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A hot summer, a wrong kind of love, and the feeling that some things begin already tasting like goodbye.
wc: 9149Â
The heat in the valley doesn't clear out at sunset; it thickens, turning into a heavy, damp weight against the vinyl walls of the trailer. You haul a crate of heavy reference books inside, gray dust coating your fingers, sweat gathering at the back of your knees, at the hollow of your throat, at every place a human body knows how to betray itself. The porch light flickers once, a dying yellow thing, and then a shadow cuts through it.
He is leaning against the rusted railing of the steps, his shoulder tipped in like he's been there a while. Like he's comfortable being a silhouette in someone else's doorway. He carries a toolbox in one hand, and his other hand hangs loose at his side, rings catching the bad light. Three of them, silver and dull, the kind that leave a mark if you're not careful. His gaze moves down your throat and stays on your damp collarbone, following the line of your oversized shirt down to your hips, unhurried.
You drop the crate onto the linoleum with a sound like a small earthquake and pull the hem of your shirt down over your thighs. âHey,â you say, surprised.
"Ahm, hey. Uncle Wayne said the window latch in the bedroom is jammed," he says in a low voice. He looks past you at the stack of books on the floor, then back at you, something registering behind his eyes. "Said you wouldn't be able to lock it from the inside."
"I've been meaning to call him about that," you say.
"And yet."
"And yet," you agree.
You step aside, opening a narrow gap in the hallway. He ducks his head slightly, a private smile pulling at the corner of his mouth, and steps through.
The smell of him fills the trailer instantly: leather, dry grass, gasoline and tobacco. "Bedroom's in the back," you say, to your own hand, mostly.
"I figured," he calls back, already moving through your space like he belongs to it. When you round the corner, he's standing in the middle of the room with his toolbox at his feet, looking at the shelf above your desk with the same attention he'd given your collarbone thirty seconds ago.
"The Demonology of Medieval Europe," he reads, then lets out a short breath through his nose. He turns to look at you over his shoulder, one eyebrow up like the corner of his mouth. "You know, this town already tried to run me out for a RPG game." A beat. "If anyone sees me walking out of here with that under my arm, I'm a dead man. We'd both get burned at the same stake."
"I've heard worse eulogies." You nod at the window. "Over there."
"I see the window." He doesn't move toward it. "You read all of these?"
"Most of them."
"For fun?"
"For work."
He turns to look at you fully now, both eyebrows up, reassessing. There is something in the way he does it that makes it feel like being placed into a different category. A more interesting one. "What kind of work?" he asks.
"The kind that makes people ask questions at parties."
He grins at that, quick and crooked, a little surprised by it, and finally turns toward the window. He crouches down in front of it, sets the toolbox open on the floor, and you get the full view of the back of his neck, the knobs of his spine where his t-shirt hangs loose, the tattoo that starts somewhere under his collar and disappears.
"It's the casing," he says, more to himself than to you. "Warped from the heat. Happens to these old trailers." He pries at it with a flathead, jaw working once, and the latch gives with a pop that's louder than expected. He catches the frame before it rattles. "There." He tests it twice, sliding the lock open and shut. "You can actually protect yourself now."
"I feel so safe now."
He looks at you over his shoulder again, and there it is, that almost smirk that's been sitting there since the porch.
"You should, princess," he says, very simply. He packs the toolbox without rushing, while you lean in the doorframe to watch him do it because you can't think of a single reason not to. He stands, brushes his palms on the thighs of his jeans, and turns to finally face you. "I'm Eddie," he says, like this is new information, like you haven't already filed it away somewhere you'll need later.
"I know," you say.
"Uncle Wayne talks about me?"
"Hawkins is small."
"Good things, I hope."
You reach past him to push the window open an inch, testing it.
"Good enough," you say.
He stands in your hallway for another beat, toolbox in hand, like he's forgotten what the exit is for. The porch light buzzes faintly through the screen.
"Well," he says, finally. "You know where to find me if anything else needs fixing."
He says it like âfixing itâ covers a very large territory.
~~
The silence of the trailer park is loud in the way only small places at night can be: crickets in overlapping frequencies, the distant television two trailers over, the soft percussion of moths battering themselves against the yellow bulb above your head. You stand on the top step of the porch with a cigarette caught between your fingers and your elbow on the railing, watching them do it. The moths, you mean, their absolute commitment to something that will not end well for them.
A match scrapes in the dark below and then Eddie steps out from the shadow between the trailers. His boots crunch on the gravel, and he stops at the bottom step, looking up at you. He nods at your hand before saying
"Those things'll kill you, you know?"Â
You take a long drag first, then exhale slowly. "I hope so."
There is a pause in which he appears to consider this information seriously. He reaches into his jacket pocket, pulls out a crumpled red pack of Marlboros, the soft pack, already half-dead, and slides a cigarette between his lips with the easy fluency of long habit.
His thumb catches the wheel of his lighter on the first try. The blue flame jumps up and for one second illuminates the sharp line of his jaw, the way his eyes stay on your mouth while he lights up.
He takes a long drag, blowing the smoke sideways, slow, deliberate, his lips still slightly parted.
"You were saying?" you say.
"I was saying those things'll kill you." He holds the cigarette loosely between two fingers, gesturing vaguely with it. "Statistically."
"Statistically, really?" you snort.
"It's a health concern." He takes another drag. "I worry."
"You're smoking right now, Eddie."
"I'm aware of that, sweetheart." He exhales through his nose, unbothered, a faint smile tucking itself into the corner of his mouth. "Look, what I do is my business. What you do," he gestures again with the cigarette, "is a tragedy."
You laugh before you can stop it, a small sound that escapes between your teeth.
"You always come out here at odd times of the night?" he asks.
"When I can't sleep, yes."
"What keeps you up?"
You look at him. The moths keep doing their thing above your head. "Restlessness," you say, and it's true enough.
He nods slowly, like this is an answer he understands in his body. He shifts his weight, rests his forearm on the railing beside yours, close enough that you can feel the warmth radiating off him.
He brings the cigarette to his lips and for a moment you watch his profile, the way he tips his head back slightly when he exhales, the long line of his throat.
"Me too," he says to the dark. You smoke in parallel for a while. He finishes his cigarette. You finish yours. Neither of you moves to go inside.
"You know what I think?" he says eventually.
"I don't."
"I think the restlessness is the point." He drops the butt, grinds it under his boot, and when he straightens he's a step closer than he was before. The top of his head is nearly level with yours from where you stand above him. Close enough that you'd only have to lean forward slightly.Â
"I think people who can't sleep are just paying attention." His eyes move over your face, slow and unashamed. "More than they want to admit."
"...the fat joint is making a compelling case for itself."
He takes one more step up, your bodies now separated by exactly the thickness of the railing, and his hand lands beside yours on the worn wood, his little finger a breath from yours.
He's looking at you the way he looked at your bookshelf, the way he looks at things he wants to understand by going closer.
"Goodnight,sweetheart" he says, and means not yet.
"Goodnight," you say back, and mean the same.
He goes down the steps, unhurried, and you watch him disappear between the trailers. The dark swallows him whole and then it's just you and the moths and the yellow light and your own hand on the railing, your little finger still warm from almost being touched.
~~Â
The storm arrives in the wednesday afternoon without any warning worth trusting, just a greenish quality to the light. The air going suddenly still and electric, and then the sky opens. Dirt paths turn into brown rivers in minutes. You watch it happen through the small window above the kitchen sink before grabbing the laundry basket from the floor, because the alternative is re-washing everything and you are not doing that, at all.
The laundry shed is barely a shed. It is a converted storage unit at the end of the second row of trailers: corrugated metal walls that drum in the rain, a single bare bulb, two washers that work and one that doesn't, three dryers that spin on their own schedule, and it smells in there.
The dryer that has your sheets in it has decided, in the spirit of the afternoon, to stop spinning. The sheets are wound into a single heavy, damp rope around themselves. You reach in and pull, and the whole mass resists you with the passive aggression of wet laundry everywhere. You are still fighting it, one knee braced against the machine, when the shed door rattles open.
Eddie ducks inside in a rush of rain and cold air, and the door slams behind him against the wind. He's soaked through, his leather jacket dark at the shoulders, heavy with rain, his hair plastered in pieces against his forehead and neck, water running down the sides of his jaw. He shakes himself once like a dog, ineffectively.
He looks at you.
He looks at the wet sheet coiled around your arms like a defeated boa constrictor.
"Rough day?" he says.
"This shit won't come out."
"Sheets?"
"Jammed."
He looks at the space between you and the back wall. He looks at the dryer. He does a quick calculation that you can see him doing, and then he takes a step forward, because he is Eddie Munson and apparently this is just what he does: he steps into spaces.
His chest is at your back, your shoulders inside the bracket of his arms, his hands coming over yours on the wet canvas.
The rain on his jacket is cold against your arm. His skin underneath is warm; you can feel it through the damp fabric, that specific heat that has no right being as present as it is. These two things happen at once and you feel both of them with equal clarity, and you do not move.
"You have to push the latch from underneath," he says, low and close. Not a whisper exactly, just what his voice does when there isn't room for it to go anywhere else. "This one sticks. Wayne's been meaning to fix it."
"Wayne's been meaning to fix a lot of things."
"He's a busy man." His fingers press over yours, guiding them to the right angle against the mechanism. His hands are large, the rings gone, and his palms are calloused in specific places, guitar-player places. You feel every point of contact. You are being very quiet about it. "Right there. Now push up."
You push up, the latch yields with a clunk, and the drum releases its grip on the sheet. The wet mass loosens in your hands.
He does not move away.
His arms stay bracketed around yours, his chest stays against your shoulder blades, and you can feel, through the damp jacket, through the thin material of your shirt, he's breathing slower now than it should be, deeper, the way someone breathes when they're trying to focus on something they're not looking at directly.
"Got it?" he says.
"Yeah," you say, "got it."
The dryer ticks. The single bulb swings slightly in the draft from a gap in the corrugated wall, making the shadows shift all the time.
"You're dripping on my laundry," you say.
"Little bit, yeah." His voice is still close. You can feel it more than hear it through the drum of the rain.
"You're going to make me redo the whole load."
"That would be a shame." A pause. "I'd feel terrible."
"You don't sound terrible."
"I'm hiding it." Another pause, and in it the specific quality of someone choosing their next words. "I'm very good at hiding things."
You turn your head slightly, not enough to face him, just enough that you're no longer fully facing away, that the line of your jaw is visible to him if he's looking. Which he is.
"Are you?" you say.
"Mostly," he says. Then, quietly, with something honest in it that he hasn't quite covered over: "Not always."
"I should probably," you start.
"Probably," he agrees, and he doesn't move for another full second, a second that you will find yourself thinking about later, at inconvenient moments.
Then he steps back. The cold air rushes into the space where he was and it's a physical thing, an absence you can map to your spine. He leans against the opposite wall, all of eighteen inches away, which is as much distance as the shed allows, and runs one hand through his wet hair, pushing it back from his face.
He looks at you as the bulb swings. He has a small cut above his left eyebrow, old and faded, that you haven't noticed before.
"You want help with the sheets?" he asks.
"I had it."
"You had it for twenty minutes before I got here and the machine disagreed."
"I was making progress."
"You were losing a fight to a dryer, câmon sweetheart."
You pull the sheet out properly now, bundling it against your chest, and look at him over the top of it. He's almost smiling. His jacket is still dripping onto the cement floor, a slow, steady sound under the rain.
"You can stay until the storm passes," you say, which is not an answer to what he said.
He understands it as one anyway.
He slides down the wall until he's sitting on the floor, back against the corrugated metal, long legs stretched in front of him. "So," he says, studying the ceiling. "Demonology."
You start folding the sheet, badly, in the way sheets always get folded in small spaces. "What about it."
"Is it a hobby or a calling?"
"Does it have to be one of those?"
He looks at you from the floor, from under his damp hair, and grins: slow and warm and a little dangerous, the way certain things you should be careful around are sometimes the most beautiful things in the room.
"No," he says. "I guess it doesn't."
The rain keeps coming. You sit on top of the middle dryer, the one that works, and let the hum of it warm you through, and you talk; not about anything that matters yet, not about anything that costs you.Â
Somewhere between the third question and the seventh you stop being careful about what you say. Not enough to notice, just enough that he does.
"You're easier to talk to than you look," he says at some point.
"What do I look like?"
He considers this with more seriousness than it deserves.
"Like someone who could wreck my life," he says, casual, like he's noting the weather.
When the rain stops, neither of you notices right away.
~~
The Hideout is the kind of place you don't end up in on purpose.
You ended up in it on purpose only in the sense that the rain was impossible and the door was the closest one. Now you've been here for forty minutes with a drink that's been empty for twenty, watching the condensation run down the side of the glass in slow, uneven tracks.
The lighting is low enough to forgive a lot of things, smells like cigarettes and old leather and beer that belongs to a previous decade. Someone on the small stage is doing something to a guitar riff that it didn't deserve, and three stools to your left someone is talking loud enough for two conversations, and you haven't heard a word of any of it,anyway.
You're watching the second drop reach the bottom of the glass when the stool beside you scrapes back. Then he says your name like he's setting something down carefully. You look up.
Eddie is standing with one hand on the back of the stool, still in his jacket, rain-damp at the shoulders as always. His eyes move over the empty glass, then back to you.
"Didn't take you for a Hideout girl," he says.
"I'm not. It was raining, thatâs all"
"Sure." He says it like he doesn't entirely believe you and finds that interesting, he sits, signaling the bartender with the ease of someone who has never once worried about whether a room would receive him. The bartender nods immediately, you file this away without meaning to.
"They're bad," you say, nodding at the stage.
"Tragically." He doesn't look away from the band. "The bassist has potential. The rest of them are crying for help."
"Harsh."
"Accurate."
"You play, right?" you say. You already know. He probably knows you know.
"Little bit," he says, and the way he says it, low and with that half smile already happening, makes it clear it is not a little bit at all.
You let yourself look at him, just for a second more, actually look at him, the way you've been carefully not doing since day one, and the problem, the real problem, is that it doesn't help.
"Right," you say, and look back at your drink.
"You want another?" he asks.
"I shouldn't."
"That's not what I asked."
You push the glass forward.
The band finishes their set to applause that is generous considering, and in the small shuffle of the stage reset someone leans down from the monitors and says something to Eddie.Â
"You know them?" you ask.
"Thursdays are mine," he says, and his face does something that is not quite modesty and not quite arrogance but lives comfortably in the neighborhood of both.
"Is that so?"
"Eight months running." He finishes his drink, sets the glass down with a small, definitive sound. "I've become something of an institution."
"This place smells like an institution."
He points at you, completely serious. "Atmosphere. I created that."
He stands, shrugs the jacket off in a single movement and drapes it over the back of the stool. Underneath, just the black t-shirt, the denim vest, the patches catching the low light.
"You're going up there?" you say. It comes out less like a question than you intended.
He looks at you over his shoulder, and there it is, that specific version of his smile, the one that knows exactly what it's doing.
"Don't go anywhere!" he says.
You watch him take the three steps up to the stage. Pick up the guitar with the ease of something he stopped thinking about years ago. Watch the room shift in a way you didn't notice it could shift, a current changing direction.
You pull his jacket off the back of the stool and set it on your lap without thinking about it.
The room shifts before he plays a single note. It's a small thing, the way people reorient without deciding to, drinks paused halfway to mouths, conversations losing a thread. He adjusts the strap, says something into the mic that makes the front of the room laugh, and you didn't catch it but you see the effect of it, the way the space loosens around him.
Then he plays.
You've heard people play guitar. You grew up with a radio and a television and enough county fairs to know what competent sounds like. This is not that. This is something that starts in his hands and moves through the instrument like it was waiting there and he's just the one who knew where to find it.
You pick up your drink. You put it down without drinking.
He moves differently up there. Not performed differently, just differently, like the stage is the place where the rest of him has room to exist. His head drops slightly when he hits something he likes. His eyes close for a bar and then open, find the middle distance, find the back wall. Find you, once, just for a second, before moving on like it was nothing.
You look down at the jacket in your lap: the patches, the worn collar, the smell of it, rain and something underneath that has no business being as present as it is.
You look back up and you realize, sitting there, that you've been collecting versions of his face without meaning to.
He plays three songs. You know this because you count them. The last one ends on a held note that he lets die slowly, deliberately, like he's deciding when to let go.Â
The room comes back to itself. The applause is different from what the previous band got: warmer, more specific, the kind that knows what it's responding to.
He says something into the mic again, easy and unhurried, thanks the bar by name like it's an old argument he's fond of. Then he hands the guitar off and steps down from the stage, and you have approximately four seconds to decide what to do with your face before he's crossing the room toward you.
He drops back onto the stool. His cheeks are slightly flushed, his hair worse than before, and he reaches for his drink before remembering it's empty. He signals the bartender, then turns to look at you.
He looks at the jacket in your lap. "So," he says.
"So," you say.
"Verdict."
You take a second and he lets you take it, leaning one elbow on the bar, watching you with the patience of someone who already knows the answer and is enjoying the wait.
"You're good," you say, because there's no version of honesty that gets you out of this one.
"I know." No hesitation. But the way he's looking at you when he says it takes the arrogance out of it somehow, replaces it with something more direct. "I wanted you to know too."
The bar fills the silence around that. Someone laughs too loud near the door, the bartender sets two fresh drinks down and disappears.
"The jacket," he says eventually, nodding at your lap.
"You left it."
"I did, saving my place for after the show."
"I was holding it," you say, "so it wouldn't fall."
"Right." The corner of his mouth moves. "Considerate of you."
"I am a considerate person."
He looks at you for a moment in that way he has, the one that makes you feel like you've been read without giving permission.
"Yeah," he says quietly, "I'm starting to think there's a lot of things about you."
You don't answer that but you don't give the jacket back either.
~~
It's Friday, which means nothing except that the week has finally stopped moving and left you somewhere quiet with a cigarette and your feet on the railing.
You hear his door before you see him: the specific sound of it, the particular weight of his step on the gravel. He's got his keys in his hand, jacket on, heading for the van.
He sees you and automatically slows.
"Going to the store," he says, by way of hello.
"Okay."
He turns back with the expression of someone who already knows what they're about to do.
"You want anything?"
You look at your cigarette, at him. You think about the Friday night stretched out in front of you: the trailer, the couch, the film you've been meaning to watch.
"Popcorn," you say. "The microwave kind, oh! And Coke. And something with chocolate."
He stares at you for a moment.
"That's a lot of wants for someone sitting alone on a Friday."
"Are you going or not?"
"I'm going." He's already turning toward the van. "I'm just saying. You could've led with the movie."
You watch him go as you finish the cigarette.
"It's Nightmare on Elm Street," you call after him.
He raises one hand without turning around. Acknowledgment, or something close to it.
He comes back twenty minutes later with a paper bag and lets himself be let in, and the next part happens the way things happen when no one is officially deciding anything, he ends up on the floor with his back against the couch, you're sitting criss-cross above him, the lamp doing the bare minimum, the Coke sweating onto the coffee table, and Freddy Krueger doing his thing on the screen.
The popcorn sits between you, the joint appears at some point, the way it does.
"She knows she's in the dream," he says, after a while. "And she's still going toward him."
"Eddie..."
"I just think it's worth discussing."
"Watch the movie."
He watches the movie, mostly.Â
The room gets warmer and quieter and the sounds from outside arrive slightly later than they should, and the conversation moves the way conversations move when no one is steering. From the film to nothing in particular to something that starts to matter without announcing itself.
"Can I ask you something?" he says to the TV.
"You're going to anyway."
"Why Indiana?"
You look at the screen. "Cheap. Quiet. Wayne had the trailer."
"That's the practical answer."
You glance down at him, he's still looking at the TV, his chin tipped up slightly, his profile caught in the blue light.
"I got divorced," you say simply, because it's late and the weed has done what weed does,"Eight months ago."
"It wasn't loud," you say. "No one screamed. It was very quiet, actually." You pull the sleeve of your shirt over your hand. "He had this way of explaining my feelings back to me. Why were too much. Why my reactions were disproportionate." A pause. "He did it long enough that I kinda started to agree with him, you know?"
The movie fills the silence. Someone runs down a hallway.
"Sorry," you say, and mean it. "That was..." You reach for something and land on the wrong thing entirely. "Freddy Krueger is a better conversationalist."
It lands badly, no timing at all, you know it lands badly. But he laughs anyway, a real one, and there it is: the slight fold at the corner of his eye, the crease in his left cheek, the specific unguarded quality of a face mid-laugh.
You look away first.
"He did a number on you," Eddie says, quieter now, the laugh still warm in his voice.
"He was very thorough."
"Yeah." He turns the chocolate wrapper over in his hands. "I've met guys like that. They make you think the problem is the size of you." He pauses, not quite getting the next part right, trying again. "You're not small. You've just been in a small place."
"You don't know that," you say.
"I've been paying attention all week," he says simply, like it's not an admission. "and I know youâre bigger than this, than him."
On screen someone screams. He shifts, turning to face you properly, his arm coming up to rest on the couch cushion beside your knee. The performance is gone, his voice dropping into the register it finds in small spaces.
"Look," he says. "I know you're older and you've got your whole," he gestures vaguely at you, at the blazer on the chair, at the stacked books, at the general fact of you, "thing going on. And I know I'm," another gesture at himself, less certain, "what I am." His jaw tightens slightly. "But I've been thinking about you since Monday, and I'm pretty bad at pretending I'm not."
You open your mouth but what comes out is a cough. Not a small one. A full, graceless, weed-in-the-wrong-place cough that bends you forward and will not stop, your eyes watering, one hand braced on the cushion.
"Are you?" he starts, between his own laughter.
You hold up one finger. The cough continues.
He gets up, goes to the kitchen, comes back with a glass of water and crouches in front of you, his mouth pressed shut in the specific way of someone fighting very hard not to laugh at you.
You take the water and drink. The coughing subsides.
"Okay," you say, hoarse.
"Okay," he says, and he's smiling, the real one, and he's close, and you're still catching your breath, and the TV is still going, and outside the park is still quiet.
"You were saying," you say.
"I think you heard me," he says.
You look at him. He looks at you. The lamp in the corner keeps doing its minimum.
"I need more water," you say.
"Sure," he says, and doesn't move, and you don't move either, and the movie keeps going unwatched in the blue light of the room.
~~
Saturday morning has the quality of something that hasn't been addressed yet.
He's gone when you wake up. The blanket folded on the couch with the particular neatness of someone who didn't want to leave evidence of being there.
The coffee you make is for one person. You drink it at the window and watch the park wake up slow under a gray sky that hasn't decided what it wants to do yet.
You're on the porch with the second cup when he passes, jacket on, hair still damp, looking at his boots until he looks up.
"Hey," he says.
"Hey."
He stops. You can see the decision happening: his feet slowing before the rest of him catches up.
You hold up your mug. An offer.
He comes up the steps without a word and takes it, wraps both hands around it, and stands beside you at the railing. You look at the park. He looks at the park. The gray sky stays undecided.
After a moment he reaches into his jacket and pulls out a cigarette, lights it, and holds the pack toward you.
"I'm almost out," you say, taking one.
"I know," he says to the park.
You smoke in a silence that has a week's worth of things in it. When the cigarette is done he sets the empty mug on the railing, reaches back into his jacket, and puts a full unopened pack next to it. Marlboros, soft pack. He doesn't look at you when he does it.
"Eddie," you say.
"I noticed," he says simply. "That's all."
The gray sky makes up its mind. The first drops hit the railing between you and he goes down the steps.
Wayne is at the kitchen table with his coffee and the newspaper and the particular stillness of a man who has been awake since five and has already formed opinions about the day.
He doesn't look up when Eddie comes in; he turns a page. Eddie gets himself another coffee with shaken hands. Wayne turns another page.
"Funny thing," Wayne says to the newspaper. "Van was in the garage all night, but you werenât here."
"Roads were bad," Eddie says.
"Rained at eleven." Wayne turns a page. "Cleared up by midnight."
Eddie drinks his coffee, remembering that at eleven, he was intoxicated by your perfume, your laugh, you.
"She's pretty," Wayne says.
"Wayne."
"I'm just saying, boy."
"You don't have to, please."
"Smart too, from what I can tell." He folds the corner of a page down, thoughtful. "Those books she carries around."
"They're for work."
"Mm." Wayne takes a slow sip of coffee. "What kind of work?"
"The kind thatâŚ" Eddie stops. "I don't know, Wayne."
"But you've talked about it."
Eddie's ears go the specific red of a man who has run out of deflections and knows it.
"She seems like good people," Wayne says simply, and picks up his newspaper like the conversation is over, which it is, because Wayne has always known when he's made his point.
Someone knocks on the door.
They both look at it. Wayne looks back at Eddie over the top of the newspaper. Eddie looks at the door, then at his ears in the reflection of the window, then at the door again.
"I'll get it," he says.
"I imagine," Wayne says.
You're standing on the porch with your hands in your pockets and the unopened pack of Marlboros he left on the railing, which you are holding in a way that doesn't quite explain itself.
"Movie!" you say. "Tonight. My place. Eight o'clock?"
He leans against the doorframe. His ears are still red, which you notice and file away for later.
"What are we watching?" he grins.
"Does it matter?"
"No," he says. "Not really."
"Eight o'clock," you say, and go back down the steps.
He watches you cross the gravel. Behind him the kitchen is very quiet. Wayne is still pretending to read until,
"Eight o'clock," he says to no one in particular.
"Wayne!!!"
"Just memorizing," Wayne says. "In case you lose track."
He closes the door. He stands there for a second with his hand still on the knob. Then he does a small, contained, deeply undignified fist pump at the floor.
Wayne doesn't look up from the newspaper. "Just neighbors my ass," he says.
Eddie straightens up immediately. "Yep," he says with great dignity, and goes to his room.
It's ten past eleven in the morning. You have eight hours and fifty minutes.
You pick up your book, read the same paragraph four times and retain nothing. You put the book down.
You clean the bathroom, which didn't need cleaning. You rearrange the books on the shelf above the desk, then put them back the way they were because the original order was fine and you were just looking for something to do with your hands.
At two o'clock you hear the van leave. You don't go to the window. You are a grown adult and you don't go to the window, and when you hear it come back forty minutes later you also don't go to the window, and you are handling this very well.
At four you make tea you don't want. At five you eat something you don't taste. At six you sit on the couch with the television on and watch it without seeing it, your eyes moving to the clock with the frequency of someone who knows exactly what they're doing and is embarrassed about it.
At six forty-five you go to the bathroom and look at yourself in the mirror for a long moment.
"It's just a movie," you tell your reflection. Your reflection doesn't look convinced either.
At seven fifty-eight you sit back down on the couch, criss-cross, with a throw pillow in your lap and look at the door. At eight o'clock exactly, he knocks.
You wait three seconds so it doesn't seem like you were waiting for him at the door, then you open it.
He's showered. His hair is still slightly damp and he's got a clean shirt on, dark, the sleeves pushed up, and he's holding a bag that smells like something fried from the diner two streets over.
He has the specific expression of someone who also waited three seconds before knocking.
"Eight o'clock," he says.
"You're on time," you say.
"I'm always on time."
"You were late on Monday."
"The window was..." he stops. "Are you going to let me in?"
You step back from the door.
You end up where you always end up: you on the couch, him on the floor below you, the food between you, the lamp barely doing its work in the corner.
The food goes, the wrappers get thrown away. He comes back and sits, and you put something on the TV, something neither of you will watch, and the room settles into the specific silence of two people pretending to be comfortable.
On screen someone runs down a corridor. Someone else follows.
"She's going to trip," you say.
"She's going to trip," he says at the exact same moment.
She trips. You look at each other.
He's already looking at you. He has been for a while, you realize. Not at the screen, at you.
Looking in that way he has, the one that makes you feel like you've been read without giving permission. But this time there's no deflection left in him. The playful edge is gone, replaced by a quiet, heavy gravity that makes your breath hitch.
He moves, certain but unhurried. His hand finds your chin, his thumb brushing over your lower lip with a slow reverence that sends a shiver straight down your spine. When he kisses you, it isn't an anchor dropping; it is a total, breathless surrender. His lips touch yours with a gentleness so deliberate it feels almost sacred, as if he is trying to memorize the exact shape of you in the dark.
You make a small sound against his mouth, and the noise seems to undo something deep inside him. His hand slides up into your hair, his long fingers tangling in the strands, tilting your head back just enough to deepen the kiss. It is heavy, steady, and consuming.
He pulls you closer, his other hand anchoring at your waist before sliding down to your hip to lift you onto his lap. He settles you there, his large hands trembling just a fraction against your skin. He holds you with the quiet, desperate intensity of a man who knows he is touching something far better than he deserves, his face buried in the crook of your neck as he breathes you in, completely at your mercy.
His knee slides between yours, slow and certain, his mouth moving to your jaw, your throat, with the specific, unhurried attention of someone who has been thinking about exactly this. For all his usual restless, youthful bravado, here he lets you dictate the pace, completely yielding to a maturity that usually intimidates him.
"Eddie," you say to the ceiling, your fingers tightening in his hair.
"Yeah," he murmurs against your skin, his lips brushing your collarbone. He pauses for a fraction of a second, his breath hot against your throat. "You have no idea what you do to me. How long I've been losing my mind over this."
Your hand finds the back of his neck, the metal of his chain, the radiating warmth of his skin. You pull him back up to your mouth because the ceiling is suddenly far less interesting. He lets out a low, ragged sigh against your lips, a sound of pure relief, before he catches your mouth again. The lamp keeps doing its minimum in the corner, and outside, the park remains completely indifferent to any of this.
At some point he pulls back just enough. His forehead rests against yours, his breath uneven, his hands still tangled deep in your hair as if heâs anchored there, looking at you with a sudden, quiet vulnerability that erases every year between you.
"Okay," he says, his voice a low vow.
"Okay," you say.
Neither of you moves. The space between you is heavy with it.
"The movie," he whispers, a faint, breathless attempt to catch his bearings.
"What movie," you say.
He laughs, a soft huff against your lips, and kisses you again, slower this time. It is a deep, worshipful press of his mouth that belongs entirely to the two of you, while the TV keeps going unwatched in the blue light of the room.
~~
Sunday starts the way things start when no one has officially decided anything, slowly, and without an exit.Â
You wake up to warmth. His arm is around you, heavy and certain, his chest against your back, his breath slow and even against the back of your neck. The room is gray with early light. The TV is off, the lamp is off, and the park outside is doing its quiet Sunday thing.
He's awake. You can tell by the quality of the stillness, not the loose stillness of sleep but the careful stillness of someone who has been awake for a while and decided not to move.
You don't move either.
His arm doesn't tighten. He doesn't say anything. He just stays, his hand open against your ribs, his breathing slow and deliberate, and you lie there in the gray light and let the morning take its time, and neither of you acknowledges that you're both awake, because acknowledging it would make it into something you'd have to address, and right now it's just this. His warmth at your back, the quiet park, the specific weight of a Sunday that hasn't asked anything of either of you yet.
Eventually you shift. Just slightly.
His arm tightens. Just slightly.
"Morning," he says, his voice still rough with sleep.
"Morning," you say.
A beat.
"Coffee?" he says.
"Please," you say.
He leaves at ten. You watch the van pull out from the window, which you do now, openly, without pretending you're not doing it.
He's back at noon.
He knocks twice and when you open the door he's holding a paper bag from the bakery on Elm and wearing yesterday's shirt and he looks at you with the straightforward expression of someone who has stopped pretending the van going anywhere was a real departure.
"Thought you left," you say.
"I got pastries," he says.
You step back from the door.
The afternoon happens in pieces, but the light is already changing, the warm amber of morning thinning into something flatter, the kind of gold that means the weekend is running out of air. He fixes the cabinet hinge without being asked, finds the screwdriver himself, does it while you sit on the counter eating a pastry and pretending to read. On Monday it had been a novelty. Today it feels like a countdown.
Later he finds your record player and puts something on, something slow and guitar-heavy, and the trailer fills with it. He sits on the floor with his back against the couch. You sit above him. His head tips back after a while and rests against your knee and you let it, your hand finding his hair without quite deciding to.
The record ends. The needle clicks on the spindle, over and over, a small patient sound in the quiet room.
Neither of you gets up to turn it over.
By the time he makes dinner the blue twilight is pressing hard against the window, making the room feel smaller. Eggs, toast, the last of the tomatoes. You sit across from him at the small table and the conversation is easy the way it's been all day, but underneath it something has shifted, the specific weight of hours that know they're numbered.
He says something that makes you almost laugh. You watch him watch you almost laugh, that warm look he doesn't always let you see.
You reach across the table. Your hand covers his. He turns it over and holds on, and his grip is slightly tighter than yesterday, a quiet reflex against something neither of you is naming.
The lamp is on low, the record back on, the dishes done. He's sitting on the edge of the bed watching you cross the room toward him, and his hands find your waist when you're close enough, and this time it's nothing like Saturday's urgency.
This is slower. This is deliberate. This is two people choosing, quietly, with full knowledge of what they're doing.
His forehead drops to your sternum for a moment, just resting there, his arms around you, his breath evening out.
"Hey," he says, quietly.
"Hey," you say.
He looks up.
You stay.
Afterward the room is dark and quiet and he's on his back with one arm around you, his rings on the nightstand in a small pile, his chest rising and falling in the particular slow rhythm of someone who has stopped performing anything. His other hand moves in your hair, absently, the way his fingers move on strings.
"Don't go anywhere," you say. Not tonight. Not in general. Both.
His arm tightens.
"Okay," he says, and means something large by it.
You wake up before him in the gray early light of Monday.
You get up carefully. You shower. You stand in front of the mirror and cover the marks on your throat with concealer until your neck looks like it belongs to someone who spent the week alone, which is the version of you that needs to exist in approximately two hours.
Then you take the gray blazer from the hanger. The good one, the structured one. You button it to the top. You pull your hair into a neat twist, pin the loose strands, straighten your collar. You locate the lesson plan in your bag. Literature, Hawkins Community College, Room 214. You check it until the words stop meaning anything.
You look like yourself. The other self.
You're pouring your coffee when you hear him stir.
He appears in the doorway a minute later, hair wrecked, eyes half-open, no shirt, and you make a very brief and very private mental note about the tattoos and the line of his shoulders and the general unfairness of the situation before returning to your coffee like a professional.
He pours himself a cup. Leans against the counter beside you. Looks at the lesson plan without picking it up.
"First day," he says.
"First day," you say.
"You nervous?"
"No," you say, which is mostly true.
"Liar," he says, without heat.
He puts his mug down. He reaches out and straightens your collar, which didn't need straightening, his fingers brief and warm against your neck. Then he drops his hand.
"You're going to be good at it," he says. Simply. Like it's a fact he's already confirmed.
"You don't know that," you say.
"I've been paying attention," he says. "Since Monday."
The other Monday. Last Monday. A week ago, which is either very short or very long depending on how you measure it.
You pick up your bag, your knuckles white against the leather. He walks you to the door, four steps, completely unnecessary, and catches your hand before you go down the steps. He turns you back, easy and unhurried, and kisses you once. Not long, not dramatic. Just the kind of thing people do when they've become the kind of people who do this.
"Good luck," he says. That half smile, the real one.
You look at him standing in your doorway with his coffee and his bare shoulders and that smile, and you think, briefly and inconveniently, that you are in serious trouble.
"Lock up when you leave," you say.
He raises his mug. Something between a toast and a goodbye.
You go down the steps. You don't look back, because if you look back you won't go, and you have a class at nine and a lesson plan and a gray blazer and a version of yourself that has somewhere to be.
Behind you the door stays open for a moment before you hear it close.
~~
Monday
The hallway smells of floor wax and coffee and the particular energy of people who haven't yet decided if they want to be here. You walk it with both hands around your travel mug, your blazer buttoned, your heels making a sound you recognize as armor.
Room 214 is yours by eight-fifteen. You write your name on the board in large block letters, set the attendance sheet square on the desk, arrange the chalk on the ledge the way you always do, a small, private ritual, the body taking over when the mind needs to settle. Your territory. The desk is a shield. You know this about yourself: you are good at this part, the standing-in-front-of-rooms part, the clear-voiced and certain part. You built it deliberately and it holds.
The room fills the way college rooms fill, without urgency, people arriving in ones and twos with coffee cups and half-open backpacks, finding seats with the specific social calculus of people who don't know each other yet but are already deciding what they think. Chairs scrape. Somebody drops a binder. You watch them settle with your hands resting on the desk, and you feel yourself shift into the register you know, attentive, warm, contained, and it feels clean. It feels like solid ground.
You pick up the attendance sheet.
The door is almost closed.
"Sorry." A drawling voice, unhurried, slightly out of breath. "Got stuck behind a tractor on route 9. Hawkins thing."
The professional smile is already shaped on your lips when you look up.
The smile stays. It has nowhere to go.
Eddie is standing in the doorframe.
His leather jacket is clean, actually clean, and the denim vest beneath it pressed flat, the patches in careful order, and his dark hair is damp and combed back from his face, which makes him look younger and simultaneously makes every angle of him more visible: the jaw, the cheekbones, the cut above his brow. He has a blue notebook gripped in one large hand, his knuckles white around it, the rings gone. He's already scanning the room for a seat with the slightly defensive posture of someone used to arriving places where they're not entirely wanted.
Then his eyes find you.
His feet stop.
The notebook drops slightly in his grip. His gaze moves down the gray blazer, slowly, despite himself, despite everything, then to the chalk between your fingers, then past you to the blackboard, where your name and your title sit in large block letters that seem, in this moment, to have been written specifically to rearrange something in him.
You watch it happen. You watch his jaw go slack and then harden. You watch the color leave his face and come back wrong, and you watch him run the same math you ran this morning in the bathroom mirror, the window latch, the porch, the laundry shed, the Hideout, Friday's floor, Saturday's couch, Sunday's everything, backward against Room 214 and Literature and the attendance sheet in your hand, arriving at the only answer there is.
The other students are finding their seats. No one is looking at him yet.
He looks at you. You look at him.
There is nothing either of you can do with your face that is adequate to this moment.
You lower your eyes to the attendance sheet first because one of you has to, because the room is full and twenty-three students will notice in approximately four more seconds if you keep standing here. You find your voice where you left it, clean and level, exactly where you need it.
"Find a seat, please," you say. To the room. To him. To no one specifically.
He moves.
He walks toward the back of the room with his steps heavy and deliberate, not looking at you, his jaw set hard. He pulls the last chair in the row with a screech of metal on linoleum that makes three people look up and then look away. He sits. He sets the blue notebook on the desk. He crosses his arms tight against his chest.
You call attendance.
When you say his name, Munson, E., third from the bottom, there is a pause that lasts exactly one second too long.
"Here," he says, to the desk.
Flat. Contained. The voice of someone who has taken everything and put it somewhere it can't be seen.
You move to the syllabus.
You talk about the semester, about Fitzgerald and Steinbeck, about the literature of disillusionment and reinvention, about characters who build themselves into something new and spend the rest of the book paying for it. Your voice is steady. Your hands are steady. You do not look at the back row unless you have to.
You're talking about Gatsby, about the green light, about the particular cruelty of wanting something just out of reach, when a voice comes from the back of the room.
"Does it count as reinvention," Eddie says, not quite raising his hand, "if you didn't know you needed it until it was already happening?"
The room turns to look at him. You don't.
You keep your eyes on the middle distance, on the space above everyone's heads, on the place you look when you need your voice to stay level.
"That's one of the questions the text asks," you say. "Whether transformation is ever truly chosen, or whether it chooses us."
A beat.
"And if it chooses you," he says, quieter now, "and then the situation changes. What happens to the person you were becoming."
The fluorescent light hums. Someone shifts in their seat.
You look at him then. You have to. It would be stranger not to.
He's looking directly at you for the first time since he walked in, his arms still crossed, his jaw still set, but his eyes are doing something else entirely, something that has nothing to do with Fitzgerald and everything to do with Sunday morning and a door closing and a van on route 9 that he drove to a building he didn't know you'd be standing in.
"That," you say, carefully, "is exactly what we're here to find out."
He holds your gaze for one more second. Then he looks down at the blue notebook and opens it, picks up his pen, and writes something you can't see.
The class continues. The ordinary machinery of a Monday morning grinds forward the way it always does.
Fourteen hours ago his arm was around you in the gray early light.
You write Chapter 1 â due Friday on the board.
The chalk makes a clean, precise sound in the silent room.
âËŕż Summary: Eddie is your best friend and reveals that he has a date. You're very unsure about your feelings towards it, and you're desperate to find out why.
âËŕż Wc: 3.56k
âËŕż Tags: Best friends to lovers, jealousy, unknown feelings, oblivious!eddie, slowburn, fluff, hurt/comfort, angst, no y/n, stoner!reader, lmk if I missed any!
âËŕż A/N: This is my first fic ever that I'm actually posting on tumblr (and ao3) and the first fic I've written in a very long time, so please be nice! I also am not sure what most people prefer when reading a fic with multiple chapters on here? I've seen people post the first chapter and then link the ao3 link and I've also seen people add "next chapter" links and posting the chapters as separate posts, so please lmk what you guys prefer! The fic is also not done so pls be patient haha <3
You laid sprawled over Eddie's bed, stomach down and feet kicked up into the air in they're usual position as you picked at your nails. School had just let out for Spring Break, and you were ecstatic, especially after the day you had. It felt ridiculous that just one day of peace was impossible for you in Hawkins High, and as much as you tried to brush off snarky comments and being shoved in the hallway and look forward to the break, it bothered you. But the waiting was over. Two weeks of doing nothing but smoking weed and Eddie, your best friend in the entire world. There wasn't any way anything could bother you then. You were sure of it.
Eddie sat on the other side of the bed, rolling up for your second smoke of the day, bringing the joint up to his mouth and licking the edge gently to seal it.
Eddie introduced you to the wonderful world of marijuana when you two were twelve and thirteen. The memory of sitting in the woods behind Hawkins Middle, heart pounding as the paper burned between your fingers. Hesitation took over your body as your eyes flickered to Eddie, crouched down a couple of inches from you. You remembered the way he studied your face for doubt, and his hand gently taking the rolled cylinder as he sensed that you weren't sure.
"No, give it back." You protested. "You said yourselfâno one comes out here. I'll be fine."
Truthfully, you had no idea if you were lying, but you were sure of one thing: the trust you had for Eddie. The part of you that screamed it was an awful idea, and that even though you were an outcast, you weren't a rule breaker flew out of the window the moment Eddie said he had to show you something.
He reluctantly stretched his arm back out towards you and allowed you to take it from his hand, and with one deep breath, you swallowed and let courage take over instead. With cautious movements, you brought it up to your mouth.
You had no idea how important that moment would be. Not only for the fact that now, being a senior in high school, you couldn't live a day with out it, but Eddie had implanted himself so deep into your life that day that you were sure nothing could dig him back out.
As he finished rolling, the two of you moved in sync. You sat yourself up and moved closer towards him, the bed squeaking and dipping lower under your weight as you rested against the wall. Eddie crossed his legs and placed the tray on the the comforter below him, routine settling in as his hands wrapped around the kitchen lighter.
Your shoulders dropped once you settled into a comfortable spot on the bed. Muscles that you couldn't even tell were tense relaxedâsomething about the familiar ritual alleviated your anxiousness in a way that you could only blame on Eddie.
School measured up to be exceptionally worse than usual. You shuddered at the thought of having to explain the large F on your chemistry test to your parents, even though in hindsight, it was completely your fault. Reruns on TV dipped into your study time the weeks leading up to the test, and as you tried to make up for your procrastination one day in advance, you'd convinced yourself to surrender your hopes of getting a good grade. It was future yous problem, and unfortunately, future phased into present, and you had to deal with the consequences. You hoped you could put it off for a couple of days, or maybe attempt to fake your moms signature again.
You didn't realize the way you stared deep into Eddies comforter until the sound of him clearing his throat snapped you out of it. You blinked, head jerking up and a short hum leaving your throat.
"Are you going to babysit that the entire time?" The corners of Eddies mouth twitched into a teasing smirk as his eyes darted down to the burning paper between your fingers.
Your brows drew together briefly before you extended it. He took it between his own fingers carefully and led it to his lips.
"What's up?" The tone in his question came out raspy as he held the smoke in his throat. It filled the air as he exhaled.
"Rough day." A dry laugh withdrew from your throat, though there was a lack of humor behind it. The lingering smile slowly dimmed as you exhaled a sigh.
Eddie arched a brow in curiosity, a spark of concern gleaming in his eyes as he stared back at you. An indication of reluctivity and worry fell evident in his question, "Do you⌠wanna talk about it?"
You shrugged casually, bringing your knees up to your chest and wrapping your arms around your legs. You paused, eyes running over the bleach stains on your pants you'd acquired from washing them wrong. "Not really. It's nothing new, just same ole' school stuff."
An understanding smile tugged at Eddies lips. Part of the reason you and Eddie clicked so fast was because you both understood how it felt to be perceived in a negative light by your peers. Conformity felt like the only way to fit in, and sure, you'd tried it for a while, but with every small slip up, the gossiping would resume. Eventually, you just learned to live with it. Eddie had dealt with it his entire life. Before you, he'd never fit in anywhere.
The burning cylinder between your lips heated up as you inhaled it deeply, smoke building up in your lungs and burning your throat, causing a raw cough to escape your throat; your face turned a deep red as you fought for air, eyes squeezing shut, head shaking side to side as you try to gain your composure.
"Ah, c'mon, you're being a baby." Something felt consoling within Eddies mockery, as if every time he did it, it was him subconsciously saying that he sees you. Most friends that you'd attained throughout the years strayed away from playful insults, instead focusing on the more favorable attributes.
But not Eddie. Eddie saw everything. Eddie knew everything.
A final cough cleared your throat, eyes rolling as an amused smile danced across your face, "Not my fault you have shitty weed."
Eddies arms crossed dramatically and a scoff left his mouth, but despite being "offended", a hint of amusement flickered across his face. "Well, I always provide it, and you haven't once contributed to our smoke sessions, so I wouldn't complain."
Your gaze met his as the words left his mouth, eyes running up and down his frame as a smug expression dragged across your face, "And that's how it'll always be, because you love me. I'm also broke, so there's that."
Brows raising, Eddie protested light-heartedly, "I am, too."
A gentle deflated sigh left Eddies parted lips, shoulders dropping. You watched as his lips pressed together and curled into an almost-smile, eyes darting back up to meet his stare.
"But yeah, it'll always be like that. Because I love you." Eddies head cocked to the side and lines settled near his eyes as he grinned sarcastically.
Even though they weren't rare, every time those three words left Eddies mouth, your stomach erupted into a sickening flutter. It was strangeâthe love you had for Eddie never fit in a specific box. He was your lifelineâyour justification for your heart beating. You'd always joked that he was your platonic soulmate and the universe sent him down from some ethereal planet to save you.
Suddenly, an enthusiastic gasp sounded from beside you, followed by Eddies hands coming together in a loud clap.
"I have news. Really exciting news." He shifted slightly and leaned over slightly, his posture faltering.
"Oh, yeah?" The question left your mouth as your head dipped low, anticipation and a bit of skepticism filling your voice. Truthfully, you'd doubted heavily that he was about to spill anything revolutionary. Half of the things Eddie said to you made you question how he'd made it past the seventh grade. It was a big reason why you loved him, thoughânot because you felt better or smarter in any way, but because he was never afraid to be his true, authentic, embarrassing self around you.
"IâŚ" Eddie started, dragging the word out. You watched as his hands slapped the bed repeatedly to mimic a drum roll, earning a playful scoff.
"Oh my god." You muttered under your breath, the words coming out as more of an exhale than a sentence.
"âŚhave a date." Eddie straightened his back as a vain expression painted itself across his face, arms crossing across his chest smugly.
Involuntarily, your smile faltered for a brief moment, and you blinked twice slowlyâfor some reason, you couldn't pinpoint where the shock of his confession came from. Eddie had crushes on people before, mainly students at school who'd he never really spoke to, so it shouldn't have been a surprise once Eddie finally did find someone who was romantically interested back. Still, your chest burned an unfamiliar feelingâJealousy? Envy? Anger? It didn't make any sense. You ran his words through your head again and again, and every time, it was as if the words "Eddie" and "date" didn't quite fit together.
Then came the guilt. Your stomach twisted uncomfortably as you wondered why you didn't feel happy. Eddie was your best friend, your better half, the one thing in this sick world that could ground you and bring you back to reality.
Eddie had crushes before. What was different about this one?
You thought that maybe it could be coming from a place of protectiveness. The memory of having to console Eddie over being asked out as a joke flashed across your eyes. You remembered the way his eyes puffed up from sobbing into his pillow right before you'd cautiously shuffled into his room. You remembered the anger you felt thenâthe way you'd marched over to her at recess, face red as fury pumped through your veins. It was the first and only time you'd laid your hands on another person.
That anger felt different to the feeling you felt boiling over in your chest. Your stomach twisted as he continued.
"She doesn't go to our school. She's home schooled, if you can believe it. I thought that only the Amish home schooled or something. We met at the music store. She was looking through a stack of records and I bumped into her like one of those cheesy romance movies you like so much." Eddies rough hand nudged your bare arm, skin burning under the playful gesture.
You could only blink, your brain attempting to process the information he was spilling out with that goofy grin slapped on his face. The way your chest burned fought harder than your silent reasoning you repeated desperately in your head. It was bound to happen eventually, and you'd been on a couple of dates, too. Eddie deserved happiness. You couldn't shake the guilty feeling that lingered with the burning in your chest. The entire thing seemed ridiculousâfeeling such a strong physical reaction towards something so simple.
"Are you listening?" Eddies voice cut through your spiral like a knife.
You glanced up at him, eyes glossed over with something behind them that he couldn't quite recognize. You didn't mean to look at him like you were just told your mom died, but you couldn't stop it before it was already done. The realization that he noticed how off you were acting made you ball your fingers into fists. You shoved them into your lap quickly and exhaled a sigh to cover it up, because how do you even explain that?
"Yeah, of course I'm listening." A weak smile flashed across your face, but it didn't quite reach your eyes. The feeling of your heart crashing against your chest, thumping harder than you'd ever felt it before, drew all of your attention away from Eddies articulation, and the only thing running through your head now was the silent hope that he couldn't tell you were lying straight through your teeth.
Eddie somehow always knew. Most of the time, it felt as if Eddie could implant himself into your thoughts and dissect every single one like they were his own.
But not this time. Maybe he was too distracted going on and on about the date, or too excited to notice the way your demeanor changed the moment the words left his mouth. And what felt the most ridiculous was the fact that both instances seemed the worstâEddie noticing or the fact that he didn't.
Eddie insisted on bringing you home, even though you repeatedly reassured him that you'd be fine walking. It wasn't out of the ordinary for Eddie to drive you home, but truthfully, being around him made it extremely difficult to thinkâand God, you had so much thinking to do when you got home.
You didn't have the energy to argue though, really, even if a nice stroll through Hawkins sounded nice to the alarm blaring in your skull.
Only an hour had passed since Eddie dropped his news on you, and still four hours until curfew. Usually, you'd stay with him from the moment that the school bell rung to early hours in the morning, but after spending the past hour obsessing over every interaction he described in detail with, what he described, his dream girl, you couldn't do it. Half of the time you'd spent concocting some reason to go home. The excuse was bullshit, of course, and something about the way Eddies brows drew together made it obvious that he knew you were full of shit. But you didn't care. Not really. You were freaking out, and you knew that being alone gave you the only shot to shut your brain up.
The passenger door swung open and you crawled into the van like it was habitual, and in some way, it sort of was. You'd spent so many hours in Eddies dingy van that the smell and the stains on the seats were a part of you. The two of you fell into the same routine every timeâEddie would make an effort to open the passenger door for you, mumbling something about being a perfect gentleman to get a rise out of you, you'd both make your way into your seats, and Eddie would remind you to rummage through the glove box and pick a cassette. Music always brought the two of you together, and blasting metal in the van so loud that you couldn't hear yourself think slowly became your favorite part of your day.
But that didn't happen. For the first time ever, you silently clicked your seatbelt and let your head fall and rest on the back of the seat.
Eddie followed into the van, taking his time (as always) to climb into the drivers seat. The engine roared to life as he turned the key. Something heavy lingered in the air, causing your stomach to twist violently. You wondered if he felt it, too, or if it was just another day for him.
As you stared up at the vehicle ceiling, you could feel Eddies eyes on you, scanning your expression with concentration heavy on his face. You blinked, and looked to your left to catch him in your peripheral. The outline of his fingers loosely on the steering wheel caught your attention. He obviously wasn't in a rush, and although you recognized that there wasn't anything wrong with that, you wanted him to rush, and something about how impatient you felt made you feel shameful.
"You alright?" Eddie asked, his voice dipping low in concern.
Here you were, bringing down the mood and sulking in his passenger seat, instead of enjoying the start of spring break like you'd spent weeks and weeks planning.
"Yeah, just really tired." The words sounded off as they left your mouth, your face crinkling up awkwardly. You lifted one shoulder and let it fall in a small shrug.
Eddies gaze lingered on you for a couple seconds too long before he stared back out the windshield. You knew that he knew something was wrong, and you also knew he'd ask about it laterâbut Eddie wasn't the type of person to pry, and for that, in that exact moment, you were eternally grateful.
The drive home fell uncomfortably quiet, the only sound coming from the rumble of the van engine and the same repeating clink that you'd begged him to get checked out months ago. You remembered the way he argued about mechanic pricing and time. The reminder almost earned a smile from you, lips twitching at the corners. You chewed on your bottom lip and your eyes burned as they stared out of the window.
Although the air around you both stayed consistently quiet, your brain wouldn't shut up. You didn't realize you could feel so many emotions at onceâconfusion, frustration, guilt. It all coated the inside of your stomach and stuck like it was permanent. But it couldn't be permanent. You couldn't feel like this around Eddie forever. You wouldn't allow it. Besides, at least if you could recognize or name the feeling, you could talk to him and maybe get to the bottom of it together. But how do you tell your best friend, the person that you'd trust your life with, that you're not happy for him? How do you willingly hurt him like that?
The other option it to ignore it. You could sleep it off and if things feel the same in the morning, you could pretend like the burning in your chest doesn't exist. That's it, you thought, pretend. It felt like the only logical way.
The brakes squealed and the van halted to a stop in your driveway. Staring through the windshield, you'd never been more happy to see those cream colored shuttersâbut somehow, that feeling made you feel sick to your stomach. On a normal day, when Eddie would drop you off, the two of you would sit in the van and soak up as much time as possible, smoking or passing the time with theories about people at school. You'd even kept one of your favorite body sprays in the back seat to hide the marijuana scent when you finally did decide to begrudgingly sloth up the porch stairs. If you were in your driveway before curfew, technically, you weren't breaking any rules. Eddie came up with that conclusion a year and a half ago, and the two of you absolutely ran with it, treating it as if it were scripture. You remember the way your parents tried to fight it, arguing about school nights and education being a more important thing to focus on, but after a couple of weeks, they just let it slide. It wasn't worth the fight, and to be fair, you were always able to come up with a valid counterargument.
The seatbelt clicked as you unbuckled it, and it shot back into the retractor quickly. Instinctively, you paused and breathed a sigh out of your nose. Moving even an inch felt like it was confirming something that you were deathly afraid of, and if society would allow it, you were sure that you'd stay right there in that van forever, living out the rest of your days sitting in the thick air surrounding the two of you.
But you had to go inside, eventually, and if it wasn't for Eddie, that process would've been painfully prolonged.
"Do you want me to walk you inside?" His voice cut through the quiet like a sword, shaking you out of your thoughts.
As your eyes shot over towards him, you felt your body immediately retreating, gaze faltering the moment it landed on his. Instead, it landed on the rings lining his finger. Under the flood lights shining through the windshield, they sparkled, silver and white light blinding you. Somehow, it felt better than struggling to look him in the eye.
"I think I've got it. If you come with me, you may never get home." A dry, humorless laugh left your throat, a lingering weak smile flashing as you glanced up to him.
"Why does that have to be a bad thing?" And there it was again, the sinking feelingâthe pit in your stomach and that goofy smile that somehow made even the worst situations okay again.
You felt like you were about to choke, your throat constricting and only allowing a couple of words out. The defense in your voice startled you, though, and you could see the change on Eddies face as you spoke, "It doesn't. I'm just tired."
Eddie blinked twice, an almost stunned look on his face. It wasn't that you sounded mean per say, but unless you were joking back and forth, your tone always sounded gentle to him.
"Yeah, okay. Go get some rest. Will you call me in the morning?"
You couldn't contain your grin from the hopefulness in his voice. Your eyes flickered up to meet his again, and though your stomach never stopped turning, you whispered lowly, "Yeah. I promise."
A hot summer, a wrong kind of love, and the feeling that some things begin already tasting like goodbye.
wc: 9149Â
The heat in the valley doesn't clear out at sunset; it thickens, turning into a heavy, damp weight against the vinyl walls of the trailer. You haul a crate of heavy reference books inside, gray dust coating your fingers, sweat gathering at the back of your knees, at the hollow of your throat, at every place a human body knows how to betray itself. The porch light flickers once, a dying yellow thing, and then a shadow cuts through it.
He is leaning against the rusted railing of the steps, his shoulder tipped in like he's been there a while. Like he's comfortable being a silhouette in someone else's doorway. He carries a toolbox in one hand, and his other hand hangs loose at his side, rings catching the bad light. Three of them, silver and dull, the kind that leave a mark if you're not careful. His gaze moves down your throat and stays on your damp collarbone, following the line of your oversized shirt down to your hips, unhurried.
You drop the crate onto the linoleum with a sound like a small earthquake and pull the hem of your shirt down over your thighs. âHey,â you say, surprised.
"Ahm, hey. Uncle Wayne said the window latch in the bedroom is jammed," he says in a low voice. He looks past you at the stack of books on the floor, then back at you, something registering behind his eyes. "Said you wouldn't be able to lock it from the inside."
"I've been meaning to call him about that," you say.
"And yet."
"And yet," you agree.
You step aside, opening a narrow gap in the hallway. He ducks his head slightly, a private smile pulling at the corner of his mouth, and steps through.
The smell of him fills the trailer instantly: leather, dry grass, gasoline and tobacco. "Bedroom's in the back," you say, to your own hand, mostly.
"I figured," he calls back, already moving through your space like he belongs to it. When you round the corner, he's standing in the middle of the room with his toolbox at his feet, looking at the shelf above your desk with the same attention he'd given your collarbone thirty seconds ago.
"The Demonology of Medieval Europe," he reads, then lets out a short breath through his nose. He turns to look at you over his shoulder, one eyebrow up like the corner of his mouth. "You know, this town already tried to run me out for a RPG game." A beat. "If anyone sees me walking out of here with that under my arm, I'm a dead man. We'd both get burned at the same stake."
"I've heard worse eulogies." You nod at the window. "Over there."
"I see the window." He doesn't move toward it. "You read all of these?"
"Most of them."
"For fun?"
"For work."
He turns to look at you fully now, both eyebrows up, reassessing. There is something in the way he does it that makes it feel like being placed into a different category. A more interesting one. "What kind of work?" he asks.
"The kind that makes people ask questions at parties."
He grins at that, quick and crooked, a little surprised by it, and finally turns toward the window. He crouches down in front of it, sets the toolbox open on the floor, and you get the full view of the back of his neck, the knobs of his spine where his t-shirt hangs loose, the tattoo that starts somewhere under his collar and disappears.
"It's the casing," he says, more to himself than to you. "Warped from the heat. Happens to these old trailers." He pries at it with a flathead, jaw working once, and the latch gives with a pop that's louder than expected. He catches the frame before it rattles. "There." He tests it twice, sliding the lock open and shut. "You can actually protect yourself now."
"I feel so safe now."
He looks at you over his shoulder again, and there it is, that almost smirk that's been sitting there since the porch.
"You should, princess," he says, very simply. He packs the toolbox without rushing, while you lean in the doorframe to watch him do it because you can't think of a single reason not to. He stands, brushes his palms on the thighs of his jeans, and turns to finally face you. "I'm Eddie," he says, like this is new information, like you haven't already filed it away somewhere you'll need later.
"I know," you say.
"Uncle Wayne talks about me?"
"Hawkins is small."
"Good things, I hope."
You reach past him to push the window open an inch, testing it.
"Good enough," you say.
He stands in your hallway for another beat, toolbox in hand, like he's forgotten what the exit is for. The porch light buzzes faintly through the screen.
"Well," he says, finally. "You know where to find me if anything else needs fixing."
He says it like âfixing itâ covers a very large territory.
~~
The silence of the trailer park is loud in the way only small places at night can be: crickets in overlapping frequencies, the distant television two trailers over, the soft percussion of moths battering themselves against the yellow bulb above your head. You stand on the top step of the porch with a cigarette caught between your fingers and your elbow on the railing, watching them do it. The moths, you mean, their absolute commitment to something that will not end well for them.
A match scrapes in the dark below and then Eddie steps out from the shadow between the trailers. His boots crunch on the gravel, and he stops at the bottom step, looking up at you. He nods at your hand before saying
"Those things'll kill you, you know?"Â
You take a long drag first, then exhale slowly. "I hope so."
There is a pause in which he appears to consider this information seriously. He reaches into his jacket pocket, pulls out a crumpled red pack of Marlboros, the soft pack, already half-dead, and slides a cigarette between his lips with the easy fluency of long habit.
His thumb catches the wheel of his lighter on the first try. The blue flame jumps up and for one second illuminates the sharp line of his jaw, the way his eyes stay on your mouth while he lights up.
He takes a long drag, blowing the smoke sideways, slow, deliberate, his lips still slightly parted.
"You were saying?" you say.
"I was saying those things'll kill you." He holds the cigarette loosely between two fingers, gesturing vaguely with it. "Statistically."
"Statistically, really?" you snort.
"It's a health concern." He takes another drag. "I worry."
"You're smoking right now, Eddie."
"I'm aware of that, sweetheart." He exhales through his nose, unbothered, a faint smile tucking itself into the corner of his mouth. "Look, what I do is my business. What you do," he gestures again with the cigarette, "is a tragedy."
You laugh before you can stop it, a small sound that escapes between your teeth.
"You always come out here at odd times of the night?" he asks.
"When I can't sleep, yes."
"What keeps you up?"
You look at him. The moths keep doing their thing above your head. "Restlessness," you say, and it's true enough.
He nods slowly, like this is an answer he understands in his body. He shifts his weight, rests his forearm on the railing beside yours, close enough that you can feel the warmth radiating off him.
He brings the cigarette to his lips and for a moment you watch his profile, the way he tips his head back slightly when he exhales, the long line of his throat.
"Me too," he says to the dark. You smoke in parallel for a while. He finishes his cigarette. You finish yours. Neither of you moves to go inside.
"You know what I think?" he says eventually.
"I don't."
"I think the restlessness is the point." He drops the butt, grinds it under his boot, and when he straightens he's a step closer than he was before. The top of his head is nearly level with yours from where you stand above him. Close enough that you'd only have to lean forward slightly.Â
"I think people who can't sleep are just paying attention." His eyes move over your face, slow and unashamed. "More than they want to admit."
"...the fat joint is making a compelling case for itself."
He takes one more step up, your bodies now separated by exactly the thickness of the railing, and his hand lands beside yours on the worn wood, his little finger a breath from yours.
He's looking at you the way he looked at your bookshelf, the way he looks at things he wants to understand by going closer.
"Goodnight,sweetheart" he says, and means not yet.
"Goodnight," you say back, and mean the same.
He goes down the steps, unhurried, and you watch him disappear between the trailers. The dark swallows him whole and then it's just you and the moths and the yellow light and your own hand on the railing, your little finger still warm from almost being touched.
~~Â
The storm arrives in the wednesday afternoon without any warning worth trusting, just a greenish quality to the light. The air going suddenly still and electric, and then the sky opens. Dirt paths turn into brown rivers in minutes. You watch it happen through the small window above the kitchen sink before grabbing the laundry basket from the floor, because the alternative is re-washing everything and you are not doing that, at all.
The laundry shed is barely a shed. It is a converted storage unit at the end of the second row of trailers: corrugated metal walls that drum in the rain, a single bare bulb, two washers that work and one that doesn't, three dryers that spin on their own schedule, and it smells in there.
The dryer that has your sheets in it has decided, in the spirit of the afternoon, to stop spinning. The sheets are wound into a single heavy, damp rope around themselves. You reach in and pull, and the whole mass resists you with the passive aggression of wet laundry everywhere. You are still fighting it, one knee braced against the machine, when the shed door rattles open.
Eddie ducks inside in a rush of rain and cold air, and the door slams behind him against the wind. He's soaked through, his leather jacket dark at the shoulders, heavy with rain, his hair plastered in pieces against his forehead and neck, water running down the sides of his jaw. He shakes himself once like a dog, ineffectively.
He looks at you.
He looks at the wet sheet coiled around your arms like a defeated boa constrictor.
"Rough day?" he says.
"This shit won't come out."
"Sheets?"
"Jammed."
He looks at the space between you and the back wall. He looks at the dryer. He does a quick calculation that you can see him doing, and then he takes a step forward, because he is Eddie Munson and apparently this is just what he does: he steps into spaces.
His chest is at your back, your shoulders inside the bracket of his arms, his hands coming over yours on the wet canvas.
The rain on his jacket is cold against your arm. His skin underneath is warm; you can feel it through the damp fabric, that specific heat that has no right being as present as it is. These two things happen at once and you feel both of them with equal clarity, and you do not move.
"You have to push the latch from underneath," he says, low and close. Not a whisper exactly, just what his voice does when there isn't room for it to go anywhere else. "This one sticks. Wayne's been meaning to fix it."
"Wayne's been meaning to fix a lot of things."
"He's a busy man." His fingers press over yours, guiding them to the right angle against the mechanism. His hands are large, the rings gone, and his palms are calloused in specific places, guitar-player places. You feel every point of contact. You are being very quiet about it. "Right there. Now push up."
You push up, the latch yields with a clunk, and the drum releases its grip on the sheet. The wet mass loosens in your hands.
He does not move away.
His arms stay bracketed around yours, his chest stays against your shoulder blades, and you can feel, through the damp jacket, through the thin material of your shirt, he's breathing slower now than it should be, deeper, the way someone breathes when they're trying to focus on something they're not looking at directly.
"Got it?" he says.
"Yeah," you say, "got it."
The dryer ticks. The single bulb swings slightly in the draft from a gap in the corrugated wall, making the shadows shift all the time.
"You're dripping on my laundry," you say.
"Little bit, yeah." His voice is still close. You can feel it more than hear it through the drum of the rain.
"You're going to make me redo the whole load."
"That would be a shame." A pause. "I'd feel terrible."
"You don't sound terrible."
"I'm hiding it." Another pause, and in it the specific quality of someone choosing their next words. "I'm very good at hiding things."
You turn your head slightly, not enough to face him, just enough that you're no longer fully facing away, that the line of your jaw is visible to him if he's looking. Which he is.
"Are you?" you say.
"Mostly," he says. Then, quietly, with something honest in it that he hasn't quite covered over: "Not always."
"I should probably," you start.
"Probably," he agrees, and he doesn't move for another full second, a second that you will find yourself thinking about later, at inconvenient moments.
Then he steps back. The cold air rushes into the space where he was and it's a physical thing, an absence you can map to your spine. He leans against the opposite wall, all of eighteen inches away, which is as much distance as the shed allows, and runs one hand through his wet hair, pushing it back from his face.
He looks at you as the bulb swings. He has a small cut above his left eyebrow, old and faded, that you haven't noticed before.
"You want help with the sheets?" he asks.
"I had it."
"You had it for twenty minutes before I got here and the machine disagreed."
"I was making progress."
"You were losing a fight to a dryer, câmon sweetheart."
You pull the sheet out properly now, bundling it against your chest, and look at him over the top of it. He's almost smiling. His jacket is still dripping onto the cement floor, a slow, steady sound under the rain.
"You can stay until the storm passes," you say, which is not an answer to what he said.
He understands it as one anyway.
He slides down the wall until he's sitting on the floor, back against the corrugated metal, long legs stretched in front of him. "So," he says, studying the ceiling. "Demonology."
You start folding the sheet, badly, in the way sheets always get folded in small spaces. "What about it."
"Is it a hobby or a calling?"
"Does it have to be one of those?"
He looks at you from the floor, from under his damp hair, and grins: slow and warm and a little dangerous, the way certain things you should be careful around are sometimes the most beautiful things in the room.
"No," he says. "I guess it doesn't."
The rain keeps coming. You sit on top of the middle dryer, the one that works, and let the hum of it warm you through, and you talk; not about anything that matters yet, not about anything that costs you.Â
Somewhere between the third question and the seventh you stop being careful about what you say. Not enough to notice, just enough that he does.
"You're easier to talk to than you look," he says at some point.
"What do I look like?"
He considers this with more seriousness than it deserves.
"Like someone who could wreck my life," he says, casual, like he's noting the weather.
When the rain stops, neither of you notices right away.
~~
The Hideout is the kind of place you don't end up in on purpose.
You ended up in it on purpose only in the sense that the rain was impossible and the door was the closest one. Now you've been here for forty minutes with a drink that's been empty for twenty, watching the condensation run down the side of the glass in slow, uneven tracks.
The lighting is low enough to forgive a lot of things, smells like cigarettes and old leather and beer that belongs to a previous decade. Someone on the small stage is doing something to a guitar riff that it didn't deserve, and three stools to your left someone is talking loud enough for two conversations, and you haven't heard a word of any of it,anyway.
You're watching the second drop reach the bottom of the glass when the stool beside you scrapes back. Then he says your name like he's setting something down carefully. You look up.
Eddie is standing with one hand on the back of the stool, still in his jacket, rain-damp at the shoulders as always. His eyes move over the empty glass, then back to you.
"Didn't take you for a Hideout girl," he says.
"I'm not. It was raining, thatâs all"
"Sure." He says it like he doesn't entirely believe you and finds that interesting, he sits, signaling the bartender with the ease of someone who has never once worried about whether a room would receive him. The bartender nods immediately, you file this away without meaning to.
"They're bad," you say, nodding at the stage.
"Tragically." He doesn't look away from the band. "The bassist has potential. The rest of them are crying for help."
"Harsh."
"Accurate."
"You play, right?" you say. You already know. He probably knows you know.
"Little bit," he says, and the way he says it, low and with that half smile already happening, makes it clear it is not a little bit at all.
You let yourself look at him, just for a second more, actually look at him, the way you've been carefully not doing since day one, and the problem, the real problem, is that it doesn't help.
"Right," you say, and look back at your drink.
"You want another?" he asks.
"I shouldn't."
"That's not what I asked."
You push the glass forward.
The band finishes their set to applause that is generous considering, and in the small shuffle of the stage reset someone leans down from the monitors and says something to Eddie.Â
"You know them?" you ask.
"Thursdays are mine," he says, and his face does something that is not quite modesty and not quite arrogance but lives comfortably in the neighborhood of both.
"Is that so?"
"Eight months running." He finishes his drink, sets the glass down with a small, definitive sound. "I've become something of an institution."
"This place smells like an institution."
He points at you, completely serious. "Atmosphere. I created that."
He stands, shrugs the jacket off in a single movement and drapes it over the back of the stool. Underneath, just the black t-shirt, the denim vest, the patches catching the low light.
"You're going up there?" you say. It comes out less like a question than you intended.
He looks at you over his shoulder, and there it is, that specific version of his smile, the one that knows exactly what it's doing.
"Don't go anywhere!" he says.
You watch him take the three steps up to the stage. Pick up the guitar with the ease of something he stopped thinking about years ago. Watch the room shift in a way you didn't notice it could shift, a current changing direction.
You pull his jacket off the back of the stool and set it on your lap without thinking about it.
The room shifts before he plays a single note. It's a small thing, the way people reorient without deciding to, drinks paused halfway to mouths, conversations losing a thread. He adjusts the strap, says something into the mic that makes the front of the room laugh, and you didn't catch it but you see the effect of it, the way the space loosens around him.
Then he plays.
You've heard people play guitar. You grew up with a radio and a television and enough county fairs to know what competent sounds like. This is not that. This is something that starts in his hands and moves through the instrument like it was waiting there and he's just the one who knew where to find it.
You pick up your drink. You put it down without drinking.
He moves differently up there. Not performed differently, just differently, like the stage is the place where the rest of him has room to exist. His head drops slightly when he hits something he likes. His eyes close for a bar and then open, find the middle distance, find the back wall. Find you, once, just for a second, before moving on like it was nothing.
You look down at the jacket in your lap: the patches, the worn collar, the smell of it, rain and something underneath that has no business being as present as it is.
You look back up and you realize, sitting there, that you've been collecting versions of his face without meaning to.
He plays three songs. You know this because you count them. The last one ends on a held note that he lets die slowly, deliberately, like he's deciding when to let go.Â
The room comes back to itself. The applause is different from what the previous band got: warmer, more specific, the kind that knows what it's responding to.
He says something into the mic again, easy and unhurried, thanks the bar by name like it's an old argument he's fond of. Then he hands the guitar off and steps down from the stage, and you have approximately four seconds to decide what to do with your face before he's crossing the room toward you.
He drops back onto the stool. His cheeks are slightly flushed, his hair worse than before, and he reaches for his drink before remembering it's empty. He signals the bartender, then turns to look at you.
He looks at the jacket in your lap. "So," he says.
"So," you say.
"Verdict."
You take a second and he lets you take it, leaning one elbow on the bar, watching you with the patience of someone who already knows the answer and is enjoying the wait.
"You're good," you say, because there's no version of honesty that gets you out of this one.
"I know." No hesitation. But the way he's looking at you when he says it takes the arrogance out of it somehow, replaces it with something more direct. "I wanted you to know too."
The bar fills the silence around that. Someone laughs too loud near the door, the bartender sets two fresh drinks down and disappears.
"The jacket," he says eventually, nodding at your lap.
"You left it."
"I did, saving my place for after the show."
"I was holding it," you say, "so it wouldn't fall."
"Right." The corner of his mouth moves. "Considerate of you."
"I am a considerate person."
He looks at you for a moment in that way he has, the one that makes you feel like you've been read without giving permission.
"Yeah," he says quietly, "I'm starting to think there's a lot of things about you."
You don't answer that but you don't give the jacket back either.
~~
It's Friday, which means nothing except that the week has finally stopped moving and left you somewhere quiet with a cigarette and your feet on the railing.
You hear his door before you see him: the specific sound of it, the particular weight of his step on the gravel. He's got his keys in his hand, jacket on, heading for the van.
He sees you and automatically slows.
"Going to the store," he says, by way of hello.
"Okay."
He turns back with the expression of someone who already knows what they're about to do.
"You want anything?"
You look at your cigarette, at him. You think about the Friday night stretched out in front of you: the trailer, the couch, the film you've been meaning to watch.
"Popcorn," you say. "The microwave kind, oh! And Coke. And something with chocolate."
He stares at you for a moment.
"That's a lot of wants for someone sitting alone on a Friday."
"Are you going or not?"
"I'm going." He's already turning toward the van. "I'm just saying. You could've led with the movie."
You watch him go as you finish the cigarette.
"It's Nightmare on Elm Street," you call after him.
He raises one hand without turning around. Acknowledgment, or something close to it.
He comes back twenty minutes later with a paper bag and lets himself be let in, and the next part happens the way things happen when no one is officially deciding anything, he ends up on the floor with his back against the couch, you're sitting criss-cross above him, the lamp doing the bare minimum, the Coke sweating onto the coffee table, and Freddy Krueger doing his thing on the screen.
The popcorn sits between you, the joint appears at some point, the way it does.
"She knows she's in the dream," he says, after a while. "And she's still going toward him."
"Eddie..."
"I just think it's worth discussing."
"Watch the movie."
He watches the movie, mostly.Â
The room gets warmer and quieter and the sounds from outside arrive slightly later than they should, and the conversation moves the way conversations move when no one is steering. From the film to nothing in particular to something that starts to matter without announcing itself.
"Can I ask you something?" he says to the TV.
"You're going to anyway."
"Why Indiana?"
You look at the screen. "Cheap. Quiet. Wayne had the trailer."
"That's the practical answer."
You glance down at him, he's still looking at the TV, his chin tipped up slightly, his profile caught in the blue light.
"I got divorced," you say simply, because it's late and the weed has done what weed does,"Eight months ago."
"It wasn't loud," you say. "No one screamed. It was very quiet, actually." You pull the sleeve of your shirt over your hand. "He had this way of explaining my feelings back to me. Why were too much. Why my reactions were disproportionate." A pause. "He did it long enough that I kinda started to agree with him, you know?"
The movie fills the silence. Someone runs down a hallway.
"Sorry," you say, and mean it. "That was..." You reach for something and land on the wrong thing entirely. "Freddy Krueger is a better conversationalist."
It lands badly, no timing at all, you know it lands badly. But he laughs anyway, a real one, and there it is: the slight fold at the corner of his eye, the crease in his left cheek, the specific unguarded quality of a face mid-laugh.
You look away first.
"He did a number on you," Eddie says, quieter now, the laugh still warm in his voice.
"He was very thorough."
"Yeah." He turns the chocolate wrapper over in his hands. "I've met guys like that. They make you think the problem is the size of you." He pauses, not quite getting the next part right, trying again. "You're not small. You've just been in a small place."
"You don't know that," you say.
"I've been paying attention all week," he says simply, like it's not an admission. "and I know youâre bigger than this, than him."
On screen someone screams. He shifts, turning to face you properly, his arm coming up to rest on the couch cushion beside your knee. The performance is gone, his voice dropping into the register it finds in small spaces.
"Look," he says. "I know you're older and you've got your whole," he gestures vaguely at you, at the blazer on the chair, at the stacked books, at the general fact of you, "thing going on. And I know I'm," another gesture at himself, less certain, "what I am." His jaw tightens slightly. "But I've been thinking about you since Monday, and I'm pretty bad at pretending I'm not."
You open your mouth but what comes out is a cough. Not a small one. A full, graceless, weed-in-the-wrong-place cough that bends you forward and will not stop, your eyes watering, one hand braced on the cushion.
"Are you?" he starts, between his own laughter.
You hold up one finger. The cough continues.
He gets up, goes to the kitchen, comes back with a glass of water and crouches in front of you, his mouth pressed shut in the specific way of someone fighting very hard not to laugh at you.
You take the water and drink. The coughing subsides.
"Okay," you say, hoarse.
"Okay," he says, and he's smiling, the real one, and he's close, and you're still catching your breath, and the TV is still going, and outside the park is still quiet.
"You were saying," you say.
"I think you heard me," he says.
You look at him. He looks at you. The lamp in the corner keeps doing its minimum.
"I need more water," you say.
"Sure," he says, and doesn't move, and you don't move either, and the movie keeps going unwatched in the blue light of the room.
~~
Saturday morning has the quality of something that hasn't been addressed yet.
He's gone when you wake up. The blanket folded on the couch with the particular neatness of someone who didn't want to leave evidence of being there.
The coffee you make is for one person. You drink it at the window and watch the park wake up slow under a gray sky that hasn't decided what it wants to do yet.
You're on the porch with the second cup when he passes, jacket on, hair still damp, looking at his boots until he looks up.
"Hey," he says.
"Hey."
He stops. You can see the decision happening: his feet slowing before the rest of him catches up.
You hold up your mug. An offer.
He comes up the steps without a word and takes it, wraps both hands around it, and stands beside you at the railing. You look at the park. He looks at the park. The gray sky stays undecided.
After a moment he reaches into his jacket and pulls out a cigarette, lights it, and holds the pack toward you.
"I'm almost out," you say, taking one.
"I know," he says to the park.
You smoke in a silence that has a week's worth of things in it. When the cigarette is done he sets the empty mug on the railing, reaches back into his jacket, and puts a full unopened pack next to it. Marlboros, soft pack. He doesn't look at you when he does it.
"Eddie," you say.
"I noticed," he says simply. "That's all."
The gray sky makes up its mind. The first drops hit the railing between you and he goes down the steps.
Wayne is at the kitchen table with his coffee and the newspaper and the particular stillness of a man who has been awake since five and has already formed opinions about the day.
He doesn't look up when Eddie comes in; he turns a page. Eddie gets himself another coffee with shaken hands. Wayne turns another page.
"Funny thing," Wayne says to the newspaper. "Van was in the garage all night, but you werenât here."
"Roads were bad," Eddie says.
"Rained at eleven." Wayne turns a page. "Cleared up by midnight."
Eddie drinks his coffee, remembering that at eleven, he was intoxicated by your perfume, your laugh, you.
"She's pretty," Wayne says.
"Wayne."
"I'm just saying, boy."
"You don't have to, please."
"Smart too, from what I can tell." He folds the corner of a page down, thoughtful. "Those books she carries around."
"They're for work."
"Mm." Wayne takes a slow sip of coffee. "What kind of work?"
"The kind thatâŚ" Eddie stops. "I don't know, Wayne."
"But you've talked about it."
Eddie's ears go the specific red of a man who has run out of deflections and knows it.
"She seems like good people," Wayne says simply, and picks up his newspaper like the conversation is over, which it is, because Wayne has always known when he's made his point.
Someone knocks on the door.
They both look at it. Wayne looks back at Eddie over the top of the newspaper. Eddie looks at the door, then at his ears in the reflection of the window, then at the door again.
"I'll get it," he says.
"I imagine," Wayne says.
You're standing on the porch with your hands in your pockets and the unopened pack of Marlboros he left on the railing, which you are holding in a way that doesn't quite explain itself.
"Movie!" you say. "Tonight. My place. Eight o'clock?"
He leans against the doorframe. His ears are still red, which you notice and file away for later.
"What are we watching?" he grins.
"Does it matter?"
"No," he says. "Not really."
"Eight o'clock," you say, and go back down the steps.
He watches you cross the gravel. Behind him the kitchen is very quiet. Wayne is still pretending to read until,
"Eight o'clock," he says to no one in particular.
"Wayne!!!"
"Just memorizing," Wayne says. "In case you lose track."
He closes the door. He stands there for a second with his hand still on the knob. Then he does a small, contained, deeply undignified fist pump at the floor.
Wayne doesn't look up from the newspaper. "Just neighbors my ass," he says.
Eddie straightens up immediately. "Yep," he says with great dignity, and goes to his room.
It's ten past eleven in the morning. You have eight hours and fifty minutes.
You pick up your book, read the same paragraph four times and retain nothing. You put the book down.
You clean the bathroom, which didn't need cleaning. You rearrange the books on the shelf above the desk, then put them back the way they were because the original order was fine and you were just looking for something to do with your hands.
At two o'clock you hear the van leave. You don't go to the window. You are a grown adult and you don't go to the window, and when you hear it come back forty minutes later you also don't go to the window, and you are handling this very well.
At four you make tea you don't want. At five you eat something you don't taste. At six you sit on the couch with the television on and watch it without seeing it, your eyes moving to the clock with the frequency of someone who knows exactly what they're doing and is embarrassed about it.
At six forty-five you go to the bathroom and look at yourself in the mirror for a long moment.
"It's just a movie," you tell your reflection. Your reflection doesn't look convinced either.
At seven fifty-eight you sit back down on the couch, criss-cross, with a throw pillow in your lap and look at the door. At eight o'clock exactly, he knocks.
You wait three seconds so it doesn't seem like you were waiting for him at the door, then you open it.
He's showered. His hair is still slightly damp and he's got a clean shirt on, dark, the sleeves pushed up, and he's holding a bag that smells like something fried from the diner two streets over.
He has the specific expression of someone who also waited three seconds before knocking.
"Eight o'clock," he says.
"You're on time," you say.
"I'm always on time."
"You were late on Monday."
"The window was..." he stops. "Are you going to let me in?"
You step back from the door.
You end up where you always end up: you on the couch, him on the floor below you, the food between you, the lamp barely doing its work in the corner.
The food goes, the wrappers get thrown away. He comes back and sits, and you put something on the TV, something neither of you will watch, and the room settles into the specific silence of two people pretending to be comfortable.
On screen someone runs down a corridor. Someone else follows.
"She's going to trip," you say.
"She's going to trip," he says at the exact same moment.
She trips. You look at each other.
He's already looking at you. He has been for a while, you realize. Not at the screen, at you.
Looking in that way he has, the one that makes you feel like you've been read without giving permission. But this time there's no deflection left in him. The playful edge is gone, replaced by a quiet, heavy gravity that makes your breath hitch.
He moves, certain but unhurried. His hand finds your chin, his thumb brushing over your lower lip with a slow reverence that sends a shiver straight down your spine. When he kisses you, it isn't an anchor dropping; it is a total, breathless surrender. His lips touch yours with a gentleness so deliberate it feels almost sacred, as if he is trying to memorize the exact shape of you in the dark.
You make a small sound against his mouth, and the noise seems to undo something deep inside him. His hand slides up into your hair, his long fingers tangling in the strands, tilting your head back just enough to deepen the kiss. It is heavy, steady, and consuming.
He pulls you closer, his other hand anchoring at your waist before sliding down to your hip to lift you onto his lap. He settles you there, his large hands trembling just a fraction against your skin. He holds you with the quiet, desperate intensity of a man who knows he is touching something far better than he deserves, his face buried in the crook of your neck as he breathes you in, completely at your mercy.
His knee slides between yours, slow and certain, his mouth moving to your jaw, your throat, with the specific, unhurried attention of someone who has been thinking about exactly this. For all his usual restless, youthful bravado, here he lets you dictate the pace, completely yielding to a maturity that usually intimidates him.
"Eddie," you say to the ceiling, your fingers tightening in his hair.
"Yeah," he murmurs against your skin, his lips brushing your collarbone. He pauses for a fraction of a second, his breath hot against your throat. "You have no idea what you do to me. How long I've been losing my mind over this."
Your hand finds the back of his neck, the metal of his chain, the radiating warmth of his skin. You pull him back up to your mouth because the ceiling is suddenly far less interesting. He lets out a low, ragged sigh against your lips, a sound of pure relief, before he catches your mouth again. The lamp keeps doing its minimum in the corner, and outside, the park remains completely indifferent to any of this.
At some point he pulls back just enough. His forehead rests against yours, his breath uneven, his hands still tangled deep in your hair as if heâs anchored there, looking at you with a sudden, quiet vulnerability that erases every year between you.
"Okay," he says, his voice a low vow.
"Okay," you say.
Neither of you moves. The space between you is heavy with it.
"The movie," he whispers, a faint, breathless attempt to catch his bearings.
"What movie," you say.
He laughs, a soft huff against your lips, and kisses you again, slower this time. It is a deep, worshipful press of his mouth that belongs entirely to the two of you, while the TV keeps going unwatched in the blue light of the room.
~~
Sunday starts the way things start when no one has officially decided anything, slowly, and without an exit.Â
You wake up to warmth. His arm is around you, heavy and certain, his chest against your back, his breath slow and even against the back of your neck. The room is gray with early light. The TV is off, the lamp is off, and the park outside is doing its quiet Sunday thing.
He's awake. You can tell by the quality of the stillness, not the loose stillness of sleep but the careful stillness of someone who has been awake for a while and decided not to move.
You don't move either.
His arm doesn't tighten. He doesn't say anything. He just stays, his hand open against your ribs, his breathing slow and deliberate, and you lie there in the gray light and let the morning take its time, and neither of you acknowledges that you're both awake, because acknowledging it would make it into something you'd have to address, and right now it's just this. His warmth at your back, the quiet park, the specific weight of a Sunday that hasn't asked anything of either of you yet.
Eventually you shift. Just slightly.
His arm tightens. Just slightly.
"Morning," he says, his voice still rough with sleep.
"Morning," you say.
A beat.
"Coffee?" he says.
"Please," you say.
He leaves at ten. You watch the van pull out from the window, which you do now, openly, without pretending you're not doing it.
He's back at noon.
He knocks twice and when you open the door he's holding a paper bag from the bakery on Elm and wearing yesterday's shirt and he looks at you with the straightforward expression of someone who has stopped pretending the van going anywhere was a real departure.
"Thought you left," you say.
"I got pastries," he says.
You step back from the door.
The afternoon happens in pieces, but the light is already changing, the warm amber of morning thinning into something flatter, the kind of gold that means the weekend is running out of air. He fixes the cabinet hinge without being asked, finds the screwdriver himself, does it while you sit on the counter eating a pastry and pretending to read. On Monday it had been a novelty. Today it feels like a countdown.
Later he finds your record player and puts something on, something slow and guitar-heavy, and the trailer fills with it. He sits on the floor with his back against the couch. You sit above him. His head tips back after a while and rests against your knee and you let it, your hand finding his hair without quite deciding to.
The record ends. The needle clicks on the spindle, over and over, a small patient sound in the quiet room.
Neither of you gets up to turn it over.
By the time he makes dinner the blue twilight is pressing hard against the window, making the room feel smaller. Eggs, toast, the last of the tomatoes. You sit across from him at the small table and the conversation is easy the way it's been all day, but underneath it something has shifted, the specific weight of hours that know they're numbered.
He says something that makes you almost laugh. You watch him watch you almost laugh, that warm look he doesn't always let you see.
You reach across the table. Your hand covers his. He turns it over and holds on, and his grip is slightly tighter than yesterday, a quiet reflex against something neither of you is naming.
The lamp is on low, the record back on, the dishes done. He's sitting on the edge of the bed watching you cross the room toward him, and his hands find your waist when you're close enough, and this time it's nothing like Saturday's urgency.
This is slower. This is deliberate. This is two people choosing, quietly, with full knowledge of what they're doing.
His forehead drops to your sternum for a moment, just resting there, his arms around you, his breath evening out.
"Hey," he says, quietly.
"Hey," you say.
He looks up.
You stay.
Afterward the room is dark and quiet and he's on his back with one arm around you, his rings on the nightstand in a small pile, his chest rising and falling in the particular slow rhythm of someone who has stopped performing anything. His other hand moves in your hair, absently, the way his fingers move on strings.
"Don't go anywhere," you say. Not tonight. Not in general. Both.
His arm tightens.
"Okay," he says, and means something large by it.
You wake up before him in the gray early light of Monday.
You get up carefully. You shower. You stand in front of the mirror and cover the marks on your throat with concealer until your neck looks like it belongs to someone who spent the week alone, which is the version of you that needs to exist in approximately two hours.
Then you take the gray blazer from the hanger. The good one, the structured one. You button it to the top. You pull your hair into a neat twist, pin the loose strands, straighten your collar. You locate the lesson plan in your bag. Literature, Hawkins Community College, Room 214. You check it until the words stop meaning anything.
You look like yourself. The other self.
You're pouring your coffee when you hear him stir.
He appears in the doorway a minute later, hair wrecked, eyes half-open, no shirt, and you make a very brief and very private mental note about the tattoos and the line of his shoulders and the general unfairness of the situation before returning to your coffee like a professional.
He pours himself a cup. Leans against the counter beside you. Looks at the lesson plan without picking it up.
"First day," he says.
"First day," you say.
"You nervous?"
"No," you say, which is mostly true.
"Liar," he says, without heat.
He puts his mug down. He reaches out and straightens your collar, which didn't need straightening, his fingers brief and warm against your neck. Then he drops his hand.
"You're going to be good at it," he says. Simply. Like it's a fact he's already confirmed.
"You don't know that," you say.
"I've been paying attention," he says. "Since Monday."
The other Monday. Last Monday. A week ago, which is either very short or very long depending on how you measure it.
You pick up your bag, your knuckles white against the leather. He walks you to the door, four steps, completely unnecessary, and catches your hand before you go down the steps. He turns you back, easy and unhurried, and kisses you once. Not long, not dramatic. Just the kind of thing people do when they've become the kind of people who do this.
"Good luck," he says. That half smile, the real one.
You look at him standing in your doorway with his coffee and his bare shoulders and that smile, and you think, briefly and inconveniently, that you are in serious trouble.
"Lock up when you leave," you say.
He raises his mug. Something between a toast and a goodbye.
You go down the steps. You don't look back, because if you look back you won't go, and you have a class at nine and a lesson plan and a gray blazer and a version of yourself that has somewhere to be.
Behind you the door stays open for a moment before you hear it close.
~~
Monday
The hallway smells of floor wax and coffee and the particular energy of people who haven't yet decided if they want to be here. You walk it with both hands around your travel mug, your blazer buttoned, your heels making a sound you recognize as armor.
Room 214 is yours by eight-fifteen. You write your name on the board in large block letters, set the attendance sheet square on the desk, arrange the chalk on the ledge the way you always do, a small, private ritual, the body taking over when the mind needs to settle. Your territory. The desk is a shield. You know this about yourself: you are good at this part, the standing-in-front-of-rooms part, the clear-voiced and certain part. You built it deliberately and it holds.
The room fills the way college rooms fill, without urgency, people arriving in ones and twos with coffee cups and half-open backpacks, finding seats with the specific social calculus of people who don't know each other yet but are already deciding what they think. Chairs scrape. Somebody drops a binder. You watch them settle with your hands resting on the desk, and you feel yourself shift into the register you know, attentive, warm, contained, and it feels clean. It feels like solid ground.
You pick up the attendance sheet.
The door is almost closed.
"Sorry." A drawling voice, unhurried, slightly out of breath. "Got stuck behind a tractor on route 9. Hawkins thing."
The professional smile is already shaped on your lips when you look up.
The smile stays. It has nowhere to go.
Eddie is standing in the doorframe.
His leather jacket is clean, actually clean, and the denim vest beneath it pressed flat, the patches in careful order, and his dark hair is damp and combed back from his face, which makes him look younger and simultaneously makes every angle of him more visible: the jaw, the cheekbones, the cut above his brow. He has a blue notebook gripped in one large hand, his knuckles white around it, the rings gone. He's already scanning the room for a seat with the slightly defensive posture of someone used to arriving places where they're not entirely wanted.
Then his eyes find you.
His feet stop.
The notebook drops slightly in his grip. His gaze moves down the gray blazer, slowly, despite himself, despite everything, then to the chalk between your fingers, then past you to the blackboard, where your name and your title sit in large block letters that seem, in this moment, to have been written specifically to rearrange something in him.
You watch it happen. You watch his jaw go slack and then harden. You watch the color leave his face and come back wrong, and you watch him run the same math you ran this morning in the bathroom mirror, the window latch, the porch, the laundry shed, the Hideout, Friday's floor, Saturday's couch, Sunday's everything, backward against Room 214 and Literature and the attendance sheet in your hand, arriving at the only answer there is.
The other students are finding their seats. No one is looking at him yet.
He looks at you. You look at him.
There is nothing either of you can do with your face that is adequate to this moment.
You lower your eyes to the attendance sheet first because one of you has to, because the room is full and twenty-three students will notice in approximately four more seconds if you keep standing here. You find your voice where you left it, clean and level, exactly where you need it.
"Find a seat, please," you say. To the room. To him. To no one specifically.
He moves.
He walks toward the back of the room with his steps heavy and deliberate, not looking at you, his jaw set hard. He pulls the last chair in the row with a screech of metal on linoleum that makes three people look up and then look away. He sits. He sets the blue notebook on the desk. He crosses his arms tight against his chest.
You call attendance.
When you say his name, Munson, E., third from the bottom, there is a pause that lasts exactly one second too long.
"Here," he says, to the desk.
Flat. Contained. The voice of someone who has taken everything and put it somewhere it can't be seen.
You move to the syllabus.
You talk about the semester, about Fitzgerald and Steinbeck, about the literature of disillusionment and reinvention, about characters who build themselves into something new and spend the rest of the book paying for it. Your voice is steady. Your hands are steady. You do not look at the back row unless you have to.
You're talking about Gatsby, about the green light, about the particular cruelty of wanting something just out of reach, when a voice comes from the back of the room.
"Does it count as reinvention," Eddie says, not quite raising his hand, "if you didn't know you needed it until it was already happening?"
The room turns to look at him. You don't.
You keep your eyes on the middle distance, on the space above everyone's heads, on the place you look when you need your voice to stay level.
"That's one of the questions the text asks," you say. "Whether transformation is ever truly chosen, or whether it chooses us."
A beat.
"And if it chooses you," he says, quieter now, "and then the situation changes. What happens to the person you were becoming."
The fluorescent light hums. Someone shifts in their seat.
You look at him then. You have to. It would be stranger not to.
He's looking directly at you for the first time since he walked in, his arms still crossed, his jaw still set, but his eyes are doing something else entirely, something that has nothing to do with Fitzgerald and everything to do with Sunday morning and a door closing and a van on route 9 that he drove to a building he didn't know you'd be standing in.
"That," you say, carefully, "is exactly what we're here to find out."
He holds your gaze for one more second. Then he looks down at the blue notebook and opens it, picks up his pen, and writes something you can't see.
The class continues. The ordinary machinery of a Monday morning grinds forward the way it always does.
Fourteen hours ago his arm was around you in the gray early light.
You write Chapter 1 â due Friday on the board.
The chalk makes a clean, precise sound in the silent room.
A hot summer, a wrong kind of love, and the feeling that some things begin already tasting like goodbye.
wc: 9149Â
The heat in the valley doesn't clear out at sunset; it thickens, turning into a heavy, damp weight against the vinyl walls of the trailer. You haul a crate of heavy reference books inside, gray dust coating your fingers, sweat gathering at the back of your knees, at the hollow of your throat, at every place a human body knows how to betray itself. The porch light flickers once, a dying yellow thing, and then a shadow cuts through it.
He is leaning against the rusted railing of the steps, his shoulder tipped in like he's been there a while. Like he's comfortable being a silhouette in someone else's doorway. He carries a toolbox in one hand, and his other hand hangs loose at his side, rings catching the bad light. Three of them, silver and dull, the kind that leave a mark if you're not careful. His gaze moves down your throat and stays on your damp collarbone, following the line of your oversized shirt down to your hips, unhurried.
You drop the crate onto the linoleum with a sound like a small earthquake and pull the hem of your shirt down over your thighs. âHey,â you say, surprised.
"Ahm, hey. Uncle Wayne said the window latch in the bedroom is jammed," he says in a low voice. He looks past you at the stack of books on the floor, then back at you, something registering behind his eyes. "Said you wouldn't be able to lock it from the inside."
"I've been meaning to call him about that," you say.
"And yet."
"And yet," you agree.
You step aside, opening a narrow gap in the hallway. He ducks his head slightly, a private smile pulling at the corner of his mouth, and steps through.
The smell of him fills the trailer instantly: leather, dry grass, gasoline and tobacco. "Bedroom's in the back," you say, to your own hand, mostly.
"I figured," he calls back, already moving through your space like he belongs to it. When you round the corner, he's standing in the middle of the room with his toolbox at his feet, looking at the shelf above your desk with the same attention he'd given your collarbone thirty seconds ago.
"The Demonology of Medieval Europe," he reads, then lets out a short breath through his nose. He turns to look at you over his shoulder, one eyebrow up like the corner of his mouth. "You know, this town already tried to run me out for a RPG game." A beat. "If anyone sees me walking out of here with that under my arm, I'm a dead man. We'd both get burned at the same stake."
"I've heard worse eulogies." You nod at the window. "Over there."
"I see the window." He doesn't move toward it. "You read all of these?"
"Most of them."
"For fun?"
"For work."
He turns to look at you fully now, both eyebrows up, reassessing. There is something in the way he does it that makes it feel like being placed into a different category. A more interesting one. "What kind of work?" he asks.
"The kind that makes people ask questions at parties."
He grins at that, quick and crooked, a little surprised by it, and finally turns toward the window. He crouches down in front of it, sets the toolbox open on the floor, and you get the full view of the back of his neck, the knobs of his spine where his t-shirt hangs loose, the tattoo that starts somewhere under his collar and disappears.
"It's the casing," he says, more to himself than to you. "Warped from the heat. Happens to these old trailers." He pries at it with a flathead, jaw working once, and the latch gives with a pop that's louder than expected. He catches the frame before it rattles. "There." He tests it twice, sliding the lock open and shut. "You can actually protect yourself now."
"I feel so safe now."
He looks at you over his shoulder again, and there it is, that almost smirk that's been sitting there since the porch.
"You should, princess," he says, very simply. He packs the toolbox without rushing, while you lean in the doorframe to watch him do it because you can't think of a single reason not to. He stands, brushes his palms on the thighs of his jeans, and turns to finally face you. "I'm Eddie," he says, like this is new information, like you haven't already filed it away somewhere you'll need later.
"I know," you say.
"Uncle Wayne talks about me?"
"Hawkins is small."
"Good things, I hope."
You reach past him to push the window open an inch, testing it.
"Good enough," you say.
He stands in your hallway for another beat, toolbox in hand, like he's forgotten what the exit is for. The porch light buzzes faintly through the screen.
"Well," he says, finally. "You know where to find me if anything else needs fixing."
He says it like âfixing itâ covers a very large territory.
~~
The silence of the trailer park is loud in the way only small places at night can be: crickets in overlapping frequencies, the distant television two trailers over, the soft percussion of moths battering themselves against the yellow bulb above your head. You stand on the top step of the porch with a cigarette caught between your fingers and your elbow on the railing, watching them do it. The moths, you mean, their absolute commitment to something that will not end well for them.
A match scrapes in the dark below and then Eddie steps out from the shadow between the trailers. His boots crunch on the gravel, and he stops at the bottom step, looking up at you. He nods at your hand before saying
"Those things'll kill you, you know?"Â
You take a long drag first, then exhale slowly. "I hope so."
There is a pause in which he appears to consider this information seriously. He reaches into his jacket pocket, pulls out a crumpled red pack of Marlboros, the soft pack, already half-dead, and slides a cigarette between his lips with the easy fluency of long habit.
His thumb catches the wheel of his lighter on the first try. The blue flame jumps up and for one second illuminates the sharp line of his jaw, the way his eyes stay on your mouth while he lights up.
He takes a long drag, blowing the smoke sideways, slow, deliberate, his lips still slightly parted.
"You were saying?" you say.
"I was saying those things'll kill you." He holds the cigarette loosely between two fingers, gesturing vaguely with it. "Statistically."
"Statistically, really?" you snort.
"It's a health concern." He takes another drag. "I worry."
"You're smoking right now, Eddie."
"I'm aware of that, sweetheart." He exhales through his nose, unbothered, a faint smile tucking itself into the corner of his mouth. "Look, what I do is my business. What you do," he gestures again with the cigarette, "is a tragedy."
You laugh before you can stop it, a small sound that escapes between your teeth.
"You always come out here at odd times of the night?" he asks.
"When I can't sleep, yes."
"What keeps you up?"
You look at him. The moths keep doing their thing above your head. "Restlessness," you say, and it's true enough.
He nods slowly, like this is an answer he understands in his body. He shifts his weight, rests his forearm on the railing beside yours, close enough that you can feel the warmth radiating off him.
He brings the cigarette to his lips and for a moment you watch his profile, the way he tips his head back slightly when he exhales, the long line of his throat.
"Me too," he says to the dark. You smoke in parallel for a while. He finishes his cigarette. You finish yours. Neither of you moves to go inside.
"You know what I think?" he says eventually.
"I don't."
"I think the restlessness is the point." He drops the butt, grinds it under his boot, and when he straightens he's a step closer than he was before. The top of his head is nearly level with yours from where you stand above him. Close enough that you'd only have to lean forward slightly.Â
"I think people who can't sleep are just paying attention." His eyes move over your face, slow and unashamed. "More than they want to admit."
"...the fat joint is making a compelling case for itself."
He takes one more step up, your bodies now separated by exactly the thickness of the railing, and his hand lands beside yours on the worn wood, his little finger a breath from yours.
He's looking at you the way he looked at your bookshelf, the way he looks at things he wants to understand by going closer.
"Goodnight,sweetheart" he says, and means not yet.
"Goodnight," you say back, and mean the same.
He goes down the steps, unhurried, and you watch him disappear between the trailers. The dark swallows him whole and then it's just you and the moths and the yellow light and your own hand on the railing, your little finger still warm from almost being touched.
~~Â
The storm arrives in the wednesday afternoon without any warning worth trusting, just a greenish quality to the light. The air going suddenly still and electric, and then the sky opens. Dirt paths turn into brown rivers in minutes. You watch it happen through the small window above the kitchen sink before grabbing the laundry basket from the floor, because the alternative is re-washing everything and you are not doing that, at all.
The laundry shed is barely a shed. It is a converted storage unit at the end of the second row of trailers: corrugated metal walls that drum in the rain, a single bare bulb, two washers that work and one that doesn't, three dryers that spin on their own schedule, and it smells in there.
The dryer that has your sheets in it has decided, in the spirit of the afternoon, to stop spinning. The sheets are wound into a single heavy, damp rope around themselves. You reach in and pull, and the whole mass resists you with the passive aggression of wet laundry everywhere. You are still fighting it, one knee braced against the machine, when the shed door rattles open.
Eddie ducks inside in a rush of rain and cold air, and the door slams behind him against the wind. He's soaked through, his leather jacket dark at the shoulders, heavy with rain, his hair plastered in pieces against his forehead and neck, water running down the sides of his jaw. He shakes himself once like a dog, ineffectively.
He looks at you.
He looks at the wet sheet coiled around your arms like a defeated boa constrictor.
"Rough day?" he says.
"This shit won't come out."
"Sheets?"
"Jammed."
He looks at the space between you and the back wall. He looks at the dryer. He does a quick calculation that you can see him doing, and then he takes a step forward, because he is Eddie Munson and apparently this is just what he does: he steps into spaces.
His chest is at your back, your shoulders inside the bracket of his arms, his hands coming over yours on the wet canvas.
The rain on his jacket is cold against your arm. His skin underneath is warm; you can feel it through the damp fabric, that specific heat that has no right being as present as it is. These two things happen at once and you feel both of them with equal clarity, and you do not move.
"You have to push the latch from underneath," he says, low and close. Not a whisper exactly, just what his voice does when there isn't room for it to go anywhere else. "This one sticks. Wayne's been meaning to fix it."
"Wayne's been meaning to fix a lot of things."
"He's a busy man." His fingers press over yours, guiding them to the right angle against the mechanism. His hands are large, the rings gone, and his palms are calloused in specific places, guitar-player places. You feel every point of contact. You are being very quiet about it. "Right there. Now push up."
You push up, the latch yields with a clunk, and the drum releases its grip on the sheet. The wet mass loosens in your hands.
He does not move away.
His arms stay bracketed around yours, his chest stays against your shoulder blades, and you can feel, through the damp jacket, through the thin material of your shirt, he's breathing slower now than it should be, deeper, the way someone breathes when they're trying to focus on something they're not looking at directly.
"Got it?" he says.
"Yeah," you say, "got it."
The dryer ticks. The single bulb swings slightly in the draft from a gap in the corrugated wall, making the shadows shift all the time.
"You're dripping on my laundry," you say.
"Little bit, yeah." His voice is still close. You can feel it more than hear it through the drum of the rain.
"You're going to make me redo the whole load."
"That would be a shame." A pause. "I'd feel terrible."
"You don't sound terrible."
"I'm hiding it." Another pause, and in it the specific quality of someone choosing their next words. "I'm very good at hiding things."
You turn your head slightly, not enough to face him, just enough that you're no longer fully facing away, that the line of your jaw is visible to him if he's looking. Which he is.
"Are you?" you say.
"Mostly," he says. Then, quietly, with something honest in it that he hasn't quite covered over: "Not always."
"I should probably," you start.
"Probably," he agrees, and he doesn't move for another full second, a second that you will find yourself thinking about later, at inconvenient moments.
Then he steps back. The cold air rushes into the space where he was and it's a physical thing, an absence you can map to your spine. He leans against the opposite wall, all of eighteen inches away, which is as much distance as the shed allows, and runs one hand through his wet hair, pushing it back from his face.
He looks at you as the bulb swings. He has a small cut above his left eyebrow, old and faded, that you haven't noticed before.
"You want help with the sheets?" he asks.
"I had it."
"You had it for twenty minutes before I got here and the machine disagreed."
"I was making progress."
"You were losing a fight to a dryer, câmon sweetheart."
You pull the sheet out properly now, bundling it against your chest, and look at him over the top of it. He's almost smiling. His jacket is still dripping onto the cement floor, a slow, steady sound under the rain.
"You can stay until the storm passes," you say, which is not an answer to what he said.
He understands it as one anyway.
He slides down the wall until he's sitting on the floor, back against the corrugated metal, long legs stretched in front of him. "So," he says, studying the ceiling. "Demonology."
You start folding the sheet, badly, in the way sheets always get folded in small spaces. "What about it."
"Is it a hobby or a calling?"
"Does it have to be one of those?"
He looks at you from the floor, from under his damp hair, and grins: slow and warm and a little dangerous, the way certain things you should be careful around are sometimes the most beautiful things in the room.
"No," he says. "I guess it doesn't."
The rain keeps coming. You sit on top of the middle dryer, the one that works, and let the hum of it warm you through, and you talk; not about anything that matters yet, not about anything that costs you.Â
Somewhere between the third question and the seventh you stop being careful about what you say. Not enough to notice, just enough that he does.
"You're easier to talk to than you look," he says at some point.
"What do I look like?"
He considers this with more seriousness than it deserves.
"Like someone who could wreck my life," he says, casual, like he's noting the weather.
When the rain stops, neither of you notices right away.
~~
The Hideout is the kind of place you don't end up in on purpose.
You ended up in it on purpose only in the sense that the rain was impossible and the door was the closest one. Now you've been here for forty minutes with a drink that's been empty for twenty, watching the condensation run down the side of the glass in slow, uneven tracks.
The lighting is low enough to forgive a lot of things, smells like cigarettes and old leather and beer that belongs to a previous decade. Someone on the small stage is doing something to a guitar riff that it didn't deserve, and three stools to your left someone is talking loud enough for two conversations, and you haven't heard a word of any of it,anyway.
You're watching the second drop reach the bottom of the glass when the stool beside you scrapes back. Then he says your name like he's setting something down carefully. You look up.
Eddie is standing with one hand on the back of the stool, still in his jacket, rain-damp at the shoulders as always. His eyes move over the empty glass, then back to you.
"Didn't take you for a Hideout girl," he says.
"I'm not. It was raining, thatâs all"
"Sure." He says it like he doesn't entirely believe you and finds that interesting, he sits, signaling the bartender with the ease of someone who has never once worried about whether a room would receive him. The bartender nods immediately, you file this away without meaning to.
"They're bad," you say, nodding at the stage.
"Tragically." He doesn't look away from the band. "The bassist has potential. The rest of them are crying for help."
"Harsh."
"Accurate."
"You play, right?" you say. You already know. He probably knows you know.
"Little bit," he says, and the way he says it, low and with that half smile already happening, makes it clear it is not a little bit at all.
You let yourself look at him, just for a second more, actually look at him, the way you've been carefully not doing since day one, and the problem, the real problem, is that it doesn't help.
"Right," you say, and look back at your drink.
"You want another?" he asks.
"I shouldn't."
"That's not what I asked."
You push the glass forward.
The band finishes their set to applause that is generous considering, and in the small shuffle of the stage reset someone leans down from the monitors and says something to Eddie.Â
"You know them?" you ask.
"Thursdays are mine," he says, and his face does something that is not quite modesty and not quite arrogance but lives comfortably in the neighborhood of both.
"Is that so?"
"Eight months running." He finishes his drink, sets the glass down with a small, definitive sound. "I've become something of an institution."
"This place smells like an institution."
He points at you, completely serious. "Atmosphere. I created that."
He stands, shrugs the jacket off in a single movement and drapes it over the back of the stool. Underneath, just the black t-shirt, the denim vest, the patches catching the low light.
"You're going up there?" you say. It comes out less like a question than you intended.
He looks at you over his shoulder, and there it is, that specific version of his smile, the one that knows exactly what it's doing.
"Don't go anywhere!" he says.
You watch him take the three steps up to the stage. Pick up the guitar with the ease of something he stopped thinking about years ago. Watch the room shift in a way you didn't notice it could shift, a current changing direction.
You pull his jacket off the back of the stool and set it on your lap without thinking about it.
The room shifts before he plays a single note. It's a small thing, the way people reorient without deciding to, drinks paused halfway to mouths, conversations losing a thread. He adjusts the strap, says something into the mic that makes the front of the room laugh, and you didn't catch it but you see the effect of it, the way the space loosens around him.
Then he plays.
You've heard people play guitar. You grew up with a radio and a television and enough county fairs to know what competent sounds like. This is not that. This is something that starts in his hands and moves through the instrument like it was waiting there and he's just the one who knew where to find it.
You pick up your drink. You put it down without drinking.
He moves differently up there. Not performed differently, just differently, like the stage is the place where the rest of him has room to exist. His head drops slightly when he hits something he likes. His eyes close for a bar and then open, find the middle distance, find the back wall. Find you, once, just for a second, before moving on like it was nothing.
You look down at the jacket in your lap: the patches, the worn collar, the smell of it, rain and something underneath that has no business being as present as it is.
You look back up and you realize, sitting there, that you've been collecting versions of his face without meaning to.
He plays three songs. You know this because you count them. The last one ends on a held note that he lets die slowly, deliberately, like he's deciding when to let go.Â
The room comes back to itself. The applause is different from what the previous band got: warmer, more specific, the kind that knows what it's responding to.
He says something into the mic again, easy and unhurried, thanks the bar by name like it's an old argument he's fond of. Then he hands the guitar off and steps down from the stage, and you have approximately four seconds to decide what to do with your face before he's crossing the room toward you.
He drops back onto the stool. His cheeks are slightly flushed, his hair worse than before, and he reaches for his drink before remembering it's empty. He signals the bartender, then turns to look at you.
He looks at the jacket in your lap. "So," he says.
"So," you say.
"Verdict."
You take a second and he lets you take it, leaning one elbow on the bar, watching you with the patience of someone who already knows the answer and is enjoying the wait.
"You're good," you say, because there's no version of honesty that gets you out of this one.
"I know." No hesitation. But the way he's looking at you when he says it takes the arrogance out of it somehow, replaces it with something more direct. "I wanted you to know too."
The bar fills the silence around that. Someone laughs too loud near the door, the bartender sets two fresh drinks down and disappears.
"The jacket," he says eventually, nodding at your lap.
"You left it."
"I did, saving my place for after the show."
"I was holding it," you say, "so it wouldn't fall."
"Right." The corner of his mouth moves. "Considerate of you."
"I am a considerate person."
He looks at you for a moment in that way he has, the one that makes you feel like you've been read without giving permission.
"Yeah," he says quietly, "I'm starting to think there's a lot of things about you."
You don't answer that but you don't give the jacket back either.
~~
It's Friday, which means nothing except that the week has finally stopped moving and left you somewhere quiet with a cigarette and your feet on the railing.
You hear his door before you see him: the specific sound of it, the particular weight of his step on the gravel. He's got his keys in his hand, jacket on, heading for the van.
He sees you and automatically slows.
"Going to the store," he says, by way of hello.
"Okay."
He turns back with the expression of someone who already knows what they're about to do.
"You want anything?"
You look at your cigarette, at him. You think about the Friday night stretched out in front of you: the trailer, the couch, the film you've been meaning to watch.
"Popcorn," you say. "The microwave kind, oh! And Coke. And something with chocolate."
He stares at you for a moment.
"That's a lot of wants for someone sitting alone on a Friday."
"Are you going or not?"
"I'm going." He's already turning toward the van. "I'm just saying. You could've led with the movie."
You watch him go as you finish the cigarette.
"It's Nightmare on Elm Street," you call after him.
He raises one hand without turning around. Acknowledgment, or something close to it.
He comes back twenty minutes later with a paper bag and lets himself be let in, and the next part happens the way things happen when no one is officially deciding anything, he ends up on the floor with his back against the couch, you're sitting criss-cross above him, the lamp doing the bare minimum, the Coke sweating onto the coffee table, and Freddy Krueger doing his thing on the screen.
The popcorn sits between you, the joint appears at some point, the way it does.
"She knows she's in the dream," he says, after a while. "And she's still going toward him."
"Eddie..."
"I just think it's worth discussing."
"Watch the movie."
He watches the movie, mostly.Â
The room gets warmer and quieter and the sounds from outside arrive slightly later than they should, and the conversation moves the way conversations move when no one is steering. From the film to nothing in particular to something that starts to matter without announcing itself.
"Can I ask you something?" he says to the TV.
"You're going to anyway."
"Why Indiana?"
You look at the screen. "Cheap. Quiet. Wayne had the trailer."
"That's the practical answer."
You glance down at him, he's still looking at the TV, his chin tipped up slightly, his profile caught in the blue light.
"I got divorced," you say simply, because it's late and the weed has done what weed does,"Eight months ago."
"It wasn't loud," you say. "No one screamed. It was very quiet, actually." You pull the sleeve of your shirt over your hand. "He had this way of explaining my feelings back to me. Why were too much. Why my reactions were disproportionate." A pause. "He did it long enough that I kinda started to agree with him, you know?"
The movie fills the silence. Someone runs down a hallway.
"Sorry," you say, and mean it. "That was..." You reach for something and land on the wrong thing entirely. "Freddy Krueger is a better conversationalist."
It lands badly, no timing at all, you know it lands badly. But he laughs anyway, a real one, and there it is: the slight fold at the corner of his eye, the crease in his left cheek, the specific unguarded quality of a face mid-laugh.
You look away first.
"He did a number on you," Eddie says, quieter now, the laugh still warm in his voice.
"He was very thorough."
"Yeah." He turns the chocolate wrapper over in his hands. "I've met guys like that. They make you think the problem is the size of you." He pauses, not quite getting the next part right, trying again. "You're not small. You've just been in a small place."
"You don't know that," you say.
"I've been paying attention all week," he says simply, like it's not an admission. "and I know youâre bigger than this, than him."
On screen someone screams. He shifts, turning to face you properly, his arm coming up to rest on the couch cushion beside your knee. The performance is gone, his voice dropping into the register it finds in small spaces.
"Look," he says. "I know you're older and you've got your whole," he gestures vaguely at you, at the blazer on the chair, at the stacked books, at the general fact of you, "thing going on. And I know I'm," another gesture at himself, less certain, "what I am." His jaw tightens slightly. "But I've been thinking about you since Monday, and I'm pretty bad at pretending I'm not."
You open your mouth but what comes out is a cough. Not a small one. A full, graceless, weed-in-the-wrong-place cough that bends you forward and will not stop, your eyes watering, one hand braced on the cushion.
"Are you?" he starts, between his own laughter.
You hold up one finger. The cough continues.
He gets up, goes to the kitchen, comes back with a glass of water and crouches in front of you, his mouth pressed shut in the specific way of someone fighting very hard not to laugh at you.
You take the water and drink. The coughing subsides.
"Okay," you say, hoarse.
"Okay," he says, and he's smiling, the real one, and he's close, and you're still catching your breath, and the TV is still going, and outside the park is still quiet.
"You were saying," you say.
"I think you heard me," he says.
You look at him. He looks at you. The lamp in the corner keeps doing its minimum.
"I need more water," you say.
"Sure," he says, and doesn't move, and you don't move either, and the movie keeps going unwatched in the blue light of the room.
~~
Saturday morning has the quality of something that hasn't been addressed yet.
He's gone when you wake up. The blanket folded on the couch with the particular neatness of someone who didn't want to leave evidence of being there.
The coffee you make is for one person. You drink it at the window and watch the park wake up slow under a gray sky that hasn't decided what it wants to do yet.
You're on the porch with the second cup when he passes, jacket on, hair still damp, looking at his boots until he looks up.
"Hey," he says.
"Hey."
He stops. You can see the decision happening: his feet slowing before the rest of him catches up.
You hold up your mug. An offer.
He comes up the steps without a word and takes it, wraps both hands around it, and stands beside you at the railing. You look at the park. He looks at the park. The gray sky stays undecided.
After a moment he reaches into his jacket and pulls out a cigarette, lights it, and holds the pack toward you.
"I'm almost out," you say, taking one.
"I know," he says to the park.
You smoke in a silence that has a week's worth of things in it. When the cigarette is done he sets the empty mug on the railing, reaches back into his jacket, and puts a full unopened pack next to it. Marlboros, soft pack. He doesn't look at you when he does it.
"Eddie," you say.
"I noticed," he says simply. "That's all."
The gray sky makes up its mind. The first drops hit the railing between you and he goes down the steps.
Wayne is at the kitchen table with his coffee and the newspaper and the particular stillness of a man who has been awake since five and has already formed opinions about the day.
He doesn't look up when Eddie comes in; he turns a page. Eddie gets himself another coffee with shaken hands. Wayne turns another page.
"Funny thing," Wayne says to the newspaper. "Van was in the garage all night, but you werenât here."
"Roads were bad," Eddie says.
"Rained at eleven." Wayne turns a page. "Cleared up by midnight."
Eddie drinks his coffee, remembering that at eleven, he was intoxicated by your perfume, your laugh, you.
"She's pretty," Wayne says.
"Wayne."
"I'm just saying, boy."
"You don't have to, please."
"Smart too, from what I can tell." He folds the corner of a page down, thoughtful. "Those books she carries around."
"They're for work."
"Mm." Wayne takes a slow sip of coffee. "What kind of work?"
"The kind thatâŚ" Eddie stops. "I don't know, Wayne."
"But you've talked about it."
Eddie's ears go the specific red of a man who has run out of deflections and knows it.
"She seems like good people," Wayne says simply, and picks up his newspaper like the conversation is over, which it is, because Wayne has always known when he's made his point.
Someone knocks on the door.
They both look at it. Wayne looks back at Eddie over the top of the newspaper. Eddie looks at the door, then at his ears in the reflection of the window, then at the door again.
"I'll get it," he says.
"I imagine," Wayne says.
You're standing on the porch with your hands in your pockets and the unopened pack of Marlboros he left on the railing, which you are holding in a way that doesn't quite explain itself.
"Movie!" you say. "Tonight. My place. Eight o'clock?"
He leans against the doorframe. His ears are still red, which you notice and file away for later.
"What are we watching?" he grins.
"Does it matter?"
"No," he says. "Not really."
"Eight o'clock," you say, and go back down the steps.
He watches you cross the gravel. Behind him the kitchen is very quiet. Wayne is still pretending to read until,
"Eight o'clock," he says to no one in particular.
"Wayne!!!"
"Just memorizing," Wayne says. "In case you lose track."
He closes the door. He stands there for a second with his hand still on the knob. Then he does a small, contained, deeply undignified fist pump at the floor.
Wayne doesn't look up from the newspaper. "Just neighbors my ass," he says.
Eddie straightens up immediately. "Yep," he says with great dignity, and goes to his room.
It's ten past eleven in the morning. You have eight hours and fifty minutes.
You pick up your book, read the same paragraph four times and retain nothing. You put the book down.
You clean the bathroom, which didn't need cleaning. You rearrange the books on the shelf above the desk, then put them back the way they were because the original order was fine and you were just looking for something to do with your hands.
At two o'clock you hear the van leave. You don't go to the window. You are a grown adult and you don't go to the window, and when you hear it come back forty minutes later you also don't go to the window, and you are handling this very well.
At four you make tea you don't want. At five you eat something you don't taste. At six you sit on the couch with the television on and watch it without seeing it, your eyes moving to the clock with the frequency of someone who knows exactly what they're doing and is embarrassed about it.
At six forty-five you go to the bathroom and look at yourself in the mirror for a long moment.
"It's just a movie," you tell your reflection. Your reflection doesn't look convinced either.
At seven fifty-eight you sit back down on the couch, criss-cross, with a throw pillow in your lap and look at the door. At eight o'clock exactly, he knocks.
You wait three seconds so it doesn't seem like you were waiting for him at the door, then you open it.
He's showered. His hair is still slightly damp and he's got a clean shirt on, dark, the sleeves pushed up, and he's holding a bag that smells like something fried from the diner two streets over.
He has the specific expression of someone who also waited three seconds before knocking.
"Eight o'clock," he says.
"You're on time," you say.
"I'm always on time."
"You were late on Monday."
"The window was..." he stops. "Are you going to let me in?"
You step back from the door.
You end up where you always end up: you on the couch, him on the floor below you, the food between you, the lamp barely doing its work in the corner.
The food goes, the wrappers get thrown away. He comes back and sits, and you put something on the TV, something neither of you will watch, and the room settles into the specific silence of two people pretending to be comfortable.
On screen someone runs down a corridor. Someone else follows.
"She's going to trip," you say.
"She's going to trip," he says at the exact same moment.
She trips. You look at each other.
He's already looking at you. He has been for a while, you realize. Not at the screen, at you.
Looking in that way he has, the one that makes you feel like you've been read without giving permission. But this time there's no deflection left in him. The playful edge is gone, replaced by a quiet, heavy gravity that makes your breath hitch.
He moves, certain but unhurried. His hand finds your chin, his thumb brushing over your lower lip with a slow reverence that sends a shiver straight down your spine. When he kisses you, it isn't an anchor dropping; it is a total, breathless surrender. His lips touch yours with a gentleness so deliberate it feels almost sacred, as if he is trying to memorize the exact shape of you in the dark.
You make a small sound against his mouth, and the noise seems to undo something deep inside him. His hand slides up into your hair, his long fingers tangling in the strands, tilting your head back just enough to deepen the kiss. It is heavy, steady, and consuming.
He pulls you closer, his other hand anchoring at your waist before sliding down to your hip to lift you onto his lap. He settles you there, his large hands trembling just a fraction against your skin. He holds you with the quiet, desperate intensity of a man who knows he is touching something far better than he deserves, his face buried in the crook of your neck as he breathes you in, completely at your mercy.
His knee slides between yours, slow and certain, his mouth moving to your jaw, your throat, with the specific, unhurried attention of someone who has been thinking about exactly this. For all his usual restless, youthful bravado, here he lets you dictate the pace, completely yielding to a maturity that usually intimidates him.
"Eddie," you say to the ceiling, your fingers tightening in his hair.
"Yeah," he murmurs against your skin, his lips brushing your collarbone. He pauses for a fraction of a second, his breath hot against your throat. "You have no idea what you do to me. How long I've been losing my mind over this."
Your hand finds the back of his neck, the metal of his chain, the radiating warmth of his skin. You pull him back up to your mouth because the ceiling is suddenly far less interesting. He lets out a low, ragged sigh against your lips, a sound of pure relief, before he catches your mouth again. The lamp keeps doing its minimum in the corner, and outside, the park remains completely indifferent to any of this.
At some point he pulls back just enough. His forehead rests against yours, his breath uneven, his hands still tangled deep in your hair as if heâs anchored there, looking at you with a sudden, quiet vulnerability that erases every year between you.
"Okay," he says, his voice a low vow.
"Okay," you say.
Neither of you moves. The space between you is heavy with it.
"The movie," he whispers, a faint, breathless attempt to catch his bearings.
"What movie," you say.
He laughs, a soft huff against your lips, and kisses you again, slower this time. It is a deep, worshipful press of his mouth that belongs entirely to the two of you, while the TV keeps going unwatched in the blue light of the room.
~~
Sunday starts the way things start when no one has officially decided anything, slowly, and without an exit.Â
You wake up to warmth. His arm is around you, heavy and certain, his chest against your back, his breath slow and even against the back of your neck. The room is gray with early light. The TV is off, the lamp is off, and the park outside is doing its quiet Sunday thing.
He's awake. You can tell by the quality of the stillness, not the loose stillness of sleep but the careful stillness of someone who has been awake for a while and decided not to move.
You don't move either.
His arm doesn't tighten. He doesn't say anything. He just stays, his hand open against your ribs, his breathing slow and deliberate, and you lie there in the gray light and let the morning take its time, and neither of you acknowledges that you're both awake, because acknowledging it would make it into something you'd have to address, and right now it's just this. His warmth at your back, the quiet park, the specific weight of a Sunday that hasn't asked anything of either of you yet.
Eventually you shift. Just slightly.
His arm tightens. Just slightly.
"Morning," he says, his voice still rough with sleep.
"Morning," you say.
A beat.
"Coffee?" he says.
"Please," you say.
He leaves at ten. You watch the van pull out from the window, which you do now, openly, without pretending you're not doing it.
He's back at noon.
He knocks twice and when you open the door he's holding a paper bag from the bakery on Elm and wearing yesterday's shirt and he looks at you with the straightforward expression of someone who has stopped pretending the van going anywhere was a real departure.
"Thought you left," you say.
"I got pastries," he says.
You step back from the door.
The afternoon happens in pieces, but the light is already changing, the warm amber of morning thinning into something flatter, the kind of gold that means the weekend is running out of air. He fixes the cabinet hinge without being asked, finds the screwdriver himself, does it while you sit on the counter eating a pastry and pretending to read. On Monday it had been a novelty. Today it feels like a countdown.
Later he finds your record player and puts something on, something slow and guitar-heavy, and the trailer fills with it. He sits on the floor with his back against the couch. You sit above him. His head tips back after a while and rests against your knee and you let it, your hand finding his hair without quite deciding to.
The record ends. The needle clicks on the spindle, over and over, a small patient sound in the quiet room.
Neither of you gets up to turn it over.
By the time he makes dinner the blue twilight is pressing hard against the window, making the room feel smaller. Eggs, toast, the last of the tomatoes. You sit across from him at the small table and the conversation is easy the way it's been all day, but underneath it something has shifted, the specific weight of hours that know they're numbered.
He says something that makes you almost laugh. You watch him watch you almost laugh, that warm look he doesn't always let you see.
You reach across the table. Your hand covers his. He turns it over and holds on, and his grip is slightly tighter than yesterday, a quiet reflex against something neither of you is naming.
The lamp is on low, the record back on, the dishes done. He's sitting on the edge of the bed watching you cross the room toward him, and his hands find your waist when you're close enough, and this time it's nothing like Saturday's urgency.
This is slower. This is deliberate. This is two people choosing, quietly, with full knowledge of what they're doing.
His forehead drops to your sternum for a moment, just resting there, his arms around you, his breath evening out.
"Hey," he says, quietly.
"Hey," you say.
He looks up.
You stay.
Afterward the room is dark and quiet and he's on his back with one arm around you, his rings on the nightstand in a small pile, his chest rising and falling in the particular slow rhythm of someone who has stopped performing anything. His other hand moves in your hair, absently, the way his fingers move on strings.
"Don't go anywhere," you say. Not tonight. Not in general. Both.
His arm tightens.
"Okay," he says, and means something large by it.
You wake up before him in the gray early light of Monday.
You get up carefully. You shower. You stand in front of the mirror and cover the marks on your throat with concealer until your neck looks like it belongs to someone who spent the week alone, which is the version of you that needs to exist in approximately two hours.
Then you take the gray blazer from the hanger. The good one, the structured one. You button it to the top. You pull your hair into a neat twist, pin the loose strands, straighten your collar. You locate the lesson plan in your bag. Literature, Hawkins Community College, Room 214. You check it until the words stop meaning anything.
You look like yourself. The other self.
You're pouring your coffee when you hear him stir.
He appears in the doorway a minute later, hair wrecked, eyes half-open, no shirt, and you make a very brief and very private mental note about the tattoos and the line of his shoulders and the general unfairness of the situation before returning to your coffee like a professional.
He pours himself a cup. Leans against the counter beside you. Looks at the lesson plan without picking it up.
"First day," he says.
"First day," you say.
"You nervous?"
"No," you say, which is mostly true.
"Liar," he says, without heat.
He puts his mug down. He reaches out and straightens your collar, which didn't need straightening, his fingers brief and warm against your neck. Then he drops his hand.
"You're going to be good at it," he says. Simply. Like it's a fact he's already confirmed.
"You don't know that," you say.
"I've been paying attention," he says. "Since Monday."
The other Monday. Last Monday. A week ago, which is either very short or very long depending on how you measure it.
You pick up your bag, your knuckles white against the leather. He walks you to the door, four steps, completely unnecessary, and catches your hand before you go down the steps. He turns you back, easy and unhurried, and kisses you once. Not long, not dramatic. Just the kind of thing people do when they've become the kind of people who do this.
"Good luck," he says. That half smile, the real one.
You look at him standing in your doorway with his coffee and his bare shoulders and that smile, and you think, briefly and inconveniently, that you are in serious trouble.
"Lock up when you leave," you say.
He raises his mug. Something between a toast and a goodbye.
You go down the steps. You don't look back, because if you look back you won't go, and you have a class at nine and a lesson plan and a gray blazer and a version of yourself that has somewhere to be.
Behind you the door stays open for a moment before you hear it close.
~~
Monday
The hallway smells of floor wax and coffee and the particular energy of people who haven't yet decided if they want to be here. You walk it with both hands around your travel mug, your blazer buttoned, your heels making a sound you recognize as armor.
Room 214 is yours by eight-fifteen. You write your name on the board in large block letters, set the attendance sheet square on the desk, arrange the chalk on the ledge the way you always do, a small, private ritual, the body taking over when the mind needs to settle. Your territory. The desk is a shield. You know this about yourself: you are good at this part, the standing-in-front-of-rooms part, the clear-voiced and certain part. You built it deliberately and it holds.
The room fills the way college rooms fill, without urgency, people arriving in ones and twos with coffee cups and half-open backpacks, finding seats with the specific social calculus of people who don't know each other yet but are already deciding what they think. Chairs scrape. Somebody drops a binder. You watch them settle with your hands resting on the desk, and you feel yourself shift into the register you know, attentive, warm, contained, and it feels clean. It feels like solid ground.
You pick up the attendance sheet.
The door is almost closed.
"Sorry." A drawling voice, unhurried, slightly out of breath. "Got stuck behind a tractor on route 9. Hawkins thing."
The professional smile is already shaped on your lips when you look up.
The smile stays. It has nowhere to go.
Eddie is standing in the doorframe.
His leather jacket is clean, actually clean, and the denim vest beneath it pressed flat, the patches in careful order, and his dark hair is damp and combed back from his face, which makes him look younger and simultaneously makes every angle of him more visible: the jaw, the cheekbones, the cut above his brow. He has a blue notebook gripped in one large hand, his knuckles white around it, the rings gone. He's already scanning the room for a seat with the slightly defensive posture of someone used to arriving places where they're not entirely wanted.
Then his eyes find you.
His feet stop.
The notebook drops slightly in his grip. His gaze moves down the gray blazer, slowly, despite himself, despite everything, then to the chalk between your fingers, then past you to the blackboard, where your name and your title sit in large block letters that seem, in this moment, to have been written specifically to rearrange something in him.
You watch it happen. You watch his jaw go slack and then harden. You watch the color leave his face and come back wrong, and you watch him run the same math you ran this morning in the bathroom mirror, the window latch, the porch, the laundry shed, the Hideout, Friday's floor, Saturday's couch, Sunday's everything, backward against Room 214 and Literature and the attendance sheet in your hand, arriving at the only answer there is.
The other students are finding their seats. No one is looking at him yet.
He looks at you. You look at him.
There is nothing either of you can do with your face that is adequate to this moment.
You lower your eyes to the attendance sheet first because one of you has to, because the room is full and twenty-three students will notice in approximately four more seconds if you keep standing here. You find your voice where you left it, clean and level, exactly where you need it.
"Find a seat, please," you say. To the room. To him. To no one specifically.
He moves.
He walks toward the back of the room with his steps heavy and deliberate, not looking at you, his jaw set hard. He pulls the last chair in the row with a screech of metal on linoleum that makes three people look up and then look away. He sits. He sets the blue notebook on the desk. He crosses his arms tight against his chest.
You call attendance.
When you say his name, Munson, E., third from the bottom, there is a pause that lasts exactly one second too long.
"Here," he says, to the desk.
Flat. Contained. The voice of someone who has taken everything and put it somewhere it can't be seen.
You move to the syllabus.
You talk about the semester, about Fitzgerald and Steinbeck, about the literature of disillusionment and reinvention, about characters who build themselves into something new and spend the rest of the book paying for it. Your voice is steady. Your hands are steady. You do not look at the back row unless you have to.
You're talking about Gatsby, about the green light, about the particular cruelty of wanting something just out of reach, when a voice comes from the back of the room.
"Does it count as reinvention," Eddie says, not quite raising his hand, "if you didn't know you needed it until it was already happening?"
The room turns to look at him. You don't.
You keep your eyes on the middle distance, on the space above everyone's heads, on the place you look when you need your voice to stay level.
"That's one of the questions the text asks," you say. "Whether transformation is ever truly chosen, or whether it chooses us."
A beat.
"And if it chooses you," he says, quieter now, "and then the situation changes. What happens to the person you were becoming."
The fluorescent light hums. Someone shifts in their seat.
You look at him then. You have to. It would be stranger not to.
He's looking directly at you for the first time since he walked in, his arms still crossed, his jaw still set, but his eyes are doing something else entirely, something that has nothing to do with Fitzgerald and everything to do with Sunday morning and a door closing and a van on route 9 that he drove to a building he didn't know you'd be standing in.
"That," you say, carefully, "is exactly what we're here to find out."
He holds your gaze for one more second. Then he looks down at the blue notebook and opens it, picks up his pen, and writes something you can't see.
The class continues. The ordinary machinery of a Monday morning grinds forward the way it always does.
Fourteen hours ago his arm was around you in the gray early light.
You write Chapter 1 â due Friday on the board.
The chalk makes a clean, precise sound in the silent room.
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A hot summer, a wrong kind of love, and the feeling that some things begin already tasting like goodbye.
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The heat in the valley doesn't clear out at sunset; it thickens, turning into a heavy, damp weight against the vinyl walls of the trailer. You haul a crate of heavy reference books inside, gray dust coating your fingers, sweat gathering at the back of your knees, at the hollow of your throat, at every place a human body knows how to betray itself. The porch light flickers once, a dying yellow thing, and then a shadow cuts through it.
He is leaning against the rusted railing of the steps, his shoulder tipped in like he's been there a while. Like he's comfortable being a silhouette in someone else's doorway. He carries a toolbox in one hand, and his other hand hangs loose at his side, rings catching the bad light. Three of them, silver and dull, the kind that leave a mark if you're not careful. His gaze moves down your throat and stays on your damp collarbone, following the line of your oversized shirt down to your hips, unhurried.
You drop the crate onto the linoleum with a sound like a small earthquake and pull the hem of your shirt down over your thighs. âHey,â you say, surprised.
"Ahm, hey. Uncle Wayne said the window latch in the bedroom is jammed," he says in a low voice. He looks past you at the stack of books on the floor, then back at you, something registering behind his eyes. "Said you wouldn't be able to lock it from the inside."
"I've been meaning to call him about that," you say.
"And yet."
"And yet," you agree.
You step aside, opening a narrow gap in the hallway. He ducks his head slightly, a private smile pulling at the corner of his mouth, and steps through.
The smell of him fills the trailer instantly: leather, dry grass, gasoline and tobacco. "Bedroom's in the back," you say, to your own hand, mostly.
"I figured," he calls back, already moving through your space like he belongs to it. When you round the corner, he's standing in the middle of the room with his toolbox at his feet, looking at the shelf above your desk with the same attention he'd given your collarbone thirty seconds ago.
"The Demonology of Medieval Europe," he reads, then lets out a short breath through his nose. He turns to look at you over his shoulder, one eyebrow up like the corner of his mouth. "You know, this town already tried to run me out for a RPG game." A beat. "If anyone sees me walking out of here with that under my arm, I'm a dead man. We'd both get burned at the same stake."
"I've heard worse eulogies." You nod at the window. "Over there."
"I see the window." He doesn't move toward it. "You read all of these?"
"Most of them."
"For fun?"
"For work."
He turns to look at you fully now, both eyebrows up, reassessing. There is something in the way he does it that makes it feel like being placed into a different category. A more interesting one. "What kind of work?" he asks.
"The kind that makes people ask questions at parties."
He grins at that, quick and crooked, a little surprised by it, and finally turns toward the window. He crouches down in front of it, sets the toolbox open on the floor, and you get the full view of the back of his neck, the knobs of his spine where his t-shirt hangs loose, the tattoo that starts somewhere under his collar and disappears.
"It's the casing," he says, more to himself than to you. "Warped from the heat. Happens to these old trailers." He pries at it with a flathead, jaw working once, and the latch gives with a pop that's louder than expected. He catches the frame before it rattles. "There." He tests it twice, sliding the lock open and shut. "You can actually protect yourself now."
"I feel so safe now."
He looks at you over his shoulder again, and there it is, that almost smirk that's been sitting there since the porch.
"You should, princess," he says, very simply. He packs the toolbox without rushing, while you lean in the doorframe to watch him do it because you can't think of a single reason not to. He stands, brushes his palms on the thighs of his jeans, and turns to finally face you. "I'm Eddie," he says, like this is new information, like you haven't already filed it away somewhere you'll need later.
"I know," you say.
"Uncle Wayne talks about me?"
"Hawkins is small."
"Good things, I hope."
You reach past him to push the window open an inch, testing it.
"Good enough," you say.
He stands in your hallway for another beat, toolbox in hand, like he's forgotten what the exit is for. The porch light buzzes faintly through the screen.
"Well," he says, finally. "You know where to find me if anything else needs fixing."
He says it like âfixing itâ covers a very large territory.
~~
The silence of the trailer park is loud in the way only small places at night can be: crickets in overlapping frequencies, the distant television two trailers over, the soft percussion of moths battering themselves against the yellow bulb above your head. You stand on the top step of the porch with a cigarette caught between your fingers and your elbow on the railing, watching them do it. The moths, you mean, their absolute commitment to something that will not end well for them.
A match scrapes in the dark below and then Eddie steps out from the shadow between the trailers. His boots crunch on the gravel, and he stops at the bottom step, looking up at you. He nods at your hand before saying
"Those things'll kill you, you know?"Â
You take a long drag first, then exhale slowly. "I hope so."
There is a pause in which he appears to consider this information seriously. He reaches into his jacket pocket, pulls out a crumpled red pack of Marlboros, the soft pack, already half-dead, and slides a cigarette between his lips with the easy fluency of long habit.
His thumb catches the wheel of his lighter on the first try. The blue flame jumps up and for one second illuminates the sharp line of his jaw, the way his eyes stay on your mouth while he lights up.
He takes a long drag, blowing the smoke sideways, slow, deliberate, his lips still slightly parted.
"You were saying?" you say.
"I was saying those things'll kill you." He holds the cigarette loosely between two fingers, gesturing vaguely with it. "Statistically."
"Statistically, really?" you snort.
"It's a health concern." He takes another drag. "I worry."
"You're smoking right now, Eddie."
"I'm aware of that, sweetheart." He exhales through his nose, unbothered, a faint smile tucking itself into the corner of his mouth. "Look, what I do is my business. What you do," he gestures again with the cigarette, "is a tragedy."
You laugh before you can stop it, a small sound that escapes between your teeth.
"You always come out here at odd times of the night?" he asks.
"When I can't sleep, yes."
"What keeps you up?"
You look at him. The moths keep doing their thing above your head. "Restlessness," you say, and it's true enough.
He nods slowly, like this is an answer he understands in his body. He shifts his weight, rests his forearm on the railing beside yours, close enough that you can feel the warmth radiating off him.
He brings the cigarette to his lips and for a moment you watch his profile, the way he tips his head back slightly when he exhales, the long line of his throat.
"Me too," he says to the dark. You smoke in parallel for a while. He finishes his cigarette. You finish yours. Neither of you moves to go inside.
"You know what I think?" he says eventually.
"I don't."
"I think the restlessness is the point." He drops the butt, grinds it under his boot, and when he straightens he's a step closer than he was before. The top of his head is nearly level with yours from where you stand above him. Close enough that you'd only have to lean forward slightly.Â
"I think people who can't sleep are just paying attention." His eyes move over your face, slow and unashamed. "More than they want to admit."
"...the fat joint is making a compelling case for itself."
He takes one more step up, your bodies now separated by exactly the thickness of the railing, and his hand lands beside yours on the worn wood, his little finger a breath from yours.
He's looking at you the way he looked at your bookshelf, the way he looks at things he wants to understand by going closer.
"Goodnight,sweetheart" he says, and means not yet.
"Goodnight," you say back, and mean the same.
He goes down the steps, unhurried, and you watch him disappear between the trailers. The dark swallows him whole and then it's just you and the moths and the yellow light and your own hand on the railing, your little finger still warm from almost being touched.
~~Â
The storm arrives in the wednesday afternoon without any warning worth trusting, just a greenish quality to the light. The air going suddenly still and electric, and then the sky opens. Dirt paths turn into brown rivers in minutes. You watch it happen through the small window above the kitchen sink before grabbing the laundry basket from the floor, because the alternative is re-washing everything and you are not doing that, at all.
The laundry shed is barely a shed. It is a converted storage unit at the end of the second row of trailers: corrugated metal walls that drum in the rain, a single bare bulb, two washers that work and one that doesn't, three dryers that spin on their own schedule, and it smells in there.
The dryer that has your sheets in it has decided, in the spirit of the afternoon, to stop spinning. The sheets are wound into a single heavy, damp rope around themselves. You reach in and pull, and the whole mass resists you with the passive aggression of wet laundry everywhere. You are still fighting it, one knee braced against the machine, when the shed door rattles open.
Eddie ducks inside in a rush of rain and cold air, and the door slams behind him against the wind. He's soaked through, his leather jacket dark at the shoulders, heavy with rain, his hair plastered in pieces against his forehead and neck, water running down the sides of his jaw. He shakes himself once like a dog, ineffectively.
He looks at you.
He looks at the wet sheet coiled around your arms like a defeated boa constrictor.
"Rough day?" he says.
"This shit won't come out."
"Sheets?"
"Jammed."
He looks at the space between you and the back wall. He looks at the dryer. He does a quick calculation that you can see him doing, and then he takes a step forward, because he is Eddie Munson and apparently this is just what he does: he steps into spaces.
His chest is at your back, your shoulders inside the bracket of his arms, his hands coming over yours on the wet canvas.
The rain on his jacket is cold against your arm. His skin underneath is warm; you can feel it through the damp fabric, that specific heat that has no right being as present as it is. These two things happen at once and you feel both of them with equal clarity, and you do not move.
"You have to push the latch from underneath," he says, low and close. Not a whisper exactly, just what his voice does when there isn't room for it to go anywhere else. "This one sticks. Wayne's been meaning to fix it."
"Wayne's been meaning to fix a lot of things."
"He's a busy man." His fingers press over yours, guiding them to the right angle against the mechanism. His hands are large, the rings gone, and his palms are calloused in specific places, guitar-player places. You feel every point of contact. You are being very quiet about it. "Right there. Now push up."
You push up, the latch yields with a clunk, and the drum releases its grip on the sheet. The wet mass loosens in your hands.
He does not move away.
His arms stay bracketed around yours, his chest stays against your shoulder blades, and you can feel, through the damp jacket, through the thin material of your shirt, he's breathing slower now than it should be, deeper, the way someone breathes when they're trying to focus on something they're not looking at directly.
"Got it?" he says.
"Yeah," you say, "got it."
The dryer ticks. The single bulb swings slightly in the draft from a gap in the corrugated wall, making the shadows shift all the time.
"You're dripping on my laundry," you say.
"Little bit, yeah." His voice is still close. You can feel it more than hear it through the drum of the rain.
"You're going to make me redo the whole load."
"That would be a shame." A pause. "I'd feel terrible."
"You don't sound terrible."
"I'm hiding it." Another pause, and in it the specific quality of someone choosing their next words. "I'm very good at hiding things."
You turn your head slightly, not enough to face him, just enough that you're no longer fully facing away, that the line of your jaw is visible to him if he's looking. Which he is.
"Are you?" you say.
"Mostly," he says. Then, quietly, with something honest in it that he hasn't quite covered over: "Not always."
"I should probably," you start.
"Probably," he agrees, and he doesn't move for another full second, a second that you will find yourself thinking about later, at inconvenient moments.
Then he steps back. The cold air rushes into the space where he was and it's a physical thing, an absence you can map to your spine. He leans against the opposite wall, all of eighteen inches away, which is as much distance as the shed allows, and runs one hand through his wet hair, pushing it back from his face.
He looks at you as the bulb swings. He has a small cut above his left eyebrow, old and faded, that you haven't noticed before.
"You want help with the sheets?" he asks.
"I had it."
"You had it for twenty minutes before I got here and the machine disagreed."
"I was making progress."
"You were losing a fight to a dryer, câmon sweetheart."
You pull the sheet out properly now, bundling it against your chest, and look at him over the top of it. He's almost smiling. His jacket is still dripping onto the cement floor, a slow, steady sound under the rain.
"You can stay until the storm passes," you say, which is not an answer to what he said.
He understands it as one anyway.
He slides down the wall until he's sitting on the floor, back against the corrugated metal, long legs stretched in front of him. "So," he says, studying the ceiling. "Demonology."
You start folding the sheet, badly, in the way sheets always get folded in small spaces. "What about it."
"Is it a hobby or a calling?"
"Does it have to be one of those?"
He looks at you from the floor, from under his damp hair, and grins: slow and warm and a little dangerous, the way certain things you should be careful around are sometimes the most beautiful things in the room.
"No," he says. "I guess it doesn't."
The rain keeps coming. You sit on top of the middle dryer, the one that works, and let the hum of it warm you through, and you talk; not about anything that matters yet, not about anything that costs you.Â
Somewhere between the third question and the seventh you stop being careful about what you say. Not enough to notice, just enough that he does.
"You're easier to talk to than you look," he says at some point.
"What do I look like?"
He considers this with more seriousness than it deserves.
"Like someone who could wreck my life," he says, casual, like he's noting the weather.
When the rain stops, neither of you notices right away.
~~
The Hideout is the kind of place you don't end up in on purpose.
You ended up in it on purpose only in the sense that the rain was impossible and the door was the closest one. Now you've been here for forty minutes with a drink that's been empty for twenty, watching the condensation run down the side of the glass in slow, uneven tracks.
The lighting is low enough to forgive a lot of things, smells like cigarettes and old leather and beer that belongs to a previous decade. Someone on the small stage is doing something to a guitar riff that it didn't deserve, and three stools to your left someone is talking loud enough for two conversations, and you haven't heard a word of any of it,anyway.
You're watching the second drop reach the bottom of the glass when the stool beside you scrapes back. Then he says your name like he's setting something down carefully. You look up.
Eddie is standing with one hand on the back of the stool, still in his jacket, rain-damp at the shoulders as always. His eyes move over the empty glass, then back to you.
"Didn't take you for a Hideout girl," he says.
"I'm not. It was raining, thatâs all"
"Sure." He says it like he doesn't entirely believe you and finds that interesting, he sits, signaling the bartender with the ease of someone who has never once worried about whether a room would receive him. The bartender nods immediately, you file this away without meaning to.
"They're bad," you say, nodding at the stage.
"Tragically." He doesn't look away from the band. "The bassist has potential. The rest of them are crying for help."
"Harsh."
"Accurate."
"You play, right?" you say. You already know. He probably knows you know.
"Little bit," he says, and the way he says it, low and with that half smile already happening, makes it clear it is not a little bit at all.
You let yourself look at him, just for a second more, actually look at him, the way you've been carefully not doing since day one, and the problem, the real problem, is that it doesn't help.
"Right," you say, and look back at your drink.
"You want another?" he asks.
"I shouldn't."
"That's not what I asked."
You push the glass forward.
The band finishes their set to applause that is generous considering, and in the small shuffle of the stage reset someone leans down from the monitors and says something to Eddie.Â
"You know them?" you ask.
"Thursdays are mine," he says, and his face does something that is not quite modesty and not quite arrogance but lives comfortably in the neighborhood of both.
"Is that so?"
"Eight months running." He finishes his drink, sets the glass down with a small, definitive sound. "I've become something of an institution."
"This place smells like an institution."
He points at you, completely serious. "Atmosphere. I created that."
He stands, shrugs the jacket off in a single movement and drapes it over the back of the stool. Underneath, just the black t-shirt, the denim vest, the patches catching the low light.
"You're going up there?" you say. It comes out less like a question than you intended.
He looks at you over his shoulder, and there it is, that specific version of his smile, the one that knows exactly what it's doing.
"Don't go anywhere!" he says.
You watch him take the three steps up to the stage. Pick up the guitar with the ease of something he stopped thinking about years ago. Watch the room shift in a way you didn't notice it could shift, a current changing direction.
You pull his jacket off the back of the stool and set it on your lap without thinking about it.
The room shifts before he plays a single note. It's a small thing, the way people reorient without deciding to, drinks paused halfway to mouths, conversations losing a thread. He adjusts the strap, says something into the mic that makes the front of the room laugh, and you didn't catch it but you see the effect of it, the way the space loosens around him.
Then he plays.
You've heard people play guitar. You grew up with a radio and a television and enough county fairs to know what competent sounds like. This is not that. This is something that starts in his hands and moves through the instrument like it was waiting there and he's just the one who knew where to find it.
You pick up your drink. You put it down without drinking.
He moves differently up there. Not performed differently, just differently, like the stage is the place where the rest of him has room to exist. His head drops slightly when he hits something he likes. His eyes close for a bar and then open, find the middle distance, find the back wall. Find you, once, just for a second, before moving on like it was nothing.
You look down at the jacket in your lap: the patches, the worn collar, the smell of it, rain and something underneath that has no business being as present as it is.
You look back up and you realize, sitting there, that you've been collecting versions of his face without meaning to.
He plays three songs. You know this because you count them. The last one ends on a held note that he lets die slowly, deliberately, like he's deciding when to let go.Â
The room comes back to itself. The applause is different from what the previous band got: warmer, more specific, the kind that knows what it's responding to.
He says something into the mic again, easy and unhurried, thanks the bar by name like it's an old argument he's fond of. Then he hands the guitar off and steps down from the stage, and you have approximately four seconds to decide what to do with your face before he's crossing the room toward you.
He drops back onto the stool. His cheeks are slightly flushed, his hair worse than before, and he reaches for his drink before remembering it's empty. He signals the bartender, then turns to look at you.
He looks at the jacket in your lap. "So," he says.
"So," you say.
"Verdict."
You take a second and he lets you take it, leaning one elbow on the bar, watching you with the patience of someone who already knows the answer and is enjoying the wait.
"You're good," you say, because there's no version of honesty that gets you out of this one.
"I know." No hesitation. But the way he's looking at you when he says it takes the arrogance out of it somehow, replaces it with something more direct. "I wanted you to know too."
The bar fills the silence around that. Someone laughs too loud near the door, the bartender sets two fresh drinks down and disappears.
"The jacket," he says eventually, nodding at your lap.
"You left it."
"I did, saving my place for after the show."
"I was holding it," you say, "so it wouldn't fall."
"Right." The corner of his mouth moves. "Considerate of you."
"I am a considerate person."
He looks at you for a moment in that way he has, the one that makes you feel like you've been read without giving permission.
"Yeah," he says quietly, "I'm starting to think there's a lot of things about you."
You don't answer that but you don't give the jacket back either.
~~
It's Friday, which means nothing except that the week has finally stopped moving and left you somewhere quiet with a cigarette and your feet on the railing.
You hear his door before you see him: the specific sound of it, the particular weight of his step on the gravel. He's got his keys in his hand, jacket on, heading for the van.
He sees you and automatically slows.
"Going to the store," he says, by way of hello.
"Okay."
He turns back with the expression of someone who already knows what they're about to do.
"You want anything?"
You look at your cigarette, at him. You think about the Friday night stretched out in front of you: the trailer, the couch, the film you've been meaning to watch.
"Popcorn," you say. "The microwave kind, oh! And Coke. And something with chocolate."
He stares at you for a moment.
"That's a lot of wants for someone sitting alone on a Friday."
"Are you going or not?"
"I'm going." He's already turning toward the van. "I'm just saying. You could've led with the movie."
You watch him go as you finish the cigarette.
"It's Nightmare on Elm Street," you call after him.
He raises one hand without turning around. Acknowledgment, or something close to it.
He comes back twenty minutes later with a paper bag and lets himself be let in, and the next part happens the way things happen when no one is officially deciding anything, he ends up on the floor with his back against the couch, you're sitting criss-cross above him, the lamp doing the bare minimum, the Coke sweating onto the coffee table, and Freddy Krueger doing his thing on the screen.
The popcorn sits between you, the joint appears at some point, the way it does.
"She knows she's in the dream," he says, after a while. "And she's still going toward him."
"Eddie..."
"I just think it's worth discussing."
"Watch the movie."
He watches the movie, mostly.Â
The room gets warmer and quieter and the sounds from outside arrive slightly later than they should, and the conversation moves the way conversations move when no one is steering. From the film to nothing in particular to something that starts to matter without announcing itself.
"Can I ask you something?" he says to the TV.
"You're going to anyway."
"Why Indiana?"
You look at the screen. "Cheap. Quiet. Wayne had the trailer."
"That's the practical answer."
You glance down at him, he's still looking at the TV, his chin tipped up slightly, his profile caught in the blue light.
"I got divorced," you say simply, because it's late and the weed has done what weed does,"Eight months ago."
"It wasn't loud," you say. "No one screamed. It was very quiet, actually." You pull the sleeve of your shirt over your hand. "He had this way of explaining my feelings back to me. Why were too much. Why my reactions were disproportionate." A pause. "He did it long enough that I kinda started to agree with him, you know?"
The movie fills the silence. Someone runs down a hallway.
"Sorry," you say, and mean it. "That was..." You reach for something and land on the wrong thing entirely. "Freddy Krueger is a better conversationalist."
It lands badly, no timing at all, you know it lands badly. But he laughs anyway, a real one, and there it is: the slight fold at the corner of his eye, the crease in his left cheek, the specific unguarded quality of a face mid-laugh.
You look away first.
"He did a number on you," Eddie says, quieter now, the laugh still warm in his voice.
"He was very thorough."
"Yeah." He turns the chocolate wrapper over in his hands. "I've met guys like that. They make you think the problem is the size of you." He pauses, not quite getting the next part right, trying again. "You're not small. You've just been in a small place."
"You don't know that," you say.
"I've been paying attention all week," he says simply, like it's not an admission. "and I know youâre bigger than this, than him."
On screen someone screams. He shifts, turning to face you properly, his arm coming up to rest on the couch cushion beside your knee. The performance is gone, his voice dropping into the register it finds in small spaces.
"Look," he says. "I know you're older and you've got your whole," he gestures vaguely at you, at the blazer on the chair, at the stacked books, at the general fact of you, "thing going on. And I know I'm," another gesture at himself, less certain, "what I am." His jaw tightens slightly. "But I've been thinking about you since Monday, and I'm pretty bad at pretending I'm not."
You open your mouth but what comes out is a cough. Not a small one. A full, graceless, weed-in-the-wrong-place cough that bends you forward and will not stop, your eyes watering, one hand braced on the cushion.
"Are you?" he starts, between his own laughter.
You hold up one finger. The cough continues.
He gets up, goes to the kitchen, comes back with a glass of water and crouches in front of you, his mouth pressed shut in the specific way of someone fighting very hard not to laugh at you.
You take the water and drink. The coughing subsides.
"Okay," you say, hoarse.
"Okay," he says, and he's smiling, the real one, and he's close, and you're still catching your breath, and the TV is still going, and outside the park is still quiet.
"You were saying," you say.
"I think you heard me," he says.
You look at him. He looks at you. The lamp in the corner keeps doing its minimum.
"I need more water," you say.
"Sure," he says, and doesn't move, and you don't move either, and the movie keeps going unwatched in the blue light of the room.
~~
Saturday morning has the quality of something that hasn't been addressed yet.
He's gone when you wake up. The blanket folded on the couch with the particular neatness of someone who didn't want to leave evidence of being there.
The coffee you make is for one person. You drink it at the window and watch the park wake up slow under a gray sky that hasn't decided what it wants to do yet.
You're on the porch with the second cup when he passes, jacket on, hair still damp, looking at his boots until he looks up.
"Hey," he says.
"Hey."
He stops. You can see the decision happening: his feet slowing before the rest of him catches up.
You hold up your mug. An offer.
He comes up the steps without a word and takes it, wraps both hands around it, and stands beside you at the railing. You look at the park. He looks at the park. The gray sky stays undecided.
After a moment he reaches into his jacket and pulls out a cigarette, lights it, and holds the pack toward you.
"I'm almost out," you say, taking one.
"I know," he says to the park.
You smoke in a silence that has a week's worth of things in it. When the cigarette is done he sets the empty mug on the railing, reaches back into his jacket, and puts a full unopened pack next to it. Marlboros, soft pack. He doesn't look at you when he does it.
"Eddie," you say.
"I noticed," he says simply. "That's all."
The gray sky makes up its mind. The first drops hit the railing between you and he goes down the steps.
Wayne is at the kitchen table with his coffee and the newspaper and the particular stillness of a man who has been awake since five and has already formed opinions about the day.
He doesn't look up when Eddie comes in; he turns a page. Eddie gets himself another coffee with shaken hands. Wayne turns another page.
"Funny thing," Wayne says to the newspaper. "Van was in the garage all night, but you werenât here."
"Roads were bad," Eddie says.
"Rained at eleven." Wayne turns a page. "Cleared up by midnight."
Eddie drinks his coffee, remembering that at eleven, he was intoxicated by your perfume, your laugh, you.
"She's pretty," Wayne says.
"Wayne."
"I'm just saying, boy."
"You don't have to, please."
"Smart too, from what I can tell." He folds the corner of a page down, thoughtful. "Those books she carries around."
"They're for work."
"Mm." Wayne takes a slow sip of coffee. "What kind of work?"
"The kind thatâŚ" Eddie stops. "I don't know, Wayne."
"But you've talked about it."
Eddie's ears go the specific red of a man who has run out of deflections and knows it.
"She seems like good people," Wayne says simply, and picks up his newspaper like the conversation is over, which it is, because Wayne has always known when he's made his point.
Someone knocks on the door.
They both look at it. Wayne looks back at Eddie over the top of the newspaper. Eddie looks at the door, then at his ears in the reflection of the window, then at the door again.
"I'll get it," he says.
"I imagine," Wayne says.
You're standing on the porch with your hands in your pockets and the unopened pack of Marlboros he left on the railing, which you are holding in a way that doesn't quite explain itself.
"Movie!" you say. "Tonight. My place. Eight o'clock?"
He leans against the doorframe. His ears are still red, which you notice and file away for later.
"What are we watching?" he grins.
"Does it matter?"
"No," he says. "Not really."
"Eight o'clock," you say, and go back down the steps.
He watches you cross the gravel. Behind him the kitchen is very quiet. Wayne is still pretending to read until,
"Eight o'clock," he says to no one in particular.
"Wayne!!!"
"Just memorizing," Wayne says. "In case you lose track."
He closes the door. He stands there for a second with his hand still on the knob. Then he does a small, contained, deeply undignified fist pump at the floor.
Wayne doesn't look up from the newspaper. "Just neighbors my ass," he says.
Eddie straightens up immediately. "Yep," he says with great dignity, and goes to his room.
It's ten past eleven in the morning. You have eight hours and fifty minutes.
You pick up your book, read the same paragraph four times and retain nothing. You put the book down.
You clean the bathroom, which didn't need cleaning. You rearrange the books on the shelf above the desk, then put them back the way they were because the original order was fine and you were just looking for something to do with your hands.
At two o'clock you hear the van leave. You don't go to the window. You are a grown adult and you don't go to the window, and when you hear it come back forty minutes later you also don't go to the window, and you are handling this very well.
At four you make tea you don't want. At five you eat something you don't taste. At six you sit on the couch with the television on and watch it without seeing it, your eyes moving to the clock with the frequency of someone who knows exactly what they're doing and is embarrassed about it.
At six forty-five you go to the bathroom and look at yourself in the mirror for a long moment.
"It's just a movie," you tell your reflection. Your reflection doesn't look convinced either.
At seven fifty-eight you sit back down on the couch, criss-cross, with a throw pillow in your lap and look at the door. At eight o'clock exactly, he knocks.
You wait three seconds so it doesn't seem like you were waiting for him at the door, then you open it.
He's showered. His hair is still slightly damp and he's got a clean shirt on, dark, the sleeves pushed up, and he's holding a bag that smells like something fried from the diner two streets over.
He has the specific expression of someone who also waited three seconds before knocking.
"Eight o'clock," he says.
"You're on time," you say.
"I'm always on time."
"You were late on Monday."
"The window was..." he stops. "Are you going to let me in?"
You step back from the door.
You end up where you always end up: you on the couch, him on the floor below you, the food between you, the lamp barely doing its work in the corner.
The food goes, the wrappers get thrown away. He comes back and sits, and you put something on the TV, something neither of you will watch, and the room settles into the specific silence of two people pretending to be comfortable.
On screen someone runs down a corridor. Someone else follows.
"She's going to trip," you say.
"She's going to trip," he says at the exact same moment.
She trips. You look at each other.
He's already looking at you. He has been for a while, you realize. Not at the screen, at you.
Looking in that way he has, the one that makes you feel like you've been read without giving permission. But this time there's no deflection left in him. The playful edge is gone, replaced by a quiet, heavy gravity that makes your breath hitch.
He moves, certain but unhurried. His hand finds your chin, his thumb brushing over your lower lip with a slow reverence that sends a shiver straight down your spine. When he kisses you, it isn't an anchor dropping; it is a total, breathless surrender. His lips touch yours with a gentleness so deliberate it feels almost sacred, as if he is trying to memorize the exact shape of you in the dark.
You make a small sound against his mouth, and the noise seems to undo something deep inside him. His hand slides up into your hair, his long fingers tangling in the strands, tilting your head back just enough to deepen the kiss. It is heavy, steady, and consuming.
He pulls you closer, his other hand anchoring at your waist before sliding down to your hip to lift you onto his lap. He settles you there, his large hands trembling just a fraction against your skin. He holds you with the quiet, desperate intensity of a man who knows he is touching something far better than he deserves, his face buried in the crook of your neck as he breathes you in, completely at your mercy.
His knee slides between yours, slow and certain, his mouth moving to your jaw, your throat, with the specific, unhurried attention of someone who has been thinking about exactly this. For all his usual restless, youthful bravado, here he lets you dictate the pace, completely yielding to a maturity that usually intimidates him.
"Eddie," you say to the ceiling, your fingers tightening in his hair.
"Yeah," he murmurs against your skin, his lips brushing your collarbone. He pauses for a fraction of a second, his breath hot against your throat. "You have no idea what you do to me. How long I've been losing my mind over this."
Your hand finds the back of his neck, the metal of his chain, the radiating warmth of his skin. You pull him back up to your mouth because the ceiling is suddenly far less interesting. He lets out a low, ragged sigh against your lips, a sound of pure relief, before he catches your mouth again. The lamp keeps doing its minimum in the corner, and outside, the park remains completely indifferent to any of this.
At some point he pulls back just enough. His forehead rests against yours, his breath uneven, his hands still tangled deep in your hair as if heâs anchored there, looking at you with a sudden, quiet vulnerability that erases every year between you.
"Okay," he says, his voice a low vow.
"Okay," you say.
Neither of you moves. The space between you is heavy with it.
"The movie," he whispers, a faint, breathless attempt to catch his bearings.
"What movie," you say.
He laughs, a soft huff against your lips, and kisses you again, slower this time. It is a deep, worshipful press of his mouth that belongs entirely to the two of you, while the TV keeps going unwatched in the blue light of the room.
~~
Sunday starts the way things start when no one has officially decided anything, slowly, and without an exit.Â
You wake up to warmth. His arm is around you, heavy and certain, his chest against your back, his breath slow and even against the back of your neck. The room is gray with early light. The TV is off, the lamp is off, and the park outside is doing its quiet Sunday thing.
He's awake. You can tell by the quality of the stillness, not the loose stillness of sleep but the careful stillness of someone who has been awake for a while and decided not to move.
You don't move either.
His arm doesn't tighten. He doesn't say anything. He just stays, his hand open against your ribs, his breathing slow and deliberate, and you lie there in the gray light and let the morning take its time, and neither of you acknowledges that you're both awake, because acknowledging it would make it into something you'd have to address, and right now it's just this. His warmth at your back, the quiet park, the specific weight of a Sunday that hasn't asked anything of either of you yet.
Eventually you shift. Just slightly.
His arm tightens. Just slightly.
"Morning," he says, his voice still rough with sleep.
"Morning," you say.
A beat.
"Coffee?" he says.
"Please," you say.
He leaves at ten. You watch the van pull out from the window, which you do now, openly, without pretending you're not doing it.
He's back at noon.
He knocks twice and when you open the door he's holding a paper bag from the bakery on Elm and wearing yesterday's shirt and he looks at you with the straightforward expression of someone who has stopped pretending the van going anywhere was a real departure.
"Thought you left," you say.
"I got pastries," he says.
You step back from the door.
The afternoon happens in pieces, but the light is already changing, the warm amber of morning thinning into something flatter, the kind of gold that means the weekend is running out of air. He fixes the cabinet hinge without being asked, finds the screwdriver himself, does it while you sit on the counter eating a pastry and pretending to read. On Monday it had been a novelty. Today it feels like a countdown.
Later he finds your record player and puts something on, something slow and guitar-heavy, and the trailer fills with it. He sits on the floor with his back against the couch. You sit above him. His head tips back after a while and rests against your knee and you let it, your hand finding his hair without quite deciding to.
The record ends. The needle clicks on the spindle, over and over, a small patient sound in the quiet room.
Neither of you gets up to turn it over.
By the time he makes dinner the blue twilight is pressing hard against the window, making the room feel smaller. Eggs, toast, the last of the tomatoes. You sit across from him at the small table and the conversation is easy the way it's been all day, but underneath it something has shifted, the specific weight of hours that know they're numbered.
He says something that makes you almost laugh. You watch him watch you almost laugh, that warm look he doesn't always let you see.
You reach across the table. Your hand covers his. He turns it over and holds on, and his grip is slightly tighter than yesterday, a quiet reflex against something neither of you is naming.
The lamp is on low, the record back on, the dishes done. He's sitting on the edge of the bed watching you cross the room toward him, and his hands find your waist when you're close enough, and this time it's nothing like Saturday's urgency.
This is slower. This is deliberate. This is two people choosing, quietly, with full knowledge of what they're doing.
His forehead drops to your sternum for a moment, just resting there, his arms around you, his breath evening out.
"Hey," he says, quietly.
"Hey," you say.
He looks up.
You stay.
Afterward the room is dark and quiet and he's on his back with one arm around you, his rings on the nightstand in a small pile, his chest rising and falling in the particular slow rhythm of someone who has stopped performing anything. His other hand moves in your hair, absently, the way his fingers move on strings.
"Don't go anywhere," you say. Not tonight. Not in general. Both.
His arm tightens.
"Okay," he says, and means something large by it.
You wake up before him in the gray early light of Monday.
You get up carefully. You shower. You stand in front of the mirror and cover the marks on your throat with concealer until your neck looks like it belongs to someone who spent the week alone, which is the version of you that needs to exist in approximately two hours.
Then you take the gray blazer from the hanger. The good one, the structured one. You button it to the top. You pull your hair into a neat twist, pin the loose strands, straighten your collar. You locate the lesson plan in your bag. Literature, Hawkins Community College, Room 214. You check it until the words stop meaning anything.
You look like yourself. The other self.
You're pouring your coffee when you hear him stir.
He appears in the doorway a minute later, hair wrecked, eyes half-open, no shirt, and you make a very brief and very private mental note about the tattoos and the line of his shoulders and the general unfairness of the situation before returning to your coffee like a professional.
He pours himself a cup. Leans against the counter beside you. Looks at the lesson plan without picking it up.
"First day," he says.
"First day," you say.
"You nervous?"
"No," you say, which is mostly true.
"Liar," he says, without heat.
He puts his mug down. He reaches out and straightens your collar, which didn't need straightening, his fingers brief and warm against your neck. Then he drops his hand.
"You're going to be good at it," he says. Simply. Like it's a fact he's already confirmed.
"You don't know that," you say.
"I've been paying attention," he says. "Since Monday."
The other Monday. Last Monday. A week ago, which is either very short or very long depending on how you measure it.
You pick up your bag, your knuckles white against the leather. He walks you to the door, four steps, completely unnecessary, and catches your hand before you go down the steps. He turns you back, easy and unhurried, and kisses you once. Not long, not dramatic. Just the kind of thing people do when they've become the kind of people who do this.
"Good luck," he says. That half smile, the real one.
You look at him standing in your doorway with his coffee and his bare shoulders and that smile, and you think, briefly and inconveniently, that you are in serious trouble.
"Lock up when you leave," you say.
He raises his mug. Something between a toast and a goodbye.
You go down the steps. You don't look back, because if you look back you won't go, and you have a class at nine and a lesson plan and a gray blazer and a version of yourself that has somewhere to be.
Behind you the door stays open for a moment before you hear it close.
~~
Monday
The hallway smells of floor wax and coffee and the particular energy of people who haven't yet decided if they want to be here. You walk it with both hands around your travel mug, your blazer buttoned, your heels making a sound you recognize as armor.
Room 214 is yours by eight-fifteen. You write your name on the board in large block letters, set the attendance sheet square on the desk, arrange the chalk on the ledge the way you always do, a small, private ritual, the body taking over when the mind needs to settle. Your territory. The desk is a shield. You know this about yourself: you are good at this part, the standing-in-front-of-rooms part, the clear-voiced and certain part. You built it deliberately and it holds.
The room fills the way college rooms fill, without urgency, people arriving in ones and twos with coffee cups and half-open backpacks, finding seats with the specific social calculus of people who don't know each other yet but are already deciding what they think. Chairs scrape. Somebody drops a binder. You watch them settle with your hands resting on the desk, and you feel yourself shift into the register you know, attentive, warm, contained, and it feels clean. It feels like solid ground.
You pick up the attendance sheet.
The door is almost closed.
"Sorry." A drawling voice, unhurried, slightly out of breath. "Got stuck behind a tractor on route 9. Hawkins thing."
The professional smile is already shaped on your lips when you look up.
The smile stays. It has nowhere to go.
Eddie is standing in the doorframe.
His leather jacket is clean, actually clean, and the denim vest beneath it pressed flat, the patches in careful order, and his dark hair is damp and combed back from his face, which makes him look younger and simultaneously makes every angle of him more visible: the jaw, the cheekbones, the cut above his brow. He has a blue notebook gripped in one large hand, his knuckles white around it, the rings gone. He's already scanning the room for a seat with the slightly defensive posture of someone used to arriving places where they're not entirely wanted.
Then his eyes find you.
His feet stop.
The notebook drops slightly in his grip. His gaze moves down the gray blazer, slowly, despite himself, despite everything, then to the chalk between your fingers, then past you to the blackboard, where your name and your title sit in large block letters that seem, in this moment, to have been written specifically to rearrange something in him.
You watch it happen. You watch his jaw go slack and then harden. You watch the color leave his face and come back wrong, and you watch him run the same math you ran this morning in the bathroom mirror, the window latch, the porch, the laundry shed, the Hideout, Friday's floor, Saturday's couch, Sunday's everything, backward against Room 214 and Literature and the attendance sheet in your hand, arriving at the only answer there is.
The other students are finding their seats. No one is looking at him yet.
He looks at you. You look at him.
There is nothing either of you can do with your face that is adequate to this moment.
You lower your eyes to the attendance sheet first because one of you has to, because the room is full and twenty-three students will notice in approximately four more seconds if you keep standing here. You find your voice where you left it, clean and level, exactly where you need it.
"Find a seat, please," you say. To the room. To him. To no one specifically.
He moves.
He walks toward the back of the room with his steps heavy and deliberate, not looking at you, his jaw set hard. He pulls the last chair in the row with a screech of metal on linoleum that makes three people look up and then look away. He sits. He sets the blue notebook on the desk. He crosses his arms tight against his chest.
You call attendance.
When you say his name, Munson, E., third from the bottom, there is a pause that lasts exactly one second too long.
"Here," he says, to the desk.
Flat. Contained. The voice of someone who has taken everything and put it somewhere it can't be seen.
You move to the syllabus.
You talk about the semester, about Fitzgerald and Steinbeck, about the literature of disillusionment and reinvention, about characters who build themselves into something new and spend the rest of the book paying for it. Your voice is steady. Your hands are steady. You do not look at the back row unless you have to.
You're talking about Gatsby, about the green light, about the particular cruelty of wanting something just out of reach, when a voice comes from the back of the room.
"Does it count as reinvention," Eddie says, not quite raising his hand, "if you didn't know you needed it until it was already happening?"
The room turns to look at him. You don't.
You keep your eyes on the middle distance, on the space above everyone's heads, on the place you look when you need your voice to stay level.
"That's one of the questions the text asks," you say. "Whether transformation is ever truly chosen, or whether it chooses us."
A beat.
"And if it chooses you," he says, quieter now, "and then the situation changes. What happens to the person you were becoming."
The fluorescent light hums. Someone shifts in their seat.
You look at him then. You have to. It would be stranger not to.
He's looking directly at you for the first time since he walked in, his arms still crossed, his jaw still set, but his eyes are doing something else entirely, something that has nothing to do with Fitzgerald and everything to do with Sunday morning and a door closing and a van on route 9 that he drove to a building he didn't know you'd be standing in.
"That," you say, carefully, "is exactly what we're here to find out."
He holds your gaze for one more second. Then he looks down at the blue notebook and opens it, picks up his pen, and writes something you can't see.
The class continues. The ordinary machinery of a Monday morning grinds forward the way it always does.
Fourteen hours ago his arm was around you in the gray early light.
You write Chapter 1 â due Friday on the board.
The chalk makes a clean, precise sound in the silent room.
A hot summer, a wrong kind of love, and the feeling that some things begin already tasting like goodbye.
wc: 9149Â
The heat in the valley doesn't clear out at sunset; it thickens, turning into a heavy, damp weight against the vinyl walls of the trailer. You haul a crate of heavy reference books inside, gray dust coating your fingers, sweat gathering at the back of your knees, at the hollow of your throat, at every place a human body knows how to betray itself. The porch light flickers once, a dying yellow thing, and then a shadow cuts through it.
He is leaning against the rusted railing of the steps, his shoulder tipped in like he's been there a while. Like he's comfortable being a silhouette in someone else's doorway. He carries a toolbox in one hand, and his other hand hangs loose at his side, rings catching the bad light. Three of them, silver and dull, the kind that leave a mark if you're not careful. His gaze moves down your throat and stays on your damp collarbone, following the line of your oversized shirt down to your hips, unhurried.
You drop the crate onto the linoleum with a sound like a small earthquake and pull the hem of your shirt down over your thighs. âHey,â you say, surprised.
"Ahm, hey. Uncle Wayne said the window latch in the bedroom is jammed," he says in a low voice. He looks past you at the stack of books on the floor, then back at you, something registering behind his eyes. "Said you wouldn't be able to lock it from the inside."
"I've been meaning to call him about that," you say.
"And yet."
"And yet," you agree.
You step aside, opening a narrow gap in the hallway. He ducks his head slightly, a private smile pulling at the corner of his mouth, and steps through.
The smell of him fills the trailer instantly: leather, dry grass, gasoline and tobacco. "Bedroom's in the back," you say, to your own hand, mostly.
"I figured," he calls back, already moving through your space like he belongs to it. When you round the corner, he's standing in the middle of the room with his toolbox at his feet, looking at the shelf above your desk with the same attention he'd given your collarbone thirty seconds ago.
"The Demonology of Medieval Europe," he reads, then lets out a short breath through his nose. He turns to look at you over his shoulder, one eyebrow up like the corner of his mouth. "You know, this town already tried to run me out for a RPG game." A beat. "If anyone sees me walking out of here with that under my arm, I'm a dead man. We'd both get burned at the same stake."
"I've heard worse eulogies." You nod at the window. "Over there."
"I see the window." He doesn't move toward it. "You read all of these?"
"Most of them."
"For fun?"
"For work."
He turns to look at you fully now, both eyebrows up, reassessing. There is something in the way he does it that makes it feel like being placed into a different category. A more interesting one. "What kind of work?" he asks.
"The kind that makes people ask questions at parties."
He grins at that, quick and crooked, a little surprised by it, and finally turns toward the window. He crouches down in front of it, sets the toolbox open on the floor, and you get the full view of the back of his neck, the knobs of his spine where his t-shirt hangs loose, the tattoo that starts somewhere under his collar and disappears.
"It's the casing," he says, more to himself than to you. "Warped from the heat. Happens to these old trailers." He pries at it with a flathead, jaw working once, and the latch gives with a pop that's louder than expected. He catches the frame before it rattles. "There." He tests it twice, sliding the lock open and shut. "You can actually protect yourself now."
"I feel so safe now."
He looks at you over his shoulder again, and there it is, that almost smirk that's been sitting there since the porch.
"You should, princess," he says, very simply. He packs the toolbox without rushing, while you lean in the doorframe to watch him do it because you can't think of a single reason not to. He stands, brushes his palms on the thighs of his jeans, and turns to finally face you. "I'm Eddie," he says, like this is new information, like you haven't already filed it away somewhere you'll need later.
"I know," you say.
"Uncle Wayne talks about me?"
"Hawkins is small."
"Good things, I hope."
You reach past him to push the window open an inch, testing it.
"Good enough," you say.
He stands in your hallway for another beat, toolbox in hand, like he's forgotten what the exit is for. The porch light buzzes faintly through the screen.
"Well," he says, finally. "You know where to find me if anything else needs fixing."
He says it like âfixing itâ covers a very large territory.
~~
The silence of the trailer park is loud in the way only small places at night can be: crickets in overlapping frequencies, the distant television two trailers over, the soft percussion of moths battering themselves against the yellow bulb above your head. You stand on the top step of the porch with a cigarette caught between your fingers and your elbow on the railing, watching them do it. The moths, you mean, their absolute commitment to something that will not end well for them.
A match scrapes in the dark below and then Eddie steps out from the shadow between the trailers. His boots crunch on the gravel, and he stops at the bottom step, looking up at you. He nods at your hand before saying
"Those things'll kill you, you know?"Â
You take a long drag first, then exhale slowly. "I hope so."
There is a pause in which he appears to consider this information seriously. He reaches into his jacket pocket, pulls out a crumpled red pack of Marlboros, the soft pack, already half-dead, and slides a cigarette between his lips with the easy fluency of long habit.
His thumb catches the wheel of his lighter on the first try. The blue flame jumps up and for one second illuminates the sharp line of his jaw, the way his eyes stay on your mouth while he lights up.
He takes a long drag, blowing the smoke sideways, slow, deliberate, his lips still slightly parted.
"You were saying?" you say.
"I was saying those things'll kill you." He holds the cigarette loosely between two fingers, gesturing vaguely with it. "Statistically."
"Statistically, really?" you snort.
"It's a health concern." He takes another drag. "I worry."
"You're smoking right now, Eddie."
"I'm aware of that, sweetheart." He exhales through his nose, unbothered, a faint smile tucking itself into the corner of his mouth. "Look, what I do is my business. What you do," he gestures again with the cigarette, "is a tragedy."
You laugh before you can stop it, a small sound that escapes between your teeth.
"You always come out here at odd times of the night?" he asks.
"When I can't sleep, yes."
"What keeps you up?"
You look at him. The moths keep doing their thing above your head. "Restlessness," you say, and it's true enough.
He nods slowly, like this is an answer he understands in his body. He shifts his weight, rests his forearm on the railing beside yours, close enough that you can feel the warmth radiating off him.
He brings the cigarette to his lips and for a moment you watch his profile, the way he tips his head back slightly when he exhales, the long line of his throat.
"Me too," he says to the dark. You smoke in parallel for a while. He finishes his cigarette. You finish yours. Neither of you moves to go inside.
"You know what I think?" he says eventually.
"I don't."
"I think the restlessness is the point." He drops the butt, grinds it under his boot, and when he straightens he's a step closer than he was before. The top of his head is nearly level with yours from where you stand above him. Close enough that you'd only have to lean forward slightly.Â
"I think people who can't sleep are just paying attention." His eyes move over your face, slow and unashamed. "More than they want to admit."
"...the fat joint is making a compelling case for itself."
He takes one more step up, your bodies now separated by exactly the thickness of the railing, and his hand lands beside yours on the worn wood, his little finger a breath from yours.
He's looking at you the way he looked at your bookshelf, the way he looks at things he wants to understand by going closer.
"Goodnight,sweetheart" he says, and means not yet.
"Goodnight," you say back, and mean the same.
He goes down the steps, unhurried, and you watch him disappear between the trailers. The dark swallows him whole and then it's just you and the moths and the yellow light and your own hand on the railing, your little finger still warm from almost being touched.
~~Â
The storm arrives in the wednesday afternoon without any warning worth trusting, just a greenish quality to the light. The air going suddenly still and electric, and then the sky opens. Dirt paths turn into brown rivers in minutes. You watch it happen through the small window above the kitchen sink before grabbing the laundry basket from the floor, because the alternative is re-washing everything and you are not doing that, at all.
The laundry shed is barely a shed. It is a converted storage unit at the end of the second row of trailers: corrugated metal walls that drum in the rain, a single bare bulb, two washers that work and one that doesn't, three dryers that spin on their own schedule, and it smells in there.
The dryer that has your sheets in it has decided, in the spirit of the afternoon, to stop spinning. The sheets are wound into a single heavy, damp rope around themselves. You reach in and pull, and the whole mass resists you with the passive aggression of wet laundry everywhere. You are still fighting it, one knee braced against the machine, when the shed door rattles open.
Eddie ducks inside in a rush of rain and cold air, and the door slams behind him against the wind. He's soaked through, his leather jacket dark at the shoulders, heavy with rain, his hair plastered in pieces against his forehead and neck, water running down the sides of his jaw. He shakes himself once like a dog, ineffectively.
He looks at you.
He looks at the wet sheet coiled around your arms like a defeated boa constrictor.
"Rough day?" he says.
"This shit won't come out."
"Sheets?"
"Jammed."
He looks at the space between you and the back wall. He looks at the dryer. He does a quick calculation that you can see him doing, and then he takes a step forward, because he is Eddie Munson and apparently this is just what he does: he steps into spaces.
His chest is at your back, your shoulders inside the bracket of his arms, his hands coming over yours on the wet canvas.
The rain on his jacket is cold against your arm. His skin underneath is warm; you can feel it through the damp fabric, that specific heat that has no right being as present as it is. These two things happen at once and you feel both of them with equal clarity, and you do not move.
"You have to push the latch from underneath," he says, low and close. Not a whisper exactly, just what his voice does when there isn't room for it to go anywhere else. "This one sticks. Wayne's been meaning to fix it."
"Wayne's been meaning to fix a lot of things."
"He's a busy man." His fingers press over yours, guiding them to the right angle against the mechanism. His hands are large, the rings gone, and his palms are calloused in specific places, guitar-player places. You feel every point of contact. You are being very quiet about it. "Right there. Now push up."
You push up, the latch yields with a clunk, and the drum releases its grip on the sheet. The wet mass loosens in your hands.
He does not move away.
His arms stay bracketed around yours, his chest stays against your shoulder blades, and you can feel, through the damp jacket, through the thin material of your shirt, he's breathing slower now than it should be, deeper, the way someone breathes when they're trying to focus on something they're not looking at directly.
"Got it?" he says.
"Yeah," you say, "got it."
The dryer ticks. The single bulb swings slightly in the draft from a gap in the corrugated wall, making the shadows shift all the time.
"You're dripping on my laundry," you say.
"Little bit, yeah." His voice is still close. You can feel it more than hear it through the drum of the rain.
"You're going to make me redo the whole load."
"That would be a shame." A pause. "I'd feel terrible."
"You don't sound terrible."
"I'm hiding it." Another pause, and in it the specific quality of someone choosing their next words. "I'm very good at hiding things."
You turn your head slightly, not enough to face him, just enough that you're no longer fully facing away, that the line of your jaw is visible to him if he's looking. Which he is.
"Are you?" you say.
"Mostly," he says. Then, quietly, with something honest in it that he hasn't quite covered over: "Not always."
"I should probably," you start.
"Probably," he agrees, and he doesn't move for another full second, a second that you will find yourself thinking about later, at inconvenient moments.
Then he steps back. The cold air rushes into the space where he was and it's a physical thing, an absence you can map to your spine. He leans against the opposite wall, all of eighteen inches away, which is as much distance as the shed allows, and runs one hand through his wet hair, pushing it back from his face.
He looks at you as the bulb swings. He has a small cut above his left eyebrow, old and faded, that you haven't noticed before.
"You want help with the sheets?" he asks.
"I had it."
"You had it for twenty minutes before I got here and the machine disagreed."
"I was making progress."
"You were losing a fight to a dryer, câmon sweetheart."
You pull the sheet out properly now, bundling it against your chest, and look at him over the top of it. He's almost smiling. His jacket is still dripping onto the cement floor, a slow, steady sound under the rain.
"You can stay until the storm passes," you say, which is not an answer to what he said.
He understands it as one anyway.
He slides down the wall until he's sitting on the floor, back against the corrugated metal, long legs stretched in front of him. "So," he says, studying the ceiling. "Demonology."
You start folding the sheet, badly, in the way sheets always get folded in small spaces. "What about it."
"Is it a hobby or a calling?"
"Does it have to be one of those?"
He looks at you from the floor, from under his damp hair, and grins: slow and warm and a little dangerous, the way certain things you should be careful around are sometimes the most beautiful things in the room.
"No," he says. "I guess it doesn't."
The rain keeps coming. You sit on top of the middle dryer, the one that works, and let the hum of it warm you through, and you talk; not about anything that matters yet, not about anything that costs you.Â
Somewhere between the third question and the seventh you stop being careful about what you say. Not enough to notice, just enough that he does.
"You're easier to talk to than you look," he says at some point.
"What do I look like?"
He considers this with more seriousness than it deserves.
"Like someone who could wreck my life," he says, casual, like he's noting the weather.
When the rain stops, neither of you notices right away.
~~
The Hideout is the kind of place you don't end up in on purpose.
You ended up in it on purpose only in the sense that the rain was impossible and the door was the closest one. Now you've been here for forty minutes with a drink that's been empty for twenty, watching the condensation run down the side of the glass in slow, uneven tracks.
The lighting is low enough to forgive a lot of things, smells like cigarettes and old leather and beer that belongs to a previous decade. Someone on the small stage is doing something to a guitar riff that it didn't deserve, and three stools to your left someone is talking loud enough for two conversations, and you haven't heard a word of any of it,anyway.
You're watching the second drop reach the bottom of the glass when the stool beside you scrapes back. Then he says your name like he's setting something down carefully. You look up.
Eddie is standing with one hand on the back of the stool, still in his jacket, rain-damp at the shoulders as always. His eyes move over the empty glass, then back to you.
"Didn't take you for a Hideout girl," he says.
"I'm not. It was raining, thatâs all"
"Sure." He says it like he doesn't entirely believe you and finds that interesting, he sits, signaling the bartender with the ease of someone who has never once worried about whether a room would receive him. The bartender nods immediately, you file this away without meaning to.
"They're bad," you say, nodding at the stage.
"Tragically." He doesn't look away from the band. "The bassist has potential. The rest of them are crying for help."
"Harsh."
"Accurate."
"You play, right?" you say. You already know. He probably knows you know.
"Little bit," he says, and the way he says it, low and with that half smile already happening, makes it clear it is not a little bit at all.
You let yourself look at him, just for a second more, actually look at him, the way you've been carefully not doing since day one, and the problem, the real problem, is that it doesn't help.
"Right," you say, and look back at your drink.
"You want another?" he asks.
"I shouldn't."
"That's not what I asked."
You push the glass forward.
The band finishes their set to applause that is generous considering, and in the small shuffle of the stage reset someone leans down from the monitors and says something to Eddie.Â
"You know them?" you ask.
"Thursdays are mine," he says, and his face does something that is not quite modesty and not quite arrogance but lives comfortably in the neighborhood of both.
"Is that so?"
"Eight months running." He finishes his drink, sets the glass down with a small, definitive sound. "I've become something of an institution."
"This place smells like an institution."
He points at you, completely serious. "Atmosphere. I created that."
He stands, shrugs the jacket off in a single movement and drapes it over the back of the stool. Underneath, just the black t-shirt, the denim vest, the patches catching the low light.
"You're going up there?" you say. It comes out less like a question than you intended.
He looks at you over his shoulder, and there it is, that specific version of his smile, the one that knows exactly what it's doing.
"Don't go anywhere!" he says.
You watch him take the three steps up to the stage. Pick up the guitar with the ease of something he stopped thinking about years ago. Watch the room shift in a way you didn't notice it could shift, a current changing direction.
You pull his jacket off the back of the stool and set it on your lap without thinking about it.
The room shifts before he plays a single note. It's a small thing, the way people reorient without deciding to, drinks paused halfway to mouths, conversations losing a thread. He adjusts the strap, says something into the mic that makes the front of the room laugh, and you didn't catch it but you see the effect of it, the way the space loosens around him.
Then he plays.
You've heard people play guitar. You grew up with a radio and a television and enough county fairs to know what competent sounds like. This is not that. This is something that starts in his hands and moves through the instrument like it was waiting there and he's just the one who knew where to find it.
You pick up your drink. You put it down without drinking.
He moves differently up there. Not performed differently, just differently, like the stage is the place where the rest of him has room to exist. His head drops slightly when he hits something he likes. His eyes close for a bar and then open, find the middle distance, find the back wall. Find you, once, just for a second, before moving on like it was nothing.
You look down at the jacket in your lap: the patches, the worn collar, the smell of it, rain and something underneath that has no business being as present as it is.
You look back up and you realize, sitting there, that you've been collecting versions of his face without meaning to.
He plays three songs. You know this because you count them. The last one ends on a held note that he lets die slowly, deliberately, like he's deciding when to let go.Â
The room comes back to itself. The applause is different from what the previous band got: warmer, more specific, the kind that knows what it's responding to.
He says something into the mic again, easy and unhurried, thanks the bar by name like it's an old argument he's fond of. Then he hands the guitar off and steps down from the stage, and you have approximately four seconds to decide what to do with your face before he's crossing the room toward you.
He drops back onto the stool. His cheeks are slightly flushed, his hair worse than before, and he reaches for his drink before remembering it's empty. He signals the bartender, then turns to look at you.
He looks at the jacket in your lap. "So," he says.
"So," you say.
"Verdict."
You take a second and he lets you take it, leaning one elbow on the bar, watching you with the patience of someone who already knows the answer and is enjoying the wait.
"You're good," you say, because there's no version of honesty that gets you out of this one.
"I know." No hesitation. But the way he's looking at you when he says it takes the arrogance out of it somehow, replaces it with something more direct. "I wanted you to know too."
The bar fills the silence around that. Someone laughs too loud near the door, the bartender sets two fresh drinks down and disappears.
"The jacket," he says eventually, nodding at your lap.
"You left it."
"I did, saving my place for after the show."
"I was holding it," you say, "so it wouldn't fall."
"Right." The corner of his mouth moves. "Considerate of you."
"I am a considerate person."
He looks at you for a moment in that way he has, the one that makes you feel like you've been read without giving permission.
"Yeah," he says quietly, "I'm starting to think there's a lot of things about you."
You don't answer that but you don't give the jacket back either.
~~
It's Friday, which means nothing except that the week has finally stopped moving and left you somewhere quiet with a cigarette and your feet on the railing.
You hear his door before you see him: the specific sound of it, the particular weight of his step on the gravel. He's got his keys in his hand, jacket on, heading for the van.
He sees you and automatically slows.
"Going to the store," he says, by way of hello.
"Okay."
He turns back with the expression of someone who already knows what they're about to do.
"You want anything?"
You look at your cigarette, at him. You think about the Friday night stretched out in front of you: the trailer, the couch, the film you've been meaning to watch.
"Popcorn," you say. "The microwave kind, oh! And Coke. And something with chocolate."
He stares at you for a moment.
"That's a lot of wants for someone sitting alone on a Friday."
"Are you going or not?"
"I'm going." He's already turning toward the van. "I'm just saying. You could've led with the movie."
You watch him go as you finish the cigarette.
"It's Nightmare on Elm Street," you call after him.
He raises one hand without turning around. Acknowledgment, or something close to it.
He comes back twenty minutes later with a paper bag and lets himself be let in, and the next part happens the way things happen when no one is officially deciding anything, he ends up on the floor with his back against the couch, you're sitting criss-cross above him, the lamp doing the bare minimum, the Coke sweating onto the coffee table, and Freddy Krueger doing his thing on the screen.
The popcorn sits between you, the joint appears at some point, the way it does.
"She knows she's in the dream," he says, after a while. "And she's still going toward him."
"Eddie..."
"I just think it's worth discussing."
"Watch the movie."
He watches the movie, mostly.Â
The room gets warmer and quieter and the sounds from outside arrive slightly later than they should, and the conversation moves the way conversations move when no one is steering. From the film to nothing in particular to something that starts to matter without announcing itself.
"Can I ask you something?" he says to the TV.
"You're going to anyway."
"Why Indiana?"
You look at the screen. "Cheap. Quiet. Wayne had the trailer."
"That's the practical answer."
You glance down at him, he's still looking at the TV, his chin tipped up slightly, his profile caught in the blue light.
"I got divorced," you say simply, because it's late and the weed has done what weed does,"Eight months ago."
"It wasn't loud," you say. "No one screamed. It was very quiet, actually." You pull the sleeve of your shirt over your hand. "He had this way of explaining my feelings back to me. Why were too much. Why my reactions were disproportionate." A pause. "He did it long enough that I kinda started to agree with him, you know?"
The movie fills the silence. Someone runs down a hallway.
"Sorry," you say, and mean it. "That was..." You reach for something and land on the wrong thing entirely. "Freddy Krueger is a better conversationalist."
It lands badly, no timing at all, you know it lands badly. But he laughs anyway, a real one, and there it is: the slight fold at the corner of his eye, the crease in his left cheek, the specific unguarded quality of a face mid-laugh.
You look away first.
"He did a number on you," Eddie says, quieter now, the laugh still warm in his voice.
"He was very thorough."
"Yeah." He turns the chocolate wrapper over in his hands. "I've met guys like that. They make you think the problem is the size of you." He pauses, not quite getting the next part right, trying again. "You're not small. You've just been in a small place."
"You don't know that," you say.
"I've been paying attention all week," he says simply, like it's not an admission. "and I know youâre bigger than this, than him."
On screen someone screams. He shifts, turning to face you properly, his arm coming up to rest on the couch cushion beside your knee. The performance is gone, his voice dropping into the register it finds in small spaces.
"Look," he says. "I know you're older and you've got your whole," he gestures vaguely at you, at the blazer on the chair, at the stacked books, at the general fact of you, "thing going on. And I know I'm," another gesture at himself, less certain, "what I am." His jaw tightens slightly. "But I've been thinking about you since Monday, and I'm pretty bad at pretending I'm not."
You open your mouth but what comes out is a cough. Not a small one. A full, graceless, weed-in-the-wrong-place cough that bends you forward and will not stop, your eyes watering, one hand braced on the cushion.
"Are you?" he starts, between his own laughter.
You hold up one finger. The cough continues.
He gets up, goes to the kitchen, comes back with a glass of water and crouches in front of you, his mouth pressed shut in the specific way of someone fighting very hard not to laugh at you.
You take the water and drink. The coughing subsides.
"Okay," you say, hoarse.
"Okay," he says, and he's smiling, the real one, and he's close, and you're still catching your breath, and the TV is still going, and outside the park is still quiet.
"You were saying," you say.
"I think you heard me," he says.
You look at him. He looks at you. The lamp in the corner keeps doing its minimum.
"I need more water," you say.
"Sure," he says, and doesn't move, and you don't move either, and the movie keeps going unwatched in the blue light of the room.
~~
Saturday morning has the quality of something that hasn't been addressed yet.
He's gone when you wake up. The blanket folded on the couch with the particular neatness of someone who didn't want to leave evidence of being there.
The coffee you make is for one person. You drink it at the window and watch the park wake up slow under a gray sky that hasn't decided what it wants to do yet.
You're on the porch with the second cup when he passes, jacket on, hair still damp, looking at his boots until he looks up.
"Hey," he says.
"Hey."
He stops. You can see the decision happening: his feet slowing before the rest of him catches up.
You hold up your mug. An offer.
He comes up the steps without a word and takes it, wraps both hands around it, and stands beside you at the railing. You look at the park. He looks at the park. The gray sky stays undecided.
After a moment he reaches into his jacket and pulls out a cigarette, lights it, and holds the pack toward you.
"I'm almost out," you say, taking one.
"I know," he says to the park.
You smoke in a silence that has a week's worth of things in it. When the cigarette is done he sets the empty mug on the railing, reaches back into his jacket, and puts a full unopened pack next to it. Marlboros, soft pack. He doesn't look at you when he does it.
"Eddie," you say.
"I noticed," he says simply. "That's all."
The gray sky makes up its mind. The first drops hit the railing between you and he goes down the steps.
Wayne is at the kitchen table with his coffee and the newspaper and the particular stillness of a man who has been awake since five and has already formed opinions about the day.
He doesn't look up when Eddie comes in; he turns a page. Eddie gets himself another coffee with shaken hands. Wayne turns another page.
"Funny thing," Wayne says to the newspaper. "Van was in the garage all night, but you werenât here."
"Roads were bad," Eddie says.
"Rained at eleven." Wayne turns a page. "Cleared up by midnight."
Eddie drinks his coffee, remembering that at eleven, he was intoxicated by your perfume, your laugh, you.
"She's pretty," Wayne says.
"Wayne."
"I'm just saying, boy."
"You don't have to, please."
"Smart too, from what I can tell." He folds the corner of a page down, thoughtful. "Those books she carries around."
"They're for work."
"Mm." Wayne takes a slow sip of coffee. "What kind of work?"
"The kind thatâŚ" Eddie stops. "I don't know, Wayne."
"But you've talked about it."
Eddie's ears go the specific red of a man who has run out of deflections and knows it.
"She seems like good people," Wayne says simply, and picks up his newspaper like the conversation is over, which it is, because Wayne has always known when he's made his point.
Someone knocks on the door.
They both look at it. Wayne looks back at Eddie over the top of the newspaper. Eddie looks at the door, then at his ears in the reflection of the window, then at the door again.
"I'll get it," he says.
"I imagine," Wayne says.
You're standing on the porch with your hands in your pockets and the unopened pack of Marlboros he left on the railing, which you are holding in a way that doesn't quite explain itself.
"Movie!" you say. "Tonight. My place. Eight o'clock?"
He leans against the doorframe. His ears are still red, which you notice and file away for later.
"What are we watching?" he grins.
"Does it matter?"
"No," he says. "Not really."
"Eight o'clock," you say, and go back down the steps.
He watches you cross the gravel. Behind him the kitchen is very quiet. Wayne is still pretending to read until,
"Eight o'clock," he says to no one in particular.
"Wayne!!!"
"Just memorizing," Wayne says. "In case you lose track."
He closes the door. He stands there for a second with his hand still on the knob. Then he does a small, contained, deeply undignified fist pump at the floor.
Wayne doesn't look up from the newspaper. "Just neighbors my ass," he says.
Eddie straightens up immediately. "Yep," he says with great dignity, and goes to his room.
It's ten past eleven in the morning. You have eight hours and fifty minutes.
You pick up your book, read the same paragraph four times and retain nothing. You put the book down.
You clean the bathroom, which didn't need cleaning. You rearrange the books on the shelf above the desk, then put them back the way they were because the original order was fine and you were just looking for something to do with your hands.
At two o'clock you hear the van leave. You don't go to the window. You are a grown adult and you don't go to the window, and when you hear it come back forty minutes later you also don't go to the window, and you are handling this very well.
At four you make tea you don't want. At five you eat something you don't taste. At six you sit on the couch with the television on and watch it without seeing it, your eyes moving to the clock with the frequency of someone who knows exactly what they're doing and is embarrassed about it.
At six forty-five you go to the bathroom and look at yourself in the mirror for a long moment.
"It's just a movie," you tell your reflection. Your reflection doesn't look convinced either.
At seven fifty-eight you sit back down on the couch, criss-cross, with a throw pillow in your lap and look at the door. At eight o'clock exactly, he knocks.
You wait three seconds so it doesn't seem like you were waiting for him at the door, then you open it.
He's showered. His hair is still slightly damp and he's got a clean shirt on, dark, the sleeves pushed up, and he's holding a bag that smells like something fried from the diner two streets over.
He has the specific expression of someone who also waited three seconds before knocking.
"Eight o'clock," he says.
"You're on time," you say.
"I'm always on time."
"You were late on Monday."
"The window was..." he stops. "Are you going to let me in?"
You step back from the door.
You end up where you always end up: you on the couch, him on the floor below you, the food between you, the lamp barely doing its work in the corner.
The food goes, the wrappers get thrown away. He comes back and sits, and you put something on the TV, something neither of you will watch, and the room settles into the specific silence of two people pretending to be comfortable.
On screen someone runs down a corridor. Someone else follows.
"She's going to trip," you say.
"She's going to trip," he says at the exact same moment.
She trips. You look at each other.
He's already looking at you. He has been for a while, you realize. Not at the screen, at you.
Looking in that way he has, the one that makes you feel like you've been read without giving permission. But this time there's no deflection left in him. The playful edge is gone, replaced by a quiet, heavy gravity that makes your breath hitch.
He moves, certain but unhurried. His hand finds your chin, his thumb brushing over your lower lip with a slow reverence that sends a shiver straight down your spine. When he kisses you, it isn't an anchor dropping; it is a total, breathless surrender. His lips touch yours with a gentleness so deliberate it feels almost sacred, as if he is trying to memorize the exact shape of you in the dark.
You make a small sound against his mouth, and the noise seems to undo something deep inside him. His hand slides up into your hair, his long fingers tangling in the strands, tilting your head back just enough to deepen the kiss. It is heavy, steady, and consuming.
He pulls you closer, his other hand anchoring at your waist before sliding down to your hip to lift you onto his lap. He settles you there, his large hands trembling just a fraction against your skin. He holds you with the quiet, desperate intensity of a man who knows he is touching something far better than he deserves, his face buried in the crook of your neck as he breathes you in, completely at your mercy.
His knee slides between yours, slow and certain, his mouth moving to your jaw, your throat, with the specific, unhurried attention of someone who has been thinking about exactly this. For all his usual restless, youthful bravado, here he lets you dictate the pace, completely yielding to a maturity that usually intimidates him.
"Eddie," you say to the ceiling, your fingers tightening in his hair.
"Yeah," he murmurs against your skin, his lips brushing your collarbone. He pauses for a fraction of a second, his breath hot against your throat. "You have no idea what you do to me. How long I've been losing my mind over this."
Your hand finds the back of his neck, the metal of his chain, the radiating warmth of his skin. You pull him back up to your mouth because the ceiling is suddenly far less interesting. He lets out a low, ragged sigh against your lips, a sound of pure relief, before he catches your mouth again. The lamp keeps doing its minimum in the corner, and outside, the park remains completely indifferent to any of this.
At some point he pulls back just enough. His forehead rests against yours, his breath uneven, his hands still tangled deep in your hair as if heâs anchored there, looking at you with a sudden, quiet vulnerability that erases every year between you.
"Okay," he says, his voice a low vow.
"Okay," you say.
Neither of you moves. The space between you is heavy with it.
"The movie," he whispers, a faint, breathless attempt to catch his bearings.
"What movie," you say.
He laughs, a soft huff against your lips, and kisses you again, slower this time. It is a deep, worshipful press of his mouth that belongs entirely to the two of you, while the TV keeps going unwatched in the blue light of the room.
~~
Sunday starts the way things start when no one has officially decided anything, slowly, and without an exit.Â
You wake up to warmth. His arm is around you, heavy and certain, his chest against your back, his breath slow and even against the back of your neck. The room is gray with early light. The TV is off, the lamp is off, and the park outside is doing its quiet Sunday thing.
He's awake. You can tell by the quality of the stillness, not the loose stillness of sleep but the careful stillness of someone who has been awake for a while and decided not to move.
You don't move either.
His arm doesn't tighten. He doesn't say anything. He just stays, his hand open against your ribs, his breathing slow and deliberate, and you lie there in the gray light and let the morning take its time, and neither of you acknowledges that you're both awake, because acknowledging it would make it into something you'd have to address, and right now it's just this. His warmth at your back, the quiet park, the specific weight of a Sunday that hasn't asked anything of either of you yet.
Eventually you shift. Just slightly.
His arm tightens. Just slightly.
"Morning," he says, his voice still rough with sleep.
"Morning," you say.
A beat.
"Coffee?" he says.
"Please," you say.
He leaves at ten. You watch the van pull out from the window, which you do now, openly, without pretending you're not doing it.
He's back at noon.
He knocks twice and when you open the door he's holding a paper bag from the bakery on Elm and wearing yesterday's shirt and he looks at you with the straightforward expression of someone who has stopped pretending the van going anywhere was a real departure.
"Thought you left," you say.
"I got pastries," he says.
You step back from the door.
The afternoon happens in pieces, but the light is already changing, the warm amber of morning thinning into something flatter, the kind of gold that means the weekend is running out of air. He fixes the cabinet hinge without being asked, finds the screwdriver himself, does it while you sit on the counter eating a pastry and pretending to read. On Monday it had been a novelty. Today it feels like a countdown.
Later he finds your record player and puts something on, something slow and guitar-heavy, and the trailer fills with it. He sits on the floor with his back against the couch. You sit above him. His head tips back after a while and rests against your knee and you let it, your hand finding his hair without quite deciding to.
The record ends. The needle clicks on the spindle, over and over, a small patient sound in the quiet room.
Neither of you gets up to turn it over.
By the time he makes dinner the blue twilight is pressing hard against the window, making the room feel smaller. Eggs, toast, the last of the tomatoes. You sit across from him at the small table and the conversation is easy the way it's been all day, but underneath it something has shifted, the specific weight of hours that know they're numbered.
He says something that makes you almost laugh. You watch him watch you almost laugh, that warm look he doesn't always let you see.
You reach across the table. Your hand covers his. He turns it over and holds on, and his grip is slightly tighter than yesterday, a quiet reflex against something neither of you is naming.
The lamp is on low, the record back on, the dishes done. He's sitting on the edge of the bed watching you cross the room toward him, and his hands find your waist when you're close enough, and this time it's nothing like Saturday's urgency.
This is slower. This is deliberate. This is two people choosing, quietly, with full knowledge of what they're doing.
His forehead drops to your sternum for a moment, just resting there, his arms around you, his breath evening out.
"Hey," he says, quietly.
"Hey," you say.
He looks up.
You stay.
Afterward the room is dark and quiet and he's on his back with one arm around you, his rings on the nightstand in a small pile, his chest rising and falling in the particular slow rhythm of someone who has stopped performing anything. His other hand moves in your hair, absently, the way his fingers move on strings.
"Don't go anywhere," you say. Not tonight. Not in general. Both.
His arm tightens.
"Okay," he says, and means something large by it.
You wake up before him in the gray early light of Monday.
You get up carefully. You shower. You stand in front of the mirror and cover the marks on your throat with concealer until your neck looks like it belongs to someone who spent the week alone, which is the version of you that needs to exist in approximately two hours.
Then you take the gray blazer from the hanger. The good one, the structured one. You button it to the top. You pull your hair into a neat twist, pin the loose strands, straighten your collar. You locate the lesson plan in your bag. Literature, Hawkins Community College, Room 214. You check it until the words stop meaning anything.
You look like yourself. The other self.
You're pouring your coffee when you hear him stir.
He appears in the doorway a minute later, hair wrecked, eyes half-open, no shirt, and you make a very brief and very private mental note about the tattoos and the line of his shoulders and the general unfairness of the situation before returning to your coffee like a professional.
He pours himself a cup. Leans against the counter beside you. Looks at the lesson plan without picking it up.
"First day," he says.
"First day," you say.
"You nervous?"
"No," you say, which is mostly true.
"Liar," he says, without heat.
He puts his mug down. He reaches out and straightens your collar, which didn't need straightening, his fingers brief and warm against your neck. Then he drops his hand.
"You're going to be good at it," he says. Simply. Like it's a fact he's already confirmed.
"You don't know that," you say.
"I've been paying attention," he says. "Since Monday."
The other Monday. Last Monday. A week ago, which is either very short or very long depending on how you measure it.
You pick up your bag, your knuckles white against the leather. He walks you to the door, four steps, completely unnecessary, and catches your hand before you go down the steps. He turns you back, easy and unhurried, and kisses you once. Not long, not dramatic. Just the kind of thing people do when they've become the kind of people who do this.
"Good luck," he says. That half smile, the real one.
You look at him standing in your doorway with his coffee and his bare shoulders and that smile, and you think, briefly and inconveniently, that you are in serious trouble.
"Lock up when you leave," you say.
He raises his mug. Something between a toast and a goodbye.
You go down the steps. You don't look back, because if you look back you won't go, and you have a class at nine and a lesson plan and a gray blazer and a version of yourself that has somewhere to be.
Behind you the door stays open for a moment before you hear it close.
~~
Monday
The hallway smells of floor wax and coffee and the particular energy of people who haven't yet decided if they want to be here. You walk it with both hands around your travel mug, your blazer buttoned, your heels making a sound you recognize as armor.
Room 214 is yours by eight-fifteen. You write your name on the board in large block letters, set the attendance sheet square on the desk, arrange the chalk on the ledge the way you always do, a small, private ritual, the body taking over when the mind needs to settle. Your territory. The desk is a shield. You know this about yourself: you are good at this part, the standing-in-front-of-rooms part, the clear-voiced and certain part. You built it deliberately and it holds.
The room fills the way college rooms fill, without urgency, people arriving in ones and twos with coffee cups and half-open backpacks, finding seats with the specific social calculus of people who don't know each other yet but are already deciding what they think. Chairs scrape. Somebody drops a binder. You watch them settle with your hands resting on the desk, and you feel yourself shift into the register you know, attentive, warm, contained, and it feels clean. It feels like solid ground.
You pick up the attendance sheet.
The door is almost closed.
"Sorry." A drawling voice, unhurried, slightly out of breath. "Got stuck behind a tractor on route 9. Hawkins thing."
The professional smile is already shaped on your lips when you look up.
The smile stays. It has nowhere to go.
Eddie is standing in the doorframe.
His leather jacket is clean, actually clean, and the denim vest beneath it pressed flat, the patches in careful order, and his dark hair is damp and combed back from his face, which makes him look younger and simultaneously makes every angle of him more visible: the jaw, the cheekbones, the cut above his brow. He has a blue notebook gripped in one large hand, his knuckles white around it, the rings gone. He's already scanning the room for a seat with the slightly defensive posture of someone used to arriving places where they're not entirely wanted.
Then his eyes find you.
His feet stop.
The notebook drops slightly in his grip. His gaze moves down the gray blazer, slowly, despite himself, despite everything, then to the chalk between your fingers, then past you to the blackboard, where your name and your title sit in large block letters that seem, in this moment, to have been written specifically to rearrange something in him.
You watch it happen. You watch his jaw go slack and then harden. You watch the color leave his face and come back wrong, and you watch him run the same math you ran this morning in the bathroom mirror, the window latch, the porch, the laundry shed, the Hideout, Friday's floor, Saturday's couch, Sunday's everything, backward against Room 214 and Literature and the attendance sheet in your hand, arriving at the only answer there is.
The other students are finding their seats. No one is looking at him yet.
He looks at you. You look at him.
There is nothing either of you can do with your face that is adequate to this moment.
You lower your eyes to the attendance sheet first because one of you has to, because the room is full and twenty-three students will notice in approximately four more seconds if you keep standing here. You find your voice where you left it, clean and level, exactly where you need it.
"Find a seat, please," you say. To the room. To him. To no one specifically.
He moves.
He walks toward the back of the room with his steps heavy and deliberate, not looking at you, his jaw set hard. He pulls the last chair in the row with a screech of metal on linoleum that makes three people look up and then look away. He sits. He sets the blue notebook on the desk. He crosses his arms tight against his chest.
You call attendance.
When you say his name, Munson, E., third from the bottom, there is a pause that lasts exactly one second too long.
"Here," he says, to the desk.
Flat. Contained. The voice of someone who has taken everything and put it somewhere it can't be seen.
You move to the syllabus.
You talk about the semester, about Fitzgerald and Steinbeck, about the literature of disillusionment and reinvention, about characters who build themselves into something new and spend the rest of the book paying for it. Your voice is steady. Your hands are steady. You do not look at the back row unless you have to.
You're talking about Gatsby, about the green light, about the particular cruelty of wanting something just out of reach, when a voice comes from the back of the room.
"Does it count as reinvention," Eddie says, not quite raising his hand, "if you didn't know you needed it until it was already happening?"
The room turns to look at him. You don't.
You keep your eyes on the middle distance, on the space above everyone's heads, on the place you look when you need your voice to stay level.
"That's one of the questions the text asks," you say. "Whether transformation is ever truly chosen, or whether it chooses us."
A beat.
"And if it chooses you," he says, quieter now, "and then the situation changes. What happens to the person you were becoming."
The fluorescent light hums. Someone shifts in their seat.
You look at him then. You have to. It would be stranger not to.
He's looking directly at you for the first time since he walked in, his arms still crossed, his jaw still set, but his eyes are doing something else entirely, something that has nothing to do with Fitzgerald and everything to do with Sunday morning and a door closing and a van on route 9 that he drove to a building he didn't know you'd be standing in.
"That," you say, carefully, "is exactly what we're here to find out."
He holds your gaze for one more second. Then he looks down at the blue notebook and opens it, picks up his pen, and writes something you can't see.
The class continues. The ordinary machinery of a Monday morning grinds forward the way it always does.
Fourteen hours ago his arm was around you in the gray early light.
You write Chapter 1 â due Friday on the board.
The chalk makes a clean, precise sound in the silent room.
A hot summer, a wrong kind of love, and the feeling that some things begin already tasting like goodbye.
wc: 9149Â
The heat in the valley doesn't clear out at sunset; it thickens, turning into a heavy, damp weight against the vinyl walls of the trailer. You haul a crate of heavy reference books inside, gray dust coating your fingers, sweat gathering at the back of your knees, at the hollow of your throat, at every place a human body knows how to betray itself. The porch light flickers once, a dying yellow thing, and then a shadow cuts through it.
He is leaning against the rusted railing of the steps, his shoulder tipped in like he's been there a while. Like he's comfortable being a silhouette in someone else's doorway. He carries a toolbox in one hand, and his other hand hangs loose at his side, rings catching the bad light. Three of them, silver and dull, the kind that leave a mark if you're not careful. His gaze moves down your throat and stays on your damp collarbone, following the line of your oversized shirt down to your hips, unhurried.
You drop the crate onto the linoleum with a sound like a small earthquake and pull the hem of your shirt down over your thighs. âHey,â you say, surprised.
"Ahm, hey. Uncle Wayne said the window latch in the bedroom is jammed," he says in a low voice. He looks past you at the stack of books on the floor, then back at you, something registering behind his eyes. "Said you wouldn't be able to lock it from the inside."
"I've been meaning to call him about that," you say.
"And yet."
"And yet," you agree.
You step aside, opening a narrow gap in the hallway. He ducks his head slightly, a private smile pulling at the corner of his mouth, and steps through.
The smell of him fills the trailer instantly: leather, dry grass, gasoline and tobacco. "Bedroom's in the back," you say, to your own hand, mostly.
"I figured," he calls back, already moving through your space like he belongs to it. When you round the corner, he's standing in the middle of the room with his toolbox at his feet, looking at the shelf above your desk with the same attention he'd given your collarbone thirty seconds ago.
"The Demonology of Medieval Europe," he reads, then lets out a short breath through his nose. He turns to look at you over his shoulder, one eyebrow up like the corner of his mouth. "You know, this town already tried to run me out for a RPG game." A beat. "If anyone sees me walking out of here with that under my arm, I'm a dead man. We'd both get burned at the same stake."
"I've heard worse eulogies." You nod at the window. "Over there."
"I see the window." He doesn't move toward it. "You read all of these?"
"Most of them."
"For fun?"
"For work."
He turns to look at you fully now, both eyebrows up, reassessing. There is something in the way he does it that makes it feel like being placed into a different category. A more interesting one. "What kind of work?" he asks.
"The kind that makes people ask questions at parties."
He grins at that, quick and crooked, a little surprised by it, and finally turns toward the window. He crouches down in front of it, sets the toolbox open on the floor, and you get the full view of the back of his neck, the knobs of his spine where his t-shirt hangs loose, the tattoo that starts somewhere under his collar and disappears.
"It's the casing," he says, more to himself than to you. "Warped from the heat. Happens to these old trailers." He pries at it with a flathead, jaw working once, and the latch gives with a pop that's louder than expected. He catches the frame before it rattles. "There." He tests it twice, sliding the lock open and shut. "You can actually protect yourself now."
"I feel so safe now."
He looks at you over his shoulder again, and there it is, that almost smirk that's been sitting there since the porch.
"You should, princess," he says, very simply. He packs the toolbox without rushing, while you lean in the doorframe to watch him do it because you can't think of a single reason not to. He stands, brushes his palms on the thighs of his jeans, and turns to finally face you. "I'm Eddie," he says, like this is new information, like you haven't already filed it away somewhere you'll need later.
"I know," you say.
"Uncle Wayne talks about me?"
"Hawkins is small."
"Good things, I hope."
You reach past him to push the window open an inch, testing it.
"Good enough," you say.
He stands in your hallway for another beat, toolbox in hand, like he's forgotten what the exit is for. The porch light buzzes faintly through the screen.
"Well," he says, finally. "You know where to find me if anything else needs fixing."
He says it like âfixing itâ covers a very large territory.
~~
The silence of the trailer park is loud in the way only small places at night can be: crickets in overlapping frequencies, the distant television two trailers over, the soft percussion of moths battering themselves against the yellow bulb above your head. You stand on the top step of the porch with a cigarette caught between your fingers and your elbow on the railing, watching them do it. The moths, you mean, their absolute commitment to something that will not end well for them.
A match scrapes in the dark below and then Eddie steps out from the shadow between the trailers. His boots crunch on the gravel, and he stops at the bottom step, looking up at you. He nods at your hand before saying
"Those things'll kill you, you know?"Â
You take a long drag first, then exhale slowly. "I hope so."
There is a pause in which he appears to consider this information seriously. He reaches into his jacket pocket, pulls out a crumpled red pack of Marlboros, the soft pack, already half-dead, and slides a cigarette between his lips with the easy fluency of long habit.
His thumb catches the wheel of his lighter on the first try. The blue flame jumps up and for one second illuminates the sharp line of his jaw, the way his eyes stay on your mouth while he lights up.
He takes a long drag, blowing the smoke sideways, slow, deliberate, his lips still slightly parted.
"You were saying?" you say.
"I was saying those things'll kill you." He holds the cigarette loosely between two fingers, gesturing vaguely with it. "Statistically."
"Statistically, really?" you snort.
"It's a health concern." He takes another drag. "I worry."
"You're smoking right now, Eddie."
"I'm aware of that, sweetheart." He exhales through his nose, unbothered, a faint smile tucking itself into the corner of his mouth. "Look, what I do is my business. What you do," he gestures again with the cigarette, "is a tragedy."
You laugh before you can stop it, a small sound that escapes between your teeth.
"You always come out here at odd times of the night?" he asks.
"When I can't sleep, yes."
"What keeps you up?"
You look at him. The moths keep doing their thing above your head. "Restlessness," you say, and it's true enough.
He nods slowly, like this is an answer he understands in his body. He shifts his weight, rests his forearm on the railing beside yours, close enough that you can feel the warmth radiating off him.
He brings the cigarette to his lips and for a moment you watch his profile, the way he tips his head back slightly when he exhales, the long line of his throat.
"Me too," he says to the dark. You smoke in parallel for a while. He finishes his cigarette. You finish yours. Neither of you moves to go inside.
"You know what I think?" he says eventually.
"I don't."
"I think the restlessness is the point." He drops the butt, grinds it under his boot, and when he straightens he's a step closer than he was before. The top of his head is nearly level with yours from where you stand above him. Close enough that you'd only have to lean forward slightly.Â
"I think people who can't sleep are just paying attention." His eyes move over your face, slow and unashamed. "More than they want to admit."
"...the fat joint is making a compelling case for itself."
He takes one more step up, your bodies now separated by exactly the thickness of the railing, and his hand lands beside yours on the worn wood, his little finger a breath from yours.
He's looking at you the way he looked at your bookshelf, the way he looks at things he wants to understand by going closer.
"Goodnight,sweetheart" he says, and means not yet.
"Goodnight," you say back, and mean the same.
He goes down the steps, unhurried, and you watch him disappear between the trailers. The dark swallows him whole and then it's just you and the moths and the yellow light and your own hand on the railing, your little finger still warm from almost being touched.
~~Â
The storm arrives in the wednesday afternoon without any warning worth trusting, just a greenish quality to the light. The air going suddenly still and electric, and then the sky opens. Dirt paths turn into brown rivers in minutes. You watch it happen through the small window above the kitchen sink before grabbing the laundry basket from the floor, because the alternative is re-washing everything and you are not doing that, at all.
The laundry shed is barely a shed. It is a converted storage unit at the end of the second row of trailers: corrugated metal walls that drum in the rain, a single bare bulb, two washers that work and one that doesn't, three dryers that spin on their own schedule, and it smells in there.
The dryer that has your sheets in it has decided, in the spirit of the afternoon, to stop spinning. The sheets are wound into a single heavy, damp rope around themselves. You reach in and pull, and the whole mass resists you with the passive aggression of wet laundry everywhere. You are still fighting it, one knee braced against the machine, when the shed door rattles open.
Eddie ducks inside in a rush of rain and cold air, and the door slams behind him against the wind. He's soaked through, his leather jacket dark at the shoulders, heavy with rain, his hair plastered in pieces against his forehead and neck, water running down the sides of his jaw. He shakes himself once like a dog, ineffectively.
He looks at you.
He looks at the wet sheet coiled around your arms like a defeated boa constrictor.
"Rough day?" he says.
"This shit won't come out."
"Sheets?"
"Jammed."
He looks at the space between you and the back wall. He looks at the dryer. He does a quick calculation that you can see him doing, and then he takes a step forward, because he is Eddie Munson and apparently this is just what he does: he steps into spaces.
His chest is at your back, your shoulders inside the bracket of his arms, his hands coming over yours on the wet canvas.
The rain on his jacket is cold against your arm. His skin underneath is warm; you can feel it through the damp fabric, that specific heat that has no right being as present as it is. These two things happen at once and you feel both of them with equal clarity, and you do not move.
"You have to push the latch from underneath," he says, low and close. Not a whisper exactly, just what his voice does when there isn't room for it to go anywhere else. "This one sticks. Wayne's been meaning to fix it."
"Wayne's been meaning to fix a lot of things."
"He's a busy man." His fingers press over yours, guiding them to the right angle against the mechanism. His hands are large, the rings gone, and his palms are calloused in specific places, guitar-player places. You feel every point of contact. You are being very quiet about it. "Right there. Now push up."
You push up, the latch yields with a clunk, and the drum releases its grip on the sheet. The wet mass loosens in your hands.
He does not move away.
His arms stay bracketed around yours, his chest stays against your shoulder blades, and you can feel, through the damp jacket, through the thin material of your shirt, he's breathing slower now than it should be, deeper, the way someone breathes when they're trying to focus on something they're not looking at directly.
"Got it?" he says.
"Yeah," you say, "got it."
The dryer ticks. The single bulb swings slightly in the draft from a gap in the corrugated wall, making the shadows shift all the time.
"You're dripping on my laundry," you say.
"Little bit, yeah." His voice is still close. You can feel it more than hear it through the drum of the rain.
"You're going to make me redo the whole load."
"That would be a shame." A pause. "I'd feel terrible."
"You don't sound terrible."
"I'm hiding it." Another pause, and in it the specific quality of someone choosing their next words. "I'm very good at hiding things."
You turn your head slightly, not enough to face him, just enough that you're no longer fully facing away, that the line of your jaw is visible to him if he's looking. Which he is.
"Are you?" you say.
"Mostly," he says. Then, quietly, with something honest in it that he hasn't quite covered over: "Not always."
"I should probably," you start.
"Probably," he agrees, and he doesn't move for another full second, a second that you will find yourself thinking about later, at inconvenient moments.
Then he steps back. The cold air rushes into the space where he was and it's a physical thing, an absence you can map to your spine. He leans against the opposite wall, all of eighteen inches away, which is as much distance as the shed allows, and runs one hand through his wet hair, pushing it back from his face.
He looks at you as the bulb swings. He has a small cut above his left eyebrow, old and faded, that you haven't noticed before.
"You want help with the sheets?" he asks.
"I had it."
"You had it for twenty minutes before I got here and the machine disagreed."
"I was making progress."
"You were losing a fight to a dryer, câmon sweetheart."
You pull the sheet out properly now, bundling it against your chest, and look at him over the top of it. He's almost smiling. His jacket is still dripping onto the cement floor, a slow, steady sound under the rain.
"You can stay until the storm passes," you say, which is not an answer to what he said.
He understands it as one anyway.
He slides down the wall until he's sitting on the floor, back against the corrugated metal, long legs stretched in front of him. "So," he says, studying the ceiling. "Demonology."
You start folding the sheet, badly, in the way sheets always get folded in small spaces. "What about it."
"Is it a hobby or a calling?"
"Does it have to be one of those?"
He looks at you from the floor, from under his damp hair, and grins: slow and warm and a little dangerous, the way certain things you should be careful around are sometimes the most beautiful things in the room.
"No," he says. "I guess it doesn't."
The rain keeps coming. You sit on top of the middle dryer, the one that works, and let the hum of it warm you through, and you talk; not about anything that matters yet, not about anything that costs you.Â
Somewhere between the third question and the seventh you stop being careful about what you say. Not enough to notice, just enough that he does.
"You're easier to talk to than you look," he says at some point.
"What do I look like?"
He considers this with more seriousness than it deserves.
"Like someone who could wreck my life," he says, casual, like he's noting the weather.
When the rain stops, neither of you notices right away.
~~
The Hideout is the kind of place you don't end up in on purpose.
You ended up in it on purpose only in the sense that the rain was impossible and the door was the closest one. Now you've been here for forty minutes with a drink that's been empty for twenty, watching the condensation run down the side of the glass in slow, uneven tracks.
The lighting is low enough to forgive a lot of things, smells like cigarettes and old leather and beer that belongs to a previous decade. Someone on the small stage is doing something to a guitar riff that it didn't deserve, and three stools to your left someone is talking loud enough for two conversations, and you haven't heard a word of any of it,anyway.
You're watching the second drop reach the bottom of the glass when the stool beside you scrapes back. Then he says your name like he's setting something down carefully. You look up.
Eddie is standing with one hand on the back of the stool, still in his jacket, rain-damp at the shoulders as always. His eyes move over the empty glass, then back to you.
"Didn't take you for a Hideout girl," he says.
"I'm not. It was raining, thatâs all"
"Sure." He says it like he doesn't entirely believe you and finds that interesting, he sits, signaling the bartender with the ease of someone who has never once worried about whether a room would receive him. The bartender nods immediately, you file this away without meaning to.
"They're bad," you say, nodding at the stage.
"Tragically." He doesn't look away from the band. "The bassist has potential. The rest of them are crying for help."
"Harsh."
"Accurate."
"You play, right?" you say. You already know. He probably knows you know.
"Little bit," he says, and the way he says it, low and with that half smile already happening, makes it clear it is not a little bit at all.
You let yourself look at him, just for a second more, actually look at him, the way you've been carefully not doing since day one, and the problem, the real problem, is that it doesn't help.
"Right," you say, and look back at your drink.
"You want another?" he asks.
"I shouldn't."
"That's not what I asked."
You push the glass forward.
The band finishes their set to applause that is generous considering, and in the small shuffle of the stage reset someone leans down from the monitors and says something to Eddie.Â
"You know them?" you ask.
"Thursdays are mine," he says, and his face does something that is not quite modesty and not quite arrogance but lives comfortably in the neighborhood of both.
"Is that so?"
"Eight months running." He finishes his drink, sets the glass down with a small, definitive sound. "I've become something of an institution."
"This place smells like an institution."
He points at you, completely serious. "Atmosphere. I created that."
He stands, shrugs the jacket off in a single movement and drapes it over the back of the stool. Underneath, just the black t-shirt, the denim vest, the patches catching the low light.
"You're going up there?" you say. It comes out less like a question than you intended.
He looks at you over his shoulder, and there it is, that specific version of his smile, the one that knows exactly what it's doing.
"Don't go anywhere!" he says.
You watch him take the three steps up to the stage. Pick up the guitar with the ease of something he stopped thinking about years ago. Watch the room shift in a way you didn't notice it could shift, a current changing direction.
You pull his jacket off the back of the stool and set it on your lap without thinking about it.
The room shifts before he plays a single note. It's a small thing, the way people reorient without deciding to, drinks paused halfway to mouths, conversations losing a thread. He adjusts the strap, says something into the mic that makes the front of the room laugh, and you didn't catch it but you see the effect of it, the way the space loosens around him.
Then he plays.
You've heard people play guitar. You grew up with a radio and a television and enough county fairs to know what competent sounds like. This is not that. This is something that starts in his hands and moves through the instrument like it was waiting there and he's just the one who knew where to find it.
You pick up your drink. You put it down without drinking.
He moves differently up there. Not performed differently, just differently, like the stage is the place where the rest of him has room to exist. His head drops slightly when he hits something he likes. His eyes close for a bar and then open, find the middle distance, find the back wall. Find you, once, just for a second, before moving on like it was nothing.
You look down at the jacket in your lap: the patches, the worn collar, the smell of it, rain and something underneath that has no business being as present as it is.
You look back up and you realize, sitting there, that you've been collecting versions of his face without meaning to.
He plays three songs. You know this because you count them. The last one ends on a held note that he lets die slowly, deliberately, like he's deciding when to let go.Â
The room comes back to itself. The applause is different from what the previous band got: warmer, more specific, the kind that knows what it's responding to.
He says something into the mic again, easy and unhurried, thanks the bar by name like it's an old argument he's fond of. Then he hands the guitar off and steps down from the stage, and you have approximately four seconds to decide what to do with your face before he's crossing the room toward you.
He drops back onto the stool. His cheeks are slightly flushed, his hair worse than before, and he reaches for his drink before remembering it's empty. He signals the bartender, then turns to look at you.
He looks at the jacket in your lap. "So," he says.
"So," you say.
"Verdict."
You take a second and he lets you take it, leaning one elbow on the bar, watching you with the patience of someone who already knows the answer and is enjoying the wait.
"You're good," you say, because there's no version of honesty that gets you out of this one.
"I know." No hesitation. But the way he's looking at you when he says it takes the arrogance out of it somehow, replaces it with something more direct. "I wanted you to know too."
The bar fills the silence around that. Someone laughs too loud near the door, the bartender sets two fresh drinks down and disappears.
"The jacket," he says eventually, nodding at your lap.
"You left it."
"I did, saving my place for after the show."
"I was holding it," you say, "so it wouldn't fall."
"Right." The corner of his mouth moves. "Considerate of you."
"I am a considerate person."
He looks at you for a moment in that way he has, the one that makes you feel like you've been read without giving permission.
"Yeah," he says quietly, "I'm starting to think there's a lot of things about you."
You don't answer that but you don't give the jacket back either.
~~
It's Friday, which means nothing except that the week has finally stopped moving and left you somewhere quiet with a cigarette and your feet on the railing.
You hear his door before you see him: the specific sound of it, the particular weight of his step on the gravel. He's got his keys in his hand, jacket on, heading for the van.
He sees you and automatically slows.
"Going to the store," he says, by way of hello.
"Okay."
He turns back with the expression of someone who already knows what they're about to do.
"You want anything?"
You look at your cigarette, at him. You think about the Friday night stretched out in front of you: the trailer, the couch, the film you've been meaning to watch.
"Popcorn," you say. "The microwave kind, oh! And Coke. And something with chocolate."
He stares at you for a moment.
"That's a lot of wants for someone sitting alone on a Friday."
"Are you going or not?"
"I'm going." He's already turning toward the van. "I'm just saying. You could've led with the movie."
You watch him go as you finish the cigarette.
"It's Nightmare on Elm Street," you call after him.
He raises one hand without turning around. Acknowledgment, or something close to it.
He comes back twenty minutes later with a paper bag and lets himself be let in, and the next part happens the way things happen when no one is officially deciding anything, he ends up on the floor with his back against the couch, you're sitting criss-cross above him, the lamp doing the bare minimum, the Coke sweating onto the coffee table, and Freddy Krueger doing his thing on the screen.
The popcorn sits between you, the joint appears at some point, the way it does.
"She knows she's in the dream," he says, after a while. "And she's still going toward him."
"Eddie..."
"I just think it's worth discussing."
"Watch the movie."
He watches the movie, mostly.Â
The room gets warmer and quieter and the sounds from outside arrive slightly later than they should, and the conversation moves the way conversations move when no one is steering. From the film to nothing in particular to something that starts to matter without announcing itself.
"Can I ask you something?" he says to the TV.
"You're going to anyway."
"Why Indiana?"
You look at the screen. "Cheap. Quiet. Wayne had the trailer."
"That's the practical answer."
You glance down at him, he's still looking at the TV, his chin tipped up slightly, his profile caught in the blue light.
"I got divorced," you say simply, because it's late and the weed has done what weed does,"Eight months ago."
"It wasn't loud," you say. "No one screamed. It was very quiet, actually." You pull the sleeve of your shirt over your hand. "He had this way of explaining my feelings back to me. Why were too much. Why my reactions were disproportionate." A pause. "He did it long enough that I kinda started to agree with him, you know?"
The movie fills the silence. Someone runs down a hallway.
"Sorry," you say, and mean it. "That was..." You reach for something and land on the wrong thing entirely. "Freddy Krueger is a better conversationalist."
It lands badly, no timing at all, you know it lands badly. But he laughs anyway, a real one, and there it is: the slight fold at the corner of his eye, the crease in his left cheek, the specific unguarded quality of a face mid-laugh.
You look away first.
"He did a number on you," Eddie says, quieter now, the laugh still warm in his voice.
"He was very thorough."
"Yeah." He turns the chocolate wrapper over in his hands. "I've met guys like that. They make you think the problem is the size of you." He pauses, not quite getting the next part right, trying again. "You're not small. You've just been in a small place."
"You don't know that," you say.
"I've been paying attention all week," he says simply, like it's not an admission. "and I know youâre bigger than this, than him."
On screen someone screams. He shifts, turning to face you properly, his arm coming up to rest on the couch cushion beside your knee. The performance is gone, his voice dropping into the register it finds in small spaces.
"Look," he says. "I know you're older and you've got your whole," he gestures vaguely at you, at the blazer on the chair, at the stacked books, at the general fact of you, "thing going on. And I know I'm," another gesture at himself, less certain, "what I am." His jaw tightens slightly. "But I've been thinking about you since Monday, and I'm pretty bad at pretending I'm not."
You open your mouth but what comes out is a cough. Not a small one. A full, graceless, weed-in-the-wrong-place cough that bends you forward and will not stop, your eyes watering, one hand braced on the cushion.
"Are you?" he starts, between his own laughter.
You hold up one finger. The cough continues.
He gets up, goes to the kitchen, comes back with a glass of water and crouches in front of you, his mouth pressed shut in the specific way of someone fighting very hard not to laugh at you.
You take the water and drink. The coughing subsides.
"Okay," you say, hoarse.
"Okay," he says, and he's smiling, the real one, and he's close, and you're still catching your breath, and the TV is still going, and outside the park is still quiet.
"You were saying," you say.
"I think you heard me," he says.
You look at him. He looks at you. The lamp in the corner keeps doing its minimum.
"I need more water," you say.
"Sure," he says, and doesn't move, and you don't move either, and the movie keeps going unwatched in the blue light of the room.
~~
Saturday morning has the quality of something that hasn't been addressed yet.
He's gone when you wake up. The blanket folded on the couch with the particular neatness of someone who didn't want to leave evidence of being there.
The coffee you make is for one person. You drink it at the window and watch the park wake up slow under a gray sky that hasn't decided what it wants to do yet.
You're on the porch with the second cup when he passes, jacket on, hair still damp, looking at his boots until he looks up.
"Hey," he says.
"Hey."
He stops. You can see the decision happening: his feet slowing before the rest of him catches up.
You hold up your mug. An offer.
He comes up the steps without a word and takes it, wraps both hands around it, and stands beside you at the railing. You look at the park. He looks at the park. The gray sky stays undecided.
After a moment he reaches into his jacket and pulls out a cigarette, lights it, and holds the pack toward you.
"I'm almost out," you say, taking one.
"I know," he says to the park.
You smoke in a silence that has a week's worth of things in it. When the cigarette is done he sets the empty mug on the railing, reaches back into his jacket, and puts a full unopened pack next to it. Marlboros, soft pack. He doesn't look at you when he does it.
"Eddie," you say.
"I noticed," he says simply. "That's all."
The gray sky makes up its mind. The first drops hit the railing between you and he goes down the steps.
Wayne is at the kitchen table with his coffee and the newspaper and the particular stillness of a man who has been awake since five and has already formed opinions about the day.
He doesn't look up when Eddie comes in; he turns a page. Eddie gets himself another coffee with shaken hands. Wayne turns another page.
"Funny thing," Wayne says to the newspaper. "Van was in the garage all night, but you werenât here."
"Roads were bad," Eddie says.
"Rained at eleven." Wayne turns a page. "Cleared up by midnight."
Eddie drinks his coffee, remembering that at eleven, he was intoxicated by your perfume, your laugh, you.
"She's pretty," Wayne says.
"Wayne."
"I'm just saying, boy."
"You don't have to, please."
"Smart too, from what I can tell." He folds the corner of a page down, thoughtful. "Those books she carries around."
"They're for work."
"Mm." Wayne takes a slow sip of coffee. "What kind of work?"
"The kind thatâŚ" Eddie stops. "I don't know, Wayne."
"But you've talked about it."
Eddie's ears go the specific red of a man who has run out of deflections and knows it.
"She seems like good people," Wayne says simply, and picks up his newspaper like the conversation is over, which it is, because Wayne has always known when he's made his point.
Someone knocks on the door.
They both look at it. Wayne looks back at Eddie over the top of the newspaper. Eddie looks at the door, then at his ears in the reflection of the window, then at the door again.
"I'll get it," he says.
"I imagine," Wayne says.
You're standing on the porch with your hands in your pockets and the unopened pack of Marlboros he left on the railing, which you are holding in a way that doesn't quite explain itself.
"Movie!" you say. "Tonight. My place. Eight o'clock?"
He leans against the doorframe. His ears are still red, which you notice and file away for later.
"What are we watching?" he grins.
"Does it matter?"
"No," he says. "Not really."
"Eight o'clock," you say, and go back down the steps.
He watches you cross the gravel. Behind him the kitchen is very quiet. Wayne is still pretending to read until,
"Eight o'clock," he says to no one in particular.
"Wayne!!!"
"Just memorizing," Wayne says. "In case you lose track."
He closes the door. He stands there for a second with his hand still on the knob. Then he does a small, contained, deeply undignified fist pump at the floor.
Wayne doesn't look up from the newspaper. "Just neighbors my ass," he says.
Eddie straightens up immediately. "Yep," he says with great dignity, and goes to his room.
It's ten past eleven in the morning. You have eight hours and fifty minutes.
You pick up your book, read the same paragraph four times and retain nothing. You put the book down.
You clean the bathroom, which didn't need cleaning. You rearrange the books on the shelf above the desk, then put them back the way they were because the original order was fine and you were just looking for something to do with your hands.
At two o'clock you hear the van leave. You don't go to the window. You are a grown adult and you don't go to the window, and when you hear it come back forty minutes later you also don't go to the window, and you are handling this very well.
At four you make tea you don't want. At five you eat something you don't taste. At six you sit on the couch with the television on and watch it without seeing it, your eyes moving to the clock with the frequency of someone who knows exactly what they're doing and is embarrassed about it.
At six forty-five you go to the bathroom and look at yourself in the mirror for a long moment.
"It's just a movie," you tell your reflection. Your reflection doesn't look convinced either.
At seven fifty-eight you sit back down on the couch, criss-cross, with a throw pillow in your lap and look at the door. At eight o'clock exactly, he knocks.
You wait three seconds so it doesn't seem like you were waiting for him at the door, then you open it.
He's showered. His hair is still slightly damp and he's got a clean shirt on, dark, the sleeves pushed up, and he's holding a bag that smells like something fried from the diner two streets over.
He has the specific expression of someone who also waited three seconds before knocking.
"Eight o'clock," he says.
"You're on time," you say.
"I'm always on time."
"You were late on Monday."
"The window was..." he stops. "Are you going to let me in?"
You step back from the door.
You end up where you always end up: you on the couch, him on the floor below you, the food between you, the lamp barely doing its work in the corner.
The food goes, the wrappers get thrown away. He comes back and sits, and you put something on the TV, something neither of you will watch, and the room settles into the specific silence of two people pretending to be comfortable.
On screen someone runs down a corridor. Someone else follows.
"She's going to trip," you say.
"She's going to trip," he says at the exact same moment.
She trips. You look at each other.
He's already looking at you. He has been for a while, you realize. Not at the screen, at you.
Looking in that way he has, the one that makes you feel like you've been read without giving permission. But this time there's no deflection left in him. The playful edge is gone, replaced by a quiet, heavy gravity that makes your breath hitch.
He moves, certain but unhurried. His hand finds your chin, his thumb brushing over your lower lip with a slow reverence that sends a shiver straight down your spine. When he kisses you, it isn't an anchor dropping; it is a total, breathless surrender. His lips touch yours with a gentleness so deliberate it feels almost sacred, as if he is trying to memorize the exact shape of you in the dark.
You make a small sound against his mouth, and the noise seems to undo something deep inside him. His hand slides up into your hair, his long fingers tangling in the strands, tilting your head back just enough to deepen the kiss. It is heavy, steady, and consuming.
He pulls you closer, his other hand anchoring at your waist before sliding down to your hip to lift you onto his lap. He settles you there, his large hands trembling just a fraction against your skin. He holds you with the quiet, desperate intensity of a man who knows he is touching something far better than he deserves, his face buried in the crook of your neck as he breathes you in, completely at your mercy.
His knee slides between yours, slow and certain, his mouth moving to your jaw, your throat, with the specific, unhurried attention of someone who has been thinking about exactly this. For all his usual restless, youthful bravado, here he lets you dictate the pace, completely yielding to a maturity that usually intimidates him.
"Eddie," you say to the ceiling, your fingers tightening in his hair.
"Yeah," he murmurs against your skin, his lips brushing your collarbone. He pauses for a fraction of a second, his breath hot against your throat. "You have no idea what you do to me. How long I've been losing my mind over this."
Your hand finds the back of his neck, the metal of his chain, the radiating warmth of his skin. You pull him back up to your mouth because the ceiling is suddenly far less interesting. He lets out a low, ragged sigh against your lips, a sound of pure relief, before he catches your mouth again. The lamp keeps doing its minimum in the corner, and outside, the park remains completely indifferent to any of this.
At some point he pulls back just enough. His forehead rests against yours, his breath uneven, his hands still tangled deep in your hair as if heâs anchored there, looking at you with a sudden, quiet vulnerability that erases every year between you.
"Okay," he says, his voice a low vow.
"Okay," you say.
Neither of you moves. The space between you is heavy with it.
"The movie," he whispers, a faint, breathless attempt to catch his bearings.
"What movie," you say.
He laughs, a soft huff against your lips, and kisses you again, slower this time. It is a deep, worshipful press of his mouth that belongs entirely to the two of you, while the TV keeps going unwatched in the blue light of the room.
~~
Sunday starts the way things start when no one has officially decided anything, slowly, and without an exit.Â
You wake up to warmth. His arm is around you, heavy and certain, his chest against your back, his breath slow and even against the back of your neck. The room is gray with early light. The TV is off, the lamp is off, and the park outside is doing its quiet Sunday thing.
He's awake. You can tell by the quality of the stillness, not the loose stillness of sleep but the careful stillness of someone who has been awake for a while and decided not to move.
You don't move either.
His arm doesn't tighten. He doesn't say anything. He just stays, his hand open against your ribs, his breathing slow and deliberate, and you lie there in the gray light and let the morning take its time, and neither of you acknowledges that you're both awake, because acknowledging it would make it into something you'd have to address, and right now it's just this. His warmth at your back, the quiet park, the specific weight of a Sunday that hasn't asked anything of either of you yet.
Eventually you shift. Just slightly.
His arm tightens. Just slightly.
"Morning," he says, his voice still rough with sleep.
"Morning," you say.
A beat.
"Coffee?" he says.
"Please," you say.
He leaves at ten. You watch the van pull out from the window, which you do now, openly, without pretending you're not doing it.
He's back at noon.
He knocks twice and when you open the door he's holding a paper bag from the bakery on Elm and wearing yesterday's shirt and he looks at you with the straightforward expression of someone who has stopped pretending the van going anywhere was a real departure.
"Thought you left," you say.
"I got pastries," he says.
You step back from the door.
The afternoon happens in pieces, but the light is already changing, the warm amber of morning thinning into something flatter, the kind of gold that means the weekend is running out of air. He fixes the cabinet hinge without being asked, finds the screwdriver himself, does it while you sit on the counter eating a pastry and pretending to read. On Monday it had been a novelty. Today it feels like a countdown.
Later he finds your record player and puts something on, something slow and guitar-heavy, and the trailer fills with it. He sits on the floor with his back against the couch. You sit above him. His head tips back after a while and rests against your knee and you let it, your hand finding his hair without quite deciding to.
The record ends. The needle clicks on the spindle, over and over, a small patient sound in the quiet room.
Neither of you gets up to turn it over.
By the time he makes dinner the blue twilight is pressing hard against the window, making the room feel smaller. Eggs, toast, the last of the tomatoes. You sit across from him at the small table and the conversation is easy the way it's been all day, but underneath it something has shifted, the specific weight of hours that know they're numbered.
He says something that makes you almost laugh. You watch him watch you almost laugh, that warm look he doesn't always let you see.
You reach across the table. Your hand covers his. He turns it over and holds on, and his grip is slightly tighter than yesterday, a quiet reflex against something neither of you is naming.
The lamp is on low, the record back on, the dishes done. He's sitting on the edge of the bed watching you cross the room toward him, and his hands find your waist when you're close enough, and this time it's nothing like Saturday's urgency.
This is slower. This is deliberate. This is two people choosing, quietly, with full knowledge of what they're doing.
His forehead drops to your sternum for a moment, just resting there, his arms around you, his breath evening out.
"Hey," he says, quietly.
"Hey," you say.
He looks up.
You stay.
Afterward the room is dark and quiet and he's on his back with one arm around you, his rings on the nightstand in a small pile, his chest rising and falling in the particular slow rhythm of someone who has stopped performing anything. His other hand moves in your hair, absently, the way his fingers move on strings.
"Don't go anywhere," you say. Not tonight. Not in general. Both.
His arm tightens.
"Okay," he says, and means something large by it.
You wake up before him in the gray early light of Monday.
You get up carefully. You shower. You stand in front of the mirror and cover the marks on your throat with concealer until your neck looks like it belongs to someone who spent the week alone, which is the version of you that needs to exist in approximately two hours.
Then you take the gray blazer from the hanger. The good one, the structured one. You button it to the top. You pull your hair into a neat twist, pin the loose strands, straighten your collar. You locate the lesson plan in your bag. Literature, Hawkins Community College, Room 214. You check it until the words stop meaning anything.
You look like yourself. The other self.
You're pouring your coffee when you hear him stir.
He appears in the doorway a minute later, hair wrecked, eyes half-open, no shirt, and you make a very brief and very private mental note about the tattoos and the line of his shoulders and the general unfairness of the situation before returning to your coffee like a professional.
He pours himself a cup. Leans against the counter beside you. Looks at the lesson plan without picking it up.
"First day," he says.
"First day," you say.
"You nervous?"
"No," you say, which is mostly true.
"Liar," he says, without heat.
He puts his mug down. He reaches out and straightens your collar, which didn't need straightening, his fingers brief and warm against your neck. Then he drops his hand.
"You're going to be good at it," he says. Simply. Like it's a fact he's already confirmed.
"You don't know that," you say.
"I've been paying attention," he says. "Since Monday."
The other Monday. Last Monday. A week ago, which is either very short or very long depending on how you measure it.
You pick up your bag, your knuckles white against the leather. He walks you to the door, four steps, completely unnecessary, and catches your hand before you go down the steps. He turns you back, easy and unhurried, and kisses you once. Not long, not dramatic. Just the kind of thing people do when they've become the kind of people who do this.
"Good luck," he says. That half smile, the real one.
You look at him standing in your doorway with his coffee and his bare shoulders and that smile, and you think, briefly and inconveniently, that you are in serious trouble.
"Lock up when you leave," you say.
He raises his mug. Something between a toast and a goodbye.
You go down the steps. You don't look back, because if you look back you won't go, and you have a class at nine and a lesson plan and a gray blazer and a version of yourself that has somewhere to be.
Behind you the door stays open for a moment before you hear it close.
~~
Monday
The hallway smells of floor wax and coffee and the particular energy of people who haven't yet decided if they want to be here. You walk it with both hands around your travel mug, your blazer buttoned, your heels making a sound you recognize as armor.
Room 214 is yours by eight-fifteen. You write your name on the board in large block letters, set the attendance sheet square on the desk, arrange the chalk on the ledge the way you always do, a small, private ritual, the body taking over when the mind needs to settle. Your territory. The desk is a shield. You know this about yourself: you are good at this part, the standing-in-front-of-rooms part, the clear-voiced and certain part. You built it deliberately and it holds.
The room fills the way college rooms fill, without urgency, people arriving in ones and twos with coffee cups and half-open backpacks, finding seats with the specific social calculus of people who don't know each other yet but are already deciding what they think. Chairs scrape. Somebody drops a binder. You watch them settle with your hands resting on the desk, and you feel yourself shift into the register you know, attentive, warm, contained, and it feels clean. It feels like solid ground.
You pick up the attendance sheet.
The door is almost closed.
"Sorry." A drawling voice, unhurried, slightly out of breath. "Got stuck behind a tractor on route 9. Hawkins thing."
The professional smile is already shaped on your lips when you look up.
The smile stays. It has nowhere to go.
Eddie is standing in the doorframe.
His leather jacket is clean, actually clean, and the denim vest beneath it pressed flat, the patches in careful order, and his dark hair is damp and combed back from his face, which makes him look younger and simultaneously makes every angle of him more visible: the jaw, the cheekbones, the cut above his brow. He has a blue notebook gripped in one large hand, his knuckles white around it, the rings gone. He's already scanning the room for a seat with the slightly defensive posture of someone used to arriving places where they're not entirely wanted.
Then his eyes find you.
His feet stop.
The notebook drops slightly in his grip. His gaze moves down the gray blazer, slowly, despite himself, despite everything, then to the chalk between your fingers, then past you to the blackboard, where your name and your title sit in large block letters that seem, in this moment, to have been written specifically to rearrange something in him.
You watch it happen. You watch his jaw go slack and then harden. You watch the color leave his face and come back wrong, and you watch him run the same math you ran this morning in the bathroom mirror, the window latch, the porch, the laundry shed, the Hideout, Friday's floor, Saturday's couch, Sunday's everything, backward against Room 214 and Literature and the attendance sheet in your hand, arriving at the only answer there is.
The other students are finding their seats. No one is looking at him yet.
He looks at you. You look at him.
There is nothing either of you can do with your face that is adequate to this moment.
You lower your eyes to the attendance sheet first because one of you has to, because the room is full and twenty-three students will notice in approximately four more seconds if you keep standing here. You find your voice where you left it, clean and level, exactly where you need it.
"Find a seat, please," you say. To the room. To him. To no one specifically.
He moves.
He walks toward the back of the room with his steps heavy and deliberate, not looking at you, his jaw set hard. He pulls the last chair in the row with a screech of metal on linoleum that makes three people look up and then look away. He sits. He sets the blue notebook on the desk. He crosses his arms tight against his chest.
You call attendance.
When you say his name, Munson, E., third from the bottom, there is a pause that lasts exactly one second too long.
"Here," he says, to the desk.
Flat. Contained. The voice of someone who has taken everything and put it somewhere it can't be seen.
You move to the syllabus.
You talk about the semester, about Fitzgerald and Steinbeck, about the literature of disillusionment and reinvention, about characters who build themselves into something new and spend the rest of the book paying for it. Your voice is steady. Your hands are steady. You do not look at the back row unless you have to.
You're talking about Gatsby, about the green light, about the particular cruelty of wanting something just out of reach, when a voice comes from the back of the room.
"Does it count as reinvention," Eddie says, not quite raising his hand, "if you didn't know you needed it until it was already happening?"
The room turns to look at him. You don't.
You keep your eyes on the middle distance, on the space above everyone's heads, on the place you look when you need your voice to stay level.
"That's one of the questions the text asks," you say. "Whether transformation is ever truly chosen, or whether it chooses us."
A beat.
"And if it chooses you," he says, quieter now, "and then the situation changes. What happens to the person you were becoming."
The fluorescent light hums. Someone shifts in their seat.
You look at him then. You have to. It would be stranger not to.
He's looking directly at you for the first time since he walked in, his arms still crossed, his jaw still set, but his eyes are doing something else entirely, something that has nothing to do with Fitzgerald and everything to do with Sunday morning and a door closing and a van on route 9 that he drove to a building he didn't know you'd be standing in.
"That," you say, carefully, "is exactly what we're here to find out."
He holds your gaze for one more second. Then he looks down at the blue notebook and opens it, picks up his pen, and writes something you can't see.
The class continues. The ordinary machinery of a Monday morning grinds forward the way it always does.
Fourteen hours ago his arm was around you in the gray early light.
You write Chapter 1 â due Friday on the board.
The chalk makes a clean, precise sound in the silent room.
A hot summer, a wrong kind of love, and the feeling that some things begin already tasting like goodbye.
wc: 9149Â
The heat in the valley doesn't clear out at sunset; it thickens, turning into a heavy, damp weight against the vinyl walls of the trailer. You haul a crate of heavy reference books inside, gray dust coating your fingers, sweat gathering at the back of your knees, at the hollow of your throat, at every place a human body knows how to betray itself. The porch light flickers once, a dying yellow thing, and then a shadow cuts through it.
He is leaning against the rusted railing of the steps, his shoulder tipped in like he's been there a while. Like he's comfortable being a silhouette in someone else's doorway. He carries a toolbox in one hand, and his other hand hangs loose at his side, rings catching the bad light. Three of them, silver and dull, the kind that leave a mark if you're not careful. His gaze moves down your throat and stays on your damp collarbone, following the line of your oversized shirt down to your hips, unhurried.
You drop the crate onto the linoleum with a sound like a small earthquake and pull the hem of your shirt down over your thighs. âHey,â you say, surprised.
"Ahm, hey. Uncle Wayne said the window latch in the bedroom is jammed," he says in a low voice. He looks past you at the stack of books on the floor, then back at you, something registering behind his eyes. "Said you wouldn't be able to lock it from the inside."
"I've been meaning to call him about that," you say.
"And yet."
"And yet," you agree.
You step aside, opening a narrow gap in the hallway. He ducks his head slightly, a private smile pulling at the corner of his mouth, and steps through.
The smell of him fills the trailer instantly: leather, dry grass, gasoline and tobacco. "Bedroom's in the back," you say, to your own hand, mostly.
"I figured," he calls back, already moving through your space like he belongs to it. When you round the corner, he's standing in the middle of the room with his toolbox at his feet, looking at the shelf above your desk with the same attention he'd given your collarbone thirty seconds ago.
"The Demonology of Medieval Europe," he reads, then lets out a short breath through his nose. He turns to look at you over his shoulder, one eyebrow up like the corner of his mouth. "You know, this town already tried to run me out for a RPG game." A beat. "If anyone sees me walking out of here with that under my arm, I'm a dead man. We'd both get burned at the same stake."
"I've heard worse eulogies." You nod at the window. "Over there."
"I see the window." He doesn't move toward it. "You read all of these?"
"Most of them."
"For fun?"
"For work."
He turns to look at you fully now, both eyebrows up, reassessing. There is something in the way he does it that makes it feel like being placed into a different category. A more interesting one. "What kind of work?" he asks.
"The kind that makes people ask questions at parties."
He grins at that, quick and crooked, a little surprised by it, and finally turns toward the window. He crouches down in front of it, sets the toolbox open on the floor, and you get the full view of the back of his neck, the knobs of his spine where his t-shirt hangs loose, the tattoo that starts somewhere under his collar and disappears.
"It's the casing," he says, more to himself than to you. "Warped from the heat. Happens to these old trailers." He pries at it with a flathead, jaw working once, and the latch gives with a pop that's louder than expected. He catches the frame before it rattles. "There." He tests it twice, sliding the lock open and shut. "You can actually protect yourself now."
"I feel so safe now."
He looks at you over his shoulder again, and there it is, that almost smirk that's been sitting there since the porch.
"You should, princess," he says, very simply. He packs the toolbox without rushing, while you lean in the doorframe to watch him do it because you can't think of a single reason not to. He stands, brushes his palms on the thighs of his jeans, and turns to finally face you. "I'm Eddie," he says, like this is new information, like you haven't already filed it away somewhere you'll need later.
"I know," you say.
"Uncle Wayne talks about me?"
"Hawkins is small."
"Good things, I hope."
You reach past him to push the window open an inch, testing it.
"Good enough," you say.
He stands in your hallway for another beat, toolbox in hand, like he's forgotten what the exit is for. The porch light buzzes faintly through the screen.
"Well," he says, finally. "You know where to find me if anything else needs fixing."
He says it like âfixing itâ covers a very large territory.
~~
The silence of the trailer park is loud in the way only small places at night can be: crickets in overlapping frequencies, the distant television two trailers over, the soft percussion of moths battering themselves against the yellow bulb above your head. You stand on the top step of the porch with a cigarette caught between your fingers and your elbow on the railing, watching them do it. The moths, you mean, their absolute commitment to something that will not end well for them.
A match scrapes in the dark below and then Eddie steps out from the shadow between the trailers. His boots crunch on the gravel, and he stops at the bottom step, looking up at you. He nods at your hand before saying
"Those things'll kill you, you know?"Â
You take a long drag first, then exhale slowly. "I hope so."
There is a pause in which he appears to consider this information seriously. He reaches into his jacket pocket, pulls out a crumpled red pack of Marlboros, the soft pack, already half-dead, and slides a cigarette between his lips with the easy fluency of long habit.
His thumb catches the wheel of his lighter on the first try. The blue flame jumps up and for one second illuminates the sharp line of his jaw, the way his eyes stay on your mouth while he lights up.
He takes a long drag, blowing the smoke sideways, slow, deliberate, his lips still slightly parted.
"You were saying?" you say.
"I was saying those things'll kill you." He holds the cigarette loosely between two fingers, gesturing vaguely with it. "Statistically."
"Statistically, really?" you snort.
"It's a health concern." He takes another drag. "I worry."
"You're smoking right now, Eddie."
"I'm aware of that, sweetheart." He exhales through his nose, unbothered, a faint smile tucking itself into the corner of his mouth. "Look, what I do is my business. What you do," he gestures again with the cigarette, "is a tragedy."
You laugh before you can stop it, a small sound that escapes between your teeth.
"You always come out here at odd times of the night?" he asks.
"When I can't sleep, yes."
"What keeps you up?"
You look at him. The moths keep doing their thing above your head. "Restlessness," you say, and it's true enough.
He nods slowly, like this is an answer he understands in his body. He shifts his weight, rests his forearm on the railing beside yours, close enough that you can feel the warmth radiating off him.
He brings the cigarette to his lips and for a moment you watch his profile, the way he tips his head back slightly when he exhales, the long line of his throat.
"Me too," he says to the dark. You smoke in parallel for a while. He finishes his cigarette. You finish yours. Neither of you moves to go inside.
"You know what I think?" he says eventually.
"I don't."
"I think the restlessness is the point." He drops the butt, grinds it under his boot, and when he straightens he's a step closer than he was before. The top of his head is nearly level with yours from where you stand above him. Close enough that you'd only have to lean forward slightly.Â
"I think people who can't sleep are just paying attention." His eyes move over your face, slow and unashamed. "More than they want to admit."
"...the fat joint is making a compelling case for itself."
He takes one more step up, your bodies now separated by exactly the thickness of the railing, and his hand lands beside yours on the worn wood, his little finger a breath from yours.
He's looking at you the way he looked at your bookshelf, the way he looks at things he wants to understand by going closer.
"Goodnight,sweetheart" he says, and means not yet.
"Goodnight," you say back, and mean the same.
He goes down the steps, unhurried, and you watch him disappear between the trailers. The dark swallows him whole and then it's just you and the moths and the yellow light and your own hand on the railing, your little finger still warm from almost being touched.
~~Â
The storm arrives in the wednesday afternoon without any warning worth trusting, just a greenish quality to the light. The air going suddenly still and electric, and then the sky opens. Dirt paths turn into brown rivers in minutes. You watch it happen through the small window above the kitchen sink before grabbing the laundry basket from the floor, because the alternative is re-washing everything and you are not doing that, at all.
The laundry shed is barely a shed. It is a converted storage unit at the end of the second row of trailers: corrugated metal walls that drum in the rain, a single bare bulb, two washers that work and one that doesn't, three dryers that spin on their own schedule, and it smells in there.
The dryer that has your sheets in it has decided, in the spirit of the afternoon, to stop spinning. The sheets are wound into a single heavy, damp rope around themselves. You reach in and pull, and the whole mass resists you with the passive aggression of wet laundry everywhere. You are still fighting it, one knee braced against the machine, when the shed door rattles open.
Eddie ducks inside in a rush of rain and cold air, and the door slams behind him against the wind. He's soaked through, his leather jacket dark at the shoulders, heavy with rain, his hair plastered in pieces against his forehead and neck, water running down the sides of his jaw. He shakes himself once like a dog, ineffectively.
He looks at you.
He looks at the wet sheet coiled around your arms like a defeated boa constrictor.
"Rough day?" he says.
"This shit won't come out."
"Sheets?"
"Jammed."
He looks at the space between you and the back wall. He looks at the dryer. He does a quick calculation that you can see him doing, and then he takes a step forward, because he is Eddie Munson and apparently this is just what he does: he steps into spaces.
His chest is at your back, your shoulders inside the bracket of his arms, his hands coming over yours on the wet canvas.
The rain on his jacket is cold against your arm. His skin underneath is warm; you can feel it through the damp fabric, that specific heat that has no right being as present as it is. These two things happen at once and you feel both of them with equal clarity, and you do not move.
"You have to push the latch from underneath," he says, low and close. Not a whisper exactly, just what his voice does when there isn't room for it to go anywhere else. "This one sticks. Wayne's been meaning to fix it."
"Wayne's been meaning to fix a lot of things."
"He's a busy man." His fingers press over yours, guiding them to the right angle against the mechanism. His hands are large, the rings gone, and his palms are calloused in specific places, guitar-player places. You feel every point of contact. You are being very quiet about it. "Right there. Now push up."
You push up, the latch yields with a clunk, and the drum releases its grip on the sheet. The wet mass loosens in your hands.
He does not move away.
His arms stay bracketed around yours, his chest stays against your shoulder blades, and you can feel, through the damp jacket, through the thin material of your shirt, he's breathing slower now than it should be, deeper, the way someone breathes when they're trying to focus on something they're not looking at directly.
"Got it?" he says.
"Yeah," you say, "got it."
The dryer ticks. The single bulb swings slightly in the draft from a gap in the corrugated wall, making the shadows shift all the time.
"You're dripping on my laundry," you say.
"Little bit, yeah." His voice is still close. You can feel it more than hear it through the drum of the rain.
"You're going to make me redo the whole load."
"That would be a shame." A pause. "I'd feel terrible."
"You don't sound terrible."
"I'm hiding it." Another pause, and in it the specific quality of someone choosing their next words. "I'm very good at hiding things."
You turn your head slightly, not enough to face him, just enough that you're no longer fully facing away, that the line of your jaw is visible to him if he's looking. Which he is.
"Are you?" you say.
"Mostly," he says. Then, quietly, with something honest in it that he hasn't quite covered over: "Not always."
"I should probably," you start.
"Probably," he agrees, and he doesn't move for another full second, a second that you will find yourself thinking about later, at inconvenient moments.
Then he steps back. The cold air rushes into the space where he was and it's a physical thing, an absence you can map to your spine. He leans against the opposite wall, all of eighteen inches away, which is as much distance as the shed allows, and runs one hand through his wet hair, pushing it back from his face.
He looks at you as the bulb swings. He has a small cut above his left eyebrow, old and faded, that you haven't noticed before.
"You want help with the sheets?" he asks.
"I had it."
"You had it for twenty minutes before I got here and the machine disagreed."
"I was making progress."
"You were losing a fight to a dryer, câmon sweetheart."
You pull the sheet out properly now, bundling it against your chest, and look at him over the top of it. He's almost smiling. His jacket is still dripping onto the cement floor, a slow, steady sound under the rain.
"You can stay until the storm passes," you say, which is not an answer to what he said.
He understands it as one anyway.
He slides down the wall until he's sitting on the floor, back against the corrugated metal, long legs stretched in front of him. "So," he says, studying the ceiling. "Demonology."
You start folding the sheet, badly, in the way sheets always get folded in small spaces. "What about it."
"Is it a hobby or a calling?"
"Does it have to be one of those?"
He looks at you from the floor, from under his damp hair, and grins: slow and warm and a little dangerous, the way certain things you should be careful around are sometimes the most beautiful things in the room.
"No," he says. "I guess it doesn't."
The rain keeps coming. You sit on top of the middle dryer, the one that works, and let the hum of it warm you through, and you talk; not about anything that matters yet, not about anything that costs you.Â
Somewhere between the third question and the seventh you stop being careful about what you say. Not enough to notice, just enough that he does.
"You're easier to talk to than you look," he says at some point.
"What do I look like?"
He considers this with more seriousness than it deserves.
"Like someone who could wreck my life," he says, casual, like he's noting the weather.
When the rain stops, neither of you notices right away.
~~
The Hideout is the kind of place you don't end up in on purpose.
You ended up in it on purpose only in the sense that the rain was impossible and the door was the closest one. Now you've been here for forty minutes with a drink that's been empty for twenty, watching the condensation run down the side of the glass in slow, uneven tracks.
The lighting is low enough to forgive a lot of things, smells like cigarettes and old leather and beer that belongs to a previous decade. Someone on the small stage is doing something to a guitar riff that it didn't deserve, and three stools to your left someone is talking loud enough for two conversations, and you haven't heard a word of any of it,anyway.
You're watching the second drop reach the bottom of the glass when the stool beside you scrapes back. Then he says your name like he's setting something down carefully. You look up.
Eddie is standing with one hand on the back of the stool, still in his jacket, rain-damp at the shoulders as always. His eyes move over the empty glass, then back to you.
"Didn't take you for a Hideout girl," he says.
"I'm not. It was raining, thatâs all"
"Sure." He says it like he doesn't entirely believe you and finds that interesting, he sits, signaling the bartender with the ease of someone who has never once worried about whether a room would receive him. The bartender nods immediately, you file this away without meaning to.
"They're bad," you say, nodding at the stage.
"Tragically." He doesn't look away from the band. "The bassist has potential. The rest of them are crying for help."
"Harsh."
"Accurate."
"You play, right?" you say. You already know. He probably knows you know.
"Little bit," he says, and the way he says it, low and with that half smile already happening, makes it clear it is not a little bit at all.
You let yourself look at him, just for a second more, actually look at him, the way you've been carefully not doing since day one, and the problem, the real problem, is that it doesn't help.
"Right," you say, and look back at your drink.
"You want another?" he asks.
"I shouldn't."
"That's not what I asked."
You push the glass forward.
The band finishes their set to applause that is generous considering, and in the small shuffle of the stage reset someone leans down from the monitors and says something to Eddie.Â
"You know them?" you ask.
"Thursdays are mine," he says, and his face does something that is not quite modesty and not quite arrogance but lives comfortably in the neighborhood of both.
"Is that so?"
"Eight months running." He finishes his drink, sets the glass down with a small, definitive sound. "I've become something of an institution."
"This place smells like an institution."
He points at you, completely serious. "Atmosphere. I created that."
He stands, shrugs the jacket off in a single movement and drapes it over the back of the stool. Underneath, just the black t-shirt, the denim vest, the patches catching the low light.
"You're going up there?" you say. It comes out less like a question than you intended.
He looks at you over his shoulder, and there it is, that specific version of his smile, the one that knows exactly what it's doing.
"Don't go anywhere!" he says.
You watch him take the three steps up to the stage. Pick up the guitar with the ease of something he stopped thinking about years ago. Watch the room shift in a way you didn't notice it could shift, a current changing direction.
You pull his jacket off the back of the stool and set it on your lap without thinking about it.
The room shifts before he plays a single note. It's a small thing, the way people reorient without deciding to, drinks paused halfway to mouths, conversations losing a thread. He adjusts the strap, says something into the mic that makes the front of the room laugh, and you didn't catch it but you see the effect of it, the way the space loosens around him.
Then he plays.
You've heard people play guitar. You grew up with a radio and a television and enough county fairs to know what competent sounds like. This is not that. This is something that starts in his hands and moves through the instrument like it was waiting there and he's just the one who knew where to find it.
You pick up your drink. You put it down without drinking.
He moves differently up there. Not performed differently, just differently, like the stage is the place where the rest of him has room to exist. His head drops slightly when he hits something he likes. His eyes close for a bar and then open, find the middle distance, find the back wall. Find you, once, just for a second, before moving on like it was nothing.
You look down at the jacket in your lap: the patches, the worn collar, the smell of it, rain and something underneath that has no business being as present as it is.
You look back up and you realize, sitting there, that you've been collecting versions of his face without meaning to.
He plays three songs. You know this because you count them. The last one ends on a held note that he lets die slowly, deliberately, like he's deciding when to let go.Â
The room comes back to itself. The applause is different from what the previous band got: warmer, more specific, the kind that knows what it's responding to.
He says something into the mic again, easy and unhurried, thanks the bar by name like it's an old argument he's fond of. Then he hands the guitar off and steps down from the stage, and you have approximately four seconds to decide what to do with your face before he's crossing the room toward you.
He drops back onto the stool. His cheeks are slightly flushed, his hair worse than before, and he reaches for his drink before remembering it's empty. He signals the bartender, then turns to look at you.
He looks at the jacket in your lap. "So," he says.
"So," you say.
"Verdict."
You take a second and he lets you take it, leaning one elbow on the bar, watching you with the patience of someone who already knows the answer and is enjoying the wait.
"You're good," you say, because there's no version of honesty that gets you out of this one.
"I know." No hesitation. But the way he's looking at you when he says it takes the arrogance out of it somehow, replaces it with something more direct. "I wanted you to know too."
The bar fills the silence around that. Someone laughs too loud near the door, the bartender sets two fresh drinks down and disappears.
"The jacket," he says eventually, nodding at your lap.
"You left it."
"I did, saving my place for after the show."
"I was holding it," you say, "so it wouldn't fall."
"Right." The corner of his mouth moves. "Considerate of you."
"I am a considerate person."
He looks at you for a moment in that way he has, the one that makes you feel like you've been read without giving permission.
"Yeah," he says quietly, "I'm starting to think there's a lot of things about you."
You don't answer that but you don't give the jacket back either.
~~
It's Friday, which means nothing except that the week has finally stopped moving and left you somewhere quiet with a cigarette and your feet on the railing.
You hear his door before you see him: the specific sound of it, the particular weight of his step on the gravel. He's got his keys in his hand, jacket on, heading for the van.
He sees you and automatically slows.
"Going to the store," he says, by way of hello.
"Okay."
He turns back with the expression of someone who already knows what they're about to do.
"You want anything?"
You look at your cigarette, at him. You think about the Friday night stretched out in front of you: the trailer, the couch, the film you've been meaning to watch.
"Popcorn," you say. "The microwave kind, oh! And Coke. And something with chocolate."
He stares at you for a moment.
"That's a lot of wants for someone sitting alone on a Friday."
"Are you going or not?"
"I'm going." He's already turning toward the van. "I'm just saying. You could've led with the movie."
You watch him go as you finish the cigarette.
"It's Nightmare on Elm Street," you call after him.
He raises one hand without turning around. Acknowledgment, or something close to it.
He comes back twenty minutes later with a paper bag and lets himself be let in, and the next part happens the way things happen when no one is officially deciding anything, he ends up on the floor with his back against the couch, you're sitting criss-cross above him, the lamp doing the bare minimum, the Coke sweating onto the coffee table, and Freddy Krueger doing his thing on the screen.
The popcorn sits between you, the joint appears at some point, the way it does.
"She knows she's in the dream," he says, after a while. "And she's still going toward him."
"Eddie..."
"I just think it's worth discussing."
"Watch the movie."
He watches the movie, mostly.Â
The room gets warmer and quieter and the sounds from outside arrive slightly later than they should, and the conversation moves the way conversations move when no one is steering. From the film to nothing in particular to something that starts to matter without announcing itself.
"Can I ask you something?" he says to the TV.
"You're going to anyway."
"Why Indiana?"
You look at the screen. "Cheap. Quiet. Wayne had the trailer."
"That's the practical answer."
You glance down at him, he's still looking at the TV, his chin tipped up slightly, his profile caught in the blue light.
"I got divorced," you say simply, because it's late and the weed has done what weed does,"Eight months ago."
"It wasn't loud," you say. "No one screamed. It was very quiet, actually." You pull the sleeve of your shirt over your hand. "He had this way of explaining my feelings back to me. Why were too much. Why my reactions were disproportionate." A pause. "He did it long enough that I kinda started to agree with him, you know?"
The movie fills the silence. Someone runs down a hallway.
"Sorry," you say, and mean it. "That was..." You reach for something and land on the wrong thing entirely. "Freddy Krueger is a better conversationalist."
It lands badly, no timing at all, you know it lands badly. But he laughs anyway, a real one, and there it is: the slight fold at the corner of his eye, the crease in his left cheek, the specific unguarded quality of a face mid-laugh.
You look away first.
"He did a number on you," Eddie says, quieter now, the laugh still warm in his voice.
"He was very thorough."
"Yeah." He turns the chocolate wrapper over in his hands. "I've met guys like that. They make you think the problem is the size of you." He pauses, not quite getting the next part right, trying again. "You're not small. You've just been in a small place."
"You don't know that," you say.
"I've been paying attention all week," he says simply, like it's not an admission. "and I know youâre bigger than this, than him."
On screen someone screams. He shifts, turning to face you properly, his arm coming up to rest on the couch cushion beside your knee. The performance is gone, his voice dropping into the register it finds in small spaces.
"Look," he says. "I know you're older and you've got your whole," he gestures vaguely at you, at the blazer on the chair, at the stacked books, at the general fact of you, "thing going on. And I know I'm," another gesture at himself, less certain, "what I am." His jaw tightens slightly. "But I've been thinking about you since Monday, and I'm pretty bad at pretending I'm not."
You open your mouth but what comes out is a cough. Not a small one. A full, graceless, weed-in-the-wrong-place cough that bends you forward and will not stop, your eyes watering, one hand braced on the cushion.
"Are you?" he starts, between his own laughter.
You hold up one finger. The cough continues.
He gets up, goes to the kitchen, comes back with a glass of water and crouches in front of you, his mouth pressed shut in the specific way of someone fighting very hard not to laugh at you.
You take the water and drink. The coughing subsides.
"Okay," you say, hoarse.
"Okay," he says, and he's smiling, the real one, and he's close, and you're still catching your breath, and the TV is still going, and outside the park is still quiet.
"You were saying," you say.
"I think you heard me," he says.
You look at him. He looks at you. The lamp in the corner keeps doing its minimum.
"I need more water," you say.
"Sure," he says, and doesn't move, and you don't move either, and the movie keeps going unwatched in the blue light of the room.
~~
Saturday morning has the quality of something that hasn't been addressed yet.
He's gone when you wake up. The blanket folded on the couch with the particular neatness of someone who didn't want to leave evidence of being there.
The coffee you make is for one person. You drink it at the window and watch the park wake up slow under a gray sky that hasn't decided what it wants to do yet.
You're on the porch with the second cup when he passes, jacket on, hair still damp, looking at his boots until he looks up.
"Hey," he says.
"Hey."
He stops. You can see the decision happening: his feet slowing before the rest of him catches up.
You hold up your mug. An offer.
He comes up the steps without a word and takes it, wraps both hands around it, and stands beside you at the railing. You look at the park. He looks at the park. The gray sky stays undecided.
After a moment he reaches into his jacket and pulls out a cigarette, lights it, and holds the pack toward you.
"I'm almost out," you say, taking one.
"I know," he says to the park.
You smoke in a silence that has a week's worth of things in it. When the cigarette is done he sets the empty mug on the railing, reaches back into his jacket, and puts a full unopened pack next to it. Marlboros, soft pack. He doesn't look at you when he does it.
"Eddie," you say.
"I noticed," he says simply. "That's all."
The gray sky makes up its mind. The first drops hit the railing between you and he goes down the steps.
Wayne is at the kitchen table with his coffee and the newspaper and the particular stillness of a man who has been awake since five and has already formed opinions about the day.
He doesn't look up when Eddie comes in; he turns a page. Eddie gets himself another coffee with shaken hands. Wayne turns another page.
"Funny thing," Wayne says to the newspaper. "Van was in the garage all night, but you werenât here."
"Roads were bad," Eddie says.
"Rained at eleven." Wayne turns a page. "Cleared up by midnight."
Eddie drinks his coffee, remembering that at eleven, he was intoxicated by your perfume, your laugh, you.
"She's pretty," Wayne says.
"Wayne."
"I'm just saying, boy."
"You don't have to, please."
"Smart too, from what I can tell." He folds the corner of a page down, thoughtful. "Those books she carries around."
"They're for work."
"Mm." Wayne takes a slow sip of coffee. "What kind of work?"
"The kind thatâŚ" Eddie stops. "I don't know, Wayne."
"But you've talked about it."
Eddie's ears go the specific red of a man who has run out of deflections and knows it.
"She seems like good people," Wayne says simply, and picks up his newspaper like the conversation is over, which it is, because Wayne has always known when he's made his point.
Someone knocks on the door.
They both look at it. Wayne looks back at Eddie over the top of the newspaper. Eddie looks at the door, then at his ears in the reflection of the window, then at the door again.
"I'll get it," he says.
"I imagine," Wayne says.
You're standing on the porch with your hands in your pockets and the unopened pack of Marlboros he left on the railing, which you are holding in a way that doesn't quite explain itself.
"Movie!" you say. "Tonight. My place. Eight o'clock?"
He leans against the doorframe. His ears are still red, which you notice and file away for later.
"What are we watching?" he grins.
"Does it matter?"
"No," he says. "Not really."
"Eight o'clock," you say, and go back down the steps.
He watches you cross the gravel. Behind him the kitchen is very quiet. Wayne is still pretending to read until,
"Eight o'clock," he says to no one in particular.
"Wayne!!!"
"Just memorizing," Wayne says. "In case you lose track."
He closes the door. He stands there for a second with his hand still on the knob. Then he does a small, contained, deeply undignified fist pump at the floor.
Wayne doesn't look up from the newspaper. "Just neighbors my ass," he says.
Eddie straightens up immediately. "Yep," he says with great dignity, and goes to his room.
It's ten past eleven in the morning. You have eight hours and fifty minutes.
You pick up your book, read the same paragraph four times and retain nothing. You put the book down.
You clean the bathroom, which didn't need cleaning. You rearrange the books on the shelf above the desk, then put them back the way they were because the original order was fine and you were just looking for something to do with your hands.
At two o'clock you hear the van leave. You don't go to the window. You are a grown adult and you don't go to the window, and when you hear it come back forty minutes later you also don't go to the window, and you are handling this very well.
At four you make tea you don't want. At five you eat something you don't taste. At six you sit on the couch with the television on and watch it without seeing it, your eyes moving to the clock with the frequency of someone who knows exactly what they're doing and is embarrassed about it.
At six forty-five you go to the bathroom and look at yourself in the mirror for a long moment.
"It's just a movie," you tell your reflection. Your reflection doesn't look convinced either.
At seven fifty-eight you sit back down on the couch, criss-cross, with a throw pillow in your lap and look at the door. At eight o'clock exactly, he knocks.
You wait three seconds so it doesn't seem like you were waiting for him at the door, then you open it.
He's showered. His hair is still slightly damp and he's got a clean shirt on, dark, the sleeves pushed up, and he's holding a bag that smells like something fried from the diner two streets over.
He has the specific expression of someone who also waited three seconds before knocking.
"Eight o'clock," he says.
"You're on time," you say.
"I'm always on time."
"You were late on Monday."
"The window was..." he stops. "Are you going to let me in?"
You step back from the door.
You end up where you always end up: you on the couch, him on the floor below you, the food between you, the lamp barely doing its work in the corner.
The food goes, the wrappers get thrown away. He comes back and sits, and you put something on the TV, something neither of you will watch, and the room settles into the specific silence of two people pretending to be comfortable.
On screen someone runs down a corridor. Someone else follows.
"She's going to trip," you say.
"She's going to trip," he says at the exact same moment.
She trips. You look at each other.
He's already looking at you. He has been for a while, you realize. Not at the screen, at you.
Looking in that way he has, the one that makes you feel like you've been read without giving permission. But this time there's no deflection left in him. The playful edge is gone, replaced by a quiet, heavy gravity that makes your breath hitch.
He moves, certain but unhurried. His hand finds your chin, his thumb brushing over your lower lip with a slow reverence that sends a shiver straight down your spine. When he kisses you, it isn't an anchor dropping; it is a total, breathless surrender. His lips touch yours with a gentleness so deliberate it feels almost sacred, as if he is trying to memorize the exact shape of you in the dark.
You make a small sound against his mouth, and the noise seems to undo something deep inside him. His hand slides up into your hair, his long fingers tangling in the strands, tilting your head back just enough to deepen the kiss. It is heavy, steady, and consuming.
He pulls you closer, his other hand anchoring at your waist before sliding down to your hip to lift you onto his lap. He settles you there, his large hands trembling just a fraction against your skin. He holds you with the quiet, desperate intensity of a man who knows he is touching something far better than he deserves, his face buried in the crook of your neck as he breathes you in, completely at your mercy.
His knee slides between yours, slow and certain, his mouth moving to your jaw, your throat, with the specific, unhurried attention of someone who has been thinking about exactly this. For all his usual restless, youthful bravado, here he lets you dictate the pace, completely yielding to a maturity that usually intimidates him.
"Eddie," you say to the ceiling, your fingers tightening in his hair.
"Yeah," he murmurs against your skin, his lips brushing your collarbone. He pauses for a fraction of a second, his breath hot against your throat. "You have no idea what you do to me. How long I've been losing my mind over this."
Your hand finds the back of his neck, the metal of his chain, the radiating warmth of his skin. You pull him back up to your mouth because the ceiling is suddenly far less interesting. He lets out a low, ragged sigh against your lips, a sound of pure relief, before he catches your mouth again. The lamp keeps doing its minimum in the corner, and outside, the park remains completely indifferent to any of this.
At some point he pulls back just enough. His forehead rests against yours, his breath uneven, his hands still tangled deep in your hair as if heâs anchored there, looking at you with a sudden, quiet vulnerability that erases every year between you.
"Okay," he says, his voice a low vow.
"Okay," you say.
Neither of you moves. The space between you is heavy with it.
"The movie," he whispers, a faint, breathless attempt to catch his bearings.
"What movie," you say.
He laughs, a soft huff against your lips, and kisses you again, slower this time. It is a deep, worshipful press of his mouth that belongs entirely to the two of you, while the TV keeps going unwatched in the blue light of the room.
~~
Sunday starts the way things start when no one has officially decided anything, slowly, and without an exit.Â
You wake up to warmth. His arm is around you, heavy and certain, his chest against your back, his breath slow and even against the back of your neck. The room is gray with early light. The TV is off, the lamp is off, and the park outside is doing its quiet Sunday thing.
He's awake. You can tell by the quality of the stillness, not the loose stillness of sleep but the careful stillness of someone who has been awake for a while and decided not to move.
You don't move either.
His arm doesn't tighten. He doesn't say anything. He just stays, his hand open against your ribs, his breathing slow and deliberate, and you lie there in the gray light and let the morning take its time, and neither of you acknowledges that you're both awake, because acknowledging it would make it into something you'd have to address, and right now it's just this. His warmth at your back, the quiet park, the specific weight of a Sunday that hasn't asked anything of either of you yet.
Eventually you shift. Just slightly.
His arm tightens. Just slightly.
"Morning," he says, his voice still rough with sleep.
"Morning," you say.
A beat.
"Coffee?" he says.
"Please," you say.
He leaves at ten. You watch the van pull out from the window, which you do now, openly, without pretending you're not doing it.
He's back at noon.
He knocks twice and when you open the door he's holding a paper bag from the bakery on Elm and wearing yesterday's shirt and he looks at you with the straightforward expression of someone who has stopped pretending the van going anywhere was a real departure.
"Thought you left," you say.
"I got pastries," he says.
You step back from the door.
The afternoon happens in pieces, but the light is already changing, the warm amber of morning thinning into something flatter, the kind of gold that means the weekend is running out of air. He fixes the cabinet hinge without being asked, finds the screwdriver himself, does it while you sit on the counter eating a pastry and pretending to read. On Monday it had been a novelty. Today it feels like a countdown.
Later he finds your record player and puts something on, something slow and guitar-heavy, and the trailer fills with it. He sits on the floor with his back against the couch. You sit above him. His head tips back after a while and rests against your knee and you let it, your hand finding his hair without quite deciding to.
The record ends. The needle clicks on the spindle, over and over, a small patient sound in the quiet room.
Neither of you gets up to turn it over.
By the time he makes dinner the blue twilight is pressing hard against the window, making the room feel smaller. Eggs, toast, the last of the tomatoes. You sit across from him at the small table and the conversation is easy the way it's been all day, but underneath it something has shifted, the specific weight of hours that know they're numbered.
He says something that makes you almost laugh. You watch him watch you almost laugh, that warm look he doesn't always let you see.
You reach across the table. Your hand covers his. He turns it over and holds on, and his grip is slightly tighter than yesterday, a quiet reflex against something neither of you is naming.
The lamp is on low, the record back on, the dishes done. He's sitting on the edge of the bed watching you cross the room toward him, and his hands find your waist when you're close enough, and this time it's nothing like Saturday's urgency.
This is slower. This is deliberate. This is two people choosing, quietly, with full knowledge of what they're doing.
His forehead drops to your sternum for a moment, just resting there, his arms around you, his breath evening out.
"Hey," he says, quietly.
"Hey," you say.
He looks up.
You stay.
Afterward the room is dark and quiet and he's on his back with one arm around you, his rings on the nightstand in a small pile, his chest rising and falling in the particular slow rhythm of someone who has stopped performing anything. His other hand moves in your hair, absently, the way his fingers move on strings.
"Don't go anywhere," you say. Not tonight. Not in general. Both.
His arm tightens.
"Okay," he says, and means something large by it.
You wake up before him in the gray early light of Monday.
You get up carefully. You shower. You stand in front of the mirror and cover the marks on your throat with concealer until your neck looks like it belongs to someone who spent the week alone, which is the version of you that needs to exist in approximately two hours.
Then you take the gray blazer from the hanger. The good one, the structured one. You button it to the top. You pull your hair into a neat twist, pin the loose strands, straighten your collar. You locate the lesson plan in your bag. Literature, Hawkins Community College, Room 214. You check it until the words stop meaning anything.
You look like yourself. The other self.
You're pouring your coffee when you hear him stir.
He appears in the doorway a minute later, hair wrecked, eyes half-open, no shirt, and you make a very brief and very private mental note about the tattoos and the line of his shoulders and the general unfairness of the situation before returning to your coffee like a professional.
He pours himself a cup. Leans against the counter beside you. Looks at the lesson plan without picking it up.
"First day," he says.
"First day," you say.
"You nervous?"
"No," you say, which is mostly true.
"Liar," he says, without heat.
He puts his mug down. He reaches out and straightens your collar, which didn't need straightening, his fingers brief and warm against your neck. Then he drops his hand.
"You're going to be good at it," he says. Simply. Like it's a fact he's already confirmed.
"You don't know that," you say.
"I've been paying attention," he says. "Since Monday."
The other Monday. Last Monday. A week ago, which is either very short or very long depending on how you measure it.
You pick up your bag, your knuckles white against the leather. He walks you to the door, four steps, completely unnecessary, and catches your hand before you go down the steps. He turns you back, easy and unhurried, and kisses you once. Not long, not dramatic. Just the kind of thing people do when they've become the kind of people who do this.
"Good luck," he says. That half smile, the real one.
You look at him standing in your doorway with his coffee and his bare shoulders and that smile, and you think, briefly and inconveniently, that you are in serious trouble.
"Lock up when you leave," you say.
He raises his mug. Something between a toast and a goodbye.
You go down the steps. You don't look back, because if you look back you won't go, and you have a class at nine and a lesson plan and a gray blazer and a version of yourself that has somewhere to be.
Behind you the door stays open for a moment before you hear it close.
~~
Monday
The hallway smells of floor wax and coffee and the particular energy of people who haven't yet decided if they want to be here. You walk it with both hands around your travel mug, your blazer buttoned, your heels making a sound you recognize as armor.
Room 214 is yours by eight-fifteen. You write your name on the board in large block letters, set the attendance sheet square on the desk, arrange the chalk on the ledge the way you always do, a small, private ritual, the body taking over when the mind needs to settle. Your territory. The desk is a shield. You know this about yourself: you are good at this part, the standing-in-front-of-rooms part, the clear-voiced and certain part. You built it deliberately and it holds.
The room fills the way college rooms fill, without urgency, people arriving in ones and twos with coffee cups and half-open backpacks, finding seats with the specific social calculus of people who don't know each other yet but are already deciding what they think. Chairs scrape. Somebody drops a binder. You watch them settle with your hands resting on the desk, and you feel yourself shift into the register you know, attentive, warm, contained, and it feels clean. It feels like solid ground.
You pick up the attendance sheet.
The door is almost closed.
"Sorry." A drawling voice, unhurried, slightly out of breath. "Got stuck behind a tractor on route 9. Hawkins thing."
The professional smile is already shaped on your lips when you look up.
The smile stays. It has nowhere to go.
Eddie is standing in the doorframe.
His leather jacket is clean, actually clean, and the denim vest beneath it pressed flat, the patches in careful order, and his dark hair is damp and combed back from his face, which makes him look younger and simultaneously makes every angle of him more visible: the jaw, the cheekbones, the cut above his brow. He has a blue notebook gripped in one large hand, his knuckles white around it, the rings gone. He's already scanning the room for a seat with the slightly defensive posture of someone used to arriving places where they're not entirely wanted.
Then his eyes find you.
His feet stop.
The notebook drops slightly in his grip. His gaze moves down the gray blazer, slowly, despite himself, despite everything, then to the chalk between your fingers, then past you to the blackboard, where your name and your title sit in large block letters that seem, in this moment, to have been written specifically to rearrange something in him.
You watch it happen. You watch his jaw go slack and then harden. You watch the color leave his face and come back wrong, and you watch him run the same math you ran this morning in the bathroom mirror, the window latch, the porch, the laundry shed, the Hideout, Friday's floor, Saturday's couch, Sunday's everything, backward against Room 214 and Literature and the attendance sheet in your hand, arriving at the only answer there is.
The other students are finding their seats. No one is looking at him yet.
He looks at you. You look at him.
There is nothing either of you can do with your face that is adequate to this moment.
You lower your eyes to the attendance sheet first because one of you has to, because the room is full and twenty-three students will notice in approximately four more seconds if you keep standing here. You find your voice where you left it, clean and level, exactly where you need it.
"Find a seat, please," you say. To the room. To him. To no one specifically.
He moves.
He walks toward the back of the room with his steps heavy and deliberate, not looking at you, his jaw set hard. He pulls the last chair in the row with a screech of metal on linoleum that makes three people look up and then look away. He sits. He sets the blue notebook on the desk. He crosses his arms tight against his chest.
You call attendance.
When you say his name, Munson, E., third from the bottom, there is a pause that lasts exactly one second too long.
"Here," he says, to the desk.
Flat. Contained. The voice of someone who has taken everything and put it somewhere it can't be seen.
You move to the syllabus.
You talk about the semester, about Fitzgerald and Steinbeck, about the literature of disillusionment and reinvention, about characters who build themselves into something new and spend the rest of the book paying for it. Your voice is steady. Your hands are steady. You do not look at the back row unless you have to.
You're talking about Gatsby, about the green light, about the particular cruelty of wanting something just out of reach, when a voice comes from the back of the room.
"Does it count as reinvention," Eddie says, not quite raising his hand, "if you didn't know you needed it until it was already happening?"
The room turns to look at him. You don't.
You keep your eyes on the middle distance, on the space above everyone's heads, on the place you look when you need your voice to stay level.
"That's one of the questions the text asks," you say. "Whether transformation is ever truly chosen, or whether it chooses us."
A beat.
"And if it chooses you," he says, quieter now, "and then the situation changes. What happens to the person you were becoming."
The fluorescent light hums. Someone shifts in their seat.
You look at him then. You have to. It would be stranger not to.
He's looking directly at you for the first time since he walked in, his arms still crossed, his jaw still set, but his eyes are doing something else entirely, something that has nothing to do with Fitzgerald and everything to do with Sunday morning and a door closing and a van on route 9 that he drove to a building he didn't know you'd be standing in.
"That," you say, carefully, "is exactly what we're here to find out."
He holds your gaze for one more second. Then he looks down at the blue notebook and opens it, picks up his pen, and writes something you can't see.
The class continues. The ordinary machinery of a Monday morning grinds forward the way it always does.
Fourteen hours ago his arm was around you in the gray early light.
You write Chapter 1 â due Friday on the board.
The chalk makes a clean, precise sound in the silent room.
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description: after a messy breakup, being trapped in the upside down with your ex-boyfriend is the last thing you want. unfortunately, almost dying has a funny way of putting things into perspective.
pairing: eddie x ex gf!reader
tags: eddie x you, no y/n, exs to lovers, second chance romance, hurt/comfort, protective eddie, light(ish) post-breakup angst, satisfying fluff, crawl gone wrong, insisting on changing pairs, robin is sick of their bullshit, steve the relationship counselor
TW: violence, severe injury, blood
WC: 7.3k
A/N: based on a request by @enne02 hope you enjoy:)!! this one had me in my feels idk why LOL. reblogs are a writer's best friend<3 (if you know where this title is from, you know ball)
âAlright,â Steve said, pulling his arms tightly together. âThen itâs decided. Tomorrow, the girls will each wear an article of El and Maxâs clothing to throw off the Demodogs.â
âThey seem to be gunning for the two of them,â Dustin continued. âEl for, well, obvious reasons. And Max, because she has dodged Vecnaâs curse like, a thousand times. We add some of their blood to make the scent stronger, and some of Nancy and Robinâs to theirs, so the scent is thrown off. Sound good?â
âYeah, I love being live bait,â Robin says sarcastically, scanning over to you and Nancy.
Nancy just nods in agreement before looking down at you on the couch.Â
âWhat about Will?â You ask, nodding over to the next room. He sat with his back to the group, eyes staring out the window ahead, headphones tight around his head. âWonât their connection just immediately give this whole plan away?â
Jonathan sighs and closes the door, âHe wonât be coming with us. Heâs gonna stay at the squawk with my mom and Lucas in case Vecnaâs spying. He wonât even be in communication with us.â
You nod once, flashing him a quick sympathetic smile.Â
âAlright!â Dustin claps his hands together. âMeet at Loverâs Lake gate sunrise tomorrow.â
The room filled with the sound of shifting bodies and tired sighs as everyone slowly stood from their spots around the Byers' living room.
Robin immediately groaned. âAwesome. Another sunrise meetup. Love that for us.â
âYou complain every single time,â Steve muttered, grabbing his car keys off the coffee table.
âBecause every single time we almost die, Steve.â
âFair.â
Nancy was already gathering scattered papers from the table, slipping them into her bag with practiced efficiency. Jonathan disappeared toward the kitchen, mumbling something about coffee, while Dustin launched himself into explaining some other part of the plan to Mike for the third time that night.
You pushed yourself up from the couch slowly, exhaustion heavy in your bones. And unfortunately, your eyes caught Eddieâs from across the room.
He stood near the hallway entrance, arms crossed tightly over his chest, fingers tapping nervously against his forearm. His eyes flicked over you for barely a second before looking away just as quickly. Still couldnât look at each other normally.
Cool. Normal. Totally fine.
You moved first, grabbing your jacket off the arm of the couch. âIâm gonna head out.â
âIâll walk you,â Nancy offered immediately.
Before you could answer, Eddie suddenly pushed himself off the wall.
âI got it.â
The room went weirdly quiet for half a second. Robinâs eyebrows nearly disappeared into her hairline while Steve looked physically exhausted by the tension.
You stared at Eddie. âI think I can make it to the front door alone.â
âWasnât saying you couldnât,â he muttered.
God. There it was, that sharp edge the two of you had been dancing around for months now.
Nancy glanced between the two of you carefully before stepping back. âOkay then.â
You brushed past Eddie toward the door, hearing his boots follow a second later.
The cold night air hit immediately once the front door opened, damp and sharp against your skin. Crickets buzzed faintly somewhere in the distance while the porch light flickered overhead.
You descended the steps first, and Eddie lingered behind you awkwardly.
âYou really think this planâs gonna work?â you asked quietly.
Eddie shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket. âNope.â
You huffed out a laugh despite yourself, and his mouth twitched faintly at the sound.
âBut,â he added, softer, âitâs the best shot we got.â
You hated how easy it still was to stand beside him. Hated how your body still recognized him instantly. The smell of cigarettes and leather and that stupid cologne you bought him lingered in the cold air between you.
âYou should probably get some sleep,â he said finally.
You glanced over at him. âYou too.â
There was a moment of hesitation between you, then Eddie rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly, curls falling into his face.
âListen, about tomorrowââ
âWeâll figure it out. Night,â you said quickly, opening your car door and closing it just as fast.Â
âNight,â he muttered to himself, tapping the hood of your car once.Â
The Upside Down always felt wrong immediately.
The air was thicker here. Wet, heavy with rot and ash and something metallic that clung to the back of your throat every time you breathed too deeply.
The sky stretched above the group in angry shades of red and black lightning, spores drifting lazily through the air like toxic snow, every step squelching beneath your boots.
âGod,â Robin muttered, pulling the sleeves of Maxâs sweatshirt farther over her hands. âI seriously forgot how much this place smells like a dead animalâs asshole.â
âThe crawlspace splits about a mile ahead,â Steve continued. âWe cover more ground if we break into pairs.â
âCool,â Robin nodded. âDibs on not dying.â
Steve pointed around the group. âNancy, youâre with Johnathan. Robin, youâre with Dustin and meââ He paused briefly. âEddie, you and...â
âNo.â
The answer left your mouth immediately. Sharp enough that even the distant growls echoing through the Upside Down suddenly felt quieter. Eddieâs head turned toward you instantly.
Steve blinked. âWhat?â
âI said no.â
You adjusted the shotgun strap harsher than necessary across your shoulder before looking anywhere except Eddie.
âWhat about Nancy?â you asked. âIâll go with her.â
Steve shook his head immediately. âNope. Both sharpshooters canât be together.â
âRobin then.â
âAlso no,â he replied. âYou and Robin both have El's blood scent on you. Two El's means a dead giveaway.â
You clenched your jaw. Of course, there was a reason for everything; of course, it made sense. But still...
âNo,â you repeated more quietly this time.
Steve sighed heavily like a tired father of six. âSeriously?â
You finally looked at Eddie, and big mistake. Because he looked just as frustrated as you felt, maybe even a little more exhausted from the situation than you were.
âJesus Christ,â Robin whispered under her breath. âTheyâre divorced.â
âWe were never married,â you snapped instantly.
âYet,â Dustin mumbled.
You whipped around. âWhatever. Come on, Dustin.â
The kid blinked. âWait, what?â
âYou heard me.â
âUhââ
âDustin. Letâs go.â
Your voice cracked through the air hard enough that nearby spores trembled slightly as you shoved past the group toward the forest line. Dustin looked between you and Eddie like a hostage negotiator trying not to die.
Steve slowly lifted both hands. âHey, Henderson?â
âYeah?â
âI wouldnât argue with an angry girl holding a shotgun.â
Dustin nodded immediately. âExcellent point.â
âSeriously?â Eddie muttered.
Dustin pointed apologetically at himself before jogging after you. âSorry, man! Self-preservation!â
Robin watched the two of you disappear into the foggy tree line before glancing sideways at Eddie. ââŚSo how bad was the breakup exactly?â
Eddie stared after you quietly for a long moment. âBad enough,â he said finally, âthat sheâd rather walk into monster-infested hell with a fifteen-year-old.â
The three of them moved carefully through the wreckage of downtown Hawkins, flashlights cutting through the thick haze drifting between abandoned cars and crumbling storefronts.
Somewhere in the distance, something screeched. Robin immediately tightened her grip on the flare gun in her hands.
âMm. Hate that sound. Really hate that sound.â
âPretty sure thatâs the point,â Steve muttered from the front.
Store signs flickered weakly overhead, vines pulsing slowly up the sides of buildings like veins beneath skin.
Eddie barely noticed any of it. Because every few seconds, his eyes kept drifting back toward the tree line where you and Dustin had disappeared twenty minutes ago.
âYou know,â she said casually, âif you stare any harder, I think you might actually burn a hole right through the fog.â
Eddie rolled his eyes. âShut up.â
âNo, seriously,â Steve added. âItâs getting pathetic.â
âIâm literally just walking.â
âYou basically broke your neck turning around five seconds ago.â
Eddie scoffed softly and adjusted the strap of the spear against his shoulder. âSheâs fine.â
Steve hummed knowingly. âUh huh.â
The group ducked beneath a collapsed power line before continuing down the street.
Robin glanced between the two boys. âWait, hold on. I actually donât know what happened between you two.â
Eddie groaned immediately. âAbsolutely not.â
âOh, come on,â she said. âWeâre in hell dimension therapy hour. Spill.â
Eddie kept walking.
âMunson.â
âNo.â
âEddie.â
He sighed dramatically, dragging a hand down his face. âIt was stupid.â
âThat means it was definitely your fault,â Robin replied instantly.
âOne-hundred percent,â Steve nodded.
Eddie shot both of them a glare before finally relenting. âChrissy needed a ride home after a game one night.â
Robin blinked. âThatâs it?â
âI didnât tell her beforehand,â Eddie admitted.
Steve already looked exhausted. âOh, my God.â
âI was going to!â
âBut you didnât,â Robin pointed out.
Eddie groaned louder. âOkay, yes, thank you, I gathered that much.â
Steve shoved aside a hanging vine as they entered the shell of an old grocery store. âSo she saw you?â
âYeah.â
Robin winced. âOh, thatâs brutal.â
âIt wasnât even like that,â Eddie argued quietly. âChrissy was upset. Jason was being a dick. I just drove her home.â
âBut from her perspective?â Steve replied. âHer boyfriend disappears for half the night with the prettiest girl in school.â
Eddie looked genuinely offended. âWhy does everyone keep calling Chrissy the prettiest girl in school? That's not even half-accurate.â
Robin deadpanned. "Oh."
âYou still love her,â Steve said it casually, like he was commenting on the weather.
Eddie kept his eyes ahead, flashlight shaking faintly in his grip. âDoesnât matter.â
âKinda does when you look one bad day away from throwing up every time she talks to another guy.â
Eddie let out a dry laugh. âYeah, well. Sheâs still pissed.â
Steve crawled up beside him slightly. âDid you ever actually apologize?â
âShut up,â Eddie snapped, ears turning red beneath his curls.
Robin gasped dramatically. âWait, wait, waitâ is that why sheâs so pissed? Because she thinks something happened with Chrissy?â
Eddieâs expression tightened slightly. Because yeah, that was part of it. But not all of it, not the real part.
The real part was that instead of fighting harder for you, instead of explaining, instead of chasing after you when you stormed away cryingâŚHe let you go.
And heâd regretted it every single day since.
Meanwhile, somewhere deeper in the woods of the Upside Down, you and Dustin trudged through layers of ash and rotting vines in tense silence. Well, mostly tense silence. Because Dustin physically could not stop talking if he tried.
âIâm just saying,â he continued carefully, trying to keep up with your pace, âfrom an outside perspective, I really donât think Eddie cheated on you.â
You climbed over a fallen tree branch without looking at him. âCongratulations.â
âIâm serious!â
âDustin.â
âNo, because you werenât there after, okay? He was literally miserable.â
You snorted softly. âPlease.â
âIâm not kidding!â Dustin insisted. âThe guy looked like someone kicked his puppy for, like⌠three months straight.â
âThatâs dramatic.â
âHe started listening to sad music.â
You glanced back at him dryly. âHe already listens to sad music.â
âOkay, fair.â
Dustin ducked beneath a low-hanging vine before continuing. âBut seriously, he didnât do anything with Chrissy.â
You tightened your grip around the shotgun because it still stung hearing her name, even now. Especially now. Because logically? You knew Eddie probably hadnât cheated. But emotionally, that night still replayed in your head perfectly.
Waiting for him, watching the clock, then seeing his van pull into the trailer park with Chrissy Cunningham in the passenger seat, laughing at something he said. And Eddie, sweet, oblivious, Eddie, looking happier with her than he had with you in weeks.
âYou didnât see them,â you muttered quietly.
Dustin sighed. âI saw him after.â
âThat doesnât change anything.â
âIt should.â
You stopped walking suddenly, sending Dustin nearly crashing into your back.
âYou know what the worst part was?â you asked, voice strangely calm.
The spores drifting through the air caught in your hair as you turned toward him.
âI wouldâve understood if he just told me.â
Dustinâs expression softened slightly. âHe always thought you were too good for him,â he admitted quietly.
That one hit harder than you expected, because yeah. You knew that already, too. Knew it every time Eddie got weird when boys looked at you too long. Every time he joked about you âslumming itâ with him. Every time, he acted as if your love for him had an expiration date.
Your chest tightened unpleasantly, but before you could answer, something screeched in the distance. Both of you froze instantly.
Dustinâs face paled. âUhâŚâ Another screech, but closer this time. Wet. Animalistic.
You slowly lifted the shotgun. The woods around you suddenly felt very, very quiet. Then, movement, fast shadows darting between the trees. One. Two. Threeâ
âOh, youâve gotta be kidding me,â Dustin whispered.
Demodogs, at least five of them. Their slick bodies slithered between the vines surrounding you both, snarling lowly as their flower-like mouths slowly opened.
You grabbed Dustinâs jacket instantly, shoving him backward. âRun.â
âYou know what your problem is?â Steve asked as the three of them pushed through the hollow remains of Family Video.
Eddie sighed heavily. âPlease enlighten me, Harrington.â
âYou think if you screw something up once, thatâs it.â
Robin nodded immediately. âOh my God, yes. Thatâs exactly his problem.â
Eddie rolled his eyes. âYou two done psychoanalyzing me?â
âNo,â Steve replied simply.
They stepped over collapsed shelves, boots crunching through broken VHS tapes scattered across the floor. Outside, thunder rumbled through the red sky.
Steve adjusted the nail bat over his shoulder before glancing back at Eddie again. âSo...did you ever actually apologize?â
Eddieâs jaw tightened. ââŚNot really.â
Robin looked horrified. âEDDIE.â
âWhat?â he defended instantly. âThings got heated!â
âShe cried and dumped you, and you just let her walk away!â Robin whisper-yelled.
Eddie scrubbed both hands down his face in frustration. âI didnât know what to say!â
Steve laughed dryly. âWell, thereâs your first issue.â
âI figured if she wanted to talk to me, she wouldâve.â
Robin stared at him for a long moment. âMen are genuinely stupid.â
Eddie ignored her. âShe looked at me like she hated me.â
âBecause she was hurt,â Robin shot back. âThereâs a difference.â
Eddie went quiet at that, because deep down? He knew. Knew every sharp comment and glare from you over the last few months felt more like woundedness than hatred.
Steve slowed slightly, expression softening just a bit. âDude.â
Eddie glanced over.
âWhen this is overâŚâ Steve shrugged. âJust apologize.â
Robin pointed at him enthusiastically. âYES. Exactly. Thank you.â
âLike a real apology,â Steve continued. âNot one of your weird little jokes where you deflect halfway through.â
âI donât do that.â
âYou absolutely do that,â Robin replied.
Eddie opened his mouth to argue, but static suddenly exploded through Steveâs walkie. All three of them froze instantly. A burst of panicked breathing crackled through the speaker. Then:
âSTEVE?!â Dustin, terrified.
Steve grabbed the walkie immediately. âDustin? What happened?â
More static, heavy footsteps, and your voice somewhere in the background, shouting something muffled. Then Dustin again:
âThereâsâ Jesus Christâ thereâs like FIVE OF THEM!â A deafening screech echoed through the radio.
Robinâs face went white instantly. âOh, my God.â
âWeâre headed east through the woods!â Dustin yelled breathlessly. âTheyâre right behind us!â
Steve already started moving. âStay moving. Weâre coming to you.â
The radio crackled violently. Then your voice cut through this time, sharp and panicked.
âDustin RUN!â
Eddieâs stomach dropped instantly. A loud gunshot exploded through the walkie. Then another, then static.
Branches snapped violently beneath your boots as you and Dustin tore through the woods.
The Upside Down blurred around you in flashes of red lightning and black vines, spores whipping through the air every time you shoved past another rotting tree. Behind you, there was screeching.
âLEFT!â Dustin yelled breathlessly.
You grabbed the back of his jacket, yanking him sideways just as a Demodog launched from the trees where heâd been standing half a second before. It hit the ground hard with a wet snarl. You spun instantly:
BOOM!
The shotgun blast echoed through the forest, the flare shell exploding directly into the creatureâs chest. Fire burst outward, orange flames illuminating the dark woods as the Demodog shrieked and convulsed on the ground.
âHoly shit!â Dustin yelled.
âNo time!â you shouted back. âMOVE!â
The two of you sprinted again. Your lungs burned as another screech split the air, then another. Then three more answered.
Dustin looked back once and immediately paled. âOh, that is SO many.â
Shapes darted through the fog behind you. Fast, crawling over trees and vines with horrifying speed. One leaped from the side, and you reacted instantly, grabbing Dustin by the shoulders and throwing him down as the creature flew over both your heads.
You hit the ground hard beside him. The Demodog spun immediately, flower-mouth peeling open with a shriek. Dustin scrambled backward, fumbling desperately inside his bag.
âSHIT! SHIT! SHITââ
The creature lunged, and a Molotov cocktail smashed against its face, fire erupting instantly. The thing screamed horribly, thrashing against the dirt while Dustin stared wide-eyed at the flaming bottle in his hand.
ââŚThat was awesome.â
âDustin!â
âRIGHT. MOVING!â
You hauled him upright again just as another creature burst from the trees, then another, and another.
Your stomach dropped. âOh, you have got to be kidding me.â
Because behind the Demodogs, towering above them in the fogâŚDemogorgons; at least two. Their massive silhouettes moved slowly through the trees, petals twitching open as they tracked the scent of blood soaking into the girlsâ borrowed clothes.
âOkay,â Dustin said faintly. âI officially hate this plan.â
One of the Demodogs lunged. Boom. Another flare shell exploded through its jaw. The recoil nearly knocked your shoulder backward as you kept firing. One. Two. Three blasts. Fire illuminated snapping teeth and writhing vines while Dustin hurled another Molotov into the pack.
Glass shattered, and flames erupted across the forest floor. Still, more kept coming.
âWhy are there SO MANY?!â Dustin yelled.
âI donât know!â
A Demodog tackled you from the side before you could reload. You hit the ground hard enough to lose the shotgun entirely. The creature screeched directly in your face, claws slashing wildly as you shoved against its throat desperately, its teeth snapped inches from your face.
âGET OFF!â
You grabbed the knife from your belt and drove it upward into the creatureâs neck. Black blood sprayed across your hands as the thing convulsed violently before collapsing on top of you. For one horrible second, you couldnât breathe.
Then Dustin was there immediately, dragging the body off you. âCOME ON!â
The trees ahead suddenly exploded with flashlight beams. Voices.
âTHIS WAY!â
Steve. Robin. And then, your heart betrayed you instantly at the sound of his voice. He yelled for you, panicked and terrified; closer now. You turned toward the sound just as one of the Demogorgons burst through the trees.
âLOOK OUT!â Dustin screamed. You barely had time to move.
One massive claw swung forward, and white-hot pain exploded across your side. The force sent you flying backward violently into the dirt.
For a second, everything went silent. No sound. No air. Nothing.
Then warmth poured down your waist, and your hands instinctively grabbed at your sides. Blood, so much blood. Somewhere nearby, Dustin was screaming your name.
And across the clearing, Eddie stopped dead. Because you were on the ground, not moving.
âOH MY GODââ Dustinâs voice cracked somewhere nearby as the others charged into the clearing.
Steve and Robin immediately started firing at the creatures still circling through the trees, gunshots and screeches echoing violently through the forest while flames spread across the ground from the broken Molotovs.
But Eddie? Eddie only saw you.
Blood soaked through your shirt in horrifying amounts, spilling between your fingers where you clutched desperately at your side. Your breathing came in sharp, uneven breaths against the dirt beneath you.
His stomach dropped so hard it physically hurt. âNo no no noââ
He was beside you instantly, collapsing to his knees hard enough to draw blood. Your eyes fluttered toward him hazily, still conscious. Thank fucking God.
âHey,â he breathed shakily. âHey, stay with me, alright?â
You grimaced as another cough wracked through your body. Blood splattered across your chin, and Eddie visibly went pale.
âJesus Christ,â Robin whispered somewhere behind him.
You sucked in a painful breath, immediately trying to push yourself upright. âIâm fine.â
Eddie stared at you in disbelief. âAre you insane?â
âI can still move.â
âYou are literally coughing up blood!â
Another wet cough interrupted you immediately, like your body itself was trying to prove his point. You glared weakly at him afterward anyway.
âDonât,â you rasped.
âDonât what?â
âLook at me like that.â
Eddieâs face crumpled for half a second before he could stop it. Like that.
Like he was terrified, like seeing you hurt was physically ripping him apart from the inside out.
The sounds of fighting still echoed around the clearing. Steve yelling. Gunshots. Demogorgons screeching somewhere deeper in the woods.
But Eddie barely registered any of it as he pressed, shaking hands harder against the wound in your side. Blood immediately soaked through to his palms.
âYou need pressure on this,â he said quickly, voice uneven. âCan you hold this?â
âI can walk.â
âNo, you canât.â
âYes, I can.â
âYou got launched ten feet through the air!â
You tried to sit up again anyway, and immediately regretted it. Pain tore through your side hard enough that a broken sound escaped your throat before you could stop it.
Eddie caught you before you could fall back completely, one arm wrapping around your shoulders carefully.
âThere she is,â he whispered shakily. âThatâs the stubborn girl I know.â
You clenched your jaw hard, humiliated tears burning behind your eyes. Not now, you refused to cry right now.
âIâm not dying in front of you,â you muttered weakly.
Something about that sentence completely shattered whatever composure Eddie had left. His eyes went glossy instantly.
âHey,â he said softly, almost pleading. âHey, donât talk like that.â
Another scream echoed through the woods. Steve suddenly appeared beside them, blood splattered across his bat. âWe need to move. Now.â
âCan she walk?â Robin asked urgently.
You opened your mouth immediately. âYes.â
âNo,â Eddie answered at the exact same time.
âI said I canââ
The second you tried to move again, your entire body folded from the pain, and a horrible gasp tore from your chest. And Eddie finally snapped.
âJesus Christ, would you stop trying to be tough for five seconds?!â
The clearing went quiet for a second, and even you looked startled. Eddieâs breathing shook violently as he stared down at you, terrified and furious and heartbroken all at once.
âPlease.â
That one word hurt worse than the injury. Before you could argue again, Eddie slid one arm beneath your knees and the other around your back.
You instinctively grabbed onto his jacket as he lifted you carefully against his chest. Pain exploded through your side immediately, making you gasp sharply into his shoulder.
âI know,â he whispered quickly. âI know, sweetheart, I got you.â
Sweetheart, your eyes shut briefly at the nickname, because he hadnât called you that in months.
Eddie adjusted his grip tighter around you before looking toward the others. âMove.â
Nancyâs house in the Upside Down looked even worse from the inside.
The wallpaper peeled in blackened strips from the walls, vines crawling through cracks in the ceiling while spores drifted lazily through the stale air. The entire place creaked softly around them as if it were breathing.
Steve slammed the front door shut behind them while Robin shoved an overturned bookshelf against it.
âAre they following us?â she asked breathlessly.
âI donât know,â Steve answered. âI donât hear them.â
Eddie barely registered the conversation. The second they got inside, he lowered you carefully onto the couch and immediately dropped to his knees in front of you again. Your blood stained almost everything now.
The couch. His hands. Your shirt. The floor beneath your boots. It just kept coming.
âOkay,â Robin said quickly, trying to stay calm. âOkay, okay. Nancy keeps medical supplies upstairs, right?â
âYeah,â Steve nodded immediately. âBathroom closet.â
The two of them disappeared upstairs instantly. Dustin crouched nearby, frantic fingers fumbling with his walkie.
âNancy? Jonathan? Come in!â Static answered him.
Your breathing hitched painfully again, and Eddieâs head snapped back toward you immediately.
âStay with me,â he whispered.
You leaned weakly against the couch cushions, face pale beneath the layer of grime and blood smeared across your skin. Every breath looked harder than the last. Still, you forced out a weak, sarcastic smile.
âPretty sure⌠this ruins the mission.â
Eddie let out something halfway between a laugh and a broken sound. âYeah,â he choked out. âYeah, sweetheart, kinda.â
Your eyes flicked toward the blood covering his hands, then back to him. He looked terrified, like absolutely terrified.
And it hit you suddenly that Eddie Munson looked like he was watching the worst thing that had ever happened to him unfold in real time.
âYou can stop looking at me like Iâm dying,â you muttered weakly.
The second the words left your mouth, Eddieâs face crumpled completely. âNo,â he whispered instantly. Your chest ached at the sound.
Eddie pressed both shaking hands harder against the wound in your side, trying desperately to slow the bleeding.
âYou can hate me later,â he said shakily. âJust donât leave me first.â
Something in your expression broke, because he sounded serious. His eyes glistened under the dim flickering light, curls stuck damply against his forehead, while blood soaked through his rings and sleeves.
And suddenly, all you could think about was Dustinâs voice earlier.
"He always thought you were too good for him."
Your vision blurred slightly. âEddieâŚâ
âDonât,â he interrupted immediately, voice cracking. âPlease donât do the thing where people start talking all soft because they think theyâre dying, okay? I canâtââ
His breath hitched sharply. ThenâŚOh. Oh God. Eddie was crying.
Not loud or dramatic, just silent tears slipping down his face while he tried desperately to keep pressure against your side.
You weakly grabbed at his wrist. Instantly, his other hand wrapped around yours.
âIâm here,â he whispered quickly. âIâm here.â
Upstairs, cabinets slammed open while Robin shouted something about peroxide. Dustin was still trying the walkies. But for a second, the rest of the world faded out entirely. It was just Eddie, holding your hand like letting go would kill you.
Your thumb brushed weakly across his knuckles.
âI donât hate you,â you admitted quietly.
Eddie froze. His watery eyes snapped up to yours so fast it almost hurt to look at. âWhat?â
You swallowed painfully. âI tried to,â you whispered. âBut I donât.â
Eddie stared at you like the words physically knocked the air from his lungs. Then suddenly, the house went strangely quiet.
Dustin slowly lowered the walkie. ââŚWait.â
Steve reappeared at the top of the stairs with Robin right behind him, carrying supplies.
âWhat?â Robin asked.
Dustin frowned toward the windows. âDo you guys hear that?â
Everyone went still, and there was nothing. No screeching. No snarling. No pounding footsteps outside. The Demodogs were gone.
Steve moved cautiously toward the window, peeling back the curtain slightly. ââŚHoly shit.â
âWhat?â Eddie snapped immediately without taking his eyes off you.
Steve looked back slowly. âThey stopped.â
Robin blinked. âStopped what?â
âFollowing us.â
Everyone went quiet, then Dustinâs eyes widened. âOh shit.â
Robin looked at him. ââOh shitâ, what?â
Dustin pointed toward you carefully. âThe blood.â
Eddie frowned slightly, and then realization hit all at once. The creatures werenât tracking Elâs scent anymore, not Maxâs either. Your blood threw them back to tracking the real deal.Â
âOh, that is dark,â Robin muttered quietly.
Steve looked back out the window one more time before letting the curtain fall shut again. âDoesnât matter. We still gotta move.â
Eddieâs head snapped up immediately. âShe canât move.â
As if on cue, another painful cough tore through your chest. Blood stained the corner of your mouth again, and Eddie visibly flinched.
Robin quickly knelt beside the couch with the medical supplies, hands moving fast as she peeled back the blood-soaked fabric around your side.
ââŚOh.â
Steveâs face tightened instantly. âBad?â
Robin looked a little pale now, too. âVery.â
You glanced downward weakly. Honestly, you kinda wished you hadnât.
The slash across your side was deep, way deeper than you originally thought. Blackened blood smeared across torn skin while the edges of the wound pulsed faintly with Upside Down spores and grime.
Robin pressed fresh gauze against it carefully, and you hissed sharply through your teeth.
âSorry,â she muttered quickly.
âItâs okay.â
âNo, itâs not,â Eddie said immediately, everyone turning to look at him.
He was still kneeling in front of you, one hand locked tightly around yours like he physically couldnât let go. And somehow he still looked angry at himself, like this was his fault too.
Steve crouched beside Dustin near the walkie.
âWe need everyone back here. Now.â
Dustin nodded immediately, adjusting the frequency with shaky hands. âNancy, Jonathan, Mikeâ anybody copy?â
Static crackled loudly, then Jonathanâs voice finally pushed through.
âDustin?â
âGet back to Wheelerâs house now,â Steve ordered quickly. âWe have a situation.â
âWhat happened?â
Steve hesitated briefly, but Eddie didnât. âSheâs hurt.â
Jonathan swore immediately. âHow bad?â
Nobody answered fast enough, and that was answer enough. Dustin swallowed hard before grabbing the walkie again. âGuys, seriously, we need everyone here now.â
Robin kept trying to wrap the wound tighter, but every fresh layer of bandages turned red almost instantly. Steveâs expression shifted subtly from worried to straight-up scared.
âHey,â he said carefully, crouching closer to you now. âStay with us, okay?â
You let out a weak laugh. âEverybody keeps saying that.â
âBecause you look like shit,â Robin replied automatically.
âRobin,â Steve hissed.
âWhat? Iâm motivating her.â
Your eyelids suddenly felt heavy, and your head tipped slightly against the couch cushions.
Instantly, Eddie tightened his grip on your hand. âHey.â
âIâm awake.â
âNo sleeping.â
âIâm literally just resting my eyes.â
âAbsolutely not.â
You wouldâve laughed if breathing didnât hurt so badly. Robin exchanged a quick glance with Steve. Then, he stood abruptly.
âWeâre getting out of here.â
Eddie looked up sharply. âWhat?â
âShe needs a hospital.â
âIn the real world,â Robin added quickly. âLike yesterday.â
Steve nodded toward the ceiling. âNearest gateâs at the trailer park. We move fast, we can make it.â
âAnd if the Demogorgons come back?â Dustin asked nervously.
Steve tightened his grip around the nail bat. âThen we fight.â
Eddie looked back down at you again. You looked exhausted now; blood loss had drained almost all the color from your face.
âOkay,â he whispered shakily. âOkay, weâre moving.â
Then softer, mostly to himself as he brushed blood-matted hair carefully from your face, âYouâre not dying here.â
The trip back to the trailer park was brutal; every movement hurt. Every step Eddie took with you in his arms jolted painfully through your side, forcing weak gasps from your throat, no matter how hard you tried to hide them.
âYou still with me?â he asked quietly after a while.
You hummed weakly against his shoulder.
âWords, sweetheart.â
ââŚUnfortunately.â
That earned the tiniest huff of laughter from him. Good. You liked hearing him laugh, even now.
Especially now.
The trailer park gates finally came into view ahead through the fog, and relief instantly loosened the group.
âWeâre close,â Steve called quietly. âGateâs right upââ
A screech exploded overhead, and everyone froze. Eddieâs entire body locked up beneath you instantly. Because he knew that sound, all too well. Demobats.
Robin looked upward first. âOh, youâve gotta be kidding me.â
The sky above them suddenly erupted with movement. Dark shapes poured through the red clouds in violent shrieking swarms. Dozens, maybe more.
âNo, no, no,â Dustin whispered.
Eddie visibly went pale; you could feel it immediately. The way his arms tightened around you, the way his breathing changed to sharp, uneven, panicked. Because last time, these things nearly killed him.
âMOVE!â Steve shouted.
The swarm dove all at once, and chaos erupted instantly. Robin started firing upward while Steve swung the bat wildly at the creatures swooping down around them. Dustin hurled another Molotov skyward, flames bursting violently across the dark sky.
Still, more kept coming. One of the bats shrieked directly beside Eddieâs head. He ducked sharply, nearly dropping you. Another latched briefly onto his jacket, and suddenly he wasnât here anymore, not fully.
Your stomach twisted painfully as you watched it happen in real time. The fear. The memory. His eyes looked exactly like they had that night in the Upside Down trailer. Terrified. Overwhelmed.
A bat swooped downward fast.Â
âEDDIE!â you shouted weakly. Too late.
The creature slammed directly into him, and the impact knocked both of you sideways violently, causing you to slip from his grasp. Pain exploded through your body as you hit the ground hard, tumbling through ash and dead vines.
Your vision blurred immediately, and everything spun. For one horrible second, you almost blacked out. Then you heard Eddie release an agonizing scream. Your head snapped upward weakly.
The bats swarmed him instantly, exactly like before. Clawing. Shrieking. Dragging him toward the ground while Steve and Robin tried desperately to fight them off. And suddenly, you werenât in the present Upside Down anymore. You were back there, watching Eddie nearly die.
Watching him bleed out while everyone screamed. Watching his body go limp in your arms. No, absolutely fucking not.
Adrenaline slammed through your body so violently it almost made you nauseous.
You forced yourself upward with a broken gasp, fingers scrambling desperately through the dirt until they found the shotgun lying nearby. Your side screamed in protest, but it didnât matter. You cocked the gun shakily.
One of the bats wrapped around Eddieâs throat while another clawed at his back. His eyes met yours across the chaos, terrified. And that? That did it.
BOOM
The flare shell exploded directly into the swarm, and fire erupted violently across the sky. Shrieking filled the air as the Demo-bats ignited all at once, peeling away from Eddie in flaming screeches. Another shot, then another.
Explosions of orange fire illuminated the dark woods around you while burning creatures dropped from the sky one after another.
Steve grabbed Eddie immediately, hauling him backward. âMOVE MOVE MOVE!â
Robin ran toward you instantly. âJesus Christ!â
Your arms finally gave out. The shotgun slipped from your fingers as the adrenaline vanished just as quickly as it came. Everything tilted sideways, and Eddie reached you before you hit the ground again.
His hands grabbed your face carefully. âHey,â he breathed frantically. âHey, hey, hey, look at me.â
Your vision blurred around the edges, but you still managed the weakest smile.
âTold you,â you whispered faintly. âNot letting you die.â Eddie looked absolutely wrecked by that sentence.
The first thing you noticed was the beeping, soft and steady. Then the smell of antiseptic hit next, clean hospital air replacing the rot and ash of the Upside Down.
Your body felt heavy and warm, and pain throbbed dully through your side the second you tried to move.
A small sound escaped your throat before you could stop it. Immediately, a chair scraped harshly beside you.
âHey.â
Your eyes blinked open slowly. Hospital room. Dim lighting. And Eddie, kneeling beside your bed so fast it almost looked like he hadnât moved in hours. Because honestly? He probably hadnât.
His curls were a mess, dark circles bruised beneath his eyes, while dried scratches still marked his neck and jaw from the bats. One of his hands clutched yours tightly enough to hurt a little.
âOh, thank God,â he breathed shakily.
Your throat felt raw. âYou look terrible.â
A watery laugh escaped him instantly. âThanks.â
You smiled weakly. Eddie immediately leaned forward in the chair, still gripping your hand like he thought you might disappear if he let go.
âYou scared the absolute shit out of me,â he admitted quietly.
âHow long was I out?â
âDay and a half.â
Your eyebrows lifted weakly. âSeriously?â
âMhm.â
âWow. Kinda dramatic of me.â
Eddie let out another broken laugh, but this one dissolved quickly. You glanced down at your intertwined hands, noticing how he still hadnât let go.
ââŚYou stayed?â
Eddie looked almost offended. âObviously, I stayed.â
Something warm twisted painfully in your chest. You swallowed carefully. âThe others okay?â
âYeah.â He nodded quickly. âEveryoneâs okay. Couple scratches, Henderson wonât stop bragging about his Molotovs, Robin cried for like twenty minutes after you passed outââ
âRobin cried?â
âShe threatened Steve when he laughed about it, too.â
That earned a small laugh out of you. God, heâd missed that sound.
Eddie stared at you for a second too long afterward, like he was making sure you were real, and alive.
His expression slowly crumbled again. âListen,â he started quietly.
You already knew from his tone that this was gonna hurt. Eddie rubbed shakily at his eyes with his free hand before looking back at you.
âI am so sorry.â
Your chest tightened immediately.
âI shouldâve told you about Chrissy,â he continued, voice uneven now. âI shouldâve explained, and I shouldâve come after you that night instead of letting you walk away.â
Tears burned visibly in his eyes again. âBut honestly?â He laughed weakly at himself. âI think I was just waiting for you to realize you were too good for me.â
Your face softened instantly. âEddieââ
âNo, let me say it.â His voice cracked slightly. âBecause I need you to know.â
His thumb brushed carefully across your knuckles.
âYou are the prettiest girl Iâve ever seen in my life,â he whispered shakily. âLike⌠stupid beautiful. And smart, and funny, and everybody loves you, and I just kept thinking eventually youâd wake up and realize you didnât wanna be stuck with some freak in a trailer forever.â
Your eyes immediately stung.
âAnd then when you saw me with ChrissyâŚâ He swallowed hard. âI donât know. Part of me almost figured maybe this was it. Like maybe I finally ruined the best thing that ever happened to me.â
Silence filled the room softly. Then finally, âYou idiot.â
Eddie blinked, and you squeezed his hand weakly. âI never cared about any of that.â
His face crumpled all over again. âI know that now,â he whispered.
âIâm sorry too.â
Eddie frowned immediately. âFor what?â
âI shouldâve listened.â
âNo, sweetheartââ
âI was hurt,â you admitted softly. âBut I think part of me already knew you didnât cheat.â
Eddieâs eyes went glossy again instantly.
You sighed weakly. âYouâre too obsessed with me to cheat on me.â
That startled a laugh out of him so suddenly he actually snorted.Â
âWell, yeah,â he whispered again.
You smiled faintly. Then after a small pause, âSoâŚâ you murmured. âWhat now?â
Eddie looked at you carefully, like he was scared to answer wrong.
Then slowly, he brought your hand carefully to his lips and pressed the softest kiss against your knuckles.
âWhatever you want,â he whispered.
Your heart melted a little. ââŚI think,â you admitted quietly, âIâd like my boyfriend back.â
Eddie actually stopped breathing. âYou mean that?â
You nodded once, and that was all it took.
Eddie surged forward carefully, terrified of hurting you, one hand cradling your face while he kissed you like heâd been dying to do it for months.
Soft at first, shaky. Then emotional enough that you felt tears hit your cheeks before realizing they were his. When he pulled back, his forehead rested against yours.
âI love you,â he whispered immediately. âLike, embarrassingly bad.â
You laughed softly. âI love you too, you idiot.â
Neither of you noticed the door cracking open. At least, not until:
âOh, thank fucking God.â
You both startled apart immediately. Robin stood frozen in the doorway holding two vending machine coffees and an open bag of chips, staring at the two of you with pure exhausted relief on her face.
Behind her, Steve physically sagged against the doorframe.
âFINALLY,â he groaned dramatically. âJesus Christ.â
Your face burned hot instantly while Eddie still hovered halfway over you, one hand on your waist. Robin pointed between the two of you accusingly. âDo you understand how insufferable you both have been?â
âRobinââ Eddie started.
âNo. No, Iâm serious.â She walked fully into the room now, setting the coffees down aggressively on the bedside table. âThe sexual tension alone almost killed me before the interdimensional monsters even got the chance.â
Eddie groaned, dragging both hands down his face. âCan we have like⌠one emotional moment? Alone?â
âNo,â Steve answered immediately.
Robin nodded. âAbsolutely not.â
Then her expression softened slightly as she looked toward you lying in the hospital bed. âYou scared the hell out of us, by the way.â
Your smile faded a little. âSorry.â
âDonât apologize,â Steve said quickly, pushing off the doorway. âJust stop getting mauled by alternate dimension creatures. Itâs becoming a weird habit in this group.â
âYou first,â you shot back weakly.
Robinâs eyes flicked back and forth between you and Eddie again before narrowing suspiciously.
âSoâŚâ she dragged out slowly. âAre we all emotionally repaired now or what?â
Eddie looked toward you, and you smiled faintly before intertwining your fingers with his again.
Robin gasped dramatically. âOH, my GOD.â
Steve pointed immediately. âI knew it.â
Eddie rolled his eyes, but he was smiling now, actually...no. More like beaming at the fact that your fingers were laced with his.Â
SUMMARY: when your ex bf shows up at a party, it brings back bad memories and starts an argument. after leaving on foot and walking to your apartment, you get surprised when someone you hadnât expected shows up to drive you home
WARNINGS: â| 18+ | smut, drinking, eddie is an asshole, drug mention, addiction mention, felon-fresh-out-of-prison!steve, billy hargrove is dating readers best friend
âᜠ᜸áśáľáľ§âᾤ! â
âᜠ᜸áśáľáľ§âᾤ! â
The asphalt beneath your huarache sandals felt like molasses as you stomped further onto the lonely highway. Tomorrow youâd waltz back into StarCourt and find the bitch at Payless who claimed these were the shoes of the season, and give her a piece of your mind. Because no, Brenda, these were not the âitâ girl sandals for the summer. These were walking wicker baskets of braided leather hell.Â
Never mind that it wasnât her fault. None of this was. But damn did it feel good to have someone other than yourself to shoulder the blame for the reason that you were currently walking your ass all alone on Highway 7.Â
The air hung like a wet sheet the entire month of August, and September was following suit. No breeze. Only buzzing mosquitos and the sticky salt of burning tears on your cheeks to keep you company tonight.Â
What was supposed to be a night outâ not just any night out but thee night where you would reclaim your confidence with a new outfit, a nearly sold out shade of lipstick, and a pair of cute toe pinching sandals âway to go Brendaâ tonight was supposed to be the night you bounced back from your breakup.Â
âžâ.Ë
When Steve Harrington, fresh from prison and breaking every violation of his parole, decided to throw a rager at his ânewâ house (aka: a rental out in the middle of nowhere where the lease was signed by Dustin Henderson who was currently attending college six states, and a few time zones away) it ended up being the perfect opportunity to get a little tipsy and maybe hook up with someone you had never laid eyes on before.Â
You had it all planned out, every minute detail of the night down to the very last cent of how much youâd need for a bottle of Strawberry Hill Boonesfarm.Â
âAre you sure you donât wanna stay and have just one beer?â you pleaded outside of Lilyâs car window.
Steveâs parties were never known to be casual, and you had to admit it was awkward showing up by yourself instead of being under the arm of your ex, like old times.Â
She laughed and ran fingers through her Farrah Fawcett-esque curls, her blue eyes catching the last rays of the sun, âyou know I canât. Billy is taking me out for our anniversary.âÂ
A whopping four months with the King of Hawkins Community Pool, how could you forget?
You roll your eyes to the sky and stamp your foot like a dramatic toddler, âInvite him here then! You guys can have a drink or two and then go, please Iâm begging, I canât show up alone.âÂ
âNancy and Robin are already here!â Lily banters back with a giggle and points at Nancyâs Griswold station wagon parked next to another slew of vehicles, âyouâll be fine.â
Fucking Lily. Your right hand since diapers, more like sisters in sin. The two of you used to hold Hawkins by the short and curlies. Two best friends dating best friends. The four of you used to be inseparable⌠now it felt like those times were lived in another life.
âGoddd fine, tell Billy to at least use a condom.âÂ
With a wink and a wicked grin she puts her car in reverse before calling out the window, âtrojan doesnât make them that big⌠have fun!â
Gross.
âžâ.Ë
The living room was packed and hazy from clouds of smoke. People you haven't seen since graduation the year before were piled into the cramped, shack-like house.Â
Lower classmen who were now seniors, guys in grades above you who now wore wedding bands instead of silver rings adorned with a gaudy jewel and inscribed with some state champion bullshit class of 1980 something, Will Byersâwho you swore was dead once right? â was even there.Â
Steve always threw the best parties Hawkins had ever seen, and it should have been on your mind that he would show up. But it wasnât. You hear your name called and make eyes with the host. A thick mustache smirk greeted you and his arms wrapped you in a familiar hug. His signature sage and amber cologne accentuated the smoke from his Marlboros.Â
Where other girls flocked to Steve in all of his masculine glory, you never saw him in that light. To you, he was just another guy in Hawkins.Â
âDidnât think youâd make it tonight, trouble,â he drawls in your ear before letting you go, âIâm digging the new hair.â
You pull away and roll your eyes playfully. The day you sat in the salon chair at Josieâs with puffy eyes and hiccuping cries, she took matters into her own hands and colored your hair a shade completely opposite of what it naturally was, and you felt like a new woman ever since. Out with the old.Â
âHavenât missed a single party of yours yet. Do you think Iâd pass on the first one since you got out?âÂ
You werenât sure how prison could have made someone better looking but Steve was living proof of just that. His shoulders were broader, arms thick and muscly under a grey heather shirt.Â
Steve cracks a smile and plucks a cigarette from behind his ear. âHopinâ you wouldnât, but I wasnât sure since I heard a nasty rumor about you dumping Munson.âÂ
Your heart sank at the mention of his surname. What happened between you and Eddie was way more complex than just you-breaking-up-with-him. It hurt to think about let alone laying it all out to his best friend.
Steve acknowledges your disdain, âSo itâs true then? You and Munson are splitsville?â
Youâre never here, you go radio silent for days at a time, Eddie. PleaseâŚI canât keep doing this!
âItâs complicated... How does it feel to be back?âÂ
âAgh agh, donât change the subject. Thereâs always three versions of a story: yours, his, and the truth. And if you donât remember, I refereed a lot of your arguments, and you two were always able to work it out.âÂ
âThis time itâs different, but enough of all that, Iâm moving on.â
âThatta girl. I get it, I wonât meddle into your shit. Iâll be your wingman tonight, okay? Weâre in the same boat⌠Iâm ready to not be alone tonight, y'know? Which reminds me, whereâs Lily?â
âSteveâŚâ
âI know, I know, sheâs with Hargrove nowâŚâ Your silence is enough for him to understand. âI really fucked that up, why would she stay with a guy whoâs doinâ time⌠she deserves more than that⌠more than me.â
Broken hearts must have been the theme for the night, but you refused to wallow in it any longer.
âNope, no, we arenât gonna do this. Any girl here would be crazy over you Steve, youâve got that âgood guy gone badâ thing going, câmon.âÂ
âžâ.Ë
It didnât take long for Steve to get over his woes and remember exactly who he was. You and Nancy were huddled in a corner talking about how Vickie dumped Robin over summer break.Â
Apparently she decided she was now straight and no longer curious for the tall and clumsy Rockinâ Robin. You hear a high pitched squeal and turn your head in annoyance to see what the hell was going on.
A peek over your shoulder and you realize immediately who it is. She was twisting her brassy red hair around her finger, a flirty smile aimed at someone you couldnât see in the crowded living room.Â
âWhoâs that?â Nancy asked.
âMy neighbor, Rebecca.âÂ
âWait! I think sheâs seeing my brother. Does she work with Hopper?âÂ
âYeah, she just started working for Hawkins Police Department.âÂ
âIntroduce me.â Nancy demands and you give her a look, âWhat? Iâm just seeing whatâs so special about Rebecca that wasnât special about Jane. Plus sheâs talking to Andy. My mom and his mom are in the same book club and she told my mom that he just broke up with Alicia but she knows heâs always had a âthingâ for you.âÂ
Andy? Yeah he was good looking. But not exactly your type. A little shameless flirting wouldn't hurt right?Â
Rebecca was smiling with her head thrown back, dancing along to Fleetwood Mac as you and Nancy elbowed your way across the living room. Over your shoulder you tell her to be nice and take it easy on the girl. She smiles her wicked mischievous grin that you know only means trouble.Â
Andyâs hair is darker than you remember it being. No longer shoved under a baseball cap but likely combed and feathered to make it look effortless. Heâs talking to Rebecca and you realize heâs wearing a Hawkins PD issued shirt.Â
âAndy,â Nancy purrs, directing his attention towards the both of you. She officially introduces you to him and his eyes drink you in. Nance takes Rebecca by the crook of her elbow in a bony vice-like grip, her voice as sweet and fake as splenda.Â
Itâs not long before the small talk between you and Andy develops into hushed whispers leaning against the living room wall, a breath and the neck of a beer bottle keeping your lips from his. Heâs handsome. Eyes like sage and beach kissed skin.Â
Youâre staring up into him, listening to him talk about arrests and a case thatâs gone unsolved for more than ten years. Heâs leaning in now, so close you can smell the spice of his gum, but youâre knocked off kilter.Â
âMmph..âÂ
âShit sorryââ
You both speak at the same time, and when you realize the person who ran into you was someone you were actively trying to avoid. Your blood runs cold and your cheeks heat. Eddie.
If brown eyes could light fires you would be in flames. He looks to you then over to Andy. The shock value in your face is exactly what he wants. And he smirks when he catches your watering eyes, you wonât give him the luxury of seeing you cry. Not on his account. Not anymore.Â
Andy glares at Eddie, âHey pal, what the fuck?â
âEddie-bearâŚthere you are!â Rebeccaâs voice is like shrapnel in your ears, but nothing hurts worse than watching her peachy lips kiss his cheek like a routine greeting, her arms slithering under the same patch vest that you had made as a birthday present for him.Â
Of course he had moved on, it's exactly what you were trying to do tonight, right here, with Andy.
You hadnât seen him since your breakup. Avoiding his normal hangs and haunts. Bypassing the trailer park anytime you could. Because of this exact reason. Seeing Eddie was too hard.Â
It set your heart aflame and your nerves rattling until they were sure to shrivel and perish. Like a phantom pain, seeing him with someone else, and not with you, not being a part of your lifeâŚwas agonizing.Â
He hadnât changed.Â
His curls still held a permanent halo of unruly frizz. A scar on his eyebrow paling into pink instead of branding a fresh deep cut like it was the last night you had seen him. When you ended it.
Nancy says your name and it brings you back to the present. Leaving the ghost of Eddieâs kisses on your neck in the past where they belonged. Dead and gone.Â
âI heard someone brought Jell-O shots,â she says absentmindedly, pulling your wrist and angling you away from the car crash that would surely unravel, â...letâs find out if they have raspberry.â
âJell-O shots?!â Rebecca squeals, her eyes looking up into Eddieâs in wonder, âwould you get me one? I need to powder my nose.â Without waiting for his response, she pinches his butt and leaves, her hips in rhythm to the music.Â
The awkward tension between you and Eddie isn't given a chance to surface. Saved by Nancyâs unashamed interrogation questions, âthatâs cute, are you two fucking?â
Eddie chokes on his beer and you slap her arm, muttering her name in a tone that suggests youâd rather melt into the carpet than hear his answer.Â
âChivalry Nance,â he glares, wiping his chin and letting out an annoyed sigh, âglad to see you havenât changed.â
Nancy flashes her bright smile. âYou know me. Reporter and such. So⌠what have you been up to? Still selling weed or have you moved onto dope and stealing catalytic converters?â
âWhy donât you ask Jonathan?â
Turning to leave you grab Andyâs hand. Not wanting to hear what Nancy spits back at Eddie, but knowing her it was going to be just as mean and vile as he was being.Â
Rebecca? Really? She was niceâŚpretty⌠but she was everything he claimed to hate. Popular. Ditzy. Fake. High conversations with him going on and on about conformity and government conspiracies flood your mind. Once he got going it was hard for him to stop.
Eddie was passionate about being unapologetically himself. He never cared about the image he portrayed, about the tainted Munson name he wore proudly, carving his own path, reclaiming his namesake. And thatâs what made you fall for him so easily.Â
The Jell-O shots were melting and sticking to the counter, staining it in splotches of red and blue. Dustin Henderson didnât have a chance in hell of getting his deposit back. Handing Andy one you trace your finger in the plastic cup and loosen it before handing it to him, a wink in your eye as you try to settle your nerves.Â
He returns your smile and strokes your chin, âwho the hell was that?â
âSorry about him, itâs myââ
âIs this how itâs gonna be?â You know itâs Eddie without even having to turn around and see his flared nostrils and furious eyes. âSending your friends to scream at me because youâre too goddamn bitter and chicken shit to do it yourself?âÂ
Fire burning in your chest you turn to chew him out, but the sight of him alone almost drove you to tears. Your lip quivers and you can see it register within his eyes, the effect he had on you, but his eyes narrow as if he chose to ignore it and trailblaze through your pain.
âCan I help you?â Andy interrupts.Â
âRun along dickhead, Iâm not talking to you,â he fumes. His dark curls you loved swaying the more worked up he got. His voice deepened with anger and sounded broken but your ears filled with muffled dread as you felt your nose tickle. âGot something you wanna say? Or are you gonna stand there and cry?âÂ
âMunson! Andy!âÂ
Thank God for Steve and his impeccable timing. He pulls his friend into a hug and slaps him on the back, âwhatâs up you little fucker, thought you werenât gonna make it tonight!â He turns to Andy then and his voice turns serious, âHey man, I heard a walkie talkie noise going off by your Jeep, sounded kinda urgent.âÂ
âShit, âm on call,â Andy mutters before sprinting out the front door.
Eddieâs eyes seem to almost twinkle and he blinks away whatever turmoil he brewed, pushing it aside to seem nonchalant. âPlans changed Stevie boy. My date decided she wanted to meet more people in town, so what better place to do that, yeah?â
You snort and roll your eyes, plucking a Jell-O shot into your mouth. Dark eyes pierce your face. Eddie crosses his arms, eyebrows raised to his hairline.Â
âEverything okay, here?â Steve asks, lighting a cigarette.
âOh yeah, fuckinâ peachy,â he seethes, his neck red and pupils constricted like heâs a snake, âIâm waiting for her to fill me in on the joke, but apparently the princess doesnât speak.âÂ
âDo you ever shut up?â you mumble mostly to yourself, mindlessly rubbing a stain on the counter with your finger.
âWell well well⌠would ya look at that,â he mocks, hands raised out in a glorified praise, âthe stuck up bitch can speak.âÂ
Pushing yourself from the counter you stand toe-to-toe with him, glaring up at him with a years worth of venomous rage youâd been holding on to.Â
âItâs reassuring to know that youâve stayed the same. Still a mean, fucked up bastard. That apple didnât fall far from the tree⌠did it, Junior?âÂ
Steve whistles low and steps between you two before either of you can throw drinks or you start screaming at each other and someone calls the cops. He knew how much Eddie hated being called that name. How much he tried to break that cycle between father and son. âThatâs a low blow, honey⌠even for you.â
The hurt on Eddieâs face is painted on thick but you canât find a single blood cell in your body to give a shit. If he wanted to be an asshole, so be it. You knew how to hurt him just like he did you. Two can play that wicked game.Â
He merely smirks and cocks his head back.Â
âIf you were any good on your knees, Iâd tell you to choke on it, sweetheart. Too bad youâre nothinâ but a lame cunt in the sack. Isnât that right Steve?
Your body flings over Steveâs shoulder aiming for Eddieâs hair. But Steve is too quick and catches you at your waist and holds you away from your bullseye. Both you and Eddie are screaming at each other. Youâre practically clawing at Steveâs arms as he tries to get you away from the kitchen and Eddie. You wanted to tackle him to the ground and rip his hair out. Slap him in the chest until he said he was sorry.Â
Eddie only eggs you on, talking shit behind Steve and moving around so you could see himâ trying to get in your face just as much as you are to him with Steve being the only thing stopping both of you from ripping each other to pieces.Â
Steve yells for Nancy and she shows up ready to fight a bull if you asked. She ushers you out of the kitchen. Hiding your tears with her jacket.Â
âGo! Now!â Steve hollers, shoving Eddie down the cramped hallway and into his bedroom.Â
Heâs huffing, hands on his hips in disappointment and disgust. Eddie leans against the dresser nursing a bloody nose he somehow managed in between fighting you and being manhandled down the hallway. Â
âEddie,â Steve sighs, shaking his head, âof all the stupid things you could have said⌠why do you always go with that one?â
âWouldnât surprise me, she always had it bad for yâ!â
âI was locked up you fucking idiot! Remember that? How I took the rap and didn't rat you out? I did two years for your stupid ass and in thanks you show up at my house and accuse me of fucking your girl?âÂ
He hangs his head back and sighs, blood trickling onto his lip, âI know dude, she justâfuck! She always knows how to piss me off. And I lost it.âÂ
Steve runs a hand through his hair, âcalm down and stop being such a prick for once in your life.âÂ
âFuck you man! You think a few years in the clink and suddenly youâre some big tough mother fucker?âÂ
Eddieâs blindsided when Steve grabs him and tosses him into a wall, his shirt balled in his hands. He tries to throw him off but Steve is stronger.
âWhat the fuck! Get off!â
âNo! Youâre gonna listen to me. I donât know what happened between the two of you but I do know that you had a fuckinâ problem man. You donât think I know that Wayne had to pay off Rickâs goons so you wouldnât get your throat cut? She came to me crying, begging me to help you.â
âOh sure, way to bring that up! That was years ago! I havenât touched that shit since.âÂ
âReally? Cause right now I donât believe a fuckinâ word you say.âÂ
Eddie reaches into his pocket and pulls out what looks like a poker chip. âNarcotics Anonymous 360 daysâ printed on the blue painted surface.Â
Steve spins the chip around in his hand, his eyebrows piled into shock, and sits on the edge of his bed, âdoes she know?â
He scoffs and crosses his arms, his voice angry and breaking, âwhy would I tell her Steve? Ainât gonna make a difference.âÂ
âOh and showing up tonight with some random chick after I told you she was here will?â Steve quips in a know-it-all type of way.Â
Eddie sits on the ground, forehead balancing on his knees. âWe can barely be in the same room together without fighting. You saw her tonight, she didnât even want to talk to me.âÂ
It was true. He doesnât know the last time you two had a talk that didnât end in harsh words and tears on your cheeks.Â
Steve leans forward and ruffles Eddieâs hair like heâs ten. âShow her that you arenât who you used to be. Youâre not Junior. I didnât tell her about anything youâre doing or how you finished school. But sheâd wanna know that youâre doing everything you always said you would. Together or not, she cares about you.âÂ
âžâ.Ë
After Nancy thumbed away your tears you sniffed and caught your breath. âIâm gonna go, Nance. âm sorry⌠I canât be here⌠I donât wanna ruin Steveâs party, tell him Iâm sorry okay?â
âNo, come on donât be stupid. Youâre welcome here anytime, you know that. Same rules, just different place. Stay. Steveâs got an extra room or take the couch, you shouldnât be driving.â
Shaking your head you hide another wave of tears, âIâm gonna walk, clear my head.â
Nancyâs eyes are brimmed with pretty blue glass as she holds her own tears in, âyou canât walk home, let me call Mike to pick you up.âÂ
âžâ.Ë
And thatâs how you ended up here. Walking home in the dark sticky heat after a fight with Eddie. He brought out the worst in you and you did the same to him. What once felt like the love of a lifetime has now deteriorated into the worst relationship youâve ever had.Â
Tonight was supposed to be yours! He fucking ruined it like he always did. Birthdays, anniversaries, holidaysâ he would show up hours late and high as a kite, dead behind his eyes, his soul diminished.Â
Tears stream down your cheeks and you wipe at them hastily. God damn him. He was still doing it. Still getting under your skin and making you miserable. Would it ever stop? Would he? Ow.Â
Wobbling on one foot, you slip off each sandal and hold them by the backs, one more blister and youâd lay down and join the roadkill. Thank God for Mike Wheeler, hopefully you wouldnât be walking much longer.Â
Headlights shine on your back and you move off to the side of the road, gingerly stepping along the gravely shoulder. A black trans am comes to a halt, the music dull and quiet.Â
âThanks for coming to get me Mike,â you say, opening the passenger door and ignoring a familiar cloud of smoke lingering, âhope you werenât in the middle of someââ
âWhoâs Mike?â
No no no. Steve wouldnât do this to you. Nancy wouldnât have let him! Whereâs his van? Why is he here? You had too many questions and didnât even want the answers. You donât bother slamming Eddieâs car door, leaving it wide open, scowling and walking away.Â
âGet in,â he barks through the open door, driving alongside you, âitâs late.âÂ
You cross your arms and walk without looking his way, âGo away, Eddie. My ride is coming.âÂ
âNo, heâs not.âÂ
âWhat?â
âWheeler didnât call him, Iâm your ride home.âÂ
Great. âNo thanks.âÂ
Eddie sighs in careful restraint, pulling his hands down his face and taking a deep breath. White knuckling the steering wheel. âYeah princess, it wasnât my idea either. So stop being a whiney little toddler and letâs go.â
You canât take it anymore, youâre about to break. âPlease, please leave me alone, Eddie. Iâm begging you.âÂ
âIâm not going anywhere,â Eddie relents, almost bored and not even watching the road, âget in the car.â
Ugly, traitorous tears drop on your cheeks and you stop walking. âIâd rather meet an axe murderer than go anywhere with you.â
âOh Jesus Christ! Quit being dramatâ!â Eddie is hit square in the face by one of your sandals, the other misses and soars into the back seat.Â
Youâre screaming into the night, voice hoarse and chest rising in a panic. âYouâre always sâ such an asshole!â you cry hysterically, âI hate you! I. Hate. You. I donât wanna be around you! I donât want to see you ever again! Leave me alone!âÂ
In the time youâre yelling and screaming, Eddie throws the car in park and swings his long legs onto the pavement. He slams the passenger door shut and crowds you in until your spine is against the hot car.Â
His body heat sears into you, those dark eyes no longer holding anger but sadness. Eddie reaches up and wipes away a smear of mascara from your closed eyes. Itâs too much for you to see him this close.Â
Your stomach is in your throat and you try to push him away but he holds your wrists and stops you. Turning your face away you sob into the night.Â
Eddieâs voice is quiet and calm, âyou donât wanna see me? Fine, I get it. But, goddamnit⌠please, get in the car so I can bring you home. Then you wonât have to see me again, âkay?âÂ
Shaking your head you hiccup and try to pull away from him. âI donât want to.. I canât.â
âCâmon, you know Iâm not gonna let you do this.â Eddie pulls your chin to him and you reluctantly open your eyes. You wish you didnât. Seeing him like this in a pure vulnerable form makes you ache for how things used to be. Heâs pleading with you now. âYou can hate me and scream at me all you want on the way home.â
You donât argue, exhausted from the night your nerves are fried. Grabbing the handle you turn without looking at him and get in. Beige carpet lays beneath your bare feet. This car is a lot cleaner than the van ever dreamt of being. As if he spent time and a lot of money on it.Â
Eddie gets behind the wheel and mutters, âseatbeltâ before putting the car in drive. You canât help but look over at him. The two years you had been avoiding him seemed to be good for him, too. He looked healthy, no longer haggard and purpled under his eyes.Â
Blood is smeared on the back of his hand, âyour nose is bleeding.â
âI know,â Eddie grumbles, leaning over to the glove box, careful to not bump your knees. He takes a napkin and twists it before shoving the smallest bit in his nose. âItâs broke.â
âWas that frââ
âThat fuckin shoe you chucked at my head?â He said, eyebrows cocked in disdain, âyeah.â Â
You feel bad for hurting him, you had never thrown anything at anyone. Your emotions have always run high with him, it was a lose lose situation.
âIâm sorry.âÂ
Eddie smirks and nods his head in acceptance. The drive back to town is quiet, no loud music blaring, no beer cans being tossed out of the window. Itâs nice.Â
You never moved out of the apartment you shared together and when he pulls into the parking lot he shuts off the engine and turns towards you.Â
âListen. Itâs hard for me to see you too, sweetheart. I didnât want to for a long, long time. I fucked up everything between us and why we had. I was fucked up. I know how shitty I was to you, fuck I deserve this broken nose.â
Youâre crying again, whatever makeup you left on your face was rubbed away by your hands.
âItâs no secret. I hurt you, over and over and over again. And Iâm so fucking sorry for that. When you left me, IâŚwent off the deep end,â he hangs his head in shame and rolls the ring on his finger. âI put myself in rehab after that, got my GED. Iâm doing good, better than I ever could have thought for myself.âÂ
All you ever wanted for him was to be sober. The years you had together werenât always bad, but they ended ugly and Eddie lost himself during that. You couldnât keep picking up his broken pieces, they never fit.Â
ââm happy for you, Eddie.â
He grabs your hand and his voice is urgent, âI keâ, fuck baby, I kept those promises I made, because of you⌠and Iâm sorry that it took me losing you to do it.â
He never cried. Not once since you knew him did he ever show an emotion that showed he had a soft side. But now thereâs tears in his eyes and you canât help but want to comfort him. Despite everything, he was still Eddie. That long legged boy with the silly grin and rock and roll in his veins.Â
You hold his face, your fingers wrapped in his curls and your thumbs sweeping away the tears. He kisses your palm and you twirl your fingers deeper in his hair.Â
âIâm sorry baby, Iâm sorry I couldnât be what you deserved.âÂ
Pressing your forehead to his, you both silently hold one another. It heals your heart, holding him while you're both breaking. Itâs second nature to ask him to come up to your apartment. It's a habit the way his hands undress you. Fingers delicately sliding the straps of your dress down your shoulders.Â
His lips on yours feel like home. Sweet, comforting, and soothing as he purrs into your skin with each kiss. He takes it slow, methodical in he way he fucks you for the last time. This is goodbye. He knows it and so do you.
âTell me,â he begs as heâs taking you achingly slow, âbaby please tell me youâre better without me.âÂ
Youâre focused on his neck, leaving a mark for another girl to find, not in a property type of way but you do it because you know him, you know he wants it.Â
âIâmâŚâ you falter thinking of the past year and everything youâve accomplished. You have a great job, friends who adore you, the answer is simple. He is the only thing missing, but you know how horrible you both are together. You know that keeping him will ruin him.Â
âHoney, please, tell me. I need to hear it from you, wonât leave if you donât.â Heâs asking for the closure you are both in desperate need of, so you give him what he needs⌠what you both need.Â
You kiss his neck, your fingers trailing down his arms so youâd remember him in your dreams, âweâre better apart, EddieâŚwe only hurt each other, this is the only thing weâre good at, and itâs not enough.âÂ
Eddie nods and stops his ministrations to kiss your lips. Those dark eyes staring into your soul.Â
âGod I loved you. I loved you so much.âÂ
You canât help but cry, itâs overwhelming but freeing, as if the last chapter of this part of your life was finally closing. It was tragically poetic the way you had loved him.Â
 âI loved you too.âÂ
The next morning you wake holding his hand. Heads on separate pillows, bodies not formed together. Heâs angelic sleeping on your floral pattern sheets, broken nose and all, and you know this is the right decision.Â
The two of you donât share breakfast. He gets dressed and you wave him goodbye from your balcony.Â
âHey,â he asks after ducking into the car and holding up one of your sandals, âdo you want these?â
Those awful shoes, basket weaved hell on your feet signifying a night that started head strong but ended in the closure youâd been seeking.Â
âNah. I donât need them anymore.â
âžâ.Ë âžâ.Ë âžâ.Ë
A/N: omg hi! thanks for reading! iâve had this in my docs since may 2024, and it was supposed to be car sex with eddie. but i like where it went, let me know if you liked it or didnât!
taglist: i somehow misplaced my taglist so id you want to be tagged pls let me know!
âËęŠď˝Ąsummary: A high that burns out, a lie that doesn't land, and something that refuses to stay casual.
âËęŠď˝Ątags: no y/n, she/her reader, slow burn, dual pov (more eddie leaning), dustin being dustin, mike being confused as always, j&g duo sharing one braincell, guided intimacy, shifting power dynamics, inexperienced!reader (not in a childish/dumb way), experienced!eddie, blurred lines, quiet yearning, wayne being wayne
âËęŠď˝Ątw: suggestive content (PG-13/soft mature) (minors you are not welcome go away or i'll hunt you down), underage drinking, weed smoking, cigarette smoking, sexual tension, anxiety, soft grinding
âËęŠď˝Ąword count: 9.4k+
Eddie woke up⌠loaded this morning â for lack of a better word.
It had been ages since heâd woken up this early without the hard slap of Wayne coming home from work. And not to mention the excitement of going to school â who wouldâve thought? â and heading to the Hide Out later that night.
Ah, Corroded Tuesday â how heâd missed it.
Sleepy crusts still clung to the corners of his eyes as he dragged himself up to brush his teeth, already tasting the stale mix of beer and whatever had once been a decent glass of whiskey on the rocks.
He rummaged through the pile of shirts on the chair, not bothering to look too closely as he grabbed one and pulled it over his head.
Something black â obviously â and with something vaguely demon-y on it.
Eddie paused for half a second, his reflection staring back at him as he took in the way the fabric hugged his arms just right â and how, for once, it didnât seem to have any visual holes.
His brows pulled together.
Huh.
He decided not to question it. Just dragged a hand through his hair and moved on.
The sun was already beating down through the thin trailer windows, warmer than it had any right to be this early in the morning.
Normally, he wouldâve complained â but today?
Today he just⌠rolled his shoulders back and stepped outside anyway, like it didnât matter how the warmth would seep into the dark fabric of his shirt.
It felt like a good day â even if he didnât really know why.
The Hellfire boys all squinted at him in concerned disbelief when Eddie pushed open the cafeteria doors with a noticeable pep in his step, tossing an apple into the air and catching it clean every time.
Since when did he bring fruit to school?
If jeff tried to think back to the last time heâd seen Eddie like this, it wouldâve been years ago â when heâd somehow scored tickets to that underground metal show, or when Loretta had finally let them shake her walls and clink her glasses with their covers.
Huh.
Jeff pushed the thought aside for now.
Eddie had a big, loud fucking mouth anyway â whatever this was, heâd spill eventually.
Eddie dropped into his usual seat at the head of the table, propping his feet up as he took a loud bite of his apple.
And just like that â nothing.
No explanation, no mention of whatever it was.
He just kept talking to Dustin and Mike, hands moving animatedly as he went on about how he couldnât wait for tonight.
If Eddie wasnât worried, Jeff wasnât about to stress himself out either.
He glanced back down at his notebook, deciding â just this once â to let it slide.
The boys were earlier than usual.
Eddie would usually make the drive to pick up Gareth and Jeff â precisely in that order â a little more than an hour before they played. Just enough time to set up Garethâs drum kit, for Jeff to fiddle with the position of his instrument cable into the amp â which he still hadnât replaced, and probably never would â and for Eddie to fix whatever was wrong behind the bar.
But Eddie had barely made it through the last bell before he was already halfway out the door, keys in hand, not even bothering to go home first. His beloved guitar already sat safely in her hardshell case in the back of the van.
One minute he was stubbing his cigarette out in the parking lot, the next he was hurriedly loading Jeff and Garethâs bikes next to his priceless instrument.
The boys didnât even get to go home â not properly, anyway. Not when Eddie barely gave them time to grab their instruments before his familiar honking echoed through their streets.
No time to change their clothes, take a nap, or whatever they usually did before a show.
Like it was something urgent.
The other two exchanged a look, each sporting a single raised brow as they took in Eddieâs drumming fingers against the wheel â but neither commented on it.
Eddie just killed the engine and leaned back in his seat with a grin that didnât quite match anything in particular.
The place was still waking up when they stepped inside â low music humming through the speakers, only two out of the five regular drunks hunched over the bar, the smell of cigarette smoke clinging to everything like it always did.
But it didnât stay like that for long.
More familiar faces started filtering in, the low hum of conversations growing louder, the music sharpening, the air thickening with more smoke.
Eddie didnât stay put for long, either.
One minute he was inside, leaning back in his chair â the next he was back out in the parking lot, white Reeboks kicking up dust as he moved between familiar faces and quick exchanges.
The early Tuesday evening was even better than the morning had been â three easy deals out in the Hide Outâs sandy parking lot, and free drinks Loretta had slipped their way, even though she knew theyâd be way too strong for the boys.
Eddie didnât question it. He just wrapped his ringed hand around the glass and shot Loretta an appreciative wink on his way back to their usual table.
The clock hadnât even struck seven yet, and Gareth had already cut himself off after his second glass of â what was it, scotch? maybe whiskey? â as he was convinced heâd end up drumming with his face if he had any more. Jeff, on the other hand, had switched to beer.
Eddie, though, was too busy ogling the pretty thing in cowboy boots that had just slipped through the door to bother taking another swing of whatever was in his glass.
She looked effortlessly beautiful â even with the faint road-trip shadows forming under her eyes â and it was obvious she wasnât from around here. Not just because she was dressed like it was still 1972, but because Eddie had been coming to the Hide Out long before Wayne had taken him in â it was the place heâd spent most time with his dad during his childhood.
She didnât hesitate when she stepped inside, either â just took a look around like she was deciding whether the place was worth her time before making her way to the bar top, leaning her elbows against it as she ordered her drink.
Eddie leaned back slightly in his chair, lips twitching.
Yeah, he could work with that.
He tipped his glass back, swallowing the rest of his drink in one, burning go. He then cleared his throat and asked Jeff and Gareth if they wanted anything else â a stupid excuse that didnât fool anybody â before making his way.
The easy grin was already settling into place like muscle memory by the time he reached her, setting his glass on the counter as he called Loretta over for a refill.
âYou look a little lost,â he said, turning his head towards her, his voice just loud enough to carry over the music.
She glanced at him, one brow lifting. âDo I, now?â
âEither that,â Eddie shrugged, angling his body towards her, âor youâve got incredibly questionable taste in bars.â
âPassing through,â she said after a second, like it wasnât a big deal. âHeaded somewhere a lot more interesting than this.â
âOuch,â Eddie pressed a hand to his chest, mock wounded. âCareful, sweetheart, youâre gonna hurt Lorettaâs feelings.â
She didnât bother replying, just glanced around the place again, unimpressed, until her eyes caught the ready-to-go instruments at the makeshift stage.
Her gaze returned to take Eddie in, dragging slowly from head to toe. âYou play here?â
Eddieâs lopsided grin returned as he huffed out a quiet laugh.
âEvery Tuesday,â he said, leaning back slightly. âYou bet Loretta wouldnât let us if we werenât any good.â
He tilted his head, studying her for just a second longer than necessary.
âBother to stick around long enough to call me on my bluff?â
She took another sip of her drink â straight vodka, he noticed â before answering him.
âDepends,â she said, her tone flat, almost bored â but there was something in her eyes, a faint glimmer of curiosity that hadnât been there before.
Her gaze flickered briefly towards the stage, then back at him.
âYou worth it?â
From across the bar, Jeff and Gareth watched what was unfolding between their lead singer and the babe in cowboy boots.
They exchanged a look â they already knew theyâd have to give more than their usual ninety-eight percent tonight.
Gareth reached over and snatched the half-full beer bottle straight out of Jeffâs hand, tipping it back for a long, needed sip.
By the time they were halfway through their set, Eddie was already running on something sharper than anything heâd felt in a while â something electric, restless, and buzzing just under the cheap liquor burning in his veins.
And it showed â he wasnât playing like he usually did.
His fingers moved like they knew exactly where to go without thinking â practiced and lethal, rings catching the dim light every time they slid along the strings. Every note landed exactly where it was supposed to â no hesitation, no second-guessing and no mistakes.
His knuckles, thickened from years of chording, flexed with every shift, every press, muscle memory carrying him through it like it was more than second nature.
By the end of the set, his voice had gone rough around the edges â hoarse in a way that only made it sound better, like heâd dragged every last bit of it out of himself and left nothing behind.
It was a little after eleven when Eddie pushed her back against the outside wall of the bar. His damp bangs brushed against her temple, his calloused hands gripping her waist as he closed the distance, pressing his lips to hers.
Her fingers tangled in his frizzy curls, tugging just hard enough to pull him closer, her other hand finding the hem of his shirt and slipping underneath it, chest still warm from the set.
Eddieâs grip tightened slightly, his mouth moving against hers like she was the last girl on earth â messy, intense, and familiar in a way that shouldâve made it easy.
But then, for the first time that day, something shifted â not enough to stop him, but just enough to throw him off.
He couldnât really place what it was â and that bothered him more than anything else.
The new day bled into the last, and Wednesday rolled around.
Whatever Eddie had been temporarily blessed with the previous day had already started to slip away â not enough to be drastic, but enough for him to notice the difference.
The birds chirped too loud when Wayne slammed the door closed behind him, and Eddie couldâve sworn the raccoons had been at it again last night.
Yeah, the tipped-over trashcans outside were proof enough.
The sun shone too bright into his eyes on the drive to school, and his van had started making that weird noise again.
And by the time he parked and stubbed out his cigarette against the brick wall by the entranceâ
He spotted you, leaning against the soft yellow metal of the lockers like youâd been waiting for Nathalie for a while.
It wasnât the first time heâd noticed the way you contrasted your best friend.
Nathalie was all loud colours and dramatic silhouettes â impossible to miss â while you kept it simple.
A pair of high-waisted, light-wash jeans that hugged you a little too well for his liking, and a shirt tucked in like you hadnât thought twice about it.
He caught the way your fingers were busy, like they always were â this time absentmindedly picking at the corner of a notebook page, folding it in and out like you werenât even aware of it as you talked to Nathalie when she finally appeared.
You hadnât noticed him yet â or if you had, you didnât show it.
Eddie slowed his steps anyways, his metal lunchbox slamming against his leg as his eyes lingered a second longer than they probably shouldâve.
He felt it immediately â the way his chest tightened just slightly, the way his focus pulled in without you even trying.
A sharp smack to his shoulder snapped him back to the noise â loud conversations, slamming lockers.
âDude,â Gareth said, dragging the word out longer than necessary. âYou gotta tell us what happened yesterday, when you ditched us for that hour.â
Eddie huffed out a quiet breath through his nose, dragging his eyes away from you before his friends could catch on.
âNothing, man,â he muttered, shifting his grip on the lunchbox. âYouâre not missing out on anything.â
Jeff let out a disbelieving scoff, already leaning into his personal space. âOh, yeah? Because you ditched us for a fucking hour and come back looking like you justââ
âDrop it,â Eddie cut in, sharper than he meant to.
It earned him a look. Gareth raised both brows, glancing briefly past him â towards you â before something clicked into place behind his eyes. Jeff didnât follow his line of sight, too busy scolding Eddie with his hands planted on his hips like a disappointed father.
âOh,â he dragged out slowly. âOh, shitââ
Eddie rolled his eyes and nudged him forward, forcing them to keep walking.
Their voices carried just enough as they passed â low, but not quiet. It wasnât enough to make sense of, but it was just enough to catch your attention.
âFuck, man, I said drop it,â Eddie muttered, a little less sharp this time, dragging a hand through his hair as they kept walking.
He didnât bother looking back over his shoulder.
The cafeteria was almost empty when Eddie pushed the door open â just a handful of students scattered around the big, echoing room.
(And if that had anything to do with the fact that heâd ditched the period before lunch to strike a deal with a junior at the picnic table tucked between the trees behind the school, he wasnât about to admit it.)
The contents of his lunchbox â a pack of yellow Camels, a few too many lighters because you just never know, and other⌠things he really shouldnât be carrying with him to school â clanked softly as he made his way to his usual table.
Heâd been running late when he left home, so no apples today â no lunch at all, for that matter.
It didnât take long for the cafeteria to fill â loud chatter swelling, the sharp tang of hairspray mixing with whatever questionable meal the kitchen staff had put together that day.
More familiar faces â and some unfamiliar ones, too â filtered in, and the noise heâd just started getting used to doubled, then tripled, until it pressed in from all sides.
Eddie was sure the noise wouldâve given him a headache, if it hadnât been for the joint heâd smoked after the pimpled junior ran back inside â taking just enough off the edge.
He dropped into his usual seat, the metal legs scraping softly against the tiled floor as he leaned back, stretching his legs out over the table. His eyes closed just for a moment â taking in the quiet before the rest of the boys piled in and started pestering the living hell out of him for whatever reason theyâd come up with that day.
But all good things must come to an end.
And before he knew it, Dustin and Mike appeared, trays in hand â each carrying something suspiciously puke-green that sloshed with every step, courtesy of the kitchen lady who never seemed to question what she served to those poor, poor students.
âI donât trust this,â Mike muttered, eyeing his tray as they approached.
âItâs probably fine,â Dustin shot back, ignoring the way his voice cracked with the lie. He dropped into his seat and cleared his throat. âItâs just⌠aggressively green.â
Eddie, still half-slouched with his eyes closed and arms crossed, snorted quietly under his breath before dragging a hand through his hair and sitting upright.
Dustin looked up with the sound, and narrowed his eyes.
âWait,â he said, pointing his plastic fork in Eddieâs direction. âAre youâ dude, are you stoned? Do you know how early it is?â
Eddie didnât react â not right away, which didnât exactly help his case.
Bad move, Munson.
âWhy are you stoned?â Dustin pressed, leaning forward now, waiting impatiently for an answer.
Eddie just grabbed his drink, taking a slow sip like that might end the conversation before it even started.
It didnât.
Jeff and Gareth approached the table with their own trays â thankfully free of whatever radioactive sludge the other two boys had â and dropped into their seats.
Gareth took a bite of his sandwich, clearly having caught none of the conversation, before speaking. âIs this about what we talked about in the hallway?â
Dustinâs head snapped towards him.
âHallway?â His eyes lit up instantly. âWhat about the hallway?â
âAbout the babe in cowboy boots,â Jeff muttered absentmindedly, flipping over his orange juice carton to read the nutritional label.
Silence hit the table â and it wasnât subtle, either.
It was the kind that made everything else feel like it had dropped out of focus.
ââŚWhat?â Mike said, frowning. âWhat âbabe in cowboy bootsâ?â
âWaitââ Dustin leaned forward, eyes lighting up again. âIs that why you disappeared on them? For like, an entire hour?â
âI didnât disappear.â
âYou vanished, dude,â Gareth mumbled mid-bite. Jeff shot him a look when he realized he hadnât even swallowed yet. âLeft us to deal with everything while you went outside with her.â
âWith who?â Mike was still lost.
âNobody,â Eddie said flatly.
âBabe in cowboy boots, pay attention, Wheeler.â
Mike blinked, the confusion not lifting, his voice cracking slightly. âWhat does that even mean?â
His voice faded into the background as Dustin let out a disbelieving snort.
âYou, Eddie Munson, met a girl.â
Eddie dragged a hand down his face. âShe was just passing through,â he muttered.
âOh, thatâs even worse,â Dustin said immediately, setting his fork down beside the green mess on his tray.
âHow is that worse?â Mike asked, brows still furrowed.
âBecause,â Dustin shot back, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, âthat means it was interesting.â
Gareth snickered behind his sandwich, the sound only getting louder when Eddie shot him a look that didnât land nearly as hard as it usually did, dulled by the lazy weight of his eyelids.
âIâm killing all of you.â
âWorth it,â Gareth and Jeff muttered in unison, neither of them even a little apologetic as they exchanged a quick high-five.
âDetails, Eddie, details,â Dustin demanded, leaning even closer now, completely abandoning his tray.
âNope.â
âOh, câmon!â
âDrop it.â
Eddie paused between the words, but there was no bite to them this time either.
He just⌠sounded tired.
And that was new â even to the two boys whoâd known him the longest.
The corner of Jeffâs lips dipped slightly as the realization finally settled in â that Eddie had smoked during school hours.
That wasnât usual.
Yeah, heâd deal before school â if he was on time â or in between classes, or after the last bell had rung. But Jeff had never seen him stoned during the day, not at school at least.
Especially not from his selling stash.
Jeff swallowed his bite and shifted the conversation, cutting through the tableâs noise â just as you walked into the cafeteria, later than usual.
Eddie was thankful for him.
Even if he didnât catch a single word that came out of his mouth.
You slipped through the doors before the incessant ringing could damage your ears, but a huff still escaped your lips â louder than you meant it to be â when the suffocating Indiana heat hit you the second you stepped outside.
You shouldâve gone with the jorts Nathalie despised so much â you made a mental note to retire your jeans for the time being.
âOh, donât even start,â Nathalie said immediately, hot on your trail. âItâs not even that hot.â
You shot her a look, taking in the hot pink blazer sheâd decided to wear.
âIt is when youâve been sitting in a classroom with broken ventilation for six hours.â
âSo have I, and Iâm not complaining,â she waved you off, adjusting the strap of her bag. âYouâre just in a mood.â
You didnât have an answer for that â because, yeah. Maybe you were.
The gravel crunched softly under your shoes as you stepped off the pavement, your fingers tugging absentmindedly at the keychain hooked into your front pocket.
Nathalie noticed â she always did.
âSo,â she started, dragging the word out way too casually.
You didnât even look at her this time. âNope.â
âI didnât even say anything!â
âYet.â
Nathalie snorted. âOkay, fine. Let me start again.â She tilted her head slightly, eyes narrowing just enough to be suspicious. âWhat are your plans tonight?â
You shrugged, a little too quickly.
âDonât have any.â
Nathalie hummed when she noticed you tugging at your shirt â and that was usually worse than her talking.
She let the sound of crunching gravel and screaming teenagers fill the silence between you for a moment.
âRight,â she said slowly, in the same tone a mother uses when she knows her child is lying. âBecause you definitely look like someone whoâs not thinking about it at all.â
You frowned, slowing your steps until you stopped altogether, finally glancing at her. âThinking about what?â
She just smiled â that knowing one she only ever wore when she had fresh gossip to spill.
âWhat I mean is,â she said, dragging the words out, âyouâre doing that thing.â
âWhat thing?â
Nathalie rolled her eyes, a small smile tugging at her lips. âThe one where you pretend you donât have any plans, but youâre obviously running through them in that little head of yours.â
You scoffed, looking away as you started walking again.
âYouâre absolutely insane, Nat.â
âAm I?â She bumped her shoulder slightly against yours. âBecause Iâm pretty sure I saw you check the clock, like, what? Five times in the last period?â
Your steps faltered â just enough for her to catch it instantly.
âOh my God,â she breathed, delighted. âYou are debating something.â
âIâm notââ
âYou are,â she cut in, turning fully towards you now, eyes lighting up. âYouâre doing the pros and cons in your head right now, I can literally see the gears turning.â
You huffed again, dragging a hand through your hair.
Her brow lifted at that, and the brief hesitation you gave was more than enough.
Her head tilted, and her eyes glimmered.
âAre you thinking what I think youâre thinking?â
Silence stretched between you â and somehow, the heat felt even worse than it had two seconds ago.
âNo,â you said finally.
You shot her a look when she just hummed.
âMmhmm,â she said lightly, kicking a pebble forward as she licked at her lips, âwhat time are you seeing Eddie?â
Nathalie, her stupid mouth and those stupid, observant eyes of hers, be damned.
You took in the girl staring back at you in the mirror â looking her up and down, scrutinizing and picking apart every little detail of her outfit.
Youâd run up the stairs the second you got home, heading straight for the bathroom, peeling off your clothes and stepping into the shower without a second thought. And while you stood under the scalding stream, you told yourself it was just to wash away the sticky, nauseating sweat of the day.
You told yourself it was time for your weekly everything-shower as you scrubbed at your skin harder than necessary â short of drawing blood â even though you knew you had one just two days ago.
Definitely not because you were considering going to Eddieâs like Nathalie had guessed.
Nathalie and her stupid fucking observant eyes be damned.
You smoothed down the soft, delicate fabric youâd thrown over your body once your skin had dried and soaked in a thick layer of lotion. Your hands lingered a second longer than they needed to, like you were still deciding.
Truth was â you and Eddie hadnât exactly made plans for tonight.
Not really.
Heâd just said âthatâs enough for tonightâ, last week.
And if that wasnât some kind of invitation, then you didnât know what it was.
You exhaled softly through your nose, gaze dropping for a moment when another thought crossed your mind.
You pushed away the possibility of him having other plans, not being home, or having someoneâ
Yeah, no.
Weâre not doing that tonight.
Your hand dragged over the fabric again, smoothing it down for what had to be the tenth time. At this rate, you were going to wear a hole through it.
You still couldnât put a name to it â to whatever this whole⌠thing with Eddie was.
Not to the way your chest tightened whenever you thought about him, or how everything else had started to feel⌠a little dull in comparison.
But whatever it was, the pull was strong enough to get you out the door.
You snatched your bag from your bed and went down the stairs before you could stop yourself.
But then you noticed how quiet the house was â almost too quiet. The kind that made everything sound louder â the faint ticking of the clock down the hall, the soft shift of the floor beneath your weight.
Your own breathing, just a little uneven.
You could still turn around, go back upstairs. Lock yourself in your room, change into your pyjamas, and pretend this whole thing never even crossed your mind.
It wasnât like he was expecting you.
He hadnât asked you to come over.
Your grip tightened around the handle of your bag as you bit down on your bottom lip a little harder than you probably shouldâve.
But he hadnât told you not to, either.
This was stupid. In fact â you were being stupid.
Showing up unannounced â like all the other times youâve done so far?
What the Hell is that about?
When Eddie got home from school, it felt like he was opening his eyes for the first time in a long while â like heâd been moving through the week half-asleep without even noticing.
His room was a goddamn mess.
He knew Uncle Wayne didnât give a ratâs ass whether he kept it clean or not â but still. His old man slept on a pull-out couch so Eddie could have his privacy; the least he could do was show a little respect and some fucking gratitude.
So, like he had nothing better to do â completely ignoring the homework Mr. Flynn had given him â Eddie pulled his thick curls into a low ponytail, changed into a tank top and a pair of worn-out shorts he wouldnât want be caught dead in outside the trailer, and turned on Wayneâs priceless record player.
He crouched down by the heavy box of vinyl theyâd collected over the years â records they picked up whenever Wayne managed to snag a few days off to spend with him.
Eddie had his own collection, stacked neatly under his desk.
But, contrary to popular belief, he didnât always crave screeching riffs, thunderous drums, and brooding melodies bleeding through the artistâs throat.
Today he was craving something a little different â something more experimental, more progressive. A little softer than the stuff he usually blasted through his speakers.
Or, you know, something that matched the joint he was about to roll before he even touched the mess that was his room.
His fingers skimmed over a few familiar sleeves, moving past the heavier stuff without blinking, landing instead on something he didnât play as often.
Golden Earring â the self-titled one, with that weird doll cover.
He pulled it out without thinking too much of it.
He slid the record from its sleeve carefully, thumb pressed to the edge as he turned it in his hands, carefully checking the label before setting it down â side A facing up first, always.
Eddie nudged the player on, the low hum of it kicking to life as it began to spin beneath his fingers.
For a second, he just watched it â black gloss catching the dim light as it turned.
A faint crackle broke through when he lowered the needle â thin, staticky, like the trailer itself was waking up with it.
And then, almost hesitantly, the opening flute of Yellow and Blue slipped into the space â warm and slightly hazy, like the first rays of spring sun filtering through fresh leaves. The kind of sound that didnât rush, just unfolded slowly. Filling the quiet corners of the trailer one layer at a time â until it didnât feel quite as empty anymore.
Eddie let it sit for a second, head tilting slightly as the melody stretched out â soft and unhurried.
Yeah, thatâd do.
Soft steps across the linoleum floor brought him back to his room.
He pulled out his chair and sat at his desk, reaching for the small tin and flipping it open with practiced ease.
The faint scent hit him immediately â earthy, familiar, almost welcoming â cutting through the dusty air that still clung to the room. His ringed fingers moved without thinking, breaking it apart with slow precision.
The flute carried on behind him, weaving through the quiet as he tapped the paper gently, evening it out between his fingers.
The record crackled softly between notes, but the trailer stayed still around him.
He ran his tongue along the edge, sealing it with a quick press before leaning back slightly in his chair, turning it between his fingers like he was checking his own magnificent work.
The music swelled just a little â still soft, but fuller now, filling the space in a way that it didnât demand anything from him.
Eddie placed the joint between his lips as he stood, reaching for his lighter â and for a second, he paused, and just listened.
By the time the second side of the record had settled into its rhythm, Eddie had already made a dent in the mess. Not enough to call it clean, but enough that the floor was visible again, clothes shoved into the laundry basket instead of scattered wherever theyâd landed.
The air felt different, too â lighter, almost.
Or maybe that was just the joint.
He leaned back slightly, the chair creaking under his weight as he brought it to his lips again, inhaling slow, unhurried.
The smoke curled lazily into the air, catching in the low light as the warm electric guitar line doubled the vocal melody. The rhythm held a steady, mid-tempo pulse â a clean, roomy sound that mirrored his room almost perfectly.
Eddie exhaled through his nose, eyes half-lidded as he looked over the space.
At least there were no empty cans of beer or soda, no overflowing ashtrays scattered around anymore.
Good enough for now.
The joint burned steadily between his fingers, ash threatening to fall if he didnât tap it soon. He didnât; he just let it sit there as he listened, head moving faintly with the drums, the music stretching around him, filling the quiet in a way it didnât ask for anything in return.
It was easy.
The needle had just slipped into the last track â gentle, chiming guitar easing into the room before giving way to wistful, almost melancholic vocals.
Until a knock cut through the space.
It felt somewhat ironic, considering the lyrics.
And who he found on the other side of the door when he pulled it open.
Because there you stood in all your glory: fidgeting fingers, nervous eyes, a yellow sundress heâd never seen you wear at school.
And there it was again â that same pull he hadnât been able to explain, settling low in his stomach the second his eyes landed on you.
For a moment â just a split second â he let himself believe youâd dressed up for him.
But then, the lyrics in the background hit him just a little too hard, too loud.
The lead singer pushed into the next lines â third, fourth, fifth â each one landing a little too close, like a personal jab aimed straight at him.
Then he blinked â once, then again â and his gaze snapped back to your dress.
And before he could stop it, heat crept up his cheeks when he realized how he probably looked â messy, frizzy hair pulled into a low ponytail. Definitely not metal.
And that stupid pair of worn-out shorts he shouldâve thrown out a long, long time ago.
âYou, uhââ he huffed a quiet breath, scratching the back of his neck as he tried to ignore the heat settling on his cheeks. âYou get lost on your way to a date, or something?â
Eddie didnât think things could get any worse â with the way you were staring at him, lips slightly parted as you took him in.
Like youâd just been hit with the reality of it all.
But then you licked your lips and straightened your shoulders slightly, grounding yourself back into the moment.
âNo,â you said, a small hint of a smile tugging at your lips. âShould I have?â
Eddie blinked, caught off guard for half a second longer than heâd like to admit.
ââŚRight,â he muttered, shifting his weight slightly, like he suddenly didnât know what to do with his own body.
The music carried on behind him â soft, and almost out of place with the way the moment stretched between you, until it started fading towards the recordâs end.
âYou, uhâŚâ he started, a crooked smile tugging at his lips as he scratched the back of his neck. âYou here for another lesson, orâŚ?â
The words sat between you for a second â like heâd already decided what this was.
You huffed out a quiet breath, something close to a laugh but not quite.
âUhââ
ââCause, I mean,â he cut you off, eyes flicking away for a second, âyou did kinda make a whole thing out of it last time.â
Eddie shrugged, too quick to pass as casual.
âDidnât exactly scream casual visit.â
He didnât outright say it â but it hung there anyway.
The money.
Still tucked somewhere in his room, and still something he hadnât figured out what to do with.
âRight,â you echoed, a little too carefully.
Eddie glanced past you again, like he was checking for something that wasnât there, then back again â letting the pause stretch just a little longer, a little thicker, than it should have.
His grip tightened on the doorknob when he made his decision.
âSo, uhââ he started, then stopped, clearing his throat.
âYou gonna come in, orâŚ?â
You arched an eyebrow. âAre you gonna let go of the door and let me in, orâŚ?â
âRight,â Eddie repeated, lips pressing together like it hadnât even crossed his mind to move.
He let go of the cold aluminium handle and stepped back, making just enough space for you to pass.
Blue-grey smoke from his still-burning joint curled through his room, slowly spilling into the living area.
Its earthy scent had become somewhat familiar by now â lingering from the last few times youâd been there.
The record player crackled softly, the needle now resting in place as the vinyl spun lazily, like it had nowhere else to go.
Your eyes drifted to the sleeve lying beside it â yellow, slightly off-putting. Four white men stared back at you from the cover, unfamiliar in a way that made you look a second longer than you meant to.
âDoesnât really look metal to me,â you said, a soft smile tugging at your lips.
You turned slightly, taking in Eddie where he lingered at the door, still half-turned like he hadnât fully decided whether to follow you in or stay right where he was.
His posture was slightly off â not quite the usual slouch, but not quite relaxed either, like he was trying to look casual and missing it by just enough for you to notice.
âIâm full of surprises, Sweetheart,â he mumbled, pushing the door closed behind him.
He glanced at you through half-squinted eyes before brushing past you, heading back into his room where his joint was still slowly burning.
The silence stretched through the cramped trailer as you followed him down the short hall.
Eddie grabbed his lighter and ashtray, joint already between his lips, carrying them with him as he sat down on his bed.
Heâd just made it â fresh, second-hand linens covering his otherwise tattered mattress â either forgetting about it or simply not caring if ash fell on them anyway.
His room looked familiar â but not quite the same as the first time youâd been there.
The only time youâd really taken a look around.
You noticed how the floor was cleared now â clothes no longer scattered in careless piles, the amp no longer blocking the bedroom door like last time.
And then there was the desk; not clean exactly, just⌠organised.
Your gaze settled on the small tray filled with picks. Heâd lined them up, ordered by sizes instead of tossing them together.
It didnât seem like much â but it was enough for you to notice.
You glanced at him briefly before stepping a little closer, your fingers hovering near the ashtray heâd set down beside him.
âYouâve been busy,â you murmured, almost more to yourself than to him.
Looking around his room, you noticed how it felt different, standing there like this â no expectations, no awkward edge to hide behind.
Not like last time, when everything had felt so⌠forced.
Eddie followed your line of sight, then shrugged, like it wasnât really worth commenting on.
âGot bored,â he said, bringing the joint back to his mouth.
You licked your lips, hesitating for a second before tilting your head slightly.
âCan IâŚ?â
Eddie stilled, the joint halfway to his mouth as the question hung there a second too long.
It caught him off guard â how easily youâd said it, like this was just⌠normal for the two of you. Like youâd been doing this with him all along.
His brows pulled together slightly, trying to place where the shift had come from, when it had started feeling so easy â too easy, almost â for you to ask him something like that.
His tongue pressed against the inside of his cheek, a quiet huff leaving him.
Yeah, no. He wasnât about to dig into that.
His eyes flicked to you â slower this time, more deliberate.
If this was how you wanted to play it, fine.
He could throw an extra lesson, free of charge.
The corner of his mouth lifted, his eyes glimmering with something that hadnât been there before.
âCareful, Sweetheart,â he said, voice low, almost amused. âThatâs a lot of firsts youâre giving me.â
His lips closed around the tip as he took a slow drag, not breaking eye contact â that made something in your stomach shift.
âCâmere,â he mumbled, coaxing you a little closer to him. âDonât take a deep drag, go slow.â
His fingers lifted the joint towards you, not letting go of it â just guiding the tip to your parted lips.
Eddieâs eyes stayed locked on yours as your lips parted just a little more before closing around the rolled paper, taking a soft drag â just like heâd told you to.
And then â no cough, like heâd expected.
His eyes narrowed slightly in surprise.
âThis not your first time?â
His fingers still lingered close to your lips as you tilted your head back just enough, blowing the smoke aside so it wouldnât hit him.
âSmoking? No,â you said, a shy smile forming at the corner of your mouth.
âSmoking weed?â you huffed softly. âThatâs another story.â
Eddieâs eyes flicked briefly to the joint before returning to yours â silently offering another hit.
You licked your lips softly, careful not to overdo it, before stepping closer â closing the space between you as you moved in between his legs.
You leaned in again, lips parting as you curled them around the rolled paper once more.
Eddie dropped the ashtray down beside his foot without looking, the soft clink barely cutting through the quiet.
His free hand came up almost absentmindedly, resting lightly at your waist, pulling you just a fraction closer.
Your breath hitched â not from the closeness itself, but from how easily it settled something restless in you.
Like this was exactly where you were supposed to be.
Even if you still didnât really understand why.
It hit him, all at once: the way you fit there, the way your breath brushed warm against his skin.
The way he hadnât looked away once.
Eddie took in the sight in front of him â pretty thing in a pretty dress, smoking his joint.
The thought made his tongue drag absently over his lips.
You noticed the way his thumb rested at your waist, moving in slow, lazy circles â enough to make your breath catch.
And for a second, you just stood there â close enough to feel the warmth of him, the faint scent of sweat lingering from cleaning his room earlier, the way his fingers still hadnât pulled away.
Without giving it much thought, you leaned in â and hesitated for just a second.
Not because you wanted to stop, but because you still didnât quite understand what you were stepping into.
And then you leaned in anyway, your lips brushing his lightly before pressing in properly, closing the distance all the way.
The joint slipped from his fingers, landing with a dull thud on the carpet.
Eddieâs grip shifted to your hips, his fingers pressing into the fabric as you licked his bottom lip, coaxing his mouth open just enough to deepen the kiss.
And then he tilted his head and kissed you harder this time â still unhurried, but deeper now.
His lips moved against yours with more intent, more certainty, picking up just slightly when a soft gasp slipped from your mouth.
Eddieâs rings pressed harder into your hips as he pulled you into his lap, a little rougher than before, forceful enough to pull a hard, accidental roll of your hips against his.
And then he felt it â the shudder that ran sharp down his spine and settled low in his stomach.
The thought hit him just as quick: this wasnât how things between you were supposed to go. Not with your breath catching like that, not with his grip tightening like heâd forget himself if he didnât hold on.
His jaw ticked faintly as the realisation settled in.
Heâd lost that line somewhere along the way.
Eddie pulled back slightly, but not without leaving a few soft, lingering pecks against your lips, like he couldnât quite stop himself from doing so.
The sound of his uneven breathing filled the space between you â louder than heâd meant it to be.
He didnât lean back too far, just enough to look at you.
His hand were still there, resting at your hips, fingers curled slightly into the fabric like he hadnât decided to let go of you just yet.
His coffee brown eyes flicked over your face, slower now, taking every subtle change â the glistening remnants of his spit on your lips, the way your eyes sparkled a little too much when you stared back at him.
His breath was still uneven when he huffed out something that almost sounded like a quiet laugh, more to himself than to you.
âThatââ he started, then paused as his jaw decided that was the best time to tighten. âThat wasnât part of the lesson.â
Lesson.
Even as the word left his mouth, it didnât sit right â too heavy between you.
Not with the way his hands were still holding onto you, not with how little he actually wanted to let you go.
âIâm not here for the lessons, Eddie.â
Your words landed harder than they should have.
Eddieâs eyes flickered for just a moment â like something in him had been caught off guard. But not enough for his grip to loosen; if anything, it tightened more.
âYeah?â he said, quieter now.
His gaze dropped for a moment â to your lips, still a little swollen, still too close â before dragging back up to meet your eyes again.
His jaw shifted.
âThen what are you here for?â The question came out low, his voice rougher than he meant it to be, like he wasnât sure he actually wanted to hear the answer.
His question made you huff out a quiet breath, something close to a grin tugging at your lips as an incredulous look settled in your eyes.
âYou really donât get it?â
Your fingers brushed gently against his bare shoulders, almost absentmindedly tracing the warmth of his soft skin beneath your touch.
âCâmon, Eddie,â you whispered, your voice softer now, something knowing flickering in your eyes. âYouâre not stupid.â
Eddieâs jaw tightened at that, a harsh scoff slipping past his lips.
His grip shifted at your hips â not letting go, just adjusting.
âYeah?â he muttered, quieter now, eyes searching yours like he was trying to find something that would make this easier.
His gaze flicked down again â to your lips, the pretty dress you hadnât been wearing at school earlier, the way you were still seated on his lap â before something in it hardened just a fraction.
âCâmon now, Sweetheart,â he said, the words sharper than he meant them to be.
His tongue dragged over his bottom lip, like he was debating whether to say it, then doing it anyway.
âWhat is this? You get bored, swing by here for a bit, then go back to him like nothing happened?â
His words landed heavier than he probably meant them to.
âOr what? Didnât work out, so you came back here?â he licked his lips and looked away for a split second before returning his gaze to you, eyebrows raised. âFigured you could just⌠do the same thing again.â
Your expression didnât quite drop, but something in it shifted, just enough for him to notice.
A small pause stretched in the air before you found the words.
âI broke things off with him,â you whispered after a moment, no edge or defensiveness in your tone.
Your hand came up to cup his cheek, thumb brushing lightly along his skin. âI couldnât lie to myself. Not anymore.â
Your words rang in his ears as he let them sink in â and that was more than enough to shut him up, like the words didnât quite land the first time around.
His eyes searched yours again, slower this time â like he was trying to find the part where you were joking, or backtracking, or anything that would make it easier to dismiss.
But your hand was still on his cheek â still warm, and impossibly real, like you werenât going anywhere.
Eddie swallowed, his jaw loosening just slightly as something in his expression shifted â subtle enough to miss it, but definitely there.
âWhat?â he muttered, like hearing it again might somehow make more sense of it. His brows pulled together, his gaze flicking over your face once more.
âLast Saturday,â you added quietly â just enough to make it clear you hadnât come running to him the second things ended with Zack.
Eddie stilled. ââŚyou didnât come here for him.â
It wasnât a question, not really.
His thumb shifted against your hip â slower now, less restless.
âI tried telling you how I felt that one time,â you whispered, delicately stroking his cheek like he was something fragile. âBut you wouldnât listen.â
Your other hand found its way to his low ponytail, tugging gently at the elastic until curls fell loose against his back.
âAnd I tried it again with Zack, but...â
Eddie didnât look away while you spoke. His eyes stayed on yours â steadier now, more focused â as he let you say whatever you needed to say.
Your words sat there, heavy and a little too real, settling somewhere deeper than he was comfortable with.
His jaw tightened slightly, like he was about to say something to push back, make it easier to shrug off.
He dropped his eyes briefly, not pulling away from you â just needing to break the intensity for a second before he could come back.
His hands shifted at your hip, thumbs brushing slow, absent circles against the fabric of your dress.
He tried to find the right words â something that wouldnât sound dismissive, just⌠careful.
His jaw ticked slightly before he let our a breath through his nose.
âOr maybe you just needed to experiment a little before committing.â
His gaze flicked back up to yours, searching again â trying to make it make more sense than anything else.
Eddie expected the usual cold, disappointing look he always got whenever heâd said something he shouldnât have.
Instead, he found a faint, almost disbelieving smile tugging at your lips â like you couldnât believe how stubborn he was being, like he didnât actually want to understand what youâve been trying to tell him.
âWell,â you paused, eyes flicking over his face. âIâve never bought a dress for an experiment before.â
And just like that, whatever had kept Eddie in check slipped.
For the first time that night, he really looked at you â at the way the yellow sundress hugged your frame, how it moved with you, how the neckline fell just a little more, inviting his eyes to linger just a second longer â like youâd chosen it with intention.
And suddenly, it wasnât as easy to pretend this meant nothing.
Eddieâs thumbs slowed against your hips until they stilled altogether, his grip tightening as he pulled you closer to his chest, a little harder against his lap â like his body had already caught on before his head could catch up.
The little space that remained between you felt thicker, almost dizzying, as you noticed his gaze hadnât moved â still fixed on the neckline of your dress, shifted just slightly lower where your arms had curled around his neck.
It lingered there â on the sliver of lace peeking from beneath the yellow fabric â even when he realised heâd been staring a little too long.
When he finally looked back up at you, something in his expression had shifted â a flicker of awareness peeking from beneath his blown-out pupils.
Youâd caught the way his gaze had lingered, the way it shifted when he finally looked back at you â and you didnât call him out for it. Like you didnât mind what heâd seen.
Almost like you wanted him to keep looking.
Instead, your fingers curled lightly at the back of his neck, softly playing with a loose strand of his hair before tugging him just a little closer.
Eddieâs breath caught when you closed the space completely.
Your fingers tightened slightly in his hair as you tilted his head â just like he had yours the last time.
Like the student becoming the master, you brushed your tongue over his lower lip before catching it lightly between your teeth, tugging just enough to make him follow before your lips found his again, harder this time.
Until your spit mixed with his, blurring the line between you entirely.
The slick glide and texture of your tongue against his â just like heâd taught you â was enough to make his grip falter, a soft groan slipping from the back of his throat.
His hands tightened at your hips, grip firm enough to leave a mark beneath the fabric as he dragged you closer â like it still wasnât enough, like heâd forgotten every reason to hold back.
It didnât make sense â the way he unravelled under your touch, the way it settled something deep in your chest at the same time.
None of it did, to be honest, but for once, you didnât feel the need to figure it out.
Not when a soft breath caught in your throat at the pressure, your fingers tugging harder at his hair without thinking.
Warmth spread through your chest when he reacted â another soft moan slipping from his lips â making your hips roll against his once again before you could really stop yourself.
But then Eddie pulled back just enough for your lips to part, still brushing faintly against each other as his hand shifted at your hips, gently urging them to still again. His chest rose and fell heavier than it had moments before, slightly out of breath.
His forehead hovered against yours, eyes half-lidded, cheeks flushed a little too warm as he searched your face â like he was trying to find something that would explain what this all meant.
âYouââ he started, his voice low, rougher. âFuck.â
His grip on your hips tightened.
He shouldâve stopped it, reeled it back in, put some fucking distance between you before it went any further.
Thatâs what he was supposed to do, right?
âYou gotta stop doing thatâŚâ he tried again, quieter now, like he was saying it more to himself than to you, breath still uneven. âBefore we start making bad decisions.â
There was something about the way he looked beneath you â his chest rising harder than he probably realized, his cheeks flushed a little too warm, brows drawn together like youâd clouded his head worse than anything heâd smoked ever could.
And suddenly, you felt a little silly for letting your nerves get the best of you in the first place.
It felt almost ridiculous now â with the way you had him looking, all nervous babbling and tight grips.
You hadnât stepped inside feeling like this, not even close.
If youâd known it would look like this â him unravelling beneath you, losing his footing while you held yours â you wouldnât have wasted so much time second-guessing yourself in your room or on the drive over.
A soft breath slipped past your lips, something close to a smile tugging at them as you angled your head just slightly, your gaze fixed on him.
âYouâre the one pulling me closer,â you said, your tongue brushing lightly over your bottom lip.
Something in your voice made his hips twitch under you â subtle, but not enough to miss.
âYou donât actually want me to stop, do you, Eddie?â
He knew it wasnât a question, not really â but it still hit him harder than it should have.
Eddieâs breath caught again, sharper this time, as his grip at your hips tightened further. His jaw flexed, eyes flicking between yours and your lips like he was searching for an out that wasnât there.
âYouââ he started, then stopped again, dragging his right hand down to grip your thigh instead, like he needed something steadier to hold onto.
A quiet scoff left him, but there was no bite to it this time.
âYouâreââ he tried again, shaking his head slightly, more to himself than to you, his tongue pressing against the inside of his cheek like it might help him find the words.
âYouâre making this real hard to answer, Sweetheart,â he muttered, like he wasnât entirely sure he wanted to.
Your eyes held a new glimmer as you took in the sight of him stumbling over his words.
âYou donât have to answer,â you murmured, your voice soft, more certain than ever.
Your fingers curled around a loose strand at the nape of his neck as you leaned in, your movement shifting the neckline of your dress just enough to reveal a little more of the soft, white lace underneath.
You brushed your lips against his.
âYou can just show me.â
And just like that, whatever flimsy excuse heâd been holding onto slipped right through his fingers.
âËęŠď˝Ąa/n: this was supposed to come out sunday but i got anxious so here it is lollliii also how many point do i lose if i tell yall i laughed so fucking hard when writing mike in this BYE anywayyy we're finally getting somewhere with these twooo (or are we?) hehe pls lemme know watcha think!
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Eddie refuses to give into your drunken flirtation - but what happens the next day when youâd slept it off & still want him?
a/n - amidst my multiple WIPs itâs always good to have a smutty one shot ready to go - right?
TW/CW - temporarily drunk!reader (but Eddieâs a gentleman), making out, smut, oral (f! receiving), no use of y/n, praise, discussions of consent
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Eddie was breathless, sweat stinging his eyes as the final chord of "Runnin' with the Devil" rang out, vibrating through the floorboards and up into the soles of his boots, leaving that distinct ringing in his ears that he lived for. He looked out into the crowd - what little there was of it, anyway - and immediately, his dark eyes landed on you.
You were standing by the edge of the stage, bathed in the shitty, flickering stage lights. You looked radiant - like you always did, obviously - but tonight? Tonight you were wearing a skirt that just barely covered you, and a top that clung to you in all the ways he spent his nights imagining he would one day. The way he wanted you was a constant, dull ache in his chest that flared up into something hot and jagged every time you looked at him.
As the âshowâ came to an end, he hopped off the stage, wiping his palms on his jeans, trying to compose himself. Just be cool, Munson. Sheâs your best friend. Sheâs off-limits. Sheâs... Oh. Very drunk.
He saw you stumble a little before he even reached you. Your movements were loose, too fluid, while your eyes were glassy and unfocused. Panic spiked in his throat, instantly cooling the heat of the performance.
"Whoa, easy there, sweetheart," he said, rushing forward to catch your elbows before you could face-plant into the sticky floor. His hands gripped your skin, and the contact was electric. You were burning up. "Didn't know you were planning to go this hard tonight. You okay?"
"I'm fantastic," you slurred, and the sound of your voice, thick and syrupy, sent a shiver down his spine. âYou did so good up there.â
You leaned your full weight against him, your face pressing into his sweaty neck. He froze and nearly stopped breathing. You were nuzzling into the crook of his neck like it was the most natural thing in the world - meanwhile his heart was busy trying to beat its way out of his rib cage. He could smell the alcohol on your breath, sharp and sour, but underneath it, you smelled like you - some sort of perfume that was a mixture of cherries and vanilla that secretly drove him insane.
"Hey," he managed to choke out, his voice sounding wrecked even to his own ears. He carefully pulled you back, forcing himself to hold your shoulders at arm's length, cocking his head down to get a better look at you. "You're burning up. Let's get you some water."
"No," you stuck out your lower lip in a slight pout, and he had to look away, swallowing hard. You grabbed his wrist, your fingers hot and trembling. "Come outside with me. Please? It's too loud in here.â
He looked at Gareth and Jeff; they were busy packing up, oblivious to the internal war currently shredding him apart. He looked back at you. Your lower lip was still jutting out in a way that made him want to bite it. He knew he should just get you water. Help you sober up before driving you home to tuck you in like the good, platonic friend he was supposed to be.
But he was weak. God, he was so weak when it came to you.
"Okay," he relented, the defeat heavy in his voice. "Just for some air. Before I drive you home."
The alleyway was freezing compared to the stifling heat of the bar, but the cold air did nothing to cool the fire raging under his skin. He leaned against the brick wall, crossing his arms over his chest in a defensive position he hoped you wouldn't notice.
"You should drink this," he said, pulling the spare water bottle from his back pocket. His hands fumbled with the cap and it fell to the ground. He felt clumsy, stupid.
You ignored it, stepping into his space and invading the safety zone he tried to maintain until your toes were touching his boots. He looked down at you, his breath hitching in his throat. You were so close. Way too close.
"Whatâre you doing?" He asked, his voice dropping to a whisper. His hands hung limp at his sides, useless, aching to touch you.
"Nothing," you breathed. Your hand came up to his jaw, your fingers tracing the line of bone. Your touch was feather-light, torturous. His eyes fluttered shut against his will. "I'm jusâ looking at you."
"Don't," he whispered back, a plea. "Please don't look at me like that."
âWhy not?â
âYouâre drunk.â Eddie cleared his throat. âIâm just trying to make sure you stay outta trouble. Take care of you.â
"You're always taking such good care of me, Eds," you murmured, your thumb brushing over his lower lip, tugging down slightly. His lips parted in a gasp. "Always watching out for me. Why?"
Because I love you. I've loved you since we were six years old and you shared your lunch with me when you saw I didnât have one. Every time you smile at me, I feel like I've won the lottery. You go out of your way to make every single day better. The thought of anyone else touching me makes me want to tear my own skin off, and I canât imagine wanting to be with anyone as much as I want to be with you.
"Because I'm your friend," he lied, the words tasting like poison in his mouth. "And someone has to.â
"I don't want a friend right now," you whispered, standing on tip-toe and letting your lips brushed the sensitive skin just below his ear. Your hips pressed against his ever so slightly. âAnd I donât think you do either.â
Eddieâs knees nearly buckled. A guttural sound tore itself from his throat, half-groan, half-sob. His hands flew to your waist on instinct, fingers digging into the soft flesh there, holding you up against him and holding you back all at once.
He wanted to let go, he really did. But it wasnât very gentlemanly to feel up someone who was drunk off their rocker. He would never take advantage of anyone who was drunk - especially not you.
But that didnât stop him from wanting to grab you by the back of the neck and crash his mouth against yours. To spin you around, push you up against this wall and show you exactly what you did to him. Heâd spent years memorizing the way you laughed, the curve of your hips, the swell of your breasts, and now you were here, seemingly seconds away from offering it to him on a silver platter.
"You donât mean that," he choked out, voice barely recognizable. "It's the alcohol talking."
"It's not," you insisted, your hand sliding down his chest, over his still slightly sweaty t-shirt, heading lower. "Kiss me, Eddie. Please."
Your fingers grazed the waistband of his jeans, teasing the sliver of skin there. His hips jerked forward involuntarily, and to his horror he was becoming hard - painfully, embarrassingly hard - and there was no hiding it as you pressed up against him. He was disgusted with himself. Taking advantage of his best friend because she had a few too many drinks? Fuck, he was scum. No better than the guys the manager of the bar occasionally asked him to toss out for getting too handsy with other customers, or trying to lure drunk girls out to their cars.
He caught your hand before you could go any lower, his grip almost bruising.
âPlease, Eddie. Justâ one -â
"D-don't," he gasped, his head falling back against the brick wall.
He looked down at you. Your beautiful eyes were glassy, and your cheeks were flushed a tempting shade of lusty pink. But he knew you weren't really seeing him. You were seeing a warm body, a safe pair of hands. A temporary scratch to an alcohol-fueled itch. You definitely weren't seeing the guy who had spent a decade silently worshipping the ground you walked on.
"You're going to wake up tomorrow," he said, the words tearing at his throat, "and you're going to regret this.â And I can't handle just being the mistake you make when you're too drunk to know better.
"Iâd never regret you," you whispered, tears welling in your eyes. âYou're⌠Eddie."
He let out a shaky laugh, feeling like his heart was being ripped out of his chest as he gently peeled your fingers off his waist, fighting every instinct in his body that screamed at him to pull you back. He needed to get you away from him before he did something he could never take back.
"Let's get you in the van," he said, his voice rough, forcibly devoid of the emotion that was threatening to drown him. "I'm taking you home to sleep this off.â And we are never talking about this again.
He opened the passenger door and helped you inside, his hands lingering on your lower back for just a second too long before he pulled away. He shut the door, closing you in, and leaned his forehead against the cold metal of the roof, dragging in ragged breaths of air. He was hard, aching, and utterly miserable - and he wanted you so bad it felt like dying. But he loved you enough to let you go.
The drive to your place was a blur of dark trees and silent roads, the only sound the hum of his van engine and your quiet, uneven breathing from the passenger seat. Eddie gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned white, his jaw set in a hard line as he stared resolutely at the road. He refused to look at you, or to let his eyes trace the curve of your very bare thigh.
You were dead weight, soft and pliant in his arms, face buried in his chest as he half-carried you up the walkway to your apartment a little while later. The scent of your shampoo and perfume filled his nose with every step, clouding his mind. He fumbled with your keys, hands shaking as he swore under his breath until the lock finally clicked.
Inside, he guided you straight to your bedroom. You probably needed a shower to get the film of bar sweat off your soft skin - but he wasnât about to try and tempt fate, or wrestle you into your small shower. He sat you on the edge of the bed, kneeling to tug off your heels. You giggled drunkenly, sliding your fingers into his hair, tugging gently at the roots. It sent a bolt of electricity straight down his spine. Jesus Christ, sweetheart. Donât do that again.
"You're so good to me, Eddie," you mumbled, eyes heavy-lidded and unfocused. "Stay with me? Please? Donât wanna be alone."
Eddie froze, his hands resting on your ankles and thumbs brushing against the sensitive skin there. He looked up at you. "I... I shouldn't."
"Please," you whispered again, clutching at his shoulders like he was your lifeline. "Just until I fall asleep. Feel⌠Dizzy.â
He let out a long, ragged breath, closing his eyes for a second. He knew he should leave. Tuck you in and go sleep on the couch immediately. But the thought of saying no to you, when you looked at him like that⌠It was impossible.
"Okay," he whispered, the defeat heavy in his voice. "Just until you fall asleep."
He helped you slide under the covers, his movements bordering on reverent. You looked like an angel lying there, hair fanned out across the pillow, cheeks flushed. He sat on the very edge of the mattress, trying to take up as little space on the bed as possible. But you weren't having it, tugging on his sleeve, mumbling something about laying down. Next thing he knew you were wrapping an arm around his waist, burying your face in his back.
He stiffened, his entire body locking up. He could feel the heat of your breath through the thin fabric of his t-shirt. He could feel the softness of your breasts pressing against him. It was agony. The sweetest kind of hell he had ever known. The kind guys like him wrote songs about. Eddie stared at your wall, counting the seconds, forcing himself to breathe evenly, trying to ignore the way his body was screaming at him to turn around and pull you into his arms.
Slowly, your breathing evened out, deepening into the slow rhythm of sleep. Your arm went lax around his waist. He waited another ten minutes, just to be sure, his heart slowly returning to a normal rhythm.
Gently, he peeled your arm away, sliding out from under your grasp. He turned back to look at you, bathed in the soft moonlight filtering through the blinds. You looked so peaceful. Almost innocent. He felt a wave of self-loathing wash over him at the mere thought of doing anything to ruin his friendship with you.
He reached out, hand hovering over your cheek for a moment before he let his fingertips graze your soft skin. Then, he leaned down, pressing a feather-light kiss to your forehead. It chaste, a purely platonic gesture of affection, but it burned his lips like a brand.
"Goodnight, sweetheart," he whispered into the silence.
Sunlight streamed through the open living room blinds, stabbing directly into Eddie's eyelids. He groaned, rolling over and burying his face in the cushion. His back was stiff, neck popping as he shifted. He hadnât even had a drop of beer the night before but he still felt like heâd been hit by a truck.
He sat up slowly, rubbing a hand over his face, the events of the night before crashing down on him. The alleyway. The kiss that almost happened. The way you had clearly wanted him. His stomach twisted with a mixture of shame and lingering desire. He scrubbed a hand through his messy hair, trying to smooth it down, and grabbed his discarded flannel shirt from the floor, shrugging it on.
He needed coffee. And he needed to know if you remembered anything. God, he hoped you didn't.
He walked into the kitchen, digging through your cabinets for a mug when he heard your bedroom door creak open. He froze, his heart jumping into his throat.
You shuffled out, wrapped in your oversized bathrobe, your hair a tangled mess on top of your head. You looked beautiful, even as you winced at the bright light, shielding your eyes with one hand.
"Hey there," Eddie said, his voice coming out rougher than he intended. He cleared his throat, turning to lean against the counter. "Howâre you feeling?"
"Like I died," you groaned, shuffling over to the kitchen table and collapsing into a chair. You buried your face in your hands. "I am never drinking again. Ever. Whyâd you let me do that?â
Eddie let out a small laugh. A small wave of relief washed over him, cooling the anxiety in his gut. "That bad, huh?"
"Worse," you mumbled, peeking out at him from between your fingers. "I don't even remember how I got home. Did I... did I do anything stupid?"
He watched you closely, searching your face for any sign of recollection. There was nothing but confusion and a pounding headache. You didn't remember the alley. Or begging him to kiss you. Or the way he'd had to physically pry your hands off him. He forced a casual shrug, plastering a noncommittal smirk on his face that didn't quite reach his eyes.
"Nah. You just had a bit too much fun. Brought you home, tucked you in. You were out like a light."
You sighed, dropping your head onto the table with a dull thud. "You're a saint, Munson. I don't know what I'd do without you."
If only you knew, he thought, his chest aching with the weight of the secret he carried. He turned back to the counter, turning on the coffee maker with trembling fingers to hide the expression on his face.
"Yeah, well," he said, his voice tight. "Someone's gotta look out for you."
The shower hissed to life a few minutes later, the sound of water against the tile and your gentle humming filling the small apartment. Eddie leaned back against the kitchen counter, staring blindly at the coffee pot as it slowly filled. He brought his hands up to his face, rubbing his palms roughly over his eyes. He felt raw, exposed, like heâd just run a marathon without training. The image of you in that alleyway, desperate and wanting in that practically nonexistent skirt was burned into the back of his eyelids. Anytime he squeezed his eyes shut, trying to banish the memory of feel of your skin, but it was no use. It was branded there, permanently.
He heard the water shut off. A few minutes later, the bathroom door opened, and a cloud of steam rolled out. You walked into the kitchen, your hair, wearing shorts and an oversized Metallica shirt. You looked cleaner, but still fragile, moving slowly as the light hit you again.
"Coffee?" Eddie asked, his voice sounding a little too loud in the quiet room. He turned to grab a mug, needing something to do with his hands.
"Please," you groaned, sinking into a chair. You pulled your knees up to your chest, wrapping your arms around them. "I feel like my brain is sloshing around in my skull."
He poured you a cup and slid it across the table without another word.
"Thanks," you murmured, closing your eyes in caffeinated bliss briefly. "You really are the best."
"I try," he said, leaning back against the counter, crossing his ankles. He watched you over the rim of his own mug, trying to gauge your mood. You seemed calmer, but there was a furrow between your brows that suggested you were thinking. Hard.
You were quiet for a long moment, staring into the dark liquid in your cup. The silence stretched, thick and heavy, until you finally spoke, your voice barely a whisper. "I... I keep having these flashes. Like, snippets of memories."
Eddieâs heart stopped. He set his mug down a little harder than he intended. "Yeah? That happens. Think itâs called, like, alcohol amnesia, or something.â
"It's not just random stuff," you said, looking up at him, your eyes searching his face. "I remember... Was I out behind the bar? Like, in the alleyway?â
Eddie felt the blood drain from his face. He kept his expression neutral, but inside, he was panicking. "Yeah. We went out there for some air. You needed to cool down."
"And we were... Alone?" you asked, brow furrowing deeper.
"Yeah," he said carefully. "Just us."
You bit your lip as your gaze dropped to the table. "I feel like I said something. Or did something, maybe? Shit, did I make a total fool of myself?â
Eddie let out a breath, a short exhale. He quickly pulled out the chair opposite you and sat down. He leaned in, resting his elbows on his knees. "Hey. You didn't do anything. You were just drunk. Happens to the best of us."
"Eddie," you said, your voice firming up. You looked him dead in the eye, your cheeks flushing. "What happened?â
âItâs not a big deal. You just⌠Got a little flirty is all.â
âOh no-â
âItâs no big deal.â
âShit, I didnât kiss you did I?â You clamped a hand over your mouth, seemingly catching Eddieâs face blanch. âDid I try something?â
He stared at you, caught. He could lie. He could brush it off, tell you that you just talked about the weather or complained about your ex. But looking at you, seeing the genuine fear and confusion in your eyes, he couldn't do it. You deserved the truth. He looked down at his hands, picking at a chip in the polish on his thumb.
"Kinda. I mean, you⌠Didnât do anything. Exactly." He admitted quietly. "You said you didn't want to be friends. You said you wanted, uh, me."
You let out a small, horrified gasp, your hand flying up to cover your mouth. "Oh my god.â
A faint, self-deprecating smile touching his lips. "You were... Attempting to be very persuasive."
Your eyes widen with mortification.
"Donât worry about it, okay? Nothing happened. Your hands were just wandering places they shouldn't have been."
You dropped your head into your hands, letting out a groan of pure despair. "I am so sorry. Fuck - I can't believe I did that. I must have made you so uncomfortable."
"You didn't," he said immediately, reaching out to gently pull your hands away from your face. He held them for a second, his thumbs brushing over your knuckles, before letting go. "It's fine. Really. You were drunk. Nothinâ to be embarrassed about. Happens to me all the time as a small-town rock star at a dive bar.â
âItâs not funny, Munson. Shit, I never⌠I didnât mean to⌠God, I ruin everything.â
"You didn't ruin anything," he said fiercely. "I promise. We're good. It's forgotten."
âAnd youâre sure nothing else happened?â
âSwear on my life.â Eddie searched your expression carefully. âI also need you to know that I donât accept those types of offers from drunk girls, okay? Kinda the bare minimum, but Iâm not that kinda guy, I swear. â
You looked at him, eyes swimming with unshed tears - partially from embarrassment, partially from realizing youâd dodged a bullet in your state the night before. You were quiet for a long moment, studying his face, like you were looking for something. Then you took a deep breath, and your next words knocked the wind out of him.
"If any guy had to take advantage of me," you said softly, your voice trembling slightly, "Iâd have wanted it to be you."
The silence that followed was deafening. Eddie stared at you, his mouth slightly open, his brain short-circuiting. He felt like heâd been punched in the stomach. It was nice to know that you trusted him, but Jesus Christ, your words horrified him.
"Woah, what the fuck?" He choked out.
"I mean it," you said, your eyes locking onto his. "I trust you more than anyone. You're... you're Eddie. You're the one person who actually gives a shit about me. If I was going to be that⌠Like, forward with someone, I'm glad it was you."
Eddie recoiled, the chair scraping loudly against the floor as he stood up abruptly. He shoved his hands into his hair, pacing restlessly away from the table.
"No," he said, his voice rising in agitation. "No, absolutely not. Don't say that. Don't ever say that."
"Why not?" you asked, confused by his sudden intensity.
"Because I would never do that!" he burst out, spinning around to face you. "I would never take advantage of you like that. You were drunk, you were vulnerable, and Iâm supposed to protect you. Not... Do the shit you were asking me to do."
You watched him, expression unreadable. Then you tilted your head to the side, your eyes narrowing slightly. "Geez, are you really that horrified by the idea of being with me?"
"What? No, fuck. It's not about being with you!" he yelled, frustration cracking his composure. "It's about consent. And like, being a decent human being!"
"So letâs say you have my consent. Can you honestly say," your voice dropped to a dangerous, silky calm, "that youâve never thought about it?"
Eddie froze. The air left the room. He stopped pacing, shoulders rigid, and he could feel your eyes burning a hole in his back. This was it. The moment of truth. He could lie. He could laugh it off or make a joke. But the words died in his throat. He couldn't lie to you. Not about this. Not when he had spent the last ten years lying to everyone else, including himself.
He turned around slowly, face pale and eyes dark - filled with a turmoil he couldn't hide. He saw the challenge in your gaze. You knew. Or you suspected. And you were calling his bluff. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. So he stood there, trapped, heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs, waiting for the inevitable fallout.
The silence stretched between you, taut and vibrating, like the hum of an amp before the feedback kicks in. Eddie didn't move, just stood there looking at you like a deer caught in headlights.
"You can't say it, can you?" You whispered, a slow, triumphant smile spreading across your face. The shame from earlier was gone, replaced by a sudden, electric thrill. You leaned forward in your chair, resting your elbows on the table, eyes locked on his. "You can't look me in the eye and tell me you've never thought about us."
Eddieâs jaw worked furiously, a muscle jumping in his cheek. He looked down at the floor, at the ceiling, anywhere but at you. "It doesn't matter," he gritted out. "I'm not that guy."
You walked around the table, moving into his space, just like you had in the alleyway, but this time you were sober, and every step was calculated. "You're the guy who takes care of me. The guy who protects me. The guy who drives me home and sleeps on my couch."
"Stop," he warned, backing up until his spine hit the wall. He held his hands up as if to ward you off, but you saw the way his fingers curled toward you, wanting to grab hold of you.
"But you never made a move," you mused, stopping right in front of him. You reached out, trailing a finger down the front of his flannel shirt, feeling the rapid thud of his heart beneath your touch. "All these years. Not once. Why? Think I'd break your heart? Think youâre too good for me?â
If anything is too good for someone - itâs you. Youâre way more than I deserve.
"Because you're my best friend!" he shouted, the words exploding out of him. "If we hooked up and I ended up losing you, I wouldn't survive it!"
"You wouldnât," you said, looking up at him through your lashes. "I'm right here. And I'm asking you. I'm giving you permission to be honest with me. Just for once.â
His eyes darted across your face, searching for a sign of hesitation - but he found none. All he saw was a heat that matched his own, a challenge that hung in the air between you.
"Fine. I think about it all the time," he finally ground out, the admission torn from him by your pleading expression. "Every single day. Every time you laugh at my jokes or wear those goddamn shorts or tell me about the book youâre reading. Every time you look at me like I'm actually worth something because youâre like, the only person who does.â
The satisfaction that surged through you was heady, better than any drink. You stepped closer, eliminating the last inch of space between you, until your hips were brushing his.
âReally?â
âY-yeah.â
"Good," you whispered. "I was hoping you'd say that."
You looked up at him, your eyes wide and curious. "So tell me, Munson. If I let you... If I actually gave you the green light... What would you do with me?"
Eddieâs breath hitched audibly. His eyes went black, dilating until the brown was just a thin ring around the edge. He stared at you, and for a second, he considered bolting. But then something snapped. The leash he'd been holding onto for a decade finally broke.
"You really want to know?" He asked, voice dropping to a low, dangerous rumble that vibrated through your chest.
"I do," you nodded eagerly.
"I donât know if Iâd be very gentle, sweetheart," he said, gaze dropping to your lips, then lower, to the pulse beating wildly in your neck. "I might not be the sweet, careful friend you're used to. Maybe I'd be selfish."
He leaned down, face inches from yours, but he didn't kiss you. He just let you feel the heat of his breath, the weight of his words.
"I'd start by getting you out of these clothes," he murmured, his eyes tracing the line of your shirt. "Slowly. I'd want to draw it out. Make you beg for it, kinda like you begged me last night. I'd peel every layer off till you were completely bare for me. Would you like that?"
He grinned as you trembled slightly, but still held your ground, mesmerized while you nodded.
"I wouldn't just use my hands," he continued, his voice roughening. "I think Iâd like to memorize every inch of you with my tongue. Find every spot that makes you gasp and squirm, and I'd stay there until you were screaming my name."
He shifted, crowding you back against the wall, but didnât touch you yet, one hand bracing beside your head. Tension radiated off him.
"And when you were finally as desperate as I could make you," he whispered, âwhen you couldn't take it anymore... I still wouldn't give it to you right away. I'd make you wait. Use your words. All that.â
He leaned in closer, his lips brushing the shell of your ear, sending a shiver down your spine that rattled your bones.
"And when I finally got inside of you," he breathed, "I wouldn't stop. Not until you were so wrecked you couldn't remember your own name. Not until the only thing you knew, the only thing you could feel inside your tight little body, was me."
He pulled back slightly, looking you in the eye, his expression fierce and hungry. "And I'd ruin you for anyone else. Make sure you never looked at another guy again without thinking of me. Mark you, inside and out. I'd make you mine. Thatâs the only way this ends.â
The air in the kitchen seemed to have vanished. You were gripping the front of his shirt now, breath coming in short, sharp gasps. It was clearly the most intense thing anyone had ever said to you, likely made infinitely hotter by the knowledge that it was your friend. Eddie. With the sweet doe eyes and nerdy side hobbies. The guy who looked like an intense, devil-worshiping troublemaker - but who was truly an angel in disguise.
"Is that..." you swallowed hard, trying to find your voice. "Is that all?"
A dark, wicked smirk curled the corner of his mouth. It was a look you'd never seen on him before - predatory, confident.
"I mean, thatâs just the start," he said softly. "I've got ten years of ideas to work through."
Your fingers clenched tighter around the fabric of his flannel, twisting it until your knuckles threatened to split open. The air between you was thick enough to choke on, charged with a decade of repressed longing that was finally snapping its tether. His words were still echoing in your ears, dark and heavy, painting pictures in your mind that made your thighs tremble.
"So do it.â
Eddie froze, his dark eyes searching yours. He looked like a man standing on a precipice, terrified to jump but longing for the fall.
âWhat?"
"You h-heard me," you said, voice gaining strength. You tugged him forward, pulling him flush against you until you could feel the hard lines of his body pressing into yours. He was solid, warm, and vibrating with a restraint that was visibly crumbling. "Stop talking about it. If you want to ruin me so badly, Eddie... Then ruin me."
He let out a ragged half-groan, half-laugh, shaking his head slightly. "You don't know what you're asking, baby. You deserve so much better than me.â
"I'm not asking for someone else," you shot back, eyes flashing. "I'm asking for you. All of you. Unless," you tilted your head, a smirk playing on your lips, "you're all talk?"
That was the spark that lit the fuse.
Eddieâs brown eyes narrowed, the heat in them intensifying. He didn't say a word as he moved with a sudden, fluid speed that stole your breath. One hand shot out, bracing against the wall beside your head, and the other hooked around your waist, hauling you off your feet. You gasped as your back hit the wall, harder than you expected, knocking the wind out of you. But before you could recover, his mouth was on yours.
It wasn't really a sweet, tentative first kiss. It was all tongues and desperate hunger. He kissed you like he was starving, like you were the only oxygen in a burning room. His lips were demanding, punishing, slanting over yours perfectly with a passion that made your head spin. You moaned into his mouth, hands flying up to tangle in his hair, pulling him closer, needing him closer. He growled low in his throat, the vibration reverberating through your chest. His hand left the wall and gripped your thigh, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise, hauling your leg up to wrap around his hip. The position left you open, vulnerable, and you could feel the hard ridge of his erection pressing against your core through the denim of his jeans
"Eddie," you gasped, tearing your mouth away to breathe, but he didn't let you retreat. He immediately latched onto your neck, his teeth scraping against the sensitive skin below your ear, sending jolts of electricity down your spine. If he had his way, (and if you were okay with it) it was going to be the first of many marks heâd leave on your body to remind you exactly who you belonged to.
"I warned you," he muttered against your skin, his voice muffled and rough. "I told you I wouldn't be gentle."
"G-good," you choked out, head falling back against the wall as he sucked the mark onto your pulse point in earnest. "Don't stop."
He didn't. His hand slid up under your shirt, his palm hot against your stomach, tracing the curve of your waist. His touch was electric, searing you from the inside out. He wasn't exploring; he was claiming. Every touch felt like he was marking his territory, learning the map of your body by heart.
Eddie suddenly back away from the wall, letting you slide out of his arms slightly. You groaned in protest but before you could say anything coherent, the world tilted upside down as he threw you over his shoulder with surprising ease. His arms banded around your legs, one hand splayed over your ass as your shorts rode up way too far than was decent. A few moments later he kicked open your bedroom door, the wood banging against the wall. The world righted itself as he carefully dropped you onto the center of the bed.
He was on top of you before you could even process the movement, caging you in, knees on either side of your hips and hands braced on either side of your head. He loomed over you, a predator finally closing in on its prey. He looked wild, his hair a mess, his chest rising and falling rhythmically.
"You sure you want this, sweetheart?â He asked, his voice dropping to a growl.
You looked up at him, shivering at both the intensity in his eyes and the raw need that matched your own. It was endearing that even in his intensity and insistence that he was about to totally ruin you - he still wanted you to fully consent to all of it. Reaching up, you grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled him down until his nose brushed yours.
"If you stop now," you whispered, "I'm gonna kill you."
He let out a dark chuckle, the sound sending a jolt of excitement down your spine. "That's my girl."
Eddie crashed his lips against yours again, and this time, there was no hesitation. There was only that fire you were quickly becoming addicted to. His hands moved to the hem of your shirt, and with a rough jerk, he pulled it up and over your head, tossing it carelessly to the floor, leaving you in a thin bra. The scorching heat of his palms landed on your waist, holding you firmly in place so he could take a moment to drink you in properly.
"Look at you," he murmured, voice a low, vibrating rumble against your sternum as he leaned down, pressing hot, open-mouthed kisses down to the sensitive skin of your stomach. "Fuck, Iâve dreamed about this. Real thing is way better though."
His mouth traveled lower, his tongue dipping into your navel, making your hips buck writhe against the mattress. But his hands were the real distraction. He had large hands, slender and strong, and the cool metal of his rings - the thick silver bands he wore on almost every finger - was a shocking, exquisite contrast to the burning heat of your skin. He dragged those hands up your ribs, thumbs brushing the underside of your breasts, and the rings snagged slightly against the lace of your bra, sending a riot of goosebumps racing across your flesh. It felt dangerous, despite knowing you were safe with him.
Your breath was beginning to come in short gasps, causing Eddie to look up at you from under his lashes. A smirk played on his kiss-swollen lips, and his hands ghosted further over your breasts. Your back arched instinctively, pushing your chest further into his hands. He squeezed ever so slightly, & a small moan worked its way up from the back of your throat.
âAwe, too much, baby?â
"N-no."
His smirk widened, a flash of white teeth. "Good. Because I'm just getting started."
Eddie carefully reached behind you, his fingers fumbling with the clasp of your bra with an ease that probably shouldnât have surprised you. The fabric gave way, and he pulled the straps down your arms, tossing the garment aside with the same disregard heâd shown your t-shirt. The air felt heavy, charged with a sudden, intense vulnerability as you lay bare-chested beneath him.
For a few moments, Eddie didn't speak. He just looked. He stared at you with a hunger that was almost terrifying, eyes darkening as they traced the curve of your breasts, the rapid rise and fall of your chest. It felt like he was physically consuming you with his gaze.
"Fucking Christ," he whispered reverently. "You're perfect."
He lowered his head, but he didn't take a nipple into his mouth immediately. Instead, he ran his knuckles - decorated in cold, hard metal - over the soft swell of your breast. The sensation was startling against your overheated skin. You gasped, your nipples hardening instantly into tight peaks.
"Like that, baby?" He murmured, doing it again experimentally, this time on the other side. He watched your face intently, cataloging every reaction as if he intended to file them away to revisit at some point.
"Y-yes," you hissed, your own hands tangling in his hair, trying to guide him closer. "Eddie, please."
"Please what?" His teasing breath ghosted over your skin. "Use your words. Tell me what you need."
"I need your mouth," you practically begged, your hips lifting off the bed in a desperate search for friction as he let out a small laugh. "Please, put your mouth on me or something.â
"Since you asked so nicely."
He leaned down and closed his lips around your nipple, sucking hard. The wet heat of his mouth was a shock after the cold metal of his rings. And he didn't just suck; he used his teeth too - grazing the sensitive bud just enough to make you gasp. A sharp mix of pleasure with a twinge of pain shot straight to your groin. His hand came up to knead your other breast, his palm rough, his fingers twisting and pinching.
After a few intense minutes that had you panting, he switched sides, giving the other nipple the same treatment. Eventually, his free hand slid slowly down your stomach, rings clinking softly against your skin. With practiced ease, his hand delving inside your sleep shorts, beneath the waistband of your underwear.
You knew you were soaked. You could feel the slick heat gathering between your legs, and now he definitely could as well. He choked out an against your breast, fingers sliding through your wetness.
"Christ,â Eddie murmured. âThis all for me, angel?"
"All for you," you managed, head falling back against the pillow. "Only you."
"Good girl," he praised, his voice dropping an octave, becoming impossibly deeper. It was a tone youâd never heard from him - commanding, authoritative. It made your stomach clench with anticipation.
Quickly, he pulled his hand out of your pants, ignoring your small whine of protest, and hooked his fingers into the waistbands of both your shorts and panties. He tugged them down your legs in one rough motion, helping you kick out of them so you were left completely bare before him.
Eddie sat back slightly as he situated himself between your legs, his large, dark eyes roaming over your naked body like he didnât know what he wanted to focus on first. He looked so terrifyingly beautiful like this - hair wild, chest heaving beneath his t-shirt. He looked like a fallen angel. Your fallen angel.
"Spread your legs a little more for me," he ordered, his deep voice leaving no room for argument.
You hesitated for a split second, an old instinct to be modest warring with the overwhelming need to please him. But the look in his eyes - fierce, hungry, but underneath it all, still kind and understanding - shattered your reservations. You slowly parted your thighs, exposing yourself to him completely.
To your surprise, he didn't touch you immediately. He just looked, gaze heavy. He took his time, his eyes tracing the curve of your hips and stomach, the dip of your navel, the slick folds of your center.
"Beautiful," he murmured, almost to himself. "Absolutely fucking beautiful."
Then, Eddie leaned forward, bracing his hands on your thighs. The rings pressed into your skin, anchoring you, pressing you open for him. He lowered his head, his breath hot against your inner thigh as you braced yourself for the lashing of his tongue⌠And then he bit down. Hard.
âOw, Eddie! What the fuck -â You cried out, hips bucking, but he held you firm, his grip like iron. He licked the red mark heâd left, soothing the sting, then moved higher, leaving a trail of lighter bites and kisses up your thigh, teasing you, tormenting you.
âGotta make sure you remember me, sweet girl.â
"Eddie, please," you gasped, hands fisting in the sheets. "S-stop teasing. I need... I n-need..."
"What do you need?" he asked, his voice vibrating against your skin. He was so close, his breath ghosting over where you needed him most, but of course he wouldn't give you the satisfaction. He seemed to get off on your desperation. "Tell me exactly what you need, or I'll keep you here like this all day."
"I told you need your mouth -â
âYeah?â He placed a searing hot kiss an inch above your clit and you nearly kneed him in the side of the head. âHow badly?â
âS-so badly -â
âWhere do you want me?â
âThis isnât fucking funny, Eddie.â
He just chuckled, watching you helplessly writhe beneath him, trying to raise your hips to his mouth. âKinda is, actually.â
A frustrated cry fell from your lips as he kissed you again, this time just a tad lower. Any residual shame or embarrassment for asking what you wanted for was gone, replaced by pure desperation.
âJust⌠Fuck - I need you t-to eat me out. Please, Eddie."
He let out a satisfied laugh. "With pleasure."
And then he was on you. He didn't ease into it or bother starting slow. He flattened his tongue and licked a long, broad stripe from your entrance up to your clit, tasting you with a groan that vibrated through your entire body. Youâd never had someone between your thighs that devoured you with the intensity your friend - well, could you even call him a friend after this? - was currently doing. His mouth was hot and demanding, tongue swirling and flicking with a skill that made your eyes roll back in your head.
Eddie pleasured you with the same finesse with which he played guitar. Which was to say intensely, precisely, and somehow also with a reckless abandon that made his actions seem like second nature. As if heâd been doing this for years, and knew your body as well as he knew his own. He growled against you, the sound muffled by your flesh, his chin scraping against your sensitive skin. Eddieâs hands continued to hold your thighs open, his rings digging in, grounding you. In some twisted way, it felt like he was claiming you, bit by bit. Every time he flicked his tongue over your clit, you saw stars.
"God, Eddie," you moaned, your hips grinding against his face, seeking more. "Yes - I, fuck - just like that -
He hummed agreeably against you, the sensation sending shockwaves through your system. He shifted one of his hands, sliding two long fingers deep inside you without warning. You gasped, your inner walls clamping down around him. He curled his fingers upward, finding that spot inside you that made your vision blur, and began to pump them in and out in a relentless rhythm, all while his tongue continued its assault on your clit.
The dual stimulation was far too much for so early in the morning. You could feel the pressure building low in your belly, a tight coil of pleasure winding tighter and tighter with every thrust of his fingers, every swipe of his tongue. You whimpered pitifully. Sensing you were close, Eddie didn't let up for a moment. If anything, he went harder, sucking your clit into his mouth, flicking rapidly with his tongue while his fingers fucked into you with brutal precision.
"Let go for me, baby," he commanded, voice muffled and breath still hellishly hot against you in the best way. "Lemme feel you. Now."
The command was your undoing. With a cry that tore from your throat, you shattered. Your back arched off the bed, toes curling, and your entire body shaking as release ripped through you. It was intense and overwhelming. A riptide of pleasure that drowned out everything.
Eddie worked you through it, his tongue slowing but never fully stopping, his fingers easing up as you rode out the aftershocks. You collapsed back against the mattress, gasping for air, your body limp and spent. He pulled his fingers out of you slowly, and you nearly whined at the loss. He sat up, his face shiny with your arousal, and looked at you with a dark, satisfied gleam in his eyes.
"Iâm not religious, but I think you taste like heaven," he said, bringing both fingers to his mouth and licking them each clean, one by one. The sight was erotic, filthy, and it made your exhausted body twitch with renewed interest.
Leaning down, Eddie braced his hands on either side of your head and captured your mouth in a searing kiss. You could taste yourself on his tongue. It probably should embarrassed you. Make you feel kinda weird. Yet in that moment, it was easily one of the most intimate things you had ever experienced.
"How was that?" he asked, pulling back to look at you, a smug, satisfied smirk playing on his lips. âFeeling any closer to ruination, baby doll?â
"Shut up," you breathed, wrapping your arms around his neck and pulling him down for another kiss.
He laughed against your mouth, a dark, rich sound that youâd felt like you could become hooked on for life. Eddie pulled back just enough to yank his t-shirt over his head. The fabric hit the floor, and your eyes devoured the expanse of pale skin revealed. He was a bit leaner than youâd expected, but there was a dense, compact strength to him that made your mouth water. A scattering of dark hair trailed down from his navel, disappearing into the waistband of his jeans. His chest was heaving, the heavy tattoos on his ribs stretching as he breathed.
You reached for him, desperate to feel the closeness of his bare skin against yours, but he caught your wrists in one hand, pinning them effortlessly above your head. The position forced your chest up, arching your back, leaving you completely at his mercy.
"Mmm, none of that," he tsked, shaking his head slowly. His free hand trailed down your side, his rings scraping deliciously over your ribs. "I'm in charge here. Remember? You wanted to be ruined? So youâre gonna let me."
He leaned down, biting a path along your collarbone, sharp stinging nips that soothed instantly under the hot press of his tongue. He was mapping you with an obsessive thoroughness, like he was trying to memorize every inch of your body through touch alone. Heâd released your wrists, but his hands were everywhere - skimming your waist, gripping your hips, kneading your thighs - constantly moving, as if he needed to feel every bit of you before you vanished into thin air.
"I've thought about this," he admitted against your skin, not meeting your eyes. His voice was a bit softer, as if he wasnât sure what your reaction would be to finding out heâd been silently lusting after you. "A lot, over the years, if Iâm being honest. I've, uh, laid in bed at night picturing exactly how you'd look spread out for me.â
A full-body blush flushed over your skin, and you shivered. âH-hope I met your expectations.â
Eddie finally pulled back to look at you, his eyes burning. "Oh, baby. You surpassed them. Easily.â
On one fluid motion, his hands slid to grip your hips, and the room tilted as he flipped you over. You gasped as you found yourself face-down in the pillows, your ass exposed to the cool air. Before you could move, Eddie gently shoved a pillow beneath your hips, and then his hands were on you once more, massaging the flesh.
"Look at this," he groaned, his thumbs brushing over your entrance as if he hadnât spent the better part of an hour with his head between your thighs already. "You're fucking perfect."
You felt the bed dip as he moved, and then the metallic clink of a belt buckle being undone. The sound was loud in the quiet room, followed by the lower rasp of a zipper. Your heart hammered against your ribs, a mix of nerves and anticipation so potent it made you lightheaded.
Positioning yourself carefully on your elbows, you glanced over your shoulder to look back at him, watching as he shoved his jeans and boxers down his thighs. Your breath hitched in your throat.
He was... Big.
Youâd expected him to be⌠What? Average? Perhaps a little more, given his height and frame. But this was⌠A surprise to say the least. He was thick, heavily veined, and seemed almost dauntingly heavy. The flushed head of him already glistening with precum. Eddieâs eyes met yours as he gave you a mischievous grin and wrapped a hand around the base, slowly stroking. The sight of his fist - with those glinting silver rings - pumping himself made your mouth go completely dry.
Eddie smirked. "Like what you see?"
"I..." You swallowed hard, your eyes darting back up to his face. You were tempted to mouth off, make a flippant remark about his ego just to see where your brattiness would take you. But rational thoughts had abandoned your blissed-out brain. So you responded honestly. "Youâre, uh, just⌠A bit bigger than I thought youâd be.â
âThink about my dick often, sweetheart?â
You made a face. âDonât flatter yourself.â
âBut Iâm so good at it.â Eddie cocked his head thoughtfully. "Think you can handle it?"
The challenge hung in the air. You wanted to say yes. You wanted to be someone who could take him. Satisfy him. Make him forget every other person heâd ever been with so that this was more than a one-time thing. But looking at the sheer size of him, a spike of genuine apprehension pierced your haze of lust.
"I-I don't know," you admitted, voice trembling ever so slightly. Eddieâs eyes softened, his rough edges vanishing into the familiar sweet man you knew.
"Don't worry," he said, crawling back over you, covering your body with his. The weight of him felt grounding. He nestled his hips against your ass, letting you feel the hot, hard length of him sliding between you. "Weâll go slow, okay?"
âPromise?â
Eddie pressed a kiss between your shoulder blades. âCross my heart.â
He reached over to your nightstand, fumbling blindly in the drawer until he found a condom. He tore the foil open with his teeth - a move that was unfairly hot for some reason - and maneuvered to roll it on. Then, he shifted his weight, spreading your legs wider with his knees.
"Relax for me, baby,â he murmured, his hand stroking up and down your spine, trying to soothe the tension he could feel radiating off you. "Breathe. Just breathe."
He notched the head against your entrance, pushing forward just enough to barely enter you. The blunt pressure was immediate, a burning stretch that made you gasp into the mattress.
"That's it," he coaxed, his voice low and encouraging. "Open up for me, sweetheart. God, you feel so good already, you know that?â
The praise was a balm as he pushed in deeper, agonizingly slow. You clawed at the sheets, breath hitching in your throat as inch after thick inch breached you. It felt like he was splitting you open, filling you up beyond what you thought possible. The stretch was intense, a sharp, burning friction. You knew that just beneath it would be burgeoning pleasure that made your toes curl - but it still felt far too large.
"Eddie," you whimpered, tears blurring your vision as your face pressed into the mattress. "It's... it's too much. I-I canât -â
"Shh," he hushed you, leaning down to press kisses along your shoulders, neck, and finally to the sensitive spot behind your ear. "You can take it. I know you can. You're doing so good for me, baby."
Eddie kept pushing, feeding you his length with a relentless, aching pressure. It felt like ages until heâd seated himself fully, hips finally flush against your ass, and you let out a broken moan. You felt so incredibly full - especially at this angle - stretched to your limit with him. You could feel every ridge, every vein, the heavy heat of him pulsing inside you, his heartbeat almost as fast as your own.
"Fuck," he groaned, his head dropping forward to rest between your shoulder blades. He was trembling with the effort of holding still, giving you time to adjust. "It's like you're choking me."
âS-sorry -â
âOh shit, donât apologize, angel.â Eddie let out a breathy laugh, shifting ever so slightly to once more run a hand over your back and down to your hip. âYou doing okay?â
âYeah - I - gimme a sec.â
He stayed just as he was for a long moment, letting you get used to the intrusion. You took deep, shuddering breaths, willing your muscles to relax around him. Slowly, the burning pain faded into a dull ache, and the pleasure began to creep back in.
"O-okay. Move," you breathed, pushing your hips back against him slightly, somehow nudging him even deeper. "Please, move."
He let out a guttural sound, part groan, part growl. "Hold on."
âAre you going to ruin me or not, Munson?â
At your goading, Eddie pulled out almost all the way, leaving just the head inside of you, before rocking back in. The force of the thrust knocked the air out of your lungs, a sharp cry tearing from your throat. He set a brutal pace immediately, no more gentle build-up - just hard, deep strokes that rattled your teeth. The bed creaked loudly under the onslaught, the headboard banging rhythmically against the wall. You prayed your neighbors werenât home, because it was too late to fully silence the sounds he was pulling out of you. Skin slapped against skin - lewd sounds that filled the room, mixing with both your moans as well as his heavy breathing and steady stream of praise.
"Look at you," he gritted out, his hand wrapping around your hip, pulling you back to meet his thrusts. "Taking it so deep. Sâlike youâre - fucking hell - sucking me in, sweetheart. Startinâ to think you were made for me."
He reached under you, his fingers finding your clit, and he began to rub tight, rapid circles. It felt like your body caught in a vice of pleasure, and your brain was struggling to catch up. Shifting his angle slightly, his next thrust hit a spot inside you that made you see white. You cried out, your entire body convulsing. Quickly taking the hint, he locked onto that spot, abusing it with ruthless precision, driving into you over and over again.
"You like that, baby? You like it when I fuck you right there?"
"Ye- oh god, yes, Eddie, I -â
He was losing control. You could feel it in the way his rhythm faltered, in the way his grip on your hip tightened. He knew you were close, but he was also chasing his own release, using your body to get there, and the thought of him losing himself inside you pushed you closer to the edge.
Just as the surface of the mattress seems to fall away from under you as your release overtop you, Eddie bit down on your shoulder as he slammed into you one last time. He buried himself to the hilt, and stilled. You felt him pulse inside you, the condom filling with his release as he let out a long, ragged moan in your ear. The sensation triggered your own aftershock-like wave that rippled through your exhausted body.
He collapsed on top of you, his weight heavy and suffocating, but you didn't care. You wrapped your arms around his forearms, holding him close, listening to the frantic racing of his heart as it began to slow.
For a long time, neither of you moved. You just lay there, tangled together, sweaty and sticky and completely wrecked. You could feel the harsh pattern of his breathing against your back, the occasional twitch of his hips as he came down, though he hadnât pulled out of you just yet.
Finally, he shifted, pressing a kiss to the back of your neck. "You okay, sweetheart?" he asked, his voice raspy and wrecked.
"Better than okay," you mumbled into the pillow, a satisfied smile stretching your lips.
He laughed against your skin. "Good. Because after that, I donât think I want anyone else to have you.â
âGonna keep me all for yourself, Munson?â
âObviously.â
Your index finger traced one of the tattooed bats on his forearm thoughtfully. âBecause you ruined me?â
âOh, no sweetheart.â Eddie laughed again, stroking your hair and pressing a kiss to your sweaty temple. âI think youâre the one who ruined me.â
