we will go softly into the night

Nicole | Chicago | she/her A page dedicated to my writing. I do post smut so minors DNI

[freenightfall]

ALL CROSSROADS BOUND TOGETHER

summary: twenty some years ago, you met a mysterious drifter who offered you something you couldn't resist and in return you offered him the only thing you had—your soul. just when you start to believe that he has forgotten you, remmick returns to collect what was owed.

pairing: remmick / f!reader

contents: f!reader, reader in their early 30s, no use of y/n, dark themes, vampirism, feeding/blood drinking, blood, fire, marking/biting, obsession, stalking behavior, yearning, corruption, feelings of hopelessness, religious undertones, selling of ones soul, violence (implied and explicit), abduction, death/murder. sexual content (MINORS DNI): oral (f receiving), p in v sexual intercourse, blood kink. cw: mentions of csa (not described in detail but still yucky—DEAD DOVE DON'T OPEN).

a/n: the title of the fic comes from the lyrics of "In Moonlight" from the Sinners soundtrack and the song included in the fic is "Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us" by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss (the song itself didn't come out during the time period, but it sounds like it could so that was enough for me to justify using it lol)

word count: 14.5 k

You were just a child, no older than ten, when you made that deal with him. 

He came to you in the night, when the nocturnal critters emerged from their dens and amorously praised the stars for their guidance and protection from the dangers that prowled in the daylight.

He looked like any other man you’ve seen in town. Tall and handsome, wearing clean, crisp clothes that seemed far too nice to be sullied by the rotten tree trunk he sat on, strumming on the banjo that was strapped to his shoulders. A musician who found solace in the darkness, like the cicadas and frogs that sang all around you in a calming serenade.

Remmick, that was his name, the one he gave you freely.

You gave him yours, unaware of the power it permitted him over you.

He smiled as he repeated it back, like a response to a Sunday hymn or reciting a song he only had ever hoped to croon. He said it as if it was the most immaculate thing he’d ever heard. 

You remember how his words were laced with a sickly sweetness that tugged on your heartstrings as he spoke with you. His voice was entwined with an accent, or maybe two you think, fusing together to create a dialect unique to a man that could only be him, something no one else would be able to recreate. It rolls off his tongue with ease, as if he had a century to perfect it. 

He offers you something you can’t refuse, something that you had silently prayed for but never dared speak out loud, not if you wanted to come out of this horrendous ordeal unscathed. 

And his eyes—the unforgettable, unnatural glow of them, as hot as embers—looked at you with a tenderness that you hadn’t seen in years, because he knew just by glancing at you that tenderness is what you needed on this night. Not harm, not violence, but tenderness. 

He spoke of a promise to release you of this suffering and all you had to do was offer him something in return, something of equal value. It was simple enough, so you offered the only thing you had to give. 

He accepted your conditions with a grin that stretched from ear to ear and assured you that if you truly agreed with all of your heart that he’d come back the following night.

And he kept that promise.

It was a night where the moon was bold, illuminating that hot, humid Delta night with an eerie glow only reserved for when the veil between this world and the next was thin enough for the wretched and malevolent things that haunted humanity to roam freely without fear of the sun’s divine might.

But the moon’s peaceful luminance was tainted by the blood-red stain of flames that painted the night sky a sickening crimson hue.

Your uncle’s house—the one that you were forced to call your home after losing your parents in that terrible accident some months ago—was now set ablaze by the flick of a single match, and the hand that held it was of the same wickedness that your grandmother always warned you about. 

She told her stories by the warmth of the fireplace, her voice withered by time and the disease that ultimately took her life after spending much of it smoking from the same old pipe that her own grandfather had passed down to her.

You remember the tales she spun, woven with the same kind of fear mongering that spewed from the preacher’s mouth every Sunday, warning the congregation of the evils that corrupted this world, turning the innocent away from God’s graces and His salvation with the invitation of temptation.

Because that’s all what her stories were: warnings laced with images of demons and vengeful spirits and of beasts that stalked the swamps looking for their next meal to keep you on the right path in life in an attempt to save your soul from the eternal damnation that would await you should you not live righteously.

But the lore of ghosts and monsters and witches did not frighten you. Even as a child you knew that this was just a way for the adults around you to scare all the children into listening and obeying them, even when they were wrong. Even when they did wrong but did not have the decency to recognize their own hypocrisies.

No, you did not fear her stories, not at all… not when the only monsters you knew that existed dressed in the same cloth and patterns as you, spoke with the same dialect that fell from your mouth… closed the door of your bedroom late at night when your aunt turned a blind eye and acted as if she didn’t know what your uncle was doing to you. 

The flames that tried desperately to escape from the wooden entombments of the house reflected in your irises. The heat that poured from the broken windows and cracks of the old wood, mixed with the ashen, black smoke that billowed out from the same crevices burned your eyes, tears welting up at the corners of your lashes as if begging you to look away from the devastation that unfolded before you. 

But you could not look away, couldn’t tear your eyes off of it even if you wanted to. Your feet anchored you to the damp earth, keeping you in place as you swayed gently with the cool breeze that swept through, moving with the spanish moss that hung on the trees. 

It was as if the fire had casted a spell on you, entrancing you to keep your gaze upon the smoke and embers that only grew more and more ferociously, climbing higher and higher and higher until it appeared that the flames tickled the star-studded night sky.

You couldn’t help but think that it looked as if they were trying to reach heaven, trying with all of their might to escape the evil that resided in that house.  

Above the roar of the fire, something else permeated through the air. 

A scream—so miserable and bloodcurdling that it pierced your sensitive ears. 

It sounded as if the person at the other end of such a disturbing wail was screaming out to you as a cry for penitence and not just a frantic call for aid all while the fire continued to consume all that it touched. 

But you knew better. 

Your uncle did not cry or scream to ask for your forgiveness. 

He was a man who did not know what the word forgiveness meant, wouldn’t know how to repent if his life depended on it—as it did now—because to men like him, his actions were not seen as sins. He was a man and everything belonged to him by his mere God given existence. There was not one thing that he could desire that he could not obtain purely by the fact that he was born as God intended. And if the almighty created all of his children in his image and some of those children had tendencies to do bad things, then surely they were not bad things at all… at least that was the way your uncle saw things. 

It was how he justified the horrendous things he did; justifications that made it easier for him to sleep at night.  

That’s why your heart felt empty as you sat in the crowded pews of the church house every Sunday morning since moving into that Godforsaken house. That’s why the preacher’s words felt meaningless, falling upon your deaf ears as you purposely turned your back on the God you were raised upon… because why would you give your devotions to a God if He would make vile men like your uncle? Why would you fall to your knees and pray to a deity that created a man who purposely harmed a child, one of His most precious gifts? 

Why did this God not hear your own cries when your uncle preyed upon you? 

Why did this God allow your aunt to let her husband hurt you in such a way, turning away with her head bowed in understanding of what he was doing to you when she should’ve been there to protect you from him?

No, He did not deserve your praise or your prayers, not when he abandoned you when you needed Him the most. When you were the most vulnerable. When you were still innocent.

It’s still night when the screaming finally subsided, fading into the darkness without much of an afterthought and leaving you in the beautiful smolder of the dancing flames and crumbling wood. 

Amidst the thick smoke, something heavy imbued the air—a shift, one that you had never felt before but was undeniably palpable—and a scent, sweeping through the yard on a gentle breeze, carrying the smell of dead earth—wet, damp soil and wood after the rain—mixed with tobacco and copper.

Then, you saw him, a dark figure emerging though the wreckage.

From where you stood across the yard, you couldn’t make out the details of his face, shrouded in the shadows of the doorway that were created by the flames that raged on behind him, casting his intimidating form in a ghastly silhouette. 

The figure looked up suddenly and his eyes glowed a dangerous, chilling shade of red that made your heart skip a beat. His gaze was hypnotizing, watching you diligently, the same way that a predator surveys its prey as it stalks, waiting to strike.

You blink slowly, feeling as if time has slowed, and when they open the man is standing before you, looming just mere inches from where you were planted in the yard, so much larger than your own smaller form. 

He was still casted in that same daunting configuration, his broad shoulders outlined by the malevolent glow that endured endlessly behind him and the only distinguishable feature you could make out was the crimson glimmer of his rapacious stare. 

Remmick doesn’t say a word, content in the silence that pervades around him while he continues to stare down at you. 

He half expects you to tremble in his presence. You may be a child but you were not stupid, you were born in a place where danger lurked where you least expected it if you weren’t careful enough. But your heartbeat didn’t quicken, nor did it falter when he took another step closer. It remained even-paced and calm even when he inched closer and closer until he towered above you like a giant. 

And just as he expected fear, he also expected that perhaps you would look upon him with defiance, to prove something to this stranger, but he doesn’t see it. Not an ounce of it in your large, doe-like eyes. 

Instead what he sees is indifference: a small mortal creature that neither cared or not of what he was or what he was capable of doing. It was evident in the way you just stared at the fire while it destroyed the only roof you had over your head. You did not cry in distraught as you lost everything you had left in the fire nor did you jump up and down with joy as the cage that kept you bound to your abuser burned to the ground. 

The wind picks up and instinctively he sniffs at the air, noticing another scent lingering there, one that doesn’t belong to him or the fire. His nostrils flare at the all too familiar metallic fragrance, his gaze drifting down your nightgown-clad frame to rest at the disheveled hem of it. 

He breathes in slow, deep, when his eyes fall upon the red that muddies the cotton. The breeze tussles the bottom of your nightgown briefly, revealing the same crimson ichor that stains the flesh underneath. 

His expression hardens and the corner of his lips twitch in a scowl as he tries to contain the disgust that eats away in his chest at the sight of the blood that coats your skin, still fresh. You shuffle at the unsettling look on his face, your small hands reaching down to smooth the edges of your nightgown while trying to ignore his dark, unwavering leer.  

It quickly reminds him why he is here and the red glimmer of his stare slowly dims into its natural color at the sight of your uneasiness, but it doesn’t make him any less intimidating, any less frightening.

“My end of the deal is done, little dove,” he says then, voice softer than you expected yet still harboring that same level of menace that radiates off of him like heat. “I will come for you when it is time to hold up yours.”

“When?” You ask simply.

He tilts his head, mouth downturning into a pondering curl before he straights back up, his eyes never leaving your tiny, unmoving form. “When the time is right.”

“But,” the sound of your interjection causes the man to raise his brow in question, “how will you find me?”

There’s no emotion in your voice that Remmick can decipher, no indication that you don’t understand his words or the meaning behind them. You knew exactly what was asked of you and you accepted his bargain and with it every gruesome and horrendous act that he committed to fulfil his end of it without question. 

He smiles, not smirking like you think he would, but genuinely smiles as if you asked the golden question, the one he’s been waiting for with keen ears. 

Slowly he reaches out and patiently bides the time it takes for you to give him your hand. 

His touch is soft as his fingers wrap around your wrist—not forcibly, not with the intention to harm you, but with gentle consideration he turns your hand over. His fingers slip from your wrist, his calloused thumb running down the expanse of your palm. 

A quiet, surprised gasp leaves your mouth, eyes widening at the sight of his nail growing longer, sharper as it scrapes against the skin, causing a dull but angry looking line to blossom beneath his nail and for the first time you feel yourself panic.

He presses the sharp tip of his nail against the soft pad of your finger, causing you to wince at the pain. But even as the crimson ichor oozes from the small wound, you don’t pull away. You don’t turn and run like you know you should. 

He swipes his thumb along the cut he’s made delicately, acting as though reverently handling the most holy of relics that lays in his hands, and coates it in the red warmth before bringing it to his lips and slipping his thumb into his mouth and sucks. 

He inhales deeply, relishing the sweet metallic flavor that dances on his tongue, but then his brows furrowed briefly as another flavor overpowers the sweetness—vaguely sour, putrid almost as if spoiled. 

He grins, knowing all too well of the taste and it forms a delightful pit in his stomach. 

“There,” he says and releases the grip he has on your hand, “now I know. Wherever you go, wherever you end up, I’ll find you.”

It’s all he says and then he’s gone. 

That was some twenty years ago and you haven’t seen him since.

It was quiet at first, no inklings that he was ever around, and that false sense of abandonment made you believe that perhaps it was all some kind of deranged hallucination your mind created as a way to cope with the trauma you endured… but then just a few weeks ago, you started to notice how the air suddenly hangs heavy, shifting with the weight of his presence—always at night, always where the darkness can hide him from you—and always lurking somewhere in the shadows. 

Sometimes you think you catch glimpses of him amongst the treeline and those glowering red eyes of his, watching you from the dark sanctuary of the woods that surround your new home—that of your new home across state lines and miles away from the where you once lived with your parents and that of your uncle’s house, but it’s gone before you can even realize that it might be him. 

The wind carries his smell from time to time, but still he’s nowhere to be found; even when you search and scour every last piece of land that surrounds you until your feet bleed from exhaustion, there’s not a single trace of Remmick anywhere.

It’s in your head, you sometimes think as you stand alone in the darkness. It’s been so long since that fateful night, surely he would’ve come to collect what was owed by now. 

Perhaps he forgot about you, or perhaps he found someone more worthy of fulfilling their end of the bargain, you thought woefully. 

Now in your thirties, you believed yourself past your prime, past any youthful appeal you once held, and reluctantly you doubt that you would ever see him again. 

It was foolish to think that you were the only one he’d ever strike a bargain with. You certainly weren’t the first, not with how fluently he was able to coax the secrets out of your heart with nothing more than a kind look on his handsome face, begging you to speak your sorrows to him, your wishes, and you knew that you couldn’t have been the last. 

Creatures like him don’t tread through the world waiting for one insignificant, lonesome soul to be ripened.

They hide where the sunlight can’t find them—lurking, hunting— never satisfied with the offering some wretched, wayward nobody had presented to them on a silver platter. Ravenous beings such as he were always hungry, always wanting more, and would stop at nothing to chase their immeasurable appetite.

And though you knew better than to hold onto that fleeting sentiment, your mind was only consumed with the thought of him and the covenant you made—ever persistent, ever resolute— and the idea of him not wanting you in return devastated you. 

It hurt more than how your uncle would use you, hurt more than how your aunt did nothing to stop it, hurt more than the passing of your parents and that of your grandmother… but the worst part was you didn’t know why he didn’t seek you out when he promised that he would.

Why didn’t he come back?

Why didn’t he return to you to finish the deal that was made?

Like a disease it ate away at you, purposefully taking its time to rot you from the inside until once again you felt empty, hollow, like that sad little girl at the mercy of your uncle; sinking its claws deeper and deeper as it gradually became a part of you, ensuring that you could never escape from it. 

Still, as you swore that he was there, watching, waiting, he never made himself known to you. He never showed himself, never gave you a glimmer of hope that he hadn’t forgotten about you. 

Besides, your soul was poisoned, blighted by the years of resentment that found its home in your worn out heart.

Even now you can still feel the heat of your uncle’s foul breath on your skin, smell the rancid stench of it invading your nostrils when you speak to other men like him, knowing who they truly are without being told so.

It followed you, clinging to you like a ghost.

Why would he want a soul that was mired, infected with the incapability of letting go of the memories that tortured you?

And you tried forgetting, tried letting go, by everything that was still good in this world you tried, but no matter how much light you let it, you always found an excuse to cast it out. 

And so, you buried that hurt away deep in the caverns of your downtrodden heart and did the only thing you could.

You waited. 

Tonight was like any other and when the sun finally descends past the horizon, you spend your time basking in the solitude you’ve grown to live with.  

The house was quiet, even more so now that you lived in it alone. 

Your mother’s cousin passed away some summers ago, leaving you to tend to the aging house that had cared for you these last couple of years. 

It was easy living with only yourself in that house once she was gone. Everyone in your life had the tendency to either leave or betray you—your parents, your grandmother, your aunt and uncle, even Remmick—so you found yourself embracing the loneliness, the solitude of it all, and you were content in living in the little, two bedroom house on the edge of the Mississippi. 

There were no painful reminders here, no devils prowling in the shadows waiting until your back was turned to strike. Just mundane memories that didn’t fill you with complete disdain and scorn.

The window in the living room was wide open, allowing the fresh, night breeze to sweep in and breathe life into the house. 

Sitting in the rocking chair that once belonged to her, you allowed yourself to sing the ballad that she had taught you.

“Strange things are happening every day, I hear the music up above my head. Though the sight of my heart has left me again, I hear music up above—” 

Outside, the harsh chirp of crickets slowly fades into silence, as does the croaking of toads and cicadas and all the sounds of the night around you until only your voice endures through the uncanny stillness.

“Secrets are written in the sky. Looks like I've lost the love I've never found. Though the sound of hope has left me again, I hear music up above—”

The wind picks up faintly, causing goosebumps to prickle at your skin, but it’s not from the chill of the draft that makes your body react. 

Your rocking stops and so does the song that fell from your lips.

There’s something different, something that was not quite right.

It’s the same shift in the air that signals that his presence is near—not here, but somewhere close by, so close you can almost feel him there in the room with you. 

And then, out in the distance, you hear it—a voice.

His voice.

He calls out to you like a whisper in your dreams, faint and dulcet as he recites the same lyrics that have since died on your tongue.

“Standing in my broken heart, all night long. Darkness held me like a friend when love wore off—”

Somehow your feet have pulled you from the chair, your body reacting solely on it's own accord, leading you out the house as if in some kind of surreal trance and drawing you out into the black Delta night. 

The soft strumming of a banjo hangs in the air, enticing you to venture further and further into the darkness, into the unknown, and far away from the comfort you've built in that little house. 

The earth is soft under your feet, sighing and kissing your skin affectionately with every step that you take. 

Closer to him, closer to the voice that lured you towards him like a siren’s song. 

Your gaze remained on the unpathed road before you, through the fields and grassland and into the swampy woods that separated you from your destiny, the one you sealed to him with a vow as a child. 

It was almost pathetic how you followed his voice without a second thought, as if this was meant to happen… because to you, it was. 

You had waited faithfully and now all of your patience was to be rewarded. 

 “—Looking for the lamb that's hidden in the cross. The finder's lost…”

Through the swampland you tread, turning and wading through it until the ground that once welcomed your journey now spites you; the twigs that litter the ground stab at the soles of your feet, at your ankles, and the prickly branches of the trees snag at the material of your nightgown as if trying to stop you—warning you. 

You could feel the wrenching of your grandmother’s withered hands grabbing at you, silently begging you to reconsider before it was too late—an attempt to save your soul from the covenant you were about to seal with this blasphemous creature. 

Her voice reverberates in your mind, soft and mild yet undeterred to break you of the spell that he had casted on you; for you to understand what was to come should you continue on and that your time on this earth would come to an end should you not turn back now, unable to join her and your parents in the afterlife.

But you didn’t heed that warning. 

You embraced whatever fate you had resigned yourself to long ago and no attempt at saving your soul would prevail.

You found your own voice effortlessly calling back to him, singing gently as your voice carried itself on the wind, hoping that he’d hear you.

And in the echoes of your mind, you hear your grandmother weep.

“I know I loved you too much, I'll go alone to get through—”

That slow, simple yet tantalizing strumming of the banjo leads you through the wood, deep and dark and twisting without the glow of the moon to guide you. 

Still you pursue it, even when logic and reason told you to stop and reconsider what might undeniably be the death of you, but there was no turning back. Not now that you were so close to what you had longed for.   

“I hear Rosetta singing in the night,” you both sing in unison, your voices melding together and becoming one singular, exquisite proclamation into the night. “Echos of light that shines like stars after they're gone. And tonight she's my guide as I go on alone, with the music up above.”

Time has evaded you, unsure of how long you’ve walked along this barren road, but eventually you reach the end. 

Through the thicket and trees of the forest lies a house—worn and old and decaying from years of abandonment, and yet it still stands tall and proud across the clearing, a remnant of another time that has refused to be forgotten. 

This is a place where the cypress trees and oaks have lived far longer than any human has, a place where they’ve planted their roots and refused to leave. Spanish moss hangs from the branches, spinning silvery green-gray threads of garland that sways with the wind, dancing to a melody only known to them, one they lived in harmony with. 

Though distance separates you both, you can see his shape lingering in the darkness, standing in the doorframe with his banjo in hand and strapped across his broad shoulders.

Remmick. 

As you approach you can’t help but think that he still looks the same as you remember, untouched by time. 

With his sleeves rolled up to his elbow you can see the veins that pulsate beneath his unblemished skin and the lean muscle underneath, a testament of the strength that he undoubtedly has. His dark hair frames the top of his head, catching the shadows that play off the contours of his handsome, angular face. 

He watches as you proceed towards him, those glowing red eyes never leaving the sight of you, drawing you closer and closer like a moth to the flame until you stand before him at the bottom of the few steps that lead up into the old house. 

You’d think that he’d be hardened from all the time that has passed since you've last seen each other, weary of you and unsure that you’re the same girl that he made that unholy promise to all those years ago. 

You trace every curve of his face, mapping the lines that kiss at the corner of his eyes and the relaxed slant of his lips, searching for any inclination that his perception of you is not what it once was. 

But the longer you look, the more you don’t see any uncertainty of your intentions reflecting back at you in those inhuman eyes of his, only adoration, only reverence. 

It makes your heart flutter pitifully inside of your ribcage.

“You found me,” you say finally, breaking the silence between the two of you. 

He smirks, recognizing the steadiness in your voice as you speak. 

Still unafraid, he thinks, still that same unfaltering spirit that he remembers from when he first encountered you just before that blood-stained night that lived in his memories like a keepsake. 

“I told you that I would. Did you doubt me?”

You shake your head, not so much as a response to his question, but more of trying to shake away the disillusion of your own equivocation. 

“I thought…” you start, feeling that familiar, unwanted hollowness in your chest return, “I thought that maybe you’d—”

“Forgotten you?” He answers with a seriousness that makes your heart stop beating for a second, “Forsaken you and the vow we made?” He tilts his head and smiles. Not smirks like he did before, but smiles, genuine and true. “I’m a man of my word, little dove, a man who keeps the promises he makes.”

Little dove, he called you that on the night when he slaughtered your uncle some twenty years ago. Such a fond endearment, one that he spoke as if he reserved it only for you.

“It's been so long, why wouldn’t I think that?”

“You were a child when we made our bargain, I needed you to be prepared when I came to collect what you owed. I needed you to be willing to give it to me without a doubt in your heart. Not taken from you. Not stolen. I wanted you to welcome it, to welcome me. Not fear me.”

“I don’t fear you, I never did.”

He chuckles. “I know you didn’t, not back then at least, but time changes people. Memories change how people perceive things. Maybe as you grew older you would come to resent me and the things I did to your uncle. I wasn't kind. I didn’t spare him one moment to repent for what he did to you… and who knows, maybe you found it in your heart to forgive him.”

“I can’t forgive him," you counter sharply, "don’t think I’ll ever be able to. And I don’t resent you either, not for giving me a second chance to live without knowing if the next time he’d visit me would be my last. Why would I resent you for that?”

He hums in response, your words somewhat convincing him that he was right in believing that you were ready for this, but he still has to ask, even when he already knows the answer. “And you’re still sure? You still want to uphold it?”

“Yes,” the word escapes your lips before you can even register it. 

Remmick nods solemnly, staring at you with those soul-piercing eyes. 

He’s spent the last twenty years waiting for this, letting time and severance come between the two of you and fermenting those memories, those emotions of that night until just the right moment that allowed this reunion to become all the sweeter for him; and for you too.

“That song of yours,” he purrs, inhaling deeply and allowing himself to reminisce about the lyrics, the sentiment behind it, of how it resonates with him just as much as it did with you, “it's beautiful.”

“It was the only thing that gave me comfort for a long time,” you say. “It was something that I could hold onto without fear that someone would try and take it away from me.”

“A beckoning,” he interjects slyly. The points of his fangs peek out from beneath the curl of his lip when he smirks, glistening in the moonlight—the canines and the rest of the teeth behind them are large and elongated and serrated, like a mouth full of knives. “An enticement.”

You nod, “In a way, yes, but not how it might seem. I just needed to know that you were out there somewhere and that you heard me, that you still remembered me. But you never answered—”

“It was never the right time,” he replies, “but I did hear you. Every time you sang out into the night, I heard it.” 

Remmick treads down a step, then two, until only one separates the two of you. He places a hand on your chest, right where the source of your music lies, the same beating mechanism where you kept your memories of him. Your intensity. Your longing.

His hand is cold, just as you remember, but it exudes more warmth than you felt in what feels like a lifetime. 

“Heard the saccharine crooning of your blood, even when you didn’t sing, especially when you didn’t sing… your heart reaching out in an attempt to call me back to you. Aching. Pleading for me to return—but you knew I was there, didn’t you dove?”

“I did, that’s why it hurt so much. Knowing that you were there, close enough to sense you but just far enough away where I couldn’t find you.”

He’s quiet then, eyes wandering over every little detail of you, every line that’s etched in your pretty face, every minute change. 

You’ve grown since he last had a proper glance at you, now taller and with a fuller figure that has filled out every curve of your body that he can see through the silhouette of your nightgown, clinging to the sweat that coates your skin like raindrops from the humid Delta night; not exactly the same thin, sickly looking girl he found decades ago with blood on her thighs and tears in her eyes—cursing silently to herself about all the wrongdoings that had happened to her, ones that should never befall a child as young as you were—but despite the changes, he can see the same spirit sweltering in your heart, untouched by circumstance and time. 

Remmick never let you drift too far from his sight, choosing to keep at a distance in order to preserve the decorum of the arrangement the two of you made, but over the years he noticed how your restraint began to wade and contort into something more zealous. 

He saw the way you searched for him relentlessly when you thought he was there, watching you or not. He felt the way your heart called out to him, felt it when you were in the arms of some long-forgotten lover that you still only ever thought of him, wishing that he would just come back to you, even when time and time again he never did. 

This, what he had, wasn’t an easy life, but it sure as hell was easier than the life you’ve lived thus far. And he just had to be sure, not needing to make a mistake that you would surely regret, a mistake that would make you resent him. 

“I wasn’t completely truthful when I told you that I had fulfilled my end of the bargain.” He says, his glowering eyes never leaving yours. Just as terrifying, just as soft. 

“What do you mean?”

He pulls his hand from your chest and straightens, nodding towards the inside of the house. 

“There’s one last loose end that needs to be taken care of before you can fulfill our deal.”

There’s something sinister that laces his voice and it sends a shiver down your spine. 

He turns and enters the house, leaving you alone once again as you watch the darkness swallow him. 

Without hesitation, you follow. 

Remmick’s already at the top of the stairs when you enter, walking down the short corridor that leads into one of the seemingly empty rooms. He moves seamlessly through the hall and without a sound. Like a ghost that is bound to this place, an apparition that haunts each brick and plank that holds the walls up, holding the nails and cement in place that prevents the house from collapsing in on itself.

Your feet carry you up the steps and the floorboards creak under your weight as you ascend the rotten wood, quietly threatening you with each step that it might be your last.

Still, you venture further into the dying house. 

The wallpaper peels off the walls in captivating spirals downwards, trying to escape the atrocities that this house has seen, of what it’s about to see.  

The air is stale around you, unmoving and void of any life that has not thrived within these walls in decades. Untouched by loving hands or caring souls that should be felt in any house. Instead it was just left to rot from the cancer that dwells in its underbelly until even time has forsaken it.

Pale moonlight seeps through the torn and tattered lace curtains, the glittering of dust hanging in the air as if frozen in time. 

Small paintings decorate the walls, depicting the vast and fertile swamps and wetlands of the only land you’ve ever known, of the dirt roads that lead to the small shacks that people here called home. But their colors had faded from neglect, drenched in the sunlight that filters through the window on the hottest of Southern days. 

Other than the moonlight, there is nothing to guide your way, so you carefully make your way down the hall. 

One of the doors on the right side of the hallway is slightly ajar and you can see the flickering of lamplight from beneath the wooden door, a sign pointing you in the direction of where you needed to go. 

Cautiously, you push it open.

Remmick stands in the center of the room, facing you fully, his face devoid of any emotion yet nothing about him is unnerving, least not to you.

Surely if he wanted to kill you he would’ve done it long ago, back when you were some weak little thing that was unable to protect itself. It was easy for him to kill your uncle, it would no doubt be easy to kill you too, you think.

Remmick seemed like the kind of man that could take life without reservation, not caring for who or what it was that he destroyed as long as he had a reason. If that reason was right or not, you didn’t know. But he didn’t kill you, didn’t touch you without your sanction, nor did he drain you of the one thing that kept you alive, and that was enough to reassure you, even when it was stupid to do so. 

He’s watching you with such intensity simply because he could, because he wanted to—wanted you to know that this was it, the exact point of time that you’ve been anticipating since you were that lost, shattered little girl he met all those summers ago.

This was your salvation. 

Something makes a sound in the room and your eyes linger on him a second longer before they drift to the source of such a pitiful whimper, to the figure that kneels with their head bowed and eyes screwed shut, trembling on the floor just past him at his feet. 

His crimson gaze follows yours, neck craning to glance down at the pathetic excuse of a woman that shakes terribly behind him like a rattled dog. 

The sound of your unwavering footsteps makes the figure look up frantically and your whole body stills, goosebumps princkling at you skin when you come face-to-face with one of the demons that has plagued your nightmares since that fateful night—one that instills a knot of dread to form in your stomach, twisting and churning your insides violently.

It is your aunt who kneels on the ground before you, her graying hair thin and wiry and not at all the same hue of brown that you remember from your youth. It frames her gaunt face, the skin around her eyes sunken in from all the years she spent in fear as guilt festered in her bowels.

Once you thought her beautiful with a face that was round and jovial, her enchanting eyes that caught the splendor of the sunlight in the summer, and a smile that promised nothing but love and warmth, but soon enough you saw that facade wane when the truth came to light. A truth of the horrors that her husband harbored in that godforsaken house of theirs, a truth that she was too cowardly to face. 

Now as she kneeled before you, whimpering and weeping with crystalline tears that smeared down her wrinkled, hollowed cheeks, all you saw was the reflection of her soul staring back at you—Weak. Craven. Spineless.  

Any fear you felt just moments before slowly ebbs into something darker, something more ominous and insidious as it maliciously seeps into your bones. There’s an unspoken itch that tickles at the back of your mind like a vindictive spirit whispering awful, terrible things in your ear.    

Your aunt doesn’t seem to recognize you, her brows furrowed in confusion and squinting in the dim lighting of the room to get a better look at you.

But how could she remember you? 

It has been over two decades since she last saw you, and now you stand before her a grown woman, so vastly different from any recollection she has of the small girl that once lived under her roof. 

To her, you look like any other stranger she’d meet on the street in town. 

But there’s something so familiar about you, something she can’t place. 

It’s unsettling how she can’t put a name to the face that stares down at her with an abhorrence that makes all the color drain from her face and the gnawing ache in the pit of her ribcage intensifies. It invokes memories laced with secrets that she has long since tried to forget, locking them away deep in the recesses of her mind.

Secrets that were buried with her husband—whatever was left of him—hoping that with his untimely passing that they would never resurface. 

The floorboards creak quietly and suddenly Remmick is standing behind you, slightly at your side, his breath fans across the nape of your neck and dragging heat along your jawline. He’s so close that you can feel the measured cadence of his chest heaving against your body with every breath he takes. 

His nostrils flare, filling with that compelling fragrance invading his mind—infiltrating, penetrating. 

You reeked of sin ready to be committed, of retribution yet to be reaped.

It clings to your skin like the finest of perfumes with the same veracity and allure as the blood that coursed through your veins. Just as potent, just as loud, and just as electrifying.

His eyes flutter shut, sensing it pulsate in the heavy thrumming of your nerves as his fingers caress up and down your arm lightly, tracing the path of it under your warm skin. 

With his breath in your ear, Remmick speaks, brushing his nose into your temple with almost tender affection. 

“That night when we met, you asked to be rid of the monsters that caused you harm. You only spoke of your uncle then, but I could hear your heart whispering another name, one last monster to be free of.”

It hits her then, hard and fast as if struck by a train running at a hundred miles an hour. 

Her eyes, now glossy and bloodshot, widened in horror as her mouth falls agape. 

Tears once again trickle down your aunt’s pale face, realizing what all of this was—of who you were and what you were going to do to her, her mind running amuck with the horrible possibilities.

This was no mere act of random violence bestowed on a stranger who was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time. 

No…time and patience had crafted this diabolical reunion, carefully and delicately with heinous consideration and all of it orchestrated by Remmick’s sadistic need to corrupt all that was good in this world and make it his. 

And he succeeded, seizing all of the anguish and rage and bitterness that dwelled in the abyss of your heart and manipulated it—manipulated you—with his deceitful promise of freedom, laced with honeyed words and kind smiles. 

But you were too blind to see it, influenced by the wickedness of his black tongue.  

She almost feels sorry for you for being easily tricked by this devilish cretin… almost, if it wasn’t for the fright that ran rampant within her.

Something small presses into your palm and you glance down to see Remmick slipping a box of matches into your hand, followed by the heavy metal handle of the oil lamp.

You glance at him briefly, but he doesn't say a word. 

He doesn’t need to, the depth of his profound, burning eyes tells you all that you need to know; of all that needs to be done and what you had to do to obtain it, and you feel the grip on the items in your grasp tightened. 

Remmick steps back, watching in reprehensible awe as you move fluidly towards the women, his red eyes glowing with nefarious intensity. 

His mouth waters, the thick, vulgar sludge running down the side of his mouth and down his chin but he makes no attempt to wipe it away.  

Your aunt scuffles back, knees tripping over the tattered hem of her dress with her hands up in front of her in a pleading gesture though no words leave her dry and cracked lips, unable to utter even a single word as absolute panic overwhelms her. 

It’s too late to beg anyway, too late to ask for your forgiveness. 

Twenty some years too late, you think ruefully.

Perhaps if she had ever reached out to you in an attempt to rectify what she had done and what she had failed to do, you could find it in your heart to absolve her of her passive sins. She was a woman oppressed by the hand that brought food to her table, indebted through marriage to a man who gave her a roof over her head and the clothes on her back. 

But she could have protected you from the detestable hands of her husband, and yet she didn’t. She allowed that evilness to thrive, allowed it to defile you.

She could only stare in absolute terror as you brought the lamp up to your lips, blowing out the flame and casting the room into shadows, replacing the reddish-orange glow of the lamplight with an eerie hue of blue and silver that drapes over the room.

She finally speaks, calling out your name. The sound of her heartbreaking voice implores you to reconsider, to let her live because she was your aunt, because you were family and she didn’t know any better. She was scared, just as you were, afraid of what her husband would do to her if she were to have interjected. 

She begs you to not be seduced by this devil and all of his false promises, but her pleas are futile. 

You ignore her excuses, just as she ignored all of your cries for help that left your throat raw and dry as your tiny body was desecrated by the fiend that kept you prisoner in that house.

Remmick’s heavy breathing behind you saturates the room as you doused her in the slick oil and light the match with a single flick against the striker strip. 

It does little to light the room and the flickering of the small flame creates shadows that dance across your face. 

Your aunt can't help but think that you look nothing like the little girl she once knew. 

You shared the same name, shared the same pretty features, but beyond the color of your eyes and hair, beyond the birthmarks she remembers, the woman who stands before her is unrecognizable. 

Once you were sweet, and kind, but all of that warmth that she knew you possessed was gone. 

And she was part of the reason why.

The realization of it makes her weep. 

Not because she knew this was the end of her, but because of all of the hurt she inflicted upon you had led you into finding refuge in the darkness, led you into his arms. 

Her eyes find yours and through despair that enrapts her, she musters enough strength not to look away, not daring cast her gaze to the match between your fingers even when you toss it onto her lap. 

Her resolve only lasts so long before her screams penetrate through the room.

The fire that started at her skirts ascended upwards quickly, violently and without hesitation, keen on destroying the last boogeyman that had ever haunted you. 

Her hands frantically try to swat the flames as if it will save her from this terrible fate, one that she had brought upon herself.

The sight of her brings you back to that night, back to when you witnessed your uncle’s demise, taking all of his sin and evil with him.

And just like that night, you simply watch as the flames take her, devouring her whole until there is nothing more of it to take.  

Eventually her flailing stops, as does the screams, and her body falls to the ground with a loud thud. 

The flames continue to grow, reaching out past her lifeless body and sprawling across the floorboards. They climb up the walls, feeding off of the dried out wood and engulfing anything that would satisfy its appetite—one that always burned, one that could never be sated.

Remmick’s hands are on you again, tighter this time and rougher, breaking you from the trance that the flames have placed you under with their deadly hex. 

He lulls your head back to rest on his shoulder, exposing your neck to him and breathes in the delicious aroma that emanates out of every one of your pores—of all the corruption and depravity and wickedness that floods through your veins like the most lethal of poisons, a product of the seed he had planted inside of you. 

This was his plan all along afterall, to fill your head with nothing but thoughts of him— his image burning in your mind until it was all consuming and replenishing the void in your chest with the lachrymose notion that one day the two of you would be reunited. 

That was why he waited so long before he made himself known to you again—through fleeting gazes that made you question your sanity, through the lingering of his scent that wafted in the cool, Mississippi breeze that drove you to the verge of madness—ensuring that you wouldn't forget him so that the yearning that festered inside of you didn’t diminish. That it only grew and grew and grew until it became an obsession you couldn’t break free of.

He’d be lying to himself if he said he didn’t find it amusing, your infatuation with him, because he too had his own sick fascination with you. 

In the beginning, Remmick’s bargain was just that: a bargain. 

You had something that he wanted, something he craved, and he was willing to linger unseen until he was able to collect what was owed. 

But the more he visited, the more he watched from the obscurity of the treeline that surrounded your home and saw how you pined for the same need for connection that had plagued him for centuries, the deeper his twisted affections grew for you.

Just like you, the time he spent abiding his time was maddening. 

For a creature of his nature, years passed by like hours, making all of the time he spent drifting through the world feel less excruciating, less unbearable. But even the most sensible of minds can lose themselves to the overwhelming spiral of despair that arises as they watch their loved ones perish to the cruel consequences of time, surrendering to the inevitable, over and over again. And Remmick was not far from falling headfirst into that spiral, so he needed to act fast should he lose that fight.

For far too long Remmick has roamed this earth in search of a companion, to find someone who would stay at his side and ease the ache that has cemented itself in his lonely soul. There have been whom Remmick saw promise in, others who’ve sought the same as he, but it never lasted. Some left willingly, others found the other half of their soul in men that weren’t Remmick, and others simply perished. 

Even now Remmick didn’t know if what he felt was genuine or if he was merely projectioning what his soul wanted onto you, but it didn’t matter to him… you were his now, completely and utterly his.

The thrum of your pulse beats against his thumb as he holds your jaw in his palm pulls him out of his wandering thoughts and he sighs with admiration at the surge of your vitality that it courses through your body. 

To him it was more than merely drinking from you, it was about forging a bond that would last in this lifetime and the next, sharing the most vulnerable and intimate parts of you with him, and he you. 

What he craved wasn’t power over you, or control, he didn’t even want your blood as sweet as it tasted, as tempting as it was.

No, what he wanted was your warmth, your depravity, your affection and devotion… he desired the music that your heart curated and sang only for him. 

It reminded him of a time before his turning, back when life was uncomplicated. Back when all he wanted was companionship.

And he found that in you, his fallen angel. His dark muse.   

“This is it, little dove,” he pants, breath scorching and burning hot, unlike the rest of him. 

You feel the scrape of his fangs brush along your pulsepoint dangerously and your breath hitches in your throat. 

“I need to hear you say it, that you want this,” he says, almost begging, almost as if not to you at all and only to silence the doubt that holds him back. He needs to hear the words fall from your lips, to prove that he’s deserving of this—deserving of you.

That’s what Remmick tells himself, trying to convince himself that he’s holding onto a shred of humanity that he still had left dwindling inside of him by offering you a choice in the matter—sure it was choice molded and influenced by his deceitful hand, but it was a choice nonetheless—and making you say it outloud made it tangible. Made it real. 

“Say it.”

“I want this,” you whisper, voice unwavering in your decision. Absolute. You look up at him, “I want you.” 

Remmick swears he sees starlight glimmering in your eyes, full of veneration and fondness and love and it’s exactly what he needed, that push forward.

Your eyelids flutter shut when he leans in, lips brushing ardently in a kiss reserved for the most reverent of lovers despite the blasphemy of it all, despite the sacrilege of it.  

And then he bites, sinking his fangs deep into the tender flesh of your throat and tasting the rush of your blood filling his mouth.

You wince, gasping at the painful pressure of where his teeth were embedded into you, his lips sealing around the wound as he drinks, swallowing hungrily at the metallic nectar. 

It makes him dizzy with exhilaration, his mind fogging over from the euphoria that courses through him. 

There’s an agonizing sting at first, but it’s not nearly as violent as you think it would be. 

You’d imagine Remmick ripping off ribbons of flesh from your throat and tearing your arteries to shreds like some brutish creature devouring its prey. 

He’s not greedily draining you with the intent to kill—he’s tasting every drop of blood that spills into his mouth, savoring the sanguine taste of you on his tongue and memorizing it. 

You aren’t a one-off meal that he’ll tear into and quickly discard. You are now his one prized conquest, marked by his bite. 

Remmick is surprisingly gentle in the way he cradles your cheek in one of his large hands while the other is wrapped around your waist, preventing you from stumbling over from the heavy weight of his body pressed securely against yours.  

A shiver runs through you, feeling the chill of death creeping up your arms like mist, up your chest and neck despite the heat of the fire that rages all around.

You know that you should be frightened knowing that death is right at your doorstep, waiting for you to take that final step through the threshold, but you aren't scared, not when it feels like this—a merciful pull into the darkness, slowly draining you until your body grows weaker and weaker the more he takes. .

Like death itself was comforting you, consoling you, encouraging you not to be afraid and tread into that darkness without fear of the unknown. Apologizing for all the pain you endured, but assuring that there would be no more suffering once you let it in. 

Let him in.

And you do, bearing every part of your soul to Remmick as he drinks. 

Tears form at the corners of your eyes, finally finding the peace you so desperately sought in this grim, dreadful world, washing over you like a Baptismal fountain.

Through the warm ichor, Remmick can see the life that you lived thus far. 

He sees your parents, both grinning ear-to-ear as they walk you up the steps of the church you all attended every Sunday and the hearty meals your mother had prepared after. He sees you standing at the edge of freshly dug up dirt, watching as the gravediggers lower their caskets into the ground. He sees the fireplace where you sat while your grandmother told you stories of her homeland and the origins of the traditions of your people and then the disgraceful excuse of a gravesite where they buried her, nothing more than a plank of wood with her name scratched into the grainy surface; the only thing your family could afford. He sees the last time you smiled before being ushered into your uncle’s house, ignorant to what you would experience at his hands. He sees himself in the threshold of the burning house behind him.

But he isn’t the only one who sees the lingering reflections of a time that have since passed.

Through the darkness that trickles into your vision, there are flashes of a life that don’t belong to you flickering behind your eyelids—a foreign land with vast green countrysides surrounded by treacherous waters, a small village with townsfolk that fill the air with laughter and music so touching you can feel it reverberate in your chest. A place where gods and spirits inhabited each stone, in every tree and in the lakes and rivers that flowed through the land, living side by side with the people who thrived there, undisturbed by marauders from across the sea who would eventually come.  

The rush of images dissipate shortly after drifting into your mind as the world around you is fading, and the sharp, thunderous drawl of Remmick’s bite dulls. 

He can feel it too, how your body slacks in his embrace with every second that passes. How the vigor of your blood’s song steadily begins to dim. 

His tongue runs along the wound of his making on your neck, leaving a thick line of saliva on the skin there and quickly replacing it with an amorous press of his lips.

You groan at the fatigue that infiltrates your mind, your body instinctively pushing away the urge to sever the thread that binds you to this existence. 

Your fingers find purchase on his thick arms, unconsciously trying to shove him off of you, but you have no strength to do so. 

“Don’t fight it,” he whispers into your hair, so soft, so reverent, like a prayer. “Think of it as falling asleep and when you wake, you’ll be anew.” He coos against your temple and places a kiss to your cold forehead, “I’ve got you. Let go.”

And you do, with one final exhale you let go.

Silence greets you. And blackness. The world around you is gone, having ebbed away into absolute nothingness. 

Growing up hearing the sermons from the preacher upon the pulpit, you’d thought death would be different, more dramatic. Blinding white light that leads to the pearly gates. Or of fire and brimstone that foretold the eternity torture that awaited you after a life of vice. Perhaps even of the muddled gray of a purgatory you’d never leave, condemning you to wander in uncertainty forever, but it wasn’t like that at all. 

Just blackness envelopes you and you feel weightless, like floating on the waters of the Mississippi River just before the sun rises above the horizon.

Time is meaningless in a place like this and you’re unsure of how long you’ve lingered here in death, straying mindlessly in that cold, dark void. Like the passing of seconds into centuries, like surviving through a never-ending winter before a long awaited spring emerges, blossoming into something wondrous and exhilarating.   

Finally, your eyes begin to open and the world around you is bold, vibrant with perfect clarity.  

There are colors and hues that are new to you now and with amazement you watch as the inferno dances around you in splendid destruction. 

You can see every flickering flame that burns deep into the walls and scorches the wood beneath it, like the brushstrokes of a painting of meticulous detail—so rich, so sharp, alive as if every shadow and streak of color had a soul within itself. 

Still in Remmick’s embrace, now cradled ardently in his arms as he carries you out of the burning wreckage of the house you can feel every stitch of his skin on yours, amplified. The once cold hands that held you now radiate a warmth that you never noticed before. 

The night birds and insects that chant their nocturnal melodies sing with sublime coherence. Even the sound of the leaves that sway gently in the night’s breeze sound as loud as the strumming of a blues guitar.

Your hand reaches up to caress his jawline, sharpe with the stubble that frames his chin. Despite the prickle beneath your fingers, the expanse of his skin feels velvety under your touch, taut and smooth like marble, sending electricity through your fingertips.

Remmick leans into the tender stroke of your knuckles along this cheek, trembling slightly as your nails rake down the column of his throat, feeling the hum of his blood dancing below with delight. 

Once outside, Remmick lays you down on the lawn with the crisp air nipping at your skin. The softness of the grass against your back makes you sigh, like laying on sheets of silk.

His mouth is on you suddenly, hot and slick and hungry. 

Your legs part, welcoming Remmick between them without hesitation and he moans when your hands cup his face, slanting your lips perfectly to deepen the kiss. 

You cling to him, causing Remmick to hiss at the sting of your nails clawing into the nape of his neck, creating crescent-shaped into his skin through the fabric of his collar. 

It spurs him on, how unaware you are of your new-found strength, and it stirs something dangerous in his gut. 

His tongue traces your bottom lip, desperately asking you to part for him—an invitation—and when you do, he licks into your mouth like a man starved. 

You can taste the remnants of the irony tang of your blood on this tongue and it eases a whine from your lips. 

Once it would have repulsed you but now it remedies a craving you’ve never experienced before, but only a little; only in the slightest of ways, in a way that teases you, in a way that demands more. 

Your head spins at the feeling of his hands on your body—fondling the swell of your breasts though the thin material of your nightgown and making your nipples pucker beneath his touch.

It has heat and wetness pooling between your legs and you chase the urge by lifting your hips upwards to grind against the hardening of his cock beneath the rough cotton of his trousers.

His tongue pushes deeper into your mouth, matching your eagerness, and he rocks back into you forcefully, enough to render another sound out of you which he does easily.

You should be ashamed at how pliable you are under his touch, at the pathetic and lewd moans that leave your mouth when his lips linger across your face, kissing and nipping at the skin of your jaw, down the expanse of your neck. 

He places searing, wet kisses on each collarbone and between the valley of your breasts as he slides lower and lower down your body. 

You arch into every kiss he lavishes on your clothed skin, desperately needing to feel all of him on you, to feel the heat that exudes off of his body bleed into you. You're so lost in his touch that you don’t even notice that one of his hands snakes under the hem of your nightgown, pushing it up and revealing the temptation of your flesh while the other tugs your underwear down your ankles until he maneuvers it off of you, throwing it aside carelessly.

You writhe against the damp grass, skin burning up. Like a fever you can’t break, kindled by the scorching trail of his tongue down your stomach, the weighted press of his body against yours, feeling the heat spread through your bloodstream and into every part of you from your head to your toes—igniting every cell with heightened pleasure.

Your mind spins haphazardly into a spiraling descent of hedonistic madness. Even the intensity that exudes from the dilapidated house that cries out for merciful release feels cool in comparison to his touch. 

The flames and smoke fades into a smeared mess of orange, red, and black until you don’t recognize it at all. It just becomes a part of the night, like the stars and moon above.    

You feel drunk off of him, mind blurring into enraptured grandeur. 

Remmick leans forward, nuzzling the side of your thigh with his nose as he catches your intoxicating scent and it racks a shudder up his spine when he breathes it in gluttonously. 

His name falls from your lips, full of want and desire, but he hushes your plea quietly.

It almost makes him laugh from the irony of it all—of how easily you traded one monster for another. 

He wonders if the thought ever crossed your mind or if the hatred you harbored in your heart for your uncle and aunt have blinded you of the fact.

It doesn’t matter now, not when he has you right here he wants you and Remmick isn’t going to let you slip through his fingers by revealing the epiphany he had. 

He’s going to indulge in all of the horrors you have hidden inside of you. Coddle it. Exploit it. Foster it.

“It’s alright dove,” he whispers, kissing your inner thigh before draping one over his lean shoulder, then the other, “it’ll all be alright, just gonna make you feel good, real good.” 

Another kiss, closer to the glistening of your cunt.

He shifts his gaze to yours, finding the natural hue of them now glowing a rich tinge of orange, the same shade as the flames that swelter behind the both of you as the house continues to burn in an endless inferno. 

It makes his heart falter at the sight of you, perfectly grotesque. 

Pushing up on your elbows, your mouth parts to object but whatever questionable demur you plan to say dies before it can even form and a drawn out moan replaces it as the sensation of Remmick flicking his tongue over your cunt suddenly overwhelms you. 

It renders you boneless, falling back amongst the grass while hot embers erupt across the sensitive flesh. Using the roughness of his tongue, he sluggishly drags it along the seam of your folds, tasting the wet ambrosia that lays between the sanctuary of your thighs, the only altar he’d ever kneel before. 

One of your hands finds refuge in his hair, fingers threading through the short, curled locks while the other grasps at his forearm for dear life, knuckles turning stark-white from strain as that wicked tongue teases you—slowly sliding over your dripping, heated slit and stroking over your clit in deliberately tedious licks. 

His large hands grip at your thighs firmly, holding you in place to ease the mindless gyrations of your hips towards his sinful mouth as he devours you—the wild, hungry way that he works his tongue against you, over you, inside of you.  

Remmick hums in content, feeling the thin strings of your resolve snapping one by one with every trawl of his devilish tongue against your flesh, unraveling a little more with each needy whine or ragged sigh you breathe out into the night. 

You shudder when he moves his mouth up to find that little bundle of nerves at the apex of your sex and captures it between his lips, flicking over it in slow, teasing manipulations, and you jerk, your body already nearly spasming and you dig your heels into the muscles of his back in a hopeless attempt to keep him rooted against you. 

He moves his mouth lower once more, hands moving around to cup the ample swell of your ass and pressing you even closer as he delves his tongue into the hot, wet depths of your pussy.

And fuck if the strangled cry that tore from your throat wasn’t the most retched, profane sound he’s ever heard, especially when it was accompanied by a violent tug at his hair that pushes his face deeper into your quivering cunt, sending his tongue plunging even further inside of you.

The swollen ache turns into burning and you feel your inner walls tighten, knowing the sensation of your impending orgasm creeping up your spine.

Remmick senses it too, feeling the same coil tightening in his abdomen, but he doesn’t relent in his attention. His moans meld with yours, matching it pitch for pitch and accompanying every sound you make with one of his own like a sordid melody. 

He wishes he could stay like this, tucked deliciously between your legs and drinking from your immaculate cunt until the sun rises beyond the horizon and for the rest of his infernal lifetime, especially as you grind herself against his face shamelessly and keening his name desperately despite the firm grip he had on your thighs, but he can’t ignore the almost painful throb of his hardening cock rubbing against his pants. 

The reverberation of his groans and whimpers make your thighs tremble against the sides of his head, but he doesn’t pay it any mind. His body rocks in sync with the roll of your hips, flowing in the same rhythmic cadence as you both become one through the tormenting ministrations of his mouth.

Never had a man or woman touched you like this, uncaring of how obscene he looks with his head buried between your legs. His hands, calloused and strong, message the delicate flesh of your thighs and ass in soothing motions. He places enough pressure to induce bruising to flourish beneath the supple skin and the pleasure that blossoms under his touch is inebriating. Addictive.

The grip you have on his arm trails up to thread your fingers through his, your nails digging deep into his palm to rouse another elongated moan from him.  

You smirk, satisfied at the sound you pull out of him, but the smugness is wiped clean off your face as the tightening pressure that had been building in your spine and lower belly intensifies, your mouth parting in a sequence of short, breathy sighs when it hits you.

It’s blinding and red-hot, a kaleidoscope of euphoria bursting from inside of you in a flash of liquid fire, and with a broken cry of Remmick’s name on your lips you cum into his eagerly awaiting mouth. 

He slurps at your sweet slickness as it floods his senses, flaring his nostrils to fully bask in the scent of you, and a low, guttural growl rips from deep within his chest. 

He licks and laps at your cunt, fervently catching every drop you offer him to not miss a single drop, not wanting to let any of it go to waste. Not on your thighs, not on the grass below, not even on his chin. No, he had to devour you thoroughly until there was nothing left for you to give. 

And god is his tongue relentless, repeating the same motions over your sensitive bud that has you squirming under his touch, trying hysterically to push him away but he keeps fighting against you, his tongue stroking incessantly and arduously into the sanctity of your cunt.  

You sit up suddenly, causing a glimmer of worry to flicker cross Remmick’s face when he looks up at you, but it quickly subsides when he sees the wanton glint in your glowing orange eyes.

A smirk spreads on his handsome face when you grab at him, pulling him toward you until your mouth clashes with his, lips slanting against mouth. His face is wet, and warm, and tangy sweet. And now as you kiss him, open-mouthed to allow your tongue to dance with his, all you can taste is herself. 

In a swift movement, Remmick pulls you into his lap, mouth never parting from yours as he squeezes and caresses the sweat-glistened skin of your thighs. He guides them to rock your sex against his, still fully clothed, but the friction of his cock through his pants surrenders a moan that seeps from your mouth into his, feeling his pent up desire grind against you. 

Your hands fall to the open collar of his shirt, fingers diligently tracing over the expanse of the exposed skin that lays beneath the fabric, beneath the golden chain that hangs from his neck.

Caressing the taut muscles at the juncture of his throat and chest, you palm the heated flesh and claim it with the drag of your nails down his pecs and then up again, leaving angry red scratches on his pale skin. 

He groans at the pain that arises from your marking—your nails now sharper than ever, sharp like the edge of a blade as they pierce the skin deep enough to cause damage. 

When you pull away, your eyes are drawn to the crimson flow of blood that oozes from the wounds you inflicted and he smiles.

He doesn’t have to say it because the enticement of the crimson ichor instinctively calls to you, whispering and screaming in equal measure to sate the new ache that gnaws and twists in the pit of your stomach. A hunger. One that you didn't know existed as your heightened senses emphasizes the thirst that leaves your throat dry. 

What was once an intrusive thought now becomes a craving, a need to quench the growing impulse to drink. It draws you in like a magnetic force, one that you can’t escape from, one that continues to invade your thoughts until it makes your head throb with excruciating agony. 

You can’t resist the lure, can’t fight the urge that beckons you with welcoming arms like the sweetest of songs. You lean forward, tongue flat against Remmick’s chest and lick the sticky substance up from the droplet at the bottom of his sternum up to the source of the wound at his collarbone. 

Remmick laughs when your body trembles when you taste him, the rich, warm liquid coating your tongue like the most divine of holy wines, but his tone is anything but degrading or mocking—its breathy and sincere, a quintessential jovial sound that teeters on hysteria. 

He laughs because now you are utterly and completely like him, a creature of his making. Corrupted. Perverted. Damned. 

Gently, he cradles the back of your neck and allows you to indulge in the taste of him, his blood, his soul, and watches through hooded eyes with triumph as you drink selfishly from him. 

It’s thick and sweet, igniting a fire that burns as it runs liquid hot down your throat. It's unlike anything you’ve ever sampled in your sad little life. Nothing tastes as delicious as this does, nothing could even compare to it. It engulfs all of your senses simultaneously, quickly soaking into every nerve-ending of your being.   

You groan when the sacred liquor of his body is eventually tapped out, but Remmick hushes you with another vulnerable laugh and places a lingering kiss to the crown of your head, his nose nesting tenderly into your hair. 

When you look up he kisses you again briefly, not as rough as before but you can taste the desire that imbues his lips. 

“There’ll be more of that later, dove,” he whispers, eyes tracing every detail of your disheveled expression, “but for now I need to fuck you good, need to feel that sweet pussy of yours around my cock as I make you scream my name so everyone knows who you belong to now.”

His vulgar words, mixed with the euphoria of his blood coursing through you, make you dizzy, drunk from pure delirium. 

You are his, forever and all eternity. 

The notion of being some unholy bride to this monstrous brute should have scared the living hell out of you, but after experiencing the thrill of his blood dancing in your belly and the absolute bliss of his mouth on your cunt, you couldn’t think of any other place you’d rather be. 

Heaven and hell be damned, you’d make whatever time you had with Remmick at his side your own paradise on earth. 

In a swift, seamless motion Remmick undoes the buttons of his trousers, hissing under his breath when his cock springs free from its confines.

You moan when he pushes his cock against your slick folds, gliding effortlessly due to the wetness between your thighs, and you lift your hips slightly, just enough for the tip to prod against your entrance. 

His hands fall to your hips, yours finding purchase on his broad shoulders to support your trembling body, already alight from the pleasure that ripples up your spine. 

Slowly, Remmick lowers you onto him and you sigh, feeling every pulsation of his thick, needy cock as you sink down inch by inch to take all of him. 

The measured push of him into the most sacred part of you is agonizing, maddening until he bottoms out fully, splitting you with a sadistically pleasurable burn. 

Your mouth falls agape at the sensation of him filling you completely, and he can’t refrain from grinning at the sight of your utterly blissed out expression. 

One of his hands loosens the grip he has on your hip, fingers creeping up from under the hem of your nightgown and fanning out to feel your velvety skin beneath his fingertips, pressing gently into the dip of your spine to press you closer to his body. 

His bright, glowing eyes find yours and Remmick pauses to take in your new appearance wholly. 

Any lines that once decorated your face have disappeared, leaving behind smooth, soft skin in its wake; like a moth breaking from its cocoon to reveal the splendors after a long awaited metamorphosis. 

Your blood-stained fangs peek through from your upper lip when you moan, elongated and razor-sharp. If you wanted you could rip out his throat, he thinks, and make a meal of him right then and there, feeding off his throat like a parched man would suck the nectar from a ripened, summer peach. 

His cock twitches at the image of you, mouth and chin saturated with the slick of his dark, red blood as it coagulates on your pretty face, your throat, and clothes—grotesquely painting you in his cruor and gore.

Your breath catches in your throat, nails digging painfully into his shoulders when he thrusts forcefully up into you, the violation quick and powerful. 

“Oh fuck, Remmick—” you moan, falling forward to press your forehead into the crook of his neck and place sloppy, lingering kisses to his damp skin. Your hot breath fans over his jugular, smelling the saccharine aroma of his pulse thrumming in his veins. 

He groans when your fangs scrape against his throat, teasing the skin dangerously and chases the fleeting sensation of implicit peril with another rough thrust.    

The grass beneath you is damp, causing your knees to slip from under your weight and spreading you unbearably wide so that when you meet his thrusts the tip of his cock prods against the spongy patch of muscle along your upper walls that musters a whine from you.

He feels it too, how you squeeze around him, and wraps his arms around your back to press you impossibly close to him, desperate to feel it again. Your tender nipples brush against his chest and the friction of it is almost too much to handle, but you don’t pull away, don’t push him off of you, and instead you rock your hips to match his pace. 

Quickly you both find your rhythm—harsh, almost cruel thrusts followed by the slow, merciful grinding of his hips meeting the sickly tender cadence of yours. 

The night air was filled with the sounds of your mingled, interwoven moans, muffled slightly as they spill into each other’s mouths, greedily swallowing every groan, whimper and sigh that you both make in shared pleasure.

Your thighs shake uncontrollably, your walls clenching around him in anticipation of your approaching climax, the coil tightening and tightening with every thrust of his powerful hips.

Remmick realizes just how close you were when you continue to pant and whine like a rabid dog in heat and your voice musically invades his ears. He eases his head back to gaze up at you and locks eyes with yours. You stare at him with heavy-lidded eyes, your pupils blown wide and your lips swollen from biting them as you move on top of him like the blasphemous goddess you are. 

One of his hands runs down between the apex of your thighs, pressing his thumb against your clit and rubs a slow, maddening circle over it, causing your hips stutter and your breath catch in the back of your throat.

He presses firmly at the bundle of nerves and reality slips away, begging you to give in. And you do, grabbing at the back of his neck while the other holds onto him hopelessly while your inner walls spasm around his thick cock and voice a desperate, strangled moan.

Remmick's eyes are drawn to the look of absolute elation that adorns your face, a look of awe, of pure amazement. It was like he just couldn’t tear his eyes from you, afraid that he’d miss something, anything, if he were to look away for even a moment. There was nothing in this ungodly world like watching your body respond to him, nothing like knowing that he was the one to pull these responses from you. 

And watching you reach that peak climax, watching you plunge headlong into the throes of this intense orgasm, prompts his own body to respond. His hips thrusts erratically even as one of his hands grasps at your shoulder, curling around it to hold your hips square against his as he pumps his hips violently, his cock twitching as he finally lets go, cumming hard inside of your hot, wet cunt that still grips him mercilessly. 

Remmick grunts as his pelvis jarrs against yours, pressing insistently against your clit with every thrust he gave. Your eyes screw shut and your whole body tenses just before you clench around him once more, throwing you into another intense orgasm. 

His glowing red eyes widen as he stares at you amorously, his mouth hanging open in utter rhapsody. A slow, sure grin stretches clear across his face as he watches your features convey a look of complete and perfect euphoria. 

You collapse on top of him when the initial high is over, your body laying limp against his as you continue to tremble and shake, burying your face into his neck and lazily nuzzle your nose against him, struggling to regain your breath.

He turns his head, pressing a kiss to your forehead and brings his hand up to gently brush your damp hair out of your sweat-soaked face, the other soothingly caresses up and down the length of your back. 

A sigh leaves your lips, your torrid breath fanning against the contour of his throat with every hot inhale and exhale you take, whispering his name. 

The night air is quiet as you and Remmick sit in each other’s embrace and the dull murmur of the crickets and cicadas slowly becoming louder as you ease back into the world, accompanied every so often by the sound of the house falling apart. 

The fire still rages, but it has pacified immensely since it first started. Planks of wood fall to the ground with a muffled thump and most of the fire has died out, now replaced with the smoldering of the thick, grayish smoke that billows into the night sky, muddying the color of it. 

It’s still beautiful, you think with your cheek resting against Remmick’s shoulder, bright eyes watching the smoke as it dances up towards the stars. 

Now after all that you’ve endured you finally allow yourself to breathe, knowing that everything that has ever haunted you is gone, that every monster has been vanquished. 

For once you can live without worry about what may come, you think with a silent chuckle. 

It wouldn’t have mattered if Remmick ended your life instead of turning you because even then he would’ve kept his promise. And that was all that mattered to you—that he kept his word, just as he said he would. And that alone brings you peace.   

It’s a while before he finally moves, shifting in little, anxious movements, and it’s enough for you to glance up at him, eyes scanning his face to find what troubles him. 

His eyes—still that ghoulish, dazzling shade of vermillion—are compelled to the horizon. 

“We need to get movin’,” he says, but you can hear the slight unease in his voice.

Turning your head, you look out to where his gaze remains and although you don’t see it, your blood tingles with astute awareness, knowing that something dangerous awaits should you linger here any longer. 

Though the night sky is still cloaked in shadows, you can see how out in the distance it leisurely changes from that dark, navy blueish-black into lighter hues of magenta and gold with your enhanced vision—bright and shimmering as the sun awakens from its overdue slumber.

Daybreak approaches. 

Seeing how Remmick reacts, you should be worried but you aren’t.

The worst of it all was behind you now and whatever the future had to offer was there for the taking.

Because with Remmick at your side, you were unstoppable. 

tagging: @eddiesvixen

[freenightfall]

remmick pfp is everything. love that jiggy irish boy ☘️

thanks! had to make him my pfp after i saw the movie 💜 and i have a remmick fic brewing, i'm super excited to post it when its done 😈

[freenightfall]

A RAINBOW IN THE DARK

summary: you and eddie have been best friends since childhood and the only place you've ever felt safe was at eddie's place.

pairing: eddie munson / f!reader

contents: friends to lovers, idiots to lovers, fluff, hurt/comfort, cw child abuse/domestic abuse, brief mentions of emotional abuse, swearing, mentions of violence

word count: 4.2 k

You’ve stood at Eddie’s front door more than you could recall, more than you could count on your fingers and then some…but tonight felt different. Something akin to adrenaline rushed through your veins like the purest drug causing your entire body to tremble and shake in place as you stared at the peeling paint of the trailer door; but it wasn’t adrenaline. It wasn’t fun and carefree and exhilarating–what you felt was the complete opposite. 

The only word that you could think of was dread… but it wasn’t because of what you were going to face inside.

You had known Eddie your whole life—lived in the same trailer park as him, grew up with him, played as children as you ran around and caused havoc together in the junkyard. You huff out a small laugh as the image of your closet trimming with black lines marked in sharpie with both of your heights written beside them as you two grew throughout the years popping into your mind… it was one of the only happy memories you had in that house. 

Eddie’s place felt more of a home to you than your own ever did and you spent a majority of your free time there instead. That’s why you’re here now, because this place was always your safe haven, a sanctuary on earth from all the cruelty and emptiness that filled the walls of the place you were supposed to call home. 

Glancing up at the door, you take a deep breath and raise your hand to knock. But just before your fist makes contact with the flimsy door, it swings open revealing the weathered face of Eddie’s uncle Wayne. He’s dressed in his usual plaid shirt and jeans, accompanied with the safety vest that serves as his uniform. His wary eyes soften when he sees you and he relaxes briefly, shoulders dropping from its tense posture. 

“Hey Wayne,” you greet, voice smaller and quieter than he knows it to be. 

The quality of your voice makes him quirk a brow, but it only lasts a moment and the natural weariness consumes his expression once again. 

Just like Eddie, you’ve known Wayne your whole life. Eddie’s father used to live here too, but one day, before the crack of dawn and a week after he had turned 14, he left with all of his belongings—left with everything except for Eddie. 

Wayne nods in his own greeting and then opens the door wide enough for you to step in. 

“He’s in his room,” is all he says as he slips past you and makes his way towards his truck. 

The door clicks shut behind you and the trailer is almost silent if it wasn't for the orchestrated hum of heavy music playing towards the back of the house. Quietly you wander past the small living room and even smaller kitchen until you come face-to-face with the door that leads into your best friend’s room, cracked open just a sliver; just enough to allow the music playing from the speakers to seep into the rest of the trailer. The door to his room is plastered with signs and posters, some handwritten or drawn and others professionally done. It’s chaotic and messy and every bit Eddie. 

You knock, only to be courteous, before gently pushing open the door. 

Eddie’s on his bed, laying on his back with his beloved guitar in hand as he strums the heavy riffs playing on the record he put on earlier. Holy Diver, you recognize, by the metal god himself Ronnie James Dio. 

His eyes are closed as his fingers are working meticulously on the guitar solo masterpiece and his curly brown locks are sprayed around his head like a halo. 

The sight makes you smile and even though you’ve seen him like this plenty of times—lost to the equally heavy and poetic melody of the music—and yet it always makes your heart melt. 

“You know if you put in half the energy and commitment into your studies as you do your guitar playing you would’ve graduated with me last year,” you say. 

Eddie's eyes snap open and he shoots up in bed, beaming up at you with the most boyish grin he could muster, like it’s the first time he’s seen you in ages when you quite literally saw him the other day. 

“Heya stranger, didn’t expect you to drop in tonight!” He says with a dopey smile on his face, totally ignoring your statement on purpose.

You thread a hand through your hair and tussle the locks slightly, “Yeah it was a slow night so Mick let me off early.”

“Ah,” he sighs in realization, fingers still strumming the guitar strings absentmindedly, “boss man didn’t want to pay you for standing around I see.”

You nod, “Probably, but I mean getting off early beats trying to find something to do for another hour or so.”

“Yeah because doing nothing and getting paid for it totally beats doing nothing with your best friend,” he jests playfully. 

“I mean as much as I love working at the record shop, sometimes I would rather be here with you.”

Eddie places a hand over his heart dramatically and gives you an over the top, almost cartoonish look of gratitude, “I am honored, truly, that you would value my friendship just slightly more than that shitty conformist, sell-out-corporate job you have. Seriously, I might cry!”

“How the hell is working for a dingy little local shop conformist or selling out to corporate? It’s not like I’m working for McDonalds or anything. And besides, the only reason I have that job is so I can make some kinda cash, not that I’m making enough to get by as it is…”

It’s true, ever since you turned 16 you were working to make enough to get the hell out of Hawkins. There was nothing here for you but misery and heartache—the only thing keeping you here was Eddie, but you’d never tell him that. 

You couldn’t imagine leaving him behind. Sure he had Gareth and Jeff and the rest of the Hellfire Club to keep him company but other than that he didn’t have any friends. People at Hawkins High didn’t understand him, they took him at face value and made assumptions based solely on that. If they took time to get to know Eddie, knew him that way you and the Hellfire Club did, then they would all know that Eddie was one of the most creative, funny, and caring people on the planet. It broke your heart that people were terrified of him, mocked him for not conforming to society's norms.

You kept mostly to yourself when you were at school, reading in the library or finishing up passable schoolwork that was due later that day during study hall; the only exception were the days and nights that the Hellfire Club met for their D&D campaigns or meetings to discuss the future of the club where you sat behind Eddie in a little foldable chair and basked in the social interaction and antics that pursued, but other than that you didn’t partake in the high school experience. You wanted to finish and then get the hell out of dodge, hoping to escape this shitty little town and never look back at all the shitty memories from over the years. 

And sure you had your fair share of name calling and bullying, but it was nothing compared to how they treated Eddie. While you were merely misunderstood and ignored by the teens and adults at Hawkins High, Eddie was villainized. 

You hadn’t realized that while lost in your thoughts momentarily you had crossed your arms over your chest and one of your hands had involuntarily squeezed your upper arm. A sudden jolt courses through your bloodstream and you wince at the pain that radiates there.

Eddie notices and quickly he leaps out of bed, tossing his most treasured possession onto the throw of pillows and pulls up the sleeve of your Led Zeppelin tee. His eyes widen at the relatively new, blotchy black and blue mark that blemishes your skin. 

When he glances up at you through his thick lashes there’s something frighteningly irate looming in his normally warm brown eyes. He lets go of your sleeve with a tender slip of his ringed fingers and takes a small step back. 

“He did this to you?” Eddie asks with a nod to the blossoming bruise, nostrils flaring slightly as he speaks. 

You nod back, unable to keep his gaze any longer and instead avert your eyes to the beer stained carpet. “Apparently he didn’t like the way I looked at him after he yelled at my mom for not washing his work clothes on time.”

“Well maybe he should do his own damn laundry then...” Eddie scoffs, the huff of a laugh that escapes his lips is laced with disgust, like venom dripping from his mouth. “… at least he learned to punch where it doesn’t show this time.” The sarcasm in his voice was hard to miss.  

“He didn’t punch,” you say, “he just grabbed me.”

“Hard enough to leave a mark.”

“It’s nothing,” you reply, “it’ll be gone in a few days.”

Eddie shakes his head, “Why are you so quick to defend that asshole?”

“I’m not defending him!” You all but snapped, the weight of the conversation becoming too much all of a sudden as your vision blurs from the hot tears that had welted up in your eyes, because you weren’t defending your father. You wouldn't defend him if your life depended on it. 

As much as you despised the word and think it has been misused, you hated your father. It was because of him you kept your head down just slightly enough to avoid the gaze of whoever it was you spoke to. It was because of him that you flinched whenever someone even remotely raised their voice in anything but joy or surprise (which even then sometimes startled you). It was because of him that you wanted to walk about life hidden in the shadows, hidden away from everyone’s view.

You hated that he made you act like your mother whenever you were around him, a woman you couldn’t fathom as a naive child who could stand to be with a man who treated her the way he did—who yelled at the smallest inconvenience, who threw plates against the floor like a deranged child when upset, a man who hurled insults under his breath like daggers. You always swore that you would never let a man treat you this way, yet here you were… afraid of the man who you were supposed to love and you let him throw you around like you were some mindless rag doll.    

But Eddie saw you, he had always seen you, and he made you feel the way a person was supposed to feel. He made you feel like you were your own person with thoughts and emotions and passions. That’s why you loved Eddie… that’s why you fell in love with Eddie… and you hated yourself for it because you felt deep down, at some point—eventually—he was going to turn out just like your father. 

You knew he wouldn’t, but that gnawing feeling still burrowed itself deep inside of your head and poisoned your thoughts. It was easy for a person to change, for whatever reason. There was a hopeful notion that your father wasn’t always this way, that something had changed him for the worse and he was the way he was because something happened to him. 

People weren’t born monsters, they became them. 

“You know you could always stay here,” Eddie says then, demeanor softening when he sees your teary gaze avoiding him. “You basically live here anyway, so I doubt that we’d even notice if you were around a little more than usual.”

It was true, when you weren’t slaving away at work you always found yourself here, and back when you were still attending Hawkins High you caught rides with Eddie before and after school (and his little entrepreneur endeavors in the woods) back to his trailer to hang out with Eddie and the rest of the Hellfire Club. You always found an opportunity to stay the hell away from home, grabbed it by its throat, and ran with it.

Any place was better than the trailer you called home, you thought bitterly. 

You give Eddie a small smile, “I made it through 19 years of this bullshit, I think I can handle a little more until I can move out on my own.”

Eddie sticks his hands into the back pocket of his jeans and sways in place, a small attempt to ease the tension that had built up in the room after the slightly heated conversation, “Well the offer is always on the table if you ever want to take me up on it.” 

The smile on your face grows a little more, “Thanks Eddie… for everything.”

He smiles back, eyes crinkling, “that’s what best friends are for… but seriously just say the word and I will beat the ever-loving shit out of him.”

“With what? Your guitar?”

“That beauty over there?” He gestures to the heap of intricate metal laying abandoned on his bed. “No, no, no… I’ll save that joyous moment for these bad boys right here,” he raises his ringed fists and starts punching the air with childlike animation.

A laugh escapes you despite all of the mixed emotions swirling around inside of you, “I know for a fact that you’ve never gotten into a physical fight in your life, Munson.”

“What are you saying? That I wouldn’t knock his candy ass straight to the ground with a single blow?”

You contemplate it for a moment, just to humor him, “Well considering that my dad is 6-foot, 200-and-something pounds and you have no fighting experience whatsoever outside of D&D, there's no way in hell you’d make it out of that fight alive, so that is exactly what I’m saying… but you might be able to smart-mouth him to death.”

He grins with comedic menace, “That can be arranged.” He claps his hands together, intertwining his fingers together and brings them to his chest, and looks over at you with devious delight. “Enough of this dreadful chitchat!” He exclaims theatrically. “We need to lighten this dreary mood and I know just the way to do so!” 

Eddie moves to the nightstand beside his bed and rummages through the mess inside until he finds just what he is looking for. Whatever it is, he’s hiding it behind his back until he saunters back over to you like a child anticipating to show their parents their artwork, waiting for a reaction. But before you could chide him for being overdramatic he pushes the VHS of Fright Night into your face.

“Up for a movie night?”

***

You and Eddie are sitting beside each other on the couch. You’re halfway through the movie and you find yourself enjoying it more than you thought you would, but you enjoy just being with Eddie way more. 

It reminds you of the late night spent next to each other just like this as kids: eyes glued to the screen of whatever Eddie managed to nab from the video store without his uncle’s knowledge as he slaved away at the plant to make end’s meet, stuffing an unholy amount of candy and soda down your throats, only this time instead of soda Eddie was babying a bottle of beer while you stuck with something a little less intoxicating (another thing you hated your father for, unable to enjoy something as dumb as teen drinking because you feared turning into the same breed of monster as him). 

The character of Peter Vincent comes on screen and Eddie’s hand darts out of the shared blanket covering the two of you, pointing towards the older man. “That’s what I want to be,” he says.

“A washed up actor?” You ask innocently, genuinely enough.

“No,” He shakes his head, “famous.” He continues without tearing his eyes from the television screen, “One day my band is gonna make it big, I can feel it, and when that day comes I’m gonna take you far away from this shitty little town filled with all of its shitty little people. We’ll travel the world and see cities way bigger than Hawkins, eat food that doesn’t come from a can, and be surrounded by people who look like us, think like us.”

“And I’ll be doing what, exactly?” You ask. with a weary grin “End up as a little groupie for you and your bandmates?”

Eddie's face scrunches up, eyes crinkling into mere slits, and mouth twisting into a strange contortion of movement as he shakes his head, “Nooooooo, being a groupie is way beneath you,” his eyes finally drift away from the screen and he stares at his blanket covered lap, thumbs twiddling underneath the heavy material, “I think the girlfriend of a rockstar has a better ring to it…”

If it wasn’t for the quality of his voice, you’d think he was joking. Throughout the years of your friendship you’d both been known to tease each other, playful banter and totally platonic flirting falling from both of your lips lightheartedly, but it was never anything more than two friends fooling around. 

This however… this felt different. 

“Yeah, I think it does too,” you whisper then, “or we could just shorten it to Eddie’s girlfriend.”

Eddie turns his head and glances over to you with a mix of surprise and confusion. 

He thinks he might’ve heard you wrong, that he was projecting his own wishful thinking onto your words. The TV volume was low enough that he can practically hear every breath you take, but still he doubted the words that fell from your lips.

His eyes dazzle in the television glow, like starlight in his warm brown hues, and you can tell by the way his body relaxes that he was relieved by your words, afraid that his feelings for you would be unrequited and not returned. 

“What?” You say with a timid smile and a gentle tilt of your head. Your eyes soften when you look at him and the look you give him makes his heart flutter. “Come on, like you didn’t know I liked you.”

Eddie shakes his head, the brown curls that frame his face swaying with him as he downcasts his gaze at his ringed fingers in his lap. “How long?” He asks with a huff of a laugh, trying to contain the joy that overrides his heart.

“Since forever, I guess? I don’t know… you’ve been my best friend for as long as I can remember, I just thought that this was how best friends felt towards each other, but then I realized that I didn’t feel this way around other people… around other guys. It was always only you.”

The smile on his face grows, eyes crinkling at the corners at your confession. Always only you, your words echo in his brain like music. He feels like he’s in a dream—a wonderful, wonderful dream—but he’s afraid that this is just that, only a dream. He’s afraid that he’ll wake up in his bedroom alone and that all of this was just his subconscious playing a cruel joke on him. Because he was Eddie Munson, his entire life was just one cruel joke after another.

When his eyes finally meet yours, he finds himself lost in the way you look back at him. There’s a soft smile that graces your lips that solidifies the fact that you’re telling the truth, that you feel the same way about him that he felt towards you. 

“I guess that makes two of us,” he replies sheepishly.  

“Only took us long enough to admit it,” you laugh, feeling the heat spread across your cheeks. You’re glad that it's dark enough so that he can’t see the blush that appears on your face, embarrassed by how giddy this moment makes you.

He laughs too and he looks so boyishly happy, like a child who got the gift he always wanted for Christmas. 

One of his hands comes up to cup your face, his thumb gently caressing along your chin. It feels electric, having him touch you in such an intimate yet simple way. It was something you always wanted, always dreamed of, and now—finally—it was coming to fruition.  

“We can make up for it, you know…”

You lean in close, enough to feel his hot breath fan against your lips.

“I’d like that,” you whisper before closing the space between you.

The movie that still plays in the background fades into non-existence as his chapped lips mold perfectly against yours. He slants his mouth to kiss you properly despite the odd angle, not wanting to ruin this moment. He’s waited his entire life for this and if he were to fuck it up by kissing you like some inexperienced deeb he’d never forgive himself for it. 

Those doubts ebb away when he feels you kiss him back, feeling how you push up against the couch to press yourself even closer to him, your lips parting slightly to reclaim his in another kiss. A shiver runs down his spine at the feeling, not daring to pull away from the warmth of your mouth, even when he’s desperate for air. 

He tastes of beer, the scent of cigarettes and weed hanging off of his clothes like cologne, leaving you nearly intoxicated as the senses invade your mind, making you dizzy with delight. 

Eddie still holds your face in his hand, gently tilting your head so that his mouth can press against yours the way he wants, the way that just feels right. 

He wants nothing more than to pull you into his lap and have you straddle him, giving him better access to your mouth so he can deepen the kiss. He’s desperate to explore your mouth with his tongue and taste you, to leave you just as excited as he was as you do the same, but it's too soon he thinks. He doesn’t want to scare you away with his eagerness when he finally has you where he’s always wanted you. 

The last thing he wanted was for you to think that all he wanted from you was your touches, that your friendship and his feelings for you were purely driven by hormonal urges. 

Eddie loved you and he wanted to make sure that you knew it, even if he couldn’t muster up the courage to say it out loud.

It feels like an eternity when you finally pull away from him, making him groan at the loss of your heat, but he smiles at the punch-drunk grin that’s plastered on your face. Your eyes are glazed over with a happiness that he hasn’t seen in a long time. 

“You look tired,” he whispers, “tuckered out after just one kiss, huh?”

“Shut up,” you laugh, leaning forward to rest your head on his shoulder. His hand cradles the back of your head, caressing the nape of your neck tenderly with the pads of his fingers. “But I am tired, it’s been a long day.”

“Then let’s get some rest,” he says with a lingering kiss to your temple, “tomorrow’s Saturday, which means we can sleep in as long as you want.”

You nod against his shoulder, straightening up to place one last kiss on his lips before sinking down onto the sofa. 

The two of you maneuver yourselves on the couch so that you’re both laying on your side, facing the TV. There isn’t much space, but with your back pressed firmly against Eddie’s chest you both seem to fit. 

He drapes the blanket over your bodies, wrapping an arm around your waist while propping himself up on his elbow slightly so that he can continue to watch the movie that somehow hasn’t ended yet.

You try to focus on the screen too, but your eyes are heavy with fatigue and slowly they flutter shut until you drift off into sleep. 

Eddie tries to fight off the creeping drowsiness that seeps into his bones, but fails miserably and after a few moments he dozes off as well.

***

The next morning Wayne jingles the keys into the lock, pushing the door open to the trailer with a tired grunt and steps in.

The TV is still running though the VHS had stopped playing hours ago, leaving the living room in a dim blue-ish white haze, the gentle buzz of the static lingering in the air. 

He’s about to yell at Eddie for leaving the TV on again after he fell asleep, ready to scrutinize the boy for wasting electricity, but he stops himself when he sees the two of you asleep on the couch. 

Somehow during the night you had managed to turn and face Eddie, tucking your head underneath his chin, pressing your chest to his in a comforting embrace.

The sight makes Wayne chuckle under his breath, moving towards the TV and switching it off. He sneaks past the couch as quietly as he could and makes his way towards his room to get some rest of his own, but not before muttering an “about damn time” under his breath.