isn’t oriented towards evil.  Chaos just means chaos, essentially arbitrary and hence absurd in character.

And in the grand analysis, we are so lucky to have this thing moving through our communities, this ridiculous madness that guarantees that there will be cracks in every wall and slips exploding cigars in the pockets of the powerful few.  Not in everybody as individuals, of course, and not everybody the same amount; asexuality is certainly one of the outcomes that all this mad gallivanting through our brains can produce.  Sexuality would never be so predictable as to guarantee its own existence, after all.  That’s part of what makes the joke so funny.

But all of us, regardless of sexuality, get to live in a world where the grand anarchy of sex is constantly driving home this lesson that no category is inviolate and no law is perfect.  That we should not and cannot take ourselves too seriously, or forget that we’re animals.  That we don’t exist only for the sake of others, or within their understanding.  That cities are made of cooperation, grace, and forbearance- not conformity or mere compliance.

People sometimes worry about immortality.  In the political sense, I mean.  They worry about eternal dictatorships and unconquerable gerontocracies.  This fear isn’t entirely unjustified; death has often played a role in progress and liberation.  But as long as enough of us are still getting horny without permission, still falling in love in stupid ways, I think we’ll be okay.  Romeo and Juliet don’t have to die at the end to make a difference in the world, as long as they’re brave enough to get weird with it.

[jewelleria]

I don’t usually talk about politics on here, if ever. But it’s been almost six months since the conflict in the Middle East flared up again, and I’m finally ready to start. Here are some of my thoughts.

I say ‘flared up’ because this has happened before and it’ll happen again. Because, even though what's currently going on is absolutely unprecedented, those of us who live in this part of the world are used to it. Let that sink in: we are used to this. And we shouldn’t have to be. 

But I use that term for another reason: I don't want to accidentally call it the wrong thing lest I come under fire for being a genocidal maniac or a terrorist or a propaganda machine, etc., etc.—so let’s just call it ‘the war’ or ‘the conflict.’ Because that’s what it is. Doesn’t matter which side you’re on, who you love, or who you hate. 

This post will, in all likelihood, sit in my drafts forever. If it does get posted, it certainly won’t be on my main, because I'm scared of being harassed (spoiler: she posted it on her main). I hate admitting that, but honestly? I’m fucking terrified. 

I also feel like in order for anything I say on here (i.e. the hellscape of the internet) to be taken seriously, I have to somehow prove that a) I’m “educated” enough to talk about the conflict, and b) that my opinion lines up with what has been deemed the correct one. So, tedious and unnecessary though it is, I will tell you about my experience, because I have a feeling most of the people reading this post are not nearly as close to what’s happening as I am.

How do I explain where I live without actually explaining where I live? How do I say “I live in the Red Zone of international conflicts” without saying what I actually think? How do I convey the fear that grips me when I try to decide between saying “I live in Palestine” and “I live in Israel”? I don't really know. But I do know that names are important. I also know that, due to the various clickbaity monikers ascribed to the conflict, it would probably just be easier to point to a map. 

I haven't always lived in the Middle East. I've lived in various places along America’s east coast, and traveled all over the world. But in short, I now live somewhere inside the crudely-drawn purple circle. 

If you know anything about these borders you probably blanched a bit in sympathy, or maybe condolence. But in truth, it’s a shockingly normal existence. I don't feel like I've lived through the shifting of international relations or a war or anything. I just kind of feel like I did when COVID hit, that dull sameness as I wondered if this would be the only world-altering event to shape my life, or if there would be more. 

I've been told that, in order for my brain to process all the horrific details of the past six months, there needs to be some element of cognitive dissonance—that falling into a sort of dissociative mindset is the only way to not go insane under the weight of it all. I think in some ways that’s true. I have been terrifyingly close to bus stop shootings when my commute wasn’t over; I have felt my apartment building shake with the reverberations of a missile strike; I have spent hours in underground shelters waiting for air raid sirens to stop. 

But. I have also gone grocery shopping, and skipped class, and stayed up too late watching TV, and fed the cats on the street corner, and cried over a boy, and got myself AirPods just because, and taken out the trash, and done laundry on a delicate cycle, and bought overpriced lattes one too many days a week. I have looked at pretty things and taken out my phone because, despite it all, I still think that life is too short not to freeze the small moments. 

So I'd say, all things considered, I live an incredibly privileged life—compared, of course, to those suffering in Gaza—one filled with sunsets and over-sweetened knafeh and every different color of sand. One that allows me to throw myself into a fandom-induced hyperfixation (or, alternatively, escape method) as I sit on the couch and crack open my laptop to write the next chapter of the fic I'm working on. 

But there are bits of not-normalness that wheedle their way through the cracks. I pretend these moments are avoidable, even if they’re not. 

They look like this: reading the news and seeing another idiotic, careless choice on Netanyahu’s part and groaning into my morning coffee. Watching Palestinian and Jewish children’s needless suffering posted on Instagram reels and feeling helpless. Opening my Tumblr DMs to find a message telling me to exterminate myself for reblogging a post that only seems like it’s about the war if you squint and tilt your head sideways. 

These moments look like all the tiny ways I am reminded that I'm living in a post-October seventh world, where hearing a car backfire makes me jump out of my skin and the sound of a suitcase on pavement makes me look up at the sky and search for the war planes. They look like the heavy grief that is, and also isn’t, mine. 

Here's the thing, though. I know you’re wondering when the ball will drop and my true opinion will be revealed. I know you’re waiting for me to reveal what demographic I'm a part of so that you, dear reader, can neatly slap a label on my head and sort me into some oversimplified category that lets you continue to think you understand this war. 

No one wants to sit and ruminate on the difficult questions, the ones that make you wonder if maybe you’ve been tinkered with by the propaganda machine, if you might need to go back on what you’ve said or change your mind. We all strive for our perception of complicated issues to be a comfortable one.

But I know that no matter what I do, there will always be assumptions. So, while I shudder to reveal this information online, I think that maybe my most significant contribution to this meta-discussion spanning every facet of the internet is this: 

I am a Jew. 

Or, alternatively, I am: Jewish, יהודית, يَهُودِيٌّ, etc. Point is, I come from Jews. And, like any given person, I am a product of generation after generation of love. 

I'm not going to take time to explain my heritage to you, or to prove that before all the expulsions and pogroms, there was an origin point. If you don’t believe that, perhaps it’s less of a factual problem and more of an ‘I don’t give weight to the beliefs of indigenous people’ problem. But, in case you want to spend time uselessly refuting this tiny point in a larger argument, you can inspect the photos below (it’s just a small chunk of my DNA test results). Alternatively, you can remember that interrogating someone in an attempt to make their indigeneity match your arbitrary criteria is generally not seen as good manners. 

Now, let’s go back to thathateful message (read: poorly disguised death threat) I received in my Tumblr DMs. I think it was like two or three weeks ago. I had recently gained a new follower whose blog’s primary focus was the fandom I contribute to, so I followed them back. I saw in my notes that they were going through my posts and liking them—as one does when gaining a new mutual. Yippee! 

Then they sent me this: 

I tried to explain that hate speech is not a way to go about participating in political discourse, but the person had already blocked me immediately after sending that message. Then, assured by the fact that I surely would never see them complaining about me on their blog (because, as I said, they blocked me), they posted a shouting rant accusing me of sympathizing with colonizing settlers and declaring me a “racist Zionist fuck.” Oh, the wonders of incognito tabs.

Where this person drew these conclusions after reading my (reblogged) post about antisemitism…. I'm not actually sure. But I greatly sympathize with them, and hope that they weren’t too personally offended by my desire to not die. 

For a while I contemplated this experience in my righteous anger, and tried to figure out a way to message this person. I wanted to explain that a) seeing a post about being Jewish and choosing to harass the creator about Israel is literally the definition of antisemitism and b) that sending a hateful DM and refusing to be held accountable is just childish and immature. But I gave up soon after—because, honestly, I knew it wasn’t worth my effort or energy. And I knew that I wouldn't be able to change their mind. 

But I still remember staring at that rather unfortunate meme, accompanied by an all-caps message demanding for me to Free Palestine, and thinking: the post didn’t even have any buzzwords. I remember the swoop of dread and guilt and fear. I remember wondering why this kind of antisemitism felt worse, in that moment, than the kind that leaves bodies in its wake. 

I remember thinking, I don’t have the power to free anyone.

I remember thinking, I’m so fucking tired. 

And before you tell me that this conflict isn’t about religion—let me ask you some questions. Why is it that Israel is even called Israel? (Here’s why.) Why do Jews even want it? (Here’s why.) But also, if you actually read the charters of Islamist terrorist organizations like ISIS, Hamas, and Hezbollah (among others), they equate the modern state of Israel with the Jewish people, and they use the two entities interchangeably. So of course this conflict is religious. It’s never been anything but that.

But I do wonder, when faced with those who deny this fact: how do I prove, through an endless slew of what-about-isms and victim blaming, that I too am hurting? How do I show that empathy is dialectical, that I can care deeply for Palestinians and Gazans while also grieving my own people? 

There's this thing that humans do, when we’re frustrated about politics and need to howl our opinions about it into the void until we feel better. We find like-minded souls, usually our friends and neighbors, and fret about the state of the world to each other until we’ve gone around in a satisfactory amount of circles. But these conversations never truly accomplish anything. They’re just a substitute, a stand-in catharsis, for what we really wish we could do: find someone who embodies the spirit of every Jew-hating internet troll, every ignorant justifier of terrorism, and scream ourselves hoarse at them until we change their mind.

But, of course, minds cannot be changed when they are determined to live in a state of irrational dislike. In Judaism, this way of thinking has a name: שנאת חינם (sinat hinam), or baseless hatred. It's a parasite with no definite cure, and it makes people bend over backwards to justify things like the massacre on October seventh, simply because the blame always needs to be placed on the Jews. 

So when a Jew is faced with this unsolvable problem, there is only one response to be had, only one feeling to be felt: anger. And we are angry. Carrying around rage with nowhere to put it is exhausting. It's like a weight at the base of our neck that pushes down on our spine, bending it until we will inevitably snap under the pressure. I’m still waiting to break, even now.

I wish I could explain to someone who needs to hear it that terrorism against Israelis happens every single day here, and that we are never more than one degree of separation away from the brutal slaughter of a friend, lover, parent, sibling. I wish it would be enough to say that the majority of Israelis (which includes Arab-Israeli citizens who have the exact same rights as Jewish-Israelis) wish for peace every day without ever having seen what it looks like. 

I wish I could show the world that Israel was founded as a socialist state, that it was built on communal values and born from a cluster of kibbutzim (small farming communities based on collective responsibility), and that what it is now isn’t what its people stand for. 

I wish the world could open their eyes to what we Israelis have seen since the beginning: that Hamas is the enemy, Hamas is the one starving Palestinians and denying them aid, Hamas is the one who keeps rejecting ceasefire terms and denying their citizens basic human rights. Hamas is the governing body of Gaza, not Israel. Hamas is responsible for the wellbeing of the Palestinian people. And Hamas are the ones who are more determined to murder Jews—over and over and over again, in the most animalistic ways possible—than to look inwards and see the suffering they’ve inflicted on their own people. I wish it was easier to see that.

But the wishing, the asking how can people be so blind, is never enough. I can never just say, I promise I don't want war. 

When I bear witness to this baseless hatred, I think of the victims of October seventh. I think of the women and girls who were raped and then murdered, forever unable to tell their stories. I think of the hostages, trapped underneath Gaza in dark tunnels, wondering if anyone will come for them. I think of Ori Ansbacher, of Ezra Schwartz, of Eyal, Gilad, and Naftali, of Lucy, Rina, and Maia Dee, of the Paley boys, of Ari Fuld and of Nachshon Wachsman. I think of all the innocent blood spilled because of terror-fueled hatred and the virus of antisemitism. I think of all the thousands of people who were brutally murdered in Israel, Jews and Muslims and Christians and humans, who will never see peace.

My ties to this land are knotted a thousand times over. Even when I leave, a part of me is left behind, waiting for me to claim it when I return. But when I see the grit it takes to live through this pain, when I see the suffering that paints the world the color of blood, I look to the heavens and I wonder why. 

I ask God: is it worth all this? He doesn't answer. So I am the one, in the end, to answer my own question. I say, it has to be. 

Feel free to send any genuine, respectful, and clarifying questions you may have to my inbox!

EDIT: just coming on here to say that I'm really touched & grateful for the love on this post. When I wrote it, I felt hopeless; I logged off of Tumblr for Shabbat, dreading the moment I would turn off my phone to find more hate in my inbox. Granted, I did find some, and responding to it was exhausting, but it wasn’t all hate. I read every kind reblog and comment, and the love was so much louder. Thank you, thank you, thank you. 🤍

Source Reading

The Whispered in Gaza Project by The Center for Peace Communications

Why Jews Cannot Stop Shaking Right Now by Dara Horn

Hamas Kidnapped My Father for Refusing to Be Their Puppet by Ala Mohammed Mushtaha

I Hope Someone Somewhere Is Being Kind to My Boy by Rachel Goldberg

The Struggle for Black Freedom Has Nothing to Do with Israel by Coleman Hughes

Israel Can Defend Itself and Uphold Its Values by The New York Times Editorial Board

There Is a Jewish Hope for Palestinian Liberation. It Must Survive by Peter Beinart

The Long Wait of the Hostages’ Families by Ruth Margalit

“By Any Means Necessary”: Hamas, Iran, and the Left by Armin Navabi

When People Tell You Who They Are, Believe Them by Bari Weiss

Hunger in Gaza: Blame Hamas, Not Israel by Yvette Miller

Benjamin Netanyahu Is Israel’s Worst Prime Minister Ever by Anshel Pfeffer

What Palestinians Really Think of Hamas by Amaney A. Jamal and Michael Robbins

The Decolonization Narrative Is Dangerous and False by Simon Sebag Montefiore

Understanding Hamas’s Genocidal Ideology by Bruce Hoffman

The Wisdom of Hamas by Matti Friedman

How the UN Discriminates Against Israel by Dina Rovner

This Muslim Israeli Woman Is the Future of the Middle East by The Free Press

Why Are Feminists Silent on Rape and Murder? by Bari Weiss

#palestine #israel hamas war #israel hamas conflict #hamas #on war #essay writing #personal essay #rant post #stop terrorism #israel #writing #palestinian lives matter #jewish lives matter #jewish and proud #jewish identity #jewish muslim solidarity #on grief #on religion #antisemitism #anti zionisim #purim 2024 #chag purim sameach #judaism #israeli palestinian conflict #am yisrael chai #kvetching #jumblr #mims on middle east #המצב

[moonstruckme]

hi!!! i love all ur marauders works they’re seriously so cute and i love how you write them!! idk if you’ve done this one already and if you have just ignore this lol but could you do remus having a nightmare and reader comforting him? ik you’ve done the reverse but i wanna know what he’s like lmao. i need to see more confer remus i can’t get enough

Thank you lovely <3

Remus Lupin x fem!reader ♡ 1k words

It’s already graying outside the window when you wake. Remus has been having some agitated nights lately, and the dim lighting of the bedroom lets you see that this has been another one. 

You’ve probably woken from the cold, all your sheets and blankets kicked mercilessly to the end of the bed. Remus’ face is twisted up tight, his hands twitching like they’re trying to grab for something, and he’s making soft, distressed little sounds that threaten to crack your heart clean in two. You hate to think how long he’s been like this without you waking. 

“Rem,” you start soft, reaching for his hand as you’ve learned to do. Touch his shoulder or any other part of him and he’s likely to wake jolting, your offending hand gripped cruelly by the wrist. Once, before you’d learned your lesson, he’d kicked himself fully out of bed from the start you gave him. You’d sat in the living room with a hot pack on his tailbone, murmuring apologies back and forth until the sun came up. 

You needle your fingers underneath his gently. “Remus, honey, you’re okay. You’re home.” His fingers twitch closer around yours, and you’re careful not to grab him back even though you want to, running the pads of your fingers down the length of his to loosen them. “You’re safe. You’re at home.” His eyes start to move faster behind his lids. “Rem.” 

That last whisper does it. He doesn’t startle, which is always a victory, but Remus still inhales sharply as he wakes. His muscles seize as though they mean to propel him somewhere, then relax shudderingly. 

You entwine your fingers with his, stay quiet. You know he knows you’re here but he won’t look at you just yet, hiding away the most frantic parts of himself before he’ll let himself turn towards you. You don’t love that he does it. You know better than to push him, though. It unnerves him worse when you try to jimmy your way into his thoughts while he’s still raw like this. 

“Sorry,” he says on an exhale. 

“Don’t be.” You start to stroke up his wrist, but Remus pulls his hand from yours, slipping out of bed and walking from the room. 

You tail him. This is part of your routine, too. You think he likes to give you the option of going back to sleep, though you can’t imagine he’d actually feel any better if you did. He’s fooling himself. (It’s okay; you’re a fool for him sometimes, too.) 

Remus isn’t surprised when you wrap your arms around his middle in the kitchen, resting your cheek against his back. He’s already got the kettle going. 

“How are you?” you ask, though you think you have some idea. He’s still trembling gently under your hands. 

“Alright.” He sets one hand over your two clasped around his front. “You should go back to sleep.” 

You almost smile at his predictability. Remus isn’t usually so stiff around you, but even he has admitted he reverts back to a younger, terser self when he’s feeling vulnerable. You could tell him that you’d have been waking up soon anyway, or that you wouldn’t be able to sleep if you knew you’d left him like this, but you go with the truth that you know you’d want to hear. 

“I want to be with you,” you say simply. 

Remus turns in your arms, resting his lips on top of your head. “Thanks, dove.” 

You hum like For what? and step around him as the kettle finishes boiling, grabbing his favorite mug from the cabinet above. Remus lets you take care of him this little bit, but he doesn’t go to sit down in the living room until you’re headed that way too. 

You curl up against him on the couch, your knees tipped over his thighs while his legs bridge the gap between the sofa and the coffee table. He blows the steam off his mug. 

“Do you remember what the dream was about?” 

“Bits and pieces.” Remus’ voice is still a bit raspy with sleep, and you know exactly what he’s thinking when his lips twitch: you’ve told him more than a few times how attractive you find it like this. “I don’t think it’s worth talking about.” 

“Okay,” you say. You’re both speaking softly, like the house itself is still slumbering as morning creeps up on the outside world. After Remus’ nightmare, you imagine he appreciates the peace anyway.

He sighs, looking at you almost sheepishly. “Sorry I’ve been waking you so much lately.” 

“Sorry you’ve been sleeping so horribly lately,” you counter. 

Remus smiles ruefully. “I think it’s all this stuff going on at work. Rude of it to fuck with me even when I’m sleeping, though.” 

You hum, tracing a scar near his elbow with your finger. “I didn’t realize you were so stressed. I’m sorry.” 

“I’ve hardly realized it myself,” he admits. 

You frown, and Remus looks back into his mug, shying from your scrutiny. “Do you think it might help if we relaxed a bit more here?” you ask him. “We could start reading that book together again.” 

His eyes are soft when they meet yours, the color of honey and just as sweet. “That sounds really nice,” he says. 

You smile. It feels good to have a plan. “Hug?” you ask him. 

Remus sets down his tea to make room for you, and you straddle his lap, wrapping your arms around his neck. His hands spread out on your back, tentative at first and then firmer as you snuggle up to him. 

“I’ll make cheese toasties and soup tonight,” you say softly. Remus sounds almost like he could purr as you start playing with the hair at his nape. He gives your hips a little tug, getting you closer. “And we can read or watch something or do a puzzle, whatever you feel like when you get home. We could talk about the work stuff, if you wanted to.” You say this last part hesitantly, but Remus hums his approval. 

“You’re so good to me, do you know that?” 

You grin. “I do my best.” 

He huffs a laugh, the sound gruff and heart-squeezing. You lapse into a thin silence, each listening to the other breathe but feeling the beginning of the new day pressing at your windows. 

“We have some time before we’d normally start to get ready,” you try. “Want to stay like this for a bit?” 

“Yeah,” Remus sighs, settling his arms around you more securely. “Yeah, good idea.”

#remus lupin #remus lupin x reader #remus lupin x fem!reader #remus lupin x y/n #remus lupin x you #remus lupin x self insert #remus lupin fanfiction #remus lupin fanfic #remus lupin fic #remus lupin hurt/comfort #remus lupin fluff #remus lupin imagine #remus lupin scenario #remus lupin drabble #remus lupin blurb #remus lupin oneshot #remus lupin one shot #marauders #marauders fanfiction #the marauders #marauders fandom #marauders era #hp marauders #marauders x reader

[reflectismo]

INT: How much singing and composing did you witness [in India]?

PS: I didn't see much, because they did that kind of thing mostly at night. So I only ever saw or was part of that one session that I photographed. I was walking back to my tent late one afternoon before dinner, and I just heard John and Paul singing from behind the trees. And I walked over and saw what they were doing, and I went and got my camera, which is the only time I took my camera out on purpose. So I took a few shots through the fence, then I walked through and just sat down, with Paul and John side by side, and just hung out. Paul had a piece of paper with the words, "Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da, oh, how the life goes on," and it was on the step beneath him. The first picture in the book is the shot of him looking down and his hand is off the guitar, and he's reading the words, which he didn't have memorized yet. And they just played with it for about five minutes, having a wonderful time fooling around. It was such fun, I mean them having so much fun. When I first sat down, they were actually just playing bits and fragments of their older songs.

INT: Previously recorded material?

PS: Yeah, like Michelle and Eleanor Rigby. Just musically meandering. Then Paul started looking down at the piece of paper and I took a picture.

INT: Was George around?

PS: No. But Ringo was siting there with his leg crossed, a cigarette in his hand. So after they had played Ob-La-Di, Ob-la-Da over and over again, they stopped for a breather, and that's when Paul looked up at me, smiled, and with this really wonderful twinkle in his eye, said, "That's all there is so far, we haven't got the words yet." So that was the only time I experienced it.

INT: That's interesting because Lennon had stated in many interviews that he and McCartney had really stopped composing together in late '64 or early '65, but Paul said in his recent book that they actually composed together right to the end. So what you witnessed reinforces Paul's version.

PS: That is interesting. And they were having so much fun together. There's no question about it.

— Interview with Paul Saltzman (Beatlology Magazine, January/February 2001 Edition)

#The Beatles #John Lennon #Paul McCartney #Ringo Starr #Paul Saltzman #1968 #India #(I remember the first time reading about the boys in India) #(And I remember just reading endlessly about how negative it all was and that it was the turning point/they were all doing their own thing) #(That J & P were barely speaking to each other) #(While I also don’t think it was a 100% happy/celebratory time for them) #(I think it’s important to note that their relationship wasn’t completely fractured during this time) #(They were still having fun in each other’s company) #(As always - the truth is usually somewhere in the middle)

[shepherdsheart]

Forgotten Child

DpxDc

Bruce would admit that he wasn’t near a perfect man. In all truth he was far from it really.

He had made hundreds of mistakes through his life and he had hoped he had learned something from them all but there was one mistake that stood out more than anything else.

The box in his hands had been proof of such, everything in it entailed just how badly he had failed. Failed as a man, failed as a person but most of all how he failed as a father.

It all started a year before he welcomed Dick into his life. It was one of his biggest regrets but also one of his biggest blessings as he stared at the new born baby boy in his arms. Soft blue wrapped around the little boy like tight arms as he held the sleeping baby close.

He had drilled that moment into his memories as he held the soft little bundle. It would be his first and his last memory of the boy in his arms. He knew the moment the pregnancy was announced that he wouldn’t be able to keep the babe. His life as Batman was to dangerous for a baby and as such he had made the decision to hand his baby to someone else.

Nobody but a trusted few would ever know of the young babe, no one would know Batman or Bruce Wayne had a son.

It had taken time and research but he had picked the perfect family. They would take care of his little star, he would be their son and not his. He would grow up safe and protect as Daniel Thomas Marshal.

Or at least he thought so.

Bruce didn’t give up contact with Daniel, each year he would send the boy anonymous gifts for his birthday and the holidays just as the elusive Uncle B. And as the boy grew they often exchanged letters.

His boy was smart, the top of his class and he was ohh so brilliant. He often drew pictures for Bruce where then man would store each with the letters in a box for sage keeping. Things had gone that way for years and Danny and he talked about many things. Bruce talked about life and Danny liked to talk about stars and the things he learned at school.

It had all been going so well till it all fell apart.

Jason had died and Bruce fell apart, losing himself in his grief for his lost child. Somewhere along the line after Jason’s death Bruce had stopped responding to the letters young Danny sent. He couldn’t bear to read them while he grieved Jason and at one point he must have told Alfred to just store them in Daniels letter box in instead of bringing them to him.

Somehow he had forgotten, he had forgotten the letters of messy cursive and doodles of stars and galaxy’s. Stories of school or life in the farm where he was being raised out in Wisconsin.

It was only because of his children that he remembered. A normal day of roughhousing and being shooed away by Alfred to take their antics elsewhere while he cleaned.

The kids had decided to take their games to the halls between there room and Damian and Jason to pick a locked door of a spare room that was never used and always locked. The others would never think to check the room as it was never opened. 

The boys weren’t expecting to find a old but well cared for nursery. The walls a soft blue, the The ceilings dark blue with plastic stars in the patters of constellations. A crib in one corner with space themed decor and a small bed in the middle of the room obviously for when the crib was outgrown.

On the far wall was multiple shelves with a few old toys along with books and many other small items. Then there were the picture frames scattered about the shelves and other furniture in the room. All had one thing in common, a boy with soft black hair and ice blue eyes but each photo the boy was more grown.

At first they thought it was Bruce but the photos were to new and Bruce didn’t have ice blue eyes. The boy was in a picture with his parents, a blond woman with blue eyes and a Black haired man with green eyes. Those weren’t Bruce’s parents so who were they and who was the child that was in each photo.

Before they could snoop any further the door had been opened and a Stern Alfred shooed them away.

It didn’t take long for the boys to question Bruce about the room he had long ago forgotten about. Bruce didn’t say a word as he had rushed over to the room that he had long sense abandoned before he closed himself inside.

There Bruce had cried, he had forgotten one of his children and he cried as he looked at the photos.

He had spent hours in that room before a wooden box to the side on a Dresser caught his attention. He knew exactly what that box contained and he dreaded opening it.

When he found the courage to lift the lid he was greeted by hundreds of letters. A portion opened but most were untouched, never opened to be read.

He’d spend the next few weeks slowly going through the letters. Danny wasn’t sure why he hadn’t responded but the boy wrote that even though he didn’t get a response he hoped the letters were reaching him.

He learned soon after Jason’s death when Danny was 10 that the Marshals had died leaving Danny to the State only to be adopted by a family called the Fentons a year later.

After that Danny’s letters became less detailed and more vague about his life but instead asking questions Bruce would never answer. The boy avoided talking about his home life and manly talked about school and his 2 new friends or he’d ask about Bruce, how he was doing? If he was ok? And so on. Somehow Danny never gave up writing to Bruce.

That was until the last letter, sent over a year ago in handwriting Bruce didn’t recognize. Jasmine, Danny’s adopted sister had written that dated letter over a year ago.

Over a year ago Danny had been killed, killed in an accident in the Fentons Lab. No body left to be buried only the address of an empty grave.



Notes

(Danny is 11 years younger than Dick, 4 years younger than Jason, 2 years younger than Tim, 4 years older than Damian)

Damian - 11

Danny - 15

Tim - 17

Jason - 19

Dick - 26

(Danny is Phantom but when he died he decided he didn’t want to deal with an abusive Jack and Maddie anymore so he continued on as phantom only being Danny with his friends and in the realms when he was safe with Allies)

#dpxdc #dc x dp #dc x dp fic #danny fenton #dp x dc au #dc x dp crossover

[worldsover]

Completeness ft. Yeseo, Mashiro

length ✦ 13.7k

genres ✧ gf!Mashiro, virgin!Yeseo

✦✧✦✧✦✧

There is exactly one axiom that matters. Mashiro is your loving girlfriend. All other truths are auxiliary. Yet, postulates exist that can carry weight to them and affect the system upon which this first and only truth is built. An example: Yeseo, Shiro's best friend, is something of a little sister to you both, and thus you make love to your girlfriend, and care for your girlfriend's friend as much as any guy should. For some reason, this unbreakable and absolute edict has been revised, softened, changed, and now truth itself is something that the two of them are… considering.

"Hey, what do you think of Yeseo?"

It's a Thursday night, and Mashiro's on top of you, her hand stroking your cock as she asks. It's not the kind of distraction you want while you're about to get off, but here you are.

"She's cute. Um, can be a bit of a handful sometimes."

"That's it?" Mashiro gives you a wry smile.

"What's with you? Why are you asking about her now of all times?"

Mashiro shrugs, but you don't believe it. She tugs down the neckline of her cropped top, showing off more of her breasts as they threaten to spill out of her bra. Between the sheen of sweat on her cleavage and the toned shape of her abs, that's a lot of skin and sexiness to swallow. Her fingers don't have to work long before you're fully erect.

"I mean, I'm just saying, she's gotten pretty hot lately."

You raise an eyebrow at her. "Hot? Since when?"

"Well, obviously now that she's an adult. And what, you think she's not hot, babe?"

You look away and groan. "I dunno, it's a bit weird." You're not even being political about your answer. That's just the truth.

Mashiro peels your eyes back to her when she takes your hand and brings it under her shirt. She's smiling like she's got a joke only she's privy to, even when you start pinching her nipples. At this point, she would usually start melting, and all clothes would be forgotten for at least another half-hour.

She doesn't.

Not that this is anywhere near Shiro's first time taking control of a situation, but the motive was always self-fulfillment, fucking out your orgasms to chase her own. Therefore, when Mashiro slaps your cock against her abs, you tense up in surprise and anticipation. She leans over to capture your shaft between her tits, inside the tight confines of her top. You thought that she thought that this shirt was too cute to ruin with stains of cum, but it seems like she's willing to sacrifice some clothes for whatever greater good. Her breasts are just big enough to make this possible, and while her skin is plenty soft and warm, she adds spit to the mix to make the passage nice and slippery.

"Ah, Shiro," you say.

Each time your tip pokes out of her shirt, Mashiro gives it extra attention—kissing, licking, suckling. The only reason you're not thrusting into her mouth is because she has your hips pinned to the bed. 

"So," she says, "Yeseo. Imagine her here."

"Wha..." You're dumbfounded, and it's not just by how Mashiro's mouth wraps around the head of your cock. That's nice though, and you could probably cum on her lips like this—you've done it before—but you're apparently in the middle of a conversation and it's very hard to reply when she's working you like this.

"Mm, tell me what you think of her. Be honest this time." Sure, Mashiro talks about her best friend a lot, but you never imagined that she'd be so cavalier about bringing any other person up while in bed. At the very least, you'd think she would broach this topic with a bit more tact, and a bit less tit-fucking.

Where to start is a dilemma, what with your brain functioning at half speed. "Uhhh. Purple hair." Gotta start somewhere. "She's… smart?" You're pretty sure that's it, right? That's everything there is to know about Yeseo. "She's like a sister."

Mashiro pulls back, relaxing the pressure on your dick, and you're both disappointed and relieved. "What if she were a little less like a sister?"

"Shiro, what do you want me to say?" You don't get to see her smile, since she's back to sucking on your tip, but you feel it.

"That you would dick down my bestie if that's what she needed?"

You open your mouth to deny it. "Well, I—" The next word should be a word, not a squeak. But that's what happens when she sucks on your dick while its length is stuffed into her tits. Her lips fit around your girth tight and they leave you with a parting lick. Makes your breath catch. You think about what she said. The fact that you're still hard says it all.

"It's okay, you can admit it. Yeseo's got such a pretty ass now, doesn't she?"

Your first thought is comparison: you want to believe that your girlfriend beats Yeseo in every department, and that's certainly true with the heft of her breasts as Yeseo's petite frame has a way to go before being able to swathe your member how Shiro currently is. Yet, you think about yesterday, how your eyes kept traveling to Yeseo's ass in her leggings and how that butt could be softer to the touch than your girlfriend's. Could be. Could be fluffier like a cloud, fuller like ripe fruit, rounder than a bubble ready to pop, and you don't want to admit you would pop it. Not really, so you're silent and tense, so what could be, isn't.

Mashiro notices, and pulls away from your cock. "Hah, thought so."

Shaking your head, clenching your jaw, you ask, "Why does it matter? Are you gonna be jealous?"

"Jealous? Of what, you ogling Yeseo? God no," Mashiro says, laughing, "she's so cute and tiny, I wouldn't blame you." She pauses, giving your length a few languid strokes up and down her tits. "If anything, I'm the opposite of jealous. Curious."

"Is that what opposite—"

She squeezes her tits together with an arm around her chest, your shaft in the most loving stranglehold. "I'm being serious. Just think about it. Okay?"

You sigh. "Fine, fine."

The conversation dies and gives way to the sound of wet slurps, soft moans, and the squelches of Mashiro's spit lubricating her titjob. Your toes curl as the pressure builds, and it's not long before you're close. And since her understanding of what close means to you is atomic-clock precise, she unsheathes your dick in the annoying nick of time. You can only laugh after all that—for all the times she's edged you, at least they were premeditated, or for a cause like a sudden visit from her parents.

"Fuck, babe, really?" You've had an infinite amount of patience for your lovely girl, so you're surprised at your own exasperation. You sit up, but then she pushes you back down to the bed with a hand to the chest. You take a deep breath, now grasping that this is all part of her plan, and that you should know better than to mistrust Mashiro for a second.

Mashiro leans over, your cock in her grip, the other hand slipping aside the wet white panties under her skirt. She doesn't bother getting them off properly, adjusting them to the side to reveal her trimmed mound and the swollen button peeking between pink lips. She lets your shaft rest against her pussy, then strokes the two together. Each pass of your cock along the underside of her clit has Mashiro breathing heavier, until she's panting like she's just finished a good work out. The wetness of her juices spreads on your shaft and her chest heaves in her cropped top while you need prison-grade handcuffs to keep from thrusting into her.

When the pressure's built enough, when your cock's about to burst, you're forced to watch your girlfriend rub herself to completion, your cock still in her grip. She cums before you, like an angel crying out for salvation, her blonde bangs sticking to the sweat of her forehead, though none of that stops Mashiro from jerking you off through your own orgasm. You moan her name as your hips buck and her thighs clench and her hand works in a blur.

The moments like this are where you realize your notions of Mashiro have been challenged, over and over. Loving is not so singular in meaning as you had thought, because when you first started having sex with your girlfriend, maybe a month after the first date, you honestly were making love. When you'd cum inside the condom while hugging her tight, that's when you two were done for the night.

But now loving means that you paint her abs in milky white, cum pooling into her belly button, spurts dribbling over her fingers, and then coat her pussy with the thick river flowing down her stomach. Plus, since you're still hard, might as well use that as lube for the ride of her life. You're not sure how you manage to keep up with Mashiro. Obviously, how she eats your cum from her fingers like it's candy, how her tits bounce now freed from her shirt and bra, and how her cum-creamed labia grips around your cock are all great incentive to push through your exhaustion. But in the recesses of your mind, the one part of your brain that isn't fixated on her, there is a small question. 

Small indeed. The same brand of small as your girlfriend. Five years younger.

Mashiro has gone and done it now. You're seeing the other girl in her face, the supposition, the thesis, your eyes blurring as Mashiro fucks down on you harder. Oh, damn, Yeseo really knows how to ride you well—wait, no. Your girlfriend's riding you well, her pussy milking your cock just right. Fuck. What the hell is wrong with you?

You groan, and you're not sure whether it's a cry of frustration or pleasure. Mashiro's face, Mashiro's tits, Mashiro's hips, Mashiro's tightening pussy, all of them are so nice and so warm and so tight and so wet and so every good that good can be. As if in that cute package of her body, your girlfriend has molded herself to be everything you need in a lover. She repeats the words for good measure: "I love you, I love you, oh, fuck, I love you!"

The same way loving used to mean something classic and rigid, taking her out to dinner or watching movies, loving now means that rigid takes on a different, more literal definition. That's Mashiro, growing as you grow, and in that way, you shouldn't be surprised that the topic of Yeseo—sweet, innocent Yeseo—isn't the end of it. Not even close.

Speaking of growing, the tension in your loins. Lewd, sloppy sounds intermix with a mess of Mashiro's cries while your hands squeeze too tightly the flesh of her breasts. 

You gasp and mindlessly call out "Shiro, Shiro, Yeseo, wait, I—" but you're cut off by Mashiro's tongue wrestling yours. Unbridled want, unmitigated desperation, she kisses you like a girl possessed, and there's no room to protest and figure out what the hell's happening. 

With no condom—it's been a long while since that—your load spills into Mashiro like she's an unwitting, impure bride, and by god, there's such a hellfire in your ears from her scream when the sin soaks through to her sinner womb. The pleasure blurs your minds, or more, her cunt does, and with the cum your dick oozes, the most you can offer when Shiro topples over you and collapses is a "Ah, mmh."

As your breathing calms, she lifts up her skirt and spreads her pussy, letting you see your second load ooze from her insides. 

"God, I needed that so bad," she says. Her voice is breathy, but there's a smile in it, and she crawls over to you and kisses you on the lips. Between the two of your bodies is a whole lot of sticky. You groan into her mouth, and then when she breaks off, she starts to pepper your lips and jaw with more kisses. "You wanted that too, huh?"

You wipe away a bead of sweat on her forehead. "Yeah. Of course. You're so fucking perfect, Mashiro." You run a hand through your hair. "Oh, fuck. Right, I'm... I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said..."

"Shh. I think I've made it pretty clear that I don't mind, right? I love you, it's okay."

You nod, laughing to yourself in disbelief is not some fancy dream. "I love you too. I just wish I, I dunno, didn't call her name right then, you know?"

She grins as you begin your cuddle. "No, no. That was fucking hot, actually."

"It was?"

"Yes!"

"No, really that wasn't right, I'm..."

Mashiro insists. You deny. It's a circuitous route that continues onward from outside of this bedroom—at dinner, walking down the street, at a sweet little shopping date where you and Mashiro were buying decorations for the home and she just had to get this puppy plushie for her best friend—really any time that Yeseo is mentioned, this conversation bubbles up from the depths.

It's one of those oddities, those quirks, the little humps in a relationship that eventually dies off and...

No, whiplash fucking snaps your neck in half.

So now you're here, in a room with your girlfriend and your truth-breaker. Mashiro sits on your lap, her breath so close to yours that you can smell the strawberry lip balm. Pliant, warm, she straddles your thigh while her hand travels down your chest, to your crotch. You groan into her mouth when she squeezes your hardening member through the fabric of your slacks. All the while, Yeseo watches, hands also down her pants. Too embarrassed despite the unspoken permission—goading, really—Yeseo keeps her fingers pressed against her clit, not quite daring to move.

It was supposed to be a normal day. Yeseo wasn't even supposed to be here. But Mashiro invited her, and she didn't kick Yeseo out, (which you would've done yourself, but it's hard doing anything when Mashiro has her nails on your skin like claws), and Yeseo didn't leave, and now you're stuck here, having your girlfriend dry-hump you and make out with you while another girl's watching.

It's like this for a while, a holding pattern, a cold war. Days. The first shot across the bow is when Yeseo leaves, flushed, and you rail your pretty girlfriend into the sheets so that the girl can't escape the sounds outside the room. If later, you somehow find out she was slouched against your bedroom, fingering herself to completion, then you wouldn't be surprised. Here comes the next battle in the next day, where Yeseo steels herself to watch Mashiro ride you, your back to the headboard. Then she sends the follow-up, bombarding you with her every fantasy while you know that acting upon it is this landmine, or now it's a minefield, or now the trenches are dug and all that's left is to wait.

Mashiro shoots the farmer's pig when she speaks up over dinner.

"It's just a handjob."

You choke on your half-swallowed piece of meat and end up coughing.

Yeseo looks up from her phone, then freezes. "W-what."

Mashiro gives Yeseo a wry smile as she gets up, massaging her shoulder. "You want to, right? So you should. It's okay, Yeseo." Mashiro's voice is gentle, and Yeseo nods slowly. Mashiro presses a kiss to Yeseo's cheek before walking over to you. She doesn't have to ask if this is what you want.

This is what you want.

Mashiro takes Yeseo to the bedroom, and you finish dinner before tidying up. You wash the dishes, wipe the table. Put away the leftovers. Count down from twenty until you tell yourself there are no logical reasons to delay the inevitable further, not with the way your pulse is racing, not with the way you've tasted anticipation in the air.

Once you open your door, you find your girlfriend holding the shirt collar of a willing Yeseo who has already crawled into your bed. The two are kissing—this isn't the first time you've seen, though it's the first time you've seen them hold it longer than a cute peck. First time you've seen tongue. First time you've seen hands under clothes and on bare skin. Never seen Mashiro grabby with her spit-covered lips.

You are quiet on your feet. Any sound you make, the creaking of the door, or the harshness of your breath, it drowns in Mashiro and Yeseo's obscene make-out. Delicious wet sounds burrow into your ears, the two girls slicking over and around and with each other, Mashiro in an exploratory mood while Yeseo lets herself get familiar. She looks flushed, content. Happy.

Mashiro acknowledges you by the doorway with a coo. "Just giving a little lesson." She pats the space on the bed next to her, where she strips off your shorts, your semi-erection right there for Yeseo to behold.

Yeseo wipes her lips with her shirt. You see her white bra. You think you can feel heat coming off the bridge of her nose. She stares like your dick's looking back, like this is the first time she's seen a penis that wasn't in a textbook diagram. Mashiro pulls Yeseo closer, bringing her between your legs; the furtive girl reaches for your member, then stops before touching, eyes back-and-forth between your dick and her arm. Even half-hard, you're about as thick as Yeseo's slender wrist, nearly the length of her forearm. She mouths "how" as her fingers hover a centimeter, this warmth a ghost over your cock.

"Here," Mashiro says, kneeling beside Yeseo. Holding her hand over Yeseo's, she guides the girl to wrap those fingers around your shaft and stroke it up and down. In your life, you've had lots of handjobs—mainly either self-administered or Mashiro-administered—but nothing quite matches Mashiro having her fingers tangled with Yeseo's, the touch soft with a little squeeze from one of them, not quite meeting any spots that'll make you squirm. You think Mashiro wants it this way, wants Yeseo to get a feel for it, find out the heft and warmth of a man's cock. It is, however, enough to get you stiff and plumb and twitch-happy, which is where Mashiro lets go.

When Mashiro gives Yeseo a quick kiss, you swear Yeseo tries to chase her when Mashiro pulls away. Then, you receive Shiro's next kiss. "I wanna see my boyfriend and best friend enjoy themselves," she whispers, before sitting aside.

You look back down at Yeseo, and you've never had such a carte-blanche view of the girl's face. Her eyes are big, round, chocolate-brown, the same as your girlfriend, but in them, Yeseo has this super-cute, really obvious, nervous lust that keeps sending a twitch in your hips. Her cheeks are soft and flushed red as you stroke them, squeeze them, press your fingertips in just to see how fluffy she is. She has a bunny's teeth when she gasps and her thin lips part.

"Hi. Hi… hi, hi." She's caught in the headlights.

You say "Stroke," and her pupils shift down to your crotch, the word a command that's clearly Yeseo's first. This exhalation out of her mouth would be fog in the winter. "Like this," you tell her, gentler, as you start to stroke yourself with one hand. Yeseo bites her lip and reaches toward you again. Your precum oiling the way, Yeseo's digits meet yours. At first, you only hold hands and smile at each other and feel out the moment before starting tender, guiding strokes. You have a way of measuring one's nervousness by cupping her hand in yours and feeling how she touches back: the sweat of your palms, her pulse through yours, this heat that seeps through the cracks in her fingers as she trembles.

When she becomes less tense, you let Yeseo try on her own. She looks down, head full of those breaths and some little noises she doesn't know she's making. Yeseo wraps her tiny hand around the base of your cock. She stares at it, at her fingers that don't cover your girth, and you wonder how long it will take for her to get used to it. When you think about Mashiro, you realize the awe never quite goes away.

With one hand in a jerking motion, the other palm wrapping around your base to act as an extension of the first, you like what she's trying—go wild, cute thing. A low growl in your throat lets her know that you find some enjoyment in the attempt. You lean back, spreading your legs apart to give her more room, and you close your eyes to savor the moment. With your eyes closed, you're certain you could tell the two girls apart, your girlfriend naturally more experienced, less afraid of your cock.

"Am I doing good? Yeseo mutters.

You nod, eyes still tight.

"You're so big, Oppa," she says, voice filled with wonder. "It's so warm. And the veins, and the way it pulses… is this really happening?"

"Yeah, it's real." Your breath catches when Yeseo runs a finger along the underside of your cockhead.

Her breath warms your cock, and you can't help but open your eyes. Yeseo is concentrating on your dick like the test's answers are on it, and the only way to get them is to wring them out. Sure, you've given yourself much better handjobs too, but there's something about her furrowed brows, her lip giving way to her teeth, that makes it all worth it.

"Yeseo-yah, try using your other hand to twist around the tip," Mashiro says, and you hear a slick noise coming from outside your vision.

There's an eep as Yeseo uses a second tiny fist around your tip to do just that.

You moan softly, weighing into the mattress; it's a good thing you're already lying down, because the newfound intensity makes your toes curl, and you find yourself thrusting up into her hips.

"Wow, it's so big," Yeseo says. "How do you fit it in Shiro-unnie?"

You draw in a hiss. "Hah, takes some work."

Yeseo giggles. "I can imagine."

You groan as Yeseo strokes and jerks and twists faster. Pressure builds up in your balls, and when you turn your head to the sight of your girlfriend dipping fingers between her thighs, you're certain you'll cum in time to Mashiro. Diligent, your girlfriend sidles on closer, adding some spit to Yeseo's hands, to which Yeseo responds by stroking you even faster. Mashiro pours more and more saliva onto your member, insistent on looking you in the eyes, while Yeseo's strokes get wetter, slipperier. Your grunts and the wet sounds of impromptu lubricant mix with and Yeseo's quickened breaths and Mashiro's self induced moans, a filthy choir of angels. Your balls tighten; the edge tempting to knock you off-balance.

But before you can finish, Yeseo abruptly stops. You clench and whip your head toward her, and you realize instantly by the look on her face that she does not know how to handle this climax part. Thankfully, just in time, your girlfriend has her mouth ready, lips around the head of your cock, and the vibrations of her moans tips forth the chain reaction of bliss. In awe, Yeseo stares as you and Mashiro unravel, your balls pumping semen into your girlfriend's mouth, your hips bucking upward as her pussy pulsates, a thin river of lust pouring out of her.

Even with every line in the sand kicked away, you haven't put much of an effort into convincing yourself of the reality of the situation. You've known Yeseo too long, too well to conceive of anything further happening. This was an aberration, puppy's love, a one-time folly, or you might excuse it as such if there weren't more mistakes—well, calling them mistakes implies a lack of agency.

"Just a handjob," you murmur to yourself, and if they're mere mistakes, then there would no point in time in which you could stop Yeseo from jumping on you and making out with you; and you're helpless when Mashiro brings your face between the young woman's ample thighs; and Yeseo kneels over you like a dutiful maid, mouth ready, hands working, and this is the result of a long-standing debt that your family's been paying—nothing, nothing to do with you being unable to say no anymore.

Looking up from the wet, messy patchwork of muted purple and blonde hair, of thighs squishing together as they kneel and lick in tandem underneath you, you realize that Yeseo has mastered her oral techniques in addition to the manual under Mashiro's tutelage, which has shattered your final understanding of Yeseo. This picture of innocence is much like the other picture of innocence in your life, and thus you should've expected as much. When you and Mashiro first started having sex, it truly was love-making, slow, sweet, vanilla, candle-lit, adoration-for-adoration's sake sex, something you started out of gratitude for each other, and continued because every time was an affirmation of the beautiful relationship you cultivated. Over time, you learned two key things: all her dirty secrets, and the fact that she only took your cock that slow because it was too big for her to be able to do otherwise.

("No, babe, I swear, I meant the love stuff too," she said.

You replied, "Okay, fine.")

The difference here is the speed with which Mashiro—and you, admit it; you are no fucking saint—have corrupted Yeseo. You estimate it'll be a matter of weeks before Yeseo's ready to match your girlfriend's skills.

Yeseo is trying to prove as much. While Mashiro licks your shaft, she leaves Yeseo your balls; while Mashiro is busy letting your dick knock against the back of her throat, Yeseo makes sure your sack receives enough tender sucking. When they swap places, you feel a pulse through your cock, Yeseo's mouth being impressively warm and wet. The only place this tongue of Yeseo's has been wetter than the inside of her mouth must have been the insides of Mashiro's pussy—and you've watched the damnable act, how your girlfriend arches back, eyes shut in pleasure, as the eager teen tongues her dripping slit.

That's the same tongue Yeseo uses now to stroke alongside the bottom of your shaft, your cock in her mouth, nose inches from your pubis. Yeseo isn't quite as capable of taking to the root as her unnie is, but you have no complaints about watching her struggle to swallow you, and you figure she'll catch up soon enough. She hums on your cock, swirling around the tip before bobbing back down again, happy to gag and make a mess.

And the slope is slippery down from her throat to her tongue, making saliva strands from the corner of her lip down the veins of your shaft, onto the floor where your filthy fucking girlfriend—lord, when did she get this nasty, this depraved—licks it up clean for Yeseo. You watch, mind blank, as Mashiro's tongue goes from the floor up to Yeseo's hard nipples. Then she continues along her breasts, till it's Mashiro's lips meeting Yeseo's again, and your shaft is jammed between their mouths for good measure. When Yeseo takes surprising control of your dick, your eyes focus on the sweet face that's learned to hollow her cheeks and flicker her tongue over the soft ridge beneath your shaft head, one hand working on the inch she can't reach. The only thing stopping Yeseo from gulping down your seed is the very girl who's kissing your shaft where it's free, taking your cock when Yeseo leaves for a quick breath. With the competitive swallow-duel going back and forth, it's inevitable that your girlfriend wins.

"Ah, thanks for the lunch," Mashiro says.

"One day I'll win." Yeseo huffs, but you can tell she is not mad. For as much as she pretends, her thighs are wiggling in Mashiro's face moments later, and she can't hide her smile so wide whenever your girlfriend's nose brushes against her swollen clit. She smiles even wider when you invite her onto your thigh, pressing that needy pussy down and leaving a trail for Mashiro to lick up.

But for all you've done in the past few weeks, one topic has never been brought up: Yeseo's virginity. Well, never explicitly—Mashiro has asked teasingly about it before, and all Yeseo says is "a guy in school" while her body language reveals that's the lie that it sounded like. Plus, whenever she watches the two of you bang, it's as though she's putting a puzzle together—how excited she gets during afterglows or those pillow talk sessions when you explain something or other.

As you gain a better understanding of Yeseo's every mechanism, you realize it's the framing of the situation. Act in the frivolities for the appetizers all you want, but don't underestimate what makes sex a nutritious meal.

"Seriously," Mashiro says, "if you've had sex before, you wouldn't be this much of a blushing mess. What are you getting embarrassed about?"

How cruel of your girlfriend to tease. Because as Yeseo says "sorry," Mashiro pushes her finger all the way into Yeseo's core, causing her to cry out. "Ahh! It, it's just that, I've had the plug, inside, since yesterday night! God, it's b-been, too, too much… mmnh."

"You're so cute," you say, spanking the girl on all fours. The plug is simple, black, silicone, and a hell of a lot bigger than her dainty fingers that you've seen toy with her anal ring before. You had taken care to see to it that Yeseo was neither in pain nor undue stress when it came to accommodating it, with plenty of lubricant, though you warned her that she couldn't remove the anal plug until Mashiro or you came to retrieve it.

Now that you've come to collect, you bend to kiss the cheeks of the girl's small, round butt, which jiggles as it twitches. Your tongue reaches, swirls around the ring of the plug, while your hand traces between her thighs to bring forth her slick. All this while, Mashiro's finger buries between Yeseo's folds, her cunt squeezes greedily against it, and her body pushes down on the object buried in her ass.

"D-don't stare. It's, um, dirty."

"Oh? Is it?" you ask while your thumb strokes Yeseo's anal ring around the plug. You pull on it, a hair's length, playing with her, and the wetter she gets, the more Yeseo trembles—the more she tries to hide her face and her screams into a pillow—the more she inadvertently thrusts her ass back into you. Inching further until the plug is out, you lean forward and bring your tongue closer to her tightest hole. "Then why does it look so tasty?"

"I dunno! God, this is so, so embarra—"

Yeseo collects the air in front of her in a single harsh breath, your lips sealing against her back passage, which tightens considerably from your tongue's foray. Then, when Mashiro supplies the same treatment to her friend's pink folds, you feel your tongue may be trapped in her hole. Fine by you. Your hands cover Yeseo's asscheeks as you slobber with licks and kisses, tasting her asshole like it's a last request, until her whines devolve into long, indecisive moans of wanting more and asking to slow down. Yet, her hips move as if to beg for more themselves, how greedy the woman. You laugh before you let up, squeezing cool lube onto the black buttplug.

"Ahh, ahh, ahh," Yeseo pants, "I need, I need more."

You are happy to provide. In another hand, you hold a small buzzing device. You trace it along Yeseo's pussy lips, weakening her elbows and knees—jolting when the vibe makes contact with her firm nub—damn near collapsing her as Mashiro seals her lips to the toy, ensuring none of its strength escapes. You know, from experience, a combination like that is bound to make a girl pass out, so once her hips slow down their staccato jerking, you steal your girlfriend's lips for a kiss.

Though every man who's made it this far in life knows well that every hole is good to eat, every hole's different flavors are treasures and miracles unto themselves. The flavor on your girlfriend's tongue is Yeseo at her very core, salty, musky, addicting to you; when you sample Yeseo's ass once again, popping the plug back out, you get a metallic tang mixed with the sweetness of the lube; lower you return, and Yeseo's cunt is spongey and soaked and hot, slick and oozing and a veritable delight to munch on, as the taste from the source is second to none.

It's an all-out sensory assault as you pull the plug some, enough so that its widest girth is right at the clinging ring, only for you to push back inside with a pop and a delightful mewl. Fingers and toys and tongues and lips alike massage Yeseo everywhere and overwhelm all her senses, her nerves tensing into spams and jerks of utter ecstasy. She doesn't even get the courtesy of oneness in her condition: each time you work her up to the peak, Mashiro is hungry for the next, pulling out all the stops to keep Yeseo climbing higher. Mashiro and you kiss, lick, push, pinch, fondle, stimulate, and the best Yeseo can do is squirm pathetically around the devices in her holes, her mind fucked straight out of her body.

Yeseo slumps down, shaking as if her bones were wrung out. After four or five or however many consecutive orgasms, and each attempt to catch her breath ending in her wailing, her crotch is so wet that you and Mashiro might as well be making out with a pond.

"Plth, pleath, please, mnh. Th-that was, was a little, little much."

Mashiro pulls her sticky face back to pepper Yeseo's lower half with little kisses, while you lick the remainder of Yeseo's juice from your lips. Cleanup takes a while, especially as Yeseo is too much a drooling, weak mess to help out—you don't mind, knowing this is all for her. Mashiro grabs a spare towel and wipes Yeseo down; once she's stable enough, you give her a gallon jug of water from the bedside stand and instruct her to drink up.

In the throes of this arousal, still breathing like air has never quite reached her lungs properly, Yeseo lays back and fights against the delirium. You and Mashiro cuddle her sides, squishing her between, and plant kisses all over her face and neck. Yeseo embarks on the road back to normalcy, thanks to the warmth of the two bodies, the careful embrace of loving hands, and your soothing words. When she's returned in totality, Yeseo locks eyes with you, her gaze serious like you've never seen on such a delicate, pretty face.

"So," Yeseo whispers, tensing up. "I know you've been waiting. You know. For me to bring it up."

"Hmm?" You grin. "What's that?"

Mashiro grumbles and reaches over to tap your shoulder. "Hey, this isn't the time to play coy."

"Alright." You face Yeseo. "Hey. It's okay." Sincerity in your voice, you bring yourself so close that Yeseo can't possibly miss your eyes and the warmth in them, you hope. "Whatever you're comfortable with, Yeseo. I mean it."

"Yeseo-yah," Mashiro says, her arms wrapping tighter. "You don't have to rush into anything. Whatever feels right to you, okay?" She glides forward until their kindred faces are so close they might as well be kissing.

A giggle permeates through the cracks in the wall of tension she's built. "I had no idea you two were such softies. Is this what happens when you date for so long?"

"Us? Softies?" You chuckle and cup her cheek, making the skin soft and pink. You brush her hair behind her ear. "Did cumming make you forget the past hour or—"

Mashiro throws a pillow at you. "Don't talk like that to our baby!"

That only makes you laugh even more, and as Yeseo joins in the laughter, so too does Mashiro. It's a while before Yeseo sits up, takes a deep breath, slaps her thighs. "I'm fine. Seriously, I'm ready now." She looks at you, dead in the eyes. "Oppa. I… I have wanted to fuck you ever since… since…" Her voice gets lower. "A couple months ago."

You try not to choke on your own spit. "Yeseo, you just turned eighteen then."

"So?"

"Yeseo." Your voice is calm yet stern.

"Besides, lots of other girls in school already lost their virginity!"

"And so you haven't, I knew it!" Mashiro laughs from the sideline.

Yeseo sticks out her tongue, and then her face turns serious again. She holds her hands on top of yours, as though drawing the answers from her fingertips as she thumbs them. After a slight pause, you give her an encouraging rub on her shoulder. "I just don't, didn't want to disappoint you guys. And I know we've done so much together, but sex… it's different. Means more. Like, look at you two. You're such a sweet couple, and I feel like I'm just budging between—"

"Absolutely not!" Mashiro exclaims as she joins in massaging the flesh of Yeseo's shoulders.

"I swear to god," you say, "you're all that matters in the world to us, right, Shiro?"

She nods forcefully.

"If we didn't care about you, we would have never taken you here, would have never let you in on our lives and intimacy. You could never budge between me and Shiro. In fact, I think you've made us better as a couple in ways you couldn't imagine, like how much happier Shiro and I are now."

Mashiro turns to kiss your cheek before addressing Yeseo herself. "We love you so much. And the most important thing to us, the thing that makes me the happiest, is when you feel good. So please, whatever you're worried about, we can work it out, baby."

It's all the truth, new axioms being built from a foundation of old, with your affection for the other girl unquestionable—enough for a lifetime, you think, that every day the three of you spend time cuddling or watching a movie is a day in paradise. Yet when you ask about the color of your world with this new addition, it becomes obvious how incomplete that thought is, to what degree you were underestimating the effect of the past few weeks. Here was this naive girl, this sweet doll, to whom the world was a painting of only shades of soft vanilla white. Now, it is pink, candy sweet. Now, it is red, a fiery thing. Now it is the burning color of sunrise, on her cheeks, from her ears, in between her thighs, and shall the colors subside, you gladly will rise up tomorrow to bring more.

Here comes the clouds, their tears on Yeseo's face, but they're joy-filled, like rain while the sun shines hot on a summer day. As Yeseo rests on her knees, back against your chest, Mashiro draws upon Yeseo's face with a kiss.

"How about this," Mashiro says. She steals the girl from your lap, pulling her into her own lap and embracing her from behind. "You should go on a date with him. Remember where we went the first time?"

With Shiro gazing expectantly at you, you reply, "Yeah, the aquarium? I even got you a stuffed shark there, right? Then we ate crab and—"

"Yeah! Take Yeseo there, go on a cute date and make her melt. You two can make it official. And while you're out, I can work myself into a mess and we can have the best possible first time. How does that sound, Yeseo?"

The toothy smile says it all.

The night falls, then another, as time slows. Gravity has changed. The anticipation for that Friday drags on, and the days are slow, sweet, long, tortuous. The three of you aren't even fooling around anymore; hell, you and Mashiro haven't... well, you still fucked three times last week, and nothing rough, but that's easily half of the usual, if not less.

But this new dynamic is not unwelcome. It's reminiscent of when you first started dating, before things became intense and adventurous. You cuddle in your bed under blankets and the moonlight and start to touch, caress, and feel each other's warmth. Mashiro whispers sweet things to you like "I love you, you're the best boyfriend in the world, you're so good to me." You run your fingers through her hair and over her neck.

Naked bodies pressed together, skin-to-skin, you can feel the warmth emanating from each other. She grinds against your leg, her wetness leaving a slick trail on your skin, and you grip her ass as she thrusts against you. Your shaft is hard and heavy on her stomach as you roll over her, Mashiro on her back and you on top of her. With the blanket covering you two, it's like the space is a tent and you're intrepid explorers discovering new continents, remapping unknown boddies. Your gazes become those of lovers finding hidden moons and suns in each other's eyes.

Mashiro grabs your face and kisses you, hard, and you return the gesture with passion. She lets out a small squeak, and it's a tiny noise in the still room under the cramped covers. You suck her bottom lip, nipping on it, before your tongues intertwine, causing her to moan softly into your mouth.

You break the kiss, and Mashiro whimpers, "Don't stop, don't stop kissing me."

You lean back and say, "Shh, baby, I got you." Your finger goes to her mouth and you pull on her bottom lip, drawing it down. Then you take that finger and run it down her body, from her mouth to her neck, then down to her breasts. Mashiro has a beautiful set of tits, and you love to see them bounce, jiggle, and move, and you circle her breasts with your finger, drawing lazy circles around them, but the way you love and touch her now is more than arousing; it's intimate as you treat her body like an adoration to praise, worship, and cherish her.

She deserves you telling her as much, in as many words: "You are the most perfect, beautiful girl in the world. Your body, your love, you, your everything."

Mashiro blushes at your words and closes her eyes, arching into you as your lips trail down to her chest. Soft, wet kisses leave trails along her skin, causing her to whimper and writhe beneath your touch. As your lips continue their journey downward, so too does your hand. Her legs spread willingly for you as your fingers hover over her folds, teasing and tracing circles around her dripping pink pussy. Your thumb rubs against the thin skin of her inner thigh before playfully dipping towards her entrance.

She's soaking already, the sweet smell of her arousal filling your senses, and your pecks if like a map of the world plot a course down her body, her ribs and her hip bones like signposts. When your girlfriend squeals and tries to push your face away as you lower your head to its final destination, you grin—it's like old times when she used to get shy and flustered in your presence. Using one hand to keep her pink labia spread and the other to hold her thighs in place, you finally lower your head to its final destination. Your tongue darts in her, kissing, lapping, probing, and, most of all, worshipping the insides of the cunt.

And the noises she makes are the sweetest little things in the world, little breaths and hums and keens and croaks that are only audible under the soft cocoon of blankets surrounding the two of you. Even though you're alone in the room, she's hesitant to be too loud; it doesn't stop her from expressing her satisfaction. With one hand on her clit and the other gently caressing her backside, you delve deeper between her folds with your tongue, eliciting coos and sighs from Mashiro. You want every moment to be this moment—your woman lost in the isolated woods of her pleasure, no one else to hear the tree fall but you.

You yearn to look up at your lovely Shiro, to watch her unravel in bliss, but the blanket obstructs your view. Thankfully, she notices and removes it herself, possibly feeling overheated from being enclosed in such a small space. You're grateful, because now the view of your beloved girlfriend is even better: her hair tousled from squirming around in bed and covering herself with the blanket, her face flushed, mouth open in a small "o." Her hands roam over her breasts, alternating between gentle cupping them and rough pinching of her nipples. Your gaze settles on the aspect of the scene you most enjoy: the small bead of saliva escaping from the corner of her mouth, the shimmering trail it leaves as it rolls down her cheek.

Her eyes, how they sparkle in ecstasy from the love and affection you give her, filling your heart with a warmth that borders on painful. As much as you could stay here all night, then all day, until the moon rose again, Mashiro's eyes connect with yours, quietly and meekly pleading, and you know it is your duty to proceed, before she crumbles on her own.

Your tongue retracts and you leave a soft kiss on her mound. You scoop her body into your strong arms, positioning yourself above her with your cock pressing against her stomach. Her face is so close to yours that you can feel every breath she takes. She wraps an arm around your back and draws you closer with a tug, hooking a leg around your torso.

This is the closest two people can get without actually being inside each other, yet your lips remain just out of reach. Mashiro's gaze captures you, as it has since you first fell in love with her in college. There's a brief moment where something unspoken passes between you both, and then her eyes close and your noses brush against each other. In the darkness of the night, with only the light of the stars shining through the window, the crescent moon appears in her smile.

"Hello there, dear," Mashiro whispers.

Your heart is caught in your throat.

"I love you," she says.

"I love you too, babe."For a few moments, your noses are the only points of contact, stretching into what feels like eternity. Then you realize she's waiting for you.

"Kiss me," she whispers, repeating the words over and over again, and you give in. Then you two kiss—it's with an odd, powerful feeling, like you're trying to stuff the world into each other's mouths, breathing each other's air, and the timing is right and perfect and good for the next stuffing of your length into her welcoming heat. Her lips and her legs tighten around you as you ease yourself in inch-by-inch.

Doesn't take you long before you bottom out, her grippy thing sealed around the base. You wait a while before you begin moving, your hands beneath her head, on the nape of her neck. Watch how her face twists from pleasure, to frustration, to a longing. As though you're both star-crossed lovers meeting at night and on the fly, she mounts you in a rush of anticipation and love and heat and she clings onto your shoulders like a lifeline. Your girlfriend's more excited than she ever was, and her breath runs ragged, as though the weight of the world is upon her—or you upon her, pressing her into the bed.

You drink in her every little moan and squeal while she clenches your bicep in a firm grip and you're on top of her and her legs split open to frame your hips. Thrusts into her like pistons in a steam engine, driving with force and energy, and so much power that the entire bed shakes around you two. All the while, you're kissing everywhere your face can reach: neck, breasts, nipples, all over her flushed skin, all over her skin getting redder still—and Mashiro loves it all, from the deep passionate kisses to the gentle tickles that make her giggle uncontrollably.

It's all so clumsy, like you don't have the years between you to know how to work together; maybe it's the nerves—like you're teenagers in the back of your first car, almost getting caught; like you're in your dirty college dorm, finding where the screw in your frame breaks and the mattress falls and you're so horny you can't find enough grip on the uneven sheets to get a proper grip. Or maybe it's because it really is just like your first time: not the location, or the rhythm, or the surroundings, or even the way her breasts jiggle when you thrust with abandon, but the all-in desperation, of thanking the past for catching up, or thanking the future for promising to get even better.

Back then, the first time you slept with her, it was like learning an entirely new language—like you had to keep looking around as she pulled you in deeper, the walls of her snatch tugging on your cock, an alien sensation like a vacuum, her sex threatening to suck out your very soul despite the awkward inexperience.

Now, despite the awkward rhythm and the need to touch and kiss every which where, the way your bodies connect is smoother. More meaningful. Hotter.

She kisses your face and cups your cheeks and makes quiet promises under her breath, "I'm yours, I'm yours, oh, god, you're fucking me, you're—ahh—so good, so big," over and over. You love it, how much she tells you, her voice strained and high and keening and on the verge of tears. Your nails drag up the sides of her thighs and bring her into another embrace, arms around each other, tongues weaving. The more it goes, the less graceful you become, and the less coordinated you are, and the more you forget the sensations and rhythms, and your animal instincts go back to clawing and prodding and exploring and mating.

How many times have you done this? You've counted them at least, the things they do to your mind, the way your girlfriend looks at you in bed. Hundreds? Perhaps a little under a thousand, almost halfway through the past three years, each time more intimate and delicious than the last. You look into her dark- yes and become stunned in love, overcome with adoration, unable to bear it as her sweet pussy contracts on your throbbing length and you push her into the bed as you both slip over the edge of sweet release—you cum together, spurting into her wet embrace, gripping her closer than ever before, and still you hold her and hug her. She's yours, and she will forever be yours, and that is why you and she still make love three times a week like newlyweds, content with the lazy nature of time.

And just like that, maybe, you can pretend like what's coming up with Yeseo is a first encounter, an exploration in the same manner that sex with her unnie was, from some corner of her heart calling out desperately to be loved the same way as Mashiro had, to that young heart you both did your best to nurture and coax into blooming.

You're standing in front of fish, alive and vibrant. Yeseo's standing next to you, not even up to your shoulders, beaming up at you in a hoodie a bit too baggy for her small frame—it's yours—actually, it's Mashiro's now that you think of it, so long ago when your girlfriend pulled it from your closet and decided she was keeping it. It used to make her small figure positively miniscule, same way Yeseo makes it swim on her. Her short shorts, however, are all hers, all that asscheek squishing out from under it, and you want to make it the floor's instead.

Cute date. Cute date. You turn your attention back to fish, all these shimmering sea creatures swimming around in their tanks, the smell of saltwater pervasive. Lots and lots of little rainbow-colored fish behind big panes of glass and the vivid blue. You watch, and they don't glance in your direction, which is probably a good thing because they'd see how embarrassingly nervous you are for a date; you're certain you can't handle this mix of sexual anticipation and cuteness overload for another minute. The air is dense, so sticky that you're practically underwater yourself. You can tell Yeseo is thirsty, a touch uncomfortable, and so are you. Despite the wet air, your throat's dry, all your senses tingling, every nerve electrified like sharp edges of lightning arcing through the thick atmosphere.

After buying her a bottle of soda (as she says thank you in the smallest voice), you take a sip, and it's funny thinking that this is the closest you've been to kissing in a while. You sip, she sips, and this repeats back and forth until the bottle's spent. It's like you're making out, in public, no less. You want to take your hand but she's off to look at jellyfish.

This little nerd goes around oohing and ahhing at at every new species while you wonder when did she get this geeky, overtaking Mashiro of all people. You go into the penguin exhibit, and watching her shiver, you grab her slender hand and intertwine your fingers with hers before placing your two hands in your pocket for safe keeping. Yeseo tiptoes and presses her nose into your shoulder, sniffling.

"Are you cold?" you ask.

"No. Smells bad."

"Oh." You ruffle her hair with your free hand. The dye's losing its saturation, though her still a brilliant tinted gray. "Good point. Say, aren't you feeling hungry?"

Here's the answer.

You're sitting in front of fish. These ones are dead, and delicious. Yeseo's sitting in front of you, eating guilt-free, committing grand larceny from your hand, all with a big smile. Unable to prosecute and in fact a perpetrator yourself (one count of corruption), you feed her, leave fingerprints of some red sauce on the corner of her mouth, and you wouldn't mind licking her clean if there weren't so many people around. She tongues at it herself, and visions of her licking other things pop into your head.

The visions disappear when she grins once again, wide, flashing her teeth. This isn't the Yeseo you've built up to break down; this is the Yeseo you started with, a postulate, the unbendably true and innocent one, a girl who likes hugging you and her best friend, and nothing more, least of all getting involved with the filthy sex you two have.

The pendulum swings.

"You know you don't have to use condoms, by the way. I know you bought a whole bunch, but… I wouldn't mind raw… you know, I trust you." All that is said without missing a beat, and you miss a few: blinks, breaths, words, choking on some oyster, and as she kindly hands you a napkin, she turns her head bashfully like nothing happened. "Tonight's gonna be so special, I know it. I'm so glad we did this, Oppa, thank you."

You smile, as warm as you can while your lungs are recovering.

In a park nearby, she's the one who takes your hand, swinging it back and forth as the day's bleeding amber into her skin, as her sweater becomes a blanket for her and her happiness. The dark thoughts push against the bright light of the girl, still fighting as you carry your Yeseo up a hill to catch the day fading away. On top of that hill, you kiss Yeseo like it's the first time and tell her you love her, and you hope that's enough because she deserves every part of the world below this hill, and so above.

As above, so below. The night falls. If the nights then slowed, this one has halted completely. The stopped night falls and the curse of darkness is a biblical thing because it will return you to dust from which you were made, back to where you started. These are the end times.

You're making out with Mashiro in your lap, and she has indeed worked herself into an apocalyptic mess for you. Her legs are wrapped around you, between her thighs as a wet spot like the flood, her hands squeeze your nape where your hairs raise, and god, you missed her kissing like her next breath must be in your lungs.

Yeseo, judge of the soul, eyes you down in the periphery of your vision—back to where you started.

The night falls, and it's a biblical curse of darkness upon the land because no good can come of it. There is an unshakable heaviness in the bedroom, like gravity has suddenly intensified. You're sitting on the bed with Mashiro in your lap and Yeseo nearby, her posture a mix of alertness and contemplation. You kiss Mashiro passionately, caress her body, run your fingers through her hair, and grasp her hips tightly to make her feel desired and needed.

Then Yeseo slinks over and wraps her arms around you from behind, pressing her cheek against yours and biting her lip while emitting a small moan. It's clear that she's uncertain about how to act in this situation. She hesitates before leaning forward and gently kissing your neck, causing your whole body to shiver.

What a stark contrast—the intentions and their effects. Your body acts on its own accord while your mind struggles to make sense of the conflicting emotions. But your arm instinctively wraps around Yeseo, as if it knows what to do.

Mashiro finally pulls away, understanding the situation, and there's a diamond in her eyes. "Go for it," she whispers.

Yeseo and you are two parts of an incomplete whole, and you sum with your lips, and multiply in moans. The bed squeaks, the sheets shift, and that which does not move becomes stiller than ever. Yeseo starts to grind against you, matching your movements. From the corner of your eye, you see her squeezing her eyes shut, drooling slightly onto your shoulder. When she opens them, they flash between desire, fear, longing, and confusion as she looks to Mashiro for guidance.

Your hand gently strokes her hair to soothe her, while Mashiro leans closer and tenderly kisses Yeseo's forehead. "What do you want to do next, Yeseo-yah?" Mashiro asks.

"I... I don't know what I want. I just want him inside me."

You smile adoringly at Yeseo and brush her hair away from her face. "I can make that happen for you."

"R-really? Aren't we supposed to do more...things first? Like...you know..." Yeseo stammers. "I can suck you clean again, or we can…"

"I think you've waited long enough, princess," you say.

Yeseo shudders. "Oh. God... just fuck me."

Mashiro's lips brush against Yeseo's forehead with tender affection, the warmth of their embrace palpable. As she moves down to her lips, their kiss deepens and they both lose themselves in the moment. You move behind the pair, pulling Yeseo's jeans down; she squirms in your forceful grasp. Mashiro moves to the side of the bed as you lay Yeseo on her back. As you throw her pants to the corner of the room, you spread kisses where they must go—along the inside of her thigh to her knee, back to the joint of her torso and her hip, your tongue grazing the skin above her panties. She does nothing to hide her arousal, vocal, flushed, all-in-all unrefined perfection.

Your teeth clasp on the fabric of her soaked panties, and you pull the clothes down, her hips bucking in hurry. Without breaking eye contact, you discard her last items of clothing, and rest your face atop her dripping pussy. Yeseo cries out, arching up in the instant your mouth meets her pussy, bucking against you to bring you closer.

At first, you take it slow and gentle, savoring every delicate motion that sets Yeseo off into a frenzy. But as her begging becomes more urgent, you give into her desires and increase the intensity of your ministrations. Kang Yeseo is like a leaking faucet, spilling out her lust onto your tongue and down her thighs until even the sheets beneath them are moist.

With practiced ease, you add a few fingers into the mix, skillfully bringing Yeseo closer and closer to climax with each thrust. And when she finally reaches the peak of pleasure—marked by a simple count to ten and a swipe of the letter Y—she lets out a primal scream of pure bliss. Her body writhes against yours, her fingers clutching the pillow beneath her head as she surrenders fully to the overwhelming pleasure.

"O-oh, oh god... yes," she chokes out. "Oh god. Fuck, fuck."

Mashiro has gotten naked during this, has started fondling herself, excited at her friend's exhibition. Yeseo only has eyes for you, though, and takes your head between her hands to bring you over and mash your faces together again. She tastes her own lust on your lips, her own pussy juices evidence of your hard work, kissing you and begging you to make love to her.

Mashiro approaches, drawn to the scene before her. Is she motivated by genuine concern for Yeseo's well-being or is it a voyeuristic desire to witness your lovemaking? As she presses up against you, her delicate hands reaching for your throbbing shaft, it becomes evident that it is the latter.

With a flick of a switch in her mind, Mashiro sheds all inhibitions and eagerly guides your member inside Yeseo's waiting heat. Slip into Yeseo's tightness, every centimeter a kilometer. Her small but eager pussy lips tightly compress around your tip, sending shivers down your spine. You close your eyes and can almost feel Yeseo's own eyes shut in bliss, while you can only imagine the hungry gaze of Mashiro fixed upon you both.

Her weight barely registering on your body, Yeseo digs her fingertips into your shoulders as she pleads, "Please… be gentle." It takes you back to when you first started dating Mashiro, and you reward Yeseo's trust with long, slow strokes that gradually stretch her open. She lets out encouraging mewls mixed with a single tear rolling down her flushed cheek. With each thrust, her pain gives way to gratitude and pleasure. From behind you, Mashiro's eyes lock onto yours with a mischievous glint.

As expected, she revels in Yeseo's discomfort—perhaps with a touch of wicked empathy or even a hint of jealousy at not being able to experience this first time herself. It's clear that with Mashiro's provocations, this will be anything but romantic and sweet. Your lips meet hers in a heated kiss as you pull back slightly before thrusting into Yeseo again. "You're doing so good, Daddy," Mashiro whispers breathlessly. It's not often she calls you that, but right now it feels fitting. "How does she feel?"

You respond with another searing kiss before murmuring, "Just like you did. Maybe even wetter."

"Oh yeah? You should fuck her harder to prove it then." Mashiro's full lips curve upwards into a satisfied smile as she watches you, her focus shifting to the girl writhing beneath you. You can feel the change in Yeseo, her body language shifting and telling you that she is reaching her threshold for pain. But her desire for that elusive orgasm is still strong.

As your hips continue to thrust into her, filling her holes with your thick cock, you sense the pain radiating from her body. But Yeseo is too caught up in the pleasure to call it off or complain. Each time your hips collide against hers, she breathes out "oh fuck" in ragged gasps.

The pace quickens, the intensity of your movements increasing with each passing second. The bed creaks and groans under the weight of your bodies as you both crave more and more. Your grip tightens on Yeseo's hips as you lift her ass into the air, pushing her body to its limits.

In an instant, everything changes. Yeseo's screams now come not from pain, but from overwhelming pleasure as you reach deeper inside her. Tears cloud her eyes and she cries out for "Daddy," shocking even herself with the pet name that escapes her lips. But hearing her say it only adds to your arousal.

You feel Mashiro's hand move down to Yeseo's clit, aggressively rubbing and stimulating her even further. Her words only add fuel to the fire, driving you both towards pure ecstasy. "You like that," Mashiro taunts, "You like Daddy's cock? Like how his giant fucking cock feels buried so deep in your virgin pussy?"

Yeseo grits her teeth and nods, barely able to form words through her pleasure-filled haze. "I do… please."

"You're a slut for my man's cock," Mashiro continues, causing a primal growl to escape your own throat in response. Your body moves on instinct, driven by a primal desire for pleasure and dominance."Such a slut for Daddy's cock, aren't you?"

"Yeeees..."

"You're gonna get addicted to this, hooked on cock, fucking you, and you're going to wanna cum all the time, Daddy's naughty princess, aren't you?"

"Aaah, ahh... fuck, yes, I love your cock, love Daddy's fat cock, aahn, aaah, don't stop, fuck me, fucking fuck me, fuck me like you fuck Unnie."

You love watching Yeseo's face as she gets pounded. The way her mouth hangs open, tongue hanging out, panting like a dog, eyes rolling back, lids fluttering, all in such a adorable package. However, you've been craving something else: that pert ass of hers. You unsheathe Yeseo's pussy to a line of girl cum, then flip her and scoot her towards you until her round rear is against your pelvis, and resume fucking her pronebone.

Yeseo screams into the sheets, Mashiro's fingers buried in her mouth to show her the taste of her lust.

"You gonna be a good girl, aren't you?" Mashiro asks, earning Yeseo's moan in approval on her digits. "Good. That's my cock, mine, and the only way you're getting to feel it is by being a good girl and letting him cum inside you, let him coat your pussy with Daddy's cum. Make Daddy proud, you hear me?"

When Mashiro pulls back, Yeseo speaks: "Yes, yes, breed me, cum in my pussy, make me a woman, I wanna be a woman, a woman who cums on Daddy's cock, a woman who cums from getting fucked."

Her ass jiggles in the prettiest way. Whether through the excitement or fear of having a pregnant belly at only eighteen, her thighs are shaking. Her entrance clenches tightly around your girth and milks your orgasm from you, and it's like you've become her baby maker and nothing more.

You wrap your arms around her. "You sure you wanna get bred, princess? You want my seed, every drop, to make you mine? You want to be an adult, that what you want?"

She struggles under you, her wet pussy giving way to your penis. "Yes. Yes! Fuck me, please, Daddy. Please."

Those are your last words for a while, that plea. Her asscheeks give way to your  fingers, slipping to the puckered hole of her anus. You know she's been practicing with that hole, plunging dildos up her butt, training for Daddy's cock. Mashiro takes your hand, offering to lubricate, and before you know it her saliva seeps through your digits. With that, a pointer finger hooks inside Yeseo easily, earning a happy squeak, a bit of cock-drunk laughter at being doubly penetrated.

Anal wasn't something you and Mashiro tried during your first encounter, but you very well are familiar with the act, an intrinsic fact about Mashiro that few others know. Her ass has come to be both of your preferred mode of orgasmic expression, your cum leaving a filthy pool in her asshole. Now Yeseo's about to find out why. Her anus offers the final tightest barrier for your probing finger, slipping inside the dirty hole. In and out a half dozen times, Yeseo soon adapts, and Mashiro—being on the other side of Yeseo and facing you—makes a show of kissing her neck and palming her small breasts. Yeseo bucks back on your digit and cock, the clench of her two insides holding you tight and in love.

You're so lucky that your girlfriend holds no jealousy to speak of—at least not in her sex life—as Yeseo cums hard around your invading cock. Her body clenches at the multiple parts of her that you've stuffed, keeping you held firmly inside. Like a chain reaction, your orgasm is triggered, pulled in forcefully. One two pumps is all it takes, her virgin pussy a divine void, and after that first one you lose count of your inseminating shots. Her womb is full of you, thickened, and your finger pumps with equal force in her ass. Yeseo is mumbling into the mattress, a long nonsensical string of begging and pleading that only end once you're out of her, she can feel your seed inside of her, once the bliss of the last few minutes leave.

Yeseo is your fucking whore.

After cumming her brains out, the tired slut in her sleepily tumbles off. You're not done. Seeing that creampie leak out of her well-fucked cunt, nope, you're not nearly finished. Right now there's a much sluttier hole available to you.

Yeseo rests her head against Mashiro's soft chest, passing out as her friend embraces her.

"Shiro. Marshmellow. I'm really going to ask this with all my self-control, but is it okay if I fuck her ass. She's very tempting."

Your precious petal gives the brightest smile, you know, when she's so uninhibited like this, free to her own wicked whims. Mashiro kisses Yeseo's sleeping forehead, before looking back to you. "Aww, baby, but she looks so adorable sleeping yeah fucking do it. Fuck the shit out of her."

With a peck, you accept her permission. You spread the winking hole open with two fingers, then collect some of the leaking seed from Yeseo's pussy and wipe it on the entrance. Then, the lube: Mashiro with a diligent mouth, and soon a dew of her spit onto your cock for Yeseo's ass.

As you rest your wettened cockhead against Yeseo's anus, it spasms slightly, involuntarily, puckering further against your assault. Suddenly her eyes shoot open, her back arching.

"Good dream," she moans, and as you've learned, it is possible to fuck cutely. Because that's the Yeseo on Mashiro's chest now: cute. "I was... a bad girl, I let Daddy use all my holes, aahn."

"He's ready for more of you, Yeseo-yah." Mashiro whispers.

"Wha..." Yeseo is still in a stupor from her slumber, and so the shock is clearly visceral and uncomfortable as you enter her ass. Even lubed up it takes more effort to break her innermost seal as it stretches around your tip and clings to the millimeter she lets you go in. As she gets filled with your cock again, it doesn't matter how she had previously reacted to the rough pounding you gave her pussy. Your hand grabs her arm and keeps it in place as the half inch meets an end in the resistance of her anus' unwilling submission to your fucking. But she begins to thrust herself back on you slightly, and that helps, relaxing the walls that inveighed against your penetration. Soon you make another centimeter of progress, a centimeter closer to fully lodging your cock inside her.

The penetration is slow as time itself, but for a curious reason: in this single instance, both you and Yeseo want the process to take as long as possible, for this moment to stretch even beyond how fucking long you're taking to actually penetrating her. The lewdness is so beyond what the both of you are familiar with, your plunging cock filling her most intimate spot is perhaps the dirtiest deed imaginable, filthy and nasty and deliciously so.

Yet, she's still fucking cute—cutely fucking, when she looks back to you, meets your loving gaze, a pout on her lips, and a fluttering opening of her mouth. She eyes you with an innocence that has long since left her presence here and now. Of all the girls you've fucked before and this night, none have the spark of natural sexual goodness that Yeseo possesses. Before it was pretty fucking adorable, the eager virgin desperate for attention, desperate for an anal orgasm. Now it's not just arousing, it's something deeper: beautiful. And she wants you to share in her beauty.

"M-more." It's a scant whisper, her throat dry with anticipation. More than enough. You pull on Yeseo's hair and throw her head back, exposing more of her slim neck, to drive your cock with more force into her unbroken depths. Harder now, in: two more inches penetrate her, yet no outward journey is permitted, something else which you've prevented as you continue your rhythm. Your other hand trails down from her back to her ass, where your fingers lay, kneading the cheeks apart to admire your conquest. Yeseo is being taken, wholly owned. She's yours, belonging only to your pleasure and only to your pleasure alone, to feel the pleasure of this moment together.

You pull a fistful of her hair now, drawing her ear close enough to your mouth to bite gently on the lobe, to send a shock of exhilaration through her skinny frame. "You're a filthy fucking anal whore, Yeseo. I'm going to fuck the creampie out of this asshole. Just know I own you, and you need a real man inside of you. Say it."

Yeseo purrs. "Nnn, nngh. Nn, yesss, Daddy, you own my hole, you own all my holes, your slut, just want your cock always in me, fuck my fuck, oh, ohyes, godd, do it, please!"

Again you claim this sweet sin, and push on through to the end of her depths, till you're bottomed out in her ass. Yeseo wiggles ineffectively, fruitlessly, letting you work her anus on your girth.

"How does it feel, baby girl?" Mashiro asks, and you begin to draw your cock slowly. Yeseo howls and squeezes your member, her anus unable to take the stretch any more, yet unwilling to let it go. It takes the weight of a greater instinct for her to move her hips away from you. You help pull back, but it's equally mind-agonizing, mind-numbing, but eventually you come out cleanly.

Through gasping breaths, Yeseo says, "C-can I ride it instead? That, that was too much."

Mashiro giggles, nods. "Daddy can lie down for you, sweetie. Lay him out and sit your pretty little butt on him."

You lean against the headrest and spread out your legs, giving Yeseo free range to work your cock. Much quicker now she takes your cock inside, sinking down on the cock to an easy half. Then, Yeseo relaxes and soon her ass claps against your pelvis, earning a moan from you both.

"Wow, you're a natural." Mashiro says.

"Yeah, oh, fuck, I practiced, this position, oh, mmhm. On, haaa, on a toy. Wow."

"But, the real thing's better." When Mashiro starts touching Yeseo's clit, even more globs of semen leave her cunt.

Yeseo just nods to that, her eyes meeting the lord in her head, her mouth dangling open. "Mhmm, so big, s-so hard, and, umph, and, haahh."

You quickly ascertain that while Yeseo is certainly practiced in her riding, she is no match for Mashiro's experience. Here, you don't mind—the grip of her warm and willing walls wrapping around your cock, her pussy clamping at air in response. Your mouth, open and hungry, is captured by Mashiro, french-kissing you. She's a warm, comfortable presence beside you, watching you watch the pornographic scene of the inexperienced girl fucking herself like a needy anal whore. Yeseo, from her expression, is obviously getting the hang of it: her fucking is getting faster, the cock that enters her quickly leaving in rapid pace, her pleasure quickening in its growth. Yeseo bucks up, slips down, trying to give you as much pleasure as possible

Insofar as Yeseo can find purchase in her brain-melting daze, she's cumming so very quickly and so damn hard. Yeseo is so tightly gripped at your cock you can only imagine the spasms she must be going through. For your troubles, she sprays juice all over your abdomen. As if from the deepest part of her orgasm, her last shreds of coherence, an almost non-fathomable concept, give way to a smile, to a laugh. She collapses on top of you, her cheek against your chest.

"I'm... Daddy's..."

"Cum dump." You sit up, wrapping your arm around her back. "I'm not done with you, not until I've left my cum in your asshole."

She nods. "I'm your slut, Daddy."

You take Yeseo from the bed, and carry her over to the side, bending her over the nightstand, holding her neck and keeping her pressed against the wood. Her small hands reach behind her, taking hold of your shaft and guiding you into her anus. A single thrust is enough to seat her all the way to the hilt, and it doesn't take long before you're pistoning into her, her ass jiggling.

Mashiro's got her hand buried in Yeseo's hair, pushing her down harder against the wooden surface. She's a beautiful girl, your girlfriend, her pussy soaked from watching you use this other girl. "Make a mess for Daddy," she says. "Cum around his cock, milk that cum out like you deserve."

With Yeseo bent over like this, it's a tight fit for the both of you. But you rail the woman. No mercy. All the restraint you had when taking the virginity of either hole is gone now, nothing but raw need and animal instinct driving the motion. The wet smack of your balls against her pussy, the squeaks of her own need, the sounds of the room fill you, fill her, fill Mashiro, and there's no stopping you from taking Yeseo's ass like you mean it.

It's all Yeseo can do to hold onto the edge of the nightstand for dear life. For good measure, Mashiro spanks the slut. The slut loves it. She's basically humping the furniture now, trying to get any kind of friction on her clit, any kind of sensation to heighten her pleasure.

In this moment, the world could be falling apart around you, but you wouldn't care. You just want to keep pounding away at this beautiful woman's ass. Your hands grip her hips, and you thrust inside as far as you can.

Yeseo's breath catches as she feels her ass clench around the base of your cock. Her face is one of pure ecstasy, her mouth forming a perfect O shape.

"Oh fuck, oh god, aaaah," Yeseo cries out. "I'm gonna cum, fuck, Daddy, I'm cumming!"

You don't announce it as loudly, just a sharp groan, solid grip of her hips, pulling her down onto your cock where balls-deep you unload into her. Your second climax is no less powerful than the first, shooting rope after thick rope of hot cum into Yeseo's asshole. You can feel it twitching around you, like Yeseo's trying to milk every last drop out of your cock. She's gasping for air, her body shaking. Mashiro kisses her neck and shoulder to soothe her.

You pull out slowly, letting her feel the loss of your cock. A glob of semen slips out of her gaping asshole, a strand of cream down her lithe legs.

Finally, you're spent, the well of your lust and energy dry, the strength of your legs gone, the strength of your arms gone, the strength of your mind gone. The energy to do anything more than lay in bed is beyond you now.

Yeseo can't even do much of that, and you have to help carry her to the bed, where the three of you lie.

"Fuck. Is it... usually that much?" Yeseo asks, her fingers sliding between her thighs, feeling her sticky hole and slit.

Mashiro giggles. "No. Not by a long shot."

"You're so fucking tight Yeseo-yah, of course you'd get filled up so much."

"But, is this, like, how it is? Like, I'm gonna feel it for days?"

"It's not too bad, after a while. But yeah, you'll definitely be sore. I think I still am."

"Okay, Daddy." Yeseo leans into you, resting her head on your chest. On your other side, Mashiro joins in too. Yeseo sighs."It was really, really good. I... I knew it would be, but I had no idea. You were so gentle at first, and then so rough, like I needed it."

"Well, I'm glad," Mashiro says. "And don't worry. It gets better every time."

"Really?"

"Mhm. You've got a long way to go, Yeseo-yah, if you wanna get as good as Unnie."

"You're a good fuck," you tell Yeseo. "You've got talent, Yeseo-yah."

She giggles. "Thanks, Daddy."

Mashiro looks at you, smiling, and kisses your cheek. "So what do you think, Daddy? You okay with this being a regular thing?"

"I... yeah. I can deal."

"Good. Because next time, you're fucking us both. Together."

✦✧✦✧✦✧

AO3, AFF

#kpop smut #kep1er smut #reader insert #male reader