Eddie Munson X Henderson Sister!Reader

You opened Doe's kiln, right?

𝐇𝐨𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐈'𝐥𝐥 𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐝 [𝐀 𝐆𝐥𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐬𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐔𝐬]

Summary: Years after Hawkins was saved, Nancy and Steve’s wedding draws everyone back together and with it, you are reminded of the love you lost at the price of fame. [Eddie Munson x Fem!Reader; WC: 17.4k] Warnings: language, exes to lovers, mutual pining/yearning, frightened lil beans in love, heavy angst.

A/N: I worked on this for weeks. I am very nervous to post it, and I hope you enjoy it (excuse any errors, it's time consuming loves).

What is it like to be loved?

There was something in that room that made you question it. The palpable, sudden feeling that permeated around it like a fog; a special dance that so many would be able to feel, yet it seemingly evaded you.

Her dress was beautiful. An ivory lace with sleeves that covered her soft skin. The brown of her hair so vibrant against the spring flowers she held as the chapel’s old stones warmed with the feeling reverberated with the words of the priest.

He was tall and stoic; filled with a slight fear that his true colors would show in his dark suit and dotted tie. He was joyous; he was a radiant boy filling his father’s suit and marrying the girl of his dreams.

Nancy and Steve.

For a moment, while the priest held everyone’s attention in a moment of prayer, it was quiet enough to imagine love physically filled the space before you. Head lightly dipped, the bouquet in your hand distracting you from the eyes of every person in the chapel.

A silence was asked for and responded to with grace. The silence of baseless words washing over the room in a wave of down-turned heads and folded hands. However quiet, however peaceful the room had become, that floating feeling hung from the rafters. You felt your heart sink. That heaviness of sorrow that plagued beautiful moments from a pain buried in your bones that you weren’t even sure really existed. Love. A tragic thing.

All you could ask was:

What is it liked to be loved?

Maybe it was the wedding that made you teary-eyed and soft hearted. You weren’t a hopeless romantic. You weren’t searching constantly for Mr. Right because he didn’t exist. They had shown you that, he had shown you that. Not some Marilyn Monroe waiting for the next man to sweep you off your feet and carry you into a raging bloody sunset in Los Angeles. No. The cards were dealt with precision and meaning; each turned over when the time allowed and burned when the bells tolled.

Love brewed and bubbled; love ached and pained; love existed and diminished; love stood in front of you screaming to break free but the cries fell silent—dead on the cold, stone floor.

Steve’s eyes called to Nancy like a ship lost at sea. The tears that brimmed at the corners whispered to fall after years of trauma and resolution. But they were relieved and elated and somehow, Nancy returned the sentiments with eyes elated. And it hurt to see your closest friends happy when you couldn’t be.

‘And from this day forward they would walk hand and hand into everything that You have destined them to be.’

The words echoed and echoed. The priest as happy to say them as Ted and Karen Wheeler nodded as if it were true from the pews. Steve’s parents had actually shown up too, along with hundreds of other people. Friends, coworkers, and the guests each of them brought.

‘We give our hearts and beings to You now in adoration.’

People like you didn’t give their hearts willingly. Not like Robin, not like Nancy. You weren’t sure about Max or Eleven, but perhaps they gave theirs willingly enough too as they stood beside you up on the alter. And you wanted that. You wanted to give it willingly. As their heads hung and their eyes diverted from above, there was a calling. Probably not from some higher God you weren’t sure even existed, but something—a gut feeling. One that simmered and bristled against negativity and anxiety; the same one that painfully squeezed that arduous organ in your chest. That feeling told you not to bow your head. It told you not to close your eyes and whatever it did, it made you shift your head in the slightest.

The groomsmen were just across the way beside Steve. Dustin helmed them, walking you down the aisle and reminding you that as they embraced adulthood, you were also getting older. Over one age milestone of established adulthood and half of the kids you babysat as a teenager were closer to marriage than you.

Angled perfectly with your shoulder—bare from the design of your green gown. The shape of your nose and chin and the style of your hair falling sleekly into a perfectly haloed outline as though a magician had cast their greatest spell. And when it turned just enough, where the platform was illuminated by the rays of the sun, one other head remained as perfectly crafted as yours, looking back as though the universe said: here it is.

This is what it feels like. 

Those butterflies? Love. The heart bursting panic that set off inside you? Love. The painful realization that you could have it and you could nurture it with passion? Love.

It existed. 

And it did so in the cruelest of forms. 

Because the sheen of your eyes from the beautiful wedding and the widely spoken words of the priest meant more when staring back at the one thing you had always wanted. It was one feeling, one person, and that’s what you swore you couldn’t have.

He had chosen that for you. Six years ago in a tiny apartment on the west side of Chicago, he decided his career was more important.

He was him. He was a brilliant, foul-mouthed metal rock star with impeccable hair and sense of style that made your heart leap for quiet bursts of love. He was complicated and corny and filled with a truth you hadn’t been able to recognize because everyone else clouded life. What life could be and what it could hold.

Eddie Munson was a rock star. Eddie Munson was one of the most famous musicians in the world. Eddie Munson was a friend, a hero, and Eddie Munson was the man who broke your heart and it could never heal itself.

And yet love remained deep down.

It’s regretful nature resurfacing because love was tangible in the chapel in Nantucket.

It was love. It existed. It was real. It was palpable in that room, in his eyes, against the prayer, across the aisle and in all of the pews.

‘And we welcome Your Holy Spirit amongst us. Amen.’

And the chorus filled the room. The pews creaked and heads returned upright. You lost the sight as Steve and the others lifted their heads, but the feeling remained. It sunk to the pit of your stomach where the realization remained.

“Hey,” a hushed whisper sounded near your right ear as your body jolted minutely from the call. Robin’s head tried to follow your direction but couldn’t find the destination. There were hundreds of people in that room. But she should have known. She should have known. 

“Everything alright?”

Her concern was evident. Had you been that rigid the entire time? Was the look of love one of fear? Were the tears in your eyes truly that clear?

“I’m fine, Rob. Really.”

It hadn’t convinced her but you returned your attention to the ceremony instead. Robin waited, glancing over your shoulder again and again to try to find her answer. The sentiment of conflict appearing much faster in times of clear disruption than she remembered. The feeling of the world tilting on its axis for something you couldn’t control.

Her eyes looked for the answer. Searching the crowd with an unfathomable hardened gaze until it landed back to the groomsmen and she felt everything click back into place. You had reassured Nancy and Robin that everything was fine; that you were friends. That there was no animosity nor tension remaining over the years but it had. They just wanted to believe the best, yet all the signs were there. 

The way you stood so still; scared of yourself as emotions took their hold.

Six years of separation meant nothing. Its degrees scorching the earth every moment not together, bound by the universe yet torn apart by wants, not needs.

They had all believed you. They believed Eddie’s lies that he had moved on—the woman looking straight out of a Vanity Fair magazine in the fifth row the one he brought to prove such a tale.

No.

They had all been wrong.

The two of you had imploded the meaning of love because if it couldn’t exist between the two of you, it couldn’t exist at all.

Steve and Nancy wed on a Saturday in March. 

The morning had greeted everyone with golden rays. Sunlight streaming in from the curtains of the Wauwinet’s rooms waking its patron’s with a sprinkle of joy. Early morning glow; warm and intoxicating on a day such as that. 

You couldn’t see the beach from where you laid; the white comforter covering your shoulders high, eyes peeking out from the space between the blankets and your pillow. High above on the second floor, the sky reflected its yellow and pink hues until they faded to blue. Not a cloud in the sky. 

The two days you had spent on the tiny island thus far had been a reflection of that sunrise. An excitable shimmer of beauty and grace only to fade into a familiar blue–a melancholy gloom that you hadn’t expected to feel. You stepped off the plane only to be greeted with every feeling that ran in its opposite direction; Robin and Nancy clung to you with joy, Steve and the boys, who you should probably call young men now, hugged you tightly. 

And then a cloud formed. 

The cloud was ugly, gray, and filled with matter you had buried deep. Years of pretending everything in your life was going smoothly–that you were exactly where you wanted to be–lingering above you like a joke. Laughing, jesting you with the past as happiness was rubbed into a wound like salt. 

He had a smile plastered onto his face the first time you saw him that weekend–the night before the ‘I do’s.’ He was sitting in the wine cellar with Steve, reminiscing about the past as the future was gently placed on Nancy’s finger; sparkling against the shine of the hotel’s lighting as night had long fallen on a Friday evening. 

As the thoughts lingered in your mind as the sun began to rise, it hadn’t been seeing Eddie for the first time in years that had thrown your world off its axis. The woman, clad in the most casual New England fashions, who sat beside him with her arm resting on his, did. 

A petty, jealous feeling at the sight rose within you rapidly. 

You felt there was no right for you to feel that way. 

Six years. Six years had left an open season for both he and you to find new people to love, hate, and screw, but the idea that there was a reality that existed where Eddie no longer loved you was jarring. 

The fear of it became engrained in your bones. Tattooed onto skin that was untouched and permanently stained with words that hurt and stung and ultimately resulted in the reason you had come to that wedding alone.  

Eddie had scarred you–in a beautifully tragic way that you’d never be the person you were at seventeen when he asked you to go see Temple of Doom at a theater two towns over. It was a shame you’d always tie him to that film… because you really fucking liked the movie but all you could think about was how Indy left Marion in the dust and hell, you felt like Marion sometimes. 

He just sat there. A gorgeous woman on his arm and smiling at Steve as though not a day had gone by. He looked older, more sure of himself, and dare you think it, had a bit more style than he did before. Nice, in a ‘formal but not too formal’ kind of way. 

They were all sipping on some hundred-dollar wine. He could afford it now. Red-soled shoes, a jacket with no fringe, and a bottle of wine that cost as much as your monthly rent. 

Nancy had been perched on a stool at the high-top beside Steve. The two had been going over the rehearsal that Eddie conveniently missed as well as the dinner from hours before. From what Robin had divulged, he had a show in Boston and would make his way out to Nantucket after it was over. 

You didn’t think Nancy ringing your suite for drinks would mean he’d be there too. 

The thunder from the cloud above you rumbled when Nancy caught your eye in the entryway. 

Everything, from the clothes you wore to the company of the room, felt out of place. Like you were looking from the outside and into a world that was completely yours but never one you recalled. The people in it–sparingly familiar but strangers all the same. 

Nancy had taken a sip of her wine, swallowing quickly as she perked up and waved at you. The attention drawing each eye away from Steve and to you, unwelcome and afraid of familiarity. Two looked happy, one looked curious, and the other looked like the whole world had stopped. 

A moment in time paused. No calm waiters tending to guests, no heads turning toward him because he was identifiable; it was blank. Two worlds gone completely still because for the first time in six years, you and Eddie had finally converged to one place. 

Some expensive hotel on Nantucket Island for a wedding between two people you both held near and dear to your hearts. It took nothing to imagine that if things had gone right, perhaps it would not be Steve and Nancy meeting at the alter tomorrow afternoon. 

In the stillness, a reunion is not bound by the trivial “it’s good to see you” or “its been too long.” A mind playing funny tricks and sending you back to years before–the way his entire person disappeared beyond the bedroom door only to be followed by the slamming of the front one. An apology sputtered at the end of a fight that had been brewing for weeks. 

The last time you saw Eddie Munson he had come home from a tour with no direction but up. Up to a new place, to a new life, and one that kept the past behind. Questions of love, home, and loyalty tested two people who were holding onto a fine thread before it snapped. 

Now, its lingering shreds brushed together with an easterly wind. 

You don’t know what he was thinking when the words stopped fumbling from his lips. 

“Hey!” Steve cheered happily from his spot as Eddie went quiet. “Come on, join us!” 

You felt like a fool standing there idle. Feet glued to the floor, eyes trained on Eddie a moment too long because as soon as the fifth second passed, the woman by his side asked: 

“Who’s that?” 

Steve said your name, waving at you the same way Nancy had, “She’s Ed–“ 

“My Maid of Honor!” Nancy cut in, giving the woman a smile in reassurance that it was the description most accurate to who you were. Nancy didn’t know why she cut Steve off like that; the side-eyed glance she received from him as Eddie stared back at you should have told her everything. 

Not friend, not best friend, not former classmate, but Eddie’s ex-girlfriend. What a label to have. 

Your planted feet begged you to move. The awkwardness of standing still for lingering seconds in time drawing eye after eye, raising questions as to whether or not you were having a medical emergency or just plain stupid. Your feet took those commands and walked, before your mind could even process that the night had continued to move forward without being truly ready to interact. 

“I told you she’d join us,” Nancy hit Steve’s shoulder lightly with the back of her hand, “Can’t spend the last few hours of us together as an unmarried couple without those who brought us back together.” 

Steve gave her a smile, hand squeezing her kneecap under the table because in reality, there wasn’t an ounce of a lie there. Not that any regular person would understand, but Steve had always dreamed of this moment: the night before he went to sleep one last time as an unmarried man, sipping chilled wine in an expensive hotel with his bride-to-be, his closest friends, and the reason he and Nance were at this stage. 

One piece of that puzzle had gone mute, silent as though they never heard him talk. As you approached the high top that was tucked into a corner by the windows that looked out to the Atlantic Ocean, Eddie couldn’t form words. He had prepared himself for this moment for years and yet his mind had gone blank. Emotions barren from his chest like he was an empty, cavernous being and not a person. He felt nothing–like the world had been obliterated and there was only him in space; alone and helpless to save his sanity. 

And if it hadn’t been so long since he last laid eyes on you, perhaps he could have recognized the same emotions bleeding out of you. That the wound had never truly closed and there was much unsaid floating around the two of you that the air was hard to breathe. 

But against it all, it was you who offered the closed smile and a small: 

“Hi.”

Eddie’s relief that the first words weren’t “fuck you,” or “I still hate you.” Just a simple “hi” that replayed in his mind as the seconds transpired and the ball had fallen into his court. 

But those words were hard for you to even muster. 

“It’s good to see you,” he settled on, not leaving his chair to wrap his arms around you or whisk you away to hear how your life has been since he left. He sat there, as still as you had in the entryway, and let you take the spot beside Nancy because it was the furthest away from his own that you could take. 

Eddie had completely forgotten about the woman to his right. 

No one had thought anything of the interaction. In two minds, it played out differently because the truth existed somewhere between two people unwilling to face it. For people like Nancy and Steve, there had been one story that had been told yet no one questioned the absence of the other on specific holidays, birthdays, or more. 

“We broke up,” that was what you had told Nancy and he had told Steve. Word for word, the same story. “Distance was getting too hard and we thought we’d take a break. It’s better this way and we’re still friends–we we’re friends before everything so…” 

For every truth, there were two lies. 

Nancy flagged down the waiter, tapping on her glass and holding up two fingers. You shifted in your seat as one leg crossed over the other and glanced at the woman to Eddie’s right. 

She wasn’t familiar at all. Still hanging on Eddie’s arm and fiddling with the cuff of his jacket. In all of your years together, you had never seen Eddie wear a dinner jacket. 

And against your feelings, you extended your hand over the table toward her. Eddie didn’t know what to think of that. You introduced yourself. 

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” he knew the voice. It was the kind someone would use on the telephone if they were talking to a co-worker or boss, not a friend. 

“Veronica,” she lifted her hand from Eddie’s arm and graciously shook yours over the wine glasses; a tiny set of flickering candles beside a small relish tray beneath it. “I hear you’re the Maid of Honor?” 

“As much as one can be,” you told her, eyes looking over her face and form. Eddie could see it now that you were comparing yourself to her, an unfortunate circumstance of choice. “The other bridesmaids have helped a bit with planning and what not… it’s not easy work,” you scoffed, tipping your head at Nancy and the bride shook her head with a grin. 

“I promise I’m not one of those crazy brides,” Nancy jokingly defended herself to Veronica who admired the friendship before her. She knew you all of two seconds and could see how comfortable the two of you were. 

“Yeah, sure…” you trailed off as the waiter returned with two new glasses of wine. You thanked him and took a long, needed sip as the white wine’s bubbles barely had time to settle. 

Steve cleared his throat as you drank, glancing at Eddie before turning to you. “We were just catching him up on what went down at the rehearsal. Told ‘em that Robin tripped down the aisle so he’s gotta hold onto her tightly.” 

You snickered at the memory. Robin Buckley couldn’t walk in heels even if she tried to. Nodding your head, you didn’t make eye contact with Eddie to reiterate the sentiment. 

“She’ll topple over if you don’t.” 

“Will do,” Eddie replied quietly, differently than he normally would have and Veronica put her hand on his arm again, rubbing it up and down as if she knew. For once, he just wished she would stop. 

“We’re going to–“ Steve’s voice drowned itself out as he rattled on about the plans of tomorrows festivities. 

Every now and again when you’d catch a word of Steve’s, you couldn’t help but look at Eddie. Those eyes still telling of his emotions rather than the words he spoke; wide and pupils blown from both the environment and alcohol. 

You weren’t shameless about it when he caught you looking. He couldn’t help it either; it was as though he was drawn to a magnet that kept pulling him in. Just as you had observed him, everything was familiar yet strangely different. The way you held yourself, the clothes you wore, makeup and hair just enough having changed to make him notice that he didn’t know you now as he had then. 

However, he still felt that hand on his jacket. 

Yet he was looking at you. And he felt like a coward for thinking he’d rather have you cling to him like that then her. She, Veronica, didn’t deserve to have a man think that of her. 

“Are you still in Chicago?” He blurted out over Steve’s talking. Like walking in a path of quicksand, Eddie did not want to drown before his life truly began. Steve stopped and glanced at Eddie as though his friend had a stroke. 

“Mhm,” you murmured over the lip of the glass Nancy had secured for you. “Still in California?” 

“Yeah, near Bell Canyon.” 

“Is that…” Of course you wouldn’t have known exactly where that was. It wasn’t like you had a map inside of your brain or tracked his every movement. Based on the question on whether or not he still lived in California, he wondered if you read anything about him at all. 

“It’s near Los Angeles… like suburbs of it.” 

“Ah, alright,” you met his eyes briefly before taking another long sip of your wine. He could see the way you practically folded in on yourself; anxiety and fears bubbling within you the same way they used to. 

“And you still live…” he trailed off in a veiled hope that the implication went unspoken. ‘At the apartment, our apartment.’

“No,” you shook your head, “I moved a few years ago… have a nice view of the lake,” the thought of it brought a small smile to your face. It was nice. It was nearly perfect. 

“No more of the ‘L’ ruining your sleep?” 

He saw the hint of smile play on your lips. 

“It’s pretty quiet now,” for a multitude of reasons he could think of. 

“That’s good,” Eddie nodded, glancing at Steve and Nancy who provided no support to make the situation any less awkward. 

“So,” Veronica began with a perky voice for eleven-thirty at night, “Eddie said you all went to high school together?” 

The model wore these big, curious eyes. She was kind, in a doxy kind of way but her sentiment’s with her words transcended through each of you. This woman, a date, hadn’t been a steady, familiar thing to Eddie. Anyone who knew him as close as a formal, long-term partner did, would have known about the crew from Hawkins. 

“Yeah,” Steve answered as a savior, “But we weren’t all friends then… that took some time. We were all pretty different.” 

Nancy hit his arm playfully, giving a scowl as Steve quirked his eyes at Eddie. The latter had simply taken the labels he was given and ran with them–a transformative play for the man with a lengthy petty crimes list and could out smoke Pablo Escobar. 

“It doesn’t matter what we were like! We’re all friends now and those three–“ Nancy gestured her hand over Steve, Eddie, and yourself, “were in the same class.” 

“Oh!” She beamed. “How cool! I don’t really talk to anyone from my class so it’s nice to see it works for some people.” 

Everyone just gave her tight smiles. Having friends from childhood didn’t make you less of a person. It meant stronger connections and the fact that no one could say why you were all bonded so closely made things more difficult. 

“And the rest of your friends?” Veronica turned her face toward Eddie who shrugged. 

“In their rooms, I’m guessing. I think we got here a little late,” he chuckled. 

“They know you had a commitment,” Nancy reassured him. “Besides, Dustin and the others will be just as thrilled to see you in the morning.” 

“Yeah,” Steve agreed. “After the bachelor party, I didn’t think half of us would even make it here so it’ll be a nice surprise.” 

Thank God for Steve and his stupid jokes. It broke some tension, a smile actually cracking Eddie’s face again and one that reached his eyes. The brown, doe-eyed ones that Robin once said made her sad were recalling that party like it was the funniest thing he had ever experienced. 

‘It probably was’, you thought, ‘Steve Harrington always knew how to party.’ 

“So,” Veronica interjected, pointing a finger between you and Nancy, “the bachelorette party wasn’t anything to write home about?” Quick judgement.

“We went wine tasting in the Valley,” Nancy’s eyes lit up at the memory, “and then we went hiking… which in retrospect wasn’t something any of us liked.” 

It was the end of summer when everyone could get together and the heat ate at each of you as the sun rose higher, the drinks flowed more, and the guides took in their amusement of each woman. 

“Went to some museums, ate too much food…” you said additionally. 

“El learned she was allergic to pears and Max got stung by a bee,” Nancy interjected, “and our heroes Lucas and Mike came to save the day when we got stranded in the middle of lake because the engine died on the boat we rented.” 

“I think we’ll stick to spa days and cooking classes next time,” you picked up your glass, a side-eye to Nancy as she quickly agreed. Veronica perked up, still clutching Eddie’s arm. 

“Who’s getting married next? You?” 

She meant nothing by it. Her eyes were friendly and voice high pitched, interested in the conversation to just be a part of something more than a two-person bubble. You choked on the wine, the question startled you because it hadn’t been something you thought of in a long time. 

You put the glass down as your hand went to your mouth, wiping it dry and you, unintentionally, looked from her to Eddie. Steve noticed, Nancy didn’t. 

“No!” You replied a bit too loudly. “Sorry,” shaking the embarrassment from you, “I just–no. Not me. I would put money on Dustin and Suzie once they’re done at MIT… He’s loved her since he was in middle school.” 

She smiled at the idea of everlasting young love. “That’s cute! Sometimes, if you know, you know, right?” And she squeezed Eddie’s arm the same way her hand squeezed your heart at the sight. 

Eddie dropped his arm into his lap after her grip loosened. Her hand fell onto the table and whether she realized it or not, the rejection she felt showed on her face. 

“How did you two meet?” Nancy picked an olive with a toothpick from the small dish on the table. Veronica peered at Eddie to answer but he wasn’t going to. 

“At an event for our agency a couple…three? months back.” 

Three months.

“Cool,” Steve mumbled as he followed Nancy’s lead and took one of the pickles from the tray. “So what are you? An agent? Model...?” 

“I model for magazines, yeah,” she nodded and focused her hands at the base of her wine glass. You watched Veronica tap her white nails on the table cloth before bringing them back to the foot. “Sometimes do commercials or videos and stuff.”

Steve sat back in his chair; a thought pondered in his mind as he watched your eyes divert from the table and out the window to your left. It was dark, you couldn’t see anything beyond ten feet. The arm that had been taken off the table now sat at Eddie’s side with his hand in his lap. He had taken his thumb and twisted at the ring that rested on his ring finger–the one with a dark stone he had worn since forever. 

The groom reflected back to his bachelor party, three weeks ago, and how Eddie made no mention of Veronica but very drunkenly admitted something he didn’t want to see the light of day. 

Buried; six feet deep with the memories he had locked away in Pandora’s box. There was key to unlock them, let them fly away and spread like stars in the sky but it was booze and a little bit of weed that truly let them sing. 

Steve wasn’t sure if Eddie realized what he had told him that night. 

The way he was twisting his rings made him think that if he didn’t, Eddie was at least thinking the same thing now. 

“You know,” Steve crossed his arms as he leaned back, glancing at Veronica first before allowing his eyes to wander to you, then Eddie. “If you asked me a few years ago if I thought that Eddie, Eddie Munson, would be dating a supermodel… I would have laughed.” 

Veronica chuckled, a light blush forming on the balls of her cheeks as Eddie shook his head. It was Steve’s tone that made you turn to him. 

“Not really your type, dude,” Steve said and the woman’s face went flat. The chuckle cease and Nancy forgot how to breathe for a second. Maybe Steve had too much to drink, maybe he was done for the night, and if she whisked him away now, he wouldn’t be hung over for the wedding. 

“Come on, man…” Eddie shifted his head to the side, glaring at Steve to knock-it-off before things crossed a line he wasn’t prepared for. Eddie thought himself a jackass sometimes but he never wanted others to feel uncomfortable. 

“No offense, Veronica,” Steve held out his hand as if saying ‘I don’t mean anything by it.’ “It’s just…” He clicked his tongue, “you want the best for your friends, right? And for the last decade or more I’ve never seen you fawn over the looks of a model.” 

“Steve,” you interjected, providing the same look Eddie had given him because he was trying to open that box. “Stop being an asshole.” 

You turned to Veronica, “he’s just a little drunk, that’s all.” Nancy supported it with a smile and put her hand on Steve’s shoulder. 

Steve laughed at your words like it was the funniest thing he had ever heard. “That’s kind of rich coming from you.” 

“I think we should–“ Nancy began but Steve leaned forward on his elbows. 

“You like Lord of the Rings, Veronica? Or ever go to a thrift store and absolutely wreck the clothes you bought? Play D and D?” She looked confused so Steve stopped, “Dungeons and Dragons? Like the game? No? How about drugs? Do you do those?” 

“Steve! Fuck man…” Eddie hit Steve’s shoulder, “I think we’re a little past a buzz, huh?” 

“Tell me, Eddie,” Steve took the whack to his shoulder in stride, “You’re not thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?” 

“I don’t know what you’re thinkin’ about.” 

“Okay,” Steve drug the ‘a’ out of the word, “fine!” He looked to you, “are you thinking what I’m thinking then? And when I said it’s funny, I meant in you defending her when–“ 

“Jesus Christ, Steve!” Eddie said loudly, “would you just shut the fuck up for once! I was so worried about us getting into it,” he threw a hand up and motioned between the two of you, “but you took that and ran right the fuck away with it!” 

As Eddie argued with Steve, you turned to Nancy. 

“I think you better take him to his room,” you saw how mortified she was, “or I can call up Lucas and Dustin to come get him too?” 

“I’ve got him,” she took your hand and held it tightly. “He’s just up-“ 

“—OH!” Steve’s voice cut through hers, “like you’re not giving ‘fuck me eyes’ to each other! Goddammit! It’s like living with divorced parents! No wonder you switch off holidays!” Steve pointed at you, “was that your idea? I bet it was.”

“Wait,” Veronica cut in after Steve’s ‘divorced parents’ comment, “did you two date?” her eyes flicking between Eddie and yourself. Her question went unanswered as Steve continued his tirade. 

“And Dustin reassured me there wouldn’t be an issue!” 

“There wasn’t an issue until you brought it up!” Eddie said pointedly. You downed the rest of your wine in one gulp and Nancy hopped off her chair as people started to go quiet at the surrounding tables. 

“Please!” Steve lamented, “you got fuckin’ plastered in Miami and told me and the boys that you wished it was you gettin’ married not me!” 

“When the hell did I say that?” Eddie furrowed his brows, voice still loud and defensive. Nancy shrugged on her cardigan that was on the back of her chair, Veronica looked befuddled, and you felt like you blanched. Even if they couldn’t see it, you felt it. 

“At the shitty strip club!” Not something he should have shouted in a place like this. “You got all weird and drank yourself to pieces because, and I quote,” Steve said crazed, “the wedding makes you fucking sad and you didn’t know how to handle it.” 

“Oh fuck you, man,” Eddie soured, rolling his eyes at Steve as Nancy grabbed his arm gently.

“Steve, come on,” she coaxed him, “we better get going.” 

“If you want to convince people you don’t still love each other,” Steve chided, “then maybe stop acting like the world will fall apart the moment you walk into a room.” 

“Wait,” Veronica added again, shaking her head in misunderstanding, “still love each other? When did this happen?” 

“We don’t love each other,” Eddie answered for both of you without a second to spare. “And it won’t fall apart! Look! We’re here now!” He motioned his hand between the two of you across the table again but didn’t look at the way you listened to every word like you had when you fought in the kitchen that horrible evening.

“Yeah,” Steve nodded as if he didn’t believe Eddie in the slightest, “Swear on Dustin? On your… shit… I don’t know, guitar!? Say that to her face and tell her like you didn’t just tell me you make a fucking mistake years ago.” 

Mistake. 

There were two paths of a mistake. 

One, where his choice to follow his career without you was a mistake because it wasn’t as it seemed or it wasn’t complete without you; or two, that being with you entirely was a mistake because it clouded his wants for his future. 

Eddie sighed, head bowing as he ran a hand over his face and through his hair before coming up again. 

“Do you really want this to be how you remember the night before you get married?” Eddie asked Steve as the groom sat there with his bride clutching his arm in a pleading motion to exit the wine cellar. 

“Do you want this to be how you remember the day you chickened out on being a man for once?” 

Steve knew it cut deep. The wound open and bleeding for all to see as Eddie’s face scoured into the in-between of pissed off and irate. 

“Go, Steve,” Eddie said flatly, “Big day tomorrow. Don’t want to be late.” 

Nancy gave you a supportive, closed lip smile as Steve finally got off his chair and walked to the door. She let him leave first. 

“I’m sorry about him…” She laughed with embarrassment, “He’s just overwhelmed with everything.” And Nancy wasn’t telling you or Eddie that, but Veronica. 

“It’s alright,” she told her kindly in reply, “wedding’s aren’t wedding’s without a little drama, right?” 

For that, Nancy was grateful. She looked between you and Eddie–still separated by the table yet the string still bristled. 

“Be in the bridal suite by nine, okay?” She told you, “and I think the guys are getting ready at like ten so, don’t sleep in.” 

“Got it,” from Eddie and a “yeah, okay,” from you. 

“Sorry again,” Nancy apologized, leaving to go scold Steve as the table now sat quiet and awkward. 


The flames flickered as the noises from other tables now filled the void of conversation at your own. Veronica tapped her glass, yours sat empty, and Eddie was still facing the empty seat where Steve had been. 

“So,” Veronica pursed her lips, “you two dated then?” 

You bit the inside of your cheek. It provided her the answers of why Eddie had been acting the way he had and the conciseness of dialogue that existed amongst you. The way he gazed, the way you diverted it; his own curiosity and knowledge of the sound of the elevated train that impacted your sleeping and the way the admittance that Eddie now lived in a suburb sent you the wrong way. 

Even then, you glanced at Eddie to see if he’d answer. She was his guest, after all. He turned back around in his seat–back flush against the chair, shoulders slouched. 

“Yes,” he treaded carefully, “we did.” 

“For how long?” It may have been worse that she said none of it with malice. 

Eddie flicked his eyes from where they were trained on the table top to you. And fuck, they sucked you right back in and spit you right back out. 

“About eight years…” You told her, ready to flee. 

“That’s a long time,” she nodded to reaffirm her words. “And you lived together?” 

“Mhm,” Eddie hummed as if he didn’t want her to know every detail of his life. He looked down at the table. “For four years of it.” 

“More like three,” you mumbled passively, pushing your wine glass forward on the table. 

“Four,” Eddie said firmly and his eyes shot back up to you. Sensitive subject, you suppose. He remembered every word you had said to him that evening and the comments about his time spent at home stuck. “Four,” he reiterated. 

“Tell me, when was the last time you were excited to come home?” 

You didn’t forget your words either. 

Your expression pinched; eyebrows shooting up for a brief second before your head cocked to the side with silent words. You weren’t going to embarrass yourself or this table any further by getting into a spat with Eddie over something as trivial as years spent in a shabby apartment in Chicago. 

The wine glass was already pushed; two chairs empty as bed appeared to be the best option to end the night. A soft, hotel pillow to help you replay every image your mind could remember from what you had, what you lost, and what had just happened. 

You hated that. But it was better than arguing with someone you didn’t want to argue with. 

Breathing in a deep, sharp breath, you retracted your gaze from Eddie and gave Veronica the softest one you could muster. 

“It was good to meet you,” you told her. It wasn’t her fault Eddie took your heart and ran away with it. “I hope Steve’s little scene didn’t scare you off. He can be a drama queen when he drinks.” 

“All good,” she gave a tight smile that didn’t meet her eyes. “Happens to the best of us.” 

“So it does,” you replied, giving her a nod before sliding off your chair and letting the space return to two. Eddie’s sigh was loud; the way he closed his eyes in frustration hadn’t gone unnoticed. 

As you passed on her side exiting the corner table, you put a hand on the table when your feet came to a stop. Veronica looked at you curiously and waited for another ball to drop on her toes but it didn’t. 

“Don’t let him smoke a whole pack, alright? Won’t do any of us good if he does.” 

And then you walked away. 

Veronica had only been romantically linked to Eddie for three months. She hadn’t seen any side of him that resembled the man sat beside her before and from what she knew, Eddie was not a smoker. The only comment that had surprised her more than the outburst from the groom was when Steve admitted Eddie had become hammered from the booze and weed at his bachelor party. 

But before you could escape the wine cellar fully, Eddie turned around in his seat and shouted your name across the restaurant. 

In a full, obnoxious manner that reminded you of the boy you had fallen in love with in high school. 

“I quit. Six years ago.” 

When the sun rose to its blue hue and the reminder of the night before replayed in your mind like a fresh, unadulterated film, there was a conflict brewing within you. 

The idea of love. 

Love was precious; an almost a forgettable thing when the daily grind became too much for simplistic thought yet it was what people craved the most. To love, to be loved. On a day like that–where there was not a raincloud in sight and when two people were joining each other in matrimony bound by the tethers of love–it was hard not to think about how the feeling evaded you. 

It touched you once. 

It gripped its claws into your flesh and left fatal wounds in its wake, yet you desired it so. Love, the splendid little thing that meant mountains but fell to cavernous trenches. 

You don’t know which part of Eddie you had fallen in love with first. Juvenile, childish love was innocent at seventeen. As you grew older and the complications of adulthood and circumstance of living in Hawkins transformed life, the reasons for loving him changed too. 

It wasn’t always about how he could make you laugh or the way his eyes were so expressive; the comfort he brought or the way he helped you love yourself through him loving you in return. 

It was doing the dishes together at the end of a long night. Falling asleep on the couch because making it to the bed after one of his gigs was too exhausting, but he’d wake up in the early hours of the morning and make sure you’d both end up there anyway. How Eddie made time for everyone and everything until life stopped allowing him to do so. 

It was moments where you and Eddie would be waiting for the train at Clinton station and he’d link his finger with yours because winter gloves constricted full hand movements. 

Those times made you hate what love often resolved itself with: pain and bitter resentment that life was cruel. 

And the clock ticked away as you thought of it. 

When Nancy put her veil on, Robin was the first to cry. Then Max, then Eleven, and Karen was close behind them all. You stayed for a few minutes before excusing yourself to the hallway because the sight painted you blue. 

You felt horrid for feeling bitter when Nancy’s fairytale was not an hour away. 

In the hallway, there was a series of doors that led to varying rooms. Ones that held the groomsmen and Steve, one for the flower girl and ring bearer’s families. It was decorated with seaside decor of light yellows, blues, and whites. A table down ten feet and across the way had a mirror hung above it cased in gold. 

The woman in the reflection was one you neglected to see for a long while. The apparent dissatisfaction of your own circumstance on a day filled with joy riddled on every feature. A necklace clutched in your palm feeling the brunt of sweat and aggravation as Eddie filled your thoughts again. 

You wanted to love him, to be loved by him. You tried to hook the clasp. Missed. 

Why couldn’t you just move on and be happy with someone else? Again, the clasp dug into your finger. Missed. 

Could you even remember what it truly felt like to be loved? 

The clasp evaded you. It was mocking, laughing as you struggled in the hallway mirror and began to sweat the idea that you’d never be able to secure it. Heaving a deep sigh in the mirror, you clutched the necklace in your hand and leaned against the table with two fists. 

“Get it fucking together,” you told yourself quietly. 

Regaining your posture, you tried again, ignoring the sounds of a hall door opening and closing down the way. Your fingers trembled as the clasp caught air once more. 

“You need help with that?” 

You stared at your reflection and pretended not to see where he had stopped. Jaw tense, you shook your head and attempted the connection for the tenth time. 

When you missed again, he scoffed. 

“Give it to me,” he held out his hand palm up, ready to take it from your timid fingers and do it for you. “Come on,” Eddie egged on.

“I don’t need help,” you told him.

“Yes, you do,” he said pointedly. He could see the indentations of the small lever on your index finger. “Just let me help you.”

He wasn’t going to leave. Your eyes met in the mirror and he rose his brows expectantly. More hesitantly than he wished, you held out the necklace and let it ring into his palm. A nod from your head gave him the assent he needed.

In the silence of the hallway, you felt squeezed—both your mind and heart. Eddie moved to stand behind you and you could barely breathe; the simple gesture of helping you put on a necklace far more harrowing than previously realized. He was so close. So close. His fingers trailed to the back of your neck, brushing away the hair with his fingertips and letting it fall where it would not infringe the task.

You couldn’t bear to look at him. Focused on the sconces beside the mirror, you tried not to enjoy the feeling of his hands on you for the first time in half a decade. You tried not to remember the way his touch intoxicated you; every stroke and graze intentional as his eyes watched you struggle.

Eddie lifted his arms above your head and let the jewelry fall onto your collarbone. You wondered if his heart was beating as fast as yours.

“How does she look?” Nancy. His voice was low, quiet in the hall to not disturb the others getting ready. You hadn’t even taken him in yet.

The suits Steve chose were all black, form-fitting with ties instead of bow ties. The pocket squares were filled with a white handkerchief, and the shoes were a clean, shiny black. On his lapel, a single rose was pinned.

“She looks beautiful,” you replied but still wouldn’t look at him. You heard the clasp make it. The necklace sat firm but his hands did not move. They lingered, tracing the line of the back of your neck to the tops of your shoulders.

“You look beautiful.”

You didn’t want him to say that.

“Don’t say that,” you replied morosely. 

“Why?” Eddie’s fingers brushed the necklace’s golden chain. “It’s true.”

The bottom of your lip trembled dangerously.

“Because you can’t say that.” 

“But I did,” he sounded hopeful which dug into that wound a bit further. 

“You brought a date.”

“Why won’t you look at me?” He whispered, fingers still gliding. He said your name softly, “look at me, please. Talk to me.”

You felt your heart constrict, sending a shuttered breath through you and your eyes blinked rapidly. There was no way in Hell you would let Eddie see you cry. He had moved on. He brought a date. A goddamn runway model that, in your opinion, ran circles around you in every way from the top of your head to the tips of your toes.

“I need to go,” you stepped away from him, shaking your head and jetting off down the hall. “I’m sorry.”

He called your name once, twice, but you ignored him. You grasped the golden handle with a heavy hand, breathing unsteady as he stood in the distance in your peripheral. As though the world stood still again, Eddie felt that he had broken through. You would turn, talk to him, and let him relish in the company of you. 

Yet, you grasped that handle tighter. 

But, you did turn. 

And when you opened the door back to the dressing room, it wasn’t only you whose memories transported you back to the night in Chicago that plagued your mind, but Eddie too. Straight back as he made his way to the men’s dressing room in the opposite direction. 

“Stop being such an asshole!” You stood in the kitchen, hands clutching the sink as the anger seethed out of you. Eddie paced in the living space just beyond the island to your right. 

“What do you want me to say, huh?” He threw his arms up in defeat. “For once in my life things are finally looking up and people just don’t get signed to a label and expected not to do—” he fumbled his words, “everything that comes with it!”

“I’m not asking you to give up music, Eddie!“ 

“Then what are you asking me?” He craned his head to the side, hands on his hips and breathing hard. “I can’t work from here. I have to go there and the least you could do is come with me.” 

The least you could do. The least you could do. 

You tossed the dish rag that had been strangled in your grip into the sink, focusing on the window positioned across from it and scoffed. A view of the goddamn ‘L’ train tracks you despised.

“Well I can’t just get up and move,” you said as calmly as you could. “Why is it so easy for you to ask that of me but when I bring up what I want, it becomes a problem for you?” 

Eddie shook his head, hair mused as he ran a hand over it. “I don’t make it a problem, baby.” 

“Yes, you do!” You laughed exasperatedly. “You just fucking said—“ a frustrated groan left your lips and you bounded off the sink and faced him from behind the counter. “It’s not like this is Hawkins; it’s goddamn Chicago and I’ll be dammed if there isn’t a music producer in one of those skyscrapers.” 

“They’re not like they are out there. If we want any chance to make music–actually make music of our own that sells platinum records and wins awards–those producers are out there,” he pointed to the door as if it signified a world beyond this one. 

“What? So, it’s all about money?” 

“No! But hell, if that isn’t a major part of it I’d be lying!” 

“And what about our home here?” You put your hands on the counters ledge and the nails on your fingertips motioned against it with rhythmic clicks. “Everything we’ve built here goes to shit because of one possible record deal?” 

“It’s not just one deal,” Eddie groaned your name in frustration, “It’s the only deal and this… this here,” he motioned around the apartment, “was only ever temporary.” 

News to you. 

“Like Hawkins was. This isn’t really home.” 

“Not home?” You furrowed your brows at him. “Then where the hell do you think it is? You bolted from Hawkins the second you got the chance and as far as I am concerned, this is my home. You see those pictures on the wall?” 

You tipped your head in the direction of the wall that the couch sat up against. Above it was a collage of frames that held so many memories. From Nancy to Max, from Steve to Mike, everyone was on that wall. 

“Those people helped us find this one.” 

“Well,” he shook his head, “they can help us find another in California. There are people out there, baby. Real goddamn people that know just what we need.” 

Not you, Corroded Coffin. What they needed. 

“It’s not going to find us all the way out here.” 

“Tell me, when was the last time you were excited to come home?” 

He had been traveling the world with Corroded Coffin for a year and a half. In all of that time, he had come home for approximately two months. Eight weeks out of seventy-eight. This wasn’t the first fight about it; he had changed. The stronghold fame was suffocating him and was the very thing drawing you apart. 

“Hm?” You hummed as he diverted his eyes to the apartment door. 

“I’m here now.” 

“That wasn’t my question, Eddie,” the ground rumbled beneath you. The way his eyes darted to the door as if it were calling him to leave. Foundation cracked and crumbled, fragmenting as the words threatened to tumble out. “Do you even want to be here?” 

“If I didn’t want to be here, I wouldn’t be here, yeah?” He looked annoyed, lips nearly flattened. That’s how you knew he was angry. Angry at life, at you, at the world. 

“Eddie,” you pleaded softly in one last attempt to salvage the broken platform, “stop lying to me.” 

“I’m not lying.” 

“Yes, you are!” You breathed in deeply, thinking of the unthinkable questions that pondered in your mind. “I’m not asking you to stay because I don’t want you to follow your dreams—you twisted my words—but why can’t I be the selfish one and want to stay here? You’ll have more money, you can visit and we— “ 

Can work it out. It was already over when he said he had been signed that godforsaken deal. 

He said your name dejectedly. It hung there in the air as if saying ‘stop trying.’ You felt a lump form in your throat as you looked him, already decided in what he wanted because he was going after his dream. Halfway there, this was his out. 

The tears gathered at the sides of your eyes, “you don’t even try.” 

Eddie always had something to say but he couldn’t form words in that moment. 

“What?” You steeled your wet eyes on him, “can’t even say that you had? Or that you were? Eddie, I’ve been doing this alone for so long that I don’t even remember the last time you told me you loved me and you meant it.” 

That set him off. He pointed a bitter finger at you. “I always mean it when I say it. Don’t play that card.” 

“Card!?” You cried, “I’m not trying to guilt trip you into staying but you don’t mean it! Eight weeks! Eight weeks in a fucking year and a half and you expect me to get up and throw my life away for you?” 

“I was on tour! Halfway across the goddamn world!” 

“Exactly!” You exclaimed, turning away from him and trying to escape to the bedroom but you could hear his heavy feet following. 

“Stop it,” he said your name over and over as you gripped the door and tried to close it. He pressed his palm against it with a hard slap and pushed it against the wall with a deafening thud. “Would you just stop!” 

“For Fuck’s Sake!” You yelled, “I can’t move! I don’t want to move! I have a lease, a good job, and I want to stay here and build my future!” 

“You can have that in California!” He yelled back. 

His eyes were wide, trying to pretend the antithesis of the fracture was anything less than his career. 

“No, I can’t!” 

“Why not!?” 

“Because of you! You don’t want what I do!” You screamed at him, voice breaking as you cried and realized that this was the end. Eddie would move out to California and you’d be left in a tiny apartment in Chicago alone. 

“I want a family, Eddie. I want to raise kids here or in the stupid suburbs, and grow old here. You want to be a—” you swallowed hard, cheeks wet and eyes getting puffy, “—rock star and those lives don’t mix. They just don’t.” 

He was only twenty-five. He didn’t really know what he wanted from life. 

“You don’t want to be here. That’s why you haven’t come home and I get it, I do. The band is growing, you’re popular, you have a million women to choose from, but I can’t keep pretending that my wants have to be ignored for you to succeed.” 

“Are you saying I’ve ignored you?” 

“You tell me, Eddie,” you shrugged, “how would you feel if the person you loved most was gone for months only to be reassured that everything was fine by a phone call every few days?” 

He let his head tip to the floor, eyes closed because although many of the cracks stemmed from his choices, this wasn’t what he wanted. Eddie wanted to be happy, to be in love and be loved. But he was at the precipice of being what he always wanted and decisions had to be made. 

Callous and resentful decisions. 

“Do you hate me?” Eddie’s eyes spurred something in him. A hatred for himself, a despised feeling growing that a part of him that had always been missing—family—was being ripped away for a dream. 

“I don’t hate— “ 

“Yes, you do,” he looked up, giving you a knowing look as his bottom lip trembled. 

“No, I don’t. But I’m hurt and I don’t think you see that.” 

“So,” he cleared his throat, breath hitching in his chest, “this is it then? We’re just going to give up?” 

“I didn’t give up, Eddie,” you needn’t say the rest to indicate that he had. “We just want different things.” 

“No, we don’t.”

“Yes, we do,” you shook your head, sitting down on the edge of the bed with your face turned away from him. “Right now we do and it’s not doing anything for either of us.” 

It was quiet for a few minutes. Minutes. A thick fog fell over the room; marinating in every picture, the clothes folded away in the dresser, the shampoo in the shower, the two dinner plates half-cleaned in the sink. Domesticity wasn’t enough. Love wasn’t enough.

You weren’t sure how long it had been, but Eddie’s socked feet moved from the spot he stood in and approached the bed—carefully and freely. He knelt down, hands on the outsides of both your thighs and his thumbs rubbed the tops of them gently, the pressure soothing when it shouldn’t have been through your jeans. 

“I want you to be happy…” he swallowed thickly as he chose his words gently. There was no point in trying to stop you from crying when he couldn’t do so himself. “I want you to have what you want, sweetheart… and if I can do that… someday… we’ll find each other again.” 

“Eddie…” Your heart ached as you shook your head. Hope was the killer of it all. 

Hope that perhaps one day you’ll find each other again; that you’d both be free to choose the paths that crossed while maintaining your own personalities and careers without giving one up. Hope that a future existed when the flame was extinguished on a cold evening in Chicago. 

“I’m sorry,” he rubbed your thighs tenderly. 

“Me too.” 

“I love you,” he said softly as if were one last confession. The tears were quietly flowing when you leaned forward, cupping the back of his head with your hands and resting your forehead on his own. 

Just to hold him one last time. 

“I love you too.” He left the apartment an hour later and it was the last time you had seen him. No contact, no cards, and no one, in the group of friends you shared, brought up the other on purpose.

The reception was noisy. 

Like a zoo full of animals that were awakened by a whistle only they could hear; sounds of song’s you hadn’t heard since high school played from the small band the Wheeler’s had insisted on just beyond the designated space for dancing. Dustin, Lucas, Mike, and Will were losing it on the floor since the second a Michael Jackson song emitted its first few strings. 

Steve and Nancy were hand in hand greeting guests at their tables as others made their way to the bar, dessert table, or chatted with drinks in their hands. 

At the head table, El and Max were positioned at the end talking in whispers about the people in the room and you sat like a lone duck near the center of it. An abundance of flowers in white and yellow flanked the table before you, empty dishes and scattered bags and goods littered its table top. Mike left a pack of cigarettes in his spot while Dustin’s best man speech was crumbled in a quarter-fold beside his sweating glass of coke. 

Time had left you behind; sitting solemn at your best friend’s wedding while everyone else put on their best smiles and grinned their way through the evening. And maybe that’s what observation had led you to believe, that you looked as though you were wallowing in self-pity for an absence of love in your life. Loveless at an event so full of it. 

You fiddled with the necklace absent mindedly. 

The room of excitable tunes slowed. 

Couples–married and not, grabbed their partners for a dance. Robin and Eddie were standing near the center of the room beside the table that all the parents were at when Veronica slid next to Eddie, her hand slinking down his arm and into his palm as she nodded to the growing group on the dance floor. 

Hours ago, you had looked back at him when he pleaded with you to stay. Now, as his hand was gripped by a woman he wasn’t sure why he had even invited, Eddie looked back from the center of the room and to the head table where you sat. 

Veronica pulled him away before he could make a choice. 

Robin leaned against one of the chairs, watching as Eddie trailed behind the woman in orange. She did not realize Joyce and Hopper were still sitting at the table she rested against. 

“What the hell was that?” Hopper voiced, hand pointing in Eddie’s direction like a finger gun. He had a mustache that was perfectly trimmed and highlighted his frown well. Joyce crossed her arms with scrutiny.  

Robin shrugged, sighing as she turned around and pulled out a chair to sit at the table. “Two idiots in love, I think.” 

“Jesus,” Hopper scratched his forehead, “I knew it was a bad idea…” he mumbled as he watched Eddie pretend to be interest in what the woman was telling him as they danced. 

“What?” Robin shook her head, “What was a bad idea?” 

“Them breaking up!” He said as if it were obvious. “I got a call from one of the bartenders at The Hideout that there was a scuffle goin’ on one Friday night a few years ago and when I got there, Eddie was there just fuckin’ bombed on the sidewalk.” 

Joyce nodded along to his words because she had heard the story before. Robin listened intently as Hopper continued. 

“I couldn’t understand a word he was sayin’ so I put him in the truck and offered to drive him to her parents’ house because that’s where they always stayed when they came to town and he just… cried. Drunk and sobbing his goddamn eyes out in the front of my truck.” 

“Was this recent or…?” Robin pondered. 

“No,” Hopper shook his head, “years back but he was goin’ on about how he was a bad boyfriend and they broke up and he was moving to California in a few days… I just thought to myself ‘shit, man, I have never seen someone so bent out of shape from a breakup.’ Those two… If it weren’t Steve and Nancy gettin’ hitched, I would have bet money on it that it was them instead.” 

“Every Tuesday he’d pick her up from Melvald’s and take her out. He had flowers for her every time,” Joyce recalled. “I asked her about it once,” she nodded and looked at how you watched Eddie with the other woman, “she said that he never had a good example of what it meant to be a good boyfriend. I guess his dad was a piece of shit,” Hopper hummed a knowledgeable assurance that she was right. “And he wanted to be the only example he could think of–be that good guy that she deserved.” 

“I didn’t know that,” Robin said quietly. 

“I told him he needed to fly back to Chicago and fix things,” Hopper added, “but I guess he was too beaten up about it; probably thought she’d slam the door in his face.” 

“Doubt it,” Robin snorted, “I don’t think they’re idiots,” she corrected herself, “I think they know exactly what the other one is thinking but are too scared to get hurt again if it doesn’t work out.” 

Hopper scooted his chair back, adjusting his pants and jacket as he stood from the table. “Well, then we’ll just have to make it happen–or,” he clarified, “get them in the same spot.” 

Robin swiveled in her chair as Hopper rubbed Joyce’s shoulder as he passed behind her, heading straight for the head table and directly to you. 

Jim Hopper wasn’t a man that could be missed in a crowd of hundreds. His bulky frame that towered over guests and moved about the room like a boulder in grass drew your eyes to the movement immediately. He passed by Max and Eleven at the end of the table, never missing the opportunity to pat the girl he raised into a wonderful young lady on the head. 

It was a nice distraction from Eddie and Veronica swaying to a melodic tune. 

“Hey kid,” Hopper pulled out the chair beside you labeled with a table marker for ‘Robin Buckley.’ 

You gave him a closed smile. “Hi Chief.” 

“I guess I can’t really call you ‘kid’ anymore,” he groaned, chuckling as he sat down with an ache all older men his age did. “I blink and you all grow up… makes me feel like a real old man,” and then he gave you that sly, side grin that made you wish Hopper was your dad instead of the one you had. 

“You’re not old, Hopper,” he managed to pull a small laugh from your lips. The dejected film washing away for a brief second in time. 

“Well,” he cleared his throat as he put an elbow on the table and adjusted himself in the seat to face you, “that makes me feel a little better about my age. So,” Hopper gave a pointed look that answered the hundreds of questions as to what Robin was chatting to him and Joyce about, “what are you sitting all the way over here for? Don’t want to chat or dance?” 

“Just tired,” you told him, “Nance didn’t pick the most sensible shoes.” 

“Robin took hers off; I’m sure you can do the same.” 

“And walk barefoot on this floor?” You snorted. “Never.” 

He shared the amusement before turning his gaze to the groups of people beyond the tables as they danced. A goddamn direct view. ‘Cruel,’ he thought. And surpassing the stone of the church from hours before, the beach where it trickled rain as photos were snapped for scrapbooks forever, and the smells of delicious food filled his belly before reaching his mouth, Jim Hopper felt the love that filled the room. 

It touched him, as it had you and everyone else on the wedding weekend of Steve and Nancy Harrington. 

Joyce was attempting to occupy Robin in conversation but every time Jim’s eyes met hers, he knew they were both far too curious and nosey to not be gossiping about longstanding drama that befuddled even the most romantically inclined. 

The woman that restored his faith in the prospect of love and devotion had witnessed the earliest of your own. Tuesday’s at the local mart, the way Eddie would hold the door for you and attempt to steal magazine’s off the rack just to get your attention. How Eddie drove you around when your car was in the shop and eventually, would take the little rascals of Hellfire with for soda and snacks before their campaigns began–but also because he wanted to see you if even for a minute. 

Although people often judged the idea of love at a young age, Jim and Joyce both recognized its honesty between Eddie and yourself. It was pure, unadulterated, and basked in a light that only belonged to the longevity of companionship. 

“You know, the moment I knew I loved Joyce, I thought I’d never get her.” 

Hopper could see Eddie and his date having their own conversation, whatever it may have been, because a blank face melted from one of an increasing lack of emotion, to one of strife. 

“And when I did, I thought she’d see a different man than the one I believed I was.”

“She would have been blind not to see the real you, Hopper,” Joyce smiled at you as you caught her eyes. “You always tried to help us be the best versions of ourselves and she did too. If that’s not a perfect match, I don’t know what is.” 

“Are you the best version of yourself now?” He questioned, tapping his finger onto the white tablecloth of the table. “Weddings can be… sobering… but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a person look as distant as you.” 

“Flattery never was your strong suit, Hopper,” you grimaced, “and I’m fine,” you weren’t fine. “You didn’t have to come save me from myself.” 

“So, there aren’t a million thoughts swimming around in that mind of yours? I know I’m not the most intuitive dad there is but believe me when I say I’ve been trained to know when somethin’ just quite ain’t right.” 

“I have hundreds of thoughts racing through my brain. ‘Why is the cake so far away?’ ‘Rob and Joyce can stop staring at me any second now,’ and perhaps my favorite thought, ‘why does Jim Hopper care about my state of mind?” Combative. He knew the signs. 

“Maybe Jim Hopper knowns that the girl deep down inside of you just needs to heal,” he said honestly. “But there is only one way to heal what’s been lost and let me tell you, it’s not going to come waltzing on down here as you sit and mope.” 

“It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?” You scoffed at yourself, “that this wedding has only made me jealous about what I don’t have.” 

“I don’t think you’re jealous, kid,” Hopper deflated, “I think you’re realizing a mistake was made somewhere along the lines of your own life.” 

Mistake. It was that goddamn word again. 

“There’s been no mistake,” you shook your head at him, “everything has played out the way it was meant to.” 

“And you really believe that?” 

“There had been nothing in my life to prove me otherwise.” 

“And lying was never your strong suit, kid,” he put on his ‘dad’ face. “You don’t have to talk to me, fine, but if I asked to be the first person to ask for a dance tonight, would you say no?”

How could you deny Jim Hopper, Police Chief and hero of Hawkins, Indiana? You couldn’t. Even if you were flailing for support in an ocean of heartache, sparing one dance for the man was cinch. He rose from the chair, holding out his arm in hopes that you would link yours through his and entertain him one dance as Steve and Nancy added themselves to the pairs on the dance floor and swayed gently to a new song. 

His stature would block a view you’d rather not see. 

“You may be the only person to ask me to dance,” you joined him on your feet. “I can’t say no to you, Chief.” 

“That’s the spirit, kid.”

“Why did you bring me here?” 

Veronica’s voice cut through the music as couples and pairs settled onto the dance floor with the melodic hum of a song playing through sets of speakers. Instead of dancing like an adult, she had flung both her arms over Eddie’s shoulders and linked her hands behind his head. He had no choice other than to put his hand at her waist; the fabric of her orange dress was coarse under his fingertips. 

“I asked you to come,” Eddie replied. “I thought I told you that last night.” 

Ah, yes. Last night; where Steve made a scene about Eddie’s lingering feelings of letting another woman go while she sat beside him with the best intentions.

Veronica did not know Eddie Munson–the guy who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks by fate, the one who had a strange group of friends that shared varying interests and ran in different social circles, or someone who threw everything he had into a career he realized wasn’t as glamorous as the cameras and magazines made it out to be. 

He cursed those Rolling Stone magazines he scoured when he was a bit too early for closing time of Melvald’s. 

“Yeah,” Veronica said as if that hadn’t mattered in the slightest, “and here you are, barely even touching me or sparring me a second look. You know I had to sit by some stoner guy for dinner and they didn’t believe you could bring someone like me.” 

Eddie narrowed his eyes, taken aback by her comment. “What’s that supposed to mean? Those are good people. And I was a huge fuckin’ stoner once too.” 

“That’s not what I meant,” she shook her head, “I mean, they didn’t see me with you. Not because of who I am or who you are, but because it wasn’t right.” 

“You know,” Eddie lowered his voice when he caught the eye of Dustin dancing with Suzie not two feet away from him, “you’re sounding an awful lot like someone who’s about to dump someone else.” 

“Would that be such a bad thing?” Her eyebrows quirked as she tipped her head to the side. “Why waste more time on me?” 

Even if his heart raced in another direction, the sound of someone saying that to Eddie was bothersome. 

“Please don’t say that,” he said, “you’re not a waste of time.” 

“But for someone else’s love, I am,” Veronica’s lips extended into a thin line. “That’s not a bad thing, Eddie… It just means I’m not the one for you.” 

The chords of the music sobered him. 

Across the room, sitting desolate at the dinner table, his heart called. 

“Afford me this dance,” Veronica continued, “and when the time comes, do what makes you happy, however difficult that may be. She may not run into your arms as she once did,” as the motions swayed the pair, she faced the table as Jim Hopper approached. “That doesn’t mean love doesn’t exist.” 

She felt Eddie’s shoulder’s deflate from the tension he had been holding in the entire day–nay, two days–since the prospect of you had become a reality. 

“I abandoned her,” Eddie admitted quietly to her, “like a fucking ragdoll for some dream that really isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.” 

Veronica did not know every detail. She did not know the exact history, nor did she fully grasp the levity of a near decade of love being tossed to the side for a pipedream. But she did know what it was like to leave an abundance of life behind to chase a want. 

Yet the model had never seen a group so peculiar as the one he belonged to. The tightknit communal that leaned on each other like family even though many were from different corners. She had seen the binds of friendship like never before. She had seen a broken love bonded by pain from across a candlelight tabletop and wondered why she had ever been invited if that would always have been the outcome. It was as though two ships hadn’t sailed passed one another but docked; lengths of a life finally running out of individual ink before relying on two for competition. 

“You both hurt each other,” she settled, “that is what separation does. But…” she chuckled, “I have been in love before and I’ve never witnessed such a feeling when being in the presence of the two of you–and I don’t even know her…” 

“She won’t talk to me,” Eddie confided. “I tried, earlier today because she was on the verge of a breakdown over a necklace and she could barely look at me.” 

“Don’t you think it may be because if she did, she’d fall all over again?” 

The song was coming to a close. 

“There is nothing wrong with pain, Eddie. Feeling pain, wanting to be healed, and being scared of that healing… and maybe she’ll need time. She loves you. I know she does because when women know, they know.” 

Jim Hopper stood from the chair. 

There was a comradery he felt in Veronica. Romance beside itself, the woman was a chakra. She had looked into a future he could barely imagine himself and pulled the heroic card before it was dealt. These cards overturned like quicksand settling between his toes. 

“You know,” Eddie gave her a sly, friendly grin, “you sound an awful lot like those odd fortune tellers that sell their services on the strip.” 

Veronica laughed; whole-heartedly, warmly. “Maybe in a previous life I was,” she played, “but in yours, there has always been one path and I guarantee you, from one romantic to another, loneliness was never an option for you. It’s what kids dream about–that ‘fairytale…’ Even if it is a little bit messy.” 

You linked your arm with Jim’s. 

“I’ve always been a little too messy,” Eddie said sheepishly. 

“I can tell,” Veronica groaned, “You don’t have to be perfect for her. Imperfection seizes our hearts faster than perfection… it’s enough to haunt us when perfection tears that apart.” 

“El isn’t dancing with anyone.” 

Jim Hopper held one hand in his and the other on the upper half of your back. It was as though he was dancing at an elementary father-daughter dance than anything else, stiff in his hulking frame. The music did nothing to silence your rapidly forming thoughts that Eddie and Veronica were feet away; Eddie’s eyes caught yours as Jim helped you to the floor, an anguish in them acted as a puzzle waiting to be pulled apart. 

In the eyes that watched Veronica rip the persona he had gathered for himself in the years past, Eddie could only imagine you. He waited for them to turn into your own, for her laugh to morph into yours, for her hands to run through his hair as yours once did, and the comfort of her presence to become you. Looking for that glimpse, Eddie found it inside of his imagination; searching every corner of it to find a home for his torment–self-inflicted and its mortal consequences bleeding life from him like a sieve. 

“It’s those sensible shoes…” Hopper joked. “Her feet are killing her. A couple blisters later, she’s sworn them off forever.” 

“I don’t blame her,” Lucas and Max joined the pairs beside you. The red-headed girl rested her head on his shoulder, eyes closed in the utmost content state she could be in. True love. 

“How many dances do you have in your feet?” 

“Why?” You questioned. “Am I a better partner than Joyce? She was always rather clumsy.” 

“No,” he laughed but could not disagree, “I just think those boys won’t end the evening without asking you. I think Dustin’s always had a little crush on his former babysitter.” 

“I don’t think,” you tipped your head at him, “I know he’s always had a crush on me.” 

Dustin Henderson had always been a cute boy. His pure child-like imagination and motivation had inspired you to explore your own interests without fear. You had watched him from five until his mother decided he didn’t need you anymore, but you were lucky to call him a friend now. 

“But he’s got Suzie,” you could see the two giggling as everyone danced around them. “And I can’t think of a more natural person for him. I think they’re next,” your eyes moved themselves around the room, “to get married.” 

“Too many childhood sweethearts in my opinion,” Hopper’s gruff voice was certain in that. “Not everyone is meant to be with their first loves.” 

“I think they are… just like Steve and Nancy, just like Max and Lucas.” 

“And you and Eddie.” Not a question, a statement. 

It was the scoff that left your lips that made his hopes for you feel weak. “That chapter ended, Chief. He’s moved on, so have I.” 

“No,” he clarified, “you haven’t. You wouldn’t have been moping around your best friend’s wedding if you were.” 

“I wasn’t moping,” you defended, “Jonathan was moping. I’m pretty sure he cried and had decent reason to but I was just… people watching.” 

“Person watching. You were watching Eddie and there’s nothing wrong with it,” he asserted. “You love him. There is no shame in it.” 

“Why is everyone so interested in how I feel?” Your face put on the mask of a scorned lover. Eyes drawn narrow and brows forming a crease in its center. “This is Nance and Steve’s wedding, their only wedding if they’re lucky, and I’ve had person after person question how I feel about something I no longer have.” 

“Maybe it’s because for once we all see the truth of it all…” He had seen the truth as a washed-up Eddie cried in his truck. “That the pain of the past isn’t worth the loneliness of the future.” 

“A true poet,” you mumbled, “but I’m fine. I promise you, I’m fine.” 

“I’ve said it before,” Hopper chuckled, “and I will always say it to you, but you’re a terrible liar.” 

“Lies be lies, Chief. But there’s no point in trying to make me feel better about feelings I can’t control.” 

“No one is asking you to control them,” you turned your head away from Jim’s and clocked Lucas eavesdropping. He gave a strained, tight smile before resting his cheek onto Max’s head. “That isn’t what we’re trying to do… I want the kids I watched grow up to be happy and you’re not happy, he’s not happy. I don’t know if the answer to that equation is the two of you finding each other again but I’ve never been a man capable of understanding the love you had. And that sound ridiculous coming from someone as old as your old man.” 

“I can’t even be in the same room as him without feeling like breaking down,” your voice was quiet, a mere whisper of what it was because the prospect of Eddie still having feelings for you was frightening. You didn’t want to end up becoming a ghost again. 

“It’s like I’m a nobody in a room full of somebody’s and they can’t see me.” 

“Someone will always see you,” his eyes were gentle. “He saw you when he couldn’t see himself.” 

“Then why did he leave?” 

And the way Hopper’s body stood taller, his gaze no longer meeting yours, and turning you cold told you the world was ending. This love, imploded if it couldn’t exist between the two of you, was bubbling to the surface like a volcano. Here, on the island of Nantucket, a tsunami couldn’t save you from emotional ruin. 

“I think that’s a question you’ll have to ask him.” 

Veronica’s hand extended into your peripheral vision. She held it out to Jim like a lifeline. 

“Do you mind if I steal him?” Her body came into view and you needn’t know the conversation the two had to know she had led Eddie back to you. “I need to hear all about this ‘hero of Hawkins!’”

“I’m not the hero,” Jim said rather sheepishly. “That’s all him.” 

You could feel Eddie’s presence in a room of hundreds of a room of one. It enveloped you into a cocoon against your fighting mind. 

“Those are strong words coming from you, Chief.” His voice rung out against the music. Eddie had been on the poor graces of Chief Jim Hopper for many a year before the man had seen Eddie for what he was: a good, kind man with a fierce complex.

Jim looked to you. “You got this, kid. I’ve got another partner now, so do you.” 

He took Veronica’s arm and linked it through his arm like an elderly man who needed help walking. He wasn’t that old. She took him away without a glance back at the one who had asked her to come. 

“Now,” Eddie cleared his throat from behind you, “I could ask you to dance or,” he had put on that voice like there were more options than he had, “we can go outside, sit down, and maybe you’ll talk to me.” 

‘Look at me. Why won’t you look at me,’ his words echoed in your mind. 

When you turned around to face him, he got his wish. 

Eddie looked hopeful, as if it were the permanent face he wore. His eyes were the smallest bit glassy, hands stuffed into his pockets, and the shine of his shoes to the wear of his tie was different than he had ever worn before. He was still him, yet so different all the same. 

“If we talk,” you felt like you swallowed a frog, “no lies. I don’t want to hear any lies.” 

“Wouldn’t think of it.” 

The night was cold. 

Springtime enfolded the shores of Nantucket; cattails and tall grasses billowing, soft sounds of ocean waves lapping muted the music from inside. Adirondack chairs lay vacant, pillows dewed and their wood smooth. 

You couldn’t bear to sit down. 

Allowing the night air to take you, Eddie shut the door behind him and felt the scene before him play at the edge of a cliff; every piece of you blowing away against a yearning to stay. He began shrugging his jacket off and you held out a hand in front of you. 

“I’m fine,” the frost bit at your voice. “Keep it.” 

“You’re freezing,” Eddie continued to remove his piece. “I’m not going to be an asshole and let you freeze to death because you’re stubborn.” 

You scoffed. “I am not stubborn. I don’t need it, end of story.” 

He tugged it off, folding it in his hands before tossing it on one of the chairs that separated the distance between you. His tie was long undone, the two buttons at the top of his shirt undone but the cufflinks remained. You wanted to take the jacket. You wanted to recall his scent and warmth but your stubbornness in protection vexed you. 

“Fine,” he huffed. 

“Fine,” You replied in kind. 

Only the note of waves filled the stillness. You both looked at one another as though a million years had gone by in the blink of an eye. Not unlike the seconds passed in the wine cellar the night before, the world seemed to dissipate to a single existence of two former lovers. Two people, in spite of themselves, who haven’t felt whole since a single moment six years before. 

Goosebumps raised on your skin, the jacket appeared delectable yet an item of fear as it sat, calling to say ‘put it on,’ only to be followed by a whisper of ‘forgive me.’ 

“I can’t imagine that small talk is what you wanted to discuss,” you started. 

“I don’t believe it’s what you would want either,” he countered, “and we both know that would get us nowhere.” 

“So, what?” You lightly shook your head. “You want me to ask how your life has been and catch up on all I’ve missed? There’s a reason I don’t read gossip magazines anymore… I don’t need to see beautiful women rubbed in my face or success showing me that my pain was worth something more.” 

“A lot of those things are lies,” Eddie walked his icy path with steady feet. “You don’t need to read them, no. But I would hope you still cared enough to ask about me when you visit Rob and Nance, not to mention Steve never brings you up to me.” 

“Oh, you mean the literal effort they all put in to never mention you around me?” You gazed at him as though the reason you never asked about him, or they never spoke about him, was obvious. It hurt too much. “It’s not exactly a cake walk, Eddie, to hear about your fantastic life when I could barely hold my own together.” 

“It’s not fantastic and if you asked, you would have known that.” 

“And it’s my responsibility to learn that? Did you want me to reach out, ask how you’ve been, and get lunch like you didn’t fucking break my heart?” You gawked. Eddie took his hands from his pockets and put them on his hips–a Steve move he had taken upon after establishing their friendship. “If I couldn’t talk about you, I don’t know how the hell I would have talked to you.”  

“Then maybe I should have called,” like an easy solution, “and maybe instead of… what was it Steve said? Trading holidays liked a divorced couple, we could have been civil and spent time with our friends together.” 

“Was that when you were traveling the world or recording records?” You pursed. “Or when you moved out to California and visited once a year? Tell me, Eddie, is a hypothetically cordial relationship something you really want with me? I can barely feel the world turn as it is when I’m in your presence, I doubt I would be able to have a good time with our friends.” 

Eddie laughed savagely. “I didn’t know all the fun had been sucked out of you.” 

You took a step back, careening your head out toward the ocean as you bit your cheek. He had gall. He was bold and unflinching, but his eyes told the truth. His own pain and suffering at the consequences of his actions had let the light leave him for so long. When pain overtook a person’s being, anger and callous language followed. 

“If you’re going to be an ass,” you looked back to him, “I don’t want to talk to you.” 

“It isn’t the truth, though? I’ve at least tried to have a halfway, goddamn decent time at this wedding and every time I looked at you, you’ve been nothing but bitter.” 

“No one asked you to look at me, Eddie. You brought a date. You should focus on her.” 

“How could I!?” A dam had broken inside of him. He couldn’t not look at you. “Every time I think I’ll give someone else a chance, it’s like seeing a fucking ghost in my mirror! I have to look at you. I need to look for you.” 

“No, you don’t!” You exclaimed with as much passion. “You lost that when you walked out! I am sorry that I am so shitty for being sad at a beautiful wedding. I am sorry for wishing that this time, maybe it was me walking down that goddamn aisle. And for fuck’s sake, I am so sorry that I am fearful that you’ll finally move on and want to marry someone else! Jesus fuck! It’s been six goddamn years and I still think that you’ll come walking through the door and say you made a mistake but I don’t want to hear that tumbling out of Steve’s mouth. I don’t want it to be based in lies because you feel bad I am sad at my best friend’s wedding.” 

“I love you,” he blurted out without reason. 

“Don’t say that!”

“Why!?”

“Because it isn’t true! IF I was, you never would have left! You wouldn’t have asked me to throw my life away and follow you to the ends of the fucking earth! If I wasn’t just some body, maybe somebody would love me enough to stay,” You argued loudly. 

“I do love you,” He argued back with the same ferocity. 

“You did. You don’t anymore.” 

“I do love you. I do. I haven’t fucking stopped loving you since I was seventeen and I don’t think I ever will stop. I will always love you, I have always loved you, and I know that when I am dying, I will die loving you,” he was breathless. Angered and pent up with emotions he had buried deep where his eyes were fiery and his tone was firm. 

“You can’t say things like that…” Fuck the tears that loved to threaten to fall.

“Why!? Tell me why I can’t tell the truth. You asked me not to lie and I wouldn’t do that to you!”

“Becau–” you stammered the word as your mind racked itself for answers, “because it’s not fair to me! I can’t live another day knowing that someone else out there loves you in a way that I do. I can’t keep waiting around in my shitty, fucking life for someone who walked out of it for something bigger than me.”

“And it was a mistake! I will never forgive myself for it but please, even if it’s the last thing you do, please believe that it was. I never should have asked that of you, I was selfish. I knew what I wanted in life then because it hasn’t changed. It existed deep down but was scared to come to the surface and I needed to be pulled under to see that. I love you. I love you so goddamn much that every day without you has been the most unbearable few years of my life. I want you, and only you.”

“Don’t lie to me,” your lip trembled, face hot. 

“I’m not lying,” his own eyes watery. “Please, I am not lying to you.”

“I don’t think you know how much you hurt me, Eddie,” you shook your head at him. “There are times when I don’t feel like myself because you took that away from me. I don’t depend on anyone; I’d never say that I lost everything when you left but you cracked me open, slaughtered me in the place we shared because of a dream. And believe me, really, that I am so happy you found that life but how can I know that my suffering was worth it? 

“You don’t think I suffered too?” He exclaimed loudly at the sky. “I went to Hawkins, you know, after everything because I didn’t have anywhere to go.” You didn’t know.

“I got so fucking drunk at a bar that Hopper had to come scrape me off the sidewalk and from what I remember, I exploded in the truck when he tried to take me to your parent’s place. Do you know what he did? Let me sleep on the couch and when Eleven got up the next day, she held my hand and told me that I’d be okay and I haven’t been okay. I’ve never been okay without you and I’m not scared to admit that. You are my lifeline, sweetheart. I have tried to replace that feeling but I can’t.”

“Do you know how long I wished for you to walk through that door?” You pointed to the door you walked through as if it could transform itself into the one of the apartment you shared. “I sat there, waiting for you because I barely remembered a life where you weren’t part of it and that was hard enough to imagine when it slammed in my goddamn ears,” you huffed, eyes nearly ablaze as his committed declarations of love echoed through every vacant place inside of you and right back to the moment he left. 

“There is not a day that goes by where I don’t question why you let it go so easily.” 

“It wasn’t easy,” Eddie stressed your name exasperatedly, “nothing about that choice was easy.” 

“You made it seem like it was.” 

Eddie felt the grounding he had built in his mind with his vow of love was strong. He felt the ghosts of the past begin to grip his feet; haunting and pulling him to the depths of his former despair to face a choice chastened by ambition. On the cold, concrete sidewalk and the airy Nantucket patio, it ruptured in spouts. 

Pain, longing, abjection tied to every word; you had tried in obstinate strength to keep the fortress from becoming invaded. That somewhere in your heart there was a knowledge it was stronger than the force of the man that had left you to bleed but it wasn’t. It felt his bullets like bandages. They neither wounded nor massacred its path forward, binding the holes left behind with attestation.

“When I said we wanted different things, why didn’t you tell me what you wanted?” You asked in a voice wavering. “I thought you wanted this life,” a hand painted his figure against the night, “he one with the glitz and glamor and women like Veronica. If you wanted what I did, why toss it to the side?

Eddie shook his head, backing away from you and throwing his hands on top of his head in a connected grasp. He looked out to the water so dark he couldn’t see yet heard. “You remember what I told you about my parents?”

After a second, he returned his gaze to you and in return, you nodded. 

Eddie’s perception of self was deeply rooted in the disjointed childhood he had been forced to experience. Every feeling, every action questioned by himself as to whether the receiving party had viewed it as strange, difficult, or simply heartless. He kept his heart on his sleeve, however, he kept it tethered there. When someone tried to hold it in their own palms, Eddie pulled away. 

It had taken years for him to be comfortable enough with himself to be willing to be someone he liked. 

“It doesn’t just go away with time,” he sighed. “I will always doubt myself. I always fear that I’m one step away from becoming him even if I know I’m nothing like him.” 

For a child of a loveless marriage, a brutal life, the most fearful thing they could imagine was not whether or not they could be loved later in life, it was turning into the people they hated most. 

“It’s not every day that someone comes to your concert and wants to sign you without so much as a demo session… and that overtook me. I know that now, and I knew that the second I walked out the goddamn door. I will apologize for the rest of my life if it means you know how I feel.”

Eddie let that sit. 

“You can hate me forever, I don’t mind. But don’t convince yourself I never cared enough about you.”

“I don’t hate you. I never hated you. And I’m sorry if I made it seem that way.”

Perhaps he would have to convince himself that you never hated him just as you would that he loved you.

“Even when I left?”

“There was not a piece of my body strong enough to feel anything more than empty when that happened.”

“I felt it too, you know,” his eyes shimmered in the lamplight. No joy, no hilarity–just hope that you knew the truth. 

“I do now,” you told him. 

“I’m not asking you to give me a second chance,” Eddie shrugged his shoulders lowly. In a nearly defeated sigh, he took the words he replayed in his mind for two thousand, one hundred and ninety days, “but fuck… I told you I’d find you again if the time was right and the minute I saw you in the archway I knew that was my shot… you’re the same but different… I loved you then and I love the you that you are now. And I’m sorry that it took me that long to realize it.” 

“What did you feel in that church today?” 

A cosmic connection, a fleeting moment he wished to hold onto forever. 

“Eddie,” you took a step forward, closing the distance, “tell me what you felt.” 

“I felt…” He paused. Breathing in deeply, it was not his admissions of love that proved to be most difficult. It was the regret of letting it go that scarred the deepest. “I felt… bitter.” 

“Bitter?”

“Because I don’t have what they do,” he threw a lazy arm toward the door. “Or I did have that and I let it go because of a silly dream.” 

“I don’t think your dream was silly,” you admitted, “it worked out of you in the end.” 

“But at what cost?” Eddie took a step closer to you; the chair with this tuxedo jacket the space that separated you. “Why do those dreams take everything away to make them happen? I didn’t want to do that, this, alone. Not without you.” 

“I felt helpless,” you disclosed. “In that church with the sun streaming in… like a fucking… higher power was saying to me that the way I loved you still existed inside of me. It hasn’t ever truly gone–as much as some moments I wish it was–yet it stays.” 

“Helpless because you love me?” 

“Helpless because I can’t have you.” 

“And why can’t you have me?” Another step closer. “Why do you, the only woman I have ever truly loved, feel you cannot have me?” 

“Because someone else does,” your eyes flashed toward the doors as if Eddie’s proximity and both of your vulnerabilities were forbidden. “Because someone else loves you.” 

“She doesn’t love me,” Eddie’s fingers eclipsed your own. Fanning in a light flutter, it was discovering touch again. “She isn’t mine and I am not hers.” 

He stepped closer again and every one of your senses went spiraling. Eddie leaned his head forward and rested his forehead on your own. Two sets of eyes closed at the sensation. 

“You have all of me. Every part of me since the moment I saw you.” 

“And what do you want?” 

‘I want you to have what you want, sweetheart,’ his words were distant from the past.

“What do you want now?” you asked him, breaking away as your eyes shone to his. His free hand cradled the back of your neck gently, he rubbed his thumb over your cheek. “I know what I want, but I need to hear it from you. No lies.”

“No lies,” he repeated, a quick glanced down at your lips had him soaring. “I want you, baby. I’ll only ever want you.” 

“Good,” you whispered, lips barely tracing his for the first time in six years. “Because we’re not letting this go this time.”

“Never.”

And he pulled your lips to his.

To answer the question the chapel had asked you, ‘what is it like to be loved?’, there is only one answer: 

This is what it feels like. Pain, beauty, and joy. There is no bind without strife, nor is there passion without sacrifice. 

And in the years in between said sacrifice, the tethers of a string brushed together until they found one another again on a little island off a blustery coast for the wedding of Steve Harrington and Nancy Wheeler.

A/N: As always, comments, reblogs are kindly encouraged :) thank you for reading!

my brain the past month: PAUL DANO PAUL DANO PAUL DANO PAUL DANO PAUL DANO PAUL DANO PAUL DANO PAUL DANO PAUL DANO PAUL DANO PAUL DANO PAUL DANO PAUL DANO PAUL DANO PAUL DANO PAUL DANO PAUL DANO PAUL DANO PAUL DA-

i'm not god's strongest soldier.

Male! Doll X GN Reader

A/N: Ahhh I got many requests both from on here and other sites of which asked for a doll yandere! To be fair, I really had… no idea how to write this one? Even possessed dolls, I genuinely had no idea how to write them to fit the obsessive trait. But it still took me mf dayS to write this so I hope its alright!!

TW: possessed items, violence, touching, open mechanical anatomy, cringe

“Oh and before I forget, don’t leave him alone. He doesn’t like to be left alone.”

“Don’t….leave the doll alone?” You chuckled, looking at the small envelope hole your customer insisted on talking through.

“Yes.” They replied, shutting the small latch. You were left in silence, holding a small box filled with metal parts and porcelain pieces.

The materials clinked against one another as you shifted the box. Your business was open for walk-ins, but this wasn’t your everyday unscheduled fix-up. Customers often walked in leisurely or tripping over themselves, requiring you to fix a machine or child’s doll.

This fellow however, preferred to stay outside of your shop, sliding the box in through the makeshift gap and latch at the bottom of your door. They were ominous, strangely demanding you to fix this, well, nearly lost cause. In the box was the tattered pieces of a doll. One of those life-size, porcelain and silicone models . They don’t make such beautiful creatures anymore, but how mesmerizing it is to see one up close. People in your craft hardly ever got to see a real antique; usually just like yourself, they’d be stuck with the same old machines that were popular at the time. But you have been given the chance to touch a real piece of hand-made craftsmanship!

Afficher davantage

Animated old OC, finally I did it x)

— come a little closer

hockey jock!vi x tutor!reader, fluff / humor / angst / kinda slowburn / smut (18+ mdni!), wc: 16k+ [buckle your seatbelts bc i could not shut the fuck up about vi if i wanted to !]

synopsis: you’re many things; an exemplary student, quiet and well-mannered, loved immensely by those who bother to get to know you, but most importantly, the newfound object of superstar athlete vi’s every affection. or, in other words, hockey jock!vi is lowkey a loser, atrociously down bad, and will stop at nothing to make you hers.

content warnings: language (duh), brief mentions of familial issues, latent insecurity, miscommunication & lack of communication, kissing, groping, SEX! mdni, seriously, i’ll THROW UP!, more specifically fingering (r!receiving), oral (r!receiving), spitting, makeup sex idk, just good old fashioned lesbian BANGING! also! jazz cabbage, lets pretend for the sake of this au that student athlete’s don’t get tested bc i NEED hockey jock!vi to hotbox reader PLS.

fic soundtrack: i could imagine —alina baraz /snooze — sza /tonight — summer walker / pressure — james vickery + sg lewis / wish that i could — umi

author’s note: of course it’d be arcane s2 that resurrects me from my almost yearlong hiatus...pls enjoy this fic even though i’m pretty rusty; she’s been cooking in the drafts for weeks T-T i’ll be answering some (very long overdue) asks and chatting with you guys <3 and finally, this shit is barely proofread bc my brain is fried lol

main masterlist | arcane masterlist

VI HAS A HUGE PROBLEM.

One that supersedes every issue she’d ever given weight to in all of her four (and a half) years of university. Is way larger than twice-a-day practices on and off the ice that go hand-in-hand with studying so hard to make sure that her grades don’t slip a fraction. Probably way bigger than the fact that her little sister’s graduating high school soon and she’s trying her absolute best to be as great a role model as she can despite wanting to crack under the pressure. And most definitely bigger than her favorite on-again-off-again fling, Cait Kiramann, whose rare to come by these days.

Vi has a huge problem, and quite frankly, it’s you.

In hindsight, she’s been relatively good at overlooking you, not that it’d been intentional to begin with, but Vi knows a lot of people. Too many, she feels sometimes. So it's easy for you to slip through the cracks when everyone’s vying for even a shred of her attention.

Perhaps it’s what piques her interest when your orbits finally do collide. Because, admittedly, you know all about Vi. Know that she’s probably one of the most valuable players on the uni’s hockey team (she’s an absolute beast on the ice). Also know that she’s a biomedical physics major and actually incredibly smart. But most of all, you know that not only is Violet a flirt, she’s a player.

Not necessarily that you’ve ever really been on the receiving end, but mostly because her reputation precedes her and you’ve seen it all from a distance. Can't not when the decorated hockey star is such a charmer whether she intends to be or not. Vi has girls both certain and questioning stumbling for a single glance.

You often think it’s pitiful, but it’s not like it’s really your problem.

Until it is.

It all starts at The Afterparty.

Hours after a big victory in the first game of three that solidifies whether the university hockey team participates in the championships, Violet is the star of tonight’s celebration.

She’d sunk the winning shot, and for that she’s being poured shot after celebratory shot. By eleven she’s practically hammered and it’s when her teammate, Ellie, and the captain, Abby, finally show up.

The three of them together, drunk, is like a minefield of obnoxious laughter, dirty innuendos, and rowdy behavior.

And for a while it’s funny, has Vi feeling like she’s on cloud nine, but eventually, the drunken high begins to evaporate and she starts to feel a little overwhelmed.

The spotlight shifts and even though Vi typically preens under the attention, she’s grateful to finally breathe.

With a plastic cup full of water, she’s sliding the back door open and stepping out onto the back patio to take in the cool air for a breather.

She makes a move towards the stairs, but nearly jumps out of her skin when she registers the silhouette at the base of the steps.

“Jesus, fuck,” Vi hisses to herself. “You scared the shit outta me.”

You don’t even spare her a glance over your shoulder, just take a sip from your drink.

“Sorry,” you hum passively.

She catches her breath, doesn’t even bother to ask permission as she drops all of her weight next to you.

The step creaks under pure muscle.

Her strong legs stretch out, elbows settling back against the step up as she waits. And waits. And waits.

The amount of silence that lapses is unusual, uncharacteristic for Vi, especially so because people are typically babbling enough to fill the void when it comes to her.

But you just sit there, nursing your beer and staring up at the stars. The moon hangs half in the sky, softly illuminating the planes of your features.

It’s her first good look at your face and Vi’s definitely drunk, but the immediate thought that comes to her mind is pretty, pretty, pretty. Undeniably and painfully pretty. And not Caitlyn pretty, the only girl she’s ever really used as a benchmark, but intimidatingly so in your own right. Makes her swallow hard, throat bobbing as she watches you unapologetically.

“It’s rude to stare, Violet,” you say simply, eyes finally flitting to meet hers.

Her breath catches in her throat, earthy flecks dancing in your moonlit irises. God, your eyes. Framed by thick lashes and round as you look up at her.

“You know who I am?” she asks stupidly as if point fives of her face aren’t blown up into memes and plastered all over the house.

“Who doesn’t?” you ask, breathing a puff of humorless laughter as you crush the can in your ringed fingers.

And perhaps you got her there, but Vi’s feeling exceptionally small under your gaze despite usually filling out a room. Something about you makes her shrink.

“I— fuck,” Vi stumbles, cheeks red because you’re looking at her with an indecipherable gleam in your gaze that has her squirming. “What’s your name?”

She cringes at herself, rolls the piercing in her nose once, twice, for comfort.

You laugh again, a little more genuine this time because, from a distance, the athlete’s usually so suave, undeniably gorgeous and composed. Right now, the girl in front of you only ticks one of those boxes.

“________,” you offer.

She weighs the name on her tongue, decides she likes it a lot, and tries to shake off whatever this feeling you’re giving her is.

“And you go to school here?” she asks.

You nod once.

“Neuroscience, fourth year.”

“Huh, we’re in similar fields, but I’ve never seen you around,” Vi observes. Because she’s certain she’d bookmark a face like yours, absolutely no doubt about it.

“We had organic chemistry together sophomore year with Dr. Talis,” you say matter-of-factly, like you’re not blowing her mind right now. “And I’m auditing Medarda’s biometry class this semester.”

Vi’s floored.

“Wait, wait, but...” She’s trying to piece the puzzle together, but her brain’s still a little fuzzy, equal parts from the alcohol, but also because she’s caught a whiff of your perfume and you smell so sweet.

“I pop in every once in a while,” you tell her. “But I tutor in that time slot every Tuesday and Thursday, only really go when I don’t have any appointments.”

“Hold on, this is nuts,” Violet says, body easing to face you. You flinch because she doesn’t realize she’s practically yelling. “There’s no way, I definitely would’ve remembered you if that was the case.”

You hum, corners of your lips quirking as you shrug your shoulders.

“Doubt it,” you counter. “I’m nothing particularly spectacular.”

“Nothing particularly spectacular,” Vi repeats under her breath.

And under normal circumstances, she’d be flirting up a storm right now, trying to charm her way into getting you to bite, but this is one of the first semblances of normalcy she’s experienced in a while. No ulterior motives, no exaggerated kindness, no outright asking her to fuck.

Suddenly your phone lights up in your lap and you’re turning your attention to the device.

“DD duties call,” is all you say as you make a move to stand up.

No, this can’t be all she gets from you tonight. Not when she’s been narrowly missing someone like you for the past four years and you’re just now coming to light.

The dormant liquid courage bubbles and Vi’s gently grabbing your wrist to pull you to a stop.

“Maybe I’ll see you around?” she asks, steely eyes liquid as she stares up at you.

You eye the scar on her lip, gaze lingering there before flitting to meet hers.

“Maybe.”

Vi decides that she needs to see you again.

You’d left her with crumbs this past Friday night and she’d spent the better part of the weekend trying (and failing) to cross paths with you again.

“Jesus, you’re down bad,” Ellie chuffs Monday morning on their walk to the campus coffee shop.

“You don’t understand,” Vi defends. “She’s so...so...”

“So?”

“Different, I dunno,” Vi sighs, fiddling with the strap of her backpack as they walk. “We didn’t even talk about much, but that was the most normal I’ve felt around someone in a while.”

Her teammate snorts.

“Probably the gayest thing I’ve heard you say,” Ellie deadpans. “She isn’t immediately trying to munch and you’re already in love. Pathetic.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Vi scoffs as they approach the coffee shop, inside packed full with half-functioning college students so early in the morning. “Trust me, if you met her, you’d—”

The words die in her throat because halle-fucking-lujah, the universe or god, or whatever has answered her every prayer this past weekend as she clocks you a few paces ahead in line.

Ellie follows her friend’s line of vision to find exactly what she’s staring at and she lets out a low whistle when her gaze finds your frame.

From a completely aesthetic standpoint, she can see why Vi’s immediately hooked.

“Hah,” she makes a noise in her throat. “Okay, so maybe it makes sense.”

Vi can’t help but stare because, if it were possible, you were far prettier under the warm lighting of the cafe’s ambiance. The curls of your hair frame your face beautifully and it’s so fucking cute how focused you are on your phone.

“Hate to break it to you, though. That girl’s way out of your league,” Ellie says like it’s common knowledge.

“Wow, way to boost my ego,” Vi mutters drily.

“Just being realistic,” Ellie argues. “If you bag her, she’s easily the hottest girl you’ve been with.”

And Vi can’t really contest that, not when the proof’s in the fucking pudding.

Her body’s moving of its own accord and before she can register her own actions, she’s mumbling quiet s’cuse me’s under her breath as she squeezes between patrons to close a bruised hand over your shoulder.

You nearly jump out of your skin, fumbling with your phone as an earbud falls out.

“Shit, sorry, sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you,” Vi says quickly.

Your gaze snaps to her, brows furrowing almost imperceptibly before your expression settles.

“Violet,” you acknowledge.

And she realizes that she didn’t really have a game plan coming up to you so abruptly. Had been so focused on actually just seeing you again, that she hadn’t thought through the rest of it.

The way you stare up at her is thoroughly disarming because she doesn’t have the shield of night or alcoholic courage to carry her through it.

“Can I help you?” you ask, but not unkindly.

“Oh, uh, I...” She chances a glance over her shoulder to find that Ellie is watching her from a few customers away, eyebrow cocked and smirk testing. She word vomits before she can think of a coherent thought. “You mentioned tutoring...the last time we talked.”

You don’t even bat an eye.

“I did.”

“You’re also auditing Medarda’s biometry class.”

“I am.”

“I’m...I’m not really doing too hot in Medarda’s right now,” Vi says, brain nearly short-circuiting and freezing up because, lie! She’s doing phenomenally in Medarda’s session and, truthfully, she’s just downright scared to ask you to hang out.

Especially when you look up at her like that.

You shift and she’s swallowing down around nothing.

“Hmm, can’t have that, can we?” you hum.

Vi could melt.

“No,” she breathes out a laugh. “Can’t.”

“You can sign up for a slot through the library’s website,” you say after you weigh the thought.

Vi’s pausing, staring at you like a deer caught in the headlights.

“So I can get paid?” you fill in.

“Oh, right,” Vi chokes. “Right.”

You give her a soft smile before plugging your earbud back in, leaving Vi to rejoin her obviously amused friend.

“You’re fucking joking!”

The librarian gives you and your incredulous roommate a look from the circulation desk and you return it with a sheepish smile from where you’re tucked by a wall of looming floor-to-ceiling windows.

“Maddie,” you whisper.

“You’re telling me that The Violet asked you personally to tutor her?” Maddie asks you, leaned over the tabletop with wide eyes.

“Yeah, cornered me at Brew House this morning and asked me to tutor her in Medarda’s class.”

“Just that?” she asks. “Nothing else?”

You look around in disbelief.

“Uh, yeah?” you scoff. “What else would she want?”

“What else would she— are you serious?” Maddie leans back in her seat, arms crossing over her chest as she gives you a plain look. “You know all about Vi, you’re actually gonna play stupid?”

“Oh, come on.” You roll your eyes. “You’ve seen the girls Violet’s fucked, right? Kiramann? The blonde from the tennis team? She’s got a type and you know it.”

It’s Maddie’s turn to roll her eyes and you see the exasperated groan she’s staving off.

“None of that self-deprecating bullshit—”

“It’s not self-deprecating!” you argue. “Not everyone wants to fuck Violet, Maddie. Put me in the number one spot.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Don’t start.”

“All I’m saying is that anyone with eyes can see that Vi’s hot as fuck. That being said, you’re also hot as fuck. Not only that, but rumor has it, she gives the most toe-curling—”

You’re rolling your eyes again, gaze fluttering out the window momentarily only to find that, speak of the devil, Violet’s approaching the library with a skip in her step.

Maddie stops her spiel to trace your gaze and nearly falls out of her seat when she finds the object of your conversation is advancing, fast.

“No fucking way,” you whisper to yourself, pulling up your tutoring log on your tablet to find that, yup, Violet has most-definitely taken your advice and signed up for a tutoring slot.

If the time reads correctly, you’ve got three minutes before she’s due to be taking Maddie’s seat.

Your friend is grinning at you mischievously, stuffing her backpack quickly to vacate the space across from you.

“Un-fucking-believable,” you scoff, slumping back in your seat.

“Tell me how it goes,” she giggles, slinging her bag over her shoulder as she stands.

“Maddie,” you warn.

“Love you, see you at home!”

Violet’s strolling into the library just as Maddie leaves through the other doors and try as you might make yourself small in the open air near the research center, her gaze falls on you as soon as she enters.

“Hey,” she breathes once breaches your vicinity.

“Hi.”

A moment lapses before you’re nodding towards the seat before you.

“We can get started whenever you’re ready.”

Right. Right! Vi’s mentally cringing, pulling the chair out with a squeak and dropping onto the worn cushion.

Her eyes are locked, watching as you pull the biometry textbook from your little messenger bag.

“Any particular areas you’re struggling in?” you ask, flipping to a clean sheet of paper in your notepad and clicking open your pen.

Vi combs her brain, tries to think of anything she’s not really grasping in Medarda’s class, but she’s been acing all the exams with flying colors, so she spits out the first thing that comes to mind.

“Logistic regression, probably,” she answers.

“In relation to...?” You tilt your head and Vi’s breath is hitching.

“The Confusion Matrix,” she answers, even though she knows all about it.

It’s only when you start breaking it down from the bare bones that she realizes that she could listen to you talk for-probably-ever.

You obviously have a great understanding of the subject if the way you deconstruct the relationship between sensitivity and specificity (or whatever the fuck) is anything to go by, and she doesn’t realize that she hasn’t even blinked until you’re glancing up at her.

“Am I making any sense?” you ask softly, taking in the almost confused look on Violet’s face.

“Huh?”

Vi snaps out of it, cheeks coloring pink when she notes the way you straighten in your seat.

“Am I going too fast?”

“No, no!’ Vi practically shouts before chancing an embarrassed gaze around the library to find a few wandering eyes. She clears her throat and tries to relax. “No, you’re doing great. I get it.”

You don’t seem convinced, but the faster you get through the material, the faster Violet can leave and you can finally catch your breath.

Because maybe Maddie’s a little right. That while you know, one hundred percent, without-a-doubt, that you and Violet are cut from two different cloths and that you ultimately won’t mesh, there’s still a sliver of want that settles somewhere confined in the pit of your gut.

You don’t know how long you continue before you notice that sun has begun to set in the horizon, but Vi’s effort is unwavering. She’s probably on her tenth practice problem by now and so far, she’s only flubbed once.

You decide to fold your cards first.

“O-kay,” you say, sucking in a sharp breath as you roll your shoulders and squeeze your hands shut so tight your knuckles crack. “This is a good stopping point, don’t you think?”

No, Vi could keep going forever if it meant hearing you talk all night, but the little G-shock wristwatch winks the time and she realizes that the two of you have been going at it for going on two hours and you’re probably exhausted.

“Yeah, sorry, I didn’t mean to keep you so long,” Vi says sheepishly. “Thanks a lot for your help, I...”

You look up from where you’re shuffling your papers together, pausing when she hesitates.

“I really appreciate you. I know you probably help dozens of people every week and—”

She stops talking when she sees you crack what seems to be the first genuine smile she could get out of you since Friday.

“It’s my job, Violet,” you tell her. “I’m happy to help.”

And she’d done well enough during the tutoring session, had a successful run with the practice problems. You were confident it was just a one and done. Perhaps served as a review for the upcoming exam Medarda had posted on the class page.

But then you see her name in the final time slot on Thursday, don’t really think much of it until you’re tabbing to next week’s schedule for shits and giggles. Tuesday and Thursday are booked through again, her name highlighted in yellow.

You minimize the calendar and pull up the aggregate schedule only to find that every 4 o’clock slot every Tuesday and Thursday’s been booked until the end of the semester.

You refresh for good measure.

“Oh, you’re so shitting me.”

You don’t know what kind of joke this is, if Violet thinks that this is funny, but you’re not amused.

Especially when you’re stalking all the way to the athletic hall, ignoring the wolfish stares from shameless student athletes to whip into the women’s hockey team’s reserved conditioning space.

You find her benching near the center of the room, Abigail Anderson spotting her while the rest of the team engages in various workouts and exercises.

A hush ripples over the weight room as you approach the hockey star, standing at the end of the bench where her knees are bent. One of Abigail Anderson’s eyebrows quirk up as you stand there with your hands on your hips and you hope the chill that runs down your spine as she checks you out doesn’t visibly vibrate your body.

When the barbell nearly crushes Vi’s chest on her last rep, Abby’s quick to help her re-rack and takes the biggest step back as Vi sits up.

Her expression falls and her face pales when she locks eyes with you, your features severe and gaze stony.

“Oh, hey,” she squeaks.

Truthfully, she hadn’t really pinned you as the type to be confrontational. Thought she’d have enough time to build a strong enough story as to why she booked out all of your tutoring sessions when in actuality she panicked when Ellie started grilling the fuck out of her about being a fucking pussy and begging her to just ask you out.

“You have some explaining to do, Violet.”

And she should definitely be embarrassed, not at all turned on, but she can’t help it as she gulps. Because when you stand before her like this, she can easily admit that she’d die for a private version of the view.

The silence in the weight room is palpable and you want to back down, but if this is some running joke and Vi’s going to make a show of humiliating you in front of her teammates, then you’d give her a show.

“Violet.”

Someone in the back snickers, another whistles, and Vi’s cheeks go red.

She’s standing, sweaty hands closing around your biceps as she spins you around and quickly guides you out of the conditioning room and out of her teammates’ line of ogling sight.

“V—”

“I’m sorry,” Violet splutters. “I’m just not really confident in Medarda’s class right now and I don’t trust myself to study alone, plus you’re a really good tutor and—”

“You do realize that those tutoring sessions are added to your tuition, right?” you ask incredulously. “It’s fifteen dollars an hour.”

Vi’s smile is crooked.

“That’s what my scholarship’s for,” she grins.

“Don’t you think that’s a bit excessive?” you try again. “I feel that before an exam for a little refresh is fair, but this would be like relearning the material after every class, all over again.”

“If it’s taught by you, I’ll take it,” Vi says quickly, and you pause because what does she mean by that?

You don’t really have much rebuttal left even though you’d marched up here with a fire under your ass. Vi’s looking down at you with a softened edge in her gaze and she’s wearing nothing but a pair of black sweatpants and sweat-soaked grey tank that reveals swathes of ink that curls up her arms and disappears under the fabric of her shirt.

She breathes out a small laugh when she notices the way your eyes dance.

“Anymore concerns, cupcake?”

Your gaze snaps to hers and her grin widens when she sees you fidget, little pet name obviously eliciting a semblance of a reaction from you.

“N-No,” you stammer.

“Great, see you tomorrow?“

You swallow.

“Okay,” you agree. “See you tomorrow.”

Violet pops into the library at four on the dot.

Her hair’s wet from an obvious shower and you smell her, warm like honey and cedar as she takes the seat across from you.

“Afternoon, cupcake,” she greets, slinging her backpack into the seat next to her.

You give her a warning look, but she just flashes you a toothy smile and nods towards the opened biometry textbook before you.

“What’s the lesson today, Teach?”

And this feels an awful lot like mocking, but you can’t be sure, not when Vi’s been somewhat respectful, sweet even.

“What do you know about the the sigmoid function?” you probe.

“Jack shit,” she laughs.

And maybe you’d find it endearing if the entirety of the situation wasn’t still absolutely mindfucking you at moment.

“Can I ask you something, Violet?” you ask, leaning back in your seat as you cross your arms to level her with as an intimidating look as you can.

“Sure, anything.”

“Are you messing with me?” you ask. “Is this some joke you and your friends are playing? Because I can’t really think of an outcome that would be funny.”

And you’d like to say that the look of horror on Violet’s face is consolation enough, but you know how being loved and being popular can make people act sometimes.

Vi contemplates telling you the truth, that she’s too chickenshit to ask you out, that getting close to you in any other way scares the fuck out of her. That maybe getting you to tutor her will segue into some form of friendship that’ll allow her to ease her way in. And maybe she’s going about it the hard way, but maybe Vi also likes a challenge.

“No jokes, just bad at statistics,” she says weakly.

You’re silent for way longer than comfort allows before you turn your attention to the textbook and Vi’s letting out a breath she doesn’t realize she’s holding.

“Fine,” you give in. “Let’s talk about sigmoid function and practice some applications...”

Vi’s happy to listen, goes through your preselected practice problems with ease (and maybe fucks up a value or two here and there to really sell her need for you). But the sun’s going down again, and it’s nearing six when Vi folds her hand this time around.

It comes in the form of her stomach grumbling in the emptying library and she looks up at you in embarrassment as you crack the first smile of the evening.

“Hungry?” you ask.

“Starving,” she replies dramatically, leaning so far back in her seat, her knees bump yours under the table.

Your toes curl at the contact, heart skipping when she doesn’t make a move to reposition herself.

“Have you eaten yet?” she asks, eyes looking everywhere but yours.

“Not since breakfast,” you admit.

“You like pizza?”

“Only the good kind,” you challenge.

“Beautiful,” Vi hums, shuffling her papers into her textbook and chucking it back into her bookbag. “I know the best place.”

Valentino’s is a hole-in-the-wall right outside of campus, a short walk from the library that Violet leverages as a way to get to know you outside of being lectured about statistical curves and correlation.

“Did you grow up around here?” Vi asks once the waiter sets two glasses of water down between the two of you.

You shake your head.

“No, grew up on the east coast and decided I needed a break from my life there,” you admit easily.

It’s almost as if the facade of professionalism fades away, melting to reveal you.

Vi’s desperate for more.

“As in?”

You look at her for a moment, wonder if you should divulge because you’re not really sure if Vi would get it, but she watches you like she’s hanging onto every single word you say, so you’re spilling.

“My dad died when I was little, left me and three other siblings with my Mom,” you offer. “And I love my siblings. Love my mom. She’s been a great parent, better than great actually, but most of our family disowned me when I came out and it was easier to run away than to deal with it.”

Violet’s expression falls, a furrow settling deep between her brows.

“Wow, I’m, uh, I’m really sorry to hear that,” she says, and she sounds sincere. A long moment lapses before she’s adding, “for what it’s worth, I think that’s very brave of you.”

And you seem a little surprised at the sentiment.

“Thanks.” You smile. “That’s sweet of you to say.”

Vi could turn to goo in this dimly lit booth, stained-glass wall sconce casting a warm glow over your pretty face.

“You—” She sniffs, changes the subject because she doesn’t know if she can do this on an empty stomach. “You like pineapple on your pizza?”

“Oh yeah,” you confirm proudly. “It’s a hill I’ll die on, I’m not sorry.”

“God, marry me now.”

She doesn’t realize she says it out loud until you’re bursting into a fit of laughter on your side of the booth.

“So this is something we can agree on?” you ask, head tilting in the way that makes Vi want to grab your face and taste you.

“Oh yeah,” she parrots instead. “One hundred percent.”

Valentino’s becomes routine just as much as Vi seeing you at four every Tuesday and Thursday becomes routine. It’s always after the Thursday session (because they have a three dollar slice from 6 to close) that you and Vi cram yourselves in the same booth near the kitchen and giggle over half a Hawaiian pizza.

“...And my little sister blew up her science project in the fourth grade—”

You choke on your bite, eyes wide as Violet recalls Powder’s little mishap that sent the entire gymnasium evacuating despite the tiniest fire.

“Now she’s about graduate and start school for chemical engineering,” she says, obviously proud.

“She seems like a smart girl,” you observe, if the countless stories Violet shares with you is anything to go by.

You figure being related to someone as great as the new friend you’ve made also speaks for itself.

“The smartest,” she agrees. “I’m proud of her.”

“I’m sure she’s proud of you too,” you assure her. “You’re a good big sister.”

And it’s in these moments that Vi realizes that she’s in far, far deeper than she initially gave stock. Because these past few weeks, she realizes that there’s a lot more to your big brain and your pretty face. You’re an attentive listener, way funnier than she could have anticipated, and just a lot more laid back than you let on.

That much she finds out after the two of you graduate from emailing with silly sign-offs to exchanging phone numbers and texting. It starts off rather irregular, a coffee order here and there, maybe a TikTok that Vi swears is funny, you just have to watch it all the way through! But then she starts texting you when she’s bored, when she’s in class, before practice, after. Even pops the question that’s been niggling at her since she met you: on a scale from 1 - 10 how down are you to smoke?

Like cigarettes?

no, weed, dummy.

Oh. Hmm. 7. 10 if I’m drunk.

She could not wipe the smile from her face even if she tried.

And then she gets the invite.

Ellie swears it’s her in.

“Jesus Christ if you even consider me a friend, you’ll bang,” Ellie calls from the couch.

“It’s just tutoring,“ Vi argues.

“Yeah, at her place,” she scoffs. “At least test the waters, maybe cop a feel.”

“You’re a pig,” Vi snorts, making sure her laptop and all of the worksheets Medarda’s assigned over the course of the week is in her backpack.

“You’ve been wet dreaming over this girl for months.”

“Fuck all the way off.” Vi’s face warms because her best friend isn’t necessarily wrong.

You’re too hot for your own good, but you don’t even know it and Vi thinks she could die sometimes. Especially when you wear your favorite pair of jeans, the ones that hug the swell of your ass just right. Or swipe on that shimmery lipgloss she swears makes your mouth look edible.

If you were willing, Vi would be all over you, but thinking about taking advantage of the fact that you trust her enough to invite her into your space feels a little grimy.

“Whatever, bang, don’t bang,” Ellie says nonchalantly. “Blueball yourself for all I care.”

Vi rolls her eyes, slings her bag over her shoulder before sliding on her shoes and leaving her friend on the couch with a resounding click.

You live off-campus, maybe a ten minute drive, in a cozy little complex near the suburbs. Your roommate, Maddie, a chipper blonde with a bob, is all too eager to leave when Vi arrives.

“Hi, sorry we couldn’t meet anywhere else,” you apologize as you let her into your space. “Even if the library wasn’t closed, the vet said I have to monitor Pip for the next 48 hours.”

Vi raises a brow.

“My cat,” you clarify.

“Oh.” Vi doesn’t know why she suddenly feels like she’s intruding as she hesitantly toes off her shoes and follows you down the hall.

But she does take the opportunity to take you in in all your glory; all cozy and cuddly in an oversized sweatshirt, plaid pajama shorts and mismatched egg socks.

Cute. So fucking cute.

You spare her a glance over your shoulder and she’s clearing her throat.

“We don’t have to have a session tonight," she says, stopping at the threshold of the living room. “I would’ve understood if you had to cancel.”

You shake your head, give her a soft smile that has her knees feel like jelly.

“S’okay,” you assure her. “A promise is a promise.”

And you do start off studying, shoulder to shoulder in front of your coffee table, but then Pip crawls from his little hiding spot under the TV console to curiously nose along Vi’s feet and she’s a goner.

“He’s so sweet,” she practically wails as he paws at her thigh and nudges against her arm so that he can climb into her lap.

You warm at the sight, can’t help but snap a picture, much to Violet’s dismay.

“Stop,” she laughs. “That picture can’t see the light of day.”

“Why?” you whine, making a show of climbing onto your wooden coffee table to get a funny top down photo of the hockey star with your cat. “You and Pip look so cute together.”

She feigns a scowl even though her shoulders shake with laughter.

“I have a bad boy image to uphold, sweetheart.”

You snort, reach into her lap to scratch behind Pip’s ear, and her heart melts, body warm from her ears to her toes.

“Is he sick?” she asks cautiously, petting him softly.

“Just a little,” you say. “Something some rest and medicine won’t fix.”

It’s how the two of you end up on the couch, study materials long forgotten as Animal Planet plays in the background. Pip’s moved to lounge atop the covers draped over your lap and you’re blowing your nose into a tissue as an especially sad segment about baby animals being rejected by their mothers finishes.

Vi knows she shouldn’t laugh, but you’re too fucking cute and she can’t help but coo at you.

“You can’t tell anyone about this,” you hiccup.

“What, that you’re a big soft baby?” she teases.

“Vi,” you whimper.

And something in her brain tickles because she can’t recall a time you’d ever called her by her nickname, only ever referred to her as Violet and nothing else.

She resists a smile.

“Okay, okay,” she gives in. “Lets change the subject.”

You make a noise of agreement as you cuddle your sleepy Pip.

“I actually wanted to ask you something,” she says, arm slung over the back of the couch, fingers a hairsbreadth from your figure.

Test the waters, cop a feel.

Vi’s not particularly into the idea, but the opportunity’s right there in the way wisps of your hair falls from its hold. Her fingers move of their own device, tucking the strands behind your ear.

She feels you still for the slightest, most imperceptible of moments, but then you’re relaxing, letting her fingers brush from your ear down to your shoulder, then back to where it rests on the back of the couch.

“You doing anything on Saturday?” she asks, really hopes you’ll say no.

“Not that I know of,” you say without second thought.

Not that you really need to. Your tight circle of friends are all alike, tethered to their hobbies and their homes.

“I have a game on Saturday,” Vi starts, fiddling with a little hole in the cushion. “If you wanted to come.”

You don’t agree or disagree immediately, and Vi’s scrambling to soothe over any potential discomfort.

“You don’t have to if you don’t wanna, of course,” she says quickly. “I just— I thought you might be interested in going and I’d really like to see you there and—”

A small little laugh puffs from your lips.

“Of course I’ll go,” you agree easily.

Vi deflates in relief.

“Great,” she sighs. “Awesome.”

Vi doesn’t know why she invites you. More so, she doesn’t know why she tells her teammates that she’s invited you because now they’re whooping and hollering in the locker room, towel-whipping her and sing-songing that their star player’s gonna get laid.

Doesn’t know why she invites you because as soon as she glides on the ice, she’s searching the stands high and low for your familiar figure. When she clocks you nestled in the middle with your roommate and another friend she vaguely recognizes, her heart’s soaring and her stomach’s twisting in knots.

Vi’s never nervous, but somehow you bring out the worst of it.

It only takes a few moments, though. The blare of the horn snaps her back into her zone and she leaves all the noise off-rink. In this moment, all she knows is cutting ice, dodging the other team’s most aggressive players and sinking shot after shot.

It’s nearing the end of the second period when she finally glances at the score.

5—4.

The opposing team’s giving them a run for their money and this is probably one of the tightest matches they’ve played all season. She takes a moment to find you in the stands again, and you’re right where she left you, eyes already glued to her as you hover over the edge of your seat.

She hadn’t realized it before, but you’ve got her number painted on her face and another surge of warmth layers over the exertion.

You give her a thumbs up and she feels like lightning.

They reset and she’s off, like a streak of light in the night sky, she’s shuffling the puck towards the goal.

Then you see the navy uniform barreling towards her, voice caught in your throat as Vi gives the puck one last shot before that damned Jersey Number Six shoves her so hard, she’s flinging into the rink’s wall.

The horn chugs, signaling the end of the second period and the stands erupt in a ceremonious cheer as the playback reveals that Vi had sunk the puck before time.

“Fuck yeah!” you cry out, shooting to your feet to clap your hands.

Vi ignores the instigating chants to fight, only really pays attention to your little dance of excitement as she shakes off the other player and rejoins her team for intermission.

“Fuck, Vi, you got it bad, huh?” Abigail Anderson’s spearheading the teasing once they all return to the locker room at the end of the game.

Vi’s body heats at the thought, isn’t really in the business of denying it anymore, because, you know what? Yeah. Vi’s got it so fucking bad for you, she doesn’t even know what to do with herself. You’re her first thought, her final prayer, and everything in between.

So all she does he shrug, can’t help the grin that splits her lips as she rubs her towel through her sweat-damp hair.

She’s the first one out of the locker room, dressed in some sweats and a pullover, towel slung around her neck as she steps into the tunnel. Your contact’s pulled up, and she’s ready to fire off a text asking where you want her to meet you, but she stops short to see you already leaned outside of the change room’s doors.

“Hey, cupcake,” she murmurs, smiling hard when she finds the smudged number 5 still chalked on your face.

“Hi, Violet,” you return shyly, hands clasped behind your back.

She hears the telltale whoosh of the locker room doors, the chattering of her teammates as they poke their heads out into the hall to be nosy, but she’s guiding you along, throwing a wink over her shoulder as the two of you fall into step.

“Thank you for coming,” Vi says after a moment. “You being here really meant a lot to me.”

You don’t know if Vi’s always been this sentimental, but just never given the opportunity to showcase it, or if she’s just buttering you up, but you can’t help but beam at her with pearly teeth and dimpled cheeks.

“God, Violet, you were so good!” you say excitedly, a little skip in your step. “You were in the rink, skating circles around them, like this, and like this.”

She bursts into laughter as you start speeding down the tunnel, dodging garbage bins and jumping up into the air to click your heels.

Something falls out of your little fannypack when you land, and Vi’s crouching down to pick up the tulle baggie to find a little beaded bracelet with a gold clasp that reads puck off.

“What’s this?” Vi asks, and you stop your shenanigans to turn your attention to her.

When your expression falters and you’re running back to her at full speed, she’s holding the baggie up just a little too out of reach for you, grin smug.

“Is this for me, sweetheart?” she asks presumptuously, even though her heart’s thrumming hard in her ribcage.

You’re on your tiptoes, chest pressed against hers, and god, please! is all Vi can think when your head tilts up, a little defeated knit between your eyebrows.

She milks the fuck out of whatever this is, arm banding around your waist as she returns the baggie to you.

“Maybe,” you whisper finally.

“Maybe what?” Vi teases.

“Maybe it’s for you,” you respond, free hand coming to rest on her chest.

“And what do I have to do to get it?” she asks, voice low.

It makes your body jolt hard as a shiver slinks down your spine because there she is, the insufferable flirt who knows exactly what to say to have your brain turn to mush.

You seem like you’re contemplating for a moment and Vi’s breath is hitching in her throat, wondering if you’re willing to play this cat and mouse game with her.

You smile, something glinting in your warm eyes.

“Puck off.”

Your giggle is maniacal as you slip away, leaving her temporarily stunned before she chases you down the tunnel. And she should expect your speed, especially because you’ve got legs, but it takes her a moment to catch up with you when her practice bag’s thumping on her back like that. Her calloused fingers are closing around the flesh of your hips in no time and she’s pulling you back into her arms.

“Cough it up, sweetheart,” she huffs.

You whine.

“It was supposed to be a surprise,” you counter.

“Gimme, gimme, gimme.”

And you give in because Violet’s made you weak. She’s holding out her wrist as you free the multi-colored bracelet.

You barely clasp the closure in the ring before Violet’s stumbling into you, a big burly girl from the other team shoulder checking the fuck out of her.

“Nice job standing in the middle of the walk way,” she bites.

Violet only snorts a laugh.

“Whatever, good game,” she calls.

Whoever she is, stops, levels Vi with a deadly look before her gaze flits to the bracelet you’ve just fixed around her wrist to you who stands frozen into place as the tension crackles between them.

“Cute,” she observes and your skin prickles. “Let me take her for a spin?”

“Violet,” you warn when her shoulders square and she takes a step forward.

She looks torn between walking away and beating the shit out of whoever this instigator is, but one of her teammates is shoving her along.

“Leave it.”

Whatever that was shatters the moment between the two of you and Vi’s taking in a deep breath as Abby trails behind the two of you.

The girl whistles for good measure and you throw a dirty look over your shoulder.

She winks.

You’ve still yet to find out who hosts these parties, but this time around gives you a weird sense of deja vu as you climb the steps with Maddie in tow.

You and Vi had parted ways at the rink, not before extending you an invite to the celebration later in the evening.

You should come, I can pick you up.

But per usual, DD duties call, and you’d smiled up at her despite the lingering pressure from the prior confrontation and promised her that yes, you’d absolutely be there.

Maddie squeals from the step below as you climb the front porch, breaths coming out in puffs of steam.

“You look so hot,” she says excitedly.

You giggle nervously, sure hope you do because you’re freezing your ass off!

“Yeah?”

Maddie gives you an incredulous look, eyelids powdered with glitter and gaze lined charcoal. She’s looking extra cute tonight too and you know that the two of you could fall into an endless cycle of teasing because a certain someone’s probably inside tonight.

“If she doesn’t fuck you before the night ends, I will,” Maddie teases, and you’re warming unceremoniously at the thought.

Because maybe you’ve been thinking about it a lot more recently despite only going into this trying to get through these tutoring sessions and dipping. Especially as of late now that Vi’s made it a habit to FaceTime you after practice, on your walk to the library, dripping sweat and chest heaving.

You’d always seen the appeal, but now you feel it.

You smooth down your asymmetrical skirt and Maddie steps up to adjust your tits in your lowcut lace blouse just as the door swings open to reveal none other than Violet.

“Oh—” Her voice catches as she takes you in.

Maddie gives your ass a little swat and Vi’s gaze is following the movement as your roommate pushes past her to slip inside.

“I was— I was just about to step out. To, uh, to call you,” she stammers.

You breath out a little laugh.

“Here I am.”

“Yeah,” she agrees. “Here you are.”

Jesus, fuck Vi could burst into flames right now. Your boots hug your thighs and Violet’s not gonna lie, she really wishes it were her head squeezed between—

“You look...” Hot, so fucking edible, downright fuck— “...really nice.”

You smile, but you can’t help the way your teeth chatters.

“Fuck, shit, you’re probably cold,” she curses, warm hands closing around your shoulders to pull you inside. “Why didn’t you wear a jacket? You’re gonna get sick.”

I wanted you to want me.

“Guess I just forgot,” you say quietly.

She looks like she wants to scold you, but instead, she’s pulling down her coat, a big black work jacket, hanging from the banister of the stairs around your shoulders and you’re relishing the residual warmth that lingers there and her familiar scent.

“Can I get you a cider?” she asks. “It’s still warm.”

It hits you as her fingers curl through yours, that Vi’s truly nothing like what you initially thought. She’s sweet, and she’s respectful, and she’s everything you could ever hope for.

You freeze at the thought, and Vi’s glancing at you when she’s tugged to a stop.

“You okay?” she hums.

Your eyes search her face, gliding over the scar on her lip and the one slit through her eyebrow. The gold hoop pierced through her nose glints under the lowlight and her thick lashes flutter as she looks down at you.

You give her a smile that doesn’t quite reach your eyes because wow, you’re in deep.

“I’m okay,” you assure her, give her fingers a squeeze for good measure.

When she finally secures you a mug of steaming cider, she’s guiding you to her group of friends that occupy the living room.

You only recognize Ellie, her best friend and her roommate, and Abby, the captain. Everyone else is a jumbled mix of names and faces and you stick close to Vi as she settles into the left corner of the couch.

You make a move to sit on the armrest, legs crossed and hands folded around your mug, but Vi’s spreading her legs and pulling you into her lap before you can effectively protest.

Her warmth immediately engulfs you and it takes every ounce of self control not to curl up into a ball in front of all her friends and classmates.

As they recap the game and catch up with each other, you remain hushed, eyes flitting from person to person as they speak. Toes curling whenever Violet’s voice vibrates in her chest as she talks big about sports and the hot teams this season.

You’re caught off caught when Ellie’s directing a question towards you and you barely register.

“What do you like to do?” she asks you.

All eyes audibly shift to where you’re cozied up in Vi’s lap, cider empty and abandoned on the side table.

“Uh.”

Your words are lodged in your throat because you’re so used to talking Vi’s ear off about your interests (namely, Animal Planet and your son Pip), showing her your little craft projects you like to do in front of the television on a weekend evening (you’d taken a break from the scarf / hat combo you were knitting to finish the bracelet you designed for Vi), and yapping about some obscure film you’d watched while finishing said projects.

But here, now, you don’t know what to say. Not when this isn’t your typical crowd and you don’t know what to expect from her friends.

Vi must feel your hesitation because her digits are slipping into her jacket, fingertips ghosting the small of your back as she presses a palm against your spine to smooth the tension there.

It’s okay, is a silent insinuation.

You give her a look from the corner of your eye before you turn your attention back to Ellie.

“I don’t do much,” you offer honestly. “Just starting my old cat lady duties early, I suppose.”

Ellie laughs benevolently.

“You have a cat?”

“Yes, his name’s Pip, and he’s basically my kid.”

“Cute,” Ellie coos. “You got any pictures?”

And you seem to light up, spare Vi one more glance as you dig in her coat pocket to produce your cellphone, charms jangling as you power it back on to show Ellie the lockscreen.

“I contemplated naming him Toothless from—”

“—How To Train Your Dragon!” Abby fills in from across the couch. “That’s such a good ass movie.”

It warms Vi to the bone, seeing you and her friends nerd out. Seeing them put in the effort because they know she likes you and seeing you reciprocate because, well, you’re you, and you just need a little warming up.

She doesn’t know how long you and her friends chat for until you’re shifting a little and turning your attention back to her.

“Can you show me the bathroom, please?”

Her gaze flits to her circle, and they’re smirking, obviously under the impression that this must be some sort of code the two of you concocted.

She ignores them, and most importantly she ignores the way her pulse jumps when you stand from your seat and perch between her legs, offering both of your neatly manicured hands to her.

This is getting fucking ridiculous.

The bathroom is tucked under the stairs near the front of the house and she stands post outside the door as you finish up.

It’s only when you’re poking your head outside the door sheepishly that she stands up straight.

“Can you help me with my zipper?” you ask timidly.

She puffs a laugh, slips in through the space you crack for her to find you holding the two sides of your skirt together.

And she knows she shouldn’t look, but the space allows her to see the pink lace of your panties. She’s shoving her tongue in her cheek, focusing on lining up the seams and pulling up your zipper as you hold the fabric taut.

“Thanks,” you whisper, looking up to see that Vi’s impossibly close to you in this cramped little powder room.

“Anytime, sweetheart,” she croaks, leaning against the counter as you wash your hands.

She thumbs the hem of your skirt absently.

“I like this,” she admits, gaze trailing up to meet yours. “You look pretty.”

Your ears burn, unable to meet the smolder of her steely eyes. You’d probably find that her pupils are blown wide if you did. Instead, you’re watching her mouth, lips stained cherry and tongue coming out to wet the dry patch.

You hold your breath as you reach across her for the hand towel, but her hands find your hips, teetering into dangerous territory as she moves almost close enough to slip her hands under your skirt.

“You’re not gonna say thank you?” she asks, watching you through hooded eyes.

A nervous giggle bubbles.

“Thanks, Violet,” you murmur.

“‘Course,” she agrees easily. “You gonna wear it again?”

You bite.

“If you ask nicely.”

She licks her lips again, body flexed as you allow her to press you closer. One of your hands splays on the counter behind her, the other brushing over the blooming bruise on her jaw.

“Can I?” she husks.

You don’t need to ask for clarification, not when her nose is nudging yours and your breaths are mingling.

“Yeah,” you sigh. “Pl—”

The door rattles with the ferocity of whoever’s knocking on the other side.

“Hurry up in there, I gotta piss!”

To your dismay, the two of you don’t talk about Saturday night. And things’s aren’t particularly bad, but something’s definitely shifted and it’s driving you nuts.

Vi’s on the ice practicing the following morning and after classes on Monday, so you wait for your session with bated breath on Tuesday. You try extra hard despite every voice of reason telling you that you’re reading into it too much.

Vi smiles at you easily as she drops into the seat across from you, pulling out her biometry textbook without so much as a peep about the fact that the two of you almost kissed in whoever the fuck’s bathroom that was over the weekend.

You’re staring, hard.

Because that familiar feeling’s coming back. The seedling of doubt that had rooted in the beginning about Vi’s intentions with you. She’d done a good job of weeding it out over the weeks, of dismantling whatever image you’d built of her in your head, but it plants itself again.

She’s squeezing your hand across the table and your gaze flits down to her rough fingers. That’s when you notice it, the bracelet, still fastened where you clasped it on game night.

You relax a fraction.

“Everything okay?”

You smile, something small.

“Yeah, good,” you assure her.

The rest of your tutoring session is uneventful, goes off without a hitch. And you’re shameless in admitting that you hate to see her go as she walks you to your car in the student lot near the library.

You’re grasping at straws, clearing your throat before she closes your door for you.

“Uh,” you squeak. “Do you want to come over?”

Vi’s pausing, hand still on the edge of your door as her lips twitch.

“Like right now?”

You nod because you’ve already pulled the trigger.

“Like right now,” you confirm.

She checks her wristwatch, sighs heavily because fuck yes, she’d love to come over right now, but Anderson and Williams are expecting her for a strategy meeting with the coach and—

“Sorry,” you say quickly. “You don’t have to, I know we only really—”

She pinches your cheek before tucking some of your hair behind your ear.

“I can’t tonight, sweetheart, I’m sorry,” she says. “But tell you what, if you’re willing to free up your Friday night, I’d really like to plan something.”

Your heartbeat skips.

“All yours,” you say without missing a beat.

Vi’s grinning wide.

“Perfect, drive safe,” she bids. “See you tomorrow.”

And you don’t know why you’re so fucking high strung, not when Vi hasn’t done anything to make you doubt that this isn’t all in your head, but it only gets worse as the days go by.

It doesn’t come to a head until Thursday, when your tutoring slots are miraculously empty until Vi’s and you receive an email from Medarda to meet in her office after her string of lectures.

“Afternoon,” the older woman greets, smiling warmly at you as she lets you into her office. “Just wanted to check in with your audit and request any feedback you have.”

You think for a moment before shaking your head.

“Nothing in particular that I can think of,” you say easily, then add with a laugh, “feel like I’ll be a professional by the end of the semester.”

“Why do you say that?” Medarda chuckles as she logs into her computer.

“I have a student sitting every Tuesday and Thursday for tutoring in your class,” you reveal.

She gives you look crossed between surprise and amusement.

“Really?”

“Yeah.” You giggle at the distant memory of Vi’s expression in the weight room. “She seems to be picking it up well enough, though.”

“Huh, every Tuesday and Thursday?” she asks, fingers flying over her keyboard. “I must be doing something wrong.”

“I’d hardly say that,” you say. “When Violet booked all my sessions, I thought it was a joke, but I think she’s just really dedicated to doing well.”

“Violet?” Medarda repeats, hands stilling over her mouse.

“Yeah, Violet, on the women’s hockey team?”

Your professor’s eyebrows twitch.

“Why would you— huh. Weird,” she comments.

“I admit it was a little strange, but—”

“Violet’s a consistent top scorer on the exams,” Medarda shares. “She’s been top of the class since the beginning of the semester.”

And it’s like the world stills as she reveals that information, fragile pieces shattering as the gears start turning in your brain and you try to put the puzzle together.

You glance at the clock, find that you’re due to meet Violet in half an hour.

“Uh, if you’ll excuse me,” you say politely, try to ignore the concerned expression etched on your professor’s face at your sudden departure. “It was nice chatting with you. If I think of anything feedback-wise, I’ll be sure to email you.”

And you’re running.

Vi’s in the locker room after practice, toweling off after an extra long shower because she’s been looking a little extra forward to seeing you today, but perhaps that’s everyday as of late.

She’s hooking the bracelet you gave her back on when her phone vibrates and she’s practically diving into her locker when your text tone bleats.

sweetheart: I have to cancel your session this afternoon. I’m sorry.

Her expression screws up.

everything ok? can i do anything for you?

sweetheart: Personal things to take care of. I’ll see you next week.

I’ll see you next week.

But what about tomorrow? She’d been working so fucking hard on tomorrow, on finally pulling her head far enough out of her ass to ask you to give the two of you a shot.

She sets her phone down, slumps down on the bench as she turns her wrist and takes in the smooth glass beads of the bracelet.

She sighs. Hard.

You hole up all weekend long, put your phone on do not disturb, and try your best to get whatever this is out of your system. But you’re a slave to your emotions and you can’t help but check your messages every time you know Vi’s free.

It’s a single text on a Saturday night, one that surprises you because you know she has practice now that the big game’s fast approaching.

violet <3: hey sweetheart, just checking in. i know you said you had a few personal things going on, but i’m here if you feel like you need someone <3

You’re texting back before your better judgement can stop you.

Just been a little stressed. You wanna come over?

.

.

.

Then you add, We can smoke.

Vi’s sending you three running emojis and you crack a smile at your screen before realizing that you need to shower.

You lay out some clothes beforehand, ultimately settling on last Saturday’s skirt.

Vi’s giggling as you fumble with the wrapper, rolling it with clumsy fingers because, truthfully, you don’t do this often, but she shuts right up when you don’t break eye contact as the tip of your tongue slides across the seam to seal the joint.

She’d picked you up with a Sprite and a slice to split from Valentino’s, throat drying as you bounded down the stairs in the same fucking skirt that had her touching herself after she’d gotten home from the party, guilty and wound tight. Now the two of you are tucked away behind some abandoned strip.

“Ready?” Her voice rasps as you pop the end between your lips and she brings the lighter to ignite the end for you.

It burns as you inhale and Vi’s thighs squeeze together involuntarily. She’d smoked with you twice before, both times on the roof of your apartment building and at a reasonable distance. But now, she knows what your body feels like, almost knows what your lips taste like.

You take a few more puffs before offering it to her and the smoke begins to plume to fill the space of her little coupe. It’s moments like these, tucked away from prying eyes, that it’s just you and Vi.

Not Vi, the supposed womanizing hockey star, or you, the nerdy homebody tutor. Just the two of you, two souls trying to get through university and carve your paths.

“I aced Medarda’s exam this week,” Vi says softly, jay pinched between her fingers as she watches you with lowering eyes.

“Oh, yeah? I wonder why,” you quip in return, face impossibly close to hers despite the console between you.

“I have a smartypants tutor that does an especially good job when she’s motivated,” she answers.

Your cheeks flame, but you don’t back down. Vi’s been extra good at pushing your buttons and flirting hard as of late, and maybe you’re a little more than willing to receive and reciprocate, but the two of you have been toeing the line, yet neither of you have taken the leap.

This moment, however, feels like it could be it. Like you’re going to find out what the fuck all of this even is.

“I have to meet this tutor of yours,” you play along. “She sounds like a miracle worker.”

“Among other things,” Vi teases, sucking in the smoke and blowing it through her nostrils.

“Like?”

“She’s also funny as fuck,” she hums. “A big baby when we watch Animal Planet.”

You narrow your eyes at her and Vi lets out a little laugh that makes your toes curl.

“Uh-huh?”

“She’s really fucking pretty too,” she says quietly.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she affirms. “Kind of pretty that makes you wanna do bad, bad things.”

You smile falters as a shiver rips down your spine and before you know it, Vi’s putting out the joint before climbing in the cramped backseat of her car to spread her legs.

Doesn’t even give you a moment to process before she’s pulling you on top of her and allowing you to settle comfortably in her lap. Her hands run up your thighs and disappear under your skirt to grab the fat of your ass.

You breathe out a little giggle as your slender fingers come up to cup her jaw.

“Think my tutor’ll be mad at me?” Vi murmurs, nose brushing yours. “‘Cuz I really, really wanna kiss this pretty girl in my lap right now.”

You let out a broken little sigh when her hips buck.

“Maybe she’ll forgive you,” you whisper. “I know I would.”

And that’s all the affirmation Vi needs from you before she’s taking the plunge and slotting her lips with yours; kissing you with so much fervor, you’d think she needs you to breathe. She tastes like mint and weed and you can’t get enough.

Vi’s all-consuming, her kiss a delicious mix of teeth and tongue. And, god, her hands. Rough and calloused, but gentle in the way she explores your body. It isn’t until she’s snapping the band of your thong and her fingertips ghost the seam of your sticky heat that you’re hyper-focusing.

“Mmmph, Violet, Vi—” Your voice cracks as she breaks from your lips to map a series of kisses from your jaw, to the juncture behind your ear, down the column of your neck. “Wait.”

She stops, hands pulling from under your skirt like you’ve burned her. And perhaps you have, branded nearly every part of her because she can’t really think of a sound moment if you’re not there.

“Sorry, sorry,” she shudders as the arousal ebbs through her tightened body. “I—”

I’m caught up. I’m losing it, and it’s all your fault, and—

“Violet,” you swallow, fingers toying with the collar of her varsity sweatshirt. “I have something to say.”

Her throat bobs and her grey eyes gleam like ash in the lowlight of the backseat of her car. The windows are smoked out and it’s exceptionally warm, equal parts sexual tension and another thing Vi can’t quite pinpoint.

“Yeah, anything,” she assures you, hands resting on your waist instead. “You can tell me anything.”

One of your palms settles over her chest, right where her heart is and you suck in a sharp breath.

“I— uh, I really like you, Violet,” you admit quietly. “A lot more than I think I’ve ever liked someone in a long, long time.”

Oh.

Oh. Here it comes, the big fat rejection. The coming to your senses.

“But?”

The look on your face is devastating and Vi’s scared.

“I have to know that if I give you a chance, you won’t abuse it,” you hiccup, and wow, that’s definitely not what she expects you to say, but fuck does it leave a sour taste in her mouth.

“Abuse it?” she repeats, face crumpling.

“Violet,” you sigh.

“Abuse what?” she husks.

“I know you—”

“Do you?” she scoffs, a wave of irritation washing over her as she looks you with disappointment. “What gave you the idea that I would ever even dream of taking advantage of you giving me a chance?”

“You don’t necessarily have a spotless record, Violet,” you say, voice edged. “And I know that I’m not your usual—”

“Not my usual what?” The venom in Vi’s tone is uncharacteristic, but this is not at all how she expected tonight to go and she’s frustrated. “Not my usual type? You internalized all this shit that people say about me even though I’ve been trying to get you to see me for months.”

Emotion clogs your throat because a small part of you knows that Vi’s right. She’s never given you an outright reason to doubt her interest in you, but it all just seems too good to be true.

“Sue me for wanting to protect myself,” you choke, climbing out of her lap and back into the front seat. “Especially because I know that you don’t actually need help in Medarda’s class.”

And that catches Vi off guard. You see as much in the rearview mirror when she pales.

She clambers back into the driver’s seat.

“Who told you that?” she asks, not even bothering to deny the fact.

“I mentioned that I was tutoring you in passing when Medarda asked for feedback on her class,” you respond, crossing your arms over your chest. “She asked why I’d be doing that when you’re top of all her sections.”

Violet’s voice is stuck in her chest.

“And then your past hook ups parade around campus like a reminder that—,” you cut yourself off, obviously hurt after bottling this all up. “And it isn’t any of my business, nor are we anything enough for me to plausibly upset—”

“Yes, I lied,” Vi admits quietly. “But only about one thing.”

Your breath catches.

“You’re right, I don’t need help in Medarda’s class. I lied about being clueless and I signed up for tutoring even though I didn’t need it,” she says.

“Why?”

“You know why,” Vi huffs. “From the moment I met you, I knew.”

It’s a glaring insinuation that makes you crack.

“No one ever says it out loud, but I know what everyone thinks,” you choke. “Violet’s fucking that loser?”

“You really believe that?”

“God, Violet, I don’t know what to fucking believe,” you cry out. “My life’s fucking fine and dandy and then you show up and make me fucking question everything I—”

Vi lets out a humorless laugh, can’t even look at you and it could make you sick.

“You’re so fucking loved by everyone, even those who won’t admit it,” you croak. “And you’re incredible at everything you do, turn everything you touch to gold, and I’m just...”

Vi’s brows furrow.

“You’re what?”

“I’m me,” you whisper meekly. “I’m just me and you’re you, and I just don’t see what makes me so different.”

And Vi realizes that she’d read it all wrong.

“Look at me,” she says softly, fingers tracing your jaw.

You knuckle your tears away, make a petulant noise in your throat.

“You wanna know why I booked all your stupid tutoring sessions?” she huffs. “Because I really fucking like you, ________. And it’s beyond wanting to fuck you even though god knows I’d fucking die if you let me. It’s so much more than having you physically. Because I’ll take being just friends with you if it means having you around. I don’t give a shit about anything else but you.”

It’s the most sound declaration you hear from the girl in the semester you’ve known her and it makes you cry.

“You make me feel so fucking normal and you remind me that I don’t need to be anything else but me,” she breathes. “And I get where you’re coming from, I hear you. I just really hope you hear me too.”

“I do,” you whisper. “I’m just—”

Vi squeezes your thigh, takes your hand in hers and brings your knuckles to her lips.

“Let’s get you home, okay?” she offers gently.

Vi only has one more game before the championships and she won’t lie and say that this limbo with you has her feeling like she’s going to be ill.

You’d cancelled her tutoring sessions this week, told her that maybe the two of you needed to spend some time apart and that she was clearly doing a number on you. So she agrees, tries to give you space to work through what’s weighing on you.

sweetheart: Good luck at your game tonight, Violet. I’m rooting for you.

She really wishes you’d be there, but she knows you need the time alone.

thanks, sweetheart. i appreciate you.

“Alright Vi, we have fifteen til puck drop,” Ellie says carefully, has been front row to everything transpiring between you and her best friend.

Vi tucks her phone away in her backpack, unhooks your bracelet from around her wrist and fastens it to the handle of her bag, and grabs her stick from the rack before she lets her teammates jostle her into the tunnel.

And she wishes she could lock in, clear her head and get into the game, but all she can think about is you.

It’s a narrow victory once the game ends, but she can’t find it in herself to celebrate, especially not at the kickback afterwards because fucking Sev and her assholes are there.

“Where’s your little dime piece?” she taunts.

“Fuck off,” Vi warns, obviously not in the mood.

“Shame,” she whistles. “She looks like a fucking weirdo, but she sure does have a fat ass—”

Ellie’s fist cracks so hard across her jaw.

“She told you to fuck off,” she hisses.

Sev spits the blood in her mouth on the toe of Ellie’s shoe, fists bunching the collar of her sweater.

“Keep that fucking energy on the ice because I’m gonna wipe the floor with your fucking pissbaby team.”

You wake up on Monday morning to a text from Vi and a handful of notifications from Instagram.

violet <3: can i see you this week?

You open Instagram.

sev.94 has requested to follow you! sev.94 has sent you a message request!

Your brows furrow, opening the message request hesitantly. There’s a few DMs and a video from this Sev person.

sev.94 hey pretty, sorry to text you like this. sev.94 just thought you should know the kind of person your little girlfriend is sev.94 sent a video. sev.94 i don’t really do relationships, but i’d take your mind off of it if you let me.

You’re playing the video, quality grainy and audio blasted. You don’t know what you’re looking at at first, it’s dark, and there’s so many voices. But you see skin, see the outline of a girl’s naked back, delicate and arched in pleasure.

You think this Sev person’s just fucking with you, playing some stupid joke with a shitty punchline as someone’s hands snake around to palm the flesh of the unnamed girl’s ass, but then you see it.

The bracelet.

Vi going to lose her shit for two reasons.

(1) Because you haven’t responded to her message despite your read receipts being on, and (2) she can’t fucking find the bracelet you’d gifted to her.

She’s barging into Ellie’s room, shirtless and hair dripping.

“Jesus, fuck, do you knock?” Ellie hisses, buds she was in the midst of grinding scattering across the floor.

“I can’t find the bracelet she gave me,” Vi says quickly.

Ellie’s face scrunches.

“Huh?”

“The bracelet ________ gave to me,” Vi says. “I hooked it on my backpack before practice on Saturday but it’s not there anymore.”

Ellie’s expression morphs, eyes narrowing in thought.

“Maybe you misplaced it,” Ellie offers. “Regardless, we practice tonight, I’ll help you look for it.”

Vi’s chest is tight, doesn’t want to admit that the stupid little bracelet means way more to her than she lets on. She only ever takes it off when she’s on the ice, won’t risk losing it when she’s got a target on her back and everyone plays rough.

It turns out to be futile when they enter the rink and she retraces her steps only to come up empty-handed.

This, she realizes, is the start of a very long week.

You should’ve seen it coming, really. Don’t know why you tried to psyche yourself into thinking that Vi could ever really want something with you when the world’s her fucking oyster and she can have anything she wants.

And you want to feel bad when she texts you intermittently through the days, checking in, offering to meet you, anything. But part of you is angry, unforgiving, tired.

You could’ve gone the rest of the school year unscathed if she’d just left you the fuck alone, but she pried and she tugged and she settled, and she made a home inside of you and you hate that you let her.

xxxx: i really miss you.

You block her number, block her social media, and even though finals are imminent, you now know that Vi’s been playing you for a fool this whole time and you cancel every last one of the sessions she’s booked.

You hope she’d get the message, figure that you’d caught onto her little game and aren’t willing to play anymore, but she doesn’t, that much is clear when you’re finishing up your two thirty session and find her stalking into the library just as the student leaves your table.

“Are we going to talk like adults or are you going to keep acting like—”

You don’t entertain a response, just pack your bag and sling the strap over your shoulder because the tears are bubbling and you don’t trust yourself not to break.

“Seriously?” Vi bites, hot on your heels as you throw all of your weight against the library doors and suck in the icy air.

“Leave me alone, Violet,” you warn.

“No, fuck that,” Vi spits, hand closing around your bicep. “You don’t— You don’t get to make me fall for you and then try to leave with no explanation.”

“Fuck you,” you whisper.

“What?”

“Fuck you, Violet,” you hiccup, yanking your arm from her grasp and putting as much distance as you can between the two of you. “I hope you and your friends got a good laugh out of it.”

Her face is screwing up and if she wasn’t confused before, she’s definitely confused now.

“Listen, I can’t fix something if I don’t know what’s wrong,” Vi argues. “I’m so fucking lost right now.”

You hate how believable she is. How the thought of hurting you seems so inconceivable to her. But that grainy video was clear enough.

“I hate you,” you murmur. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.”

Your name comes out broken, like you’ve wounded her. But you’ve officially folded your hand, won’t dare look her in her eyes because the both of you know it’s not true.

The championships roll in fast like a tide and neither your or Violet are ready for it.

You hear they’re live streaming the game, it’s the most anticipated one in the season. Piltover Stallions against the Zaun City Tigers. A part of you wishes you could support them, but then you’re starkly reminded that you’re a laughingstock amongst them.

The library on a Friday night is as quiet as can be, the hum of the fluorescents background to the voices in your head that are loud. You’re so engrossed in the study material that you don’t realize someone’s making a beeline for you until they’re knocking on the tabletop.

Ellie Williams stands before you in all her lean glory, hands sunk in her pockets as she stares down at you.

“Aren’t you supposed to be playing?” Your tone is clipped, disinterested because you believed that you and Ellie could be friends once upon a time.

“Coach sat me out because I socked one of those dickhead Zaun City Tigers in the mouth last weekend.”

You humph.

“Listen, we don’t have much time left, so I’m going to make this short and sweet,” she says. “Whatever happened between you and Vi is obviously personal and that typically would have nothing to do with me, but she can’t get her shit together because all she can think of is you.”

“And that’s my problem because...?”

“I know that Vi comes off a certain way, but she’s my best friend, like my best friend in this entire shithole of a world, and she’s—”

“No offense, Ellie,” you cut her off. “But if Vi sent you here to plead her case, I think that’s pathetic and—”

“Okay, well maybe if you shut up for three seconds and let me get to my point—”

You close your textbook and shove it in your backpack before standing to signal the end of the conversation.

“Whatever, I don’t have time for this.”

Ellie watches you walk away, takes in a deep breath because wow, you’re a bitch when you’re mad, but she absolutely gets why Vi is whipped.

“Violet’s in love with you.”

And that statement makes you freeze. Tears cloud your vision as your fists tighten around the strap of your bag.

“If you fuck someone else while you’re in love, I want nothing to do with it,” you bite.

Ellie’s brows shoot up.

“Whoa, what?”

“Violet fucked someone else as soon as things got tough, and if that’s the kind of person she is in love, I’d rather be alone,” you say stiffly.

“Respectfully, there’s no way Vi’s interested in getting pussy from anywhere else with how down bad that bitch is for you, but even if she was, I spend over seventy percent of my day with her and know that all she’s been doing the past two weeks is moping over the fact that you handed her ass to her on a silver platter.”

“There’s a video.”

Ellie’s brows must be mingling with her hairline right about now.

Her reaches a palm out.

Show me.

You open the DM from sev.94, watching as Ellie’s expression morphs from morbid curiosity to disbelief, to a quiet rage.

She’s handing your phone back to you and grabbing you by your forearm.

“She’s fucking dead.”

When you enter the rink, the ice is tense.

It’s the middle of the second period and the game is tied 3—3.

Your eyes comb the playing area, can’t find Vi’s jersey number in the mix, but finally settle on her on the bench, shoulders terse and obviously on edge.

She doesn’t clock you yet, had given up on the idea of patching things up with you after your last conversation.

“Vi’s been missing her bracelet since practice on Saturday,” Ellie’d told you on the way there, then pulled out her phone to show you the photo she’d taken of Vi passed out in nothing but her boxers on the couch the night of the last game, fucked up and sad. “We went out for like an hour after the game, but that was it. Vi was too fucking in her head.”

The girl from the tunnel, the one who’d been taunting the two of you, you piece together, has been the one behind it all, stirring the pot.

Throughout the end of the second period and all through intermission, Vi doesn’t notice you, too busy trying to get off the fucking bench to survey the crowd.

It’s only during final puck drop in the third period that their coach finally gives in, smacks the back of her helmet and tells her to make him proud that she lifts her head up.

And there, front and center of the student section is you.

Her eyes are wide, body frozen in place as she tries to figure if you’re just a figment of her imagination, but then the horn’s blaring and she’s having to zone back in.

At this point in time, she doesn’t give a fuck if they win or lose, she just needs to get to you.

“Your little bitch looks cute tonight,” Sevika comments wolfishly. “Bet she tastes as good as she looks.”

Vi easily intercepts her pass, cuts between two players as she shuffles it along with practiced precision. She sends the rubber flying and the goalie narrowly misses block.

“Maybe if you played as good as you ran your mouth, you’d wipe the floor with my pissbaby team you big bitch,” Vi calls, resetting in their corner.

And perhaps you’re her good luck charm, the only thing she needed to see to get back into it, because Vi reignites. The adrenaline pumping through her veins fuels every shot, and soon the timer’s buzzing.

7—5.

The roar is deafening, but you’re all she sees in the ocean of cowbells and pompoms.

She barely inches forward before something arcs through the sky and lands before her feet.

Her bracelet.

You watch from the sidelines, the final confirmation as Vi picks up the loop and launches herself at Sevika.

The crowd cheers.

Fight, fight fight!

You don’t know how many swings Vi gets in, just know that she’s flashing you a bloody smile before she skates off the ice.

Ellie emerges from the locker room and you’re perking up.

Most, if not all, of Vi’s teammates had come and gone and you’d been waiting patiently, anxiously, for her to emerge since the end of the game nearly an hour ago.

“She’s the last one in there,” is all Ellie says before strolling off.

“What if...what if she doesn’t want to see me?” you ask hesitantly.

Ellie chuffs a little laugh, doesn’t bother turning as she calls from halfway down the hall, “Find out for yourself, sweetheart.”

Vi’s pulling a tank top over her head as soon as you enter and your cheeks bloom when you catch a split-second of her tits.

She glances up at you, nose bruising and lip busted.

“Hey,” she spares you, stuffing her uniform and skates into her gym bag.

“Hi,” you squeak.

A pregnant pause as you take her in, hesitant to close the distance between the two of you.

“Didn’t think you’d make it,” she observes.

And you don’t really have a bullshit response, know that you had every intention of staying as far away as humanly possible, so you settle on humming your agreement.

“Ellie told me,” she starts. “Why you lashed out on me.”

You swallow.

“And part of me gets it, I really do,” she continues, “but I also thought you had more faith in me than that.”

“I’m sorry,” you whisper. “Fuck, Violet, I’m so sorry.”

“I told you to free up Friday night a few weeks ago,” she says, shuts her locker door and slumps down on the bench behind her. “I was going to tell you everything, officially ask you out, but then all that shit happened and it caught up to me.”

You take a step forward, and then another, and another until you’re standing in front of her.

“You have to know that I would never do something like to anyone, but especially not to you,” she says softly, taking your hands in hers.

“I know.”

She brushes her lips against your knuckles, pulls you in closer so that you’re standing between her legs.

“You’re right,” she continues, voice hoarse. “I don’t have a spotless track record, but I meant it when I said that I don’t give a shit about anyone else but you. I would give you anything I can if you let me.”

Your hands rest on her shoulders, her chin resting against the plush of your belly as you look down at her, speechless.

“That night, in the car, you said that you didn’t see what made you so different.”

“I don’t,” you admit.

Vi stands, caging you between strong arms as she drops her face into the hollow of your neck. You shiver when you feel her lips press to the skin there.

“We could start off with the obvious.”

One of her hands rests on the small of your back, pulls you flush so that the only things that separate you are the flimsy fabrics of your clothes. The other grabs a handful of your ass.

“I meant it when I said that you’re the kind of pretty that makes me wanna do bad things.”

You gulp, thighs squeezing as her lips part and she bites.

“Vi.”

“You got a giant brain,” she laughs breathily, fingers coming around the fiddle with your belt.

She kisses you, mouth hot and breath warm. It’s better the second time around, no doubt obscuring you from truly indulging.

“Pl—ease.”

“You’re kind and you’re selfless, and you’re my sweet, sweet little crybaby.”

“Violet,” you sigh breathlessly. “Listen to me.”

“Yeah, sweetheart?”

“Fuck me,” you pant. “Please.”

Violet nearly runs two red lights and whips into your neighborhood on two wheels.

The two of you are stumbling up the stairs and she’s spanking your ass on the last step as you fiddle with your keys and try to find the right one under the dim light of the complex hall.

Violet’s already unbuckling her belt as you turn the key, nearly taking you down as she shoves you inside and up against the front door.

“Maddie home?” she breathes.

“Out of town,” you answer quickly, kicking off your sneakers and pulling your sweater over your head. “Visiting her family upstate.”

“Perfect,” Vi hums. “I’ve been fantasizing about fucking you on your couch.”

“Oh–”

One of her rough hands comes to cup your tit over your bra, her tongue laving over the other while her free hand makes work of the clasp.

You walk her back to the couch, stand between her knees as she flops back into the seat. Her arms spread over the back as she settles in, legs widening to give you ample room to strip.

Her eyes never leave yours as you easily unclasp your bra and shimmy out of your jeans, leaving you in nothing but a tight pair of little lace panties and pink socks that has Vi wet.

“C’mere,” she rasps, pulling you to straddle her lap.

Her lips immediately latch onto one of your pebbled nipples, tongue hot as her hands wander.

“Fuck.”

“Tell me what you want,” she husks, biting down on the swell of your breast.

And having Violet this close, her touch excruciatingly featherlight and tempting, you wind tight.

“Want you inside of me,” you whimper, fingers fixing around her throat. “Please.”

“Yeah?” she eggs you on, lips brushing yours as her palms settle on your ass. “You want me to fuck you?”

You nod eagerly, hips rolling in her lap as her breath pitches.

“Vi.”

Her nickname puffing from your lips makes her crack. You’re wound in her arms, face in her neck as she peels your thong taut, away from your waiting cunt, and runs her fingertips from your slit down to your clit.

“F...F—uck,” you sigh.

“Holy shit,” she marvels, licking her lips when she easily glides through your folds. “You’re really fucking wet.”

You grind down against her, clothed clit catching against her belt buckle. The cool metal sends a jolt through your pussy and you’re moaning loud in her ear.

And Violet really wants to take her time with you, wants to milk the first time she ever gets to fuck you for as long as she humanly can, but she’s still fully dressed and you’re practically naked, perfect tits pressed to her chest and fat ass in the palm of her hand.

She shifts you further into her, so that she can peek over the arch of your back as she sinks her middle and ring finger three knuckles deep into your needy heat.

“Ah, fuck, Violet.” Your voice breaks as she starts pumping into you, your arousal coating her fingers and the sound of her easily slipping through your pussy reverberating through the living room. “Fuckfuckfuck.”

She kisses your jaw, litters them until she’s catching your lips and licking crudely into your mouth.

You cry out when her fingers slip out.

She’s leaning the both of you forward, easing you from her lap and onto the couch as she takes a moment to shuck her shirt off and pull her belt through the loops in one tug.

You watch her through it all, the way the trim muscles of her biceps and shoulders flex as she leans over you, takes you by the ankles and yanks you until your ass is half-hanging from the edge of the couch.

She kneels before you, strips you out of your thong.

You don’t miss the way she shoves the soiled fabric in her jeans pocket.

“Jesus,” she breathes, gaze fluttering between your eyes and your pussy. “You’re so fucking pretty, sweetheart.”

Your toes curl at the praise, fingers closing around where Vi’s holding your legs apart.

“You know how bad I’ve been wanting to taste your pussy?” she rasps, gathering the lewdest amount of spit to dribble onto your clit. When you don’t answer, she’s freeing a hand to slap your slit.

“Nnngh, fuck!”

“Think I’ve always wanted to have you,” she admits. “But it was that stupid party fucking party and that stupid fucking skirt. God, I would’ve fucked you in that skirt if you let me.”

“Yeah?” you whine breathlessly. “Tell me.”

She’s stuffing you again without warning, curling her fingers in a way that has your back arching off the couch.

“Would’ve bent you over that sink and made you watch yourself while I ate you out,” she says easily.

And it’s so fucking delicious, the nasty shit Vi’s saying to you while she pounds your aching heat; the way she finally gives in and tastes you, sucking on your clit like she’s starved and you’re the only thing that can sate her hunger.

Your fingers curl through her hair as you teeter dangerously over the edge, nails grazing her scalp and tugging when she hits the spot deep inside of you that has you keening for more.

“I’m gonna fuckin’ cum,” you choke. “Holy fuck.”

You feel Vi grin against your pussy, watch her with a slack jaw and half-lidded eyes because the sight of her between your legs in your moonlit living room has your insides twisting hard.

“C’mon, sweetheart,” she encourages you. “Cum all over my fingers. Wanna see you gush.”

“Hah, h—” Your thighs tighten around her head, fingers curled so hard in her hair, she moans in a mix of pleasure and pain. “Don’t stop, Vi, please.”

She moans into your cunt, savoring the heady taste of you as you practically ride her face.

The sound that fills the room is downright filthy, the sight that Vi beholds when she peeks from where she’s devouring you equally so. It’s picturesque, the way she has you writhing. A sheen of perspiration glistens over your flesh as she eats you out and it’s a perfect mix of her tongue and her fingers that send you soaring over the edge.

It’s a pitched whine that echos, the staccato of your shaky breathing that sings like music in her ears as you cum. And hard.

Her lashes flutter against the skin of your inner thighs as she peppers kisses there, her lips slick with spit and arousal.

“Fuck, babe,” she whispers. “That was...”

She can’t really choose a specific word, is just mind blown at the fact that she’d just made you cum so hard and so fast. It makes her tense and tingle, a smug wave of pride washing over her as she starts mouthing a trail from your belly, between the valley of your tits, up your throat, to finally press a chaste one on your lips.

You taste yourself first and foremost, but then you taste everything she’s ever wanted to say to you, all the unspoken words and the things she’d been too scared to share. Feel it in the way her hands are roaming, squeezing, caressing.

You breathe a disbelieving laugh, peck her lips again when she pulls away to brush your hair from your face.

“Vi—” Your breath hitches and your eyes glaze.

“I know, I know.”

You wrap your arms around her shoulders, legs hooking around the narrow of her waist as she bears your weight and picks up your boneless figure.

“I’m not done with you yet, sweetheart.”

The sun is warm against your skin when you wake up the following morning, your bedroom bathed in an orange glow.

You feel bone tired, body sore and muscles tight as your arm sweeps the other side of the bed in search of balmy skin, but instead you’re met with cool sheets and swelling dread.

You sit up quickly, find that you’re still naked, and take a moment to asses your bedroom. The bathroom door’s cracked, light off, and everything else is exactly where you left it.

Everything except Vi.

Oh, you think to yourself.

Almost don’t want to leave your room because your empty apartment will be confirmation enough that Vi really did get the last laugh in the end.

But you force yourself out of bed, shrug on an oversized t-shirt before finding the living room just as still as it had been before the two of you had barreled in the night before and she’d left her mark on you.

The only sign that the entire thing wasn’t just a figment of your imagination was Vi’s belt strewn haphazardly on the coffee table.

You feel hollow, almost numb, and even if a persistent part of your brain was consistently telling you that you should’ve known better, the tears well in your eyes because you’d really hoped Violet was different.

You knuckle the tears away angrily, mind racing far too fast to register the door quietly unlocking and the soft footfalls coming down the hall.

“Babe?”

Your gaze snaps up.

Like a vision, Vi’s standing in the doorway, a handful of plastic bags in tow. She’s wearing her clothes from last night and the puffs under her eyes make her a little worse for wear.

She sets the bags down on the eat-in, rounds the couch to take you by the shoulders.

“What’s wrong?” she worries. “What’s going on?”

You hiccup, crumpling in her arms because you were so fucking scared.

“Thought you left,” you croak.

Vi breathes a sigh of relief, blowing out a hollow laugh because her girl’s such a baby.

“You have jack shit in your fridge,” she teases lightly. “How am I supposed to make you a five star breakfast with greek yogurt and carrot sticks?”

You whine.

“Don’t care about breakfast,” your muffled voice sounds from where your face is pressed in her chest. “Just wanted to wake up to you.”

Violet groans.

“You’re so cute,” she laughs, kissing the top of your head.

“I wanna go back to bed,” you mutter petulantly, emotional whiplash making your eyes droop.

“You’re not gonna let me make you breakfast?” Vi picks, smoothing the hair from your face.

Your eyes catch the bracelet refastened around her wrist and you grin softly, taking her fingers to press a kiss to her palm.

She could combust, gaze gooey as she watches you watch her.

Yeah, Vi has a huge problem.

One that’s particular, and overarching; one she doesn’t think she can go without.

And frankly, she wouldn’t have it any other way.

neng © 2024

do you think you could do some Dabi smau where he has a kid with reader and all the fluffy things?

I’m in pain after the last one </3

if you’re not comfortable do not feel pressured to do it! <33333

-🐦‍⬛

domesticated | t. todoroki

parenthood was not in the plan, but now there's a glitter drawing of you and touya on the fridge.

Is my writing that shitty that nobody asks me to write things? Damn

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