Other characters: Chaz, other members of the Ski Patrol at Silver Peak Lodge, Kodiak Valley.
Contents: Chaotic relationship dynamic
Chapter Summary: The gentle, but sharp beginning of something strange and new
Word count: 1034
Chapter Warnings: Blaine’s arrogant self, jealous Blaine, soft Blaine, brotherly vibes from Chaz 'cause I can
Chapters: | Two | Three | Four | Five | ...
Author Note! This is my first chaptered fiction of Sebastian's characters, so I hope I'm able to maintain the same level of consistency throughout the chapters. There is a mathematical scene in the third chapter; you do not need to understand what she's saying, the sole purpose of it is to show her knowledge.
The sun sinks behind the ridge like a final breath being exhaled. The sky melts into a dreamy gradient of lavender and dusky blue—the kind of light that turns everything quiet, like the whole world is holding still just before night falls. The trees wear fresh snow like icing, branches heavy, sagging in elegant lines. The ski slopes below are empty now; ghostly trails of churned powder lit only by the fading light. The last shuttle has disappeared down the mountain, leaving behind only quiet and cold.
The back porch of the staff lodge groans under Helen’s step. She leans into the railing, the old wood cool against her arms through the sleeves of an oversized jacket Blaine once tossed at her during a snowstorm. She still wears it more often than she cares to admit. Her fuzzy socks peek out from under her leggings—her favourite pair, the ones with worn soles and little snowflakes stitched at the cuffs.
She brings a mug to her lips—something hot and sweet, probably containing stolen cocoa swiped from the kitchen. Steam curls around her face as she stares up at the sky.
The slider creaks open. Boots crunch. Door shuts.
“You hidin' again?”
She doesn’t turn around. Just smiles.
“Not hiding. Just... breathing.”
Chaz steps up beside her, cigarette already between his fingers. He flicks his lighter, then offers her one out of habit.
She shakes her head with a playful glare and a cheeky smile. “Still not a fan of lung failure.”
“You’re so weird,” he mutters, tone fond and half-distracted.
Helen tilts her head, a small smile playing at her lips. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
Chaz shrugs. “It’s not. Just... while you’re out here whispering to clouds, the rest of us are playing propane dodgeball. Your loss.”
“They whisper back sometimes,” she murmurs, turning back to the scenery.
Chaz blinks, then laughs shaking his head. “Okay, that’s freaky. I like it.”
From behind the frosted glass, Blaine watches. Arms crossed. Jaw tight. The way Helen’s hair catches the wind. The way she lets people in without even trying. Makes them feel warm with ease.
It’s annoying.
The porch groans again. Another pair of boots. Another gust of cold air like a warning.
Blaine steps out, sleeves rolled up like he’s trying to prove the cold can't touch him. Cigarette in hand. Irritation already locked and loaded.
“Well, well. The nerd and the burnout. How precious.”
Chaz turns, smirking. “Look who finally decided to get some fresh air.”
Blaine rolls his eyes. “This isn’t fresh. It’s frozen. Like both of your brains.”
Helen sips her drink with her hands wrapped around it savouring the warmth, unbothered by Baine's sarcastic behaviour. “Still a ray of sunshine I see, Blaine.”
“I’m not here to make your night magical,” he says, stepping up beside her, leaning his back against the frosted wooden railing. “That’s Chaz’s department, apparently.”
Chaz raises his eyebrows, amused. “Jealousy doesn’t suit you, man.”
Blaine ignores him. Takes a drag. Flicks ash over the railing.
Helen doesn’t look at him but rather the greys of the snowy landscape that quickly loomed over the hills of the ski trails. “You always show up like you’re angry that the world’s still turning.”
“And yet you’re always surprised,” Blaine mutters, rolling his eyes softly as he turns around and gazes out to the bleak landscape.
Silence falls—tense, sharp around the edges, but a gentle touch of calm covered them like a thin blanket. Helen breaks the sharp, but thin layer of tension first.
“Do you ever think about the future? Like, what this place will be in twenty years?”
Chaz snorts, taking a drag. “Dust, graffiti, and lawsuits.”
Helen shakes her head. “No, I mean... actually being in the future. Like skipping the mess. Fast-forwarding past all the... noise.”
“And miss all this fun?” Blaine deadpans without blinking. “Shame.”
“You’re the loudest part of the noise,” she says, glancing at him.
He doesn’t meet her eyes. “Then maybe I’m doing everyone a favour.”
She watches him. Carefully. “You act like you hate it here.”
“That’s because I do.”
“You don’t. You hate feeling stuck. That’s different.”
The words were quick, not sharp, but firm.
He turns toward her, finally, something sharp in his stare. He takes a heavy breath. “You think you’ve got everyone figured out.”
“I don’t. Just you.”
Chaz whistles low as his eye flickered between her and Blaine. “Yikes. Okay, I’m officially uncomfortable. Gonna leave you two to your weird tension.”
He backs away into the lodge. Door sighs shut. Gone.
Snowflakes start to fall again, drifting slow. Helen sips her cocoa. Blaine’s cigarette glows faintly in the dim as he takes a puff.
She speaks again, soft but firm. “You always act like you’re supposed to be somewhere bigger. Better.”
“Maybe I am.”
She looks at him. Unshaken. But determined. “Then why are you still here?”
He doesn’t answer. Just clenches his jaw. A flicker of something uncertain in his eyes. But one he would never admit.
Helen lowers her mug, her voice barely audible. “Sometimes I feel like I’m meant for a different time. Like I belong somewhere else," she huffed a laugh before continuing again. "Somewhen else, maybe.”
He finally looks at her. Really looks. “Then maybe you should go find it.”
It’s not warm, not cold either. But honest.
She blinks, surprised. A small smile curves her lips. “That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
His answer is fast and automatic. “Don’t get used to it.”
She turns back toward the lodge, music now pulsing louder from inside, the vibrations of the bass from a random song playing through the floorboards into their skeletons.
“We should go in before Chaz eats everything.”
She brushes past him, leaving behind the scent of something that lingers something sweet in his nose too long. He stays where he is for a beat, then finally follows.
Cracking the door open, there was a clash of warmth and chill as he stepped inside and took in the loud music through the floorboards and his ears, watching the lights rapidly flicker different colours in different directions.
Summary: Your boyfriend, Joe, comes over, and you just can’t stop loving him, at least not while your song is playing.
CW: Joseph Quinn x you, fluff, kissing, soft intimacy, mention of scars, crying, Joe being hopelessly in love, established relationship.
Author notes: Hi! This is my first post, and I haven’t written anything in a long, long time (sorry if it’s not very good). Every time I hear this song, I think of Joe, and I love him so much. I hope you, beautiful reader, enjoy it! Also, English isn’t my first language, so please let me know if you spot any mistakes.
W.C: 0.8k
You were in your apartment when Joe called you, saying he’d cooked too much pasta and needed someone to share it with.
He showed up an hour after your call, holding a bag with a Tupperware full of pasta, and your favorite wine.
You’d always loved how effortlessly romantic Joe could be, crossing the whole city just to be with you for a couple of hours, with the silly excuse that he’d cooked too much of your favorite pasta, the one he made on your first date, the one that—to this day—you say he poisoned with something to make you fall in love with him.
And the one that, ever since the first time you told him how much you liked it, he’d made whenever he could.
After dinner, you ended up on the couch, on top of each other, simply enjoying the moment, enjoying each other.
Joe was lying there with his arm bent under his head, and you, as usual, had settled right on top of him, with one arm under his back and the other wrapped around his neck.
Music was playing softly on the TV when Joe finally broke the silence. “I think I should stop eating pasta… I’m really full.”
“Do you want me to get off?” You were about to sit up so you wouldn’t be right on top of him.
“No, no, I like it this way,” he pulled you closer, wrapping both arms around your waist. “Don’t go.”
“Mmmm…” You sat up, placing your arms across his chest. “And what if you throw up on me?”
“Well, then…” he shrugged with a chuckle, “you get a shower.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“Mmmhm… but you love me anyway,” he said, sliding his hands down toward your butt as he lifted his head to kiss you.
With his hands, he helped you straddle him; you brought one of your hands up to Joe’s face, stroking the little stubble that had grown there, and slipped your other hand under his shirt, caressing his stomach, which was now a little bloated from the excessive amount of pasta he’d eaten.
Meanwhile, Joe had left one hand resting on your butt while the other was slipped under your shirt, caressing your back.
Kissing Joe was undoubtedly one of your favorite things to do; it was—in a way—a form of communication you’d developed together.
Joe kissed you gently and slowly; at one point, he pressed his tongue against your lips, asking permission to explore, and you had no intention of refusing.
It was a lazy kiss, your tongues entwined as they explored each other, your hands wandering whatever skin they could reach, without seeking anything more.
You’d created a bubble where only the two of you existed, until the sound of the TV seeped into your thoughts.
Cowboys and Angels.
You started humming it, without breaking the kiss, until laughing, he pulled away from your lips.
“What?” You sat up, confused.
“I can’t kiss you while you’re singing,” he said, sitting up without letting go of you. “It threw me off.”
“I didn’t—“ You covered your mouth with a little giggle. “I didn’t realize.”
“You’re crazy,” he said with a sigh, raising his hand to brush the hair from your face.
The song continued to fill the apartment, and Joe was simply admiring you, running his fingers all over your face, memorizing every part of it, until he began to hum it softly.
It’s the ones who resist that we most want to kiss
Wouldn’t you say?
“Every time I hear that song, I think of you,” you murmured, snapping Joe out of his reverie.
Joe smiled, confused. “Why?”
Why should I imagine that I’d be a find for you
Why should I imagine
You lifted your hand to his forehead, gently tracing the small scar on his forehead with the tip of your index finger.
“But that scar on your face,” you whispered, lowering your gaze to meet his eyes, your finger still tracing his scar. “That beautiful face of yours.”
“Every time I hear this song, I can’t help thinking of that scar on your face.” You wrapped your arms around the back of his neck, a smile spreading across your face as you softly sang the next line. “That beautiful face of yours.”
He was speechless.
His eyes scanned your face, trying to find the right words to express what he was feeling.
“Nev—” he cleared his throat, lowering his head. “No one has ever said anything like that to me,” and when he looked up again, you met his slightly reddened eyes.
“Oh, sweetheart,” you cupped his face in your hands, forcing him to look at you. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
“No, no,” he raised his hands and placed them on top of yours. “Just…” His eyes drifted down to your lips for a second before returning to yours. “I love you,” he said, and kissed you again.
The song had changed, and the kiss had started to taste salty because of the quiet tears slipping down his face, but you didn’t stop kissing him.
Later, you were lying in your bedroom with Joe after he decided to spend the night at your apartment, your legs intertwined, you resting on his chest, and him caressing your arm.
“Now every time I hear that song, I’ll think of you,” he whispered, almost as if to himself.
“Good.” You snuggled even closer to him, smiling against his chest. “It’s our song then.”
Joe just smiled and kept stroking your arm, his gaze fixed on some spot on the ceiling.
The next time he saw his scar, he wouldn’t think of the silly kid who’d thrown a rock at him when he was thirteen.
He wouldn’t remember how much he’d hated it growing up.
He’d remember the feeling of your fingertips tracing over it.
He’d remember the way your eyes had looked at it—with nothing but adoration.
summary: The emperor's advisors had decided that Geta needed a legitimate heir to secure his claim to the throne. For that reason, they determined he must take a wife. And Geta has expressed particular interest in you.
genre: romance, fantasy, suspense, drama, angst, fluff if you squint
warnings: set in au, may not be lore/historically accurate. m18+ content, sexuaI tension, nudity, obsessive/possessive behavior, typical period sexism. Geta might slightly be ooc for his softness with you only
a/n: Reader descriptions are not described besides the clothing. Mentions reader having hair they fix (no type) and makeup (forced) the song that inspired this
You sat alone on the narrow stone balcony of your family's modest farmhouse. The rough-hewn ledge cool beneath your palms as the countryside stretched before you in a vast, shadowed quilt of rolling hills, and contours softened by the deepening twilight.
Far to the south, the distant lights of Rome shimmered like a scattering of gold coins on the horizon. It’s unreachable flames that spoke of power and splendor. You had only heard through stories and riding soldiers' worlds away from the quiet and peaceful life you knew.
The sky above was moonless, yet alive with stars in a vast, glittering canopy that seemed to press down gently upon the earth. The last sliver of sun had slipped below the hills, leaving only a faint rose glow at the edge of the world.
A soft breeze stirred the air, carrying the earthy scent of turned soil, the sharp tang of olive leaves, and the warm, musky odor of grazing animals. From the nearby pastures came the low, rhythmic bleating of sheep in their gentle, familiar sounds that rose and fell like a lullaby.
Your five brothers moved through the fields, their silhouettes dark against the fading light as they checked the fences and herded the last stragglers toward the stone enclosures.
Torches flickered to life around the farmhouse made up of simple clay lamps and open fires that painted the walls of your home in warm, dancing gold. The structure itself was humble. Thick walls of local stone and sun-baked clay, roofed with thatch, its windows small and shuttered against the night.
And a single muddy track that led from the yard, winding through green meadows and toward the ancient Roman road, paved centuries ago by emperors whose names you barely remembered.
Inside, your mother hummed softly as she mended a tunic by the hearth, the needle flashing in the firelight. Your father, weary from the day's labor, sat sharpening his crook.
The air inside carried the comforting smells of baking bread, woodsmoke, and the faint lanolin of wool from the fleeces piled in the corner from your own hands, and set reminders of the simple rhythm that had defined your days since childhood.
You drew your shawl tighter against the growing chill, gazing out over the land that had cradled your family for generations. Shepherds, seamstresses, and simple humble farmers.
Your world was small, but it was yours, perfect and settle enough for you. Yet tonight, something felt chilling, and it wasn’t the air that made you think so. No, it was restlessness and stirred in your chest, as though the wind whispered in your ear of coming change.
Unbeknownst to you, that change was already riding toward your home, with torches blazing along the imperial road, horses' hooves pounding the stones, soldiers and couriers bearing the Emperor's seal without notice.
The counsel had decreed, that the twins who ruled Rome, Geta and Caracalla, needed an heir to secure the throne. Each should find a wife of their own, from their free choice.
Naturally, Caracalla had thrown a fit that he had no desire to marry nor bed a wife, at least for now. So, it was left to Geta to go about finding himself a new empress despite his fury in doing so.
And so far, not one noble daughter had pleased Geta's discerning eye; no princess had stirred his cold heart. Some had thought he only did it on purpose to delay his marriage. Seeking that his power over the people didn’t need tender caring of show, because his presence of rule should be enough.
Now, in desperation, they sought further afield—simple women from the provinces, women like you. Which meant with every square mile of Rome, they would take all the first born daughters to the capital to have prepared like a meal in front of starving hyenas.
The night was quiet, save for the animals and the wind. But soon, the silence would shatter both the tiny village and your world.
And after some time you all decided to retire, you had kissed your mother’s weathered cheek, felt the familiar scratch of your father’s beard against your lips, and murmured blessings to each of your five brothers, who would rise before dawn to tend the flocks.
They answered with soft grunts and tired smiles, the same ritual that had ended every day since you could remember. You climbed the narrow ladder to the loft where your pallet waited, the wool-stuffed mattress still warm from the day’s heat trapped in the thatch above.
You pulled the heavy blanket over your shoulders, the scent of lanolin woven into its fibers, and snuffed the single tallow candle with a pinch of your thumb and forefinger. Darkness folded around you like a second skin while sleep found you quickly.
It was torn away just before first light anyway. A sudden, brutal chorus that eerily shattered the stillness due to baying hounds, and iron-shod hooves striking the muddy earth as men bellowed orders in clipped Latin.
The village woke in terror. Mothers screamed from open doorways; children wailed; fathers shouted useless defiance. Torchlight bled through the cracks in the shutters, creating angry orange streaks that danced across the clay walls.
Your family was already on their feet when the first heavy fist pounded on the door in three deliberate, thunderous knocks that rattled the wooden frame.
Your father reached it first, unlatching it with steady hands even as your mother clutched the youngest brother to her side. The door swung inward before your father could even open it properly and a Roman soldier filled the threshold. Helmet gleaming dully in the torchlight outside, his scarlet cloak mud-spattered and his face carved from stone.
He stepped inside without permission, boots tracking mud across the swept floor. His gaze swept the room to find five sons ranged protectively in front of their parents, your mother nervous but upright, while you peeked down through the planks to watch discreetly.
The soldier’s eyes narrowed before he seized your father by the collar of his rough tunic, yanked him forward, and drew his gladius in one fluid motion until the blade kissed the skin beneath your father’s jaw.
“All I see is sons,” the soldier said, voice low and dangerous. “But you must have daughters. No?”
Your father’s throat worked dryly. “I have only sons.”
A rough shake and the sword pressed harder; a thin line of blood welled. “You lie. We were told two women live here.” His stare cut to your mother. “There’s one. Where is the other?”
“Please—” Your second-eldest brother stepped forward, hands raised.
Another soldier moved inside like a ghost, sword flashing free and leveled at the boy’s chest. “Speak, old man, or you’ll have one less son.”
“Stop.” The word left your lips before you could think.
You stood at the top of the loft, shawl slipping from your shoulders, hair loose and wild from sleep. Every eye turned to you. Your mother cried out in a broken sound.
Your oldest brother lunged to block the ladder, but you pushed past him gently, firmly descending the rungs with deliberate steps. You walked straight to the soldier holding your father, chin high, eyes blazing in the torchlight.
“Leave them,” you said. “I’m their only daughter. It’s me you want.”
A moment of silence stretched, heavy as were their gaze. The two soldiers exchanged a long, wordless glance. Then the one gripping your father nodded once. They released him so abruptly he staggered.
Rough hands seized your upper arms, with iron-hard fingers digging into your flesh. You were hauled forward, feet dragging for a heartbeat before you found your balance.
Your mother surged after you, voice splintering into sobs, “No, no, my girl, please—” but your brothers caught her, held her back as she fought them with desperate strength.
Their faces were masks of pure grief, fury, and utter helplessness. Outside, the night felt dead in its wake. More girls were being dragged from neighboring houses, their cries mingling with the barking of hounds and the harsh commands of centurions.
Horses stamped and snorted, breath steaming in the pre-dawn chill. One rounded toward you both and the soldier lifted you onto the back of a cavalry mount as though you weighed nothing.
You sat astride behind a broad-shouldered soldier, his armor cold against your thin shift, his arm banding around your waist to keep you in place. The horse sidestepped, eager to move. You twisted once, just once, to look back.
Your family stood clustered in the doorway, silhouetted against the firelight within as you took one, last, hard look at them. Your mother’s hands reached uselessly toward you while she sobbed.
Your father’s shoulders slumped as though the weight of Rome itself had settled there. And your brothers stood like deadbeats, fists clenched, eyes shining with unshed tears and rage.
You lifted your hand in a small, steady gesture and shaped the words with your lips so they could see, “I love you.”
The soldier spurred the horse and the village fell away behind you in a blur of torchlight and tears. Other riders flanked you, each carrying another young woman, some weeping openly, some staring ahead in stunned silence.
The imperial road stretched south toward Rome, straight and merciless under the fading stars. You kept your gaze on your home until the last flicker of firelight vanished behind the hills. Then you turned your face forward, into the dark road and whatever waited at its end.
And so, the Emperor Geta had demanded a bride from the people and the people had answered. Unwillingly.
Two weeks had passed since the night the soldiers tore you from your family's arms. Fourteen days that blurred into a haze of endless gardens and marble halls, echoing city noise beyond the walls, and the ceaseless murmur of other women in waiting.
You were one of dozens now, plucked from farms, villages, and distant provinces, all herded into the imperial women's quarters like prized livestock readied for auction.
The air here smelled of rosewater, myrrh, and the faint heated oils, that were nothing like the clean earth and lanolin of home. The attendants, were older women with sharp eyes and practiced hands that treated your arrival as a project.
You had worked the fields, tended sheep, stitched wool for years by firelight; to them, that marked you unclean, your skin roughened by sun and labor.
So they bathed you repeatedly, not once but three, four times a day at first, in steaming pools scented with lavender and costly cinnamon. They scrubbed you with pumice and barley meal until your arms and legs stung, then anointed you with olive oil infused with saffron and frankincense until your skin gleamed like new and polished.
They plucked every stray hair and then some all from your body with sharpened bronze tweezers, leaving your flesh smooth and vulnerable to the cool drafts of the open air palace.
Nails were filed short and neat, then buffed to a soft sheen; your cuticles were pushed back with ivory sticks and glossed over by rich oils until your hands looked like they had never known a needle or a crook.
You submitted to it all with quiet discomfort. The pampering felt foreign, indulgent, almost intrusive. The soft horse-hair brushes gliding over your scalp to suit your needs.
The perfumed creams were massaged into your shoulders and pulse points, until the attendants' murmured approvals when your skin finally took on the shine and unblemished glow so prized in Rome.
A clean, blemish free complexion was the beauty itself here. It was flawless and in their terms pleasing to the gods to be as close to godliness as one could. That just spoke of leisure and mattered more with high birth.
As for you, you thought it to be yet another society complication they pressured young women to believe. To think, you could only be found attractive if you followed the new trend of the hour or be shunned from the public for not being beautiful enough.
You had never sought such perfection; the sun had kissed your skin freely, and you welcomed blemishes as they were natural and you had worn it without shame.
To be imperfect, is to be human.
When the day came for dressing, the attendants led you to a chamber lit by oil lamps that cast long, flickering shadows. They stripped you bare before a circle of watchful eyes of matrons, seamstresses, and a stern-faced overseer.
All in which inspecting you as one might appraise a horse. Turning you slowly, noting the curve of your waist, the line of your spine, your backside and the modest swell of your breasts or not. No one spoke of modesty; this was preparation for an emperor's gaze. And you felt sick.
They laid out fabrics across a low table. Silks imported from the East, in shades of cream, pale rose, and the deepest indigo. All finer than anything you or your mother had ever woven.
The overseer, in her gray-haired, authoritative stance, chose for you after a long, appraising look. "Geta favors simplicity in form, but richness in movement," she said, almost to herself. "Something that flows, that reveals without vulgarity."
What they draped over you was a stola of gossamer silk, the undertunic beneath it a whisper thin subucula of the same luminous white. The stola itself was sleeveless, its folds caught at the shoulders with golden fibulae shaped like laurel leaves.
It fell in soft pleats to your ankles, but the fabric was so sheer in the lamplight that it clung and shifted like mist over water, hinting at the contours beneath, and leaving everything up to the wandering gaze.
A deep neckline plunged low across your chest, exposing the graceful hollow of your throat, the delicate ridge of your collarbones, the smooth expanse of your shoulders and upper back.
The silk grazed your skin with every breath, cool as alive, the hem brushing your calves like a lover's touch. A slender golden cord—thin as a serpent, cinched at your waist, gathering the fabric and accentuating the natural dip and flare of your body.
They wove delicate threads of gold into your hair, pinning it accordingly to match the frame of your face rather than the towering, elaborate piles favored by some of the noblewomen, and it made you look ever more stunning.
A single armlet of hammered gold coiled around your upper arm like a vine, cool against your skin. Sandals of soft leather laced high on your calves, their straps adorned with tiny gold studs, but the unfamiliar height made each step precarious, the rough inner edges already promising blisters by day's end.
Your face they left lighter than most. No thick layer of ceruse . . . the poisonous white lead paste that gave other women the ghostly pallor of statues.
Instead, a subtle dusting to even your tone, a faint gold and rose stain on your cheeks from crushed madder root. For your eyes, only kohl of black lines drawn with a fine stick of soot and galena, extending the almond shape to make them appear larger, brighter, more arresting against your skin.
The contrast was striking. Your gaze seemed deeper, more luminous in the flickering light. You were grateful for the restraint; the other women wore heavier masks of white powder caked thick, lips reddened with cinnabar, cheeks rouged to an almost feverish bloom.
Some of the gowns around you were bolder too. Vibrant crimsons, deep purples, beautiful emerald greens that caught the eye like spilled wine or fresh blood.
Whispers rippled through the waiting women, so garish, so bold for the emperor's taste. Yet the dressers (take from yours) insisted that Geta, they said, delighted in vivid color, in the drama of it, perhaps because it echoed the gore he had seen on battlefields and in the arena.
You wore white, simple and luminous, a quiet contrast despite the spectacle, and it made you relieved. One on knowing you liked simple, and the other knowing he’d go for one of the more vibrant choices then.
Not all the women bore their transformation with grace though. Some wept openly, ruining the careful kohl with tears until attendants disciplined them with sharp slaps or cold compresses, forcing composure.
Others preened, thrilled at the luxury, eyes bright with ambition to capture the heart of the young emperor. You stood neutral, neither eager nor broken. There were too many here, you reasoned.
Dozens upon dozens, each more polished than the last. You were only one face in the crowd. Surely the emperor would choose elsewhere, and you would be sent home with a purse of coin and a story no one would quite believe. Why waste tears on a fate that might never claim you? So you waited.
Each day, groups of women were summoned to the imperial audience chamber. Pleasant, perfumed girls with doe-like eyes and practiced smiles. You were not yet called.
In the hours between, you wandered the permitted corridors under the watchful eyes of guards whose own eyes lingered on you a second too long.
The palace was a labyrinth of white marble veined with gold, columns rising like petrified trees to ceilings painted with gods and countless triumphs.
Your stola flowed behind you like smoke, the silk whispering against the stone floor with every step. You trailed your fingers along cool pillars, feeling the chill seep into your skin, marveling at the scale of it all.
Rome. The city your father had described in half-warnings and half-wonders. He had spoken of its dangers of the crowds, the countless thieves, and the men who looked too long at the girls.
"Not for you," he would say, kissing your forehead before setting out with your brothers to sell wool and cheese at the markets. "Rome devours the innocent."
He had shielded you from it, from the lustful stares, from the city's hunger. Now you walked its very heart, dressed like a goddess, yet feeling more exposed than ever in your life.
The corridors stretched on, endless and beautiful, but cold. Somewhere deeper in the palace, the twin emperors held court. Geta and Caracalla, brothers bound by blood and divided by everything else. You had never seen them, not even from afar. But the waiting carried its own weight, heavy as the gold at your throat.
You told yourself it was only a matter of time before they sent you back to the hills, to the sheep, to the hearth where your mother waited with unspent tears. But the palace had its own rhythm, slow and inexorable. And Rome, as your father knew, did not easily release what it had claimed, if only you knew.
You stepped through an arched colonnade into the open peristyle garden, where a vast number of plant life you’d never seen before resided. Stone and marble framed it all, admitting the full, unfiltered light of the sun as it began its slow rise.
The garden itself was a quiet miracle to you amid the palace's relentless grandeur. With its endless manicured box hedges, climbing roses trained against white marble trellises, and beds of lilies and irises whose perfume hung heavy in the still air.
At the center stood the fountain in a broad, shallow basin of polished travertine fed by hidden aqueducts. Rising from its middle was a larger-than-life marble statue of an earlier emperor, perhaps Trajan or Hadrian, armored and laureled, one hand raised in eternal command.
Water cascaded in soft sheets from the basin's rim, rippling outward in concentric rings that caught the light like molten gold. You approached the fountain's edge and settled onto the wide marble rim as though it were an ordinary bench.
The stone was cold, yet smooth beneath your palms. You arranged the folds of your stola with care, drawing the silk modestly across your chest so the deep neckline revealed nothing untoward. You drew your knee up toward your chin, leaning forward slightly, the posture more country girl than court lady.
The gentle fall of water was calm to your aching skin. It murmured steadily, drowning the distant and more or less constant buzz of the palace.
You reached toward a nearby rose bush and deftly snapped a single petal free. Between thumb and forefinger, you twirled it, then dipped it to the water's surface, watching tiny ripples spread outward.
The hour had turned golden. The light shortly after sunrise had softened to that perfect, honeyed glow that painters chased and poets praised. It bathed everything in warmth.
The marble gleamed like old ivory, the roses deepened to blood-red, and your white silk caught fire in a translucent way where it clung and luminous where it drifted. Gold threads woven into your hair shimmered; the armlet on your upper arm flashed like ember.
You were deeply lost in thought, circling the petal through the water. Not noticing the distant heavy footsteps nearby that seemingly broke the stillness. Emperor Geta stormed from the direction of the western court, his crimson cloak snapping behind him.
Fury etched every line of his face while his jaw clenched, brows drawn tight, the vivid patterns of gold embroidery on his tunic flashing with each angry stride.
Whatever audience or argument had just ended had left him white with pure anger; his hands flexed at his sides as though still itching for a sword. He meant only to pass through the garden on his way to cooler chambers, but something, like a flash of white and gold, caught the corner of his eye.
He began to slow as his eyes drifted slightly before they stopped on you. You sat haloed by the rising light, the sun at your back transforming you into something almost unearthly.
The silk of your stola seemed to drink the gold hour and give it back brighter; your skin glowed as though dusted with the same precious metal. You still faced away minding the petal, drifting it in lazy circles on the water's surface, unaware.
He came to a full stop then, and simply stared. Servants did not wear silk like that. Servants did not sit with such careless elegance beside an imperial fountain. Curiosity and something a bit more irritated pricked him. He stepped forward, sandals ringing on the stone path, until he stood only a few paces away.
“You there,” he said, voice low and edged with command. “By whose leave do you wear such finery, servant?”
You had turned at the sound of him calling out, but in hopes he meant another. The movement was slow, unhurried. Yet, when your gaze lifted to meet his, the full force of the golden hour struck him like a blow.
The light framed you in a radiant corona, gilding the curve of your cheek, the line of your throat, the dark sweep of kohl that made your eyes seem sharp and impossibly vivid.
They were like that of deep pools under sunlight—electric. Just alive, and utterly unafraid of his presence. The sheer silk clung and shifted with your breath, revealing the elegant architecture of collarbone, shoulder, and the subtle rise of your breasts beneath the fabric.
Yet there was nothing vulgar in it; the dress was simple, almost severe in its purity, and that restraint only sharpened its effect. Geta forgot to breathe for but a moment too long.
He had seen beauty before no doubt. Polished, way too over calculated, offered up by ambitious families and trembling princesses. He had rejected them all. But this . . . this was different.
You were no statue carved for display; you were alive, breathing, seated on imperial marble as though it belonged to you. The white silk against your skin, the glints of gold in your hair and at your waist, the way the light worshipped you.
It struck some buried chord in him. Gold had always been his weakness, the color of triumph and their symbol, of blood craved in torchlight, of coin and crown.
It was simply him and his brother expressing the irregular looks they had, to contrast their ghastly yet oddly captivating beauty. But this here, white with gold was something he favored deeply. and it truly beheld you.
You rose smoothly to your feet, the stola whispering around your ankles again. The movement pulled the silk taut across your form for one devastating instant, and Geta’s mouth went dry, then flooded with sudden, unwelcome want. He swallowed once, hard.
He wore his own opulence like armor, crimson wool shot through with thick gold thread, heavy rings on his fingers, a torque of twisted metal at his throat.
He and Caracalla had always favored excess, the better to shock and dazzle, to mask whatever lay beneath. Yet here you stood in luminous restraint without trying, and it humbled every vibrant excess he had ever donned.
For the first time in years, Geta felt something stir that was not anger, not calculation, nor something out of boredom. He felt wonder. You said nothing at first, only regarded him with those steady, luminous eyes. The petal still floating like a boar adrift on the water beside you.
While in that suspended moment, with nothing but flowing water and the sound of your beating heart, the Emperor Geta, who had refused every daughter of Rome, found himself utterly, irrevocably captivated by a girl who had never asked to be seen.
“I am no servant,” you said, voice calm despite the sudden knot in your chest.
The words cut between you, sharp enough to snap him from his trance. You stood taller upon eye contact, refusing to cower under that intense gaze, though your heart almost hammered out of your chest.
He blinked once, twice, as if emerging from a dream. His brow furrowed deeply, carving lines of confusion across his chiseled features.
“Then who are you?” he demanded, intrigued yet bewildered. “One of the magistrate’s daughters, perhaps? Come to curry favor in my gardens?”
You hesitated, lips parting but no sound escaping. His presence was overwhelming, like a beast contained in human form, radiating heat and authority that pressed against you like a midday sun.
The golden light still framed him while he directly faced the rising sun. Catching the intricate embroidery on his tunic, but it was his eyes that held you just the same. Dark, piercing pools of golden brown, that stirred something within, you couldn’t name.
He stepped closer, closing the distance until only a breath separated you. The scent of him enveloped you, rich honeyed wine mingled with sharp citrus oils, underlaid by the faint musk of sweat from whatever fury had driven him here. It was intoxicating, heady, and entirely too intimate for a stranger.
“Answer me,” he commanded, his voice dropping to a low rumble that vibrated through the space between you.
There was no mistaking the imperial edge to it, the expectation of instant obedience.
“I’m not,” you replied, the words clipped with a hint of defiance.
You lifted your chin, meeting his stare head-on, even as your fingers twisted nervously in the folds of your stola. Who was this man to interrogate you like a criminal? Dressed in finery, yes, but the palace was full of arrogant courtiers it seemed.
He tilted his head, a slow smile curling at the corners of his mouth, not kind, but predatory, and amused. “Not a servant, not a magistrate’s whelp. Then why are you here, in my court garden?”
He emphasized the word my, letting it hang like a boast, his chest puffing slightly as he gestured expansively to the marble and roses around you.
“By what authority do you wander these paths, plucking flowers like some woodland nymph? Do you know whose ground you tread upon, girl? This is the heart of Rome—my Rome.”
His tone was teasing now, laced with that boastful authority, as if he delighted in wielding it like a toy. He circled you slowly, sandals scraping softly on the stone, his cloak brushing the edge of the fountain.
The movement forced you to turn, keeping him in sight, and you felt the heat of his gaze tracing the lines of your silk-clad form. It felt like being back on the farm, as a sheep while a rabid wolf stalked you like prey.
It was infuriating. His arrogance, his assumption that you should quiver before him. Your temper flared, a hidden trait made up from the fields where you’d argued with brothers and bartered with traders.
“And who are you to question me like this?” you shot back, a slight edge creeping into your voice even if you were playing a dangerous game. “Some lordling playing at power? The gardens are open to those waiting on the emperors’ presence. Or have I missed a sign barring simple folk from the fountains?”
He froze mid-step, eyes widening for a fraction of a second before narrowing in delight at you not knowing him. A low chuckle escaped him, rich with unexpected and it sent a shiver down your spine.
He liked it. The bite in your words, the refusal to bend and the odd pleasure of knowing that you knew not who he was. It thrilled him, oh yes, you could see it in the way his posture shifted, from interrogator to hunter savoring the chase.
“Oh, you have fire. I am amused,” he murmured, stepping closer again, so near now that you could see the faint stubble shadowing his jaw, the pulse beating at his throat.
“Most women brought here simper and bow, ready to give me pleasure. But you . . . you snap like a wild thing, don’t you? Tell me, does that tongue of yours ever command still? Or does it work like that at all hours?”
A new tension filled the air between you, charged with something electric and shuttering. His gaze dropped briefly to your lips, then back to your eyes, and you felt a heat rise to your core and bloom throughout your body.
Yet you held your ground, refusing to look away. “It stills when I want it to,” you retorted, though your voice softened just a touch, laced with the growing awareness of how close he stood.
The golden hour’s light played across his face, highlighting the sharp angles, his full mouth curved in that maddening smile, and then you finally notice.
Perched atop his gold curls, half-hidden by the play of shadows that blended so well until now sat a circlet of hammered gold to match, wrought with laurel leaves and imperial eagles. A crown. Not the ostentatious wreath of a festival, but the subtle, undeniable mark of absolute power.
Your breath caught at the realization. One of the two emperors, twins, in fact. Geta and Caracalla, rulers of Rome. He was one of them. You couldn’t tell which brother he was, given the whispers of their temperament of being so, volatile, brilliant, and cruel when crossed.
Your attitude faltered, the realization crashing over you like the fountain’s cascade. You had bitten back at an emperor. He noticed the shift immediately, the widening of your eyes, the subtle retreat in your stance. That predatory smile widened, but there was no malice in it now, only a deeper intrigue, and a spark of genuine pleasure.
“Ah,” he said softly, reaching out to trace his fingers along your jaw, his fingers lingering just a moment too long against your skin.
The touch felt electric and hot, sending a jolt through you. “Now you see. Emperor Geta, here to serve—or rather, you at mine.”
You swallowed hard, the attitude draining away into a mix of awe and lingering defiance. But even as you dipped your head in a belated show of respect, your eyes flicked up to meet his again.
“Forgive me, Emperor Geta,” you murmured, though there was still a hint of challenge in the words. “I didn’t know.”
He laughed outright then, a genuine sound that echoed off the stone corners. It was rather warm and disarming. “Hm, I prefer the fire.”
He leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, breath warm against your ear and neck. “It makes the chase so much more . . . thrilling.”
The tension coiled tighter, a palpable heat building in the scant space between you. His hand dropped to your arm, fingers tracing the golden armlet lightly, possessively.
You didn’t pull away. Instead, you felt a strange pull toward him, this man who ruled the world, yet looked at you as though you were the only thing in it worth conquering.
“But tell me truly now,” he continued, his tone gentler, though the tease lingered. “You are one of the daughters sent from the farther provinces, are you not?” He gestured vaguely toward the palace wings. “You’ve strayed farther than allowed, haven’t you? The attendants will be searching.”
You nodded slowly, finding your voice again. “I am. From the hills beyond the Tiber. They brought me . . . for you, or your brother. To choose from.”
His expression shifted into that of anger then at the mention of his brother getting you instead of him. It also surprised him to know you weren’t a high-born considering your raw beauty.
Surprise, followed by a slow, satisfied gleam. “For me,” he echoed, as if tasting the words.
He stepped back slightly, but not far, his hand still on your arm. “Then perhaps the gods have smiled today. Come, walk with me. These gardens are vast, and I would hear more of this fire from the provinces.”
You hesitated only a moment, the weight of his crown and his touch warring with the girl you’d been two weeks ago. But there was no refusing an emperor and, if you were honest, looking at him you had no desire to. The thrill mirrored his own, a dangerous, unknown wanting igniting in your chest.
As you fell into step beside him, the golden light fading into blue, the palace gardens seemed suddenly smaller, more intimate with you two. The whisk of your silk, his divine robes and footsteps mingled with the fountain’s song, and the air hummed with the city noise again.
Deeper into the peristyle he led you, asking you many questions to which you answer honestly. Past alcoves where statues of forgotten gods watched with marble eyes.
You had both lingered in the garden far longer than either of you realized. The conversation stretching on and lengthening time and space at Getas will.
Hours that slipped away in quiet exchanges, his teasing questions about your ways, your sharp retorts that drew that rare, genuine laugh from him, the way his fingers brushed yours once, twice, until they entwined. You had been simply intriguing, and exotic to him, to the point he wanted to taste it all.
Then the bright day turned into the pale hours of the evening, stars lightly pricking the oculus dome overhead like scattered jewels. His guards found you first in a phalanx of blazing torches and boots pounding the paths in disciplined urgency.
They burst into the peristyle with drawn swords, faces pale with fear of the consequences if the emperor had come to harm. Geta rose smoothly, waving them off with an irritated flick of his hand.
“Stand down,” he commanded, voice calm but edged with steel. “I am unharmed. Escort the lady back to the women’s quarters. Tell the attendants to ask of her no questions. Her whereabouts are my concern alone.”
The soldiers bowed low, one stepping forward to offer you his arm. You glanced at Geta once more; his eyes held yours in the torchlight, dark and unreadable. Then you turned, silk whispering, and followed the escort through the labyrinthine corridors.
Your personal overseer awaited you at the entrance to the quarters, her sharp gaze missed nothing. She took in your shy demeanor, the faint disarray of the gold smeared on your arms, stroked by his thumb.
Her lips curved in a knowing half-smile, but she said nothing, only inclined her head. “You are late,” was all she murmured, and the glint in her eye spoke volumes that she knew.
Two weeks had passed since your secret and accidental meeting with Geta. A full month since the soldiers had dragged you from your father’s doorway. The number of women dwindled steadily, once dozens, now only thirteen remained.
The others had been dismissed in waves. Some with a purse of silver and a carriage home, others with nothing but tear-streaked faces and the sting of rejection.
Geta had seen them one by one in private audiences, and found them overbearing. Whispers circulated that he had grown impatient, cruel in his dismissals, sending some away mid-sentence or even mid-pleasure.
No one knew of your encounter in the garden. You had kept quiet about it, burning the memories quietly beneath your skin, just like he’d hoped. But ever since that evening, your thoughts had circled back to him relentlessly.
In the way his scowl had softened into amusement when you bit back. The way the heat of his breath against the pulse of your neck, and the possessive trace of his fingers along your skin felt so good.
It angered you, how much you longed to see him again, even as guilt twisted in your gut. You did not want this life, never thought about this life, the palace, the silks, the endless waiting.
You wanted the hills, the sheep bleating at dawn, your mother’s hearth. Yet the memory of his gaze—hungry, and so undone, as though you had unraveled something in him, it all had begun to haunt you.
The luxury grated now. Trays of exotic fruits such as pomegranates from Carthage, dates dripping honey, arrived daily, untouched. Jewel boxes spilled open with necklaces of pearls and emeralds; you left them where they fell. The silks felt heavier each day, confining rather than caressing.
You lounged in the tepidarium annex of the women’s baths. A spacious, colonnaded chamber the attendants called the solarium, where the remaining girls gathered in the afternoons to bask in their glow and laughter.
Sunlight poured through high clerestory windows, warming the mosaic floors patterned with nymphs and grapevines. Low couches draped in fine linens lined the walls; servants fanned the air with peacock feathers, stirring the scent of rose oil and incense.
Here, the women reclined, gossiped, practiced their poses and lustful eye contact for the emperor’s gaze. Some laughed too brightly; others stared into the distance, hollow-eyed.
Today, your overseers had summoned you all with new instructions. “The emperor has narrowed his favor,” one announced, voice carrying across the chamber.
“Only thirteen remain in consideration for marriage to Emperor Geta. Each of you will now receive a personal task, a demonstration of worth, of suitability as imperial consort. Prepare yourselves. The summons will come soon.”
Instant squeals and murmurs rippled through the room. The others had met him already, in private audiences of the throne room or private chambers, where they had curtsied, smiled, or offered song.
You had not, which came off weird to the rest of the young women. It had also bothered you. And with the realization of still being one that remained, it settled like cold lead in your stomach and bitter on your tongue.
He still kept though, even though he didn't see you like the others. So, what then? Would he choose you now? After all this time? Would he even consider you, his empress. . .Bound to Rome, to him, forever.
Your family would fade into memory if that happened; the farm, the muddy tracks, your brothers’ laughter—all distant. Marriage was expected of women, a duty to leave home for husband and new hearth. But this was no simple union, no, this was elevation to a throne stained with blood.
The twins’ rule had been whispered about even in your distant hills and beyond. You were no fool. Your father and brothers spoke of it in low voices when the wine flowed late.
How Septimius Severus’s sons had inherited an empire forged in war, only to tear it apart with their hatred. They had ruled jointly after their father’s death, dividing the palace itself, each commanding separate courts, separate guards. It was all a mess awaiting a downfall.
The brothers’ shared reign had been marked as devastating in other domains, where they claimed new territory under General Acacius. It caused division, and sudden, shocking violence to a prelude of sole tyranny. But it granted citizenship to all free men only to tax them harder, while their armies grew fat on plunder and terror.
Geta, they said, had been the quieter one. Administrative, less openly cruel. Yet he shared the throne with a monster, and the empire suffered for it. Evil, your father had called them both. Terror in every conquered domain.
You hated that you still wanted him. Hated the way your pulse quickened at the memory of his touch, the citrus-and-honey scent of him, the way his eyes had darkened with raw desire when the sun gilded your skin.
No man had ever looked at you like that. Hungry and completely destroyed, as though you alone could sate something feral in him. Your parents would have been ashamed. Their simple daughter craving the touch of a man whose hands were stained with blood and only met once.
Yet the little game you had played in the garden thrilled you in ways you could not name. His teasing authority, your defiant snaps, the sexual tension that had built until the air itself felt charged enough as it is.
It was new, intoxicating. For once, someone wanted to please you, not the other way around. Desire bubbled beneath your skin, corrupting you, who had always put others first. It began with his gaze, that lustful, glare of hunger and now it spread, a slow fire inside your veins you could neither quench nor ignore.
You reclined on your couch, staring at the mosaic ceiling where Bacchus lounged amid vines, and wondered if the next summons would be yours. Part of you prayed it would not. The greater part, the part that had tasted his attention and craved more, hoped it would.
It was a mental and eventual physical battle between yourself. And in the quiet of the solarium, with the other women whispering of virtues, you felt the corruption take deeper root in its slow, inevitable surrender to wanting something, someone, for yourself for once.
The night was warm and still, the kind of Roman summer darkness that clung to the skin like damp fabric. You had been pulled from sleep without warning, the overseer’s hand firm on your shoulder, a single finger pressed to her lips for silence.
Beside her stood a soldier. His helmet, scarlet cloak and presence alone was command enough. They led you wordlessly through the mixed corridors, past flickering oil lamps that cast long, wavering fingers across the marble.
On the terrace they stopped. Moonlight silvered the balustrade and turned the distant city lights into a faint, scattered constellation far below.
The overseer placed a long, soft scroll into your hands, that was made up of fine goatskin, supple and pale, tied with a simple cord of braided rope.
“Read this,” she said quietly. “Out loud. Here. Until I return for you.” No explanation was given, nor questions permitted.
The soldier took up position at the far end of the terrace, back turned, giving the illusion of privacy as she just vanished into the palace shadows. You settled onto the low, cushioned sofa they had prepared.
Deep indigo cushions piled against the balustrade; a wool throw draped over the arm. The night air carried the faint perfume of jasmine from the gardens below and the distant murmur of the Tiber. You untied the cord, unfurled the scroll, and felt your breath catch.
It was poetry. Not the stiff legal documents or imperial decrees you had half-expected, but elegant verses, flowing script inked in deep black with occasional flourishes of red for emphasis.
You recognized that the hand was careful, deliberate, and the work of a skilled scribe. And you knew the poem almost at once, a pastoral idyll, one you had spoken of fondly to the overseer weeks earlier, in a rare moment when she asked what comforted you in the endless waiting.
Literacy among Roman women, especially those of your station, was rare, almost suspect. Noble matrons might read letters or household accounts, but full fluency in poetry, the ability to parse meter and savor metaphor, belonged to men of high status such as senators, philosophers, and soldiers who quoted Virgil on campaign to steady their nerves.
Your father had taught you in secret, tracing letters in the dust of the barn floor when the brothers were out with the flocks. Later, your eldest brother had slipped you scraps of parchment, proud and amused by your quick mind.
You had devoured what little came your way. Fragments of Catullus, nights of Ovid, and when the loneliness of the hills pressed too close, you had written your own lines in quiet moments, scratching them onto broken pottery shards before hiding them beneath the dirt.
To read aloud now, under the open sky, felt like a small rebellion. You drew a steadying breath and began. The poem told of a boy that was wandering. He was rootless, cast out from the clamor of cities, until he stepped into a wild valley where the world remade itself.
Rivers sang over stones; olive groves whispered in the wind; a single cypress stood towering against the sky. Beauty crept in slowly, not with fanfare but with the patient insistence of dawn to make the boy’s anger soften, his steps slowed, until he knelt in the grass and understood that the earth had been waiting for him all along. Its beauty calling.
Your voice was soft at first, hesitant in the vastness of the night, but it found its rhythm. The words flowed like the waterfall that cascaded into the lower garden before you.
Below with gentleness, and ceaseless to carry you with them, you traced the lines with a fingertip as you read. The goatskin warm from your palm, the ink faintly raised beneath your touch.
You did not see him, but Geta had been there from the beginning. He stood behind the slender column that flanked the waterfall’s source, half-hidden where the spray misted the air and moonlight fractured into rainbows.
His back pressed to the cool marble, head tipped back against the stone, eyes lifted to the wheeling skies above, speckled with bright stars. But he was not watching the sky. He was listening.
Your voice reached him in waves so clear, so unadorned, carrying the faint lilt of the countryside even through the polished Latin. No artifice, shrill in your voice, and no per formative lilt like the court poets who declaimed for coin. Just the quiet certainty of someone who had loved these words long before they were summoned to a palace.
His heartbeat too fast which was a traitor beneath the crimson tunic. He had orchestrated this after your overseer told him everything about you so far.
When he had discovered your love for poetry, it made him think about how soothing your voice would be if you read to him like his mother did.
He chose the exact story you mentioned, having the author write your own personal copy. He had you summoned for this starry midnight, outside his chambers terrace, chosen for its seclusion and its acoustics.
He had wanted to hear you without the weight of his crown between you. Without the posturing, the fear, the temptations that over shadowed his most vulnerable side. He had originally told himself it was curiosity, nothing more. Just a whim.
It was not a whim. He had not stopped thinking of you since the moment he laid eyes on you. You were the most beautiful thing he had ever beheld. Rather, too pure and innocent as he could see for his lustful eyes, this he knew.
He tried pushing it away, the longing to see you again. He had seen the other girls, tried seducing them into his bed, but couldn’t finish the work he had started when all he could see as he closed his eyes were your own. And the feel of skin that was cold and not your soft warmth.
And now, just like you had back in the garden with him, every line you read struck him like a quiet arrow. The boy in the poem could have been him, lost in the blood and ambition of Rome, searching for something the throne could not give.
And there you sat, bathed in moonlight. Looking like a goddess, just like the first time he saw when the sunlight did the same. Simply reading the very story that had once steadied him through nights when Caracalla’s insanity grew closer, when the palace walls felt like a tomb crumbling down on him at any moment.
He closed his eyes, letting your voice wash over him. The waterfall’s murmur wove beneath it, a counterpoint; the night insects added their soft chorus.
You reached the passage where the boy first touches the earth, fingers sinking into soil, feeling the pulse of roots beneath, and Geta’s breath hitched as he imagines it was him but with you.
He had never told anyone this poem was his favorite. Not his mother, not the tutors, not even the brother he had once loved before hatred consumed him. Yet you read it as though you understood.
When you finished the final lines, the boy lying beneath the cypress, at peace, the world no longer enemy but home, you let the scroll rest against your lap. Silence settled, broken only by the water and the distant city hum.
You exhaled, a small, private sound of contentment. Geta stepped from behind the pillar. The movement was deliberate, unhurried. Moonlight caught the gold circlet in his hair, the gleam of the rings on his fingers. He crossed the terrace slowly, sandals silent on the stone, until he stood before you.
You startled, scroll crinkling in your grip, eyes wide. He said nothing at first. Only looked at you, really looked, the way he had that first evening in the garden, as though memorizing every line of your face but this time with tears threatening to spill.
“You read it better than I ever could.” His voice was rough, stripped of its usual imperial edge. Vulnerable, almost. The confession hanging between you.
You rose slowly, scroll clutched to your chest like a shield. “You . . . were listening.”
“I arranged it,” he admitted. No boast this time, no teasing authority. Just truth. “I wanted to hear you. Alone. Without the eyes of the court.”
You searched his face, those dark eyes dressed in charcoal, the faint scar at his temple, the tension in his jaw that spoke of battles fought long before you arrived. “Why?”
He stepped closer. The scent of citrus and honey reached you again, warmer now in the night air making your heart flutter. “Because you see things the rest of Rome has forgotten. What I’ve seem to forgotten.” he said softly. “Beauty in the small. Peace in the quiet. I thought . . . perhaps you could remind me what it feels like.”
The words landed heavier than any command he had ever given he thought. And you felt the pull again, that dangerous, corrupting thread of desire, but softer this time, mixed with something of deeper need and recognition.
He reached out, slowly, and brushed a knuckle along the edge of the scroll. “Keep it,” he murmured. “It was made for you. Read it when the hour grows too heavy. And when you do . . . think of me.”
You swallowed. “And if I don’t wish to think of emperors?”
A ghost of his old smile flickered, wry, and boyish. “Then think of the boy in the poem. Lost. Until he found something worth staying for.”
He lingered a moment longer, gaze tracing your lips, your throat, the way moonlight silvered the silk at your shoulders. Then he turned, cloak swirling, and vanished back into the shadows of the palace.
You stood alone on the terrace, scroll warm against your heart, the waterfall singing on. And for the first time since the soldiers came for you, the silence did not feel empty. It felt full. For both the man who ruled an empire yet for the boy who came to you in in vulnerability.
Each night passing had become a quiet ritual of stolen intimacy since. Every evening, as the palace settled into hush, the overseer would appear at your chamber door with another scroll.
Sometimes a familiar work of Virgil or Propertius, sometimes verses no scribe had copied before and random poems without an author's signature.
Eventually, you had come to recognize Geta's hand in the latter. The slight flourish on certain letters, the way the ink pressed harder when emotion overtook his precision.
Those were his own poems, written in the small hours when sleep eluded him. They spoke of a woman seen through sunlight and moonlight, of gold shining over her, of a voice that could quiet the clamor of an empire. Romantic as almost reverent. Nothing like the man Rome feared.
It felt like courtship, though no one would have named it so. For thirteen days you watched the remaining women depart one by one after being summoned to accompany him on inspections of the legions or audiences with senators, processions through the Forum.
Each returned changed, some glowing with favor, others pale with dismissal. You received no such summons. Instead, the gifts arrived in silence.
Scrolls of Catullus left on your pillow by himself, along with a small posy of white roses tucked beneath it, a single almond cake dusted with cinnamon, otherwise known as his favorite, and never shared with another soul.
Once, he came to the women’s court in person. The chamber fell silent as he entered, crimson cloak sweeping the mosaic floor. The others surged forward, curtsying, offering practiced smiles and excited notes.
He acknowledged them with polite nods, a broad imperial smile that never quite reached his eyes. His hands remained clasped behind his back in a formal, distant way, until his gaze found yours across the room.
Then the smile softened, becoming private. A small inclination of his head, a flicker of warmth meant only for you. The other women noticed nothing; you felt the look like his soft touch.
One by one they vanished. Until only you remained. You stood on the high balcony of the women’s quarters that final morning, palms braced on the warm marble rail, staring down at the sprawling city below.
Smoke rose from a thousand hearths; the Tiber gleamed like molten bronze in the dawn. A disbelieving smile curved your lips; you pressed a hand to your mouth to stifle the soft laugh that escaped.
You already knew. He knew. The waiting had been his gift to you, time to choose freely, without the pressure of command. And still he delayed the inevitable, because he was preparing something sweeter.
That evening an attendant came for you again. No scroll this time. She dressed you carefully in a stola of luminous white silk, the same pale shade you had worn the night he first saw you.
It was adorned only with the delicate golden armlet, the thin cord at your waist, the simple fibulae at your shoulders. No heavy jewels, no overdone hairstyle. Just you, as he had first beheld you.
Your heart thundered as she led you through corridors you had never walked through before. You past guards who bowed low without meeting your eyes.
Massive bronze doors loomed ahead, flanked by Praetorians in gleaming lorica segmentata. The attendant brought you to the overseer who paused, squeezed your hand once reassuringly, bowed, then stepped aside.
The doors swung inward.
You froze.
Your family stood in the center of the grand triclinium. Your father, weathered and proud, eyes shining; your mother, hands clasped tight to keep them from trembling.
Your five brothers, scrubbed cleaner than you'd ever seen and awkward in borrowed tunics, grinning like boys caught stealing figs. They looked exactly as you remembered—sun-browned, sturdy, and home.
And among them stood Geta. He wore no crown tonight, only a simple tunic and matching robe of deep purple edged in gold, yet the authority clung to him strongly as ever. When your gaze met his, his expression softened into something loving.
The small smile that threatened to break across his face was the same one he had given you in the garden weeks ago. Your family rushed forward before you could speak.
Arms enveloped you, your mother’s fierce, tear-soaked embrace, your father’s steady grip on your shoulders, your brothers’ laughter and clumsy pats.
“Look at you,” your mother whispered, tracing the silk at your collarbone. “Our beautiful girl.”
Your father’s voice cracked when he said your name. They marveled at the changes, the glow of your skin, the quiet confidence in your stride, yet they still smelled of earth and wool. Which made your stomach drop homesick.
Geta had invited them for a private feast, he explained quietly when the first rush of reunion ebbed. No senators, no spectacle. Only family, and the man who wished to make you his.
The meal passed in a warm blur, platters of roast, nuts, seafood delicacies, fruits and honey, wine from his own personal estates. Geta sat at the head of the table, quiet but attentive, answering your brothers’ hesitant questions about the legions and listening to your father’s stories of the hills with genuine interest of his people.
When Caracalla appeared, it was late. He was imperious, and his presence felt like a heavy wet blanket. He offered curt greetings before retiring early, leaving the room lighter in his absence.
Afterward, as the tables cleared and your family was led to guest chambers prepared for them, Geta rose. He crossed to you without flourish, simply extended his arm. You slipped your hand through it, feeling the steady warmth of him, but also the faint tremor beneath his calm.
He led you back to the peristyle garden where it had all begun. Moonlight silvered the fountain, turned the roses ghostly white. The waterfall sang its endless song.
He was unusually silent as you walked, brow furrowed in thought, jaw tight. The man who commanded anything it seemed, for once, was nervous and uncertain.
“What bothers you?” you asked softly.
He stopped beneath the cypress that overhung the path, turning to face you fully. Moonlight carved sharp planes across his features.
His dark eyes searched yours. As he slowly lifted a hand to cup your cheek, thumb tracing the curve of your cheekbone with such gentleness it stole your breath.
“I have fought this,” he said, voice low, rough with emotion. “Every day since that first evening. I told myself it was infatuation, a distraction. I refused the consul’s urgings, sent away every candidate they paraded before me. I thought distance would kill it.” His thumb brushed your lower lip. “It only grew.”
He took your hand in his free one and pressed it to his chest, over the steady, frantic beat beneath the fabric. “You must feel that? It has not rested since I first heard your voice reading in the dark. No—Since the moment I saw you at this fountain where we stand.”
Your own breath caught. His heart raced at a pace that was concerning beneath your palm.
“I’ve fallen in love with you,” he whispered, the confession sounding almost like a wound. A crime. “Completely. Irrevocably. You have undone me, and I find I do not wish to be mended.”
Tears stung your eyes. His brows drew tighter, pain etching lines around his mouth.
“Please,” he said, voice breaking on the word. “End this torment.”
He lifted your hand to his lips and kissed the knuckles slowly, reverently, then each fingertip, lingering as though memorizing the taste of your skin. “Be my wife.”
The plea stunned you. This was no command from an emperor. This was a man stripped bare, offering his heart without armor, terrified you might refuse.
“Be mine,” he murmured again, lips brushing the sensitive skin of your wrist, then your palm. Hot tears escaped him, falling onto your hand one after the other.
You drew your hand back gently. He froze, eyes wide with the certainty of rejection, shoulders bracing for the fall. Instead you reached up, cradled his face between your palms, and kissed him.
Softly as tentative, tasting salt and the faint sweetness of wine. His eyes fluttered closed; a shudder ran through him. Then he answered, arms encircling you, drawing you close until there was no space left between your bodies.
The kiss deepened, with a slow ach, tears mingling on your lips, his hands trembling where they cradled your waist. When you parted just enough to breathe, he searched your face with desperate intensity, as though afraid the moment would vanish.
You shook your head once, a small smile breaking through your own tears, and kissed him again. This time he melted into you, completely, holding you as though you were the only thing he had.
Beneath the watchful gaze of the full moon, in the garden where the golden hour had first brought you both together, you stood wrapped in one another’s arms. Emperor and a simple country girl. Conqueror and a quiet reader of poetry.
The most unlikely of pairs, yet in that suspended heartbeat, the most inevitable. Rome would come to know this love story in time and in forums, sung by poets, carved in marble. And Geta once the cruel would turn and go down as noble and just.
Summary: When Eddie accidentally tells his judgmental family that he has a girlfriend, he needs to find someone to stand in. What could possibly go wrong by offering the role to his actual crush?
Content: fake dating, cheerleader reader, shitty toxic family members, standing up to belittling, slightly suggestive but not NSFW (timeline doesn't quite work with canon but reader and Eddie are both over 18)
A/N: this is so niche but I wanted to write a fic based off the lyrics to Twirler Girl from the musical Band Geeks which of course made me think of Corroded Coffin, so if anything seems a bit out of place it's me desperately trying to work in lines from the song! Also I've seen a couple of different headcanons for Freak 1's name, I liked the idea of Frank
Taglist: @neewtmas (let me know if you want adding!)
Word count: 11.5k oops
“You think a twirler girl would actually go out with you?” Jeff asked as the Hellfire Club settled around their usual table in the cafeteria.
“Cheerleader,” Eddie corrected with a sigh. “And no. That’s why I’m not actually asking her out.”
Dustin frowned as his tray thudded down onto the table. “Come again? I thought you were into her?”
“Hey, keep your voice down! Are you trying to announce it to the entire school?!”
“Well are you or not?”
He was into you, very much so. In fact, Eddie Munson had had a crush on you for years, but the simple fact was that he knew he didn’t stand a chance. The two of you weren’t even close to being on the same level. You were the pride of the cheer team, the object of the unrequited affections of at least half the jocks in the school (and a good portion of the rest of the student body besides). He was a failing student and the head of the most scorned society in Hawkins. Your spheres never crossed and they never would, unless he did something about it. Which he was about to.
The issue was hopelessly complicated and annoyingly simple. In preparation for an annual family dinner that he had no choice but to attend, his somewhat estranged uncle had called the night before to check whether it would be just him and Wayne attending as usual. Really it was just a snide way of pointing out that Eddie was still single, as he had been last year and the year before that… and the year before that. In one desperate, stupid moment of bitterness, Eddie had announced that he would in fact be bringing his girlfriend. Now he had 3 days to find a girlfriend, which was an impossible feat, so he’d come up with the idea of finding someone to pretend to be his girlfriend for the duration of the dinner. Then, he’d figured that if he was going to do something so monumentally ridiculous, so utterly damning to himself and what little reputation he had left, he might as well go out in style by inviting you. It was an insane plan, but it was worth a try. He’d never hope to ask you out any other way, certainly not for real.
He caught sight of you in front of the food kiosks, picking you out in seconds from the bright white clump of identical cheer uniforms. You were the last in line, and there was nobody else approaching.
“Wish me luck,” he grinned as he stood from the table and his way towards you.
The cafeteria was crowded, as always, and overwhelmingly noisy, as always. It was your least favourite part of the day, standing in the lunch line, waiting for your food to give you some distraction from the cacophony, but your fellow cheerleaders made a point of sitting together and you couldn't bear to be the one left out. So you just focused on the chatter from the girls in front of you and the texture of the tray in your hands. In fact, you were so focused on shutting it all out that you almost shut out the blur of denim and dark curls as it sidled up beside you.
“‘Scuse me,” he murmured as he leant past you to grab a carton of juice, his leather-clad arm brushing against yours. “Mind if I just…”
“Hello, Eddie,” you greeted with a sweet smile. You had to admit you were a little surprised - you'd known Eddie for years, but other than perhaps one or two interactions in class he'd seemed to make a point of avoiding you. Eventually you wound up just assuming he hated you, the same way he seemed to hate most of the popular or even just normal students, but now here he was mere inches away acting like nothing was wrong. In fact, that wasn't entirely true. He definitely reacted. He took a step back, lips parted slightly and eyes scanning your face. Was he surprised or just insulted that you’d spoken to him?
“Hi,” he replied, before turning swiftly and marching back to his friends. You frowned. How odd.
Eddie sat down heavily at the head of the Hellfire table. The rest of the group pointedly avoided his gaze, each feigning a deep interest in the trays of food scattered across the surface or the conversations happening around them.
Finally, Dustin broke the silence. “So, what'd she say?”
Eddie’s gaze drifted back to your figure as it followed the gaggle of cheerleaders. “She said ‘Hello, Eddie’.”
Everyone blinked. “That's it?”
Gareth shot Dustin a look. “Hey, that's huge. I mean, that's the first she's spoken to you since… was it sophomore chemistry?”
“Mhm,” Eddie nodded. His voice slipped into a surprisingly good impression of you. “‘Pass the pipette please. Thanks!'” The older boys, the ones who had known Eddie back then, laughed at the mimicry. “This time she even used my name.”
“Well,” Jeff shrugged, “stranger things have happened.”
“Yeah, Kermit the Frog won a Grammy,” Gareth added.
Dustin furrowed his brow. “Technically, it was all the Muppets, not just-”
“Shut up!” Eddie snapped. “Unless any of you are going to volunteer to dress up as my date-” Gareth jokingly raised a hand, and he pointed his straw accusingly at him, “- no - then we need to figure this out.”
The table settled into an awkward silence, a bubble of stagnant air within the hubbub of the cafeteria. Gareth jabbed his fork in and out of a portion of peas; Dustin picked apart his dinner roll; Frank took a slow, rattling sip of his milk.
“Are you sure about this plan, Eddie?” Jeff asked when the silence became too much.
Eddie glowered. “What's wrong with my plan?”
Frank pulled a face. “It's just… it would destroy the whole natural order of things! You're the master of Hellfire…”
“And she's a twirler girl,” Mike finished.
“Cheerleader,” Dustin and Eddie corrected in unison.
“Aren't they the same thing?”
“No!”
Jeff waved his hands to regain the group's attention. “That's besides the point! Isn't she, like, engaged to that meathead from the basketball team?”
“Andy?” Mike scoffed, his squabble over the technical terms for the cheer team forgotten in his excitement to share insider knowledge he'd gained from Nancy. “No, he dumped her last week. Right in the middle of her shift at the Chick-Fil-A.”
Gareth winced. “Brutal.”
Eddie simply grinned. Sure, it sucked for you, but it worked for him. Now he just had to work up the nerve to talk to you properly.
He caught up to you by the lockers after the final class of the day. You were busy putting your books away and reapplying a thin coat of lip gloss before cheer practice, and when you closed your locker door the sight of him leaning on the other side of it made you jump.
“Eddie!” You gasped, quickly composing yourself. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
His eyes roved over your uniform with a smirk, utterly unaffected by the puzzled or scornful looks he was earning just by speaking to you. “Pleasure's all mine.” Suddenly, his gaze dropped and he cleared his throat. “I need to ask a favour, but it's going to sound kind of insane.”
You folded your arms across your chest, one eyebrow raised. “Try me.”
“I need a fake date for this weekend.”
You blinked in surprise. Had you heard him right? After years of acting like your mere existence went against everything he stood for, now he was asking you out? You faltered. No, you hadn't heard him right. One little word sent your spiking heart rate back to normal. “A fake date? You mean I'm not good enough for the real thing?” You knew the teasing was uncalled for, but if he was going to mess with you then you might as well get your own back.
To his credit, his entire face turned red. “No! That's not what I- God, I knew this was a bad idea.”
You fought back an unexpected giggle. “No, no, go on. Tell me exactly why you want to not date me.”
“You're not going to make this easy for me, aren't you?”
The giggle finally burst free, lighting up your whole face. “Nope.” You popped the p like bubblegum. The movement emphasised your lips, and Eddie's eyes drifted to them.
“Fine,” he sighed, running a hand down his face. “My mum’s brother and his wife are coming to visit and there's a dinner I can't get out of. I need someone to pretend to be my date for one night so they'll get off my back about finding a nice girl and not turning into my father.”
That last line wiped the smile off both your faces. You didn't know him very well, but you knew his dad was locked up and generally not a very good influence. You'd be lying if you said the honesty hadn't tugged at your heartstrings. You bit your lip. “Why me?”
With slender fingers, he played with those chunky metal rings he always wore. You'd never been close enough to tell what they were until now. One was a skull, you could see that much. “I mean, the fact you haven't already called me a pervert or told me to fuck off is a good start,” he said with a small laugh. “But I think having someone like a cheerleader would shut them up, and… well, you're one of the nice ones.”
Warmth blossomed in your cheeks and you almost melted beneath the unexpected sincerity of his gaze. He’d put thought into this, into choosing you. The thought took root in your head and deep within your chest. After months of winding up on the back burner every time Andy wanted to go out with the other guys from the team, or ‘didn’t feel like date night’, it was nice to be chosen, even by someone like Eddie. Especially by someone like Eddie. He was so utterly unlike anyone you’d dated before, but maybe that was what you needed, even if just for one night. “Flattery will get you everywhere.” You paused. He was clearly committed to this idea, and you were doing him a favour like he said; even if he wasn't actually interested, there was no reason you couldn't get something out of this too. “Fine. I've got practice tonight, but maybe tomorrow you could take me to Melvald's for milkshakes to go over the plan?”
You placed a hand on his shoulder as you leant in a little closer, until you could feel his shallow breaths glossing over your cheek. “Mine's a chocolate strawberry swirl.” With a wink and a flick of your hair, you headed towards the gym, unaware that you were leaving him combusting in your wake.
—
Eddie slumped on his throne in the theatre room, fingers drumming on the unusually blank tabletop. This was no time for DnD; this was an emergency meeting, the second one that week. Instead of updates on the actions of this campaign’s villain, he was delivering a word-for-word retelling of yesterday’s conversation.
“It’s totally a date,” Mike insisted. “El and I go out for milkshakes all the time!”
Dustin shook his head, his curls bobbing with the movement. “Nuh-uh. This is an ‘I’m taking the opportunity for a free milkshake while I scope out whether you’re as weird as everyone says before I agree to spend an entire evening with your family’ situation. It’s recon!”
Eddie sighed, sinking back further into his seat.
Gareth, the unexpected voice of reason in this whole situation, took the reins. He was in a couple of your classes, so it could be argued he knew you the best out of anyone. “It’s just probability. Y/n likes guys who act real macho and in command, and you…” He pulled an apologetic face.
“I am the leader of a club.”
“I mean, I think she likes athletes, dude.”
Jeff leaned forward conspiratorially. “Then why did she agree to ‘go over the plan’ like she’d already decided?”
“And,” Mike continued, a glimmer in his eye, “why did she say ‘you can take me to Melvald’s’ instead of ‘let’s meet at Melvald’s’. I’m telling you: it’s a date."
Everyone watched with bated breath as Eddie continued to drum his fingers on the table. Both sides had a point. Why would you agree to even just meet with him if you weren’t a little bit interested? His reputation was disastrously low compared to yours, being seen with him was a risk to your pristine social standing that you wouldn’t dare take without good reason. Then again, maybe he was being played without even realising it. The freak asking out the cheerleader? He could already imagine the laughter rippling through the basketball team. The only thing more amusing to them than him exposing his feelings, even if he’d done his best to hide them between the insistence on fakery and a forced nonchalance he hoped had masked his blushes, was for him to get strung along until his hopes were dashed. Maybe you were using this as a way to win back your jackass of an ex. But still… the way that you’d looked at him…
“Screw it,” he said at last.
The room erupted into boyish yells of victory and outrage. Mike and Dustin were practically wrestling one another, Jeff and Frank were in varying stages of uproar, while Gareth simply sighed and shook his head.
“There’s no way you’ve got a shot with her, homeslice.”
Eddie rolled his eyes. “You’re just jealous. She’s totally into me.”
Frank stopped his argument just long enough to snicker. “Yeah, right, and Foreigner is heavy metal.”
Somehow, this kickstarted a whole other argument (Eddie had no idea how when it was, as far as he was concerned, an incontrovertible truth), but at least it gave him time to think about what he was getting himself into. Most importantly, it gave him time to think about you.
When the final bell of the day echoed through the corridors, Eddie was hit by a jarring realisation. He’d been so flustered by your proposition yesterday that he’d completely forgotten to set down any sort of details on where to meet you. Which class were you in? Could he make it to your locker before you gave up waiting for him and left? Were you even going to wait in the first place? He was always eager to get out of class quickly, but this time he barrelled out of the door and straight into a throng of students moving at a snail’s pace. Not a single one of them paid heed to his glares or frustrated huffs, not even when he began muttering at them to move out of the way. By the time he made it to your locker, it felt like an eternity had passed. There was no sign of you. Was he too early or too late? He waited. He waited some more. The crush of bodies in the hallway slowly dwindled. Shit. He’d blown his chance before he’d even had it. Dejected, he trudged out to the parking lot.
You waved from where you leant against the hood of his van.
“Thought you’d forgotten all about me,” you pouted dramatically as he approached.
I could never, he thought to himself. “Wasn’t expecting you to wait around.”
You tilted your head ever so slightly, your hair falling gracefully to one side as you scrutinised him. “We had a deal, didn’t we?”
“Well, yeah.” He faltered, the doubts from earlier creeping back in. You were looking at him so sincerely, but he’d been stung before by people who were better actors than they were companions. “This isn’t a set-up, right?”
You laughed, a brief, sweet sound. “You’re the one who set it up, darling, you tell me.” A tiny gasp escaped you and you clapped a hand to your mouth. “Pet names! That’s something we should go over.”
Eddie had never been more grateful for his long hair; the heat of a blush was creeping into his ears and he couldn’t let you see that, not now. He had the whole week to scare you off yet. “Oh, you’ve been thinking about this, huh?”
“I like to know what I’m getting myself into.”
A bright grin spread across his face, smile lines deepening like canyons. “Well then, let’s go and find out.” He opened the passenger door and held out a hand to help you in. Your hand was warm and smooth, fingertips pristine against the callouses of his guitar-weathered skin.
The drive back into the centre of town was quiet. Eddie had tuned the radio to the local station, and a pop song played softly over the dull roar of the engine. You bounced your foot nervously against your backpack in the footwell. You hadn’t been lying - you did like to know what you were getting yourself into - but the truth was that with Eddie you had no idea. Every picture of him that had been painted for you was of a wild, vicious Satanist, but so far all you’d seen was a sweet, somewhat shy guy who just wanted to get his overbearing family out of his hair. Still, he was nothing if not unpredictable, as you’d seen from his occasional outbursts in the cafeteria, so you were a little hesitant to put yourself there unprotected, especially so soon after your break up. You just had to hope you weren’t setting yourself up for embarrassment or, worse, heartbreak.
Eddie, meanwhile, was equally lost in his thoughts. Every year when his uncle and aunt came to visit, it was the same. Pointing out how much like his dad he was; thinly veiled remarks about how he and Al had never been good enough for his mum, the beloved little sister; updates on his cousin, the famous weatherman, and all the extraordinary things he was doing with his life that Eddie could obviously never dream of; reminders that his cousin's girlfriend had won Miss Indianapolis three years ago while Eddie was still perpetually single. He’d always wanted to be able to throw their pity and scorn back in their faces, and now here you were offering him that chance. There was no way he’d ever admit how many times he’d pictured it: you coming back to his trailer, flicking through his comic book collection, curling up on the couch together with a slasher movie, listening to him play guitar, discovering you were into the same things. Finally, his family would see that he was someone. With you at his side, he’d be unstoppable. Even if you were only there to pretend.
You trailed behind Eddie as he strode up to the milkshake counter, not because you were embarrassed to be spotted with him, but because it was your first time seeing him outside of the confines of the Hawkins High social system. He seemed lighter, more relaxed. There was almost a bounce in his step, which made the bandana in his back pocket ripple with every movement.
“Hi. Two chocolate strawberry swirls, please.” You bit your lip. Not only was he polite, he’d remembered. Sure, it was only a day since you’d told him, but Andy had needed to ask what you wanted every single time.
You were startled back to the present by the alluring scent of strawberry sauce being held out to you. Eddie clutched an identical cup. “Didn’t have you down as a chocolate strawberry swirl kind of guy,” you smiled.
“I’m not, but everyone thinks I’m out of my mind for liking chocolate mint.” He said it casually enough, but there was an air of bitterness to his words. This whole thing was getting to him more than he let on.
“Next time,” you said softly, “you can get the mint chip. You don’t have to change on my account.” The words ‘next time’ hung between you, a promise unmade; to your own surprise, you let them stay there.
Eddie led you to a bench in the shade, where the two of you toasted your milkshakes together. The crinkle of colliding plastic was anticlimactic, but overshadowed by the novelty of the gesture. You took a sip, basking in the icy coolness and the syrupy sweet blend of your favourite flavours.
“So,” you said around your straw as you drank down another mouthful, “talk me through it. What’s this dinner you can’t get out of?”
Eddie huffed out a chocolatey breath. “It’s… the anniversary of my mum’s death. My uncle, her brother, comes into town every year to visit her grave, and he and his wife insist on taking me and my uncle Wayne out for a memorial dinner.”
You lowered your milkshake, overcome by the urge to reach out to where his hand lay beside you on the bench. “Oh my god, Eddie, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s fine,” he sniffed. “Or it would be if they were actually here to remember her. That’s what it used to be about, but now they pretty much just come to gloat about how well they’re doing and about my cousin and his stupid, perfect life.”
“Okay. Give me names.” You pulled a notebook and pen from your bag, much to his amusement. “I just-”
“-like to know what you’re getting into, I know,” he chuckled. “Okay, there’s Ronald and Betty Franklin, that’s my aunt and uncle. My cousin is Jimmy Dean-”
You pulled a face. “Like that sleazy guy off the news?”
To your surprise, Eddie laughed, his eyes glimmering with delight. “That’s him. The weatherman.”
“I prefer Donnie Philips,” you shrugged with a smile. You didn’t really have a preference, that was just the only other name you knew. Either way, the admission eased some of the tension from the boy’s shoulders. “Sorry, go on.”
“Yeah, and his girlfriend is Cynthia Morgan: Miss Indianapolis 1983, hence the gloating.”
“Oh yeah, she’s stunning.”
“You’re prettier.”
Both your gazes snapped up at the same time. Eddie’s eyes were wide, panicked, the colour drained from every part of his face except for his burning cheeks. Your gaze was soft, surprised, your faltering lungs stimulated into a shaky breath by the fluttering of a thousand butterflies beneath them that had manifested from nowhere, a hidden corner of yourself you didn’t even know existed. He hadn’t meant it as flattery to get you on his side; by the look of mortification it looked like he hadn’t meant to say it at all.
You swallowed, mouth dry, drink forgotten. “Anyone else?”
That snapped him back out of it. “Just Wayne, but he’s chill. I think you’ll get on alright with him, actually.”
You smiled to yourself as you finished writing down the names. “Okay, good. Now let’s go over details.”
The two of you sat together until the sun was beginning to set, going over everything either of you might need to know. First came the details of the evening (Enzo’s, Saturday, 7pm, Eddie would pick you up at 6:30, semi-formal dress code). Then the intricacies of your fake relationship - this took a little more working out, but eventually you settled on the two of you having got together just after New Years, so three or so months ago, and it was Eddie who had asked you out. You lent him some paper and relayed a few details about your own family and life, just in case that came up. Then you decided it was probably a good idea to actually get to know each other a little. Eddie had practically fallen off the bench in excitement when you asked him to explain his current DnD campaign.
“There’s no way you want to hear about that,” he’d protested.
“I do! Not that I’ll understand what any of it means, but it’s important to you and if I was a good girlfriend that would mean it would be important to me too.”
He had to resist the urge to lean over and kiss you right then and there. “That would make you an amazing girlfriend,” he grinned. “Hope you’ve got plenty of paper.”
After that, he insisted on making notes about your hobbies too, from beadwork to baking. Of course there was also the list of recent scores from the games you’d been cheerleader for (“as an equally incredible boyfriend, I came to watch every one,” he said), then a list of both your favourite bands and your top songs by each of them. By the end of it he had jotted down everything from your favourite pizza toppings to how you took your tea to what your childhood pets had been called. You must have been there for hours.
When you were finally done, Eddie nodded to his van with an offer to drive you home.
A mischievous smirk spread across your face as you looked at the beaten up Gaucho. “You know, if you really want to rub your family’s nose in it, we could borrow my dad’s car for the weekend.”
He raised an eyebrow. “What could your dad possibly have that’s better than this beauty?”
You struggled not to let the smirk turn into a full-on mirthful grin. “A black Cadillac. You know, like the song?”
“Well, aren’t you just full of surprises,” he said incredulously, raising a hand for emphasis. “How the hell do you know Quiet Riot?”
The grin spread, despite your best efforts. “My dad sings it every time we hit the freeway. It’s a good song.”
Now he definitely wanted to kiss you. “If this doesn’t work out, I might have to ask your dad out next.” There it was again, one of those unfinished deals. If this doesn’t work out. This time it was an unspoken question, too. What if it does?
The two of you set off again, now in a more amicable quiet. You were halfway through directing him to your house when you gasped.
“Everything alright?” he glanced nervously at you.
“Sorry,” you said hurriedly, “I just realised after all that we never covered pet names, and that was the first thing I thought of!”
He laughed. “Oh, sure, okay. What do you want me to call you?”
You hesitated. Despite it being your idea, you hadn’t actually thought far enough ahead to realise it meant picking a term for yourself. Somehow, it felt too intimate to admit you had a preference. Andy had always called you babe, sometimes doll, but he always said it with an air of disinterest, like it was something he was supposed to do instead of actual affection. You ran a hand over the hem of your skirt. “Um, I think maybe sweetheart?”
Eddie glanced at you again, a smile tugging gently at the corner of his lips. You got the feeling he had sensed your internal battle, but he said nothing about it. “That works.”
“What about you?”
“Well, sweetheart,” he smiled properly, tasting the word as it slid languidly off his tongue, “you can call me whatever you like. Darling was a nice touch earlier, but I’m easy. It all sounds just as good coming from you.”
You nodded to yourself, filing that piece of information away to add to your notes. It helped distract you from the heat in your core at the thought of him using the term you’d picked without a second thought. You’d always thought it sounded lovely hearing it said on TV or around other couples, but the way the low gravel behind his voice wrapped around it pierced straight through the barrier you’d built up in your chest.
When you finally made it to your street, Eddie pulled up outside your front door with a sigh that, if you didn’t know better, was almost reluctance. The glow of the street light illuminated his curls in a halo of light, shadows striking across his cheekbones.
“We should, uh,” he started, scratching the back of his neck, “probably set some boundaries too. Don’t want to overstep or anything.”
Your mind was instantly flooded with thoughts of all the things the two of you could do, and you hastily pushed them down. Where the hell had that come from? Of course Eddie wouldn’t go that far for a fake date, and you weren’t interested in going any further than absolutely necessary… were you? But what did necessary even look like when it was all for show? “I think nothing that will make it weird afterwards, but we’ve got to make it believable, right?” you offered, as much for your own reasoning as anything else. “So I guess the occasional touch, like hand holding and all that would work. What are your family like with affection? Do we need to kiss to- to sell it?”
He watched you carefully, eyes dark and response measured. “Not if you don’t want to.”
You found yourself wondering if you could answer that honestly. “I guess on the cheek would be okay.”
He nodded, smile dimming ever so slightly. “Sure.” The smile brightened, almost forcibly so. “Well, I think we’ve covered everything.”
“It’s not like we won’t see each other at school tomorrow to check anything before the day.”
“True.” He fought the urge to remark on the stir it would cause among the student body to see the two of you conversing even a fraction as much as you had today. For once, he was able to fight off the self-deprecation and allow himself to simply enjoy the fact that you were there, in his van, hanging off his every word, looking at him like he was the only person left in the world. For that brief moment, he was. “You’d better go, the last thing I want is the man with the fantastic taste in music getting mad at me for keeping you out late on a school night.”
You pulled a face. “Wouldn’t want to risk it, he might not let you take me out on Saturday.”
“I’m more worried he won’t let us take that gorgeous car,” he laughed, nodding to the Cadillac in the driveway, but the way his eyes drifted back to you suggested otherwise. “Mind if I walk you to the door?”
“Aren’t you a gentleman?” you said coyly, reaching to let yourself out of the van. Your breath caught in your throat when Eddie leaned over and wrapped his hand gently around your wrist, pulling you away from the handle.
“I’m doing my best here, sweetheart, if you’ll let me.” His words were teasing but his tone was so devastatingly sincere that all you could do was wait, dumbfounded and slightly weak at the knees, as he climbed out and dashed around to your side of the van to open the door and offer his hand. You took it gingerly once more, and this time his fingers folded over your own as he helped you down, his other hand hovering over your lower back like he was scared to make contact, until you were safely on the ground. You led him up to the door, the two of you huddling in the warm glow of the porch light.
“Here we are,” you murmured.
“Here we are,” he echoed.
A hundred unsaid words rippled between you, all the things you could possibly think of to say to make sense of whatever this was turning into. None of it were things you could actually say, not to him. “Good night, Eddie,” what all you could settle for.
He moved fractionally closer. “Can I test something? Just before we get into this for real?” You resisted the urge to point out that none of it was for real; instead, you gave a small nod and he leant forward, one hand settling feather-light on your waist as he placed a delicate kiss on your cheek. “Good night, y/n.” As he pulled away, you could have sworn you felt the warmth leave with him, a slight shiver rippling up from where his fingers had pressed against your side. The warmth in your face, on the other hand, radiated outwards from the spot his lips had touched until it covered every inch of your cheeks, and it stayed that way long after he’d returned to his van and watched you head inside with a small, shy wave.
—
When the boys found Eddie in the cafeteria the next day, he was practically floating on air, staring into space and barely aware of the arrival of his group.
“How’d it go, loverboy?” Gareth grinned mercilessly.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Eddie quipped back.
Everyone winced. “That bad?”
“What?”
“I’m just saying, I hate to say I told you so, but…”
Eddie frowned, pushing his lunch out of the way. “No, I’m just saying I’m not giving you all the tawdry details.”
Frank perked up. “Oh, tawdry was it?”
“Piss off.”
“Come on Eddie,” Dustin whined. “We just want to know how it went! And, you know, who was right or wrong,” he glared pointedly at Mike, “about it being a date.”
The older boy pondered for a moment before sighing and running a hand through his hair. “The non-date went fine, thank you very much.” Mike groaned and handed Dustin a handful of dollar bills. Eddie turned, trying to subtly seek you out in the crowd. He hadn’t expected to find you so quickly, nor to meet your eyes already looking back at him. You gave a small wave, much to the disdain of the other jocks and cheerleaders around you, which he returned. His entire group turned to him in one synchronised motion, their expressions a mix of disbelief and amazement.
“She just waved at you,” Gareth said as if they hadn’t all watched it happen.
Eddie broke into a wide grin and steepled his fingers under his chin. “She also likes Quiet Riot. The whole world’s topsy turvy.”
“Holy shit.”
Dustin frowned. “What’s Quiet Riot?”
“Quiet Riot, my uneducated friend, is a metal band.” The way he explained, eyes still on you, was almost proud. “Maybe not the heaviest, I’ll admit, but hey, the girl’s got taste.”
Frank chuckled to himself. “And yet she’s going out with you?”
Eddie threw a chunk of cookie at him, which put a swift end to the conversation.
—
You stood outside Eddie’s trailer, adjusting your dress for the umpteenth time. Why were you so nervous? It wasn’t like you’d never done the whole ‘meeting the family’ thing before, and this time it didn’t even matter how it went. It wasn’t like you’d ever be seeing the people again. Except for Eddie, and you had to admit you cared what he thought. You’d picked out a smooth satin dress in a rich teal that made your eyes pop, with spaghetti straps and a ruffled skirt and all paired with a matching shrug and black kitten heels. It was formal enough without looking ridiculous, or so you hoped. With one final adjustment, you raised your hand and knocked cautiously.
After a few moments, Eddie opened the door. As his eyes roamed down you, taking in your outfit, you did the same. He was wearing a crisp white shirt with rolled sleeves and pressed black trousers, still with his chunky leather belt and chain draped across his hip. A tie hung, unfastened, around his neck. “Hi,” he murmured. “Wasn’t sure you’d show.”
That was the second time he’d doubted you, despite all the evidence you’d given to the contrary. It wasn’t because he didn’t trust you, you suspected, but that he didn’t think he was worth showing up for. You bit your lip, smoothing the fabric of your skirt. “How do I look?”
He seemed to struggle to find the words. “Perfect,” he said eventually, the single word hummed low and reverent. Then he blinked. “Um, why don’t you come in for a sec? I just need to…” he held up the ends of his tie, lips pressed together in a frustrated line. You followed him inside and sat down when he gestured to the sofa. The trailer was small, a little unkempt, but clean and cosy in the soft light of the lamps around the room. You watched as Eddie fumbled with his tie, rings flashing in the light as his fingers moved back and forth, undoing and reattempting the knot. Slowly you stood and moved to him. His hands stilled as you took the fabric from him, fingers gliding over his. Up close, you could see his Adam’s apple bob as you began wrapping the ends round each other. Neither of you spoke, just breathed in unison in the shared confines of the space between you. When you were done, you fixed his collar and smoothed the tie down his chest. His breath hitched beneath your fingers and you pulled back slightly. He almost followed you.
“You’re, uh, good at this stuff,” he muttered.
“What, ties? I helped teach my brother how to do his.”
“Right, of course,” he said, as though that wasn’t quite what he meant. He couldn’t bear to outright tell you that you seemed like you’d be a good girlfriend, not when you were standing this close and smelling of fruit shampoo and sweet perfume and smiling as kindly as you were. A jitter had returned to his hands, chain rattling in his grasp, so he was relieved when you decided not to press the matter. “Are you sure you still want to do this?”
You took his hand, moving it away from his anxious ministrations. He stilled instantly. “Are you?”
“No,” he admitted. “It’s gonna suck, I already know that much, but it’ll suck a bit less having you there.” You felt heat rising up the back of your neck. “I’m really glad you’re here, you know? It’ll give Ronald something to talk about other than golf and the fucking weather forecast, if nothing else,” he finished with a chuckle, like he wasn’t allowed to be sincere if he wasn’t making a joke out of it too.
You swallowed the part of yourself that wanted to tell him to forget the whole thing. Not that you didn’t want to go, but you found yourself not wanting to see him spend the whole evening miserable when you could do something just the two of you. But that wasn’t the deal and never had been, and there was no guarantee that he’d be open to the idea outside of the terms of your unconventional arrangement. Instead, you held up the keys to the Cadillac and eased into character. It was as easy as breathing. “Would it make you feel better about it if you got to drive, darling?”
His face lit up as he snatched the keys from your grip. “Come on then, sweetheart, let’s get this shitshow over with.”
—
Eddie tensed the moment the two of you pulled into the parking lot behind Enzo’s. His knuckles were white where he gripped the leather steering wheel and the colour that had painted his cheeks ever since he first spoke to you had drained away to somewhere beneath his collar, which felt like it was tightening with every breath.
“Eddie?” you coaxed. “You okay?”
His gaze was trained on the group of people outside the restaurant as he parked the car and reached clumsily to you. You took his shaking hand in yours without a thought. “I thought it was just going to be the two of them.”
You followed his haunted stare. Sure enough, the group was bigger than you’d anticipated. There was an older couple, who you assumed were Ronald and Betty, talking to a man standing a little further apart. That must be Wayne Munson. But then there were two others, a young man and woman who looked to be in perhaps their late 20s.
“Is that…?”
Eddie swallowed dryly. “JD and Cynthia. They never come to this. Why are they here? I don’t-”
You both realised it at once. They were here to see you. They wanted to know if you were real, or if Eddie had once again come up short.
“Hey, hey,” you said softly, turning to him, “you’re gonna be fine. Just get through tonight and then you don’t have to see them for at least another year.” You looked back at the group and something dawned on you. “How much does Wayne know? About you and me?”
Something about the words ‘you and me’ brought him back to his senses. “Enough. He knows you’re… not really my girlfriend, but he’s got the basic details to be able to play along if he has to.”
You nodded and let out a slow breath. “Okay, see? He’s got your back. And so have I, for what it’s worth.”
It was worth more than you could possibly know. Taking one last moment to pull himself together, Eddie let himself out into the oncoming chill of the evening and walked round the front of the car to meet you at your door.
“Junior!” a booming voice rattled across the parking lot as you approached. Your arm was linked through Eddie’s, and you squeezed it reassuringly when his bicep flexed at the sound. “Long time no see!”
“That’s what annual visits are like, Ronald,” he replied through gritted teeth.
The older woman, Betty gasped. “Edward! Manners!”
Now it was your turn to tense. He’d never been Edward as long as you’d known him, always Eddie. You’d not even been here a minute and the condescension had already begun. This was going to be more difficult than you thought.
“Sorry, Aunt Betty,” the chastised voice came from beside you. “It’s nice to see you again. Jimmy, Cynthia, hello.”
Ronald sneered. “That’s more like it. And who’s this pretty little thing?”
You bristled, but held out a hand all the same. “I’m y/n, Eddie’s girlfriend.” It made you feel slightly more in control using his name like that, showing them all that you were on his side.
The whole group surveyed you, scrutinised you, took in every detail they could to confirm to themselves that you were actually there. None of them quite seemed to believe it; you were perfectly believable, they had no reason to doubt you beyond their own expectations of their nephew and cousin.
“Nice to see you again,” Wayne said, voice gruff and smile barely there. This was, of course, the first time you’d met. Eddie relaxed slightly into your touch. Between the three of you, you could sell this long enough to get through the meal.
Cynthia, as pretty as you’d pictured but not nearly as confident, tugged on her partner’s sleeve. “Can we go in now? It’s freezing.”
Jimmy shot her a look that ran from her face to the bare arms hugged around her thin dress, then sighed and opened the door to lead her and the rest of you inside.
Enzo’s was warm, filled with the homely scent of garlic and cooked tomatoes. Everything about it reeked of class, from the crisp white tablecloths to the folded red napkins to the jars of candles on each table. You suspected you knew why Eddie’s relatives insisted on coming here - to rub in the fact that they could afford to take the whole family here, as though they were doing Eddie and Wayne some sort of charity.
Eddie pulled out a chair for you as you shrugged off your jacket. “Thanks, darling,” you smiled, placing a hand on his arm as you sat down and he shuffled into the seat next to you. Somewhat reluctantly, Jimmy repeated the action for Cynthia. The waiter who had led you all across returned with an armful of menus and a carafe of water.
“Have you been here before, y/n?” Ronald asked pointedly. He knew very well how expensive this place was.
“I have, Mr Franklin. We came here for our second date.” The lie came easily.
The look of surprise on the man’s face was priceless. Under the table, Eddie’s fingers ghosted against your side, and you gave him your best attempt at a loving smile in a show of silent victory.
There was a brief reprieve from the inevitable interrogation while everyone planned their orders. Betty asked about getting a bottle of wine for the table, Jimmy insisted they get some soda waters too since Cynthia would be driving, Cynthia herself mused on the idea of getting a steak, which you recommended despite never having had it. Wayne said very little, he just sat and watched you and Eddie as you made tiny remarks to each other and you skimmed your hand across his rings whenever he laid his hand on the table.
At last, the waiter returned, and you knew it was only a matter of time before your safety net was swept away and you were forced to confront the whims of the people sitting opposite you.
“You know what, the steak does look good,” Jimmy announced as he closed his menu. “I’ll take that medium, and she’ll have the Italian salad.” Cynthia’s face fell, the light in her eyes flickering, but nobody else seemed to notice. You offered her a small sympathetic smile. She didn’t return it, but you saw her shift slightly away from her boyfriend.
Eddie ordered some sort of chicken dish, then turned to you. “What do you fancy, sweetheart?”
“I’ll have the cannelloni, please,” you nodded to the waiter as you handed back your menu. Jimmy scowled at the pair of you.
The moment you were left alone again, Betty rounded on you, positively sparkling at the prospect of harvesting gossip. “So, how long have you two been together?”
Eddie’s hand found yours. “Since the New Year,” he said proudly.
His cousin scoffed. “And how much bribery did it take?”
Your hand tightened around Eddie’s. “I don’t know what you mean.” You were going to make him say it, one way or another.
“I mean, look at you,” he leered. You shot Cynthia a look, and her gaze dipped to her lap.
Ronald picked up the dangling thread. “Let’s just say Junior’s not exactly in your league.”
“Why wouldn’t he be?” you asked innocently. “And why do you call him Junior? His dad’s name is Alan, isn’t it?” That wasn’t something that had come up in your makeshift briefing. Beside you, Eddie drew in a sharp breath.
“Ah, but he’s so like his old man. You’ll see eventually. Anyway, what else is new since last year?”
Eddie mumbled a non-committal response, his hand slipping from yours. He seemed so utterly different from the boy you knew. Long gone was the wild guy who climbed on tables and pulled weird faces at anyone who bothered him, but gone too was the sweet young man you’d been getting to know over the past few days. In their place sat a boy, alone and hurt and trying so hard to find ways to prove that he was better than what his family thought of him. You’d barely got to know his distant uncle, but you already wanted to climb on the table yourself so you could throttle him with his own napkin.
“Didn’t think so,” Ronald gave another patronising smirk. “That’s okay, we’ve got plenty of updates. Jimmy is getting a promotion in the studio, and your aunt and I have been invited on one of these new-fangled cruises with the Colemans.”
Betty lit up once more. “Oh! And you’ve heard that Jimmy and Cynthia are engaged?”
Jimmy gave Eddie a smug grin as Cynthia raised her hand to flash a diamond ring. She seemed significantly less enthusiastic than you expected. “Don’t suppose we’ll be expecting this from you any time soon, eh, Munson?” Jimmy said, each word a barb cutting deeper and deeper.
“Who knows?” you jumped in over the ripples of laughter spreading down that side of the table. “It’s early days yet, but I think we’re going pretty strong so far, right, honey?” Your words were double-edged: a retort to Jimmy, a reassurance to Eddie. He reacted slightly beside you, a miniscule jolt in the corner of your eye as you turned to look at him. You wondered if he knew how much you meant it; it really was early days, only three days into a fake relationship that had supposedly been going on for three months, but you were more invested than you’d expected and if you were being honest with yourself, you wouldn’t mind having to pretend a little longer. Or not pretend, if that was an option. You weren’t sure where ‘honey’ had come from. It felt right in the moment, and you didn’t regret it afterwards either.
“The love of your life, is he?” Jimmy bit back with an unconcealed laugh.
“Maybe, is that so hard to believe?” you almost snapped. You were stopped dead in your tracks by a warm hand on your thigh, forcing a tiny gasp to bubble up from within your chest. Your eyes met Eddie’s. If you weren’t already shocked, you would have been by the way he was looking at you. It was as if you’d hung the moon, or perhaps that you were the stars themselves. Whatever it was, it stirred something within you, and you tucked yourself closer into his side. The movement shifted the hem of your skirt, bunching it up above your knee, and the hand on your thigh adjusted until the thumb was skimming across bare flesh. You knew it was probably just for his own comfort, something grounding to get him through the evening, but every pass sent sparks through you until it felt like all the oxygen was being sucked from the room.
“I wouldn’t get too attached, doll,” Ronald’s brash voice cut through the haze of thoughts, laced with venom. “Al was never good enough for my sister either. Like father like son.”
The hand left your thigh as Eddie’s chair slid back, accompanied by a small strangled noise from the boy. “Excuse me,” he muttered as he made a beeline for the bathrooms next to the bar.
“Jeez, was it something I said?” Ronald shrugged comically to uproarious laughter from his wife and son. Wayne, on the other hand, had a face like thunder and looked like he was seconds away from reacting, though how he would do so you couldn’t say. You raised a hand, placating, and stood.
“Oh my god, he’s gone soft,” Jimmy cackled. “Imagine needing your girlfriend to run after you to calm your little tantrum.”
You spun back to the table, startling everyone with the ferocity of the movement. “He doesn’t need me to run after him, I’m doing it because I love and care about him.” The words spilled from you before you could stop them. Your eyes widened. In the heat of the moment it barely occurred to you that the others would have no reason to question why you’d said them - all except Wayne, who was looking at you strangely. Not in a bad way, just… knowingly. You reached back and took a hurried, anxious swig of your water before you ran after your supposed boyfriend.
You found Eddie tucked down the far end of the bar. He wasn’t drinking, just standing there trembling from head to toe. Instinctively, you took his hand. You weren’t expecting him to squeeze back as firmly as he did.
“You okay?” you murmured. Your heart broke a little when he shook his head. With a small sigh, you cradled his face with your free hand, tilting it up until his eyes met yours. “We don’t have to stay if it’s too much.”
His lower lip wobbled. “That’s just it, though. Any reason I give to leave, or to not be here in the first place, they just throw back in my face about how I’m not honouring mum’s memory or respecting the family or whatever bullshit they can come up with to keep me in my place.”
You stroked your thumb comfortingly across his cheek. “Then let me say it for you. There’s nothing they can use against me.”
His other hand settled, still shaking, on your waist. In spite of everything that had happened so far, he still touched you tentatively, as though he might break you just by being there. It stung that the people who were supposed to care about him had made him think so little of himself. “I can’t ask you to do that. It’s so far beyond what you signed up for.”
“Hey, I signed up to be your girlfriend for the night. That means I’ve got you, whatever it takes.” You gave him a small, conspiratorial smile, and leaned in until there were barely inches between you. “You just say the word, and I’ll get as ugly with it as you want.”
“Oh my god,” he breathed, subconsciously tugging you closer, a hint of his usual grin seeping back onto his face. You could practically feel his heart racing, or maybe that was your own. “You say whatever the hell you want, sweetheart.”
You grinned, placed a kiss on his cheek, composed yourself, and led him back to the table.
“Uh-oh,” Jimmy smirked as the two of you approached, “the lovebirds are back.”
You felt Eddie, still pressed close, tense at the mocking tone. Your resolve settled like a ball of iron in your core. Allowing yourself a steadying breath and a reassuring squeeze to his hand, you painted on a sweet smile, though one that was tight-lipped against the barrage you were about to unleash. “Actually, we just came to get our jackets.”
Ronald frowned. “Leaving so soon?”
“We’ve not even eaten yet!” Betty protested, her hands balling into little fists. Wayne looked at you with a raised eyebrow and an unreadable expression.
“I’m sorry,” you began, but then you paused. You caught Wayne’s eye again, and it was almost as if he knew what was coming, as he gave you a tiny, near imperceptible nod. “Actually, I’m not sorry at all. I won’t apologise for putting Eddie first, and after the way you’ve all been treating him I refuse to put him through any more of it.” You smiled at Wayne, who was watching you proudly. “Except you, Mr Munson, it’s been a pleasure.”
Ronald was rapidly transforming into the human version of a beetroot. You could almost see the steam coming out of his ears. “I beg your pardon, young lady?”
You turned your saccharine smile on him, expression unwavering even as your rage came to a boil beneath it. “I’d prefer if you didn’t ‘young lady’ me, Ronald.” You’d been brought up referring to adults with their surname as a sign of respect, like you had with Wayne - a point you hoped the other man had detected - but he deserved no such honour. “But given how condescending you’ve been this whole meal, I don’t suppose I can expect much. I appreciate how hard it must have been to lose your sister, but that is no excuse for your abysmal attitude towards Eddie all night, which I suspect is no different from how it has been every other year.”
Betty began to interject, over your own tirade and the spluttering of her husband, but you held up a hand and, to your amazement, it stopped her instantly. “Are you going to deny it? You dare try and tell me that this treatment is what he deserves, when he’s been nothing but civil and accommodating to you barging into his life once a year to ruin any hope he has of moving forward with his life and his grief?” You turned your attention back to Ronald. “I never had the pleasure of meeting Elizabeth, but I can tell you without a doubt that she would be so proud of the polite, caring, thoughtful young man her son has turned into, without any help from the uncle who is supposed to want the best for him.” Once more, you turned to Wayne, whose eyes were twinkling with thinly veiled amusement. “Again, I don’t mean you, Mr Munson. I imagine you’re largely the reason I’m lucky enough to have someone so wonderful.” You glanced back, cheeks warming, and took in the baffled, amazed look on Eddie’s face. There was something else in it too, buried within those deep doe eyes, clawing its way second by second to the surface.
Jimmy stood up sharply, his chair scraping across the restaurant floor with a piercing screech. “Are you done insulting my parents, or do I have to stop you myself?” He stepped closer, looming over you with a dark scowl, and Eddie flinched. Part of him was genuinely scared of his cousin, but the other part had flinched forward, ready to jump in and protect you without thinking.
You glared up at the man. Despite being several inches taller than you and looking ready for a fight, your shoulders were set firmly, years of cheer training kicking in, and you stared him down like he was a petulant child. By now it wasn’t just the faces around the table watching the battle of words; several nearby tables had lowered their cutlery to eavesdrop, and a couple of waiters were loitering awkwardly nearby. You’d better wrap this up, you thought, but not without getting one last jibe in. “Oh don’t worry, they’re not worth any more of my time. You, on the other hand, I’d hoped would be slightly more bearable than your TV persona makes you seem, but I suspect that’s unfortunately just your personality. Cynthia,” you smiled, genuinely this time, at the other girl, “he’s a jackass, and you deserve to be with someone who treats you like a queen and lets you order a goddamn steak.” Her jaw dropped, but there was a fire in her gaze that told you the relationship wouldn't be making it out of the restaurant alive. “Now if you'll excuse us, I'm going to take my boyfriend home. Mr Munson, I'm very sorry if I've spoiled your evening.”
He gave you a nod and a slight wink. “Not at all.”
You squeezed Eddie’s hand again. “All the same, I'll make it up to you. Dinner next weekend, just the three of us?” With that, you turned tail and led the two of you out of the restaurant.
The cool night air hit you like a brick wall, and you shivered. The rush of adrenaline from your outburst was rapidly wearing off, and you stumbled a little in your heels. Eddie’s hands flew to your hips, steadying you as he leaned you against the back wall of the restaurant, away from prying eyes.
“Holy shit,” he muttered, breathing heavily. “You really are full of surprises.”
“I'm so sorry, did I take it too far?” You were trembling against his touch, your breath coming in short gasps. He reached out to smooth your hair back behind your ear, then slipped his jacket around your shoulders. The enveloping scent of leather, menthol and cologne was intoxicating.
“God no, that was incredible. Kind of hot, to be honest.” He met your gaze, pupils blown wide in the dark. That look you'd seen inside had almost crawled to the surface. It was clearer now, more recognisable: hunger, need… wanting. “Shit, I didn’t mean it like that!” His eyes grew panicked as he pulled away. The look began to retreat, and you realised in that instant that you didn’t want to see it go.
“Eddie…”
“I don’t want you to think I’m- I mean, fuck, we set boundaries, you said nothing that would make it weird, and then I go and-”
“Eddie!” Your tone cut through his spiral, sending it grinding to a halt, and he stared at you in shock. You lowered your voice back down, until it was barely audible outside of the bubble of the two of you. “What if I told you to forget the boundaries?”
It was like you had flicked a switch.
He was on you in seconds, all hands and lips and desperation. His fingers clung to your hips as he surged forwards, holding you so close, like if he didn’t you’d disappear. The kisses he pressed to your mouth were firm but gentle, a man starved and sated all at once. You stumbled with the force of him, a muffled squeak of surprise escaping into his waiting mouth when your back hit the wall.
He drew back immediately, every inch of him shifting away just far enough to give you space but still hovering close, hopeful. “Please tell me that’s what you meant,” he panted.
You drank in the sight of him coming undone with every heartbeat. His eyes were almost entirely eclipsed by his pupils, saturated with the darkness of the night and his own desire, a light flush coloured his cheek, his hair was as unruly as the twitching in his fingers as they longed to rest against you once again. You opened your mouth to respond, but found that no words would come. All you could do was reach out, a hand on his tie as you pulled him back to you.
The kiss he met you with was less frantic this time, but no less passionate. One of his hands came back to your waist the same way yours went to his and into his hair, but the other of his wrapped around your back to hold you tightly to him, and his lips were soft against yours. Every move was attentive, from his grip adjusting to make sure your bodies slotted together comfortably, to his lips trailing across your jaw line to your neck, to his teeth so carefully bruising your pressure points between kisses, to the way he waited until you were practically gasping for him before he returned to your mouth. You inhaled like you were trying to absorb the very essence of him when he finally made his way back to you, breathing in a taste that was all at once bitter and sweet and Eddie. Your tongue flicked instinctively against him, and he parted his lips with a deep groan that drew you in even as it sent warmth pooling in your core. Your hips moved against his, ruffling the satin of your dress.
“Ed- mmph - Eddie,” you moaned against his lips, tasting the sweetness of his name rolling from your tongue to his between kisses.
“Yeah?” he pulled back a touch, pressing your foreheads together as you both gasped in the cool air that rushed into the space between you.
“Take me home?”
His hands drifted away, hovering in anticipation above your sides. “Like, drop you back at yours?” You pressed your hips to his again, running your tongue over your lower lip as your eyes dipped down to where the two of you met. “Oh,” he smirked, hands settling back against your sides as he rolled against you. “Got you.”
You let out a stunned giggle as his hands moved to grip the tops of your thighs beneath your dress as he hoisted you up, your arms wrapping round his shoulders and your legs round his waist. “Eddie!”
He gazed up at you, all smile lines and crinkled eyes, joy and lust and something more permanent. “For the record, big fan of ‘honey’ back there.”
You settled into his grasp as he peppered kisses across your chest. “Then what are you waiting for, honey?” Your voice dropped into a low, teasing tone, which elicited another groan and a nip at the soft skin below your collarbone. You squirmed and his hands shifted upwards, the cool metal of his rings sending shivers up you as his fingertips edged higher, past the boundary of your thighs and into the plush flesh above. “Eddie, please-” The words came out needy, more so than you expected.
Eddie let out a low chuckle as he carried you to the car, his lips not once leaving your body as they roamed back up towards your own.
—
On Monday, the Hellfire Club piled into the cafeteria. Each member was brimming with anticipation; none of them had heard from their fearless leader all weekend or seen him that morning, which meant things had either gone very well or very badly.
After what felt like an eternity, Eddie sloped in and slouched down into his usual seat. A hint of a scowl was painted across his expression that had the rest of the group hesitating.
Dustin finally broke the silence, making sure he was a safe distance from any projectile food first. “Soooo, how was Enzo's? Was the food good?” A nice safe question to begin with, test the waters.
Eddie shrugged. “Wouldn't know. Didn't get to try it.”
A low murmur of disappointment rippled its way through the group. Very badly, the answer to their unspoken question seemed to be.
“That sucks,” Dustin commiserated. Mike, who had been so convinced the plan would be a success, nodded in agreement.
Gareth raised a finger. “Hold on. Did she not show, or did you stand her up?”
“It was a family dinner,” Jeff reasoned. “If she hadn't shown you'd still have gone in, right? So did you-”
Frank was staring across the cafeteria, and slowly the group fell into a hushed quiet as they followed his gaze. “She's walking this way.”
On the other side of the room, the basketball team and a handful of cheerleaders were watching in confusion as you stalked through the tables.
You arrived at the table and stood over Eddie, one eyebrow raised and your lips pursed. “Munson.”
“Y/l/n.”
It felt like the whole group was holding their breath, waiting to see which of you would break first. You so desperately wanted to keep the act up a little longer - you’d been planning how to break the news to his friends the whole drive to school in your brother’s Chevy Malibu, the former swine and his pearl - but the way Eddie was staring up at you was doing a number on your ability to keep a straight face.
“I think you ought to know…” you began as threateningly as you could, “I've got a table for us and Wayne for Saturday night, 6:30.”
Gareth almost choked on the drink he'd been slowly raising to his lips. “I'm sorry, what?”
Eddie sat back with a shit-eating grin, and you placed a kiss on his forehead as you hopped into his lap. “Hi, honey,” you beamed as you settled into place. “Hi guys.”
Your greeting was met by five gobsmacked faces, plus more from the table you'd just left. You'd announced to the jocks that you were done with them, but they never expected you to end up at the table of freaks. Andy rose to his feet in outrage. Eddie raised his hands into devil horns and stuck his tongue out at the guy, giggling when you mirrored his expression. Your ex glowered as he sank back down with no insults to hurl, and you grinned with delight.
“So you didn't-” Jeff frowned.
Eddie held a hand to his chest in faux outrage. His other was firmly around your waist to keep you in place. “What do you take me for?”
“But you said you didn't get to have dinner!” Mike protested.
You laughed, playing idly with the badges on Eddie's vest as you leaned into his side. “That's my fault. I may have chewed his relatives out for their bullshit, so we left before we got time to eat. We ordered pizza instead.”
The gobsmacked faces returned, both at your language and the fact that you, sweet little you, had snapped at his family enough that you'd had to walk away.
“Anyway, what are you doing Friday?” you turned back to the boy.
“Hellfire!” a chorus of voices answered on his behalf.
“Can I come?”
The outburst overlapped so much you could barely tell who was saying what. “Sorry, closed group-” “Club members only!” “We're halfway through the campaign, you'd have to wait-” “We all agreed no partners…”
You leant forward, Eddie’s arms hugging your middle to keep you on his lap. “I'll bring cake.”
A beat. A breath.
“I like cake,” Dustin volunteered tentatively.
Frank narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Chocolate or vanilla?”
“Chocolate, obviously,” Eddie frowned.
“I can bring both.”
Again, everyone spoke at once. “We can do honorary memberships, right?” “Jesus H Christ, homeslice, you're a lucky son of a-” “I'd be okay with changing the club rules if it means weekly cakes.”
Mike waved his hands frantically to get everyone's attention. “Wait, wait, wait. So if you're, like, one of us now, are you still a twirler girl?”
Omg yesss can you write for Enzo where Reader is kind of known-ish for not ever showing interest in guys, always saying no to dates and stuff, but when Hopper pulls up with Enzo at the end of season four Reader is severely attracted to him? Like, super flirty, super straightforward, and everyone is just like ????huh???
Now, who is THAT?
Dmitri Antonov x Reader
A/N: I love this request so much. Hope it's alright.
Everyone in Hawkins knew one thing about her: She did NOT flirt. Not ever, not with anyone. Guys had tried — awkward high school classmates, overeager co-workers, even that one firefighter who had been basically a walking thirst trap — and she had turned all of them down with polite indifference. So when Hopper showed up at her door with a tired-looking stranger from Russia, nobody expected anything.
Hopper opened the front door and closed it after Dmitri and himself before the cold air managed to get too far inside. “Joyce! We’re here!”
Joyce stepped into the hallway, smiling warmly, but then paused when Dmitri stepped in behind Hopper, quiet and cautious. Just behind Joyce, she appeared. She had been helping Joyce unpack the groceries for the dinner, sleeves rolled up, hair messy in a way that was definitely not intentional but very distracting. She froze for a beat, her eyes locking on Dmitri, who froze as well. Something in her brain glitched.
Oh.
Oh.
She had never had a type, not until now. No man had ever interested her enough to progress further than small-talk or platonic relationship, but this stranger who had just stepped inside the house made her brain and body function in a completely new way. He hadn’t even said a word to her yet, but she could tell this man was nothing like the men she had previously met.
Dmitri offered a stiff nod. “Hello,” he said gently, in that deep accented voice that hit her like a punch to the lungs.
Hopper opened his mouth to speak, but no one heard him because—
“Oh,” she breathed out louder than intended, but slow like she had just discovered the concept of attraction for the first time. “Hello, there.” She smiled, but not her usual, polite and mild smile. A slow and warm, flirty-as-hell smile she had literally never used on another human being. She looked at him from head to toe and stepped a little closer than necessary. “So, you must be Enzo.”
Dmitri swallowed, feeling the urge to take a step back just by the look in her eyes but stayed still on his spot. “My name is Dmitri, actually.”
“Mm,” she hummed, smiling. “I like both.”
Hopper could only stare and so did Joyce, both of their jaws dropped. Dmitri, for his part, stood with a posture that suggested he was ready to be interrogated, arrested or tackled, but not flirted with. His confusion deepened when her chin tilted, confidence radiating off her in a way none of them had ever seen before.
She extended her hand. “Nice to meet you, Dmitri.”
He hesitated, then reached for her hand. She didn’t shake it, but held it. Warm, firm, lingering just long enough for him to temporarily forget English.
“I, ah, yes. Is… nice,” he managed to stutter.
Hopper kept watching her as if she had been replaced by an alien. She, who had turned down every date, ignored every flirty remark, rolled her eyes at every man who had tried to charm her, were now looking at Dmitri with unmistakable interest. She stepped again a little closer, while Dmitri stepped back instinctively, bumping into a coat rack.
“Do you always retreat,” she asked lightly, “or am I special?”
Dmitri blinked rapidly. “I, I do not know how to answer that.”
Joyce clapped a hand over her mouth, trying not to laugh at the situation and Dmitri’s awkwardness. Hopper dragged a hand down his face.
She finally released Dmitri’s hand, only to angle herself just slightly into his space again. Hopper and Joyce were trying to process what they had just witnessed. The girl who had never so much as smiled at a man in a suggestive way, was now leaning casually toward Dmitri Antonov, who was standing as rigid as a soldier on parade.
Hopper pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’ve seen a lot in my life,” he muttered to Joyce, “but I swear, this… this is a miracle.”
Joyce nodded solemnly. “I think we just witnessed the impossible.”
Meanwhile, Dmitri’s carefully maintained Russian composure had completely collapsed. He opened his mouth to respond and froze again, caught in the thrill of being openly flirted with for the first time in a very, very long time.
She tilted her head and smiled at him, utterly confident and completely fearless. “You know,” she said, letting her voice drop to a teasing whisper, “I wasn’t expecting you to be so… handsome.”
Dmitri’s cheeks turned red. “I… I am flattered,” he stuttered.
Hopper groaned. “This is worse than any hostage situation.”
Joyce leaned on Hopper’s shoulder, whispering, “He’s so obviously nervous.”
“So,” she continued with an air of casual seduction, “how long are you staying?”
“I, I do not know yet,” he replied, still flustered, still not breathing normally.
“Well,” she said with a dazzling smile, “I hope it’s long enough for us to get to know each other.”
“Hoooly shit,” Hopper muttered.
Joyce elbowed him sharply but didn’t deny it. Dmitri stared at her like she was something dangerous, but intriguing. Very intriguing.
“I… suppose that could be… nice?” he replied cautiously, like any word of his could trigger a bomb.
She stepped back at last, giving Dmitri a playful wink before disappearing into the kitchen again, leaving him looking like he had just survived a natural disaster. Only when she was out of sight did Dmitri exhale, rubbing the back of his neck.
“She…” A pink tint had spread on his cheeks, as he looked helplessly at Hopper. “Is she always like that?”
Hopper snorted. “No. Never, not once. What the hell did you do?”
“I did nothing!” Dmitri protested.
Joyce beamed. “Well, Dmitri… welcome to America.”
—
A little while later, Dmitri approached Hopper in private.
“Jim,” Dmitri whispered.
Hopper sighed. “What’s up?”
Dmitri glanced toward the kitchen where she was talking to Joyce, laughing at something. Every time she laughed, Dmitri’s eyes flicked toward her like he couldn’t help it. He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, flustered red already.
“Jim,” he repeated, lower. “I need… explanation.”
“About what?”
Dmitri pointed vaguely in her direction, whispering like he was discussing nuclear codes. “She talks to me,” he started. “In… way.”
Hopper narrowed his eyes. “A way?”
“Yes.” Dmitri nodded urgently. “Way.” He gestured wildly with his hands, then gave up. “I do not understand this way.”
“What way?”
Dmitri leaned forward, he was dead serious. “The way where my face gets hot.” Hopper let out a laugh before he could stop himself, but Dmitri just scowled. “I am serious, Jim.”
“Yeah, yeah, okay, sorry,” Hopper muttered, rubbing his mouth to hide a grin. “So you’re saying, she flusters you.”
“Yes!” Dmitri hissed. “She says things, looks at me like…” He searched for the word in English, and his jaw tightened in frustration.
Hopper helped. “Like she was interested?”
“Yes,” he said stiffly.
“And that bothers you?” Hopper asked carefully.
Dmitri opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. “I do not know,” he admitted. “She is very… Pretty.”
Hopper tried very hard not to laugh because Dmitri looked like saying that word physically pained him.
“Okay,” Hopper said slowly. “So you don’t dislike it.”
“I did not say that!” Dmitri blurted.
“Then what are you saying?”
Dmitri dragged a hand down his face. “Jim… I have not flirted. Since before prison. Before—“ He stopped, swallowing hard. “Long time.” Hopper softened. Dmitri’s voice lowered even more, almost embarrassed. “And she looks at me like… like she knows what she is doing. Like she wants me to look back, and I do not know if I should.” He avoided Hopper’s eyes. “I do not want to insult her.”
Hopper raised his eyebrows. “So, you want to know if she’s actually flirting.”
“Yes.”
“And what you’re supposed to do.”
Dmitri groaned. “Da.”
Hopper chuckled and clapped him on the shoulder. “Well, keep in mind: she has never flirted with ANY guy in Hawkins, ever. Not one.”
Dmitri’s head snapped up. “No one?”
“Nope.”
Dmitri’s entire expression changed. Surprise first, then something else. Something warmer, something he tried to hide.
Hopper lowered his voice. “So if she’s flirting with you, she means it.”
Dmitri went stock-still, breath caught and eyes wide. “Jim,” he said very quietly. “I do not think anyone has meant something like that to me in long time.”
Hopper softened again. “Hey.” He nudged him. “You don’t have to rush anything. Just, be yourself. You’re a good guy.”
Dmitri let out a long breath, like he had been holding the air in his lungs since he left Russia. Then he looked toward the kitchen where she was smiling at Joyce, but Dmitri wasn’t close enough to hear what they were talking about.
Dmitri’s voice was almost a whisper when he muttered again, “She is very… pretty.”
Hopper laughed quietly and shook his head.
Dmitri furrowed his eyebrows. “What’s funny?”
“It just,” Hopper chuckled. “Dmitri, you survived a Russian prison. The KGB. You fought the monster that ate everyone else in the prison.”
Dmitri straightened. “Yes. That is correct.”
Hopper raised one finger. “And she, SHE makes you nervous. By just existing. By talking. Just by being pretty. She hasn’t even touched you yet. And you, someone who’s faced death and the KGB, are practically melting like a popsicle.”
Dmitri exhaled shakily, hands clenching.
“Antonov, you need to relax. Be yourself. She likes you, alright? You don’t have to fight monster or survive interrogations to impress her. You just… exist around her and somehow that’s terrifying to you.”
Dmitri looked back into her and Joyce’s way.
“The prison, it did not have women there,” Dmitri tried to defend himself. “I am not used to something like this.”
“You’ll learn,” Hopper smirked.
Meanwhile, she found herself in the kitchen with Joyce, helping clean up, but Joyce had clearly been itching to talk.
“So,” Joyce began, drying a plate and giving her a sidelong glance, “you’re… flirting with him.”
She raised an eyebrow, loading the dishwasher casually. “Am I?”
Joyce put the plate down and leaned against the counter, folding her arms. “Let me remind you of some of the guy who’ve been… very much into you over the years.”
Her, curious despite herself, leaned in slightly. “Alright, list them.”
Joyce’s eyes sparkled as she recounted: “There was that firefighter, very handsome, anyone would have died to get his attention. He asked you out and you were like, ‘no thanks but we can be friends’. He was shredded, by the way.” She let out a laugh at the memory, but Joyce continued seriously, “And the one who used to volunteer at the animal shelter, always flexing his… well, you know.” Joyce lowered her voice for dramatic effect. “And don’t even get me started on the cute neighbor with the dog, he practically tried to move in just to see you more.”
Her lips twitched into a small smile. “Okay, yeah, I remember them. And?”
“And now,” Joyce continued, shaking her head slightly in disbelief, “you’re flirting with him. The man Hopper dragged out of a Russian prison. And you just, you just swoop in right at the doorstep?”
She leaned against the counter, folding her arms, and gave Joyce a shrug. “Alright, I guess that sounds a little strange when you put it at way.”
“Is it the accent? Or the brooding ex-prisoner thing?”
She laughed quietly.
“I’ve known you for a long time. I’ve never seen you act like this. Not with anyone," Joyce said, but the expression on her face softened.
She thought about it for a moment, really tried to think, until turned back to Joyce. “Well. Maybe I just like staying unpredictable.”
—
A while later, the room had settled into a tense sort of silence, Dmitri still recovering from the last onslaught of her unexpected charm. Hopper and Joyce were pretending to look busy, badly, while absolutely eavesdropping. She tapped her fingers against the table, studying Dmitri like she was weighing a choice. Then, with her usual lack of hesitation, she stepped right into his personal space.
“Dmitri,” she called calmly.
“Yes?” He straightened instantly, as if she had barked a military order.
She held his gaze, steady and unflinching. “Do you have a woman in your life?”
Hopper choked on absolutely nothing. Joyce slapped a hand over her mouth.
Dmitri, for his part, went absolutely rigid. “I… what?”
She arched a brow. “It’s a simple question.”
“I… I do not… No. No woman.” He cleared his throat violently. “I mean, I am not with… no.” Every sentence ended in defeat.
She smiled, satisfied, almost triumphant. “Good.”
Dmitri blinked rapidly, almost offended. “Good?” he echoed, voice unintentionally soft.
She nodded, leaning her hip against the table like she had all the time in the world. “Yes. Good.” Then, without mercy, “I’d hate to think I was wasting my time.”
Dmitri’s mouth opened and closed twice like he was trying to reboot. “Wasting… your time?” His accent thickened noticeably.
"Mhm," she hummed, looking very pleased at herself.
Joyce whispered to Hopper, “Is she interrogating him or flirting with him?”
“I don’t know. Both?” Hopper whispered back. “God help the man.”
Dmitri had spent at least half an hour practicing words in his head. How did people flirt with each other these days? She was younger than him, quite a lot if he had to estimate, so were there differences to flirting compared to young and old? Was American flirting different than Russian? He couldn’t steal her lines she had used on him.
You look nice.
Your hair is pretty.
Simple. Not dramatic. Not too forward. American flirting, easy.
Except it wasn’t. Because when she looked at him now, really looked directly into his eyes, Dmitri’s brain simply stopped working. She had teased him, brilliantly and effortlessly. Dmitri decided now was the moment to flirt back. Just tell her what you have practiced, he thought. Compliment her hair, simple. Say the line. He opened his mouth, and the line instantly evaporated.
“You…” he started, then paused, searching for anything in the English language. “You are… having hair today.”
She lifted her brows, a little taken aback. “What?”
Dmitri froze. Hopper, from the other side of the room, choked on his coffee. Joyce whispered, “Oh no.”
But Dmitri forced himself to continue, refusing to abort the mission. “It is…” He gestured awkwardly around her hair. “You hair is being very… there.”
She stared. Confused, amused and concerned all at once.
He tried again, starting to panic. “It is nice. I am saying it is nice hair.”
Joyce covered her mouth. Hopper muttered, “Jesus Christ, man.”
She, however, began to grin, delighted and eyes sparkling. “My hair is… being very there, huh?”
Dmitri swallowed. “Da.”
She stepped closer. “You trying to flirt with me, Dmitri Antonov?”
He went still, very still. His voice dropped half an octave. “Maybe.”
She took a slow sip of her coffee, eyes locked on him, savoring every fraction of his fluster. “Well,” she murmured, “you can keep practicing on me.” She leaned in just a little. “And next time, maybe try telling me what you really noticed.”
Dmitri swallowed hard. “What I… really noticed?”
She smiled like she already knew his answer. “Yes.”
He stared at her, heart thundering, Hopper mouthing say something, Joyce mouthing not the hair again. And then, somehow, Dmitri found the courage Hopper swore he had:
“You look…” he said, sincerity overtaking panic, “beautiful.”
She was the one to freeze this time. Her lips parted, her breath caught and her cheeks flushed.
Dmitri instantly panicked again. “I mean, good. Not beautiful. Well, yes, beautiful, but not—“
She laughed, warm and touched, and stepped even closer.
“Dmitri,” she murmured, “stop while you’re adorably ahead.”
His cheeks went pink.
Hopper muttered, “Dear God, it actually worked.”
Joyce elbowed him. “Shh, let him have this.”
“Maybe later… you tell me how to flirt more in American,” Dmitri suggested.
She grinned slowly. “Gladly.”
Dmitri Antonov, for the first time being in America, realized that flirting might actually be survivable.
—
Dmitri was minding his own business, sitting at the kitchen table, quietly drinking tea, doing absolutely nothing wrong, when he felt a heavy hand slap on his shoulder. He almost jumped out of his skin. Hopper stood behind him, looking like a man who had rehearsed a speech in the mirror and hated every second of it.
“Walk with me.”
Dmitri froze. “Why?”
Hopper narrowed his eyes. “Because I said so.”
Dmitri stood immediately. Nobody would dare to disobey Jim Hopper when he used that tone. Hopper lead him out to the driveway. Hands in pockets, jaw tight, silence heavy as a brick. Dmitri swallowed, feeling like he was suddenly in trouble.
“You are… angry?” he asked carefully.
“No,” Hopper denied, but the tone of his voice very much meant: Yes. Very. Dmitri straightened, ready for interrogation. Hopper sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose and muttered: “Jesus, I hate this part.”
“What part?”
“The part where I have to give you the ‘talk’.”
Dmitri tensed so hard he could snap.
“Oh god,” Hopper muttered, kicking a pebble. “Okay. Look.” He turned to Dmitri, serious and solid as a wall. “I have known her for almost ten years.” Dmitri nodded respectfully. “She’s family. Basically a little sister.” Another nod. “And if you,“ Hopper pointed a thick finger at him, “hurt her, I swear to God, I will put your ass on the first plane straight back to Russia.”
Dmitri stiffened and his eyes widened. He was very sure Hopper could make good on that threat.
“I understand,” he said quietly. “I would never hurt her.”
Hopper grunted. “Yeah? Well, you seem like a good guy. Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
Hopper shrugged. “You were in a Russian prison when I met you. Hard to ignore.” Dmitri winced. Fair. Hopper stepped closer, voice low and honest. “She’s been through a lot. More than most people her age ever should, and she hasn’t… really dated. Not seriously. So if she’s looking at you like that and you’re looking back? Then this isn’t something casual. Understand?”
Dmitri nodded once, firmly. “Yes.”
Hopper stared at him for a moment, as if weighing him, measuring his soul. Dmitri kept steady, until finally Hopper sighed.
“Good. Because she’s important to me, and if you treat her right, I won’t… you know…”
“Kick me back to Russia?” Dmitri offered.
Hopper smirked. “Exactly.” There was a long pause. “Alright, I’m done threatening you. Let’s go back inside.”
Dmitri exhaled, relieved. Then Hopper clapped his enormous hand on Dmitri’s back so hard he stumbled.
“And Antonov?” Hopper added.
“Yes?”
“I’ll be watching.”
Dmitri nodded quickly. “Yes. I know.”
—
For a moment, the room was quiet. Just Dmitri standing there trying to remember how lungs functioned, her watching him with that warm, wicked smile, and Hopper and Joyce pretending to reorganize papers while obviously eavesdropping. She turned back to her notes, humming softly, clearly pleased with the direction things had gone. Dmitri swallowed hard. His heart was pounding, but beneath the nerves he felt something else, something steady, something brave.
She liked it. She liked me.
He felt the courage crackle again, the same reckless surge that had pushed him to flirt back. Before he could think better of it, before caution could reclaim him, he stepped closer and called for her name, voice low and careful.
She looked up, eyebrows lifting. “Yes?”
Dmitri hesitated. Every instinct from a lifetime of discipline and restraint screamed at him to stay silent, to be safe, to avoid vulnerability. But then she smiled at him, soft and hopeful, and suddenly he found his words.
“I wish to ask you something,” he began, posture straight, shoulders squared like he was delivering a military report.
Her eyes sparkled with interest. “Go on.”
Dmitri inhaled through his nose, slow and steady. “Would you…” He paused, recalibrating. “…like to have dinner with me?”
She froze. Joyce dropped a pen. Hopper looked like he’d been slapped by God.
“What?” she asked, shocked but in the best way. “Dinner? With you?”
“Yes,” Dmitri confirmed, forcing himself not to flinch. “Even though you have caused me more stress tonight than KGB or anything I experienced in Russia, I would like to take you to a restaurant or somewhere nice. I thought… it might be something you would enjoy.”
A beat. Then another. She approached him slowly, cautiously, like she was afraid he might disappear if she moved too fast.
“Dmitri,” she said softly, “are you really asking me out?”
He met her gaze with surprising steadiness. “Yes.”
Her expression melted into something warm, touched and genuinely flattered.
“You,” she whispered, laying a hand gently on his chest, “are full of surprises.”
This time, Dmitri didn’t freeze. He placed his hand carefully over hers, fingers brushing lightly, his voice steady as he said: “I am trying to surprise you in good ways.”
Her smile grew brighter. “You are.”
“So…?” Dmitri asked, a hint of fear slipping into his tone. “Do you accept?”
She didn’t answer with words. She rose onto her toes, leaned in and pressed a soft, lingering kiss to his cheek, just beside the corner of his mouth, making Dmitri stop breathing entirely.
When she pulled back, she whispered, “Yes. I’d love to go to dinner with you.”
Dmitri stood frozen, hand on his cheek like he couldn’t believe what had happened. “You said yes,” he murmured.
“I did,” she teased. “And Dmitri?”
“Yes?”
“You can surprise me like that anytime.”
Dmitri’s blush deepened, but a small, proud smile tugged at his lips. He’d done it. He’d asked her. And she’d said yes.
SUMMARY: you surprise jim with a special present for christmas.
CW: fluff, established relationship
twelve days of ficmas masterlist | masterlist | fic requests are OPEN
"God dammit!" Jim yelled in frustration, looking back at the skipping record while still holding his hands firm to your waist.
You smile at him, shaking your head adoringly at him - he was always so cute when he freaked out about his music.
Jim releases your waist to trudge over to the record player, the disc continuing to skip and scratch under the weight of the needle. With a smack of his hand to the side, the turntable resumes - Otis Redding's voice flowing once more throughout the cozy cabin.
He groans, walking over to you and pressing a kiss to your hairline.
"Piece of shit," he sighs, taking your hips in his large hands once more before you both continue dancing, as if nothing ever happened.
You press a kiss to his stubbled cheek, whispering I Love You's into his neck as you both continue to wrap yourselves in one another.
It would be a rather large surprise to most people that knew him, but Jim Hopper was incredibly passionate about his music collection. Most of his vinyl records had been passed down from his mother's side of the family, but over the years he's added music from his youth and more modern music to keep up with Jane.
Whether he was relaxing out on the porch smoking a cigarette, napping on the couch wrapped up in some large wool cardigan or simply holding you in his arms on cold nights like these - Jim always had the turntable on.
The one constant, though, in the last year and a half that the two of you had been dating, was just how broken and unreliable that record player was.
Jim would always huff about it, making audible plans to fix it up in his spare time - time with which he never had. Anytime that you had offerred to get it repaired, he would always wave you off, insisting that what he had was good enough. You'd realized just how much Jim didn't like to make a fuss. He hated buying new things or getting gifts - even when it was desperately called for.
With Christmas right around the corner, you knew the one gift that would truly make him speechless would be a new system for his music. You'd been saving up all year for the complete works - a new record player, stereo speakers, an entertainment stand and even a couple of new records he hadn't bought yet that had been on his list to find.
He really just believed you'd be getting him a new pair of work boots, insisting that whatever extra money you both had should go towards a new car for you. And you did agree with him to a point, especially after the countless times he had to help you when it stranded you on the side of the road - but you knew a few extra bucks towards this gift for him was something you were never going to budge on.
The holiday came quickly enough; the morning was spent with you, Jim and Jane in the living room - opening up gifts, eating cookies and sipping hot chocolate. After she had begged hard enough, Jim relented into dropping her off at Mike's so she could spend Christmas dinner with her boyfriend and his family.
While he was out, you'd taken the opportunity to set up your gift for him. After clearing the living room of all shredded paper and empty boxes, you'd put a new holiday record on and waited for him by the fireplace, eager and excited to see his reaction.
It took about another ten minutes until you heard the familiar sound of his boots on the patio. When he'd came in, brushing snow off of his jacket, he stopped suddenly, hearing crisp music - way crisper than the piece of junk he was used to hearing.
His eyes grew wide, looking between you and the new set up. His jaw dropped, a huge grin forming on his face. He only had one boot off before he ran up to you, engulfing you in a huge hug.
"What is this?" he smiled, releasing you and admiring the setup in the corner of the cabin. "Oh baby, this is amazing."
You beamed at his side, pressing a kiss to his cheek, "You like it?"
"Like it?" he shouted with a chuckle. "Baby, I love it!"
He looked down at you with softer eyes and a shake of his head, "But, I really wish you didn't spend all this money on me."
"Jim, shut up," you shook your head, grabbing his shoulders. "All I wanted was to see that smile on your face. And that, alone, is worth all the money in the world."
His cheeks grew ruddy, cupping your cheek with a cold hand before pressing his lips to yours gently. You smile against his mouth, wrapping your arms around his shoulders before murmuring, "Merry Christmas, baby."
His lips trail down to your neck before whispering in your ear, "I love you."
"I love you, too," you smile, peppering kisses across his cheek. "You gonna dance with me, or what?"
He chuckles, lifting you off the floor in a spin, "Always."
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