hi i'm kirsten (35/they/queer) and i'm a certified morosexual. i guess i write about turtles now??? wack background and header by @skulldustart icon by @yorshie
AO3 ~~~ writing ~~~ theories and headcanons
bayverse mating season
18+ only please
got asked about this, so: if you see any of my posts and it inspires you to add to it, please do so! i always love to see other people’s thoughts!
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REQUESTS: closed
requests in queue: 9
please read this before you ask!
Request Rules:
feral about the turtles so that's what i'll write- specifically bayverse and rise but will almost certainly add more as i get farther into turtle hell
please specify if you have a preference for iteration or writing vs. headcanons, otherwise i will pick one
i will write: reader x turtle (f!reader or gn!reader), fluff, a little smut, headcanons and theories... pretty much anything that's not on the no-no list
the no-no list: tcest, underage/noncon, self harm, crossovers, unhappy endings
angst: i will write angst, but i won't write heavy angst. if you're not sure, go ahead and send it in and i'll let you know if it's something i'll write or not.
i'm always available to talk!
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Current Projects:
I've Got Sunshine on a Cloudy Day: Rise Mikey: AO3: Chapter 16
Spotlight: Rise Leo wants your attention
Upcoming Projects:
Cowboy AU: Rise Leo: Working Title: The Future is Comin’ On
Some Dakota softness because I'm still reeling and i needed!!!!! some visual fluff!!!!!!!!!!!!
fun fact!!! Its actually illegal for any harm to come to her, god told me so himself. This is a 100% true fact and im not scared at all! (Im a little scared)
@desceros
Vunerable Teenage girl character: exists
me: I will protect you with my life
to raise money, Wikipedia should do that thing CNN did where they sold shirts with headlines on them. I would kill for a shirt that had the article title and Wikipedia layout for Homosexuality in Medieval Europe
we, in a manner akin to that of a man who once was, in Rome, an orator of significant skill, who was then for his elegance of speech renowned and now for his elaborate structure of sentences cursed by generations of scholars of Latin, the language which he spoke and we now study, Cicero, write, rather than by any efficiency, functionality, or ease of legibility have our words, our honors, the breaths of our hearts, be besmirched.
Not many jnſtances of Punctuation - but for many Daſhes – et words Capitaliz’d for emphavſis, but not logicaly - ſpeeling and word Endings varied Gratelie - and the long S - ſ - vſed in at the ſtart and Centre of wordes - & the short “s” vſed only at the end - as with the U and V, and the I and J - but v and j only at the ſtart of wordes (we diſtinguishe not between Vouels and Conſonants, only decoratiue Letteres). Ye letter “y” being in lookes cloſe to an Olde letter “þ” which is vſed as “th” - Y may be vſed in the place of TH - but only ſparingly - and ſtill Pronounc’d the ſame as TH. Long and rambling ſentences - ſeeminglie without end - a paragraph can conſiſt of One whole ſentence, and ſhort ſentences are rare – we ſcribe like hiſtorical Modern English – and other european Languages.
Wanted to do something short, cute, and fluffy for Halloween since it's my favorite so I branched out and went with Michelangelo! The little cinnamon roll has been bouncing around in my head for way too long. Keep reading under the cut or HERE on my AO3.
You were starting to get worried. You had never seen Mikey so quiet, focused, and still before. He wouldn’t let you see what he had been working on, his tongue sticking out of his mouth in concentration as he carved. Whatever his jack-o-lantern design was, he was taking it seriously. You looked at your own pumpkin and smiled at the cute outline of the ghost you had carved. It was adorable.
Plucking up your courage you decided to finally ask what was on the ball of energy’s mind.
“Mikey,” you whispered trying not to spook him and failing as he jumped and made eye contact. “You OK?”
“Oh…uh, yeah…why?” He asked suddenly suspicious and twisting his pumpkin even closer to his chest.
“You haven’t said a word in almost twenty minutes and with the way you’re forehead has been puckered you’re going to have a chasm between your eyes if you keep it up,” you giggled.
“I’m almost done,” he said quickly…too quickly. “It’s something I’ve been wanting to show you for a while and I just want to get it right.”
“If you say so,” you said, smile fading when he again took up focusing on his pumpkin instead of talking to you.
Tonight was supposed to be a chance for the two of you to finally get some one on one time. Mikey was your best friend and the turtle you spent the most time with. In truth you wanted to spend all of your time with him. He had been in your life since saving you from a group of thugs on your late night walk home from work almost five years ago, literally dropping in and stopping them in their tracks. Call it wonder or shock you hadn’t reacted like most humans they saved and he had stuck around to make sure you were OK until detective Jones and several other officers had shown up. His brothers had shown up shortly after and the rest was history.
You still got a chuckle from the look of confusion on Leo’s face when he had turned up to find you laughing on a nearby stoop at his brother’s impressions. Mikey was always trying to make you smile or laugh or feel carefree. It was one of the reasons why he was so easy to love. He truly just wanted to see you happy. And when Mikey was happy it was like no force on earth could dare bring sadness close. You had long ago admitted to yourself that he held your heart, but you never said a word for fear that it would cost you your dearest friend.
Staring across the table you observed the slope of his cheeks, the way his nose scrunched up when he was concentrating, the way he carefully held the carving tools after you had so detrimentally bent yours with your carelessness. No matter what his brothers said, Mikey showed care when it mattered. You could feel your cheeks flush with color the longer you stared. He really was a wonder to behold and you loved every minute you spent with him.
Seeing him pull his tongue back in his mouth and sit back observing his work you realized he must finally be finished. But then a curious thing happened, you watched his face morph from concentration to nervousness. What was he thinking now?
“So before I turn this around I should probably explain first,” he started. You gave him your full attention. “I love when we get to spend time together, and when I asked you to carve pumpkins with me tonight I didn’t mean it as like…a friend thing…I meant it as…a date…thing.”
Here he paused and you felt your heart ramp up it’s beats per minute. Was he…was he finally making a move? Could it be that your feelings were returned??!! Whispering your name he finally made eye contact and turned his pumpkin around. The words “Will you be my boo?” were carved into the front.
Smiling you looked down at your own carving of a ghost and decided to answer him the same way. You took the little carving knife and began to quickly carve out your answer. Finishing you looked back at him to see that he was clearly nervous and panicked. You turned it around and watched his face bloom with a smile as he saw the word YES carved right beside your ghost. Reaching across the table he grasped your hand and held it tight.
When his brothers came home to find the two of you cuddled under a blanket on the couch whispering with the lights turned out and your pumpkins glowing, you heard Raph’s over the top approval of your decision.
“It’s about time!”
Happy Halloween
@thelaundrybitch @thepinkpanther83 (thanks for encouraging me to branch out to the other turtles) @stellaspectral @sophiacloud28 @adebauchedsloth @milykins (because I know you enjoy Mikey 🧡)
seeing like. gavin newsom tweet about being "against political violence" really lays bare how that means fucking nothing, huh. like, yeah, i do think it is generally bad, actually, when people get shot in public, and the fact that it's happening with politicians and pundits (not just this but the minnesota democrats who were murdered a few weeks back) is a bad sign for how things are going. but how are you going to come out as a usamerican politician against "political violence." political violence is this country's number one export. political violence is sending ICE into cities in the style of a civil war. political violence is manufacturing consent for murdering trans people in bathrooms. political violence is murdering immigrants by detaining them in concentration camps or sending them to countries they have never been and places they will die. political violence is funding the gazan genocide so the united states can have an oil outpost in the middle east. and the moment you speak out is when when the violently racist misogynistic anti-vaxx climate-change-denying neomccarthyism motherfucker gets a taste of the life or death stakes of all the shit he "debates" about? give me a break
Eddie Munson should have a senior photo. It's his third try, after all. Someone should have at least taken a half-assed photo of him in the hallway, or the cafeteria or, ideally, during whatever it is the Hellfire Club does one of those years. He doesn't. TW: some discussion of a prior eating disorder, discussion of previous abusive relationship, fluff but you're gonna earn it
Day One
“You can fit this into half as many pages,” you tell Candace, doing your best to hide the bored irritation in your voice. You'd really only listened to about a third of her impassioned defense of the basketball team and cheer squad both respectively having roughly three times the yearbook pages devoted to them as any of the rest of the school’s extracurricular organizations, too busy cycling through the list of seniors without pictures or quotes that you would need to hunt down this week so they could at least have something in their own yearbook. You already knew what it came down to anyway. “You've already got way more pages than anyone else, and we're running out of space.”
Candace scoffs, clearly miffed that you haven't acknowledged the clear supremacy of the popular crowd to give them favoritism. “Nobody even cares about those stupid clubs.” Her voice comes out almost as obnoxious as the eye roll she gives as she says it.
“They matter to the kids who are in them - kids who are also buying these yearbooks. It's their senior yearbook, too, you know. In fact, we'd probably sell more of them and have better funding to get the embossed covers like you wanted if we actually include everyone. Look at this,” you flip through the copy you have written, looking for an example. Finding one, you point to the page in question. “Like these guys. I mean, hell, they barely even have a sentence written about them. There's not even a picture. It's just a list of names of people who are in it. It doesn't even say what the club is about. Would you buy a yearbook, if this was all you got in the whole thing?”
Candace grumbles something derogatory in reply, the words ‘bunch of freaks’ coming out of a mouth far too pretty to be so mean. You don't really care. This was why Mrs. Rychnovsky had sought you out, anyway - the only student she knew would give the less popular groups their proper dues and actually write something to make sure they were included. It's not like the lack of consideration for others is a surprise.
Something about a few of the names on that list stick in your mind, though, and you realize after racking your brain for a moment that they're also on the list of people who don't yet have photos for the yearbook. Candace is still blustering about why the cheerleading squad needs more pages and how nobody wants to read about a bunch of freaks anyway, and you've had about enough. There's a million better things for you to do, including the idea you've just had. “Candace, cut the content down to under two pages or I will simply cut it off where you run out of room on the second page,” you declare as you stand, bringing the page you'd been staring at with you as you walk to the shelves in the back of the room to find the previous yearbooks - though something tells you that you won't find what you're looking for.
Eddie Munson should have a senior photo. It's his third try, after all. Someone should have at least taken a half-assed photo of him in the hallway, or the cafeteria or, ideally, during whatever it is the Hellfire Club does one of those years.
He doesn't.
You have to go all the way back to the yearbook for his freshman year to find a single photo of him in the entirety of the yearbook, and it's only because he was in Mr. Clarke’s last shop class before he retired. You can barely even tell it's Eddie, only realizing he's even in the photo at all because he's listed in the caption. He's in the background, half turned away from the camera, working on something that's too blurry to make out. His hair is shorter than you've ever seen it. The Hellfire Club doesn't really fare much better, mostly looking about the same as the copy in your hand does right now - just a list of names. Some years there's a picture of the club’s logo, if there's a picture at all. They're not even mentioned at all in last year's yearbook, even though you knew for a fact that they should have been, another blurb about how the basketball team is just so great where the page containing Hellfire Club should be.
‘Fuck that’, you think to yourself. It's the senior yearbook, not the basketball team yearbook, and people like Eddie Munson deserve to have more than just their name in a list crammed in beneath yet another picture of Jason Carver making a basket, barely even enough to be considered an afterthought. Especially this year. His last year, his last chance to have someone acknowledge his name and that he was here. Snapping the old yearbook shut, you slide it back into its spot on the shelf, your mind already made up. This year, the Hellfire Club is getting its full page allotment. Even if you have to do the whole damn thing yourself. Two entire pages, with photographs, whether Candace and the others like it or not.
They were probably going to regret letting you be this year's editor.
No longer paying any attention at all to Candace's incessant complaints that she's now attempting to lob at the teacher, you check out a camera from the storage room and grab your notebook, shoving it in your bag. Mrs. Rychnovsky looks up at you, pulling herself out of the politely blank stare she'd put on to suffer through the cheerleader’s whining. “Can I get a hall pass? There's some seniors who still need photos taken. I was going to go grab them and get a few of them done in the hall while it's quiet.”
She writes you a hall pass remarkably easily, not even asking which seniors or what classes you needed to pull them from. Teachers were often like that with you. You kept your head down, did your schoolwork, didn't cause troublesome disruptions, so they were typically pretty willing to give you what you wanted. It's probably a good thing you only use this power for good. Mostly. Sometimes. So what if you used it to go to the record store sometimes? A little truancy wouldn't kill you. Your mom might, though, if she ever found out.
The office administrator was a little more skeptical when you asked her what class Eddie Munson had this period, but your hall pass and the camera with the ‘property of Hawkins High’ sticker on it seemed to assuage her concerns and she directed you to first period Algebra. Expecting either more or less resistance from Mr. Thompson based on whether he wanted to punish Eddie by keeping him in class or if he wanted him gone, you slip into the room quietly.
There's a moment in which you wonder if he's skipping, or if maybe you're in the wrong classroom, before you spot his signature curly brown hair and denim battle vest. It's probably the quietest you've ever seen Eddie Munson. He's just…sitting there, reading a book. You've never seen him so undisruptive.
A blush colors your cheeks when you look at Mr. Thompson and realize that he's staring at you questioningly, waiting for a response to whatever he’d said to you while you were busy staring at the resident metalhead. Had Eddie Munson always been that pretty? You wouldn’t know, because there’s no prior pictures of him to reference and compare and contrast. “Um, sorry,” shaking your head, you collect yourself, putting on your best ‘professional journalist’ face. “I'm looking for Eddie Munson?” Holding up the camera and your interview notebook to lend yourself some credibility, you look expectantly at the teacher. “I need to borrow him for a little bit. For the yearbook.”
There's less of a reaction than you'd expected. Usually, teachers were frustrated at the very mention of Eddie's name. But there's no annoyance as Mr. Thompson turns his head to where Eddie is still seated, lost in his book and scribbling something down in a notebook beside him. “Munson,” the teacher calls out, gesturing to you with his head.
Eddie looks up, a little miffed that he's been interrupted in his task while he was actually being good. Thompson usually left him alone, and he had been taking advantage of that to really delve into this idea he'd had for his next campaign. But then he sees you, camera and notebook in hand, and his irritation turns to confusion. What could you possibly want from him? He's seen you talking to the cheerleaders and the jocks at lunch. Is this the lead-up to some kind of prank? Are you taking him to a secondary location just so you can get a picture while the jocks beat him senseless? That seems…unlikely, actually. Well, not the prank - he's actually surprised the jocks on the yearbook committee haven't thought of that yet. They'd probably give it a full page feature to memorialize it. You wouldn't do something like that, though. He wasn't sure why he was so certain of that fact, but he'd always been keyed into people, always been a good judge of character. Whatever your intentions were, they weren't that. “Alright, I'll bite,” he mutters to himself before setting down his book and heading to the front of the class where you were waiting, following you warily into the hall. “Uh, what's up?”
You almost make a ‘need your mugshot’ joke, falling back on the usual tricks to try and put him at ease, but something tells you that he might not think you're joking and you snap your mouth shut before the words can come out. You're trying to make sure he's included, the last thing you want is to hurt his feelings in the process. Alas, the silence has gone on too long and now it's awkward. “I need your picture for the yearbook.”
Visibly, this confuses Eddie further. “Why?”
“Because there isn't a picture of you, and you're graduating.” You explain simply.
“I didn't think I was important enough to take up space. Gotta make sure you get in a photo of Carver from every single game, right? I’d hate to take away from all of the basketball team’s accolades.” Eddie's voice is sarcastic as he eyes you with skepticism and maybe a hint of curiosity.
“They get two pages. Just like everybody else.” Your reply is firm and simple.
“Good luck with that, princess,” Eddie snorts. “The rest of your little committee will never settle for that.”
“Well, they aren't the editor. I am,” you answer him. “So they get two pages, and you,” holding up the camera, you give him a pointed look, “are getting a senior photo.”
Eddie is still a little skeptical, but you manage to wrangle him into letting you take a photo. “Uh, what pose do you want me in?” He asks a little awkwardly, trying out a pose and looking a bit like a wet cardboard cutout of his usual self.
“Whatever you want,” you tell him lightly. This was your first mistake.
You shouldn't be surprised when he flips the bird with both hands, a nearly feral glint in his eyes as he grins wide. Your teachers would tell you not to encourage this behavior, but you're pretty sure that Eddie Munson is well past the point of reinforcement - positive or otherwise - so you take the picture. It's a good picture of him, even if it's unusable. “You know I can't use that,” you admonish him in a deadpan, hiding your amusement at his antics surprisingly well.
“Alright, alright,” he responds, the mischief in his voice making you instantly wary. He strikes a surprisingly professional looking pose, and you just know he's about to pull some more bullshit. Sure enough, just before you click the shutter, he throws his hands up beside his face to make devil horns, his tongue sticking out and his eyes wide and crazed. Despite the demon-inspired face, his joy is palpable. You are going to get so much shit for wasting school resources on unprintable photos of Eddie Munson, but you kind of don't actually care. The shutter snaps two or three times while he's busy making weird little imp sounds, earning a small laugh from you despite your best effort. “I don't know if I can slip that one past the advisor.”
“Yeah, fine.” Eddie agrees surprisingly easily now that you've let him have his fun. This picture is definitely teacher-approved, certainly a better technical portrait of him, though it doesn't quite feel like a representation of him as much as the others had. You hope you can convince Mrs. Rychnovsky to let you use the devil one. Eddie deserves to be seen.
“Okay, on to the senior quote. Anything you want to say?” Swapping the camera for your interview notebook and a pen, you look at him expectantly.
“Uhhh, I don't know, ‘fuck you, Higgins, and fuck this place’?” He offers unhelpfully with a shrug.
“Pretty sure they won't let me print that,” you reply with dry humor. What could you print, though, that would really encapsulate Eddie Munson? “What's your favorite song lyric?” You ask him after a moment of consideration, thinking up everything you know about him to try and find something that might actually speak to him. He eyes you suspiciously, like the question is a trap but he hasn't quite figured out what the angle is yet, how you'll use this information to mock him.
He waves dismissively at you. “Nah, sweetheart. Just put in whatever lame generic shit you usually use. It's not like I care.” His voice is cautious, careful not to give you anything you could use against him.
Chewing your lip, you study him for a moment. He's not going to give you anything else, and ‘generic’ definitely doesn't suit Eddie Munson, so you'll just have to figure something out on your own. “I'll find something that suits you.”
The nonchalance with which he shrugs again is meticulously crafted to hide the way your seemingly genuine consideration made him feel. It was too good to be true. Pretty girls like you wanted one thing from Eddie Munson: a good time. Whether that was in the form of drugs, a quick fuck, or a laugh at his expense, girls like you didn't really concern yourselves with whether or not Eddie Munson was also having a good time when you took what you wanted from him. What did it matter to you if his feelings got hurt, as long as you got a laugh out of it? Or whatever else it was you were looking for.
In truth, your persistent will to ensure he was actually included- represented, even - in this, his last ever senior yearbook, had shaken something loose inside him. Your determination to make sure that you could use the picture you took and not just settling for something you know won't get printed is an anomaly - even more so when paired with the fact that you’re seemingly actually invested in finding a quote that encapsulates him. Most people preferred to pretend he didn't even exist at all, and the yearbook committee typically tried to actively write him out of their history like he was some kind of stain to be removed. They definitely didn’t try to accurately represent him in their precious book of highschool memories. It's a little thing, the fact that you thought to ask him for a quote that would actually mean something to him, but it’s more than he'd gotten from anyone outside of his small circle in a very long time. Part of him is still convinced it's some sort of trick, a prank to make him think you actually wanted to commemorate his existence at this shitty school. A joke played on the freak to make him think a pretty girl had even a passing interest in the real him.
It’s going to crush him when the punchline finally lands, he's sure of it. He always had been too soft for his own good, never did learn how to keep his too-big heart from getting wounded.
“Hey, um, you wouldn't happen to know what class Gareth Emerson has this period, would you?” You ask, shoving your notebook back into your bag, the camera dangling around your neck. “He doesn't have a picture either, and I don't really want to use his sophomore photo from last year. He kind of looks like a dork. I didn't even recognize him.”
So it's not just Eddie. You're determined to make sure all of his little band of outcasts gets a fair shot at representation this year, are you? If this is some kind of prank, it's an awful lot of work for very minimal payoff. What's your angle? “Uh, yeah, I think he's got Chemistry.”
Nodding, you make a mental note of how much time you have left this period and whether you'll be able to grab Gareth before the bell rings. Deciding to at least see if you can catch him in the hallway between periods, you ask Eddie one more series of questions before releasing him back to Algebra. “You're in charge of Hellfire Club, right? You're like the president or something?”
Eddie fights off the desire to correct you, certain you don't actually care about his nerd shit. “Uh, yeah. Why?”
Wiggling the camera in your hand a little as explanation, you look at him expectantly. “I'm taking over the piece on you guys this year. Would it be okay if I sat in on one of your meetings? Maybe ask a few questions, take some photos? I won't be too disruptive, I promise. I can save my questions for the end or something.”
“Yeah, sure, I guess. We've got a big session this Friday, but you'll probably be too busy covering the championship game. Gotta get that perfect shot of the game-winning basket. Can't miss a chance to stroke Carver's ego, right?” His voice drips with sarcasm as he mentions the school’s general obsession with Jason. “Next session won’t be until after spring break.” His little freshman sheepies all have driver’s ed three days a week after school for the next four weeks, making Fridays out of the question. The yearbook will have to be finalized and sent to print before spring break. He shrugs nonchalantly, looking away but still watching you out of the corner of his eye. What will you choose? Forgo the championship game, or do the bare minimum on Hellfire Club like everyone else has for the past five years?
You're starting to think that maybe shrugging might actually be his tell, because this is definitely some kind of test. “I’d rather not stroke anything of Carver’s, personally,” you reply before you’ve really even thought it through. Luckily for you, Eddie barks out a laugh despite his attempts at nonchalance. “Where do you usually meet?”
“Drama room. We usually meet at six, but I'll have the guys show up at five so you can get some basic information before we start.” He's still a little wary, but if you're actually going to miss the championship game to watch a bunch of outcasts play a tabletop game, then maybe you do actually care. It'll hurt if you don't show up, so he refuses to get his hopes up. None of this should be that big of a deal to him anyway. He plans on leaving Hawkins High in the dust the second he gets that diploma, and never looking back. He didn’t even order a yearbook. He’ll probably never see you again after graduation. You’ll probably go off to bigger and better things and never think of him again. It doesn’t matter.
Jotting down the time and place in your interview notebook and circling it twice, you release Eddie back to class and go on your way. You do find Gareth before the bell rings, and you're glad he's a junior so you don't have to pry a quote out of him. Trying to take a half-decent photo of Gareth Emerson feels like trying to give a cat a bath. If he's not looking irritated and grumpy, he's looking at you with dead serial killer eyes. You know he smiles - you've seen it. Something about pointing a camera at him just gives him a complex. After a while, you manage to get him talking about being a drummer. It's as he's telling you about the band he plays in with Eddie, Corroded Coffin, that you manage to snap a candid shot of him leaning against the wall. He's grinning, and he looks relaxed, and that's good enough for you. You let him talk some more about their band and the gigs they play on Tuesday nights at the Hideout even though you already have what you need. He's nice when you get to know him, in the way that teenage boys can be nice, and you talk to him until the bell rings and you part ways.
Second period is your free period, and you manage to round up the few remaining photos you needed. There’s just enough time to get some of the negatives developed in the dark room and start working on prints of the photos you’d taken before the bell rings. You hope no one notices the number of unprintable photos of Eddie Munson you were developing - you’d definitely be in trouble for using school resources on those.
The remaining time until lunch goes by surprisingly quickly. When lunch does finally roll around, you spend it in the dark room working on the rest of your photographs and contemplating what you want to do for Eddie’s senior quote. Pretty much every generic quote known to man is thrown out on the face of it. Nothing generic could ever sum up Eddie Munson. You've seen him reading worn, well-loved copies of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings over and over again, but somehow that doesn’t seem right either. You think about the impassioned speeches he himself has given from atop cafeteria tabletops now and again and consider using some of his own words - ‘it’s forced conformity, that’s what’s killing the kids’ - but somehow even that doesn’t seem right. No, you think maybe you had it right on the first try. Music. The problem is that you don’t really know Eddie’s kind of music.
You spend the next class period racking your memory for every band name you can recall from his battle vest and the handful of conversations you’ve overheard him having with his friends. Not that you were eavesdropping, he’s just loud when he’s excited - and he’s very excited about music. Opinionated, too. There’s Dio, obviously. That one takes up the entire back panel of his vest in a prominent place of honor. There’s also a band called W.A.S.P… Judas Priest, and Megadeth, among others you can recall. You remember him having a conversation about a musician named Ozzy Osbourne. The details are hazy, but if you recall correctly his stance was pro-Ozzy’s music, so you add that to the list too. There's a few others you've heard him discuss positively as well - Scorpions, Metallica, Slayer. You’ve seen him wear an Iron Maiden shirt, too. There’s also his own band that you now know plays at The Hideout every Tuesday, thanks to your conversation with Gareth. You consider asking him for some of their song lyrics, but that seems maybe too personal. Gareth had said that Eddie writes those himself, and if he wanted to use one then he would have given it to you when you initially asked. No, you’ll find something somewhere else. The list is a decent start, anyway, and you jot the names down so you can scour the record store for them later. You could probably get a hall pass for your Sociology class. You're already about four chapters ahead on the reading anyway, and the teacher gave you the homework in advance, so it's not like you'll be missing anything. You'll just say you have yearbook stuff to work on - which technically is not actually a lie. This time.
Finally, sixth period rolls around and, as expected, Mr. Robertson frees you from your educational prison with the requested hall pass when you turn in your homework. Fleeing school grounds before you can be caught and forced to come up with some fake thing you needed to grab from your car for the yearbook, you drive yourself to the local record store to begin your search. Armed with the list of band names you’d managed to remember, you get to work scouring the used cassettes section. There’s not as many as you had hoped, which shouldn’t be surprising given the town’s general disposition towards everything Eddie Munson likes, but you grab what you can find and even shell out the cash for a few new ones, too. It doesn’t even occur to you that you’re spending actual money to do research for something that will be at most under 200 characters and not even yours. This has become your mission. Your quest, as it were - finding Eddie Munson's perfect senior quote.
Heading out of the record store, you load the first cassette into your car’s tape deck and drive. The first thing you notice about Eddie's favorite music is that it is loud. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and it's not really a surprise. You understand why people like to sneer and say music like this is just noise. That's what happens when you don't listen to someone for their entire lives - they make themselves heard however it takes.
The second thing you notice is that Eddie's taste in music is emotional. Sure, there's some rowdy rebellious rockstar songs about sex and drugs and parties, but quite a lot of it is raw. Songs about feeling alone, about struggling, about fighting to be who you are when everyone wants to make you hide yourself away. There's a surprising number of love songs, too. Sure, some of those are also mostly about sex, but there's a depth of emotion even there, too. Sex as an expression of connection. A longing that takes a physical form.
The third thing is that, to your surprise, you like quite a lot of it. You only make it through a small number of your new collection before you have to head back for your last class, but what you've heard so far has been good. This quest to find Eddie’s perfect senior quote in the lyrics of the music he loves so much will be far more enjoyable than you'd anticipated. You're actually looking forward to listening to more of it on your drive home.
Technically, seventh period is your drop period, but you want to finish those prints you were working on before the teacher finds them and scolds you for using school resources to print unusable yearbook photos of the resident town freak. You also want to mock up a rough draft of what you want the spread for the Hellfire Club piece to look like. As you work on drying the photos, you think about how you wish you'd thought to check up on the progress of the other clubs sooner - or even just assigned Hellfire to yourself to start with. You should have known that Tommy wasn't going to take anything seriously unless it was about him in the first place. There’s only a few weeks to get everything done now, and you hope you can do Eddie’s club justice. The photos are finished by the time school is out, and you slip the unusable ones into your interview notebook where they'll be safe. Deciding to hope for the best, you place the devil horn photo in the Folder of Judgement for your advisor to approve or deny tomorrow.
Also extremely special thanks to yorshie, lucky, cleric, and pinky without whom this fic would straight up never have seen the light of day. Y'all are the MVPs and I appreciate you so much.
