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thefreakandthehair · 4 months

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(don't bother) calling me when you're sober | rating: m | wc: 1.5k

content warnings: future fic, parental alcoholism ("falling off the wagon"), past parental neglect, minor character death (i've committed wayne crimes i'm so sorry but it's not shown, just mentioned), emotional hurt/comfort, ends on a happy, hopeful note despite the tags

“My dad called.”

Eddie walks into the room, pinched eyebrows and flared nostrils lit up by the multicolored Christmas lights they string on the tree every year, one hand balled into a fist. The reaction wouldn’t surprise Steve so much if this happened years ago, when Al Munson was still living in the bottom of a bottle of Jack, but now?

It’s been eighteen years since he’d gotten sober, nineteen years since his last stint at Hawkins County, and fifteen years since making a genuine attempt to right the wrongs of Eddie’s childhood and build a relationship with his son.

Fifteen years after Eddie let him in, let him try, let him earn Eddie’s trust.

Fifteen years is a long time and to see Eddie so vitriolic in the doorway of their apartment’s living room— hands shaking, body shaking— Steve knows something must’ve gone wrong.

“What happened?” Steve asks, standing from the couch and meeting Eddie where he stands, holding the hand not curled tightly around itself.

“He’s drunk. He called, and he was drunk.”

Steve’s chest pulls tight, his heart racing. What does someone say to that? What can someone say to assuage that kind of deep anger, pain, and betrayal? His thoughts are scattered as they try to make sense of what Eddie just said, and he’s even more grateful now that Ronnie wanted a sleepover with Aunt Robin tonight.

“Eddie, fuck. I’m so— ” Before he can finish his thought, Eddie leans back against the doorframe, ripping his hand out of Steve’s and tangling his fingers in his hair, tugging.

“How could he? How fucking could he?!” Eddie bellows, eyes squeezed shut. “He knew! He knew that if he ever did this again, I’d be done. For good. For forever. And he did it anyways! After eighteen fucking years!”

His eyes fly open and Steve stands still and nods him on. There are just no words to fix this, and trying for the sake of filling the silence has never served him well.

“He did it anyway! Two days before fucking Christmas, a week before the anniversary of—” He chokes and cuts himself off.

He knows what Eddie was going to say. A week before the anniversary of Wayne’s death. It’s been on his mind, too, of course. On his mind and in their conversations over breakfast with eccentric mugs of coffee, over the tangled lights that Wayne could always figure out. The year hasn’t been the kindest to them, particularly Eddie, and Steve wants to protect Eddie as much as he can from whatever he can.

But he can’t shield him from this. Al Munson skips to the top of his shitlist.

“That son of a bitch!” Eddie rams his fist sideways against the door jam, leaving a sharp, red mark along his pinky. “He promised, and I believed him. Why the fuck did I believe him, Steve?”

Steve takes a step closer and grabs both of Eddie’s hands, carefully soothing the angry mark. “It’s been almost twenty years, babe. Trusting him with so much time invested makes sense. Hell, I did, too.”

“I’m— I’m in my 30s, hurt and angry about the same shit I was hurt and angry about as a fucking kid. All the nights I slept in the backseat of the car because he blew his money at the bar, all the car accidents and court appearances and jail time, all the mornings I missed school because he didn’t know what fucking day it was,” Eddie rants, stopping to take a breath before picking back up, Steve’s own heart cracking and raging the more he speaks.

“And every time he’d get sober, he’d always promise. He’d promise it would be the last time, and it never was. Not once could he choose his fucking son and I didn’t understand it then, but now that we have Ronnie, I understand it even less. If I was sick enough to walk away from her, I’d walk my happy ass to the nearest fucking rehab. I get that it’s a disease, I get it, I get it, I get it. But I can’t— I can’t do it again. Not this time. Eighteen years just down the fucking drain because of his company’s holiday party? How can I ever believe him again? Or trust him again?”

Eddie’s voice grows raspier, breath shallow and quick, eyes watery. “Every time this happened when I was a kid, I always had Wayne. He’s the only person who really got it, y’know? The only one who lived it with me and now, I don’t even have him. My dad’s drunk, slurring his way through who fucking knows what on the phone, and no one else can fully understand the magnitude of what that feels like for me.”

He squeezes his eyes shut again and drops forward toward Steve, forehead on his shoulder and arms loosely hung around Steve’s waist. Steve still doesn’t have words that bandage this up, but he knows how to show his husband love in other ways. Ways that, over the years, have become a language all their own. Steve pulls him in tight, one hand near his waist, the other cradling the back of his head. Fingers slide carefully beneath the hem of Eddie’s tee-shirt and rub little, repetitive circles into the small of Eddie’s back while he cards his other hand through Eddie’s hair, scratching his scalp and holding him to his chest to feel the rhythm of Steve’s own heartbeat until his breath returns to a steady pace.

It’s only then that Steve speaks.

“I don’t know what to say, Ed. It’s fucked up, and if you want to me like, hit him with my car, you know I’m game.” Steve feels Eddie laugh— just a few puffs of air through his nose but it’s a laugh all the same. “But I’m here, and we’re gonna figure it out, okay? Whatever you decide to do, we’ll do it together.”

Eddie nods and lets himself be led to the couch, Steve tucking Eddie into his side and pulling the afghan up over them.

“I never want to be what Al was to me to our daughter,” Eddie whispers, not looking away from the tree.

“Well, you’re ahead of the game, because she’s already older than you were when he started hitting the bottle hard. And I know there’s the genetic piece to it that everyone talks about, but nurture counts for a lot of who we become, too. Shit, I owe Joyce Byers a huge thank you for being more of a parent to me than my own were because she’s probably the reason I didn’t turn out like Dick Harrington. Ronnie’s never going to have an Al Munson in her life, because you weren’t raised by Al Munson. That’s not whose legacy you’re passing down. You’re passing down love, not pain.” Steve presses a soft kiss to Eddie’s temple and feels his whole body sag into him.

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Eddie’s voice is quiet now, a far cry from his earlier venomous edge.

Silence nestles onto the couch with them, a comfortable addition, as they watch the basketball game Steve had on before Eddie told him about the phone call. Watch is a loose description, actually. They're more just looking at a moving, flashing screen.

“My hand really hurts, by the way,” Eddie announces, holding up the hand he’d used to punch the doorjam. “That was fucking dumb.”

“Maybe a little bit, but I get it,” Steve untucks a hand from beneath the blanket and outstretches his palm. “Lemme see?”

Eddie plops his hand into Steve’s and Steve takes a look, mentally working down the check list he’s memorized from his decade plus of EMT work. No obvious breaks, nothing looks crooked, Eddie’s able to move each finger and flex his hand without severe pain.

“If anything, it’s just gonna be bruised tomorrow. But I’ll fix it,” Steve grins and lifts Eddie’s fist to his lips, carefully kissing each knuckle and paying a little extra attention to the pinky that delivered most of the blow.

“I’m so in love with you, Steve.” Eddie rests his temple on Steve’s shoulder. “You know that, right?”

“I know,” Steve agrees, chest fluttering despite the circumstances. “And I’m in love with you, too. You know that, right?”

Eddie snuggles in and wraps Steve up, full koala, as though he’s trying to get as close as possible without actually cracking Steve open and climbing inside of him.

“Definitely.”

The next morning, Aunt Robin brings Ronnie home and together, they decorate the gingerbread cookies that only vaguely look like people but are good enough to pass for a seven year old. Halfway through, Eddie’s cell phone rings and the caller I.D. reads Al. Steve watches, worried that Eddie’s going to answer in the middle of their decorating. That he’ll forget Ronnie’s having the time of her life, and that in his righteous indignation, Eddie will leave the table to go fight and argue.

There’s so much to be said, and Steve wouldn’t blame him, but he breathes a sigh of relief when Eddie simply declines the call and sets about pouring more edible glitter onto his design with a smile down at their daughter.

#steddie #steddie fic #steddie fanfic #steddie fanfiction #steve harrington x eddie munson #eddie munson x steve harrington #steve harrington #eddie munson #stranger things #stranger things fic #stranger things fanfic #stranger things fanfiction #myblurbs #(whispers): yeah so my mom fell off the wagon after 18 years at her fucking work party and this is basically just what my day was #our relationship has always been strained but since she got sober there was at least some contact?#anyways #replace wayne with my grandparents and this is just all projection baybee 😙✌️#super not cool with it BUT that's why there are some content warnings here you don't see from me very often 💕

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lord-squiggletits · 1 year

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Ratchet expresses more Functionist beliefs on-screen than Pharma ever does send tweet

#squiggposting #pharma apologism #like COME ON ratchet had a whoooole fucking deal about how he has to retire if his hands stop working!!!!#he took pharma's hands and used them as his own after he assumed pharma was dead!#and yet in fanon and fanfic people for some reason saddle PHARMA as being the functionist one #ratchet is right fucking there y'all

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virescent-v · 7 months

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Except Me?

A/N: Happy Saturday morning!! ;) Back with another smutty Emily x fem!reader fic. Enjoy :P Warnings: Honestly, if you've read my stuff before, same apply lol. Word Count: 2080

“Is everybody around here getting laid except me?”

“Well, I’m not,” Rossi had said.

You just stood there frozen.

Because while the statement itself was rhetorical, you definitely weren’t thinking that way.

But now you were thinking about getting laid.

With a certain unit chief.

So that everyone around here was getting laid.

Of course, Emily had no idea that you’ve been harboring a crush on her since your arrival to the BAU over three months ago. You’d heard of the infamous Emily Prentiss and the legendary things her team did. You worked your ass off to get your spot on the team and, while you didn’t want to fuck it up, you certainly wanted to fuck.

You avoided eye contact with everyone that was standing there, not wanting the profilers to catch a glimpse of the rising heat on your cheeks. You quietly excused yourself and made a beeline for the bathrooms.

“What’s gotten into her?” Rossi asked.

Emily and JJ shared a look; JJ’s slightly more concerned, while Emily’s was one of curiosity.

“I don’t know. Maybe she didn’t feel comfortable with all of the talk about getting laid?” JJ asked, twirling the ring on her finger.

Emily’s head cocked a little to the side, considering. You hadn’t seemed like the prudish type, but she really didn’t know you too well, seeing as you’d only been here a few months and she was your boss. She made a mental note to check in on you in a little bit, seeing as she had never seen you run off from a conversation before.

The conversation had lulled and everyone had moved their separate ways, Emily heading straight for her office. After a bit of time, she glanced up from her desk, gazed out into the bullpen. She could see you from her office, especially since you were the only one currently around, the only one at your desk. You had some files open on your desk, but you weren’t working on any of them. You were fidgeting; your knee was bouncing like you were anxious and you were playing with the pen you were supposed to be writing with. Emily had never seen you so distracted before.

Making a quick decision, she stood up, walked to her office door. “Hey,” she said, grabbing your attention immediately, breaking the silence surrounding you. “My office, now, please.”

You looked at her, an almost panicked look on your face. Interesting, Emily thought.

You made your way into her office. “Shut the door behind you,” Emily said.

You could feel your heart rate increase. Like you had just been called into the principal’s office. You made your way across the room, sitting yourself in the chair across from her desk. You were fidgeting even more with the cuffs on your blazer, trying your hardest to not make eye contact with Emily. You knew that she had no idea what was going on and if you could just control yourself a little bit more, you probably wouldn’t even be in here with your boss obviously profiling you.

You could feel Emily’s eyes watching you, tracking your every movement. While the BAU tried very hard to not profile each other, you knew that with your behavior you were likely being observed.

Emily let you sit and stew for a few moments, watching you. She had never seen you act so…anxious. And while she knew that part of that was from being called into her office, there was obviously something else going on. “What’s going on?”

Your eyes shot up to hers. She looked so beautiful. Concerned, but curious. You could see yourself slipping under their spell, like you should just say what was going on. But you held yourself back. “Nothing. Just, uh…just feeling a little, um, anxious today, I guess.” Even your voice was shaky. You could hardly keep eye contact with her while talking. You knew all of Emily’s profiler alarms were going off. You just hoped she didn’t ask too many more questions.

“You were fine this morning until our conversation in the hallway. Is your anxiousness right now about that?” She asked.

Your eyes darted toward the right. “No,” you said unconvincingly, your voice managing to crack on the single syllable. You almost scoffed at yourself. You needed to get it together before Emily caught on even more than she already had.

Emily’s head tilted, watching you now with narrow eyes. “Try answering that again, but a bit more convincingly,” she teased.

You glanced up under your eyelashes at Emily, trying to figure out what was going on. She sounded like she was just teasing you, not having figured out what was really going on with you yet.

“I could tell that our conversation made you uncomfortable. You all but ran off to the bathroom. I’m sorry if it was too much,” Emily stated, her hands folded neatly in front of her, resting on her thighs. Her well toned, strong thighs that you just wanted wrapped around your head.

Shit, I’ve got to stop or she’s going to be able to read me like an open book, you thought. You cleared your throat, feeling another wave of heat rush to your cheeks.

Emily smirked to herself. She had watched your eyes linger on her hands, drift around her thighs, before registering what you were doing, snapping yourself back to reality. Interesting, she thought.

Emily decided to see if her suspicions were right - if you were harboring something for her, even if it was just lustful thoughts.

She got up from her chair and basically stalked around her desk, stopping in front of you with her hands on her hips. You refused to meet her eyes, keeping them on her shoes in front of you, pulling your bottom lip between your teeth.

Emily didn’t say anything, just watching you squirm in front of her for a few minutes.

When she didn’t speak, you pulled your face up, your gaze immediately connecting with Emily’s.

“Did it make you feel some type of way when I said I wasn’t getting laid?” She asked.

You almost choked on air, coughing slightly to recover. “Wh-what?” You couldn’t believe she would just ask straight out like that and now you were worried she was catching on.

Emily tilted her head, her eyes scanning your face. “How did you feel earlier when I said I wasn’t getting fucked?”

Your breath stuttered, an immediate flush taking over your face and upper chest.

Emily had to hold back the smirk that was threatening to take over as she watched your eyes dilate almost to the point of black. She leaned forward placing both of her hands on the arms of the chair you were sitting in, her face so close to yours that it felt like you were about to go cross-eyed. This close, you could smell her earthy perfume, feel her breath against your lips.

You had to hold yourself back from launching forward and capturing her lips with yours.

“Do you want to be the one to change that?” Emily asked, her hand coming up to your face, her thumb tracing over your lower lip. “Do you want to be the one to finally make me cum on fingers that aren’t my own?”

“Christ, Emily-” you started.

“Yes or no, pretty girl.”

You took her thumb into your mouth, your tongue tracing around it once, twice, before letting it pop out. “Fuck yes.”

Emily finally let the smirk cross her features. “Then on your knees, angel. I want to cum all over that pretty little face of yours.”

You’ve never gotten out of a chair so fast in your life, the sound of your knees hitting the floor almost echoing in the small office. You reached up to Emily’s waistband, eager to undo her pants to finally get a taste for what you’ve been thinking about for months.

But Emily’s hands smacked yours away. “Uh huh, where are your manners?”

Sitting back on your knees, you glanced up at Emily from under your lashes, giving her your best pout. “Please, ma’am, can I taste your pussy?”

Emily wanted to roll her eyes at your little display, but she found herself getting turned on by how eager you were to please her. “Take your shirt and bra off first. I want to see more of you.”

You didn’t hesitate. It didn’t even cross your mind that you were at work, in Emily’s office, that she was your boss. All you could think about was getting to be the one to make her cum.

You whipped your shirt off, throwing it across the room, your bra following after. You watched as Emily licked her lips as she started to undo her own pants, pulling her panties down too. “You’re so beautiful, angel. Once I cum enough to statiate me, I’m going to fuck you until you can’t remember your own name.”

Your eyes tracked her panties going down her legs, the ones you couldn’t stop staring at earlier. As they got kicked to the side, your gaze traveled back up her delicious legs and zeroed in on her already wet cunt. You let out a little whimper at the moisture you saw waiting for you. “Please, Em, can I?” You asked, never taking your eyes off of the prize in front of you.

Emily’s hand found its way into your hair, holding it back off of your face. “Make me cum, pretty girl.”

You moaned indecently at the first tangy taste of her on your tongue, your eyes rolling back into your head. Your hands gripped her thighs, keeping them apart as your mouth went to work. You took your time exploring her, getting to know what kind of movements she liked, what made her hips twitch, what made her grip in your hair get a little tighter, slowly building her up.

By the time your tongue focused on Emily’s swollen, throbbing clit, you could hear her panting above you, her hips gyrating to a beat that pushed her closer to the edge.

You alternated between tight, little circles around her clit and broad strokes up and down that made Emily’s breath stutter in her chest. You could tell that she was trying her best to hold back the noises she so desperately wanted to make. You hoped to hear them soon.

“I’m so close,” Emily breathed out. “Make me cum, make me cum,” she whispered, both hands finding their way into your hair, guiding your face to her clit. “Put your fingers in me now.”

You knew better than to test her patience; you could almost taste how close she was. You wasted no time, easily sliding two of your fingers into her dripping core.

Moaning into her cunt at how warm and wet she was, you started a brutal pace, curling your fingers so with each thrust they hit against her sweet spot. Within a few plunges of your fingers, you could feel Emily’s thighs begin to shake, her inner walls tightening down as if trying to keep you inside.

“Ungh, fu-fuck, I’m gon-gonna cum,” Emily whimpered.

With one final thrust in, you focused on pushing against her g-spot in a pulsating motion, your tongue flicking fast and hard against her clit. You moaned against her, the added vibrations sending her over the edge.

One of Emily’s hands gripped tighter in your hair while the other clamped over her own mouth to muffle her moans. You continued to fuck her through her orgasm, making sure she got the most pleasure.

As she finally came down fully, you slowly removed your fingers and mouth, not wanting to make her too sensitive.

You slipped your fingers into your own mouth, your tongue wrapping around them and sucking them clean, appreciating the taste of her.

“Fuck,” Emily said, looking down at you. “You busy after work?”

You threw your head back a little chuckling. “Whaddya know, my schedule just opened up.”

Emily smiled, helping you up from your position on the floor. Her hand started caressing your hip, slowly making their way up your chest, circling each nipple before wrapping her hand around your throat. “Good, I have plans for you that involve you cumming all over my cock. Sound good?”

You whimpered before hungrily nodding your head.

Emily’s eyes darkened, a devious smirk replacing her earlier easy smile. “I’ll see you at seven at my place, pretty girl. Don’t be late.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

#virescent v fanfic #emily prentiss #emily prentiss fanfic #emily prentiss smut #emily prentiss x reader #no use of y/n #fem reader #emily prentiss x you #idk i could probably make a pt 2 if people wanted to see what happens after work #if theres errors ignore them ive been up all night lmfao

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sugarpasteltmnt · 26 days

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Chapter 23: Tag, Part I: Sonic

[squints] is that a Ben Schwartz reference???

[Read it on AO3]

#didn’t want to wait until after work lol enjoy #surprise!!! splitting this one into two chapters. whoopsie.#the neon void #the neon void tmnt #rottmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #The Neon Void Final Chapters Spoilers #TNV Final Chapters Spoilers #fanfic update #ROTTMNT fanfic

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bones-of-a-rabbit · 7 months

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After Everything was Fixed (but you were still broken) arc3 be like,

this is a little smthn I like to call, “Moon attempts to make a move, and it went,, better than expected??”

(theyre both idiots your honor)

(The idiot he wants to smooch [but whom does not have a mouth] in question:)

(it u!!!)

(I drew this entirely bc I kept thinkin abt how fucking funny it is that when Moon (or Sun) kisses Readerbot it would make this CLANK noise like hitting two plastic plates against each other. Like can you imagine ur a night guard walking around doing ur job and u hear this weird repeatedly clattering noise and ur like ???? is smthn broken so u track it down and find the daycare animatronic sitting on the floor of the daycare with a staffbot and he’s holding their face and giving them a bunch of tiny bonks on the face with his face. Like. Can yOU IMAGINEEEwHEEEEEEEZE)

#after everything was fixed fic #after everything was fixed but you were still broken #fnaf fanfic #fnaf au #fnaf dca x reader #fnaf moon x reader #fnaf moon x y/n #readerbot au #repairbot reader #readerbot #silly fluff #doodles #sketches #silly doodles #bones of a rabbit au #short comic #they’re all so dumb I love them ur honor #anyway I should b working wheeeeeeeze bye

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cuubism · 22 days

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some canon-verse trans Hob for the lovely @five-and-dimes who recently got top surgery! 🥳🥰 congratulations, I'm truly so happy for you, my friend. please accept this humble offering

“So, it actually started on a dare,” Hob says, on the day he tells Dream the story of him. Or of this part of him, anyway.

Normally, Hob gets a bit guarded the first time he tells someone he’s trans. It’s hard to predict with absolute certainty how people will react, especially ones he’s just become romantically involved with. He’s had it go poorly, to say the least, in the past.

He doesn’t feel that way with Dream. It’s not because there’s so much trust between them—they’re still new, after all. No, it’s something about Dream himself. For all his prickly and standoffish nature, being close to him feels like sinking into a warm lake, into a dark sleep where secrets and hidden wishes float up like glowing reeds to the surface. Deep, personal feelings feel safe with Dream; he cradles them in his hands and soothes them. Or that’s how it feels, when Hob is touching him.

Personification of dreams, indeed.

“A dare?” Dream echoes.

“Sort of," Hob says. "Got frustrated with people saying women should or shouldn’t do this or that or the other thing, so I decided if they felt so strongly about it I’d just be a man. Moved somewhere no one knew me, dressed differently, got stronger, practiced the sword—and that was that. No one seemed to care much, once you were at war. So long as you could swing a sword and not get yourself killed.”

“A choice, then,” Dream says. He’s listening very intently, hands folded on his knees, untouched tea on the coffee table before him.

“At first. Was only after I’d been living that way for a few decades—before and after we met—that I realized while there might be a handful of women out there living as men for the freedom of it, that they didn’t all like it. Given the choice they’d rather just be women in a more equal world. You know?”

Dream hums in understanding.

“But I didn’t want to go back,” Hob continues. “I felt like... who I'd become was the truth of me all along.”

“Identity, while not wholly immutable, is resilient against adversity and circumstance,” says Dream. “You found what your heart wanted you to be, if in a circuitous manner.”

“You seem very unbothered by it,” Hob observes, sipping his tea.

Dream frowns. “Why would I be bothered by it?”

“Dunno.” Apparently he can’t fully shake that this’ll put a wedge in us feeling. “People sometimes are. Feel deceived, or something like that. So they say.”

“If they are deceived, it is by their own assumptions,” Dream says, with disdain. “You should be as you dream yourself, Hob. No more nor less. Put aside these petty physical trappings.”

“I do actually have to live in these ‘physical trappings’ even if you don’t, you silly thing.” He can’t help laughing. “Besides, I rather like being some kind of living creature in the world, rather than what? A ghost? Best I can do is make this body as close to how it should be as possible.”

Hob’s come to like his body, for the most part, in the form that he’s made it. He didn’t always. But he needs a body of some kind to be alive, and he likes being alive. So what he couldn’t change, he made peace with.

Besides, they have hormone treatments nowadays. Brilliant stuff. Makes it so much better.

“Anyway, now you know. I wanted you to. Since we’re together.” It’s still a marvel. Together.

“Thank you,” says Dream, with evident sincerity. “It is a privilege to be gifted your secrets.”

“Not really a secret, but I get what you mean.” He takes Dream’s hand, just to touch him, and admits, “Telling it to you is like… I don’t know. Feels like when I was younger and first admitted out loud, ‘I’m a man. I want to stay like this.’”

It hasn’t been a proper secret in a very long time. But giving it to Dream is like the freedom of releasing a held breath, even so.

“I am the harbor and cradle of dreams,” Dream says in reply. He traces his fingers over Hob’s. Does Dream’s strange form just spring from the ether? Hob wonders. Or does he have to choose it? The way Hob chose his? “Dreams of being and becoming… these are most precious for they grow from tough soil. I can only protect them, I cannot create them. You must do that. And I expect that were I to find you in the Dreaming, there would be a fantastic garden there, indeed.”

Dream himself is the most fantastical thing. “Well, darling, just know your work is appreciated.”

Dream’s lips tip up in a tiny smile. When he meets Hob’s gaze again, his eyes have gone dark and starry. He folds Hob into a hug, and—

oh, it’s like being hugged by the universe itself.

Hob feels the light breeze of a warm dark night, when he’d lain by the dying fire in a war camp in the French countryside, and looked up at a million stars and first whispered to himself what if this is really who I am? Dream is that breeze and those stars. The dying embers that had lit him as he’d run his hands over his body and felt it differently than he ever had before, and been terrified because what would it mean?—but also thrilled and alive. Dream is the night wrapping around him in that moment, the night that was listening to his dreams no matter how quietly he admitted them, Dream is that and more and the voice in his heart telling him it would be okay.

A younger, more uncertain Hob would have needed this. Hob now is older, and he already knows who he is and what he wants, but he falls into Dream’s embrace all the same. A tear slips from his eye, and Dream kisses his cheek, wiping the tear away with his tongue before leaning their heads together.

“I could craft you any body you wanted in the Dreaming,” he says lowly. “However I think the one you have made with your own hands is more remarkable.”

Oh, God, he’s going to tear up again. “Dream, you are the most beautiful, wonderful thing.”

Dream hums in pleasure at the words, and lets Hob hold him close, lets him cradle his head to his chest, a dream kept close to his heart. One that he knew as soon as he saw it walk into the White Horse. Sooner even than he truly knew himself.

Then Dream looks up at him with a hopeful expression. “With these truths revealed, are we able to be intimate?”

Hob laughs so hard he has to tip his head back against the couch. “Wow. One track mind with you, isn’t it? I spill my heart and that’s what I get?”

Dream grumbles, tucking his face in against Hob’s neck to press his lips to Hob’s throat. “I find myself impatient of late.”

“Knew all along you were only with me for my body.” He’s grinning, though. Can’t stop.

“Well. Considering it is such a lovely one.” He plucks at Hob’s shirt buttons. Lecherous little nightmare.

It feels fucking good, though, to be desired.

“C’mere, then,” he says, and drags Dream into his lap.

Dream settles there with a purr, starts playing with Hob’s hair, but says, “I would not truly derail this moment, nor distract from your feelings if you do not wish it.”

“Oh, I wish it. You’ve no idea how much I want you right now. You’re like a prize.” He cradles Dream’s beloved face between his hands. “Stick around for long enough and you’ll get the most incredible Dream at the end of it.”

“Or at the beginning,” Dream says, and Hob’s heart swells so much to hear him voice that that he has to kiss him.

When he does, Dream makes a low, pleased sound, settling deeper in his lap. Yes, this moment, this life, is certainly the prize for all of those years hanging onto those dreams:

the dream of his lover

and the one of himself.

#1389 hob: while you were busy with the gender binary i studied the blade #trans hob #dreamling #my writing #i think after this hob gets to ask his burning questions about how gender works for the endless and dream is just like [meme of marge #simpson holding a potato but it says 'trans and nonbinary people (except desire)'] 'i just think they're neat.#unrelatedly i did have to choose my gender--' and hob's just like 😐.........#[dream a known king of self awareness]#this is like sending someone a casserole when they get home from the hospital except the casserole is gay fanfic XD #a different kind of sustenance...#hope it's okay!! 🥺

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jubilee40 · 2 months

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“They hurt your feelings, Bella Donna?” Osamu asks, between neck kisses.

You sniffled and nodded into his chest. You straddled your fiance’s lap with your hands wrapped around his long neck.

“I don't understand, Osamu. I handed out flyers and made cookies for the possible new club members too.” You cried, tears staining his light brown trenchcoat.

“It's okay, Bella Donna.” Your fiance says in a comforting tone, planting a kiss on the top of your head.

“How dare they make my darling bella donna cry.” Mafia Port Executive Osamu Dazai thinks. One hand wrapped around your waist while the other rubs soft caresses on your back, his mind already plotting ways to handle your fellow college classmates for embarrassing you and making you cry.

#after work series #after work fanfic #bungo stray dogs x reader #bsd x reader #bungo stray dogs dazai #dazai osamu x reader #dazai osamu #dazai x reader #dazai x you #dazai x y/n #dazai oneshot

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ghost-proofbaby · 9 months

Text

FIRST IMPRESSIONS (a barista!eddie x barista!reader au)

summary: eddie faces the perils of being a coffee shop opener, and meets you. you, who's so damn optimistic it should be annoying. you, who makes the job that has given him trouble seem like a cake walk. you, who seemingly bleeds sunshine. god, he should really hate you.

warnings: TWO uses of "y/n", fem!reader (use of she/her pronouns), PHYSICAL descriptors used for reader (she has a nose ring and a septum piercing! that's all), eddie is just a bitter and grumpy idiot.

wc: 5.2k

a/n: i apologize in advance for all the technical 'barista' talk in reference to positions. i tried to elaborate on a few of them, haha. also... yes. i gave reader two nose piercings. it's definitely not even more self-projection psh. (because i have three)

the full menu

Eddie Munson is not a morning person.

So, why, for the life of him, he ended up as an opener, he couldn’t tell you.

It had been a snowball effect. He got tired of working odd jobs here and there to produce enough cash to slip Wayne for bills, decided the quick change made off of fixing up neighbors’ cars or mowing lawns just wasn’t cutting it for his desired spending habits. He was tired of being so restricted by his misfortune; he was tired of watching Wayne pull long shifts only to continue living paycheck to paycheck. He was tired of his friends like Harrington and Buckley having money from their part time gig at the movie store to freely agree to impromptu late nights at Benny’s or seeing the latest slasher films in the theater as they premiered while he had to deliberate over counting change to see if he even had the funds to join in. He was tired of eyeing that guitar in the mall and constantly telling himself one day.

Eddie Munson had been tired. But now, as he forced himself awake most mornings before the sun even rose, he was exhausted.

Originally, he’d wanted to be a closer. He didn’t mind being the clean up crew, having to spend late nights in a coffee shop sweeping up grounds and scrubbing away the stickiness of the day. But then the hiring manager that interviewed him had hinted towards the fact that their store already had enough closers when he’d spotted Eddie’s availability, made a few off comments about how what they really needed was a couple brave souls to take over opening shift, and that tiresome cycle rang in Eddie’s ears. Before he even had the chance to think it through, in his desperation, he’d insisted that oh, actually, my availability is completely open. I don’t mind working earlier than that.

What bullshit. Eddie definitely minded working earlier than that. He more than minded it — he loathed it.

Long story short, it had been a series of unfortunate events that led Eddie to where he was now. In his van, fifteen minutes early, staring out at a parking lot bathed in the lingering night as he fought to keep his eyes open.

The clock on his dash read 4:46 in a taunting blink, flickering against his bleary eyesight and making him question every decision in his life that had led him here. Adjusting to the new job had been easy enough — his trainer was nice enough, learning how to make drinks and what routines were required in the morning had been meticulous but rewarding — except for the time. It wasn’t just his start time that tortured him vehemently; shifts seem to pass miserably slow, the seconds dragging their feet in no hurry to get anywhere in particular. The clock didn’t care if Eddie yearned for his bed and a few extra hours of sleep gifted by a nap. Traffic didn’t either, when he’d hit the highways and catch just the beginnings or the tail end of the morning rush.

You’d think he’d complain more about the commute. But the gas spent on the twenty minute drive to the town over was the least of his concerns.

“Fuckin’ John,” Eddie mutters when a large truck pulls up to the drive thru, a notable regular he’d begun to recognize after not even a month of working there. They had just recently changed their opening time (they used to open an hour earlier, his manager had informed him. Eddie had nearly burst into grateful tears that he’d never experienced that crime of humanity.)

None of his coworkers had arrived yet. Most lived closer, able to garner extra snoozes on their alarms and shorter drives of contemplation. Eddie only ever envied them on mornings like today.

“We don’t open for, like, another forty minutes, asshole,” Eddie curses out loud to himself, counting down the time until John gives up and drives away. The man would just circle the store like a vulture anyways. He always did; he always had to be the first customer, grabbing his ridiculous coffee order before scurrying off to play cards at the casino, “How do you come here every fuckin’ day and not know that?”

It took the older man a full four minutes before he finally roughly shifted his truck back into drive, being the farthest thing from gentle as he hit his gas and jerked his vehicle out of the drive thru line. Eddie couldn’t see him clearly through the stubborn darkness, but he could easily imagine that look of irritation at not receiving the caramel frappucino with a quad shot that he seemed to feel entitled to.

God, that man was a dick.

Eddie nearly misses another coworker pulling up to park beside him during the spectacle.

By this point, he’s learned what cars all his coworkers drive.

Carmen, the fellow barista who had trained him but he now rarely worked with due to her availability being a bit later in the day, drove a bright red 2012 Kia Soul that had certainly seen better days. Nicole, one of the shift leads he worked with often during his opens, drove a small and silver Nissan Versa. The year is lost on him, but he’s willing to bet it was a few years old at this point. James, another shift lead who went by Jamie and never had much to say, drove a Volkswagen that looked to be straight out of the 70s. And that was just the beginning, the ones he could think of off the top of his head while he was still waking up inside his van.

The car parked beside him wasn’t any of these. He didn’t recognize it at first glance, and found himself doing a double take as his face scrunched up.

A Jeep. A two-door Jeep Wrangler with vibrant, chipped yellow paint now sat idle beside him.

Who the fuck drove a yellow Jeep?

He can’t even bother to be annoyed or fatigued anymore with the mystery presently before him. He can’t see through the tint of the windows, can’t make out the silhouette of who it was. He was well aware that he hadn’t been acquainted with all of his coworkers quite yet – there was a plethora of baristas in the store he’d only heard spoken of in passing rather than properly meeting – but it had seemed like the people who opened always came from the same rotation of sorry suckers.

Nicole’s car pulls up. So whoever drove the Jeep was not one of the shift leads.

Five minutes to 5:00 AM, Nicole’s car door opens first and Eddie can hear the Jeep’s engine kill. He’s quick to fumble with his own keys, pulling them from the ignition in a haste and throwing a hand out to blindly grab his apron from his passenger seat.

A deep shade of green. Everyone had one or two of them laying around, and they were the root of the nickname for all new hires: green beans. He had just finally gotten the one embroidered with his name a little over a week ago, and his manager had apologized profusely as she swore it usually didn’t take that long.

Eddie really didn’t care. The moment he started wearing the apron with his name on it, customers had taken to randomly addressing him by it, and it made him fucking uncomfortable.

“Rise and shine, campers!” Nicole’s voice echoes through the parking lot the moment all three openers are out of their cars.

Eddie doesn’t answer at first (which isn’t unusual; Nicole was used to his ever-present sleep-deprivation induced silence). He’s too busy nearly tripping over himself as his eyes stay glued on that Jeep, on the door that swings wide open roughly from two parking spaces away as he waits with bated breath.

Would this new coworker he was about to meet even like him?

“God, Nicky,” a new voice groans – a girl’s voice.

Ah, fuck.

Eddie had noticed the mysterious phenomenon of the way everyone who worked here seemed to be attractive to some extent. Nice on the eyes, always smiling and always flirting in a friendly manner to garner more tips. He’d had plenty of bisexual panics in the bathroom anytime one of his coworkers extended that friendly flirtation his way. All the fellow guys (as few as there were) and all the confident girls he’d been in the trenches with – it didn’t matter, they all affected him.

Hawkins didn’t have nearly as many pretty people. Eddie sort of felt cheated for having lived a mere twenty minutes from a goldmine of such people for so long, completely unaware. But he also felt sort of relieved, knowing that if he were still a teenager barely scraping by in high school, this coffee shop would have been his downfall with awkward stumbles and feelings caught from all those faux smiles and joking winks that his now coworkers laid on heavy with their regulars.

With this in mind, he doesn’t know why he wasn’t prepared for when you stepped out of the Jeep. Slamming the door shut behind you, your arms were full with an apron that was definitely not green, along with an oversized water bottle and what he thinks is either a cardigan or jacket. A tote bag slung over your shoulder looked to be stuffed full as well. You were a walking cliche for the type of person that people would expect to work at a coffee shop. The type of person that embodied all those jokes of if an alternative person isn’t making my coffee, it’s not going to taste good.

Eddie should know; he’d been the butt of many of those style of jokes given that he also fit into that category. With his long hair, with his sparse tattoos, with his new nose ring – he knew he was as much of a cliche as you were.

Didn’t stop him from staring at you, suddenly wide awake.

“Aren’t you just a ray of sunshine?” Nicole jokes as she rounds the front of your Jeep, stopping and looking between you and Eddie before she says to you, “You’d think after a month’s vacation you’d be happier to see me.”

You take two steps forward, lining up right between Eddie and Nicole, and suddenly contort your face to be such an over-exaggerated smile that it’s nearly a grimace. Eddie is so caught up in the scrunch of your nose, he nearly misses the way you grit out a sarcastic “Better?” from between your teeth.

“Oh, that’s the winner,” Nicole cackles, keys jangling as she shakes them and leads the two of you towards the front of the store. Over her shoulder, she continues to joke, “Keep on smiling like that, and I sense a twenty dollar tip in our future.”

Eddie still hasn’t said a word. What is he supposed to say? All he can do is trail slightly behind you, doing everything in his power to not let his eyes roam over your legs or backside. You were just wearing black jeans, in line with the same dress-code everyone else followed, but they were doing you favors.

“Y’know, I think I already saw John’s truck this morning,” your voice was surprisingly pleasant despite the insinuation Nicole had made that your first impression should be grumpy. Far less gritty than Eddie’s would have been had he spoken up, “Think I can sweet talk that out of him? Maybe I’ll ask about his wife. Or- Oh!” you exclaim, bursting with sudden energy that should give Eddie a headache this early, “Put me on bar! I’ll douse his drink in caramel how he likes, that’s sure to tug on his wallet- Sorry, I mean heart-strings.”

Nicole continues to laugh as she fumbles with unlocking the door, and it’s not lost on Eddie that he has never made any of the fellow baristas laugh like that. Although, to be fair, he has never been quite as enthusiastic as you. He didn’t seemingly bleed sunshine like you. Here the three of you were, outside in the dusky beginnings of a morning, and he could have sworn that the sun had already risen from the light that seemed to emit from you.

It should have made him nauseated. It kind of did, actually.

You turn suddenly, just as Nicole finally turns the lock, and face him. Your smile is subtle, eyes so wide he wouldn’t notice the bags even if you had any. “I’m Y/N, by the way.”

You stick your hand out and he can see you sticky with it – with hopefulness, with friendliness, with kindness. His stomach churns.

Nope. Not a chance.

The moment Nicole opens the door, he’s barely muttering his name back to you, and is rushing past you to enter the store. His shoulder brushes against yours, and he has to tell himself repeatedly he did not just shoulder-check you. He has to tell himself that it’s okay he didn’t meet your level of enthusiasm. He has to tell himself that you’re just another barista, someone else who makes coffee for a living and that this new energy you bring is just due to that vacation that Nicole mentioned.

It’ll fade. He’ll be fine. At some point, his stomach has to stop churning.

—

It doesn’t.

Your energy doesn’t falter, to his surprise. Not only are you sunshine personified, but you’re also damn good at your job. Eddie can only imagine how sluggish he’d be if he had a month off from anything, especially a job, but it doesn’t even seem as though you have to dust any of your skills off for the day.

You offer to take over opening up the ‘drive thru’ aspect of the store, brewing all the coffees and teas without complaint as Eddie lingers in his misery of shuffling through the tasks of opening up the food portion of the store. As he’s sorting the croissants to be replenished, implementing the technique of FIFO (first in, first out), he can hear Nicole still cackling at whatever you’re saying in the back of the house as you clean the syrup pumps. When he’s labeling all the new breakfast sandwiches for the day with their best-by dates, he can hear you humming a few feet away from him over the clicking of the sticker gun in his hand. And when the clock finally reads 5:30 to signify the time of opening, you’re putting on your apron, tying it around yourself more securely than Eddie always lazily did. Even your black apron seemed to fit on you better than his did, as if you were more made for this job than he was. As if you had years of experience to carry on your shoulders, and God, were you carrying them with grace. Constantly smiling, constantly joking. He’d once thought Nicole incapable of even breaking a grin, but he’d hardly gone longer than a minute without hearing her laugh during the time of your opening together.

God, he sort of hated you.

You never even mentioned how rudely he’d shrugged off your introduction. Occasionally, he’d even caught you looking his way during the conversation, a soft expression on your face as if you were ready to include him in all the inside jokes at a moment’s notice.

He made sure to consistently stare straight ahead, never once seeming to glance your way when you wore that expression.

You were just too nice. You were putting all the other openers to shame right before his eyes, himself included, and he hated you for it.

Once the store is open, John is the first customer in drive, as always. Eddie wears the headset (the one you’d grabbed for him, sanitizing it and slotting a freshly charged battery in without him even asking. God, he hated you.) and listens in to you greeting the awful bastard, and his stomach does another flip.

“Good morning, John,” you chirp happily. He couldn’t see your face from around the corner, but he could only imagine that you were wearing a smile. Maybe you even had that damn camera on so that the customers could see you just as you could see them.

He waits. Anxious to hear John’s grumpy reply, be reassured when someone else also didn’t match your energy. The man had never been pleasant a single day that Eddie had worked thus far. Simply barking out his order, acting offended when someone didn’t recognize him.

If anyone was going to be cruel to you, Eddie would bet all five dollars in his pocket that it would be John.

But even John wasn’t fucking mean to you.

He had replied in the most cheerful tone Eddie had ever heard leave the man’s throat.

“And who am I speaking to?” he almost sounds teasing. It fans at Eddie’s irrational irritability.

“I’ll give you three guesses.”

He hates the way your customer service voice was so similar to just your normal voice. A bit squeakier, a bit more polite, but still bottled sunshine. He hates how nicely it caressed his eardrum as compared to the grate of some of the other barista’s tones while on drive thru. He hates that some deep part of him secretly hoped that Nicole stationed you there your entire shift, and that if she did, he would fight tooth and nail to keep this damn headset on. Just to hear your voice. Just to hear your light.

“Only three?” John’s gruff voice scoffs, “There’s only one person who works here who is this damn cheery before eight in the morning.”

Nicole laughs from where she’s bent over to put down a few of the sanitizer buckets by the bars, shaking her head as she also listens in over her headset.

“I’m making it easy on you, then,” you say as you suddenly come into view for Eddie. He’s trying to replenish the sandwiches and protein boxes that the store keeps on display for the customer by the register, still working through his morning tasks as he realizes you’ve completed yours.

Man, he fucking hated you.

You don’t miss a beat as you begin to tap one of the espresso machines awake, punching all the right buttons to pull John’s espresso shot before you turn to make your way towards the cold beverage station. “You still drinking the same thing, old man?”

“I’m not old.”

“Right, and I’m not already over-caffeinated,” that’s a lie. He hasn’t seen you touch a drop of coffee this entire time, “Just pull on up. It’s a billion dollars, or whatever your total normally is.”

John’s cackle is cut off by him pulling away from the speaker box, effectively disconnecting the two way mic. Even Eddie finds himself nearly grinning at your reply, but he stops himself. Because you’re annoying. Because no one should be this witty this early. Because the ability to make others laugh this often should be a cardinal sin.

He stops the grin because he hates you… right?

You do manage to get a tip out of John. Eddie sees it with his own two eyes. It’s a quick deposit of whatever spare change the stingiest man Eddie had ever had the displeasure of meeting has lying around his car, and it happens so quickly while you’re leant out the window to pass the man his receipt that he always requests that Eddie almost convinces himself it didn’t happen. But it did. He saw it with his own two eyes, as he tripped over his two left feet, effectively nearly knocking Nicole over with him.

The look she gives him makes his stomach twist this time as his heart lurches. It’s a knowing look. It’s despicable.

She doesn’t say a word until later into the shift, once more baristas are scattered across the floor and peak is in full swing. Eddie isn’t kept on food, and you aren’t kept to manage taking orders or run the window – he’s the one reassigned to the window position as you are moved to the cafe bar. He’s tasked with quick connections before handing out drinks to bored business people, as you fly through making drinks for both mobile orders and any customers that choose to physically walk into the store.

Nicole puts herself on the position of ‘DTO’ – she greets the drive thru customers over the headset and takes their orders, her tone not nearly as honey-sweet as yours had been. She’s lacking in jokes, she sticks to a script that must have taken her years to make sound even remotely natural.

Eddie’s just grateful he doesn’t have to wear a headset and listen to her directly in his ear.

Rush has died down when she turns to him and cocks a brow with her hip. He has the window shut, fiddling with his thumbs as he anxiously awaits for the partner on drive bar to finish making the iced white mocha for the customer currently sitting on their phone. He’s sure the look she shoots his way is in regards to the fact that he isn’t ‘connecting with the customer’ or putting himself through insufferable small talk.

It isn’t.

“Do you not like her?”

His head shoots up, fully meeting her curious gaze, “Excuse me?”

“Y/N,” she clarifies, “Do you… not like her?”

“I don’t know her,” he weakly defends himself.

He had been a dick to you this morning, hadn’t he? What a weak defense for being a bad person to someone who makes this entire store glow simply by being here.

“You should give her a chance,” Nicole speaks softly as she leans back on the counter that holds the order screens, “I… She can be a lot, but she’s one of our best. Think of her as the people’s princess, so to speak.”

He knows you’re one of the best here, just in the short few hours he’s caught glimpses of you. He has no idea how you’re so quick with making drinks, or how you manage to hold such genuine sounding conversations with all of the customers who stand right at the hand off plane. He just gets irritable when they stare at him with prying eyes as he tries (and fails) to keep up his pace.

“I… I can see it,” he nods, bringing a hand up to pinch his bottom lip, “I mean, John clearly loves her.”

Nicole gives a pointed look, “He does. She doesn’t take his shit – him and his wife bring her gifts for every holiday. They know her damn birthday and bring her cards. It’s insufferable.”

He cracks a shy smile at that, “They bring her birthday cards?”

“They bring her birthday cards,” she echoes back to him. Eddie finally receives the drink he was waiting on and turns, quick to hand it out with a soft mutterance of ‘have a good day’. Once he’s finished and the drive thru is officially empty, he faces her once more, “You don’t have to like her as much as everyone else. I know you’re still new and adjusting but… she’s one of the best for a reason.”

“Because she can turn out drinks like it’s no one’s business?” Eddie questions, side stepping and lifting his chin in your direction as you finish yet another drink, as if to prove his point.

“That,” Nicole shrugs her shoulders and pushes off the counter, “And because she actually gives a damn.” Eddie’s brows shoot up as he waits for her to continue, “She knows these customers, man. Learns about their lives, hears them out. Remembers the small things. She’s the same way with all of us, too. She once got turned down from being a shift lead because she’s too nice. Have you ever heard of someone being shot down from a job for that?” Nicole pauses, and Eddie can only shake his head, feeling the ends of his ponytail brush the back of his neck, “She has the management experience – she knows how to run this place. Sometimes, I see it. The way she steps up and takes responsibility. She chooses to be that kind even if it makes her seem like a nut job. She chooses to let people hear walk all over her, because she cares. She cares more about treating us as humans or whatever than she does an upgrade in pay.”

“Makes sense they wouldn’t make her a shift, then,” Eddie dares to say, which earns him a sharp look, “I mean, management positions aren’t for the weak of heart. You have to make tough decision-”

“Once, a man was harassing one of our baristas. This dude who was married. Came in like clockwork and picked up a mobile order under his wife’s name, wouldn’t take no for an answer and kept flirting with one of our poor girls. I’ve never really been afraid of her, but I was every time that man stepped foot in here,” Nicole grabs a rag and starts to wipe down the counters with a low whistle, as if she isn’t spilling serious store lore right now to Eddie. As if she isn’t bringing on more questions than answers, “She’s not weak of heart. She’s good of heart. And if she hadn’t been on vacation, she would have been your trainer. You don’t have to like her, like I said, but it would do you well to give her a chance.”

Trainer?

Carmen had mentioned something about another barista being the usual trainer. She had even tried to joke around with Eddie that he would have liked the other girl better, something about how she was funnier and easier to get along with.

You. You were the girl she’d been talking about. The people’s princess, as Nicole had put it.

Eddie opens his mouth to say something in reply, although he isn’t quite sure what he can say.

God, he had been a fucking dick. And Nicole was matching sure he felt all seven levels of Hell, of guilt, for it.

It ate him alive for the rest of his shift. His stomach churned with it. All that guilt gnawed on him from the inside out, using his bones for toothpicks, and he already knew what he needed to do without Nicole saying it.

—

“Did that hurt?”

The two of you got off your shifts at the same time, as most openers do. At ten o’clock precisely, Nicole was shooing the two of you off the floor, two fresh baristas taking both your places as you scurried to the back.

He’d overheard the joke made ten minutes prior, Nicole speaking to a fellow shift lead about who would be replacing you, already mourning your absence. She didn’t make such a joke about Eddie.

“Huh?” you look up quickly from where you had been carefully rolling and folding your apron into a bundle.

Eddie gestures vaguely to his nose again, repeating himself, “Did it hurt?”

It was the best he could do – pathetic small talk about the nose piercings of yours that had caught his eye.

You grin radiantly, and he tries to swallow down that instinctive voice that whisper hate, hate, hate. “Which one?”

Right. You had multiple nose piercings. A hoop that matches Eddie’s own, only on the left nostril rather than the right like his, and that septum piercing. He’d probably look dumb to ask about the nostril considering he had his done, and should already know that it definitely doesn’t feel nice.

“The septum,” he clarifies, “That combination, though, um… It looks sick.”

Oh, he sounds so fucking stupid right now. He wishes the sticky floors beneath the two of you would split and swallow him whole.

“Eh,” you shrug, finally glancing away from him to finish wrapping the strings of your apron snugly around the bundle you’d made of it, “My nostril honestly hurt worse. If you’re thinking of getting one,” you pause, and look up, offering him a look of pure mischief. Heart, stomach, mind. They all lurch with that look as you whisper, as if letting him in on a secret, “Do it.”

“I don’t think I could pull it off,” he’s quick to blurt out, eyes widening, resisting the urge to take several steps back and put distance between you two.

Fuck, he didn’t hate you. It hits him like a truck – this shift had managed to slip through his fingers so quickly. The fastest one to date. Between all of your jokes, all of the laughter you managed to pull out of others and that he had to fight down, the day had flown past as easily as a shift really could.

He regrets spending the shift moping. He regrets ignoring your introduction. He regrets not giving you a chance.

“I think you could,” your tote bag now hangs from your shoulder, and you have your keys prepared in one hand as you hold your water bottle in the other, “Everyone says that, but if you can already pull off the nostril, adding a little septum to the mix never hurt nobody.”

Is your face stuck like that? Stuck with a subtle and shy smile pulling at the lips, making the corners of your eyes crinkle in the slightest?

He hopes not. If it is, he’ll never be able to have a normal conversation with you. He’ll always be too distracted, too infuriated, too overwhelmed.

“You’re a very optimistic person,” he almost lets it slip out as a scoff, but refrains, Nicole’s words echoing in his mind. It would do you well to give her a chance.

“I find your lack of faith disturbing,” you casually say to him.

“Did you just quote Star Wars to me?”

Eddie is aghast, staring at you with even more awe than before. And you – oh, you look so goddamn proud of yourself and the way you’ve left him shellshocked, smugly lifting your chin and smiling more intentionally. You’re smiling so widely that your eyes pinch nearly fully shut and even more of that sunshine is now flooding the backroom up to Eddie’s knees.

“I don’t know,” you start to step around Eddie, carrying an air of arrogance that would only be so endearing from someone who had been proven to be as kind as you were, “Did I?”

You never give him the chance to answer. You leave him there, standing in the middle of the back of house and not even clocked out yet as you walk away with a bounce in your step and a quick have a good day, Eddie! over your shoulder.

When he’s finally off the clock and having given a half-ass goodbye to everyone on the floor (which no one replied to as enthusiastically as they had yours, by the way), you’re still sitting in your damn yellow Jeep. You give him a slight wave through the windshield as he makes a beeline for his van, and he doesn’t even bother to return it. Pretends he doesn’t see it. Looks straight ahead. If Nicole is watching from the drive thru window that serves as a front row seat to the entire interaction, she’s going to rip him a new one next shift they work together.

God, Eddie wishes he hated you.

Instead, he’s left hoping that next time he opens, you’re there to make the time fly. Maybe he’ll be the one quoting Star Wars to you. If he can ever get the stick out of his ass, that is.

taglist: @josephquinnsfreckles

(tag list is open - if you'd like to be added, let me know!)

#my writing #coffee shop blues #eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson fic #eddie munson fanfic #barista!eddie munson #this is what i do with my free time before and after work #and on my breaks lol #makes the grind more bearable #we needed some fluff #can i come out of jail now?

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