#hurt/comfort Eddie munson
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bright eyes | eddie munson x reader
summary you're a new neighbour in the trailer park, on a sunny day Eddie's daughter bumps into you. (4.1k)
warnings fem!reader, girl!dad Eddie!!!!, fluff, mutual pining, yearning etc, slowburn strangers to lovers, idiots in love!!!, , english is not my first language so I apologise if there’s some mistakes, not proof read!
a/n: i think i might make this a little series if you guys would like that <3 part 2 part 3
It was warm outside.
Early spring had its advantages, flowers started to bloom, the sun shone brighter and longer, and the rain fell only at night when you had trouble sleeping.
You had just moved here, and you still weren’t sure or knew that much, so you tended to keep to yourself. You’d go to work, to the little shop on main street, back to your little trailer.
You were sitting down on your little kitchen floor, looking at the way your washing machine turned around, waiting for your hair to dry after the shower, so you could sleep with fresh sheets tonight. You enjoyed this sort of calmness, a new found happiness that you weren’t aware you could achieve.
You placed the white sheets on the little laundry basket that you had lying around, cloth pins scattered on its bottom. You held it, against your waist, your left hand grabbing it while you struggled to open the door.
You whispered along the words of a song that was playing from a beat up radio from across the street, taking your time, as you placed every sheet perfectly, enjoying the sun shining on your face. It was all going as well as it could.
“Hi.”
It startled you, not as much as it could, the little voice coming from down below you, it forced you to look down, a little girl looked up at you, half hiding behind your sheets, she was wearing a black faded black sabbath shirt that didn’t belong to her, the seam of it well past her knees, white socks on her feet, her hair was black and curly, half hiding her eyes.
“Oh. Hi.” You smiled at her, the sweetest tone you could fathom came out of your lips. She became shy for a second, as she grabbed one of your clothes pins and handed it to you. “Thank you, buddy.” You smiled as you grabbed it, placing it on top of one of your cushion covers, even if it didn’t need an extra one. “You’ll get your socks dirty.” You point out.
She smiled in a shy manner, covering her face with her hands as she nodded.
“Bug?” She turned around as soon as she heard his voice. Her arms went up, demanding to be held by him. “There you are!” He had a soft and playful tone, as he grabbed her.
You felt stuck there for a second. He was tall, with curly dark hair, strong decorated by tattoos arms that flex when he held her, close to his chest. The same smile she seemed to have was imprinted on his face. It’s not that he is attractive -which he undeniably is- but he seems to shine, in a beautiful light, warmer than the sun.
“I’m sorry if she annoyed you, we were playing hide and seek.” His words come out way too quicker than he had wanted them to, with an apologetic look on his face as he swayed his body, her giggles invading the space between you.
“She didn’t, not at all.” You smiled at him, before looking back at her, she was giggling at you now, and a soft spot was found deep inside your heart. “She was helping me do laundry, actually.” You point out to the extra wood clothespin that she had given you.
“Oh, so you can help the pretty lady and not me?” He jokes as he tickles her belly, the infectious laughter growing louder and stronger as he holds his face closer to hers.
But you don’t really listen, the only thing in your mind right now is his voice calling you pretty.
pretty, pretty, pretty.
Your cheeks become warmer, pinker.
As soon as he notices, he realises what he had said.
He had called you pretty before even introducing himself. He feels like a fool, he meets a pretty girl and is only focused on the one in his arms.
He tries to fix it, a soft grin dedicated to you as a nervous scoff leaves his lips.
You don’t really mind the silence, or the opportunity to look at him, and his dark chocolate eyes, but you have the impulse to tell him your name, and you do, with an upside down smile that passes down to him.
“I’m Eddie.” He says in return, grabbing your hand not thinking much of it, though he didn’t think he’d feel a sort of sparks as soon as your hand met his. To be fair, neither did you. “This little bug is Lua.” He adds, as he lets go of your hand, slowly, so his fingers can tickle her again, making her giggle once more, her tiny hands grabbing his hair in a playful manner.
“Hi Lua.” It’s not that your voice comes out shy, but the high pitched baby voice makes your tone come out with a bit of a treble, as if nervousness that she wouldn’t like you took over. “Thanks for helping me with laundry.” You add, as she hides, pushing her face against Eddie’s chest, the pureness of that gesture makes your smile wider.
If you weren’t so focused on Lua’s reactions, you would have caught Eddie lost into you, as he had never experienced such kindness or softness from someone that wasn’t already close.
He was used to the stares, and the silent judgment from everyone, way before Lua came into his life, and mostly it came from people around his age, or way older. His constant thought behind a string of ‘shut up grandpa’ and ‘go back to your retirement home’ that he never said out loud. The world could be mean, but he would never let her little girl know that. At least not yet.
He wasn’t used to this though.
A kind stranger, around his age, that doesn’t really judge, and interacts in a playful manner with her. It was more than he could fathom.
“‘r welcome.” Lua mumbled as she looked up from her hiding spot for a second, before burying herself back into his arms.
Eddie’s heart felt full for a moment. Lua wasn’t used to strangers, and she didn't really like to talk out loud to people she wasn’t used to. Though these days she was only used to uncle Way and Stevie, or aunt Rob. So seeing her, not only talking back after you told her something, but having seen her approach you out of her own will, it made his mind stop worrying for just a second. Lua’s social ability was just as good as his in that moment.
The thought made him smile to himself.
“We should check if our’s is done.” He mumbled to Lua’s ear as he started swinging his chest again, hugging her tightly as he felt how she was starting to get heavier. “That way you can stop wearing dada’s shirt.” He looked attentive at your face, waiting for your reaction.
He felt better when he didn’t see nothing but a compassionate smile.
Eddie was also used to people thinking he wasn’t the dad, maybe an uncle, maybe an older brother. Eddie was also used to people opening their eyes wide as soon as they hear dad when referred to him.
But you didn’t.
Truth be told, it did shock you a bit. But the little girl was a carbon copy of him. The same wide smile and wild hair. And the world was mean and complicated enough, you didn’t need to make it harder for someone you had just met.
“We’ll see you around?” He asks, with a hopefulness on his voice that you’re not too sure what it means, or what you actually want it to mean.
“Yeah, I moved in a while ago so…” He nodded as he pointed at the little trailer right in front of yours.
“That’s us.”
“Way!” Lua blurted out as she looked back at where she called home, and Eddie couldn’t help but chuckle and give her a kiss on her temple.
“Yes! And uncle Wayne too.” You noticed that his tone is sweeter, calmer and a bit higher when he talks to the little girl on his arms than when he talks to you. “If you ever need anything…”
He doesn’t finish his sentence, the end of it implied, and you’re left nodding, telling him that if they ever need anything you’re here too, waving bye to Lua as she looks over Eddie’s shoulder, her little hand waving back.
You finish hanging your laundry dry, as you think about what just happened.
You had finally made friends that weren’t work related, and one of them was a baby. You sort of chuckle to yourself. It felt stupid, but it also felt good, knowing someone here, and that someone being nice, and kind.
It felt as if you were finally on the right path.
-
“Bug, please?” Eddie whined for the fourth time, while Lua was still on the higher part of the couch, looking out the window.
She shook her head again, Wednesdays were always the longest days in the Mudson household. Eddie took another big breath, while he looked at his wrist watch once again, afraid he’ll be late if he doesn’t leave soon.
“Okay… You can either stay here with uncle Way, or you can come with dada to the garage. Please?” He bargained, for the last time, begging to some higher power she’ll climb down the sofa.
He could scream out of excitement once she finally did.
“friend?” She asked, in a mumble as she pointed out of the door.
She had been doing that for a while now, ever since Eddie had found Lua in your yard, she kept asking to go see you, for some reason that escaped Eddie’s mind, her little girl seemed to have an infatuation with you.
Eddie sat down on the floor now, and Lua started walking closer to him, he laughed in defeat as she giggled, her little steps approaching him.
“Once I get back from work, deal?”
Eddie held his hand out, waiting for her to shake it as she usually did when she knew she had won whatever she wanted -which happened frequently- but accepted with glee once she tried to hug him, with her usual clumsiness. Her arms not quite reaching the back of his neck until he helped her up.
He enjoyed this little moment.
Holding her close while nothing else was going on. A long day ahead of him that he wasn’t totally ready for, but then again he wasn’t really ready for a lot of things that he ended up being capable of.
Wayne’s steps broke the small intimate moment.
“You made a friend, Lua?” He asked as she giggled at the sight of him, even if he still was half asleep, Wayne always seemed to have more than enough energy for her.
“She did.”
“Who?”
“New girl.” Eddie nodded at the trailer that could be seen through their window.
“Huh.” Wayne had never been a man of many words, but the way his facial expression changed usually left nothing to the imagination. In this case, it was a warning. An overprotective warning.
“She seems nice. Lua approached her.” She smiled, as she always did when she heard her own name. Eddie knew that she liked to be included, no matter what. Maybe that’s why he tried so hard.
“You did?” Wayne’s eyes opened wider, as he squatted down to meet her eye level, she wobbled her way into him, as she giggled once again. She had a secret power, or at least that’s what Eddie thought, to make everyone happy.
“Friend!” She said again, pointing at where she had last seen you.
“Okay bug, see you in a bit?”
“Lo you.” She muttered as she waved bye, Eddie’s heart warmer as he opened the door and blew her a kiss.
“Love you too, bug.” Eddie opened the door, stopping on the frame as he always did, checking his pockets, making sure he had everything he needed with him.
“Kid, if you plan on going over, make sure she’s okay with it. Not a lot of people are.” It was another warning, his left eyebrow raised, his tone sharper. Eddie just nodded.
And before he knew it, he was already on your door, knocking and hoping you’re actually home.
You were, and the nocks on your door wake you up. You had always been a light sleeper. You found your way out of your bed, and you didn’t care if your hair was a bit knotted than usual, messier or that your eyes were still adjusting to the light creeping through your windows. You opened the door and there he was. Tall, handsome Eddie, in his washed up jeans and his white shirt that had some small car grease marks on it. His opened blue short sleeve shirt with the little name tag made you smile internally.
“Sorry.” He muttered, as soon as you made eye contact with him.
He took a second, you stood there, sleep still present on your face and overall demeanor, but what caught his attention -even if he tried not to- were your naked legs, barely covered by an oversized shirt that you evidently used as a sleep shirt. Still, you looked pretty, he thought. He also felt bad that he had woken you up.
“S’kay. Morning.” You half joked as you smiled up at him, your head resting against the door frame, your arms crossed over your chest, the air making you feel a bit colder than you were deep in your sheets.
“Yeah, morning.” He was left speechless. He wasn’t sure why, but all of a sudden he wished he hadn’t knocked. So you could be resting, being face to face with you, he could see the little bags under your eyes, and he imagined how much you were enjoying getting to sleep in.
“You knocked to tell me good morning?” If you hadn’t had a smile on your lips, or your voice wasn’t as sweet and soft as it was, Eddie would have felt even worse. When in reality it made you inexplicably happy that he was the reason you had woken up.
“No, yeah, sorry.” He chuckled in a nervous manner once again. “Uh, Lua has been asking for you, and uh… I’m done at work early today, and if it’s not too weird and if it’s okay we could come for a bit after, don’t worry if you don’t feel like it i-”
“I’d love that.” You cut his nervous and anxious rambling off. “I’m free today, so I can go pick up some things for her?”
Eddie relaxed, his shoulders dropping and his smile finally appearing.
While you had to try hard to hide your excitement.
“You don’t have to…”
“Shut up. She deserves it.”
Even if you weren’t aware of it, that was the best thing you could have said to him. But truth be told, you were actually excited, you had been thinking about him, and the promise of a new friendship since you had met him, so this? It felt like the perfect excuse.
“What time were you thinking?”
“Uh, I dunno, my shift ends at around six, so maybe…”
“I’ll have snacks ready by six then, don’t worry.”
He was way more thankful than he could express, but he tried his best anyway.
“Thank you princess, it means a lot. Truly.” That nickname rang in your ears for a while, the same way it did when he had called you pretty. It was made obvious that you had liked it by the way you were starting to blush.
“Don’t worry Edds.” You stayed just like you were for a second longer. Looking at him, and the way his dimples were showing when he smiled as wide as he did, and a spark in his eyes he seemed to reserve for you. “Hope you have a good day at work.”
He was the one blushing now, and the one he was left with the way you had called him Edds, the sound of your voice present on his ears for a while after he had started driving. It wasn’t until he arrived at the garage, when he realised he was smiling at nothing, like an idiot.
-
You might have gone a bit overboard.
You had gone into town, and before you knew it your fridge was now filled with various juices and milk. The good ones that you usually didn’t buy for yourself. You had thought about baking a cake, but you ended up deciding that that felt too much as a birthday type of treat, so you went for your comfort recipe.
The cookie dough was already done, and you were chopping up the chocolate bar into smaller bits. You hated dark chocolate, so milky sweet one was the only acceptable one.
Morrisey’s voice kept you company as you mutter along the lyrics.
You looked over your little home, you had cleaned, deeply. Afraid that Eddie would judge you, or that Lua would somehow hurt herself or something could happen to her. You tend to do that, over worrying about things you can’t really control.
Then again, Eddie was doing the same thing.
A quick shower, fresh clothes, and hair almost dry. Lua looked up at him with excitement, as he tried to find something else for her to wear. She had a tendency to steal his shirts when he wasn’t there, in an attempt to be close to him, or at least that’s what he thought. So the negotiation began.
“Bug, which one?” On his left hand he had a light blue dress that Joyce gave him a few years ago, on his right he had a newer pair of overalls. She stood there, shaking her head as she hugged the shirt she was already wearing. “You need to get dressed if you want to go see your new friend, bug.” He couldn’t help but chuckle, as soon as she realised they were going to see you, she pointed at the overalls and had no issue getting ready.
Thank god for you, he thought. It had never been that easy, normally Lua hated changing clothes, especially when she was already comfortable. But this time, she didn’t only do it, she helped, and was excited to.
Lua wasted no time, her hands hitting your door as hard as she could, which resulted in soft knocks you still heard.
“Hi.” She beamed up at you, holding her arms open for you, her voice higher than you remembered. It might be her childish excitement, or at least that’s what you think.
“Hi Lua.” You met her level of excitement as you squatted down so you could meet her, her arms trying to hug you, waiting for you to help her get up so she could do it. Used to this type of hug with her dad.
Speaking of, Eddie was speechless. Mainly because Lua doesn’t really hug people that are not him, or Wayne. Steve maybe had gotten two or three hugs, she usually blew kisses. Also he wasn’t sure if you actually wanted them there, or were just being nice, but that doubt went away as soon as he heard your voice, and saw the way you smiled at her.
He also was pretty sure that he could smell cookie dough.
Lua found her way in, passing you by as you greeted Eddie. She didn’t have time to waste, her curiosity always winning. In her defense, your house was full of colour, and she wasn’t used to it. Every pillow was a different colour, and they were everywhere. Your couch was green, which she didn’t even know that was a possibility. Your walls had photos, and posters, and drawings. She had so much to look at she was grinning from ear to ear, laughing as she moved around.
Eddie did the same, in a more discrete manner. He found his way in the middle of your living room, he looked at the stacked shelves, they were full to the brim, various fantasy books that he recognised -mainly because he had already read them- cassette tapes and vinyls also shared a big portion of space. He smiled to himself everytime he knew a group that you seemed to like. Your vhs collection also caught his eye. You, on the other hand, were left there, holding your hands in an anxious manner, not too sure what to do now. Seeing how father and daughter act the same in different ways.
“You’re listening to the Smiths?” He asked, once he caught on to what was playing.
“Oh, yeah, I’ll uh… turn it off.” You became embarrassed, knowing that probably he didn’t like that type of music, or maybe it was too loud. Eddie smiled, shaking his head no.
“No, it’s fine. Lua likes them, that’s all.” You looked down at her, and relaxed once you saw her dancing along. She was moving up and down, kind of in tune with the music.
The little timer started, letting you know that the cookies were now done.
“Lua, you like cookies?” She didn’t even need to say anything, her eyes opened as she heard the word, she walked next to you, Eddie following closely.
He grabbed her up, letting her sit down on the counter. He was grateful all the trailers were the same, that way he knew -kinda- where everything was.
“Carefull, bug. It’s hot.”
“Hot.” She repeated, pointing at the baking sheet that you took out, fresh golden chocolate chips came out. “For me?”
“Well, not all of them.” Eddie answered, with an amused tone in her voice that made you chuckle in response.
“We have to wait for them to cool down a bit.” You told her as you placed them on a plate, the tips of your fingers slightly burning.
“Why?” Her eyes opened in wonder, not really following you.
“‘Cause when they’re too warm, they can give you a belly ache.” You explained to her, earnest in your tone, as you touched your own stomach.
“Only five minutes, bug.” Lua turned around, looking at Eddie with a confused look. “You can wait five minutes right?” She looked at him, slowly. You couldn’t help but chuckle, seeing the way they share the same look between them.
-
You were on the couch.
Eddie didn’t count it as cuddling, not really.
You were just sitting down next to him, his arm brushing yours, as you both looked between the T.V that was playing ‘Arthur and the Stone ’- you had a tendency to collect VHS, and the style and drawings had pulled you to buy it. You didn’t have an excuse until now to watch it, so you were just enjoying it as much as Lua did- and the little one, who was enamored by the story, while she colored in one paper lazily.
Eddie had become a bit too comfortable. His body feeling heavier, warmer, he was on the verge of falling asleep. That same feeling shot sirens on his head. This felt too nice, too normal, too usual. He could get used to this, and that wasn’t good.
He didn’t really know you.
Eddie knew where you lived, how your living room looked, that you worked almost everyday -though he still didn’t know where-, and that you were incredibly nice. And sweet.
Eddie also knew that Lua trusted you, and for now, that was enough.
It was enough that you had taken time out of your day so you could bake them cookies, or buying the expensive juice that you had taken them in as if they had always belonged there.
Lua giggled and Eddie’s eyes opened, seeing how she was pointing at the T.V when the boy turned into a squirrel, and the way she looked up at you, wanting to see your reaction. He was happy, more than he had been in a while.
You were sinking deeper into the cushions. Deeper into him and this familiarity. You could get used to this, but you weren’t unsure if you should. You enjoyed spending time with them, and this was fun, but then again, it was scary. It scared you, the thought of it going wrong, or you doing something you weren’t supposed to, it was a bit too much.
While you were sitting down there, with him that close, his smell lingering in the air, his warmness by your side, the risk of this crush evolving into something else was too much.
You didn’t care. Not at all.
Neither did Eddie. Not even a little bit.
-
part 2 is up!
if you enjoyed it please leave a comment or reblog. i promise it makes a huge difference <3
requests! are open
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you can pry happy endings from my cold-dead hands. It can be the most heart stopping, gut wrenching fic that has every existed and I will read every drop of it if I get my happy ending. I have had enough painful endings in real life, give me happy in my fantasy world. It can be at the last second, it can be a single sentence, even a single word. Give me all the angst and hurt in the world for 500,000 words, but please give me the comfort I need in the ending. please and thank you.
#do I love angst? yes. but also need to be happy in my delulu world for five seconds#sometimes you need domestic fluff to soothe the burn#fan fiction#ao3#hurt/comfort#steddie#stranger things#lumax#byler#ronance#steve harrington#Eddie Munson#archive of our own#wattpad#robin buckley#steve x eddie#happy endings
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I love a good fwb steddie fic where one of them thinks they’re dating and one of them thinks it’s just casual but I could also get behind a fwb steddie fic where they both think it’s casual and there’s zero misunderstanding between them but then they realize it’s been like five years, they live together, they have a cat together, they kiss and go out together, and they both just look at each other like????? Wait are we dating???? When did we start dating????? And they’re idiots but they’re in love your honor
#I just think it would be funny#stranger things#steve harrington#eddie munson#steddie#steddie fic idea#helpimstuckrambling#there’s no hurt/comfort here#just idiots being idiots but they also think it’s funny
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Bullshit.
The word rings obnoxiously in Steve’s ears as he pushes his way out back, not wanting to be anymore of a talking piece at this party than he already was.
He’d just wanted Nancy to stop drinking, take a second, pace herself…
Steve swipes furiously at his eyes, and then curses when it nearly causes him to run into Chrissy Cunnginham, who’s perched in a chair tucked away from the patio door.
“Sorry, sorry.” He apologizes, trying not to sound like he’s upset, trying to keep his cool--only for her to look up and away, brushing off her own tears.
“Oh.” Steve says, a little laugh bubbling out of him. “You too huh?”
Thankfully she correctly interprets that he's not laughing at her, and adds her own giggle to the mix, the sound gentle even if pitched in upset.
"Boy problems?" Steve asks her, sinking down to the vacant chair on Chrissy's right.
She nods, clasping her hands together in her lap.
"Girl problems?" She asks back, and he grimaces a smile.
They sit for a minute, Steve pulling out a cigarette and offering it to her before lighting up. Chrissy shakes her head, and though her nose curls a little at the smoke she doesn’t say anything.
Neither of them do, staring at the few people bringing the party outside in the way only drunk teenagers can.
"Can I tell you something?" Chrissy says finally, as Steve continues to struggle to keep himself breathing evenly (and not spiraling. He still has to go back and try and escort Nancy home, and he needs to keep his temper when he does it.)
She licks her lips. "I keep trying to break up with Jason, but he won't let me."
It takes a second for the words to register, but when they do he leans himself towards chrissy in concern. “What do you mean, he won’t let you?”
“He’s not--it’s not…”She trails off, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth. “He talks me out of it is all.”
She’s downplaying it, and Steve’s concern grows tenfold. “Does he argue with you or just…tells you no or something?”
"It's complicated." Chrissy says, refusing to look at him. "He has this vision for me, for us."
Steve watches as she worries at a hangnail.
Feels the need to reach out and take her hand, but keeps his own hands to himself.
If Steve has learned anything, it's that not everyone wants to be touched as much as he does.
"He keeps telling me I'm just being anxious. That I should trust him, and I do, he just expects me to always do what he says? And more and more lately I--"
She huddles down into the little cat costume she's wearing, pulling the thin black sweater around her. "I want different things than he does."
Steve wonders vaguely if Nancy wants different things.
Or a different person entirely.
"That's not fair to you." Steve says, leaning forward and lowering his own voice. "He can't keep you in a relationship you don't want to be in."
A hard thing for him to say, after the bathroom conversation but this is different.
‘Please, let this be different.’ He thinks, before pushing the thought aside.
"He can't force you to do what he wants just because he wants it, or thinks its best. He should be listening to you and what you want too. Relationships are about…compromise right?” It’s what he’s heard anyway, though most of the time “compromise” means “letting the other person get what they want.”
Which is what he thought he’d been doing for Nancy all this time.
“I can help you if you want. Be your," Steve poorly mimes waving a pom pom. "cheer support."
Chrissy looks at him, eyes still wet. "You would?"
"Of course.” He says, before scooting just a smidgen closer. “Might have to ask you to return the favor though. Nancy said some things tonight and I could really use a second--”
A loud curse makes them both startle, interrupting Steve.
Together, they look around before another noise, like bark being scraped, draws both their attention to the large oak that stands in the backyard.”
"Is…is that Eddie Munson?" Chrissy asks.
"I think so."
Chrissy squints a little, as if not quite believing what she's seeing. "Is…he stuck in a tree?"
Steve finds himself staring in his own disbelief, hands moving to his hips as he watches Munsons wriggling, cursing form.
"I think so." He repeats with a shake of his head.
Eddie's foot slips off a branch, once, twice.
"Hey--" Steve calls out in warning, but unfortunately it comes too late.
The branch under his foot gives away with a startling crack! as another branch shreds Munson's jacket as his full weight caches on it.
"Oh!" Chrissy gasps, hand flying to her mouth as Eddie falls right onto his ass with a yelp.
"You good man?" Steve asks, rising from his chair, hesitant to go over but needing to make sure the idiot hasn't cracked his skull open.
Chrissy has no such qualms, popping up to run over to Munson.
"You're bleeding." She tells him worriedly, dropping to her knees to get a better look.
"Well shit." Munson says with a wonky grin. “I’m sorry.”
“What are you apologizing for?” Chrissy asks, as Steve’s newly honed babysitting instincts kick in and drive him to get up and look at Munson’s injury himself.
Chrissy carefully strokes the older teen’s hair out of his face, as Steve bends down to check his head and neck.
"You hurt anywhere?" He asks, spotting the scratch that had Chrissy worried.
It’s on his forehead--the guy must have knocked his face against the tree when he fell. Head injuries always bleed a ton but this one's well contained to a small scrape.
Probably not a concern, though Steve looks at his pupils anyways.
"Nah, I’m pine. I didn't mean to drop in on you guys.” He waves a hand behind him before dropping his voice to a dramatic whisper. “I knew I shouldn’t have trusted that tree, it was pretty shady.”
Steve, long trained by Dustin, narrows his eyes. "Are you making puns right now?"
"Maybe?" Munson hedges, looking delighted to have been called out.
“Uh huh.” Steve puts his hands back on his hips, straightening up from where he’d crouched down. “Your head okay? You remember your name and shit?”
“Edward Edwardian Munson, present and ready for duty!” He gives a mock salute, before dropping Chrissy a wink. “If the duty is drinking and playing games that is.”
“Your middle name cannot be Edwardian.” Chrissy laughs.
"It is!" He defends, at the same time Steve says,
“It's not "
“Oh?” Munson challenges, as if this entire situation isn’t ridiculous. “Then what is my middle name, Sir Steven?”
“No idea, but I know it’s not that.”
Munson blows a raspberry at him. “Well then, maybe you should mind your own beeswax."
"Like you were doing? Up in the tree right above us?" Steve banters back.
The playful look dies a little, Munson beginning the painful process of standing after one falls.
"For the record, I absolutely was not eavesdropping, you guys just happened to be under the tree I climbed and I was there first. " He says it rapidly, like he's used to being accused of such things, and is heading off as many problems as he can.
Steve just ignores it, opting instead to hold his hands out. One to Chrissy and one to Eddie.
Watches surprise cross the older teens face, even as he waits for Chrissy to get up before accepting Steve's hand.
"Why were you up a tree? The family dog run you up there?" Steve grunts as he pulls the metalhead up.
"Funny." Munson quipped sarcastically. "But no. I was up there for reasons."
'Reasons.' Steve mouths, and has to fight himself to keep from grinning.
"Even though I was there first, I did happen to hear some things." He looks at Chrissy, voice turning serious. "If you need any help getting things through Carver's thick skull I'd love to lend a hand."
"You would cheer for me too?"
"Oh absolutely. I'd make a far better cheerleader than Harrington here." He shoots a grin towards Steve to take the edge off the words, before doing a far more enthusiastic mimicry of the cheerleaders pom pom routine.
"But I know how much Carver hates the word no. If you break up with him and he gives you shit after, I'm happy to step in."
Steve hadn't actually thought about that yet, but given what he knew of Jason it makes sense.
He could easily see Chrissy worrying about Jason harassing her after the break up.
"Thank you. Both of you." She sniffs. "Eddie, are you sure you're okay?"
"Right as rain!" Munson gives a rather theatrical thumbs up. "I'll let you in on a family secret, we Munson's have rubber bones."
She gives him another giggle for his efforts, and even Steve can’t fully cover his
Munson, the ass, notices.
“Well call me the court jester, I got both the King and Queen to smile!” He cheers.
Steve rolls his eyes, but doesn't deny it.
"Chrissy!?" Someone barks, loud in the otherwise quiet backyard.
"Speak of the devil." Eddie drops his voice dramatically as Jason strides out of the house.
"I've been looking for you." He chides, two of his friends following close behind.
They're younger members of the basketball team, ones Steve's brain sluggishly attempts to remember.
"Are your knees dirty?" Jason asks Chrissy, disgust tinting his voice as he slowly looks from her to Munson next to her.
His eyes narrow, expression almost offronted.
"You heathen." Jason snarls, stepping forward with a fist clenched.
It was a move right of the sitcoms Steve swore he didn't watch, and it looked just as cheesy in real life as it did on screen.
"Calm down." Steve speaks up, hands going to his hips.
Jason's head jerks as he registers him, so focused on Munson that Steve slipped his notice entirely.
"Harrington?" He asks, as if Steve could be mistaken for anyone else here.
Steve gives him jazz hands in return.
"What are you doing out here?" Jason speaks only to Steve, whole body angling towards him like he's the only person who matters.
It's something Steve's dad does, if there's a businessman he considers to be an equal in the room. Zoning in on them, so he can subtly work in ways to make them feel inferior.
It's narcissism at its core (or so says his mother, when she's blitzed out on too many glasses of wine.)
"Talking to people." Steve deadpans. "If you're looking for beer, you walked past it."
Jason entire face pinches, like he just stepped in dog shit. "No one just talks to Munson."
It's a stupid thing to say, and whatever Hason was trying to imply with it wasn't appreciated.
"Well mark me as the first." Steve's hip cocks, voice frosting over.
Surprise washes across Munson's face, though he remains silent as Steve deals with Jason.
Probably a smart move, given how Jason seems to be eager for a fight.
"Whatever it is you're doing, you can leave Chrissy out of it." He says, and god his voice even sounds like Steve's dad.
"Chrissy," Steve says, with an eyebrow raise he knows looks judgemental, "can speak for herself."
He turns to face her, inviting her to the conversation, in the same way he'd always wished someone would invite his mother to speak against his father.
Watches as the cheerleader bites her lip, trying hard to hide the tears that have sprung to her eyes--but proves that she's stronger than Steve's mother ever was.
She steps forward, taking the opportunity offered to her with a steadying breath. "Jason--"
"You can explain it to me later." Her boyfriend waves her off, like she was a waitress offering water and not his partner.
Uncaring entirely that she's clearly upset.
That she wants to talk.
Munson has come to stand on Chrissy's other side, gone still in a way Steve's never seen him do.
It's downright weird for a guy who's normally always moving, and Steve knows it's defensive.
He's feeling a little defensive himself right now, though he doesn't want to particularly untangle why.
"Jason, listen to me." Chrissy tries again.
In his preffery vision, Steve spots a flash of familiar color. Turns his head automatically, seeking it out--and sees Jonathan hustling Nancy across the room.
The younger man is trying to balance Nancy while opening the front door, and for a second Steve almost beelines for them, except--
Except.
Nancy's whole body moves in what Steve intimately knows is an exhale, leaning her head in the crook of Jonathan's shoulder.
One arm wraps around his waist, as Jonathan finally gets the door open, and Steve watches with a stunned sort of horror as his girlfriend presses a kiss to Jonathan's shoulder.
It's fine.
He's fine.
Nancy was just--drunk. Seeking comfort. She didn't know what she was doing. She didn't mean it like that, she didn't--
"Oh shit Harrington." Jason drawls, a lazy sort of taunt. "I think Byers just stole your girlfriend."
Steve's head snaps back to him, the emotions he was attempting to box up flying to the front of his brain like dogs who slipped their leash.
"Never thought a priss like Nancy would be easy like that, but then, you never were the kind of guy to inspire loyalty." Jason continues, clearly ignoring his own girlfriend and all Steve can see is red.
Munson sucks air between his teeth next to him, nervously eyeing Steve while Chrissy's eyes have gone wide with shock and growing anger.
"Jason!" She admonishes, but he's not even looking towards her.
That too sharp smile is all for Steve.
He thinks of Nancy, the way she'd been so angry with him but so gentle with Jonathan.
He thinks of the monster he faced down in the Byers house, the terror that had shrank down to that same adrenaline soaked focus he had on the basketball court.
He thinks of this asshole Junior in front of him.
Making Chrissy cry just because she'd been kind enough to try to help Eddie, and accept Eddie's kindness in return when the weirdo tried to help her and Steve both.
Steve taps his foot, then switches his stance.
'Plant your feet.' Hargroves voice snarls in his memory and Steve wouldn't be surprised if the asshole abandons the keg long enough to come watch this.
Have his turn at heckling, just because he can.
Steve plants his feet anyway.
"You know what Carver?" He says, hands dropping from his hips.
Jason's face curves into a smile. "What?" He says, tone smarmy.
"You're full of shit."
Hand cocking back of its own accord, Steve puts every bit of himself into his punch.
Feels it reverberate up his arm as his knuckles connect to Jason's cheek.
It's going to hurt later, but right now all he can do is stand over Jason as the asshole's head snaps sideways, legs staggering him backwards until he's falling into his friends.
Chrissy gasps, Jason's boys chanting variations of 'Oh shit!'
Steve just glares him down.
The junior wipes his bloodied mouth, letting his friends push him up before shrugging them off.
"You're going to regret that." Jason snarls, and Steve squares up a second time, expecting to be rushed, when the sharp snickt! of a switchblade freezes them both.
"I think we're done here." Munson says, knife in hand.
The blade he holds is stained a deep, russet red. Crusty flakes fall off it, drifting gently down to the patio floor.
Jason's eyes boggle at it for a moment before he stands up straight.
"Now it makes sense. You're weak, Harrington, letting the Freak get his claws into you." Jason spits bloodstained saliva down at Eddie's feet. "No wonder Coach wants Billy as co-captain!"
Steve just scoffs.
"Chrissy!" Carver barks, making the poor girl jump. "Come here, we're leaving!"
Trembling, but stepping closer to Steve, she shakes her head.
"Chrissy." Jason orders again, and has the audacity to point to his feet, like a man commanding his dog.
"No." Chrissy says it quietly at first, voice a little shaky, before she seems to realize it.
She stands taller, repeats herself in a stronger voice. "No, Jason. We're done."
Jason stares at her, hard. "Chrissy, your mother told me to bring you home. So I'm going to take you home and get you away from this--demon and his lackey!"
It doesn't sound loving.
It sounds like a threat.
He steps forward, hand out to grab her arm and Steve tenses, shifting to step in front of Chrissy.
Eddie beats him there.
The word demon seems to awaken something in him, because his face is now grinning theatrically, voice dipping low in pitch.
"You heard her, Carver. She said no, and even I respect a lady's wish. So run along now," he walks two fingers in the air, from the hand not waving the knife around. "before I decide to make you and her both one of mine, just as I did Harrington!"
Jason actually crosses himself, before making one last attempt for Chrissy.
"That monster is dangerous. if you don't come with me, I'll have to alert your parents." He locks eyes with her. "For the good of your soul."
Steve snorts at that crock of shit, but Eddie lunges forward, slashing the knife in the air.
It's nowhere near Jason, but the guy leaps a foot back anyway.
"Begone!" Eddie booms, and that's all it takes for Jason and his cronies to huff and puff and stride away.
He keeps his arms in the air for a few beats more, before dropping them when it's clear Jason won't be back.
"So I'm yours, huh?" Steve drawls, as Eddie finally puts his hands down and turns to face them.
The guys scary face drops into something almost excited, and Steve can practically see the adrenaline crackling through him.
"Hey it worked. Carver's a religious nut, he goes running anytime you even hint at Satan." Eddie shrugs, grinning wildly. "Put on a little show and poof! Him and his flying monkeys melt away!"
He mimes melting and Steve stares at him for it, until he hears Chrissy laughing next to him.
Eddie grins at her and Steve is hit with the realization that it was for her benefit. To make her feel better about her psycho ex.
Something fond and familiar winds through his chest as the other boy bows.
He refuses to put a name to it.
"Did you paint your knife?" He asks instead, rubbing the hand he hit Jason with.
"What?" Eddie asks, startled out of his court jester act.
Steve nods to his hand holding the switchblade. "That's not blood, it's way too red."
"Ah." Eddie turns the grin back on, and this time it's for Steve. "Yeah, it's uh. Modeling paint. Not like Carver would know the difference."
Unspoken was the fact that he hadn't thought Steve would.
Prior to last year, he'd have been right.
Drunken cheering erupts into wild yells inside, breaking whatever spell the three of them were under.
Hargrove's voice is the loudest among them, and the dude is definitely wasted.
Steve has a feeling Hargrove also knows the difference between paint and blood, rendering Munson's knife trick useless if the dick tried to start something.
"Do you want a ride home, Chrissy?" He asks quietly.
"If it's not a bother." She says, wiping tears shed refused to let fall from her eyes.
Chrissy Cunningham was a lot stronger than people gave her credit for.
"Come on, Munson, I think it's time we all make our exit." Steve says, finding himself weirdly unwilling to leave the older teen behind.
Eddie could hold his own, but given how badly things were playing out Steve figured it was best if they all just called it a day.
"Yeah lemme just…" Munson puts his blade away, fumbling at his pockets for a moment before turning and snatching up a metal lunchbox.
"There! After you, my liege." He says, before opening the lunchbox to make it talk.
"My lady." He makes it say, pitching his voice high.
Chrissy breaks into giggles again and Steve rolls his eyes, but he claps his good hand on Eddie's shoulder as he walks past.
Eddie smiles at him, this one a bit softer than the others, eyes sparkling and Steve chooses not to read into that either.
The three of them walk together, Eddie splitting off to his van after Chrissy thanks him.
Part Two
#borked my computer trying to update the graphics card#have a thing#steven harrington#eddie munson#chrissy cunningham#this is part of an almost finished one shot#eventual#steve/eddie/chrissy#eddie is a dork#100% this oneshot focuses on how dorky his ass is#well that and putting two jocks back together after bad relationships and monster's details both their lives#i called it patchworks because its written to ne weaved through the shows plot and is mostly compliant until vecna#hurt/comfort#breakup
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"what are you doing," eddie mumbles in confusion, hair fanned out on steve's pillow, the moonlight streaming in giving him a hazy halo.
there's a hand on the side of his face and it's cupping his cheek, thumb stroking over his skin. it's soft, so soft, too soft. another hand is trapping his against the mattress, fingers trailing over his forearm before tangling into his own and squeezing tight. it's gentle, so gentle, too gentle.
eddie isn't soft, eddie isn't gentle. eddie isn't making love in a full size bed with wallpaper that matches the drapes. he isn't fluttering kisses in time with fluttering heartbeats and the fluttering wings of butterflies trapped in his stomach like the most lovely cage.
eddie is fucking at 2am when there's enough intoxication to make him look like he's worth it. he's rough and wild, quick and easy. a means to a barely wanted end because he's there and willing and with long enough hair to let people imagine he's someone else.
he should be caged instead of the damn butterflies. he bares his teeth and thrashes his limbs just to fight and see what he can get away with. he laughs loud and brash in the face of sweetness just to see anger, just to see hurt.
he has half a mind to think he's a feral animal that's hardly been trained, performing in some fucked up circus that charges two bucks to see him snarl and hurl insults at anyone who passes by. he bites at the hands that try to touch, try to feed, proving to the onlookers that he's only worth the pocket change they pay to see him.
but steve. he's holding his face like he wants to, holding his hand like it's the most important thing in the world. he's pressing kisses along eddie's jaw without any hurry, without any rush, kissing just to kiss. feeling just to feel. he's like a ray of goddamn sunshine even in the darkness that midnight provides, warming eddie from the inside out.
eddie wants to run. he wants to scream. he wants to feel like he's allowed steve's soft and gentle but he's-
"is this not okay?" and now steve's looking at him with all of whatever he's trying to give him lacing into his face, his eyes and spit slick lips sparkling in the moonlight like a shiny new toy. "do you not like it?"
concern and care are different sides of the same steve shaped coin and if eddie looks hard enough, he can see them blurring together in his frustratingly beautiful sparkling eyes and those damn butterflies start to come back.
"no, it's-" he let's out a sigh, relaxing his tight muscles and sinking into the bed, sinking into whatever steve is willing to give him. "just different, is all. good different, i think."
steve smiles and eddie shakily mirrors it back, before he's ducking his head again and slotting their lips together, fingers still holding tight to eddie's, still cupping his face like it's something precious.
eddie's come to terms with the taste of the metal bars of his cage, teeth wearing down as he tries to bite his way to freedom. maybe this time he'll let himself get used to the taste of soft and gentle smiles if it means loving steve.
#under a read more solely for length!#this post is brought to you by me avoiding my work and feeling emotions about steve canonically holding hands when he has sex!#my writing#steddie#steve harrington#eddie munson#steddie drabble#steddie fic#steddie hurt/comfort#for some reason i'm currently obsessed with dog imagry and you can pry it from my cold dead hands
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𝐅𝐀𝐌𝐈𝐋𝐘
Pairing: Eddie x F!Reader
Summary: Wayne didn't trust you, until one night.
Warnings: angst, fluff, nightmares
Wayne Munson just wanted to protect his boy. And that's why he was so reluctant towards you.
It wasn't that he didn't like you, it was that he didn't trust you: after all the years Eddie had spent almost alone in school, you came in the picture. You, saying you cared about him, saying you were interested in the music he listened to and the books he read, saying you loved him.
It all seemed too perfect and Wayne just knew there was something wrong.
Not because he was a bad person, Wayne absolutely wasn't, but because he was afraid you were playing with Eddie's feelings. He was afraid that one day you'd laugh in his face and tell him there was no way a girl like you could ever love someone like him. An outcast. A cult-leader. A freak.
The worst part was that Eddie, on the other hand, was really in love with you. He could see it by the way he talked about you when you weren't around, by his loving gaze when you visited him at the trailer, by the smile that appeared on his lips whenever he mentioned you in a conversation.
Wayne was afraid Eddie would suffer when you left him.
Because he knew you would. It was just a matter of time.
After what had happened in the upside down, after Eddie had almost died (because yes, he knew the whole truth even if he had a hard time believing it at first) he often woke up due to nightmares.
Often he heard the bed creak as if Eddie was tossing and turning in pain, sometimes he heard him talking but never understood what exactly he was saying. He was probably calling your name, the name of girl he was in love with, poor naive boy.
Once, he opened the door to his room slightly, slowly and asked if everything was all right, watching the figure curled up on the bed, his legs drawn up to his chest in a defensive position.
Even in the dark he could clearly see that Eddie was shaking.
It was pretty obvious that no, he wasn't all right. He was far from it.
Eddie told him to go away, that he was fine. Wayne pressed for a while but Eddie didn't seem to want to talk to him. Finally he closed the door and went back to his room, hoping that giving him the space he wanted would help.
He wasn't sure if it had really helped him when he started hearing muffled sobs coming from his room.
He really didn't know what to do. Eddie should have talked to someone about it, vented in some way but he didn't seem to want to do it with him.
He didn't seem to want to talk about it even with you, his "girlfriend". Wayne had expected this too: You wouldn't be there for his boy when he needed it.
After that night, Eddie had locked the door to his room, so even if Wayne wanted to go inside to check, he couldn't.
One night though, Wayne woke up to a noise coming from the room next to his, from Eddie's room.
He sighed running a hand over his face, tired, knowing he was going to have another sleepless night and that Eddie would too.
Thar time though, he heard the door to Eddie's bedroom open and the sound of bare feet making their way down the hallway where the phone was hanging on the wall.
What the hell was he doing?
Wayne got out of bed and headed for the door to his room but, when he was about to open it, he heard Eddie's voice on the other side of the door and stopped.
He knew eavesdropping was wrong, but that didn't stop him.
"Hey, sweetheart."
Wayne realized Eddie called you. At two in the morning.
"Yeah, yeah I'm fine." Eddie whispered, almost as that was all the voice he could get out at the moment.
"Yeah, don't worry. I just... I think I just wanted to hear your voice. I'm sorry, I'm sure I woke you up. Yeah, I told you I'm fine." Eddie muttered, if his words were to sound convincing, he was failing miserably.
He sounded like a kid scared by a thunderstorm, in moments like that Wayne wished Eddie's mom was still there with him, some things really would've been easier.
“No, that's stupid, I shouldn't even have called, you probably just want to sleep and not worry about my dumb problems. It's just…I'm tired, Y/N. I'm so tired and the nightmares won't stop and I… I don't know what to do. Every time, every night I'm there again and there are the bats and the lightning and- and It's hard to sleep without you. I'm scared Y/N. I'm scared they'll never stop, that I'll never be okay." Eddie sniffed.
Was he crying?
"But it's okay. I mean, yeah, I- don't worry and-" he probably stopped to hear what you were saying.
Were you telling him to go fuck himself for calling in the middle of the night? Were you trying to console him? Wayne couldn't know but either way, he didn't trust you. He had never done that.
"No. You don't have to. No, Y/N, no please, really, I-" Eddie stammered before silence fell on the other side of the door.
You hung up the phone. You hung up the phone on Eddie's face when he needed someone to listen to him and when he trusted you enough to call you and talk about how he was feeling.
Wayne knew it would end like this. You never loved Eddie like you said you did, you didn't even care about him or you wouldn't have hung up the phone. Maybe it was a joke all along, "make the freak your boyfriend, make him fall in love and trust you and then leave him when he needs it most and break his heart."
He knew how mean teenagers could be, they always managed to hit where it hurt the most. And, of course that's what you did with Eddie, you played with his heart that had already been broken too many times for someone so young.
He heard Eddie pacing nervously down the short hallway a couple of times, and just as Wayne was about to walk out of the room despite having no idea what to say, he heard the trailer door open and close.
Eddie went out. And Wayne wasn't going to let him spend the night in the cold or whatever that boy was up to.
The older Munson finally came out of his room and made his way to the door Eddie had disappeared through.
He opened it slightly and looked out, finding himself faced with the most unexpected scene he had imagined.
There you were, your car parked in front of the trailer, the door still open, and you were striding towards Eddie.
The sky was dark and moonless, only a few stars were visible, a nearby street lamp allowed the man to see what was happening.
Wayne leaned against the door frame, watching the scene a few feet away from him.
As soon as you reached Eddie you wrapped your arms around his neck and pushed him towards you, he immediately wrapped his arms around your body in a hug Wayne wondered if it could actually break any bones.
Eddie held on to you as if his life depended on it, squeezing the fabric of your shirt with his hands and closed his eyes, letting out a sigh of relief as he hugged you, as if having you there in that moment solved all his problems, as if Eddie was okay again just because of your presence.
"I'm here. It's okay, I got you." You said holding him, your voice soft and sincere.
That was the moment Wayne realized he was completely wrong about you, all along.
"You didn't have to come." Eddie whispered, not letting you go.
"But I wanted to." You responded by stepping away from him slightly, cupping his face with your hands and running your thumbs on his cheeks.
"I swear, you are something else." Eddie said with a slight smile. "Thank you for coming, really."
And Wayne, seeing you looking at Eddie as if he was the most precious thing in the world, wondered what had been on his mind every time he doubted your sincerity, every time he thought you didn't really care about Eddie.
You went there in the middle of the night because you knew he needed it, and he didn't even ask you. That was all it took to know that you were a good person. That you were there for his boy.
"I love you." He murmured before bringing his lips to yours in a light but affectionate kiss. Wayne had to look down, feeling he was slipping into a too intimate a moment.
"I love you too." You responded leaning your forehead against his. "And I'm here for you. I'll always be here for you, you know that."
"Do you- think you can stay the night? I understand if you can't- if you don't want to- I mean-"
"Eddie, I've come to stay. I wouldn't leave even if you begged me, right now." You reassured him.
He nodded, leaving a kiss on top of your head. "I love you so much."
You smiled grabbing his hand with yours, intertwining your fingers ready to reenter the trailer.
Your eyes met Wayne's still in the doorway.
Eddie's hand squeezed yours tighter as you reached for him.
"She's spending the night here whether you like it or not." Eddie announced to his uncle.
Wayne looked between you and Eddie, then back to you as you started to talk.
"I'm sorry I showed up here in the middle of the night but I can't leave now, I-"
"I'm sorry I didn't trust you." He finally admitted.
A surprised expression came onto your face.
"I was wrong about you, I was wrong from the start." He said leading you into the trailer.
Eddie smiled at his uncle's words.
"It's okay, I understand where all your resilience came from. Really, don't worry about it." You answered with conviction.
Wayne patted your shoulder. "You are a good kid, thank you for being here."
You smiled again. "You don't have to thank me. None of you have to."
Eddie put his arm around your shoulders and pulled you closer to him, up against his Metallica shirt he used to sleep in.
"We're going to sleep, uncle Wayne." Eddie said before heading to his room, dragging you with him.
You turned one last time to Wayne before disappearing behind Eddie's bedroom door. "Good night."
The man's gaze softened even more. "Goodnight kids."
Eddie was in good hands now, he always had been even when Wayne didn't know it.
You were always there, even when Wayne didn't know it. You were family.
Tags: @jacklesdeanvessel @morning-sky7
#eddie munson x reader#eddie x reader#eddie munson fluff#eddie munson fanfic#eddie munson fanfiction#eddie munson angst#eddie munson x y/n#eddie x y/n#stranger things fanfic#stranger things fanfiction#wayne munson#eddie munson hurt/comfort
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This is not how Wayne was expecting to come home from work.
He had expected, as usual, that Eddie would be asleep, and he’d be free to watch the 5:00 AM news. He’d have a bowl of cereal for dinner (or was it breakfast at that point?), and then he’d be out like a light while Eddie did whatever it was he did before noon. Usually, that was sleep.
The exact opposite of what Wayne was expecting is happening right now.
He didn’t even get his keys out of his pocket before Eddie whips the door open. He looks a mess: hair tied back loosely, pajamas off kilter, panic mixed with exhaustion on his face.
“Oh, thank Christ,” he croaks. “Wayne, I need your help. I have no idea what to do.”
Wayne can count on one hand the number of times he’s seen Eddie panic like this. He shoulders past him into the trailer and is greeted with the sight of Steve Harrington standing in the middle of his living room.
“What on God’s green earth,” he murmurs. He blinks, then blinks again, but Harrington is still there, in pajamas, the tire iron Eddie still keeps under his bed in his hands. He’s breathing real heavy, and he stares out the window, stock-still.
“The hell happened?” Wayne asks, keeping his voice low.
“I don’t know,” Eddie whispers desperately. “I don’t know what happened, but he got up and grabbed the iron and just stood here-”
“How long?”
“Ten minutes, maybe.”
Wayne doesn’t like where this is going. “Has he responded to you at all?”
“No-”
Shit.
“-but I can try again?”
Wayne eyes the white-knuckled grip Harrington has on the tire iron. He’s ready to swing, and Wayne knows he’ll swing hard if given the chance.
No way he’s risking Eddie. No way he’s risking Harrington. Wayne doesn’t know him well, only met him a few times in passing, but he knows he’d never forgive himself if he hurt Eddie.
“No. Don’t try again.”
“I’m not leaving him.”
“Didn’t ask you to. All I’m saying is don’t go near.”
Eddie is very good at following instructions to the letter and to the letter only, much to Wayne’s fond annoyance. So, he doesn’t go near.
Instead, he says, voice strangely soft, “Stevie, sweetheart.”
Harrington doesn’t respond, but he turns a little in the direction of Eddie’s voice. Wayne takes that as a good sign, even if he can see the tension on his face now.
“Will you come back to sleep? Please?” Wayne hates hearing Eddie’s voice crack the way it is right now.
Harrington faces them a little better, and Wayne sees what he was expecting.
He’s staring through them, not at them. Wherever Harrington is, it sure ain’t here.
“I don’t know how much that’s gonna help, Eddie. He’s having-”
“I know he’s having a flashback, Wayne!” Eddie snaps. “I’m not stupid. It’s usually just not this bad, and I don’t know how to fix it.”
“Alright,” Wayne says because snapping back won’t help anyone. That and because he’s trying to process the fact that Eddie has had to deal with this before. “Let me try.”
He takes a few steps toward Harrington, keeping his hands up and his movements slow.
“Harrington,” he calls, keeping his tone light. “You’re at Eddie’s place right now. It’s almost five AM on a Friday night.”
Harrington blinks, and it looks like his eyes are coming back into focus.
“You’re safe right now. Eddie’s safe right now.”
Harrington shakes his head and lifts the tire iron a little higher. Christ, his arms must be aching by now. “No. I saw the lights flicker, and I heard a thud outside, and it got cold.”
“Stevie, the gate’s closed,” Eddie pleads. “You saw it happen. Nothing got out. You’re safe.”
Wayne doesn’t know what any of that means, but even though it was supposed to reassure Harrington, he just shakes his head again.
He hears Eddie sigh behind him, and he knows without turning around that he’s trying not to cry.
Guess he’s gotta try something different, then. “You just wake up?”
Harrington blinks, and for a minute, Wayne thinks this won’t get them anywhere. But then he whispers, just loud enough to be heard, “Yeah.”
“Okay. I just got off work.”
Harrington stares at him, confused.
“So, I think I’m a little more awake than you. I’ll take what you’ve got in your hands, and I can stay up.”
Harrington shakes his head. “It’s fine. I stay up most of the time when I’m alone.”
Alone. Wayne knows from experience, both personal and witnessing this shit, that alone is the last thing anyone should be when they’re having a flashback. Harrington says it like it’s the only thing he’s ever known.
He dismisses his questions - why is Harrington having flashbacks, why is he alone - and focuses on getting him to put down the tire iron and go to bed.
“You’re not alone this time,” Wayne says. “You’ve got Eddie here, too, and I think both of you would feel better if you were together.”
Harrington looks over Wayne’s shoulder. Wayne doesn’t turn around, but he can imagine the pleading look on Eddie’s face just fine.
Wayne holds out his hands for the tire iron, and after a minute, or maybe a month, Harrington sets it there. Immediately, he looks lighter and heavier.
Eddie walks up next to Wayne and murmurs, “Come on, sugar.”
Harrington goes to him and just rests his head on his shoulder. Eddie holds him there, just standing in the middle of the living room, sunrise just starting to peek in through the windows.
Thank you, he mouths to Wayne.
Wayne nods, but he’s got a hell of a lot more questions than answers - what the hell brought this on, what exactly is Harrington to Eddie. That can wait for morning, though.
For now, he just hopes Harrington will be okay by then.
No, not Harrington. Steve.
After something like this, Wayne has learned, you start using first names.
#stranger things#stranger things fic#steve harrington#eddie munson#wayne munson#steddie#(from an outside pov)#angst#hurt/comfort#flashbacks#idk what this is#it's the night before midterms#i've had a shit week#bon appetit#this is old btw i promise i wasn't THAT irresponsible#to write new fic the night before a midterm#ria writes
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𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐛𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐬 | 𝐞𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐞 𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐧
summary eddie munson is super weird. he holds your hand too tight, he has a fascination with your neck, and he can’t give a hickey to save his life. good thing you’re super weird, too. [20k]
warnings two losers falling in love!! vampire!eddie munson, ditzy!reader (kind of), fem!reader, smut mdni (p in v, unprotected sex, oral fem receiving, general heavy petting and kissing, praise), fluff, hurt/comfort, angst (eddie struggling with guilt and grief). canon divergent (the events of volume 2 take place but there’s a mostly happy ending i.e. everyone good lives and everyone bad dies) TW eddie doesn't have suicidal thoughts, but he does think about it briefly. not with intent or anything like that though. requested here for my halloween party <3
(㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ)
Eddie Munson never wanted to be a vampire, and he wants that on the record.
It's a ridiculous existence. It's embarrassing. It's nothing like all the movies and books promised him.
He's looking at you, Bram Stoker.
In Eddie's mind, Stoker’s nothing less than a liar and a sycophant.
"Who's dick were you bouncing on, Stoker?" he demands to know, kicking fallen leaf mulch under his feet angrily. "Need'ta fucking impress some vampire lover with your over-exaggerated, over-powered, ridiculous descriptions? Great. Hope it was worth it. Meanwhile I'm here, self-esteem half the size of a grain of rice because I can't scale a building with my bare hands."
Eddie would know. He's tried.
He's not genuinely angry with Bram Stoker, but he'd rather take his frustrations out on a guy who's been dead for a hundred years than take them out on the demobats, because he doesn't want to even think about the demobats. They're all dead too. Not before they'd had (see: devoured) their pound of flesh and changed his life for the worse, though.
He shakes his head to drive out the memory like water in his ears. It's easier to pretend none of that shit in the upside down ever happened. (Impossible to pretend. He begs himself to try anyway.)
He’s pissed because science fiction has promised him a lot of things and reality has delivered on none of them. No super strength, no impermeable skin. He is faster, but that's more a reflexive thing than anything else. And being faster doesn't make running fun. That’s impossible.
Sunlight breaks through the treeline and his skin crawls. Science fiction didn't get that right, either. The sun doesn't hurt. It's just really, really annoying.
He covers his eyes, winces at his itchy hand, pulls his sleeve over his fingers and covers his eyes again. "This blows," he says, and means it.
In Dracula, the sun nulls Dracula’s supernatural abilities. Eddie doesn’t have any abilities worth nulling, unless you count echolocation.
He doesn’t.
He walks another five minutes up the road toward Forest Hills when he realises you're behind him. His senses are enhanced now as a bat’s might be, hearing fine-tuned and dialled up every second of the day — which makes living in a trailer park where everyone thinks he's a murderer an acute misery — but he's as prone to distraction as anyone else. Especially when he gets stuck in a memory.
Eddie throws his gaze over his shoulder and finds you thirty or forty feet away, talking to yourself under your breath. He knows you more for your sounds than your appearance. To be able to put a face to your mindless babbling is a mystery solved. Of course you look like that. A skirt made of soft looking fabric bounces over two cute thighs, a pretty lacy corset type of thing that isn't too tight outfits your top half. You look more like a vampire than he does.
"Hi, Eddie," you call.
His eyes widen, a deer-in-the-headlights kind of surprise. If you notice how he's frozen you don't show it, continuing to push your bike toward him. The tick of the wheels grows louder as you get closer, two hands on the handlebars with wrists draped in bracelets, both silver and fabric.
Besides your jewellery, your arms are bare. You must be freezing.
"Hey," he says.
He doesn't know your name. He doesn't know how you know his, and he’s too awkward to ask.
Your sounds peak as you close the gap. The wet scrape of your dirty black canvas shoes over shining asphalt, the soft puff of your breath, the clinking sounds of whatever trinkets you have in your bag. If he focuses, he can make out the tiniest pinches of fabric. Your short sleeves rubbing against your arms, your bra straps stretching over your shoulders.
Eddie takes a deep breath and tries to diminish his senses.
"Where's your van?" you ask curiously.
"Piece of shit kicked it in the middle of town. Just my luck."
You pause at his side, looking him up and down obviously but without the judgement or irreverent disgust he's come to expect from near about everybody in Hawkins.
"That's not good," you say succinctly.
It's such a genuine response that Eddie can't find it in himself to be sarcastic.
"God awful," he agrees sullenly.
You nod and start to walk again. Eddie falls naturally into step beside you, matching your pace without thinking.
"You should get a bike."
He laughs. Coughs to cover it up. "Yeah?"
"They're way more reliable than a car, and it doesn't hurt the zone."
Eddie squints. "The o-zone?"
"Is there another one?"
You're still so serious that he spares you the ridicule he might dole out to anyone else. If Dustin had said something like that he would've ripped the kid a new one, but you're rather sweet in an odd way. You have a soft manner of talking — each word sounds like you've thought its pronunciation through meticulously beforehand.
He ignores your question and points at your bike, ring catching the sun. "Why aren't you riding it?"
"My chain slipped."
"So much for reliable."
That makes you smile. Eddie feels it like a punch, a flat palm slapped into his chest.
"You can't put the chain on yourself?"
A brisk breeze whips your hair, your earrings. The left kisses your cheek, a silver heart-shaped hoop with pink beads that click together. You lean into it, face tilted to one side as a perplexed smile plays on your sticky lips. "You can do that?"
"Sure, you pull it back around the gear. It's easy." He hesitates for a moment, and then feels guilty about hesitating. "I'll do it for you, if you want."
"The guy in no. 62 has been charging me ten dollars." You don't sound as angry as you should, in Eddie's opinion.
"I'll do it for nothing."
You beam at him. His chest feels like a bruise.
Pretty girls don't like Eddie. Not before Chrissy, not after. He's trying to work out your angle, what it is that you want.
Or maybe you don't know.
As soon as you find out who he is, you'll turn your pretty nose up at him and walk the other way. He shouldn't smile at you, he definitely shouldn't fix your bike.
He can't help it. He's so starved for positive attention that he follows you all the way through the park, westside to east.
He checks the driveway of his own home and smiles mildly when he spots Wayne's new car. It's new in the sense that it's different. It's actually way older than the one he'd had before, the one he'd pawned to pay for Eddie's — well, Eddie's everything. His check-ups, his court dates, his goddamn bail. In the same way that this trailer isn't the trailer, but an older, smaller one as far away from their first as possible.
Kid, if I had the money…
Wayne hadn't needed to finish. If he had the money, they'd leave. Leave Hawkins, leave Indiana. Settle down in some other mediocre Midwestern state with all the same creature comforts and none of the "You were acquitted but literally none of us believe you didn't kill someone," motif.
All they have now is debt, each other, and the Great Munson mug collection.
Eddie keeps his head down as they pass the old trailer. Nobody lives inside now. Only termites.
He can taste blood by the time they reach your home. Far from the metallicity of his human blood, Eddie's blood now harbours a bitter taste. Not quite like coffee but with that same overwhelming earthiness. He pulls his teeth from the bitten flesh of his bottom lip and quickly raises a hand to his teeth, alarmed.
No knife-like points. Normal teeth.
"Are you thirsty?" you ask him.
Eddie flinches and drops his hand. You've parked your bike against the wooden lifts of your porch and are halfway up the steps to your front door, hand clasped loosely on the railing.
His heart fucking pounds.
"I have grape juice?"
"Right," he says hurriedly, "right. Yeah, that would be awesome."
Duh, you meant juice.
You send him another endearing smile and pop up the last of your steps and into the front door. It's not locked. He doesn't follow, thinking you must live with somebody (who's gonna know exactly who he is and tell him to get lost).
He turns his attention to your bike instead. It's easy enough to fix. He rolls the bike so its handlebars are resting against your concrete driveway and covers the top bar of the metal body with his sneaker to stop it from toppling. He rolls up his sleeves and bares his arms, but pulls them back down immediately when he remembers the white-purple whorls of scar tissue lurking underneath.
"Fuck," he mutters. Everything is a reminder, all of the time. He can't escape what happened.
It's everywhere.
He's getting his fingers under the chain when you reappear. You've layered up, bracelets and naked arms hidden by a black hoodie.
The wind blows and your skirt shifts. From his position he can see a ladder hiding in your tights where your inner thighs are pressed together. He whips his gaze up like a high-school perv caught sneaking peeks in the girls locker room and notices the stitching on your chest for the first time.
"You like Dio?" he asks excitedly.
"Who?"
He wilts. "Uh, your hoodie. Dio."
"I got it for three dollars in the bargain bins," you supply helpfully, all pep as you climb down the stairs and offer him a glass cup adorned in dainty enamel flowers. "Is Dio good?"
He waves his hand at the glass apologetically. "Two seconds…" Lifting the chain with the second hand, Eddie tugs and then feeds until the links are lined up with the bumps on the big chainring. The skin on his fingertips get pinched and his eyebrows pull together in pain, but it's a mild irritant at worst and after a moment the chain is back in place.
He pulls his hand away and wipes dark grease down the front of his jacket. "I think I did it."
You're glowing, earrings like a metronome as you ask, "That fast? You're awesome."
He turns the pedal and your back wheel spins in time with his heart. You're awesome. When was the last time somebody who wasn't Wayne said anything like that?
Although Dustin had told him he thought Eddie was a much cooler, more fucked up version of the guy from Van Halen the other day.
You're just saying that 'cos we're both called Eddie, Eddie had said morosely.
Learn to take a compliment, dude.
When they aren't pity compliments, he might.
Eddie lifts your bike back onto the wheels to show you that it's working perfectly. You giggle your evident pleasure. "Oh, thank you, thank you!" you say, super sweet even as grape juice sloshes over the rims of your flowered glasses and drips down your fingers.
"Here, let me," he says, taking the glasses from your purple-stained hands.
You kiss your hands clean which is a thing, a lot to watch. Eddie admits to himself that he thinks you're really pretty, recognises that that is a bad thing to think considering the likely very short life span of your acquaintance. God knows you won't be saying anything as friendly when you find out who he is.
"You're so nice," you say. It feels like you're talking more to yourself than him. "Thank you. It's slipped off three times this month, and ten dollars is ten dollars. Wait, do you want ten dollars?"
"My services were administered charitably.”
Your smile grows. You accept your glass and take a small sip, eyes lit up as Eddie steers your bike one-handed to rest against the porch.
"Do you wanna come inside? I don't have any of the Dio, but I have Blondie."
He holds in a throwaway comment about real rock and roll, astounded that you’d ask him. "Your folks aren't home?"
"I'm twenty-two."
Eddie squints at you. "Seriously?"
"You didn't think so?"
He shrugs. It's not that you don't look twenty two. Or even that you don't act twenty two. But it's been a long time since he met somebody living alone in the park. Forest Hills is where poverty comes to settle.
"A boyfriend?"
"Just me and mister Porterson."
"That your grandpa?"
"That's my pet fish."
He smiles. It's his first real, authentic smile in days. He's genuinely elated by your offer and your attitude, but he doesn't know how to handle it, struck with a sudden nightmare of you, afterward, telling somebody you'd invited him in and he'd tried to hurt you. It isn't fair of him to assume you'd do anything like that. You've been nothing but sweet and sincere this whole time.
Eddie hasn't let his guard down in a long time.
You're giving him this wide-eyed, imploring look that promptly suffocates any fear.
And in a week, when she finds out who you are and feels betrayed, feels tricked? What then, Munson?
"You know what happened?" he asks.
"What happened?"
"Two years ago. Chrissy… Chrissy Cunningham?"
Don't say her fucking name.
Your expression clears as clarity blooms. You take a step. He needs a second to realise you've come forward rather than away, fingers twitching toward his hand.
"I know about it. I'm sorry that happened to you."
He stares.
This is a trick. Two years and he can count the amount of people who believe him on his two hands, and only because they'd all gone through it with him. Sometimes there are outliers, logical people who seem to realise Eddie couldn't have killed all those people, couldn't have been in all those different places without leaving any evidence behind. And sometimes there are people who agree he didn't kill Chrissy, but he's a coward for leaving her to die. (She’d already been dead.)
Eddie doesn't know what he thinks. Wayne sets the record straight every now and then with a clap on the shoulder. You did what every parent wants their kid to do. You lived. I can't ask for more than that.
"You don't believe it?"
"That you hurt her?" You hold his gaze, face practically impassive. "No, I don't believe it."
He pulls in a breath that fills every inch of his chest. "I could learn to like Blondie," he says.
—
You're standing in the driveway of Eddie's trailer with a heavy bag over your shoulder, face to face with a man who kind of looks like him but not really. You assume it's his uncle because who else could he be? If you hadn't seen him here you'd never guess.
"Eddie's mom must've had strong genes," you say. You bring your shoulder up toward your cheek thoughtfully. "He didn't get any of your face. Was she pretty? Eddie's really pretty."
"She was," he says, peering down his nose at you.
"I got sandwiches. Do you want one?"
"What kind?"
"I have ham and cheese, or ham and lettuce and tomato, or I have pumpernickel cookies. Is Eddie a vegetarian?"
"Why?"
"'Cause I only brought one cheese and cucumber, and I have dibs."
He climbs down the last couple of steps and is still taller but definitely less imposing, face covered in scratchy salt and pepper stubble and crows feet deeply embedded into the corners of his eyes. He looks like a man who has been tired for a very long time. You make a mental note to bring him some lavender for his pillow on your next visit.
"You're Eddie's new friend?"
You nod your head briskly. "Yes, sir. I'm Y/N."
He opens his box of camels like a pro, bottom pressed to his chest. He tucks a cigarette between his lips and pulls his lighter out. He doesn't light it.
"It's nice to meet you," he says eventually, voice warming.
You search through the mess of your skirt for the zipper on your bag and peel it open, pulling out your tupperware of cookies and cracking them open to release the fragrant smell of cinnamon and almonds. It's a heady scent, fitting for the holiday season approaching.
You offer Eddie’s uncle a cookie.
"Thought pumpernickel was bread," he says gruffly, taking one.
"It is, but there's this little town in France that makes these every year at Christmas and they call them pumpernickel biscuits," — he takes a bite and winces at the hard snap — "you're s'posed to dip them in hot chocolate."
"You don't say."
You nod happily and he moves aside to let you pass.
"Thanks, kid."
You turn back to him with your fingers curled around the door handle. "Of course! It's really nice to meet you, Mr. Munson, sir."
"Wayne is fine."
You laugh and repeat his name in a similarly rough voice, letting yourself in as Eddie had told you to do. You find him immediately in a man-made corner of the living room, pale and in his pyjamas. The trailer is open planned, a living room they’ve divided by propping a couch against the kitchen counter, a slim hallway leading to a cramped bathroom and the single bedroom. It's exactly like in your home.
You're somewhat surprised to see him in pyjamas. Eddie doesn't wear comfy looking clothes out of the house — you've only ever seen him in jeans and jackets like a real rockstar.
"Are you ready?" you ask.
You've invited him to come and search for bugs with you. Catching any kind of bug, whether beetle or butterfly or spider, is really scary, but you need to be able to catch them to draw them.
You'd expressed this to him over the phone and he'd said, "I can come and help. I have good reflexes."
He rubs his hands over his knees. There's a blanket pooled around his feet, a quilt he must sleep with, and the room is decorated with not a whole lot of stuff but enough to make you take a step back.
"Is this your room?" you ask, enchanted.
"Kind of." He pulls his hair from behind his ear, obscuring a pale cheek. "I don't think I can come with you today, I'm sorry. I meant to call you."
You toy with a dark thigh high sock as you ease out of your shoes, height drastically decreasing. "That's okay, we can stay here. I brought you a sandwich. I brought you two sandwiches," you correct.
He nods. Rather sadly, in your opinion. "Alright. Thanks."
You step over a tented paperback and hand off the cookies before sitting down beside him on the couch he's occupying. It's smaller than the one against the wall and round like a clam, lots of room for your legs to stretch out.
"I feel like a pearl," you say.
You and Eddie have been friends for a little while now. Long enough for you to realise he's either depressed or mentally unwell in some way. You hardly mind keeping him company on his bad days if he needs somebody, so drawing bugs will have to wait.
His hair is limp, not totally greasy but not super clean either. His face looks fresh enough, though the bags under his eyes make you frown.
You pull your purse into your lap, thighs covered by the thin layers of your midi skirt. "I have just the thing for you," you murmur.
"Yeah? Bring me another bracelet?"
You like that he sounds eager. Making his bracelet had been a challenge, lots of knotting and double knotting, three restarts and one small under the breath tantrum. It's not anything special, black and white hearts seven strands wide, but he'd been very appreciative.
"No, but I can make you another one if you want. I mastered the inverse chevron last night."
He hums. You pull a saran wrapped sandwich from the depths of your crowded bag, glad to see it's mostly intact. When you open it up you find that it's the ham and lettuce and tomato one, so you drop it into his lap haphazardly and move onto the next.
"Aha! Here," you pull a cucumber from your sandwich. "For you."
He takes it between two tentative fingers. "Thank you?"
"For your eyes."
"There's cheese on it."
"I'll still work," you assure him.
"M'not putting cheese on my eyes."
You laugh because he probably shouldn't put cheese on his eyes, cucumber adjacent or otherwise. "Okay, don't. I'll make you a hot towel."
He drops his hand on your arm as you go to stand. You like how he touches you, soft but not scared. "You just got here. Stay here." He pats you nicely. "Tell me about work last night."
You settle heavily into the seat beside him, your thigh to his thigh, your hip squished against his hip, doughy flesh separated by nothing more than a strappy tank top and a cotton long-sleeve t-shirt. His heat quickly becomes yours, a sinking transference of warmth.
"Well," you begin, cheek turning into the couch to face him. "It was mostly okay. I dropped another plate, but this time it didn't have a stack of waffles on it."
He smiles ruefully and sinks back as you had. Neither of you eat your sandwiches. "Progress. Taking it out of your pay?"
"Yes, definitely."
"Discrimination."
"That's what I said! I said, Sarah, I was born with butterfingers and you know that."
"She didn't budge?"
"Dishwashing all week next week. Whatever, though, 'cause it's Saturday."
He laughs and shakes his head, his gaze dropping to your neck. He does that sometimes. You can't blame him; you wear a varying assortment of necklaces because you think they're pretty, and you're glad he likes them too.
"See my new one?"
"What?"
"New necklace." You look down at your chest and pull the newest addition from between the cups of your bra. "It's real silver."
"It's nice."
"It's surprisingly heavy. Wanna feel?"
"That's okay," he says, slightly strained.
Right, you think. I'm talking a lot.
You press your lips together in a mild pout and look at him through appreciative eyes. He's a very pretty boy, all soft and pale and sweet dark curls.
"Do you want me to put your hair up?"
His lips part before he talks. "I don't know if you should."
"Sure I should. It's getting in your eyes, right?" You take his hand where it's laid unsuspectingly in his lap and slip the hair tie from around his wrist, his fingertips tickling the inside of your palm. "Sit forward, Eddie."
He takes a deep breath, holds it, and sits up. You twist and then realise you need some more height, pushing a leg under yourself to kneel next to his lap.
You weave our fingers softly into the hair at the front of his face and rake away in lieu of a brush. After it's mostly tamed you pull it all into one hand and wrap the tie at the base of his head. You hum to yourself as you go, pleased when his lovely curls behave.
"Voilà," you announce, moving back on your haunches.
He breathes out. "Thank you."
You reach for a curl you'd missed at the very front and encourage it behind his ear. He has subtle indents in his cheeks today like he's in need of a good meal, and his skin is colder than it should be when you flatten your palm.
"You need something to eat," you fret. Your fingertips stroke under his eye, your thumb his smile lines.
He moves away slowly.
You pull your hand back into your lap. "Maybe we can go out and get something, if you don't like the sandwich?"
"What?" he asks, pale lips taut as he simpers at you. "Are you kidding? This is about to fix everything that's wrong with me."
His enthusiasm emboldens you. "It so will! There's ham and cheese too, if you prefer that one."
"Get it! I'm gonna eat both of them." S
Eddie eats both of his sandwiches and you eat your own, the two of you with your heads dropped back against the couch as you watch TV. There's a guy you've never seen before running around the streets of Chicago city centre looking for people to be in his play. Eddie's seen it before. He repeats dialogue in time with the characters, performing each line. Impressive, what with how tired he looks.
"What did he just say?" you ask, mouth full of cucumber.
"He said he's gonna throw himself off a bridge," Eddie informs. "Poor guy. I know the feeling."
You swallow harshly.
"Seriously?"
Your sad tone surprises him.
"I- No, I'm kidding," he says, scratching the base of his throat, friendship bracelet his only adornment.
His nervous itching makes you even more worried.
"If you did wanna do that, you can talk to me-"
He baulks, tongue poking out past his lips as he licks the corner of his mouth. "Thanks, sweetheart," he says, pet name like a kiss. It sounds silly but it really feels like one, right in the centre of your chest. "But I'm fine. Promise. It was a bad joke."
"Okay," you say, letting your suspicion shine through. You hold his eyes.
You haven't known Eddie long. It feels like you met yesterday, though really it's been two or three weeks. You fit together in a way you hadn't expected and adore more than you can articulate, two funny puzzle pieces.
"Well, I just wanted you to know. I like being your friend, I don't want you to disappear."
He laughs and licks his lips, a rough, chesty sound. "I don't want you to disappear either."
Tires crunch outside, a shushing sound and then the sharp shriek of a jeep being put into park. Eddie perks up considerably, his shoulders straightening.
"Hey, Chief," Wayne calls.
Trailer walls. Basically made of cardboard.
"Hey, Wayne. Where's the kid?"
You can't hear what Wayne says after that, words stolen by the TV.
"Is that Chief Hopper?" you ask, trying to catch a glimpse of him through the mostly shuttered blinds.
"Yeah, he- He's friends with Wayne."
"Why's he wanna know where you are?"
"'Cause I got into so much trouble."
You bite your tongue. His tone is hard, not stern but almost, and you realise you've overstepped as you usually do. You want to apologise but you don't want to pick the wound, eager to gloss over and make him smile again.
"It's pretty cool, isn't it?" you ask him.
"What?"
You spread your legs wider to slide onto your thighs and make him the taller one again, legs bent in a 'W' shape. "Coming back from the dead! First Will Byers, then Hopper."
Something surfaces in his expression. An irony.
"The undead," you croon, aiming for a smile, a laugh.
He cracks. "The undead," he agrees, smiling in bemusement. His eyes are a funny shade of brown.
—
Eddie shoo’s you home early that night but tries to do it kindly. He feigns exhaustion, a facade that's difficult to uphold when his entire body is thrumming with want. If there's one thing Eddie hates about being a vampire (there are literally hundreds of things he hates, but this one's special) it's that he wants to hurt the people he likes a thousand times more than the people he doesn't.
He can't explain it. Your blood is more appealing than any lonesome stranger's. Your pulse is practically music to his ears when you sit beside him. He'd kill himself before he ever hurt you, though. Or that's what he likes to think. Whether he has that amount of control is debatable.
No. He would kill himself before he hurt you, or Wayne, or any of his friends.
Steve can see the way that he's feeling on his face.
Hopper's delivery set to one side, a tall glass with blood congealed in a sticky ring at the bottom, Eddie curls under his huge quilt and tries not to pass out. Blood sate feels the same as a thanksgiving food coma. It's awesome.
He hates how good it feels.
"Stop feeling guilty," Steve says.
"He doesn't look guilty to me," Dustin says beside him, taller than the last time Eddie had seen him but still miles off of Steve's tall stature. He's changed his hat again, this one a garish green. It's not a good look.
"He looks like he's napping," Robin says, delighted.
"Can you guys go home?" Eddie asks.
"Shithead."
"What Steve means to say," Robin corrects, grinning her huge, catching smile, "is that no, we aren't going home. We brought games."
"I don't wanna play games." He does. Eddie needs the distraction, because eventually the blood sate will fade and all that will remain will be self-revulsion and a cruel desire to do something awful.
"I do not care even slightly," Steve says, deadpan, as he sits right there next to Eddie where you'd been sitting before. Steve's nowhere near as soft and he doesn't smell as nice, but Eddie's honestly glad someone is willing to sit next to him at all.
"Ouch, what the fuck?"
Dustin looks up from where he's sat himself on the floor. Robin giggles in her seat on the coffee table.
"Munson, are you fucking shedding? I just got stabbed."
"They don't work like that. They retract."
Eddie feels at his broken gums with his tongue. There's a clean incision where his fangs come out and then snap back inside after a time. They're remarkably thin, fitting in front of his natural incisors neatly.
Steve grumbles, hips lifted and hand searching under his butt for whatever it is that jabbed him. He retrieves exactly what Eddie had been expecting but hadn't had the forethought to prepare a lie about with a shocked gasp.
"Is this an earring? You don't have your ears pierced."
He swallows, knowing it's a very guilty gesture, and meets Steve's eyes straight on.
Funny how Steve's hair speaks as much as his expression, bobbing as he nods his head to emphasise each word, "Munson, do you have a girlfriend?"
Silence.
"...Not really."
"Holy shit," Dustin says, sounding extremely pleased. "No way."
Robin tucks her short hair behind her ears, hands paused in disbelief at her neck. "Actually?"
"I have a friend," Eddie admits.
"Thank god," Steve says, dropping your heart earring onto Eddie's thigh. The silver feels extremely hot over his pyjamas, like it's been held in the centre of a blistering hearth.
"I really thought Steve was gonna have to take one for the team and give you a pity handie," Robin says agreeably, scratchy voice coloured by genuine awe.
Eddie groans, "Harrington, get this shit off of me. You know I can't touch that."
"I forgot," Steve lies. "Can you wait? My hands are busy."
—
He has Steve put your earring between two pieces of kitchen towel and holds onto it. He doesn't see you for a week, and he keeps your damn earring in his pocket that entire time worried it's gonna slip out and brand him at any second.
Finally, you call him. He pretends he wasn't waiting.
"Hello," you say, like you're announcing something.
"Hey. How are you?"
"Eddie, I need your help. Badly."
He flinches up where he'd been leaning casually, hard enough to make Wayne jump. Eddie smiles at him placatingly and mouths a poor sorry, turning away to pretend there's a semblance of privacy to be found in such close quarters.
"Are you okay?"
"I gotta find a rainbow leaf beetle. Do you have a torch?"
"...What?"
"They only come out at night, so I'm gonna go look but I don't have a torch that works."
He relaxes, the lilting cadence of your voice enough to make his whole night. You sound so pretty even through the phone. He suspects you could hold any pitch, deep or high, and you'd still sound nice.
It's all in the way you — he says this with love — perform the words. You speak like each word you're saying has equal importance, and it's calming.
Even when you say stuff that's nonsense to him.
Right now, you don't sound upset or even worried about not having a torch, simply curious to know if he has one. If he focuses hard (and he's been trying not to, as you deserve your privacy) he can hear you all the way across the park, shifting from foot to foot in your bedroom, carpet crushed under your heels.
The action makes him think this might be more urgent to you than you'd first admitted.
"I have a torch." He also has amazing night vision. Like, impeccable. "Can I come help?"
"You want to?"
"I'd love to. Are you going out tonight?" He leans back to glance out the window. "The rain is finally stopping."
"Yeah, tonight! Is that okay for you? We could go tomorrow if you can't."
You're willing to change your plans now that he's asked to go with you. It's a gesture as lovely as you are. Eddie doesn't think you'd ever think it of yourself; your kindness is so intrinsic you don't notice it, like the fine stitching of a leather bound book. Integral and widely unappreciated.
"That's perfect."
Wayne raises an eyebrow when Eddie relays the conversation. "You're going out in the middle of the night with this girl to… look for bugs."
Eddie crosses his arms over his chest. "I swear."
"Be honest with me, kid."
"I am!"
Wayne swirls his coke can around in his hand as he thinks, a reluctance evident in his scowl. Eddie knows he's way too old for a guardian's oversight like this but he lets Wayne have a say because Wayne loves him, and Eddie doesn't ever want to put his old man through the turmoil he went through when he ran away. If that means a curfew in his twenties, Eddie's okay with that.
"If you're going to have sex with this girl, I'd prefer you did it here. You have to treat women with respect."
Eddie shivers, full body. "Wayne," he groans, covering his face. He can feel his cheeks pink under his palms, that's how quickly his embarrassment rises.
"I know you're more responsible these days, and you're a grown up. If you want a girlfriend and you want to do adult things with her-"
"Jesus Christ."
"- then that's alright. You don't have to fool around outside."
He drags his hands down on his face, pained. "It's not like that. You met her, you know she's…"
"Strange?"
"Alternative."
"No, you're alternative. She's cooky."
"Don't," he says. He knows his uncle isn't actually being cruel, so he lets it lie and fights for his own cause. "We aren't messing around. She genuinely wants me to go find these bugs with her. And…" He hates himself. "She has her own place, you know? If we were going to-"
Wayne seems stricken by the same mortified embarrassment as Eddie, raising a calloused hand in surrender. "Spare me."
"Thank you," Eddie says, spinning on his heel to hide in the bathroom for a while. It's only when he's sitting on the closed toilet does he realise Wayne hadn't mentioned his more dangerous ailment. For a time, he'd been a normal (debatable) person having a normal (horrifying) conversation with his dad. Not a vampire. Not somebody who ruins everything he touches.
—
"It's so quiet," you whisper.
For you, Eddie thinks.
You're in the forest surrounding the aptly named Forest Hills trailer park, wielding your borrowed torch carefully into the dark. Eddie's following in your footsteps, trying not to smell everything that's on you today and failing.
You smell like a person as everybody does. Over that is your soap, a faint hint of milk and honey that sticks to your skin even after you've washed it away. Over that is your deodorant, 'unscented', and over that is your perfume, which he likes most. It's a mix of smells, some Eddie doesn't know and some he does. There's lavender, though that might be down to the bunch you'd brought for his uncle wrapped in newspaper, and there's something fruity he can't quite put his finger on, all of it wrapped up in a cloying pairing of vanilla and coconut.
"Eddie?"
"What?"
"Are you okay? You're almost as quiet as the trees."
If only you knew the trees aren't quiet.
"I'm alright," he says quickly, catching up to you where you stand a few feet ahead. "What are we looking for?"
Best change the subject. How to explain he'd been smelling the notes of your perfume?
"They rest on tree trunks. You have to be careful, any sudden sound or light will scare them away. But if you flash the torch on them, they shine like oil stains."
He loves when you talk. "Where'd they come from?"
"Place called Snowdon. They're so rare, they think there's only about a thousand alive there."
"Well, how did they get here?"
You laugh under your breath, so quiet he would've missed it if he wasn't enhanced. "I don't know. How do beetles get to different places?"
"They fly?"
A twig crunches under your shoe.
Eddie tips his head to the side, thinking. "If there's only a thousand, how-" He stops, your circle of torch light growing further and further away. "Are you sure that they live here?"
"No, but if they do we'll be the first to find them."
"So they've never found any out here? In- In the midwest?"
"Not yet. Where'd you go?"
He shakes his head in an affectionate disbelief. "Right behind you."
You search in silence for a while. Eddie wishes he could say he was mad, or even mildly annoyed, wishes he had even the slightest regard for his own time, but really he thinks any time with you is time well spent. Especially if it's helping you do something you want to do. Whether you find your rainbow leaf beetle or not, he feels better knowing he's out here with you to keep you safe and in company.
Conversation is sparing. He doesn't mind. Your footsteps fill the sound and he finds even that stupid detail charming, the crunch, the pick up. His own are silent, a rare advantage to his terrible affliction.
"Any other beetles you want me to keep an eye out for?" he whispers.
"I'm not sure…" You turn to face him, torch pointed at your shoes. Rubber toes touched together, you lean in until you're all he can smell. Perfume. Blood. "If you see any cool spiders, too."
"You have the mason jar?"
"You know I do."
More than you realise, he thinks. The glass clicks in your bag.
There's enough light reflected to see the most minute details of your face. Your nose, the circle of your irises but not their colour. He suspects Eddie from early '86 wouldn't have been able to see hide nor hair, and it wouldn't shock him if you were technically blind right now.
"Thanks for coming out with me. I was gonna ask you."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, but I didn't want to come on too strong." He can sense your smile even though he can't see it. It's in the way your breathing deepens. "I know I can be a lot to deal with."
"Who told you that?"
"What?"
Eddie doubles down.. "Who told you that?" he sounds heartbroken.
He kind of is. Yeah, you're weird — Who cares? Who isn't? — but you're not a lot to deal with. He doesn't 'deal' with you.
"Everybody tells me that. All the time."
"Everybody's stupid." To say it so loudly, scathingly, is sweet. It's therapeutic. "They are. This whole town is stupid."
Your fingertips touch his thigh. He's willing you to turn the torch up and see his face, because he has a lot of feelings on display that he isn't brave enough to say out loud.
"You never make me feel stupid," you say softly.
"You're not."
You giggle breathily at his vehemence, fingertips pressing in with a touch more pressure before you pull away and shine the torch deep into the trees.
"This whole town is stupid," you mumble. "But not you."
He thinks of his friends who are definitely stupid, but he loves anyways. He's about to add them to the not-stupid (subjectively) list when he remembers Steve's discovery: your earring burning a hole in his pocket. He'd been carrying it for long enough now to forget all about it.
"Hey, I have something for you."
"You do?"
"Don't get too excited. It's not a gift."
He digs in his pocket for the tissue paper wrapping and hisses in shock as the silver plating of your hoop graces his index finger. You shine the torch at him. His eyes ache like he's been stabbed and he slams them closed, hand pulled to his chest.
How embarrassing.
"Eddie, what happened?" you question loudly.
He winces at the sudden overstimulation. Slowly, he blinks, and finds you staring at him in a worry that softens every feature, even your nose. He doesn't know the logistics.
"It's okay. Stabbed a paper cut on the back. Your earring's in my pocket, the heart?"
"The hoop? I thought I lost it." Your worry turns to confusion and then melds into joy. You step forward and fish in his jacket pocket for your earring.
"Steve found it."
"'The hair'?"
"Yeah, the hair."
You both laugh and yours heightens when you find the earring, pulling it out like a knife to be brandished. "Yes."
"I meant to tell you a dozen times that I had it."
"You're the best."
There's a crunch of wood somewhere to the left like something heavy falling over.
The forest sprawls in every direction and the trees tower, their presence looming as skyscrapers. The wind ruffles the topmost branches and their trunks groan with pressure. It's enough to freak Eddie out super sense or not, feeling suddenly like he couldn't protect you. He could hear the individual droplets of drool dripping from a lynx's bloody maw, and he can sense each twig underfoot before he takes his next step, but none of that is going to keep you safe in the face of real danger.
"Maybe we should head back," he says tentatively.
"Okay. Do you want to come over?"
His breath catches. "You want me to?"
"Yeah, we can watch movies, I have leftover pasta."
That sounds more like what he should've been thinking. "I don't wanna keep you up."
"What kind of pasta?" he asks.
The torch flickers. "With the tiny tomatoes. You'll like it, super creamy."
"How do you know?"
"You like Alfredo," you say astutely, hitting the torch into the palm of your hand. It flashes weakly, the shadow of the trees flickering and so dark they're violet.
"Try tightening the handle."
You turn the barrel of the torch and the light switches off completely. You try to undo what you've done to no success, the sound of plastic rubbing plastic almost as loud as your heartbeat. Your pulse falters and then grows to racing when the light fails to come back on.
"Eddie," you say, sounding unsure. It's a new sound on you. "I don't know where we are. How are we gonna get home?"
Your admission is like a dousing of ice water over his head. "You don't know what direction we came from?"
"No, do you?"
Eddie wouldn't know if he couldn't hear the sound of the electricity pylon buzzing somewhere to the right. But how can he explain that? "Uh, we were turned around."
You creep to his side and grab his arm with both hands. "Are you sure?"
"Hey," he says gently. "Hey, it's okay. I know where we are. We'll be fine."
"Are you sure?" you ask again.
"I'm positive."
You take a deep breath that doesn't erase your shakiness, a failed attempt at self-soothing. "I really don't know where we are."
"You're not afraid of the dark, are you?"
"Not really… I don't wanna get lost out here."
"You won't. I know how to get back. C'mon," he prompts, pulling his arm to encourage you forward.
You let go of him and navigate a few steps by yourself. He weaves through the trees, waiting for your heartbeat to slow.
It doesn't. He opens his mouth to reassure you again when you gasp, kicking your foot against a root and tripping. You barely fall, catching yourself on the trunk of a tree, and Eddie remembers himself. You can't see the trees. That's why you're worried. You can't see anything.
Then the smell of blood hits him like a freight train.
—
Your hand stings where you caught yourself, palm scraped down against harsh bark.
"Shit," you mumble.
You're panicking badly, and you're confused as to why Eddie isn't. Not only was it fucking stupid of you to come out here with only one torch, it was stupid of you to assume you'd remember what way was home. It was stupid of you to come here tonight for that stupid beetle, and stupid of you to drag Eddie along. You're an idiot, and now you're bleeding.
Your eyes sting with tears, pain like a popped seal. I'm so stupid.
"Hey," Eddie says, his tone silky soft, "you're okay. Let me help you up."
You hold your hands out.
"Eddie, this is weird." Hopefully he understands that weird means scary.
He takes your hands, fingers closing slowly over your bloody palm. His breath is loud as he pulls you up toward him like he's panicked but his grip stays kind, and you abandon the notion when he rubs over your knuckles with his thumb. "It's alright."
He doesn't sound the same.
"Eddie, we can't see."
"We'll go slowly, okay? I'll put my hand out and we'll walk around anything that gets in the way."
"Yeah," you say hurriedly, heart bump-bump-bumping against your ribcage.
He keeps one hand, the injured one, and starts to drag you slowly through the trees. His grip tightens as you go until it starts to ache, until it feels like it might bruise.
"Ouch, Eds. You're hurting me," you say, going for a lightly teasing tone and missing the mark.
Instantly, he eases off. "Sorry, sweetheart. You hold onto me, alright?"
You do as he'd asked, hand clinging to him as he leads. He doesn't squeeze you again, walking slowly as he'd promised, and the closer you get to the edge of the forest the clearer it becomes. Light pollution from the centre of town leaches through the trees like water trickling from an overflowing basin.
His second hand is in his pocket.
"Here," he says after you've traversed to the very edge of the forest. "There's the park. We're bona fide explorers."
He looks out toward the park and you look at the side of his face. Something isn't right. Something uncanny.
You drop your gaze from his face to your joined hands. They come apart, blood smeared in both your palms like two halves of a dripping heart.
—
There is something weird about Eddie. As a residential freak of Hawkins you think you're an authority in this, and you don't feel guilty for judging him. Your brain can't stop going over your night in the forest. For days you play the scenes back and for days you lose the details. You forget how the wind had tousled his hair, how he'd smelled, what he'd said.
You remember the way he'd squeezed your bloody hand. You remember the way he'd spoken, strained.
Not strained like he didn't want to comfort you, he had, but strained.
Restrained.
You're poking at the shallow cut half-healed now in your palm at work when a dude walks in, very tall, handsome, and gunning straight for you.
You straighten your badge and hide your bracelet heavy wrists behind your back, receding slightly as he approaches. He slows in front of you.
You have a light bulb moment.
"The hair," you say.
He scowls. "He told you that, huh. Typical."
"You're Steve?"
"That's me." Steve crosses his arms across his chest, his back to a booth, your back to the diner bar. "You're Eddie's new friend."
"What counts as new?" A month and a half doesn't feel so new to you.
"Trust me, you're new."
He has the strangest patch covering the outside of his left wrist, the same peculiar scarring that you can see on Eddie's waist when he reaches for a glass out of the kitchen cabinet. You don't ask because you're not a dick no matter how curious you find yourself, but it makes your heart skip. What is that? You'd assumed Eddie's was road rash. Now you're not so sure.
He tucks it under his arm.
You meet his suspicious gaze.
"You want coffee?"
"No."
You kick your foot, shoe sliding over the shiny waxed floor with a squeal. "Is Eddie okay?"
"Did you want to come to a party next Friday?"
"No," you say honestly. "Like a cult?"
"What?"
"Are you initiating me into your cult?"
He finally smiles, eyes creased with amusement. "I'm inviting you to our club."
"Club where you chew on each other?"
You look pointedly at Steve's wrist.
"No. Club where we play board games and drink jiffy pop. Come or don't, doesn't matter."
"If it doesn't matter, why are you asking me?"
It's a strangely intense conversation to have this early in the morning. Patrons chatter about work, coffee gets poured. The diner smells of syrup and sugar and bitter cold-press. You're both in work apparel, both refusing to move back. If this is some kind of shovel talk then that's fine, and if it's a test you're determined to pass, even if Eddie's been super weird lately.
"I'll come if you promise not to eat me," you say.
"It's really not that kind of club."
—
"I had the weirdest visit in the entire world today," you declare, stopping in front of Eddie's porch with a smile.
"Yeah?" he asks without looking up, guitar in his lap and pen scribbling over a lined notebook.
You wait for him to stop before you continue, leaning forward with both arms braced on the porch by his feet. "Steve Harrington came to see me, and he was super mean. You said he was nice."
He frowns at you. "I told you he was a dick."
"You like him when you tell me stories."
"How mean?" Eddie asks, patting the seat beside him.
You climb up onto the porch and plop down onto the couch, worn leather cold with the weather and damp in the seams.
You take a strand of his hair and curl it around your finger. "Not really super mean, but he was, like, acting like I killed a baby."
"He's like that."
You sigh and lean your cheek against the couch cushion, watching Eddie's stubble move as he tamps down a teasing smile. "He invited me to a party next weekr."
"It's not a party- Sweetheart, what are you doing?"
You tickle his cheek with the end of his hair. "Nothing."
"M'gonna sneeze."
You tickle him again, fine dark strands brushing over his pale cheek. He's a very ashen guy, you've found. Likely because he barely goes out in the sun and he doesn't eat enough. You draw circles around the apple of his cheek and grin softly at his growing smile, a sweet, silly thing.
"I'll tickle you back," he warns.
"Promise?"
He steals the curl back and tucks it behind his ear.
"You're not a cannibal, are you?"
Eddie chokes on air. You startle at his coughing and move to pat his back, palm slapping a steady rhythm into his shoulder. When he calms down you run your hand down the length of his arm, long sleeve t-shirt soft beneath your touch. You linger at his wrist and decide to hold it.
He drops his pen and your hand travels until he's caught your thumb. He kneads it in his fingers.
"I'm not a cannibal. Why would you think that?"
"I don't, but you and Steve are in your club, right?"
"Hellfire wasn't like that," he says heatedly.
"No, not- Not that one."
He doesn't say anything.
"You have… He has this scar, on his wrist. Like something bit him, or-" He turns to you and he looks formidable and upset and himself, not mad at you but raw emotion in his expression anyhow. It's gone as quick as it came.
"When all that… stuff happened," he begins quietly, "we got hurt. A couple of us."
You drop your head, ashamed at having pried. "I'm sorry, you don't have to tell me anything else."
"Don't be sorry…" He squeezes your hand and lets it go. "Don't worry about it."
"Okay."
"We usually call ourselves a party, these days. Not a club."
"Do you really play board games and drink jiffy pop?"
"Sometimes we get really crazy and order a pizza. You should come."
You realise as he says it how much his wanting you to go had mattered to you. Eddie's your friend, and you don't think that you're going to stay friends much longer.
"You think your friends will like me?" you ask, voice descending to a new kind of gentle.
He puts down his guitar and his notebook. His full attention is something you've come to really enjoy, not because of the hunger you often see flitting across his face — though that's neat —, but because of the inklings of adoration clinging to his smile when he looks at you. His blinking lashes. He smiles at you and just slows. A usually frenetic boy calmed.
"Maybe not Mike. Mike doesn't like anybody. Except for Will," he muses.
"What about you?"
"What about me?"
"Who do you like?"
"I like all of them." He juts his cheek toward his shoulder, conceding, " I think Dustin's my favourite. He's funny. He's funnier than I am, and he's the smartest kid I've ever met. And he knows it."
Your eyes focus on the pink outline of his upper lip as he speaks. It's a pleasure to be this close, and see him in this kind of crazy detail. When you go home tonight you might try to draw him. You'll probably forget.
It's the kind of smile that deserves to be immortalised.
"I really like your smile," you tell him, hoping it'll last a little longer.
It stretches. The pink outline turns white. "Shut up."
"I do. I've seen a thousand different smiles but I've never met someone who smiles like you do."
"How's that?" he asks, edging toward you, face a mirror in which you can see your own charmed expression.
"Like you," — you shake your head with your lips parted — "know a secret. Something you won't tell anybody."
His smile abruptly ends.
You've nothing if not a talent for saying the wrong thing.
"A good secret," you amend.
He picks up his acoustic and gives it an experimental strum. "Maybe one or two," he agrees.
Relief catches you. You nibble at the inside of your lip and watch his fingers work over the neck of his guitar, tipping your head so you can read the words he's markered over the body.
"This machine slays dragons," you murmur to yourself. "Yeah? How many?"
"Just the one."
"Save any princesses?"
"Not yet." He plucks at the strings, lost in thought, before turning to you with eyebrows raised. "Can you play?"
You exhale out of the corner of your mouth as he pushes the guitar into your lap, an arm coming around your shoulder, the other reaching to guide your curled forefinger to the strings. You turn to face him, watching him talk with a growing fondness.
"It's easy, I swear. We'll do Call Me. Blondie's basic, even a baby could play it."
He realises you aren't listening and raises his gaze, shiny brown irises stuck on your lips. This close, it would be worse if he didn't look at them.
You glance at his, an obvious thing, half a wish. If he only lifted his chin.
Your breath mingles.
"It's easy," he says again, a murmur of his usual volume as his gaze pulls back up to yours. "I'll show you."
You wonder if he can hear your heart pounding; it's deafening. You wait, and you wait, and you turn your eyes back to his guitar and clamp your fingers down against the struts so he can't see them shaking with adrenaline.
—
Eddie sits beside Steve and tries not to admit to himself that Steve Harrington is, horrifyingly, his best friend (along with the rest of the party, obviously). Steve is the closest in age and Eddie can't make excuses (though he tries and tries and tries), Steve understands how much Eddie doesn't ever want to talk about anything that's happened to them, so he talks about literally everything else instead.
"It was the weirdest pawn shop I've ever been in. They had, like, a wall of combi's playing the same video at the same time but all slightly delayed."
Eddie blinks.
Steve turns his head from the TV, having expected a response. "Did you say something?"
"No." Then, because he's not a dick. "Sorry, Harrington. Want me to sit on your other side?"
"What for?" Steve says. Not because he denies how he's hard of hearing, but because he denies having conversations with Eddie.
He does end up moving to Steve's other side with a pathetic excuse. "I can't see the TV."
Steve doesn't say a word until he's sat down again. "Sorry I was mean to your girlfriend."
"Yeah, what was that about?"
"I was cranky because it was early and I don't want her to damage the integrity of the party." He gives equal weight to both reasons.
Eddie snorts at him. "Since when do you care about the integrity of the party?" Steve barely acknowledges that they are a party. He thinks that's a very nerdy way to say friends.
"Since always, dipshit."
"And inviting her to join the party was the solution because…?"
Steve drinks the rest of his coke and pretends to really care about what's on TV. "If," he begins after a minute, refusing to look at Eddie, "something happens with her, and something happens to you, that damages the integrity of the party."
"Steve," Eddie says, jaw dropped down to his chest, "do you have a crush on me?"
"Oh my god," Steve mutters. "Oh my god," he says louder. "I can't stand you."
To prove his point, he gets up from the couch with a wrinkled nose, stops to tap his shoe gently against Max's where she's sitting in the armchair across from the coffee table, and disappears into his kitchen.
Steve Harrington cares about me enough to give Y/N the shovel talk.
He feels kind of great about it.
But he's not sure your the one who needs warning.
That night in the forest, Eddie had almost snapped. There are rules to follow if he wants to keep people safe, self-imposed, Hopper-imposed, and he's broken too many with you already, the most important being no close proximity when he's hungry. Eddie doesn't even realise he is hungry half the time. He'll be standing by you and he'll want to touch you, and suddenly it's like he's three weeks in to the month without sating.
He thinks about kissing you and suddenly he's thinking about biting you, and hurting you, and it's literally tearing him up from the inside out.
How can he want to do that to you?
"You look so depressed and pathetic," Dustin says out of the blue.
Eddie pouts and falls back into the couch, Steve's fancy throw falling onto his shoulder. "I used to like you," he says, taking in Dustin's outfit with a kind of parental approval. He's getting older and it shows, slightly more handsome than he had been — he's kept all his baby weight and it suits him, his full cheeks surrounded by the softest brown curls Eddie has ever seen. The outfit stays immature, a funny t-shirt and ill-fitting pants.
"Sad. You have a sad face," Dustin says.
"Go play with your nerd squad, please."
He doesn't listen, collapsing in Steve's still-warm seat like a cheap tent and crossing longer, thicker arms over his chest. He smiles at Eddie genuinely. "Where's your girlfriend?"
"No."
"Where's Y/N?"
Eddie tips his head so he can see past the coffee table and points to where you're almost hidden, sitting with Robin on the floor by Steve's sideboard. You have a basket of tapes in front of you, the two of you trying to choose what's going in the stereo. Eddie prays for anything but Blondie.
You will most likely choose Blondie.
"What does she like?" Dustin asks curiously.
"Everything, kind of. Why?"
"I wanna know what to say when I talk to her."
Eddie smiles at his friend's face, a soft, surprised thing. "I don't know if she knows anything about the radio but if you're happy about it she'll be happy too. She's a good listener."
Dustin picks at a piece of lint on his t-shirt bearing a white and black print of a dog wearing sunglasses. "So you talk to her?" he asks without looking up.
"I mean, yeah. What else do you do?"
"With a girl that likes you? Huh, let me think." Dustin laughs and ruins his own sarcasm, pointer finger laid against his chin in a show of thoughtfulness.
"It's not like that," Eddie says lightly.
"It could be."
"Could it? I mean… I don't even know if she'll stick around. And I feel bad 'cos I can't be honest with her."
"Why not?"
"Hopper said he would literally put me in the hole if I even thought about it." There's no need to expand. Dustin would know better than anyone what he's talking about.
He cringes at the thought, self hatred a hot poker down his throat. He must've said it to Dustin a hundred times when he finally came around from his coma (that wasn't a coma, but a death, and then a rebirth). I can't believe I put you through that. I can't believe I put you through that. I'm so sorry.
I'm just glad you're alive, Eddie.
And for a while, Eddie hadn't felt the same. The world he'd woken up to was hard. There had been lawyers and grief and guilt and becoming. He doesn't have the words to describe how it feels to become something new, something that needs to hurt people to live, something that will hurt people to live, whether Eddie wants to or not.
The loss of choice is suffocating.
Though moments like this with his friends– they don't make it 'worth it', they're just how it had to happen. There isn't a scenario where Eddie could give up. He can't leave Wayne, and he can't leave Dustin. He can live with the grief of what he is if it means other people don't have to live with grief of what he isn't.
"Eddie, are you okay?"
He's missed something. Dustin isn't the only one looking at him.
He curls a hand around his forearm subconsciously. "I'm fine. I think I'm gonna go to the bathroom, actually. Gotta piss real bad."
"Eddie-"
"I'm fine, Henderson." He puts on a good show, patting Dustin's arm. His heart, usually so slow these days, has enough life in it to ache.
He can't have been in the bathroom for five minutes when somebody knocks on the door aggressively. He's expecting Steve, pissed at his disappearance and likely preparing a speech on attention seeking behaviours and how they're hurting the youth of America, so he opens the door with a tired glare.
He finds you, beaming and pretty, dressed ridiculously nicely for his idiot friends.
"Hi," you say. He can hear something from Blondie's Parallel Lines playing from the living room, familiar because it's your favourite album. "Any room for me?"
Eddie moves back. You close the door behind you. The bathroom becomes a vacuum of your sounds and smells.
"They didn't have any Dio," you say with a smile.
"I honestly wouldn't expect any different."
"You could've brought some tapes, your mix from the van," you suggest. "I love that one."
"Which one?" he asks, and he can't help it, whenever he's with you his voice crops to a dulcet murmur. The urge to speak to you as you speak to him is unconquerable.
"One with the winking smile on the slipcase. I really like it."
"You can have it."
You lean against the sink. "I can?"
"Mm. Whatever you want." Especially when you look like this.
You smile at him, your 'thank you' smile, all sticky fondness and mischievousness. He has no idea what you're thinking.
"'S a small bathroom in a huge house," you marvel. Your voice echoes "Where does he shower?"
"There's an upstairs bathroom."
"Two bathrooms? That's-"
"Audacious?"
"I was gonna say overkill."
Your candidness has him shaking with laughter. He clutches at his sides, arms crossed and leaning forward. You visibly take in his appearance, eyes panning slowly over his clean hair. He'd taken care to look like somebody you might want to look at tonight.
"Why don't you sit down, Eds?" you ask, eyes creased with an unreadable emotion.
Eddie feels blindly for the toilet lid and pushes it down so he can do as you ask, wondering why you're asking.
"You look very handsome today."
He hugs himself. "As opposed to every other day, when I don't?"
You take a step forward, a second, hands playing with the hem of your shirt. Your outfit today is delightfully simple, a pressed black t-shirt long enough to cover the waistband of your pleated skirt. There's an expanse of thigh that makes his heart beat spin out, one longer than the other where your thigh-high is falling down.
He wants to pull it up.
"C'mere," he says.
You take that last step between his shoes and he reaches out, getting his fingertips under the elastic of your sock and tugging it upward over the soft fat of your leg. Your hands come up to his shoulders for balance, and you say, "No, you look handsome every day. Today you look very handsome. I made the distinction."
He covers your thigh with both hands, looking up into your face as you look down. "You look really pretty today," he says boldly, fingers spreading behind your knee.
"Thank you. Do you like my t-shirt?"
It's a screen print of Debbie Harry. Eddie tries not to roll his eyes. "I love it, but your dedication to Blondie is seriously worrying, sweetheart." He gives your leg a short squeeze and pulls the most giggly smile out of you yet.
"Like Madonna."
"No!" he bemoans.
You laugh and grow closer, arms on his shoulder, a hand threaded into his hair. "Cyndi Lauper?" you suggest.
He puts a hand on your waist as you move in for a hug. Your arms wrap around his neck and the tops of his shoulders, cheek crushed to the top of his head.
He'd ask if you were okay if he thought you weren't. You're not upset or seeking comfort. You're affectionate. You've been getting more and more touchy for weeks, as he has. Stolen touches, your almost-kiss on the porch last week.
"No, not Cyndi Lauper," he says, his hand skirting around your back to pull you in properly.
"R.E.M?"
"God, no. Where are you hearing all this junk?"
"The radio."
"Tuned into the wrong station."
You pet the back of his head. "Yeah," you say softly, "I think I was."
The hug is shorter than Eddie wants it to be. You make one of your happy sounds and pull away to get your hands on his face, stroking curls from his cheeks with a protective touch. "Handsome," you say, turning your hand to stroke his cheek with your knuckles. "Pretty. You have really big eyes, Eddie, so brown, and so…" You tilt your head to one side, face inching forward.
He turns his face to suit, to fit, breath held as you close the gap.
"So pretty," you murmur, and kiss him.
His hands are limp and then alive, one clutching your hip, one splaying against your chest. He can hear the thud of your heart clear as day — you're bumping with excitement as you kiss him. It's a delicate, tender thing, the party suddenly far away, the music drowned by the sounds of your breathing. You kiss as you talk, as you move, gentle but with bursts of ardency. Your lips are a blissful heat, the tip of your nose smushing into his as you part your lips over his.
He lifts his chin higher, his neck craned to receive you. He's savouring every movement. Each pause for breath that you take. The feeling of your inhales over his quick-bruising lips.
Your hands play in his hair so sweetly it makes his eyes burn with an embarrassing amount of emotion. He screws them closed and squeezes up your waist, steadying himself as you feel along his bottom lip with the tip of your tongue.
You don't get much further than that, seemingly pleased with your own brazeness or perhaps his touch, eyes glowing with mirth as you pull away.
"Sorry," you breathe, not sorry at all. "You just really looked like someone should be kissing you."
You're flushed. Eddie can practically see the heat emanating off of your cheeks. He can feel it.
He stands up, your pulse a ringing in his ears. The wet valves of your heart opening and closing.
"Eddie?" you ask quietly, lifting your head to meet his eyes as he walks you back into the door.
His gums sting. A click.
It's a compulsion.
His hands curl around your elbows, holding you in place. Your eyes are wide with confusion, your lightly swollen lips parted. He can see the tiniest slip of your pink tongue.
He holds your gaze as he leans in. Your eyelids flutter closed. You wrap your arms around him as he descends, totally trusting.
He's a meaner kiss than you are. He starts slow but swiftly loses a handle on it, kisses short but insistent, hot presses like little crescent moons against your barely open mouth.
His hands move up your arms, a near vice-like grip until he finds your sleeves. His fingers slip underneath, hands hungry for your warmth.
You make the worst sound anyone has ever made as he moves back, like something has been ripped from you. A gutted gasp, near silent.
He placates as he wades back in. Thumbs rubbing your arms, lips mouthing damp kisses down your face. The corner of your pout, the hill of your chin, the skin under your jaw. Your head tips back against the door with an audible thud. You exhale hard.
Eddie can't feel his hands.
Your pulse hammers under his lips. He kisses it once. He can't think. He can't breathe.
"You're always cold," you whisper, your hands drifting lazily under the fabric of his t-shirt. Your fingertips trail up his spine. "But your lips are warm."
He kisses your neck, his lips parting slowly, a hair's width a second as he sucks your skin into his mouth gently. It's barely a kiss. He does it a second time. A third. You start to laugh, a golden sound.
The point of his fangs touch your skin and you stop.
Eddie closes his mouth abruptly. His hand leaps to your neck and he feels your heart skip as he holds you still. "I'm sorry," he says, nose rubbing over the damp spot he's left behind, your teased skin.
Your heart hikes again.
"I'm sorry," he repeats. He pulls away, an agony.
"It's okay," you say. Your breathlessness says otherwise.
Eddie takes as many deep breaths as he can stand, wanting to clear his head and filling it with you instead. Your everything; your smell, your skin. Your limp hands against his back.
"I didn't hurt you, did I?" he asks when he gets a look at you, your unreadable expression. He takes care to keep his head angled down so you can't see the lower half of his face.
"I don't think you could."
You cup his cheek in your hand and he leans into it, his weight against yours.
"I wanted to tell you something," you confess.
"What-" He licks his lips, wincing when his fangs slide into his tongue and scrape grooves across his taste buds. "What was that?"
"I know you…" You pause, fingertips rubbing at his cheek.
Does she know? Eddie thinks, horrified. He hadn't realised how scary waiting could be. A thousand worries condensed into a handful of seconds. Does she know?
How could she not?
You press your palm to his cheek with more insistence. "I don't want you to think you have to hide anything from me. I know you have scars," you say, fingers sliding into the soft baby hair at the back of his neck. "You don't have to cover up. You don't have to cover any of it."
"I won't hurt you," he says, trying to convince himself.
"I know."
-
You stay a while longer. Eddie's friends pretend that you hadn't been alone in the bathroom for an inordinate amount of time together. You thank them all silently and less so, trying to talk to as many of them as you can.
There's Lucas, who's really, really nice, and his girlfriend Max, who's less so. She gives you an unimpressed look through her thick-lensed glasses, but you compliment her crutches and she comes around.
There's Mike, who actually isn't anywhere as bad as Eddie had described him. He's not frosty or standoffish, he's sweet and he asks questions. There's a girl with him that you don't catch the name of, and a boy on her other side.
There's Dustin, who you adore immediately, Robin, who you adore more, and then there's Steve.
Steve offers you a pretzel like you're more than familiar. He strolls right up to you with a bowl of them in hand and doesn't leave until you've eaten half of them.
There's a couple of people you don't manage to talk to at all, and you feel guilty about it all the way home.
"What if they think I'm rude?" you ask, tired eyes locking onto the stereo system. The time blinks analog in the dark, 12:59AM.
"They don't, don't worry about it. You have lots of time to get to know them, anyway."
You hum and turn to his face, indulgent because you know he can't look back. "You're not too tired to drive, are you?" He's spent. Yesterday had been one of his bad days.
"I'm fine."
"You say that all the time," you observe, dropping your cheek into the passenger seat's headrest.
"I'm fine all the time."
"Liar."
"Nuisance."
You huff a laugh through your nose. The strands of his friendship bracelet, the small beads at the ends, swing like pendulums in the gap between his arm and the steering wheel. You can see the rough skin of a scar creeping out from under his sleeve.
"Mike was really nice," you say.
"He has a bleeding heart."
That feels accurate. "He reminds me of you."
Eddie rolls his eyes. You feel for every detail, the strange tension between you like a gaussian filter over everything. He's gorgeous in a horrific way, heartbreakingly pale, eyes dark as pitch, hands restless. They squeeze alone the wheel, thick fingers curling tight until his knuckles are stark white. Running down the back of his hands are veins like rivers. They're more purple than green.
"Eddie," you say, playful, a tiny bit insecure.
"What?"
"Wanna stay the night?"
His hand moves forward on the wheel like he's revving a motorcycle, the tendon in his wrist rising to the surface. He clenches. "Not sure it's a good idea."
"Just to sleep. It's late."
"I don't know if I can sleep next to you."
You don't wanna say please. You don't want to ask Eddie to do anything he can't or doesn't wanna do.
He pulls up outside of your house with his mind already made up. He gets out of the car and you follow his lead. He locks it, shoves the keys in his pocket as you join him on the path up to your porch.
He's been in here enough times to know what it looks like, but for some reason you find yourself checking his face, worried about what it is he thinks of your things, all your mismatched trinkets, your stained glass lamps, your life as you let yourselves in. He ducks through the beeded curtain into your bedroom wary that they'll get tangled in his hair like they sometimes do.
"Do you wanna call Wayne?" you ask, gesturing to your telephone on the right hand side, nestled between a stack of books and a cup full of coloured pencils.
You pull your knee up to your chest and unlace your shoes one at a time. Eddie punches the number into the phone and holds the receiver to his shoulder to do as you're doing. It takes him less time to pop his sneakers off than for you to get out of yours. He's just taken the phone back into his hand when Wayne picks up.
"Wayne?" he asks softly. "Didn't wake you up, did I?"
You can't hear his response.
"I'm gonna stay with Y/N tonight. Yeah, we had a good time. Yeah…" His eyes drift to you as you peel out of your thigh highs.
"Yeah, I'm still here. What?" He meets your eyes and it feels accidental, because he throws his eyes to your bedsheets and turns his face to the wall. "No," he says firmly.
You scrape together something to wear for bed and some fresh underwear and leave for the bathroom, telling yourself that nothing is gonna happen so don't get your hopes up but not wanting to get caught out if it does. You freshen up, brushing your teeth and washing your face.
You stare at yourself in the mirror and wonder if you should've left your face-powder and your mascara on. Maybe even the skirt. You'd looked nice and pretty for the party. Now you look like yourself, still pretty but without those extra touches. Will he care? Does it matter?
You debate your pyjama pants considerably.
There's a lot happening.
Eddie is… Eddie is something else. He's different, you'd known that for a long time, and his kiss had confirmed it.
He's something out of a science fiction book.
Well, nobody's perfect.
Whatever he is, he'd kissed you. You'd kissed him and he'd responded, he'd come back for more, and now he's sitting in your bed when he could've gone home. You bring your hand to your neck and crane to one side, fingertips poking at your unbroken skin. His hickey's haven't even bruised.
You screw the pants up and drop them into your laundry basket. You take off every piece of jewellery on your person.
"Do you wanna use the bathroom?" you ask from behind the beaded curtain. "I left a new toothbrush for you on the sink."
"Yeah, desperately, I…" He takes you in as you emerge. Fresh-faced, bare-legged. As naked as you've ever been in front of him, physically and otherwise.
Eddie meets you where you're standing. He's ditched his jacket, and for the first time since you met him you can see the full length of his arms.
"You're not wearing your bracelets," he says, looking between your bodies. His hand twitches toward yours.
"You have tattoos," you say.
"They were better, before."
There's a misshapen mess of black splodges near the crook of his elbow broken up by scar tissue. One arm is less scarred than the other, an almost perfect flank of white skin.
"Is that a puppet? He's super spooky."
"Mh-hm."
You bring your hand to his tattoo and feel over the skin. It doesn't feel like it's there. Eddie holds your wrist and the two of you move together, your fingertips stroking up until you're wrapped around his bicep.
Eddie brings his free hand to your collar. His index finger straightens, encouraging your chin up so he can ease forward and kiss you. He's firm, eager, and your lips curl up into a smile underneath it. He turns his head to the right and you fall left, smile worsened when you feel his own start to form.
He nudges your nose. You take it for a telling off and laugh. "Sorry," you apologise, kissing his top lip.
"You're making this difficult," he chides.
Despite any sternness, Eddie loosens his grip on your wrists to slide his fingers between yours, pressing your joined hands to your chest. He leans back down and he's careful, almost methodical in the way he kisses. Chaste pecks, hot and precious as tiny stars.
You reach for his waist.
Eddie kisses you a final time and steps back. "I'll be back," he promises.
You lower your chin, flustered and perplexed by his sudden departure.
Walking around to the right side of the bed, you click on your bedside lamp — a beautiful glass and foiled contraption that throws dainty stripes of stars and hearts over everything close in the dark — before climbing in. You sniff one of your pillows experimentally, trying to remember when you last changed the bed. You decide they're acceptable even if they really smell like your hair oil and flip them around to be safe, plumping them up with your hands.
You've curled up on your side and almost succumb to your fatigue when Eddie returns, bringing with him the smell of spearmint and a fuzzy feeling in your stomach as he shuts off the light and sits on the opposite side of the bed, facing you. The hair around his face is damp with water, baby hair's limp.
"I'm sorry I don't have anything for you to wear, I-" Youre cut off by your own gasp as Eddie kisses you, his hand on your neck, his nose bridge sliding into your own. You hadn't been expecting it, and it's no less dizzying than any other kiss he's given you today.
"It's okay," he murmurs lowly, lips pressed to your lips, "have to wear you, is all."
You huff a laugh into his mouth. "I swear I'm always laughing when I'm with you," you muse as Eddie dedicates himself to your bottom lip. You cup the back of his head. "You're amazing."
Eddie groans and eases back. "I'm not good with words, sweetheart. To tell you how I feel about you."
You push one of your legs toward his knee. "...You can show me."
He shifts in the bed until he can lean over the entirety of your chest, hands cupping your face and lips poised hovering over your own, a millimetre of space between your mouth and his. "Okay," he says quietly.
He dips down. You can feel his bottom lip tremble, and then he's kissing you too hard to feel it anymore. You wrap loose arms around his back.
"Are you sure?" you whisper to him.
He rests his nose against your cheek, eyes closed, drawing the tiniest left to right. "I want you," he reassures.
"And you're okay?"
"Yeah, sweetheart. I'm okay. Do you want to?"
"Yeah. More than anything."
Another loving kiss against your cheek, Eddie moves down, down, down. "Tell me if I do something you don't like," he murmurs, top lip dragging and leaving a line of dampness to the base of your throat.
He adorns the canvas of your neck in half-moon contusions, big hands caressing your shoulders, your chest. You hold your breath as his fingers pass over your nipple, fighting to keep in any embarrassing sounds.
Eddie disagrees with his plan of action. You shiver as he brings his lips to a close and his bottom teeth scrape upward, as he pulls his head up and says, "C'mon, angel, breathe."
He follows his command with a manipulative touch, a circle over your nipple that makes you shudder. He kisses you and it feels like a thank you, pressure, a heat as his palm smooths over the bump of your tummy to your thighs. He squeezes the outside of one and for a while you can kiss him back, and then he pulls your thighs apart and you break away. Eddie follows, kisses you even when your reciprocation is weak.
He pushes your thigh flat to the bed.
You feel the heat of your excitement start to grow. Your stomach aches with the want to be touched.
"You're like a space heater, you're that warm," Eddie says, hand coasting down the inside of your thigh. He squeezes until fat melds under his fingers. "Are you scared?"
His whispering in your ear, his hand as close as it is to where you want it, it winds you up like a coil. You sigh as his thumb strokes the edge of your panties, sound coloured by an awful, devouring desire.
His face presses further into yours in reaction.
His touch is like the tide. He wades in, away. His thumb strokes inward over something soft and then his whole hand moves back to your thigh.
"Teasing," you utter.
"A little… Why, is there something you want me to do?"
His clueless whispering is infuriating and exciting at the same time. Your heart races and you can't discern if it's more lust or love.
"Touch me," you plead, pouting, knowing he's a pushover.
Anticipation stabs like a needle in your tummy as he slides his palm over your cunt completely. He rubs a careful, almost casual rhythm into your panties with the breadth of his fingers, lips kissing a lazy stripe up to your forehead, where he rests his face. You both watch his hand move past the valley of your rising chest.
"M'gonna pull these off, yeah?" He sits up, fingers pushing under the sides. "Lift your- yeah, thank you, sweetheart."
You buzz with his pet names, his soft voice, the feeling of your panties sliding up to your knees and his gentle exhale. You swear you can feel it fan over your slit. "Shit…" he moan, pulling at your spread cunt.
He looks like he's in pain, eyebrows pinched together and murmuring curses as he circles the wetness gathered at your entrance. You turn your head searchingly as he starts to ease his index finger inside your heat, a gentle probing.
One becomes two. He muffles your sighing with firm kisses, amorous praises, "That's it, baby, relax," as he works you open, fingers wet with slickness but not enough. He changes his position, pushing his middle and marriage finger inside and curving as his thumb slides up your slit looking for the bead of your clit.
Slow, slow circles. "There, huh?"
You shiver as he pushes in deeper, fingers as far as they can go. He spreads them wide, drops reassuring kisses all over your face when you keen. It's so new to have him kiss you at all, and to have him touching you — you're melting into nothing right there in his hold.
"I got you. Tell me if it hurts, okay?"
"Want you to- I want you to fuck me," you murmur, arms wrapping around him so you can hide your face in his neck.
"Fuck. Fuck, baby. Gonna fuck you just as soon as I can fit," he murmurs back, sinking three of his thick fingers into your snug cunt. He pulls wetness out with every thrust, a line of slick dribbling down onto the sheets underneath. He wipes it upward and pushes it back inside, his chest heaving. "Y'so tight, gotta take my time. Take our time." He rubs his nose against your head until he can kiss the highest point of your cheek. "Make sure you can take it."
"I can."
It doesn't bear repeating how quietly you're speaking, a mouthing inaudible under the wet, rhythmic thud of Eddie's pinky finger slapping your sticky cunt as he ups the pace of his finger-fucking.
"I don't think so," he coos, pulling his fingers from your cunt and making a show of spreading them wide. Your slick ribbons between them, almost invisible in the dark. "Ruin your sheets before any of that, maybe."
Eddie sits up and gets his hands under your armpits. You laugh as he tugs you up so your shoulders are on top of the pillows, but you don't have time to be confused. He quickly moves to kneel at your feet and pulls your leg over his shoulder, your back lifting unevenly from the sheets.
He starts with a sweet kiss pressed to the skin closest to his mouth, your lower thigh, and then works his way up, open mouthed, barely kisses at all until his hair whispers against your sensitive cunt and he's nipping at the stripe of skin between your thigh and the place where you most want his attention.
"Pretty," he says into your damp skin, lips shining. You reach down to stroke his hair behind his ears, worried he's gonna get it dirty.
He looks at you from between your thighs, his eyes dark in the dim light, their lashes long and soft where the outermost flutter into your skin. He's lovely.
He holds your gaze as he pulls back to your inner thigh. "Pretty everywhere," he says salaciously.
His lips part over your skin and you think he might bite you, a bruising hickey, but he pushes you down flat to the bed by your hips and kisses your clit, a simple kiss. Your fingers weave deeper into his hair. Your fingernails scratch lightly against his scalp, every tiny lick or kiss reflected in the minute tightening of your hands.
He goes slow, mouths down, kisses wetter and wetter as he reaches your entrance. "Poor girl," he murmurs, hands pulled down to further scandalise. He sinks two fingers inside and laughs into your cunt. You squirm.
"What happened? You're dripping on my fingers." Your thighs draw closed around his head as he curls his fingers against a soft spot.
"Eddie, can you-" You swallow. "Please. Please."
He pries your thighs open and rubs them soothingly, lapping at the heat of your cunt in face of your pleading. His tongue appears broad and flat up the centre of you until he's kissing on your clit, fingers pumping in rhythm. Your fingers work into his hair and he groans, the vibration enough to make you whimper under his mouth.
He laps at your clit messily and you tip your head back, breath coming in tight pants. You don't know what you say, only how you say it, desperate "please,"s and keening "Eddie,"s.
His thrusts grow in enthusiasm, fingers rubbing eagerly against something sweet. You pull your legs up and nudge his face to your cunt insistently, thigh shaking as you hold it up. Eddie doesn't need any more encouragement, his pretty pink lips suckling at your clit until you see stars. You make a pained little sound and try to move away from his kissing, startled at the intensity of your high.
Eddie lets your clit pop out of his mouth with a lewd, slick sound, his hands moving under your thighs and pulling you closer. "Good girl," he says, rubbing his wet face against the inside of your thigh. He inhales hard as you are, though he pauses to kiss your kneecap and pat your leg. "Good girl, sweetheart."
"I'm sorry," you say breathlessly, hands pulling his hair from his face. Pleasure rolls through you in hot waves.
"For what?"
"Tugging on your hair," you explain, shoulder pulled up to your cheek.
Eddie kisses your tummy lovingly and climbs on top of you to do the same just under your chin. "It’s okay, sweetheart, I like that shit. That was good, huh?" he asks, lips dropping down to yours all wet and warm.
He's not bragging, he's genuinely asking.
You nod into his kiss, your hands coming up to his sides. You swear your ears perk up as he unzips his jeans and eases them down, a hand disappearing into the mess of fabric. He moans quietly at the first touch.
You move his hair out of the way to watch. Eddie tugs at the length of his cock with a cruel hand, a short dribble of pearly precum sobbing down the tip and under his fingers. He spreads it as it goes, the slickness emphasising the ridges and veins of his cock. You can see it throb, if you look close enough.
He sits back and eases his jeans and boxers down enough to reveal a thatch of curls that brush his hand with every pump downward.
"You okay?" he asks, smirking.
You pull your shirt over your head and your chest warms at his adoring smile. "Will you take off yours?"
He doesn't hesitate like you worried he might. He sheds his t-shirt, pulling the fabric over the back of his head and dumping it off the side of the bed.
You take in his chest and it's abundance of ragged scarring still purpled with newness. He has a tattoo over his heart, a black whorl of legs and eyes. Fine dark hair crawls from the middle of his chest down his navel, joining with the thatch of coiled hair surrounding his aching cock. You shuffle forward and wait with two tentative hands held aloft until he says, "It's okay," before you touch him. You run your hands down the soft slopes of his waist.
"Does it hurt?"
"Not anymore."
"Can I kiss it?"
He snorts. "Prefer you kiss something else."
That really makes you laugh. You dot a kiss against his jaw and can't make yourself stop, dropping them all the way to the skin behind his ear. Your hand creeps lower as you go, held to the curve of his tummy. His skin is hot to touch the lower you go, and his stomach feels solid, a heaviness you know all too well.
"Can I touch you?" you whisper into his ear.
"Please."
You drop your forehead against his chest and he brings his hand up to cup the back of your head. His cock pulses as you wrap your hand around it, skin smooth and slick as you palm slowly up and down. You watch in awe as a bead of precum wells at the tip, Eddie's rough breathing loud overhead.
"Lie down, Y/N," he says, hand moving behind your naked shoulders.
"What way?"
"How do you want it, sweetheart? We'll do it whatever way you want."
You think about it. Whatever way you want. No matter how indulgent, you know he means it.
"Will you spoon me?"
He pushes you gently and follows behind, dragging your body into his front and angling your hips, cock hot and prodding your back. He gets his hand under your knee and pulls it up, splaying your cunt. You jump in surprise as he pushes his cock through your folds, tip rubbing against the still sensitive bead of your clit.
Eddie wraps his arms around you, hugging you from behind. "You wanna put it in for me, baby?"
You reach between your bodies and take his sticky cock into your hand, shifting until the head nudges against your hole. He sinks in inch by inch, arms tightening around your waist and grinding you down onto his cock until you're whimpering.
You grab at his arms with your hands and tether yourself to him as he starts to rock his hips, his thrusting tender and his face turned into your neck.
He presses his hand flat to your abdomen, an anchoring point as he moulds your weepy cunt around his length, each slovenly movement into your heat spreading you that little bit wider.
"Fuck," he says finally, sounding seconds from a black out. "Oh, fuck- You're tight. Gonna fuck you open slow, okay?"
You're pretty sure you'd let him do just about anything. You bring his hand to your mouth and kiss every white knuckle, every freckle you can see on the back, and when he bottoms out your cover your lips with his stolen hand to smother a tearful gasp.
Eddie's thrusts are spearing in their steady rhythm, a dirty slap ringing with every punching thrust forward. You curl in on yourself and hide your mouth in the sheets, wet pants smothered by fabric. Eddie's grip falls to your hip, where he pulls your body back and forces your cunt open even deeper.
His cock pushes into your sweet spot sudden and emphatic. You moan and he stills, rutting into that same space without pulling out until you're babbling his name, body knocked forward with every thrust.
Eddie turns your face toward him as much as he can without hurting your neck, your moans echoing in time with each thrust. "There you go," he says, "wanna hear how good it feels."
If he cares that you can't answer him he doesn't show it, arm coming up under you arm to grasp at your chest, your breaststroke soft and aching under his hand as he squeezes tenderly. His cock kisses at the sweet spot inside you intermittently; you're dizzy with it.
Eddie can't keep quiet either, his moans breathy, his breath hissing between his teeth when you clamp down around him. "Fuck," he begs, dragging his cock out of your heat, "fuck, Y/N."
He says your name like the syllables alone are appraising.
You can tell when it gets too much for him. He slows. His face drops into your shoulder, and he matches his pace to the wet kisses he leaves behind. Your wetness feels stickying, each of his thrusts snug.
His breath hitches, ragged pants accompanying every slow push of his hips. "Where's my girl?" he asks, eyes still closed as his hand abandons where it'd been squeezing the bump of your tummy to search further downward, fingers disappearing into your folds, short curls wet with slick. He can't find any purchase. You roll your hips, chase his touch and the pleasure that comes with it.
He groans into your shoulder. It sounds more pain than pleasure.
"Are you okay?" you ask, trying to turn in his arms. He holds you in place. "Eddie?"
"Yeah, fuck, I'm okay." He grinds up into your cunt. "Fuck, you're perfect."
"Will you kiss me?"
He does. It's nowhere near the bruising press you'd wanted. It's too careful.
"Listen," he murmurs, "I'm gonna get you on your front, okay? Gonna make you feel so good," he promises, waiting for you to nod before he pushes your shoulder away from him and climbs up behind you. You lay flat on your stomach and Eddie settles on your thighs, a heavy weight.
He pushes into your cunt with two fingers first, the new position allowing for a new pleasure. He pumps in and out and swaps his fingers for his cock quickly after, bearing the full weight of his body into your back as sinks to the hilt.
You both moan in time, hands fisted in the sheets.
He kisses your neck, lips parted, and his teeth feel so sharp that your heart sinks as it had in the bathroom.
"Eddie-" you start.
He pulls away, stops every movement.
"Eddie," you say again. What are you supposed to say? You both know what he is.
There's a lull where neither of you knows what to do filled by your too-fast breathing.
"I won't hurt you," he says, hands rubbing up the length of your back and then under. He holds a hand over your heart. He drops his lips to your back. "Do you want me to stop?"
He must feel your pulse calm under his touch, but he still asks again when you don't answer. "Do you want me to stop? It's okay if you do. You're okay, baby, I promise."
You steal a pillow from against the headboard and rise up on elbows. Your admission comes weak but completely honest. "Fuck me, Eddie, please... I want you. I want you-" Your murmuring's interrupted by a sharp breath as Eddie starts to move again, the head of his cock pushing into your cunt, a slick, perfect feeling.
He moans from the back of his throat as his cock pushes into you again and again, hips smacking the dough of your ass as his pace quickens. You hug your pillow tightly, tears popping up in the corners as he ruts deep.
"Being so good for me," he groans, clamped down on your hip with a vice-like grip. "Fuck, you feel so good. Fucking clinging to me every time I pull out, baby, Christ." His blasphemy is punctuated by a thrust that has you sliding up the bed, sheets wrinkling under your arms. You spread your thighs and wetness pools at your clit as his pelvis thrusts into you, driving pleasure so deeply it aches in your hips.
You moan pathetically and reach back to hold his hand, wiggling your fingers. He takes it in one and presses your arm against your lower back with the other, struggling to maintain a steady pace as he gets close to cumming. You're a babbling stream of sounds as he fucks in deep, swollen sweet spot tapped against mercilessly.
He throws himself back on his haunches, cock dragged out of your heat.
You pull your legs out from underneath him and curl onto your side to watch, eyes wide as white spurts of pearlescence jump out of the head of his reddened cock and drip down the bumps of his fingers. He leans back, his stomach and thighs tensed with every pump.
He groans through a smile, moan's coloured by a happy, relieved laughter. "F-uck," he drags, fisting his cock dry.
He meets your eyes as the last of it slides down onto his stomach.
You smile softly. "Fuck," you mumble.
Eddie wipes his hand in his jeans like a fucking hooligan and tucks his cock back into his boxers with a wince, and then he collapses on top of you. He's sort of nice about it, his arm over your shoulder and his face behind your ear.
"Fucking beautiful," he praises, dropping his head back on the bed so you're face to face. "You're so fucking pretty. So perfect." He kisses you. "You're perfect," he repeats, staring intently into your eyes.
You pull a hand from between your legs, smelling of sex. Eddie literally couldn't care less if he tried, and he lets you take his face into your hand without complaint.
He gets his arm under your arm and starts to rub your back. "You want me to take care of you again?" he asks, eyebrows raised gently. "Yeah?"
And you would let him, you would, but you need to see them for yourself.
You touch your index fingertip to his lip.
"Can I see?" you ask.
He loses his boisterous joy, tamps it down. He realises that he can't lie, that he hasn't been lying, and he nods. You tremble as you pull his lip up over his canine tooth, excited and scared.
A sharp, exceptionally white tooth pokes out of Eddie's gums. You're taken aback, though you'd known exactly what you'd find.
A fang.
Blood oozes at the gums.
"You're bleeding," you worry aloud, touching your finger to the dark beading at the base of his tooth.
Eddie's eyes rove over your face thoughtfully. He pulls your hand away from his lip and sets it on his neck instead. "They always do that. The gum heals, breaks when they wanna come out."
"How often do they come out?"
"A lot more since I met you. Whenever my adrenaline spikes, they seem to think it's… feeding time."
That is a dizzying thing to learn.
You're not sure how you feel, but you know one thing: he's Eddie. "It's too bad," you say, forcing a lightness that turns real more easily than you expect. "I really want to kiss you right now."
He strokes your cheek with his thumb. "I really wanna kiss you too. Maybe a small one?"
You find yourself leaning forward, unafraid.
He kisses you once, twice, three times, the two of you holding each other's faces and covered in mess. Slick and sweat and blood. The hearts and stars from your lamp spray over his hip and paint him with pinks, greens, oranges, a rainbow cutting over his trim waist. You rest your hand overtop, feel his keloid scars like hills under your fingers.
"My boyfriend's a vampire," you mutter, bemused at fate.
Eddie blinks at you. "I'm your boyfriend?"
"Yeah, I think so. Don't you?"
Eddie pulls you into his chest and doesn't let you go for a long, long time.
-
Your first time watching a blood sate is weird.
For one, Chief Hopper is firmly against it. He's got his kid with him, the boy from the party that Mike had been so heavily doting on, and if he didn't you might think he was a pretty scary guy.
"I think this is stupid," the chief says plainly. "I think this is stupid, I think you're stupid," — he points at Eddie where he's sitting sickly in the round couch — "and I think you're plain crazy, kid." He points at you last.
You beam at him. "People have said that about me."
His kid laughs.
"Will," Hopper says tiredly, "go sit in the car."
"Look, Chief, I know I messed up, okay, but she kind of stuck her hand in my mouth and I didn't really have a choice."
Wayne looks at you with new eyes. "You did?"
You nod at him faux-seriously.
"And what gave her the inkling that you might have had something in your mouth worth looking at?" Hopper says, which is hilarious. You laugh behind your hand.
He gives you a disapproving look that you completely ignore. If you'd taken notice of disapproval you would've stopped having this much fun years ago.
"Uh, well, she might have… felt them?" His pitch rises.
Hopper looks like he's about to blow a gasket when Will says, "What was he supposed to do? Never talk to anyone new ever again?"
"He did a lot more than just talk to me," you say. There'd been a fixed bike, phone calls, lots of sandwiches, bug hunts, an entire sketchbook full of drawings.
"I told you to wait in the car," Hopper says.
Will grins and raises his hands in surrender. "Bye," he mouths. You wave.
Hopper waits for the door to close before he continues. "I get it, when you're a teenager you think your hormones are the end of the world-"
"I'm almost twenty three."
Hopper pinches his hand closed. "But you do not understand the danger that you are creating here."
"Like a stake-ing," you whisper, very very quietly. Eddie's the only one who can hear you, and he laughs so hard he snorts.
"I'm glad you find this funny." Hopper's tone could not imply the opposite any more.
He hands Wayne a paper bag that audibly sloshes and stalks out, his anger a palpable cloud of steam rising off of his shoulders. Eddie seizes up beside you at the sound, lips parting as his fangs come through. You don't touch him because you value your blood inside your body, only slide away from him and smile. "You okay, handsome?"
"Kid, maybe the chief is right. We don't know how Eds is gonna act with you here," Wayne says.
You nod respectfully. You like Wayne, and he knows about all of this stuff more than you ever could.
"No," Eddie mumbles, putting his hand out for you across the couch.
You take it without thinking.
Wayne sighs. You can hear him grumbling as he disappears from view into the kitchen and puts a pot on the stove. There's the sound of a bag being punctured with a knife, a wet slosh. Eddie's grip on your hand tightens.
You're still fascinated that he even drinks blood in the first place. That's wickedly sickening. Wicked, because it's cool that he's a vampire, with his impressive hearing, senses and smell. But sickening, because if you had to drink a pint of blood every couple of weeks you'd throw up.
"I read about a new blood-sucker."
Eddie raises his heavy head. "Another bug?"
"No, a finch! A vampire finch. They're really pretty, Teddy. They're small and brown with long beaks and they drink blood because there's barely any water on their island." You give him a loving smile. "They aren't parasites. S'just how they had to change to survive."
He squeezes your hand, this time on purpose.
"Are you gonna come and have it in here, Eddie?" Wayne asks, one last shot at separating the two of you.
"I'm okay," he says loudly. His eyes trace your smile. "Really."
It can't be fun to have two people watch you drink a warm mug of blood, but Eddie finds it funny. He keeps laughing every time he brings the rim of the glass to his mouth.
"I can't do it if you're looking at me," he says.
Wayne rolls his eyes and looks away. You cover your face with both hands and part your fingers to spy on him through the gaps. He makes it look easy, draining the mug basically in one long pull, though his hunger turns violent as the cup empties. He chokes. Blood trickles down from one corner of his mouth.
You automatically want to reach over and wipe it away. Wayne grabs your arm before you can and gives you a fatherly look that says, I wouldn't do that if I were you.
"Shit," Eddie says, slamming his now empty mug down on the coffee table. It makes a grating sound like a ground mortar and pestle. He sits as far back on the couch cushions as he can, nausea clear on his face.
"Deep breath," Wayne says.
"Fuck, Wayne."
"You're aces. Deep breaths."
Your heart hurts watching Eddie like this. He covers his mouth with eyes closed tightly and breathes hard through his nose. Already there's colour coming back into his face, not a lot but anything is an improvement. He'd been practically grey.
When Eddie pulls his hand from his mouth blood has spread over his lips and jaw. Your eyes widen.
"I'll get the shower running," Wayne says, slapping his knees as he stands. He stops before the hallway. "Good job, Eddie."
The boy in question slouches into a ball on the sofa and nods into a cushion. You wait for the sound of Wayne pulling the shower cord that turns on the hot water before you stand up, head tipped to one side.
"You okay, handsome?".
"Tired."
"You want a hug from me?"
"Is anyone else offering?" He opens one eye to peek at you and grins at your distraught expression. "I'm joking, I'm kidding. C'mere, before I start bawling." You sit and then flop onto your side, pulling your legs up next to his. "Such a frowny face." His voice is adorably tired.
"Better than yours. You look like someone from Night of the Living Dead, baby."
Eddie's arm lies limp like a dead fish over your waist. "Lemme nibble on your brains," he says, words thick as dark honey, eyes closed. "Just a snack."
You're waiting for someone to pull the rug out from under your feet. No way your boyfriend, your cries at the end of every movie, brings you flowers because he felt like it, won't step on cracks in the sidewalk boyfriend just skulled a glass of O-negative like it was a milkshake.
You feel guilty as soon as you think about it. He's not confined to all his softest parts and he never will be. He's snarky and angry and loud. He plays guitar like a real rockstar and he doesn't take anyone's shit. He's a survivor. A glass of blood every now and then was never gonna stop him.
You keep wondering if you should let him suck your blood. It could be hot. It could also probably be the worst idea ever, a relationship faux pas up there with proposing after a month or saying I love you on the first date.
"What are you thinking about?" he asks.
You brush the hair out of his eyes with your ring finger. "Embarrassing relationship fumbles."
"Oh yeah? Like letting your girlfriend watch you drink human blood from a mug shaped like Woodstock?"
"Least it wasn't Snoopy."
"God forbid."
"Is it always like this?" You stroke your hand down his face and rub along his jaw with your thumb. "D'you always get sleepy?"
"Yeah." He turns his face so your hand covers his mouth.
You've stopped wearing silver jewellery, your wrists bare besides the endearingly awful friendship bracelet he's constructed for you. Not a friendship bracelet, he'd corrected. You're not kissing other friends, are you? Because that's really gonna put a downer on this whole thing.
You dip your forehead to his chin and the two of you lay there in silence. You can smell blood, a thick, metallic stick permeating every corner of the room. It's especially strong between the both of you.
"Do you wanna bite me right now?" you inquire without opening your eyes.
"Not really. Blood sate kicks in quickly. It's the worst for, like, the first ten seconds after. Now I wanna sleep, but Wayne's gonna make me shower."
"Maybe I can shower with you."
"I'm sure he'd jump for joy if you suggest it."
"Really?"
Eddie kisses your hand. "No," he says with a giddy laugh.
"I'll pretend I'm gonna sit on the toilet. Keep watch."
"How will you stop your hair from getting wet?"
"I'll lean out."
Eddie laughs even more than he had been, peeling laughter that warms you from the inside out as he kisses your hand again. "That'll definitely work."
Wayne clears his throat.
"Shower's hot. I'm going out. For an hour." Eddie perks up. His uncle looks him dead in the eye. "Don't make me regret this."
And while Wayne had been under the impression you and Eddie were gonna have some grown up fun together in the shower, what you really do is an innocent act of affection: you wash Eddie's hair.
"You have to lean your head back," you chide.
"I am."
"More than that."
"There's no room."
You're lucky you both fit. You're freezing standing behind Eddie, the only relief the warm water that trickles down from your hands to your elbows as you draw circles in his scalp, working the shampoo into a fine lather.
"How did you get blood here?" you ask, scratching rusty flakes from the hair behind his ear.
"I don't know. It gets everywhere. Like eyeshadow."
You push your chin over his shoulder. "You wear eyeshadow?"
"For shows."
"Really?"
"Is it hard to believe?"
You encourage his head under the water and rake your hands through his curls, encouraging the soapy water down to the ends with patient hands. "Lip gloss too? Hey, can I do your makeup?"
"Maybe tomorrow," he bargains. While the shower has helped to wake him up, lethargy remains thick and unshakeable as adamant.
You kiss the wet ridge of his shoulder blade, picturing his pretty face decked out in dark liners and sticky balm. "Thank you."
"I haven't worn any in a long time. Haven't played a show in a really long time."
You wring the water out of his hair and search in the steam for his conditioner. It's mostly empty. "You could put on a show for me. I never got to see you play," you say, shaking it really hard. A dollop collects in your hand and you work the dregs through the ends of his long hair.
"You want that?"
"I think you're the best guitar player in the world."
You're not joking. He's the best, and he plays guitar. And he's pretty good, semantics aside. You love sitting out on the porch with him and listening to him play old rock songs off the top of his head. You could watch his hands move over the strings for hours.
"If that's the case, I can definitely put on a show. Make-up, costume, stage dives. The whole nine yards. Anything for my girl."
You roll the ends of his hair between two coated palms and step back. "There. You have to let it soak in for a couple of minutes."
Eddie turns with a grin, angling his chest and hair forward, away from the stream.
"Whatever will we do?"
You wipe an escaped streak of blood off of his bottom lip and smile. "I have no idea."
You kiss. Eddie leans down and you move up, damp noses glancing off of each other. You're used to short kisses, never enough to make his heart race in case it prompts an unnecessary appearance of his fangs, so when Eddie encourages your lips apart to wade in deeper you pull back questioningly.
"Blood sate. I'm 'sated'. They won't come out."
Your jaw drops. "For real?"
He shakes his head with a pleased smile. "For real. Kiss me sick, sweetheart."
You throw your arm around his neck and drag his face to yours, kissing with an ardency that both surprises and amuses him. He laughs into your open mouth until suddenly he's not laughing at all, only breathing, pushing against you with the same urgent force and the same adoring smile.
"Does this mean you can give me a hickey?" you ask enthusiastically. Eddie has yet to give you a proper love bite.
He leans back under the show spray and pulls you in with him, laughing when you dissolve like rice paper in his arms, finally warm. There's never been a sweeter sound.
/\^._.^/\
thank you for reading! | my masterlist | my halloween party
if you enjoyed reading his, please consider reblogging. i promise it makes a huge difference
#eddie munson x reader#eddie munson#eddie munson x y/n#eddie munson x you#eddie munson x reader fluff#eddie munson x reader imagine#eddie munson x reader hurt/comfort#eddie munson x fem!reader#eddie munson x afab!reader#eddie munson x fem!reader smut#eddie munson smut#stranger things x reader#stranger things fic#stranger things#vampire!au#vampire!eddie#vampire!eddie munson#vampire eddie au#vampire eddie smut#vampire eddie munson#eddie munson imagine#eddie munson fanfiction#eddie munson fanfic#eddie munson fic#stranger things 4#stranger things 4 spoilers#eddie munson x reader smut#eddie munson x afab!reader smut#fem!reader#luveline's halloween party
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Beg You to Love Me
"I'm surprised you even remembered, Harrington," Eddie shrugs, hoping he comes off as aloof as he wants to, instead of shaky and unsure like he feels. He was sitting atop the picnic table, arms behind him trying to look as unaffected by Steve's presence as he can, but he's been thrown for a loop ever since Steve emerged from the woods instead of Robin Buckley, like he was expecting.
"Of course, I remember. I- I've never forgotten," Steve whispers, head down and fists clenched at his sides. He looks more like a child being wrongfully scolded than a man defending himself.
The words pull a scoff from Eddie, though. Never forgotten? What the fuck ever. "Right. Something to hold over me, then, if I'd stepped too far out of line? Mutually assured destruction?"
Steve's head snaps up and he looks horrified, which Eddie will admit to almost believing. Steve doesn't seem like the type to join the drama club but his acting's pretty fucking good. "What? No! I would have never- I would never have said anything about us to anyone."
"Right. Sure. Of course. Your own reputation to think about there."
Something like hurt flashes across Steve's face before it frosts over. This is the face he's used to see on Steve. Cold and distant. "I- whatever, man. I don't even know why I thought..." but Steve doesn't finish his sentence. He just shakes his head and turns his back on Eddie, heading back the way he came.
He doesn't know why that sparks a rage from deep within him. "Yeah, that's right. Tuck tail and runaway again!"
"I ran away?" Steve shouts back, turning sharply on his heel to glare at Eddie. "You think that I ran away?"
Eddie just spreads his hands to the empty clearing as if to say 'look at all this room around me you've never occupied'. "You weren't here, were you?"
"Because you told me to not be!" Steve stomps back to Eddie but stops a couple yards away.
"Like fuck I did," Eddie argues back, because he didn't tell Steve to go away. He'd told him-
"'If this isn't good enough for you, there's the fucking door.' That's what you told me," Steve quotes, "I thought it was pretty fucking clear what you wanted."
"Yeah, I fucking thought it was clear what I wanted," Eddie snarls, lunging from the picnic table, closing those last few feet to get into Steve's face. "Yet here we are!"
"Don't act like this is my fucking fault. Like you weren't the one who forced it to be my fault. My decision-"
"Yeah, it had to be your damn decision! You were dragging it out-"
"-because you were too much of a coward to do it your-fucking-self-"
"-acting like you were. Acting too good to actually slum it with the trailer trash-"
"-so of course I made the choice that was best for me. Because I deserved more-"
"-like what I had to offer you would never be good enough for the goddman King-"
"-than just being your hookup when I wanted to be-"
"-like I wasn't good enough to be your friend, much less-"
"-your fucking boyfriend!"
"-your fucking boyfriend!"
The contrast of this sudden silence that falls following their screaming match that ends with identical sentiments is jarring. Eddie feels wrong-footed and lost. Confusion and hurt mixing in him that he can see reflected on Steve's face.
"What?" Steve is the first to break the silence, drawing into himself. Arms crossing to hold himself at the elbows as he takes several steps back, as if to be able to see all of Eddie will clear the confusion he's feeling.
Eddie just stares back, slack jawed for a moment. That's. What. No, wait. Really, what? "What what?"
"You- you said 'if this isn't good enough for you, there's the fucking door'. How was I- I thought you- you were breaking up with me!" Steve cries, "you. You said that to make me pick, because you knew I wanted more and you didn't. That's- you were breaking up with me!"
Eddie's in just as much disbelief. "No, you broke up with me! I said if this isn't good enough but, like, I meant if I wasn't good enough. And you left! You walked out because I wasn't good enough to be with you!"
Steve looks stricken and he claws harder at himself, sort of folds into himself like he's going to be sick. "No. No no no, that's- then that means I- it's all been my fault. No no no no."
Eddie stares wide-eyed and frozen as Steve talks to himself. Eddie kind of feels nauseous. There's no way that this is possible. That these last two and a half years of heartbreak have been because of miscommunication. That they both thought the other was breaking up with them and neither actually wanted to.
"Why didn't you- Why didn't you say something?" Eddie asks.
Steve laughs at that, sounding a bit hysteric. "Me!? Why didn't you! I wasn't- I wasn't going to beg you to love me like I had with my parents. You were the one who told me I shouldn't have to do that!"
Yeah. He had. When Steve had broken down and cried on his bed, in his arms, wondering what it was he had done to lose his parents' love. Eddie told him it wasn't his fault, never would be, and that he would never need to beg for love from someone who does love him. It was the same advice Wayne had given him when he'd taken Eddie in.
"I already thought you were wanting to break up. You were being so distant, I thought..."
Steve sucks in a deep breath and nods, "Yeah. Yeah I was. I was scared of scaring you away. Of being too much. Because I- what I felt for you was a lot. I was afraid I'd chase you away if I continued to be so clingy. I pulled back, to reign it in but. Fuck. Fuck!"
Eddie drops to a squat. His legs feel like jelly and he can't keep standing. He squats and looks down so his hair becomes a curtain separating him from the reality of the situation, if only for a moment. Fuck is right.
He's spent his junior and first senior year being pissed at Steve. Hurt by him and what he thought happened. And it's- if Steve's being honest, it's all been for nothing. If they both wanted a deeper relationship, they could have had it. They might still be boyfriends if Eddie hadn't been so wrapped up in his Munson Doctrine. He'd been convincing himself Steve was embarrassed of him, and was working on breaking off their- whatever they were. But he hadn't been.
He's thought such terrible things about Steve over the years. God, what has Steve thought of him over the years? No. He doesn't want to know, actually. That's not what he cares about right now.
He lifts his head to see that Steve's plopped himself onto the ground, sitting cross legged, elbows on his knees and head in his hands.
"Steve. Steve!" He calls Steve's name out until he looks up, looks at him, "why'd you come out here?"
He laughs again, slightly less hysterically, and he's shaking his head like he can't believe what he's about to say. "I. Fuck, I was coming out here to beg you to love me."
"No you fucking weren't!" his tone is filled with disbelief.
"I was," Steve repeats, sounding amused and heartbroken at the same time. "I really, really was. Graduation's coming and I know you want to get out of Hawkins the second that happens and I'm. I was running out of time trying to get you to notice me again, so I was going to beg."
Notice him again? As if Steve doesn't haunt his every waking thought. As if he doesn't dream of Steve every night while his eyes seek him across the halls and in their few shared classes like he's the goddamn night sky and Eddie is a sailor lost at sea needing the north star to guide him home. Eddie's never not noticed him, and he thinks he has to come out here and beg? "When someone loves you, you don't have to beg."
"Yeah, I know," Steve sighs, defeated, which lets Eddie know that Steve does not, in fact, know. He looks away from Eddie, down to his lap.
Fuck, it's like every fantasy Eddie's had of them making up and then making out has been handed to him on a silver platter and he's blowing it. His words are too vague, too easily misinterpreted. Again. He falls forward on to his knees, hands catching him so he's on all fours like an animal. "Steve. I mean it. You don't have to beg."
"I get it, Eddie," Steve huffs, not looking at him. Not actually understanding.
Eddie starts to crawl the distance between them. Steve looks up then, probably to see what the fuck Eddie was doing with the shuffling sounds and the chain on his belt clacking. Eddie watches Steve's eyes go wide, mouth dropping open to a small 'o'. "See, the thing is, Steve," Eddie says, pulling himself up to be just on his knees to shuffle the last few inches closer. Steve leans back to keep his eyes on Eddie's face, which opens his lap up. "You said you know, but I don't think you do." Eddie brings his hands to rest on Steve's shoulders and Steve lets him. "You don't have to beg." He uses his hold on Steve's shoulders to balance himself as he swings a leg wide, to straddle Steve, then shifts his weight to repeat the process with his other leg before settling himself into Steve's lap. Steve's hands land on his hips and Eddie isn't sure if it's intentional or a reaction to Eddie plopping himself in his laps but he's going to believe it's the first one. "You've never had to beg with me."
Steve sucks in a sharp breath and then he collapses into Eddie. Steve's hands on his hips slide up and pull him into a hug, as close to Steve's body as he can get, while Steve shoves his head under Eddie's chin, into the junction of his neck and shoulder and breaths him in like it's the last breath Steve will ever take. "We're so stupid."
"Yeah," Eddie agrees, as he lifts one hand to hold the back of Steve's head while the other drops to rub soothingly at his back. "Yeah, we are."
They sit in the dirt, the closest they've been since that summer between '81 and '82. They should probably talk about. They're going to have to, if they want this to work. Full sentences with no hidden meanings, even though the thought of that kind of vulnerability makes Eddie skittish. It's going to be difficult, but it'll be worth it. Steve has always been worth it.
Eddie wants to say 'I love you', just to get it out, in the open, and not just implied, but there's a different first step to take. One that's actually a little easier. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
"Me too," Steve whispers, "I'm sorry. I should have-"
"Shut up," Eddie cuts him off, voice quiet and soft as he can be. "This is, and I cannot stress it enough, a we situation."
The huff of laughter on his skin from Steve feels like the start of something. A new beginning, a start over. A re-do.
A goddamn miracle.
Later, they'll drag themselves apart and up. Make it to the back of Eddie's van in the school parking lot to talk. Going to either's house feel too much, too soon. Their big fight happened at Eddie's home, and Steve's house isn't warm enough for the kind of comfort they want to share.
They'll have a talk. Filled with long pauses, stumbling over words and fears and insecurities because this is the hard part of a relationship. Getting it all out in the open so they can learn if they'll even work. The fear that they aren't going to be compatible anymore looms but doesn't deter. They both want a second chance, to give it a real shot, by the end of that first talk. But taking it slow.
They'll discuss what went wrong the first time (diving in without talking about anything certainly played a big part) and how to avoid that.
But that's later. Right now, Eddie just holds Steve, and Steve holds him back, and it certainly feels like the beginning of something good.
-
@i-less-than-three-you @nburkhardt @afewproblems
#steddie#my fic#this is just Miscommunication The Fic#hurt/comfort#steve harrington#eddie munson#robin buckleys the mvp for setting up the meeting by lying to eddie#shes going to demand a thank you gift for giving them the time to talk#and eddie WILL send her a whole fruit basket
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bright eyes | eddie munson x reader
summary you're a new neighbour in the trailer park, your's an Eddie's relationship takes a new turn, while navigating life with her little girl (4.3k)
warnings fem!reader, girl!dad Eddie!!!!, fluff, mutual pining, yearning etc, slowburn strangers to lovers, idiots in love!!!, , english is not my first language so I apologise if there’s some mistakes, not proof read!
a/n: the support has been insane, so enjoy part2 <3 part 1 part 3 (they can be read seperatly)
“Munson! There’s a girl here asking for you.”
The raspy voice of his college snapped him back to reality. He had been working on the same bike for a while now, and had become unaware of everything else that was happening around him.
But if there was a girl to see him, it could only be you, or maybe Robin.
He really hoped it’d be you.
Heads followed him as he crossed the dusty garage floor as he found his way to the opened mechanical door. Lucky for him, you were anxiously waiting there, your hands playing with the hem of your sweater.
You had been lucky, if you actually think about it. You had left the café you started working at a few weeks ago, so you could go to the trailer park and get some sleep. This last weekend the logistic center that was 30 minutes away had called you, begging you to take the night shift since some of their employees were on vacation. You accepted, since they offered to pay you extra, and in cash. The downside was that the sleep you had lost didn’t seem to come back, and your car had been making a strange sound since then.
Now your car refused to turn right, and if it did it took way too much strength.
You avoided spending more than you had to, but it looked like it was finally time. Thank god Eddie works here, you kept thinking as you found your way to the mechanic.
“Hi.” Your voice was lower, barely holding yourself together.
“Hi princess.” He tried to cheer you up, a big smile on his face and his affectionate pet name he had only for you. “What a nice surprise.” He kept walking towards you, cutting the distance until you were a step away from each other.
“I wish it was a surprise.” The way your eyebrow furrowed let him know that you were a bit too anxious, a bit too nervous with the situation. “I need your help.” You added as your palm covered your face for a moment, trying to wipe away the panic.
“Whatever you need, princess.” And maybe it was his sweet tone, maybe it was the nickname or maybe it was the way his hand held your arm, in a supportive and soft way, that let you finally relax.
You walked with him to your car, while you told him what was going on. He just nodded and let you talk, knowing that that was just what you needed.
“It just sucks, I don’t know how I’m gonna get to work now.” You kept speaking as he popped the hood up of your car, and he kept looking at the engine, and everything that crept deep into it, what everything did you had no idea. Eddie was used to people talking while he worked, but oddly enough it made him feel more important, when you were the one doing it.
“I could drive you.” He replays. His body stood up from being bent over. He was tying his hair up, and you had lost any and every train of thought you had. You had never seen someone look as pretty with a ponytail, even when they were covered in car grease. Black stains in contrast with his white muscle top, decoration his arms in places tattoos didn’t. “I don’t mind, as long as you’re okay with carpooling with Lua.” Eddie’s nervous smile came back, an upside down grin while his eyebrows raised, eyes locked with yours.
“I’d love that.”
-
Breakfast was Lua’s favourite.
A piece of toast with some sweet jam, a cup of warm milk, and some cut up fruit.
Eddie let her eat it wherever she felt like, time proved that was the better option. She usually preferred to eat it sitting down on the kitchen counter, while Eddie sat on the stools, eyes on the same level. He usually ate the rest of the fruit that he didn’t give to her, while he downed his black coffee. Though if he was honest, he had never cracked how to brew a good cup.
Lua would babble whatever she had on her mind, she was chattier in the mornings, unlucky for her, Eddie was not a morning person, his energy drained from another poor night’s sleep.
Everytime he thought about it, it made him laugh. Before her little girl came into his life, he’d sleep until way past noon, usually skipping school, having a cigarette and a coffee -if anything- for breakfast, without a job - a legal one- and with no real reason to do anything with his life.
Maybe that’s why he cares so much about her, her little light, his reason to keep going, and be better.
While he looked at her, the world seemed to quiet down for a moment, and everything was fine.
Three knocks at the door, and he already knew you were on the other side of it.
“Morning.” Amusement in his voice, in a hush tone. His dippels appeared, as his smile grew wider, they way your hair fell, in a tangled mess, being the reason for it. He was just happy to see you, though he wasn’t going to admit it. Not yet.
“Hi.” Your voice came out raspy and hoarse. You hadn’t talked to anyone yet, and it made him chuckle even more. He moved his body out of the door frame, letting you plenty of room to walk through. “Coffee?”
“Already done.” He muttered back, pointing with his head where the mug in his kitchen was.
You felt your face relax as soon as you saw Lua enjoying her breakfast, quietly. Your eyes closed when your earnest smile came, once her voice rang with excitement as she said your name, as her hands moved through the air.
“Hi dude!” You matched her energy, the momentary excitement winning the battle for your remaining energy.
Lua gave you a high five, which you celebrated with a funny face that made her laugh. She offered you a piece of fruit that you accepted in a way too exaggerated manner, that only made her giggles multiply. Unbenoughts to you, Eddie was watching attentively.
He was memorizing the way your hair fell on your back, and the way it swayed everytime you moved. The way you fitted in your dark washed jeans, the little red shirt from the café hugged your waist and he suddenly had the wish to place his hand there. He didn’t do it.
Instead he handed you a mug with watered down coffee, that you accepted. He grinned at the way your nose scrunched once you took the first sip of it.
“Yeah, I’m not the best coffee maker.” He confessed while he suppressed a laugh.
“Clearly.” You answered in a joking manner, it wasn’t bad, you just weren’t used to black strong coffee, not the way he was. “I’m making you breakfast tomorrow.”
You meant it. He knew, so he accepted with a nod and another smile.
“Wayne’s sleeping, so we try to not wake him up. It’s difficult when little miss sunshine has all the energy in the world.” He explained while looking at Lua, her beaming smile and giggles made him light up, his thumb cleaning her cheek that had some purple jam on it.
“There’s no one else in my trailer, she can be as chatty as she wants there.” Lua understood that, as soon as she realised what you were talking about she started to clap and cheer, a soft chuckle escaping from your lips.
Eddie could hear that symphony for the rest of his days, he thought.
-
It became a new way to start your days.
You’d brew some coffee, and prepare an extra mug for Wayne, that Eddie left on the counter of his kitchen before you left for work.
You’d actually cook, eating something in the early hours for once, a new habit you never had before.
Lua always knocked on your door whenever they were ready, the little sound on your door followed by her sweet hi, as her arms swanged up in the air. She was becoming more and more comfortable with you, letting you hold her. She even gave you a thank you kiss on the cheek once.
Today you had some pancake batter sizzling in the pan, orange juice for her, milky tea for you.
“Dada?”
“Yes?” Eddie raised his eyebrow as he took his first sip, his voice softening at her.
“Music?” She answered with another question.
“Ah, yes. The beautiful melody that connects us all together.” He babeled, in that voice he used when he was talking as what he was saying was written in an antique book. He tended to do it more when he knew you would smile.
He took two cassettes out of his back pocket, letting her choose. He wished she’d actually choose the mix he finished last night, but as always, she picked the one that had a drawing she did as a cover.
He nodded and walked to your radio.
It hit him in that moment, just how tangled your lives were becoming. He knew where (almost) everything in your home was, and the same was starting to happen for you. He knew that you kept honey in a reused jar, because Mr.Felix gave you local honey from a friend in the first cupboard to the right. He knew you had extra plasters in the second drawer of your bathroom because you had a tendency to cut yourself when you used a knife when you had to chop something up. He knew that the drawings on your wall were painted by you, but that the one that hung over the orange lamp was gifted to you by a kid you took care of when you worked in a hotel two years ago. He also knew that you knew where Lua likes to put her toys away, under the table of his living room. You knew that the only way she had to eat vegetables was if they couldn’t be seen. You knew that Eddie liked to have it all under his ‘controled mess’ as you called it.
In just a few weeks you had become such an important person that he was scared of you leaving. Which people had a tendency to do in his life.
Now he couldn’t only care about his life, he had to care about Lua’s too, and he had been trying to talk to you about it. But everytime he summoned up the courage to do so, you’d look at him with your pretty doe eyes and everything he had wanted to say left, he could only focus on how pretty you always look.
You focused on other things. Silly, non important things.
Like how his tongue went over his upper lip every time he concentrated to fasten Lua’s seatbelt. Or how he played with his rings when he was deep in thought, whatever it was, his thumb played with the middle one, while his left hand focused on the one in his index finger. Or how when he had a clear idea, and had to start working on something, he’d tie his hair up in a lazy ponytail, his thick neck exposed. Or how he rotated his shoulders when he sat down on the driver's seat at the end of the day, half exhausted, half excited to go back to his home.
You walked to the car shop at around eight, as you always did. Knowing that he’d already be waiting for you outside. Since Lua was back in the house, Wayne coming to pick her up as soon as he wakes up, he always enjoyed that small frame of time to actually smoke a cigarette, his little moment, all for himself.
Before he met you, he’d spend this moment thinking about what he needed to do, what he needed to buy, or what Lua wanted for dinner. Now, the only thought was you. You and your sweet voice, you and your angelic laughter, you and your soft skin. You, everytime you called his name.
“Hey princess.” His pet name had also become a familiar sensation. Your heart still races a bit when it hears it, nevertheless.
“Hey moon.” Eddie wasn’t sure if it was the earnestness of your tone, or the new nickname, but he felt his heart jump around his chest, and his cheeks changing colour, a pretty pink flush taking over them.
“Should we go?” He added, happiness crystal clear, not only by his higher tone, but by his overall demeanor.
“Please. I’m so tired, I think I’ll go straight to bed.” You let out in a whisper, rubbing your face in an attempt to wake up, so you wouldn’t fall asleep on the drive back to the trailer park.
“You should eat something first.” It was his way of showing you he cared, making sure you were taking care of yourself half as well as you took care of others.
“I know, I just really hate cooking for myself. It's boring, and then you have to clean it, and do it all again…”
“You make breakfast for us everyday,” He pointed out, his eyebrow raised in synchrony with his pitch, as he opened the passenger door so you’d climb in.
“Yeah, but that’s different. It’s mostly for you.” You stop as you wait for him to sit on the driver sit, taking the time to make sure your seat belt is fastened. Looking at the backseat, a new habit you had developed thanks to him and his baby. “I didn’t eat breakfast before you guys came.” You admit, and he knows you’re not lying. You never do when your eyes shine that bright. You also know he is a bit worried, a frown appearing on his forehead. “I’m okay, moon.”
“Hey, it’s not fair that you use the nickname to your advantage.” He points out, his index finger raising to the air as he speaks, his car engine starting, heading home.
“Sorry?” You jokingly ask. Knowing that everything’s fine by the way he laughs it off.
“Then, we’ll come over and cook you dinner.”
“Tonight?”
“If that’s okay.” His tone showed a bit of concern now. Maybe he was pushing it a bit too much. He was just excited to spend time with you, so he tried to grab every opportunity he had to do so.
“Yeah, I just… My fridge’s a bit empty. We should stop by the shop.” You were embarrassed.
It was stupid. Or at least it felt stupid. Being embarrassed about it. But the only actual thing you had been buying was dedicated to the breakfast you shared together, once you were home by yourself, you usually had a soup, frozen pizza or a simple grilled cheese sandwich. You really didn't care that much, you just ate if and when you were actually hungry.
And it wasn’t that often, if you were honest.
Eddie knew. He had a tendency to be over observant, and he had noticed, but never dared to say anything. Life was complicated enough, and that was a mantra he stood by. So he took the chance, and planned to cook you the meal he was actually proud of.
-
The Never Ending Story played in the background.
A familiar scene in your trailer.
Eddie’s cooking filled the air with a delicious smell, he was concentrated in it, wanting to impress you while he cooked his ramen noodles with seared shredded chicken.
Meanwhile, you and Lua layed on the rug in your living room, the T.V on a low volume. She had found your nail polish, and cheerfully asked if she could paint your nails.
“What colour do you want to paint them?” You had asked, the calmest your voice has ever been, the tiniest trace of exhaustion in it.
“Blue!” She beamed as she held the bottle.
“Okay, careful though.” You opened the bottle for her, and looked at her as she looked at the puzzle before her. “Do you want me to do the first one?” You asked, knowing that she needed some sort of guide. You realised, she had the same face of concentration as her father, tongue out covering her upper lip.
She started painting, the smell of polish annoying her a bit, you encourage her. Telling her in a kind voice how good of a job she was doing, even if she was getting more colour on your skin than in your nail. She giggled as she covered her face in a shy manner, proud of the job she had finished.
“They look beautiful, bug” Eddie’s voice came right between both of you. As he sat down between you, she held your hand so he could look at them closer. “You did this all by yourself?” Even if he didn’t look at you, and even if his eyes were looking at the proud look on his daughter's face, you could feel the electricity travel from your body to his. And the warmth his touch leaves on your soft skin.
“Yeah.” She whispers in a shy, proud giggle, nodding along, waiting patiently for his compliments.
“She didn’t help you?” He asked again, this time his eyes were on yours. It had changed, you noticed. His eyes weren’t shining with a second intention, or a jokey flare. They were full of something else, if you had to put a name on it -without having to say it out loud- you’d say it was adoration, though you weren’t sure. You were right regardless.
“It was all her.” You tell him. He nods, catching himself falling deeper into the abyss.
“Dinner’s ready” He ended up saying that. He thought that saying what he was really thinking would have been too weird. Tough if he really thought about it, telling you that you had never been more beautiful wasn’t a total lie, or that out of character for him.
Lua sat on his lap, knowing that she would be fed, since she couldn’t be trusted with noodles. Not since she had used a fork to catapult them into the wall a few months back. She was smarter than Eddie realised, and he loved her more for it.
Eddie waited silently for your reaction, and was pleased with himself when you whispered an amazed my god once you took your first bite. He took his chance to look at you while you were eating, distracted by the food. While you took your chance to look at him when he fed Lua.
This was something you could also get used to, you find yourself thinking.
Having company. Having them as company.
It was complicated, and you knew that.
And it was even harder when he acted as nice as he was doing. Even if he had cooked, he was still offering to clean up. It was also harder seeing how Lua wanted you to hold her, exhaustion after a nice meal, she was sleepy and needed comfort. You looked at Eddie, a question written over your face is this okay? He gave you his usual grin, the upside down smile that showed his dimple of course it is.
You held her, close to your chest, her little arms hanged by your side, her head resting between your shoulder and your breast. You were softer than the strong arms she was used to, and your swaying was more delicate -probably because you were afraid to do something that might upset her- you hummed along the final song of the movie that was still playing, and as she felt deeper and deeper into dreaming, Eddie finished cleaning up.
“Is she…?”
“I think so.” Your voice was so quiet he could barely even understand you.
The image of you, holding her with such care, with such softness, with that much love… It became an image he would end up thinking in a recurring manner.
“We could set her down in my room.” You point at the closer door that he had never walked through. He nodded, trying to mask his boyish excitement.
He half expected your room to be as colourfull as the rest of your house, but your walls were white, decorated with just a couple pictures of a city he couldn’t name on the wall, your white sheets that had witnessed your meeting on your bed.
He walked over to you, a bit closer than he had to be to hold Lua, so he could put her down. Enjoying the way his skin graced yours.
He sat down on your mattress, and laid Lua in the middle of it, resting in deep sleep. You followed closely. Your body hitting the usual comfort that your mattress always seemed to have. He waited a second. Another image he wanted to remember happening right in front of him, your body laying down on a bed next to her baby. In another life… Maybe it could have also been yours.
He laid down carefully, and you saw as both of you were lost. Not really sure where to look, but dying to just look at each other's eyes. As these things go, you could only avoid each other for so long.
So you ended up lost into his gaze just as much as he was lost in yours.
It was a bit too much.
“Moon…” You whispered, trying to not wake her up.
“Yeah?”
“Is this weird?” Even if you tried not to, your words still came out as worried as you were.
“Is it weird that it isn’t?” He asked back, the sincerity in his voice made your body relax, your eyebrows furrowed.
“Maybe.” You admit, with a hopeful smile. You turned your focus on her for a moment. “She looks so peaceful.”
“You should see her when she wakes up.” He adds with a smirk on his lips. His fingers pushing a hair out of her face. “She’s calmer when you’re around.”
“We should be careful, then.” You were measuring your words now, not only speaking about her. He knew, so he just nodded.
“You know…” He started speaking after a few minutes of comfortable silence, his body sinking deeper into the comfort of your bed, smelling your perfume in the pillows that hugged his head. “When I had her, it was only me and Wayne, her mother doesn’t want her in her life, and it was scary, and nauseating. I had no idea what I was doing.” His eyes flickered back to you. His shyness was gone, he was calmer with you near. You and the admiration in your eyes. “But I figured it out pretty quickly. She needed me just as much as I needed her. I had help, of course. But still, I wouldn’t change it for the world. She keeps me sane in a way… I know I’m a better person because of her. But I think I’m becoming an even greater person because of you, too.”
You weren’t sure what you could say back. It was a warming feeling, having heard him say it, knowing that somehow you were in the same position as him. So you decided to be brave, to be honest for once.
“I just worry Edds, that’s all.” You admit in a sincer whisper. He knows you’re not done talking, and he doesn’t rush you. He waits patiently, with an understanding nod and a smile on his face. “Meeting you, both of you, has been a blessing. Honestly. It’s been lonely, moving away, being here… And you guys have been so kind, and so welcoming… I really don’t wanna fuck it up.”
“I know, princess.”
“I just… I don’t know where’s the limit. I think… I think I kinnda like you, and if this complicates things I… I don’t know.” You were a bit embarrassed. having finally confessed what has been on your mind for days. But seeing the beaming smile that escaped from Eddie’s lips was all the confirmation you needed.
“I think I kinnda like you too. And I know it sucks. In another life, I would have asked you out, and we would have gone on dates, and we would spend days together but… All I can really think about, all I should think about…” He gestures to the little girl, sleeping soundly. “But we could still figure out a way…”
“You think?”
“Maybe.” He echoes your first maybe, the same tone, the same expression you had given him. “If you want to, we could try it out, go on a date, see if we…”
“Work?”
“Yeah.” A lovesick grin was plastered in both of your faces.
Hope could be felt in the room. Maybe it could work out, maybe you could have something, even if you weren’t sure what that was. Normally the uncertainty would make you nauseous, and anxious. Not this time, it actually made you excited, the promise of a something with them. With him.
“You’d go out with me? An actual date?” He finally asks you. His soft spoken words can’t really hide the excitement that laid deep in his question. And you weren’t that good at lying, and he could read you like a book.
“I’d love to, Moon.” It had been easier than you had anticipated. Complicated and easier seemed to go hand in hand when he came into the picture. “As soon as you fix my car.” You add in a joking tone, sticking your tongue out.
“Oh, your car’s been done for a couple days.” He said in a sirius yet humorous tone, he covered his mouth with his index fingers as soon as a chuckle escaped your lips.
“Asshole.” You whispered in disbelief.
“I just liked having an excuse to hang out with you.”
Just like that, your heart was warmer once again. And soft giggles and conversation followed all the way through the night.
Until the exhaustion caught up with you.
You fell asleep right there. A picture that both of you wanted to remember, the little promise of something more.
-
there might be a part 3 if you guys would like it ! xx
if you enjoyed it please leave a comment or reblog. i promise it makes a huge difference <3
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part 2 is up, thank for the support dudes <3
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For the angst prompt thing: Steddie and "Don't fucking touch me."
Hello! Thank you very much for sending a prompt, I'm sorry it took me so long to post, but I do think this one is my favorite out of all the fills I've done for this prompt list <3
[No warnings; Unnamed Freak (who apparently got a name in the most recent novel, but I didn't know that at the time) is named Oliver]
Angsty-ish Prompt List
-
“I’m gonna step outside for a minute,” Steve leans in to murmur in Eddie’s ear, even though the music isn’t that loud.
“Yeah, sounds good.” Eddie nods, and only just keeps himself from turning to catch Steve’s mouth in a kiss when he feels the brush of his lips against his ear; it’s not his fault he’s developed some kind of Pavlovian association between having Steve’s mouth anywhere near his skin and receiving kisses – but they do have company.
Said company is just Gareth, Jeff, and Oliver, but still. Eddie has some decorum.
Steve stands from the couch and the arm he’d had slung around Eddie’s shoulders slides away slowly, his hand brushing warm and heavy over the back of Eddie’s neck, thumb stroking once, familiarly, along the side of his throat before disappearing entirely as Steve moves towards the front door. He doesn’t do so great with groups of people in small spaces anymore; the noise gets to him, and the heat generated by so many bodies in close proximity tends to give him a headache, so he takes breaks now and then, just to give his brain a few minutes to unbend.
The door swings open on silent hinges (Steve had attacked it with a can of WD-40 and a look of determination earlier today, insisting he couldn’t stand the squeaking anymore; he’s always doing things like that around the house – little repairs, organizing, picking things up, even though Eddie insists he doesn’t have to. He says he wants to, the endearing little weirdo) and Steve steps out into the cool evening, leaving Eddie and the boys behind in the warm light of the trailer’s main room.
“So,” Jeff says, looking up from his spot on the floor and gesturing vaguely at Eddie with his beer can, “how’s that going for you guys?”
Eddie blinks at him. “How’s what going?”
“The whole thing between you two,” Jeff clarifies, and Eddie raises a skeptical brow at him.
“You wanna talk about me and Steve having sex?” Eddie asks.
Jeff’s nose scrunches in distaste. “What? No.”
“Not ever,” Gareth jumps in.
“I mean…” Oliver says with a shrug, flinching when Gareth pelts him with a balled-up napkin.
“No,” Gareth reiterates.
“I refuse to apologize for simple curiosity,” Oliver sniffs, and Eddie, seated next to him on the couch, gives him a shove.
He’s glad his friends are accepting – supportive, even (he’d like to say he wouldn’t hang out with them if they weren’t, but let’s be real: nerds could be hard to come by in their neck of the woods, and as long as they were the quiet type of homophobic, Eddie would probably still play D&D with them. But he’s glad they’re not), but he does have some boundaries.
Like, one or two, maybe.
“I just meant the whole… dating thing,” Jeff says, taking a sip from his beer. “Because I’ll be honest, I really didn’t see it at first, but it actually seems to be working out.”
“Dating?” Eddie parrots blankly.
“Yeah. You guys are in, like, some kind of never-ending honeymoon phase or some shit,” Gareth says. “Hasn’t it been over two months?”
“Uhhh, no, I think you gentlemen are confused,” Eddie drawls. “Steve and I are not dating.”
This declaration is met with a moment of silence.
“Seriously?” Oliver finally says.
“Yep,” Eddie replies easily. “No relationship shit here. Strictly a friends-with-benefits-type deal.”
“Seriously,” Olver says again, flatly this time.
“Yes, Oliver, seriously,” Eddie huffs, reaching over to give him another shove, only to have his hand pushed away.
“Eddie, he was practically sitting in your lap just now,” Jeff says. “You two are all over each other.”
“Constantly,” Gareth adds.
Eddie shrugs. “It’s not like this is a big couch; we gotta squish. Anyway, Steve’s just a touchy kind of guy.”
“He doesn’t sit like that with any of us,” Gareth points out.
“Yeah, well, you guys aren’t the ones receiving benefits,” Eddie says. “You want him to sit on your lap? You could ask.”
Gareth lets his head hang back with a noise of frustration. “That’s not the point, and you know it.”
“Don’t you two go on dates?” Jeff asks. “I’ve seen you at the movies. You talk about going out to eat, doing other shit…”
“Yeah, see, that’s the friends part of friends with benefits,” Eddie snarks. “Friends hang out sometimes, I’ve been told. We are all, in fact, hanging out right now, but that doesn’t mean I’m dating any of you.”
“You don’t see the way he looks at you?” Oliver asks, and Eddie can’t help but scoff.
He appreciates the fact that Oliver is passionate about pretty much anything he does, but it also means he’s given to romanticizing. He doesn’t usually manage to drag Jeff or Gareth in with him, though.
“Pretty sure he looks at me like a friend, because that’s what we are.” Eddie rolls his eyes before offering a smarmy little grin. “I mean, I’m sure he looks at me as an exceptionally attractive friend, but that’s it.”
“Genuinely can’t tell if you’re fucking with us, man,” Jeff says, rolling his eyes.
“Genuinely, I am not,” Eddie promises, taking the last viable swallow from his beer before getting up and heading for the kitchen, wiggling his empty can at the others with a raised eyebrow in question. Gareth raises his own near-empty can with a shrug and Eddie nods. “Look,” he says as he ducks towards the fridge, “Steve isn’t the kinda guy you have a relationship with, anyway, you know?”
Eddie doesn’t mean this in a negative way, just as a matter of fact. Steve just doesn’t seem to be a relationship kind of guy. Nancy had been something of an outlier, in how long she and Steve had lasted, and it had become clear after the dust from the Upside Down had settled that he really doesn’t have any interest in pursuing her further. Just the other day, he’d mentioned to Eddie how difficult relationships can be, and about how glad he is they have their thing together instead.
“Being with you is just… easy,” Steve had said; he hadn’t been looking at Eddie at the time, his face instead pillowed on Eddie’s chest, hair sticking to his naked skin where the sweat was still cooling from their last round, but Eddie could see the edge of a smile on his lips.
And Eddie doesn’t have much experience with relationships himself, but he knows that being friends with Steve is easy and that the sex feels equally easy and that the way he’d agreed with Steve and carded his fingers through his hair had sent Steve right to sleep with that same smile still in place.
Easy.
Now, Eddie shoves his head into the fridge and reaches for the beers that have somehow gotten pushed to the back. “It’s nothing major, okay?” he calls back towards the living room.
“Eddie…” Gareth calls back, an edge to his voice.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m on it.” Eddie waves vaguely, making sure to grab a second beer. “Anyway, Steve’s a good friend, and he’s really hot, and we’re just having fun.”
The bang of the front door against the frame startles Eddie so badly he nearly smacks his head on the underside of the freezer as he stands, a beer clutched in each hand like he might be able to use them as projectiles.
There is no threat, though – just Steve, who had apparently failed to catch the screen door before it had shut too quickly behind him. He doesn’t seem to have noticed; he’s just standing there, staring at Eddie, color rising high in his cheeks, eyes wide and shocked, like he’s just been slapped.
Concern wells up from Eddie’s gut, and he opens to his mouth to ask what’s wrong when Steve finally speaks.
“Yeah,” he croaks, “I’m not having fun.”
Eddie’s brows furrow in confusion, the beginnings of cold dread trickling into his veins well ahead of any conscious thought.
“I think I– I think I should go,” Steve says.
He grabs his keys from the side table by the door, where they’ve lived next to Eddie’s and Wayne’s for the last few months whenever he’s been at the house, and then he’s gone again, the screen door banging shut once more behind him.
And Eddie has no idea what just happened, but he knows it wasn’t good. He drops the beers on the counter and bolts out the door after Steve.
Steve is nearly to his car by the time Eddie scrambles down the front steps, and he’s paying absolutely no attention when Eddie calls after him.
“Steve,” Eddie tries again, stumbling to a stop right behind him as he jams his keys into the driver’s side lock. “Steve, for fuck’s sake, what–” he reaches out, wrapping one hand around Steve’s bicep, and Steve jerks out of his grip.
“Don’t fucking touch me,” Steve snaps.
Eddie pulls his hand back, but doesn’t step away, entirely baffled by the sudden turn the evening has taken. “What the hell happened back there?”
Steve goes still, grip going lax on his keys. “I heard what you said, Eddie.”
“About – about what? Are you mad I was talking to them about us sleeping together? Because, Steve, they already knew,” Eddie insists, a little incredulous. “You said you were fine with them knowing! You were practically feeling me up in front of them!”
“I don’t give a shit if they know we’re having sex!” Steve hisses, finally whirling around to look at Eddie. “I meant the rest. About how I’m not the kind of guy you have a relationship with.”
Eddie’s stomach sinks. He hadn’t realized that was such a sensitive subject. “I – shit, I wasn’t trying to hurt your feelings, I just didn’t think you wanted–”
“About how we’re just having fun,” Steve cuts in, and if he’d sounded raw before, his voice is practically ground down to nothing now.
That brings Eddie up short. “…aren’t we?” he asks after a moment.
Steve says nothing.
“I mean, shit, Steve, it’s not like we’re in a relationship,” Eddie says, offering a little laugh, because even Steve would have to admit that the idea is a little silly.
Except.
Except Steve just glances away, staring at the ground beside Eddie’s feet, and – oh, shit.
“Oh, shit.”
Steve is still unnervingly silent, one arm curled around his middle while the other hand comes up to pinch briefly at the bridge of his nose. He still won’t look at Eddie.
“You… you thought we were,” Eddie says dumbly, and Steve shrugs.
“Can you blame me? We spend all our time together, Eddie. I’m here more than I’m at my own house, I think I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve slept in my own bed in the last month. We go out and do things together, I try to keep things nice around the house because I want Wayne to like me, we have, like, a lot of sex, and– we… I mean, we kiss and touch and just – do shit like that even when it doesn’t lead anywhere.” Steve shrugs helplessly, finally looking up. “I mean, Christ, Eddie, what did you think we were doing?”
“I thought we were friends!” Eddie insists. Steve throws him an incredulous look and Eddie amends, “With benefits!”
“Right.” Steve’s expression flattens back out, going cold and hard and unlike anything Eddie’s become used to from him. “Because I’m not the kind of guy you’d want to have a relationship with.”
“I said that because I thought you didn’t want to be in a relationship!” Eddie snaps. “It’s not like you stay with anyone for very long, so I just assumed you didn’t want to be with anyone.”
Some of the ice retreats from Steve’s face, leaving a watering kind of hurt in its stead. “Do you listen to me at all when I talk?”
“What? Of course I do!” Eddie might have gotten turned around in certain respects, but he will not have his merits as a friend called into question; of course he listens to Steve.
“Are you sure? Because I talk about you an awful lot. I talk about doing things with you, about doing things in the future with you,” Steve says pointedly, “about how I want to stay with you.”
And Eddie had wanted Steve to stay with him, too. He’s just been thinking – well, he’d thought it was because they get along so well, that Steve had wanted to stick around. That it had only made sense.
“We never talked about… being anything else,” Eddie says, the protest a little weak even to his own ears. “I’m pretty sure I’d remember that.”
Steve pulls a sharp breath in, pinching at the bridge of his nose again; he leaves his hand there this time, eyes scrunched shut. “Just a few days ago, I told you how much I liked being with you. How good and how easy it felt compared to anyone else I’ve ever been with,” he says, barely more than a rough whisper. “And you said…”
I like being with you, too.
Eddie had said that.
He’d meant that he likes being around Steve, likes being his friend, definitely likes having sex with him, but he’d said it while combing his fingers through Steve’s hair, while cuddled up with him in bed, and – okay, yes, he can see the mixed signals there. He can see where Steve might have gotten the idea that they didn’t have an arrangement, that they were just together.
“I– I didn’t mean–”
“Obviously,” Steve snaps, dropping his hand from his face and turning back towards his car.
Eddie tsks, frustrated, and reaches out to grab Steve’s wrist – not pulling, just trying to keep his attention.
“Don’t,” Steve warns him, pulling back from his grasp for a second time.
“I didn’t mean to lead you on,” Eddie tries desperately. “I really… I really didn’t.”
“Yeah. I can see that. But Eddie…” Steve is quiet for a moment, posture so tense and still that Eddie suspects he’s not even breathing. “I’m probably the best-qualified asshole around to tell you that you really have to fucking think about how what you’re doing affects the people around you.”
Somehow, that stings more than any screamed insult Steve could have thrown at him.
“Steve…”
“I’ll come get my shit out of your place tomorrow,” Steve says, low and sharp, before getting into his car and slamming the door behind him.
After that, Eddie has no choice but to step back or get run over, and he watches until Steve’s taillights are no longer visible.
He can hear the hissing of some whispered conversation just beyond the door as he trudges back up the front steps, but his friends fall conspicuously quiet the moment he steps inside.
“…hey,” Gareth finally ventures after several seconds of awkward, sticky silence.
“Hey,” Eddie says flatly.
“Do you… want us to stay?” Jeff asks.
Slowly, Eddie shakes his head. “I think I should… I need to– think about shit.”
The boys all nod, throwing him variously sympathetic glances and clapping him on the shoulder on their way out. Oliver pauses, as if he’s going to say something, but Gareth gives him a shove and gets him out the door before he has the chance. Probably for the best.
Eddie feels numb as he trudges back towards his room, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened.
He flops down on his bed, face landing in a pillow that smells entirely too much like Steve’s shampoo. Probably because it’s on the side of the bed that Steve always takes. Next to the nightstand with the small stack of sports magazines that definitely aren’t Eddie’s. And the spare pair of glasses that also isn’t Eddie’s.
With a low tug in his gut, Eddie realizes how much of Steve’s stuff has crept into his room, into the trailer, into his life – how much Steve has become a part of his life, how much of Eddie’s day has been built around him, how much he’s come to lean on his presence, has come to want him there.
And Steve is going to take it all back sometime soon. Take all of his things away before he removes himself from Eddie’s life, too, because Eddie hadn’t been thinking and he hadn’t been careful and he hadn’t realized–
Eddie’s pretty sure he just broke up with Steve.
He’s also pretty sure he hadn’t wanted to.
His main consolation, as he curls up on his side, nose still buried in Steve’s pillow, is that as soon as Robin hears what happened (and she will hear, he has no doubt), she’ll probably come murder him.
At least he won’t have to wallow for long.
Part 2
#steddie#eddie munson#steve harrington#stranger things#smallspaceplant#eddiesteve#listen Steve is u-haul lesbian flavored and Eddie is I know we're married but do you like me? lesbian flavored - you feel?#anyway I shouldn't be allowed to use tags on less than six hours of sleep!#answers from solar#solar wrote#hurt no comfort#edit: now with a continuation that will eventually include comfort
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Steve’s bat bites start to bleed again during the drive out of The War Zone.
It’s a slow realisation, a creeping dampness on his skin.
He stays as still as he can, keeps his movements small and contained when turning the steering wheel; he thinks he mostly gets away with it, manages to park the RV and pitch his voice on just the right side of normal as he tells the kids to scram.
Awareness of his surroundings grows a little fuzzy around the edges, but he senses enough to know that he’s alone—the silence feels heavy, makes his ears ring.
He lifts himself up out of his seat, one hand clinging onto the headrest for balance. The ringing gets sharper, more high-pitched; he shakes his head to try and clear it.
One step forward, then another, and another.
There’s a slight rocking motion under his feet. It feels a little like he’s in a boat that’s docked, constant movement even in the gentlest of waters.
His palms brush against the bathroom door.
“Okay,” Steve whispers to himself.
He hangs onto the sink to keep himself upright—feels the room sway, as if the waters underneath have suddenly become stormy.
With one hand, he finds the knot in the bandage.
“Okay, okay…”
Pulls.
Steve doesn’t think he blacks out, not quite, but there’s a shift, a dizzying tilt… and then, somehow, he’s sitting on the closed toilet seat.
And…
The bat bites must cause hallucinations or something.
Otherwise, Steve cannot explain why Eddie—who notoriously threw up and passed out during a dissection in Biology—is currently pressing a clean bandage against his stomach, staring down at the blood like he can’t look away.
“You’re good, you’re good,” Eddie’s saying.
He’s clearly trying to sound calm, but it’s just coming out strained, like what he really means is this is all a fucking nightmare actually, but we’ve gotta find something to be optimistic about.
“Think it just needs some more pressure,” he goes on. “Yeah, there, see? It’s stopping. Oh, thank God.”
Steve feels more gauze getting wrapped around his middle—if he wasn’t injured, it’d almost be a nice sensation, Eddie’s touch somehow the perfect mix of both firm and gentle.
As he works, Eddie hums nervously.
“Talk to me Harrington,” he says in a shaky sing-song. “Come on, don’t leave me hanging, man, gimme some awkward small talk. Got any hopes? Dreams? Anything I should know?
Oh, so many things, Steve thinks, still light-headed.
But then he really does mull that over: his mind goes to The Upside Down, to belatedly telling Eddie about the hive mind, and oh shit.
“Hey, weird question,” Steve says, “but I’ve not been, like, asking you to make it cold in here or, um, anything like that?”
Eddie blinks. “Uh. No?”
“Okay.” Before he lets the relief of hearing Eddie’s answer sink in, Steve adds, “If I ever do, you need to lock me in here and get out. Tell Nancy.”
Eddie’s staring at him like he’s grown a second head. “Sure. Cool. Cool! Uh, for any particular reason or—?”
“Just in case—like, I don’t feel any different, but—one time, Will Byers, when he was in The Upside Down it, like, infected him? Like a virus. Except more… possession. And they had to kinda… burn it outta him.”
“Ha,” Eddie says. A beat. “Oh fuck, you’re serious.”
“I really don’t have the energy to be messing with you, dude.”
“Sorry. Sometimes you all just say things, y’know? And if I don’t get it, I’m like, well, they’ve been living through this for a while, maybe they’ve got a code going on.”
“I mean,” Steve says, “we kinda do.”
Eddie shakes his head. “So when Buckley said she dealt with a human-flesh-based monster, and the one before that was smoke-related, that wasn’t just, like, a really fucked up metaphor?” Eddie’s eyes are wide, pleading. “Please say it was a metaphor.”
“Sorry,” Steve says sincerely.
Eddie sighs through a lacklustre chuckle. “You’re fine, Steve. As for, uh, being possessed, I don’t think so. You’re no weirder than usual, but—”
“Wow, thanks. Means such a lot coming from you.”
“—you were a bit, like, out of it for a few seconds, but it just looked like you were gonna faint on me. Um. How’re you feeling now?”
“Good,” Steve says. When Eddie raises an eyebrow, he tacks on, “As good as I can be, I guess. Still.” He groans slightly as he stands, goes back over to the sink. “Better check.”
“Check? What?”
Steve runs the water as hot as it will possibly go, until the steam is evident. He sticks his hand right into the stream, hears Eddie hiss as the water scalds his skin.
“Okay, yup. Not possessed.”
“Fucking fantastic. Now I want it cold,” Eddie says.
He takes control of the faucet, nods for Steve to put his hand under the now cold water.
After a minute or two, Eddie sighs and collapses onto the toilet seat himself.
There’s a squeak as Steve turns the faucet off—his skin’s probably not had the good of the cold water for nearly long enough, but it’ll do.
Eddie’s tipped his head back so he’s facing the ceiling, eyes closed. Steve watches him with sympathy; he really must hate blood.
“Eddie. You can go.”
“Mm, nope,” Eddie says without opening his eyes. “I’m fine right here.”
“Suit yourself.”
Steve turns back to the sink, frowns at the tiny mirror above it; there’s black spots on the glass, but he can make out enough. Christ, the bags under his eyes are horrific.
“Relax, Casanova,” Eddie says, almost as if he’s heard Steve’s thoughts. “You look good.”
“Uh-huh. Think your brain’s fried from being on the run.”
Steve leans against the sink with one hip, finds Eddie looking at him with a small smile.
“Yeah, probably. Or maybe being on the run just suits you.” Eddie’s eyes flicker down. His smile falters. “You know, in an ideal world,” he says conversationally, “you’d be in a hospital getting stitches.”
Steve scoffs. “In an ideal world, I’d be in bed sleeping.”
“Amen to that,” Eddie says lightly. But he still looks sombre. “Seriously, though. If it gets… you know. I’d drive you.”
“To the hospital? What are you gonna do, Eddie, wander up to the front desk? Sounds like a real interesting way to get arrested.”
But Eddie doesn’t leap at the chance to make a joke.
“Steve,” he says softly. “I mean it. I wouldn’t care.”
“That would sorta ruin the whole priority of hiding you.”
“That’s—” Eddie huffs. “That’s not the priority.”
“Huh, that’s funny, cause it is in my book.” Steve nods at the door, to his whole world just outside. “One of many.”
Eddie’s eyes narrow. “And your name better be right at the top, Harrington.”
Steve hums.
“In bold. Underlined.”
“Whatever you say.”
Eddie groans quietly, runs a hand down his face. “You worry me, man.”
“I’m not trying to.”
“I know. Just…” Eddie hesitates. “Don’t go off alone. You know?”
Steve thinks it over. He steps forward and offers Eddie his hand.
Eddie takes it.
When Steve pulls him up, he stumbles a little, as if he feels like he’s on a boat, too.
“Oops, sorry.” He grabs onto Steve’s forearm for balance. “Think this should be the other way round, man.”
“Hmm, I don’t think so.”
Steve leads the way out of the bathroom—doesn’t mention the fact that, really, they’re both holding each other up.
There’s a bottle of water left in the back. Steve twists the cap off. Drinks.
“You too,” he tells Eddie.
“Huh?”
Steve considers him—thinks of the little flare of panic he felt when watching Eddie walk through the woods, tiptoeing around vines. How he had a sudden instinct to catch up to him, to make sure he wasn’t alone.
“I’m making a deal,” Steve says. “I won’t go off alone if you don’t.”
He lifts the bottle up as if making a toast—drinks again then passes it over to Eddie.
For the slightest of moments, their fingers brush; Eddie’s rings skim over Steve’s knuckles.
“So what’s this?” Eddie asks. “Legally binding magical water?”
Steve shrugs. “Cool metaphor,” he replies.
You say you just turn heel and run, Eddie. But sometimes I think if there was a fire, you’d run towards the flames if it meant no-one else got hurt.
Eddie smiles. Tilts the bottle towards Steve.
“Guess it’s a promise, then,” he says.
He drinks.
Steve prays that it holds.
#reciprocal hurt/comfort & protectiveness because they notice each other and care so damn much. with a side of banter of course ❤️#pre steddie#steddie ficlet#steddie#steddie fic#steve harrington#eddie munson#steve x eddie
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Wayne takes in a Beat to Shit Steve Harrington after Starcourt as n Owed Favor to Hopper Part 4
Part Three: link
First Chapter (parts 1-3 on tumblr) on A03: Link
The kid was madder than a wet hen.
Just as slippery as one too, when he got like this--music pulsing like a living thing to signal all his rage and upset.
Not like Wayne hadn’t expected it.
He just wished it wasn’t quite so damn loud.
The music had started up almost immediately after Eddie had stormed to his room, startling Steve awake and nearly making Wayne curse for it.
Normally it was a good thing--music meant Eds was willing to listen instead of heading for the hills.
Normally, they didn't have a house guest who looked like he'd gone ten rounds with a bear.
They had a routine for this, was the thing and the music was a key part of it. It worked all the edges off for Wayne, and he'd long figured out that about thirty minutes was a the perfect length of time for Eddie to stew before he could actually talk things through.
Given the hand Harrington put to his forehead, Wayne wasn't eager to give him that thirty minutes.
Not when Steve deserved little peace he could have.
Unfortunately, so did Eds.
Still.
Strutting through the door and demanding to talk right now was a bad move and so, with a sympathetic look given to Steve, Wayne did what he did best
Gave space.
Let Eddie rage, as Wayne got up and shuffled about the kitchen.
Pulled out the soft earplugs he pretended weren’t there for Eds to steal (playing that damn loud guitar all the time could not be good for his ears) and offered them to Steve, before making two cups of what Wayne privately thought was the Munson “chitchat” drink.
One cup of hot water, one packet swiss miss, a small amount of maple syrup drizzled in, topped with little marshmallows they reserved for these types of situations.
Wayne took his time with it, thinking through what he wanted to say.
‘I understand that this is a screen door on a submarine kind of situation...’
Nope.
‘Son I know you hate listening to anyone for anything but this is serious...’
Absolutely not--that would end up with the boy bolting for sure.
‘Ed’s, I love you but could we please turn Ozzy off while we talk? That man wails louder than any damn cat I have ever met.’
That one was purely self indulgent, mostly because the wall was starting to shake.
Wayne put the finishing touches on the cocoa before staring at both of them.
Perhaps if he stared the Garfield mug in its eyes hard enough, the right words would come through.
They did not.
He kept trying, standing there long enough for the cocoa to reasonably have cooled and for Eddie’s song to flip over to something with more screaming in it than singing.
Wayne supposed that this was the hardest part of being a parent. You just didn’t get to have the magical one liner. The right thing to say at just the right time.
The joke that would ease all the tension and let things progress forward nice and easy.
Instead, you got to fumble your way through the dark with a flashlight up your ass and hope you were going in the right-ish direction. Ideally without making things worse.
Wayne was here though, and that had to count for something.
(Knew it counted for something--because Eddie was still here.
They had cleared hurdles far higher than this when it came to trust. They’d get through this too, come what may.
Steve too.)
“Can I just ask,” Eddie started, aggressive as always when Wayne finally gave in and entered his room, feeling all sorts of awful for the migraine Steve had to have, “what the absolute fuck is happening?”
Sure as fire he was sitting on his bed, leg bouncing a mile a minute.
An unlit cigarette hung between two fingers, looking a little chewed on, but otherwise undisturbed--as it should be, because one of Wayne’s few rules was that smoke stayed outside the house.
“You could.” Wayne said loudly but agreeably, as he turned himself around and dropped down next to his kid.
Held out the Garfield mug, and was happy when it was taken from him.
“Figured you might have other things to say, though.”
Likely a lot of things.
It was as good an opening as any, and his kid didn’t disappoint, launching right to it.
“Why is he here and not at a hospital?”
‘Here’ was punctuated by Ed’s hand winging towards the door, and while it wasn’t the righteous fury Wayne expected, it was at least, an easy answer to give.
“Steve has some people looking for him. Bad people. Hospital makes him an easy target.”
Wayne was still talking loud. Could only hear Eddie himself because he was looking at the kid’s lips more than he was actually hearing his voice.
Eddie took that in, swallowing it about as well as he’d swallowed anything he hadn’t liked.
And thank the stars above, he finally reached a hand out and turned the music down. Not a lot--Steve wouldn’t be able to hear them over all this--but enough that Wayne didn’t have to struggle.
“We’re hiding him from the cops now?!” Ed’s spat.
“Cops know he’s here. Hopper’s the one who asked me to take him.” Wayne reminded him, because it was the truth.
Not the full truth, but given how Ed’s pissed off half the local PD on a good day, Wayne absolutely did not want to see his nephew take on Federal Agents.
(Particularly not the kind who were going ‘round killing kids.)
“So--what?” Eddie yanked hard on his hair, a gesture that looked less intentional and more like he was trying to fight his own anger down. “Hopper just called you up and said ‘Hey, we had a whoopsie with the rich kid, the hospital’s not safe anymore. Can we stash him with you for a few days?”
Wayne nodded once, slow-like.
Always remembered how too fast movements had made Eddie flinch and jerk back when was littler, and given the way Steve was looking, figured it was a good time to be cautious again.
“He did.”
“And you just--agreed? Just like that!?”
“I did.”
He pretended not to see Eddie boggle at him at the simple admission, so furious that he seemed to struggle for words when he normally had too many to say.
Wayne took advantage.
“We did talk a bit more than that, I’ll admit.”
Ed’s scoffed. “About the weather I’m sure.”
“‘Bout trust.”
Eddie blinked at that.
“Trust.” He echoed flatly.
“What have I always told you? People like to ask you to trust them, but you they don’t get to have it until--”
“They provide proof or a reason.” Eddie finished with an eyeroll. “So which did Hopper provide then?”
Wayne took a noisy sip of his coca. Smacked his lips a little before saying: “Both.”
Didn’t bother to say anything else, because he knew Eddie would finish the thought for him.
“One of them was me, wasn’t it.”
Eds didn’t say it like a question, but Wayne hummed in agreement anyway.
He wasn’t gonna shame his boy, but he wasn’t gonna sugar coat Eddie’s involvement in this either. Not when he’d already admitted that was half the reason Hopper had gone to Wayne to begin with.
“No one is expecting Steve to be here.” He said, seeing the chance to hammer home the most important part of this entire shitshow. “So long as no one finds out he’s here, he’ll be safe. Everyone will be safe.”
Steve from the Feds who were hunting him for while he was busy being involved in shit he couldn’t control and Eddie because he had a mouth that most people didn’t like.
Not small town people anyway, and absolutely not authority figures with guns.
“Who’s even after him?” Eddie was theatrical as always, hands waving away as he talked. “Did he make a deal with the mob? Piss off some other rich guy? I know it’s not anything drug related, I’d have heard about it by now.”
After years of experience, Wayne knew exactly how far to lean away to stay out of range, too used to his nephew talking with his entire body.
“That’s his story to tell ya, Ed’s. It ain’t mine. Same way it ain’t my place to tell him your story.”
That at least got the boy to think for a minute. Put down that frustration he carried with him all the time, and use the brain they both knew he had.
“How long is he staying here?”
Wayne shrugged. “Don’t know.”
Eddie sighed and mockingly mimicked Wayne, taking an obnoxious slurp of his cocoa. “The neighbors are going to notice if he’s here more than a few days. The trailer park isn’t exactly big.”
“They didn’t notice that time you decided to make fireballs with the cooking spray and about blew up half the driveway. Don’t think they’re gonna notice someone being quiet in the house.”
Eddie snorted, and probably rolled his eyes again, not that Wayne could see it given the kid was looking into his own mug as he thought it all through.
Wayne sat with him as he processed.
Eds worked at his own pace with things, and while life at large might be against that, Wayne was happy to let him do it. Found it easier that way, then trying to poke and prod and force him like so many father figures did.
Wayne’s patience was rewarded not even a full minute later, when Eddie turned to him and asked;
“What if he finds out?”
This in a quieter voice. An unsure one--words and body hunching in a way unlike the Eddie the world outside knew, but very much like the little boy Wayne had brought inside his home.
It took Wayne a moment to connect the dots--he’d been speaking out of the place parents and authority figures often do, and in doing so hadn’t thought much of the fact his nephew had a real secret.
The kind small town minds didn’t like--and would kill him over.
This all wasn’t about Wayne taking in Steve, he realized abruptly. It was that Steve being here meant Eddie couldn’t be himself.
Could not relax in a place he was accepted for who he was, because Wayne knew and made sure Eddie understood he was wanted here, had a place here, regardless of who he loved.
Now, Wayne had gone and removed it.
‘Shit.’
“He won’t.” Wayne said.
Knew that wasn’t enough, and so, promised: “But if he does, I’ll make sure he understands his safety here relies on your own.”
Ed’s chin jerked in a nod, the two of them sitting in silence for a moment before the boy did as he often did when he wanted a hug but felt too awkward to ask for one, and tipped himself into Wayne’s side.
“Thanks old man.” Eddie whispered into his shoulder and not for the first time, Wayne wished things were easier for the poor kid as he put his mug in one hand and hugged his kid with the other.
Hoped that in the future, it would be.
Even if he had to force everyone and everything coming after him--and now Steve--to do it.
(Wondered vaguely, how bad it was that he was already getting as protective as Steve as he was of his own kid.
Probably very, given his kid clearly hated Harrington.)
xXx
Wayne took the first night of Steve’s stay off.
He wasn’t the type to use his PTO lightly. Was used to rationing it for any possible thing Eddie might need him for.
A night up sick when he was younger, to a night spent chasing him down during some of their bad spots--but the last year or so Wayne had slowly realized he hadn’t had to use it much.
He was still careful with it though, precious as it was, and was thankful for it now as it ensured his nephew didn’t murder their house guest.
Or at the very least, didn't sit there pecking at him.
The kid might've failed English a few times, but he had a real gift with words and an even better one with insults.
(Wayne wasn't quite clear on what all the "King" jabs were about, and absolutely did not get why Steve looked far more hurt at the comment about his "sad ass floppy hair" but given the increasingly flat look Steve was throwing Eddie's way, Wayne figured it couldn't be anything good.)
Thankfully a pointed reminder about Steve's injuries had finally gotten them all some peace, enough for Harrington to drop back to sleep--and for Wayne to realize he looked a little too dead while he did it to be comfortable getting any sleep himself.
The kids chest barely moved, and that it ate at Wayne’s until he got up and shoved a hand under his nose.
Felt his breath, and told himself the poor sod was fine.
Hurt, absolutely, but alive.
Over and over again, until the sun had made its rotation in the sky, bringing the morning with it.
‘Better than nightmares, I suppose.’ Wayne figured, as exhaustion scraped at his eyelids.
Those Wayne knew, would come later. When Steve’s brain caught up to the rest of him, and stopping dumping survival chemicals through his battered body.
He'd given up on sleep entirely sometime around 1 am, and now he sat at his small kitchen table, writing out a medication schedule for Harrington so he and the kid both knew when he could have his next Tylenol.
Wasn’t even halfway through it before Eddie made his typically late appearance and blew through his door.
Had his back up from the moment he’d stepped a foot in the kitchen and it didn’t take a genius to see he’d worked himself into a snit again.
Unfortunately for him, whatever scenario that imaginative brain of his had cooked up fell flat to the reality that was the poor kid on the couch.
Steve Harrington was one a hell of a sight.
Didn’t help that he was doing his level best to make himself as small as possible, curled deep into Wayne's ancient couch.
The blankets covered the ribs and hid away most of the damage, but there wasn’t much Steve could do to hide the shiners on his face--or the marks around his neck.
Not when they’d grown worse overnight, practically inviting questions.
It was almost laughable how quickly Eddie ate whatever words he’d prepared, mouth awkwardly chewing around them as if they were tangible.
The less-than-sneaky looks he threw at the younger teen were equally amusing, and if Wayne wasn’t trying to peace keep, he’d have given in and chuckled when Eds split attention caused him to pour half his coffee into the sink rather than a cup.
Looked utterly lost when, after finishing putting his coffee together and grabbing some junk food thing that absolutely was not a breakfast item, he came to stand awkwardly at Wayne's shoulder, openly staring as Steve blatantly ignored him.
Eds didn’t know what to do, and Wayne couldn't blame him.
Seemed to keep thinking he was going to encounter a boy that likely no longer existed, and whose blood tinged specter just made things sad.
Shit like this, Wayne knew, took a man’s ego and warped it, shaping it to something else entirely.
At least for Steve, it seemed that getting wrapped up in whatever mess he had had shaped him for the better, instead of pretzeling him into something worse. That, Wayne thought, spoke to the boy's character more than anything he’d done prior.
(It helped to know what Hopper tolerated and what he didn’t. That he’d vouched for Steve in the same way Wayne knew he’d vouched for Eddie, even if Eddie didn’t yet realize the cop he antagonized so much would do that for him.)
That didn't erase the history his kid had with Harrington, though.
Wouldn't stop him from seeing the old Steve, first.
‘Don’t you got school?” Wayne asked when he decided Ed had stared enough.
“Yeah, yeah.” Eddie waved him off, trotting out the door. “Bye old man, house parasite!”
It was clearly a jab, meant to nettle, but Steve barely acted like he heard it.
Wayne rolled his eyes.
“Goodbye, Eds.” He said firmly, much of a warning as he ever gave, and fondly watched his nephew scuttle out the door.
Turned to see how Steve was taking things, and was once again given a reminder that Steve wasn’t doing a hell of a lot other than feeling his injuries.
“I think I promised you a game, son.” Wayne said gently, startling Steve out of the distant, dim look he had trained on the wall.
It wasn’t a lot to offer in terms of a distraction, but it would have to do.
#small town rumors#this is the first part of chapter two#I will post all parts of chapter two once im done fighting through it lol#steddie#or pre steddie#where I exist as a person#best dad wayne munson#wayne pov#did I say this entire chapter was going to be eddies pov bc haha I lied#outsider pov#s3 au#hurt/comfort#enemies to lovers but like softish enemies to lovers as in Eddies not caring a whole lot that Steves hurt....yet#beat to shit steve harrington#0o0 fanfics#stranger things#eddie munson#steve harrington#Eddies out here ready to face down snotty af rich boy king steve#keeps working himself up so much he forgets how badly off Steve is lol#dont worry his munson doctrine goes to shit later#mostly bc Eddie thinks steve stuck his nose where he shouldnt have and finally got what he deserved lmao
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hurt/comfort | mentions of anxiety and trauma | crossposted to twitter
"what's that?" eddie murmurs into the quiet darkness of their bedroom.
dread piles into steve's stomach. he wants to tug his sleeve over his hands so eddie can't see the writing on his palm anymore. wants to hide the pen marks by holding onto his hips instead.
"it's nothing," he whispers back, attaching his lips to the underside of eddie's jaw. he knows his boyfriend melts at the kisses he puts there. knows it will distract him from asking any more prying questions.
the ink is smudged, hardly legible anymore after a day at work. between washing his hands and shuffling papers and rubbing subconsciously at his palm when that certain type of anxiety knots into his gut, the pen marks from earlier are halfway to disappearing until he starts it all over again the next morning.
steve can't help it. he thought that moving in with eddie, having his support, would make it easier to cope with it all. thought that having someone else to help hold him accountable was the answer.
yet here he is, writing a list on his hand every morning, just to help him remember simple things.
he turns on the coffee pot in the morning, makes a note of it on his palm, crosses it out when he turns the pot off and tells himself over and over that it's actually off and he's not imagining it.
he locks the door and writes "LOCKED" in all caps so he doesn't come home halfway through the day to check and make sure it's actually locked.
he brushes his teeth, he feeds the dog, he puts his wallet in his briefcase, he closes the refrigerator door after breakfast and writes reminder after reminder on his palm in sticky black ink.
it helps, really it does, when steve's mind starts to wander in a boring meeting and he gets that hot rush of guilt of forgetting something burning through his veins. he'll look at his hand under the table and scan over the notes, find what's looking for, and try to breathe.
he'll read it over and over, the crossed out "coffee pot" or the "wallet in bag" or the "fed duke", until he feels like it sinks in, blinking back into real time to focus.
it's some strange mix of anxiety and lack of control and head trauma, robin thinks.
steve can't talk to a lot of people about it, embarrassed that he can't remember doing simple fucking tasks, but robin gets it. gets him. robin lets him swing his legs into her lap and pulls his hand up to her face so she can inspect the notes from the day to piece them all together.
it was her idea in the first place to write on his hand. she had suggested paper first but that was too easy to lose especially if he couldn't remember setting it down. she traces over the ink and lets him vent about feeling like a failure or stupid or some type of broken, reminding him gently that none of them got out hawkins without scars.
but steve hasn't let eddie see that yet, too afraid of breaking whatever they've made together, too afraid of scaring him off with his cracked brain and clenched jaw. too afraid of being built so wrong that he'll look like a once shiny penny covered in rust-colored problems.
so he digs his fingers into his palm, nails slicing into flesh & ink, and presses his lips fiercely into eddie's jaw to stop him from spilling any secrets. lets his tongue sneak out as an apology for not showing him his jagged edges. lets his teeth bite against the words he wants to say.
"baby," eddie whispers, his gentle callused hands trailing over steve's arms to settle on his clenched fist. he shakes his head against eddie's chin, bites at his neck again, ignores the way the love of his fucking life is trying to peel his fingers open to see it. see him.
steve feels raw, a live wire, one second away from snapping into sparks of electricity. he shakes his hand free and curls it around the small of eddie's back, tugging him closer, hiding his shame.
"it's nothing," he repeats, voice shaky and rough against eddie's skin.
if he just slots his leg right, if he just presses into eddie right, if he just tips his head and rolls his hips and plays his cards right, he can avoid all of this all together. he can take eddie's mind away from the writing on his hand and convince them both everything is okay.
but it's not that easy, it never is, because there fingers wrapping around his wrist at an awkward angle to pull his hand back and heat flares up in his cheeks. eddie's going to see, going to ask, going to figure out that steve is broken beyond repair and it's all thanks to one too many blows to the head & one too many times of fucking up & one too many times of leaving the goddamn door unlocked.
"i just-" he bites out, trying and failing to pull his arm out from eddie's grasp. maybe some part of him wants to come clean and get the inevitable over and done with. "-they're just some notes okay?"
and now eddie's looking between him and his palm with those eyes that hold love and the pity that he hates, so he blinks away, jolts to get his arm free again. he doesn't want pity, he doesn't want puppy dog eyes, he doesn't want the reminder that he can't-
but then there's lips pressing oh so gently to the hand he rubbed raw earlier when he could have sworn he didn't triple check that he paid the water bill. there's the flutter of eyelashes against his fingertips as eddie trails kisses over the thing that makes him feel less than.
steve doesn't fight to pull his arm back anymore. his shoulders drop, his muscles relax, and that ball of dread in the pit of his stomach eases away into something that feels more like acceptance.
"that's smart," eddie mutters against his palm. "to help you remember?"
and just like that, it isn't secret anymore. just like that eddie's peeled back the layers of bravado and nonchalance and seen steve for the mess he is.
he kisses the notes like it's the easiest thing to do and maybe for eddie it is. maybe taking a piece of steve's hurt is what they found each other for. maybe eddie was made to understand every inch of steve from the inside out like the way a vine instinctually knows to follow the sun.
steve resettles his face in eddie's neck, nods and breathes him in so he has him deep in his lungs. "it was robin's idea."
"she's smart too, then." eddie hums and drops steve's hand gently, letting it wind back around him so he can tangle his in steve's hair. "does it help?"
"yep," steve mumbles.
"how have i never noticed you scribbling on your hand everyday?" eddie asks with his lips pressed into the crown of steve's head.
"i didn't want you to see. i'm pretty good at hiding."
he can feel when eddie takes in a deep breath. feel when his chest expands and collapses before whispering "start adding 'eddie loves me' on there."
steve shakes his head with a small grin, his heart beat slowing from an anxious jack-rabbiting speed to something more eddie paced. "i never need a reminder of that one."
#this headcanon is brought to you by my own head trauma and anxiety causing me to forget literally everything!!!#zoom in on the 4 photos i took of my curling iron this morning to prove it was off#steddie#my writing#steve harrington#eddie munson#steddie drabble#steddie ficlet#steddie hurt/comfort
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Steve was doing laundry and making small piles of his and Eddie's clothes. Colored polos and sweaters next to a pile of black band tees and ripped jeans. His and Eddie's styles were so different, each pairing them with their respective social groups, whether they be true or not.
But it's enough to make people surprised when they go out together, surprises people that they could really be friends. Most of the time Steve just brushes it off, but some of the time it gets him thinking.
He doesn't really fit with Eddie, not all the time. Especially in the way he dresses. Eddie is all black with silver chains, the only color coming from his vest or the words on a band T-shirt. Steve, well he's preppy. Wears a lot of colors and comfy clothes. It's different from Eddie, he's different from Eddie.
He's heard what some people say behind their backs. They can't believe that Steve's hanging with the freak or that they can't believe that Eddie's hanging out with some prep. Those he can ignore. But when Eddie introduced him to his band and they made some snide remark about the way he dresses, it hurt a bit deeper. Or when one of the kids offhandedly says Steve and Eddie are so different, it's a surprise that they're so close. He knew they meant it more toward him.
So, Steve picks out a pair of clothes from Eddie's pile. Just to try on, just to see. Is this what people expect when they see someone walking next to Eddie? Is this who he should be?
When he looks in the mirror, he sees himself being someone he's not. Even though this is what he expected, it still hurt. The person looking back at him is what should be with Eddie, not him.
"What are you wearing?" Eddie asks behind him, Steve not even hearing him come home.
"I just wanted to see what it would look like if I wore your clothes, funny right?" He tries to hide how he's feeling with a joke, but it doesn't come out right.
Eddie tilts his head to the side. "You look too much like me. Take it off," he says, a bit offended.
"Is that such a bad thing?"
"What?"
"Is it such a bad thing that I look like you? Don't you wish that I dressed this way?"
Eddie's face falls. "No. Why would I want you to dress like me?"
Steve shrugs, feeling small. "Because everyone always thinks it's weird when they find out we're together. We don't look like we fit. So I thought that if I dressed more like you, it would fit more."
"You're wrong. We do fit, no matter what people say," Eddie walks towards him, taking Steve's face in his hands. "There's more to us than the way we dress."
"Yeah, I know that. Just thought you'd want me to look more like you."
He shakes his head. "I don't. You know why?"
"No."
"It's cause you've lost all you're color, sweetheart. I love your color.""
Steve's heart melts. "Really?"
"Yeah, baby." Eddie leans forward and kisses Steve softly. "Now go change, I want to see your color again."
#they do not need to change the way the dress in order to love each other#i really believe that#also i think eddie would love the way steve dresses#steddie#steve harrington#eddie munson#stranger things#ficlet#steddie ficlet#hurt/comfort#established relationship
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it was supposed to be short n small and now its 3k & its unedited and u all have to just deal with it bcos it was supposed to be SMALL | ao3
The driver's side car window makes a resounding thunk when Steve’s forehead falls against it.
Through the glass, his keys glint tauntingly back at him.
Still tucked in the ignition, locked in on the inside. So close and yet so far from Steve who is, unfortunately, locked on the outside.
I’m such a fucking idiot.
He lets his head raise up a bit just to drop it back against the window again, this time more in punishment. Of course, of course, he coughs up the money needed for a warrant of fitness and then he goes and locks his keys in the car the next day. Like he needed one more cost added to his finances.
Steve steals a glance at his watch. Fuck, if he doesn’t get on the road in the next 10 minutes, he’ll be more than late to work.
His eyes glance across to Eddie’s van, parked beside his own car, outside the trailer home in Forest Hills. Then he looks back at the trailer.
He can ask. He can just go inside and ask Eddie for the lift— and explain that the reason he can’t take his own perfectly fine car is because he’s so goddamn thick between the ears that he’s locked his keys inside, like some kind of moron.
The voice in his head sounds suspiciously like his father.
Something thick grows in his throat. He swallows it to no avail. Embarrassment begins to flush down his neck, hot and uncomfortable.
No, no— he can’t ask Eddie because as far as Steve knows, Eddie hasn’t quite figured it out yet.
Even while Dustin and Mike make their jokes about him being a bit slow, even when Robin says at least you have your pretty face, Eddie brushes them off and laughs. Takes them as jokes with no merit to them. Steve knows though.
So what if he doesn’t want to burst his bubble just yet?
He knows Eddie will figure it out eventually— because they always do. When he asks too many stupid questions and needs things explained twice and— and it’s just inevitable, okay? He knows that.
Fixing his glare through the window of his car at the shiny pair of keys within, Steve wrestles with what would be worse; being late or accidentally tipping Eddie off when they’ve just gotten so close.
Close enough to share a kiss, two nights ago, under the covers. It was barely more than a peck. But Steve knew it had taken a miraculous amount of courage from Eddie to do it— to surge forward and grab Steve’s face, his rings cool against his skin, and press his mouth against his Steve's own.
Eddie’s lips had been chapped but his smile had been pure sunshine and Steve thinks he could’ve stayed forever under that blanket, memorising the shade of pink Eddie’s cheeks turn after a kiss.
They’ve been dancing around it ever since. Each interaction is more charged, more flirty, more gooey. Long lingering looks and pointed nudges that make Steve feel like a 14-year-old with a crush again, in the best way.
So, no. He exactly can’t go ask.
With a heavy sigh and glance up at the darkening sky, Steve is only glad he’s not supposed to pick up Robin today as he begins to walk.
—
One phone call to the auto-shop reveals exactly how much it’ll cost to get his keys retrieved. Which is, to say, entirely too much for one adult living on the wage of a Family Video employee.
And they won’t be able to get anyone out for another whole day.
Growing more and more frustrated with himself, Steve angrily jots the number down into his little notebook, the pen pressing down hard enough to leave indents on the page behind it. Keith is somewhere out the back, snacking no doubt, and leaving Steve to man the front.
Normally, it wouldn’t bother him— especially because he could discretely make the phone call he needed— but now it’s just him, the empty store, and the number in his notebook that stares back at him.
Oh, and it’s raining.
The darkening sky from earlier had transformed into something closer to a thunderstorm, rain lashing against the windows and driving any and all customers away. Which is fantastic— just what Steve needs now, really the fucking cherry on the top.
The phone rings, the noise unusually shrill in the silence of the store. The film playing amongst the aisles has been on mute as soon as he’d gotten his hands on the remote and Keith had disappeared out the back.
Steve stares at the phone, watching it ring once, twice, before he picks it up with a heavy sigh. He dredges up his customer service voice.
“This is Family Video, how can I help?” He greets, putting as much pep into his voice as he can manage—which turns out to be a meagre amount.
“Did you walk to work today?”
Steve straightens up at the sound of Eddie’s voice on the other end of the line. His free hand instinctively smooths down the front of his vest before he quickly remembers Eddie can’t actually see him.
“Eddie?” He asks, instead of answering the question.
“Your Highness, himself,” Eddie responds. His tone is that usual jaunty playfulness that Steve’s come to adore. “Now answer the question, Steve-o. I thought you were one of those smart guys who actually listens when the weather report comes on the radio. Why the hell did you walk?”
Steve’s shoulders curl in, just an inch, and his eyes seek out the open notebook with the quoted amount, underlined and circled, staring back at him. His throat grows a lump at Eddie’s unknowingly poor choice of words.
“Thought I would walk today.” He replies, his voice clipped. “You know, walking, exercise, good for you? Any of these ringing a bell for you, Munson?”
It’s supposed to be a joke but Steve can tell by the end of the sentence, it’s come out way too sour to land that way. He sounds mean.
Steve cringes, clutching the phone a little tighter and screwing up his eyes. He waits for Eddie’s response.
“You know,” Eddie says, sounding a lot duller all of a sudden. “I was calling to maybe offer you a lift through the rain—”
“Sorry, I’m sorry, that-“ Steve cuts in, that same strange embarrassment swelling in his throat. “I didn’t mean for it to come out like that.”
“—But if you’re gonna be a dick about it, you can enjoy the walk.”
Steve grits his teeth and pinches the bridge of his nose because this feels a little too much like a line from his Dad— but it isn’t because Steve is the one digging this hole all on his own. He’s the idiot who fucking locked his keys in his car and walked to work and snapped at Eddie and—
“No, I’m sorry.” He says, still a bit too tense.
Idiot, idiot, you’re being a fucking idiot, Harrington.
“A ride would be appreciated. Please.”
A pause. This time when Eddie speaks, he’s a little softer. “You off at five today?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. I’ll see you at five.”
The dial tone sounds as Eddie hangs up but Steve stays where he is, phone pressed against his one good ear, with a sinking feeling in his stomach. The rain begins to flood the parking lot.
—
Five o’clock comes around too soon.
The rain has let up, just barely, but enough that Steve can actually see Eddie’s van when it pulls up into the parking lot. It rocks about dangerously in the wind and Steve suddenly feels bad for making Eddie come out to get him.
He could’ve stayed here, taken the longer shift. Told Keith to take off early and just walked back home when the rain let up a little more— or just camped out the back on the couch in the employee room if it never did.
It wouldn’t be the first time.
He’d started doing it more and more when his parent’s visits to home became more frequent. It was easy to pull a few white lies out and Steve far preferred answering questions like: Where were you last night? than Why won't you come out to our event tonight? Show face for the Harrington's? It's not like you're doing anything with your life, right?
The only reason he’d stopped, actually, was because he had become good friends with Eddie.
Eddie, who loved his company almost any hour of the day. Who gobbled up each and every morsel of food Steve cooked up, whether it was good or partially burned on the sides. Who told him he had a place in the trailer, day or night, rain or shine.
Eddie who… was waiting outside at five o’clock exactly, pulled up to the curb so Steve wouldn’t have to walk through the rain for more than a moment.
There’s a sliver of surprise, deep within his chest; like he thought Eddie might’ve not shown up and forced him to walk through the rain, just to learn his lesson. It would make sense, Steve thinks. You reap what you sow.
He clocks out hastily, barely murmuring his exit to Keith who doesn’t look up in the slightest. Steve heads for the door and decides then and there, he’ll happily pay the number in his notebook if he doesn’t have to tell Eddie what a fucking moron he actually is.
Water splashes as he dashes down the steps and Eddie’s leaning across, pushing the door open so Steve doesn’t even have to wait to yank it open in the rain. He slides in, sprinkled with rain, slams the door closed, and instantly gets blasted with heat.
“God, you’re a lifesaver,” Steve sighs, sticking his hands out towards the air vents which are working in overdrive. They whir loudly in complaint. Eddie smiles, the apples of his cheeks glowing in the warmth, and twists the wheel, his eyes on the road before him.
The van groans and the bumper dips, kissing the gutter, as they roll out onto the road and head for Forest Hills. For a moment, Eddie focuses on driving straight before he flicks his gaze across to Steve.
“You know I wouldn’t have actually let you walk, right?”
Steve blinks, unsure of what to say in response, because he actually did think that was a possibility until about 2 minutes ago. He shivers as a stray drop in his hair sneaks under his collar, cold and wet.
“Right.” He answers, giving a hesitant smile back.
They’re driving slower than usual due to the rain. Steve lets himself sink back into the worn seats of the van, comforted by the familiar smells. A tang of tobacco, a stronger hint of weed, and that musky deodorant that Eddie swears by— even if Steve has never heard of the brand before.
But, well, it must be working in some sense because when Steve takes a deep breath, he smells it and feels a sense of calm. He doesn’t even notice he’s begun staring.
The strange weather has made Eddie’s hair frizzier than usual and paired with his rosy cheeks, Steve thinks he looks goddamn delectable. He gets caught up in a daydream about having a hot chocolate when they get back to the trailer, maybe even sharing a blanket on the couch and—
And then, Eddie turns and says, “So, wanna tell me why you walked? For real, this time?”
Something shrivels up within Steve. The tightness in his throat from this morning returns. He turns his head and looks out the window.
“I don’t get why you don’t believe me when I say I walked because I wanted to.” He grumbles, almost too low for Eddie to hear over the rain.
Why are they still talking about this? He thinks of the keys through the driver’s side window, thinks of the number in his notebook and the much smaller one in his bank account, and has to hold back from thumping his head against the glass again.
Something metallic jingles behind him.
Steve whips around, his eyes zeroing in on his keys dangling from Eddie’s hand— clearly just retrieved from his pocket. Something ugly and warm wakes up inside him, his stomach knotting uncomfortably, and his cheeks start to burn in embarrassment.
Idiot, Idiot, Idiot.
He knows, he already fucking knows how stupid you are.
Eddie’s eyes dart off the road to look at Steve. “Cos you’re clearly not telling the truth.”
Steve averts his gaze, turning his face back to the window and the wet pavement rushing by beneath the car. He swallows but the lump in his throat doesn’t move.
“Okay, look I don’t actually care that you walked to work,” Eddie continues, placing the keys down in the cup holder between the seats. “I just don’t get why you wouldn’t tell me that they were locked in your car.”
Steve can’t help it, the way his shoulders hike up. His teeth sink into his bottom lip meanly, nearly drawing blood. He doesn’t get it, he doesn’t get it— Eddie’s still trying to rationalise away what everyone else has already figured out.
“I just—” Steve starts, on the defence, but it comes out a bit too wet. He forces himself to swallow again, thankful there’s no sting of tears in his eyes. “I can fix that shit on my own. That’s all.”
“Well, yeah,” Eddie agrees.
Below them both, the hum of the van begins to dwindle and Steve realises abruptly that Eddie’s slowing down, pulling over to the side of the road. He looks to the side, at Eddie.
“Please, c’mon, I just wanna go home, man.” Steve pleads, not even caring that he’s referred so casually to Eddie’s trailer as his home.
“Wait, just,” Eddie waves a hand as he sticks the van into park, releasing the wheel and properly turning to Steve.
“I just want to understand. You know I can pop the door to most cars in, like, 5 minutes. Why didn’t you just ask?”
“Eddie,” Steve stresses, turning away with a pointed sigh. He runs a hand through his hair, latching onto the roots and tugging at it. “Just leave it, please.”
“Or asked for a lift!” Eddie continues, his hands gesturing out a bit wildly. “I could’ve given you a lift even.”
Steve's eyes slice across the van and he wills back every emotional outburst that wants to lash out of him, to poke the right spot that will hurt to get Eddie to back off.
But Eddie is just staring at him, brown eyes wide, a little furrow between his brows, and is just confused. Concerned.
“If you keep driving,” Steve murmurs, almost dejectedly. He ducks his head low and turns back to the window. “I’ll tell you.”
It works— the engine rumbles back to life and the wheels roll gently back out onto the road, just a couple more minutes from Forest Hills. Steve watches the road and tries to grasp for the right thing to say, each possibility dissolving like smoke. His eyes squeeze shut tightly. The rain dins loudly on the roof of the van, a song and dance of the elements.
By the time they’re entering Forest Hills, Steve still hasn’t said a word. The van crawls up into its usual spot, next to Steve’s own car, and Steve stares down at it. He can hear the soft click of Eddie’s seatbelt as he releases it.
He supposes it’s too late now, anyway. Eddie already knows. He keeps his eyes out the window as he speaks, his voice flat and dull.
“I just... I didn’t want you to think that I’m an idiot, too.”
There’s a questioning noise behind him, a little noise from Eddie’s throat that slips out, unbidden.
“Too?” He echoes. “Steve? Who thinks you’re an idiot?”
Steve huffs loudly and turns back, throwing his hands up. “Jesus, who doesn’t? Would you like a list?”
Eddie’s face twists into a meaner expression than Steve's ever seen before and for once, he properly matches the dark clothes and spooky tattoos he dons.
“Yes. And I’ll go door to door— wait,” He shuffles, shifting up onto his knees so he can stretch over the console and place his large hands on either side of Steve’s face, directing his gaze towards him.
It’s reminiscent of a kiss not too long ago. Despite all the burning self-deprecation that churns inside, the pleasant reminder dulls it significantly.
“I’ll go door to door to anyone who ever made you feel that way,” Eddie repeats, now face to face with Steve, their noses nearly touching. His brows are still pull tight into a furious frown. But it's not at him, Steve realises. “And I’ll do something— I’m not sure what yet, but it’ll be foul and like, maybe I’ll put instant mash potatoes on their lawn and— okay the specifics aren’t relevant but this— this is.”
He searches Steve’s face intently, eyes darting around, making sure the message is sinking in. His expression softens out, his eyes suddenly sweeter than before. “You’re aren’t an idiot, Steve. You aren’t an idiot for making a mistake and I’ve never thought that about you.”
Steve blinks. Swallows heavily and god fucking dammit, is the thickness in his throat ever going to disappear? This time it feels different though. He’s not sure how.
“You don’t think I’m an idiot, do you?” Eddie asks.
Steve shakes his head, moving Eddie’s hands with them at the same time. It’s true, he doesn’t. Eddie is… goddamn fucking wonderful. He’s like a warm summer shower through the wretched seasons of Steve’s life. One of the reasons it was worth living through the entire ordeal of 86.
The rain outside continues, pitter-pattering on the roof, somehow softer than it was a second ago.
“Okay,” Eddie says, a small smile on tugging on his lips.
“Okay,” Steve says back. He tries for a smile and it’s easier than expected, though it wobbles at the ends. It doesn’t matter— Eddie is still gazing at him, brown eyes shining and Steve believes what he says.
“Okay,” Eddie says one more time, his smile turning closer to a grin. “Let’s go make some cocoa, yeah?”
He moves to retract his hands but Steve moves faster, his hands darting up to hold them in their place, palms against his cheeks.
“Wait,” Steve murmurs, watching how Eddie stills and keeps his closeness, their noses still a couple inches from touching— and Steve clings to the threads of courage in him tightly.
His hands slide off Eddie’s, grasping lightly at his wrists, and it’s easy to lean forward and connect their mouths in one swift motion.
Eddie squeaks— then melts.
It takes half a second before he remembers to kiss back, equally as enthusiastic and it’s nothing like the first kiss they shared under the covers. The rain dances around them and Steve swipes his thumbs over Eddie’s pulse soothing, feeling the barest jump of his rabbiting pulse.
When he shifts back, breaking the kiss, Steve keeps the closeness, the tips of their noses bumping together. Eddie’s hands feel blazing warm on Steve’s cheeks but when his lashes flutter open, catching sight of Eddie’s glorious pink cheeks, he thinks it might be his face burning up too.
They tumble inside through the rain and with all of Steve’s prayers answered today, they also share a blanket on the couch, ankles linked beneath the rumpled fabric. They make hot chocolate, Steve’s style, and sip it at, making googly eyes at each other over the rim of their mugs— until Eddie laughs too much and spits it down his front.
Steve doesn’t feel stupid again— unless that is, you count feeling stupidly sappy.
(He does not.)
#get it OUTTA MY SIGHT#god this ate up too many hours for the final product#resisting the urge to boo my own work#ruby writes steddie#steddie#steve x eddie#steddie fic#steddie fanfiction#steddie ficlet#hurt/comfort#technically it is tehe#steddie hurt/comfort#steve harrington#eddie munson#steve harrington x eddie munson#steve harrington hurt/comfort#uhhhhhh that's all folks.#i just need a boost im having a week and its friggin. monday#okie byeeeeee
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