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tropes-and-tales · 5 months

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Dyin' for a Taste

Day 11: Face Sitting (Johnny "Soap" MacTavish x F!Reader)

(For the 2023 Kinktober event that I created on my own because I am boring and basic and am trying to keep it simple this year...found here!)

CW: Idiots in love; pining; smut (oral, f!receiving); 18+ only.

Word Count: 4096

AN: This was requested by an anonymous person!

AN2: When I say this is not edited, please know it is NOT EDITED. Full of typos and sloppy typing. Tropes is a fat-fingered old crone.

It starts with a joke.

The 141 is on a covert ops in the mountains. It’s cold—the sort of cold that burns, that makes the bones ache. You’re posted up in a perch, your sniper’s rifle at the ready if shit goes south. The rest of the team is in the square below, waiting for the drop.

“My bollacks are gonna freeze off,” Soap complains over the comms, and you snort at the whining tone in his soft Scottish brogue.

“Shoulda dressed for the weather,” you reply. “Ghost probably has a spare balaclava.”

“And cover this handsome face?”

“Won’t be so handsome when your nose turns black from frostbite.”

You hear the tsch noise he makes over the comms, the very Soap, very Scottish noise of dismissal.

“You’ll have to sit on my face then, hen, and warm me back up,” he says.

You’re rarely stunned into silence—you and the guys are always making off-color jokes—but when you open your mouth to reply, you only gape wordlessly. The silence over the comms grows, expands, until Gaz—fucking Gaz—chimes in.

“I think she’s into the idea, bruv.”

And you can’t respond to that fast enough either, which leaves another long beat of silence over the comms, which likely seems like enough of an answer.

-----

The mission goes smoothly. The team splits up as planned to avoid drawing attention. You don’t see Soap again until a few days later when you regroup at HQ.

You think, perhaps, that he’s forgotten. Maybe that’d be better. You and Soap get along well, and sometimes he flirts with you, but he flirts with everyone. It means nothing.

And yet…

And yet, it’s Soap. You might be able to lie to others, but you can’t lie to yourself: you’ve spent many a lonely night with your thoughts drifting to him. Turning him over and over in your mind.

Soap MacTavish. Handsome, almost unbearably so. He could be a cocky asshole, be the sort of man who knows he’s hot and be insufferable about it, but he’s gregarious. Friendly. He’s a happy-go-lucky sort of man—or as much as someone in the One-Four-One can be.

-----

“Been avoiding me.”

It’s a statement, not a question. Soap corners you in the mess hall, his blue eyes peering at you without guile. He looks almost concerned.

“I haven’t,” you reply. You try to shift past him, but he puts a hand out against the doorway, bars you with his arm.

“You have.” He peers at you closer, his blue eyes somber. “What’s wrong?”

“Why would anything be wrong?”

You thought, perhaps, that he’d forgotten…but those somber eyes crinkle at the corners as he smiles, then smooth out as he schools his expression.

“Maybe you think my offer was wrong,” he says.

“I never said that.” You duck under his arm, but he lays his hand on your shoulder and stills you again.

“You’ve never said anything about it.” You don’t look at him, but you hear his gentle snort of laughter. “Your silence is deafening.”

You feel your face start to heat up because he’s not wrong. Too much time has passed now to address that moment in the mountains. You should have said something then, spat out some rejoinder to signal that it meant nothing to you, that it was just another dumb joke between you and Soap. But something about that dumb joke conjures up the mental image of you and Soap, and your face burns in embarrassment.

So you duck from his light grip on your shoulder and it makes him laugh again, then call out to your retreating form, “the offer still stands, hen.”

-----

A month passes, then another. You get leave for a few weeks and go someplace warm, a beach with golden sand and soft breezes where you can relax and forget the horrors of what you see every day.

Then you’re back on base, then another mission. Over and over, the same routine.

Through it all: Soap MacTavish, the team’s Golden Retriever. Always with an easy grin on his handsome face, a laugh, a joke. He teases Ghost, he does a passable impression of Captain Price. He gives Gaz a hard time about their rival rugby teams, but it’s always good-natured.

He jokes with you, but that joke—the one about sitting on his face—becomes just a joke between the two of you. You don’t know if the other men have forgotten it, but Soap only brings it up when you’re alone now.

At the barracks, in the rec room, he’s sprawled out on the couch and half-dozing, half-watching a rugby match. When you walk past, he notices, sits up. Beckons you over, tells you to have a seat…then thoughtfully strokes his face with that damned smirk and comically waggling eyebrows.

“You’re a jackass,” you call out as you leave the room, but by now, it makes you laugh…and it lightly stokes that ever-burning flame low in your belly.

-----

Another time, he sidles up to you at the range as you study your targets with their tight formation of bullet holes. He points out one shot, high in the corner of the paper, off of the concentric circles of the bullseye.

“Missed one,” he says.

You scoff. “One out of….many.”

He matches your scoff with one of his own. “Might be losing your edge.”

“I’m not.” You know he’s winding you up, but that missed shot galls you.

“Maybe you’re stressed out.”

You set the target down on the wooden railing. “Maybe you’re stressing me out, MacTavish.”

It’s the wrong thing to say. His blue eyes light up in glee, and he only gets out the first part of his retort—You know what’s good for de-stressing—before you drop to one knee and start disassembling your sniper rifle, ducking your head and hiding your burning cheeks from him.

“…nothing wrong with it,” he finishes as you shut the rifle’s case, and you realize you’ve missed part of what he’s said.

“There isn’t,” you agree. You stand up and lean a bit on the courage that sees you through each mission. You look him square in the eye and add, “but you’re just flirting.”

He gazes back at you, a soft smile on his face, only a little teasing. “Not just flirting.”

“Sure.” You roll your eyes.

He makes his Soap-branded tsch sound, then he loops his arm around your shoulders to pull you in close. He smells like…well, he smells like soap, clean with a hint of something herbal. It’s nothing he hasn’t done a hundred times—in safe houses after a mission, walking out of a bar on a night out with the team—that companionable way he pulls you against him.

“It makes me sad when you don’t believe me, hen,” he chuckles, and it’s low, right by your ear, his warm breath fanning over you.

You’re not sure what spurs your next move. You’re a natural-born sniper; you take the measure of everything around you—the curve of the earth, the speed and direction of the wind—before you squeeze your trigger. You’re the same with people, cautious and feeling out every angle of their intentions before you make a move. But you know Soap, and the question around his joke is the only uncertainty.

Something makes you act without much thought. Your rifle case in your hand, your other hand tucked in your pocket, and Soap’s arm slung around your shoulders…the moment is crystalized, will be an easy memory to recall in the years to come because this is when everything between the two of you changes.

“You know what?” you ask, and you don’t allow him to hazard a guess. Instead, you gaze at him levelly, straight into those bright blue eyes of his and add, “alright, let’s do this.”

It’s comical, how the smile drops from his face, how his mouth makes a little “oh” of surprise. His eyes scan your face, quick, like he’s trying to find the joke, trying to find proof you’re just having a laugh at his expense.

“Bonnie,” he starts to say, and his voice has a rough edge to it. His voice is missing its usual teasing edge, and he pauses to study you. You don’t know if he realizes it, but the tip of his tongue darts out, licks against his lower lip, like he’s really thinking of it now that it could be a reality.

“Bonnie, are you just…are ye fer real?” His voice is lower and his accent gets thicker, and it sets a frisson of heat shimmering through your lower belly.

You refuse to blink. Refuse to look away. “I’m for real if you are.”

“I was never joking about that.”

“Then I’m not joking either.” You swing your rifle case towards the barracks, playing at bravery but willing the fluttery feeling in your stomach to calm. “So let’s go.”

Soap—gregarious, convivial Soap—says nothing else on the walk back. He keeps his arm around your shoulders, though, and his hand settles against your bicep, rubs you briskly before gently holding you there, like he’s proving to himself that you’re real, that the moment is really happening.

-----

Your nerve wobbles a little when you get back to quarters. Soap’s nerves must have a similar wobble, because he turns to you and his usual boyish grin is gone, replaced by a grave expression.

“You dinnae have to do this,” he says, “if you don’t want to.”

Part of you wants to back out, chuck him in the arm and say it was just a joke. You could still back out. Soap is flirty and gregarious, but hooking up would irrevocably change your easy relationship with him. It could change the tenor of the team. And yet…

…don’t you both face death every day? Don’t you see the absolute worst of humanity? Don’t your bodies bear the scars of your hard, unrelenting lives—countless scars, visible and invisible both? Don’t you all operate in your own bubbles of loneliness, sleeping alone night after night but crowded out by the ghosts you all haul around?

Is it too much to ask for even a moment of connection, of not feeling alone?

You gaze back at him. Sweet Johnny MacTavish. Handsome but not vain, smart but not aloof, funny without being cruel about his teasing. Is there anyone you’d rather be with?

“I want to do this,” you tell him, and there’s no hesitation in your tone. “If you do. If you really were just joking around, then no harm, Johnny.”

His somber gaze softens at your use of his real name. “Wasn’t joking at all.” Then he opens the door to his quarters and turns to you, invites you in with a sweep of his hand, and when you walk past him, he lays his palm on your lower back to guide you.

-----

In truth, you’ve never actually sat on anyone’s face. It’s one of those funny sex acts that you joke around about but have never gotten around to, like sixty-nine (always seemed more complicated than necessary) or food-play (always seemed too messy).

Soap, it turns out, has never actually had his face sat on.

And it’s adorable, how he sheepishly runs his hand through the longer stripe of his short-shorn hair and admits as much.

“Figured it cannae be that complicated though,” he says. He huffs out a breath, and you realize how nervous he must be, and it gives you courage to take charge.

“Kiss me first. Then we can figure it out from there.”

The tame command makes his face light up and he murmurs, “yes, ma’am” in his brogue, and then he does as you say.

If Soap MacTavish is generally the team’s Golden Retriever, bouncing around with a wagging tail, he kisses with far more finesse. He cups your face gently, reverently and leans forward, brushes the lightest of kisses against your lips like he’s testing the waters. Like he’s waiting for you to pull away, and when you don’t, he kisses you again.

It’s awkward at first, but only because you’re both so tentative. It’s uncharted territory. He must be aware that you’re crossing a line in doing this, you think, and he must not care either. But the awkwardness melts away quickly because Soap is a damned good kisser, skilled in how he moves his mouth against yours, his tongue against yours. One of his hands stays on your face, cupping you gently and steering you, but the other hand touches your waist, your hip, slides around to squeeze your ass gently before returning to the dip of your waist.

He tastes like something warm and spicy, like cinnamon or nutmeg. Everything about him is warm, really: the way he cups your face but runs his thumb over your cheekbone, the way his other hand holds you steady as he kisses you. And the way he looks at you when he breaks the kiss, the almost-shy way he tugs at the hem of your shirt and asks if he can take it off.

He’s warm too—his body, his skin as you bare it with each article of clothing shed. You strip each other in tandem, and the sight of him leaves you breathless. He’s like something carved by a Renaissance sculptor, but when you smooth your palms over the dips and swells of his muscles, you find that he’s warm to the touch, wonderfully so, and a wave of lust almost takes you out at the knees by how much you want to feel his body against yours, under you or on top of you, every inch of you pressed against him.

Soap must feel the same way about you—he touches you just as gently as before, almost reverent, but his goddamned eyes practically shine when he looks at you, then groans out, “fuck, but you’re stunning, hen.”

He maneuvers you both towards the bed, and then he stretches out across it, and this is precisely why your sexual repertoire has always been lacking: when a brutally handsome man is stretched out in front of you like a damned buffet, your mind singularly focuses on one thing, and you rarely remember that there’s other, more adventuresome things you could do.

You’re already turned on. Ever since the two of you walked back from the range, you’ve been on a low simmer of lust, and the desire has ratcheted up with each kiss, with each little grumbling groan of Soap’s, with each sweep of his big warm hands along your body.

So you’re already turned on, so why sit on his face when his beautiful cock—perfectly sized for you, the ruddy tip already leaking precum—is also an option?

And Soap is no dummy. He must guess at your internal battle because he says your name softly, pulls your gaze back to his face where he smiles that brilliant Soap-smile at you.

“Alright then?” he asks. He pats his upper chest. “You can sit right here, to start.”

It hits you all at once how intimate this is. Fucking, hooking up—that’s one thing. But sitting on your teammate’s face feels like you’re taking a further step into the unknown. Oral sex, to you, is already more intimate than regular ol’ intercourse, but sitting on his face feels…even more intimate. There’s a lot of trust on both ends: he has to trust you not to hurt him, not to put too much weight or force on his face or neck. And you have to trust him too, since you’re basically smothering him you with your pussy, and many men are precious little babies about eating pussy.

“I could just…” You trail off and gesture vaguely at where his erection strains and bobs against his belly, and Soap snorts before he replies, “we could do both, hen.”

When you don’t say anything, when you don’t move, he adds, “c’mon, sweet girl. I’m dyin’ for a taste of ye.”

The accent is unfair, you decide. The accent is not fighting fair. Soap’s Scottish brogue is charming in the best of times, but his bedroom version is thicker, at a slightly lower register, and it’s entirely unfair. It easily dismantles the rest of your meager defenses, so you nod and then kneel on the bed. But when you start to awkwardly clamor on top of him, he stills you for a beat and taps his mouth, says, “give me a kiss first.”

And the kiss is unfair too because it reminds you that it’s just Soap, one of your dearest teammates, a man who often holds your life in his hands and whose life you hold in your own. His now-familiar taste of spicy warmth on your tongue, and his lips curving in a smile against yours when he whispers, “climb on up, hen Don’t keep me waitin’ anymore.”

There’s no sexy way to climb on top of him. Do you just kneel by his chest and throw a leg over him? Do you straddle him lower and scoot up? You split the difference, try to straddle him on his lower chest and scoot up, but then his one arm gets pinned. Any other man? It might be a deal-breaker being so clumsy, but Soap laughs underneath you—a genuine belly-laugh full of warmth that makes you giggle too. He wrangles his arm free, then lays both hands on your hips and guides you the rest of the way.

This is unbearable intimate too, being so exposed to his bright blue-eyed gaze. You probably have tons of issues around previous men who didn’t eat pussy, who were grossed out by it, but Soap’s eyes practically glitter black with how blown his pupils are. His face rarely hides its emotions very well (he’s a shitty poker player), and there’s no disgust in his expression at all. There’s only desire, naked and apparent.

“Tell me,” he says, and his voice is a low growl that sends that frisson of heat straight to your core. “Tell me what is working for you, yeah? Don’t go quiet on me.”

You nod, and you wish you could think of something cool or funny to say, but Soap lifts his head a little and presses a plush, open-mouthed kiss to the inside of one thigh, then the other, where both are splayed in front of him, and before you can even beat yourself up for failing to think of something cool or funny, his mouth is on you in earnest.

Soap, a damned good kisser. It translates to this, his skilled tongue and lips licking at you, suckling at you, swirling against you before he breaks up the pattern with an outright kiss, then resumes his routine. He traces the tip of his tongue around the firm bud of your clit, the perfect amount of pressure before he snakes it lower, lapping at the arousal leaking from your entrance. He’s unabashed about it, groans against your feverish skin, and you love him in this moment—love that he wasn’t joking after all, love that he had led you here, where you sit perched on him while he feasts on your cunt and seems to genuinely enjoy it as he does.

Any other position, you’d lean down and kiss him, or pull him to you and kiss him. Now, as he groans against you again, you reach down and run your fingers through the longer stripe in his hair. He must like that, because he groans a third time, and his grip on your hips spasms tighter.

You remember what he asked of you, so when he purses his lips and suckles against your clit, you gasp out a startled “oh!” but then add, “fuck, Johnny. Just like t-that.”

“Good?” It comes out muffled against you, and he pauses his mouth long enough to gaze up at you with a smile.

“So good.” You shift your hand, cup his stubbled chin slick with your arousal—a gentle movement that makes his smile soften too.

“Like when you call me Johnny, hen.” Now he sounds a little shy, like he’s edging close to something beyond a random hookup with face-sitting.

“Keep using your mouth like that and I’ll call you Johnny all the time,” you tease.

“Deal.” And then he’s on you again, laving your sensitive folds with his tongue, his bit of stubble raising a warm burn against your inner thighs. His hands on your hips pull you closer, and he encourages the slow, careful rhythm when you start to actually ride his face—a languid back-and-forth, mindful of his need for oxygen, while he eats your pussy with the fervor of a starving man.

Your orgasm approaches faster than you thought; you thought you might have to fake it, since you rarely come from oral alone. But there’s something about this position. You feel powerful in a benign way, in charge, but mindful of the man underneath you. You run your fingers through his hair and Soap preens at the touch, just as he preens when you pant out praise for him, tell him how good you feel. How good he is making you feel.

He must sense it because his grip tightens on your hips, but his tongue moves faster and focuses solely on your clit—teasing with the tip of his tongue, then laving it with the flat of his tongue, then wrapping his lips around it and sucking.

“F-fuck,” you choke out. “Johnny…fuck…I’m gonna…” but you don’t finish the sentence, you keen out a garble of nonsense as you come.

The heat in your belly pools over, spills over in a brilliant wash that courses through your veins, into your trembling legs and up through your body, makes your vision shimmer and crackle with sparks. Your heartbeat, your panting breath are loud in your own ears, and you hear Soap groan but he sounds faraway. He teases your orgasm, prolongs it by licking against you until you grip his hair tighter and hold his head still while you clumsily dismount, then flop gracelessly onto the bed beside him.

You feel boneless. You feel heavy, sleepy, like you could sink into the mattress and sleep for days. You close your eyes and feel the bed shift, and Soap disappears for a moment. You hear running water—he must be cleaning his face, you think—but then the mattress dips again and he’s curling his warm body around yours, wrapping his arms around you as he pulls you to him, then settles the blanket over both of you.

“Good, yeah?”

You laugh. “Yeah, that was good. Especially for someone who’s never done it before.” A beat. “Give me a moment to catch my breath and then I can help you out.”

Soap chuckles above you, and you feel him press his lips to your forehead before settling again. “No need.”

“But I—”

“Already came.”

The gears in your head turn slow when you’re sated from sex. Coming makes you stupid. “Huh? When?”

Another chuckle, another kiss to your head. “When I was eating you, hen.”

You turn your head and try to peer up at him. He looks comfortable and sleepy too, content and sated. “Seriously?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Wait, seriously?”

“Told ye I was dyin’ for a taste.” He shifts a little, pulls you closer to him. He tugs the blanket more securely around your shoulders. “If ye want a second round, I’ll need a few minutes.”

You appraise the situation: the warm scent of Soap, the feel of his naked body pressed to yours, the warm little cocoon he’s created here in his bed. Of course you want a second round, but you’re sleepy too, and the thought of sleeping with Soap doesn’t seem nearly as terrifying as it might have seemed before he had his mouth on your pussy.

“Or we could sleep,” you offer.

“Sleep,” he agrees. “Round two tomorrow.”

The doubts from earlier start to surface in your mind, but they seem tiny and inconsequential when you’re wrapped up in Soap’s arms. You feel sleep tugging at you—he’s already asleep, you think, breathing deep and even against you—so you chance to brush your lips against the bit of him you can reach and whisper good night to him.

But he’s not quite completely asleep yet because he kisses you back, another press of his lips against your head, and he whispers back, “g’night, hen.”

#john soap mactavish #soap mactavish #johnny mactavish #johnny soap mctavish x reader #soap imagine #johnny mactavish x reader #johnny mactavish imagine #soap x reader #call of duty modern warfare #kinktober 2023 #tropes and tales

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senanatheskenana · 8 months

Note

Hello! I loved your Sinclair post about their S/O leaving them. If you would like too could you please write a part 2 where the S/O comes back and the talk it out? Happy ending if at all possible only if you want too, I hope you have a great day!

I'm glad you enjoyed it :)

I hope this is ok, i tried my best but i've been a little bit rusty after my break from writing <3

Part two of this

The Sinclair Boys' S/O Comes home.

Bo Sinclair

Bo had exhausted nearly every option of where to find you.

He knew that even if the chance of getting you back was slim, he had to at least apologise- promise to be better. For once he needed to prove to someone that he was worth the fight.

Most of all, he needed to see you.

And he never admitted it, but a part of himself needed to see if you looked even a fraction of the way he did.

Bo turned up on your doorstep, hat in his hand, face covered in dirt, sweat, and who knows whatelse.

You had to admit he looked awful- worse than you'd seen him in months.

Even when Bo recognises he's done wrong, he doesn't always feel bad and her certainly never apologises for it.

Until now.

~~~~~

You stand there on the porch, staring expectantly at Bo as he struggled to find words. His throat was dry, and all of the things that he wished to say- the large speech he had spent days rehearsing and rewriting- melted into nothing at the back of his throat. He looked at you briefly before diverting his attention downward at his shoes.

"Beauregard, please say somethin'. I don't wanna stand in the cold all day," when he doesn't seem to respond, you more to shut the door on him. He panics and in a moment of adrenalin, sticks his hand in the doorframe to stop you from closing it. He doesn't so much feel it as he does hear the scraping crunch, letting out a hiss when you immediately reopen the door to let his trapped fingers go.

The next thing he knows, he's in your kitchen with a bag of ice wrapped around his hand. The lights in the kitchen are too bright for Bo, making everything but you seem hazy in the sleep deprived state hes in. You can see that hes not in a good state, but it worries you how he got here

"Bo, did you drive all the way by yourself?" you hope he says no, that Lester had driven four hours to get here. However, from looking into his truck, you know it was just him.

Bo looks at you like you're stupid. "I drove. Din't ya see the truck?"

"Don't make that face at me, Beauregard. Why are you here?"

He stares at you a little longer again, his resolve cracking further. It's been so long since he's seen you and now he can barely look at you out of shame.

"Sugar, you know i ain't the type to apologise for anythin'. An' i know you deserve someone who does..." but now he looks you in the eyes like a kicked dog, "I haven't be'n treatin' you like I shoulda."

"Bo-"

"No, please lemme say this cuz i wanna get the chance before you chuck me out." he sighs.

"I know I'm no good for you, and i know i dont deserve the time of day from you but i do love you... Sugar, i love you so much it hurts when you ain't around no more. It's like i'm continuously choking on smoke. Now I ain't trying to guilt you into comin' home- Ambrose. "

"Bo please just say it"

"I'M SORRY- I know that don't make up for how ive treated you- or anyone," Bo shifts and mores to grip your hand, "But i wanna be better for you, i wanna show you i love you, and make you feel loved"

You remain silent for a time and he feels his stomach sink slowly to his feat and he deflates, retracting his hand.

"I-I'm gon' head out soon, get outta your hair for good. I just wanted you to know i was sorry."

"No you're not, you're in no state to drive Bo. Stay the night here. We can head back together tomorrow" at that his face lights up. "You can have a shower before you get anywhere near me though," you tease.

He smirks and scampers up the staircase, "Yes, ma'am"

Vincent Sinclair

Vincent made no attempts to find you.

After all, why would he try to bring you back if you were only going to leave again.

He figured he may as well cut his losses and try to get over it.

So he tried.

For weeks.

Then for months.

But he just couldn't.

He saw you in everything he did.

He could swear that he saw you in his paintings or in visitors' cars.

Hell he thought he saw you getting out of Lester's truck right now.

Until he realised you actually were.

But something was different.

~~~~~

Through the glass he could see you hopping out of the cab of the truck, thick winter sweater consuming your figure. He's sure its one of his.

Vincent rushed through the house to the front door, swinging it open on its creaky hinges. You hardly get the chance to look at him before he's wrapping his arms around you tightly.

Lester stands to the side watching.

"Yer lucky i was drivin' west otherwise she might not've made it t'all"

Vincent turns away to sign to Lester but you dont catch it because he's moving his hands so fast.

"She's tryin' to get back to ya but ran outta gas before i found her"

He was shocked. You were trying to get back to him? Why, he was sure you wanted nothing to do with him this entire time.

He signs slower so you can understand,

'Why did you come back?'

You look at him sadly. In truth you felt bad for running away with no notice- leaving Vincent all alone with no explanation.

"I had to." you started, "Because i love you. And it wasn't fair to run away, i know, but i was scared of what you might think, or do"

Though you cant see, Vincent looks puzzled under his mask, you can tell. he signs again.

'Why did you leave- what were you afraid of me for?'

Your eyes water and you look down, arms wrapping around your torso.

"Vincent, I.." the words get stuck in your throat and he moves to cup your cheeks but you grab his hands before he can. You don't think you can say it. Your trembling hands guid his callused palms to your stomach. His eye widens when he feels the protrusion there.

There was no way. He stiffens and stays like that for what feels like forever until your shoulders start to shudder with sobs. Vincent snaps out of it and panics, trying to calm your cries. He moves to embrace you again before frantically signing to you.

'No please darling, don't cry. I'm not upset- i could never be upset with you'

You sniffle, "I'm sorry i left you. It was only meant to be for one day- to go to the clinic but then i found out i was pregnant and then i got scared that you wouldn't want it so i went to a hotel to try to think about what to do but i never manages to figure anything out."

Vincent feels his heart crack a little bit at your distress. He should've been more intuitive- maybe let you know that he'd care about you no matter what.

He gently puts his hands back on your tummy and looks at you. He doesn't even need to sign for you to know what he was trying to say.

'It'll be ok'

Lester Sinclair

Lester was a good guy, you knew that.

To you, he was perfect.

He never even raised his voice at you, and you're sure that if he even scratched you, he'd feel horrible for days.

And if you were honest, you still missed him.

You knew what he was doing was wrong but you still loved him.

Before you can stop yourself you're calling his mobile, waiting for the beeps.

He picks up after a single ring, like always.

~~~~~

"Heh-hey hun!" he tries his best but you can hear he's happy that you called him. "Is everythin' ok up there?"

You had to admit, it was sweet that even now, he cares about things like that.

"Hey, Les..." you don't really know what to say but he's patient, "Sorry im not really sure why i called."

"It's ok, please, i ain't gonna complain" you can almost hear his smile through the phone.

"I'm sorry about what i said-"

he cuts you off, "No, no you're right. What we was doin' was horrible, i know. But i- i wantcha to know that i told Bo that i ain't doing his dirty work anymore."

That surprised you. You know that Bo's a strong, stubborn character and Lester wants nothing than to impress his older brothers. This was big.

"I'm glad, Lester. Just stay outta trouble." You tease him and he giggles.

"I'm tryin' my best out here." an uncomfortably long period of silence takes over the line before he speaks again. "Jonesy misses ya... she just sorta stares at the door at night, expectin' ya to come walk through it."

It sounds sort of sad when he says it like that, he realises. "Not that I'm tryin to trick ya into comin back, im jus' sayin' that maybe you'd like me to bring her up to you some time." It's a ploy so that he can see you again, he knows.

"Oh no, Lester don't go all the way out here to let me play with YOUR dog, thats unfair." you pout through the phone and he laughs again.

"I don't know- i'd get to see you again, so it seems like a good trade, hun."

You dont know what got into you.

"Lester, I miss you."

The line is quiet again for a few seconds before he replies, "Really?"

"I know you've done some horrible stuff, but i still love you, and i dont know, if you're tellin' the truth about leaving that stuff behind, then maybe we can make it work."

He fights back a squeal of delight when he hears that.

"You stay right there, Huneysuckle, I'll be coming to get you as soon as i can." you laugh at his enthusiasm, "I'm getting in the truck, ill see you soon!"

#house of wax x reader #house of wax 2005 #bo sinclair x reader #bo sinclair #lester sinclair #lester sinclair x reader #vincent sinclair x reader #vincent sinclair #xreader

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lipglossanon · 9 months

Text

Out Here All Night

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

A Little Savory tier commission for @iloveyousomuch1989

Word count: 1993

Thanks so much for the request! 💜 💜 😘

Warnings: 18+ minors DNI, stepcest, kissing, tipsy reader, biting/hickeys, dirty talk, degradation, objectification, spitting, unprotected sex, creampie

proofread! But apologies for any mistakes I may have missed 😅

Title from Out Here All Night by Damone

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

You tug down the hem of your dress after you climb up the porch steps. Never more thankful than now that your parents are gone since you stayed out with your friends a little later than intended… and maybe coming home a little more tipsy than intended, too. You giggle to yourself as you unlock the front door and step inside. You kick off your shoes and slide the lock back into place.

You pad into the living room and see Leon lounging on the couch, looking bored as he channel surfs. Oh he’s so pretty you think, a giggle slipping past your lips. His attention moves over to you and you see him tense as he rakes his eyes down your body. You feel a thrill of satisfaction as he takes in your red mini dress, hugging your curves and shimmering in the lowlight from the tv.

You walk over to him, a bubbly smile spreading over your face, “Hi, big brother.”

With an oomph, you plop down next to him, side to side as you look up into his face.

“Where have you been?”

His low voice gives you goosebumps making you shiver.

“Out with some friends,” you giggle, “missed you, shoulda come with.”

He grins down at you, “Sounds like you had fun. Had a few drinks, huh?”

“Just a few,” you stifle a laugh with your palm making his grin widen.

His hand smooths across your neck, teasingly running through your hair before grazing your shoulders. You sigh and lean into the feeling.

“I love your eyes, Leon,” you giggle again, staring up into his dark blue gaze, “my pretty big brother.”

He chuckles and drags his fingertips over the line of your throat, “Mmm yeah? Think I’m pretty, little sis?”

“Mmhmm,” you hum, “really pretty.”

You boop his nose with a giggle making him laugh at you.

“You’re being really sweet huh, princess?” he murmurs, thumb tracing along your bottom lip.

You feel bold under his heated gaze shifting yourself to straddle his hips, glittery dress hiking up with the motion and showing off your thighs.

You run your nails along his scalp making him groan which lights you up on the inside.

“Love your hair too, ‘n you always smell so good,” you whisper, lowering your head to nibble at his jaw, “anytime I smell your cologne I get really, really wet.

“Fuck,” he mutters under his breath, watching you with dilated eyes, “what else, little sis?”

“Y’know,” you bite your lip, rocking down onto his bulge, “you're so strong, love when you push me around and force me to do stuff.”

He grunts as your nails scratch through his hair and across his neck, “I like that too.”

You giggle and kiss his neck softly, “Love your big fat cock and how it always stretches me out,” your lips trail up to nip his earlobe, “I also like when you talk dirty to me, saying you’re g’nna make me take it.”

Leon groans as you kiss his jaw, teasingly bypassing his lips to kiss the other side of his face. His hands grip your ass tight enough to bruise, making you whine. He slaps his hands down on each cheek before groping until the fat dimples between his fingers driving you to press into him harder.

“Want it, want big brother’s cock in my needy princess pussy,” you kiss his cheek sloppily, “wanna be big brother’s slut, just a hole for him to use anytime he needs to cum.”

“Fuck me,” he murmurs, pulling you back by the hair, “such a dirty little sister, huh? Need big brother that bad?”

“Uh huh,” you moan, rocking down on his chubbed cock, “‘m all yours, my pussy is made for your cock.”

He kisses you messily, tongue licking past your lips to taste you. Scraping his teeth against your bottom lip, he sucks it into his mouth before letting go with a pop. A low whine escapes you as he pushes closer, slanting his mouth to deepen your kiss. His tongue flutters into your mouth.

You moan and suck on his tongue eagerly, letting your hips roll down to grind against him. Leon’s fingers slip under your slinky dress to rub against your cunt, lacy panties completely soaked. He moans into your mouth as he lets himself feel all across your panty clad slit, wetness coating his fingers.

“Take it off,” he growls, yanking the spaghetti straps off of your arms and shoving the neckline below your breasts.

With a pained groan, he watches as your breasts bounce in his face as he tries to work your dress down your body.

“God damn,” he mutters before latching onto a hard nipple making you keen.

“Big brother,” you mewl as he swaps to the other sensitive bud.

“Sexy fucking tits right in my face,” he spits out, nipping and sucking at the underside of each breast until they bruise.

He yanks you by the hair again making you whimper before letting go to squeeze your tits in each hand.

“Use me,” you gasp out, “use my pussy like a little fucktoy, big brother.”

He turns and shoves you down on the couch, kneeling in between your legs as he grips where your dress is bunched up and roughly pulls it all the way off. You whine at him, arching your hips up drawing his eyes to the pretty lace that’s practically transparent now from your slick.

“Gonna eat this hot little cunt,” he rumbles, snagging the hem of your panties and pulling them off, tucking them in his pocket.

“Noo,” you pout, foot coming up to press on his clavicle, “don’t want your mouth, want your cock.”

His eyes are so dark now they look black, “You just want big brother to ream this pretty pussy?”

“Yes, yes, please, ‘m just your little cock hungry slut,” you toss your head back.

Leon undresses then leans forward, pressing his cock against your slick cunt. His thumb comes up to pull your bottom lip down, dropping your mouth open. You loll your tongue out excitedly. He spits directly on your tongue making your clit pulse in hot arousal. You swallow, feeling his cock kick against your pussy lips. He growls and spits hard into your panting mouth.

“Beg me for it, baby sis,” he smacks his dick against your clit, “beg me to fuck this slutty hole.”

“Want it so bad, Leon,” you let your foot fall away, to wrap your legs around his waist, grinding your slick folds against his thick cock.

“Aww princess, it doesn’t sound like you want it,” he mockingly pouts, dragging his fat tip against the hood of your slippery clit.

“Big brother, please,” your voice breaks as tears gather at your lash line, “want you to stretch me on your big cock, want you to use my hole til you cum.”

“Fucking hell, you’re so hot,” he groans, pressing the tip of his dick inside your pussy, slowly sinking into your fluttering walls until he’s balls deep inside of you.

You gasp trying to swallow air as he bullies in and out of your spasming pussy.

“Speechless?” he laughs at you, “nothing but a dumb little cockwhore.”

“Yeah, yeah, ‘m your cockwhore, big brother,” you moan, hands digging into his shoulders, thighs spasming as they wrap tightly around his waist.

Leon groans and cages you in with his body, forearms bracketing your head as he slowly ruts his cock into your soaked hole.

“Just my little slut, huh? Like your pretty big brother fucking you with his big cock?” he sucks a bruise into your neck, one of his hands coming up to tangle in your hair to tilt your head back.

“S’good, love it so much, want it all the time,” you thrash underneath his weight.

He hums and keeps biting bruises into your skin in between words, “My own personal pocket pussy, just a wet little hole for my dick.”

You nod jerkily, dislodging Leon’s mouth from your neck and the collar of bruises he’s left across your throat. He moves up to messily lick past your lips, sucking on your tongue before filling your mouth with his own. Pulling away, he sloppily kisses down to your neck, teeth sinking into the bruised skin again making you whimper and squirm.

“Big brother, please,” you mewl needily, nails scratching along his back making him buck harder into you.

“Such a slutty sister,” his laugh ends on a groan as your cunt clenches around his dick, “mmm, that pussy loves the way I’m talking about her, just squeezin’ me so tight.”

He picks up the pace, cock thrusting into you harder and harder, grinding against your g-spot every time he presses into your cunt. One of his hands moves to grip your waist as the other slips down to rub your pudgy clit.

“Leon,” you moan, pussy clenching down on his thick cock, eyes fluttering as the pleasure builds.

“Yeah? Gonna cream big brother’s cock like a good cockdrunk whore, hmm?” he coos mockingly, “this pretty pussy’s been crying for a good fuck.”

His eyes watch your pussy greedily suck his cock back in with every thrust.

“What’re you, baby sis?” the hand on your waist moves up to grip your chin, “tell me and I’ll make you cum.”

“‘m yours,” you choke out as he bullies your g-spot with the fat tip of his cock, “my pussy’s yours, big brother.”

“I know that, princess,” he simpers condescendingly, “aren’t you my little slut? Big brother’s own little cumdump?”

“Yes!” you whine, hips rocking down onto his thick cock, “I’m your slut, big brother. Nothing but a slutty hole for you to use whenever you want, c’n use my princess pussy any time.”

“Fuck me, little sis, such a dirty mouth,” he grins, “think it’s about time that hot little cunt creamed me, don’t you?”

“Please, Leon—big brother,” your nails score down his chest making him grunt, “w’nna cum for you, wanna cum for my brother.”

“Damn,” he hisses, roughly flicking his thumb on your clit as he grinds into your pussy.

He bites your shoulder just as his fingers pinch your sensitive bundle of nerves, making your hips arch as pleasure washes over your body. Your walls pulse and flutter around his dick making Leon groan and snap his hips into you harder.

“Feels so fucking good—god damn,” he groans, burying his cock deep inside your spasming cunt and cumming, hot jizz coating your walls.

You sigh when he slowly pulls out, Leon hissing at the sensation. He lays down next to you, squeezing himself between the back of the couch and your body.

“So fucking lucky to have you,” he murmurs into your hair, “you’re next level sometimes.”

You giggle and turn to kiss his jaw, “Just sometimes?”

Humming, he kisses your swollen lips, nipping the bottom one, “Don’t need you getting an ego.”

He laces your fingers together making your heartbeat pick up as he pulls you into his arms.

“Think you’re the one with an ego,” you bite your lip stifling your grin.

“That goes without saying, princess. Gotta keep up with you,” he kisses your lips, a little softer and slower, “prettiest fucking girl,” another slow, wet kiss, “so smart,” another tongue teasing kiss, “and sexy.”

You sigh and let Leon pull you into slowly making out, all soft lips and hot tongues. Feeling your eyes start to droop, you pull away from his mouth.

“Tired, Leon,” you mumble, pressing your face into his neck.

“Mm, let’s get to bed then. C’mon, I’ll carry you,” he kisses the top of your head and helps you to your feet before swinging you up into a bridal carry.

The next thing you know is Leon laying you out on his sheets. Pulling you into his chest to cuddle, you sigh happily and snuggle further into his arms, letting his heartbeat lull you to sleep.

#lipglossanon #paid requests #kofi commission #stepbro!leon s kennedy #stepbro leon s kennedy/you #stepbro!leon s kennedy x fem!reader #leon s kennedy x fem!reader #fem!reader #leon kennedy x reader smut #leon s kennedy smut #lipglossmasterlist

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khadiiii · 6 months

Text

'i got a girlfriend' -Hanma shuji

you decide to mess with your drunk boyfriend..

Hanma shuji was always down to get drunk.

'and then i punched him right in the face...you shoulda fuckin' seen it doll' shuji laughs boisterously in your direction, not caring about the people around him.Typical.

'seriously blood everywhere..' You cant help but laugh and mockingly put your hand on his shoulder, a light flush shading his face..

'you alright?' you chuckle at his more than tipsy state. Hanma rolls his eyes knowing you were poking fun at him

'm fine.. *hiccup* only been a few drinks..'

his words are more than slurred as he turns his head to look you in the eye-just to stick his tongue out at you. you nod and snicker,giving him a sarcastic thumbs up 'a few...totally..' he swats your hand away and calls for another drink-a sly grin cracks on your face a new idea to mess with him coming to you... 'm going to the bathroom shuji...' you stand up speaking with your normal innocent tone 'yeah,yeah be quick baby..' his voice is gruff and strained...cigarettes and alcohol aren't a good pair..

Hanma is a possessive man..he like to have nice things to himself...as much as he looks and sounds like a player...he'll never leave someone he truly likes (hes a loyal mf basically)

....So when you emerge from the bathroom 20 minutes later with your hair done slightly differently and a pair of shades on, you find him slumped in the same spot staring down into his glass,head lulling forwards waiting patiently for you...but shuji was drunk out of his mind..so much that he couldn't see straight and his eyes became watery making everything a blur.. You approach him slowly, snickering quietly and run your finger along his back..putting on a slightly new voice to trick him

'hey there, handsome~'...you coo to him..voice like honey.. it takes Hanma a few moments to register your touch, his body shaking a little from the large volume of alcohol in his system..he coughs once,then twice then sputters drunkenly with his raspy and slightly intimidating voice... 'the hell...?'

'....dont touch me'

you fight to hold back a chuckle and trail your finger to his shoulder lightly caressing his bicep which you know he likes 'woah..easy mister..i-'

'i got a girlfriend.' his eyes remain deeply focused on the liquid in his glass, head rocking forward as he tries to stable himself.

'yeah? i dont see her...'

'then look for her...shes wearin a blue...' hanmas drunken words trail off as he stares intensely into his glass...he takes a few moments to turn his head and you stay silent in the hopes he'll realise.. His eyes wander...to the left of you,then to the right and even above your head..looking intently for something

'shes wearin a...' he mumbles,still looking around for..well,you.Finally he shifts his gaze to you, looking kinda defeated...

'a blue...shirt...?'....his eyes widen slightly as he takes hold of the fabric of your shirt, tugging you towards him...he grins at you and starts giggling like a little girl

'y/n!!' his giggles turn to laughs..as you finally speak back in your regular voice-taking off your shades

'you took your time didnt you?'

'ughhh you're a little shit....' he groans in annoyance, keeping an arm around your hips as you stood next to him....'i thought you were lost'

'you only cared about the fact i was lost and not that a smoking hot babe was hitting on you..?....we have different priorities huh?' he giggles some more, giving a light kiss to your side and nodding drunkenly.

'im gonna get you back baby...ya made me think i got hoes...hehe ♡'

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

#hanma shuji #tokyo rev fluff #shuji hanma #hanma tokyo revengers #hanma x reader #tr hanma #tokyo revengers #shuji hanma icons #hanma shuuji x you #hanma shuuji x reader

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britcision · 10 months

Text

Okay so I’m well aware that this is probably my own fault, but a lot of people seem to have gotten the idea that Bruce is in any way important to this story

This is not a story about Batman

This is a story about the many and varied disaster gays he has trained to commit bigger and more epic disasters than any other gay in history

So let’s fix it and get back to the second most important thing in the story! Timker (and bonus Connor)

——————

Field Trips Without Permission Slips part 1

Tucker was still firmly in his happy bubble, floating along after Tim Drake-Wayne even as they left the Bat Cave.

Connor, Kon, Superboy, he’d be there soon. Tucker wanted to make a good impression; this was Tim’s boyfriend, Tucker really wanted the guy to like him.

That way they could all be friends, and he wouldn’t worry if Tucker and Tim hung out, and talked tech, and maybe got to have a hackathon…

Because of course, even notorious ladies’ man Too Fine Foley would never make a move on a taken man. That’d just be low.

He was just trying to work out what to say when Tim got a buzz on his phone. The excitement dropped off the younger man’s face in an instant, his expression immediately shifting to worry and determination.

“Something’s come up,” he said tersely, and Tucker frowned, wondering if he was about to hear about a second rogue attack in almost as many days.

Gotham… Gotham was kinda exhausting. No offence, obviously, even he could feel the Curse lingering on the back of his tongue.

But trying to keep this city safe was like bailing a sinking boat with a sieve. No wonder they needed the best of the best.

“How can I help?” Was all he offered, trying to make himself look ready and eager.

Tim’s eyes widened as he looked up, like he was only just remembering that Tucker was actually even there at all. That yeah, he definitely could help.

Actually, it turned out he was their subject matter expert when Tim explained the problem.

“Superman just told B he can’t hear Jason’s heart anymore. I don’t suppose there’s a reason you’d know of?” He asked hopefully, and Tucker’s jaw clicked shut.

Because… yeah, he could guess exactly why Jason was now out of range of super hearing. But the bats weren’t cleared to know about Jason’s halfa nature yet, and Tucker was pretty sure Jason couldn’t transform.

It’d be a wild time for him to give it a first try if Superman was listening in. He’d have to warn Danny and Jason, though that might have to wait if they’d… gone… to the Ghost Zone.

And yeah, okay, Tucker maybe shoulda thought of that first, but in his defence Danny died on a regular basis and occasionally just to show off.

Shoulders sagging as he relaxed, Tucker blew out a long breath and grinned at Tim, relief making him lax. And yeah, sure, he didn’t know why they’d gone, but he could bullshit something if they asked.

“Oh, yeah actually… they’re probably in the Ghost Zone,” he explained with a slight shrug, because really? It wasn’t a big deal.

Some of the tension leached out of Tim’s shoulders with the presence of an immediate answer.

“The Ghost Zone? That’s the Infinite Realms, right?” Tim asked and Tucker nodded, sticking his hands in his pockets.

It was always nice to be the guy with all the answers, but having all the answers for someone like Tim Drake-Wayne? Yeah, that felt extra good.

“Yeah, same place. It’s mostly only the Ancients that call it the Infinite Realms, and Danny and Jason probably won’t bother them.”

Not unless Clockwork chose to make another visit, but that would be an Ancient going to bother Danny and Jason.

Tim nodded thoughtfully, making some quick notes on his phone.

“Any idea why, or how long they’ll be? Bruce has probably convinced himself Jason’s dead again by now,” he added dryly, sounding neither impressed nor concerned.

Well, maybe a little concerned. Tucker had kinda gotten the stage door tickets to Batman’s opinion of Danny.

Tucker shrugged again, thinking back quickly over what Jason had told him he’d told his family. He was gonna make himself a cheatsheet if (hope of hopes) hanging out with Tim became a regular thing.

Frostbite? Yeah, they probably mentioned Frostbite. No need to mention he was an Ancient, the yeti certainly never brought it up.

“They’re probably going to see Danny’s doctor. Check Jason’s ecto contamination, see how Danny’s doing away from his haunt; that’s Amity Park,” he added as Tim’s brows furrowed momentarily. “Technically halfas don’t need need one, but Danny claimed it so we dunno what leaving will do to him.”

Which made it sound way more dramatic than it actually was; even full ghosts could leave their haunt if they wanted to. Not all of them even kept haunts in the Zone.

They’d asked last year, before Danny finally took the plunge (and yeah maybe coming out of puberty was why he’d waited a couple extra years - not that he’d gotten the promised Fenton Growth Spurt).

Frostbite had just asked if they even knew where Ember’s haunt was.

News to Tucker and the gang that she’d even had one, with how much she wanted to go on tour.

Danny’s haunt would always be his place of power, but with the power Danny wielded? He never needed it anymore. Tucker was pretty sure that when he actually became king the whole Ghost Zone was gonna be Danny’s haunt.

Not cuz anyone had explicitly said so. Just interpreting a lot of the flowery bullshit around Pariah. And no one had told him no yet either.

Tim just nodded, typing a moment more before sending off a quick reply to Bruce.

He did feel a little bad tattling on Danny and Jason like that. If they’d wanted anyone to know where they were going, they coulda just said.

But they also probably hadn’t known Superman would be listening, or notice Jason’s heart disappearing. Really Tucker was doing everyone a favour; making sure no one came back to Batman in a panic attack.

He just hoped Jason would see it the same way.

And then the single hottest person Tucker had ever seen in his entire life popped his head around the door, perfectly windswept black curls pushed back with one hand.

A smile of perfectly white, perfectly even teeth flashed as gorgeous blue eyes like the heart of the ocean landed on him and Tim.

On Tim.

Tim was smiling back even before the other entered the room.

Tim’s boyfriend.

Tucker raised Ida to cover his face without even thinking, cheeks burning and really really really hoping neither white boy knew enough about dark skin to tell.

Tim’s brother Duke was Black too.

Tucker was going to fucking die.

He could not go weak kneed at just the sight of Tim’s boyfriend!

He was only vaguely aware when the walking Adonis spoke, striding quickly into the room.

“Hey, any reason I should be worried that Jason and Danny just disappeared from Gotham’s airspace?”

Ancients even his voice was perfect, rich and smooth like dark chocolate, with just a little bass that made Tucker’s heart flutter. If that voice said his name Tucker was going to fucking die.

Tucker strangled most of the whimper in his throat because he was a fucking adult goddamn it. Jumped and almost smacked himself in the face when Tim called his name from right next to him.

Loudly.

Like he’d said it a couple times already.

And the World’s Hottest Man was looking at him too, the absolute cutest worried little frown marring his perfect brows, and oh ancients just the littlest pout on soft, full lips…

Yeah, no, someone get the headstone, Tucker would just bury himself out back.

———————

Note: I’m genuinely still turning over which name our dear Superboy Prime is going by as his regular name, since it’s… about 1000% going to depend on his relationship with Clark

I cannot fucking imagine anyone but Clark gave Kon El his Kryptonian name. Just. No fucking way. (Kara could but then we’re back to Too Many Characters and tbh she has more tact than that)

So their relationship has to be good enough that Clark offered this very personal piece of himself, and Connor’s accepted it

But Connor is the name his first friends gave him

And his civilian name, so it’s not like he can whole hog the switch

Atm the Bats call him Kon in uniform as the world’s shittiest cover but we’re getting his POV next chapter and I need to know what he calls himself, so… poll!

Tag List: @welcometosasakiworld @kyrianclawraith @someonebored0100 @stealingyourbones @starkcravingmad @frostedthroughghost @akikkobara a @rainbowbunny0159 @littlefeather345 @violet-catsarelife e @serasvictoria02 @wolfjackle @blacksea21090 @secretdestinywerewolf @anime-hipster-the-amazing @undead-essence @skitscratched @blackroserelina @snoodly-boop @trickerdi @mayoota-blog @xysidhe @idkmrpianoman @little-apricot-the-writer writer @chaoticmistake e @the-legal-shipper r @bun-fish @aroranorth-west t @demon-cat-goes-woof @perfectwastelandcreation @onyxlightdragon on @larks-and-katydids @peachesandcreamfemboy @jesus-camp-the-sequel @may-rbi @mothman-the-mothman87 @viyatrix @stargirl1331 1 @idfk-man10 @thedepressedrobin @skulld3mort-1fan n @rootsmudge @ravenshadow17 7 @cankoking @phantom-dc @mentalcarebear @magic-pincushion @redamancyardor @lyra689 @itsparadoxlacuna @alcorbearson @asphyxia778 @why-must-i-be-like-this @tkiesai @greenpyrowolf @frivolous-pastel @honeysuckletook

For anyone wondering, the reason the tag list looks like it’s having seizures is my phone has decided that letting me scroll around is far too convenient and it’s just going to randomly jump around if I try and move the cursor

You cannot tag a bitch on tumblr mobile without scrolling to the end of their name and selecting them on the search

If you are not at the end it will autocomplete what’s left and thus *gestures vaguely* happy WIP Wednesday

#dp x dc #danny fenton dead and loving it #wip wednesday #chapter 16 #ghost zone ghost zone ghost zone #danny phantom #Dead on main ship #danny x jason #tucker quick be less gay you’re drooling on ida #Ever see someone so hot your brain just short circuits #Tucker did #Tim gets it tho

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thecreelhouse · 1 month

Text

tramps like us

Paring: Gator Tillman x Fem!Reader

Summary: As spring arrives, Gator learns just what family really means— blood or found, the hard work of healing finally begins to pay off, and a new chapter you never expected, begins.

CW/Tags: fluff. so. much. fluff. , hurt/comfort, language, brief smut (oral, f receiving, dirty talk, etc.), brief internalized ableism, mentions of alcohol/weed, found family dynamics, did I mention this chapter has fluff?

WC: 10.6k

〘 series masterlist ✧.┊this is a sequel to part time soulmate, full time problem ✧.┊listen to the series playlist here. ✧.┊read on AO3 〙

A/N: so excited we’re finally at this chapter!! I wrote the sappiest part of this first before anything else in the whole series lmao, and I’m so excited to share it with y’all 🥹 thank you as always to anyone who has supported this series so far!! love y’all ♡ (also if any of y’all can spot the very vague sopranos reference I will (consensually) blow u a kiss xoxo.)

chapter 5 ✧.┊

home - edward sharpe & the magnetic zeros

↻ ◁ II ▷ ↺

⋆｡♪ home, let me come home / home is wherever I’m with you / ah home, yes i am home / home is when I’m alone with you♬ ₊˚.

·············································

It’s the start of spring, and the city is abuzz with a fresh start of a new season; not much is in bloom yet, but there’s a mood shift in the house as the days grow a little longer again. It’s amazing what a little extra daylight can do for one’s mental health.

Over the following few months from when he first moved to Brooklyn, Gator finds his way in this new life. While he still struggled with finding a new career path to start on, he helps out at the bookshop, but you’re convinced he’s doing it to spend more time with Lovebug.

Regardless, you’ve enjoyed watching him come out of his shell, find his way and become his own person, even if just a little bit.

Ever since he lost half his eyesight, Gator had countless visits to the doctor. More often than not, he’d ask you to come along, and naturally, you’d always join; most of the time there wasn’t much you could do beyond giving him support, but he was more grateful than he ever showed.

He never had to say it, you knew he still struggled with expressing most emotions, especially towards others. It might’ve been easiest showing the raw side of his feelings to you, but that didn’t stop his insecurities completely. It’s something Gator was working hard on in therapy, and though it wasn’t easy for him to believe, you reminded him constantly of the progress he was making.

Slowly, with your support, he was beginning to believe it, too.

In the tail end of winter, the cast on his arm was removed; his bones thankfully healed with ease. The bandage over his eye was next; the first time you see the now empty socket, despite telling yourself to not make a fuss, you’re in shock.

The nurse removed the bandage for the doctor to examine Gator’s healing progress, then carefully takes out a thin, plastic shell from the socket. He explained to you weeks earlier how it was implanted immediately after the initial surgery to keep shape of the eye socket while healing.

You stood off to the side, eyes wide with a dropped jaw.

Gator catches your expression with his good eye as he sits on the exam table, throwing a dim smirk your way. “See, told ya’ you’d think I’m gross.”

The doctor steps back while the nurse leaves, giving the two of you space and privacy.

“Huh? No, no way. It’s just such a… jarring change, obviously much more jarring for you than me, but I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable.” Your hand rested on his face, the side of the removed eye, thumb soothingly running along his cheekbone.

“Eyes or no eyes, you’re still you.”

“Shoulda’ known you’d be corny about this,” He teased, earning an eye roll and breathy laugh from you.“You don’t think I look—“

“Whatever negative thing you’re ‘bout to say ain’t flyin’ with me. I love you, no matter what. So you should love you, too.”

“Alright, cool it, Sunshine.” His smirk this time was a little brighter. You stood close as your hand slipped into his; you gave a tight, quick squeeze.

With the lapse in conversation, the doctor, an older woman with kind eyes and a warm smile, returned. “Everything looks good, Gator, it healed nicely, and faster than I anticipated.”

“Got lucky t’have a good friend that’s a nurse. She helped lots.”

Hearing Gator call Ivy his friend set off a bloom of warmth in your heart. It was the first time he called anyone in the group a friend. That alone was huge progress.

“Well, she sure knew what she was doing!” Even her laugh was warm and inviting. “Have you had any phantom pains?”

“Nah, but it kinda still feels like it’s… there? That probably sounds weird.”

“Not at all, that’s rather common after surgery, too. Some folks have it for a brief time, others have it for much longer. If it gets to be painful, though, call and we’ll check it out.” The doctor watched as he nodded, adding, “Any questions, or anything we might’ve missed?”

Gator was quiet, leg bouncing while anxiety built up. He wouldn’t know until he asked. Again, you squeezed his hand; a sign he wasn’t going this alone. “S- so, what’s next? I’ve been kinda curious ‘bout one of those… y’know… uh…”

The doctor caught on immediately, “Well, that’s up to you, Gator. You can leave it be, or try an eye patch, or we could discuss the option of a prosthetic eye. Whatever you’re comfortable with.”

“Does a fake eye just… pop in there?”

“We’d have to give you surgery again, it’s a permanent implant that’ll hold the prosthetic properly, help it move along with your existing eye—“

“They move?!”

The doctor didn’t laugh at him, but her smile grew at his surprise. “It’s not perfect, but yes, it’s meant to appear as natural as possible. The pupil wouldn’t adjust according to light, either, but most folks can’t tell unless they really give your eyes a good, long look.”

“C- can we try that?” He didn’t hesitate like you expected from previous conversations. He sounded… hopeful. Cautious, but hopeful.

“Let’s give you another month, just to be safe on the healing, and then you can come back so we can figure a plan out. Sound good?”

“Sounds great,” He breathed as his smile brightened even more.

On the walk home, his smile never faded. This was the most optimistic he was since he arrived.

“Y’know, if this works out, I won’t look like a total fre—“

You stopped in your tracks before pulling him aside, out of the path of irritated fast walkers. “Gator, with or without a prosthetic, you’re not a freak. I support whatever you decide, and I can only imagine this would help you feel more comfortable about the entire situation, but you’re not gross, or a freak, or any of that shit you’ve been saying.”

He fidgeted with his glasses like he was adjusting them. It’s a habit he recently picked up. “Yeah, but—“

“Nope. I’ll annoy the shit out of ya’ and remind ya’ every day that you’re wonderful, no matter what.”

“Wonderful? You’re pushin’ it, darlin’.” He snorted, deflecting. You grabbed his hand, softening his features as your fingers laced in his.

“I mean it, jerk.”

“Not sure I can believe ya’ when you say it like that, but okay.” He glanced down before stifling another laugh.

“What? What’s funny?”

“Ya’ stopped here on purpose, huh?”

Your face scrunched in confusion before you follow his gaze down; beneath your feet was a set of large, bold letters, reading ‘you look lovely’ spray painted onto the pavement.

“You’re really outdoin’ yourself with the cheesiness today.”

“I swear I didn’t see this,” You laughed, shoving your hand against his shoulder playfully. “But ya’ better start believing it. Totally some weird sign you should be nicer to yourself.”

“Or what? Gonna threaten t’kick my ass and not do anythin’?” He taunted while he poked his tongue out, continuing to walk on. You opened your mouth to argue back, but closed it again, grumbling as you caught up to him.

“One of these days, Tillman, m’gonna show ya’ I can pack a punch,” You smirked before rethinking your words. “Not- not like saying that as an actual threat, I don’t- I’m not gonna actually—“

Gator pulled you into his side while he snickers, “Oh, ya’ totally are, now I gotta sleep with my only eye open.”

It took a second for the joke to land, but once you started to laugh, he felt the tiniest bit of weight lifted from his shoulders.

A prosthetic wouldn’t instantly fix the trauma from losing his sight, but it could be a step in the right direction to help him feel comfortable in his own skin again. Maybe feeling comfortable could help him face the trauma with a little more courage.

As Gator listened to your syrupy sweet laugh, he knew one thing was certain— that he’d never have to carry this weight on his own, and he’d never have to fight his demons alone, either.

·············································

It takes time— while the flowers are beginning to bloom in April, pastels coloring into the city while fragrant, sweet scents linger in the warm air weaving among and between the city’s grid— but Gator finally begins to feel like he belongs among everyone in the house.

He still struggles time to time, but with his own self doubt, not with anyone in the house. The first time he finally feels like he connects with someone in the house, without you, is the day Ty comes home from his top surgery.

You bound down the stairs, excited to greet Ty and Ivy in the foyer; Ivy’s got an arm linked with his, taking their time to enter the house. They shuffle in like an elderly couple, making you giggle.

“Ives, I got top surgery, I’m still able to walk. My tits might be gone but my legs are right here.” He complains as you stifle more laughter while pursing your lips.

Throwing your arms out, ready to hug him, he shoots a death glare, stopping you immediately. He sternly warns, “Sunshine, don’t you dare. I don’t have airbags to protect me from your bone crushing hugs anymore.”

“Right, sorry,” You smile bashfully with a shrug. “How ya’ doin’ after that?”

“Well… aside from the pain and the whole gross ‘draining the void of where my tits once were’ thing, I’m alright.” Ty grins tiredly, unlinking arms with Ivy as he carefully makes his way into the living room. He bumps into a recliner on the way, and Ivy curses herself for letting him walk alone.

“You know… it’s not the healing from surgery I’m worried about with Ty, it’s the fuckin’ pain meds— he’s clumsy enough when he’s sober.” Ivy groaned, watching him like a hawk as he settled himself onto the couch slowly, but thankfully, with ease.

“I heard that!”

You stifle a laugh before calling out to Ty, “Need anything from the kitchen?”

His face lights up, “Ice cream? Please tell me it’s still in there. Big tub, has my name on it.”

“No, I ate it all,” Jinx deadpans as she walks out of the kitchen and towards the stairs.

“On god, Jinx— ”

“Dude, I’m joking.” She replies before heading upstairs. “Welcome home, by the way!”

Ty grumbles under his breath, “Man, ice cream’s nothin’ to fuck around about.”

While Ivy helps Ty build a fortress of pillows for him to sit upright on, you head into the kitchen to find Gator putting dishes away. You come up behind him, about to wrap your arms around him, but panic, wondering if it would startle him since his peripheral vision was limited now.

As you pause behind him, he laughs, “Hi, Darlin’,” before turning to face you.

“How’d you know I was gonna hug you?”

“I can still hear, y’know.” He jokes, holding his arms out to you. Face heating up, you feel embarrassed, but you still enter his embrace, burying your face into his chest. “And see enough.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t say anything.”

“Footsteps, everyone’s got their lil’ sounds, you shuffle your feet a lot, like a penguin.”

“Oh. Duh. Right. Wait, like a what?”

He laughs, tugging you closer as he glazes over your question. “How’s Ty doin’?”

“He seems okay overall, just sore. I can only imagine how relieved he must feel, though. He wants ice cream so I’m gonna grab some.”

Gator releases you, shrugging as he says, “I can get it.”

“Oh, hey, you don’t have to.”

“I wanna… if that’s okay.”

Surprised, you respond, “Yeah, of course.”

It’s not that there was any negative energy between anyone and Gator, but he’s been having a hard time feeling like he belongs with you all, feeling like he’s invading a space he shouldn’t be in. Everyone’s been sweet and patient, though, and slowly, Gator’s been opening up and feeling like he’s part of this family.

You lean against the counter, peering out of the doorway into the living room as Gator gives a hesitant wave to Ty before handing the ice cream over. Once Ty gives a looped up, yet welcoming, “Hey, thanks, man,” you watch Gator’s shoulders relax.

Ivy heads back into the kitchen, mirroring you as she leans against the counter, too. Softly, she confides, “Ty was saying on the way home how cool he thinks Gator is.”

You snort, “Really? I mean, that’s sweet, but he’s definitely a dork like me. Probably more than me.” You look on as Gator slowly grows more comfortable in conversation, leaning back in the recliner.

While Ivy chuckles, she shrugs. “Maybe, but I think Ty’s been kinda looking up to Gator lately.”

Your brows furrow, taken aback. “Huh? Why?”

“I think watching Gator make progress has been helping Ty in his own way… helps him see that he can lean into his masculinity while not giving into the toxic side of it all, y’know?” Ivy smiles while she crosses her arms over her chest, leaning back further. “Your boy’s a better person than he realizes.”

“Don’t I know it.” You sigh, smiling, but it never reaches your eyes. “Wish he did, too.”

“He’ll see it someday. He seems a lot happier since the first day he got here.” Ivy observes, glancing over to you with a soft expression. “It took a bit for you, too. For all of us, really. We were all a little lost, looking for a safe place to heal, and each of us has a success story, and a real family, too. Gator’s no different.”

“Christ, Ives, I wish I had a dollar for every time you made me cry in the damn kitchen.”

Ivy pulls you into a side hug with a soft laugh; the two of you continue to be nosy, watching Ty and Gator continue conversation.

“Does it… does it hurt?” You overhear Gator asking Ty, resting on the couch— the velvet green couch Ty’s been asking about for years now— all looped up on pain medication. Then he quickly adds, “I mean that’s- is that a dumb question? It’s definitely a dumb question.”

Ty shakes his head, “Nah, man, not dumb.” He thinks for a moment before adding, “It does hurt, but the pain was worse with ‘em, if that makes sense.”

Gator nods, “Yeah… like, emotionally, you mean?”

“Uh-huh,” Ty responds, spoonful of ice cream muffling him. “But binders? Jesus Christ, I thought bras were bad, but you wear one of those too long, you can really fuck up your lungs and ribs and shit.”

“Wait, seriously?” Gator’s genuinely shocked by this; living in a house with some diversity has made him willing to learn from others, even in the form of obvious questions. “Shit. At least you don’t gotta worry ‘bout it anymore, right?”

Ty laughs, not cruelly, but over Gator’s innocence asking questions and wanting to learn. He jokes, “I’m a free man now. Minus this annoying ass chest compression bullshit. I wanna rip it off, but Ivy would murder me.”

Ivy, much to Ty’s dismay, enters with you at the wrong time. “Damn fucking right I will, Ty. Last thing you need is bleeding out all over Mama’s couch you want so badly.”

You sit on the arm of the chair Gator’s in, leaning down to kiss his head. It’s brief, but Ty still catches it, grimacing with a muttered, “Ew. Gross.”

As you flip Ty off, Gator, with a snort, grabs your hand and shoves it down. “C’mon, don’t be a jerk-off.”

“When are you two gonna get married?” Ty’s question comes out slurred from being heavily medicated.

Your eyes go wide while Gator chokes on air, but Ty’s unfazed, moving onto his next thought already.

“Ives, y’think if I bleed on the couch Mama would finally give it to me?”

“No, Ty,” Bea chuckles as she walks in. “Nice try, though.” Ivy’s in stitches while you crack up, too. Even Gator stifles a laugh.

Ty glares at all of you.“What’s a guy gotta do to have a fancy ass couch?”

“Outlive me and see if I put you on the will for the couch, kiddo.”

“Bea!” Miles gasps as he shuffles in from the front door. He’s about to close it behind him when Flor barrels in, flinging the door open again. “Jesus, Flor, run me over, why don’t you?”

Ivy ignores the exchange as she retorts, “Oh, c’mon, Miles, we all have our fair share of dark humor in the house.”

“Yeah, but I wasn’t expecting that as soon as I got inside.” He mutters, then side-eyes Flor, “Or get murdered by Flor.”

“It wasn’t intentional! I didn’t wanna miss the gifts!”

Jinx returns, “Flor, shut it.”

“Gifts?” Ty’s brow quirks at Flor; she cringes at the slip of her tongue.

Ignoring the banter, Bea slips into the hallway before returning with a gift basket for Ty. She sets it in front of him on the coffee table, and as he leans over to open the packaging, Ivy dives in front of him, successfully blocking Ty from bending when he shouldn’t.

“Ivy! C’mon, dude!”

After Ivy scolds him for bending when he shouldn’t she helps him open the packaging, rummaging through the contents. The basket’s filled with snacks, including a few edibles, a travel pillow for his neck while he sleeps upright, some necessities for healing from any medical procedure, a few of his favorite movies— “Ty, you would like ‘Fight Club’,” says Miles, ignoring the glare from Ty.

Everyone chipped in for the basket, but there’s a few special gifts left. One’s a box from you; a crocheted mesh top— “Sunshine, this your handiwork?”

“Y’needed somethin’ new for your club nights,” You grin as he holds it up. “No point in top surgery if ya’ can’t spend the rest of your life half naked.”

He chuckles, absolutely whacked from the meds, muttering, “Can’t wait to be a slut in this,” The room erupts into laughter, aside from a happy, quiet grin from him.

Jinx speaks up, handing over a gift certificate for her tattoo parlor; the amount is left blank. “I couldn’t put it in the basket, but whenever you’re ready for that chest tattoo you’ve been wanting forever, you let me know, ‘kay?”

“Wh— Jinx, that’s a lot to—“

“Seeing you happy in your own skin is more important than dollar signs, kid. Just say the word and we’ll get started.”

Ty grows quiet, staring at the basket as tears build in his eyes. He thinks for a moment before speaking, hoping his words don’t come off like they’re fueled from the meds. “Thank you guys… for everything since I got here. I feel like the luckiest guy in all of Brooklyn with the best family in the world.” He rubs his eyes, then laughs a little. “I’d hug y’all if I could, hope it’s okay to rain check those.”

“As soon as you’re fully healed, you’re getting bone crushing hugs again from me, buddy.” You smirk, earning an eye roll from him.

Everyone expresses their love back to him, along with well wishes and speedy recovery. Eventually, one by one, you all filter out, except Gator.

You leave, giving Gator a soft squeeze on his shoulder as silent support before heading back into the kitchen. Again, you can’t help but be nosy, easily able to overhear their conversation.

“Hey, uh, Ty? I’m sorry I didn’t have anythin’ cool for ya’,” Gator’s voice wavers a bit, nervous to break down another barrier with letting new people into his life. “But, uh, not t’be all sappy n’ shit, but if you ever need a friend, or need to talk about guy stuff, or whatever—“ Gator laughs at himself. “—I don’t know how to say it without soundin’ dumb, but don’t be ‘fraid to say somethin’, okay?”

Ty lazily beams at Gator, “If I wasn’t so fucked up right now, I’d have a better response, but that means more than y’know. Thanks, man.”

You watch on while Gator’s smile grows, your heart growing along with it.

·············································

May arrives, and Gator gets his second eye surgery; this time, it’s to implant the structuring for his prosthetic eye. Just like Ty coming home from his surgery, Gator’s welcomed back with well wishes and love from everyone in the house.

Everyone asked Gator in the weeks leading up to the surgery if he needed or wanted anything to make his recovery process a little easier, but he kept insisting he didn’t need anything.

One day, you asked him why he kept turning everyone’s help down, but he just shrugged and said, “I got a safe place to recover, with you and everyone else. I got everythin’ I need, darlin’.”

While his answer was heartwarming, you were determined to do more, getting everyone to brainstorm an idea to chip in on.

After another monthly family dinner, you slide a card over on the table to Gator. His brows furrowed.

“What’s this?”

“Won’t know ‘til ya’ open it, now will ya’?” So, he does.

Gator looked down at the comically large ‘get well soon’ card, face bright as he read over everyone’s personal well wishes added into the card. Inside was a plain envelope, to which, again, he reminded the group he didn’t need anything.

“We still wanted to do something nice,” Bea spoke up at the other opposite end of the table. “You deserve it.”

Hesitantly, he opened the envelope, and with one glance inside, his eye widened, brows flying up in shock.

“What— I don’t understand,” Gator looked around at everyone, baffled.

“Sunshine here mentioned how crazy fucking expensive just the surgery alone was,” Miles clarified as he nodded to you. “We thought maybe this would help ease up on the amount you need for your new eye.”

Gator’s face dropped, completely caught off guard by the generous gesture. He looked down into the envelope again, finding cash and checks; he knew he should accept the gift, but immediately he felt guilty at the thought.

“Y’guys didn’t have t’do anythin’,” He murmured as everyone sat together in the dining room. His uncovered eye was glassy with emotions ready to spill over, while the other side is covered with a new eye patch for the healing process. “This is… really kind of y’all, but I- I can’t take all’a this.”

Then, he looked to you while your hand was in his. “Y’didn’t have to make everyone—“

“I didn’t make anyone do anythin’. It was Ty’s idea,” You smiled over at Ty.

Gator looked over his way, “Dude, this is- it’s really kind of y’all, but you didn’t—“

“We didn’t have to. We know. We wanted to.” Ty simply answered.

“I- I don’t get why, though. I definitely don’t deserve this.”

“You do, though. You deserve to be cared about,” Ivy chimed in. “Because that’s what family does. We take care of one another.”

The dam breaks, but not before he held the card over his face in one hand, one that shook as he began to cry. Really cry. You only got to see this side of him; Gator was always so careful to never let his walls down with anyone, because he hated the way his father treated him when he did. It was drilled into his head since he was a kid that ‘men don’t cry’, so he just… didn’t.

It wasn’t until you came back in his life and reassured him constantly it’s healthy and normal to cry shit out. It’s normal to get emotional during the bad, and the good. It’s only human nature, and he shouldn’t be shamed for what’s just basic instinct.

You squeezed his hand to give some comfort, while Ty couldn’t help speaking up.

“You better pick the coolest, fanciest fake eye in the world, man.” His lighthearted comment pulls a laugh out of Gator through his tears; you’re grateful for the comedic relief, watching Gator relax as he continued laughing.

“Okay, kid, only if ya’ help me find one.”

“Deal.”

The rest of the night was spent at the table, catching up with one another while Gator continued to thank everyone, still in absolute shock. It’s all he could talk about when Bea asked her monthly question of what everyone was grateful for, but it wasn’t the only thing.

“M’grateful that y’all have been so kind. I ain’t the best with words, but y’all have shown me more love than my own family ever did—“ He paused, glancing over to you; again, to reassure him, you squeezed his hand and shot a warm smile. “— thanks, y’all… for givin’ me time t’figure things out, and makin’ room for me in this family.”

Bea patted her tears away with a napkin before leaving her chair to come over to Gator. “Get up, kid, you’re not making me cry without a hug.”

As Gator hugged her, you glanced around the table at everyone, mouthing a ‘thank you’.

There wasn’t a dry eye in the house that night.

·············································

It’s an incredibly warm evening for mid-May; Miles, being the movie enthusiast he is, suggests breaking out the projector for a movie night on the rooftop.

Except no one can decide on what to watch.

You all bounce ideas around while lazing around the living room; if Ivy wasn’t working right now, she’d totally back your movie choices.

Doesn’t help that Ty’s napping, so whatever you all choose, both him and Ivy will have to deal with it.

“What if ya’ did a game night instead?” Gator’s sitting on the couch while you lay back against the couch’s arm, legs hanging over his.

You look up at Gator, eyes wide while you shake your head, “No, bad idea—“

“Oh, that could be cool!” Flor is giddy with excitement, kicking her feet from her spot on the ottoman. It doesn’t take much to amuse her, honestly. “Sunshine, you still got Mario Kart, right?”

“Well, yeah, but we probably shouldn’t p—“

“We got all those extra Switch controllers too, pretty sure it’s up to 4 player.” Miles grins, movie night a long forgotten idea. “Too bad no one else has a Switch, ‘cause we could’ve linked ‘em up for everyone to play at once.”

“Four players is more than enough, don’t push it,” You grumble as you sink in your seat with a sigh. “Fuckin’ hell, someone’s gonna end up bein’ thrown off the roof.”

“What? C’mon, it’ll be fun. Don’t be a brat ‘bout it.” Your face feels hot; it’s meant to be innocent, but Gator realizes what he said before he smirks at you. You frown while you pinch his side. “Hey—“

“Fine, we’ll do that instead, but if anyone ends up with their feelings hurt, don’t get mad at me.”

“C’mon, Sunshine, we’re all adults here,” Jinx snickers. “Clearly, Gator knows how to have fun more than you do. We might have to revoke your nickname and give it to him.”

You throw your head back on the armrest, groaning in frustration “First my cat, now my friends, what else ya’ stealin’ from me, Gator?”

He grins down at you, “A kiss?”

“Y’all are too sappy for me, I’m out,” Jinx leaves, while Miles cringes, following Jinx.

Flor hangs back for a moment, only to tease, “So, when’s the wedding?”

“Oh my god,” You cover your face in your hands while you feel Gator tense up under you. “Flor, consider your ass kicked in Mario Kart later.”

“You’re terrible at it. Gator told me. I thought I saw the worst but you’re bad bad at it. So, good luck with that, Sunshine.”

As she leaves with a shrug and a smug look, Gator softly laughs. “Would marryin’ me really be that bad?”

Your hands drop to lock eyes with his. “No, god, no, I- that’s just— don’t you think it’s kinda early—“

His smile doesn’t falter while he holds your hands in his. “I’m only teasin’, promise. I know that ain’t your thing, anyway.” It’s a sliver, a hairline, but the hint of sadness still hangs in his words. He changes the subject anyway, “We should grab stuff for later, you wanna come with?”

You nod with a slight smile, unable to take your mind off of his reaction.

Marriage really was never appealing to you, not with anyone. Still isn’t.

… Or, at least you thought.

————

Everything’s set up on the rooftop; there’s inflatable chairs, an air mattress, bean bags— basically anything soft is scattered about the roof for everyone to get comfy. There’s two coolers of drinks, one for alcohol, one for non, while pizzas and snacks are scattered around a low table in the middle of you all.

The projector shows the home screen of your Switch, ready to start up Mario Kart, while everyone decides on who’s going first. The conversation, naturally, gets sidetracked with ease; you bring the heated debate over to the rest of the group.

“Okay, fine, we’re settling this once and for all.” You make your way to the air mattress, some kind of cider in hand, kicking off the controversial question with your best friend. “Ives, pop or soda?”

“What th— is this a trick question? Soda, obviously.”

Gator’s not far behind, sitting next to you on the air mattress, cracking open his go-to, shitty beer of choice. “Ivy—“

“Don’t even try, Gator. I was born and raised on the East Coast. It’s soda.”

“So much for our growin’ friendship, damn.”

“You asked the wrong person. Sunshine’s my best friend, what’d you expect?”

“Fine,” Gator huffs. He glances over at Ty, who’s sprawled out across a long bean bag. “Hey, Ty, ya’ got my back on this one, right?”

“I can’t have this conversation again,” Ty instantly starts laughing with a shake of his head. “Sorry, man, it’s definitely soda.”

“For the love of—“ Gator turns to Miles, next to him on a beach chair, “Aren’t you from the Midwest too?”

Miles shoots an apologetic smile, “Tennessee ain’t the Midwest. The South just calls it coke.”

You’re confused, “Like… all soda?”

“Pop—“

“Gator, no.”

“Yeah, not sure who decided on that, but I hate it,” Miles laughs with a shrug.

“See, that makes no sense. What do ya’ do when you want a root beer?” Gator’s perplexed by this, and honestly, the whole group is.

“It’s like…” Miles glances at the pizza boxes on the table, “If someone asked what kinda’ pizza you want.”

“So it’s just assumed everyone wants soda—“

“Pop—“

“Gator, I dare you to go to the bodega down the block and ask for a pop,” Jinx snickers, and of course, unable to turn down any challenge, Gator sets his drink down before starting to get up. You tug him back down by the hem of his shirt.

“She’s— don’t actually do that.” You stifle a laugh. “I mean, ya’ can, but you’re gonna be clocked as a tourist instead.”

“I’d rather be a tourist than seriously call somethin’ water ice. The fuck is that?”

“You take that back!”

“Ivy, that’s a Philly thing,” Flor pipes up among her giggles.

“And Jersey!”

“And we’re… where, Ivy?”

“Miles, you used to think the state of New York was only the city. Don’t even try me.”

“Okay, but Ives, Gator’s got a point, what the hell is a ‘water ice’? It’s one or the other, for fucks’ sake.”

“What do y’want it to be called? Italian ice?” Ivy’s sass is skyrocketing tonight.

“Considering that’s the name…yeah.” Ty counters.

“Get the fuck outta here,” Ivy continues to passionately defend her stance. “‘Besides, some of youse’ call heroes hoagies when that just ain’t it.”

“What… what the fuck are either of those?” Gator has long forgotten the soda vs. pop debate by now.

“Oh, like, a sub?” Miles asks. “Submarine sandwich?”

You pipe up, “Hoagies are a Philly thing too!”

“To be fair…” Jinx swoops in with further hoagie defense. “That’s what Wawa calls them, too, and they’re in Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia—“

“Jinx, c’mon!”

“— D.C. and Florida.” She finishes with a petty smile to Ivy. Then, she redirects the energy to Gator and Miles, “By the way, it’s soda.”

Gator rolls his eyes and Miles scoffs, “Jinx! You’re from Florida! Traitor.”

“Calling it coke just adds an extra step!” Jinx retorts, hands thrown up above her.

“This was an awful conversation to bring up before playing,” Ivy mutters, taking a swig of her drink.

“Oh, it’s definitely soda.”

Everyone turns to Bea, hanging out in the door of the stairwell with her partner, Opal; she shrugs her shoulders lazily with a knowing smile.

“I second that,” Opal chimes in with a grin as the two of them join the group. Before Bea sits down, she glances over at Gator.

“Hey, Gator, can I talk with you for a sec?” He nods, pushing off the mattress.

Your eyes grow wide, worried something bad happened, but Bea senses your mood shift. She leans down to mutter, “Nothin’ bad, I promise, kid.” You exhale with a nod.

They wander to the farthest side of the roof to talk; Bea faces towards the rest of the city, while Gator’s hands are in his pockets as he looks at the ground. He’s smiling, but it’s like earlier, with a tinge of sadness.

For only a second longer you look, not wanting invade their privacy, but you catch the way Bea pulls Gator into a comforting hug after he wipes his eyes.

What’s that about?

“Sunshine, you still wanna race?” Flor smugly asks, leading your attention back to your friends. You grab a controller, moving to a seat closer to the screen.

“Eat my dust, Flor.”

·············································

You lost. Again.

Flor won, so you challenged her again. You lost. So you go another round. She wins again, you call a rematch. Before you know it, Gator’s sitting behind you after finishing his talk with Bea. He watches as you lose, grumbling under your breath, something about “She’s gotta be cheating”.

Leaning forward, Gator softly says in your ear, “Darlin’, ya’ gotta learn when to quit.”

“I didn’t win yet!” You whine, eyes still glued to the screen. You’re tipsy after another drink, surprisingly more intoxicated than Gator.

Ivy plucks the controller from your hands, “Don’t worry, Sunshine, m’gonna protect your honor.”

“What honor?” Ty snickers, situating himself in front of the screen to play.

Gator notices your pout, then the one controller that’s left. He grabs it off the table before leaning over to grab your head, kissing your temple quickly before murmuring, “Gonna win for ya’, angel.”

His words still make your stomach flutter, despite the silliness.

“Aw, Flor, I hate Rainbow Road!” Ty shouts, and you snicker.

“That’s karma for ya’, short king.” Ivy laughs, shoving her shoulder into his.

Gator adds, “Too bad, kid, ‘cause I fuckin’ love Rainbow Road.”

“You’re sick, Gator,” Ty reels back at his words. “Absolutely sick.”

“Nah, Ty, I’m a winner.” Your eyes roll automatically, but you can’t help but laugh.

You watch everyone with a smile on your face, resting back on the mattress and hill of pillows. Gator looks so comfortable in this new life, and after all of the turmoil he had endured, it’s such a relief to see him happy. Happy, and safe.

In fact, your holiday plans not working out— snow trapping you together for days, both of you up standing up to your abusive fathers, the terror that followed while Gator stayed behind— it was all worth it to get him somewhere safer. Worth it to see him grow into a better version of himself, a better version for both everyone around and himself, especially. Worth it to watch him grow into a found family that treats him how he should’ve been treated by his own blood.

It was all worth it to see Gator Tillman happy.

You don’t regret going home last Christmas. Not at all.

·············································

It’s late, and the sun’s long set behind Manhattan’s skyline across the East River; after a few rounds of Gator winning for you— and one from Ivy— the rest of them take turns challenging one another while Gator makes his way back to you.

At some point, you slipped back inside to grab a hoodie— the same one of Gator’s you always wear; he smirks as you reach out, arms snaking around him as he lays with you. Your eyes are heavy but your smile doesn’t falter.

“Still stealin’ that from me?”

“Smells like you,” You murmur sleepily. “Plus, you’ve stolen a lot more from me since getting here. You’ll live without one hoodie.”

“Yeah, guess that’s fair.” He laughs softly, “And why’s it matter if it smells like me? We live together now. M’here all the time.”

“Not when you’re floorin’ it on Rainbow Road. Who knows when you’d come back to me.” You feign a dramatic sniffle.

“I was playin’ Mario Kart, not off in a war.”

“Same thing, honestly. And ya’ won for me? My hero.”

You lazily tug the blanket over the both of you. It barely covers Gator, but he appreciates the gesture anyway.

“Should probably get ya’ back in bed,” He lays on his back, pulling you into his side. You rest your head on his chest, taking in the thump, thump, thump of his heart against your ear.

“Why? Racing got ya’ all horny?” You’re teasing with your brows wiggling, but the alcohol in your system has you worked up a little.

“Oh, for fucks’ sa—“ Gator rolls his eyes, ignoring the twitch in his dick. “No, just don’t want ya’ fallin’ asleep up here.”

“‘Member what we did last time we were on an air mattress?” You giggle before Gator’s hand slips over your mouth.

“Zip it.”

“You zip it.”

“What? You want everyone to know how much of a slut you are, don’t ya’?” He whispers, just low enough for you to hear. “Want me to fuck ya’ out here where anyone can watch?”

Gator can feel your smirk under his hand, eyes growing dark. It was all lighthearted joking, but now that your hand has slipped under the blanket, ghosting over his bulge, he wants to fuck that bratty smirk off your face.

Pulling his hand away, you murmur, “Don’t act like you wouldn’t like it.”

He’s even more wound up looking at the face you give him, all pouty, eyes heavy from a combination of sleepiness, desire, and alcohol. “I miss when you’d be mean t’me.” You grab him, it’s gentle, but enough to make Gator buck into your hand.

It’s taking everything within Gator not to moan, but a soft, sighed,“Fuck,” escapes him.

“Me?”

Thankfully, the noises of the game, your friends shouting, and the city surrounding you, drowning the two of you out.

“Yeah, I need to get ya’ inside.”

“Need you inside me.” You giggle.

He sighs, but with a smile. “Behave for like, ten seconds.”

As Gator pulls you up along with him, he positions you in front of him, just enough to cover his strained hard-on under his pants. “Sunshine’s fallin’ asleep, so I think we’re gonna head in.”

Everyone says their goodnights, distracted by the game, much to Gator’s relief. In record time, he manages to lead you down the stairs safely, thankful the stairwell’s door is right next to your apartment door.

He holds you upright by your waist, arm wrapped firmly around you. Once the door’s closed, he shoves you against it, cock twitching as you gasp.

“How mean?”

“Like the first night we fucked,” You whine as his thigh slips between your legs, giving you something to grind against. One hand grabs both of yours, holding them up and against the door by the wrists.

“Huh, don’t remember bein’ too mean that night.”

“Well, fine. Be meaner.”

“What, you want me t’cuff ya’? Call ya’ awful, filthy things? Make ya’ cry when ya’ cum?”

“Uh-huh,” You breathe, eyes glazed over, intoxicated. Gator’s buzzed, too, but definitely not as pliant as you, influenced by sleep and the few drinks from earlier.

“Wanna play with your toys?”

“And you.”

“And me?” His leg tenses underneath you, making you keen and shudder. “Think you deserve that?”

“Mhmm,” You struggle against the grip he has around your wrists. “Upstairs.”

“Oh, you tellin’ me what to do now?”

“Yeah, and if ya’ won’t listen, I’ll go back outside,” Your threat isn’t even a threat. Gator laughs as the other hand runs along your curves.

“Never seen ya’ in tiny, tight shorts like these,” His fingers dip just behind the button of your ripped denim shorts. You whimper when he stops, not reaching where you want him. “Last time I saw ya’ in warm weather, you weren’t allowed to wear clothes like these. Got no idea how hard it’s been watchin’ ya’ walk around all day like this.”

“Gator…”

His hand slips further, but not by much. His fingers rest just above the top of your slit; you’re glad his leg is giving you some kind of friction, but you’d rather his hands toy with you instead.

“Thought y’were such a babe even in all that modest clothing bullshit when we were younger... But Jesus Christ, darlin’, might have to move home if you’ll be ‘round me like this all the time.”

A whine slips from you as you struggle in his grip again. “No, home’s here, with me.” The hold he has on your wrists releases.

“You’re right, I’d miss your sweet cunt too much,” He unbuttons your shorts before pulling them down roughly as he sinks to the floor. Eyes unable to leave your clothed core, fabric sticking with your own arousal, he taunts, “Always so soaked, poor thing.”

Shoving your legs farther apart, he holds you against the door, strong, large hands pinning you by your thighs. He presses a kiss to your heat, making your breath hitch.

“You’re right, I couldn’t leave, ‘cause who would clean ya’ up when you’re a wet, pathetic mess like this?” His kisses become more open mouthed, with a faint caress of his tongue against you. It only makes you squirm more. “Go ‘head, tell me.”

Your hands wander down, fingers weaving through his hair; he hardly pushes it back these days, or at least, with not as much gel. Makes it easier to tug at when you’re crying out his name.

“Y- you, Gator.”

A distant echo of voices travel down the stairs from the roof, and your eyes go wide, trying to calm your breaths while Gator flashes his signature smirk up at you.

“No, wait, we should—“ The commotion gets closer as footsteps grow louder. Having your door right next to the rooftop door hasn’t been a problem, ever, in your ten years of living here.

Not until now.

In a swift motion, Gator slides your panties down, mouth on your centre immediately; at the same time, the door next to yours creaks open, conversations carrying on. There’s a goodnight yelled from someone directly on the other side of the door; you’re unable to tell whose voice it was, focused on keeping your moans suppressed while Gator sucks on your clit roughly

He digs his fingers into your thighs, glaring a silent command up at you.

“G- goodnight!” It comes out so strained as a finger slips into you, hips instinctively rolling onto his hand.

“Hey, you good in there?” You still can’t tell whose voice that belongs to, too busy panicking on how to respond while Gator continues to ruin you on just his tongue and one finger alone.

“M’good! All good!”

“Okay, just checking. G’night!”

As the voices and footsteps fade out, Gator stands and grabs your face, fingers squishing into your cheeks. His other hand still holds a finger inside of you, barely moving, driving you mad. “Do any of ‘em know how filthy their lil’ Sunshine is?”

You shrug, eyes on his lips glistening with your slick and his spit flowing together. “I- I mean, not really… but Ivy totally does after the day she heard us.”

Gator can’t help laughing, “I’m so glad the vent’s fixed… we can be loud, yeah?” His finger starts slowly pumping in and out of you. “Need to hear those pretty noises you make when you’re goin’ dumb on my cock.”

“Uh-huh,” You’re about to let your eyes flutter shut when he pulls his hand away, leaving you empty with an intoxicated pout; he drags you away from the door and towards the stairs.

“Good, ‘cause I plan on playin’ with ya’ all night.”

·············································

June rolls along, and like the year prior, you always seem to forget the city has a stagnant, dense heat within its grid of endless buildings. Even on the windiest of summer days, that heat lingers, makes you feel like you’re practically swimming in it.

Today, though, is just perfect. The last of the spring breeze helps cool down the hot, almost summer day while the sun continued to brighten the city.

You take a big gulp from the mug of fresh, iced coffee Gator made you, pulling your legs to your chest as you watch your housemates make their own breakfasts, along with a variety of drinks. The banana pancakes you made were a hit, but you ran out of mix quickly, underestimating just how much everyone liked pancakes.

“Thanks, love.” You warmly smile at Gator, voice laced with a leftover rasp from sleep. Drinking his tea, he returns the warmth back to you in his signature smirk, a sight you could never grow tired of. “It’s crazy we all have the mornin’ off, for once. When the hell did that happen last?”

“About two years ago!” Ivy pipes up from across the table as she settles into her chair.

“Well, good thing I made pancakes the one time y’all are all here.” You giggle, looking out the bay window, admiring the way the shadows projected into the house from the giant blooming tree outside, and the sun peeking through it.

“Ya’ say that like we’ve never demolished a buncha’ pancakes on our own before,” Gator snickers, recalling the morning he made some while the two of you were snowed in. You remember being in such shock he could be … domestic. What was probably nothing to him only solidified how you really felt for him. A soft, sweet morning together was something you never expected in a million years.

Now, you’re home, with Gator by your side; part of a family neither of you had growing up, but had the compassion and kindness the two of you always needed and deserved.

“Yeah, I believe it.” Ty glares at you, still mad he woke up too late to grab pancakes in time. “You and Ivy both are demons when you get the munchies.” Bea snorts from the kitchen, earning a smile from Ty.

“Man, it wasn’t me! I had, like, one! And I made them.” You defend yourself, laughing as you put your hands up. “Besides, I’m sober as hell right now. Can’t speak for dear Ives over there, though.”

Ivy, too stoned to care, just shrugs with a giggle, eyes crinkling and hiding how damn red they were. “It’s my first morning off in weeks. Let me live!”

Conversation continues from there between everyone, with teasing banter and laughter, sharing jokes and catching up; a bonus from your monthly family dinner, or rare rooftop nights, this morning was a real treat for you.

The sunshine pouring in from the window spilled across your shoulders, exposed from the slouchy cardigan you slept in with a sleep tank underneath. You could see the little, floating fuzzies dance in the sunlight, sipping on your coffee as you let yourself fade to the background, watching everyone just… exist. Something all of you at one point didn’t have the privilege of doing. No abuse, no going hungry, no anxiety or fear of the unknown, just existing peacefully among one another.

All lives that were all once thought to be at the end of the thread, hope nearly given up. Lives, filled with struggles no human should endure. Lives, while independent, now intertwined in a way where not one of you could fail. No one would ever be left behind. You all had a place to rest your head at night, a place where there was always a shoulder to cry on, advice to give and receive, with an endless amount of safety and love.

Not a day went by where you didn’t wish Willow could experience this, too. You knew, though, she was looking over you, probably relieved you made your way into this group of misfits, who had similar dynamics with you the way she once had. Something familiar. Something that felt like home.

Best of it all, to you, was being able to encourage Gator to take such a huge leap outside of his comfort zone. To leave everything and everyone behind that has harmed him, to start fresh and grow into someone he wanted to be, rather than what his father forced him to be.

Gator always had the potential to be so much more than the violence, toxic masculinity, and hatred Roy tried burying him under. He just needed someone to see that and remind him it’s never too late to change for the better.

“Oh, dude, gross.” Miles groaned from a few chairs down, watching as you subconsciously chewed on the half melted ice cubes in your nearly finished coffee. “I forgot you love doing that.”

You spit the ice into the mug as gracefully as possible, shooting an apologetic look. “My bad.”

“No, she’s onto something. That shit is refreshing as hell on a hot day.” Flor points out, imitating you with her own iced coffee, crunching on the frozen water. Miles looks like he’s about to lose his marbles, letting his head hit the table in defeat as Ivy also joins in. All three of you end up in a fit of giggles.

“Surprised you haven’t chugged that yet, what’s with you today?” Ty teases, leaving you to knit your brows together in confusion.

“Huh? Can’t a bitch enjoy their coffee at a leisurely pace?” You joke back.

“Today of all days…” Jinx murmurs into her matcha tea latte. Gator narrows his eyes at her while Miles forces out a short hissed, “Shut it!”

What’s that about?

Every now and then, you’d catch Gator staring at you fondly, and it’s not like it was out of the ordinary, but it felt like he was waiting for something. You just weren’t sure what.

Under the chaotic breakfast chatter, you ask him softly, “You doin’ alright?” Gator slipped his hand in yours under the table, squeezing gently.

“Yeah, darlin’, I’m alright.” He answers casually, but his sweaty palm tells another story. “How about you?”

“I’m good,” You answer honestly, but ask with a smirk, “Why’s your hand so clammy?”

“I- no reason. Might’ve had too much caffeine. Y’know how that goes.” Gator’s quick to pull his hand back and answer, but it doesn’t conceal his nervous tone.

You fly into panic mode, “What? Honey, you can’t have caffeine anymore, why did you—“

“Right! Right, I- I didn’t. I dunno why I said that—“

“Is your eye okay? You don’t feel any pressure, do you?”

Gator shakes his head frantically, “I swear, I didn’t have any. I- it’s still a habit to blame everythin’ on caffeine still, I guess.”

Jinx runs her hand over her face at the terrible save, for lack of a better word.

“It’s because he— hey!” Ty slaps his hand over Ivy’s mouth, muffling the rest of her unfiltered interruption.

“Is something going on that I should know about?” You ask, brow quirked up as you study everyone’s faces. They’re all frozen, like deer in headlights, side eyeing one another, or shrugging.

You peer over at Gator through narrowed eyes, and he grins weakly with a shaky shrug. “Uh-huh… better not be some fucked up prank. Anyway, it’s so nice out! Do y’all wanna do anything today?”

You pick up your plate and mug, intending to head to the dishwasher, but Gator tugs the back of your shirt softly. You face him, “What’s up?”

“I- you— you don’t want any more coffee?”

Again, Miles groans, this time at Gator’s graceless attempt to stall, while Flor shushes him, and Ty’s shooting the two of them a death glare.

“Y’all didn’t spike this, did you?” You’re joking, but you’re also nervous from the way they’re all acting, with hushed whispers and cryptic, warning glances to one another. Bea whistles comically to play innocent, as she leans against the kitchen counter, eyes everywhere but you.

“Guys, she’s not gonna get it.” Ivy chimes in, and no one disrupts her this time; brushing her hands together, freeing her fingers from bagel crumbs, she points back to your empty chair. “Take a seat, sunshine.”

Now you’re really nervous, but you do as she says, and sit back in the chair next to Gator.

“What am I not gonna get?”

“Gator, just show her— ”

“This is definitely not going the way I planned,” He murmurs, shaking his head in defeat before resting it in his hand, elbow propped up from the table.

“Can someone just fill me in on what’s going on?” You glower as you gaze around the table at everyone again.

Flor stiffens both her hands as her elbows rest on the table, aggressively throwing them your way. “The mug! Look in the damn mug already!” She shouts impatiently.

You do, but all you see is the ice left from your finished coffee that you didn’t chew, much to Miles’ relief, you were certain.

“… Ice? Guys, I don’t understand.” You’re just sinking into bewilderment the more they murmur so cryptically around you.

Gator silently takes the mug, spilling the ice onto your empty plate. placing the mug in front of you again before he nervously bites on his thumbnail as his leg bounces rapidly. You don’t think you’ve ever seen him like this. Searching his gaze, all you see is nervous, nervous, nervous, written all over his face; hidden by the hand near his face, he pauses the anxious nail biting, quietly mouthing, “I’m sorry”.

Brows scrunched together, you finally glance into the cup, reading the two words intentionally stamped into the ceramic bottom. The room falls silent as your jaw drops, reading the words once.

Twice.

Three times.

You gaze at them in disbelief.

It’s a question, one you never once cared about being asked by or asking for anyone. Now that it’s a question coming from Gator, though, you care a whole fucking lot.

It’s a tiny phrase, a small question in quantity of letters, yet loaded enough to stop time in its tracks.

“Marry me?”

By the time you turn back to Gator, you can see the tears welling up in his uncovered eye, still biting his nail anxiously, but his smirk is ready to burst into a full blown grin.

“You— you’re not kidding, right?” Your voice cracks as you ask, your own lips beginning to curl into a smile, ever so slightly, still being held back by doubt.

“Serious as a heart attack, darlin’.” He finally moves his hand away from his face, gathering all the courage left within him as he kneels down on one knee in front of you. “Don’t got a ring yet, but I’ve got somethin’ else in the meantime.”

Gator pulls from his hoodie pocket the worn, familiar friendship bracelet you made him as kids. The same one he asked you to keep safe when you departed after seven full days being snowed in together, ten days in total with one another, until he came home to you. You gave it back to him as soon as he made it here, and here he is again, offering another promise, offering his heart, to you.

It didn’t matter if it was bound by those fraying threads or by an elegant ring, his heart was completely exposed with the promise and love all the same.

“The longer we spend together, the harder it is to ever imagine life without you, darlin’. It didn’t hit me ‘til the week we were apart, home was with you all along. I want to keep building this new life with ya’, if you’ll have me.”

You’re choking up, trying to nod, at the very least, but you feel so frozen, overwhelmed in so many emotions, all good. All positive. All filled with nothing but love for this man you once were certain you’d never see again.

A thud hits the table as Ivy slams her fist against the table, hissing across the way, “Girl, say something!” It causes everyone to start laughing, breaking the silence.

You try answering with a “yes” and “uh-huh” but it comes out as a “Yuh-huh,” leaving you to snort at yourself, only making Gator’s grin grow as he waits patiently for your answer. “Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. You wanna get married tomorrow? Today? Let’s do it today.” The rambling, for once, isn’t from nervousness, it’s from pure joy and excitement as you slide off the chair and onto the floor, throwing your arms around Gator.

“Finally!” Mama Bea shouts jovially; the room erupts into cheering and clapping, sounds much louder than they should be considering the small source.

“I’m so sorry I only like iced coffee,” You blubber through happy tears, watching as Gator laughs as he ties the bracelet around your left wrist. Just like last time, it’s not too tight, but not loose enough to slide off, almost symbolic of this relationship; close enough to one another that the two of you feel safe, secure, loved, but not so tight where either of you suffocate one another. It’s just right.

Through it all— good and bad— with Gator, it’s always been just right.

“Kinda makes sense it wouldn’t turn out the way it was planned… pretty on point for us, huh?” Gator murmurs, one hand on each side of your face, holding you close as your foreheads rest against one another. “I love you.”

You kiss him, and it’s soft, but kind of haphazard with the way you accidentally bump his eye patch with your nose, making him laugh into the kiss; for once, he’s not the clumsy one. The sunshine falling through the window lands on the two of you, warming the embrace you have one another in. Pulling back, you’re grinning, elated, while you take a thumb to swipe away a tear falling down his face.

“No one ever let me get stoned before a proposal ever again,” Ivy grumbles, sinking into her chair, relieved. “That was stressful.”

“That was stressful, even sober,” Jinx deadpans, but shoots a smile at the two of you.

“Wait, I gotta get my bracelet for you, then.” You scramble to your feet, tugging Gator’s arm to get him up from the floor, too. Rushing for the stairs, Bea reaches for your shoulder, stopping you.

“One condition,” She warns, and you give her your full attention. “No eloping. Someone’s gotta walk y’down the aisle, kid. It ain’t gonna be anyone outside this house, that’s for damn sure.”

Weepy, you pull her into a bear hug, murmuring, “You got it, Mama. Promise.” You pull back, giving her hands a squeeze before heading for the stairs, pulling Gator by the arm to follow you.

“Yeah, get the bracelet, uh-huh.” Flor teases, and Jinx giggles with her. Meanwhile, Ivy still has no filter, yelling, “Get a room, freaks!”

Ty, confused, chimes in, “They have one— ”

“That’s the joke, my precious, short king.”

Their chatter falls away as you and Gator make your way up the stairs, laughing as joy courses through your veins, stumbling on some stairs as the two of you pepper each other’s faces in sweet, short kisses.

Reaching the apartment door, you throw it open, Ivy style, grateful for the foam landing pad the doorknob has; you yank Gator in before slamming the door behind the two of you.

There’s no intention of coming out anytime soon once you flick the lock.

·············································

Any and all plans for the day are lost to the excitement of Gator proposing to you. Time is easily lost on the both of you as you ended up fucking on nearly every surface in the apartment.

Eventually, you adventure up to the rooftop, soaking in the afterglow of sex and the colorful sunset; your brain is fuzzy from the countless orgasms he gave you. “M’glad I’m not workin’ tomorrow. Pretty sure ya’ broke my back.”

“Yeah, well, my dick’s probably outta order for the next week, so thanks.” As Gator stands behind you, watching the sky paint itself into bold oranges, purples, and pinks, he teases you; his arms are around your waist while his lips are back on your neck, making you giggle, overstimulated.

“Hey, no—“ A soft sigh escapes you while your eyes flutter shut.

“Why not? Won’t kill ya’ if you cum one more time.”

“It might, and then what? Can’t get married to me if I die.” You squirm and laugh as his lips tickle your skin, but he stops abruptly before pulling back. You spin around to look at him. “Hey, you okay?”

Gator’s smile is lovesick and filled with joy, “More than okay, darlin’. Just thinkin’ how lucky I am that my best friend said yes.”

“Are you gonna make me cry again? I ain’t—“

He cuts you off with a soft kiss, only pulling back enough to ask, “Y’gonna let me take care of ya’? Not sure if I can give ya’ the world, but I’m gonna try my damndest.”

“Only if you let me do the same in return.”

He sighs with a smirk and an eye roll. “Yeah, I guess, not like I deserve that much.” Your hands meet his face, holding him softly, butterflies still going wild as you watch him blush under your touch.

“Gator Tillman, you deserve the entire fucking universe.” He tries scoffing it off lightheartedly, but you shake your head, gaze locked with his.

Even with his remaining eye slightly clouded over with a scar, a sign of the darkest moment of his life, there’s so much light behind it all, reflecting in the golden brown flecks among the soothing green. His soul is brighter than he lets himself believe, and if he can’t see it, you’ll do your best to be his mirror, to show him in return how good of a person he truly is.

“I’ll spend the rest of this life trying my best to give that to you. I mean it.”

Gator’s bottom lip pouts out, just a little, before he catches himself and holds it back. His tears, though, are too fast for him to catch; he ducks his head into the crook of your neck, giving a soft kiss in the curve as he shudders off future tears.

“Will you stop being such a sap?”

“For you? Never.”

“Damn, wedding’s off, then.” He teases through a sniffle.

Though you laugh, you warn, “Don’t joke like that, I’ll start asking if you still love me up until the wedding day.”

“What, are ya’ gonna say that in your vows?” He laughs, lightly teasing you as you playfully shove his shoulder.

“Maybe, put ya’ on the spot in front of everyone,” You shoot back, grinning up at him. “I love you too much to be a dick like that.”

“I love ya’, too, darlin’. Even if you’re being a dick like that.”

While you laugh again, his gaze doesn’t leave yours; he marvels at the way the vibrant colors reflect in your eyes, and the way they paint over your entire being, drowning you in sunshine of the day’s end.

You’ve always been Gator’s sunshine in his grim, overcast life; his future always was brighter with you by his side, and he’ll do anything to make sure his sunshine’s never taken away, never ever again.

#gator tillman x reader #gator tillman x you #gator tillman smut #gator tillman #tramps like us #part time soulmate full time problem #my fics

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keerysquinn · 2 years

Text

Coffee Cups and Unconditional Love

Summary: Wayne Munson has been there for his nephew since before he was born, and he'll be there for him for the rest of his life - a.k.a. an explanation of why Wayne Munson owns so many coffee mugs as told through his relationship with his nephew

CW/TW: alcoholism, mentions of child neglect, death, illegal activities, dismissal of mental health issues because it's the 70s/80s, season 4 spoilers if you haven't finished yet

Word Count: 17.6k

A/N: I'm just gonna apologize in advance for this one. It was a labor of love, and I hurt my own feelings writing it.

April 1965

Wayne Munson was a simple man with simple tastes. It didn't take much to make him happy. A couple cigarettes from his pack of smokes, a cold beer, and a working radio were the only things he needed to unwind after a long shift at the plant. He mostly lived off of TV dinners, cold sandwiches, and cereal, and that was fine with him. He had never been the greatest cook, and not wasting his time in the kitchen gave him more energy for work anyway.

At the age of twenty-three, he only had a few more payments left to make on his trailer before he owned it outright, and he had a foldout bed for his younger brother Richard to use when things weren't going so great with their parents. He'd made it clear that his home was always open to him, no questions asked.

However, that didn't mean he wasn't surprised to find his brother and a crying girl sitting on his front step when he got back from the grocery store.

Wayne was a man of few words, and the few he did have did not equip him with the skills to handle a clearly distraught, sixteen year old girl. He and his brother exchanged a look before he wordlessly ushered the two inside.

He put on a fresh pot of coffee before busying himself with putting away his groceries, occasionally glancing over to where his brother was attempting to calm down the crying girl on his sofa.

"Everything is gonna be okay, Linda," he heard his brother say. "Wayne'll know what to do."

Once his groceries were put away and the coffee was finished brewing, he realized that he only had the one coffee mug. He found a couple of plastic juice cups in the back of one of his cabinets and poured the coffee into those and the lone mug. He set the mug in front of the girl and then handed one of the cups to his brother. He held his own cup as he sat down in the chair across from the couch.

Before he could ask what in the world was going on, the girl gave him a funny look.

“Where are your other mugs?” she asked as she wiped the tears from her eyes.

“I’ve only got the one,” he replied.

“Who only owns one coffee mug?”

Wayne shrugged.

“My mother owns three entertaining sets in different patterns with eight mugs a piece. I can’t imagine someone only having one mug.”

She sniffled a bit, but it seemed as though she’d stopped crying for now.

“Don’t really need more than one when you live alone,” he said before taking a sip of his coffee. “Now, does someone wanna tell me why you were crying on my porch?”

Wayne looked back and forth between the two as they shared a look, both hesitant to come right out and say it.

“I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s going on, Richie.”

“Linda’s pregnant,” Richie blurted out as he started talking a mile a minute. “We didn’t plan for it to happen or anything, but it did. And then her parents found out, and all hell broke loose. You shoulda heard what they said about me, Wayne. About us. About our family.”

Even without being there, Wayne could imagine it pretty perfectly. Their parents weren’t exactly the greatest people, and there was a reason he’d left home as soon as he could, a reason why he had a spare bed specifically for his brother. Their dad was a mean drunk and took it out on everyone around him. The neighbors would hear him yelling, and the next morning, broken furniture would be sitting on the curb waiting for the next garbage pickup. Their mom just made excuses for him and watched as it happened. A bystander in her own life sweeping up broken glass and scrubbing beer stains out of the carpet. They weren’t exactly the kind of family that you’d want your daughter to involve herself with. Wayne had some firsthand experience with that fact.

“It was just awful,” Linda said as she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “They told me I could either stay with my cousins in Kentucky until I had the baby and gave it up, or I could get out of their house. So, I got up, and I marched out with Richie.”

“I didn’t know where else to take her,” Richie continued. “There’s no way I’d leave her at mom and dad’s, and I just panicked and brought her here. We could help pay your bills or buy groceries or anything else you need. I got that job that I was telling you about - the one as a bag boy down at the grocery store.”

“And I’m going to pick up as many extra shifts at the diner as I can until I’m too pregnant to work,” Linda added, talking over Richie. “And we’ll help out around here with anything you need. You’ll barely even know we’re here.”

Wayne ran a hand over the back of his neck and abandoned his coffee on the table.

“Where’s all your stuff?” he asked. “You’re gonna need stuff if you’re moving in.”

“They didn’t give me time to pack when they threw me out,” she replied. “But I still have my house key, so Richie was going to take me back over there to get my things tomorrow when I know they’re both out of the house.”

“And I was gonna head over and grab my own stuff after we talked to you,” Richie continued. “Didn’t want to show up here with a bunch of stuff if we were gonna have to go somewhere else. I figured she could use the fold out I usually sleep on, and I can sleep on the couch.”

“No, you’ll take my room,” Wayne said as he moved to get up from his seat. “I’ll be fine out here. Just gotta straighten it up a little bit for you.”

Before he could leave the room, Wayne was practically knocked over by the force of Linda leaping up to wrap her arms around him in a tight embrace.

“I can’t thank you enough,” she said.

He awkwardly patted her on the back.

“It’s fine,” he replied. “I’d do anything for my brother.”

The next day, Wayne busied himself with getting his room ready for Linda and Richie to move into while they were out collecting Linda’s things. When the couple returned, Linda handed a brown paper bag to Wayne.

“These are for you,” she said with a smile. “A little thank you for all that you’re doing for us.”

Wayne opened the bag, and inside, he found three different coffee mugs - one dark green, one light blue with pink rosettes, and one yellow and white striped.

“I snagged a mug from each of my mother’s entertaining sets. It’ll drive her nuts, and now you have enough mugs for us all to have a cup of coffee. Everybody wins.”

The gift of coffee mugs wasn’t the only way Linda started to improve his life. She actively scolded him about the way he’d been eating and told him that she was going to fix his diet even if it killed her in the process. And so his TV dinners were reserved for the nights when Linda was working the dinner shift at the diner and hadn’t planned for leftovers that Wayne and Richie could easily reheat on their own.

She’d promised that he’d barely even know that they were there, but she made her loving presence known.

October 1965

Wayne ducked out of his shift at the plant several hours early when he got the call that Linda had gone into labor. His brother wanted him there for support, and he wanted to meet his niece or nephew the second they were born, so he was happy to do it. He sat in the waiting room for hours until his brother came to grab him.

“Ready to meet your nephew?” Richie asked him as they entered the hospital room.

Wayne’s attention was immediately drawn to Linda sitting up in bed cradling her tiny son. She was sweaty, and her wavy, dark hair was even messier than it normally was, but he didn’t think he’d ever seen her look happier in the six months he’d known her.

“Do you want to hold him?” Linda asked, never looking away from the baby in her arms.

Wayne nodded and made his way to sit in one of the chairs by her bed. Richie carefully took the baby from his girlfriend’s arms and placed him in Wayne’s awaiting hold.

“Wayne, meet Eddie. Eddie, this is your Uncle Wayne.”

"Hey Eddie," Wayne whispered, as he cradled the newborn. "It's nice to meet you."

"His full name is Edward Wayne Munson," Linda said, causing Wayne's gaze to snap up from the baby in his arms to look over at her.

"Really?"

"Would I lie to you?"

Wayne's heart swelled, and he would have been lying if he said that he didn't get a bit choked up.

Wayne was often awake with Linda during the late night feedings. With Richie still going to school and working extra shifts whenever he could to support his little family, he needed all the sleep he could get, so Linda would take Eddie into the living room whenever he got fussy.

"Are you sure this is alright?" she'd asked the first time she accidentally woke him up.

"Don't worry about it," he reassured her. "I've always been more of a night owl anyway."

So the two would sit together at the tiny kitchen table as Linda fed her son, a light blanket draped over her chest to protect her modesty. Not that Wayne would have ever stared at his brother's girl. He'd come to think of her as the sister he never had, and he was fiercely protective of her. He'd make her tea, and she'd tease him about how nice it was to have more than one mug to share between them.

"If I didn't steal my mother's mugs, we wouldn't be able to have nights like these," she said. "And wouldn't that be a shame?"

"You're never going to let that go, are you?" he asked with a small laugh.

"The handle was chipped, Wayne. You only had one mug, and it wasn't even in good condition."

"I've never needed much."

"Well, you'll never have to drink out of a chipped mug again. I'll make sure of it."

On the nights where Eddie was particularly fussy and wouldn't go back to sleep after being fed and changed, Linda would move over to the couch and pass the baby over to Wayne. Wayne would sit in the worn out rocking chair that he'd picked up at the Goodwill, and he'd slowly rock with him as she made herself comfortable. By the dim light of the lamp on the end table, she'd read aloud from her beat up copies of the Lord of the Rings novels, and Eddie would fall asleep to the daring adventures of hobbits and elves with his uncle’s finger in his grasp.

December 1965

Eddie was only a little bit over two months old for his first Christmas, and he could barely hold his own head up, but Linda still went over the top to make it as special as she could on her limited budget.

They couldn’t afford to get Eddie’s photo professionally taken with the Santa at the big department store in the city. It was just too expensive if she wanted to put any gifts under the modest tree that they were all pretty sure Richie had chopped down illegally. Instead, she placed her son in the Christmas stocking that she’d found at Goodwill and stitched his name onto and had Wayne take pictures of him with his beat up polaroid camera. They didn’t have anyone that they wanted to send the pictures to, so every single one was hung up on the refrigerator until Linda decided it was time to add them to her photo album.

“Next year, I want pictures of him playing in the snow,” Linda said as she looked at the collage of photos on their fridge. “And I’m getting a picture of him with Santa even if I have to force one of you to dress up to make it happen.”

On Christmas morning, the three of them sat in a circle on the floor in front of the tree with baby Eddie laying on his stomach in the middle. They all knew that he was too young to know what was going on, but Linda made a point of setting each of Eddie’s gifts in front of him so he could marvel at the brightly colored comics that she’d wrapped them in. There weren’t many presents under the tree, and they were all for Eddie anyway, so everyone was content to sit there with their morning cups of coffee for as long as the baby wasn’t fussy.

“Oh, before I forget,” Linda said as she popped up from her seat leaning against the sofa. She headed back to the bedroom and returned with a small parcel wrapped up in newsprint. She handed it over to Wayne as she sat back down and pulled her son into her lap.

“I thought we agreed on no gifts?” Wayne asked. “Save all our money to make things special for the kid?”

“It’s not from me,” Linda said as Eddie gripped her finger. “It’s from Eddie, of course, and you can’t expect him to follow our rules. He’s just a baby after all.”

Wayne sighed and carefully unwrapped the gift. Inside the crumpled newspaper was a coffee mug with “World’s Best Uncle” hand-painted on the side along with a bright blue baby handprint of Eddie’s.

“It’s not much,” Richie said. “But we hope it shows even a little bit of how thankful we are for everything you’ve done for us.”

“It’s perfect,” Wayne replied. “Really. Thank you.”

April 1967

For Wayne’s twenty-fifth birthday, he insisted that he didn’t need any gifts, and he didn’t want them to make any sort of a fuss over him.

“You’re being absolutely ridiculous,” Linda told him. “We can’t just skip your birthday.”

“I’m happy with what I have,” he said with a shrug. “We don’t need to bring more stuff into this trailer, and I’d much rather just spend the day playing with Eddie and maybe listen to the ball game on the radio if there is one.”

“That’s fine, I guess. But I’m making you your favorite dinner. And a cake. I’ll maybe even get some ice cream to go with it. And we’re singing to you while wearing party hats made out of newspaper whether you like it or not. It’s been decided, and I will not fight with you on this one, Wayne.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied with a laugh.

So, on his birthday, Linda made a pot roast slow roasted with carrots and onions and a side of mashed potatoes with extra, extra gravy. For dessert, there was a double chocolate chip cake with vanilla frosting and strawberry ice cream. Wayne didn’t fight about the newspaper hat that Linda made him wear, and he pretended that he didn’t hate being the center of attention when they all sang to him if only because he got to hold Eddie while it was happening. The eighteen month old tried to feed him a handful of cake before shoving it in his own mouth and giggling wildly.

He shouldn’t have been surprised when Linda set a small gift in front of him. He knew what it was without even opening it. Every time she thought of giving him a gift, it was a coffee mug, and he had started giving the same to her. They’d started an almost competition of sorts, seeing who could find the most interesting mug at Goodwill or one of the small thrift stores in the city. This one was beige and had the words Ohio University Grandma printed in green on the side. It might have been the best one yet.

“We have something else for you,” Richie told him after sharing a look with Linda. “A gift we couldn’t really wrap.”

“I expected the mug, but I told you guys that you didn’t have to give me anything.”

“We know, but this is a really important gift,” his brother continued. “We’re giving you your bedroom back.”

“You don’t have to do that. I don’t mind sleeping in the living room. We’ve been over this a hundred times. You need your privacy more than I do, and with the kid, you need the extra space.”

“We know that’s how you feel, Wayne,” Linda said. “But it’s time for you to start sleeping on a real bed again.”

“Which is why we’re moving out,” Richie blurted out.

“You’ve been so good to us these past two years,” Linda continued. “And we are so grateful for everything you’ve done for us and the life you helped us build. It’s because of everything that you did that we know we’re ready to take this step.”

“I finally grew a pair and asked her to marry me, and we found an apartment that’ll be ready for us to move into next month. It’s not going to be easy, but we’re excited. Really excited.”

“Well, I’m really happy for you guys,” Wayne told them. “Truly. But you’re gonna leave the kid with me, right? I’m way too attached to him to let him leave.”

As if agreeing with Wayne, Eddie reached up and pressed a sticky, chocolate-covered hand onto his uncle’s cheek. Wayne dug his fingers into the boy’s side and smiled down at him as he giggled and squirmed.

“I don’t know,” Linda said. “I think I’d miss him too much.”

She looked at her son as if he was the whole world, and to her, he probably was.

“You’re probably right.”

“But you’ll still see us all the time,” she promised. “We’ll be over here bothering you every chance that we get, and as soon as we’re settled into our place, we’ll be having you over for dinner every single Sunday night. You’ll get sick of us and be longing for some peace and quiet before you know it.”

Wayne didn’t know how to tell them he didn’t need peace and quiet anymore. He’d grown used to coming home from work to see his nephew playing in the living room and laughing as he toddled around the trailer. He was used to Linda singing loudly and off-key along with every song on the radio as she busied herself in the kitchen. He was used to his brother cracking jokes and making loud comments about every single sport he watched on TV. He was used to there being too many people in his tiny trailer, and he didn’t want that to change.

But he was proud of them. So extraordinarily proud of the two of them and the life they were building together. In the past two years, he’d watched them grow from a couple of scared kids into the loving parents that neither of them had ever had themselves. It would hurt to live apart from them, but he knew that it was what was best for all of them.

May 1970

“Munson residence,” Wayne said as he answered his ringing phone.

“Wayne, it’s Linda,” the voice on the other end of the phone replied.

“I was just about to head over to your apartment. Need me to pick up anything on my way?”

It wasn’t unusual for Linda to ask him to pick up something on the way to dinner. Especially now that she was in college. She’d gotten her GED the year before and was about to finish her first year of schooling to become a teacher. Now that Eddie was a little older and getting ready to start preschool, she was ready to give up her waitressing job and work towards something more stable that fit better with her life as a young mom. Something that would allow her to be home for his bedtime every night.

“Actually, I was calling to ask you for a different sort of favor. I hate to cancel our dinner so last minute, but Richie got called into work for an extra overnight inventory shift at the grocery store, and I have a huge group presentation for one of my classes due tomorrow. Normally, I would give you more notice, but I was wondering if I could maybe drop Eddie off over there for a sleepover? Richie would be able to pick him up first thing in the morning when he gets off work, and this way I can meet up with my classmates to put the finishing touches on our project. I’d owe you a huge favor.”

“You know he’s always welcome over here. Are you heading over now?”

“In a little bit. I still have to pack an overnight bag for the kiddo. One of the girls from my group is going to pick me up, and then we’ll drop Eddie off with you before we head over to the library.”

“Sounds good to me. See you soon.”

While waiting for his sister-in-law and nephew to show up, Wayne looked through the kitchen to see if he actually had anything that he could feed Eddie for dinner. He hadn’t been expecting to have to cook that night, and he usually did his weekly grocery shopping on Mondays before he came home from work. He supposed he could make the kid a TV dinner if it came down to it, and he maybe had a can of soup or two in the cupboard, but neither were up to the standards of the food that Linda normally made him.

But, when Linda arrived with Eddie, she entered the trailer carrying dinner for them.

“I’d already started cooking before Richie got called into work,” she said as she set the lasagna down on the table. “I knew you wouldn’t have had a solid dinner plan, and I wasn’t going to let two of my favorite boys get stuck eating what I’m sure would have been TV dinners.”

“You know me too well.”

Before Linda could respond, Eddie took a running leap at his uncle who caught him easily.

“Uncle Wayne!” Eddie said as he clung to his uncle’s chest. “We get to have a sleepover! And mama said I can stay up an extra half hour ‘cause it’s a special occasion!”

“She did? Well, that’s a good thing because I was thinking we could have a campout in the living room, and maybe if it’s okay with your mama, we could even make some hot chocolate.”

Eddie shifted in Wayne’s arms to face his mom and fixed her with his best pleading gaze, all puppy dog eyes and pouty bottom lip. The kid had them all wrapped around his little finger, and he knew it.

“How could I say no to this precious face? It’s fine with me,” Linda said with a small laugh at her son’s excitement at her answer.

Wayne set Eddie down on the counter next to the sink.

“Why don’t you wash your hands while I talk to your mama, and then you and I will have some dinner, okay?”

Eddie nodded vigorously and turned on the water, so Wayne turned his attention back to Linda.

“Alright, so bedtime is anywhere between seven thirty and eight tonight. He’s gonna be home with Richie all day tomorrow, and I know it’s going to be a lazy sleepy day anyway, so he’ll get plenty of rest if he doesn’t sleep enough tonight. His pajamas and clothes for tomorrow are in his backpack, but if you don’t have him dressed before he gets picked up, that’s fine, too. If he wants a bedtime story, Peter Pan is his favorite right now, and he usually falls asleep around the second chapter. That’s somewhere in his bag with Mister Lion. I gave him a bath earlier, so you don't need to worry about that, but make sure he brushes his teeth. He will try to convince you that he doesn’t need to, but he wants to be just like his Uncle Wayne, so if you brush your teeth when it’s time for him to, he shouldn’t put up too much of a fight. I don’t think I’m forgetting anything, but it’s not like you’ve never watched him before. You know how to handle my little hellraiser better than anyone.”

She looked over towards her son who was now laying with his stomach flat against the counter as he clapped his hands under the running water repeatedly trying to make the biggest splash he possibly could. She moved to turn off the sink before sitting her son upright on the counter and drying his hands off with the dish towel.

“Were you making a mess of the kitchen, you little stinker?” she teased as she skittered her fingers across her son’s belly.

“No,” he replied through his giggles as he curled in on himself. She stopped tickling him and ruffled his messy curls that matched her own.

“You be good for your Uncle Wayne, okay? Daddy will be here to pick you up first thing in the morning. Now give mama big hugs and kisses.”

Eddie stood up on the counter and flung his arms around Linda’s neck. Once she’d wrapped her arms around the boy, he moved his hands to squish her cheeks as he smothered her with as many kisses as he could give.

“I love you so much, Eddie Bear,” she told him, laughing as he kissed one of her eyes.

“I love you more,” he replied.

“And I love you most.”

She gave him one last big squeeze and kissed his forehead before setting him down on the ground.

“Alright, I’ve kept Sandy waiting out in the car long enough. Don’t have too much fun without me!”

Wayne and Eddie had a relatively easy night together. They ate dinner, and Eddie didn’t fuss when Wayne had to wash the sauce off of his face afterwards. He sat at the kitchen table drawing pictures with the crayons and notebook paper they kept at the trailer for him while his uncle cleaned up the kitchen, and he narrated all of his art as he drew. They had the hot chocolate that Wayne promised with extra marshmallows, and there were no complaints about brushing teeth since Wayne was brushing his teeth, too. Wayne set up the foldout bed in the living room with an extra set of sheets and the fuzzy yellow blanket that was Eddie’s favorite. They both changed into their pajamas, and then they read four chapters of Peter Pan before Eddie fell asleep on the couch curled up against his uncle’s side with his fingers threaded through Mister Lion’s mane. Wayne carefully moved the sleeping boy to the bed and placed a kiss on his forehead. He fell asleep on the couch shortly after.

Wayne always woke up at five without an alarm clock no matter what time he went to bed the night before. It was both a blessing and a curse. Being careful to keep quiet enough that he wouldn’t wake Eddie, he made his way to the bathroom to take a quick shower before his brother got there. He didn’t know when his brother would be there, so he wanted to be ready to head to the plant early just in case he’d be racing out the door.

When he was finished getting ready, he headed into the kitchen where he found a very sleepy looking Eddie with the fuzzy, yellow blanket wrapped around his shoulders. He was dragging Mister Lion by his tail behind him.

"What are you doing up, Eds? Did I wake you?" he asked.

"Bad dream," Eddie replied, sniffling a little. “‘Mnot scared, but Mister Lion needed a hug.”

Wayne scooped Eddie up, and the boy immediately wrapped his arms around his uncle’s neck.

“I got ya, buddy,” he said as he rubbed the boy’s back. “I got ya.”

Wayne continued to hold Eddie as he moved around the kitchen and started his morning coffee. Once he’d poured himself a cup, he headed to sit down on the couch.

“Why don’t you try to get a little more sleep, Eds?” he suggested. “I’ll start making breakfast after I finish my coffee, and then I’ll get you up, okay?”

Eddie nodded a little and moved to curl up next to his uncle on the couch not wanting to stray too far from the comfort that he’d found.

By the time Wayne had finished his coffee and used the little he had left in his kitchen to make some scrambled eggs and toast for the boy, it was close to seven. He had to be at the plant by seven thirty, so he was going to have to call in sick if his brother didn’t show up soon.

Eddie was not a morning person, so it took a few minutes for Wayne to get him up and seated at the table, and when he glanced at the clock on his wall, he knew he wasn’t going to make it to work on time.

“Mr. O’Grady? It’s Wayne Munson,” he started when his boss at the plant finally answered the phone. “I’m gonna be a little late for my shift. I’m watching my nephew. My brother was supposed to pick him up by now, but I’ve still got the kid, and I can’t leave him here alone.”

“It’s fine, Munson,” his boss answered. “In the ten years you’ve worked here, you’ve never taken a vacation, and the only times you’ve ever called off were when your nephew was born and when he broke his wrist last year. Take the day to spend with the kid. Sullivan has been asking for more hours anyway, and I can call him in to cover for you this time.”

“Thanks, Mr. O’Grady,” he said as he lunged to take the ketchup bottle away from Eddie before he could empty the entire thing onto his plate. “I really appreciate it.”

Wayne poured himself another cup of coffee and sat down across from Eddie who was more interested in eating ketchup than the eggs on his plate. He figured that inventory took a little bit longer than expected. The grocery store opened at nine, so they’d have to be done by then, and if his brother wasn’t at the trailer by nine thirty, he’d start calling their apartment.

Nine thirty came and went, and the phone call to Richie and Linda’s apartment went unanswered. The same happened every other time he called between then and noon. Wayne was starting to get worried, but he was trying his best not to let it show. His focus was on Eddie who didn’t seem to mind that he got to spend extra time there.

Finally, when Wayne was getting ready to set the table with the TV dinners that he’d ended up making for their lunch, someone answered the phone at the apartment.

“Hello?”

“Is everything okay over there?” Wayne asked, skipping the pleasantries. “I’ve been trying to get a hold of you all morning.”

“Everything’s fine. I was sleeping,” Richie replied. “What time is it?”

“For the love of god, Richie.” Wayne lowered his voice and glanced into the living room to make sure Eddie wasn’t paying attention to him before he continued. “I was starting to think something bad had happened. I called you at least a dozen times. Scared the shit outta me.”

“I’m sorry. I came home from work and passed out immediately. Didn’t hear the phone until just now.”

“But you were supposed to pick up Eddie before you went home.”

“I stopped on the way to change my clothes. Smelled like sweat and pickle juice after someone dropped a box and the shit splattered everywhere. I figured Linda changed her mind and was picking him up since she wasn’t home when I got here.”

“Well, she definitely didn’t come here.”

“She had a group presentation due today, and she was really hounding the other girls to make sure it was perfect. She probably just caught the bus and headed over to campus early. Do you want me to come over and get Eddie?”

“Don’t worry about it. You should get some more sleep. One of you can come and grab him after Linda gets home from class.”

“Are you sure? I know he can be a handful.”

“We’re fine. I’ll take him to the park or something, and he can do my grocery shopping with me. Besides, I just made him lunch, and I kinda like having him around.”

“You wanna keep him?” Richie asked with a laugh.

“Don’t tempt me,” Wayne responded with a laugh of his own. “But I don’t think Linda would be too happy about it.”

“You’re probably right. We’ll give you a call when we’re on our way to get him, okay? Most likely right around dinner time?”

“Sounds good to me.”

After lunch, Wayne finally got Eddie dressed and took him to the playground across town. Since they’d done nothing but sit around the trailer all morning, the kid had a lot of energy to burn, and he chose to burn it by giving his uncle a heart attack every time he went to leap off of something he probably shouldn’t have climbed in the first place. Eventually, he got tired of scaring years off of his uncle’s life, and Wayne agreed to push him on the swings as long as he promised not to jump off of those, too.

Once he’d successfully tired out the kid, Wayne loaded Eddie into his truck and headed to the grocery store. His usual get in, get what he needs, and get out trip took a lot longer than normal with his nephew riding in the cart, but debating about breakfast cereal and lunch meat with a kid who wasn’t even going to be eating them was wildly entertaining. In the end, he only ended up with three things that Eddie had wanted in his cart, and he was taking that as a win.

Standing in the checkout line, Wayne couldn’t help but overhear the conversation between the two housewives behind him. He wasn’t one to pay attention to town gossip, but he couldn’t ignore them.

“I’m sure you’ve heard about the accident last night,” the first woman said.

“News travels fast in a small town like Hawkins,” the second replied. “It’s a shame really. Those poor girls.”

“Oh, I know. I wonder if they’ve been able to find their families by now. Eleanor said that they weren’t sure who to call.”

“How did Eleanor get so much information about this anyway? It wasn’t in any of the papers today.”

“Her husband was on duty, and you know he went home and told her every detail. The man can’t keep a secret to save his life.”

“Can you blame him? A drunk driver crashing into a car full of girls leaving the community college library is probably the most exciting thing he’s ever seen working around here. Not that a tragedy is exciting mind you. It’s just more interesting to talk about than the occasional traffic violation.”

Wayne almost dropped the milk that he was holding on the ground. Their conversation meant nothing to him. To him, or his brother, or the little boy who was currently fighting to stay awake in his shopping cart. The fact that no one had seen Linda since last night was merely a coincidence. She was probably at home with Richie right now telling him all about how her presentation went and getting ready to pick up her son. She had to be.

But, when Wayne pulled up to his trailer to find his brother sitting on his front step looking more scared and alone than he had when he came to tell him that Linda was pregnant, he knew that wasn’t the case.

Wayne held Eddie throughout the funeral. Richie was an absolute wreck and could barely hold himself together let alone take care of his son. But he had his older brother to help pick up the pieces, and that was a comfort in such an upsetting time.

Wayne hadn’t expected such a large turnout for the funeral. With the way she lit up every room she entered, the fact that she had had an effect on so many people in her short twenty one years shouldn’t have been a huge surprise. There were groups of girls from all of Linda’s classes, and the diner had closed for the day because all of the waitresses and cooks wanted to be there. There were high school friends who had just arrived home from college, and there were families from their apartment building. All there to pay their respects. The only notable absence was Linda’s own parents. Not that anyone had really expected them to show up anyway. They hadn’t tried to contact her at all in the time since they’d kicked her out, and Wayne would have forced them to leave if they’d tried to show their faces.

After the services, Wayne took Eddie straight back to the apartment. He and Richie had discussed it beforehand, and they figured that the whole situation would be too overwhelming for him. They’d explained to him what had happened in a way that was simple enough for a child to understand, but the boy was still so young and confused about why his mother wasn’t coming home. He didn’t need to be surrounded by a bunch of people he didn’t know talking about what a shame it was that his mother was gone.

So, while his brother stayed behind to receive condolences, Wayne reheated one of the many casseroles people had dropped off at the apartment for them, gave Eddie a bath, and put him to bed. But throughout it all, he couldn’t help but notice that his usually bright and talkative nephew was the most quiet and reserved he’d ever been since he learned how to talk.

When Richie finally came home, he didn’t say anything. Just grabbed the casserole dish that Wayne had left on the counter along with a fork and sat down on the sofa where Wayne was pretending he cared about whatever was on TV.

Without saying anything, Wayne got up and grabbed a drink for his brother. Nothing fancy. Just a glass of the iced tea from the fridge. But there was an unspoken meaning behind it that they both could feel. That Wayne was always going to take care of them and get them what they needed. No matter what, he would always be there.

“Thanks,” Richie said as he accepted the glass. “For everything.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Wayne replied. “It’s what I’m here for.”

August 1970

Sunday dinners had remained the norm for the three Munson men, but Linda’s absence was always in the forefront of their minds. Not just because she was the best cook out of the three, but because she was the one who really got them to talk to each other. Wayne and Richie were never big talkers, and she had bridged their gap in communication.

And maybe that was why Wayne had accepted the Sunday overtime shifts that were offered to him. He hated missing the time with his family, but he hated the awkward silences more.

After not attending Sunday dinner for nearly a month, he figured that it was time to start going back. Eddie was starting school soon, and he felt guilty for the time he was missing with the kid. He felt even more guilty once he saw the state of their apartment.

He’d let himself in like he normally did, and the first thing he noticed was his brother passed out on the couch. There were empty beer cans strewn across the floor around him, and the room was in complete disarray. The kitchen wasn’t any better. The sink was overflowing with dirty dishes, and the trashcan was filled with enough beer cans to show that this probably wasn’t the first time this had happened.

He made his way back to Eddie’s room since the kid was nowhere to be found in the front of the apartment, and he found his nephew happily playing alone. It wasn’t exactly a comforting sight though. While the room was in relatively decent shape, the laundry hamper was overflowing to the point where there were small piles of clothes surrounding it, and there was a distinct odor hanging in the air. But the worst part was Eddie himself. The boy looked dirty. This definitely wasn’t the first day that he’d worn those clothes, and his hair was a tangled mess that obviously hadn’t been washed anytime recently.

“How’s it goin’, Eds?” Wayne asked, finally alerting his nephew to his presence.

“Uncle Wayne!” Eddie leaped up from his spot on the floor to give his uncle a hug.

As Wayne picked up the boy, he was hit with another wave of that stench, and his suspicions about said stench coming from Eddie were confirmed.

“So, when was the last time you had a bath?” he asked.

“We don’t have to do that anymore.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know,” Eddie said with a little shrug.

“And I’m guessing you’d have the same answer if I asked why the kitchen isn’t clean?”

“Yep.”

“And why the laundry isn’t done?”

“Yep.”

“Do you know anything?” Wayne teased.

“I know we’re eating TV dinners tonight!” Eddie said, excited that he could tell his uncle something.

“And how do you know that?”

“‘Cause we eat ‘em every night. Daddy puts ‘em on a plate so I won’t know, but he never throws out the box cause he’s too busy sleeping on the couch.”

“Does he do that a lot? Sleep on the couch like that, I mean?”

“Yeah. He’s no good at bedtime anymore.”

Wayne couldn’t tell if he was more heartbroken for his nephew or angry at his brother at that moment. All he knew was that he needed to do something.

“How do you feel about coming over for a sleepover?” Wayne asked. “We haven’t had one of those in awhile, and I miss hanging out with my favorite kid.”

Eddie’s response was an enthusiastic yes, so Wayne set him back down.

“I’m gonna go talk to your daddy, and then we’ll get your stuff ready to go, okay?”

“Okay!”

Part of Wayne wanted to be thankful that at least Eddie still seemed happy. He was okay on the inside even if it was clear that his dad had dropped the ball. But a much larger part of him was consumed by his anger. Angry at his brother for letting his home get this messy. Angry at his brother for clearly not taking care of his child. Angry at his brother for picking up their father’s bad habits.

But, most of all, Wayne was angry at himself for avoiding the awkward silences. If he’d kept going over for Sunday dinners, he would have caught the warning signs sooner. He could have kept things from getting this bad. He could have done something to help, and he was going to live with the guilt of not helping sooner for a very long time.

When Richie didn’t respond to his name or being shaken, Wayne grabbed a glass of water from the kitchen and dumped it over his brother’s head.

“What the hell, Wayne?” Richie sputtered as he came to and glared up at his brother.

“Don’t what the hell me,” Wayne replied. He was trying to keep his volume down so Eddie wouldn’t hear them. “It’s barely five o’clock on a Sunday, and you were passed out drunk.”

“It’s not a big deal.”

“It is a big deal. I shouldn’t have to tell you that with the way we grew up. Do you really want to put your kid through that?”

“I’m not turning into dad.” Richie sat up and laid his head in his hands. “I will never be anything like that man. I’m just not doing the best right now, okay? After everything, I lost my job. Missed too many shifts. It all spiraled from there. I just need some time to get back on my feet so we don’t lose the apartment.”

“You can’t take time when you’ve got Eddie to think about,” Wayne said as he took a seat next to his brother. “I’m bringing him home with me. This isn’t good for him, and you know it.”

“You can’t take my kid away from me.”

“The boy stinks, and I’m guessing he barely has any clean clothes left from what I saw in his room. This place is a wreck, and you don’t seem to care because you’re too busy drinking. He told me all you do is sleep on the couch like you were when I got here.”

Wayne ran a hand over the back of his neck. He hated putting this out there, but he had to open his brother’s eyes, and he didn’t see any other way.

“He starts preschool next week, Richie. If he gets there looking and smelling the way he does now or tells anyone anything about the way you’re living, someone is going to come here and take him away from you. He needs a safe and stable living environment, and this isn’t one right now. So you can either let him come with me while you pull yourself together, and you can still come and see him everyday. Or you can keep living like this, and you could wind up losing him for good. The choice is yours, and one of those options seems a lot better than the other to me.”

“Shit.”

Richie kicked the coffee table in frustration and sent empty beer cans flying.

“So, I can come see him everyday?” he asked after a moment.

“Whenever you want. I promise.”

“Okay . . . I’m not really turning into dad, am I?”

“No. I just think you went through some shit that you’re way too young for, and it made you make some bad choices. You’ve at least acknowledged it, so you’re doing better than he ever did.”

Wayne didn’t wait for a response from his brother. He just grabbed a garbage bag from the cabinet under the sink and headed back to Eddie’s room where he started shoving all of the dirty clothes into the bag.

“You can’t throw away my clothes,” Eddie pouted. “I need those.”

“I’m not throwing them away. I’m gonna do your laundry. Your daddy is awake, so why don’t you go talk to him while I get your stuff ready to go?”

Once Eddie’s clothes were taken care of, Wayne moved around the room grabbing whatever he saw that he thought his nephew would maybe want at his house and loading it into the duffle bag he found under the bed. He took the dinosaurs and toy cars that Eddie had been playing with when he came in. He took the stack of books and photo albums that were sitting on the tiny nightstand by his bed. He even grabbed the toy guitar that he was sure he was going to regret bringing with him. And, of course, he grabbed Mister Lion.

After a quick trip into the bathroom to grab Eddie’s toothbrush and other toiletries, he headed back into the living room where Eddie was giving his dad a goodbye hug.

“You be extra good for your uncle, okay?” Richie said as he pulled away from his son. “And I’ll be over to see you every day.”

“You promise?” Eddie asked.

“Cross my heart.”

Once they were back at the trailer, the first thing Wayne did was give Eddie a bath.

“I thought I didn’t need to do this anymore,” Eddie pouted as his uncle worked the shampoo into his hair.

“I’m gonna be honest with you, Eds,” Wayne replied. “You smell, and I can’t have you stinking up my trailer. So, it’s either you take a bath on a regular basis, or you’re sleeping on the porch.”

Eddie looked up at his uncle with wide eyes.

“You’d make me sleep on the porch?

“Never. Which is why we need to get you cleaned up.”

Getting Eddie bathed was the easy part. Tackling the tangled mess of his hair was an entirely different beast. Wayne tried to be as careful as possible as he worked through the knots, but Eddie was especially tender-headed, and his hair was a mess from the neglect, so there were plenty of complaints and tears.

“Mama never made it hurt,” Eddie said between his sniffles.

“I’m sorry, Eds,” Wayne replied. “I’m being as gentle as I can.”

“I miss her.”

“I know. Me, too.”

Wayne made grilled cheese and tomato soup for their dinner. It wasn’t anything special, but it was better than a TV dinner, and he made himself a promise that he’d never feed his nephew one of those for dinner ever again if he could help it. And, after the table was cleared and the dishes were done, he put the kettle on the stove to start heating up some water to make tea for himself and hot chocolate for Eddie.

When Wayne’s mug collection started to outgrow the small cabinet shelf, he’d moved most of them into the living room to put on display, but his favorites were kept in the kitchen for easy use. He pulled out the mug from Eddie’s first Christmas for himself, and then he grabbed Linda’s favorite mug - the light blue one with the pink rosettes - for Eddie. He carefully carried the mugs over to the coffee table before going through the bag of Eddie’s things to find the book he was looking for.

“Hey, Eddie, can you come over here?” he called over to his nephew as he sat down on the couch.

Eddie abandoned his crayons and the picture he was drawing to climb onto the couch with his uncle.

“You were too little to remember it, but did your mama and daddy ever tell you that you all lived here with me when you were a baby?”

“We did?”

“You did. The three of you shared my bedroom, and I slept out here. Whenever you were up at night, your mama would come sit in the kitchen, and we’d have tea together while she fed you. And then, when you still wouldn’t go back to sleep, she’d hand you over to me. We’d sit over here, and she’d read her favorite book to you until you fell asleep in my arms.”

Wayne grabbed the mugs off of the table and passed Eddie’s to him before picking up the copy of The Hobbit that he’d set aside.

“I know you miss your mama, and I know this isn’t the same as having her here, but this is a little piece of her that I can share with you.”

Eddie curled up against his uncle, and they sipped their drinks as Wayne started to read Linda’s most favorite adventure out loud to her son. It wasn’t much, but it was all Wayne could do to make Eddie’s first night in his trailer a little bit easier.

December 1970

Richie had made good on his promise to come and visit every day for the first two months that Eddie was staying with Wayne. But right around Halloween, he started missing days. And then multiple days in a row. It broke Wayne’s heart every time he saw Eddie realize that his dad had forgotten about him again, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. Richie had either stopped answering his phone at the apartment, or he was never home no matter what time of day Wayne called. Nor did he answer the door any of the times Wayne dropped by to check on him.

On Christmas Eve, Wayne realized that his brother hadn’t been over to see them since Thanksgiving, and he wasn’t sure if they’d be seeing him at all the next day. Wayne wasn’t going to let his brother’s screw ups ruin the holiday for Eddie though. It was going to be hard enough on him to spend his first Christmas without his mom. He didn’t want the whole day to be miserable.

Wayne had hidden all of Eddie’s gifts from Santa in the cabinet over the fridge - the only cabinet that Eddie hadn’t found a way to climb to yet - and he had gotten a small tree to prop up in the corner. It wasn’t very impressive, but Eddie was all smiles when he got to put the star on top, and that was good enough for him. He’d even picked up everything he needed to make cinnamon french toast for breakfast and a roast for Christmas dinner. It was shaping up to be a fairly decent holiday.

But, when he asked Eddie if he was excited for Santa to visit them that night, he was met with frustrated tears instead of the happiness he’d expected. Wayne stopped what he was doing and went over to where Eddie was sitting on the couch. The boy had tears streaming down his cheeks, and his tiny hands were balled into tight fists.

“Hey, hey, what’s wrong?” Wayne asked as he knelt down to get on Eddie’s level.

“I forgot.”

“Forgot what?”

“I forgot your present, and now it’s too late.”

“It’s okay. You don’t need to get me anything. I promise.”

“No, I gotta,” Eddie said as he wiped at his tears. “Mama said it wasn’t special if you didn’t get a mug, and I wanted it to be special.”

Wayne moved to sit on the couch and scooped Eddie up in his arms, allowing the boy to cry into his shoulder and get his feelings out.

“I was going to ask daddy to take me, but he’s never here.”

Wayne could pinpoint a lot of things about his brother that had angered him lately, but he didn’t know if he could ever forgive him for hurting Eddie like this. Still, he didn’t want his nephew to end up hating his dad. When Richie pulled it together, they’d be a family again, and he didn’t want moments like this to sour that.

“It’s my fault, Eds,” Wayne lied as he rubbed Eddie’s back in an attempt to soothe him. “Your daddy gave me some money so you could buy me a Christmas gift and told me that I should take you, and I got so busy with work that I just forgot about it. But if we leave right now, I bet we can make it to the Goodwill in time for you to pick out something real special.”

The opportunity to go present shopping cheered Eddie up immediately, and before Wayne knew it, the boy was pulling at his arm to get him to help grab his coat and shoes.

The Goodwill was still open when they got there, and nobody was inside except for the very bored looking teenager running the cash register.

“Now, you go pick something out, and I’ll wait here until after you’ve paid so whatever you pick can be a surprise,” Wayne said as he handed Eddie a few dollars.

Eddie took the money and wandered off towards where the homegoods were kept, and Wayne busied himself by looking at a rack of kids clothes near the front of the store. He wasn’t necessarily planning on buying anything, but if he could maybe find something decent that would fit Eddie, he might as well look. He only turned his attention back to the checkout counter when he heard his nephew’s voice.

“Excuse me,” Eddie said as he reached up to set his purchase on the counter. The counter was taller than he was, so he had to stretch just a little bit. “I want to buy this as a Christmas gift for my uncle, please. I have my own money and everything.”

“Well, aren’t you the cutest,” the girl working the cash register said as she picked up his mug. “Are you sure this is the one you want to get him though?”

“Yes, it’s the best one.”

“Okay, that’ll be one dollar. And for an extra quarter, I can even put it in one of these fancy gift bags for you if you’d like.”

“Yes, please.” Eddie set his money on the counter and waited as the girl got his change and wrapped his purchase.

“Here you go, sweetie,” the girl said as she handed Eddie his things.

“Thank you! Merry Christmas!”

Eddie raced back over to his uncle, and it was apparent that the tears from earlier were long forgotten.

When Wayne unwrapped his new “Virginia is for Lovers” mug in front of the tree on Christmas morning, he couldn’t contain his laughter.

“What’s so funny?” Eddie asked.

“It’s nothing Eds. I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

“Did I pick a good one then?”

“You picked the best one. I love it.”

And he did. Not just because it was Eddie that gave it to him, but because he knew it was the exact mug Linda would have chosen if she was there.

June 1973

Wayne and Eddie had settled into a routine together. During the school year, Wayne put Eddie on the bus before heading to work, and then he picked him up from after school care on the way home. Wayne made them dinner while Eddie did whatever homework he had to do, and then it was bathtime and books before bed. There wasn’t really enough room for two beds in Wayne’s bedroom, but he’d rearranged the furniture enough that they could just barely fit the fold out bed in his room when Eddie had expressed that he didn’t like sleeping out in the living room alone.

The only difference during the summer was that Eddie went to daycare instead of school. It was a little too expensive, but Wayne was doing his best to make it work.

Richie’s visits were few and far between at this point. They were lucky if he came to visit Eddie once a month, but it was usually a longer absence than that. They didn’t even have a way to contact him when he was gone anymore because he’d lost the apartment, and the only reason they knew he lost the apartment was because he’d told Wayne that if there was anything of Eddie’s still there, he should probably get it before the landlord changed the locks. When Wayne had showed up to grab the rest of Eddie’s toys and books, he’d grabbed the rest of the photo albums and a few of Linda’s things that were still around that he thought Eddie might like to have one day. Richie was supposed to give them his new address and phone number once he’d settled into a new place, but that had been nearly a year ago, and Wayne wasn’t holding his breath. His brother had broken so many promises since Eddie had moved in with Wayne, that he had a hard time believing anything his brother said.

So, when Richie showed up that morning and said that he wanted to take Eddie for the whole day, Wayne couldn’t have been more surprised. Even when Richie did remember to show up, he never spent the whole day with his own kid. But his brother said he had a new job, and he wanted to celebrate with his son. Wayne was reluctant to let it happen, but he knew the kid missed his dad, and if Richie wanted to step up, it would at least give him a chance to get some work done around the trailer without any distractions.

But when they came back around dinner time, Wayne regretted letting them go alone. Physically, Eddie was fine, but they returned in a different car than the one they’d left in. A much nicer car that Wayne knew his brother wouldn’t have been able to afford. He’d heard some rumors about cars getting stolen around Hawkins and getting brought to a chop shop somewhere outside of the town, but he hadn’t given it much thought since no one wanted to steal a car from someone who lived in a trailer park.

“Uncle Wayne!” Eddie said as he climbed out the car and ran to his uncle. “We had the best day!”

“You did?”

“Yeah! First, we went to the arcade, and then we got hot dogs, and after that, dad showed me how I can get any car I want for free!”

“Oh really?” Wayne glanced over at his brother who was leaning against the hood of what Eddie had all but confirmed was definitely a stolen car. “That sounds like a really great day, Eds. Why don’t you go inside and get washed up for dinner while your dad and I have a little chat, okay?”

Wayne waited until Eddie was out of earshot before he walked over to his brother.

“Seriously, Richie? Is that what your new job is? Stealing cars?”

“Lighten up. Do you know how much money I get for each car I bring in? I might actually be able to afford a decent apartment again, and I can quit sleeping on people’s couches. Eddie could even come stay with me.”

“Oh yeah. Sure. Being enmeshed in illegal activities is exactly what every seven year old needs. Do you even hear yourself?”

“Don’t tell me how to raise my son, Wayne. I think I know what I’m doing here.”

“Well, that’s rich coming from you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Since when are you the one raising him, Richie? The last time I checked, we haven’t seen you since March.”

“He’s still my son.”

“Then act like it. Because I’m the one who gets him to and from school and makes sure he gets his homework done. I’m the one who makes sure that he’s fed and clothed and has a roof over his head. I’m the one that he cries out for whenever he has a bad dream or he’s sick. And I’m the one who comforts him and distracts him every time you say you’ll be here and then don’t show up because you’re too drunk or you overslept or just forgot and didn’t care. And I am sick of you coming back around for a day and lying to him about how you’re going to be around more often and promising to spend more time with him because every time you break that promise, his heart breaks all over again. He deserves better than that, and you know it.”

“Shut up.”

“You can’t just tell me to shut up when you don’t want to hear the truth, and frankly, I’ve stayed quiet long enough. This is something you should have heard a long time ago.”

“I said shut up.”

“If she could see the way that you’re treating her boy, Linda would be so ashamed of you right now.”

“Fuck you!”

Richie launched up from where he was leaning on the car to post up to his brother. For a minute, Wayne was convinced that Richie was going to take a swing at him from the anger burning in his eyes, but nothing happened.

“You want me to be a better dad? Fine. I’ll be a better dad,” he spat as he stormed toward the trailer door. “We don’t need any help from you anymore.”

Before Wayne knew it, his brother was marching out of the trailer pulling a very confused looking Eddie behind him.

“Say goodbye to your uncle, Eddie,” Richie said as he opened his car door. “You’re not going to be seeing him for a while.”

“Richie, be reasonable.”

“You can’t have it both ways, Wayne. Either I’m the dad that you want me to be, or I leave him here with you. So I’m taking my son, and we’re leaving because I will not stand here and listen to you insult me. And if I ever hear Linda’s name leave your mouth again, that’ll be the last time you ever speak.”

Richie climbed into the car and slammed his door shut. Once Eddie was inside with him, he sped away and out of the trailer park leaving Wayne to spend the night alone for the first time in years.

February 1976

It was after midnight when Wayne got the call. He'd been asleep for a few hours at that point, and he'd been woken up by the phone. At first, he'd tried to ignore the call, but the person on the other end of the line was persistent, so the phone just kept ringing. He stumbled out of his bedroom and into the kitchen to grab the phone.

“Hello?” Wayne answered the phone, his voice hoarse from barely being awake.

“Have we reached Wayne Munson?”

“Speaking.”

“Mr. Munson, this is Chief Carver with the Hawkins police department. We currently have your brother in custody down at the station. His bail hasn’t been set just yet, and he declined his one phone call, but I’m calling to inform you that we also have your nephew here. He was asleep in the back of the car when my officers picked up your brother, and we’ve been told that you’re the only other family the boy has. We were hoping to place the child in your care as we’d rather contact family than anyone else in situations like these.”

“I can be there in fifteen minutes.”

Wayne didn’t need to hear anything else before he was putting on real pants and racing down to the station. He’d barely seen his brother and nephew since their fight as Richie had cut him out of their lives. He only saw them in passing, but Richie would quickly leave whatever public space they were in when he noticed Wayne was there, too. And even if he had a phone number, he doubted Richie would take his calls. He didn’t want to say that he was afraid of what he’d find when he got there, but he wasn’t expecting anything good.

“I got a call from the chief about my brother,” Wayne said as he walked up to the officer sitting behind the front desk. “I’m supposed to be picking up my nephew.”

“Wayne Munson, right?” the officer asked. “I’ll take you back to see your nephew shortly. Just gotta go over some official business first. You know how it is. Now, your brother will be staying here overnight because we won’t be able to get him arraigned until morning.”

“What is he facing in the way of charges?”

“Well, for starters, he was already wanted for multiple counts of grand theft auto and the possession and selling of stolen merchandise. Tonight, he was picked up on a DUI with multiple traffic violations, expired plates, and child endangerment to sweeten the deal. There was also a startling amount of liquor in the car with him. When he was pulled over, he attempted to assault an officer, and he resisted arrest. We don’t expect you to stay here until he’s arraigned, so we can call you and let you know what his bail is set at after the hearing occurs.”

“Don’t bother,” Wayne replied. “I won’t be posting his bail. All I care about is my nephew. Is he okay?”

“As far as we can tell, the boy is fine. A little shaken up, but okay. He was asleep in the backseat when the car was pulled over, and he only woke up when your brother started to get belligerent. We have reason to believe they were living out of the car from the sheer amount of stuff loaded into the trunk and backseat. Because the car was one of the ones he’s accused of stealing, everything inside it was admitted into evidence. However, we’re hoping someone will be able to sort through it after the weekend, so we can set aside anything that belongs to the boy and get it to you then.”

“Can I see him now? I just want to take him home.”

Finally, the officer led him back to the station’s break room where he found Eddie sitting on the sofa with his knees hugged to his chest.

“Alright, Eddie,” the officer said. “Your uncle is here to take you home.”

Eddie got up from the sofa and headed over towards where they were standing without saying a word. It was the quietest that Wayne had ever seen the boy other than when he was sleeping, and he hated it more than he could say.

Eddie stayed quiet the entire way back to the trailer despite Wayne asking him how he was doing, telling him he missed him, and just trying to get even the smallest bit of a conversation going. He tried not to read too much into it. It had most likely been an overwhelming night for him so far, and he was probably worn out.

It was only once they were back at the trailer that Wayne realized he didn’t have any pajamas or extra clothes for Eddie. He still had most of the clothes that had been left behind when his brother had taken the boy back, but he’d grown in the three years since he’d worn any of that stuff, so Wayne doubted he’d be comfortable in any of them. He grabbed one of his own t-shirts out of the basket of clean laundry he’d neglected to put away and offered it to Eddie.

“I know it’s not pajamas, but you might be more comfortable sleeping in this.”

“I’m fine,” Eddie replied, not bothering to take the shirt. “I sleep like this most of the time.”

The boy moved to sit on the edge of the couch, and Wayne set the shirt down on the coffee table just in case Eddie ended up changing his mind.

“How long do I get to stay here?” Eddie asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Am I gonna have to go stay somewhere else?”

“No, Eds. You’re here with me for good.” Even if Richie didn’t end up in jail for any of the charges he was facing, Wayne was never letting Eddie out of his sight again. Even if that meant spending what little money he had on a custody battle for his nephew’s wellbeing.

Wayne noted the confused look on Eddie’s face at his response, but he didn’t press the issue further. It had already been a long night for the both of them, and he was surprised that Eddie wasn’t already passed out.

“I’ve still got all of your stuff here from before, so I figure we can go through it tomorrow. See if any of your clothes might still fit or if there are any toys you might still want, and then we can go to the Goodwill and maybe get you some new things to replace what doesn’t work anymore.”

“You kept my stuff?”

“Of course, I did. Why wouldn’t I?”

“I don’t know,” Eddie said as he looked down at his shoes. “Figured you wouldn��t want my stuff here either.”

It was the either that struck him. How Eddie was so quiet when he said it as if he didn’t want to voice his fears out loud. Wayne moved to sit next to Eddie on the couch.

“What do you mean?” he asked gently.

“Nothing.”

“It’s not nothing, Eds. You’re upset, and I can’t help if you don’t tell me what’s wrong.”

Eddie refused to look at his uncle, continuing to stare at the ground instead.

“Dad said you didn’t want me here anymore. That there wasn’t space for me, so I had to go back with him.”

Wayne thought that being punched in the chest would have been less painful than hearing that. As much as he wanted to sit there and call his brother a liar along with a slew of much harsher names, he couldn’t let himself do that. Eddie had already been through so much that night, and he wasn’t going to be responsible for worsening the boy’s opinion of his own dad. Instead, he placed a comforting hand on Eddie’s shoulder.

“That couldn’t be further from the truth. There was not a day that went by that I didn’t wish you were here with me. Your dad and I had just had a fight, and it made more sense for you to be with him than it did for you to stay here. That’s all it was.”

Wayne got up from the sofa and moved over to where the old foldout bed was pushed into the corner. Behind it was a small, wooden chest. He picked up the chest and set it back down in front of Eddie. He encouraged Eddie to open it, and when the boy did, the first thing he saw was his old stuffed lion. He pulled the plushie out and hugged it to his chest before looking back to find many more of his childhood play things. Toy cars, dinosaurs, and little army men mixed in with crayon stumps, notebooks filled with his drawings, and his mother’s well-loved copies of Tolkien’s epic fantasy. The boy looked up at his uncle with wide eyes.

“I’m sorry if my mistakes ever made you feel unwanted,” Wayne started, “because the truth is that I would still want you here and have the space for you even if this trailer was the size of my bathroom and nothing bigger.”

“You swear?” Eddie asked. He held out his pinky, and his uncle immediately gripped it with his own.

“I swear.”

Wayne moved to set up the fold out bed.

“You don’t have to go through any of that tonight. It’s late enough as it is. Let me get your bed set up, and we can deal with all of that tomorrow.”

“I’m fine on the couch.”

“Don’t be silly. I’m not gonna let you sleep on the couch when I’ve got a perfectly good bed for you.”

“It’s really okay. When we weren’t sleeping in the car, I slept on a lot of couches at other people’s places. The floor sometimes, too. But I always liked the couches best."

The boy seemed eager to please as if he'd been told not to be difficult about where he slept in the past. To accept what he was offered without complaint. Wayne didn't want to fight him on this, but he also didn't want Eddie to think that this was any trouble for him. He'd give him the choice and let the boy do whatever he was most comfortable with.

"Well, I'm just gonna go ahead and set up the bed anyway. You don't have to sleep on it if you don't want to, but I want you to have it as an option."

Wayne barely slept that night. Eddie had looked at the fold out bed as if it was a trap before curling up into a ball on the sofa. It was then that it occurred to him that his nephew hadn't had his own room or any space to really call his own since the first time he'd come to live at the trailer. He'd always shared his uncle's room or the living room or whatever space his dad was able to provide.

Wayne had never needed much space. He didn't have a lot of stuff, and he figured he could fit most of his things in the tiny closet outside the bathroom if he did a little rearranging. Most of his drawers had been taken up by Eddie’s clothes when he lived there the first time anyway. He could take the fold out bed in the living room and give up his bedroom for his nephew. And if Eddie had his own space, maybe that would silence whatever was telling him that he was unwanted and allow him to relax.

So, instead of sleeping, he went through his closet. The boxes filled with Eddie’s old clothes were emptied onto the bed so he could load them up with his things. Moving it all into the hall closet and drawers could wait until morning since he didn’t want to accidentally wake his nephew, but he could get the room mostly ready for the boy to move into it.

By the time it was a reasonable enough hour for him to go and make his morning coffee, he had all of his stuff piled in boxes in the corner and another box of things he was planning on donating to Goodwill. He figured he could wash the sheets and put a fresh set on the bed later, but everything else was ready.

Eddie was still curled up asleep on the couch when Wayne exited the bedroom, so he tried to be as quiet as possible as he started the coffee. He woke up before the coffee was done though, and soon enough, he was rubbing the sleep out of his eyes as he stood next to his uncle in the kitchen.

“You sleep okay, kiddo?” Wayne asked as he pulled out a couple cereal bowls.

Eddie nodded before moving to take his normal spot at the small table. Wayne didn’t want to pry too much, but he was clueless about what Eddie’s life had been like over the last few years, so he tried to get the boy to talk to him without it seeming like he was interrogating him.

Over bowls of Cheerios, Eddie shared that most of the time, his dad had him hang out at the comic book shop after school and on the weekends. He wasn’t supposed to get in the way while Richie was working, so every week, his dad gave him two dollars, and he could spend that on whatever comics he wanted even if the only ones he really cared about were the X-Men ones. The guy who ran the shop was really nice and let Eddie sit there for as long as he needed to even on the days that he wasn’t buying anything. He never missed school, and his dad always made sure he was fed, so at least he hadn’t been lacking in those departments. Richie was neglectful in a lot of ways, but he had managed to do the bare minimum. He could be thankful for that at least.

After breakfast, Wayne had Eddie help him sort through the boy’s old clothes. None of the pants were going to fit him anymore, but he had a handful of shirts that had been a little big before that he could still fit into. Wayne just hoped that they’d be able to find a few pairs of jeans in decent shape while they were at Goodwill because he definitely didn’t have the money to drop on new pants.

Eddie wanted to keep his dinosaurs and the one little car that had been his favorite, and of course he was keeping Mister Lion, but the rest of his old toys joined the Goodwill boxes. He just wasn’t interested in those things anymore. Wayne made a mental note to pick up a new box of crayons the next time he was at the grocery store since Eddie was very adamant about keeping all of his old drawings, and his old crayons were barely usable anymore.

Their trip to Goodwill was a successful one. Wayne had to use up a good portion of his cigarette budget for the month on a new wardrobe for Eddie, but it was a sacrifice he was willing to make. He’d been meaning to cut back anyway.

“Why don’t you go and put your clothes away in your room?” Wayne told Eddie when they returned to the trailer.

“My room?”

“The bedroom is yours, Eds. I just have to move a few things into the other closet and change the sheets, and then it’ll be ready.”

“You don’t have to give up your room for me.”

“I know. But I want to. Figured you should have a space of your own if you’re gonna be staying here permanently.”

Eddie dropped the bags he was holding and went to give his uncle a hug.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“No need to thank me. You deserve this.” As Wayne was moving the rest of his stuff out of the room, Eddie was drawn to one item in particular.

“You play guitar?” he asked, eyeing the old acoustic in his uncle’s hands.

“I used to. I don’t think I’ve actually played it since before you were born. I was about your age when I learned though.”

“Could you teach me?”

“Sure can. I was just gonna stick it in the closet, but you can keep it in your room if you want and you promise to be real careful with it.”

Eddie nodded enthusiastically before taking the guitar from his uncle and carrying it back into his bedroom.

The rest of Eddie’s first day back at the trailer passed by without any incident. Eddie was slowly warming up to being there again even if he still seemed cautious about what he was and wasn’t allowed to do. It wasn’t until bedtime that Wayne was certain things would be okay between them.

By then, he was exhausted from having stayed up all night and all the work he did to get the bedroom ready for him. He’d just tucked Eddie in and was getting ready to set up his own bed in the living room when he heard the bedroom door open.

“What are you doing out of bed?” he asked. “Thought you were going to sleep?”

“I was,” Eddie said as he looked down at the ground. “But I was just thinking maybe you could set up your bed in my room like we used to? Just for tonight?”

“I think that can be arranged.”

Wayne squeezed the fold out bed into the cramped bedroom. Without saying a word, Eddie handed his uncle the copy of The Hobbit that was sitting on the nightstand, and even though he was ready to crash, Wayne settled in and read until his nephew was softly snoring beside him just as he had so many times before.

December 1976

Wayne was not spoiling Eddie for Christmas this year. If anyone asked, he insisted he wasn’t. He was staying well within his budget for the holidays, but he was buying pretty much everything secondhand, so his money went a little further. He’d picked up a few board games and an assortment of mismatched legos from the Goodwill, and he’d managed to get a good deal on a new set of strings for the guitar. He’d even picked up the 64 pack of Crayola crayons that had a sharpener built into the box and some plain, unlined paper for him to draw on. Eddie's Christmases with his dad hadn't exactly been great ones, and he wanted to do what he could to make up for that. There was just one last thing he wanted to get.

It had all started when Eddie had spent an entire day drawing at the kitchen table. Wayne hadn't been paying much attention to him because anything that kept Eddie occupied and quiet for more than five minutes meant he could get some cleaning done around the trailer without his nephew getting underfoot or making more work for him. He loved the kid as if he were his own, but he could be a handful at times. When he went to put another load of dirty clothes in the washer and figure out what he was making for dinner, he got a good look at what Eddie had been drawing.

Wayne gathered up the papers and shuffled through them, and he was amazed by Eddie's work. They were good drawings. Not just good for a kid drawings where you could tell what they were supposed to be but they still looked clumsy. These were actually good, and they were all dragons. Different shapes, sizes, and colors. Some breathing fire, some flying, and some sleeping, but all recognizable as dragons.

"Did you draw all of these?" he asked.

Eddie nodded without looking up from his current drawing.

"And you didn't trace 'em or copy them from something or anything?"

"Nope. I just drew what I pictured."

“These are really great, Eds. Best drawings I’ve ever seen.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. Don’t know where you got all this talent from. No one in our family can draw more than a stick figure.”

Eddie was absolutely beaming from all of the praise.

“Which one is your favorite?” the boy asked.

Wayne flipped through the stack of drawings in his hand before pulling out one of a purple dragon asleep on a pile of gold coins and jewels.

“If I had to pick, it’s this one,” he said as he held up the picture. “Would you mind if I hung it on the fridge?”

“You wanna hang up my picture?”

“Of course, I do. Gotta display it like the masterpiece it is.”

After the first drawing was in its place on the fridge, Eddie wanted to hang the rest of his dragons up in his room, so Wayne carefully taped up each and every one of them exactly where Eddie told him to. The entire time, Eddie was sitting cross-legged on his bed monologuing about how cool dragons were and why they were his most favorite fantasy creature. It was then that Wayne knew he had to find a way to get his boy something dragon-related for Christmas.

The problem he was facing was that there seemed to be absolutely nothing dragon-related in all of Hawkins, and he was running out of time. He didn’t know what he was going to do until he spotted something on one of the shelves in the comic book shop.

Wayne couldn’t give Eddie as much money as his dad had been giving him to spend on comics, but every Saturday, they took a trip there after lunch and before they did their grocery shopping for the next week. Eddie was allowed to choose one comic to take home, and Wayne would let him take as long as he needed to make that decision. Usually, he’d just stand and wait with Eddie, but a box with a large red dragon on the front had piqued his interest, so he went to examine it. It didn’t take long for him to realize that it was the perfect gift for his nephew.

When Eddie ran up to him with the comic he’d chosen, Wayne told him to go wait in the truck while he paid. As soon as his nephew was out of his sight, he grabbed the box and bought it along with the comic. It was a little more than he wanted to spend, but he knew it would be worth it to see Eddie’s face when he opened it on Christmas morning.

Wayne had barely opened his eyes before Eddie was shoving a gift into his hands on Christmas morning. He’d insisted that he didn’t need anything like he had for every single Christmas of his adult life, and he had been ignored as usual. When he opened the gift bag, he was presented with four different coffee mugs.

“There’s one for this year, and one for every Christmas I missed,” Eddie said, looking very proud of himself.

“How’d you get the money to pay for these?”

“A group of kids on the playground bet me their milk money that I wouldn’t eat a worm.”

“You ate a worm?”

Eddie shrugged. “It didn’t seem like a bad idea at the time.”

Wayne snorted and moved to ruffle a hand through the boy’s curls. “We’ve gotta work on your impulse control, kid.”

“Do you like them?” Eddie asked.

“I love ‘em. In fact, I’m gonna have my morning coffee in one of them, and I’ll make you a special Christmas hot cocoa in one, too.”

After the drinks had been passed out, Wayne pushed his bed to the side so he and Eddie could sit on the floor together with the tiny fake tree that Wayne had found at a garage sale. It wasn’t much, and it looked even tinier when the small pile of gifts for Eddie was almost the same height, but Eddie had just been excited to have a tree which was good enough for Wayne.

As Eddie opened his gifts, Wayne made sure that the one he was the most excited to give him was the last one he opened.

“Dungeons and Dragons?” Eddie read off the front of the box.

“It’s a fantasy roleplaying game,” Wayne told him. “I don’t know much about it, but the guy down at the comic book shop said it’s pretty fun, and I know how much you like dragons and fantasy stuff, so I thought this could be fun. I figured you could read the manual and maybe teach me how to play? If that’s okay with you, of course.”

It was more than okay with Eddie. Wayne watched as Eddie did nothing but read the manuals and plan out a small campaign for them to play for pretty much his entire winter break. On New Year’s Eve, he sat his uncle down at their kitchen table and walked him through creating a character before diving into their fantasy adventure. Wayne tried his best to understand what was going on, and Eddie often had to remind him which die to roll and when, but the boy’s excitement and enthusiasm for the game was apparent the entire time. He never got frustrated with him for forgetting what he was supposed to be doing, and he put every bit of his dramatic, over the top personality into painting a picture of this fantasy world.

There were plenty of days where Wayne was convinced that he was doing everything wrong when it came to raising Eddie, but as he watched his nephew fall in love with his new game, he knew that he’d done at least one thing right.

May 1980

When Eddie started middle school, Wayne had decided he was old enough to take the bus home from school and be alone at the trailer until he got home from work. For the most part, this hadn’t been a bad idea, and Eddie had only almost flooded the trailer once. But, towards the end of eighth grade, there was one big hiccup.

“I messed up,” Eddie called from the bathroom the second Wayne had walked in the door.

"Messed up how?"

"Can you just come here?"

Wayne made his way back to the bathroom where he found Eddie leaning over the sink. Sitting on the edge of the sink was a pair of scissors, and there was a very obvious chunk of hair missing from the left side of his head. Considering the fact that Eddie had just told him a week before that he was planning on growing out his hair in an attempt to emulate his favorite musicians, Wayne was more than a little bit confused.

"Wanna tell me what happened?" he asked.

"I was just minding my own business and talking to my friend Jeff about how awesome Corroded Coffin was gonna be at the talent show next week when the kid in the seat behind me smashed his gum in my hair."

"Is this the same kid who called you a freak and ripped up your notebook last month?"

"Yeah . . . I've been ignoring him like you said, but he just won't leave me alone."

Wayne had never considered beating a child before, but there was a first time for everything.

"And I'm guessing the scissors are out because you were trying to get the gum out by yourself?"

"I tried everything. But I couldn't get it out with my hands, and trying to pick it out with my comb only made it worse. And I didn't know what to do, so I figured I could just cut it out, and no one would notice. But I ended up cutting off too much, and now I look like this."

"Why didn't you wait for me to get home? I could've helped you."

"I was embarrassed," Eddie said. The boy looked like he was about ready to cry. "I don't like talking about this stuff, so I thought maybe I could do it alone, and then I wouldn't have to tell you."

Wayne sighed before squeezing past Eddie to pull his clippers out of the bathroom cabinet.

"I can fix this," he said. "It's not going to be what you want, and it's going to take awhile for your hair to grow back, but I can at least even it out and make it look like you wanted your hair to be shorter, okay?"

Eddie nodded.

"Good. Now take a seat and let me take care of you."

Eddie sat down on the edge of the toilet, and Wayne got to work. To make it easier for the clippers to do their job, Wayne started out by using the scissors to cut off Eddie's curls in chunks that he tossed aside in the sink. Once his hair was a more manageable length, Wayne turned on the clippers and started evening out the cut. It definitely wasn't what Eddie wanted, but soon enough, the boy was sporting a fresh buzz cut.

“I’m going to clean up in here, and then you can take a shower if you want. After that, meet me in the kitchen. I think you and I might need to have a talk.”

After sweeping up Eddie’s hair, Wayne headed into the kitchen and put on the water for hot chocolate. That was their routine. Whenever they had to talk about something even remotely upsetting, they did it over cups of hot cocoa in the hopes that the sweetness of the drink would soften the blow.

Eddie came out of the bathroom and took his usual seat at the kitchen table just as Wayne was finished making their drinks. He set Eddie’s mug down in front of him before taking his own seat. It was obvious to him that the boy had been crying while he was in the bathroom from his red-rimmed eyes, but he didn’t comment on it. He didn’t want to make Eddie feel worse than he clearly already did.

Wayne couldn’t get a word out before Eddie started talking.

“I don’t think I wanna do the talent show anymore,” he said as he stared into his mug.

“Why not? It’s all you’ve talked about for weeks.”

“They haven’t even heard me play yet, and I’m already getting picked on for it. What if I suck, and it gets worse?”

“So what?”

“What do you mean so what?” Eddie asked. “You just had to shave my head. I don’t want anything like this to happen ever again.”

Wayne sighed and took a sip from his mug.

“I know we don’t talk about your mama very often, but after you, music was her favorite thing in this world. When you all lived with me, there wasn’t a moment of the day that she wasn’t singing along with whatever was playing on the radio, and she might have been just about the worst singer I’ve heard in my entire life. Couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket if her life depended on it, and we all teased her about it constantly. But that didn’t stop her from singing her heart out whenever she heard her favorite songs.”

“What does that have to do with me?”

“People around here are small-minded, and they’re raising their children to be a bunch of small-minded idiots. No matter what you do, there’s always going to be someone who’s gonna try to make you feel small. That’s just the way life is. And if you stop yourself from doing the things you love just because someone else is making fun of you for it, you’re only letting the bullies win. You’ve gotta be a bigger and louder version of yourself and not let them affect you.

“You are so much like your mama in a lot of ways. Practically a little clone of her at times. Especially when you smile. But the biggest difference that I can see is that you have talent. I may not understand the kind of music you like, but I can tell when something sounds good. I hear you practicing, and you’ve got a gift. I won’t lie to you and pretend that everyone is going to love your performance or that the bullies will magically disappear, but what I can tell you is that it would be a damn shame if you didn’t share your gift with the world just because some little shit stain on your bus clearly wasn’t raised right.”

Wayne got up from the table to put his mug in the sink, but he’d barely taken a step before Eddie had jumped up and wrapped his arms around his uncle in a bone-crushing hug.

“Thank you,” Eddie whispered.

“You’re welcome,” Wayne replied as he hugged him back. “I probably don’t say this enough, but I hope you know that I love you, and I’m always going to be in your corner.”

“I know. I love you, too.”

“Good. And if you have any more trouble on that bus of yours, you let me know, and I’ll kick that little punk’s butt. No one is gonna get away with treating my boy like crap.”

Eddie snorted as he pulled away from his uncle.

“I’m sure he’ll be terrified. You’re basically the least intimidating person I know.”

“Okay, smart ass. I’m plenty intimidating.”

“You’re about as scary as a teddy bear.”

It was Wayne’s turn to laugh.

A few weeks later, when Father’s Day rolled around, Wayne woke up to a gift and a homemade card waiting for him next to the coffee maker. He opened the card first, and printed in Eddie’s messy scrawl, it read:

I feel like this is probably long overdue, and I should have been honoring you today for at least a few years now. You’ve been more of a dad to me than I ever remember mine being, and I feel like I don’t tell you how much I appreciate everything you’ve done for me enough. So thanks for always being there. Happy Father’s Day from your boy.

Feeling a little choked up, Wayne pulled the gift towards himself next. It was wrapped up in the comics from the day before’s newspaper with way too much tape. He knew what it would be before he'd even unwrapped it, but he was always happy to see whatever mug Eddie had picked out for him. This one was dark green and patterned with sunflowers, and he knew that it was going to become one of his new favorites immediately if only because of the circumstances in which he received it.

March 1986

Wayne Munson was tired. Tired of people judging Eddie without really knowing him, tired of people not listening to him, and tired of people defacing his missing posters instead of actually helping him look. He was tired of having to keep his guard up when anyone tried to talk to him because he didn’t want to lose his temper and attack someone for spouting vile nonsense at him, and he was tired of spending every waking moment - and most of his sleeping ones - worrying about Eddie. Tired of sleeping in the high school surrounded by people who had actively been hunting down his boy to do who knows what to him. He was just tired.

So, when Dustin Henderson came up to him and gave him the news that Eddie was gone, he could feel himself crumbling from the inside out. At first, he didn’t want to believe it. It couldn’t be true. His boy was out there somewhere and hiding until someone could find concrete evidence that cleared his name. He had to be. But the guitar pick necklace that Dustin held out to him and the apparent pain plastered across the kid’s face had sealed it. His boy was dead, and he was never going to see him again.

Wayne had never been one to outwardly express his emotions. He tended to keep things tucked away until he could have a moment in private, and he certainly never cried in public. But hearing the way that Dustin spoke so fondly about Eddie broke him. Because Dustin was saying everything that he already knew to be true. If Hawkins had really taken the time to get to know his boy, they all would have been able to look past his outer appearance, and they would have loved him just as much as Wayne did. He was certain of it. He just never thought he’d hear someone else say it.

Shortly after he spoke to Dustin, Wayne and the other trailer park residents were given the all clear to go back to their trailers and gather their things. The relief workers had marked it as safe for them to enter briefly, but no one was going to be allowed to stay there for very long. They were instructed to gather up anything important and head back to their temporary housing at the school as soon as possible. Eventually, they’d be able to come back and grab the rest of their things when more permanent housing was found for them, but for now, they were limited in how much they could take.

Wayne didn’t know how much of his stuff was going to be worth saving. Frankly, he was surprised that his trailer had even been left standing when he saw the fault line that ran through what had once been his living room. Out of an abundance of caution, he had entered through the door down near the bedroom instead of the main entrance. He moved quickly, shoving as many of his clothes in his bag as he could. He’d much rather wear his own stuff than the donations that people brought into the school.

After that, he grabbed the sentimental things. For once, he was thankful that he didn’t keep things in conventional places because that meant that all of his photo albums were safe. The notebooks full of Eddie’s childhood drawings and his favorite dragon picture were safe. Eddie’s beloved stuffed lion was safe. All of these were carefully added to his bag. But the one thing he couldn’t take was what hurt the most to leave behind.

He’d known the second that he saw the fault line running through his home that his mugs wouldn’t have made it. What was left of his living room display was now smashed on the floor, and he could tell just from the look of it that there was nothing he could save. He knew it was stupid for him to be so upset about them. They were just a bunch of mugs and nobody else would find them important. Anybody else wouldn’t give them a second thought because they could be replaced.

But they were important to Wayne. Those mugs tied him to better times with people he would never be able to see again. He could buy a new mug, but he couldn’t buy the mugs that Linda had stolen from her parents for him, he couldn’t buy the mugs that Eddie had eaten a worm to pay for, and he couldn’t buy the mug that Eddie gave him the first time he recognized him on Father’s Day. He couldn’t buy back the happiness that looking at those mugs and remembering their stories gave him. That was gone forever.

He didn’t want to set himself up for even more disappointment, but a part of him needed to know if the mugs that he stored in the cabinet had made it through the earthquake. Those were the ones that he used the most often. His favorites. He would be heartbroken if they were all destroyed, but he needed that closure.

When he opened the cabinet above the coffee maker, he was met with a shelf covered with the broken pieces of his mugs that had smashed against each other in the enclosed space. He knew not to get his hopes up, but it was still a painful sight to see.

But, pushed into the very back corner of the cabinet, there was one mug that appeared to still be intact. He carefully pulled it out of the debris to inspect it. Sporting a new chip on the handle, the mug featured the phrase “World’s Best Uncle” hand-painted on the side along with a bright blue baby handprint. The mug from Eddie’s first Christmas.

As he carefully wrapped the mug in a sheet of newspaper that was sitting on the floor underneath the kitchen table, Wayne felt himself choking back tears for the second time that day. It wasn’t his whole collection, but at least it was something. After all, he was only one man. He always said he didn’t need more than one mug.

#wayne munson fic #eddie munson fic #wayne munson #eddie munson #stranger things fic #my writing

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memory-and-sky · 8 months

Note

HIIIIIIIIIIIIII MATT HOW YA DOING SWEETHEART?

I saw that you wanted requests and decided to jump in on that 💗

How about Hobie x reader where they are on patrol and reader just drops the most philosophical sentence just out of the blue and Hobie is like

Wtf how are you the most interesting and smart person ever?

Would that be nice? If not feel free to ignore dude

(PS: drink water and take care of yourself 💗 love ya)

this is such an awesome request, thank you for this! i took a few creative liberties, but i hope you enjoy nonetheless :3 !!

word count: ~700

containing: swearing, mentions of death/dying (nothing too in-depth), not quite dating but a little more than friends, hobie x gn!reader, just talking about stuff on a roof together

the rest of the fic is under the cut!

philosophical shit. hobie x gn!reader

(aka what i think about past 9pm)

You and your work partner, Hobie, had just gotten done containing another malicious anomaly in some random universe.

The sun was just beginning to set, though, and you thought you'd stay until it fully settled, until the stars came out. Then you’d clock out and go home.

It was a gorgeous, clear evening. You felt the cool wind blow through your hair as you sat on the top of a decently tall building, glad to be mostly done with your work for the day.

Suddenly, you heard an all too familiar voice from behind you. "Mind if I join ya, mate?"

It was Hobie, of course.

"Sure. Thought you were heading back now, though.." You craned your neck, and leaned back to look at Hobie as he walked over to sit next to you.

"Soundin' like ya don' wan' me around, love." He chuckled to himself, sitting down cross-legged, and gazing out into the colourful sky with you.

It was beautiful. Your universe was never really this pretty.

"Wasn't half bad back there, eh?"

"You or me? I think I did most of the work there." You offered a small smile.

Hobie laughed. "Fuck off, ya wanker. Seemed equal 'cause I had to save your sorry arse. Shoulda given me so much as a plain 'thanks, 'obie' 'n I'd be chuffed."

You sighed, looking down as you fidgeted with your hands. Looking back up at the changing sky, you couldn't help but think of what could've happened, had Hobie not been there to save you.

I mean, you could've probably handled it, but what if you didn't?

"You know, I always have felt sort of unhappy with myself. My life, and whatever. Whenever something like that happens, it always scares the shit out of me and makes me think about dying a lot more vividly and realistically."

You shift to lay down on your back, arms supporting your head. "Fuck, for all I know that could be my canon event... dying. It really fuckin' puts stuff into perspective. The whole canon events thing, I mean. How am I supposed to live life freely, and even just normally, when I know there's a goddamn model that a computer came up with that already dictates my entire life, birth to death? How am I important at all?"

Hobie stared at you, eyes a little wide, a little slack-jawed at your intelligent, observant remarks.

"Christ, ya good, mate?" He chuckled, regaining his usual smirk that seemed to be permanently plastered onto his stupidly attractive face. "Gettin' a bit serious there, yeah? Thought I lost ya for a sec. But, love, I do see what ya mean. 'S quite hard to feel like 'ur in control when 'ur entire bloody life seems planned out. Y'know, canon ain't always right, though. I didn't go through tha' whole stereotypical 'officer savin' a li'l kid' event, so 's able to be changed somewhat."

He shrugged, messing with a loose thread on his pants absentmindedly.

You nodded, resting your hands on your stomach. "Yeah… I know. I just feel like I'm stuck in a cage and I can't do anything about it until I'm dead."

"Mm, don' we all, love.." Hobie shifted over to grin down at you. He seriously tried to play it cool, but he was freaking out, and totally all nerves on the inside. You sounded so smart and educated, this whole interaction totally came out of left field.

Which was more than welcome, fuck, Hobie would be the first to admit that he loved discussing things like this with you. You were so confident in your words, and more importantly, how you said them, and it made you even more beautiful in his eyes. If that was even possible.

He adored every part of you.

Your dorky smile, all your imperfections… Hobie loved that you didn’t hide them and didn’t let people tell you shit, and just your whole personality... it'd take him forever and a day to list everything that he loved about you.

Especially now, you looked artistically beautiful. Like a painting, with all the warm colours swirling around you, illuminating your skin and basking you in the fleeting sunlight.

"Oh, Hobie,"

"Hm?" He snapped out of scanning every aspect and detail of you for a moment.

You leaned into him after sitting straight up, closer and closer, and then pecked his cheek. "Thanks."

All Hobie's blood rushed up straight to his cheeks, and he offered nothing but a blank stare, an awkward laugh, and a light touch to where you kissed.

"Y-yeah, mate... f'course,"

104 notes · View notes

iamknicole · 2 months

Text

Chapter Ten

A/N: Two chapters in 24 hrs! Look at me! 😂😂 but enjoy! ⭐Comment, reblog & share!⭐

Warnings: Cursing, strong emotions ahead, typos, 18+ MINORS DNI!

Masterlist

Chapter Nine

Another three days passed with Zilla staying with Bronco. He would sneak to the apartment late at night to grab clothes when he knew Moriah was asleep. Watching her sleep gave him a dull ache in his heart for her. It wasn't fair that Nadine had made so many unjust decisions for them. There was nothing anybody could say to him that would make him ever forgive Nadine. Before he left the apartment, he made sure to fill her work cup with ice and put it in the freezer for her and put snacks in her purse because she always forgot. He was honestly surprised she didn't notice but then again she never did.

Slipping back into Bronco's house, he tried to move as quietly as possible so he didn't wake Bronco's little brother. As he moved towards the living room he heard a soft squeal.

“Aye you good in here?” He called out as he walked through the doorway then quickly turned his back seeing Toni sitting top less in his friend's lap. “Oh shit, my bad, B.”

Bronco laughed wrapping the throw blanket around her. “You good, shoulda been in my room anyway. You got what you need?”

“Yeah, I got it. Nice to see you again, T.” He chuckled with his back still to them.

Toni hit her boyfriend, who was still laughing. “It's not funny, Bronco. Nice to see you too, Zilla. Where were you?”

“You really wanna know or you askin cause it's awkward?”

“Both,” she laughed getting off Bronco's lap, “Answer please.”

He held up his bag for her to see. “Went to get clothes from the apartment.”

“So you saw Rye? Did everything go okay? Well of course it didn't if you're here.” Toni rambled on until Bronco moved to stand behind her and gripped her shoulders. “Huh? Sorry, I'm talking too much. I'm just worried.”

“Ain't no need to worry. He ain't wake her, she don't know he been there.”

Securing the throw blanket around her torso, Toni moved closer to the younger man and turned him around to face her.

“It's been damn near a week, Zilla. How long are you gonna do this? She already thinks you hate her, this is not helping.”

“That's what I been tryna tell him,” Bronco added, making Zilla suck his teeth.

“Fat know I don't hate her. I text her. We good, T.”

“That might work with Bronco but that does not work with me,” she fussed. “She doesn't know that because besides you texting her that you love her, you don't say anything else to her and you're not at home.”

He huffed shifting his weight from foot to foot. “Listen, I appreciate you being there for Fat and all that but we straight. I got it.”

“You got it? Yeah, okay. I understand that you're hurting and processing right now but you're literally doing exactly what her mom said you would do. You left her by herself, Zilla. She's alone every day and every night while you're here with your friend every night.”

Toni pushed past him, going to Bronco's bedroom careful not to slam the door.

“Damn, she kinda feisty,” Bronco chuckled, “But you know she's right. You can't keep runnin, bruh. You gotta talk to her at some point. Good night, man.”

Getting back to the guest room, Zilla got situated for the night and responded to a few texts he had. Jon had invited him and Moriah to the house for a cookout, even though he told him no the first time Jon continued to ask until Zilla gave in. As they were talking a facetime call from Arthur came through. He debated on answering for a few moments before ultimately answering.

“Damn you wasn't gon answer the phone?”

“I was gettin in the bed. What's up?”

Arthur knew his little brother well. He could fool their other brothers and occasionally their mother but it was very rare that he could get past Arthur.

“You tell me. What's going on with you?”

“Nun, wrestlemania season so it's busy.”

“Now that you got ya lie out ya system, let's try the truth, Isayah. You know whatever you tell me don't go no further.”

Zilla couldn't stop the chuckle that escaped him, it was dipped in sarcasm. “Oh trust me, I know you can keep a secret.”

Arthur's face scrunched up, giving his brother a confused look. “It's obviously something you wanna say so say it. Get it off ya chest.”

“Why you ain't tell me?” He asked after a minute.

“Tell you what?”

“About Angel. You knew and ain't say shit.”

Arthur sighed, wiping his free hand down his face. “This ain't what you wanna hear but that wasn't my place to tell you, Isayah. It wasn't my business to tell. That was for Moriah to tell you.”

Zilla rolled his eyes. “Okay so why not tell her to tell me before?”

“Do you think she wanted to hold this shit in this long? No, she didn't. She wanted to tell you but she been terrified to tell you since the moment that test came back positive.”

“I hear you.”

“If you're acting this way with me then I can only imagine how you acting with her about this.” Arthur paused to gather his thoughts. “That's why y'all ain't been answering our calls. She told you and you lost your shit, didn't you?”

He sucked his teeth hard. “I ain't lose shit. She told me and I left.”

“The hell you mean you left? You left the room? That's what you better mean.”

“Left the apartment. I needed to get away from the whole thing before I took it out on her.”

“You got air then what?”

“That's it. I ain't been back since and before you start I'm not tryna hear shit about it.”

Arthur chuckled under his breath. “I don't care what you don't wanna hear. It's fine for you to want space after hearing that but running from it won't change it. You do know that, right?”

“I know that, Arthur.”

“I know that look on your face so tryna say anything else to you is pointless right now so ima go. You call or text me when you wanna talk.”

Before Zilla could say anything else, Arthur disconnected the call. He could add another person to the list that felt his anger that didn't deserve it. The whole situation with Angel was eating at him, the person he wanted to take his anger out on was nowhere near and he wasn't calling her. Not yet at least.

Zilla

12:45am

Remember u said if I ain't find 1, u would fine 1 fa me?

Aunt Kami

12:45am

Yup.

Zilla

12:46am

I ain't find 1

Aunt Kami

12:48am

Gotcha. I'll let you know when your appointment is.

Zilla

12:49am

Thank u. I owe u

Aunt Kami

12:50am

No you don't. Is everything okay?

Zilla stared at the text trying to figure out how he wanted to answer. He knew Moriah is the closest to her Aunt Kami and her Aunt Gabi but he wanted her to have control of how much she wanted them to know.

Zilla

12:55am

Not really but ion wanna talk about it.

Aunt Kami

12:56am

That's perfectly fine, Zilla. But if you do, you know I'm here. Go to sleep, love yall

Zilla

12:56am

Love you 2

Getting out of bed was hard for Moriah and going to work was even harder. Having to act like everything was okay especially in front of Thomas so he didn't raise suspicion to her mother was tiring. Zilla buying her a car made it a little easier since he hasn't picked her up from work since. Even though Thomas worked her nerves, the kids on the pediatric floor gave her a little joy.

Entering her five year old patient's room, Moriah got sanitizer and approached the bed with a smile. She greeted her parents softly then laughed seeing her patient faking sleep.

“Nia's sleeping? I thought she was up.”

The mother smiled, her eyes crinkled in the corners. “Thought so too. Guess she fell asleep.”

“Well I guess I have to give this pop it game to my other patient then,” Moriah playfully started to walk backwards.

Nia's eyes popped open followed by her giggles. She reached her hands out. “Noooo! I'm awake! I'm awake!”

Her parents and Moriah laughed along with her. She approached the bed again, taking the game from her pocket to give to the five year old.

“The gopher game! You found it!”

“I did, I told you I would. I got you, girl.”

“Thank you! Thank you!”

Moriah started to check her vitals. “You're so welcome, friend. I talked to Dr. Harris and he told me that you can take it with you to pre-op while you wait.”

“Yes!” She squealed excitedly.

“And when you come out of surgery, what would you like to eat?”

“Anything?”

Moriah winked at her. “Anything, friend.”

“Spaghetti and meatballs!”

“You're gonna turn into a meatball, Nia.” The dad joked.

Moriah finished up and went to grab more sanitizer. “Spaghetti and meatballs it is, friend. Mom and Dad, Dr. Harris and another nurse will be in shortly to talk to you a little more about her surgery then take her to pre-op.”

The mother stood quickly. “Wait, aren't you going to surgery with her?”

“Well, no ma'am. I'm sorry.”

“Could you?” She asked, grabbing Moriah's hand. “Please. It would make us and her feel much better if you did. You've been so good to us the last few days, she just adores you.”

Moriah rolled the thought around in her head. “I'll check with the team and make sure it's okay. Alright?”

Leaving the room, Moriah walked around the floor looking for Dr. Harris. She found the slender, salt and pepper African American man engulfed in a conversation with Thomas. The sight of him repulsed her but she pushed it aside for her patient.

“I'm sorry to interrupt, Dr. Harris. I wanted to run something by you about Nia Whitfield's surgery.” Her eyes shifted momentarily to Thomas. “In private.”

Dr. Harris smiled, he was always a jovial man. It's why the kids in the pediatric floor loved him.

“Of course, Nurse DeBreaux. And it's okay if Gardner stays, he's going to be in surgery with me shadowing.”

It took every bit of willpower for Moriah not to roll her eyes at that.

“Isn't that … great. Nia and her parents would feel more comfortable if I went into surgery with her. I know you had another nurse scheduled with you and I understand if we can't change it but I wanted to try.”

Dr. Harris waved his hand dismissively. “Never be fretful to ask to switch in my surgeries. I want my patients and families to be as comfortable as possible,” he explained. “If they want you then they got you. I'll meet you at her room in fifteen minutes.”

With that, he walked off towards his office she presumed leaving her with Thomas. He stepped closer, she took two steps back and held her hand out to stop him.

“Stay out of my personal space, Thomas.”

“Our first surgery together. Aren't you excited, Moriah?” He asked, smiling from ear to ear.

“Not at all. You need to focus on not messing up in there instead of on me.”

He shrugged. “It's just a hernia removal. Piece of cake. In and out in an hour tops.”

She rolled her eyes.

“You heard what I said.”

“How's your boy? One of my patients had the show on last night, he's not bad.”

Moriah turned to walk away from him, mumbling to herself. Getting transferred back to the emergency department wasn't happening quick enough for her. Between the rift with her and Zilla and Thomas always in her face at work, she was more than tired.

Hassan pulled up to the house he knew Tamera would be showing in the next couple of hours, parking discreetly behind hers. He grabbed the flowers he had gotten her before jumping out and heading for the porch. The door was open, he knocked on the door frame as he entered. He didn't have to wait long for Tamera to come out, her heels clicking against the impressive marble flooring. Her smile grew wider seeing Hassan.

“What are you doing here, Hassan?”

He gave her the flowers then kissed her cheek. “I was in the neighborhood and decided to stop by. Happy to see me?”

His heart swelled as he watched inhale the flower's scent excitedly.

“Yes of course I'm happy to see you. But in the neighborhood, sir?” She laughed. “You live forty five minutes from here.”

He pulled her into a tight hug. “Not the point. You mentioned you didn't have flowers for the house today so here I am.”

“Thank you,” she grabbed his hand, pulling him with her through the house to the kitchen. “I'll put them in a case. They're very beautiful, Hassan.”

“Just like you.”

Their eyes met, her eyes flickered with a very familiar flame that Hassan acted like he didn't see. The flame in her eyes was the same flame that burned inside of him but he wanted to make sure she knew what she was getting into with him. Gabi and Moriah would say that he was stalling but he hadn't and didn't plan on asking them.

“You are slicker than can of oil, Mr. DeBreaux.”

“And you, Ms. Jefferson, are sweeter than honey.”

Tamera checked her watch then glanced back at Hassan, a smile rose to his face again.

“Two hours until your appointment, Tamera.”

She hummed, filling a vase with water. “Guess we better put those two hours to good use then.”

His phone rang interrupting their stare down. Seeing his ex-wife's name made him internally groan but he excused himself and stepped out of the sliding door to the backyard.

“How can I help you, Nadine?”

“Am I interrupting you or something? You sound irritated.”

He chuckled. “You know I don't enjoy talking to you, Didi. What is it?”

“Well that's rude, Hassan. I was just calling to check on Moriah. Apparently she's blocked my number.”

“You say that like it's a surprise. She meant it when she said she was done.”

Nadine scoffed into the phone. “Anyway, how's my baby? Have you talked to her today? I heard she's going into her first surgery today.”

Hassan took the phone away from his ear to stare at it for a moment. “No, I haven't talked to her today but she's fine. How the hell did you hear that?”

“I have my ways. Later on, you need to call and ask her about it. And tell her to call me, this is something we need to talk about.”

He took a few deep breaths to calm his nerves. “I'm not telling her anything, she'll call if she wants. Whatever person you got keeping tabs on her at that hospital needs to stop.” He spat harshly.

“If you think I'm gonna just stop looking out for my baby because she's upset with me right now then you're sadly mistaken,” Nadine fussed. “This isn't the first time, she'll get over it. She got over that damn baby, didn't she? Exactly so she'll be fine.”

“That damn baby was your grandson, Nadine! He was a part of you and you took his life! You took him, you traumatized our daughter, who is also a part of you and you act like it was nothing!”

“Oooh,” she cackled, “I struck a nerve if Hassan is yelling. Not cool, calm and collected Hassan getting out of character over that bastard baby.”

“You would stoop so low and hurt our daughter because you're pissed at me? You're pissed at me for something that didn't have to change anything about our lives, Nadine.”

Laughing, she mocked him, not bothering to give him an actual response.

“What if she would've hurt herself? What then?”

“Oh please that girl is weak but she's not that weak. She would never.”

He chuckled bitterly. “Because you know her so well, right? Nadine, stop trying to hurt my daughter. Leave her alone, let her be and let her live her life.”

“Your daughter?” She snorted.

“Yes, my daughter.”

“Goodbye, Hassan.”

The urge to chuck his phone into the pool a few feet away from him was strong. Instead he stuffed it in his pocket and took slow, deep breaths to calm himself down. No one could make him as angry as his ex-wife and he hated it. Some would say it was because he was still in love with her and reached to be her but they didn't know him. He hated who his ex-wife became right before and after their divorce, he didn't know her. Feeling hands on his back, he jumped a little then relaxed remembering he was there with Tamera.

“Didn't mean to scare you. Just wanted to check on you. You looked stressed.”

He wiped a hand down his face. “I'm sorry about that, it was my ex-wife. I'm alright though.”

She gave him a small smile, taking his hands in hers.”You don't have to be sorry, I understand about exes. We can talk about it, if you want. Or not talk.”

“Not talking sounds good,” he smiled.

Bronco and Zilla sat on the floor in front of one of the practice rings with a few of their peers listening to Booker and Regal talk to them. Since their interaction after the run in with Thomas, Zilla and Booker hadn't said much to each other if it wasn't work related.

“Getting TV time doesn't mean you stop practicing and working hard to get better,” Regal informed looking at each of them. “The goal is to stay on TV. Right?”

The group acknowledged him with an answer.

“So if you all know then why are we here right now?”

Silence.

Booker ran a hand over his locs, stepping in to add his own thoughts. “It's great that yall go to promo class, it's great that you're getting TV time but what's not great is yall either half assing it during drills and practice or not showing up at all.”

Zilla honestly didn't understand why he had to be in this conversation. He went to practice, he went to class and he did his thing on TV. With everything he had in his plate, the lady thing he wanted or needed was to be chastised about something he wasn't doing. The whole time Booker spoke, he rolled his eyes and scrunched his face up which didn't go unnoticed by the older man.

“Is there a problem, Zilla?”

He sucked his teeth. “Nah, mane. Go head.”

“You sure? Cause the eye rolling and facial expressions is telling me something different.”

Again, he sucked his teeth. “Man, go head. I ain't say nothing, did I?”

“This is something I need everybody to understand right now. Don't take me for no sucka, I don't disrespect any of you so don't disrespect me,” he moved closer to Zilla as he spoke until he was in front of him and snatched the younger man up from the floor, ripping his shirt in the process. “Cause if you wanna get disrespectful, I can show you how I handle disrespect. Is that understood?”

The two men stood nose to nose with no intentions of backing down. Zilla's chest puffed out from his heavy breathing, his jaw tight and his eyes burned. Booker maintained eye contact with him, seeing the tears in his eyes. Bronco watched the interaction wanting to step in but he knew it wasn't his place and he knew his friend needed it.

“I asked a question. Is it understood?”

Zilla scrunched his face to keep his tears at bay and choked out a ‘yeah’. Booker turned him around and pushed him gently towards the door, letting Regal know they'd be back. He guided the younger man to his office, closing the door behind them, then went to sit on the corner of his desk as Zilla dropped into one of his chairs.

“Let it out, man.”

Zilla choked back a sob, wiping angrily at his eyes. “I'm good.”

“You ain't. Ain't no way you are. I looked into your eyes, man. You're not good.” Booker said softly.

“I am. My bad for what happened.”

“I accept your apology but man it's okay to not be okay. Is everything okay with you and Rye? Or is this about your dad?”

Pulling up the end of his now ripped shirt, Zilla wiped his face with it. He cried softly, unable to hold it in anymore.

“Both,” he mumbled beneath the fabric of the shirt. “This shit is hard, man.”

“I know it's hard, I know it is but turning on the people trying to help you won't make it any easier, Isayah. Your people love you,” Booker explained, moving to kneel in front of the younger man. “Lean on the people that love you instead of leaning away. I know it's hard to be vulnerable but sometimes it's necessary. Alright?”

Zilla nodded, pulling the shirt from his face. “Aight.”

With a smile, Booker stood then pulled Zilla up and into a hug. “Go change your shirt and come back to practice. But understand I meant what I said, I'll put you right on your ass if you do that again.”

Zilla chuckled and agreed.

They left the office going in opposite directions, Booker back to the practice rings and Zilla to the locker room to change shirts. On his way, he went ahead and pulled the ripped shirt off, stuffing part of it into the front of his doors, letting it hang.

“Hey, Zilla!”

Not stopping his stride, Zilla threw his hand up at Gia. “What's up?”

She jogged a little to catch up with him. “Damn you walk fast. Why you in such a hurry?”

“Gotta get back to practice.”

“Your face is red,” she observed stepping in front of him to stop him, “Are you okay? You wanna talk?”

“I'm good, just hot,” he lied, wanting to get away from her. “Ain't nothin to talk about.”

“I feel like you're lying. You can talk to me, Zilla. I'm a good listener.” She smiled, rubbing her hand up and down his bare arm.

He moved her hand off of him, placing it back at her side. “Like I said, I'm good and if I'm not, I talk to my lady or my mama.”

“That girl of yours must have you on a short leash,” she joked. “I mean I can't blame her, I'd wanna hold on to you too.”

He scrunched his face. “I ain't on a leash. I respect my lady and our relationship.”

“Sorry, sorry. I'm just saying every time I talk to you, she comes up. I know she's there, you don't have to worry I'm not gonna try anything. I can appreciate a good looking man and be respectful.”

Shaking his head, Zilla moved around her and went to the locker room. After he changed his shirt, he checked his phone to see if he had any notifications.

Aunt Kami

9:33am

Saturday @ 10am. I'll send the location. You can take Rye if you want.

Zilla smiled a little at the message.

Zilla

1:15pm

My bad, been workin. Thank u, Auntie!!!!

He exited their thread then went into Moriah's. His smile grew a little wider.

Moriah

11:30am

Just wanted to let you know that I'm going into my first surgery in 30 minutes! It's a short one, not more than a hour but I'm so nervous and excited!

Zilla

1:20pm

I'M SO DAMN PROUD OF YOU, FAT!! I know u did amazing, baby. I love u

Zilla tucked his phone away and locked his things back up before he left the locker room. He opted to run back in order to avoid Gia, in case she was lurking around.

After surgery, Moriah stayed with Nia long enough for her to wake up so she knew Moriah had been there the whole time. When her parents came in, she slipped out to go grab the food she had delivered for the young girl. She sat it up in Nia's room with Toni's help.

“You need to get your man to go on back home.”

Moriah chuckled softly. “If I could, I would, Toni. What happened?”

“He walked in on us last night. Interrupted my moment.”

Moriah laughed, taking a peek at her friend's face. “A moment that you swore wasn't gonna happen because yall are just friends?”

“That is not the point, ma'am. The point is, it was interrupted.”

“I got more than a I love you today so maybe he'll be back soon,” Moriah shrugged, putting the parents’ food to the side. “Tell me about it though. Did you finally get some? Cause if you did, I'm gonna need him to try again you still mean.”

Toni wadded up a napkin and threw it at her friend. “I am not mean. No, we didn't. After that lil run in, the mood was killed.”

“Damn, I'm sorry. Try again tonight, at your place.”

“We can't leave his brother by himself, Rye.”

Moriah thought for a moment. “He can spend the night with me. I could use the company and I'll take him to school on my way to work tomorrow.”

“Sounds like a plan. Two birds with one stone. I'll let Bronco know.”

Before Moriah left the hospital, she stopped by Nia's room to check on her and to let her know that she would see her in the morning. She stopped by the store to get something to cook for dinner and snacks for him before she went home. She texted Toni to let her know that they could drop him off whenever they were ready.

A facetime call interrupted her music as she cooked. She answered it quickly, seeing Arthur's name.

“My favorite!” She said excitedly.

“Hey, sweetheart. How you doing?”

She propped her phone up so they could see each other while she cooked. “I'm alright, Art. How are you?”

“I'm okay. Worried about you though.”

She smiled briefly at him. “I'm okay, no need to worry about me.”

“If you lie to me, I can't help, Rye.”

Setting her tongs to the side, she leaned against the counter behind her and stared at the phone.

“I'll be okay, Art. It'll be okay. I promise.”

“I talked to him. He told me you told him about Angel and he left. Why you didn't call me, manamea?”

She shrugged. “I didn't think he would be gone this long. I thought he would've come back the next day and when he didn't … I don't know. I just didn't wanna talk. He's so mad.”

“He's mad, he's hurt, he's angry but not with you. I don't know if he bit your head off but he tried to bite mine off,” Arthur chuckled, “But he knows it's misplaced anger. He knows.”

“Yeah,” she said softly, wiping her eyes. “It's been a week but he's texting back now at least.”

Arthur wished he could teach through the phone and hug her because he knew she needed one. This is what she had been terrified of all these years and it was happening.

“What did he do when you told him?”

“He asked questions, he would barely look at me. He yelled at me but he apologized right after. I was frustrating him.”

“Frustrating him?”

“He asked me what happened to Angel and where he was and I was telling him that I didn't wanna tell him.”

Arthur sat quietly for a moment, he wanted to say that his little brother shouldn't have done that but given the situation and the emotions in that moment, he could understand it.

“You weren't frustrating him, the situation was, Rye. Do you want me to come out there? I can clear my schedule for yall.”

She shook her head moving back to the stove. “No you don't gotta do that. We'll figure it out.”

“I hate this for yall but I'm proud of you for telling him, Rye. And I know you're glad you were able to tell him before Nadine did.”

The doorbell going off interrupted their conversation, she let him know that she would call him later and went to get the door. She smiled seeing Javier standing there with his bookbag and overnight bag. She hugged him then invited him in, she took his bags sitting them beside the sofa.

“I'm so glad you're here Javi. Dinner is almost ready. You didn't eat yet, right?”

“No ma'am, my brother told me you were cooking. Thank you for having me.”

She cooed, going to pinch his cheeks. “Awwe, you're so polite. You can call me Rye, okay? You don't have to say ma'am, I'm not that old yet.”

He laughed going to sit on the sofa. Moriah went to close the door but was stopped by a hand. She panicked for a second then noticed the ‘630” tattoo and breathed a sigh of relief as she opened the door back for him. They locked eyes as he stepped inside, pushing the door closed with his hand.

“Hi,” she greeted softly.

He greeted her just as softly. “What's up, Fat?”

She wanted to hug him but she honestly didn't know if she should or could so she played with her fingers to keep from touching him.

“I'm gonna go finish dinner.”

He nodded. “Ima shower real quick. You need anything before I get in?”

She shook her head.

“You sure before I get in?”

She smiled a little at the familiarity. “I'm sure, Zay.”

Again, he nodded then turned his attention to Javier. “Aight, Javi, make sure she don't burn our food, man.”

The trio sat on the sofa eating dinner and watching one of the John Wick movies. Moriah sat between them, trying to ignore her boyfriend's eyes constantly staring a hole into the side of her face. He would look away long enough to take bites of his food and catch a scene or two but that was it. At least she knew he'd missed her as much as she'd missed him. When they were all done, Moriah took their dishes to the kitchen and cleaned up while Zilla showed Javier how the shower worked and set up his blanket and pillows on the sofa. He was done before Moriah so he went to lean against the breakfast bar to watch her.

“How did the surgery go?”

She jumped and squealed, turning to face him. “Dammit, Zay. I forgot you were here.”

“My bad,” he chuckled.

“It's alright. It went really good. It was a hernia removal on a 5 year old.”

He frowned. “How does a 5 year old get a hernia?”

“When their intestines bulge through the abdominal wall inside the belly button they can develop one.”

“That sound painful. How was it seeing it?”

Moriah smiled as she wiped down the counter. “It was really cool honestly. It was crazy to see how big it was. She was a trooper though.”

“Yeah? She went home today?”

“Uhn uhn. She'll be there two more days and she's excited about it cause she doesn't wanna leave me.”

He chucked. “I bet you love that.”

“A lil,” she laughed.

He let her finish her cleaning in silence, keeping his eyes on her. Javier came back out to the living room and got comfortable on the sofa, remote in hand.

“You got your alarm set, Javi?”

“Yup, all set, Rye.”

“Your phone on the charger?”

He sat up to check it. “Yup, it's good. Can I watch TV?”

“Sure,” she smiled, “If you want a snack or drink, you're welcome to whatever is in the kitchen, Javi.”

He grinned at her before turning his attention to the TV. “Thank you.”

Zilla approached Moriah, speaking softly. “Can we talk outside, Fat?” When she agreed, he grabbed her hand. “We gon step outside for a few, Javi. Yell if you need us.”

They sat beside each other on the first step, shoulder to shoulder. The night breeze gently whipped around them.

“First, let me apologize for walkin’ out like that and not lettin’ you know I was aight. No matter how upset I was, that wasn't right.”

“I accept your apology, Zay.”

“Second, I don't hate you and I'm not mad at you so get that thought out your head. You my Fat and I love you.”

She nodded, blinking a few tears out. “I love you too.”

“I can't imagine how scared you was that whole time and the pain that must've caused. You needed me and I wasn't there, I'm sorry, Moriah.”

She laid her head on his shoulder, crying softly. She wanted to tell him that he didn't need to apologize but she needed to hear that.

“Thank you for apologizing. I gotta be honest, a part of the reason I was so mad at you and refused to come see you was because of Angel.” She admitted softly. “I knew that my mom would've probably still did what she did if you weren't locked up but I wanted you there. I needed you, Angel needed you and you left us.”

His face scrunched as he tried and failed to keep his tears at bay. They betrayed him, slipping from his eyes in rapid succession. He moved the arm she laid on, wrapping it around her and pulling her closer to him.

“I regret not being there for you and him, it's something ima spend the rest of my life tryna make up for. I appreciate you been honest with me, Fat. I gotta be honest with you too.”

“I'm listening.”

“I love you and I don't wanna lose you but if you let your mom back in your life, I can't promise that ima stay. My love for you is the only thing keepin me from doin anything to her. I can't have her in my life, Moriah.” He spoke honestly. “She took our baby from us and probably any possibility of having another. She took what would've been a piece of my pops from me and my family. Do you get that?”

“I got it, Zay. I do.”

“That's the only thing I'm asking of you. Keep her out of our lives. She don't want shit but to tear us down and tear us apart. You got me, my family, your dad and the rest of your family … you don't need shit from her.”

“I'm done with her. She's not coming back unless you and I decide that she can. I've washed my hands of her. I promise.”

Nodding, he put his finger under her chin tilting her head back. He wiped the lingering tears from her face then kissed her softly.

“I love you, aight?”

“Aight,” she giggled softly. “I love you more.”

“Damn I missed you.”

“Not as much as I missed you, big head.”

“Two more things though.”

She raised a brow waiting for him to finish.

“We changing your number tomorrow.”

“Okay, second thing?”

“Since Zilla can't get you pregnant right now, can Zilla throw his condoms out?” He laughed.

“Boy,” she laughed, “They're tied not burnt but I guess you can throw them out.”

“What that mean?”

“It means that there's a small chance that I can get pregnant but very small. And if we want I can reverse the procedure but it's not guaranteed to work.”

Zilla pecked her lips a few times making her giggle. “Well guess we gon find out how small that chance is.”

#aao #Zilla & Moriah #zilla fatu #the samoan dynasty #the bloodline

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