#ten ways

you’re in his room. (again.)

he’s in your arms. (again.)

you look at him past the blur of your glasses sliding down the wrong half of your face, too lazy to right them, and your heart is thumping to the rhythm of your favorite song, grounded by the weight of him (his left arm, technically, but, well, tomayto tomahto, you’ll take what you can get) pressed against your chest. (again, again, again.)

it’s a feeling you’ve long grown used to, more fitted to your body (like a warm blanket swaddling your skeleton, down to your tippy toes) than the harsh stretch of puberty, one day sporting limbs like gangly, giddy tentacles, arms and legs wrapped around whatever body is closest to you (you play favorites, and everyone⏤even, and sometimes most especially, victim numero uno⏤is grateful for it). but this⏤a) feeling b) tsunami c) cavity filler d) all of the above⏤just settled along the expanse of your ribcage one day; this sweeping emotion that leaves your mind calm (not quiet, never quiet, buzz buzz, beep beep, etc etc), sated and smiling somehow in the knowledge of its existence, even in the heady intensity of it sharing a space with the rest of you (by far your favorite pet worm in your apple), even as it makes the rest of you so dizzy you feel as if you’ll turbo into outer space and moonwalk among the stars.

the radio’s on, but it’s soft; neither of you would risk invoking an investigation from his mother right now, like you sometimes do, just to be hastily pushed into his closet and chuckle at the irony (is masochism a drug? hello? stop ignoring me, siri!), but tonight he asked for you, an occasion so rare you almost wanted to go buy a diary just to write it down. 

(see, you’ll come over unannounced and he’ll sigh and pull you in through his window before you start throwing rocks, but as he pulls a face in response to your feet monster mashing all over your curtains, he’s hiding a smile to match yours. see, he never has to ask, and neither do you. see, any and all disruption to the status quo is big, huge⏤hear ye, hear ye! dial the derry press!)

it’s something about his mom (it always is), and he doesn’t want to talk about it, so there you two lay, in his perpetually made bed listening to a station that is drowning out the tune of your heartbeat, so you talk over both, senseless shit that goes in one ear and out the other. it looks like⏤well, it looks like he only wants you. your mind is already warping the very notion into something bigger, twisted butterflies jazzing it up in your stomach in imitation of your happy, jiggy heart, while your big head is already on bullet point twelve of why that is Not The Case and while we’re at it, says said head, poor ol’ eds has had enough bad medicine in his life, your selfish desires aren’t a balm for anything, especially not him. 

unfortunately, your heart (for once, the express link to your mouth) could never shut up, and off it natters, isolated amongst the bullshit. 

“i love you, eds.” (you heard somewhere the “i” was important. you almost left it out, if you had been thinking at all.)

you’re always quoting something, most of the time you never know what, but there’s a truth in your words that makes you want to take your glasses off completely and burrow beneath the covers you’re never allowed under (you burrow into his hair instead, digging into it like you’re searching for the dignity you were born without). richie tozier ain’t home, no siree, come again next time, or how about never at all! 

and eddie.

he laughs, like it’s a joke rather than a revelation, but maybe it’s neither, maybe it’s a fact of the universe, like peanut butter and jelly being soulmates, or howler monkeys and their huge balls (self-proclaimed as your patronus in seventh grade), or his stupidly cute train shirts that you dream about seeing in your own closet one day. it’s something he already knows, something you both do. maybe it’s not something you understand, yet, but what else is there to say? so your laughter melds with his, joining the chorus of your heart. 

and his left arm shifts to make room for his right, the full weight of eddie kaspbrak resting on your chest, and that says it all. 

Summary (request): May I request a dean x reader for something like ten ways he shows you he loves you?

Pairing: Dean x reader

Word Count: 1,000ish

Warnings: none

A/N: This was very different to write but I adore this so very very much...

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2. sturggle

3. sturgle

4. struglle

5. srtuggle

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10. srutglle

so, i love you comes with the grace of an avalanche of bricks.

so, you don’t say it again (lesson learned? first time for everything?). maybe there are more important things to say (are your pants burning?), though that was never your practice. you say, the truth wasn’t made to be spoken by your tongue (a child’s proclamation would deem it too boring, though you know this not to be⏤you’ve just simply never known it to be without weight, sinking you deep, when you’d rather float). 

so, your mind tries to tempt distraction with the other big words. sayonara love, howdy trust.

so, trust is written into the lines of his face looking into yours⏤on a cliff with your hand in his as he leads the way into a jump (it used to be the other way around, but eddie kaspbrak is braver with every free breath shared with yours), in the decaying and grisly house that he’s always feared with a monster snarling bared teeth a foot away and the stench of death even closer, in rest, in laughter, in love. trust is him letting you in through his window, one day leaving it unlocked for your hands forevermore. trust is him risking the climb through your own, which screams i’ll chance it more than the dizzying words could. trust is you holding onto his spare inhaler in your back pocket, and then another in the center console of your rusty car, even when you itch to hide it away from his desperate hands. trust is underlined beneath r+e, in the eternal, promising wooden grooves of the kissing bridge, the haunted and haunting. 

so, trust is the most natural truth between you, except maybe for love.

so, you never have to say it.

(it’s understood off the bat, like learning 1+1 for the first time⏤trust (love) equals eddie kaspbrak and richie tozier, intertwined for life.)

so, you say i fucked your mom instead, because there is the simple math again: light a fuse and watch it burn in the sight of him tinged red and spitting soft fire. that balance of push and pull, of roughhousing in a hammock and settling your teenage weight perfectly (feet in unwanted places, maybe, but it gives your cowardly, racing heart an excuse to push a part of him away, even as you tug him back just as quickly). you say something he understands, even if not completely, which is okay, because neither do you. 

it pervades every atom of your existence, every breath you take, every joke out of your mouth. sometimes you feel gutted with its force, sometimes you feel like it’s the only thing holding you upright. love, love, love. what a sorrow! what a sight! what a sentiment to behold, cradled in the arms of your ribcage! (you jest with a shakespearean flair, but the truth can oftentimes be found barricaded within the forgery⏤this fervor of which dictates your life may not be your enemy but your savior, and that in and of itself is monumentally distressing, [a creature, werewolf, monster] caught between humanity and desire and a pinned smile as you are, melpomene and thalia in the flesh.)

hidden like a lucky card (jester, never king) shuffled behind the seven of hearts, you find a home, metaphorical hearth and blankets and warm food and all. you create the meaning of family sheltered between six pairs of hands, all clutching at one another, life lines stitching together like a puzzle. you feel like a cartographer mad with discovery, or even a frenzied scholar jotting down notes in every margin he can find: this is love, this is family, this is what you live for, don’t mess it up. anyone but your gnarled self, irregular with identity and crooked with all else (except, but also sometimes most especially, with this).

what a contradiction. to love him, to hate yourself. to love them, to hate what you are without them. love and hate, you don’t even know what such words are. all you do know is the feeling in your chest when you see him, all you know is the stinging in your veins when she takes him away (not always physically, but in the way he won’t laugh at a joke specifically tailored for his smile, or the way he won’t lean into you like always, like he’s been made aware of his gravitational pull, a sickness trailing his every move, but not one borne naturally, a cancer that has her name on it), all you know is the sensation pinching at your skin (not a dream, not a dream, please don’t let it be a dream) when his gaze makes you feel held, even as you wiggle out of it, unable to let yourself feel it for too long, lest you lose yourself in it forever, a siren’s victim. fortunately for you, eddie doesn’t quite have the voice he thinks he does (even as you can’t resist, cute as the high pitch of it is, perfectly matched to your own low travesty). 

and here you are, blurred in all of the emotions begging for a quarter of your attention, a thing made of foreign parts that somehow fit (roughly) together. you haven’t gotten a beep beep in a while, and your chest feel lighter in response, a button no one has been forced to push, for you’re there to do all the work anyway, the autopilot of a plummeting plane. it’s a strange thing to be so overlooked, when a word or two or three or one hundred have no weight, no gravity to sink into the ground or a heart. but you speak anyway, because you like it that way, or maybe because the more you speak the higher the chance someone will hear the words underneath. sometimes it’s the former, occasionally the latter, somehow always both. like you said, the contradictions are off the wall, and you’re simply there as a fly on the said wall, so leave me be good sir! 

so there. there you are, the enthralled spirit you always are, and there they are⏤beverly with her crimson heart, mike with the grounding hand on your shoulder, ben with his fellow passion (different than yours but no less thorough in possession of the soul), stan with the wings that beat beneath his shoulders, bill with his hand in yours (dragging you behind him). and eddie. well. isn’t he always there? isn’t that what love is? 

no one blinks when it slips out of your mouth, softer than bullets (even shouted as it is, hurdled between a joke or runaway thoughts or the same lyrics running around in circles in your mind) but enriched with the same plucky impact, gusty and gutsy, an impulse you have never been able to shake⏤in fact, it is often you that is shaken in its aftermath. no one blinks, but again you are held in his gaze, same as you are in the smile you don’t notice exchanged between them all, a smirk for some, a grin for others, mirrored in rolling eyes and raised brows, mouths continuing to run as the moment passes.

you exist in the love unsaid, even as your own charges out of your being. 

1: A hot bath or shower.

2: Watch a children’s movie.

3: A hot water bottle.

4: Have sex.

5: Eat healthy with some cake.

6: Hug a baby animal.

7: Get some sleep.

8: Comfortable clothing.

9: Drink some water.