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pin-k-ink · 26 days

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how about Kenma getting addicted to the taste of reader's tits? 🤭

refuge // kozume kenma

tw ⇢ tooth-rotting fluff, cuddling, needy!kenma, praise kink, nipple play, fingering, kenma’s love for apple pie, anything else i missed

wc ⇢ 4.2k

The bedroom was awash in the warm, honeyed glow of the bedside lamp when Kenma shuffled in, steps heavy with exhaustion. You glanced up from your book to take in his appearance, heart immediately going out to him.

His normally bright eyes were glazed and half-lidded, dark smudges underneath standing out starkly against his pale skin. Strands of hair, still slightly damp from his post-practice shower, had escaped his messy bun to frame his face in wispy tendrils. The black roots were starting to show through more prominently, bleeding into the bleached ends.

"Hey you," you greeted softly, setting your book aside and opening your arms in invitation. "Long day?"

Kenma made a vague grunt of affirmation, clambering onto the bed and immediately collapsing onto you. His chin dug into your sternum as he nuzzled close, seeking comfort, and you bit back a wince.

"We had morning practice, then classes, then more practice after school," he grumbled, voice muffled by your sleep shirt. "I think Kuroo is trying to kill me."

You made a sympathetic sound, fingers finding their way into Kenma's hair to scratch lightly at his scalp - something you knew always helped him relax. "I'm sorry, baby. That sounds brutal."

"Mmmph." Kenma shifted a bit until his head was pillowed more comfortably on your stomach, arms loosely curled around your hips. "S'okay. This helps."

Warmth bloomed in your chest at his admission. Kenma wasn't always the most verbally demonstrative with his affections, so hearing him say that - knowing he found solace in your arms - made you feel cherished.

For a while, the two of you just lay there like that, breathing together in the quiet stillness of the bedroom. Your fingers continued their soothing ministrations, gently combing through silky strands and lightly scratching at Kenma's nape and behind his ears. Every now and then he'd let out a barely audible hum, melting further into you as the tension gradually seeped out of his muscles.

These were some of your favorite moments - just holding Kenma close and feeling him unwind, knowing you were his safe harbor. Whether he was stressed from volleyball practice, drained from too much social interaction, or just stiff from too many hours hunched over a game - he always seemed to seek you out, craving your soft, grounding touch.

Usually, Kenma was content to rest his head in your lap while you sat propped against the headboard, dozing as you ran gentle fingers through his hair or massaged his scalp. Or he'd stretch out between your legs on his stomach, face pillowed on your thighs as you rubbed his back in long, firm strokes.

But today, as the minutes ticked by, you began to sense a restlessness in him, a dissatisfaction in the way he kept shifting minutely against you. His brow was furrowed, nose scrunching slightly, like he couldn't get completely settled.

"Everything okay?" you asked quietly, smoothing your thumb over the wrinkle between his eyebrows.

"Mmm." Kenma's answer was decidedly noncommittal. He turned his face more fully into your belly, nuzzling the soft pudge like a cat trying to make a bed more comfortable. "Just...I dunno. Can't relax."

He huffed out a frustrated breath that tickled your skin through your thin cotton tee. Then, in a move that surprised you, he pushed himself up on his elbows to frown down at your midsection almost accusingly. "It's too...this isn't soft enough."

You couldn't help it - a burst of laughter escaped you at his petulant expression, so at odds with his usual controlled stoicism. "Are you calling me bony, Kozume?" you teased, poking him in the side.

Kenma squirmed away from your prodding finger, nose wrinkling adorably. "No," he denied, but the flush rising on his cheeks said otherwise. "I just...I need..." He trailed off, clearly frustrated with his inability to articulate what he wanted.

Patient as ever, you just watched him, one hand rubbing soothingly up and down his spine as you waited for him to sort out his thoughts. Kenma's eyes darted around, landing everywhere but your face as he struggled for words.

Finally, he sat up fully, knees bracketing your hips as he hovered over you. His gaze roamed your body slowly, almost appraisingly, and you fought the urge to squirm under the intensity of it. When his eyes landed on your chest and widened fractionally, a glimmer of interest sparking in their golden depths, your breath caught.

Kenma licked his lips, an unconscious gesture that made heat prickle under your skin. He reached out a tentative hand, fingertips grazing the curve of your breast through your shirt. "Maybe..." He swallowed audibly. "Maybe these would be better?"

It took you a second to compute his meaning, brain momentarily stalled by his touch, light as it was. When it clicked, you couldn't contain your amused grin. "Are you asking to motorboat me, Kenma?"

"What? No!" His response was immediate and adorably flustered, cheeks going pink. He snatched his hand back like he'd been scalded. "That's not - I wasn't - I just thought -"

Taking pity on him, you gentled your smile and reached for his hand, guiding it back to your chest. "I'm just teasing, baby. Here..." Maintaining eye contact, you placed his palm more fully over your breast, shivering slightly when his fingers reflexively curled around the soft mound. "Is this what you wanted?"

Kenma's blush intensified, creeping up to the tips of his ears, but he didn't pull away. He nodded shyly, thumb rubbing almost reverently over your nipple. It stiffened under his touch, the thin fabric of your shirt doing nothing to mute the sensation, and you bit your lip to stifle a gasp.

"Well, in that case..." Reaching up, you curled your fingers into the loose collar of your sleep shirt and tugged it down a bit, exposing the gentle swells of your breasts. "Mi casa es su casa."

Your playful tone startled a laugh out of Kenma, breathy and warm against your skin. The sound made affection swell in your chest, bright and buoyant. He so rarely laughed fully; each one felt like a gift.

Slowly, giving you time to change your mind, Kenma lowered himself down until he was stretched out on top of you, head coming to rest on your chest. You felt his hesitant exhale, the flutter of his lashes against your skin as his eyes slid closed. A heartbeat passed, two, three...and then he relaxed fully against you, a sigh of bone-deep contentment escaping him.

"Oh," he breathed, sounding a little wondering. "This is...wow."

You couldn't help but agree. There was something profoundly intimate about holding him like this, his lean body a line of warmth against yours from chest to toes. You felt surrounded by him, enveloped. Safe. Cherished.

Winding your arms around Kenma's narrow shoulders, you pulled him incrementally closer and pressed a lingering kiss to the crown of his head. "Comfy?" you murmured into his hair.

"Mmmm." It was more a purr than a word, drowsy and utterly content. Kenma nuzzled into the valley between your breasts like he was trying to burrow into you. "Very. You're so soft. And warm. And you smell good."

Your heart turned over behind your ribs, so full of tender affection you thought it might burst. Kenma was rarely so artless with his praise, the sincere words made clumsy by impending sleep. It was painfully endearing.

"Glad to be of service," you whispered, unwilling to disturb the cocoon of hushed intimacy enveloping you. "Sweet dreams, lovely boy."

Kenma made a small, agreeable noise and you felt his lips curve into a smile against your skin. His limbs grew heavy and lax as sleep pulled him under, one arm curled possessively around your waist and a leg thrown over your thigh.

For a long while you simply held him, cheek resting against his silky hair, drinking in the peaceful rise and fall of his chest. Your fingers traced idle patterns over his back and shoulders, following the dips and planes of lean muscle and the delicate ridges of his spine. Each steady, trusting exhale fanning over your skin felt like a precious gift.

This beautiful boy, so reserved and guarded with the rest of the world, felt safe enough in your arms to let himself be vulnerable. To seek comfort and care without fear of judgment. Your throat tightened at the thought, overcome with tenderness.

Shifting carefully, trying not to jostle Kenma, you craned your neck to study his slack features. The ever-present furrow between his brows had smoothed out and his lips were parted slightly, long lashes fanned over his cheekbones. The late-afternoon sunlight filtering through the blinds gilded his skin and set his pale hair aglow, surrounding him in a hazy nimbus.

He looked so young like this, untroubled and ethereally lovely. You felt almost breathless with the need to bundle him close, to shelter him from anything that might dim the contented glow suffusing his face. Kenma carried tension in every line of his body, a quiet sort of melancholy that broke your heart.

If you could give him respite from that, even just for a little while...if you could be his safe harbor, his soft place to land when the world become too much...you would consider yourself the luckiest person alive.

Careful not to disturb Kenma's rest, you fished your phone off the nightstand and set an alarm to wake you in an hour. As much as you would've loved to let him sleep as long as he needed, you knew he'd be upset if he missed dinner. Growing boys needed their fuel, as he often reminded you with a wry smile when you questioned his truly heroic food intake.

That task done, you curled your body more securely around Kenma's, savoring the warm solidity of him in your arms. With a sigh of utter contentment, you closed your eyes and let yourself drift, surrounded by the boy you loved.

The shrill chime of your phone alarm roused you some time later. You groaned softly, nose scrunching in displeasure, and fumbled to turn it off. Beside you, Kenma stirred, making a sleepy sound of protest at being disturbed.

"Sorry, baby," you rasped, voice thick with disuse. You ran a soothing hand up and down his back. "Didn't mean to wake you."

Kenma grumbled something unintelligible and burrowed deeper into your cleavage like he could block out the world if he just tried hard enough. You bit the inside of your cheek, fighting a smile. Who knew Kozume Kenma was a secret cuddle monster?

The rumbling of your stomach broke the drowsy silence a moment later, seconded almost immediately by an answering growl from Kenma's. You huffed out a laugh, carding your fingers through the cornsilk hair at the nape of his neck. "Sounds like it's dinner time for us. Want me to order something?"

"Nooo." The petulant whine was muffled by your skin. "Don't wanna move. 'M comfy."

"I know, lovely, but we need to eat." You stroked your knuckles down the knobs of his spine, gentling him like a grumpy kitten. "Tell you what - if you let me up, I promise I'll order from that place you like with the apple pie. And you can use me as a pillow again while we eat."

There was a considering pause as Kenma clearly weighed your words. You could practically hear the gears turning in his head. Finally, he heaved a tremendously put-upon sigh and rolled away to flop on his back, one arm slung over his eyes.

"Fiiiine," he dragged out, peeking at you from under his elbow. "But there better be pie or I'm staging a protest."

"So demanding." You grinned, leaning over to smack a kiss to his cheek before sliding out of bed. "You're lucky you're cute."

Kenma's outraged sputter followed you out of the room, making you giggle into your palm. Riling him up was entirely too much fun. You knew you'd pay for it later - he'd probably rope you into being his player 2 for some new co-op game he'd been obsessed with - but it would be worth it. Time spent with Kenma was never time wasted.

When you returned to the bedroom, bags of takeout in hand, it was to find Kenma propped up against the headboard in one of your old, oversized sweatshirts, tapping away at his PSP. He glanced up when you entered, nose twitching appreciatively at the savory scent wafting from the bags.

"That was quick," he commented, setting his game aside to make grabby hands at the food.

"I may have bribed Yamamoto with a free teriyaki bowl to sprint over here. And before you ask, yes - I got the pie."

"My hero." Kenma's smile was tiny but genuine, eyes soft as he watched you unpack containers of gyudon and steamed veggies. "Have I mentioned lately that I love you?"

You paused, chopsticks hovering over a piece of beef, and tilted your head at him. "Are you talking to me or the pie?"

Kenma's lips twitched like he was fighting a grin. "Can't it be both?"

That startled a bright laugh out of you, head tipping back with the force of it. "Wow, okay, I see how it is. Nice to know where I stand."

Setting the food aside, you crawled up the bed and swung a leg over Kenma's hips to straddle him. His hands settled automatically on your thighs, thumbs rubbing circles into the sensitive inner skin. Cupping his face in your palms, you dipped down to touch your forehead to his, noses brushing.

"I love you too, you brat," you murmured against his mouth. "Even if I have to compete with baked goods for your affection."

Kenma's lips curved into a rare, full-blown grin, cheeks rounding out under your palms. "No competition," he said simply, tilting his chin up to slot your mouths together.

He kissed you slow and deep, a leisurely exploration that made your toes curl. Slender fingers crept under the hem of your- his shirt to stroke the skin of your lower back, making you shiver and press closer. You sighed into it, arms sliding around his neck as you sank into him.

After long, drugging minutes, Kenma drew back to rest his forehead against yours again. His eyes were soft and hazy when they met yours, full of quiet adoration. "Apple pie's got nothing on you."

The words were light, a little irreverent, but you heard the deeper meaning under them - the steadfast devotion, the promise inherent in each syllable. Your heart swelled, straining against the cage of your ribs with the force of your love for this beautiful, brilliant boy.

Unable to articulate the depth of your emotions, you simply kissed him again, winding your arms tighter around him as if you could fuse your bodies into one being. Kenma sighed against your mouth, melting into your embrace like coming home.

Later, bellies full and limbs heavy with encroaching sleep, you watched through drooping lids as Kenma set aside his empty pie tin with a satisfied sigh. He caught you looking and cocked an eyebrow, mouth curving into a lazy smirk.

"Good?" you asked.

"So good. That pie never lets me down." Kenma patted his stomach, then held his arms out to you in clear demand. "Now c'mere. I need my human pillow."

Stifling a laugh, you obediently crawled into his arms and let him arrange you to his liking - head nestled on your chest, arms banded around your waist to hold you close. He nuzzled his face into your softness with a contented hum, already boneless and pliant with impending sleep.

"Hey," he mumbled a moment later, voice muffled by your chest. "Wanna try something else…"

You pulled back slightly to look at Kenma, a curious tilt to your head. "Oh? What did you have in mind?"

Kenma ducked his head, peering up at you through his lashes almost shyly. A faint blush dusted his cheekbones, but there was a glimmer of heat in his golden eyes that made your pulse kick up a notch.

Slowly, deliberately, he slid his hands up your sides to cup your breasts, thumbs brushing over the peaked nipples through the thin fabric of the shirt. You inhaled sharply at the sensation, back arching into his touch.

"Just wanna feel you," Kenma murmured, gaze heavy-lidded and intent on your face. "Wanna make you feel good."

Your breath hitched, arousal unfurling hot and syrupy in your veins at his words. Wordlessly, you reached for the hem of your shirt and pulled it over your head in one fluid motion, tossing it aside. Kenma's eyes darkened, pupils blown wide as they raked over your bared skin.

Leaning down, you captured his lips in a searing kiss, licking into his mouth with purpose. Kenma groaned softly, fingers flexing on your breasts as he kissed you back just as fiercely before pulling back for air.

Kenma's heated gaze raked over your bare chest, pupils blown wide with desire as he took in the sight of your breasts. Slowly, almost reverently, he cupped the soft mounds in his palms, relishing the weight of them. His thumbs grazed your nipples, circling the dusky peaks until they pebbled under his touch.

Kenma's eyes were riveted to your chest, pupils blown wide and dark with desire as he took in the sight of your bare breasts. His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed hard, tongue darting out to wet his lips unconsciously.

"Can I...?" His hands hovered just shy of touching, fingers twitching with the effort of holding back.

"Please," you breathed, arching your spine in clear offering. "Touch me, Kenma."

Permission granted, he wasted no time in cupping the soft mounds again, relishing the weight of them in his palms. Your flesh spilled between his fingers, impossibly smooth and warm. He squeezed gently, wonderingly, thumbs grazing the dusky peaks and feeling them stiffen further under his touch.

Leaning down, Kenma traced the tip of his nose along the curve of your breast, breathing in the scent of your skin. He pressed open-mouthed kisses to the silken flesh, tongue darting out to taste you. Your breath hitched as he moved higher, laving the sensitive underside before finally closing his lips around the straining peak.

A low moan escaped you at the sensation of wet heat enveloping your nipple. Kenma suckled gently at first, tongue lapping languidly as he savored the feel of the taut bud in his mouth. His free hand palmed your other breast, rolling and plucking at the nipple until you were arching into his touch with a needy whimper.

Kenma released your nipple with a soft pop, blowing cool air over the damp flesh and making you shiver. He couldn't tear his eyes away from the rosy peak, glistening with his saliva and swollen from his ministrations. Pride swelled in his chest at how responsive you were to him, at the way you trembled for his mouth alone.

"So perfect," he murmured, voice low and rough with want. "I could spend hours just worshipping these pretty breasts. Sucking and licking until you can't take anymore..."

You keened high in your throat, fingers tangling almost desperately in his hair. "Please, Kenma..."

Compelled by your breathy plea, he dipped his head again to lave attention on your other breast. He licked broad stripes over the soft flesh, trailing the tip of his tongue around your areola before drawing lazy circles over the straining peak. Your answering moan was music to his ears, urging him on.

Kenma increased the suction, hollowing his cheeks as he suckled harder. He grazed the sensitive bud with his teeth, soothing the sting with flicks of his tongue when you cried out. He alternated between lapping kittenishly and sucking deep, until your nipple was red and throbbing, until you were writhing beneath him and panting his name like a prayer.

Only then did he release you, admiring his handiwork through heavy-lidded eyes. Both of your breasts were heaving, the flesh damp, nipples swollen and glistening obscenely. The sight made heat spark through his veins, desire throbbing insistently in his core.

"Kenma," you whined, back bowing as you shamelessly presented yourself for more. "Don't stop, please..."

"Shh, I've got you baby." Kenma smoothed his hands over your sensitive flesh, massaging gently. "I'm nowhere near done with you yet."

True to his word, he ducked back down to mouth at your nipple again, suckling ardently as his fingers plucked at its twin. He kept at it for long, blissful minutes, until the world narrowed down to the heat of his mouth on you and the ache building between your thighs.

Kenma's mouth was unrelenting against your sensitive flesh, alternating between soft suckles and firmer draws that made your toes curl. He seemed determined to map every inch of your breasts with his lips and tongue, leaving no patch of skin untasted.

You arched into the wet heat of his mouth with a throaty moan, your hands fisting in his hair to hold him close. Each pull of his lips sent sparks of electricity zinging down your spine, stoking the fire smoldering in your core. You could feel yourself growing slick with arousal, empty and aching for his touch.

"Kenma," you panted, voice wrecked and needy. "Feels so good, don't stop..."

He hummed against your breast in response, the vibrations making you gasp. Encouraged by your reactions, he redoubled his efforts, suckling harder and grazing the sensitive peak with his teeth. His tongue swirled around the pebbled bud, flicking rhythmically in a way that had you seeing stars.

Just when the pleasure was verging on too much, Kenma released your nipple with a final lingering lick. You whimpered at the loss of his warm mouth, back arching in wordless invitation. He soothed you with soft kisses peppered across the swell of your breast, hands kneading gently at your flesh.

"So perfect," he breathed reverently, nose nuzzling the valley between your breasts. "I could worship these for hours and never get my fill. Love how responsive you are, how easily you come undone for me..."

Your only response was a shuddering moan, head tipping back against the pillows as Kenma continued his sensual assault. He seemed fascinated by the weight of your breasts in his palms, the plushness of them against his lips. Like he was determined to memorize every dip and curve, every hitch in your breathing.

And you were more than content to let him take his fill, to lose yourself in the magic of his mouth as he laved attention on your aching nipples. Every draw of his lips sent molten heat flooding your veins, coiling tighter and tighter in your belly. You felt unbearably empty, desperate for friction where you needed it most.

As if reading your mind, Kenma released your breast with a final suctioning kiss. He raised his head to lock blown-black eyes with yours, his thumb sweeping maddeningly over your nipple.

"I've got you," he rasped, voice like gravel. His other hand skated teasingly down your stomach, over the trembling plane of your abdomen. "Gonna take care of you, give you what you need. Gonna make you feel so good, baby..."

The broken keen that spilled from your lips was completely involuntary, torn from someplace deep inside you. "Please, Kenma... need you."

The corner of his mouth kicked up in a small, wicked smile. He looked utterly debauched hovering above you, lips red and slick, golden eyes molten with desire.

Without breaking eye contact, he dipped his head to close his lips around your nipple once more. At the same time, his wandering hand slipped lower, fingertips grazing the lace edge of your panties. Your hips canted up in shameless offering, a silent plea for more that he was all too happy to answer.

Kenma took his time working you up with lips and tongue while clever fingers slowly teased your entrance, until you were writhing beneath him, until you were balanced on a razor's edge and begging for release. He brought you to the brink again and again, only to ease you back down, determined to wring every last drop of pleasure from your trembling form.

Through it all, his mouth never ceased its worship of your breasts, suckling and licking until you were boneless and overwrought. Until the world fell away and your entire existence narrowed down to the pull of his lips, the slick slide of his tongue, the feeling of his dexterous fingers sliding between your soaked folds.

And when his fingers finally delved into slick heat of your pussy and crooked just so, when his teeth grazed your nipple in tandem with a particularly devastating thrust, the coil in your belly snapped. Ecstasy crashed over you in a tidal wave, Kenma's name a broken litany on your tongue as he worked you through it, wringing out every last aftershock until you collapsed against the sheets.

Kenma released your breast with a final soothing lick, pressing a tender kiss over your thundering heart. He watched you come down with a soft, reverent expression, fingertips tracing idle patterns on your overheated skin.

"Gorgeous," he murmured, pressing his lips to your collarbone, your throat, the hinge of your jaw. "Absolutely stunning. I'm so lucky you're mine."

You hummed contentedly, threading your fingers through his hair to pull him down for a slow, sweet kiss. You poured every ounce of adoration and gratitude you felt into it, hoping he could taste the love on your tongue.

"I'm the lucky one," you whispered against his lips. Hooking a leg over his hip, you rolled your bodies until he was nestled in the cradle of your thighs, exactly where he belonged. "Now it's my turn to worship you."

#haikyuu smut #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu x reader smut #kenma x reader smut #kenma smut #kenma x reader #kozume kenma #hq kenma #kenma #kenma kuzome #haikyuu kenma #kenma fluff

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macfrog · 3 months

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psyche and cupid | one shot

happy valentine's, beautiful people. i love you with all of my heart. xx shoutout to @familyvideostevie for putting joel's slutty little thigh holster into my head and, well. yeah. pairing: jackson!joel miller x fem!reader summary: valentine's day with joel doesn't go to plan. warnings: part two never happened!!!!! abby who!!!, established relationship, cursing, half joel pov, unspecified age gap, hints to reader having a sliver of ptsd, jesse is alive and well because he is my prince and i said so, reader has dark pubic hair, masturbation, somnophilia (not discussed in this fic but she is a-ok with it) and therefore dubcon, sprinkle of praise kink, oral (f!receiving), someone comes in his underwear, these two goofballs are big in love word count: 5.5k

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It’s not in his nightstand.

Not hung over the newel post, either.

He said he left it on the kitchen counter yesterday, right after he got home; said he woke up this morning and it was gone. And then he muttered something of an accusation that someone had tidied it away and forgotten where, and that started a whole new argument.

You know what, Joel? You’re following his tall figure as it sways down the hallway, his strides longer and considerably smoother than your flurrying shadow in his wake. Maybe if you weren’t going out today, we wouldn’t be having this problem.

His chin tilts upward, salt and pepper scruff angled to the ceiling with a ha slung from his throat. Yeah, he tosses a glance over his shoulder, we’d just be havin’ it tomorrow, instead.

You scoff in response, stepping where his boots lift off from, following the heavy thud thud thud like a cat at his heels until he’s rounding the corner towards your bedroom.

You pass over the messy trail of your jeans and Joel’s pajama bottoms, your underwear and his leading in a trail to the unmade bed – sheets like a rippled wave painted golden by the dawn.

The two of you split off – Joel lifts the cotton and watches it float back down over the flat of your mattress. Nothing.

You take the closet – the squeal of metal on metal harsh in your sleepy ears as you shove the hanging clothes aside, swiping around at the floor. Also, unsurprisingly, nothing.

Deflated, you straighten, stars peppering your vision and a tatty sleepshirt pinched in your fingers. Led Zeppelin – some band Joel was into before everything went to shit. You’ve listened to him out on the porch before, plucking strings in time with the record wobbling on the turntable inside.

The collar torn, sleeves pecked with holes, print lost to the years and the dryer – but each time you drape it over your shoulders, he smiles and hums some song from a world you’ll never know.

It’s sweet, when you’re in the mood to be wooed.

Which, incidentally, is not right fucking now.

His eyes flit down to the peeling, grayscale image – and that same smile attempts to bloom on his lips. That’s cute, but it ain’t my holster, pretty bird.

His smirk dampens quickly when he looks back up, snuffed by your stony expression.

You whip the tee down to the foot of the bed. You are a piece of fuckin’ work sometimes, do you know that? you growl, storming by him for the en suite.

Joel’s rough hand slips around your wrist, tugging gently but letting you drag him through to the bathroom.

Just go, Joel, you groan, the chill of the room prickling goosebumps on your naked legs. Give me some peace and quiet. ‘s not like I’m gonna be seein’ much of you today, anyways.

Is that what this is about? His voice echoes in the morning blue, round in your ears as you hang your head over the sink. Pickin’ a fight ‘cause you’re pissed I’m goin’ out?

I didn’t start the fight, you protest. You’re the one who lost his holster.

Didn’t lose it… he mumbles, lips closing around the sentence when he catches your glare in the mirror. He crosses one ankle over the other, toe of his dusty boot on the cracked tile, and sighs. What do you want me to do, baby? I gotta do my job.

On Valentine’s Day? When I worked extra to get it off, and you can’t even get your brother to swap one shift?

Joel’s expression seems to stiffen, tense with a realization that you know, and now he knows, too – he should’ve had days ago. A weighty breath falls from his nostrils, admitting some kind of defeat, and then he’s wandering carefully over to you, two hands curved over your shoulders.

He lowers his forehead onto the nape of your neck, a slow breath which flutters the loose collar of the flannel you’re wearing and sweeps down your spine. I’m sorry, pretty bird. I didn’t know it meant that much to ya.

It doesn’t, you admit, adding, usually. I just thought we could have a day to ourselves, for once.

He’s nodding, sweep of his fringe tickling the slope of your skin. It’d be a lot more romantic than spendin’ it with Jesse, that’s for sure.

Your bodies fall together with a shared laugh, a bright and charming thing in the dull bathroom light. Joel kisses the soft cushion of your shoulder and hooks his chin over, beard grazing your skin.

I’ll be back before you know it. ‘n then we can do whatever the hell you got planned for us, hm?

He’s steady behind you when you lean back, turning to place a damp kiss to the hinge of his jaw. A reply, a plea – a promise.

In the echoing dripdripdrip from the faucet, Joel pulls apart from you, two fingers pinching the hem of your shirt to pull you back into the bedroom.

You wanna walk me to the gate? he asks, pulling the zipper on his jacket.

What about your holster?

He smiles. I’m sure I’ll survive without it. C’mon. Put some pants on.

February is bitter even by Jackson’s standards – a bite of ice in the air which numbs the tip of your nose and stings the helix of your ears. The chill slips a long, sharp finger down the collar of your – Joel’s jacket, and you wrap the baggy canvas tighter around yourself.

Told you to wear som’ thicker. Joel sighs, grip light around the strap of his shotgun. His elbow nudges into yours, a wide arm wraps around your shoulder and draws you flush against his side. Head on back if you’re cold, he says, rubbing until the friction warms your upper arm.

I’m fine, you lie, eyeing the line of horses up ahead. The eager crunch of their hooves in the frozen ground, the pinkish light on their backs from the sky flooded crimson overhead – a warning from the horizon, you think.

It seems to agitate the animals as much as it does you, their heavy heads tossing nervously, ears flicking and inky eyes blinking.

Jesse meets you by the paddock, slipping Joel the reins of his horse with a curt nod, before hoisting himself atop his own.

It bleats from your lips before you can hold it back. Be careful.

Your frozen fingers claw around the zipper of his coat, tugging it upwards until it brushes against his bottom lip. The weather gets bad, you turn back. Okay?

He’s nodding, paying half his attention to your words, the other half to the little crease between your brows. Sure could use my holster against the cold, baby, he mutters, smirk lifting his cheeks and folding similar creases at the corners of his eyes.

Your eyes narrow, palms landing flat against his strong chest. Home soon?

He hums a little laugh, lips ghosting across your temple as he shifts by. Home soon, he mutters, breath steaming against your cold skin, and he leads the mare off towards the gate.

There’s a lot about Joel you admire.

Each part of him like a pebble stolen on a hike; some more jagged, a little more weathered than others, some well-rounded and smooth to the touch. Each one turned and turned and turned between your fingers until you’re fluent in every pore and vein, then dropped into your pocket alongside the others you’ve collected.

Clacking against one another until you arrive home, coat heavier with the happy burden of how much you love him. The same weight you feel behind your ribcage when you think too much about it.

He takes good care of you – has done since you first happened across one another. As if hanging his hunting jacket over your frail body was a wing over your shoulders; as if, from then on, you would never make a single move again without your grizzly bear of a man making it first.

Quiet about it, sure. Subtle. Opens the crook of his elbow for you to hook your wrist around as you wander through town together, and waits until you’re under the cover of nightfall or behind the close of your front door to do much else.

Asks with little more than a fleeting glance if you’re okay; a squeeze of your knee under the table in the dining hall. A conversation shared between closed lips and the meeting of his honey-flecked gaze, and yours. A language which lives and dies with the pair of you.

He’s guarded – and for all that he’s been through, you figure you can allow him that. Allow him his private peace. For all that he says without saying, all he does without making some big song and dance of it – there hasn’t been a second since you arrived here on the back of his horse, that you haven’t known he loves you.

It’s in him like it’s in you. A fever which broke at the first touch of his hand and yours, the first meeting of his warmth and your chill. Two opposites – cooling the painful sear in his heart, warming the barren frost in yours. Something sewn deep into your flesh, carved right through to the hollow of your bones.

And Jesus, if it doesn’t drive you fucking insane.

The front yard needs tidied up after winter, you notice, as you scuff your way up the path towards the porch. Once the last of the snow dries up, you two can get to repairing the damage done by the blizzards and the gales: fitting new shutters, planting new bulbs.

A cycle you’re still getting used to: the upkeep of a place called home. The strange feeling of having someone you call the same thing.

Your extra shifts at the stables and Joel’s long mornings out on the trails mean your home has gone neglected for a few days. Dishes and cutlery left in the sink, a pile of laundry slowly sprouting to new heights like a wild plant each time you cast a wary glance at it.

It’s not like you’ve much else to do, given Joel won’t be home for at least another couple hours. So you shuck off your jeans, letting the tail of his shirt dangle from your behind, and pick your way around each room – wiping counters and dusting corners, humming along to the crooning old records as they spin in the background.

Playing house at the end of the world. Pretending to listen for the tired exhale of a yellow school bus, mimicking the electrified babble of radio presenters between each track.

The bedroom is arguably the worst offender. Bedsheets used a few days too long, clothes strung across the floor – the relics of a late one at the Tipsy Bison. It’s no wonder you’re so fucking tired.

Echoes of stumbling footsteps and hushed, drunken giggles loop your ears, the groaning bedsprings and blunt thud of the headboard. You pluck the underwear and socks one by one, your body wincing around a satisfied ache still lingering, and shuffle over to the laundry hamper, lifting the lid to –

The dopey smile on your lips dissolves instantly. You gotta be fucking…

The buckle glints in the light, silver blinking up at you from its bed of dirty laundry. The tan strap coiled and neatly slung through its fastener; the pouch empty. Awkward and ashamed, lying there in front of you. Apologetic, almost.

Your eyes roll closed; a short, hot breath seeping past your lips. A silent promise embedding beneath your tongue to take him by the sleeve as soon as he crosses the threshold, force him to lift the lid himself. An I told you so already brewing in the pit of your stomach.

The holster’s actually pretty heavy when you lift it up in the light. Leather a little worn, stitching frayed where it should clip around his belt.

It’s the size and width of him: a thick, toned thigh slotted inside the loop of leather, fixed by fingers long void of feeling when he’s been riding to the outpost, chasing infected, plunging his knife deep into their necks.

Patrol was never your thing. Joel took you out just once – but there are cracks in your past which threaten to split you in two, it seems, the longer you spend outside the settlement walls. Phantoms which follow close behind in the form of snapping twigs, of the wind rustling in the trees overhead. Shadows living in your periphery with curled sneers and spits of filth.

You lasted twenty minutes, that first and only day, before Joel had your horses tied together and your body shelled in his own, taking you straight back home.

But the thought of this around his thigh, the thought of him adjusting it to the waistband of his jeans; his hand floating down to settle gently atop it when he’s listening for danger approaching, two fingers slipping into the trigger guard.

It…stirs something.

You pad over to the bathroom, hopping as you step into the strap. He wears it on his right leg, right? You pull it past your ankle, ball of your foot slamming clumsily back down on the tile.

Adjusting it to fit your thigh, you bunch the hem of his shirt in one fist and stare back at your reflection. Her nervous stance, hips swaying left to right as she peruses the figure opposite.

Who is she, this mirage – naked thigh decorated with her man’s leather, fingernails tracing the messy stitching and imagining the weight of his gun, keen in the pouch?

A strange aura of possession about it, like a part of him locked firm around a part of you, from however many miles away. You swear you can feel the ghost of his warmth on the inside of the strap, wrapped around your sensitive skin.

Yeah.

Stirs something, alright.

Joel’s been gone little over an hour. He’s probably at the outpost by now, logging All clear and pretending to let Jesse take the lead. Wide shoulders swaying as he wanders from room to room, a careful scope of the valley from each window, tongue tracing the bottom of his teeth.

Ridges of his knuckles white around the grip of his shotgun, squinting down the barrel. Lines drawn between his brows and at the corners of his eyes like scores on parchment, focus and concentration tight on his face.

You sink back into the cradle of your bed, that divot where his body and yours meet each night. Each part of you intertwining with a part of him: the place where you become one. His smell and your touch, your giggle and his teeth.

A sudden, powerful thing which hammers through your veins and jumps your body for a few seconds – you pull the first orgasm from between your legs within a matter of minutes. The sight of his shirt disturbed over your stomach, the feeling of blood squeezing past taut leather enough to throw you under by itself, never mind the fast snap of your fingers deep inside your body.

Another – slower, lazier, still vibrating from the first – then almost a third, but the crinkle of sheets at your ears, the pillow-soft landscape beneath your heavy body, begins to sweep you off somewhere.

And in as little time as it took to entice you into the water in the first place, you slip beneath the waves.

The house is quiet when he finally makes it home.

Jesus, Joel thinks, what a shift.

Not one infected the entire run, he can’t quite believe – but Jesse caught his palm on some warped sheet of chain link fence, then almost passed out when he looked down and saw the scarlet seeping from his shredded skin.

The pair sat for half an hour, unsheltered in the unforgiving wind, waiting for the kid’s head to stop spinning and the cold to rob the feeling from his hand.

All Joel wanted was to get home to you. You, and your hips swaying as you stand by the stove, and his hands kneading into the velvet plush of your waist, and the smell of burnt sausages and spatter of angry oil from the pan.

He’s so late. He said he’d be as quick as he could, said you’d barely know he was gone, and he’s so fucking late.

But he’s here now, at least.

He’s home.

As he kicks off his boots, snow sprinkling from the soles onto the doormat, he notices the absence of your arms around his waist. The missing weight at the back of him, no ear flat against his spine and hands interlocked above his belt. No relieved, I missed you, no nuzzle of your head under his arm.

The house is still and dim. The turntable spins in the corner, a dead crackle playing nothing for no one. Joel sniffs, eyeing the room and its new, orderly form: the books slotted neatly on their shelves, the rings of coffee wiped clean from the table.

Lifting the needle from the record, Joel calls out, Baby?

Maybe you’re in town somewhere. Maybe you’ve gone to spend the morning with the horses. But then, you would’ve been watching for his arrival. Would’ve skipped out from the stables and swung around his body, a gleeful smile and an outstretched hand. Take me home, cowboy.

And you wouldn’t have left the lights still burning, the player still turning. Your coat is still on its hook, smaller and brighter and where it belongs on the right of Joel’s. The cushions on the couch are fluffed and smooth, perched contentedly in place; the curtains draped in their tie backs.

You’re home. You’ve been home all morning.

So where the fuck are you?

Joel crosses over to the bottom of the stairs, blinking up at the painted cowboys and horses staring down from the landing. Calls your name, a faint singsong as he slowly ascends the stairs. You up there?

Down the wintery dull hallway to the bedroom door, figuring he knows the answer. And he’s right, isn’t he, when he nudges the door open and peers inside, spots the tiny lump of you in your double bed. Sunk deep into the mattress – covers you’d come in here to change, swallowing you whole.

A crooked, exhausted smile pulls across his lips; his thumb hooks around a belt loop, knee cocking.

You’re so…perfect. So heavenly, so still like this – stretched out on your front, breathing in the scent of his pillow and breathing out little puffs of air.

Joel leans over you, a heavy hand pushing into the mattress above your shoulder, and runs a featherlight knuckle over your cheek.

Pretty bird? he whispers, lighter than the long breaths from your sleep-swollen lips.

You don’t stir. No movement, save for the rise and fall of your shoulders wrapped up in his flannel.

Joel feels a pang of guilt, numbed only by the chill still through his body: he woke you this morning, before even the sun had lifted her head. Had you hunting all over the house with him, for some dumb holster that he wound up not even n–

His eyes trail down the shape of your body, draped in the sheets like white marble carved into the round shape of something beautiful, hands following the curve of your thigh. His wrist freezes when it meets the odd bulge of something, an awkward bump beneath the cotton.

He peels the sheet back, lifting it from your shoulders, your waist, your hips – until your angled thigh lies on full display for his feasting eyes.

His fucking holster…wrapped tight around your fucking thigh.

A disbelieving laugh at first – a She told me so, before he notices the indents in your skin, the stretched leather snug around your leg, riding higher than it should at the doing of your slumber.

Christ, baby, he breathes, stare glued to the folds of plaid hooked around the belt loop. Following the tatty hem down past your hip, along the underside of your ass – riding up some, right where your legs part.

And between them, all sheer and thin, twisted around itself and slipping between: your underwear. The threading of pubic hair peeking over the frilled hem of it; the sight filling Joel’s mouth with saliva.

A heavy heat forms in his jeans, an irritable weight which aches when he moves; which hardens when he pictures the image of you in his bed, his shirt, his holster wrapped around your thigh – playing with yourself while he’s been gone.

Fuck. Fuckin’…shit.

He lowers, running lips he knows are freezing cold along the burning surface of your skin, tongue slipping past his teeth to drag a wet trail along your thigh.

Your leg shifts under his touch, the startle of his chilled fingertips behind your knee, nuzzling of his nose where the holster sits smugly on your thigh. Smelling like leather and salt, the sticky sheen of sweat still glowing on your skin.

Joel takes your waist in two hands – he can’t fucking help himself, can he? – and turns you, patiently, watching as you roll onto your back so he can drag you further down the bed. Tongue flicking at the corners of his lips, thirsty for something he only wants you to feed him.

Slow, slowly. Every effort put into not waking you, to keeping you in this peachy haze between asleep and awake; your movements long and staggered, held firm against the mattress by the weight of your doze.

With a sigh, your jaw turns to one side. Joel pulls you in, kneeling at the edge of the bed with your socked feet resting on his shoulders. His shirt gathers around your waist; your hips and the thin twine of your underwear spotlighted by stripes of weakened sunlight spilling in through the blinds.

Oh, pretty bird, he groans, slipping his open palms under your ass, rough and squeezing the pillows of flesh in his hands. This all for me?

A moan wrapped in a hefty breath twists from your lips. Your knees fall limp; legs open almost eagerly, like your body inviting him in. And he accepts, takes it with eyes blown black and hungry lips parted – leans in and nestles his nose against the thrumming heartbeat pounding through your clit.

Such a good girl, he whispers, closing his lips in a kiss over your clothed mound, and your hips jolt.

You’re so fucking warm. So wet; sticky and so ready for him. He kisses your folds, suckling gently and letting his tongue dart along the inseam of your lips in flicking movements – collecting the taste of salt and feeling his cock throb against rough denim.

Off? he asks – you and the room and himself – fingers hooking around the underwear rolled on your hips.

When your back arches, body feeling the loss of his tender kiss, rolling like a wave seeking to crash against the steady rock form of his – he smirks to himself.

Joel nods. Off.

He takes his time peeling them from your body, watching as more and more of his paradise is revealed. The waves of your folds, the sheer glisten of arousal along them; the dark hair peppering either side as damp and slick as the skin beneath it.

Your panties drop from a hooked finger without a sound and he turns back, hovering over your waiting cunt with wide eyes and a slack jaw. Out front, voices call back and forth to one another – some neighborly greeting and affable conversation – but Joel doesn’t hear. Deafened to anything but the sound of your sighs and his own blood hammering through his ears.

It’s a little rushed, a tad rough, the way he presses his lips back to yours. The way his beard grazes against your most sensitive spot, and the gasp he swears he hears lift from your tongue.

But fuck, he’s missed this, the way he always does – without knowing, without actively thinking about it, without knowing it was even at home waiting for him. If his mind weren’t on an entirely different planet right now, he’d curse that goddamn chain link for holding him up, for keeping him away longer than thirty seconds from the sweet little angel resting in his bed, and the sweet little pussy between her legs.

He parts your thighs wider, tongue dipping lower and deeper as he laps at your core, almost fucking panting against it.

You squirm lazily beneath him, shoulders tensing and untensing, a half-limp wrist lifting to pet his hair and an attempt at his name between your lips. Joel, you whimper, thick with sleep and something more dangerous.

I know, baby, he’s telling you, I know, and his tongue slips inside again. His hips grind into the mattress, cock an agonizing stiff against the sturdy edge. He can feel the wet in his boxers, the precome sticking to the inside of the cotton.

Fuck, he wants to be inside you so badly, so desperately.

Another gasp sputters across your lips, cut short in your throat when his teeth bump against your clit.

Too hungry, too brash, he thinks. You’re too soft, too open for him to let it go to waste. Not like this.

He pulls back, a filthy thread of arousal and saliva between his open lips and yours, and places a sodden kiss to the inside of your thigh.

But you whine, you poor little thing – your head twisting to the other side, a second hand now blindly surfing across his shoulder, past the brush of his beard and sifting through his still-chilly hair. The loss of attention to your pussy aching between your legs; your hips lifting weakly to meet the scratch of his chin again.

And that same sound – that same Jo-oel – a sound like song, like saccharine dripping over his shoulders.

So, he lifts a hand – two middle fingers coming together to push open your cunt, instantly sliding in knuckle-deep. Sucked in by the wet mess left behind by his lips, stretching you out with slow, round movements.

You’re slowly stirring, blossoming from your sleep and turning slowly back into this world. The cold edges seeping in, the warm flush of pleasure sharpening at their meeting. He’d do anything, he thinks, to keep you here; keep you teetering on the edge, tangled up between your world and his.

J– oh, fu-uck, you whine, and he can tell you’re still blinkered by sleep. But you grind on him again – a long, languid movement which seems to spatter out at its end when the coarse hair of his beard catches against your clit.

The breath stops in your throat, punching out in a shuddered moan. Joel could come just from the sound of it.

You gonna give me one, baby girl? he pleads, forearms clamping down on the underside of your thighs. Desperate – desperate to feel you, hear you, taste you as you come undone. Just one.

You’re writhing around beneath him, as needy as he is. A winding which matches his, coiling at the bottom of your stomach; a feeling which pulls at the corners of your lips and shocks them into a smutty, half-conscious smile. Your eyes roll back, fluttering open and then snapping shut when the light floods in.

There, you say, clearest so far, movements the strongest he’s felt. Your fingers root in his hair, rough over his scalp. Keep – keep doin’ that.

Joel smiles against your mound; a cocky thing, emboldened by the sound of that little Texan twang, the curl of an accent which doesn’t belong to you. Rather, a result of your years spent with him, watching the way his mouth shapes the words, learning the low swing and swirling melody of his tongue.

As if he’s as alive within you as he is within himself; every little thing Joel knows is him, injected into your bloodstream – his dry wit, his blunt honesty, his thick fingers and his insatiable tongue.

He slips in a third, flicking them perfectly inside of you. Beckoning your release; tongue sitting in wait, a resting point for you to grind your clit against.

And he wants it as much as you do: wants to feel the clamping of your body around him, wants to taste the flood of your orgasm as it shocks through every bone in your body.

Wants to pull three soaked, pruned fingers from your pussy and slip them over your tongue, letting you clasp your fingers around his wrist; watching the half-dozing flutter of your eyelashes as you suckle on them and make those pretty little sounds for him.

Your hand knots tighter in his hair, pelvis circling steady against his suckling lips. He can smell it on you: smell the need seeping from your pores. The sleep spilling from the corners of your mouth, the happy whimpers and quiet cries for more, more, Joel, more.

And – Shit, he breathes against you, feeling a sudden rush of electricity he knows all too well between his hips. Not now, not now not before he’s been inside – Shit, baby, gotta let me go.

You whine in refusal – a petulant sound, all stubborn and greedy. ‘m so close, I –

Pretty bird, he groans, lifting his jaw. He places a messy kiss to the crease between your core and your thigh, wrist stammering with his sudden movements. You gotta – you gotta let go, you’re gonna make me come –

You’re echoing him, mumbling the words gonna, gonna come – fuck, Joel, ‘m gonna –

Shit.

Not – Fuck – not right n– Christ, baby girl, you’re gonna – you’re –

Your walls spasm, clamping and relaxing, squeezing around his huge fingers. But it’s not that – it’s not the gush of warm fluid which seeps from between your legs, coating his knuckles and dripping into his palm.

It’s not the arch of your back, the way your breasts lift to the ceiling and his shirt slips below one nipple. Not the way your head rolls back against the mattress, a broken moan tearing in shards from your throat.

No.

It’s the way your hands leave his hair in an instant, and grip around the leather on your thigh. Skin stretching thin over your knuckles, thumbs between the strap and your sticky skin; hips still riding out your high as you ground yourself, holding onto his holster.

And it makes Joel come. Hard.

Harder than he knew possible, grinding against a mattress and the inside of his fucking jeans.

He falls forward, breathing a guttural moan into the soft swell of your stomach below your navel, fingers hooking into the baggy shirt around your arms.

Shitshitshit, he pants, feeling the warm ejaculate spurt from his cock and all over the inside of his boxers. Oh, fuck, baby. Fuck me.

His hips shudder a few more times, pressing hard into the edge of the mattress before he’s coming down, slowing to a stop – still a leaden weight on your stomach. His cock almost painful, overstimulated and oversensitive.

But then – something gently tittering. A bird singing, cooing above his head. The ground beneath his temple shakes, tremors with laughter. The dust twinkles in the sunlight, now brighter, golden, streaming through the window.

You’re awake.

Joel drags his gaze upwards, bleary and glazed with sex, and catches your eye.

Feel good? you ask, sifting hair away from his damp forehead. When was the last time that happened? Fourteen?

I don’t wanna talk about it, he mumbles into your belly.

Your chest jumps, a laugh which echoes into Joel’s ear. Tastes that good, huh?

It takes a mighty effort for him to push up on his palms, slowly crawling up the length of your body until his elbows plant firm into the mattress either side of your head. He groans as he lowers his lips, parting them to let you slip your tongue inside.

The kiss is slow, tender. Your bodies melding together, teeth clacking and jaws moving in sync. A sharp taste, sweet with a singe of bitterness to it. Perfect, you think, smirking against Joel’s cool lips.

He pulls away, lips tickling the tip of your nose deliberately.

With a giggle, you push on his chest. You should shower. You smell like patrol.

Joel cocks an eyebrow. You comin’ in with me?

Nope. I got even more laundry to do now, old man.

He entertains the quip with a subtle smile, a thing which softens the creases on his face and lights a twinkle in his eyes. Quietly, genuinely, in a way which makes your heart ache a little, he whispers, Sorry I was workin’, pretty bird.

You shrug. ‘s okay. You made up for it. And – I found your holster. You lift your knee, letting the buckle shine in the sunlight.

You did that, Joel agrees, nodding and glancing down at the thing. He hooks a finger around the strap, giving it a little shake. Maybe I oughta lose it more often.

Hm, you shrug, or I can just keep it safe for ya. Looks good, don’t it?

He feigns a disappointed smile, a resigned sigh before he looks back up.

Better ‘n when I wear it, he admits, and his lips crash down to yours again.

#same universe as 'wish you were here' - if you want #joel miller #jackson!joel #joel miller fic #the last of us #tlou fic #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #joel miller smut #tw somnophilia #tw dubcon

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willowser · 1 year

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bakugou watches the news while washing the dishes.

muted, because he wouldn't be able to hear the weatherman over the faucet, anyway, and his brow is furrowed in concentration — at both his hands and the forecast for next week. behind him on the stove the kettle warms and you eye it lazily, jumping back and forth from it to the way bakugou's muscles shift beneath his shirt as he scrubs.

sometimes it amazes you, the strength he's built within his body — the broad span of his shoulders as he rolls them, sleeves almost too tight for his biceps, and the rest of the material hangs loose on his body, swaying off his tiny waist as he swaps weight from one foot to the other — but you know it hasn't come easy; even now, from where you're sitting, the heavy, pink scarring on his cheek is visible when he tips his head down.

you stand quietly, shuffling across the tile of the kitchen until you're close enough to wrap your arms around him. bakugou says nothing as you press your cheek into his back, only peeking over his shoulder when you press a gentle kiss into his soft cotton tee.

"thank you for spoiling me," you murmur, nuzzling further into him when you receive only a grunt, one you feel more than hear. "the food was really good, sweetie-pea."

the silly name makes him snort and he shakes his head when you hum, amused. dinner has made you full and tired and you lean a little further into him than you maybe should, though if he minds at all, he doesn't show it. instead he just sighs, breath stuttering when you slip your hands under the loose material to gently run over his stomach. just like you, he's soft, a tummy full of food, but it's not long before his abdomen is contracting, muscles suddenly tight under your touch.

you laugh quietly into his shoulder, holding back the urge to bite him. "are you flexing, tough guy?"

"shuddup," he grumbles, shifting his weight once more. "...bein' fuckin' touchy."

at that you inch closer, now purposely much too in his space — and yet he still doesn't push you away. around his shoulder, you watch him run a soapless plate under the water for almost two minutes before his focus returns and he moves on, and then you do bite him, because you can't help it.

bakugou hisses and jerks away when your teeth sink into his bicep, flushed face made more obvious as he turns to glare down at you. before he can get a word in, you kiss him in the center of his chest, over the scars of his heart, and offer him a sweet smile.

"love you,"

his eyes dart away on instinct, embarrassed, but he's been working on his vulnerability; his lips twist once before he's pressing them into your hairline, leaning back against you in return as the kettle starts to squeal.

"drink your tea, woman," he grunts, nuzzling into you the tiniest bit before letting you free. "love you, too."

#cant proofread phone at 2%#i've been thinking about this exact scenario for two days now #get OUT of my HEAD #domestic bakugou 🥺 tummy full of food 🥺#this is so self indulgent he would hate me LOL #i use too many pet names and cant help being too touchy idk #bakugou drabble #✿ willow writes #✿ thoughts: bakugou #✿ theme: domestic bakugou

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farlydatau · 1 year

Photo

Sak Yant Unisex Heavy Cotton Tee, Sak Yant Thai Twin Tigers Shirt, Muay Magical Thailand Igloo White T Shirt, Thai Spiritual Graphic Shirt

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loripatt21 · 9 months

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#https://www.etsy.com/listing/1553923795/unisex-heavy-cotton-tee

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l0vergirlv0mit · 5 months

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Pretty Girl

Pairing: Hazel Callahan x Reader

Summary: smut with no plot <3 😛

Contents: strap-on r!receiving, fingering r!reciving, dom!hazel, sub!reader, gagging r!receiving, referring to a strap-on as a cock, degration r!receive

a/n: sorry for not posting a while I lost my sparkle for a bit tbh. also didn't receive a soft masc under my Christmas tree this year? really weird. Ends abruptly.

Just coming home from work, Hazels quietly playing games at her pc wearing a very frustrated expression. The only thing pulling her out of her transe was the door to your shared apartment shutting. You slip your heels off and shed your heavy coat.

Hazel watched you intently, her face spreading with a smile.

“Cmere.” Hazel beckons you with a smirk on her face. She leans back in her gaming chair with her toned thighs spread in her black 5 inch inseam shorts and plain white tee You walk over and she’s eyeing you up and down.

You stand in front of her and she hooks her fingers under the waistline of your pants pulling you closer. She wraps her arms around your hips and places a kiss to your clothed abdomen. “I missed you honey.” She looks up into your eyes.

“I missed you too baby.” You stroke over her cheek and she melts into your hand. Hazels eyes becoming heavy at your much needed touch.

“I was thinking about you all dayyyy.” She lifts your shirt to ghost her lips over your stomach her hand rubbing up and down your hip.

“Yeah? What about me?” You replied cheekily smoothing down her messy hair. Your tummy tightening from the tickle of her soft lips. You let out a quick heavy exhale and Hazels blue eyes penetrate yours.

“I was thinking about how pretty you are…” She places one kiss on your tummy as her fingers fiddle with your belt. “How pretty your voice is…” Her finger work on the button of your jeans and she leaves another kiss lower on your hip. Your pants hang loosely on your hips. Her finger breaches the waistband of your panties and she looks up at you again.

“Especially when that pretty voice is moaning my name over and over again.” Hazel finishes and rubs over your erect clit. Your breath hitches and becomes more ragged. “F-fuck Haze I just walked through the door baby” You struggle out a response your fingers gripping her hair tighter.

“I know baby but you just look so beautiful.” Hazels puppy eyes are big and pleading. “I just wanna make you cum baby.” Hazel begged and your legs nearly gave out. You nod fervently and quickly pull her up to go to the bedroom.

Hazels lips find yours the moment you back hits the bed. You kick your jeans off at the speed of light. “I can’t wait to see your pretty face all fucked out for me.” She cups your pussy as her lips attack your neck. Rubbing quick circles over the cotton material of your panties.

Your nearly thrashing at this point. “Be careful please I don’t w-wanna, ah, go to work tomorrow all b-bruised.” You squeak out.

“What? You don’t want your coworkers to know your girlfriend fucks you so good?” She pulls her face out of your neck looking at you with a pout. All while she’s shoving your panties to the side to insert her middle and ring fingers inside your wet fluttering hole.

“ahh fuck!” You whimper at the sudden intrusion. Her fingers pump in and out of you at a fast pace. Your eyes fluttering and mouth agape.

“That’s right baby, thats the pretty face I love so much.” Her darkened eyes scan over your features. You grip her wrist not knowing if it’s to make her slow down or go deeper.

“Feels s’good.” You mumbled out, Hazels watching every facial expression not wanting to miss a second. Hazel dipped down by your ear. “Yeah you like that? Like the way my fingers feel? You like being fucked like a good slut huh?” She was dirty today probably from being home all day. She took a much needed pto day. With a cocky look on her face as she fingered you as deep and fast as she should.

Your poor whimpers soon turned into louder moans. Hazel was quick to shut you up with a sloppy uncoordinated kiss. Her lips slamming into yours as if you were her air. Her tongue didn’t wait for acceptance. You could feel her desperation with her every movement. With you now quiet the wet squelching sound reverberated through the room.

You disconnect your lips for a moment, “More.” You said breathlessly then trying to go back to her soft lips, but hazel is quick to dodge your kiss. Making your brows push together. “More? Like blue 7 inches more?” Hazel said almost out of breath with a shit eating grin on her face still continuing her rough pace on your cunt.

“M-mhm!” You struggled to reply. She slowed and pulled her fingers from your needy pussy. Placing the digits in her mouth and sucking not breaking eye contact with you once. She gets up and pulls a box out from under the bed grabbing her harness and the light blue toy.

Crawling back onto the bed she placed herself between your legs. The tip of the toy sitting against your clit. Causing your hips to buck up into her. Hazel laughs at your actions rubbing up and down your thighs. “Eager girl.” She rubs the tip up and down and stopping to tease your slit.

You bite your lip and look up at her with pleading eyes. “Patience baby I’ll give you what you want just let me play for a second.” Hazel continues to tease you enamored by how wet you were. She pushed the tip in making you let out a sign of relief. Just for her to take it right back out and relish at the strings of slick connected to her cock.

“God. So pretty.” She whispers to herself ignoring the fact that your squirming in anticipation. Hazel finally lines up again and sinks into you. Watching every inch get swallowed with ease. Gummy walls adjusting immediately. The back of the toy hitting her clit just right. She nearly jumped at the sensation taking her out of her transe.

Her strokes are slow and thoughtful making sure to hit just the right spot to have you begging for more. Hazel brushes your hair out of your face smirking. She was teasing you with the slowness of her hips, your brows pushed were together in frustration at her slow thrust. Not like you could do anything because her hands were keeping your hips still.

You let out a quiet “hmph” trying to buck your hips into her. She cocked her head to the side. “What’s wrong baby?” Hazel brought her thumb to your clit to make even slower circles on your sore bud.

You bit your lip muffling a whimper. “Hazel stop fucking teasing.” You said sternly, but she was unaffected looking at you with questioning eyes instead.

“You wanna try that again? Maybe I should pull out right now?” She was dead serious pulling out a couple inches just to prove it.

“No! No I’m sorry! Please, can you go faster baby.” You cried out tears nearly welling in your eyes. You batted your lashes trying to help your case. A smirk spread across her face again.

She bottoms out once again. “Since you asked so nicely. Open up honey.” She placed her pointer and her middle finger at your lips. “Be a good girl and keep quiet for me.” Hazel finished and you opened up for her wrapping your lips around her fingers.

She began thrusting again getting you used to the feeling before going faster then faster. Her eyes glued to your chest as your tits bounced. Soft whimpers gargled in your mouth muffled by her fingers.

The pace she had was absolutely perfect. Your eyes rolling into the back of your head from the pleasure. “We aren’t gonna use that tone again are we honey?” Hazel said through heavy breaths using the fingers in you mouth to gag you. Furthering her point.

Spit dribbled down your chin from sucking on Hazels fingers for so long. Babbling sweet nothings around her digits. Hazels hips are stuttering from the friction of the strap against her clit. She was closer than you but she’d be damned if you didn’t cum on her cock first. “Dumb baby.” She said plainly, taking her fingers from your mouth and slapping you lightly, but just hard enough to sting. The pain mixing with the pleasure felt amazing. The constant push and pull of her praise and degrading was intoxicating.

She pulls out suddenly, flipping you onto your stomach. The swiftness of her movements made you wince. You let out a sad cry at the empty feeling hot tears filling your eyes. You push your ass in the air, arching your back as much as possible for her. You needed her more than anything on earth. “Good girl I didn’t even have to ask you.” Her words sent warm shocks all over your body. You hummed in contentment.

Hazel rubbed over the soft skin on your bottom tenderly. A loud smack rings through the room as you lurched forward. You were sure that hand print was gonna be there for at least a couple of days. You squeeze your eyes shut and clench your jaw. You deserved it after all, talking to her how you did.

“You take it so we’ll angel.” She praises rubbing over the sore skin. She holds the toy in her hands poking at your entrance to prepare you. She chuckles in surprise at how quick you are to push back into her. Fucking yourself on her cock without any assistance. It was enough to make Hazel let out a loud shaky whimper.

Her eyes getting even more lidded she was a bit embarrassed honestly. Even more so when you huffed out a laugh even after trying to suppress it. Her grip on your hips tightened as she fucked into you relentlessly. Your weeping greedy pussy taking everything she gave you.

“Y-yeah you think s-something funny? Let’s see how funny it is when you don’t cum huh? How does t-that—nhg— s-s-sound?”

Hazel was lying of course she needed you to cum. It was the only thing swirling around in that empty little head of hers. But you didn’t know this as your blood ran cold. Frenzied “I’m sorry”s and pleads falling from your lips. Tears falling down your cheeks at the mere thought of it. You were almost there too it would be downright evil at this point.

Your legs shaking uncontrollably giving away that your about to cum. You pray that Hazel won’t pull out of you at any second. “ ‘M g-gonna c-cum.” You said quietly still give her a chance to deprive you if she felt like it.

When she didn’t stop a blissed out smile grew on your heated cheeks. “Y-yeah? Me too.” Hazel whined out less cool and more desperate. It sent you over the edge. Your body went limp slumping in its position, offering no resistance against Hazels thrust.

Her thrust are greedy as she’s bringing herself over the edge. Her strokes twitched and lost rhythm as shes sporadicly pumping inside you until you both where overstimulated and exhausted.

She pulls out of you slowly and your body sinks into the mattress. You laid limply trying to catch your breath. Hazel in a daze gets off the bed and drops the strap to the floor. Laying back down onto the bed. "You're not a slut, I'm sorry, I love you." She says quickly patting down your hair. You laughed at this weakly.

"I love you too baby." You replied to her scooting closer. Hazel pulls you on top of her and kisses the top of your head. "whadya do today at home?" you asked her in a sleepy voice.

"I seriously only thought about you, you have no idea how much I needed that." Hazel holds you tighter.

#bottoms 2023 #hazel callahan x you #hazel callahan x reader #hazel callahan #bottoms movie #hazel callahan imagine #hazel bottoms #hazel callahan smut #bottoms hazel

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mysticmunson · 1 year

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walls of jericho (e.m.)

summary: eddie's guard has been up for everyone, but you make his reservations tremble, and he doesn't know what to think of that.

authors note: hi i wrote this and it's very angsty. the semester is finally done so i'll hopefully be around more :) much love. xx elora. (my blog is 18+)

warnings: allusions to smut, angst, eddie being bad w emotions :( (there’s a happy ending) eddie is 22 and reader is 21 :)

thank u to my loves @lilacletter @bimbobaggins69 and @andvys who i spoke about this fic with! :D

As soon as the words left your mouth, Eddie thought he was dreaming, that you weren’t sitting on his bed and timidly asking him a question he never expected. You nervously twisted the hem of your black cotton skirt, not daring to look into his eyes that widened with surprise.

“Will you take my virginity, Eds?”

He knew you were having a hard time intimately as you told him almost everything, with a few failed dates ending with a peck on the cheek. As you both grew older, it became more embarrassing for you to be so inexperienced, even if he assured you it was fine.

Perhaps it was a stupid idea that shouldn’t have been announced, but his response made it even worse after he was assured you were being serious.

“Only if nothing changes then okay.”

His hands roamed to uncharted territories, feeling how your skin warmed beneath him and your breath staggered. His lips touched yours for the first time after years of only meeting the apples of your cheeks.

Your voice bounced from your chest as he entered you, the soft hymns of your pleasure clashing with the harshness of his room. He hushed your winces as you accommodated to his latex-covered cock, never more vulnerable than at this minute.

His bister eyes bore into yours, mouths agape as your breath exchanged for gasps, while he was applying pressure to the bundle of nerves beneath your navel. Bliss arose from thin air as you finished, his hips stuttering shortly after as some of his body weight remained on you.

As his nose pressed to your ear, he knew he fucked up, but he couldn’t bring himself to move until you squirmed. Rolling to his side, he didn’t meet your gaze that shot at the side of his cheek.

“How was it?” You asked meekly, pulling his sheets to your chest to cover yourself, adjusting to the viability of his old pillow.

“Good, you’ll make a dude real happy.” He quipped, staring at the popcorn ceiling above him, not daring to welcome the immense warmth he felt coating his gut. He told himself it was because he was in orgasmic bliss and that he knew you’d delight someone with your body.

The night went on after clothes returned to both of your bodies, he noticed your abnormally quiet demeanor, but decided you must be a little shocked at the recent events until you went to leave.

“You make me happy, Eddie.”

He shrugged, mumbling a ‘you too’ as he yanked off his shirt from today and put on an older band tee with a hole on one of the seams. He’d remove his sweatpants once you left.

“No, Eds, I mean… You make me really happy, I like you.” You spoke, sounding celestial in a cream-white blouse. With the look he gave you during sex, it gave you the motivation to speak your mind, but now with his silence, it felt grim. “Please say something.”

His back was to you now, looking down at the wrinkled sheets, cursing the fact he let it get this far. He couldn’t face his emotions now, he needed to be alone.

“You didn’t say anything.” He stated coldly, but you awaited some hope, that this couldn’t be the result. “The one thing I said was that nothing changed.”

“Nothing has changed, Eddie, it’s just-” You consoled, but the burn behind your iris’ were betraying you.

“No!” He snapped, turning to face you with beet-red cheeks, “I told you no feelings, don’t try to make me the bad guy. You’re my best friend and we need to agree that you didn’t just say that, okay? I’ll see you tomorrow.”

With that he stomped to his front door and swung it open, waiting for your heavy footsteps to leave in embarrassment. His head hit the door as it shut, biting his lip and clenching his eyes shut. It was for the best, he’s doing this for both of you.

That was hard to believe as he heard your choked cry before your car purred, pulling from the trailer park until it became a small light near the highway. Grabbing a beer, he switched on a record and took off his pants.

He lit the rolled blunt tucked in his bedside table and took a deep hit, feeling his fingers tingle as he vanished into the thrashing of Steven Duren through his boombox. The walls of Jericho etched inside of his mind teetered, but never fell and he wouldn’t let that happen.

The barriers within him remained stagnant as he went through the next week, remaining his chaotic self on the battlefields of Hawkins. He showed up full of energy for Hellfire, only earned one day of detention, and sold to more clients than normal.

Meanwhile, the drive home was one of the most humiliating moments of your life, trudging inside your apartment and getting in the shower. It was foolish to believe he liked you this way, just based on how kind he was with you. Your stomach churned at the thought of him looking at other women as he did to you, that every ounce of sincerity you believed was contrived.

The week came and went as you worked and caught up on school, focusing on that instead of on yourself. How sometimes you could smell his cologne from his presence weeks ago, feeling the grazing embrace at encompassed your shaking frame only to be left alone in your bedroom.

You had called Robin and Steve to catch up as they missed movie night the Friday before, the night you and Eddie became closer then further than ever. The diner floors were freshly waxed, your shoes announced your presence before you could say hello.

“Hey, what’s up?” Robin questioned as you sat, “Where’s Freakazoid?”

“I don’t know.” You shrugged, grabbing the plastic-covered menu, and looking at the fake images of the food that wouldn’t hit your table. The mention of Eddie made you queasy, anxiously pondering if every time you left your apartment is when he would call, but each time, the call log remained barren.

“What? You two are inseparable, I thought you held hands when you pissed.” Steve joked, but was genuinely curious about the metalhead’s disappearance.

Robin and Steve hadn’t seen Eddie since last week when he returned a VHS copy of a western that Wayne liked. Nothing seemed peculiar and they told him why they couldn’t make it to movie night a few days later as Robin got a B on her calculus test. Her grades seemed to be the one thing her mother focused on, so she was grounded aside from work.

Your continued silence made them confused further, looking at one another to see if there was a missing component, but nothing was transmitted. A waitress came by to collect your order before heading off, coming back briefly to give you your drink.

“What happened?” Steve asked, noticing your shoulders tensing and scratching at your collarbone.

The humility was consuming you, unable to pick up your phone and call him, the number you knew by heart. The self-confidence that you had been working on vanished over a few sentences, your face shoved into your pillow as you drifted into the white noise.

“Nothing, just needed some space.” You disclosed, revealing the slight truth without too much of the bigger picture.

“Lies. Lies. Lies.” Robin bites with no malice, sipping her Dr. Pepper from the glass cup, “You’re acting weird, don’t act weird, that’s hair’s job.” Steve elbowed her arm at the dig, scoffing as he drank his Coke, fidgeting with his watch.

The truth sat on the tip of your tongue, knowing it would feel better to remove it from your sole subconscious, but it also held a bomb. One that would reveal the intimacies, your naivety, and Eddie’s coldness. The two were a sarcastic pairing, but they weren’t cruel.

“Eddie and I slept together, my first time.” You mumbled, looking at the gold dainty rings on your fingers before up as Steve choked on his drink, not expecting the answer. He would’ve heard of it from his friend, surely, but he also knew you wouldn’t lie.

“What the- So what happened?” Robin caught herself, seeing your defeated expression as you drew shapes on the table with your fingers.

The hardest part became lodged in your throat, constantly in an internal battle of if Eddie was being cruel or honest or some odd combination. His words were blunt, but he began with them. It was you who spoke out of turn, but it felt so cruel.

“I told him I liked him,” You whispered, the wavering in your voice rising, “He told me we agreed on no feelings and that he wouldn’t be made the bad guy. He made me agree that I never said anything, but he hasn’t spoken to me since.”

Looking dumbfounded, the pair opened their mouths to provide comfort, but the waitress returned with their meals. For Robin, a plate of pancakes, and for you and Steve, two burgers and fries. Grabbing the ketchup, you tapped the bottom of the glass to slide some out.

“Shit, Y/N,” Robin breathed out, eyes still widened, “I’m sorry that’s-“

The sound of your drink hitting the table ceased her reply, though the action wasn’t done with intention on your part.

“No, no. I shouldn’t have said anything, he said from the beginning he didn’t…” You trailed, eating a fry to push the wail down your scratching throat, “Like me.”

Wiping his mouth with the white napkin, Steve scoffed, pointing in your direction. “Don’t, he’s being a total jackass! He shouldn’t have talked to you like that.”

Nodding, you let Robin divert the conversation to something else that consumed her mind, more than happy to think of anything, but those brown eyes looking in yours. Halfway through a story about an interesting couple that made their way to the beaded back section of Family Video, you excused yourself to the restroom.

Waiting a brief moment, neither one of them could hold back the commentary they desperately wanted to spill, but refraining for your own well-being.

“What is his problem!” Robin scoffs, shoving a syrup-covered bite in her mouth, “He had to have known how she felt, I mean, she’s not exactly the best about holding her love back.”

It was true, you were affectionate to people you cared for, and Eddie was one of your closest friends. You had seen him at his lowest and highest, for every midnight drive and stroll in the mall. You didn’t falter your affection when kids began to tease you both with Eddie receiving the brunt, choosing to stay at his side.

The feelings were contemplated for years, many mocking your demeanor in which you would shrug off their teasing. But the constant reminder of how you did act differently with him lingered until one day you sat across from him silently as he wrote out his latest DnD campaign that you knew. It scared you, but somehow being hurt by him would be okay in your mind if it meant you could have him briefly.

“It’s weird as hell, man. I’m gonna talk to him, it’s not fair to her.” Steve mused, sympathizing with the abandonment of a first lover not reciprocating their feelings.

While Steve’s first had been a random girl at a party, he still experienced immense pain sitting beside her in geometry. He didn’t even want to conceptualize the pain you must be enduring, hoping it would vanish rather than fester.

After you returned, the discussion resumed about strange customers and annoying strangers until there were only crumbs and reminisce of syrup.

Waving goodbye, you went back home, the quiet car ride reminding you too much of that day just last week that had you crying all over again.

Steve dropped Robin off at home before driving to Forest Hills with Eddie’s van nowhere to be seen. Groaning, he smacked the steering wheel, now deadset on finding his friend before the sun went down.

As he went through town, he looked for the car, stumbling across the record store sticker between a Radio Shack and Dairy Queen. Spotting his target, he pulled into the parking lot and headed inside, the dust swirling as the wind brushed past the old types of vinyl.

A girl with long black hair was talking to Eddie, feeling his muscles through his leather jacket and fluttering her eyelashes. He watched as she noticed the time, scribbling down a series of numbers.

“I’d love to see you play sometimes, I’ve heard great things about going backstage.” She purred, her voice becoming louder as Steve snuck closer, only appearing when she had vanished.

Grabbing the small paper from his friend's hand, he shoved it in his pocket and crossed his arms. He resembled an upset parent, too tired to deal with bullshit, but caring too much to let it go unnoticed.

“Hey! Man, what the fuck?” Eddie exasperated, holding his arms up, “Give me that.”

“No, not until you explain why the hell you’d say that to her.” Steve stated, raising his brows in anticipation.

What excuse could he possibly give for viciously rejecting his best friend and having a random girl touching him up in a public place, all within days.

“What? How did you even hear, I thought it was just the two of us in here until you showed up! Honestly thought she’d give me head in the bathroom-“ Eddie began smugly, smirking at how she came onto him on her own accord.

“Oh my God, I don’t care about her, I mean our best friend who’s been crying for a week.” Steve clarified, grimacing at his words.

He didn’t miss as his friend’s face went slightly pale, arms falling to his side, looking to the side at the selection of 1960s hits.

“It’s none of your business, nothing even happened.” He huffed, turning on his heels before his Reeboks scuffed out of the old building, but Steve was hot on his tail. He never realized how broad his friends' strides were until now, barely able to climb into his passenger door unwarrantedly.

Eddie huffed, his finger tapping against the leather steering wheel cover that was beginning to peel. Steve stared at his profile, anticipating some form of reaction that would involve a yell, but the silence felt heavier.

“Get out of my car, man.” Eddie sighed, looking over at his friend, “I wanna go home and smoke.”

Steve shrugged, stepping from the van and slamming the door, retreating back to his BMW. He clicked the button before pulling away, leaving Eddie in the parking lot with the other older cars.

Truthfully, Eddie should’ve anticipated that Steve wouldn’t give up that easily. So when the BMW pulled into the trailer park moments after Eddie had, he acted annoyed, but let him inside anyways.

“Don’t be stingy, I want hits too.” Steve said, walking behind him and into his room which had clothes scattered against the ground and beer cans on the dresser.

“Don’t get fucking pushy, Harrington, why should I give you my good weed?” Eddie questioned, biting words as he pulled out his grinder.

Sitting beside the other man, he began twisting the silver container, hearing the small blades slice the fresh bud that he could smell.

“I just want to know what happened, calm the fuck down. And I should get your good weed because my high school parties made you so much money!” Steve retorted, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall, making sure his shoes hung off the bed.

This was true, Eddie was able to help Wayne with bills during high school because of their unspoken deal. Steve would keep the assholes away from Hellfire if Eddie sold him good weed and sold the rest at Steve’s parties. It was a just arrangement and became the building blocks of a peculiar friendship.

The pair sat with just the sound of the old AC machine filling the space as Eddie took rolling paper and set it on his thigh. Years of practice came in handy, assembling the blunt in record-breaking time and lighting it with the lighter from his right pocket.

Taking a hit, Steve remembered why he used to smoke frequently, it was soothing. Definitely much easier to take than alcohol which left him groggy and nauseous the following morning.

“So?” Steve began as his friend's shoulders visibly tensed, taking a deep drag and holding it in his chest before it seeped through his cracked lips.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Eddie falsely assured, picking at a piece of skin beside the nail of his middle finger, and looking down at his lap.

“Cut the crap, dude.” Steve snapped, but regained slight composure at the reminder that Eddie would likely not respond well to hostility, “She told me and Robin what happened.”

The forced laugh sounded bizarre, but he kept up the facade of being annoyed with you for being hurt. In reality, the thought that you went to someone else with a problem instead of him gnawed at him, but it was only because he was the problem.

“I told her from the beginning I didn’t want anything to change, it wasn’t a crime.” Eddie scoffed, gulping when he remembers the disappointment in your eyes, a similar one being in his friends.

He feels a set of chills when he faintly hears your cries from outside his front door in the back of his mind, the smoke on the exhale burning more than usual. He kicked off his tennis shoes, thudding on the floor and rolling twice over. Crossing his legs. he picked at the cut on his hand-ripped jeans.

Steve looked at his friend in silence, the smoke blurring some of his features in the dim light of his room. He wanted to get angry at his words, but he had known him for a few years now and knew there were layers to his emotional presentation.

“What did she say?” Eddie caves, hearing the thumping against his chest in an anxious manner, taking another hit to combat the nerves.

“She said you took her virginity and when she said she liked you, you said you agreed no feelings, that you wouldn’t be made into the bad guy, and that you both need to pretend she didn’t say it.” Steve sighed as his friend winced subtly at the venom in those words, the awaited guilt bubbling, “Remember how Mary made you feel?”

Eddie’s throat constricts at the mention of the mysterious woman he met one night at a bar near Indianapolis, a spur-of-the-moment road trip to see a band he liked when he came across Mary. She had no idea he was seen as a loser and that he was a virgin, she came onto him and he was thriving.

After a quick fuck in the back of his van, he felt overwhelmed as she slipped out the door. His face was flushed as he adjusted his clothes, tossing the condom in a plastic bag he got from the gas station. When he asked if she wanted his phone number, she laughed, pulling down her shirt.

“I don’t roll like that, loverboy.” And she was gone. The intimacy they shared made him believe this was unlike any other time, that she truly was becoming infatuated with him, but she left without a trace.

He hoped he’d be able to win her over until she saw her going into another guy's car, speeding off to the sound of Aerosmith.

The memory upset him, he didn’t like being vulnerable during sex afterward, only doing quick fucks where they both understood what they were agreeing to. The mere mention of her name put him back in that spot, sitting in silence as he watched her walk back into the club.

“That’s not the same thing.” Eddie cringed, passing the weed to his friend who took the final hit before putting it out in the ashtray. Despite the alleviating drug, they both felt the pressure of the actions and the reciprocations.

“You’re right, it’s not,” Steve accepted, giving his friend confusion for a moment, “It’s actually much fucking worse.”

Eddie’s blood began to boil as his insecurity soared, Steve was one of the only people who knew about the incident with Mary, and he only discovered it after Eddie accidentally revealed he wasn’t a virgin anymore. He tried to avoid the harsh rejection, but it was hard to explain the story without it.

“No, it was not, asshole!” Eddie rejected, crossing his arms like a petulant child, that resentment of that night and every time someone left him hanging knotted in his body.

“Really? It’s not?” Steve taunted as Eddie shook his head, “Fucking a stranger and them leaving is worse than being your best friend’s first, someone who stood by you through every time you got yourself into trouble, and when they opened up, you raised your voice at them and said they never said anything?”

The reality of Eddie’s words swiftly made him lose his breath, running a hand through his curls, catching on one of his gaudy rings. Removing his finger, he pulled it from his hair, fiddling with the silver band with a small bat engraving.

The ring had been a gift on Eddie’s 16th birthday from you, secretly saving up most of your money from your summer job to pay for it, and one he never took off.

“Why’d you say it?” Steve asked gently, “It’s not like you man, especially not with her.”

“The last thing I need is to lose her, the greedy part of me couldn’t stomach the thought of her being with someone else either.” He revealed, inadvertently revealing his feelings, “No one would’ve treated her right for her first time.”

“I know you don’t want to tell me how you feel, but you need to tell her. What you did was really fucked up.” Steve added, “It’s okay to be scared, but it’s not fair to hurt people who weren’t. She worked up a lot of courage to do that.”

The mention of courage almost broke his composure, recalling every time you mentioned being terrified of rejection. That your crush on Matthew in freshman year ended terribly when someone told him your feelings, leading to him mocking you in front of everyone.

He hated that he was added to the list of men who did you wrong, even after wanted to beat up every single one before him. He needed to make this write somehow or, at least, soften the aftermath. He had to be something he grew to despise, vulnerable.

Days went by before Eddie finally found the strength to approach you, a sick feeling in his belly that he couldn’t shake as every night passed. He approached your door Thursday evening, his boots sounding against the hollow apartment hallway. He ignored the hidden key by his foot as he knocked, one he would’ve used weeks ago.

The door flew open, the breeze blowing some of the hairs from your glowing face, resting your shoulder against the wood. He fought the urge to slump his shoulders when he saw your face slightly fall, mouth opening to see the tip of your teeth.

“Hey, kid, can we talk?” He adjured, his leather jacket making his skin heat further under the nerves.

“Oh, yeah, sure.” You murmured, moving back to allow him in, shutting the door behind him as you went to the living room.

The room was spacious, with a couch from the 70s you had found at a garage sale that Eddie helped you transport it to your home, decorated with blankets and pillows, and a boxy television.

Both of you sat down on the couch, your bare knee touching his denim-clad one, but to his dismay, you move it quickly. He watches as you fidget with your fingers, looking down at your lap.

“How are you?” He asked, scratching his collarbone that had been exposed by his stretched shirt collar.

“I’m fine,” You nodded, “How are you?”

The response was polite, but it wasn’t you. The tight-lipped smile was a facade, not comparable to the radiance your laugh exuted.

“M’okay, wanted to talk to you though.” He replied, turning towards you with a knee on the cushion.

“Okay, I just have a, uh, date tonight so it can’t be too long.” You disclosed, turning towards him as his face dropped, the blood in his veins freezing.

Opening his mouth to respond, he nodded, beginning to play with the rings on his fingers.

A date. You have a date. How could he interject this? What good is it to pour his heart out when you have someone getting ready to see you. He wasn’t one to harbor regrets, but now, he wished more than ever that he hadn’t done what he did.

In that same vein, he also knew he was shit at masking something he cared about when looking them in the eyes. He couldn’t walk out of here with that same weight on his chest. He needed to wrap it in a bow and leave it at your feet as you chose to share it or throw it away. No matter what, it wasn’t just his anymore.

“I’ve been a dick,” Eddie conceded, “I’m sorry for running last week, you didn’t deserve that. I fucked up.”

Even when mad at him, he watched as you softened at his self-depreciation, something you fought with him about. It scared him sometimes when he would realize just how much power you gave one another with the other.

“I haven’t stopped thinking about you. At all.” He expresses, the intensity not waning, “As weird as it sounds, I got angry because I knew I felt the same, but I know me. I know my track record, how nothing good ever lasts, and how I screw it up eventually. I- I just can’t lose you.”

Looking at him with a perplexed stare, he saw you contemplating if he was being genuine. You never doubted his sincerity till now, but he could understand why.

“You’re incredible, I don’t know why you’ve been my friend for so long, and why you would let me be your first time.” He exhaled, the faintest smile that didn’t brush his dimples, “You excite me, enchant me, but you scare me.”

Standing to pace, he ran a hand through his valleys of curls, “You scare me because when I was inside you and any other time before, I couldn’t fucking think of anywhere else I’d rather be.” The tears he hadn’t released in years burned as he choked, avoiding your eyesight.

“I know you have a date, so I’m going to go, but I-” He stopped when he saw your feet near his.

He looked up just before you met his lips, hugging him like a vice as he returned it, trapping each other. The shock of what you were doing was prevalent as his lip quivered, hungrily meeting yours.

“I like you too, Eddie. That didn’t change.” You murmured against him as he said a quick reply and kissed you, “I’ve liked you for longer than I’d like to admit.”

Not giving you time to jump, he yanked up your thighs that soon wrapped around his waist. He, thankfully, knew the inside of your apartment like the back of his hand and found your bedroom quickly.

Before he set you down, he pulled away, almost moaning at your puffy lips and glistening eyes.

“What about your date?”

The warmth rose to your cheeks as you pulled yourself closer to his chest, staring downwards. “I lied, I just wanted to see you jealous.”

The fake squawk of repulsion from him made you bite back a smile, seeing his brown eyes enlarged and his pink lips expanded. He dropped you to your bed suddenly, but his body covered yours soon after.

“Well, mission accomplished, I wanted to slash his tires.” He rolled his eyes, but smiled at your giggle, “You’re an absolute, menace.”

As the laughter subsided, the look in his eyes softened as the walls of Jericho fell to rubble. You could see the soft slivers of light brown within, the glass-like quality of the eyes you could see with your own closed.

Pushing his hair back from his face as he did yours, it was almost like seeing one another for the first time. Practically every other aspect of yourselves had been revealed to one another except that one small part. The part that contained the future you had no idea existed yet.

It was in that moment he felt complete tranquility, that everything he fought so hard to protect was safely nestled within your grasp, but he also knew you had been holding it for quite some time now.

“I want you to make love to me, Eddie.” You whispered, your breath fanning his face and stroking all stress-driven crease etched on him.

His agreement was sealed with his mouth, kissing down your neck, lingering on the sensitive points that derived a louder whimper than the one before it. As your eyes fluttered closed, a sharp bite hit your earlobe, making you squeal.

“Eds!” You squirmed, but it was no match for when he placed all his body weight on top of you with a laugh that vibrated you.

“That’s for getting me riled up about your nonexistent boyfriend.” He teased, kissing behind your jaw, rubbing his nose against the soft skin.

“I mean, now I do have a boyfriend.” You sighed, turning your head to meet his throat as he rose, cheek pressing to your forehead. Your lips were so delicate, the scraps of lip balm went to his reddened neck, nibbling on his collarbone.

“Really? Who?” He joked, expecting an extravagant response as he had given you, but he was always surprised by you.

The legs on the bed quickly wrapped around his waist, pulling him flush against your core and hands went up his shirt, nails scratching his broad back just enough to leave a temporary mark.

Moaning unabashedly, he buckled his hips against you, fist tightening. Sitting up he tossed his shirt to the ground, smirking as you looked at his body in awe, licking your lips.

He stood to pull off his jeans, getting his right foot stuck in the tight material. Kicking it off in frustration, you watched fondly at his struggle, removing your own clothes until clad in undergarments.

When freed from the denim, he was about to crawl on top of you before he scanned your body, mumbling a blend of curses. Yet, you sat with a shy smile, giggling at his affections toward you.

“Oh, you’re gonna ruin me, kid.”

hi im giving you a hug.

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undercoverpena · 8 months

Text

comfort came against my will

gif credit to @perotovar

joel miller x f!reader summary: it’ll begin with a little beg, a whispered plea—fingers wrapping around his chin, mouth ghosting over his: Let me ride you, Miller.

word count: 1.8k warnings: smut, p in v, jo's spelling and poetic nature. dedication: happy birthday to my friend, @swiftispunk - i know you love Joel, and i hope you love this. special thanks to @perotovar for letting me use their beautiful GIF that inspired half of my imagery, if not all of it.

There’s something about heavy rainfall.

The way it’s cleansing, renewing—almost reinvigorating, depending on when the last time it fell.

Joel found that the only downside is the scent it leaves behind.

Once, a long time ago, it used to leave behind a smell that others wished to bottle—a wish to burn it in candles or hang cheap versions from their car’s centre mirror in haphazardly cut-out trees.

Now, it has an aroma that reminds him of death. A stench which has dug itself into the hairs in his nose, unwilling to let go—clinging, desperate not to be forgotten.

But, you like the rain.

He'll always find you near the window when it pours, eyes tracing the droplets. Your chair purposefully, and with all intentions, pointing to the muck-covered window. Nothing more perfect, you’d murmur—fingers wrapped around one of the crystal glasses the two of you discovered on a run, pressing it to your cheek, off-coloured liquid sloshing as you sigh.

He’s pretty sure he could name a few other things more perfect than rain, but he does find it hard to argue that it isn't the most perfect soundtrack when your thighs are on either side of him.

Especially when the weather is like this. Where a flash of lightning can illuminate you, casting you in a brief spotlight that kisses over your curves and the evidence of your survival.

Tonight, it begins with you draining your glass, turning your head, eyes shimmering as you move from your place, coming to join him on the bed.

Your fingers, both a little rough and soft, wrap around his chin, before a little beg, a whispered plea fills the air—mouth ghosting over his: Let me ride you, Miller.

He couldn’t argue, would never protest. But, your mouth stealing any words he wishes to say. Because he likes having you under him—pinned, close, unable to look anywhere but directly at him. For when you stare, you make everything else pale in comparison. Made the world around mute, it all fading to nought.

You do so with ease, with a single look. One he imagines has always been there, all very much you, even if the state of things has tried to steal it away. He can easily imagine a younger you modelling it, one without the stress lines of living, it all softer, gentler.

Joel doesn’t mind that isn't the case now. He doesn't care for gentle or soft. He likes how sharp you are, that you can cut, wound and make him bleed. He enjoys that, even if he doesn’t deserve anything from you, you stand side-by-side with him, choosing him—wanting and needing, all raised brow with a smirk to match.

If you listen, the rain is telling us something.

You're close to his ear as you mumble it, lips ghosting down his cheek before a clap of thunder steals the phantoms of your whispered echo.

His hands fan over your hips, pushing up one of his tees that you're wearing, sliding it up with his thumbs—feeling how your skin moves, shifts, lengthening over your muscles and bones. His mind busy, occupied, only thinking about how beautiful you are, even when drenched in darkness.

How you’re all untouched except the few scars, the nips and scratches left by those who wished to end you, but found that you weren’t so easy to dispose of.

Joel knows that you’re vicious, all sharp teeth and a menace with a knife many shouldn’t ever want to meet in a dark alley, not that the world has cottoned on. Each try, each fail. He often watches, in awe, pleased, because you're like him. So smooth in the way you're prepared to split someone open, coat your boots in their ichor as the rest of them spill out. Leaving him, often, battling his feelings at the sight.

But while he knows that side of you, Joel also knows the other you.

The one who still believes the rain is romantic. A soul who wishes for a pretty print on a dress, even if you'll only wear it in the four walls of the place you two share. Modelling it for him, dipping your toe into a fantasy with him. You also like the little things, such as a pair of matching glasses, enjoying that they belong together, a metaphor for something you clearly desperately crave.

If he were an honest man, one not ripped to shreds and put together all wrong, he’d tell you you’re a more perfect sight than rain. Not just when you’re sitting on top of him or when you’re under him; not just when you’re panting, venom in your eyes and splattered with cherry-red. But, when you’re just beside him.

Breathing, existing, sleeping.

He’d tell you that you’re an image perfectly cut out of an old version of his happy ever after, slapped down and glued beside him now, even when he’s all tragedy and tragic. That your darkness dances with his faultlessly—making him less alone.

That for you, he’d want to be better, which included letting you go—even if you’re pulling him close—because a man such as him, with hands stained and scarred with horrors, shouldn’t get to touch smeared perfection. That you’re not really poisoned or rotten, just living, fighting—claws digging into the soil, all desperate for another moment.

It’s why he lets you have your fun, and then he flips you under him, palm to your cheek, stare burning into yours.

What’s it tryin’ to tell us? The rain.

You fit him inside of you perfectly—just like you’ve fitted yourself in his space. You’re all knotted around him, heat warm—inviting. Your thighs pressing close, legs crossing behind him, aiding, helping.

Not because you don’t think he’d get you there, but because you’re conscientious, caring—it appears in smaller gestures others wouldn’t notice, but he sees them. Bottles them. Keep them close when you’re not beside him.

Not that he shows it.

Unsure once again, for the billionth time since you stood beside him (and never left), what you see in him—what you think he can give you. Because he’s old, worn, somewhat broken beyond repair—not that it stops you from trying.

“More, Joel. Please.”

You don’t call him pet names, but he hears them in the silence.

They quiver and talk in hushed voices in the kitchen that is covered in grime and not fit for a beauty such as yourself. Some even sprout on his tongue, a fresh seedling, all untouched and unruined—not yet weeded from his throat.

He finds it harder to not let them fall when you sound as pretty as you do. When your nails press half-moons into his skin, leaving a tale of your own in his forearms and biceps, meeting him with everything you have as your walls tighten, delightfully, a match made in hell—because heaven would never allow him. Or you now, he supposes.

It’s why his thumb slides between the two of you, licked with his spit, mixing with the slick against your swollen clit. You gasp, spraying sweetness around the air that's heavy-layered with sex.

He’s forever starving, never quenched—a need for you that runs deeper than mere living and existing. Not ever able to purge you from his system, never wanting to either. Because you’re entangled with him, rooted, anchored inside of him so you can bob along and never go under.

Not that he’d let you.

Joel would never.

His hips punctuate that sentiment. Wanting you to know it, driving them in, so the words don’t go in one ear and out the other. He aims to stamp them in you, fuck them so deep into you you’ll never forget. The sound of skin on skin, groan and grunt, all filling the space, evidence of his determination, swirling around your returning breath, still moaning, murmuring—all scratchy and rough.

“—Let go, Joel. Fill me.”

It rips from him, your name.

Each letter is important, each sound giving the attention it deserves as it coats the air—mouth finding the space between your ear and neck, kissing, teeth nipping.

“Stuff me full.”

The rain hammers heavier, beating its fists against the glass as though it’ll only calm when he does as you’ve asked. As though you and nature are tied together, bonded—the real pairing made in paradise.

It’s then your lips find his, sloppy, messy, all uncoordinated. He can taste the bitterness of your drink on your tongue and the pleasure he’d given you. His mouth lapping it up, licking into yours, tongue far past your teeth as he grips you a little tighter, ruts into you a little deeper—as if hoping there’s more of you to explore, more vastness he can leave a mark on.

It's muffled, but you cut the air with his name as if your tongue is a blade. Your body tightens, mouth ripped from his as you bare your throat, chin lifted, eyes closed as it washes over you and your walls become a vice, hugging his cock in a way no one else ever has.

He's close.

So close.

Another flash, it all bright, exposing the sweat collected on your skin, the path it has made between your breastbone, the way your body looks under him.

Then it’s electric, ripping through him as he stains, writing you’re his all in thick ropes of white—his hips stuttering, slowing, riding it out what it is you do to him. It’s a feeling akin to being folded inside out and then put back again—making his muscles tense and relax, his bones forget they ache, as his throat burns with the force of his exclamation.

It’s minutes, little seconds clumping up until an expanse of time collects, and he’s ready to leave the space between your thighs.

Your eyes on him, all unwavering, mapping his features as though you’re an artist, ready to make him into a sculpture.

He doesn’t tell you to stop, he's learnt his lesson from doing as such—eyes ablaze, full of molten, words sharp as ice, all a twisted juxtaposition as you lay into him all the ways you were, are and am enamoured by him.

He’s sure his list is longer, but he swallowed that, too.

Joel had just nodded, left you angry for half an evening until his arms wrapped around you, and he felt you melt, less lava and more a candle-lit flame licking at him until he took you to bed.

Even if a scrap of time has passed since then, Joel is still no closer to finding himself comfortable with the look—the one he suspects comes with words. Ones you don’t thankfully spill, but ones he would mean just as much if he really asked himself.

It isn’t until you tap him, that he moves. You’re more nimble, quicker on your feet to fetch a rag to clean yourself and then him. Each touch delicate, your stare concentrated before the cloth is cast to some corner—a thing you’ll move and clean tomorrow.

And then, you’re beside him, finding the place you usually choose—all intentional, willingly given—as his arm finds itself around you. A flash of lightning displaying the two of your shadows pressed together, merged in ways the two of your souls are.

Swallowing, he finds your stare is back on the window, the world outside painting its own version of a masterpiece.

“Y’never said what the rain’s telling us.”

You smile, before you lift up your chin, looking at him through your brows. “Just stories. The rain likes to tell stories.”

an: ily, han.

#joel miller x reader #joel miller x reader smut #joel miller x you #joel miller x f!reader #joel miller x fem!reader #tlou fanfic #hbo the last of us fanfiction #pedro pascal characters #pedro pascal characters fanfic #joel miller smut #pedrostories

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lovebugism · 8 months

Note

omg omg omg I can’t wait for tcar part 9 🥹 I miss eddie spaghetti and peach so much 🥹🥹🥹

THE CUSTOMER'S ALWAYS RIGHT | sunshine, sometimes

summary: the gang searches for peace of mind at lake lemon. after an enlightening conversation with steve, eddie unknowingly stirs up a storm. (17k)

pairing: virgin!eddie munson / f!reader, mentions of past steve harrington / f!reader

tags: experienced!reader, idiots in love, domestic bliss (road trip edition), newly established relationship, fluff, hurt/comfort, the gang's all here! TW probable typos, swearing, mentions of b*lly h*rgrove and toxic relationships, kissing, heavy petting, fingering, eddie coming in his pants (vol. 3), smut 18+

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˗ˏˋ ꒰ ♡ ꒱ ˎˊ˗

You think it’s entirely possible that you made Eddie up in your head.

Sleeping next to you, painted in satin shades of pale pink and milky white, he looks exactly like a dream.

His curls are wild, spread across his face and cotton pillow in a chestnut-colored halo around his head. Soft snores billow from his rosy mouth in heavy, even breaths — a heavenly sound you think could lull you back to sleep all over again. His long lashes flutter against the flushed apple of his cheek, made a gentle strawberry shade from the ardor of his slumber. The soft color splotches the tip of his nose and the plush of his lips.

Eddie’s made of all the prettiest colors you wish you could paint. Maybe then he’d finally see himself the way you do. He possesses an otherworldly kind of beauty — one bordering on religious — something holy people used to sacrifice themselves for.

And here he is. In your bed and on your mouth, like a vivid ruby lipstick stain you’re not rushing to rub out just yet. Or ever, if you had anything to say about it.

“I can feel you staring, weirdo,” Eddie mumbles, slurred and heavy with sleep. The words come out muffled because his face is shoved into the pillow.

You’re not as embarrassed at getting caught as you probably should be.

You could deny it if you wanted. His eyes are still shut. You’ve got every ounce of plausible deniability to defend yourself with, but for some strange reason, you don’t feel the urge to. He was far too pretty not to be unabashedly examined, like a piece of art you could stare at for ages and find something new in every time.

“Really?” you hum in return, voice as quiet with leftover fatigue as your sleepy smile. “I didn’t know my boyfriend had superpowers.”

The smile that tugs at Eddie’s mouth is absentminded but no less sincere. It’s lopsided and rosy and full of all the love he has for you. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get tired of being called your boyfriend. He figures his chest will swell every time he hears the words — as long as they spill from your mouth, anyway.

“You weren’t supposed to know about that,” he teases quietly — eyes still shut, grin still pressed into the pillow.

“I can keep a secret,” you promise in a whisper. Your hand rises from beneath the fluffy comforter to spread across his cheek. Your palm settles warmly at his jaw as your fingers brush a few rogue curls from his forehead. “As long as you give me a kiss for it.”

Eddie’s smile, weighed down by sleep and adoration, only widens at your words.

His button eyes are swollen as he blinks the haze of sleep from them. It feels a little like his heart has stopped when he’s able to see you clearly.

It’s like he’s looking down a high-up cliff or staring into the deep abyss of outer space — a warm, empty, and lurching feeling in his chest that only comes from witnessing something so profound.

The profundity in question is you.

It’s your wild hair and puffy cheeks and crooked smile. It’s the way your swollen eyes twinkle with adoration at an ungodly hour of the morning. The way your honey voice seems to match the golden sunrise. You’re an angel in the flesh — a divinely ethereal being wearing his Hellfire tee to sleep in.

The beauty you are takes him by surprise for all of half a second. It makes him forget how to breathe and makes his brain go all fuzzy. It’s like he’s seeing you for the first time every time he looks at you.

“Well, as long as it’ll keep you quiet,” Eddie huffs, feigning annoyance, as he lifts his head off the pillow to settle onto yours.

His plush lips press against your subtle smile a second later. Your mouths entwine something heavy, like maple syrup or marshmallow fluff — a kiss so full of sleep and distant longing.

But that’s all it is. A kiss. It’s nothing more than an innocuous peck that Eddie stamps upon your mouth. His nose smushes into the side of yours, and he’s gone as quickly as he came.

Your shut eyes flutter open again. They widen when Eddie ducks down for another sneaking peck. He lingers a few moments longer this time, like he can’t quite get enough of you the same way you can never seem to get enough of him.

Your grin grows. You feel a bit like you’re glittering all over when Eddie settles back onto the mattress. But maybe that’s just the rising sun peeking in flaxen shades from the window — or maybe it’s love sparkling like orange embers in your chest. Maybe it’s both.

Maybe loving Eddie feels pink and gold like the sun rising in the east and setting in the west.

It’s just as easy, anyway.

“Ooh,” you singsong with a smile as you prop yourself on your elbow. “Two for one deal, huh?”

The boy shrugs one shoulder. His leadened lids fall over his chocolate syrup eyes when sleep threatens to pull him under again. He shifts against the mattress to get comfortable, though it’s much harder without you pressed against him.

“I gotta secret identity to protect, sweets. Gotta make sure we keep it under wraps and everything, you know?” The tired boy’s mumbles are followed by a hearty yawn that scrunches his sleep-ridden features.

“Well, you can pry this secret from my cold, dead hands,” you lilt quietly, leaning down to sprinkle a featherlight kiss to his flushed cheek. His skin is warm against your mouth, rosy with a good night’s sleep.

“Well, except for Robin,” you whisper shortly thereafter. “I have to tell Robin.”

Eddie exhales sharply through his nose in place of a laugh.

“And Steve, too. He’ll be mad if I tell Robin and not him.”

“Right,” Eddie scoffs with a tired nod against his pillow.

You can tell he’s trying hard to stay awake for you. He’d done this the night before, too — kept talking to you even though his body was threatening to shut down after a long day of school and road-tripping. You’d called him out on it then, and he confessed that it hurt too much to stop talking to you. He said he’d rather be exhausted than miss you, even for the faintest fraction of a second.

A smile hints at the corners of your lips as you stare down at the boy. You duck down once more to brush a fleeting kiss to the warm apple of his cheek — there and gone again.

Eddie sighs at the heavenly feeling, then scrunches his features in annoyance when the mattress shifts beneath him.

“Where are you going?” he grouses over the sound of your padding feet and the door creaking open. He’s got one tired eye squinted when he rises to look at you over his shoulder. His untamed curls are as drenched with sleep as the rest of his softly swollen features.

You stand in the doorway and smile back at him. You don’t look nearly as exhausted as he does. That’s only because you spent the better part of the morning ogling at him, of course, but he doesn’t need to know that.

It wouldn’t change anything, anyway.

Slumber looks too good on you. It’s got you glowing like a pink and orange sunrise, grinning like the morning dew has kissed you. It’s a very distinct part of your beauty that took Eddie several days of unabashed staring to understand. You’ve got a far-off kind of quality about you, dreamlike.

You’re a nymph made of flower petals with unearthly eyes and angelic lips. You’re a swan princess who’s enchanted his imagination. His mind can’t go anywhere without bumping into thoughts of you — like some romantic spell you’ve cast upon him.

Still a bit grumpy with sleep and overcome with yearning, Eddie makes a mental note to add you to a future campaign. What better way to tell someone you love them than by making them your muse, solidifying them in the history of you forever?

“I’m gonna tell everyone that my boyfriend is basically the metalhead equivalent of Clark Kent,” you joke with a crooked smile that flashes your similarly crooked teeth.

The door creaks when it shuts behind you. Eddie’s chest aches with the empty feeling of missing you. The warmth of adoration lingers, however, as though you’d never left at all.

˗ˏˋ ꒰ ♡ ꒱ ˎˊ˗

Thankfully, no one had gotten Jason Voorhees-ed while you were sleeping.

You make your rounds about the cabin, peeking into darkened bedrooms and making sure everyone was where you’d left them. You knew Robin hadn’t truly meant her words from the day before, about Ted Bundy or some equivalent creep stalking the woods of Lake Lemon. She’s sincere but in a blatantly irrational sort of way. Sweet but slightly insane. She’s an illogical genius that unintentionally gets in your head.

You’re grateful to find that you hadn’t woken up in the middle of slasher film, however. You’re able to exhale a trembling sigh of relief as you walk into the kitchen.

Steve The Hair Harrington unknowingly keeps you company as you break out the supplies needed to make a couple of teenagers a sufficient breakfast. His soft snores fill the quiet cabin from where he’s sprawled out in the center of the pull-out couch in the living room. He’s twisted in a thin white sheet and gripping a single pillow like his life depends on it.

He used to hold you like that, too. Like you were a buoy in an ocean and the only thing keeping him afloat. He’d cage you in his arms with a grip that only seemed to intensify with his sleep. It felt like being suffocated almost. But in a good way.

The memory is glittering with reminiscence instead of soaking in heartache.

You don’t miss being with Steve, nor do you miss the person you were when you were with him. You do miss the closeness of him, though — in the simplest, most human way. Also, you just really like taking the piss out of him and all his little idiosyncrasies.

With his sleeping form so near, everything you do feels so much louder in the quiet. The fridge closes too aggressively, the eggs crack too sharply, the cabinets close too harshly. You grimace with every noise you make, checking over your shoulder to make sure Steve hadn’t heard from across the room.

He hadn’t. ‘Cause he tends to sleep like he’s hibernating.

He doesn’t rouse when a humming car crunches against gravel when it pulls into the driveway outside — or when the bowl of pancake batter in your hands clatters to the countertop accordingly.

The milky white concoction sways in the container, splashing in pearly dots onto the gray granite. You’re too distracted to focus on the mess. Your heart starts to race at the appearance of the sudden visitor with the irrational thought that Ted Bundy was strolling up to your doorstep like some kind of offbeat traveling salesman.

God, you need to stop hanging out with Robin so much. Or watching so many horror movies. Maybe both.

Because it’s only Nancy.

It’s sweet, beautiful, lithe Nancy Wheeler and her beat-up Station Wagon.

Her curly hair is cropped at her shoulders, hastily combed through and pinned out of her face with a butterfly clip. Her pretty pink skirt swishes around her knees as she reaches for a leather satchel in the backseat. Her purple and white Emerson College tee is tucked into it, matching the same-colored Converse on her feet.

“Hey,” she greets with a pretty wave and delicate smile when she catches sight of you in the doorway.

“Hi…” you respond, mixed with a breathy sigh of what should be relief.

Because she isn’t Ted Bundy — or some local Lake Lemon serial killer. She’s far too pretty and far too kind to be either of those. But your heart still thrums something fierce against your ribcage when you look at her. You’re still drenched with ice-cold fear when you know you should be relieved.

But despite your clammy trembling hands, you hold the door open for her.

She winces at the sight of Steve’s sleeping figure on the couch, ocean eyes widening at his freckled back peeking from beneath the thin sheet. Her footsteps become noticeably lighter as you lead her into the kitchen.

It’s far too big for just the two of you. The open space is filled only with a distant awkwardness and the potent smell of sweet vanilla you’d dropped into the pancake batter.

“Sorry…” Nancy grimaces as she sets her bag on the dining table, as though her company was something she needed to be excused for. Her bushy brows pinch together, and her doe-eyes swim with apology. “I know I was supposed to be here last night…”

You shift your weight on your feet across from her, arms wrapping around yourself for further comfort. She’s just a few feet away from you, but the distance feels cavernous.

“Yeah, is— is everything, you know… okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s just— it’s dumb,” Nancy scoffs out a laugh, shrugging off your worry with ease. Her gaze flits to the ceiling. You can see smudged eyeliner around her eyes, like she’s still wearing yesterday’s makeup. “I got carried away with the school paper after school, and I didn’t get home until late, and I… I figured I should just wait until morning to make the drive, you know?

You nod slowly in response — for a couple seconds too long, maybe — as you think of what else to say. “Well, was, uh— was traffic okay, at least?”

“Yeah. It was fine,” she answers and bites back a yawn. “People around here are amazing drivers, you know, so… It was a perfect, anxiety-free three hours.”

Her plush pink lips curl into a smile.

Yours follow suit, but the breathy laugh that spills from them feels much more forced.

“You’re probably tired, huh?” you wonder, then ramble before she can answer you. “I could get Steve to move upstairs with Robin— or Robin can come down here, and you can take the bed. Unless you wanna share with her, but fair warning, she does kick in her sleep, so…”

A giggle spills from Nancy’s mouth. It’s a soft, bubbly sound that squints the edges of her eyes. Her pointed chin tucks to her chest like she’s trying to hide the gentle grin from you.

You can’t tell if she finds your babbling amusing or endearing like Eddie does.

You quickly realize you don’t care — you’re just proud that you’ve made her smile. And, fuck, you can’t even blame Steve for wanting her more than you because look at her. You should hate her, yet you can’t take your eyes off her.

“No, I’m good. We can… deal with all that when everyone wakes up, I guess,” she dismisses with a shake of her head.

You vaguely catch her eyes darting past you to the tornado of breakfast behind you — a whirlwind of uncooked food, miscellaneous containers, and crumbled napkins. It’s a mess only a gentle, well-meaning child could make. That’s what you feel like most days, anyway, so you guess it kind of fits.

“Do you want help with breakfast?” Nancy wonders when her gaze flits back to you.

You can’t tell if she’s asking to be kind or if she really wants to. You decline either way. “No. You’ve— You’ve been driving all morning.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” you affirm with a wavering smile.

Her grin is equally sheepish. She falters, a tad bit awkwardly at first, before mumbling something and heading out the back door to explore.

A trembling sigh of relief shakes through your chest when the sliding glass door swishes shut behind her.

It gets better over time — the preliminary tension that settles like suffocating humidity between the two of you — but it never gets any easier. A forgive but can’t forget sort of rigidity you can’t quite smooth out.

You get only a few more minutes of uninterrupted solitude after Nancy’s gone. The last bit of peace you’re bound to have all day.

A door clicks open and shut again from down the hallway, followed by the subtle scuff of socked feet against carpet.

Your eyes widen softly when Dustin appears from around the corner, though you figure you really shouldn’t be surprised. Of course he was the kid that woke up before the rest of his friends. You feel a bit like you should fix him a cup of black coffee while he reads the business section of the newspaper. He’s far more mature than you were at fourteen.

“Oh,” you hum quietly, a soft smile twitching at the edges of your lips. “Morning.”

Dustin’s swollen eyes squint at you. His gaze darts around the room, as wild as the chestnut curls on his head. It’s strange not seeing him in his usual Thinking Cap. He looks a little foreign in his baggy blue Scooby Doo pajama pants and baggier yellow Camp Know-Where tee.

“Where’s Eddie?” he wonders aloud when he turns back to you, like he can’t quite fathom seeing one of you without the other somewhere nearby.

Your chest aches. You don’t know why.

Well, you do, but you figure it shouldn’t hurt as bad as it does.

Dustin was Eddie’s friend. He had zero obligation to care about you the same way. He didn’t have to like you past his not-so-subtle admiration for your boyfriend, but it still hurts that he doesn’t think you’re as cool.

“Uh… Still sleeping. I think,” you lilt, voice as high and light as the salty breeze slipping past the slightly ajar backdoor.

“Oh. Okay.” Dustin nods and doesn’t say anything further. He doesn’t seem as weighed down by the silence as you are. He peeks over his shoulder at Steve’s rousing figure on the couch and then at the pots and pans of food on the counter. His tired blue eyes fill with light when they flit at you again. “Can I help?”

He’s suddenly aglow with a boyish sort of enthusiasm. His bushy brows raise and a smile pulls at his face, and you find it dreadfully hard to tell him no.

“Sure. If you want to, but—” You’re about to prattle on and on about how he shouldn’t feel obligated to. That he’s a kid on vacation and can sleep in if he wants. That he shouldn’t have to worry about helping you if he doesn’t really want to.

But he’s already walking to the sink, flipping on the faucet so he can wash his hands.

Your aching heart swells with warmth.

˗ˏˋ ꒰ ♡ ꒱ ˎˊ˗

The rest of your friends wake up one by one.

Mike and El come out shortly after Dustin, the latter already dressed for the day. She’s a ray of sunshine compared to her grumpy boyfriend. His hair is a wild raven halo, and his cheeks are lined with indentions from the sheets. El hangs on his arm in a pair of jean coveralls, sparkling like the cerulean waters outside.

“Wanna call Hopper?” you ask the blushing girl from where you scramble eggs at the stove.

She nods with her cheek smushed into Mike’s shoulder, eyes wide and sheepish like she’s embarrassed about wanting to talk to her dad. You don’t blame her for it. You tend to call Hopper after most minor inconveniences.

Dustin mans the kitchen while you help her with the telephone. He’s very meticulous about the cooking, like he’s got flipping pancakes down to a science. He’s too good of a sous-chef for you to get mad at him for stealing from the stack every now and then.

Robin and Max are sitting at the dining table by the time you get back. They’re practically zombies, silent and grumpy, with their freckled features scrunched like they take offense to the early morning.

Lucas is the last of the kids to come out, though a part of you thinks it might’ve been intentional.

He’s traded his pajamas for day clothes — Hawkins Tigers track pants and a fitted t-shirt. He idles in the kitchen for several long moments with his trembling hands balled into fists. You can tell he wants to sit next to Max. The thought of rejection keeps him from gravitating towards her, though. Instead, he stands at the counter next to Dustin and tries to hide his grieving.

Steve comes second to last — which is strange, because he was the first one there in a sense. The volume in the kitchen grows too loud for him to ignore. When he comes to the begrudging realization that there’s no falling back to sleep, he decides to join the rest of you.

His feet trudge down the hall when he returns from the bathroom. The only remnants of slumber he wears are the sweatpants and wrinkled t-shirt he’d thrown on sometime after waking up. His structured features are seemingly too sharp to be weighed down by fatigue.

“Where are those little shits going?” he wonders in the place of any actual greeting. He eyes Mike and El as they depart through the sliding glass door. His bushy brows scrunch in confusion and distant worry — neither of which ever seem to leave him.

“Probably to talk to Nancy—”

“What?” Steve sputters, wide-eyed and gaped mouth. “Nancy’s— Nancy’s here?”

Your brows pinch at his shock. You scrape fluffy yellow eggs from the skillet into a large bowl, fit to feed a sizable family — yours of which has squeezed like sardines into this cabin. “Well… You did invite her, didn’t you?”

“Well, yeah, but…” he trails off, features twisted in puzzlement. His anxious hands prop against his sweatpant-clad waist. “When did she get in?”

“This morning—”

His eyes fly open once more. His head whips over his shoulder, like he might see her standing there, then turns back to gape at you again. “And you didn’t wake me up?”

You scoff a faint laugh at him. “Why would I wake you up?”

“‘Cause he’s in love with her,” Dustin answers for him, mouth full of the pancake he grips in his right hand. “Obviously.”

“Shut up,” Steve squints at him with all the annoyance of an older sibling despite having been an only child all his life. His irked features relax when his cinnamon gaze flits to you. “Where is she now?”

“Uh… She went for a walk a while ago,” you answer absentmindedly, as though she hadn’t been on your mind the whole time. “I think she’s sitting out by the beach waiting for everyone to get up now, though.”

You and Steve share similarly narrowed eyes when you look out the kitchen window. The brunette girl sits at the square table outside the cabin. You can only see the profile of her pointed features as she smiles up at her younger brother and his girlfriend — a look so full of annoyance it can only be love.

“Maybe take it down a few notches before you try to talk to her, alright, Stevie?” Robin teases from the dining table.

“Yeah,” Lucas lilts with a slow nod, obviously playful in his dogpiling. He leans against the counter with his arms crossed over his chest, trying hard not to smile too wide. “You look a little crazy right now, man.”

“It’s only ‘cause you little shits drive me crazy,” Steve defends in a monotone.

“Go tell her breakfast is almost done,” you advise with a sincere smile, though your eyes sparkle with mischief. “You can use that as an excuse to talk to her instead of whatever bullshit you were about to make up.”

Steve nods with a flat face. “Thanks, Peach.”

Dustin and Lucas help you transport the containers of food to the rectangle dining table — pancakes, eggs, sausage, and only halfway stale biscuits. Basically whatever leftover groceries you could find in the cupboards and the fridge.

Steve is too busy idling in one place to bother helping. With his eyes trained on the sliding glass door, it’s too apparent that he’s in his own head. He’s trying hard to work up the courage to talk to a girl he’s known for years now.

As you sit in your seat at the table — beside Robin, across from Max, with a spare chair open for Eddie on your other side — you watch the fidgeting boy from over your shoulder. His pointed features harden slightly with his newfound bravery, his chest puffing with a wavering breath in. You watch him take a firm step towards the door, but he’s stopped in place by three bodies already walking towards it.

Nancy was already on her way back, with Mike and El at her side. Steve had been too late — too doubtful of himself, too frightened of the pushed-away problems he’d caused. He’s forced to share awkward, trembling smiles with his first love and not a thing more.

You feel his heartache as if it were your own.

Eddie’s footsteps stomp, stomp, stomp down the spiral staircase when he finally comes down.

Your heart warms at the very sight of him, as though you were looking at the rest of your life in the flesh — wild hair, swollen eyes, wrinkled t-shirt, and all. It’s too early to smile as wide as you do.

“Morning, Eds,” you greet, because everyone’s too busy stuffing their faces or writhing in unrequited love to do it for you.

His lips curl into a soft smile, weighed down by fatigue but rosy with his love for you. The pink expression grows when he sees the full table and the seat you left open for him. “Morning, sweetheart,” he lilts in response.

“How convenient,” Dustin squints from the head of the table, adjacent to Lucas and Eddie’s vacant seat. He’s got scrambled egg clinging to the side of his mouth as he chastises, “You show up right when breakfast is done.”

“Sorry, Dusty Bun,” Eddie apologizes with a teasing inflection that would imply that he’s not actually sorry. His chair scrapes against the kitchen tile when he pulls it out from under the table. “It’s not my fault I have impeccable timing.”

Your eyes dart to the boy standing beside you. They dance across his sleep-ridden features as your lips quirk in a cheeky half-smile.

You know better than anyone that he’s only ever late to everything. The only time you can count on him being early is if there’s a Hellfire campaign or when he’s coming in his jeans.

Eddie grows sheepish with the same understanding. His cheeks flush with a poorly hidden smirk as he sits down next to you. “Don’t say anything, Peach,” he mutters quietly to you.

The table, now sufficiently full, seems to thrum with life. Whether they’re picking at their food like Steve and Lucas, or stuffing their faces like Dustin and Robin, you can’t help but smile softly at each of them.

They feel like family — like you’ve upped and carried your home with you three hours away. You’d forgotten what not being alone felt like before now. Your chest swells with a newfound life you didn’t even know you were missing.

“Uh, did everyone pack a bathing suit?” you wonder aloud with a bright smile on your face, a measly question to fill the silence and the sound of silverware against porcelain plates.

Everyone nods and hums soft “yeah”’s with their mouths full — except for Eddie.

The boy beside you stills with his fork in front of his mouth. His dark eyes go wide as he looks over at you. “Oh, fuck,” he mutters in the place of an answer. “I was supposed to pack a bathing suit?”

You find his forgetful disposition rather endearing. You can too easily imagine him standing in the middle of his bedroom, mouthing everything you told him to pack while counting them on his fingers. You can see his brows furrowing with a distant pout while he asks himself “what the hell am I forgetting?”

You’re too in love to be annoyed with him — or ill-prepared.

“I packed trunks for you. It’s okay,” you murmur in response, voice as quiet as the smile you look at him with.

Eddie’s chest aches. It’s too warm to be his heart breaking — too fluffy and sticky and sweet. It’s a burning sort of pain that can only be pure, unadulterated love.

“God, you are the woman of my dreams, baby,” he confesses lowly, mostly to himself.

You only hear the words leave his mouth because he’s leaning in to kiss you. You don’t meet him halfway, but instead grin softly at his efforts, which you know are bound to be interrupted.

“Hey!” Dustin scolds through the bite of biscuit in his mouth. “No kissing at the table!”

Robin licks syrup from the corner of her mouth, then concurs through her pancakes, “Yeah. You wanna make everybody here puke or what?”

“Or what,” you answer the rhetorical question, meeting her deadpanned expression with a smile. You tilt your head to your shoulder and scrunch your nose. “Preferably, at least.”

“How about everyone just keep their hands to themselves, yeah?” Steve advises in a monotone. His honey eyes flit around the table with a significant focus on you and Eddie and Mike and El. He waves his fork in his hand, still piercing the cooled piece of scrambled egg he hasn’t eaten yet. “How about that?”

“Okay, Hopper,” you scoff to yourself.

El snorts a quiet laugh from across the table, on Max’s other side.

Steve flashes you an annoyed glance from across Robin sitting between the two of you. Despite his monotoned features, his eyes sparkle with an adoration for you he couldn’t conceal if he wanted to.

He tries to, anyway.

“Bite me,” he grumbles with narrowed eyes.

Eddie huffs dramatically from beside you. The sound gets your attention — makes you turn your head to look at him again — which is all he really wanted to do, anyway.

“Stop flirting!” the boy grumbles, wide-eyed and chewing through his mouthful. “I’m sitting right here!”

˗ˏˋ ꒰ ♡ ꒱ ˎˊ˗

Eddie Munson was never supposed to believe in love at first sight. That stuff was for children, chick flicks, and over-played ballads — not metalheads who’ve never been loved before and have had to improvise all their awkward tenderness accordingly.

But then he met you. And he didn’t love you then, but he knew something was different. Off. Metamorphosing, even.

It was different from love — whatever strange, foreign thing he was feeling way back when. It didn’t hurt nearly as much, and it didn’t feel like every single one of his atoms had been set ablaze. It was softer, warmer, a gentle familiarity in a stranger who just wanted to get high.

You sat down in front of him on that rotted park bench in the middle of the woods, and it felt like he was staring the rest of his life in the face. There was no falling head over heels like all the songs on the radio said there’d be, but rather an “Oh, hi, it’s you. I hope it’s always gonna be you.”

He feels that foreign, fluffy feeling in his chest even now as he stands on the shore in a pair of trunks you bought because you knew he’d forget his. He watches you wade into the cerulean sea with a lily sort of hesitance. You’re so much smaller than the wide-open, but he loves you so much you seem swallow it all whole anyway.

You’re a pretty little thing in a canary yellow bikini, sunshine incarnate. Your thighs are round and full. The pudge of your stomach is soft and tender. The scarred marks on your back and shoulders are like so many little kisses, each of which he longs to give you in return.

You possess an intimidating sort of beauty, one that Eddie found easier to admire from afar. You were entirely too captivating — warm and gentle like a summer rain dying to be danced in.

“Stop being such a baby!” Robin calls from further in the water. Her sandy-colored hair is a darker shade from the salty sea and pushed back over her forehead and ears.

Her chapped lips curl into a pink smile as she looks up at you. Not even she could hide her admiration for your fantastical, demoniacal beauty.

“The water’s not even that bad!” the girl continues in half-hearted taunts. “Just run in!”

“It’s cold!” you insist, shivering when a brutal breeze brushes by. You tense and tighten the grip you have on yourself. Your arms are crossed over your chest in a feeble shield that does little to protect you from the water nipping at your ankles.

Robin cackles at your wincing.

Eddie might’ve defended you if he wasn’t so lost in the eternal blue of you, more infinite than the water you stand in or the sky you idle beneath.

You look so soft in the golden sunlight, so diabolically angelic. Lithe, unholy, yet pure all the same. Built for sin but looking just like Heaven.

Eddie Munson wasn’t supposed to fall in love. He wasn’t even looking for it until it tripped him, ate him up, and spat him out. The universe does whatever the universe wants sometimes, he figures, and if you can’t laugh at their stupid jokes, then that’s on you.

“Holy shit…” Eddie mumbles as the realization pierces him like a dull needle between his ribcage. That searing, subtle feeling of being in love.

It’s frightening more than it is anything, really — the understanding that you’re diving into something that could ruin you, something you’re going to let ruin you. There’s nothing but a thin line between love and horror.

“Huh?” Steve hums with a cartoonishly scrunched nose and furrow to his brow.

He was the only one close enough to hear him. Everyone else was separate but still near, using every inch of their reserved space.

Nancy’s reading a book in one of the lounge chairs with El and Max sunbathing on towels close by. Dustin, Lucas, and Mike are roughhousing in the water — no doubt irking Steve and his lifeguard-esque spidey senses. Robin, meanwhile, was still coaxing you inside.

Eddie’s head snaps in Steve’s direction. He squints through the wisps of gray smoke rising from the grill. “Huh?” he repeats like the idiot he is.

“You said something.” The brunette boy responds. Not a question, but a statement of fact.

“No, I wasn’t,” Eddie sasses back despite having been caught red-handed. He shrugs and crosses his pale arms over his chest. “I was just… I was just talking to myself.”

“Yeah. ‘Cause that’s not weird or anything.”

Eddie bites back a too-harsh jeer. He watches Steve flip a steaming burger on the tiny grill in front of him with a floundering sort of finesse. He scoffs out a laugh. “Making fun of me isn’t gonna compensate for you having absolutely no idea what you’re doing over there, you know?”

“How hard can it be?” Steve wonders, bouncing his shoulders and gesturing with the spatula in his hand. “They’re burgers. Just flip ‘em before the burn, and they’re golden— well, not golden, but… you get it.”

Eddie rolls his eyes at the boy’s blind optimism. Steve’s got all the trappings of a rich kid who never had a fend for yourself night where dinner was just chocolate milk, dry cereal, and pizza rolls. “I thought growing up in the suburbs, you would’ve perfected the art of grilling by now.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t exactly have anyone around that often to teach me, so…”

Steve isn’t exactly playing the woe is me card. He’s just stating a fact that most everyone in Hawkins seems to know by now. It blows the wind out of Eddie’s sails, anyway.

It’s hard to understand sometimes that Steve’s got his own thing going on — his own secrets with his own trauma he keeps hidden from the rest of the world. Eddie spent his whole life thinking that if he was richer, or if his house was bigger, or if the kids at school liked him more, he might’ve been happier growing up.

Steve Harrington is living proof that that’s not always true.

Eddie walks a few steps closer to the grill. The smell of smoke and cooked meat pervade him instantaneously. He snatches the spatula from Steve’s hand, who’s too off guard to dodge him.

His frizzy curls bunch at his shoulders when he tilts his head to the side, flashing the brunette boy a sickly sweet smile. “Let the trailer trash show ya how it’s done, Stevie.”

“First of all, don’t call me that,” he retorts with a flat face, golden biceps crossed tight over the chest of his fitted tee. “And second of all, what the hell do you know about cooking?”

“When you grow up in a trailer park, you know how to make at least two things by the time you’re seven-years-old — pizza rolls in the oven and burgers on the grill.”

Steve’s honey eyes narrow. “I don’t trust you not to poison us, Munson.”

“What? You think I’m gonna poison a bunch of kids and my girlfriend? That’s, like, the lowest of the low,” Eddie defends with bubbly laughter sputtering from his mouth. He flips a smashed burger and lets it sizzle over the low flame before pointing the spatula in Steve’s direction. A mischievous glint sparkles in his eye. “But you, Harrington? You should definitely be worried.”

“…Girlfriend, huh?”

Eddie, visibly surprised by the lack of a comeback, glances over his shoulder at the boy. His fleetingly puzzled gaze gives way to a teasing pink grin. “Yeah… Jealous?”

It was a joke, but Steve starts to stutter over himself like he’s guilty of something. “What? No,” he argues between forced laughter. “Why would you— Why would you even say that?”

“‘Cause I actually had the balls to ask out the girl I like, and you’ve been ogling at Nancy for an hour trying to figure out how to talk to her without coming off like a total creep.”

“That’s not… I wasn’t doing that.”

Eddie shrugs. “Okay.”

“I wasn’t.”

“I said okay!”

“Jeez…” Steve concedes with a dramatic huff. “I have no idea what Peach sees in you, ya know?”

“Me neither, honestly,” Eddie confesses with a distant smile, grinning at the grill like he can see you in the wisps of thick smoke. “I always thought it was my strong arms and sparkling personality.”

“See, that’s what I’m talking about! You can’t be serious about anything!”

“I can be serious about some things.”

“Yeah?” Steve muses with raised brows and a smile that says otherwise. “Like what?”

There’s a million stupid jokes Eddie could make just to piss him off all the more. He swallows them all down in place of something more real. “I don’t know… Peach is pretty cool, I guess… Don’t really wanna fuck that up…”

Steve nods, proud of the answer he wasn’t expecting. “Good. Don’t.”

“And what would you do if I did, tough guy?” Eddie jokes, narrowing his eyes at the boy beside him. “Beat me up?”

He answers without missing a beat. “Yeah.”

“You don’t exactly have the best track record for that. I’m pretty sure you’re on a world-record losing streak, actually.”

“I don’t have to win,” Steve assures with a strange sort of sternness to his words.

Eddie is visibly shocked by the sudden seriousness, wide-eyed and confused.

The brunette boy sighs before explaining. “That time I got into that stupid fight with Hargrove, it wasn’t about trying to beat him, you know? I was trying to— I don’t know— I was trying to… keep him from hurting the people I cared about, I guess.”

“Peach?” Eddie presses with furrowed brows.

Steve shoots him a dumbfounded look, confused by the confusion. “She didn’t tell you about that?”

“...No?”

“Then, uh… Never mind.”

Steve closes in on himself all over again — an impenetrable brick wall with abs and a chiseled jawline. Eddie feels so suddenly left out, like there was some secret everyone was in on but him. He abandons the grill entirely.

“Nope. No way. You have to tell me now.”

“I don’t have to tell you shit, Munson,” Steve scoffs, side-stepping the wild-haired boy and taking his place in front of the grill. The burgers are cooked through now, perfectly seared and smoky. He plates them all like he wasn’t on track to burning them. Eddie lets him do it.

“I swear to god, I will give you food poisoning on purpose, Harrington—”

“It’s not my story to tell, alright?” Steve interjects the half-hearted threat.

“Well, I mean, it sorta is because you were just about to tell it, so…”

The brunette grumbles something under his breath like a rolling storm cloud.

You and Robin watch the encounter from afar, both of you someways from shore. Now submerged to your shoulders in the sapphire water, you’re not nearly as cold as when you first stepped in. It feels as soft as silk now, sparkling around you like diamonds every time you kick your feet to keep yourself afloat.

A smile quirks at your mouth at the sight of the bantering boys — one you used to love and one you think you’ll love forever.

They’re complete and utter opposites of each other. One golden, one pale. One broad, one lean. One with trimmed honey locks that shine golden in the sun, and one with long curls so dark they seem to reject all light entirely.

They both wear deadpanned looks of utter annoyance on their features, having no idea how close they’re standing to each other.

“The sexual tension is ripe between those two,” you confess to Robin, though it’s mostly for yourself.

“Think they’re gonna kiss?” the brunette girl jokes as she blinks salt water from her eyes.

“I don’t know… They might…” you observe quietly, squinting in the distance in a feeble attempt to read their lips. The conversation seems heated — well, as heated as it gets between two boys who think they’re better off as enemies.

You long to understand what they’re saying and mourn the fact that you don’t.

“Bet I can get them to kiss by the end of the night, though,” you answer more finally and with a glint to your eye — a result of your looming mischief rather than the glittering sun above you.

“Please, don’t say it…” Robin grimaces.

“Truth or dare,” you singsong with a beaming grin.

The girl makes a pained sound at your words. She bubbles her freckled cheeks and squeezes her eyes shut tight. She ducks herself beneath the water in attempts to hide there, knowing there are some things you just can’t run from.

˗ˏˋ ꒰ ♡ ꒱ ˎˊ˗

You hold onto your love for Eddie like so many flowers in your hand.

It’s a collection of wild things — honeyed daffodils, fluffy white daisies, and pretty pastel forget-me-nots. Their vivid green stems feel like stripes of hardened silk in your palm.

Maybe you’ll shape them into a crown later, place them on top of your lover’s wild curls the next time you see him. You hope that isn’t too long now.

Max was the one that wanted to go on a hike. Upon the other boys’ insistence of tagging along, she spat like venom in return — “No boys allowed.” And, quite frankly, none of you were in any position to deny Maxine Mayfield of anything.

Robin hadn’t even wanted to go until that moment. She complained she was too tired after a day in the water to spend an evening in the woods. The thought of making fun of Steve seemingly cured her.

“Yeah,” she lilted with a smile, voice raspy from hours of nonstop laughter. She slid a cap over her drying locks, leaving it backwards and lazy on her head. She bounced her brows and walked backwards behind the group of you. “Go on your own hike, Stevie.”

“We will!” Steve argued in return, like a child not easily left behind.

You can’t be sure of what they’re up to now. Nothing, maybe, or perhaps everything. You just hope Eddie’s missing you as much as you’re missing him — innocently, gently, childishly.

Maybe he’s seeing your face in the crystalline waves of the sea like you’re seeing his face in the satin petals of the flowers in your hand.

“Having fun?” you ask Max over the subtle crunch, crunch, crunch of grass and leaves and twigs beneath your feet.

The redhead’s eyes widen at the suddenness of your presence — or rather, how slow she’d been to register it. Noticing her languishing stride, she puts more pep in her step.

“Tons,” she huffs.

You become a silent observer of Max Mayfield for a moment. You blink at the girl beside you — with pretty red plaits down her back and pale shoulders peeking from her tank top — and try to make sense of her. It’s an impossible task.

“I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not,” you confess with a quiet laugh.

“I’m not,” she affirms with her own scoffed-out chuckle. She tucks a rouge wisp of amber hair behind her ear and averts her gaze to her beat-up sneakers. “It’s… actually been kinda fun so far.”

With a blooming feeling of relief and slight accomplishment, you nod in response. “Good.”

“I just wish the boys weren’t here, though,” she admits with a distant girlishness, kicking a rock with the tip of her shoe. It clunk, clunk, clunks down the hill. She screws her freckled face. “They’re making it all… weird.”

“Weird how?” you press gently.

You don’t want to push her so hard she closes up again, but you don’t want to stay so quiet she thinks you don’t care. It’s tricky work, getting close to Max Mayfield — like digging through a brick wall with a plastic spoon.

“Weird as in… I don’t know— they’re making it something it’s not supposed to be, you know? Like, Dustin is cool, but that’s because his girlfriend just dumped him and everything,” the girl rambles with a shrug. She lifts her arm to duck beneath a low-hanging branch, scraping her calloused palm against the wood as she goes.

You’ll hear a low thud moments later when Robin smacks her forehead against it. She’d been too busy explaining how to tell the difference between poisonous and nonpoisonous mushrooms to Nancy and El — the former only half as enthused as the latter.

“El and Mike are always sneaking off to suck face, and Steve and Eddie keep ogling at you like they’ve never seen a girl before, and Lucas won’t stop asking me if something’s wrong, and—”

“He’s just trying to check up on you,” you interject gently, letting the wound-up girl take a much-needed breath.

“Yeah, well, it’s annoying,” she grumbles like a thundering rain cloud. “I’m trying to forget my problems, not talk about them.”

And, honestly, you think she might be onto something. Teenage girls are basically tiny pessimistic philosophers — your problems don’t exist if you don’t look at them, she tells you in essence. The logic is cynically sound to an unhealthy degree. It’s a poison apple you’ve plucked from the tree and eaten whole once.

“You gotta talk about them eventually, Max,” you tell her. Not because you have, but rather because you haven’t, and you’ve seen where that’s gotten you.

Max stops in her tracks. She turns ninety degrees to glare at you — arms crossed over her chest, bushy brows quirked like the right side of her lips. She looks bitterly amused at your words.

You cower beneath her icy blue stare. You know you’ve said the wrong thing.

“Oh, yeah? Like you’re talking about them, too?” she sasses with all her practiced teenaged apathy.

You falter. “Yeah, well… Don’t do what I do, alright? Do what I say.”

Max scoffs. It sounds almost like genuine laughter in its curtness, as though it were truly sincere. She shakes her head with a cynical smile. “Face it— we’re both hopeless…”

Her words leave you stunned, as though she’d pierced you with the poison tip of them. There’s an edge to them that cuts you and leaves you bleeding as she walks on without you. The wind brushes your exposed skin, a reminder that the world is still going even though it feels like it’s frozen still.

Robin and El walk by you a moment later. The former rubs her aching forehead over the brim of the cap on her head. The latter is elbow-deep in a drawstring bag looking for a bandaid to give her.

Nancy, either poetically or cruelly, is the one who notices the splintered ache you are.

She smiles with her pretty pink lips and blinks at you with her stone-blue eyes. She’s as pretty as she ever was — with her bare, sun-kissed face and oversized cardigan pushed up to her elbows. It’s hard to admonish someone who looks as sweet as she does.

Her attention alone is enough to heal you, like a dog licking a weeping wound. You hate her as much as you worship her. The loathing feels religious.

“Who are those for?” she questions innocently, motioning to the flowers in the limp hand hanging at your side.

“Oh, uh, they’re— they’re for Eddie,” you sputter in a mumble, suddenly aflame with embarrassment. You turn your red-hot cheeks away from her and look at everything but the girl in front of you. “It’s… It’s stupid…”

“I don’t think so. I think it’s sweet,” she disagrees, grinning so sincerely it scrunches the sloped bridge of her nose.

“I don’t know, I just… I felt a little bad about leaving him behind, so…”

“He did look a little like a sad puppy when we left,” Nancy confesses in a soft giggle.

You roll your eyes despite the lovesick smile on your face. “He always looks like that when he doesn’t get his way.”

“He really likes you. I can tell.”

Your heart lurches at her words.

“What the hell do you know about him?” is first fleeting thought that scorches your mind. “He isn’t yours. You don’t get to know him.”

The misplaced anger is raging crimson, vivid enough to taste. Or perhaps that’s just the metallic tang of your blood as you bite your tongue.

Your rage is engraved into your bones at this point.

It isn’t fair, not to either of you, so you swallow it down.

“You think so?” you wonder instead.

“Oh. Totally,” she scoffs like she’s never been surer of anything in her life.

Her sneakers scuff against the rough terrain of Lake Lemon as she starts walking again, towards the sound of trickling water. You follow behind her on instinct and watch her angled profile flit to the blue sky above you. Gray clouds start to gather in the distance, concealed by the green of towering trees.

“The way he looks at you… It’s really sweet.”

“Bet it makes you miss Jonathan, huh?”

“I always miss him,” she answers without missing a beat, though she seems so suddenly forlorn. “Even though I know I’m not really supposed to.”

“What do you mean?” you press with pinched brows.

She tilts her head and looks at you beneath her lashes. “We, um… We broke up, actually.”

“Oh. Shit,” you stutter, surprising even yourself because you hadn’t meant to say the words out loud. It makes you that much more embarrassed at yourself. “I— I’m sorry. I didn’t— shit. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. You didn’t know,” Nancy assures kindly, giggling and bringing you at ease again. She smiles so softly, like she isn’t hurt by it all — by what you’ve said or what she left behind in Jonathan.

You squint at her with a question on your tongue. How can you seem so happy after having lost a piece of yourself? you want so desperately to ask. How has that not ruined you entirely?

She sighs, still with a reminiscent smile. “I haven’t really… you know, talked about it, so…”

“Are you…” you start, but trail off again. Your head whips from her to the rocky trail you descend down, trying to keep focused without tripping over yourself in front of her. God knows you’ve done that enough for a lifetime. “Are you okay?”

Nancy thinks on your words more than you expected her to. “Uh, yeah. I think so. I mean— I guess that’s what this trip is about, you know? Trying to be okay again.”

You nod in response. You figure that’s why you ultimately asked Max to tag along in the first place, and why her friends had decided to join — those heartbroken and otherwise.

“Sorry about that, by the way,” Nancy follows quickly with wet eyes and pinched-together brows. She’s waiting for you to condemn her, though you’re not entirely sure why.

“For… what?”

“You know, not telling you I was coming and… everything.”

You wonder if she truly does mean everything or if it’s just a figure of speech. Nancy has a world of things to say sorry to you for — she knows this, most barbarically so.

“Steve told me it was normally a him, you, and Robin thing. He said you wouldn’t be upset about it or anything, but I feel like… I don’t know… like I’ve intruded or something?”

“No,” you assure almost instantly because you know what non-belonging feels like. You don’t want it to eat away at her like it did you. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Yeah?” the girl presses with a twinkle in her eye.

“Totally.”

She exhales a sharp chuckle through her nose. It’s almost a sigh of relief — like your words have removed a hulking weight from her bony chest. “I was so scared things were gonna be…”

“Weird?” you finish for her when she trails off.

Her sheepish smile matches your own. She nods. “Yeah.”

“That was forever ago,” you shrug, repeating the words you’ve been telling yourself for ages now. It made everything much easier to stomach. You found it much safer not to feel any of it at all — to keep the hurt from touching you entirely.

Nancy nods. Her words leave her mouth, soft like a song and kissed by sorrow. “I know, but… Things were…”

She doesn’t finish her sentence. She doesn’t have to.

You were there for all of it. Most of the bloodshed was yours in the end.

“Yeah,” you huff so deeply it deflates your tightening chest.

“It was all just bullshit, you know?” Nancy says, shaking her head like she’s detested by the memory. “Steve shouldn’t have done what he did, but… It wasn’t like I was raring to stop him.”

“It wasn’t your job. You didn’t know me— you never had to… defend me or whatever.”

“I know, but… I think maybe I should have.”

The two of you stop in place and share a look of distant longing. Not the kind you often give Eddie — not the kind full of puppy love — but rather one of acute understanding.

She didn’t know you, and you didn’t know her. You thought it was better off that way. Her presence was so often forced against your will. Like Pavlov’s Dog, you knew she only ever came with your inevitable heartache. Steve drifted to her like she had her own gravitational pull. He only came back to you when she was gone.

Jaded by heartache, you learned to hate her. The wrath ate away at you accordingly. And here she was — all your anger in the flesh — extending an olive branch and trying to make you whole again.

“Whoa…” you hear Robin croon lowly in the distance.

Your attention leaves the piercing moment and darts over to her. She stands between El and Max in front of a leaning willow. She parts the weeping leaves with the palm of her hand and marvels at something further in the juniper you can’t see.

You give Nancy a tight-lipped smile that doesn’t quite meet your eyes — too weighed down by the heavy moment — but it isn’t any less sincere. You walk away from her and towards the three others. It takes her a moment or more to follow you.

Past the swaying willow is a shrouded cove. The clear water is kissed by streams of sunlight poking through the fluttering leaves. It possesses a hearty smell of rain and wet grass, the very breath of spring.

It’s a corner of the world that feels so pure, so untouched by the rest of the world. You can hear words hidden in the rippling water — “Swim with me,” it calls to you. “Let me cleanse you. Let me save you.”

“Sweet…” Max hums to herself, apathetic as ever, though utterly unable to tear her eyes from the sight before her.

El nods, similarly mesmerized. “Yeah. Sweet.”

Robin turns to you, smirking all cool in her backwards cap and baggy jeans and thumped forehead. She bounces her brows and beams. “Bet the boys haven’t found anything this cool.”

˗ˏˋ ꒰ ♡ ꒱ ˎˊ˗

“Hey, look!” Dustin shouts to the others, eyes squinted with the intensity of his grin. He holds up a shining red rock, made smooth from the water rolling over his feet. “I’m pretty sure it’s a gemstone! Like, a ruby or something!”

He’s met with several unenthused gazes from the rest of the boys on shore.

Mike squints at him from where he sits next to Lucas in the sand, both of them equally mopey without their girls to bring them back to life. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s just a rock,” the raven-haired boy monotones.

Dustin’s smile washes away like the ebbing tide at his ankles. He looks back at the weighty thing in his hand and realizes that he doesn’t actually know the difference. “Oh…”

“What do you think the girls are doing right now?” Lucas wonders aloud. He can’t go more than five minutes without bringing them up, which Dustin has bitterly observed a number of times.

He’s more worried about Max than anything, about her eagerness to get away from the boys — from him. He doesn’t know what he could’ve done so wrong to make her pull away like she has. His chest aches with the uncertainty.

“Talking about us, probably,” Mike answers.

“That’s a little sexist, Mike,” Dustin scolds as he walks back on shore, kicking up white sand behind him as he goes.

“What do you think they’re doing then?”

“Talking about you,” the curly-haired boy retorts with narrowed eyes. “‘Cause you’re a dick.”

Mike squints an eye as he looks up at him, shielding his vision from the white sun. He flips the boy off with a pale, bony finger.

Eddie watches from a distance. He stands beside Steve in front of the bubbling white waves, though it’s not really by choice. He’d much rather be standing next to you. He searches for you in the pearly waves and weeps because nothing compares to the real thing.

“Well, why don’t we just find out?” he offers with a shrug and a lopsided grin.

“Uh, because they said no boys allowed,” Steve answers like it’s obvious.

Eddie meets the boy’s furrowed brows with jettisoned ones hidden behind curly bangs. “…Okay?”

“And, I don’t know— I kinda don’t wanna get my face ripped off.”

“And what would poor Steve Harrington do without his pretty little face?” the wild-haired boy singsongs in response, face scrunched in feigned sympathy.

Steve squints. “You know what? Please, leave. I encourage it, actually.”

Eddie grins wide and tilts his head to his shoulder. He blinks at the boy beside him with glittering chocolate eyes that match the frizzy curls billowing in the breeze. “But then who would I annoy?”

“I don’t know. Your girlfriend, maybe,” Steve responds in a monotone, grunting softly as he bends down to pick up a handful of rocks from shore. He flicks his wrist to skip them across the water. It becomes quickly apparent that he’s never done it before. Each pebble plops hopelessly into the salty sea. “Anyone but me, preferably.”

“But you can’t break up with me, so… that’s an obvious bonus.”

“Jesus Christ…” Steve mumbles within an annoyed exhale. “You are the most insufferable person on the planet, you know that, right?”

“Tell me what happened with Billy, and I’ll leave,” Eddie challenges with narrowed eyes.

It’s too good a proposition not to give any thought to. Steve thinks about it for a beat, then shakes his head and turns away. “Yeah, no,” he concludes, skipping another rock that sinks to the bottom almost immediately.

“Why?”

“’Cause you annoying the shit outta me now is nothing compared to what Peach’ll do if she finds out I told you.”

“And what’s that?”

Steve shrugs. “…Be mad at me?”

Eddie scoffs and crosses his pale arms over his chest. “And that would just be… inconceivable, right?”

“I spent enough time pissing her off.”

“What’d you even do, anyway? Or is that another secret everyone seems to know but me?”

Steve shoots him another bitter side-eye. He tosses out another pebble. It bounces on the water once and then disappears beneath the surface. “I think these are questions for your girlfriend, Munson.”

“No, these are questions for bros, Harrington,” Eddie jokes, shoving the boy on his shoulder. His touch is more aggressive than he realizes and it makes the disgruntled brunette stumble slightly to the side. “Isn’t this the sort of things bros talk about?”

“Oh, my god…” Steve mutters to himself, shaking his head and wondering how he got here. What was supposed to be a trip with you and Robin has turned into him babysitting with Eddie fucking Munson.

“Am I not bro enough for you, Harrington?”

“That word has lost all meaning now—”

“C’mon, just tell me, man,” Eddie pleads with a newfound seriousness. “Every time I almost get something outta her, she just— she clams up, you know? I love her and everything, but fuck— it feels like she only lets me know her so much. It’s agony sometimes, dude.”

Steve doesn’t mean to, but he melts.

Maybe it’s the foreign emotion he’s getting from the local freak, or maybe it’s the confession that’s unknowingly slipped from his lips.

He sighs. Then shrugs. “It was a long time ago. And I was a douchebag.”

Eddie snorts. “Figures.”

“Do you want me to tell you or not?” Steve bites.

Eddie curls his lips around his teeth, puts his mouth in a tight line, and stays silent.

The brunette boy continues. “I liked her and everything, but I also liked Nancy, you know? I really liked Nancy. I mean, Peach was a lotta fun, but Nance— she was the kinda girl you wanted to settle down with.”

Eddie feels his chest tighten, and the confession’s only just started.

You were fun. The most fun he’s had in his life. He’d kill to settle down with you, to have an entire future of fun. There was never any but with you — I love you, but it’d be a bad look to settle down with the town slut. Eddie wants all of you, the good and what everyone else has collectively decided is “bad.”

He loves the sound of your laughter as much as he loves the sound of your moans.

He wants a lifetime full of both.

“—So every time Nancy broke up with me, I’d go back to Peach. And I wouldn’t tell her about… about any of it. You know, that I still wanted to be with Nancy and everything. And that’s… I think that’s the worst part about it. ‘Cause she thought there was a chance we would get together, you know? And I wanted her to think that, ‘cause I wanted her to always be there when I was— when I needed her…”

Steve squints off into the blue — where the darker-colored water meets a lighter-colored sky. The white sun casts harsh shadows on his already chiseled features. His face scrunches into something sharper, whetted edges of held-back emotion.

“A part of me knew the only reason Peach stuck around was because she thought I’d finally come to my senses and ask her out, you know? But I was… so far gone for Nancy back then it’s not even funny,” the boy confesses. He exhales a curt, cynical chuckle from his nose and shakes his head at himself.

“I knew I was gonna keep chasing after Nance, but I couldn’t let Peach know that because I didn’t wanna be... I don’t know… alone, I guess? I needed someone to go to when my heart got broken., you know? But when I went back to Nancy— over and over and over again— it’s like… where’d Peach go? Who did— Who did she have to turn to, you know?”

Silence rolls in like the whispering breeze. It settles heavy like the gray rain clouds on the horizon.

Steve sighs like a strangling hand has finally let go of his throat. Like he can finally breathe again after saying all that out loud for the first time. Beside Eddie, the boy stands golden, grieving, and utterly changed. Steve towers over his old self in the memories he wishes he could get rid of and mourns the people he can’t un-hurt.

And it fucking sucks.

What he did to you sucks. The person he used to be sucks. And it sucks that he’s changed too much to hate now. Where is Eddie supposed to put all the anger simmering in his chest and scratching at the back of his throat?

“And, yeah,” Steve suddenly concludes, flicking his wrist to toss another rock out to sea that’ll never see the light of day again. “That went on for a while until she got with Hargrove, which was… a total fucking train wreck.”

Eddie doesn’t know how to respond, so he just laughs — a short, sharp, and scoffing breath.

“Wow,” he muses with his brows raised and hidden beneath his bangs. He shakes his head in complete and utter bemusement as he looks over at Steve, eyelids as heavy as the forced smile on his face. “You guys are fucking assholes, you know that?”

Steve exhales sharply from his nose in place of a laugh. He shakes his head in agreement anyway. “Believe it or not— people can change, Munson.”

The wild-haired boy squints. “Really?”

“I did. Peach did,” he answers with a shrug, then averts his gaze entirely to mumble, “You did, too, I guess…”

The half-heartedly grumbled phrase feels almost like a compliment — more so when it’s spilling from the mouth of someone he used to hate but has grown to sort of tolerate on handpicked occasions.

It’s great beauty, to grow and shift and become the person you were also meant to be. And what praise it is to be seen in your becoming.

From a brief distance, they hear a soft and relieved “Fucking finally,” spill from Dustin’s mouth.

Eddie turns and finds you coming down from the trail. Well, you and the rest of the girls you ditched him for, but all he can really see is you.

He’d missed you in a way he knows he shouldn’t have. Not just because you were only gone for one measly hour, but because that one measly hour ate away at him as though it were eons.

He knows he shouldn’t miss you so hard, but sometimes the absence feels strangely fulfilling. It’s a reminder that you’re real and not some dream he made up in his head. A reminder that he’ll meet you again because you’ll always come back to him.

“Have fun?” you ask when he’s close enough to hear you. You’ve got one eye squinted to shield from the sun and also to conceal the beam threatening to take over your features.

“Oh. Tons,” Eddie scoffs in a deadpan. “Didn’t even miss you.”

“No?”

“Not even a little bit.”

“Well, I didn’t miss you either,” you confess in a similar lilt and with a similar grin that drips with honeyed adoration. “’S why I spent the whole time picking these flowers for you.”

You shrug and hold out your left hand, where a bushel of tiny flowers rests softly against the edge of your palm. It’s a mixture of vivid colors — of greens, blues, purples, and yellows. They’re wild and beautiful and drenched in sun. A whole lot like the love he has for you.

The dull ache of his broken heart sears with warmth when you put it back together again.

Eddie’s toes dig into the sand as he fills the short distance between you. He curls his fingers around your elbows, takes you in his arms, and feels whole again. With a rosy smile and sparkling chocolate eyes, he groans, “Oh, god, I hate you so much…”

Your cheeks hurt with how large your grin has grown, with how hard you try to hide it. It’s not nearly as painful as the adoration burning wildfires behind your ribcage. “I hate you more, Eddie Spaghetti.”

There’s no need to admit you’re only joking.

The words are so obviously playful.

And both of you know what they really mean, anyway.

˗ˏˋ ꒰ ♡ ꒱ ˎˊ˗

The heavenly cadence of spring rain sings a wild song on the old tin roof.

It began first as a few gentle taps, a sparse sprinkle that tricks your brain into thinking it’s not really there at all. Then the greying clouds gave way to darker, more ponderous ones. The soft drizzle became a roaring rain that fell all together, all at once.

A foggy grey covers the cabin and lulls its inhabitants to sleep. Swim-tired, sunkissed, and energy-spent — you all return to a sweeter sort of peace. The sudden exhaustion feels like rose petals. It’s gentle, pure, and liquid smooth.

Robin clocks out first, and in record time. She stomps in from outside, terribly sunburnt and complaining relentlessly — before and after a cold shower. She shoves a burger in her face and passes out on the couch soon after.

Steve makes fun of her for it, but he goes right after her. He lays opposite her on the small couch, both of them fighting for room, even in their sleep.

Nancy went a lot more quietly, and only after the millionth time you assured her that she was more than welcome to take the bed. “It’s not like Robin has any plans of sleeping upstairs right now,” you joked, nodding your head over to the brunette girl who had her chin tilted backward and her mouth wide open.

You can’t be entirely sure what the kids are up to now, but they’ve all returned to the bunk room. It’s quiet, but not suspiciously so. You figure they’re all either sleeping or fighting it, so you decide to give them privacy while you sit alone in the kitchen — waiting for Eddie’s shower to end and for Hopper to get off the phone with you.

“Having fun?” the man wonders politely.

“Mm-hmm,” you hum in response, cheek propped lazily against your fist as you lean over the granite countertop. You’re too heavy with fatigue to do anything else. Your legs are sore and your skin is sun-drenched. Slumber all but sings your name like a siren out at sea.

“What about El? She doing okay?”

“Yep.”

“You’re watching her and Mike, right? You’re not letting them go off alone?”

“Yes, Hopper,” you singsong in an impatient-sounding sigh.

The man huffs out a laugh that crackles from the other line. “You sound like you don’t wanna talk to me, teacup.”

“I’m sorry. ‘M just tired. Running after kids all day is exhausting,” you confess in a series of barely intelligible mumbles.

“Exactly. That’s why you wear protection—”

“Hopper!”

“I’m just saying!” Jim defends between a bout of gruff laughter. “I don’t want you coming back from this trip and having a mini-Munson nine months later, alright? That’s all I’m saying.”

You have a hard time placing his intention — if he’s truly being protective or if he’s just making fun of you. He’s more than aware of Eddie’s secret, after all, so you coming home with a mini-Munson is virtually impossible. But, then again, no-parents-empty-cabin surely has its own lewd history.

You figure it’s a healthy mixture of both, and decide to take the piss out of him, too.

“Oh, trust me, lurch. There’s gonna be a million mini-Munsons when I get back. What do you think I’ve been doing all this time, huh?” you argue with squinted eyes and a sudden fire behind your sunkissed lassitude. “Please ignore the sounds of moaning and squeaking, by the way.”

A beat of utter silence passes.

The other line is perfectly mute. You can’t even hear his breathing.

“…That’s not funny,” Hopper grouses in a monotone.

“I’m not laughing,” you retort, giggling anyway. You couldn’t hide them if you tried. Fuck, you miss annoying this man in person.

You collect yourself with a sigh and continue. “Believe it or not, I’m perfectly abstinent, okay? I’m not some kinda fiend that… You know what— I don’t want to talk about this with you, actually.”

Hopper exhales a sigh of relief when you cut yourself off. “Good. I checked out of this conversation about a minute ago.”

“I’m good. El’s good. Everyone’s currently sleeping, so… Thanks for checking in, lurch.”

“Remind me to ask for Harrington next time I call.”

“Will do.”

You hang up the phone with a smile and a plan to trek upstairs and tell Eddie all about it. You’ll sit on the bathroom counter and laugh about it with him while he finishes up his shower. You’ll leave out the million Munsons part, of course, because you don’t want him to think you’re a total weirdo.

Eddie finds you first.

“Mini Munsons, huh?” you hear the boy chuckle behind you.

Your heart lurches against your ribcage at his sudden arrival. You spin around to face him, features wide and gaping as you figure out how to worm your way out of this one. “I was— I was just kidding. Hopper was being annoying, you know? So I was… I was just fucking around with him…”

Eddie meets your wild-eyed shock with a much cooler, pink smile. It’s lopsided and wide and beautiful. Leaning against the wall, he bounces his shoulder and juts out his lip. “Well, I know that’s your favorite pastime, so… I guess I won’t hold it against you.”

You know he’s joking, but you exhale the breath you were holding in relief anyway. “Thank you…”

He walks the short distance to meet you. His bare feet pad against the kitchen tile until he’s close enough to wrap you in his arms. He carries the smell of your body wash with him — a warm, floral, and sweet scent. His hair is damp and pulled back out of his face, dripping onto the neck of his t-shirt.

His palms are wide and lotion-soft as they smooth up your forearms. “Uh… Everyone’s asleep now, I think, so… You wanna go talk?”

He looks at you so sweet, you’re almost certain it’s code for something. Not sex, maybe, but something almost as gratifying. It’s Eddie — he kisses you stupid like he was made to do it. You’re more than happy to make out like teenagers until the rest of the cabin starts to stir again.

“Sure, I do,” you answer with a shrug, trying to keep an air of nonchalance about you even though you’re beaming up at him like schoolgirl — some innocent being that’s never been hurt before.

You let him lead you up the spiral staircase with that same giddy grin. You barely let him shut the door behind you before you’re pushing him against it.

You hear him gasp quietly when your arms wrap suddenly around his neck. He’s tense when your body presses against his, like hugging a mountain’s edge. It takes him a moment or more to respond when you start kissing the breath from his lungs.

He finally relaxes with a soft exhale that fans against your cupid’s bow. His idling hands settle over your hips, fingers threatening to crawl beneath your cropped shirt when it rises to reveal a sliver of your skin. You’d kill for him to touch you further, but his touch stays perfectly still. You’re just glad he’s holding you at all.

He tastes like nicotine, soda, and summertime — clean, boyish, and nostalgic. Your tongue swipes gently over his plush bottom lip for more. You expect him to open up further for you, to let you explore the mouth you already know like the back of your hand. You’re heartbroken when he pulls away from you entirely, missing him the second he’s gone.

Eddie’s grieving in a similar way. It’s hard for him to part from you when you kiss him like no person on earth has ever been kissed.

He breathes out a soft laugh as he peers down at you. He grins crookedly with his freshly swollen lips. “Not that I’m not enjoying this or anything, sweetheart, but when I said talk, I really did mean talk…”

Your blood runs red-hot. “Oh…” you sigh like an idiot because you can’t think of anything else to say. You feel like a total fool — spent ages denying the slut stereotype just to jump someone’s bones the second you got them alone. Maybe they were right about you.

Eddie sees you second-guessing everything, watches you form a long-winded apology inside your head. He follows up quickly to quell your worry. “No, it’s okay— it’s kinda my bad, actually. I guess I should’ve clarified.”

You muster a trembling smile when you step back from him. You’re cold the second he’s gone. You have to fight back the shiver that crawls up your spine. “Well, you did say talk, so…”

“Yeah, but how often do I say things I actually mean?”

“Sometimes,” you answer sheepishly, gazing at him from beneath your lashes in a sincere response to his half-joke. “I hope…”

I hope you meant it when you said you liked me, is what you’re really trying to say. I hope you meant all the nice things you’ve said about me, ‘cause I don’t think I could handle them never being real.

He seems to hear everything you don’t say.

His rosy lips tug into a slow smile as he tilts his head to his shoulder. “Well… maybe when it comes to you, sweetheart.”

Your girlish smile returns to you — wide, innocent, unhurt. You like feeling this special. You like Eddie belonging to you in a way he doesn’t to anybody else. It’s a primal sort of possession, a borderline unhealthy one for someone who loves like it’s breathing.

“What did you wanna talk about then?” you wonder, then scrunch your nose with a distant wariness. “It kinda seems serious now.”

“No,” Eddie scoffs, walking away from you and towards the bed. “Not serious.”

The mattress squeaks under his weight when he flops down onto it. You want to scold him for being so rough with an obviously aged thing that doesn’t belong to him. You’re already gravitating towards him with an unrealized smile on your face.

You sit down beside him, far more gently than he had. You settle on top of the fluffy comforter and curl your legs behind you. Eddie lays on his side, propping his head up with one hand and using the other to trace the faded scars and beauty marks on your thigh.

His finger trails absentmindedly over your skin in a featherlight touch. Chills erupt over your skin, and he smiles to himself. You’re still learning how to be touched so delicately.

“Spit it out, Eds. The tension’s killing me,” you laugh with words you’ll regret a second later.

“I don’t know… I just— I wanted to ask why you never told me about Steve,” the boy says with a nonchalant shrug, like the words don’t suck all the breath from your lungs. He’s too busy watching his finger dance across your skin to see the shock flood your features. “Like, I knew you guys had— a thing or whatever. But I didn’t know… you know, the rest of it.”

Despite being unable to breathe, you try to muster a laugh. “This sounds like a pretty serious topic, Eds.”

His wide-eyed gaze matches your own. His stare darts upward to meet yours. The chocolate of his irises are full with brooding. The last thing he wanted to do was make you uncomfortable. Actually, he spent his entire showering thinking of ways to bring this up that would be the least painful for the both of you. But in true Eddie Munson fashion, he can’t ever say the right thing.

“No! No, it— it doesn’t have to be. I was just… It was just a question, you know?” he sputters hopelessly. He glances away and mumbles to himself, “A really dumb, stupid question…”

Despite the overwhelming urge to find the deepest, darkest hole and hide there, you can’t tear your eyes away from the boy in front of you. You’re not really looking at him, though, much too deep in your own head about the whole thing.

You can’t stop thinking about what he must’ve heard — how he felt when he heard it. Did he think of you differently? Even for a fraction of a second, was he embarrassed at the very thought of you?

“Are you saying that… Steve told you about… all of it?” you ask slowly, terrified of the answer.

“Uh, yeah…” Eddie hesitates, equally as apprehensive. “Honestly, I think we were going a little insane with the girls around…”

He exhales sharply through his nose in place of a laugh and flashes a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. It ebbs away a moment later.

“Why would he do that?” you wonder with wide, wet eyes. The question is more for yourself than anything. You can’t begin to understand why Steve would’ve opened up about such a thing — to Eddie, of all people. Your Eddie.

“I asked him about Billy—”

“What do you know about Billy?”

“Well, he brought it up, but—”

“So you spent the entire time talking about me?” The laugh that spills from your mouth is bitter, cruel.

Eddie, who’s never known you to be either, chuckles emotionlessly back. “Well… No. It just— It just came up, I guess.”

You smile despite the emotion swimming in your glassy eyes. It makes the boy cower inside himself, unsure which contrasting reaction to pay the most attention to. “My relationship with Steve and Billy just… came up?”

“Yeah. It’s not a big deal, babe—”

“It’s not a big deal because they weren’t your exes,” you bite like a snarling dog. “If I spent the entire time talking about you, you wouldn’t be too happy about it either, would you?”

Eddie’s eyes narrow in a challenging squint. “I didn’t come up? Not one time?”

“Yes!” you exclaim. The volume of your answer and its blurted sincerity take him by surprise. You wave your hands wildly as you ramble. “I told Nancy that I missed you and that I couldn’t wait to see you and give you a bunch of stupid flowers—”

You motion to the makeshift bouquet sitting on the nightstand. They idle in a clear shot glass Eddie found in one of the cabinets. He couldn’t stand not giving them a home.

“—While you were off with Steve, talking about everyone that’s fucked me over!”

Your rage is as wild as it is brutal. You’re painted red from the slaughter you’ve been forced through. It’s given you claws and teeth accordingly.

Like a stray dog that bites the gentle hand trying to feed it, you’ve been so obviously mistreated. Eddie knew that before he knew you — ‘cause he’s got eyes, as well as a bleeding heart. Someone didn’t love you the way you deserved to be loved, and now the memory turns you cruel.

“It wasn’t like that, okay?” Eddie presses with an urgency you can feel on his hand curling intently around your calf. His fingers tremble with sincerity. His dark eyes swim with it, too. “I just— I wanted to learn more about you because you never tell me anything!”

“Yes, I do!” you scoff.

“Then why do you never talk about Billy?”

“Why do you care so much about Billy?” you cry with a broad, disbelieving smile. “Why do I need to talk about him? He doesn’t even matter— he doesn’t even exist anymore!”

“Because something obviously happened! And if that thing is bothering you, I wanna be able to make it better!”

“That’s what therapists are for, Eddie. Not boyfriends.”

“Yeah, not any that you ever had,” he scoffs to himself before he can stop it.

You tense beneath his hand. He deflates with a sigh — squeezing his eyes shut and asking himself how the hell he manages to make the bad shit that much worse.

“Sorry. I’m— I’m sorry. I didn’t… I didn’t bring any of this up to hurt your feelings, alright? I just wanted to— I don’t know— I just wanted to talk about it, okay? That’s all.”

You can tell he’s being sincere. That he really did just want to talk about it, and that he really is worried about you, and that he really does want to make it all better. He wears it all over his face. His features are soft and blurred and utterly genuine.

You haven’t yet softened your sharp, whetted edges. “You said we didn’t have to. That this trip was supposed to be fun.”

He flinches at the way you spit the words at him. They’re coated in vinegar, venom. It sinks into his skin and maims him accordingly. His bushy brows furrow, the corners of his mouth turn downward, and his eyes go glassy — a sad puppy indeed.

“You’re not having fun?” he wonders in a wounded whisper.

His hurt becomes your own. It only makes your anger tower mountains over you. “Not anymore,” you answer lowly and through a tense jaw.

Eddie’s spent a lifetime screwing things up. He’s spent a lifetime apologizing for them, too. This one aches worse than all the others combined. “I’m sorry…” he mutters quietly.

You’ve never seen him this somber. This sad.

The broken look of your lover’s heartache cracks the hardened porcelain you’re made of. You let out the breath you were holding in a trembling, heavy sigh. “No, don’t— Don’t apologize.”

“I feel like I shouldn’t have brought it up…” he confesses with his gaze cast downward.

You bring a hand to the one idling on your leg. You rest your soft palm over his bony knuckles. Your touch is much warmer than the iceberg you were just minutes ago.

“It’s okay. You were just curious. I shouldn’t have blown up the way I did,” you concede. The softness he’s more familiar with finally returns to you. The corner of your lip quirks into a wavering half-smile as you joke, “But if you want the entire list of guys that have fucked me over, it’s a really— it’s really fucking long one.”

You laugh quietly at your joke.

But Eddie knows it’s not really a joke, so he stays unsmiling.

His touch is still soft, though. He takes to rubbing your calf again — a slow and measured up and down — a reminder that he’s still in your corner. “Well, you can tell me about it when you’re ready.”

“What if I’m not?” you wonder, hesitant and testing the waters. “Like… What if I don’t want you to know all that stuff?”

Eddie’s gaze flits away from yours as he ponders the question. He purses his lips to the side and nods to himself, visibly deep in thought. “Then I’m good with not knowing,” he answers after a few, long moments.

“Are you?”

Again, he thinks.

“Not really. No,” he responds, still as honest as he’s always been with you. He grins lopsidedly and bounces his shoulder. “But if it means I get to keep you, then… Yeah.”

You exhale a breathy laugh at his words.

Eddie’s wavering smile breaks out in a sheepish beam at the sight of your more genuine grin.

“Can I have a kiss?” he whispers to you, as innocent and mousy as a child.

Your hand gives his a reassuring squeeze. “You never have to ask, Eds…” you remind him.

You lean down to press your mouth against his. He tilts his chin to meet you halfway. It’s chaste and lingering — a delicate peck that expresses all the swirling emotions neither of you could name if you tried.

“There isn’t anything about you that I wouldn’t want to know,” Eddie confesses after he’s pulled away from you. The breath of his words fan across your cheek, he’s still so close to you. His deep galaxy eyes dance between both of yours. “You know that, right?”

A smile tugs slow at your mouth. “Now, I do,” you nod in return, even though you’re not sure if you believe him.

He only says that because he doesn’t know you — the deep, dark you that you try to keep hidden from yourself and the rest of the world. He’d learn everything you’ve been through, everything you’ve done, and he’d hate you. He wouldn’t be able to look at you the same.

You can’t stand the thought of Eddie looking at you the way the rest of Hawkins does — with eyes squinted and twinkling with an admiral sort of disgust. So you’d rather him not know any of it at all.

Silence dances into the room as effortlessly as a spring breeze. The rain’s offbeat cadence taps hard against the sliding glass door across the room. You have the sudden urge to walk outside and stand it. You think it’d be easier to drown in the warm deluge than in your own thoughts.

Eddie’s rosy mouth turns slightly upward. Yours does, too, in anticipation of what he’s about to tell you.

“Wanna fool around?” he wonders, if only to brighten the heavy grey mood.

The sound of your laughter is sunshine — a metaphor he’s been trying to write for years. “You can’t just say that every time we’re alone, Eds!”

“Why not?” he challenges just to tease you.

“Because you know we can’t,” you answer with a soft sort of sternness about you. Your eyes are firm with sincerity, though they sparkle with mischief.

“We’ve been here almost two days, and I haven’t got one whiff of Jason Voorhees, babe.”

“That’s not what I mean,” you mutter, then whisper more quietly. “There’s people downstairs.”

“Well, you can be quiet…” Eddie lilts, grin lopsided and pink as he rises off the mattress to lean closer to you. His breath fans across your chin, coated with nicotine and something sugary. He tilts his wild head to the side and raises his brows in question. “Can’t you?”

“I’m not sure that you can, Eds.”

“Don’t worry about me,” the boy assures, voice low and suddenly serious.

His warm palm travels up your calf, smoothing over your knee and curling around the side of your thigh. His touch is almost as all-consuming as his stare — deep chocolate brown, as infinite as a galaxy. You fall into them accordingly. You couldn’t deny him if you wanted to.

You try, anyway.

“Eddie…” you start, a warning that trails off when he squeezes the buzzing skin of your outer thigh.

“Lay down,” he urges. It’s too soft to be a genuine command. It gives him ample opportunity to turn it all into a joke on the off chance you reject him completely.

You don’t. You couldn’t.

You find yourself slithering past him and closer to the headboard before you realize you’re doing it. It’s like you’re made of magic, totally under whatever spell he’s unknowingly cast upon you. Your head’s swimming with his sorcery as you lie back on the pillows.

Eddie follows you, resting his body above yours. It’s a comfortable sort of weight, heavenly even. He props himself up on his forearms so he isn’t crushing you completely, though you wouldn’t complain if he did.

You want him to ruin you, and then you want to thank him for it.

The untrimmed edges of his curls hang down over his face. They tickle your jaw when he kisses you with the ardency of someone who wants to swallow you whole. His tongue swipes against yours, slow and more aggressive than either of you expect. He sucks on your swelling bottom lip right after.

The gray world around you explodes with a burst of a thousand colors. You can’t see any of them because the inner workings of your mind have been stripped away and replaced totally with Eddie. His nose nudging against yours. The taste of his mouth. The texture of his tongue. The warmth of his breath. His hand traveling down down down your body.

His palm starts at your cheek, cupping sweetly at your jaw so he can open your mouth wider for him. Then his touch trails down to your neck, taking a brief pitstop to feel the rapid thrum of your racing pulse, before falling to your chest.

You think he must be able to feel your pounding heart through your t-shirt when he cups your breast. His thumb swipes over your hardened nipple in time with his tongue diving deep into your mouth. You feel his lips curl into a smile when the combined efforts make you shiver.

His fingers smooth over your ribcage, then your stomach, and then your hips.

It’s a touch featherlight, yet steady and earnest at the same time. His hand creeps slowly over the thin fabric of your shorts and settles between the warmth radiating between your thighs. He cups you gently through your clothes and kisses the breath from your lungs. It’s like he’s trying to kill you.

You buck your hips slightly upward in a silent plea for more.

The boy above you has the nerve to pull away from you to ask, “This okay?”

His hair is mussed from where your fingers had entwined so intensely in his chestnut strands. His lips are rosy and swollen and wild. You get lost looking at him.

With dazed eyes trained on the pink mouth you so desperately want to kiss again, you nod like an enthusiastic child.

“Can I do more?” Eddie wonders through heavy breaths.

“Please,” you hear yourself say, right before your hips cant against the subtle weight of his palm.

You watch with wide, unblinking eyes as Eddie brings his hand to his mouth. His pink tongue darts out to lick the pads of his middle and forefinger, leaving them glistening as he slithers them into your shorts.

His efforts to be easy with you are appreciated but virtually unnecessary. You’re as slippery as satin for him, drooling in anticipation for him to make you feel good.

He slides two fingers into your trembling pussy with little effort. The fatty edge of his palm settles over your swelling clit. Your head tilts back against the pillow while you exhale a pretty moan.

With your eyes fluttered shut, you don’t see the crooked grin tugging slow at Eddie’s mouth. “Shh…” he shushes, only half playful, before engulfing your mouth again and swallowing each of your gentle cries.

He’s moaning with you, though, at the soft squelch your pussy makes when his fingers sink to the knuckle inside you. You feel the smooth metal of his rings on the outside of your cunt and the inside of your thighs.

And fuck, you’re so pretty for him — always so pretty for him — that it makes him forget about the ache of his stiffening cock. His yearning for you throbs like a heartbeat. He wants so desperately to fuck you, to really fuck you until he’s got you gushing all over his lap. But he figures he can settle for this for now.

But the way you’re moaning for him just now? It doesn’t really feel like settling.

“You’re so pretty,” he hums lowly, almost to himself. “Have I told you that?”

He has. Plenty of times within the few months he’s been able to do that without it being too weird. It feels like the first time he’s ever said it to you, anyway.

A breathy moan spills lightly from your lips, like a spring breeze coated in sunshine. It’s the total opposite of the storm swirling outside the bedroom.

Your cunt involuntarily squeezes his fingers at the compliment — walls sticky, hot, and pulsing. You all but melt around the two digits he presses inside you.

He figures you must like the praise, which is great ‘cause praising you is the easiest thing on the planet.

“You have such a pretty pussy, too,” he confesses in a gritty whisper.

You moan for him again, a muffled cry stuck in your throat.

“Feels so warm around my fingers… And you’re so tight, baby— I don’t know how I’m gonna fit my cock in you—”

His words are as sinful as they are vivid.

Behind your shut eyes, you can see the vision of him on top of you. You can feel his sweaty body sticking to yours like glue — similar to the honey you leak for him while he fucks you.

If you try hard enough, you can almost replace his fingers for his cock. You know it’s nowhere near as pleasurable as the real thing, though.

The thought of him fucking you — making love to you — has you whining and writhing beneath him. Your hips jut upward, looking for pleasure and running away from it all at once. His fingers squelch as they push in and in and in. You drool impossibly more for him, drenching his fingers and his rings and the cotton sheets below you.

“You could take it though, right?” the boy above you wonders, swollen lips quirked in a heavy half-smile. “You’d take whatever I give you, wouldn’t you, sweetheart?”

You hardly recognize him now. Not because he’s teasing you — because you’ve gotten more than used to that — but because he’s so damn confident.

He talks to you with the finesse of a guy who’s done this a thousand times, to a thousand different girls. You’re the first, and you know this, but he’s ruining you like he created you.

You nod with a satin sigh.

The silent admission makes Eddie’s head spin.

He shouldn’t have you in the first place, the metalhead freak he is, yet he’s got two fingers inside you and your permission to go further. And he wants to — god, he wants to — but he’s scared it’ll drive him crazy.

Crazier than he already is for you, if that’s possible.

“Get on your side for me, yeah?” he whispers to you, surprising himself with his newfound dominance.

You’re too far gone to do anything but obey him.

You maneuver onto your side like he asked, feeling like your bones are made of melted honey. Eddie follows you. He keeps his fingers nestled deep inside your thrumming heat as he curls in behind you.

His stiff, aching cock is hard and heavy against your clothed ass. Despite the layers of clothes separating you, his warmth presses so intently against you. You clench around him at the feeling — tighter when his fingers begin to crook inside you. You tilt your head back and moan, rutting further back against him.

Eddie smushes his nose into your hair and hums a moan in his throat. His heavy exhale fans against the shell of your ear. He keeps working you open with his fingers, a slow and measured rhythm he maintains with the thrusts of his hips.

He’s terribly sensitive, almost embarrassingly so. You drive him too wild for anything else. Even like this, without being inside you and with his clothes still on, he feels like he might explode.

You’re much of the same. The pad of his thumb rubs mercilessly at your swollen clit as his fingers coax you towards a head-spinning orgasm. The overwhelming pleasure crawls up your throat, strikes you like lightning, and swirls in the pit of your stomach. You couldn’t run from it if you tried.

It doesn’t stop you from canting your hips back and forth — a feeble attempt to cope with the overwhelming pleasure Eddie gives you with nothing but his hand. With his pale arm caging your side and his lean body behind you, curling and melting with yours, you can only get so far.

All you can do is take it.

Eddie whimpers delicately in your ear as he humps your ass. He babbles in faint whines — things you don’t think he realizes he’s saying.

“You’re so hot, baby,” he slurs heavily, swollen mouth tracing the shell of your ear. “So soft, too... Fuck... Keep grinding back on me like that— shit, yeah, just like that. ’S gonna make me come in my fucking pants, baby.”

If you weren’t drowning in the void of your own pleasure, you might’ve asked him to come. No, begged him to. “It wouldn’t be the first time,” you would’ve assured him, only slightly teasing. But you don’t do any of that because his fingers are shoved so far into you that you can feel them in your throat.

Or maybe that’s just your impending climax choking you.

You couldn’t form an intelligible sentence if you wanted to, either way.

Instead, you roll your hips back against his cock and act like he’s fucking you for real. The idea of it alone sends you catapulting into an orgasm. You’re so far gone for him — for the freak of Hawkins — you let him ruin you while you fall for him like the rain pounding at your window.

Effortlessly, unapologetically, and over and over and over again.

Eddie dampens his boxers in the same way you drench his fingers. His twitching cock drools for you, more and more as he nears his peak. He hasn’t felt anything as gratifying as grinding against you like this. He’s bound to be a fucking goner the second he’s caught inside your snug pussy.

“Can feel you trembling for me, you know?” he continues to ramble, only half-aware of the sin spilling from his rosy lips. His thumb presses against the fleshy hood of your clit. He’s barely moving it, but the pressure alone has you buzzing. “You’re gonna cum so hard for me, aren’t you? Gonna make a mess all over my hand?”

You bite back a cry — quite literally, with your teeth caging your bottom teeth — and lean your head back to bear your throat. You throw a hand back in search of Eddie. Your fingers twist in the mussed curls at the crown of his head.

“Mm, Eddie—” you call in a muffled cry, overwhelmed and half-frightened by how good he’s making you feel. By how hard you’re about to cum for him.

“I know, baby. I know,” he coos sympathetically to you, crooking his fingers in time with his grinds against the plush of your ass. His cock starts to ache all over again, this time with hunger.

Through a breaking voice, he begs. “Go on and cum for me, yeah? Let me make you feel good, baby. Cum all over my fingers, baby— I need it… I fucking need it. I’m so fucking close—”

You bury your face in the pillow when you cum, crying his name into the cushion for only the two of you to hear. You tense, thighs shaking and toes curling, as you gush around his fingers — like the pouring rain outside.

You drip mercilessly for him, a slippery mess between your thighs you know you should be ashamed of. You might’ve been, if it were anybody else.

Eddie stills behind you, though his fingers remain relentless. He coaxes you completely through your orgasm just as he’s reaching his own. His moans come out in gasps — choppy, sharp breaths through a swollen mouth. His aching cock spits in the confines of his boxers, several warm loads that cool too quickly.

He trembles through his high, trying to trek through its entirety but growing so suddenly sensitive.

You let him work you through yours. His fingers, now wrinkled at the pads, are frozen inside you while his thumb circles softly at your delicate clit. You twitch with the aftershocks of your orgasm. Your hand leaves his hair to grab his wrist, a silent plea that you can’t take anything more.

And the two of you just lie there, for several long moments — sticky, blissed-out, and so intently pressed together. You let the heavy moment of your ebbing orgasms linger. You decompose together in the heavy honey of pleasure.

It’s all so messy, but then again, everything seems to be.

His hair, his fingers, his boxers.

Your thighs, your bed, your heart.

Words. Life. Love.

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