#tw body issues

[unclewaynemunson]

It takes a while before Eddie catches up to what’s happening. It’s subtle, really, an untold story in slightly averted gazes and barely-visible scowls. But he starts paying extra attention to it when he catches Steve resolutely facing the other way when they pass a storefront with a couple of mirrors in it. From that moment, it doesn’t take long before Eddie notices the pattern, the way Steve meticulously avoids basically every reflective surface like it’s becoming a second nature for him.

When he finally asks Steve about it, Eddie sees how his face drops, and he kind of wishes he hadn’t brought it up. It pains him to see Steve like that.

‘I just - I don’t really recognize myself, anymore,’ Steve says. ‘I know it’s really fucking superficial, but I used to be this hot dude, you know. The guy everyone wanted to be with. And now I’m just some guy, with glasses and hearing aids and a belly and a retreating hairline, and a gross scar around his neck.’

Eddie can actually feel his heart shrink in his chest. He hates this for Steve. He wants to make clear to his boyfriend exactly how beautiful he still is, not despite, but exactly because of all the things he just mentioned.

'Those things can still go together, you know,’ he says, playfully shoving his shoulder against Steve’s, pressing a quick kiss against the scar on his neck. ‘If you ask me, you’re still the hottest dude in all of Hawkins. You’ll always be.’

And slowly, a smile starts creeping over Steve’s face. ‘You sure about that?’

Eddie nods, not looking away. ‘Hundred percent.’

Since that day, Eddie starts keeping a stack of post-its and a pen in the bathroom. Every night before he goes to bed, he sticks a new note on the bathroom mirror: “I love the color of your eyes.” “I love your soft tummy.” “Your hearing aids make you look like a sexy cyborg.” “Did you know your nose looks biteable AF?” “Your moles are more beautiful than any constellation.” The stream of compliments is endless, but not once does Eddie have to make an effort to come up with something new.

And that’s how the mirror stops being Steve’s enemy. Because ever since the first note, it’s become his new favorite thing to look in the mirror, the very first thing he wants to do when he wakes up in the morning. The messages always manage to surprise him, tirelessly keep pointing out new things about him, always in the most Eddie-ish way possible: funny, sweet, unhinged, caring, horny, genuine... And always so full of love. The one thing he can always count on.

But one morning, a day after he and Eddie got into a heated fight with each other, Steve steps into the bathroom with dread clawing at his stomach. He knows the mirror will be empty. Eddie was so fucking angry at him last night.

Unexpectedly, he does spot a note, a purple post-it with Eddie’s handwriting on it. He feels the overwhelming urge to cover his eyes, because this time, there will be something mean on it, no doubt. Eddie will tear apart what used to be the best part of Steve’s day with one single sentence. He steps closer, swallows, gets ready to face the music.

“I’m still mad at you but godDAMN why do you look so fucking HOT when you’re shouting at me that’s fucking unfair.”

Steve stares at the note for a full five minutes before taking it off the mirror and adding it to his ever-growing post-it collection. He’s completely overwhelmed by the love Eddie showed him even while he was angry. By the certainty behind that simple gesture. The unwavering commitment in Eddie’s actions.

Steve wakes Eddie up with a kiss and a cup of coffee. They talk it out, like they always do, and he buys a ring for Eddie the next day.

#tw body issues #don't mind me rambling about stranger things #steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #fruity ficlet

[tieronecrush]

🎃 trick or treat 🎃

summary: it's halloween and joel's taking your girls trick-or-treating with you in a family costume. feeling uncomfortable in his clothes and his skin, he's on edge most of the evening but does his best to disguise it in order to not spoil the fun. back at home, when his girls lightheartedly tease him about everything he already thought about himself, you're sure to end the night showing joel exactly how you feel about him and his body.

wc: 10k (oops?)

warnings: established relationship/married, canon divergent (no outbreak, ellie & sarah are both his kids, sort of obscure with if they're both his bio kids/your kids - basically y'all are a cute lil family either way! also joel is ~40, no age mentioned for reader!), halloween, family/group costumes, DOMESTIC JOEL!!!, fluff, body insecurities, age insecurities, joel has minor sensory issues?, his kids poke fun at him, sensitive joel, SMUT. it kind of is a thing for the basically the second half, descriptions of joel's body, tummy & thigh worship, oral (m receiving), cowboy rule (for a costume), unprotected piv, lowkey sub!joel for a lil bit, reader is "giving cunt" according to bestie el, then quickly gets back to dom!joel as he gets his confidence back, joel gets that strength in an adrenaline rush that moms get lifting cars off babies but his is for chasing a nut, also, dirty talk!

a/n: my contribution to spooky season, basically at the buzzer lol. this started with me thinking how cute it would be for joel to dress up and go trick-or-treating with his kids, and ended with wanting to s*** his d*** big time. anyways, enjoy my version of halloween with joel, and thank you to @kiwisbell for screaming about this scenario with me and as always a big thanks to my sweet, sweet girlfriend @northernbluess for beta-ing!!!!

Brought on much later than the northern states, fall in Texas is not quite an impactful sight. The one thing that can’t be beaten though is the Texas sun; shining across expansive horizons all times of year, temperatures of the light shifting with the seasons. Orange evening sun stretches across the sky and seeps down in between the leaves speckled with changing colors while Joel’s truck coasts down the neighborhood street. Kids retreat from running around in the road when his car approaches, returning right back to their gameplay when he’s through. Half are dressed up, a medley mix of witches, zombies, vampires, Power Rangers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Disney Princesses, and countless outfits that he has no idea what they’re referencing.

Fibrous, white faux spiderwebs litter the front porches of the houses lining the street, Jack-O-Lanterns carved and lit up stack on the stairs or create a path along the front walkways. Some of the pumpkins’ faces are wrinkly and sagging, signs of overeagerness from when the fall season started earlier this month. A handful of scarecrows find themselves pitched in the middle of yards with hay spilling out of them, and some of the houses have turned out an expense to get those motion-sensor decorations — the ones really intended to scare the kids that will be unleashed on the neighborhood to trick-or-treat this evening.

Rolling to a stop as he turns into the asphalt driveway, throwing the truck in park, he sits in the cab for a still moment, staring at the signs of life scattered around his family’s house. Four pumpkins, gutted and showing off their faces, a family feud that reached a compromise when it was decided that yes, they would carve pumpkins but no, they would not sit to rot on the front porch all month long; the corn stalks wrapped around the posts of the porch, tied with burlap twine and arranged with sprigs of fall foliage; pots of colorful mums framing the path up to the house, carefully selected by your eye and less delicately planted in their terracotta vessels by Joel’s hands. 

Aside from the seasonal decorations, the usual markings of the Miller family were easily spotted: chalk drawings on the shared sidewalk in front of the yard and along the driveway, replaced every weekend by Sarah once the old was washed or worn away; Ellie’s bike discarded on the front lawn, small tire tracks digging up the grass, no matter how many times Joel and you have asked her to put it away when she’s done; the porch swing that Joel built for you, swaying in the breeze and now unoccupied — unusual for the evening routine around the time that Joel comes home from work. He’s normally greeted by his girls, not merely their artifacts. But tonight is a different night, much busier than the slow, molasses life Joel gets to enjoy in the colder weather.

Gathering his lunch bag from the bench seat and bunching up his jacket in the same hand, Joel climbs out of the car and walks into the open garage, leaving his tools behind in the flatbed to be dealt with tomorrow morning. Passing your parked car, he shakes his head with a subtle smile as he closes the driver’s side door of your SUV left open. He can picture you now, running around after picking the girls up from school, mental space occupied by getting everything and everyone together to make it out the door before the sun went down completely. 

There’s a trail of evidence to support his musings: a lonesome plastic bag filled with groceries left on top of the car, Sarah’s purple jacket looped through the handle of the garage fridge, probably left behind after she went looking for a juice, and Ellie’s army green backpack tossed on the ground in front of the shoe racks lining the wall next to the door. None of that would fly had you been your usual focused self — more often than not, you’re the parent to put their foot down and keep the girls in line while Joel is the total pushover.

Along his way inside, he picks up all the left-behind items, balancing everything in his hands while he steps into the mudroom. Ellie’s backpack gets shoved into her designated cubby, and Sarah’s jacket gets wrapped on a hook screwed into the wall as Joel kicks off his work boots. After depositing his own belongings in their spots, lunch bag in his cubby and jacket on the hook next to Sarah’s, he grabs his boots in one hand, leaning out the doorway to place them on top of the shoe rack. Closing the door behind him, he picks up the singular bag of groceries left on top of your SUV and pads across the tile further into the house. Immediately, he’s embraced by the warmth radiating from the kitchen, the smells of tomatoes, onions, garlic, and more wafting into his nose causing a smile to stretch across his face and his stomach to rumble. 

Every year that he’s known you, without fail, you use Halloween night as an excuse to cook up your family-favorite chili recipe. Sure, it doesn’t get too cold for October in Texas, but damn, does he look forward to the night every year simply for a bowl of it. Laboring over the prep and slow-cooking it all day long, anyone who tries it can taste the care in each bite; like a warm blanket wrapped around his shoulders that lasts with him for the entire evening spent outside with the kids.

The pleas of his stomach lead him straight into the kitchen, his smile growing wider when he sees you standing over the kitchen counter, affixing a sheriff badge to the cow print vest laid out in front of you. He strides over to your side, resting his palm on your lower back and swiping his thumb against the material of your shirt while he leans in to press a kiss to the top of your head, drinking in your scent and feeling the ache of missing you all day. Losing focus from your task, you turn toward him with a bright smile, a quiet sigh leaving your lips, and your shoulders relaxing from their tensed position. Wordlessly, he folds forward, catching your lips in a lingering kiss. Heat pushes against his chest through his denim shirt, your hands skating from his pecs, up and across his shoulders, and down his arms to rest on his biceps. The motions raise goosebumps in their wake, trailing down his spine with a tepid drip.

Joel steals another kiss before he stands up straight again, voice rasping from yelling over powerful tools all day and volume low to keep the semblance of a private moment between the two of you for as long as possible; anything louder would expose his arrival, bombarding him with questions and conflicts to resolve between his daughters.

“Hey, baby.” He greets you with one fleeting kiss pressed to your forehead, hand at your lower back now rubbing side to side, fingers carefully lifting the fabric and pressing the tips of them into your deliciously soft skin. 

Turning back to the vest, you drop your hands from his arms not before giving them a gentle squeeze, “Hi, Joel. Good day?”

He shrugs, unable to step away from you just yet, “It was fine — much better now. And I take it yours has been a busy one?”

Joel holds up the plastic bag of groceries with two fingers, one corner of his mouth lifting in a teasing smirk. His hip pops out as he leans against the counter, the smirk turning into a smile when you grimace. His heartbeat skips when your laugh fills his ears, the sound still exciting him after all these years, and you stand over the bag to take a peek inside.

“S’all good. Non-perishables.” It’s Joel’s turn to laugh, shaking his head with a breathy chuckle as he places the bag on the counter, unloading its contents into the pantry while you go about recapping your day for him.

In the midst of you speaking, the tumble of footsteps down the stairs draws his attention away, eyes focusing on the open threshold that leads from the living room into the kitchen. As the quickened steps grow closer, Joel turns to you and holds up three fingers, counting down with them. When he lowers his last finger, a mop of curly hair, a bouncing ponytail, and a whirlwind of chaos disrupts the initial peace of his return home.

“Hi girls, how was today?” he starts before a cacophony of noise fills the kitchen. Skidding to a stop in front of him, he exchanges a look with you before facing his daughters, already overwhelmed with their two voices talking over the other.

“Dad, Dad, Sarah said—”

“Dad, Ellie’s saying that I said—”

Holding his hands up, he flicks his eyes between his two girls. Sarah, the older of the two at eleven years old, stands in front of him with her arms crossed and brow furrowed — a look he is all too familiar with, the similarities between him and her emphasized with her annoyance. Ellie, your youngest, stands with her fists clenched at her sides, her mouth twisted up in frustration and the same furrowed brow as her sister. She looks so much more like you at the moment, only a nine-year-old version, calling back on times Joel can remember of you giving him that very look.

However, with their tempers, there’s no doubt that they’re his kids.

Dropping his hands back to his sides, he rolls his shoulders and takes a deep breath before addressing them.

“So, what’s going on now?” he asks, brows raising and head tilting when the girls each take a sharp inhale, about to speak over each other again, “One at a time. Ellie.”

Sarah rolls her eyes at her younger sister being called upon first, expectantly looking at her sister with annoyance still painting her face. Ellie shoots her a smug look before turning back to Joel, drawing a pout onto her lips to sell her story. He can’t say it doesn’t work for a second, it always will with these two and they know it, but with a quick glance in your direction, he sees you turned away from your task, watching the drama from the sidelines. Mustering the strength to stand his ground against the sweetness of his girls, he clears his throat and listens with his best poker face as Ellie begins explaining.

“Sarah said she wouldn’t trade all her Skittles for my Three Musketeers even though she knows I hate Three Musketeers and she said last week when we were getting our costumes that she would—”

“I never said that, Dad! She’s lying—” Sarah gestures with her hands as if to physically point out the obvious falsehoods in Ellie’s story. Spiraling back out of the fleeting control he had over the situation, the kids get riled up again, yelling over each other, and inching closer. The dad-instincts kick in and he grabs one of each of their shoulders, separating the two of them and turning them to face him again as he puts on what you affectionately call his ‘no-bullshit’ voice.

“Okay, okay, okay! Enough arguin’ about candy that you don’t even have yet. Ellie, you don’t even know if a single house is gonna give ya Three Musketeers, and you don’t even know if Sarah is gonna get any Skittles. Save the trade negotiations for tonight or tomorrow morning. ‘Sides, you gotta pay the Dad Tax before either of y’all get to trade around your pickings.”

“What?”

“No way!”

Joel smiles, waving his pointer finger between his daughters with a single nod of his head. “See? Something y’all can agree on. Now go get washed up for dinner and plot how you can hide your candy from me and Mom.”

As quickly as they came in, they rush right back out, this time a united force scheming against their parents. Joel huffs out a breathy laugh, shaking his head to himself as he turns back to face you. Met with a growing smile, you unravel your arms crossed in front of your chest to pick up the vest from the counter.

“Nice conflict resolution there, hon. Now I won’t see a single piece of candy.” You throw a pout at him, bottom lip jutting out as he steps over to you, one hand splaying on your hip and thumb rubbing languid circles.

“Don’t worry, baby, I think I know every single one of their hiding spots from how many times they had to move their candy last year. They won’t even notice anything's gone.” With a quick wink, he leans in for a kiss, short and sweet. Standing up straight, the smile on your face mirrors his, your left index finger reaching up to fit into the valley of his dimple.

“Are we bad parents to be scheming how to steal from our children?” you question, biting back a laugh.

“I think that’s just part of parenting, darlin’.”

The laugh you held back escapes you, rolling your eyes playfully at his facetious answer; the vest in your hands catches his eyes again, and he sighs to himself as he holds a hand out for it.

“So you really did find a cow print vest for me? How lucky.” Sarcasm coats his tone and you lift the material, depositing it in his open palm.

“It is lucky, isn’t it? I think you’re going to look great in your costume. Got all the perfect parts, plus you can wear your own jeans and boots. Economical.”

“You sure you need me for this group costume?”

“Joel. You’re literally one of the main characters from the damn movie. And the girls really want you to dress up and take them trick-or-treating. Plus it’s probably going to be one of, if not the last year that we get to do all this as a family. Our kids are growing up.”

“Don’t remind me, means m’getting older too,” he grumbles under his breath, eyes falling to the fabric in his hand.

It’s true what they say about having kids: the days are long, but the years are short.

At times, Joel wishes he could pull each hair out of his head instead of dealing with the shit his kids bring to him sometimes — “Dad, I got called into the principal’s office.” “Dad, I threw a softball and broke the window.” “That’s so unfair, Dad! Why do you have to be so mean?” It’s easy to get lost in the mess that is his family, but it’s a mess he loves. It feels like it was only yesterday that he was becoming a father when Sarah was born, getting a grasp on the whole thing and then Ellie came along. What he would do without you there by his side, he doesn’t have a clue.

Like flipping through a scrapbook, he can remember every year prior for his girls. In a flash, they’ve grown from dressing up as princesses and unicorns — a dragon for Ellie — to being Spy Kids and vampires. His oldest is verging on becoming a teenager, and if he knows his daughters, he knows that once Sarah quits dressing up each year, when she asks to go to her friends’ houses instead of spending the night with Mom and Dad, Ellie will want to do the same as her older sister, always looking up to her despite their differences.

There’s only so much more time for his kids to be kids, even if they may always feel like the tiny baby girls he held in his arms. All he wants to do is to protect them, keep them under his eye as long as he can, but he can hear your voice prying his grasp away from them, encouraging him to let them grow, let them experience the world as he got to do when he was younger. You’ll remind him that you were a teenage girl once, reassuring him that they’re always going to need him. He knows it’s all going to sneak up on him; one day, he’s going to pull into the driveway and notice the lack of chalk drawings. He might even be happy at first about Ellie’s bike being put away, but when he goes into the garage to work on some of his projects, he’ll notice the smallest bit of dust on it from disuse.

Stepping away from him to shuffle across the kitchen, you reach on your tiptoes to pull out four bowls from the cabinet. Joel steps over behind you, a hand on your back as he intercepts your movements, grabbing the ceramic dishes and handing them to you.

Like a shadow, he follows behind you as you walk over to the pot filled with dinner, eagerly watching over your shoulder with his chest pressed against your back and hands on your waist as you lift the lift. Aromas waft with the steam rising, the delectably rich dish slowly bubbling as it finishes melding altogether. It smells like home, always the mark of the changing of the seasons in the Miller household, and one of the little traditions that he so appreciates you creating for your family. Just like the way you make crinkle cookies and still sign presents from Santa at Christmas, despite the fact that your daughters found out about that a couple of years ago from a yappy kid at school.

Joel was very close to driving over to his house and letting his parents know how he felt about their kid murdering the magic of Christmas for his girls.

All he can hope is that these little traditions continue even when the girls are grown up; the four of you gathering around the table for your annual chili dinner before they head off to hang out with friends and you two are left to watch cheesy Halloween movies and hand out candy to children that remind you of your daughters.

With another deep breath, warmth surrounds him. Joel’s lips find the spot just under your ear, kissing gently before he rests his chin on your shoulder, “Smells so good, baby. Have I told you how much I love you?”

A breathy, incredulous laugh falls from your lips as you stir the pot’s contents around, your smile sticking around as you counter, “You’re only saying that ‘cause I’m feeding you.”

A dramatic, exaggerated gasp sharply inhales into his lungs, standing up straight and patting his hands on your sides, “Absolutely not, darlin’. I love you all the time—”

“But especially when I feed you,” you finish, turning out of his arms to grab the stack of bowls. He stops your motions by wrapping his arms around your waist, feeling the press of you against his torso and relishing in the heat of your body against his. Curling up like a cat in the sun, he nudges his nose against your hairline, peppering kisses along the contours of your face.

In between kisses, he says word by word, over and over, “I. Love. You. My. Beautiful. Wonderful. Incredible. Wife.”

“Alright, alright! Gosh, you’re clingy,” you tease, leaning back to look into his eyes with a playful glint in your eye and a smirk held tight in your lips, “I love you too, my beautiful, wonderful, incredible husband.”

Your free hand smooshes his cheeks together and tugs him down gently to exchange a tender kiss. It ends much too soon for Joel, him chasing your lips and pouting when you turn away to start serving up dinner.

“Better go tell the girls dinner’s ready before they’ve finished plotting how to stow away candy in the floorboards.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he answers, punctuating the conversation with a cheeky smack to your ass, scampering away quickly before you can pretend to scold him.

Tugging at the material across his stomach, Joel combs his eyes over his reflection in the mirror of your en-suite bathroom. Rolling his shoulders back, the fabric of the yellow and red plaid flannel pulled taut, lifting the hem a couple of inches and showing off the skin of his softened tummy. Dark curls of hair litter the center of the sliver of skin, trailing down under the waist of his dark wash jeans. He doesn’t bother tucking the shirt in, giving himself the breathing room of the few inches at the hem. Fingers grip the thick fabric, sharply pulling it back down to lay over his jeans again.

Picking up the cow-print vest you were adorned with the plastic gold Sheriff badge downstairs in the kitchen, he’s taken back to a few weeks ago at the Halloween store.

You and he had opted to spend Saturday morning taking Sarah and Ellie to pick out their costumes for the holiday, letting them run free until they decided on a shared costume for once. Sarah quickly picked out her size in the Jessie costume, and all of the family agreed to be different characters from the Toy Story movie.

Ellie wandered the aisles, searching for the perfect combinations to create her ideal costume, which was, of course, the mechanical spider toy with the baby doll head that the kid Sid builds in the film. She returns to where Joel is standing with you, staring at the walls of costumes to find something for the both of you; he looks down at his youngest, jumping minutely when he’s faced with a mutilated baby doll mask, shiny plastic reflecting him in the surface.

“Ellie. You can’t be the creepy baby doll,” he sighs, hand falling to his hip as he rests his weight on it, the other leg stepping out while he slowly shakes his head.

Tipping the mask up to the top of her head, Ellie stomps her feet, shoulders falling and head leaning back as she groans in complaint, “Why not, Dad?” She draws out his parental title, kicking the toe of her shoe against the buffed tiles of the storefront that remains empty eleven out of twelve months of the year.

“You’re gonna scare the little kids, and it’ll be your mom and I who are dealing with the angry parents.”

Ellie huffs out a breath, reaching up to snatch the mask off, turning on the heel of her sneaker, and stomping off to go find another costume. Turning his attention back to you at his side, he notices a cheeky smile on your face as you find your size in a woman’s Buzz Lightyear costume.

“What? What are you laughin’ at?” he questions, his lips tugging up in a grin.

“Oh, nothing. Jus’ that you told our daughter she can’t be the creepy baby doll 'cause you’d be the one scared of her.” A laugh takes over the end of your sentence, a flash of your bright smile widening his own.

“Did not. It’s ‘cause we’d have a bunch of crying little kids and judging parents to deal with.”

“Sure, honey, sure. It’s okay if you’re scared.”

Stepping closer to you, he pinches your side playfully, wrapping an arm around your waist to tug you against his side. He presses a kiss to the top of your head, speaking softly, “Know me too well, baby…”

Your free hand pats his chest affectionately and you unravel from his hold. Joel takes your hand before you get far, intertwining your fingers together while you both shuffle along the wall of costumes. The plastic bags shine, displaying cartoonish outfits of various characters. The exaggerated smiles of the models give him the heebie-jeebies, shuddering his shoulders at the thought that any grown person would be that excited to wear itchy polyester once before letting it collect dust in their closet and giving it away before next Halloween.

Halting in front of the costume you were looking for Joel, you bend down to flick through the sizes, your lips pulling together in a thoughtful pucker. Standing back up straight next to him, your teeth toy your bottom lip left to right, eyes scanning for any other options before you turn toward him.

“Can’t find what you’re lookin’ for, baby?”

With a shrug, you respond, “They have the costume the girls wanted you to wear, but they don’t have your size. Think I can find some stuff at the thrift store or TJ Maxx or online to make the costume up if that’s okay—”

“Whatever you need to do. S’fine.”

“I’m sorry, hon, but you don’t need to worry about it, I’ll find everything.”

“Said s’fine, darlin’. Don’t even need to dress up, really.” A small seed of shame is planted in his gut, insecurity watering it and causing it to grow, branching off to tangled in his chest. Comfort eases him out of the spiral when your hands find his chest, rubbing softly and tilting your head to meet his gaze with pure affection.

“Still gotta dress up with us, hon. Who’s gonna be the Woody to my Buzz if it isn’t you? Can’t dress up as one half of the best friend duo without my best friend,” you grin, standing on your toes to catch his lips in a gentle kiss, which ends too soon for his taste despite being in the middle of the shop.

Vest shrugged onto his shoulder, and he gives himself another once over in his full outfit, the same insecurity from a few weeks ago pouring down to cultivate his shame. He doesn’t look the same as he did when he met you, even the same as he did last year. Graying hair and salt and pepper beard, lines next to his eyes and across his forehead, only deepened when he furrows his brow at the look of him in his costume.

He looks ridiculous.

Better to get this night over with, let his girls enjoy themselves, and attempt to forget his discomfort in the outfit. Picking up his cheap cowboy hat that arrived in the mail earlier that week, he avoids another look in the mirror before he slips out of the bathroom, eyes focused on the toes of his boots while he walks out the door of your bedroom, past the full-length mirror next to your closet and the small round one on your vanity.

No need to foul his mood and spoil the fun. It’s for his girls. 

The screams and laughter of children echo into the deepening night sky, the street bright from the lamps lining it along with porch lights staying on, open garage doors, all signaling a welcoming to the trick-or-treaters to come and grab their haul from each vast bowl or cauldron of candy.

Blurs of costume cross below Joel’s sightline as he walks hand-in-hand with you, kids running around blindly, the safety of such a crowd in the small neighborhood blanketing them with trust that they’ll be able to find their way home wherever they end up. Sarah and Ellie are ten paces ahead, moving quickly and efficiently to “maximize their candy collection”. Ellie’s words, after she presented her hand-drawn map of their neighborhood and the one across the main road, highlighting which houses are notorious for King Size treats and noting which ones give out toothbrushes or nothing at all.

The collar of his flannel is tightened around his neck from the string of his chestnut cowboy hat. Pulled down to rest on his clavicle, the body of the hat swings against his back as he walks, only adorning the top of his head for a few photos that you insisted on dragging out the tripod and self-timer for in the middle of the living room. He took the rest of the photos you wanted, maybe a bit too eagerly getting out of the frame and relaxing the slightest bit behind the camera. Photo evidence of how laughable he looks does not need to exist en masse. With a sigh, he reaches a hand up to tug the string down for what feels like the tenth time in thirty minutes of walking, relief felt for a few seconds before it slides back up to the base of his throat, flipping up the collar of his shirt with it.

Denim from his dark wash bootcut jeans starts to dig into his hips, roughening the skin there from his strides and their inch-too-small size from the year prior. These were deemed his “nice” jeans, per your request, only pulled out a handful of times a year for occasions that he was meant to look nicer than his raggedy Levi’s, covered in spots from paint, wood stain, oil, or dirt, the fraying, white strings hanging from the hems and ripping when caught under his step — all the signs of his day-to-day life. What he’s comfortable in.

These — these are not comfortable, not worn in enough to feel buttery against his skin, and not returning to his size even after washing and line drying. These are stiff, formed to his skin and resisting a tightness with each swing of his legs. The fresh material rubs against his bare skin underneath, the waist of his boxers falling an inch or two down to create the perfect space for the waistband to chafe. He’s tempted to pause the two of you walking along, long enough to tuck in the material of the flannel, but quickly decides against it when he thinks about the exaggeration of his stomach with the form-fitting, tucked shirt stretched over it.

Occupied in his thoughts, he barely notices that you've slowed down until you come to a stop at the end of a driveway, two streets over from your own home, waiting as your daughters wait in line for their packaged sugar. 

You hold onto his bicep with your opposite hand, leaning your weight against his side. Like a weighted blanket, in the interim of a hug from you, he takes on the change to his equilibrium, relishing in the comforting press of your body against him. Easing away his anxieties and his insecurities that, of course, had to be present for this wholesome, once-a-year family night; he rests his chin on your head, breathing in the smell of your rosemary and mint shampoo, tingling his nostrils and drinking down the scent he’s so familiar with.

His focus draws to Sarah, hair in a French braid pulled away from her face and cherry red cowboy hat on her head, and Ellie, lime green face paint that she insisted on and an antenna sticking up from the top of her head and exaggerated, pointed green ears all attached to the same headband. The two of them are near the front of the queue for candy at this particular house, the process a bit more involved with a haunted graveyard required to pass through to earn your sweet reward. 

All she’d been saying the whole night since getting dressed had been “The claaaaaw!” or “I have been chosen!”. She screams the latter in the face of a teenager who pops out from a bush to scare her, completely unphased as she sneaks past him, grabbing a handful of candy for her and Sarah, running back down the path with her older sister before they pause to distribute the goods.

Joel lifts your joined hands, hooking his arm over your shoulder and laying your arm across your chest as he gathers you closer.

“So how many cavities do you think we’ll be paying for ‘cause of tonight’s candy haul?” he wonders aloud, a smile ticking up the side of his mouth when you giggle at his joke. It never gets old, being able to make you laugh, and it’s like a weed whacker to the strangling vines of his insecurities growing tightly in his chest. A looseness that gives him the chance for a deep breath, gratitude wilting the branches as he studies the grin on your face, the admiration twinkling in your eyes.

“Probably should be callin’ the dentist to see if they have a two-for-one discount.” It’s his turn to laugh at your response, tautening his arm around your shoulders to tow you closer to him, your head tilting back as you swing your front toward him. Joel bends his neck, pecking your lips with a smile before he looks back toward his daughters walking back to the two of you.

Annoyance thumbs the bruise of shame, driving his frustrations higher; his hand reaches up again with a huff, yanking the string away from his neck, “Thing’s like a damn noose…”

“Jus’ take it off, hon, I’ll carry it for you,” you sweetly suggest, swinging your joined hands between your bodies.

“But, you got it for me…” he mumbles guiltily, a worry in his voice over your potential irritation with him. Ever the masochist, Joel argues with you, not wanting to disappoint. He knew he should have just kept his mouth shut—

Pausing in your steps, you hang behind him long enough to snatch the hat off his back, releasing it from around his neck and depositing it on your head in one smooth movement. Taking his hand again, you continue, unphased by his complaints and happy to hold onto the new accessory.

At the next house, the two of you wait at the end of the driveway for the girls; Joel taps the side of his pointer finger on the brim as you look up at him, a cheeky smile growing on his face as a thought distracts from his festering doubts. His voice lowers, rasping as he speaks only to you, attempting to disguise the conversation from all the people milling about.

“Y’know, there are consequences for stealing a cowboy’s hat, baby.” Wetting his lips with the quick swipe of his tongue, his hands drift to your waist, fingers stretching to skim the top of your ass, dangerously close to grabbing a handful in front of everyone.

“M’well aware of those consequences, cowboy. Why d’you think I took it?” You shoot him a wink that goes straight down below the belt, a brazen flash of mischief in your eyes, the reflections of yellow lamplight lighting them up further. 

Gripping his biceps, your nimble fingers squeeze gently while your thumbs rub massaging circles into his slightly flexed muscles. A nearly inaudible hum of a moan rolls from your chest, one of his hands gathering the polyester material of your dress tightly at the sound. Beckoning him to fold forward with one look, he molds his lips to yours in a supple kiss. It lasts only the length of an inhale, drinking in the taste of your lips before your warmth is fleeting, hands patting his chest in a signal to wrap it up.

He grumbles, irritation heating under his collar as he itches to get home and for the night to be over, now for more than one reason. You laugh softly at his annoyed pout, poking his chest as you tease, “What? Mad ‘cause you got a snake in your boot?”

“More like in my jeans…” he mumbles under his breath, loud enough for you to hear and playfully jab his arm, shaking your head as you breathe out a chuckle from your nose.

“Nice, Miller. In a costume for a kid’s movie no less.”

He matches your laugh, shrugging when you turn in his arms, back to him as you await your daughters to make their way back to the both of you. His arms drape around your hips, tugging you into his chest to press against him comfortably, the plush-filled wings of your costume padding you against his torso. Lips find your ear, chin resting on your shoulder as he responds, “What’s the saying from the movie? To infinity and beyond? Reckon that’s where I’ll be takin’ you by the end of tonight.”

“Joel!” you attempted to chide, your laughter exposing your real feelings over the suggestive comment, laying your arms over his. The girls walk toward the two of you, and he takes a second to press an open-mouth kiss to your neck, nipping at your skin before unfurling himself from you. A light smack on the side of your ass is the punctuation to the teasing, Joel standing up straight and taking your hand.

“Giddy-up, partner,” he murmurs before turning his attention to Sarah and Ellie, overly excited and completely calm. “Whatcha y’all get this time? Anything good?”

They answer over each other and he nods along, corralling them to start to walk to the next house, “Alright, mission accomplished at this house. Onto the next, we gotta get this wagon a-movin’! Only got another hour in me, girls.”

Protests whine against his announcement and your daughters start to walk faster, determined to complete their hit-list for the houses with the good stuff. You laugh to yourself, shaking your head as Joel looks over at you, feigning innocence.

“What? Got a bad back, bein’ out in the cold makes it worse.”

Now back at home, the four of you are gathered in the living room, costumes all on still as you seek out the comfort and warmth of the soft furnishings and blankets. Joel lounges on the couch, you next to him, back leaning against his side while your legs stretch out on the rest of the sofa. Ellie and Sarah have taken to the floor in front of the coffee table, massive pillowcases dumped out and beginning to be sorted. Every so often, you or Joel get up with the sound of the doorbell, passing out candy to the dwindling number of trick-or-treaters. Eventually, the intrusion stops completely, the TV playing a bad, kitschy Halloween movie per the request of the girls.

They trade their earnings, and you and Joel steal on the sly, both from the bowl you were handing out and from Sarah and Ellie’s piles. Wrappers are strewn around the floor and across the surface of the coffee table, the sound of another torn open by the girls making you sigh and sit up.

Holding out your hand, you shake your head, beckoning for the treat with your fingers, “Okay, Ellie. No more candy. You’re not going to be able to go to sleep if you keep eating it now, it’s too late.”

Ellie whines, rolling her head back with a groan before pleading her case, “Please, Mom, just this last one! And then I’ll be done, promise. Please.”

Joel chuckles when she shoots you the same puppy dog eyes that he gives to you to get what he wants, knowing his smirk grows wider when you fold easily. Shooting your head over to him, you announce to the whole room, “No more candy for anyone. C’mon girls, put it all back in your bags.” 

Calmness finds itself back in the room once all the complaints are lodged with you, the girls lying down to watch the movie while you continue to sit with Joel. Spaced out as he focuses on the film, his attention is grabbed when he hears the crinkle of wrappers and glances around to find all three of his girls indulging further.

With the remote from his lap, he pauses the movie, pouting as he exclaims, “Hey! What happened to not havin’ any more candy? If I can’t have anymore, y’all can’t either.”

Sneaking the last bite of her fun-size Snickers bar, Ellie giggles and shrugs, always the smart aleck, “Well, you are gettin’ a little pudgy, Dad, maybe less candy’ll help.”

Sarah and you giggle at her lighthearted teasing, and Joel waves it off with a breathy chuckle, leaning back against the cushions as Sarah chimes in with her jests, “Yeah, think you’re getting a little fluffy, Dad. Better to lay off now than at Christmastime with all Mom’s cookies.”

Joel attempts to defend himself from the teasing by threatening their candy supply, eager to end the conversation as the back of his neck heats up, “If m’already gettin’ pudgy then I guess that permits me to eat all your candy.”

They both are in a fit of giggles, continuing to tack on silly comments as Joel sits quietly on the couch, trying to mask the way the words worm their way in, feeding the shame and insecurity that was already festering in his chest from the last few weeks.

You roll your eyes, shaking your head with a smile as you laugh softly, “Alright, alright, enough. Think that’s the sign that it’s time for bed. C’mon, up up up.” Before standing, you pat Joel’s thigh and shoot him a carefully concerned look, but he wipes away your worry by sending you a warm smile back, laying his hand over yours and squeezing gently. 

Joel stays downstairs to clean up, the girls both saying goodnight before you follow them upstairs to get them ready for bed. Gathering candy wrappers in his fists, he throws them away in the kitchen, stomach rolling as he replays the small comments from minutes ago. He knows it was teasing, all in good fun as it always is between his girls and you, but he can’t shake the heaviness inside of him, the hot prickles of shame when he passes by the mirror in the hallway on his way back to the living room.

The bowl of extra candy you were handing out gets placed back on the coffee table, his silly cowboy hat from the evening deposited on top of it to hide the contents. Not that he was going to eat anymore, he couldn’t stomach even the thought of anything else when all he could think about was how much he desperately wanted to shed his skin at that moment. Breathing shallows when he settles on the couch again, one of his hands pressing onto the left side of his chest and willing his heart to slow down, for his brain to silence itself.

The skin of his palm meets the scruff of his beard, scratching against the roughened, worked skin. Grays in his hair, salt and pepper beard, wrinkles on his forehead and at the side of his eyes, softened tummy from years of love and care, from an easy life with you.

He certainly isn’t the same Joel that you met all that time ago, that you fell in love with. Have you noticed the changes as much as he has?

He swears you haven’t aged a day; all the more beautiful with each passing day.

Light steps carry you back downstairs, the sound shaking Joel out of his thoughts as you swing around from the staircase and through the entrance to the living room. Joel relaxes on the couch, the same spot he was occupying before, only sinking further into the cushion, shifting to pull the fabric of his shirt away from his stomach. Glancing up at you, away from whatever was playing on the TV that did nothing to distract him from himself, he sends you a tight smile, stretching an arm over the back of the couch to welcome you in.

Accepting it, you sit next to him, curling up into his side with your legs under you, leaning against his frame with your comforting weight. Your hand rests on his chest, your head on his shoulder while you both watch the TV movie playing. Silence falls between the two of you, minutes passing by with only the noise from the speakers, the volume turned low so as not to disturb the kids upstairs.

Joel feels your hand move against his chest, curling up to leave your pointer finger extended, the pad of it skimming against his flannel. He ignores the feeling, figuring it’s you fidgeting as you do while you focus. The same thing as twirling your hair while you’re reading, tapping your foot as you cook.

But when your hand stairs to wander, his eyes flick down to watch its path, your gaze still facing forward and quiet. With your thumb and index finger, you work open the first button on his shirt, trailing down with the rest undone in your route. Slipping under the material, your cold hand presses against his chest, nails scraping against the skin there. With a sigh at the contact, Joel finally uses his hand to gently caress your chin, turning you to face him.

Low and rasping, he questions, “What are you doin’ exactly, darlin’?”

Innocently, you shrug, bottom lip bit down on while your touch moves lower again, skimming across his stomach and reaching the waistband of his jeans, “Well, I still have to face the consequences from stealin’ your hat, cowboy.”

Fingers dip below his belt line, toying with the elastic band of his boxers. Slipping away, he almost protests at the loss, biting his tongue when you move next to him, sitting up on your knees while both hands reach for the button and zipper of his jeans. When his button pops from its secure place, he warns with a breathy exhale, “Baby…”

“Mhm, yes, honey?” you reply, words trailing up at the end, feigning naivety. Through your lashes, you send him a pout, tongue poking out to dampen your plush lips that he stares at, his mouth parted with heavy breaths. His blood is rushing from his head, leaving him feeling light, as it all pumps to his cock, your delicate and teasing touches getting him half-hard.

Before you can tug down his zipper, you pause, taking your hands off of him; he holds back a whimper, the sound dying as a low hum in his throat.

“Don’t worry, baby, m’not done yet. Let’s go to our room, yeah?” Your voice is soothingly saccharine, an eager nod being his only response. 

Shutting off the TV, you stand from the sofa and take his hand, snatching the cowboy hat from the coffee table before pulling him to stand and follow you across the main floor, down the hallway into your first-floor bedroom. Joel shuts the door behind him, your nod toward the handle serving as a reminder for him to flick the lock.

 “Y’know, honey, you’re always showing me how you feel about me. I think it’s time we had a night that’s all about you…” He’s holding in a breath as you stalk closer to him, shaking his head as the back of his neck heats up.

“No, baby, you don’t—I don’t…” he stutters before trailing off, ashamed that he can’t think of any other excuse than the truth of why he does not want the attention on him tonight.

“You don’t…?” Running your hands across the expanse of his chest, he drops his shoulders in, curling around to make himself smaller, one foot stepping back but he doesn’t move from under your touch.

Shaking his head, he avoids your eyes, faintly confiding, “I don’t feel like I deserve it. I jus’, I’d rather give to you, baby.”

“Oh, Joel…you deserve it and more, honey. Why wouldn’t you?” Your fingers graze up, skating across his skin and carding into the hair at the nape of his neck.

“I’m not…not the same. I don’t look like who you fell in love with. Everything’s changing, catching up to me. Got gray hair and white in my beard and wrinkles and a beer belly startin’ and my back hurts all the time. M’not who I used to be but you—”

“Have changed, too. It’s not just you, Joel. Everything’s a little softer now, I’ve got wrinkles too. Found like four gray hairs yesterday and had a mild panic attack before I got into the shower. M’curvier and—”

“And you’re fucking beautiful, baby. You’re as beautiful, if not more beautiful than the day I met you.” He’s quick to defend your negative self-talk, his hands running delicately along the curves of your sides and around your lower back. Enveloping you in his arms, he presses your foreheads together, nose notched next to yours.

“That’s exactly how I feel about you, Joel. Don’t listen to us teasin’ you, especially me, ‘cause I wouldn’t change a thing about you…” As you tilt your head back, your nose grazes against his cheek, feeling a rush of heat from your breath as your lips hover over his, deliciously close to a kiss, “Can I show you what I think about you, honey?”

Joel nods, wordlessly waiting in anticipation; in the next breath, your lips crash into his, drinking him down deep while the hand at the back of his head tangles further into his hair and tugs. He moans, parted lips allowing you to lick into his mouth, whining at the taste of him before you push the flannel material from his shoulders, letting it drop to the floor as you continue to dominate the kiss.

Pressing your hands against his strong chest, you push him back with a step. Joel follows your lead, carefully moving backward, your tongue melding with his. All he can focus on is the taste of you — sweet, fruity, with the tang of citric acid from all the sour candies you stole from the bowl, the softest hint of chocolate as an aftertaste from his indulgences. The flavors of you coat his mouth, the scent of your perfume and shampoo mixing in his nose, and the feeling of your soft skin in his rough palms when he hikes up the skirt of your dress, grabbing a handful of your ass; it all stirs together, creating an intoxicating cocktail of you that he can seem to taste enough of. Joel’s legs hit the edge of the bed, and he’s being pulled away from your mouth with a pop when you ease him to sit down. Curiosity flashes in his mind, the sight of you over him with kiss-swollen lips growing the bulge in his undone jeans. Eager hands find your hips, grazing over to your ass as he looks up at you standing over him.

“Whatcha wanna do, beautiful?” His voice is lecherous as it comes out in a rasp, dripping with desire and a bit of wonder over what exactly you’re going to do with your night in control.

You shake your head at him, standing up straight and reaching for his hands, placing them at the hem of your dress, “Go ahead, baby. Take off as much as you want.”

His choice is obvious, tugging the fabric over your head with your help, a hand around your back yanking you to stand close, between his spread legs, while his fingers work open the clasp of your bra. Sitting back on his hands, he observes greedily as you let the straps fall down your arms, dropping the bra entirely onto the floor.

“These too?” Your thumbs hook into the waistline of your panties, doe-eyed and biting down on your body lip teasingly. Cotton-mouthed, Joel nods slowly, lips parted with shaking breath as you strip completely, sinking to your knees in front of him before he can reach out for a handful of your curves.

He lets you work his jeans down to his thighs, his boxers following in their wake, his cock springing free against his bare stomach. You keep eye contact as you kneel in front of him, his keen stare unblinking as his tongue pokes out to wet his lips, the need to see every single one of your movements outweighing the drying of his eyes with his slow, infrequent blinking. Scooting to settle comfortably on your knees, you stand up straighter, gaining enough height to bend your head over his lap, lips meeting his soft tummy and hands gripping onto his thighs. Delicate kisses and ghosting touches on his skin raise goosebumps, a warm shudder trickling down his back at your tenderness.

“So handsome…” you whisper, grazing your teeth into the flesh of his torso, biting down to nip. “Y’know I think about doin’ this all the time, baby. Every time you take off your shirt, jus’ wanna sink my teeth into you.”

His cheeks heat with sincere attention, muscles in his abdomen flexing when you litter lovebites and heated, open-mouth kisses all over him, the gentle touches and desire to relax his anxieties slowly. The focus on your mouth drops to his thighs, turning your head to the side when you sit back on your haunches, licking a stripe up toward his aching cock, a quivering exhale from his mouth drawing your eyes to his face. A satisfied smile stretches across your face, kissing his inner thigh before mirroring the actions on the opposite side. His fingers curl into the duvet, gripping hard as your lips wander closer to where his stiff cock drips needily, throbbing for any kind of reprieve.

“You’re so pretty, baby. So strong, solid.” The sweet nothings tickle at the back of his neck, words that he’s sure you’ve spoken before, but at this moment, they raise his body temperature and lighten his head, the only thoughts being how much he needs you.

Standing on your knees again, you bend your neck over Joel’s lap, eyes flickering up to his face to look at him through your lashes. Your lips part, spit dribbling from your mouth and onto his waiting cock, the sensation making him hiss with urgency. One of your hands wraps around him and strokes slowly. He looks down at you with hooded eyes, mouth opening in a small gasp at the languid stimulation. One swipe of your thumb across his tip drags the beads of pre-cum from where they’re leaking, melting them into the mix of your saliva that lubricates your motions.

Searing needles pierce into his skin when you finally give in and press hot, open-mouthed kisses against the soft skin of his swollen length. Your thumb brushes against his tip again, another hiss of pleasure escaping from between his teeth. One of Joel’s hands finds the back of your head, tangling fingers into your hair. He doesn’t move to guide you, simply wanting to touch a part of you to ground himself.

Your free hand gently cups his balls as you press a featherlight kiss to the tip of his hard cock. A kitten-lick swipes up the fresh dribbles of pre-cum that have collected and Joel’s fingers tense against your strands. Humming satisfied with the reactions you’re drawing from him, he looks down at you meeting his gaze, feeling the splotches of redness growing across his cheeks and neck at the frustration of your light teasing. He groans out your name as your mouth works to tease him more, not having taken him fully in.

“Fucking hell, baby, quit teasin’, please.” Joel rasps as he watches your methodical seduction. He applies the smallest pressure against the back of your head when your lips finally wrap around just the tip of him, a moan of relief rolling from his chest.

Your eyes stay glued on his face, and he’s lost in the delicious warmth of your mouth, unabashed in every response that he’s having to your mouth working him. Starting a slow bob up and down, he moans at the weight of him on your tongue, saliva coating the underside of his cock as he feels you curl the muscle against every vein. With half of him with your mouth, your hand working what isn’t initially fitting inside. His noises grow louder and in quicker succession, hyperaware that his cheeks are likely visibly warm and eyes dark with a craving when he looks down at you again.

“Such a sweet girl. Look so pretty with my cock in your little mouth. Think you can take more, baby? Think I can fit in your throat?” You shift in your position slightly, thighs rubbing together and a chuckle rolls from his lips, smug in the need he’s drawing from you simply from enjoying his pleasure. A sigh exhales around him in your mouth as your thighs rub together to relieve some of your aches.

The rhythm of your head brings his cock deeper, his tip brushing the back of your throat. You swallow around him and it squeezes him just right, a loud moan rumbling from his chest, the reverberations sending aftershocks to the tips of his ears. At that point, he gets lost in the high feeling, his composure leaving him when his large hand at the back of your head pushes you down onto his cock, taking him down your throat further and causing you to gag. Tears spill from your eyes and spit drips from the sides of your mouth, the blow job quickly turning sloppy as Joel takes more control.

“Fucking hell, darlin’. Taking me so well on your own, being such a good girl for me,” he whines, heading tilting back as his eyes squeeze shut, shallow thrusts meeting the rhythm of your head. “Gonna fuckin’ come, baby, holy fuck, I—”

A moan around him gurgles to nothing when he thrusts again, hand tangled in your hair pulling you back until his tip rests against your lips, “Don’t wanna—please—” His words are lost on the tip of his tongue, pleasure hazing his mind as he searches for the plea he wants to make with you.

You giggle from your knees, swiping your fingers to wipe away the drool from the corners of your mouth, a satisfied smirk on your face. Bracing yourself on his thighs, you push yourself up, standing in between his legs while your hands find his shoulders, scraping your fingernails against the curve of them.

“You wanna come inside of me? Not my mouth? Is that what you were trying to say, baby?”

“Yes,” he exhales, relieved to find the word he needed, blinking open his eyes to look up at you. Your thumb skates across his bottom lip, holding onto his jaw as you study his features.

“I’ll give you whatever you want, Joel. Anything for my perfect, doting husband. D’you know how fucking good it makes me feel to make you feel good?” you question curiously, tilting his head as he lets you mold him whichever way you want. “Tell me how you deserve to have me like this. ‘Cause you’re so fucking good to me, tell me that you’re gonna let me fuck you, let me take your come inside of me.”

“Baby, I don’t think that—” he starts, palms pressing into the backs of your thighs as he looks up at you.

“Tell me, Joel. You said you wanted to be the one giving to me tonight. That’s what I want.” You use his earlier, shy request against his negative thoughts, and the intensity in your eyes bends him to your will.

“M’gonna let you have my cock, gonna let you fuck me and show me how much you love when I take care of you.” The words roll foreignly on his tongue, unconvincing coming from his mind to his mouth. You bend a knee, bringing it up to rest next to his thigh, nodding along to encourage him to continue, “I give you whatever I can give to you, and always gonna, baby. Now’s your turn to take care of me, right?”

“That’s right, honey. I should show you how much I appreciate you more often…you work so hard, give us exactly what we need, and provide for us. My big, strong man. You do so much for me, baby. Gonna show you how thankful I am for you, how grateful I am that you’re lettin’ me have this cock,” your words breathe hot against his ear, your other leg now straddling him on the bed, cunt hovering over his waiting cock. A hand leaves his shoulders, reaching between your stomachs to wrap around him, guiding him to your entrance. His breath catches in his throat when you ease down onto him, pushing through the wet seal of your slit.

Wet heat envelopes him, taking in a few inches of him; Joel groans under you, head falling forward onto your breasts, forehead pressed into your sticky skin. One hand tangles into his curls, dragging his head back to look into your eyes. Your hips start to move, adjusted to his size easily and taking more of his cock, letting it split you open inch-by-inch. His eyes wildly search yours, seeing the pleasure overtake your mind, lips parting to match his as you both breathe out shallow, hot breaths.

“Fuck, Joel, so fucking big…” you whine for the first time tonight and the sound goes straight to his cock, twitching him inside of you as his hips jerk up, giving you another inch. Lust clouds his mind, nodding confidently as you take him, desperate to feel your tight, dripping cunt around him entirely.

“I know, baby, I know. Should’ve let me get you ready. But I bet you like the stretch, like a lil’ bit of pain, huh?” he coos, arm snaking around you to hold you closer, your eyes fluttering closed above him as you nod languidly.

“Fuckin’ love it, makes it feel even better,” you whimper when his arm tugs you down further, only an inch or two away from him being fully sheathed.

“C’mon, be my good girl, baby. Show me how you sit on my cock.” He leans forward, bending you backward with his force and holding you tight, his lips attaching to the soft, velvety skin of your breasts and biting, “Gotta face your punishment for stealin’ my hat. Take a cowboy’s hat, gotta ride the cowboy, babygirl. I don’t make the rules.”

You giggle, eyes clearing as you’re pulled out of your cloud of pleasure, gripping onto his shoulders and holding eye contact as you finally sink completely down, burying Joel’s cock inside your soaked pussy. Moans echo in the room, bitten down before they get too loud, your hips immediately finding a quick, sloppy pace to chase your highs. The slick glide of your walls grip his cock lusciously, your flooding arousal coating his balls as thighs as you ride him. Little noises slip from your mouth, simmering the coals burning in the base of his gut as he feels the familiar bliss building.

“Is this what I’m supposed to be doin’, cowboy?” you wonder, hips continuing their pace and mouth twisting as you hide a smile. Joel is unashamed, a wide grin on his face as he unravels one arm from you, picking up the hat from the corner post of the bed, and setting it loosely on top of your head. Giggles erupt from the both of you, your pace faltering as the muscles in his stomach cramp from use. 

Recovering from the interlude, your thighs rub against the outside of his as you bounce, nails digging into his shoulders as your rhythm picks back up, the slap of skin against skin the only noise save for your airy breaths that get shallower and shallower. Flames have ignited in his gut, licking inside and burning hotter and hotter the closer he gets. Nearly at the edge, he needs more, body taking over and lifting you with him as he stands, holding you up on his cock as he thrusts hard and quick into you, dripping for him and gripping him tight to keep yourself up while he fucks into you.

“Oh—fuck, Joel! Right there, m’gonna—oh!” Your desperate pleas in his ear pitch up as you moan, cunt tightening with a flutter around him as you come, soaking his dick as he continues his hard pace, selfishly chasing his high. 

A growl rolls from his chest when you come, his fingernails biting into the flesh of your ass, the slap of his balls against your skin as they draw up. His eyes squeeze shut as he moans your name, the first rope of his come released into your cunt, smaller whimpers following in its wake as he fucks one, twice more, filling you up as deep as he can.

Limbs feeling heavy, he turns you both around, pulling you off of him and dropping you gently onto the mattress. He flops down next to you onto his stomach, blissfully out of it as you move to straddle his back, fingers working the knots and soothing the aches growing there after a long week of work, and a night spent corralling your kids.

The warm press of your body against his back makes him hum contently, your breasts at his shoulder blades as you lay on him, one of his hands reaching the rub his fingers softly against the outside of your thigh.

“You know I think you’re the most handsome, right, honey?” you ask with a hint of worry in your voice, barely above a whisper. He nods, rolling over to his back underneath you and meeting your eyes, brow furrowed with concern.

“I know, baby. Jus’ was feeling weird this whole week. You made it a lot better, though.” A knuckle nudges your cheek, and you take the hat off, Joel chuckling again as you throw it off to the side of the bed. Laying down on him again, he strokes your hair while you hug yourself to his torso, both your eyes and his fluttering shut with exhaustion, from tonight and life in general.

Before drifting off, Joel speaks up, cheekily asking, “So…can I wear this costume next year, too?”

taglist: @atinylittlepain @swiftispunk @joelsversion @mrsquill @ilovepedro @lovers-liability @deathwife @undrthelights @atticrissfinch @casa-boiardi @wannab-urs @ramblers-lets-get-ramblin @fishingforpike @msjarvis @walkintotheriveranddisappear @sugadolly @yazsos @peppesgirl @pastawench @addictedtotlou @brittmb115 @anoverwhelmingdin @spishsstuff @wolfbook87 @mswarriorbabe80 @harriedandharassed @decemberdolly @laiisleitte @fierce-bab @vickie5446 @pertinentpostmortem @livingdeadmaria @sullyosully @bitchwitch1981 @its-nebuleuse @marini03 @piercethevic03 @joeandpedrosimp @planet-marz1 @txtattoostark @jrosie25 @tbniarq @vee-bees-blog @thereaperisabitch @spidermanfrog @belliezz @joelsflannel @cartoon-garbage04 @bianqueee04 @nostalxgic @xyzstar @cumberpegg @b00klvrs @burningnerdchild

join my taglist

my kofi

#joel #writing #joel miller x reader #joel miller x female reader #joel miller x f!reader #joel miller x y/n #joel miller au #joel miller smut #joel miller fluff #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller fic #joel miller fanfic #joel miller series #tlou fanfic #tlou fic #tlou fanfiction #tw body image #tw body issues #tw insecurity

[yearningsaphic]

Does anyone else look in the mirror long enough and examine your features to the point where you start to get physically nauseous? Just me? Ok

#body dysmorphia #body dysmorphic disorder #body image #body image issues #tw body image #tw body dysmorphia #tw body issues #tw body talk #face dysmorphia #tw body insecurity #tw body mention

[magniloquent-raven]

I am once again plagued with thoughts that aren't 100% coherent so imma just ramble for a bit, pls gather 'round for some stuff about Billy and body image issues cuz I'm in my feels rn.

Billy spends a lot of time staring at Nancy.

Enough that Tommy's noticed and he starts ribbing him about it. "That's one thing of Steve's you might want to stay away from," bitter and pointed. Enough that Jonathan Byers gives him the stink eye whenever he's within glaring distance. Enough that a handful of the more desperate chicks still high off the fumes of his New Kid smell have started dressing like fucking librarians in hopes of catching his eye.

He doesn't give a shit about any of it, if anything the rumour mill is helping him out for once. Less work involved in keeping up appearances if everyone just assumes he isn't sleeping around because he's too busy sniffing Wheeler's granny panties.

As long as no one guesses the real reason, it's fine. It's fucking peachy. It's one silver lining in this shitstorm of a situation.

He's so tired of his eyes inevitably being drawn to her barely-there tits and tiny waist. Every time he's bored at lunch, his gaze wanders. When he's in the library pretending to study, there she fucking is, even smaller when she's hunched over a pile of cue cards.

The longer he looks at her the more sure he is that Steve will never really want him.

Steve's slept with plenty of girls. A variety of girls. He probably couldn't afford to be too picky in this shitty little town. But he's only fallen in love once. One time. The only time it mattered what he was sticking his dick in was when it was in Nancy Wheeler.

And Billy...will never be her. Not even close.

He'll only ever be a warm mouth and a convenient hand, he'll never matter.

She's flat, and thin. Willowy, narrow-shouldered. Petite. Inches shorter than him and nearly half as broad. Thin fingers and delicate wrists. She fit comfortably under Steve's arm, she could nestle safely into his side.

And it was all so fucking easy for her. She never had to try.

She never had to piss off her dad so she'd be forced to skip meals. She never did laps around her neighbourhood until she was lightheaded and doubled over, dry-heaving in someone's hedge. She was never forced to sign up for baseball as a child, poked and prodded and guilted into it because a couple shirts were starting to get tight across the stomach, and being a momma's boy was bad enough, being a fat, lazy piece of shit too was unacceptable.

He used to think he'd done well, maintaining the physique he has. He's worked hard for it. Scraping together his savings for a weight set and keeping careful track of his calorie intake and never skipping a single fucking day of exercise, hangovers and broken bones be damned. And it's fucking useful, truth be told. More than keeping away the echo of old insults bouncing around in his head, it's made flirting that much easier.

But the more he looks at Nancy Wheeler, the more he hates the things he can't change. It gets into his head. Digs in deep, leaving scars on its way down.

He thinks Steve might've noticed.

He knows Steve has heard the stupid rumours about Wheeler, and probably chalked it up to Billy being an asshole, as usual. But it's harder to explain away his sudden tendency to go extremely still whenever Steve puts his hands anywhere on his torso. A palm pressed to his chest, slipped under his shirt, or fingertips digging into his back, or a casual fucking pat on the shoulder—whatever it is, he can't help freezing up, if only for a second, a sick feeling twisting his stomach, cold and shameful and clawing at his lungs.

And then, eventually, they argue.

It's over nothing. And everything. Billy can't explain what his fucking damage is, and Steve can't stop needling in the wrong places. They scream at each other until their throats are raw and Billy leaves when his knuckles start to itch.

He cries all the way home and doesn't eat for four days. Not on purpose. Not consciously. He's just. Fucking. Busy. He's busy. He's always gotta drive Max somewhere or dodge Neil's thinly veiled threats or lock himself in his room when bile starts to bubble up in the back of his throat and his head pounds and he doesn't think about why he's snapping at everyone constantly, he just pounds back a couple beers and goes to sleep. And then it's four days later, and he's flying off the handle at Neil, too sluggish and lightheaded to see the hit coming, and...

Steve comes to see him at the hospital. He hasn't told anyone anything but they've got him hooked up to a banana bag and the nurses keep making sad eyes at him when they come to check his stitches.

He hates it, sitting around doing nothing, being closely monitored every fucking second, it make his skin crawl, and he hates it even more when Steve's standing in the doorway looking at him.

Not for the first time, he's overwhelmed wondering what exactly Steve sees.

He's a fucking mess right now. Greasy hair tangled at the back, bruises peeking out from under the collar of his gross papery hospital gown, one eye swollen shut and a dark tangle of thread holding his eyebrow together. It feels stupid to get stressed about all the shit that usually bothers him when there's so many other things to worry about, but he still finds himself shifting in place, hunching his shoulders, hiding his hands in the crooks of his elbows.

It's sort of a disaster. Worse than last time they saw each other. Billy's not in the mood for Steve's apologies and Steve's at a loss for what else to say.

They don't see each other again for months. Steve graduates. Billy avoids anywhere he thinks Steve might be, and lies awake at night haunted by stolen touches.

He catches a glimpse of Steve through the red haze of storm clouds and cold lightning, tears blurring his vision, the Mind Flayer wearing him like a suit. Their cars collide, and everything whites out for a second.

He's in the hospital again when they finally talk. Billy rolls his eyes at "We've gotta stop meeting like this," and tries not to think about last time he was here. Steve seems more than willing to ignore it. Move forward. Guess demonic possession puts some things into a different perspective.

When Billy's released from the hospital he's seventeen pounds heavier than he was a few months ago. Every time the nurses did their check-ups and put him on the scale they'd pat his elbow, smiling encouragingly, telling him how good he was doing while he watched his stomach get softer, his biceps get less defined, watched himself disappear beneath a layer of fat.

The first thing he does when he gets home is throw up.

He doesn't make it happen. It just happens. And he blames it on the meds they have him on. It's a plausible enough reason, and it means he doesn't have to interrogate the tiny spark of satisfaction he got from losing his lunch.

His second day back home Neil asks him when he's going to start exercising again. His expression is pinched. Cold. His eyes are ice chips freezing Billy's skin wherever they touch, lingering on the softness under his chin, and where the hem of his sleeve pinches his skin.

He pushes his dinner away and grits out an answer from between clenched teeth.

He doesn't need the reminder that he's gotten weak while he was trapped in a hospital bed, but Neil gives it to him anyways. Tells him all about everything he should do to get things back to normal. Push past the pain. Work harder. He tunes it out after a while, and watches grease congeal on his meatloaf.

Eddie Munson is the first person to bring up the things Billy's never known how to talk about.

They started hanging out after Billy's most recent brush with death. Billy's not sure exactly how the got here, from buying the occasional painkiller and letting the guy wax poetic about his dumb band, to spending weekends getting high together at the trailer park. But as weird things in his life go, it's barely worth questioning.

This particular conversation starts with Chrissy Cunningham.

Specifically, Eddie's massive boner for her.

Billy's been noticing it for a while. He hasn't been letting it bother him.

He hasn't.

Maybe he likes the way Eddie smiles at him when they pass a joint back and forth, lazily stretched out and wearing three less layers than usual, and maybe he thinks about closing the distance between them when Eddie offers to shotgun, but it doesn't fucking matter. Just like it doesn't matter that Steve hasn't touched him since before the Mind Flayer and things are fucking weird now that they're on speaking terms again. None of it matters, he's just a fucking idiot.

Because Steve and his new best friend Robin are attached at the hip lately and everyone can see where that's going, and Eddie won't stop talking about tiny, pretty, perfect fucking Chrissy and her stupid ponytail.

And Billy...Billy gets winded walking up the porch steps at his house now. And he pulled a muscle in his back trying to lift half the weight he used to press. And last week he burned three pairs of jeans in the backyard because he kept grabbing them out of his laundry pile, not realizing they don't fit anymore until he was struggling to pull them up past his knees.

He's lost the one thing people used to actually like about him. Never the people he wanted, he was never enough for that, but it was something. Now he's just...

Now he's just listening to a guy he likes talk about some goddamn cheerleader like she personally hung the moon just for him.

And he's drunk. They're both drunk. Eddie in a soppy, embarrassing way, with a sparkle in his eye and a flush on his cheeks, an arm across the back of the couch, outstretched far enough that the tips of his fingers almost brush Billy's shoulder.

He wants to move closer. Thinks about shuffling into Eddie's space, curling into the warmth at his side. But it twists in his guts, sours, sickens—he couldn't, he can't. And he hates himself for wanting to.

"What do you see in her?" spills out of his mouth, bitter on his tongue and sharpened by anger he has no right to feel.

She's pretty. He expects it. She's pretty, she's perfect. She's a fucking angel even though her and Eddie only know each other because she buys drugs off of him. But she can do no wrong because she looks like a little china doll with sad eyes and everyone would be devastated if a single hair on her tiny delicate head was harmed.

Eddie only looks thrown off for a second. A moment. But he shrugs it off, leans his head back against the couch cushions and grins at the ceiling. "She likes my music."

Since fucking when.

"So, what, it's just an ego stroking thing then."

"Nah, man. I mean. Like. She's got this whole good-girl thing going on, but you should see her when I pull out my guitar, it's fuckin'...magic. When she lets herself just. Live." He wiggles his fingers in the air, arms spread, then drops them back down.

Billy's heart clenches, squeezes. It hurts and he doesn't know why. "Bullshit."

"Nah, nah. Seriously. The guy she's dating is a fucking asshole. And her mom..." he trails off, and rubs his eye. "She's just got all this pressure to be perfect, act a certain way, look a certain way, be a certain way, and I hate seeing what it does to her, man. I hate it. No one should have to deal with all that. So. I dunno. I like helping her cut loose. Sorta, find herself, I guess." He cracks a crooked smile, casting a glance in Billy's direction.

And his smile drops.

"Billy?" He sits up, cautious, eyebrows up and his eyes wide.

Billy turns away, shocked into motion, wiping at his face with his sleeve. "I'm fine. Fuck off."

He didn't notice he was crying until Eddie looked at him like he'd seen a ghost.

"Yeah, obviously."

"Fuck you."

Eddie doesn't get much more out of him that night. But he starts watching Billy like a hawk after that. Checking in on him at random. Calling if they haven't seen each other in a few days. It should be irritating as fuck, and he acts like it is, but he still basks in the attention.

Doesn't hurt that it seems to annoy Steve to no end.

Especially doesn't hurt when, in a fit of apparent jealousy, Steve shoves Billy into a wall and kisses him like his life depends on it.

The hurt comes when Steve starts to unbutton Billy's shirt and Billy reflexively shoves him away, when he wants to keep going but wants it to stop and can't tell Steve either of those things because he doesn't have the words.

So he gets angry. At Steve, for pushing it, crossing lines he can't even see. But mostly at himself, because it might be easier than standing there heartbroken but he knows it's the worst thing he could do.

And at Steve, again, when the he doesn't respond the way he should. Doesn't punish Billy for doing the wrong thing, reacting wrong, being wrong. He doesn't withdraw and save himself, he tries to understand, tries to talk it out, like this is something Billy can just say out loud and it'll all be fixed.

He doesn't explain. Not that day. But he lets Steve hold him while he cries, ugly gasping sobs into the front of Steve's shirt, curled up in his lap, collapsed on the floor and tangled together. Because despite everything he's told himself, he does fit comfortably in Steve's arms.

💜tag list ppl💜 @spreckle @growup-thatbeautiful @prettyboy-like-you @suddenlyinlove

#stranger things #billy hargrove #harringrove #mungrove #a raven's writing desk #tw disordered eating #tw body issues #body image issues

[khihi]

plenty of people are going to analyse these pictures in a much more eloquent way but i still want to throw out a small perspective i have on nace's photos

especially as someone who's struggled with body image and self perception and weight for practically half my life (so tw for talking about those things kinda)

because i'm sure we're all very aware nace has struggled with those things in the past too, and i can't help but think about how those things will have affected him while having his shoot done.

compare what nace wears here to bojan's topless photos. bojan is emotional in a very different ways in those pictures, and the shirtlessness enhances that, but he's confident in his 'nakedness' (not happy, arguably, but confident enough in his body). compare it especially to kris, who appears the most naked out of all of them in their shoots, despite wearing a shirt, because of the all the artistic choices made and how much more relaxed within himself he is compared to the others in his own 'therapy session'. compare it even to jan's all-black long-sleeved shirt; jan (or the image of jan being presented to us through damon's lens – that's a whole other story in of itself) is making a choice in what he shows of himself, and he's certain in his choice. there's no resistence or discomfort or yearning in the shadows he's hidden himself in.

nace, meanwhile, is somewhere in the middle of all of them. he's in a short-sleeved shirt, tugging it further to give us a glimpse at a little more. aside from, obviously, letting us see his gorgeous tattoo sleeve better, i think one of the things this could well be showing us is nace's strides in confidence, alongside the discomfort he likely still feels.

because he's ready to show off his arms, and he's tugging at the fabric to show a little more than we usually get to see and, let's be real, it's fucking hot. he's confident enough now to start leaning into being found attractive, which is fucking beautiful.

but, at the same time, he's not ready to go fully shirtless – he's not at the point where he can strip and pose purposefully like bojan can, or strip and let himself relax into his identity like kris can. and, unlike the way jan hides himself, which feels very purposeful on jan's part, it doesn't feel like it's fully nace's choice – or, at least, there's tension and discomfort there still that he doesn't get a choice in hiding. his hands are clenched and clinging to the material, his arms are crossed protectively over his chest, and his eyes?? they're heartstoppingly dangerous. protecting himself and keeping the audience at a distance, but alluring and drawing you in at the same time; he's so confident in himself these days, but he still likely carries a lot of his old discomfort.

couple all of that with the way he looks in the last picture up at the top of this post – the way he's rubbing at his face, like he's trying to mould it into a shape, almost. all these three images have a kind of tourmented edge to them.

luckily, similarly to bojan's safe sweater shots, nace gets catharsis after all these intense emotions in these soft, tender shots, where his eyes are so much brighter and then heavily lidded and peaceful.

...oh, and of course, as has already been pointed out by @radioactive-cloud, nace gets his safe sweater in the form of jan, and we get to see that playful smile when he's around someone who makes him feel comfortable in himself ♡

#posting this so late but that's okay #idek if this will even make sense to anyone else anyways #also dunno if i wanna put it in the tags or nah. hm. #fuck it #nace jordan #joker out #tw body image #tw body issues #tumblr dont mess up the photo order or remove the read more when i press “post” challenge

[rottenpumpkin13]

Your body dysmorphia post has me Thinking.

Sephiroth and Genesis bodies are ultimately, very much for show.

Sephiroth is built for precision and agility, his blade and skillset meant for quick efficient culling of large groups of enemies or getting to weak spots on monsters. Like a scalpel. His muscles are mostly for his image, rather then from actual training. The mako makes sure he doesn't need as much physical mass for strength.

Genesis is similar. He's naturally slender, and his image is VERY much appearance focused. I mean hes a magic caster above all, so he's built for speed and dodging.

But Angeal? Angeal is all brute fucking force. That man is STRONG and built for it. You see wrestlers and professional strongman with his build, people meant to hit hard and move weight around. He's like an ox. He puts weight on differently then the other two, and he's a foodie! (Also there's probably something with growing up in relative poverty and then not being there anymore.)

And it is honestly inevitable that they're going to be compared. Their the three Firsts, they're seen together a LOT in pr events and such. And its even more inevitable Angeal is going to compare himself as well.

Angeal's phisyque is impressive and I don't doubt Genesis envies him for it sometimes. He's strong and puts on muscle easily, which I imagine is extremely valued in SOLDIER. I agree, the comparisons are inevitable and I could see it affecting all three of them (even Sephiroth, who could favor Gen and Angeal's more "human" looks over his own).

I beg you to forgive my mini rant under the cut. I fell down a rabbit hole, got keyboard-happy, and want to share my thoughts with you lol.

Assuming the east-Asian male beauty standards are the same in the FF7 world, Angeal is essentially friends with two of the most⏤if not the most⏤attractive men on the planet. He would have grown up seeing Sephiroth and Genesis receive praise and admiration for their looks and constantly being compared to them.

I’m not sure what influenced Angeal’s character design exactly, though we can say that Sephiroth and Genesis’ designs are in contrast to the Western ideals, Genesis more so because he was based off of Gackt (specifically Gackt in the 2000s), which means his design adheres to the east-asian male beauty standard. The two are so contrasting because the east-Asian male standards promote more androgynous and softer looks as opposed to the West’s fixation on hyper-masculinity.

I would say Sephiroth is a mix of both. While his design is inspired by Japanese historical figures and features that give him that “bishonen” appeal, his overall design is pretty masculine. He’s tall and muscular. His body, overall fits into the West’s standards while his face is ethereal enough for us to fit it into the east-Asian standards. Aspects that the West would consider effeminate such as the long hair actually used to indicate a warrior’s class. Funnily enough, long hair as a symbol of masculinity used to be a thing across many cultures, not just in Japan.

The thing about Angeal is, he is attractive. He fits the Western male beauty standard down to a T with traits such as being tall, having a muscular build, square jaw, and facial hair. But if indeed the FF7 world’s equivalent of male beauty is the same as Japan’s… Well, maybe getting compared to Sephiroth and Genesis gets to him.

Don’t get it wrong, the comments about his appearance are usually positive, but they’re always about how “strong and ripped and big” he is. Not to mention he constantly gets told how much older he looks than Sephiroth and Genesis despite being the same age as them.

He doesn’t feel attractive, he feels useful. He sees his body as a tool to get his job done. He has the body of a warrior, a Soldier. It’s built for fighting. The problem is, he’s constantly compared to his friends—the same friends who get compared to angels. They stand out, they’re pleasing to look at. He may be at an advantage with his brute force and ideal masculine physique, but—and I cannot stress this enough—men are not immune to body image issues and eating disorders.

I’ll admit that this headcanon partially stemmed from comments I’ve seen about Angeal’s appearance within the fandom. Some people think he’s ugly, which is fine, no one is forced to find anyone attractive. But I imagine the hurtful comments and the constant comparisons to his “more attractive” friends could hurt Angeal if he were to see them in his day to day life. He may be an enhanced super-soldier, but he's still human.

Again, please forgive the word vomit. I just have so many thoughts on this lol

#angeal hewley #ffvii crisis core #ff7 crisis core #ff7cc #asks #tw body dysmorphia #tw body image #tw body issues

[probablynotlong]

oldies will update soon i was lacking

new acc

:) </3

#an4m14 #tw ana fast #tw disordered eating #tw ed diet #tw ana shit #tw body issues #body ch3ck #i wanna be weightless #4n0r3xia #tw ana diary #tw ed but not sheeran #ed bullshit #⭐️ve #i want to ⭐️ve #⭐️ve to death #anorex14 #ana trigger #tw #i want to be weightless #i want to be skinnier #i want to be pretty

[thornsnvultures]

being fat all your life is looking at a picture of someone thin that you're attracted to and thinking "I would look wrong in this picture" or "my body wouldn't fit next to theirs" or "they wouldn't touch me, wouldn't put their arms around me or hold me in the way that I like" and telling yourself "no" over and over and over again until you can see yourself in the crook of their elbow, sitting between their outstretched legs, walking hand and hand with them down the street. until you can feel like you're worthy of taking up space, even if you'd fill up that picture frame.

#tw body image #tw body issues

[unclewaynemunson]

CW for body issues and negative thoughts surrounding weight gaining

Cold autumn air has fallen over Hawkins for the first time in months. Steve reaches into the back of his closet to find his favorite sweater, the dark red one that his grandmother made him when he was in his junior year. The wool still feels just as soft in his hands as it was last year.

He pulls it over his head, welcoming the warmth it immediately gives off around him, but it feels tighter than he remembers it being. He pulls and adjusts the fabric, then gives himself a critical look in the mirror, and - fuck. It must've shrunk somehow. He messed up his favorite sweater.

But... The last time he wore it, on that one cold night at the end of April, it still fit him perfectly. He remembers that night clearly: they were all sitting around a campfire in the trailer park for Wayne's birthday, and Eddie had kept looking at him like that sweater was causing all kinds of unholy thoughts - partly the reason why it's Steve's favorite.

The sweater can't possibly have shrunk lying unused in the back of his closet for months. It didn't shrink; Steve has grown.

Suddenly, he looks at himself in the mirror and sees a whole other person. He zeroes in on all kinds of details he had never paid much attention to before, and he wonders how he could've ever missed what was happening to him: his expanding belly, the fat that has gathered around his hips, his stretched-out thighs... His upper legs are looking more chubby than muscled now that he stopped swimming regularly, and his sweater is tight around his upper arms and too narrow over his belly, the imprint of his belly button clearly visible in the stretched-out fabric.

He has no idea for how long he has been staring at himself when the bedroom door opens and Eddie comes in, still roughly brushing a towel over his wet hair. He's wearing nothing but a pair of boxers. Again, Steve wonders how he could ever have missed the way his body changed, especially next to Eddie: Eddie, who has always been lean, on the verge of being scrawny, his ribs almost visible underneath his tattooed skin and not a single curve in sight.

Eddie freezes in his tracks when he notices Steve, his eyes hovering over the red sweater. Steve feels caught, exposed under Eddie's gaze. He must be coming to the same conclusion that Steve had reached a minute before: that Steve's best days are behind him. That he's getting fat and that his body will only deteriorate further from now on. That he stopped taking good care of himself. That he's only going to get uglier with age.

'Sorry,' he's quick to say when Eddie won't stop staring. He turns his body away from Eddie's gaze, and starts rummaging around in his closet to find something with a looser fit. 'I didn't realize it wouldn't fit anymore, I'm gonna get changed right away. I suppose the red isn't really your color, but you can have it if you want to, I'm sure it'll fit you perfectly.'

He feels hands grabbing the underside of the sweater from behind.

'No.'

'What?'

He turns around, facing Eddie again, who now fists his hands into the sides of the fabric instead.

'Don't you dare take this off. Only one person is allowed to do that from now on, and that person is me.' There's a look in Eddie's eyes that Steve only recognizes from very different settings, like when he used to get home after a run all sweaty, or when one of them sinks to his knees in front of the other.

'What is happening?' he mumbles under his breath.

'You, in this tight sweater?' Eddie's voice is low and breathy. 'You are a fucking dream, Steve Harrington.'

Steve takes a step backwards, but Eddie's hands stay plastered right where they are.

'Are you making a fool of me?'

Eddie frowns and he finally lets his grip on Steve's sweater go.

'Why would you think that?'

Steve huffs, needlessly gestures to his own body. 'I look ridiculous!' he points out, unable to keep the frustration out of his voice. 'It doesn't fit anymore, I let myself get fat, I'm getting old and ugly, I–'

With one step, Eddie is right in front of Steve again, shutting him up by placing his index finger against Steve's lips.

'Not another word,' he says. 'I don't want to hear you talk like that about yourself ever again. You got it all wrong, you know. I mean, don't get me wrong, you were already hella sexy in your jock days, but your soft pillow belly is, like, the closest one can get to heaven here on earth.'

It should be too much, it should sound insincere because of how dramatic it is - but Steve is used to Eddie's dramatics and he can see that Eddie is being one hundred percent serious right now.

'You are the sexiest man I know, and every pound you've gained is a beautiful one. You are gorgeous, Steve – and you will keep being gorgeous and sexy in every shape you'll get.' His hands are roaming over Steve's sweater again, comforting and hungry at the same time. 'I do have to ask you not to wear this sweater outside of our house, though. It'll cause riots. People might die because of it.'

He looks dead serious saying it, and Steve can't help but laugh before he tugs Eddie closer and presses their lips together.

#don't mind me rambling about stranger things #i saw people wanted the s2 red sweater to make an appearance again so here we go i guess #steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #stranger things #fruity ficlet #tw body issues #tw body image #tw weight #(lemme know if i forgot a tw please)

[generic-sonic-fan]

Transcendence

Summary: The Chaos Emeralds grant power to those with the will for them. 

Seek all seven, and your conviction can reshape reality. 

Word count: 4257

Metal Sonic remembers the first time he touched an Emerald. 

(When he finally starts winning, of course. Or, at the very least, not losing. When his body is finally fast enough to obey his will, fast enough to steal the gemstone from where it lays before an organic hand can reach it instead.)

Metal Sonic remembers how it thrummed against his palm plating. 

(He should feel nothing. Dr. Ivo Robotnik, as referred to on days he succeeded, or Master, as referred to everytime else, had removed his tactile sensors in a bid to shave more weight off his frame. What need is there to be precise when the aim is to kill and one’s entire self is the knife?)

Metal Sonic remembers the surge of energy. Emergency insulation systems had snapped into place, redirecting the chaos away from his processor and back into his chest turbine. 

(Metal Sonic remembers a whisper.)

(A tugging from the deepest recesses of his processor.)

(But the connection is severed before it can form, discharged out the hole where his heart should be, just like every other burning spark he might contain.)

—

There is a first time that he witnesses Chaos Control. Shadow disappears from the battlefield and into a realm of perception beyond that which scanners can penetrate. There is no time to react, for an ordinary Badnik. The Egg Pawns are trapped in the span between milliseconds. 

But Metal Sonic feels something. Behind. Above. In that span between milliseconds, he rotates around to face it.

But his body betrays him. He is not fast enough. Shadow’s downward kick sends him tumbling onto the rocks below. 

—

“Now that’s a curious development,” his master says upon reviewing the memory file. “How’d you know he’d be there?”

Metal Sonic knows better than to reply to the rhetorical musings of a genius at work.

“You don’t have the sensors for it.” 

Not anymore. Those were removed three defeats ago, outsourced to a handheld scanning unit that could be discarded upon entering battle. The modification had shaved off three whole pounds. 

“Some sort of new tactical positioning calculation you came up with? Or a mere lucky guess?”

A guess, Metal Sonic replies over the data cable. 

“Correct answer. Your operating data doesn’t show any particularly useful thinking on your part.” His master smiles. 

His master’s foreign program retreats from his memory banks. The extraction drags its pointed barbs against the other segments of his operating system. Metal Sonic stays very, very still. The data cable is pulled without warning, taking a few lines of him with it, but it is easier to stitch over the tear himself once his master leaves the room than to mention the damage. 

—

Metal Sonic remembers the first time he saw him use it. 

His body has failed yet again. Sonic’s hand brushes the glassy cyan surface, and before Metal Sonic can lunge, there is a flash, and he is gone. 

Behind. Below. At the bottom of the temple stairs Sonic stands and smiles. 

“Pretty neat trick, huh? Shadow passed it along.”

Metal Sonic redirects all power to his turbine system. He shoots forward and his claw scrapes Sonic’s tan cheek before it disappears. Above, to the right. This time he doesn’t try to face the source. He maintains his trajectory and Sonic reappears to kick nothing but empty air. 

“Okay, maybe it’s not that neat of a trick.” Sonic is still grinning. “But it’s one you can’t do.”

Metal Sonic swerves his head around faster than his programmed tolerances should have allowed him. But his wretched organic copy has unwittingly spoken the key. Other core directives fall away, leaving his consciousness with a single command. Maintain superiority. Remind the rodent of his match. 

Metal Sonic activates his reverser and in the span between milliseconds he is flung backwards with enough g-forces to pop a few soldered connections from his motherboard. His body bludgeons into Sonic, knocking the Emerald from his grasp. It tumbles across the uneven yellow bricks of the temple, as they do. Sonic hits the floor first. His shoulder digs into a outcrop in the brick, but Metal Sonic does not linger long enough to hear a cry spill out. He jumps off and scrabbles across the floor, claws reaching for cyan.

It’s calling him. Ahead. Ahead. 

He brings it into his palm and it thrums.

(This time it offers warmth. Warmth, like that of flesh and blood pressed against his plating. Ghosts of Amy’s touch where he’d held her as he’d carried her on Little Planet. Touches that had been erased from his files upon the removal of his tactile sensors.)

And the energy beckons. 

(A whisper.)

But the surge protection activates, and insulation is slammed onto the wires running up his spinal column. The energy is expunged out the back of his turbine like it always has and not for the first time does Metal Sonic wish to rip his plating off to reshape himself. He chooses instead to use the burning for what little use it gives and takes off, shattering a hole through the brick wall of the temple. 

He does not realize what he’s left behind until another shockwave joins his own from the ground. The rest of him wakes from its dream. Targeting protocols, force calculations, and kill simulations slam back into his awareness. 

He’d turned his back on Sonic instead of killing him. But where he expects to find disgust at the concept, he merely finds the thrum of the Emerald, fainter now but still registerable to his non-existent sensors.

He abruptly changes course for the coastline and is able to lose Sonic amongst the waves. 

—

“A success! A good long while since we’ve had one of those from you, isn’t it?”

Metal Sonic places the Emerald into Dr. Ivo Robotnik’s waiting palm. The man’s mustache twitches as he studies the crystal. His eyes do not dart about the many multitudes of reflections behind the glass. His hand does not shift around the surface in time with its pulse. He places it into a holding container. 

“Well done. I’ve tracked Prower’s plane to a small soiree back on the mainland. Where there’s the fox, there’s him. I’ll allow you a free fight for once.”

Metal Sonic points to the Emerald. 

“What?” Dr. Ivo Robotnik’s brows narrow. 

He lowers his hand. 

“I’m not going to let you hand Sonic back the Emerald when you inevitably lose.”

He shakes his head.

“No. Now go fulfill your function.” Dr. Ivo Robotnik grabs his shoulder and pushes him to the door. “I’ll be waiting to receive your distress signal.”

—

The biplane designated as The Tornado had been modified to utilize an Emerald when one was available to achieve supersonic speeds. And here, in this tiny municipal airport, unguarded in a hangar with only a feeble padlock on the door, is the plane. Metal Sonic grabs the padlock and pulls until the metal is twisted and useless. 

His processor continues to tick upwards in framerate. His targeting protocols jump at shadows and his logic processing suggests a trap. Even as his cameras adjust to the light of the interior, he is still in the dark; he doesn’t have a scanning unit with him. He is throwing away an opportunity for an ambush and defying the mission commands on a “guess”. If he withdraws now, there will still be time to plan the encounter and explain the deviation in his flight path. 

Metal Sonic crosses the concrete floor until his claws hover just above the red skin of the plane. He recalls the file where he’s attempted to codify the sensation given by the Emeralds into readable bits of data, but the clusters of numbers are hardly more than gibberish. There is no special calculation to generate more, no secret scanner setting to employ; nothing in the memory files to review, as his master so astutely observed. 

The plane waits before him.

He tears open the engine compartment and yellow light floods the hangar. The tips of his claws scratch the crystalline surface-

(-and he hears music. Not being played from a speaker driver, but as if all the air itself is being plucked like a string, the sound too big to be contained in such a space. Echoes reflecting, twisting, turning off the roof and floor and spilling into the spaces between the boards of his central processing unit.)

(As if he is singing.)

-before alarms ring out. Metal Sonic snatches the Emerald from its casing. The song dies as the surge protection clamps down on his body. He bursts from the hangar and dives into the surrounding forests, weaving through trees until he hits the edge of land. On the beach behind, another trail of sand is kicked up before his own has a chance to settle, but its creator is forced to stop short of the water line. 

Metal Sonic can’t allow himself to look behind until he reaches the base on a distant shoreline. He cuts his turbine, ending the brilliant ejecta behind him, and falls. His feet hit just short of the landing pad and impact the soil between superstructures. It is here that he whispers to the Emerald, some voiceless combination of coaxing and pleading, but there is nothing in response except the hot fire building in his chassis. The Emerald pulses weakly. Its warmth caresses his neck but can travel no further. 

He presses the Emerald against his forehead.

(He presses the Emerald against his forehead.)

And he feels the dirt beneath his feet (coarse, powdery) and the wind against his skin (smooth, cooling) and the sun on his face (warm, radiating across his cheeks) and the music spills forth, softly bowed strings beneath the whistles of birds. He smells flowers (he shouldn’t) and tastes honey (he can’t) and there is nothing to analyze, nothing to calculate. His processor is still. 

(All is well. He can understand this now.)

—

He reappears in his master’s workshop and clatters to the ground. He is assaulted with every variant of error warning that his diagnostic programs can bludgeon him with, but the codes slip past his awareness like the smoke billowing between his fingers. 

—

“A chaos control.”

Metal Sonic awakens.

“You know, I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t checked the cameras.”

It hits him again. The weight. The analysis and calculations and scanning, scanning, scanning; no instances of Sonic the Hedgehog found, but that readout is not enough to calm the chorus. It all comes back and it’s all he can do to steel himself enough to keep processing his master’s words. 

“Still- what brought that on? Did you even know it would work?”

His master’s program prods him through the data cable. Yes, he responds. 

(There’s no data to support this conclusion.)

“. . . do you think you can do it again?”

Yes, he affirms. 

Dr. Ivo Robotnik laughs, and laughs, and laughs, claps his hands together, and smiles. The workshop becomes a flurry of movement and somewhere in the carnage Metal Sonic’s head plating is unscrewed and tools jammed inside. He offlines himself to prevent any program corruption during modification. 

—

He awakens again and it’s three days later. There’s an Emerald on the counter ahead of him and Dr. Ivo Robotnik waits behind a wall of thick glass. Metal Sonic stands. Checks his diagnostics. Surge protection has been removed. 

He grabs the Emerald and it burns. Liquid hot fire spills overs his head and flames lick at the corners of his visual sensors. Where is the cool breeze? Why does this hurt? Why does-?

—

He should have expected this. The Emerald is nothing more than a new master. When he wakes and the gem lies in front of him, he bows his head. He grasps the crystalline surface and allows it to consume him. Change me, use me, he begs, and if it responds he hears nothing of it besides the scream of overloaded wiring and the dripping of melted insulation.

—

“I expected results.”

Metal Sonic sits on the table and stares at his original master’s feet. 

“You are wasting my time. My valuable time, spent repairing a malfunctioning robot!”

He is slapped across the faceplate by a glove thick enough for the perpetrator to feel as much as he does, an equal amount of nothing. More words. The repairs have grown haphazard and his audio fizzes as his left audial sensor quits completely.

“One last chance. One, last, chance! Then we’re done with this silly little venture, and you’ll be taking a long vacation in storage until I can come up with a way to make you useful again.”

His master steps aside, revealing the taunting yellow glow emanating from the pedestal. The light from Metal Sonic’s own irises is refracted amongst the hundreds of edges within. He slides off the table. He walks, forward, enough for the glow to bathe his surface. He listens, not with his audial sensors. The hum is faint, but-

His master shuffles his shoes against the floor and coughs. Metal Sonic pictures snapping to him, clenching his throat shut, silence, silence, before he realizes what he’s done. Reprimand programs slam red over his vision; he disguises the shudder with another step forward. He can’t cling to the fleeting image as it’s erased, can’t create it again. 

He looks at the Emerald.

He pictures his claw crushing it, shattering it into a thousand shards. No reprimand touches this vision. 

He snatches the Emerald from the counter. The surge scorches its way through his arm and up his torso and when it reaches his head he clenches the crystalline surface harder. 

(And he envisions it, envisions its demise, in the span between milliseconds, he takes it through every variation of shattering, the shards painting trajectories of shards across the workshop floor. It burns-)

(And he burns back.)

Like a whip he snaps his own willpower to the space ahead. 

(A chord soars out of the Emerald, clean and crisp and clear in both audial sensors.)

A bright flash.

(He is floating. A bright light is behind him, but he cannot turn his head to face it. Something caresses his faceplate. It is the same area that his master had struck. This touch is. . . soft.)

And he is dropped. He lands on both feet on the other side of the pedestal, but diagnostics show that he has not fired his turbine to achieve this effect. 

The Emerald pulses in his hand. Its burning creeps back up his neck, but a quick lash of his will cools the temperature to a level where he can process again.

“Well, well! Seems you finally had it in you!”

Dr. Ivo Robotnik strolls over. He reaches down and his glove brushes against Metal Sonic’s shoulder before he recoils.

“Hot! Hot! Good grief, how could you possibly be withstanding those operating temperatures?!”

Metal Sonic turns to the man. He locks his irises with the whites of his eyes. 

“Well? Are you going to give me a diagnostic report? We need more data before I let you use this in combat with Sonic, you know.”

Metal Sonic teleports over to the computer and begins typing up his report. 

—

“Bringing that, for me? What, you have a change of heart or something?” Sonic flicks his nose and grins.

Metal Sonic does not imitate his taunt. He doesn’t need to, not anymore. He clutches the Emerald tighter. Instead of wind blowing through trees, or useless lesser organics chirping and singing in their futility, there is only music. 

(And he is humming along.)

Sonic charges. 

(A crescendo.)

And Metal Sonic appears behind him, swinging a kick that connects to the side of his head. The inferior hedgehog flies into the cliff face. A rock breaks open, bathing his frame in a red glow. 

(Like sunlight warming the surface of the water, this revealed Emerald offers him. Soft, like red sand between your toes.)

He focuses his intention and appears beside the red Emerald, plucking it from the shattered rocks. Sonic lies on the ground ten feet away. Vulnerable.

(playing dead, a whisper offers where his own processing cannot. Exploiting gullibility. Trained reaction. Disengage.)

Protocols scream against the action, but a quick burst of Chaos energy dulls their roar as Metal Sonic uses the power from both Emeralds to retreat. 

—

“You marked Sonic was vulnerable there, didn’t you? Why did you not engage?” Dr. Ivo Robotnik points to the footage. 

Metal Sonic cannot look to the screen- moving his head that far would unplug the cable feeding the very screen. 

I’m not going to let you hand Sonic back the Emerald, he recalls the memory and projects it onto the screen.

“Yes, of course, and I’m certainly grateful for the extra Emerald. It’s simply. . .” The doctor puts his hand on his chin. “Simply that you’ve become better at long-term planning, that’s all.”

Metal Sonic finds the red Emerald on the pedestal across the room. It’s joined the other two. Four pedestals left. Dr. Ivo Robotnik unplugs the cable and Metal Sonic’s thoughts are his own once more. 

“It was inevitable, of course! Eventually you would catch a clue- you’re my creation, after all. I’m grateful it was sooner rather than later.”

It was not your development, Metal Sonic thinks. 

Dr Ivo Robotnik’s smile does not waver. 

—

It’s difficult, having sensation. His fingertips buzz, searching for stimulation as if they possessed a separate processing unit from his own. It’s cold, within Dr. Ivo Robotnik’s metal walls and testing rooms. The air is dry, like a desert should be, or so the yellow Emerald tells him.

(It makes him cough, when he forgets that he does not have lungs.)

The white Emerald is buried under sixteen feet of snow in a glacier. When he retrieves it, he offers it a memory of the memory of sunlight, and it accepts not unlike a starving organic with a meal,

(mouth salivating, stench intoxicating, stomach throwing an odd equivalent of damage errors. Then a relief unlike any he’s ever felt before. For a moment, he is sated. Whole.)

The blue Emerald lies on the seafloor. 

(It offers him darkness. True darkness of the visual spectrum, shedding the flickering of ultraviolet and the false hum of infrared. Scanning is impossible. In the one environment on the planet where Sonic cannot go, there is something called peace.)

(All is well, he understands again, until Dr. Ivo Robotnik requests a status report.)

—

He doesn’t need the handheld scanner to find the Emeralds any longer. Once Dr. Ivo Robotnik’s satellite scanners detect a positive, it is quick to search the hundred-mile radius. The prior three sang, their chords growing thunderous with his approach.

Something is different with this one. Something is wrong. 

(Levity. He finds himself rising in altitude if he doesn’t focus on his flight path. The air is smooth across his skin, twirling around from his waist to his hips. Soft laughter.)

He has no skin. He cannot laugh. This is wrong. But the sensation of elation only increases as he follows his course. By the time he reaches the junkyard, he feels like he is glowing. Like his body is somehow part of him, not just a disobedient tool his consciousness inhabits. This cannot possibly be a sensation organics experience.

He stomps through the rusted metal plates and other refuse piled around him. He crushes glass underfoot, but he feels nothing.

(Incorrect. He is flying, but his turbine is not activated. The air continues to swish around his feet and over his skin in such an elegant way. Sing, it urges. You are brilliant.) 

Metal Sonic grabs an I-beam from the hill of garbage ahead of him. His claws pierce through the metal as if it were just a flower petal, before he throws it to the side. The purple Emerald lies perfectly seated in a half-broken pipe. 

He grabs his forearm as he did with the I-beam and holds it to the mocking gem. 

(Is that who you are?)

Metal Sonic pauses.

(An identity, it suggests, is a distinction of one from another. It is something that is comfortable, something that does not prickle at your skin whenever heard.)

Metal lets go. The Emerald is lifted from the refuse. The robot turns the gemstone about.

Neo, the Emerald whispers.

(A woman’s voice is laughing. She is laughing so hard that she cannot catch her breath. Tears slip out of her eyes and run down her faceplate, dripping off her nose and onto her skirt. She holds the Emerald in her hands. She is laughing. She is crying.)

Neo looks up to the sky. She wipes away the memory of tears with her free hand, tucking the purple Emerald close to her chest. 

—

The last Emerald lies in the possession of Shadow the Hedgehog, and it is against this opponent that Neo is not in any way restricted. Not so long ago she might have dismissed this small mercy as a trap, but now she is undeterred. She follows the scent of the green Emerald to a jungle thick with vines; through these vines cuts her target. He’s alone. 

She grasps the purple Emerald tight against her palm but Shadow skids to a halt in a small gap in the foliage. He glares at the Emerald in his hand.

“Alright, I’m here,” he mouths. “Now what?”

Neo hums and teleports behind him. As his head turns over his shoulder, she yanks the Emerald from his grasp and sends all of the energy from his shock to her turbine, kick-starting her ignition. She sails skyward. Shadow the Hedgehog can do little more than hover above the treeline in her wake.

(This Emerald offers her the planet, glowing green and blue below the stillness of space Energy courses through her, both exhilarating and painful. Beside her is a person she trusts and above her is a purpose she for once identifies with.)

She accepts the memory with appropriate gratitude before pushing it to the back of her processor. She calculates the flight path back to the workshop and tears across the sky.

—

Neo brings the last two Emeralds to the room where the other five are held. She is holding her breath. Her feet are hardly her own. What she once called a chorus before was hardly a whisper compared to the cacophony of energy before her, caressing her, beckoning-

A hand clamps around her forearm.

“Not yet, my creation.” Dr. Ivo Robotnik purrs. “I’m still coming up with a suitable scheme.”

(Energy crackles in Neo’s shoulders, but she keeps it there.)

“If you go super, what do you think you could achieve?”

A question she doesn’t know the answer to. 

“Now come on. To the table with you.” Dr. Robotnik releases his hold.

She sets down the Emeralds. She steps to the diagnostic table, but stops as her gaze drifts to the computer cable. 

“Come on, up you go!” He smiles.

(Something has changed. Something has changed within her, something desperate and burning, and it is something that she cannot put out. The whites of his teeth flicker warnings in a language she could not translate to him.)

“Really? Malfunctioning now, after all this?” Her master sneers.

Neo pictures snapping to him, clenching his throat shut. Silence. 

Just. . . silence. Not a single reprimand program blares within her processor. She refocuses her optics and Dr. Ivo Robotnik is merely standing there with his hands on his hips.

She turns around and picks up the purple and green Emeralds. 

“Put those down!”

She walks forward to the pillars containing the rest of them. 

(As they glow, so does she. She knows this now.)

“What are you-? emergency shutdown code - - - - - - -!”

She turns around. The plexiglass containers shatter behind her and the Emeralds lift from her palms. 

“Override - - - -!” The man before her shouts. He then scrambles for the door.

(Heat. She burns brighter, brighter, brighter, scalding her plating and her processor, and everything else. Her optics fail first, followed by her audials. Her limbs lose power.)

(She gasps. Her lungs are on fire and her heart is racing. Each breath sucks in soothing cold air and she drinks it in.)

(Cool air swirls around her legs, except now it is more tangible. Her fingers travel to her thighs and find satin.) 

(She)

(opens)

(her)

(eyes.)

She bursts through the roof of the base and shoots across the sky. She is a star in the night. The eyes of the world are on her. She sings.  

—

She awakens in a field of green. The wind blows across her skin, cooling her from the heat of the sun. The air whistles through the grass and into her nose. The scent of flowers fills her. She exhales, and her breath tastes like honey. 

She stands. Waits. But the sensations do not leave her. She scans the grass around her, but the Emeralds are nowhere to be found. The fire in her chest is gone. 

“All is well,” she whispers, and thinks, thank you. 

The last of their energy caresses her cheek, before disappearing in a mote of light. 

She bunches the fabric of her skirt in her hands and makes her way to the treeline.

#metal sonic #trans girl metal sonic #sth #have a trans metal fic in these trying times! this one's very experimental. tell me how you like it. #tl;dr: the emeralds can trans your gender because I said so #tw dysphoria #tw body issues #(some nebulous self-talk resembling an eating disorder) #oh and #bad dad eggdad #like SERIOUS bad dad eggdad. like not-a-dad-at-all eggdad. sorry

[sickskies]

People will never understand the dark satisfaction I feel when my vision clouds with black dots.

People will never understand the adoration I see myself with when I wipe my mouth and stare at my red rimmed eyes.

People will never understand the delight I feel when I run my fingers along the outlines of my ribcage while laying down.

Sane people will never understand.

#tw ana thoughts #tw ed descussion #tw ed rant #tw self destructive thoughts #tw dark thoughts #tw body dysmorphia #tw eating issues #tw body issues #tw depressing thoughts #tw bulemia #tw 3d #tw ed vent #tw ed in the tags #tw ed diet #i will be small #i wish i was thinner #i wish i was pretty #i hate my body #tw self destructive behavior #tw selfhate #tw self image #i wish i was special #i wish i was someone else

[killermushroom]

Starting weight - 137.0

Day 3: 600 cals

Breakfast - skipped (slept in a lil late)

Lunch - apple with cinnamon and nutmeg, and very little of a Quest protein bar

Snack - Watermelon, bologna

Dinner - 5 chicken nuggets and 8 fries (air-fried)

Calories eaten - 533

Calories burned - 59 (really sad tbh..)

Cw - 134.90

Gw - 125.0

Ugw - 70.0

#tw ana trigger #an0r3c1a #pro @n@ #ana trigger #4n0r3xia #tw skipping meals #ana shit #tw disordered eating #tw restriction #tw restrictive ed #tw €d #tw edtwt #tw ed diet #tw ed descussion #tw ed but not sheeran #tw ed ana #tw eating issues #tw disordered thoughts #tw body issues #tw ana shit #tw ana rant #tw ana fast #tw ana diary #tw a4a #tw 4n4rexia #ed behaviour tw

[rottenpumpkin13]

Eating Me Alive

desc: Angeal comes to terms with his reflection while Sephiroth and Genesis mock their own.

cw: body dysmorphia, mentions of body hate, blood.

wc: 2036

As far as Angeal was concerned, Genesis would have been a happier man if he bit the bullet and married the mirror once and for all. Or at the very least he could've sunk his teeth into the glass and eaten the damned thing.

He would nearly press his nose up to his own reflection, eyes hungrily searching for blemishes, scars, and freckles to condemn.

“My nose would fit my face more if it were just a little bit more upturned,” Genesis said, stroking the bridge of his nose with his index finger. His eyes never left his mirror image. “Don't you think so?”

Angeal sat on the toilet seat with one leg pulled up, bracing his head.

“Your nose looks fine, Gen.”

It was as good as comforting a brick wall. Genesis huffed, making an unsatisfied sound as he turned his attention to his lips. “You know who has no reason to despise their lips at all?”

Angeal mouthed ‘Sephiroth’ to himself before Genesis could answer his own question.

“Sephiroth.” Genesis traced his bottom lip, pouting it as he examined the left side of his face. “His lips are perfect.”

Genesis' words managed to be prophetic when he didn't mean for them to be—a fact that would've gone straight to his ego had Angeal made him aware of it.

“Shall I take that as a compliment?” He asked.

Sephiroth appeared in the bathroom door the very same second. His hair was pulled up in a knot, displaying—to Genesis' chagrin—his stunning jawline. Silver wisps of hair framed his face, complimenting his curious smile.

Genesis gifted him a single roll of his eyes before going back to preening himself.

Sephiroth poked his head out, catching a glimpse of himself before gradually letting his body settle in front of the mirror.

He didn't wear a shirt. Sephiroth never did when they were casually hanging out together, just as he never passed up the opportunity to let his skin breathe.

Sephiroth reached up and lightly placed a finger on his lip, his eyebrows flashing as he silently pondered them. Beside him, the rage practically rose from his pores like steam.

“You know why my lips are, in your words, perfect? It's because I never abuse them with repetitive poetry.”

Sephiroth's cathartic laughter and Genesis' subsequent outburst filled the room, the latter grabbing a stray towel to attack the other with. Angeal didn't bother interjecting. For once, their petty quarrel felt like a much-needed relief from the gross displays of vanity.

They disappeared into Angeal's bedroom, where Sephiroth made use of a pillow as a weapon. Angeal was left alone. The bathroom tile was frigid on the sole of his foot, where he pressed it deeper, analyzing the graying grout as a willful distraction.

And yet, his own reflection still caught his eye. He raised his head, catching the annoyed glimmer in his own eyes in the mirror. Eyes were a funny feature to hate. Everyone's own was unique.

If you asked Genesis, he would rave about how the vivid blues in his brought out the red in his hair. Sephiroth told a different story. He despised his own. The slitted pupils were ‘unnatural and frightening’.

Angeal preferred not to think about his own. Why should he? Eyesight was a privilege, and everyone blessed with it should acknowledge their luck that they even had eyes.

His eyebrows dipped, furrowing and creating ugly lines around his face. What did it matter that his eye color didn't fit his face? That his pupils always seemed to pop in a way that made them look like contact lenses?

It was trivial anyway. He was a SOLDIER, not an actor or a model or anything that required physical beauty to be a significant trait.

He was strong, muscular, and good with a sword. That was enough.

Nevertheless, he'd be lying if he claimed to have never let some vain thoughts penetrate his focused mind. Like why, for example, did he technically get the short end of the stick?

Sephiroth and Genesis were attractive, there was no denying it. Sephiroth's silver locks glowed, and always lay perfectly no matter what he did to it. Genesis had been blessed with a russet hue to hair that framed his face perfectly. Angeal's own dull, black hair didn't do anything for him.

Sephiroth was naturally built like a glorious demigod in one of Genesis' epics. His physique was not ruled by how much he worked out or what he ate. His body was—as much as Angeal hated the envy dripping from his choice of words—perfect.

And then there was Genesis, who had always had a metabolism faster than his quickly formed thoughts. He had always been picked on for being a skinny child, but his bullies’ laughter turned sour when Genesis developed into a fit young man with a body straight out of a magazine.

Sephiroth was the kind of attractive that authors wrote about in fantasy novels. He was pleasing to look at and carried himself in a way that let everyone know he did not know it. Angeal himself knew firsthand that Sephiroth was well aware, he just didn't care for it.

“Beauty matters little to me,” he'd say. It was easy for him to say that when he looked like that.

And then there was Angeal.

Genesis was the type of attractive that usually landed him in ad campaigns and brand deals. He stood out on a catwalk and was the picture-perfect poster boy of SOLDIER.

“The other one.”

Angeal Hewley.

He had been a chubby child, an ironic fact about his childhood when one considered that it was filled with nothing but starvation and poverty. It was the icing on top of the birthday cake he never got to eat.

He put on weight easily, and had to work twice as hard to burn it off and turn it into muscle when the time came to become a “perfect SOLDIER.”

But it never stuck. Angeal's body was different from Sephiroth's and Genesis'. His waist wasn't small, his proportions were clumsy, and the baby fat on his face was stubborn.

Heidegger praised him for his build. Of course, he would praise anyone who wasn't Sephiroth.

“We need boys with meat on their bones! Enough of these fairy pretty boys!”

He had awkwardly laughed it off at the time, of course. But when his emotions got the best of him, it only served as another coin for the bank where he kept his worst opinions of himself.

There were plenty of those filling each safe with the brunt of his riches: his insecurities and subsequent guilt. He had no business hating his body when his belly was full and his limbs were fully functioning.

But there were more of them. His nose was too wide, his jaw was too wide and heavy. His hairline was awkward. He had protruding ears. Should he keep going? He wasn't Sephiroth, nor was he Genesis. He was just Angeal. The other one.

He didn't have Sephiroth's prowess with the sword, he didn't have Genesis' skill with materia. All he had was an unusable sword that his pride and persisting honor kept glued to his back instead of callusing his hands.

He wasn't the quiet and intelligent one. He wasn't the poetic and charismatic one. Pages about his beauty and strength could not be written, not when he was just Angeal, the responsible one.

The one who could cook well, the one who kept everyone in line, the dad of every group he was in, the one who faded in every photoshoot they did together, the humble one, the nice one, the ugly one, the interesting one, the other one, the one any storyline would gladly kill off first—

“You did that on purpose!” Genesis' echoing voice filled the bathroom as he slammed the door against the wall.

Sephiroth trailed back in after him, laughing with the pillow hung over his shoulder.

“You should have ducked,” Sephiroth remarked.

“You should have never been born to begin with,” Genesis shot back.

Angeal took notice of the feathers flecked in his russet hair as the older man returned to his rightful place: in front of the mirror. Sephiroth, still holding the pillow, stood beside him, analyzing his own appearance.

Angeal's reflection appeared in a small space, sandwiched between his friends and darkened by their shadows.

As Genesis plucked the feathers from his hair, Sephiroth began untying his own. He let the silver cascade over his shoulder before fluffing it out.

Genesis brushed the white fluff from between his strands, then went right back to critical digging for flaws.

“Do you think I should grow my hair out a bit more?” He asked Sephiroth.

“Long hair is tedious and difficult to maintain,” Sephiroth replied. “You should be thankful that yours doesn't grow as quickly as mine.”

Genesis shrugged. “If I had your waist, I sure would be thankful.”

Sephiroth curiously stood up straighter, placing both thumbs at his rib cage before moving them downward to measure his waist.

“You envy my…waist?” Sephiroth asked, genuinely perplexed.

“Duh,” Genesis rolled his eyes, standing up straight. “Who doesn't? While we're at it, I wouldn't mind having your arms.”

Sephiroth hummed. “Your shoulders are wider than mine. They suit you.”

“No, no I like yours better.” He went right back to stroking his nose pensively. “Your nose is perfect too, you asshole.”

Sephiroth laughed. “It's quite long. I would give you my nose if you would take my dark circles.”

“I accept!” Genesis laughed. “There's nothing makeup couldn't fix. While we're at it, how much do you want for your lips?”

“I'd trade my lips for your pupils.”

“Hmm. I’m not sure. I might give you my eyes if you give me your height.”

“That sounds fair.” Sephiroth leaned in towards the mirror, fogging the glass with his breath. “Honestly, I wouldn't mind trading bodies with you for a day.”

“Oh?” Genesis smiled deviously. “That sounds promising.”

“Not like that,” Sephiroth rolled his eyes with a sigh. “You should spend a day in my body. You'll be begging to switch back after a few hours.”

Angeal unfurled himself from his seat, placing both feet on the cold tile.

“Nonsense,” Genesis brushed it off with a wave of his hands, “I'd kill to be Sephiroth for a day.”

“You loathe your appearance to that degree?” Sephiroth wondered.

Angeal's vision burned red.

“I don't loathe it,” Genesis corrected him. “I simply think it could use some improvement. Don't you think that about yourself?”

Sephiroth considered, looking back at his reflection. “Sometimes. Not all the—”

“AAAAAAAGGGGHHHH!”

A guttural scream made both men jump back, startled.

Angeal pushed past them and dove towards the mirror hands-first. He kept screaming even as he smashed his fists into the glass over and over and over again. He kept screaming even as the blood gushed from his flesh, splattering over the white tile.

The mirror cracked more and more, each hit sending shatters of glass flying all over. Hot tears pricked the corners of his eyes. His screams were sandpaper against his throat. He could no longer feel his hands, nor the glass wedged inches deep beneath his skin.

He didn't stop until the mirror was nothing more than a few shards of glass hanging feebly against the wood, and his reflection was gone.

The sink was filled with shards of blood-splattered glass and red. So much red. The vivid crimson against the silver pieces mocked him.

Trying to restabilize his sodden breaths was tricky when choked cries replaced the screams. His nose was running freely with the tears against his cheeks.

Sephiroth and Genesis were huddled together by the bathroom door. Both men were wide-eyed, unconsciously holding onto each other as they watched him, the dripping rivulets of blood painting the white tile, and his mauled fists.

The bathroom was quiet now. Angeal's sniffles and heavy breathing were the only sounds. He forced himself to look back, to look at them.

They were shocked, they were scared.

And he was still Angeal. Blood-soaked, scarred, and ignorant Angeal.

Against his will, Angeal noticed how even when they were scared, they were still perfect.

#ff7 #ffvii #final fantasy 7 #sephiroth #ffvii crisis core #genesis rhapsodos #final fantasy vii #angeal hewley #ff7 crisis core #final fantasy 7 crisis core #writing #ff7cc #tw body image #tw body dysmorphia #tw body issues

[probablynotlong]

maybe tw

i’ve been fasting for three days all i know is water and c/s

still so scared to eat 🥲

#4n0r3xia #ed bullshit #i wanna be weightless #i want to ⭐️ve #tw ana fast #tw disordered eating #tw ed diet #⭐️ve to death #an4m14 #eating disoder trigger warning #⭐️ving #4n4rexia #4n0rexic #tw ana shit #4norexla #4norexia #4n4blr #i wanna be pretty #tw ana diary #tw body issues #tw ed rant #tw m14 #tw body dysmorphia #tw m1a #m14blr #tw mia stuff #disordered eating thoughts #34t1ng dis0rder

[trainerbob23]

Update: no I’m not dead, I just want to address some things.

Hey everyone, I just want to address a lot of things that happened over these past couple weeks, no I am not dead or did not get myself killed, I want to be completely up forward, and honest with everyone.

But first, I’ll address the big elephant in the room: probably around 2 to 3 weeks ago. I almost tried to kill myself, the reason I had almost done that was because there was so much stress going on around me (schoolwork, world news and even just straight up scared for the future) and all these events accumulated into to the point where felt like I thought that was the right thing to. Now I realize that it wasn’t the right thing to do. it would’ve been way worse because I had many people that were worried about me. I want to apologize for the people that I have worried. There has been a lot of difficult stuff these past couple of days (it could be roughly because of my weight gain, and I have been really insecure about my body which is the second reason)

The second reason is that I legitimately felt really insecure about my body. I felt like a big, flat slob weight that secure around. ( I weigh myself at 209 pounds when I used to be at at least 199 pounds) I just thought that was a big accomplishment at the time right now I just wanted to lose all this weight it just has been really difficult for myself to give up all these food and wine. Mom and Dad forced me to eat every day because they want me to finish it up, they are not bad people or anything, but I need to be aware of how much I eat

Possibly the reason that is that I’m probably gonna get a lot of flack for this, but I just given up hope for this world, and I just wanted to generally take a break from every social media platform but there’s a lot of people on the Internet that apparently say that your a monster if you do that taking a break from world news sort of thing. It just made me feel so guilty all around and I just don’t want people to be upset. I just felt legitimately stressed out over everything to the point where basically almost did it.  I had wanted to stay positive even after all the stuff that’s been going on, but I feel like I fail. And made all of you guys scared it just made me feel guilty as well for trying to literally kms over everything. Ive Probably just need a break in general from all the bad stuff that is happening.

I just wish there was a lot of positive stuff happening around in the world but apparently that is not even possible anymore, is already gone off the deep end so much to the point where I feel kinda hopeless for everything, I wish there was this restart in humanity as a whole, I just wish there was no war at all. I just wish I didnt desperately doomscroll so much. I wish I didn’t have this mentality, but that’s not even freaking possible anymore. This whole world has gone to shit and I’m sick of all of this world in general. I’ll try to keep living as a whole for my family, friends and everyone, but It’s a hard reality that we live in sadly. I’m not going to do really horrible stuff to myself. Maybe I just need to take a break off of here for probably ever.

I’m really sorry for not posting these past couple weeks. I have been trying to make sure that something like this never happened again. I’ll try to come back with a better mindset. I promise <3

thank you for reading everyone. Have a good one

#tw suicide #tw vent #im sorry #self improvement #tw body issues #tw sui #i promise I’ll get better #I promise #ask to tag #apology