#sue evil-eye | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

maximoff-pan · 5 months

Text

the ultimate deception | benedict bridgerton (part one)

summary: you are a well known artist who paints under a pseudonym. What happens when Lady Whistledown comes to know of your identity? How will your relationship with Benedict evolve?

pairing: benedict bridgerton x fem!(artist)reader

word count: 4k

warning(s): poor writing and dialogue (sue me, I'm rusty lol), very unedited so if there are mistakes, I apologize, misogyny, penelope aka Lady Whistledown's biggest defender

a/n: this is definitely going to be more than one part, but I wanted to post something after so many months. Let me know how you like it (or don't like it haha)...comments and feedback are much appreciated <3

• • • • • •

“I wish I possessed merely an ounce of your talent.”

Benedict’s gaze seems to be wholly absorbing your latest painting, a depiction of the botanical wonders of London’s Royal Kew Gardens.

You puff out a breath, blowing on the feathery end of one of your writing quills. In your haste, it had gotten loose, tickling your face irritatingly. Tucking it back behind your ear, you wave him off. “You have much more talent than you give yourself credit for.” You admit through squinted eyes, scanning your work. “You simply lack conviction. And you worry far too much about what others think of you.”

Benedict smiles, receiving your words as the highest of praise. He reaches out to take a better look at the piece of art before him. “You flatter me.” He mumbles in awe. “But I suppose there’s a chance you could be right.”

Chuckling at his words, you grin knowingly. You’re right. It’s more than a chance…you just are. He knows it too.

You both continue to steadily eye the painting, you out of critical evaluation of your work, and him in sheer admiration of it.

Benedict’s favourite part remains the beautifully bloomed magnolias that are scattered across the canvas. He’d been sure to tell you numerous times of their elegance while you’d been working on it, eagerly awaiting the finished product. As you’ve come to realize, Benedict loves watching you work. It’s one of the prices you’ve had to pay for his allowance of your workstation being at Bridgerton House, if you could even call it that.

You are grateful, truly. You wouldn’t be able to make your own living without his kindness. And you certainly wouldn’t be able to keep to yourself in the way you prefer to.

“When will Augustus Leighton be displaying his latest work of perfection?” Benedict’s question reminds you of your fate as an artist.

Augustus Leighton is the pseudonym you paint under. Using his name, you have become a well known artist among the ton, even going so far as to have a painting hung at Buckingham Palace. It’s difficult, you must admit, pretending to be someone else. But it’s a necessary evil.

Painting as a woman would get you nowhere. Especially as a woman with no money (particularly at the time you began), no status, and no husband.

Your mother is a seamstress with little to her name and your father was a servant to Violet and Edmund Bridgerton, before his heart became too weak. He passed away when you were thirteen, only a few years after the Bridgerton children had lost their own father. You’d grown up with little money, but Violet had been kind to both you and your mother, seeing how close you’d become with her children.

You were raised alongside them, Benedict and Eloise becoming your closest of friends. At three and twenty, there are five years between you and the two siblings in either direction, with Eloise being freshly eighteen, and Benedict having turned twenty eight. To this day, they remain two of only three people who know of your true identity, outside of Penelope Featherington.

You hadn’t exactly meant for Eloise or Penelope to find out about it, but once they had, it became comforting to have more than just Benedict to speak to about your predicament. Especially considering, although Benedict has been wonderfully supportive, he could never understand the struggle a woman must endure in a male dominated world.

“Likely never. This one is a gift for Lady Danbury.” You answer Benedict’s inquiry after a bout of silence. “She’s spoken about her love of these gardens quite regularly, so I thought, why not have Mr. Leighton recreate it for her?”

“How will you get it to her?” He questions.

A smile pulls at the corners of your lips. “I have my ways, lest you worry about it.”

• ж • ж • ж • ж •

The next few days are interesting to say the least. You’d somehow managed to get the painting delivered to Lady Danbury, and as far as Violet had been willing to speak of her latest visit with the formidable aforementioned woman, you have been made aware that she adores it.

You’d also heard more about it from Benedict, who’d mentioned something about her being at a loss for words, an ultimate shock to both him and his mother. They’d never seen her look so bewildered.

According to Eloise, Lady Danbury had been surprised to receive such a gift, especially of something so near and dear to her heart. She’d said it reminded her of her time with the Queen, telling the young Bridgerton woman about the months just after her husband had passed, when a new independent lifestyle began to bloom for her.

The painting itself reminded her that women like her could be free, and one day, they would be. That sort of metaphorical mindset had definitely appealed to Eloise’s sense of social justice. She’d been more than excited to tell you about the older woman’s reaction to your art, claiming it to be a wonderful revelation.

Today though, as you sit in the Bridgerton’s common living room, the opposite representation of said female autonomy rests in your hands. The paper feels rough against your skin as you pass it to Eloise who’s propped excitedly to the left of you. You’ve never been a fan of Lady Whistledown’s gossip column, although you can admire her unabashed confidence. But despite her strong will as an author, which could be seen as an inherently empowering trait, you are of the impression that she goes about it in an entirely backward way.

Women don’t need to put each other down to build themselves up. It accomplishes nothing, consequently acting as a source of nourishment for the patriarchy you find yourself trapped in.

“You’re not going to read it?” Eloise asks as she takes the pamphlet from you.

“I never do.” Is your instant reply.

Penelope perks up at the mention of the column, eyes trained curiously on you. If you had known better, you’d say she was a little too interested.

But at this moment you shrug it off, listening with no suspicion as she asks a simple, “Why?”

You don’t have the hindsight to understand why your stomach turns at her question, but you respond anyway. “I tend to think of Lady Whistledown as a poison.” It’s the first time you’ve voiced such an opinion.

Penelope and Eloise turn to you in surprise. “Come again?” Penelope’s soft voice cuts through.

“She is a poison.” You repeat before explaining yourself. “Do not get me wrong, I hold admiration for her bravado, but her words, the things she writes, they cause nothing but pain and conflict for those she chooses to sink her teeth into.”

“But she’s an independent woman.” Eloise interjects. “One who is doing more than any of us could dream of. She is making a name for herself!”

You try to think about your next words carefully, but your mouth makes quick work of a reply. “A name which she hides behind, casting stones through the guise and safety of anonymity.”

Penelope lets out a scoff from beside you. She’s always been one to defend the infamous gossip columnist. “At least she does not hide herself behind the mask of a man.” That feels like a shot. “The people know full well of her gender, despite her true identity remaining a secret.”

You hear the implication on her tongue. The same cannot be said for you.

And she’s not wrong. You do hide yourself behind the mask of a man. You’d never once denied that.

You sigh. “I know you must think of me as a hypocrite.”

Eloise agrees hesitantly. “Only a little.” She admits. “It’s just that you do the same as Mr. Leighton.”

You soften at her honesty. Truthfully, you understand where she’s coming from, but you can’t help the urge you feel to defend yourself.

“I disguise myself as Augutus because I know that no artist or art critic alike will take me seriously as I am. I want to share my work with the world, that is simply all I want. It’s all I have ever wanted.”

“Does that not make you a coward?” Penelope inquires, although it feels less like a question and more like an opinion. This is what she believes. And she's entitled to that.

“Perhaps.” You nod in acknowledgment. “But it has also made me uniquely successful. And I take great pride knowing that my work is highly regarded, in spite of the fact that I have to be someone else to succeed.”

“Does that ever bother you?” Eloise persists. “Knowing that no one will know you for the work you have done?”

Before you can respond, Penelope chimes in with a query of her own. “Does it ever make you feel guilty, lying as you do?” This feels like a challenge.

You turn to Eloise, answering her first. “No, I feel quite unbothered. I like the privacy it provides me.” Your gaze flicks between the two girls, a fire in your eyes as you speak.

You answer Penelope’s question next. “Guilt is one of the last feelings to cross my mind.” You feel content with it. “Because of Augustus, I have my own money, my own independence. I do not need a man to survive or to be happy. I have choices. And that's a facet of my life I never dreamed could have existed. If there is anything more empowering for a woman than that, I cannot think of it.”

Eloise listens to your words carefully, absorbing them, reveling in them. She hadn’t thought of it like that, but you’re right. Independence is a sign of true equality. And you have that. Not because of the name you hide behind, but because you’d used the insecurities of men to your advantage. You’d played the game and won.

“I suppose I have been quite short sighted.” There’s much less arrogance in her tone. Eloise sounds humbled. “You’ve given me a new perspective to think about.”

Penelope does not enjoy the direction this conversation has headed. “Surely you cannot think yourself above someone such as Lady Whistledown.”

Your face scrunches in thought. “Above?” You stipulate. “I do not think myself above anyone, gender aside. But I do think I have a much higher sense of self respect than she does.”

“And how could that possibly be?” Penelope has to bite her tongue. She wants to say more, defend herself more. But she cannot.

Eloise cuts in. “Lady Whistledown has the utmost confidence in herself. I dare say more than all the women in London combined. As much as I have come to see your side, I cannot agree with that.”

“One’s high level of confidence is of little concern here.” You deliver. “Often, in matters regarding the human condition, such as these, it can act as a detriment.” Your eyes narrow as you speak. “Self respect and self confidence can coincide, but they are not the same.”

Eloise laughs out of confusion. She’s not used to being this clueless. “I don’t understand.” She says.

“Ah,” you decide to stop tiptoeing around the subject. “I merely think that no self-respecting woman would use the pain and suffering of other women, or any other person for that matter, for their own profit and entertainment.”

Eloise’s smile drops. “Oh.” Again, she hadn’t thought of it that way. But what resonates with her most is that you’re not wrong.

“Is that what you truly think of Lady Whistledown?” Penelope’s voice is calm and collected for the first time this afternoon. It almost scares you.

“Yes.” You say, before voicing, “However, I mean no offense to either of you. I know how much you girls adore her column. I just want more for you than what she does. A life of gossip is dangerous, and you deserve so much more.”

If you had known you’d been talking to Lady Whistledown herself, maybe you would have kept those opinions to yourself. But little did you know how much your life was about to change, how dangerously you’d walked the line, and how much vengeance rests in Penelope Featherington’s soul.

Future note to self, do not play with fire if one does not wish to get burnt.

• ж • ж • ж • ж •

“(Y/n), I think you need to see this.” Benedict holds up the newest edition of London’s famous gossip column.

Your heart sinks at the look in his eyes. I’m sorry they seem to say.

You haven’t even read it and you already know it’s bad. Handing it to you, Benedict looks hesitant, almost in preparation of what's to come. As you take it from him, you glance down at the ink on the paper, her handwriting etched in your brain.

You swallow the lump in your throat as you begin to read:

Dearest Gentle Reader,

It has come to this author’s attention that a certain individual is playing an unforgivable game of deception within the world of classical art that this ton so highly regards. This artisan has gone to great lengths to keep their true identity from you, painting under a well recognized pseudonym.

By now you may have guessed, this artist is a woman. One who has tricked you and lied to you by passing her work off as that of a man’s. What a horrid crime it is to keep such a secret from you, and a desperate one, I must admit. A woman so foul as to seek such attention for her art, far too greedy to be content with the life so many of the wonderful women of the ton lead. Instead, she parades around disguising herself so she can live a life she feels entitled to.

This author asks you to consider the arrogance of it all. But the question remains, as I am sure you are desperate to uncover: who is the serpent who remains among us?

And so it is with great sorrow that I announce the once beloved Augustus Leighton is a fraud. A man never seen in the public setting, has given us a reason why. He is a woman.

And her name, ladies and gentleman of London, is (Y/n) (L/n).

As I am sure you, gentle reader, are shocked at this revelation, I will take a moment to address the woman this particular entry concerns.

May I remind you Miss (L/n), I have ears and eyes everywhere. Or did you forget? It would do you a world of good to remember that the next time you think about besmirching me. And, as I write this, I must say, this warning goes for all. Heed it, live by it, breathe by it. I am not a woman you want to cross.

Yours truly,

Lady Whistledown

Panic crawls through your body. You want to cry, scream, maybe even simply die from the anxiety you’re feeling.

“What am I going to do?”

Your voice cracks, it sounds like glass breaking. Shattered, ragged, and tired, and Benedict can do nothing but hold you.

Again, as your body shakes and caves into the pressure you think, what am I going to do?

• ж • ж • ж • ж •

The moment Eloise enters the room with Anthony at her side, your mind is sent ablaze. Only three people had known about Augustus. Only three people could have possibly let it slip, and you know for a fact it wasn’t Benedict.

As much as you want to believe Eloise would never do something like that to you, you can’t help but feel like she might have offhandedly mentioned it to someone. Her mouth had always worked much faster than her brain.

Benedict’s gaze meets yours in understanding. He hopes his sister hasn’t done this; he’ll be furious if she has.

You’re about to say something when a certain eldest Bridgerton catches you off guard. Anthony smiles when he sees you, eyes twinkling uncharacteristically so.

“I had no idea you could paint like that.” He says. “I must admit, I’m quite proud of you.”

You blink rapidly in confusion. Proud? In all the years you’ve known Anthony, he’s never told you he’s proud of you.

“So you’ve read the column then?” Your head hangs in shame. Everyone in London has probably read it by now.

“Everyone has.” Eloise pipes in timidly, confirming your suspicions.

She’s nervous, understandably so, fingers fiddling with the hem of her dress. You assume when you finally catch her gaze that she’ll avert it quickly, but instead, she holds it well.

We need to talk.

Benedict, reading the room perfectly, coughs in apprehension. “Brother, how about we let these ladies be for a moment? I’m certain they have some things to discuss.”

“Of course.” Anthony nods with a smile, not before reminding you how proud he is of you.

If anything good can come of this, it might just be that.

Once alone, Eloise is eager to assure you of her innocence. “I spoke to no one.” She promises. “Blood be forgotten, you’re my sister (Y/n). I would never betray you like that.”

The look on her face is one of pure panic; she needs you to believe her. And despite everything, you do. It almost makes you feel guilty that you questioned her.

“It’s alright.” You assure her. “I know you wouldn’t.”

But that only leaves one person…

“I think Penelope is Lady Whistledown.” You're taken aback by Eloise’s words, like a stab to the chest. Twisting the knife in further, she corrects, “I know she is.”

Moments of silence pass before you can collect your thoughts. “How long have you known?”

This is where Eloise loses her composure. Pure shame is etched upon her features. “I caught her a few weeks ago.”

A few weeks. A few weeks… A FEW WEEKS?

“Oh.” Your murmur is dejected and weak.

Eloise had known you’d been slandering Lady Whistledown in front of Lady Whistledown, and she’d done nothing to stop you, except defend her best friend’s honour. No wonder she’d been so reluctant to agree with you.

“I wanted to say something.” Eloise stammers. “But I couldn’t. Penelope doesn’t know that I know.”

You inhale a staggered breath of air, face falling to your palms. “I’ve been such a fool. How could I have been so stupid?”

“You have not.” The girl beside you opposes before continuing, “Trust me, I am furious with Penelope. The things she’s done and said about me, about the people I care about, I’m not sure I can forgive her for it.”

You scoff lightly. Trust her? How are you supposed to do that?

Sure, Eloise has certainly been burned by Lady Whistledown before, but she’s always had her name to fall back on. “You have no idea what it’s like, Eloise.”

“I’m sorry.” She slumps in apology, shrinking in on herself. Eloise likes to think she can understand where you’re coming from. She’s a woman, same as you, one who has the same struggles against the patriarchy, and yet, hers are much different.

“Don’t.” You dismiss her apology in frustration. It feels harsh but necessary. “You always speak about feminism and the difficulties of being a woman. How it is impossible for you to hold title and rank, or to be recognized for your accomplishments. But you are a Bridgerton Eloise, and that comes with more privilege, more title, more rank, and more acknowledgment in society than you seem to understand.”

Eloise’s brow furrows. “More often than not, that name is a burden, something you could not possibly grasp.”

“And I should not have to.” Your lips pull into a thin line. This isn’t a competition, but you feel it necessary to defend your point wholly. “I am the daughter of a servant and a seamstress. I have no money, no control, and no future if I am not to marry. Since the day I was born, I belonged to someone else. You talk of struggle, but you have no idea what it truly means.”

Eloise doesn’t like what you’re implying. “You think I live a life of luxury? That I am a stranger to the adversities life has to offer? I can assure you, I know much more about the struggles of which you speak. My mother has prepared me for the purpose of my future; finding a husband is imperative.”

“You plan to remain unmarried, correct?” You ask her seriously.

“With every fiber in my being.” Is her scathing reply. And it only serves to prove your point. But you can see her side of things too.

“El, you defy your mother with your distaste for society. And while I applaud your determination to fight for equality, your fault remains in your failure to recognize the entitlement that has been bestowed upon you simply by having that choice. Unlike so many women, you can choose to live your life as a spinster. For you, those options exist. For me, I have not one choice besides finding a well suited, at best, middle class husband, because that is all I am suited for.”

In this moment, her heart shatters for you. Is that really what you think of yourself? “You cannot possibly mean that.”

“It’s how it has to be.” You affirm.

“It’s not.” She disagrees. “There’s so much more for you than a husband.”

Both your defenses are down, walls have collapsed, and you’re starting to get through to each other. She’s starting to grasp the gravity of what this means for you. Your career is more than likely over, as is the steady source of income you’d managed to build. Except where before you’d had less than no money to your name, you now had a healthy dowry (that you’d earned no less) to find a more comfortable suitor.

Eloise sees it now. What Penelope has done is monumentally life changing.

However, as emotional as this circumstance is, you still feel the need to reach out. She’s your sister after all.

“Eloise,” your eyes search hers. They tread in a sea of empathy. “I never meant to imply you have lived a life without misfortunes. I’m not trying to diminish your hurt. But I thought if you heard my side, you might come to understand mine.”

She softens at your admission, having gotten carried away in defending herself. Nodding, she smiles gently. “I do.” She says. “And while you may not bear the Bridgerton surname, you do have us. Every Bridgerton will stand behind you, always.”

Against every fibre in your being, you believe her. Somehow you’ll always have this little family of yours, somehow you hope you’ll be okay…

#benedict bridgerton x reader #benedict bridgerton x you #benedict bridgerton x y/n #benedict bridgerton x fem!reader #benedict bridgerton #benedict bridgerton imagine #bridgerton x reader #bridgerton x you #bridgerton x y/n #bridgerton x female reader

2K notes · View notes

moonlightspencie · 6 months

Text

tenderly, tragically

Description: Silly, lifelong best-friendship leads to a lot of meaningless teasing. Though, sometimes teasing comes from a place of truth. It’s just that sometimes, those getting teased are the last to know why.

Pairing: Best friend!James Potter x Reader

Warnings: fluff, some angst, smut 18+ (p in v, praise kink, whiny james, size kink, first time for both), drinking, its really idiots to lovers

Word Count: 7.8k (just fluff): 9.4k (smut)

A/N: smut is at the end, and there’s a warning before it starts since it’s kind of like an alternate ending/extra bit. if you JUST want fluff, it ends at a good point for that before the smut starts :) ALSO: as with all of my marauders fics, characters are aged up (19-20)

fic playlist

“Jamie,” I squeal a laugh, chasing after him.

He laughs, continuing to out-run me. The bastard.

“Not my fault you’re slow,” he calls back. “Catch up, love, or you’ll get caught.”

I run harder, jumping on his back when I get close enough. We both knew he’d slowed down to let me get closer, but neither of us bothered to mention it. He laughed, holding onto my legs as they wrapped around his waist, slowing until he was walking.

“You’re going to get us caught, you know that?”

I snort a laugh. “Please. There wasn’t even anybody there.”

He rolls his eyes playfully, finally dropping me from his back, and instead slinging an arm around my shoulders.

“They could have, though.”

“But they didn’t,” I say pointedly. “Besides, Remus, Peter, and Sirius are still actually in the Slytherin dorms. Lousy look-outs we are because of you.”

He chuckles, walking us towards the stairs.

“They’ll be fine,” he shrugs with a cocky smirk. “Besides, I doubt even most of the Slytherins would object to a little prank on Snivellus.”

I hum, nodding a little. “I guess. Still. You’re a bad friend.”

“You ran too,” he accused, his brow furrowing. “Don’t go and pin all this on me.”

“You told me to run!”

“You didn’t have to listen!”

I scoff, shaking my head. He gives me an irritated look, but pulls me a little closer under his arm. We get into the common room, and without even asking, he starts ushering me to their dorm room.

“Why?” I ask, knowing he knows what I’m asking.

“Sue me for wanting to spend some time with my life-long friend,” he says, quirking a brow.

I push him away from me, but he doesn’t really let me get far. He opens his door, pushing me in first. I immediately flop onto his bed face-first.

“Not complaining now, are you?” he asks, laying next to me.

“Not my fault your bed is so comfy,” I say, my voice muffled by the mattress.

I feel the mattress dip, and look up to see him also turned on his stomach, right next to me.

“If you really wanted to get me alone this bad you could’ve asked,” I say with a wink.

He rolls his eyes, but a smile gives him away.

“Please. I know you’re secretly hoping for it, but we both know that’s never going to happen.”

“Me?” I laugh. “As if. What would I do with a quidditch player?”

He scoffs, an offended look on his face.

“I’ll have you know that I am very desirable, and half of that has to do with the fact I’m the seeker, thank you.”

I roll my eyes. “Uh huh. And what’s the other half?”

“You seen this face?” he asks, a cocky smirk on his lips.

“Unfortunately I have.”

“You’re mean,” he says, a laugh breaking up his attempt to be offended.

He pushes me a bit, but I hardly budge. I laugh at his attempt, but apparently that was the wrong thing to do. He perks up, trying harder to fully push me off the bed, now.

“Hey!” I say in protest, fighting back against him.

He laughs, both of us practically fighting as he keeps trying to push me off. I see an opportunity a moment later and take it: I grab onto one of his arms with both of mine.

“Ha!” I say loudly. “Can’t push me off now unless you also fall off.”

He pauses, then an evil smirk comes onto his face. My face drops as I realize what he’s about to do. He scoots over, dropping both of us onto the ground. I squeal as we fall, and I end up taking the brunt of the fall as he lands on top of me.

“You should never threaten me with a good time. You know I can’t resist,” he says, not bothering to alleviate the pressure of his body pinning me down.

I groan. “You suck. I didn’t think you’d actually push both of us off just to get me.”

“Then you don’t know me very well,” he replies with a quirked brow.

“Please. I know you better than anyone and you know it.”

He opens his mouth to snark back at me, but the door opens before he gets a chance.

“You two are the worst,” Sirius says, clearly out of breath. Then, he scoffs as more footsteps follow behind him. “And look at this! They ran off on us to… Canoodle on the floor.”

I furrow my brow, pulling a face as I try to see him around James.

“Canoodle?” I repeat in disgust.

James finally starts getting off of me, kneeling on the ground next to me as I start pulling myself up. Remus and Peter give us a look.

“We’re not… canoodling, and you can blame Prongs for us ditching. He’s the one who took off running and told me I had to, too.”

Remus quirks a brow at that as Sirius goes to sit on his bed.

“You didn’t have to listen to him,” Peter pipes up.

“That’s what I told her,” James says, giving me a self-satisfied look.

I make a sour face at him, pushing his arm a little. He pushes me back, and I straighten up. Though, Remus must notice that look on me.

“Don’t you two start up again,” he says, pointedly looking between us. “If I have to watch you two flirt any more I might throw up.”

“We’re not flirting,” James grumbles. “She’s just fun to mess with.”

“Mm. And you’re just easy to win a fight against,” I add.

He looks at me quickly. “You didn’t win the last one.”

“Because you pushed us both off the bed!” I exclaim.

“Oh, shut it, you two,” Sirius says, his arm draped over his face. “We’ve been back for three days and you’re already acting up.”

I snort a laugh at Sirius’s annoyance, climbing back onto James’s bed. I sigh with my face in the pillows, feeling him climb over me to get to the other side a second later.

“You got us in trouble,” he whispers.

“Your fault, not mine,” I reply.

“You’re the one who insulted my perfect face.”

“You’re the one who pushed me first,” I argue back.

“Oi!” Sirius calls out again, leaving us both laughing.

Our first few weeks of school go off without a hitch. The boys continue pulling their little pranks, occasionally dragging me along with them. I settle into my space this year, glad to still have Lily, Marlene, and Dorcas as my roommates. We always tended to get along quite well.

I start reading a new book one night, absolutely enraptured with the story, probably even more so considering it’s helping me to avoid the homework that I really should be doing. I get though the first couple chapters before I notice Lily staring at me.

“What is it, Lils?”

“Can I tell you something?” Lily asks suddenly.

She looks around the room, seemingly to make sure the other girls are really gone for whatever she’s about to say.

I look at her over my book. “Sure.”

“Promise not to tell anyone?”

I nod. “Promise.”

She sighs, sitting up a little straighter. “I think I have a thing for someone… Well, for James.”

My eyes widen. “Really? You wanted nothing to do with him a little while ago.”

“I know. I just… I don’t know. Maybe I’m just bored or something, but I’ve been thinking about telling him.”

I nod. “Yeah. You should.”

“Really?” she asks, surprised.

“Why not?”

She smiles to herself. “Yeah. Why not? Do you think he’ll say it back.”

I shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe? He did have a crush on you before.”

She hums to herself. I laugh a little, shaking my head.

“I think I’ll do it tomorrow. Better to do it sooner than later, yeah?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” I shrug noncommittally. I really just wanted to get back to my book.

“You don’t even care,” she groans after a moment.

“This is a really good book, Lils,” I laugh.

“Fine. I’ll stop bothering you.”

“Thanks,” I smirk to myself.

She scoffs again, though I know she isn’t really offended. I wish her good luck as we head off to our classes that day, knowing she was planning on telling James sometime in the morning.

I end up finding him later, though I try not to press for answers the second I find him. We sit on the grass in the late afternoon, watching some first years play a little quidditch match for fun. It’s uncharacteristically warm outside, and the sun shines down on us. After half an hour of watching the kids play, I glance at James.

“I wanna show you something,” I say suddenly, standing.

James looks up at me in confusion. “I’d prefer not to move.”

I roll my eyes, crossing my arms over my chest.

“It’s a nice day. Sunny and no clouds. Please, just follow me?” I ask, almost whining. “Promise you’ll like it.”

He leans back on his hands. “How do you know?”

“Because I found a secret place in the woods, and you’ll be the first person besides me to see it,” I offer.

He quirks a brow. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Now get up.”

He grumbles to himself as he gets up, following me as we walk towards the woods. I start leading him through the trees towards the destination I had in mind.

“What were you even doing in here? It’s dangerous,” he says quietly.

“I was fine. Just had a long day and wanted to explore. It was in the daytime anyway,” I say matter-of-factly.

He hums to himself, clearly dissatisfied that I went out here by myself. But as I finally lead him to our destination, his annoyance wears off.

“Whoa,” he says, his eyes a little wide.

I smile. “See? Told you it would be worth your while.”

He looks on at the small clearing. There’s a little pond with clear water, the space in the trees allowing some sunlight to reflect on the water. It looks peaceful at least, and nearly-heavenly at best. I look at him expectantly.

“How’d you find this?” he asks, squatting by the water. He dips his hand it. “Whoa. It’s warm.”

I nod, still standing. “I found it when I was exploring, like I said. A few weeks ago. I charmed the water to stay warm, so I’ve been out here two or three times to swim. Thought I’d show you before it gets too cold.”

He smiles, standing up. “You want to go swimming? You didn’t bring any—”

His eyes widen as he finally looks at me. At this point, I’ve already started taking off my robes and my shirt.

“What?” I ask, brows furrowed. “You act like you’ve never been around me getting dressed. We’ve been friends since we were like six years old. Now, hurry up. Faster you get undressed, the faster we get to swim.”

He rolls his eyes at me, begrudgingly taking off his clothes, even though part of him still looks excited that I’d found such a nice little place.

I start wading in once I’m down to my underwear, the water feeling nice and warm in contrast to the slightly-cool air. I hear him come in after me in a moment, and turn to watch him.

“Nice, isn’t it?”

“Can’t believe you were hiding this from me,” he says, hiding a smirk.

“Oh, please,” I reply, floating on my back in the water. “You’re lucky I showed you at all. Nobody else knows about this. You should feel honored.”

I hear him hum and splash around a little, though my eyes are closed. I bask in the warmth of the sunlight on my face.

“Did Lils talk to you today?” I ask after a few minutes of silence.

“Yeah.”

I upright myself, looking at him as he aimlessly walks around in the water.

“And?”

He glances at me, giving a shrug. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” I press, furrowing my brow. “What’s that supposed to mean? What did you guys talk about?”

“I have a feeling you already know,” he snorts a laugh.

I roll my eyes, wading closer to him. “So she told you?”

“Yep.”

“Well, what happened? What did you say?”

He sighs dramatically. “Does it matter?”

I splash him a little. “I’m gonna hear about it no matter what. She’s my roommate. Just wanted to know from you before I see Lily later.”

“Told her I wasn’t interested,” he says quietly, splashing me back a little.

I pause. “Why? You always had a massive crush on her.”

“Not in like a year,” he says.

“So you just rejected her?”

“I didn’t reject her,” he furrows his brows, looking away from me. “She told me she liked me, and I just told her I wasn’t into her like that. She didn’t ask me a question, so it wasn’t a rejection. Just being honest.”

I groan. “Jamie, she’s going to kill me. I’m the one who encouraged her to tell you.”

His eyes widened. “Why the hell would you do that?”

“I thought you liked her!”

He pauses for a moment, then splashes me again, this time fully soaking me. I scoff a laugh, in shock as the water hits me. I glare at him, then splash him back just as hard. He starts going on the attack, practically throwing the water at me repeatedly.

“You absolute tosser,” I say, continuing to splash back, though I can’t help but laugh.

I start backing up as we both continue, now laughing and barely able to see with how rapid-fire we’re going. Eventually, I turn and start running for the shore as much as I can while being chest-deep in water. I squeal as I hear him closing in on me.

“No, no, no,” I laugh, getting closer and closer to safety.

“Should’ve thought about trying to run a little harder, love,” James says back, still giggling to himself.

He catches up to me when the water is finally below my hips, and grabs around the waist, pulling both of us backwards. The water goes over our heads for a moment, and I gasp out a laugh as we emerge again. He sits us up in the pond.

I turn in his arms, smacking him lightly on the chest. “You’re awful!”

“You love me,” he smiles brightly, still sitting on the ground in the shallow water. He pulls me in a little closer. “You’re just mad that I won.”

“Still can’t believe you said you didn’t like her,” I say, brushing some of his wet curls away from his eyes.

“Not gonna lie to the girl,” he shrugs, swatting away my hand.

“Still. I thought for sure you’d be excited.”

“Hm. I don’t know. Maybe a couple years ago, but not anymore.”

“At this point I’m convinced you’re driving girls away on purpose. When was the last time you dated someone?” I laugh.

He looks at me, mockingly offended. “Excuse me?”

“What?” I exclaim, still laughing. “Last girl I remember seeing you with was some Ravenclaw a few quidditch wins ago, and even then, you were just sucking face because you were drunk.”

He finally pushes me away from him, trying to hide a smile. I chuckle, gaining my bearings, and finally landing comfortably on my knees in the water a foot away from him.

“You wouldn’t be so offended if I were wrong,” I tease.

“Yeah? And when’s the last time you dated somebody?”

I scoff. “You scare off every boy who tries to ask me out.”

“Cause they’re all ridiculous,” he states, making a face. “Are you seriously telling me you wanted to go out with that Johnny kid from Hufflepuff?”

I smirk. “Touché. But still, it’s not my fault I’m not dating anyone. You, on the other hand…”

“What’s that supposed to me?” he quirks a brow.

“You’ve got all kinds of girls chasing after you. What’s your excuse?”

He pauses for a moment, then smirks. “Who else would waste all their time with you if I were too busy with some girl? You’d be all alone. I’m doing you a service by staying single.”

“Please. You and that ego, I swear,” I shake my head. “I have plenty of friends outside of you.”

“I’m the best one, though,” he says, a brow raised with a cocky smile.

I make a face, then splash him once more for good measure.

“That’s it,” he mumbles, tackling me.

I yell a little with a laugh as his arm wraps around my back and drops me onto the bank where the water was scarce. I keep my head propped up as much as I can, though the rest of me is still covered in a little bit of water. It doesn’t help that James is pressing me into the ground.

“Admit it. I am the single greatest person you’ve ever met.”

I laugh again. “In your dreams.”

“Not letting you up until you admit it.”

“Guess we’re stuck here forever, then,” I argue back.

“Guess so,” he says plainly, dropping his full weight on me. I groan, my breath getting squeezed from me. “Best to make myself comfortable, then.”

“You’re so heavy,” I whine.

He chuckles, just quietly observing me for a moment. I tilt my head in question as he doesn’t snark back. He swallows, a small smile still on his face, but a little bit of color now in his cheeks. My eyes widen a little bit.

“Jamie—”

He doesn’t give me a chance to get anything else out, his lips pressing to mine softly. I freeze, in shock at the sudden change of circumstance. My best friend is kissing me. He pulls away when he realizes I wasn’t kissing him back, his cheeks taking on a deeper shade.

“I’m sorry, I don’t…” he shakes his head, looking at me with his lips still parted. “I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry.”

He gets off of me quickly, getting out of the pond and back to where we left our clothes. He casts a drying spell on himself and starts getting dressed. Meanwhile, I’m still in the water, feeling like I’m stuck. I swallow with a dry throat, turning to see him starting to pull on his pants. I finally get up, quickly moving towards him.

“Jamie—“

“I’m sorry, I don’t know why I did that,” he shakes his head, not looking at me.

I let out a frustrated groan. “We have to talk about that, James.”

“Not right now. Just,” he sighs, looking at me quickly. He takes out his wand again, casting that same drying spell on me. “Get dressed. We don’t want to miss dinner.”

I stare at him for a moment as he continues putting his clothes on, then finally move to get mine on. We finish getting dressed in an uncomfortable silence, that kiss playing on repeat in my mind. Why would he do that?

I look at him when I’m done to see him staring at his shoes, his hands shoved in his pockets. I walk nearer to him, though he takes half a step back when he notices. I furrow my brow.

“Don’t start that.”

“Start what?” he asks, his voice uncharacteristically quiet.

“Pulling away from me,” I say, grabbing his arm and tugging him closer to me. “I don’t know what just happened, but I’m not going to lose you as a friend all because you—”

“I’m not pulling away from you,” he rolls his eyes. “I just— I don’t want to… I’m embarrassed. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“You don’t need to be embarrassed.”

He scoffs. “Right, because there’s nothing embarrassing about trying to kiss your best friend while she looks at you like you’re crazy.”

I sigh. “I just didn’t know what was happening. You’ve never done anything like that before.”

He looks away, chewing at his lip. “Can we just forget about it? I really don’t… I didn’t mean to.”

I fall quiet for a minute, trying to gather my thoughts, but they’re all seeming to escape me. I let go of his arm, taking in a deep breath.

“You know I love you, right?” I ask.

He nods. “Yeah. I know.”

“Okay. Yeah, we can forget about it,” I nod. “You want to go get dinner, then? I heard a rumor they’ll have those apple tarts you like.”

He looks at me, smiling a little bit. “Yeah?”

I nod again, smiling back. “Would I lie?”

He chuckles a little, nodding towards the way we came into the woods. I start leading the way back out until we see the castle again. He catches up to me at that point.

“Sorry again,” he says quietly.

“About what?” I ask, raising a brow. “All I remember is us swimming around. Unless you’re apologizing for tackling me in the pond, in which case, you’re forgiven only if you get me some chocolate frogs next time we’re in Hogsmeade.”

He smiles a little. “Yeah. Promise I will.”

“Good,” I say, knocking into his shoulder a little.

He nudges me back. Of course. I go a little harder the next time I knock into him, until we’re both practically pushing one another over as we head towards the castle. He gives me a particularly hard shove, barely catching me by the arm before I actually fall to the ground. We’re out of breath from laughing when we finally get to the castle, feeling wonderfully back to normal by the time we reach the Great Hall.

We walk up to the marauders, taking our usual seat across from the three boys.

“Hey,” I greet.

“Where were you two for the past hour?” Sirius asks with a quirked brow.

I snort a laugh. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“I would, considering we saw you wander off into the forest,” he says, leaning forward on his arms with a smirk.

I roll my eyes. “None of your business.”

“Always so secretive,” Remus says, stabbing a few potatoes on his fork before looking between us.

I glance at James who laughs as soon as we make eye contact. Though, I also catch another pair of eyes when I turn towards him, and wince a little. Lily looks at me with her brows furrowed from a little ways down the table. I shrug at her, unsure why she looks upset with me. She rolls her eyes, going back to her conversation with Dorcas. I sigh.

“Great. Now Lily’s mad at me because you had to go and turn her down,” I say to James.

Peter laughs. “He turned her down?”

“When did this happen?” Remus asks, looking much more curious now.

“You need to learn how to shut it,” James says to me, his voice a little high as he shakes his head.

“They would’ve found out anyways,” I say, barely feeling sorry at all.

I hold back from chuckling as James is pelted with questions from the boys, focusing more on my food and trying to ignore the occasional sour glance I get from Lily.

Though, I couldn’t escape her forever.

I walked into my room after a night of sitting around with the boys and Marlene in the common room. I thought I would be going to bed and falling asleep, but clearly it was wishful thinking. Lily stared at me from her bed as Marlene and I shut the door behind us.

I raised a brow. “Hi?”

Marlene looked between us, excusing herself to take a shower. The traitor.

“What the hell?” Lily said, crossing her arms.

“Yeah, what the hell? Why have you been giving me sour looks all day?”

She scoffed. “You told me to tell him, and you know what he did? Oh. Wait, of course you know. Because of course he already told you. Because of course—”

“Oh my god, Lily,” I roll my eyes, going to sit on my bed next to hers. “I’m sorry that I was wrong about how he’d react, but I had no clue. I thought he still had a thing for you.”

She huffs a sigh. “I should’ve known you were setting me up. What, do you like to see me embarrassed?”

“If I did, I would’ve gone along to watch it happen,” I say, annoyed at her attitude. “Sorry I was wrong, but I didn’t know. And you said you wanted to tell him, anyways.”

“You don’t seem to be that sorry considering you were back to hanging around him again all day.”

“He’s my best friend, Lily. I’m not going to ditch him because he didn’t have feelings for you,” I say, shaking my head.

She stands up suddenly. “Well, maybe you should. Maybe if you weren’t like… In love with him, you’d be a better friend to me.”

I stare at her in annoyance. “You need to get a grip. I wouldn’t have encouraged you to try telling him if I was ‘in love’ with him. We’re friends. You’re being insane.”

“Well, clearly he at least has feelings for you!”

I furrow my brow. “Excuse me?”

“Why else would he reject me?”

I laugh against my better judgement. “Are you serious? One boy doesn’t like you, so it just has to be because he’s in love with someone else? Lily, I love you, but that is the most egotistical thing you’ve ever said.”

“But you’re not denying it.”

“James isn’t in love with me. Have you considered that he just doesn’t like you anymore? It happens. People move on,” I say, sighing. “Just… Go to bed, Lily. This is a ridiculous and pointless argument.”

I lay back on my bed, closing my eyes while I wait to get into the bathroom. I hear Lily mutter something under her breath, but choose to ignore it. The more she got angry with me, the less I cared that she got her feelings hurt. I didn’t want to be unsympathetic, but it was getting hard to be concerned when I was blamed for a boy not liking her. Obviously James didn’t like me.

Obviously.

I think.

He did kiss me.

I open my eyes, staring at the ceiling for a moment. James didn’t like me, did he? He’d never shown interest in me before. That kiss probably just happened because he was confused. He wanted to forget about it, anyways, so clearly that had to mean he didn’t mean it. And I didn’t feel that way about him anyways, so it didn’t matter.

Except, I did feel my heart pound a little differently when he looked at me before the kiss.

I didn’t hate the way his lips felt.

Seeing him smile at me on the walk back did give me a few butterflies.

But, no. That’s nothing. He’s my best friend, I wouldn’t suddenly start feeling that way about him. I couldn’t. It’d be ridiculous.

It’s not like I’d spend the rest of the night thinking about him. Except that I did. A lot.

I woke up the next morning, feeling like I was going insane. I’d never felt that way about him before. Of course, I always though he was attractive. How could anybody look at him and not think he was gorgeous? But there was never anything more besides friendship. So why could I not stop thinking about him?

My eyes feel heavy as I sit in my last class of the day, James trying repeatedly to mess with me throughout the class. With five minutes left, he leans in closer. Since when did he start smelling so good?

“Hey,” he says quietly, drawing my attention. “What’s wrong? You’re not getting mad at me.”

“Just tired, Jamie,” I shrug, staring at the notes on the chalkboard that I haven’t copied down.

“That’s a lie. I can tell.”

I sigh. “Have you ever… Has anyone ever told you something about yourself that you thought wasn’t true, and then… And then you realize they might be right?”

He furrows his brows. “How do you mean?”

“I don’t know. Like, let’s say someone tells you that you like strawberries, when you’ve never liked strawberries. But then you think about every time you’ve had a strawberry, and you realize that you actually really did like strawberries. A lot more than you thought you did. Like… you realize strawberries are your favorite fruit.”

He stares with a confused look, tilting his head. He reaches up, pressing the back of his hand to my forehead.

“Are you feeling alright?”

I lean away from him, rolling my eyes. “Cut it out.”

He smiles, nudging me slightly. “Can’t say I’ve had that experience, no.”

I groan. “This sucks.”

“Why can’t you just tell me what actually happened?” he asks. He pouts. “Please?”

I smile at him, trying hard to be annoyed, but finding it difficult. *God, I’m in trouble.*

“I just can’t. It’s… private.”

“You never keep secrets from me.”

“I don’t even know what secret I’m keeping just yet,” I sigh, resting my chin in my hand. “I feel like I’m going crazy.”

“Aw,” he coos. “You say that like you aren’t already.”

I push him, laughing softly, though we both straighten up when the professor reprimands us. We give a quick apology, still smirking at each other the next time we catch one another’s eye.

The next days pass by in a blur as I come to terms with what I’ve been feeling. It doesn’t help that I couldn’t talk to anyone, especially since Lily was still mad at me. Now, though, I couldn’t blame her as much. She somehow realized I was into him before I did.

“Hey,” Remus says, coming up to me as I sit in the common room. “It’s late. Why are you still here?”

“Why are you?”

He shrugs, sitting next to me. “Can’t sleep. Moon’s coming in a couple days.”

I hum in acknowledgement. “Gotcha.”

He settles into the couch, crossing his arms over his chest. He looks sideways at me as I stare into the fire.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Cause I can’t tell anybody.”

He scoffs. “That’s ridiculous. You’ve been off for days. James keeps complaining about how you’re not spending time with him as much.”

I shake my head, not responding.

“You need to talk to someone about this.”

“Can’t.”

“Bullshit.”

I look at him. “Seriously. I can’t talk to Jamie about it, Lily’s still mad at me, and Marls and Dorcas are too gossipy.”

“You can talk to me,” he shrugs.

“You wouldn’t get it, though.”

“Try me.”

I let out a breath. “You have to promise this stays a secret.”

He nods. “Promise.”

“Okay,” I say under my breath. “Okay. So, um, Lily got really mad at me the other day because of the whole…. Confession thing. And I didn’t understand why, and she started accusing me of things, and obviously I disagreed… But then something she said kind of stuck with me.”

“She’s just mad. Don’t listen to her,” Remus says, shaking his head. “You know how she gets when she’s in one of those moods.”

“But I think she was kind of right,” I sigh. “That’s the problem. She thinks… She told me she thought I was into James. And not like friends, like really into him.”

Remus’s eyes widen a little. “And… are you?”

“I’ve been thinking about it for the past week, and… I think I might be.”

“Whoa. I know we always tease you two for how close you are, but I never thought you…”

“I know,” I groan, my face in my hands. “And I know I haven’t been hanging out with him as much as usual because of it, but I don’t know what to do. How do you tell your best friend that you suddenly realized you’re in love with him?”

He doesn’t answer, just reaches over and gives me a hug. I accept it, sighing a little.

Our next week goes over just like that. I don’t avoid James by any means, but I try not to always be alone with him. I do find more opportunities to talk with Remus about it all, though, and it helps. Just to have someone to listen to me as I complain about my feelings. I do the same for him when he has troubles, though mine seem silly in comparison. He always tells me not to compare, though.

Unfortunately, though, as much as those chats help me process my feelings, they don’t help me get over those feelings at all. If anything, they only grow the more I think about James.

It’s super annoying.

Even more annoying is Lily’s smug look when I tell her about my feelings for James. I expected her to be mad at me, but she did something worse: she laughed at me.

“I knew it!”

“How? I didn’t know!”

“Because you are so obvious,” she shakes her head.

I scoff. “I’m clearly not that obvious or else you wouldn’t have told me you had a crush on him.”

“Alright. Fair enough,” she quirks a brow. “But still.”

I roll my eyes, walking over to hug her.

“Sorry about that. If I knew I had a crush on him I wouldn’t have told you to go for him.”

“Sorry back,” she says. “Shouldn’t have gotten mad at you that he told me no.”

“I agree,” I laugh.

She whacks me in the arm, laughing back.

I try to go about my life as usual over the next couple of weeks. There’s no sense in making myself miserable or drawing attention to my small shift in behavior. I find myself still doing most of the same things I always did. Just a bit more carefully.

I sit with the boys at dinner, laughing at their stupid jokes and the plans they have for pranks. I finish my food, pushing the plate away from me, and listening in on a conversation being had between Sirius, Remus, and Peter.

“You know, those three plan on being out all night,” James says quietly, leaning close to me as he watches the three boys talk.

I raise a brow. “Yeah? Doing what?”

“They wanted to just be out of the castle for the night. Think Sirius and Remus are going to the shrieking shack, and Peter is sneaking out to go meet up with some other friends in Hogsmeade, I guess.”

“And you aren’t running off?”

He shakes his head. “Told them I’d stay behind. Thought me and you could have a sleepover. Like old times.”

I chuckle. “It has been a while.”

“I think close to a year. They’re always in my space,” he says, feigning annoyance. “But it’ll just be us tonight, if you want.”

I push down whatever feeling rises in my chest at that and agree, despite my better judgement.

He pulls me into his room that night, immediately going to the foot of his bed, looking at me like he’s about to change my life.

“I brought something a little… fun,” he smiles, opening up his trunk to show me his secret stash of drinks. “Thought we might finally crack it open.”

I laugh. “And you didn’t think to tell me sooner?”

“Hey, we’ve had plenty at the Gryffindor events,” he smiles. “This is just for us. Our secret.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“I’m the greatest.”

We find ourselves on his floor after a few drinks, feeling fuzzy and happy. We talk about nothing for hours, occasionally passing a bottle between us.

“Maybe we should do this more often,” he says, smiling up at the ceiling. “I miss spending time with you like this.”

“We’re always together.”

“You spend a lot of time with Moony lately. Not fair, I want you all to myself,” he chuckles, poking my side.

I laugh, poking him back. “I’m still all yours. Love Moony so much, but you’re still my favorite I think. Now, if Sirius decided to start hanging around me more, then you’d be in trouble.”

He giggles, his cheeks rosy. I watch him carefully, feeling warm in the face myself, but for a different reason.

“You have a really cute laugh,” I say before I can think about it.

He looks at me with a smile, his tongue poking out between his teeth. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” I nod.

“You’ve never told me that before.”

I shrug. “I should’ve.”

He stares back at me for a moment, giving me a little silly smile. He leans over me, propping himself up with his forehead next to my head. He leans down, much like he did that day we went swimming. But this time I kiss him back. My hand finds his cheek, holding him gently as I let him work his lips against mine. I can’t deny the warmth that spreads over me or the butterflies I feel this time.

This time it lasts for a few minutes, neither of us bothering to pull away. Whether that’s because he actually likes it or because we’re both drunk and don’t know any better, I don’t know. I also don’t care.

He finally pulls away after a little while, still giving me that smile as if he didn’t just take all the air in my lungs away from me.

“We can pretend that one didn’t happen, either,” he says, voice barely above a whisper.

I nod, unsure what to say. I don’t want to pretend it didn’t happen, but I couldn’t tell him that without outing myself. I settle for the way his hand mindlessly reaches for mine as we go back into conversation like nothing ever interrupted us in the first place. Eventually, we move to his bed, preferring the softness of the mattress and pillows over the hard ground.

“Can I ask why you’ve been spending all your time with Remus?” he asks during a lull in the conversation, playing with my fingers as he does.

“Just became better friends recently, I guess,” I say, glancing at him. I admire his face for a moment before snapping out of it. “Some stuff I can talk to him about that I haven’t been able to tell anyone else. It’s been nice to have someone to listen.”

“I could do that for you. You didn’t have to go to him.”

“Not this time, Jamie. It’s… different.”

“How?”

“It just is,” I sigh. “I’ve had too much to drink for us to be having this conversation, James.”

He whines. “Please? I just want to know.”

“No. Maybe I’ll tell you someday, but not now.”

He grumbles, turning over and resting his head on my chest. His arm rests over my stomach. I just hope and pray he doesn’t feel how hard my heart starts beating when he does.

“Play with my hair?” he asks, his voice a little muffled.

“Okay,” I reply softly, running my fingers through his messy hair. “This okay?”

He nods a little. “Mhm. Thanks.”

We don’t wake up until the next morning, still stuck in that same position.

I find myself with Remus again the following night. I sit on a chair, and he lounges on the couch, trying not to judge me for putting myself in that situation. I don’t tell him about the kiss, but he hears about everything else.

“You can’t keep doing this to yourself,” he says after a beat of silence when I finish explaining. “You either need to tell him, or put some distance between you.”

“I tried that today.”

“I know,” he rolls his eyes. “It’s all James could talk about. Complaining the whole day that you weren’t eating with us or not going to the library when we were.”

“See? I feel like nothing I do is right in this situation,” I say, feeling defeated. “Like, how am I supposed to keep spending time with him like everything’s normal when I’m practically floating every time he so much as looks at me. It’s pathetic. And I can’t just ignore him, cause then he goes and bugs you all.”

“Maybe you just need to—”

“Hey,” James’s voice calls from behind us.

I look at him, noticing the annoyed look on his face. It doesn’t seem like he’s overheard us, but I can’t tell why he looks so irritated. Usually he’d be annoyed if I didn’t bother with them all day, but he looks… mad. I quirk a brow.

“Hey,” I say, confused.

He doesn’t reply, looking a little upset and a little lost. I turn back to Remus after a moment of silence, our conversation effectively being cut short. I stand up quickly.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I say to Remus, starting to walk past James in order to get to my room.

“What’s going on?” James asks, grabbing my upper arm.

I turn around quickly. “What?”

He clenches his jaw, then looks at Remus. “Moony, we need a minute.”

Remus goes to argue, but drops it quickly when he sees James looking more serious than he ever has. He gets up, giving me a sympathetic look before he heads towards the boys’ dorms. I glare at James as he hasn’t let go of my arm yet.

“Why did you do that?”

“Why are you with him again?”

I scoff. “You mean our friend? Did you ever think maybe we were talking?”

“That’s the problem,” he says, dropping my arm.

“How is that a problem? I’m going through something and he’s just trying to help—”

He sighs harshly, looking around like he’s lost. He looks back at me with his brows furrowed.

“I don’t get it,” he says, practically whining. “You never keep things from me, and now you’re telling Moony all of your secrets and ditching me for him and… And I don’t understand it. We’re supposed to be best friends.”

“We are, Jamie, there’s just some things that I can’t—”

“Why not?” he swallows, tears starting to prick his eyes. “Why can’t you tell me? You never do this. We tell each other everything.”

I freeze for a moment, my mouth drying up as I look at him. I want to reach out for him and hold him and make him feel better. But I also want answers, because it’s his fault that everything got screwed up. He didn’t have to reject Lily. He didn’t have to kiss me when we were swimming. He didn’t have to do it again on his bedroom floor. He didn’t have to treat me like I was the most important person in his life.

“Then tell me why you kissed me,” I blurt out.

He shakes his head a little. “I don’t know.”

“Then figure it out! You don’t just get to kiss me and then act like you just did it for no reason.”

His chest heaved from his breathing, staring at me. His cheeks tinged pink again as he took a moment.

“I—I just wanted to. I don’t know. You were there and you were looking at me like that and you just…” he huffed a sigh. “I just wanted to kiss you.”

“Why?” I asked, frustrated.

“Because,” he said back, his tone matching mine. “Because I always want to kiss you and I slipped up and did it one time—”

“You did it twice!”

“Okay! Two times,” he exclaims. “We promised we would just forget about it.”

“And what exactly is that even supposed to mean?”

“You’re so fucking oblivious,” he grumbles, rolling his eyes. “God, what do I have to do to make you understand that I’m—”

I wait as he stops talking. “That you’re what?”

“I’m in love with you. I have been forever, and you’ve never cared,” he says, letting out a shuddering breath. “And now you’re spending all of your time with Remus. And it’s so embarrassing that I’m sat here hopelessly in love with my best friend of over ten years while she’s running around with another one of our friends.”

“Running around with him? We sit in the common room and talk because you’re fucking infuriating!”

“Oh, so you’re gossiping about me?” he asks, voice raising as mine does once again.

“Not gossiping, just—”

“Just what?”

“I’m in love with you, too, you fucking tosser!”

He looks angry for a few moments, then it switches to confusion, then shock, and possibly the five stages of grief before he finally lands on raised brows and an open mouth.

“You what?” he exclaims.

“You’re so annoying,” I say, groaning. “Yeah, Lily had to go and tell me I was in love with you, and she always has to be fucking right about everything, doesn’t she?”

“Are you listening to yourself right now?” he asks incredulously, furrowing his brows. “You just told me you loved me.”

“I’m aware, James,” I say, crossing my arms.

“Well… Did you mean it?”

“Obviously,” I say, shaking my head at him like it was a dumb question.

“You’re so dumb,” he says under his breath.

Before I can say anything else, he’s moving forward, his hands on my cheeks as he crashes his lips into mine. I melt into him, this kiss being way more passionate than the one we shared the night before. I hold onto his waist, letting him deepen the kiss, though it only lasts for a minute or two after that.

He pulls away. “You’re infuriating. Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“You didn’t tell me anything, either!”

“I kissed you twice!”

I roll my eyes. “That doesn’t count. You said we should forget about both times.”

“Only cause I thought that’s what you’d want,” he defends, making an annoyed face.

I try to be angry, but it’s a difficult task. I reach up, running a thumb over his furrowed eyebrows.

“So grumpy,” I mutter. “Just told you I was in love with you. You’d think you’d at least try to be happy.”

He scoffs a laugh, pulling me into a hug, his face buried in my neck.

“I’ve never been happier.”

We hear footsteps coming down a few minutes later.

“You owe me ten galleons,” Sirius’s voice says.

I look over James’s shoulder as he keeps holding onto me, not caring that our friends are right there.

“You were betting on us?” I ask.

Sirius nods with a smirk. “And Peter just lost. He thought you’d take until the end of the year to get together. I said it’d be in this term.”

“I didn’t bet,” Remus says from behind Sirius, holding his hands up in surrender with a small smile. “Glad you worked it out, though.”

I smile at them, shaking my head and turning my attention back on James again. He looks at me finally.

“I’m glad, too,” he says quietly. “Think I might’ve combusted if I had to keep pretending I didn’t want you like that.”

“Didn’t do a great job at covering for it, though. Still kissed me twice.”

“You say like you didn’t love it,” he smirks with a wink.

————-> SMUT STARTS HERE. 18+ <-————

James finally pulls away, taking my hand in his.

“Good, now that you’re all out the room, if you’ll excuse us…” he says, pulling me past the boys who all groan in disgust.

I giggle as he practically runs to his room with my hand in his, kissing me the second the door is shut and locked. I smile into the kiss, my arms around his neck. He starts kissing my cheek and jaw after a few minutes.

“Hope you’ve been feeling the tension as much as I have, cause I could probably cum in my pants right now if you asked me to,” he says casually, as if it wouldn’t send a wave of arousal down my body.

“Oh my…” I trail off as he bites at my neck softly. “Are we gonna…?”

He pauses, his eyes wide. “Oh. I probably should’ve asked before I assumed, huh?”

He winces a little at his own excitement, cheeks tinged pink.

“Sorry.”

I smile softly. “That’s okay. I— I want to, I just didn’t know if that’s what the plan was.”

He smiles again brightly, kissing me once more. He giggled against my lips, then starts backing me towards the bed.

“I really do love you. Kind of embarrassing, really. I think I have forever,” he says softly, laying me down on the mattress and crawling over me.

I let out a soft breath. “Embarrassing for me, I think. I didn’t even realize until someone else told me I did.”

He laughs again, starting to kiss down my neck.

“I kind of always wanted you to be my first time, to be honest,” he says against my skin.

I pause, realizing what’s really happening. “Oh. Oh my god.”

“What?” he asks, leaning up to start unbuttoning my shirt.

“Wait, have you never… You haven’t done this either, have you?”

“Not all the way,” he shakes his head, then looks at me with wide eyes. “Is that okay?”

“That’s okay. I haven’t either. Just… You know. I’ve done some hand stuff but that was it.”

He looks at me again, then starts laughing a little. I find myself laughing right back as reality sets in for both of us.

“We’re gonna take each others virginity,” I say, still laughing a little. “Oh my god.”

He snorts a laugh. “Didn’t wake up this morning thinking this would happen, that’s for certain.”

I smile. “I love you.”

“I love you more,” he teases, dropping a kiss on the tip of my nose.

I watch as he finishes taking off my shirt, getting up just enough to help him pull it and my camisole off completely. He sits back on his knees, staring at me for a moment.

“You alright, Jamie?”

He nods. “Doing great, love.”

He starts taking off his own shirt, then. As many times as I’d seen his arms and chest, you’d think I wouldn’t still feel amazed seeing him in just his trousers… But I couldn’t stop staring, either. He leaned back in, kissing me again. I let my hands run over his arms and back, having free reign to do so and enjoying it. He nipped at my lip, a little noise leaving me and making him smile against my lips. I do the same to him, both of us ending up grinning at each other again.

“This is nice,” I say quietly. “Doing this with you, it’s nice. I like that we don’t feel like we have to act… sexy.”

“Well, that because it’s never an act for me, love,” he winks with a smirk.

I pull him back down with a giggle, though the smile is wiped from my face when he rolls his hips into mine. Feeling him hard for me for the first time leaves me a little breathless, especially when he’s grinding into me. I small groan leaves me when he does it again.

“Like it when you do that,” he says into my ear, doing it again just to get another reaction out of me. “I like those little sounds you make. So pretty.”

I find myself breathing heavily, my hands squeezing between our bodies to start unbuckling his belt. He gets the hint and sits up, pulling it off himself.

“Get out of those, yeah?” he says, nodding at my bottoms as he works himself out of his.

I comply immediately, shimmying out of my trousers and tossing them onto the ground. He gets back on top of me as soon as we’re both one layers closer to what we really want. I let my hand slide into his underwear as he stars kissing at my neck again, letting out a shuddering breath when I finally feel him. He whimpers into my neck as I start stroking him, rutting his hips into my hand.

“Feel so good, love,” he says, voice whiny and desperate.

I groan back, especially as one of his hands slides under the band of my panties to slip a finger into me. I feel myself growing hotter, kissing him and swallowing the moans he lets out as my hand keeps working him over.

“Shit, Jamie,” I moan as he adds a second finger.

“Good for you?” he breathes out.

“Yes,” I say breathlessly. “Yes. Very.”

I whine as he gets me closer to the edge, his hips doing all the work as my hand stopped moving up and down his length. He adds pressure to my clit with his thumb, sending me careening over the edge with praises and his name on my lips.

He pulls his hand away from me suddenly.

“Can’t wait any longer, love,” he says, voice wrecked.

He slides my panties off my legs as I take my bra off. Then, I watch with wide eyes as he pulls his underwear off, his cock bigger than I was expecting by far. I knew he felt big, but seeing him was entirely different.

“Fuck,” I say, staring at him. “Don’t know if I can take that, Jamie.”

“Yeah, you can, love,” he nods, settling between my legs and kissing me softly. “You can take it, baby.”

He pushes himself up just enough for both of us to see him rubbing his head through my slick before prodding at my entrance. He starts pushing in slowly. I let out a loud groan, my eyes shutting.

“Shh, just relax, love,” he says, lips hovering over mine. “You’re doing so good. Taking it so well, baby.”

He whimpers against my lips as he keeps pushing in slowly.

“So big, Jamie,” I moan, watching him disappear inside of me.

“I know, baby,” he says, a few more little noises spilling from his mouth. “I know, but you’re being so good. My good girl.”

He bottoms out, both of us panting and holding onto each other as I adjust to the new feeling. It hurts a little, but not in a bad way. Especially when he starts moving. That bit of pain makes way for a lot of pleasure once he starts rocking into me at a steady pace, whining and moaning into my ear.

“S’good, Jamie. You feel so good,” I say, trying to catch my breath.

“So good for me, baby. Squeezing me nice,” he whines, pinning me down under the weight of his body. “Good girl. So proud of you taking me so well.”

“Gonna cum again,” I say, feeling it building in my stomach again.

“Me too, baby. Just a little more,” he says, pressing his face into my neck again. “Don’t want to be done so soon, but you feel so perfect. You’re so good for me.”

I moan at his ramblings of praise, his words only causing me to get closer to that peak again. I hold onto him tightly, my body wrapped around his as he fucks into me like we’d done it a million times before. I speak his name over and over and over again as I crash down, my eyes rolling back from the intensity of the orgasm, and the fact that he doesn’t stop fucking me through it.

Though, near the end of my peak, he moans out a hundred more praises, my name falling from his lips as I feel him fill me up with his cum. He whimpers again against my skin as he finishes, not stopping the movement of his hips until he’s visibility overstimulated.

We breathe heavily, holding onto one another tightly as we come down from our highs, his hair sticking to his forehead as he leans in to kiss me softly again.

“Holy shit,” he whispers. “You’re perfect.”

I breathe out, a small smile on my face. “You… Yeah. Oh my god. I thought the first time was supposed to be bad.”

“It was perfect for me. But I barely lasted, it couldn’t have been that great for you,” he says, looking a little disappointed that he might not have done a good job for me.

I shake my head. “You still made me come harder than I ever have. You were incredible, Jamie. I mean it.”

He smiles softly. “I’m gonna have to kick them out of here more often. I might be addicted now.”

“And we have more things to try,” I add. “Can’t let this happen only once a week or something. Too much to figure out, I think.”

He giggles again. “Like what?”

“I’d really like you in my mouth next time.”

His smile drops. He starts nodding quickly. “Yes. Yeah, I’ll kick them out at two in the morning if you ask. Whatever you want.”

I laugh, pulling him into another kiss.

“Now, we have to figure out that contraceptive spell, or else we might be in some trouble,” I say with a smile.

“Sorry about that,” he smirks, clearly not sorry. “I’m sure Sirius knows it.”

“Please. As if he isn’t fucking Remus whenever those two run off to the shrieking shack.”

James’s eyes widen. “What?”

I snort a laugh.

“And you called me the oblivious one.”

#james potter #james potter x fem!reader #james potter x you #james potter x reader #james potter fluff #james potter smut #james potter fic #james potter fanfiction #best friend!james #bsf!james potter #marauders smut #marauders fluff #marauders fanfiction #marauders fic #marauders x reader #marauders #luna still hates jk

3K notes · View notes

hedgehog-moss · 2 years

Text

I’m reading a book on the history of man-made monsters and at one point it casually mentions “the famous Pope Formosus, who was the focus of the terrifying Cadaver Synod.” I can’t believe I went to Catholic school and was never taught about this... what’s the point. It turns out that in the 9th century a Pope decided to sue the previous pope, who had died the year before, and so naturally they dug up his corpse and dressed it in full pope outfit to hold the trial in his “presence”. The dead pope was pronounced guilty and cancelled (his papacy was declared null). Then the next pope held another synod that uncancelled him and forbade future cadaver trials. Then the next-next pope went “no, digging up a corpse to sue it was a good idea” and re-cancelled Formosus. Lesser-known chapter of Catholic Church history.

What does this have to do with man-made monsters you might say—my book mentions that among other things Formosus was accused of dabbling in alchemy and creating a “frog with huge eyes” who showed “diabolical intelligence.” The brief mention of him ends with

if the pope’s sentient evil frog actually existed rest assured that it was possibly destroyed

#findings #been a while since i added something to this tag

9K notes · View notes

xoxoskai · 6 months

Text

NIKOBRAN HEADCANNONS

to keep you going this last week before God of Fury drops<3

Between all his sons-in-law, Brandon is Kyle's favorite.

Levi's is Mia (cousin-fuckers who stole his son and daughter he'll always beef with)

Brandon and Niko are the type of relatives to wear matching clothes on Christmas because Niko would take up any chance to wear matching anything with Brandon.

If and when Brandon bakes, no one gets a chance to even taste what he made before Niko devours it all.

The only place Niko can fall asleep in at record speed is Brandon's arms.

The only reason Niko teaches Brandon how to drive a bike is so he can put his arms around his boyfriend's slutty waist boyfriend.

Remi is terrified on Brandon's behalf.

"Bran, yes, he's hot but mate, look at that guy! He has some skin on those tattoos!"

Astrid shares Remi's concerns but soon comes to find out that Niko is the biggest goofball of sunshine and almost adopts him.

Surprisingly, the one who takes the longest to accept Brandon is Rai. Because it's not her first time meeting the Kings (hello, she's a far relative) and she's worried that her oldest who is actually tender hearted and plagued by demons of his past, might be crushed beyond repair if Brandon hurt him.

Brandon and Landon think they can get away with tricking their in-laws by dressing as each other but they underestimate the Sokolov-Hunters who told them apart the moment they walked in.

Brandon tried it on Niko once when he first divulged about how Maya and Mia used to do it, but Niko could tell Brandon apart from his "psycho" brother in a heartbeat.

"It's your eyes" He had murmured. "Yours sparkle"

Glyndon is weary of Niko but as long as Brandon's happy, she's happy.

Landon is supremely unhappy.

When Landon first opposes their relationship by threatening Niko, Niko flings back "Remember who you're dating and what I mean to them" back at him.

Niko and Landon almost kill each other multiple times.

If there's someone even more unhappy than Landon, it's Crieghton.

Creighton: "Does this mean I can't fight him anymore?" Elsa: "Why were you fighting him before this?!" Creighton: "Is anyone else hearing this buzzing? I should go check."

Niko goes feral whenever he sees Brandon shirtless and vice-versa but

Niko is always shirtless, so Brandon is always suffering.

Unlike Niko, Brandon doesn't carry him into a dark corner to immediately fuck.

If there's no scene of Brandon asking Niko "Who's fucking you?" Rina, you'll hear from my therapist. And if there's not a single, evil, unhinged Brandon moment where Niko is flabbergasted at the change and is accusing him of being two-faced at which Brandon will laugh, lean in and ask tauntingly "What are you going to do? Tell on me?" I will sue.

Brandon's muse is Niko. (Bitch, I said what I said)

Unlike Landon, Brandon doesn't divulge this piece of information to his boyfriend because he does not want to give Niko even more reasons to walk around with lesser clothes.

Brandon gets a tattoo for Niko on his ribs. (cue feral Nikolai)

After which Niko tries to get Brandon's name tattooed on his favorite organ, but Jeremy literally deadlocks the door to his room to keep him inside after Niko asked for opinions in their group chat about his decision.

Niko: You don't think it's romantic? Jeremy, Killian, Gareth, Landon, Eli, Creighton, Remi:

They've definitely rolled around in paint and fucked on a canvas after it. Niko would display it in the entryway of their house if Brandon let him.

They've also joined the mile high club.

After they get engaged, Brandon calls him by his full-name as in "Nikolai Sokolov-Hunter-King" just to piss him off but Nikolai loves being associated to Brandon in every possible way, so it backfires.

Their wedding bands have each other's name inscribed in them.

As does the underside of their ring fingers in the other's handwriting.

Nikolai tries drawing a heart over the i in his name and almost gets smacked.

#legacy of gods #nikolai sokolov #brandon king #nikolai x brandon #nikobran #god of fury #god of malice #god of pain #god of ruin #god of war #eliava #eli x ava #eli king #landon king #jeremy volkov #creighton king #mia sokolov #maya sokolov #cecily knight

409 notes · View notes

hedwig221b · 2 days

Note

Not the same anon but your fav jealous and possessive Derek fics? I’m talking toxic possessive, Stiles always in sight and scented and being touched cuz Derek just CANNOT STOP 💞💞💞😌👆🏼🙂‍↕️

Hi, hello, here you go 🔥💖 (p.s. we need more obsessed borderline toxic Derek pleek)

As it Should Be by KuroKitty (HaleYes)

Stiles comes home from his 18th birthday party at the bowling alley to find a surprise waiting for him in his room.

Or, the one where Derek has no chill.

Assume I'm just An Asshole by mannersmakethmine

the pack always finding Stiles and Derek in coupley situations and assuming they're fake dating because there's a new threat in town, and Stiles and Derek because the shits that they are just go along with it.

Deflowered by astrugglingstoic

In which there is a prince, a knight, sequential sword fights, and an anecdote about pressed flower petals.

Feral Formalities by Aleandri

"There was silence as no one seemed to breath at the table. Derek had just gifted Stiles, an unmated Omega, with food. Right in front of another Alpha. Who he was on a date with. To discuss being heat partners…." In which, Stiles presents as Omega, and everyone wants a piece of the alpha-baby-making ass!

five times derek is protective of stiles and one time it's the other way around

Yeah, okay, so maybe Derek was a tad too protective of Stiles. So what? Sue him for worrying about his best friend, whom he totally does not have a raging crush on.

Okay, so maybe he does.

Shut up.

Hung The Moon by BurnItAllClean (nrnyx)

Slowly Stiles got control of himself again. His heart calmed. His breathing evened out. The anger was gone. In its place, a bone-deep weariness settled. He couldn’t do this. He wouldn’t survive this.

Might be a Predator by churkey

Derek's mom once told him they were predators. It never occurred to him to ask, 'If werewolves are predators, what do we hunt?'.

Oblivious Misadventures, and Other Such Tales by Little Spoon (JaydenNara)

Going to college was exciting and new, a chance for new friends and a fresh start, and the best part was, there was a supernatural fraternity on campus, meaning Scott finally had the freedom to be himself.

Then he met the resident human who came with a stalker alpha. What was the point of a supernatural fraternity if he still had to pretend to be human. And seriously, did Stiles ever fall asleep somewhere normal?

of gods & monsters by Dexterous_Sinistrous

“I’m not the best at conversation. I’ve been told I have no finesse for it.”

Stiles took a step closer to Derek, pushing the billowing silk out of the way. “And what would you say if you looked at me now?”

Derek looked up, startled for a moment when he realized he was now looking at Stiles’ unveiled face. He was silent for a beat, taking in Stiles’ features for the first time, convinced he would never see such beauty unveiled for him alone.

Oh my (let me look at those eyes) by Gorgeousgreymatter

A few months ago, he might’ve been able to solve this with some force—a little man-handling, a snarl, a glimpse of teeth. But he looks at Stiles’s broken face, knows he’s seen too much horror and blood and evil, the whole Big Bad Wolf routine is just going to fall flat. Because Derek looks at Stiles and he doesn’t carry himself like a teenager anymore. He carries himself like a soldier.

The Alpha and his Spark by sandyde03

Stiles is pregnant. Derek is perpetually horny and possessive. Stiles is confused. Not by Derek sexing him up. He loves that. It’s the fact that ever since he started to show that he was with pup everyone has been avoiding his eyes.

The Boy Is Mine, You Bonkers! by frownypup

It turns out that the words ‘a painfully smart and brave unclaimed human who is stupidly unutilized in Beacon Hill’s pack’ became the hottest gossip in werewolf underground. Yes, what the hell. Stiles’ existence has changed from a plankton to a rising sun.

Derek Hale has something he needs to say about it.

Three Little Words by Chloepioneer

“Oh god,” he whines, slapping a hand over his mouth to quell the vomit that boils the back of his throat. “Derek, is that the mailman?”

or Derek has a bad habit of killing people that take an interest in Stiles. Stiles might like it a little bit.

won't you torture someone else's sleep by redeyedwrath

I love you, Derek thinks, but he doesn’t say it, just watches Stiles throw his head back in laughter that isn’t for him and never will be. I love you, I love you, I love you.

Maybe if he thinks it hard enough, Stiles will hear him.

you are an obsession (i am your possession) by EvanesDust

Once Derek catches that tantalizing scent, he can’t stay away. Stiles. Derek’s completely enthralled by him. Obsessed. But all he can do is stand in the shadows, watching and waiting. Until he can make Stiles his, that is. And when that happens, Derek will never let him go.

Pack nights are not for getting laid by igotdamn

Stiles goes out clubbing, Derek doesn't like that very much.

Obsession by Rae666

Derek gets hit by a witch's curse and is confined to his loft as his uncle searches for a cure and Isaac stands guard. But as the curse grows worse and Derek's obsession with a certain pale skinned person becomes increasingly intense, how long can the team keep Derek and Stiles apart, especially when Stiles decides to take matters into his own hands?

pack mom!Stiles sterek fic rec here

angsty fic recs here

#sterek #sterek fic #sterek fanfic #sterek fic rec #sterek ao3 #sterek fanfiction #teen wolf fanfiction #stiles stilinski #derek hale #hedwig221b replies #stiles x derek #eternal sterek

171 notes · View notes

am-i-the-asshole-official · 5 months

Note

WIBTA if I tried to get my friend's character killed?

🎾🐕 for recognition.

I (19M) and my friends (all 18-early 20s, 5 players incl. me but not the DM) play Dungeons and Dragons from time to time, usually once a month.

We just introduced a new player to the campaign, who we'll call Evan (21M). Evan's character seemed a little Mary Sue-y to me when she was displayed to the rest of us, but I don't usually have beef with characters based off of that and just chalked it up to having different tastes which isn't bad at all.

My character has been working very closely with the BBEG and has basically joined their side in their conquest to y'know. Do the thing that makes them the Big Bad Evil Guy. I was super excited to see what the BBEG was up to.

Well, this was our 8th session, and we were about to wrap up Arc 1. My character had finally reunited with the rest of the party at the BBEG's lair, and Evan's character was introduced as being a traveling assassin/Sorcerer that happened to recieve a tip that the rest of the normal party was here.

By the end of the session, Evan's character had spent a third of the game time monologing at the BBEG before slicing his head off. My character is currently half blind and mute thanks to Evan's character [she tried to kill my character and I didn't roll the best on my roll to move out of the way of her blade so now she's missing an eye, and Sara's character cut out her tongue as punishment for working for the BBEG while my character was knocked out], and was kidnapped by Evan's character.

I was and still am PISSED. I'm trying not to be, but it's been driving me insane. Evan keeps on bragging about how he killed the BBEG and keeps on revelling in the scene, and I'm the only one upset by it. He was the BBEG, and you KILLED HIM YOUR FIRST SESSION?! It just seems like a silly thing to be upset about, but it's been really upsetting me and me alone (everyone else saw the BBEG just as that, a maniacal mustache twirler). Everyone is making jokes and laughing, but it was really upsetting me.

My character is very fond of revenge. Anything she has to deal with, she tries to get even with anyone no matter the cost. One of our characters died back in Session 4, and my character ended up being the only one that learnt about his character's backstory: he's a prince, and his family would do anything to give proper punishment to his killer, and his character told mine what to do to make this happen before he died. I am the only one in-game with this information.

We're now on Session 16, almost done with Arc 2, and the current plan is [the DM mentioned we'd have to wait until Arc 3 to act on the prince's last words] to rat out Evan's character as being the killer [she isn't the killer, my character would be framing her, but the BBEG was the true killer and my character is loyal to him] and hope that she's persecuted. Most likely, this would end up with Evan's character dead, but I'm not sure due to how much he's been Mary Sue-ing all over the place [not a bad thing, but his character does virtually have no flaws that have presented themselves opposed to the rest of our party each with a glaring flaw that the DM made us all add in when we first started playing, and her stats are leagues beyond the rest of ours due to what her Sorcerer powers granted her].

I haven't told this to anyone, but I have asked the DM questions about how to execute this plan. I feel like it's going to be a real dick thing, but I think it's well within the realms of what my character would do and I honestly want to knock her down a peg. I don't know if the DM will let me do this anyways, and as I said I don't think Evan's character will even die because she's just got too good of stats so unless Evan rolls Nat 1s she's probably fine.

WIBTA for acting on this?

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

296 notes · View notes

rebelfell · 7 months

Text

The Third Date

Eddie Munson x Anorgasmic!Reader

It’s finally the night of your date with Eddie and everything is gonna be fine. Great. Fine and great. Right?

Part One. Part Two.

cw: childhood friends to lovers, mutual pining, making out, fingering, sexual anxiety/panic attack, discussion of difficulty climaxing, eddie being sweet and reassuring, fluffy ending.

I was kinda in my feelings and needed Eddie to tell me all the right things. Sue me. 18+, MDNI 6k

You’ve barely finished knocking on the bright red door to Eddie’s when it swings open to reveal him grinning back at you. He ushers you inside, nearly bouncing on the balls of his feet as he shows you around his place.

It’s a small apartment, but for two young guys living together it’s surprisingly tidy and well furnished. That must be Steve’s influence, you muse, noting the plushness of the sofa and an overstuffed armchair. Shelves piled with books and board games sit off to the side and next to the screen door is a plant that could do with a little water, but ultimately is surviving fine. It’s bordering on cozy in here, cast in the glow of a couple lamps and a candle flickering on the coffee table. The warm, sweet smell of some nonspecific baked goods filling the room.

“So, this is my castle,” Eddie says, bowing slightly and brandishing his arms.

“I like it,” you nod as you glance around. “It’s not quite what I expected.”

“What? You were thinking empty liquor bottles, a couple camp chairs, a half dozen posters of babes in bikinis?” He quirks his brow at you, seemingly reading your mind.

“That may be exactly what I was picturing,” you reply with a knowing smirk. “Though it is you, so maybe a dragon in a bikini instead?”

He laughs at that and bobs his head a few times in agreement as his eyes drift to the overnight bag you’re clutching. “Here, let me put that in my room for you,” he says with a sweet smile.

You hand it over and your eyes follow him as he heads down the hall. He pushes open the door at the very end and you catch a glimpse of his old Corroded Coffin banner hanging on the wall that brings a smile to your face. Below it is his bed, nicely made up with a navy duvet.

Just the sight of it makes your heart race and every thought falls right out of your head.

When he re-emerges from the room, you realize he’s been talking to you and you have to force yourself to focus on his voice rather than your deep contemplation of his sheets.

“I hope you don’t mind, but I ordered dinner already,” he says. “There’s this Thai place that’s seriously incredible, but it takes a while to deliver, so I wanted to be sure it got here on time.”

“That sounds great,” you say, still milling about to take in the rest of Eddie’s place.

He rattles off all the dishes he ordered, each one sounding better than the last, and you pause by the fireplace. A row of knick knacks interspersed with framed photos sit on the mantle. Some are his figures from Hellfire and you delicately touch a fingertip to the top of each one until you reach a photo in a frame made from popsicle sticks.

It’s a picture of you and him—one of the few in existence. You think you must be six or seven based on his buzzed haircut and your braces. Instinctively, you run your tongue over the front of your teeth, almost expecting to feel the thick metal wires there. Eddie moves silently to stand at your side and peers over your shoulder at the picture now held in your hand.

The two of you are at Forest Hills, sitting on top of the dome climber across from he and Wayne’s trailer. You must have spent all summer on that thing, pretending it was a deserted island where you’d been marooned after refusing to marry the merchant sailor your evil father had betrothed you to. The picnic table nearby played the role of Eddie’s pirate ship where he spotted you climbing to the top of the island’s mountain to signal for help. He would oblige, rowing an imaginary smaller boat to your island and bravely scaling the mountainside to sit beside you at the top. He offered you passage on his ship as a member of his crew, assuring you it would be hard work but that your new life would be filled with riches like the freedom to sail the seas and explore worlds unknown you could not even imagine.

Wayne must have interrupted your epic play to snap this photo. Eddie is in his signature pose. He’s got his hands raised to the sides of his head, fingers pointed to resemble horns and his tongue flicked out with his eyes wide and wild. You’re not even looking at the camera, enamored gaze unable to tear away from him.

“It’s like you had a crush on me or something,” Eddie says teasingly.

“Yeah, clearly I wasn’t hiding it as well as I thought I was.”

You chuckle, but Eddie’s brow furrows and his voice loses that playful edge as he dips into pensiveness. He takes the frame from you and carefully places it back on the mantle.

“Did you really?” he asks. “Did you really like me all that time and I was too stupid to know?”

The question catches you off guard. You’d sort of just assumed he had to know that was the case, given how things had progressed between you, seemingly overnight. Well, overnight plus five years. It's the first time you’ve stopped to question what had inspired his pursuit.

“I’m not sure,” you say slowly. “At the time, I don’t think I knew the difference between how much I liked having you as my friend and how much I liked you. Eventually, I figured it out.”

You pause, summoning the strength to ask the question you’re dying to know. The one you’ve been wanting to ask practically your whole life.

“Did you ever think of me like that? I mean…before now?”

Sadness flickers in Eddie’s deep brown eyes and he takes a steadying breath. He moves into you, slipping his arms around your waist and holding you by the small of your back. You feel yourself tremble as he tucks his chin down and gently rests his forehead against your own.

“All the fucking time,” he whispers. “I liked you so much, but I…I couldn’t imagine you’d ever want me back. I guess I was too scared to find out.”

“Oh, Eddie,” you sigh mournfully. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it?” he mutters. “Trailer park loser. Criminal. Freak. Who would want me?”

You shake your head at his disparaging words and overwrite them with your own. “Honest. Fearless. Kind. Trustworthy. Genius.”

A bashful smile spreads across Eddie’s face and he tries to look away, but you surprise yourself with your own boldness as your hand comes up to catch his face and turn it back towards you.

“I wanted you,” you confess softly. “I always have.”

He leans in and captures your lips with his. It steals every speck of breath from your lungs and you think you could fly apart into a million pieces if it wasn’t for his hands gripping your waist. It feels like the kiss goes on forever and yet it’s not nearly long enough. You instantly miss the feeling of his mouth when he pulls away, but he keeps his face close to yours.

“Sorry I wasted so much time,” Eddie whispers. “We could have been doing this all along.”

When dinner arrives, you guffaw at the array of food before you. It seems entirely possible he just ordered one of everything on the menu. You dutifully sample a little of each dish and have to resist stuffing your face full after one mouthful of this roasted duck Eddie asserted was the best thing they made. Delicious as it is, your nerves have made your stomach too jumpy to eat much and before long you’re helping Eddie box up the absurd amount of leftovers.

Guilt pangs in your chest thinking how much he must have spent, but Eddie chatters excitedly about how it only gets better the longer the flavors have to sit and meld together.

“Are you sure?” you ask, handing him the last container.

“Absolutely,” he says as he pushes the fridge closed. “You can take some home with you, too.”

His hand finds the small of your back as you walk back into the living room. His touch is gentle and reassuring as you head to the couch, but it does little to quell your nerves.

“How about a movie?” he asks. “Steve brings home a bunch of different stuff. We’ve got some horror, some comedy…”

There’s a knot in your stomach as he bends in front of their entertainment center, rifling through the rentals piled up next to their VCR. The lingerie under your clothes rubs raw against your skin as you shift in your seat on the couch, threatening you with the stinging humiliation of wearing it all night long only to never be seen.

What if he’s changed his mind? What if he doesn’t want to anymore? What if he thinks you don’t want to? Is there some signal you should be giving him? Some move you should be making? Ears now ringing, you clear your throat and he glances back at you over his shoulder.

“Maybe later?” you say softly.

Eddie smiles and nods in agreement before returning to his spot on the couch. He sinks down next to you and lays his arm across the back of the cushions. His eyes stay fixed on your face, taking in every inch. It makes your breath catch as you study him back, his features as mesmerizing as always.

You hurl yourself at him, realizing just a second too late his head is dipping down to kiss you at the same time. His face knocks against yours and you wince as you pull back, a dull aching where his chin connected with your cheek.

“Shit, shit, shit,” you mutter frantically. “I’m sorry! Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he laughs. “No permanent damage.”

“Are you sure?”

“Definitely,” he says, his head tilting to the side.

He reaches out a hand and cups it against the side of your face, his thumb stroking your jaw. You have to resist the urge to ask again if he’s sure, he’s sure. You know you ask it too often. It’s not even conscious at this point, it just comes out. Are you sure? Are you sure?

“Hey…are you okay?” he asks. “You’re shaking.”

“Yeah, I-I’m sorry,” you stammer out your response, heart still pounding in your chest. “I don’t know, I thought maybe I was supposed to like…make a move.”

Eddie’s brows raise and smiles impishly. “What kind of move?”

“Like a…a hook up move.”

Eddie chuckles, his dimples deepening in his cheeks as he scoots closer and leans in so close you can feel the warmth coming off his skin and smell the light, fresh scent of his aftershave.

“How about you let me worry about the moves?”

You inhale sharply, his words zinging straight to your core and making you squirm in your seat from the need to be closer to him. His eyes flit down to see your thighs pressing together and a knowing smile curls up the corners of his mouth. His beautiful, perfect mouth…

He helps you climb onto his lap and wraps his arms tight around your waist, squeezing you against him. He stares up at you, the tip of his nose bumping against the bridge of yours and then mashing into the softness of your cheek as his lips cover your own.

The kiss ignites everything inside of you. Years and years of built up feelings for the boy beneath you begin to smolder—a pile of kindling finally stoked into a flame.

Experimentally, you shift your hips and begin to rock back and forth in a slow, deep grind. You can feel the effect you have on him in his stilted breath and the prodding of the hardness growing in his jeans. He kisses his way along your jaw and when his lips ghost over a sensitive spot on your neck just behind your ear, you give an involuntary thrust forward.

“Holy shit,” he breathes, tightening his already firm grip on you. “Do that again…”

You oblige him happily. Enthralled by the need in his voice and spurred by his gritty tone, you grind down on him again and squeeze your thighs around his hips. A strained gasp bursts from his lips and he fumbles to grip the back of your neck and hold your mouth against his.

He’s wearing another button up tonight, dark hunter green this time that sets off the rich brown hue of his eyes. Your fingers find the hem of his shirt and begin to unbutton it from the bottom, revealing inch by inch the clingy white tank underneath. It does little to nothing to conceal the solid muscled form of his chest and it makes your heart pound imagining it bare. But sitting down, there was still that soft roundness to his belly you’d always liked. It made you want to scratch him like he was a stray mutt from the junkyard, scraggly and carefree.

When the last button is pulled open, you help him shrug off his shirt, revealing corded arm muscles that twitch and flex as he reaches out to wrap you back up in his arms.

“God, Eddie, I need you—please.”

Your voice is plaintive and desperate in a way it’s never been before. He groans into your neck and you feel your hips take on a life of their own. The seam of your jeans catches perfectly on your clit and the feeling makes you rock harder, sliding back and forth on his lap and despising every single layer of clothing separating you.

“Hang on, hang on,” he pants, breathless as he sits up and slips his hands up your back to hold you in place. A chill runs down your spine and you sit back on his thighs, body going rigid.

“What is it? D-did I do something wrong?”

“No, not at all,” he laughs, his pale cheeks tinging pink with embarrassment. “But if you keep that up, I’m gonna come in my fucking jeans.”

Heat rises in your own face, his words filling you with a mix of excitement and shyness. And you know he has to be able to feel how it causes you to flutter. He smooths his hands firmly up and down your back, bringing one of them up to the nape of your neck and beginning to massage your hairline with his fingertips.

“How about we…slow down a little?” he asks, his voice gentle but still husky with need.

You nod wordlessly and let your eyelids drift closed, rolling your head into his strong fingers as they continue rubbing your neck. Shivers ripple down your back and your mouth falls open with relief when he finds a knot in your shoulder and presses down on it. A heavy, resonating moan releases from deep in your chest and you immediately stiffen.

Panicking at the realization the practically pornographic sound you just heard came out of you, you slap your palm over your mouth and stare wide-eyed at Eddie. He just smiles.

“Don’t hide it, sweetheart,” he hums. “I wanna hear you.”

He pulls your hand from your mouth, bringing it to his own instead. Warm lips and hot breath caress your fingers and the pad of your thumb brushes over the impossibly soft skin of his lip. You tug it down gently, letting it spring back up.

“Your moans are so pretty,” he sighs. “Will you make some more for me?”

The words are lilting like he’s writing lyrics for a song. He looks up at you with those pleading eyes and you bury yourself in the crook of his neck, hiding your face in his curls. His lips and teeth nip at the skin behind your ear, causing you to release breathy sighs and moans just for him. He shivers beneath you and the evidence of his pleasure throbs, unable to be ignored.

Your mouth seeks his blindly, messily, desperately. Your own hands slide up his chest and around the back of his neck, raking your fingers into his curls until the heels of your palms meet the base of his skull. Firmly and slowly gripping the hair close to his scalp, you guide him deeper into the kiss. He moans into your mouth and relaxes his whole body, giving you the control to put him exactly where you want him.

So much for slowing down, you think.

His hips suddenly jerk upwards, lifting you with him, and you moan again. It’s not as loud as before, but its enough to make your lips break from his. It all feels too good, too overwhelming. The anticipation is killing you now. You’ve spent your whole life waiting, you can’t waste another second. It’s time. It has to be. It’s now or never.

“Can I, um…freshen up?”

Eddie looks up at you with a dreamy expression, his eyes a little glazed and pink lips puffy from kissing. He nods down the hall to the door adjacent to his bedroom, his eyes never leaving you as you slip off his lap.

You don’t enter the bathroom, though.

Instead you push open the door to Eddie’s room and slip inside, leaving it just ajar enough to spark his curiosity. You place yourself at the end of his bed to wait for him, half sitting up leaning back on your elbows. The mattress dips as you sink into the softness—a far cry from the lumpy thing he slept on in Wayne’s trailer. Your heart races hearing the soft clinking of his belt as he comes down the hall and pushes the door fully open.

He leans against the frame and smiles.

Eddie looks at you like a kid on Christmas Eve—not feral and wide-eyed like he’s ready to tear through a mountain of presents in an early morning frenzy, but serene and reverent like he’s looking at the tree bathed in the soft glow of twinkle lights strung on its branches.

“Hi,” he whispers.

You smile and tuck your bottom lip behind your teeth. “Hi…”

He gently pushes the door closed behind him and moves towards you where you sit on the bed. But rather than climbing onto the mattress, he sinks to his knees on the floor in front of you and rests his hands on the tops of your thighs.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” he says, voice still hushed like he’s afraid this is a dream and you’ll twist into smoke if he speaks too loudly.

You nod back at him. “Me too.”

His hands move steadily up your thighs to your waist and he gathers your blouse to lift it gently over your head. Lit only by the lamp on his bedside table, the blue of your bra looks even more like the night sky and the light catches on the silvery threads, making the stars sparkle. Your whole body shivers with excitement as he takes you in, his eyes drawn to the swell of your breasts and your nipples standing rigid, pushing out from behind the unlined mesh.

“Fuck…”

His voice is soft. So soft, you think he might not even realize he spoke out loud. You smirk at him, a little disbelieving even as he sounds genuinely awestruck. His eyes dart back up to yours and he grins, chuckling with mirth at his own reaction.

“Sorry,” he says. “I just…you’re so…god, you’re gorgeous.”

Eyes falling to your breasts again, he reaches out to cup them gently and lets his thumbs brush over their stiff peaks. You hum softly at the feeling of him flicking your nipples with calloused pads worn that way from years of guitar playing. With a soft kiss, he continues on—his hands reluctant to leave them, but eager to touch you more places.

He slides them downward, relishing every inch of the curve of your waist until he finds the top of your jeans. “Do you want these off?” he asks, voice wavering slightly.

Your own breath is getting uneven itself as the beginning flames of nerves start to flicker and nip at your ankles. Eddie’s eyes parse your reaction, but you divert his attention by unbuttoning your fly and helping him shift your pants over your hips and down your legs. He tugs them off until they sit in a heap on the floor and he can take you in fully, the reveal of your matching set clearlying having the desired effect.

“Wow…” He stares, eyes soft with awe. His strong hand flexes to extend his fingers and he reaches out to gently stroke the navy material. “I like this a lot,” he says.

“That’s good,” you say, peering at him shyly. “I got it for you.”

His eyes light up at that, brows raising in disbelief. Not that he thinks you’re lying, but that he can’t possibly fathom how he got this lucky.

“Seriously?” he breathes. “No one’s ever…”

He clears his throat, trying to choke back the incoherent stream of words threatening to spill out of his mouth. And his mind scrambles to say something that doesn’t sound completely idiodic. He feels like a caveman seeing fire for the first time and trying to think of a word for it.

He’s just so fucking happy.

Cupping your face tenderly in his hands, thumbs brushing the apples of your cheeks, he gazes deep into your eyes. “You’re so special to me,” he says. “I want to be sure I do this right.”

“So far so good,” you whisper.

He’s left his button down in the living room, leaving him stripped down to only his white singlet. The muscles in his shoulders ripple as he lifts his arms and you whisk off his tank to unveil his bare chest. A couple new tattoos catch your eye. A black widow spider now sits over the demon head on his left pec, just beneath his collarbone. There’s a sword etched into his ribs and as you follow the point down, you spot two pale nicotine patches in the usual spot on his hip.

It makes your heart swell thinking of how he’d explained it that night you played pool. For when I’m really nervous, he’d said. It still seemed so silly that you could make him nervous.

“Can I kiss you more?” he asks.

You nod and close your eyes to wait for the feeling of his mouth on yours, only to gasp softly when he goes to your neck instead. His lips vibrate with a gentle groan as he kisses down the column of your throat, sucking at it lightly and listening to how it causes your breath to hitch when he finds a particularly sensitive spot. Shivers cascade down your back as he continues on his path, kissing over the mounds of your chest, down your belly, nudging your legs apart.

“Eddie, you don’t have to—ohhh…”

His mouth trails over your hip and they flex upwards, seeking more. He smooths his hands over your legs and every inch of your skin he touches buzzes with anticipation.

“Please, sweetheart?” he says, baring his teeth in a sinful smile from between your thighs. “Been dreaming about this so long…I just want to make you feel good.”

His lips ghost over your heat, the tip of his nose brushing against your sensitive button through the thin barrier of your underwear. Your breath hitches in your throat as he starts to slowly nod his head, giving a preview of the motions he’s dying to use on you. Warm, broad palms coast over your hips and ringed fingers curl around the elastic band circling your waist.

“Can I take these off?” he asks. “I want to see you.”

You hum a noise of approval, so dizzy with need you can’t even form a real word. He glides your panties down your legs, nails raking over your skin all the way down to your ankles. Fighting the urge to cringe at how exposed you feel, you bring your focus back to Eddie—back to his eyes and the way they drink you in. The tip of his tongue ekes out between his lips to wet them and he turns his head to make a path of delicate kisses along the inside of your calf.

You’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay, you chant internally. God, you want this so much.

Excitement pools in your belly and the feeling mixes with your nerves into a lethal cocktail. As he kisses up one leg, your other begins to tremble against his ear. You feel as though you’re about to float away and drift untethered into the ether.

“Eddie?”

His kisses pause at your knee joint and he looks up at you. “Yes, princess?”

“I…I need you closer,” you admit meekly.

He obliges instantly and slides up onto the bed, cradling your body against his. The hardness in his jeans prods against your side and you almost black out thinking how he could be inside you any minute now. Except Eddie seems perfectly content taking his time.

He skims his fingers from your navel up your sternum, relishing every quiver of your body. His touch follows the graceful lines of your collarbone and neck up to your jaw. With his other arm under you, head resting securely in the crook of his elbow, he traces more of your outline.

At last he begins his descent, teasingly light touch weaving back and forth across your tummy in swirling patterns down to your mound. He tenderly spreads you apart and strokes your center, fingertips brushing ever so gently over your clit. His eyes stay fixed on your face as he applies more pressure, seeking your reaction.

“That feel good?” he asks, his breath warm on your cheek.

“Yes,” you gasp softly. “Keep going.”

With a little more intention, he dips a finger into your entrance and his chest rumbles with a moan. “You’re so wet,” he whispers. “Is that all for me?”

You can’t answer, your eyes falling closed and your head tipping back—almost wanting to cry because it feels so good in a way it never has. He slides further inside, gently massaging your warm, wet walls. With his thumb pressing on your clit in time with his thrusts, he adds another finger, stretching you open further. Your pussy positively blooms for him, enveloping his fingers and taking him in eagerly.

“Oh, god, Eddie…”

“That’s it, beautiful,” he husks, his digits expertly curling inside of you as his thumb swirls outside. He lowers his voice further, a heated whisper in your ear. “I wanna hear you come…”

His voice sends a jolt straight to your core, but the words cause your mind and body to diverge. You try to stay present. You try not to dwell on it, but his statement echoes. It fills your head and ricochets around the inside of your skull, taking over everything. That’s when you feel it.

Suddenly, it doesn’t matter what he’s doing down there or how good it felt just moments ago. That rigidness you know all too well permeates your body and stills everything—a boulder at the bottom of a frozen lake kind of stillness. You can’t believe you let this happen. You can’t believe you’re ruining this. You can’t believe how stupid you were for thinking it would be any different. Your heart races, pounding like a battering ram behind your ribcage like it’s trying to burst out.

“Eddie,” you croak. “Eddie, stop!”

He pulls back immediately, his eyes round with concern at the sudden panicked tone in your voice. He stares at you, his own expression descending into remorse.

“Shit, shit, I’m sorry,” he says. “Does it…did it not feel good?”

“No, no, it—I mean, yes, it did, I just…”

Your chest gets unbearably tight, the pressure crushing your windpipe. You try to inhale, but it feels more like sucking air through a pinhole. You sit up, hands fumbling for the sheets to cover yourself. Your whole body is on fire. Blistering, burning, searing pain replacing every speck of the pleasure you’d been feeling. And Eddie…poor Eddie is looking at you like he’s about to cry.

“Hey,” he soothes, timidly reaching to touch your knee. “Talk to me, tell me what’s wrong.”

“I don’t know,” you gasp, still struggling to get air and failing. “I-I-I feel…”

“It’s alright,” he says, voice steady but urgent. “Look at me, yeah? Take a deep breath in and blow it out quick like you’re blowing out a birthday candle? Okay? Do it with me.”

He locks eyes with you as he demonstrates, sucking in a breath and holding it in his chest until you do the same. Once you have, he blows out a big puff of air and begins breathing steadily in through his nose and out though his mouth. You mimic him, remaining held by those deep brown pools until you feel your heart rate slow and finally steady.

“That’s good,” he says, shifting so he can rub his hand in wide circles across your back. “You’re doing so good, just keep going.”

You can’t decide if he’s patronizing you, praising you for breathing of all things. But his words are calming regardless and his hand on your back has a comforting weight to it. He keeps up with rubbing small circles across your back until you swallow hard and open your mouth to speak.

“I have to tell you something,” you say.

“Okay. What is it?”

“I can’t, um…I’m not going to…I don’t…finish.”

He frowns, brow furrowing as they knit together. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve never been able to get there. And I-I guess I panicked. I didn’t want you to spend all this time on it when it’s not going to happen.”

“Oh,” he exhales softly. “So…never?”

You shake your head, hugging your knees to your chest. “No,” you sniff. “Never.”

“But what about with Carl? You guys were together for like years.”

“Yeah, but he never…” You sigh and pinch your eyes closed. “I mean, I never—”

“He never made you come?”

Shame radiates in your chest like heartburn and you feel the sting of tears that threaten to spill over your eyelids. “I know, okay?” you whimper. “It’s humiliating.”

“No, no! That’s not what I meant. I mean, it should be humiliating for him. Isn’t it?”

“I don’t see how,” you shrug. “It’s not your food’s fault for being cold if the microwave is busted.”

“You’re not busted,” Eddie insists. “He’s got to try. He should have helped you get there.”

“He did try. We’d have sex and it would feel fine, but we’d always get to this point where I knew it wasn’t gonna happen. And it…it was just easier to get him taken care of.”

“But what about with his fingers? Or his mouth? Or a toy?”

Your face burns at the memory of similar past conversations. Bringing up things you thought seemed obvious only resulted in Carl feeling insulted, like you were saying his dick wasn't enough for you.

“It, um…it took too long.”

“What’s too long?”

“I don’t know,” you mumble. “It felt like an eternity. And I’d get all wrapped up in my head kind of…kind of like I did just now. And it didn’t make sense to waste all that time—”

“It’s not a waste of time,” Eddie scoffs. “Did he actually say that to you?”

Anger flashes briefly in his eyes and you quickly shake your head. It was true, Carl never outright called it that. He just didn’t disagree with you when you apologized for taking so long. And when you started to feel him getting tired and frustrated, it only added to your stress.

“How about like…on your own?”

“I mean, I-I’ve tried.” You look down again, your body still prickling as you try to answer without crying. “I don’t know why, but I can’t relax? I start thinking about, like, f I’m doing it right or if I’m doing it wrong. And I wind up laying there for hours trying and I feel like such a failure. Like I can’t experience this thing everyone else can and I don’t think I ever will.”

A dark, wet splotch appears on his sheets as a tear falls from your eye. You brush furiously at your cheek, smearing the trail it left behind.

“I guess I get close. I think? I don’t know, it feels good up to a point, and it feels kind of, vaguely, like something, but then it just starts to hurt and ache. And I guess that could be it, but…like, the way people talk about it? I can’t imagine what I feel is what they’re referring to. You know?”

Eddie’s head hangs low. His expression churns with a myriad of emotions like he can’t decide which one to feel. Sadness for you. Anger at Carl. Disappointment with himself.

“I’m so sorry,” you sigh. “I didn’t know how to tell you.”

Furiously, you wish you’d just faked it. How hard would it have been to breathe sort of heavy and writhe around a little bit? It would have been worth it to avoid all this. But even as you’re thinking that, something tells you Eddie never would have bought it. He was too attentive, too attuned to any shift of your mood, of your body. He would have seen right through you.

“Don’t apologize,” he says calmly. “I’m glad you told me, I just…I wish I’d known. I wouldn’t have rushed you. I wouldn’t have said that…”

He hangs his head again and rubs his hand across the back of his neck. You sneak a glance at him, the sadness in his eyes that you caused making your heart ache. This is all your fault, you think. You don’t deserve someone like him. You don’t deserve anyone.

“I, um…I’m gonna get out of here,” you say quietly, scooting towards the other side of the bed. Eddie’s head jerks up at your movement.

“Wait, what?”

“I should just leave, I’m…I’m really sorry.”

“Hang on, hang on, don’t go—” He lurches forward, reaching for your waist to stop you and then abruptly pulling back when he realizes what he’s doing. It breaks your heart a little, the look in his eyes like he’s afraid to touch you now. Again.

“Eddie, it’s okay—”

“It’s not okay,” he says. “Please stay? This is my fault, I shouldn’t have pushed so fast, I was just excited for you to stay over. And I thought this was what you wanted.”

“It was,” you say solemnly. “It is, I mean. I do want this. I’ve wanted this for so long, I just…I don’t know what’s wrong with me and now I’ve ruined the whole night.”

“No, no, not at all.” Eddie shakes his head emphatically. He lifts his hands and cups your face, calloused thumbs rubbing the smoothness of your cheeks. “Absolutely nothing is wrong with you,” he says. “You’re perfect. The only thing that could ruin tonight is you leaving.”

“Are you sure?” you rasp.

He smiles and chuckles at your refrain. “How about from now on, you assume when I say something—anything—it means I’m sure?”

“But are you…” You catch yourself mid sentence. “…certain?”

Eddie rolls his eyes at you and chuckles as your lips finally quirk into a small smile. “I’ll give you that one,” he says begrudgingly. “But no more.”

You give a reluctant nod and he grins.

“And yes, I’m very certain,” he says. “I bought all these snacks for breakfast. And I found this little basket we can put them in. I thought maybe we could drive out to the lake and read like we used to? And then go to that diner way outside of town? With the great milkshakes?”

Tears threaten to spill over your cheeks again, but now it’s from happiness burgeoning in your chest. “That sounds really nice,” you whisper.

He grins back at you.

“Okay, then. I tell you what…why don’t we table all this for right now? Neither of us is gonna make any moves for the rest of the night. We’re going to get in comfy clothes and watch TV, or smoke, or play cards, or talk…whatever you want. And whenever you’re ready, we can go to bed.”

Reactively, your shoulders stiffen and his eyes go wide.

“No, no, no! I didn’t mean—” He slaps his hand to his forehead and sighs at his own flub. “I meant sleep. I…I really just want to sleep next to you. And wake up with you in the morning. And spend the rest of the day together. Is that okay?”

He gives you those eyes again, round and open and vulnerable. Hopeful. It makes it easy to nod at him with a gentle smile. Because it’s more than okay, it sounds perfect. He smiles back and reaches for your hand. You let him lift it to his lips and his breath is warm as he kisses your fingers.

“I just want you here,” he murmurs to your knuckles.

You bite your lip to stop the Are you sure? already queued up on your tongue. Eddie lifts off the bed and pulls a pair of sweatpants and a clean t-shirt from one of the drawers in his dresser. The fresh smell of his detergent wafts towards your nose and you inhale it deeply.

“I’ll change in the bathroom,” he says. “Just come back to the living room when you’re ready.”

Still smiling as he leans over you with ease, balancing on his fists pressing down into the mattress, he kisses you. It’s not a messy or desperate snog, but not quite a chaste peck either. It’s deep and yearning. Full of wanting, but asks for nothing.

He heads into the hall and his bedroom door clicks as he pulls it shut behind him. When you hear the bathroom door also click closed, you creep out from beneath his sheet and reach for the panties bunched up at the foot of the bed. You strip off the matching bra and stuff the pair into the bottom of your overnight bag. To replace them, you exhume a simple gray pajama set of an oversized shirt and loose, flowy shorts. The light material is cool against your skin, soothing for the first time the existential itchiness that had consumed you all night.

In the living room, Eddie sits on the sofa, comfortable and casual as can be in his soft sweats. There’s not a speck of disappointment or frustration on his handsome face as he flips through the channels. His mouth splits into a grin when he sees you, eyes dancing as he takes you in, just as dazzled by the sight of you in plain pajamas as he was by your lingerie.

He pats the cushion next to him and jerks his chin up to beckon you over. From the TV, the eerie tinkling theme of The Twilight Zone begins to play and you all but scamper over to the couch. He chuckles as you pad across the carpet and nestle into his side, folding your legs under you.

He reaches behind your head to pull down the knit blanket draped over the back of the sofa and proceeds to tuck it securely around you both. “Comfy?” he asks, still smiling down at you.

You nod and his arm curls securely around your shoulder. It rests there naturally, like it’s the one place in the world it’s always been meant to be. “Thank you, Eddie,” you whisper, stretching your neck to press your lips against his.

“Of course. Anything for you, sweetheart.”

His voice is tender and rumbly and you can feel his chest vibrate with the words as you lay your head against him. The softness of his t-shirt on your cheek and the warmth of his skin you can feel through it fills you with contentment. You mold yourself into his side, already thinking how nice it will be when you inevitably fall asleep right here. Right where you belong. Eddie’s head dips and he rests his cheek on the top of your head as he begins to recite along with the narrator,

“You’re traveling through another dimension. A dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination…”

Thank you for reading/interacting - love you, mean it (◕‿◕)

tags: @vintagehellfire @mygirlchaos @autumnleagues @valerievortex

#eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x fem!reader #eddie munson x female reader #eddie munson fanfiction #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson stranger things #eddie stranger things #stranger things fanfic #tw: anorgasmia #eddie munson smut #eddie munson angst

360 notes · View notes

nayatarot777 · 4 months

Text

who’s sending you evil-eye?

• pile one •

hi pile one 👋🏾 welcome to your reading!

this is someone who you either cleansed out of your life, or someone who you feel like you need to cleanse yourself from every time you see them/have to be around them. your energy could feel very drained, heavy, and just murky after interacting with them. for some of you, this person is evil-eyeing you because you cleansed them out of your life. this person could be a water sign too. i’m seeing that this person is quite an emotional person. perhaps someone who cries a lot. this person is evil-eyeing some type of awakening that you’re currently going through. an awakening that this person can tell is a new beginning for you. you could’ve planted a lot of seeds in your life within the past few months to a year, and these seeds are finally blooming in a very beautiful way. you may have cleansed them out of your life because of that fact that you knew that they’d get in the way of this to begin with. i’m also seeing that this person could be born in the summer, or they could also be a leo or have leo in their chart. they’re evil-eyeing your happy period that you’re going through right now. or a happy period that they perceive you to have. and that’s simply because this person is going through a very low and sad period of life while they feel like you’re able to enjoy the opposite.

this is definitely someone who is no longer in your life. they feel like, while you’re experiencing a lot of new things that are being birthed for you, they’re going through a major death moment. they feel like everything is just dying around them. like death has come and knocked on their door to take away everything that has reached it’s expiration date in their life. i’m seeing that they could definitely be going through an awakening of their own, but they’re in the stage of an ego death that they’re really suffering in. they’re not making this any easier on themselves by evil-eyeing you though 😂. and a lot of things and people are being cleared out of their life in a way that’s really emotionally affecting them. they’re literally sending you evil-eye simply because you’re not suffering like they are. they’re evil-eyeing your wisdom for some reason. i’m hearing that they feel like you’re more well-equipped to deal with life (especially life moments much like their current one) way better than them. i’m also seeing that whatever knowledge that they felt like they knew about you was wrong. and their ego death is showing them that. but they’re resisting admitting this to themselves. the level of resistance that they have is even showing in how long it takes the cards for this person to come out. they can’t bear to acknowledge this, so they’re evil-eyeing you as if it’s your fault that they were wrong about you. they’re literally mad that you’re not who they believed you to be. that their judgement of you was wrong.

this is someone who wanted to punish you for their wrong judgement of you, but now they’re feeling punished by life itself. sue to whatever major endings they’re experiencing. i’m also seeing that this person could’ve been extremely verbally abusive to you and they tried to attack you through words - perhaps that was the ‘punishment’ that they sent your way. i’m hearing that they’re being punished so heavily because they found joy in doing this to you. capricorn/saturnian energy is coming out here. you could be a saturn-ruled sign (capricorn or aquarius) or just have an abundance of placements in that sign or in the 10th/11th houses. if that applies, then just know that saturn is always on your side when it comes to delivering karma to those who deserve it in your life.

this is someone who is content with chaos. content with causing chaos too. but now that they’re experiencing chaos that they’re not the cause of - nor in control of - they’re having to stay calm in this sea of turbulence. i’m seeing heavy scorpio energy here. this chaos came out of nowhere for them. much like the emotional chaos that they tried to cause for you. now they don’t know what to do. they’re being forced to be brave throughout this period. they’re having to climb a huge mountain just to get out of this chaotic situation that they’re in. completely by themselves. this person could’ve portrayed a persona of a timid and harmless person while being a wolf in sheep’s clothing. now they’re actually timid as fuck because they don’t know how they’re going to get through whatever karma is putting them through. this person is definitely a fake person who you cut out of your life. they wear a mask. a costume. just to get close to people to cause turbulence for them. now they’re dealing with someone who’s exactly like them. and they can’t handle it. this person is bringing them all sorts of drama, messing with their mind and their perception to the point of putting this evil-eyeing person in pure emotional chaos. serves them right 🪐

find the extended reading soul tribe tier: extended: how can you spiritually protect yourself from this evil-eye? here on patreon OR you can purchase your extended individually here on kofi!

personal readings

youtube

• pile two •

hi pile two 👋🏾 welcome to your reading!

for some reason, Highland water could be significant to identifying this person? 😂 i feel like this is someone who’s not brave enough to say something to you. but they want to say something that they’re trying to gain the courage to say. they’re not happy about something. this is someone who’s healing from heartache. they’ve experienced something that has really affected their heart space. now, i’m not sure whether or not this heartache is something that they experienced with someone else or with you, but they’re deeply sad at this current moment. this person also doesn’t heal from heartbreak healthily nor thoroughly. they’re the type of person to put a bandaid over pain and think that it’s sufficient enough to deal with it. they’re someone who tries to mend their heart in circumstances of emotional pain, but in all the wrong ways. this is someone who’s very defensive currently. or, if not currently, they wanted you to back off from them in the past. this is someone who pushes people away when they’re going through a deeply sad and emotional time. this person could also be a witch too. they could practice voodoo in particular for some of you. if not, then i feel like they’re evil-eyeing you because of whatever deep pain they’re in - whether this pain has anything to do with you or not.

this person’s evil-eye is quite intense, so i’d strongly advise you to spiritually protect yourself from them in whatever way you feel comfortable. this is also someone who is quite an intense person. perhaps intense with their emotions. their emotional range could be quite erratic or dramatic to some of you. there’s also a message about how this person usually has quite a timid energy, but something about their energy is intensifying. i can’t make out what this is exactly, but hopefully the rest of the cards explain this. damn. the next card out was the shadow card. this is someone who’s shadow is intensifying because of the fact that they refuse to properly heal. what they might want to speak to you about is whatever heartbreak they’re experiencing, but they don’t have the courage to because they’re the one who pushed you out of their life and told you to basically leave them alone. but their shadow is definitely intensifying and they don’t have the courage to do any type of shadow work. to take a good, hard look at the ugly parts of their psyche or their personality. this person’s shadow is intensifying because of a heartbreak because of a masculine/a man. if you’re the masculine/man then they’re allowing whatever heartbreak they experienced with you to add onto their shadow. if you’re not, then this masculine is someone else. probably an ex that they had a nasty, explosive break up with. for some of you in particular, they saw you as a threat to their relationship with this masculine who is now an ex, so that’s the reason why they found a reason to push you away from them. now that this masculine turned out to be just another person who hurt them, they’re now wanting to come back and say something to you but they don’t feel like they can. because they vilified you and saw you as the problem due to their possessiveness over their ex-person. when the whole time, the person who was a threat to them was actually the person who they chose over you. ain’t that some shit? 🙃

whoever’s evil-eyeing you is someone who finds themselves in intense connections with other people - or they try to force this. they try to attach to people intensely, which gives me the energy of someone who has an anxious attachment style. someone who is just really codependent and overly attached with other people. this isn’t just limited to romantic relationships either - this could definitely be with friends too. this person could be into divination, but i feel like they use divination to feed their shadow. to feed their need for codependency or to feed their fears. whatever it is that they’re feeding with divination practices, it’s not healthy. this person’s method of feeling stable is to rely on masculines/men. this is someone who can’t feel secure in themselves. they can only feel secure with a boyfriend or a man/masculine that they’re entertaining for the time being. now that this reading is coming to a close, i’m realising that this person is evil-eyeing you either because they got defensive with you and you won’t allow them back into your life (or they don’t have the courage to attempt to come back), or because they saw you as the problem or the threat but they were wrong. in some weird way, they’re still finding a way to blame you for what happened between them and this masculine - as if any of it is your fault somehow. wild ✨

find the extended reading soul tribe tier: extended: how can you spiritually protect yourself from this evil-eye? here on patreon OR you can purchase your extended individually here on kofi!

personal readings

youtube

• pile three •

hi pile three 👋🏾 welcome to your reading!

the person sending you evil eye is someone with a very distorted view. this distortion is either towards you or just life in general. they don’t see things clearly at all. this person could have addictions to substances which causes this deluded state of mind. there’s the energy of overindulge in something that shifts their perspective of the world and people around them. this is someone who’s experiencing intense karma for something - or multiple things - that they’re guilty of. this person may have experienced a lot of luck that protected them from this. this luck could simply being related to not being caught or called out for something. but that luck has ran out. “what goes around, comes around”. that’s what i’m hearing. they’re experiencing whatever they caused you and/or others to experience. this person may have been responsible for cutting your luck or abundance too. but there are spirits that are pissed as fuck at this person. The Three Fates are present here (you can google the greek mythology behind them). they’re cutting out something that this person felt like they were fated for. because they don’t deserve it. and i feel like it’s something related to abundance/finances. for some of you, this person is a very messy person - literally speaking. their home could always be a mess or really dirty. for others of you, this person is a disgustingly grimy person. there’s a lot of dirt that they have that they’ve tried to hide. but with The Three Fates coming through, they’re being forced to clean up their act. whether that’s related to searching for atonement or cleaning up their addiction/dependency to some type of substance that they rely on.

the mythology of The Three Fates also includes the energy of death (the death of an individual that i like to interpret as the death of one’s ego). The Fates are the daughters of the Goddess Nyx (the Goddess of Night and Darkness). The Fates are putting this person into a dark night of the soul. and i’m saying this due to the awakening card coming out next to the shadow card. this person is being forced to awaken to their shadow now that they can’t distract themselves with whatever they usually overindulge in. they’re having to look at themselves in the mirror and recognise the darkness (and i’m hearing “evil”) within them. they’re evil-eyeing you because you’re protecting yourself from them. and your self-protection is a mirror that further reflects to them how dark they actually are. they could distract themselves with drugs, alcohol, and any other distractions before - but not anymore. they’re evil-eyeing you because they literally can’t get to you. they can’t distract themselves by projecting their negative feelings about themselves onto you anymore. you could’ve even done protection spells against this person, and they’re working extremely well.

the “angel of night” has literally come out 😂. Nyx is putting this person THROUGH it. and this energy of darkness is also the energy of protection that’s cloaked over you. this person has a lot of secrets that i feel have come to the surface. if you were the one to expose these secrets, then that’s another reason why they’re sending evil-eye. they’re scapegoating you and blaming you for their secrets being exposed instead of blaming themselves for causing themselves to have such dark secrets in the first place. they’re evil-eyeing your knowledge about them. knowledge that they perhaps didn’t even realise that you had. and this knowledge is ripping through them. it’s almost like they’re left winded now that people know about these things. this is probably the reason for the collapse of their ego. for their dark night of the soul that’s long overdue. you served up some type of knowledge about this person on a platter, and they did not like this at all. they’re under a lot of pressure now. and this is their karma because this is just as much - if not, more - pressure that they put onto you. they feel like they have the weight of the world on their shoulders, and they’re having to navigate this in a depth of suppressed emotions about themselves and their shadow self.

find the extended reading on my soul tribe tier: extended: how can you spiritually protect yourself from this evil-eye? here on patreon OR you can purchase your extended individually here on kofi!

personal readings

youtube

#psychic readings #pick a card #pac #tarot reading #pick a photo #tarot #pac reading #pick a picture #pick a card reading #pick a pile #tarot pick a card

273 notes · View notes